Stanley Hughes, of Hurdle Mills, still farms the land his grandfather bought in 1912. His Pine Knot Farm, near the Orange and Person county line, is one of 30 operations on this year’s Piedmont Farm Tour. Photo by Kirk Ross.

Spring annual marks Earth Day celebration

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Stanley Hughes isn’t the kind of fellow you meet every day in downtown Carrboro — just Saturday. That’s when Hughes is in his spot at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, moving dozens of head of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower and stacks of collards and kale.

Most of the time you’ll find Hughes hard at work on one of the many fertile plots of land he farms around Hurdle Mills. Some of the land he owns was passed down through his family, who moved to Hurdle Mills in 1912. Some of the land he leases from cousins or neighbors.

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Paw-paw blossoms have had a rough time this year. Photo by Ken Moore.

By Ken Moore

Wow, we now know that because of that recent record-breaking late cold snap, peaches, strawberries and blueberries are going to be really pricey this harvest season. Wait till you see the prices on pawpaws! Well, you probably won’t see any pawpaws (Asimina triloba). You may even be wondering: “What’s a pawpaw?”
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The corner of Poplar Avenue and Elm Street in Carrboro saw some of the worst of Monday’s wind storm. Photo by Kirk Ross

Power outages, traffic jams and plenty of debris as gusts topped 50 m.p.h.

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Monday was clear, but anything but calm as gusts of more than 50 miles per hour knocked down dozens of trees and knocked out power to nearly 10,000 residents of Orange County.

Unofficial wind speed analysis from the National Weather Service in Raleigh showed that a 53 m.p.h. gust was recorded at an Orange County monitoring station in Duke Forest at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and a 46 m.p.h. recorded at Horace Williams Airport nine minutes later. The winds hit after soaking rains over the weekend loosened soils around trees.

By Wedneday morning Duke Energy reported that more than 1,000 Orange County residents were still without power, most of them in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill. The company estimated all of its Orange County customers would be back on line by Thursday at 5 p.m.

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By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

As the county gears up for budget season, officials say they hope to limit the tax-rate increase this year.

State law requires the county manager to submit a budget to the Board of County Commissioners by May 15 and the board to approve a budget by June 30. The board will work through budget issues at this year’s first regular budget work session on Thursday.

At a retreat in January, the board discussed limiting the tax-rate increase to equal the amount of debt-service payment increases.

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Sima Fallahi and her daughter Leila at home in Carrboro. Photo by Jackie Helvey Courtesy of Carrboro.com

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Carrboro resident Sima Fallahi and her daughter, Leila, were due good news. They got some this past Monday when Fallahi was informed by her attorneys that an immigration judge had granted a motion to reopen her deportation case. A preliminary hearing will take place in Atlanta on June 7, at which time the judge will provide a deadline for Fallahi’s attorneys to present documentation in support of her political asylum case and will set a date for a full hearing.

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By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Fourth District U.S. Rep. David Price said he thinks the country is headed for a constitutional crisis as Congress and President Bush square off over funding for the Iraq war.

Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said he expects the president to veto a narrowly passed emergency-funding bill that includes a timeline for ending U.S. military involvement in the four-year-old conflict.

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UNC News Services

Bluegrass, black gospel, country and a steel guitar sound rooted in the black church will come together in a celebration of North Carolina’s grassroots music on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.

The “Carolina Breakdown” concert will feature the innovative bluegrass of the Tony Williamson Band of Siler City, the sacred steel sounds of the Allen Boys of Mount Airy, the old-time country of Laurelyn Dossett of Greensboro and the down-home gospel of the Branchettes of Newton Grove.

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By Patrick Barnes and Mike Cross

In the mid-1980s, Dare County’s leaders saw a housing boom coming and didn’t know how to pay for it.

Higher property taxes were a touchy issue in the coastal county. The rich didn’t want them and the poor couldn’t afford them. Taxes on hotel rooms and other purchases wouldn’t raise enough.
Their solution? A tax on real estate sales.

With the legislature’s permission in 1985, Dare began levying a 1 percent tax on every real estate transaction. In two decades, the tax has raised more than $90 million. The money has helped pay for a gleaming high school with a view of the Wright Brothers memorial, two middle schools, three elementary schools and a $14 million justice center.

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Photo by Kirk Ross

It wasn’t a groundbreaking, but a symbolic sprinkling of rainwater on native plants that marked the official event celebrating the pending construction of the new North Carolina Botanical Garden’s Visitor Education Center Saturday on Laurel Hill Road.

The center is the first building at a major U.S. campus to be designed as a Platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) structure, the highest certification given by the U.S. Green Building Council.

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Pig out on the green

The Chapel Hill Police Department will host the annual “Pig Out on the Green” barbecue fundraiser on Sunday to benefit Special Olympics of North Carolina.

The fundraiser, which will take place on the green at Southern Village, will run from 2-6 p.m. Tickets to the benefit are $10 and include barbecue “and all the fixins’,” according to the police department.

The event will also feature the Rhythm Brothers band, as well as a silent auction with items including a basketball signed by UNC men’s basketball coach Roy Williams, a football signed by UNC football coach Butch Davis and a Brian Vickers NASCAR racing helmet.

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Echoes from Blacksburg

Grief is immediate and lasting at the same time. In Blacksburg, a community much like our own, it has settled in while the town and the world stands in shock.

The echoes sounding on a survivor’s cell phone had barely faded when the conversation veered from anguish to politics and what to do about guns.

While not conceding any point in the debate over the parameters of the second amendment, it is doubtful that even the depth of this grief and the magnitude and horror of this crime will budge firearm policy a hair’s breadth.

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By Louisa Warren

North Carolina lawmakers deserve great praise for passing a substantial lobbying and ethics reform package last year that will truly help change the pay-to-play culture that ruled in the General Assembly. But unfortunately there’s a fundamental flaw to the legislation that threatens to stain their good work and further erode public confidence.

When lawmakers created an Independent Ethics Commission last summer that now holds sway over all three branches of government, they managed to close the ethics proceedings to the public. That means that any ethics hearings and punishments given to executive branch employees or legislators will be kept secret. That means that the public may never know if a public official has committed an ethics violation. That means that legislation that was supposed to make government function more honestly and fairly actually sanctions closed-door maneuverings.

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Help Wanted

With the race for the Democratic nomination for governor tightening, it’s looking less and less like either Richard Moore or Beverly Perdue are going to blink and veer onto the federal side of the ballot to take on Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

With the two most well-funded and visible Dems not inclined to take on Liddy, the party has had a big help wanted sign hanging with no takers talking about it — at least out loud.

That changed last week when Rep. Brad Miller uttered that he’s talked with party officials about a possible Senate run.

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By Frank Heath

You wake up on a beautiful Tuesday morning, but the power remains out in half of Chapel Hill, and 33 people are still dead on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Sometimes we make sports out to be as important as the things that go on in real life; but they’re not. Sports become like wallpaper on a day like Monday, April 16th.

What’s funny is that when sports fade a bit from our focus, that’s when they may actually provide a more meaningful framework for understanding the significant events and relationships of our lives.

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By Jim Warren

Power company influence – including suppression of criticism and public relations smokescreens – continues to damage our democratic process and threaten regional safety.

Last fall, NC WARN, the Union of Concerned Scientists and others began legal action to compel the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to enforce its rules after allowing Shearon Harris to violate fire safety regulations since 1992.

Since that time, Harris owner Progress Energy has repeatedly misled public officials and media about its fire protection status. A recent letter by Harris VP Bob Duncan disparaging NC WARN would be amusing if fire wasn’t a leading risk factor for a severe nuclear accident.

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