Veterans Park: Going To The Dogs

I enjoy walking and jogging around Veterans Park off Hicks Road in Hudson, Florida. It’s part of the Pasco County park system:

I’m not alone – others enjoy it, too.

By 7:45 AM, many people have already hit the trail:

 During my walks, I’ve seen Bald Eagles, Pileated Woodpeckers and, of course, Sandhill Cranes:

Of course, there are rules:

But, as they say, rules were made to be broken or, in this case, changed:

To: Frederick J. Buckman, Parks and Recreation Director,
Martha S. Campbell, Administrative Services Manager,
Brian W. Taylor, Parks & Recreation Mgr (Area I & II)

Subject: Dogs at Veterans Park
When my wife and I arrived at the park this morning, at about 7:45 AM, for our walk, we immediately observed people walking around the park with their dog. Since, as they often are, a sheriff car was sitting in the parking lot, I approached the officer and asked if it was within his power to do something about the dog. He advised me to find a county park employee and inform him of the dog's presence. There was a man in the main building cleaning up so I informed him. He advised me that the policy had changed and that people were now allowed to walk their dogs as long as they stayed on the asphalt. If that's true, it's a sad day for park regulars who already have to deal with discourteous bike riders and roller bladers. Now, we have to dodge dog droppings, too. Anyway, the dog in question was being allowed to run all over the place. The park employee didn't seem to care about the dog. As for me, I've always taken comfort from the signs that inform visitors that the policy is "no alcohol and no animals." If this is no longer the case, I'm sorry to hear that.

The Reply:

Dog in park at Veterans Memorial Park
Mr. Toscano:
 I am Terry Hamby, Park Operator at V.M.P. and have been asked to address this with you. At the present time, dogs are allowed at V.M.P. only on the trail, and signage is in the process of being created to define areas where they are permitted, while the current signs will be modified to reflect the change in policy. Dog owners have approached the county and requested that they be allowed to walk their animals at this facility, the results of which you have witnessed. However, dogs must remain leashed, and the owners are expected to clean up any mess their pet may leave laying around. In the near future we may be able to provide pet bags for this purpose, but until then pet owners are responsible for their own clean up supplies.
 In the case this morning I also saw the dog, and did nothing about it due to the change in policy and the fact that the dog was leashed, although it was a very thin retractable style leash that from a distance looked near invisible.
 When I am asked by pet owners where they can take their dogs, I recommend  to them Crews Lake or Jay B. Starkey Parks, both of which are better suited for this activity and have pet stations. When they ask if they can come to V.M.P. I tell them they must stay on the train and clean up after the pet.
 I am sorry you had this experience, but rest assured we are trying to maintain a clean facility for use by our citizens, and will endevor to keep this park clean and dog dropping free.

Regards,
Terry G. Hamby
Park Operator II
Veterans Memorial Park
Pasco County Parks and Recreation department

The thing with those retractable leashes is that owners can let their dogs roam off the path when they think no one is around, then reel their dogs back in when someone approaches. I’ve seen it already, on three occasions.

Doggy does its business.

The woman, seen above allowing her beloved bow-wow to run, restrains her dog everytime I pass by. Afterwards she praises her mutt by chanting “Good girl, good girl,” as though the act of not attacking me was praiseworthy. This, btw, is the same "leashed" dog Terry G. Hamby referred to in his email.

Of course, I have questions. Like, what was the decision-making process? Was there a decision-making process? Or, is asking all it takes? If so, I'd like to have my car washed and waxed on Wednesdays. And, how many inquiring dog owners does it take to get the policy changed? Who, exactly, are these dog owners? And, who do they know? Did anyone consider polling those of us who are already using the park before they changed the policy? And, how many bike owners will it take before the signs are changed to read “Pedestrians Must Yield To Bicycle Traffic?” Two? Three?

No Dogs. No Bull.

I’m not happy about this change, mainly because I know dog owners. Back when I was a telephone man, time and again when customers let me in their house they’d tell me not to mind their dog because it didn’t bite. Guess what – they didn’t bite their owners, but they sure as hell didn’t mind sinking their teeth into me. Up to now, I’ve seen three people at Veterans park walking their dogs. Two of them have violated the rule about allowing the dogs off the path. It’s only a matter of time before the dogs start lunging at people and barking at the cows and the cranes and all the other wildlife. After all, that’s what dogs do.

