Joetopia

So after several weeks of angst and grassroots outrage, the Annie saga has come to a close in an uncomfortable manner — torn up, emotionally rent and fully not tied nicely with a pretty bow as I had originally hoped.

Annie’s new owners returned her to her old owner on Monday evening, and as the photo above shows, a heartfelt bond has been repaired.

Surely one family is bitter and sad about how a simple trip to adopt a stray dog has turned out, but an image like this should offer some cheer.

Bob Cuddy, who sparked the controversy with his original column, is also bitter and sad, chagrined at having participated in the process and the melee that ensued.

Dave Congalton, who took the proverbial ball and ran with it, may have at one point been bitter and sad but now is mostly happy and content with just a bit of bitterness and sadness, but that’s only because he believes Bob called him a terrorist.

Me? I’m okay. Neither here nor there, I guess.

I’m happy Annie is back with Chuck Hoage.

I’m not happy that to make it happen, a family had to be intimidated to the point they feared for their safety.

I’m happy so many people were energized and inspired to participate.

I’m not happy a few of them proved to be the kind of knuckleheads whose license to use a keyboard should be revoked.

I’m happy the county stepped in and tried to correct a previous mistake by trying to reunite Chuck and Annie.

I’m not happy they screwed up further and made it worse by inadvertently releasing the adopter’s name to the frothing masses.

I’m am happy someone (Congalton) led a crusade to keep the case alive.

I’m not happy he elevated the crusade from radio show to Facebook group to public rally to personal phone call.

As polite as he may have been, at some point a media and Internet phenomenon hits too close to home, and voicemails on the family phone are that point.

There can be no denying the tinge of threat in both his e-mail to the county and his message to the adopters, even if he didn’t intend it that way.

Terrorism may be too strong of a word. Intimidation certainly isn’t.

In the end, I never did get my Hallmark Channel ending, the one that should have made most everyone feel good.

And in the end, while I appreciate Bob’s effort to refocus attention on larger issues, this wasn’t just about a dog.

It was about a man first, one who made a mistake, certainly learned from it and hoped to reverse it.

It was about a family that, for whatever reason, started out in a noble act and then went astray, eventually making an honorable decision, but probably because they were compelled by fear rather than charity.

And it was about a radio personality who went from community soundboard to something akin to self-appointed hostage negotiator.

In the end, many people with good intentions acted less responsibly than they should have.

We got the result we wanted, but the road is now littered with the carcasses of those good intentions.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

Tribune photo by Joe Johnston

I kind of hate to weigh in on a topic that has been ruminated upon ad infinitum, but I had an incident the other day that fully exemplifies the obnoxious attitude many people like to take when sitting behind the wheel of a car.

I’d bet in a great many circumstances, it is an attitude absolutely divorced from the one they exhibit in most normal social interactions.

So I’m driving down the road and come to this T intersection that operates in this exceedingly weird way.

Picture me driving along the top of the T from right to left.

At the intersection, I have a stop sign. Traffic coming up from the bottom of the T, however, does not.

This always seems counter-intuitive in that they’re leaving one road to enter another just like me, but it’s because the great majority of the cars coming up turn right. So usually, there’s no problem.

Occasionally, someone wants to turn left, and they don’t have to stop before cutting right in front of a car stopped at the sign.

When you drive this road enough, you become used to never seeing a car turn left. It’s happened maybe three times in five years.

So when I proceeded to make my turn even as traffic was approaching, it was because nearly all traffic in the past has always turned right.

This particular car, though, wanted to turn left, and was exceedingly irritated to find me in her path.

She did have her turn signal on and had the right of way, so I stopped and waved an apology, well before we actually got close enough for any contact. It was what she did at the same time that absolved her of complete innocence in the matter.

Which was to holler, scowl and take both hands off the steering wheel to flip me a double salute.

Just because you are in your car doesn’t mean you have to be totally ungracious and rude when someone makes a mistake.

If I had been walking along the street and accidentally cut someone off, I would have excused myself and the matter very likely would have gone no further.

A normal pedestrian in a face-to-face interaction would have accepted the apology before flying off the handle.

Why do some people abandon that personal courtesy just because they aren’t personally face to face?

It’s the same attitude that compels certain drivers to act like the road is their own personal Indy 500, to tailgate if you’re going too slow ahead of them, to weave quickly in and out of traffic, and to commit any other number of motor vehicle insensitivities.

All of this behavior is what spawned the DMV motto that we all “drive defensively” — in other words, do not be aggressive in a car, because bad things happen.

Another way to put it is, drive like you walk.

Treat people like you would if you met them face to face.

If every driver followed this simple guide, we certainly would see a lot less road rage and fewer accidents.

What do you think? Share your worst driving story here.

So Little Miss Fifth-Grader comes home with a stack of papers from her first day of school. She doesn’t have any homework for herself, but she does have some for me.

I’m supposed to write memories of when I was in fifth grade for some such thing that she will use in class, I suppose. This is what I wrote. I hope it will be better than what any other parent in her class writes, but that’s just me trying to overachieve and all:

When I was in fifth grade, I lived miles and miles and miles and miles away from my school. It was all the way on the other side of town, through many stop signs, across some big streets, around a shopping center and past the park.

Usually, my mom drove us to school. But one morning I was being obnoxious to one of my friends who was getting a ride with us, so my mom told me I could find my own way to school.

She left me crying in the driveway and drove off. Once it was clear she wasn’t coming back, I jumped on my bike and pedaled like crazy all those miles across town.

I think I almost made it in time. I also nearly had a coronary embolism.

•  •  •

I can’t remember what I liked most for lunch in elementary school, but I remember what I disliked most: liverwurst sandwiches.

It’s like eating stinky meat in the form of peanut butter. Gross.

•  •  •

I can still remember some of the names of the kids in my fifth-grade class: Darcy Tizio, Rich Cerutti, Rob Something, Joey Something, Sean Something, Kris Something.

Okay, so I can’t remember very many. I remember Darcy’s last name because it was close to mine and we were always lined up near each other.

Plus, she was cute.

•  •  •

In fifth-grade, my school had an art contest to pick some designs to paint on the handball walls.

I drew a desert scene with a tornado. It didn’t win.

One of the kids who did win drew a picture of Garfield the cat. I think this qualifies as copyright infringement.

•  •  •

This didn’t happen in fifth grade, but it’s a good story: In first grade, I won a bank contest asking for ideas about how to save water.

I drew a picture of an outhouse and suggested we get rid of flush toilets.

This seemed like a very good way to save water at the time. This does not seem like such a good idea to me now.

I won $5 and they opened my first savings account in honor of this innovative proposal.

•  •  •

I was a very good reader in fifth grade. It was my best subject.

I got put into a little group with the other good readers and we got to read on our own while the teacher worked with the rest of the class. You should be impressed by this.

Thirty years later, I’m still in a little group with all the good readers, only now they’re called journalists. You may or may not be impressed by that.

•  •  •

After my fifth-grade year, the district closed the school.

There are now several houses occupying the field where we used to play kickball and shoot marbles.

I drove by it once many years later. I liked the field better.

What do you remember about fifth-grade? Share your stories here.

It’s nice to see county officials finally stepping up to do something about this Annie the dog business.

The latest development had them arranging a meeting of top minds to figure out a solution, before the enraged electorate storms the County Government Center with torches and pitchforks.

I’m not exactly sure what their strategy will be, but it’s encouraging they’ve included county counsel Warren Jensen, who presumably represents the muscle that may be needed should the initial round of begging and offers of free-puppy gift baskets prove unsuccessful.

When all other rational efforts at negotiation fail, bring in the lawyer.

As I wrote earlier, this could all be resolved so simply if the new owner would just do the right thing.

But that has not happened, and we increasingly appear headed toward a Hollywood ending. Let’s suspend reality for a moment and take a look at some of the most entertaining scenarios:

The Hallmark Channel ending

Also known as the “after-school special” scenario, it would see the anonymous adopter come to his senses and generously reach out to Chuck Hogue, perhaps by leaving Annie on his doorstep with a big red bow around her neck and a note saying, “She always loved you best.”

At some point, it will include a scene where Annie is placed exactly equidistant between her new and old owners. She will look back and forth about 12 times, before waving a paw to Mr. Anonymous and trotting to Hogue’s side.

The Lassie ending

In this scenario, it’s revealed that Annie has actually been held captive all this time and always wanted to get back to her rightful owner.

After chewing through the rope that bound her to the wall in the broken-down shed, she races for home.

In the climactic scene, a despondent Chuck Hogue is tending to business on his property, when he hears a distant barking and looks up to see his beloved dog charging over the crest of a nearby hill.

Much hugging and orchestral embellishment ensue.

The ‘Homeward Bound’ ending

This scenario follows the same basic plot as the Lassie ending, except that Annie’s journey crosses five states, the Mississippi River and Death Valley, takes several months and includes many extra-sensory conversations with animals she meets on the way.

