Strip Mall Advantages

A strip mall has some surprising advantages over an enclosed mall.

Identity Reconstruction

This post about coping with acquired disability focuses on identity reconstruction.  I think it's the first I've seen that does NOT try to force people into "accepting" their situation, but acknowledges that they may wish to fight it.  \o/

Instead of Flowers

... send something else to a funeral. 

When to Close Roads

This article looks at closing roads that are more trouble than they're worth. 

"When it's in an unstable location" is a good reason to close a road.  Cut the worst problems, the most expensive drains on the budget, before cutting things that are sort of working.

However, I would add "after you establish a core" in regards to timing.  Suburban sprawl is unsustainable, so one way to deal with that is to concentrate growth around core areas and let the sprawl between them dwindle.  This will be a great deal easier if the cores are built up first.  The article mentions that the troubled road connects clusters of suburbs.  In such a situation, look at why people are crossing between them.  Likely reasons include jobs, schools, and shopping.  Make sure each area has those things, and the connecting road will become much less important.

Look at suburbs.  Most of them have some kind of activity center either near the middle or along the edges, remnants of the older (and much more functional) traditional neighborhood design.  If you build up those areas so they contain most of what people need, that undoes a lot of the damage that suburbs did by segregating activities.

Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy, calm, and almost warm.

I fed the birds.  There was a squirrel on the hopper feeder earlier.

I did a bit of brush trimming around the purple-and-white garden.