Kittelson’s Corner: Process Maps & TDM

Posted on June 10, 2017

This is Kittelson’s Corner my weekly musings on things I think are interesting or important, especially in local government nerd-dom. This week I watched Wonder Woman (it was awesome), finished a book about the Jim Crow era, learned about car-free planning and followed Jim Comey.

Alright, let’s go…

What I Read

The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward

I finished a book this week and wanted to share it with y’all. C. Vann Woodward’s “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” is a really interesting and quick read on the history of the Jim Crow era in the south. I saw this book on a couple of lists for books to learn more about that era and it’s been named one of the most important books of the 20th century.

It’s definitely worth checking out from your local library, it’s a short read (about 225 pages) and is really compelling. The original book was based of a series of lectures that Woodward gave in the 1950s about segregation in the south and broke a lot of misconceptions about the origins of segregation. The updated version that I read follows the rise of Jim Crow and the history of integration through the black power movement of the 1970s. I found it fascinating and I worked through it pretty quickly after getting into it.

200-Mile Town-to-Town Columbia River Gorge Loop Hike In the Works

One of my favorite places in the world is the Columbia River Gorge. It’s beautiful and amazing and if you like hiking or the outdoors and you are in Oregon or Southwest Washington you should go. This week I learned about an awesome 200 mile trek that the Friends of the Columbia River Gorge are working on. I cannot wait for this. The month/week/day it’s complete I will be calling in sick from work and doing an extended hike through the Gorge.

Also, for fans of obscure governments, the Columbia River Gorge Commission is a regional government established by the states of Washington and Oregon. The commission has representatives from each state, local governments and even the federal government.

 

Environmental Justice

Okay this last one is a video, technically I didn’t read it, but it’s really good. I didn’t know much or anything about environmental justice before reading some of Vann Newkirk II’s work (he’s also a great Twitter follow). Also, spoiler alert, one of my dreams for the ELGL Pop-Up in Charlotte is to get Newkirk to come speak *fingers crossed*.

What I Listened To

“Comey Came to Play” & Still Processing

With everything that was in the news this week I’ve got two podcasts to help you catch up and help you escape. The first is Pod Save America, one of my favorite newsy podcasts. They did a great recap of the Jim Comey testimony and even got Representative Adam Schiff to talk about it.

The other podcast I really enjoyed this week was Still Processing. Hosted by two culture writers from the New York Times, Still Processing is a great weekly show about all things TV, Movies and Music. They reviewed Wonder Woman (which I saw last night and thought it was awesome! The best superhero movie I’ve seen since the Dark Knight) and discussed potential songs of the summer.

Well$

So I have been listening to Well$ like constantly the last two days. He’s a rapper from Charlotte with a very unique sound. I stumbled upon this article on how Well$ is trying to give North Carolina Hip-Hop a sound of its own and he dropped an EP this week that’s worth listening to. I really like the below video (forgive the cover picture) it’s got shots of Charlotte and a head bopping beat.

Transportation Demand Management on GovLove

This week on GovLove I interviewed Chris Hamilton, from Key West, FL, about all things transportation planning. For those that don’t know Chris he’s a great thinker on car-free transportation and shares awesome stuff about getting people to use alternative transportation options. He also has quite the following on Twitter and as a result my notifications have been a mess since the episode dropped on Tuesday… Take a listen and let us know what you think of Chris’ views on parking requirements, bike share and more.

 

Tweet of the Week

Every budget office during the month of June.

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Wait! One More Thing…

I think I’ve talked about the City of Durham’s IdeaLab, but in case I haven’t it’s a cool bi-monthly get together where staff from the city, county and other places get together to learn about innovation and new ideas. This week we learned about  process mapping and it has me excited to map out the whole budget process.

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