Brigid Howe

Not to berate me or advise me on what he thought I should do. He just said, let me know what you need and I’ll help. My mom told the rabbi that my dad would have done anything for me, & I believe it.

Anyway, my dad was a mensch. He helped people who are often under-resourced access the entitlements they deserved—veterans & people with disabilities.

He also loved me & my kiddo fiercely. I lost a job once & his response was to help me with my bills until I knew my next step.

I think about my dad every single day but there are days I miss him more than others. Also, he’d be so pissed off about the shutdown.

Grief is so weird. My dad died 9.5 months ago but today something triggered me to look at a Gmail exchange about him w/ the rabbi who spoke at his burial & now I’m crying. A friend sent me a screenshot from a fb group—I sent it to the rabbi to help him write his eulogy.

In my previous life working with Girl Scouts, I got to engage with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots institute regularly and always thought very highly of her as a leader and activist, and also truly as a sage.

‘Let’s be nice, please’: Debate over sidewalks gets testy amid safety concerns The Montgomery County Department of Transportation wants to add sidewalks in Kensington. Neighbors are turning on those who welcome the change.

‘Let’s be nice, please’: Debate over sidewalks gets testy amid safety concerns

Here is the 10 year crash history map of the neighborhood. Some are property damage only. But every crash could be one that hurts a child.

Blue dot is K-P ES.

Right? And even if I felt that way deep down in my shriveled husk of a heart, I wouldn’t admit it on the record.

Kinda like people prioritizing trees over keeping children alive.

Imagine telling a reporter you’re mad at the dad of a disabled youth for trying to improve safety in your community.

I get it when they install sidewalks—it’s a pain. You might lose trees, construction takes time, and then you have to shovel snow. But you might also have a safer route to school and prevent pedestrian injuries and deaths. So why is this even a debate. Plus, sidewalks increase property values.

These people are bad people.

They saying that they believe the aesthetics of their neighborhood matter more than the safety of children and people with disabilities.

Trees are replaceable. Children are not.

My mortgage company just told me I need verbal authorization from Mr Howe to talk to them about my mortgage. I am not married. My ex is not on the mortgage (plus he’s technically Dr. Howe). I’m the only one on my mortgage. Wtf? Is this some new handmaids tale thing dreamed up by them?

A driver hit me and my dog, and here’s the proof This month, my dog and I became members of a not-so-exclusive club: the 60,000 pedestrians who will be injured in a car crash each year. In the process of writing about this I get stuck: I want to bri...

I still have bruises from this driver's negligence. my dog has spots where his fur will never grow back. and five months later I am begging MCDOT to answer my emails, let alone to fix the intersection where it happened. at least the driver's insurance paid out. ggwash.org/view/99589/a...

One year the county hosted a Walk to School Day event at an ES where my walk zone sidewalk requests have been languishing for nearly a decade.

www.thebanner.com/community/lo...

‘Let’s be nice, please’: Debate over sidewalks gets testy amid safety concerns The Montgomery County Department of Transportation wants to add sidewalks in Kensington. Neighbors are turning on those who welcome the change.

Every time I think I’ve heard the worst story about an affluent suburban area blocking something, another one comes along: www.thebanner.com/community/lo...

That doesn't mean that housing supply is everything. But a severe shortage of units (and diverse unit types) in opportunity-rich areas is an undeniable contributor to our multifaceted housing crisis (to say nothing of climate change, our transportation challenges, etc)

Yes. I was telling my kid about Oscar and Frank and the fight for safer infrastructure this morning.

When there is a bike trail crossing a busy state road at the bottom of a deep valley & there is no beacon or even a median where cyclists & pedestrians can stop, their deaths in crashes are predictable, not accidents. And when beacons or medians are installed…fewer deaths.

When a driver racks up the records driving citations & has a list of offenses a mile long but the consequences & enforcement doesn’t happen, and then six weeks after yet another ticket he strikes and kills an elderly woman on a state highway…that is entirely predictable, not an accident.

Data shows that along the UBCP area since 2015 there have been 21 fatal or serious bike or ped injuries. There have been 4 in the neighborhood streets in the study areas. Our stroads and highways are deadly by design. Calming University Boulevard will save lives.

This administration indicates their lack of interest in protecting people’s lives in many ways.

When the decision is made to keep dim or failed streetlights in a congested urban area, on a section with hills & compromised sight lines, a driver not seeing a pedestrian until it’s too late to brake is not accidental, it’s a predictable result.

When a cyclist veers off a sidewalk to avoid untrimmed foliage, a fall into the road may be accidental (maybe they thought they could control the swerve), but the need to avoid the foliage is predictable & the lack of trimming is the fault of a land owner or local government. Not accidental.

When pedestrians regularly cross mid-block because that’s where the bus stop is & the signaled crosswalk is hundreds of feet away, a pedestrian getting struck by a driver is not accidental, it’s the predictable result of a transportation department policy or decision.

www.michigan.gov/mdot/travel/...

#crashnotaccident

Almost no collision on University Boulevard is an accident. Sometimes the cause is easy to identify (drunk driver) but there are policy decisions at all levels that impact traffic safety.

If you cut deaths in half along University/VM/Georgia/Randolph/NH/Connecticut/355, even if you doubled neighborhood street deaths, we’d lose fewer neighbors overall. Do you believe peds along state highways are more expendable than those in neighborhoods?

False. The vast majority of pedestrian fatalities in the county (and state for that matter) happen on state highways to poor, older, immigrant transit-riders and people of color, not on neighborhood streets. Even if more traffic moves to neighborhood streets they are engineered more safely.