If it looks like a park, and people sit in it like a park...

"[New York state's highest court] is making a big mistake even hearing the crazy anti-NYU lawsuit to designate strips of village streets as parkland," says The Daily News.

Hoping to block development, opponents focused on four strips of land... Owned by the city Department of Transportation... DOT let the Parks Department manage the properties on the condition that DOT could reclaim them. Now, the city plans to give NYU use of the strips to get into and out of the construction site � then rehabilitate them with full park designation.

Here is where the opponents� loony claims enter the picture. They say that, because the land looks like a park, and because people like to sit on the benches, it became a park with the full legal protections afforded to parkland. Although DOT holds title, although the law classifies the strips as streets, although the city repeatedly refused requests to convert them formally into parkland, the opponents say the parcels became parks simply because dogwalkers cleaned up after their animals there.

A unanimous Manhattan Appellate Division threw out the case by affirming that a property owner cannot lose control over land just because someone else likes to relax on it. Unbelievably, the Court of Appeals saw grounds to question such common sense.

Loony claims?

"I keep wanting to use the phrase, 'I need your help' but it's important to me to be honest."

"I don't need your help at all; I simply want your money to be spent in place of my own."

I have a problem with the "winner level":



There's no apostrophe in the possessive "its." I question the purity of the promised love.

"Unable to pay rent in L.A., I slept behind my desk. But what began as a quick financial fix soon became a lifestyle."

The pseudonymous Terry K. "secretly lived in my office for 500 days." (And by "my," he means the office provided by his employer.)

Living in the office had many unexpected perks. But it was far from a permanent solution. When the company started to show signs of budgetary collapse, I began to plan for my future. What did I want life to look like post-office?...

I had to read that last sentence 5 times before I understood it! I was like: What do I want my life to look like? Post office?!

Having spent over a year rent-free, I realized I valued how I spent my expenses differently. Dropping over a grand every month on a single budget item felt like it ought to result in overwhelming returns. Instead, the housing options were bland. Each had a laundry list of glaring flaws�aging units with no parking, thin walls with no outdoor space, poor walkability and a long commute. What�s more was the sense of entitlement on behalf of many landowners, like I was doing them a favor by handing over 40 percent of my income for a glorified doghouse. The transaction felt oddly imbalanced, a product of seriously misplaced supply and demand....

Ultimately, the company went under. I was part of the first round of layoffs. I lost my job and my home all in one, but I saved over $20,000 in living costs and 216 hours of commuting.

Terry K. now lives in a tiny house built on a truck... and blogs: here.

ADDED: I don't know how you can be a writer and write about this subject without mentioning "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street."

Madison's "Mifflin West" neighborhood is the #1 "Most Livable" neighborhood in the United States....

... according to the AARP. 

Condos and apartments blend with single-family houses in this eclectic neighborhood within walking distance of parks, lakes, shopping, a performing arts center, the state Capitol and all the university amenities. Minimal congestion, frequent buses. High voting rate.

New York's Upper West Side comes in second. Another Wisconsin place is #6: Washburn, La Crosse, Wisconsin.

It's street construction time around here.

I'm glad it's the small mountain of dirt that got placed in front of our house. Elsewhere, there's heavy machinery...



There's some noisy ripping up of everything getting started, but I'm thinking of the future. The curbs have been crumbled for the entire 30 years I've lived here. It will be startling to see sharp, intact curbs on this street for the first time.

And, no, that's not my yard sign. I don't do yard signs. I'm a distanced observer of the political scene. Cruelly neutral is my brand.