The warm-up-for-Mardi Gras Rhino Times Schmoozefest will be held at 1618 Midtown on Thursday, Feb. 23 from 6 to 8 p.m. As always beer, wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served gratis to those who sign in and wear a name tag.
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Special thanks and a big hug to whoever the kind person was who turned in my hat to the lost and found at the Wal-Mart on Cone Boulevard on Sunday. It wasn’t a particularly valuable cap but it had a lot of sentimental value and I was delighted to get it back. So, to whoever found it: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Happy Groundhog Day. Although Hollywood has produced other movies that are now considered holiday traditions, like It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmas, in all of its years Hollywood has produced only one movie that has resulted in the creation of a holiday, Groundhog Day.
Until Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell made Feb. 2 famous with a movie about some giant squirrel predicting the weather, it was just another dreary day in February. Now it’s celebrated all over the country, but it is particularly big in the imaginary city of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Really, you would think that Hollywood would have come up with a more believable name, but that’s Hollywood for you.
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Greensboro Police Chief Wayne Scott told about 140 people gathered at the Greensboro Coliseum Special Events Center Tuesday, Jan. 31 at the Safer City Summit that the Police Department can’t solve the increase in violent crime on its own.
Scott told the crowd that it was a community problem and they were looking for solutions from the community. Scott noted that when there was a big uptick in violent crime in the 1990s, the police knew the cause was crack cocaine, and it took a while but the violent crime rate was reduced.
He said this time, with violent crime spiking, there doesn’t appear to be one cause, but a variety of factors causing it. Poverty, mental illness, drugs – he said all of those played a part in an increase in homicides in Greensboro in 2016.
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Going to the Coliseum Tuesday for the Safer City Summit, I was concerned because the parking booths were staffed, which usually means you have to pay for parking. I didn’t think paying for parking for a city meeting was fair, but more importantly, as best I could remember, parking at the Coliseum costs more than $1, which is what I thought I might have in my pocket.
It turned out parking for the meeting was free, but once I arrived I discovered that several other people – it’s not fair to name names – had the same concern. It’s amazing how many people don’t carry any cash these days. If we aren’t a cashless society yet, we’re pretty close.
It also made me wonder what muggers do these days. I thought they were usually after ready cash. I suppose now they steal phones. Everybody has one of those in their pocket. In fact, it was once I learned to pay for coffee with my phone that I found I had very little need for cash.
Some things are a priority and for me, near the top of the list is coffee.
