The 31st annual Hillsborough Hog Day will get a new name, one that honors the town’s colonial history and the festival’s tradition for local and regional barbecue.

In about two weeks, construction of the controversial Bicycle Apartments will get underway on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

It was a mild December day in 2012 that William Timothy Walker took his first steps toward Canada. Walker started at the original homestead in Caldwell surrounded by, well, Walkers. It took young Walker 67 days to journey from northern Orange County, up N.C. Hwy 86, into Danville, Va., and then to the Appalachian Trail, and to Buffalo, N.Y., and eventually to his rest place at Walker’s Hall in Canada.

Remember, although I adore making you chuckle, I occasionally must rant! Like today, I – and multitudes of others like me – would like to know when, in this country, it became prohibited to speak the truth, for fear of “offending” someone? When did it become wrong, somehow, to state facts? When did it develop that making judgments branded one as “judgmental”?

Leaders from the town, county and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered Wednesday to mark the opening of a West Rosemary Street building as a new home for start-up businesses.

Facebook is proving to be a useful tool for the Hillsborough Police Department in communicating with the public and identifying suspects.

Longtime Hillsborough Commissioner Evelyn Lloyd recently was recognized by the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy for her service to the community.

The University of North Carolina Hospitals and Skanska, the company building a new hospital in Hillsborough, will hold a topping out ceremony at the site today. The topping out ceremony marks the safe and successful end to vertical construction and will begin at 11:30 a.m. at the 256,000-square-foot healthcare facility, which is scheduled to be completed in 2014.

Community input and the form it should take dominated a discussion Monday about an exploratory process that could lead to a development agreement for the controversial Obey Creek mixed-use development proposed for U.S. 15-501 near Southern Village.

Bynum Front Porch, a nonprofit community organization, begins this year’s Friday Night Music Series on May 3 with the traditional country music sounds of Malpass Brothers. Christopher and Taylor have toured with Merle Haggard and perform a variety of traditional country music influenced by the likes of Johnny Cash, Earnest Tubb, Faron Young, Hank Williams, Sr., Marty Robbins, Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Jimmie Rodgers.  In addition to traditional country music, other genres represented during the season include bluegrass, jazz, old time music, rhythm and blues, Latin American and Caribbean, roots, gospel, West African traditional music, folk, Americana, world music, rock, country and honky tonk.

For Bob Sharpe of Efland, the opportunity to sew his first quilt was about linking the past with the present. Sharpe, who was born and raised in Orange County and attended Orange High School and then East Carolina University, became interested in quilting as an extension of his major in college. “I received my degree in theater arts and directing management and I found an ability to relate my design experience with quilting,” says Sharpe.

Women are a sturdy lot, and most of us are able to handle what life hurls at us...and hurl it does, my friend. In things that really matter, we are stronger than men in so many ways. (I had my gallbladder out and was teaching again in five days. My Dad and my son-in-law both had theirs out, and even after two weeks you would have thought that no one on the planet had ever been in pain of this magnitude in the history of mankind...and, of course, if men had to accomplish childbirth, well, mankind would be wiped out in a matter of weeks, anyway.)

After years of scientific uncertainty and speculation, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill show exactly how trees help create one of society’s predominant environmental and health concerns: air pollution.

To the untrained eye, parking can be a challenge in the southern part of heaven. But a new website, a joint effort among the town, the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, intends to take the challenge out of parking downtown, even for a first-time visitor.

There was a runner in scoring position at third base. The score was tied. The catcher and the pitcher conversed on the mound. Coaches adjusted the brim of their hats. And with a full count, the student-athlete on the mound let loose a spinning pitch, forward.