Be safe
This time of year, you hear the words teenager, excessive speed and alcohol mixed together in news stories all too much.

School is almost out. It’s party season, and all the lectures, all the peer support and every effort to ask, plead and demand that our sons and daughters make responsible choices are up against some pretty tough odds.

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 By William Schweke

Twenty years ago, North Carolina was not a player in the controversial national competition between states sometimes referred to as “the corporate incentives game.” Today, it’s a “leader” (at least in the eyes of the site location profession) and has set new precedents for how much a job is “worth” with its recent and costly winning bids for Dell and Google. These “successes” have, in turn, raised the expectations of relocating businesses everywhere for even more lucrative deals and pressured other states to match North Carolina’s largess for the privilege of providing a home for a new plant, distribution center or headquarters.

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By Al McSurely

A favorite last-ditch tactic of the Big Lie is to send out high-ranking officials as rabbits to deflect attention and indictments from their sponsors. Our high-paid, blow-dried TV talking heads are suckers for this ploy. Chattering away, like they did when Cheney/Bush lied us into Iraq, the millionaire talking heads appear clueless to the origins of the expression “fall guy.” Even after Scooter Libby’s lawyer spelled it out to the jury. And the jury foreperson spelled it out to the media:

“Libby is a fall guy.” He is falling on his sword for his sponsor, Dick Cheney. The talking heads repeated the clue, but did no follow up. Two months later, the White House sent out another rabbit and the talking heads chased him with the same gullibility. Alberto Gonzalez, facing criminal indictment for conspiracy to institutionalize racist voter suppression in Arkansas and other key swing states, could remember inconsequential interactions over the years, but his mind went blank about all but one of his interactions with his Texas sponsors, George Bush and Karl Rove.
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Carrboro Fire Department officials have announced the date for a pubic design charrette for the town’s new fire station.

The new station — dubbed fire station number two for now — is located at 1411 Homestead Road and will provide fire protection and medical response to the citizens in the Northern Transition Area.

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John W. Vadney, 84, of Mebane, died Monday at Duke University medical Center.

A native of Albany, NY, he was a member of St. Thomas More Catholic Church and retired as a telephone repairman.

A mass will be conducted at 11:00 Thursday at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. Burial will follow in the Union Grove United Methodist Church Cemetery.

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Frank Graham Umstead, 91, of Chapel Hill, died April 28, 2007 after a long decline in health. He was born on June 9, 1915 in Greensboro to the late Sallie Reade and John Wesley Umstead, Jr., a fourteen-term N.C. legislator representing Orange County. He was the eldest of the Umstead’s four children and namesake of the late Frank Porter Graham, a close family friend. He was recently preceded in death by his beloved wife of 62 years, Margaret “Peggy” Burris Umstead; and by his parents; his brother, John Wesley Umstead, III; and his sister, Sarah E. Umstead.

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Carrboro’s DSI Comedy Theater has announced the hiring of Shane Hudson as its new theater manager.

Hudson attended Emerson College, earning a BFA in arts management. He worked for 14 years in the Boston area as an arts administrator, where he was general manager for Blue Man Group Boston, theater manager for the Charles Playhouse and an arts program administrator for Brandeis University.

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Tiles from Ali Sobel-Read at N.C. Crafts Gallery 

The 2nd Friday ArtWalk is this week, and there’s a special push on to walk Carrboro — and not just on Friday.

The ArtWalk is a traditional time to take to the streets and view displays through the downtowns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Now a group of Carrboro residents wants to take it to a higher level.

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