Column Archive

2003 Columns

A brand new year, but not a new day
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
A new year has arrived, but it appears a new day has yet to dawn on our beloved Orange County Schools. It looks like the new board is choosing to define itself, in part, by bodily functions and how they'll guide the school district.
New board member Randy Copeland apparently believes that the district's choice of a new superintendent should be one that works through his intestinal tract without incident. Rather than using his head and contacting the references provided by each of the candidates, Copeland wanted to "go with his gut."
This innovative new approach to personnel selection still managed to "eliminate" candidates number one and number two, thereby constipating Copeland's strategy, but we have to give him credit for trying to push through a new idea.
Don't be too hard on the new board. They just arrived from the North Pole, where no one ever heard of the Open Meetings Law.
I take board members (old and new) at their solemn word when they declare that because there were no reporters in the room with them, they thought it was OK to vote. The problem is the practical application.
On those rare occasions when school boards go into permissible closed sessions, it's often at the end of a school board meeting. Historically, Orange County's meetings have run into the wee hours of the morning, so a closed session could end at one o'clock in the morning - long after local reporters have filed their stories or turned into pumpkins.
So when the board emerges from closed session and then votes on firing a principal or buying property or something that's really big news, the reporter depends on the integrity of the system of doing things to get the news out to the citizens.
We don't all have the "Copeland gut" to go by in these situations. We parents and ordinary folk need rules and procedures to follow along on our song sheet. Rules like keeping minutes and voting in open session - even if no one is looking.
This brings me to the bodily function of hearing - as with having a deaf ear. The board has not distinguished itself in the way that it hears things. For example, I reported on these pages some months ago that now-former board member David Kolbinsky had not paid his property taxes in this county - for several years.
This, according to my legal sources, was more than sufficient cause to remove Kolbinsky from the school board. This should have been done whether he had five weeks, five months or five years remaining on his term.
But somehow the Orange County board couldn't hear that information. Though it never referred the matter formally to the State Board of Education, that board's attorney was certainly aware of the facts. He was a source for my reporting on the story.
How is it then that the matter simply died quietly? Despite her insistence that the public should be heard on the selection of a new superintendent, then-chairwoman Dana Thompson did not lift a finger to get the Kolbinsky matter to the state board and therefore back to Orange County for a public hearing. It would seem she didn't want her fingerprints on his removal.
Funny how one thing should be so public and the other so private. But that's the problem with the "gut" strategy. One little hiccup in your diet, and everything turns to ... well, you get the idea.
All of these instances lead one to think that we've just swapped some body parts around and are stuck with the same old system. We no longer have Bob Bateman's backslapping system to tell us who's up and who's down in the school district. Instead we have Randy Copeland's vapor cloud. Both systems stink.
Rather than a vision for better and more accountable schools from fresh new candidates, we have Libby Hough telling us that e-mails circulated by the board discussing superintendent candidates were really just chat about how great everyone was getting along.
She couldn't "see" any importance in the few comments about the candidates. Rather than vision we should trust the blind copy of an e-mail or two.
The good news is that Rick Kennedy, a former board member, is wrong about his observation that "it's the children who suffer" for all of this monkey business. The children of our school district are those affected the very least by these high jinx.
Teachers and parents pick up the slack for nonsense like this. They make do with what they have, ignoring promises of newer, better equipment or hiring new staff members to reduce class sizes. They're used to being jerked around by pathetic political squabbles over whether or not to sod the football field because of a 100-year drought.
And while we're taking about body parts, they've learned to turn a deaf ear to the empty promises of putting the academic needs of children before all else. They're the ones who have to actually deliver on some of these lofty ideas, so they're trying actually get on with it.
So while Randy Copeland waits for the next bubble to work its way though his system and onto the school board's agenda, my son may go another entire marking period without a permanent teacher in his Honors Economics, Law and Politics class at Cedar Ridge High school.
Pass the Alka-Seltzer.

Board foundering in controversy
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
All kidding aside, I guess I owe Randy Copeland an apology. Last week, I attributed a comment to Copeland that apparently was not his and I should clear up right away that it seems he was not the Orange County school board member who said he wanted to "go with his gut" when choosing a superintendent.
Who did or didn't make the comment is long past important now. This board is already in much deeper water. Worse, it has responded to its first serious error - an illegal vote, taken during a closed session - by looking outside the seven seats at the table for blame.
When not pointing angrily at one board member who has been talking to the newspapers, the new board has reacted to its error by shaking its collective fist at the media for the unthinkable crime of reporting the news.
Most elected officials run for office to serve their community and have the best of intentions when they say they wish reporters would just go away and let them do what they were elected to do. There's no doubt that it's a difficult dance when, for example, a board is trying to negotiate a real estate deal and wants to keep the location and price of land quiet until the deal is done.
The publicity of a pending deal can affect prices overnight, so the board is allowed to discuss these things in closed session. That doesn't mean secrecy that's never breached; it's just a degree of discretion that's permitted because it is necessary.
Likewise, in making a big hiring decision, the board is allowed some time to talk things over candidly among themselves. Talking, as most of us know, isn't doing. In order to act, the board must come out into the sunshine for all to see.
Evidence of how badly the board has misunderstood this is found in a draft press release that new board member Libby Hough circulated among her colleagues last week.
The board, said the release, "would like to address the public directly" in response to letters and stories that have been run in this newspaper regarding the botched superintendent selection vote.
At the outset, this presents a ridiculous pair of suggestions - that a press release is needed for the board to express itself to the public and that this (or any other) newspaper should oblige by running the release unedited, then sit and be quiet.
"It is true that the process has been a long and arduous one, and that there have been missteps by individuals and the board as a whole," the release goes on. "However, it is also true that there are different interpretations of what has transpired over the last few months. It is our intent to address each of those concerns," writes Hough.
"However, at this point it is not constructive to continue this dialogue in the newspaper. The issue has taken on a life of its own and has become counterproductive."
Did you think you were seeing things? It was at this point I started rubbing my eyes, too. But there it is - a press release that indicates elected officials should not continue a dialogue with the public through the newspaper because doing so is "counterproductive."
The interpretation: We now announce through the press that we will no longer be talking to the press about this issue because it's controversial. We want to speak only directly to the voters.
I guess we can each expect a phone call then?
And it gets better. Later on, the not-yet-released release says, "It is the opinion of the board that further discussion of this issue should happen in a public setting with all board members present and with the assistance of an unbiased third party."
As long as that party is not embodied in a reporter, I guess.
The controversy the board is now swimming in up to its collective neck is one that has an illegal secret vote at its core. To try and dig its way out of the controversy, it is convening its collective mind to form a collective opinion and is doing all of this via e-mail - outside the public's purview.
And all of this is to form a group opinion about how to tell the newspaper that future discussion on the illegal secret vote will happen in public with all board members present.
Are you keeping up?
It's too bad these elected advocates for our children don't take the time to read the instrument of their contempt - the newspaper. If they had, they would have educated themselves throughout last fall on how to avoid a public relations disaster.
All they had to do is read story after story of Marcia Conner's non-compliant deals to award contracts and her public relations management-by-press-release-take-no-questions strategy. When she actually did live interviews with reporters, she looked like a hostage blinking the word "t-o-r-t-u-r-e" with her eyelids.
Conner is not a person who enjoys the spotlight. One wonders what the heck she's doing in the job she has, but that's another day's rant.
That parallel universe brings the Orange board's murky question into specific relief - if you don't want the task of advocating for kids' education and making multimillion dollar decisions in the public arena, then leave the most public of forums (elected office) and volunteer quietly elsewhere.
Cursing the darkness won't affect the right of citizens to own and use flashlights and it's a sorry example for teaching civics.

Twenty-one years and counting
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Forgive me. I feel old today.
Yesterday, my older son turned 21. Now, how in the world did that happen?
It seems like only yesterday that he kicked me to tell me he was on the way, arriving a week early in a horrific snowstorm. The night I labored was the very night the Florida Air Flight 99 hit the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., and slipped into the icy Potomac River.
The same storm that landed all those people in that freezing water had my husband and me skating up the roads to Durham County Hospital at one in the morning.
Brian's birth was an event that transformed my entire life. When they handed his squirming little body to me, I grew a steely spine and the size of my heart tripled. I became someone's mom.
And I developed weird body parts.
Eyes grew into the back of my head. Forget those lipstick cameras that monitor everything going on in your house. Nothing's more effective than a mom calling down the hall, "Whatever you're doing in there ... knock it off!"
The occasional knot in my stomach was an extremely reliable early warning system that what I was seeing might lead to trouble. Brian was a very easy first child - very cautious, not a climber and quite content to leave me ample evidence when he'd gotten into mischief.
When Brian was born, Ronald Reagan was president, interest rates were double-digit and the popular strategy for women to get ahead in business was to dress like men, show no "weakness" and work 60 hours a week.
I didn't care that most of my friends were dropping out of work long enough to have a baby and bounce right back. I stayed home with Brian and played full-time mommy.
We ate more peanut butter and jelly than steak and drank more apple juice than champagne. We spent many, many nights of reviewing the channels just one more time for what to watch, instead of paying for a sitter and going out to dinner and a movie.
In elementary and middle school, we stayed on top of the homework and knew almost all of his friends and their parents. We stayed in Brian's life, though I'll bet he often wished we'd back up just a little.
In high school, we let go. We let him make mistakes. We watched him stumble and recover. I once spoke to his biology teacher at Orange High and thanked her for giving him a terrible grade for one marking period. She looked stunned.
"He didn't do the work," I told her. "He earned this grade and I'm grateful that you gave it to him. Meeting a standard is a very important thing - it's the only way you learn what matters," I said.
In later years, we did things that caused some of our friends to scratch their heads. When Brian turned 16, we didn't give him a car for his birthday, as so many of our friends had done with their kids.
They also complained mightily about the frequent accidents their kids had due to inexperience or the many bad drivers that seemed to hover around their kids.
None of this makes my husband or me a hero. None of it means we'll write a best-seller about the brilliant idea we had - that parents should sacrifice if necessary to give themselves to their kids.
To us, this was ordinary stuff. This is what our parents did.
No, Brian is my hero. He's smart, funny, charming and handsome. He's found his way through N.C. State and will graduate this year. When he made the dean's list last semester, I called everyone I know and screamed it into the phone.
His friends, many of whom he's had since his first day at Grady Brown Elementary, are great people.
That makes all that peanut butter and jelly and apple juice taste a lot like steak and champagne in my memory bank.

Carrboro: A little town that could
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
They think they can. They think they can. And so, when the opportunity presents itself, the good people of Carrboro speak out occasionally to raise one fist in the air - to say "no."
Many have opined about this. Many have dismissed the exercise. But when considering the record, Carrboro should be given its due. In short - the little town that could has been right about some pretty important stuff.
Just one example: When the announcement came that Time-Warner and America Online were going to merge into one gargantuan company, the little town of Carrboro, a Time-Warner franchisee, said "Uh, not so fast."
It so happens that franchisees had to vote on the merger to approve it. Carrboro took that opportunity to speak its mind about the perfectly lousy service that its citizens have endured under the Time-Warner regime.
While Time-Warner-AOL officials were gushing about the awesome synergy that the new enterprise would produce, Carrboro was asking a few questions. Simple questions, like these:
How can you build an empire when you can't get the buzz off the channel that carries our meetings?
What measures will be taken to ensure that customers can use other forms of Internet access if they don't want to use AOL?
When will Carrboro residents get a straight answer about their rates and when will those rates be aligned with service in Chapel Hill?
I went to a lot of meetings back then as I was covering the Board of Aldermen. I heard a Time-Warner representative stand on a perch of shifting sand and tell one half-truth after another to the board, trying to get the little town that could to say that it would (approve the merger).
Time-Warner officials handed me a line of baloney about not being able to give discounted services to qualified senior citizens who live in Section 8 subsidized housing. They told me they couldn't do this because it would amount to discrimination.
I called other Time-Warner offices around the country. Several of them told me the same thing - that discounting basic cable to poor people is discrimination. The FCC, however, said that the cable industry is encouraged to do that very thing.
If you owned 100 shares of Time-Warner-AOL stock at the time of the merger, it was worth around $10,000. Today, it's worth less than $1,500, give or take a chip off the old computer.
With all the talk about developing high-speed access and all its lofty ideals of great expansion delivered through the efficiencies of joining the companies together, the big bad behemoth ignored the one little bitty thing that would make all the difference - customer service and a quality product.
So grand and so huge is the vast merged company that the sound on the Board of Aldermen meeting still stinks, and there's apparently absolutely no one who cares or seems able or willing to fix it.
This programming provides an important connection between the local government and the people. It helps the Aldermen be heard and understood by those citizens who can't always get to their meetings - the elderly, the disabled.
The little town that could is a place that is especially attentive to the needs of those citizens - not just because they vote ... because they contribute, they matter for the most basic reasons - the most human reasons.
Carrboro has made the journey that our forefathers perhaps hoped for but never codified in the Constitution, that famous framework for freedom. That most essential American document outlines how Americans' freedom is protected from tyranny and sets out how the people shall empower (and limit) the government.
It says nothing about how a government might empower the citizens to build a community. This, indeed, is what the little town that could seeks to do through its leaders - elected and otherwise.
So when Carrboro weighs in on issues as vast as racism, free speech, war and peace, it is speaking to the record of its own history. A community, after all, is a social construct, one that can learn from its own history and void its repetition.
When Mayor Mike Nelson suits up as Don Quixote and starts talking about tilting at a media giant, it's not because he expects the world to tremble at his disapproval or awaits a call from CNN to appear on Larry King to explain himself.
It's because when he votes, he's supposed to believe that he's voting for the right thing - the thing that's best for Carrboro and for the larger community. It's because he's the mayor of the little town that could. It's his job to step out and encourage the train to think it can make it up the hill and carry the people along to a better tomorrow.
Nelson and his colleagues will make decisions along the way that will stir things up, that's for sure. If Steve Case, AOL Chairman, had just listened to Carrboro, his customer, and focused on improving the quality of the most basic cable product (the picture, the sound and restoring service quickly after outages) he might not be looking for a new career right now.

Watching watchers: What to watch
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
A group of frustrated Orange County Schools' parents have banded together to form a group called "Board Watch." Their goal is said to be the protection of sunshine in board operations, but I wonder.
If Bert L'Homme were picking out drapes for the King Street office, would these folks be designing their new Web site? I don't think so.
The group's spokeswoman, Jackie Wolfe, said that following the board's decision to re-open the search for a new superintendent was announced, a group of parents collected in the parking lot to plan their next move.
Yes, their next move - as with a game of chess. Recall that the group first went to that meeting with 20 speakers lined up and petitions signed by 450 people. They went there to win the day, advocating for their candidate.
When the board, to its singular credit, was not intimidated by this show of force, the armies retreated and planned a flanking move, just outside the windows of the boardroom.
When they lost - and probably only because they did lose - they decided they were "concerned" about how the board does business. It's baloney.
If they were concerned with how the board does its business, they'd have made this decision and announcement before that meeting - before the outcome was known.
This ball of wasted energy could have stood proudly and scolded the board, admonishing that this was not about the outcome, but of the process. That would have been an effort to get behind, a force to be reckoned with.
But first, they thought they'd try one last time to use the very thing that persuaded the board against L'Homme as a candidate. First, they tried a full-court press of political pressure.
All these parents are to be commended for caring enough about their schools and their kids to go to the lengths they did in trying to get a quality superintendent candidate into the job.
And they should all be ashamed of themselves if they pick up their marbles and go home now. The fact is that lining up row after row of supporters and packing meetings is an absolutely wrong-headed approach to getting a superintendent of choice hired.
Far be it from me to be the great defender of the Orange County school board, but this time, the board's collective "gut feeling" was right. They were collectively repulsed by the amount and kind of pressure being brought to bear on L'Homme's behalf - most especially that brought by member Dana Thompson while she served as the board's elected leader.
It's the role of the board chair to run the meetings, to assure fairness and to facilitate the development of consensus to every degree possible. This must often be done at the expense of the chairman's own opinion, which explains why this type of leadership is not for everyone.
If you're a person of strong or extreme views, subordinating them for the greater good of the group is sometimes too difficult.
By most accounts, Thompson repeatedly used her position to manipulate the process in favor of L'Homme's candidacy. Whether or not any of her colleagues might have seriously considered L'Homme, they responded as hostages to these tactics. They didn't like the "or else" that seemed looming at the end of the sentence.
Good for them. A point too often lost in this bitter debate is the role of L'Homme himself. Where was he during all this?
Assuming the most innocent explanation, that of a whirlwind of spontaneous support from all those parents, L'Homme should have held his hand up and said, "thanks, but no thanks," to their offers to lobby for him.
No, he should have said ... if I win this job, it will have to be on my own merits. If I get this chance, I will have to have a relationship of shared goals with the board and I will have to win their trust.
You don't win trust at political gunpoint, he should have told them. I'll be the board's only direct-report employee. They must have confidence in me in order for me to be effective over the long term.
Show me your support after I earn the job myself, he should have said. Come to meetings, raise money at your schools, volunteer in classrooms and above all else, care about the kids who are not your own.
Care about them with as much fervor as you would your own. That's what will make your school system strong, not one person versus another at the helm of the administration. Focus your energy there and I'll do my best to earn the board's trust and confidence. Though I may fail, you will not and yours is the more important victory.
That's what he should have said. Those are things that a visionary leader who is interested in empowering parents would say. Those are things that help people focus on a fair process, not on winning.
And since they are things that L'Homme apparently thought were secondary to his professional ambition, I applaud the school board for its decision, despite the fact that they stumbled on their way to it.

Columbia's rainbow of scientists
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
In September 2001, I received an e-mail from my uncle. It was one of his typical "So there I was ..." missives about his computer giving him trouble. He's a wonderful storyteller and normally I would have hung on every word, enjoying his silicon adventure.
Instead, I immediately wrote a terse response. "Turn on your television," I said. It was Sept. 11.
My cousin, his daughter, was supposed to be in an airplane the next day, leaving on a trip abroad. I called my uncle to be sure I had the day right. For us, at least, there was that consolation - Margaret wouldn't be stranded in New York, waiting for America to fly again so she could return to Seattle.
Saturday morning, as Rick and I watched "Ripley's Believe it or Not" (yes, really), my brother called. He said the shuttle had lost contact with Houston. It looked like another horrible day was before us, and so it was.
I was at work in downtown Durham when Challenger exploded 30 seconds after it launched. We gathered in the conference room to watch the news coverage, to see if what we'd heard could possibly be true.
As we watched the terrible images, one of my co-workers became more and more upset. She didn't know any of these people, but she was connected to that mission. Before working for Central Carolina Bank, she was a teacher.
In a nutshell, that's why this story commands the spectacular coverage on the front page of Sunday's Herald-Sun and other newspapers. Almost every American can watch this tragedy and be affected in some way.
When I was a girl, there was Amelia Earhart to admire. Women who were pilots or doctors or great scientists were women you usually could name. They were the rare exceptions.
Earhart was an especially difficult example, since she was famous mostly for getting lost.
And so for me, the shuttle program was all about the veritable rainbow of people who were on that flight. Dark-skinned and light, men and women, surgeons and scientists - all searching for a new discovery, a new truth.
And now, we'll all learn new truths about the space shuttle and the people who flew it. Don't let anyone tell you that such flights are routine. That's the guilt of the national television news media talking.
I was in Central Florida in November, arriving at my hotel just minutes before a nighttime launch. The clerks were helpful in hurrying our check-in so that we could go outside to watch. We were excited. So were they.
On Saturday, my friend Jamie, a resident of the town of Winter Haven, was working along with his 8-year-old daughter, making breakfast. As is their routine on a launch day, they were watching the NASA channel. Jamie's daughter commented that the big boom was going to wake up mommy, who was sleeping in.
When Jamie, a pilot and flight instructor, heard that Mission Control had lost contact, he dropped into parent mode and changed the channel. Mommy's lazy Saturday was interrupted as he went into the bedroom to watch the events unfold.
How is it that seven people's deaths can be so compelling, so devastating and so important to the future of America's mission of scientific discovery?
America's role in the world of science and innovation cannot come without tragedy. Exploration is for all of us, and bearing the cost of risk is ours, too. The events of September 2001 and those of Saturday reminded us of our capacity to bear the burden of being free - to think, to question, to express and to explore.

