News-Record.com

As part of the discussion that continues in the comment thread on last Sunday's column, here is a previous column I wrote on the issue on May 16, 2004:

BACK TO THE FUTURE IN LOCAL SCHOOLS: BROWN V. BORED OF INTEGRATION

And so it has come to this.

A Greensboro couple, frustrated by the choice of public schools in their district, decide to sell their house and uproot their family.

To save enough money for a new home in north High Point, they move in for half a year with relatives. "We are not that well-off," says Faye Thompson, 39, a plan coordination consultant for Aetna Inc. "This was not easy."

But she and her husband Delancey, also 39, work and sacrifice to make it happen. Faye Thompson plugs their expenses onto a computer spread sheet and devises a two-year strategy to eliminate debt. They even order water when the family goes out to eat instead of tea or soft drinks. "Honestly, it was a stretch," says Faye Thompson, pausing to sigh. "A big stretch."

Then they painstakingly set goals: Their two daughters' new schools must be close to home and work; they must be known for strong test scores and must be connected to supportive communities.

All the planning and sacrifices paid off. The Thompsons settled last year into their new neighborhood. Both daughters are doing well in school, Brittany, 13, at Southwest Middle, where she is a cheerleader, and Sydney, 9, at Southwest Elementary.

The Thompsons praise the welcoming atmosphere and fervent parental involvement at both schools.

And Faye Thompson loves their new home in the Southern Chase subdivision off Willard Dairy Road. More importantly, says Delancey Thompson, a supervisor at Southern Foods, his children's new schools are so close he can hit their front doors from his yard with a football. That wasn't the case in their old district, where a parental visit might mean an hour-long round trip.

The Thompsons' suburban exodus is a new twist on an old story; they are African American. Yet they have gone to the same extraordinary lengths that many white parents have taken to choose the "right" schools by choosing the "right" neighborhoods. Faye Thompson says she wasn't altogether thrilled that her family had to redistrict themselves into their schools, lock, stock and mortgage. "But you do what you have to do."

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education theoretically ended lawful segregation in public schools, we seem to be back where we started. The major thrust of the Brown case, remember, wasn't integration in and of itself - it was that racially segregated schools inherently weren't treated the same. The white schools got better facilities and materials. The black schools got what was left.

Flash forward to 2004 and the picture is all too familiar: the Guilford County Schools face the perception, and in some cases the reality, that all schools are not created equal. But now the segregation is both racial and socio-economic.

This is, of course, the crux of the contentious battle over the High Point high school magnet plan - an inexorable trend toward have and have-not schools, socially and racially. Soon the rest of the Guilford schools will face a similar reckoning.

Ours is one of the most segregated urban school systems in the state, almost as much as before 1971, when the then-Greensboro City Schools were forced to desegregate.

As you may have noticed, the News & Record reversed one of its primary endorsements this fall, adding Florence Gatten to our choices in the at-large City Council race for the Nov. 8 general election and dropping Don Vaughan.

Why would we do this?

"Who got to you?" one reader e-mailed.

Actually nobody.

Things simply changed. Campaigns are fluid and candidates reveal more about themselves as races progress.

That's why we continue to follow the candidates in community forums after the primary. And it's why we continue to study their qualifications and their stances on key issues.

In the primary, only a hair's breadth of difference separated Gatten and Vaughan. Since then, Gatten has surpassed Vaughan, as we see it.

Gatten especially impressed us on her commitment to managed growth. She also appeared more willing to take unpopular, principled stances than Vaughan, who has a reputation for playing it safe. She is thoroughly versed on the issues and has performed exceptionally in recent forums.

We've kept waiting for Vaughan to live up to his campaign promise of "proven leadership" by showing at least a semblance of political courage and initiative.

We still haven't seen much evidence of that.

To be sure, we don't agree with Gatten on some issues, among them her stance on the Truth and Reconciliation effort, which she (and Vaughan, by the way) voted to oppose.

The problem we had with her then was not that she was against the effort to revisit the Nov. 3, 1979, killings at Greensboro's Morningside Homes. But that she attacked its integrity based on evidence whose accuracy she admittedly did not confirm.

