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This just in from my dentist: A persistent, worsening problem with my bite means I'll probably need orthodontics.

In layman's terms, that means braces.

Gee, I'm only old enough to be somebody's granddaddy.

Reminds me of a fall commencement speech by a professor at UNCG a few years ago. Seems he also chose to have braces at a less-than-tender age.

His students wondered why, he said.

After all, they said, at this stage in his life, what was the point?

As the News & Record reports today, the state Supreme Court has censured former District Court Judge William Daisy for inappropriately touching two female court employees.

Daisy received harsh words from the court and justifiably so.

But the court would have been well within its rights to rescind Daisy's retirement benefits. It did not.

These were not isolated incidents, say even other judges.

Daisy should consider himself fortunate.

Choosing letters to the editor for publication -- or not -- has its occupational hazards.

Consider the grief I've gotten from an irate reader who charges in a high-traffic list serve that I have "blackballed" him "permanently" from the News & Record.

Misunderstandings can and do occur in situations like this. Writers whose letters are rejected sometimes take fierce exception to not being published.

Problem is, as John Kerry might say, this man's letter actually was chosen -- before it was un-chosen.

Here's how it happened:

Last week, I called a reader to verify his letter for publication. He confirmed he had written the letter; I thanked him for writing and told him his letter would be published within five to seven days.

Minutes later I found myself in the Twilight Zone.

Ons of life's small unpleasantries: muscling for position against well-dressed church ladies at local breakfast buffets.

Some commenters in the letters blog have taken exception to Ed Crothers' piece in Tuesday's News & Record on flag desecration.

Ed Cone wonders if Crothers goes too far in his warning that some veterans would take exception to stomping of Old Glory by doing some stomping of their own.

Written in the voice of the flag itself, and submitted in response to an excerpt of a Cone column that opposes a flag burning ban, the Counterpoint closes: "Oh, and by the way, Mr. Cone, since you are all about free speech, let me give you a few words of advice that won't cost you a cent. If you plan to step on me or burn me, it would not be a good idea to do that if there is a member of our Armed Forces nearby -- like a sailor or a dogface or a Marine. They don't take kindly to that, and from that encounter you would very likely get a clear idea of how it feels to be stomped."

Ed responds in his blog:
"I'm sure that many veterans grasp the difference between supporting free speech and supporting the content of that speech. And I'm sure that even talking flags see the distinction between stomping on a piece of cloth and stomping on a person.

"I think this is the first threat of physical violence against me (even as a conditional action based on possible behavior on my part) I've seen published in the N&R. And it is certainly the first threat I've received from an inanimate object. A great day all 'round for free speech in Greensboro."

Mr. Crothers may not have literally meant to threaten physical harm in his zeal to make a point.

But, I agree with Ed. The ending violates the News & Record's standards. We should have asked the writer to change it.

We routinely ask readers to soften or rewrite passages in letters to the editor and Counterpoints when they cross the line of civility. I should have asked Mr. Crothers to do so in this case.

My bad.

And so it has come to this: A 15-year-old is stabbed to death in Brooklyn on Independence Day because he won't surrender his iPod.

A group of youths run the boy down and surrounded him in pursuit of his music player.

Two Brooklyn teens later were arrested in the homicide and New York City police report 50 iPod thefts so far this year, nearly all on city subways.

For all our technological advances ... well, you know.

Still waiting for those county commissioners who were so outraged at the raise some of them recently awarded themselves to just say no and refuse the 41 percent salary increase.

Or are the Republicans planning to laugh all the way to the bank while the Democrats take the heat for favoring the raise?

Still waiting ...

I have been asked to share the following, very thoughtful column by a participant in this year's News & Record Minority Journalism Workshop, Ciara Lilly.

It touches upon a number of provocative subjects based on her high school experiences at Southwest and Andrews.

Here it is:

I can remember confidently walking inside my AP U.S. history classroom for the first time at Southwest High School and being flabbergasted by the unequal ratio of whites to blacks among the students. Their puzzled faces stared holes straight through me as they hesitated to crack a smile.

I took my seat beside two other African American girls in the back of the room, where we huddled together in a small corner against the wall. That whole day I said nothing as I observed the occasional glances back from some students who concurred with their soft whispers. As the bell rang, the teacher approached the doorway, gracing a group of white boys and girls with a "See you tomorrow" as they walked eagerly out of the classroom. On my way to the doorway, I waited until the others left before I continued to my next class. The teacher’s eyes met mine as he slowly walked out the door, but he said nothing as I walked out of the classroom. My thoughts were garbled about why he chose to walk away, but I tried to deny that my skin color was the reason.

