When we sat down a few weeks ago to look at the work of former North Carolina Fund photographer Billy Barnes, the photos of economically depressed parts of our state in the early 1960s spurred a conversation about poverty then and now. A series on WUNC radio broadcast in conjunction with Barnes’ exhibit also explored […]
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
Posted inNews
Vigilante spring
A few years back, when I was working on a series about the growing Latino labor force in North Carolina and a post-9/11 crackdown on undocumented workers, one of my sources noted that if Pat Buchanan and others who want to stem the tide of immigration got to build their wall around the United States, […]
Posted inNews
Signs of life
If you traverse Erwin Road as it winds its way through the suburban and occasionally bucolic countryside just north of the hot concrete of U.S. 15-501, you might have noticed a few sets of simple green and white signs along the side of the road near the Orange/Durham line. In Burma Shave style, they read […]
Posted inBest of the Triangle
Rosemary to Main to Jones Ferry
Planning 101 at Carolina isn’t 101–it’s PLAN 46, and if you took it in the early ’90s like I did, chances were that your prof was Jonathan Howes, who at the time also held the title Mayor of Chapel Hill. Professor Howes took us on a walking tour of downtown Chapel Hill pointing out some […]
Posted inNews
Heels rock
Every sport teaches us something. That’s why we connect with them on a visceral level. Football is a lesson in determination. Baseball, where a .500 season is pretty good and being successful at bat a third of the time gets you into the Hall of Fame, teaches us how to lose and yet go on. […]
Posted inMusic
SXSW
Upside: A couple of days of cool weather; Elvis Costello and most of The Attractions proving they can still rock it; jaws dropping as Trailer Bride fans dig The Moaners for the first time; a drop-in by Alejandro Escovedo and a post-downpour double rainbow on view from the porch at Maria’s Taco Express; Thad Cockrell […]
Posted inMusic
Royal visit
Don’t Miss Show Alert: It’s been nearly five years since King Sunny Ade and his African Beats took to the stage at Cat’s Cradle and reminded everyone there that juju music is still very much alive and kicking and every bit as relevant as it was when it sprang from the West African highlife scene […]
Posted inNews
Be true to your school
Where I’m from we do not suffer fools gladly and, unfortunately, there are a lot of them. Even more these days since this whole thing with Sean May boiled over–again. You’d think that after three years the good people of Bloomington, Ind., would have told the shrill, ill-mannered and, yes, sacrilegious basketball fans among them […]
Posted inNews
Welcome back
The people have spoken, now it’s the General Assembly’s turn. And we’re thinking that maybe with margins not so evenly split, there are a few things on our long-term wish list that will come out of this year’s session. Tops is the death penalty moratorium, which passed the Senate last go ’round but didn’t come […]
Posted inNews
Stacked deck
The refreshing thing about Gov. Mike Easley (yes, that’s right: refreshing and Gov. Easley in the same sentence) is that unlike most politicians entering a second term, he does not seem overly concerned about his legacy. That’s pragmatic given that term-limited executives in states like ours, where the legislature reigns supreme, find legacies hard to […]