Let us not feign confusion over the meaning of a noose, regardless of the material from which it is constructed, nor pretend that one can safely be ignored.

Anyone who has somehow forgotten the source of the terror inspired need only visit Without Sanctuary, and while there, bear in mind that hate crime is not merely our past.

Hate crime and hate groups are on the rise again, now:

• An average of 210,000 incidents a year were reported to police over a recent period, according to the U.S. Department of Justice study Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police
• The number of active hate groups grew from 602 in 2000 to 844 in 2006, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
• Of those active hate groups, 23 call North Carolina home and four are headquartered in Raleigh

There is no mystery about the meaning of a Southern noose, whether ready to do work at the end of a stout rope or writ small and in pencil, where someone will find it.

North Carolina State University's Chancellor struck the right note when, responding to the discovery on campus of a noose made of toilet paper, he wrote:

We want to resist the temptation to overreact to what appears to be an isolated incident. This could be someone's idea of a prank or it might constitute a crime. In either case, it is inappropriate. This is an act that has become symbolic of racial hatred.
There is no room for this kind of action on the NC State campus. Even if it is intended as a prank, it is disruptive and an offense to a safe learning and working environment.

Let us not quibble over the choice of particular words but note that a healthy, open debate ensued, and continues.

Upholding a constructive record that is at least four decades deep, NCSU's student newspaper, the Technician, took a strong position, saying in part:

Our campus needs to lead the nation and set a standard of how race issues are dealt with. Nooses are popping up all over the country and N.C. State must take a firm stance and develop sound policies stating we will not tolerate this type of action at our University -- N.C. State is no place for hate.

To the credit of those involved, on-campus debate was punctuated by a student government resolution "to formally condemn the act of hatred," thus calling the effect of that noose by its right name.

I was an undergraduate at NCSU when night fell on the day of Martin Luther King's assassination. Standing on a Lee Dormitory balcony I was restrained by my suite mates from voicing too loud an objection to the small cross that was burned that night while so many of my fellow students cheered as though there were cause for celebration. My suite mates believed I was in danger, and in retrospect, perhaps I was.

Let none of us stand silent and through silence or underestimation of the infectious malevolence of hate allow the behaviors of intimidation to find any comfortable place among us here.

              

Something about Saturdays and Sundays in downtown Raleigh, N.C., brings out the suicide squirrels.

Their lithe bodies create a circuit at a Progress Energy transformer, shattering the downtown weekend quiet with their arcing demise.

Amid the brief fluctuation of local power line currents that follow, my backup power supply does its job and I am briefly sad.

Not today, and I am glad. This is instead what I call a "low-voltage Saturday."

Although "low-voltage" is a metaphor here, not an engineering summary, the problem is nonetheless one that tortures my faithful backup power supply to shriek in warning. Ruth and Elvy, the black cats who own me, sniff about sympathetically and until I deal with the alarm, meow for me to give it something to relieve the pain.

This has in the past been a wonderfully transitory issue, lasting less than a handful of minutes.

Today, morning ages into afternoon and sunset approaches, yet whatever the true name of the problem, it persists.

On this sad Saturday, Reddy Kilowatt, which as a child I identified with Carolina Power&Light, seems today to have grown old and tired.

I understand and like Ruth and Elvy, sympathize.

It was inevitable, even for a promotional emblem. He is, after all, more than two decades my senior. Reddy was born in 1926, the natural child of Ashton B. Collins Sr. and the Alabama Power Co.

It may be time now for Reddy to give up the brilliant orange-red, cheerful yellow and pure white of his youth. Is it faintly possible that the fine downtown Raleigh office tower headquarters of Progress Energy, formed when Carolina Power & Light merged with Florida Progress Corp., would be well-graced by a version faded throughout to a swamp-water brown?