Ok, I have a bleg. I'm in a focus group for my city, on parks/open spaces/city facilities. I'm looking for some cities that are roughly comparable that have a really good program that might be worth modifying and adopting in other places.
Roughly comparable means 40K-200K people and not affluent. Although affluent places tend to be able to afford to implement more adventurous projects, so if there's a good one, I'd still like to hear about it. Often times I think that we're about 20 years behind big, progressive cities. They work out all the kinks and we implement it 20 years later.
Any ideas?
Big progressive cities are not role models on land use!
(My city has a "parks fee" so that all new apartments have to contribute to park service. It's collected less than a million dollars over the past decade because almost nothing gets built. Recently one new project - a majority affordable one! - asked if it could pay $8m instead of $12m and everyone was like NEVER, THIS IS A BETRAYAL OF OUR PARKS.)
But what kinds of programs/activities are you looking for info on? Just new ideas of all stripes?
Contribute to park infrastructure, I should say, not park service. It's a one-time impact fee.
Pretty open-ended, because this is for a longterm comprehensive plan. So I can advocate for whatever idea suits, and it has as good a shot of landing as whatever else.
Planting trees in parks is nice. Especially if you put the trees in the outfield so they can't play baseball.
We have a lot of reasonable programs in place - working on a connected circuit of bike paths and trails throughout the city, a reasonable amount of parks where development into usable land and maintenance are constrained by finances. There are some obvious places for growth - parks in underserved areas and branch libraries. The homework assignment is to specifically find comparable cities with specific programs that might inspire something in Heebieville.
Especially if you put the trees in the outfield so they can't play baseball.
This reads like the feminist retort to the statutory rapey line that my friend's dad taught him, "If there's grass on the infield, play ball!"
Do sidewalks count as city facilities?
LA has an ordinance that when something new is being built, they have to pay to put a sidewalk on the road if it wasn't there before. The idea was that over a generation, the desired sidewalks would emerge, or gaps would get small enough it would be a lot cheaper to close them. It got hijacked since its 60's passage into requiring progressive widening of streets when they were deemed needing more "service", which was ridiculous, but it's not a bad idea from the outset.
I had a friend who liked to go around saying, "Old enough to pee, old enough for me" as a reductio of those statutory rapey lines.
The 70s were a really creepy time.
9: Oh, fellow dirtbag. I ALSO had this friend. He also mused about why necrophilia was so taboo. "It's not like the corpse is gonna mind!"
One guy told early-teen-me that "This don't plug no holes" while pointing at his wedding ring. I was too young to ask "What if your penis is bigger than your ring finger?"
(I guess I'm making an assumption about tone that may or may not be warranted.)
You think your friend might have been serious?
Our city has a lot of open space/parks, and it's a big deal here. We have bonds and such to fund acquisitions -- city and county both.
Anchorage has a great park and trail system, but it's a somewhat larger and wealthier city than Heebieville so I don't know how well any specific projects would serve as models.
I was on the consult committee for this park, which breaks ground next year. I put most of my energy into pushing for more disability-inclusive features in the playgrounds. I did make some suggestions that will improve things but what I realized is that disability should have been considered far earlier in the process (like, before they picked a playground equipment vendor).
Anyway, Heebie, I think you should push for inclusive playgrounds, because having someone that will push for them is they only way they ever happen.
BTW, I'm home, having tested my way onto a plane Wednesday/Thursday.
Covid vaccines are really a miracle. Everyone should get them!
18: Hurray!
18.2: About 5 hours after my shot, and my arm is very sore.
This weekend, I'm going to see Pippin, the musical. I didn't even know there was a Lord of the Rings musical.
I did my daily Wordle before the NYT switched over to auto-redirect, and I got "today's" word in one guess.
Wordle 237 1/6
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11. This one guy I worked with at a print shop, Red, always had the most distasteful stories about the parents of the girls with whom he cheated on his main girflriend, mutual antagonism between Red and Mr and Mrs shouldn't-be-a-sidepiece, he and they apparently equally matched in incompetent misanthropy. Generally laconic, but the girl I was seeing at the time had six older brothers, so he talked more. Also I'm sure this was pure coincidence but he was a cracker and we were the only white guys for a while. Hard to tell how old he was-- 25, 45? Full beard and ballcap, so not much more than a pair of beady eyes and a nose.
To the OP, wasn't this pretty literally Leslie Knope's situation? Asheville seemed nice, but no productive comment other than that. I can ask my kid.
One thing our parks department has been doing lately is converting old little league fields into dog parks. Some of them were already being used that way, so it's mostly a matter of making the fencing more secure.
So the dogs don't get attacked by the outfielders.
