Today's Opinions

Everybody’s looking forward to the end of our Great Recession, but at least one bad thing will come along with the good — higher prices.

Many construction projects have come in under budget around the country, leading consultants to point out the decreasing cost factors to localities with needed infrastructure projects.

But the nation — with the stock market clawing its way back and federal stimulus funding causing many infrastructure projects to heat up — may soon see an end to construction discounts provided by the soft economy.

During the coming days, communities across the South will celebrate Textile Heritage Week — this year exploring how our mill hill ancestors survived the Great Depression.

Many references have lately been made to the Depression because it remains the nation’s yardstick for deprivation and mass insecurity.

Chronicles usually begin with the October 1929 stock market crash. The South’s mill hills were not only far from that Wall Street epicenter, they were, in so many ways, a world apart. Isolation can be awful, but it can sometimes be an asset.

"Does this have to be in the paper?"

It's a question a reporter on the scene hears quite often, from those who feel a particular incident isn't newsworthy because, in their opinion, it makes the community look bad or it hits too close to home for the person asking the question.

(A caller to the newspaper's Hotline once lambasted The Gazette for running an article about a drug bust while thousands of music fans were in town for the fiddlers' convention.)