Then Jefferson Airplane sang the line “Ain’t it amazing all the people I meet,” it came within the context of a song that was both anti-establishment and unifying in its scope. The gist was that the more subversive the context, the more interesting the people are that it attracts.

There is a school of thought that believes great beauty comes only at the cost of great pain and suffering. The lives of Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton are a testament to that axiom. In the summer of 1984, an unknown intruder broke into Thompson-Cannino's Burlington apartment and raped her at knifepoint.

The first was filed by 39 black officers; the second comes from Officer Julius Fulmore, a bitter rival of Scott Sanders, the detective whose job for the better part of three years was to keep tabs on black cops accused of wrongdoing.

Sure, the Piedmont Triad is known for its barbecue. But there's a whole world of cuisine within our borders. Italian, Greek, Chinese, French, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Irish, Mexican, Caribbean, Southern and Middle Eastern restaurants abound.

Everyone loves lists. The Billboard charts, Forbes magazine and direct marketing firms exist because of that fact. Well, maybe not all lists are great, but here's one that won't end up filling your mailbox with ads for the Publisher's Clearing House or male enhancement: the 100 Greatest North Carolina Songs.

Luis pointed out the new washing machine and telephone in the kitchen of the two-bedroom house where he and two fellow immigrant farmworkers stay six months a year while working on a vegetable farm just outside Creedmoor. A single, bare lightbulb illuminated the wood-paneled kitchen as Luis spoke after preparing dinner on May 8.

This year's Carolina Blues Festival, the 23 rd annual fete put on by the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society on Saturday at Greensboro's Festival Park, has something for everybody. We've got contest winners, local heroes, piano heroics, guitar wizardry and a couple bona fide legends all gracing the stage.

The Marines offers an alternative with better pay and benefits, personal development and opportunities for advancement and education. But to join the Marines, he must graduate from high school. For Brian, the opportunity may be too distant and the challenge too hard. Sergeant Long asks where he wants to be five years from now.

It's that time of year again, when we mine the collective preferences of our readers and then print the results for all to see. We got more entries this year than ever before, thanks in large part to our new internet voting system at www.yesweekly.com

When the lights go down in the Stevens Center next Wednesday night, and the first frames of the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer begin to flicker on the big screen, thus will begin the eightday RiverRun International Film Festival in the city of Winston- Salem.

Going to plant a weeping willow, On the banks green edge it will grow, grow, grow Sing a lullaby beside the water, Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll These words had heft, meaning… a kind of common-man poetry that still influences my writing to this day. In summer 1986 I went to my first Dead show. They were paired with Bob Dylan at Giants Stadium. I drove out to Jersey with Silly, and we scored tickets in the parking lot, where several dozen kids from our high school were partying and making deals.

As Corey Weaver prepares for another gig with his bandmates in Bloodline Severed, the curious nature of the venue doesn't strike him as being the least bit ironic.

The place: Festival Park; downtown Greensboro The buzz: The folks at the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society survived several years of inclement weather and venue changes before finding their groove and a home in downtown Greensboro One(s) to...

For Mexicans, mainly from the indigenous south, traveling to the United States to work without authorization means one illegal border crossing. For Central Americans, it means at least two. And it means crossing hundreds of miles of Mexico, mainly by rail, imperiled by the possibility of dismemberment under the wheels of the cars; robbery, rape and violent assault by bandits; and extortion and violence by police and railroad employees.

Maria Mendieta entered the Information Systems Building at Wake Forest on Feb. 21 with her 15-monthold daughter, Eliana, on her hip and with her 2-and-ahalf- year-old son, Oswaldo, in tow.

What's in a name? Maybe nothing, maybe everything and the administration, staff and board of the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem are hoping it's a little bit of both.

They stood in line for Scott Sanders friends, relatives and the cops who once worked by his side in the Special Intelligence Division and other branches of the force. They hugged him tenderly, crying. They clasped him roughly and thumped his back. Some laid their heads on his shoulder.

The news isnt all bad for newspapers. Alt-weeklies in particular, like this very one you hold in your hands, will play a serious role in the future of journalism, according to Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism (of which, incidentally, News Editor Jordan Green is an alumni) in a blog posted on the New York Times.

On Stratford Road every morning from six 'clock until noon, Donald Daniels sits on top of two crates beside a stack of newspapers. He smiles to the drivers and waves to most cars that pass; and he's constantly rising up from the crates, paper in hand, and limping to car windows.

I set out to salvage the holiday, to reclaim its essential significance from the marketing parasites that manipulate our personal insecurity for their own commercial gain.