Idling thoughts
Someone approached me recently with a concern of cars idling in Ketchum. Her distress was this:
“Hi there, came across your email on the SVO blog. I am not a blogger, but did join the site. Am new to Wood River Valley. since you seem big into blogging, has anyone blogged about how bizarre and disturbing it is that so many people leave their cars running at the curb while they go about their business in Ketchum. I wrote a LTE in the Express about this... but wonder if it can / ought to be blogged about. Thoughts?
And on that subject, why do so many people drive in Ketchum? It’s so unnecessary! - KT”
I replied, “Welcome to the valley. I think that’s an interesting subject you bring up, and could work well for a SVO discussion.”
A few random thoughts:
In recent years, local authorities have posted several dozen no-idling signs in well-thought out places around the valley. Hailey has a lot of these, as do most schools. I wonder though, how local law enforcement works with this. Has anybody been ticketed or warned for idling their vehicle in one of these zones? What about Prius owners? Maybe the accepted wisdom is that the signs, along with a healthy dose of passerby’s scornful-looks, should be enough to do the trick. (Sometimes finger-pointers utilize Miscellany 2 in the Express classifieds in similar technique)
It sounds like you’re focusing on cases, where people actually leave their cars running, unattended. That’s definitely worse and I have heard of somebody ticketed for this. Frequent naïve attitudes about how crime is practically non-existent here don’t help either. A few years ago, somebody stole a Ketchum man’s car on April Fools Day. Although he had left his keys in the car, he presumed that his friends had played a practical joke, until that afternoon, when he realized it really was stolen.
It would be interesting to get a mechanic’s opinion on idling cars and at what point you should turn your engine off for brief stops. When I used to operate a cab, the company liked us to keep the engines running in wintertime. I’ve seen the same thing with the City of Ketchum, snow removal machinery – sometimes they run the engines for an hour or two, without actually operating the machinery, but to keep them warm and at ready stand-by. Probably a wise choice, when we’re facing harsh single-digit weather conditions.
As far as parking goes, some people allow themselves to become spoiled here. I’m not immune to this either. Where I grew up in a larger city, if I discovered a parking spot within ten blocks of the movie theatre, I felt like I had scored big. Here when you have to walk five blocks it seems like a long slog, until I remember…
Perhaps we could design a poll to complement the blogpost.
Something like:
Q: What’s your favorite idling car excuse?
1. I didn’t want to lose the spot at where my music was playing.
2. I couldn’t find a palm tree to park under and my baby was in the back, so I needed to keep the air-conditioner running.
3. Need to keep beer cool.
4. Practicing Heyoka methodology.
5. High altitudes amplify my natural stupidity.
6. Etc.
I wonder how people would feel about idling, if cars ran off solar / water and emitted no pollution. Some idle observers might not even be interested in the subject anymore, as they tend to focus more on arguing than truly seeking solutions. Some would probably argue don’t forget about the noise they create; but personally, I would like to welcome the sound of idling cars operating effectively off small amounts of water as something to harmonize with; something good enough to whet the environmental curiosity of even the saltiest of Ketchum’s rough-idling dogs.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Congratulations to Tony!
Participants in the Idaho Conversation League writing workshops will be pleased to hear that Tony Evans has won two more Idaho Press Club, Excellence in Journalism awards:
A First Place for the informative and refreshing outdoor feature “Out on the ice”:
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005123796
And a third-place for “Home Building 101” in the Education reporting category.
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005123776
Way to go Tony!
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Friday, April 24, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Emmylou Harris 'Wrecking Ball'
Fiery Hypnologic Anthem
I was floating on a red white and blue noctilucent cloud that I had surfed on some years before. I didn’t realize that this cloud could ever be there again. I had seen it before too, in a cartoon, where Ben Franklin trounced Jimi Hendrix in a tight game of air hockey. This got me thinking about Whiskey Jacques air hockey game and the infernal fire it must have endured next to pool table ball teardrops and melting graffiti.
What did the clean-up workers talk about as they excavated this mess? I hope the demolition boys utilized their imagination, while multitasking Neil Young’s Romantic jukebox song, Under the Wrecking Ball: “Wear something pretty and white, and meet me under the wrecking ball tonight”
But first, I’ll have to cash in some sauce-cash at the ATM, as long as it doesn’t cut my finger again, bleeding through wads of sacred infernal Federal Reserve bills.
