Growing Indoor Children In The Summertime

Here we are in the middle of summer - and I mean right in the middle of summer - and the kids are going back to school. Some of them got out a few weeks before summer began but all will be going back well before it ends. Even the “unofficial” end of summer, Labor Day, is three weeks from the real end of the season.

Summertime, as a kid, for me was a whirlwind stream of activities either in the park across the street or biking to other parks for events and, eventually, explorations out into the then suburbs. I often tell people that I grew up not on a street or in a certain house, but I grew up in the park, specifically Woodland Park.

I crossed Woodland Park twice every day while attending elementary school and most days four times, since they allowed us to go home for lunch. I can probably count on both hands the number of times that I ate Maxwell cafeteria food.

But summertime was a time for spending all of our available hours doing something with the other kids in the park, be they friends from school or not. After a morning playing games and waiting for the activities directors to show up, we would run home for lunch, then run back for the afternoon's events. Dad had to round us up for dinner and again after the lights went out at the ball field to usher us home to bed.

I don't see that these days and I can pretty well guarantee that you don't either. The days of “free range” kids is well over. On the streets full of single family houses which make up a large percentage of our city, one rarely sees anything but indications of children “living” there. Walk by on a warm summer morning and the birds will be making more noise than the kids – quite different from when I grew up.

When many households consist of 1-2 working adults and youngsters requiring day care, there will be little in any daytime activity. Simply put, our suburbs are pretty much empty during the day.

Daycare, now there is a strange bird. Daycare now has to sell themselves as “pre-schools” with many parents, since they are supplying the early instructions that family members used to demonstrate for free. Daycare now has secluded, fenced play areas, rarely exceeding a few thousand square feet when 20 acres seemed small to me. Outdoor activities at daycare may average less than 3 hours a day, depending on weather.

Is it any surprise that compared to the 1970s, children now spend 50 percent less time in unstructured outdoor activities? And the '70s were not the '50s of my youth. The average early teen, 10 to 16 now spends only 12.6 minutes per day in vigorous physical activity. If it were not for the soccer moms and the little league parents or the pee-wee football and basketball camps, that would be much less.

All of the blame cannot be placed at the doorstep of day care. Although 40 % of the kids in a British study (I don't think that they are that different from American kids) stated they would like to play outside more often, it was the parents who simply didn't allow it. Fear of traffic and a fear of abductions by strangers were the top two reasons given.

Can traffic be so bad as to fear the random careening auto sailing through your front yard? Is not one of the common complaints about our suburbs that cul-de-sacs and limited connecting streets are so prominent? Would it not be one of your neighbors who was driving so erratically? As for the abductions, statically those are done by non-strangers though it does happen it is rare.

Frankly, all of us kids roaming the neighborhood and playing in the park back in my day were being watched by many eyes, without our knowledge. With so many stay-at-home moms and the older couples moving throughout the area, there was little that we could do that did not get home before we did. Empty houses and neighbors who are little more than nodding acquaintances cannot do the same quality job.

When did it become necessary to be so absolutely certain of our child's safety that we limit their opportunities to practice the decision making skills that we should be teaching them? Could it be that we are NOT teaching those skills? Could it be that we are not confident in our teaching abilities?

I have heard it said that parents will structure their child's time so as to incorporate themselves into the child's life. The child needs transportation and support. Television programing and commercials add to the myth by showing the child playing one on one with the parent and not with neighborhood kids. What happened to the TV shows of old like “Dennis the Menace” and “Leave it to Beaver” or the cartoons of “Peanuts” and “Fat Albert”? Teaching, supportive adults / parents and the kids played outside.

Just Add Kids?

I heard it again today. It was during the panel discussion put on by the Downtown Lexington Corp. which was to feature the 6 finalists of the 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd district races. The thing is, one of them did not show up.

Most of the comments were very positive about downtown and how we needed to continue to plan for the economic development and a strong need for jobs. But I also heard the quiet cry for more family oriented facilities like restaurants and such. It was like families want to live downtown but not as it is today – or how it is being planned for by today's planners.

We can look at our successes, like Thursday Night Live, and how well they have grown in just a few short years but some families have begun avoiding the Pavilion because it has become so large. The crowd of young professionals out for an early beginning to their weekend of drinking can erode the feeling of festival that many young parents want to ingrain in their kids.

The number of new, trendy restaurants which have opened seem geared toward the single/dating young professionals or the more refined tastes of the upper echelon from the 02 zipcode or horse country. Few of them would accept the “wander around he table” child which frequents an Applebee's or Texas Roadhouse franchise. Why cannot some of those parents find a suitable dining experience in the downtown scene. (OK, I don't want to eat near this kind of action either.)

