In Durham and across North Carolina, as school years finish up, people are working to ensure students won’t go hungry over summer break. Durham Public Schools Summer Meal Program plans to serve between 1,500 and 1,800 students per day, according to Linden Thayer, Durham Public Schools school nutrition planner. The DPS Summer Meals Program will run from June 17 to July 26 across roughly 30 sites, in community locations and schools, Thayer says. The summer meals program is federally funded and has operated in Durham for more than 30 years....

This month, cast members of the Pure Life Theatre Company’s production have offered up a poignant and oftentimes laugh-out-loud performance of the Tony-nominated play, Home. The play closes out on Thursday, June 20, as part of Burning Coal Theatre’s Second Stage Series. Under the direction of Jade Arnold, the iridescent June 8 opening night performance at Raleigh’s Burning Coal Theatre by Ajani Kambon, Moriah Williams, and Tydiam Coleman, under the direction of Jade Arnold, was especially meaningful coming less than a month after Samm-Art Williams, who wrote Home, died on...

A Durham planning commissioner has resigned in protest of the way in which some Durham city council members have, in his words, “dismissed, at times ignored” and “even denigrated” the work and expertise of the planning commission. Anthony Sease, a civil engineer and adjunct assistant professor at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, was appointed to the planning commission in 2021. He submitted his resignation letter to the city council via email on Wednesday, a day after announcing his imminent exit at a planning commission meeting. (“This is going to...

Eight Triangle artists and arts organizations were awarded grants from the regional nonprofit South Arts, earlier this week. The grants will help fund new programs ranging from a flamenco dance course for kids in Carrboro to a prominent writer’s residency at NC State. South Arts, a regional nonprofit headquartered in Atlanta that receives funding from the National Endowment of the Arts, issued the grants. One hundred and three artists and organizations across nine Southern states were awarded grants from South Arts totaling over half a million dollars on Tuesday. “We...

Welcome to the weekend, readers. Housing remains a critical challenge for the Triangle, even as new apartment buildings and large townhouse communities seem to sprout up every week. As local governments continue to evaluate possible solutions, some entrepreneurial developers are taking matters into their own hands. Small-scale development firms like Coram Houses, Haven Ventures, and Heeks Collaborative are contributing to Durham’s housing market by increasing the stock of accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

To Christina Tran, a junior at Middle Creek High School in Apex, her painting featuring Harriet Tubman and her brother Ben Ross invokes a sense of resilience. The work, titled “Under the Northern Star,” depicts Tubman and Ross walking along a sand-colored pathway toward the home of an Underground Railroad conductor. A lush green landscape surrounds the figures as they walk underneath a night sky dotted with stars, the largest of these the North Star, to freedom. Tran created her acrylic painting for a project in English teacher Matthew Scialdone’s...

Lin Peterson, the cofounder of Locals Seafood, starts our tour of the company’s new East Raleigh market and processing facility by pointing out the fishing village Wanchese on a mural of North Carolina. It’s the state’s hub for the commercial fishing industry that sits, somewhat precariously, on the southern end of Roanoke Island. The map isn’t detailed: it’s a large ocean-blue outline of the state that wraps around the corner of the building’s market space, unlabeled except for a small dot representing where we are now. Still, Peterson is able...

On South Wilmington Street, one of Raleigh’s few bastions of the past stands seemingly frozen in time. The Pope House’s rustic brick exterior and aging white paint looks nearly identical to when it was first built in 1901. But by August, the Pope House will take another step back in time, featuring restorative renovations that staff hope will give visitors a clearer look into Raleigh’s Black history. To Hazel Boomer, manager at the Pope House, this small house is far greater than its size. “I always say that the house...

Hashem Amireh was sitting by himself in a conference room when his friends texted him, around 5:30 a.m. on April 30, to say that UNC campus police were coming to dismantle the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the quad. Amireh, a doctoral student in economics who serves as president of the UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student union, had spent much of the previous four days at the encampment but wasn’t on-site that morning because he’d walked 20 yards away from his tent to get some work done in Gardner Hall. When campus...