I had transferred from Andrews High School, where African Americans made up the majority. The diverse student body, including Asian and Hispanic students, provided a shield to a lot of racist blows. It was not until I experienced college-level courses at Southwest that I really understood the influence of racism in the classroom. In all my classes at Andrews, the students encouraged one another, and the teachers saw us as one body. There was no division in the classroom like I witnessed at Southwest.

The bell rang starting my second day of class, and within the first five minutes I became the class' focus.

"Ciara, why don't you stand up and tell the class some things about yourself," the teacher said.

I already felt intimidated. I stood and I could feel the burning of the sweat beads that streamed down into my eyes.

"Hi, I am Ciara Lilly and I am a new student here at Southwest and, I transferred from Andrews High School and I ..."

The deep sighs from a group of white students interrupted my introduction as I waited for the teacher to recognize their rudeness.

Some small consolation in the terrorist carnage in London: The death toll has dropped to 37 after climbing to 40. May more such miscounts be forthcoming.

My colleague, Doug Clark, in a provocative post on where public housing ought to go:

"The High Point Housing Authority plans to replace the community with 160 new units on the very same 20-acre site.

"It's a poor place for housing. The center-city property would be better suited for a business or industrial development.

"What's needed in High Point's low-income, inner city is not more low-income housing but more jobs for the underemployed population already there.

"This public housing community should be relocated to north High Point, miles closer to existing and anticipated jobs at Piedmont Centre, the airport and Dell.

"Proximity to those jobs is essential for people who face transportation challenges getting to work."

Predictably, not everyone agrees.But Doug raises an interesting point. Greensboro has seen remarkable success with its extreme makeover of Morningisde Homes into Willow Oaks. Yet, there are similarities to High Point. In Greensboro public housing is concentrated more heavily in the southeastern part of town.

As an aside ... I experienced the flip side of this issue.
I grew up in Woodmere Park, a middle-class black community that protested the construction of Claremont Courts public housing.
Residents argued that the city wouldn't have dared do that when Woodmere had been an all-white subdivision.

I agree.But the episode made us re-examine the demons that not only racism, but classism, can conjure among black and white people. There was at least an element of that in the Woodmere case.

On the other hand, the big difference with Willow Oaks and Claremont Courts is that the city did Willow Oaks right. It's the kind of place that breeds community pride, not a place whose look at feel screams, "Projects!"

David Wharton's most recent post on Willow Oaks:

"This kind of holistic approach -- folding low-income housing in with middle-class housing and neighborhood-friendly business and schools -- is typical of other Hope VI projects I've read about. And Willow Oaks successfully avoided one of the pitfalls that earlier Hope VI projects fell into, by making sure that the residents of Morningside Homes were all taken care of and relocated successfully into the new project.

"Will it be a success? We won't really know for a generation or so, but I think it's got a good shot."

Choose your poison: Greed or hypocrisy?

Despite hints that they might reconsider the fat raises they've given themselves, the Guilford County commissioners decided, in the end, to take the money and run.
Well, not all of them.

Republicans Mike Winstead and Trudy Wade actually have made arrangements to return their raises to the county. If they're against the raises, they reasoned, they shouldn't be accepting the extra cash. The concept of principle isn't dead yet among the commissioners; it's just on life support.

Whom should we be most disappointed in: the Democrats, who railroaded the 41 percent raise in the first place? Or Republicans Steve Arnold, Linda Shaw and Billy Yow, who say they oppose the raise but plan to cash the bigger checks anyway?

"I'm not going to turn it back into their slush fund, period," Yow said, in defense of pocketing the raise.That's pretty lame logic, Billy.

Then there are the Democrats, who slipped the raise into the budget without public input and tried to defend it as overdue compensation for all the hard work they put in. Based on what I've seen in recent weeks, I want a refund.

We hear people such as Sue and Hardy, who are concerned about the prolific few who are littering our Letters to the Editor blog with mean, obscene, crass and juvenile comments.

Hardy: "... The "letters" blog has achieved some good things.
But I'm not sure if it all is as good as it could be.
Some of the comments posted in response to specific letters fail the basic standard of actually addressing the points made and issues raised in those letters.
"Those comments are off-subject and might be labeled irrelevant to the discussion the letter writer may have been interested in inspiring.
"Other comments are mean-spirited, attacking the letter writers or previous commenters in ugly, uncivil ways.
"Still other comments are out there only for cheap laughs.
"As someone who deeply values the letters to the editor section, I have to wonder if allowing the 'letters' blog to continue like it is cheapens the time, effort, energy, passion, and thought taken to write the letters in the first place."

