I hope you will print this so I can address a perceived slight related to a comment I contributed to the thread from last week about driveways being blocked on N. St. Clair Street.  There is a person who saw my comment on the listserv who at one time was an active member of St. Andrew's church and he took offense to my remarks.  He sent me a couple of messages that were somewhat aggressive and off-base so I wanted to throw him a bone and clarify my remarks even though he completely missed the point of my comment.

He felt that my comment was a "nastygram" and an attack on the church and congregation.  It was not intended as such.  Rather, I mentioned the church to put my comment in context both geographically and related to traffic volume.  My comment focused on the crazy things that people will say to justify their inconsiderate behavior. It was in response to a post that someone else had initiated rather than an attack salvo that I launched out of the blue.  I should add that my comment was not meant to tarnish or admonish either the church or the congregation as the people who park in front of our driveway represent a broad cross-section of drivers.

I also heard from many supportive folks who suggested that I paint the curbs yellow (we did this a long time ago and have a City permit for it) or call the police.  We haven't called the police because we don't want to cause a lot of trouble.  We just want clear access to and from our driveway.  Instead of calling the police, we go in search of the driver and have to do this frequently.  The problem was particularly concerning when we had a young child still at home and that was a safety issue in addition to being very inconvenient.  My comment didn't refer to people who didn't "see" the driveway or who were just going to be there for fifteen minutes.  My comment referred to people who say "There was no place else to park" which is willful inconsideration rather than an innocent mistake, although if you can't detect a driveway then your vision probably isn't good enough for you to be driving around.  We even installed motion lighting so people could see the driveway opening at night.

In the interest of full disclosure, the church does put out no-parking cones on Sunday mornings and on the day of special events.  We truly appreciate that.  They do not, however, do that for the multitude of community meetings that take place throughout the week.  We have our own cones and put them out from time to time but many people just move them so they only block part of the driveway which, by the way, is still blocking the driveway. The Rector and I have communicated frequently about this for thirteen years and he shares our frustration and we often laugh at the absurdity.  In any event, we manage to remain on good terms. The entire point of my post on Saturday was to say that people who say "There was no place else to park" when they block a driveway are truly entitled narcissists.  My sincere apologies to anyone who was offended.