News-Record.com

A former Tar Heel cheerleader turned civic cheerleader for Greensboro will retire next summer.

Priscilla Taylor, 61, will step down after 11 years in a position she says she expected to hold for three.

Prim but passionate, mannered but impatient, Taylor is driven in more ways than one. The Chapel Hill resident drives herself here at least five times a week to her day job at the Cemala Foundation and her "other" job with Action Greensboro.

That's about 25,000 miles a year, give or take a few. And a whole lot of gas money.

Taylor, who also is a member of the UNC Board of Governors, may hold a record as being the biggest booster of a city in which she does not live. Her impending retirement also means her role as one of the Big Three in Action Greensboro will diminish if not disappear altogether.
Come next summer she'll spend the majority of her time in the Southern Part of Heaven. She'll miss Greensboro, she says, "but I love my house in Chapel Hill."

Greensboro will miss Taylor as well. Taylor, along with Jim Melvin of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation and Skip Moore of the Weaver Foundation, are the "managing partners" of Action Greensboro. In that role, they have pushed and prodded and paid for a number of important civic and economic initiatives since they came together to form Action Greensboro in 2001.

If it weren't for Action Greensboro, there would be no First Horizon Park or downtown master plan or Center City Park or Elon Law School or at least a half-dozen other initiatives that have helped the city reposition itself socially and economically.

Taylor and Moore also have done a pretty good job of repositioning Jim Melvin — as in away from china shops and sharp objects. (You never know which wondrous words of wisdom might pass through Jim's lips).

They have been like two brothers and a sister, getting on each others' nerves occasionally but always pulling together when they most needed to, to make things happen.

For his part, Melvin praises Taylor's spirit and high energy. So does Moore. I'd like to praise them all — and to ask them please not to go anywhere just yet.

Judging by his comments to Mark Binker into today's News & Record article, Skip Alston has accepted his defeat for another term as state NAACP president with grace.

Whether he has learned anything from the experience remains to be seen.

Alston continues to do so little with so much.

He is clearly the smartest member of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners.

He is a savvy businessman and a clever politician.

He moves comfortably from the grassroots to the executive suite.

He can be a compelling public speaker.

But he is so focused on Doing What's Good For Skip that he misses opportunities to be what he really ought to be: one of the county's most effective servant leaders.

Let me type that again: SERVANT leaders.

The St. James homes fiasco is a case in point. How can an elected leader and (now former) state NAACP president possibly manage such a sad example of substandard, crime-ridden housing? And how could he possibly present himself in the next breath as a advocate for, and champion of, the rights of poor and black people?

Smart people benefit and grow from the lessons of their failures. Will Alston wake up or stay blissfully self-absorbed?

The poll workers looked lonelier than the Maytag repairman at Jesse Wharton Elementary School this afternoon.

I was the 22nd person to vote there as of about 1:40 p.m.

For photos of the Big, Mysterious Cat captured in Fisher Park the other day and a story, click here.

Garfield this definitely ain't.

WUNC Radio ran an interesting report on the Truth and Reconciliation effort this morning with quotes from the Rev. Mark Sills, Sandy Carmany, Tom Phillips and Nelson Johnson.

Even Phillips sounds less skeptical about the commission's progress thus far, though not sufficiently moved to say it's a good thing. He'll read the report, he says.

More intriguing: The Rev. Mark Sills of the T&R Commission says no evidence he's seen at this point to consider what happened on Nov. 3, 1979 a conspiracy.

And now this.

The announcement Monday that JP is merging with Lincoln Financial rattles this city's soul.

Say what you will about "net job gains," Jefferson-Pilot has been such an integral part of the community's fabric that the thought of its headquarters being anywhere but in the stately twin towers downtown is nearly impossible to accept.

Equally painful is the thought that JP CEO Dennis Glass will move to Philadelphia as a part of the restructuring. Glass had taken an aggressive role in community affairs in Greensboro, including his vice chairmanship of the Greensboro Economic Partnership. No matter what good regard for Greensboro he carries with him to Philly, his physical presence will be missed.

Glass not only had invested money in Greensboro; he had invested his personal time and leadership.

I met him last year at a dinner sponsored by the Action Greensboro Young Professionals Task Force (Yeah, I know I'm not a young professional, but they let me in anyway).

Here's what I wrote in an editorial a day later:

What's good for Greensboro is good for JP, Jefferson-Pilot CEO Dennis Glass said Tuesday night in an informal speech to young professionals.

There is, in fact, a renewed sense of engagement in Greensboro's future by its corporate captains -- a hopeful reminder that building a more economically vital city is all of our business.

