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Just spent a couple days' worth of R&R on the coast, in Beaufort, N.C.

One of the greatest pleasures of the trip was our stay at the Pecan Tree Inn, a delightful bed & breakfast operated by a former News & Record colleague, David DuBuisson, and his wife, Allison.

Dave, a former editorial page editor and editorial writer at the News & Record, and his better half retired early and seized their dream to operate their own B&B on the coast. Dave and I reminsiced and probably talked too much politics. His, by the way, was one of the 4,000-plus ballots lost in the Carteret voting machine SNAFU that helped tangle last year's state elections.

Otherwise, the weather was perfect and a catamaran trip to Cape Lookout alone was worth the four-hour drive from Greensboro.

We also enjoyed the restaurants, especially the Spouter Inn, where we got the chance to have dinner on the harbor front (I could have reached out and touched the water from our table).

A footnote: Beaufort is revitalizing its already elegant waterfront with help from federal Community Development block grant funding.

Some might argue that such money shouldn't go to a playground for the at least reasonably well-off (present company excepted). But the enhancement of Beaufort's tourism industry certainly benefits the entire local economy.

Greensboro has wrangled with the idea of whether such money ought to channeled into downtown revitalization. Some critics savaged city leaders a few years ago when they considered using Community Development money to help prepare the original South Elm/Lee Street site for the new downtown ballpark.

The fuss almost sunk the stadium idea altogether. And it delayed the City Council doing something about an area that sorely needs attention (fortunately, the council finally figured that out and the city is workng on a revitalization plan.)

Almost all Community Development money traditionally has gone to affordable housing in Greensboro. That speaks well of the city's priorities.

However, there is more to developing communities than affordable housing. I say yes, spend some of those funds downtown. And continue to put the rest into affordable housing. A strong, vibrant downtown benefits us all. Plus, downtown needs affordable housing, too, doesn't it?

I never quite understood why we Americans want the freedom to do dangerous, hurtful things to ourselves and our loved ones.

That applies especially to those who have opposed restrictions on ATV use by small children.

A proposed state law will help, even though lawmakers have watered down the original, stricter language of the bill.

Meanwhile, this happens to a Greensboro child:

"A 5-year-old boy is dead from injuries suffered in an all-terrain vehicle accident mid evening Tuesday," the News & Record reports today.

A movie I wouldn't recommend, "The Island," is a loud, glitzy pastiche of ideas we've seen before in films such as "Logan's Run" and "Coma."

It raises provocative questions about cloning, abortion, medical ethics, etc. Then it does nothing with them , devolving into a car chase movie and a big-screen product placement gallery for bottled water and a Cadillac concept car.

To add insult to injury I put too much seasoning on my popcorn. My tongue hurts.

The Scoop has reported that Luther Falls has filed to run against Diane Bellamy-Small in the District 1 City Council race.

I know a little bit about Falls, whom I first met in the first grade at Bluford School and who also was a classmate at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Falls is a Greensboro native and has been involved in a number of community initiatives, including the Watchful Network, which promotes black entrepreneurism.

This should be an interesting race. Bellamy-Small has been criticized in some corners of her district for not being responsive enough.
And, based on what I know about him, Falls should be a tenacious campaigner.

This district needs and deserves a good race. Now it may have one.

I'm reading the third in three prequels to the sprawling science fiction epic "Dune," written by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, and based on characters created Brian Herbert's late father, Frank Herbert.

Despite that awful 1983 movie adaptation by David Lynch -- memorable for its stunning visuals but forgettable for its leaden dialogue, its incomprehensiblity and for putting Sting in a blue plastic diaper -- the Dune universe is full of provocative ideas about science and religion.

I could buy the notion of wars over a resource essential to transportation and found only on a harsh desert planet (sound familiar?). However, one idea in the book (first published in 1965) that I initially had trouble swallowing was that man still could be so driven by religion to do cruel, inhuman things in the year 10,191.

I am not so skeptical now.

Keith Holliday will not face an opponent in this fall's mayoral election -- unless someone mounts an unprecedented write-in campaign.

And that's not good for Greensboro.

No matter how solid a job he has done, Holliday deserves a strong competitor. Instead, he's getting a pass.

This council has had lapses in leadership and Holliday is not without some culpability.

That doesn't mean he doesn't merit re-election, but a city this big and diverse should be able to produce a serious challenger for Holliday. I've no doubt there's one out there ... he or she just isn't running.

