Questionable Decision: A strange adjunct to the LC immigration resolution

DirecTV subscribers in League City Texas can see a bizarre case of art echoing life on their very own TV sets right now.  Bear with me for a moment while I set the stage for context.

The debate over the League City immigrant resolution rages on, both within City Council meetings and in the press, largely in Galveston County Daily News, where the comment count is now among the highest I've ever seen.

Front of the proposed resolution.  I re-published the original text in this July 2014 post. 

The resolution's reference to Islam has long since eclipsed the original debate about whether or not to receive Latin American immigrant children in League City.  Some League City Muslims are still actively opposing the reference, but the people who support it have also been vocal.

Based on the current reporting, it doesn't seem like either side exhibits a clear majority at this point.

Screengrab courtesy Galveston County Daily News.  

It's immediately apparent from reading the GCDN comment stack that many of the resolution supporters have taken their positions out of what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) as an abundance of caution.  That stance appears to arise because many people simply don't feel like they have a reliable lens through which to discern what Islam means on a local scale.  This perspective was quoted in a GCDN piece as having been stated in a Council meeting:  “During (the public comments two weeks ago) of the individuals who spoke, representing the Muslim community, never once did I hear an allegiance to this country, to our flag, to our Constitution, to anything about the American way of life,” Russell Fielder said during the public comment portion of council to a round of applause from many on the council.  In a similar vein, one commenter on GCDN noted, "It is long past time that normal, moderate Muslims speak out against radical Islam."

What both of those communications suggest is that residents simply lack a coherent framework for parsing any of this.  What they expect or hope to see doesn't exactly match the reality that has manifested.  Thirteen years after 9/11, this is apparently where we still are socially, for reasons that I'm not sure anyone really understands.

Case in point where such confusion and discrepancy is concerned - the oddness of what's currently offered in juxtaposition on your DirecTV service: two versions of the same classic American movie, but one of these things is no longer like the other.

I'll get to the explanation in a minute.

Screengrabbed from this site.   

Executive Decision has always been one of my all-time favorite movies.  It was made 18 years ago, "back in the day" when suspense films were still built primarily on plot and character development rather than on mindless ADHD-inspired computer graphics.

The film also showcased Kurt Russell's unparalleled work ethic as an actor.

Image screengrabbed from this site.  

Not only was the film a gutsy depiction of a very difficult subject (that being "radical Islamist terror groups"), it was also noteworthy for having featured a 747 aircraft that actually was bombed by such a group, that being the following:

In 1982, a bomb was detonated on PAN AM Flight 830, resulting in the death of one minor child and the injury of 16 other people.  Despite the resulting damage, the plane was able to make a successful emergency landing in Honolulu.  The aircraft was apparently re-painted for the movie with the fictitious airliner name "Oceanic".  Either that or they just used it for interior shots.

Screengrabbed from Wikipedia.

Executive Decision was a stunning portent of 9/11 five years before it unfolded, and as far as I'm concerned, it's a creative work of national significance.  But prior to being released on Blu Ray, Executive Decision was "edited", or, some would say "censored", for reasons that are not clear.  Furthermore, I can't find a single source on the internet which describes the full extent of what was done to eviscerate the film.  Most references such as this one and user Iceboy's Amazon review primarily cite digital alterations to the imagery, including removal of certain religious references and deleted scenes.  But I believe that the most significant changes actually involved extensive dialog dubbing throughout the movie, dubbing which changes utterly the character of the film and manifests most strongly with this scene.

A suspicious glare indicating a sea change of attitude 1 hour and 24 minutes into the movie:  When the leader of the terrorist group finally reveals his plan to utilize the jet to strike a deadly blow against countless innocent American citizens, his second-in-command revolts, stating, "This has nothing to do with Islam.  This is not [the Deity's] will.  You are blinded by your hatred and I will have nothing to do with your plan."

But the same lines in the censored version are spoken very differently, indeed.

Screengrabbed from my TV set.   

The bizarre part is that, if you so desire, you can currently watch both the censored and the uncensored versions at the same time.  If this situation is of interest to you, it's an opportunity for you to compare and see for yourself what's been done to the film.

