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Another reason it's great to live here. ("Here" for me being very near Carrboro.)

The Carrboro Poetry Festival is only two weekends away.

The Carrboro Poetry Festival, to be held June 5 and 6 at the Carrboro Century Center in the heart of Carrboro North Carolina, will feature 40 poets.

Renowned North Carolina poets Carl Martin, Gerald Barrax, Jaki Shelton Green, Jeffrey Beam, John Balaban, and shirlette ammons will read their poetry along with some of America's best younger poets--Brian Henry (editor of Verse and founder of Verse Press), Linh Dinh (anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000 and the editor and co-translator of Night Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam), K. Silem Mohammad (author of Hovercraft and Deer Head Nation), and Lee Ann Brown (Charlotte native and winner of the New American Poetry Prize).

The festival is co-sponsored by the Town of Carrboro, The Independent Weekly, The Town of Carrboro Art Committee, and Carrboro Poet Laureate Patrick Herron, the organizer of the event.

Admission is FREE.

Many of us have lamented the inability to force commenters to register here. I have been looking forward to the new version of MovableType (the software that powers this site) because it includes a comment registration system called TypeKey. Since OrangePolitics.org is a community service written and managed entirely by volunteers, it's obviously important that the software has been free for us to use.

Well that new software was finally released this month, but the free version is now limited to only one author. We currently have about half a dozen authors, and hope to add more someday. So this pricing change present a serious barrier to upgrading. Especially since we hope to syndicate the model of this site for other communities. (ChathamPolitics.org anyone?) With the current version of the software we're using, I can expand this way without limit.

Guest Post by Graig Meyer

In the recent WCHL forum on education, an unidentified caller ($50 says it was Gloria Faley) chimed in at the last minute to challenge the notion that we live in a "diverse" community.

Initially I thought "right on" when she pointed out that our town's population is overwhelmingly white and affluent. But then I thought, "Hey, one of the reasons we moved here was for the diversity."

Are we diverse or not?

If you go by population numbers, we're not as diverse as Durham but we're more diverse than many other NC towns. What really bothers me is that people from different cultural groups don't really seem to know one another. Do many members of our white, affluent population maintain friendships with many Latino immigrants or African-Americans who live in Northside.

If we were truly diverse, wouldn't we know each other better and talk a little more?

Graig Meyer coordinates the Blue Ribbon Mentor Advocate Program in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System.