The leaves are turning and summer’s gone, but the North Carolina General Assembly is still at it, still trying to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the resources available to them to cover more territory, even as the resources shrink virtually by the day. That’s been the budget story ever since the session started in January: Legislators kept putting off […]
Bob Geary
Condemned: David Junior Ward
David Junior Ward struggles to express himself. He’s sorry he chose to go with Wesley Harris that day in 1991 when they robbed the woman who ran the neighborhood store in rural Pitt County, and one of them shot and killed her.Does he still think about what happened? “About every night,” he says. He dreams […]
Hillsborough St. blues
Unlike Ed, the TV lawyer who operates out of a bowling alley, architects Roger Spears and Rhonda Angerio don’t own Western Lanes in Raleigh, they just rent the office space at the back, above the Hillsborough Street entrance. Ed jokes are inevitable, they sigh, and no, they can’t bowl for free. What they do get, […]
The Third Way?
If Cam Hill had his way, the University of North Carolina would be putting up new buildings in Fayetteville, or Elizabeth City, or anywhere but Chapel Hill. UNC is wonderful, a great industry and the main reason Chapel Hill is a charming town, he says. But the university is becoming gargantuan, and its plan to […]
Fight for the Hill
There’s a clear difference between the two Town Council members who are neck-and-neck to be the next mayor of Chapel Hill, we’re told by reliable liberals. Kevin Foy is an environmental activist who’s tough on developers. Lee Pavao is a businessman who isn’t. Case closed, comrades? But then, why is Joe Herzenberg, a former Town […]
Old Times, Not Forgotten
Is Jesse Helms’ retirement the end of an era? Not really. It was fitting, in fact, that on the same day the senator announced that he will not seek re-election in 2002, a state legislator from Harnett County, Rep. Don Davis, was forced to apologize for spreading–via the Internet–the same brand of crypto-Christian racism that […]
Having Faith
“We now have direct access to the students.” Brother James Allen, associate minister of the First Baptist Church of Holly Springs and president of the Wake Missionary Baptist Association Laymen’s League, likes to be direct. No trimming. No phraseology. So when he says Christian missionaries like himself are being asked to go into North Carolina’s […]
John Rosenthal
In person, photographer John Rosenthal is very much as you’d expect him to be if you’ve been a regular listener to his commentaries on WUNC and National Public Radio. Which is to say that he is, in many ways, unexpected. He is, for example, brilliant and sure of his ground, but the ground he stands […]
Fresh Start
Let’s give it up for her campaign slogan: “Raleigh needs a breath of fresh air!” Janet Cowell, running hard since spring for an at-large seat on the Raleigh City Council, wants the voters to think about the Triangle’s dirty air–“Our air quality is worse than New York City,” she points out at every stop–and also […]
Sunny side up
Having seen it the other day, I just don’t know whether the Tarheel Regatta should be run on Lake Wheeler, the pretty little lake that Raleigh owns in southern Wake County. What is clear is that one side in the argument, the Optimist Club of Raleigh, is from Mars. The other side, John Argentati and […]

