Award-winning columnist, writer, speaker and editor
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There’s still challenges in North Carolina with the Defense of Marriage Act.
The Register of Deeds in Buncombe County accepted marriage applications, even though they can’t be filed.
Mecklenburg County, on the other hand, denied same sex couples’ applications last week.
At least it wasn’t one of those “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” apologies. For her big mistakes, John Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, offered an all-encompassing apology in a column on the Huffington Post Web site. She knows she offended and hurt a lot of people.
“Back in 2006, I did not think about the scope of my actions, how my falling in love with John Edwards, and acting on that love, could hurt so many people,” she wrote. “I hurt Elizabeth and her kids. I hurt her family. I hurt John’s family. I hurt people that knew Elizabeth. I hurt people who didn’t know Elizabeth but loved her from afar.” The “Elizabeth” was, of course, Elizabeth Edwards, who was married to John Edwards at the time of the affair and who died of cancer in 2010.
Americans spend more time watching televised cooking shows than actually cooking. “We’ve managed to turn cooking into a spectator sport,” said best-selling author Michael Pollan. Plus, wouldn’t you know, “the less we cook, the fatter we are.” While Pollan’s visit to Queens University Thursday night was thoroughly entertaining, such depressing truths sprinkled throughout made the food star’s talk pretty scary, too.
The way Pollan writes, food is history and culture, as well agriculture; cooking is therapeutic, a political act. If “the family dinner table is the nursery of democracy,” he said, grabbing fast food on the run really could be the decline of civilization we suspected all along. Pollan explores where what we put in our stomachs really comes from, something that would have been obvious 75 years ago, he said, but now results in such revelatory New York Times best-sellers as The Omnivore’s Dilemma,The Botany of Desire and Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.
After his description of a vast, industrialized potato farm with machines spewing toxic insecticides just so those fried spuds sprouting from bright cartons remain unblemished, you immediately vow to start digging out a patch of dirt or trolling farmers markets. “If you grow vegetables, you will cook them; you will feel guilty if you don’t,” he said – even though you might have to learn to use more than the microwave.
So it was a relief to hear Pollan bring the discussion close to home.
Being thrown off the ballot was the best thing that ever happened to Montravias King. The national coverage that rained down on the Elizabeth City State University student when a local elections board in North Carolina rejected his initial City Council bid surely helped him break out from the field of candidates. He got the chance to plead his case, and his views, before millions, reaching many more people than a meager campaign budget could ever allow. This week, according to preliminary results, the university senior was the top vote-getter and will get to represent the ward where his school is located.
Was turnout affected by the actions of the board in an increasingly partisan state atmosphere where restrictive voting laws have drawn legal action from many groups, including the U.S. Justice Department? King, who never stopped thinking local, didn’t take any chances, knocking on 365 doors for votes, he said in the News & Record. He said that in addition to his fellow students, he had gotten a “great and amazing” reception from older voters. That he had also discussed the issue of voter suppression with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, who went to North Carolina for the story, was an unexpected extra.
CHARLOTTE, NC: Terrance Bates talks with Washington Post columnist Mary C. Curtis about the latest developments at Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.
As Nobel Prizes are handed out this week in the sciences, it’s fitting to take note of a woman whose accomplishments in the field of chemistry – as complex as any – made life easier for so many and liberated homemakers from the ironing board.
Dr. Ruth Benerito died Saturday at 97 in her Louisiana home. Though few would recognize the name of the woman inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2008, most are familiar with her work. “A chemist long affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. Benerito helped perfect modern wrinkle-free cotton, colloquially known as permanent press, in work that she and her colleagues began in the late 1950s,” is how her obituary in the New York Times explained it. The achievement “is considered one of the most significant technological developments of the 20th century.”
CHARLOTTE, NC: We’re on Day 2 of the Government Shutdown. While the economy is holding up steady, the American people are starting feel the effects of the standoff in the nation’s capital. Washington Post columnist Mary C. Curtis discusses the shutdown’s effects on North Carolina and if she sees a solution anytime soon.
You really could see this one coming. When Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday announced that the Justice Department would sue North Carolina over a controversial new voting law Holder says discriminates on the basis of race, no one was surprised. Those on both sides were ready – some cheering and others defensive — as North Carolina continues to be a puzzle for those who tagged it as that moderate Southern state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008. It’s now making headlines for conservative legislation and the resulting vehement pushback from groups inside – and now outside – its borders.
The story was about one particular case — a sad one, to be sure – but one that involved individuals, each with a name and story. When Jonathan Ferrell was killed in Charlotte, N.C., nearly two weeks ago, it shattered his family –which is now planning his Saturday funeral in Tallahassee, Fla.– and forever affected the life of the police officer accused of voluntary manslaughter in his death, no matter the verdict in his trial.
Many in a community that prides itself on getting along are asking questions and demanding changes – including a strengthened Citizens Review Board – to prevent a repeat of what happened.
Yet for many who commented on my story and NPR appearance that laid out the facts as they are now known, the case is already closed. For them, the woman who responded to Ferrell’s post-car accident knock on her door for help in the middle of the night with a frantic 911 call about a robber was making the only logical assumption. And Officer Randall Kerrick’s decision to fire 12 times at Ferrell, who police say was coming toward him, was more than justified. No more fact-finding is necessary, according to the critics of the charges filed against the officer.
The people that should be made to answer for the death of the unarmed Ferrell are black men – all of them, they told me.
When he was a middle-school student, Lloyd Knight made a deal that he called “my dad’s tradeoff.” His father told him, “If you’re going to dance, you’re going to do karate.” For a while, he took karate at night. But dance won.
At 30, Knight – with the support of his family — is in his eighth season with the New York-based Martha Graham Dance Company, a soloist who has performed starring roles in iconic works such as “Appalachian Spring.” On Sept. 28, as part of the UNC Charlotte Department of Dance’s annual Faculty Concert, Knight and fellow Graham company member Lorenzo Pagano will dance “Traces,” part of a larger work in progress choreographed by Kim Jones, assistant professor of dance at the university. It will be a reunion of sorts — Jones was a dancer with Graham’s company.
