Fixin' Supper

First, the back story.

I’m not a political insider. I am friends with a number of political insiders, but truth be told, we don’t talk politics all that often. You can’t help but know political types when you live in East Nashville, really. You can’t throw a stick around here without clobbering a whole mess of them. Bless their hearts, I mean, my friends.

So my post here isn’t informed by any inside perspective. Here’s what it is informed by:

• I’ve voted in every local and state Democratic primary since I was 18.
• I’ve worked any number of state and local Democratic campaigns.
• I’ve even given money to a few, but I’m a small-money donor.
• I like to sit on the sidelines and pontificate.

You’ve been warned. This is all worth what you paid for it.

Who is the Tennessee Democrat?
I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell the TNDP is doing. Wait, that’s wrong. It seems to be doing exactly what the national GOP is doing — casting about for an identity. Flailing, I would say.

I’m not sure what the big mystery is. I’ve lived in TN all but about 6 months of my life, and here’s my understanding of the Democratic identity here:

• Ds fight for the little guy.
• Ds like small business, teachers and the working class.
• Most Ds here tend to be pro-life, or pro-choice with lots of restrictions, but they have little interest in spending much, if any, time legislating or pontificating on that.
• They’re tough on crime but not draconian.
• They’re very good at building roads.
• They take a lot of pride in our state’s fiscal management and want to see continued careful oversight.
• They may or may not be union folks. I suspect that depends on the district.

Now, that’s not how I’d describe my personal politics. But if you had to stuff all the elected Democrats in this state in one kettle, that would hold most of them.

There are a decent number of liberal Democrats in TN, with many of them [but certainly not all] concentrated in our cities. Outside a very few TN House districts, the TNDP can’t expect to field really liberal candidates and win.

What is the TNDP doing today?
It seems to be reorganizing itself, sort of. Since the November election, the TNDP executive committee elected a new chairman, Chip Forrester, in what seems to have been some kind of leadership coup. The “establishment” favored Charles Robert Bone. [I suspect many of my political friends favored Bone, but I'm more likely to know what they did over spring break. Just a guess on my part.]

Since Forrester came in, he’s hired [what, 6 weeks ago?] and then accepted the resignation [today] of a new TNDP treasurer, Bill Freeman. Who, as it turns out, had more Republican than Democratic ties. Two quick thots: If his job was accounting, I don’t care if he’s a Communist. If his job was fundraising, WTF? Seems there was some weight toward the latter, so I’m not sure I understand the initial appointment.

But what I really want to say is this:
I don’t care who the TNDP chairman is, nor the treasurer.

Here’s what I care about: In a year that saw the Democratic party make tremendous strides nationally, we fell way backwards. I don’t know whose fault that was, but I want it fixed. I’m glad to help fix it, but you big wigs need to figure out who’s really going to show some leadership. Because I’m going to be pissed off if we screw around and waste the next two years. We have a serious issue in the Tennessee General Assembly. The GOP now controls both houses, and I’m seeing painfully little interest on their part in actually passing legislation that helps people. They seem mostly interested in regulating people’s personal lives. [You explain to me how that's "conservative" and we'll both know.]

I want to help a TNDP that knows how to win some seats back in 2010. And that has a giantslayer of a gubernatorial candidate ready. I don’t want to see a bitter primary struggle for any Democratic office next year. We can’t afford it.

I’m listening. Time’s a-wasting.

I was one of those people this morning. I’m hoping you’ll excuse it because I’m 31 weeks pregnant, and I was provoked. But there’s no doubt this scenario pissed me off.

In addition to cooking, community volunteering, web strategy and writing, I like to sew. Off and on, I’ll go on kicks and make the kids some clothes, or make curtains or sofa slipcovers or whatever. The 9yo has been on one of those big growth spurts this year — she’s outgrowing size 8 and moving into size 10. From the looks of it, she won’t be at 10 very long, either. So, she has no shorts that fit, and warm weather is here in Tennessee. I decided to make her a few pair of shorts.

