That’s the inscription at the bottom of the postcard.

We have no idea who wrote it since it was in 1906, as you can see. This is another photo on a postcard from the past just bought by Gregory George of Gregory’s Jewelry at 346 S. Elm St. downtown. He found this on eBay.

Gregory found the photo intriguing, as do we.

What you are looking at is West Market Street as it approaches downtown straight ahead, probably sometime around 1900 or so. You’ll notice on the left side of the street what is unmistakably West Market Street United Methodist Church, still standing today, just as imposing as it was back then.

The houses next door to the church, of course, gave way long ago to what eventually was the old federal courthouse, which is where the John Edwards trial is underway now. The residential property across the street from the church is now part of the grounds of both the old and the current county courthouse.

It looks to us like the photographer was standing about where Eugene Street intersects with West Market. It’s too bad that great canopy of trees on both sides of the street had to give way to widening of Market.

We’re really just giving an educated guess about the date of the photo itself. According to Wikipedia, the current sanctuary at West Market Street Methodist, which must have included the bell tower, was built in 1893. So the photo would have been taken between 1893 and 1906.

Whoever wrote the inscription on the front of the card never filled in the back with any message, and the card was never mailed. It’s blank. If you’re wondering what it would have cost back then to mail that card, we can tell you. 1-cent.

Most of us remember the really gruesome murder in 2008 of William Ransom Hobbs, the well-known local musician who was killed in the "castle" home over on Summit Avenue in the Aycock neighborhood.

And we also unfortunately remember how his friend Deborah Moy was brutally beaten, then both Hobbs and Moy were set afire along with the home, apparently to cover the crime.

It took many months before police arrested Michael Slagle, who’s been in jail for a year.

Now, the News & Record is reporting that police have dropped the charges against Slagle and set him free. That’s a discouraging turn of events. 

In December 2008, Brian Clarey of Yes! Weekly magazine wrote a stunning story about the crime, more thorough than any other reporting on it. You can read it here.

And here's a nice video below of Hobbs, put together by his good friend and fellow well-known Greensboro musician, Bruce Piephoff.

Here are the five major findings of the consultant group working with the downtown performing arts center task force that were presented to the City Council tonight.

* Greensboro can comfortably sustain a performing arts center with between 2,500 and 2,800 seats.

* There would be at least 160 performances a year, with a diverse mix of community and local arts productions, touring Broadway shows, concerts, lectures and special performances. Projected annual attendance would exceed 300,000.

* The facility would not compete with local arts organizations and in fact would strengthen existing community assets. The study projects that local arts groups would conduct nearly 60 performances (and 76 rehearsals) a year in the new facility.

* Ticket sales and usage fees would ensure the facility would be at least self-sustaining, and likely generate an operating profit of more than $500,000 after its third year of operation.

* The direct and indirect economic impact of a downtown performing arts center would be more than $7 million annually.

The task force hired AMS Planning and Research Corp., an arts management consulting firm from Fairfield, Conn., to determine the projected ecnomic impact and feasibility of building a performing arts center somewhere in downtown Greensboro.

This report is a preliminary finding from the consultants. A final recommendation will be presented to the council on June 26. If the council decides to move ahead with building a new arts center, it probably will carry a price tag of about $50 million.

The current proposal calls for $30 million to be raised from a general obligation bond that would be placed on the Nov. 6 ballot for voter approval. Another $10 will be raised privately and $10 million obtained in revenues from the local hotel/motel tax.

After the presentation was made, the council was asked to vote on moving forward with plans to seek a $30 million bond referendum on the Nov. 6 ballot. It was the first of three required votes before the council can add the bond referendum to the ballot. But council member Trudy Wade said it made no sense to vote to move forward with the bond referendum when not enough is yet known about the plans for a downtown arts center.

Interim City Manager Denise Roth told the council that the process can be stopped at any time up until the final vote is held, probably on June 26. 

Wade and council members Dianne Bellamy-Small and Marikay Abuzuaiter voted against moving forward with a bond referendum, but it passed 6-3.