respublica

Walking down Vandalia

On Thursday Ferdie had a vet appointment at Northgate Animal Hospital on Vandalia so I decided to walk him there since it was a sunny Fall day and he needed the time outside. Here are the things I learned about the newly finished road construction.

There are now 5 lanes through most of the route, two in each direction and a middle turn lane. I made the decision to cross the road so that we would be walking facing the oncoming traffic and found we needed more time to cross, the width is so wide. It's important to make sure there isn't much traffic from either way or you won't get across in time.

The highway (and that is what it is now) is very pretty, nice black road bed and new sod and sidewalks along each side. However it was definitely not constructed to be pedestrian friendly and in fact, is often scary to walk on the new sidewalks because they are perilously close to the inside traffic lane. Two young girls were walking about 50 yards ahead of Ferdie and me (no school that day) and I watched as they were jostling around, laughing and talking. At times one or the other moved to the curb area and cars just zoomed right by at their shoulders.

Frankly, I doubt I'll be walking along Vandalia much anymore. When I could I moved into parking lots of business along that route just to get away from the cars. Heading home we took the other side of the street just so I could keep my eye on the oncoming traffic.

If you walk Vandalia, don't turn your back on the driving surface.

Favorite Halloween candy?

If I had to guess, this article on favorite Halloween candy by state was geared to adults not kids. Adults who buy what they like to pass out and take out of their kids trick or treat bags to eat. Here's a question. How many people really like candy corn?

Here's a list of what is most popular by state. Illinois is Snickers! Yes! I'm all in with that choice. Missouri is supposedly Hershey's Kisses but I tend to believe they have the holidays mixed up with this one. Christmas Kisses, yes, Halloween...not so much. California is Lifesavers and Kansas is Twizzlers.

You'd think Missouri would be Twizzlers since they're made right here in St. Louis. Maryland is Almond Joy. Again, this has to be an adult list because very few kids I've known have liked all that coconut and Almonds. Louisiana loves Swedish Fish. Who knows what that is?

Our experience in recent years is that most kids trick or treating like the sour candy in any form. And, we get many many toddler aged kids coming to our door and I've begun having bags of animal crackers for that age.

Wealth of members of congress

A list of all the members of the House and Senate in order of wealthiest to poorest for a total of 541.

The richest ten are evenly divided between republican and democrat. The poorest is republican David Valadao of California and the richest is republican Darrell Issa.   Locally, John Shimkus ranks 292 and Rodney Davis is 394.

Claire McCaskill is 21 and Roy Blunt is 209.  Dick Durbin is 143 while Mark Kirk is 492.

ESTL teacher strike

I saw this data from East St. Louis today in regard to the 21 days and counting teachers strike:

East St. Louis District 189 teacher strike: 6% college-ready; $14.5k spending/pupil/yr, median teacher-salary $72k; median HH income: $19k.

Can't get that GOP debate out of my mind

Last night's debate hosted by CNBC was one of the most infuriating, awful, insulting and consecending bodies of work by the moderators I've ever experienced. And I am not alone, except for MSNBC maybe which had the Morning Joe panel doing their utmost to keep anyone from mentioning how bad things were for the moderator/journalist.

How bad was it? So bad that even other more liberal news people weighed in.

Howard Kurtz: "An absolute train wreck for CNBC…snide, hostile, condescending, borderline insulting'

Ron Fournier: "Biggest loser of this debate isn't JEB. It's MSM. We've earned this bashing."

Piers Morgan: "Come on CNBC moderators, get your damn facts right. This is embarrassing."

Juan Williams: "The moderators were so often wrong...the candidates were able to say 'I didn't say that.'" 

Maybe it's good that the main stream media bias was on such obvious display last night, they were snide, adversarial, downright rude. But this behavior was so bad and so obvious that finally GOP candidates pushed back in a strong way. That push back is a long time coming, but so important.

The Arch is 50 today

Not such a great weather day for St. Louis to celebrate 50 years of the Gateway Arch, it's raining. But, hey, the arch has stood in the midst of floods so it will be ok.

Here are a few pictures I've taken of the arch over the years.

This was taken during the flooding of the arch grounds in June of 2008

This was taken in April of 2005 when St. Louis hosted the Final Four and Illinois was one of the 4. We went to one of the open practice sessions and then walked around the riverfront.

Taken from the City Garden in 2011 at Christmas

This was from a downtown hotel which held our nephew Brad's graduation from St. Louis College of Pharmacy, May 2011.

From the first local Tea Party rally February of 2009

This goes pretty far back, at least 2004 maybe earlier. We'd gone down to the riverfront on the 4th of July to see a WWII ship just like the one my dad had been on when in the south pacific theater as a marine. A nice man who happened along took our picture with my camera. But, someone else standing nearby also took this picture and later added Fredbird. This crazy photo shopped picture turns up in various media outlets in St. Louis frequently.

 

Holy Cross flyover

Yesterday two of our seminary staffers went with me to Holy Cross to take overhead photos of the church and school property. These two staffers have been trained in the use of a drone and its camera which made it fun for the school children and adults who came by to watch. The purpose was to get a few good shots to put into the new time capsule which will go into the building's cornerstone.

We were all pretty surprised at just how many trees surround Holy Cross.

The kids

And here are Michelle and Justin operating the drone.

Justin was operating the drone while Michelle was watching the images in the device she was holding. She was able to tell him to move left or right, up or down.

And Holy Cross' new comfort dog, Esther, came to watch.

Hot dogs are people too

This is one of those headlines which, like sudden photos of snakes that appear on a timeline, that I want to scroll past as fast as I can.

"Human DNA found in hot dogs."

Good bye free speech

According to a survey of a variety of colleges across the country, 51 percent of students favor speech codes to regulate speech for faculty and students versus 36 percent who do not. 63 percent favor requiring professors to employ "trigger warnings"to alert students to material which may be discomforting. One third could not identify the First Amendment as the part of the Constitution that dealt with free speech.

This should bother all of us. Once this stoppage of speech has begun, it will seep into every nook and cranny of our culture. Those who are uncomfortable about some topic now, will wake up one day to find that someone else is uncomfortable with something they want to hear or say.

A very blunt Tweet by Richard Dawkins on the results of this survey went like this: "A university is not a "safe space". If you need a safe space, leave, go home, hug your teddy & suck your thumb until ready for university."

 

Parking

Living in an area with 3 universities all right together we've noticed firsthand how students will go to great lengths to avoid paying their school's parking fees. They park all over residential areas often taking reserved parking set aside for others, block driveways in neighborhoods and take spots in front of the homes that residents need. And, these official parking lots are often well constructed, well lit and very nice. But empty.