Tell Me About It:  Dear Carolyn: My parents are wonderful people, and have been kind to allow my sister and me to move home due to the recession/higher education.

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A few questions for Natania Barron, senior editor of Wired magazine's 'Geek Mom' blog and co-author of a book with the same name.

Parenting:  Q: Our two sons are in the fifth and sixth grades at a private school that just held a father-daughter dance. Now the school has announced that it's putting on a mother-son dance so as not to leave out the boys. I really don't want to attend this. What are your thoughts?

Jane Currin, a Raleigh Pampered Chef consultant, is one of millions of entrepreneurs who have turned to direct sales as a way to start their own business and make extra money.

Backstory:  It won't take long for Zydeco Downtown to transition the Raleigh restaurant from Super Bowl Sunday to Fat Tuesday. After all, New Orleans is never far from owner Antwan Harris' mind. Harris won the Super Bowl twice in his NFL career, the first in the Big Easy with the New England Patriots in 2002.

Nearly every time Mary Todd Lincoln appears in Steven Spielberg's film "Lincoln," a woman is at her side. In real life, the woman was the First Lady's best friend, a dressmaker who spent her teenage years as a slave in Hillsborough -- and later bought her own freedom on her way to the White House.

Southeast Excursions:  An exhibit building and three historic structures give visitors to the High Point Museum & Historical Park a wealth of information about this Triad town.

Tell Me About It:  Dear Carolyn: My daughter would like to request cash versus the usual wedding gifts.

Food and wine festivals in the Southeast are hotter than a cast iron skillet full of corn bread. "We are witnessing a proliferation of festivals in the South and across the nation," says John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance in Oxford, Miss.

Here's a stunner. Even New Orleans thinks this might be too much partying.

The scientist’s research was a blessing for farmers in the rural South.