Scot Sanborn stood behind the bar and concentrated on a drinking glass. He wiped it clean and carefully laid the glass on the bar, alongside another just like it. He pointed at each glass and counted in silence, save for the soft jazz that came from a speaker set high in the corner of the candle-lit room.

While some claim that Dylann Roof is mentally ill, the truly frightening possibility is that he is sane and sober -- that he was raised under a white supremacist culture and is acting out his racism in the most violent of ways.

Sgt. Henry Johnson and Sgt. William Shemin are being awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama at a White House ceremony for their heroics in World War I. Not surprisingly, a fair bit of information about both soldiers can be found online, and while personal details about Sgt. Shemin are mostly accurate, Sgt. Johnson's are frequently distorted.

The Camel City has long wanted to be known as City of the Arts. In fact, it was the first city in the nation to establish an arts council in 1949. And this weekend welcomes back two major events -- Phuzz Phest and RiverRun International Film Festival -- that should help it achieve just that.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community in Boston that felt both nurturing and stifling. If anyone in the community struggled financially, they knew that tzedeka (or charity) would be raised to sustain them