The Encore HD version is the Blu Ray version available for instant access.  The Encore Suspense ("ENCSUS") version is the original uncut version.  I recorded both versions within 24 hours of each other this past weekend.

Photo from my DirecTV list with intervening screen space eliminated for clarity.  

The resulting existential questions are as follows:

Why was the movie altered in the first place?  The original version was arguably quite responsible to Islam by forming an explicit distinction between Islam and that which has "nothing to do with Islam" but is instead driven by "[blind] hatred".  This is much the same distinction that the GCDN commenter was seeking in referring to "normal, moderate Muslims" as opposed to "radical Islam".  What benefit to understanding is derived by obscuring this essential distinction in this film or in any other context?  Clearly, we need more of that distinction, not less.

Why are Americans provided primarily with the censored version?  I can understand Warner Brothers / Warner Home Video wanting to change the tone of the movie in certain restricted distributional regions where such actions might be expected, but they only made one Blu Ray, that being the censored version.  In general terms, most Americans are probably going to default to the Blu Ray as their obvious choice (audio and video quality are both superior to the DVD). Given the age of the film, most present-day watchers may not even know that an original version of the movie exists.  In more specific terms, why am I sitting on my flat American butt in my house built on American soil accessing an American content provider streaming an American-made classic movie which has effectively been censored?!  What the hell is up with that?!

The whole thing doesn't sit well with me, and it is an example of what is working against those people who are honestly trying to put Islam into an appropriate social perspective.  "Censorship" is one of the dirtiest words we have in America, provoking immediate defensiveness and hostility in those who sense that they have encountered it.  What's been done to Executive Decision is just going to raise even more suspicions and questions and confusion about perspectives and allegiances where Islam is concerned, both locally and elsewhere.

At least the "editors" had the guts to admit what they had done.

Screengrabbed and annotated from this site.  

Both sides of the GMO debate are missing the real issue

Three days ago, the New York Times distinguished itself by publishing a piece titled "A Lonely Quest for the Facts on Genetically Modified Crops". 

Screengrab from the online version of that article. 

It was one of those proverbial shots heard 'round the world because it departed significantly from what everyone expected such a well-known liberal rag to produce, in that it evaluated the question of GMO safety on its merits rather than toeing the established liberal line in simply condemning GMO technology. 

By this time, the debate is so polarized that, if you Google "GMO meme", Google automatically segregates the results into "Pro" and "Anti" for you. 

Screengrabbed from Google. 

But the fundamental flaw in the NYT article is exactly that - it attempted to evaluate the question of GMO safety on its merits, which is the absolute worst way to look at the issue.

To consume or not consume GMOs is not primarily an issue of safety - it's an issue of personal choice.  But when I try to make this point, people usually respond by giving me a blank stare because they are so conditioned to think in terms of safe vs. unsafe that they can't manage the paradigm shift, the conceptual leap, to evaluating the question in terms of want vs. don't want. 

I personally don't care whether or not GMOs are safe - I would not choose to bring them into my home regardless.  If someone such as God Himself were to present me with conclusive evidence that GMO corn is 100% safe, I still wouldn't make my tortillas out of it.  That's just my personal choice, which I am entitled to make for myself. 

I have my reasons for that choice, but rather than getting all bogged down in the minutiae of my own personal opinions, I decided to write a parable that illustrates this fundamental point on a broader scale.  Different people may have different bases for want vs. don't want.  It doesn't matter what their individual reasons are.  They all have the right to make informed choices, as this parable teaches. 

***

A Jew and a Muslim walked into a grocery store and proceeded to the meat counter.  They asked the butcher, “Which of these meats is free of pig DNA?  We know that a lot of chicken and beef has had pig DNA spliced into it by this time, DNA sequences from those Texas feral hogs which are particularly robust and disease-resistant.  We wish to buy meat that hasn’t been altered, so we need you to point out what our choices are.”

 

The butcher looked at the pair of them and smiled condescendingly.  “With today’s technology and sanitation, there’s no rational reason to exclude any particular meat from your diet.  All of our meat is equally safe to consume.”