Great fun: Go ahead, read my mail
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Probably the best part about this job is the really great stuff that people write to me about. After all this time and so much experience with it, I still love getting mail as much as I did when I was seven.
Months ago, I wrote a column about the re-opening of Allen &Son's Barbecue, which is located right near my home. I went on about how much we enjoy that fabulous establishment and how gratifying it was to see the community helping out the Allen family in getting the doors re-opened.
Months later, I received an envelope in the mail that contained a lovely letter from a member of the Allen family, expressing gratitude for the kind words. The family was very appreciative for those who helped them re-open the restaurant and was pleased that I'd noticed that.
So often good news like that - neighbors helping each other - slips past us and is thought of as routine. It certainly has trouble meeting the standard of what's newsworthy.
I got a letter from one reader in Pittsboro that was response to a column I'd written about traffic cameras and the automated issuance of citations.
"I, too, received one of Charlotte's citations," wrote the reader, who asked that her name be withheld. "The photo showed a dark, small car at the intersection ... showing my license number."
She called the N.C. Department of Motor Vehicles immediately to complain. She and her car have never visited the Queen City, she said. How could they have this "evidence"?
She received an apology and a quick "we'll fix it," she said, but wanted to drop me a line to let me know that my concern about a hypothetical situation turned out to be exactly what had happened to her.
And how many people would have just paid that ticket if they'd ever been anywhere near Charlotte, she asked. Awful good question.
I get lots of funny e-mail when I've managed to strike a reader's funny bone. Barbara Robertson enjoyed a column I wrote about the humor of Southwest Airlines employees and was kind enough to share a few that she'd heard of:
From a Southwest Airlines employee: "Welcome aboard Southwest Flight XXX to YYY. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don't know how to operate one, you probably shouldn't be out in public unsupervised."
And another: "Heard on Southwest Airlines just after a very hard landing in Salt Lake City: The flight attendant came on the intercom and said, "That was quite a bump, and I know what y'all are thinking. I'm here to tell you it wasn't the airline's fault, it wasn't the pilot's fault, it wasn't the flight attendant's fault ... it was the asphalt!"
There are days when you just need a good laugh to get you going. I certainly thank Barbara for jumpstarting my Wednesday a little while ago with that one.
Then there are letters that are not so much fun. While I appreciate the freedom that anyone has to express their views on these pages - that's an important role of any community newspaper - a line is crossed when attacks are inappropriately personal and irrelevant to the public matter at hand.
There's an old saying in the legal profession. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the facts and the law are against you, raise hell.
If the letter from Nancy Perera that appeared in this newspaper last week is any indication, I'd say that Bert L'Homme's supporters (the "board watchers") are definitely in the "raise hell" stage of their strategy. To prove what a great and inspiring leader L'Homme (the former superintendent candidate) would have been for the Orange County schools, his supporters now apparently have taken to dredging up old (and false) accusations made against an unrelated third party, hope the appearance of a "motive" will smear me in some way.
Pathetic.
It makes me long for the grilling I get from some of Orange County's most devoted extremists who drop me a line or two before the sun comes up whenever I write about a woman's right to control her reproductive life. At least when these guys (and they're almost always guys) write to me, it's about the issue at hand and the fact that they think my opinion is ill-considered and wrong.
I respect that. I welcome the discourse that the community can and should engage in to make good decisions about who should lead the Orange County Schools.
Right now, I wish that only half of the PR espoused on L'Homme's behalf were true. If it were, he'd write a guest column on these pages and tell his supporters to clam up and turn their attention to the future of the district and the process that secures its next leader.
Shouting at the rain isn't going to get our kids a good education or help our district to identify a sharp, capable leader. Perhaps it will just make wet all who are determined to ram through a superintendent selection by way of backroom deals.
If so, let it rain.

To medical schools: Teach talking
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Before all else, I want to say thank you to Kelly at UNC's eye clinic, located at the Ambulatory Care Center.
On Valentine's Day, I had a test there called RTA - Retina Thickness Analysis. This is a remarkable machine that can look into your eye and photograph a topographic map of your retina, measuring layers of thickness in the nerve bundles in your eye.
The thicker, the better. Thickness of nerve tissue in the eye means redundancy of function. In this case, it's good to repeat yourself.
The problem is that to have this test, your eyes have to be dilated. If, like me, you're extra sensitive to light and suffer from migraines, this test and its aftermath (hours of dilated pupils and difficulty focusing the eyes) are quite uncomfortable.
Like a mammogram, it's a momentary discomfort well worth the trouble for the information it gives us about the health of something vital. Also like a mammogram, this test requires active cooperation from the patient. Lots of "hold still" moments in a position of physical discomfort.
And this is where Kelly comes in. Despite the fact that Kelly has done this procedure a zillion times, she talked to me throughout. It's far less important what medical people say during these things than just the fact that say something to guide you through.
"Focus on the doughnut ... hold there ... that's perfect ... okay, relax ... you're doing great ... almost done."
Like a kid in the back seat of the car on the way to the beach, all I want to know is "How much longer? Are we there yet?"
I mentioned all this to Kelly during my visit. She said that medical people can sometimes forget that the patient might be getting this test for the first time or might simply be anxious about it. When you're the X-ray technician or the mammography specialist, you can forget that something you do dozens of times a day is new and may be scary to the person to whom you are doing it.
But when there's a chatty person at the helm, telling you what's going on, how you're doing and what's next, it makes a world of difference. I've enjoyed the benefit of wonderful mammography technicians at UNC. They welcome you back, tell you that you look great in that gown and joke about turning a very personal part of your body into a pancake so that you can keep it. Well, they joke with me about it - but that's me.
A while ago, I had a doctor look into my eyes during a so-called "slit lamp" exam. Again, they do this while you're dilated, and it involves a very bright, focused white light.
Usually, a doctor will do this and chat through it. "Doing fine, everything looks good here," that sort of thing. Not this time. This time, it was "Hmmph," followed by scribbling notes, then a new expression on the face - one of manufactured compassion, which is better than none at all.
If I were teaching communications in medical school, I'd tell students that they need to realize how their every grunt, every sigh is interpreted (for better or worse) by the patient. After all, we're there in order to get information. If we're anxious, we'll latch onto anything.
And there's the simple element of the humanity of it all. Telling the patient to take a deep breath and to try and relax conveys the understanding that while you might be doing this test, the patient is the one who must cope with its results.
It would be great if, in medicine, we could tip for good service as we do in restaurants. Instead, a simple "thank you" will have to suffice for how Kelly does business.

Stone: Our page in black history
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
They say that when you're living in the good old days, you don't really know it. Chuck Stone's continued presence in the UNC School of Journalism reminds me of that.
When I was a student there (a decade ago), I found myself walking among two greats - Stone and the late Jim Shumaker. The two were the senior partners of the craft, and fine friends to boot.
Between the two (and among all of us), there was a running joke wherein each referred to the other as the elder. They were, in fact, the same age, but the "When I get to be your age ..." stories were all the more fun for their inaccuracy.
In the story of Chapel Hill's struggle through the civil rights movement, we had Jim Shumaker telling us how it was to work on a newspaper in this town - trying to shake things up and keep his job at the same time.
He often said that he felt he didn't do enough in those tense days. His employer felt he'd done far too much, so he probably struck the right balance.
In the story of blacks' struggle in that era, we could find the voice and face of Chuck Stone. The first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, Stone was one of a handful of blacks working in major media in the mid-'70s.
What was once a few dozen members has swelled to more than 3,000 today. Stone's charm and that ever-present bow tie have no doubt been responsible for attracting many to the profession. The guy is classy.
Stone has been a relentless voice in protecting the First Amendment against the perils of censorship. Today, more than ever, I recall his lessons from his signature class on that most important topic. In this time of international tension and uncertainty, his cautions about the compelling need to protect political speech - dissent, specifically - are more vivid than ever.
A decade ago, we were watching headlines about Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding. America was buzzing about Hillary Clinton's health care plans and whether she was too strong a figure in the political arena.
But all that changed with the September 2001 attacks on the United States. Worries over the repression of political dissent became quite palpable. In the months that followed, I remember feeling comforted when I spotted Stone on television, talking about censorship and handicapping various political races in the 2002 election cycle.
It is a relief to know that he's still here, still fighting, still teaching. The last time I was in Stone's office at UNC, it was in Howell Hall, but I doubt much has changed. It was always a hall of fame of its own, featuring a who's who in journalism and politics, a gallery of photos of Stone with preachers and presidents with whom he has worked.
You might think you'd just taken a wrong turn and hit the Life magazine archive, but it's "merely" the life of Chuck Stone. He's always proud of his students, and more so of his own kids - yeah, that was one of his who came up with "Wasssssssuuuuuup" in that beer commercial.
It's too seldom that we get the chance to pause and say thanks for the opportunity Stone has given us to talk to a walking history book. Stone doesn't age; he just gets more stories, more information, more background.
Thanks, uncensored, for everything, Chuck.

Merging 2 worlds of Orange schools
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
When the rest of North Carolina finally complied with Brown vs. Board of Education, somehow Orange County (and a handful of other districts) avoided merging our two districts together.
The first and most compelling point to keep in mind in reviewing that history is simple - both districts wanted it that way.
The view from the county is one of self-determination. The folks outside of Chapel Hill's city limits tend to feel that the large population (collectively) of Chapel Hill and Carrboro drive the policies of government and commerce in Orange County quite completely.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro politics do have a hefty influence in the county government, and that's as it should be. That's where most of the people are, after all, and the county government functions include social services and the health department, for example. Those are departments driven by the needs of people, both individuals and populations of people.
Want a new landfill? When and where and how big ... that's all driven by people, too - those who do (or don't) recycle their newspapers and yard clippings. The government has to go where the people are to make policy that serves all of us.
To go where most of the people are in Orange County, you have to go south.
The need for the government's help in dealing with yard waste or trees damaged in a storm is different for someone living on 10 acres of land than it is for someone with a postage stamp-size lot, a 25-foot paved driveway and a sidewalk that must be kept clear.
Those separations are simple and obvious. They define a way of life - urban or rural - that the resident has deliberately chosen when purchasing or renting a home.
But a way of life, living in the country or living on the city bus line, should not be a factor in determining what "kind" of school you go to. For any student attending a public school anywhere in Orange County, going to public school should mean going to a school that's safe, appropriately equipped and offers the student a fair and equal opportunity to educate himself in preparation for a successful adult life.
The reality of our separate school systems has meant more than simply a physical separation between two districts. It has served as the dividing line creating two separate and clearly distinguishable education communities, and that's just wrong.
My rural friends and neighbors have complained mightily that holding onto the power to control the county school district is effectively holding on to autonomy - freedom from Chapel Hill's dreaded liberal establishment.
That "freedom" also has meant freedom from any and all benefits that might flow from a merger. Children likely would see relatively little disruption in their school life; after all, no one's going to move New Hope Elementary School to Franklin Street.
But if the teachers in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district are the real reason that their schools are touted as the best in the state, perhaps the rest of the county could see more benefit from their expertise.
Indeed, with more in-service workshops and professional collaboration, perhaps the teachers up in these parts would do a better job with teaching our kids, too.
Or maybe that wouldn't happen.
Maybe the merged district almost immediately would drop off the top of the North Carolina heap and force the merged leadership to find out why algebra in Hillsborough differs so much from algebra in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Is it the amount of math homework in middle school? Is it the textbook? Is the color of marker used by the math teacher? Is it ... (gulp) ... the education level of their parents?
Maybe, just maybe, it would become clear that the children of university educators do very well in school and the children of farmers struggle more academically.
Maybe all that extra money that the southern district gets through its fundraising and self-taxation actually buys valuable extracurricular learning experiences.
And maybe it's true that if the merger meant cutting just five or six jobs at the very top of the administration, the half-million dollars in savings could go to a better use.
As for the need to keep the districts separate in consideration of their combined size, both geographically and in terms of students, I only ask how does Wake County manage this? They have more than 100,000 students and more real estate.
I imagine they would describe their student population as "diverse" as well. With our university system's flagship sitting smack in the middle of the Southern part of Heaven, we ought to be able to figure out a way to merge these districts, just like more than 90 other counties managed to do years ago.
Just as growing real estate value is not a civil right and not a reason for neighbors to win the day in blocking an adjacent development, protecting a position of perceived exclusiveness and superior performance is not a reason for keeping two school districts separate and unequal.
Let the debate begin for the merger of Orange County's two school systems. When we all reconvene in the fall, we'll have this community discussion to show for "what we did on our summer vacation."

Teenagers correct for protesting
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
When some local teenagers cut class last week to attend an anti-war protest, there was some grumbling about the scheduling of the rally. The criticism was as fascinating as the rally itself - they should have held that gathering during non-school hours so that cutting class wasn't the incentive to attend.
On its face, that sounds kind of reasonable. Hold the demonstration during a time when you won't miss anything. That way, we know that you're only going for the cause involved, not the lure of missing a chemistry test.
The problem, I think, is that the theme of that rally and others like it last week was something like, "If War Starts, America Stops."
It would seem counterproductive to that message to deliver it in one's free time.
But our president has worked hard to set up such a mind-set.
"We're at war," he is constantly saying, while encouraging Americans to get to the mall, spend their money and not worry about the future. Be at war in your free time. Be at war by spending money, being free and carrying on "normally." Don't disrupt your life - if you do, the terrorists win.
According to press reports, about 75 students from East Chapel Hill High cut class to attend the demonstration. I don't know how many of them returned to school the next day with a note excusing their absence.
For those who didn't have an excuse, please clip and use this column.
Dear ECHHS,
Please excuse (student's name here) for being absent from class on the day of the anti-war demonstration last week. (S)he was trying to save my nephew's life, and those of more than 200,000 other American military personnel currently serving in the Middle East.
Signed, Jean Bolduc
When these students and others - some clothed, some "barely" so - took to the streets to protest the war, they were doing the very thing that my deployed nephew, a Marine first lieutenant, is working to protect. They were expressing their political views freely and passionately without fear of government reprisal or arrest.
The wife of a local Marine wrote a letter to the editor that ran in this newspaper on Monday. She complained that the recent "Naked Peace March" was somehow an expression of the protestors' lack of appreciation for her husband's service in the Corps.
The opposite is true.
It is the way that all Americans can, in a cherished tradition, shake their collective fist at the policy that sent her husband into harm's way. It's not a protest against voluntary military service. It is a protest against a policy that will have American citizens marching into and occupying a foreign country that has not attacked us.
Does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction? Yep, they sure do. Chemical weapons? Biological weapons? Yes and yes. And they've had that stuff since Ronald Reagan sold it to them.
These high school students may well have supported that particular protest in order to skip a class they wanted to avoid, but heck, it's their first outrageous war to protest. We should give them a break.
They've grown up thinking that the president's role was to secure, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not pick off foreign leaders whom we consider undesirable.
They got used to the idea that their civil rights were of the utmost importance to federal authorities and that spying on civilians was a topic of history, not a fear for tomorrow and the next day.
Their parents have filled them with glorious stories of how the college students of America, through persistence and protest, ended the war in Vietnam.
Maybe they didn't sleep all the way through American history after all. Maybe they know that the American sons and daughters who lost their lives in Vietnam died so for the benefit of proving a political science theory and not to defend the United States.
Maybe they think that's the wrong reason for Marines to lose their lives and expend our nation's fortune and her sacred honor.
If they thought that, they're in good company.
Protesting wrong-headed foreign policy is not just the right of Americans, it's our job - our covenant with those who yearn to breathe free. We can and we must state our reasons for opposing such policies and we should state these reasons at every level of public dialogue, including the high school civics class and the local newspaper.
It is a wrong thing for this country to invade and occupy Iraq.
John Brady Kiesling, a career diplomat, recently resigned his post because of the Iraq policy, which he said "will bring instability and danger, not security." In his letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, he says that America's legitimacy is being squandered by the current Iraq policy.
I appreciate the protest of local high school and college students (and others). I consider their demonstrations to be acts of patriotism. Keep up the good work. The tanks aren't rolling yet.

The aldermen, the French and war
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Once upon a time, there was a little town called Carrboro. Affectionately nicknamed the "Paris of the Piedmont," Carrboro is a place that sees itself as a thoughtful town - a community.
Among its elected leaders were fearless warriors - lawyers - named Joal Broun and Mark Dorosin who were famous for their skills in both reading and writing the fine print that can be so important in making agreements "stick."
One example of this was demonstrated a couple of years ago when Broun was reviewing an agreement pertaining to the mining of the American Stone Quarry. An agreement in principle had been reached between the nearby residents and OWASA, but those were not yet in writing.
Broun delayed the vote until the agreement was in writing, much to the chagrin of the dozens of people who attended the meeting expecting the years-long issue to come to a close. Too bad, Broun said. If it's no big deal to get this in writing, then it should get done quickly.
She was right to insist. A willingness to stop up the drain on every detail is the sign of a good lawyer.
In light of the French government's "stopping up the drain" at the United Nations over the last few days and weeks, some Americans have taken to boycotting French products. Protests have featured Americans pouring French wine into the streets, renaming the fried potato that is America's staple food of choice and even the egg-coated slice of fried toast finds itself with a new moniker.
Americans are nothing if not trivial in the face of war.
Well, I'm something of a walking United Nations on this subject. I am of English and German descent. My father's forefather, John Howland, came to the colonies (as a servant) on the Mayflower and bought his freedom in 1624. My mother's family is German and Scotch.
I married a man who is a first generation American in his father's Canadian line. Rick's mother, whose name was Clavette, grew up in northern Maine and was fully fluent in French and English. Her French grammar was much better than my father-in-law's.
For his part, my father-in-law was an army sergeant who hit the beaches of Normandy the day after D-Day and marched through Europe into Paris, working with General Patton's staff as an interpreter. His French was good enough for that.
The people of Paris were grateful for the Americans' arrival, he often said, and the women were willing to express that gratitude in every way. Oddly enough, he returned to the United States on a troop ship called the USS Chapel Hill - well before my husband was born and obviously long before he knew that we would live here and he would die here.
My father-in-law loved to eat at Elmo's in Carrboro. He enjoyed the people and the atmosphere. He liked the food, but he never ate out for the food alone. It was a cultural exchange for him - a kid from Quebec, transplanted to Hartford, Conn., and retired in North Carolina. There was always more to learn.
There was no one whom he couldn't charm, no one whom he wouldn't talk to, have coffee or a glass of wine with. My father-in-law, my second most favorite French guy, was a smoothie.
And when I think of the leadership in Carrboro, I think of him in that odd way - that Paris connection. That sister-city idea. It seems to me that Alderman Jacquie Gist and her colleagues on the Board of Aldermen make a very good point in their recent proclamation of April as "French Trade Month."
But perhaps you have to be willing to read the fine print. They are not willing to be sucked into a freedom fry debate. They see the arguments over just causes of war and peace to be more complex than bumper-sticker logic.
Moreover, they seem to articulate thoughtfully the notion that even as we have this week faced down a severe difference of opinion about methods of achieving common goals with our French allies, we are not at war with France, our oldest ally and critical sponsor of our tea party.
During a time of war, we are wise to respect those who, in the interest of due diligence and care for those who may face harm (friends and foes alike), make the commitment to stop up the drain if necessary in order to dot every "i" and cross every "t" or walk away from the table if they just don't believe in the deal.
It's a good time to give thanks for the commitment of French leaders and those in our own community who have made thoughtful offerings of dissenting opinion regarding our march toward war with Iraq. Spilling wine in the street will not hurt the French any more than protesters rejecting EuroDisney crushes any of us.
Friends argue, then they kiss and make up, especially if one of them is in trouble. I'm betting that the kissing and making up is the French part of that tradition. In the scheme of things, I think it's the best part of being friends.

