On May 8, North Carolina became the 31st state to adopt a constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from being legally married. Gay marriage is already illegal in the state, but voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment anyway.

The amendment was opposed by a wide-ranging coalition of legal scholars, progressive religious leaders, CEOs of the state’s largest corporations and ordinary folk, gay and straight. The opposition made a lot of compelling arguments about why the amendment shouldn’t pass. The Coalition to Protect NC Families used video and social media brilliantly in its campaign, in my view, but so did a lot of unaffiliated and passionate others. Documentary filmmaker Frank Eaton did some mighty fine video advocacy on the issue, and musicians from near and far followed Greensboro singer/songwriter Laurelyn Dossett’s lead, either by recording her “Vote Against Amendment One” song or writing and recording their own.

For those who oppose the amendment, May 8 was a pretty bad day.

News of the North Carolina vote was everywhere, and then, the very next day in the wake of it, President Obama said the words out loud that so many people had been waiting to hear: “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Such is the context in which The Campaign for Southern Equality brought its “We Do” campaign to Winston-Salem on Thursday.

One by one Thursday, under the scrutiny of a phalanx of reporters, photographers and videographers, 10 couples walked into the Forsyth County Register of Deeds office to request marriage licenses. One by one, they were refused. Reporter Laura Graff wrote beautifully about it for the Winston-Salem Journal.

She invited me along to shoot video. At first I was only going to mosey down to the Government Center sometime before 5, to witness a couple of the protesters get arrested when they refused to leave the Register of Deeds office. But I decided to go for the afternoon. And I’m so glad I did. What I saw Thursday was a beautiful display of love, courage, dignity, respect and compassion — the clerks whose hands trembled as they denied the licenses, reciting lines from little pieces of paper taped to the counter in front of them, “We cannot issue you a marriage license because it is not allowed in North Carolina, under North Carolina law.” The county manager who carefully and softly spoke to the women occupying the office. The sheriff’s deputies who eventually led the women away in handcuffs. And of course the families themselves, who have all been living out their love and commitment to each other in the shadow of injustice, without the rights and protections extended to heterosexual partners.

I feel like we are living in a particular historical moment now, one in which as a society and a culture we’ll soon be big enough, brave enough and grown up enough to set aside the notion that only heterosexual couples should be granted the multitude of legal protections conveyed by marriage. On Tuesday I felt ashamed to live in North Carolina. But Thursday? Thursday was a whole different day.

My sister got all the athletic talent in our family, so I’ve never been on a ball diamond for more than a few tortured hours during compulsory school games (always relegated to right field, where I could do little harm). But you don’t have to be an athlete to understand this story. It’s an homage to a great coach from a grateful player, looking back on his boyhood experiences.

Last summer, my friend Chris English went to Fayetteville, North Carolina and spent a couple of days with Iverson “Smitty” Smith, his boyhood baseball coach. Smitty had a profound impact on Chris. “He wasn’t just a coach,” Chris says, “he was a life coach.” Chris sometimes calls me for a little editing help, when he gets on a tight deadline or needs another set of eyes and ears. I love working with him, because, well, he just has the most wide-open heart for story, and he makes amazing photographs.

At first Chris just intended this to be a feel-good story to celebrate an unsung, humble hero. But it took on additional poignancy and urgency when Chris learned that Smitty is suffering an inoperable, malignant brain tumor.

We should all have a Smitty in our lives. Godspeed, Coach, and keep fighting.

Meet Greg Silvernail, the first of six group home residents we’ll be featuring in a new and improved “Story of My Life” project over the next few months.

Christine Rucker and Phoebe Zerwick did most of the field work on this project, so I’m mainly just their most interested set of eyes and ears.

Greg’s wide open spirit and energy is evident the first time you meet him, and you had better be willing to live at a sprint when you’re with him. He plays soccer, rides horses, sings in the Inner Rhythm Choir, volunteers at the Y and the library, and when he’s not out playing or volunteering, he’s studying or visiting with his mom and his brother Henry.

We should all be so loved.