Alas. Alack. Bummer.

Coincidence in a week in which Greensboro lost the Jefferson-Pilot headquarters and JP surrendered its name?

The lighted sign on the side of the Self-Help building downtown was only only partially lit the other night. It read merely: "Help."

You may have seen the ubiquitous blurbs in the paper soliciting your input on the editorial pages.

They've looked something like this:

The News & Record is exploring ways to make its opinion pages livelier, more open and more informative. And we need your help.

Thay even may involve our Web site or face-to-face activities such as community meetings.

We asked you to send those suggestions to us and were pleasantly surprised at the level of response.

Among some of the things you said:

1. First and foremost, get rid of Molly Ivins. "The first change you should make is saying good bye and good riddance to Molly Ivins," one reader wrote. "Her column constantly reeks of hatred for America."

2. Whatever you do, don't get rid of Molly Ivins. One reader wrote: "First and foremost, whatever you do, please keep Molly Ivins as a regular columnist. She is perceptive, humorous, and fair. She helps balance the conservative views so prevalent in the media today."

Hmmm, wonder what all those black reporters and editors for whom the News & Record compromised its standards over the years are doing these days?

Let's see, Rochelle Riley is a columnist for The Detroit Free Press.

Ruthell Howard is a copy editor for The Washington Post.

Byron McCauley is deputy editorial page editor of the Cincinnati Inquirer.

Cedric Bryant is a corporate recruiter for Gannett.

Stephen A. Smith has his own talk show on ESPN.

John Smallwood is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ken Campbell, Ph.D.. is a professor of journalism at the University of South Carolina.

Tanya Ballard is managing editor of GovExec.com but will join the washingtonpost.com staff in October as News Producer for investigative projects.

She is an A&T graduate, too, as is Cedric Bryant.

I'd say the News & Record has hired well over the years, wouldn't you?

He should have seen this one coming.

Skip Alston's tumble from the presidency last week of the state NAACP was almost inevitable. Alston, a businessman/county commissioner/political power broker, has been so relentlessly self-absorbed that it was only a matter of time before he tripped over his own inflated ego.

The real shame here is not Alston's defeat as it is his mission to do at nearly every turn what's best for .... Skip Alston. What a waste of smarts and talent.

Rarely has one person done so little with so much.

Brenda Cogdell, a local advocate for the homeless, was delighted by Alston's NAACP defeat. She has roundly criticized him for his role as manager of the perennially troubled St. James Homes apartments, whose residents have had to cope, over and over, with crime, drugs and disrepair.

"I have managed properties,"Cogdell said last week,"and I know you can make people comfortable in their homes. I was told you walk your properties first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening when you leave. If I can do that, (Alston) certainly can do the same thing at St. James."

Some have been reluctant to criticize Alston, for fear of the payback that often follows, but Cogdell said she didn't care. "What's he gonna do, not hire me to work in his barbecue restaurant?"

N.C. A&T charged too much for homecoming tickets ($50 and $45) this year and paid a price of its own.

The Aggies failed to sell out what is traditionally a sure sellout. To add insult to injury, they lost the game, too.

With a new video billboard, a relatively new fieldhouse and a state-of-the-art track, the school is reaching high and thinking big.

Which is fine. But sometimes you can be so eager to change that you forget to dance with who brung you, as they say. Memo to the Aggies' leadership: Don't move so fast you leave longtime fans behind. Or A&T may get to where it's going all right -- all by itself.

In case you missed it, the Winston-Salem Journal has editorialized on Greensboro's loss of the Jefferson-Pilot corporate headquarters.

"Greensboro," the editorial begins,"Winston-Salem feels your pain."

They're not kidding.

Winston suffered a similar trauma when Wachovia and First Union merged and the city lost Wachovia's corporate headquarters to, ugh, Charlotte.

In fact, Winston's probably has had more corporate upheaval than one city deserves, a lot of it at the hands of former RJR Nabisco CEO F. Ross Johnson (no relation), who packed up his corporate headquarters in the 1980s and moved it to Atlanta. Johnson had no merger to blame. He plain just didn't like Winston-Salem.

You see, Johnson was a fast liver -- a wild and crazy guy. And Winston simply wasn't wild and crazy enough for him.

I lived and worked in Winston then, and the mood alternated between funereal and furious. People lost their jobs, and even worse, they lost faith. The city defined its self-image through its corporate caretakers (mainly RJR, Wachovia and Hanes)and it relied heavily on them for jobs, charitable giving and leadership.

Smaller setbacks took their toll as well. Chicago-based Sara Lee bought Hanes. More recently, Krispy Kreme's fortunes have gone stale. a big downtown corporate headquarters/entertainment complex with the doughnut maker as its anchor tenant crumbled.

"Take heart, Greensboro," the Journal editorialist writes. "Life will go on. Some things may even get better. Necessity may prompt change, and change can be invigorating. Like Winston-Salem, Greensboro has a lot going for it these days.

"But nobody is going to pretend that it doesn't hurt to lose the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company. Especially when that company is so tied up with a community's identity."

No forced, awkward attempts at commiseration here, folks. They know whereof they speak.

Thanks for the kind words.

I am running out of patience.

My morning jogs are becoming more and more of an adventure these days because pet owners refuse to restrain their dogs.

I recently was attacked by two dogs on my morning jogging route, one of them a repeat offender. I have not been bitten yet(my colleague, Doug Clark, hasn't been as lucky in High Point, as he notes in today's column) just growled at and even bumped.)

One dog followed me, snarling and barking, as I passed and seemed poised at one point to bite. Scarcely one block and 45 seconds later, a slightly smaller dog bolted my way in a cul-de-sac with the same menacing disposition.

On a parallel neighborhood street, a pit bull wanders leashless and has attacked me at least three times (I once hit in the head with my Walkman when it got too close.) Fortunately, he took the day off on this particular morning.

To make matters worse, I had spoken to the one of the owners once before, very calmly, about the city's leash laws -- after his dog bared its teeth and brushed my leg.

Although he had seen the behavior of his dog (I don't know the breed, but it was a large animal with long, sharp teeth and a bad attitude) he appeared unimpressed that there was a problem. The owner smiled and shrugged.

When the same dog accosted me again, I was not as calm.

"If you don't do something about this dog, I will!" I yelled.

I threatened to call Animal Control. And I meant it.

The owner, a gray-haired man with a friendly face, shrugged again and said, "I guess I'll have to lock him up."

Well, yeah.

The second dog was not as imposing as the first but twice as mean. As the owner of this dog was nearby as well, I reminded her of the leash laws, to which she responded, "He never behaves this way toward strangers."

"He just did to me," I said.

Morning runs typically relax me, I thought to myself. Now I'm starting to growl.

As I have become addicted to jogging over recent years, I have accepted that someday sooner probably rather than later, I'll have to give it up when my knees or my back or my ankles or something else finally surrenders to Mother Nature and Father Time.

But not, I hope, because neighborhood streets are too doggoned dangerous.

A Charlotte area high school student was suspended for 10 days, later commuted to two, because of content on his personal Web site that school officials deemed racially offensive.

Does a school system have the right to determine what a student can or can't say or write away from school, on his own computer?

More on this very interesting dilemma on Doug Clark's blog.

Dennis Quaintance plans to build an eight-story, $23 million hotel, The Proximity, in Green Valley Office Park, reports Jim Schlosser.

The new design will pay tribute to the city's textile heritage. Wonderful.

As the elegant O. Henry Hotel attests, Quaintance and Co. know how to do a hotel right.

I only wish it were a downtown project.

Ironically, the new, 147-room hotel is inspired by an old downtown hotel by the same name.

Of course, it's Quaintance's money and he can do with it what he wants.

We're not supposed to report publicly what goes on in the Mosaic Partnership sessions, so I'll have to be a little cryptic.

This week's cluster session, in which small groups of partners discuss community issues, was rich, contentious, honest, constructive and very satisfying -- just the kind of dialogue Greensboro needs much more of.

The Mosaic Partnership is an initiative begun by Mayor Keith Holliday to pair community leaders of different races and ethnic backgrounds. The idea is to build greater trust and communication in the city.

If Thursday night's meeting was any indication, we're making progress.

Our endorsements for the Nov. 8 general election begin in Sunday's paper.

We revisit Greensboro's District 1 City Council race between T. Dianne Bellamy-Small and Luther Falls. We also discuss in our lead editorial the type of leadership the city needs from Mayor Keith Holliday, who is running unopposed for a fourth term.

The mayor shared his views on a variety of issues during an hourlong interview on Oct. 11.

The endorsements continue Monday with Ward 1 in High Point.

To everything there is a season, and a blog to every purpose under heaven.

Consider the case of a new Web log devoted entirely to Carolina Circle Mall.

Carolina Circle is no more, pounded into so much rubble and scraped away to make room for a new Wal-Mart. All that's left is red clay, clumps of uprooted trees and brush and scattered stacks of rusty steel girders.

Coming soon: another temple to low prices and low wages. Hoo-rah.

But the loving new blog keeps the memories alive and sees life through the shops and promenades of what used to be one of the most pleasant places to shop in Greensboro.

Titled "Carolina Circle City," and authored by a self-described 15-year-old Sagittarian named "Billy," the site covers any and everything you'd want to know about The Mall that Time Forgot -- and more.

Billy Coore of McLeansville is a ninth-grader at Pendle Hill Christian School. "A lot of my childhood was there," he says of the old mall. "I have many, many memories there." Back when he was young.

Adds his dad, John Coore: "He's been crazy about that mall ever since he was a baby."

So it was no surprise when Billy prodded his dad to take him out to the old mall to shoot photos and video recently as dozers and excavators picked it apart.

In a Q&A with himself about Carolina Circle, the young blogger makes clear his affection. For instance:

Q. What was your favorite version of the mall? Ice Rink Version or Carousel Version?
A. Carousel Version. I grew up going to the Carolina Circle with ... a carousel. Even though I was born after the ice rink years, if it wasn't for the carousel, I wouldn't care about the mall as much.
Q. What was your favorite store?
A. Montgomery Ward. It had everything from your electronics to your apparel. I remember that smell it always had outside and inside. It's too unique to describe. During the demolition, I could still smell it.

I can't say that I still smell the old mall. Some say I didn't smell the coffee, either, about its inevitable demise.

Some time ago I wrote a column about Black Entertainment Television's rump-shaking descent into sleaze and irrelevance.

I had expressed hope that former Greensboro resident Debra Lee, successor to Charlotte Bobcats owner Robert Johnson as the cable channel's CEO, might change BET's focus as low-brow and high-profit.

That may well happen.

Meanwhile, I've read Brett Pulley's unauthorized biography of Johnson, "The Billion-Dollar BET."

It paints a mixed picture of Lee, noting her brilliance and her impeccable credentials.

And noting an apparent affair she had with Johnson while each was married to someone else. Both since have divorced their former spouses.

In fact, Johnson fired his ex-wife Sheila from BET while the two were still married.

But she did OK, raking in millions in her divorce settlement and, last week, marrying the judge who presided over her divorce.

Don't buy the party line that the Simkins PAC is one big, harmonious family.

There is tension within the group's leadership, and some disgruntlement in the ranks that it is viewed as a tool of County Commmissioner Skip Alston.

Members of the PAC privately dispute that. And they resent it.

But the proof lies in the pudding. Who has the guts to publicly dispute Alston? Raise your hands, please. Please?

The Charlotte Bobcats' new downtown home arena has opened, and from this vantage point, only a few miles away, as the SUV flies, it has its share of fanciful flourishes.

Among the amenities, a sculpture of the Charlotte skyline mounted atop the scorebard and a section without a seats, but with a bar, for standup cheering and inbibing. There's also a mosaic devoted to North and South Carolina basketball and two contemporary posters of Germany's Queen Charlotte, one black and one white. There's an upscale restaurant and a play area for children. There's even an outdoor terrace.

But in one important area the new facility comes up short. It contains only 18,500 seats for basketball, nearly 3,500 fewer than the Greensboro Coliseum.

Charlotte may essentially have conceded the ACC Tournament to Greensboro, when it's in the state.

Think of it as Greensboro's newly announced Proximity Hotel. On steroids.

Plans have been hatched for a 42-story building in Raleigh, the city's tallest -- five miles from downtown.

The new needle-nosed skyscraper would measure 480 feet in height. It would be called Glen-Tree, and would contain a luxury hotel and 4,700-square-foot condominiums, each of which would occupy an entire floor. (Greensboro's tallest building is the 20-story JP tower).

And it would stand separately from the Raleigh skyline.

"I'm a big fan of this project," a Raleigh City Council member told the News & Observer (registration required). But, "Does that suggest that anything can be built anywhere?"

If you've got the cash and the idea, of course it does.

That's the problem with Greensboro. We've got plenty of tall buildings; they're just scattered all over, as if whoever was in charge of planning the town did it during his afternoon martini break.

The Koury Center's over there. Grandover's way over yonder. Then the O.Henry's back thataway.

And all we have to show for all that concrete and glass is a gap-toothed downtown skyline -- with one cavity (the old Wachovia tower).

Manm what I'd do if I had a spare hundred million.

True story. Guy calls the newspaper the other day and complains about all the talk -- and copy -- about hotel price-gouging at the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point.

That's an unfair charge, said the man, who also said he was a local hotelier, but would not reveal which one.

What evidence did we have of price-gouging? he said.

Well, um, the prices, I replied, adding we're not the only ones complaining. The Market Authority and market visitors have complained about inflated rates during market for years.

