The State of Things

When Forrest Fenn was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decided to give away some of his wealth in an unconventional way. Fenn is a collector, and he buried his gold, rare coins, and gems in a treasure chest and left a riddle leading to its location.

For James Roy Gorham , growing up in the small farming community of Falkland, NC was full of tough lessons, and he learned many of them from his father. Gorham says in the town of fewer than 100 people, there were not explicit signs designating areas for blacks or whites only, but there were unwritten rules about race.

Vann McCoy grew up in Mount Airy, North Carolina, and like the fictional town it inspired, some folks who lived there were happy learning what they needed to know to make a living. But from a young age, McCoy was on a search for something different.

This week President Donald Trump attended a historic summit with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump surprised South Korea and some officials at the Pentagon when he announced the U.S. would stop military exercises with South Korea.

While working for Wake County, Derrick Byrd was sent on a mission to find parenting resources for men. Not only were the options limited, he noticed a resistance to developing programs specifically for fathers. This was the genesis of the North Carolina Fatherhood Conference .

Doug Largent spent a decade in jazz clubs playing the bass. In 2009, he followed a new dream and taught himself the organ. The Doug Largent Trio was born.

In an attempt to regulate unaccompanied children who cross the border, the Trump administration is considering detaining them in tent cities. In an exclusive by Franco Ordoñez of McClatchy, there are reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is scouting locations at military bases in Texas that will house up to 5,000 migrant children.

As a prominent Islamic scholar, Omid Safi has written often in defense of the breadth and nuance of Islam. But for his latest book, Safi hones in on the idea of love, and how mystic Islamic poets interpreted the theme.

Historian Hari Jones says there were no losers in the Civil War. Instead the war formed a more perfect union by securing freedom for millions of Americans.

While incarcerated it is a constitutional right for inmates to receive medical care. But what happens when inmates are released and no longer have access to health services? The reality is they often go without medication or treatment. Considering prisons have become the largest mental healthcare providers in America, it is in the interest of public safety to remedy that gap in coverage.