Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/24822
STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman bbowman@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Janice Burton Joy Crowe editor@upandcomingweekly.com STAFF WRITER Stephanie Crider stephanie@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Marybeth Leiby Marybeth@upandcomingweekly.com OFFICE MANAGER Deborah Baughn deborah@upandcomingweekly.com –––––––––––––– GRAPHIC DESIGNER Alicia Miller art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Soni Martin, D.G. Mar tin, Pitt Dick ey, Margaret Dickson, Bob Cogswell, John Hood, Jhana Lewis, Erinn Crider, Karen Poppele, Heather Griffi ths, Beth Solzsmon-Carpenter –––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan Street P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a “Quality of Life” publication with local features, news and infor- mation on what’s happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per per- son. Subscriptions can be purchased for $30 for six months or $60 for 12 months, delivered weekly by first class mail. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. INSIDE There Is Hope PUBLISHER’S PEN by JOY CROWE You don’t hear from me often in this spot. I like to stay in the background, writing about the facts and keeping my opinions to myself, so I leave it to my Publisher Bill and Associate Janice to pen this space and share their opinions. After all, my momma always told me “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything all.” But this week, I actually have something nice to say. We read week after week, and hear day after day, of the evils in our present-day world ... how uncivil we are to each other, how our kids are bullies, and our teens are selfi sh, lazy and spoiled rotten. But I’m here to tell you that there is hope. And that’s saying a lot coming from me, the eternal pessimist. During one of our recent snow and ice storms, perhaps on the second or third day as the city was fi nally dusting itself off and coming back to life, I came to Fayetteville from my home in Harnett County, fi nally heading back to work. I was making a quick stop at my mother’s to deposit my son for the day, as schools were still closed. As I neared my mother’s house, I saw two young boys — maybe in the neighborhood of 13 or so — cleaning the snow and ice off her neighbor’s car. Like my mother, her neighbor is an elderly widow, and these kids did not belong to her. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “there are some entrepreneurial kids out making a buck in the cold. Good for them. At least they have initiative.” Pulling up to my mom’s house, I saw that her car had also been cleaned off. Entering the front door, I commented on it and asked her how much they charged for that. “They volunteered,” she responded. “Yeah, volunteered for FREE or volunteered for a few bucks?” was my skeptical response. She explained that they had, in fact, volunteered for FREE. They were the boys that did her yard for her (albeit, not for Fayetteville’s Weather Forecast February 11 Fayetteville’s Weather Forecast Friday Thursday February 10 Saturday February 12 free) and came by and offered to clean off her car. Wow! I was almost stunned, which is sad. Once, that would have been a common neighborly thing to do for each other. But these days, unfortunately, a kind simple act as that seems extraordinary. I watched out the window as the boys headed across the street to the home of a disabled person and cleaned off yet another neighbor’s vehicle. I took this as a teachable moment for my own 10-year-old son and let him know what a nice, admirable and unselfi sh act these boys were performing. Instead of playing with their friends, or sitting in front of the TV with a cup of hot chocolate, they were out in their neighborhood helping their neighbors — and providing excellent customer service and added value to their lawn-mowing business customers. Sometimes, it’s all I can do to get my own dear child to take three steps across the hall to put his laundry in the laundry room, or to feed his own cats. And many businesses in our community could learn a thing or two from these kids about customer service! Every now and then my faith in humanity is restored. There are still some people who do the right things for the right reasons. All hope is not lost for our youth. And to the parents of those two boys, whoever they may be, I applaud you for a job well done. I hope that my own will turn out so well, eventually. And as for all this cold winter weather we’ve been having, to borrow a line from Grady Bowman’s Facebook post, “I’m snow over it.” Thanks for reading Up & Coming Weekly and thank goodness the Groundhog predicted an early Spring! JOY CROWE, Associate Publisher, Up & Coming Weekly, COMMENTS? editor@ upandcomingweekly.com. CalCall 910.354.1679l 910.354.1679 Sunday Monday February 13 February 14 Calendar ........................................... 14 Concert Connection ........................ 17 Movie Review .................................. 21 Free Wheelin’ Feelin’ ....................... 23 Games .............................................. 24 News of the Weird ........................... 25 Horoscopes/Advice Goddess ......... 25 Classifieds ........................................ 26 Tuesday February 15 High 45° Low 20° Showers 4 UCW FEBRUARY 9-15, 2011 High 43° Low 28° Sunny High 48° Low 30° Sunny Forecast available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. High 53° Low 33° Mostly Sunny High 44º Low 30º Partly Cloudy High 47º Low 28º Mostly Cloudy WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM 24 / 7