The N.C. School of the Arts seems well on its way to putting its troubles behind it, so we're glad that the latest big leadership change at the school seems free of controversy.

Dale Pollock, who helped put NCSA's School of Filmmaking on the map, says he's just plain tired, so he's stepping down to join the faculty. We can see how he might have gotten worn out, what with running the school of filmmaking and the RiverRun International Film Festival.

The good news is that he'll stay on as the executive director of the successful festival. And we're betting that he'll be a pretty good professor as well.

Jerry Meek, the chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party, says Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th, is vulnerable in her 2006 re-election campaign for Congress. He wants the Democrats who campaign against her, and other Republicans, to use a positive, coherent platform of alternatives to current GOP policies.

And speaking of elections … Having failed to oust him in the past two elections, the N.C. Republican Party is now dropping any sense of primary neutrality with former House Co-Speaker Richard Morgan. The party executive committee approved a resolution urging Moore County voters to defeat Morgan in 2006 and authorized the party chairman to "aid and support" Morgan's Republican opponents.

Tom Lambeth of Winston-Salem got a well-deserved honor Monday night when Gov. Mike Easley recognized him with a North Carolina Award, one of the state's highest honors.

Lambeth was honored for public service. He learned service from some of the best, including the late Gov. Terry Sanford, whom Lambeth worked for early in his career.

As the head of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation until his retirement in 2000, Lambeth helped transform many of Sanford's New South dreams of social reform into reality. Lambeth led in the careful allocation of more than $200 million in grants to organizations and agencies statewide for work on projects that helped the environment, economic development, education, minorities and women.

He did it all with a soft-spoken, compassionate style, once saying that "the real success belongs to the folks who've done the projects." We're glad the governor realized that Lambeth deserved just a little bit of the credit as well.

When President Bush tried to exit a Beijing meeting through a locked door this week, TV cameras captured him looking first bewildered and then lost.

For those who aspire to a career in politics, however, Bush provided a lesson in how to handle such embarrassment. He first mugged for the cameras, then chatted with the press and, as he was being directed to the proper exit by an aide, facetiously explained that he was only "trying to escape."

Well, in an effort to prepare seniors for the kind of in-depth cost analysis they'll have to perform, the Journal editorial staff recommends playing the daily Sudoku puzzle. By the first of the year, seniors should be able to convert all of their prescription drug needs into numbers between 1 and 9 and place them on a Sudoku grid.

Alfred Anderson died this week, the last known surviving soldier, at age 109, of one of history's most poignant events - the Christmas truce of 1914.

As the Germans and British faced each other across trenches in the first months of the Great War's western front stalemate, fighting spontaneously stopped on Christmas Day. Soldiers from both sides met in no-man's land to exchange trinkets and sing carols. Although the truce continued in some spots for days, it broke down quickly in most, and the killing resumed.

One of the latest blasts of e-mail spam filled inboxes this week with messages purporting that the FBI is monitoring the recipients' use of illegal Web sites.

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