Stuck in the '70s

There was a trivia challenge show on over the weekend that one of my daughters was watching on VH1. The show went on for hours and hours, some sort of marathon challenge. I watched a few minutes, while she seemed to be watching all weekend.
When I came back from dinner last night to continue working on the paper, our newest reporter was waiting for a board meeting to reconvene in open session, watching Jeopardy in our break room. I like Jeopardy, too. She volunteered that she had once tried out for the show.
One of our earliest family memories was the WoWo tape. It seems we had taped a concert off HBO not long after we moved to North Carolina. It was a 4th of July concert by the singing duo of Hall and Oates. Their signature song was “Maneater,” with resounding bass guitar in the chorus, followed by the words, “Wo Wo, here she comes.” My very young daughter at the time gave the tape the name “WoWo.” Great concert, by the way.
I remember very well record players with spindles that you put on to play 45’s. I remember 33’s of course, but I also remember well 78’s. Mom had lots of 78’s when I was young. I got to know Glenn Miller and The Dorseys through those 78’s. It may have been Mom’s music, but I knew it, too, and we had a common bond.
As the 78’s wore out, she bought a bunch of Ray Coniff Singers records. They were a lot of contemporary renderings of older songs. They struck a chord with Mom. They were beautiful recordings.
My daughter, Ashley, has been a fan of The Police, and of course, Sting, for many years. Her sister, Kelly, just came back from an archaeological field trip in Peru, but they took in a lot of the contemporary culture while there. She noted that the Peruvians play a lot of The Police. They broke up twenty years ago!
There are some interesting common chords here. A lot of it, as I have presented, is around music, though as game stores profit today, we have common themes in TV shows and movies.
Have you every thought about why concerts are so popular? I have certainly been to my share over the years. We obviously go to hear a particular artist or group that we like. There’s something else beyond that. We like being with a group that shares our like for that group.
It’s kinda like going to a UNC football game. If you’re weird enough to like UNC, you want to be surrounded by weird people like you so you don’t stick out of the crowd. (Just kidding, Joey and Keith and David and Steve and the rest of you, you...well you know what you are.)
What I’m trying to say is we like our values affirmed. When we cheer for The Police or the Tar Heels, we like the guy or gal next to us to say, “Yeah.”
I think most of us treasure our memories. Like they said about Norman Rockwell’s illustrations, most of us remember all of the good, and we minimize the negatives. It never really was as good as we remember.


We’re planning a trip to Cincinnati, though I’m not sure we’ll ever get there. We want to show Ashley where she was born. We’ve been trying to call our old next door neighbor that we lost contact with ten years ago or so. We can’t find if she is still living in the old house. She had gotten divorced, and may have remarried and moved somewhere, but we can’t tell.
I’m afraid we will go back and look for places we used to go when we lived there and not be able to find them because they will be gone. Surely Skyline Chili is still there, even though Riverfront Stadium is gone. Most of the places we will look for, I’m afraid, won’t say “Yeah,” when we search for them.
I guess it’s why people in Goldsboro are so desperate to hold on to the old Paramount.
Yes, the Reds are still in Cincinnati, but the (my) Big Red Machine is but a distant memory. There’s a Reds museum for guys like me, and a place for us to take our kids to show them our memories. I guess that’s what museums are for.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? And Johnny Bench?

Inside Man

Marilyn and I went to see Inside Man Wednesday night at a $1.50 theater. I think it's the first Spike Lee film I have seen. It wasn't the best movie I have seen, but it was good. There were a lot of comments about racial attitudes. There were no bad guys or good guys. People may have responded the "right" way in one circumstance, and the "wrong" way in another. My favorite line is Denzel Washington's. After a Sikh is roughed up by police, he complains about the prejudices against him. Denzel pops off, "Bet you don't have trouble getting a cab."
One of the things I liked was the main bad guy (Clive Owen) asking a black kid about his video game. The overly violent game with questionable values draws a response fromm Owen that he needs to talk to the kids father about what he is allowing him to play.
Those of you who watched the movie, what did you think?

Slow drive thru

After the Mudcats game Marilyn and I stopped to get her a soft drink at the McDonald's drive-thru at Catch Me Eye. I didn't time it, but I know it took us 15 minutes to get through the drive-thru at 11:30 p.m. to get a soft drink. How could it take that long?

Mudcats Fireworks

Marilyn and I went to see the Mudcats game on Monday, July 3rd. The game was good, the crew entertaining. The fireworks were spectacular though. The concession crew got everything cleaned up after the game, and then went down on the field to lay down in the grass to watch the fireworks. They had the right idea. Our necks got tired straining to watch the fireworks.

