May 21, 2009
GREENSBORO — Sit down with a few Elon Law School grads, ask them about their three years in the trenches and they all sound like Atticus Finch. You know, the lawyer from “To Kill A Mockingbird.’’ They want to make a difference. And...
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May 17, 2009
GREENSBORO — Last Sunday, in this space, Yusra Alaqrah talked about having her house egged time and again, always after midnight, for more than three years. She felt no one was listening, no one cared, and she believed she was hit inces...
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May 15, 2009
GREENSBORO — Maybe it’s the grape soda. John Hart used to suck down the artificial purple juice he bought from the canteen below his Greensboro office because he wanted that sugar rush to find the tough-boy voice of Johnny Merrimon. He needed...
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May 12, 2009
My dad loved baseball. I must’ve been 8, when he took me to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, walked me to the dugout and introduced me to one of his old acquaintances, a guy whose name was burned into my baseball glove. Brooks Robinson . I got thick-t...
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May 10, 2009
You’d like to think we live in a tolerant city. But then you talk to Yusra Alaqrah. She’s 53, a mother of four, a grandmother of three. She works three jobs, owns her own home, grows fava beans in her back yard and lives in Adams Farm......
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May 9, 2009
Garrison Keillor will get a taste of Greensboro this weekend. Sure, he’s a few towns over for “A Prairie Home Companion,’’ his live radio gig. And sure, we can all hear it anywhere tonight on any public radio station, namely WFDD 8...
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May 7, 2009
You’ll see the three billboards all across Greensboro — near N.C. A&T, over by the coliseum or way out West Market.They carry the classic just-say-no message and tell teenagers — as well as you, me and everyone else — to avoid...
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May 5, 2009
GREENSBORO — Marquel Townsend, a third-grader at Brightwood Elementary, is learning how to read. He doesn’t struggle. At least not anymore. He rolls through words like “thought’’ and reads up to 87 words a minute, plowing thr...
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May 3, 2009
GREENSBORO — Diane Stephenson keeps her husband John beneath a butterfly in her back yard. At least his ashes. She goes out there often with her dogs Al and Abby. And when she does, she thinks of her husband, the record store owner, the Robert Earl...
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April 30, 2009
GREENSBORO — Barbara Presnell used to walk among the rows of sewing machines and hear the women say, “Is this your little girl, Bill?” That happened always on Saturdays. She’d be there, in Stedman Manufacturing in Asheboro, trailin...
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April 28, 2009
GREENSBORO — Will Guest has heard it all. He’s 28, an amiable Midwesterner with gel-spiked hair and a small gold loop through his left ear. He runs The Insight Program, which helps local teenagers and young adults overcome drug and alcohol add...
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April 26, 2009
GREENSBORO — They’ll start searching for a new leader at N.C. A&T on Monday. They’ll converge behind closed doors and start poring through the applications of people who want to lead a university that’s been a way of life for s...
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April 25, 2009
GREENSBORO — Timm Perry will wear his dad’s top hat today. It’s to honor his dad, the man known for a quarter century in the Triad as The Old Rebel, a grandfatherly character who became the local version of Santa Claus. But it’s al...
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April 23, 2009
I like Arty. So do the kids in my neighborhood. Arty — or really Artemis Dinglemeyer Jr. — is a dinosaur with a lisp that likes to … er … play with his food. He’s the star of “Gotch Ya’,’’ an animate...
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Local mothers of incarcerated children announced this week they have formed an organization to push for prison reform in Raleigh and beyond. They call themselves Mothers For Justice. They’ll meet Saturday morning at a Greensboro Mason Lodge to hear...
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April 21, 2009
PattiHanna. Say it quick. They did for years on the third floor of the Guilford County Courthouse. The folks with Guilford County’s Guardian ad Litem program would superglue the first and last name together and yell it from one end of the hall to th...
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April 19, 2009
Our duty is not to see through one another but to see one another through. — A quote from Leonard Sweet’s book “A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café,’’ taped to a book shelf in an office of Legal Aid of North Carolina in G...
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April 12, 2009
Edwin Gil knows he’s lucky. There was a time in his life when he hid from his father’s drunken rages and pained looks at his skin — the color of milk-flavored tea — every time his dad told him flatly, “You’re not my son...
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April 9, 2009
It’s all about what we see. At least this week. Let me explain. At Walker and Elam, the place we call The Corner, walk into Bestway, and you’ll see folks staring, pacing, taking pictures and even whispering into their cell phones as if they&rs...
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April 7, 2009
MADISON — Up U.S. 220, where 11 crosses take root within a two-mile stretch, there’s a tiny country church where Jesus speaks. Kinda. It’s really three huge paintings behind the pulpit and a 26-minute presentation in which the baritone v...
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April 5, 2009
Elaine Hoover’s fourth-graders know him as Greg. They saw him a few days ago at their school, looking like a Rotary Club member in his blue blazer as he lumbered from lunchroom to classroom to an outdoor recreation spot by a lake. But they knew he w...
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April 2, 2009
BURLINGTON — Ask them about their big quilt, and they just laugh. They spent hundreds of hours — sometimes on their knees, curved pins in hand — sewing, sticking, pulling and putting together these 30 panels that portray the mill houses...
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March 31, 2009
STONEVILLE — William Adkins didn’t make it to the bus stop Monday morning. He couldn’t. Another migraine kept him in bed. Still, he knew he’d get there sometime this week, to the entrance of his apartment complex to stand with the...
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March 29, 2009
There’s an empty desk in Lyn Carlisle’s journalism class at McMichael High. It’s by the window. The one with a big plant in the seat because Carlisle doesn’t want anyone to sit there. It’s where Nick Adkins sat, the shy stude...
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March 26, 2009
GREENSBORO — You’d figure Alex Sigmon would be on the fast track to something. A few years ago, after college, he came back to his hometown and bought two houses, started a career and met a hometown girl he plans to marry. But this summer, he......
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