There's still time to sign up for Fleet Feet's popular Pumpkin Run, but registration closes soon — at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

This fall family classic, proceeds from which benefit the local YMCA, features a 4K trail run on the "Pumpkin Loop" through Carolina North Forest. It starts at 5 p.m. Saturday near the CNF's entrance.

Awards go to top finishers, as well as to those wearing the best costumes.

The run costs $25 per entrant. Space is limited and proceeds benefit the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA's We Build People Campaign.

See http://www.fleetfeetcarrboro.com/racing/premier-events/pumpkin-run for details or to register.

A Duke Law School conference this month will examine issues at the heart of public discourse on race in America.

The conference, April 8-10,  is called “From Slavery to Freedom to the White House: Race in 21st-Century America, a Conference in Honor of John Hope Franklin." It is free and open to the public.

All discussions will be in Room 4047 of Duke Law School, located at the corner of Science Drive and Towerview Road on Duke’s West Campus. Parking is available at the Bryan Center.

Conference participants come from a range of disciplines such as law, history, social psychology, economics, political science and the humanities. The full Thursday-Saturday conference schedule and list of participants is online at www.law.duke.edu/lrp/conference/agenda.

In a series of roundtable discussions, they will examine such issues as the role that race plays in politics and the significance of the Obama presidency; the future of voting rights, civil rights and racial justice; the causes and implications of interracial disparities in wealth; how social psychology can inform our understanding of societal disparities; and how immigration factors into many of these issues.

“Our goal is to identify questions about the future of race or racial inequality that merit examination but are not currently being addressed or are given insufficient attention in scholarly and public discourse,” said Duke Law professor Guy-Uriel Charles, co-director of Duke’s Center on Law, Race and Politics, in a Duke news release. “For example, to what extent is race something other than a site of grievance? To what extent is it simply a negative, victim-centered framework and to what extent ought it be a more positive, empowering framework?  Should -- can -- we reframe the stories we tell about race?”

Journalists Brent Staples and Ray Suarez and Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson will offer keynote remarks at the event.

The conference honors John Hope Franklin’s life and work, which were devoted to understanding the impact of racism on American life. (Franklin taught at Duke Law School late in his career.)

Duke University mailed acceptance letters to 3,517 high school seniors out of a record 23,843 applications submitted for the regular-decision process.

The mailing brings the university’s total offers of admission to 4,065, including 548 early-decision applicants accepted in December, the university said in a release. (Duke received 1,539 early-decision applications, the second-largest number in the university’s history). This represents an acceptance rate of 17 percent, the lowest in Duke’s history.

Duke expects about 1,705 of the accepted students to enroll this fall.

A notable trend among accepted applicants for the Class of 2013 is that almost one in five did not specify their race or ethnicity, compared to about one in 10 among accepted applicants for the Class of 2012, said Christoph Guttentag, dean of Undergraduate Admissions.

“It’s hard to understand exactly what this represents without knowing whether other colleges have experienced the same thing,” Guttentag said in the release. ”But a change of this magnitude shows that at the very least more students are feeling differently about how they want to respond to questions of this kind, or whether they want to respond at all.”

For some, the Krispy Kreme Challenge didn't end with simply running two miles, eating a dozen donuts, then running another two miles. Riding back to the paper to file a story after the race, I heard someone yell, "Hey! Joe!" Sitting with a group of friends on the patio of the Flying Saucer, hoisting a beer, was friend/one-time-kayak-babysitter/N&O colleague Carol Jenkins, who did a 2-2-2 at the Challenge.

Liz & Lauren: An unprecedented 2-12-2-12! 

Then we got word via the shinny little things blog about the exploits of Liz and Lauren. "Ok," writes slt, "so there is a guy out there right now who can say he won the Krispy Kreme Challenge today; he ran and ate and ran faster than anyone else. He skipped the After Challenge, however. Liz and Lauren did not. They both ran, ate a dozen, ran, AND then came and made a dozen (earrings) at Ornamentea."

Dang! A 2-12-2-12. Look for more extensions on the KKC at the 2010 running. (For more on Liz & Lauren's donut-n-doodad adventure go here.

For a visual perspective on the Challenge, check out former N.C. State Technician photographer Rob Bradley's work here.

Timing chips, donut sandwiches, beer runs and more.

The Wake County Public School System's socioeconomic diversity policy is one of the most hotly debated public policy questions in the region.

The News & Observer has combined forces with our sister publication, The Charlotte Observer, to examine the results in Charlotte after the public school system in 2002 abandoned diversity considerations in assigning students. We are also looking at the pressures on Wake County, now the state's largest public school system, to change the policy that has been a factor in student assignments for several years.

Stories will appear in Sunday's N&O and the Observer. 

 Linda Williams

Sorry folks, if you haven't already signed up for Saturday's Krispy Kreme Challenge, the race is all full. As of this morning, the cap of 5,000 runner-eaters had been reached. In fact, the race has overindulged slightly: 5,038 folks are registered. (Meaning if all 5,038 competitors were to eat a dozen, that would be 60,456 donuts down the hatch.)

We are again receiving complaints about the contents of an obituary published in our news pages. At least one reader has demanded an "apology" for the contents of the recent obituary of Marguerite Lightner, the widow of Raleigh's first and only black mayor. The obituary noted that Mrs. Lightner was tried and acquitted in 1975 of knowingly accepting stolen goods. The complaints from Mrs. Lightner's friends and families are similar to questions we invariably receive when the subject of a news obit has a life history that includes elements that are not entirely positive.

A fair question raised by readers is why bring up something that happened so long ago? Not everything in a person's past has to be examined, but some things do not lose their significance with the passage of time.

When we set out to write an obituary of a person in the public eye, we are not insensitive to the feelings of family and friends of the deceased. But an obituary that appears in the news pages is not a tribute, such as the notices published in the News & Observer under the auspices of the classified advertising department, which collects payments for obituaries written by family members or their representatives.

A person chosen for a news obit may have been selected because of a meritorious life of public service. Most often, the subject is simpy someone who holds a public position or is well-known within a community we cover.

The news obit when done well connects the individual's life story to the cultural and social context of the community and the community's history.

Because of her involvement in civic endeavors, Marguerite Lightner may have been chosen even if she had not been Clarence Lightner's widow. But she was and her 1974 arrest was not an insignificant factor in ending the political career of a man who surprised the nation in 1973 by winning a popular election for mayor of a Southern city where blacks were just 16 percent of the registered voters.  This was less than a decade after passage of the 1964 Voting Rights Act and the region was still significantly segregated in jobs, schools and housing.

To this day many in Raleigh believe that the mayor's wife was set up by his political enemies. Such a conspiracy was never proven. Nor did the state prove that Mrs. Lightner committed a crime, according to a Wake County jury.

Despite the not guilty verdict that ended a trial receiving national attention, Clarence Lightner lost his bid for reelection after serving just one term.

 I was here during that period and contributed to the news coverage. It is understandable that many people do not want to be reminded of such an unsettling event. But it is a part of Mrs. Lightner's life story.

Linda Williams

Senior Editor/News 

Just got word from the folks at TORC that Saturday's Heel of a Race 6-hour mountain bike race at Carolina North has been postponed due to wet weather. Rain date: Next Saturday, Nov. 22. Not only is it dang wet today, but another system is moving in tomorrow and "there is a good possibility of intense storms prior to the passage of the front.  As we all know, it seems to take only a little wind to bring down pine trees in the forest."

Good enough for me.

In these post-election letters, several readers reminisce about life in a segregated South and say they're proud of how far the country has come.