I was nursing my second cup of coffee and making breakfast for my kids last Tuesday morning when my phone buzzed.

In the January 1953 edition of the magazine If: Worlds of Science Fiction, a fan of the genre from Texas, Marilyn Venable, made her debut as an author. “Time Enough at Last,” Venable’s story of a bookish man who survives a nuclear holocaust, made such an impression that Twilight Zone creator…

I’ve never been to New York or Boston or any other major northern city, but I’ve always heard that public works crews in those places do a really good job of getting the snow off streets and making it possible for people to resume normal schedules pretty quickly.

After a slow blue wave that swept across the country, presenting a possible pre-view of 2020 turnout, the people spoke by voting and turned most seats in the U.S. Congress, blue.

Those who know me realize how big a part of my life the game of football is. I watch it every chance I get. I played it as long as I was good enough to do so.

So far this year, North Carolina’s state budget is running a surplus. There’s nothing new about that – robust economic growth and fiscal restraint have produced a series of healthy surpluses since 2014. But both the Cooper administration and the General Assembly need to temper their expectat…

It’s the season of thankfulness once again and, while we are all thinking about turkey, stuffing, football and a day off, few of us will stop longer than perhaps at a meal blessing to consider what we’re really thankful for.

Has politics become polarized? Even if you and I agree on little else, I’ll bet we agree that the answer is clearly yes. But as the wild and wacky elections of 2018 near their close, it’s worth considering what political polarization is – and what it is not.

As a child, I knew nothing of the religious significance of Halloween.

Person Memorial Hospital’s mission is Making Communities Healthier. We are proud to partner with and support Roxboro (and broader Person County) to achieve this mission. Our physicians, employees, volunteers, and board members work hard every day to provide the highest quality care possible …

History has a way of repeating itself.

Hurricane Florence brought a scare to Person County which turned out to be a major blessing. When the original forecast was released, the storm track showed Person County taking a direct hit. As citizens of Person County, you should rest comfortably knowing your county and city government le…

“You’d better be careful,” my wonderful seventh-grade teacher, Miss Winifred Potts, preached to my class more than 65 years ago.

The President is caught on a secret tape recording discussing a payment to a porn star to buy her silence about his extramarital affair prior to the 2016 election. The President did this to betray and mislead the American people. He did not want citizens to know that he was essentially unfit…

As elementary and secondary schools open their doors across North Carolina for the 2018-19 academic year, the cumulative effects of some 20 years of school-choice initiatives are impossible to miss.

“Can I speak to Mr. Locke?” During the quarter century that I served as either president or vice president of the John Locke Foundation, we got such calls on regular basis.

A few days ago on July 4, we celebrated the 242nd year of independence of our nation; a nation born on the idea of unity. Nearly two and half centuries later, we continue to build on the foundation of that idea.

Only the youngest among us probably don’t realize the significance of this day.

A heartbreaking and shameful episode continues to unfold before our very eyes as young children were ripped away from parents and guardians who presented themselves at our southern border crossings to seek asylum and avoid persecution from un-told horrors in their Latin American homelands.

The pool down the street from my house opened last weekend. I don’t know how many people were there over the weekend, but judging by the hot weather and the number of cars that passed by my house, I’d say it was a popular place.

What’s the matter with kids today? What makes them such noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy loafers? You can talk and talk until your face is blue, but they still just do what they want to do.

There’s a lot of talk in Person County about the need for more jobs, especially jobs that pay more money.

Do governors and state legislators really have much to do with the performance of state economies? If governors and state legislators are to be believed, their policies are responsible for all good economic news — and rarely responsible for the bad news.

Will Trump remember Washington on Presidents’ Day?

“America is still killing Emmett Till,” writes Duke professor Timothy Tyson in his new book, The Blood of Emmett Till.

Other than Dale Folwell, North Carolina’s new state treasurer, no state politician made a big campaign issue last fall of the condition of the health plan for teachers and state employees. Did you hear candidates for governor or legislature talk about the state’s past promise to provide reti…

You woke up Saturday to The Winter Storm That Wasn’t. Your roads were fine all weekend, and Monday evening you learned that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) will be closed for a second day.

We are the Person County Environmental Issues Advisory

As it did in 1999, the nearly unimaginable is unfolding again in Pitt County and eastern North Carolina.

These are the streets we walk during weekdays, the intersections we pass on the way to our uptown jobs.

After decades of neglect by previous administrations, North Carolina is finally on track to permanently solve the long-ignored coal ash problem.

Americans might have been distracted by the misbehavior of some Olympic swimmers, but the truth is that despite fears about the Zika virus, the impeachment of Brazil’s president and nervous concerns about security, the summer Olympics were a success.

The end of the party conventions marks the point in a presidential campaign when candidates shift from trying to rally their natural supporters to trying to impress an entire nation of voters.

North Carolina’s 2013 election law was advertised as preventing voter fraud. Instead, it has been exposed as fraudulent lawmaking – voter suppression in the guise of voting protections.

North Carolina has become a national leader over the last three years in addressing the longignored threat of coal ash and a law signed recently by the governor goes even further to protect the environment and public health from a problem that has existed for decades.

Red and blue lights flash in your mirrors. You pull to the side of the road and madly begin fishing through the glove box for your registration and insurance. Then, you tear off your seatbelt so you can jam a hand down your pants to locate your wallet.

Gov. Pat McCrory has signed off on a bill regulating the use of body cameras in police departments, claiming that this ham-handed legislation is in the best interests of the public.

Editor’s note: The op-ed originally appeared in the News & Observer of Raleigh.

We are proud. Our North Carolina Tar Heels have had an amazing tournament run, giving this community life.

People’s rights often appear to be rather black and white.

A Southern Republican governor sits at his desk, mulling a bill that paves the way for discrimination against gay residents. The bill was sent to him by a Republican-led General Assembly fearful of a bogeyman that doesn’t exist.

Duke Energy stores millions of tons of coal ash — containing toxins like arsenic — in unlined leaking pits next to Person County’s most important waters — Hyco and Mayo lakes.

Nearly a third of the members of the General Assembly will get a free pass to another term next year, as they face no opposition. That is not good for democracy in North Carolina, no matter which side one may be on.

Used to be, being “middle class” meant a family had a measure of economic security, though not wealth, and hopes that the children would themselves one day expand the middle class with families of their own. It meant having a job. It meant some, though not all, goals had been attained.

The record is going to show that Duke University’s football team lost to the University of Miami on Saturday after a final eight-lateral, 91-yard play.

Common Core standards have been in effect for roughly five years, since the nation’s top school officials and the National Governors Association got together to establish standard skill levels for high school students in basic courses.

Hillary Clinton must hope that what happened Tuesday in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. In the first debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls, Clinton was the clear winner, offering clear and concise answers to a variety of questions, even those that harped on Benghazi and her email server…

Catastrophic rainstorms like this one happen only every thousand years, climate and weather experts explained as unprecedented flooding forced people out of their homes, closed roads and submergedstalledvehicles. One can only hope that assessment holds true.

RALEIGH — If you ever thought that complaining about the tax system was a modern phenomenon, I can disabuse you of the notion in two sentences.