But this is not a one-issue campaign and we agree with her on so many other issues. In addition, Gatten appears more willing to move forward than stay safe. We respect that and Greensboro needs more of that kind of leadership.

By the way, we've reversed a primary endorsement before (sort of). When Billy Yow opposed incumbent Phyllis Gibbs in a Republican primary runoff for county commissioner, we sided with neither.

"Try as we might," we wrote back in May 2000, "we cannot in good conscience recommend either candidate in Tuesday's Republican runoff for county commissioner in District 5."

But sufficiently impressed that Yow had become better informed on the issues, we endorsed Yow over Democrat Jim McNally in the general election (guess we'll have to live with that).

The bottom line: Just because you've got an endorsement in the primary doesn't mean you'll keep it in the general election.

Or, with apologies to Carole King, will we still love you tomorrow? Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

Guy snatches a woman's purse at a bus stop in Charlotte. Another guy, a bystander, pulls out a gun and fires several shots at the robbery suspect.

The fleeing suspect is hit in the leg. A few minutes later, police find the man in a culvert under the street.

Why does this act of "heroism" seem creepier to me than upifting?

Just got back from a very, very nice black alumni reunion event at my alma mater in Chapel Hill.

I haven't been going to these affairs in recent years but I should. It felt so warm and familiar, even as the campus looks less and less like I remember it.

Sam Perkins, the former basketball star, was there. He still appears to be in playing shape. So was the chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees, Richard "Stick" Williams, a Dudley graduate who grew up in public housing in Greensboro and is now an executive with Duke Power. And the chairwoman of the newly accredited journalism program at A&T, Dr. Teresa Styles.

During the reception they were flashing PowerPoint projections of photos from way back when. Suddenly, there was me up there, with an Afro out to here. Geez.

As for all the new construction, they paved paradise and put up too many parking decks.

At Tom Phillips' prompting, the City Council has voted unnamimously to request records of an SBI investigation into the Project Homestead fiasco.

Which would be encouraging if it weren't two years after all the news surfaced about the council's repeated lack of oversight on how taxpayer money was being spent by the now-defunct nonprofit homebuilder. And the council's hindrance of city staff's attempts to more aggressively audit Homestead. And its insistence on blaming the media (in other words, the News & Record) for bringing this nettlesome stuff up in the first place, instead of dealing honestly with the obvious litany of screw-ups. And so on.

If the details of the report are released, and they should be, very embarrassing details about some council members are likely to come to light. But, frankly, the council had no choice but to all go along with Phillips' idea. Voting no would have looked awful, especially right before an election.

But the council ought to go further than the SBI report and devote a full meeting (or more) to an honest debriefing on what went wrong and how not to repeat it.

Sort of its own Truth and Reconciliation session.

About that about-face ...

As you may have noticed, the News & Record reversed one of its primary endorsements this fall, adding Florence Gatten to our choices in the at-large City Council race for the Nov. 8 general election and dropping longtime incumbent Don Vaughan.

E-mailed one reader: "Been hearing rumor that Mr.(presumably Jim) Melvin is grooming Ms. Gatten (wonder what's going on there?) for council/pssibly mayor? Could this be behind your endorsement yesterday?"

Fumed Chewie in an earlier blog comment: "Please don't tell me you base your picks on what Politicians say in Political Forums they're going to do should they retain their Political office. Please. I had no idea you were that easy to bamboozle. I hope that people ignore you completely on this one."

"Who got to you?" e-mailed another.

Um, actually, nobody.

Why then, to paraphrase John Kerry, would we vote against Vaughan after voting for him?

Things simply changed. Campaigns are fluid and candidates reveal more about themselves as races progress.

That's why we continue to follow the candidates in community forums after the primary. And it's why we continue to study their qualifications and their stances on key issues.

In the primary, only a hair's breadth of difference separated Gatten and Vaughan.

