respublica

Festival of Trees decorating day 2010

Ah, the annual rite of Collinsville Christmas, the Festival of Trees.  Today was the day when 40 some organizations decorated their trees.  At 9 tonight the trees will be judged, the winners announced tomorrow night at the dinner.  All the trees and many wreaths will be auctioned off during the course of the evening.

Here's a quick look at some of how the trees looked as they were being trimmed.

This is the one Pat, Donna and I worked on for Collinsville Progress.

The new downtown organization.

Anderson Hospital

Scott Credit Union doing a Glee tree.

Someone, maybe the school district, is doing a Kahok tree.

Every group has a table filled with their ornaments. 

Be back tomorrow for a look at the real thing, the Festival of Trees.

Food trucks not allowed in Clayton

The Pi Pizza folks have a bustling food truck business, selling their pizza over the lunch hour in downtown St. Louis, the Central West End, Wash U and the SLU area.  Each morning they use Twitter to let people know where they will be.

Someone wrote and asked them to please come to Clayton.  Their response was, "We'd love to but Clayton won't allow us."

Too bad, really. 

Urban planning and Eastport Plaza

Steve Patterson of Urban Review takes a look at the hits and misses of Eastport Plaza, most notably zeroing in on what he sees as poor pedestrian walkability.  He uses his own photos to document his case.

Oddly, the availability of sidewalks in Eastport has been one of the things I've always credited to the developers.  But, looking at this from the point of view of someone dependent on a wheelchair, it seems things could be better.

But I take issue with his last comment:  "The sidewalk is just there to create a passing appearance of walkability."  Certainly the sidewalk are more than appearance, I've walked them numerous times with my own camera and have seen many people walking those sidewalks.  So they are useable, although it wouldn't hurt to fix the places which need fixing and plant some trees. 

Animals-often overlooked on our roads

Between 2005 and 2009, 1017 people were killed on American roads in crashes involving animals, mostly deer.  The crashes between vehicles and deer are three times as high in November as in any other month which is makes sense as deer hunting season would cause the animals to flee.

The state with the most animal/vehicle collisions is Texas. 

Sadly, according to the study, 6o percent of people killed in these accidents were not wearing seatbelts and 65 percent of motorcyclists dying after hitting an animal were not wearing helmets. 

We've hit or been hit by a deer twice and each time it was a sudden, out of the blue, horrifying impact, impossible to predict.

Ann Wagner runs for RNC chairmanship

Great news!  Via the St. Louis Beacon:  "St. Louisan Ann Wagner -- a former U.S. ambassador, the Missouri GOP's first woman chair, and a former state chair of a presidential re-election campaign -- announced Monday that she is seeking to add yet another title to her impressive resume: the chair of the Republican National Committee."

The GOP can't do better than Ann Wagner. 

In early November there was some talk that Wagner might challenge Claire McCaskill in 2012, but this is just so much better.  I blogged about this rumor and added in the comments that I'd like to see her as RNC chairman.  Hopefully those who vote realize what a force she is. 

Leslie Nielsen made us laugh

After the news of Leslie Nielsen's death yesterday at age 84, everyone began tossing out some of his funniest lines. 

The most famous judging by the number of times the line has shown up the past 24 hours was this:

Another character says to Nielsen's character:  "Surely you can't be serious."  Nielsen says, "Don't call me Shirley."

Which reminded one of our daughters of something my mother said to the other daughter some years ago.   One of her friends sisters had just had a baby girl and was named Lindsey Noel. 

My father, after hearing this news asked, "How do you spell Lindsey without an L." 

Leaking should have consequences

The latest news about WikiLeaks' making public thousands of diplomatic communications should make the leaker an enemy of the state.

Is there any such thing as treason anymore?  This action seems to fall into that category. 

Reflections on Cyber Monday

Supposedly buying online today is a big deal, or, there are comparable online deals to Black Friday's instore sales.

I haven't found much in the way of interesting Cyber Monday sales and I woke up to an inbox full of sale notices from various stores. 

But, if you're one of those who is looking for a new camera you might look at Abe's of Maine.  We've had good experiences with them and their pocket digital cameras are priced nicely today. 

 At the moment Avon of all places has a Flip video for $89.  I have a Flip and it's a great video camera to keep in your pocket and as easy as anything to download, send to YouTube or make a full movie with.  89 dollars is a good price.  Won't last long, I'd guess.

 

It never fails department

I go upstairs to the computer and my cell phone rings downstairs. 

A couple of additions to the Christmas scene

A neighbor of the seminary and one of her friends often walk their dogs through the campus.  Lauren got a couple of really fun shots.

Actually, Liz had this photo made into her family's Christmas card.  Seamus and Mattie among the animals.

I love this one.