Lena Geller

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

The Durham County farm campus project—a long-awaited agricultural education center and incubator farm—passed a milestone Monday as county commissioners received the final feasibility study for the 129-acre Orange Factory Road property. A presentation of the study revealed both ambitious plans and looming challenges for the project, which has been in development for more than a decade.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

This story is part of a new bi-weekly column, Lunch Money, where staff writer Lena Geller visits restaurants in the Triangle in an attempt to dine out for less than $15. When I step into Shanghai, Durham’s oldest operating Chinese restaurant, the hostess beckons me toward her stand. “See that booth?” she asks. “Go, and I will follow.”I head to the booth she’s pointing at, tucked in a back corner next to a bookshelf stocked with wine bottles and silk foliage, and slide in.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

Rows of school desks appeared in downtown Durham’s CCB Plaza on Thursday as Durham School of the Arts (DSA) students staged a May Day “study-in” demanding climate action. “We were debating between sitting on the steps of the school board building or doing the middle of the plaza,” says Sarah Rodrigues, a junior who helped organize the demonstration. “We were like, the plaza sounds good, but how do we make it school-specific?

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

Judges in black robes stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the Durham County courthouse steps Thursday afternoon and administered the attorney’s oath to dozens of legal professionals before them who raised their right hands and reaffirmed their pledge to defend the Constitution. The gathering was part of nationwide observances of Law Day. Established by President Eisenhower in 1958, Law Day transformed this year into a more urgent, and public, “Day of Action” amid attacks on judicial independence.

1 week ago | indyweek.com | Lena Geller

Senator Thom Tillis was invited to hear testimony from federal workers affected by recent government cuts Tuesday evening but didn’t bite, so instead, a life-sized cardboard cutout of the Republican senator was erected inside a windowless meeting room on the first floor of an M&F Bank in Durham. “Turn to him and address him with your question like he’s really here,” an organizer quietly instructed speakers as they prepared to deliver remarks.