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Studying how editorial cartoons can be used to influence societal discussions is a popular lesson in North Carolina high schools (maybe cartoons are part of the statewide curriculum?). My rising sophomore had to draw his own political cartoon last fall as part of his freshman civics class, in fact. As I recall, his cartoon involved Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin and a misfired rifle, but I can't for the life of me remember the punchline. You could probably create your own just imagining his picture.

Matthew Durkin, a World History teacher at Franklin Academy, sent in the two most creative and relevant cartoons from his most recent class. Because we are quite fond of editorial cartoons here at The N&O and want to see this particular form of comment succeed in the coming decades, we're going to post them here. Maybe the next generation will be inspired. The first is by Ashley Kabat, the second by Anna Brown.

So a previous eye doctor, a bald guy himself, once said after finishing an exam, "I'm going to give you bifocals...you need something to kind of go with that bald head of yours..."

I never did master that. Bill Cosby once did a routine about getting bifocals, and showed how going down stairs required holding on to both rails and taking sort of giant, feeling-your-way steps, in slow motion. That convinced me that I would just get by with two sets of glasses. 

Of course, that's not exactly right. You have to have a set of reading glasses for work and home, and a set of distance glasses for the car and home. That's four sets. 

Then came the computer, whereupon those of us with glasses needed an additional pair of specs for looking at the computer screen. Times two, for work and home. Total count: six pairs.

Last week, I went for my eye checkup and it seems I now could use trifocals, which means I would have eight pairs of glasses, and add on another couple for sunglasses. 

That's 10 sets of glasses. Should anyone really own more eyeglasses than they do shoes? 

And to think I get funny looks when I take the elevator at the YMCA.

Thanks to some ethics reform in recent years, things are pretty lean in more ways than one down on Jones Street, where legislators are having to do without fancy dinners and the like from lobbyists for special interest groups. A friend in the General Assembly says even tiny gifts are combed with the ol' fine tooth.

State institutions are doing likewise. I learned the lesson first-hand when, on a trip to Asheville to participate in a meeting of the Parents Council of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, I took along a couple of News & Observer umbrellas, the ones with the comics on them, to give to friends in the administration there. With my employee discount, I recall they cost me about 15 bucks total.

I dropped them off to the designated parties, and went about my business on campus. But another of my acquaintances with the university came up at one point and said, "We can't accept gifts. I know it may seem ridiculous to you, but the rules are very strict, and frankly, it makes it easier and more clear to us, so we just don't accept things, at least not as individuals." I think I wound up donating them to the university as a whole in order to comply, to go by the book. 

It seemed like a small difference to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the rules were a good idea. Most little gifts are harmless enough. Time was you could go into about any office in the Legislative Building or nearby office building and see desks or bookcases crammed with various tokens -- a stuffed dog from the Association for All Virtue, a pen and pencil set from the Council of the Good and the Great, the random 'fridge magnet. Mostly, the gifts were, and perhaps to some small extent still are, just an attempt to get attention, to stay on the minds of lawmakers when the issues of this group or that came up in legislation.

Harmless. But rules regarding gifts are worth the inconvenience. And I'm kind of proud of my friends up Asheville way for being fussy about them. I just hope the upcoming months aren't too rainy in the mountains.

Transportation Secretary Gene Conti's Visit Part II:

The secretary also talked about how his department is no longer just the "highway" department. He's also focusing on transit and even bike trails. Of the federal stimulus money coming North Carolina's way, $735 million will go to roads and bridges and $103 million to transit ($70 million of that to urban transit). He's also looking at going after even more federal money that would come with coordinating projects with other states, including Virginia and South Carolina.

If you're worried about the disrepair of the state's roads and bridges, Conti said we might come to a time when we have to say we'll build no new capacity until we can keep what we have in good shape.

Are we there yet?

Conti also mentioned something else that might hamstring the state's road-building ability: air quality. He said Charlotte is in danger of having a moratorium on road construction because of its poor air quality. He envisions the Triangle having to wrestle with the same issue.

In Conti's opinion, the worst stretch of I-95 is the one between Benson and Fayetteville. His department is starting a 15-month study of I-95 in the hopes of coming up with an upgrade plan that makes sense. Yes, that might include tolls.

Because of the way North Carolina sets up road construction and maintenance, Conti's job is nearly unique among the states. North Carolina is second only to Texas in miles of state-maintained roads. 

But given our love of loops around here, the most interesting thing Conti said was that there ain't going to be any more loops (or completion of loops) for a long, long time.

Take a listen.

N.C. Transportation Secretary Gene Conti sat down with The N&O's editorial board yesterday to answer questions about how things are going, given that his department in the past has come under fire fairly frequently. When Gov. Beverly Perdue took over the reins of the state, she decided to turn the transportation process on its head, changing the Board of Transportation from a decision-making body to an advisory body. Conti pretty much holds all the power now.

How's that reform going and how hard is it to change the culture there? For starters, Conti said that his department will have a goal of accomplishing 80 percent to 90 percent of what it says it will do, as opposed to the 50 percent success record it has now.

Here are two audio clips of Conti answering those questions:

If plans haven’t changed, today is the day the Town of Knightdale is going to see how many of its residents are crazy enough to attempt to cross the nine lanes of traffic on Knightdale Boulevard (formerly U.S. 64) on foot.

