Brent's Blog

- App will rock the throw-back uniforms for a game this year.
- Grassley wants to investigate the anthrax investigation.
- This is not good.
- Slide oil prices, slide!
- Save your goatee.
- The empty mall phenomenon.
- College football blog of the day: Rocky Top Talk covers the Vols.

- Edwards urged to quit saying “I don’t talk about tabloid stories” and answer the question.
- Border patrol has standoff with Mexican soldiers.
- Copy of a poll given to Manhattan Project scientists to gauge opinion on how and whether to use the bomb.
- Breast-feeding lags in North Carolina.
- Onion story of the millenium.
- The Salon guy continues blogging on the anthrax case.
- NASA plans test of a rocket that could get you to Mars in two months.
- College football blog of the day: The Pack kicks off the season in Columbia three weeks from today. Garnet and Black Attack seems to be one of the main South Carolina blogs.

- Average ER waiting time reaches an hour.
- Athletes in Beijing starting to worry about the smog. I’m telling you, we should have sat this out.
- Bruce Ivins revealed to friends the tactics the FBI was using against him. And a judge today unsealed the investigation documents.
- Another foot washes up, this one in the U.S., not Canada.
- In a reversal of white flight, American cities are turning themselves inside out, with those who can afford it moving to these downtown condos and those who can’t moving to the cheap suburbs.
- Our friends from the South are bringing TB with them.
- I signed up for a free daily edition of the The Sporting News e-mailed to me every day as a pdf of an actual magazine. This Salon guy has a take on it.
- College football blog of the day: College Football Resource.

- A Gotti charged with murder. I have no idea which one this is. I was hoping it was one of the brats on that stupid reality show.
- Slate has a nice photo slideshow on Coney Island.
- The Montauk monster was probably an animal whose skin had been removed by the saltwater, says this guy.
- Bill Easley signed into law allows ticket scalping over the Internet, but only for a year.
- The anthrax story continues to be the best thing ever. The FBI claims Ivins was obsessed with sorority girls, specifically Kappa Kappa Gammas, and that he mailed the letters in a mailbox across the street from the Kappa house at Princeton. The New York Daily News claims to have an unnamed source saying the White House pressed the FBI to link the anthrax to Al Qaeda. Of course, at the time someone used ABC news to try to pin it to Iraq, and a guy at Salon is doing some very good stuff on why unnamed sources who lie to journalists to advance their agenda shouldn’t get to remain unnamed sources. And, of course, why in the world would anyone believe anything the FBI says after what they did to Steven Hatfill, so there’s a growing call for the bureau to show its cards.
- The Olympics circus might actually end up being more interesting than anthrax. American cyclists arrive in Beijing wearing breathing masks.
- College football blog of the day: SI on Campus is football, basketball, college culture and everything else.

John Parks brought this cartoon by today. It was first printed in 1916 and was reprinted in a book he has about early cars.
Seems that even back then, gas was too expensive for some.

- So I go to the beach for the weekend, and one of the most interesting stories of the last decade pops up again with the FBI’s main suspect in the anthrax killings offing himself. Here’s a new detail story from the AP.
- This really stinks. A lot of us grew up listening to Skip Caray.
- Man missing since 1976 found alive.
- I trust Mr. Stopper also filed a complaint over the signs in the window at Victoria’s Secret as well.
- Governor candidates face off for the tale of the tape.
- Anybody want a brand new theater in Roanoke Rapids? Lee Greenwood, I’m looking in your direction.
- Fourteen tv/movie franchises that have jumped the shark.

Have a good Friday.

Lesson learned in the case of the charity that wasn’t

I really should have seen this one coming. For a minute, I actually did.

Earlier this summer, Karen Gillespie came to the office to talk about a charity she said she had started and a community event she was planning. Now, she stands accused of writing worthless checks to businesses that provided services for her community awareness day at Burlington Square Mall. Reporter Brie Handgraaf documented the aftermath in Sunday’s newspaper.