Family oriented recreation come to downtown at various times through the year, like the Ringling Brothers Circus or Disney on Ice, but the normal, run of the mill, child friendly activities are rare. The special events will draw from communities other than Lexington, but day to day stuff – not so much.

Finally, and maybe the most troubling, there are no new residential units designed for the family of four in which a couple can live with their kids. The latest units are designed with young professionals in mind but not families. The common mantra is that “families don't want to live downtown” and that is not just applicable to Lexington.

According to Brent Toderian, a Canadian planner, “The truth is that many downtowns are currently not great places to raise families, because they are not designed to be. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. A city gives up on kids downtown, as does the home-building industry, so no one designs and plans for them... ...Most importantly, no homes built that could actually fit a family. Perhaps a couple, but as soon as baby comes, they start planning the move. This perpetuates the theory that families would never want to live downtown.”

Do we want a vibrant, lively, complete downtown? If so, then an addition of children to the mix of seniors and young professionals(both singles and couples) will support a broader local economy and a safer community. These families will need certain support facilities in order to make it work; child-care, and nearby schools initially, then family appropriate retail and recreation and then the all-important family sized residential units.

I may be wrong, but I feel that the on-going efforts to put on event after event in an attempt to draw families to downtown would be easier if some of them lived “right around the corner”.

Heat Wave And The Fourth Of July

I doubt that many of us remember how it was during the days before air conditioning when heat waves would come rolling through the countryside, but I can just imagine what the public warnings could have sounded like. Since there was no such thing as radio or TV in the 1800's, and the newspapers of the day were reporting the weather not predicting it, many folks simply relied on common sense and practical measures

For instance, residential housing was built in such a way as to take advantage of the natural breezes and air currents with strategic placement of windows and doors. It even extended so far as to include landscaping and trees. It was the city densities and commercial buildings which began to plague the occupants during the hot spells and made city life nearly unbearable.

Today, the public announcements call for those with ailments and allergies to stay inside and for others to keep a check on the elderly or disabled. Places which were recommended for relief (Woodland Park or country outings) are now to be avoided since they are equated more with physical activity than with passive recreation. Those who wished to find a swimming hole could locate a shaded body of water, whereas now there are just expanses of sun-baked concrete and rules.

Lexington, like most urban areas, is not the small, ecologically designed community that it once was. We, and they, have sprawled out and built fanciful imitations of homes which remind us of what was, but cannot function without mechanical, environmental aids. This we call progress.

While ruminating on these processes of the past, I am also brought to consider the upcoming 4^th of July activities and the events surrounding a fireworks display. The events of these days seem so different from those of my youth. Time may have moved much slower back them but, then again, it may be a matter of perspective.

I have read where this year's celebration will be capped off by a 17 minute aerial display (providing the fireworks are allowed at all due to weather) and it hardly seems worth it. I can remember when the 4^th just seemed to never get here. Also, there was not a downtown based, community event.

Lexington's involvement was limited to the individual parks preparing decorated floats (flatbed trailers generally provided by a local transfer company) for a parade through downtown to the football stadium at UK. Most floats were designed and decorated by the older park regulars and directed by a team of parks staffers. The inter-park competition caused some floats to become quite elaborate. Probably the best part was the total lack of overtly political interjection.

Drivers would haul their park's float to Woodland Park and line up on Kentucky Ave. Then, at around 7 or 7:30, the parade would begin. From the park to Main St. and right down through the middle of town. A turn on Broadway and up the hill to Maxwell and back to Rose St.   Out Rose to the Avenue of Champions and ending between McLean Stadium and Memorial Coliseum.

Many of the participating parks had had their cook-outs and neighborhood celebrations or parades earlier in the day, but the kids still had their sparklers and flags for the evening. There was enough light left in the evening to get to the seating and maybe get a drink. Climbing to the top of the stadium and looking over onto the street below was a thrill to many a kid as was watching the sun dip below the treetops in anticipation of the “real” show. (Sunset would have come about 9 p.m. since this was before the Uniform Time Act of 1966 and there was no Daylight Savings Time.)

The fireworks were set off from the field where the marching band now conducts practice and the western end zone seats held the constructs of the so called “ground displays”. At dark the stadium lights would go out and a “test” shot would go up, I believe, to determine the wind conditions. Then the show would start.

There was an intermission during which music was played and the parade float winners were announced. More drinks and hot dogs and then back to the seats for some more show. An interspersing of aerial and animated ground displays later and the grand finale of bombardments over, it was time to go home. The parks staff rounded up their charges, got back on the floats and went to their respective neighborhoods. Even though I lived close to the stadium, I got home around 11 p.m. and sent to bed, one tired puppy.