Life, liberty and health care access?
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
With the best of intentions, N.C. Representatives Verla Insko, Martha Alexander and Thomas Wright have sailed off the deep end, having greased along a slope so slippery it's doubtful that super glue could hold any part of them to their position.
These three members of the state House have proposed an amendment to the N.C. Constitution that would recognize a legal right to health care under Article I.
The critical section reads: "Health care is an essential safeguard of human life and dignity, and there is an obligation for the State to ensure that every resident is able to realize this fundamental right. Not later than July 1, 2006, the General Assembly shall provide by law a plan to ensure that by July 1, 2010, every resident of North Carolina has access to appropriate health care on a regular basis."
If it should pass, the matter would be on the November 2004 ballot for the voters to have the final thumbs-up or down.
To be sure, there are too many residents of our state who are uninsured. That does not mean, however, that they do not have access to the most basic forms of primary health care.
Health departments, for example, provide free immunizations for both children and adults. Well-child visits with a pediatrician are helpful, especially to new parents, but they are not a fundamental human right.
When people talk about health-care access, they're really talking about so-called affordable health care. That is at the center of this issue.
Who gets to decide how much is enough to pay for that coverage?
If a family of four buying their own coverage must pay over $500/month for what is essentially hospitalization insurance, is that excessive? How about $750? How about $1,200?
It depends, of course, on the circumstances and risk of that family. Two healthy parents and two healthy kids would find that $1,200 way out of line for the benefit that very basic coverage would provide them. Give the mom or dad a tricky case of cancer or a need for a heart/lung transplant and the picture changes pretty quickly.
Looking at half a million dollars in treatment costs can bring the equity of that rate into focus.
The problem with making "access" a civil right is the broad scope through which it can be interpreted. We all have access now, we just don't have absolutely equal abilities to pay for that access.
The levels of bureaucracy that this proposed amendment could generate are mind-bending. We thought HMOs were intrusive?
The tragic story of young Jesica Santillan provides an interesting twist on the debate. Would her treatment have been ruled as having deprived a North Carolina resident of equal access to health care?
The same week of Jesica's death, a young man from the area died while awaiting a transplant. No one was holding press conferences on CNN for him. He was not the victim of malpractice, just an ordinary guy awaiting a new heart.
He was, however, a U.S. citizen and a North Carolinian. What might have happened if his health care was a civil right? Might his family have sued for his case to take precedence? Is that the path to better health?
It seems to me that the answer to better health overall is lost in our desire to have the government be responsible for our basic needs. It's a false hope.
The government isn't going to make us eat a leaner diet, get more exercise, stop smoking, drink alcohol in moderation or not at all and get the routine cancer screenings (many of which are available free already) that can save or extend our lives.
The government isn't going to make us buckle our seat belts by ensuring a civil right to health care.
The government isn't going to attentively supervise our children, preventing them from being hurt or killed in accidents each year.
The government's guarantee of "access" to affordable health care will not take guns out of shoeboxes and put them into locked gun cabinets. The access will pay for the treatment of the non-fatal injuries in these cases.
Obviously, the larger value in both human and fiscal terms would be found in prevention. When parents want to beat their children and abuse them in unthinkable ways, this bill will have no effect whatsoever on their ability to do so. We'll still have unlimited access to our own carelessness. We'll still make bad choices for our kids and ourselves. That's the down-side of free will.
The upside of that equation is the part that says your health is primarily your problem. You are the one who should ask questions during your visit to the doctor. You are the one who should read the instructions with a new prescription. You are the one who should walk more, eat less and buckle up.
If you're smoking, it's only you who can quit. And you're the one who will live longer for it.

Practice not even close to perfect
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
As Britney Spears would put it - oops, they did it again.
That's right, the Orange County school board, apparently in a reflex of some sort, took another vote about the superintendent search in secret. But heck, that's not even the exciting part of the board's latest escapades.
No, indeed.
Now comes the story of board member Delores Simpson calling superintendent candidate Brad Sneeden and promising him all manner of trouble if he accepted the job.
Note to Sneeden regarding his decision to run for the hills: good call.
What in the world possessed Simpson to make a call that yanked the rug out from under her colleagues is for her to explain, and she'd darn well better. There's a time and a place for some things, the old saying goes. This contact was way out of line and does no service to either the children or the staff of the Orange County schools.
Front and center, Ms. Simpson. Let's hear your explanation. At the meeting, in the newspaper, let it all hang out. If you think you're within your rights as a board member to submarine a candidate, then you can now tell all of us why a board meeting wasn't a sufficient forum for voicing your concern.
Fifty lashes with a wet noodle for the board's chairwoman, Brenda Stephens, if she doesn't get this bunch under control and in some form of compliance with the Open Meetings Law.
For crying out loud, how many times and in how many ways must we scold and remind that you can't justify secret votes with some baloney about the candidates wanting privacy?
Surely the board is clever enough to use color coding, numbering or some other identification system to refer to the candidate without disclosing a name in public.
I've been at board meetings where a student was expelled from the district - a rare action taken only in extreme cases.
The law is very clear about student records and their strict confidentiality, yet the vote I recall was taken in public session, referring to the student as "Student X."
It is tiresome and simply not credible when board members shrug and say they're better educated each time they blow something like this. Their errors should be on the side of disclosure or delay in these cases.
If they need to consult with an attorney before voting, they should do so.
Has the dog eaten the board's collective homework? Doubtful.
A simpler explanation is the more likely, and the simplest explanation revolves around politics and power-brokering and contempt for the public interest.
When a couple of board members give that, "We're learning what's OK and what's not" stock answer followed by we'll-do-better-next-time-we-swear, alarm bells ring.
I wouldn't accept these answers from my kids. Hearing them from school officials doesn't pass the stink test.
There's plenty of blame to go around here and this doesn't fall along neat political lines.
Still, wasn't it curious that the folks at "Board Watch" seemed so quiet and so pacified in all this? "We'll just have to trust the board to do the right thing," said one self-appointed "watcher."
Where's the dogmatic review? Where's the Web site? Where's the outrage at a secret vote?
And while all this is going on, what must potential candidates be thinking about the three-ring circus that they are watching?
It becomes clearer why it is that some of the finalists (we're down to two now - again) don't want their names disclosed.
They may not feel any differently after one of them wins the job.

U.S. 70 dump site more than eyesore
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
Over a year ago, I got a call from a reader following a controversial column I'd written (this was one call among many). He began our chat as most of these calls tend to start - by telling me that he didn't agree with much of what I write.
With that disclosure, he shared his insights on that particular column, then went on to tell me that he lived near Hoyle King on U.S. 70. He asked me if I was familiar with the site, which I wasn't.
You've just got to see it, he explained. Once you have seen it, there'll be no need for me to explain it to you. It's a hazard and the county seems unable to do anything about it, he said.
He was right. I may not agree with everything this caller thought or said, but on this one, he was 100 percent solid gold right as rain.
The put a picture of this incredible scene on Sunday's front page. It's not the first time our paper has put this story on our pages and I hope, cautiously, it won't be the last. This picture itself, however, cannot do this disaster area justice, nor can these thousand (almost) words.
The story was prompted by a neighbor, Tommy Scott, who put a rather substantial sign up in his front yard. It reads: "Just Ahead: Residential Properties being used to store junk cars county government can't control. Why?"
That's a darn good question and I'm grateful that Scott found a way to lay the issue out so neatly for the county's "powers that be." Commissioner Steve Halkiotis has repeatedly expressed his frustration by suggesting that perhaps there is a rogue batch of kudzu that's levitating the autos and depositing them on the site.
One thing struck me immediately as I drove past the scene over a year ago: If a tiny fraction of this were on the right of way in front of my house, my neighbors would make my life miserable until I cleaned it up. Moreover, I would expect the sheriff to be a regular visitor. Frankly, this seems too simple to me, so I'm confused about the delay. It's perfectly obvious that this is far more than an eyesore. It is a public health and safety hazard with "long overdue for tragedy" written all over it.
The picture on Sunday's front page displays the random dumping of dangerous material. This place is not a junkyard; it's an illegal toxic dump.
Junkyards provide an important and valuable service to the community, by safely organizing and storing old and potentially reusable material. Junkyards, in this very environmentally aware community, are Earth Day-friendly places. And most of all, junkyards are legitimate businesses, with permits and accountability. I have never seen a junkyard without a fence around it.
No, this place is not a junkyard. With cars parked all along U.S. 70's right of way, there's no ability to control children's access to unattended cars, with trunks to be trapped in and toxic chemicals to which they can be exposed.
So, what should be done? The county and state should create an omnibus action (which county Attorney Geof Gledhill is said to be working on) against this homeowner whose actions constitute a serious risk to the public health. If he were spreading a potentially fatal virus around town, he'd be locked up, not charged with the pitiful "creating a public nuisance."
The district attorney should charge this guy for his reckless endangerment of the minor children who live within walking distance of that site. One count for each unregistered vehicle.
Department of Transportation officials have "talked to him repeatedly," according to Sunday's story. Perhaps they forgot to say "pretty please." This begs the question as to whether or not we can hope to start depositing abandoned cars in the front yard of the governor's mansion in Raleigh - another residentially zoned area that's entitled to treatment no better or worse than that enjoyed by the more-than-patient folks who live along U.S. 70.
DOT officials should give him five days to remove that stuff from the right of way, then they should show up and haul it off (sending it to an actual junkyard), sending him the bill and seeking a judgment against him when he refuses to pay it.
The county (on behalf of its residents, of course) should sue King for the environmental damage that can surely be documented by an EPA site study, also billable to King. No homeowner has the right to do things with (or to) his land that endanger the land or people around him.
The county's planning board has the right idea in its effort to increase the fines against Mr. King, but they're thinking too small. They want to increase it from $50 a day up to $100 a day. I would like to propose adding the words "per unregistered vehicle" to that.
It would produce a hefty fine for King on the first day and would be very unlikely to negatively affect any other resident or any legitimate junkyard operator.

Board, 'watchers' lack credibility
This time, I honestly think we might need a new baby, new bathwater, a new tub and a fresh bar of soap.
Since my older son entered kindergarten at Grady A. Brown Elementary School, I've been an observer, an activist and even an applicant for a seat on the board of the Orange County schools. In a few weeks, he will graduate from N.C. State University.
In all that time, I've seen superintendents, administrators and plenty of board members come and go. I've never seen a downward spiral in credibility, fair play and common sense that could hold a candle to this bunch. The campaign promises of harmony and professionalism from the newest board members have gathered dust over this winter and spring of our discontent.
The board has made an unmitigated mess out of its search for a new superintendent - a search that is promised to end this very day. Between illegal votes and inappropriate calls to finalists, the board itself has so soiled its own bed, it is not possible to imagine how it can constructively turn the page to move on to its next task - consideration of merger.
No better are the self-appointed "board watchers" whose tactics have been at once misinformed and naive, as well as misleading and manipulative.
Members of "Board Watch" have posted on their Web site's bulletin board some comments about a recent jam-packed board meeting at which the Hillsborough police were present. Presumably Chairwoman Brenda Stephens anticipated a significant crowd and asked the police to attend in case feelings ran too high.
There's only one thing worse than having police at a school board meeting, and that's not having them when you need them. Any board chair has as her primary job the task of running the meeting, making sure that everyone who's entitled to speak has a turn to be heard.
Inviting the community's law enforcement to attend a very controversial meeting where lots of people with diverse views will attend is normal and expected. School boards often do this with redistricting meetings, for example.
But according to the "board watchers," this was "intimidation to an art form." And for over-reach of the year, there's this from the group's Web site: "What, indeed, do we have here? Are we to understand that our School Board rules by intimidation. To use another Iraq war analogy, we have been working hard to oust a tyrannical dictator who has oppressed people in Iraq. What excuse do we have for allowing tyranny in our own school system?"
These same little lambs at "Board Watch" have represented to some mainstream media that the State Board of Education is "watching" the Orange County superintendent search, implying that the state board may at some point step in to stop the madness. This, after a state official merely stated that the state board "was aware of" the Orange County superintendent search. (The state board is notified of all such openings.)
One "board watcher" writes: "So the state is afraid to acknowledge they are watching the situation - because they don't want to be drug into the muck? Isn't supervising, training and monitoring boards in the state their job?"
Uh, no. It certainly is not. The state board's job is to set education policy, not supervise well more than 100 duly elected boards. I'm sure the state board's members are "watching" the Orange County selection process; just as they "watched" to see which ACC teams would be selected to go to the NCAA basketball tournament. They have approximately equal authority over both.
In a county where self-reliance is all, it boggles the mind to think that anyone would be looking to the state to "rescue" us from the knuckleheads we've seated on this board. Durham cannot give the boot to a convicted felon, but we would hope that the big, bad state would give Delores Simpson the gate for making a telephone call?
The one sip of lemonade from that bushel of lemons is that the candidate revealed himself to be rather thin-skinned. If one or two phone calls were enough to freak him out, what would he do in a bonafide crisis? You don't think you're going to get some hot phone calls as this community thrashes over the question of merger?
The board's bungling is embarrassing, but temporary. We have 13 months until the corrective cycle comes around to sweep out that barn. If those who sit on the board now are re-elected, we'll all be able to look in the mirror and across the backyard fence to see the reason our schools have suffered.
Board Watch's childish ideas about the state saving us from our own bad choices amounts to little more than watching an amateur piano recital. It doesn't seem right to boo too much.
Still, these particular amateurs are staging themselves to play some very ugly political cards that all seem to point back to their bitter disappointment that their candidate, Bert L'Homme, failed to get the job earlier this year.
We can hope they walk away from the table before this game gets too ugly, but that will mean that someone's better angels will prevail. This doesn't seem to be the year for that sort of victory.

The more things change ...
Last week, members of the Orange County school board managed finally to take the step that has seemed impossible for nearly a year - they hired a superintendent.
Three cheers to Shirley Carraway for taking the job. She must have experienced at least some pause in considering the offer. Come to Orange County ... land of illegal voting, wacky activists and an electorate that isn't sure what it wants. Heck, I'll bet she thought she was going to Florida.
Though we cannot offer the high profile of the famed butterfly ballot, Orange County does have a certain quirky kind of attraction that explains what might have possessed Ms. Carraway to pack up and move here.
First, we may be many things, but we're not dull. It cannot be said of Orange County's parents, teachers or kids that we're just slogging along from one school year to the next. We can get our knickers in a twist over sodding a football field, teaching sex education or staying overnight on a field trip.
Some of the most fun and best education I've ever gotten as a student or parent was in taking my kids on field trips associated with their classes in elementary school. You have not seen the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C., until you've gone there with a fourth-grader who is seeing it for the first time. Ditto for visiting a session of the House of Representatives or the Senate.
If I am allowed only one piece of really sage advice to our new superintendent, it would be this: Please lead the board to allow and embrace more experiential learning outside of this county. The more children see of the larger world, the more they draw from their classroom experience.
When you've actually met an astronaut or a museum curator, you can understand that they started with geometry and art I, too. They struggled with an English paper or a biology project, but then they realized how it applied to their dream and they made academic study part of accomplishing their goals.
When you're around people who really love what they're doing, their enthusiasm is utterly infectious. Their smiles start creeping across your own face before you're even aware of it.
In her book, "And So It Goes ..." journalist and author Linda Ellerbee wrote about being a local reporter. "You have to ride the elephants," she wrote.
The meaning there is simple. Every year, the circus comes to town, and the folks who watch their local TV news expect to see their favorite roving reporter do a live remote story while riding an elephant.
Likewise, our new superintendent will be expected to make the rounds this summer and ride some large animals while talking about upcoming challenges. It's pretty much scripted stuff. She won't have years of experience in dealing with Orange County's particular issues, but she certainly knows what a budget process is and how much grease some of the squeakier wheels demand.
It's in all our interests to help her in easing into her new job. The board and the teaching staff will benefit from the stability. I remain cautiously optimistic that the academic needs of our kids will retake center stage where they belong.
So welcome aboard, Ms. Carraway. We're glad you've embraced this opportunity. We hope this time the road signs are right, and that you'll be a fan for life.

Progress, thy name is frustration
It's been a while since we've seen our friends Sandy and Tom, so we made a date for Saturday night to go out for an intimate dinner and get caught up. Between job changes and various family events, we had a lot to go over. First, however, we had to get there.
We left around a half-hour before our appointed rendezvous, allowing ourselves an extra 15 minutes for the added traffic delay that we anticipated on I-40 between Chapel Hill and the Southpoint mall.
If you've been on I-40 in the last week anywhere in that stretch, you probably already are laughing. If so, play along for those you're eating breakfast with who don't get the "15 minutes" joke.
Between 15-501 and the Southpoint area, I-40 has recently gone from being a construction area to a picnic area. It's little more than a glorified parking lot now for much of the day, due to a lane-shift that means entering the highway is strictly stop and enter.
Perhaps it's an omen, but there'll be no merging in that part of Chapel Hill for the next two months.
Delusional, we thought that on Saturday night (really, it was late Saturday afternoon) we would see some slowdown, but still get there on time.
My son and his girlfriend had left the house 10 or 15 minutes before we did ... going out to shop for a wedding gift. When we finally decided to ditch I-40 and find our way along NC 54, we passed them on the off ramp.
They looked older than I remembered. I wondered if they'd gotten married while we were in line.
Snaking our way along N.C. 54 was barely better, although I didn't feel as though we'd start getting mail along the route as I did on I-40. Still, between the intersection of I-40 and N.C. 54 and the intersection of N.C. 54 and N.C. 751, my mind started wandering.
Is Bush still president? If so, which Bush is it? Is the war over? How many gallons of gas does this car hold anyway?
Alas, we finally reached N.C. 751 and made a quick right turn to a wide-open road. We were immediately suspicious, but somehow arrived rather directly to the lesser-used entrance to the small city that is Southpoint.
Now, of course, the problem is parking. Here we had that nice spot on I-40 and gave it up, I thought. Since we were now something like 20 to 25 minutes late, Rick dropped me off at the restaurant and I went in to meet our friends and apologized for our tardiness. They laughed. They had secured a table for the four of us and had to keep the bar tab going so as not to forfeit the space, so their mood was upbeat.
Apparently without committing a crime, Rick secured a parking space and joined us fairly quickly. Of course, instead of spending our first 20 minutes together talking about our lives and families, we whined (all of us) about traffic and parking.
Eventually, though, we moved on to dinner. We watched the prom-goers stream through the restaurant. We reviewed the hairstyles of the young women. We discussed fashion.
At one point, the husbands (with more than 50 years of marital experience between them) probably considered ordering a bowl of milk for the wives to commemorate our somewhat critical remarks. If they did think of it, they were wise and kept it to themselves.
Emerging with our britches bulging, the rain that poured while we ate had subsided. As we left the parking lot, there was a simply stunning double rainbow - visible from end to end - soaring across the sky.
The rain had moved on, and somehow, so had the traffic. Between now and Independence Day, I'm sure they'll both return.

Mother's Day a mixed (golf) bag
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
It was an odd day for me this past Sunday, a peculiar blend of the traditional and the quirky.
On the traditional side, my grown-up son returned from college and brought me flowers, even though at my house the term "Dr. Mom" is short for the button on my refrigerator that reads: "I'm the Dr. Kevorkian of house plants."
They're cut flowers. They were terminal when they got here.
I was also treated to a lovely dinner at my favorite restaurant, with a string of terrible jokes in the car to and from dinner.
An infection in my foot kept me off the golf course this Mother's Day. I was the subject of a tick attack a little over a week ago. A word to the wise - don't underestimate the little guys.
It's great to play golf on Mother's Day. The putts seem to roll in easily and I think the woods are enchanted - when I hit into them, my ball bounces back out onto the fairway.
More importantly, all those nice gentlemen who are usually overpopulating the courses are at home doting on their non-golfer wives. Since Mother's Day is commonly a perfect weather day for the links, their devotion is notable.
Occoneechee Golf Course in Hillsborough is an especially favorable location for a Mother's Day round. Is it the grasses? Is it the new sand in the bunkers? No. It's none of these things.
Occoneechee has two things, two very distinct things, that will make a mother's round memorable.
First, there are the Canada geese. The babies are hatched and toddling around behind their mothers by now. There's just something sweet about having to stand on the tee, with your ball ready to launch and having to wait while a new mother and her five goslings cross in front of you.
You'll often see them walking across fairways and greens, in strict single file, as though in goose boot camp, practicing their marching. It's a rite of spring that allows me to be tolerant of the downside - the deposits they leave behind.
The second offering on Hillsborough's fine little course is one that I do believe may be reserved especially for me.
The seventh and eighth holes border property that runs along U.S. 70. Some folk who live in there (and I don't know which house) have a couple of roosters.
You don't have to play golf to know that unlike a game such as football or basketball, it requires a certain level of quiet in order for the player (even at my level) to effectively concentrate on the task at hand.
So as one is standing over a putt, drawing the club gently backward in a manner very carefully controlled and precise, it's just a little unnerving to hear "cock-a-doodle-doo!" just as the club is stroking through the ball.
Images of a Chevy Chase movie flash through my mind, followed by thoughts of a chicken sandwich.
On the tee, another very focused and tense shot ... especially on a par three like the eighth hole ... the pair of roosters crowing with everything they've got right at the top of my backswing has become so expected that if it doesn't happen, the quiet will crack me up.
These two things - putting on the seventh hole and teeing off on the eighth hole - occur right next to each other, as you might expect. Yet they virtually never happen to my husband and playing partner. I think it's a guy thing.
So while I missed my wacky and traditional Mother's Day gift - an uncrowded round of golf at Occoneechee - I do have the comfort and satisfaction that comes with planning ... for Father's Day. It seems to me that there's a train station near Hillandale golf course in Durham ...

