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What clues has J.K. Rowling herself dropped? Is Harry a Horcrux? Snape: Villain, hero or something else? Who dies in Book 7? And is Umbridge the worst villain of all? If you’re interested in those topics, see previous posts, below.

I found several interesting viewpoints on the Harry Potter phenomenon published over the weekend. One is from a self-confessed Potterhead, in her 20s, who spent years scorning the books and then succumbed. Here’s a link. Another, also from the Post, is a book editor who is less optimistic than many about whether the Potter phenomenon will translate into more kids (and later, adults) reading fiction. Here’s a link to that one.

And here’s a link to a column, published on today’s Viewpoint page in the Observer, in which a book editor in St. Petersburg, Fla., ponders whether the fact that so many adults are reading the Potter books with their kids will make a difference as those kids become adults themselves.

Finally, I got this missive, via e-mail, from Tom Nie of Iron Station, who describes himself this way: “I’m a well-adjusted, ex-businessman, ex-corporate executive, 65-yr. old grandfather with a crew cut and a Harley. I ordered my new book months ago, as I did book 6 :)”

Nie has some theories. See if you agree.

Important is the butt-kicking Harry received at Snape’s hands in the finale of book 6. He was completely inept. No longer will Dumbledore be around to bail him out in a fight. He must improve his skills in some unusual, fast, almost miraculous manner.

He’s very weak in Occlumency and, clearly, has to achieve silent cursing skills like Snape and Dumbledore. So, how’s he to do that if he’s skipping his last year or Hogwarts closes? Snape was the one who was brilliantly creative at the same age. It would seem relevant that Harry has always been a learner of what was before him while Snape and Voldemort were the creators of additional wizardry. How then does the student get a leg up on them?

For him to be the hero he’ll have to develop superior strength and tactics – as opposed to RAB becoming his next Dumbledore. Something akin to Matrix’s ending maybe.

I find it interesting to consider Harry receiving bottles through Dumbledore’s Will to use in the Pensive so that he can receive further training and edification on the Horcruxes. This, I think, will be the way Dumbledore reappears, including providing the explanation of his burnt hand.

Doesn’t it seem odd that he’s splitting with Ginny, yet Hermione and Ron appear to be joining him, even if they’re not at Hogwarts? Especially considering the strength that Ginny exemplifies? Wouldn’t you think that their love could be a factor?

Notice the ending of the latest movie and consider that unspoken answer of “love.”

I finally saw the “Order of the Phoenix” last night. I’m not sure if I liked it, mostly because I watched at Charlotte’s Imax theater at Discovery Place and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I couldn’t see it very well.

We got there 20 minutes before showtime, but that was much too late to choose a good seat. Upshot: We sat in the second row. I have a crick in my neck today, and I know I will never again watch another regular movie on an Imax screen until I’ve watched it in regular format first. It’s possible some of the scenic shots, such as the broomsticks flying over the Thames, were fabulous. I really couldn’t tell. And my aging ears did not get along well with the sound system.

All that said, Imelda Staunton as Umbridge was almost perfect. The small, pink, plastic, kitten-shaped buttons on her fuzzy pink sweater were a masterful touch.

A few days ago some of us were asking who was the worst villain in the Harry Potter books (other than Voldemort, of course). Is it Draco Malfoy — the spoiled, rich and smarmy bully? Is it Lucius Malfoy — his father who combines the syncophancy of Jack Abramoff, the ethical business sense of Ken Lay and the compassion of David Duke? Is it Snape? Is it Filch, the creepy and whip-loving janitor? What about Bellatrix Lestrange, the deranged sadist torturer?

To me, Umbridge is worse. It’s the banality of her bureaucratic maneuvering, and the way she (and her boss, Cornelius Fudge) close their ears to reality.

Maybe she’s so scary because of some eerie parallels to the current White House administration, which muzzles its scientists and, like Fudge and Umbridge, just sticks its fingers in its ears rather than notice reality. (Sorry about the political digression, but the similarities are hard to ignore.)

A fellow Potterhead described her as a dripping sweet snake — a type we’ve all encountered. Science fiction writer Orson Scott Card, in his review of the movie (He loved it! Go figure) says, “She personifies every slimy, evil person you have ever known.”

