The Wyndham Championship week kicked off with a pro-am on Monday and the tournament, played Thursday through Sunday, makes the Sedgefield golf course the center of the PGA world.
Since moving to Sedgefield 10 years ago, the Wyndham has showed improvement in the caliber of the golfers and in the galleries. Although it’s going to take a while to top the galleries in 2015 when Tiger Woods was seeking his first win in two years – and except for one disastrous hole on Sunday, he might have done it. What he did do was increase the size of the crowds to previously unseen levels.
New this year at the Wyndham, not only do active military get free admission for themselves and a guest, but that has been extended to veterans. You have to pre-register to take advantage of this offer but you can do so by going to https://birdiesforthebrave2.sheerid.com/wyndham-2017.
I thought Greensboro was somewhat unique in having a gang leader run for City Council. Jorge Cornell of the Latin King and Queen Nation ran for City Council in 2009 and 2011. Cornell is now serving a 28-year sentence in federal prison, so it’s likely that his political career is over.
But in Detroit, four of eight mayoral candidates are convicted felons. We can’t touch that here in Greensboro.
Those pushing for more light rail transportation systems in North Carolina need to take a look at the New York subway and Washington, DC, metro. Both systems are in such a state of disrepair that portions in New York had to shut down this summer so that critical repairs could be made, leaving people stranded on the platforms. In DC, the whole system was shut down leaving some people without a way to get to work.
Building public rail transportation systems costs billions of dollars, and then it cost billions to maintain them. In both New York and DC, the minimum maintenance money to keep the systems running hasn’t been spent.
It’s the same with buildings. Governments love to build new buildings but they don’t like to maintain the buildings they own. The Old Guilford County Court House has scaffolding all around it to protect people from falling pieces of the building because it hasn’t been maintained.
Transportation systems are no different. Government officials like to launch new programs, but spending billions to maintain them after the shine is gone is something that isn’t exciting and governments don’t do.
One of the problems that they never mention when getting people to pony up for the construction costs of public transportation is that the more people who ride, the more money the system loses and the higher the maintenance costs.
Americans love football. But the game may be forced to change. A recent study showed that the brains of 110 out of 111 professional football players who had died showed signs of degenerative brain disease caused by frequent trauma. Even quarterbacks have shown signs of degenerative brain disease.
It’s hard to imagine football without players banging heads, but something will have to be done, not simply because the players should be protected, but because even an immensely rich organization like the NFL can’t survive the lawsuits that will follow, particularly now that there is scientific evidence that what many people have suspected for years is true.
Technology has come a long way from the old leather helmet, and it may be possible that with modern technology football players’ brains can be protected without making drastic changes to the game, or maybe not.
NASCAR drivers now survive accidents that would have been impossible for any human to survive when the sport started, and the drivers have adjusted to the safety equipment. It’s time for football to follow suit.
Recently I had to wear a jacket to work because of a luncheon. As I was carrying my jacket out to my car, because it was too hot to even consider wearing it outside, I was reminded of my years in Washington, DC, working for a consulting firm.
It was a staid conservative office where once I was told I was brave because I had worn a tan summer suit instead of a dark blue or gray suit. I didn’t wear that suit again.
But in the summer, like everyone else, I carried my suit coat to the subway and then carried it into my office where I hung it behind the door until lunch when I carried it to a restaurant and put it on the back of my chair and then carried it back to my office where I hung it back behind the door. Unless we had a big meeting, I would never put my suit coat on all day, but I wouldn’t have considered going anywhere without it.
At the time I didn’t think much about it, because everybody did it, but looking back I wonder what an anthropologist would say about a society where men carry jackets around but never wear them.
