I have an old friend who helps run the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, which is first class and only a two hour drive away. But, they don’t have fairies.

And Woody if you fly in from Atlanta, I’ll be happy to comp him a couple of tickets. It might do you some good – make you a little less uptight:) You’ll get to see some great theatre, have a picnic, and watch people dressed in fairy costumes flutter about while you eat.

LR, not sure the kid tax thingy would fly. But, hey, there’s a provocative Op Ed waiting to be written! People would came at you with all manner of projectiles but it would certainly open up an interesting discussion.

We have more than enough people living in S. California, time to try and limit population growth. I would change the tax laws, people should have to pay more taxes for each kid, not less. And of course we need a lot more MTA trains all over S. Calif. The majority of driving is commuting for work, not sure how you fix that, even if you move close to work, the job probaly won’t last long and you will be freeway commuting again.

Most “suburban sprawl” towns have their own school district, local stores/shopping and some jobs.

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/709231/

You do live next to the Theatricum Botanicum. That’s something!

On the other hand, we have lots of building regulations as it is, some smart, some driven by fear of liability. I’d welcome some wiser planning.

And when you look at some of the Smart Growth stuff it’s kind of interesting, and seems community oriented and possibly more functional, from a human perspective, as well as from an environmental impact POV. I honestly don’t know enough to have a strong opinion, but I do know that the path of least resistance isn’t always the right one and I don’t think our suburban sprawl has been ideal.

Where I go up in Montana (my mother’s from MT), it’s much more of a multi-use situation, although people have plenty of yard space, and we have a river in our back yard. But a lot of the places we have to go for day-to-day needs plus the elementary school are within walking or biking distance. There’s much more of a community feel.

Obviously, a sparsely populated state like Montana is never going to be analogous to So Cal, but wiser planning seems like a worthy goal. Whether or not this bill represents wise planning or not, I don’t know. I was first introduced to this whole notion when I got curious about what Jerry Brown was doing.

But check out this link.

http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/

And heaven knows we’re all sick of the traffic. So what should we do?