Shifting burden shafts programs
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
In the last week, the competing headlines have sent me running for an aspirin bottle. I think it must be leftover karma for all the algebra homework I didn't complete as a kid, but my mind cannot help but make equations when these situations taunt like a magician's trick.
Several days ago, there was story in the news about the U.S. Senate passing a $350 billion tax cut. This is not as much as the White House wanted, but appears to be the compromise figure that will become law sometime this year.
As leaders pat themselves on the back for their "stimulation of the economy," I am left to observe the obvious. This, like trends in health care that mean mastectomies are sometimes outpatient procedures, is nothing more than cost-shifting (read: "buck-passing").
There is no real savings; the burden is just moved down the line to be carried by smaller and smaller pockets in the hopes that, eventually, it will reach a level so powerless as to disappear into the abyss of "stuff that fell through the cracks."
A case in point is Chapel Hill's own homeless shelter, run by the Inter-Faith Council. To be sure, this has nothing directly to do with the tax cut currently before Congress, but I'm willing to bet it flows from the one passed earlier in the Bush II era.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has decided not to renew the funding for the IFC's Project Homestart. The loss of more than a quarter million dollars will deal a hefty blow to the program's future.
Seven fewer people will be employed to support that program because of the cut. I have no doubt in my mind that the IFC will beat every bush in town (the green kind, that is) to shake out enough volunteers to limp along until they can secure new funding from somewhere to keep the program alive in some form.
Or perhaps the town and the county will mutually agree to raise taxes locally to make up for the lost revenue. And that's precisely where my cynical little voice starts making political equations.
I imagine the president's advisers paging through the federal budget and finding that, just taking the IFC's program as an illustrative example, they can cut more than $300,000 out of HUD's budget and shift that cost to a heavily liberal community that was not going to turn up in their "win" column in 2004 anyway.
Enough cases like that and you can cut many millions of dollars while taking almost no political risk. The homeless are the perfect group to pick on. People living hand-to-mouth usually don't hire lobbyists or set up angry Web sites rallying a national march on Washington.
But the next time the White House brags about its compassionate faith-based initiatives, we'll have to ask what faith it is that cuts funding to programs like Project Homestart.
Yes, our community is an affluent one, but this also translates to our cost of living matching our obvious quality of life. Put simply, it's a great place to live and a couple of bad twists of fate can make it an unattainable place to afford.
So while Washington shifts that burden closer and closer to individual towns and federal legislators congratulate themselves for "putting money back into the economy," chances are that we won't have an extra nickel in the bank in the end, and a good program goes without sufficient funding.
And seven people who used to work for the IFC are looking for jobs. Is it just me? That just doesn't seem like the right equation.
The new improved Franklin Street Wednesday, May 28, 2003 Every few years you read about a UNC alum coming back to town, looking around and declaring, "They've ruined the place."
This is a tried-and-true assertion, taken fondly to mean, "Something has changed since I went to school here, therefore the town has hit the skids."
And let's be fair ... when I came here 25 years ago, there was a gas station where the First Union-now-Wachovia building now sits at the corner of Franklin and Columbia. While I remember that with some nostalgia, it's mainly a point of pride that I can remember any detail from so long ago.
But now the town, the university and local business owners are going to put themselves in a room together and try to fashion something of a plan for keeping what's good on good ol' Franklin Street and improving what needs work there - all for the benefit of the local tax base and the overall quality of life.
Sorry you're not here to see my standing ovation.
As a business owner, I'd feel a little skittish about the town getting up to its elbows in development plans. These things should be driven by what the landowner wants, not necessary what the town would "like to see."
However - and that's a big however - the reality is that what the landowner wants has to go through an approval process that by all accounts makes getting top secret clearance at the CIA look like a walk in the park.
There's a reason that the town is picky, of course. There's an awful lot of Franklin Street that is extremely successful ... and it isn't any one thing. It's an ecosystem all its own. Disturbances that seem slight can ripple down the street and onto the campus.
Chapel Hill is a town that likes its look-and-feel "franchises." Whether it's roundball or Sutton's Drug Store, we know that certain things set the tone of the tradition of success, and we want to keep those things. So despite a population that belies the use of the word, we still think of Chapel Hill as a village - because we just want to, that's all.
But downtown needs more mixed-use sites like those expected in the upcoming Rosemary Village (see what I mean?). No, it's not a subdivision named for former Mayor Waldorf, it's a proposed condominium complex to be located on the corner of Rosemary Street and Mitchell Lane.
This is an idea that Carrboro has been in love with for some time ... people living and working in downtown and perhaps not owning a car at all, the so-called "walkable" community.
With buses all around Chapel Hill and even out to RTP and Raleigh, it could become a really viable scenario to live and work in downtown, getting to the grocery store, the drug store and the dry cleaners without ever missing the jingle of your own car keys.
My own little nudge for UNC to "give a little" is to allow a few more affordable places to eat along Franklin Street.
I know there's concern about competing with the university dining services, but we local folk would like to pop out for a soup and salad before a movie.
Making some of the currently vacant commercial space more enticing might benefit from these cooperative efforts. How about this idea where everybody gives something:
I can get a break on my rent if I agree to mentor two students a year in the "real world" of running a small business. The landlord gets a tax break, the business gets a good location and some space that's presently vacant pulls at least some revenue. The students get three hours of credit and the rental agreements can't exceed two years, thereby not tying up the space indefinitely.
Where do I sign?

No accounting for those ABCs
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
In preparing kids for end-of-grade tests, proponents often cite the need for kids to experience the so-called "real-world" need for proving themselves.
Just last week our own Howard Lee, now chairman of the state Board of Education, acknowledged that there are concerns among educators about the intrusion of state testing into instructional time. "We hear the concerns about too many tests and we will respond," Lee said in a press release.
That release then went on to chat up the virtues of North Carolina's "nationally touted" accountability model -- the ABCs of Public Education.
To be "nationally touted" requires only that a prominent political figure says that he likes the program and that everyone should look at it as a wonderful model of accountability. In short, George W. Bush, a self-described average student who went to Yale University on the exclusive George & Barbara Bush scholarship plan, says he likes the ABCs of accountability. Is this an endorsement we want?
At the risk of beating a dead horse, the end-of-grade tests that our state uses are tests that were designed to collectively evaluate North Carolina's standard course of study. They were never intended to be used as individual testing instruments.
Other nationally "normed" tests, like the Carolina Achievement Test (commonly referred to as "CAT" tests) are designed for that purpose, but North Carolina stopped using those in the 1980s. It was then that we somehow decided (as a state) that the only way to improve our state's performance was to compare North Carolina's students only to other North Carolina students.
We seceded from the country's education union, so to speak. Was it a coincidence that we were in the basement in national rankings at the time? Unlikely.
But those are end-of-grade tests. Promotion from one grade to the next through elementary school through middle school should be heavily driven by teacher evaluation and parental judgment. Woe to the school that waves a piece of paper with a single test result in any parent's face and says, "Your kid is going to have to repeat a grade."
The end- of-course tests are more like the old days. These are given in high school and are recognized by universities as an objective measure of students' mastery of the subject. These are given in classes that are graduation requirements or college admission requirements -- mathematics, science, English and civics, for example.
Thankfully, the curriculum of these courses is driven much more by universities than by the N.C. General Assembly. Not worrying about aligning the curriculum to the state's course of study, the teachers and students can focus more on the topic.
At Orange County's Cedar Ridge High School, Beth Neill teaches mathematics. She's a favorite among students and with good reason. She loves math. She loves teaching and she very obviously loves those kids in her class.
When we met (again) at the open house last year, she looked at my older son, called him by name, and asked him how he was doing ... where was he going to school now ... and so forth.
Brian was in Beth Neill's class in sixth grade for about two weeks -- nine years ago. He'd transferred to Algebra, but she remembered him. It was clear that she was interested to know how things had turned out for him.
She takes her end-of-course test prep time and turns it into a game for students, a way to review and decompress the pressure of the actual test day. There are quizzes and prizes, provided by us, the parents.
If teachers felt free to express themselves on the topic (and I doubt they do), they'd probably list the many tricks they must have at the ready to try and relieve their students of the test anxiety that is drilled into them through end-of-grade testing.
And that's because teachers have as much or more on the line as the kids do. Students may get a bad grade, but teachers may get or miss out on a bonus depending on students' results.
How many chances are you going to take to be innovative or outspoken about testing in general if your job and you career could be hanging in the balance? Most of us would keep our noses down and try to stay out of trouble.
Chairman Lee says that he'll be reaching out to teachers and other school employees to "stay the course" on education improvements. That's got "don't rock the boat" written all over it -- a shameful position to take with so much at stake.
In most academic circles, real improvement comes from accounting to a standard, inviting criticism and acting constructively on that review. That is what life-long-learning is about and what parents should demand.

Policy is good, but ethics are better
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Rare though it may seem, I applaud the Orange County Schools for adopting its anti-nepotism policy last week, even though I find such action somewhat redundant.
Schools, after all, are run by licensed professionals, who are bound by some canon of ethics that surely proscribes one from supervising a close relative.
The policy applies to employees of the district and not to the school board, as is completely proper. If board members could not have relatives working in the district, for example, then Cameron Park Elementary School would have been deprived of the services of Kim Rorrer for the many years she's worked there.
Kim is the daughter of Bob Bateman, a recently retired veteran of the school board. During his tenure, Bateman voted on teacher contracts, raises, bonus money -- which certainly affected his own daughter quite directly.
And this is a perfectly appropriate thing. Bateman was not, after all, her supervisor. He comprised only one-seventh of the vote to supervise his daughter's supervisor's supervisor (the superintendent). To be sure, a principal might think twice before recommending a disciplinary action against a sitting board member, but he or she also might balk in the same way at scolding the daughter of his minister or a friend.
School board members can and must make decisions that directly affect members of their own immediate families -- their children, specifically. That desire, to affect schools in a way that benefits their children, is the reason most of these people are giving up their Monday nights and dragging home at 1 a.m.
It is definitely not for the pay, the glory, the privacy or the gratitude they receive.
Yes, the schools are an institution in which we entrust our children's academic development. But part of that development is the piece that shows them how to be connected to other people -- how to build a community.
This newspaper is another organization that offers itself as "Trusted and Essential." The fourth estate is built on its objectivity and on our ethics. Would it make any difference if family members of some editors have done work for the paper?
It wasn't nepotism that got The New York Times into its current nightmare; it was bad judgment and lack of institutional control.
The Herald-Sun is one of the few locally owned newspapers remaining in the United States. That closely held ownership is a good thing for community-rooted coverage. It's a good thing for the institutional memory of the organization. It's also a darned common thing in American companies for kids to work for the family business. From dry cleaners to restaurants to farms, this has been going on a long time.
So why the big stink over nepotism? It's not a bad thing when it's applied properly.
I speculate that the policy is the product of some stinker burning up phone lines and sending mail to one or more board members whining that some person -- or people -- has had his or her way as a result of nepotism.
Clearly, someone has turned over a rock recently, because all sorts of dark, wriggly stuff has been bubbling up to the surface. You'd call it "chatter" in the intelligence business.
This comes in the form of anonymous letters (I've gotten one recently and I've heard about others), e-mails and phone calls from people who won't identify themselves.
In the news business, you get a lot of good stories from disgruntled people looking to get even. And you get to listen to a whole lot of gossip, the root of which may be planted (sometimes buried) in the truth or may just lead to a rich cow pasture. Even I (the Dr. Kevorkian of house plants) could grow orchids in some of the stuff I've heard lately.
I appreciate the county's new policy and its good intentions, and I'm glad it stopped short of including members of the school board. I'd hate for the schools to lose some good people just so the board wouldn't feel it was under any political pressure.
Fending off the political fringe and keeping focused on what serves all the community's children is what board members are elected to do. The weather may not reflect it, but based on the "chatter," it's shaping up to be a long, hot summer.

Police ethics, the law and sportswear
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
We all know that a couple of boneheaded Chapel Hill cops decided to play dress-up and pretend they were FBI agents. Bad, bad, bad officers they were, and that's all in the book.
It's of value to point out that they were not rewarded for this -- they were punished. One was forced out, one was temporarily suspended. I certainly hope that they'll be looking down the barrel of a federal prosecutor's pen (facing criminal charges) as I would expect to be if I were caught impersonating a federal agent.
The officers, in order to appear more like FBI agents, wore golf shirts that they had received at an FBI workshop of some sort. Apparently, it was not a workshop on ethics or the law, but I digress.
So they got shirts that said something more official looking than "My partner went to Quantico and all I got was this lousy golf shirt." Let's say it said something like "FBI."
I read in the news reports of this embarrassing episode that the Chapel Hill Police had adopted a new dress code that is intended to help prevent a recurrence of such behavior.
That dress code will prohibit Chapel Hill officers from wearing shirts that display a law enforcement insignia other than that of the Chapel Hill Police Department.
Now that seems simple enough, doesn't it?
The problem is (and I know I'm becoming a regular nag about this) it ignores the import of the role of ethics, which are by definition "principles of right conduct." In practical terms, to behave ethically means knowing the difference between right and wrong and following that system of moral beliefs by deliberate choice.
My husband has a golf shirt that he got at a charity golf event to benefit N.C. Special Olympics. It says "Chapel Hill Police 4th Annual Golf Tournament" on it. Almost invariably, when he wears this shirt, people ask him if he's a police officer. He isn't. He says so.
Could he get a better table in a restaurant if he said yes? Maybe. And there are those who would argue that there'd be no harm in that ... after all it's the assumptions of other people that initiate the ruse, not Rick's asserting it to gain advantage.
But he would never do that. In fact, in my estimation, he avoids wearing that shirt because of the tendency people have to make this assumption.
So the problem with the CHPD policy is that it wants to solve an ethical problem by making a rule. One could comply with this new rule and wear an FBI hat (also a favorite at golf events), wave around an FBI key chain, wear an FBI jacket or use any of a dozen other knickknacks that you probably can buy at any FBI "cop shop."
The real issue here is that these officers were hired by the town to protect and serve the public -- to keep us safe from crime. No law enforcement official serves the community by lying, cheating and stealing.
Yes -- stealing. When these two cops stepped over this line, they stole a little bit of the reputation of everyone in their department. They stole a little bit of our community's pride in their department. They stole a little bit from a lot of people.
Acts of deception are sometimes a necessary part of police work. Those occasions can include undercover work or lying to a suspect. Obviously, those are investigation techniques that are within the bounds of what cops do to solve crimes. Those are not only different circumstances; they are certainly regulated by police procedure. In short, it's legal, ethical and appropriate.
But this business -- impersonating an FBI agent -- would be criminal for an ordinary citizen, and if it isn't criminal for a police officer, then the law needs some rewriting. The credibility of those officers who put in the hours, know the rules, understand and live by their ethical obligations depends on equal treatment (and punishment) of their colleagues who fail to do the same.

Drawing a bead on my new addiction
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Hello. My name is Jean. I have an addiction.
Laugh all you want, I am unashamedly hooked on the fine art of beading, jewelry making ... I don't even know what to call it -- I'm too busy doing it.
A month or so ago, I was watching my son's girlfriend make a pair of earrings. Jamie is a terrific artist (which I am not) and yet as I watched her go through this process with pliers and wires, I couldn't help but observe that it seemed doable to me.
When a person as artistically challenged as yours truly runs across a thing like this, it's a really exciting event. What the heck, I thought. I work long hours, pounding away at my computer. I should get a relaxing hobby that will help me bring some beauty and reward into my life.
It goes without saying that someone who is staring at a computer all day would find the one hobby that actually provides more eyestrain.
Jamie let me try my hand at it, patiently teaching me some basic techniques. I made a pair of earrings for myself -- a pair that I would actually wear out of the house.
Soon, we were off to go shopping at the Original Ornament in Carr Mill Mall. I wanted to just hook up the store to the back of my car and bring it all home.
We pored over tiny glass beads, those made from silver (among my favorites) and various charms and so forth. Jamie was very restrained and responsible, scolding me not to buy too much. A little bit will go a long way, she said. The shopkeeper encouraged me to follow my heart, of course.
And so I developed my humble supply of the many beads and earring hoops and wire that one needs to get started.
On Sunday, my phone rang and it was Jamie. I commented that she sounded unusually chipper and she explained that it was because she wanted something. Jamie never lacked candor.
"Come with me to the bead show," she said. After only brief explanation, I happily agreed. When I asked my son if he wanted to come, he looked at me (and his girlfriend) as though I'd just volunteered a free root canal.
Just us girls, then.
And off we went to the Mebane Arts & Community Center for a bead show. We walked in and received paper bracelets after paying our admission. How appropriate, I thought. I bet the Betty Ford Center does the same thing, though I thought these should have beads on them.
Entering the multipurpose room (a gymnasium with a stage), we stood awestruck at the sea of vendors with every kind of bead in every color and texture. Some were pearls, some were stones from riverbeds and some shells from the ocean. It was a form of sensory overload that defies explanation.
One of my fellow "addicts" and I were looking through some beads and she commented, "They're all so beautiful."
"This would be a lot easier to resist otherwise," I told her.
I spent more money than I should have, but I always enjoy driving up to Mebane. It's good to support the local economy by spending some money there. If there were an Olympic competition for the prettiest small town, Mebane would be a lock for at least a silver medal.
And we could take that medal and put it on a pendant ... and maybe a pair of earrings ... .

