One of the best parts of my job is being able to work with on community service project with our member companies. Each year we do a project related to housing and this year we worked with Housing Greensboro to help repair two homes for families that are facing some fairly serious difficulties due to illness. One of our members, THS National, sent along a videographer and the result is the video below.
As someone who has served on the Lewisville Board of Adjustment in the past I read this post by attorney Tom Terrell with more than a passing interest. Basically he lauds the Harnett County Board of Adjustment for their hard work on a landfill case that took 33 hours spread over six nights to conclude. Most people have no clue what boards of adjustment do, and quite frankly the people who volunteer their time to serve on most municipal boards like BOAs don't get enough credit for their efforts, so it's nice to see when someone who deals with them on a professional level takes the time to give them their due. Here's a bit of what he wrote:
After six nights and 33 hours of testimony and deliberation, the Harnett County Board of Adjustment reached a decision this week regarding a Conditional Use Permit for a regional landfill. It was a marathon. I know, because I was there…
The hearing demonstrated why we desperately need quasi-judicial proceedings and, despite what I consider to be demonstrable legal flaws in the decision itself, provided a showcase example of how a BOA should operate.
Quasi-judicial proceedings establish evidentiary frameworks for unpopular but necessary land uses. Without them, the alternative is a decision based purely on emotion and, sometimes, hysteria. Or bad math. (Let’s just count the number of people in the room for and against and let it be “democratic” despite what our comprehensive plan says, despite what our zoning ordinance says, despite what our staff says, and despite what our planning board says)…
But my other point is that this BOA was among the best I’ve ever seen in how it handled the hearing itself. Each night board members systematically disclosed calls from the media and emails from neighbors and how they handled them. They disclosed civic and personal connections with witnesses.
The board chair did a better job ruling on objections by attorneys than most judges I’ve been in front of, and he gave some leeway to members of the public to stray from true evidence (in one case, a speech on “the purpose of man”) and to relate blatant hearsay conversations while instructing and reminding board members what can and cannot be considered as evidence.
He also praised the Harnett County staff members and I think he's absolutely spot on when he says that "I’ve learned never to underestimate the importance of working with good staff." I've been lucky enough to work with many of the staff members in Lewisville and I can say that it has always been an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
I received an email about an event, Mission for Mason, being held on May 14 at the Ten O One Sports Club in Winston-Salem to help a local boy fighting an aggressive brain cancer. From the event website:
The goal of the event is to donate 100% of profits from admission, food sales, raffle ticket sales and also a portion of the bar sales to Mason’s family of eight to offset medical costs and to provide support through the duration of his treatments. More importantly, we want to celebrate and lift up Mason, showing him that hundreds of individuals who have been touched by his firm resolve and bravery will be compelled to to rally behind him at a gigantic children's event and music festival for all ages on a sweet spring day in May !
No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
~Aesop
Last February anyone who reads this blog probably got a little tired of me constantly writing about the Labor of Love project the Triad Apartment Association (the organization that pays me to work for them for some reason) took on at The Children's Home. Well, we had no idea that Fox 8 was going to do a story about how The Children's Home is using the building but it sure made our weekend when it aired.
BTW, you'll note in the story that they're looking to renovate another floor so they can house more kids. We actually fixed up every floor in the building, but my understanding is that there are lots of additional safety measures that have to be in place in order to move kids in. They are looking for $10,000-$15,000 to get that done so if you want to help out you can do so by contacting The Children's Home, or if you want just drop me a note and I'll hook you up with the appropriate people at the Home.
That room that she mentions is her favorite? Well it was my favorite too. Here's a photo gallery of all the work that was done to get it to its current state:
The Triad Apartment Association (my employer) is hosting a food drive to benefit Second Harvest and one aspect of it is that we're having a competition between the Winston-Salem Dash and the Greensboro Grasshoppers to see which team/city can raise the most food for one game. The Dash game is next Monday (July 12) and the Grasshopper game is next Wednesday (July 14). We have slightly different arrangements for each game but the basics are that we're encouraging folks to bring food or financial donations and then stick around to enjoy the ballgame. Here are the details:
Winston-Salem Dash, July 12
Bring food or financial donations to our table by the entrance and you'll get a voucher for a free Dash baseball cap. Your donations will be counted towards the Winston-Salem total.
Greensboro Grasshoppers, July 14
You can bring food and financial donations to our table, and on top of that if you buy your ticket to the game from us $2 of the ticket will go to Second Harvest. There will also be prize giveaways throughout the evening. Your donations will be counted towards the Greensboro total.
Last year our Food Drive raised almost 210,000 cans of food and we're determined to beat that this year. I hope to see many of you on either Monday or Wednesday!
