Article from the Folio Weekly

January 19, 2010

Recreation || Susan Cooper Eastman

Emersion Therapy

Local blogger charts a three-year journey into the largest park system in America

Duane Smith cruises three times past a cop directing Sunday traffic at First Baptist Church of Mandarin. Driving a vintage 1958 Ford Ranchero, the original “pickup car”, Smith certainly stands out, but the 27 acre Loretto Nature Center seemed to be hiding in plain sight. Though marked on his map at 3900 Loretto Road the park was nowhere to be found.

Like Julia Powell, who spent a year cooking her way through Julia Child’s book “The Art of Mastering French Cooking” (the movie Julia/Julia Project that later became a book and a Meryl Streep Movie), or Morgan Spurlock, who spent a month eating three meals a day at McDonald’s for his film “Super Size Me,” Smith decided in December 2009 to immerse himself in a journey of exploration. After reading online that Jacksonville has the largest park system in the country, the 44 year old set out to visit each one of Jacksonville’s 384 public parks.

As of January 13th, Smith has been to 47, and recorded 46 of those visits on his blog, jaxparx.com. He figures it might take as long as three years to get to every park, but he says he expects to learn plenty from the experience. He’s already discovered a 102 acre preserve on the St. Johns River just 1.3 miles from his Arlington home. (He drove past the Reddi Point Preserve almost daily without knowing its dock was public property.) And he expects to become an outspoken advocate for the park system. Signage is an issue, he says, and the system’s most obvious failing. “If we have the biggest park system in the country, it should be very obvious to people who are driving around the city,” he says. “There should be so many signs that people say, ‘Dang! There’s a lot of parks in Jacksonville!”

Smith doesn’t expect his effort to elicit the reaction that greeted Powell’s blog or Spurlock’s documentary, but he does hope to create a user friendly guide to the city parks and build awareness of these public assets. In some ways Smith is an unlikely missionary for parks and recreation. Though he’s always enjoyed the outdoors – he keeps a pair of plastic lawn chairs bungeed in the bed of his Ranchero for viewing the sunrise in Atlantic Beach each morning, and watches the sunset with his wife from the 36-acre Arlington Lions Club Park – He doesn’t fish, mountain bike, camp, backpack, kayak, canoe or do any of the things one might expect of a typical outdoorsman. For Smith, the outdoors is more of a contemplative, restorative experience. “I just like being outside,” he says.

On his blog, Smith features a picture of each park’s sign along with photos of the park itself, and lists any available information about the parks size, amenities and history. He also writes his general impressions. Friends have suggested he rate the parks, but he hasn’t figured out how to compare a small neighborhood park to one of the city’s large regional facilities. Others have suggested organizing the site by amenities, such as river access or tennis courts. Smith concedes the blog is a work-in-progress.

As he visited parks No. 41 (Genovar Park) and 42 (Hood Landing Boat Ramp), smith found a number of things to criticize and some to applaud. At Genovar Park in Bayard, he noted that a light burning under a picnic pavilion didn’t seem to be hooked up to any sort of sensor. “Wonder how much that costs a month?” he muttered. He also observed that the park had a baseball field, but had no restrooms. “The biggest issue I’ve found so far is the lack of restrooms,” he said. “There’s not even a Port-a-Potty.”

At the Hood Landing Boat Ramp on Julington Creek, the sun was shining brightly despite the chill. Smith sat on the dock jotting down notes in a black marbled Composition book. A jogger slowed to a walk along the ramp’s dock before turning around and jogging back up Hood Landing. “I run down here a lot,” he called back. “It’s beautiful even on a cold day.”

After driving up and down Loretto Road hunting for the Loretto Nature Center (as-yet unchronicled), Smith finally found it behind Loretto Elementary School, behind a cluster of playground equipment, some picnic tables and a basketball court. A city sign beside a chainlink fence marked “Loretto Nature Trail,” but the gate was padlocked. Although the city names Loretto as a neighborhood park, it is managed by the Tree Hill Nature Center at the request of the Duval County School Board and isn’t open to the public, the Tree Hill Nature Center staff says. Currently, it’s more of a nature preserve than a public park.

Smith said he’d return during the week to see if the gate was unlocked before adding the information to his blog. But on the day of his visit, Smith fingered the padlock at the entrance to a .8 acre trail that the city website said would take a hiker along Oldfield Creek. “No public park should be padlocked,” he pronounced.

Dust in the Drawers and Lint in the Belly Button!

The other day I noticed that carrots seemed more orange than some oranges do. Well it seems that since I posted that on Facebook some friends of mine wanted me to cipher a bit on a couple of other topics. You know me, I will pontificate on any topic so I will give each of these requests some explanation here. As you know, quite a large number of idle thoughts pop into my head and then, for some still unknown reason, I feel I need to babble on about them for a while. I have talked about a WIDE range of things and writing to answer questions on the Oratory is not even setting a precedent. Some time back I answered some of those imponderables that plague our lives. The craziest one came from my friend Phil, it was “Is there a relevant analogy involving the necessity of firing Porcelain to a high temp 1200+ degrees to make it durable and useful to the travails and suffering of humankind?" As you can imagine that was not easy to expound upon but I think I did it justice.

So here we go, my friend Jennifer posted this in response to my carrot – orange question. “Your philosophical ways got me thinking...earlier today, I was wondering how do crumbs and various other debris get into the clean silverware drawer? Answer me that, will ya!” Well Jennifer that is a good question, obviously there is a great answer that explains this phenomena. You did leave it a bit open to my interpretation by not clearly defining what the debris was. I used my vast understanding of debris coupled with knowing your geographic location. We put those metrics together with the fact you are married, happily (that makes a difference) and have two wonderful daughters. Had you been married with a boy and girl the crumbs and debris would have a different makeup altogether. The other response to carrot posting was from Don, he wanted to know “How come lint collects in your navel, but not other places on your body”? Both these question start out with similar causes and they will diverge later. I will start with Jennifer’s question and then move onto Don’s.