Local ordinance should be amended
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
It was too long ago -- something like 15 years now -- when I was pacing around while on the telephone with Mosey Carey, then-chairman of the Orange County Commissioners.
The topic was the civil rights ordinance that the Human Relations Commission (of which I was chairwoman) had pending. The commissioners had sent a request for enabling legislation to the N.C. General Assembly.
As we spoke, we were discussing (that means I was ranting and he was trying to calm me down) the treatment we already had received in committee. Our original hope was to establish that in our county, sexual orientation would be considered what is called a "protected class." This would mean that like race, creed, religion or national origin, citizens could not be discriminated against for being openly gay.
Carey's words still ring in my head. "We've got to crawl before we can walk," he said. Needless to say, I didn't like that answer, but as a matter of pragmatic politics, I agreed that we were either going to get most of what we wanted or nothing.
We opted for most and Orange County, for a decade now, has had the added scrutiny of local enforcement over our right to equal housing and employment.
Recent challenges aside, it has been a solid victory.
The hearings we held in the late 1980s that led to the ordinance are still fresh in my mind. During one, I remember a speaker who explained North Carolina's "crimes against nature" statute. She told us that under the law, only intercourse between married people was permitted.
"There goes half the room," someone said. We all laughed. The speaker (a legal expert) explained this would also mean that women who were (as I was at the time) very pregnant who chose to accommodate their very large tummies by changing positions were also committing a crime -- an "H" felony.
"There goes the rest of the room," I chimed. Although the thought certainly added a certain exotic nature to my love life, I've always resented North Carolina's intrusion into my bedroom. There's no form of "deviant" sexual congress any more illegal for a gay person than it is for me.
In all the years since that decision -- the "crawling-before-walking" decision -- I've regretted not digging in and insisting that our county's gay citizens should have rights equal to my own.
Since we share the same "criminal" history, I never could see why I should care any less about it than they would. And now I have arguments espoused by none other than Justice Anthony Kennedy to back me up.
As Independence Day approaches, this all falls together for me. Sometimes, you just need to throw the tea into the harbor to get everyone over the desire to figure out every angle of political calculus. When something is flatly wrong and unfair, you have to raise hell to stop it, making it necessary to justify continuing the status quo instead of persuading people to change.
I have no criticism for then-Chairman Carey. His incremental approach seemed the only way we were going to get anything done at the time. When our delegation introduced our enabling legislation into the local government committee, there were a couple of troglodytes who picked up their clubs and started after it, comparing equal rights in the workplace to endorsement of bestiality, incest and child rape.
The discussion was so graphic and disparaging that a reporter called me from just outside the meeting to tell me that our request was getting pounded. She also told me she was shocked, embarrassed and disgusted by the debate.
And now, I fast-forward to this very day, so many years later. The baby I was pregnant with at the time will be taking driver's education this fall. In all these years, he's crawled, and walked and run and grown to nearly 6 feet tall.
And still we wait. We've waited so very long that none other than one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in history has tossed this law out with the trash, where it belongs. In doing so, the court also has scolded that these laws should be repealed though a political process, not a judicial one.
I agree with Justice Antonin Scalia on that very point. The legitimacy of social policy is strongest when it's expressed through a political process. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 may be our most shining example of this, but many court cases (like Brown v. Board of Education) plowed the field for that moment of national political courage.
Perhaps last week's Texas decision can give a renewed vigor to the effort to end discrimination against our citizens based on their private (and now legal) conduct.
The discrimination we documented over a decade ago is still going on and the need for legal protection is just as great. The "special rights" argument against adding sexual orientation to the protected classes of the civil rights ordinance have long since been shown to be false.
Now's the time to amend our county's civil rights ordinance. The political season soon will be here and that's the proper arena for this decision and debate. It may take a year or two, but we're already 15 years in. It's time to struggle to our feet and walk.
Caring for pets the human thingWednesday, July 09, 2003
I've got pets on the brain.
Driving back from the beach after the holiday weekend, we came to a trouble spot on U.S. 70. "We" in this instance was my family and many others on a shared mission.
Apparently, something fairly serious happened on the highway. As our long line of traffic finally reached a nearby intersection, we were greeted with state troopers and fire engines coming toward us in our lane. Like sheep, we followed the many cars in front of us as we were led along some local roads that would eventually take us back to highway U.S. 70 -- about an hour later.
Winding ever so slowly through these back roads is instructive to the observer. This, indeed, is what most of North Carolina looks like -- farmland with tiny houses scattered about. Creeping closer to our goal, we watched as some of the local folks came out to talk to the bored drivers, smiling at our unlikely meeting and exchanging holiday greetings. They've scarcely ever seen a hundred cars stretched across the front yard. We were an oddity for them to ogle at.
As we approached one fenced-in field, Madison (our golden retriever) began to growl and bark. Coming up was a horse who had come up to the roadside fence to see what all the fuss was about. Madison didn't like the horse.
I rolled down the window some, thinking that the smell would be of interest to her. She barked at the horse, which caused it to look in our direction with one of those "you talking to ME?" expressions. It was absolutely priceless. We laughed for 10 minutes.
That's something a pet can do for you -- make you laugh when you're frustrated, and help you relax. My mother returned home from a week in the hospital recently. The young cat that she's babysitting all summer has been a great comfort to her in the wake of a heart attack. Some kitten antics here and there and a purring companion to pet and talk to. How do you put a price on that?
Orange County has a problem with its domestic animals, there's no doubt about that. We have too many stray cats and dogs and the county will have to start euthanizing them earlier to cope with the backlog. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that everyone who works for the Animal Protection Society of Orange County wants to avoid that, but there are problems with the APS operation that are already beginning to trump that central issue.
In the short form, these will be described as "just communication problems," but indeed communicating with the public is so critical in protecting animals and controlling their population that there is no such thing as "just" a communication problem.
Whether it's euthanizing feral cats after starting adoption proceedings or suing a local man who allegedly insulted the reputation of the organization, the APS is spending a whole lot of time and resources in a downward spiral of public-relations damage control instead of advocating for animals that really need help.
A friend of mine recently tried to adopt a cat that the APS determined was feral and put down before she could pursue the agency's appeals process. When she brought the matter to the board, they heard her out and determined that, in fact, they had erred in accepting her deposit and in not explaining to her what the feral policy was and why she would not be permitted to adopt the animal.
More importantly, they not only didn't apologize for the bungled experience, but Executive Director Laura Walters took it upon herself to twist the facts into an editorial criticism of my friend for the fact that she was going to keep the cat in her bathroom for the first few days in her new home.
This, said Walters, would have been inhumane. If it is, then APS should stop recommending it to people who are adopting new pets. Instead of counter-suing its critics with defamation charges that are little more than bluster, the APS should be spending its time accounting for its budget, planning for needed improvements and articulating for the public the need for a strong animal-control program and creative approaches to adopting out as many animals as possible.
There's only one thing Walters should say (or write) to those who have criticized the agency and sought public accountability for its work, its budget and its plans for the future: "I'm sorry."
The euthanization rate at the Orange County shelter is reportedly well below the state average, but there's always room for improvement. While that part of the agency's work is probably in need of better public understanding, the more troubling issue is vividly clear.
When officials of a publicly funded agency are pointing the finger at critics as the cause of trouble instead of defending their programs and administration on facts and merit, something is very wrong.

60 million reasons to merge schools
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
There reaches a point in matters of public policy where the question is no longer "why?" but shifts instead to "when?" and "how?"
We are fast approaching that threshold on the subject of merging the Chapel Hill-Carr-boro and Orange County schools.
Certainly there are conflicts of culture, fair representation and the preservation of neighborhood schools that may prove vexing problems in the coming decade. Bringing the two systems together will be a major event of upheaval, anxiety and controversy.
But if the facts as reported in news accounts are correct, there's a brand new freight train on the tracks that's heading in the direction of merging these districts and it has a full head of steam to start.
Because it would delay the need to build new facilities by as much as a decade, merging the districts could save this community more than $60 million. Even as a rough estimate (subject to waggles in both directions) that is a number that must stop you short. It transforms the argument.
The tectonic effect of this information will make for some very interesting political bedfellows. Those who have been shaking their figurative fists at the prospect of higher taxes, for example, must be four-square in favor of this long-delayed marriage of systems. Right?
For example, former county school board member Bob Bateman opposed the bond that paid for Cedar Ridge High School. He did so, he said, because he thought that passing it would result in higher taxes.
He didn't say what ought to happen with all the students who were practically hanging out of the windows at the overburdened Orange High School; he just opposes higher taxes and voted against anything that might threaten that outcome.
Bateman has also conspicuously opposed a special district tax for the county schools while offering no real solution to meet the district's financial quandaries. He continues to be active in opposing any form of tax increase through his activism in the community, as is his absolute right.
Surely integrity will now force Bateman and like-minded others to take to the streets to advocate for merger. They will have 60 million good reasons for rendering the Orange County school board moot -- and that's just the facility savings. We haven't even gotten into the issue of administrative savings.
Obviously, we will not need the redundancy of highest level administrators for the newly merged district and one assumes that Neil Pedersen, the well-established champion of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district, would take the helm of the larger operation.
And of course, he'd get a big raise for that. After all, it would be a huge increase in the number of students and would be an enormous challenge professionally.
Surely all those who are watching the pennies around here will support that as a necessary expense to remaining competitive -- we must retain the "best of the best" in our administrative leadership to keep the quality of the educational product consistently high.
This will probably be the argument advanced by those who believe that the academic success of Chapel Hill-Carrboro's students is attributable to the district's administrative leadership as opposed to the education level and socioeconomic patterns of the children's parents.
Those savings, in all likelihood, will be offset by the jumble that the transportation changes would bring ... but that may be something of a wash, too. Some of those issues may be mitigated, for example, by making one of the high schools a magnet school, specializing in one particular curriculum offering.
Imagine building a small high school in Southern Village that offered the International Baccalaureate Program, but parents further than 15 miles away would have to pay a fee for bus service. Guess what? Those who really want that program would gladly do it.
If you are a county resident who has long been grinding your teeth at the near constant comparison of the county schools to Chapel Hill-Carr-boro's district, perhaps you relish the opportunity to blend the two together and end the competition.
Perhaps you live out on Dairyland Road, so close to McDougle elementary and middle schools and Chapel Hill High that you can almost touch them. But your county address means that your kids take a long ride to Grady Brown, A.L. Stanback and Cedar Ridge or Orange High.
In my own case, my son attends Cedar Ridge High School, but we probably live physically closer to East Chapel Hill High. For the benefit of continuity, I would probably ask that he remain at Cedar Ridge to graduate. He feels a part of the school as a community. That's important to him and it's important for his social development.
And perhaps you want just the opposite. Perhaps you like the separation and the usually friendly rivalry between the high schools in the sports arena and elsewhere. Perhaps you simply live on one side of this fence and, to put it gently, you just don't care much for the culture and community on the other side.
Fair enough. But school leaders must lay out front and center whether or not that's a $60 million reason to remain separate and unequal.

‘Nickelby’ leaves middle behind
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
I sometimes think that when educators and government bureaucrats marry they produce ACRONYMs. Oh, sorry ... Alphabet Crap Really Offering Nothing & Yielding Murkiness.
"Nickelby" is the insider-education wonk term for the so-called "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) Act. The concept is probably sponsored by some private conglomerate that plans to introduce a new product called "Dimeby" which will solve all the problems outlined by "Nickelby."
NCLB is essentially a new way to force school districts to be held accountable for results -- an admirable goal.
To be sure, there are more than a few serious flaws in the program. The federal government, after all, doesn't run our schools. We do. It's our local and state tax money that provides the vast majority of the funding for our schools.
On its face, the accountability seems like a good standard. If one or two of your schools don't do well, the whole district pays the price for it. This is an incentive that will prompt each school community to care about the outcomes elsewhere in the district, thereby ensuring that no child is left behind (hence the name).
My son is studying karate these days. Among the group he studies with, each student is told that the entire group should make every effort to advance together. They should help each other to learn effectively. If one of them is failing, they should all feel the burden of that failure. This teaches them not only patience and discipline but also a sense of shared commitment, an esprit de corps.
But that intent is where it ends. The instructor is not going to give out a black belt to someone who doesn't deserve it. He sustains a difficult standard for his students to aspire to. That's why they respect him. He understands that the actual achievement is the basis for the student's sense of accomplishment, not the ceremony where the new belt is awarded.
He's also not going to fail students who have achieved that standard by applying themselves just because their classmates have not arrived at the same level of achievement. To do so would break the contract between teacher and student.
Under NCLB, some schools that fail to comply with the federal accountability standards for two consecutive years must offer all students the choice of another public school.
But if all of Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County schools fail to meet these standards again next year (as most of them did this year) nothing will come of that failure. For the standards to apply, the schools must have at least 40 percent of students on free or reduced lunch, an indication of their families' low income level.
So for all the bluster about leaving no child behind, the new accountability will leave lots of children behind -- those in the middle of the class in the middle of America. In communities like ours that have problems and affluence, we'll be left alone. How very nice.
To his credit, Neil Pedersen says that by golly the Chapel Hill-Carr-boro district is going to take these standards really, really seriously and that his "expectation" is that 100 percent of his district's schools will meet the standards next year.
When I was pregnant, I never used the expression "I'm expecting." To me, it seemed absurd. You expect the bus to show up, but it may not. My children were coming. Seven months into pregnancy, I was what we call "committed."
Dr. Pedersen, too, should be "committed," as should the school boards of both Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County. If they cannot (or will not) meet the standards of the program, they should explain why. This may prove educational for all of us, for example, if it reveals the details of how the federal program is flawed.
The starting goals (which neither district fully met) don't look unreasonable to me. They state, for example, that by the end of the next school year, 81 percent of students in third through eighth grades will be proficient in math and 76.7 percent will be proficient in reading.
By grade 10, the proficiency level required is less than 70 percent for both reading and math. The on-grade-level proficiency required by the year 2014 is 100 percent.
Pedersen says schools that nearly make the mark should have another way to be described ... something other than "needs improvement." That reinforces the "expecting" standard, not the "committed" standard. I'd describe it as the "almost" standard.
I wonder if you'd want to go to a doctor who "almost" got into medical school, use a lawyer who "almost" passed the bar or fly on a plane into a storm where the pilot was "almost" instrument rated.
Almost certainly not.

Summertime’s slothlike news cycle
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
It is a torturous time of year in the news business -- summer, the season that never seems to end.
When you see stories about a long hot summer, you might think they're about the weather. Except for the occasional hundred-year drought, the long hot summer relates more to the desperate search for the quenching refreshment of a story -- maybe even a controversy.
With governments and schools on break, there's just not as much going on. Even Mark Twain would tire of commentary on the fescue development rate.
The only time that may be worse is the winter holiday season. In December of 1990, I gave several interviews about the work I was doing for the Orange County AIDS Service Agency.
At the time, we were raising money to build a group home in Carr-boro and trying to coordinate service within the county.
After doing an interview with this very newspaper, I was asked for a comment about then-Gov. Jim Martin's expressed interest in doing away with North Carolina's anonymous HIV testing program. I said what I thought about it -- that it was a bad idea -- and ended the interview thinking nothing of it.
My opinion on that topic was, after all, nothing especially unusual. Ho-hum.
On Christmas morning, my husband brought the newspaper in and dropped it on the dining room table. We probably didn't even look at it for 10 or 15 minutes.
Rick opened it and his eyes grew wide. There it was, on the front page, above the fold ... a blaring heading that said something like "bolduc blasts governor's testing plan."
We cracked up. Rick's parents were going to arrive later that day, coming down to celebrate the holiday and their 50th wedding anniversary. They were terribly impressed, of course.
Gov. Martin, I joked, was surely trembling that he'd earned my disapproval. He never called.
With this as background, I was particularly amused to read about the recent tribulations of Carrboro Mayor Mike Nelson. He has been blasted by a couple of citizens who didn't like the fact that a controversial piece of art was hung in the mayor's office.
The good mayor, for his part, was busy during the tempest in Carr-boro's teapot.
Immersing himself in Spanish, the mayor was too busy trying to become a better mayor to notice his own neglect.
Oh, yes, he was definitely negligent. Perhaps Nelson should have anticipated all of this and micromanaged Town Hall -- all the way from Mexico, where he has been throughout the flap.
Instead, I'm willing to bet the mayor was more focused on something larger.
A few years ago I covered the town of Carrboro for this newspaper. I attended the annual retreat of the Board of Aldermen.
Nelson and several other members of the board discussed the need for town employees and the Board of Aldermen to think creatively and lead by example in their desire to be responsive to the town's growing Hispanic community.
This was (and is) a community embraced by the town's government. The board discussed the need for emergency responders to have training in Spanish.
Among the things that I remember clearly was that the aldermen themselves cited a desire to lead by example in developing their own second-language skills.
The aldermen and the mayor agreed that they couldn't effectively lead a community that they cannot easily talk to and listen to. Obviously, the good mayor is once again leading by example.
Local-level hurricanes like this are part of doing business in government these days.
I joked with a town employee recently that they must have a running gag about this sort or thing around the office. If there's not much going on in the news, just hide under your desk and don't answer the phone.
He said that they take it in stride and even send their feigned sympathies to the media target of the day. I can hear it now ... the mocking questions of resignation or recall election, dripping with sarcasm. It actually sounds like Carr-boro's style -- not taking itself too seriously.
Meanwhile, the perhaps-ironic point of it all can drift away. Nelson, like most Americans, certainly cares about the sensitivity of whether and how artwork using a swastika is displayed. The more pressing issue, however, is the ultimate protection of speech.
Keeping it free doesn't always mean easy and obvious choices. It requires thought and commitment to serious principles. Defending speech that offends is the ultimate test of those principles.
In this case, if you think the answer is easy, you don't understand the question.

Back to school -- it’s already time
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
You know it's been a slow summer when your teenager glares over at you and declares, "I cannot WAIT for school to start."
Like so many parents, I may have dreamed of this day (when my child would beg to go to school) for years, but never thought it would actually arrive.
I can recall only one summer that boring when I was a kid. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school -- the summer of 1974.
I couldn't drive yet and so I marked the time, waiting for my 16th birthday (in mid-August) by watching the only thing there was on television.
All day, every day: North Carolina Sen. Sam Ervin and his colleagues grilled John Dean and various others in the Watergate hearings.
It was the ultimate in reality programming.
Thankfully, they wrapped it all up with an exciting finish (President Nixon's resignation) just in time for me to start out on the road. Very considerate, really.
This year, my teenager has only the weapons-of-mass-destruction (where-are-they?) debate to draw him into the drama of national politics. He cannot wait to return to Cedar Ridge High School next Tuesday.
Many business owners, here and elsewhere, are loudly pondering: Why are the kids going back to school so soon?
I'd hate to be trying to run a tourist-driven business like the go-karts, mini-golf or an ocean-front restaurant when my workers have to report to homeroom in the second week of August.
When so many from the Triangle vacation at the North Carolina shore, some of the demand for those services will drop off.
And this doesn't seem to pick up earlier in summer to make up for it as you might anticipate.
The differing schedules of northern states (which still go back to school after Labor Day) means that tourism areas are understaffed when the Yanks march in during August.
This trend toward earlier and earlier starts began so that schools could work one or two more weeks of test preparation in for those wonderful springtime rituals, the end of year tests.
I haven't noticed those results soaring as a result of the "extra time," so I'm coming to agree with those from the tourism industry who advocate for returning to the post-Labor Day kickoff date.
There are, after all, other problems that are created by going back to school when it's routinely very hot.
Dress code restrictions tend to nearly rule out the clothes that teenagers like to wear in summer, requiring their parents to buy some sort of summer-transition period wardrobe. Can it be that our textile industry has been behind this all along?
It's a tricky business dressing a kid for school these days -- nothing too revealing when it's hot and nothing with too many layers or hidden areas when it's cold.
Maybe when they finish that super Wal-Mart in Hillsborough next month they can start construction on the school-weather bubble. Perfect conditions all the time and never the need for an umbrella: our own little biosphere.
Perhaps the bubble will protect the kids and teachers alike from the upcoming autumn hailstorm of merger discussion. The county commissioners' dress code must call for flak jackets and helmets. They'll need them.
So go to bed early and get a good breakfast boys and girls.
It's back to school next week. And don't forget the sunscreen. The bus might be late.

They seem so young -- the parents, that is
Wednesday, August 27, 2003 I came to Chapel Hill in October of 1978, relocated for my husband's job with Blue Cross & Blue Shield. I was a child of 20 at the time. It wasn't until the next fall (when I had just turned 21) that I experienced the seismic adjustment that Chapel Hill goes through when the students hit town.
That fall, I remember distinctly a day just after the students arrived. I was driving down Franklin Street and the place was literally swarming with wide-eyed freshmen. You can pick them out...they're the ones walking with parents who are toting checklists and looking somewhat more worried and exhausted.
At the time, I felt a little jealous, to be quite honest. I had dropped out of school and gotten married.
I decided that my education would have to wait until I was settled in with the man I loved. It was a good decision, but had its moments of second-guessing -- usually in the autumn.
I remember looking at the students and thinking that they looked just like me.
I felt as though I could just blend right in with them. I may have even been in high school with some of them, I thought. It was almost eerie.
When I returned to school 15 years later, I didn't exactly blend in. Unlike my classmates at Carolina, I had two kids, a husband and in-laws with failing health at home.
I also had a more keen appreciation, I think, of how precious an experience it was to be in college. I wouldn't trade that piece of my college degree for anything.
This past weekend, I was walking through the parking lot at Eastgate when a minivan drove up slowly behind me. "Excuse me...," said the voice behind the wheel. "Do you live around here?"
My husband and I spun around and confirmed our being "locals."
"We're looking for a grocery store," said the somewhat frazzled mom behind the wheel. "The sign over there says that a Food Lion is coming soon, but we need one today," she said.
We explained the route to the Harris Teeter at University Mall and offered our wishes of good luck in finding it.
Clearly, this was a kid-drop-off trip and mom and dad were getting pretty worn out with the whole settling-in process.
And boy, I could relate. Just a couple of years ago, I was settling my older son into his dorm at N.C. State and felt like I was in the land of the lost trying to find anything for him in Raleigh.
Oh, it's not as far away, but his dorm seemed to be in the corner of campus that was convenient to absolutely nothing.
And so there I stood, giving directions and looking at the nice woman, who was about my age.
I felt like I was seeing my life flash before my eyes -- or maybe just a complement to the set of bookends begun in 1979.
When people come here to school, they often return and declare "they've ruined the place."
Thinking back on this particular set of experiences, I am stunned at how much of Chapel Hill is so very much the same as it was when we arrived here.
That includes, of course, the fact that the party's over for us locals when it comes to getting dinner reservations or enjoying easy parking when we eat at Pepper's Pizza or the Rat. It'll be Thanksgiving or Christmas before the streets fall quiet again.
We never want them to be silent, like famous Sam and his musket. After all, he's vigilant but lifeless. Thankfully, downtown Chapel Hill -- though ever-changing -- is anything but that.