This reminds me, surfing freely on noctilucent clouds without a wallet or belt always seemed easier, even though it is floating in a most peculiar way.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
My friend
You come for me often; and sometimes you are welcomed. Sometimes I embrace you like a dear old friend. Sometimes we go for walks together through a forested park. Holding hands like lovers on the verge of a life together. Sometimes we just stay in, and share the night together.
There are other times, old friend, when you are not welcome on my doorstep. Sometimes, you need to just leave well enough alone and go your own way. Go back to the dark cave from which you came and wallow in your own misery.
Those are the brighter days for me. Those are the days the clouds clear to blue skies; the sun somehow seems warmer on my skin and the days that the mountains seem so much stronger and wise thrusting themselves from the earth. The days I shout to you; I am not alone dear loneliness. I am not alone!
The days you are away, I become stronger and more alive. Though, I do miss you, and will welcome your embrace again soon. But I also realize that too much time together with you is a depressing and sorrowful place. We need each other. This I know and accept. We've spent too much time together to have it any other way. But, I need our distance from each other, and the more I am away from you, the more I realize this.
I think it best you no longer show up unannounced. If you want me in your life, please let it be me that sends the invitation. Let it be me that sets the table for two, who lights the candles, and pours the wine. You'll be my guest for now on. When I ask you to leave, just go. Don't talk back. Just go. I am not alone dear loneliness. And I live by my rules now. I am not alone.
-Steve O'Donnell
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Facebooked
by TONY EVANS
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My teenage niece has Facebook friends in her hometown to whom she has never spoken a live word. For some mysterious reason, she would never even acknowledge these people if she were to see them at the grocery store. Did she inherit my unfortunate lack of social skills, or has the popularity contest of life taken on a whole new dimension? I suppose flesh and bones interactions these days might break the spell of who everyone is trying to be in cyberspace.
My own friend-scape is an organic and evolving thing, based on common interests, shifting loyalties and a great deal of happenstance. There is no real rhyme or reason to how we all know one another, but lately I have been wondering what my life would be like if I had been more socially adept and focused all these years. Maybe I would be famous, or rich.
Awkwardness didn't play very well in college where the most popular guys in the room always spoke the loudest, usually about sports. It took forever to find out who I wanted to hang out with, and even longer to know if they wanted to hang out with me. By then I was cut loose on the sea of possibilities known as adulthood.
Still the whole idea of "networking" when it comes to making friends has always seemed a bit creepy and elitist to me. Doesn't it eventually lead to stepping over the homeless person on a sidewalk, rather than picking them up, because we have some pressing social engagement?
The father of one of my old girlfriends once told her, "You marry who you meet. It's as easy to fall in love with a rich guy as it is to fall in love with a poor guy." I had to dump her and her father for their lack of faith in romantic destiny. I like to think we meet whom we meet and love whom we love based on deeper mysteries than the size of our bank accounts, that our personal lives should never be circumscribed like gated communities. Relationships of all kinds help to make us who we are as people, and lasting friendships can emerge from unlikely places. "Don't talk to strangers" is about the silliest piece of advice I ever got as a kid.
Facebook allows us to be selective when finding friends, searching out those with common interests, but when everyone is thinking the same, is anybody really thinking?
Thankfully, Facebook is more than just a handy vehicle for an old girlfriend tour. It's an opportunity to present myself as the heroic protagonist in the epic story of my life. (My profile photo has me at the helm of a sailboat, but it's just a rental.) Facebook can also work like a kind of glass elevator for social climbing. (With careful networking, and some public chit-chat, I could become well known in the Facebook group: Helps Homeless People Up From Sidewalks.)
But to start with, you have zero friends on Facebook, which tweaks your deepest social anxiety, the you-may-have-to-spend-the-night-away-from-the-fire-and-out-of-the-cave anxiety. Two primary impulses ensue: (1) to swing the doors open wide to all and sundry like some kind of Facebook slut or (2) to be selective and Machiavellian, stealing friends from those loud guys I once knew in college (or, in my case, from my sister).
Somewhere between those two extremes I find myself balancing two basic needs: the need for friends and the need for privacy. Facebooking often begins with conversations that ended, and perhaps should have ended, long ago. But it also brings you to old friends who accepted you for who you were, on the street. Maybe you drifted together for mysterious reasons, and then drifted apart for no other reason than that your parents stopped paying your college tuition. Maybe you made a break to some wild blue yonder of the future.
In any case, running the gauntlet with my old crowd on the true landscape of my life reminds me that I had to go then and there before I got to the here and now. There are no shortcuts to growing up, and lasting friendships will always be more than a click away.
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