"Les abeilles malades de l'homme"

This is a troubling article from Le Monde in France that talks about the challenge to bee populations in France and here in the US. It's a serious issue, as we have read several times in recent months. The question for Chapelboro is "what are we doing to make sure we are the good news answer to that problem?" In other words, how many bees do we have, and what are we doing to encourage more? As the Le Monde story points out, there is a great danger in all of us becoming "insectophobes"! [Just found that there are beekeeper associations in both Chatham and Orange counties. See this story on an event they helped organize earlier in the summer.]
For those interested in how issues important to us are playing out in other places, especially France, here is a link to a list of all of the food issues that have arisen recently in several European countries stemming from imports from China. While the list appears in l"Expansion, the French business-oriented magazine, there is a broad review in Le Monde today as well.

"The Black Swamp Bootleggers Bluegrass Band"

Here's the site for the group - a local Chapel Hill band - performing this Friday at "Fridays on the Porch" at the Carolina Inn. Has anyone heard them perform?

"Camp Carolina"

A production of the Southern Foodways Alliance; check it out.

"Wildflowers Find Favor With Highway Gardeners" - The New York Times

This is a great story from Felicity BARRINGER at The New York Times. Mentioned in the story is Derek SMITH, an environmental engineer here in North Carolina with the state department of transportation. I have contacted him by e-mail to ask for more information about how we can bring more wild flowers to the roads we travel in Greater Chapel Hill....from among Carrboro, Hillsborough and Pittsboro. When I hear from him, I will add more. (You'll find his name and others listed on this page.)

"Big Decline in U.S. Poverty Rate"- The New York Times

Now, let's bring that down to CHCHP......coming.

"SAT scores down in Triangle" - Triangle Business Journal

Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools drop 4 points, but remain at the top of the North Carolina list.

"UNC-TV cuts 15 positions" - News & Observer

How do people in CHCHP feel about this?

"Pittsboro Place gets a partial OK" - News & Observer

This potential new development deserves a lot of attention. It may determine just how busy 15-501 becomes and, more important for Pittsboro, define the character of that town for decades to come.

WCOM ENews

The Carrboro radio station is a great gift to the community, and it behooves all of us to be more engaged as listeners, contributors and commenters!

North Carolina needs to go on a very big diet starting now!

These figures were released today. North Carolina kids 10-17 are the 5th most overweight of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. That age group is fatter only in DC, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Among adults, wer rank as the 17th fattest state in the country. It takes a village to solve this problem; start with the next overweight person you meet and ask how you can help him or her lose weight. Everybody wins when you succeed, everybody.

Stations — The Story from American Public Media

This shows and lists the stations that broadcast "The Story" with Dick GORDON, produced in Chapel Hill in partnership with WUNC, and distributed by American Public Media. It's carried at 1 PM M-F on WUNC.

Studio will allow UNC to broadcast from campus - University

newsobserver.com | OK sought for four-story building in downtown Carrboro

Le Monde.fr : Michèle Alliot-Marie demande que soient interdits certains croisements de chiens

France is imposing new restrictions on the ownership and cross-breeding of "dangerous" dogs. What are the laws/rules in CHCHP?

newsobserver.com | RDU terminal-to-be takes off

Cary public input in CHCHP?

Are there any plans to do this sort of thing in any part of CHCHP?

O.J. Simpson book will not be stocked by Barnes & Noble

It's nice that we have these two bookstores and each can make its own decision about what to carry, and we all get to make a decision there, as well as on the web, as to what to buy, or not buy.

Value of CHCHP websites

We have lots and lots of websites tied to local people, places, businesses, organizations, institutions and governments. That's just the websites tied to our geography. Beyond lie all the big ones that some use a little, a lot or not at all.
But what is it that we actually use the local ones to do? Which are the most valuable? Which provide real help? The information we are seeking?
In other words, it's one thing to say my shop or organization has a website, and quite another thing to say that I went to x's website and could not even get the thing to load! How do we all help one another make these services work even better so that as many people as possible "win" in the process? I have some ideas. If anyone has some you'd like to share, please do so here if you are so inclined.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (free registration required)

How UNC fared in the Princeton Review survey.

Best College Newspaper: The New 2008 "Best 366 Colleges" Rankings on The Princeton Review

Congratulations to the Daily Tar Heel!

newsobserver.com | WCHL host marks 30 years

Renovated Morrison opens doors - Features

My boss: You, and 38,999 others - Opinion

Know your edit board - Opinion

New shop to satisfy local sweet tooth - City

Greenway to get extension - City

TV anchor raises funds at YMCA - City

Jazz Vocalist Susan Reeves: Dynamic, Bluesy, Soulful, Classy, Scintillating swing.

