Celebrate our Independence Day

The citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, declared their independence from the British throne on May 20, 1775.  Happy Independence Day, everybody!

The call finally came

By call, I mean phone call. Our local government has what I presume is a reverse-911 system, and they are so happy with it that everything seems to qualify as an emergency. From residents who go missing from area nursing homes to escaped jail inmates, if something happens then everybody gets the call. I suppose there’s an argument to be made that each of these cases could be termed an emergency case, but what happens when a firestorm is ravaging the county and the evacuation call gets ignored by most simply because they think it’s just another call about Fannie Mae getting lost from the home again?

Last night the call was the one I’ve been dreading: an official government request to cut water usage by 50%. Fortunately, these requests are still completely voluntary for us. I’ve blogged previously about how responsible local residents have already been in drastically cutting their water usage, even though our local water supply is considerably insulated from the effects of even the current extreme drought. I have little fear that residents will be able to achieve nearly the 50% goal, even if they don’t quite make the full amount.

Happy with just a sprinkle

We’ve had sprinkles of rain throughout the night and this morning. To most people, that isn’t news, but in the parched southeast United States, it’s huge.

A report last night on the Weather Channel really drove home just how severe this drought is: as of this week, almost 38% of North Carolina is classified D4/Exceptional, the most severe rating for drought conditions. You can see a map of what this looks like at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s North Carolina State Drought Monitor page. Georgia is lucky, comparatively speaking. Only (only, he says!) 27% of that state suffers from the most severe drought conditions. Now take a look at Alabama. Over 50% rated D4.

Still room left on the bus (but they won’t make you ride in the back)

If you’ve heard of the Jena 6, you may be interested in joining the sentencing vigil in Jena (I’m not calling it a demonstration, since I don’t believe demonstrations can help at this point, but a strong show of public vigilance can help). Charlotte metro residents can apparently still get a seat on buses that will leave on September 19 to arrive in Louisiana early morning on September 20.

You can read more about the Charlotte connection on WCNC.com. Read more about the planned trip, including your cost to join in, at PraisePreview.com.

Has the world gone mad?

OK, I wasn’t going to post anything at all about the Virginia Tech shooting mess, since the people involved in that have enough to worry about already, thank you very much.

Then I saw on today’s news that there was a school lockdown in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, while police searched for a homicide suspect. Then in a completely unrelated story, some schools in Mecklenburg County were locked down until the gunman shot himself. And in yet another story, some Cabarrus County schools were locked down while police searched for a man who was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.

I’m suspecting that the two North Carolina stories are possibly related, since the affected areas are so near each other. Still, could somebody tell me what, exactly, makes people with guns head in the direction of the nearest school? Even if they don’t enter, they still seem to be drawn to schools of all descriptions much as a moth is drawn to a bug zapper. Maybe there’s something of the Virginia Tech incident that’s stuck in the crazed gunmen’s brains?

UPDATE:  WCNC has an update on the Mecklenburg County story.