 

The Jew and the Muslim looked at each other with trepidation, realizing the extent of what they were up against.  The Jew spoke gently as she said, “But we don’t eat pork in whole or in part.  It’s just our choice – it’s part of our respective cultural heritages, a fundamental personal decision that underpins who we are as people.”

 

“Well, tough luck for you, then, because we have no intention of disclosing,” the butcher replied.  “If we reveal which meat contains pig DNA, the public might get the mistaken idea that it’s somehow inferior.  And that ain’t ever going to happen.” 

 

The Jew and the Muslim left the grocery store silently, contemplating the subtle but comprehensive manner in which their identities had been disrespected, and the degree to which their worlds were continuing to shrink. 

 

Think it couldn't happen with beef and chicken?  It has already happened with fish. 

One of the aforesaid memes, screengrabbed from this site.

 

Creationism controversy: What's different now?

The mainstream media seems like it might be suffering from an attack of short memory syndrome, and so I'd like to help rectify that here. 

The internet positively exploded yesterday with retreads of the AP story surrounding the apparently-growing textbook controversy in Texas, as creationism once again threatens to rear its inappropriate head in public school science classrooms.  The list of news URLs went on for several pages Monday night. 

Screengrabbed from Google. 

But here's what I found curious:  Neither the Associated Press nor any of the related media sources that I've read have thus far have invoked Kitzmiller while framing the issue in its present-day Texas context.  OK, some so-called "social conservatives" are once again pushing for the teaching of creationism at the expense of science instead of in its proper historical and cultural context  - that's no more surprising than the sun rising in the east.  But what hasn't yet been explained is why this newest challenge rises to the level of justifiable alarm.  As a nation, we've been there, we've done that, and in Kitzmiller, Judge John E. Jones III did a jaw-droppingly good job of setting everyone straight on the issue (trial transcripts here; judgment here).  

In a word, yes (tap to expand).  Screengrabbed from this source. 

At this point, there are the popular news stories and Texas Freedom Network has initiated a campaign called Stand up for Science to oppose these developments (the grab above is from their summary document).  But the Constitutional precedent has already been strongly reaffirmed on this issue, has it not?  And recently, and by Republicans to boot. 

According to the NOVA episode "Judgment Day", Judge Jones (rear right) had been recommended for his position on the bench by Senator Santorum (left) and appointed by George W. Bush. 

Screengrabbed from "Judgment Day". 

So even if some rogue Texas creationists were to succeeded in getting inappropriate textbooks approved, what's the worst-case scenario?  Presumably, the usual squandering of an inconceivably large number of public dollars on some Rube Goldberg-style legal machinations would quickly follow, as it always does in the unwinnable culture war.  The litigation would launch, textbooks would get tossed, and Texas would then resume its expected social trajectory none the worse for wear (except financially, of course).  Or would there be more to it this time than just that? 


One of my favorite "unwinnable war" memes, courtesy of Cheezburger.

Perhaps more details will emerge in the coming days.  Hopefully some of you media people have your trackback ears on, because many of us would like to know more about the core of this emerging issue.   

A rose by any other name.

Excerpted from the Kitzmiller decision, page 8. 



The remarkable elegance of Kitzmiller is found in the way in which the plaintiffs were able to show, using actual physical evidence, that "intelligent design" is quite literally creationism re-labeled.  It was so striking that, at times, I wondered if an intelligent designer actually had a hand not in the arising of life, but in the trial. 

It is resoundingly and emphatically unconstitutional to teach creationism within the context of science in an American public school system.  That much was affirmed long before Kitzmiller. 

Screengrabs from "Judgment Day", from frames around the 1:27 mark.

Blogging ethics in an imperfect world

I said something incendiary in yesterday's blog post, but I bet it's not what you think it might have been.  It had nothing to do with the League City logo.  It was actually this:

"Of course, I'm not evaluating any of this logo situation in any professional capacity - I blog solely as a private citizen and taxpayer. But I do access general life lessons in my thought processes, as every private citizen does."

