This Weekend friday House Calls Partly Cloudy 86/61 See page 4 saTurday Clear 85/61 sunday Clear 88/61 carrborocitizen.com augusT 26, 2010 u locally oWned and operaTed u Volume Iv no. XXiV free Board deadlocked on banking services local groups By kirk ross clination toward supporting local Supervision put the bank on notice Staff Writer businesses and concerns about un- that it would need to improve its support certainties in financial markets. risk-based capital ratios. CARRBORO — The Carrboro Board of Board member Jacquie Gist said she Quizzed by board member Dan proposed Aldermen returned to Town Hall Tuesday wanted to see the town switch to Har- Coleman, Harrington president night with the top item on the agenda a rington because of its local ties. Duke Larry Loeser said the bank has been sales tax lingering discussion of whether to switch business professor and investment advisor working with regulators to obtain a banking services from Bank of America Doug Breeden, who lives in Chapel Hill, clean bill of health for the institu- By susan dickson to either BB&T or Harrington Bank, owns about 80 percent of the bank. tion. He said the bank has improved Staff Writer but wound up deadlocked 3-3 after about But the bank’s trouble with regu- its capital rations and he expects the 40 minutes of discussion and once again lators last year worried some mem- issue to be resolved by the end of the Local organizations are com- tabled the issue for a later meeting. bers. After losses in 2008 in its bond calendar year. ing out in support of a proposed The board, with member Joal portfolio took a toll on the bank’s quarter-cent sales tax that the Hall Broun recused, debated its in- capital reserves, the Office of Thrift SEE BOARD PAGe 3 Orange County Board of Com- missioners have said would help fund economic development, schools, emergency services and libraries if voters approve the tax in November. At a work session last week, the board tentatively agreed to dedicate 42.5 percent of the funds to economic development, Seashore mallow produces a sea of pink 42.5 percent to schools and 15 hibiscus-like flowers. percent to be split between EMS PhotO by keN moore and library services. The board voted unanimously in June to put the sales-tax option on the November ballot and will vote by keN Moore flOrA on the proposed allocation at its meeting on Sept. 2. A wildflower to Bill Whitmore, president of the Greater Chapel Hill As- know and grow sociation of Realtors, said the association would get behind riving through the the referendum, collaborating center of campus on with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Cameron Avenue Chamber of Commerce, the last week, I noticed schools and economic develop- hundreds of flowers ment staff “to do everything we of seashore mallow, Kosteletz- can to make certain the sales and D use tax gets passed. kya virginica, stretching up over “With that blend of dedi- the stone wall next to Coker cated use, we’ll be right behind Arboretum’s arbor. the vivid it,” he said. “We’ll be taking an pink of those flowers caused active role.... We’ll have some me to slow down for a brief kind of work sessions to deter- mine how our resources could closer look. be put into motion.” Here in the Piedmont, you Of course Matt Neal is in a good mood. Neal’s Deli just got another glowing write-up in a national publication – this time will see this beautiful wildflow- it was Food & Wine – and the summer doldrums are officially over now that students are flocking in for lunch. the deli and er only in gardens. In the wild, dozens of other local eateries are featured next week in the semi-annual food issue of MILL. SEE SALES TaX PAGe 3 it occurs in ditches and edges photO by Alex maness of brackish marshes and riv- ers along the coast from New york all the way down and perry deane young’s return around to coastal texas. years ago, in the late 1970s, By Taylor sisk tells the story of two of his friends, I was approaching the White Staff Writer the photojournalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, who, in 1970, disap- Oak river bridge at the coastal The distance from Phnom Penh to peared forever into the jungles along town of Swansboro when I Saigon has diminished. Actually, you the Cambodia-Vietnam border. For spied a ditch filled with a tall no longer can go from Phnom Penh Young, the April trip provided an wildflower unknown to me. to Saigon, as there no longer is a Sai- opportunity to retrace his friends’ Using my trusty old Flora of the gon. But the last time Perry Deane last documented miles and to revisit Carolina’s botanical key, I was Young was in the region, in 1972, what he calls “the great moment of the distance from Phnom Penh to my life” – the events he witnessed excited to zoom in on sea- what’s now called Ho Chi Minh City and