Sue: "Allen, a public request: Take down the stupid comments (leave the on-point ones) in today's Letters and make it a habit from now on. Hire someone with the $34K you saved by getting rid of the NYTimes (yeah, I know...don't bother).
"It offends me that a letter writer with a good point is subject to personal vilification because of his name."

On the other hand, Ed Cone wonders if there are others to stem the flow:

"The level of conversation is sometimes perilously dumb, some of the regulars could take a break...but it's an online forum, vox populi, and serious conversations do break out with some frequency.
"Another way of addressing the off-topic/juvenile/mean etc. comments is to just ignore them, don't get sucked in -- the jerks end up showing themselves to be jerks, and the conversation continues ..."

We see both sides of this issue. We are as concerned about this troubling trend as others are and we're mulling our options.

We're hoping we can come up with solutions that don't hinder the healthy flow of ideas and perspectives. We appreciate your ideas and feedback.

Roch of Greensboro 101 had suggested a post and comment thread on fact-checking letters to the editor, and I said I would begin one.

Sorry this has taken so long. As you may have read, we lost power last night.

Matters of fact in letters have grown more and challenging over the years. The phenomenon no doubt predates me but it seemed to peak during the height of the FedEx hub debates, when passionate letter writers tossed around all sorts of numbers and claims.

I still recall phoning one writer to question a statistic in a FedEx letter and she said she couldn't vouch that it was absolutely, positively true ... she'd overheard it at a cocktail party.

Similar claims have arisen over such diverse topics as the downtown baseball stadium, Iraq and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

So, we modified our letters policy, which is published in the paper every day, to include the following, to-the-point language:

"Please cite sources for facts and statistics."

Some people do that, adding copious footnotes. Some remain casual and even sloppy, misspelling the names even of local elected officials and railing about the city's role in school funding (in which it plays no role.)

The Internet hasn't helped. Some people tend to believe what they read there, including urban legends.

Are we responsible for fact-checking every letter we choose to publish? We do our best but our staff is small; there are no fact-checkers on the payroll, so we try to flag obvious errors. We also Google suspected astroturf letters and vet some letters through popular fact-checking sites. But you can spend hours doing that, and we have limits in time and resources.

So we don't always succeed in catching errors.

You can help as readers and letter writers by taking more care in composing letters and documenting your facts.

Here is what our internal handbook on processing letters now instructs staff members to do:

Fact-checking: Letter writers should cite sources for quotations and facts, especially statistics, that are not general knowledge either in the body of the letter or, as some writers do, in informal footnotes below the body of the letter. Otherwise, they will be filed.

A letter that is "filed" is not published.

We are tightening this requirement to ensure that letters are more carefully researched.

As always, we appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

In a comment today on the letters to the editor blog, my good friend Roch has taken issue with a letter writer, David Austin.

In an example of what Roch considers a kink in our fact-checking process, Roch suggests that Austin misrepresented himself as a Democrat in his letter criticizing Democratic county commissioners Bruce Davis and Skip Alston.

So today I phoned Mr. Austin, who chuckled that his party registration had been called into question publicly and who assured me he is a Democrat.

He's right. He is registered in Guilford County under the name Martin David Austin. You can look it up.

As for the greater question on fact-checking, we would not take the time to check writers' party affiliation. We take them at their word on that.

We expect most writers who used their names on letters to tell the truth about such basics. We verify their identities and their addresses, but we don't go snooping as to whether they are misrepresenting themselves (unless they give us a reason to be suspicious).

For that matter, I didn't have our tech people check Roch's comment to verify it was really him.

Nor, the last time I checked, do our news reporters typically ask for drivers' licenses or passports when conducting person-in-the-street interviews.

That would be impractical. There are boundaries created by time, resources and common sense.

Of course, we could reorder our priorities and pick every nit in every letter. And we would never get a daily newspaper out.

The letters to the editor blog passed a major milestone this week: 1,000 letters posted and 10,000 comments.

That means two things: A tremendous, sustained level of participation. And a majority of commenters who far outnumber the trolls.

That's why this is a forum well worth saving. And building on.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing Saturday ought to offer fascinating perspectives on local histroy.