Weighing in on housing issue

We got an unsigned letter in the other day (Princeton) responding to our series on rental property (http://www.princetonleadernow.com/062106/rent3.html). As is our policy, we are not publishing the letter, because it is unsigned, but I think the writer raises some good points.
As they point out, many younger people in today’s economy can’t afford to buy a home, and many older people can’t. While there was discussion of renters who can destroy property and not be the type of people you want to live around, many renters are good people, good neighbors and good citizens. Still, some are clearly not.
I don’t believe anyone is saying we don’t need rental property or renters in Princeton. The experts say we have too many older, not well maintained, rental houses in town, owned by absentee owners.
Those are very troubling parts of that equation. Too many means there is a glut of properties available, meaning it will be tough to get a good rental income from them. Older homes often mean high maintenance costs, and often that means that leaky roofs or busted screens or worse go unfixed for long periods, adding to the problems. Absentee owners are often only concerned about their rent check, not investing more money in their property.
There’s nothing wrong with some. Some older homes make good rentals. Some landlords spend a lot of time and money keeping their properties up. Some absentee owners are good landlords. In every case, clearly, some are not. And in too many cases around Princeton.
One innovative way to turn things around is to offer incentives to good perspective buyers for former rental property. Owner-occupants are more likely to make improvements in properties.
One way is to aggressively pursue the minimum housing ordinance, and perhaps increase the standards. One can argue that most residents would never accept living conditions which the current standards call for. This is hard and controversial.
Another, which some have suggested, is licensure for rental agents/owners with three or more rental properties. Again, this is controversial, but it may be the most practical of all solutions. You have virtually no control over renters, but you can put some limits on landlords.
The town board has had the good sense to address important issues, rather than just wringing their hands because they were tough or would cost some money to address. This issue could bring Princeton into a death spiral. There are other examples across eastern North Carolina.
It’s easier to say we don’t know how to handle it, and less costly. Not addressing it is making a decision to kill the town.

As I was reflecting on that letter, the writer jumped to some assumptions and accused us of making some rash judgments (which were not borne out by the articles). We all have our triggers and I am not immune.
I was a bit put off by the Princeton Town Board’s lack of guts in putting off merit increases for town employees in favor of not increasing taxes. That hit two of my triggers.
I have a responsibility to my employees to pay them and fairly compensate them. If I cannot do that, I risk losing them. To tell them I can’t pay them more because I can’t afford it is one thing. When I don’t have the guts enough to ask my customers to pay more for the good product we are producing, that’s another.
Some will argue that any tax is bad, any fees are bad, and virtually no one will tell you they want to pay more for this newspaper or for taxes or for water or sewer fees. That doesn’t absolve the town board or me of our responsibility to our employees. Anyone who has employees will tell you it’s a lot cheaper to reward good employees than to hire and train new ones.
I have an even greater responsibility to those employees who have done a better job. I particularly need to reward them if I want to keep them. To say we will do across-the-board increases and no merit increases really bangs on that other trigger. You tend to lose the employees who are good and can find work elsewhere, and keep the ones who can’t find a good job (with regular increases). I could live with some merit increases but no across-the-board increases, but it’s easier to say we will give everyone a little raise.
I might be tempted to say gutless.

A political posture in Pikeville

It would be easy to applaud the speech by Pikeville Assistant Town Clerk Sherry McAllister. Someone on the inside, a town employee, blowing the whistle on her bosses. She says the board members are to blame for raising water and sewer rates because they are not making the town staff strictly adhere to town billing policies. It’s not the cost of operating the water and sewer departments that is to blame for the increase, it’s the town board’s giving favors out. Then she offers a petition with 300 signatures saying the town should not increase their rates.
Sounds like a Fourth of July flag-waver to me. If we only had a hundred more like her.
Sorry, but it sounds more like grand-standing than good government to me.
There are too many in the town who want to find snakes and bugs under rocks for my taste, and they feed on things like this. “Aha! I told you that things were wrong, twenty years ago, and this just proves it.”
OK, people had their utilities turned on without posting a deposit. The town worked with some people who had gotten behind on paying their utility bills. Did it follow the letter of the law? Are we feeding everybody out of the same spoon? “Aha!”
Show me some people who are stuffing big bags of money at the town hall and taking it home. Show me some people who are making big bags of money because of the favoritism shown by the town staff.
There’s no huge money trail to follow here, or even a little money trail. We are talking about people trying to work with people.
It reminds me of a town board discussion one time about not cutting off utilities on Friday, because they could not make payment until Monday and would have their water or utilities off all weekend. You could cut it off on Monday or Thursday, but not Friday. Sure, they hadn’t paid their utility bill, but which makes more sense as a compassionate person.
Ms. McAllister makes this Grand Canyon leap and says if everything had been done completely properly, it MIGHT have prevented the town from having to raise sewer rates. If it doesn’t rain for six months they might not have to, either, but we know it’s going to rain and we know the billing exceptions won’t come close to balancing water and sewer revenues and expenses.
What she and Commissioner Johnny Weaver are saying is we are on the side of those who want to believe something is wrong in town, and who don’t want to pay higher bills because something is wrong.
There is something to be said for cleaning up practices like making exceptions on deposits, and publicly taking exceptions on paying off utility bills before the board. Maybe it gives some of the old timers something less to try to scrutinize.

Speaking of Commissioner Weaver, he is convinced that in a number of cases the town has been violating state laws, often with the blessing of the town attorney.
I have been to a couple of board meetings where he has spoken and I have to admit that some of his statements make good sense to me. We have as a newspaper dutifully investigated charges which he has levied against the town. Unfortunately, we can’t justify them.
The most recent is the office built for the new town administrator was a violation of the law. The $1500 spent may have offended Mr. Weaver because he didn’t personally approve it, but it clearly wasn’t illegal, or a misappropriation of funds. The money was there for it in the budget, and was needed to be used for that.
It would make for a good headline, too. Town commissioner uncovers illegal acts by town board and town staff. Unfortunately, the facts don’t back it up.
I guess when the facts don’t bear you out, you make up things. Lately we understand that some claim the area newspapers won’t publish the truth about the town, only what the town wants put out. I guess we didn’t really publish that story last week.
Maybe they’ll be saying that the new office caused water and sewer rates to go up. Aha!