Common Milkweed standing tall in Arcadia Community. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

An early-morning walk through the Chapel Hill Merritt Pasture near the James Taylor Bridge is a real pleasure. The wild part is gaining access to the rolling pasture site. You are well advised to plan your visit during the Sunday morning hours. There is a little parking available along the bikeway at the intersection of Culbreth Road and Highway 15-501. It’s a challenging intersection to negotiate on foot, even with the traffic light, and though Sunday morning is light, please remain constantly alert to the speeding vehicles until you have safely made it to the pasture. Eventually the town will have the planned parking and pedestrian safety measures in place so that access to Merritt Pasture will not be such a wild experience.
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Carrboro and the rest of the O.C. bake away

Lifeguard Elizabeth Hamilton surveys the pool at Heritage Hills. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

If you had a strange sensation on Monday morning that something wasn’t quite right, that maybe something was missing, you were right. In most places in southern Orange County, there was no dew.

Even though the air was plenty heavy with water, temperatures never dipped low enough Sunday night and early Monday to allow for the usual overnight condensation.

That was an early clue of the heatwave barreling down on us. The next clues were not so obscure.

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By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

With one participant reportedly saying, “There are people here who need to eat,” a variety of foods were distributed at last Saturday’s Really Really Free Market, held the first Saturday of each month on the Carrboro Town Commons.

The rub, from the town’s perspective, is that participants in the Really Really Free Market aren’t insured to distribute food at the event and therefore have been in violation of the event’s contract with the town.

But at least a few among those who bring goods to the gathering for free distribution say the town is wrong – that they are no different than anyone who may bring food to a public park and then share it, and that signs posted informing those who partake that the town can’t be held liable in case of sickness sufficiently cover all concerned.

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Joe-Pye-Weed flower heads.  Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Common names and the meanings and tales associated with them are the source of endless wisdom, humor and trivia. I’ve always wondered who Joe-Pye really was. The familiar description is of a Native American herb doctor in the Massachusetts Bay Colony region.

The Indian’s name was Joe-Pye and he used a special plant to ease the discomfort of a common disease known as typhus, or typhoid fever. So the plant was commonly identified by early settlers as Joe-Pye-Weed.

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Members of Carrboro Greenspace on the porch of Casa Grande. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Granted, even in a community as substantially liberal in spirit as Carrboro, “usufruct” is hardly a word around which the general citizenry will likely clamor to rally.

“Usufruct” (according to Webster): “the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another”; from the Latin usus et fructus, “to use and enjoy.”

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A little zumba, courtesy of instructor Willa Robinson Allen, is a healthy thing, and great fun, at “Salud es Fiesta,” held at the Southern Human Services Center on Homestead Road. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Members of the Latino community came together on Saturday to dance, eat and learn about fun ways to live a healthy lifestyle.

The event – “Salud es Fiesta,” or “Health is a Party” – was hosted by the Líderes de Salud, a group of 12 trained volunteer health promoters in the Latino community, and focused on the fight against obesity and diabetes within that community.

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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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Chris Richmond, director of The ReCYCLEry, rolls out one of the newly tuned up Blue Urban Bikes. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Jack Carley
Staff Writer

The ReCYCLEry, Carrboro’s nonprofit community bike workshop, is working to bring more bicycles to Carrboro roads. By expanding their bike loan program, called Blue Urban Bikes, or BUB, they hope to get people pushing bike pedals instead of gas pedals.

The Blue Urban Bikes program is the ReCYCLEry’s biggest push to promote bikes on Carrboro and Chapel Hill roads. For the annual price of ten dollars or two hours of volunteer work, anyone can become a BUB member and borrow the refurbished blue bikes for a day at a time, complete with two cargo baskets, lights, a lock and a helmet.

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Yellow flowers spiralling around the tall Mullein stalk. Photo by Ken Moore.

By Ken Moore

First I offer a sincere apology that Marie Weiden was not properly identified in last week’s column about Ruellia regarding her colorful curb in Chapel Hill. Beginning with Marie’s garden, I’m looking forward to describing more curbsides as folks share more and more garden enthusiasm and expertise right up front for all to enjoy!

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Haw River Watch Project coordinator Cynthia Crossen keeps a focus on the challenges to the health of the river as she helps build a network of monitors. Photo by Kirk Ross

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
Four times a year, volunteers from across the Haw River watershed head down to their piece of creek or riverbank to take a serious look at the water and the life around it.

Haw River Watch Project teams are instrumental in monitoring the health of the river and its tributaries. They check for changes in the color of the water, erosion and any indication of the health of the river to report back. In addition, volunteers test the pH levels and look for different aquatic insects.

On Saturday, River Watch coordinator Cynthia Crossen demonstrated water sampling on the banks of the Haw in Saxapahaw. Participants of all ages traipsed around the river collecting water samples and various critters.

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By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Ask each of the dozen or so individuals from throughout the Carrboro community why they attended the U.S. Social Forum and you’ll likely get a dozen or so variations on a common objective – to help create a space for change, gather inspiration, rejuvenate, rejoice, join forces, connect. And many, if not all, among those are also likely to reveal having come away with a sense of something gained, some sense of, “This thing that we’ve got – it’s big.”

That is, precisely, how one local attendee, Ruby Sinreich, defined it – the “this thing” that she describes being a movement, or, rather, a movement of movements, for a more just, peaceful and equitable world in which to live.

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Ruellia standing tall in ditch in lower Bynum. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

I spied it three weeks ago along a roadside ditch in lower Bynum while helping volunteers clear a site for the Haw River Assembly’s new storage building. Then, this past week, some of us were back down there helping move stuff into the new shed.

There it was again, and this time there were more lining the weedy roadside.

I’ve been happy to spot it here and there in my yard, at the edge of the back steps and along the edge of the house foundation where the mower blade seldom travels.

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By Ken Moore

One of the childhood memories I hold vividly is the neighbor’s giant mimosa tree, under which I spent many days playing with fragrant silky flowers in summer and twisted little bean pods in the fall. The mimosa, also called silk tree (Albizia julibrissin), remains for me one of the most exotically beautiful of all trees.

And exotic it is. Having been introduced from Asia in the mid-1700s, it has now made itself at home throughout North Carolina and the entire southeast. I’m still trying to get rid of one I set in my yard two decades ago. Similarly, staff of the N. C. Botanical Garden continue to eradicate a persistent population along the Coker Pinetum on Manning Drive.

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Local writer and theologian L.D. Russell explores his devotion to NASCAR.

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

One of L.D. Russell’s earliest memories is of the smell of grease on his granddad’s coveralls. A mechanic by trade and Fireball Roberts fan by inclination, it was Russell’s grandfather who took him, at age 8, to his very first stock car race.

A Hillsborough resident, freelance writer and instructor of religious studies at Elon University, Russell has written a very fine new book called Godspeed: Racing is My Religion, in which he explores NASCAR’s place in the South and, now, in the nation at large, and his own complicated history with the sport. Russell is a believer, but certainly not an unquestioning one.   More »

Emily Kaplan and Francesca Dell’Ova work on a mural at the Town Commons. Photos by Kirk Ross

Photos and story by Kirk Ross

It was standing room only in the misting tent — a welcome place for young and old who made the trek to the Town Commons for the Carrboro Fourth of July Celebration.

Most arrived en masse in one of the Triangle’s shortest but well-attended parades. Hundreds wheeled and walked from Weaver Street Market to the commons in Carrboro’s annual and colorful plunge into summer. More »