This Weekend FRIDAY Annual 40% Chance of Rain 76/61 Carrboro Guide SATURDAY 70% Chance of rain 72/49 Inside SUNDAY Partly Cloudy 66/45 carrborocitizen.com OCTOBER 22, 2009 u CLO ALLY OWNED AND OPerAteD u VOLUME III No. XXXii FREE Slow start to early voting BY KIRK Ross As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, “Because it’s convenient Staff Writer only 384 voters had cast and I already know for their ballots — 31 in whom I’m going to Voting got underway in Orange Hillsborough, 235 vote,” she said when County, but just barely, with light at the planetarium asked what got her turnout reported at all three early- and 118 at Carrboro down to the poll- voting polling spots. Town Hall. ing place. Polls opened last Thursday in There were some Although the Hillsborough and on Monday at indications that ballot will remain Carrboro Town Hall and Morehead more pleasant weather the same, the start of Planetarium. might lead to a pick-up voting Thursday coin- Orange County Board of Elec- in the pace. cided with a shake-up in tions director Tracy Reams said “It’s a nice day, and we need- the race for Chapel Hill mayor, operations at all three site were run- ed to vote sooner or later, so we fig- with candidate Kevin Wolff telling ning smoothly. ured why not sooner?” said Collan the audience at Thursday’s WCHL “We just need some more vot- Kneale, who’d ventured to Car- election forum at Chapel Hill Town PHOTO BY AVA barLow ers,” she said. “My people need some rboro Town Hall at lunchtime on Hall that he was dropping out of the Donnell Walden receives his ballot from work to do.” Wednesday. race. Wolff did not endorse anyone in Orange County Board of Elections worker The turnout was a far cry from the Also in line was Lucretia Kinny, making his announcement. Terry Tinker at the Carrboro Town Hall record-breaking crowds during the first who decided to beat whatever rush Monday. Walden was the 33rd voter to cast his week of last year’s presidential race. the local election might engender. SEE ELECTION PAGE 3 ballot during early voting at the Town Hall. Perry Deane Young on the Council hears ‘peculiar obscenity’ of war shelter plans Residents rally against PHOTO BY Ken Moore BY TAYloR SIsk Winter leaf of crane-fly orchid emerges next to a Staff Writer site off Homestead coral fungus along the edge of Bolin Creek in the Adam’s tract nature preserve. Old men lust after war; young BY KIRK Ross men court it. It’s the same impulse Staff Writer born of opposite origins – that of BY KEN MOORE those who needn’t fear having to ChaPEL HILL — The Chapel Hill Town FLora actually encounter war and those Council began its official review Mon- who wish to. In that nexus lies day night of a plan by the Inter-Faith Celebrating what Perry Deane Young refers to Council for Social Service to move the as the “peculiar obscenity” of war. men’s homeless shelter to the intersec- Bolin Creek That may be putting too fine a tion of Homestead Road and Martin t’s fall, and we have a winter’s point on it. But it does seem to be Luther King Jr. Boulevard, site of the old Duke Power facility. worth of exploring along Bo- what Young suggests when he talks about war. The IFC wants to build a new lin Creek ahead of us. I took “It was so obviously unnec- 16,000-square-foot facility with a my own solitary preview walk essary,” he says of the Vietnam health clinic and 50 beds, and filed a last Sunday. War, which he covered as a cor- concept plan with the town. The con- IMy favorite access begins at respondent for United Press In- cept plan process offers members of the the well-marked trailhead in ternational. town council and town advisory boards Wilson Park that enters the A grunt’s-eye view of war “is a look at a new project to provide feed- like a car wreck; there’s noth- back before a full application is com- Adams Tract nature preserve. pleted and submitted. An uphill walk through mature ing noble about it,” Young said, seated on the porch of his Hen- At the meeting at Town Hall, IFC piney woods leads on over the derson Street home. Certainly, executive director Chris Moran opened oak-hickory forest and down noble deeds are done. “But it’s stu- his presentation by thanking the town through the beech-maple for- pid, and always has been. When for its support for the shelter, which est to the edge of the creek. All you get out there, it’s just people has been located for 24 years at the old along the way, I could not help killing each other. It’s slaughter. Chapel Hill Town Hall, at the corner of but pause frequently to admire That’s what it’s always been. Rosemary and Columbia streets. “But