Join the YES WE CANS Food Drive to benefit the Inter-Faith Council (IFC) and Orange Congregations in Missions (OCIM) food pantries on Monday, January 18th!

The Orange County Democrats are partnering with Organizing for America/Orange County Campaign for Change on this national day of service to help our neighbors across the county who are struggling. The shelves at the county’s food pantries are constantly being emptied.  Let’s work together to help restock the empty shelves! We are asking each precinct to collect at least 47 lbs of food to help us reach our goal of 2010 lbs of non -perishable food, toilet paper, new or gently used clean blankets and coats.

You can take food and clothing donations donations and/or help collect food in either Chapel Hill/Carrboro or Hillsborough:

Click the image at left to download a poster you can use in your neighborhood to promote the event!

In Chapel Hill/Carrboro: Please deliver food donations you have collected to the IFC office at 110 W. Main St., Carrboro between 1pm and 4pm on Monday, January 18. Copy the attached flier, staple to a grocery bag and go out and meet just 5 of your neighbors. This is a great way to establish relationships that will help in our work. Feel free to deliver to Diane Robertson’s home at 405 Waterside Drive, Carrboro, NC 27510 if you can't get to IFC on Monday;  leave on her porch with your precinct name if she is not home. Donations of checks can be made to IFC. We will weigh them at $1 per lb. Questions call Diane at 919-607-9604. You can also volunteer to collect food donations by clicking here.

In Hillsborough: We will be collecting food donations and asking shoppers to purchase needed items at Lowe’s Foods, off South Churton Street, Hillsborough from 2pm until 6pm on Monday, January 18.  You can collect food items from your friends and neighbors and drop off  or volunteer to work a short 2 hour shift at Lowe’s Foods. This is a great way to meet and greet our neighbors in the northern part of the county!  To volunteer or ask questions contact Linda Chewning at lindachewning@gmail.com or 919-360-1281.  You can also volunteer to collect food donations by clicking here.

Jim White, Chair of the Orange County Democratic Party and Bill Knight, Chair of the Orange County Republican Party issued the following joint statement today:

Last week a mailing was sent to residents of Chapel Hill that was supposedly from an organization calling itself “CHC PAC.”   There is apparently no such political action committee registered with the Orange County Board of Elections and no contact information or mailing address on the postcard.  The postcard is designed to look like a mailer supporting mayoral candidate Mark Kleinschmidt, and contains attacks on mayoral candidate Matt Czajkowski. 

Frankly, this does not read like a mailing that was intended to benefit either candidate, neither candidate has time to respond to it, and we are greatly disturbed that this was sent in Orange County in the few days before an election.    This appears to be an unfortunate and illegal attempt by an unknown individual or group to influence the election for Chapel Hill Mayor.   We do not care whether the responsible parties are Democrats, Republicans, or unaffiliated; this is not the way campaigns are conducted in Orange County, and we strongly condemn the person or persons behind this mailing.  This improper electioneering communication may violate both the North Carolina General Statutes and federal mail fraud statutes and we call on the Orange County District Attorney, the Orange County Board of Elections, and the North Carolina Board of Elections to investigate this matter vigorously and punish those behind this mailing to the full extent of the law.

We both implore the voters of Chapel Hill to ignore this spurious attempt to influence the election and ask that it not influence their choice either way.  Judge the candidates on their positions, not some unwelcome attempt by a third party to sway the outcome.
 

Independent Weekly

The Independent Weekly has endorsed the following candidates:

Carrboro:

Incumbent Mayor Mark Chilton and aldermen Jacquelyn Gist and Randee Haven-O'Donnell for re-election and challenger Sammy Slade.

Chapel Hill:

Mark Kleinschmidt for mayor, incumbents Laurin Easthom, Ed Harrison and Jim Merritt for Town Council and challenger Penny Rich.

Hillsborough:

Incumbents Mike Gering and Frances Dancy for re-election to the Hillsborough Town Commission. No endorsement for mayor because Mayor Tom Stevens is running unopposed.

Chapel Hill/Carrboro Board of Education:

Incumbent Greg McElveen and challengers Michelle Brownstein and Joe Green.