Comedian and activist Dick Gregory last week on the N-word at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Atlanta:

"Do you think the Jews want the concentration camps changed to the C-word or swastikas changed to the S-word?"

Gregory's point, I think, was that the word shouldn't be converted to a less offensive euphemism to soften its ugliness.

I probably can agree on that. The News & Record has used the full word when we felt it was pertinent to the story, as in the reprint of a New York Times piece a few years ago on racial attitudes in eastern North Carolina.

I can't agree on the notion that gratuitous usage of the word is acceptable by anybody, black, white, yellow, brown or chartreuse.

Last week, while I was on vacation, Jerry Bledsoe posted the following comment to a thread on the Dudley/A&T riots of May 1969. At question was our decision to correct the wording in a July 27 Counterpoint column by Steve Flynn.

Allen,

Readers deserve an explanation.

Mayor Keith Holliday called Thursday afternoon, sounding perfectly giddy.

Having learned while vacationing in Colorado that he is running unopposed for re-election, he said, he was relieved that he won't have to spend the money and resources on an extensive campaign.

But he did say he intended to campaign.

"I have every intention of going to all the forums," he said. "I want to be as engaged by as many people as I can."

Holliday also said the search for a city manager was going well and that a successor to Ed Kitchen could be chosen by as soon as the "second or third week in September."

Problem is, he said, which person to pick.

"We've got some incredible candidates," he said. "When you've got so many good people to choose from, that makes it hard."

Holliday also said he stands by his decision on the city's controversial, temporary management of the Greensboro Generals, but he would have communicated it to taxpayers differently (as in sooner and more effectively). He did not speak of Project Homestead.

And he repeated his belief that being mayor ought to be a full-time job. He said he advocates a "hybrid full-time mayor" in which the city manager still would run city government. The mayor would do "mayoral work," he said.

That way, Holliday said, the mayor could be more proactive.

I still don't own a cell phone, but my resistance is waning.

Then somebody (you know who you are) does something rude or pompous with one and my resolve stiffens.

No way the FAA should permit cell phone use on commercial airliners.

Meanwhile, Judith Martin (better known as Miss Manners) this week offered her theory on our fascination with being heard and being seen as we're allegedly having private conversations:

"It's like children getting new toys. But the excitement is over. People should be over it."

Some words from the prologue of the book "Codename: Greenkil," by Elizabeth Wheaton, that bear remembering during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings ... any beyond:

"The full story of the Greensboro killings may never be revealed, not because there is a lack of information but because there are a multiplicity of perspectives from which we can view the facts.

"It is as though we were looking through a kaleidoscope and events fell into one pattern when viewed through the Communist Workers Party perspective, another through that of the Klansmen and Nazis, and yet another through that of the police and federal agents.

"Each pattern has its own logic, but when they are superimposed, the image becomes a jumble of contradictions and conflict. One can only see that there are no heroes in this story; there are many, many fools. ..."

A framed, black-and-white photo of Debra L. Lee hangs in my mama's den, smiling alongside my sister at a National Junior Honor Society induction ceremony at what was then Lincoln Junior High.
Debra, a pretty, fair-skinned girl with thick, curly brown hair and perfect teeth, was grinning slyly. Maybe she knew where she was headed even then.

After graduating in 1972 from Dudley High School, she went on to Brown University, where in 1976 she earned a bachelor's degree in political science with a concentration in Asian politics. She followed that with a law degree at Harvard and a master's in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Not bad for a home girl who grew up off of South Benbow Road.
But there's more. She serves on the boards of Eastman Kodak Co. and Washington Gas & Light Co. She is a trustee emeritus at her college alma mater. And she probably made more money last year than I'll make in the next 20. Or 40. Or forever.

But I'm not mad at her. Well, maybe just a little. And here's why: Lee is president and chief operating officer of Black Entertainment Television, and she will succeed Charlotte Bobcats owner Robert L. Johnson as the network's top executive next year.

BET, for the uninitiated, is a cable network that began, modestly, as a home for cheap programming: music videos, vintage movies, gospel music and infomercials. It expanded to include news, public affairs and educational programs. Then it boomed with the emergence of hip-hop music. Johnson, who started the network in 1979 with $15,000, became the first black billionaire when he sold BET to the media giant Viacom in 2000 for a reported $3 billion.

The problem with Lee and Johnson is not what they've done with their remarkable success at BET. It's what they haven't done.

