Louisa Lauver, who lives across the street from us here on Cypress Street took up painting in her "spare time" a little while ago.  She has now collected enough to start to sell them and what better way to do that than a weblog.

Go check out LouisasPaintings.  She has some cool stuff.  I really like the one below called Front Porch View From Cypress Street. I'm especially partial to it because the house on the left is the Hoggard mansion.

12:34:52 PM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks

Update 3:00p - I am finally catching up on my NR reading from the past week.  An unposted article from Thursday's paper covered the school board forum that was held at Irving Park Elementary during whcih incumbent Kris Cooke and challenger Bill Davidson apparently had time to really duke it out.

The article quoted part of Davidson's response to how school violence can be best be curbed.  While I agree with his view that "teachers need greater authority to deal with troublemakers", I disagree with his apparent philosophy on how he believes a student and a teacher should relate to each other when he says, "Kids are basically not scared of teachers."

We should strive for all students to respect teachers, not be scared of them.  Fear is a negative trait that only breeds contempt - respect is positive trait that is beneficial to all involved and should be the goal.  I want to be sure my school board representatives understand the difference.

**************

"Files? We don't need no stinking files."

In his usual "cut to the chase" manner, Mr. Sun has convinced me to give up my quest to get District 7 school board candidate Bill Davidson to follow through on his pledge to make his personnel files "wide open" for public inspection.

In the 60th, and perhaps last, comment to my very popular SOS post, Mr. Sun asks readers to simply look at the information available in order to judge a candidate's qualifications.  Good advice.

"Read these posts from start to finish. Ask yourself, "what has Davidson's impact been on the communities in which he participates?" I see an unbroken trail of conflict, ideology over practicality, self-absorption and defensiveness. Read his own posts and see those same qualities between every line."

Even though I am convinced there is pertinent information in the files, Sun suggests: "Let the files stay private and we can judge by the milestone declarations that the employer is willing to make and the personal accounts of peers, superiors and direct reports."

We already have a declaration from a former employer when Dr. Collette Love stated that she would not hire the candidate as a teacher.  Also, in the comments to the SOS post, a "recent Page parent" provides an account of his experiences with Davidson as a his chidlren's teacher that mirrors many back channel accounts I have recieved but don't have permission to post.   Although I wish the commenter had not posted anonymously, the account sounds genuine.

I agree with Sun that a candidate should be judged by statements made on the record.  Also, I agree with Friday's News & Record assessment of school board candidates when they state that Davidson, "provides little in the way of a positive agenda".

Now, let's move on.

9:00:23 AM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks

Because it wasn't posted online, I found out about the Simkins PAC endorsements (PDF file) by reading Mark Binkers post over at The Inside Scoop Thursday night. 

Only one surprise among the lot and it wasn't the fact that they broke Democratic ranks and gave the nod to Mike Winstead over Mike Barber and Jim Capo.  Skip Alston felt deeply wronged by a couple of Barber's votes, so there was no way the PAC was going to endorse him.  In that race, because of the fact that District 7 is very nearly lilly white (90.5%), the PAC's influence there is almost nil anyway.

• As an aside, there is some rich Republican irony in the PAC's endorsement of Winstead over Barber.  The Republican's most familiar campaign fear statement is the fact that if the Democrats win, Skip Alston will again become Chairman of the Board (I think Skip did a pretty good job at it BTW).  By grudge-endorsing Winstead, the PAC is apparentlly OK with the fact that they might be party to shifting the balance of power away from the Democrats.  Very interesing in my book.

The surprise was the fact that they have come out against the County P&R Bond issue.  Committee Chair Steve Bowden was reported to have said that "PAC members weren't convinced that the money would be equally distributed throughout the county to include... East Greensboro."  The fact of the matter is that the ONLY pre-determined project for any of the bond money lies squarely within East Greensboro:  A community track and field facility for Aycock Middle School.

During the County Commissioner's hearing on the question of whether or not the Parks Bond should be put on the ballot I spoke in support of the measure's $3M set-aside for development of 10 "School Parks" throughout the county.  I specifically made the Commissioners aware of exactly what $300,000 could accomplish for East Greensboro and how that money could be leveraged to obtain an additional $50,000 grant from Nike to expand the scope of the project.  In addition, I have called my Commissioner Alston and made him personally aware of how some of the bond money would specifically benefit out District.

So even though the article says PAC Chair Steve Bowden claims that information regarding park projects for East Greensboro was not available at the time the PAC made its endorsements, in actuallity the ONLY information for such projects involved East Greensboro and at least one leader of the PAC knew it.

8:52:00 AM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks