My Quiet Life

So, I’m watching all the (deserved) turmoil over the rape in the bicentennial mall and the lack of regular patrolling there. (See S-Town Mike for good coverage of this.)

I’ve also been observing the treatment of the Church Street Park and their efforts to remove the homeless uh birds. (See Kevin for more on this.), which has resulted in a marked increase in police presence, as well as an army of Downtown Partnership Segway-ed “safety ambassadors”.

It seems the solution here is obvious. We need to get more homeless people hanging out in the bicentennial mall. Evidence suggests that this would have it staffed and patrolled in short order.

I had been doing some reading recently on macro stuff, and I had never realized that there’s a cheapo way to get into macro photography: a reversing ring. This is simply something that screws into the front threads on a lens and lets you mount the lens backwards on the body. They’re only like $6 or so, but I am impatient (not cheap, just impatient). So, I made my own. I recently bought a Nikon EM at a pawn shop, and it has a nice 50/1.8 prime on it. It has an aperture ring on the lens itself, which makes it an ideal candidate, since when you mount a lens backwards, obviously you lose all the electronic communication with it. So, if you want to mount a Canon lens backwards, you have to shoot wide-open all the time. Bogus. So, anyways, the Nikon lens is also a good candidate because it also came with a cheap (and scratched up) UV filter that I could use to make the mount. So, I smashed the glass out of the UV filter (this was remarkably satisfying) and cleaned it up. I then took a body-cap from my dead D30 (yes, I still have it, I have no idea why. RIP little buddy) and dremeled out a hole slightly smaller than the size of the filter ring. A little hot-glue (with a glue gun purchased at www.glu-stix.com, which is AWESOME) to attach it, and voila:

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Project365 update:

Some of these are available for print-purchase at chriswage.com, if you feel so inclined. (Which you do)

So, there’s an anti-panhandling ordinance going before the metro council this next week. I’d encourage you to call your councilperson to let them know you disapprove. Why? Here’s what the ordinance legislates:

A. It prohibits any VERBAL REQUEST for a donation within proximity to

1. Any bus stop;
2. Any sidewalk café;
3. Any area within twenty-five (25) feet (in any direction) of an automatic teller machine or entrance to a bank;
4. Any public or private school;
5. Within ten (10) feet of a point of entry to or exit from any building open to the public, including commercial establishments; or
6. On any private property where “No Solicitation” signs are posted.

B. It prohibits any form of panhandling in any place before dawn and after dusk.

C. It prohibits aggressive panhandling as defined in ordinance.

What are the problems with this? Well, first of all, a lot of what it legislates against are all already illegal. What is “aggressive panhandling”? According to the ordinance:

To approach or speak to a person in such a manner as would cause a reasonable person to believe that the person is being threatened with:
1. Imminent bodily injury; or
2. The commission of a criminal act upon the person or another person, or upon property in the person’s immediate possession;
b. To persist in panhandling after the person solicited has given a negative response;
c. To block, either individually or as part of a group of persons, the passage of a solicited person;
d. To touch a solicited person without the person’s consent;

Many of these are illegal already. This is a pervasive thread with the whole issue of “safety” regarding panhandling. When was the last time you were assaulted by someone panhandling? And if you were, how would that not already be illegal and something that would merit immediate police response? Answer: it wouldn’t. This legislation has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with discrimination.

Then there’s the fact that a lot of this ordinance may not pass constitutional muster. See Smith v. City of Fort Lauderdale, 177 F.3d 954, 956 (11th Cir. 1999); Loper v. New York City Police Dept., 999 F.2d 699, 704 (2d Cir. 1993); Gresham v. City of Indianapolis, 225 F.3d 899, 904 (7th Cir. 2000), Int’l Soc’y for Krishna Consciousness v. Lee, 505 U.S. 672, 678 (1992), etc. Speech on public sidewalks is one of the highest forms of protected speech.

I am going to ask some hard questions, now. Does this legislation help anything? I hear a lot of crowing about people feeling “threatened” by “aggressive panhandlers”. Does this legislation make affronts to your safety “more illegal”? What’s the value in that? Is this legislation going to magically make a police officer closer to help out if you are being assaulted? No. This anti-panhandling ordinance is a seriously misguided attempt to legislate away a problem that can’t be fixed that way. And it does so by threatening to infringe on the liberties of everyone in the process.

