Back-story? And if you tell me to check the archives, I'll cut you.
You can't make threats, even in a free speech zone. I think. I'm a not lawyer, but I have several relatives who are and sometimes they all get together in the same room, so I can't get them to talk about non-legal stuff. And I learn.
The only thing on google news relating to the decision is this.
Detroit has the largest Arab population outside of the middle east!
2: I think this is about it no longer being legal to assault street mimes. This country is going to fucking hell.
Like, why does Muir Woods need a 1st A. area? But whatevs. I'm easy man, like Sunday morning.
And if you don't want to be cruelly and unusually punished, stay inside the red line!
Like, why does Muir Woods need a 1st A. area?
Beats the hell out of me.
Hounded by the festival's private security patrol, he and another evangelical Christian were taken from the sidewalk to the security tent, where they were detained and harassed before being physically ejected from the festival, driven out in a security vehicle, and ordered not to return. According to Rojas, "Hezbollah" was tattooed on their arms. "One security guard tried to initiate a fight with us by saying all Christian Americans are losers, that our credit cards are all charged up, that our wives have left us, that our children hate us, and that we are all financially broke," a frustrated Rojas told me. "Another guard took my ID and refused to return it. My life was threatened."
Also, hippies spit on me when I got back from 'Nam! And then grew up into atheist professors, but then they got what was coming to them, all right!
12 to 10. But really to everyone. I'd like to buy the world a Coke!
This isn't a new thing, is it? I have a picture of a friend exhibiting his middle finger in front of a very similar sign -- somewhere in the west, I don't remember -- saying "Free Speech Zone" etc., from about 10 years ago.
The point is not to say that this is nothing new, though. Rather: what. the. fuck.
The picture isn't a new thing, but the ruling is, which is nice, considering that the other ruling, in Detroit (linked in 5) was not so nice.
I was shocked to discover it. The picture, I mean.
I'd just like to note that not all national parks do this.
Yeah, it's shocking. I'll check (but not now) on the picture of my friend from a while ago in front of a similar sign. I'm thinking it was Yosemite, but I'm really not sure.
Let me guess: your national park doesn't.
Indeed it does not. Here you can say anything anywhere.
Omitting main verbs is a grave offense in Chaco.
I'll put my jackboots on long enough to say that no, I really don't want to take a free personality quiz while I'm trying to enjoy a little nature. The free speech zone thing can be and is horribly abused, but the idea of confining random politicking and religifying to specific areas of parks in order to reserve other sections for other sorts of parkish activities isn't inherently offensive.
21: Right, exactly.
22: It's quite possible to get thrown out, but it would take more than speech.
24 helped me understand, finally, what the fuss is about.
It depends on whether I agree with the politics of the people who are trying to speak freely, or not. If not, I'm glad they're confined.
I am presuming what the sign means is that having designated an area for free speech. the authorities can now prevent your group from doing your 25 kazoo musician rendition of "America the Beautiful" deep inside the quieter recesses and trails of Muir Park.
Am I supposed to be offended by this? In principle, I am, a little. Maybe more than a little. In practice, fuck your kazoo rights that interfere with my trying to catch a glimpse of some wildlife.
27: Well, yeah, but unfortunately we have these funny little hangups about giving park managers the same discretion. The "fighting words" doctrine has not yet been extended to garden-variety obnoxiousness and won't be as long as the Robertses and Alitos of the world need to protect the free speech rights of abortion clinic protesters.
24 goes too far
A whispered:"Have You Found Jesus?" should not be grounds for arrest.
26: Likewise. We don't get nearly enough visitors for this to be an issue here.
Wow, Muir Woods gets 800,000 visitors a year. That's a lot.
27: Well, yeah, but unfortunately we have these funny little hangups about giving park managers the same discretion
What are you talking about? Park managers have exactly the same discretion to bitch as does heebie.
|| I have reached a new milestone in Tetris. 1.75 pieces per second. My goal is 3 pps. Level 1 tetris is about .1 pps. |>
33: As measured in quibbles per Kalpa.
The idea should be that people should be able to police, as it were, themselves, in a public area, without having free speech zones ordinated.
While that's more problematic in, say, Washington, DC, it shouldn't be as problematic in a comparative wilderness area. It would appear that we have all kinds of jackasses running around in national parks mouthing off obnoxiously. Who knew.
