Lumberton Informer

There may be a few glitches on the site today. I am updating the SEO and RSS feeds. I will be blogging more frequently once the updates are completed. The posts for this week will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The following week, the blog schedule will be Tuesday and Thursday. I would like to thank those that subscribed to the RSS feed and thank you for your feedback. I would also like to thank those that inboxed me photos from CiCi's Pizza yesterday. I'm glad you recognized people from the blog. I don't think I'll be able to use the photos but thanks for fanning out and keep up the good work. Before closing, does anyone know who planted those beautiful arrangements in the planter boxes along Main Street? Good job. That's all for today. Please log on for tomorrow's blog: From Greatness to Grazing: An Analogy of Lumberton's Mayors.

Shooting the messenger" is a metaphoric phrase used to describe the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of bad news. In earlier times, messages were usually delivered in person by a human envoy. Sometimes, as in war, for example, the messenger was sent from the enemy camp. An easily provoked combatant receiving such an overture could more easily vent anger (or otherwise retaliate) on the deliverer of the unpopular message rather than deal with the source that led to the message. That's a major problem here in the City of Lumberton; too many want to focus on the messenger instead of dealing or addressing the message. The information I post on the Lumberton Informer was not created by me; instead, it's a review of the matters that have been witnessed. Often times I wonder if I'm the only one that sees or am I the only one that's willing to address the concerns. Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to wrap my brain around the series of events that...

The other night at the regularly scheduled board meeting, Kent Crider, Alderman/Self-Appointed Chair of the Lumberton Fire Department Board, gave a report that 19 firefighters responded to a recent fire in the City of Lumberton. A police officer in the audience also chimed in saying "that was the quickest response he ever witnessed." Kudos to the volunteers that responded to the fire. Now for the rest of the story. The ones responding to the fire were from surrounding counties. Also, the fire happened during a training session and the fire fighters were already at the fire station when the call came in regarding the fire. I'm sure Crider wanted to use the incident to show that the fire department is doing well without the assistance of the former members of the fire department, but if you're going to give kudos; provide the audience with the rest of the story. In other fire department related news, there was a meeting of the fire board last night. From what I ...

The first item on the agenda was to allow Ms. Debbie Luther to speak with the mayor and board regarding a water survey. She spoke ad nasuem for about 15 minutes, outlaying the reason why the board needed to raise the water rates. After she addressed the board, Mayor Winston went on to say that he appreciated her suggestion and they wanted to look into other avenues to see if they could maintain the water system without a water rate increase and before he could complete his train of thought, he was asking for an amendment to the agenda so they can hold a public hearing to raise the water rates. At the suggestion of Luther, the board plan to raise the water/sewer rate by 7.5%. They will hold a public hearing on July 1, 2014 at 5:50 p.m. to receive citizen's input but more than likely, despite input from the citizens, they will raise the water rate again. Now, I know the board is regulated by law to make sure the WSOM is able to sustain itself. The problem I have with the rate incr...

You've been enriched in countless ways. There's no better way to make your mark on the world and to share that abundance with others. My constant prayer for myself is to be used in service for the greater good. Dr. King said, "Not everybody can be famous. But everybody can be great, because greatness is determined by service." Those of you who are history scholars may know the rest of that passage. He said, "You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love." In a few moments, you all will be Lumberton High School Graduates of 2014. You have the heart and the smarts to go with it. And it's up to you to ...

My inbox runneth over. For some reason, the message I was trying to convey was somehow lost in translation. My last blog post was almost ten days ago. I had planned on blogging about the city's plan to create a website and the low pay of city employees but, as you all know, other events transpired and I felt compelled t share my opinions on the matter. Now, I generally don't like blogging about events that involve people from my community. Based on past experiences, the posts are taken too literally and I have often times found that I had to seek legal actions because of other's inability to deal with certain things I post. Now don't get ne wrong, there's plenty of people within the white community that detest the things I say but they usually email their threats. Today I made a reference to one of the emails I received. I inserted the phrase because it has been used repeatedly in reference to my blog. Unbeknownst to me, one of my Facebook friends posted the s...

There has been a lot going on in and around the City of Lumberton this week. Again, we were on the news but not in a good way. If you have not heard the news, then I don't know where you've been. After the first arrest, there was a post about Lumberton thug arrested or something to that affect. When I first saw their post, I was bothered by the use of the word thug; especially since the term was not used when the gang of gun hoarding, meth making family was arrested in Lumberton. However, as more and more comments were being made about the incident, the author of the original statement was seen in a more favorable light. The comments kept rolling in and I actually felt compelled to respond. For me to agree with the author was totally out of character and for me to comment on the page was weird as well. I generally don't comment or follow the page because of the things that are said but in the end, we may grip about our differences but in reality, we're more alike th...