Tales from the Steppes

2004-02-05

12:20 p.m.
Faster than a locamotive...

Today, YM and I are a study in contrasts. He is resplendent in his purple and teal dinosaur pants topped by the bright red with tractors Hawaiian-like shirt, and, of course, the cherished frog boots. I am dressed completely in black. Black leather boots, black suede skirt, black silk sweater, black leather jacket. How now, black cow? All except the Supergirl underoos. But we'll get to that later.... In contrast, Griffin went commando today. Why? Who knows. Maybe it just felt good.

Anyway, the music in YM's class today was the Wimoweh song - a song with which I have a few negative associations. But not him. He was dancing like a little maniac, swinging around my Grateful Dead lunchbox. He tends to be a little more on the spastic side, rather than interpretive. I am undecided on whether I will teach him the lyrics, so he can come up with his own crazed version. It brings up the ethical question of how much to manipulate the situation to provide for your own amusement. His version of "Another Postcard" makes me writhe with laughter, but he did it spontaneously, without me mentioning the lyrics. Well, we'll save the manipulation discussion for when it is more important. Not quite the ethical crisis here yet.

This afternoon, we have yet another Planning Board worksession on our master plan update. This is an open session wherein the Planning Board debates the merits of our recommendations and asks detailed questions about how we made them. It can be very uncomfortable, because they grill you about anything that pops into their head upon the subject. You are expected to have detailed analyses and numbers available at your fingertips to accomodate this. Not really a problem so far.

The problem is that over the summer, while I was on hiatus, Khalid inserted a recommdation at the last minute about a certain county-owned property that indicated that it should be used for affordable housing. This completely set the community off and triggered an avalanche of letters, all of which stopped just short of calling us bozos. So this may not be a happy thing today. The public is not allowed to give testimony at this meeting, but that does not prevent them from letting their views be known. In other meetings, we have had an auditorium full of angry citizens holding up signs and posters, protesting our recommendations, our processes, and just about anything else you can think of. Thus the Supergirl underoos. I did stop short of wearing the matching tank top, because I did not think that would go over well with the Board members. but it is a comfort to know that if I need to stop any speeding bullets, I will at least be partially dressed for the part.

It always amuses/saddens me to hear the reactions of citizens to affordable housing near them. It almost always goes the same way. "It's not that we are not for affordable housing. We are. We love it. But. This is just not the right place for it. There are no buses or jobs within walking distance and Those People need to be close to both of those things." When we point out what affordable housing really means, it does not seem to make any difference. I shut up a room full of citizens talking about Those People when I mentioned that most of the Planning staff would qualify for this housing. Pushing hypocritical buttons. What fun. Well, at least I don't have to worry about falling asleep in session today.