That’s why she raises just about everyone’s blood pressure. If I know someone like Voldemort, I don’t know it.But we’ve all known an Umbridge. And that’s truly scary.

When Snape killed Dumbledore, did the majestic wizard really die?

Tolkien’s resurrection of Gandalf in “The Two Towers” gives a shiver of hope to any Harry Potter readers who don’t want to see the end of Hogwarts’ headmaster.

Most of us would love to think Dumbledore isn’t really dead. You have to love a guy who uses candy (“lemon drops,” “Fizzing Whisbees”) as the passwords to his secret office. And who, when asked by Harry in Book 1 (“Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone”) as they stand in front of the Mirror of Erised (it’s “d-e-s-i-r-e” backwards for newby Potter readers) what he most wants he says, a warm pair of socks. And who has a brother who’s been in trouble with the law for what may be a rather perverted habit. Fun fact for newby readers: Dumbledore is an old English West Country (King Arthur territory) term for bumblebee. Albus means white. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry on Dumbledore, which includes the meanings and allusions for all his names, including Percival Wulfric (think Beowulf) and Brian. And here’s another link, to an excellent compendium of Dumbledore lore, including the allusion to the scar on his knee that was a perfect map of the London underground. I had forgotten about that.

All this — the Gandalf reappearance, the affection most readers have for him, the symbolism of his pet and his Patronus being a phoenix, which arises from the ashes — has led to a fruitful but, I believe, misguided thread of theorizing that Dumbledore will return. But how?

Author J.K. Rowling has said many many times, generally when asked about Harry’s parents, that when you’re dead, you’re dead. Even in the wizarding world. She has said she always knew Dumbledore would have to die, because Harry must make his way alone. That’s in keeping with the heroic epic genre in which she’s writing.

Of course, knowing she’d have to kill Dumbledore doesn’t prove he won’t come back. Maybe she knew she’d have to kill him off because she knows his return plays a role in the climax? See, even I can try to make myself believe it.

But sorry. I’m afraid that when Dumbledore died, he died.

What clues has J.K. Rowling herself dropped? Snape: Villain, hero or something else?
Who dies in Book 7? Ralph Fiennes — born to play Lupin, not Voldemort? If you’re interested in those topics see previous posts, below.

Other than the discussion about whether Harry will have to die in order to kill Voldemort [(n)either can live while the other survives: Trelawney’s prophecy recounted in Book 5 (OotP)], the next most common line of speculation seems to be whether Harry himself is a Horcrux.

Note to slacker fans: You have to read Book 6 (HBP) to learn about Horcruxes. In brief, a Horcrux is an item that holds a piece of a wizard’s soul, making said wizard sort of immortal. To make one the wizard has to A) Be to magic as Wayne Gretzky is to hockey and B) Kill someone. Voldemort has made six Horcruxes, Dumbledore speculates. Some are accounted for, some aren’t.

A very astute Potter reader with whom I’m close is exasperated at all the people who believe Harry is the last, missing Horcrux and that’s why Voldemort couldn’t/didn’t kill him as a baby and why Harry and Voldemort seem to share some mental connection.

I’ll see if I can extract a paragraph or two from the “Harry’s No Horcrux” side and post it, but it won’t be until later today.

If Harry IS a Horcrux, that might mean he has to die for Voldy to die. Because otherwise Lord V wouldn’t really be dead as long as Harry is alive.

After all, Voldemort could have used Lily’s death to make Harry into a Horcrux. The question is, why would he do that if he wants the baby Potter out of the way? UNLESS someone else was there, perhaps hiding under an invisibility cloak that belonged to James Potter, and did something to make Voldemort’s spell go weird. Dumbledore? Snape? Could Voldemort have been using James’ death to try to turn Lily into a Horcrux? Does anyone know whether the Horcrux death has to happen before the Horcrux spell, or after?

Could Harry use the Prior Incantato spell (used by Amos Diggorgy in Goblet) on Snape’s wand to get Dumbledore’s ghost back? And if he does it, wouldn’t that be too cheesily close to the Obi-Wan and Yoda ghosts who show up for Luke in “Star Wars”?

Is/was Dumbledore the Heir of Gryffindor? What does that mean for Aberforth, and his goats?

