My Mayor is not @Corey Booker (or Oh, My Aching Back)

Corey Booker is the Mayor of Newark New Jersey.

There are two reasons this guy is even on my radar.

1) I like the show Brick City on the Sundance channel. It's an excellent documentary series about how the people of Newark New Jersey are turning their city around and becoming a better place for everyone. It's gritty, honest,candid and engrossing.

and

2) Corey Booker is on Twitter, where he communicates with his constituents about problems they face with both in their personal lives and with the city.

My mayor, R.T. Rybak is also on Twitter and I follow him because I live here.

Yesterday, I saw that he had tweeted the following:



I didn't think that much of it at the time because we were still receiving a 13" gift of snow from Mother Nature.

I had spent a good part of the day shoveling and last night I was out until almost midnight helping shovel out a neighbor who unlike me, likes to do it all near the end of the storm instead of periodically throughout the day.

Both our properties are on either side of the beginning of the alley. While we were shoveling last night, we were talking about having to do some of it again in the morning after the plows came through.

When I got up this morning and looked out the window, I saw that the plows had come thru alright:



Daggnabbit I groaned.(Okay, I didn't use that particular word) and knew that I had a heck of a lot of work to do.

I thought of Mayor Rybak's tweet about Corey Booker and sent Mayor Rybak the following tweet before heading out to shovel all that the plows had left behind (BTW, I'm going to reveal my Twitter name here, so feel free to follow me, but if you don't like what I Tweet, unfollow me. Don't try to engage me in Twitter word wars, I'm not interested. I've learned that lesson. Discussion, yes, word wars no.)

Anyways, I sent the following Tweet to the Mayor:



and headed out to clear the snow that the plow had deposited from the street into the plowed alley.

When I came back in, I found that Mayor Rybak had actually responded:



Okay big points for responding but seriously, I thought the Mayor must have someone he hired to plow himself out and maybe my picture wasn't making my question clear to him so I tweeted him again after spending 5 flipping hours clearing the alley:



and here are his next two posts which I have no idea whether or not they were addressed to me:



I didn't bother to respond.

If he ever decides to address my concern with anything other than platitudes or facts that are interesting but not what I was asking, I'll let you know.

But until then, I stand by the title of this post.

My Mayor is not Corey Booker.

Sigh.

Why I love my neighborhood

We had a huge snowstorm here this past weekend. It was so bad that even the plows couldn't and (as of this writing) still can't get through to clear the roads and alleys.

On my block, our alley luckily exits onto a snow emergency route that has no parking allowed, ever, so that street was on of the few that actually got plowed.

Early Sunday morning, the Metrodome roof caved in from the weight of the snow.

Since the game was cancelled and nobody could drive anywhere, most people on my block were out clearing snow from their sidewalks. One of my neighbors, decided he use his snow blower to clear a path down the alley for walking. I had talked to him when I was out clearing my driveway. When I was done, I went inside to warm up.

I glanced out the window and saw that his effort snowballed (sorry I couldn't resist) and all the menfolk (I hate to be gender specific but it was true) were now clearing the alley! A couple of snow blowers and a bunch of shovels now replaced the Vikings game!

Speaking as one of the oldest people on the block, I'd like to say a public thank you!

These guys are angels and I am blessed to live on their block!!

Before:

After: