Aug

WUNC to Broadcast “Carmina Burana” Tonight

From the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra:

Due to a change in programming, the North Carolina Symphony’s performance of “Carmina Burana” will be broadcast tonight on WUNC 91.5FM, beginning at 10pm. The program was previously limited to online streaming only.

The broadcast features North Carolina Symphony Music Director Grant Llewellyn leading the North Carolina Master Chorale and renowned guest artists in two choral highlights.

Poulenc: Gloria

Orff: Carmina Burana

Composed by Carl Orff beginning in 1935, Carmina Burana is based on 24 poems found in the medieval collection of the same name. The often-quoted composition has taken a unique place in popular culture, a musical Canterbury Tales that covers a wide range of topics: the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of spring and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling and lust, to name a small few.

“It is incredibly evocative, incredibly powerful at some moments and poignant at others,” says Llewellyn of this tour-de-force. “There’s a reason it has endured and people love to hear it. It’s a piece I enthusiastically conduct.”

The concert, which also includes Francis Poulenc’s Gloria—“a joyous hymn to the glory of God,” in the composer’s words—was performed live in Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall as part of the Duke Medicine Classical Series Raleigh on Friday and Saturday, May 11-12, 2012.

Legendary broadcaster David Hartman hosts tonight’s exhilarating concert program. Listeners are also treated to special access to content not available to concertgoers, including interviews with musicians and soloists and insights into some of the finest compositions ever written.

The program will stream online at wunc.org throughout the week. To stream the broadcast and see the latest details on upcoming Symphony programs on WUNC 91.5FM, visit www.wunc.org/programs/north-carolina-symphony-concert-series.

Posted by Dana on August 27, 2012 | Tags: Radio. | ( 0 ) Comments

Aug

Nowell’s Furniture Closing

Very sad news today from the Nowell family. Jerry Nowell was my Philosophy teacher at UNC, and was talented enough to clarify Immanuel Kant.

" August 23,2012 (Cary,NC) — After 107 years in business,Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture will close its doors by the end of this year.

Owner Jerry Nowell,who was diagnosed with Multiple Myaloma in 2010,announced the closing recently.

“I’m now unable to work,” Jerry said. “At first,we thought my wife [Kit] would run the store. And she has since March of this year. But we did some soul searching and realized that we wanted to spend some time together. Retail is a seven-days-a-week business. That’s one of the reasons why we finally decided it was time to put this thing to bed.”

William McKee Nowell,Jerry’s grandfather,began the store 1905 by selling furniture out of the back of a horse-drawn cart. His merchandise was so popular that he moved it into a storefront in the now-historic Prairie Building in downtown Raleigh. Jerry’s mother and father inherited the store and moved it to its current location in Cary in 1957.

Since then,there have been a lot of “firsts” in store’s history. In 1968,Nowell’s was the first furniture store in the Triangle region to challenge the “blue laws.” The blue laws were enacted to enforce religious standards,particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of worship, restricting Sunday shopping. Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture helped start a movement to remove those laws in North Carolina.

“We were also among the first in the area –possibly the first — to have a diverse sales team,” Jerry noted. “We were also the first all-contemporary furniture store in North Carolina.”

Jerry Nowell holds a PhD in Political Theory. He was teaching at UNC-Greensboro in 2001 when his older brother,who had been running the store since their father’s retirement,suddenly decided to retire himself. That presented the Nowell family with a choice: either close up shop right then or Jerry would have to come home and take over management.

“I set a goal to get to the 100-year mark,which we did in 2005,” Jerry said.

And they kept going,racking up Readers Poll wins for the “best place to shop for contemporary furniture in the Triangle” year after year from Spectator magazine,the Independent Weekly,and Metro Magazine. In 2010,Business Leader magazine named Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture one of the top 100 small businesses in the state.

Since Jerry took over management,the store has also been a good corporate citizen. “We’ve raised and donated roughly $30,000 over the past 11 years to organizations such as Interact,cancer research,and Camp Kanata,” Jerry said. “We’ve also sponsored a little league team.”

Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture has also been one of Triangle Modernist Houses’ (TMH) primary sponsors. TMH is a non-profit organization dedicated to archiving,preserving and promoting modernist residential design from the 1950s to today. Among other support,Nowell’s has been the naming sponsor for TMH’s annual Nowell’s Architecture Movie Series,and Jerry Nowell has served on the TMH advisory board.

Jerry has also served on the Cary Players’ Board of directors,allowed the community theater troupe to store props in Nowell’s warehouse and to use the store’s truck to load shows in an out,and the store has been a consistent advertiser in the Players’ programs.

After Jerry was diagnosed with cancer in 2010,he kept working as long as he could. But his treatments eventually made it impossible for him to keep up with the seven-day-a-week schedule.

Kit Nowell took over for a while. But according to Jerry,there was more to their decision to close than his health and the store’s demanding schedule.

“We’ve also found the business moving in a direction that we don’t really like,” he admitted. “We’ve always offered good values,but we’ve never sacrificed quality or service for price. People are getting more and more price conscious now, to the point that we either must lower the level of quality or the level of service,and we don’t want to do that. We knew that if it reached the point where we could no longer be proud of what we do it would be time to retire. And that’s where we are.”

From now until the end of the year,Nowell’s is holding an “Everything Must Go” sale. For more information on the sale,go to www.nowellsfurniture.com.

For more information on Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture,visit www.nowellsfurniture.colm/about

Posted by Dana on August 24, 2012 | Tags: Retail. | ( 1 ) Comment

Aug

Employment Security Commission Leaking Social Security Information

Faithful readers should know by now that I get on kicks from time to time. Whether it is paperless office goals, continuing my education, or some other type of growth, I tend to make advances in waves. Recently I’ve noticed a lot of personal information security breaches in area businesses. In the era of stiff fines for HIPAA compliance breaches, security breakdowns are still rampant throughout medical communication. These problems aren’t limited to just medicine, though. The lack of security for non-medical transmission of sensitive, personal information remains a dangerous problem, too.

I have always heard that one of the biggest vulnerabilities to identity theft we have is the use of checks. The bold checking and routing numbers can easily be read through envelopes in the mail, and can be used with no authentication to purchase items online. While many banks have created convenient methods of online payment, there are still some situations which require the use of a check. For our convenience, vendors enclose a return envelope, however in many cases those envelopes are not “security envelopes”. It’s time for businesses and government agencies to wake up and stop tempting us with these insecure methods.

Security envelopes have a printed pattern on the inside that obscures the visibility of enclosed information. Because these envelopes require a printing process before folding in the assembly process, they are more expensive. However the use of these can greatly improve the security of an envelopes information. Because of this I am discarding the non-secure return envelopes and printing my own return envelopes when security is warranted.

I recently received a routine notice from the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina. Occasionally they will check the recent employment records of citizens of this state to verify the information on other paperwork in the system. I hire many temporary employees through the year, and they are treated as true employees while they work here (that’s another big irritation I have with NCESC, but that’s another post). Today I received a notice about a former “employee” which clearly states the citizen’s full name and social security in the header of the document. The letter asks me to verify the salary paid to this person, and return the document in the enclosed NON-SECURE return envelope!

When the completed form is correctly inserted into the envelope, this person’s full name and social security number are CLEARLY LEGIBLE from outside the envelope. This is unacceptable, especially from an agency that routinely handles some of the citizens’ most sensitive information while carrying the word “security” in their own name.

You can help spread the word with your business. If your business encloses return envelopes, make sure that information cannot be seen through the envelope. Also notify your vendors that you would like them to use secure envelopes by notifying their billing department by phone or in writing. In the least enclose a slip of paper with a such notice with your payment. For example:

Due to identity theft concerns, we are now asking all of our vendors to refrain from sending non-security return envelopes for payment. Any non-security envelopes will go unused, so please reduce waste by either utilizing a different, secure envelope design or excluding return envelopes altogether.

Perhaps such notices will help businesses realize the risk they are creating for their own customers. The fines for HIPAA breaches can be $50,000. Reprimands for personal information leakage in non-medical entities certainly aren’t as severe, but their information leaks can have just as devastating effects on customers. Let’s work to reduce these errors in the private sector before the legislature/congress is prompted to use their inaccurate, brute-force methods. In the meantime it would be nice if government agencies would adopt safe practices, too.