Saturday, December 08, 2007
Friday, December 07, 2007
Gaudiest holiday decorations award
It seems to me that we already have plenty of homes from which to choose the 2007 gaudiest holiday display in Southern Village. I am hoping that we can come up with an appropriate prize! Feel free to suggest any homes you think are especially dserving of this distinction this year.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Seedlings for 15-501?
The NC Department of Forestry has a great offer on young tree seedlings. Why don't we all get together and buy some for planting in the center strip of 15-501 in front of Southern Village? Crape Myrtle? Dogwoods? Other ideas. Here are just some of what they offer.....
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Jazz Vocalist Susan Reeves: Dynamic, Bluesy, Soulful, Classy, Scintillating swing.
Her concert last night on the Green was marvelous! The only sad part was the small size of the audience.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
V Route, Weekday Schedule | Chapel Hill Transit
This makes it easier to go to Meadowmont, for example, with fewer twists and turns on the UNC campus.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Sunday strolling
In walking around our Graylyn block today, it was nice to see a neighbor with his kids ejoying the play equipment that's recently been upgraded. It was a surprise to see the signs on the construction "fence" - the orange plastic type - around the work being done to extend the paved path to the now-under-construction Southern Community Park. One says "CONSTRUCTION AREA - DO NOT ENTER", but it was the other that got my attention, "AREA UNDER 24 HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE - VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED". Who knows if that's true, but it sure was enough to cause me not to cross the "line"! I also noted that the sale of one of the Graylyn houses has resulted in the removal of (for me) a big eye sore - one of those portable basketball backstops that never seems to move! It will take the grass a while to return, but it sure looks nice to be backstop-less. Another of our neighbors was playing the piano providing a lovely interlude as I walked by his house!
Thursday, August 09, 2007
"Fish can fight malaria mosquitoes" - BBC News
Should we consider stocking our two ponds in Southern Village with these fish - not to combat malaria, but simply to combat the mosquitoes?
Friday, August 03, 2007
"WNYC Radio crowdsourcing project" - CyberJournalist.net
What a great idea to deploy in Southern Village where SUVs seem to outnumber people most of the time in most places.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Best walking routes FROM Southern Village
What are the most interesting walking routes from Southern Village? Suppose you want to walk for an hour or two hours......what are the most interesting hikes from a base in Southern Village?
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Walking to schools
What percentage of students, teachers and others walk or bike, as opposed to drive, to Scroggs and Culbreth schools? In our increasingly obese world, this would be a nice statistic to know and to improve the walking numbers are not impressive.....and if they are impressive, keep them that way!
Radar "gun" for Southern Village
Cars often seem to drive around Southern Village at speeds well above 25 MPH. Wouldn't it be helpful to know for sure so that the police can be notified of chronic offenders? It's hard to estimate car speed from the sidewalk, but I just discovered that the hand-held radar "guns" are not all that expensive. Here is just one for example.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
"Edwards goes carbon neutral" - Gristmill
See reference to one quarter of EDWARDS' campaign headquarters staff (in Southern Village) walking to work. I wonder if the carbon neutral pledge applies to his 4+ million dollar house as well?
Tree mulching
What is the best - most recommended - way in which to mulch around all our trees in Southern Village between sidewalks and curbs? Surely, some approaches must be better for the trees than others. What are the approaches that we should all be encouraged to adopt?
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Our "neighbor", John EDWARDS
Today's Chapel Hill News carries an opinion column by one of the Chapel Hill (NC) Town Council members, Laurin EASTHOM. In it, she attempts to respond to an article in the (Raleigh) News & Observer about US Presidential candidate John EDWARDS. Ms EASTHOM contends that we should ignore EDWARDS' new, very large house here in Chapel Hill and the report by the N&O that EDWARDS does not say hello to a local business owner across the street from the new home - that has the highest assessed value of any home here in Orange County. She says that we should look to other wealthy US presidents and all the good works they have done for the poor, starting with Franklin ROOSEVELT.
I am afraid that she misses the point. It's a question of judgment.