Stay tuned. This project will eventually also have a gallery exhibit featuring Christine’s photos and those taken by each of the participants in this project.

My friend Nancy Crooks is a genius. No, seriously. She is a really gifted body mechanic who has devoted her life to learning all kinds of healing touch methods.

A while back, she asked me to do a video for her that would explain her work with Mechanical Link, a really rather esoteric and obscure technique developed by a couple of French osteopaths. She ran across it for the first time a few years ago while training with a therapist in Washington state.

Without going into the gory details, it’s a technique that attempts to unlock the body’s own healing potential by effecting changes in the fascia system, the web-like structure that extends underneath our skin and around all our organs. It’s cutting-edge stuff, and not a lot of research has been done on it, but Nancy has worked with a bunch of folks who swear by it.

This is the first time I’ve ever ventured into making a video for a “client” (funny even to think of my friend as a client), but it was a learning experience to be sure. As a journalist I can make all kinds of independent editorial decisions, but for this it was necessary to work with Nancy every step of the way, adding things she felt I’d neglected, taking things out that she felt didn’t belong. But I loved it, and I’d do it again.

My colleague Lisa O’Donnell wrote this top-notch, and way overdue, story about guitarist Lowman “Pete” Pauling and the 5 Royales, a legendary R&B group from Winston-Salem that never got the kind of mainstream respect they deserved.

Lisa is a heckuva writer, and the story couldn’t possibly have been in better hands. Check out the first few paragraphs of her article, which ran on the front page of the Winston-Salem Journal Sunday:

“A small obituary, lost in a wash of gray newsprint appeared halfway down Page 5 of the Winston-Salem Journal on Dec. 28, 1973, announcing the death of a one-time city resident who had lived in New York for the past 10 years.

Beyond his survivors, the obit contained nothing of the man’s life, the miles he traveled, the musical masterpieces he created, the impact he made on pop culture.

More than those errors of omission, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it obituary of a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, arguably the most important musical figure to emerge from Winston-Salem, included one other egregious mistake.

His name was misspelled.

Which is all sadly emblematic of the life of Lowman “Pete” Pauling (misspelled Lawman in the obituary), a visionary guitarist and songwriter who transcended his impoverished upbringing in the coal camps of West Virginia and the streets of Winston-Salem to become one of the pillars of early rhythm and blues, only to die alone at the age of 47 while working as a custodian at a Brooklyn synagogue.

Pauling was the guiding light for The 5 Royales, a groundbreaking Winston-Salem band whose fusion of gospel and R&B in the 1950s laid the groundwork for soul and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Wow.

Great writing can take a reader to a lot of amazing places, but when it comes to understanding Lowman Pauling’s genius, hearing is believing. Lisa came to me with a great idea — to ask guitar shopkeeper Michael Bennett to deconstruct some of Pauling’s licks while we recorded him on video.

Pauling and the 5 Royales are winning some new fans these days thanks to guitarist Steve Cropper’s recent project, “Dedicated: A Salute to the Five Royales.” Cropper cites Pauling as one of his most important early musical influences. The recording features an all-star supporting musical cast including the likes of Lucinda Williams, Bettye LaVette, Delbert McClinton, Buddy Miller and B.B. King, and it’s been getting some mighty good press in the wide world beyond our beloved Winkytown.

Take a listen and I think you’ll see why. And if you see Santa, remind him that I’ve been a very good girl this year.

The relish.com podcast has been evolving over the last few months, and I gotta say that I’m pleasantly surprised by how much fun it’s become to produce. YouTube and our vast photo archive make for a entertaining treasure hunt each week, but the latest addition is our $6 green screen. A few weeks ago, our super-delightful colleague Lindy Bazner came into the office with a few pieces of bright green poster board tucked under her arm. We proceeded to duct tape them together and hang them on a portable rack. (Look carefully behind us and you can see a seam … but hey, cut us some slack. We’re newspaper journalists, making this stuff up as we go along.) Now though, thanks to the green screen, we can go anywhere in the world. No travel budget required!