With apologies to H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke underestimating Americans’ desire to do things for themselves. Ryan Faircloth found that out when he opened Raleigh Take-Out in mid-2004.

Last August, fire destroyed Sunburst Trout Co.’s fish-processing plant. When the smoke cleared, owner Sally Eason found about 75% of the Canton company’s trout caviar, nearly 700 pounds, had been stolen. The business would have to be rebuilt, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Louis Foreman says it often. “Everybody has a great idea. The problem is most people never really follow through on that idea.”

In their first year of selling tickets for the North Carolina lottery, retailers are learning to leave little to chance. To get the games to pay off for them, they’re finding ways to turn losers into winners, even if it means peddling tickets for nothing to customers who buy something.

Promising a company incentives for creating 210 jobs might seem a no-brainer — as in state and local officials must have no brains to cut a deal that gives Google Inc. $260 million over 30 years for coming to Lenoir. After all, that’s more than $1 million per job.

Ratings on this page list in alphabetical order the state's top hospitals last year in selected specialties.

I approached this month’s cover story with some trepidation. The assignment went to freelancer Jerry Shinn, a former editorial writer and associate editor of The Charlotte Observer. Those were not the credentials that concerned me. Like a great many of the state’s journalists — and all its sports-writers, if you listen to State fans — Jerry went to Carolina. Class of 1959, he was there when the Tar Heels went 32-0 to win the national championship in 1957. “I saw all the home games that year, in old Woolen Gym,” he recalls. “You just had to wander there about tipoff time and show somebody your student ID to get in.”

Singer Willie Nelson peddles automobile fuel made from vegetable oil and animal fats. Raleigh-based Progress Energy, the state's second-largest electricity provider, experiments with poultry bedding and waste. Maybe the tide is turing against coal, petroleum and other nonrenewable energy sources.

If you want to stash your boat at Creekside Yacht Club in Wrightsville Beach, you’d better act fast and bring some serious green. Prices for a slip run from $90,000 to $159,000, General Manager Tommy Vann says.