A couple of weeks ago, I hit Joann and picked up some fabric, patterns and notions to make her three pair of shorts, some leggings and some pajama pants. I’ve finished the pajama pants — they turned out really cute, thanks for asking — and I was working on the first pair of shorts last night. I realized halfway through the process I’d bought polyester thread instead of cotton.

I hate when I do things like that.

For the uninitiated, if you go to the store and buy something labeled “all-purpose” thread, more than likely, it’s polyester. Which is fine for sewing on buttons or whatever. For using on polyester clothes, perhaps. But if you are making cotton shorts, and you are going to iron them on the hottest setting of your iron, polyester thread will literally melt. Which is how I discovered my mistake. Fortunately, I realized it soon enough that I don’t think I ruined the shorts, but now I’ll always have to remember they can’t be ironed on high.

I checked my other two new spools of thread, and sure enough, I’d made the same mistake with all of them. So I thought I’d run up to Joann and exchange them for cotton thread.

For reasons that escape me, national chain craft and hobby stores are apparently incapable of checking people out efficiently. Michael’s is particularly notorious for having slow registers and long lines. Joann always seemed better to me until today. Now I am wondering how much of this stuff I could buy online [at some other retailer] and avoid all these people.

I walked in at Joann. Like many stores, it has a customer service desk that sits near the cash registers. As I walked up to it, a woman with many items in her cart dashed in front of me. Sigh, fine. So I wait. The customer service person helps her. Finally, it is my turn. I hand her my two spools of thread, but before I can even explain that I want to exchange them, she pushes them back to me and says in a really loud voice, “The line is over there.” I look. She’s pointing at the checkout line, where everyone waiting to check out waits in one line for an open register, like at a bank.

I said, “Right, but I’m trying to exchange these. Don’t you do returns here?”

Yes. But apparently, despite having a big “Returns here” sign over her head, and no signage indicating that I had to wait in the other line, I was just supposed to know that. I said, “It would have been nice if you’d told me that before I wasted 5 minutes standing behind the other woman.”

At which point, the customer service rep professed not to have seen me before.

Normally, I might have bought that. I am 5’2″. But I’m also 31 weeks pregnant and I’m not easy to miss right now. Especially when I’m standing right in front of you. And the other woman was standing to my side and also short.

So I went to get my new thread, and I came back. I waited in the line, which was mercifully, shorter.

A regular cashier opened up and waved me over. I said, “I have a return. You don’t do those, right?”

“No, but she does,” she said — pointing to another woman at another regular cash register. Since the customer service desk was still busy and this mysteriously powered cashier was also closing out a transaction, I went to stand at her register.

By this time, I was so fed up with everyone that I know I wasn’t nice. I said, “How on earth are you supposed to learn all the rules about making a return here? It’s too confusing.”

The cashier, who as it turned out, was the store manager, tried explaining it all to me again. Rather defensively, I might add.

So I said, “Look, I think I finally get it. Stand in the big line. Eventually, someone will take my return. But my point is, you’re not making this clear or easy for your customers. I know you understand how returns work. But when you have a sign at the returns desk, saying, Returns here, people are going to think they can walk up and return something, just like they do at every other store with a similar sign.”

At which point she tried again to explain to me how returns work.

Joann, some friendly advice. If your customer tells you you’re making it too hard, you are. Stop arguing with them. For heaven’s sake, have someone apologize [which I didn't get this morning, shockingly]. Give them a coupon or something so they don’t leave your store mad. In this economy, you really want to be making your customers mad by defending a returns system that doesn’t make sense?

And if you’d like to keep your wacky returns system, please take down the freaking “Returns here” sign at the customer service desk, and add a sign at the checkout line that indicates all purchases and returns wait in the same line. And then — yes, one last thing — fix it so that returns can be handled at any register, so you aren’t making your returns customers wait longer for a register with the special-powered cashier who can, in fact, take a return.

I don’t see why that’s a lot to ask, but what do I know? I’m just the customer.

Unrelated: I am beginning to think I could spend about 2/3 of the day handling email every day, and still not keep up. Increased volume on all fronts this week has been overwhelming. If I haven’t answered you, I’m trying.

Back on point: We’ve gotten a lot done in the garden in the last 10 days or so, but very little of it is finished, or more importantly for our purposes here, fun to look at.

