Helms cared when newspaper did not

In 1973 it became my distinct pleasure and high honor to become Sen. Jesse Helms' campaign manager in the county of Greene: the first Republican campaign manager in the county of Greene since Reconstruction. The following story grew out of that relationship.

Our small family business had been making a patent medicine for the treatment of mange on dogs and horses since 1946. In 1974, a Washington bureaucrat issued a stop sale for lack of clinical evidence the product was safe and effective. While making preparation to meet with Senator Helms to discuss this problem, I penned an editorial, the gist of which was what if the regulators had been around when the Wright Brothers tried to get their plane off the ground.

The editorial was sent to the News & Observer and the Washington Post. The editorial policy of the News & Observer was as studiedly liberal as Senator Helms' firebrand TV commentary was conservative. In a few days, the N&O returned the editorial as not being newsworthy. Shortly afterward, a staff member from Senator Helms' office sent me a copy of the editorial which had been published in the Post. When Senator Helms learned the N&O had rejected the editorial, he had it read into the Congressional Record!

Over the next 20 years, we, would meet often when the regulators and the re-regulators became overzealous. It didn't seem to matter than I never contributed more than $100 to any of his reelection campaigns. -- Joe Exum, Snow Camp

Don't make me get my pruning shears

OK folks! Listen up:

It is time for Chapel Hillians to do a little yard work.

We have had lots of rain and the foliage is overtaking the sidewalks. Trees hang too low to walk under, grass is growing over half for the sidewalks, shrubs are pushing us off the curb and into the street.

By the way, if you have poison ivy, it is even worse for the walker (especially if they have a dog yanking toward it). There is lots of poison ivy along Estes Drive between Library Drive and the Kangaroo station on the corner of Franklin and Estes.

I really don't want to have to bring my pruners or lopping shears out on a walk, and I am sure you do not want me to demonstrate my machete-jungle-maneuvers in front of your children, so please prune and edge your greenery. -- Sarah McIntee, Chapel Hill

Dole out of touch with constituents

Elizabeth Dole's attempt to name a bill to benefit AIDS victims in Africa for Jesse Helms shows just how out of touch she is with the people of North Carolina.

That should come as no surprise since her primary residence for many years now has been a condominium in the Watergate in Washington, D.C. She may claim her late mother's house in Salisbury as her residence, but everybody knows she does not live there.

This was not, as the senator's staff explained, an attempt to honor Helms' "change of heart on AIDS" because in truth that change never happened. He may have approved aid to Africans, but he never stopped ridiculing American AIDS victims. Mrs. Dole has forgotten Jesse's flippant note to a mother in Raleigh, saying "I'm sorry your son chose to play Russian roulette with his life." Dole's futile gesture was a cheap attempt to use the same old mean-spirited racist and sexist tactics Jesse himself used to barely get himself elected all those years.

But Dole may find Jesse's kind of divisiveness won't work in North Carolina any longer. We've gone beyond all that meanness of the past. We need a new kind of senator who appeals to our highest aspirations, not our basest fears. We also need a senator who actually lives in North Carolina. -- Perry Deane Young, Chapel Hill

Revaluations just another money grab

Citizens don't want their property revalued more often than every eight years. When they find out what the legislature is doing to make it happen more often (particularly now), they will be at the capitol with pitchforks!

This just takes the onus off county commissioners who can simply say we had nothing to do with it, and it allows higher taxing more often. Find out how your representatives voted and let them know how you feel -- by e-mail, letter, phone and at the ballot box! Property owners are fed up with being the primary financing source for government programs! -- Douglas M. Holmes, Chapel Hill

Editor's note: Orange County revalues property every four years. The county is undergoing a revaluation now that will affect residents' 2009 tax bill.

Time is right for historical marker

We are approaching the 220th anniversary of the first of two North Carolina Federal Constitutional Ratification Conventions, held in Hillsborough July 21-August 4, 1788, which called for a Declaration of Rights to be added to the 1787 Federal Constitution drafted and signed in Philadelphia and then submitted to the states for ratification.

Thomas Jefferson, in a Dec. 20, 1787, letter to James Madison from Paris, had reviewed a copy of the new federal plan of government which his friend and close associate Madison had mailed to him. Jefferson made extensive comments, among which latter observations were that the new Constitution ought to include a Bill of Rights:

"A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth," Jefferson wrote to Madison.

Madison, though initially favoring the adoption of the Constitution without specific amendments, subsequently took the initiative of introducing a set of 12 amendments enumerating specific constitutional rights and liberties, 10 of which were adopted.

Meanwhile, North Carolina, which at its first ratification convention in Hillsborough in the July and August of 1788 deferred ratification of the Federal Constitution pending the addition of a Bill of Rights, did proceed to ratify the Constitution at a second convention held in Fayetteville in November 1789, with the actual ratification date being Nov. 21, 1789.

The Hillsborough convention of July 21-August 4, 1788, has been much overlooked by historians generally and by some in the press here in the Triangle region of the Old North State. It is to be hoped that the media will take note this month of the 220th anniversary of the historic first North Carolina ratification convention in Hillsborough.

