Thumbs! (12/02/2013)

Now that Thanksgiving holiday is over, we’ve got a stack of Thumbs! Let’s give them out…

Would a stack of Thumbs! be a Thumbstack? (groan). Ok, enough already…

• You’re going to be surprised, but I’ll give a Thumbs UP! to Star News for their efforts to organize the 2013 Reidsville Christmas Parade that was as good as it always has been. Giant Thumbs UP! (as usual) go to Mark Childrey & Ken Echols who are the best around for parade hosts and to Debbie Moore for being the on-the-street reporter as she should have been a long time ago. I also need to recognize Matt Smith for his organization of the parade.
• Let’s give a big Thumbs DOWN! to Danville City Council members Sherman Saunders, Lee Vogler, Gary Miller, Alonzo Jones and Buddy Rawley for horribly underestimating the voters that elected them to their terms. They killed a Fred Shanks proposal to move city council elections to November to get them synchronized with the regular election schedule. Those five councilmen thought there could be confusion among voters on local issues. That’s total horsecrap and I’m pretty sure that they knew it was horsecrap too. Shanks’ proposal would have saved the city money as well as gotten more voters out to have a say-so in who gets on the council. All this does is further cement the advantage the incumbents have and it’s a damned shame that those five would do that.
• From elected officials that don’t Get It, we’ll move to elected official who do Get It. Over the last few weeks, Rockingham County (NC) Commissioners Keith Mabe & Craig Travis both announced plans to run for reelection in 2014. These men were elected for the first time in 2010 and helped change Rockingham County’s government into a functional Board of Commissioners that actually did things and did them in the right way. Their hard work helped the county land a big job opportunity, Ruger Firearms. We’re over 11 months away from the 2014 election cycle, but I’ve got no problem saying that Mabe & Travis are well-deserving of another term on the board and well -deserving of a Thumbs UP!.
• Finally, we’ve got a giant Thumbs UP! to Halifax County Little Theatre for their successful run of “The Man Who Saved Christmas”. The cast and crew worked hard to put the show on over the last three weekends and it showed. HCLT never lets the audience down and is clearly the premier theater group in the area (although Martinsville’s TheatreWorks runs a close second).

That’s the ThumbStack for today. More coming up from SouthsideCentral!