Who here remembers the Niven story "Cloak of Anarchy"?
32 is why I have lost all interest in travel. The stories I have heard about Westminister, Notre Dame, the Taj Mahal. I don't like people that much.
Most such experiences, as they could be experienced, are now gone forever.
Most such experiences, as they could be experienced, are now gone forever.
I blame paved roads.
32: It's like, what, fifteen-twenty minutes from San Francisco? I mean, we sometimes stop in there for a quick hike when we're driving down to the city.
Hear that, everyone? It's all ari's fault.
Hey you kids! Get off my portico!
I think some of the above comments are making a reverse inference. This little park section is where civil servants go to not establish a religion.
41: It's true: my family despoils nature whenever we can.
Cloak of Anarchy. It's a good story (I say somewhat hesitatingly knowing Larry Niven's reputation).
45: And does nature reciprocate?
does nature reciprocate
After a few drinks, sometimes. But when she wants go for a walk on the beach first, I draw the fucking line.
a) Muir Woods is pretty but there are prettier parts of the Bay Area (I know, it's about preserving a remarkable grove of trees, not about satisfying my aesthetic preferences).
b) I offer up an example of a different sort of 1st amendment-related signage. Pic taken here.
I know, it's about preserving a remarkable grove of trees, not about satisfying my aesthetic preferences
Give that man a badge.
I find it hard to joke about this stuff. Off to bed.
Give that man a badge.
Seriously. I'm always amazed at how many people don't get that.
En los bosques de Seattle, osos tienen libertad de expresion para que comerte.
En verdad, solo me gusta decir "osos".
El disco se llama «El Oso» es el peor del groupo «Soul Coughing».
Cloak of Anarchy is a terrible story. The moralizing is just way too obvious.
Visiting Muir Woods from the UK, it was pretty spectacular. But then, we don't have that many very tall trees. Or that much sunshine. Pity us.
30: "A whispered:'Have You Found Jesus?' should not be grounds for arrest."
How about a whisper "have you found the deros?"
Douglas Adams type protest: unbolt the sign and bolt it on to the other side of the fence. (cf. The Outside of the Asylum, in "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish".)
58. That's great stuff, Gary. Pure Dr Who material.
I'm not opposed in principle to asking people to STFU in certain areas, or designating some places as having less strict rules about what constitutes obnoxious and disruptive behavior. The problem comes in how those places are chosen and who gets to do the choosing. Once you formalize free speech zones people in power get to move them around and shrink them at their convenience.
I wish I remembered my 1st Amendment law better, but this sounds more "badly worded" than "offensive.". Reasonable time, place, manner restrictions have always been deemed acceptable depending on the nature of the forum. I presume this sign just means, "have at it folks, any time and in any manner you like."
38 -- The good news, bob, is that visitation to such places is not evenly distributed. By regulating time of day and time of year, one can often avoid the worst crowding. And anyway, Stonehenge should be experienced in the dead of winter.
re: 63
Yeah, and there are places that regulate numbers, too. Visiting the Villa Borghese in Rome is probably my all time great travel memory for that reason. By the time we left my wife and I were the only people in it.
I presume this sign just means, "have at it folks, any time and in any manner you like."
Expressio unius, exclusio alterius, biatch.
Most such experiences, as they could be experienced, are now gone forever.
Are you experienced, Bob?
61: Yes. For example, I don't see anything wrong with kicking all of the touts out of the airports and am very happy that they did so (apparently because nobody who wanted to fly had a real chance to get away from the 'speech'). But other distinctions seem more problematic.
65: Your Latin is fabulous; your meaning, less clear.
68: he means more or less "to expressly allow something in one place implicitly forbids it elsewhere." eg if you saw an area of a factory floor marked EATING PERMITTED IN THIS AREA you would assume that eating wasn't allowed anywhere else.
And anyway, Stonehenge should be experienced in the dead of winter.
Yes, human sacrifices tend to go "off" a bit quickly in the summer months.
69: For some reason I'm tickled by the notion of signs posted randomly throughout the park stating: No Free Speech Zone. Don't shit in the stream either! Dumbass!
