Cartoonist Bill Lunsford is joining the Rhino herd (which as I just learned is also called a crash) this week and will be providing weekly cartoons that will run on the page facing Under the Hammer. His cartoons will be about both national and local issues. We hope to have a healthy mix of each.

The late Geof Brooks was the Rhino cartoonist from 1992 until he unexpectedly died of a heart attack last February, but in one of those oddities of life, Geof introduced us to Bill.

Geof was taking a class in cartooning from Bill at Randolph Community College and talked about how much he had learned.

So when we needed a cartoonist, we contacted Bill and he said he was interested.

Bill has been a cartoonist and advertising illustrator for 30 years. He has done political cartoons for both The High Point Enterprise and the News & Record.

As well as teaching at Randolph Community College, Bill is finishing up a degree there. Once he gets through studying he said he hopes to be able to devote his time to teaching and drawing cartoons.

Here are some samples of his work, and his first Rhino cartoon is on page 34.

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Looking over the comments on the Rhino Times Facebook page, I believe that Central North Carolina Airport Authority has managed to do something that even President Donald Trump has been unable to do. Take an action that everyone agrees is bad.

If there are folks who think the CNCI airport was a good move, outside of those who made the decision and those who because of their jobs feel obligated to say they think it’s a good idea, we aren’t hearing from them.

Changing the name reportedly took hours of discussion, although from what they came up with the decision making could have used a few more hours.

The name change isn’t free. From signs to stationary, everything has to get the new name, not to mention the highway signs that the taxpayers will pay for. And to what end? Piedmont Triad International Airport was not a great name, but people had gotten used to it.

If the name had been changed to something like one of our personal favorite suggestions – the Howard Coble International Airport – to honor the late congressman from Greensboro that would at least be understandable. It might be hard to get Winston-Salem to go along with the vote, but Greensboro, High Point and Guilford County have enough votes to pass it.

Perhaps the problem was coming up with a name that could get unanimous approval, which guarantees it won’t mean anything.

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As everyone says now, you are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts. News & Record Editorial Page Editor Allen Johnson wrote that the City Council might not have voted for something controversial like the two new downtown parking decks if they hadn’t been elected to four-year terms.

But we know that they would have voted for the parking decks if they were serving two-year terms because they did – and in an election year no less.

It’s one of the questions Mayor Nancy Vaughan had about the opposition: Why now, when we have already voted in favor of these decks twice?

The final vote to allocate the money was by the new four-year City Council, but the previous votes to enter into agreements to build the decks and allocating the $4 million for design had been by the old council elected for two years.

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Like a lot of folks, we had a frozen pipe during the recent cold spell. Unlike other folks our frozen pipe was entirely my fault.

We have a water pipe that freezes if the temperature gets below about 25 degrees. But there is an easy solution. If we leave the cabinet under the sink open, the pipe doesn’t freeze. I can’t count the times I’ve gotten up out of a warm bed to go check and make sure I didn’t close the cabinet out of habit before going to bed. It’s not obsessive behavior because about half the time I have.

Saturday morning I got up early and closed the cabinet, as I usually do in the morning, ignoring the fact that it was 10 degrees and not getting much warmer for hours. So when I got home at about 10 a.m., the pipe was frozen. I think it’s the first time it’s ever frozen during the day. But I did learn a lesson; it’s not the darkness that freezes the pipe but the temperature.

The good news is that after spending about 10 minutes in the crawl space with a blow dryer, the water started flowing through the pipe like it’s supposed to, and after that it was obsessive behavior because I constantly checked to make sure that door was open.

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Retailers use their membership clubs that give customers a discount to collect all kinds of information about them and then send out personalized advertisements.

But there must be some kind of glitch in Barnes & Noble’s formula. I buy Moleskine reporter notebooks from Barnes & Noble with some frequency. So I recently received an email from Barnes & Noble that said because I buy reporter’s notebooks they thought I would be interested in some children’s books on sale.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what the connection is. Are reporters known to have a lot of children? Or perhaps Barnes & Noble has found that reporters like to read children’s books in their spare time. Reporters notebooks = children’s books. It’s a connection I don’t see.

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I never thought I’d be waiting for it to reach the balmy temperature of 25 degrees so I could take my constant companion for a long walk. But that was the case Sunday. I may be a wimp, but my attempt to take her for a long walk failed on Saturday because by the time I got on enough clothes to be somewhat comfortable outside I could barely walk. I was like one of those small children who get so bundled up by their mothers that they totter around because they can barely bend their knees.

We walked around Lake Townsend, and if you want to see how destructive nature can be, take a walk down the Townsend Trail off Yanceyville. The area around the first bridge you come to has been clear cut by beavers. It is amazing what a couple of beavers can do to a forest.

I have walked there a lot and I didn’t recognize the place.