If you are under the belief that the recent study by UNCC’s Center for Transportation Studies was paid for by the Charlotte Chamber, or somehow was connected with the Chamber: What are you smoking?

It was paid for by UNCC and done by a nonpartisan UNCC transportation study center whose director has a lengthy background in transportation studies.

Here’s what happened: Chamber President Bob Morgan suggested to UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois that the topic would be a good one to study. That’s sort of like mentioning to Bob Johnson, “Say, you might want to get your players to practice shooting.” I mean, Duh! You’ve got a center of transportation studies. Studying transportation is what it does.

Some people are offering up UNCC Professor Emeritus David Hartgen’s studies as being more objective. Yet several of his most recent studies were paid for by interest groups with a specific position to advance: The Reason Foundation and the John Locke Foundation, two Libertarian think tanks that have funded a variety of studies opposing rail transit and Smart Growth. Those nonprofits have a point of view, and they use their money to advance it, hiring researchers who share those points of view. How is that somehow purer than a short report from UNCC’s Center for Transportation Policy Studies, beholden to no one?

If you bother to read the UNCC study — in contrast to most advocacy group studies such as those from Reason or the JLF — you’ll read no conclusions and no recommendations. Indeed, some of the information it offers will probably be of more use to people opposing light rail transit, such as the comparison of highway and transit spending since 1998.

“Our research has revealed a need for a comprehensive study of the economic, societal, environmental, land use and business impacts of LRT,” it says. Gee, that’s clearly a biased, tainted and suspect statement if I ever heard one.

I suppose some people are going to see dark conspiracies in such statements. Remember, there are more than a few people out there who think Commies in pink robes are hiding under the bed, or they put on tinfoil caps to keep the alien transmissions out of their brains. But the rest of you? Get a grip.

Some people who don’t like mass transit are deliberately trying to plant the idea that light rail mass transit is a creature of the Charlotte Chamber. Though it’s misleading, it’s also a clever political stunt, because a lot of people here are suspicious of the Chamber. But if you think I blindly follow everything the Chamber proposes, well, you haven’t been reading what I’ve been writing for more than a decade.

If you’re thinking mass transit is a creature birthed and nurtured by Charlotte’s business oligarchy then you are uninformed about Charlotte. For about, oh, the past century or so it was the conservative business oligarchy here that fought the concept of any government-funded public transit. They kept a pitiful bus system running on fumes and pennies — and extremely high fares — because business leaders didn’t want their taxes raised just to make life easier for low-income mill workers and black people. It’s still the ultra-right-wing descendants of those anti-tax businessmen who are fighting the transit tax now.

One last thought. Rick, I appreciate your devoted readership and your civility, but it’s blindingly naive to say we can just get another transit tax in 2010, if we decide we want one again. State legislators from outside Mecklenburg just cackle if you mention that possibility.

What Mecklenburg voters do or don’t want doesn’t make a rat’s patootie’s worth of difference unless the legislature allows it. It took years to get permission to hold the 1998 referendum. If we have a transit tax and kill it, it will take years — if ever — to get permission for another one.

Get another transit tax in 2010? It would be easier, and about as practical, to just get hold of the pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow.

I spent a couple of hours last week talking with Robert FitzPatrick, who spent much of the 1970s helping Charlotte neighborhoods and grass roots groups organize to fight City Hall.

My Saturday column told of his efforts to prevent Freedom Park from being plundered by an ill-conceived canal project. The project would have dredged Little Sugar Creek and trapped it into concrete embankments and locks – and would have richly rewarded land owners and real estate developers who were pushing the plan.

In those days FitzPatrick and the folks he organized mostly fought City Hall and the business oligarchy that backed city government. Among the leaders of the group that fought the canal project were a roofer and a truck driver.

FitzPatrick helped organize the North Charlotte Action Association, which focused on code enforcement and trash pickup. He helped organize the Association for Better Public Transportation, a citizen group that fought (unsuccessfully) a bus fare increase that made Charlotte’s fares among the highest in the country. (40 cents in 1974, equivalent to $1.66 today.) The group also wanted the city to take over the bus system, because the private company running it was providing, as FitzPatrick termed it, “nasty, dirty buses that were never on time.”

So I asked him what he thought of the folks who had organized to get the repeal of the transit tax onto the Nov. 6 ballot. They say they’re “grass roots,” because the Charlotte Chamber and most elected officials here support the transit tax.

