Asheboro library ‘Back-to-School Night’ to showcase new online tutoring service

ASHEBORO – All Randolph County students – including those in the city and county school systems, Uwharrie Charter Academy, private schools, and home schools, are invited to a “Back-to-School Night” at 6 p.m. Tuesday, August 15, at the Asheboro Public Library.

The event will showcase free resources that the library offers to support K-12 students, including Tutor.com, an new, online service that provides live, one-to-one tutoring in all subject areas through carefully vetted educators.

Students are invited to wear school colors to show their pride and will be able to test virtual resources, participate in brain games, and win prizes to help out in the new school year.

Availability of Tutor.com is part of an “Equal Access to Tutoring” project developed by the Asheboro library Youth Services staff and funded by a federal Library Services and Construction Act grant via the State Library of North Carolina. At the Asheboro library alone, staff estimate they receive five requests for affordable tutoring each week.

Tutor.com will be accessible at all seven library branches and remotely to anyone with a library card or REAL2 student ID.

In addition, the grant will fund 10 each of laptops, Chromebooks and iPads for the Asheboro library that students can check out and use anywhere in the library to access Tutor.com and other resources.

The Asheboro City Schools is a partner in the project to help promote the new resources.

The Asheboro library is located at 201 Worth Street. Call 336-318-6804 for further information.

The Equal Access to Tutoring project is supported by grant funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (IMLS grant number LS-23645-OLS-23).

Author Judith Turner-Yamamoto, Asheboro native, returns for Sunset Series appearance

Judith Turner-Yamamoto

ASHEBORO – Randolph readers will recognize familiar locales — Little Beane Store, Blue Mist Drive-In, the Sir Robert Motel and others — in Asheboro native Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel, Loving the Dead and Gone.

Turner-Yamamoto — Judith Cox, growing up in Asheboro — will appear in conversation with Randolph Hub journalist Larry Penkava in a Friends of the Library Sunset Signature Series event at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, August 19, at downtown Asheboro’s historic
Sunset Theatre.

Her appearance is free and the public is invited. The Sunset Series is sponsored by the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau, the City of Asheboro and the Friends of the Randolph County Public Libraries.

In Loving the Dead and Gone, a freak car crash in a place not unlike Randolph County puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. The choral novel delves into the minds of four characters, and explores how the traumas of the present stir those of the past.

Set in the world of 1920s tobacco farms and 1960s textile mills, the novel exhibits a lyric strength and deep and empathic understanding of working-class daily life in rural and small-town 20th century North Carolina.

Loving the Dead and Gone was named a Gold Medal winner in Southern Regional Fiction in the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2023 UC-Berkeley Eric Hoffer Book Awards Grand Prize, where it was an honorable mention in General Fiction and finalist for the Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award for Debut Fiction.

Publisher’s Weekly calls Loving the Dead and Gone “a bittersweet and fantastical debut.” Foreword Reviews says “Loving the Dead and Gone is a moving, insightful novel about growing through tragedy.”

Turner-Yamamoto’s work has appeared in over 30 journals and anthologies. She has received more than fifteen awards and fellowships, including the Washington Prize for Fiction and the Virginia Screenwriting Award.

She has taught fiction at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, the Danville Writer’s Conference, and the Writers’ Center at Bethesda, Maryland. A featured author and panelist, she has appeared at various book festivals and is a keynote speaker at the 2023 Santa Barbara Writers Conference.

As an art historian, Turner-Yamamoto’s on-air interviews have been featured on NPR affiliate WVXU. She has penned over 1,000 articles on the arts, travel, design, books, fashion, and food that have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Elle, Interiors, Art & Antiques, The Los Angeles Times, Travel & Leisure, and many others.

Begun in 2018, the Sunset Series brings high profile speakers and performers to the Sunset Theatre. The theatre is located at 234 Sunset Avenue, Asheboro.

For further information, contact the Heart of North Carolina Visitors Bureau at 800-626-2672.

Accidental witness: historian to recount McGlohon’s A-bomb experience in Asheboro library talk

John McGlohon's photograph of the
Hiroshima atomic bomb blast.

ASHEBORO – Many Asheboro residents are aware that legendary Fire Chief John McGlohon, as an aerial reconnaissance photographer in World War II, snapped images of the atomic bomb blast at Hiroshima.

What they may not know is that as McGlohon began to tell his story, doubters arose — and because his images were classified Top Secret until 1995, proving it was problematic.

McGlohon friend and oral historian Ken Samuelson will share McGlohon’s unique story, and detail his own efforts, through archives, museums and service members’ memories, to substantiate it, in a talk at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, August 10, at the Asheboro Public Library.

Although only the three B-29 bombers assigned to the Hiroshima mission — including the “Enola Gay,” which dropped the bomb — were supposed to be in the area, a misunderstood order put McGlohon’s reconnaissance aircraft nearby. McGlohon captured images of the explosion and its aftermath.

John McGlohon with his
aerial reconnaissance camera

After the war, McGlohon returned home and operated a photography business. In 1955, he joined the Asheboro Fire Department, and served as Chief from 1961 to 1985. After retirement, he served on the city council from 1987 to 2005 as mayor pro-tem. 

Samuelson, from Moline, Illinois, graduated from George Washington University and served in the U.S. Navy as a supply officer. He later worked in financial management.

He has a long and deep interest in World War II, and has conducted oral histories with veterans for the North Carolina Museum of History, The National World War II Museum and the University of Florida Oral History Collection. He has published numerous articles on veterans he has interviewed.

His oral history work led him to McGlohon.

The library is located at 201 Worth Street. For further information, call 336-318-6803.

Learn beekeeping basics in Asheboro library talk

ASHEBORO – Get buzzing about beekeeping as Cooperative Extension Horticulture Agent Cody Craddock talks about how bees make your garden bloom in “Basics of Beekeeping,” 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 27, at the Asheboro Public Library.

Craddock will offer beekeeping tips, share information about hive supplies, and answer questions.

The talk is free and the public is invited.

Craddock has been an avid gardener since childhood, when he grew a large garden and pulled a wagon to sell produce to neighbors. He graduated from the University of Mount Olive in 2021 and has worked for North Carolina Cooperative Extension’s Randolph County office ever since.

The Asheboro library is located at 201 Worth Street. For further information, call 336-318-6803.