The Dog Park Won't Die
A letter sent to local news organizations:

Last Wednesday, Mayor Funkhouser and his wife visited Eula Enloes, President of the Here's Waldo Neighborhood Association which serves the neighborhood surrounding Sunnyside Park. They attempted to convince her to sign a letter saying she endorsed Deb Hipp's effort to put an off-leash dog park in Sunnyside park.

The majority of the Neighborhood Association, including Eula, and almost every resident who's property is next to the park, oppose putting a Dog Park in Sunnyside. Not one adjacent resident supports it.

We agree with the Parks Department that Sunnyside is not an appropriate location for such a park. While we do not necessarily agree on the same reasons for objecting, we do object.

I do not want to loose the open, "unprogrammed" space that anybody and everybody can use for any purpose. We have had concerts and movies in the area that the dog park would use. On nice days, the park is frequently completely surrounded by cars, with no parking left around it. We are only a few blocks from the State Line and Leawood, and while we do not begrudge our Kansas neighbors who like to use our park, I don't feel we should be building facilities for their dogs.

I think a dog park that would be more accessible to more of the Kansas City, Missouri population would be more appropriate. I would like to see a dog park in an area large enough to have a buffer zone between it and other developed uses like the Splash Park and baseball diamonds in Sunnyside.

It has been very disheartening for those of us who don't want the park here to have to fight it again and again. Although the Park Board has twice agreed with us that this is the wrong place for a dog park, Deb Hipp won't give up, won't take no for an answer, and won't consider any other location.

Now I feel like she's gone behind our backs and pressured the Mayor in a very undemocratic way to do something that the people here don't want.
- posted by Jonathan Hutchins @ 12:07 PM 0 comments

 
Cats and Baths
Friday was the first day since Spring that it was cool enough to enjoy a proper bath. I suppose one could crank the air conditioning down to sixty-five and pretend, but this house doesn't approve of such antics, and it wouldn't feel real.

The cats being in, and Jack being intrigued with whatever I found to do, he investigated, very concerned, pacing the rim of the tub, sniffing my knee. He reached over and tapped me with a paw, as if to say "do you mean to be all wet like that?".

He likes to walk from the sink across my shoulders to the windowsill, or sometimes just pause on my shoulders if I am leaning forward to read. He offered to try my shoulders, and even put three paws up, while keeping most of his weight on the fourth, which he did not commit. He concluded that I was right, bare skin was not an appropriate perch.
- posted by Jonathan Hutchins @ 3:11 PM 0 comments

 
Sunnyside musings

Today's the first day I've kept the windows closed in weeks. It's just barely over sixty degrees out there, and windy! Autumn is here for sure. Clouds are skittering across the sun and the leaves are dancing and the old house is putting on quite the clever light show.

The lawn has at last gone dormant. How nice to walk on it and not have to worry if it needs cutting. Unfortunately, it went dormant the week before I seeded the bare spots. The neighbors got their seed in just in time, and have a lovely crop, but mine just lies there, rain and all.

I must apologize to my neighbors for the brush pile. I had not realized how big it is, or noticed that it's so visible from the street until some enterprising men with a pickup truck offered to remove it for me. We have to get the chipper-shredder rented soon.

I own one - a little ten-horse Craftsman, but it's always getting bogged down or a branch stuck behind the wheel or something. Not quite big enough for what we need, and it's easier to just rent the one with the six-inch throat and do a big pile all at once.

A couple of years ago, though, I trimmed the branches off the cedars so we could walk under them, and as they have absorbed those changes they've revealed the pile. I will have to come up with a different way to manage the generous crop of sticks this place produces.

- posted by Jonathan Hutchins @ 2:24 PM 0 comments