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!