The Book that is on the CD

Someone invited me to join Goodreads.com, so I did. Judging by the name, you're not supposed to talk about books you didn't like. In any case, I gave up reading for blogging, but during my commute I've begun listening to books on CD(s). So far, The Abstinence Teacher and Pattern Recognition. Both good. I've got the new one from that Kite Whisperer guy cued up, and something else I forget. The trick is, get a librarian to marry you -- FREE BOOKS (for, you know, a week).

So that the books that are on the CD(s) don't get stale, and to reclaim some of that creative time I lost when I switched from training to driving, I think I'm going to bring a voice recorder for blog entries. I'll spare you my dramatic readings, though, and transcribe myself.

Is there a NaBloPoMo award for most boringest post?


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The Permeability of the No-TV Rule

We don't watch TV* here.


*That's what I tell everyone. In reality, we watch far less TV than the average folks, but I'm still surprised at how often the TV is on. Much of what we do watch is on DVD, after the fact. Take, for instance, Heroes. We're watching the first season now.

Now I know a lot of you bloggers write about the shows that the kids are watching today -- that America's Next Top Runway, and the Lost Restaurant, and the Real Estate Magnate's Apprentice (where the guy keeps chopping up the loft spaces into condos and they keep multiplying and supply seems to outpace demand...shudder). But it can't hold a candle to the simple pleasures of interacting with your family, enjoying a wholesome meal in one another's company, performing the day's mundane but meaningful tasks, reading a story, playing patty-cake. Am I right? I mean, I'm not sure, because I'm usually plugged in to the Internet, checking the sitemeter stats, but from what I hear, TV rots your brain.

Anyway, what's my point? Heroes is pretty cool so far. And I'm really starting to develop some respect for that lovable scamp Caillou.



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Now THAT's a Sunday!

It's during the yard work that we spot the water dripping down the outside of the foundation. I get out the ladder and clean all the gutters, then head down into the crawlspace under the parlor (that sounds pretentious, but "parlor/laundry room" sounds stupid) -- a place I've never actually ventured before.

It's clean and concrete-floored and the floor joists above are insulated -- this is the new part of the cellar. However, since it's at least partly below ground, I'd donned my spelunking gear: a backwards baseball cap (underground is the only acceptable locale for that particular fashion statement), safety goggles, dust mask, paint pants, work gloves, boots. You know, in case I come across a spider.

I crawl like a worm over to the corner, where sure enough there's some water dripping down the inside of the foundation. The insulation above seems pendulous, and ripples ominously when I poke it. My wife brings down a bucket and heaves it to me. I cut a hole in the insulation and let it drain. It drains. And drains. I run out to the store, have dinner, build a car from a kit, paint the Sistine Chapel, come back. It's still draining.

Using my homeowner's skilz, I deduce that there is some water up in there. It's apparently leaked down either 1) the inside of the walls or 2) the outside of the walls. If there's a third option -- perhaps the walls were actually made of water and they're melting? maybe the Borrowers left the tub running? -- I don't know what it is.

Worse, I don't know what the source of the water is, even after cutting away the insulation. I rule out the washing machine, because it's not wet anywhere near it and the water would be on top of the floor, which it's not. It's either a leaking radiator pipe or my first thought -- that the gutters had overflowed. I can't satisfactorily select either, which makes me seize up...which expert to call?

So I'm just lying there on the floor of the crawl space, nice and cool, listening to the burble of the water trickling into my bucket, remembering Richard Carlson and wondering what the hell I've done with that god damned book, when my wife sticks her head back in and asks "what's the story with the dead mouse?"

"Which one's that?" I moan, thinking about just what a Sunday conversation this is going to be.

"The one in the dining room. Did you kill it?"

"What are you asking me? Does it have a story?"

"It's under your shoe."

"My..."

"Your shoe. The ones you were wearing this morning."

"To the diner?" we both say. "Yes," she answers us.

"Is it, like, guts and everything?"

"I don't know," she says. "It's sorta squished. You must have stepped on it..."

She's of the opinion that the mouse is my job -- not because she's squeamish (not about mice, anyway), but because I'd apparently been the stepper. Reluctantly, I leave the pleasant woodland sound of the water filling my bucket, crawl forth from my little sanctuary under the parlor/laundry room and hoist my chemical-resistant corpus upstairs.

