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.

Last week, I stumbled across a DVD of my grandfather’s funeral service. It’s been nearly four and a half years since my beloved mentor, protector and father figure passed away. I had almost forgotten the video chronicle of that day even existed.

The NC NAACP, one of the plaintiffs in a consolidated lawsuit against the state, argues that the new maps “are a scheme to increase the political power of the ultra-conservative leadership in the General Assembly at the expense of the power of the African-American vote.

The FBI raided the home of Jorge Cornell and other members of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation in Greensboro on Dec. 6 as part of an indictment of 13 people on RICO racketeering charges. It’s far from the first time they’ve been taken away in handcuffs, but it is the most serious case that’s been built against them yet.

The Cone Health Family Medicine Center on North Church Street in Greensboro might seem an unlikely place for a revolt to stir, but that’s exactly what was happening as Health Care for All NC gathered for its annual meeting on a recent Saturday afternoon.

As anyone who follows the news regularly knows, the world is inundated with violence, so much so that my mother avoids the news; it’s too depressing. But the violence runs deeper than the continuing upheavals in Syria, Yemen and Egypt, or at UC Davis. where students were pepper-sprayed by police.

I was young. Too young to realize how ridiculous my partially dreadlocked hair looked. Young enough that I didn’t have my driver’s license. But I still remember the dusty room and how surreal it felt, listening to her recount what had happened and wondering how many times she had told the story.