71: or perhaps signs saying THIRD AMENDMENT ZONE - if you build a house there, you're guaranteed not to have any troops quartered on you.
72: I like that. I'm not usually a complainer about the so-called nanny state, but really, there are an overabundance of signs. Apparently we are as children.
You do understand the distinction between a sign indicating that you are allowed to, for instance, decry governmental activities here but not there and a sign saying, for instance, that you shouldn't lean way out over a bridge's railing, right, parsley?
Well, yes, I do, Nebbie. Though there's more than one distinction to be drawn.
Just allow me my moment of hand-wringing over all the signs. "No dumping"!
69: And yet, that meaning seems such a poor response to my comment that the sign, while poorly worded, does not in fact mean that free speech rights do not exist elsewhere. The canon of construction to which neb refers does not supplant the one which dictates that absurd constructions are to be avoided.
71, 75: "No dumping" might refer to dumping trash, not taking a shit.
66:Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful
But Di, your own interpretation is itself absurd. If they wanted to say "it's always a reasonable time, place, and manner here!" they could quite easily have said that—what's the motivation for thinking that's what they meant, given that it's so far from what they wrote? And even if they did mean that, wouldn't the establishment of one place where it's always kosher have the effect, possibly unintended, of significantly raising the bar in nearby places? It would!
I have a bit of a problem with the reasonable t/p/m stuff too, but I realize that's somewhat idiosyncratic.
78: In the hand-wringing zone? Gotcha.
I have a sign complaint, but it's grounded in neurosis rather than constitutional principle. North Carolina (and maybe other states as well) has signs that say REDUCE SPEED AHEAD. However, they also have otherwise identical signs that say REDUCED SPEED AHEAD. And all the editor in me asks is that they pick one and go with it. A couple of times a month, I will see one sign on one side of the highway, and the other on the other, parallel to one another, and I feel an almost insurmountable urge to stop and make them consistent.
I like how North Carolina is divided into "Fire Districts". "Now entering Fuquay-Varina Fire District", the sign reads. "Who cares?" I think.
Although I guess it's no different from telling you when you're crossing over into a new county.
That isn't just grounded in neurosis. That is neurosis bursting out of a cake wearing a bikini and holding sparklers.
Sign complaint: relatively early in my time as a reporter, I misspelled the plural of "bus" as follows: "busses". I believe that's listed as an acceptable alternative in the dictionary, but the AP style guide is not so wishy-washy. Because the spelling I used is also a synonym for "kisses", and/or because I made the mistake more than once, my editor gave me a hard time about it. Some time later as I was driving from a remote area to a more remote area, I passed a road sign that used the unacceptable spelling the way I had used it. When I got back to the office I blamed the DOT for my spelling mistake.
I don't think anyone has used the word "buss" to mean kiss in 90 years. It's a "grammatical rule" preserved in amber.
Apo's complaint doesn't seem neurotic, just, uh, grammatically firm.
There was a new street sign not far away from here which read on one side "Reservoir Road" and on the other "Reservior Road." I couldn't tear my eyes away from it whenever I passed. It's been fixed, thankfully.
80: I don't think it is that far from what they wrote. "This area has been set aside for [speech]" doesn't imply to me that speech is banned elsewhere, and I'd be surprised if anyone who wanted to protest or whatever thought so. I would understand it as an implicit request "We'd like it if you picketed here rather than elsewhere", but nothing stronger.
It's as if you've never before heard of free speech zones.
In the context of a presidential appearance or political convention, where security is stopping people from speaking outside of the zones, that's one thing. In a park, where I assume there have been no such enforcement efforts (am I wrong? I didn't read the link), I don't think it's the same animal at all.
The link doesn't directly pertain to the picture.
For all either of us knows, park rangers, either themselves or by bringing in others, will stop you from speaking outside of that area (which is right next to the bathrooms).
It's hard not to hypothesize that the sign was put up for a reason. I'm about to head out for a bit, so I can't check, but it may be that people have protested in those woods in ways that were deemed unsuitable.
At least bring right next to the bathrooms guarantees an audience, though, if it is like other park restrooms, it also means a funny smell.
For all either of us knows, park rangers, either themselves or by bringing in others, will stop you from speaking outside of that area (which is right next to the bathrooms).
