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I've started yet another blog. This one is very different from what I do here. I hope check it out.

Thanks.

I’m Not The Only Blogging Poet

In a face to face conversation with another blogger a few days ago, the topic came up that I might be the only blogging poet. As several people have expressed this very thought to me, I think it only fair that I point out a few of the hundreds of blogging poets I have discovered, many of whom have been at it longer than I.

Say hello to Laura Harvey. Laura works raising cash for a university and plans to start working on her masters degree in October. Laura began writing poetry at the age of ten, some twelve years ago. Her poetry web-log, Poet's Tea has been online since August 2004.

Laura works mostly in free-verse that is well-formed and tightly scripted (very important if you prefer to write in free-verse.) She subscribes to the theory that much should be left to the imagination of the reader or listener. Personally, I don’t usually work that way but see nothing wrong with it as long as you do a good job of it. Laura does a good job.

Laura lives in London but has traveled to Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia. Her worldliness is apparent in her mature verse. (I love smart women.) I recommend all of you drop in and read her verses.

2004 Idle Handy Award

Well the readers have spoken. (That’s you.) While it may be that IdleHandsMag.com is soon to be no more, the Idle Handy Award lives on here at BloggingPoet.com.

“What is the Idle Handy Award?” you ask.


Yeah, it's lame, but read what it's for. The various Idle Handy Nominees are those persons who, as nominated and voted by the staff, contributors, and readers of IdleHandsMag.com, most represent persons who are only in the public eye because they have nothin’ better to do than waste taxpayer dollars or take-up valuable television and radio on-air time, as well as Internet band-width, simply because they exist. The readers of Idle Hands Magazine believe that these persons are a waste of the gene pool and that humanity would have been better served had our nominees not ruined the lives and television viewing of millions of people worldwide through their own self-centered existences.

The winner of the 2003 Idle Handy Award was none other than President George W. Bush who beat out Vice-President Dick Cheney, former President Bill Clinton, former Vice-President Al Gore, and some dude in Australia who set a world-record for hanging himself inside a glass box tied beneath the Sydney Harbor Bridge but forgot to first call the folks from the Guiness Book of World Records. Also nominated was IdleHandsMag.com Publisher, Billy Jones AKA: Billy The Blogging Poet.

Al Gore was quoted as saying, “Damn, robbed again!”

Billy Jones was quoted as saying, “Damn, now I got to get me another trophy!”

Staff and readers of IdleHandsMag.com were free throughout all of 2004 to nominate their choices for the award. Voting was to begin on January 15, 2005, but because of the impending closure of IdleHandsMag.com, and the fact that only one person was nominated in 2004, voting will not take place.

That’s not to say there won’t be a 2004 Idle Handy Award winner. While it might not seem too very democratic a process, there was one nominee and that nominee wins the award.

“So who is it?” you ask.

Ladies and gentleman, as the former publisher of the now-defunct IdleHandsMag.com, it is my duty-- and my pleasure-- to announce that President George W. Bush AKA: the Shrub, AKA: Bushit, AKA: Bushie, was the only nominee and thus the winner of the 2004 Idle Handy Award given to the person who our readers believe exists in the public eye simply because he has nothin’ better to do than to make the rest of the world miserable. That’s right, the Shrub pulls it out again!

Al Gore was quoted as saying... Well actually Al wasn’t asked about the 2004 Idle Handy Nomination.

Billy Jones was quoted as saying, “Thank God, now I don’t have to steal another stupid trophy. Bushie can just use the same one I sent him last year.”

The White house has yet to respond to this year’s or last year’s Idle Handy announcements.

The Idle Handy Award is a trademark of Idle Hands Magazine and Billy Jones. For permissions, please e-mail idleblogs (at) yahoo.com. Thank you.

Tonight, I posted chapter five to my on-line romance novel, Shaggy Dog. It's always listed in the Navigation bar but in-case you're new I've added a List Of Chapters to make keeping your place a little easier. Also, I inverted the order so that the beginning is at the top of the page. That's one of the many features available to Squarespace users that isn't offered by most other platforms I've sampled.

No, I'm not talking about my old friend, Yellow Dog, who ran for President. I'm talking about my first romance novel, Shaggy Dog. I hope all of you will read it. It's a story about a laid-off Southern cotton mill worker trying to get his life back together in the small town he ran away from as a young man. It's rough, tumble, action filled, and yes there's romance. And while I'm a long way from giving away the ending-- it will be a surprise. You can always find a link to it in the Navigation bar or click here to be taken to the beginning.

