The biggest thing to come out of the Democratic National Convention in California last month, other than Al and Tipper’s smooch, was the bad news about electric deregulation. California was one of the first states to turn electricity prices loose and the only state to jump into deregulation without a net. Delegates and reporters visiting […]
Bob Geary
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Next stop, Raleigh
Margaret Toman was at the Charlotte City Council meeting last week, part of a small contingent who came from the Triangle to listen to the debate over a resolution in favor of a death-penalty moratorium in North Carolina. Opponents, including family members of crime victims, were tearful, passionate and angry, Toman says. But the advocates […]
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Smart Growth for Real
So you think you know how to do “smart growth”? OK, you’re in charge. What’s the right plan for the land around the Entertainment and Sports Arena in West Raleigh? By the way, the decisions you make will be very important to the Wake County school system, which could use some “smart” thinking to get […]
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Play by play
Check out the side balcony the next time you’re at Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh for a show. If you spot what looks like the broadcast team for Monday Night Football up there, it’s gotta be a crew from Arts Access of Wake County, describing the action on stage to audience members who are blind. This […]
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Squeaky Wheels
To Mark Ezzell, nothing could be plainer than that people with disabilities must get organized politically–and vote. Both are first-nature to him. He was born with spina bifida, an imperfect closure of the spiral cord resulting in paralysis of the legs. So he’s always used leg braces or a wheelchair to get around. His birth […]
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Code Red
It’s summer, and the ground troops of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group–mainly college students–are going door-to-door in the Triangle, as they do every year. Their job: Get people riled up enough about something the government’s doing wrong so they’ll sign a petition and contribute to the cause. And because it’s summer, the PIRGs (as […]
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A happy ending
Art and Loretta Zumbach are a comfortable couple, the sort of mellow middle-agers who finish each other’s sentences–or try to, anyway–and laugh as they correct the corrections. It’s the second marriage for both, a widow and widower who knew one another, and their families, long before they tied the knot in 1998. So putting their […]
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Dr. K´s Cure
By the time she finished medical school at UNC-Chapel Hill, Carol Kirschenbaum was committed to the goal of universal health care, which means “appropriate health care on a regular basis for everyone,” she says. By then she was in her mid-40s and had seen a lot more than the typical new doc. She’d taught school […]
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Brainstorm
Glen Lang, Cary’s new high-octane mayor, comes from the “do something” school. The Wake County school system is systematically underfunded and overcrowded? “We need to do something,” Lang exclaims. And bounding–one imagines–to his desk, he taps out a white paper, posts it at www.townofcary.org, calls a public hearing, courts the press, flays his critics and […]
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Land for swap
Is there any chance N.C. State University won’t sell that 159-acre tract of land next to the Entertainment and Sports Arena? In a word, no, Vice Chancellor George Worsley told a citizens’ meeting last week. Local residents who turned out at the West Raleigh Citizens’ Advisory Committee (CAC) implored Worsley to save the land from […]