About a dozen years ago, while playing in our front yard, my kids and I watched some contractors pour wet cement around a manhole in the middle of the intersection at our corner. After they’d smoothed the cement, the workers barricaded the spot with sawhorses and left. Though they probably worked for the DOT, they […]

For the past five weeks I’ve felt a bit like the fellows in the kgb commercial. You know, the one in which two men frantically search on their cell phones for a Japanese translation of “I surrender” before the sumo wrestler attacks. So I have an unbounded sympathy for the poor fellow who is so […]

An airplane crashed not half a mile from my house, and I heard nothing until the sirens began. We live underneath the flight path of many planes taking off and landing at Horace Williams Airport. We always know when the Tar Heels are playing football at home because of the increased air traffic, and more […]

What does Betty Kenan know that the rest of the moneyed world doesn’t? Georgia Kyser’s house at 504 E. Franklin St. sat on the market for, what, four or five years, at least. I don’t recall its initial asking price, though I remember thinking when I heard it, “Good luck with that.” As the house […]

Nothing but bad news came out of the Chapel Hill Museum’s board meeting last night. Monday will be the last day the public can see the exhibits, though the gift shop likely will remain open for another week, said Stephen Rich, the museum’s treasurer. All that inventory must be sold, as well as the museum’s […]

While we sat in Kenan Stadium on July 4, waiting for the fireworks display to begin, I was struck by the diversity of the crowd. Not just in race and ethnicity, but in age range and social group – families of mom-dad-kids, grandma-mom-kids, dad-kids, and other mixes; teenagers with their friends; senior citizens in male-female […]

As I listened to the debate, during the Town Council’s last business meeting on June 21, over guidelines vs. standards pertaining to the Planning Commission’s request for clarification on how to proceed with the section on shelters in the Land Use Management Ordinance, something Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt tossed off caught my attention. At the start […]

Got something to say? We need to hear from you. We’d like to open Chapel Hill Watch up to guest bloggers. Between Chaucer and Uncle Sam, Don’s time is spoken for for the rest of the summer. Although Nancy is always ready to spout off about something, she would like to lace her posts with […]

I wish we had some cover-up to explain our nearly two-week silence. But it was much more plebeian than that – we needed money. Rental property I needed to refurbish before new tenants moved in; a course Don needed to take to further his career; our regular freelance assignments that allow us to pay our […]