Postcards
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A road by any other name. To help emergency personnel respond to calls, Door County, Wis., began working in February to eliminate confusing duplications of road names. Specifically, the town had a preponderance of streets named after the elm tree. All did not go smoothly, however. Residents on the newly named Dutch Elm Road were unhappy about living on a street named after a tree disease. According to the Green Bay News-Chronicle, one resident told County Supervisor William Anschutz, “The county may as well take the insult a step further and rename the rural road ‘Horse Apple Lane.’”
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Talk about spoiling a long walk. In January, the Columbia, S.C., City Council discovered that its nearly completed municipal golf course sits atop an old graveyard for indigent black mental health patients. According to the Augusta Chronicle, approximately 1,400 bodies had been buried in the cemetery in the early 1900s. The council is seeking help from one of the course’s major contributors, the Tiger Woods Foundation, to stop construction of the course, which was intended to be used primarily by the city’s youth.
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Cough capitals. The American Lung Association has released its annual air quality ranking. The 10 cities/regions with the worst air quality: Los Angeles-Riverside/Orange County; Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, Calif.; Fresno, Calif.; Houston-Galveston-Brazoria, Texas; Bakersfield, Calif.; Washington-Baltimore; Charlotte-Gastonia, N.C./Rock Hill, S.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Atlanta; and Atlantic City, N.J./Philadelphia-Wilmington, Del.
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Move over Mr. Ed. In November, Woodside, Calif., struggled with a state law that required it to have at least 16 affordable housing units. In the Silicon Valley town (think high-end real estate market), that meant the maximum rent for a one-bedroom apartment had to be $870. According to the Associated Press, the city solved the problem by allowing farmers to create apartments for residents inside their barns.