Greensboro, North Carolina government and civic leaders are busy telling everyone what a great success recent downtown revitalization efforts have been, touting the elimination of many one way streets and parking improvements but Billy Jones shoots holes through their flimsy stories.

Downtown Revitalization:
A Few Things We’re still Missing

Greensboro City Government has spent the better part of the last forty years dealing with issues of downtown revitalization, and while recent years have seen great strides in the effort to save our downtown, city leaders as well as downtown business owners lament that it isn’t what they’d hoped it would be. A growing number of new businesses have opened in downtown Greensboro, several new apartment communities have been or are being built, and numerous old buildings have been restored, some to even better than their original incarnations, and yet downtown still suffers.

City and civic leaders point to a misguided public perception of inadequate parking, all the while noting that they’ve plenty of parking with city owned parking lots, parking garages and street side parking being free nights and weekends, but they’ve failed to realize that the average upper middle class, SUV driving, stay-at-home, soccer mom is most likely to do her shopping during the middle of the weekday. That is: persons who are most able to afford to shop prefer to shop during the middle of the day as evenings and weekends are spent with their husbands and children. Secondly, many of the parking garages cannot accommodate some of today’s taller SUVs and conversion vans.

More importantly: downtown Greensboro is not yet shopper friendly.

Shopper friendly is not a reference to downtown merchants. Our downtown merchants are probably just as friendly, if not more so, than merchants everywhere and are no doubt friendlier than the big chain outlets who fill our suburban shopping centers. What is meant by shopper friendly is the fact that downtown Greensboro is not conducive to people who love to shop.

For starters, even if we get past the perceived and/or real parking problems, where do shoppers sit? While Greensboro has a much smaller downtown than does most cities and towns-- even many smaller towns-- it’s still a long distance to walk while carrying arm loads of merchandise. While some might say, “Well they can put it in their cars and come back for more,” make no doubt that once shoppers get to their cars, they will quickly be driving to the Mall. Fact is: other than a few restaurants, there are few places in downtown Greensboro where a well-dressed woman might wish to rest her weary feet, back, legs, and arms. A small, fuel efficient downtown shuttle-- something much more attractive than your average city bus-- might help package laden shoppers as well.

Another problem for downtown merchants, as well as small businesses everywhere, is the fact that they are unable to compete price-wise with the big box stores. Perhaps the nonprofit foundations driving downtown and regional revitalization should look into founding a merchant’s cooperative that would allow merchants to pool their limited resources to enable them to buy in larger quantities thus forcing wholesalers to offer deeper discounts. After all, many local merchants are buying inventory from Sam’s Club and Costco who retail at lower prices than wholesalers and manufacturers are willing to offer to small businesses, thus forcing small businesses to supplement the growth of their competitors and push themselves out of business. And when these smaller retailers buy from the big box stores they pay the same prices as you and I.

Getting to downtown Greensboro is a problem as well. Oh sure, there’s streets on which to drive cars and a bus station in the Depot, but what if a shopper wishes to walk or ride a bicycle? Sure, we’ve lots of sidewalks downtown, but riding bicycles on the sidewalk is illegal in North Carolina. Besides, for most of Greensboro, while downtown is the closest place to shop, pedestrians and bicyclists have to travel several miles on busy city streets without sidewalks or bicycle lanes just to get to a street with a sidewalk. Efforts to revitalize downtown will be forever hampered as long as every means to bring shoppers downtown isn’t fully explored.

As long as we’re on sidewalks, it needs to be noted that, as a whole, Greensboro needs more middle of the block crosswalks and better education and enforcement of pedestrian crosswalks. For example: in California cities, pedestrians jaywalk less and use crosswalks at a much higher rate than we do in Greensboro, and traffic is far more likely to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks due to stronger enforcement of crosswalk regulations. As a matter of fact: middle of the block crosswalks are safer than corner crosswalks in areas where crosswalk regulations are more strongly enforced. “Right on Red” at traffic lights has made corner crosswalks much more dangerous than they once were. Add to that the fact that motorists often drive at speeds of fifty miles per hour or faster on the downtown portions of Greene, Market, and Friendly, and you’ll see why being a downtown shopper is a hardship many Greensboro citizens simply choose not to face. When our city leaders choose to educate, adequately finance, enable, and enforce the law, downtown Greensboro will become more pedestrian and shopper friendly.

