Full Disclosure

That's what we need. And that need is critically important at this time as we watch, almost helplessly, as Dunwoody city bureaucrats work diligently to attack us in our very neighborhoods as they seek to destroy, to rape and pillage Dunwoody Village. This is being spearheaded by none other than Richard McLeod, the bureaucrat in charge of "community development" who appears to live in Fulton County (by way of property records) and seems offended when he has to drive through the Village to get to his little gold mine.

“I drove there when I got the job here, which was 40 years later, and I said, ‘Wow, the village looks exactly the same."

Yes. That is a WOW! So the folks who actually live here, work here and shop here and have liked it here, some for well over 40 years, have caused a great offense by maintaining a lifestyle they enjoy. Wow indeed. We seem to have committed the heinous sin of offending an arrogant outsider with our very presence, a situation he intends to change using our own tax dollars. Just when we were thinking that the worst thing about drive-through traffic was speeders endangering our children. 

But it gets worse...and back to the point.

"I started talking about it, and more and more people said how they wished something could be done with the village.”

Really? Prove it. Or were these just your developer friends from outside Dunwoody?

And prove it you should. Let's see every communication between this and every other city bureaucrat, both inside and outside that bureaucracy, regarding Dunwoody Village. All emails. All phone Call Detail Records. All meeting itineraries, minutes, lists of attendees and recordings. We know you have them because you just spent quite a bit of our hard-earned tax dollars buying vast SSD storage to back this up. Or are you somehow not quite up to speed on record keeping? Wouldn't that be convenient? And let's see the full results from that easily manipulated internet survey. Show us how the respondents were authenticated and how each voice was given equal weight. Let's see some accountability as we've already seen how easily you dismissed and ignored the issues raised by nearby residential citizens. Many of whom have lived here for decades, pre-city and very much pre-you.

And why wouldn't the city be open? Be transparent? Show some honesty? Some integrity? What have they got to hide? Who are they protecting? It sure as hell is NOT the people who live here.

Promises, Promises

Lots of promises come out of city hall. Lots are broken. An interesting one is wide sidewalks. This started with the Dunwoody Parkway fuster cluck wherein the city promised that proper development or renovation would trigger sidewalk expansion to six foot. This promise came complete with some of those mid-century illustrations showing all the cool folks walking throughout the village on those luxurious strips of concrete. Early on one poor slob fixing up a law office complained but not effectively enough. This was because unelected bureaucrats had yet to take full control of city hall. After that takeover was complete the first developer to complain got an almost instant waiver. That first bloke must feel like a real fool.

Now city hall is mouthing about those wide sidewalks promised for Georgetown. Don't count on it as any developer, and now most businesses, have friends and advocates at city hall. Don't hold your breath. First developer that balks and you'll end up with what looks more like a concrete hopscotch course than a planned development. Just like Dunwoody Parkway. 

Now there is one situation where wide sidewalks are guaranteed.  When they're taking property from individual property owners, actual residents, then city hall bureaucrats have no problem paving paradise. Because they don't care about people who actually live here.

Guest Post: Calinky In The Kitchen

Once again we have our favorite Calinky in the kitchen, this time with, of all things: quiche. As always the spicy language has been moderated so as not to offend the more sensitive palates. Without further ado. 

A Calinky, especially a low-country Calinky will eat darn near anything. But not that surrender-monkey speciality, quiche. That ain't even a real word let alone real food. Another thing about Calinkies, even low-country Calinkies, is we got to grow veggies. And the older we get the more we got to do it and the more we end up litterin' the larder. Stuff just piles up. One thing you got to grow is squash. No one knows why 'cuz it is the most appropriately named veggie in the garden. Maybe the whole world. Squash. Hard to cook so it doesn't look exactly how it sounds. 

But there is one way. Bake it into an egg pie. Now credit where due: this egg pie is inspired by the lovely young doctor who took us to that Eddie Izzard concert in the before times. I didn't have no grocery store pie crusts so I had to make do with my own but since I got one of them ee-murshun blenders that comes with a pigmy food processor I didn't have to fork the butter into the flour. So my messy-plates for the crust was just a cup and a quarter of flour, a stick of butter, a half teaspoon each of salt and sugar and about a quarter cup of real cold water. 