Since then, Gatten has surpassed Vaughan, as we see it. Gatten especially impressed us on her commitment to managed growth. She also appeared during her time on the council to be more willing to take unpopular, principled stances than Vaughan, who has a reputation for playing it safe. She is thoroughly versed on the issues and has performed well in recent forums.

We kept waiting for Vaughan to live up to his campaign promise of "proven leadership" by showing at least a semblance of political courage and initiative. We still are.

Vaughan also raised more than a few eyebrows when he addressed Project Homestead questions at two consecutive campaign forums with a jarringly insensitive answer.

Taxpayer money was misspent on the nonprofit homebuilder because the council couldn't predict that Homestead's CEO, the late Rev. Michael King, who ultimately took his own life, "was going to go nuts," Vaughan said at the NAACP forum, then repeated at the League of Women Voters panel.

The Simkins PAC's endorsements for city elections have gone out in the mail to African American voters.

Interestingly, the PAC chose to endorse only two candidates for at-large seats in the City Council race: Yvonne Johnson and Sandra Anderson. Anderson, the PAC'e endorsement said, "will be responsive and open-minded." Anderson was no surprise as an endorsement. She has deep roots in the African American community, where she has built 1,200 houses.

That could have an impact on how Florence Gatten and Don Vaughan fare in black precincts. Conventional wisdom had been that Vaughan would get the third nod from the PAC. Conventional wisdom obviously was wrong.

Foe Gatten in particular, this makes the road rougher. She polled poorly in black precincts in the primary. On the other hand, the issue is not only how many but who. So few people turned out for the Oct. 11 primary that Gatten still could rally in tomorrow's election.

Vaughan continues a losing streak in local endorsements, where Yes! Weekly, the Rhino Times and the News & Record all have left him off their endorsement lists.

The PAC's other endorsements:

Mayor: Keith Holliday, who is running unopposed. Holliday "has been more responsive to many of our concerns and initiated projects to improve race relations," the mailer noted.

District 1: >Luther Falls over incumbent Dianne Bellamy-Small. The PAC's letter described Falls as "an energetic new voice who will be responsive in addressing our needs and concerns." The PAC did not indicate what dissatisfaction it obviously must have with the job performance of Bellamy-Small.

District 2: Goldie Wells over Ed Whitfield. The PAC said Wells "has been a strong voice addressing landfill issues, recruiting businesses & promoting economic development for N.E. Greensboro."

District 3: No endorsement.

District 4: Newcomer Janet Wallace over former county commissioner Mike Barber. Curious. The PAC described Wallace as "sensitive to quality of life issues."
District 5: No endorsement.

The PAC mailer was signed by its chairwoman, state House Rep. Alma Adams,and its vice chairman, attorney R. Steve Bowden.

T. Dianne Bellamy-Small almost pulled a Don Vaughan during the stretch run of the campaign in District 1.

Bellamy-Small's sizeable primary margin nearly disappeared Tuesday as challenger Luther T. Falls Jr. fell by only 50 votes.

Small blamed an "African American leader" who assailed her "full force."

Would that be state Rep. Earl Jones, who held the District 1 seat for 18 years?

"Uh huh," she said.

Jones's newspaper, the Greensboro Times, attacked Bellamy-Small as unresponsive to constituents and also criticized her support for changes in how food vendors are handled at N.C. A&T's homecoming.

But Bellamy-Small may want to blame herself, too.

She has until only recently begun to talk to reporters again and she may be the polar-opposite of Councilwoman elect Goldie Wells, who is warm and open. Bellamy-Small is not warm and open.

She does not return phone calls.

She likes to tick off lists of places she's been and things she has done.

But has she really tried to connect to constituents as a person, one to one?

I'm not sure she has. And it nearly cost her on Nov. 8.

David Hoggard correctly notes that Sandra Anderson, as the highest at-large vote-getter in the Greensboro City Council race, doesn't necessarily have to be made mayor pro tem, although that has been the general practice.

Anderson might opt for statesmanship in this case and yield to Johnson's experience. Johnson is better suited for the position. Anderson would do well to concentrate on learning the job of city council member first.