It's dead, but it's not a mouse. It's a mole. Possibly the unluckiest mole that ever lived. He must have popped himself outside -- "Back in a sec, hon, just gonna grab a worm...need anything?" and got trod upon, then sorta got stuck in the arch of my Skecher. Fortunately protected from any animal contact by my nature-proof clothing, I pick it up and bring it outside. Some crows are loitering in the backyard. I toss it to them and go back in to consult smarter homeowners than me about the water.

Ahh, Sunday, you never fail to deliver. Still, I'd rather be the human with the unwanted damp crawlspace than the mole who'll never go back to his.


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Cult-Like Programs I've Embraced, Part V: Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (and It's All Small Stuff)

In my old office I had a corner filled with black and white pictures of Men of Character. Arranged so that my head was positioned in the center of the group, when viewed from the door, were portraits of Hunter Thompson, Johnny Cash, Allen Ginsberg, my kid, and a tiny shot of a guy with a Big Toothy Grin and a slightly too-intense, almost forced, look of sheer ecstasy on his face. That last was Richard Carlson, author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (and It's All Small Stuff).

And here we go, go ahead, roll your eyes -- beliiieeeeeeve me, you're not rolling your eyes any more than I did when I walked into the downstairs part of Shakespeare & Co. back in '02-'03(?), followed the alphabet to the right shelf, thumbed past all the ultra-specialized Don't Sweat volumes, and settled on the classic. My own eyes had rolled so far up into my head that scoff-atometers a block away in the Derision Lab at Hunter College began sneering and saying "Puh-leeeze" and they weren't even turned on.

Weighing down one shoulder, as I walked to the cash register with that slim, brown, vaguely victorian-looking volume, were Stewart Smalley, Oprah Winfrey, someone saying "You go, girl!" and lots of kitty-cats and doilies. On the other shoulder was a feral wolverine of anxiety staring at my Adam's apple and licking its chops.

I decided to go with the Emo geeks on the other shoulder, and paid for the book.

My self-help reading is not that extensive. And I've never bought one of those for-dummies books. (Aside: I heard a funny George Carlin joke the other day on the radio. To paraphrase: "How come people buy self-help books, but they're written by someone else? That's not self-help. That's help.") But I was in the midst of a confluence of existential crises and I wanted a list of things to do that would make me feel better. If this was delivered in a somewhat smarmy, tooth-achingly earnest style, with lots of exclamation points punctuating dozens of little revelations, all the better.

Whew, I thought on the subway later. Just what I was hoping for! I read the thing deliberately over the next week.

Here's the power of Don't Sweat. You're every day running full-tilt into some particular problem, feeling, situation, or cycle. Over and over. There's no way out of it. It's driving you to [insert addictive behavior here]. I mean, dude, you're freaking out. So you pick up this book, and you flip through looking for the part that says "Here's how to stop having your particular problem," but there is no such chapter. It doesn't do that. Nor is it all vague like "Dude? Why'nt you just relax?" Instead Dr. Carlson lays out a series of 100 exercises, some physical, some mental, some procedural (for lack of a better term) that don't have anything to do with your problem. Shit! you think. Wrong book! But you've bought it, so you read it, and you find one of the little techniques that will inconvenience you the least, and you try it.

And then next day you're walking to work from the subway and you're overcome with the usual rage and remembering some event from junior high and nothing has changed. So that afternoon at lunch you read some more and you find another technique that sounds doable and has nothing to do with your problem and that night you try that one. And so on. One day you realize you haven't thought about that particular problem in a couple of days. Even though you've been in the same situation, with the same people, facing the same challenges, and your junior high past hasn't changed either. Somehow the edge -- the anxiety-producing, rage-building, time-consuming, goal-diverting edge -- has been dulled.

It worked for me. I needed a way to attack my problems laterally, because years of smashing face-on into stuff had proven counterproductive. As with any of the cult-like programs I've embraced, feeling better by reading this book required a certain drinking of a certain amount of Kool-Aid. It required believing that such a book could help, which belief in turn led to a certain commitment to practicing Dr. Carlson's recommendations, which do, in fact, work.

And a year or two later, that's why his face ended up on my wall. When he died unexpectedly -- young, from a heart attack, on a plane from San Francisco to New York -- it was a little confusing. Because of his age (45) and his apparent calm. The obvious gag -- that maybe he died from the ironic buildup of pent-up steam -- had no allure for me. I can only assume that he felt like a success when it was his time to go. And even if, as my cynicism sometimes suggests, he was a marketing genius first and a quasi-buddhist do-gooder second, at least his marketing efforts went toward something useful. RIP, Richard Carlson.

