I do believe the end of the world is nigh since Esbee has affiliated herself with a project that has a Facebook group. She's looked down her nose at Facebook and Twitter for as long as they've existed so I can only believe that someone sneaked this into the mix behind her back.
BTW, Local Dish Winston-Salem features contributions from the uber-coolest ladies online in the Twin Cities.
On June 20 a/perture will be screening the documentary Crude and all proceeds will go to helping save animals endangered by the Gulf oil spill. Below is the trailer and you can read more details here.
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
Yarddawg offers a great review of the downtown BB&T Ballpark.
The ballpark is as nice –albeit on a smaller scale- as any Major League ballpark I have ever been in. One Chicago White Sox executive stated the players would not play in a better facility until they made the Big Leagues and I completely agree. And remember this is Class A ball, the lowest of the three classes (A, AA, & AAA) in Minor League Baseball.
Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center has benefited from the services of a world record setting volunteer. According to this article a fellow named Don Moss has volunteered over 47,000 hours of his time to WFUBMC since 1982 and has been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for his efforts.
If WFUBMC had paid Mr. Moss $5 an hour then it would have cost them $235,000. I picked $5/hour because it's a nice round number that makes it easy to do the math and kind of the middle range of the minimum wage from 1982 until now.
MyBridges.net is a local social networking thingamajig that gave away $1,000 to a lucky member to be shared with a charity of his or her choosing. When I saw who the lucky winner was I was kind of gob-smacked: it was Dr. Ron Hutton with whom I served on the Lewisville Zoning Board of Adjustment for several years. I don't think I've seen him since I left the ZBOA, but I might have to look him up to see how he's spending his lucre!
My parents both worked for RJR while they were students at Wake Forest. When I saw the news that Reynolds is closing down its Whitaker Park operation I emailed both of them to see if they'd heard the news (they hadn't) and to see if they'd actually worked at that particular facility. Ends up that they had. Mom told me that the first summer they worked for RJR they were downtown, but the second summer they were at Whitaker. Dad said he remembered working at the "state of the art" facility as well. Mom mentioned that it was divided into six units, four for Salems and two for Camels, and that she worked in Unit 1 and Dad worked in Unit 3. Dad thought the shift ran from 4 p.m. to midnight.
Dad also wrote, "Wake could use it for some type of recreation facility. Because of its location you would think that would be prime real estate and would make a sizable tax deductable gift, that is if they have any profits to shelter." Seems that he and Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce head honcho Gayle Anderson are on the same page.
Cancer is insidious and I'd venture a guess that almost every person in America has been touched by the disease. Whether it's a family member, a co-worker or a friend we know someone who has had cancer and we've seen first hand how it decimates them and their loved ones. That's why watching Burzynski, the movie will likely infuriate you.
The movie is a documentary about a doctor and chemist named, you guessed it, Burzynski who discovered a revolutionary treatment for cancer more than 30 years ago. Thanks to battles with myriad government and private entities his treatment has had difficulty getting approved for advanced clinical trials, and has only been available to a limited number of patients as a result. That's all I'm going to say about the actual content of the movie for fear of spoiling it, but I will say that while I found the movie to be obviously slanted towards supporting Dr. Burzynski, it also provides compelling and objective evidence in support of its stance. I also found it refreshingly absent of the kind of stunts that Michael Moore has made popular with his movies, and instead relies on public documents, interviews and public hearings to make its case.
All that's not to say that the movie is boring or slow. To the contrary the pacing seems just right, there's very little redundancy in the evidence presented and yet it still seems thorough. As a result Burzynski is compelling, the story infuriating and it's a movie I highly recommend seeing.
Burzynski, the movie is appearing this weekend (May 29-30) through next week at a/perture cinema (across from Mellow Mushroom on Fourth Street in downtown Winston-Salem) was written, directed and produced by Eric Merola. You can find show times on a/perture's website.
There are a gazillion reasons to stay out of politics, but one that never occurred to me until I read this post at YES! Weekly is that when you're stumping you'll likely have to deal with people in various stages of undress. It's bad enough dealing with this at the pool, where you're at least expecting it, but I don't think I could handle it as part of what's the equivalent of a job interview. Ick.
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.
Befuddled 