Well as you may or may not know there are approximately 40,000 tons of mass are added to the earth by way of space dust each year. I suspect that this accumulation has contributed in a couple of ways. First and foremost, if the earth is getting heavier every year by 40,000 tons then it is obviously going to have an effect on the gravitational characteristics of the planet itself. When mass increases at that rate it is bound to have an impact on how things work here on the planet. I even suspect, and have hypothesized that this accumulation of space dust and the corresponding and somewhat linear increase in gravitational pull over the hundreds of millions of years was what actually killed off the dinosaurs. I mean think about it, with their incredible mass it would not take much of a change in gravity to bring them down, the giant beasts simply could no longer grow to the sizes they had in the past when there was less gravity.

Anyway, I digress a bit, my first point is that with the additional weight of the dust the gravitational characteristics of the planet have changed. Things of a certain mass today weigh more today than the exact same object weighed yesterday. When we pull in on a daily basis the changes are minute but still measurable. So back to the dust itself that is being deposited here on earth. There are many kinds of dust coming from outer space. We have your garden variety Cosmic dust, that is a dust primarily composed of particles, that while in space which are only a few molecules to 0.1 mm in size. Cosmic dust can be further distinguished by its astronomical location; for example: intergalactic dust, interstellar dust (potentially concentrated in a nebula), interplanetary dust (such as in a circumstellar disk) and circumplantetary dust (such as in a planetary ring). So, there is some high order math that is involved. I can then punch in the approximate square footage for your house (since you are married with children I can deduce your home is 6000 square foot) and that along with some more complicated metrics I can produce the resultant amount of actual comic dust that is in your home.

So the amount of debris in your silverware drawer has very little to do with the actual comic dust accumulating, the resultant changes to the gravitational pull actually have more to do with it then anything else. Of course I have no doubt that you have some minute amount of asteroidal dust from the Kuiper belt in your house but that is not what is in your drawers. But, we cannot rule out the zodiacal dust descending from the heavens, there is a small but measurable amount of that everywhere on earth. This cosmic dust is of such importance that NASA plans to launch a probe called the “Terrestrial Planet Finder”. Some of the work this probe will be looking for is signs of water, a requirement for Earth-like life, and ozone, a bi-product of oxygen that could signal plant life. But whether it sees other worlds or not may depend on our knowledge of the various types of dust. But, I guess the bottom line is this, the bulk of what is in your drawers comes from cleaning the counters and reaching in for something stored in the drawer while you have crumbs on your hands from making whatever culinary masterpiece you may be working on. When you couple that with the fact that it is not an area we ever clean, we just don’t do it. We don’t - until we notice that the crumbs and debris have accumulated to a level that starts hiding some of the utensils we store in that drawer. It is not just you Jennifer, no one likes to empty all the crap out of that drawer because it turns into a big job.

So the other part of the explanation that has to do with belly button lint and why and how it accumulates there and nowhere else on our bodies. Well we can follow along with the above explanation about cosmic dust, I mean look at the pictures – does that not look like something pulled from our belly button hole. To some degree most of what is in there is link but some of that is just plain old ordinary dust along with the comic dust from the Kuiper belt. Normal household dust is made up of a variety of things from blowing dirt, bacteria, pollen, pollutants, molds, animal dander, hair, decomposing insects, fibers, dryer lint, insulation, dust mites and their excrement, and mostly, skin flakes that humans shed – body crumbs if you will and I think you might. As you can see, you DO NOT want to eat that, or even lick your fingers when you are done pulling it out. So where does all that come from? It comes from a variety of sources including plants, roads, wind, clothes dryers, electronics, attics, basements, air conditioning and heating ducts and vents, pets, pollen, insects, carpeting, knick knacks. If you live in the south, coastal states, desert, or Southwest, you have more than your fair share of dust due to excess pollen, windy, and dry conditions. It is everywhere!

In all seriousness, we are constantly shedding material off ourselves. Clothing gets abraded through normal use. People who have "innie" bellybuttons tend to collect more of this stuff due to gravity and moisture. Your navel is one of the few places on your body where perspiration has a chance to accumulate before evaporating. Lint from your clothing, cottons especially, adheres to the wet area and remains after the moisture departs. Since most bellies move around throughout the day this accumulation is compressed, depending on the gravitation pull in your exact location and the periodicity of proper bathing. Most normal bellybuttons are self cleaning, this efficiency decreases as we get heavier because our belly buttons tend to get deeper thus allowing more accumulation to occur. So sadly now I have to tell you that the answer is not more exciting than that but now you can, if you wish, feel like a genius and share the answer with the masses!

So, the bottom line is this my friends, clean yourselves and clean your house more often and these issues will not raise to the level of having to ask for answers. I hope that this will help clear up the questions that were originated by my pondering carrots and oranges. Love you guys and thank for the fodder, I laughed the whole time I wrote this.  And yes, i realize there is something wrong with me, very - very wrong with me!

Astrodial dust

Comet dust

Floaters, I love the name of this company!

I was on my way home the other day and was behind a sanitation truck, you know the vacuum trucks designed for pumping out the nasty byproducts our bodies generate from the septic systems as well as the portable toilets. I know this is not a topic most folks want to talk about - but you know me, I could not resist. This was the absolute cleanest truck of its nature I have ever seen in my life. It has been my experience that usually the trucks and the folks driving and operating them are dirty, smelly and have a certain look about them. That was not the case with this truck, I saw the driver as I passed and he did not have that look. Spic and Span, top to bottom and front to back – from a purely observational perspective it was a pleasant change from my normal expectations.

