Politics

Politics

There are 1,056 posts filed in Politics (this is page 63 of 106).

Building Raleigh’s startup scene from the ground up

Officials from Raleigh and N.C. State announced a partnership Monday to make Raleigh a “city of innovation.” A conference, known as the Raleigh Innovation Summit, will take place on January 18th, 2012 to discuss ways to give the city’s startup scene a boost. Being that I’m not yet working again and I have experience with startups, I grabbed my camera and headed to the press conference, eager to hear more details.

The press has already done a good job covering the details, it turns out. Thus there’s not much I can add to this except a few thoughts after the fact.
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Pullen Park speech

Pullen Park ribbon-cutting

Here are my written remarks from the Pullen Park dedication Saturday. I frequently compose my speeches on the fly but Pullen Park is important so I spent more time on this one.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting for this day for 124 years!

Today we celebrate the grand opening of a park that actually opened 124 years ago. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I did a little research to get a better idea of what Pullen Park’s first grand opening must have been like.

On that day in March 22nd, 1887 when Mr. Stanhope Pullen donated the land that created Pullen Park, N.C. State University was a mere fifteen days old. Fayetteville Street – where this morning’s Christmas Parade took place – had only been paved for a decade. Raleigh sprawled to almost two square miles and had a booming population of 13,000; qualifying it as the fifth largest city in our state.
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Parade and Pullen

Posing after the parade


Wow, what a day! As a volunteer and boardmember with Mordecai Historic Park, I was offered the opportunity to march in today’s Raleigh Christmas Parade. This is the second year I was offered this opportunity but through a scheduling snafu Mordecai missed out on the parade. I had gotten the whole family excited about it then only to be disappointed. We were determined not to miss our parade chance this year and fortunately we were not disappointed.

We got to Mordecai around 8 AM, about 30 minutes before we were due to line up for the parade. Having gotten our costumes a week before, we were all decked out in 19th century clothes (though the timeframes varied considerably). We met the park staff and other volunteers who were participating and boarded the Raleigh Trolley for the parade.
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The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise

The Independent’s Bob Geary takes a good, in-depth look at Southeast Raleigh.

It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way to Martin Street Baptist Church in Southeast Raleigh. For two years, it’s been the high ground in the political fight for control of the Wake County school system: the church, as a gathering place for the defenders of diversity; and Southeast Raleigh, the historically black area of the city and the county with all its problems and its promise.

via The other side of town: Southeast Raleigh’s problems and promise | News Feature | Independent Weekly.

It’s the new vegetable

Alluding to the ridiculous news that Congress voted to make pizza a vegetable, a neighborhood wag replied to an email post about an upcoming event from the Raleigh City Farm with this:

“I wonder if the Raleigh City Farm folks will be planting pizza.”

Glad to know Congress is being so productive.

Looking deeper, the whole “four food groups” thing has long been manipulated by farmers more concerned about food sales than nutrition. No wonder we have an obesity epidemic in America.

American Censorship Day pop-up

If you’d like to add your own anti-SOPA pop-up to your blog, simply add this text somewhere on your website:

script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://americancensorship.org/js”>/script

You’ll want to enclose the above “script” and “/script” in angle brackets, of course.

On my WordPress setup, I put this into a text widget and added it to my sidebar. Your Mileage May Vary.

Thanks for spreading the word!

SOPA/PROTECT IP acts will censor Internet

Hollywood is pushing bills through Congress right now to give them the power to shut down any Internet sites they disagree with at will. This law would not only apply to American websites but any website with a .com, .org, or .edu domain suffix.

Ironically, the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act go against the very First Amendment rights that make Hollywood possible. Free speech isn’t free if it’s more free for some.

Call or contact your Congressional representatives today and let them know that you care about your Constitutional rights! See the EFF or Mozilla.org for more information!

The family’s back together

It had been a challenging week for me, with the uncertainty of being unemployed and having Kelly gone all week for her work. I was feeling pretty lonely. I was happy to see Kelly again Thursday night, though, and by Friday we were our usual happy selves (with the exception of Travis, who left school early with a mild fever).

Saturday morning, Kelly took Travis to his piano lesson while I got ready for the Strickland Road Park Dedication at noon. Kelly took the kids to Hallie’s haircut while I was at the park. Afterward we went to Conn’s fall carnival.
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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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