All right, so tell us something we didn't know. It hardly comes as a shock that the sprawling and multifarious region of Eastern North Carolina, for all its wonderful attributes and assets, in key respects is hurtin' for certain.

It's a story that has played out for decades, and that's now been updated in thoughtful fashion by the well-regarded N.C. Center for Public Policy Research in the latest edition of its journal, N.C. Insight. As the state's interior cities, spearheaded by the Triangle metro area, the Triad and Charlotte, have ridden crests of high technology and high finance, most counties along and to the east of I-95 have struggled.

Farming, for so long the region's backbone, is up against it, and geography has proved an enduring obstacle to industry. Educational shortcomings leave many residents without the skills to take advantage of those decent jobs that do exist.

But even if the overall problem has long set teeth to gnashing, there's value in continuing to describe and explain. It helps keep the East's difficulties from being swept under the Tar Heel rug. Unfortun-ately, that's an inclination for many of us for whom the region tends to be out of sight, out of mind except when we zip through en route to the coast (or, in my family's case, on our occasional jaunts to see the relatives in Tidewater Virginia).

It also strikes me that in a way, it's fitting to be reminded of Eastern North Carolina's challenges during this holiday season. Folks in the East aren't looking for handouts -- but they doubtless would appreciate the gift of our attention and concern. What that could translate into, if we're both smart and generous, is the gift of opportunity -- surely a key to success when it's bestowed on people well endowed with resiliency and pride.

Of course, some parts of the Tar Heel Coastal Plain already are drinking from good fortune's cup. Coastal counties where tourism thrives -- Dare, Carteret, New Hanover -- have to deal with the risks of overdevelopment, not a development dearth. Wilmington has its movie industry and an invigorated waterfront. Greenville has up-and-coming East Carolina University.

Yet for a Triangle-ite such as myself, there's no mistaking the oft-noted "two North Carolinas" phenomenon upon venturing, say, up U.S. 258 -- past the farmland where cotton again is king but not a particularly munificent one, if the wrecks of old homesteads and the humble circumstances in which so many still live are any sign, and through faded towns such as Scotland Neck and Rich Square that barely hold their own despite their charm.

If the battle to overcome the East's poverty and isolation is to be won, it certainly helps to have friends in high places. In that regard Governor Hunt of rural Wilson County, and now Governor Easley, raised on a farm near Rocky Mount, have certainly qualified. They know the score. In particular, they understand that education is the pivotal issue.

Just how pivotal? Tom Lambeth, recently retired executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation (i.e., the state's do-gooder-in-chief), minces no words in his lead-off piece for N.C. Insight.

". . .This is the region where more educational deprivation is found than in any other part of North Carolina," Lambeth writes. "It is here that we find the majority of low-wealth counties and the greatest numbers of under-performing schools. . . .No strategy for improving the economic and social well-being of Eastern North Carolina can succeed without significant, perhaps massive, investment in improved public schools."

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