As the Town Council’s liaison to the Historic District Commission since the 2015 election, I’ve had a front-row seat to many redevelopment proposals by people who have no clue what value historic neighborhoods add to our community. The presentations follow a form so uniform that it appears to be an Internet download. The presentations apparently […]
All posts in category Community life
The New Historic District
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 13, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/13/the-new-historic-district/
Women helping women
I go to a lot of meetings, and some of them are productive. Some lay the groundwork for future success. Others are simply vehicles for egos to preen. To offset the waste of time of the latter, I occasionally volunteer with Habitat for Humanity. It is satisfying to see what can be accomplished by a […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 6, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/06/women-helping-women/
Our tenuous link to history
I haven’t been inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame since I went sightseeing after running the Paris Marathon some 30 years ago. Yet when I heard about the fire that destroyed the ceiling and spire of the 800-year-old church, it felt like a personal loss. In his book Why Old Places Matter, Tom May, the […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 22, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/04/22/our-tenuous-link-to-history/
Sanctuary city
A couple of years ago, after Donald Trump had taken office and begun threatening punishments to sanctuary cities, a member of the Justice in Action Committee proposed that Chapel Hill take a stand and declare itself a sanctuary city. After all, the committee member pointed out, we behave like one. My response at the time […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 15, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/04/15/sanctuary-city/
Whose opportunity?
Trump has come to Chapel Hill. The federal Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, signed into law in December 2017, created an investment vehicle to allow the very wealthy to avoid paying taxes. The idea was presented to the public as a way to attract new development to high-poverty areas. A thousand such areas were identified […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 8, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/04/08/whose-opportunity/
Words matter
For our rehearsal dinner, my husband-to-be and I wanted to serve a carrot cake from a restaurant that was special to us. The restaurant owner gave our contact information to the woman who baked the cakes. The next day her husband called and explained that his wife was an opera singer and baked the cakes […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on March 4, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/03/04/words-matter/
Ask the neighbors
The road to redevelopment is paved with community meetings, as residents in the Rogers Road area found out, and residents on the southern edge of the Greene Tract wished they’d found out. At last week’s Town Council meeting, we received an update on staff’s plans to create a zoning overlay for several parcels of land […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on February 25, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/02/25/ask-the-neighbors/
When helping hinders
In a recent episode of the TV show The Good Doctor, the main character, an autistic surgeon, wants to minister to his friend who is undergoing chemo. The surgeon tries reading a novel aloud, pushing electrolyte juice, taking his friend’s vitals. The friend, sick and exhausted, tells the surgeon to leave. The rebuffed surgeon shouts, […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on February 18, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/02/18/when-helping-hinders/
Repairing the breach
Did you read the Rev. William J. Barber II’s recent editorial in The Washington Post? If not, take time to read it now — https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-ralph-northam-and-others-can-repent-of-americas-original-sin/2019/02/07/9aef18ec-2b0f-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html — and you can skip the rest of my blog post. I will simply add underscoring and exclamation points to some of the main points in Barber’s eloquent piece. Barber […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on February 11, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/02/11/repairing-the-breach/
Act Now
If Chancellor Carol Folt needed a swan song, she got it Sunday night at the Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Dinner. Folt, who had long spoken up about her desire to relocate Silent Sam but early on had been tentative about acting on it, had recently come into her own, right before our eyes. Last […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 21, 2019
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/01/21/act-now-2/