My blog has finally been switched over to Wordpress, which I hope will be a better blog program.

My biggest complaint about the old program, called B2Evolution, is that it wouldn’t allow me to embed YouTube vidoes and rejected half of the Web links I tried to use. Plus it made it almost impossible for people to leave comments. Most troubling is that I’ve never seen any other blog on the Internet use that program, which was troubling.

Michael Abernethy, our Homegrown Snob, had the same complaints. He’s already switched over and has promptly gone nuts, embedding YouTube videos of Norwegian zydeco music performed in a wind tunnel, the little-known Joy Division side project, Theosophy, and a strange clip of Morrisey simply weeping for 25 minutes.

WordPress is home to most of our other Times-News bloggers, including Joe Jurney, Roselee Papandrea, Alex Kreitman, and Barry Smith.

So please consider leaving a comment below, so I’ll know that all my hits aren’t my Mom just hitting page refresh because she’s worried about my feelings.

In Troop 311 you got a merit badge for flesh wounds

I was scanning the wires Wednesday and came across a mention of Camp Durant.

Camp Durant is the council camp of the Occoneechee Council of the Boy Scouts of America. It’s located near Carthage in Moore County.

The council is inviting Eagle Scouts to Durant this weekend for the first Eagle Summit, according to the News & Observer in Raleigh. The event will “promote leadership development for younger Eagle Scouts and to reconnect older Eagles with their Scouting roots.” A panel of Eagles will include a state Supreme Court justice, a congressman, and a physician,

I’m an Eagle Scout from the Occoneechee Council, but I don’t guess I’ll be able to get down there. I’d love to go back to Durant, though.

It’s a little strange to think of leadership training at Durant. Though I figured out later in life that I learned a lot at Durant, my strongest memory is of a comedy of errors.

My first trip involved a week of rain that had us wading through three feet of water to go back and forth from our campsite and put a river through the middle of my tent.

There always seemed to be something crazy going on at Durant, and it usually involved my troop, 311.

Our troop, made up of boys from all over Raleigh, was larger than a lot of troops at Durant. We were led by the late, great Ted Reed. Mr. Reed led this large troop almost by himself. I don’t remember him ever having an assistant Scoutmaster. He relied on the older boys, myself included when I turned 17, to help.

Mr. Reed also ran his own business and had three children at home. His life always seemed to be in a state of chaos, but he managed to make time for Scouting and he had as much patience working with young people as anyone I’ve ever seen.

We were always running late for a camping trip, or forgetting something that we needed. But we always had fun, and Ted Reed taught us a lot.

At Camp Durant, it seemed, we were always getting hurt.

A big part of being in 311 was playing tricks. My first year, the older boys talked me into using a convoluted device called a left-handed smoke shifter which didn’t so much shift smoke a certain way as it made the shifter look like a moron. But because I was subjected to that trick, I was in on the snipe hunt the other 12-year-olds were tricked into.

So one year, when we threatened to tie a Scout to his cot and put him in the latrine, he freaked out. He swung his pocket knife around to get us away and ended up cutting his own leg open instead.

Another year, as we chased each other through the woods, someone pitched a tent stake into the air and it hit another Scout in the head. Another trip to the hospital.

There were broken arms. One particularly hot summer we had a rash of Scouts passing out while standing at attention at the mess hall before dinner. The entire camp went into lockdown once when one of our guys forgot to take his tag off the board at the lake (this was how lifeguards kept track of how many boys were in the water) and they were in the middle of dragging the lake when we found him asleep in his tent.

It might sound like the Bad News Bears, but they are some of the best memories I have of being kid. In that Scout troop, a painfully shy boy found a place where he felt comfortable.

I learned how to use clear fingernail polish to get chiggers out and overcame fears about snakes, spiders and showering in front of other kids. I nearly drowned trying to pull a cinderblock off the bottom of a lake for Lifesaving merit badge.

Most of all I learned that Scouting is the best thing to get a young man involved in, injuries and all.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at  brent_lancaster at link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at thetimesnews.com

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- This probably isn’t too exciting to all of you. It’s a News & Observer story about Clinton’s visit that moved on the McClatchey wire and ran on the Kansas City Star Web site. But it’s still kind of neat to see reporting on Alamance County posted around the country and world.
- I don’t remember a principal being charged with student sex, at least not around here.
- I find it hard to believe that Jimmy Fallon will be anywhere near as good as Conan O’Brien.

- High bonds have long been cited as a cause of jail overcrowding in Alamance County. Now Wake County is going to cap them.
- Nothing in the news interests me more than international espionage and oil. There are lots of interesting oil stories this week. A Canadian study thinks that prices will double in the next four years. Some people are going crazy over this big oil discovery off Brazil. I read an interesting story this week in the WSJ about the Saudis’ struggles to keep up. Of course, there’s still the Bakken field in North Dakota and Canada that could be a big producer.