And at that point their behavior should be litigated until they stop it.
It's hard not to hypothesize that the sign was put up for a reason. I'm about to head out for a bit, so I can't check, but it may be that people have protested in those woods in ways that were deemed unsuitable.
Not implausible, certainly. I'm not unhappy about a request that people picket/protest/whatever in a designated area, so long as it's not an enforced command. If there's not a compelling reason for the location of the protest/whatever, who wants to walk through picketers while they're hiking?
86: Now I want to use the word "buss" for "kiss" all the time just to de-amberize it. It's sort of like Jurassic Park, only with words and kisses instead of velociraptors.
If there's not a compelling reason for the location of the protest/whatever, who wants to walk through picketers while they're hiking?
No one, but (a) what's that got to do with it? and (b) who's going to judge the compellingness of these reasons, exactly?
95: while you're at it you can start using "intercourse" to mean "interaction".
I mean, I wouldn't want to walk through a protest that had an obviously compelling reason for being located where it was.
who's going to judge the compellingness of these reasons, exactly?
The judiciary, typically. See your link -- they look at how good the reasons are and how narrowly tailored the restriction is.
96: The point is that the only argument I can see against the sign is that it might have a chilling effect on protests outside the designated area, because people will speculate that such protests are banned. I'm pretty much okay with such a chilling effect, figuring that anyone who actually cares about the location of the protest won't be chilled. And I can't, offhand, think of a reason you'd want to protest in a specific place in the woods.
With a presidential appearance or a convention, you want to be where people will see you and walk by you. In Muir Woods? What's better than by the bathrooms?
97: And criminal conversation to mean adultery.
So if I want to organize a protest in location X, I go before a judge and explain why that's a relevant location, given the topic of my protest? I thought it worked otherwise.
who's going to judge the compellingness of these reasons, exactly?
Exactly.
I really am off in a minute, and maybe it's worth checking with respect to Muir Woods, but remember that EarthFirst!ers have chained themselves to trees, and Julia Butterfly took up residence in an old-growth tree for quite some time. On the face of it, putting up signage designating a free speech zone looks like a move to stop that sort of thing. Admittedly, those actions were in response to logging.
criminal conversation to mean adultery
A new one to me!
102: No. You show up and see if anyone stops you (barring locations, and sizes of protest, where it's pretty obvious that you're going to need a permit -- blocking traffic, thousands of people, whatever.) If someone stops you, that's a problem, and you can deal with it then.
104: aka "Crim Con" - it comes up in Cecil Woodham-Smith's The Reason Why.
If someone stops you, you've been stopped. Maybe you can deal with it later, and maybe the conclusion is that you shouldn't have been stopped, but in the meantime, so much for your protest, right? Hope it wasn't anything time-sensitive.
This is somewhat tangential now, though.
107: What pre-emptive measure would you suggest taking that wouldn't involve getting a permit to make sure that no one wrongfully stopped you from protesting? This seems to fall under the heading of don't cry until you're hurt.
What pre-emptive measure would you suggest taking that wouldn't involve getting a permit to make sure that no one wrongfully stopped you from protesting?
Being born rich and well connected would help, as would having achieved international fame.
don't cry until you're hurt
This hasn't affected me personally, admittedly, but I would be astounded if it hasn't affected anyone.
What pre-emptive measure would you suggest taking that wouldn't involve getting a permit to make sure that no one wrongfully stopped you from protesting?
Probably there isn't one, and really, having a permit wouldn't do it in the face of a sufficiently motivated police force. My understanding is that getting a permit is supposed to be blind as to the purpose of the protest, i.e. strictly for coördination and whatnot, though probably in practice it won't be difficult to know what the purpose is—all the more reason not to have vague, pretext-providing rules pertaining to, for instance, your having a good enough reason to be where you are in the first place.
Obviously I hadn't thought of soup's measures. Possibly another would be only to protest on behalf of the powerful.
I feel an almost insurmountable urge to stop and make them consistent.
Recently I saw a roadsign that said "14' 2"" and then another sign, on the underpass itself, that said "13' 11". I was dying to know how the difference came about -- was there a law change in terms of how conservative you have to be in estimating clearance?
Did somebody come out and actually measure for the second sign, and come up with a measurement without noticing that the first sign already existed and had a different number? These mysteries beg to be solved.