UPDATE: March 10, 2013 - The dog situation continues to deteriorate. People don't pick up after their dogs. People don't think their dogs need to be confined to the path or, for that matter, need to be leashed. And, worst of all for us bird lovers, dog owners think it's great fun to let their dogs loose in the area of the pond on the west end of the park, a pond that had been a haven to all kinds of wading birds, so that their little lovable pooches can cause the birds to scatter and fly away which they have, permanently, to somewhere outside the park. Contact the park authorities, you say? You have to be kidding. They usually confine their activities to the smoke free sections of the park, where, by the way, they can be found with cigarettes dangling from their lips.

The Story Continues… Unfortunately

I watched Blood Bloods once. The new CBS cop series featuring Tom Selleck revealed a continuing story line dealing with who and why one of his sons was killed. Boring. Not interested. Show me a crime, solve it in one episode or you’re going to lose me.

Even the Red John bullshit involving Patrick Jane of The Mentalist is starting to turn me off to what was once my favorite show. I mean, I can accept some continuing nuances like Temperance Brennan’s relationship with Booth in my current favorite series Bones. Or, in a new favorite like The Defenders, starring Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell, I can live with the fact that Belushi’s character Nick Morelli is going to mix it up with the wife he is enjoying a separation from. Well, he’s not really enjoying it, but it looks like he better get used to it.

Anyway, Back to Bones, the series keeps getting better and better. The frank, literal and always honest Temperance is one of the funniest characters on TV, even though the show is not, strictly speaking, a comedy. I tried to read a couple of the Kathy Reich novels upon which the series is very loosely based and found them completely boring. The Temperance Brennan of the novels bears very little resemblance to the unique and brash Temperance of the Fox series. Thank goodness.

Lone Star: Channeling George Clooney

Josh Lucas

 This is weird: I decided to give the new Fox series Lone Star a shot, mainly because I didn’t see anything too appealing up against it, and recorded it along with the NBC show Chase. Well, we, my wife and I, weren’t far into the first episode of Lone Star when an actor pops up who strikes me as familiar. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that the guy who played Reese Witherspoon’s husband in Sweet Home Alabama?” My wife said she didn’t know. Well, from another angle, it was obvious that this was not Josh Lucas, the guy I had been thinking of.

Cole Hauser

 Next, we watch Chase. As soon as character Jimmy Godfrey appears on the screen, I say to my wife, “Well, I’ll be damned! There he is. That’s the guy who played her husband. Can you beat that? I thought he was in the other show and, now, he turns up in this one.” “That’s weird!” she agreed. Of course, as it turns out actor Cole Hauser was not the guy who played Reese’s husband, either. But, like I said, it’s weird. In my defense, Looking at their pictures, it looks like their noses are similar.


Putting aside indications of my diminished mental capacity, we gave the two shows mixed reviews. Before it was cancelled we had already made up our minds not to watch Lone Star again. It just wasn’t offering the kind of story I could get into on a long term basis. The only thing mildly interesting, aside the obligatory hot girlfriend, was James Wolk’s Clooneyesque facial contrivances. What the hell, if you have aspirations of being a heartthrob, who better to mimic.

It’s sort of ironic that the show is being replaced by Season 3 of Lie To Me, another show that me and my honey removed from our potential watch-list after seeing the first episode. Go figure.

And the Emmy for Worst New Show Goes To…

Covert Affairs. This series from the USA Network has earned our highest grade for unwatchability – a perfect 10. Forget about the farfetched premise and plotlines with more holes than a spaghetti sieve, what brings this series down is star Piper Perabo or, more specifically, her lips. Show after show, shot after shot, pictures Ms. Perabo with the oddest contrivance of attitude to ever effect post-Angelina lips. At times, it looks like she has lost all control and feel of her lips as if she’s been shot up with Novocain. Or maybe they’re frozen. No matter, I can almost hear the director demanding from her “more poutiness, more poutiness.” Whenever the camera’s on her the focus is on her lips. Sorry, I tried to watch a couple episodes but I could not get past the lips, the lips, the lips. God, is it ever distracting. Surrounded by competent actors like Kari Matchett (“24” and “ER” among her credits) and Peter Gallagher (“While You Were Sleeping”), Perabo hijacked the show with her lips. After that, the show never had a chance.

