Cold Snap

It was 16 degrees this morning. When I tried to open my door the handle snapped. Later, a friend called me to jump her car and the wires on my cheap car safety kit jumper cables smoked and melted free from all four clamps. I arrived home to a note from my neighbor informing me I had been irrigating my roof after the shutoff valve for my sprinkler system froze and split resulting in an attractive geyser.

I was already laughing, I had to laugh harder. Perhaps a bit maniacally, but I was laughing. What else can you do?

Home Again

Boise Train Depot at daybreak.

Success By the 6 P's

Without doubt this was my best trip east, at least for my parents and my relationship, since I moved back west to Idaho more than three years previous.

It required strategy.

The problem I face with both my family and my friends is time. Invariably I short change one or more of my friends and I always leave my mother feeling jilted.

This trip I took a different tact. Instead of emailing my mother my flight schedule the second I purchased it, I emailed her an itinerary of our time together. The main problem is one of expectation. Once she sees I will be home from a-z, she plans out every moment between the two and when I schedule time with friends from c-g and m-t she feel short changed. So this time she didn't even see my flight schedule until she begged for it, and in the process she learned she had an additional evening with me on my arrival date. Once on the east coast, she discovered she had another part of a day with me. It may sound small, but this peace is huge. This is the first trip I didn't spend half the vacation stressed out trying to appease everyone and failing miserably.

One negative to this plan is I had several very tempting offers to hang out with friends I couldn't accommodate because they violated the pact we had already established. It stunk to tell my friends no, but in the end I think it was worth it.

I am such a spur of the moment fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of person it is almost unfortunate this succeeded.

I am already in trouble for my trip home for Christmas. My mother knows my flight times and I haven't scheduled one visit with friends yet. This could be bad.

Privatization of the Commons

I was both appalled and delighted five years ago when "The Avenue" opened in White Marsh, Maryland. It is everything that was great about early 20th century small town America, packaged up by big box stores and dropped onto a sea of asphalt like a parked starship. But it also represents acknowledgment of what is needed in America.

It is not a smattering of box stores, it is not a strip mall, it is not even a mall, but instead an artificial public space built on a human scale with mixed uses. If you stand in the right spot and don't notice the acres of asphalt stretching into the distance you just might mistake your reality for a place of substance. But there is no five and dime, and certainly no one is going to know your name at the corner pub.

This is a good step forward and I want to embrace it. But then I start thinking more about what we are doing in packaging what was public space. Make no mistake; this is not Main Street America. This is no more Main Street than the 7/8th model Walt built. You can't picket, parade or protest in this space. This is private property.

The Avenue is no longer alone. This trip I discovered a richer "Town Centre" in what was once Hunt Valley Mall (and a vast improvement on the original). Yes, there is still a large parking lot, but it is no longer simply a redesigned shopping experience. The "street" aligning the shops sits at the end of a light rail line that runs to Baltimore and nearly respects the existing street pattern of the community. The development contains many retail stores, but also a bevy of restaurants, bars, a large supermarket, a department store, and a megaplex.

Harford Mall is currently receiving a similar, alas much smaller make-over.

Maybe there is hope for good design. At least for upper middle class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who are happy with the status quo to enjoy. Maybe with time we'll even start building our businesses on public street fronts again without the need for stadium-sized parking lots.

Heck, college students are now coming up from Baltimore to go to the bars in Bel Air. When I was young the biggest thing happening in Bel Air was the Rock Spring McDonald's.

Lost in Place

One thing I abhor about coming home is change. The Harford County of my youth is gone.

In my youth there were cows in downtown Bel Air. That field is now a Chili's, Taco Bell and strip mall. And for Bel Air today that's an old development.

There are whole communities built and inhabited between my visits.

Just recently it started creeping toward my parent's house. Mini-mansions are popping up like dandelions. My favorite gravel roads are paved, woods flattened and creeks culvertized. It depresses me.

When will we find a way to develop in synergy with the land? Ian McHarg did a fairly good job directing growth in Baltimore County. Suburban expansion was restricted to clusters around urban cores which encouraged mixed use (with limited success). The rural areas however became outlets for the rich and gentrified estates quickly replaced family farms.

We need smarter people working on building livable communities. Without strong leadership from Planning Boards we'll get the same cookie cutter subdivisions and strip malls. Anymore I'm not certain if I'm in Peoria, Columbus or Abingdon. Everywhere I find the same characterless boxes.

I'm convinced it can be done well. I've seen it.

The answers lie in mixed use development of urban cores, strong value placed on rural agricultural production and high speed efficient mixed-mode transportation networks.

Of course none of this will happen until we break off our love affair with the automobile. When will that happen? When gasoline and highways charge their true cost. Federal underwriting of the two results in the Mickey Mouse development we currently endure:

• Subdivisions without sidewalks, or worse yet sidewalks that lead nowhere.
• Box stores standing like islands in a sea of asphalt
• Stop lights every 100 yards on multilane "highways"
• Neighborhoods where garages are all that address the street, and all neighbors know of their neighbors are the makes and model of their automobile.

We know good design when we see it. In fact, we flock to communities built on a human scale. Heard of Disneyland? Not only is Main Street follow a nostalgic archetype, it's built at 7/8th scale. A human dimension.

Cheap Chicken

I've been having a great time visiting this week. With a little time, it's easy to forget just how many great friends you have made in past lives. Spending a week back home it is so utterly delightful to fall back into these friendships like no time has passed. Almost enough to make me want to move back.

Then I got stuck in traffic. At 1:30 in the morning. Ah, Delaware.

Back when I was debating whether to leave my old job in Delaware and move to Idaho I did pro-con analysis. Idaho had great skiing, wilderness, hot springs, a laid-back lifestyle, promised the ability to bike to work, a job that truly was doing some good in the world, less stress and more time. And on the other hand Delaware had cheap chicken.

I left one off though... some really, really, great people.

State College

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Road Trip + Algiers Reunion + ABC + Ratchet + Tailgate + Justice of the Peace + Beanbags + Flip Cup + Drinko + OG in Beaver + Naptime + Lucky + Pong + Gaff + Rail Grind + Dance, Dance, Reach-Around = Good Times.

 >> Now I have to make a Griz Bean Bag Game. That's quality.