When I worked in Cape Girardeau, Mo., one of the civic lessons that twice-daily newspaper tried to instill in our readers was that while growth was good, especially in the inner city, growth needed to be considered along with the resultant problems.

And one of the problems was that there were not many projects on the outskirts of town where drainage was ever considered. They tore out green fields and replaced them with parking lots. You had one massive, massive parking lot one right after another. The homes that dotted the landscape between these lots were often flooded out after even mild rains. And on sunny days, the heat rising off these parking lots was horrible.

I drove around the Wal-Mart lot today. Actually, it’s a collection of parking lots running from West Forrest Hill up to West War Memorial Drive. There are a couple strips of mostly ornamental green space, but virtually all the land is used up by parking spaces. All these parking spaces MAY be needed around when Christmas approaches; but on most days, most of these spaces are just sitting there, storing heat from the Sun, contributing to rising temperatures in the city.

The air was cool, with a nice breeze. But the heat coming up off this lot was oppressive.

Most of the rain that hits this lot goes right into the city’s storm water replacement system. None of the rain sinks into the ground (these parking lots were built before permeable parking lots were invented).

These buildings were erected on farmland. But now they are sitting on ground that is as dry as a desert. If Wal-Mart and its parking lot were to be snatched away by aliens, you couldn’t grow anything on it, I don’t think. Not without watering it for six months straight.

I wonder about the safety of that. Will this dry ground even HOLD buildings that heavy in another 50 to 100 years?

We take green land and turn it commercial at the drop of a hat. How often do we take commercial land and made it green again? When we turn a green field into a shopping center, aren’t we essentially telling the Earth that this land will never, ever be part of the ecosystem ever again?

We — and by that I mean the City of Peoria — have to be wiser. It might be “good for business” to get every acre of green field to be converted into shopping malls, but I don’t think Peorians 100 years from now want to live in a city where the temperatures rise to 115 degrees by May 1st.

Of course, Peoria would have to end its practice of giving millionaire developers everything they want, all the time.

The Peoria Riverfront Museum boosters have found their scapegoat for fewer-than-predicted customers

Jim Richarson is out as the CEO of the organization. This move comes as the museum failed to supply the Peoria County Board with audit figures. You see, the county owns the building, and rents it to the museum.

There is no doubt in my mind that if the numbers were good, all the reports would be done.

Apparently, the movers and shakers want us to believe Richarson was standing outside the museum in a fright wig, scaring away all the customers. And I fail to understand how losing their CEO could speed up the document creating process.

A modest proposal 1

Have you ever lobbied state or national government on behalf of a corporation or industry where the CEO earns in excess of $1 million a year? I propose a law wherein you would be hunted down like a dog and forced to clean toilets to make amends.

A modest proposal 2

Have you ever stood in line behind someone at the self-serve soda fountain who will fill his cup to the brim, take a sip, then refill his cup, then take a sip, then refill? I propose a new federal law wherein you would be allowed to kidney punch this person. After getting kidney punched seven or eight times, sociopaths like this would get the hint.

The press is not an elite club

I read an article the other day, written by a member of the press bemoaning the fact that he went to a political convention and met a dentist, who wore press credentials he earned because he was a blogger. The columnist referred to the dentist as a “reporter” (quotes were his, not mine).

Oh, woe, cried the columnist. How could the President even consider asking Congress to pass a shield law to protect journalists when bloggers walked around with press credentials?

Simple. A “journalist” is anybody who does journalism. If you are a guy who occasionally posts “selfies,” (a snapshot of yourself that a Facebook or Twitter user posts) you’re not a journalist, so you don’t really need the protection of, say, a shield law. Now, if that same guy uses his cell phone to post video of cops beating the crap out of a motorist, he just might need some protection from the law.

The trouble is that too many mainstream journalists see themselves as members of an elite club, whose members enjoy some elevated status in American society, with rights and privileges denied the lumpen masses.

The 1st Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Note that text does not refer to “employees of press organizations.”

Trouble is that the 1st Amendment applies to everybody. From a practical standpoint, freedom of the press used to belong to anyone who owned one. Now we have WordPress, Blogger, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Now, everyone owns one. That may be bad news for those who literally own a printing press. But it’s good news for everyone else.