Daylight Savings Time, a much larger parks network and insurance/litigation issues have surely put an end to such happenings but simple memories of simpler times make it rough to not long for those days again. I am sure that many of you have your own memories and will be making more this coming week, so I hope that the weather is kind to you and that we all play it safe this year.

Two Chances to Enjoy Downtown

There are a number of events coming up that I wish to bring to your attention. They are (1) World PARK(ing) Day and (2) Lexington's 2nd Second Sunday.

On Saturday the 18th of September the world will celebrate PARK(ing) Day. PARK(ing) Day is the name of an annual, one-day global event during which individuals and groups transform parking spaces, parking lots (and other areas of the landscape built to store stationary motor vehicles), into places for people to congregate, socialize and play, to the exclusion of motor vehicles. The original concept is by by Rebar, a San Francisco art and design collective. This is a chance for all of you to grab you favorite parking space and make it into your little piece of recreation space.

There are a few rules to abide by, mostly just you can't use your PARK(ing) space for commercial purposes without permission, and many folks have usually made a quiet seating area with temporary landscaping(sod, potted bushes, small trees, etc...).

I have not seen that anyone in Lexington has done a PARK(ing) space before, so if our young creative class of activists(i.e. those protesting CentrePointe so much) is so creative, then maybe they can come up with a group of real interesting spaces. I hope so.

The other event comes in October, and as the name suggests is on the second Sunday of the month, this year it falls on the 11th. I posted about this last year and gave some very definite proposals about my likes and dislikes of this event. The more I think about it, the more I believe that it should be handled less like a community festival and more like a "grass roots" happening.

What began last year is a local emulation of the program that started in Bogota, Colombia. Their program has grown so large that they close approximately 70 miles of roadway EVERY Sunday, and they do it without any government run activities. They just let the people take back the streets. Lexington's successful event last year caught the eye of State officials and many other communities around the Commonwealth, so much so that they have now coordinated this years event to occur in 99 of Kentucky's 120 counties. I has now become a measurable boasting point to compare with other states. Letting people have free run of their streets and get healthy at the same time should not be a feather in some politicians cap.

The ongoing events in Colombia prove that it is not a numbers game for political gain and, although it is allowed, the government is not required to arrange activities for the participants. I am not calling for a free-for-all to take place and some sort of police presence is needed but yoga classes on the court house lawn(not in the street at all) or even focusing on activity downtown is the unnecessary part.

This year's closure (I still prefer to call it opening) of Main, Mill, Short and DeWeese is again concentrated in the downtown area. A location to which a majority of participants will have to drive for a four hour period. True there should be plenty of parking, but if the idea is to get people OUT of their cars then this project FAILS. The carbon footprint of the event negates any alleged benefits of the exercise undertaken, as it would include all of the organizers and volunteers as well as interested participants, of whom 80% or better will drive and park for the afternoon.

That brings up another point, four hours of a Sunday afternoon. Why not take all afternoon, or the full 24 hour period from 6:p.m. Saturday night to 6:p.m. Sunday? Involve the whole community for the entire time. Can you imagine an outdoor church service on the courthouse lawn in sight of the homeless of Phoenix Park? Or the morning strollers meandering by the accumulated trash of the previous nights revelers? Each segment of the city's population using the street for their own purposes, just without car and trucks.

Once again, I like the idea of Second Sunday. I like the idea of letting the people take back the streets. I don't like the sanitized version being foisted upon the people to let them feel good while being bad.

Avon and the State Parks system

Several years ago the Federal government began transferring the operations at the Avon Depot to private industrial entities and renamed to facility Bluegrass Station. The majority of the new industrial operations were military in nature and the army kept a small force there for security reasons.

Recently the Lexington-Fayette County Government began offering recreation opportunities by opening the golf course and pool as facilities of the LFUCG Division of Parks & Recreation. On their current web pages, they show the golf but not the pool ( I believe they ceased operating it due to low attendance) in Avon.

Today I learned that the State of Kentucky took title to 211 acres of the former Avon facility at the end of September. This was not in the news, either TV or print. Where was the crack investigative team from the Herald-Leader? "Rita Skeeter" must have been tracking down something about CentrePointe at that time. Anyway, the State will now be responsible for the land and I guess the recreation to done there. I cannot put much stock in the city's parks website right now since the entire LFUCG website is to be revamped and relaunched within the week, the current pages may not be the most correct. That is the reason that I did not link to them.

I will try to keep my eyes open an learn just what the State has in mind for the property and if the LFUCG will contiue to provide services to that portion of the county.