Archive for March, 2007
Students Document Black Communities
Note: This is a follow-up to a previous story about Because We’re Still Here (and Moving).
By Justin Smith
Staff Writer
Commons Photos by Justin Smith
The three students set out on foot into Chapel Hill’s Northside community armed with a notebook, a digital audio recorder and a disposable 35mm camera. They have everything they need to conduct a field interview – almost everything.
“Do you know where Caldwell Street is,” asks UNC-Chapel Hill freshman Maura Baldiga.
UNC-CH sophomore Jessica Ra responds, “I have no idea.”
Navigating through sometimes unfamiliar neighborhoods is just part of the challenge for students participating in Because We’re Here Still (and Moving), a project in which area high school students team up with UNC-Chapel Hill sociology students to document Northside and Pine Knolls, two of Chapel Hill’s historically black communities.
Ra uses her cell phone to call the interviewee to ask for directions. The woman cancels the interview, saying she is too busy – and it turns out she doesn’t live on Caldwell Street anyway.
Situations like this have forced the project organizers to make adjustments to their original plan, said Hidden Voices Director Lynden Harris.
“It’s become very flexible, but I think that’s great,” Harris said.
During a period of four Saturdays, 10 teams, each with two UNC-CH students and one high school student, interviewed residents and business owners in the black communities.
Team members share the roles of photographer, oral historian and producer.
Thomas Moore, a senior at East Chapel Hill High School, lives in the Northside community and participates in Because We’re Still Here (and Moving).
“We’re trying to save the community,” Moore said.
The 18-year-old said he has seen Northside change in recent years with increased development and the rise in the number of college students living in the area.
Moore said some families have moved away from the area.
“It seems like they’re getting forced to move out,” he said.
Harris said one of the goals of the project is to document the stories of older residents before it is too late.
“Some of the older residents have been interviewed many times, so one of the things we wanted to do is ask them questions they have not been asked before,” Harris said.
On a Wednesday evening, Moore and three other students gathered in a conference room in the Midway Business Center in Chapel Hill as they prepared to interview Fred Battle, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“Who are your parents?” Battle asked Moore. “Most of the people around here, I know their parents.”
After the small-talk is done, UNC senior Leniqua Blue gets Battle to sign a release form while UNC junior Amelia O’Rourke-Owens places an audio recorder on the conference table.
O’Rourke-Owens did not have to ask many questions. Battle spoke freely about the changing face of Chapel Hill’s historically black communities.
“The taxes are at a point, they’re so high, a lot of our seniors can’t afford to live here,” Battle said.
He added that many of the houses are being sold or turned into rental property.
The local civil rights leader also complained about the public education that black students in the area receive.
“The biggest difference between the schools today and the schools in the past is back then we felt like a family,” Battle said.
The transcript of Battle’s interview along with the other oral histories will be used to create a live stage production to be performed in February in conjunction with Black History Month.
Harris said the performance, like the field work, is a work in progress.
“On stage, we’re going to have images projected, maps, students, maybe some seniors, and that’s as much as we know right now,” Harris said with a laugh.
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Carrboro High School goes green
Tales from a Jaguar
By Daniel Matchar
Carrboro High School Columnist
Along with Carrboro High School being up-to-date on all of the latest technology and a highly professional atmosphere, the school is also “going green.”
It was recently given a certificate naming it an environment-friendly school. Staying true to its location, the new high school is building on Carrboro’s already excellent reputation for caring deeply about the environment.
Policy 9040, written by the Chapel Hill Carrboro Board of Education, states that it “supports the definition of High Performance Schools provided below and will incorporate it during the design and construction phases of school development. High Performance Schools (HPS) are designed to improve the learning environment while saving energy, materials, and natural resources.”
Without a doubt, Carrboro High School is staying true to the School Board’s wishes; surpassing any environmentalist’s wishes for a school. In fact, Carrboro has recently been registered as a LEED project (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) through the U.S. Green Building Council. The intent of LEED is to give schools that are willing to be eco-friendly means by which they can measure the buildings’ “green” performance.
According their Web site, LEED “promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.”
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All aboard for a smorgasbord
Meghan Cooke
Staff Writer
Children dart eagerly in and out of the railcars. Waiters maneuver between the cars, carefully balancing an array of prepared dishes. People gather in the bar while others sip on coffee and enjoy each other’s company.
It sounds like a scene aboard an early 1900s train, but it could be a familiar view for Carrboro residents in the coming months. Southern Rail, a new restaurant located in three railcars just off of Main Street in Carrboro near Weaver Street Market, is scheduled to open in late April or early May.