What was the most amusing to me was the fact that owner/owners of this outfit had a sense of humor about themselves. A sense of humor you might ask, how in the world did I come up with that from seeing a turd truck you might ask. Well it was not only the name of the company but the slogan they chose. Both are hilarious to me and when you work in that business I suspect a sense of humor is critical. So there I am driving along and laughing and trying to figure out how to get a picture of this. I did not have my Nikon that I usually keep in the car. I did not want this truck to get away from me with getting the shot. As dangerous as it was I pulled out my cell phone and got the camera application running and was able to snap a shot, while going around a bend at 35 miles an hour. I was not even sure that I got the shot until the next day when I was able to hook up the USB cord and pull the picture from my phone. No, I am not blue tooth enabled and sometimes struggle with the gadgets.

When I saw the picture I was impressed, not only with my ability to multitask while I was driving – something I bitch about when I see others doing it but I was also impressed with the capabilities of the phone in my camera. It takes pretty good pictures for a cheap cell phone. It is not even one of the fancy smart phones, it is a simple Motorola flip phone. It is not that I am not impressed with the new smart phones, they are the most impressive array of personal gadgets with functionality and form that rival anything invented to date. I just do not want to be quite that “connected”. I like to be “off grid” sometimes and I really do not care to know what everyone is doing every moment of their day, hell I do not even want to know what I am doing every moment of the day. I also do not care about work email after I leave work and while I am there, I would prefer to read my email on my 24” widescreen computer monitor and not some 2” gadget that will fit in the palm of my hand.

So, the name of the company tending the turd truck is “Floaters Portable Sanitation” and their motto is “You Float’m - We Tote’m”. Is that not the coolest name for a company in that business? I suspect some folks sensibilities are offended by that but, in my opinion, naming your company by that name shows you can make a bit of sport of yourself. (spoken like Carl from the movie Slingblade). I was so intrigued by the name that when I got home I looked to get a phone number and then, low and behold, I noticed they had a web site, http://www.floatersnow.com/ so I logged on to take a look. Wow, it was not what I expected, although after thinking about it I suppose I was expecting a dirty looking dingy site, kind of the expectation you would have of the trucks. I found their site well thought out with a good design and was easy to navigate.

click on picture to enlarge

I then basically started laughing, at myself mainly. What in the heck was I doing, I have no responsibilities when I comes to waste removal, at home or work so why was I so intrigued by their business. After thinking about it I came back to how spotless the truck I saw was, I like to see people take pride in what they do, whatever it is, and the appearance of that truck screamed that they take pride in their operation. I suspect I will send a link to this blog to them when I am complete. I did investigate their site and learned quite a bit and feel that I am ready with information should the need ever arise. For example I read the following on their site. “Whether you’re planning an outdoor event or party, starting a remodeling project, or need portable toilet facilities at your business or construction site Floaters Portable Sanitation has the restroom rental that’s right for you. Based out of Jacksonville, Florida we are able to rent just the right item for you from a single port a toilet to a large A/C restroom trailer. We’ll even travel to your event in the greater Southeast United States!”

I also learned that their Portable Sanitation Services Include: • General Portable Toilet Rentals • Large Outdoor Event Portable Toilet Rentals • Construction and Sales Site Portable Toilet Rentals • Emergency and Disaster Port a Toilet Service • Holding Tank Rentals. That is an impressive list of services. I even found on their site that I could fill out an online port a toilet rental request. Talk about ease of use, these guys have got it going on. I also learned some things that I did not even know while on their site. Like the fact you can rent a luxury portable restroom trailer. They say, and I tend to believe them, that they can provide portable restroom trailers that are as comfortable and nice as the bathrooms in a home. They must have a large inventory because they boast that for large events such as concerts, outdoor parties, or business emergencies that they can have as many toilets or restroom trailers needed to support the crowd at hand. I learned they also handle all the items needed on a construction site as well, including the eye-wash stations. I just pray they are not recycling anything in that regard. They have 24x7 emergency service available and large holding tanks as well.

Seems that Floaters has every contingency covered, no matter what shitty job needs done, they will be there for ya. (sorry for that but I could not help myself) I guess I knew they were a top shelf operation from the moment I saw their truck, that first impression is so important. I have found that my first impressions are often very accurate and I got a good feeling about these guys and if I ever had the need for those services I would call them confidently. If you ever need those types of services call’m – and remember with a motto like “You Float’m - We Tote’m” how could they not be able to take care of all your needs. They are “Floaters Portable Sanitation” and can be reached at 904-751-2614

I got all that from a 20 second ride along side a spotless truck down by the stadium – whodathunkit?

My lawn mower makes me laugh every time I mow the grass

I have a Snapper riding lawn mower, it has a 38-inch deck, 16 horse Briggs and Stratton industrial engine and it has the bagger attachment. Seems ordinary enough right, WRONG! I have had this mower for a few years now and it has proven to be a fantastic machine. I have what seems to me a large lot for a city dweller, 115x115 feet, which comes out to about 1/3 of an acre best I can do the math. When we moved in I had a 20-inch push mower and for a number of years that I used to keep the St. Augustine grass beat down. It would take in the neighborhood of about 3 hours to complete the mowing portion of the yard work, not including the edging, the weed whacking the blowing and the bagging. It was an all day job that I used to break into two days, especially in the heat of the summer. This was not the way I wanted to spend my weekends, I do enjoy yard work just not that much of it.

So there I was, toiling away year after year, thinking I ought to buy me a riding mowing to make this job easier. I could never bring myself to spend the money on one though. Riding mowers are not that expensive and are readily available at a wide range of generic stores. They are also available from the specialty lawn equipment shops although they are usually a better make and that makes them more expensive. It is like anything else, you get what you pay for so the cheapies at Home Depot are that, cheapies by comparison to the professional models. Same goes for the Ryobi weedeaters when compared to the Stihl or some of the other professional models – the Ryobi’s are crap and I speak from experience on that. Keep in mind my little puch mower I had gotten about 14 years earlier and it was a non self propelled and only cut a 20 inch swath at a time, slow and tedious. Now I still have that push mower and it is approaching 20 years old now, it is an MTD I bought at a Sam’s type store that is no longer in business.

