Mary Newsom

I didn't go into newspapers because I wanted to crusade for anything - not sunshine laws, or streetcars or sidewalks - or because I wanted to spend years interviewing politicians and police. I just wanted to become a famous novelist someday.

In Mediterranean countries you often see a phenomenon that, to American eyes, is amazing. In many towns, at about 5 or 6 p.m. the downtown streets suddenly fill with people. Elderly couples amble arm in arm.

It was the same old-same old Tuesday as I walked to work. Cars turning into my path. Crosswalks that you'd think would exist that didn't. Pedestrian signals that, no matter how many times you pressed the button, just kept showing you the big red hand.

That Saturday was as fine a spring day as Charlotte can produce - sunny but not hot, air drier than it's likely to be again before October.

You have to admire their chutzpah. Because it is gutsy to run for the General Assembly as a conservative who wants less intrusive government, and, once elected, flood the place with bills overriding local communities' power to manage their own affairs.

A friend commented recently that smelling honeysuckle was like smelling the South.

Monday night wasn't quite deja vu all over again, but there were ghosts in the City Council chamber.

. For people who care about cities, the past 10 years have been good ones. Many of America's cities are flowering.

If you lived in Charlotte in 1987 and live here today, you know the city has grown and changed. I think we've changed enough that it's time to atone for a 1987 decision. We should try to get our Gumby back.

This is a riverside city that for years acted as if the river that birthed the city did not exist. Then something wonderful happened. In 2002 Greenville removed a four-lane street that since 1960 had hidden the river from view and public consciousness.