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Moving slowly, but surely

This year's economic woes may have temporarily slowed the downtown Greensboro Children's Museum's expansion plans but fortunately haven't derailed them.

Rather than proceeding with a more extensive overhaul, museum officials say they're taking one step at a time.

And the first one, calling for creation of the innovative Edible Schoolyard, a cooking and organic gardening program, sounds like a winner.

It will use unique approaches to teach children about ecology, nutrition and gardening. Hopefully, the groundbreaking effort ends up bringing national attention to both the museum and the city.

By paring down original construction cost estimates, there's a good chance it will happen.

For too many families, the downtown attraction has been a well-kept secret. Prudently moving ahead with improving it could change that unfortunate slight.

Esse quam videri, governor

Gov. Bev Perdue's poll numbers remain low, but she's just hired someone to help: a new senior communications and policy adviser, Pearse Edwards, at an annual salary of $136,000.

Adding that much money to the governor's office payroll in these tough times seems like an extravagance.

Perdue already employs a communications director, deputy communications director and press secretary. That's plenty of communications help. At some point the governor has to be the message, not have it crafted for her by an expanding army of professional spinmeisters.

Who would wear it now?

Back in September 2007, a New Orleans teenager was told he couldn't wear a T-shirt supporting John Edwards' presidential campaign in his high school. He sued, but a federal appeals court ruled against him last week.

Although the outcome is a blow against free expression, which should be valued even in high school, the former North Carolina senator's fortunes have fallen so far since the case originated that it's hard to believe anyone ever would have gone to all that trouble for the right to wear a John Edwards T-shirt.

State of Community changes

The Chamber of Commerce's 10th 2009 State of the Community luncheon on Aug. 26 will shift gears, dropping the format of speeches -- some good, some not as good, some too long -- in favor of a panel discussion.

That's a welcome change. The speeches tended too often to be self-congratulatory or recitations of laundry lists, or both.

The discussion involving Guilford County commissioners Chairman Melvin "Skip" Alston; Mayor Yvonne Johnson; and Board of Education Chairman Alan Duncan could be more enlightening.

The more they talk to one another, onstage and off, the better.

Road to the future

They broke ground on the new toll road in Wake County last week.

The $1 billion-plus project would be the first modern toll road in the state and is expected to ease some of the infamous congestion in that neck of the woods.

It's also likely to usher in a new era of toll roads in the state.

Given the mounting problems with paying for highways, that's OK with us, as long as they remain one way to get from Point A to Point B, but not the only way.