Don’t North Carolina senators have better things to do?

Aren’t our lawmakers busy enough trying to kill criminals, drag out divorce proceedings and establish a state religion (personally, we recommend the Jedi Church)?

Apparently not.

Aahhh, April. Springtime is here.

Trees are budding, flowers are popping up, birds are singing, and the grass is greening. It should be a time of happy beginnings, sweet expectations and the bracing realization that there are only nine weeks left till WE have to wear bathing suits!

And, if we don’t get to the gym in 15 minutes or sooner, we will be forced to wear jeans to the beach again, telling people we have horrific sun allergies.

We live in our houses like eggs in a carton. They shelter us and contain us, but we also carry a part of them. When we have lived in a house for a long time we take some of it with us when we leave. What we carry resides in muscle fibers and deep memory - a psychic space that holds rooms and features. 

Such features come to me unbidden at times. I am here, but suddenly a part of me is back in the house I grew up in, seeing a certain room or touching a particular feature. That house had tall ceilings, carved woodwork, and etched brass doorknobs. Over the years I have realized that it lives in me as much as I ever lived in it.

Someday, Gray Palmer might raise the food that rides from your plate to your palate.

Right now, though, the 10-year-old Pathways Elementary School student from Hurdle Mills is preparing for his fourth year in the Central Piedmont Junior Livestock Show.

At the event, held April 10 and 11 on Orange Grove Road, Palmer’s going to show the pig he’s currently walking.

“My pig is named Bacon,” the boy says with a suspicious grin. He’s attentive to the details of the animal, mixing Bacon’s feed and cleaning his stall. Someday, Palmer wants to teach agriculture.

An annotated list of interesting events happening in Orange County over the next week, prepared by the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau.  For more information, visit www.visitchapelhill.org.

Have an item for The Buzz? Contact Laura Oleniacz at loleniacz@heraldsun.com or at 919-419-6636.

An afternoon of laying sod and raking may sound like your typical spring yard work, but for Martha Isgett from Durham it’s a way to give back to her “home away from home”.

“What's Happening?”

March 31 – April 6, 2013

An annotated list of interesting events happening in Orange County over the next week, prepared by the Chapel Hill/Orange County Visitors Bureau.  For more information, visit www.visitchapelhill.org.

Send letters to The Chapel Hill Herald to chh@heraldsun.com.

A new office building that will contain UNC Hospital clinics in Hillsborough is expected to be completed in July.

The outside of the three-story physicians’ building is almost finished, along with parking lots, driveways and landscaping for the full facility, which eventually will include a 68-bed hospital.

The construction crews are now working on the interior finishes of the office building, said Raymond Lafrenaye, vice president of UNC Hospitals Facilities Planning and Development.

Happy Easter to you all. I wish you peace, love and a basketful of jellybeans! No, I’m not in the bourbon, I’m on Spring break…FINALLY!

A fiscal triple-whammy lurks ahead on the calendar for the UNC system.

Gov. Pat McCrory’s first budget proposal has called for cuts in state appropriations by $138.5 million, would only partially fund the Board of Governors’ five-year strategic plan projects and would saddle out-of-state students with yet another tuition hike.

Those cuts in state money come after $400 million in previous reductions during the past two years.

And, as The Chapel Hill Herald’s Gregory Childress reported last week, revenues from the tuition increase that would normally go back to campuses to provide financial aid instead would be destined for the state’s General Fund.

Rain Holloway turned her focus to a fragile confection when her life seemed to be crumbling.

Holloway, a Baltimore native who now lives in Caldwell in northern Orange County, used to work as a scientist for a firm in the Research Triangle Park.

“I got started doing this when I lost my job,” she said. For the past two years, she’s been making and selling peanut brittle, known as Brittle Bits by Rain.

For Susan Lombardo, it’s about quality of life.

Lombardo, the transition facilitator at East Chapel Hill High School, wants to make sure that families with middle school and high school students who have disabilities or special accommodation needs get what they need from the community.

So, on Tuesday, the high school at 500 Weaver Dairy Rd. will host the 2013 Transition Fair from 5:30 to 8 p.m. The fair is expected to put families in touch with more than 50 community services under one roof, including colleges, vocational skill-training programs, recreational and social organizations, housing resources and advocacy groups.

Hillsborough may not have a Fountain of Youth, but at least it has a young-at-heart yoga instructor teaching pupils at the Senior Center.

Here, in the glass studio, Joy Gornto brings the art of yoga to those navigating the mature years of life.

“Yoga is a union between the mind and breath,” she said. “I am trying to teach them that if they listen to their body, they can open up to its greatest potential based on the person.”