So anyway, I toiled along in my yard for about 7 years before I came up with a solution to my lawn mowing issue. I was over at a friend of mines house and we were just BS’ing about this and that when I noticed what looked like a riding mower stuck between his chain link fence and the shrubs on the other side. I asked him about it and he tells me the story. His neighbor had died several years ago and when he did, she got a lawn service to take care of the lawn. Fine and good I thought but that did not explain the mower being stuck in the bushes in their back yard. He told me that for some reason the son from next door (he did not live at home) had pushed it back there not long after his Dad died. Strange I thought. Anyway seems when he did he did not know or care that on a hydrostatic drive lawn mower you must release the drive mechanism or the wheels will not roll. So in his haste to move the mower he destroyed the hood assembly and the busted pieces of plastic were tossed on top of the rest of the machine. I asked my buddy if he thought she may want to get it removed from behind her shrubs, he says, let’s go ask her.

We bang on her door and ask, she lets us into her backyard to take a look. This is when I see that it is a Snapper with the Briggs and Stratton I/C motor on it. I ask what she would take for it and she says 50 bucks, I give her the money immediately. It has been sitting there so long that even the front wheels will not roll so me and buddy have to literally carry this big damn lawn mower out of her back yard and load it up in my truck. I remember thinking that worse case, I will have to load it again to take it to the dump if I can’t get anything going and I am only out 50 bucks, worth the gamble I thought. I get this thing home and unloaded into the garage and thought – let’s make the motor run first because that will determine if she is a keeper or not. It will not even turn over, froze up. So I drained the sludge and filling the crankcase with clean new synthetic oil and an oil additive. I then filled the cylinder with a product called PB nut buster and let the whole thing sit for a day. The electric starter was non operational as well, the battery was shot but even after jumping there was no joy. I took the starter apart, removed the rust, and gave it a general clean and lube and it was working perfectly. So perfectly in fact, that when I installed it on the mower to test it again the motor actually turned over. Wow, I thought we are getting somewhere now. After downloading the manual for the motor from Briggs I purchased a new spark plug, fuel filter and air filter. Well we were off to the races with that, the engine ran fine and that initiated the rest of the work. I then commenced the tear down, I took that mower completely apart, every nut and bolt came out and all things were cleaned, lubricated, painted in some cases and then reinstalled. I had spent the original 50 bucks and another 15 in nuts and bolts that I broke taking it apart and after sharpening the blade I was mowing the grass, in a fraction of the previous time.

No hood though and after a couple of weeks of using the mower I realized that I kinda wanted to not be a hillbilly and thought I am going to get the hood from the Snapper dealer. The one that was on it was completely destroyed, that piece of plastic was beyond my repair capabilities. After a trip to the Snapper dealer I found that I was a hillbilly because I was not going to spend $479 on a new plastic hood. So after a couple of more weeks of mowing without a hood I was sitting in the garage smoking a cigarette (I smoked then but not for the last 2 and half years) looking at the mower and I got to thinking, I could just make a hood for it. Kinda like the old Case tractors, flat on top, flat on the sides and only a same radius to go between the two planes. I thought a little plywood, a little fiberglass and some red paint and I should be able to create something that resembles a hood for this crazy mower. Something, while not looking as good as the $479 factory model could still pass muster. So away I went, chopping up lumber, building molds and laying sheets of fiberglass mesh, all of which I already had in the garage. So I get this thing built up and it looks pretty good, that is probably where I should have stopped but NO………………. I had to take it just those couple of additional steps further.

So there I sit, taking a smoke break, thinking ya know what, I could put a hood scoop on that thing – easily. So back to the lumber and fiberglass I went and produced a giant snorkel hood scoop right there on top of the previously innocuous hood. I remember Bride coming out to see what I was up to a couple of times and just shaking her head and walking back into the house mumbling something about my heritage. After a few more smoke breaks and more pondering I came up with adding flames, then a name. I was looking at my Troy Bilt lawn implement and it dawned on me, Smitty-Bilt. Then, just when I thought my master piece was complete I decided it needed one more crowning jewel, the Tasmanian Devil right there on the front. Well after a bit more time we were done, a new freshly painted hood. Not what I had originally envisioned but complete all the same. Hood scoop, flames, Smitty-bilt emblazoned on the side and the Tasmanian devil himself leading the way, it was quite a sight to behold. My wife just laughed, not at the mower, but directly at me for being so ridiculous. I realized then that I am actually a hillbilly. It did not take long before I realized I needed a skull-cap with flames to wear while I mow the yard, one with a built in sweat band. It was the keystone that makes the whole experience work. My favorite part of mowing the grass is the craned heads to get that second look, I know on more than one occasion someone has said “did I just see what I think I saw”. To this day almost every time I mow someone drives around the block to come back for a second look. It makes me laugh every time I mow the yard and its sheer ridiculousness is very amusing to me.

Does your mower make you laugh when you use it?

Whaddyathink?

I have been working on the Parks project for a bit now – here is an update

I am amazed at how much this project has expanded since its inception. What started out as something simple, just go see all the parks, has turned into something completely different all together. The Park blog is coming along but I have a few issues that I see that may cause me problems as I grow it bigger. I am still pondering what to do there and am considering learning how to create an independent site, instead of using the blog format. I realized that I needed a catchy URL as well, one that is much shorter than the cumbersome name I was using, I got a new one – www.jaxparx.com. The blog is a pretty time-consuming outcropping from just visiting the parks that I had envisioned originally. The blog includes pictures and commentary. I now am concerned that I get the right shots to capture the essence of the park. I also pay close attention to what I write, not that I am compromising what I see and feel, I am just aware that folks are reading and looking at the pictures and I want to ensure what I am doing will be helpful for them. I am amazed at the number of people who have visited the Park blog. The blog was started up on December 10th and in the first month there have already been over 2000 page views from almost 500 visitors. Now those are not quite as good as the numbers on the Oratories blog but to get that volume in the first month stunned me.

