Japanese WWII flags found by the GSO History Museum tell the story of loss, family trauma and reconciliation - Greensboro news - NewsLocker (2024)

Featured photo: L-R: Season Nye, Glenn Perkins, Ayla Amon with the Greensboro History Museum, pose with a yosegaki hinomaru they found in their archives in 2023. The flag is currently being held by the OBON SOCIETY while their volunteers search for descendants of the flag owner in Japan. (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)This story was published in collaboration with the Assembly, a statewide news organization that publishes stories about place and power.Late afternoon light poured into a back room of t

‘You have to know the history’: Burlesk Con of the Carolinas aims to educate, celebrate the art of burlesque

Featured photo: Selia d’Katzmeow Carmichael has been a burlesque performer since the mid nineties. (courtesy photo)There’s a reason why Selia d’Katzmeow Carmichael spells burlesque with a “k” instead.According to historians, burlesque — the art form featuring comedy, music and dance — has its origins in the Victorian era. By the late 1800s and into the early 20th Century, the term became synonymous with strippers, and during the “golden age”

Winston-Salem’s boards and commissions are looking for new members. Here’s how to apply.

Featured photo: A view of downtown Winston-Salem. (Photo by Gale Melcher)Interested in serving on a board or commission in Winston-Salem? Mayor Allen Joines is selecting members for the following panels. Applications must be received by 5 p.m. on July 8. The application form is available here. Per the city, call the Mayor’s Office at (336) 727-2058 for questions.Affordable Housing CoalitionAccording to the city, members of this commission should have expertise in real estate, nonprofit dev

Guilford County’s Adopt-A-Mom helps expecting mothers navigate a complicated healthcare system

Featured photo: A program in Guilford County has been helping expecting mothers navigate the healthcare system for the last two decades.Marielle Argueza is Triad City Beat and Next City’s new Equitable Cities Reporting Fellow for Racial Justice Narratives fellow. Argueza will be reporting on behalf of both newsrooms on issues pertaining to diverse communities in Greensboro.Love was in the middle of moving back to her hometown of Greensboro from Raleigh when she found out she was pregnant w

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In Winston-Salem, buses play an important role for local and Triad-wide transportation

Featured photo: A city bus chugs away from Clark Campbell Transportation Center along Liberty Street in downtown Winston-Salem. (Photo by Gale Melcher)Every day, 45 bright-green Winston-Salem Transit Authority buses roll to and fro throughout the city, running along 31 fixed routes making an estimated 1,700 stops.A 90 degree breeze swam around people waiting for their buses to arrive on a weekday afternoon at Clark Campbell Transportation Center, the city’s downtown bus hub, where dozens o

EDITORIAL: Can we end John Faircloth’s legacy?

Along with Sen. Joyce Kraweic (Forsyth) and former Rep. John Hardister (Guilford), Rep. John Faircloth (High Point) joined the slew of state-level Republicans who announced their retirement from public life this year.We acknowledge Faircloth’s many years of service to the NC Legislature — he was first elected in 2010, unopposed, the same year Republicans took over the state legislature in more than 100 years and two years after Barack Obama won the state in his presidential run.Those

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Two years post-Roe, abortions are needed more than ever

Featured photo: Dozens of people gathered to express their rage after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade at the Greensboro rally for reproductive rights in Greensboro N.C., on June 24, 2022.I remember the first time I got the implant in my arm.I made an appointment at the Planned Parenthood off of Fordham Boulevard in Chapel Hill where I weighed my options. If I got the implant, which is inserted in my upper arm, it would last me about three years. If I got the IUD, which is

U.S. Supreme Court upholds law that prevents domestic abusers from owning guns

This piece was originally published by Ariana Figueroa, NC Newsline
June 21, 2024The U.S. Supreme Court Friday upheld a federal law that bars people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning a firearm.In an 8-1 decision on United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that “our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”“When an individual h

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Despite resident pushback, city council approves rezoning for more warehouses in east GSO

Featured photo: A zoning notice sign posted into the grass at 3530 and 3534 McConnell Road. (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)Out on the east edge of Greensboro on McConnell Road lie nearly 20 acres of verdant land that really put the “green” in Greensboro.But that’s all about to change.On Tuesday night, Greensboro’s city council voted 8-1 to annex the land into the city and 9-0 to rezone it from its current intended use of farming and commercial business to light industria

At the Cosmic Summit, a proliferation of conspiracy theories, distrust in institutions and a yearning for the ‘truth’