As a side: A recent FHWTSA (Federal Highway Traffic Safety Administration) study rated the Triad area-- of which Greensboro is the largest city-- as the seventh worst area in the nation for pedestrian safety, noting a lack of sidewalks and high numbers of automobile/pedestrian accidents as the reason.

A recent trip along Elm Street at night revealed many restaurants and bars this writer was previously unaware of. While this might be seen to as an achievement by our city and civic leaders, the fact is: at 7:30 PM. they were all empty with several having no one inside other than employees. Sadly, downtown merchants find it undesirable to remain open at night, and without open retailers to bring shoppers downtown, bars and restaurants fare little hope of remaining in business.

Another option that has been completely ignored is bringing to our downtown, the people with the most money to spend. On average, elderly people have far more expendable income than young people, but business, advertisers, and government leaders ignore their needs altogether. Many of these people, while still able to drive in the suburbs, find driving in cramped downtown streets to be extremely difficult. Why not organize events and shopping trips for seniors, shuttling them downtown and helping them with their shopping instead of leaving them to rot all alone in their suburban homes? Many would happily come along just to get to spend a little time away from home with others of like mind. Think of the beauty of giving to these people-- people whose tax-dollars have long supported this city-- the joy of new friends and new experiences.

Besides, do we really want an economy that runs on 80 proof?

Meet Romeo

Meet Romeo. While on his own, Romeo isn’t much of a problem, if allowed to grow in numbers, Romeo and his kind could become the next environmental nightmare.

Romeo lives a quiet life by a pond on Carriage Crossing Lane just off of West Friendly Avenue in Greensboro, North Carolina. As a few of you have already guessed, Romeo is a non-native Black Swan whose origins date back to Australia where Black Swans are the predominant species of swan. Romeo was brought here along with his now-deceased mate, Juliet-- who died while laying eggs-- to rid the pond of those pesky Canadian Geese. You see, Black Swans are twice the size of Canadian Geese, and really don’t like geese of any kind.

Black Swans grow to be four-feet long, weigh 11 - 20 pounds, and have a six-foot wingspan, making them one of the larger birds in the world. Black Swans are very aggressive and will even attack people and pets if you wander too close. Romeo was less than happy with my moving-in to take his picture and expressed his displeasure towards me the entire time I was visiting.

Romeo prefers to eat aquatic vegetation, small fish, and grass, but if hungry enough, and given the opportunity, Romeo will eat garden vegetables, flowers, picnic lunches, and raid paddocks where livestock feed is stored.

Black Swans build their huge nests on piles of sticks and grass they place in the shallow waters of the ponds on which they live. Rather than nest alone like most birds, Black Swans prefer to nest in colonies, often growing in numbers to the point that there’s not enough food in the ponds to support them. In New Zealand, where Black Swans were introduced almost a century ago, they are considered a far worse pest than the Canadian Geese they were supposed to drive away. The New Zealand Fish and Game Commission now allows hunting of large numbers of Black Swans, sometimes even in public parks as their numbers are so out of hand. In most parts of North Carolina, swans have no predators to keep their numbers low.

The state of Florida is also very concerned with their introduced Black Swan population.

For those of you who consider Canadian Geese to be a problem, consider a population explosion of a bird species with all the same nasty habits of Geese, twice the appetite, and twice the size-- does that seem like a solution to you?

Another non-native bird, the Mute Swan, was introduced to the United States from Europe over a century ago. Today, in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay alone, there are over 3,600 Mute Swans. These Mute Swans are destroying the aquatic plants, wrecking the nesting areas of many native species, and helping to ruin both the commercial and sport fishing industries of the bay by wiping out the feeder fish. The United States Fish and Wildlife Commission estimates that of the over 17,000 Mute Swans known to exist in the eastern US., over 14,000 birds will have to be destroyed to save our native fish and bird species from extinction.

On his own, Romeo will not be a problem as Black Swans do not migrate, preferring instead to live their lives in the same pond, but in the interest of being environmentally responsible, I’m calling on citizens and community leaders alike to make sure Romeo remains as he is-- alone. If you need to get rid of Canadian Geese, a big Labrador Retriever would probably be a much better choice.