This was a superb evening on the Green at Southern Village last night. Anyone else attend who wants to offer their opinion. You can listen to her radio show tonight, and every Monday night, here.

"ECU adds text alerts" - The Daily Reflector

How do we in CHCHP get news like this? It really is a hodge-podge at this point, isn't it? When and where were the last times you learned of a significant emergency situation in the CHCHP region? I will try to develop a longer article on this, perhaps for Chapel Hill Magazine!

UNC News release -- North Carolina Public Radio/WUNC-FM reaches capital campaign goal early

It sure would be nice to know who gave the bulk of this money. We North Carolina citizens own this station and this should be public information.

"OWASA may declare water advisory" - chapelhillnews.com

Possible further Orange County water restrictions will be discussed on Thursday.

"Weight sting nets 115 truckers" - heraldsun.com

This strikes me as a very good thing to be doing!

V Route, Weekday Schedule | Chapel Hill Transit

For those who use the V route from or to Southern Village, the bus will not make as many twists and turns on the UNC campus starting on Monday.

False fire alarms in CHCHP

Yesterday, I waited outside 300 Market Street in Southern Village while Chapel Hill firemen waited for someone to come with a key to a storage room in which, it seems, fire alarm controls were located. I learned form the firemen that they had been responding to false alarms from this building many times.
I asked if there were other places in Chapel Hill with the same chronic problem. They said no. For UNC, they have an agreement that if they get a second false alarm from any spot on campus, a fire safety person from UNC must join them to resolve the difficulty. There are no fines on building owners for multiple false alarms. This information - the sending of false alarms - is all public information and it would make a good story to look at which businesses - and possibly some individuals - in all of the CHCHP jurisdictions are wasting the time of our firefighters.

Solar America Initiative: Solar America Cities

Why is CHCHP not on this list?

Music events

What's the best way to find all the music events in CHCHP? I have come to rely on the e-mail calendar to which I subscribe from Backporch Music at WUNC. Are there others that are better? The negative of the WUNC calendar is that it is not accessible online if you do not have the e-mail.

Movie searches

This is the movie search that we use - from the News & Observer. The New York Times offers another that seems to be equally up-to-date. Are there any others that are better? For CHCHP, Chapel Hill is the only town with movie theaters....so far.

General Store Cafe Dinner Menu M-W

I've never seen an automatic gratuity of 18% added to split checks. Yes, it's a little extra work, but I sure would not want to agree to give that much of a tip before I'm served and see if the service is worth that tip, more, or less. It says here, too, that you have to announce when seated that you will want a split check; perhaps that is for those people who ordered many different things and then ask the server to sort it all at the end by who had what. I never do that; when we split a check, we just tell the server to divide it down the middle, in thirds, or whatever applies.

How good are CHCHP schools today?

In learning more about the No Child Left Behind debate, it occurs to me that there ought to be some ways in which to evaluate how all of our CHCHP schools are performing, both public and private. Any ideas? Perhaps - as a non-parent - I'll start by what I can learn about the ways in which Scroggs Elementary School winds up getting evaluated, and perhaps the same for the pre-school here in Southern Village.

"West End valet service expanding" - Herald-Sun

OWASA - Supply and Demand Graphs

If you are curious about our water supply in parts of CHCHP (Orange County served by OWASA), there are some fairly intuitive charts and graphs on this page that help explain where we are. "Why" we seem to be doing so well when the rest of the state is in such a drought condition, however, is not explained. We, too, have gotten no rain - yet - but the reservoir levels are at what seem to me to be comfortably-high levels. Here is more information about the greater Triangle area, but it does not include Pittsboro. Here is more on the situation in Chatham.

Collecting restaurant reviews

There are so many different places where one might find, online, a review of a local restaurant. As blogs like this one explode, the number of those places is only going to increase, along with the volumne of such commentary. Wouldn't it be valuable to be able to go to a near-single place in order to see as many of these reviews as could be assembled, possibly with a little summary?
Imagine "reviews" like this one or a more traditional one - both for Bonne Soiree - being assembled in an easy-to-access format..... (Bonne Soiree, I learned last night from one of the owners, does not have a website and does not plan to have one.)

