Last week I mentioned briefly a new feature of our Web site (www.randolphguide.com) called Eviesays.com, an interactive calendar that allows the public to submit events for posting.

All you need to do it create a screenname and a password then begin submitting events.

Once you submit an event, it will go into a holding que until we can approve it. Then, voila, it will be posted.

One of the cool features of this new calendar is that you can look up events anywhere in the United States. All you need is a ZIP code.

Plus, Eviesays.com provides an automatic Google map to the location of every event that is posted.

Pretty cool, huh?

When you click on any day on the calendar, it will bring up all of the events in this area that are occurring on or near that date.

You will notice that some of the recurring events that happen in Randolph County are already on there as are most of the DayBook listings we have every week.

I also make sure to add any new items that come in during the week so that anyone utilizing the calendar will get a comprehensive look at what’s going on in the area.

It’s just one more way that The Randolph Guide is helping you stay plugged in to your community.

Also last week, we added a link on our Web page to Coupons.com.

Through a co-branding partnership with Coupons.com, the Web sites for all of Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. – our parent company – are linked to the Coupons.com main site.

Just visit our home page, click on COUPONS.COM – CLICK HERE! and get started. It’s easy and it will help save you money.

Tell your friends, your co-workers, your neighbors. In this day and time, we need all the help we can get when it comes to saving money.

Our partnership with Coupons.com is just another way The Randolph Guide – and Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. – is being proactive in helping the residents of the communities we serve.



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Speaking of helping residents of the community – is anyone else out there ticked off that Time Warner is considering charging you for Internet use based on how much you use?

Give me a break. You can’t tell me that a pencil pusher somewhere didn’t predict that use of the Internet would take off like the price of gasoline less than a year ago. Isn’t that why companies like that put so much time and energy and money into developing the technology, installing the technology and then making it available?

Silly me. I understand the theory behind supply and demand. But just because people are using your service more than you think they should doesn’t mean you should jack up the price or punish those who surf the Web more than others.

It would satisfy me if they would just retool their customer service so you didn’t have to be on hold for 30 minutes only to be told to cut the power off to the DVR box and then cut it back on.

But like any company that has a strong following, when everyone starts jumping on the bandwidth, they think they are in a position to exact a price increase. Um-hmm.

Next thing you know they’ll be threatening to charge for all of the shows that are TiVo’d. If they do that, then good-bye cable, hello digital converter.

You would think that with the economy in as bad of shape as it is these days, companies would be trying to keep customers, not drive them away.



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I managed to get home to see my mother last weekend. At 78 – soon to be 79 – she is still going as much as she can, bless her soul.

There is something about a mother’s cooking that can be replaced by no other cooking in the world. Mama always makes it special for me when I do get home, asking me if there is anything special I would like.

To be honest, she could serve me a bowl of cereal and it would be the best cereal to have passed my lips in a long time.

We had that discussion Saturday while we were eating. You know what I mean: the way you can eat when you are home.

My brother Doug can eat. He has always been able to eat. But he has been lucky in that he can eat and it not spread over him like cold butter melting on a hot biscuit.

I can tell that when he comes to Mama’s, he comes hungry. We don’t fight about food. We never have. But we do make sure that we leave as little as possible for Mama to put up as leftovers. Or, as is usually the case, for me to bring home.

I call him Sir Sops-A-Lot (jokingly of course) because he can sop out a gravy bowl and leave it so clean it could be put back in the cupboard.

He thinks it’s funny. So does his son Daniel. And so does my mother. And his wife.

She made me that chocolate birthday cake I mentioned last week and it was as perfect as they always have been. But there were more mouths to feed this year – and bigger appetites – so I didn’t get to bring much of the cake home with me. Needless to say, what I ferried home Saturday didn’t make it past Sunday night.

What can I say?

Some things never change, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.



Patricia M. Edwards is the publisher of The Randolph Guide. She can be reached at (336) 625-5576 or by e-mail at pedwards@randolphguide.com.