the people he met as a young shore mallow. seemed considerable. War has that correspondent amidst the horror of Seeds collected from that effect on distances. war in Vietnam. ditch a month or so later were The drive these days takes some The group was given first-class subsequently sown at the six hours, first past the throngs of accommodation by the Cambodian desperately poor in the streets of government; they traveled in air-con- N.C. botanical Garden. re- Phnom Penh, over the Mekong Riv- ditioned buses with police escorts. sulting plants were observed er by ferry and across the flat delta “It was bang, bang, bang, one for the next several years in dotted with the occasional tiny vil- thing after another,” Young says. the garden’s wildflowers beds. lage. Then from nowhere, it seems, George Hamilton (left), Perry Deane young (center) and tim Page stand along They took part in a Buddhist ceremo- Surprisingly, seashore mallow, flush against the Vietnamese border Hwy. 1 in Cambodia where Sean flynn and Dana Stone were last seen. ny at the site where nine journalists expected to require constant appear a half dozen or so casinos. photO courteSy Of Perry Deane young were executed by the Khmer Rouge Ahead lies today’s Vietnam, so dra- in 1970 and visited one of the Killing moist conditions, as in the matically different from the Vietnam as a correspondent for United Press Es, who took so many iconic photos Fields, where perhaps 200,000 Cam- wild, proved to be a vigorous, of four decades ago. “Night and day,” International, and he returned to of the war. Upon the news of van Es’s bodians were murdered. drought-tolerant perennial. So Young says, from both Cambodia Southeast Asia in late April for two illness, a Google group formed that “You just look down and it’s impressed were garden staff that and its own past. weeks – one each in Cambodia and according to Young now includes just absolutely littered with bones,” they designated it the Wildflower “Vietnam is booming,” Young, a Vietnam – to attend an “Old Hacks some 300 former war correspon- Young says. “Pits with 200 bodies Reunion,” a reuniting of former dents, colleagues and family mem- of the year in 1990. Since then, Chapel Hill resident, says. “Every- and no heads. Where are the heads? where you look now, four-lane high- Vietnam War correspondents. bers. … To think of the horror of it all.” as a result of the garden’s seed ways with elaborate bridges … irri- The impetus for the gathering was Young’s book Two of the Missing, distribution and plant sales, it has gations systems and canals.” the illness and death in Hong Kong which was published in 1975 and become a common garden plant Young arrived in Vietnam in 1968 of Dutch photojournalist Hugh van re-released last year in paperback, SEE YOUNG PAGe 7 in the area. integrating into the hearing world SEE FLORA PAGe 10 recenTly . the skull near each cochlea (the part by Valarie Schwartz of the inner ear where sound impuls- es respond to vibrations) to receive inside Madison Jackson was a year old signals from transmitters that attach when her parents, Corrine and Nick with magnets to the outside of the Jackson of Apex, learned that she scalp. Used with a microphone and High school sports could not hear. speech processor (worn around the “We had an inkling at six months, ear), a deaf person can hear sounds See page 8 but we weren’t sure until test results and understand speech. indeX at 12 months,” Corrine said. Nobody “It was pretty amazing to learn in the family had ever had hearing that there was a fix, something that Music ................................................................................................ 2 problems. “Looking back, it was re- could help her,” Corrine said. News ................................................................................................ 3 ally emotional, very upsetting, we During the next six months, an House Calls .................................................................................... 4 were questioning why it happened.” extensive work-up was done to de- Community .................................................................................... 5 But the same day they learned that termine Madison’s chances for a suc- Opinion .........................................................................................6 Madison was deaf, they also began cessful outcome with implants, and Madison Jackson is left standing in a game of musical chairs. but Ian fan gives her School .................................................................................... 8 to learn about cochlear implants, a the decision (made easier because a smile and Sarah bess eskridge gives her a sign for doing a good job at CASTLE, Classifieds ...................................................................................