respublica

This is the church you go to if...

This is an interesting Twitter thread in which readers were asked to put up a photo of unusual church architecture and explain what would make you go there. The pictures are interesting. But most of the responses weren't funny as they should have been. Some actually make no sense. However, this entry did make me laugh.

"This is the church you go to if you were a cool Lutheran in the seventies and never got over it."

So many Halloween treats

After seeing stories of myriad Trunk or Treat events the past two weeks, I wonder just how much candy kids can deal with and how interested are they in actual trick or treating tonight. Seriously, it seems the past two weeks most towns saw trunk or treats at schools, churches, civic areas on many nights or afternoons. By now Halloween is mostly an afterthought except for local news people who feel the need to dress up during the newscasts.

Trunk or Treat affairs began, I believed, as an alternative to traditional trick or treating so that the kids would be assured of being safer than wandering around neighborhoods in the dark. These days you can't be too careful.

But the way shoppers were attacking the Halloween candy aisles yesterday, it looks like trick or treating is a go.

A recycling update

Here is news we may have seen coming but hoped it wouldn't. We've become accustomed to recycling so many different things and have been thankful they didn't end up in landfills. O'Fallon Missouri is one of the first local cities to change what can or can't be recycled.

Glass bottles, aluminum cans, tin cans will all still be allowed to be picked up curbside. However, the key is all these materials must be empty, clean and dry or they will be turned away. Recyclers are also encouraged not to bag your items as well.

But...

Paper and cardboard will no longer be allowed to be picked up. No information on plastics.

Most of our recycling items went to China and they are no longer accepting them. Watching big recycling trucks haul off tons and tons of material every day for years made me wonder if there would ever be a time when there was so much there'd be no use for all of it. I guess we've come to that point in time and O'Fallon is probably just the first of many cities to curb what can be recycled.

Our 4 campus recycling dumpsters get emptied twice a week by Republic trash haulers. I can't even imagine what will have to change if cardboard and paper must go into normal trash dumpsters. Those items make up 30 percent of waste nationwide. In Indianapolis Republic doubled residential rates in August.

Is there a plan anywhere on what to do with all the recyclables when other cities follow O'Fallon's lead? Will we need to open more landfills?

 

Commenting

For some reason Typepad, my blog server, has stopped allowing me to comment on my own site. I have no idea why.

If elected...

Right at this moment in time, I would happily vote for any candidate who promised to work to eliminate the twice a year time changes. We don't need this anymore. The worst is waiting til almost 7 for daylight in the mornings. Mother nature is going to give us a certain amount of light and dark each day whether we are happy about the time or not. Let's just pick one set of times and quit the back and forth.

Now there will be three

MoDOT announced this morning that they have opened a third lane on the Poplar as well as the northbound Route 3 ramp to westbound 64 to the Poplar. This should help even though they're still working. Looking at my KMOV traffic app on Live Traffic I can see the westbound traffic headed to the Poplar is heavy but better than it has been while the traffic heading to the Musial is heavy. This could mean the bridge news did not get to most commuters this morning.

I'm still taking bets that as soon as MoDOT finally finishes their bridge work, IDOT will decide to start closing lanes on the east end to resurface or something else. It never ends there.

Like that will happen

Twitter announced they plan to remove the "like" tool which gives readers the opportunity to "like" a tweet, a move they believe will improve the quality of debate on the social network.

I fail to see how this will improve any of the vindictiveness on many Twitter postings and for the most part, many of the likes are for cute dog posts.

Two roadway incidents

Two stories on the hazards on the roads popped up this morning.

"FedEx truck caught on video speeding through St. Peter's neighborhood." There is a photo attached to the story which does look like that FedEX van is going pretty fast. But this doesn't surprise me after any number of experiences on the road with FedEX trucks and deliveries. I even posted about them a few weeks ago.

The second:

"Giant industrial spool rolls down highway as cars try to dodge it." The photos in this story are pretty scary, but the frustrating part of this is how poorly written it is.  For instance, "Commuters trekking home on Interstate 10 in Texas Thursday night encountered a rather unusual sight — a large industrial spool barreling down the highway."  Thursday night it says, commuters going home. But then the next few lines say: "The loose spool was spotted by drivers in Houston around 11:30 a.m. near Wayside according to the Houston Chronical."

So which was it? Night time or late morning? It seems it was late morning as a later posting by TxDOT at 1:23  said:

"Heavy truck incident on I-10 East Freeway WB at Wayside has moved. The spool has been loaded on flatbed truck. Mainlanes open but traffic moving slowly in the area."

How many raccoons are there in the world?

I posted a week or so ago about our most recent raccoon problem and said we'd be calling Critter Control again. Well we did and so far this week they've trapped at least 7 raccoons and I think it's more than that. I don't believe I've added in yesterday's number. This is creepy and ridiculous. Here's what I found today and folks, they are not cuddly creatures. 

Click to enlarge the pictures.

This one is on the side of our house next to our neighbor's driveway. He's trying to sleep or is asleep as they're nocturnal.

Then outside of the garage are two in one trap. 

Critter Control snuggled this trap around various things. We've gotten to know this particular Critter Control guy very well over the years. He knows right where to put the traps. 

It's a mystery to me

"A Missouri judge has made clear that local election workers cannot enforce a core requirement in a new voter photo identification law."

What is the requirement? "voters lacking valid photo ID should sign a sworn statement and present some other form of identification to cast a regular ballot."

I don't understand what is so wrong about proving who you are when you go to vote, especially when it may be your first time in a precinct or state. The judge clarified the law to include not just state workers, but local election officials on election day. I guess there was confusion over whether or not both entities had to do this. So now, no one does.

In our Clayton precinct we have always been asked for ID and I'm not upset by this at all.

My dad often told stories of growing up in Chicago in the 20's and 30's and seeing election day shenanigans. Bars were closed on election day supposedly to keep votes from being bought for the price of a beer. But that never stopped the Chicago machine back then, there were ways to stuff ballot boxes.

My grandfather played in a band (really an orchestra) in many a ballroom or speakeasy and my dad's aunt wrote soap operas for NBC which had their broadcasts come from Chicago. So my dad got around as he spent time with both of these people and saw a lot of Chicago Machine goings on. My dad had so many stories and he was forever cynical about local politics.  Kids weren't protected like they are today so he was trooping around the city when young all the time.

Elections are better now, bars can stay open, but there will always be those who want to game the system. It's just not that hard to have some form of ID.

Here is a picture of my grandfather's band. He is on left in back row.