"Documents Describe Whole Foods’ Strategy" - The New York Times

Costco olive oil

While I am trying to limit notes here to stores in the CHCHP area, there are some that some of us use that are short drives away. Since we are trying to help people who live here, it makes sense to include some number of those when they are the closest store in a chain.
In this case, the store is Costco.
With the stir created recently over the suspect origin of Italian olive oil, I decided to test how easy it would be to check on whether Costco was really on top of this. For the 2 liter bottles that we buy there, I asked them to tell me how they verified the claim on the bottle that all oilves came from Italy. A very helpful woman by the name of Tammy said she would get an answer within 24 hours. She got back to me within 20 saying she could have called earlier but did not want to wake me up! The answer was reassuring. She said that Costco sends its own people "into the fields" to inspect, and then follows through with the manufacturing process as well.
I have always like Costco, and now I like them even more for being so responsive and reassuring about their product.

Harris Teeter and Lowes personal shopping lists

I got an e-mail today from Harris Teeter inviting me to click and construct my own shopping list both from this week's specials and beyond. The tool works very well, and I actually might use it in the future now that I have those discount coupons to use! It does not appear, however, that you can get to it other than from the e-mail you can get for free if you have a VIC card from Harris Teeter.
Lowe's sent me the same kind of offer - to create a shopping list including specials. Unlike the Harris-Teeter offer, this one cannot be e-mailed. It also does not appear to be accessible from the main website without coming through the e-mail sent to holders of the Lowe's frequent shopping card.

"Triangle trees desperate for a drink" - newsobserver.com

The trees in our backyard, at least the younger ones, seem highly stressed to the point of looking near death.

"University Inn approaching its final days" - heraldsun.com

"Town aims to clean up park, waterways" - heraldsun.com

This is in the southwest part of the town of Pittsboro. I will try to add a map.

"Guard helicopter spots marijuana" - heraldsun.com

Between Chapel Hill and Pittsboro.

Azure Grille

Four of us had a very good meal at Azure Grille last night. We ate outside away from the sidwalk and it was a very nice evening for doing so. The wine we picked from Australia, a Penfolds Shiraz-Cabernet was excellent and very well priced under $30. The crab cakes were great as appetizers, along with two of the salads we had - one the baby greens and the other a caesar. The bread was a big disappointment; WonderBread might have been better, and the size of the dipping oil/tapenade was a joke (one of the smallest I've ever seen). Main courses and service overall were wonderful. Three of us had the risotto which was done very well indeed, as was a shrimp entree. Dessert was first class, two of us having the blueberry and peach cobbler (the blueberries overwhelmed the peaches, however) and the other two enjoying a cantaloupe sorbet and a wonderful mint chocolate chip cheesecake.

Harris Teeter

The Harris Teeter computer thinks that we have either "decreased" or "stopped " our shopping at their stores. So they sent us coupons today offering $20 total on $100 of purchases. On the one hand, the $20 is nice, but on the other, it is still a little spooky to think of how many computers are hard at work following, analyzing and now acting on personal information about us!

National Do Not Call Registry

Today, I got a call from (Credit) Card Services, Dallas, TX (214-245-0885) promoting a credit card consolidation service. Our number is on the FTC's Do Not Call list and so I filed a complaint with the FTC about this on a very easy-to-use form linked above. In the event that this firm is targeting numbers in this area, this may be a useful thing for others to do as well.

Murders in Chapel Hill?

With so much attention being given to the apparent horrific murders of young people in Newark, NJ, I wonder how many murders there have been in the CHCHP area this year? I doubt it is zero, but whatever number above that it is, perhaps we should go back and take a little more time describing those lives that were lost. Who were these people? What was it that made their lives special? What were the specific circumstances - as best known - that brought those lives to an end?

Bonne Soiree

It is surprising to find a restaurant without a website anymore. Such is apparently the case with Bonne Soiree in Chapel Hill and I will ask them when I got there tonight why they do not have one.

Morning and evening outings today

This morning, I had to drop something off at a doctor's office in Chapel Hill. What was nice about that was how committed the nurse was there to dealing with the problem at hand. That could happen anywhere, but the fact that it is "remarkable" says something all by itself.

It was surprising to find that the CVS in the shopping center opposite EastGate (next to Food Lion) does not open until 9 AM. More positive was the clerk - or maybe manager - pointing out a new item at the store for kids "of all ages".....a little pocket antibacterial spray. For 1.99, it was a great deal. It's been a while since an employee in one of thos chain stores has recommended anything to me. It was a nice touch.

At Staples, there was more good news. I could not find a chair "pad" that I needed among those on display. After buying some other things, the employee went to the back, crawled on his stomach to check the label on the box, and produced exactly what I needed. He carried it to the cash register and I was on my way.