She also owes a debt of gratitude to Johnson, whose coattails probably helped Anderson in heavily African American precincts.

Johnson and Anderson almost ran as a ticket and were the only two endorsed by the Simkins PAC even though three seats were open.

This sordid tale of the two Carolina Panthers Top Cats cheerleaders who, um, misbehaved in a stall (and one of whom punched out another woman) in a Tampa ladies room begs a question:

Pro sports teams are trying to polish their images (witness the NBA dress code, which I support, by the way). But what signals do they send, especially to young girls, by parading half-naked dancers and cheerleaders along the sidelines?

Oh yeah, according to the Panthers' media guide, the Top
Cats' achievements go well beyond shaking their groove things: One member is a mechanical engineer and another is a financial adviser (I haven't checked, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of the Tampa combatants isn't a rocket scientist).

So it's OK if you're really smart and half-dressed.

Florence Gatten's resurgence from primary also-ran to general election winner was impressive but not improbable.

As Gatten knew, the turnout was so low in the primary that it was more than doable to make up ground by motivating more of her supporters to go to the polls.

Gatten also benefited from Don Vaughan's late-inning slide.

Gatten, by the way, who was not endorsed by this newspaper in the primary, obviously didn't expect a News & Record endorsement in the general election either.

She called the office two weeks ago to ask when the at-large endorsement editorial for the general election was scheduled to run.

She said she wanted to hide that day's paper from her husband.

David Hoggard chides Channel 2 for valuing Oreos in its newscast over local elections.

Lex Alexander wonders what it says about the public's taste in news given the sky-high interest in the lifes and times of two Top Cats.

Says Lex:
"On ESPN.com, more people e-mailed it to friends Monday than any other story. The Panthers' Web site, which features photos of its cheerleaders, bent under so many hits that it was shut down."

Sandra Anderson confirmed today that she will accept the post of mayor pro tem, if it is offered.

A potentially divisive issue on the usually civil City Council is avoided.

But this could have nasty, folks.

Anderson had considered nominating Johnson. But it could have made the council meebers look like county commissioner wannabes.

Responding to a Fast Forward column my Jason Hardin,David Wharton offers an insightful post today on why so many places in Greensboro are unwalkable.

He's right. Even on streets with sidewalks, walking can be unpleasant and even nerve-racking.

Consider Lawndale Avenue, on which some stretches of sidewalks are so narrow that zooming cars and trucks seem to brush past you.

Or Battleground Avenue, where at some points telephone poles are plopped smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk.

I suspect these sidewalks were retrofits, added as clumsy afterthoughts beacause they weren't built when the road was built. And don't even get me started on West Wendover.

Wharton wonders if the City Council will exercise more leadership in developing sidewalks. I'm by nature an optimist, but the council seems to have a natural aversion to the P-word: setting plans and, even worse, following them.

"Is this a part of this city's history or isn't it?" Signe Waller asked during last week's community dialogue sponsored by the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Waller's husband, Jim, was one of five people killed during a clash between Klansmen and Nazis and Communist Workers Party demonstrators in Greensboro's Morningside Homes on Nov. 3, 1979.

The story made international headlines, and probably would have remained on the world stage had it not been followed almost immediately by the Iranian hostage crisis. Yet, judging from the Greensboro Historical Museum's total omission of any evidence of the incident, it may as well have never happened.

This is not a new mystery.

Waller asked the same question while promoting a book in the museum three years ago, News & Record columnist Lorraine Ahearn reported in 2002. A museum guide replied: "Not at this time."

Apparently not at this time either.

But, no matter how you feel about Nov. 3, 1979, it is a part of this city's past, for better and for worse.

By now, somebody somewhere is angrily cranking out a letter, berating this tired exercise in dredging up the past instead of looking to the future. Please, let me save you some time and help:

"Why must you continue to be so fixated on an event involving outside troublemakers who simply chose this community as their battlefield?
"The truth be told, I've little sympathy for either side in the events of Nov. 3, 1979. Both were irresponsible, despicable groups of people.