110: Sure, the issuance of permits should be content-neutral -- I just glanced at the case, and I'm assuming that's what it was about. But in the Muir Woods sign case, if they're not generally requiring permits to protest in the park, then people should go protest where they like, and not complain about the risk of being stopped until they're stopped. If permits are required, and they're not being issued outside the designated area, or they're being refused arbitrarily, then litigate that. The sign itself, though, doesn't seem like a problem.
112: And a third sign, positioned so as to be visible only to someone in a 14'0" truck stuck under the overpass, saying "Psych".
Possibly another would be only to protest on behalf of the powerful.
This one may well work, but probably carries an increased risk of bodily harm.
I seem to remember an accident a while back where a truck scraped an overpass. The sign was old information after the roadway was resurfaced.
114, 116: I was trying to figure out how much wiggle room you really get from letting air out of your tires. Probably an inch, at least.
105: 102: No. You show up and see if anyone stops you (barring locations, and sizes of protest, where it's pretty obvious that you're going to need a permit -- blocking traffic, thousands of people, whatever.)
I have to admit, I'm with the nebster1 here. The sign is highly problematic; if they're trying to ban a given form of behaviour (chaining oneself to a tree, living in a tree, performing the 9th with a kazoo orchestra), then they should ban that behaviour, or issue a general ban on excessively loud noises, etc.
I have no idea what they're litigating, but I am pretty sure they would not have put up that sign if they intended to do anything other than ban free speech ('free speech' here meaning 'speech the park rangers don't like') in the rest of the park. If that wasn't what they were after, they seriously screwed up and need to ditch the sign.
max
['But free speech zones are A-OK these days.']
1 Because I can.
I used to work in an office right next to a very low railroad bridge (11'8") on a fairly major street. There were frequent crashes and this caused problems for the railroad, so they eventually put a bar in front of the bridge so that trucks would crash into that instead of the bridge. When I rented a truck one day, they warned me about that bridge.
117 -- The moving van that came to my house was very tall, and damn near clipped the neighbor's cable TV wires. They had to let some air out of the suspension, and got several inches thereby.
118: Can't you moderately discourage expressive behavior in one location by encouraging it in another without banning it? I think you're right, that the motivation behind the sign has to be something like "Man, picketers are annoying." If the response is limited to a sign like the one in the post saying "Please picket here", though, that seems okay. (If there's some other response, I'd object to that, probably. But not to this.)
120: A friend of my father's peeled the whole top off a truck driving too fast under a low underpass.
the motivation behind the sign has to be something like "Man, picketers are annoying."
Strikes me as more along the lines of "If you get offended, please don't come demand we do something about it."
I'm not seeing how that works, exactly. You mean like so:
Irritated Hiker: Can't you do something about the picketers? I was hoping for a peaceful hike, and there are people with dayglo signs bitching about environmentally unsafe clothing dyes all over the place?
Ranger: We've taken action on that -- there's a sign saying they should be over there.
I.H.: But they're not over there.
R.: Oh, the sign's just a suggestion.
That doesn't seem like it would work, but I don't see another way for it to play out.
''When the first one hits, we say, 'They're back!' '' said Gary Larivee, president of the U-Haul Company of Massachusetts.
Two types of signs that you sometimes see entering towns (or townships or counties) intrigue me.
1) "Green River Ordinance" enforced here. (I remember looking for them when I drove through Green River, Wyoming.) I knew it was somehow related to door-to-door solicitations, but the full story is here. Apparently, Green River was a pioneer passing a law against door-to-door solicitation and a lot of towns have passed essentially duplicate laws. Two reasons cited for the original law, Night-shift railroaders and their wives had marched on the Town Council demanding that "something be done." and to prevent contagious diseases being carried by promiscuous peddlers, traveling in their automobiles from one community to another.
2) Signs that indicate a building code/permit system is in effect. It just does not seem to be something you need to announce on a sign (unlike the Green River ones). The only plausible reason I can come up with is to alert out-of-town construction crews or a trucker bringing building supplies to a building site that whoever hired them needs a permit. But maybe I am missing some other obvious scenario.
The scariest near-wreck I saw was a touring bus. Fortunately, he stopped in time and got out to look. He was able to confirm he couldn't fit visually.
