David Auerbach's post to the Trinity Park e-mail list, on reducing water usage as good-neighborliness:

I have to admit that I was tempted (but didn't yield) to a form of neighborliness that involves slashing the hoses of people with green lawns. Or at least having my dog help with the watering, so to speak. ...

We installed a couple of rain barrels that fill in no time given almost any slight amount of rain. 110 gallons is a nice supply. Keeping some cheap white paint buckets (about 3 1/2 gal.) in the shower with you yields a surprising amount of yard water. (Lets you more easily visualize how much water you're pouring down the drain normally.)

From Kevin Davis's"Bull City Rising" blog, on the election returns:

All of which has interesting implications for the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, which raised many eyebrows in the Bull City by combining an endorsement for mainstream candidate [Farad] Ali with the controversial [Victoria] Peterson. This seems to be a continuation of the Committee's weakness in recent years at delivering results with its endorsements. ... This could be explained simply by the Committee having failed to perform enough get-out-the-vote efforts to register and turn out voters at the polls, or more complexly as a sign that individuals in the Committee's community have been dissatisfied with the recommendations and have chosen to just stay home. In either event, the biggest loser in tonight's election seems to be the Committee.