The Native North Carolinian

Here are some opportunities for fun around the state this weekend:

Summer Fun in Salisbury
Thurs - Giordana pro & amateur bike races. Fri - 60’s Night Out outdoor festival, live music, kids’ fun. Call 704-637-7814 for more info

Talking Trees Children’s Trout Derby in Cherokee
Featuring fly-tying exhibitions, fish-cleaning stations, food, music, door prizes and trophies.
828-497-8126

Mount Mitchell Crafts Fair This is a biggie, ya’ll, celebrating it’s 51st year!

Mineral and Gem Festival also in Mitchell County

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in Flat Rock.

Here in North Carolina, it’s hurricane season. If you are on the coast, I imagine you already have some sort of plan set up, but it’s always a good idea to look things over and make sure you’ve accounted for everything. You might consider using an online disaster planning tool like Axcesspoints. The service is free for the first 30 days, an just $9.95 per month after that.

AxcessPoints can help you keep track of your personal, medical, and financial records, because you can access the site from anywhere you have an internet connection, even if you are temporarily displaced! You can also enter information about your family, and they will generate a list of supplies you need to have on hand in case of emergency. This would be a big help to me, because I am always afraid I am forgetting something.

Navtej Kohli has been gracious enough to sponsor a post about my favorite charity. In fact, he’s sponsored several across my different blogs, and I’ll be highlighting a different charity for each sponsorship.

I spoke on another blog about an agency that helps distribute food to the eastern portion of our state, and on this blog, I’ll talk about one that serves the western part. Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC is a major distributor of donated food, helping to feed the hungry in 18 North Carolina counties. They have been given a rating of four stars by Charity Navigator. Over 95 percent of donations to the food bank are used to service the people who come to them for help. That means that less than 5 percent is spent on salaries and overhead. The food bank raises donations in several ways. In August, they are having a golf tournament, and they collect canned goods at local free concerts.

There is no need for people to be hungry in this state, or in this country. The food is there, we just need to get it to the people who need it. Second Harvest makes that happen. I want to thank Navtej for the opportunity to talk about an organization that’s making a difference for people in my state.

In 2005, the General Assembly adopted the Fraser Fir (named after a Scottish Botanist) as the official Christmas Tree for the state of North Carolina. It can take up to 12 years for one of these trees to reach a salable height, And has been chosen as the White House Christmas Tree 9 times since 1971. It was a group of students from at Harris Middle School in Spruce Pine that bought this tree up to the legislature as a potential state symbol. You can click here for more Fraser Fir Facts.

I would really love the opportunity to focus on some of the fine businesses here in North Carolina. We have some wonderful small businesses here and I know we have them, but I can’t possibly track them all down myself. I’m talking about the little local businesses, like the boiled peanut stand I stopped at the other week, whose name I failed to write down, because………uh, no reason there, except I failed to do it.

I was excited, then, to see this link in my email: Jacksonville Locksmith. I thought, woohoo, that’s local, I can certainly talk about that! Well, no. No, it’s not local. I’m not quite sure which Jacksonville they are talking about on that page, but I can tell you that it is NOT Jacksonville NC. I can tell that because the site has a list of other area cities that they serve, and I don’t recognize any of them!

I’m laughing at myself about this because it just proves how locality-centric I am. In spite of the fact that our Jacksonville is one of the smallest, it’s the only one on my radar. And when I search for something in Wilmington, I still get aggravated when Google gives me results in Delaware.

My friend Marcus suggested that I might find talking about traveling to other places an interesting topic for this blog, so I thought I might try it. You can let me know what you think in the comments. He wanted me to compare them to North Carolina, and then say how North Carolina is always better, but he has underestimated the size of my travel lust, and while I do always want to come home, I really do love to go, go, go.

So, lets talk about Australia. I was surprised to see Australia hotels on the Asia hotels website. It just never occurred to me that it would be considered part of Asia, ykwim? But it makes as much sense as anywhere else, geographically, so it works. Once you get to that Australia page, you can use the right sidebar to find hotels for a specific city, for example hotels in Cairns. Pretty simple, yes? Yes.

So what is Cairns like? The temps range from a mean temperature of 25.7 °C in July to 31.4 °C in January, and they get tropical monsoons between November and March. In contrast, our temps here in coastal North Carolina range from an average of 31.6 °C in summer to 4.4°C in winter, and we have hurricanes from June to December. Sounds like I might want to go in their winter, since they are coolest while we are hottest, but I use the term coolest is a very loosest sense of the word.

I know it rarely gets shivery cold here. Well, it does to us, but I am sure most of my northern friends just giggle when I say that. Many folks here use fires to heat their home, either traditional fireplaces or ventless gas fireplaces. I like the idea of the ventless gas because they aren’t so messy. What can be tricky to find is fireplace surrounds that can be made to fit whichever fireplace you do end up getting. At Agee Woodworks you can get marble, granite, and slate fireplace facing kits that will let you upgrade the look of your wood or ventless gas fireplaces with the stone facings. And Agee is almost local, being located in Virginia.

My Papa lives quite a bit inland from my coastal area, and he keeps a fire burning all through the cool months. Notice I did not say cold, but only because I didn’t want you to laugh at me.

My boys and Dh are very excitedly plannng a camping trip next weekend. They’ll be going to Tabor City to Jellystone Park. The older girls and I will be going to Carowinds as soon as they get home.

Hehe, I don’t “do” camping, but Kim does. I was reading tonight about her family adventures in getting ready for summertime fun.

I was browsing the Medical News site today, and found an article about the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center. Some students are biking across the US to raise funds for it. How cool is it that they would give up their summer vacation to help others, right here?

Also worth checking out is this article on BCBSNC, and their “Eat and Move” campaign. They are a major health care provider here in North Carolina and they are reaching out to the state’s children to help them develop lifetime good health habits. The campaign includes a scavenger hunt for parent and kids in Lowes Foods stores across the state.

The new site is very well organized, with a menu on the left to make navigation easy. You’ll find more articles on cancer, articles on physical therapy and many other topics. There is even a search box to aid in finding specific information– like what’s happening right here in the Old North State.

With summer here (boy, it sure snuck up fast, didn’t it??) it bears repeating to use sunscreen. We went to the park for just an hour or so Sunday, and I forgot to put any on us. Tomorrow, we’ll be out for a good part of the day, so I’m posting this to remind myself (and you) to protect your skin.