104: Yes, it's a common misunderstanding when teaching 18c texts that "intercourse" often means conversation and "conversation" often means intercourse.
I'm not seeing how that works, exactly.
"I was walking through the First Amendment Area, and that guy told my kids they were going to burn in hell for being gay. How can you allow that kind of thing to go in a public park? I should sue this place!"
"We don't have anything to do with what's being said over there, sir. It's the First Amendment area."
"I don't care. I want you to throw him out of the park. My tax dollars pay for this park and your salary."
"Please go read the sign."
Intercourse is commerce.
HONEY YOU'RE MY ONE AND ONLY SO PAY ME WHAT YOU OWE ME.
126: How about "No Jake Brakes" and "Agricultural Security Area"?
129: Ah, I got it -- it looks as if the park is doing something in a way that "we can't stop people from speaking, it's the First Amendment," doesn't.
134: I like the "No Jake Braking" signs, though I must admit I don't know if there is a technical reason (say stopping more quickly) why it might be good to have a trucker jake brake. I'm close enough to the parkway that, after the leaves fall, I can hear the hammering when they do that.
134 -- I don't know what an Ag security area is, but I'm certainly on board with restrictions on the use of jake brakes anywhere near where I plan to be sleeping.
I like the "No Jake Braking" signs, though I must admit I don't know if there is a technical reason (say stopping more quickly) why it might be good to have a trucker jake brake.
Using the jake brake reduces the load on the regular brakes so they're there when really needed. Diesel engines don't generate much in the way of compression braking without the jake, and big trucks have a lot less margin for brake fade than passenger cars.
I like the "No Jake Braking" signs, though I must admit I don't know if there is a technical reason (say stopping more quickly) why it might be good to have a trucker jake brake.
Not really (it can increase the braking speed a bit). It's a lot easier on the trucks though. That much weight is hell on brakes, which is probably particularly on the mind of owner/operators. Often what people call a Jake brake isn't actually one, it gets (ab)used as a catch all for exhaust brake systems etc. too.
138: Then I won't push for the sign near my house. There's a major bottle-neck not far away.
Oh, sort of pwned.
I should add, though, there is a significant safety issue when you are dealing with long descents, particularly with heavy loads and/or steep pitches. You don't want to heat your brakes up too much, and using an engine break can keep you off them and let them cool properly
Coming down through the Rockies there are semi-regular gravel for runaway trucks, because braking all the way down is hell on the brakes, enough so that failure is a real possibility. The gravel slows the vehicle down in a controlled manner. I've never seen one with an actual truck on it, but apparently it's enough of an issue to be worth spending what must be close to 100k$ on these things.
A long-haul truck driver I knew quite well in Texas in the '70s said he (and others) tried to avoid Pittsburgh. Not that the grades are that long compared to real mountainous areas, but the continual up and downs combined with city traffic, narrow roads, aging infrastructure of loading docks and lack of signage (obviously very pre-GPS) made it a trucker's nightmare. He had pretty much a similar opinion of the whole Northeast, but Pittsburgh stood out to him as the worst.
143: I'm not surprised by that. Also, I think we are one of the biggest cities without a belt to avoid the downtown.
are semi-regular gravel for runaway trucks,
This is standard near everywhere mountainous I've been in N.A.. Part of the problem is that a lot of mountain roads have cliffs on both sides, so if you're driving a truck whose breaks fail you don't have a lot of choice, you can go off a cliff, into a cliff, or try and stay on the road. It's a lot of weight to have careening down the road out of (or nearly so) control...
The rockies are actually a lot better than many areas, because the grades aren't too bad and not many corners. Some of the coastal highways are pretty brutal on trucks if they go at all.
141, 142: My favorite is Sheep Creek Hill, a few miles west of Williams Lake, BC. IIRC it's about eight miles of 7-8% grade switchbacking down off the plateau to the Fraser. There's a runaway lane before every switchback and one last one just before the bend from the last pitch onto the bridge that would require a logging truck driver who'd lost his breaks to cross oncoming traffic at a shallow angle to get into the runaway lane. Scanning that last pitch for out-of-control trucks is a very good way to pass the time while crossing the bridge.