"This Truth and Reconciliation business is a waste of time, a brazen attempt to rewrite history to flatter the Communists who provoked Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazis to attack them in the first place.

"More than 26 years later, we're still subjected to the same old song. Move on, please.

"This would not be a story at all if the newspaper wouldn't insist on making it one. This event is history."

Exactly. And what better place for history than a historical museum? (As for the outsiders argument, the Wright Brothers weren't from Kitty Hawk, either, as I recall.)

The lessons of the past aren't always pleasant or flattering. But they can and should provide valuable insights and perspectives. They can be especially illuminating when viewed from a distance, with the benefit of cooler heads, deeper reflection and wider lenses.

Greensboro's official historian, Gayle Hicks Fripp, does acknowledge Nov. 3 in her book "Greensboro: A Chosen Center," published in 2001.
The big, lavishly illustrated volume devotes six paragraphs to the shootings, in the same dispassionate prose that characterizes the rest of the book. There are, however, no photographs, despite the incident's coverage, from start to bloody finish, by television film crews and newspaper photographers.

There's no arguing that the shootings do not and should not hold the same prominence as the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins. But you would think they deserve at least a nook or a cranny in the city-funded Historical Museum.

"There are a lot of stories in Greensboro's history that we're not telling," Fred Goss, the museum's director, said Friday.

But Goss also said that the Klan/Nazi shootings are among subjects being considered as the museum plans to expand its exhibits to present a fuller, more textured picture of the city's past.
"It's definitely one of the things we're looking at," he said.

Goss noted that a number of key moments in the city's history are underrepresented in the museum's programs and displays, including the Reconstruction era, the legacies of Jefferson-Pilot and Cone Mills and the city's rich sports traditions.

Goss said the changes and additions should add "lots of new voices" to the museum's offerings.

Coincidentally, UNC-Chapel Hill has opened an ongoing exhibit on part of its history that is comparably tainted with remorse and injustice. In an homage to, and an admission of, the significant role slaves and slavery played in the university's past, the school is offering "Slavery and the Making of the University: Celebrating Our Unsung Heroes, Bond and Free," which includes letters, photographs and bills of sale for slaves, and other artifacts.

"I think it's important for us to know our own history and to be honest about it," Chancellor James Moeser told reporters.
That's just as true in Greensboro as it is in Chapel Hill.

Somehow I managed to jog 10.5 miles Sunday morning, a personal record for me.

Now, I know for seasoned distance runners, that's not a lot, but for me it's a milestone.

There's a funny thing about running; you never know what kind of day you're going to have. On some days I "have my legs." On others I don't.

There's no rhyme or reason to it. Today I had 'em and probably could have have gone a little bit farther. (The cooler fall weather helps a lot.)

One difference in my running routine is I don't take my Walkman anymore. The silence, I've learned, is golden.

The IRS is investigating a Southern California church on the grounds that it engaged in political advocacy against President Bush. The church may lose its tax-exempt status.

The probe stems from an antiwar sermon by a guest speaker, delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election at Pasadena's All Saints Episcopal Church.

The guest speaker was the Rev. George F. Regas, who in his sermon opposed the Vietnam War and 1991's Gulf War.

The Los Angeles Times reports that Regas "imagined Jesus participating in a political debate with then-candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry." But Regas endorsed neither, saying that "good people of profound faith" could vote for either man.

Regas did, however criticize the war in Iraq, the Time reports, saying that Jesus would have told Bush, "Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine. Forcibly changing the regime of an enemy that posed no imminent threat has led to disaster."

The IRS responded with a letter to the churh saying that "a reasonable belief exists that you may not be tax-exempt as a church … "

According to the federal tax code, churches and other tax-exempt organizations cannot intervene in political campaigns and elections.

Having listened to the full audio of the sermon, I'm not sure why the IRS has chosen to bark up this tree.

The sermon is critical of both men for seeing war as an effective reaction to terrorism.

He also criticizes both Kerry and Bush for not dealing the campaign with poverty. In words that presaged the lessons of Katrina and New Orleans, he described that as a "moral failure."

