Ford: The man in charge of trying to keep Raleigh growing in a way that makes sense, economically and environmentally - that would be the city's planning director, Mitchell Silver - has been even busier than usual.
Modified: 02/03/12 06:55:38 PMFord: When you think about all the twists and turns until Americans choose their next president and North Carolinians choose their next governor, what's abundantly clear is that clarity is hard to come by.
Modified: 01/27/12 06:30:04 PMFord: What appears to have been the desecration of the bodies of dead Afghans by U.S.
Modified: 01/13/12 05:03:46 PMFord: You won't find the Viaduct Building by looking for a viaduct.
Modified: 01/07/12 02:56:11 PMFord: The view below was of a river, its current discernible at the sun-glinting rapids upstream to the left. Across was forest, a lattice of light and shade, limbs bared to winter, colors of dark green pine and silvery-trunked sycamore. Beyond - a ridge. Sky.
Modified: 12/30/11 04:15:18 PMFord: Some familiar language from this time of year offers this agreeable notion: "... and on earth peace, good will toward men." Christmas wish, or Christmas promise? Either way, it seems like it ought to be easy enough to get with the program.
Modified: 12/25/11 04:01:34 AMFord: William Shakespeare used his mastery of language and fertility of imagination to probe the human soul, with all its capacity for joy and suffering, love and hatred, generosity and selfishness, goodness and raw evil.
Modified: 12/16/11 05:36:17 PMFord: Did DeMario Atwater do it? He pleaded guilty in the vicious murder of Eve Carson and is serving life in federal prison. Yep, he did it.
Modified: 12/09/11 06:02:44 PMFord: Church bells did not ring, nor were fireworks shot off, to herald a recent ruling by some federal judges in a North Carolina money-in-politics case.
Modified: 12/02/11 06:32:50 PM
Ford: Perhaps there was some kind of unconscious pull that, during a stay in Washington last weekend, led us down Florida Avenue, N.W., past the site of now-vanished Griffith Stadium.
Modified: 11/25/11 01:37:09 PMFord: Is there a silver lining to the conflict that has dogged North Carolina's largest public school system?
Modified: 11/11/11 06:00:23 PMFord: The pendulum of politics swings to and fro. Two years ago, a slate of four candidates running under the Republican banner swept the field and joined with an incumbent ally to form a single-seat majority on the nine-member Wake County school board.
Modified: 11/06/11 12:20:32 AMFord: Along South Ellis Avenue in the Southside Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park stands a dark-hued, modernistic bronze sculpture, vertical in aspect, dome-shaped at the top and vaguely ominous in its imagery.
Modified: 10/29/11 10:14:07 PMFord: To invoke a seasonal metaphor as the Cardinals and Rangers do World Series battle: For the Wake County schools it's a brand-new ballgame.
Modified: 10/22/11 09:51:22 PMFord: Our favorite local hyper-politically active plutocrat, Art Pope, works up a nice head of steam trying to convince us that the millions he funnels into conservatives' campaigns and right-wing activist groups scarcely count for a hill of beans.
Modified: 10/15/11 11:59:19 PMFord: The chair of the Wake County Republican Party didn't mince words when she touted the party's endorsed candidates and declared on its website, "Only by WINNING these races in 2011 can we provide the necessary clout and pressure that will compel our elected officials to govern under the principles of our platform."
Modified: 10/08/11 11:54:54 PMFord: Let's say you're of an age that would have inclined you to be drawn into the orbit of one Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, whose all-too-human life story spins out across four novels by John Updike. If you know Rabbit, then you know Reading.
Modified: 10/01/11 11:56:53 PMFord: There are no secrets on the autopsy table. Mysteries, perhaps, but no secrets:
Modified: 09/23/11 05:43:24 PMFord: How many people - design engineers, contract specialists, surveyors, real estate appraisers, hard-hat construction workers - would it take to build a new rail bridge over Raleigh's Capital Boulevard?
Modified: 09/16/11 06:10:18 PMFord: My appointment with the caterer to arrange for the rehearsal dinner that would precede my oldest son's wedding fell on a day when the prospect of a celebratory occasion seemed wildly out of place.
Modified: 09/09/11 05:52:49 PM
Contact the N&O editorial staff
Steve Ford, editorial page editor
(919) 829-4512
Jim Jenkins, deputy editorial page editor
(919) 829-4513
Allen Torrey, op-ed page editor
(919) 829-4517
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