there’s always been this He said that although the shelter has mighty specimens of pine, oak, been in that spot for more than two de- tulip poplar, beech and maple, glorified image …” Thirty-nine years ago, Young cades, it was always considered temporary. each with an interesting story to began writing a book about a “You have been very gracious to pro- relate, if only we knew how to band of young correspondents vide us this space for 24 years,” Moran talk to trees. and photographers covering the said, “but our goal has always been to Well-worn trails lead in all di- Vietnam War. His intent was to provide a permanent facility.” rections along the creek’s corri- write it devoid of romance. PHOTO BY AVA barLow The new site is on property recently dors and on up into the Carolina It couldn’t be done. Perry Deane Young, author of Two of the Missing, which was re-issued in May. acquired by UNC. The university has promised to provide a $1 per year lease North trails. It’s a close-to-home That book, Two of the Missing, is about the disappearance into reissued in May with a new chap- said with great affection, as quoted on the shelter land. adventure to see if you can get the jungle along the Cambodia- ter updating the lives of the major in Michael Herr’s classic, Dispatch- Moran said the model for the new fa- yourself lost in these hundreds of Vietnam border of photojournal- personalities portrayed, excepting es, another stripped-bare vision of cility would be similar to the IFC’s Project acres of connected forests. If you ists Dana Stone and Sean Flynn, Stone and Flynn. America’s war in Vietnam), and Homestart facility, which has operated on succeed, you are never far from Young’s friends, young men Two of the Missing is reportage, where the two meet — the trans- Homestead Road for 11 years. a trail that leads to a road or drawn into the rush of war and memoir, meditation. It’s about formative, intoxicating effects of “This is not to be construed as a flop adjacent residential community. driven to document it. war, and about an introverted war, indelible and at odds, in a very house or a place where people can come It was a difficult choice Sunday The book was published in mountain boy blossoming into particular place. and go at will,” Moran said. for me to abandon enjoying the 1975 (Truman Capote called it “the fullest flowering of Southern “moving and engrossing”) and degeneracy” (Flynn’s description, SEE YOUNG PAGE 7 SEE COUNCIL PAGE 8 colorful wildflowers and grasses of fields and roadsides to enter the darker world of the forest. I was rewarded in rediscovering World of languages now among school offerings the beauty of fall’s lively awaken- ing in so many ways. BY KATE GRIESMANN The presence of so many Staff Writer different types of fungi (mush- CHAPEL HILL—Sprechen sie Deutsch? Operor rooms) hugging the forest floor vos narro Latin? and clinging to fallen and stand- If you are a student in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro ing trees reminded me that school system, chances are you may do one or both of my mushroom guide was of those. That is, unless you studied one of the four other little help left unattended on an world languages the district offers. indoor bookshelf. I took extra In that case, you might speak Japanese, Spanish, time out to appreciate a clump French or Mandarin Chinese instead. While, nationwide, most public school students SEE FLORA PAGE 12 don’t start learning a foreign language until ninth grade, CHCCS offers Spanish or French as early as kindergarten. At all grades, the district offers students INSIDE a chance to learn about languages, culture and, some- times, opportunities to travel as well. After Carrboro Many, many endorsement High School added Mandarin Chinese last year, be- letters coming the first high school to offer that language, the school organized a summer exchange program to See pages 6 & 7 China. INDEX A trip to China is on the horizon for another CHCCS student later this month. Caroline Liu, a Smith Middle School seventh-grader, will participate Music .........................................................................................2 PHOTO BY AVA barLow News ................................................................................................ 3 in the Second World Chinese Culture Contest. The finals, which will involve 10 international teams, will Judy Ouyang, a dual-language teacher at Glenwood Elementary School in Chapel Hill, conducts a fourth-grade math Community .........................................................................................4 lesson in Mandarin Chinese.