A newborn with no crib. A kindergartner who goes to school hungry. A mother who chooses between buying food for her family or paying the light bill. These are the situations Durham Connects nurses encounter when visiting a family in poverty. Because Durham Connects is a universal program, we see all babies in their home, regardless of income. Today we are seeing far too many families who are contending with poverty and inequality. Unemployment and disparities have widened the gap between rich and poor in our community. Currently 14,000 children in Durham are in poverty. This is more than 1 in 4 of our youngest citizens – well above the state and national average. “We have a dreadful 27 percent child poverty rate in Durham – a fact that is shameful and unacceptable,” said End Poverty Durham’s Mel Williams.
The 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will celebrate the work of filmmaker Jessica Yu during its thematic program and tribute. The program will examine the intersections of truth and storytelling with a series of films curated by filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev.
In C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” Max McLean portrays Screwtape, a demon psychiatrist fighting spiritual warfare to win souls for Satan.
Q. I have a home remedy that is amazing. I used to have severe psoriasis on my knees, elbows, eyes, forehead, wrists, feet and scalp. It would crack and bleed, itch and flake.
They were mostly UNC fans, but I really enjoyed speaking to and answering questions from the Chapel Hill Kiwanis Club last week. My topic was Duke football and basketball history, which is a subject I teach, write and speak about quite often. I talked about some of the great Duke basketball teams before Coach K came to Duke, such as the teams of coaches like Eddie Cameron and Vic Bubas, and we also talked about how football used to be the big sport on the Duke campus, not basketball.
Wanting pork to be as lean as chicken (“the other white meat”) may have led to drug-enhanced leaner pork; here’s the round-about way I learned about this.
For some reason, Petey doesn’t want me to sing “Happy Birthday” to him on his birthday. He does, however want me to cook for him.
It was tough when Caitlin Liles first had to sell a lamb that she had raised.
Mercury Studio opened last year downtown as a co-working, meeting and events space. Now the organizers of Mercury are accepting applications for creative or community-minded projects. Visitors who come to Mercury Studio Jan. 22 will get to see several project presentations and vote on them. The presenter whose project is chosen will take home all the money from the $5 entry fee.
Eliot Conte is a complex and troubled man. A private investigator by trade, he also is a former adjunct professor and could-have-been Herman Melville scholar, and an aficionado of the great Italian operas. Conte also is divorced, estranged from his ex-wife and his two daughters, whom he left 20 years previously, and from his father, Silvio Conte, a powerbroker and kingmaker in northern New York politics.
Since the American Revolution and before, when North Carolina was a British colony, the state’s governors had their own old boys’ network and their wives were the first ladies. That changed when Beverly Perdue (2009-2013) was elected to office. She broke the glass ceiling and became the state’s 68th governor and the 28th one to live in the Governor’s Mansion. Experts on protocol had to rename the category of the governor’s spouse and so her husband, Robert Eaves Jr., became the first gentleman, and from now on, the spouse of the sitting governor will be referred to as first spouse.
In 2010, N.C. State University’s Emerging Issues Forum discussed the importance of creativity to the modern economy. Everyone from politicians to artists extolled the virtues of innovating by thinking outside of the usual norms – also called “the box.”