Southern Kind of Life

So, now that our reservoirs are full, Durham has moved from Stage IV water restrictions to Stage III. (ref)  Stage III restrictions state that no person shall “[i]ntroduce water into any decorative fountain, pool or pond except where the water is recycled.”  I wonder if the little fountain we have in our front flower garden, that has been sitting idle for months would qualify as one “where the water is recycled”.  You put water in it and then the water goes up and then it comes down.  Of course, it does then evaporate fairly quickly so it’s probably not a good idea to run it.  Also, the ordinance adds that no person shall “[u]se water for any unnecessary purpose” and a fountain in the front yard, while nice, really isn’t necessary.  So, we’ll probably leave it as is, but I did wonder.

At the Durham Symphony Orchestra rehearsal tonight we had our first guest conductor: Andrew McAfee.  He’s the former principal horn player for the North Carolina Symphony and is now apparently working on his Master’s degree in conducting.  Tonight was his first rehearsal with the Durham Symphony.  Beforehand he had sent out a schedule of what we were going to work on when and by and large he stuck to it.  Since this was our first rehearsal for our upcoming pops concerts, tonight was mainly about site reading the pieces and making notes on what to work on before the next rehearsal next week.  All in all, I think he did a pretty good job and should do very well conducting our upcoming concerts.

Another interesting bit of information that was announced at the DSO rehearsal tonight was that we had apparently received 96 applications (with accompanying DVDs of their work) for the position of DSO conductor!  The search committee has now winnowed that down to 10 and will be looking to reduce it even further down to 4 and invite those top 4 to guest conduct during the next season.  I have no idea who the candidates are but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing who the search committee picks.

The Durham Symphony Orchestra starts rehearsals tomorrow for their series of pops concerts at the end of April/beginning of May. The concerts will be April 20 at 5pm in Trinity Park, April 27 at 3pm in Cameron Park, and May 3 at 6pm at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion in Durham Central Park. All the concerts are free and open to the public.

These concerts should be interesting as they are the first ones since Conductor Emeritus Alan Neilson retired. The Durham Symphony plans to host guest conductors until a replacement for Maestro Neilson is found. Up first will be Andrew McAfee who is the Music Director/Conductor for the Triangle Youth Ballet and Durham Intermediate Youth Orchestra and Adjunct Instructor of Horn at UNC. He was also formerly the principal Horn for the North Carolina Symphony from 1992 to 2007.

Maestro McAfee has started off by e-mailing the orchestra a complete schedule down to the minute of what he expects to cover during our rehearsal on Tuesday. This is actually the first time I’ve ever had a conductor do that and I find that I actually like it quite a bit. It lets the instrumentalists know what the expectations are and doesn’t leave us wondering how much more we need to cover in the rehearsal. As to whether the reality will actually fit the schedule, that remains to be seen, but I am hopeful.

Wednesday night while my son and I were driving to dinner at Elmo’s Diner, I got a phone call from Whitney at the Durham County Board of Elections. I had volunteered as a polling place official for the 2006 election and had been meaning to call the board of elections to see about working this year’s elections. Well, they called me first. From what I understand, it looks like the primary on May 6, 2008 may have a fairly large turnout, especially if the Democratic presidential nomination process is still not decided. So, they’re recruiting election officials now. From personal experience I can say that working as an election official makes for a very long day. You get there at 6am and stay there until after 8pm. As someone, however, who thinks that voting is the bedrock of our democracy, I think it’s an outstanding service to the community and more people should volunteer for it. If you’re interested, see the BOE web page about it and give Whitney a call at (919) 560-0690 to volunteer today.

Phillip Barron and Jack Edinger have started a project to create maps of local triangle bike maps. It looks like they’ve got a good start at lots of road bike lanes and greenway trails. They seem to be a bit lacking for mountain bike trails, but they are asking for more collaborators. This looks like a great project and I encourage people to go look and offer to help.

My son and I ate supper at Elmo’s Diner last night and I noticed they had an innovative way to politely let customers indicate that they’d like to help save water (see picture). I asked one of the managers about it and she said it was a good way for the servers to do their jobs while still giving people the opportunity to save at least a bit of water. I, personally, like it and would like to see other restaurants adopt it. It may not be enough, but every little bit helps.

The Durham County Library is inviting the public to a meeting on Tuesday, January 8, 2008 at 7 p.m. at Southwest Branch Library, 3605 Shannon Rd about expansion plans for the Southwest Branch Library expansion.

The meeting will give the community an opportunity to hear about the expansion and renovation of Southwest Branch Library that will transform the facility into a full-service regional library.

Apparently the branch will be transformed into one of four “regional libraries” along with East Regional (opened June 2006), North Regional (opened January 2007) and South Regional (which is planned to replace the Parkwood Branch). I’d love to go to this meeting, but I’ll be in a First Aid/CPR certification class at the Red Cross that night. I’ll have to see if I can find more information about what happens at the meeting.

More information about the meeting can be found in their pdf flyer.

My wife and I try to shop locally whenever we can. When we moved into our current home five years ago we were looking for a local pharmacy when my wife spotted the Triangle Pharmacy on Hwy 54. When you’re a small store it can often be hard to get people to take a second look at you. Triangle Pharmacy/TrueValue, though, has hit upon something that is a very good way to get people to notice them. They put up small rhymes on their marquee. Whenever we go by, my wife and son always want to see if the sign has changed and what it says now. So, in the best tradition of Barry Ragin’s blog, I thought I’d post their latest marquee, taken this morning on my way to work:

For Christmas this year, my six year old son got a Scientific Explorer’s My First Weather Science and Learning Kit. On Saturday I helped him put it up in our back yard. We had good timing because Sunday we had the most rain we’ve had in a while. At our house in my son’s weather station, we recorded one and 7/16 inches of rain. Compare that to the entire month of November when my wife and I recorded only 2 rainfails of 0.1 and 0.2 inches each! I had been wondering if this had affected the water supply in Durham and after looking at the city web page about water supply I see that indeed it has. According to the city this is what our water supply look like:

Current days of supply

Using the weekly average demand for Dec. 24 - Dec. 30, 2007 of 17.37 MGD:

• Lake Michie and Little River combined, 60 days of supply of easily accessible, premium water
• Teer Quarry, 30 days of supply (anticipated online late December).
• Lake Michie & Little River combined, 59 days of less accessible water below the intake structures
• Total days of supply = 149

This is a far cry better than the around 36 or so days we previously had in the Lake Michie and Little River reservoirs. And, even though it messes up my ability to go mountain biking, here’s hoping it rains again and soon!