In Pursuit of Special Interest

I love my town!  We have so much history, great people and wonderful activities.  There are so many opportunities to volunteer and we have awesome committees and commissions in the borough.  The restaurants and businesses, that are here and thriving, are some of the best around.    Our fire departments and police departments are simply fantastic and help serve in the community along with their regular duties, but there comes a time when we stretch these entities too thin with too many obligations.  Public works becomes an around the clock job and commerce is interrupted for an activity that is not necessary nor is it an established event in which the above mentioned are prepared for in advance.

For instance it is rumored around town that there is to be a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.  Now while that might sound like a lot of fun and bring citizens together on a holiday, but the added pressure it will place on our police force is not something that any group that is given the responsibility to protect and serve a community should have to deal with.   The trot would take place on a Thursday morning which means that officers that are on night shift Wednesday night will complete their 7pm to 7am shift and then be held over till 11am.  Once the trot is over with they will be allowed to return home for 8 hours to eat a bit of turkey, sleep maybe 5 hours, shower and report for duty at 7pm again Thursday night.  It is true that every job has sacrifices and that we all have to make them, but I am not sure that I want someone who is carrying a gun to be forced to work under those conditions because a special interest group  decides that we need yet another activity on a holiday. .  Public Works will also have to work overtime to place barriers and remove them along with trash cleanup instead of spending time with their families and friends on this special day.   Yes, Downingtown has wonderful holiday celebrations such as the Christmas Parade, Ghost Walk, Good Neighbor Day and the like, but these things are in the schedule way beyond and past what some of us can even remember.  The police are ready to serve on those days and rarely is it like the above scenario.  The Ghost Walk does not even need police presence and very little from Public Works.  Good Neighbor Day is synonymous with Downingtown and the 4^th of July and the Christmas Parade benefits each business on Lancaster Ave that choses to stay open that day.  But what benefit do we gain from forcing officers to work less than reasonable hours?

There is a race scheduled for the last Saturday in October that sounds like a great idea until one realizes that it possibly will close down streets where commerce is present and will cause money to be lost to those employees and the borough.  Normally most of the businesses are closed on holidays so parades and activities don’t interfere with the buying and selling of goods.  However, to have a 5K race on a non-holiday weekend which is the end of the month a time when a lot of businesses close their books for that month, there is no benefit other than to the race promoters and to whom the money will go.  I’m wondering if the registration fee will go to pay the money that will be lost to employees of any of the major (and minor) businesses while the race is going on.

I guess that my peeve is that while activities and events can be fun, entertaining and a draw for the future what good does it do when in the end it costs us, the taxpayers, so much more.

Do You Remember?

I can still tell you the exact timetable of my day on September 11, 2001.  I am sure many of us can and when we really think about it the pain is still a little raw even after 11 years.  How can you be older than 14 and not remember some little piece of that day?

Yet today I came across something disturbing to the memory of that day.....conspiracy!  There are still people out there that think that the government killed all those people.  That there were no planes and no terrorists that day, just explosives and operatives.  Jesse Ventura is one of the conspiracy nuts who would like you to believe that, yet again, it's all Bush's fault.  Intelligent, or at least what I assumed were intelligent people still hold on to the deluded assumption that this was all one big cover up for a governmental boo boo.  Most of these people don't reside on the East Coast or even in NY.  They did not see the planes hitting the towers or the crater in the ground from Flight 93 or hear the messages to home and a final, "Let's Roll!"  I am not sure how they can still hold on to an idea that has been debunked by better people than I such as Popular Mechanics whom in 2008 gave their conclusions based on the NIST Report.  People who know how buildings work and fire destroys and metal does collapse with intense heat and yet there are those who poo poo these very facts and chose to believe that it was all a set up.

I do not put my whole trust in the government, but with engineers and architects who state unequivocally that the towers came down because of the heat, that the Pentagon had a plane flown into it and there is a crater in PA because some brave souls saved more lives than were lost, I cannot understand how anyone could be so deaf, dumb and blind.

