Rants
Suburban Sprawl in Culver?
Wikipedia defines Suburban Sprawl thus: “Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl describes the expansion of human populations away from central urban areas into low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities, in a process called suburbanization.” While Culver isn’t exactly racing down the road to strip malls, it’s worth looking at the changes occuring in recent and proposed developments in Culver.
Culver’s early development was very traditional. Despite dealing with the curvature of Lake Maxinkuckee, a traditional grid system was used for both the commercial and residential areas with the section of Lake Shore Drive along the Park being one of the few deviations with some curvature to reflect the lake shore. Since that time, the newer subdivisions have not followed the grid. The Riggings, Maple Ridge and Edgewood Estates are all dead end or loop streets with no plans to tie into the grid. It’s a little cheesy, but Adam Conover of “Adam Explains Everything” does a quick run down of some of the issues here:
Careers in Construction
I just finished an article in the September/October issue of Building Indiana by Brad Benhart, Associate Professor of Practice at Purdue University’s School of Construction Management. A quote in the article resonated with me as it’s been something I’ve been talking to my friends in education about for years. “The message needs to change to all kids should learn skills for a career. College is not for everyone, and our society needs education and training to match the needs of the workers required.”
I’ve been pleased in recent years to see a change in thinking in the schools in our area. Many of them are providing technical school equivalency training in high school. Non-college careers are receiving more discussion. Things are improving, but we still have strides to make to end the bias towards college programs. We also need to instill the idea of life-long-learning as a positive thing and requirement for survival in today’s society. When I receive an application from a student who has been through a high school building trades class, they do receive preferential treatment because they have shown an interest and hopefully shown some aptitude for the trades. Unfortunately, this does not qualify them as a Journeyman Carpenter as some of them seem to think. Easterday Construction will help them achieve that goal through apprenticeship training if they are serious about it, but it requires a commitment to additional education on their part.
I don’t think this qualifies as a rant… I’ll reiterate that I have seen progress in recent years. But as per the quote, kids need to learn skills for a career. And if it’s your career, you should be interested in learning all you can to be the best at it you can be. This means education… and Life Long Continuing Education… Never miss the chance to learn and improve.
Commuting Observations
I always have to assume this means the child isn’t bright, since they’re obviously running quickly in the picture…
I’m fortunate that I don’t have a particularly long commute to work, but since it’s through a mostly rural area, I have the pleasure of dealing with school buses along the way. It’s amazing that in the short few weeks since school has been in session, I’ve developed active likes and dislikes for some of the families and children along the way… all while never meeting them, but just based on how they interact with the school bus pick up. There’s quite a variety out there and I’ve named a few of the bad apples…
Spaced Cadets – This is a family with three kids. They are never out and ready, and apparently the outside door of the house has an airlock with a timed-release feature as they never come out together. They generally exit the home one at a time and as they are ambling (no rush) to the bus, there is generally a 20’+ spacing between them. Though I can’t see this, the bus driver must have to follow this protocol too and not let another child on until the previous one is seated, since the delay extends beyond just getting to the bus.
Atlas’s Daughter – This poor child stands about 4′ tall, looks to weigh about 60 lb and comes trudging out with a 3′ tall backpack, that from the way she’s carrying it, must weigh 150 lb. She appears to be carrying the weight of the world as she trudges out from the house each morning. Again, she doesn’t start her trek to the road unto the bus arrives, but I at least feel a little sorry for her. If that pack every pulls her over, she’ll be flaying on her back like Randy from A Christmas Story.
Basketball Jones – This young man must be brilliant, since as opposed to Atlas’s Daughter, he carries no books to school. On the positive side, he is generally out by the road, practicing to palm the ball. But then, when the bus arrives with its built-in audience, he has to dribble his way across the road… maybe throwing in an out-of-control spin move, nearly losing the ball several times along the way.
Dead Heads – There are a couple of houses where the bus stops… for an inordinately long period of time, only to move on. The houses are dark. In the case of one, there doesn’t even appear to be curtains in the windows which truly turn a dark-eyed stare to the street. I’m left wondering if there is ever any follow-up on this. While it’s probable that someone overslept or decided to drive the kids to school, there’s always the possibility that a serial killer paid a visit and the whole family is dead… or worse, they’re being held and tortured with their only hope being that the bus driver reports the absence of their children…
While unfortunately, the above get on my nerves and seem to be all too prevalent, there are still others that are more courteous. Some are waiting near the road, either with their parents or on their own, ready to walk briskly or even run to get to the bus as quickly as possible. There is one young man that appears to have invisible Hellhounds on his tail, because he runs headlong for the bus as if his life depends on it. I like him!!! I want to stop and give him $5 at the end of the week! Ha!
If it’s raining or later this year when the weather is frigid, I understand waiting in the house until the last minute. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to change much of the above behavior. The dawdlers continue to dawdle and the polite and respectful ones are there on time and move to the bus with purpose.
I hate to drop a rant without any constructive solutions. I realize that the children with the poor manners are the product of their parents, so the grief should go upstream… and probably would do no good. But on the houses where no children appear, can the school come up with a sign to put in the window to let the bus driver move on? Maybe a series… One for sickness. One for laziness (went back to bed). One for alternate transportation. Put them on a flip ring and supply a suction cup hook to hang them on the window.
There! Got that off my chest and provided a partial solution. Oh, and one last thing… THANK YOU to the bus drivers that wave the traffic on around when there’s a line behind them. Your thoughtfulness is greatly appreciated. I don’t think I could do your job without ending up as the serial killer listed above!
“Slow Children” sign borrowed from www.barcoproducts.com
“Book Bag Girl” gif from www.pinterest.com
Vacant home pic from www.creonline.com
“Friendly School Bus Driver pic borrowed from www.mlaker.com
Shcool (sic) Choice?
There’s something sadly funny about an article discussing the quality of schools that misspells school in the title! Geez! That’s a bold face headline for crying out loud! I don’t know if the mistake is from the original article or the reprinting in the Pilot News, but either way I think it’s a bit embarrassing. Spellcheck anyone?
I seem to be in the minority of people bothered by these things. The other day a tweeted a sign I saw. (here) I had to say something to the manager. Their first response seemed to be irritation at me. <sigh> At least they did take it down. It was one of four that had personnel spelled incorrectly.
I am not above a spelling, typo or grammar error. Look and you’ll probably find one on our site somewhere. Sometimes my fingers get ahead of my brain. I’m still struggling to implement the spacing rule that I learned last year… I guess I expect more from a newspaper where there’s an editor reviewing things though. At least the mistakes in the bold print should jump out at them…
Voter Responsibility
I haven’t posted a good rant in a while, so…
The “Brexit” vote has me thinking about voter responsibility. I honestly only knew about Brexit peripherally until about a week before the vote. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it for a couple of reasons: 1) I had no say, and 2) I didn’t really see that it was going to affect me much. A 20/20 hindsight look at the turmoil in the stock market and how that affects my 401(k) negates #2, but in reality, #1 was still valid. No matter how much concern I had placed on it, I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. I can’t even name one British citizen I know that I could have gone up to and said, “Look here Old Chap, you need to do the right thing because this decision is going to affect the whole world!” Not that I even thought that. I had pretty much trusted those in the know to have factored either result into the markets and that the outcome would be a blip outside of Great Britain.