That ended heavy. Tomorrow, yardwork!


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The Internet Tells Me It's Patellar Tendinitis

My knee aches. You know how I often write about the many hills to be run in this area? How steep they are? How many ups we do on a weekend morning? Well, they all go back down eventually, and that can be hell on one's knees. Couple that with races on two consecutive weekends and a little more mileage than usual, and you can develop tenderness and a little inflammation of the patellar tendon, which connects the kneecap to the, umm, fribula. The one in front there. The shin, yeah.

It only hurts when I keep it bent for a long time -- for instance, during an hour-long drive or sitting at a desk for eight hours. Fortunately I only do each of those things once a day (well, twice, the driving). For my lay readers, I have prepared a diagram that will illustrate the condition.



Don't be alarmed: this is a fairly common syndrome and I expect a full recovery. Although your concern is appreciated. (PS: I'm still running, because it only hurts after.)

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Reading This? Thank Blame a Librarian.

It might be that I don't know enough about the history and philosophy of libraries to hold forth on the topic, but I do know a committed, civic-minded, performance-driven librarian whose budget just passed yesterday, and who does a lot of personal good for the town where she works. And while I mostly didn't like the crotchety old ladies who ran MY library growing up, you'd've had to pry me out of there with a, like, a Twinkie or something if you wanted me to stop reading or shuffling my feet along the carpet and then touching the abstract bronze to get a shock. If I'd had a librarian who resembled this one, I might've been a lot better-read and a lot thinner (because, I guess the joke here is that someone was always prying me out of the library with Twinkies, I don't know).

So also there's Nancy Pearl...is she a phenomenon of Seattle, or does she make Seattle? Does it matter? Could I make a more obvious and done-to-death librarian-outsider reference? Anyway, from what I hear about the ALA conferences, Ms. Pearl comes out on stage through a burst of dry-ice smoke in a rhinestone-covered suit wearing a giant pair of cat's-eye glasses and the hall goes freaking nuts, and there's a reason for that and it's books.

But not just books. Most librarians have something a little off about them -- and I know how many of you there are out there, and that one or more of you might be reading this, and I want to be on record that "a little off" is JUST FINE WITH ME, but really, admit it -- and it's that slight touch of the mystic, a little witch-doctorishness that comes with knowing how to know...and I suspect that people either respect that or fear it.

And that fear might be the only reason that every library budget in the country doesn't pass with flying colors, the only reason that governments aren't building ever bigger, better public libraries, with huge windows and quiet rooms, auditoriums and exceptional collections, brand-new best-sellers gleaming in their ranks, tried and true classics lovingly stored alphabetically, the runic Dewey Decimal system ranging far and wide over human inquiry, placing all thought on an equal footing. Fear because knowledge is scary. You know why? I have to go back to Spidey, here, but with great power comes great responsibility. Once you know something -- say, about Darfur, global warming, evolution, the Tuskeegee study or where your own sewage goes when you flush, you can't un-know it. And even if you don't do something -- change your behavior, donate to a cause, enlist, quit your job, stop flushing so much -- you feel that nagging sense that you should be doing something. That nagging is discomforting. We like comfort. And that's why libraries inspire fear.

I guess they should. But in the meantime, you can also use them to escape, and that's just as important. So go ye forth, and get ye to your local public library, and kiss the industrial carpet, shake hands with the reference librarian, scream "thank you!" as loud as they'll let you (hint: not very) and take out a book. You'll be glad you did.


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The Raccoon Informs Me That It's Time to Write About Compost (with Curses!)

Each morning this week I've come out to find the compost bin open and unidentified compost missing. The raccoons, with their nimble fingers, can slide back the admittedly easy catch on the lid and then flip it off. (In fact, writing this at 9:45pm, I think I hear someone knocking around out there right now. Fucker.) Of course, the sliding catch is intended more as a defense against a strong breeze or random chance, as opposed to a determined omnivore who smells the delicious aroma of coffee grounds atop macaroni and cheese.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about; let's just leave the raccoons to their mischief, shall we? They're welcome to their little bit of rotting vegetation, if that's what it takes to keep them from breaking into the car and stealing the current book on CD. The little scamps. No, I'm here to talk about the joy of composting. Did I say joy? I meant joys.

The main thing is that between recycling (plastic, paper, glass, metal), the cloth diapers, the cloth dinner napkins, and the composted food scraps, we have to SEARCH THE HOUSE to find things to throw in the regular garbage. Actually, that's not true: food packaging, paper towels/tissues, and cat shit will do nicely, thanks. But that's really about it. And as primary garbage-taker-outer, I have to say that it's an improvement over the old forklift and manual labor process. The sanitation guys seem to be happier, too -- they've stopped pelting our car with leftovers, anyway.

Second, though, all that rich foody goodness, plus some leaves and grass clippings, decays into the most incredibly rich, dark, trufflacious stuff, bursting with nutriments for the plants. This year I planted a single tomato plant in a patch of soil dug in with last summer's compost. Okay, yeah, every tomato had blossom-end rot (we ate some anyway), but we got four crossbred pumpkin-zucchini that grew out of the compost. And that's fuckin' spooky.













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I Guess I Planted

Saturday morning we leapt from bed, jammed everyone into their fleecy clothes, gobbled down a quick cup of coffee and some oatmeal on our way out the door wandered around the house for a while like a herd of sleep-deprived goats, looking for shoes and rejecting all breakfast ideas, before finally getting into the car and driving to a tree-planting organized by the Hudson River Estuary Program's Trees for Tribs initiative. The idea is to create erosion and runoff buffers around Hudson tributaries by planting trees, and to then eat pizza.

We got out of the car and shoved the stroller (the town stroller, not the woodland stroller, whoops) through waist-high grass down toward the bank of the Moodna Creek, ignoring the plaintive bleats of our son, who hated his coat, and his shoes, and his too-large work gloves, and us, and who was cold. It was simple enough to follow the rows of plastic tubing that had been erected to protect the newly-planted saplings from browsing deer, until we found the other hippies concerned citizens who had decided this was important enough to do on a Saturday morning.

Although we had been alerted to the event by an email from a friend in another town who couldn't actually make it to plant trees, we found ourselves in the midst of a who's-who: the woman we bought our house from, a friend we made through other friends, one of our babysitters, the water authority consultant I'd already talked to about our cellar...it seemed as though we'd found the right crowd.

The work was very light (somehow the holes had dug themselves) and our companions had done much of it already. Almost before the lad had asked if we were ready to leave, we were ready to leave. Just then, atop the mighty iron Moodna Viaduct, something like 200 feet overhead, a Secaucus-bound New Jersey Transit train hove into view. That did it for the boy, and the look on his face did it for us.

While we had worked, shoving dirt in around the root balls of the thin sticks and staking up tubes of corrugated plastic to protect them from nibbling teeth, I had tried to impress the boy with the seriousness of what we were doing, tried to get him to picture a time twenty years hence when a proud stand of oaks and maples that he had helped plant would keep the creek within its banks and help the adjacent fields retain their topsoil, while providing habitat for animals and shade for hikers— and what he'll remember is the train.

Which is also fine by me.


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Orange You Glad We Didn't Give out Bananas?

We don't get down to New York City that often—at least not to Manhattan—but the marathon is powerful enough to draw us out of the mountains in our flannel, beards, and suspenders to stand on Fifth Avenue and croak obscenities from baccy-stained mouths at the sneaker-clad city slickers in their polyester gym shorts. Our toddler is especially good at this.



Sunday we went, and a very generous woman who lets me sleep at the house spent some time slicing oranges in the kitchen before we left. I haven't watched the race since 2004, and I didn't hand out fruit then, but I received a slice of orange while running it in 2005. That's when I discovered that oranges are hand-made by Santa Claus, and he uses magical go-juice to make them.

I don't know if you fish, but that physical feeling when a fish mouths your bait? And the more decisive tug when it takes the lure? That's what it felt like when runners dipped into the gallon-sized ziploc I was holding, extremely grateful, looking me in the eye, calling me nice things ("lifesaver," "godsend"...I would have given my wife the credit, but she was three or four feet away, and I like being called nice things), asking if they could take one "for a friend."

The three pounds or so that I held outstretched went as quickly as my wife had said it would, and even the last forlorn little orange section, awash in a pool of juice, got snatched up by a Swedish lady whom you could tell felt a little thrill of victory at getting the last orange.

Ordinarily I would sum up by digging out a metaphor and broadening the orange story and the running and the time my wife spent slicing them into something to walk away with and chew over. But not today. Today I would like to simply report that it was really fun to give out oranges to runners during the New York City marathon.



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The Raisin Joke

The lad was in the bath the other day. His mother came in and checked his fingertips.

"You're going to turn into a raisin," she told him.

"Dad!" he called. "You better get me out of here or you're going to have to cover me with yogurt!"


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The Vermin Who Came in from the Cold

The high today is supposed to be forty-eight. And you know what that means. Out in the woods about a mile away, a raccoon will wake up this evening in its hollow log, shivering, and thinking about how the hell it's going to chew through another withered, jerky-like corncob, with the skeletons of the stalks all around mocking it for living such a crappy life.

Or! this raccoon might think, Or, I can go to town! And as it weighs the pros and cons, reluctant to leave the relative warmth of its loamy bedroom, the idea will become more and more appealing. The fears--angry dogs, cars, bright flashlights and the shouts of bathrobe-clad homeowners--will fade away as the raccoon convinces itself. Instead, visions of driveways covered with flimsy, thin plastic kitchen garbage bags, so tender, so vulnerable, will begin to form in its head. And just visible through the pale plastic, Good Things to Eat. Parts of bagels. Crinkly little packages with plenty of leftover food. Whole rinds of tasty melons. Fish parts!

Stomach growling, the raccoon will gather its keys and cellphone and head down the hill toward the lights, muttering to itself despite its excitement I've got to get this place set up for winter or I'm gonna freeze. Passing bushes whose berries have long been gathered, walking over the rocks where salamanders hid in warmer days, the raccoon will wonder if Earl's likely to be out tonight, or whether those skunks from the park will show. They're always good for a laugh, as long as they don't get too excited, the raccoon will think.

And about a hundred yards outside of town, the merest whiff of garbage and compost on the air, the raccoon will come around a curve in the game trail to find a couple of woodchucks, the possum twins from the Big Oak Tree, his cousin Earl and his girlfriend Arlene, and a whole tribe of skunks jamming the path, milling around and muttering. A coyote will slink back through the crowd toward the woods, snarling "This is freaking ridiculous, I come here all the time."

And standing up on its hind legs, craning its neck, the raccoon will see a bear and a velvet rope blocking the trail. The bear will explain reasonably and implacably to a couple of demanding, agitated weasels--"But if you'd just check the list!" "There is no list. I am the list."--that it doesn't make the rules and that if they would just join everyone else on the line, that would be best.

And of course the bear will step aside for two does who bat their long lashes and will unclip the rope with a little smile as their scent wafts over him, then turn back to the assembled masses and shake its head and shrug at their sarcastic jeers.

The raccoon will sidle up next to Earl and Arlene and roll its eyes. "Man," it'll say, "this place has really gone to hell." They'll all nod their heads. But they'll be patient. Because it's chilly, and there's garbage in there.

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What You're Gonna Need

You've been renting for eight or nine years and you want to move out of the city and get a house. You can do this, because you can get your landlord to buy out your lease, because even though the rest of the country is hurting, home prices in Disneyland New York are still strong. Your shopping list:

cars (2)
shovels (2)
ice melt (50#)
rakes (4.5)
lawnmower, ride-on (1)
paint (6 gal.)
cat's paw (for prying up nails, carpet, etc.)
lock de-icer
garden hose
sprinkler
cinder blocks
duct tape
bike
kayak
dog
more furniture
hangers (2 dz)
televisions (2)
Duraflame™ logs (4)
needlepoint: "bless this house" (1)
kids (2.5)
seeds
twine
welcome mat

I'll try to keep this list up to date. Feel free to add your own findings in comments.

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The Trouble with Raising a Five-Year-Old Hippie

Last time we went up to New Paltz, a few weeks ago, for the fingerpainting, the Boy got out of the car, filled his lungs with village air, and announced “it smells like granola here.” That’s pretty much what anyone of my generation would say: New Paltz is redolent of crunchy, crunchy granola for certain.

So this past weekend when we took a jaunt up thataway to buy a present for someone at a charming, non-patchouli-scented-but-still-earthy boutique, the Boy got out of the car, took in a big gulp of village air, then froze, pointing across the street like a wide-eyed Gordon setter flushing a covey of rainbow-colored pheasants. “Look at those great shirts!” he yelled.

