Stumbleupon is working to save the world by planting trees to reduce global warming and produce more clean air.

For every thumbs up by Stumbleupon Toolbar users, Stumbleupon will plant a tree. From their site: "During the campaign period StumbleUpon agrees to donate funds to the National Forest Foundation to plant trees for each "Thumbs-Up", up to a maximum donation of $25,000. The Campaign is being conducted by the National Forest Foundation for the following charitable purpose: to benefit the overall operation of The National Forest Foundation."

Already they've planted over 7.000 trees and all you need do to help them plant more is click on the word, Stumbleupon and give it a thumbs up.

Thanks so much to everyone who responded with VCT tiles for the new kitchen under construction at the HIVE.  We hope to start putting down the tile this coming Sunday, April 20.  If anyone has some extra vinyl adhesive gathering dust in the garage (we estimate we need 5-6 gallons) we would love to take it off your hands.

Also...we begin building lighting fixtures soon.  We will be recycling discarded pole lamps--the kind that has three adjustable canisters. If you have any pole lamps or see any by the side of the road--working or not--please bring them by the HIVE at 1214 Grove Street; if the HIVE is not open leave them by the loading dock.

If you're interested in getting involved in the construction, please check the calendar at GSOhive.org for upcoming work days.  And watch the kitchen page on the website as we post photos of our progress!

Liz 274-1814

The Hive, 1214 Grove Street in Greensboro, is looking for donations of VCT (Vinyl Composition Tile) in any color or amount to be used on the floor of the kitchen where they prepare free meals for the homeless and poor. If you have any left over VCT or know someone who might, please contact Liz Seymour at 274-1814.

And to be perfectly frank: The vast majority of the Time Magazine choices suck big time.

Link via e-mail fromTina.

CCWA EVENTS (details below):
1) *NEW* David Blair poetry reading, Apr. 3
2) *NEW* North Carolina Music Festival, Apr. 12
3) 2nd Annual Southeastern Literary Magazine and Small Press Festival, Apr. 23-25; North Carolina Writers Network Spring Conference, Apr. 26
4) *NEW* Kelly Cherry and Leigh Anne Couch poetry reading, Apr. 23


OTHER UNCG AND COMMUNITY EVENTS (details below):
5) Design, Art, and Technology Symposium, Mar. 27-29
6) MFA Creative Writing Thesis Reading, Mar. 28
7) *NEW* Dean Young poetry reading, Apr. 10
8) *NEW* Alan Shapiro poetry reading, Apr. 17

For more details on CCWA news and events, visit the center's website:

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EVENT DETAILS:

1) The UNCG Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, the MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro, and The Greensboro Review will host a poetry reading by UNCG alum David Blair on Thursday, April 3rd at 5:00 pm in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. A graduate of the MFA Writing Program at Greensboro, David Blair's collection Ascension Days was the winner of the 2007 Del Sol Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Boston Review, The Greensboro Review, Harvard Review, and Ploughshares and have been featured in the anthologies Zoland Poetry and The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. David Blair is an associate professor at The New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more information, contact Terry Kennedy (tlkenned (AT) uncg.edu).

2) The North Carolina Music Festival: A Celebration of NC Vocal Traditions will be held from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, at the UNCG School of Music. The event will focus on performing, discussing, participating and appreciating popular vocal styles native to North Carolina. The festival features workshops, panel discussions and performances, and concludes with a concert at 7:30 p.m. featuring Sister Lena Mae Perry, Alice Gerrard, Laurelyn Dossett and Sheila Kay Adams. All events are free and open to the public except the concert. Concert tickets are available through the UNCG Box Office. The festival is co-sponsored by the School of Music and the UNCG Center for Creative Writing in the Arts. More information is available at NC Music Fest.