We’re a little less than half done building a brick path around the garden. It’s somewhere around 1 3/4′ wide all around the inside of the fence. We’ve just been scavenging bricks from various folks in the neighborhood who are doing projects. I have to say, it’s one advantage of living in an older area — there’s rarely a shortage of people tearing up old sidewalks and/or cleaning out basements and discovering big stashes of bricks. I don’t know what people living in the suburbs do when they need a bunch of free bricks.

The path work has been slow and painful, but mostly because I started on the hardest side. Once we finish the north edge, the rest should be a lot faster. When I bought this house 4 years ago, half of the backyard was gravel. I don’t mean pea gravel or paths. I mean, gravel like a driveway. Even worse, it wasn’t in the driveway area, which was nicely paved. The gravel was just in the yard.

Now, don’t get me started on the crazy guy who used to own this house. Let’s suffice it to say, that was just one of the unusual features I’ve since updated. In the case of the gravel, I paid my regular yard guy and his crew to pull it up and haul it out by hand — wasn’t really possible to use a Bobcat or anything because of the layout of the yard. It took them 2 days. And they put down grass seed and in general, things are lots better. But there are a few areas of the yard that still have a lot of stray gravel. And the north garden path is one of them. So before we can place the bricks, we’ve had to pull out a lot of gravel.

The other interesting thing I’ve found is a full-sized cinder block buried right below the surface on the east path. Maybe 3 inches down. I’ve never dug that far there before, since it was under the path, and not where I plant, but the block had to go if I was going to lay my new-found bricks there.

This is one of those things that you know you should not be doing when you are 30 weeks pregnant, but that you do anyway.

You will be pleased to hear that once I dislodged the block and pulled it out of the hole, I left it there til Ashby got home, and I had him move it out of the way til I can decide how it may be useful.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week beating myself up for not getting things planted faster, but thinking back, I haven’t wasted any good days. There’s just a lot of work to do in your garden in the spring that doesn’t necessarily involve planting anything, and we just haven’t had that many good days yet.

We’re still 3-4 weeks from our last frost date, so the minute things improve outside [cold and rainy again today], I’m slapping some peas in the ground, and more lettuce and spinach. Oh yes. The two things I have gotten planted: Two adorable little lettuce plants. Two days before the sleet this week. I’m scared to go look and I have a lot more lettuce seeds starting inside anyway. And some spinach seeds, which I think will be OK.

UPDATE: Don’t just take my word for it. District 23 Council Member Emily Evans was also at the meeting, and came away with a similar impression. Thanks for your time today!

ORIGINAL POST: Today is another one of those days I am so proud to live in East Nashville. Our neighborhood has a long history of civic activism, and I was really energized by the overflow crowd at the East Park Community Center for a meeting with MDHA on the riverfront redevelopment plan. To judge by crowd reactions, I believe most left feeling the way I did, ready for action!

The background
In 2007, the Metro Council approved funding for the initial two parts of a plan to redevelop areas of the east and west riverbanks, roughly between the Korean Memorial/Gateway and Woodland Street bridges on the east and corresponding locations on the west [downtown] side of the river. Improvements in the plan were slated in several phases, to facilitate long-term funding and take advantage of the length of time it takes to get the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers when you do anything related to a river channel managed by the Corps, as the Cumberland is.

There are around 20 projects total in the plan, but significant items include:

• Transforming the parking around LP Field into an urban forest, with grass parking and permeable pavement
• Improved and expanded large and small watercraft access on both banks of the river
• Full greenway connections on both riverbanks to existing and planned greenways
• Re-creation of small wetlands areas on both banks that would improve water runoff and the health of the Cumberland
• Improved river event access on the west bank
• River overlook on the west bank
• Amphitheater on the east bank
• Water adventure park on the east bank

The basic order of the original plan, as designed by a team of development experts, calls for the first phase to include the water adventure park [After reviewing the plan today, it makes me think of Chattanooga's aquarium/waterfront park areas, but on steroids.] and a test site for the urban forest. Next phases handle the east and west bank wetlands and greenway development — all of which will involve significant permitting from the Corps — and then the plan wraps up with the complete urban forest.