Are there old train lines that can be converted into multiuse paths?
There's the famous Cowboy Trail across Nebraska.
Walk, ride a horse, bike, or bebop.
Pippin, or as I like to call it, "For whiny white boys who have considered suicide, when your corner of the sky is enough."
We are facing the issue of trying to cram a dog park and a disc golf course into the same defunct campground. There are private groups behind the both dog park project and the disc golf project, and they both make a pretty good case, so we figure the thing to do is split the baby.
Are there old train lines that can be converted into multiuse paths?
You are probably familiar with: https://www.railstotrails.org/
We've got rail trails all over town. They are pretty nice, although I would prefer an actual, working train line that connects to the outside world.
33: I have a train to Boston but it's pricey. Also, it used to go every 30 minutes pre pandemic but now it's once an hour, so it's somewhat less convenient which means that fewer people take it which makes it less viable.
Franklin, NH has the coolest new park idea I've seen. I'd love to do a similar whitewater park here but I'm told our river is too slow. I think we could build a standing wave if we took out the dam, but there are actual engineers who think otherwise.
21: By the time The Lord of the Rings closed one year later in July 2008, it had become one of the biggest commercial flops in West End history
On November 11, 2013, Playbill announced that the show would be revived for a world tour in 2015. The first location for the tour would be in New Zealand but dates and other locations were never announced. As of 2022, the status of the tour remains unknown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Rings_(musical)
I'm kind of surprised. This seems to me like the kind of terrible idea that could make a lot of money.
Are there old train lines that can be converted into multiuse paths?
There are tons of train lines throughout town - like 3 - but they are heavily used, unfortunately. I did bring up the idea of having shared-use paths alongside the rail lines, since there's an easement and the railway slices through town in a way that might be super convenient.
Anyway, Heebie, I think you should push for inclusive playgrounds, because having someone that will push for them is they only way they ever happen.
We do actually have one - our flagship playgound is inclusive - and I'm wondering if you all used the same company that we used. The big city playground used to be wooden, and we'd go on these roadtrips and see the exact same distinctive wooden structures in various cities when we'd stop at playgrounds to eat lunch. (There's one in Wyoming, for example.) Then when they proposed re-building it, and gave some highlights, I realized we were going to get the kind that is in Amarillo and in St. Charles. Same company, apparently. So I suspect that they have blanketed the United States.
The inclusive aspect is really wonderful, though, and I'm not short-changing that in my general capitalistic weariness.
Gimme a sec, Heebie. There was an interesting article a while back on designing park spaces for girls. Let's see if I can find it.
My main take-away was that they like nooks. Like, multi-level climbing spaces with nooks to hang out in.
Specifically teen girls.
This must have been the article I saw:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-05-28/we-need-more-public-space-for-teen-girls
The swings do look awesome.
40: Those swings are cool, but I was picturing something more like this
Isn't that what teen girls want?
omg. This parent-teacher conference with Rascal's teacher. "Of all my years teaching, I've never had as big a gap between a student's academic intelligence and their social-emotional level."
The teacher is amazing, despite that. She was completely at a loss at the beginning of the year, and she did a ton of research and worked with the counselor to figure out how to handle Rascal. She's learned how to read him and how to help him manage his emotions. She told me that when he's agitated, she asks him if he'd like to run an errand for her. She keeps a list of teachers in classrooms that send him all over the school. She gives him a stack of chocolates, and he has to hand them out to the teachers on the list. When he gets back, he's much calmer.
42.2: He doesn't eat the chocolate? He's a saint!
It's actually pot delivery and kids aren't allowed to carry lighters in school.
35: I don't know where you live but if Yorkville, IL can have a whitewater course it seems like anyplace could.
I have news which I am not sharing in the other place but which I weirdly feel comfortable telling all my imaginary friends about.....I'm pregnant! I'm at the end of week 15. Now that I have stopped freaking out about losing him, I am starting to freak out about everything I have to do before pushing him out and also that part.
Sorry to hijack a great thread on parks. I suspect my town is now "affluent" but I don't think it was when it invested in Parks in a big way. Tone feature I particularly appreciate is that many of the parks have a little community center that doubles as a host for mini daycare during the week. Sorry they're good places for birthday parties, etc. I have no idea how that's operated in the pandemic. Another feature that's probably not so great is the restrooms all have the same key, and any household can get a copy of that key. I have never done so but I might finally.
Congratulations! It'll be easy; think of all the idiots you know with kids who manage fine.
Toddlers are fun, except the one kid kept shooting people.
Thanks everyone! I'll try to mentally prepare for biters. Hopefully I'm not dumber than the idiots!