3) Save the dates for the Second Annual Southeastern Literary Magazine and Small Press Festival on Wednesday, April 23rd, through Friday, April 25th, to be followed by the all-day North Carolina Writers Network Spring Conference on April 26th. The events, scheduled to take place in the UNCG Elliott Center, will include poetry and fiction readings, a book fair, panel discussions, and workshops. Stay tuned for more details as they become available, or contact Terry Kennedy (tlkenned@uncg.edu) or Mark Smith-Soto (mismiths (AT) uncg.edu). More information also is currently online at the UNCG MFA program website, at MFA Greensboro.

4) The Greensboro Review in conjunction with the UNCG Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, the UNCG Alumni Association and Waccamaw will host a poetry reading by Kelly Cherry and Leigh Anne Couch on Wednesday, April 23rd at 7:00 pm in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. A part of the 2nd Annual Spring Southeastern Literary Magazine and Small Press Festival, the event is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. A graduate of the MFA Writing Program at Greensboro, Kelly Cherry is the author of seventeen books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (criticism, memoir, and essay), including the poetry collections God's Loud Hand, Death and Transfiguration, and Rising Venus. Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she lives with her husband on a small farm in Virginia. A graduate of the MFA Writing Program at Greensboro, Leigh Anne Couch lives in Tennessee with her husband, Kevin Wilson, and is the managing editor of the Sewanee Review. She is the author of the poetry collections Houses Fly Away and Green and Helpless. Her poems have appeared in The Greensboro Review, Western Humanities Review, Shenandoah, 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, The Carolina Quarterly, and other journals. She has held residency fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. For more information about this event, contact Terry Kennedy (tlkenned (AT) uncg.edu).

5) The 2008 Design, Art, and Technology Symposium will be held at UNCG March 27-29. This year's DATS symposium brings guest speakers and panelists to UNCG from around the country; of special interest to the UNCG writing community are keynote speakers Graffiti Research Lab, who will be doing a public projection project Thursday evening, and a panel on interactive text on Friday, featuring Graffiti Research Lab (graffitiresearchlab.com), Seth Ellis from the UNCG Art Department (sethsellis.com), and Christopher Baker from the University of Minnesota (christopherbaker.net). Other panels, events, and student exhibitions will take place in the UNCG Elliot Center and the Gatewood Studio Arts Building.  Visit the symposium website at dats.uncg.edu for more details.

6) Graduating students in UNCG's MFA program in Creative Writing will be giving their thesis readings in February and March. The readings are held at St. Mary's House (930 Walker Ave.) and are free and open to the public. All readings begin at 8:00pm. The final reading is scheduled for Friday, March 28th. For more information, see the MFA program website at www.mfagreensboro.org.

7) The MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro, The Greensboro Review, and Spring Garden Press will host a poetry reading by Dean Young on Thursday, April 10th  at 8:00 pm in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Dean Young is the author of Skid, First Course in Turbulence, Strike Anywhere, Beloved Infidel, Design with X, Elegy on Toy Piano, and embroyoyo. Two books are forthcoming: Primitive Mentor, and The Art of Recklessness, a book of prose. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dean Young teaches at The Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and in the Warren Wilson Low Residency Program.

8) The MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro, The Greensboro Review, and Spring Garden Press will host a poetry reading by Alan Shapiro on Thursday, April 17th at 8:00 pm in the UNCG Faculty Center on College Avenue. It is free and open to the public and will be followed by a reception and book signing. Alan Shapiro is the author of nine acclaimed books of poetry. He is a former recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Los Angeles Book Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was recently elected as a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Alan Shapiro is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

I thought she was crazy. I even said so publicly. I might have even gone so far as to say it on a blog somewhere. The things she accused Randolph Hospital of doing were simply unbelievable. The idea that a court of law would find an entire hospital system to be without guilt when they punished Dr Johnson for saving the life of someone's baby seemed ridiculous. The thought that she would loose her job and medical practice because she stepped-in and saved the life of a child put at risk by another doctor was simply beyond me. But that was before I learned she was telling the truth.