Another conclusion I have come to is that I have to separate this park project from my Oatmeal Oratories. My Oratories are my soap box and as such I have developed a certain persona when writing them. That is not the soap box I want to be standing on for this parks project. The park project is much, much bigger and much, much more important. While in the early stages of the project I could not see that but now I have been at it a while I can see it clearly. One of these things is not like the other,

one of these things just doesn't belong. Sang to the theme from The Sesame Street Book and Record that was released in 1970. As my feelings about the parks have not changed what I want to do with this project has. I am not sure where this will take me. But, I want to be open to anything and I suspect I will become friends, or enemies with the Director of the Parks Department here in Jacksonville. I think I have pretty much extricated Mr. Oatmeal from “A Day in the Park”. Don’t get me wrong on this one, I am one with Mr. Oatmeal and will continue with that persona in my Oratories. I do not want explanations about the name or something I said in an Oratory to distract or divert attention away from the Parks project. Two totally different things that require two totally different approaches.

So with all that said I want to attempt to give some perspective when talking about the size of this project. Jacksonville’s Park system is unique and it is huge. I grew up in Ohio and will use locations there for a comparison. If one were to combine the Cities and towns of St. Paris, Urbana, Troy, Springfield, Bellefontaine and Piqua you would have aggregated less than one half of the number of acres that are in the Jacksonville City Park system. Yep if you added up the square miles of those six cities, and then DOUBLED it you would have pretty close to what Jacksonville Florida has designated just as Park space. When I did that math is when I realized just how big a challenge this park project had become. Just the Thomas Creek Preserve I was planning on visiting soon is over 1500 acres, that is three times bigger than all of St. Paris. Or, if we use well known places, the individual cities of Cleveland, Denver, Boston, Milwaukee, Las Vegas and Washington DC are all smaller than Jacksonville Florida’s Park system. Even the city of Atlanta is only about 4000 acres bigger than our park system. IT IS HUGE!

It is so easy to be caught up in the trials and tribulations of our days, even outside city life. People can begin to lose themselves it the madness of urban sprawl, which seems to have been on an out of control paving project, until the recent economic woes threw the brakes on that. Seems that is a positive from an otherwise terrible blow to our economy. Maybe if some of the folks driving that housing boom could have spent a little more time in parks relaxing we may not be where we are now. I am convinced that it should be, but is currently is not, our greatest duty as citizens to preserve, maintain and protect tracts of nature from being paved over with concrete and black top. Some of my conclusions have me believing that the plants and trees in our parks must be defended from invasive species, mainly of the bipedal type. I have changed, somewhat, my thoughts on what the purpose of an urban park is. That philosophy changed for many reasons, one of which was reading about John Muir. I have been fascinated with him since I visited the Muir Woods north of San Francisco. He said once, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.” I can only aspire to one day develop a mindset like that. I have been a city dweller for now on 20 years, I like the city life. However, when I walk down the concrete sidewalks next to the endless surface of streets looking at the buildings made of brick and steel I wonder….shouldn’t we strive to make our city parks stand out, glaringly obvious to resident and visitor alike.

So, what is the purpose of a park, aside from going there to relax the mind. Using the internet, I have looked at many Park purpose statements. The ones I found seem to be based on national park legislation, legislative history, and Park Service policies. The statements reaffirm the reasons for which the park was set aside as a unit of a park system and they provide the foundation for park management and use. I am beginning to see that I have A LOT to learn about our Park system. I could not find a mission statement, or purpose statement of the Jacksonville City Parks department, I am sure there is one somewhere that I will find. I am jazzed out the project, I actually get more excited the more I see and hear. Our parks should not be little green aberrations in what is otherwise an endless gray conglomeration of civilization, they should be the prominent features. They should not just be something we do because we are told to. Do not get me wrong, I have always loved the parks but this quest, along with feedback on the parks blog and via email has changed the way I look at the Jacksonville Park system, I believe it can be more than it is now.

I now have over 200 hours invested in this project and I am only one 10th of the way complete. I am still excited and hopeful and I pray that that excitement does not wane. I have learned so much about our parks, met so many folks in those parks, and was even interviewed live on the radio and interviewed for a weekly paper about this project. In the short time I have been at it I already see areas where we are doing it right and other areas that could use a closer look to seek improvements. As one park patron said to me, “I come here to relax my mind” I think that could somehow be my mission statement. As I said earlier, this project has evolved since I started. I am blogging, I added park patron comments and soon I will be adding a scoring system, based on a 1-5 star rating. I am having troubles developing the grading methodology to provide unbiased metrics for an even comparison of such a diverse group of parks with such a diverse set of amenities. Bride says that is the engineer coming out and that I need to just put my opinion. She’s right and I know it, but the engineer in me is having troubles accepting it. When I get that figured out, I will be adding a one to five star grading system. I have had the great pleasure of relaxing my mind in 46 of the nearly 400 parks in the largest urban park system in the county. I have thoroughly enjoyed this project so far and am looking forward to seeing the rest of my city’s parks.

Get out there people, and enjoy the parks - Wherever you are!

How many damn people have to die in these crazy assed wars we are waging?

In 2009 there have been 304 American military deaths in Afghanistan, this was twice as many as in 2008 and even 152 deaths is to many! Seems crazy to me that the media is mum on the numbers of dead because of our quest to catch and stamp out the bad guys, whoever the hell they are. They are not easy numbers to find either and I am not sure why. I am not positive about the 304 number, I found other numbers that were all close. They all hovered around the 300 mark so I assume that general vicinity is correct. That is only US casualties, not included are the coalition troops, contractors, journalists and last by not least, the Iraqi and Afghani troops and or civilians. Does it not stagger your imagination that these numbers are not talked about by everyone who is sucking air and able to have a conversation? Why is it that we do not have the daily body count on the evening news, like they did during the Vietnam offensive? What are the human costs for our American military men and women? What are the costs for their families? And why in the hell are we doing it??

