You forgot somebody, didn’t you? Somebody who is expecting a present from you? Now, remembering this person, you have no idea what to give. Here are some thoughts for last-minute gifts drawn from my recent reading. At the top of...
Read MoreWhat could we North Carolinians learn about ourselves when we sort out the results of the December 12 Alabama special U. S. Senate election? Nothing, you say. We are not like Alabama. They are Deep South. We are mid-South. They...
Read MoreStunned. North Carolina lost another monument. It came like a flash. And I am still reeling. Charlie Rose was one of North Carolina’s nationally best-known and most admired people. He was right up there with Michael Jordan,...
Read MoreDoes the life of a Jewish woman who was born, lived, and died in the same house in Goldsboro have lessons for today’s historians? The answer is yes, lots of lessons, which is certainly one of the reasons that the newly published...
Read MoreA message from Virginia for Democrats: Fight Trump, not each other. North Carolina is not Virginia, and 2017 is not 2018 or 2020. But North Carolina Democrats and Republicans still watched what happened in our neighboring...
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What is the worst idea floating around about the UNC system these days? Jesse White, who headed up...
Read More“The bottom has fallen out of the Republican Party.” So wrote Fort Worth’s Star-Telegram columnist Cynthia Allen last week. “Well,” she continued, “not the bottom exactly. More like the middle.” She was writing about Texas,...
Read MoreDon’t worry about the monuments coming down. There is more. People are rewriting our history. Some folks who oppose taking down Civil War monuments argue that such actions would destroy important history. Meanwhile, a group of...
Read MoreIs the Rev. William Barber, leader of North Carolina’s Moral Monday protests, going to take the movement to the rest of the country? Beginning in 2013, the Goldsboro minister has led demonstrations at the state’s legislative...
Read MoreWhat is North Carolina’s best-known and most influential college? It might be an institution that went out of business 60 years ago, Black Mountain College. Still today, educators praise and criticize the college’s progressive...
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