Enlarge Julie Schmidt (left) and Mona Teasley help clean up Frazier Park. (The Charlotte Observer)

Posted: August 10th, 2011 Greg Lacour

I’m tired of bad news--the debt ceiling nonsense, the credit rating downgrade, the terror in Norway, the helicopter crash in Afghanistan. So I thought I’d do an all-nice things roundup. Enjoy.

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• The thunderstorm that caused flooding throughout Charlotte on Friday caused an estimated $5,000 in damage to plants and trees in Frazier Park and left a layer of mud on Our Children’s Memorial Walkway. But as so often happens in Charlotte, a team of volunteers appeared over the weekend to clean up.


• More volunteer goodness: Meet the Burrito Bikers.


• Tried to secure a bank loan lately? Darn near impossible, isn’t it? That’s why microloan programs are growing in popularity, and why the Charlotte Mecklenburg Black Chamber of Commerce is in the early stages of starting such a program.


• There’s an art exhibit at the Gantt Center that seems like a good springboard for thought and discussion. How do you think art can add to a community’s life?


• Want to help the homeless and do some big-league sweating, too? Sign up for the second annual N.C. Music Factory Rock ‘N Run 5K, which last year raised $4,000 for four nonprofits. This year, Proceeds from this year’s race will benefit Hope Haven, Inc., a foundation that provides life skills training for homeless, chemically dependent adults and families.

Posted: August 4th, 2011 Carolyn Steeves

The oppressive heat may have kept the crowd small, but The Brass Connection brought a cool funk July 30 at Saturdays on Selwyn, a free summer outdoor concert series with Crossroads Charlotte Artist-in-Residence Quentin "Q" Talley as emcee. The event features a different local band each week, while encouraging community building through music and mingling.

“We enjoy doing what we do, it doesn’t matter if we’re playing to 100,000 people or two people. We enjoy it no matter what,” said Michael Taylor, founder of The Brass Connection. The band, which plays a variety of songs from Top 40 to Motown, features Taylor's young son on trombone. "It's just a big family thing," he said. “We hope that everybody enjoys what we do, because we enjoy it,” Taylor said. 

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Posted: August 3rd, 2011 Greg Lacour

Some stories worth sharing this week:

• Today is Peter Gorman’s last day as superintendent of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. He’s leaving quietly. No farewell reception. No public statement. No exit interview with the press. Why? Do you think CMS is better or worse after five years of Gorman at the helm?

• You may remember the news from a few weeks ago about Erick Velazquillo, a 22-year-old Central Piedmont Community College student threatened with deportation even though he’d been in the United States since he was 2. Immigration officials decided to drop deportation efforts.

• Longtime Charlotte civil rights attorney James Ferguson has founded a group called the Carolina Regional Minority Partnership Coalition to push Democratic National Convention organizers to hire minority-owned businesses for services, supplies and support.

• Nice story here about a Mexican cultural exchange program called Jóvenes en Acción (“Youth In Action”) that allowed a group of young people to spend two weeks in Charlotte, learning lessons about leadership and education they can take home.

• Charlotte attorney Ken Harris represented the family of Darryl Turner, a 17-year-old boy who died in March 2008 after a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer shot him in the chest with a Taser, in a lawsuit against Taser International. Last week, a jury in U.S. District Court in Charlotte awarded the Turner family a damage award of $10 million--only the second time the Arizona company had ever lost a suit. QCityMetro.com conducted this interview with Harris. Tasers are billed as a less deadly way for police officers to incapacitate criminals, but suspects still die from Taser shocks. What, if anything, do you think should be done?