When friends and I would go to baseball games at Yankee Stadium, we always scanned the crowd for nominees to our Quintessential Yankee Fan Hall of Fame. Yankee fans were quite different from Mets fans, I noticed on my very rare trips to Shea Stadium. Perusing crowds became a habit, and when I’m out and […]
All posts in category Community life
Quintessential Chapel Hill Fan
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 23, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/23/quintessential-chapel-hill-fan/
ICE on Ice?
An email circulated recently asking elected officials to sign a letter in support of abolishing ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. I read it and sighed. Once again, pressure is on us to perform some gesture that maybe looks like we are doing something for a righteous cause but in reality would do […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 16, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/16/ice-on-ice/
Do We Want Diversity?
In an effort to improve our chances of recouping through tax revenue the $10 million taxpayers invested in infrastructure in the area now known as Blue Hill, Town Council members considered options for increasing the amount of commercial space in the district. At our June 27 council meeting, we talked about changing the form-based code […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 9, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/09/do-we-want-diversity/
Won’t you be my neighbor?
Is all affordable housing good? Is it morally defensible to put affordable housing somewhere that you wouldn’t put other housing? These questions came to mind last Wednesday during a Chapel Hill Town Council meeting at which representatives of the town’s Office for Housing and Community proposed putting affordable housing on three parcels of town-owned land […]
Posted by Don Evans on June 25, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/06/25/wont-you-be-my-neighbor/
Mama Dip’s Legacy
Chapel Hill laid to rest one of its better-known and much-revered residents yesterday. Mildred Council died May 20 at age 89. Unexpectedly, perhaps because she was an icon, and we all thought that Mama Dip would always be there. She always was there, for anyone in the community who could use a meal or two […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 28, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/28/mama-dips-legacy/
Honor Council
Not long ago, a few members of Duke University’s Honor Council spoke with students at McDougle Middle School about the roles of morals and ethics in making good decisions. Honor Council members set up a scenario for the moral dilemma all of us have faced more than once in our lives — You see someone […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 21, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/21/honor-council/
Indy loses its independence
Was a time when Chapel Hill and Orange County had a good selection of news providers to advise voters in the candidate selection process. With the elimination of The Chapel Hill News and Chapel Hill Herald and the weakening of The Daily Tar Heel, the town has lost great resources. Now it appears that The […]
Posted by Don Evans on May 14, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/14/indy-loses-its-independence/
The value of green
To hear business leaders and major investors speak in favor of the need for greenspace as density increases gave me hope. At the Eggs With Elected Officials gathering on April 18, sponsored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, the topic of what to do with the 36 acres the town had purchased from American […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 7, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/07/the-value-of-green/
Reverse Town Hall
North Carolina has 77 pages of gun laws on its books. But can they be enforced? A panel of 16 high school and college students discussed gun violence at a reverse town hall organized by the UNC Institute for Politics. The IOP invited four legislators from the N.C. General Assembly to pose questions to the […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 23, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/23/reverse-town-hall/
Fear trumps finances
Last week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents swept through the Triangle and snatched up more than two dozen Latinx residents suspected of being in the U.S. without proper documentation. An ICE spokesman claimed that the majority of those taken into custody had criminal convictions. But anecdotally, those in Chapel Hill were law-abiding, gainfully employed […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 16, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/16/fear-trumps-finances/