Roses to Kidzu Children's Museum in downtown Chapel Hill, which opened in March 2006 and recently welcomed its 100,000th visitor.

Right from the start, Kidzu has been a terrific addition to downtown, adding to the variety and vibrancy of Franklin Street and drawing families with children, a prized demographic group, to the central business district.

A healthy downtown appeals to people of all ages and interests, and Kidzu has done more than its share to help expand the area's diversity.

Somehow, in spite of the familiar litany of woes such as parking and panhandling, Kidzu has succeeded.

And it's only gotten stronger, despite the sagging economy; officials report attendance is up 30 percent from this time last year.

One of the reasons for the museum's success is its energetic willingness to collaborate with other creative people and institutions in the community, such as the Ackland Art Museum. Make yourself the kind of organization other people are eager to work with, and good things start to happen.

Good job, Kidzu, and we hope we're here for your 200,000th visitor.

Raspberries to whoever defaced the Handprints mural on West Franklin Street. Muralist Michael Brown painted the mural, one of about 20 he's done in downtown Chapel Hill, in 1990. He was looking for inspiration, he said, when he remembered some faded Carolina blue handprints on a downtown drugstore wall, relics of the celebration that followed UNC's 1957 national basketball championship. He persuaded a number of people -- a bunch of elementary school students, passersby and notable residents, including one Tar Heel basketball player -- to dip their hands in paint and make their marks.

Someone recently sprayed ugly black scrawls over the mural. Part of the new markings form an unintelligible knot, and there's also a series of numbers and letters.

What they mean, if anything, is anybody's guess.

But the act was vandalism, disfiguring a public work of art, and it's shameful that someone felt moved to do that.

A partnership called the Painted Walls Project has been engaged in the process of raising money to have Brown restore and revive the aging and fading murals; he's about the start sprucing up the first one he did, the blue steeple mural on the back wall of 109 E. Franklin St.

We hope that soon the Handprints mural can be restored as well.

Roses -- appropriately enough -- to the Strowd Roses Charitable Foundation, for its recent award of $5,000 to the Chapel Hill Public Library Foundation.

The library foundation will use the money to bolster the library's holdings and programs for young people.

Plans are to put the funds toward the purchase new non-fiction for children and summer reading programs for children and teens.

With the economy in the tank, more people turn to libraries for reading material, other media and programs -- where else do you get to go in, pick what you want and take it home for free?

Library loans to children have risen by nearly 10 percent in the first half of 2009, attendance at children's programs is up by19 per cent.

The Strowd Roses foundation is one of the under-appreciated treasures of this community; every year it funds worthwhile programs and projects that make a significant difference.

While we're at it, kudos to the Library Foundation, too, whose funding has allowed the library to add more than 500 general audience DVDs to its collection.