There is no crosswalk there. The idea is to see how many people are attempting this feat without one so we can see whether a crosswalk is warranted.

Everyone who thinks this is absurd, raise your hand.

When a town allows the construction of a strip mall with dozens of fabulous stores across a highway from a subdivision with nearly 700 houses, new apartments by the hundreds and yet another subdivision, a crosswalk should be a given, not an afterthought.

Knightdale periodically sends out a survey to see what residents think would make the growing town even better than it is. On the last one, I emphatically (with underlines and exclamation points!) said we need a crosswalk on Knightdale Boulevard. My nearly 15-year-old has begged repeatedly to be allowed to walk to Dick’s Sporting Goods by himself. But there is no way — none — I’m going to let him do that without a crosswalk to get him there.

Now it’s nearly summer break for traditional-calendar students, and Knightdale teens by the dozens will be looking for things to do and places to go. How many are going to be dangerously dashing across a major highway with Target in their sights?

But to see whether a crosswalk is warranted, the town is going to count pedestrians today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., when most of the people who attempt that crazy crossing are in school. Or when most of us who have often thought a bicycle ride that had at its end a reward of a Chick-fil-A dream cup would be heaven are at work.

I understand a crosswalk would slow down the light cycles on Knightdale Boulevard. But that’s what crossings with push buttons are for, to allow enough time only when someone is waiting to cross. And people are going to cross any way. It’s better to be proactive now than to wait until someone is hurt, regardless of how many people do or do not cross that road today.

Towns everywhere in the Triangle should want to be able to tout walkability — to keep us out of our cars as much as possible. The fact that this far into the 21st century planners (whether Knightdale or N.C. Department of Transportation) didn’t put a crosswalk there to begin with is nearly inexcusable, and it’s time to paint those lines and put up those boxes. Now.

Brother Wally is a sculptor and real estate and business guy. Eddie Haskell, the annoying neighbor boy, spent 18 years as a Los Angeles motorcycle officer. Lumpy's a financial planner. Mom's doing fine. And there's the update on the characters from "Leave It to Beaver," a family situation comedy that bridged the 1950s and '60s. People know the characters by their show names, so why start using their real names now?

And the Beaver. The Beaver...OK, let's use HIS real name anyway...was in Raleigh last week, working as a spokesman for PhRMA, the drug industry trade association, which was announcing new developments in diabetes drugs. Jerry Mathers, the Beaver, has Type II diabetes. The disease is now virtually epidemic in the United States, which is why medical associations (and likely your own family doctors) are talking more about it. Kids are eating their way into it. Some adults who have it, including yours truly, may have had a family member with diabetes and thus had a better chance of getting it, particularly if they also developed bad eating habits. 

A column last week talked about Mathers' role in promoting diabetes awareness, but didn't include his thoughts on modern television. To briefly come up to speed, Mathers is 60, and is enjoying life, continuing to act, and financially secure thanks to good management of his Beaver money and a sound university education followed by prudent business ventures. 

I had a chance to spend some time talking to him before he attended a press conference about the new diabetes drugs. When I asked him what he thought of today's television offerings, he nodded his head in the negative. "I don't watch television," he said. "Reality TV? It's distorted. What kind of message does that send?"

He thinks his old show still is relevant because, "You can watch it with the whole family. It's still on, everywhere."

These are things Mathers has talked about all over the place. He's a frequent guest on TV shows about TV shows. And, like most of the actors from the 1950s and '60s (and '70s and '80s for that matter) he's not much for what's on the old tube these days. 

My colleague Brooke Cain, who writes a superb blog on television for The News & Observer, likely would disagree. And truth is, there's some very interesting entertainment out there, as long as folks look at it as entertainment and not as a guide to life. 

Still, the Beaver must have been doing something right. People still love that show. My friend Jayne, who was raised in a large family in Chicago, was mighty happy when I told her that Mathers had signed a picture for her. "We all watched that!" she said. "I've got to call my sisters!"

How many stars from the old days can get such a reaction? Not many, once you subtract Andy Griffith, who is of course the greatest star on the greatest show in the history of the medium. Make that in the history of world. Of the universe. Of the...say, anybody know what comes after universe?

Well, well, well. It seems that Dan Shaughnessy, columnist of The Boston Globe, has referred to those of us in Tar Heelia, specifically those of us who are fans of the Carolina Hurricanes, as "goobers." This comes from my colleague Luke DeCock, The N&O's hockey correspondent, who has been dueling of late with Mr. Shaughnessy because of the Hurricanes' battle with the Boston Bruins in the National Hockey League playoffs. Luke's the best in the business in my book.

But my task today has to do with "goobers." This term, applied to us in a derisive way, is meant to say we're rednecks and cornballs, I suppose.  Had Mr. Shaughnessy been comparing us to Goobers, the chocolate-covered, movie-theater peanut treat, well, that would be OK. You can't beat a Goober. Had he been playing off the song, "Eatin' Goober Peas," well that would be OK, too. Ernest T. Bass once wanted to sing that one to Charlene Darling in a memorable episode of "The Andy Griffith Show." Had he even been speaking indirectly of Goober Pyle of the aforementioned show, we would take no great offense. Goober was a fine mechanic, after all.

I doubt, however, that Mr. Shaughnessy intended such. My guess is he's never seen "The Andy Griffith Show." Friends, do we really need to know anything else?