“I hope you will not link the group I was involved in with them,” he said. “We were not financed by somebody anonymous throwing a lot of money. To me that’s not real grass roots.” (Businessman Jay Morrison, who says he’s running for school board, paid to hire professional petition-gatherers to get 48,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot. Morrison hasn’t said how much he paid. “Those close to Morrison say he’s paid for about half the cost for the petition drive,” a June 7 Observer news report said.)

And, FitzPatrick pointed out, “We didn’t have a single elected official anywhere within a hundred miles of us.” Co-chairs of the anti-transit tax petition are former school board member and former county commissioner Jim Puckett, former City Council member Don Reid. Helping them is former U.S. attorney Tom Ashcraft. None holds those positions now, of course.

FitzPatrick is not looking at CATS through rose-colored glasses. He said the single-issue interest groups, like the one formed to fight the transit tax, are a symptom of a government (including CATS) that doesn’t take the time to be responsive to the public.

Is Charlotte different, I asked him, from the days when the business community ran the city?

“If it is,” he said, “it’s imperceptible to me. Just look at the sprawl. It’s a disgrace. Is that vision? … Nobody ever takes responsibility for disasters, like the death of the west side, or the university area. You can’t even walk around up there. Whose vision was that?”

I spent a couple of hours last week talking with Robert FitzPatrick, who spent much of the 1970s helping Charlotte neighborhoods and grass roots groups organize to fight City Hall.

My Saturday column told of his efforts to prevent Freedom Park from being plundered by an ill-conceived canal project. The project would have dredged Little Sugar Creek and trapped it into concrete embankments and locks – and would have richly rewarded land owners and real estate developers who were pushing the plan.

In those days FitzPatrick and the folks he organized mostly fought City Hall and the business oligarchy that backed city government. Among the leaders of the group that fought the canal project were a roofer and a truck driver.

FitzPatrick helped organize the North Charlotte Action Association, which focused on code enforcement and trash pickup. He helped organize the Association for Better Public Transportation, a citizen group that fought (unsuccessfully) a bus fare increase that made Charlotte’s fares among the highest in the country. (40 cents in 1974, equivalent to $1.66 today.) The group also wanted the city to take over the bus system, because the private company running it was providing, as FitzPatrick termed it, “nasty, dirty buses that were never on time.”

So I asked him what he thought of the folks who had organized to get the repeal of the transit tax onto the Nov. 6 ballot. They say they’re “grass roots,” because the Charlotte Chamber and most elected officials here support the transit tax.

“I hope you will not link the group I was involved in with them,” he said. “We were not financed by somebody anonymous throwing a lot of money. To me that’s not real grass roots.” (Businessman Jay Morrison, who says he’s running for school board, paid to hire professional petition-gatherers to get 48,000 signatures to put the measure on the ballot. Morrison hasn’t said how much he paid. “Those close to Morrison say he’s paid for about half the cost for the petition drive,” a June 7 Observer news report said.)

And, FitzPatrick pointed out, “We didn’t have a single elected official anywhere within a hundred miles of us.” Co-chairs of the anti-transit tax petition are former school board member and former county commissioner Jim Puckett, former City Council member Don Reid. Helping them is former U.S. attorney Tom Ashcraft. None holds those positions now, of course.

FitzPatrick is not looking at CATS through rose-colored glasses. He said the single-issue interest groups, like the one formed to fight the transit tax, are a symptom of a government (including CATS) that doesn’t take the time to be responsive to the public.

Is Charlotte different, I asked him, from the days when the business community ran the city?

“If it is,” he said, “it’s imperceptible to me. Just look at the sprawl. It’s a disgrace. Is that vision? … Nobody ever takes responsibility for disasters, like the death of the west side, or the university area. You can’t even walk around up there. Whose vision was that?”

Friday afternoon Doreen Szymanski of the city’s Department of Transportation returned the message I left Wednesday, asking whether the city ever cleaned off its grungy street signs. (See my Wednesday posting, below.)

If you see grungy signs, she said, call the city’s 3-1-1 number to report it. “It’ll probably show up in my office,” she said, and she’d flag it to the attention of the city’s Operations Department.