But some other parts of the sermon are aimed squarely at President Bush. The president should not determine whether a woman should or should not have an abortion, Regas said.

He also noted the increase in abortions during President Bush's administration.

And he criticized conservative politicians for wanting to dismantle social programs that aid the poor.

Yet, as it turns out, the All Saints case is not isolated. Reports the LA Times: "The IRS has looked at more than 100 tax-exempt organizations across the country for allegations of promoting — either explicitly or implicitly — candidates on both ends of the political spectrum."

So far, none those organizations has lost its nonprofit status, but investigations of about 60 of them are ongoing.

I am behind on my fall moviegoing, but I'm catching up fast.

Saw David Cronenberg's superb "A History of Violence" over the weekend, which dupes you into thinking you're watching an action movie that could have starred, say, Sylvester Stallone, then sneaks in a clever, bloody commentary about our fixation on shooting and smashing people's faces as a way to solve problems.

Be warned, though: The violence in this film is not the comic book variety.

It's pouring rain outside. Drops of the wet stuff are pelting my office window. I have no unbrella. I don't care.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina has voted to expel any member church that "knowingly affirms, approves or endorses homosexual behavior."

Whatever that means.

As a Baptist myself, I find it interesting that this denomination has become so fixated on homosexuality when there are plenty of other sins to go around.

What about churches that knowingly affirm, approve or endorse:
1. lying
2. stealing
3. cheating
4. cursing
5. killing
6. coveting

There's a bloody war going on in a faraway land (based on misinformation) and here they are fretting over someone's private sexual preference.

Lord help us.

Lines of folks formed before midnight, many of them adults, to see the latest Harry Potter film.

Not to be a spoil-sport, but, frankly, I don't get it.

I can be a "cinema" snob, who prefers the term "film" over "movie" and who frets about why more serious works take so long to get here and leave so soon, but I like a good time in a theater as much as the next guy.

So, for the record, I have waited in long lines to see "Star Wars," "Star Trek" and "Lord of the Rings" installments.

But I have never seen a whole Harry Potter film.

I've tried when they've aired on cable, and I just couldn't sit the whole things out.

Now, I appreciate the power Harry Potter has had to get young people to read very long books. I appreciate that the books apparently respect kids' intelligence.

I guess Harry Potter is just an acquired taste that I never acquired.

Thursday's Counterpoint ("Good news from Iraq") was not the work of the writer who submitted it. It was adapted from a widely circulated e-mail whose original author is unknown.

This e-mail, or reasonable facsimiles thereof, have been appearing since 2003, according to the rumor and myth-debunking Web site, snopes.com.

It has been forwarded, like an old-fashioned chain letter, snopes reports, "under so many different names (most of them U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq) that it's difficult to determine who the original author was."

The facts appear to be accurate. The text of that letter simply is not original -- and that's a form of plagiarism, even if the misrepresentation is not intentional.

We often catch such submissions before they are published. We didn't in this case. However, some of our readers did.

Now, we don't mean to embarrass the person who submitted the piece. But the We have said this and we'll say it again: Please be certain that writing you present as your own is your own. You sign it, you wrote it.

The same standard holds for astroturf, or letters to the editor that are offered in the whole or in pieces, on political party or other advocacy Web sites, and that are cut and pasted together and signed as a local person's letter.

Please do your own thing, or don't do it at all.

This episode recalls a column I wrote last year about academic plagiarism. Its reprinted below:

Local blogger Sandy Carmany has no delusions about celebrity.
Yes, the veteran Greensboro city councilwoman has received rave reviews for the timeliness, candor and completeness of her Web log, "Sandy's Place," where she not only tells you what she thinks, but also where she'll be almost every waking moment of her life.

You'll break a sweat just reading her weekly itinerary.

But Carmany also is a realist. Her daily audience generally numbers in the hundreds, she told an audience at last month's Converge South Internet conference at N.C. A&T. That's only a fraction of the people who live and vote in her district.

Yet Carmany shouldn't undervalue the big reach of her little corner of cyberspace. Print and TV journalists read her blog. So do other bloggers. She's got an impressive pass-along readership.

