Rhino Shorts: April 19, 2018

The April Schmoozefest is Thursday, April 26 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Loaded Grape at 2915 Battleground Ave. Free snacks, beer and wine will be provided to all
business professionals who sign in and wear a name tag while supplies last.

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Here’s some good news for Greensboro residents: Because of the severe storms and tornado on Sunday, the restrictions on yard waste collection have been relaxed. That means if you have a bunch of limbs and yard waste, regardless of how long it’s been there, you can drag it out to the street without having to cut it up or put it in a container.

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Proving that prayers are answered, the IRS website went down on Tuesday, April 17, which was tax day this year – giving those who file electronically another day to file.

I remember as a child going to the Old Post Office, now the L. Richardson Preyer Federal Building, with my father on April 15. Inside the post office there were men in business suits using every flat surface to fill out their income tax returns.

I don’t have a clue how to fill out my own tax return, but according to President Trump, next year most Americans will be able to do what they did 50 years ago and fill out a one-page form to file their taxes. Trump has a good record of keeping promises and I hope he keeps this one.

Paying taxes is bad enough, but the idea that you have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for someone to figure out how much you have to pay is absurd.

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I attended a Greensboro Neighborhood Congress forum on the proposed downtown Greensboro parking decks on Thursday, April 12. City Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann spoke in favor of the parking decks and Greensboro 101 website founder Roch Smith Jr. spoke against them.

I was struck by the amount of fake news about this one local project. For example, the February One and Westin Hotel parking deck will be one deck that spans February One Place. But people keep repeating that there will be one deck north of February One and another south, connected only by a walkway.

Much about the deck is debatable, but this is not. The deck has been designed and it spans February One Place, turning the street into a tunnel.

There was more fake news quoted as fact, but it requires too much explanation to deal with here.

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Because of the tornado, the Greensboro City Council meetings on Tuesday, April 17 were cancelled and will be held on Tuesday, April 24. Which means next Tuesday the City Council will hold a work session at 3 p.m. in the Plaza Level Conference Room and a regular City Council meeting beginning at 5:30 in the Council Chambers. According to the new City Council meeting schedule, no speakers from the floor on non-agenda items will be heard, but speakers will have the opportunity to speak on agenda items.

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I’ve been spending my weekends going through boxes of stuff and throwing most, well, maybe not most, but a lot of it away. But in looking through the detritus of my past, I discovered that my mother owes me some money. It would be my parents, but my father died in 2004, so I’m holding my mother responsible.

I found a note from my father to me when I was 3 or 4 and staying with my grandmother for a week. My dad sent me my 20-cent allowance in stamps and said I could sell them to my grandmother. He also promised that when he came to pick me up, he would pay me the one penny a day that I was due for not crying. As far as I know, the one penny for each day I don’t cry contract has never been cancelled. I think over the past 60 years I’ve averaged not crying about 364 days a year, but to be fair I’ll go with 350. So I figure my mom owes me about $210 for not crying nearly as much in the past 60 years as evidently I did in my first 4 or 5.

I think I’m being pretty reasonable in not expecting interest or a cost of living increase. Back when the deal was made you could get an ice cream cone or a candy bar for a nickel. So if I made it an entire week without crying (which reportedly was rare) I could get a candy bar and have two cents left over for bubble gum, and today I think I can do the same thing with $210, except I don’t eat candy bars or chew bubble gum anymore.

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OK, I’m all in favor of self-driving cars, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some concerns. Here’s one: I buy Moleskine reporter note pads from Barnes & Noble. As a result of that I get marketing material from Barnes & Noble about children’s books. The Barnes & Noble marketing computer sees some connection. I don’t, which is fine as far as advertising for books goes, but if the computer were driving my car, I’d want to have a better understanding of how it was thinking.

On second thought, the Muse drives me around all the time and her thinking still completely baffles me, so maybe I’m ready for my self-driving car.