The day's speakers will include feature two Klan voices in Virgil Griffin, an imperial wizard who helped organize the fateful Klan counter-demonstration on Nov. 3, 1979, and Gorrell Pierce from Forsyth County.

Even staunchest skeptics of the T&R process would be hard-pressed not to be curious as to how this unfolds.

Two of Greensboro's summer pleasures: Dinner at the Revival Grill and a concert across the street at the Eastern Music Festival.

I have been blogging, or something like it, for approximately six months now.

It's an interesting place to be, this new world of people connecting to one another -- and not -- at their computer keyboards.

I've found it a wonderful new way to have conversations with readers about issues, the newspaper and even life's pains and pleasures.

It was in my blog that I shared the unsettling news that I'm doomed to wear braces soon, even though I'm old enough to be somebody's granddaddy.

It's there that we've had long and winding discussions about why we don't sign our editorials (and whether we ought to) ... why people still confuse me for News & Record Editor John Robinson (OK, we're both really handsome guys) .. why the "Night of the Living Dead" movies are so creepy and so resonant ... and why the popular but often controversial Letters to the Editor blog is or isn't a good thing (more on that later).

Along the way, I keep learning new lessons, many of them humbling. Here are only a few:

1. The beast must be fed. It's not always easy to keep posts (or Web log entries) going, even when I have tons of things to say. That said, I used to feel guilty about not being able to respond as soon as I'd like or to as many comments as I'd like.

People comment 'round the clock, seven days a week and, frankly, it's hard to keep up. Not to worry. Your online conversations simply go on without me. Often, they go better without me.

A new cable military drama,"Over There," debuts on July 27.

Set in Iraq, the series is the first such show to air during a war that's still being fought.

You may have seen a very effective promo for the FX show in movie theaters, in which the camera pulls back from a young woman who apparently is relaxing on the beach while listening to music in headphones.

In time the shot reveals she's actually a soldier and the music is interrupted by the rattling chaos of enemy fire.

It'll be interesting to see public reaction to the show, which may ebb and flow depending on U.S. fortunes in the war.

An upcoming movie, set and filmed in London before the July 7 terrorist bombings, involves terrorist attacks in subways.

Now the studio, Warner Bros., has to decide how to market the release of "V for Vendetta," due in theaters this fall.

The movie even shot one of its fictional terrorist attacks on location in an abandoned Underground station ... with government approval.

A postcard came in the mail today picturing lush blue-green waters and sugar-white sandy beaches lined with high-rise hotels.

It read:

Aloha --
Wish you were here -- there's lots to write about.

Paul

Saw a man (I think) today dressed in a chicken suit on Lawndale Drive.

It was 90-plus degrees outside but there he was, looking pleasant and trying to entice motorists to rent in a nearby apartment complex.

Not sure a man in a chicken suit would be the first impression I would want to have of my new rental community.

Hope he was well-paid.

City officials may have stayed away in droves from the first Truth and Reconciliation hearings last week, but the Ku Klux Klan didn't.

Virgil Griffin, a self-proclaimed Klansman hence, now and forevermore, gave as good as he got.

He made no apologies. He affirmed his belief in "race purity." He attributed the one-sidedness of the carnage on Nov. 3, 1979, to his boys being better shots than the anti-Klan protesters they killed -- and the fact that "maybe God guided the bullets. I don't know."

He had nothing against black people, he said. He just wouldn't want to have a drink with one and wouldn't want any of his kids to marry one.

He was curt and crusty and unrepentant, so tightly wrapped in fear and ignorance that he couldn't even see the sheer absurdity of it all.

For instance, Griffin said the Klan despised communists because U.S. soldiers had fought against communism in Vietnam. How then, could he justify an alliance with Nazis, against whom U.S. soldiers fought in World War II?

Yet, give Griffin -- who led the caravan of heavily armed Klansmen and neo-Nazis that fatally shot five protesters in '79 -- credit for showing up at all. And give the Truth and Reconciliation Commission credit for inviting him.

A footnote to last Sunday's column about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

In our recent interview, former Greensboro police officer Art League noted Greensboro's uneasy rationalization of the five deaths on Nov. 3, 1979.

It was less difficult to deal with the bloodshed, said League, who helped capture a van load of heavily armed Klansmen on that day, by rendering the victims less human.

"They didn't put a person there," League said in a quote I didn't use in last Sunday's column -- and should have.

"They labeled them as communists. 'The communists got what they deserved.' "

"Over There," the new fictional war drama set in present-day Iraq, debuts tonight on cable's FX channel.

