It has finally turned cold in Greensboro. A mother is walking her children bundled up in sweatshirts and hats down the broken sidewalk toward the school bus. The neighborhood’s work trucks left hours ago, before the sun came up, as adults left for their jobs.
It feels like any day…
I had a neighbor who ran over a child with his truck. It was purely an accident. The child died. The whole neighborhood was devastated.
My neighbor never drove again. His truck sat on flat tires out back rusting out. He ended up losing his job as a construction foreman…
Yesterday, I was in a small Southern town, the type of town with the court house at the square where the cars drive slow and old timers sit outside the soda shop and the waiter in the diner always says “God bless you, honey pie” when I tip him for…
I once had a boss who would send me Suze Orman articles. I was in my late 20s, a single mom with just one income, and he knew money was tight. …
I felt a little silly making everyone ride with me 20 minutes off the highway to an overgrown cul-de-sac with a crumbling curb. “Where are the houses?” my buddy asked. The once-cleared lots were slowly being taken back over by scrub trees. “They were never built,” I say. …
The other day, a friend sent me a photo of the billboard from the side of the road in my hometown. It was put up by a local realtor and read: “Tired of the Plandemic? Move to the country!” and implored viewers to contact him. Next to the text was…
It’s 6:30 AM and I am sitting on my porch steps with a cup of coffee. In 10 minutes I’ll go inside to start breakfast for my son. I can tell time by the movements of my neighbors. The woman wearing scrubs up the street cranks her Buick; the housekeeper…
A man in Salisbury, North Carolina shot into the crowd at a Black Lives Matter protest in the weeks after George Floyd’s murder. A man in Elkin, NC, drove his car into protestors; a judge in Fayetteville was arrested for doing the same. In Wilmington, a man repeatedly drove by…
Last night, a friend and I were drinking beers on my porch, trying to avoid the interior of my house which had been overrun with 13- and 14-year-olds.
With all the windows of the house thrown open to catch the few breezes of a summer storm, we could hear the…
Six years ago yesterday, when I arrived at the Heritage House Apartments after work, it looked like the building was being turned inside out. Garbage and people’s belongings lay all around the foundation where they had been dropped out the windows onto the ground below.
Pickup trucks were backed up…
