“When Artistic Expression Becomes a Livelihood: The Stories and Handiwork of Indian and Kenyan Women” will be displayed Thursday, Aug. 2 through Sept. 20 in UNC’s FedEx Global Education Center.

Visitors can see embroidered pieces by women in India and hand-dyed and woven wool rugs by women in Nairobi, Kenya. Photos and written stories of the artists and their communities will be posted. Both groups support their families with sales of their works.

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A hand lens or magnifying glass is helpful for viewing the Crane-fly Orchid flower. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

They’re late this year. The specimens in my parched woodland have not yet shown themselves. Over in the middle of Carrboro – more showers over there – they’re up but not in flower, and along the trails of the Botanical Garden – lots more showers over there – they’re in full flower!

Well now, unlike most wildflowers these are not going to knock your socks off with a showy display of color. You can easily complete your woodland stroll without ever seeing this diminutive native orchid down by your footsteps. Sadly, a number of them, growing too close to the edge of the path, sometimes in the path, will be trampled by innocent feet.

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 New facility will also be a focus for company’s retail brews

Next week is another first for Pittsboro, as Chapel Hill-based Carolina Brewery opens a new 9,000-square-foot restaurant and brewpub near the new Lowe’s Home Improvement store at the intersection of U.S. 15-501 and U.S. 64 bypass.

The location, the company’s second, will house brewing operations along with the restaurant and feature patio dining and a room for private parties and dinners.

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Cooking demo
Marilyn Markel of A Southern Season will demonstrate cooking with farmers’ market products at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market on Wednesday, August 8, at 4 p.m.
Markel, who manages Culinary Lessons at A Southern Season, will use in her demonstration ingredients found at the market that day.

For more information, visit carrborofarmersmarket.com.

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(Good) drivers wanted
Where did you learn how to drive? Yeah, you, the guy in the black Camero that skidded around two lanes of traffic, veered left and cut everyone off, then sped up the N.C. 54 on-ramp scraping the curb along the way.

And you in that gray, beat–up Tercel — what the heck were you doing running red lights all the way up Smith Level?

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Eve Carson and Mike Tarrant 

The Orange County Board of Elections may present UNC students with two alternatives for early voting in this fall’s municipal elections: Hitch a ride to the closest poll, or simply don’t vote.

In an email last Monday, Orange County elections director Barry Garner informed UNC-Chapel Hill administrators that he had decided to recommend that the board move the location of their early-voting polling site from the traditional on-campus site to the Seymour Senior Center off Homestead Road.

In past years, the on-campus polling site has been located at Morehead Planetarium, which will not be available this year due to the showing of a special exhibit.

The UNC voting location has been Orange County’s most popular early-voting site for UNC faculty and staff as well as local community members who live and work nearby. According to the News & Observer, nearly 2,800 people voted early for municipal elections at the planetarium last year. They represented more than 40 percent of the early ballots cast and 8 percent of the total ballots cast in the 2006 general election.

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 Jim Warren

North Carolina has been harmed by a disreputable process that gives powerful corporations even more control over our energy and environmental future – at the worst possible time for our climate. It’s deplorable that a $10,000 per legislator investment by the power companies – and far more to their key supporters – could lead to such an anti-consumer, anti-environment bill.

The bills content
Protections for our climate, health and economy have been gutted because the bill’s clean energy provisions are dwarfed by measures promoting dirty energy, expensive power plants and disincentives for efficiency. An incentive allowing the corporate hog industry to continue polluting our communities and rivers with thousands of feces-and-urine “lagoons” is nothing short of shameful.

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Last week in an op-ed Shana Becker of the N.C. Public Interest Research Group wrote for The Citizen titled “Well-intentioned bill would give utilities a blank check,” Becker stated, “the utilities also said that Shearon Harris would generate energy ‘too cheap to meter.’”

Becker has since contacted us to say that a representative of Progress Energy, in response to the piece, informed her that Progress Energy (formerly CP&L) has no record of saying Shearon Harris would be “too cheap to meter.” We hereby retract the observation.

Early voting site a necessity

The Board of Elections should reconsider the recommendation to eliminate the early-voting site on UNC’s campus this year and, instead, move early voting to the Senior Center on Homestead Rd.

For the past few elections, the early-voting site at Morehead Planetarium has provided a convenient voting opportunity to thousands upon thousands of students, staff, faculty and the members of the general public. In my opinion, it’s critical that we have an early-voting site on campus to serve the citizens who live, work and study there.

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William Schweke

Strong and intelligent leadership can turn economies around. Economic developers that neglect this important but intangible asset do so at their peril. Indeed, most mainstream economic developers seem to still believe that economic development is the “art of the deal.” I disagree. Instead, it is more about “the art of collaborative problem solving.”

It’s true that without a steady and growing stream of new ventures and business expansions, an economy will not renew itself. And if improvements in the labor force or infrastructure are not generating such results, something is wrong. But such a focus on the project can also steer development in the wrong direction.

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Chris Fitzsimon

Early in the sentencing hearing of former House Speaker Jim Black Tuesday morning, the disgraced former lawmaker was explaining how in 2003 he promised to help two Republican legislators raise money if they agreed to cross party lines and support him for speaker.

Black testified that he told the lawmakers that the period between the November general election and the convening of the legislative session in January was a “fertile time to raise money” because a lot of people have an interest in getting something from the General Assembly.

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UNC News Services

Confirmed incidents of child abuse and neglect among Army families increase significantly when a parent is deployed to a combat zone, according to a new study by researchers at RTI International and UNC’s School of Public Health.

The study, which appears in the Aug. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), compares the rates of child abuse and neglect among nearly 2,000 Army families with confirmed incidents of child abuse or neglect. Researchers compared rates while enlisted soldiers were at home and while they were deployed for combat operations between late 2001 and the end of 2004.

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Unless you were among the hundreds who showed up at Cat’s Cradle for a reunited Slint performing their 1991 epic Spiderland, you missed a real gem of a moment in indie rock retro. But while the band’s on a nationwide tour getting their due for a breakthrough album, let’s not forget that Spiderland producer Brian Paulson, who churned out the record with the band over a couple of weekends in Chicago, now makes his home in beautiful downtown Carrboro.

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Thursday August 2

The Cave: Hale Dixon, Blondes Pass Out.
Weaver Street Market: Equinox. 6pm

Friday August 3

The Cave: Early: Sea Cow. Late: Rat Jackson.
Local 506: Black Skies, *Sons, The Rho Band. 10pm. $6
Open Eye Cafe: Clifton Williams & Blue James Band. 8pm

Saturday August 4

Cat’s Cradle: Dragonship, Robert Griffin & Taz Halloweeen. 7:30pm. $10
The Cave: Early: Pagan Hellcats. Late: Dom Casual, The Turnpikes.
Open Eye Cafe: Dogwood Deddy. 8pm

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Greetings from NC: A Century of Postcards from the Durwood Barbour Collection - Through Sept. 30. UNC Campus: Wilson Library.

The Mirror of the Noonday Sun - paintings by Eduardo Lapetina. Through Oct. 21. Panzanella, 929-6626, panzanella.com.

Painting for Children - a celebration of play, whimsy, laughter & fun as seen through the eyes of some of NC’s Children’s Book illustrators & authors. Aug. 1-31. Pittsboro Memorial Library, 542-3524, pittsborolibraryfriends.org, Mon-Fri 10 am-6 pm (Tue 8 pm), Sat 9 am-5 pm.

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