Month: November 2008

  • The Greatest Lie of the Greatest Generation?

    Chapel Hill is filled with talented, thoughtful folks whose stories – personal and professional – often open new avenues of personal discovery. Eric Muller, UNC Law professor and, lately intermittent, ‘blogger (Is That Legal?), is a Chapel Hillian I’ve spoken of before. His personal history, finding out what happened to his great-uncle during Germany’s Holocaust […]

  • A middle finger to Northside

    I wasn’t able to attend the spoken-word event concerning the corrosive effects of Greenbridge on Northside last evening, but according to the Daily Tar Heel, it stirred some sharp discussion. UNC junior Kane Smego, who performed slam poetry at the event, described the project as two towers, “one 10 stories, the other seven — like […]

  • Northern Heads South

    Not a great day for local tech companies in RTP. Nortel (Northern Telecom) is shedding another 1,300 jobs in an effort to stay afloat. I worked at Northern for nearly seven years (I started at Team10 for any old-timers out there). Back then it was an incredibly vibrant can-do company with a really nice and […]

  • Vote for Me? Orangepolitics Straw Poll

    [UPDATED: Fixed missing links.] A number of readers sent me a link to an informal poll (here) over on OrangePolitics. If you register, you can vote and add to my apparent lead 😉 As many of you know, after contributing significantly to Ruby’s website over many years, I pulled my support from OP, a supposedly […]

  • Eve Carson: Ripples of Hope

    Eve Carson was universally lauded by the local community for epitomizing the Carolina Way. Her friends honor her by ensuring that her contribution to our community continues. Linda send out this reminder. Dear Friends and Neighbors, The death of Eve Carson last year was a tragic moment that stunned us all. In the months since […]

  • Lifting all of us up…

    Orange County Commissioner Mike Nelson posted this small poem on his ‘blog in celebration of the Obama blowout: Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Jesse could run. Jesse ran so Barack could win. Barack won so our children can fly. Nice. Ellie, Elijah and I stayed up past midnight tracking the close […]

  • Dec. 10th: The Density Discussion

    In my application for the Council seat, I called again for Council to sponsor a thorough, wide-ranging and comprehensive community discussion on development density. How high, how dense? Last Spring, Council decided to end their pursuit of high density development zones. We need to restart that discussion. We should take the recent work on twisting […]

  • Persons Out of Place

    In my application for Bill’s seat on Council, I mentioned my concern (“Walking is not a crime.”) that the recently announced Orange County Community Safety Partnership program, which trains Town staff and the general public to identify and report criminal activity or other public safety related issues, needs to be careful in discriminating what is […]

  • Community Service: Horace-Williams Citizens Committee, What Did I Do?

    Someone sent me an email saying one local pundit doesn’t think my service on the Horace-Williams Citizens Committee deserves recognition. Three comments. First, while I was appointed in January, 2006 and the HWCC provided its final report May 22nd, 2006 (report here), I definitely hit the ground running. While I wasn’t a member of the […]

  • Halloween 2008 on a Diet

    Wow! A %50 reduction in this years Halloween crowd. The Town of Chapel Hill successfully reduced the size of the Halloween event on Franklin Street with an estimated showing of 35,000. Town Manager Roger L. Stancil said he believed the “Homegrown Halloween” campaign assisted in reducing the number of revelers, and strategies implemented by Chapel […]

  • Jesus Swept. The Devil Dusted?

    Prolific BlueNC ‘blogger Anglico better known locally as former Council member Jim Protzman is now a newly minted novelist. Debut novelist Protzman offers a refreshingly different tale about a man who calls himself Jesus and leads a group of men who have taken the apostles’ names as they sweep parking lots and anything else they […]