It’s time to mow down the real problems

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/grass_24583___article.html/jail_glenn.html

It’s time to mow down the real problems
June 23, 2008 - 4:28PM
David Trinko
The hardened criminal looks over at the new guy at the Allen County Jail.
"What're you in here for?" the career crook asks.
The new guy, serving his first term in the slammer, replies simply, "Grass."
"Oh yeah? How much?" responds the long-timer.
"Six inches," answers Mr. I Didn't Mow My Lawn.
This conversation could be coming to a jail cell near you, courtesy of Lima's 6th Ward councilor, Derry Glenn. Glenn announced Friday he wants Lima to adopt a law similar to one passed in Canton.
The Canton version makes a second violation of the city's high-grass ordinance a fourth-degree misdemeanor, carrying a $250 fine and up to 30 days in jail.
It's already a no-no to blow off cutting your lawn. After getting an initial warning, offenders get a fine from $50 to $350, plus the costs of inspection. That makes a grand total of about $500, not including the city paying someone to cut your grass.
Still, Glenn seems to be playing in the high grass here. If money isn't enough incentive to get property owners to whack their weeds, is jail time going to make that much of a difference? Or, to whip out bigger words, how does criminalizing a problem solve it when monetizing doesn't?
Glenn's idea is full of shortcomings. As Amy Odum, Lima's community development director, said, the hard part is finding absent homeowners to make them responsible.
The problem gets worse as there are more and more foreclosures. Odum estimated 65 percent of the homes where she's heard complaints were vacant or abandoned.
It's also nice to see a councilor focused on an issue when there's already a law addressing it. And, oh yeah, the law can send someone to jail if necessary.
Then there's the issue of putting extra burden on an already sluggish legal system. We don't really need to fill the Allen County Jail up with people who skipped a mowing. We ought to spend our efforts on people who sell grass, as in marijuana, than the ones who're sloppy about mowing schedules.
It's also hard to get behind Glenn in deciding what the standard should be. If a home is a man's castle, he should have some voice in how high the moat is.
I know I agitate my neighbors by cutting my grass with nearly the lowest setting on the lawnmower. My grass never looks as green or as full as theirs, but I can get away with a week and a half between mowings if I must.
Quite simply, we shouldn't trample over a property owner's right.
We keep dancing around the same problems over and over. Everyone wants to live in a utopia except for the people keeping it from being one.
We want fewer drugs on the street. We want safer neighborhoods. We want the grass mowed and a picket fence on every block.
By going after the people who poorly maintain their properties, Glenn's going after the symptom, not the disease.
To accomplish these things, we simply need to be better neighbors to one another.
We had some pretty bad neighbors for a few years as I grew up. At one point, they had nearly a foot of grass in their yard.
My dad's solution to this eyesore was simple: He told me to mow down our neighbor's yard, first with a weed-whacker and then the mower. Then he told me to stick a note on their front door: "If your mower's broke, feel free to borrow ours. Or we can mow it for you."
That grass never got higher than 4 inches again. We never had to get the authorities involved. We invoked something more powerful: Community pride.
When crimes occur in Lima, police ask the community to speak up to bring people to justice.
When people are in need here, friends and neighbors come together to help, be it financially or emotionally. On any given weekend you can find a benefit dinner or auction for someone going through a tough time.
There is no power greater here than the power of the community.

Finding a reason for freakishly long arms

http://www.limaohio.com/articles/arms_24063___article.html/long_freakishly.html

Finding a reason for freakishly long arms
June 9, 2008 - 6:43PM
David Trinko
My arms are freakishly long.
I can touch my knees without bending over. Long-sleeve shirts never fit right. I can't hold my wife's hand without bending my elbow.
Generally accepted knowledge says your wingspan - that distance from the tip of one middle finger to the tip of that same finger on the other outstretched arm - is roughly the same as your height.
My wingspan is 72 inches, or 6 feet. My height is 69 inches, or 5 feet 9 inches. I could never understand where those extra three inches came from.
A girl at school used to call me "Daddy Longlegs" because my arms and legs were so long and unwieldy.
Most of my woes come with clothes. At 5-9, I'm the average height of a man in the United States. Needing a 37-inch arm, however, makes finding clothes very difficult. Even when I do find them, my arms are long, not my torso. Countless shirts have pockets resting on my gut.
In high school, my older brother and I could generally wear the same long-sleeved shirts. That's awkward, since he's nearly 6 inches taller than I am.
I have a closet full of gifts from well-meaning girlfriends and family who tried to get large shirts, knowing they'd be big enough around the waist but not realizing they'd be several inches too short in the arms.
And girlfriends could be troublesome. When your arms are several inches longer than someone you're dating, it's hard to hold a hand in a movie or while you're walking.
I'm self-conscious enough about my freakishly long arms that I bend my elbows when I walk, so people can't see them dangle. When I once told a co-worker at a past job I could touch my knees without bending over, the whole office spent a week gawking at my arms as I walked by.
I could never understand why my arms were so freakishly long. It always seemed to be such a bother.
Now I think I've figured out why.
I'm rolling toward my third Father's Day as an honoree instead an adoring kid. And maybe those freakishly long arms were there for a reason all along.
While my arms are too long to hold hands with my wife without bending the elbow, they're the perfect length for taking our 6-year-old daughter for a walk through a crowded room.
They're also ideal for pulling a Crock-Pot out of the cupboard above the refrigerator when my wife requests my "monkey arms."
I can pull our baby daughter in and out of her crib without ever pushing down the crib's railing. And those same freakishly long arms can lift her near the ceiling, enjoying her giggles of delight throughout the arch upward.
Yes, my arms are freakishly long. It took a long time to figure out why. Now that I know, I wouldn't have them any other way.