Was asked to write an obituary for my uncle Johnny. He was my dad’s brother and best bud, but he was everybody’s best bud. In the photo, he’s in the blue, along with my dad in the middle and great-uncle George in the yellow. Most prominent three men of my childhood, all gone now. Here’s what…

In the debate, the president told a white supremacist group to stand by, then told supporters to watch the polls. It reminded me of some things I’d found while researching our forthcoming book on election fraud in eastern North Carolina, in particular the Wilmington coup of 1898. Been getting quite a response from this essay…

The night I saw his father die, Justin Carr Jr. was still in the womb. It was September 21, 2016, and I was covering a protest in uptown when a shot rang out. The bullet could’ve hit anyone. But for some reason it chose Justin. And now his son is almost 4.  Of all the…

180 words. That’s all I wrote for the Panthers in this “Message of Hope for the Carolinas.” They added video footage. They added sound. And Julius Peppers read them. Now. In this month. In this year. I’ll remember writing these 180 words the rest of my life. What a trip. 

Our son was born March 6.  The world shut down the next week.  In a new essay, I tried to write about all that.

For Charlotte Agenda, a story on one man’s drive to save the youth in his neighborhood, starting with a boy named Haji.  And a sad follow-up in November. And the story of Chynna Deese and her beautiful family, after she was the victim of a murder that set off the largest manhunt in Canada’s history….

Hard to believe, but I’m seven weeks into a job at Charlotte Agenda already. Days and weeks move faster when you’re on staff somewhere. But I’m enjoying it. I mean, of course I miss the freedom of freelancing and midmorning walks with Gizmo, but Agenda’s been a refreshing change.  A few months ago I thought…

The pelicans—excuse me, the goddamn pelicans—are back. They skipped town for the hurricane last fall like everybody else, and weren’t to be seen during a 99-degree Memorial Day weekend, but they made it in time for Father’s Day, gliding over the beachfront homes in a single line, headed wherever it is smug and certain creatures…

When Charlotte College moved to a nearly 300-acre stretch of farmland in north Charlotte in 1961, construction crews finished the first two buildings ahead of schedule. It was August, and The Charlotte Observer was so excited it sent a photographer out for pictures of the buildings standing next to a barn. A woman saw that…