March 21, 2009
For the scientific problem of the century — climate change — this is the expedition of a lifetime: a multinational team drilling down 3.6 million years to the only undisturbed place on Earth old enough and cold enough to hold an answer. Lake E...
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March 1, 2009
His sins were many, under the law of the land, and his penance, severe. For organizing the Piedmont Leaf strike of 1946 at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a labor action that cast a long shadow on civil rights in the South, Philip Koritz was to be banished fro...
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I didn't know what the story was, but it was a story, sitting right here in the hallway of the News & Record. Slumped in one chair was a young guy, maybe 25, shellshocked. In the other chair, a woman, 30ish, wiping back a tear, talking on her cell. Sh...
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February 22, 2009
Correction: A Feb. 22 column by Lorraine Ahearn about the not guilty verdict in the trial of Greensboro Police Detective Scott Sanders contained two errors. First, the interviews of residents by Sanders referred to in the column took place in Peggy Barke...
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February 15, 2009
Remember Mamie Kosia, the pretty but subdued Liberian refugee whom photographer H. Scott Hoffmann showed a couple of Sundays back, trying to warm her feet in front of a space heater at the Apache Street apartment where she and her child were facing evict...
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February 11, 2009
Ignoring the TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE rule in the ice-cold examining room where I had been sitting for 45 minutes in a plunging cotton gown that ties up the back, I called my friend. “Where are you?” she said. “I can barely hear you. Is this the Ver...
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February 8, 2009
Our sheriff and police chief disagree, sharply, on a question so long in the news that the headlines begin to run together. The question? How much training do patrol officers need to protect and serve mentally ill people coming home to Guilford County as...
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February 1, 2009
In Congo, they never heard gunshots this close by, until the war. But here in Greensboro, where Marie-Jeanne Bombongo and her refugee neighbors were resettled in 2008 in low-rent flats off English Street, gunfire is a daily threat. So is joblessness, hung...
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January 30, 2009
Caroline Kennedy, who cryptically ended her bid to serve out Hillary Clinton’s Senate term last week, was born in New York the same day I was: Nov. 27, 1957 (very good, schmendrick, we’re 51). I used to think the similarities ended there. Her father......
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January 25, 2009
It was time for a storybook ending. That's because tales of folly and plunder - even in a business as civilized as gourmet kitchen stores - are a dime a dozen. And dropping. What's your pleasure, if that's the correct word? Tobacco USA, a seemingly rock......
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January 23, 2009
Do you ever wonder what would happen if suddenly, one day, you didn’t show up in your usual spot? How many people would miss you? And how many of them would miss you enough to ask where you went? And when you were coming back? In the case of Ann Jones......
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January 21, 2009
“This won’t be over till 4 o’clock,” Mickey protested in dismay, checking the cable guide as the Queen of Soul began “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” “All the snow will be melted.” Alas, the tug of too much history in one morning. The biggest...
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January 18, 2009
You did it, Greensboro. It was 10 degrees Friday night, and everyone who wanted in, came in. That included Willie Chandler Muhammad, 38. And though he may be a former welterweight boxer from Chicago, the cold is too much for him, as is the stress and no...
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January 16, 2009
Barack Obama is in danger. He is about to fall victim to the Hannah Montana Effect. It will catch him by surprise. Few people past age 11 recognize the phenomenon, including the undercover/overexposed TV character herself. Ah, but 10-year-old girls everyw...
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January 11, 2009
The last leg of his journey home to West Bank on Wednesday will be the easy part. God, it could be said, does have a sense of humor. When his wife and children wave goodbye at PTI Airport, Masoud Awartani will travel light. In his pocket will be a plane...
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January 9, 2009
Our Final Jeopardy question: Name the place in Greensboro where you can regularly meet (in person!) a group of people (who all go by their real names!) and have an hour to spend chatting about a book they just read. Hint: They all got the book free, and...
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January 7, 2009
At 12:45 p.m. on Jan. 4, 2009, I was beckoned to follow a bright, white light I’d never in my life beheld. At least, I don’t recall there being a light in the refrigerator, behind all that leftover turkey, stuffing, spaghetti, meatballs and sausage. T...
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December 21, 2008
When the rotor on the light-up Santa Claus helicopter stopped turning a few years back over Holland Electric Co., drivers on U.S. 29 took it as a sign from above — or, from below, a half-staff salute to Bill Holland. It was, in fact, a coincidence...
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December 14, 2008
Seeing isn’t believing. No, seeing is reserved for opening night, for curtain calls and roses, and the chance to say, “I told you so.” Believing, on the other hand, comes before all that. For instance, a dry run on a waning Tuesday afternoon, when i...
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December 7, 2008
On the gray Friday after Thanksgiving, 24 hours before standing in formation in the Fort Bragg rain with his 82nd Airborne company bound for Iraq, Pfc. Clay Hartsook dangled his cowhide boots from the counter of the firehouse kitchen and took a last look...
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November 30, 2008
Editor's note: "Winter People" is an annual series by columnist Lorraine Ahearn that appears Sundays between Thanksgiving and the end of the year. There is a move in chess that is game-changing, if not game-ending. A lone pawn, an expendable foot soldi...
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November 19, 2008
On a field trip a few weeks back, a UNCG student asked the startup businessman the class was visiting about the future. What was a "smart" course of study to pursue? The veteran businessman stroked his beard a moment. Had any of the students heard of Wayn...
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November 16, 2008
The stout pecan harvest table she bought when they got married in 1959 is easy to overlook in Mary Moore's 12th floor flat at Gateway Plaza. The table is a good six feet long, but with the drop leaves down, just two feet wide, compact enough to be tucked...
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November 14, 2008
(Editor’s note: Lorraine Ahearn is on leave pending a gut check. In her place appears a conversation with “Wizard of Oz” star Toto, recorded in a traveling edition of James Lipton’s “Inside the Actors Studio.”) JAMES LIPTON: Good evening, and...
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November 12, 2008
I've been falling down on the job. Not the "job" job. The other one. Making time for people, over things. This is clear when I call my brother for Veterans Day and he sounds surprised. It's clear when I pick up my son at dusk, which these days falls too e...
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