Mr. EDWARDS keeps exercising very bad judgment as he demonstrated on Meet the Press today. While he says now that his vote for the Iraq "war" was wrong, he continues to say that he would have voted for the action even today if the "war" had been managed better. He simply does not have the knowledge of other countries and cultures, and especially the Middle East to be President, in my view. Further on that point, he said that he ignored evidence to the contrary on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the time. The judgment that he made at the time of that vote, the time that it took him to admit he made a mistake (more than two years) and the judgment he still applies in saying better management would have resulted in him still voting the way he did all say to me that he does not have what it takes to by my President. This all comes in the wake of a couple of things. One was the visit here last week of some people from Northern Europe who had never been to NC previously. They were struck by the absence of poverty. It also comes in the wake of a rough calculation that what the President is asking for Iraq and Afghanistan over the next two years amounts to about 10,000 USD for each citizen of those countries. If not 10,000, then it is a very healthy sum. And this comes along with a story in the same Chapel Hill News, adjacent to Ms. EASTHOM's piece that talks about the trials and tribulations of a small family restaurant (average meal $7, the N&O reports) only a few miles from Mr. EDWARDS' new home. The story reports that the restaurant "more times than not, ...is operating at a loss". Mr. EDWARDS and Ms. EASTHOM both know that all politics are local. Walt's Grill is about as local as it gets for both of them. Finally, on top of all that is an invitation to a fund raiser for EDWARDS at the home of D.R. BRYAN, the developer of Southern Village. The invitation seems to be looking for contributions at the levels of $500 and $1,000. Where will that money go? Much of it will probably go for EDWARDS' staff and more fund-raising. Ms. EASTHOM says we should look not at EDWARDS' house, but at what he has "done in his work,is currently doing in his campaign, and will continue to do for all Americans as he proactively tackles the complexity of poverty in America". Ok, so let's see what John EDWARDS has done in Chapel Hill, with his neighbors and others to deal with the poverty here that our European visitors did not see. He may have done a lot, and many of us would like to know so we can appreciative. I hope he will share this with us. In the meantime, imagine what might happen if he took all the money donated for the lunch on 9 Feb and created a fund that turned the contributions into meal tickets redeemable at Walt's for those in our town and county for whom an occasional free lunch might make a huge difference. That would give the so-far missing strength to Ms. EASTHOM's words about "actions" that her words now lack. And, most important, it would wind up being one of the actions to put on Mr. EDWARDS' "very good judgment" list. He needs all he can find.
I am afraid that she misses the point. It's a question of judgment.
Mr. EDWARDS keeps exercising very bad judgment as he demonstrated on Meet the Press today. While he says now that his vote for the Iraq "war" was wrong, he continues to say that he would have voted for the action even today if the "war" had been managed better. He simply does not have the knowledge of other countries and cultures, and especially the Middle East to be President, in my view. Further on that point, he said that he ignored evidence to the contrary on Weapons of Mass Destruction at the time. The judgment that he made at the time of that vote, the time that it took him to admit he made a mistake (more than two years) and the judgment he still applies in saying better management would have resulted in him still voting the way he did all say to me that he does not have what it takes to by my President. This all comes in the wake of a couple of things. One was the visit here last week of some people from Northern Europe who had never been to NC previously. They were struck by the absence of poverty. It also comes in the wake of a rough calculation that what the President is asking for Iraq and Afghanistan over the next two years amounts to about 10,000 USD for each citizen of those countries. If not 10,000, then it is a very healthy sum. And this comes along with a story in the same Chapel Hill News, adjacent to Ms. EASTHOM's piece that talks about the trials and tribulations of a small family restaurant (average meal $7, the N&O reports) only a few miles from Mr. EDWARDS' new home. The story reports that the restaurant "more times than not, ...is operating at a loss". Mr. EDWARDS and Ms. EASTHOM both know that all politics are local. Walt's Grill is about as local as it gets for both of them. Finally, on top of all that is an invitation to a fund raiser for EDWARDS at the home of D.R. BRYAN, the developer of Southern Village. The invitation seems to be looking for contributions at the levels of $500 and $1,000. Where will that money go? Much of it will probably go for EDWARDS' staff and more fund-raising. Ms. EASTHOM says we should look not at EDWARDS' house, but at what he has "done in his work,is currently doing in his campaign, and will continue to do for all Americans as he proactively tackles the complexity of poverty in America". Ok, so let's see what John EDWARDS has done in Chapel Hill, with his neighbors and others to deal with the poverty here that our European visitors did not see. He may have done a lot, and many of us would like to know so we can appreciative. I hope he will share this with us. In the meantime, imagine what might happen if he took all the money donated for the lunch on 9 Feb and created a fund that turned the contributions into meal tickets redeemable at Walt's for those in our town and county for whom an occasional free lunch might make a huge difference. That would give the so-far missing strength to Ms. EASTHOM's words about "actions" that her words now lack. And, most important, it would wind up being one of the actions to put on Mr. EDWARDS' "very good judgment" list. He needs all he can find.
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