An astute political friend once observed that North Carolinians were a bit schizophrenic when it comes to elections. What voter, she asked, would vote for Jesse Helms for U.S. Senator and Jim Hunt for Governor in the same election?

It's an interesting question to ask in Wendell these days, in light of the town board's decision to appoint both Lisa Sanderson and Charlie Kramer to the Planning Board.

Sanderson and her husband, Steve, have led an effort to remake Wendell Boulevard, a move that struck a nerve with some of the more conservative folks in town. Lisa Sanderson, daughter of former Mayor June Perry, is smart as a whip and always does her homework before she opens her mouth.

Kramer has been the silent giant behind the Wendell Community Coalition. He's an astute researcher who's inclined to follow a leave-it-alone course of action. Commissioners may have believed Kramer was the lesser of two evils in having to choose between him and Dan Edwards, the much more vocal opponent of developments like Pepper Pointe. But they have appointed a big dog to the board.

Sanderson and Kramer ought to be wonderful foils.

On Tuesday afternoon, the News & Observer blogs will be moving to a new system and a new server. This change will make getting to our blogs quicker and easier. Most of the blogs will change their appearance, while blogs like Taking Stock and Under the Dome will remain the same.

This change requires nothing from the reader. There will be a link to the older posts, and you won't need to change your bookmarks. If you have trouble finding your favorite blog or you have a comment, please email feedback@newsobserver.com.

— Rachel Carter

A recent experience our family had at a Raleigh restaurant made me think — again – about dining options in eastern Wake.

We ate at a family owned Italian restaurant that has been in operation since 1995 and has never disappointed us. The food has always been excellent, the service professional and the atmosphere welcoming.

This time, we had our 18-months-old son, Stefan, and another couple with us. Because it was close to 7 p.m. when we got there and Stefan’s nap had been much shorter than it should have been, he was a little wild. He didn’t want to stay in his seat and wanted to roam the restaurant. We had some trouble with keeping him occupied and trying to socialize with our friends at the same time.

That’s when the restaurant’s owner came to our rescue. At least five or six times, he took Stefan’s hand and walked him around the eatery. He showed the baby his reflection in a large mirror and gave him a cookie. He also placed one of his employee’s motorcycle helmet on Stefan’s head and gave him orange slices to taste.

While we still kept an eye on the baby, the owner enabled us to exchange news with our friends and eat the delicious food without interruptions.

Getting that kind of service is rare in most restaurants I have ever been to. While I have only pleasant memories from most eateries, I don’t remember ever encountering that kind of personal service.

And while we frequent chain restaurants on a regular basis and enjoy their food and service, I doubt they would go to such great lengths to keep their customers happy. I might be wrong, but, according to my experience, family owned places still top the chains in the personal approach and flexibility they offer.

I am happy that eastern Wake, especially Knightdale, now has many more dining options than it did just a few years ago, but I wish the area would get a few more locally owned restaurants. I know at least three customers who would frequent them on a regular basis.

Whenever I need a reality check, all I have to do is look at my son. Perhaps I've had a bad day, and turn angry and mean.
It's like a breath of fresh air to come home, or pick him up at school, as was true until this week, and see a seven-year-old who needs a mother. When I need a reality check, I can hear his voice wishing me a good day at work in the morning as I dash out the door.
On those days when dark clouds move in, I must fail him terribly. I long to do better, and believe I will. The call for stability from a child can restore an uneven temperament.
My son is home from school now --waiting out this week in leisure until the activities of summer camps begin. He's growing up, and it seems he's done so overnight.
Always young for his age, he seems wiser, a little less innocent. I want him to grow up to be like his father. My track record is far too dismal to want him to be like me.
As I said, having a son helps one take stock and see one's failings face to face however painful.

I sit here ever day and wonder what football will be like this year for those in Eastern Wake County.

Last year it wasn’t very pretty of Knightdale or East Wake. But every year brings new promise, a new goal and a new crowd of hopefuls to add to the long-time stand fillers.

It seems like a ways away, but it isn’t. The pigskin preview will take place in just a couple of months, and although it normally doesn’t reveal much in the mini-game match-ups between various schools, it instills that feeling of a freshly-cut field and the blow of a whistle — the most comforting prospect of the season to many.

Going 2-9 isn’t easy for anyone to stomach, and since both the Knights and the Warriors ended equally on paper (aside from East Wake’s higher ranking in defeating the Knights) I’m thinking they will be trying not to let history repeat itself.