The thing that makes me the angriest is that instead of keeping these deluded ideas to themselves on a day that should be for remembrance of lives lost they have to try and infect future generations with their, OK I will say it, whacked idea of what happened that day.  Instead, shut your mouth, bow your head and say a prayer for the souls that were lost, because after I am done with that I will pray that YOU find clarity.

Kardon Park Yet Again

Downingtown Does does such a nice job breaking this down for you all I am not going to even try and do a better job.  However I ask those on BOTH sides of the issue to please be respectful in your responses and PLEASE come up with different arguments than the same ones that have been overused in the last few years.


The ongoing saga of the controversial Kardon Park redevelopment project has taken a new twist. On Fri, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ordered the Chester County Court of Common Pleas to “vacate” and “remand” their earlier decision denying the Borough of Downingtown from selling Kardon Park to a private developer.

You may be asking yourself, what does that mean? In layman’s terms, the higher court ordered the lower court to go back and reconsider their earlier decision. Specifically, Chesco’s Orphans Court needs to go back over their original decision with new guidance given to them from PA’s Commonwealth Court. To better get an understanding of what got us to this point, let’s take a look on how we got here.
Court Gives Kardon Park a Second Chance/Downingtown Does

The Needs of the Few?

I am confused…..for months now we have been hearing about Sandusky and JoePa and the Freeh report and how we need to protect the children and now it comes down from the NCAA that Penn State wins from 1998 are wiped out and no bowl games for four years….can someone tell me how that is protecting the children?  People and a program that had NOTHING to do with the scandal are being punished, I must be slow because that seriously does not compute. 

I used to be a big Star Trek fan and there was always a line that Spock said that made complete sense to me, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”  Now we have the NCAA considering the needs of the few and hurting the needs of the many.  This is going to help the victims?  How?  Young men who played their hearts for their school for over 14 years are now the scapegoat for a sick twisted individual and mistakes made by others.  I am not getting this.

I am not excusing JoePa, but what gets me is that he is now dead and can be easily thrown under the bus for the cause.  His statue is now gone and his reputation is tarnished because he did too little.  So I guess he should have beaten Sandusky to a pulp?  Should he have fired him?  Yes, but did anyone stop to think that maybe Joe did not think that a man he had known all those years could do something like that.  How many of you have heard of or had it happen to you where a rumor or an accusation ruined your career or reputation forever or for even a little while on heresy?  Joe went to the people he thought would take care of the situation and THEY did nothing.  Should he have done more, probably, but to vilify him and then say he defrauded the university and the people?  Really?

Now those out for vengeance have drawn first blood.  They have stripped a PROGRAM because an INDIVIDUAL was sick.  That is plain wrong, inappropriate and devastatingly the move of a public with seriously misplaced anger.  Why aren’t you calling for all the monies that Sandusky and his family were given to be given back to the victims?  Why is the outrage not focused on him and the young assistant coach who reported Sandusky to his father and then to JoePa?

Not only does the situation make me sick that people like Sandusky exist, but those who want a school to suffer, a program to suffer, other kids to suffer, for the actions a few people makes me ill to my very core.  Serious evil exists in this world when people like Sandusky walk the earth, but it also exists when others want suffering of people who had no hand in the crime.

Throw the Dead Man Under the Bus

I have watched the whole Penn State scandal and then listened to the Freeh report this morning and I have to say that I am disappointed and a bit angry.  First of all let me put a disclaimer here so as to not be accused of making light of a serious situation.  As for what has gone on it's appalling to me that people would want to blame the dead man.  Joe Paterno is being painted as the bad guy in this whole sick twisted situation because he is not alive to defend himself and I find it pitiful that the Freeh Report came out as it did and the media is now eating it up that Paterno is a horrible human because he allegedly did nothing.  Why are we not blaming who actually committed the crime and the young man who witnessed behavior that was not in the least appropriate?  JoePa was allegedly told that Sandusky was dealing with young boys in a manner that no one would approve of,  he did his due diligence, he told the administrators and they chose to do nothing.  McCreary witnessed the acts and went to his father and then to JoePa.......why not to the police?  Social Services?  The parents of the child?  Yet JoePa is now the scapegoat and is conveniently not here to defend himself.  This opens the gate for survivors to sue the Paterno estate.  How is that going to wind up being fair?  Paterno's widow had nothing to do with this whole issue and she and her children have every right to live out the rest of their lives quietly and with dignity. 

