Beta came home last night with a scary tale of an incident suffered by one of her schoolmates: a young man she knows (an ORHS senior), went outside to bring in his cat, and a coyote jumped him, scratching his shoulder and chest in an attempt to take the cat from him.
If true (this came via my teenager and I haven’t confirmed it anywhere), this pokes a big ol’ hole in the argument that coyotes are no danger to humans, as presented by one side of a publicized neighborhood discussion about the coyote problem in Country Club Estates a couple of months ago. This incident was nearby, but on the north side of the turnpike.
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The Tennessean has a very interesting piece of black history from yesterday (hat tip: VolunteerVoters). I’d have never guessed; I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that in the various black history month things from school.
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Another Ford made the news (again). Funny, just yesterday, I told a couple of friends at lunch that my primary discomfort with Harold Jr. is his family. I know he says he’s different — I even want to believe that he is — but it’s not just a case of one rogue relative. There are so many.
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Terry Frank has been doing some homework; although there are plenty of areas where Terry and I disagree, this is a story that needs to be heard.
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The Oak Ridger covered an informational meeting about the proposed Crestpoint shopping center project on Wednesday morning, and some of the comments were very enlightening as to why this development would bring the revenues shown in the City’s estimates:
For example, Heather Tang, an Oak Ridge mother of three, said she spends at least $200 a week at the Turkey Creek Target, buying a variety of items including clothes, food, and diapers.
“I would much rather spend it in Oak Ridge than drive over to Knoxville,†Tang said.
Some of the critics have challenged the revenue estimates on the basis that Oak Ridgers can’t spend that much more, but the quote above precisely illustrates the counter-argument: it’s not that we will spend more, but that we will spend more here instead of elsewhere.
I don’t doubt that Wal-Mart will lose a little business with competition in town after my own experience yesterday. In a hurry, needing to pick up just two pizzas and some orange juice, I got in the shortest of the quick checkout lanes on the grocery end of the store — with only one woman ahead of me. Unfortunately, she was buying a pet fish (which appeared to me to be already dead). She told the checkout clerk that she needed a fishbowl, but couldn’t reach them, so… yes. The clerk left her cash register to go all the way to the other end of the store and get a fishbowl…
I changed lanes, getting behind an elderly lady with more than 20 items, but figured it would still be faster than waiting for the fishbowl. It wasn’t — I don’t think this lady has anyone to talk to, so she chatted and chatted with the polite 20-something young man at the register (about her tractor, how last year’s drought affected her greens, that it’s time to plant this year’s greens but they need rain at a certain stage, and on and on). It was apparent that he didn’t know her personally, but had spoken just enough to get her started. Even when her order was finished and she had her receipt in hand, she stood and continued chatting. Even when MY four items were rung up and totaled, she stayed and kept chatting — keeping me from reaching the card reader so I could pay for my stuff and get out of there.
If Target has a self-checkout, it will be well worth driving the extra three blocks.