I come from a blue collar family, but my personal life isn't. I didn't get the gene that my grandfather had in spades. He was a local hero. Built the church that I went to. Built the house I grew up in. Steamfitter, pipefitter, electrician, mechanic and plumber. I wanted to do those things. But it just didn't come easy.
Where I grew up in the middle of Georgia, hip-hop is king, and on Friday and Saturday nights, local DJs do mixes. It's a great mix of local stuff and then some of the bigger hits and remixes of the hits, and it just has this nice flow with a dirty-South sound to everything.
Local politics, like everything else, are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.
There are many singers who have got an exceptional talent, but spend their lives singing in local trains or hotels. Does the country even know who they are? Music in India is restricted only to Bollywood. Whoever manages to make a mark there is remembered. The ones who fail to reach and make it big there are forgotten.
We have 1.8 million Americans behind bars today at Local, State and Federal level. In the federal system, which has doubled in the last ten years, over 110,000 people behind bars in the Federal system, probably two-thirds are there for drug related reason.
In high school, I had a gold 1992 Ford Explorer. It was a gift. I used to have a terrible habit of locking the keys in the car when I used leave the car running to help it start on a cold morning. I think the local locksmith became used to me calling him.
I don't really like to go out to clubs or anything. It's just not my style. I'd much rather go to a dive bar or a local place.
When Bob came through Cincinnati, he wanted a girl singer to be on his show. There was a local contest, and my sister and I entered, but Bob said, Gee, I wouldn't break up the team.
Having billions of dollars immediately available to plug budget holes without raising taxes is very appealing. And to the delight of Wall Street investors, state and local governments often fail to ask the important questions or consider the long-term impact.
For decades, community colleges have been the backbone of American workforce training. Because they are nimble and closely attuned to local community needs, they are inherently positioned to be influential leaders of the movement for a sustainable economy.
Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?
State and local government, with financial support from the federal government, should offer a program to educate and train foster children for employment and provide them with financial assistance, as needed, until they reach age 21.
When I was younger, I was one of the few girls in the neighborhood who could break dance. That's kind of my local, ghetto-celebrity claim to fame.
It was a matter of survival for the local people, but it was the most violent scene I have ever witnessed. The people in my group, feeling helpless, were all spellbound and aghast at the same time. I became a vegetarian shortly after that.
As my wife says, I'll never fully retire, but it'll start to slow down. I'll continue to do the local gigs or go to Las Vegas. But I won't be going out to Ohio to play an Indian casino anymore. Those will probably go by the wayside.
The backbone of our nation's domestic defense against terrorist attacks will continue to be the men and women in local law enforcement and emergency services.
So many wells have been dug in Changzhou that its groundwater has been over-exploited, and the local ground level has sunk by two feet. The city has officially banned new wells and mandated the installation of pollution controls, but China's endemic corruption ensures that neither measure has much meaning.
In most communities it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
My dad was a labourer and my mum had exactly the same job as Noel Gallagher's mum - she was a dinner lady at our local school. Everyone comes over from Ireland and they get the same jobs.
Yelp has been in this business since it really became something worth thinking about in 2004, when the transition started happening from the world of the Yellow Pages to the world of searching online for local information.
Some of those stories in local newspapers are just as dull and boring as the stories that I get from on-line services, which are basically sort of straight news.
They have what you call a black night where they have black people come in for just one night only to watch comedy, and you get all your local drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, all of them come in, sit down, and listen to you tell jokes. They the hardest people to make laugh.
I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.
Organizations that empower folks further down the chain or try to get rid of the big hierarchal chains and allow decision making to happen on a more local level end up being more adaptive and resilient because there are more minds involved in the problem.
I always like to get local music when I'm in another country.
There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.
Some people argue that we should limit choice in favour of good local services. My response is simple: why should we assume those two concepts are mutually exclusive?
I've thought from the start that a parallel federal investigation into the death of Michael Brown is important. I also believe that our state and local elected officials have been given a responsibility by the people who they work for to get to the bottom of this tragedy.
It's really actually been pretty shoddy and appalling, the amount of local content, Australian drama, on ABC TV.
The local communities, through their leaders, were able to build a communications network that allowed my work here to reflect the needs and interests of the people within the 9th Congressional District. It's been an honor to do that and we did so successfully.
One of the critical issues that we have to confront is illegal immigration, because this is a multi-headed Hydra that affects our economy, our health care, our health care, our education systems, our national security, and also our local criminality.
At the end of the day, the government, local government all bow to public pressure.
The vast majority of the online crime cases, we don't even know which continent the attacks are coming from. And even if we are able to find online criminals, quite often there is no outcome. The local police don't act, or if they do, there's not enough evidence, or for some reason we can't take them down.
When I visit local communities, people often complain that they need the approval of several dozen government departments to get something done or to start a business, and people are quite frustrated about this.
The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism. Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments.
For me, it is always part of my holiday to go and work my way along the shelf in the local artisan bakery with its breads, savoury tartlets, pastries and cakes. It is soul food: one of those things that tells you about a place and the history of a place and its people.
