This Weekend Friday Schools 50% Chance of Rain 57/49 Smith Middle School Saturday Honor Rolls Mostly Cloudy 53/27 Sunday Page 9 Sunny 53/31 carrborocitizen.com MARCH 6, 2008 u CARRBORO’S COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER u VOLUME I NO. LI FREE Living to tell the tale by Susan Dickson “You know I couldn’t even go Staff Writer over to McDonald’s and get a Happy Meal,” McCain told the students, who Franklin McCain accomplished a responded with gasps. “Couldn’t swim, great feat on Friday at Rashkis Elemen- couldn’t go to the pool.… Couldn’t tary School – he held the attention of even go to the park. 250 fourth- and fifth-graders for more “When I was 12 years old, I was so than an hour. angry, if you touched me with a pin, I McCain, one of the “Greensboro would have popped.” Four” who participated in the 1960 McCain went to North Carolina Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in, re- A&T State University, where he met counted his experiences for Rashkis McNeil, Blair and Richmond. He told students, including his grandson, kin- Rashkis students that the four young dergartener Davis McCain. men would sit around every night talk- McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair ing about how unfair segregation was, Jr. and David Richmond took seats at the and that finally they decided to do Woolworth’s segregated lunch counter something about it. to ask for service on Feb. 1, 1960. They “We decided that we were going to continued to sit at the counter every day, go down to [Woolworth’s] and take PHOTO BY DAVE otto You have only a couple of weeks to catch the joined by more people each day, until a seat at that counter,” he said. Wool- fleeting Trout Lily finally, in July, they were served. Their worth’s had a separate standing-only actions inspired sit-ins across the country counter for blacks. and are considered seminal moments in “We decided that we were going to do the civil rights movement. two things. We were going to be orderly FlorA By Ken Moore Rashkis students crowded around … and we were going to be nonviolent,” McCain in the school’s media center McCain said. “We fully anticipated some for what resembled a grandfather tell- bad things happening to us.” Don’t Miss the ing stories to his grandchildren. “It didn’t matter – it did not matter “I’ll tell you some things that are if I came back dead, because the kind of Spring Ephemerals pretty hard to believe,” McCain began. life I had to live and the conditions that I “The times weren’t all that good and had to put up with made me question if ome of our most beauti- fair. You know what fair is, don’t you?” this life was worth living,” he continued. ful woodland flowers are Throughout his talk, McCain McCain and his three friends pur- called spring ephemer- quizzed students about different things chased some school supplies in the als because their visible he said or words he used. He told stu- store, then took seats at the counter, presence is fleetingly Photo BY KIRK ROSS dents about segregated schools, pools where they asked for Franklin McCain signs autographs for students at Rashkis Elementary after his talk about and restaurants, and how he got angry brief. They emerge from the for- S his experience as one of the Greensboro Four. as he got older. SEE LIVING PAGE 8 est floor in the chilly late winter to take advantage of the full sun- light that’s absent once the forest Mental health collapse canopy is in full leaf. Housing economy slowing, but By mid-April, some of these leaves network in shambles early risers will have flowered, by how much and for how long? made fruit, dispersed seed and by Kirk Ross Local foreclosures are on the rise, by Taylor Sisk health treatment in Orange, Per- son and Chatham counties – an- returned to dormancy. The Trout Staff Writer even some out in the tonier neighbor- Staff Writer hoods. Phillips said he’s personally had nounced that it would be discontin- Lily is a classic spring ephemeral. I “I’ve come to the conclusion,” uing almost all of its services in the failed to interrupt my busy in- Local realtors and homebuilders to do a good bit of “reality therapy” agree that they’re getting at least a taste with sellers to help them understand says Karen Dunn, director of Club three counties. CFN will no longer door pace a few years ago and I of what their counterparts in much what they can really expect to get out Nova, a Carrboro clubhouse that provide outpatient and community- missed the pageantry of this little more troubled locales are experiencing, of their homes. helps people with mental illnesses based services but will continue to woodland lily. That had a dramatic but thoughts about the degree of the While the high-quality $800,000 lead productive lives in the commu- provide therapeutic foster care. impact on me. I no longer take slowdown and how long it will last are to $1.2 million homes and those un- nity, “that there must be a new diag- As a result, Marilyn Ghezzi, lightly the passing of seasons. The much more varied. der $300,000 are likely to continue to nosis that hasn’t yet ended up in the who until last week was a therapist DSM” – by which she refers to the with CFN, has had to tell clients budding, flowering, leafing, fruiting Weaver Street Realty’s Gary Phil- do well here, there’s a lot of inventory lips said he has a running bet with an- of homes in between, Phillips said. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of with whom she’s built relationships, and return to dormancy of plants Mental Disorders. some as many as 20 years in dura- are cherished as special separate other realtor who thinks the situation The slowdown is evident in recently is highly temporary. compiled statistics for the fourth quar- “It’s some kind of delusional dis- tion, that she’ll no longer be their annual occurrences. Although the local market has a lot ter of 2007, which showed a marked order on a bureaucratic level.” therapist. Other therapists have had The fleeting presence of the of promise going forward, thanks in slowdown in home sales in Orange “I know people are well inten- to do likewise. Trout Lily makes me want to part to the lure of local schools and a and Chatham counties. tioned,” she continues, “but you just “They were devastated,” Ghe- linger over it – quietly hoping I commitment to expand the university, “Orange County presents a stron- get into that institutional thinking, zzi says of her clients’ reaction to will be privileged to see it again Phillips said there are major forces at ger performance than the rest of the and it’s just …” She pauses; shakes the news. “One person said to me, work around the country that are hav- Triangle,” said Bernard Helm, presi- her head. “Talk about the definition ‘How can they just change your next year. I saw some in flower of insanity….” therapist?’” – which would seem to this past weekend down along ing an affect here. dent of Market Opportunity Re- “There are a lot of debts coming due,” search Enterprises, a Rocky Mount- As Dunn sees it, the breakdown reflect a tacit belief in mental health the Rocky River on Triangle Land he said, both literally and figuratively. based research firm that analyzes an in the provisioning of mental health care as a fundamental right. Conservancy’s White Pines Pre- Phillips, who is part of a national mort- array of local data from building per- care services in North Carolina Perhaps it’s not. But it’s certainly serve south of Pittsboro. Dave gage study group looking at debt issues, mits to land inventories to types of was easily enough forecast. Men- a critical service – and one that’s in Otto photographed some early said that the country has been trying to sales and prices. Part of that, he said, tal health care reforms that were critical condition. What those pro- ones this past week down along “live off its fat, its debt” for far too long. is that overall in the Triangle sales intended to provide more commu- fessionals along the front lines of nity-based care and thereby reduce mental health care will tell you is Bolin Creek in Carrboro. Too many people are using their home- of homes in the less than $250,000 equity credit line like a piggy bank, he range are suffering the most. Since the need for more intensive services that in addition to weaving a safety If you are going to catch them were, Dunn says, flawed from the net for those with mental disorders this year, you will have to get out said. Couple that attitude with the “false Orange County, where the average assumption that property will appreciate home in 2007 cost $329,006, has a beginning, and yet we continued to they’re protecting us as citizens and there soon. You can’t miss them. forever,” Phillips said, and you have the much smaller inventory of properties drive these reforms headlong into taxpayers, or at least attempting to In some places like the Botanical making of a long-term crisis. in that range, Helm said it has not what she and many of her colleagues do so, from further headlines of Garden, the Adams’ Tract and While this area is not feeling it as been hit as hard as other spots.