After subsequently getting into a lively off-post debate with a local journalist regarding the fact that I don't openly state my identity on this blog, I thought I'd explain the difference between personal contribution and professional contribution and the impossible position in which those of us who endeavor to make *both* types of social contributions currently find ourselves.

Simply put, society hasn't provided us with a reliable means of declaring the difference between professional representations for which we are fully liable, and personal opinions and perceptions that we hold as private citizen taxpayers.  The internet in particular furnishes absolutely no means of differentiating between these two.  For that reason, those of us who are professionals are put at substantial undeserved risk every time we utter a viewpoint in a public forum. 


Even more insidious is the fact that, the more advanced our educational and career statuses, the more we are assumed to be speaking with professional authority in every instance.  So to add insult to injury, there's a strong positive correlation between seniority and liability, which is exactly the opposite of how the situation should be when viewed through the lens of morality.  Those of us who have withstood the many trials of age and experience... should we not be at greater liberty to share those lessons learned?  And yet what happens is that we end up being the most extensively muzzled by the circumstances of our inferred liability.  Is this even remotely in the public interest?!

Do you doubt these interpretations?  Observe how the liability impacts extend even into the lowest rungs of the employment realm.  How many times have you heard about someone having their employment terminated because they made some after-hours brain-fart comment on Facebook? There's a blogsite devoted to tracking some of those cases.  This woman got fired simply for calling her job "a joke".  She was held to the extremity of liability simply for stating a personal opinion on her own time (the very same opinion that about 90% of the rest of us will also declare at some point in our careers).  Case law will eventually sort that kind of thing out, but right now, there isn't a robust legal precedent for defending ourselves against this kind of reprisal. 

Oh, but it gets even worse.  Case law suggests that bloggers aren't even entitled to claim established journalistic protections.  And then, of course, there's the issue of SLAPP suits.  I could go on and on. 

So after acknowledging the breadth and depth of these very real risks, bloggers and blog contributors are left with only two valid choices:

1. Don't blog at all.  Go through public life manifesting a professional identity only.  Don't share any insight or viewpoint or make any social contribution beyond working and paying taxes. 
2. Blog, but minimize the associated risks.  Find a means of preventing disparate professional and personal representations from becoming inappropriately associated. Stop those two unrelated facets of identity from contaminating each other, given that society is currently not equipped to reinforce any part of this distinction on our behalves.

The vast majority of educated people in our society choose Option 1, but I find it to be pretty boring and downright stultifying, actually.  Not to mention being about as far removed from the public interest as you can get. 

For that reason, I chose Option 2.  The task that then remained was to identify the mechanism through which cross-contamination could be prevented while still maintaining a verifiable authenticity and a supportable ethic. 

One of the best precedents I've identified to date figures prominently in the very popular Houston Chronicle blog SciGuy.  The blog author has one scientific cohort in particular who makes significant contributions without revealing his identity to the public.  The journalist knows who his contributor is, the newspaper has vetted his credentials, and he's known to blog-related third-party experts as well.  But as a contributor, he simply cannot run the risk of having either his well-known guest posts or his comments be construed as reflecting any views or positions of his employer.  His employer could retaliate against him for that just as easily and as swiftly as employers can people like tuna for farting on Facebook.   

In other words, he could lose his job simply by making honest and conscientious and well-informed contributions to the public dialog on his own time and for no compensation.  That's horrifying and an unacceptable risk, and so this lesser-of-evils approach of anonymity was adopted in the case of SciGuy. 

And what a tragedy it would be if instead that contributor's voice had to be silenced because of our regrettable social circumstances.  I'm grateful that those folks got together and formulated this workaround of qualified anonymity.  I've learned a great deal from SciGuy over the years, and my learning would have been profoundly diminished if that contributor had instead been silenced according to Option 1 above. 

And so I have deployed a similar tactic.  The commercial news media knows my identity.  Many of my neighbors know my identity. Key employees and elected representatives within League City know my identity.  I never initiate or respond to a serious email without volunteering information regarding my identity.  But I can't do it here, on this blog.  At least not until society begins granting folks like me reasonable protections that are in accordance with common sense and general decency. 

