Everybody Wants to Be Picked First + Rise Apartments Suspect Charged + Farm Tour This Weekend

Remember dodgeball in elementary school? Two captains. Two lines. And that slow, stomach-dropping countdown as the teams get chosen and you’re still standing there.

Dea Irby remembers. And she’ll tell you — gently, with the kind of laugh that makes you feel like you’re already in on the joke — that we never really grow out of it. Not at work. Not at church. Not in our neighborhoods. We still want someone to look across the room and say you — I want you on my team.

That’s the heart behind CLAIM — the framework Dea built from a lifetime of showing up for people. And the question she asks cuts right to the bone: Is your organization a hotel or a home? Hotels do hospitality beautifully. But nobody belongs at a hotel. You check out.

Everything Dea does traces back to a basketball camp in small-town Mississippi, where a teenage Dea heard a teammate talk about God like he was someone she actually knew. Not rules. Not religion. A relationship. That encounter reshaped everything — and eventually led her to a man who showed up in a purple convertible MG with yellow bucket seats.

She met her husband at summer camp. He was teaching tennis; she was training lifeguards. She told him she was majoring in Christian education. “I thought he was going to stop the car and put me out.” He didn’t. He bought her ice cream and spent two hours explaining why Buddhism was more dedicated. But God, as Dea tells it, would not leave this man alone — a traveling evangelist at a hamburger stand, a girl who tried to hand him a Bible, a roommate who turned out to be the son of missionaries. By the time he knelt beside his cot at Army Reserve camp, Dea says he was “legal to date.”

Almost 52 years of marriage. Eight children. Twenty grandchildren on five continents. Ask her the secret, and she’ll give you the four C’s: Commitment, Communication, Compassion, and Comedy. Her aunt put it differently: “Murder, maybe. But never divorce.”

She also has advice for anyone tempted to fix the parts of their partner that drive them crazy: don’t. “It’s like taking the orange out of a painting,” she says. “It totally changes the way the whole picture looks.”

Dea ran the Baron York Tea Room in North Georgia for seven years — hostess, cook, server, and cashier all at once. She’s written books on workplace culture, devotionals for young mothers, and contributed to three Chicken Soup for the Soul collections. She has a TEDx talk called “The Magic of the Meal.” And she drives for Lyft — not for the money, but because she’s endlessly curious about people. She calls herself “a student of peopleness.”

Today, she’s building a consulting practice to help churches and organizations create cultures of genuine belonging — and she’s over fifty episodes deep into her podcast, Hear Where You Belong — that’s H-E-A-R, like listen — where she interviews people from all walks of life about how they found their place.

When her kids come up in conversation, she gets a little misty — especially about her youngest, Malia, who’s living in North Macedonia, loving on people she first met when she visited the Balkans at fourteen. And when people ask how all eight ended up scattered across the globe, she’ll deadpan: “Either we created these wonderfully mature, independent adults who want to change the world — or we were really bad parents, and they want to get as far away from us as possible.”

I think it’s the former.

Connect with Dea: Hear Where You Belong Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube | TEDx Talk: “The Magic of the Meal” on YouTube | Books on Amazon | [email protected]

This Saturday and Sunday, April 25–26, thirty farms across Orange, Durham, Chatham, Alamance, and Person counties are opening their gates for the 29th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour — hosted by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and Weaver Street Market. It’s a self-guided, family-friendly tour that lets you visit pasture-raised livestock farms, spray-free orchards, handmade cheese dairies, flower fields, and working beehives. Most farms are open 2–6 pm, with a handful of kickoff farms opening at noon. Tickets are $35 per carload — that’s right, per car, not per person — with discounts for CFSA and Weaver Street members: rain or shine. Muck boots encouraged.

Insider tip: Look for the Eco Village on the tour map — you’ll find veggies, baked goods, and a chance to connect directly with the farmers who grow your food.

carolinafarmstewards.org/piedmont-farm-tour

Through Apr 26 Steel Magnolias | PlayMakers Repertory Company, 120 Country Club Rd., Chapel Hill | Six sassy Southern women. Sharon Lawrence. Thursday Farrar. If you haven’t gone yet, this is your last weekend — and every review says you’ll ugly-cry in the best possible way. | playmakersrep.org

Sat, Apr 25 Steel Magnolias Interactive Workshop | Gillings Center for Dramatic Art, Room 101, UNC | 4:45–5:30 PM | Join the assistant director between matinee and evening shows to explore themes from the play. | playmakersrep.org

Fri, Apr 24 – Sun, May 3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Stone Soup Theatre Company, Honeysuckle at Union Grove, 3501 Dairyland Rd., Hillsborough | Fri & Sat 7:30pm, Sun 2:30pm | $30, $25 students | If Steel Magnolias made you cry, this one will make you laugh — fairies, love potions, and a group of amateur actors who have no business being on stage. Pay What You Can on Sun, Apr 26. | stonesouptheatreco.com

Thu, Apr 23 Easy Honey | Cat’s Cradle, 300 E Main St., Carrboro | Doors 9pm, Show 10pm | catscradle.com