Gillespie described her North Star Foundation as a charity that helps sexually and physically abused children, I think. She talked very fast about child sexual predators on the Internet and several other things.

She described plans for an event at the mall that would include vendors, activities, even a parade. She said hundreds, no thousands, would be there.

I was skeptical. I’m not particularly bright, but I do work at the daily newspaper in this county. I deal with local charities a lot. I had never heard of Gillespie or the North Star Foundation.

Now that’s not to say that people don’t start new charities. They do. But when they do, they start off with a meeting, or a bake sale, or a car wash. This woman, seemingly from out of nowhere, planned an event that only a couple of charities in this county could pull off.

Then she talked about her plans for a compound where children could stay in dormitories and get services from doctors and psychologists. That seemed even more far-fetched.

A couple of weeks later, we ran a short preview of community awareness day. A lot of people seemed to be involved, I thought. The mall had the event on its schedule. It seemed that it would at least happen, though I thought the whole thing might be a bust.

Seems we were fooled like everyone else.

As Brie’s story told, Gillespie got a lot of help. People donated their time. Businesses cut her a deal. But those who showed up at the mall said it was a big letdown. The police now say the North Star Foundation doesn’t exist.

Helping local charities is a huge part of this newspaper’s mission. Whether it’s with our writing - with stories on golf tournaments, charitable motorcycle rides or the Hospice Flea Market - or our words - with blood drives, sponsorships and our annual Love Enough to Share campaign - you’d be hard-pressed to name another company in Alamance County that does more good.

I’m constantly amazed at how our coverage of people in need can change their lives and at how willing our readers are to help. Take our stories this summer about Daniel Mize, who needs a kidney transplant.

After writing about Daniel, readers have sent in checks and held fundraisers. The Mizes have now raised the $5,000 they need to move forward with testing Daniel’s father as a kidney match and plan for possible surgery.

Most of the charities we write about have a track record with us, so we can count on what they’re saying. Even when they don’t, we try to double check what we’re being told.

But to be honest, if some of the motorcycle rides or other fundraisers we write about didn’t actually happen, we might not know about it. We err on the side of helping, rather than saying no.

Maybe we should be a little more careful.

I think Karen Gillespie is a well-intentioned woman who bit off more than she could chew, not some sort of grifter out to rip off all of Alamance County.

In her case, like so many others, Alamance County was asked to help and the people who live here did. I hope this story won’t discourage them from doing the same thing the next time.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at  brent_lancaster at link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at brentsblog.freedomblogging.com.

- Beach driving along Hatteras National Seashore is a big issue.
- Olympic athletes will be gender-tested.
- Study finds decline in illegal immigration.
- FOIA request yields forms used by the National Security Agency.
- Computer animation lets you watch how Wal-Mart has spread. Reminds me of kudzu.
- Hammer drops after Probation internal investigation.
- Now we’re talking, Entertainment Weekly. Fifty best high school movies. If Heathers isn’t number one, I will never visit your site again.
- College football blog of the day: The News & Observer’s ACC Now.

- Asheboro joins Graham, lifts liquor ban.
- State’s beaches get high marks for water quality.
- The News & Observer does the illegal librarian story.
- Some analysts see the oil bubble really popping. Loud. Feel free to drop your recent lifestyle changes, act like a glutton again.
- Five tiny mistakes that led to huge problems.
- George Orwell’s personal diaries are online.
- Monster washed ashore or another Internet hoax? The Internet has been doing me wrong lately, so I’m going with hoax.
- I’m really down with this “kill your lawn” trend (turn your lawn into a natural area - it’s green), mostly because my lawn looks terrible. Here’s a Flickr photo stream of killed lawns.
- Pat McCrory wants to break Democrats’ hold on eastern North Carolina.
- College football blog of the day: AOL’s college football fanhouse blog.