RantMom on a panel with another great woman RantWoman knows partly becaus of long work to install a composting toilet at the Picardo Pea Patch. (RantWoman doesn't want to look but suspects the Picardo Pea Patch, near where RantWoman long ago lived, may have gone the way of University Prep Expansion.)
RantWoman appreciates it when RantMom gets asked to offer opinions about things like this.
For the record, the following are RantWoman's opinions. The opinions have not been cleared with RantMom. The opinions do not necessarily reflect the positions of any organizational hat RantWoman wears. The opinions are RantWoman's alone and could possibly in some cases be subject to reconsideration.
RantWoman 200% agrees with comments in the video about the garden and the landscaping, absolutely part of what drew RantMom to Ida Culver house.
RantWoman also wants to put in a good word for a la carte home health services. RantMom definitely did not plan on needing such services when she moved in. RantWoman has been REALLY glad they have been available several times because of some medical event or another. RantWoman recommends families just mentally budget for this kind of need knowing that there still can be stresses due to that reality!
RantWoman needs to address the importance of transportation considerations. RantMom quit driving when she moved to seattle 15 years ago. There are may reasons that was a good thing even though the transition to reliance on transit, first the bus and now a mix of bus, paratransit and sometimes other options has not gone perfectly smoothly. The RantFamily have all very much appreciated the fact that near Ida Culver House there are frequent buses both E-W and N-S. Presently Little Sister laments the demise of the Route 71. Considering a certain level of sketchiness about Lake City RantWoman is relieved actually that RantMom does not just hop a bus to the Lake City Fred Meyer but goes to other Fred Meyers. Considering the impending (October) opening of the 3 North link stations, it probably would be good to study up on what will happen to bus routes, but those station openings are still far enough off not to rush.
Now here's the part where RantWoman is going to wade into neighborhood controversies. RantWoman QUITE likes all the trees in NE Seattle. RantWoman has some doctor friends who have a lovely house on a street where their house, like all the other houses on the street is a large single-family home. RantWoman suspects doctor friends are eventually going to decamp back closer to the grandkids who have been born since they moved to Seattle so magnetic grandkids luring elders toward major moves still may figure in RantWoman's dreams.
Parallel with grand magnificent homes that some elders, RantMOm for instance, might not want to manage, RantWoman observes LOTS of very boxy cramped housing construction, in some cases with barely a twig of anything likely to be acceptable green for several years.
RantWoman is also all for transit development, not only because almost everyone in the RantFamily depends on transit to get around. Transit can move more people in the same space than cars. Substituting increasingly electrified transit for gasoline-powered vehicles cuts greenhouse gases and other pollutants. RantWoman can barely muster sympathy for anyone spending a lot of time in cars in Seattle are traffic. RantWoman also thinks that long commutes are a time tax. Soooo, RantWoman dreams of RantMom being able to live out her golden hears in a place where it is easy for her kids to come visit but also where it is easy for the people taking care of her to raise their families, to have the kind of time with their children that RantMom had because of running a home-based daycare.
There are all kinds of infrastructure and public policy threads wrapped up in this fantasy and they may or may not in the short term figure in the Ida Culver House rebuild. But RantWoman would be much happier if she can help RantMom enjoy these years without all the voices shouting at each other in Seattle's many public process meetings.
Okay, it's a dream, or many dream but might as well dream big!
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