Down Lake Wheeler Road, a couple of miles south of the Raleigh Beltline, Yates Mill stands on Steep Hill Creek as a bit of living history–the history of agriculture and mill construction in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the history of open-space protection in the 20th and 21st. When it was built, around 1756, […]
Bob Geary
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It’s dogmatic
We’ve all got our hot-button issues, experiences deeply embedded in our subconscious minds that political candidates can trip by what they say–for good or bad. Quote Bobby Kennedy on poverty, I’m there with you. Works every time; I’m like Pavlov’s dog. What makes me bite the furniture? Candidates who promise, as two did within my […]
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Full-Throttle?
Mike Easley reacted cautiously when progressives asked him, as the state’s attorney general, to get behind legislation that would crack down on predatory lending in the mortgage industry. Some finance companies were tricking up loans to so-called “subprime” borrowers–low-income folks–and systematically stripping them of the equity they’d built up in their homes. The reformers had […]
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Mine owner’s daughter
Beverly Perdue likes to tell audiences that she grew up “real poor,” a coal-miner’s daughter from the mountain town of Grundy, Va. What she doesn’t always mention is that her coal-miner dad, the late Alfred Moore, became a coal-mine owner who was rich by the time she was in college. At least, she didn’t mention […]
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Inside or Out
What are you looking for in the next lieutenant governor? Perhaps a seasoned legislator who’s taken some lumps while shouldering a leadership role in the General Assembly? How about a new kid on the block whose tastes run to Romantic poetry and idealistic notions like campaign-finance reform and getting rid of the death penalty? Probably, […]
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Marching moms
What can a million moms do about gun violence in America? Not much, maybe, given that violence is as American as apple pie (to quote H. Rap Brown) and guns the ol’ equalizer. Or maybe, they can give us the recipe for peace that remakes the American culture. First things first. We need the million […]
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What it’s worth
Was Education Secretary Richard Riley’s speech at Southern High School in Durham worth $300,000? The invited guests–public-school officials, mainly–streamed in from all over the state and beyond. “Did you really come from Tennessee?” I asked one of them, looking at her license plate. “Been driving all morning,” she said and nodded. The cheapskate in me […]
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Derailed
In a meeting room at the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, officials of the Triangle Transit Authority are describing the various places they’re thinking of building a downtown rail station for commuters. It seems like just another in a years-long series of efforts to keep local “stakeholders” informed–especially property owners and developers who might help the […]
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The right to health
At present, the offices of the N.C. Committee to Defend Health Care consists of a spare room in Dr. Carol Kirschenbaum’s house in Durham. Meetings are in the parlor and may adjourn to the dining room table when there’s a mailing to get out. The group’s objective: to make decent health care the constitutional right […]
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Shooting blanks
Do they advocate anything? moderator Bill Friday asked, as he began the first gubernatorial candidates’ forum of the 2000 election year, carried on UNC-TV and WUNC-FM radio. Well, sure they do. All except former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot, a Republican, who asserted that “we have no earthly idea” what issues our state will face over […]