www.roanoke.com

I've never met Leonard Pitts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who uses words as both a salve and a scalpel.

But like millions of readers who see his column each week in newspapers across the country, I've come to know him.

The Miami Herald columnist writes from the soul -- as he did on the morning of 9/11, when he crafted a defiant open letter of American solidarity to the terrorists who attacked this country but not its resolve.

He can be loving as when he penned an anniversary column about surprising his wife with a new car. Or blunt, calling Paris Hilton a "skank" when many of us were thinking just that. And fearless, as when he discredited white supremacists' foolish take on a heinous crime.

Pitts, the man who provokes a nation to thought with his words, will be the keynote speaker June 6 at the NAACP banquet at the Hotel Roanoke.

Read more »

Today, I want to use this space to call for an end to the factors stymieing the future of the Roanoke City Market Building.

Most everyone agrees that downtown's signature marketplace building needs a serious makeover. But the suspicions and the inability to communicate between the people running the building and those making their living in it have stalled the renovation.

Read more »

The crisis of the black male is our crisis ... -- Sen. Barack Obama

According to the National Urban League's 2007 State of Black America, more than half of the nation's 5.6 million black boys live in fatherless homes.

In many inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school. In 2004, 72 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless. The incarceration rate for black men from ages 25 to 29 is 8 percent, compared with 1 percent of white men.

Yet, in a society in which his gender and race mark him as an endangered species, William Fleming High School senior Adrian Ambrose forcefully declares, "I am not a statistic."

Read more »

I don't know what's worse: Feminists having hissy fits because Barry Obama called a Detroit TV reporter "sweetie" or 90-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela on U.S. terrorist watch lists.

Do tell.

A follow-up on our informal game of Democratic VP roulette: VaGuy weighed in saying that HairBoy (John Edwards) would be a poor choice, citing HairBoy's less-than-stellar veep run four years ago. He floated the name of Sam Nunn, the retired senator from Georgia.

s

A week ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a 29-year-old Roanoke man was shot to death as he stood in front of an apartment building on Hunt Avenue.

Hours later, in an incident believed to be related to the shooting, a 50-year-old woman was attacked at a convenience store on Williamson Road.

When an off-duty police officer spotted the suspects in the attack, he was viciously beaten and left unconscious. He remains paralyzed.

The absence of values instilled at home is bleeding into America's streets in the form of a vicious and cold-hearted violence.

Read more »

You're not afraid to essentially ask, "Shanna, what 'chu been smokin'?"

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? What was I thinking!? Granted, I knew Barry would have to toss his principles (and probably his cookies) to pair up with Hill if he wanted any real shot at the White House. But it wouldn't be a first. I saw a report recently on PBS that chronicled folks who didn't like each other but served together as prez-vp. (All of the pairings escape me now, but JFK-LBJ and Eisenhower-Nixon were among the examples cited.)

But no, wait a minute....It's a bird, it's a plane....it's JOHN EDWARDS to the rescue of the Democratic Party to save it from itself! This campaign has more twists, turns and cliffhangers than an episode of The Young & the Restless. All I can say is stay tuned....and dare I put forth a Barack Obama-John Edwards pairing!?

Sherman Lea is poised to be a BMOC, Big Man on Council

Not the BMOC -- that's Mayor-elect David Bowers -- but a voice of leadership.

It's about time.

Since his election four years ago to Roanoke City Council, Lea has been seen as a toady for his running mate and fellow council member Brian Wishneff.

Earlier this year, Lea cut ties with Wishneff and joined ranks with Mayor Nelson Harris as the two sought re-election in last week's municipal election.

Harris didn't retain his seat, but Lea was the highest vote-getter, with 6,562 and will become vice mayor July 1. He will become the longest-serving member on the council. If Lea's runaway victory showed anything, it showed he can stand on his own. Without Wishneff, without Harris.

Read more »

Monday, I saved two lives.

I didn't pull anyone from a burning building or talk any despondent soul off a ledge. My action was as unexciting as it was routine -- but no less important.

I donated blood at St. Philip Lutheran Church on north Williamson Road.

Read more »

Not THAT end, folks. The end of Hillary's sense-of-entitlement, self-annointed ascent to the presidency.

Here's what I think. Obama can't beat McCain. Hillary has made sure of that with all of her talk about working-class whites not voting for him. (In case Hill hasn't noticed, blacks aren't exactly lining up to push the touch-screen for her, either.)

If by some miracle that the superdelegates lose their minds and make Clinton the nominee, she can't beat McCain, either. (see above paren. That won't change in the general.) So here goes the regurgitation of the "dream-team" talk floating out there in cyberspace: A Obama-Clinton ticket in the general.

Such a ticket would clean McCain's clock, because all segments of the Democratic base would have a dog in the fight. But I don't think Hill wants to be the No. 2 of the man she has trashed --- and intensely --- for the past several months. She's not going to play second-fiddle to a perceived newbie interloper.

What do y'all think?

Aubrey and Michelle Wright embody the typical boy-meets-girl American love story.

On Thanksgiving Eve 2002, she was out with her friend Susan at Corned Beef & Co. in Roanoke. He was out with his brothers.

The couple met, and they hit it off immediately. They made plans to meet at the same spot two nights later. Eight months later, they married.

"It was love at first sight," Michelle said with a smile one evening last week as she recalled meeting her husband.

One thing, however, distinguishes their love from most American couples. It reaches across racial lines. Aubrey, 32, is black. Michelle, 33, is white.

Read more »