Somber news kicks off this week's Amuse Bouche column. Ginnie Tate, known hereabouts as the Goat Lady, passed last week after suffering ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, for three years. I met Ginnie at my mother-in-law's health food store shortly after moving to Greensboro in 2000.

Some of Greensboro's real estate interests combined with the city's civic insecurity in powerful fashion on May 8 when Coliseum Director Matt Brown and two business leaders lobbied the city council to buy a piece of contaminated property to serve as the future home of the ACC Hall of Champions.Adding still more agendas and players, the state of North Carolina has dangled $2 million in front of the city for the project, and the property - a mothballed Canada Dry bottling plant - is partly owned by the wife of News & Record Editor John Robinson.

A statement issued by Guilford College Students for Justice reads: ""In consideration of the administration's own system of core values, we find the charges placed on [Faris Khader and Osama Sabbah] as unacceptable....

A family-owned community newspaper company, Womack Publishing Company was founded in 1960 when Charles Womack Sr. purchased the Danville Commercial Appeal.

YES! Weekly was launched Jan. 5, 2005 by Greensboro resident Charles Womack, president of Womack Newspapers, Inc a division of Womack Publishing. www.womackpublishing.com The new free weekly alternative newspaper focuses on the cultural, political and artistic aspects of the Triad. YES! Weekly has a weekly readership of 85,000 and is distributed Wednesdays to over 500 locations throughout the Triad (Greensboro - High Point - Winston-Salem). Womack, whose company is a division of Womack Publishing of Chatham, Va., also owns the Adams Farm Gazette in Greensboro, the Jamestown News in Jamestown, and the Outer Banks Sentinel in Nags Head. Womack Publishing began in 1960 when Womack's grandfather -- also named Charles -- bought the Danville Commercial Appeal in Virginia. Throughout the sixties and seventies the company acquired and launched more newspapers in Virginia and North Carolina. Womack Publishing Company, headquartered in Chatham, Virginia is a privately-held, family-owned, media company of newspapers, telephone directories, speciality publications and Internet-based businesses. Womack Publishing Co. operates 21 newspapers in VA, NC, and CO. Additional Womack sites include: WomackNewspapers.com, VaNcNews.com, WPCVA.com and ACONews.com. Womack also operates state-wide Legal Notice web sites. Our Mission is to publish strong, independent and profitable community newspapers. All of our newspapers strive to be the conscience of the community, a recorder of its history, a voice for all citizens, and an advocate of the good.

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