Social distancing became a commonly used term, a mask mandate was implemented locally, shops large and small were shuttered in the spring, and there was no Greene County Fair or Greeneville Christmas Parade.
These are just some of the ways that life changed in Greene County due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which dominated almost every aspect of life beginning in March when the first coronavirus case was reported locally and was selected by The Greenville Sunâs news staff as the top local story of 2020.
Other top stories were record-setting precipitation that caused extensive flooding early in the year, the November elections and a fire that claimed the life of one child and forever altered the life of another.
Just because the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, that doesn’t mean that’s what people feel their time is worth, a Compare.com study discovered.
For the 12th consecutive year, North Carolina s 38,000 minimum-wage workers did not receive a pay raise with the arrival of the new year Friday.
They remain stuck at the federally mandated $7.25 an hour set in 2009.
The majority of N.C. Republican legislators expressed little, if any, interest during the 2019-20 session in a wage hike for private-sector workers.
Constricting minimum-wage increases is that North Carolina s constitution does not allow for voter-initiated referendums, which gives Republican legislative leaders the power to shelve minimum-wage bills.
The first time John Elliott Neville s name appeared on the front pages of the Winston-Salem Journal was on June 27, seven months after his death.Â
At the beginning of the summer, Winston-Salem, like the rest of the country, witnessed people pouring out into the streets, angered at the death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died on May 25 after a white police officer placed his knee on Floyd s neck for nearly nine minutes. Floyd was unarmed and lying on the ground, handcuffed.Â
He is seen on a cellphone video, saying the words, I can t breathe. Â
John Neville said the same phrase at least 28 times over a three-minute period, as he lay on his stomach in a jail cell while detention officers piled on top of him in an attempt to remove his handcuffs. His feet were tucked up toward his buttocks. On July 8, the five detention officers and a nurse were charged with involuntary manslaughter â Lt. Lavette Maria Williams, 48; Cpl. Edward Roussel, 51, Officer
Amy Dixon
Special Correspondent
Winston-Salemâs Ronald McDonald House features a new playground and meditative garden with a mosaic pathway created by designer Richard Phillips.
Many gardens are intentionally designed for a specified space, taking into consideration exposure, surrounding landscape and use. But sometimes a garden s conception is dynamic â based on fluidity and circumstance. A newly-completed meditative garden at the Winston-Salem Ronald McDonald House is one such dynamic space, born from fluctuation and functionality.
To best understand the design and purpose of the Ronald McDonald House (RMH) Meditative Garden, a little background is in order. The RMH is on Hawthorne Road, adjacent to Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
North Carolina ended 2020 at a record level of hospitalizations amid what may be the first wave of an expected Christmas holiday surge in cases.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services reported Thursday there are 3,493 North Carolinians hospitalized with COVID-19-related symptoms.
That s up 154 from Wednesday s report and up 116 from the previous high of 3,377 reported Tuesday.
By comparison, there were 1,966 individuals hospitalized with the coronavirus on Nov. 30.
DHHS reported 6,715 cases Thursday for an overall total of 539,545.
DHHS will not provide a report Friday, resuming its daily schedule Saturday.
The 17-county Triad region has 968 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, down one from the record high of 969 on Tuesday.