And hotels weren't the only ones. Restaurants had been known to jack up prices as well.

He huffed and he puffed and then he went nuclear.

You're only writing this kind of stuff because the News & Record is liberal and probably gets instructions from the French on what to write, he said (I'm not making any of this up).

So we agreed to disagree and I invited him to write an op-ed if he was interested in telling another side of this story.

And I thanked him from bringing to my attention how efforts to curb price-gouging were part of a liberal conspiracy.

Imagine, for a moment,that Guilford County has become mecca for public education.

Imagine that it demands quality schools and won't settle for less.

Imagine that it invests more dollars, time and interest in its students and teachers than any other county in the nation.

Imagine that newcomers don't have to cherry-pick school districts when shopping for homes here — they're all attractive.

Imagine that Guilford's reputation as a good place to teach is so positive and nurturing that new faculty are lining up to come here.

Imagine that its teacher pay supplements rank No. 1 in the state.

Imagine that every school has a corporate partner that provides human and financial support.

Imagine that new companies want to locate here because the schools and the quality of life are so exceptional.

Now step back into reality ... where instead we seem increasingly splintered and self-absorbed about what we believe our schools can and can't deliver.

Consider the ongoing reaction to Matt Williams' provocative, Oct. 9 piece on the impact of wealth on student achievement. I was not surprised by the wave of letters following the story, headlined "Dollars and Sense."

I was surprised at their tone, which was, in many cases, angry, snide and dismissive.

These comments came via e-mail this morning. They are re-posted in their entirety.

Read your editorial about the reaction to the story on wealth and
educational achievement. I've read enough of your columns to realize
that you're a fair minded person who sees two sides to issues. What

I'd suggest to you about the comments you quoted are that they aren't
a reflection of mean-spiritedness as much as fatigue with the issue of education.

When it is suggested that we have a "man to the moon" type approach to educational spending it ignores the simple fact that history shows
we've already made that effort and don't have the results to show for
it. Go back thirty years and look at the percentage increase in taxes
and the percentage of revenues that schools are absorbing.

We've made great sacrifices and neglected other needs, so it is hardly from a lack of caring that we are in the position we are in today.

All most of us are saying is simply that we need to put everything on
the table and see what works before going forward. The current
administration has not built trust among the public that they would
turn greater expenditures into results. In fact, having no children
in the schools and no axe to grind in any case, I can honestly say
that the current Superintendant of Schools and his administration come off as politically adept to an almost cynical degree, but managerially
inept.

I believe we need to examine the current situation carefully before
pouring more money into programs that clearly don't work. Magnet
schools and junk ciriculums need to be looked at carefully and pared
down to ensure that students can master a common core ciriculum.
Administrative costs should be reduced with dollar for dollar
transfers to class rooms. The community, and I mean that in the
broadest sense of the word, must come to an understanding of what
disciplinary requirements and policies will be and then they must be
uniformly enforced. And, I agree with you that disparities in funding > and facilities within a unified system simply cannot be tolerated.

But, having said that, it also needs to be understood that a first
step in correcting inequities may mean moving funds out of one school
to another before asking for more funding.

There are things we can advocate for outside the schools that would
help. I seriously believe that when the next cable TV contract is let out that we must insist that consumers have the right to exclude
networks promoting violent lifestyles like MTV from their basic cable
package. We need to raise taxes on alcohol to painful levels so that
students will go home to an environment that permits them to learn and grow. Raising funding for libraries and building new ones in poor
neighborhoods is something that cries out for action. Spending more
on child support enforcement is a a good place to invest that will pay dividends in schools. It is frustrating to see study after study that links births to non-married couples to poverty and see no consequences for the males who bring children into these situations.

New programs within the schools and new thinking might help. Maybe
the emphasis on a college track for all students is misguided. Why
not build trade schools that provide real useable skills for children
who won't go to college? Why not greater emphasis on life skills and
civic responsibility? Would dress codes or even uniforms diffuse some of the cultural conflicts and negative teen culture? Why not make massive cuts in administration and then put back only the parts that absolutely must be put back? And, why not make Superintendants sign a contract of expectations and incentives that they must meet to have their contracts renewed?

At the end of the day, all I'm saying is that it's short-sighted to
think that anyone who opposes a blank check to the schools doesn't
want students to succeed. Some of us just don't see what we're
getting from the investment and want new ideas and approaches and not
more tired rhetoric about "our children."

Dudley Bokoski

For the seventh time this year, a tractor-trailer wedged itself Monday under the Davie Street bridge in downtown Greensboro.

The street was closed at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive for several hours while the truck was removed.

This is (how to put this delicately) ridiculous.