Eugene Brown - embarrassing!

I spotted this story on WRAL.com today: "Durham councilman: officers' arrest embarrassing." And even before I clicked on the link I thought -- gotta be councilman Eugene Brown.

Why? 'Cause EB was born to make the grandiose finger-wagging pronouncement of blame. Need someone to call out someone else in Durham? Eugene should be #1 on your virtual Rolodex.
But then I started wondering why I was so confident it was Eugene, and then I remembered: I've seen this before! Only I didn't realize how often I had. With a little help from the Google elves and LexisNexis I found ...

• "'This is ground zero in government failure,' City Councilman Eugene Brown said. 'It's really an embarrassment.'" (Durham keeps rolling with struggling development project -- WRAL, 10/5/09 and similar "embarrassing" comment two days later in the Independent Weekly)
• "'[...] Duke did not make their case very well,' Brown said. 'They didn't make it very well at all, and it's embarrassing, and they know it.'" (Spat with city over private streets nears resolution -- Duke Chronicle, 4/15/09)
• "Said Councilman Eugene Brown, 'I think it’s an embarrassment. How many times does it take for them to get things right?'” (Durham Housing Authority still troubled, Independent Weekly, 9/3/08)
• "'This is just embarrassing,' Durham City Councilman Eugene Brown said Monday." (Reports: Wake, Durham probation offices 'in crisis' -- WRAL, 8/25/08)
• "[...] Councilman Eugene Brown said Tuesday that the incident is 'embarrassing for the entire community.'" (Housing funds case unravels -- Herald-Sun, 5/25/08)
• "As Councilmember Eugene Brown said last week, 'It was an embarrassing chapter in the life of Durham. It's time to put it behind us.'" (Bitter end of the city loan scandal -- Herald-Sun (via LexisNexis), 2/19/08)
• "'It's really an embarrassment that we're going through this and that we have to do this process,' Durham City Councilman Eugene Brown said." (Durham PD Goes Under the Microscope for Lacrosse Case -- WRAL, 7/20/07)
• "'Right now, we're in a reactive mode and not a proactive mode,' Councilman Eugene Brown said Friday. 'We've got to put this sucker out, and that's why we're talking to people like that group out of Virginia. The longer it goes on, the more embarrassing it is to the city.'" (Fire foam gets green light -- Herald-Sun (via LexisNexis), 9/23/06
• "City Councilman Eugene Brown agreed. 'It's always problematic when you have those hired and paid for enforcing the law breaking the law,' he said. 'I want to withhold judgment, but so far, this is just embarrassing.'" (Two Durham officers charged with assault -- Herald-Sun, 7/28/06)
• "'That search was a primer on how not to hire a police chief,' Brown said. 'It was an embarrassment. We were the laughingstock for the state.'" (Durham police chief search set -- News & Observer, 7/18/06)
• "'I hope, folks, that we have learned from this very embarrassing episode,' Councilman Eugene Brown said." (Council accepts Canal Street audit -- Herald-Sun (via LexisNexis), 10/5/04)

Let's say it together as Eugene would -- EMBARRASSING!

What a (solid) waste

"We encourage those folks to call us to get that extra cart because we want our tonnage to go up as high as it can go," says Durham's Solid Waste Management director Donald Long. What's he talking about? Getting people to recycle as much as possible! Who are "those folks"? Residents who are recycling so much that they need a second 95-gallon cart!

WOW! They need a second cart because they are recycling so much! That's awesome! People are keeping more waste out of landfills and helping the planet. How can we reward them for this effort? Let's see how director Long chose to do it:

To accommodate people who find that their bins are overflowing with materials by the end of two weeks, the city has started renting out extra containers for $18 a year.

Nice! You're doing such a great job that we would like to make you PAY for it! Well done, Durham, pat yourself on the back for this one.