Final note: I'd like to personally thank Mayor Joines, Mayor Knight, WXII, The Dash and The Grasshoppers for partnering with us and Second Harvest to help feed the hungry in the Triad. Here's the commercial we all collaborated on the promote the event:
Guns make me nervous, always have and always will. In particular I'm not a big fan of handguns because it just seems like it would be too easy to make a catastrophic error with one. That's why seeing people walking around with handguns makes me jumpier than a mouse in a room full of cats. It's not that I think they'll gun me down for looking at them cross-eyed, rather it's that I can think of 100 ways that someone could inadvertently pop off a round and I can just as easily imagine myself catching that round somewhere on my body. That explains why you won't catch me within ten miles of the Guilford Courthouse National Military Park on August 14 when some pro-gun people hold their Restore the Constitution Rally.
Obviously I'm not a gun guy, but I'm also not someone who gets real worked up about gun control. I am a guy that's been known to sit in rush hour traffic and marvel that so few accidents occur on a daily basis rather than how many. Seriously, given what we know about the human condition how is it possible that thousands of cars driven by people who watch American Idol on a regular basis can weave from lane to lane at 75 mph and only a tiny minority actually wreck? Take that thought process and apply it to guns and you'll know where I'm coming from.
Here's the deal: the organization I work for (Triad Apartment Association) has kicked off its annual food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank of NW NC. For the past several years we've hosted an event at a Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball game and invited the public to bring cans of food to contribute to Second Harvest. This year we've stepped it up and are hosting an event at the Winston-Salem Dash game on July 12 and the Greensboro Grasshoppers game on July 14 and we're holding a contest to see which game will raise more food/money for Second Harvest.
As part of our efforts WXII has agreed to partner with us and both Mayor Joines (W-S) and Mayor Knight (GSO) have filmed public service messages that will run on WXII as part of our efforts. Obviously we're most thankful to the mayors, the Dash, the Grasshopper and WXII for working with us on this effort.
If you'd like to participate you can do so in several ways:
I hope to see you all at one of the ballgames!
Winston-Salem/Kernersville Drop Off Locations
View 2010 TAA Food Drive W-S Drop Off Locations in a larger map
Greensboro/High Point Drop Off Locations
Anyone who's been watching WXII this week knows that they're making a serious push to raise food for Second Harvest so that kids won't go hungry this summer. One of their morning show members, Kenny Beck, has been doing goofy stuff like the chicken dance in exchange for financial donations. I asked him via Twitter what it would take to get him to shave his head and he said $1,000. When I indicated I might be serious he said he was too, and we agreed to a low setting on the clippers (not bald, but pretty short).
This dovetails nicely with the food drive that my office is doing for Second Harvest and I thought that if Mr. Beck has the guts to do it, then so should I. So here's the deal:
So that's it. If you want to see Kenny Beck and me get our heads shaved then email me at jon.lowder AT gmail.com, or call me at (336) 899-0238 to arrange donations. You can also simply mail a check made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina and write "Make Kenny and Jon Shave Their Heads" in the memo field and mail it to me at:
Triad Apartment Association/Attn. Jon Lowder
3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E
Greensboro, NC 27407
Of course you can mail it directly to the Food Bank, but if you want it to be counted towards our impending baldness you need to send it to me so I can keep track of our progress.
Also, I've also set up my very first Facebook group for the cause. If you visit it you can see one of the worst pictures ever taken of me Photoshop'd to show me bald. Like I said, it's gonna be ugly.
From the day job: TAA's team was honored to be presented with a Governor's Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service (Forsyth County) in the "Team" category at a breakfast at Salemtowne this morning. There were also winners in six other categories and it was a true pleasure to be surrounded by so many people doing incredible things for their community. A big thanks to The Children's Home for nominating us for the project. Here's a couple of pics:
The TAA Team
TAA VP and Labor of Love Chair Marc Crouse
Kind of cool shot of the program
Lex has linked to a very interesting piece that provides the following quote:
But what part of being a CEO could be so difficult — so impossible for mere mortals — that it would mean that there are only a few hundred individuals in the United States capable of performing it?
In my humble opinion, it’s the sociopath part.
CEOs of community-based businesses are typically responsive to their communities and decent people. But the CEOs of the world largest corporations daily make decisions that destroy the lives of many other human beings. Only about 1 to 3 percent of us are sociopaths — people who don’t have normal human feelings and can easily go to sleep at night after having done horrific things. And of that 1 to 3 percent of sociopaths, there’s probably only a fraction of a percent with a college education. And of that tiny fraction there’s any even tinier fraction that understands how business works, particularly within any specific industry.
Thus there is a shortage of people who can run modern monopolistic, destructive corporations that stockholders have to pay millions to get them to work. And being sociopaths, they gladly take the money without any thought to its social consequences.
This makes it much easier for me when I read business news and ask myself the question, "How do these people sleep at night?" The answer, of course, is "quite soundly."
I'm not a big believer in generalizations, so I my knee jerk reaction is to say that this description probably only fits the vast majority of the CEOs of the world's largest corporations.
Befuddled 