Carrboro mayor’s race is a puzzler
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
With an offensive flag flapping in the breeze of an otherwise relatively uneventful summer, there are some bizzarr-o goings-on in the not-very-contested race for the mayor's seat in Carrboro.
This game of musical chairs lacks the usual shortage of seats to make the game interesting. Normally, you'd think that a swell job like being a small-town mayor (something you needn't quit your day job for) would attract a couple of folks with differing opinions to at least play-wrestle for the votes of the citizens -- but not in this case.
The mayor's race hasn't been genuinely contested in recent years and it certainly isn't due to lack of interest on the part of the citizenry.
Carrboro is a politically active and engaged town. When it sets up planning sessions on a beautiful spring afternoon, it can fill a school cafeteria with residents just brimming with thoughtful ideas for how to make the place better. People know who their local officials are -- they call them by name on the street. They call them at home with problems.
And that may be the down side of serving as mayor of a small town, but Mike Nelson has never made any secret of the fact that he loves all of it. He goes to ribbon-cuttings and award ceremonies small, medium and large. I covered a meeting he went to with local business owners to talk about ways in which the town could better support the development of the music and entertainment businesses that have recently cropped up in Carrboro.
Nelson mentioned to me after the meeting (a luncheon) that he was not feeling well. He'd just come from the dentist. It was important to keep the date, he said, so he ordered soft food and tried not to grimace openly.
When Nelson's office (not him, just the four walls allotted to him by the town for ceremonial purposes) got wrapped up in the recent flag flap, it was, in fact, a nonresident of Carr-boro, Todd Melet, who got his knickers in a twist over the fact that a controversial piece of art was displayed in the mayor's office.
Knowing that he couldn't run for mayor himself, Melet cajoled a friend, Robert Glosson, to challenge Nelson for his seat. Glosson, it should be noted, seems to live in a peculiar part of Carrboro that allows him to vote for mayor but not seek the office.
Somebody needs to 'splain that one to us laypeople who are still trying to understand the Florida butterfly and the California remake of "Total Recall."
According to a story in The last Friday, a complaint was filed with the Board of Elections, but they won't investigate because it was made through an attorney who is not a resident of Carrboro.
Huh?
Glosson, for his part, agreed to withdraw from the race, but wanted Mike Nelson to withdraw also and thereby reopen the filing period for another five days.
Now that's perfectly logical, isn't it?
A duly elected public official, who has absolutely never been accused of any wrongdoing, malfeasance, official misconduct or anything worse than having bad taste in art, should withdraw from an uncontested re-election campaign in order to suit the "need" for fairness as described by someone who doesn't live in his town.
What does Melet think this is, California? Only there can you yank a public official out of office due to buyer's remorse. The rest of us have to suffer along until the next election cycle.
It's one trend that the Golden State can keep to itself.

Merger something to talk about
Wednesday, September 03, 2003 Bonnie Raitt said it best with her song, "Let's give 'em something to talk about, a little mystery to figure out."
We can't know if that was the song Moses Carey just couldn't get out of his head in January when he tossed the idea of merging Orange county's two school districts onto the county commissioners' planning table. It would sure make a good story if that's what inspired the move.
Tomorrow night, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board will put the issue on the table in a most delicate manner. The board is expected to discuss only whether and how the district should disseminate public information about the prospects for merger.
Superintendent Neil Pedersen will ask his board for direction on whether the public should be entitled to view the report that he and his county colleagues have generated for the commissioners. The report is supposed to outline the programs offered by each district and the anticipated effects of merger, offering something of an "apples-to-apples" comparison.
It's a curiosity that Pedersen needs this "direction." I mean, is he kidding? This is a report that outlines what the programs are in two public school districts and he needs instruction about whether or not to make it public?
It's our report. We paid for it. If a final document (ready for the commissioners' review) exists, it should be posted to the Web sites of both districts immediately.
With all the chatter going on about officials of all sorts having a burning desire to hear what the public wants regarding merger, it's more than a little curious that Pedersen would need direction here.
And skip the hair splitting that this is about the issue of spending money on printing a zillion copies of this report. That dog won't hunt. It would cost the district exactly zero to publish this to the districts' Web sites and certainly this newspaper and its competitors would gladly publish the material in the interest of generating a robust public debate on the issue.
Pedersen does not anticipate that the board will discuss the merger itself tomorrow, just the discrete issue of whether or how to disseminate this report to the community. The board will be wise to avoid that discussion and avoid the clumsy conduct of its county colleagues, who have publicly and emotionally stumbled into a discussion on merger already while discussing whether or not to survey parents on the issue.
The county decided to do the survey in the end, but it is tainted by the stench of frontier justice -- first we'll give the accused a fair trial, then we'll hang him.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro may be keeping its cards closer to the vest, but their perspective is likely the same. Those signing petitions and turning up the heat on this issue tend to focus on the "what people want" aspect of it. Somehow, a referendum (not required by law) is touted as the more democratic means of deciding the issue.
It's not. It's a way to appear demo-cratic while effectively throwing one's hands aloft and resigning the issue to the whim of southern Orange County. Chapel Hill and Carrboro's population numbers mean that what they say (as an electorate) is what would happen.
You know it's got to be hard for the members of both school boards to effectively stay out of this for now and keep their mouths shut. They were elected to these positions because they wanted to lead the community on the critical issue of educating kids. To have such an important aspect of how that is accomplished decided by others is a potentially frustrating situation.
But clamming up and facilitating the public debate is what they must do right now. Listening to the people you serve is an extremely important task for an elected official, too. Putting solid, factual information in the hands of parents and the community at large is a critical role that educators must play right now. At this stage of this process, it is the most mature kind of leadership -- the kind that gives the masses some credit for knowing what they're looking at.
And this, by the way, is what the commissioners are ultimately seeking -- feedback from an informed public and the fruit of a robust public debate.
The report is going to be presented to the commissioners on Sept. 15, which means it will be in the board's agenda packet (and on the county's Web site) prior to that. In fact, it may be posted on the county's Web site by the end of this week.
That being the case, Pedersen's "request for direction" would seem to be a red herring and this is no time to be fishing.

The courage of our convictions
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
As the second anniversary of the infamous September attacks approaches, I'm reminded of my first reaction when I put on my television and watched in horror as the first World Trade Center building fell, then the next followed.
I was home-schooling my son two years ago. Obviously, our lesson plan vanished and we were mesmerized as we saw our definition of freedom rewritten by terrorists.
Beyond the likely loss of life, my first thought was that now, as a nation, we would see if we had the courage of our convictions.
Now we will see, I thought, just how much we are devoted to being a free and open society. Now we will learn what our commitment to free speech looks like. After all, if we are not willing to defend the right to speak of those who offend us, then we are not committed to free speech at all.
There will be investigations, I thought. There should be questions -- hard questions -- about whether or how the attacks might have been thwarted. If Americans can embrace that asking questions is just as patriotic as following the leader, we'll be OK.
My son and I, like most Americans, were glued to the television that day and for many that followed.
The towers were in New York, but intuitively, we watched the skies of Chapel Hill, which were also ominously clear as a bell that day. It is the first time I remember feeling nervous while driving around in Orange County. I only wanted to be at home.
As the news streamed in we learned that there were, in fact, reports of other planes in Washington and Pennsylvania.
Knowing the close proximity of the Pentagon to the White House, the monuments near the mall and the Capitol, my heart just sank thinking about the very possibility of a plane striking one of those most important symbols.
The attack struck at the hearts of all of us. The response in the two years since has been felt on every level of government, from local police to mall security to airport searches. In truth, we are less free today.
But the cycle of shock and adjustment has meant that now we, as a nation, are asking more questions. Regardless of the answers, this is a good thing. What we need most to remain free and safe is information that we can rely on. We need the truth.
In a very odd way, all of this really struck home in the last week as I read the many stories and letters and commentaries on the question of merging the Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school districts.
Likewise, in considering this question and doing some research, my eyes were opened on several fronts, but none more than the overall similarity of one single thing -- through this debate we will learn if our community has the courage of its convictions.
After all, the Orange County community is home to one of the great universities in the United States if not the world. It is a cradle for higher learning, and the entire community is simply swimming with resources, both human and otherwise, to support the education of children and young adults.
North of Interstate 40 we have seen a significant influx of Duke families who have located here for our more rural landscape. This demographic doesn't change the fact that this northern landscape is much more heavily populated with farm acres than is southern Orange County.
That has a significant impact on our tax base and our potential for leveling the funding between our two systems.
But now, as the debate is about to surge forward in earnest, we are left with only one clear objective: doing what is in the long-term interests of our children.
At this stage, no responsible person should have a position on what that is going to look like.
While this doesn't have the implications of a criminal trial, it wouldn't hurt us to think of ourselves as a jury, finders of fact.
We should be wary of those who view the prospects of merger as a political battle or other kind of power struggle.
For example, the Orange County Board of Education is just about the only thing left that we in northern Orange County have separate voting power over. Retaining that power is no more reason to block a merger than fear of unknown social consequences.
The commissioners will hear the first wave of information next Monday at the Battle Courtroom in the county courthouse in Hillsborough. It will be refreshing to see where the actual facts lead us all.

Symbolism is thick in merger talks
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
"Spellbinding."
That's how Commissioner Steve Halkiotis described the reports and proceedings Monday night in the ultimately appropriate venue for discussing school merger -- the Battle Courtroom in the Orange County Courthouse.
The comment drew a giggle from the crowd, as was likely the good commissioner's intent. Lighten up everybody; it's not a murder trial.
But the debate over merger, now technically in its infancy, is one that will heat up the community, and Halkiotis knows it better than anyone. He reminded the crowd that he cautioned his colleagues back on that January afternoon when Moses Carey first put merger on the table.
Be careful as you put this train on the track, Halkiotis cautioned. He was right. A runaway train is a dangerous thing.
And his prediction, that alliances of proponents and opponents would form ranks before the facts were even laid out, has proven so accurate that nearby Virginians are probably calling Halkiotis before buying their lottery tickets.
There are already anti-merger stickers to wear. Perhaps they're manufactured by Orange school board member Randy Copeland, who said earlier this week that he had not read the county's report on merger impact, but that didn't matter to him because he opposes merger.
Part of the opposition formed has been the online petition, which includes such educational luminaries as Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone.
Several lines of the unregulated document are consumed not by names, but instead by comments like "Sign your name to the list of shame."
That's the problem with online "petitions": They're invalid.
And so, according to county attorney Geof Gledhill, is the notion that a referendum can or should take place. He advised the commissioners and the crowd -- more than once -- that a referendum is not permitted in a merger initiated by the commissioners.
The crowd was polite and attentive throughout the meeting and the matter-of-fact announcement to this effect by Gledhill did not trigger demonstrations or outbursts. The only sound I heard was wind escaping the sails of merger's opposition. Time for Plan B.
Not surprisingly, the salient argument of the night came from Carey, merger's champion and the county's longtime leader.
What we have to ask ourselves, he said, is whether or not we would choose to create two separate systems if we were beginning from scratch today. Carey said only one person thus far has answered "yes" to that question.
At its essence, the issue squarely before us is a civil rights issue. It is one of equal opportunity. The special district tax in Chapel Hill was initiated about 50 years ago. To my recollection, that about the same time that the Brown v. Board of Education decision came down from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Back then, there were two school districts in Chapel Hill.
I'm guessing that the paler of the two probably got that district tax passed. When the two systems were forced to integrate, the district tax survived that merger. According to county officials, it can technically survive this one, too, though it would be zeroed out when the merger occurs and funding mechanism shifts to the county.
That in itself has prompted rallying cries of dreaded tax increases. In point of fact, for Chapel Hill-Carrboro families, their 20-cent special district tax would be reduced to 17 cents per hundred dollars of value.
A tax that was born in racism should be sent to its place of eternal rest in North Carolina's history books. There is no better person than Carey to make that argument as he sits in the county courthouse, the very seat of justice for the community.
This is not to say that merger should be a certainty. It should not. All possible options should be brought to bear and the "boxes" of predisposed thinking should be eschewed.
But the special district tax should be repealed. Because of the dramatic changes driven by the more affluent development in Chapel Hill, the tax has created a multi-million dollar gap in funding that is inherently unfair.
As Chapel Hill-Carrboro's growth demands more school construction in the coming decade (if the systems remain separate), we'll all get to pay for it, even as only Chapel Hill-Carrboro kids benefit from the new facilities.
Two hundred fifteen years ago, Hillsborough was the site of North Carolina's Constitutional Convention. The story goes that that was a pretty controversial merger, too. At that moment of truth, delegates insisted that a Bill of Rights be included before ratification.
So despite claims that the county cares less about education that the city, demanding equal opportunity and fair taxation is nothing new. Hillsborough has a storied history in this regard. I guess you can't quite believe everything you hear, no matter how loud the clatter.

Parade’s name gets across the point
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
If you remember Gilda Radner's slightly deaf character Emily Latella, you had to get a good howl out of the "Dykes march in celebration" story in this newspaper on Monday.
For those too young to recall, Emily would appear on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" and would launch into a spectacular rant about a misunderstood topic. Among the classics was, "What's all this I hear about violins on television?!"
On she'd go, explaining why classical music is a good thing to have on television and why it was that people were being outrageous and intolerant in complaining about it. The anchor would eventually interrupt, explaining that, no, the fuss was about violence on television, not violins.
"Oh, I see," Emily would say. "That's entirely different ... nevermind."
Monday's story featured a headline that I'll have to admit I had a little trouble with. I just had a hard time getting past the front page of the newspaper featuring a headline that read "Dykes march in celebration."
It all ran through my mind like greased lightning. The angry letters, the canceled subscriptions, the agonizing explanations of how the newspaper totally didn't meant to offend anyone.
Hey, the news business is tough. Headlines I looked at in high school as being unremarkable might spark angry protest today. It's unlikely, after all, that anyone would refer to Martin Luther King Jr. as a "Negro leader" now, but it was common back then.
Regardless, I had visions of retractions and regret...and I didn't even write the headline!
But then, I started reading the story. There I found that the event's name was the basis for the headline, not some insensitive headline scribe. In fact, the more I read about it, the more I giggled at myself. It seems that last year's parade featured topless dykes marching in celebration.
My older son commented that he should have gone to the parade -- not only to support his gay friends, but also to take in the view. Perhaps the paper missed the chance to increase its younger readership by not running a carefully chosen file photo to go with Monday's story.
Although I have certainly used the word dyke with my gay friends (in good humor, of course) I have tended to think of it in pejorative terms. The word "dyke" is defined by the dictionary as an insulting term, a "disparaging term for a lesbian" says the American Heritage College Dictionary. It doesn't offer a second usage that would make it the source of pride.
So I was taken aback when I read the headline. When I read the rest of the story, I was just in stitches.
It seems that one onlooker was initially confused about the parade, having misread the sign. She said that she thought the parade had something to do with Duke -- hence my vision of dear Emily Latella.
"What's all this I hear about Duke's marching in celebration? Don't they know this is Franklin Street, the heart of the UNC campus? Don't they have their own town to march in to show their pride in their own school? I thought these two schools were rivals, anyway! Does this mean that Tar Heel fans are going to descend on Ninth Street? It isn't right I tell you!..."
Well, you get the picture.
My curiosity about the whole thing led me to the dykemarch.org Web site which explained the history and mission of the march, now in its 11th year.
My reaction to the word "dyke" is part of what the organizers are trying to get after. They want to define themselves, not be defined by others, and rise above labels and stereotyping. Taking the attack to the words themselves is a good approach, especially for words that are eyebrow-raising but not widely thought of as obscenities.
But having watched the Emmy awards with great interest on Sunday night (because a member of my extended family actually won one) I am reminded that we're all making good progress on the getting-past-the-labels thing.
The now infamous Britney Spears-Madonna slurpfest is totally yesterday's news, now that we got to watch Brad Garrett plant one on Garry Shandling at the opening of the broadcast. I'm sure there were at least some who were offended, but you know what? It was FUNNY.
And it was funny when Milton Berle and Sid Caeser did similar shtick 50 years ago, too. According to the song "As Time Goes By" a kiss is still a kiss and a smile is still a smile.
Nevermind.

Frustrated with DMV? Get in line
Wednesday, October 01, 2003 My son is taking Driver's Education at Cedar Ridge High School in breathless anticipation of securing his learner's permit and then, of course, his license.
He'd like to get his permit before Christmas, so he should probably be in line right now.
A driver's education course cannot be complete without an overview of the fine art of surviving the Department of Motor Vehicles. Specifically, I draw the attention of every would-be driver to the arena of the driver's license office.
I say would-be on account of the fact that my father (a life actuary) always told us that within a certain population (if the number is big enough), some number of people will expire within a fixed time period. Every day in North Carolina there are so many people spending so much time standing in line to get something done at a license office of DMV, they are bound to have an official mortality rate.
This summer, I mentioned to a friend that at long last (it's been eight years) my license was up for renewal.
She immediately admonished me to make an appointment or I'd lose half a day waiting in line.
Now this friend meant well, of course, but she's a very busy and successful attorney and I just thought she was demonstrating that she doesn't have an hour to waste standing in a line.
She travels a lot for business and it still amazes me that she hasn't been carried off by security at an airport out of the sheer frustration of that experience in recent years.
Still, taking her warning as somewhat more than histrionics, I swung by the DMV office in Hillsborough several weeks before my birthday. The line was out the door. I was there at lunchtime and thought ... look at all the nice people with a birthday today. Too bad for them that they waited to the last minute.
I asked around. Nightmare stories began to flow. Stories of two- and three-hour waits.
In late July I called the Hillsborough office and asked about making an appointment (before my August birthday). Next one available was after mid-September.
"How long is the wait?" I asked.
"It's about three hours, ma'am," he answered.
"Is it any better in the other offices? Are you understaffed?" I continued.
"Where do you live?" he said.
Yes, that was his response ... to ask me where I live. Red Flag #1.
"Chapel Hill," I said.
"There's an office in Carrboro and you can go to the Durham office," he said.
"Yeah, I know that," I said, "but that's not what I asked you. I asked if the wait is any shorter in the other offices. Is it?"
"It's the same everywhere," he said. Now he sounded weary.
"Is it better first thing in the morning?" I continued.
"No," he said. "It's the same all day."
Interesting. That must mean that if I got there at the moment the office opened, there'd be a three-hour queue of people waiting ahead of me. If they open at 8 a.m. or 8:30, that puts somebody out there in line before 6 a.m. every day.
Impossible.
As my birthday approached, I was determined that I was not going to spend it in line at the DMV, so I ventured out to Carrboro Plaza and hauled myself into the line already formed there a half-hour before opening. There were about 25 people ahead of me. I figured the wait would be an hour, once they opened the office.
I was wrong.
For no reason, I was stranded in this line for two hours after the doors opened -- two and half total. When it was finally my turn, I saw a significant part of the reason why -- two problems, really.
Regardless of your reason for being there, everyone is in one line. An uncomplicated, two-minute, clean-record renewal like mine is standing behind a person who has multiple tasks ahead and may chew up 20 minutes of processing.
Second, the examiner who I went to decided that it was time for her to vent to me about how stressful her job is.
She'd had a boyfriend a while ago, but he left her, she said, because she brought the job home with her.
That's right ... I guess when she arrived each night, there were people lined up around her house, unable to legally drive home.
She went on and on and on. Eventually, I told her to please get on with my renewal as the people in line behind me would jump me if they saw her yapping away while they waited.
"I don't care," she said. "There's gonna be people waiting all day. It's like this all the time."
Stay tuned for my foolproof plan for curing this scourge. It will address the economic impact as well as providing citizens with the visceral satisfaction of righting this terrible wrong.