Sorry, folks.  It's not fair and it's not ideal, but the cards are simply stacked against us right now.
--Your friendly neighborhood blogger. 

Microsoft clip-art.   

Debunking de beach debate

I wish I could.  Debunk it, that is.  But the fact is, I have no real "feel" for the bottom line on the beach debate.  And the longer I ponder it, the more my head hurts. 

Let me re-cap briefly my unsophisticated understanding and analysis, and then proceed with the mental fruits of the walk I took yesterday evening.

Back in July 2011, I published a post called "West end wackiness" which crudely summarizes the state of the mess surrounding the challenges to the Texas Open Beaches Act. 

Things apparently haven't gotten much clearer in the intervening period of time.  There was a subsequent judgment in March of 2012 affirming that the "beach" had indeed become private property (if I'm understanding it correctly), but I'm not entirely sure that anyone really understands what that means on a practical level at this point.  The mainstream news media hasn't been all that helpful because they've tended to view the issue through the lens of whether or not "the public" is allowed onto "the beach".  But apparently it's not that simple. 

Pic from that original July 2011 blog post.  The whole thing started because of legal debate over the line of natural vegetation and what happens following abnormally-intense erosive events, such as hurricanes.  Like Ike, for instance.   

Here's a similar view taken yesterday - a bit farther up the coast but you can still see the same water tower as a point of reference.  The amount of vegetation gained during this intervening period of time is impressive, at least to my un-trained eye.  But what exactly does this mean for private property claims?  I'm not sure. 

I'm still perplexed as to why this beach is allowed to be treated as a right-of-way.  There's so much vehicle traffic that they've basically carved a superhighway through the vegetation that reportedly means everything in the eyes of the law. 

And yet signs like this are present, apparently of a post-Ike vintage (judging from their shiny and new appearance).  But of course, if that property being torn up by vehicles is actually private property, I'm betting that there would be little grounds for enforcement.  Not from a municipal authority, at least. 

But if it's private property, one would think that it has a very high monetary value, because it's beach frontage.  So you'd think that the private property owners would be motivated to preserve that value.  So why do they collectively appear to be allowing people to drive vehicles all over it and tear it up??

In sooth, I got the feeling yesterday that I really was in a type of existential Twilight Zone.  I can't fathom any of these things.  Like, what is it?  Whose is it?  What rules apply?  Yesterday, it felt like I was in No-Man's Land. 

As I was trolling for the latest updates on this issue, I found this FAQ produced by the Texas General Land Office.  According to that source, the "wet beach" (the portion below the high tide line) can still be lawfully accessed by the public, regardless of any recent legal judgments. 

That being the case, at least we've preserved the rights of future generations of Texas children to be able to collect shells...

...and see all the fascinating evidence of life in the littoral zone, even if they have to wait until low tide to do it. 

But if we extrapolate that thought, that statement regarding dry-beach access restrictions, out to its full extent, the picture it paints is very bizarre.   What would families do if we were all held to this wet-beach-only access restriction?  Would people line their cars up on FM 3005 and sit patiently waiting for the tide to recede before they could get out and legally trek to a narrow ribbon of damp sand?  It would be the beach-analog of being relegated to the steerage section of the Titanic, a scenario that strikes me as a particularly ugly form of classism. 

And if I'm understanding things correctly, the thought experiment gets even weirder from that point.   Because, wouldn't private property owners themselves be held to exactly the same restriction?  Sure - the microscopic subset of beachfront owners would be able to claim exclusive rights to their own fifty-foot chunk of dry beach - but apparently by this new set of rules, they would not be allowed to walk on anybody else's fifty-foot chunk of dry beach because, after all, it's private property. 

So if they themselves wanted to take a proverbial walk on the beach, technically, wouldn't they have to exit their beach-front houses, trek across their own miniscule section of dry beach, and enter the wet beach with all the rest of the steerage class people? 

But realistically, would they even be able to do that much?  Because if a bunch of steerage-class Texans saw a property owner emerging to walk on that very same paltry strip of wet sand to which they themselves had been relegated, I'm guessing that the resulting social situation would not be very comfortable for the beachfront owner.  The word "lynching" comes to mind. 

