Here's a young talent by the name of Ranford Almond performing on the streets of Greensboro (found at Roch101)
Sing It Youngin
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Category Archives: Greensboro
Triad Moms on Main
Last week I wrote about local mommy-blog Triad Smarty Pants biting the dust. Some commenters pointed out that the local writers for Triad Smarty Pants and flown the coop and were building their own site. Not long after writing that post I heard from Katie Moosbrugger, one of the folks behind the new site Triad Moms on Main, who wanted me to know about their new site. Now that I've survived my daughter's BirthdayPalooza (she turned 17 on Saturday) I decided to check it out. Obviously I'm not really part of their core demographic, as evidenced by an article titled "Got a Ladystache?" that I found during my highly random search of the site, but I will offer a limited opinion anyway: the site is very well designed and informative. In simpler terms, if I were a mommy in the Triad this would be my main online destination.
Best of luck to Katie and the rest of the folks over at T-MOM. Now I'm gonna see what I can do about that 'stache.
Help Me Help the Hungry, or, About That Head Shaving Thing
At the day job we're making a final push in our food drive. We've collected food at apartment communities, we've hosted food collection drives at the Winston-Salem Dash and Greensboro Grasshoppers games and in general we've worked our rear ends off to raise food and cash for the hungry. The drive ends August 24, and as some of you may remember I agreed a couple of months ago to shave my head if people would donate $1,000 for that purpose. Well we're still short (although my mother has made a valiant effort to see her oldest son's hair lopped off) so we've put together a little campaign to get us there. If we make it I'll be getting my head shaved on the 24th at a little shindig we're hosting to recognize our largest food contributors. Contributing is as easy as sending a text, so please take a moment to help feed the hungry.
And yes, our promotional concept was a total ripoff of the cute girl quitting via whiteboard hoax from earlier this week.
Benefit Second Harvest and Take In a Ballgame. Also, Is Winston Better Than Greensboro?
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:
Colonial Pipeline Tank Goes Kaboom
Anyone who lives in the Piedmont Triad is familiar with Colonial Pipeline's tank farm hard by I-40 in Greensboro. I drive by the tanks at least twice a day during my commute to and from the office so I've had ample occasion to wonder what would happen if one caught fire. We found out this weekend when one of them was struck by lightning and went up like a roman candle, and from what I've seen the Greensboro Fire Department did a stellar job containing the blaze.
Something interesting I learned while monitoring WXII's Kenny Beck's coverage via Twitter: one tank contains 200,000 gallons of oil, which helps put the Gulf Oil spill in perspective. If the current low end of the estimate of 42 million gallons is correct then that would be like taking 210 of those tanks and dumping them in the Gulf.
Food Fight Between Winston-Salem and Greensboro
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:
- Attend one of the games and bring food or financial donations ($1 = 12 cans of food)
- Drop off cans of food at one of our participating apartment communities (see the map below, or the list on the TAA website).
- If you'd like to mail in a donation you can send it to TAA at 3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E, Greensboro NC 27407. Checks should be made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC
- An added bonus: if you want to donate a couple of bucks just write "Shave Jon's Head" in the memo field of any check, or on a cover note with the donation, and if we get $1,000 with that note then I'll have my head shaved.
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
Want to Force Me and Kenny Beck to Shave Our Heads?
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:
- If you want to donate to Second Harvest please contact me via email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com and coordinate the donation with me. Once we amass $1,000 I'll arrange to get it to Kenny and we'll get his head shaved.
- Once we pass the $1,000 mark for donations I'll start adding to the tally for TAA's food drive. If you tell me you're donating in hopes of getting me to shave my head then once we reach another $1,000 I'll get my head shaved too (most likely a high and tight like the Marines). I'll post pictures on this blog, my Facebook profile, Twitter, and anywhere else. It won't be pretty, but it's for a good cause. BONUS FEATURE: The largest single donor actually gets to do the hair cutting on me (can't offer that up for Kenny).
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.
Governor’s Volunteer Service Award Breakfast
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
Things Are Getting Better, but…
The Dixon Hughes Triad Business Index for March, 2010 shows that the local economy is improving, but it's not by much and we've got a heckuva long way to go before we can say things are good. It will be interesting to see what happens in real estate when the stimulus plan expires at the end of this week, but when you read this from the report you wonder how much worse it can get (knock on wood):
At the end of the 1st quarter of 2010, the inventory of homes on the market was 9,098, or 6.3 times the number of homes sold in the 1st quarter. At the current sales pace, it will take 18.9 months to exhaust the existing inventory. The number of existing homes offered for sale was up 16.5% from what it was at the end of the 4th quarter, and it was 9.5% higher than at the end of the 1st quarter one year ago.
The price of the average home sold in the 1st quarter was down 2.8% from the previous quarter. The average quality-adjusted price of an existing home in the Triad was $158,718. The average this quarter was down 1.7% from the average recorded in the 1st quarter of last year. By comparison, over the past year, consumer prices nationally have risen 2.2%.
Split Google Loyalties
Today I attended the Linking Winston-Salem luncheon and part of the program was a plea to support the Winston-Salem effort to get Googled. Winston-Salem is a little late getting started with its public push, especially when you compare it to Greensboro's weeks old effort, but I guess it's better late than never, and since I live in the Winston-Salem burbs I'm happy to see them going for it.
On the other hand thanks to my job and my long-time interest in the Greensboro blog community I've also been invited to participate in their various Google-wooing efforts. Typical of Greensboro they've been working out the kinks in public, but they seem to be making decent headway.
I've been thinking about this and I've come to the conclusion that I can't be the only one who's in this situation. I'm guessing that since this isn't an election I can vote for as many municipalities as I want, but I'm also guessing that Greensboro and Winston-Salem could be missing an opportunity. Wouldn't a consolidated, regional effort for the Triad make a lot of sense to Google? I haven't studied the requirements in depth so I don't know if this is even an option, but if it is I can think of a lot of compelling reasons for a Piedmont Triad effort:
- The combination of all the higher ed institutions in the Triad is pretty impressive (Wake, UNCG, Winston-Salem State, NC A&T, High Point U, Salem College, Greensboro College, UNCSA, etc.)
- The combination of all the large, public corporations between the two cities
- Each of the cities is doing some pretty cool economic development on its own (FedEx and HondaJet in Greensboro, PTRP in Winston-Salem) but when considered together the efforts seem even more impressive
That's just three positives off the top of my head, and I'm sure that there are people who will let me know if I'm all wet, but I still have to ask if a joint effort has even been contemplated?
I do realize that Google's basic info page says "We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people" and that even if you combined only Greensboro and Winston-Salem you'd be awful close to the upper limit so the entire Triad would obviously exceed it. Still, if Google's going to wire multiple mid-sized cities wouldn't it be of interest to them to do a couple in close proximity for purely logistical reasons? And if that's the case wouldn't it make sense for the various players in the Triad to throw in together to make a really, really compelling case with Google? Just askin'.
Befuddled 