The butter and water gotta be real cold. Heck, you cain't even cube up the butter unless it is pretty near frozen and it don't hurt none to freeze it after you get it chopped up. Ya gotta put the flour, sugar and salt in first and run the machine to mix it all up. 

Then you add the butter and run it 'til the butter bits are small pea sized. After that you add the water and grind on it until you get a dough that holds together. Make sure you don't take it so far the butter bits completely disappear. If you do there ain't no fixin' it and you gotta start over. 

Now the easiest way to work the dough is to dump it onto a sheet of Sara's wrap and then you can roll up the edges, push down with your knuckles and bring the dough together. Run it with the rolling pin to make sure it is all together and fills the plastic. Dough done. EZPZ. 

Start

Finish

Hopefully you did this real quick and the dough is still cold but you still gotta put it in the fridge for a while to keep that butter cool. Don't make much sense but when you take it out you have to let it sit a few minutes to keep it from splittin' all around the edges. Roll it 'til you're sure it'll fit the pie pan.

Get it into the pie pan, make sure it is in the pan all way 'round. If you don't know how to use the rollin' pin to get a crust in a pan your momma didn't raise you right and there ain't no fixin' that either. 

Depending on the pan you can use the rollin' pin to trim off the excess. 

I use the trimmin's to make cookie cutter stars cuz I don't want to throw out that much dough. 

The filling's got two parts and a few ingredients. 

First is the veggie we're trying to get rid of in the first place. This is just sliced thin either with a knife or a vegetable peeler. Your choice. These strips are placed on edge from the outside spiraling in to the center. Mix and match squash with zucchini and eggplant if you got 'em. For the liquid chicken mix that makes this an egg pie you're gonna need eggs, cheese, fresh thyme and maybe a little cream or half and half. Put all this in a bowl and mix. 

You pour this over the veggies already in the pie, adorn with the stars and you're about ready to bake.

This thing has to bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes and you'd be wise to keep an eye on it after the 20 minute mark. Other than that, cook it until it is done. 

That's an egg pie and you cain't hardly tell there's squash in there. Now you might be thinkin' the yellow color comes from the squash. Think agin. That yellow comes from the egg yolks cuz these are backyard chickens and that's what you get from backyard chickens. The best thing is that even when you slice it you still cain't tell there is squash in there. The best way to eat squash is when you don't know you're eating squash. 

They Hate Us. They Really, REALLY Hate Us.

If Sally Fields lived in the Branches, either of the Winters, Creek or Hall, Redfield or a few other unnamed residential areas adjacent to or very near the Village, you could imagine that is exactly what she would say.  And she would be right.

This comes about because there has been a bump in the road on the developers' path to total destruction of our suburban shopping centers, Dunwoody Hall and Dunwoody Village. The planning commission has deferred a vote. Not voted the matter down, just waiting for a more opportune time. One might excuse this as incompetence that the planning commission did not already know of and have in hand the documents in question, or maybe they do and have and there is something else afoot. Maybe they really, really hate us.

And there is good reason to think that. After all, developers and profiteering businesses are openly shameless in their greed. They don't give us any consideration, let alone hate us. They are in love with money and that is merely the root of the evil afflicting us. We need to consider the trunk and the branches. And that lies with the bureaucracy at city hall. 

While developers and profiteers have molded Dunwoody to their liking since the very first day and the city is structured to allow this, the real hatred emanates from and festers within the city itself. It is at city hall where we find the intense hatred of suburbia and yes, the irony of this coming from what was created as a suburban city is lost on no one. And our shining example of successful suburbia is the thriving, vital shopping and business district known as Dunwoody Village. For several decades this center has well served the community and in return has been equally well supported by that community. Yes, developers are eyeing the lucrative opportunity to replace the Village with a mega-development high density retail and multi-story apartments to generate the footfalls. But make no mistake, in city hall's genocidal lust to destroy the Village the surrounding communities will not be just collateral damage-they have become secondary targets.

