One late November night 12 years ago, Peter Lafata woke up in a panic. Shaking awake his longtime girlfriend, Jo Hill, Lafata declared that he had come to a realization about his mortality. Grabbing a pencil and a scrap sheet of paper, he wrote: “I give Jo Hill 2 acres land with barn and studio. […]
Jennifer Strom
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Footwear, snakes and revenge
In August, it will be four years since I bought my construction-worker boots. You know the kind–caramel-colored rawhide, rubber soles, stiff padded ankle collars. Buying them was one of those close-the-barn-door things–they arrived in my closet directly after my copperhead encounter. Wrapping up a steamy late-summer Sunday in 1999, I endeavored to settle our crazily […]
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Not ashamed of the Dixie Chicks
It’s a rainy Saturday night in Greensboro. The Dixie Chicks are rockin’ the house, and there are no politics here. Or are there? Nearly 25,000 people have paid many bucks and traveled many miles to hear the Texas trio belt ’em out in the Triad. By the sound of the hooting, they aren’t disappointed. The […]
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Full press court
On April 28, exactly one week before the murder trial of Michael Peterson was set to begin, the smell of fresh paint filled the main stairwell in Durham’s downtown courthouse. If you chose to walk the five flights to Superior Courtroom Number One, like most regulars familiar with the creeping elevators do, you’d get a […]
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Development
It has 17 floors and almost as many nicknames. The Green Weenie. The Big Pickle. A trophy of suburban sprawl. A monument to all the things gone awry in Durham’s planning process over the last two decades. Simultaneously hailed as “a sign of economic progress” and decried as “a high-rise freak” at the time of […]
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Who Is After the Public School Textbook Business?
A few years back, there was a little dust-up in the news about North Carolina’s public school textbook operations. After a couple of autumns in which some students didn’t have their books at the start of school, two local businessmen put together a proposal to privatize the state education department’s book-distribution process. Ricky Wright, a […]
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The geography of expensive oil
The house on the slide-show screen is your average two-story suburban denizen: neutral vinyl siding, 14-inch-deep front porch and a postage-stamp yard with vibrantly green grass. There are no windows on the sides, so the occupants can keep up their “little cabin in the woods” blinders rather than be subjected to a close-up of their […]
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Education Experts Behind Charter School
Durham parents who want a “child-centered” education for their elementary schoolers will have a new charter school option this year. Patterning their school after a model usually found in private schools, a group of Durham educators and parents plan to open The Central Park School for Children July 14. The school will use an integrated, […]
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General puts war aside for UNC-Tech battle
Fred Stutzman happened to walk to the bank late last Friday afternoon in Chapel Hill. On his way across the UNC campus, he spotted a media circus of TV trucks. Curious, Stutzman quizzed a passing cameraman, who tossed something about the “joint chiefs of staff” over his shoulder while scurrying into the throng of men […]
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Getting decked in Old West Durham
It’s not that Terry Sanford Jr. can’t build a gravel parking lot in Old West Durham if he wants to. Indeed, the zoning is appropriate, and as long as the plan meets specific design requirements about landscaping and other details, planners say it’s likely to be approved later this month. But to an active group […]
