My friends call it a refuge, but I call it regular: the silence out here, in western Orange County. In all the cities in which I’ve ever lived, there has been this conspicuous B-flat hum. It comes from the computer processors, refrigerators, televisions, the whirring up, on and off of neighborhood air conditioners. Musicians call […]
Randall Williams
Posted inNews
My name is Joey
Joey Wade can remember the first conversation, but not the exact time of day. He knows he was in Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Hospital and in the Cherry Building. The 15-year-old knows he was in his room, sitting on his bed, and it was after the other residents had gone to sleep. That’s when a woman […]
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Minister preaches against ‘faggots,’ for The Passion
From this past Sunday’s sermon, one would think the Rev. Donald Q. Fozard Sr. likes saying the word faggot. The pastor of Durham’s Mount Zion Christian Church hollers the word’s last syllable as if he were exorcising a demon, or as if he were a movie star who understands that notoriety rises when you do […]
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Bullhorns and blackboards
During the last class, on the last day, of Duke Young Writers’ Camp, my students and I gathered around a conference table in the basement of the Lilly Library. Amid art books and chapel lithographs, the high school students chattered about their flights home, new beverages on the market and a pink-haired drama student one […]
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What’s going on with the national anti-war movement?
One block east of Union Square, in the crumbling Washington Irving High School, 800 activists gathered last month to discuss the direction of the anti-war movement. The event was the most recent national gathering since the April demonstrations in Washington, D.C., that drew upward of 30,000 people, and organizers intended it to be an opportunity […]
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Nightmares of the Recently Laid Off
Those were the days of the MSNBC afternoon. It was 1996, I was in Charlotte, in the 12th grade, and my father had just been laid off. I recall returning home from school to see him watching the 24-hour news channel, and turning our living room into a workplace. I played along, of course, and […]
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The Worst Motels in the Triangle
On Feb. 18, the doors permanently closed at the Durham Inn, or, as locals knew it, the big blue motel by the highway. At its end, city officials refered to the lodging as an “eyesore,” with its rainbow mural and sky-blue shingles, and a “nuisance,” for racking up more than 300 police calls since 1996. […]
Posted inGuides
Ritualistic Behavior
Around midday, people in the Triangle gather or go their own way for lunch. Portrayed here are four groups and their lunches, each a different flavor, for different tastes. ictures of space shuttles, rulers and frogs decorate the walls inside Carrington Middle School’s cafeteria. At 1 p.m., every weekday, eighth graders fill the room with […]
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Bright Lights, Big Hair
The names of store employees in this story have been changed. She moves toward the studio’s corner, ending her journey between a wall of feather boas and a rack of industrial clamps. The middle-aged woman reaches to undo the hooks on her silver-studded tube top. It falls to the floor, exposing sagging skin. She moves […]
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Baby, it’s you
Last Saturday night, two friends and I attended a baby pageant at the North Carolina State Fair. Underneath a large tent located between a livestock competition and a student art show, about 100 parents pushed strollers, scanned the competition and primped their babies. The emcee for the evening was a woman in a black suit […]