Jewel weed the best antidote after poison ivy exposure

Please click on image to ENLARGE view of flower of the shade-loving jewel weed, the best remedy or preventative for poison ivy in the natural world.

Got to see a couple of vehicles more turn left by swinging right with the median and then crossing MLK and swinging west

I don't plan to stay up all night and watch this dangerous intersection register its first fatality. I won't call 911 tonight. The emergency is just the need to educate these upper classmen. I doubt there are enough traffic cops on duty to post one near enough to ticket a few dozen of these and put the fear of FPD into the rest. Maybe a call to Frank Broyles would get him to call the head football coach, whoever that is this year, and have him explain driving rules to the Razorbacks who are living at Hill Place. Frank knows the place well. He spoke in praise of Aspen Ridge not long before he spoke AGAINST a multifamily project in his old neighborhood. And he donated a bunch of Hog memorabilia to Hill Place for its recreational center.
http://www.HillPlaceApts.com/gallery.aspx
Please click on images to ENLARGE view of north lane of Royal Oak Parkway on August 21, 2009.

Hill Place student-apartment residents have been quieter tonight than earlier in the week but driving hasn't improved

Please click on image to ENLARGE view of the full-size, clearly readable left-turn-only sign on Royal Oak Dead (just north of the site where the giant oak for which the street is named stood until the Aspen Ridge contractors killed it).
I watched three student cars use that exit and each turned left. Someone told me that no freshmen or sophomores are allowed to live off campus. So I was surprised to see non-readers driving out of there tonight. Cars passing on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard were honking at the violators, but that seemed to be no deterrent. I don't have time to watch that intersection and don't want to see an accident, so I went home quickly.
There is no excuse for residents off Hill Place student apartments not to go less than a block to Hill Avenue and go up to the traffic light. The lanes for people turning left, right or going straight there are wide and the light offers some protection. Of course, even after the city required the contractors to widen the street by about 2 feet on the west side, that lane for people heading south on Hill Avenue remains the narrowest of the three. That makes it hard to turn in there without using a part of the northbound turn lane, so people traveling east on MLK but planning to turng south have quickly caught on to the east of turning into Hill Place right after traveling under the railroad to avoid the narrow turn lane onto Hill.

University of Arkansas speaker's message won't please those desperate to pass a millage increase during a depression to build a new high school

August 28, 2009
Steven A. Peterson, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg
Lecture Title: Building Construction Expenditures and Student Performance
Suggested Readings
Stephen A. Peterson. "Building Construction Expenditures and Student Performance: A Research Note." Prepared for Presentation at the University of Arkansas, August 28th, 2009.
Eric A. Hanushek "School Resources." Handbook of the Economics of Education, Vol. 2, 2006
Department of Education. "Impact of Inadequate School Facilities on Student Learning." Last updated: April 3, 2000.
Mark Schneider. "Do School Facilities Affect Academic Outcomes?" National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, November 2002.
Glen I. Earthman. "School Facility Conditions and Student Academic Achievement." A Research Report prepared by UCLA's Institute for Democracry, Education, & Access, 2002.


Peterson's comments near end of his paper linked above:
"One lesson that I came away with from this and other research that I have done on
students’ achievement is that there really does not appear to be a single “magic bullet” that will
transform the system in terms of effectiveness.
Do the results reported here mean that school districts should not carry out building
construction projects—whether renovations or new construction? Obviously not. We do not
want our children studying and learning in unsafe conditions or in conditions that leave them in
considerable discomfort. So, building projects should be examined on their merits, as to what
makes the most sense for students and the district itself. However, one should not carry out large
scale construction on the belief that that will have a considerable impact on students’ academic
performance. The data here simply do not support that linkage. In other regression equations that
I developed, building construction had little impact on alternative measures of achievement (note
the lack of relationships in the second half of Table 1; even using multivariate analysis to double
check, I detected no effect of building construction on these other metrics of performance)."

Read it all and check Peterson's sources. His conclusions are those I hear from the best-educated people I know

Karst map of NW Arkansas significant tool for identifying green infrastructure deserving of protection

Please click on images to ENLARGE 10 a.m. Thursday, August 20, 20009,l view of muddy water running from the new trail site carrying silt from red dirt and tan "topsoil" spread in past couple of days on the edges of the trail through Pinnacle Prairie. An intense but short-lived thunderstorm had passed over the area at about 9 a.m.

Despite protests from neighbors, the sifted, tan non-organic "topsoil" was spread on the trail edges on August 19, 2009

Please click on sunset image of Pinnacle Prairie trail on August 19, 2009. The non-natural alleged topsoil has been spread over the non-natural red-dirt, gravel, clay and debris mix and the the big machines are gone for the day. Not a pretty sight.

Pinnacle Foods' wet prairie trail work disappointing because it disrespects a magnificent natural site

Please click on images of Pinnacle Prairie trail with red dirt and gravel along the right of way and the trail edge cut by truck tires dumping dirt along the edges.
The top photo (view east to 12th Street) shows a pile of silty soil moved from the grading off of the new park land. The contractors insist that the city requires the use of this soil regardless of where a project is done. No one has explained where the tan, sifted dirt comes from or who sells it to the city and the contractors. It may be useful in some parts of town but is WRONG on black-dirt prairie land.

The second and third photos (view south) show damaged blacktop trail edge where truck drove off the trail to unload or load dirt.


The fourth photo shows red dirt packed right over the edge of the Soup Branch, which routes water east under the trail from the western, eastern and northwestern portion of Pinnacle Prairie.

The fifth photo shows a view south.

Exercise in futility costs taxpayers for material and labor

Dumping sifted, tan "topsoil" into people's yards, especially South College Avenue yards where the soil is mostly rich (and rapidly becoming rare around here) prairie black dirt is a waste of city money for the material and for the labor. Doing it at a time when thunderstorms are on the radar is shortsighted (at a minimum) and wasteful and impolite to the homeowners.
Please click on images to ENLARGE view of "soil" piled up ready to erode onto yards and down the street if rain comes tonight or tomorrow.



The real question of course is why was this curb and gutter project not squashed. Surely, the people in the transportation department know that an ordinance\ making curb and gutter only an option is in the works.

Pretty flowers and ugly tan dirt spilled into yards and S. College Avenue

Please click on images to ENLARGE view of nice white flowers and store-bought topsoil spread from curb down into yards along South College Avenue.