So OK - perhaps in light of that little existential hurdle, perhaps all the beachfront owners could band together and mutually agree that they could reciprocally walk on each others' dry-beach private property.  Even if we set the resulting insurance ramifications aside for the sake of argument (but it's debatable as to whether those issues could ever be discharged), how would the rightful beach-walkers be able to distinguish each other from steerage trespassers?  The average west-ender might be familiar with a few of their neighbors, but most of these west-end houses are only occupied part of the time.  Furthermore, they tend to be occupied by extended families, friends of those families, and/or weekend renters, so we're talking about an impossibly-large pool of people to potentially identify.  They'd have to wear wrist bands or forehead tattoos or something, wouldn't they?  Which would also be problematic, because that would further heighten the ability of the steerage beach-goers to visually identify them as potential targets of wrath. 

And even with all that, who would enforce the segregation?  Certainly not the taxpayers.  So theoretically, would the dry beach property owners perhaps have to band together to hire private security or something, to enforce private propery access? 

But even if they did that, what if an owner or an entitled visitor forgot to get his forehead tattooed on the way to Galveston?  What if the tattoo machine was temporarily broken?  Or what if a dry-beach owner had their wrist band accidentally torn off as they were frolicking in the surf?    What then?  Would they even manage to make it back to their own beach-front houses?  Or would they be apprehended by their own security team?  Would difficulties such as this maybe prompt them to start microchipping themselves instead, like dogs?  Because microchips can't wash off in the surf. 

But then they'd have to pay for microchip readers to be installed at the high tide line.  Microchip readers that the steerage class beach-goers would then be inclined to vandalize. 

And on, and on...

Am I missing something here?  Has anybody really thought this whole wet/dry scenario through to its logical end-points??  That's the question that was foremost in my mind yesterday, as my beloved dog and I walked for over an hour on a deserted narrow soggy strip of Every-Man's Land, the strip that exists at the bleeding edge of No-Man's Land. 

We don't yet have transparency on the bottom lines. For the time being, we'll have to settle for transparency in this delicate feather.  

Erroneous agetribution

The quote-of-the-day in this morning's NYT reads as follows, doing an acute disservice to greater Houston in the process (Willis, TX being just north of Conroe):

"When you're older, they just see gray hair and they write you off."

This is attributed as follows:  ARYNITA ARMSTRONG, a 60-year-old in Willis, Tex., who has been looking for work for five years since losing her job at a mortgage company.

Say it ain't so: condolences to the old fart, who appears fit and healthy but is summarily damned by his balding gray head??
Microsoft clip-art.

Every time I see something like Ms. Armstrong's quote, I cringe.  I cringe because most of the people who make those kinds of statements are in such acute denial.  They have absolutely no grasp of how the real world works or why it works as it does.  I cringe when I think of all the senior citizen petroleum industry veterans who have been begged and pleaded back out of their happy retirements because there aren't enough workers available to manage all the new operations that have developed because of the current oil boom. 

I was on the phone with one of my professional cohorts late Friday as he was driving in the Karnes City area, and he said, "There are so many flares here now... the sky is so bright that you don't even need to turn your car headlights on at night. I'm not kidding."

I can spot Willis, Texas on this photo as well - can you?  Hint:  it's relatively close to the employment action.

Screengrab from this Scientific American blogsite. 

The industry veterans who re-emerge from retirement don't need the money - they are already financially set for the rest of their lives.  They return to the oil field often forfeiting their Social Security benefits in the process, return purely out of a sense of allegiance to their cohorts and their companies, because this thing called an oil boom would be utterly unable to function without their participation, the shortage of skilled workers is so great. 

In my work, I routinely encounter the un-retired who are not sixty but are rather seventy to eighty years old!!  Their hair is not gray - it has long since turned white.  And they are working at six-figure salaries for only one reason: because they feel responsible in the old-school way which is increasingly rare these days.