- The only thing worse than Arby’s buying Wendy’s would be Hardee’s buying Wendy’s. For God sakes, just leave Bojangles’ alone.

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- Our folks confirm that North Korea was building that reactor in Syria that the Israelis blew up.
- Media wakes up, starts to realize Obama is full of it.

- Let’s dig a river during a water shortage. Yeeah Raleigh!
- Priest grabs party balloons, floats away. How much does this guy weigh?
- Brent faves Superchunk will be playing for Obama in the Greensboro Coliseum parking lot with superhyped Canadians Arcade Fire. There was a rumor that Wilco would play at Elon for Obama. I guess this is it. If you can do something like this in the middle of a day on a Thursday, you should see the Chunk.

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- The more federal regulation of the Internet, the worse.
- The 100 greatest dogs of pop culture history. The JYD at 91? This list seems to be in reverse.
- Big “green” events are not always “green.”

- The 20 most profitable companies of 2007.
- Gymnastics can be a tough sport.
- States are looking to spread tobacco tax money around.
- Why do women need to be perfect? Good question.

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- Seven great home shopping screwups.
- In case you want some more college football knowledge, I also recommend Tony Barnhart’s blog, Mr. College Football at AJC.com. He knows about as much about Southern college football as anyone.
- Coal is falling out of favor.

- NASA sings the praises of duct tape.
- More images from the upcoming G.I. Joe movie.
- Our alien overlords spotted over Arizona.
- I’m up to about five or six on a Google search for “Brent’s blog.” I think this Brent’s blog is probably the best, though.

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- Spring football has provided a needed respite from the Rangers, who have already shown themselves to be a non-factor in the AL West race. My favorite college football blog is Every Day Should Be Saturday.
- Interesting story from the Fayetteville Observer about buried houses.
- Mexican government trying to scare immigrants with comic books.

- Paper that printed story about Emperor Putin and a 24-year-old gymnast mysteriously shuts down.

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We’ve got this TV thing licked … or maybe not

If there’s one thing my kids won’t do, I used to say, it’s watch television.

Then we got a kid.

Parenting, I’m discovering, is all about adjustments. It’s a process. A long and hard process.

Our first night with our son, in a hotel room in Texas after his adoption, was one of the most terrifying nights of my life. What if, having just met us for the first time that day and now being stuck with us, he suddenly began screaming bloody murder and wouldn’t stop?

Every time he moved or breathed heavily we popped out of bed. It was a long night.

But we got over it. He’s pretty much sleeping through the night now and I’m so comfortable with him that it seems he has always been around.

Same thing with television. Adjustments.

I’ve read the studies on hyperactivity among children who watch too much television. I’ve seen the little glass-eyed zombies, carrying Game Boys around like security blankets. They’re incapable of talking to anyone because their noses are always glued to screens.

All my fears were confirmed when we brought him home. Turn on a television and the boy was transfixed. When we went out to a restaurant, he would spot a television from across the room.

The day my son crawled over to the living room television screen and licked it, I knew things had to change.

No more television. Ever. We would spend all our waking moments engaged in constructive, educational play with our child.

That didn’t work either. Like I said, adjustments.

I grew up in front of the television. A pile of toys sat in front of the screen in the den pretty much constantly. But I also played outdoors. Everything in moderation.

If he’s going to watch television, I thought, it should be educational. Like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Or SportsCenter.

We bought him some Baby Einstein videos, educational shows that teach vocabulary and use shapes and colors babies love. Now Baby Einstein has gotten some bad press lately because some parents think that popping one in is the only thing they need to spark their children’s development. Of course, you also need to talk to them and show them things. But they do help. Mostly, though, they are good for holding an infant’s attention so you can shower or clean the house.

Beyond that, we turn the television on a little bit more and I don’t think it’s hurting him.

The child has a long, tormented life of pulling for N.C. State ahead of him. Might as well let him know right away what’s he’s in for. So he watched some basketball games with me this season. He’s taken in America’s Next Top Model with his mother, so he’s learning what he’s up against with the opposite sex as well.

Last Sunday, we watched the last few holes of the Masters together as father and son for the first time. I nearly cried.

Most times, though, the television is off and he’s walking around the house, hitting cats and bumping his head.

Like I said, adjustments.

City editor Brent Lancaster can be reached at  brent_lancaster at link.freedom.com or 506-3040. Read his blog at www.thetimesnews.com

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- Teacher sex comes to my high school.
- America’s most lustful cities. Swepsonville, despite all its horniness, not on the list.

- Huh? Germany exports more than China and the U.S.?
- The record companies are suing a homeless man.
- I’ve always been amazed at how many people pile on to trains in India. Apparently the trains are also deadly.
- People submit photos of themselves as kids, and now, in the same pose. Pretty interesting.

- The new X-Files movie means the return of Gillian Anderson. Geeks of the world, including Madison Taylor, are excited that she’s going to be in the May edition of Maxim.

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