Barbara Solow recommends Honky, by Dalton Conley (Vintage Books, 207 pp., $12 pb.) Dalton Conley’s moving and often hilarious memoir of his New York City boyhood sets out to explain how and why his growing up was not that of “your typical middle-class white male.” His artist parents had no money, so the family wound […]
Barbara Solow
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Dividing lines
Just before 9 p.m. outside the Durham YMCA, a sudden snowfall has transformed our world. The sky is a jigsaw puzzle that’s flying apart–tiny, frosty pieces break off and hit us in the face as they fall. Although we can’t see each other very well through the swirl, there’s an instant fellowship among the hunched […]
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Campaign stepchild
At breakfast time last Wednesday, there were no spaces left in the parking lot outside Embassy Suites in Cary. Inside the hotel, more than 500 people were sharing bacon and eggs around cloth-covered tables in the ballroom while listening to speakers kick off the Triangle United Way’s annual fundraising drive. Every so often, the growl […]
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Fits and starts
Why is it so hard for state lawmakers to do the right thing? In January, state officials froze enrollments in North Carolina’s Health Choice insurance program for low-income kids–a move that forced more than 3,000 needy children onto a waiting list. Although the federal government was offering $21 million to expand the program, Tar Heel […]
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Truth and beauty
The other day, I went to a funeral that restored my faith in medicine. I sat with a group of about 75 mourners clustered on wicker chairs at the front of Duke Chapel. From the back of the sanctuary, a Shaker hymn cut through the silence, the notes as sharp as the colored panes in […]
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Deadly Air
During the warm-weather season that’s fast approaching, Wes Wallace says he doesn’t have to check the local news to find out whether it’s a bad air-quality day. He can tell by the people he sees coming into the emergency room at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, where he teaches emergency medicine. In the past few […]
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Positive Pressure
SEX EDUCATIONIt’s just after 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, and the small waiting room at Planned Parenthood in Durham has been turned into a temporary classroom. Fourteen teenagers crowd in and attempt to settle down, as they pass around a sign-in sheet and balance their favorite snacks on top of bulging notebooks. For the next […]
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Vanishing Point?
Some days, Gerald Bowen feels as though his neighborhood in western Durham is under siege. His comfortable home on wooded Shoccoree Drive above a swath of Interstate 85 is the picture of privacy and calm. But about once a month, a real estate company flyer will appear on Bowen’s doorstep, reminding him that the happy […]
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Frozen Out
Until the start of this year, when patients showed up at his Wake County pediatric offices without insurance, Dr. Wallace Brown knew he could help them find a way to pay for their care. For those occasions, Brown, who’s a member of Raleigh Pediatric Practice, kept a stack of brochures handy describing North Carolina Health […]
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Chasing phantoms
I’m in the student union building at North Carolina Central University, talking to Sylvester Keech about his night-shift job as a housekeeper on campus. We’re here during the holidays, so the lounge is empty and echoing, and the floor has a mesmerizing gleam. Keech–who’s tall and lean with a neat mustache–doesn’t have a phone or […]