Fixing DMV’s wagon easy, quick
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
When I wrote last week that I had the solution for our state's licensing renewal operation, I may as well have declared that I had a cure for a dreaded disease or a chicken for every pot. Heads nodded with approval of my criticism (waiting two hours for a three-minute renewal process is obscene) and my solution may shove school merger off the front page for a day -- that's just how big an idea this is.
One reader wrote, "[I] am eagerly awaiting your foolproof plan for curing the scourge of the DMV's drivers' license bureaus! I experienced my own disillusionment back in August STANDING in lines (I am 65 and could barely do this) and found myself, along with nearly everyone else, berated, rejected and sent away for more documentation so I had to return and stand some more, simply to renew the license I've had for 32 years."
Thank you for writing, Marie, though I still have a palm print on my forehead from reading that one.
Never daunted by a challenge, I have made the unselfish decision to run for governor of North Carolina on a DMV reform platform. Here's what I will do once "elected."
I will shut down the Department of Motor Vehicles' licensing operation and automatically extend every expired license for one year. No new licenses will be issued in the 12 months following my election.
I just won the vote of every parent of a 14-year old.
Next I will put out for bid the entire operation of driver's license renewal as an Information Systems project. Private companies will develop innovative ways to process 80 percent of renewals (routine, uncomplicated) but they could start with simple changes like these:
*When you receive your reminder postcard telling you that your license will soon expire, it will also tell you if your driving record is clean (no points) or, if not, will verify how many points you have.
If you have a clean record, you will automatically be issued an appointment good for your renewal. You can call and change it if you want, but you must give seven
days notice to do so. Because you're a good driver, you'll be in and out of the office in 15 minutes or less by using this appointment.
*If you have points on your record, you'll be given a different appointment -- one for a longer time because you'll have to re-take the written test.
These will be offered and supervised via any number of options, including use of the community college system or a notary public. All you really need to verify is that a licensed person whose signature cannot be bought actually watched you take the test. Actually, any licensed public school teacher should be able to open a small business proctoring DMV tests on Saturday mornings.
The more complicated innovations could include developing the capability to complete the renewal at an ATM-like device at a mall kiosk. After you get your reminder notice and a user name and password, you'd go to the mall and this gadget would take your picture (which you can do over and over again until you get one that looks something like you) and transmit it back to headquarters in Raleigh.
There, a new license is created and mailed to the address registered with DMV. If the mail is good enough for issuing a credit card, it should be good enough for this. They can be spot-checked against existing licenses to make sure that the photos are close enough.
Getting this done in an almost completely automated and user-friendly way should be one of the perks of keeping your driving record clean as the well-known whistle.
As for people who work for DMV, my administration will have a whole new approach. These folks will not work for the government, they'll work for the private company that wins the contract. They will have financial incentives that will relate to an old but still viable concept that I like to call "customer service."
The employee who processes the most registrations and gets the most glowing reports on the "how's my processing?" feedback card issued with your license will win cash or a prize each month. There will be a winner of some kind in each DMV service office each month.
Yes, that's right, they will be called "service" offices and will be open seven days a week.
If you work there for six months and have never placed in the top five performers of renewals, you're on probation, ready to be fired if you don't improve.
One more thing. Fees will go up. My prediction is that we'll all be happy to pay a little more in order to get shafted a little less.
Naturally, if Gov. Easley does all this before I get elected, I'll just have to live with that. I can console myself by going for a drive.

Plan sounds good, doesn’t deliver
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
Where would Orange County Schools' parents be without the protection of Neil Pedersen? Stranded in the dark selling pencils for a nickel, I suppose.
Pedersen was asked by his board's leadership to present some non-merger options to the board. This, incidentally, is apparently how the Chapel Hill-Carrboro board defines "staying out of it" where the commissioners' merger discussions are concerned. (I would take a more strict interpretation myself ­- something along the lines of actually staying out of it.)
In his Oct. 9 memo to his board, Pedersen begins with the expected tax increase that would be mandated by a merger. "This would amount to approximately a 25-percent property tax increase for homeowners and businesses in the OCS district, an amount that can be expected to be not only unpopular but also a real financial hardship on many residents," he writes.
It would seem the presumption is that what is a "commitment for great schools" in Chapel Hill is a "potential burden" to me and Huck Finn out here in the land of the plow and bandana.
Pedersen's proposal, which is curiously timed to coincide with the district tax agenda item of county schools' chairman Keith Cook, is essentially one that presses to put a district tax on county residents and a bunch of we-promise-we'll-collaborate paragraphs that discuss all sorts of time- and money-saving reasons to stop short of merger.
Now the funny part is that the untrained eye might buy into this malarkey.
In almost one breath, Pedersen points to the areas where the two districts already collaborate and specifies transportation, for example. Without dropping a stitch, he makes passing mention of the dreaded "long bus rides" that many parents are citing as the reason they fear merger.
But why would that happen when the two districts transportation systems are already so well-coordinated?
So let's pause on that one just a moment.
I read a quote from a parent in the paper the other day that would have had me in stitches if it weren't so serious. A father said that he liked the Chapel Hill school where his child goes because it's in walking distance from his house. He feared that merger would end that.
"A lot of people are worried about long bus rides and redistricting," he said.
Somehow, an intelligent man actually believes that merging the two districts might take his elementary age child, put him/her on a bus for an hour and ship this kid off to a county school. Nonsense.
It is beyond absurd to think that any school board would take such action and it is worse to remain uninformed and fear change simply in order to avoid it.
And there's more. School board members (and many school staffers, no doubt) are implying that some programs may be in jeopardy because of the possible merger of the districts. This is offered as some form of "caution" but it is essentially sabotage -- a way of killing the commissioners' process by throwing a blanket of uncertainty over virtually any specific area of interest within either district.
These gyrations, whispers and distractions are in large part being generated by the two districts, their boards and staffs, yet this process of evaluating merger is a process of the county commissioners, not one of either district.
And at this point, we're beginning to see the essence of the differences between our two districts.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro is driving a luxury automobile and has convinced itself that luxury automobiles are worth the extra money and are convinced that the extra investment explains better road handling and overall satisfaction.
Orange County is driving a mid-range sedan and feels that the added investment in leather interior and alloy wheels won't get you to work any sooner. We have airbags and seat belts, too. We're not in the dark ages.
But neither of us wants to drive the other guy's ride. If the districts don't merge, we'll each get to ignore the other side's argument and the divide will continue to grow. Not just the money. Not just the architecture of the school buildings -- the growing and conspicuous gap between our two communities.
To merge the schools and our communities, we're going to have to get on the bus -- the big yellow one -- that shuttles our kids to school and back. We're going to have to put on the table the 85 percent of all stuff that we agree on (safe schools, best teaching practices, equal opportunity for college, strong athletics, diverse sports opportunities, effective administrative management) so we can clear the way to resolve the 15 percent where we find our differences.
If we were to approach merger constructively, we'd likely find that the 15 percent could provide us with valuable diversity and some of the strength that specialized choices can bring. This could range from building a project house to science classes that offer remote virus manipulation via the Internet or a magnet International Baccalaureate high school.
First, we have to decide if it's better to reinforce walls or build bridges.

Irony abounds in merger hearings
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Calling the merger debate between Orange County's two school districts a culture clash is just too tame an expression for the apparently plaid versus polka dots perspectives voiced at the second public hearing last week.
I think of it more as the irony from hell.
As I looked around the Cedar Ridge High School auditorium, I wondered what constructive cause would bring 500 parents out on a Thursday night. I was tempted to take to the podium myself and tell the commissioners to take a good, long look at that crowd. More than any other factor, this is the reason kids succeed. These people -- not the school system -- make that happen.
These are the parents who pay attention, who know what's going on at their child's school, in the classroom and in the play group. They're involved, informed and take action to make opportunity happen.
And there they sat, side by side, the city folk and the county folk, many on the same side -- opposed to merger. Nearly half the attendees felt compelled to wear stickers, labels or other displays on their person that said "no merger."
And there they sat, side by side, ironically united in their opposition to their children doing the same thing in a classroom.
One parent decried the commissioners' discussions of merger as a naked attempt to commit a "massive transfer of wealth" from Orange County's southern population toward the north.
Uh ... so what? The shared communal responsibility for educating children is the definition of public education.
Next came the dreaded busing argument. This one we heard over and over again, scolding the commissioners that they were condemning the little lambs of the city district to ride long hours per week to get to their new schools out in the middle of nowhere.
But then Orange County parent David Laudicina, who has been a fixture of volunteerism for the last decade, took to the microphone and asked the simple, elegant question: Why has it been OK all these years to bus a kid who lives spitting distance from McDougle Elementary to Grady Brown? Doesn't that kid deserve a neighborhood school, too?
The big bad threat of busing makes for a grabbing news headline (one report warned that 1,600 might be shipped out to the county) but the actual expectation of the districts is that most of the changes would not be seen or felt until nearly 10 years from now, when the shift in facilities versus population would actually occur.
That's more than enough time to plan elementary to middle school transitions, which is where much of that shift would occur. Where's the trauma?
Laudicina, like many of us, has been around long enough to have grown weary of this fish story of cooperation, too. He heard all about it when East Chapel Hill High was offered to voters as a bond issue, he said. He's not buying this time.
And he shouldn't. If they succeed in blocking a merger, it's laughable to think these warring factions would willingly embrace cooperative programs. They've had dozens of chances to do so already and nothing but turf warfare has resulted.
And then there was John Hartwell, a former county commissioner himself. The good Mr. Hartwell pointed out to his former colleagues that the county has pursued responsible land-use public policy. Of course there is a concentration of higher priced and more heavily settled real estate in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area, he said. That's exactly what we've planned for decades now.
We established a rural buffer, he said. We have avoided the waste of sprawl. As a matter of preserving the rural character of the county's unspoiled farmlands, the northern half of the county is clearly disadvantaged in raising revenue from property taxes. A special district tax on the county simply cannot level this playing field.
The commissioners do not feign surprise at this disparity. They have seen this train coming for years.
Hartwell cited an inspired quote from his days as a commissioner back in the early 1980s when a member of a merger study group said, "You get the money where the money is and you spend the money where the children are."
The commissioners, so integrally involved in this complex brew of competing issues, know this better than any panel of elected officials who oversee budgets and policy.
There was applause for merger. There was support. Those voices tended to be voices of reason and logic. The angry, fearful opposition made a lot more noise.
And on the way home, after leaping to their feet to shout for a vote on a matter their self-interest clouds, they probably complain that elected leaders aren't willing to make tough decisions without checking the political winds.
Yet the commissioners wouldn't be on this hot seat if the opposite weren't true. They have wisely rejected pressure to hurry up, to slow down or to do anything other than what they said they would do about merger -- think about it, talk about it and learn what it would mean.

5 of top 10 reasons to nix merger
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
If citing a top 10 list is good enough for attorney David Rudolf in trying to spare his client life in prison, I thought it might a be a good device for summarizing the top reasons listed so far by opponents of merging the Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County schools.
Read the list of comments from those who attended the public hearings on merger and you will help yourself to some of the most superficial arguments for avoiding a merger of the county's two school districts. Those cited directly are in quotes. Here are five of my top ten, with the rest to follow next week.
Reason #10: Busing. Except for logic, this one could really gain some traction. So many bad memories and fears going back to forced integration ... it's practically a knee-jerk reaction that if the schools are thrown together, it's bound to mean some sweet little kid is yanked out of his comfortable elementary school right down the street from home and shipped to Alaska (or Efland Cheeks Elementary) to fend for himself on the barren land, returning home at midnight each school day, not recognizing his parents.
But reality intrudes. In a merged district, most students will still go to the schools they would have attended anyway, especially at the elementary level and more especially in the then-former city school district.
The real fear here (regarding facilities) is not merger at all -- it's redistricting. Once a new middle school (or two) comes along, Chapel Hill-Carrboro is going to go through redistricting regardless of what happens with merger.
Reason #9: The mixture of populations, or what I call middle-school misoneism (a hatred or fear of change). Getting more to the heart of it, merger opponents fear that their middle-grade children will get mixed in with kids from "that other district." This condescension is a curiously equal problem, except when there are awards to be distributed, such as the county Human Relations Commission's Pauli Murray awards. Then, both districts are all about tolerance, outreach, the realization that only one race matters -- the human race -- and there are many fine speeches and essays about the strength and bond formed through appreciating diversity.
Reason #8: Democracy (let the voters decide). "The commissioners weren't elected on a pro-merger platform," writes one stern opponent, who also promises a lawsuit. Great point, but I don't remember Lyndon Johnson getting elected on a "Voting Rights Act" platform and I missed the part where George Bush got elected on an "invade Iraq" platform.
Things come up. Leaders see situations evolve and make judgments as they govern. Their judgment and effectiveness is how we decide whether or not to re-elect them.
Regarding the proposed merger, the commissioners have become aware that in 10 years there is going to be an absolutely untenable problem in this county in regards to the facilities provided by and for our public schools. You don't address a problem like that eight years from now. You look at it now and that's what they're doing -- looking at it.
If they failed to examine merger seriously, voters would have a basis to remove them for their gross incompetence. Tens of millions of dollars and the very fabric of the school system are at stake. An ostrich-inspired deference to "whatever the people want" is a cheap and gutless excuse for leadership -- one that the commissioners have not succumbed to as yet. Put simply, this is what they were elected to do.
Reason #7: Moses Carey is inflicting his agenda on his colleagues. One might suppose that if this were the case, Carey would have done so when in a different situation politically -- like just after being re-elected, or when he was chairman of the Board of County Commissioners.
Reason #6: A merger cannot be reversed. Oh, to live in California now that the winds are whipping and the forest is dry? Merging the districts would mean months or years of planning and commitment to minimize disruption to children. So, yes, like mixing paint, it cannot be undone.
That does not mean, however, that the school district would be completely void of any ability to establish creative stand-alone programs and even district-supported charter schools within the county if it chose to do so.
And the point to ponder in the intermission is this: It's interesting to read all the comments and notice the total lack of focus on one very important certainty -- the future is going to arrive whether we build this highway or not.

Foes’ top 5 reasons for nixing merger
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
My "Top 10" list continues with the top five reasons offered by opponents for just saying no to merging the Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.
Reason #5: Chapel Hill-Carrboro will no longer be the top district in the state. This, it is argued, will threaten not only community pride in the school district, but also potentially injure property values in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
Let's take the easiest part first. Having your property gain in value isn't a civil right; it's the benefit of good speculation. Regardless, as long as UNC continues to grow and add students, the pressure on our housing market will continue to drive values up, much to the chagrin of affordable-housing advocates.
As for being No. 1, if the Chapel Hill-Carrboro district really has the magic formula for making students soar, why wouldn't it apply to those county students added to the mix? Could it be that the district's magic formula is just the advantage of having more college-educated parents?
Reason #4: Administrative savings are being oversold. There's something to this. It's unlikely there will be administrative savings by merging the districts. It's more likely those costs that disappear will be replaced by new costs created by the merger.
That said, this is going to be as difficult as any issue to measure, because there's apparently not a single, clear answer to the question of how many administrative staff members work in the city schools.
Columnist Stanley Peele was unsuccessful in his effort to resolve this question, and he presented himself at Lincoln Center to ask it. Frankly, of all the things I've read about merger in the last six months, his column on this was among the most shocking.
The county district told Peele it had 954 adults dealing with students, not including bus drivers. The city schools told him 1,653 were employed, 969 of them as teachers. But they also told him another office would have better numbers.
The second inquiry brought a different number -- 1,071 "professionals" and 675 "others." After receiving conflicting information, the judge called for clarification, bounced around and then passed off to an answering machine. He got no return call.
That rather neatly brings me to Reason #3: Bigger isn't Better. Again, a fair point, but more a caution than a reason for not going forward. Most of this argument comes from the county side, as we have all heard horror stories about large districts being overly bureaucratic and insensitive to the needs of individuals. Don't we all want to support our smaller, more locally controlled district, even if it costs a little more?
Maybe we'd like to think so, but it seems to me that while we say this, we're still buying a hammer at the Super Wal-Mart, not at Dual Supply on King Street. Dual Supply is a terrific hardware store. If they don't have it, you don't need it. But for a bag of nails or a screwdriver, you're going to the discount store to pick from one of five screwdrivers that's on sale.
The county school system has pretty well topped out the buying power it can get from efficiencies of scale. Merger can bring important savings and complementary offerings between the two districts.
As for service and responsiveness, I've had awfully good customer-service experiences with American Express, FedEx, Land's End, L.L. Bean and Southwest Airlines, to name a few mega-huge companies. Excellent service is a function of institutional culture, not the number of employees.
Reason #2: We don't want higher taxes. This argument comes from the same crowd that opposed the last school bond referendum. If it were up to the county district's votes, we would never have passed the bond that helped build Cedar Ridge High School. That's an embarrassment.
The reality is likely to be, however, that avoiding merger is the much more expensive option. Money alone is not a reason to merge, but it's a compelling aspect that cannot be ignored.
And finally, the No. 1 reason to avoid merger, voiced over and over again, is effectively the reason listed in dozens of the comments from the public hearings thus far: "Because we said so."
Many opponents have simply presented a "we don't want this and we'll vote you out" argument to the commissioners as their reason for opposing merger.
Just as when my parents "said so" as a means of ending an argument, this isn't an argument, it's as attempt to assert power as a last resort. It's proof of frustration, not commitment to equal opportunity, which is what we should be seeking in the longer term.

School improvement demands vision
Wednesday, November 19, 2003 Now that the county commissioners have passed through the preliminaries of considering merger, the panel has put several specific planning and analytical options on the table to consider in its effort to move forward. Excellent work.
It has become clear throughout this autumn season that an unspoken ABM (Anything But Merger) treaty exists between Orange County's two current districts creating one of the more bizarre political alliances in our community's history.
The fringes of the political spectrum, from don't-tax-me-for-anything to let's-put-a-tax-on-anything have somehow held hands (and perhaps their noses) to make the ABM alliance a reality. It is obstructionism as an art form -- you have to give them credit for their determination.
But now the commissioners must do the important work of moving forward in a constructive manner. As much as opponents of merger would like to rush or obfuscate that part of this process, it appears the board will not be deterred from its task.
Many may wonder at this point what that task really is. Commissioner Carey put the question of merger on the table, but that was predominantly because the prospect of merger has served for so many years as a kind of shorthand for a means through which the county could accomplish certain objectives -- potentially solving the vexing problems of funding inequities and lack of substantive cooperation, for example.
Stepping back, then, the commissioners would be wise to set aside the question of how to optimize the school system (to merge or not) and paint with a broad brush exactly what the outcome looks like. We cannot transition to a great school system if we are driven by an ABM approach.
We need a deliberate, specific process to develop our vision for what the next generation of our public schools should look like. We need to envision the ideal Orange County public school system of the year 2020 and work backward from that outcome.
This will allow us, as a community, to look at the schools beyond the immediate interests of our individual children. It will free us from the petty fiefdoms of currently employed bureaucrats (from either district) and will free the political leaders from concerning themselves with their electoral considerations.
Such comprehensive planning is commonly done in business and government. I assume that Orange County has conducted visioning processes like this for land use and long-term environmental-impacting decisions it must make. The university's master planning certainly goes many years into the future and seeks to examine its impact well beyond the individual fates of those involved in the process.
When I covered the town of Carr-boro for this newspaper, I covered the town's Vision 2020 planning process, which was a continuation of its Vision 2000 process, begun in the 1980s.
The most amazing thing wasn't just the large numbers of citizens who came out on a March Madness Saturday and spent the entire day indoors engaging in this process. It was the review of how the original report came to be a road map for them. The Vision 2000 document contained scores of forward-thinking specific goals (like bike paths in road planning) that over the years had translated into a philosophy that guided elected leaders in their decision-making.
In short, while elected officials may have disagreed from time to time about which specific path to take, they were found to have generally agreed overall which direction they were taking the town in and where they wanted to be eventually.
With the Vision 2020 plan, they revisited their original goals, adjusted them and updated their toolbox for getting there, allowing for new technologies and more innovative specifics to enter the adjusted plan.
To develop a great school system, we should be looking at what characteristics we would find in a great school system (excellent teaching, involved parents, responsiveness to individual needs, flexibility, maximized purchasing power, strong accountability and so on) and we need to work backward from the year 2020 to see what best practices will make that happen and how facilities and human resources need to adjust to fit that vision -- not vice-versa.
We should do this without regard to political complications. We should grant our planners a magic wand and tell them that excuses don't exist, only solutions and imaginative, productive pathways to them.
It is nearly certain that the actual changes from such a process would not become reality for at least six to ten years and would not be fully implemented for 15 to 20 years.
And when you think about it, it is almost unconscionable that so little attention is paid to the long view of how we educate the next generation of citizens, workers, parents and leaders.
But just as we invest our time and energy in planning the best use for our land and natural resources, we should develop a clear vision of what we want in our ideal school district, fulfilling our obligation to the next generation by delivering them to a better future.