Blogs tend to be bucket brigades of opinions, linked, quoted and alluded to from here to who knows where. Consider Ed Cone, a News & Record columnist who blogged Tuesday that the city's Bicentennial Commission contained not one representative from the local Jewish community. Next thing you know, there's a story in this newspaper, and the mayor is scrambling to address the oversight.

That's why it'd be nice if more elected officials followed Carmany's lead. Blogs are a very effective way to explain votes, explore issues and hold dialogues with others without having to be in the same room, the same zip code or even the same hemisphere.

With that in mind, here's a list of people who could be natural bloggers — if only they would.

Deena Hayes: The Guilford County school board member sees the world from her own unique perspective. She can be combative, thoughtful, puzzling, enlightening and frustrating. But she is always provocative. And she is one of the most difficult elected officials to reach, by telephone or e-mail. A blog might help.

Despite its inauspicious beginnings, the N.C. lottery will hit it big anyway,the News & Observer's Rob Christensen writes (registration required).

"North Carolina's lottery came into the world as an ugly little bugger that only a mother could love -- screaming, spewing and soiling itself," Christensen notes.

"Some folks tried to prevent the lottery's birth. And when it arrived, some immediately called it illegitimate.

"Still, despite the claims of bastardy -- and despite the ethical lapse du jour -- most North Carolinians eventually will consider the lottery a winner."

He adds: "The lottery passed because the people of North Carolina wanted it. Gov. Mike Easley and the legislative leadership wanted it. And all our neighbors were raking in millions from their lotteries.

"Despite all the ethical breaches, a poll conducted last week by the Elon University Institute for Politics and Public Affairs found that 70 percent of North Carolinians still support the lottery."

Some of the things I saw Sunday during a five-mile run downtown:

1. The classy new facade of the South Elm Street business Thousands O' Prints that was remade as a downtown promotion.
2. Continuing construction on the innards of the old central library on Greene Street as it's transformed into the Elon Law School.
3. A man foraging for cans in a city trash bin on Davie Street.
4. A trio of young men having coffee at a sidewalk table in front of a South Elm Street cafe.
5. Downtown Greensboro Inc. workers cleaning a sidewalk with a pressure washer.
6. Afternoon customers trickling into the Cafe Europa.
7. A neverending Norfolk Southern freight train as it rumbles past the Depot.
8. A lady resting on the rail of the Eugene Street overpass who smiles as I jog by and says, "Oh, I wish I could do that." (On some days, so do I.)
9. The trickling water of Milton Kern's "water feature" in an alley on South Elm.
10. Those nifty "Walk/Don't Walk" signs that count down the seconds to safely cross the street (a godsend to joggers and walkers alike).
11. An older couple walking hand in hand.
12. Motorists dutifully yielding for West Market Street Methodist churchgoers as they exit from Sunday service.
13. A billboard for bail bonds on Eugene Street that features a pair of hands clasping bars and the friendly message: "Hablamos espanol."

Wasn't Ed Hardin a bit tough on A&T's firing of Head Football Coach George Small Monday?

After all, consecutive 3-8 seasons are no cause for celebration. Neither was a loss to Division II N.C. Central.

But Small's dismissal was handled crudely and A&T has fired so many athletics officials and coaches so fast in recent years, you have to wonder what's going on.

Hardin writes:
A&T is now looking for its third football coach in four years, the search presumably being led by the third athletics director in five years. The men's basketball program is playing under its third coach in six years, and the women's program has its sixth coach since 1999.

This is insane. This doesn't just make A&T look bad. It makes us all look bad.

Not to mention the judgment of those doing the hiring.

Some communities and major retailers, including Wal-Mart, are rethinking the concept of the big box.

The Charlotte Observer reports that more inviting facades and creative designs that break the cookie-cutter mold are on drawing boards in the Queen City and elsewhere.

For instance, one proposed new Lowe's store in Charlotte will feature rooftop parking and condominiums along its sides. The rationale? The massive rectangles that typically characterize big-box stores have limited life spans and often become vacant eyesores once the stores opt for new locations.

