The Soapbox Archives:

• February 1, 2015:
  I wanted to thank local dance teacher Pam Levy for her appreciation of my efforts on this website. As a dance teacher she benefits from the new students sent her way; as a social dancer, she appreciates being presented with a list of choices where she could go dancing. The venue where she teaches cited her for the kind of promotion of her classes to a wide variety of students.

• February 8, 2015:
  

• February 15, 2015:
  

• February 22, 2015
  A week after the last big snow storm, I saw a front loader in my town on one of the main roads picking up snow and putting it in a dump truck. With all the snow that wasn't picked up, some local roads lost about 6 feet of roadway on each side so traffic had been congested for at least the past week.

  I saw in the news that the last four snow storms left a record amount of snow and badly hurt the local economy. The (new) governor was urging people to go out shopping and help save the (local) economy. What I didn't hear was the state and towns planning enough resources to take care of the snow problems so that people could go shopping without any urging by the government officials. Winter is winter; it always shows up every year and right nown there's no parking near the stores. They knew what was going to happen and they didn't prepare for the worse.

  During all that snow clearing during the morning commute, they had police details managing the traffic because the front loaders were clearing one side of the road while the dump truck was on the other side. I was just wondering....why don't they do this at night when everyone's home and off the roads? Wouldn't they be able to clear out the snow faster at night?

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  I saw some guy drive by with his dog in the front passenger seat of a Mini Cooper. It wasn't big enough to be a Lab but was large enough to see.

  I'm thinking, this dog isn't going to be in a seat belt. If the guy gets into an accident, either the airbag will trigger and slam into the dog (and probably break his neck) or the dog will go slamming into the dashboard (and probably break his neck). Considering that some people care about their pets as much as they might care about a baby human, it doesn't make sense to let a dog sit in the front seat like that.

  Yeah, sure, no one's going to be trying to get into an accident with their beloved pet in the front seat. However, that's the point: no one ever plans on getting into an accident; they happen anyway in spite of one's best intentions. If you're not going to risk a baby or a child in the front seat, why risk a pet?