Upcoming local events

For those listening to us on WOLI radio in Greenville, here is a listing of the events we have been announcing recently.


[] PUBLIC HEARING: Thursday, April 4, 2013 (Speak up for the Broad River!)

The proposed WS LEE Nuclear Power Plant in Gaffney, SC needs an NPDES wastewater discharge permit to dump chemicals and heated water into the Broad River at 99 Island Reservoir. Folks concerned about the health and social impacts of this plant will attend the hearing to make public comments and request denial of this permit to protect downstream communities. JOIN US!

Restoration Church
1905 N. Limestone Street
Gaffney, SC 29340

6pm: A presentation by Dept of Health & Environmental Control (DHEC) with questions & answers
7pm: public speaking begins
View the draft permit (PDF)
General information on Clean Water Act permits from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.

For ride-sharing and more information, check out Clean Water for North Carolina..


[] Greenville Tech Earth Day Event: Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 10am - 2pm

Greenville Technical College
Student Center Courtyard
506 S Pleasantburg Drive
Greenville, SC 29607

Free event designed for students, faculty, alumni, staff and community... learn to be environmentally responsible!

For more information 864-250-8767


[] SpringSkunk Music Festival: April 12 - 13, 2013 - all day long!

Bands featured: Col. Bruce Hampton, Brushfire Stankgrass, Locust Honey, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Nu-Blu Bluegrass, Sol Driven Train, River Whyless, and many more.

Albino Skunk Music Festival - The Skunk Farm
4063 Jordan Road
Greer, SC 29651

For more information - info@albinoskunk.com.

NOTE: I am hoping to make it there to read the Tarot, so be there or be square... look for our Occupy the Microphone radio booth! (And my previous account of Skunkin is HERE.)


[] Ninth Annual Greer Earth Day Run and Fitness Festival: Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 7:30am

Choose from three different events this year, Half Marathon, 5K and 10K, including a free Earth Kids Run at 9:30am. Advance registration necessary, brought to you by the Greenville Track Club. There will also be a variety of exhibitors at the Fitness Festival.

Greer City Hall/Park
301 E Poinsett Street
Greer, SC 29651

For more information, check out GreerEarthDayRun.com.


[] Furman Earth Day Festival: Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 1pm- 6pm

Furman University (Amphitheater)
3300 Poinsett Highway
Greenville, SC 29613

Earth Day celebration will include music, local food, cool people, sustainability-related student initiatives, community organizations and more.

For more information, contact the Shi Center at 864-294-3655


[] DIY show at the Garaj Mahal: Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 7:30 - until

Bands featured: They Eat Their Own God, Rubrics (includes members of Occupy Greenville!), Dables, M.E.H., Jake Xingu (greatest ever!), Satan in Bondage.

Garaj Mahal
22 Apopka Ave
Greenville, SC 29609

Bring cash for merchandise and to support the artists! Please friend Garaj Mahal on Facebook and check out the DIY Greenville website. (PS: Daisy's other excellent Garaj Mahal photos are HERE!)

Left: The Greenville County Recycling Center at Stone Avenue.


[] City of Greenville Earth Day: Monday, April 22, 2013 - 10am - 2pm

North Greenville Recycling and Education Center
514 Rutherford Road
Greenville, SC 29609

Phone Book Drive, bring those old phone books and other recyclable detritus in to the county's newest recycling center. This event will include refreshments, giveaways and information about other upcoming environmentally-friendly events.

For more information, call 864-467-8300.


[] Authors and Artisans Fair: Sunday, April 28, 2013 - 12:30 - 4pm

Local artists, authors, photographers, musicians and fans will be at this event, making connections. Free demonstrations, workshops, performances. A percentage of all sales (CDs, books, artwork, etc) will go to support the GUUF.

Greenville Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship
1135 State Park Road
Greenville, SC 29609

For more information, 864-271-4883.


[] Volunteer Fair: Sunday, May 5, 2013 - 12:30 - 1:30pm

If you are interested in volunteering in the Greenville community, stop by and meet the volunteer coordinators. Volunteer for the GUUF choir, for marriage equality or to help the homeless. Free lunch and great fellowship!

Greenville Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship
1135 State Park Road
Greenville, SC 29609

For more information, 864-271-4883 or contact volunteers@greenvilleuu.org.


[] Renaissance Faire: May 31 to June 1, 2013 - all day long!

Games, costumes, music, cool people, jousting, sword-fighting and fairies. Yall come!

Greenville Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship
1135 State Park Road
Greenville, SC 29609

For more information, 864-271-4883.


