Lambert's Launchpad: The Durham Concert

...so that headline is slightly over-the-top, but it hasn't even been a month since Miranda Lambert performed at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. On Wednesday night at the CMA Awards in Nashville she raked in the hardware:

• Female Vocalist of the Year
• Song of the Year
• Album of the Year
• Music Video of the Year

I've been holding on to these unpublished photos from the DBAP concert...hoping that I would have a reason the revisit the subject...and to CONGRATULATE Miranda Lambert!

Check out our Facebook page. You could win a concert poster autographed by Miranda, Josh Kelly and Eric Church.

Photo credit: Deep South Entertainment

A Gaping Achievement Gap

My last post was on a Broadway show. Next up: a documentary. (It is the off-season after all.)


The Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce held a screening of Waiting for Superman on Monday. Even with that unruffled, earnest documentary style, it’s a scathing review of American public education in general and teachers’ unions in particular.

The gist of the film (according the me): Public education is broken. It hasn’t functioned effectively since the 1970’s. Funding per pupil has more than doubled while outcomes have flat-lined. The documentary stresses the importance of effective teachers, yet the system engenders mediocrity rather than merit. Poverty need not be an impediment. Children will learn in any school staffed with great teachers. [Click here for Wiki's take on the movie.]

The US Chamber of Commerce is using the film to demand accountability and innovation. Excerpts from an op-ed column in Monday’s Herald-Sun:

The facts are alarming. Among developed countries, the United States ranks 21st out of 30 in science literacy and 25th out of 30 in mathematics literacy. The achievement gap between low-income and minority students and their peers is gaping. And an astonishing 1.2 million students - about six times the population of the city of Durham - fail to graduate from high school each year.

...North Carolina has significant work to do to better prepare all of its students for success in college and the workplace. The National Council on Teacher Quality gave North Carolina a “D+” for its state teacher policies, noting that policies for delivering well-prepared teachers and removing ineffective teachers were especially bad.

...while leaders in North Carolina have been committed to improving student performance in reading and math, achievement is still too low. The National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 43 percent of fourth grade students and 36 percent of eighth grade students were proficient in math. There is also a wide achievement gap, with minority students underperforming white students by nearly 30 points on fourth and eighth grade reading and math tests.

Read the entire piece; click here. It was penned by Durham native Bill Shore, chairman of the US Chamber’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce and director of community partnerships for GlaxoSmithKline, and Casey Steinbacher, President/CEO of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce.

Waiting for Superman is currently showing at Galaxy Cinema in Cary.

Another Home Run at the DPAC

We do baseball, but our neighbor - the Durham Performing Arts Center - has hit another home run.

I attended the musical Billy Elliot Friday night. It’s an energetic, uplifting production. Elton John wrote the score. Set during the bitter 1980s British coal miners’ strike in County Durham, the story is about that conflict and the family tension between coal miner machismo and Billy’s prodigious ballet talent.

The lead rotates among several young performers. On Friday, it was Giuseppe Bausilio’s turn. The kid is fantastic! He’s from Switzerland, thirteen years old, speaks five languages…and he sure can act, sing and dance.

An advisory from your resident prude: I’ve talked to folks who assumed this was a family show given the child stars and dancers. Maybe not. The language is quite “authentic” and there are issues you might not want to explain to your ten year old. I’m just sayin’…

From County Durham UK to Durham NC: It seems appropriate that this national tour of the show premiered in the Bull City. It was actually staged in Durham over the past couple of months. The orchestra even practiced in our storage space for a few days. The last Durham performance is 11/14…and then the tour moves on to Cleveland, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Tampa, Houston and Seattle this winter.

Only one week left in Durham! Click here for the DPAC website.

The results are in...

No, this isn't about Tuesday's election. Rather, we have the stats for Habitat's Halloween Bike Ride in Durham:

796 riders!

Over $66,000 Raised!

The ever versatile Durham Bulls Athletic Park was both start and finish line for the ride. A great event for a great cause! Habitat for Humanity is such an effective, productive organization.

Our staff helped out with this home last winter. Check out the before and after:



This is in the Lyon Park neighborhood off Morehead Ave. near downtown Durham. It seems like Habitat is building a house on every block. This is how neighborhoods are transformed...for the better!

Habitat of Durham can assist you with Holiday gift-giving. CLICK HERE for the scoop.

Halloween: Nightmare on Blackwell Street

You would think that the Bulls invented Halloween:

We hosted the Durham Habitat Halloween Bike Ride.

Wool E. Bull went trick-or-treatin' with a family of Bulls fans.

We conducted a costume contest on Facebook.

And we sold so many jerseys for Halloween costumes in our store that we were able to donate $1300 to the Susan G. Komen foundation for breast cancer awareness month.

Here are several photos from the Saturday cycling event. I'm waiting to hear how much money was raised. Thanks to Cree - outstanding Durham corporate citizen - for sponsoring the ride.

Election Day Looms Large

Let's take a break from the World Series and football to consider our civic duty: Election Day is Tuesday.

Have the tedious, nasty campaign ads turned you off? Snap out of it! !!!VOTE!!! Whether or not there's a seismic power shift in Congress, you should exercise your personal power at the polls. Concerned about the subterfuge of campaign financing? Cast your own secret ballot.

I liken this to choosing a fantasy team. Do a little research this weekend...make your picks...and get your results Tuesday night. (It seems I have thirteen little known state judges and two obscure reps from the Soil and Water Conservation District on my active roster!?! This is hard.)

Here's an excellent web site to help with those picks: NCvoterGuide.org

You enter your county of residence and the web site lists all the applicable races and candidates...with links to their bios. Check it out. It's the Yahoo! Fantasy Sports of electoral politics.

Huff, Hamilton & the World Series

Of course, I'm disappointed that the Rays aren't in the World Series, but we can't lose now.

Raleigh's Josh Hamilton plays for Texas, and Aubrey Huff of the Giants played for the Bulls at the beginning of this decade. I have some shots of our memorabilia...

Clean-shaven Aubrey Huff in a Bulls' uniform. Aubrey made his Durham debut in 2000, leading the team with a .316 batting average while blasting 20 home runs and collecting 76 RBI. He earned a spot on the International League All-Star Team and Rookie of the Year honors in the IL. This is his locker nameplate from the All-Star game in Rochester:


Huff returned to Durham for the first month of the 2001 season but was called up to Tampa Bay after 17 games. Here's some trivia from Bulls' Media Relations Director Matt DeMargel: Aubrey returned to Durham to begin the 2002 season, but he was injured when a line-drive struck him in the head during the batting practice portion of Meet the Team Day! He was activated on April 24th and appeared in 32 games with the Bulls...was called up to Tampa...and the rest is MLB history for Aubrey.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Josh Hamilton never played in a game for the Bulls during his time in the Rays' organization, but we did this bobble-head promotion. I saw one on eBay Monday evening for $39.95!

Here's the good stuff...

99.9 The Fan staged a charity event for Josh's Triple Play Ministries in 2008, and I got carried away at the auction with my company credit card. (Can you really go overboard at a charity event?) So, the Bulls own one of Hamilton's bats from the 2008 All-Star Game and a Nolan Ryan jersey.

You won't find these gems on eBay! Stop by the DBAP and take a look...