142: In 1980 there was a very notorious accident when a truck lost its brakes coming down the Greentree Hill on the Parkway (route to Pittsburgh from the airport) and went all the way through and across the Fort Pitt Bridge and Tunnel and killed three downtown pedestrians on Liberty Avenue before smashing into a building.
Pittsburgh has a run-away truck ramp right before you go under the Ft. Pitt tunnel. It's the only one I've even seen in an urban area.
146: Willy's puddle! I think I remember that particular hill.
147: I didn't know that. I suppose that's why the ramp is there.
150: It's pretty memorable. You don't also happen to know a Willy from that part of the world, do you?
152: I don't think so, no. Spent some summers up around 100 mile yonks ago though.
This is standard near everywhere mountainous I've been in N.A.
Yes, there are these on the Kangamangas Highway up in New Hampshire, which is extraordinarily steep, borders on a serious cliff, such that you will clearly die if you go over it.
There's some confusion about the spelling of the name. A google image search shows lovely pictures; I've camped near there with great delight.
Also, speaking of internet coincidences: yesterday I followed a random link to a supplier of swipple bedding products, only to discover that their production facility is located in what used to be the general store of the less-than-podunk town in which I spent a goodly chunk of my childhood.
This is why you find a lot of them in BC, like the one NPH mentioned.
153: My folks have a place out west of Williams Lake that I've been up to more summers than not since my early teens, but haven't done any more in 100 Mile than stop for coffee or a meal or some groceries. The Willy I'm thinking of lives up around 150 Mile, but there's no particular reason your paths should have crossed. Your "Willy's puddle!" just made me think of her.
157: It's pretty country around there. I wasn't actually in 100 mile, that's just the nearest town. All the locals called it willy's puddle at the time, at least the ones my age.
151: I suppose that's why the ramp is there.
Yes it is. I could not recall whether the escape ramp was there at the time and the truck just did not use it (a lot of truck ramps are so extreme-looking that you'd *really* need to be out of control to use them), but from reading about it, it apparently precipitated the construction the ramp. The two people in the truck were injured but survived, and surely experienced the famous view of "downtown Pittsburgh coming out of the tunnel" in a visceral way that few others have.
There are a fair number of places in PA where a steep hill leads right into the center of a small town. Many "require" trucks to come to a stop at the top and review a map of the situation. (And have seen that elsewhere as well, of course.) A truck took out a house in Oakmont PA (hill coming down from by the famous golf course to the Allegheny) a few years back and incredibly to me, they rebuilt in the same spot, even though it is pretty much the only residence in an otherwise commercial/institutional block.
To be sure, we have a lot of trucks and cars crashing into houses here. But that isn't all the slope. Some of it is because there are houses that basically four feet from what became, hopefully well after the house was built, a well-travelled street or highway. There are quite a few houses in Pittsburgh that I cannot understand why the owners aren't petitioning PennDot or the city to buy the house for a right-of-way.
Speaking of trucks, we've been trying for weeks to figure out how to transport a few hundred cubic feet of free mulch here from Santa Barbara, which is about 30 miles. Borrow a pickup truck and make several runs? The place won't deliver out of county, the in-county sells their mulch instead of giving it away ($29/yd3), and it's not the bigtree-trimming season, so the tree trimming folks (who'll dump their waste in your yard for $40) don't have anything.
So I called around about renting a 20' stakebed truck. About $100; doable.
But then I found a guy on CL who has a dump truck and needs work THIS WEEKEND who'll do it for $100. Which means Mr. B and I do not personally have to do all the driving, loading, and unloading. SCORE.
My son put his hands in our mulch and I saw little teeny slugs all over them. Then we found the big slug. Pittsburgh is turning into Seattle what with the rain, clouds, and G-20.
Yeah, and Seattle is apparently turning into Tucson. So weird.
162/163
It's a big game of musical environments, and when the music stops, someone's left with swampland.
I'm pleased to report that my neck of the woods, anyway, continues to be lovely.
It's actually pretty nice here also, as I hate heat and we haven't had much. But my tomatoes are for shit.
It's actually pretty nice here also, as I hate heat and we haven't had much. But my tomatoes are for shit.
All the tomatoes! It's killing me.