And in stark contrast to those veterans are the people who whine their erroneous attributions such as age-related discrimination.  Those are often the people who, even in their advanced ages, are unwilling to accept the very same reality that we've been trying so passionately to teach our teenager:  that you must see the world the way it is - NOT the way you personally would prefer it to be.  And if you don't identify an in-demand job description that is palatable to you and that you can successfully gain skills for (even though it might not be your favorite choice), you will spend the rest of your life mired in a state of emotional uncertainty, financial insecurity, periodic if not chronic unemployment, and fear. 

It's just that simple, and yet so many people are unable to accept it.   You can't sit there and indulge in a pity party because nobody wants to hire you to do a job that society doesn't need done.  You have to go where the jobs are. 

You commercial investigative journalists who stumble across this blog rant... you may wish to develop a feature that documents the Texas Un-Retired, because theirs is an utterly fascinating human interest story.  Such a feature would make a satisfying counterweight to some of the warped perspective emphasized by the NYT.  It's the kind of true story that so many of the young and the old desperately need to read. 

Sidewalk talk

It's never my intention with blog entries to appear preachy or demanding.  We have enough agents (both official and unofficial) in our society who delight in assuming those roles.

I'd rather be a provider of perspective and information and, with that in mind, I'd like to expound upon a point that appeared in the February neighborhood newsletter:

Look at the fourth line down.

I am quite sure that many local residents do not know this:  it is ILLEGAL in many municipalities to block the sidewalk with your car, even where your own driveway crosses it.

Let me offer you a vignette of perspective on this issue before further discussing its practicalities.  I was jogging in the neighborhood about three weeks ago when I happened across a young lady, a prospective buyer, who was viewing a listing for sale on Harvard Pointe Drive.  We chatted about the neighborhood and its amenities.   Seeing my attire, one of the first questions she asked was, "Is Centerpointe a good neighborhood for joggers?  Are all its sidewalks in good condition equivalent to the sidewalks on Harvard Pointe?"  She, too, was a jogger and the availability of good sidewalks were a key factor in her purchase decisions. 

Moral of the story: 
Access to sidewalks is extremely important to many of us.  Sidewalks are not just bling added to the front of houses to increase property values.  Many of us make active use of them daily. 

Here's a short list of activities that CANNOT be properly accomplished if there is no access to sidewalks, either because they were not installed in the first place, or because they are blocked by multiple cars:

1. Take yourself jogging.
2. Take your dog walking.
3. Push a baby stroller.
4. Guide a young child on a training wheels bicycle.

We used to live in "old town" League City where you can see majestic 100-year-old oak trees... but you better not spend too much time gazing up at them because you have to constantly jump out of the way of traffic in that area.  Those old neighborhoods were built without sidewalks or even street shoulders.  Many times when we would try to walk there, we would find ourselves literally leaping into open ditches to escape speeding cars.  From a stress standpoint, it was hardly worth it to go outside. 

I personally know some families in Centerpointe who block the sidewalks with their cars, which is why I figure many people who do it are unaware that their actions are impacting their neighbors.  They're nice folks - they probably just haven't given this much thought.

Google Maps tells a tale of the extent of it in Centerpointe:

Sometimes it appears to occur because folks failed to buy or build a house big enough to accomodate all of their cars.  If you can't fit them in your garage or on your own section of your driveway (see plat excerpt below), the street is your other legal parking option.

In my recent observation, the section of Walnut Pointe between the two ends of Lilac Pointe is the worst street in the neighborhood for this kind of thing.  I have often counted as many as a DOZEN blocked driveways just along that one stretch.  Sometimes joggers on Walnut Poine have to go straight down the middle of the street! 

An example of a 2-wide where a car is blocking the sidewalk despite ample room in the driveway.  Even if these folks do not want to park next to each other, they could still probably pull all the way up to their garage so that they spare the sidewalk.

A 3-wide driveway example where blocking the sidewalk is clearly unnecessary!!

Yet another 3-wide driveway where blocking the sidewalk is EVEN MORE unnecessary!!

Some of the less-enlightened among you may be thinking at this point,
"Well, it's MY driveway - I'll park in it any way I want."