[] Medicines from the Earth: May 31st to June 3, 2013

Blue Ridge Assembly
84 Blue Ridge Assembly Road
Black Mountain, NC 28711

Medicines from the Earth (pdf) is the best herbal conference in the USA. (PS: Daisy's old post about her conference experience is HERE.) Symposiums, nature walks, workshops, demonstrations and panel discussions... accompanied by a tour of the Gaia Herb Farm.

For more information, 541-482-3016.

~*~

Our show yesterday was a lot of fun! Give us a listen, folks.

Thoughts on Fake Schooling

This lovely Wisteria patch is blooming beautifully--right outside the WFIS radio studios in Fountain Inn--home of the Daisy Deadhead radio show. (Podcast is up!)








There was a bright pink Packard parked in a yard on East North Street for about three weeks or so... I kept meaning to park and take a photograph of it, but the neighborhood gave me pause. Not for nothing do Catholics call the area around Bob Jones University "Ulster"--and I try to whiz through Ulster fast enough that nobody can take a shot at me. Even though I really wanted a photo of the pink Packard (something I'd never seen before), I knew the only places to park would be (eeep) church parking lots. And they'd likely ticket me for trespassing, if their security cameras got a good look at my dreaded lefty bumper stickers. Ulster plays for keeps!

So, I am sorry to say, I did NOT get a photo of the fabled pink Packard. I wonder what the sale price was?

For more news of Ulster, check out the new blog "BJU News"--which actually gives us the real news, not the okeydoke offered up by local BJU-subsidiary, the Greenville News.

And speaking of the Greenville News, Sunday's piece on tech colleges offering job training was SHAMEFUL in its lack of reporting and total acceptance of the status quo. It was one long commercial for technical colleges, as their recent piece on BJU's spring opera season was one long commercial for Bob Jones University. Do they even understand the difference between reporting and press releases? Do they have any clue what real newspapers write about? Have they ever seen the New York Times, or even the Spartanburg Herald?

Sometimes the Greenville News reads like a series of gushing travel pamphlets, advertising the upstate.

Here is my correction to the comical piece titled Tech schools offer path to jobs, lure for industries:

Once upon a time, companies trained their own employees. Really! But as they grew bigger and bigger (read: greedier and greedier), they didn't like paying people to learn, and decided to cut out this (pricey) introductory first step. So, they successfully dumped this expensive first step onto the tech colleges.

Greenville Tech has a Michelin building, for instance, paid for by Michelin to train the Michelin employees. This way, the EMPLOYEE must pay for their own training! Is that capitalist ingenuity or what? The tech college makes a profit and Michelin has a continuous stream of already-trained, job-ready applicants. You can get hired right out of school, just like Goldman Sachs hires kids right out of Harvard.

Unlike those mad Harvard skillz, however, working-class skills do not always transfer to other jobs. Michelin and BMW manufacture things their way, using their own patented materials and procedures, and have their own corporate culture. Experience in these companies may or may not transfer to another job. But that is not the concern of the tech schools. They've made THEIR profit, after all.

So, you have a continuous stream of working class people who must be constantly trained and re-trained. This sets up a revolving door of tech college attendance, as workers must PAY to receive job-training that may not even get them hired, especially in today's economy. It's a pretty good racket, and the Greenville News obviously wants to do their part in keeping that revolving door moving, and keeping those profits rolling in.

But a RACKET it is, and wouldn't it be nice if someone came out and said so?

Sitting here sorting laundry and watching LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT reruns, I am inundated with TV ads for countless cheapy tech schools that offer various vague degrees in "management" and so on. They invariably feature an almost-middle-aged woman of color who looks triumphant and borderline-weepy as she graduates, all while talking about making life better for her children. They know exactly who is unemployed right now, and they have geared these endless commercials for THE TECH COLLEGE RACKET, specifically to them.

Yes, I know someone must draw the blood, style hair, take care of the very old people, change oil in vehicles, prepare restaurant menus and all of that... and they need to be trained to do those jobs. Thus, I suppose these commercials should not make me as angry as they do... but they do. I resent the naked emotional manipulation of desperate unemployed people; the idea being communicated that this economic situation we are all in right now, can be instantly fixed, just by paying a fee to a fly-by-night school nobody ever heard of. All we need is MORE TRAINING.

All we need to do, say the commercials, is STAND UP AND TAKE CONTROL of our lives, at long last. Right?

Right?

Until the next economic crisis, that is. Who, I always wonder, will these people from the fly-by-night colleges be managing with their spanking-new phantom management degrees?

Are there any employees left to manage?