Fri, Apr 24 Krooked Kings | Cat’s Cradle | Doors 7pm, Show 8pm | catscradle.com

Fri, Apr 24 Ritt Momney | Local 506 (Cat’s Cradle Presents) | Doors 7pm, Show 8pm | catscradle.com

Sat, Apr 25 Superchunk | Cat’s Cradle | Doors 7pm, Show 8pm | Carrboro’s own. Hometown heroes on their home stage. That’s the whole pitch. | catscradle.com

Tue, Apr 28 Luna Luna | Cat’s Cradle | catscradle.com

Wed, Apr 29 Fishbone | Cat’s Cradle | Doors 7pm | Ska-punk legends still bringing the chaos after four decades. | catscradle.com

Sat, May 2 Wednesday | Cat’s Cradle | Doors 7pm, Show 8pm | North Carolina’s own narrative-rock poets, back on the Bleeds tour. This one’s sold out — check for resale. | catscradle.com

Tue, May 5 Cass McCombs | Cat’s Cradle | catscradle.com

Sat, Apr 25 Northside Festival | West Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill | Noon–3:30 PM | Free | The Marian Cheek Jackson Center hosts this annual celebration of Chapel Hill’s historic Northside neighborhood — live music, field games, community potluck, kids’ activities, and a whole lot of love for a community that’s been here since long before any of us. | jacksoncenter.info

Sat–Sun, Apr 25–26 Piedmont Farm Tour | 30+ farms across Orange, Durham, Chatham, Person & Alamance counties | Most farms 2–6pm, kickoff farms noon | $35/carload | See where your food actually comes from. | carolinafarmstewards.org/piedmont-farm-tour

Sat–Sun, Apr 25–26 Chapel Hill Garden Tour: Sculpted & Soaring Skyward | Five private gardens + three public gardens, self-guided, 10am–4pm | Blooms, butterflies, rock formations, and a certified wildlife sanctuary. Tickets $30 through April 24, $40 after. | chapelhillgardentour.org

Fri, Apr 25 Fairy House Contest at Magical Hill | Chapel Hill Community Center | 11am–2pm | Fairies, a magic show, and a reptile encounter. Bring the kids. Or don’t — we won’t tell. | chapelhillnc.gov

Sun, Apr 27 Drug Take-Back Day | Wegmans, Chapel Hill | 10am–2pm | Clean out that medicine cabinet — safely and for free. | orangecountync.gov

Tue, Apr 28 38th Annual Carolina Blood Drive | Smith Center, UNC | 7am–6pm | chapelboro.com

Wed, Apr 29 Public Hearing: Town Charter Changes | Council Chamber, Town Hall, 405 MLK Jr. Blvd. | 6 PM | Smaller council? Longer mayoral term? Come tell them what you think. | chapelhillnc.gov

Rosemary Street is still torn up for OWASA’s waterline replacement. Detour runs from Rosemary to Church to McDade to Roberson. Drive slow through the neighborhood. | owasa.org/rosemary

Pope Road near Beaumont Rd. remains closed through June 5 for NCDOT culvert work. The south end of Clark Lake Rd. closes starting this week for at least four weeks.

Two weeks after a man was found with multiple gunshot wounds in a breezeway at the Rise Apartments on Westminster Drive, Chapel Hill police have made an arrest. Jose Luis Enamorado Flores, 22, of Chatham County, faces 21 charges, including two counts of attempted murder and eight counts of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling. He’s being held without bond. The shooting happened around midnight on April 4 and involved coordination with the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office and the SBI.

A house fire on Manns Chapel Road on April 11 claimed the lives of 52-year-old Ethan Douglas Long and 56-year-old Kristen Lea Hancock of Burlington. The fire was reported around 3:30 a.m. by a passing motorist, and North Chatham firefighters arrived within minutes to heavy fire conditions. A joint investigation by the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office and the state fire marshal determined the fire originated from a fire pit on the home’s deck that had been used the evening before. With North Carolina under a statewide burn ban since March 28 due to severe drought, this is a painful reminder to be careful with any open flame — even close to home.

Chapel Hill lawyer Jonah Garson has been appointed by Governor Josh Stein to the state Senate seat vacated by Graig Meyer, who resigned last month to lead the North Carolina Justice Center. Garson also serves as the NC Democratic Party’s first vice chair and former chair of the Orange County Democratic Party. He’ll represent Orange, Person, and Caswell counties.

Mayor Jess Anderson is asking Chapel Hill residents to weigh in on two proposed changes to the Town Charter at a public hearing on April 29 at 6 PM at Town Hall. The first would reduce the Town Council from eight members to six. The second would extend the Mayor’s term from two years to four, aligning with budgeting cycles and capital planning. No decision will be made that night. Want to speak? Sign up with the Town Clerk or email [email protected].

UNC-Chapel Hill faculty have formally raised concerns about the university’s School of Civic Life and Leadership, passing two resolutions at their final faculty council meeting of the year. One calls for the release of a $1.2 million investigative report into the school. SCiLL has been controversial since its creation was fast-tracked by the Board of Trustees in 2023, and the state legislature later mandated its establishment with millions in taxpayer funding.

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