He'll be remembered as one of the state's great political "characters," a term generally associated as much with good fun as with anything related to government. There was the Stetson Open Road hat, the cigar, the donkey bray, the special technique of savoring a fresh tobacco leaf, the golf cart at the State Fairgrounds. Thirty-six years as commissioner of agriculture gives a man a lot of time to develop some, shall we say, personality in the job. Jim Graham died yesterday. In his last months, I'm glad to say I spent a lot of time with him at Mayview Convalescent Center in Raleigh, where he was attempting to recuperate from a number of bouts of ill health. My father, who died Oct. 30, had been a friend of Jim's for nearly 40 years. It was a comfort to him, and to Jim I hope, that they were there together in that very good place.

We've all had the experience: You're on the highway headed to grandma's house or wherever, and there's this one fellow pulling up behind people, tailgating, honking his horn until they get out of his way. Miles and miles go by. He zigzags in and around traffic. And then, some time down the road, you and the others he's passed see him by the side of the road, a trooper's car parked behind with the lights flashing. Some succumb to the temptation to wave. In the world of political commentary, Rush Limbaugh has for some time been the head horn-honker. The size 8 of the talking heads. A melon-sized burr under the hind-end of the liberals. The disc jockey who became a diss jockey.

Cannes it wasn't. No red carpet. No blinding hail of camera flashes, no nosy, celebrity-hunting paparazzi. Still, when one is afforded the opportunity to see oneself on the "big screen," to bask in the adoration of fans, to revel in the triumph of one's art, well...

We of this space have obtained some highly classified and sensitive material. No, it is not pertaining to homeland security, in which case we would have turned it over to the FBI on account of we do not like the way they cook the green peas at Central Prison. Rather, it has to do with the real story of the top-secret negotiations just completed in these parts over a matter of colossal importance to the free world. That's right. We now can share with you some of the behind-the-scenes exchanges between newly crowned...er, make that newly signed...UNC-Chapel Hill basketball coach Roy Williams and his representatives, and Chancellor James Moeser and Athletics Director Dick Baddour.

Management problems unearthed of late at East Carolina University have prompted a warning to the school's administrators and trustees that, as the search for a new chancellor begins, the university will be under a close watch from the University of North Carolina system's administrators. If the system's people don't like how the ECU folks are handling things, East Carolina could lose "management flexibility" that allows individual campuses more than a little autonomy from the home office in Chapel Hill. The warning came from UNC system President Molly Broad and Board of Governors Chairman Brad Wilson. It's appropriate enough, but the launching of another chancellor search within the system also brings to mind this sentiment: How refreshing it would be if the president and Wilson also encouraged those leading the search for a new chancellor to look first close to home for candidates. That's no judgment based solely on the just-resigned chancellor, William Muse, who came from the presidency of Auburn University and whose tenure was shortened by health concerns and a couple of critical internal audits.

So I'm betting Mary Horne Odom voted for her first Republican Tuesday. Her staunchly Democratic friends understood, the Republican in question being her son, John, a five-term Raleigh City Council member who challenged incumbent Mayor Charles Meeker. John Odom lost after a long campaign during which he advocated an agenda more conservative than Meeker's. He had wanted to run for some time, but the fact was, Meeker proved to be a popular mayor, something reflected in his winning percentage. Odom's defeat will disappoint a lot of his family friends in Scotland County, most of whom will be offering their condolences to his mama. But don't worry. Democrat Mary Odom was a stellar state senator from Scotland County herself (she recently moved to Raleigh), a progressive voice in the legislature when that wasn't a particularly popular thing to be. And she stayed active in public policy issues after leaving the General Assembly. She's one of her son's political heroes. Another is his late father, Dusty Odom, who served as Scotland's chief deputy sheriff. Tall-as-a-tree John Odom picked up his size from his father, whom the son reckons was 6-feet-8. From both parents he inherited his character as a stand-up guy.

So the story goes that Harry S. Truman, pronounced a loser for sure in the 1948 presidential campaign against Thomas Dewey, dismissed the polls that showed him, politically speaking, ready to be marched to the cemetery accompanied by strains of "Nearer My God to Thee." In gauging his chances, Truman went by the unscientific, simplistic fact that as he whistle-stopped around the country, his crowds were getting bigger. You know the rest. The famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline, and a chronic bellyache for all those in the polling business.

It's just fantastic, and that's all there is to it. Everyone in Wake County should visit The Healing Place, a nonprofit recovery and rehabilitation program for homeless men who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs. The visit would inspire; it would prompt some troubling thought; it would hurt -- these stories of men who lost their jobs, their families, and nearly their lives; it would make you ache for the wives and children left behind, for the parents who watched their children self-destruct. It would give you pause that anyone, be he doctor or lawyer or another professional, or a hard-working family man who was on a manufacturing line, can disappear in a daze of alcohol and drugs. Anyone. Mostly, though, it would give you an inspiring sense of hope. For these men are on the road back. Seventy percent of them will be sober a year after they make it through a multitude of recovery steps at The Healing Place, which is off Lake Wheeler Road in Raleigh. That's a good number. To get to that point, they'll incorporate the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. They'll work. They will participate in meetings where they enforce discipline on each other. They will walk 700 or 800 miles in the course of their recovery, going to classes at Wake County's South Wilmington Street Shelter and to 700 or 800 meetings.

Some people go to psychiatrists. Some to gurus. Some to swamis. Some to isolated mountaintops where their chanting can echo through the hills. We go to Thad Woodard.

Well, you can't call it much ado about nothing. California, after all, may be about to elect a new governor in a recall election, which came about when a wealthy Republican congressmen decided he despised the current one, Gray Davis, about 30 seconds after Davis won a second term. The polls are a little iffy, but the 150 or so candidates are taking seriously the run of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he-man movie star, liberal Republican, Kennedy spouse, American dream guy. So far, to build support and be taken seriously, Ah-nold has gone around smiling a lot and talking about how he headed presidential councils on physical fitness. He's thus far getting a lot of friendly press, both because of his media skills and because reporters are afraid he could break them in half.

His name was Albert Francis Caldwell and he was from Roseville, Ill. He and his wife, Sylvia Mae Harbaugh, with their son, Alden, had gone to Bangkok in Siam -- now known as Thailand -- to teach at the Christian College for Boys. They were headed home to Roseville, out of Southampton, England. It was April of 1912. They were aboard the Titanic.

His name was Leroy and he was a loom fixer. Her name was Shirley, and she was a weaver. More than 20 years ago, they allowed a reporter who was not yet 30 to invade their lives for several months. It was a presumptuous request, when I think about it now -- the young reporter looking for a story and maybe a prize going through the public relations people at the mill to pick out a couple of folks for an "in-depth" profile. I talked with 10, maybe a dozen mill employees before settling on Leroy and Shirley, who'd been married a good while, had two boys and were long-time employees at a denim factory in Greensboro.