There has been a traffic jam recently on East Holding Avenue and adjoining streets because so many people were trying to get to the free COVID tests at the Northern Regional Center. There were lines of vehicles on both sides of East Holding and winding all around in the parking lot.
Bill Crabtree, the communications and public affairs director for the town, sent out this advisory on Monday:
To ensure an orderly traffic flow, Town officials are encouraging anyone planning to visit the testing site at the NRC to approach the facility from the Dr. Calvin Jones Highway/NC 98 Bypass. Motorists should then turn onto South Franklin Street and then onto Yellow Poplar. From there, turn right onto South White Street and right along East Holding Avenue before turning right into the NRC lot.
He also said the town would be installing signs Monday to direct traffic and ensure the safety of all.
The NRC offers COVID-19 testing and vaccination according to the following schedule:
- Sundays & Wednesdays: Closed
- Mondays & Fridays: 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.
- Tuesdays & Thursdays: 12:30-7:30 p.m.
- Saturdays: 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Northern Regional Center Director Ross Yeager said, “To confirm your suspicions, the vast majority are, in fact, coming for testing.
“We’ve been averaging over 1,000 tests per day here. I too would like to see more migration over to the vaccine side of our operation, but many people are locked into their position on the vaccine and there’s very little opportunity to get them to budge.”
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The Washington Post is publishing “The Afghanistan Papers” complete with names and quotes that show what many of us already knew: The war in Afghanistan was a total 20-year multi-quadratrillion drain on the American economy and the tragedy of our time by killing and injuring so many of our young soldiers. No one should emerge from the attempted overtake of that country with honor intact.
We knew what was going to happen because we read a thick book about the first English invasion of Afghanistan: Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839, 42 with a contemporary note by the author. In 2010 he was speaking with some village elders who all remembered the names of the English generals and their often gory deaths, saying it would be the same as the United States and then maybe China.
The English invaded with all their martial splendor, elephants and all. Of the thousands who went into Afghanistan, only a handful escaped with their lives and nothing else. Thirty-nine years later the English tried again, invading Afghanistan from India, with the same results. And we know because it was so recent that Russia invaded and left ignominiously.
How are we leaving? And are we able to take our thousands of translators and their families?
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Closer to home I’ve been thinking about heat islands and cooling islands, looking for examples. The newest subdivisions are largely heat islands, barren expanses of similar-looking houses without a single mature tree. Cooling islands can be found all around town where mature trees shade streets and houses.
How to solve this? Perhaps there could be a new tree code in Wake Forest, requiring subdivision developers to plant at least five or six fast-growing pines on the western sides, where practicable, of all the houses with slower-growing maples and other trees like oaks on the back property lines and along the streets with decorative but large trees like crepe myrtles interspersed. Or maybe developers could find a way to keep a large portion of existing trees and site houses around them. Nah! They can’t do that.
The trees would not only cool houses and streets, they also absorb carbon dioxide, making the air cleaner and slowing climate change. Don’t we need that?
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