Chapel Hill native Mike Benson, owner of Southern Rail, is the conductor of the new eatery. He originally had plans to open in March, but delays have caused the restaurant’s opening to be pushed back.
But it will be worth the wait, Benson said. The delay was caused partly by the construction process of a steel awning over the three railcars, which would make it appear as if the railcars are in a vintage train station.
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Dinner feeds many
Commons Photos by Justin Smith
By Justin Smith
Staff Writer
Carrboro resident Sue Kent sits by herself at an octagonal table in the McDougle Middle School Cafetorium a half-hour before the Community Dinner is set to begin.
She was dropped off by EZ Rider, a free transportation service for people with disabilities.
Kent reads her thick Sunday newspaper while waiting for strangers to fill the seven empty seats around the table.
“I meet people on the bus, and I meet people walking, and I meet people at church, but other people aren’t on the busses that I’m on, and other people don’t go to my church, and other people don’t walk where I walk,” Kent said. “That’s why with something like this, you get people from all different walks of life and all different areas of town.”
Kent’s eagerness to meet new people mirrors the dinner’s slogan: “Sit down with a stranger, leave with a friend.”
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Thrifty shoppers bag for bargains
Commons Photos by Liz Thomas
Liz Thomas
Co-editor
Shoppers in Carrboro support local schools by testing the threshold of paper grocery bags. The contents of one bag, regardless of splitting seams or overfill, cost three dollars. Since 1952, PTA Thrift Shop, Inc. has sold high-quality donated goods, but “Bag Day” offers some of the lowest prices of the season.
“At these prices, I’ll be a ‘double bag’ lady,” Karen Spell said. Spell, from Chapel Hill, filled her bags with stacks of blankets. “These make great cushioning for my aging dog to sleep on,” Spell said.
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Expect big things from county’s smallest fire department
Elsa Hasenzahl
Staff Writer
Commons Photos by Elsa Hasenzahl
Despite having only 28 full-time personnel responsible for the safety of thousands, the firefighters of the Carrboro Fire-Rescue Department still take the time to make personal connections with the community and educate citizens through tours and ride-alongs.
The department has been around since the late 1920s and takes its rank as the smallest fully careered fire department –meaning that all the firefighters are paid and there are no volunteer firefighters– in North Carolina, with one ladder truck and two fire pumper trucks.
The department is located beside Town Hall on Main Street. The buildings that Town Hall and the fire station currently occupy actually used to be school buildings until the 1960s.
The department does not only provide aid to Carrboro though. It is also responsible for the areas of southern Orange County.
It protects an eclectic mix of properties from smaller houses in urban areas with narrow streets to farms with large land acreages and huge residential properties.
According to the department’s annual reporting statistics, 875 calls were made to the fire department from July 2004 to June 2005, and 1,182 calls were made from July 2005 to June 2006. This increase of 35 percent shows a greater need for fire protection.
To better serve the town’s growing needs, a new fire department is planned to be completed around December 2008 in the northern annex of Carrboro.
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Lyrics contest looks for surreal entries
By Sara Gregory
Staff Writer
Singer and songwriter Billy Sugarfix says he wants the next song he writes to be silly.
“The weirder the better,” he said.
Sugarfix, also known as Bill McCormick, is hosting a contest and looking for the weirdest, wackiest, wildest lyrics to set to music.
Known for his role in the band Evil Weiner and more recently for his role in the rap he performed with housemate Brian Risk called “It’s Carrboro,” Sugarfix is sponsoring the Song Poem Bizarre Lyrics contest through his blog, Surreal O’Rama, and asking for submissions from anyone and everyone.
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Storied ArtSchool begins semester
By Jordan Lawrence
Staff Writer
When students walk into the first classes of the ArtSchool’s spring semester next week, they may not realize the history they are about to be a part of.
The school is the teaching branch of the ArtsCenter and holds classes in several kinds of arts, including painting and dancing.
“There’s something there that would appeal to anybody in the community interested in taking classes in the arts,” said John Wilner, executive director of the ArtsCenter.
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‘Web 2.0′ giant Blogads calls Carrboro home
By Graham Russell
Deputy Design Editor
When Blogads moved to its new office on Weaver Street, founder and CEO Henry Copeland and his staff were worried about one thing: The signal for WXYC, their favorite radio station, didn’t reach into the building. That didn’t stop them, though.
“Now we’re streaming it through the Internet,” Copeland said. “So all is well in Carrboro.”
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