Much Ado About Nothing – Changes at WUSF-FM

Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Jazz – that’s all I really want from my public radio station. I’m not really into classical music. I do listen to it some times, when I don’t want to be distracted. For me, it’s sort of like elevator music.

Recently, I learned that my local NPR station, WUSF-FM, was splitting it’s offerings onto two stations. Their acquisition, located at 89.1, will now broadcast classical music 24/7. Big whoop. WUSF, 89.7, will switch to a talk radio format during the day with Jazz still available only to us night owls.

Those talk shows they’ll be throwing at us are already available to me on WUFT-FM out of Gainesville. In fact, I get a stronger signal from Gainesville which is about 100 miles north than I do from the locals which sit 40 to 50 miles south. So, the big expansion that goes into effect September 15th, 2010, doesn’t really excite me. Jazz during the day – now, that’s something I could’ve gotten excited about.

I can’t help thinking that if you invited all those who are thrilled about the new 24/7 classical music station, along with those who will be listening to the endless litany of NPR talk, to a picnic, no one would show up – too boring.

Mel Gibson: Edge of Darkness

Though I know we can never resurrect the Martin Riggs of the Lethal Weapon classics and I realize the trials of time have forever taken the shine off his star, I was hoping Mel Gibson could recapture some of his former luster as Boston homicide detective Thomas Craven in Edge of Darkness. And he did, but just barely.

Is it the case that we will never again allow the Jew hating, crucifix toting Gibson to emerge as a victorious hero in a modern day police drama? That seems to be what we’re being told here. After Craven’s daughter Emma is killed by a shotgun blast outside his Boston home, it appears at first that the shot was meant for Craven himself. But, in time, it’s revealed that she had gotten on the bad side of a coalition of industrial bad guys, a private security death-squad and your run-of-the-mill government assholes who, in retaliation for her threatening to blow the whistle on their nuclear bomb business, had managed to poison her by slipping some radioactive morsels into her food supply. In other words, she would’ve died even if she hadn’t been blasted.

Unfortunately, we learn how this particular poison works because the avenging Gibson is also poisoned. With nothing to live for and not much time, he manages to kill quite a few culpable people. Enroute he meets his adversaries’ Security Consultant Jedburgh, played by Ray Winstone, whose respect he apparently gains since untimately it’s Jedburgh who eliminates the remaining no-good scum who orchestrated the plot, shooting them at point blank range during a meeting where they were deciding how they should spin Craven’s demise.

As cheery as that ending is, the reality that Craven and his daughter are both dead sort of takes the shine off the moment. The final cut shows the spirits of Emma and her father walking off into the white light. I guess that was supposed to be uplifting. It didn’t work. Everything that precedes that moment confirms that that could not happen, ever.

I think this movie would have been somewhat better if all the good guys hadn’t gotten killed, but such is life. I give it a C-.

Ed Emberley: Children’s Drawing Books and More

Ed Emberley is the illustrator and author of over 80 books, including the bestselling Go Away, Big Green Monster! and his enormously popular "Drawing Book" series. He has received many awards and accolades, including a Caldecott Honor in 1967 for One Wide River to Cross and a Caldecott Medal in 1968 for Drummer Hoff. Ed Emberley lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts, with his wife, Barbara.

That blurb comes from Ed Emberley's Amazon page. I was drawn there recently when someone purchased several of his drawing books via my site AcesWebWorld.com. Honestly, prior to that, I had never heard of him. That’s probably because I no longer have little children with whom I can share my love for reading and my love of books.

But those who are familiar with Emberley’s work are filled with praise. In fact, customer reviews of his books average 5.0, the highest possible rating on Amazon.

My interest piqued, I googled Ed Emberley and was led to his website EdEmberley.com. What a great site! If you have kids, I suggest you steer them there. If not, go there yourselves like I did. I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of it.