I have eight minutes before time to leave for a meeting about rebuilding our highway. The designers have proposed a couple of options in our little town of Drake where I pick up my mail, and neither one of them is going to make a certain neighborhood happy because they are moving the bridge into their area so 100% of the traffic coming across that bridge will go past houses that were previously at the end of a dead-end. Now, all the neighbors will drive past, as well as the people going to the little chapel that is at the other end where the current bridge from the main highway is.

To make it worse, since the flood, the street that goes past the houses is about 8 feet from their front doors, and they have to cross it to get to their front yards.

The highway department was going to spring this on them in a public meeting next week, and our river coalition people who've seen the plans have warned them that would be the biggest mistake possible - those residents are old, the youngest is 70 something, and there will be heart attacks and strokes. Remember those movie trailers from the 1950s or so where it'd say: 'This movie is so shocking, ambulances will be standing by.'

Anyhow, this morning I'm headed for the meeting where we'll discuss this some more.