We as a society are constantly looking for someone to point a finger at when something goes horribly wrong instead of taking responsibility for ourselves or placing it where it should go, on the individual who committed the act.  Joe Paterno gave decades of his life to that school and money to boot.  His players were expected to be upstanding young men and for years and years Penn State football was a respected program, now because one coach chose to sabotage his career, reputation and life we are all ready to sully a good man's story.  How are we much better than the hate mongers that we propose to despise?  Not much.

Get Your Facts Straight

Just out of curiosity I did a google search when one of the residents of Johnsontown created a picture of the present day train station and the old one.  Then the discussion moved to when that one had burned down.  What I found were not facts about that incident, but some disturbing blogs and ill thought out articles stating that Downingtown did not need a new train station because the present one was less than 20 years old.  Skimming some of the blogs it was evident that none of the writers had even seen the station in it's present state.  I wanted to set these people straight but I wasn't about to log on to every blog account out there or register for every news service that I could.  So I come here.

Yes, it's true the train station is only a little over 20 years old.  However, it is not ADA compliant and it is the only one on the R-5 line that is not.  The pass through tunnel smells like a urinal on good days and I try and stay away from it on really hot ones, and parking and traffic can be quite challenging on any given day the line is running.  The other misinformed bloggers also complained that D'town had 213 parking spaces.  What they did not mention is that there are quite a few people that are dropped off and or walk to the station from various parts of town.  The station is sometimes only a mile away from different sections of D'town.  It was also not mentioned that parking for the train station also limits the spaces available for Johnsontown Park goers to put their vehicles.

I will tell you that I am staying skeptical about the new station, but this is only because I am waiting to see what they propose to do with the old once it is built.  The west end of town tends to be a forgotten entity and it has taken the hard work of many residents to bring it to the forefront even in the small capacity that it is now being recognized and I am sure along with many residents of particularly Johnsontown we don't want an eyesore existing at one of the entrances to our little burg.  However with that being said I challenge these bloggers and news people to actually come and see the present station, watch the flow of traffic, see how many spaces are used and how many people walk, and then try and get a wheelchair up to the platform.  Then and only then can they accurately describe what our 20 year old station is like.  Don't speculate people, you don't do it well.

For Everyone

Tomorrow there will be a parade in Downingtown and then a short service at the memorial for which I am profoundly glad that I live in a town that recognizes the sacrifices of those who have served and gave their all.  Today while at the ceremony in Marinelli Park I was reflecting on not only the young men and women who have gone before us, but those who are still here who served and are still serving our great country.   I guess the moment that it truly hit me was when I watched my husband wipe away a tear after the singing of the National Anthem.....he gave up a few years of his life so that we could have a ceremony like that one and then I really looked around and saw the others who were there, standing in the shade, or sitting in a chair or on a bench and leaning on a cane and I wanted to give each of them the biggest hug that I could muster.  I respect those so much who gave their lives, but the horrors of war for them are over, yet men and women all over are still here and carry a pain in their hearts that none of us will ever know.

I am sure that every Memorial Day and Veterans Day they relive what they endured for our freedom, yet we don't thank them enough in our everyday lives........when you can go to church services and then attend a ceremony, you can say that you disagree with our governmental leaders or to peruse the Internet without fear of someone breaking down your door because you have gone to a place that you cannot.  So today I would like to say thank you to them men who worked for hours this morning cleaning up the Memorial in Kerr Park, I would like to say thank you to my husband for the time that he spent keeping us safe, I would like to say thank you to the gentleman whose chair we carried to the circle so he could attend the goings on, and I would like to say thank you to those whose lives are still in the line of fire because without you, I could not do the things I do and say out loud "I am proud to be an American!"