Before the school’s became two, some four years ago, football was a pretty darn big deal in Knightdale, Wendell, Zebulon and the surrounding communities. I knew this even when I lived in Raleigh, before moving to K-dale.

So I can understand fully how much of a pain it must be to take a program, split it in half and send the kids into two different locker rooms to butt heads against each other.

Sure, there was a need for the new school, and more kids ended up drafted to Knightdale from the Raleigh side than would have ever made it to Wendell. But I can’t help but think this is no different than a red and white game at N.C. State. Who’s to say in year one of Knightdale being open it wasn’t kind of like East Wake’s best offense against East Wake’s best defense, except on two totally different teams?

At that, I felt terrible, but got a kick out of the fact the two border rivals felt the same hardships — one team didn’t hurt more than the other.

Inevitably, both teams will be looking to frustrate their opponents in the 2008 season, and “no rooting for the home team” aside, I can’t wait to see what they’ve changed in preparation for such a task.

Mayor Harold Broadwell hopes he is.

Broadwell moonlights as president of the East Wake Education Foundation, which, like most non-profits, perpetually struggles to keep money in the bank.

Broadwell has applied to be a contestant on the show with the idea that any money he wins would help support the foundation. And he's already gotten the support of another eastern Wake mayor - Zebulon's Bob Matheny. A similar endorsement is said to be on the way from Knightdale mayor Russell Killen.

The Buzz is not certain if this is what everyone expected when the mayors talked about regionalism during last fall's campaign, but it can't hurt Broadwell's chances and we're sure Killen and Matheny would be more than happy to let Broadwell be the sacrificial lamb.

After all, those fifth-graders can be tough.

Wake County is one of the 15 counties selected by the National Traffic Safety Administration as a seat belt survey county, according to the Governor's Highway Safety Program. The survey will help determine North Carolina’s overall seat belt usage rate. Surveyors will be in the area throughout June tracking seat belt usage among Wake motorists.

In 2007, NHTSA reported that the state’s seat belt usage rate was 88.8 percent, its highest rate ever. Wake County’s usage rate for drivers was 94.2 percent and 85.8 for passengers. North Carolina law requires that all motor vehicle occupants, including back seat passengers, buckle up.

Other survey counties are Alamance, Buncombe, Burke, Craven, Cumberland, Gaston, Granville, New Hanover, Mecklenburg, Pitt, Robeson, Stanly, Wayne and Wilkes.

I was glad to hear about the efforts to increase seat belt usage. Due to my job as a reporter, I have seen too many examples of what can happen if you don’t buckle up. A simple, quick move could end up saving your life if you get into an accident. I hope the usage rate will one day be what it’s supposed to be: 100 percent.

Have you ever had a time when you just can't see?

I don't mean literally. Though I did have a case of double-vision for about two hours one day recently that baffled and scared me. It went away just as quickly as it came.

I wish that were the case with my vision these days. I'm in a muddle most of the time, with only occasional clarity. And when it comes, it's refreshing.

It's important to see. Our mind's eye, while not the seat of our personalities, certainly informs our view and helps determine which way we go.

Without clarity of vision, good choices are difficult to make. Sometimes our mind's eye is blighted with anger, jealousy, or any of the seven deadly sins. If those color our world, it's no wonder we have a blurry picture.

So bring on the rains, and wash us clean.

When you’re young it seems like town board positions are filled by individuals as a result of their wanting to make a difference in the community.

But when you’re young, your perception of “making a difference” can be a bit off.

Growing up with a grandmother who happens to be a county commissioner, I always knew what others said about her involvement in getting things done on a local scale. But at that age I assumed they were in more cases civic ordeals or acts of kindness — anything but an issue over water restrictions or a mandate from the Environmental Protection Agency.

I was thinking simple — as if she and her counterparts helped paint the old high school or addressed issues of long grocery lines, etc.

In almost a year, I had never really heard anything that seemed to be a direct request from any of Zebulon’s commissioners, but when such thoughts were brought up at this Monday’s Board of Commissioners meeting, it sounded a whole lot more like the list I had ideally conjured in my brain as a child.

Although less frequently heard at a town meeting, such comments are the exact reason a mayor asks his or her commissioners for input.

Curtis Strickland brought up a local issue of houses in which more than eight people are living.

