This blog...

This blog was started as an alternative to an email chain that was moderated and edited by a neighbor who decided he didn't have time to do it anymore. theport@googlegroups email list was set up as well. Although everybody had access to this blog they seemed to prefer the email chain. Some folks now seem to think that the google group should be limited to crime prevention. I think that's a little limiting personally, but it that is the consensus, this blog is still available to be as valuable as we make it for general community stuff.

Food Drive and Lemonade

Image via Wikipedia

Well, we must be doing something right! Ella asked to do her canned food drive for The Good Shepherd Center again for her summer volunteer project We'll be collecting canned foods this Sat from 9-12 at our house (402 Forest Hills Dr). If you can't make it and want to drop off before Sat that will be fine too. I'll put out a plastic container on the stoop incase we aren't home. Last year she collected over 350 canned food items.

Hope to see you,
Julie Coxe

PS. There will be lemonade too. :)

Forest Hill's Global Elementary School

In response to the "Name change" discussion or removing "Global" from the school's name, presented by David McCall on the Port/Our Neighbor Vine....


There are a lot of topics concerning children that could use a "world" of attention, this NOT being one of them!

Christmas Party

Thanks to Sonja and Jim McFarland and Jean and Connor Keller; Meg Davenport and Amy and Rob Crofoot; and Bo and David McCall for hosting the Forest Hills Christmas party. It was Julie and my first neighborhood Christmas party and we enjoyed seeing the neighbors we met and the ones we hadn't. The food and hospitality was great and we look forward to next year.

Sad News

Trish, a neighbor here on Colonial Dr. passed away last night. As many of you know, she was living as a paraplegic for sometime, due to an accident on Market St.
Judy, her mom, is the neighbor that FH's adopted a few years back to help with home repairs.
Our neighborly thoughts and prayers go out to their family, especially at this time.

Hi folks, welcome to the blog

I see Miles sent out a missive from Bradley introducing many of you to this blog. Welcome. And please please please take up the offer of becoming an author. We created this thing (and by "we" I mean my lovely wife) so the neighborhood could use it to share information. Any kind of information -- yard sales, school news, neighborhood watch, safety concerns, local meetings, etc. And to make it accessible to everyone, not just folks who knew about Miles' list and gave him their email address.

That's where our responsibility starts and ends. The rest is up to you. And as Bradley noted in his letter (which I'll excerpt below), writing a blog post is as easy as writing an email, only you also get to add pictures and video, if you like. Just remember not to reveal too much information (you probably don't want to post your phone number here or the names/ages of your kids, for example). Other than that, it's pretty much fair game.

Here's Brad's email, as a reference:

Anyone who lives in Forest Hills can be an author at the blog and it's very easy. Send an email requesting an author account and you will get one. Even if you aren't yet set up as an author, you can post comments. (At the end of posts, click on the word comment). If you need help figuring out that first blog post, email me at bcoxe (at) ec.rr.com or Dan at dan (at) tynanwood.com. [Remember to substitite an @ symbol for (at) in that address.] After that posting to the blog will be a simple as sending an email to Miles.

And you don't have to check the blog to read announcements. Just subscribe to the blog and the posts will come right to your email. Enter your email adress on the box on there on the left or click on the feed button if you like to use a feed reader.

Now, there are a few differences between this blog and the email chain. First, understand that this blog is not private. You need permission to post, but there is no permission required to view it. I think this is a positive thing as it allows people who are thinking about moving here to check it out, and new neighbors who are just googling their new neighborhood to find it. The more people who use or view the blog, the better it is. If you exercise a little common sense, there shouldn't be much of a security risk. If I or anybody else sees something that you probably shouldn't post, we'll let you know. I can't think of any of Mile's emails that would have concerned me had they gone public. Again though, you will control how much or how little identifying information you want to post.

Second, your blog post or comments will go "live" as soon as you post it. Nobody will edit it or check it beforehand. Usually everybody stays on their best behavior, but while the topics or posts may start in Forest Hills, the discussion may range outside. For example, one post lately was an ad for a fundraiser for Obama-Biden held in Forest Hills. Now somebody may make a comment to that supporting McCain and then all of a sudden we have a political debate for a national office, just like you might have over the back fence with your neighbor.

Blogs are supposed to be a conversation. when the conversation turns ugly, it's usually self correcting. if someone gets abusive, they can be banned. The biggest problem with blogs is bots that fill comments fields with spam; you get around that by having people register before they can post, and by moderating comments. That's also how you catch people who are abusive. it's a system that works very well for 99.9% of the online world.

One final gentle suggestion: Though you can comment anonymously (at least for the moment), I think it would keep things more civil if people identified themselves in some fashion when they comment on a post. It's very easy to post negative things about people when you can do it anonymously; much harder when you have to actually account for what you say.

Cheers.

dt

Looooong Lines at Early Voting

I've been driving people to the six early voting stations in Wilmington. Actually, I've only been to two: The one at the Government Center near Ten Pin Alley, and the one downtown at 805 North Third, the northern end of the Cape Fear Community College campus.

The lines got longer each day I drove: 30 minutes, then an hour, then 1 to 2 hours, and this morning over 3 hours. (As you can sort of see from that very surreal picture I snapped with my cell phone.)

But New Hanover County declined to extend its early voting hours, despite the fact that many counties in NC are extending them today until 5 pm. (New Hanover's closed today at 1 pm.) I emailed Margaret Haynes, chair of the New Hanover Board of Elections, and asked her why. Here's what she said:

I appreciate your involvement and concern.

50 North Carolina Counties did not extend early voting. The Star News article is totally erroneous. Each locality had to have a meeting to discuss extending.

There are many localities that are not running as smoothly as we are. We know there are lines, but many lines are moving fairly quickly - 20 to 40 minutes. We have many steps to prepare for Tuesday...where we will have 43 sites open to vote.

If we close at 1:00, we will not finish voting people until probably 3:00. It will be another hour or two for paperwork in each site. Then property management MUST retrieve the equipment, and return it all to the government center to be locked down.

On Sat. we are also -as always- distributing ballots and materials and supplies to 43 precinct workers...this is done from the Government Center site.

The computers used to check people in at one-stop all have to be checked, backed-up and reconfigured to support the unprecedented CALL CENTER that we will be operating out of the Emergency response center on Election Day.

This will take hours to accomplish.

We can not expect permanent staff, temporary staff and others to work 24 hours a day. They are already working 16+ hours a day. It is my understanding that people are actually threatening to quit in other localities that have extended.

Unfortunately the public has no idea how involved and detailed our work must be in order to maintain the integrity of the vote.

If you want election day to go smoothly, we need to stick with the state approved plan and proceed in an orderly fashion.

This Board of Elections has worked deligently to modernize the office, to be forward thinking in using technology and to do everything we possibly can do to support and enhance the voting process.

Thanks for all of your hard work on getting folks to the polls. We are doing the best we can with limited resources.

I know that folks at the local Democratic office feel politics were involved in the decision; longer voting hours means more likely votes for Obama, and fewer Obama voters turning away from the polls on Tuesday. Local politics here tends toward the conservative, as most of you know.

On the other hand, I can see her point. These folks are working very hard. In fact, I'd like to extend kudos and appreciation to all the election officials working at the downtown station. They were unfailingly polite, helpful, and patient, despite the huge crowds and often clueless voters.

- Dan Tynan