(Via WRAL.com)

Changes at Watts Grocery

Watts Grocery, the Broad Street haven for Durham foodies, has a few changes coming up. First there are the usual seasonal menu changes which include:

• Braised lamb shanks with Sea Island pea ragout
• Southern Fish and Chips (at lunch only) with catfish fingers and house cut fries
• Caramel Cake with cranberry compote
• Oyster, Shrimp, and Andouille Jambalaya with short grain rice
• Warm apples with Mas de Lavail ice cream and crisp walnut cookies
• Roast poulet rouge de Piedmont with Lee Brothers' pimento cheese potato gratin and pecan pan sauce

Mmmmm, pimento cheese anything sounds good to me, so I'm looking forward to the gratin. I wonder if it's offered as a side, though, since I doubt I'll order the chicken. And I love the Southern Fish and Chips idea -- hope there's the requisite Southern fried seafood condiments of cocktail sauce and tartar sauce too.

One other big change for WG is the axing of the late-night hours. I asked chef/owner Amy Tornquist about this by e-mail and she replied that it wasn't working as well as they would have hoped and that "it always seemed a little bit of a painful shift for the front of the house" because of the small WG staff. Amy's willing to reconsider in the future but only if there's a way to do it without taxing everyone. It'll surely be a loss for Durham's late-night offerings but will still remain a superb option for lunch, dinner and Sunday brunch.

Amy was also kind enough to share the full new menus (which haven't been posted on the WG site as of yet) so here they are: Lunch/Dinner and Brunch/Dessert. Enjoy!

(photo via http://blog.indienc.com/2009/03/watts-grocery-durham/)

KIng's Sandwich Shop -- still in progress

I noticed yesterday that the renovation of King's Sandwich Shop has moved forward one more step -- note the cool new logo on the east side of the building:

Here's an artist's rendering of how the new place will appear when complete:

(from August's Durham Magazine article)

Help students learn more about the Constitution!

A shameless request for you to jump in the fun and help 10th grade students in Durham learn more about the US Constitution in my Civics and Economics class. C&E is required for graduation in NC and there's also an End of Course test that the students need to pass to get credit for the class. I've created my first DonorsChoose project to get a class set of this graphic novel adaptation of the US Constitution.

It's a terrific new way to tell a 222 year old story: how can a document that old still be relevant to our lives and our government? Through amazing images and words Jonathan Hennessey and Aaron McConnell vividly describe not only that summer in 1787 but also important cases that have tested the Constitution in the years since. I'm hoping that this innovative method of storytelling will make learning more interesting and fun!

If you can, please click this link to give $ to my project so that my students can use these texts to be the best C&E students they can be! I thank you in advance and my students will thank you directly if you can help us. --Steve

Don't call us Durham, call us Raleigh-

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on the "next hot youth-magnet cities." The usual suspects of Washington DC and Seattle are tied at #1 but look down at what's tied at #7 .... it's, um "Raleigh-"? And that picture is um, Raleigh's Brightleaf Square? Nope, sorry, that's Durham people, and I'm assuming the "city" in the print version is Raleigh-Durham. Sigh. The depressing text of the "city" description is below as is the screen shot that shows both "Raleigh-" with the thumbnail of the same photo at the bottom identified as Durham.

I'm sending a note to the reporter for clarification. Stay tuned.

A relatively low cost of living and a highly educated population help make this Southern city appealing.
The smallest city on our panelists' list, with fewer than 400,000 people, Raleigh has job opportunities in tech and research and a strong university presence. It offers outdoor recreation and a lively music scene. Also, Fort Bragg is expanding, signaling more jobs and more spinoff employment. "Raleigh's future is so bright that it ought to wear shades," says one panelist.
Downside: Raleigh has few critics; the worst panelists could say is that it wouldn't be seen as the hippest locale on the list.

U2 conference looking for you, too to be a sponsor.

NCCU is the home for the first ever academic conference exploring the music, work and influence of U2 from October 2-4, 2009. The conference organizers just tweeted that they are looking for one more Gold ($5K) or Silver ($1K) sponsor for the conference and are promising to give away a free trip to Durham plus free tickets to the U2 show in Raleigh on October 3.

From the site, on how to find a sponsor:

The best way to connect to a business is by a personal connection. Do you work for someone who has a soft spot for U2? Or for arts and music education? Or for Africa? Or for AIDS treatments and research? Or cares about promoting Durham, North Carolina?

(How they know that Twitter-reader A is the person who connected them with Sponsor B is beyond me ... I'm just passing on the info. I don't need a free trip to Durham NC thank you very much nor am I likely to go to the concert.)