Featured photo: Callie Roang leads Sam in a meditation sequence as he lays on the Theraphi table at the 2024 Cosmic Summit. (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)Ancient lost civilizations, sacred geometry, UFOs, cold fusion, alien technology, thunderstorm generators.At first blush, none of these things appear to have anything in common. But at Greensboro’s Koury Convention Center in mid June, these ideas — most of them controversial — found a home at the 2024 Cosmic Summit.I watched on in

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Local art over AI art

Featured photo: Screenshot from Downtown GSO’s promo video.
You might have seen it driving into downtown. Or maybe it caught, or rather, assaulted your eyes as you drove down Battleground Avenue. Either way, it’s likely that if you live in Greensboro and have driven around in the last few weeks, you’ve seen the awful Downtown Greensboro billboards that have popped up around the city.And on the off chance you haven’t, I’m here to tell you: they’re truly terribl

In ‘Restless Anahita,’ a photographer captures rare faces of Iranian women, children

Featured photo by Maroupi SaniThe shot is called “Mother’s Little Helper,” but it could also be called “The Persian Mona Lisa.”The similarities between photographer Sia Yazdanfar’s image and the seminal painting by DaVinci are not subtle.In Yazdanfar’s photo, the little girl, 10 years old, stands in three-quarter profile to the right of the frame, caught glancing at the camera from the corner of her dark eyes. Behind her, desert mountains wear patches of

A photographer’s eye wanders back centuries

Photographer Sia Yazdanfar captures the remote cultures of IranFeature photo by Maroupi SaniThe shot is called “Mother’s Little Helper,” but it could also be called “The Persian Mona Lisa.”The similarities between photographer Sia Yazdanfar’s image and the seminal painting by DaVinci are not subtle.In Yazdanfar’s photo, the little girl, 10 years old, stands in three-quarter profile to the right of the frame, caught glancing at the camera from the corner

Winston-Salem city council approves civil service board for police and fire employees to request hearings about employment decisions

Winston-Salem’s civil service board got the official go-ahead from city councilmembers in a 6-2 vote on Monday night. A civil service board serves as an extra layer of protection for city employees who disagree with employment decisions. The board gives them the opportunity to request a hearing and plead their case before the five-member board.Actions taken by Winston-Salem’s board will only apply to police and fire department employees. While police and fire department chiefs and as

Proposal would make NC public records and meetings access a constitutional right

Featured photo: Jayron32 of English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsThis story was originally published by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
June 17, 2024A group of legislators are pushing to guarantee the right to access to public records and meetings in the state Constitution, but that proposed amendment likely isn’t headed anywhere during this year’s legislative session.Rep. Pricey Harrison
State Sen. Graig Meyer, D-Or

FRESH EYES: Jesus is in the midst of Pride

“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”
These are the often quoted words of Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson, one of the mothers of the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. As a Black transgender individual, I find her words to be deeply necessary because of how familiar she was with being relegated to the margins. She and others were tired of living on the edge, tired of being pushed into the shadows, tired of discriminatory laws that failed to prioritize her p

Winston-Salem’s Kaleideum isn’t just for kids — it becomes a social hub for adults on second Saturdays

Featured photo: The rooftop of Kaleideum. (Photo by Gale Melcher)At Kaleideum, the children’s museum in downtown Winston-Salem, peals of laughter echo through rooms filled with games and toys. The sound of footsteps tumble down the hallways, followed by squeals of elation and surprise.But it’s a Saturday night, and the kids are in bed.On the second Saturday of the month, the space opens up to adults for a night at the museum called “Kaleideum After Dark.”The view of downt

EDITORIAL: What are we supposed to do about Republican overreach?

PHOTO: White supremacists guard a confederate statue in Lexington, NC, December 2021. [File photo]It’s all coming together for Republican officials in North Carolina, who by their actions seem intent on dismantling key tenets of good government including ethical oversight, transparency and education.ProPublica, which has of late gained traction by reporting shocking ethical lapses in the US Supreme Court, turned its eye to the GOP-majority NC Supreme Court this week. In the investigation,

NC Supreme Court secretly squashed discipline of two GOP judges who violated judicial code

This report was first published by Doug Bock Clark, ProPublica, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom.
June 17, 2024Last fall, out of public view, the North Carolina Supreme Court squashed disciplinary action against two Republican judges who had admitted that they had violated the state’s judicial code of conduct, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the decisions.One of the judges had ordered, without legal justification, that a witness be jailed. The other had e

GALLERY: Thousands celebrate Juneteenth in Winston-Salem over the weekend

Last week, thousands of community members gathered in Winston-Salem across the city to celebrate Juneteenth ahead of the national holiday on June 19. On Saturday, June 15, people gathered in Innovation Quarter for the Juneteenth festival that included live music, food trucks and vendors.Photos by Maaroupi Sani