Actually, you might be wrong about that, as this survey excerpt suggests:

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice, but it appears to me as if the documents that legally define the neighborhood state that the sidewalks and the land upon which they were poured are public property, not private.  This would mean that it's actually NOT "your" section of the driveway. 

Anyway, I hope this post begins to raise awareness about this issue.  Thanks for not blocking the sidewalks, from those of us who utilize them daily.  There are so few public spaces in our modern, crowded residential neighborhoods that we need to maintain open access to what little has been made available to us.

The scoop on the ice cream man

Get it??  The scoop on the ice cream man?!?
:-)

Yeah, well, y'all can throw rotten tomatoes if you want, but given the wretched condition of the American news media, this post just might end up being the most penetrating piece of investigative journalism that you get to read all week.
;-)

A discussion was initiated over the past two monthly newsletters about the ice cream truck that is frequently seen driving through the neighborhood.  A resident voiced suspicions about this person's intentions and solicited feedback. 

Twenty-two residents offered comment.  Raising the question was completely reasonable and appropriate, but here's what astonished me:  of those twenty-two respondents, not one reported having asked the ice cream truck driver a couple of neighborly questions (except for one person who apparently once told him to get lost).  An inquiry was launched, suspicions were expressed about security, an investigation was begun into the legality of operating ice cream truck around here, but nobody appears to have engaged in actual communication with the person of concern (or if they DID, the news didn't make it back to me).

For goodness sake, if there's something going on in the neighborhood about which you have legitimate questions, then trot your bottom out your front door and simply ask about it.  Either that, or send me an email via Centerpointe.blog@gmail.com and I'll be happy to do it for you!  Or if for some reason you suspect that a situation is unsafe, call the League City Police.  But however this present situation unfolds, I do believe that everyone would be better served if the neighborhood didn't jump into a Bogeyman decision tree before even confirming who the players are, and what they're doing.

So I did that very thing, pursuing the poor ice cream man down White Oak Pointe like a dog-jogging madwoman earlier this evening.

Here's what I found out.  That friendly older gentleman with the white goatee and the gentle eyes is named Mike.  It's not his truck.  It belongs to his employer, who assigns each of his drivers a territory. 

And guess what else??  Mike says that there's more than one ice cream truck company operating in this area.  If we go through a spell where the selling of packaged ice cream feels more like a plague of locusts than a microbusiness engaging in mobile retail activity, I suspect it's not because Mike feels compelled to consume the balance of his golden years in endless circulation of Centerpointe.  It might be because we've got multiple unrelated trucks coming through, each not knowing that another has recently been here.

AAUUUGH!!!  IT'S THAT MUSIC AGAIN!!!!
:-)
Plague of locusts pic from
http://sportsblog.projo.com/2008/07/olympics-threat.html

Mike was kind enough to give me the name and phone number of his boss.  I think I'll call the guy just to touch base in a friendly way, and to ask him a few general things about his business intentions and competitors.  To initiate a dialog which may proceed one way or another depending on the eventual wishes of the neighborhood.  I'll follow up with another post if I learn anything of consequence, or if I get requests for further info. 

Meanwhile, here's my challenge to all of you:
Don't take my word for it!  Go say "Hi" to Mike, the ice cream employee who diligently follows his employer's route instructions, the next time you see him.  Make a little small talk with him, enough to get the beginnings of a 'feel' for him as a human being. 

After you get done with that, comment below (or send me an email if you wish to remain anonymous), and answer me this:

Which do you think is more likely?  Does your gut (based on your newfound actual experience rather than a bandwagon of generalized hysteria) suggest that this guy might be trouble?  Or does he seem more like the kind of guy who would call the police on your behalf if he happened to be driving by your house when you weren't home and saw something that didn't seem quite right?

Remember, it cuts both ways.

Boo Radley thumbnail from the film adaptation of one of the greatest American novels of all time, To Kill A Mockingbird. For those who may not be familiar with the story,
Boo was widely demonized by his local community,
but he saved the lives of two children.
(Photo source: http://www.saraethompson.com/megan_port/subject_web/bios.html)