Even though I'm in California (and thus, mostly immune from the blight) I keep checking my tomato plants obsessively for signs. But no, just to brag a little, they're growing magnificently and turning red (well, and brown, but that's just the varietal) all at once.
I don't have tomato blight, just not enough sun (for reasons of yard-layout, they aren't in an especially sunny spot anyway). The slugs haven't eaten them yet either. For some reason, they went for the flowers.
I think I might have tomato blight. I have recurring pain in my lower abdomen and a runny nose but no fever. Those are the symptoms, right?
Also, I'm not producing any fruit.
Yes, quite aside from blight, there hasn't been appropriate weather to make the tomatoes tomate.
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This seems like an awfully short turnaround time: I got a delinquent notice for electric/water bill today, and if it's not paid by 5:00 pm on MONDAY, it'll be shut off on Tuesday.
I logged in, and they got my payment yesterday, so the delinquent notice had already gotten sent out. I'm not a bad citizen.
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169, 172: Ah - I luck out with a south facing exposure for my tomato plants that keeps them in sun for 12 plus hours a day. I can take no credit for the appropriate weather.
173: That does not square with my experience at all! We had this weird thing where we got a $1500 electric bill (the norm for our house being about $30-$45) and the company told us to simply not pay it while they were investigating what happened. (Which was good, as I did not have a spare $1500). However, the sector that deals with problems like htat never communicated this to the billing department, so over the next few months we received increasingly desperate notices about how if we didn't pay up, they were going to shut the electricity off. Really. In a few more months. I think we did eventually get the 3 day warning, but they resolved the issue nearly simultaneously and I paid up.
171: That sounds pretty serious. How much fruit do you usually produce?
This has happened before. Um, as in the window passed between the delinquent notice and shut-off date and I got to see that they tell the truth. The day before I turned 30, so I get to say "I havn't had the utilities shut off since my twenties!"
This is run by the city, not a private company, fwiw.
My tomatoes are freaking lovely. Two plants are red now, and two will be there in a week or so. Three different varieties, fuckers. Next year I'm planting twice as many plants, though, because we're eating them off the vine as if they were m&ms. They're THAT GOOD.
I do wish I knew why the lower branches were yellowing and drying out, though. I'm sure it means I'm getting fewer delicious tomatoes than I should.
Ah, that probably makes a difference. PG&E is huge.
I do wish I knew why the lower branches were yellowing and drying out, though.
Mine are doing that as well. On my plant, it's just the innermost small branches, and I suspect they're just not getting enough light. You could try strategic pruning.
173: They may be bullshitting. I got one of those a couple weeks ago saying my electricity would be cut off two weeks ago, didn't open it, got another last week, which I did open, it said my electricity would be cut off on Monday. Set up an automatic payment from the bank that went through on Tuesday. Never had service interrupted at all.
180: Unfortunately, I've called their bluff before (inadvertently). See 176.
173: Huh. I had automatic payments set up, but my credit card company put one of those dumb-ass "we've blocked your account because that box of Oreos you bought seemed out of character" holds on the account. Never got a notice from the water company; just showed up one night after a long day at work to dfind i no longer had water. Fuckers, all around.
God I fucking hate when they do that shit.
My tomatoes are freaking lovely
Bitch! I don't think I'll get any. Tomatoes. My garden neighbors told me last year that the yellowing lower branches is some sort of soil-borne disease.
185: The yellowing lower branches is usually just that those branches are being shaded out as the vine/bush grows higher and bushier, and so the plant, in its wisdom, is pulling chlorophyl out of them and shipping it up to higher branches where it can do more good. You can just leave them there, no big deal, or take them off if you don't like the look of them.
186: Hey, I was right in 179! Woo!
185, 186: I assume M/tch is right, although I find it hard to believe that there are branches that aren't getting enough light in my full southern exposure back yard, growing on top of a white wall that reflects the light back up. But in any case, disease or no, they're producing. And next year I plan to plan them in a different place anyway.
In any case, they're delicious. If I had enough and it were possible, I would ship them to all of you whose tomato plants are disappointing you.
188: I have similar light, a few hundred miles to the north, and the yellow branches are only on one plant (and they're all potted in the same soil). My inclination is to agree with M/tch, obviously.
I'm inclined to agree with M/tch about pretty much everything.