"Are you the Ryan Shell that just ran for Greensboro City Council at-large?" With a small grin on my face I said, "Yes." Then the attendant behind the ticket counter at Triad Stage said, "Oh my gosh - I voted for you! I'm so sorry you didn't win, but I think you did really great job.

Let me see whether I have the facts straight. In May, President Barack Obama removed Gen. David D. McKiernan as the top US commander in Afghanistan and replaced him with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal - who, in September, issued a dire report warning that without as many as 40,000 more troops for the fight in Afghanistan, the mission will likely result in failure.

Just how funny was that story of the man in Fairfax County, Va. who got up early on Monday morning, Oct. 19, walked naked into his own kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee? The next significant thing that happed to 29-year-old Eric Williamson is the local cops arriving to charge him with indecent exposure.

Last week a cast of characters lacking in character paraded in front of the State Board of Elections to tell what they knew about Easleygate. Some were forthcoming, while others suffered acute memory losses. The latter group included Gary Allen, who said he had no recollection as to the circumstances surround-.

When I moved to Greensboro almost five years ago looking for employment and professional advancement, I found a midsized city that encapsulated the contradictions of America: on one hand the promise of freedom embodied by four A&T students who broke the color barrier with their lunch counter sit-in and began the process of desegregating public accommodations;

Halloween just got scarier - much scarier. Flying deep under Washington's radar is an upcoming (December) global climate change conference in Copenhagen, the "United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change."

Across the country last weekend, there were antiwar demonstrations, modest in turnout, but hopefully a warning to Obama that war without end or reason in Afghanistan, plus 40,000 more troops to Kabul, is not why people voted for him.

If you want proof that Congress is collegially corrupted and gratuitously gridlocked, look no further than Sen. Harry Reid's recent power play in which he used the McCarran-Ferguson Act as his weapon of mass distraction.

When I started college I thought that by the time I was done there would be job offers around every corner and that a stable job that could pay bills would be ready and waiting. It's amazing how much can change in six years and how far off base my eager, young mind was.

Despite atheists' attempts to keep our national motto ("In God We Trust") from being engraved on the walls of the new 580,000-squarefoot Capitol Visitor Center, the inscription was indelibly etched recently in large, bold and deep letters. And the Pledge of Allegiance soon will follow.