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Something for everyone today, even Jardine’s haters and future Jardine’s lovers…
One of my all-time, good-for-the-earth, suburban pet peeves is taking a step towards being eliminated. Starting in January, yard waste will no longer be picked up in Johnson County and dumped in landfills.
Hats off to the Johnson County Commission for doing the right thing.
Starting in January, "Yard waste collected curbside will be required to be composted rather than disposed of in a landfill…" the Johnson County Sustainability Program Web site says. "The changes to the Code will require all residential trash haulers operating in Johnson County to provide specified minimum solid waste services to their residential customers to divert more recyclable and compostable materials away from landfills to beneficial reuse."
Why should you care?
Because bagging grass and leaves is pointless and wasteful. Mulching with a lawnmower is not only better for your lawn, but it saves fuel guzzling trash trucks from having to lumber around town to pick everything up and dump it in landfills that are filling up fast.
Don’t believe me?
Here’s what the Grounds Maintenance, a site for "golf and green industry professionals" says: "The easiest and cheapest way to dispose of leaves is to mulch them into the turf. This is not a new idea, but universities have only recently compiled enough data to determine that tree-leaf mulching has no long-term negative effects on the turf. Studies at Michigan State, Cornell, Rutgers and Purdue have concluded that mulching tree leaves is an excellent disposal method that does not harm healthy turf."
The new JOCO ordinance requires trash haulers to offer composting services (for an upcharge) to Johnson Countians who persist in bagging clippings and leaves, which the county (and I) hope will result in more mulching and less needless trash disposal.
Huzzah!
H&M on the Plaza
It’s been a while since there was this much advance buzz on a retail store opening…
The countdown and excitement over clothing store H&M was huge. Including my 14 year-old daughters who had the esteemed pleasure of checking out H&M in Tucson last summer. And make no mistake, H&M has been packed since its recent pre-holiday opening.
So down I went, fashion conscious teens in tow to get a first hand read on the place. To my surprise, here’s what I got; disappointment.
"Forever 21 is for younger people," says daughter Savannah. "You can shop at H&M if you’re older. It’s cheaper than Urban Outfitters but it’s not as hip as Urban Outfitters,"
So what’s missing?
"I just don’t like the clothes they have right now. They had more stuff that I liked in Tucson last summer."
The KC Star’s new ‘913’ weekly magazine
Eat your hearts out Missourians…
New Star Wednesday insert 913 is clearly targeted to replace the dearly departed Johnson County Sun.
And so far, so good.
For the past two weeks 913 weighed in at 36 and 32 pages in length. Nearly as large as what’s left of the Pitch.
However, the similarity ends there. There’s not a hip bone in 913’s body with the possible exception of Steve Rose – who finally has a current pic of himself and he’s looking pretty good. No way Rose is used to the type of editorial scrutiny that’s mandated at the Star, but when he wants to get pissy and take somebody or something down, he knows how to play the game. Here’s hoping the Star lets him.
The Star is throwing just about everything but the kitchen sink into the mix and it appears to be a content / news improvement over what was left of the Sun the past few years as it slipped toward oblivion. It’s even got Joyce Smith from the business section. Which could be a good thing if she can come up with enough content apart from her business section columns. She had a bunch of good stuff in the first 913, but today’s column is content light with nothing more than a filler, puff piece on a Leawood nut shop. A Leawood nut shop? Yep.
Anne Brockhoff’s new dining column could be a winner, but the Star is pretty goosey about letting people other than the designated reviewer assign a ratings number. So you have to plow through the column and then guess to what extent she liked it. It’s a great concept, but the newspaper needs to entrust her to make that call, otherwise many readers may find it skipable.
The main feature news content is a little PC for Johnson Countians. And a lot devoid of much news (unlike the Sun).
Week Two’s "Breaking Free, Unshackling from the chains of hyper-parenting," for example. And then today’s, "We’re Diverse. Really! How a 100 percent increase in our black, Hispanic and Asian residents is reflected in our schools, institutions and neighborhoods."
I’ve been living in Johnson County for more than 20 years now, and I can tell you those are not the must read kind of stories locals are looking for. Let alone thirsting for. The Star needs to figure a way to get some real news into 913 if it wants to be much more than an ad rag.
