The Winston-Salem Journal ran a piece on PAVE Creative
on the front page of yesterday’s business section. I met co-founder
Chris Patti when we played against each other in a tennis ladder last
year and we’ve stayed in touch since. It’s good to see that they’re
doing so well. Now if I could just get him to start blogging…
FYI, here’s a link to the PAVE Creative site.
I noticed today that the Winston-Salem Journal had zero letters to the editor in today’s (August 9, 2007) print edition. They had five opinion columns and their own two editorial opinions but not one letter from the unwashed masses. Honestly it kind of depressed me since the letters are usually as effective at getting my blood flowing in the morning as my 12 cups of coffee. (They did run Cal Thomas who also gets me riled up, but it’s not as fun because he’s not half as bright as the folks here in Winston-Salem and his English ain’t half as goodly either). I’m wondering if the Journal’s just hit a summer lull in submissions. I hope that’s the case because I fear that since 95% of the letters seem to come from the same seven people and all those people seem to be in the "AARP members for over years club", that maybe we’ve had a migration from op-ed to the best read page in every paper: the obits. Like I said I hope it’s just a lull because I really enjoy reading those folks.
Of course if the WSJ runs out of commenters I can now go to Google News and get all the comments I want. Google has started accepting comments by email, reviewing them and then attaching them to news stories if they’re deemed appropriate. I expect it will get entertaining fast.
Last weekend was the tax-free shopping weekend for school supplies in North Carolina. Here in Forsyth County many parents, yours truly included, had a common problem: no supply lists from our students’ teachers. Sure we could buy the basics like pencils and paper, but any parent will tell you that every year they get a list that has some very specific items on there that you just can’t anticipate.
Heck, we’ve gotten lists that tell us which brand of a particular item to buy, apparently in an effort to avoid brand-envy among students. God forbid a kid show up with a generic binder and not the "BLACKWATER BINDER: Made of bullet-proof KEVLAR. Tested and approved by the Navy SEALS and perfect for today’s student. Available in green or pink camouflage" despite the fact that the generic costs 1/10 what the BLACKWATER costs. No, we must make sure our little robots students all look exactly alike!
Anyway, it caused a problem for a lot of parents that we didn’t have a list of supplies for our big tax-free weekend. Who’s responsible for the lack of supply lists? Eh, I’m willing to bet the responsibility can be distributed pretty far and wide, but I have to say that the folks who write editorials for the Winston-Salem Journal cast their net of blame in the wrong direction. Here’s what they wrote:
It would be even more helpful if parents knew exactly what their children will need for school. But some parents told the Journal late last week that they had not yet received supply lists from their public schools.
The culprit here is
the school-calendar law that the General Assembly passed at the behest
of tourism and real-estate interests a few years back. For business
purposes, they wanted a later start to the school year. So, the
tax-free weekend now comes three weeks before the school bell rings,
and teachers don’t have supply lists ready.Some will propose to push the tax-free weekend to the middle of August. We argue for a different change.
The General
Assembly should repeal the school-calendar law and let school boards,
not real-estate agents, decide on what is best for educating our
children.
So let me get this straight. The reason we don’t have the lists we need is because several years ago the real estate and tourism lobbies got the General Assembly to move our school start dates to later in the summer? And the way to fix the problem of our not getting the lists on time is to give the power of school scheduling back to the local school boards?
Did our school administrators and teachers not get the memo telling them that the start of the school year has been moved back? Is it too much to ask for our teachers and school administrators to adjust their schedules? And as Celeste (my lovely wife) pointed out to me, last year we received our lists before the tax-free weekend and we had the same schedule then as we do now. What changed?
Seriously, it would be like me telling my client that because this year their annual conference is two weeks earlier in the year than it was last year I didn’t get the attendees their information in time. I think the question they’d ask me as they were cancelling my contract would be, "Since we published the date of this year’s conference over a year ago shouldn’t it have occurred to you to move your timeline up so the attendees would have the information when they needed it?"
Now, I don’t disagree with the Journal about allowing local school boards to determine their own schedules, but blaming the tardiness of our teachers and administrators on the General Assembly’s actions is some seriously flawed logic. Kind of like the Journal editors’ argument that the state lottery is a tax.
Oh, don’t get me started.
Long ago I signed up for the Winston-Salem Journal’s email alert service. I don’t know if I also signed up for their advertisers’ messages or if it’s part of the package when you sign up for the alerts, but a few months ago I also started receiving those alerts. Well, a couple of minutes ago I received one of their advertising messages for Harris Teeter and there’s a slight problem. They apparently forgot to change the "From" field of the message because instead of saying something like "JournalNow.com Special Harris Teeter Prize Offer" it says "JournalNow.com Breaking News: WFU coach Skip Prosser dies". (Click on the image to the left to see a screen shot of the email).
The death of Skip Prosser was a big and tragic story here last week and it’s unfortunate for the folks at Harris Teeter that their ad message is being associated with a mistake that I think everyone will find tacky at best. More likely Journal readers will find it highly insensitive and the kind of mistake that just shouldn’t happen.
Update: I just received another email from JournalNow apologizing for the first. Here’s the text:
Moments ago, you received a very unfortunate e-mail from JournalNow.com.