A definite sign of changing times: One of my journalism students at N.C. A&T, Addie Whisenant, just finished her summer internship.

She did PR work for a NASCAR racing team.

Addie admits she didn't know a carburetor from a dipstick when the summer began.

She does now, and she hopes to make a career out of writin' about racin'.

Folks round here didn't want to name the new Northern High School for legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow, who was born in Guilford County.

Some said they didn't even know who the man was.

Maybe Hollywood will help. George Clooney is director and co-writer of a new independent movie, "Good Night and Good Luck." The black-and-white film stars David Strathairn as Murrow, who not only was an intrepid war correspondent, but who also dared defy Joseph McCarthy during the heyday of the Red Scare.

Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey Jr. also star.

The movie theoretically debuts on Oct. 7. That's because it typically takes forever for such releases to make it to Greensboro.

My car has been out of the body shop only two weeks after being smashed on the right front end by a hit-and-run driver in a parking lot.

So, naturally, a guy felt compelled to run into the other side this morning.

I was leaving a parking lot at A&T after class. He was in the left turn lane and for some reason decided to turn right. Problem was, I already was in the right lane. An even worse problem was he didn't see me.

He was talking to someone. Without looking right, he began to turn his steering wheel to the right. As I realized what he was about to do, I yelled, waved my arms and pounded my horn.

Too late.

I jumped out of the car and ranted like a maniac. Initially, I thought the guy had been using his cell phone because he was wearing a cell phone earpiece (and you know how I feel about cell phones).

But he actually was talking to co-workers outside his car. (He later let me use his fancy cell phone to call the newspaper.)

Anyway, I was back in the the body shop this afternoon. They know me there now. The office dog greets me like a friend.

I wonder if they have a Frequent Wrecker deal.

In a little more than three months, Trudy Wade would have been in her contested commissioner's seat for a full year.

With no end to the dispute in sight.

Enter Mike Barber,the erstwhile county commissioner who now is a City Council candidate, and who still doesn't lack for ideas.

His latest: Resolve the impasse between at-large commissioner candidates Wade and John Parks with a special election this fall ... or let Wade serve out a full two years and have the seat contested again in the next countywide elections in 2006.

Then from that point on stagger the at-large elections so that two seats (still with four-year terms) are up for for re-election every two years instead of having all four at-large seats come up for for re-election every four years.

"I think there are good arguments for it," he said

Barber says such an arrangement offers more accountability and allows the community to react more quickly to change the makeup of the commissioners.

"We are an ADD society," Barber said, referring to what he sees as the public's inability to remember indiscretions that occurred two or three years ago when elections roll around.

I still say give 'em all two-year terms and don't stagger any of them. That way we can clean the whole house if the need arises. And it already has.

For my money, the best candidate forums for the coming city election will be at Temple Emanuel on Jefferson Road in Greensboro.

Those forums typically are well-attended and feature thoughtful, challenging questions.

More details on the forum schedule are forthcoming. You'd do well to attend one; City Council members have a more direct day-to-day impact on your life than your senators or congressmen.

Really.

My own experiences in the classroom confirm my belief in the power of teacher expectations -- or the lack thereof.

One of the students in my honors newswriting class at N.C. A&T is a linebacker for the football team. And an architectural engineering major who wants to start his own business.

He really isn't that atypical of many football players I've taught over the years. The truth be told, the football and basketball players haven't been all that different from the general student population: Some are very high achievers; some are average; some are low achievers. Like everybody else.

Yet I've been tempted more than once to sell athletes short -- to view athletes with some skepticism. To assume that they are more motivated in class by the threat of punishment by their coaches than the desire to learn and grow.

I'm wrong to do that. And I actually know better.

Students like this bright young man periodically remind me of how poisonous and wrong-headed low expectations can be.

One of the things I cherish about teaching college students is that my college students also teach me.

I can't get this one out of my mind.

A former Tennessee physical education teacher who was indicted for having sex with a 13-year-old male student recently was sentenced to nine months in jail in a plea deal.

The teacher, 28-year-old Pamela Rogers Turner, faced multiple charges of having sex with the teen during a three-month relationship.

It's hard to imagine that a male teacher who'd had similar relations with a female student would have gotten such a sweet send-off.

But, you see, this former teacher is a woman. And a former homecoming queen. And she's really good-looking -- in the words of the local sheriff, "absolutely gorgeous."

