Petrblt News in Raleigh

Al Adams, former legislator and law partner of Terry Sanford told me a story the day before Jesse Helms’ funeral of the time Sanford found himself seated on an airplane next to, as synchronicity would have it, Jesse Helms, as diametrically different from the ex-Governor as two southern boys could be.

Reploy (v) 1: To put someone else’s discarded possession to new use.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” I was hectored during my grad-school years. Unfair, thought I, given the source: a critical theorist whose view of writers was like the butcher’s on meat, “You’re just a pig, what do you know about bacon?”

The somber one year anniversary of the Blacksburg shootings brings us to an appropriate station-stop. Time to stretch our legs, pause and reflect on where we are, where we may be going and how the Hell we got here.