Year: 2022

Categories
Places

Growth isn’t always good

I moved to Savannah from Missouri a couple of years ago. The city I moved from, O’Fallon, is the fastest growing city in Missouri. It shows, and not in a positive way.

We had little in the way of parks, few sidewalks, no bus system, and wall-to-wall stores and shopping centers (and offices). The roads are a mess, and the water/sewer utilities are a disaster.

One of the more famous parks, the Katy Trail which uses the old railroad system to create a walking and biking trail that crosses the state, was damaged when the county decided that heck yes, a developer can build mega-priced homes on the cliffs overlooking the trail.

It’s not a pleasant place to be solely because the county and the city value growth over quality of life.

So take it to heart when I warn you that growth isn’t always a positive thing.

Housing is an issue already in Savannah, as is strains on the necessary utilities to support a growing community. Savannah is already constrained by being bordered by an immovable object, Fort Stewart—not to mention the rivers, flood plains, and marshes. And I’ve heard many folks complain of too much development around already overcrowded roads and freeways. Big big houses on tiny matchbook sized lots, and all of it too expensive for the average citizen.

Savannah is not considered a good place to retire because of lack of adequate medical care.

The real question is: what does Savannah want to be when it grows up?

Does it want to be a major port with lot after lot full of containers and warehouses? Does it want to be an industry hub? Or does it want to be a quaint tourist town with lovely homes and parks and waterfront activities? How about being a new Hollywood or artsy academic center with SCAD?

All of these aren’t mutually exclusive…but it takes care and caution and planning to do it right. What I’m seeing now is less careful planning, and more of what happened to O’Fallon in Missouri. And once you’ve done the damage, there’s no going back.

Categories
Political

Putin: Russia’s Trump

Putin and Trump shaking hands
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the 2017 G-20 Hamburg Summit

Whatever we want to say about Putin from this moment forward, let’s all agree to no longer use the word ‘shrewd’ to describe him. Because his invasion of Ukraine was anything but shrewd.

Continue reading “Putin: Russia’s Trump”
Categories
Critters Legal, Laws, and Regs

Feld Entertainment Circus Elephants Finally Find a Home

Take equal parts dealing with Trump as President and then COVID and you have an explanation for why I didn’t notice that there was a piece of outstandingly good news beginning in 2020.

The Feld Entertainment/Ringling Brothers elephants I had written about in the past have finally found a good and loving home in a sanctuary in northern Florida.

For years I followed the animal welfare court cases related to Feld Entertainment’s indifferent and callous care of the elephants in the organization’s famous circus. I had though of writing a book on the longest of the court cases, Animal Welfare Institute (formerly ASPCA) vs. Feld Entertainment. Even today, one of my most popular web pages is a PDF listing incidents with elephants in circuses in North America.

When Kenneth Feld retired the Ringling Brothers Circus, and the circus elephants, they were out of sight out of mind but we all knew their care would continue to be indifferent, their future dismal.

Now, the elephants run free at the White Oak sanctuary, in a lovely home with lakes and forests and they’re no longer chained up for days at a time on cold concrete.

Though Feld Entertainment is attempting to paint themselves in the best light with this move, they sold the elephants to the sanctuary; they did not give the elephants to the sanctuary. I suspect the reason why is equal parts Feld’s daughters telling him to move on and the cost and upkeep of the elephants when Feld Entertainment was hit by COVID losses. Regardless of the underlying reasons behind it all, we can celebrate the fact that Feld no longer has elephants and the elephants, and we, can all move on to something better.

 

Categories
Photography

Out of this world…Pics

I posted a selection of my off-world photos on Facebook and thought I’d post here, too. After all, these pages could use a little color.

Most of the moon and solar photos were taken with a Nikon P900, a camera that is pure delight to use. I used a special filter for the solar shots to keep my camera, and my eye, from getting fried.

The eclipse photos were from the total eclipse in 2017 when I was living in St. Louis. Note that one points out a coronal ejection that was happening at the time of totality.

And the fuzzy orange photo is of Mars, taken with a fairly inexpensive telescope.

Half Moon

Sun and spots


Eclipse

solar eclipse partial

eclipse almost complete

 

coronal ejection

Tower and moon

Tower Moon

Tower Moon 1
 

Mars

Mars

Categories
Just Shelley

Do it yourself eye prescription

I’ve not had the best of luck finding new healthcare in Savannah. My dentist is good, but my vision exam was not. When I had a bad fall on both knees earlier, I made an appointment with an orthopedist in Richmond Hill, only to find out the doctor doesn’t work in that office. This, even though his web site states this is where he works. I just let my knees heal on their own.

But back to that eye exam…

I’ve not had drops in my eyes for an exam for decades, as I don’t deal well with the drops or with people coming all that close to my eyes. But the place I went to didn’t even allow me to discuss this with the optometrist, as the medical assistant jammed the drops into my eyes, practically holding me down and prying my eyes open.

Sure enough, when it came time for the refraction exam, it didn’t go that well. Drops make my eyes blurry. How can you determine which is better, A or B, when all are equally blurry?

The new prescription ended up being a puzzle because the optometrist wrote it out with a positive cylinder value, leading to a vastly different result for my left eye, which hasn’t suffered any degradation in vision. A little Google sleuthing and I discovered you typically only see positive cylinder values when an old time ophthalmologist does an eye exam, because the cylinder has to be converted to a negative value for the prescription. Once I converted the prescription, the left eye’s vision was the same.

The problem really is the right eye. It’s been off for some time, and very blurry with my existing prescription. Yes, it is true that I have the beginnings of a cataract in both eyes, but not enough to really impact on vision. The new prescription showed that I have the same prescription for both right and left, and same cylinder, but the right eye is much weaker, more off, than the left.

I ordered a pair of glasses from an online shop and when I received them, I wasn’t surprised to find that the vision in the right hadn’t improved nearly enough. It’s still blurry, still feels off. I tried them for over a month, and my eyesight just didn’t improve.

I wasn’t going back to the original optometrist, and I had my ‘free’ eye exam for the year (2021). I’m not that concerned about cost, but I’m just not into struggling to find healthcare, yet again, in Savannah.

Instead, I did the geeky thing. I ordered an EyeQue vision test device. I did an eye test at home, just like in the 1895 Sears Catalog, with its complimentary eye exam to find the right eye glasses to order. However,  instead of paper, my device utilized my smartphone.

The device is not the easiest to figure out how to use. It took me some time to discover that you have to tilt the device until you see both a green and red bar, that looking straight into the device doesn’t work for everyone. And getting the phone app to change to the next test required the absolute right sequence and finger pressure. Once I had all this down, though, it was a piece of cake.

(Kind of stale cake at that point, but whatevs.)

I didn’t take one test. I actually took ten separate tests. The app summarizes all of the tests into your new prescription.

Again, very little change for my left eye. A slight change in the axis, but not enough to really matter that much. It’s the right eye that changed from the prescription the optometrist gave me. Not hugely, but a difference.

Where before both eyes had a spherical value of -3.00, now my right had a value of -3.25. And both cylinders were -.50 with the optometrist prescription, but my right eye was -.75 with the EyeQue test.

I ordered the exact same glasses (progressive) from the eye place, but with the new prescription. It’s an improvement. It’s not a perfect improvement, but will do until I can go to a different optometrist in a few months time.

The concept of a do-it-yourself eye test at home is a good one. We may only need to see an eye doctor every couple of years to check the health of our eyes, but our prescriptions can change in the meantime. The EyeQue people are on the right track. The device isn’t without bugs, but they’re already at work on version 2. And if the price isn’t too high, I’ll probably give that one a shot, too.