Trust me I believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, I oppose many of our governments current policies. This does not mean that I am anti-American, it does not mean I am a redneck, it does not mean I am a terrorist-sympathizer. What it doe means is that I believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché. I believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while the antithesis leads to the oppression, war, terrorism, poverty, and misery. Does it not seem preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, are we as a country so shallow? What difference does someone’s race or nationality, religious views or lack of religious views really make in the grand scheme of things. In an age when political correctness has run amuck and the decision makers have their heads up the asses how are the citizenry, us common folk, supposed to react to the wrong minded decisions of our government? What are we doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is the objective? Why has it fallen to the United States to deal with problems a world away? If we just left folks alone more often I suspect that they would leave us alone a little more often.

I want to get back to the numbers for a bit here though because the US casualties only play a minuscule part in the make up of human life that has been lost since we proactively and preemptively started these two wars. I will start with Afghanistan because that is where we started. We (coalition forces) have killed in the neighborhood of 8,600 and injured almost 26,000 Afghan troops. So, we have negatively impacted almost 35,000 Afghani soldiers, that seems a significant number to me. Now, when we move over to Afghani Civilians killed or injured I really took note. Almost 8,200 killed and almost 15,000 injured, that is CIVILIANS I am talking about now. That is over 23,000 innocent bystanders! Why have we not heard about this travesty? The amount of loss of innocent life is crazy to me. Now the numbers of US and Coalition forces killed and injured pale by comparison, almost 1,500 killed and 4,455 injured. I suppose one could say our military is better equipped and an all around bunch of bad asses and they would be right, our military is second to none but………. My point is we are killing an awful lot of people, innocent and otherwise and it makes my heart hurt to see so much loss. The military should not be forced into doing this fools errand, as I see it that these wars are. The totals, everyone killed or injured in Afghanistan is a bit over 18,000 killed and over 47,000 injured. That includes everyone from all the sides and even the journalists who were killed. 47,000 people affected – holy cow.

It took me a couple of days to digest those numbers, lots of sorry and sadness. Once I was able to stop crying enough to continue my investigation of the other war, the one in Iraq, I was even more stunned than I was by the numbers out of Afghanistan. The numbers here are truly staggering so please stop now if you do not want to know. There have been nearly 4,400 American Casualties and over 31,000 injured in the time we have been there. It breaks my heart to see those numbers, because as sad as that is it is multiplied by a magnitude of order when you consider the impact that those deaths and injuries have had on the families of those military Men and Women. When you look at the coalition numbers, while every bit as sad you can begin to see that the US is bearing a disproportionate amount the deaths and injuries. Keep in mind I am not talking about the Iraqi numbers just yet. Coalition forces causality numbers sit at a bit over 300 killed and the injured are in the neighborhood of 2,300. A fraction, less than 8% on deaths and injured numbers, it begs the question – what are the coalition forces actually doing. Seems to me that they are doing about 7.5 percent of what the United States is doing - if we use the numbers to determine it. Not a bad thing, just a thing and I think it tells a story, I would not want to help us either in this open ended boon dogle that is costing HUGE in the number of lives and at the same time the financial obligation could bankrupt a country.

Here are the really staggering numbers, if we look at Iraqi troops, 30,000 of them have been killed and 90,000 of them injured. Yep, 120,000 Iraqi military members have been negatively impacted by our invasion of their Sovereign Nation. Imagine what would happen if someone invaded our country, we would all be fighting in some way or another. And that is EXACTLY what happened there, we invaded a Sovereign Nation. All said and told there have been almost 800,000 Iraqi CIVILIANS killed in the war and another 1,500,000 injured, just imagine every person in Jacksonville being injured, that is about what the injured numbers equate to. CRAZY we have not heard about this! If you add up all the numbers killed and injured it comes up to 2.5 million folks – 2.5 million. That is damn near the entire population of Chicago – what in the hell is going on! That amount of loss of life is staggering, during the Vietnam conflict the number was a bit over 3 million and we rose up and protested in the streets. Why not now?

I am quite sure that there were no terrorists in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in power. I mean think about it, he was a power hungry dictator who controlled the populace through fear and intimidation. Anyone who secretly or publicly questioned his authority was dealt with, in the harshest of ways. He was a tyrannical leader who had a lot of blood on his hands. He was a dirt bag, plain and simple. The one thing he was not, was tolerant of ANYONE stealing any of the sunshine from his brilliance. What makes any normal person believe that there was a terrorist problem in Iraq before we showed up. That was before we created one by removing the one person who could keep it from happening, the tyrannical dictator. He was a devil we know, he was a devil we created when he was fighting Iran. He was a monster of our own making and we wonder why when we let him off the lease he attacked. Even me in my infinitesimal knowledge and ability to understand any of it can see that, why could not our elected officials in Washington?

I am not even sure what point I want to get across with this Oratory but I think the cost in human lives is even more important than the 12 billion+ dollars a month our government is putting on the Visa card. I ask that each of you say a prayer for everyone who was lost and everyone his or her loss has impacted. I want to pray for everyone because we are all human beings and any loss of life means something, especially senseless loss of life.

The cold weather – yes I am a wimp, BY CHOICE!

I do not like the cold weather, not at all. If the temperature dips below 50 degrees, I am cold and do not like it. I gripe about the cold, when it gets cold – a lot. We have had some unprecedented cold this year here in northeast Florida. I have been here 20 years and do not ever remember this amount of cold. We get a few days that we dip below 32, for a few hours and we cover the plants and move on. NOT this year. We are getting hard freeze warnings and it has been cold (below 32) at night for over a week. It does not get much better during the day, rarely making it over 45-50. I hate the cold. Thank God the forecast has us getting back up to 68 during the day and only 48 at night by the end of the week and I could not be happier.