The situation appears hopeless and helpless. Loyal opposition has either passed or swum off to warmer waters. The DHA was a staunch proponent of city formation and one has to wonder if anyone in that organization was aware of the deliberate structural flaws in the city they helped create. Initially DHA did positioned themselves as the conduit to power, a stepping stone to city office, or more lucratively, membership on one of the many bureaus, administrations or boards. More recently they seem to have come to a fork in their road: continue as a remora  clinging to the power-hungry sharks at city hall; or advocate, as they once did so long ago, for the residents of Dunwoody. 

What Is "Value?"

The season is upon us and all the tax-hike supporters and apologists have taken to the PR circuit in support of yet-another-Dunwoody-tax-hike. A city PRopagandist dares anyone to find another city with this millage rate. One of the dwarfs touts the great value this city offers, suggesting that may accrue to residents. But maybe not. 

Both beg the question: what is value? In the real world, outside the distorting lens of self-serving politics, value is getting a good or service at a reasonable price to the buyer and one that supports the ongoing operation of the provider. Not cancerous metastatic growth, but sustainable operations. So given that tax hikes and uncontrolled bureaucratic growth has been a plague upon us since the very beginning, what do we, the mere residents of Dunwoody get in return?

We might start with the three P's, the bedrock from which the pro-city fundamentalists screamed their message of fire and brimstone, of hellfire and damnation should we not all line up in support of this faux neo-city. You may have noticed the pavement work on Mt Vernon in the Village. Again. All because city bureaucrats couldn't resist meddling in the engineering work done in the original effort. Is that value? Maybe parks? Well, if you consider paving an interstate lane of concrete through a natural setting aligned with leave-no-trace or a good use of money then you might see value. If you look real hard. Then there is the dumpster-fire called the Dunwoody Police Department. Is an endless string of lawsuits, inevitably settled at great cost, currently running into the millions of dollars a "great value?" Is a police chief stating, in discoverable emails, that enforcing traffic laws in our communities "isn't worth the cost" what residents would consider value? Is allowing that yahoo to cling to his job until the end of the year just so he can retire with full benefits any real value to residents?

Then we have the supply side. While the city bloats its headcount, absorbing functions (e.g., Chamber of Commerce) that rightly belong far outside city hall, they are handing out millions of dollars to powerful developers. This is done by way of tax exemptions. That's right. While we mere residents have seen nothing but year over year tax increases, crony capitalism ensures that developers won't pay a dime. 

Is that what these yahoos call "value?" Maybe they think the folks who live in this city are as clueless, as detached from reality as they are. Their only problem is that we actually see our tax bills because we have to pay them.

They're Baaack!

Oh! Fence!

You can see from a recent meeting of the Randy Newman fan club just how intimidating those tall fences can be. It's enough to scare a giggle o' gals into a tight huddle.

Don't Want No Tall Fences 'Round ME!

This must be what a dwarf meant by "personally affected."

They REALLY Should Get Out More

Notice anything wrong with this picture?

Where the Hell IS Dunwoody Drive?

 

This is directly from the bozos at city hall. Looking at the sign pictured in the masthead above one has to wonder who the hell these folks are, where the hell they're from and how the hell we get rid of them. Or maybe they just decided to rename roads willy-nilly because, well, they just don't give a rodent's hairy rectum about anybody or anything in this city unless it comes with developer or business connections. They should tell Google about their changes as Google seems to be living in the alternate reality inhabited by actual residents of Dunwoody.

Still Looks Like Dunwoody ROAD

Maybe instead of raising our taxes they could fire the incompetent bozo's at city hall. If they get rid of all of them we should be able to house the dozen or so remaining employees over at the annex on N. Shallowford. Assuming they can find the address.

Not Without A Fight

They will not go down easily. Not without a fight. Many parents have started their own "liberty libraries" to ensure their children have access to literature that has stood the test of time...to science...to mathematics. All those things no longer taught in schools. Things that have been replaced by divisive racist dogma promulgated by profiteering charlatans. 

Then it got serious. Organized. Focused on the real, underlying problem: the United States sucks at education. Free to Learn is not satisfied with merely expunging racist fascists from our classrooms, but all manner of political indoctrination. They also are working towards injecting learning and academic accomplishment in hopes that we might do better than come in 22nd internationally. They seem concerned that if we continue the status quo, let alone spiral down into a learning-free zone of indoctrination our children will not be able to compete against global rivals. 

So maybe The Woke have given rise to a great awakening. One can hope.