If he was a toddler in 2017, he'll be in grade school by now.
Congratulations Ile!
40: interesting stuff. I haven't thought about that before but I don't know where my kid is going to hang out when she's that age. There are a ton of parks in this city but I can think of very few like that article is talking about, none within walking distance.
Congratulations, Ile! Let me the first to suggest you name him "Wry Cooter".
I have once again failed to use a Q code. Can I have Medicare now?
"Pippin" was kind of weird. He may have been a hobbit. He was the only character not wearing shoes.
You people sucked me in and now there's this:
Daily Quordle #19
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quordle.com
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Nice. That's fun. Though it seems like it's probably small variance in terms of mostly being 6, 7, or 8 guesses. I also got it in 7 like you.
Yay, Ile!! That's exciting. How are you feeling?
Presumably like John Hurt in Alien?
That was the only part of health class I remember.
Congrats, Ile!
Did anyone else see the brutal LA Times article about racial discrimination lawsuits against Tesla? I don't see the word "horrific" in a headline often. Here is the complaint.
I was always talking about getting a Tesla when our current old car needs replaced, but the Volkswagen electrics look nice. Or just going back to being a one car household.
Instead of a small herd of does outside my house, I now have a large-ish buck (one side of the rack has four points and the other two). He's staring at my grill. I feel like I should go grill something from a hoofed ruminant family just to arrest dominance, but it's cold.
He's just staring like he's asking if it's pronounced "Veber" or "Weber."
So my uncle, who I haven't seen for at least 8 years, is dying. He's got months to live. We have a complicated relationship (which I may detail here when I've had more sleep and less beers - though the new job is so stress free I no longer drink at home, it's just that I wanted to see the Liverpool game with some friends tonight) but he's always been a bit of a role model for me, especially when I was younger. Anyway I want to go see him, he was always the quintessential NY-er but for some reason about 10 years ago moved down to Florida, St. Petersburg, and now has gone to move in with a friend in Ocala. The only problem is it doesn't seem easy to get my ass from Arrakis to Ocala and back here (and take a PCR test some 72 hours - I think - before my departure). If he was still in NY it would be easy. I'd stay in a hotel nearby since I don't want to be a burden on him or his friend or my brother and his kids who are in Cocoa Beach (my mom is with them now, it's her brother). Maybe more to say tomorrow...
I'm sorry, Barry. I hope you can make it.
I'm sorry to hear about your uncle. That's rough.
79: Hoping you can find a way, Barry. Very sorry to hear that.
Now he's staring at me through the window.
We're here and alive, but somewhat less well. Two weeks ago my wife and I went in on Sunday night for a store staff meeting; just before close a robber came in, opened a bag and just started shoving card boxes in. When staff intervened to tell him to cool his jets, they pulled the staff member to the ground and wrestled. My wife backed away and dialed 911 - while she was dialing and looking down at her phone, the robber dropped his stuff and charged, driving her back through the entry door and into a concrete planter. She was fortunate in that she only broke her wrist (and maybe some ribs) - evidently staff thought that the angle she'd hit at had been much worse. (I was 10 minutes away picking up dinner for the staff meeting while all this went down.)
Staff was great and made sure that she didn't move, so even though she broke both arm bones just above her wrist, there wasn't any displacement. She's in a long arm cast (to prevent her from rotating her wrist) for another 2 weeks, then will get evaluated as to whether she gets promoted for a forearm cast or recast in a full past the elbow cast for another 2-4 weeks.
The big bummer is that she'd been bicycling to work 2-3 times a week, and the weather has turned absolutely beautiful (today's high is 80). She's afraid that she'll miss most of the cool weather biking season by the time she's out of her casts.
That's horrible. I'm sorry she was hurt and hope she heals quickly.
Oh my god. That's terrifying and awful. Glad she's mending.
Also the linked story in 72 is shockingly racist!
So sorry Mooseking - that sounds traumatic and not just physically. Best wishes for a quick recovery for your wife. Sorry also Barry about your uncle and the annoying difficulties of traveling.
86: Oh, that's awful. I'm so sorry that happened, but so glad it didn't turn out worse for her and the staff.
huge yikes mooseking massive sympathy to your wife & you! good job staff, wow.
so sorry about your uncle, barry, that really sucks.
congrats in the baby ile!
What 93 said to all. Mooseking, that aounds both terrifying and very, very uncomfortable. Barry, I hope you find a way to say goodbye that lets you feel like you said what you wanted, whether in person or by letter. Ile, congratulations!
My sympathies to Moseying & Barry, congrats to Ile!
