Tag Archives: greensboro

Traffic

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Until 11 years ago I’d lived my entire adult life in Northern Virginia and had spent my time commuting to work in some of the worst traffic the United States has to offer. When we moved to the Winston-Salem area it felt like I’d gone to traffic heaven because rush hour literally didn’t exist. We kind of have a “rush quarter hour” but even that doesn’t feature the gridlock you find in most metro areas. Still, it’s all relative and I would regularly hear locals complain about the busy highways and I’d just shake my head and mutter to myself, “You have no idea how good you have it.”

That’s why I felt vindicated by this article relaying the news that our area has the second-best traffic experience (behind only Phoenix) according to data from Google’s WAZE traffic app. Here’s an excerpt:

You’re not just getting there, Friend. You are having a world-class automotive experience — at least according to a newly released study that suggests Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point offer some of the best driving scenarios on the planet.

The metropolitan area finished second, just behind Phoenix, Ariz., in overall driving satisfaction in the study by analysts for Google’s WAZE travel app who compared driving experiences in 32 nations and 167 of the globe’s most mobile communities…

The Triad finished first among the various metros for minimal traffic delays.

Motorists in the region average less than a half hour on the road in a commute that averages about 26 miles, the WAZE study found. A pittance compared to some places in the United States where commuters average more than an hour each way,

Interesting that it ends up my commute is almost exactly the average.

Cool Recognition for Some Greensboro Folks

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The excerpt below is from a press release from Gov. McCrory’s office announcing the 2016 North Carolina Heritage Award winners. Many folks in Greensboro are familiar with the Montagnard community, but it’s probably a safe bet that folks outside of Greensboro would be surprised to learn about how large the community actually is. I need to make a note to myself to try and see some of the work of the award recipients – it really looks stunning.

H Jue Nie and H Ngach Rahlan

Calling themselves Dega, more Vietnamese Montagnards settled in North Carolina than in any other state, due to their fellowship with Special Forces units during the Vietnam War. Dega weavers H Jue Nie and H Ngach Rahlan of Greensboro mastered the ancient spinning, dying and weaving traditions of their people while growing up in the central highlands of Vietnam. Once a part of every highland woman’s knowledge and practice, women wove to clothe their families, decorate homes and altars, and to keep everyone warm at night. Originally Montagnard weavers grew their own cotton, spun their thread by hand, and used dyes from the indigo plant and other natural sources. Decorative elements such as beads were once made from plant materials that grew in their rice fields. War and displacement has reduced the numbers of skilled weavers remaining in Vietnam. H Jue Nie and H Ngach Rahlan moved to Greensboro 20 years ago, bringing their backstrap looms and an immeasurable knowledge of the designs and techniques that make their weaving traditions unique.

Explore the work:

Montagnard Weaving: The Women
Backstrap Weavers

Montagnard Weaving: Overview
Backstrap Weavers

Montagnard Weaving: BacksStrap Loom
Backstrap Weavers

The Guilty Mumble and Run

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The Greensboro News & Record’s Joe Killian had an interesting interaction in downtown Greensboro last week:

As I was handing it to him and he was thanking me, a guy walked past who was dressed basically as I was — dark, pressed suit; button-down collar; well-shined shoes. He looked at me and at this homeless man and stopped in front of us suddenly.

“You really shouldn’t do that,” he said to me.

“I really shouldn’t do what?” I said.

“You really shouldn’t buy them food,” the guy said, speaking to me as if the homeless man wasn’t there.

“If you give them money, they buy drugs,” he told me. “If you buy them food, then they spend the money they’d spend on food on drugs.”

“OK,” I said. “Thanks for the input. Have a nice day.”

I began to tell the homeless man good luck and to take care when the other guy broke in again.

“No, really,” he said, more insistently now. “You don’t know how they are. Giving them food isn’t your smartest option.”

Finally, I just ran out of patience.

“Your smartest option is to mind your own business and get out of my face,” I said to him.

Apparently surprised that one guy in a suit would speak to another like that over — you know, just this homeless guy — he looked spooked and quickly moved on.

The homeless guy thanked me and went on his way.

This is the kind of story that will strike a cord with everyone, but not in the same way. Most, if not all of us have had to make the decision on whether or not to help a person who is asking for help. Personally it used to be a lot easier for me: if I had money, I gave some and if I was buying a meal I would just add an item for the person who said she was hungry. It never occurred to me that the person asking might not need it and that I might be getting taken for a ride.