In accordance with this plan, Metro’s consultants had already completed the schematic for the water park, making it ready to move into the final planning stages and begin development quickly. The council had already allocated money for that phase of development, back in 2007 when the plan was OKed.

And yet to date, nothing has happened.

Today
At today’s public meeting, a couple hundred Nashvillians heard the initial plan sketched out, and then heard a proposed revision to the plan from the Metro Development and Housing Authority, the agency charged with managing such civic projects. The revised plan currently includes all projects in the old plan, but it re-orders them.

New order

• All east bank projects except the water park and urban forest
• All west bank projects
• Water park and urban forest

At first blush, it just sounded like a reshuffling. The reasons given — the state of the economy and the impetus to continue burying power lines on the riverbanks — didn’t quite make any sense to me, especially since the money’s already in place to get started.

The real story
And then we learned from District 6 Council Member Mike Jameson the most important point: There’s no money allocated yet for phase 3. So we’ll likely never see the water park or urban forest if the plan is re-prioritized.

I’m actually skeptical we’ll see any of the project if the new priorities hold, because — and this is just a gut feeling on my part — since permitting for all parts of the plan except the water park and forest require full-blown Corps permits, we won’t have anything happening for at least a year [absolute best case] and more likely, 3-5 years.

I hope you don’t think I’m coming across as one of those East Nashville whiners. I have lived in this neighborhood for almost 14 years, and I’ve seen a decent number of broken promises about development. But this situation just dumbfounds me. The water park isn’t about East Nashville. It’s about creating an amazing civic resource out of a brownfield — the kind of resource that will bring tourists to Nashville, tie in perfectly with the new downtown convention center, and give all Nashvillians a great destination to both enjoy and be proud of. Take a look at the plan on this PDF. Just awesome!

I’m really struggling to understand how you oppose the water park. And the urban forest — the Titans are willing to give it a try, and it would both be more attractive, and dramatically better for the environment than the vast asphalt parking lots on the east bank today.

I got the sense from Ed Owens, the MDHA representative, that MDHA views its role as to implement what the administration directs it to do. So I am anxious to hear directly from Mayor Karl Dean the rationale behind this plan. From what I know now, the revised plan will serve only to kill the riverfront development. I can’t figure out whom that’s going to benefit, but I know it’s not me.

Stay tuned. As I learn more about what’s happening and what we can do, I’ll let you know.

AND: The Tennessean’s report on the meeting.

• I am not a neat person — ask anyone who knows me. But I am apparently the only person in my whole house capable of seeing, and reacting appropriately, to dirt. I promise you the other 3 inhabitants of this house could happily live in one of those crazy-people houses piled to the ceiling with newspapers and decades-old dust bunnies. At least I don’t like dirt and clutter and fix them when I see them.
• My until-now precious, compliant and obedient 3yo has turned into a holy terror in the past 2 weeks. He’s been punished [severely] twice for hitting the dog. [The dog, bless her heart, just stands there and looks balefully at him when he does this. My screaming at him how any other dog on the face of the earth would have bitten his face to shreds seems to be making little impact.] He’s gotten a sassy mouth [including calling his father a "stupid dumb-o" last night at dinner] and he willfully ignores all instructions [including important ones like "Stop that right now!"] At this point, I’ve decided that there must be some really poorly behaved kids in his new class at school, because the only other change in his life recently has been to spend more time with me. Let’s just leave that where it lies, mmk? We’re all hoping this is a very short stage.
• Bizarrest pregnancy symptom: My arms fall asleep all the time. While it was bad enough that this happened every single night [have to sleep on my side now, and both top and bottom arms are prone to falling asleep], I am now able to trigger this reaction just by moving my arm in a certain way. It basically feels like I’m hitting my funny bone 25 times a day, and my funny bone runs the entire length of my arm and hand. Good times.
• Metro advertises that the recycling truck runs in our neighborhood on the 1st Tuesday of every month, beginning at 7 a.m. I don’t live anywhere near the recycling operation center. And in 4 years of living in this house, the recycling truck has never reached my house after 6:50 a.m.