By this Author

Jeri Rowe: After war, a veteran kept on fighting

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:00:00 -0500

GREENSBORO — We’ll celebrate Veterans Day on Wednesday with a collective salute to all our soldiers past and present.

Here’s one to remember: James Roscoe Davis.

He was 17 when he was drafted into the Army and given a parachute and a gun to fight the enemy in Southeast Asia.

Remembering others' sacrifice

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:00:00 -0500

GREENSBORO — Some 65 years ago, he wasn’t known as Dick Behrends. He was simply called Bugs, the adventurous kid from Chicago.

At age 17, right after high school, he hitchhiked from his hometown to California because he and his buddy wanted to help build an airstrip on Wake Island, an island in the Pacific.

But they ran out of money.

Films connect kids to politics, nature, culture, life

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:00:00 -0500

WINSTON-SALEM -- We live in a test-it-to-death culture when it comes to education.

Sit down with any public school teacher, and they’ll rattle off the ordeal of teaching to the end-of-grade tests mandated by the state. Their students, they say, turn into bundles of stress.

The power of brew

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Y’all, we’ve changed.

Walk into almost any grocery store, and you’ll catch folks with plastic cups of Dead Guy, Dogfish or something you can’t even pronounce.

It’s maybe two fingers’ worth. Two ounces. But show them your ID, and you can pick up a plastic cup of something that’s brown or red, pitch-black or orange. Then, taste.

Rowe: Parallel lives, but a bullet ended one at 18

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Two voices, two parallel lives.

Gucci Mane is 6 feet above ground. He’s 29, a hard-core rapper capitalizing on his hard-knuckle upbringing in east Atlanta.

He raps about dealing crack, packing guns and running with the street gang known as the Bloods.

Astronomer shares the thrill of looking up

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

JAMESTOWN — Every Friday night, when our star-studded sky looks as clear as blown glass, they come across Lake Katherine at GTCC toward the Cline Observatory.

Sometimes, it’s a handful. Sometimes, it’s as many as 100. They come to see the moon, Saturn or that bright thing just over the horizon. And they come with questions, so many questions.

Battling ALS with awesome army

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Count the swallows on Tim LaFollette’s left forearm.

There are 23, all different sizes, flying from his wrist to his elbow. It’s from a sticker on a Quaker song book his mother used, a design he had tattooed on his arm to remember the woman he barely knew.

John Hart wins dagger award for best thriller

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

John Hart really wanted the dagger.

For years, the Crime Writers Association has awarded top writers one of those long, scary, scramble-your-brains knives that British Secret Service agents used during World War II.

Now, Hart has one. But his knife is encased in hard plastic.

Still, he says, the award is pretty cool.

The costume lady's last call

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

You know it’s her.

It’s that voice, as distinctive as a signature, one that’s stopped people all over Greensboro and coaxed them to ask the same question.

“Aren’t you the costume lady?’’

Taking care of Buddy

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO - Buddy Gist doesn’t wear his suit anymore.

He rests in a single bed at the Golden Living Center, in a hospital gown, surrounded by posters that remind him of the people he knew when he was the King of New York.

Comedian Bill Cosby. Actress Diahann Carroll. Jazz man John Coltrane. And, of course, Miles Davis.

Schools are feeling the fears of illness, vaccine

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Go to the front lines of swine flu.

Talk to a classroom teacher or someone who runs a preschool. Spend some time in a pediatric emergency room with a sick 6-year-old clutching a stuffed dog named Fluffy.

You hear about this fear of the unknown.

Rickie Lee Jones says the spirits are leading the way

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

Rickie Lee Jones says she needs to sing like she needs to breathe.

She learned her phrasing from her father, that slower-than-Sunday-morning delivery she made famous 30 years ago. Now, at age 54, she starts a 14-city tour that will take her overseas. And, she'll start Saturday night at the Carolina Theatre, her only date in the South, one of eight nationwide.

Jeri Rowe: Nurses go where the need is

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — In three housing complexes run by the city, you’ll see residents as old as your grandmother with all kinds of ailments.

Little by Little: Kids learn of better life

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Austin Modlin and his classmates came from Kinston, all 25 of them, driven for three hours in three vans to see a show at the Carolina Theatre and spend the night here at the O. Henry Hotel.

