Too often debates about immigration veer way off course, inhabiting some netherland of hysteria that is so far from reality it borders on the ridiculous. In the past couple of weeks we in North Carolina have witnessed just such a situation as the decision that community colleges should admit illegal immigrants exploded into newspapers and radio talk shows.

By David Curtis

Wool socks, silk long johns, cotton turtleneck, boots, down vest, wool jacket, Gortex insulated camo gloves. Deer hunting? No, Friday night high school football in late November, expected temperature at game time — 27 degrees.

Rumors have been circulating for years about the proposed mega-development in the Jonathan Creek area, the one with a thousand houses and a huge retail center that would take advantage of the area’s proximity to Interstate 40 and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Well, now that those plans are out of the bag, so to speak, the one thing people in the affected area should be reminded of is this: it’s going to take a grassroots effort that pulls out all the stops to prevent a development like this from getting under way.

I was 22 years old in 1967. Although it’s become fashionable to downgrade the sweeping changes brought about by my generation to the meaningless antics of a bunch of spaced-out druggies and naive idealists, history confirms that we really shook things up in the 1960s. We advanced civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, and free speech; we became environmentally aware; we exposed and brought down the dark reign of Nixonian evil, we said no to an imbecilic war, blind conformity and government censorship. Yes we had our nut cases and, yes, we made our mistakes, but overall we made a real and positive difference. This great worldwide birth contraction was spearheaded by young people.

I look at you. You look at me. We’re dancing sort of, but I’m not much of a dancer and neither are you. There is no practical reason why you would want or need to buy cookie dough from my six-year-old daughter, just as there was no practical reason why, just a few years ago, I bought six boxes of Girl Scout cookies from your daughter. If either of us needed or wanted the cookies, we would simply get in our cars, drive to the supermarket, and purchase them. Think of a world in which we would have the things we needed only when six-year-old girls came knocking on our doors to provide them to us. I do not believe that this is a world either of us wants to live in.

These days Americans aren’t known for making tough choices. To the contrary, our national reputation is one of being soft. We eat too many bad foods and complain about our health, sit around way too much instead of exercising, and continue to drive gas-guzzling, huge cars when we know they damage the environment and play into the hands of foreign dictators who control the oil.

By Sarah Kucharski

Sunlight streams in our house’s south facing windows. The rays bring out the color in the Kiatt wood that makes up the top of the new table sitting in our dining room.

By David Curtis

Making the rounds in teacher’s email inboxes is a story about an educator from Arkansas who taught her students an invaluable lesson on the right to an education.

I am pretty sure I am going to get lashed for saying this, especially as an English teacher, but I do not really believe there is much that can be done to improve one’s ability to spell words. I haven’t done the research, but it has always seemed to me that good spellers are born, not made, that the ability to spell is as genetic as freckles or male pattern baldness.

By Michael Beadle

The tired diatribes of partisan politics may continue to capture the headlines in the coming campaign months, but there is one issue President Bush, Republicans, Democrats, student activists, Hollywood actors and most world governments are all agreeing on — Burma’s long-running military regime must end its repressive campaign against its own people.