At 49, Greg Michie gave it all up. His tenure-track position. His flexible schedule. His unhurried lunch hour. (His lunch hour, period.) In 2012, as a citywide teacher’s strike loomed, Michie left the relative comforts of higher education. He returned to the undervalued but indispensable work of public school teaching in America.
As writer Bekah Brunstetter shows throughout her funny and moving play, The Cake, reconciling traditional roots with progressive values in a polarized world is wrenching work. And while no one should expect to abandon the things that sustain her — be it waffle fries, her faith or the person who has captured her heart — what should be expected, the play shows, is conversation, with a generous dash of understanding and more than a pinch of heart.
They elbow one another for space in his mind: young black teenagers and their worried mothers, old white supremacists and their nervous wives, skeptical lawyers, gravelly voiced journalists and a slave who mailed himself to freedom inside a box.
Mike Wiley not only plays them all on stage — often more than two dozen characters in a single performance, with no costume changes and few props — the documentary theater actor and playwright rehearses himself to sleep at night with their dialogue, their humanity and inhumanity, strumming through his head.
While they waited for Superior Court Judge Howard Manning to read the court’s finding — minutes that seemed almost as long as the six years Christine Mumma had worked to free Greg Taylor — Mumma became more convinced they had lost, while Taylor simply prayed that his heart would not give out. They waited together for a moment that had never before happened in the history of the judicial system, neither of them daring to believe.
For Andrea Bruce '95, vision is everything. And at that moment, in June 2004, riding in a Humvee with soldiers from the U.S. Army 1st…
Continue reading → World Witness: The Photography of Andrea Bruce
Two o'clock in the morning and the noise is deafening. Rye Barcott gets dressed, grabs his machete. It sounds like war coming down outside his shanty in Kenya, and swarms of people are running toward the railroad tracks on the border of the Kiberan slums. Barcott follows the candles, the flashlights, the moonbeams that shine like an interrogation lamp; he follows the banging, to a man who lies bloodied in the middle of an enormous mob. He's a thief, a mwizi, and his tale makes Barcott lose his voice. A villager stands over the mwizi. He appears to be flicking something at him. Seconds later, the thief is in flames.
Gaston Caperton overcame dyslexia to become a millionaire and rise to West Virginia's highest office. Now he leads the venerable College Board into a new century - and, he hopes, a new relevancy - on the Web.
Academic medicine’s financial climate has been diagnosed, and the news isn’t good for teaching hospitals. About half will be operating in the red within two years.
From tiny Woodburn, Ind., to Washington, D.C., Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Jane E. Henney never faced a hurdle she couldn’t leap. The New…
Many observers say Elizabeth Dole's Southern charm and graceful appearance -- she long ago earned the nickname ``Sugar Lips'' for her ability to diplomatically deal with difficult situations -- have helped her bring combative sides together and foster Red Cross fund raising. Some say they also could help in a presidential race.
WASHINGTON -- Hoping to light a fire under House Speaker Dennis Hastert and members of the Senate, a bipartisan group of congressmen led by Rep.…
WASHINGTON -- From Union Station's newsstands to the city's corner drugstores, John Edwards' face stares out at Washingtonians from the cover of Capital Style magazine, so large that his senatorial pores can be counted like beans.
"Building the Perfect Senator," the headline reads. "John Edwards is rich and rugged. But is he ready?"
The answer is, he'd better be.
WASHINGTON -- When 1999's largest sporting event hits the Triangle for nine days this summer, it might seem natural to expect crowded stores, packed restaurants,…
Continue reading → Games aim to boost goodwill, not area coffers
WASHINGTON -- Although the outcome was clear long before the final roll call, Friday's historic impeachment vote was more than an exercise in statesmanship for…
WASHINGTON -- They are the personal research librarians for members of Congress, and Rep. David Price wants you to be able to check them out.
WASHINGTON -- The city of Durham has won a $2.4 million federal grant to alleviate lead poisoning among low-income children living in private housing, the…
WASHINGTON -- It has more pages than ``War and Peace,'' more tables than a Martha Stewart guide to entertaining and a price tag larger than…
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton's proposed $7.2 billion Environmental Protection Agency budget includes the nearly $50 million still needed to complete construction and tackle initial startup…
Continue reading → Clinton sets $50M aside for EPA’s complex
WASHINGTON -- In what may be the smallest gym he's performed in since his high school days in Wilmington, Michael Jordan unveiled one of his retirement plans Friday: a $5 million program that will give teachers of disadvantaged students money for new equipment and new programs.
WASHINGTON -- The freshman Democrat from North Carolina on Friday was chosen to represent his party in the House prosecutors' deposition of Monica Lewinsky. Edwards is the youngest of the three Democrats and three Republicans tapped to serve as presiding officers during the testimony of Lewinsky, Clinton confidante Vernon Jordan and White House aide Sidney Blumenthal.