On the way home, as we sang "Yellow Submarine" for the sixth time and planned his next yoga class, a peace-loving, organic-minded woman in the passenger seat and I agreed: it will be sad/funny when our tie-dye-wearing son goes into class and shoves some other kid during circle time while they’re talking about the seasons.


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Next Week, Sleet

We're doubtless about to be enthwapped with the wet, cold, gray sock of November, but today someone stumbling around in the glare of summer finally found the out-of-date calendar and flipped the page.











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Read This Post, Win Bar Bets

Next time you're knocking back a few Diet Red Bulls and vodka at Sonny's and someone brings up, as they always do, the location and date of the creation of the World's Largest Finger Painting, and they bet you you can't guess where it was, you can tell them it was New Paltz, a few weeks ago. Then whip out the Guinness Book of World Records and do a sort of victory dance because you? How often do you win something?

And oh yeah, we helped.







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RIP, Our Gruff Cousin, the Bear

From time to time, a bear will wander through an area neighborhood, get treed by someone's cockapoo, knock down all the garbage cans on the street, eat the last pork chop off the grill, and go back into the woods to sleep it off. As mentioned before, where we used to live — about twenty-five minutes south of here — one wandered into our back yard the Friday before Labor Day, upsetting us as we sipped summer's last gins and tonic.

Last week, a couple of miles from there, a hunter shot a bear that will likely set the archery record for a bear in New York State. It weighed 626 pounds and was about seven feet long. Here's essentially how he did it. He got his bear license, waited for the first day of bow-hunting season, wandered out into his back yard, followed the bear into the woods, and gave it the ol' twangeroo.

On the one hand: "'[The bear] usually came out during the time that the kids got on the bus, so it was kind of scary,' Joy said."

On the other hand: "...[He] came within 45 feet of the bear, which was busy eating acorns and berries....[and] released an arrow that pierced its heart and lung."

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Reason #458

My neighbor and I were daubing the last bit of sealant on the shared driveway, under his direction. I leaned on my broom a little too hard, it snapped, and thworlp! my forearm was coated with viscous, lukewarm tar.

"You're fired," he said.

Now, I've talked about my skill with tools in the past; on the spectrum of general handiness, I'm sort of a five out of ten. The bulky things come easiest. I'm good with stone walls, as long as you don't want them ruler straight, and I'm a decent digger. I have little patience for the detail work, which includes such things as measuring, masking, working slowly, planning. As I said in a recent post, I only learned one knot in all my scouting years.

But none of that matters. Because no matter how bad—or at least not great—I am at other things, I can still run. Perhaps because the skill was so hard to earn, or because it was something that seemed so alien to me for so long, putting a few miles together still feels like an achievement, every time.

In the rigid world of times and scoring, I'm about as good a runner as I am a house-painter. But while I look at any given paint job and see where I should have applied some tape, I remember every race as though I broke the tape. Like air guitar or karaoke, you don't have to actually be good at running in order to feel good about your skill level.

First prize for my age group is still safe in some other runner's hands. My times may not improve. That's okay. Because when I change out of my synthetic gear and put on leather shoes and go off to test my competence in other arenas, there's always this quiet spot right at the center, a place I can mentally put my finger on and say "I'm good at this."

And that's almost as rewarding as watching your neighbor finish sealing your driveway.


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Highlands Anxieties

The Dyson Foundation just sponsored a Marist College survey of Hudson Valley residents to determine, essentially, what's keeping us awake at night.

Here's the list: Many Voices, One Valley

Our top priority, I am advised on the day the second bill for the lad's asthma hospitalization arrives, is making health care more affordable. I'll give 'em that.

I've got plenty to say about this study and its implications, and little brainpower to compose it. The connection I want to make most, though, is the one between air quality (not a concern that made the list, although Orange County has some of the region's crappiest, thanks) and health care costs (specifically, for us, asthma--and Orange County's asthma death rate ranks among the highest in the state). Preserving open space, minimizing sprawl, and improving public transportation all ranked well down the list, but improving those areas would filter upward to affect health care--it might remain expensive, but we might need less of it. And now that I think of it, wouldn't people prefer fewer auto accidents and their attendant health care costs? Better public transportation would probably help there, too.

Some good news related to the above and not much touted in the regional press was this major air pollution settlement. It's a start.

Goose poop didn't rate high enough to make the top ten, but you wouldn't know it. People talk about it around here ALL THE TIME.


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