Raleigh

Community-focused posts

There are 775 posts filed in Raleigh (this is page 39 of 78).

Drama-filled day

What a day filled with many events! On my dog walk this morning, I found a neighbor’s wallet where it was lying in the street and reunited it with its owner. I found out later that it fortunately had only been lost, not stolen.

Then at 11 I went over to an elderly neighbor’s home to discuss ways of making her home safer from some trespassing teenagers who have been harassing her lately. Together with her sons, other concerned neighbors, and our community officer, we brainstormed ways to keep this from happening again. She is a very sweet woman and expressed tremendous gratitude for my offering to help. To me it’s nothing. That’s what neighbors are for.
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Zombies for Mordecai Historic Park

Zombies
Travis and I spent the last two nights being zombies for Mordecai Historic Park’s annual Haunted Trolley rides. We were stationed in the insanely-decorated yard of Oakwood resident Jesse Jones, where we waited for the trolley to arrive. Once it did, Travis and I jumped out of the yard and worked to spook the riders.

After the second trolley went by last night, I decided it wasn’t enough to spook the riders. I wanted to make them laugh, too! Before the last trolley visit, Travis and I stopped by the house and made some cardboard signs saying “will work for BRAINZ” and “I need brains! Repeat: I need brains!” I also grabbed a bottle of Windex and a towel.

The trolley rolled up to the house and Travis and I stood statue-still for a moment. Then we leaped out with our signs (illuminated with LED flashlights – the latest zombie accessory) and hollered “braaaaaaains!” as we lurched around the trolley. Well, I lurched around the trolley -Travis lurched only as far as the curb: junior zombies aren’t allowed in the street.
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Startup incubator

I’ve been thinking more about Raleigh’s need for a startup incubator lately. I did a little research last night on the available warehouse spaces around town, wondering if any might be good candidates for housing techies. A few on South Wilmington Street look good as does the old Alcatel plant on Wake Forest Road near Costco. A really good location is the old Winn Dixie warehouse at the corner of Whitaker Mill Road and Atlantic Avenue because that warehouse is close to a future transit stop. I think an incubator needs to have good public transportation in order to be successful.
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Raleigh’s startup opportunity

The Atlantic Monthly takes a peek at Durham’s startup efforts:

Durham is a fascinating example of what happens when a community bands together to try to attract entrepreneurs. They’ve set up all the mechanisms and institutions to foster innovation and now they’re waiting to see if startup culture can take root. The city itself has “great bones,” as they say, with a dense downtown core filled with beautiful old-timey architecture. They even have some inspiring local business history to draw on. Durham was once known as “The Black Wall Street” because of the preponderance of successful African American-owned businesses on Parrish Street.

As I said before, Raleigh needs to get into the startup game pronto or face being forever branded as LawyerTown.

GOP blames Obama for school board shellacking

This is too funny. The Wake County GOP got its clock thoroughly cleaned in the latest municipal elections. Now its hapless chair, Susan Bryant, is laying the blame on Obama and his legions of “paid volunteers”

Actually, the only paid volunteers I know of was on the GOP side. A few days before the election, I spotted a small sign at the intersection of Louisburg Road and Perry Creek Road, seeking paid political volunteers. The sign emphasized that the volunteers needed to be conservative.

Wake County Republican Party Chairwoman Susan Bryant blames “President Obama’s national organization” for last week’s election results that could lead to Democrats regaining control of the county school board.

“Make no mistake!” Bryant writes in a GOP newsletter this week. “President Obama’s national organization was very much involved in the recent elections, with particular emphasis on Ron Margiotta’s and Heather Losurdo’s campaigns. They hired ‘volunteers’ and spent tens of thousands on mailers cleverly disguised as coming from non-related groups.”

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via GOP boss blames school election on Obama – Local – NewsObserver.com.

Update 4:20 PM: Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Sez one commenter on the N&O article:
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Ron Margiotta’s attack ads

A few folks are raising a stink about Wake County School Board chairman Ron Margiotta’s recent use of school board video in his political ads. Some on the left are pointing to Margiotta’s use of the video as proof he enlisted county employees to help him in his campaign. WTVD’s Jon Camp did a story about it.

Now, I’m no fan of Ron Margiotta. He’s arrogant, grating, blunt, and I find a lot of what he says and does to be embarrassing. Still, you gotta hand it to him for thinking to use this video. Sure, it’s video of Susan Evans, his opponent in the school board race, and sure, it was taken with the county-owned video system. But that’s the point: it’s video taken by the public, for the public at an open, public meeting. The video is thus a public record and therefore available to anyone who requests it.
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Tree planting at Chavis Park


I spent yesterday morning volunteering to plant trees around Chavis Park through the city’s Neighborwoods program and a generous gift from the Siemens Corporation. About 72 volunteers made up of Siemens employees, the St. Augustine’s Lady Falcons basketball team, Parks and Rec staff, Parks board members (Scott Reston, Kimberly Siran, and me) and other volunteers spent three hours planting new trees in the hardscrabble neighborhoods surrounding the park.

The weather was brisk in the morning but as the crew got rolling with tree planting we warmed up quickly. I had a wonderful time meeting folks from Siemens and working the the Lady Falcons to help beautify Raleigh with new trees.

Good election day

It’s been a long but good election day! All of the candidates I supported won election, with Nancy McFarlane becoming Raleigh’s next mayor, Russ Stephenson reelected as at-large councilor, Eugene Weeks being elected outright to the District C seat, Randy Stagner winning a seat as the District A councilor, and Kevin Sutton reelected to the school board. Also, both the housing and transportation bonds passed by a good margin. To top it off, school board chairman Ron Margiotta was sent packing when Susan Evans defeated him tonight. There’s still a runoff pending for the District 3 school board seat held by Kevin Hill, but that’s within reach.

A fantastic day, politics-wise!

St. Aug candidate forum

I attended a candidate forum at St. Aug Monday where two mayoral candidates and all the District C candidates were addressing the mostly-student audience. The audience was a bit reserved and the candidates mostly spoke of vague goals. In general, the forum seemed kind of dull.

Then Raquel Williams, one of four candidates for the District C seat, stood up and told her remarkable story. Ms. Williams is a smart, hard-working woman who has far more education than I’ll ever have and she earned it as a single parent of four children. Her personal narrative described her path through college, which was sidetracked four times by pregnancies.
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