August 14, 2008
Let's talk trees. Amble into downtown Lewisville, to the western edge of Shallowford Square, and you'll find three oaks no one wants to lose. Sure, they give great shade, particularly during the town's annual Beach Blast.But these trees are at least 70 ye...
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August 12, 2008
GREENSBORO - Julia Charles' book is all of 95 pages. So if you're lucky, you can read it in an afternoon. Yet, dig into it - even a chapter or two - and you'll find a powerful story of a young girl from Guilford County's foster care program who felt she w...
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August 9, 2008
GREENSBORO — Back in ’68, what Newsweek magazine calls the “year that changed everything,” the seniors at Dudley, Grimsley and Page lived in a protective bubble far from our country’s social and political fray. They lived for house parties, Whiz...
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August 7, 2008
GREENSBORO - Right now, there's not much to look at. Cross East Lee, pass the cleared lot where Greensboro wants to root a growing downtown, and you'll find a spider web of empty rooms in the basement, and a top floor occupied by a church. But hear Nathan...
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August 5, 2008
LIBERTY — In a cluttered cubbyhole, behind his fuzzy Carolina-blue Carolina rug, Warren Dixon writes. He started on a Royal typewriter nearly three decades ago. Now, he bangs away on a Gateway computer, late at night in the corner of his den, surrounded...
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August 2, 2008
GREENSBORO - Once again, it's the vision thing. You heard that Thursday night in a conference room above South Elm. Some of Greensboro's most plugged-in and pragmatic talked about their trip last week to Charlotte to see how big-city collaboration works.
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July 31, 2008
ASHEBORO — The crane is gone from Dixie Drive. For weeks, you saw it from at least a mile away in either direction along Asheboro’s main drag. You’d crest the slight hill beside Asheboro High’s Lee J. Stone Stadium, and there it was — 40 feet in...
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July 23, 2008
There's a quote that John Shelton Reed and his wife, Dale Volberg Reed, like to bring up when they talk about their new book, "Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing." They'll mention their friend John Egerton, a Kentucky native writer who...
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July 22, 2008
CHAPEL HILL - Beside the Reeds' refrigerator, where the tiny letter magnets spell out "Slick Southern Dude,'' are three long shelves of cookbooks, a few of which are more than a century old. Dale Volberg Reed has read every one. She reads them at night. N...
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July 19, 2008
In our summer of Saintpaul, on my last working day before a week long romp, I was just thinking … About a big vote. Asheboro, the Triad’s version of Mayberry, will decide in 10 days whether it can sell beer, wine and mixed drinks as well as operate A...
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July 17, 2008
GREENSBORO — We all need to hear our share of stories. Red Russell, along with Jeff and Laurie Clark, gifted me with a few. Back in February 2007, the Clarks — husband and wife, natives of Louisiana — told me how they turned their backyard storage s...
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July 12, 2008
GREENSBORO - That's Tee, better known as Terrace McKinnon. He's loping through Ray Warren Homes, wearing his old basketball shoes, as he plucks from his big black bookbag fliers for next Saturday's gang forum. He passes them out to everyone he sees. Or he...
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July 10, 2008
GREENSBORO - Madison Heintz got her a dog Wednesday. She stood by the door of the Guilford County Animal Shelter, beside the 5-foot artificial Christmas tree, and talked to everyone who came in. You had to decipher her lingo. She was an excited 2-year-old...
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July 8, 2008
GREENSBORO — To Eric Sturdivant, it’s more than just a scraggly patch of grass off Franklin Boulevard. Sure, in the bank of trees beside his tiny church, Sturdivant has discovered empty beer bottles and used condoms. Meanwhile, he’s heard stories ab...
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July 5, 2008
GREENSBORO - This one's about a big-toothed little girl, and she's flying to China today to cover the Olympics. She's Meghan Davis. And she's all grown up. In front of me I see a 22-year-old grad from UNC-Chapel Hill. But in my mind, I'll always see a 7-y...
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July 3, 2008
It’ll all happen Friday, July 4, our Independence Day. In Greensboro’s Sunset Hills neighborhood, Scott Harkey will slip into his white shirt, his “Harkey For President” Styrofoam hat and his favorite fashion statement from Converse: red Chuck Tay...
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July 1, 2008
GREENSBORO - Red keeps the small, laminated black-and-white photo in his billfold. When he finds a sports fan - and that could be anywhere - he'll pull out his photo and recreate a time when baseball seemed more innocent and larger than life. It was May 1...
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June 28, 2008
Bart Ortiz can still hear the rhythmic rumble of his grandmother's homemade rolling pin. He'll close his eyes, smell the sizzling sweet peppers and remember the click-click-click of his grandmother's fingernails on the counter as she rolled out the flour...
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June 26, 2008
GREENSBORO — This week I began biking to work. I dusted off my 12-speed, my college transportation from two decades ago, and took to the street toward downtown. Our city looks much different from the curb than from the wheel. You'll see makeshift memori...
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June 24, 2008
More than a mile above southern Virginia, plugging along at 150 mph, Matthew Oehmann laid his flight plan across his plaid shorts. He followed the flight on paper, marking tracks across a thick line that stretched from Chesterfield, Va., to Greensboro's A...
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June 17, 2008
Todd Baldwin Jr. slipped underneath the rope and waited at the top of the steps, near the orchestra pit, for the sharply dressed politician. He was anxious, like before a football game. And over and over, he kept thinking about what his dad drilled into...
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Todd Baldwin Jr. slipped underneath the rope and waited at the top of the steps, near the orchestra pit, for the sharply dressed politician. He was anxious, like before a football game. And over and over, he kept thinking about what his dad drilled into h...
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June 14, 2008
Walter Latham is reminded of two things every Father's Day — what he's gained and what he's lost. He has two good boys. Michael is 10, a rising fifth-grader at Jesse Wharton Elementary. Kevion is 19, a rising sophomore at Penn State University. Mich...
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June 12, 2008
GREENSBORO — Get ready, Ricky Proehl. You played some big games at Wake Forest. And you played some bigger games in your 17-year career in the NFL. Is this just too expensive right now, given the economy?
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GREENSBORO - Get ready, Ricky Proehl. You played some big games at Wake Forest. And you played some bigger games in your 17-year career in the NFL. But now, you've got the biggest game of your career. It's with Proehlific Park. It opened three weeks ago.
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