Thaden has helped build East into one of the top-peforming high schools in the nation. Its students excel academically and athletically, and they are engaged and active in a dizzying range of fields. It's one of those schools where you can walk through the halls and feel the creative energy in the air.

Thaden is very good at his job and also happens to be, to put it as simply as possible, just a really good guy. He's popular with teachers, parents and students -- and that's a tough trifecta to pull off.

He will be sorely missed by everybody at East and throughout the district, and we wish him well in everything he does from here on out.

Raspberries to whoever swiped the 2,600-gallon cistern from the Growing Healthy Kids Community Garden in Carrboro.

The garden, a collaboration between the Orange County Partnership for Young Children and Duke Energy, is used by local churches and by families with young children as part of the Healthy Kids Campaign to address childhood obesity. In cultivating, growing and eating natural foods, participants build both healthy bodies and a healthy relationship with the earth and the food it produces.

The cistern, worth about $1,000, was to be the main water supply for the garden.

As even little kids know, taking anything that doesn't belong to you is wrong. But taking something that benefits children, that's cold.

Raspberries to Federal Realty, for once again giving the boot to a longtime and beloved local business.

Federal Realty, which manages Eastgate Shopping Center, informed the owners of China Chef restaurant that their lease would not be renewed. A number of devoted customers of the restaurant have written letters expressing their dismay.

Eastgate is a private enterprise, of course, and the owners of the shopping center have the right to lease to whichever tenants they choose. And we're not privy to whatever the private negotiations might have been between the management company and the restaurant.

But Federal Realty has a discouraging record of terminating some of our most well-established and successful local businesses. Last year the management firm booted the wonderful Somerhill Gallery, which now graces the American Tobacco historic district in Durham, and Sal's Pizza, one of the best-loved pizza places in town. Sal's now has a shop at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Homestead Road.

Now China Chef, after 17 years in business. We hope the good folks at China Chef will be able to find a new location and re-open in short order. Good community businesses are a treasure; the last thing we need is to be driving them out of business.

Roses to Allison Nichols and Bob Nutter, who have established the new Maple View Agriculture Center in Orange County.

The center is a learning facility, designed to teach adults and children the elements of agriculture.

More and more, we're coming to recognize how important it is to understand how food gets from field to plate, to encourage locally produced foods, to appreciate those whose work makes that possible and to maintain a connection with the earth.

The Maple View Agriculture Center will play a key role in that. A visit will be well worth the trip -- and as a bonus, it's just down the road from the Maple View Ice Cream shop.