A classmate suggested I take over his valet job for the summer, and it wasn’t long before I was sitting in an interview, downplaying my lefty-sounding peace and conflictstudies classes and my allegiance to the Red Sox after learning my interviewer was a Yankees fan and National Guardsmen who would be deployed to Iraq soon.

It clears the clutter out of your brain, sweeps the ephemera of phone numbers, deadlines, story lines and angles aside as all mental focus pours into the body’s performance and interaction with the terrain. I think it also appeals to us because we need to practice endurance and patience in our craft, and running gives us another form to express that.

Jasarevic, who was 8 when she left Bosnia, is headed to med school at PCOM-Georgia in the fall, but first, she is returning to her homeland. Her parents still talk about better days, but people in Bosnia, she said, hardly acknowledge their recent history and the tens of thousands who were wiped out in the war.

I pride myself on being a good tour guide, an ambassador and booster for Greensboro — I try to convince every-one to move here. But as I walk past empty storefronts, or notice the absence of certain cultural offerings and well-paying jobs, I wonder if even the affordability can’t compete.

A dozen people clustered around my living room table — eying the matzo ball soup, kugel and charoset — listening to a Cliff Notes version of the Passover story. A few of us were raised Jewish and while we argued about the details, we agreed about the main storyline and presented it to our gentile friends.

As an observant Christian, I certainly love the grandeur and celebration of Easter, but my heart is closer to the somber reflection of Good Friday. The Episcopal church that I attend, St. Mary’s House in Greensboro, has maintained a tradition since the mid-1980s of celebrating Good Friday with individual meditations on the 14 stations of the cross.

When I was younger, every year, my family would visit my grandmother for Christmas in her small Ohio town, and my cousins who lived nearby would join us. Under her mantle, covered in Santa Claus figurines, and a real tree decked with decades-old ornaments sat a mountain of presents, with an equal number of boxes for us all.

Maybe the other shoe will drop in Charlotte in September, but actually, quite a bit has been happening with occupy in the North Carolina Piedmont. Occupy Greensboro decamped last year, but working groups on foreclosures, energy and other topics are active.

In the last week, two aspiring lawyers told me about their fears of being trapped in jobs that will prevent them from traveling or experiencing other things, or could lead them to change their values, being initially motivated to help people but ultimately focusing on money and job preservation.

The article claims that the Greensboro Police Dept. knew that a package containing 30 pounds of marijuana was mailed to the Beloved Community Center, and that somehow it was still delivered. Yet there is absolutely no evidence that anything remotely close to this scenario actually occurred, and even Chief Ken Miller doesn’t believe it did.

It couldn’t be more true. The fact that we were raised in the same house and attended the same primary schools did not stop us from being bombarded with social values enforcing rigidly separate expectations and dynamics.

Yes, Piedmont Triad Sustainable Communities Planning Project — it’s an unwieldy name, and it’s so difficult for me to commit it to memory that I typically have to do a Google search or two to recall it. Unwieldy or not, the project is your federal tax dollars at work.

Checking my mail and finding something from my grandmother Barb is like that moment you take a deep breath and jump into a pool. Sometimes water shoots up your nose or it’s much colder than you anticipated; you jump out shivering and disappointed.

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Keith G. Debbage, professor of urban geography at UNCG, but I greatly respect anyone who thinks deeply about the intersection of economy and public policy and marshals intellect to “foster positive growth in the local economy.

Every January, I make my annual pilgrimage to Park City, Utah, to work on the Sundance Film Festival. This year marked my 10th time working on the most prestigious film festival in North America. And this year’s crop of films was as impressive as any lineup I’ve seen since my first Sundance way back in 1999.

As an angry high school student, I argued frequently with my parents about politics, and I was transfixed on money. Sometimes my critiques were broad political arguments about the inherent inequalities of our capitalist economic system and other times they were stingingly personal.

With age my priorities had changed. I still occasionally joke about starting a band, and if anyone took me seriously I might find a way to make it work. While I would gladly play basketball more often, I’m hardly even ready to play a regulation-length game against my friends.

When David Wray resigned as chief of the Greensboro Police Department, YES! Weekly had been publishing for scarcely more than a year. We’ve just celebrated our seventh anniversary. In the meantime, another police chief, a city manager and two mayors have come and gone.

Beverly Perdue’s veto of SB 9, also known as the No Discriminatory Purpose in Death Penalty Act. Supporters of the bill call it a rewriting of the Racial Justice Act.

The dirty secret of US Rep. Howard Coble’s staying power — 26 years in office, and counting — is his expert management of press relations.