Ruby Sinreich's blog
I have no idea what the story is behind this, but I bet it's interesting. Seven months after resigning as the head of Economic Development for the Town of Chapel Hill and taking effectively the same position for the City of Raleigh, Dwight Basset has come back to his old job. I wonder how all those people who blamed his departure on Chapel Hill's supposed E.D. failings will interpret this?
Personally I hope Bassett returns with some fresh ideas about local economies and especially about citizen particpation, which is one area where Chapel Hill has a lot to learn from Raleigh.
Some highlights from the Town's announcement:
Dwight Bassett will return to the Town of Chapel Hill as Economic Development Officer (EDO) and part of the Town team devoted to policy and strategic initiatives supporting the goals of Chapel Hill 2020, Town Manager Roger Stancil announced today (Monday, Oct. 15).
First some digital goodies: This site has a few cool tricks and an archive of 3,600 posts that don't get utilized much. One is the random post generator: http://orangepolitics.org/random. Another is what I call "in review." It allows you filter and sort posts by date and rating to find some of the best (and worst) and most commented posts of previous eras: http://orangepolitics.org/in-review. For example, here are the top rated posts of the past 365 days.
And some less virtual treats: at today's birthday party we'll be serving BBQ sliders, catfish bites, and hushpuppies from Hillsborough BBQ, as well as fresh, delicious beer (by the pint) from Mystery Brewing. And there will also be a limited number of cupcakes from Weaver Street Market's bakery for the early birds.
Thursday marks the 9th anniversary of the day OrangePolitics came to be. A few of you old timers will remember that it didn't always work the way it did today. OP's first platform was MovableType. It didn't offer much in the way of comment moderation, which led to some very crazy things being posted on the site. In 2004, I moved the site to Wordpress, an open source platform that was better, but lacked some key community elements.
Five years ago, I asked for donations from the OP community to help bring us to a proper community platform. Readers donated $1,134 and we were able to move the site to Drupal 5. I think most people agree that having community tools such as real profiles for each user and the ability for everyone to blog without having to publish to the front page are big improvements.
I was a bit of a doubter
when Holden Thorp was first appointed to be the UNC Chancellor, but he
has turned out to be the best thing to happen to South Building in
decades. I’ve been surprised to see some of my friends blaming Thorp for
UNC’s athletics scandal and acting as if staff abuse of med air flights
was a capital crime.
Thorp clearly seems guilty of trusting Matt Kupec too much, and
allowing him to waste taxpayer dollars. But Thorp is also a tremendously
thoughtful and effective leader of this hugely complex academic
institution. One stupid screw-up wasting money does not outweigh the
great job he has done for many thousands of students, for Orange County,
and for the state of North Carolina. In fact, I think he’s due a lot of
credit for the badly-needed daylight that’s been shed on UNC athletics.
The Chancellor’s position has become untenable now because of athletic boosters and anti-intellectuals like Art Pope
pounding the drums of “scandal.” These people are not concerned with
the quality of education available to North Carolinians. Of course the
Kupec/Hansbrough thing was a big mistake, but it doesn’t make Thorp
unfit to do all the many things required of a good university
chancellor. Let’s don’t blame Thorp for having to clean up the mess left
by decades of athletic corruption and mismanagement.
A friend of mine who is a teacher at a local high school asked me to post the following story. My friend requested that I share this without any identifying information so as not to compromise student trust and confidentiality.
One of my students (a 16 year old) is on the email list for Expressions, the shop on Franklin Street. Over Labor Day Weekend, he received an email stating that if he came in to the store and said the words "purple bud" he would get a good sized free sample of some brand of Spice -- synthetic weed. He did. This particular brand of synthetic weed is "legal" only because the laws regulating most synthetic weed as a class one scheduled narcotic haven't quite caught up to the chemicals that are sprayed on the plants. Apparently, North Carolina has recently joined an initiative with 28 other states banning these forms of synthetic marijuana.
Pages
About Us
OrangePolitics is a not-for-profit website for discussing progressive perspectives on politics, planning, and public policy in Orange County, NC. Opinions are those of their authors. Learn more.
Community Guidelines
By using this site, you agree to our community guidelines. Inappropriate or disruptive behavior will result in moderation or eviction.
Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by
WeebPal.