Sierra Club

The Orange-Chatham Sierra Club has made its endorsements in this year's municipal elections:

Chapel Hill:

-Mark Kleinschmidt for Mayor

-Laurin Easthom, Ed Harrison, Penny Rich, and Jim Merritt for Town Council

Carrboro:

-Mark Chilton for Mayor

-Jacquelyn Gist, Randee Haven-O’Donnell, and Sammy Slade for Alderman

Hillsborough:

-Tom Stevens for Mayor
-Frances Dancy and Mike Gering for Town Council

Thorpe-Anderson Breakfast Club

Chapel Hill Mayor - Mark Kleinschmidt

Chapel Hill Town Council - Lauren Easthom, Ed Harrison, Jim Merritt and Will Raymond

Carrboro Mayor - Mark Chilton

Carrboro Board of Aldermen - Randee Haven-O’Donnell, Jacquelyn Gist and Sammy Slade

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board - Greg McElveen, Michelle Brownstein and Joe Green

UNC Young Democrats

Mark Kleinschmidt for Chapel Hill Mayor

Daily Tar Heel (UNC Student Newspaper)

Matt Czajkowski for Chapel Hill Mayor

Congratulations to all of those who received endorsements.
 

Welcome to the new folks who are so gracious in helping us work out the kinks here! 

We may be throwing some terms around here that not everybody is familiar with, or they may be used in a somewhat odd way, so I wanted to define some things. 

Drupal - It is simply an "application" much like Word or Excel or Calculator.  The difference is that it is "open source" meaning that anybody can modify it or add to it (obviously with oversight).  It is not proprietary.   The Core of Drupal is used by every Drupal Site, the magic comes from plugging in "Modules" to make unique things happen.  You can even write your own modules.

For instance, when you post an Event to the Calendar, you are actually using four different modules just to post the event, they are "configured" to work together in such a way that we can create an event and see it on a calendar.  That way, we can make it behave the way we prefer.  So, not all Drupal sites will behave the same!

Themes - This will be a hot topic for awhile then probably fade away.  The "theme" is the look and feel of the site.  We will be experimenting with varoius themes.  If you see green headers in bordered boxes on the home page and a thick blue line under the Heading, the site is currently using the "Acquia Marina" theme.  By the flip of a switch, we can change the theme instantaniously and we'll have a whole different look and feel.  Things may appear to have disappeared under certain themes.  Nothing is lost!  It is only that that theme is not presently configured to show that information. 

Content Types - Content is what is posted to the site by you and me!  Content is made up of various "types".  As of this writing, we have the following Content Types that can be created depending on your "permissions".

• Blogs - your own series of personal posts 
• Pages - what you would think of as a typical web page (but they may take up only a portion of a window...so in a way, Page is now something of a misnomer)
• Stories - "Pages" where you can leave comments, so they are less static than pages.  The original content is unchanged, but people can rant and rave about it! 
• Polls - a way to get orderly feedback
• Forums - These are especially handy!  You've probably seen them on other sites and may have been a bit afraid to wade in, but they are basically conversations in outline form.  They are used extensively by technical sites to organize questions and answers.   They are something like a bulliten board where you can leave a post and also see everybody's responses.
• Events - These are things that happen that are date focused.  We present these in a calendar view.

To make a distinction. You can see that you can score blog entries.  That scoring mechanism is not a content type, even though you are taking an action and making a statement by scoring.  The distinction is that you are filling in information ABOUT something rather than creating something new.  So, a vote on a poll is not a content type, while a poll is a content type.. the poll required someone to put it together and post it, the votes in the poll are simply reactions to the content.

So, you can then perhaps see why Comments are not a content type!  You can post comments in response to a blog or story, but comments themselves are not "content type", they are reactions to content.

Gadgets (also sometimes called Widgets) - These are the little features that you'll see that (hopefully) enhance your experience.  The voting mechanism on blogs  is an example of a gadget.  We are not very gadget rich right now, there is such a thing as making things a bit too busy!  But we will be experimenting with new gadgets to see if they enhance or dampen the experience of the site.   One of the gadgets I'm working on is a taxonomy gadget that you may have seen on Amazon, where the commonality of the word makes it appear larger or smaller within the gadget.

Well, that's enough vocabulary for now. Come in and get your feet wet and post!  Post about anything.  I don't know if we will do a total reset after testing is done, certainly we can delete mundane test posts once things settle down here, so don't be afraid to just post saying "this is a test...I just want to see how it behaves."  That's exactly what we want!  See how it behaves and give us feedback.

Thanks again!

-MagicT