I have learned that I really hate the folks from the north with their condescending attitude about my hatred of the cold. I have heard all manner of criticism about it. Comments like, Oh you don’t know cold, in 89 during the blizzard in Buffalo it got cold and you should quit whining it only got up to 9 degrees today are BS. Well I am here to tell you something, I grew up in Ohio and lived in Chicago during the winter of 83-84 and I lived in Maine for the winters of 90 and 91. I know what cold is! When I was in Chicago, with the wind chill factor, it was 89 degrees below zero. -89 is cold and I bet there aren’t many of you that have endured that level of cold, pansy my ass. When I lived in Maine where it routinely got so damn cold the snot on the inside of my nose froze, yeah how damn crazy is that. So for you dunderheads who say that I do not know what cold is I say to you, kiss my ass! I know what cold is!

Through all of that cold I learned something, before the cold froze and killed the parts of my brain closest to the outside out my head. In the frontal Lobe, where reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions, and problem solving take place and some research indicates the outer layers closest to the skull are the most critical. The Parietal Lobe on the other hand controls movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli. Humm………. Perception of stimuli, say for example the ability to recognize cold assed weather is severely limited, severely limited - by the very cold in question. Of course, the Occipital Lobe is not lost in this mix either, in case you were wondering. It is normally associated with visual processing, for example someone seeing and then in turn thinking that 10 feet of freaking snow is beautiful, beautiful my ass. That part of the brain was clearly damaged by the cold weather. In conversations about brain function we can not forget about the Temporal Lobe, this is where perception and recognition of auditory stimuli, memory, and speech are handled. For example, the inability to remember that cold weather SUCKS and the cold weather can kill you.

I have not even been talking about the snow, freezing rain, sleet and all other manner of nastiness that comes out the sky when it is cold. It ruins shoes and clothes with ease. It makes life itself a challenge when driving. Oh yeah I hear the stories, I have been driving on it for years. Well let me tell you, NO ONE can drive safely on snow covered roads, you are cheating death every time you do it. And if there is ice on the road, black ice or whatever – NO ONE can drive on that. I am not trying to pass judgment on anyone’s driving skills I am merely stating the obvious. No car will hold traction on the ice, simple physics dictate that, not driver skill sets. Then you have to put the salt and sand all over everything in an attempt to make it somewhat safe. Actually you are being lulled into a false sense of security and due to the problems with brain freezing, you are not even aware of the actual danger. Aside from that, the salt eats away at the second biggest investment most folks make, your automobile. The miserableness is not limited to just that, it can also ruin your house. Gutters filled with frozen water, backing up under the shingles and behind the fascia – ruining all manner of things. The salt thrown down erodes the sidewalk and driveways.

I have chosen to live in Florida because, before my brain was damaged, I figured out, I do not like the cold. I do not like the cold and I do not like the cold. That does not make me a wimp, pansy or any other name tossed at me recently, it is my choice. My choice because I do not like to be cold. I do not like to deal with any of the misery that comes with the shitty weather, that is my choice. You can fool yourselves all you want but when you have to get out and shovel the three feet of snow from your car in the darkness of morning in sub zero temperatures – it sucks. And you know what, it is OK to hate that - it is a terrible thing to have to do. If you can not admit that it sucks we are back to talking about the frozen brain. So for me, less than 50 degrees is cold, and I hate it.

The comparisons with the heat we have to deal with does not hold water when scrutinized either. So when it gets to 100 here we stay inside in the air conditioning. JUST like when it is below zero, you crank up the heat and do not go outside unless you have to. We have the heat index, ya’ll have the wind chill. We have hurricanes, we get a warning and ya’ll have tornado’s which do not come with much warning. It is a tit for tat game, all the way to getting to the unavoidable fact that we DO NOT have to shovel the heat. I live in Florida because I like it here and do not like the cold.

Stay warm my friends.

2009 – What a year, a lot of loss and a lot of gain

With 2009 in the books I have had time to ponder what the year meant for me. If I had to grade the year, 2009 gets a passing grade. I made it through and they have not started shoveling dirt on my face.

I got on Facebook in January. I remember thinking at first it was a passively selective way to have a relationship. That opinion has changed, I have reconnected with folks from every part of my life starting with my babysitter from before I went to kindergarten to folks on both ships and all the shore duty assignments I had in the military. I have reconnected with really good friends in my life that I had just lost touch with after the military. What I initially thought was a passively selective way to have a relationship has turned into something very special to me. I have made new friends that I have never met but we talk all the time. I have had chats with friends here in Jacksonville about topics we have never talked about in person or on the phone. There is a certain amount of boldness and openness to this Facebook thing. I have told things to people in the ether-world that I most likely would have never said to my friends face to face. It has taught me to be as open and honest in my “offline” relationships as I am in with my friends when we are “online”. I like it!

This year I, for the first time, started to wonder where in the world the world is going. I mean, it seems so crazy to me and I have no idea what the answers are anymore. It permeates our personal lives and work lives. Work was crazy, like it is for everyone. Cutbacks on staff, reduced hours and pay cuts suck but they were enough to keep the company viable and operating. It is still crazy, even more so with less people and less hours to get the same amount of work done. It supports my life though, which is what a job is supposed to do and I feel for those people who think that that works the other way. I do not ever want to be defined by what I do for a living, I do that so I can spend the rest of my time getting on with living life. This year I have remained focused on maintaining the balance, crazy world swirling around and nary a thing I can do about it is somewhat difficult for me. I feel I have strengthened my coping skills in that area, adversity is nothing more than practice sessions for our lives and I feel for the ones who do not recognize that. That is where we need to dig in and truly learn who we are and what we are all about.

Early 2009 had a mild winter, I do not remember having any days that dipped below freezing, unlike this miserably cold we are enduring right now. 2009 was off to a good start and I had a nice quiet birthday – my 44th. Seems nearly impossible sometimes that I made it this far. I just do not feel old, oh yeah sometimes my body feels some aches and pains that were not there before but I just do not mentally feel old. I think that is the biggest task in our lives, to never be old of mind. Our biological aging is an evolutionary process and it will end in death but how we spend our time on that trip is the key to happiness. As with every birthday I spent some time pondering my life, where I have been and where I might be going. Getting everything in the proper perspective helps me maintain balance in my life and this year was no different.