It was free,

arranged by Jim Perry. He’s a Kinston native and a fourth-generation attorney. The kids know him by one name.

Mr. Jimbo.

Trestle wall may become art canvas

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

It’s a big concrete canvas, this beveled wall underneath the railroad trestle at Davie and McGee.

Nine feet high. Seventy-five feet across. It’s a constellation of drawings and words, scrawled in white chalk. From across the street, even in the daylight, it looks like a bunch of squiggles. But move closer. You’ll see.

Rowe: At a busy corner, the world is waiting

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Head north on South Elm, and from a half-block away, at the dip of East Bragg, you can make it out — the green of the United States and the Popsicle orange of Central America.

Benefit concerts aim to save the Monkeywhale

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — I was back in Harvey’s kitchen the other day. This time, I asked the questions.

I had been there before. The last time, Harvey Robinson stood behind his camera, parked me by his sink and asked about all things Greensboro for “Harvey’s Kitchen,” his online video show on www.monkeywhale.com.

Looking through a teen’s viewfinder

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO - The photos are telling. Look at them and you’ll see things you’ll recognize around our city.

There’s the familiar, like the frozen figures of Bicentennial Gardens. But there’s also the vice and violence of any city, any town.

Rowe: Gardening project gives kids healthy beginning

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — In this half-acre garden, surrounded by our city of concrete, you’ll find just about everything.

Tomatoes and eggplant. Sweet potatoes and squash. Cantaloupes and okra. And some leafy thing called stevia that you can slip between your cheek and gum and taste nature’s sweetness.

Lucinda Williams’ new happiness fills Carolina Theatre

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — Lucinda Williams has told folks she loves playing the Carolina Theatre.

It showed Friday night.

She played for more than two hours and dipped deep into her songbook that spans 30 years of writing about love, sex, death and redemption in the small-town South, all lyrics ripped straight from her own personal journal.

Rowe: Grande dame's beauty holds up well on screen

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

The curves. The elegance. The grace. She’s a gem in front of the camera.

You can see for yourself this weekend at the Carolina Theatre.

She’ll be on the big screen, along with a gaggle of young actors and the man hired by Walt Disney to make generations laugh — and wish they owned a pearl-white VW Beetle with a brain.

Battle over benches goes to City Council

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — The benches behind Bilbro Street were meant to spark conversation, not confrontation.

But now they’re doing just that.

Later today, Warnersville residents are expected to ask the City Council to remove those five benches bolted in a semicircle behind Bilbro. Intended to be an enduring symbol of the neighborhood’s heritage, the benches apparently attract drunks, drug addicts and prostitutes.

Despite disease, Stevo dreams big — and he usually wins

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

GREENSBORO — He’s Stevo, the kid with the big shoe.

He can bowl, golf, swim, play pingpong, throw a change-up, deliver a sweet serve and hit a jumper from beyond the 3-point line drawn in fuchsia-colored chalk on his driveway.

He loves nothing better than beating his little brother, Jacob, or acing someone at Greensboro Country Club, or getting on the mound in the last inning, with the game riding on what he can deliver with his right arm.

9/11 shrine in High Point bar hails the heroes

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

This week, we’ll remember through a T-shirt, a birthmark and a pair of shoes.

Walk into The Claddagh, High Point’s only Irish pub, and you’ll see it just beyond the wooden beam: the makeshift shrine of helmets, badges, photos and T-shirts.

Particularly one T-shirt. It bears a date we’ll always remember: 9-11-01.

We’ll remember it Friday, the eighth anniversary of the day our world changed.

Making a difference for all Americans

"Jeri Rowe ()" — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 03:00:00 -0400

There’s some kind of commotion along West Lee.

Harry Im, in his sunglasses, has turned a corner beside Highland Avenue into his own personal gym. At lunch, he shadowboxes, stretching, kicking and punching the air.

Meanwhile, Heather Watson looks tiny. You barely see her beside her huge computerized cutter.

Then there’s Chris Alexander . He can assemble 1,800 pens in a day and carry on a rapid-fire conversation that will bounce from jump-rope to meatloaf to Michael Jackson in one morning.

That is, if he isn’t singing.