(UN)RELIABLE SOURCES:

LIGHT SUMMER READING

by FRANK O'DONNELL
July 14, 2008

Some light summer reading, based on your emailed and stop-me-on-the-street commentary.

CAMERAS ON THE BUS

It looks like the town’s going ahead with a pilot program to install cameras on school buses to catch the people who pass the buses that are stopped to pick up or discharge students. There’s a $300 ticket involved, with $37.50 going to the town.

I’m all for bus safety, but I’ve got a better way.

If there are 35 kids on a school bus, there are 35 cameras on a school bus.

Cell phones, my friends.

Show me a kid over the age of 8 who doesn’t have one, and who knows how to use it a whole lot better than any of us parents.

Once they’re on the school bus, deputize them. If they catch a motorist passing the bus when it’s stopped, snap a picture, take a video.

When they get to school, they turn the evidence over to the school’s resource officer. The offender is billed, and the town gets the whole $300.

Give the kids 10%. It’ll help us parents pay for the phones.

As an added benefit, the only arguments on the buses will now be about who gets to sit on the left side.

3RD OF JULY FIREWORKS

I wasn’t in town for this year’s fireworks, so I’ve had to rely on others to know how it went.

One reader reports this year’s display was vertically challenged.

Many of the bursts barely cleared the tree-line, cutting down on visibility for the folks who generally watch the show from a variety of lawns and intersections in Lee’s Farm.

Perhaps in a budget-cutting move, the town bought cut-rate fireworks this year.

Perhaps this was a move calculated to drive more viewers to Notte Park to help out the sausage-and-pepper vendors.

I almost hate to write about this, because I know the tree warden’s going to see this as an opportunity to fell some trees so next year’s display can be better seen.
           
BIRCHWOOD CUT-THROUGH: CLOSED, OR NOT?

In recent months, there’s been a lot of rumbling about the gate on the Lee’s Farm side of the Birchwood School campus.

More often than not, it’s locked after school hours, reportedly to cut down on people cutting through to avoid the lights at MSA and Douglas.
           
This past weekend, I was in Lee’s Farm and drove past the street leading into Birchwood.

 Ten o’clock at night, and the gate is wide open.

It looks like someone is playing Cut-Through Roulette.

SPEED HUMP BINGO

They were all the rage a couple of years ago. Now, they’re so very hard to find.

You’ve got the pair in front of Birchwood School, and then there’s one on Birchwood Drive, outside the school grounds.

And that’s about it.

I did hear about one on Hope Street, a very small side street (20 houses or so) that doesn’t intersect with any major roads and ends for all intents and purposes in the woods to the left of the Fatima Hospital grounds.

Perhaps a resident recently moved there from a more active thoroughfare, and requested one for nostalgic purposes?

NOT SO MUCH COMMON SENSE

“I don’t think Thomas Paine wrote ‘Common Sense’ in 1776,” said one reader. “I’m pretty sure it was 1775, maybe earlier.”

I’d included a reference to it in a recent column about the common sense lacking in the traffic design on our town’s favorite street, Mineral Spring Avenue.

I usually shrug my shoulders when greeted with such information, but on this one, I was adamant. I’d done some research, and all sources agreed that Paine published his pamphlet in early 1776.

So I guess we’re both right. If published in 1776, Paine might have started writing it in 1775.

Why is that important?

I don’t really know. Blame it on lack of common sense, I guess.

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