I'm stuck in the grim old bad patterns here -- totally paralyzed about Getting Stuff Done as the clock ticks down (2 weeks left on bachelor paper for the teaching degree). Just doomscrolling (have you SEEN the quality of doom out there?!), binge-reading trash, anything to avoid thinking about what I'm doing. It'd be nice to blame this on pandemic stuff and recent Infanta quarantines, but nah, Iberian Fury's shouldering more than her share of the load there, too, and still doing her job. One day at a time, and I guess today wasn't the day.
Doomscrolling is just reading the news. I do try to limit how much I read the news these days.
Mooseking, that's just terrible. Let us know if it's the kind of situation where you might need some mutual aid...
Trapnel... sympathy. And empathy. But also, do it now! You deserve to do your work!
Are you all adults, or is anyone else getting sucked into the Olympics drama?
You mean the Russian doping figure skating kid?
Maybe it's "figure skating kid doping"?
that whole sitch seems like a swamp of exploitative shit, that coach a straight up abusive creep.
I actually learned the Russian word ΠΊΠΎΡΠΌΠ°Ρ (koshmar), from the French, from hate-reading stuff about the coach on Twitter. I admit I was curious if you saw any parallels to the ballet world, dq... hopefully the latter is not quite so horrendous, but that may be wishful thinking.
The one that got to me in this long thread of victims was the girl (silver medalist 2018) who is now too badly injured to turn to the left. I was only very, very briefly connected to a performance culture/cult of personality situation remotely like this (and the harm was psychological rather than physical), but it was in my most formative year of preadolescence, turning 13, so that may be part of my visceral desire to see the coach's head on a pike and all the skaters given a very tasty large meal with lots of carbs. The young skater who failed the drug test should clearly, and indeed for her own protection, have been sent home. Who the fuck gives a 15yo heart medication plus whatever they have to take on top to mask it? It is amazingly fucked up.
It should just be fundamentally obvious to any ethical medical practitioner that if you're giving a kid medication that has that sort of risk of permanent side-effect, then that had damn well better be an actually sick kid. Even if the kid is Gillick competent and consents, you still shouldn't do it.
But IOC and WADA are a dead letter anyway. You can systematically dope your athletes all you like and you won't be barred from competing, they'll just make you compete as "Russian Olympic Committee team" rather than "Russia".
(A really good sanction would have been to allow all Russian athletes to compete, but only as part of the Georgian team. Reparations, you know.)
Just randomly assign them to other countries. In many cases it would actually be better for the individual athletes. Remember the hype around the Jamaican bobsled team? A Russian athlete who won a ski jumping medal for Uruguay would get tons of publicity.
Or do a draft during the opening ceremonies where countries compete to choose which athletes they get from a doping-banned country.
"With the fifth overall pick, Thailand chooses.... Anastasia Smirnova!"
Or, they have to take a random drug from a big bowl before competing. Ivermectin for the doubles luge. Tough luck there.
Canonically it's viagra and doubles luge that don't mix.
Taylordle 18 4/6
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Today's is fine, but so much of the Taylordle is stuff that even an encyclopedic knowledge of her music wouldn't help with, you need to know the fan nonsense too. Which I do not, because I like her music, but find her public persona usually somewhere between boring and annoying.
In conclusion, fuck Jake Gyllenhaal but only metaphorically.
Wait are we somehow doing a different Taylordle? If the answer had been scarf I'd have gotten it in 1 and you'd hear about it.
115: Sorry, I was showing of my encyclopedic knowledge of the Taylor Swift oeuvre.
87 to 97: Thank you for the sympathy notes. The offer of solidarity is appreciated; she did get some nice surprises from her "secret cabal" that often does nice things for each other, and some chocolates and nuts from a few of the people that she orders from. Small hits of pleasure for her in the midst of disappointment and easy exhaustion while her bones knit together.
Unfortunately, work has kicked into a higher gear, which has made for longer workdays for me, not even including breaks for extra care and maintenance time for the missus. But she had her 2 week appointment today and it's healing well, so fingers crossed that she keeps on the good path.
Healing is great. Just don't forget to follow it with Batman-style vigilante justice.
My car is in the shop and I feel like the mechanic is going to be all judgemental because it hasn't been a good couple of years for me in terms of not running into things or having the oil changed.
I, too, have neglected routine maintenance, and I'm getting a really judgmental attitude from my doctor.
The thing is, when I run into a parking garage pillar with my body, there's no external sign visible after a couple of weeks.
The damage to the pillar weathers away that fast?
I go back with some spackle and paint.
Probably not related, but I think I need a new hip. If I don't stretch for like 15 minutes a day, I have nearly constant pain. And I just don't have that much patience.