We on Stannage Ave between Dartmouth and Gilman were able to prevent an unsightly “too large for the neighborhood and will not be able to handle the associated traffic with the development” project from being built as proposed by SHOWING UP at meetings to voice our concerns. Unfortunately, the economy went south by the time we reached a compromise with the developer and no building stands in the spot. However, an empty space is better than an overcrowded one with a bad traffic plan.

SHOW UP and SPEAK UP if you have an opinion on the Park’s re-design. If you don’t, please don’t complain if you don’t like the results.

City Council emails as of today (good read!)
http://www.albanyca.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=15362

City Council agenda (Tot Lot is item 7-2)
http://www.albanyca.org/index.aspx?recordid=4296&page=640

Tot Lot sketches
http://www.albanyca.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=15364

I love your idea of having a day alloted to working at the tot lot to perhaps add additional traction paint for the steps, to put in even more greenery, and to get rid of more concrete.  

Emilie, I know you are getting ready to do a story on the community effort here for the Albany Patch, so you should know that the Parks and Rec. Dept. sent a letter to all the neighbors saying that a City Hall Meeting is planned for 10/14 at 7pm.  Not sure I can make it as I have a PTA mtg. at Cornell, but I hope that the spirit of what we neighbors wanted to do is captured, and that the City and Rec. Dept. learn the following:

1) The plants that were donated were specifically requested to be non-invasive, urban strength, drought tolerant and non-troublesome over time.

2) Neighbors donated compost and mulch, which is in the spirit of the greening of Albany.

3) Paint was donated by Pastime Hardware in El Cerrito, and the vast majority of it is paint which is designed for covering exterior cement/garages and metal.

The businesses which donated plants were: Westbrae Nursery and Magic Gardens, Berkeley Horticulture and Yabusaki’s Dwight Way Nursery gave a significant discount, and East Bay Nursery donated seeds – native wildflowers which may appear next spring.

There is still a gallon and a half of industrial, exterior primer if the City wants any parts of it re-done, etc. and 2 gallons of the same quality of blue.

The ultimate goal is for us to expand the vision of the greening of Albany, partnering with the City to make better use of our parks, schools, curb strips and public land.  We welcome the guidance and direction of the City in making this a safe process.

Sincerely,

Joanna

I will be at the meeting on the 14th and speak to a few of these issues. Other than doing some minor pruning on some of the street trees I have not done too much with the Tot Lot. I look forward to hearing what others have to say.

This is a difficult area to work in (small with children). The biggest obstacle is the sand. It’s everywhere. Can we figure out some way of containing the sand? I would also recommend that we do a Saturday dedicated to the Tot Lot and surrounding blocks – plant trees and other plants, clean-up areas, prune existing trees and shrubs, maybe paint. We could also remove some concrete the week before.

-Tony

Tony Wolcott
Urban Forester
City of Albany
Board Certified Master Arborist
ISA#WE3284
(510) 559-4275
Fax – (510) 524-9722
Email twolcott@albanyca.org

NOW on twitter and Facebook Fan page – TreeMan_Tony

I did a search on newegg.com by most reviewed and came away with these two. What say you?

LINKSYS WRT54GL – $45 but not Wireless-N :{
D-Link DIR-655 – Comes with a high gain antenna

I then went looking at outdoor antennas and came across this HAWKING HAO9SIP for $90. Will it work as one of the antenna for either of the routers above?

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On a side note, the Linksys can be bundled with the ooma VoIP phone (meaning the router is $6!). Tsan uses the ooma and loves it. She no longer pays for a land line and says her calls are clear as a bell! Since we are thinking of dropping ATT, I was going to grab one from Costco to check out. Newegg, of course, offers a better deal. Do you have any thoughts on this product?

I was struck at the high level politics of the conversation, because a big part of my construct of marriage is very low level and personal. I noted in the conversation that tradition is tradition for a reason – it works. It may not work any more and that’s always something we have to think about, I was not advocating blindly follow tradition for its own sake, but before we do throw it out we should think hard about what we are tossing. Among other things, I think what makes marriage so useful in a selfish sense is that it is a path to personal growth, and its a kind of growth that leads to wisdom and fulfilment.

You can achieve significant personal growth in the ‘cauldron’ of marriage through intimacy, through commitment, through living life and facing its daily challenges, small or large, together (or not) There is something that comes of working together that is hard to get alone, and its not necessarily an easy thing to obtain, in fact I’d argue it takes a lot of hard work as does anything worth achieving. Its when you have differences that the growth opportunity is most available. While you can certainly be married and opt out of that (and not committing would be the biggest opt out, no judgement applied here), its pretty hard to have this kind of growth outside a committed relationship. We are social beings after all, and that’s why I think we obtain the most wisdom and maturity through working with each other.

I’d make the same argument about having kids, it provides a whole new set of growth opportunities that is pretty hard to access outside of parenthood.

tOOtie