31 July 2007
Best wiki use in CHCHCP?
What's the best use of Wiki technology that produces real value for the people of this area?
Finding shops and services
There are many online options open to us when trying to find a shop, a restaurant, another business or service in CHCHP. What are some of the best? This one from the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership is particularly good. What are the best for the rest of the area? How well do they work? Is this the best one for Hillsborough?
Connecting CHCHP......
How good a job are we doing in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and Pittsboro (CHCHP) at connecting ourselves to all that the web and e-mai can do? How good a job are we doing of connecting ourselves to one another, especially our friends and neighbors, our governments, our schools, and our businesses and services? We will try to report periodically on how this seems to be changing......
The area's best websites?
Who has done somethng really special - specifically - with their website that should put it among the area's very best?
The best online maps of CHCHP?
Who has used some combination of technology and design to come up with the best and most valuale online maps relating to CHCHP?
Best blogs of Chapel Hill?
What are the best blogs that relate in some way to Chapel Hill - other than those simply done by people who live here (we can list them separately!)? Who is putting the blog technology to use to help CHCHP (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough and Pittsboro) be a better place to live?
Whole Foods selling local food
Whole Foods has a sign out front saying that they are selling many food items that they buy locally. Wouldn't it be nice to see on a map what and where these are?
Age pays!
For those moving beyond the 50 mark, there are a number of ways in which local merchants are rewarding all those years. Kohl's offers a 15% discount, at least from time to time, to those 62 or over. The Lumina theater in Southern Village offers a lower ticket price for those 60 or over. The first day of every month is Senior Day at Belk but I think this applies only to the 65 or over crowd. I'll try to add more in this post and some links for details.
Trader Joe's
Lots of activity at the old Southern Season/new Trader Joe's site. Surely, we can find some details of what they are doing, what they are planning, and how the timetable is evolving. I think the expected opening is to be before Christmas? So far, there is nothing on the Trader Joe's site about "coming soon" to Chapel Hill.
06 July 2007
20 June 2007
18 June 2007
Chapel Hill and Mont Boron - Part I - Recycling
Mont Boron, France - I just made a note to myself to remember to put out the recycling on Wednesday. If I were back in Chapel Hill, I'd be doing the same, but where we live, a reminder to put out the blue boxes on Tuesday.
Here on Mont Boron, a hill that makes up the southeastern corner of the city of Nice, we are big on recycling, except for "mixed paper" as we call it in Chapel Hill. The newspapers and magazines here go into a conainer that's a five minute walk from our front door. Ditto with glass of all kinds.
The rest - and I mean virtually everything that won't "spoil" (excluding mixed paper....something I am seeking to clarify, but also including cardboard, plastic bags, etc.) - goes into a city-provided rolling cart with a smart yellow lid. Once a week, they come by in the late evening and empty those containers up and down the street. We put it out early evening and bring it in the next morning.
And, just as in Chapel Hill, everything we can possibly compost goes into the composter.
What's still surprising to me is that now that we have far less "all other" garbage than goes into our yellow-topped cart, another truck still passes our house 5 nights a week to collect any garbage that we put out.
But that's just our experience and what I see and hear from our French neighbors.
Another day it would be even more interesting to see how we compare overall in how much garbage we are producing here on Mt Boron and back in Chapel Hill and what the recycling trends are.
Here on Mont Boron, a hill that makes up the southeastern corner of the city of Nice, we are big on recycling, except for "mixed paper" as we call it in Chapel Hill. The newspapers and magazines here go into a conainer that's a five minute walk from our front door. Ditto with glass of all kinds.
The rest - and I mean virtually everything that won't "spoil" (excluding mixed paper....something I am seeking to clarify, but also including cardboard, plastic bags, etc.) - goes into a city-provided rolling cart with a smart yellow lid. Once a week, they come by in the late evening and empty those containers up and down the street. We put it out early evening and bring it in the next morning.
And, just as in Chapel Hill, everything we can possibly compost goes into the composter.
What's still surprising to me is that now that we have far less "all other" garbage than goes into our yellow-topped cart, another truck still passes our house 5 nights a week to collect any garbage that we put out.
But that's just our experience and what I see and hear from our French neighbors.
Another day it would be even more interesting to see how we compare overall in how much garbage we are producing here on Mt Boron and back in Chapel Hill and what the recycling trends are.
17 June 2007
16 June 2007
Following Chapel Hill news from out of town.....
Local news that interests us, individually, does not cease to be of interest even though we may be out of town. It's a little like the tree falling in the forest and does it make a sound if no one is listening? Well, news happens whether we are in Chapel Hill and neigboring communities or not.
Each of us probably has come up with our own way of doing this, and I hope to expand my experience to include those of others.
Even when I am in Chapel Hill, I find it a challenge to follow the local news of interest to me. I read newspapers, visit websites, subscribe to e-mail and try to keep my ears open. Even with all that, I miss a lot sometimes briefly and sometimes forever.
When I am out of town, my choices are considerably reduced and I am reliant on someone contacting me by one communications tool or another to tell me some news and the internet - both for those e-mail subscriptions and for websites.
Studies show over and over again that most of us are most interested in the news closest to us geographically. (Sure, big news from elsewhere in the US and around the world can catapault into a position of great importance, but day in, day out, it is the local stuff that touches us in some way that always seems to be the most important to most people.
I live in Southern Village. How do I follow any news relating to Southern Village, downtown Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, the three places most local to me? Each of us has our own definition of news and that will be clearer after you look at the list below; some of the sources on the list may surprise you!
There is no one solution that does the job, but here are some that I have tried and some that I continue to use. I'll start the list (not necessarily in order) now and come back and add more and some comments on each:
Each of us probably has come up with our own way of doing this, and I hope to expand my experience to include those of others.
Even when I am in Chapel Hill, I find it a challenge to follow the local news of interest to me. I read newspapers, visit websites, subscribe to e-mail and try to keep my ears open. Even with all that, I miss a lot sometimes briefly and sometimes forever.
When I am out of town, my choices are considerably reduced and I am reliant on someone contacting me by one communications tool or another to tell me some news and the internet - both for those e-mail subscriptions and for websites.
Studies show over and over again that most of us are most interested in the news closest to us geographically. (Sure, big news from elsewhere in the US and around the world can catapault into a position of great importance, but day in, day out, it is the local stuff that touches us in some way that always seems to be the most important to most people.
I live in Southern Village. How do I follow any news relating to Southern Village, downtown Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, the three places most local to me? Each of us has our own definition of news and that will be clearer after you look at the list below; some of the sources on the list may surprise you!
There is no one solution that does the job, but here are some that I have tried and some that I continue to use. I'll start the list (not necessarily in order) now and come back and add more and some comments on each:
- Chapel Hill News
- Herald-Sun
- Carrboro Citizen
- WUNC
- Chapel Hill Wine Shop
- Carolina Inn
- Acme
- The Independent
- Chapel Hill Magazine
- News & Observer (The best option on the website is to go to the Orange County section; most, if not all, of the Chapel Hill stories that appear in the N&O are accessible here.)
- Southern Neighbor
- Daily Tar Heel
- Southern Village Listserv
- Sally GREENE
- Chapel Hill Town Listserv
- A Southern Season
- Google News
- The New York Times (I have chosen "Chapel Hill" as one of the key words that triggers an e-mail link; I have rarely seen any local news via this route of intense interest to me.)
Some general comments:
- It has been a long time since I recall getting a news "alert" related to Chapel Hill that I considered to be local news important to me.
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