Another is that big boxes simply tend to be ugly.

That's why Charlotte requires most big boxes to seek rezonnigs from its city council, a process that in turn gives the city a chance to force the issue on aesthetics.

Other towns and cities make such stipulations as
1. parking only in the rear of the buildings;
2. limited square footage;
3. that all stores comprise at least two stories.

If only Greensboro leaders had such vision and resolve.

The city's idea to buy blighted land in the Cedar Street neigborhood from notorious landlord Bill Agapion makes sense.

Even though the city will offer more than the fair market value of the land (that offer stands at $1.65 million), it turns the stomach to consider that someone like Agapion, whose penchant for violating housing codes is legendary, would be rewarded for being such a lousy landlord.

Adding insult to injury, the unrepentant Agapion has been relentlessly defiant all along, thumbing his nose at his critics. And he seems to have been born without a conscience.

David Wharton has blogged that the city should use its power of eminent domain to take the land, but that just doesn't feel right (he also is reconsiderinf that idea). The Supreme Court has ruled that cities are within their rights to use such power for the public good, but such a move would set a bad precedent in Greensboro. And if it the city did choose that nuclear option it would be cumbersome and could take years.

The pluses may outweigh the minuses: The city will recoup its investment in increased property tax revenues and whatever it gets from a private developer who presumably will buy the land.

Cedar Street will get a much-needed boost.

And if you believe in karma, Agapion will get what he deserves somewhere along the way.

(For some reason I keep thinking of the banker in "It's a Wonderful Life.")

I've written in previous posts and columns about a WTVD (Channel 11) television reporter in Durham who shared raw footage of the 1979 Klan/Nazi shootings with a class of mine at N.C. Central University in 1980.

If he is who I recall him to be, I fear he is the same man who died in Miami on Nov. 14.

The obituary in The Miami Herald lists him as Elmore Grady Philpot, 57, and indicated that he had died of a heart attack. If, again, he is who I think he is, he went by the name of Max Sinclair as a reporter and an anchor at Channel 11 in Durham.

A story in the Triad Business Journal says he was scheduled to testfiy at the Truth and Reconciliation hearings and that he had won a Walter Cronkite award for his reporter of the 1979 shootings.

I remember him as a friendly, easygoing man who had been eager to share with my fereshman and sophomore journalism and English students.

Fredrich Philpot, told the Miami Herald that his brother "was still having dreams about the [Klan/Nazi] murder."

My baby brother turned 45 this month. He wears an earring.

Gregory Hines, the dancer, actor and singer, also wore an earring until his death in 2003 at age 57.

Even Ed Bradley, 64, the venerable "60 Minutes" newsman, has interviewed heads of state and captains of industry — most recently the Prince of Wales — for more than two decades ... wearing an earring.

Be all that as it may, in the words of comedian/actor Damon Wayans — who also, incidentally, sports an earring: "Homey don't play that."
Not now. Not ever.

A fine movie well worth seeing (and rightly deserving of Oscar consideration) is "Capote."

The fascinating -- and frequently unsettling -- film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, who deftly captures the title character's trademark quirks and eccentricities without slipping into caricature.

"Capote" chronicles the research and writing of Truman Capote's landmark nonfictional novel "In Cold Blood." Particularly discomfitting is Capote's relationship with the two killers who murdered an entire Kansas family in 1959. Hoffman's Capote is alternately cold, compassionate, funny, cold, arrogant, insecure, charming, deceiving, sympathetic and manipulative. In one scene you chuckle; in the very next, your skin crawls.

No, this is not the feel-good feature of the season. But it's a damned good piece of movienaking.

Now we know what former Greensboro City Manager Ed Kitchen plans to do next.

He'll join the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation as a vice president in January, the News & Record's Marta Hummel reports.

"It's not as easy as you think," Bryan Foundation President Jim Melvin says in the article. "It's not just sitting around giving away money."

But Kitchen is well-equipped for the job.

It's good to see him in such a position to do good here. He's been a community asset for years.