Ed Cone gives City Council candidate Janet Wallace encouragement and input on her blog:

" ... You have to make it interesting and give us reasons to visit repeatedly.

"Link out to draw traffic in. Let us get to know you. Write in your own voice. Tell us where you've been each day -- show us, with pictures that you post to the blog."

Cone sighs: "I'm waiting for a local candidate to really get it right with a blog."

Ed has a point. On the other hand, you've got to give Wallace credit: Her record of community involvement is impressive and she provides more than thorough information.

She addresses a number of issues in great detail, among them incentives and Project Homestead. She also includes in her personal profile her Zodiac sign (Taurus) and her Zodiac year (Rooster).

Now we won't have to ask in the editorial board interview.

There'll be no hero's welcome for Art League at the next round of Truth and Reconciliation hearings Friday and Saturday at N.C. A&T State University.

In fact, there'll be no welcome at all.

League, cited for his bravery by author Elizabeth Wheaton during the first hearings in July, plans to be somewhere else.

The former Greensboro police officer-turned-private investigator who helped arrest a van load of heavily armed Ku Klux Klansmen following the Nov. 3, 1979, Klan/Nazi shootings, has changed his mind. He will not testify at the hearings.

Wheaton detailed his actions in her richly detailed book on Nov. 3, "Codename Greenkil."

Contacted at his office Wednesday, League, 52, said he's decided he wants no part of the hearings. He had said in an interview last month that he would readily participate if asked.

League seemed more than eager to share his perspective back then. All they had to do was call, he said. On that day League talked about Nov. 3 for more than 40 minutes. He phoned back later to say more.
His comments last week consumed eight short minutes at best.

"I just changed my mind," League said. "I'm just not gonna get involved in it. This is my choice."

In the Cindy Sheehan episode, President Bush has displayed, again, his inability to distinguish resolve from bullheadedness.

The art of listening, especially to a critic, can be a virtue, not a sign of weakness. Bush and his advisers obviously don't see it that way.

If you're not for him, you're against him.

Bush could have appeared magnanimous, courageous and truly sympathetic by meeting with Sheehan early on. From a strategoc standpoint, such a move also would have taken the starch out of a growing protest movement.

Rather than speak at Sheehan through surrogates and the media, all the president had to do was meet with Sheehan for a second time (what a wonderful gesture for a compassionate president).

Even though Sheehan has left Crawford, Texas, to be with her ailing mother, the president is on the defensive, forced to mount a campaign to defend his handling of the war (which the majority of the U.S. public apparently also questions).

Cindy Sheehan no longer may be on the president's front step, but she clearly remains on his mind.

Hip-hop mogul and fashion designer Sean Combs has changed his name again.

He has announced with great fanfare that he is removing the "P" from his name and will be known from here on simply as Diddy. He is well-practiced in calling himself new names. He has been, in recent years, Puff Daddy, Diddy Daddy and Sean Jean.

Such tumultuous news hasn't rocked the nation since Roseanne Barr became Roseanne, and soon after became merely Irrelevant.

Seymour Hardy Floyd's passion for the city election is showing. His blog on campaign matters is detailed and exhaustive.

He's exhorting all the candidates to blog, too. A recent letter to the editor hammered home that point, as does nearly every reference to every candidate.

I was so deeply affected by the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11 that I attended the funeral of one of them, flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw, of Greensboro, four years ago.

Bradshaw and others fought back against the terrorist hijackers of the plane, who apparently intended to usws it as a missile against a Washington target, possibly the White House.

The memorial service was so well-attended that I could find room only in the basement of Westminster Presbyterian Church, where I fought back tears for a woman I'd never known.

I've since read the account of Flight 93, "Among the Heroes," by New York Times reporter Jere Longman.

The heroic acts on the flight also are chronicled in the report by the 9/11 Commission.

Now, on the night of the fourth anniversary of the attacks,the Discovery Channel plans to air a recreation of Flight 93's hijacking.

Forty passengers and crew members were killed when the terrorists crashed the plane into a Pennsylvania field as crew members and passengers attempted to retake the cockpit.

Facing nearly certain death, I don't know if I would have that kind of fortitude. I so admire them for theirs.

We are beginning candidate interview season this afternoon.

Today's session will feature candidates for the Greensboro City Council's District 1 seat and will include incumbent Dianne Bellamy-Small and challengers Luther Falls and Charles Coffey.

