north carolina

Chris Knight's avatar

After everything that happened at the July meeting, you would think that Standard Mode Of Dress (“SMOD”) aka school uniforms would not come up again anytime soon at the Rockingham County Board of Education. Or ever again for that matter.

Well, tonight it did.

Take a wild guess who brought it up.

Now to be fair, Ron Price did not outright suggest putting the SMOD issue back up for discussion as something to be immediately implemented (all hell would have broken loose on the far opposite side of the table if he had tried to). But the mere fact that Price spoke at length about wanting to have policies and guidelines already in place and ready for SMOD “in case” it is ever implemented, is troubling enough. I also happened to notice that Price spoke about SMOD as if it was something that the administrators and faculties of schools ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Yes the rumors are true: Monday Night Live now has its own page on Myspace! And it does a really good job of conveying the off-beat personality of Reidsville, North Carolina’s premiere television call-in show, too. On the page you’ll find a history of the long-running show, hilarious “in-jokes” like references to Commander Ashtar and Tom Wopat and Richard from Danville, pictures of hosts Mark Childrey and Ken Echols (and maybe a few other familiar faces), and even the show’s theme music – “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac – playing in the background… along with much more! The only thing missing is that Jaybird isn’t on the friends list… but maybe he’ll get a Myspace page of his own soon (hurry up Jaybird!)....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Earlier tonight on WGSR, Richard Moore appeared with Charles Roark and was (among other things) talking about this week’s meeting of the Reidsville City Council. And Richard reported on something that I couldn’t believe that I was hearing, so I e-mailed Richard and he confirmed it…

Reidsville City Council has voted to ban new churches from the downtown area.

Here is what Richard told me…

“Current churches can continue to operate, but no new churches will be allowed in the Central Business District. It was put into law today with a 5-2 vote. I think John Gentry and George Rucker voted against it.”

Richard also tells me that the Reidsville City Council did not debate whether or not this measure to ban churches was constitutional, but the council did discuss the constitutionality of banning pit bulls.

Only in Reidsville.

Let’s review the First Amendment of the United States Constitution:

“Congress

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

This morning I was going back though the past few months of blog posts looking for something I’d written pertaining to education. In the course of searching I found the video of WGSR’s Star Talk on June 14th where Mark Childrey interviewed me about my plans to address the July 9th meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education while dressed as a Jedi Knight. It was all to protest the “Standard Mode of Dress” (legalese for “school uniforms”) at Reidsville Middle and Reidsville High schools that the board had approved.

As was reported here a few weeks later, the board wound up rescinding the earlier vote to implement the policy after POTSMOD (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) turned the meeting into a media spectacle with picketing by students, black armbands and not just a Jedi but an “escaped convict” too 🙂

Well, I watched the video ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It all started a little over a month ago, and the very strange tale of how we wound up with a life-sized statue of Yoda in our home. Bear in mind that Brian Hodges wanted it to go in his new office at Mercer University and since he’s teaching cello, he was going to replace Yoda’s lightsaber blade with a cello bow. But he didn’t have enough room and so Yoda came back to North Carolina from Atlanta (after already coming up from Florida) and ended up in our “foster care”.

The thing is that even at life-size, Yoda takes up considerable space. Lisa and I didn’t really know what to do with him. But then an idea came to us. Or to be more accurate, the notion came to mind to “adapt” Brian’s original idea…

Let’s put Yoda in Lisa’s music classroom at school! That way Yoda would have ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

UPDATE 09-12-2007 12:29 am EST: YouTube has restored the clip

“Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word meaning “unbelievable gall or audacity”. An example of it would be the story of the kid who murders both of his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan.

That’s chutzpah. So is this: multimedia giant Viacom is claiming that I have violated their copyright by posting on YouTube a segment from it’s VH1 show Web Junk 2.0… which VH1 produced – without permission – from a video that I had originally created.

Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!

The clip in question was pulled by YouTube earlier this morning, at Viacom’s insistence.

Last ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Over the weekend I was re-reading through parts of the Harry Potter books and something really scary crossed my mind. It turns out that there are numerous striking similarities between Harry’s arch-nemesis Lord Voldemort, and disgraced Rockingham County Board of Education member Ron Price (the admitted thief and loather of public participation).

Consider…

– Lord Voldemort has no friends. Ron Price couldn’t find a friend or relative who would hold his Bible as he was being sworn-in for the school board.

– Lord Voldemort conned many people into thinking that he was a charming man. Ron Price conned many people into thinking that he was a “conservative” Christian.

– Lord Voldemort is fixated on himself and sees everyone else as a potential threat. Ron Price is fixated on himself and has said that “I’ve learned who my opponents are and who will work with me.”

– Lord Voldemort and Ron ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I’d planned on attending Monday night’s meeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education, and would have been there had some things not arisen on this end. So there’s no first-hand account this month. But the Reidsville Review already has up a story about some of what went down this time.

The board voted 8-4 to impose a time limit of 5 minutes per each person who addresses the board during the public comments portion of the meetings. Which is considerably more than the limit of 3 minutes that the board was originally considering. Elaine McCollum, Reida Drum, Nell Rose, and Nell Rose voted against the limit. Voting for it were Celeste DePriest, Ron Price, Lori McKinney, Amanda Bell, Jim Austin, Wayne Kirkman, Herman Hines and John Smith.

I suppose that 5 minutes does seem pretty reasonable. This however is not: that in addition to the 5 minutes per person, ...

Read more