UNC’s real estate deal a bad idea
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
If you thought the stench in your neighborhood came from leaving your old boots out in the rain, fear not. It's the stink of a real estate deal struck in secret and explained with baloney, smoke and mirrors.
And the interests and money of taxpayers are all over this disaster. It's a wonder we can even clear our throats without coughing up phlegm.
UNC is finishing a deal with incoming Town Councilman Cam Hill that will enrich Hill by $100,000 and provide him a domestic upgrade. Hill's Cameron Avenue home -- valued at just over $140,000 by the Orange County tax office -- is to be traded for the university's property at 412 E. Rosemary St.
The Rosemary Street property isn't on the county's tax listing, but the values of nearby homes would seem to conservatively place it in the $300,000 range.
According to county records, Hill still owes $1,903.03 in taxes and interest on his 2002 property tax bill. Here we go again. Why is it so hard to elect people who pay their bills?
As for Hill's blaming the media for not asking the right questions, he's right. He should have been grilled about this during the campaign. So consider this a direct question, Mr. Hill: Why haven't you paid your taxes on time and in full?
It so happens I've been in the Rosemary Street property several times this year. My son stayed in professor elin slavick's home for a month this summer, house- and dog-sitting while the professor, her husband and child were away.
It's a lovely, well-kept house -- an enviable property in a highly desirable, friendly and very walkable neighborhood. That said, the university is completely within its rights to not sell the property to the professors. UNC owns all the homes it does in the area so it can rent them to faculty, not so it can churn real estate for profit.
Selling the home to the professors, then, would not have solved any larger problem for UNC, so the use of the property as a bargaining chip within another deal is a defensible action.
But there is no "benefit of the doubt" that can explain or excuse how UNC and or its agents treated slavick and her husband in securing their clandestine deal with Hill. For her to walk in and find Hill, his family and a real estate agent sizing up the place must have been a real kick in the stomach.
Even so, simple decency and consideration could have largely alleviated a misunderstanding. A simple oh-my-goodness-we're-so-sorry-to-have-upset-you (accompanied by a speedy exit) would have done nicely, but slavick reports that Hill was not only insensitive, but also rubbed salt in the wound by inviting his children to go upstairs to look around.
Can you imagine walking in on such an unexpected intrusion and having the offending party retreat to your bedroom while you collect yourself? At a bare minimum, Hill and the university each owe slavick and her husband, professor David Richardson, a formal apology. Hill's part of it should be on bended knee.
As for the public accountability aspect, there's much more to be done. From the facts at hand, the Rosemary Street property appears to be worth at least twice the Cameron Avenue property. Hill has claimed his home would be worth more than $400,000, if only he had completed some improvements.
My home would be worth half a million if only I'd added a third floor, installed a built-in swimming pool in the back yard and had the entire property landscaped by Tom Fazio, but doggone it, I just haven't gotten to it yet.
Since Hill bases his claim on an appraised value that seems totally unsupported by the property's tax value, he should produce the appraisal or admit he lied about it to strike a deal for his own enrichment.
Until and unless the Orange County tax office and/or 10 real estate agents (preferably from out of town) line up to say Hill's house on Cameron Avenue is worth $450,000, this deal should be stopped cold by the university, the taxpayers and the Town Council itself.
Hill's first comments were that this transaction would be a "straight swap," which most of us would interpret as indicating that no money would change hands. This was a blatant deception in and of itself.
Even if Hill's house really is worth a bundle, we will be left with the prospect of the apologies due to two professors and the prospect of a sitting member of the city council who doesn't have the common sense that God gave a turnip. Hill says he just didn't think any of these particulars concern the taxpayers or voters, so that's why he didn't mention them during his neighborhood-preservation-based campaign for that seat.
If that's his story, he'd have the first part right -- he just didn't think.

Hill should pay taxes, explain delay
Wednesday, December 03, 2003 At a minimum, the deal that Cam Hill has struck with UNC will accomplish what thus far has eluded the Orange County government -- it will force Hill to settle up his tax bill.
According to county records, Hill still owes $1,803.03 in 2002 taxes on his Cameron Avenue home.
This is no criticism of the county tax office, mind you. Orange County has among the best track records in North Carolina for collecting taxes. I'd wager it's probably one of the most under-appreciated functions of the government, but I'd love to help end that tendency.
I appreciate the tax office and its staff. They're polite. They're helpful and they want to make it possible for everyone who owes back taxes to work out a plan -- one they can really deliver on -- to get their bills paid.
But when it comes to elected officials, most of us have a common perspective. If you're going to sit on a panel that spends the community's money, you should chip in your part like the rest of us do and you should do so on time, just like we do.
And Hill has failed to do this ... for several years. He did pay his 2001 taxes on the Cameron Avenue house. He finished paying those on June 6 of this year -- a year and a half after they were due.
He paid his 2000 taxes on one of his vehicles -- just over $100 -- in July of 2002, a year and three months after they were due. He paid the 2002 taxes on another vehicle on July 14 of this year (around the time he filed for office), eight months after they were due.
Are you sensing a pattern here?
Should Hill need to summon the police or an ambulance, they cannot take the same lax approach to meeting their obligations. Thanks to the rest of us who pay on time, their vehicles will have gas and current inspection stickers, and their salaries will be paid on time so they can get to work rescuing a slacker.
Last week I asked Hill on these pages to explain why he's not paid his taxes. I haven't heard from him. Maybe he'll respond in a year and a half.
Someone who can't get $100 in taxes (due on a car) paid on time is either in terrible financial trouble or is lacking in the competence needed to responsibly serve on the Town Council. Whatever the case, it's certainly time for Hill to take to the microphones and both explain himself and disclose to the taxpayers his plan for correction.
If his constituents don't care to pursue the matter, that's a telling insight. There's been a fair amount of noisy wind coming from the southern portion of the county lately. The air has been filled with claims of self-taxation representing commitment to excellence in education, for example.
Credibility on such a claim stretches awfully thin if it's only about sending out the bills and not caring if elected officials (or anyone else, I reckon) actually pay them. I seem to recall there was plenty of outrage (not just from me) that outgoing county school board member David Kolbinsky hadn't paid his taxes last year.
Even though Kolbinsky was a couple of months away from leaving office, I urged that he resign or be removed as a matter of principle. He didn't quit and, in fact, took the opportunity to put one or two spending initiatives on the table before he left the board.
Kolbinsky never lacked for nerve.
Hill's delinquency is not merely a problem for his constituents. His taxes go to both the city and the county, so the health, animal control and social services departments are waiting for his money.
At a minimum, we can hope that Hill will have the humility to not participate in spending any tax dollars until he's paid his share. That's a near-impossibility, though. Virtually every action he will take as a member of the Town Council will be paid for by the taxpayers. From attending a meeting in a building with lights and running water to making copies to asking questions of paid staff members, Hill will be along for a ride he hasn't paid for ... yet.
And unlike the Kolbinsky matter, this ride is just about to begin. The irony of seating a council member whose taxes are long overdue and persistently delinquent should add some of that much-needed carnival atmosphere to the excitement of Hill's swearing-in ceremony. I can hardly wait.

City school board has enough to do
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
The other night, I watched most of the first meeting of the new Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board. During the session, the new board elected its leadership and agreed to committee assignments.
If you're a parent, or even go so far as to describe yourself as an activist, you must be impressed by the task ahead of each school board member. Each sitting member of the board is expected to sit on about six committees. Just thinking about the sheer volume of work that can produce is daunting.
It may seem redundant to some that many committees have two school board members, but it's not. With all that activity, one board member or the other is bound to miss a meeting here and there. By partnering, little is missed -- kind of like study buddies.
Still, it's a big commitment that these people make for what is really virtually no pay and plenty of criticism.
So you'd think that the board would try to stay focused on its rather monumental task, one that takes so many committees and so many nights away from families.
But, no, the city school board has recently made clear that it has even more to bite off and a belief that it can chew it all.
The board showed no sign of regret or humility after telling the county schools (via resolution) that they should begin closing the funding gap between city and county with a special district tax.
In doing so, the city board fired its most essential salvo against merger -- the county can't even get a second board member to put a tax discussion on the table to talk about it, but the city board is unanimous that the county district should have its own special district tax.
The fact that this simply cannot level the funding between the two districts just isn't relevant. The major goal is to block merger and maintain the status quo.
Not feeling deterred, the city board apparently decided that it's now time to give direction to the Board of County Commissioners. This adventure in hubris was launched by telling the commissioners that they were outside of their jurisdiction in considering several specific programmatic aspects of merger's impact. The BOCC's job is to fund the schools, they said, not to get into programming decisions. How dare they question how the money is spent?
I sure hope that board members' memories are vivid as they walk into next summer's budget hearings. When they arrive, they will have a laundry list of terribly important programs that must be funded by the commissioners. I hope the BOCC gives the school board a long, cold, blank stare in return, followed by a blistering review of the statute that says the commissioners should not dabble in curriculum.
Then the commissions should rightly take a trip down memory lane and tell the school leaders that they almost fell for it again last winter -- the ruse of cooperation and planning of joint but undisclosed (see "how dare you ask") programming between the two districts. Along with promises that maybe someday the schools will merge, but it will happen at the hands of others, just like when it was bumped 17 years ago, it almost worked all over again.
And won't we all be better off if all this happens? Aw, heck, sure we will. Our kids will learn the keen value of hard-fought political victories and the wisdom of standing up for your legal authority as an elected official. They'll learn about leadership and sacrifice.
It's funny, isn't it? The UNC Board of Governors wants to increase the number of out-of-state students the university accepts and seeks to do this to keep the university academically rigorous.
That is, if North Carolinians go to college and encounter mostly other North Carolinians in the classroom, their view of the world will be more myopic, their educational experience will be diminished. This isn't a theory; it's a fact.
Why then is it so hard to wrap our collective brains around the idea that this would apply within the county in which that world-class university sits? Why wouldn't it be manifestly obvious that the student population of both the city and county districts will benefit from greater diversity?
Why wouldn't that be among the top priorities of the city school board? After all, they profess to be the best district in the state and every year at the Pauli Murray awards, their winning student-essayists give stirring presentations about the value and necessity of diversity of cultures, backgrounds and populations in the educational environment.
Are the kids wrong or are they just saying what they need to in order to win?

All I want for Christmas is . . .
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
There's just over a week remaining till the big day so I'm working on my Christmas wish list. My wishes are all about how people communicate ... or don't. Here's my latest draft.
Peace on Earth, good will toward people.
Aside from the grammatical correction that many would consider to be political correctness, I really mean this most sincerely. More than that, I mean it on exchanges large and small.
When did people stop saying "excuse me" when they walk between you and the books you're scoping out on the shelf? Why doesn't holding a door for someone mean an automatic smile with a twinkling eye?
The return of "You're welcome."
My husband noted recently that the nicety of saying "you're welcome" is slipping away from us and being replaced with "no problem." Nearly always as we ask for extra napkins or more iced tea, as the wait person arrives with it, we express our gratitude and are assured that it's "no problem."
It just seems like a sort of "non-assurance" doesn't it? I'm sure its origin is the somehow more genteel sounding "it's no trouble at all," but this has a sort of staccato feeling to it that erases the initial gesture of stopping to say thanks. I write e-mails to my son now and then thanking him for some work-related thing he's done. Sometimes I get an e-mail back that says simply, "NP."
Leave a message.
At the very least leave a message one time, even though you hate answering machines. Give me a chance anyway. It drives me nutty when someone calls and just as I'm diving over the dining room table and falling off the last of the chairs on the other side, the answering machine picks up and the caller hangs up. This is met with a colorful display of vocabulary that would impress both a sailor and a peacock, followed by more of same when the numbskull calls later, insisting that he's been trying to reach me, then scolds me for never being home.
Listen to the answering machine's announcement before making a fool of yourself and have enough humility to consider that you may have dialed the wrong number.
My business line, for example, says something like "You've reached the phone and fax line for [my company]. You can send a fax at any time or leave a message and we'll call you back." Now I'll admit that I did not employ my most sexy vixen voice in recording this message, but it's pretty clearly a woman's voice and the name of my company is stated just as it is in the yellow pages.
The other day, I got two calls while I was on another line. The first one made it through my machine's message, then the caller hung up. The second call (from the same number) produced this message: "Hello, Frank, this is Bill. Call me on my cell at [number] and let me know when I can come in today to install that intercom system for you."
I hope the guy got his new, improved communication system installed OK. Nobody showed up here.
The other night, a woman called my cell phone once and hung up. Then she called again and my son answered, identifying himself and politely informing her that she had the wrong number. Then she called back and left a message on my voice mail, telling Rodney that he should call her back for that information she had for him. This, after waiting to hear my voice-mail message: "You've reached the Sprint voice mailbox for Jean Bolduc ... ." I think I need voice lessons.
Don't answer the phone when you're really not available -- especially when you have caller ID.
How many times have you had someone answer the phone sounding harried and nearly annoyed that you've called, cutting you off with "I really can't talk now. ... I'll have to call you back." Then why did you answer? You know it's me, you probably know why I'm calling. Are you just trying to prove to me that you're so busy you can't even take a break to go to the bathroom?
As a columnist, I get a special breed of "thank you" e-mails. The best ones are those that start out with "I love your column, though I often disagree with you." I'm sincere when I say that I appreciate those critical e-mails the most, because they help me improve as a writer and they show me that people really care about the topic if they've chosen to invest their time in trying to straighten me out.
I always write back to thank them for taking the time to write. Sometimes this starts a longer dialogue wherein we each understand the other's perspective better and sometimes they're too busy to continue on the topic. This usually leaves me where I began as they acknowledge my thanks with "No problem."

Make it yourself -- that’s the spirit

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

'Twas the day before Christmas and all through the county, the shoppers all scrambled, collecting their bounty.
Are you done yet? I mean, is the frenzy almost over?
This year I feel I've actually improved significantly on my gift giving. I made many of the gifts I'm giving away. A famous cousin of mine once said that the only real gift is the gift of yourself. The less I buy and the more I make, the easier it is to see how true that is.
I compiled a CD of some music I like and I'm giving that to lots of people. The cost is not of the materials, which are minimal.
No, the real gift is in the time and effort to make the choices and to put it all together.
The label that appears on the CD has a picture on it that I took at the beach. It's the real thing -- a remembrance.
My cousin gave me a CD last year of pictures from her travels and it was a grand thing, very inspiring, really. This past year she went to Australia. I can hardly wait to see what she sends.
In 2001, my son's girlfriend designed a long-sleeve T-shirt that she screen-printed and gave to everyone. Part of the design is "Christmas 2001" on the front.
People ask me about that shirt all the time ... where did I get it and so forth. I tell them with great pride that it's not available in stores. This one is a very limited edition.
I think that times really have changed in the post-Sept. 11 world we live in. My goal (not always reached) is for each gift to remind its recipient that this gift was from 2003. I want to make a connection with the person and the year.
This year will be memorable for me because of some family events that will change each of us in ways small and large.
I had one child graduate from college and the other from driver's education. If we get in line now for his permit, maybe he can be driving by the time school gets out.
My mother was pretty darn sick this summer. A heart attack and a stroke knocked her back pretty hard, but she's still among us this Christmas. Some gifts need no wrapping, no tag.
A dear friend of ours (and our attorney) died suddenly the day after Father's Day. We attended his funeral, then left for vacation. A day after arriving at the beach, we learned of my mother's heart attack.
Some things could have gone better, yes. But I can scarcely complain about my inconvenience in the scheme of it all. No ... for me, it's more about vividly understanding how precious and fragile life is and how necessary it is to look up and around and really drink in the happy times when you're in the midst of them.
And the often frenetic pace of the last days of shopping are truly among the happier problems to have in this world.
Americans are long on blessings and short on appreciation at times. Lately, as I awaken on a Saturday morning and realize that I don't have to be anywhere that whole day, I wonder if it's even possible to be any luckier than that.
It's a kind of relaxation that no spa could deliver.
I'll look forward to the challenges that we all face in the upcoming year. A fascinating political landscape -- both local and national -- awaits us. By next Christmas, we should know who the next president will be ... unless we have a hanging chad redux. Please NO!
Closer to home (and of greater import, frankly) will be the movement forward in our consideration of merging the school districts and the communities in Orange County. Regardless of what happens with the schools, one of my Christmas wishes is that the various "interest groups" involved in the overall debate get a lot more involved in seeking to understand the kids' perspectives and interests.
A town hall meeting of, by and for Orange County students (and only students) would be a breath of fresh air in that debate. Maybe Santa can deliver that small miracle for us next year.
And I hope that the primary and the November races for county commissioner seats are constructive and civil. It's a lot to wish for, but what the heck -- it's Christmas.

The best and worst of 2003

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

As the year grinds to a close, let's pause and review some of its highlights and, of course, lowlights.
* Best way to wake up Orange County and make sure everyone's paying attention:
Moses Carey's school merger proposal hit the table during the commissioners' planning retreat in January. No behind-the-scenes consensus building, he just ran that one right up the flag pole to see who'd shoot at it. Turns out out the answer was ... just about everyone.
This brought extra ink orders for the local newspapers and sign makers -- good for the local economy. Red circles with lines through them were the special throughout the year, whether it was merger, war or a renewal of APS's contract with the county, somebody was not only against it, but organizing an army of support.
So many of us were hoping that the best comeback in recorded history would belong to the UNC men's basketball team after its stunningly poor beginning to the 2002-03 season. Instead it turned into the worst season ever for the Tar Heels -- very bad for the local economy.
* Best reality television show:
The Michael Peterson murder trial. If you could tear yourself away from the TV or your computer screen while that epic was going on, you're stronger than most of us. Like watching a slow-motion train wreck, it was fascinating to see Peterson's defense team explain away big things and little and, of course, never address the most glaring hole in his case. How could a professional writer and an innocent man who merely discovered his dying wife after a fall ever be kept from telling his own story?
* Best commentary during that trial:
It came from our very own Carl Fox, district attorney for Orange and Chatham counties. At one point in the trial, the prosecution had just finished with a police expert who outlined in detail how he determined that a spot of blood spatter on the inside of Peterson's shorts could only have gotten there by his standing over a blood source and hitting down on it.
With only brief questions from the defense, the witness was excused, the trial took a break. Fox commented at this point that this was an important witness for the prosecution and that the defense had done nothing to dispute his findings.
"As Ricky Ricardo would say, 'He's got some 'splainin' to do,' " Fox quipped.
Of course, Fox did have a slip of the lip just a few minutes later. In emphasizing how important the testimony was, he said he "didn't want to beat the point to death." Ouch. Was that shoe leather?
* And speaking of shoe leather between the tooth and gum, there's Cam Hill's 2003 Worst Excuse for Not Paying Your Taxes:
He's poor, says Hill, and shouldn't be criticized for that.
I'll admit that my upbringing was on the affluent side, so I'm confident that readers will straighten me out on this one if I'm just not up to speed on these terms. That said, where I come from (snooty suburban Connecticut) a guy who owns two houses strains credibility in calling himself "poor."
Cam Hill owns his own residence, which he says is mortgaged to the hilt, and also owns a second piece of real estate in downtown Chapel Hill just a couple of blocks from his new home on Rosemary Street.
The second property, apparently not yet developed, has a tax value of about $120,000. Hill owns it with a partner.
Beyond this, "poor" Mr. Hill pulled more than $2,000 out of thin air a few weeks ago after the taxes on his primary residence were revealed to be unpaid and overdue. Presumably, he will not only do this again in a week when his 2003 taxes become past due, but also come forth with his share of the $1,731.56 that also will be past due on his second property.
A person with real estate holdings whose tax value is around a quarter of a million dollars just isn't "poor." Call me a bigot, I just don't think that someone who can pull that kind of money out of the mattress is "poor" either. In my book, Hill wins the 2003 Houdini-with-a-checkbook award.
And I may seem like a dog with a bone here, but I think that we taxpayers are entitled to know how it is that Hill has plucked that money out of nowhere. When a public official suddenly has desperately needed cash without explanation, it seems, well, fishy.
Let's hope that he's really our own George Bailey and all his friends tossed cash into the basket to save his neck. If so, they should be happy to say so.

posted by Jean Bolduc @ 8:22 AM