Tomorrow we'll interview at-large candidates Florence Gatten, Sandra Anderson, Yvonne Johnson and Joel Landau. (We've split the at-large sessions in two because there are eight candidates. We've scheduled a second interview next week for the other four).

We typically conduct group interviews for the sake of efficiency and because it allows us to compare the candidates' stances on the issues in one setting.

Many of them don't like that format, but they indulge us.

We also ask the candidates to fill out questionnaires that we later will post online in their entirety.

If there are any issues you'd like for them to address in this interviews, please let me know.

We held our second election interviews today with half of the field running for three at-large seats on the Greensboro City Council: Florence Gatten, Yvonne Johnson, Sandra Anderson and Joel Landau. We'll interview the other four next week.

All gave strong performances. These won't be easy endorsements to make.

We touched on lots of sensitive issues, among them Project Homestead, Truth and Reconciliation, economic development and the Wal-Mart incentives.

But Gatten may have become most strident when we asked to take a fresh photo.

We like to update the files, we explained. That helps us avoid being in the position we were in recently when we ran a file photo of a mustachioed Police Chief David Wray, who had shaved his whiskers months ago.

Absolutely not, Gatten. said. You'll have to use the photo you've already got.

"I didn't have a mustache then," she said of her last photo session, "and I don't now."

Maybe the networks ought to stop pretending that daily Natalee Holloway updates are the most compelling news in the world (war, what war?) and come clean that they're exploiting her case for ratings.

Go ahead and start a daily series. At least that would be honest.

This email came Friday on the criticism in the paper of the Natalee Holloway case.

It is from Switzerland. The "junk news" reference is to Rosemary Roberts' Friday column.

It's not that I completely disagree with your commentary
on the Holloway media coverage, but to call it "junk news" and
comment on it the way you have done is callous and insensitive. Just imagine if it were your daughter... Find a better way to give your opinion -- follow the golden rule "treat other people as I would want to be treated" and ask yourself if that commentary reflects that, if it were your child...

Tamara Minick-Scokalo (US citizen)

This I'm writing in response. Wow. Who knew we had an audience in Switzerland.

Tamara:
I won't presume to speak for Rosemary Roberts, to whom I've forwarded your note. But the problem is not so much the criticism of the Holloway coverage -- or lack of sympathy for the family -- as it is concern with how, in fact, some media have exploited the plight of families such as the Holloways for ratings through ongoing "true crime" mysteries.

It's titillating. It's cheap. And it's easier to do than pieces on the war and health care.

And it still raises the issue of how certain missing people are anointed as national news while the vast majority are not.

Thanks for your note and we appreciate your reading us.

Sincerely
Allen Johnson

So smitten is the city of Charlotte with visions of a NASCAR Hall of Fame there that it held a parade last week to show its love.

They donned yellow shirts and marched and smiled while visiting NASCAR muckety-mucks mustered "Aw shucks, for us?" smiles.

Not everyone was impressed.

Groused one letter writer to The Charlotte Observer: "All the yahoos who lined the streets wearing yellow to impress the NASCAR committee just reinforced the stereotype of this part of the country as being only 'bout racin' and rasslin'."

But this guy clearly was the exception. Probably a foreigner, too. From New York.

People in Charlotte are drooling for NASCAR and they don't care if the whole world knows.

We don't do things like that in Greensboro. While Charlotte is a shamelessly rah-rah town full of deep-pocketed cheerleaders, we have our dignity in Greensboro.

You won't find us prancing around in yellow shirts rantin' about racin'. At least not in full view.

But we do have our own sports-themed civic jewel to dream about. A group of local boosters proposes a $23 million Atlantic Coast Conference Hall of Champions near the Greensboro Coliseum. And state lawmakers slipped a $2 million allocation into their new budget to "study" the idea.

Not to sound like I'm from Charlotte or anything, but the Hall of Champions is a brilliant concept.

We've managed to wedge among all our candidate interviews a sit-down Monday with Guilford County Commissioners Chairman Bruce Davis.

Naturally, we'll ask about what he and Commissioner Paul Gibson learned during their convention trip to Hawaii.

We'll also ask about the mood of the commissioners, who seem as divided and as snippy toward one another as ever.

And we'll address such issues as his leadership style, the county jail's problems and the county budgeting process.

There's still time for you to add your own 2 cents. Anything else you'd like us to ask?