The e-mail was supposed to contain an advertising message sent by JournalNow for Harris Teeter.
While the message did contain the Harris Teeter information, it also came to you using a “From” line that had been used last week on a Breaking News message: the death of Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser.
This juxtaposition was completely inappropriate and inexcusable, and I’d like to personally apologize for the mistake. No disrespect was meant to Skip Prosser or his family.
JournalNow, not Harris Teeter, takes full responsibility for the error. I will assure you that every effort will be made not to have anything like it happen again.
Mark C. Anderson
General Manager
JournalNow.com
I received the first email at 12:39 and the apology at 1:08. That’s some good response time, which leads me to believe that they probably caught their mistake even before the first complaint hit their email server.
Oh, and Esbee points out in the comments that the contest ends December 26, 2006. That means that either the Journal ran the wrong ad art or the ad rep for Harris Teeter is in seriously deep doo-doo.
Via Jake’s comment on an earlier post I learned that the movie Mr. Destiny was filmed right here in Winston-Salem. In a follow up email he informed me that Jim Belushi’s high school baseball team in the movie was played by the Mt. Tabor high school team at the time and the opposing team was played by RJ Reynolds’ team. I checked out the movie’s listing on IMDB and found the following locations listed for filming:
I think I’m gonna have to rent it just to look for the landmarks.
Last month I posted some interesting information I’d learned about Winston-Salem and commenter Jacob McConnico added his own list that I kind of blew my mind. Here it is:
Thanks Jacob!
A little while back I wrote that Esbee’s Life in Forsyth is the best blog in Winston-Salem or about Winston-Salem. It seems that the readers of Smitty’s Notes, THE online resource for all things related to having fun in Camel City, agree with me. They voted Life in Forsyth the best blog and a blog I’d not yet heard of, alphabitch.org, came in second. Yours truly pulled in an honorable mention along with Otterblog, UrbanPlanet (The NC Triad) and JoeJon.
Since I didn’t even know that Smitty was running the contest I’ll have to thank whoever voted for me since it wasn’t me. If I’d known about it I’d have had every living or dead being I know stuff the ballot box, but alas my chance to behave like a Chicago mayor has come and gone.
Per my previous post about The Old Fourth Street Filling Station I wanted to give a quick update. First, I did indeed contact the restaurant via the comments form on their website and last night I received a reply from them. If I get permission from them I’ll share the reply in full because it was a great example of how to handle a customer complaint. Second, I wanted to post a positive comment I’ve gotten about the restaurant (I’ll update with more if I get them). Here it is:
I love the burgers at the The Old Fourth Street Filling Station. The burgers and the brie appetizer are awesome!
I hope you give it another try.
Update: Here’s another comment I recently received from Mandie:
I’ve
eaten there once with a large group of friends, and I thought it was
fantastic. I even took photos of all the food. We ate Sunday brunch, in
April, on the patio. Betty thought the shrimp and grits were excellent,
and the salad I had was huge. The pancakes with fruit were to.die.for.
The omelets and fries were good, too.I’ve
seen the letter from the chef, and I hope you do take them up on the
offer to go back. Hopefully the second time will be the charm.
I IM’d Esbee about this and she pointed out
that the real food chain was:
One thing I’d like to see is that if a paper does
pick up a lead from a blog that perhaps they reference the blog in their
article. If nothing else it would give readers an opportunity to get the back
story and it would acknowledge the contribution that the blogger is making to
the community. Another reason I’d give is that newspaper folks have complained
for years that local TV newscasts get most of their stories from the newspapers,
so I’d hope that newspapers would be sensitive to the same issue with the
bloggers. On the other hand maybe they take the view that if the TV folks
aren’t going to give them credit for story leads then why should they give
bloggers credit? The "kick the dog" theory as it were.
Side note: I
just noticed that Esbee’s been removed from the Journal’s blog
page. Since Life in
Forsyth is easily the most informative blog focused on the Winston-Salem
area I’m a bit surprised by this. I certainly hope it’s not because she wrote
this
a while back. That would be a bit like biting the hand that feeds if you ask
me.
Celeste and I had dinner with our friends the Ewings last night at South by Southwest on S. Marshall Street in Winston-Salem.
Celeste had the Mesa Verde Grilled Fish soft tacos, which she described
as absolutely delicious. The fish was finely grilled, moist and
light. She found it to be a little bland, but once she added some
salsa from our chips appetizer she found it perfect.
I had one of their specials, a pork tenderloin and pineapple fajita
that was huge (one of the few times in my life I’ve had to ask for a
doggy bag) and extremely tasty. The pork was moist and tender, the
spices were just right and if anything I could have used about 15 more
soft tortilla to wrap the meat in. Like I said, it was HUGE.
Entrees range in price from around $11 to $20, the atmosphere is casual
and cozy, and it’s definitely a very relaxing night out. They open the
doors for their bar at 5:30 and they begin seating for dinner at 6:00,
and are open until 10:00.
Highly recommended if you like New Mexico style food and are looking
for something thats a step or two above your average Tex-Mex fare.
Cross posted on TriadFamily.com
Befuddled 