This evening, we go to the Azure Grille in Meadowmont for dinner with friends. I used the power of their website and my connection to it to print out the summer menu (nice to see something like this really kept up to date), the wine list, and the dessert list so that my wife and I can have a look before we get there. It is too bad that the page of specials was empty, and they need to provide some better tips on how to print pages; only the first page prints for me.

Map of 2007 Orange County candidates

I can only assume that the flags on this map reflect where they live; it is not at all clear.

"Dining cars bound for Carrboro" - Chapel Hill News

It looks from a distance as though they are hard at work!

National Night Out

None of the towns in CHCHP are registered here. I wonder why that is the case? There is probably more to the story..... Well, it looks like there is something, but this is the only information I found.

"Chapel Hill Restaurant Reviews, Doctors, Bars, Salons, Dentists and More" - Yelp

"Reinspecting Bridges" - The New York Times

The US Department of Transportation has not included any bridges in the CHCHP region among the 450 requiring reinspection because they are similar in design to the one that collapsed in Minneapolis.

"Chapel Hill pushes healthy lifestyle" - News & Observer

"Robbers Continue Crime Spree in Chapel Hill" - abc11tv.com

Where were these nine?

Friends of Bolin Creek

Another great resource!

Farmers' Markets

We have a number of Farmer' Markets in CHCHP. How are they doing? The one on Thursday in Southern Village seems to be getting smaller. Is it viable? Are the others successful? What are the trends? What can we all do to help?

Trees

How many trees do we have in CHCHP? Who's keeping track. I thought of this in seeing all of the trees cut down for the Southern Community Park. See what some cities are doing here.

Bus routes

I wonder how often the Chapel Hill bus routes change? Wouldn't be a great add-on to their site to be able to offer general comments about new or changed routes, and specifically to comment on changes that would improve individual routes?

Taking the bus from Southern Village to Carrboro

Walking from Carrboro to Southern Village

Sam W Hitt Medicinal Plant Gardens

I stumbled upon this garden while waiting for a bus yesterday. Every place is rapidly getting its own webpage or more! I wanted to know more about the garden and who was Sam HITT. Clearly someone was expecting I and others might be interested.....

"Pozen stocks plunge on news of delay" - News & Observer

This is a Chapel Hill-based business.

Studio 91 wine bar?

There is a sign in their window in Meadowmont saying their wine bar is now open. Nothing here yet on their website.

American Tobacco Trail

The Trail is referred to often as being in the Triangle, which it is, but how can one WALK from Chapel Hill to the Trail? What is the shortest distance and and best route to do this? Or a bus? This News & Observer story says that the Trail will "connect the Triangle" and reports that the Trail may be finished in summer 2010.

Local at Whole Foods

Whole Foods plans to feature its local products:

"Friday, August 3rd
It's Local! a Celebration of North Carolina4:00–7:00pmStop by and sample the wonderful local produce, seafood, cheese, breads and beer, among other items which North Carolina has to offer. We will be showcasing growers and producers whose products are featured everyday, all year long in our store.
Saturday, August 11th
It's Local! a Celebration of North Carolina11:00–3:00pmStop by and sample the wonderful local produce, seafood, cheese, breads and beer, among other items which North Carolina has to offer. We will be showcasing growers and producers whose products are featured everyday, all year long in our store.
Friday, August 31st
It's Local! a Celebration of North Carolina4:00–7:00pmStop by and sample the wonderful local produce, seafood, cheese, breads and beer, among other items which North Carolina has to offer. We will be showcasing growers and producers whose products are featured everyday, all year long in our store."

Great Harvest Bread Co - New Owners

This just received in a broadcast e-mail from the owners, announcing a sale of the business:

"It is with mixed emotions that Joan and I announce the sale of our Great Harvest Bakery to Martin and Rebecca McCorkle.
Most important to you is that Great Harvest in Chapel Hill will remain Great Harvest and continue to strive daily to give you the best bread in the Triangle while maintaining a high standard for community involvement.
The final closing of the sale and transfer of operations to Martin and Rebecca is scheduled for the 14th of August.
Martin and Rebecca started their training four weeks ago, but Joan and I will assist them for at least one week to ensure a smooth transition.
It’s very difficult for us, the Krueger’s, to find the words to express our gratitude for your support over the last 5 years. Like any thriving business, Great Harvest is nothing without you. We plan to continue to live in Chapel Hill for the foreseeable future. I will be looking for other employment just so Joan doesn’t have to put up with me around the house.
Other than that, our “retirement plans” are wide open."

Fresh Market coming to Chapel Hill

Fresh Market will be replacing the Harris Teeter on Route 54, opposite Glen Lennox. If you want to see what's coming, there is one in Cary, and two in Raleigh - here and here.