The $64 million question: Can the Star think outside its "normal" news box enough to truly matter to suburban Johnson Countians who still lump the Plaza in with downtown and consider KC’s crown jewel too dangerous to let their teenage kids roam free? Even by day?
We’ll see.
Star
Glad to see Star upgrade to a little nicer stock paper. Seems like new boss is making a few good changes.
Mulching is Good But can Be Bad
Yes mulching leaves back into the yard is good but you can only mulch so much back in. Then you reach a point that you start killing the grass. One has to be very careful when mulching leaves.
I mulch leaves…
Right out into the street like the rest of the duche bags on my block. Every yard has at least 2 50-60 oaks in it. It’s leafapalooza around here. But I hear mulched up leaves are good for asphalt, so it’s a win win.
LMAO Mark.
🙂
Laura Bauer
Hearne, the first edition of 913 included a piece (http://joco913.com/news/living-on-the-edge-how-the-housing-crisis-is-hitting-home-for-johnson-countians/) on the housing crisis in JoCo. It led with an anecdote from a resident named Laura Bauer. That couldn’t be the same Laura Bauer who is a Star reporter, right?
H&M sells cheap shit made in China clothes. March yourself over to Standard Style across the street and get some real stuff. Their Baldwin Jeans are the dog’s breakfast — designed in KC and manufactured in America. Yeah they’re expensive but quality goods pay for themselves.
Keep throwing those leaves in the Deffenbaugh dumpster….
I have 35 mature trees in my yard. Trust me, you CAN NOT simply mulch all of the leaves back into the lawn. You get to a point of critical mass quite quickly, and then you kill your lawn. I suppose what I find extremely hypocritical and quite annoying is in one breath greenies like yourself, Hearne, will tell me to mulch the leaves back into the ground, after all, they are biodegradable, right? Then in the next breath, you will tell me how these same biodegradable leaves are taking up precious room in the landfill.
SO, somehow once yard waste gets to the landfill, it ceases to biodegrade evidently. RIGHT.
Also, who really gives a shit how quickly landfills fill up? Last time I looked out an airplane window, there sure seems to be a whole lot of undeveloped land left in these here United States.
hearnie…delete some of these posts
please..this blog is getting boooorrrrrriiiiiingggggg……b ring back the back stabbing/cut to thebone
insults and short to the point assaults on people we don’t know’s charactor.
these new posters are too intellectual…one guy bob loblaw writes about looking down from a fucking
plane window seeing lots of empty land. Hey bob…you don’t need to fly in a plane to see empty land
buddy…just drive south on alt 69. Expat wants us to wear $500 a pair jeans…says “they’re the dogs breakfast”..
wow buddy…my dog eats dog food…sure wouldn’t want to wear that stuff around all day. where the hell did
you get that analogy mr. wizard? Super dave is now an expert on mulching…who is he? George Tomas
grandson? Who gives a rat ass? B shloz (my buddy for months now) says he’s impressed with the new
paper stock the stars using. Great shloz…why don’t you go to the dump and analayze the rest of the paper
stocks used in kc…
please hearne…delete these inane posts. We your loyal and longtime readers want blood and guts..
insults…fighting…conflict…hard hitting news about hotties…hookers…glazes hair piece…your daughters…
jardines lies and scams…i can hardly stand to see 2 queers post stories about composte shit in the
front yard.
give us back the real kcc…and do it fast!
Harley “The BlogFather”
Haha after 14 posts and 383 comments on Jardines Wait staff..thought maybe you and I could lend Beena a $1,000 to make it stop.
Happy Chanuka bud, we have missed you over at the BIAV… remember we’re there every Saturday.
Just so you know I mailed my vote to Hearne to give you blogger and commenter of the year.
Happy Holidays to all KCC community!
She’s quite popular, hasn’t had to do any layoffs and may not for a while – maybe a long while. And I hear she’s all over the newsroom, unlike her predecessor
I have a similar problem. You can’t do it in one pass, you have to go several times in the leaf falling season. And what about the grass clippings?
I’m coming back soon….
and KCC will be all back to normal. The insults can fly and the bloggers can have some fun again!