Wrap your head around roundabouts | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Wrap your head around roundabouts detnews.com The Detroit News
I found this article on detnews.com this morning and thought of how it related to the visitation of Dan Burden http://www.walklive.org/?page_id=17 over the past two days in Oxford, Michigan. Many of you know that I serve on the Down town Development Authority Board and Chair the Economic Development and Restructuring Committee for the Village of Oxford. The development of our Village is a work in progress. Many who have served on various Boards and committees have long been talking/visualizing one of our Villages blessings ad curses, M 24.
The blessing is that we have what many are trying to create in a historical downtown street scape. We have iconic buildings with unique character that cannot be duplicated in a Mc-mall drawn up on a board with fake facades made to look, but can never feel like what we have. Why? because you cannot put the heart and soul into a Mc-mall. When you closely examine it and touch and feel it.... knock on it.... you hear and empty "ping" because.... it has not heart and soul.

After meeting with Dan Burden I can attest to a man who has heart and soul. Just take one look at the larger than life smile and a mustache that is unique to.... well Dan Burden (some from the Village would argue Dave Baily is a close match!). This past week was an energy overload for our Village. We started out the week with a DDA Board meeting, moved up on the calender to coincide with our Main Street Evaluation by the Oakland County Main Street Evaluation Committee. This is a highly coveted recognition that many towns and villages across America are reaching toward gaining that recognition http://www.oakgov.com/peds/program_service/main_street/mainstreetoc.html .

This does not happen by osmosis or good luck. Recognition like this comes from good old fashioned hard work with volunteers pulling the load. People who reside in the Village of Oxford need to know that they are blessed. Why? Dan Burden commented on several occasions about the energy level and excitement level he felt over the time he spent with community leaders and volunteers over his stay. Dan even commented on an example of how this phenomena works making reference to a TED.com video demonstration I will try to paraphrase. Imagine a group of people on a hill... kind of like Pine Knob at a concert.... and one person gets up and starts to sway and dance to the music.... another person joins in.... and then another.... and another.... and eventually everyone... even the rhythmically impaired join in. The revelation is in that it is not the first in leader that is the key to this but the first to join in that creates the sense of "courage" to join in the dance and the wave follows. I'm thinking this is a similar situation to pop culture things like spiked mow hawks, ear rings for men, nose rings, belly rings.... uhhhh.... lets stop here?

My point to all this is a call to all to look around and see what positive things are happening in your community.... join in the dance... if you don't have a lead dancer.... start dancing... you might feel funny or foolish at first.... but don't be afraid..... START DANCING!

The evaluation committee gathered with the DDA Board and community leaders and gave us their verbal report findings. You might think I'm going to go one to tell you how perfect we are in every way? WRONG! Good news is that we received good , but can use improvement in almost all categories. The formal written report will be synthesized and made available to the community in a few short weeks. So... that is good news because isn't that what life is really like? Aren't we all really on a "needs improvement" program? My wife and kids tell me this often (JK!)!

I cannot close out without mentioning that Dan Burden met with over 50 community members and gave us a presentation that left us all with a real vision of "Yes... this can be done..." as opposed to some that have said "No.... we've already looked at that... It can't be done..." . It reminds me of those pictures we were shown as students in Psych 101 class... what do you see here? Do you see the beautiful women? Or do you see an old women with a large nose with a big wart on the tip? Glass half empty or half full?

My personal favorite (remember I'm a science teacher at heart!) part of the day.... a demonstration of the brand spanking new LED downtown street lighting retro fit designed, made and installed by Relume Technologies http://www.relume.com/ of Oxford Michigan. Wow, high tech, low energy use, state of the art , made in USA, made in Michigan, Made in Oxford! The representative from Relume pulled us up to his vehicle, pulled up a program, clicked a couple of buttons... BAMM... entire street lighting goes to 50%.... Click.... slowly... in theater mode.... back up to 100%... clear focused.... lower energy use, less maintenance, efficient lighting. He continues on to say that each light has its own id (name) and they can do things like knock off every other or 2 of 3 lights in late night/early pre dawn. That makes sense... we shut off our lights before hitting the sack... right? Why not at least knock them down a few notches and save a few bucks on the electricity bill? Now... I though I heard him say... and I don't want to make any promises or over state this... but he did say something like "We can even sink these lights to music...." Excuse me?? Did you say you can make these lights go with music? Are you kidding me? You've got DDA people standing on the street looking at these new lights and thinking.... Rochester... we love your Christmas light display and all.... but... you can't touch the sugar plumbs dancing in our heads right now. I mean... dancing lights?

Stay tuned!