“How can you allow a house to have eight in it,” Strickland said. “It becomes a real problem if you’re a neighbor in one of these areas.”

Whether he spoke to someone that was leaning on him to bring this up or brought it up himself, it seemed like much more of a citizen-level issue than a town issue, and that’s what I always believed to be the only thing commissioners focused on.

So, naturally, when Don Bumgarner brought up dog droppings, it was icing on the cake, and I began to laugh.

Apparently there is a need for some kind of fecal-capturing device (like the bags commonly found in dog parks everywhere)
near the Whitley Manor area and someone is not happy about the presents little sparky keeps leaving in their flower bed.

I guess my point here is that it kind of makes you say, “Wow, this is really someone’s personal problem,” not just another road that needs to be paved.

My ignorance of the role of commissioners has been completely erased over the course of the last year, but Monday’s meeting reminded me they can voice any thoughts whatsoever to the entire board, town staff and the mayor, even if dog poop is the topic on-hand.

If you're looking for evidence of growth, here are a couple of little nuggets for you.

The town of Wendell recently got word from Wake County Clerk of Court Lorrin Freeman that the Clerk's office had underpaid the town for court cases in the Wendell courtroom. Under an agreement between the court system and the town, Wendell is supposed to get a small fee - about $12 - for every case disposed of in the Wendell courtroom.

That money is supposed to be used for the upkeep of the courtroom facilities, which in this case means Town Hall.

But Freeman and Mayor Harold Broadwell, himself a lawyer, noticed that the amounts didn't look quite right. After a little research, Freeman and her staff realized they had shorted the town by about $38,000 over the past few years. It's possible the shortfall may have gone on longer than that, but it's uncertain whether the town will recoup any more money.

Going forward, however, town and court officials expect the payments will more properly reflect the true activity in the courtroom. And if you've tried to park nearTown Hall on a Friday, you know it's a happening place, especially since Wake Forest began holding its court sessions in Wendell while they build a new town hall.

And in another case of growth helping the town, an audit discovered the town has not been receiving all the money it should from Progress Energy.

The town charges the utility company a franchise tax that is based on the number of accounts within the town limits. The audit showed Progress Energy was paying $103,299 per year on 2,187 accounts. A check of the accounts that are actually in the town limits showed there were 501 accounts that should have been included in the town's total but were not.

The additional accounts will generate about $23,662 per year. Progress Energy agreed to make prior year payments for the past few years, which means the town will receive a check for $86,126.

Robert Segal, the CPA who conducted the audit, gets half the money.

When 7-year-olds learn chants for their recreation league softball games, you'd better take some earplugs, and if you want to remember the chant, you'd best take a pen and a pad.

I line the fence at every field game, normally armed with a camera. Obviously you can hear some witty comments made from team to team at the high school level, but the best overall cheering I've heard all year came from the 7-8-year-old Doug's Cubs Wendell rec. team.

Of course, it sounds like the Chipmunks singing Christmas carols when the squeekish voice of a little girl is projected at full throttle, but even that sound was indicative of a different age in life — when things are simple and times are good.

I can't remember the whole chant (I don't think) but it went something like this, rotating from player to player:

"My name is ——— and you know what I got? (team: WHAT DO YOU GOT?) I got a team that's hotter than hot. (team: HOW HOT IS HOT?) Grand slams and home runs too . . . let's see what my friend ——— can do."

There's different versions of this for different sports, but no matter the version, when you hear it like I did, you can't help but smile and admire the kids. It seemed like a lot for them to remember, but then again, the majority of them probably know more about the Internet than most of us do.

News stories very rarely make me cry. I might become sad or baffled by what people do or what is done to them, but I normally don’t become so emotional that I actually cry.

However, an ongoing court case has made me weep more than once during the past two weeks. Lynn Paddock, 47, of Johnston County, is on trial in Smithfield for first-degree murder in the death of her adoptive son, Sean.

The 4-year-old was bound so tightly in blankets one night in February 2006 that he suffocated.

During the trial, which started more than a week ago, witnesses have offered horrid details about living in the Paddock household. The Paddocks’ adopted children have told jurors that Lynn Paddock beat them with plastic plumbing pipe, forced them to exercise for hours on end and taped their mouths shut to keep them quiet. One little girl said her adoptive mother forced her to eat her own feces and one of the boys said he had to eat his vomit.

Sean and his two biological siblings, Hannah and David, first visited the Paddocks' farm outside Smithfield in January 2005. According to news reports, he returned from the visit with a bruise on his backside, but Lynn Paddock said he fell off a bunk bed. Sean and his siblings said Paddock whipped him for playing with the family dog.

Social workers decided that Sean tumbled from the bunk bed and the children resumed their visits to the Paddock farm. About six months later, the Paddocks adopted the three children.

Lynn Paddock’s now ex-husband Johnny has said he didn’t know about the abuse.

If this was a case we didn’t report on, I probably wouldn’t be reading the updates from the trial. But since we are posting Mandy Locke’s stories on The Herald’s Web site, I have to read every word. I wish I didn’t.

I’m having a hard time with the accounts. While I understand the trial is still going on and Lynn Paddock hasn’t been convicted, reading about the children’s testimony is difficult. I just can’t wrap my mind around the fact that anyone might do something like that to a child. It seems too cruel and horrible to understand. And I can’t wait for the trial to be over.

If I could teach my son the lessons he needs to know, I'd tell him -- never cry wolf; give until it hurts, then give some more; long to be where somebody needs you, be careful what you wish for.
There's a lot of longing in the world. If I could long for the right, the honorable and the true, maybe I'd be at peace. If we could wish for the right, true and honorable and just, justice would surround us.
I'd tell him, you pay for your mistakes. Being sorry isn't enough. That's the way life is. So make few mistakes, and always be willing to pay for them.
This is what I'd tell my child.
Trust is precious -- don't break it.

Wendell commissioners have staked themselves out on this year's budget. Last night Town Manager David Bone formally presented a budget proposal that called for a 49-cent tax rate. That's about three-quarters of a cent higher than Commissioner Sid Baynes said he was willing to vote for. Commissioner Carol Hinnant has expressed concerns about a number of expenditures in the proposed budget, including the amount of money the town is using from its savings to balance the budget.

So you can look forward to a 3-2 vote in favor of the budget. Commissioners Ronald Thompson, Buddy Scarboro and Bill Connolly have had relatively little to say about the budget. On the face of things, they seem comfortable with the numbers Bone and finance director Butch Kay have proposed.

A couple of interesting point to note. Residents have, on at least two occasions including last night, expressed concerns about some aspect of the budget.

Parents of ball players rallied against a proposal to raise the fees charged to out-of-town residents. That proposal flew in the face of what the town's Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission recommended. Commissioners backed off and will likely adopt the rates proposed by the commission. The other public comment concerned plans to hack the budget for sidewalk construction and repair from $280,000 to just $80,000.

Last night Bruce Lynch presented commissioners with a petition signed by downtown residents and property owners and others with an interest in downtown, asking that the board reconsider their commitment to sidewalks. That request is not in Bone's budget proposal.

Here's the second interesting point to ponder. Bone wants commissioners to hold a public hearing at the June 9 meeting. He also said commissioners could adopt the budget that night.

If commissioners choose to do that, it could render any public comments moot because those comments are unlikely to get much attention before the budget is approved.

Howard Foster woke up one morning this week and heard the crunch of a mulcher.

He didn't think too much about it because his neighbor had told him the day before that a crew would be at the neighbor's house that morning trimming trees. But when Foster went outside he saw two Asplundh trucks sitting in his yard. And it was his tree they were cutting.

Foster asked the men what they were doing and he was told the company had a contract with Progress Energy to trim trees that were within a 15-foot right-of-way from the road. Foster said he didn't know Progress Energy had such a right-of-way.

I saw the action Tuesday morning when I left for work because Foster's house on Old Zebulon Road is just around the corner from mine. I figured he wouldn't be happy with the end result and, sure enough, he was not.

When I returned from work Tuesday night I noticed the skinned spots on the tree where branches had been lopped off. Traveling north on Old Zebulon Road from Wendell Boulevard, it looks like the tree is leaning toward Foster's house because all the streetside branches were cut away.

It'll be interesting to learn what Progress Energy has to say about the shearing. Foster has called Jenny Melton, who is a member of the town's Tree Board, to lodge a complaint. It's unclear how much good that will do, though. Progress Energy tends to be pretty aggressive when it comes to keeping trees off power lines.

Still, it seems like Progress Energy could bring some pressure to bear on contractors like Asplundh to communicate better with property owners and to do what they can to apply some kind of aesthetic touch to their work.

Meanwhile, Howard Foster is left with an ugly pock-marked tree. And there's precious little he can do about it.