Cone and I met at the Weatherspoon Museum yesterday to finalize and visualize what will occur in the museum's auditorium on Saturday.  What started off as a lark a few short weeks ago has blossomed into a sum far exceeding it's many parts.

We initially and internally decided that Saturday's Piedmont Blogger Conference would be a rousing success if we could get fifteen people in the same room together to discuss political blogging.  We are now at 50 confirmed.

Because of the gathering's "un-conference" format, no pecking order will be observed.  The Cone facilitated "we're all bloggers now" second session will bring that point home.  Blogging is the ultimate journalistic equalizer - we all write in 10 point fonts.  The only differences are in experience, command of language and point of view.

Conference info here including maps and directions.  Conference weblog is here.

Figuring that people might be impressed if the facilitators actually had some idea of what they were doing, last night I emailed Ed, Matt and Ruby to get input on subject matter.  Even though the format will be free-wheeling, there are certain things that we just shouldn't forget to cover.  Which brings me to this...

What would YOU like to hear discussed the most?  What specific information do you hope to glean from the wealth of talent that will occupy the room?  Comment below or take what you get.

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Two long held traditions end this week in the Aycock Neighborhood - one we saw coming, the other... not.

World War Memorial Stadium will host its last professional baseball games this week.  More on this later, but part of the traditions the old stadium held for me, mine and others is a simple badge of honor that many neighborhood children have attained over the years.

To walk to WMS from Cypress Street, we must cross two four-lane thoroughfares - Yanceyville Street and Summit Avenue.  After years of accompanying children with hand holding, traffic light function observations, "too-far-ahead-of-me" beratement and a near miss or two - there comes a time when the kids will plead.  "Come on Dad, you don't have to go with me - I'll be fine... all I need is ten bucks", and you relent.

With the new stadium being much further away, Aycock parents will now have to keep saying no to such pleadings until our children are of an age when walking to the stadium by themselves just won't be "cool".

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Every morning, for the past five or six years, there has been a gathering at 7:00a at the corner of Percy and Cypress Streets - the school bus stop.  Tradition dictates that parents wait on the bus in bathrobes sipping coffee - the kids bring UgGiOh cards, soccer balls, bicycles or whatever they think their parents will carry back to the house after the bus departs as kisses are blown through the air.

Because of the new hub system for magnet school buses, the ride from school doesn't get the kids home until over an hour after school is let out - its a ten minute car ride.  After a couple of weeks of hoping the system would reduce the ride time and get closer to the 35 minutes we have been used to all these years - most parents finally formed a car pool and said "no thanks" to busing.

This morning, it was just Jesse and I - we'll have to start some new traditions for his final year of elementary school.

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