As printed in the July 29th Chapel Hill Herald

Folks are taught from an early age that if they have a problem with something that a governmental body is doing, they should contact their representative. It's safe to say a lot of progressives in Orange and northern Chatham counties have had a lot of problems with the actions, or lack thereof, taken by the North Carolina General Assembly during this year's session.
The most glaring disappointment is the lack of meaningful ethics/lobbying reform.

It's clear many legislators want to get as much out of their status as they possibly can and are not committed to making the real changes that could help North Carolina residents better trust their elected officials.

But this is by far not the only failed opportunity to make the state better during this session.

A full slate of good environmental bills have been killed by the moneyed interests around the General Assembly, ranging from strong standards to create cleaner cars to the common-sense issue of electronics recycling, for which the Orange County Commissioners have provided a great model.

Many have expressed concern about a recent action by Carr Mill Mall to ban dancing by free-form dancer Bruce Thomas (even the CH Herald today opined "Let the dancing guy keep on dancing.").

Thomas has been enlivening the Carr Mill lawn for the last few years with his spontaneous, gracefully spiritual dancing. Other times, Bruce can be seen sitting in quiet meditation on one of the nearby benches. And, yes, he is a regular customer of Weaver Street Market.

The ban apparently results from a Carr Mill policy that states that only mall tenants and those attending their events can use the lawn space (thus, Bruce may dance during a WSM event but not otherwise).

What do you all think Faison's future will be? Had you noticed that he wasn't attracting as much attention this time around?

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 22nd-

As this year's state legislative session winds down, one of the most interesting trends for the Orange County delegation is the silence of Bill Faison, representative from N.C. House District 50 that includes part of Orange as well as all of Caswell County.

During his inaugural session last year, he made all sorts of noise. He attracted attention statewide as one of only two Democrats to vote against the state budget, while gaining notice locally for his effort to force a referendum on district representation for the Orange County Commissioners through the N.C. General Assembly. This drew him the enmity of many other local elected officials, who thought his efforts were an attempt to wrest power away from them.

This year has been a completely different story.

Amazingly, his name has not even appeared in the pages of this newspaper since early March.