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It’s been a long time since I got summers off, but I still mourn the start of school, especially when it happens before Labor Day. Not that getting up in the dark with two teenagers is anything less than a pleasure, or that cooler weather and college football will be unwelcome, but this just is not the most wonderful time of the year. 

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One possible upside to summer’s end: Maybe the political silly season will draw to a close, and we can start discussing health insurance reform in terms of cost and benefit, rather than pretending that Nazis are about to snuff granny, or arguing with a straight face that the government should stay out of Medicare.

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Greensboro lost a quiet star with the death earlier this month of former UNCG Chancellor Patricia Sullivan. Her accomplishments at the university are pretty well understood, but I was happy to see that Joe Killian’s article on her funeral mentioned Pat’s sense of humor and her light touch with people, which were sometimes obscured by her serious public persona. 

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A while ago I saw a map showing the boundaries of the Sweet Tea Zone, an area delineated to the north by the point in Virginia where a southbound traveler can begin to order tea and expect to get the beverage iced and sugar-saturated. On a similar theme, I was happy to discover on a family trip that the Chick-fil-A zone now extends into New Jersey.   

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If Mike Easley, the jet-setting former governor, was dropped into a Borges story where he met an earlier iteration of himself — Mike Easley, the tough prosecutor — well, that would sure be an interesting story to read.

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 The winner of the Wyndham GGO Sedgefield Classic Golf Extravaganza was Greensboro and, as the dulcet-toned announcer said so many times, the Piedmont Triad. I know that in golf terms, the guy with the hat beat the hefty guy and the other guy after Sergio found a really exciting way to miss yet another shot, but the tournament has turned into something really good for this region in ways that matter beyond the last hole. Also, we sure look pretty from a blimp. Bobby Long and his team have done great work, for which, this being Greensboro, they’ll no doubt face some criticism.

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 Public art is often not very good. It’s supposed to please everyone and so fails to please anyone. But the ambitions of Greensboro’s new Public Art Endowment, which will unveil its first project at the corner of Market and Eugene streets next month, seem to be a bit loftier, and if people support the project, we should end up with a more interesting city.

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 A different kind of public art is promoted locally by the DotMatrix project, headed by Sean Coon and involving a large cast of musicians, photographers and filmmakers. It’s a great example of Greensboro’s vibrant creative culture — you know, the kind of thing touted but then largely ignored by our economic development organizations. You can see some of DMP’s work at a show opening this Friday night at the Green Bean on South Elm Street.

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 When blogger and homeless advocate Michele Forrest announced that a national tour aimed at documenting homeless life would stop in Greensboro, she mentioned that the producer, Mark Horvath, needed a place to stay (you can see the project at http://invisiblepeople.tv, and see Michele’s blog at www.chosenfast.com).

 I called Dennis Quaintance of Quaintance-Weaver Hotels and started to explain the situation. I was about half a sentence into my spiel when Dennis cut in to say, “What can we do to help?”

This really is a nice town, thanks to folks like Michele and Dennis, and Sean and Bobby and Pat. And you, too, probably.

Edward Cone (www.edcone.com, efcone@mindspring.com) writes a column for the News & Record on alternate Sundays.