The son of former World Heavy Weight Champion and Boxing Legend Joe Louis was in Harrisonburg on Saturday afternoon. Joe Louis Barrow Junior leaned how to play golf from his father, starting at the age of 4.
Barrow has been the CEO of “The First Tee”, a non-profit that teaches children golf and other values embodied by the sport, for over 10 years. He was in town to speak at the Grand Opening of First Tee at the Heritage Oaks Golf Course. The building is 4,800 square feet and cost 440,000 dollars. It features four indoor tees, which have high-speed cameras to assist in improving players swings. The Rotary Club gave 55,000 dollars toward the new building.
Barrow’s speech kicked off the Eighth Annual First Tee Golf Classic which raised money for the organization.
They were talking about Michael Jackson’s kids on TV. Nobody seems to know who or where they are going to live. He has two children, Paris and Michael Jr, with former wife Debbie Rowe. She gave up custody after the couple divorced. Lets all hope they don’t go to live with their grandfather.
Rockingham County is thinking about something that will make students at Harrisonburg City Schools green with envy. They want to start using the 10 point grading scale. I loved the 10-point scale (if you went to college the you know what I’m talking about). Nothing beats getting a passing grade of 60 on a term paper that you started writing an hour before class.
I have no problem with the new grading system— only a quote by John Meyers, chair of the board.
“People think that we need to do it to kind of have a level playing field for our students to help them apply and get into colleges.”
Doesn’t it seem like he is implying that students in Rockingham County aren’t smart enough to compete with students in other districts with the regular (94 is an A) scale?
In his defense he went on to say that the board was considering it because other districts have already changed their scales. So perhaps keeping the regular scale is putting students at a disadvantage. Though the disadvantage is certainly much less than restricting learning by forcing teachers to teach only the material that is on SOL tests. That puts kids’ futures at risk than any grading scale ever could. Can we all agree that standardized testing for third graders is a bit much. I am a firm believer in making learning interesting and these tests put so much pressure on students from all sides (if schools average is too low they can loose accreditation).
I’m pretty out of the loop the days, I didn’t find out about Michael Jackson’s death until an hour ago. All jokes aside he was a very talented individual that obviously dealt with mental illness (I blame Joe for that). Here is a video I grabbed of MTV.com, since Youtube is blocking the embedding of Michael Jackson videos at the moment….BOO!!!
Update: I took down the MTV Video because it was giving everyone a tracking cookie from ad.doubleclick.net.
This is kind of scary, apparently the H1N1 virus (Pig Flu) has finally found it’s way to our fair city. A spokesman for RMH announced that they have a patient that has tested positive for the virus. On the bright side the patient was allowed to go home and is expected to recover. It’s kind of a big deal but it’s not like its the Rage Virus and we are all going to turn into zombies or anything but it’s still semi-disturbing. More updates as information becomes available.
The find people at harrisonburgnow.com finally gave me my own account, that way if I manage to offend anyone that is bored enough to look at this mediocre website, they can blame it on me and not them. Seriously aren’t their better websites with this kind of information on it? How hard is it to come up with an original idea for a website. My friend that made this site is all code and no vision. How about a site that is kind of like myspace but for the area, ok maybe thats not original either, of course I didn’t waste countless hours designing this one.
I’m going to see how long it takes for this post to be removed.
I had a chance to catch up with an old friend today (we will call him Bob), he was recently laid off from his job and lost his health insurance (his employer cited “the economy”). He applied for unemployment but has not received his first check and he does not have the money to pay COBRA. Basically, he can’t afford to pay for the medications he needs or the doctor’s appointments required to get them. The poor guy was suffering from withdrawal from his anti-depressant (apparently they are called (brain zaps).
I asked him if he had tried going to the free clinic. To which he replied, “I can’t, I don’t have a job”. I didn’t believe him at first but he insisted that you had to be employed to get help from the Free Clinic. Still doubtful when I got home tonight I looked at their website and sure enough, you have to be employed for at least 16 per week or you have to apply for disability. What about people that are unemployed and can’t afford to go to the doctor? If you don’t believe me look at their policy (taken directly from their website.
The Free Clinic serves people who meet all of the following criteria:
Resident of Harrisonburg City or Rockingham County
Without any type of medical insurance, including Medicaid and Medicare
Gross family income (before taxes) less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. This means that if you live alone, your income before taxes cannot be more than $20,800 a year to receive services. For a family of four, your income cannot be over $42,000.
Working at least 16 hours per week, on disability, or deemed unable to work by Free Clinic clinical staff. People who are caring for young children, the elderly and persons with disabilities can be considered working.
If 1,300 new apartments for JMU students are being built in Harrisonburg, how come I can’t find a decently priced place that allows cats? I have seriously searched and searched- nobody allows cats. I’ve looked on craigs list, even posted a “housing wanted” ad on craigslist. I looked at a place behind Sheets off 33 and it had a huge crater in the driveway and was in dire need of a power washing. The trim around the door was rotting off and they still wanted $695 plus a huge pet deposit. What are my lazy old cats going to do to compared to all the years of neglect? With the Real Estate market in shambles I was hoping landlords would be willing to make some concessions.
I thought I had found a place a few weeks ago but ran into a bit of old fashioned descrimination– and by old fashioned I mean cira 1900. It’s hard to believe but my fiance and were not “allowed” to rent a place from Hess and Miller, because we aren’t married yet. Pick up some cheap wedding bands or an attorney before you deal with those guys (if you and your significant other are still putting off getting hitched that is).
As made applicable by section 803 of this title and except as exempted by sections 803(b) and 807 of this title, it shall be unlawful– (a) To refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.
Most of the posts on this blog are written by Chris Burke, the one person I know that has the time to blog on a regular basis. He is often rude, offensive and uncouth; but he writes these blog posts for free.