This is interesting:

How will I pay my bills when I have a need? You explain to your care providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) that you do not have insurance and that you are a self-pay patient. The providers send their bills directly to you. You organize the bills, complete a Need Processing Form, and submit them to Samaritan Ministries. We will publish your need in the newsletter, and the members assigned to your need will be asked to send their monthly shares directly to you through the mail. You can use the money you receive in paying your bills.

Via S-town Mike:

The Mayor is willing to support a proposal which provides $3,000,000 in new resources [to the Nashville Predators] for a total of over $6,700,000 per year for five years for the operation of the arena, plus incentive payments [50% of Metro revenues] for improved performance through the efforts of the local ownership group.

Wow, that’s a lot of money. Anyone want to take any bets as to whether we fund the Barnes’ plan for a Affordable Housing Trust Fund ($5 mil a year)? Maybe we’ll get around to fixing our homeless/housing problem next decade. Who needs bread when you have circuses? Oh, I know what you’re going to say. The predators being in Nashville will be good for commerce, which will boost tax revenue! It will trickle down. Just like it did from the old convention center. And the symphony hall. And the new convention center. And the (now-defunct) baseball park. I get it. It was a cute trick, but we really shouldn’t be falling for it anymore. When do we get off the merry-go-round ride of revenue-raising and middle-class luxury-item building and actually, you know, provide civic services and infrastructure that will sustain a healthy community? Anyone know?

But hey, at least we have a hockey team.

Sondre Lerche looks like he’s about 12. Who knew? I [heart] Sondre Lerche.

See also this and this.

I just finished watching Robert Altman’s Nashville. Finally. Holy fuck, what a boring movie. That’s two hours of my life I’m never going to get back. What was the point of it? What did I even just watch? It was like a movie about Nashville, filmed in Nashville, written and directed by people that knew nothing about Nashville. And nothing happens. So yeah, I didn’t like it.

It was cool to see some old shots of Nashville, though. Got to see my neighborhood in 1975. There was a giant billboard on 1st & Broadway where the flags are now.

So, I have been distantly following the goings-on of the Urban Residents Association, the Downtown Partnership, and the saga of the Church Street Park. The Church Street Park is (well, was) full of homeless people, see. And this is bad for business, and blech who likes to look at poor people, right? So, the URA and the Downtown Partnership have been pretty vocal that we “do something” about “the problem”. I’ve done my share of ranting about this in the past, so I won’t recap all that. But, basically, the city was eventually cajoled into basically razing (sorry, remodeling) the park. Trees were razed, comfortable benches were ripped out, all in the interest of discouraging homeless people from hanging out there. So what’s left is this rather ugly abomination. A lot of the people that hung out there are now hanging out underneath the Shelby Street bridge next to my apartment complex. (They didn’t just disappear! Shocker!) However, even here, now, they’ve posted signs that now the park (benches) under the bridge closes at 11PM. That should take care of our homeless problem — unless of course they continue existing and just go somewhere else. But I digress. Sorry, I’m trying to keep my sarcasm off. So, anyways. Today I get this e-mail from the URA:

We haven’t scheduled any official programming yet for Church Street Park…………

But we can still come out and play in the Park right away!

Come join us tomorrow, Saturday November 10 between 11:00AM and 3:00PM.

We have some games, bring your own if you want.

Dogs and kids welcome, Everyone is welcome!

I’ll see you in the Park!

How cute, they’re reclaiming the park, now that it’s been rid of the filthy vermin. “Everyone is welcome!” Somehow, I don’t think that’s exactly true. So, of course, you know what I’m thinking. My inner provocateur is thinking it’s time for a homeless field trip to the Church Street Park. Sadly meaningless provocation is rarely a good way to effect change. Still, the idea of an NHPP assemblage or something at the park tomorrow is very amusing to me right now.

I really liked the way this picture turned out:

Unfortunately there was some crap all over my sensor that I had to clonebrush out, so the sky is a little fucked..