ROSES to organizer Gerry Williams and the hundreds of others -- volunteers, musicians, tech people, town staff, the works -- who helped make Sunday’s Carrboro Music Festival a sensational success.

This year’s 10th annual festival was, to our eyes, the best one yet. The weather could not have been more glorious. The crowds were big but not too big. The quality and variety of music was extraordinary.

No doubt there were a few behind-the-scenes glitches; at any event this big that’s almost inevitable. But from what the casual festival-goer could tell, the day went off without a hitch.

It’s a wonderful idea -- live music all day long, all over town, all for free, all for fun. Walk from one of downtown to the other and in just one trip you could take in a smorgasbord of jazzy funk, Southern boogie, Irish jig, folkie ballad, reggae, teenage garage band, Latin dance number and just about anything else you can name. It’s hard to beat that.


RASPBERRIES to a certain insurance company for turning the Carolina blue skies over Chapel Hill into advertising space for several days recently.

An airplane flew back and forth overhead last week, towing behind it a massive orange banner. The plane was tiny, laboring along at a pace that by all appearances wouldn’t have gotten it a speeding ticket on MLK Boulevard. The banner looked about the size of a football field.

People looked up, of course. Many of them wondered two things. One, how in the world is that plane staying up there? And, two, why is it towing a picture of Che Guevara?

We can’t answer the first question. As for the second, upon closer fly-by it became clear that it wasn’t Che at all, but a caveman that a certain insurance company uses in its print and TV commercials. Ick.

Aside from the obnoxiousness of using the heavens as a billboard, the campaign seemed especially clumsy coming from a certain insurance company that is famous for the cleverness of its ad campaigns.

This one got old in a hurry. There may have been some locals who looked up and said to themselves, “Hey! I think I WILL switch to a new insurance company!” But our guess is that the airborne ad campaign, at least around here, turned off a lot more potential customers than it gained.


ROSES to Brian Curran, a 21-year veteran of the Chapel Hill Police Department, who was named the department’s new chief last week.

Chapel Hill, with affluent homeowners, working class neighhborhoods, a significant homeless population and thousands of students all in close proximity to the central business district, is an unusual place. It requires a police force that knows how to strike that delicate balance between keeping order and letting people express and enjoy themselves, sometimes in huge numbers.

Curran knows his own department and the community. He’s been serving as interim chief for six months, ever since Gregg Jarvies’ retirement. He’s earned the permanent position, and the department is in good hands.