Mary and I disagred on lots of issues. Politically she was to the right while I'm to the left but our political views have nothing to do with the fact that Doctor Mary Johnson was punished by Randolph Hospital, the Randolph County Commissioners, the City of Asheboro, North Carolina, the courts, lawyers, a corrupt medical board and local main stream media outlets because she saved the life of a baby and blew the whistle on those who put the child at risk.

Mary Johnson became a doctor in order to save the lives of children but instead of thanking her for doing the right thing the powers that be systematically set out to destroy her life just as they almost destroyed the life of the child Mary Johnson saved that day all those years ago.

Thankfully, Dr Mary Johnson is still alive and still fighting to save the lives of children. The title was simply a trick to draw you in.

In the coming weeks I hope to meet Mary Johnson face to face for the first time and when we meet I plan to give her a big hug. I've never been much of a hugger but sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do. I hope that everyone who reads this will hug Mary Johnson as well. Leave comments of support and do what you can to propel her story into the eyes of the national media and force Randolph Hospital to finally do the right thing. Click here to e-mail this post to your friends or forward Dr Johnson's blog to your friends. Add these links to your favorite social networking and bookmarking websites or send them to your local media outlets no matter where you live. Call the attorney general, something, anything to get her story told.

And please, do it before a baby dies.

Over at Hoggard's, Mebane asks if Billy The Blogging Poet intends to run in the upcoming Torch Relay as part of the 200th Anniversary of Greensboro, North Carolina.

I have been approached by event organizers as the relay passes in front of my house but as many folks know the only running I've done in the last 30 years was for Mayor of Greensboro and I lost miserably.

Anyway, that got me to thinking, while this fat old poet is going to look pretty silly running down Textile Drive torch in hand I'm willing to make a fool of myself if other local bloggers are willing to do the same. Are there others in Greensboro's blogosphere who are willing to look as silly as I'm willing to look? Are all of you as out of shape as I am?

The Torch Relay is going to cover most of the city and lots of runners will be needed and you need not be a blogger or an athlete to participate. Also, crowds who stand along the sides of the roads and cheer rather than laugh will be greatly appreciated.

The applications can be found at Approaching200.com or by going by the Greensboro Historical Museum at the corner of Lindsey and Summit.

The NAACP and the UFCW's, Justice at Smithfield Campaign are joining forces this year to repeat the NAACP's Historic Thousands on Jones Street Rally and March (HK on J!) on Saturday, Feburary 9th., 2008.

Greensboro residents can ride a bus to the event by contacting Fahiym Hanna 910 736 7048, e-mail FAH9109 (AT) ufcw.org

Busses depart Greensboro at 10:15 from the New Light Baptist Church, 1105 Willow Road, Greensboro and return the same day.

The actual rally will take place at Chavis Park, 505 Martin Luther King Blvd., Raleigh, NC., and will be followed by a march to the NC General Assembly at 16 W Jones Street in downtown Raleigh.

And remember to boycott Smithfield Foods.

Folks here in Greensboro know Cara Michele Forrest as one of the most honest, loving and caring people to ever walk the streets of Greensboro. From Greensboro's homeless to those North Carolinians working in Washington and those trying to get elected to Washington everyone knows and loves Cara Michele.

A couple of days ago I put a bug in Cara Michele's ear about a way to possibly raise millions of dollars to help feed and clothe the homeless in Greensboro and elsewhere. CM and friends can manage the technical skills, she simply needs people in the business community to invest in a technology that would not only help the homeless but would also increase the bottom lines of your businesses.

Because this is an Internet based project it doesn't really matter if your business is local to Greensboro or not and because this will be a nonprofit your investments will be tax-deductible.

Myself and the rest of Team Blogsboro will help in promoting this effort and dream of the day when we can help fund it. To learn more or pledge your support please contact Cara Michelle. Mention "rice" in your e-mail so she'll know what you're talking about.

I came across this story tonight and it made me wonder. In Australia everyone is required to vote but in America you can get deported for voting?