But no, she said, there’s no system for cleaning the signs. When streets are repaved the workers routinely replace street signs that are older than two years, she said. But at the current pace of repaving, you might not want to rely on that, especially if the sign is getting unreadable.

Did you notice that — almost in time for Independence Day — a stretch of Independence Boulevard has a new name? From Kenilworth Avenue (at the Midtown redevelopment area) over to Seventh Street it’s now Charlottetown Avenue. An article in the Observer last week revealed the news. So, is this a good thing or a bad thing or irrelevant? Thoughts welcome below.

One longtime Charlottean likes the idea of memorializing Charlottetown Mall (later known as Midtown Square), even if it’s only on a small green sign. She wrote:

“Even if building it did cover Sugar Creek with concrete … and even though I will be right in line when the Target opens where I once stood in line as a high schooler to see “Star Wars” at what was then the biggest theater in town … I like it that “Charlottetown” — and all it says about where Charlotte’s been and is going — will live on in a subtle, tiny way. A street sign. Pure Charlotte!”

My column last Saturday (yes, I write columns as well as this blog) about walls and the public realm brought in plenty of comment, most — though not all — in agreement. Sadler Barnhardt brought up an interesting point, about one small, additional way that the public realm is disrespected:

“Thanks for a good column. That reminds me of a project I have tried to get at least two Observer writers to help me with but no luck: the atrociously dirty street and stop signs around town. Is there money in the budget for this?? If not, why not? What can we do? Have you noticed? They have been this way for years.”

He’s right. Green mold covers many street signs in town. I’ll try to find which department would be in charge of that. My first call will be to Doreen Szymanski of the Charlotte Department of Transportation, who seems to know — if not everything — then almost everything. I’ll update this later, with a report.

And if you can e-mail me a photo of a particularly grungy street sign, I’ll try to post it here.

Have you been to the cinema at Ballantyne? If so, you may have some thoughts to share on the topic that Hickory’s Avis Gachet shared. Gachet, one of the Observer’s community columnists this year and a faithful Forum writer, e-mailed me this. My response is below. And planners, it would be especially interesting to get your thoughts on this one:

Mary, Yesterday a friend and I spent the day in Charlotte. At noon we sought out the Ballantyne Theatre in Ballantyne Village. It was a nightmare to find. (Fabulous movie, however–“Away from Her.”)

I had gone to the Website for directions. Found a phone number, and, after talking to two people, obtained rather poor directions. Found Johnston road off 485–no problem.

THEN…we began to negotiate our way through the maze. I had NOT been told to look for the tower. Even so, we found ourselves turning around in parking areas and going out of our way several times before we zeroed in on it. We were ten minutes late for the movie as a result.

Is that the current planning style in Charlotte? I have to say that I would opt for a strip mall instead.

I am NOT a timid driver. I drive in Washington, D.C. and New York City. I would drive to England if someone told me I could. One of these days if there is a fire or a crisis in that area, people will be frantic trying to evacuate.

Do you approve of that sort of design? This would be a real turnoff to many older drivers.
Give me a theatre in a former big box–with a parking lot one can find easily. I guess that I am a Philistine.

But I am one person who is old enough to: 1) see various fads come and go (each having the absolute answers, of course); and 2) feel that making things fancy is not always making them better.

I would not THINK of making a casual run for something from one of those shops near the theater. It would take an Act of Congress to get me there more than a very few times a year. Generally speaking, I will go anywhere–at least once.

Here’s my response, only partly tongue-in-cheek.
Avis, I’ve been to Ballantyne Theatre and I fully understand your frustration. They need some signs that tell you where to turn! I’ve been there 2 or 3 times and usually I turn at the wrong place.

From what I see, it’s the planning style everywhere to use movie theaters in large shopping center-mixed use developments. There’s one at a Ballantyne-like shopping center in Mount Pleasant, S.C., called Towne Center-or-maybe-Centre (not that it’s in the center of town.)

But I don’t think the planners have any set “style” other than to encourage connectivity of streets, etc., etc. They tend to assume the retailers and developers will be savvy about getting people into their developments. And as we all know, sometimes they aren’t savvy at all.

And then you can’t discount the old Charlotte tradition of just figuring that people who are from around here will learn their way around and the other people, well, they’re not from around here, are they? Example: Myers Park and its Queens Roads.