Health fair provides info about low-cost services
Town residents received free medical screenings and information Saturday as part of an annual fair organized by students.
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Town residents received free medical screenings and information Saturday as part of an annual fair organized by students.
About eighty people spent their Sunday with their feet in the mud, shoveling and digging rice paddies on a farm that wasn’t theirs.
Men wearing 18th century red coats with shiny gold buttons, the uniform of the British army during the Revolutionary War, camped out in the middle of downtown Hillsborough on Saturday.The Loyalists’ camp stood across the field, where actors were demonstrating parts of camp life, such as cooking soup in front of a hemp tent.The Alliance for Historic Hillsborough re-enacted the occupation of the city by British troops in 1781 for its ninth annual Revolutionary War Living History Day.In February 1781, the 64th regiment stayed in Hillsborough, the most sizable town in North Carolina at the time. They occupied the town for 10 days, trying to gather as many Loyalists as they could to fight the Patriots.David Snyder works in medical research at Duke but became the re-enactment’s regiment captain on Saturday. He has been participating in re-enactments for 35 years.“I like to bust historical myths,” he said with a British accent that he harbored for the occasion, although he is from the Bronx. “I just love to get in another person’s skin and get away from modern times for the weekend.”Every detail was there: the knitted socks, the hats, the sound of the muskets firing, the smell of gunpowder and rough orders barked with a British accent when doing marching drills.Re-enacting history is not a cheap hobby. The hand-sewn uniforms cost about $500 each. The muskets cost the most, usually between $600 and $1,100. Participants were not paid by the town for putting on the event.Some participate in such re-enactments every two weeks, on various places all along the East Coast. Some of them have even gone to England for re-enactments.Steve Rankin, a carpenter and archeologist portraying a poor farmer on the Loyalist side, sat on the ground as he watched soup at the war camp come to a boil.“It was not as cut-and-dry as people like to imagine,” he said. “Not everyone was a Patriot, and most of people actually picked the safest side at the moment, Loyalist or Patriot.”Portraying history accurately and sharing that with the public motivates actors to continue, Rankin said.Jean Gangloff, a Hillsborough social worker, came with her husband and their two children to the re-enactment.“I majored in history in college because my brother was participating in these war re-enactments,” she said. “Seeing him doing it is what really got me into history, and I want the same for my children.”Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Chapel Hill still has work to do to achieve racial equality.
Susan Soleil moved her bookbinding business from Rochester, N.Y., to Carrboro two years ago, just as the recession started to hit.“It was not a very good time to start a business,” she said. “But now, everything is fine.”She was one of more than 60 artists at the 15th Annual Open Studio Tour, some of whom said the art profession is unpredictable enough that the recession hasn’t hurt business. The event, hosted by the Orange County Artists Guild, which was held the first two weekends of November, provided members of the guild with the opportunity to showcase and sell their work to the public.Gordon Jameson, the guild’s artist liaison and a painter, said the tour helps Orange County artists build relationships with potential buyers.“The local economy is probably fairly strong,” he said.Although many artists said their sales have been slightly down this year, they can still make a living.“People are probably more cautious with spending their money now,” Jameson said. “They are less eager to buy art, since it is considered to be a luxury item.” Clay Carmichael, a children’s book author and illustrator who lives in Carrboro, said most buyers work in the Research Triangle Park, which is an area less affected by the recession.Carmichael said artists also know how to live on fewer resources. She said because they aren’t used to regular paychecks, the recession has not greatly changed their lifestyles.“When you are an artist, you’ve got to learn how to live on what you get,” she said. “Art is a chancy business.” Jameson said many artists have other jobs as well to make ends meet.Carmichael, who recently published her new book, “Wild Things,” said she also visits schools and teaches classes. But due to budget cutbacks, less schools have invited her this year, as they have less funds to give to artists.“But we are recession-proof,” Carmichael joked. Jameson said the area has a high artist population, which fosters a creative atmosphere and productive competition. He said Orange County has the most artists per capita in the state, with around 1,500 residential artists total.“It’s a very good place to live as an artist,” Jameson said. “It’s a very creative place to live.”Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
The sound is fuller and warmer. The records are artistic and classic. And it’s tradition.Those and other reasons drew community members such as graduate student Heather Wilson to the ninth annual Carrboro CD and Record Show at the Carrboro Century Center.Wilson said she owns 600 vinyl records, which is little compared to her friend, who has more than 4,000.“My family collected vinyl. That’s why I started collecting them, too,” she said.About 100 people were browsing vinyl records and music memorabilia Sunday afternoon.Wilson, who mixes for WXYC, said she planned to have a listening party featuring music from her new purchases.“Vinyls are real pieces of art,” said Gerry Williams, the organizer of the fair.The event featured music from various genres, from 1950s rockabilly to soul music.Among the vinyls and CDs, posters, photographs and other memorabilia like an Elvis Presley Russell Stover Christmas chocolate box were also available for purchase.Most of the sellers were professionals from across the East Coast. Tim Harris, a seller from Lynchburg, Va., said he has been in the business for 20 years and enjoys selling records in Carrboro. “It is a very diverse area, and there are only few places in the country where you can find such an eclectic crowd,” he said. “My DJ friend, Mark, had enough support to mix Indian music once a week in the Triangle.”Other oddity records were for sale. In a box labeled “Dumb Real,” Harris included records like “Canine Heart Sounds” or “If a Bomb Falls: A Recorded Guide To Survival.”“I just like to collect odd stuff like that,” Harris joked. “I am a weirdo.”Caleb Coppola, a 25-year-old drummer and construction worker from Pittsboro, bought two records of rare 1970s Jamaican reggae music. He said he values vinyl records more than CDs because of their durability.Most of the records cost between $5 and $15, although rare records, like the 1963 first pressing of “Introducing the Beatles,” were priced at about $200. Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Orange County, which already recycles more plastic bottles than any other county in the state, is being encouraged by state officials to conserve even more.The N.C. General Assembly placed a ban on disposing plastic bottles, oil filters and wooden pallets in landfills across the state. The ban took effect Thursday.But while Orange County is running out of space in its landfill, town leaders don’t anticipate the ban to help much.Town officials estimate the Orange County landfill will last only three more years before filling up. But plastic bottles don’t make up much of the landfill’s intake, so a ban will not do much to ease the burden, said Blair Pollock of the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board.In Orange County, plastic bottles represent 2.4 percent of household waste, Pollock said. And out of 25,000 tons of residential waste per year in Orange County, only 600 tons are plastic bottles, he said.“In other terms, it only represents a week of waste,” he said.Still, 19 million plastic bottles are thrown out every year in the county, or about 150 plastic bottles per household, Pollock said.Orange County recycles 29.42 pounds of plastic bottles per resident per year, almost double the rate of the second-highest county, Pamlico. The average county in the state recycles 3.81 pounds per resident per year.The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources categorizes Orange County as a top recycler in the state.“The ban will have more effect on people in other jurisdictions,” said Jan Sassaman, chairman of the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board.Pollock said the county’s recycling program is 22 years old, one of the oldest in the state.“Recycling is a long-standing tradition here,” he said. “It is a combination of the ease of recycling, the availability and the visibility of recycling opportunities.“There is definitely a culture of recycling in Orange County and this is an expectation of people,” he said.But Pollock said the ease of recycling decreases once people are outside of their homes, and the county still can make progress.“The infrastructure outside the household is lacking,” he said. “Fifty percent of bottles are consumed away from home.”According to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the state recovers less than 20 percent of the plastic bottles generated in the state.The purpose of the ban is to boost the state’s recycling business, the department said.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
When Jeff Polish started his act Saturday, it wasn’t in a restaurant where he typically performs.Instead, it was in the Carrboro ArtsCenter, which has 355 audience seats.But the stories weren’t any less intimate.The act, called The Monti, encourages community members to tell stories to an audience, abiding by four rules: all stories must follow a particular theme, be true, be under twelve minutes and told without notes.“It’s just plain, old-fashioned, simple storytelling,” said Polish, the founder of The Monti.“All it takes is a microphone, an audience and storytellers.”Five local artists sat one by one on a stool in dim stage light and told stories based on the night’s theme — “Heroes.”The five performers took the audience on a trip through North Carolina, South America, Thomas Wolfe’s tomb, crazy families and extraordinary people. Jazz musician Django Haskins told a story of his passionate and bold parents.“They were like the Beatles, unable to face realities, but not afraid to keep on evolving and changing,” Haskins said.He said his parents attempted to travel to South America on a Vespa, but instead ended up being kidnapped in Jamaica.Author Louis Bayard said his father was a spiritually promiscuous man who would sing inappropriate Johnny Cash or Irish folk songs in a Wesleyan church, making his son wish he were dead. Bayard said he eventually realized as a grown-up, at his dad’s funeral, that his father’s inspiring individuality made him a real hero. Canadian writer Sophie Naima Caird described her childhood angel — her aunt, who wandered around barefoot, loved stray dogs and rotten meat and stretched naked in the morning. “She would never let anyone hurt her feelings in any way,” Caird said.Justin Catanoso told a story of personal failure, and at one point, he urged the audience to shout, “Asshole! Asshole!” to make him feel like he was back at his university’s talent show.Catanoso said he had tried to impersonate Rocky Balboa but failed and faced the most humiliating experience of his life, he said.“Rocky Balboa came back to fight again and again. And so would I,” Catanoso said.Since its creation in April 2008, The Monti has occurred once a month in Alivia’s Durham Bistro. This was the first time the show had performed at a larger venue.“The audience was receptive,” said Emily Ranii, the center’s theatre director, who would like to book The Monti again.It was the first time Mike Harris, a social studies teacher at Phillips Middle School, had seen the show. “Storytelling is the beginning of everything,” he said.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.