From two early reviews :

James Poniewozik in Time:

"... 'Over There' is raw and brave. But it is not yet good, in the plain old sense of So Over There is raw and brave. But it is not yet good, in the plain old sense of creating three-dimensional characters, as FX's 'The Shield,' 'Nip/Tuck' and 'Rescue Me' have. To a man and woman, the soldiers are types -- the hard-bitten sarge, the college kid, the greenhorn, the choirboy -- whom the pilot introduces with the inexcusably hackneyed device of having them explain their colorful nicknames.

"In between battles, the scripts -- many penned by co-creator Chris Gerolmo (screenwriter of 'Mississippi Burning')-- saddle them with canned Socratic dialogue about race relations and what it means to fight an enemy who's willing to die. The subplots about the families on base are even more trite. On this show, when a dad abandons his wife and kids, he actually says he's going out to get cigarettes.

"The show may seem exploitative, but there's a fine line between exploitation and relevance: both involve depicting horrible things that command people's attention. As a first TV draft of history, Over There is far smarter and more unflinching than a sweeps war movie--or for that matter, much network news. But it wants to be more, and should be."

Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times:

"School shootings, presidential scandals and even abuse of Iraqi prisoners are now routinely sifted into 'Law & Order' subplots; viewers have become just as inured to the fictionalization of real life on so-called reality television. But even in our hyperaccelerated media culture, 'Over There' is fast work.

"And that is both troubling and comforting. 'Over There' ... is a slick, compelling and very violent distillation of the latest news reports and old war movies and television shows. That alone could make it seem like a show business atrocity, a commercial abuse of a raw and unresolved national calamity.

"Except that exploitation is not necessarily a bad thing. 'Over There' dramatizes wartime slaughter and suffering that all too often go unnoticed. For all the lives lost and billions spent, the Iraq conflict has raged on with surprisingly little impact on most Americans. Gas is not rationed, neighbors do not plant victory gardens, and there are no gold stars in the windows of grieving mothers."

Economist Andy Brod, who writes a monthly column for the Ideas section, suggests in this Sunday's piece that the concept of free parking in Greensboro is actually costly and shortsighted.

Before you storm his office at UNCG's Bryan School of Economics (if you can find a parking space) give him a chance to make his case.

The reader was shocked and appalled.

"So what's the deal, Mr. Johnson," she asked over the phone regarding Tuesday's News & Record, which contained no letters to the editor, "you guys run out of letters?"

Well, sort of. The entire editorial staff was involved in an all-day workshop on Monday, so we finished Tuesday's section well ahead of time on last Friday. Actually, we did the Saturday, Monday and Tuesday sections Friday.

At the time, the supply of publishable letters did not extend into Tuesday's paper. Late July typically has been a light period for letters anyway as many of us take our final summer vacation trips.

But not to worry. The letters are back in full force now. From Truth and Reconciliation to truth about the war, check 'em out.

"The times, they are a-changin'," Bob Dylan once wrote and kinda sung.
He doesn't know the half of it.

In coffee cans, candy jars and small cardboard boxes, I have saved a large fortune in small change (a few hundred dollars' worth anyway). Tiny mountains of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters have sat there over the years, some dating back to the heyday of disco and cuffed bell-bottoms.

I knew not from whence they came, but the coins just kept on piling up, not earning one iota of interest.

So I decided one day to cash in my vast reserves and began to sort the change in rolls by hand. That didn't last long.
Then, about nine years ago, I received one of those battery-powered change-sorters for Christmas (for the man who has everything). A little time, I figured, a couple of "D" batteries and I'm on my way to instant wealth.

The premise: You feed the coins into a hole at the top and the machine instantly funnels them into appropriately sized plastic tubes. You then slide a change roll into each full tube and voila!
The reality: Sometimes dimes tumble into the pennies tube. Sometimes the machine jams or chokes if you feed it too much change at once. The pennies tube fills much more quickly than the others and tends to overflow if you don't pay strict attention.

After practice, concentration and a few choice cuss words, I generally mastered the contraption and began rolling pennies, nickels and quarters like a madman. For about three days.
Then I'd tend to the change when I was bored, meaning when there was absolutely, positively nothing else to do.

So, instead of just cans, boxes and jars full of change, I amassed cans, boxes and jars full of change, plus several dozen rolls of change.
Clinton won two terms. "The X Files" swaggered in and staggered out (the truth never was really out there). Regis finally was emancipated from Kathie Lee.