Likewise, it would be helpful if among the many historical markers in "Historic Hillsborough," another could be added providing some basic information on the 1788 N.C. Constitutional Ratification Convention, whose action in support of a Declaration of Rights for the new federal plan of government helped spur the addition of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. -- David McKnight, Chapel Hill

Speeders thwarted on Simpson Street

Three cheers for the Town of Carrboro, who put traffic humps on Simpson Street. They based their decision in response to a neighborhood petition.

Simpson has always been a major cut-through. Over the years I watched with alarm at the speed and ferocity of the cut-through traffic. On account of the way Simpson dips at West Main, cars turning onto Simpson cannot be seen from my driveway; when the cars and trucks really wind it up, they are bearing down by the time they appear in your field of vision. Of course, for those who cut through, it takes well under a minute to cover Simpson Street's two long blocks even if you follow the speed limit. Speeders only gain a few seconds.

Speed they always have, but happily, they don't any more. -- Julian Sereno, Carrboro

Dialogue can help healing process

We are two graduate students in public health at Walden University engaged in community empowerment work in the Knolls Development in Chapel Hill. Before we present you with lessons that we can learn from this tragic event, we want to express our grief for Eve Carson, the UNC student body president, murdered March 5, 2008. We also mourn for the young men accused of her murder and their families.

Mayor Foy, we believe that too many young people are heavily exposed to violent scenes shown on television and in music videos that make gun violence seem real and natural. If Ms. Carson had been fed high doses of the virtual reality of the media that many poor black, brown and white young men experience, would she still have become the outstanding person we all have read about? Maybe the mayor cannot tackle the producers of violent media, but he does have something to say about his own law enforcement team. Are the police and detectives doing all they can to decrease the presence of illegal handguns and drugs?

Mayor Foy, we must appreciate all people and confront all things that contribute to senseless violence as well as lives lost due to injurious environmental exposures and forces. Until that happens, we will mourn Ms. Carson for a while, but after a while we will go back to business as usual until the next Eve Carson is gunned down.

Mayor Foy, please accept our challenge to facilitate dialogue in Chapel Hill in order to heal wounds caused by our keeping silent on issues of race and poverty as they relate to our collective circumstances. We appreciate in advance your response to this letter. -- Manuel Hyman, Takesha McMillion

Community silent on 'The Big Ignore'

I live near Chapel Hill High School and, while walking my dog, attempt to pick up what garbage I can. There is a never ending supply of bottles, cans, wrappers, broken glass, plastic utensils and paper/plastic bags littering the campus, much of it near the many garbage and recycling containers on the grounds.

Areas that I clean return to their prior states in days, sometimes hours. Is this simply the rebelliousness of youth? Perhaps. But to answer that more thoroughly we should perhaps ask ourselves how clean Interstate 40 would be without the forced cleanup by inmates and why, despite available receptacles, cigarette butts line our main streets and bus stops.

Although there are admittedly places with far worse refuse problems, this unfortunately indicates a failure on the part of this community to address something totally within our control and whose incompetence compromises all generations. For how can we expect our sons and daughters and their sons and daughters to be good stewards of the land, when we expect and deliver so little of ourselves?

We are all engaged in one Big Ignore, where the problems we create will be left for others to solve, presuming again the competence or the interest.

It doesn't have to be that way. We can do better. Associations and schools can work singularly or jointly with the town to form cleanup groups to educate and eradicate the problem at the source. Smokers can act responsibly when discarding their cigarettes. Legislation regarding bottle deposits on all bottles can be pursued so that a financial incentive for cleanup, regardless of its modesty, is available. To that end, I ask you to join me leaving what we have in better condition than we found it.

What can one person do? One person can start. One person can try. One person can recognize that the cumulative efforts of the concerned, though apart, can always contribute to a better day. -- Hillel Abrams, Chapel Hill

Massage parlor not the biggest problem

The recent stories in the Chapel Hill News regarding the investigation of University Massage have left me puzzled, especially considering the larger safety issues that remain seemingly unattended in downtown Chapel Hill.

I wonder if the mayor is aware that last week three armed men mugged a friend of mine as he walked home from his job, which is on East Franklin Street. He had a gun held to his head and was robbed of the $1.50 he possessed and his cellphone. Then he was beaten in the face and left bloody. After finishing his walk home, he called police.

I recognize the fact that no one in power wants to courageously announce a war on downtown crime, as this would risk getting into the news and perhaps scare prospective students thinking of coming to UNC for a tour. However, Eve Carson's murder should have been a 9/11 moment. Everything afterward should have been different. Including the posture of those in power.

Everyone in Chapel Hill should be aware that armed men still are able to lurk in the shadows off of Franklin Street. But that's the problem. We all do know that. As silently as these thugs walked the streets that night, are those in power sneaking around the issue of downtown security. Where are the demands for more street lights? If they and other recommendations have been made, then perhaps I'm out of line.

Perhaps the drive to put University Massage out of business is part of somebody's larger plan to "clean up" the downtown. However, it is my opinion that this needs to start not with moralizing about a massage parlor, but by actually creating a 24-hour safe zone downtown sanitized of armed vermin that are ready to kill for $1.50. I just don't sense the urgency. -- Christopher Censullo, Chapel Hill