As I got older that changed. Partly that was the result of bad experiences, like the multiple times I was asked for money, offered to buy the person food and was told in no uncertain terms that I could keep my f***ing food if I didn’t have any money for him. Then there are the incredible number of times I’ve been approached at a gas station by someone with the same sob story we’ve all heard about needing to borrow a dollar or two to help buy “just enough gas to get home to <fill in the blank city about 100 miles away>.” Some of the change was the result of hearing from multiple sources, including experts who deal with the homeless, that giving them money was a bad idea because it just enabled their addictions. The end result is that I became hesitant and that hesitance has often led me to do what I call the Guilty Mumble and Run.

The Guilty Mumble and Run is exactly what it sounds like in that when I’m asked for help I divert my eyes, say something like, “Sorry, got nothing on me” and then speed up my walk to escape the situation. The guilty part is the following time period where I feel guilty about it, but it’s not for not giving them anything, but for not having the guts to just say I don’t want to or don’t feel I should and instead lying to the person and not giving them the common courtesy to look them in the eyes.

Quite frankly this didn’t use to bother me that much because I let myself believe that my actions were justified, that I didn’t owe these people anything, and that they were actually being rude to me by coming up unbidden and asking me for something. But that changed over the last few years when I started doing things that brought me into contact more often with people who had hit hard some hard times, but who had an incredibly difficult time asking for or accepting help. It made me realize that as hard as it was for me to handle being asked for help it had to be infinitely harder for the person asking for help to find themselves in that position.

So that’s what has sealed the deal for me. Sure there are the folks out there running a scam like the folks at the gas station, and there are those who are on the street who will take whatever I give them and turn it into their next fix, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t at least do the right thing for me. That is to help those I can and look the others in the eye and tell them exactly why I can’t. At least then I can live my life without ever having to do the Guilty Mumble and Run again.

Where the Buck Stops

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A big part of being a good leader is doing the right thing when things don’t go right. Today I’d say the chief of the UNC-Greensboro campus police department is providing a small example of how to react when things go wrong. Here’s the story from my particular point of view:

Last night there was a shooting at an off-campus student apartment community. My son happens to attend UNCG and lives in an off-campus apartment, but not in the community where the shooting occurred. Knowing that his parents might hear about it and might be concerned for his safety he sent me a text saying that a shooting had happened near his apartment, but that it wasn’t in his particular apartment community and that he was fine. We definitely appreciated it, but it also caused me to start monitoring the news about the shooting. As always I turned to Twitter because that tends to be where I get news the earliest, including from the various local news outlets, and sure enough that’s where all the freshest info was coming from.

That’s why I was able to see these Tweets from UNCG:

UNCGTweet

See that top Tweet that includes a suspect description of “B/M, 6′-6’2″, Red Shirt, Red hat, Goatee and a large bottom lip”? Well that predictably struck many as a racist description and generated the responses you’d expect online. So what did the chief do? Well, among other things he sent a message to the UNCG community which my son received by email and forwarded to me:

To the UNCG Community,

On behalf of the UNCG Police Department, I want to apologize for what many considered a racially insensitive description included in one of the alerts last night. We give our staff a great deal of latitude in crafting emergency messages because safety often depends on timeliness.  Sometimes that means just repeating descriptions provided to us, as we did in this case.  However, we know our community and should be able to filter information in a way that reflects our values but still provides the information you need to stay safe.  One of our core values is Accountability, and, ultimately, I am the head of this agency, and I am accountable for the actions of those who serve you at the Police Department.  For that reason, I apologize to those who were offended. We can do better, and we will.

Jamie Herring
Chief of Police
UNCG Police Department
P.O. Box 26170
Greensboro, NC  27402

I truly can’t tell you anything about the department or the chief outside of this event because I haven’t had cause to pay any attention to them, but I can tell you that this is a very good response to a screw up that happened on his watch. It’s nice to see a leader accept the buck instead of passing it along.

The Blogfather

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Ed Cone was blogging before "blogger" became a pejorative. The Greensboro dead tree product carries a story about his decision to quit the blogging scene.

From his office three floors above South Elm Street — where he has an action figure perched on his window and a framed handwritten response from gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson on his wall — Ed wrote about it on Word Up.

Will it return? Who knows? Ed doesn’t. But there is this story I heard once about Ed’s great-grandfather, about how he used to row out to the middle of a lake in Maine and sit.

I ask Ed about it. He tells me he understands it now. It’s that need for quiet, for some contemplation. That’s what Ed is doing. For now.

 

Blogageddon

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In the span of 18 hours I learned that my RSS manager of choice, Google Reader, is going dark as of July 1, 2013 and that the Godfather of Blogging in the Triad is shutting down his blog for a while.  I understand Ed's motivation – I long ago morphed into a leisurely poster here because I just didn't have the time or energy to manage an ongoing dialogue like he has for 12 years – but I'm still really bummed to see him pull the plug. It will be interesting to see if anything fills the online void in Greensboro.

A serious hat tip to Ed for providing a valuable online forum for the Greensboro community. I hope he enjoys the peace and quiet.

Why No Trader Joe’s in GSO?

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The Triad Business Journal explores why there won't be a Trader Joe's in Greensboro in the near future. In addition to all of the reasons cited in the article – Greensboro not being on TJ's 2-year plan, the attorney involved in the proposed project last year no longer being involved, and nothing happening on the development front – they might want to add that no one in Greensboro (that I know of) made a video to try and woo Trader Joe's. Some folks in Winston-Salem did a couple of years ago and now we have a TJ's in Thruway. So, folks in GSO here's a helpful hint from your neighbors in Camel City.

Just Do Your Job

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Greensboro blogger Roch Smith, Jr. has been taking local CBS affiliate WFMY to task for passing off press releases or stories from other outlets as having been written by WFMY staffers. Roch calls it plagiarism, which I don't agree with IF the other parties are in agreement that it's okay for WFMY to do it. On the other hand it's incredibly lazy on the part of WFMY and it likely diminishes their reputation as a news outlet.

There's also a hidden danger to the practice of simply regurgitating press releases with the station's imprimatur: mistakenly giving credence to an organization, or even missing a story, because the station didn't bother to do any background on what it was sent. Today Roch found a perfect example of this at WFMY's website:

Here's why. When WFMY vomits up a glowing press release that touts a local sheriff heading off to some "border training" sponsored by Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) without any of their own investigation, they miss the rather important fact that FAIR is tied to white supremacy and bigotry.


WFMY not only gives their poor audience the impression that everything is just peachy with the sheriff's trip — just as the press release promises and just as they've affirmed by putting a staff person's name to it — but they also fail to see the news right under their nose and ask the obvious question which is why the hell are local sheriffs attending a "training" event sponsored by this group?

So here's a lesson for you kids: laziness in your work almost always comes back to bite you. It will be interesting to see what happens with this.

Trader Joe’s Big Brother

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I remember reading an article (I think in Wired magazine) years ago about the parent company for Trader Joe's, but I'd forgotten about it until I saw this Freakonomics post:

The company is called Aldi and, though I’d seen one or two of its stores in the past, I didn’t even know it was a grocery store. Then I read this very interesting Wall Street Journal piece about the company’s ambitious new plan for the U.S., which calls for 75 new stores this year. The article claims that Aldi is so good at selling cheap goods that WalMart couldn’t compete with it in Germany.

So, for those of you waiting with bated breath for Trader Joe's to announce a store opening in Winston-Salem or Greensboro, you can already shop at its big brother's stores.  Here's a handy-dandy list of locations for you.

A Tale of Two Cities

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I live in Lewisville and I work in Greensboro for a trade association that works with companies throughout the 12 counties of the Piedmont Triad so you could say I live the whole "regionalism" thing.  Because I'm paid to stay on top of what's going on throughout the Triad I track the news in Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Burlington, Mebane, etc. and every once in a while I'll notice an interesting contrast between the various municipalities.  Today after checking my news feed I came to the startling realization that if you went by the local blogs alone you'd have to believe that Greensboro is a graveyard for restaurants while Winston-Salem is experiencing a veritable renaissance of eateries.

From the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership blog in the last day or two:

Via Ed Cone's blog I found this post on 99 Blocks titled Vanishing Eateries – Can you help us out? about the restaurant closings in Greensboro.

As commenters at Ed's place pointed out the restaurant business is notoriously risky and in any given downtown you're going to see any number of restaurants come and go on a regular basis.  My point is that if you were to base your assessment of the health of these two cities' restaurant sectors on what you read online you'd think that the folks in Greensboro are going to all be burning up the travel lanes on westbound I-40 to get a decent meal. I know some folks in Winston-Salem who'd claim that's always been the case, but I'm here to tell you that there are some great places to eat in both cities.  If you feel like picking up the tab I'll be happy to take you on a tour.