I don’t need a calendar; I’ve got a dogwood tree. It’s fall and the leaves are getting rusty-colored and red berries are hitting the deck. So are pokeberries reprocessed, if you will, by a variety of locals like the cardinals and brown thrashers and migrating species like the hermit thrush, a wonderful singer. This is […]
Kirk Ross
Bio: Kirk Ross is a freelance columnist for INDY Week and founded the online news and feature publication The Carolina Mercury. He lives in Chapel Hill.Link: http://www.exileonjonesstreet.comEmail: [email protected]: http://twitter.com/ExJS
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Shortchanged
What can happen when you rob Peter to pay Paul? Well, if Peter is in charge of the sewage treatment plant, then plenty–most of which is exceedingly unpleasant. This has been a banner couple of years for municipal sewage spills, and that’s saying something considering this state has long been plagued with such things. But […]
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Some land for tomorrow
No mosquitoes, no ticks and cool pleasant weather. Aside from the fact that I had to crawl through a rhododendron hell for an hour and spend the day up to my ankles in muck, the trip to Sugar Mountain Bog was a sure-fire respite from summer in the Piedmont. Sugar Mountain Bog and Pineola Bog […]
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Bowles taking charge
Call him Erskine, everybody else does. That’s how he wants it and that’s how it is now between the new UNC system president, his staff and the UNC Board of Governors, the 35-member body that guides the university system. In a linguistic contrast to the administration of former President Molly Broad, who stepped down last […]
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Nightmare on Jones Street
Halloween–the scary part, not the candy–may come a bit early this year as state agencies in the midst of preparing their budgets get wind of the fiscal picture for next year. With all the focus on the elections, it’s a little understandable to forget that it’s also crystal ball season for economic forecasters. In a […]
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UNC Healthcare faces critics; Bowles responds
Elderly patients, patients without insurance and those having a tough time meeting co-payments got a break last week when UNC Healthcare officials–under pressure from UNC system President Erskine Bowles–agreed to modify recent policies that health care advocates say send the message that if you can’t pay, don’t go to UNC. Bowles, who took over as […]
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As they round turn one
It’s Mixed Metaphor Week as we take a quick look at the latest thinking in common wisdom among Washington insider-types handicapping congressional races to watch in North Carolina. Here, as Firesign Theatre once put it, is the latest bird’s-eye lowdown. N.C. 11: Dems throw a hail yes Latest poll: Schuler 48 percent, Taylor 43 percent. […]
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Alamance farmers snag national award
The lettuce is gone, and its quarter-acre plot now covered with grass is about the only thing on Alex and Betsy Hitt’s Peregrine Farms that looks even remotely unproductive. In the plot next door are a mix of zinnias–red, orange, purple–with colors so bright they make your eyes hurt. Just beyond that display are a […]
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The man who would be speaker
The biggest election of the ’06 cycle actually happens in ’07. But if history serves as a guide, the election of speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives will be all but sewed up (or at least assumed to be) by the time the dust settles on the November elections. Anybody who says they […]
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Risky business
A steep drop in federal homeland security grants and a new state system for passing the money on to local agencies has opened up a feud between the state and local emergency management officials, who are frustrated and bracing for a sudden loss of funds for projects. Early this year, after being informed by the […]