LGBTQ+ employees can’t be misgendered or denied bathrooms at work, new federal rules say

This story was produced by The 19th and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.LGBTQ+ workers who are misgendered by their employers or blocked from accessing restrooms consistent with their gender identity will now get additional workplace protections as a result of new guidance issued April 29 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.It’s the first time in 25 years that the EEOC has issued new rules on workplace discrimination — a change precipitated in part by the 2

The GSO2040 plan says East Greensboro is for industrial use, but residents say they don’t want more warehouses

Featured photo: A zoning notice sign is posted into the grass at 3530 and 3534 McConnell Road. (photo by Sayaka Matsuoka)A property’s “highest and best use.” That’s what was being debated during a Greensboro zoning commission hearing on May 20. The properties in question — 3530 and 3534 McConnell Road — could be annexed and rezoned from their current use of farming and commercial business to light industrial if approved by city council on June 18.Driving along

Featured photo: Demolition work tears into the former advertising and design office section of the News & Record on May 29, 2024, as seen from South Davie Street.Between the 1970s and 2020, the Greensboro News & Record operated out of their headquarters at 200 E. Market St. in downtown Greensboro. The complex churned out daily editions of the Greensboro Daily News and The Greensboro Record until consolidating to the single News & Record paper in 1984. Over the decades, the paper staf

Residents push back during contentious public meeting about Bingham Park and White Street Landfill

Featured photo: Resident Malinda Pagett voices concerns at Wednesday’s meeting about Bingham Park and White Street Landfill. (Photo by Marielle Argueza)“If you’re going to be disruptive, then you can leave.”That’s what the city of Greensboro’s Communications and Marketing Director Carla Banks told a crowd of more than 50 residents on Wednesday night during a contentious meeting to discuss the city’s plan to use White Street Landfill in East Greensboro as

Downtown Greensboro’s Place for Play Turns 25

Miriam P. Brenner Children’s Museum
220 N. Church St. GSO
336.574.2898
mbcmuseum.com/Twenty-five is an important number. It’s a quarter of a dollar. It’s the birthday when a human brain is fully developed. And it’s also the number of years the doors to the Miriam P. Brenner Children’s Museum (MBCM) have been open!Over the last two and a half decades, MBCM has carried out its mission to engage all children and families in hands-on learning experiences which contribut

‘The ultimate job’: Black fathers reflect on parenting, masculinity, raising sons

Featured photo: James Phillips and his family. (courtesy photo)In 1965, just five months before President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, white American scholar Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a report titled, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” which in subsequent years became known as the Moynihan Report. In a case for racial justice, Moynihan wrote that the rise in Black single-mother families was due to “ghetto culture” and that wi

Featured photo: Joseph Wilkerson has worked to publish a magazine for Greensboro’s Juneteenth festivities for the last four years. (courtesy photo)Joseph Wilkerson III is an artist, community activist and organizer who has lived and worked in Greensboro for decades. As part of the city’s official Juneteenth celebration, the fourth one on the books, Wilkerson helps to create and distribute magazines that serve as a guide to the events. In our conversation, Wilkerson talked about his h

Evictions plague renters across the country. In Greensboro, a grassroots group is pushing the city to fund a solution.

Featured photo: Keep Gate City Housed launch party on April 7. (Photo by Gale Melcher)Courtroom 215, located in Greensboro’s Guilford County Courthouse, can feel like a machine, spitting out judgments as quickly as fresh eviction cases are filed. For those unfamiliar with the civil court system, it can be daunting, especially without legal help navigating the process.Unlike criminal court, where defendants have a right to an attorney if they cannot afford one, there is no federally u

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: Talk to your dads

Featured photo: Me with my dad and my sister in Japan back in October 2023.
I talk to my mom a lot.We play tennis together no less than three days a week and my sister, my mom and I have a group chat where we send funny videos and news articles for discussion.But I don’t talk to my dad as much.Growing up, my dad was like a lot of other dads. He worked long hours while my mom stayed home and raised me and my sister. So naturally, we grew close to my mom and had an easier time talking with h

How activist-artists in Greensboro established Juneteenth as a city holiday a year before the US declared it a federal holiday

Featured photo: Vendors sell Juneteenth-themed shirts during the 2022 festival. (photo by Carolyn de Berry)Princess Johnson, a dancer and owner of Greensboro-based Royal Expressions Contemporary Ballet, did not grow up celebrating Juneteenth. Even as a Black woman who grew up in the South, the holiday was something only a few people in her circle celebrated.“I didn’t know what it was exactly. Growing up in the United States, everything’s about the Fourth of July,” she sai