Later in February, the 21st actually, I decided to start a blog, hell I was still very new to Facebook and the whole social networking thing but I had something to say and I built my own soapbox to say it. After staring into my bowl of oatmeal thanking all those who contributed to bringing it to me and I could not for the life of me figure out what our government was doing with all the money and what impact it would have on me. If my getting my bowl of Oatmeal was that complicated there was no way the government could understand what they were doing with that much money, of that I was sure. That was the topic of my first one and I had no idea where it would go to and how long it might last. My Beautiful Bride came up with the name, Mr. Oatmeal’s Oratories and here you are reading it. I was not sure where that was going but here were are 11 months later, 150 Oratories down and thousands and thousands of visitors behind us and I still have more to say – whodathunkit?

We lost Mom on March 17th in a small town North of Pittsburgh. She had been suffering through Alzheimer’s for some time when she finally passed away. Though there was a bizarre sequence of events after her death, I was able to mourn and come to peace with Mom being gone. I still think about her often and as I look around my house, I reminded of her all the time. She also wrote a column for several newspapers over the years, similar to what my Oratories turned into. I wish she would have gotten the opportunity to read some of them, I think she would have liked them. She was a much better writer than me, I just kind of punch out the string of thoughts that run through my head, not much thought goes into flow and cohesion of the Oratory. I am not sure if it has gotten any better or not but it has become easier. My Mom had a huge impact on my life, lots of quiet contemplation has revealed that fact to me. A great deal of who I am is related to the way she was. That includes the good and the bad, some things about her I emulate, some things I avoid at all cost but I do so because I saw the negative impact that certain actions had on her life. I miss my Mom

Out of the blue my Niece called us, it was April 14th, to ask if she could give up her life in Ohio and move in with us while she started her new life in Florida. There were many calls and many plans made but it was July before she finally made it here. It was exciting for both Bride and I, to see life through the eyes of a 22 year old. She was not here long at all before she was working and going to school to become a surgical technician. She has been a real joy in our lives and we both love her so much. It is scary though that we are so similar, I feel sorry for her because I have lived a lot of the experiences I know she will encounter. Makes me smile though, anticipating what she takes away from those experiences. We have had lots of adventures, sunrises here, sunsets on the gulf coast. Developing a new little known name for folks, A Bogo on the Blue Bell for instance, we still use it and it makes me laugh every time.

On October 24th we lost Dad to a variety of complications. Complications, that is a good word. Complicated is the best way to describe my feelings after Dad passed. Through another bizarre set of circumstances, the funeral for my Dad was equally fraught with unwanted and most definitely unneeded drama created by a sibling. Not the exact same drama that was created when Mom died but equal in its bullshit and ridiculousness. Hummmm, seems I have not quite let go of that all the way yet. Dad’s death was harder for me, I suspect it is because I was involved in the process more. With Mom her new Husband was left to address all the details of her passing. With Dad it fell to my Sister and some to me. Cleaning out his apartment was the most horrible thing I have ever had to do. If for some reason that responsibility ever falls to me again I will hire someone to do it, for those who have done it you know what I am talking about. A funny story, I have paid his phone bill for a while and when he passed and I was in Urbana I tried to close the account and make the final payment. They told me they could not give that amount and it would be better to just let the final bill come in the mail and pay that amount, which is what I did. Funny thing is though, seems the amount they told me to pay was about 6 bucks more than I owed so I got a statement telling me I have a credit. Even in death my Dad is making me laugh, I live 1000 miles away from there and that credit will probably just get left there, unused forever. Makes me laugh, I miss my Dad.

We also lost Sybok, Bride and I’s kitty of almost 10 years. He developed kidney problems and in the end we had to put him to sleep. That is the second time I have had to do that and I am here to tell you that SUCKS. Sybok was the weirdest cat we ever had, Bride and I have had four together. Sybok was introduced into our home as an 8 week old kitten, we had a 4 year old dog (Boston terrier) and a 8 year old cat. He immediately asserted himself as the dominate Alpha Male. It was his kingdom and we were all his subjects. Every night when going to bed he would come in and demand some forced petting. He would stay about 5 – 10 minutes and then off he would go. He was such a lover kitty, when he wanted to be, when he did not, he was not though. It is the first time Bride and I have been without a cat since before we were married and it seems really weird. We are going to go to the pound and adopt two kittens soon. Maybe we will when it starts to warm up a little. I miss that damn weird cat.

The year ended with Bride officially retiring, yeah I know I wish that were me too. Don’t get to thinking that we are filthy rich so my Bride does not have to work, we are not. We do however make enough to pay the bills and go out every now and again so - what is really important. Hanging out and having fun together – that is what is important. I wished she loved to cook, then maybe I would have a gourmet dinner waiting every night for me when I get home from the salt mines. She has been trying to figure out what to do in retirement, she is looking for things to occupy her time. I can’t imagine her knitting or crocheting so those are out but I am sure she will find just the right thing to occupy her time.

Speaking of hanging out and having fun, I also started a quest to visit the nearly 400 parks in the Jacksonville Park system. That happens to the largest urban park system in the country by the way. Just got started so I am not sure where it will take me but it has had me interviewed on the radio and then the following week the Mayor was talking about my quest, on the radio again. I was followed around today by a writer from the Folio Weekly Magazine while I visited a couple of parks. Makes me laugh out loud, and not LOL. LOL is so overused. If something makes me laugh out loud it seems I should be able to muster the time to say it, laughing out loud. Anyway, the park thing is fun so far, 40+ parks visited and written about and 340+ to go, even the numbers make me laugh.

That’s pretty much it. I am looking forward to 2010, it will be a great year!