Say YES to NNO

The title of this blog post is reminiscent of my all-time favorite T-shirt, which reads "Say No to Negative Thinking".  I reckon it took me a good 45 minutes to stop laughing after I first saw that one.

This post's subtitle should perhaps be "Dancing Cows and Missing Cats".  Because firstly, if you did not see the dancing cow last night at National Night Out (NNO), well, what can I say?  You should have, because if you missed out on this unprecedented cultural enrichment, there's really no excuse.

Unfortunately, he seriously put the kybosh on his own moves when he noticed I was filming.  I don't know why - was he afraid he'd end up on Facebook or something??  Or perhaps on some really dorky subdivision blog??

Now secondly, on the issue of missing cats, let me start by saying that what I really don't like about NNO is that it only happens once per year.  And it only happens for two hours.  Each year like clockwork (or Groundhog Day if you prefer), what occurs is that I show up, take a few minutes to cram some really good BBQ into my chops, and then manage to have time for only 1% of the conversations that I would like to have with residents.  And then a year later, the same thing happens all over again.  If I manage to make the next one hundred annual NNO's in Centerpointe, which has a zero percent probability of happening, I might get to actually talk to everyone.

But included amongst those few with whom I did manage to have interesting chats last night were a small group of the very first buyers in Centerpointe Section 1.  They had some interesting things to say about this area as it was Way Back Then, a whole entire decade ago, which is an unfathomable time frame for many of us (see, I was one of the first buyers in Section 9, the very last section - I'm the late chick to the party, here).  And what happened in those proverbial Early Years still resonates today in some of the effects that we can still see here.

Case in point: the coyotes.  Reportedly, when Centerpointe first commenced construction, this area was crawling with coyotes.  The Section 1 residents reported that they'd listen to them singing at night as they roamed across territory that included the as-yet-undeveloped Centerpointe Sections 2 through 9. 

So the coyotes moved out when the houses moved in.  But not entirely - they're still here, just not according to their original distribution.  I have seen them sneaking into Section 9 even after construction was finished.  And, of course, during the 2-ish years it took for this batch of 75 houses to go up, I would constantly see coyote tracks everywhere in the freshly-plowed dirt.

Coyotes' lingering proximity to Section 9 may be part of the reason why in this thread, "Walnut Pointer" noted what (s)he described as an undesirable situation with feral cats on Walnut Pointe (which is in an older section) and yet I haven't seen a single one of them in Section 9. 

We have one well-cared-for family-pet Tinkerbell-style feline who often runs at large here (we do cherish him) and that's all.  And I've wondered why that is, because usually there are feral cats to be found just about everywhere in urban and suburban areas.  I've wondered if perhaps the coyotes have been taking them out in those neighborhood fringe areas that they can still access, the areas that are still adjacent to the undeveloped lands that still support coyotes. 

It could be the case.  Coyotes do eat rodents, but a feral cat would make a much more desirable meal.  Better bang for the canine buck.  We are cleaned out over here in Section 9.  This might be the reason. 

So there's all that.  In future posts I'll talk more about the potential to have additional NNO-type events, because some residents do want that.  I don't mean large-scale commercialized events such as what occurred last night... 

Gone but not forgotten.

...I mean smaller-scale casual events.  Whatever happened to the Friday evening spontaneous gab-fest at the end of the cul-de-sac that naturally progresses into an unplanned mini-potluck?  One of our Section 9 cul-de-sacs is pretty good at doing that kind of thing already, and another of our cul-de-sacs is making plans to start.  If stuff like that happened, I might actually get to talk to everybody before I die.  So I'll have more on that idea later. 

Any quality local blogs out there?

There are over seventy thousand people in League City and about a quarter million in Galveston County - do any of them have anything genuinely interesting to offer in their blogs??  If they do, please send me an email at centerpointe.blog@gmail.com and tell me who they are.

I'm searching for other local blogs so that I can link to them and thus expand the reach of this one.

Trouble is, I haven't yet found any of quality.  Oh, there are plenty of pickin's in the blogosphere - but the ones I've found are all either profit-driven or navel-staring.  Lawyers on the take, realtors on the make, journalists writing indiscriminantly about anything and everything so that they can continue to justify their paychecks, people pushing their own private local political agendas, and of course the "look at ME!" crowd who have inexplicably concluded that the whole world would really like to see photos of their particular family dog.

One must expect a strong editorial element in any blog - that's the nature of the art form.  But there's a fundamental difference between a veiled sales pitch and an outreach effort.  There's a difference between people trying to bring about a result for their own individual benefit, and people whose goal is to provide information and perspective for the purposes of initiating actual two-sided dialog. 

It's the latter that I'd like to learn about, if it exists.  Forgive me, but I was born and raised in the Before Time, when everybody knew their neighbors, and the whole of daily life experiences did not revolve around the buying of tickets or paying of fees for absolutely every event that takes place.   We were participants more than we were spectators or pitchmen, in other words.  And in that process, people shared things.  No literal or figurative money traded hands in the process, but people and communities were much richer for the experience. 

So where are the local bloggers who are not out to capture your money, your vote, or your soul?

The difference between participating and pitching reminds me of the most powerful performance of  Danny Devito's career, the closing scene in the movie The Big Kahuna, which he starred in beside Kevin Spacey.  In it, he explains to his young understudy the essential difference between being a human being and a being a marketing rep:

"You preaching Jesus is no different than Larry or anybody else preaching lubricants.  It doesn't matter whether you're selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or how to make money in real estate with no money down.  That doesn't make you a human being - it makes you a marketing rep.

If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids.  Find out what his dreams are.  Just to find out, for no other reason.  Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it's not a conversation any more - it's a pitch - and you're not a human being - you're a marketing rep."  

Girl Scout cookies direct sale event

One of the local Girl Scout troops will be doing a "wagon drag" cookie sale this Sunday afternoon (February 13) in Centerpointe.

Unlike the older ordering method, this will be an efficient DIRECT SALES event with on-the-spot delivery - no fussing with order forms, no waiting for cookies to come in, no hassle with trying to coordinate a delivery time.

From http://www.girlscouts.org/

So if you hear your doorbell ring on Sunday, chances are it won't be some annoying solicitor trying to sell you bad art or water filters - hopefully it will instead be some cheerful Scouts building their business skills with great cookies to offer.

From Galveston County Daily News, here's a video of the logistics required to get all six hundred thousand boxes of cookies into our general area for sale:

Video: Great Girl Scouts cookie drop