She’s accompanied by a comedic parakeet voiced by Chris Rock and a wise-cracking toad voiced by Don Rickles.

The kids love this one, but the critics pan it as a “hack job” due to serious cases of overacting.

The ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ ending

This scenario focuses the dramatic action on the courtroom fight for custody of Annie.

Initial hopes had the producers thinking Oscar nomination, until they errantly cast Fred Gwynne — of Herman Munster, “My Cousin Vinny” and “Pet Semetary” fame — in the role of the judge, who spends the better part of the movie rebuffing the county’s legal arguments and confounds attorneys by repeatedly saying, “Sometimes, dead is better” and “What is a ‘yute’?”

The Elian Gonzalez ending

In this compelling story, negotiations with the evil, villainous adopter drag on for about 18 months and feature much threat-making and saber-rattling.

United Nations mediators from The Hague are called in, and many scenes feature grim-faced suits entering and exiting closed-door meetings.

The story climaxes with a SWAT team rappelling from Blackhawk helicopters and storming the adopter’s home, automatic weapons at the ready.

They tear a whimpering Annie from the clutches of her new master and inexplicably send her to Cuba.

How do you think Annie’s story will end? Share your thoughts here?

The most ridiculous thing about the seven-year wait for work to begin on Atascadero’s historic Administration Building is FEMA’s claim that it will only cover visible quake damage.

As noted in Tonya Strickland’s story this week, the federal agency bases its funding estimates on damage people can see, which would seem to be exactly the opposite approach you’d want to take when assessing the effects of an earthquake.

Seriously, of all the natural disasters that can occur, is there any event that is more likely to cause unseen but potentially life-threatening weaknesses to a building — especially one as old as Atascadero’s famed city hall — than invisible tectonic forces rattling through its bones?

And this is nothing to say about all the deterioration that has occurred these several years while FEMA was farting around failing to commit to a dollar amount that would restore the building to usable status.

This building is a California landmark, and with the exception of Hearst Castle, probably the most notable piece of architecture in San Luis Obispo County.

The estimated cost to repair it is running around $43 million with FEMA offering up only $16 million.

Atascadero is hoping to convince the federal agency to up its share to $28 million and in the interim will use a bond to cover costs so the work can finally proceed.

It’s annoying that the process has drawn on this long, especially when you consider a time frame that took us from the boom times of the early 2000s to the days of financial crisis we live in now.

How much is that having an effect, and wouldn’t it have been so much better if we’d worked this out five years ago, when government coffers were more flush with cash?

On the bright side, the work is at last slated to begin, which leads me to another observation.

While perusing the various historical photos of the Administration Building’s construction nearly 100 years ago, what most struck me was how open the site was.

In that setting, the building stands out in a remarkable way that fully showcases its unique architecture.

In the ensuing years, many trees have been planted in and around Sunken Gardens, most of which are nice additions and provide shade for visitors to the park.

A few, however, provide no such benefit and are no better than unpulled weeds, the vision of some misguided landscaper than now serve only to obscure the building’s handsome terra cotta facade, especially as it’s seen from El Camino Real.

How cool would it be, as part of the renovation and reopening of the building in time for the city’s centennial in 2013, if we could also restore that unobstructed view?

So to Atascadero’s city leaders, as part of the restoration budget, allocate a few dollars to hack down those trees.

Like the floss silk tree that was removed in 2008 from the front of Mission San Luis Obispo, these trees were not part of the original plans for the site, as the illustration here shows.

It would be a shame to spend all this money repairing the “visible” quake damage only to be left with a building we can’t actually see in all its glory.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

Photos courtesy City of Atascadero

In his column yesterday, Bob Cuddy shared the troubling story of Chuck Hogue and his dog, Annie, who jumped out of his truck, went missing for several days, then turned up at the shelter, only to be adopted out to another family before anyone notified Hogue.

Yes, there are lessons we all can learn from this case, about how to ensure a lost pet returns home safe, but the most significant one has nothing to do with that, nor any of Hogue’s actions, for that matter.

This lesson is for the family who adopted Annie.

At the end of the day, despite some communication problems within Animal Services, the system worked.

Annie was found. Annie can be reunited with her owner.

But her new family won’t let her.

Bob asked these unknown people to return the dog to Hogue and adopt another, but with all due respect, he kind of hemmed and hawed a bit in coming to that conclusion, making it seem as though the conclusion rested in some sort of gray area.

It doesn’t, so I’m going to take it up another notch.

Whoever you are, you have a moral obligation as a decent human being to give Annie back to Chuck Hogue.

It is that simple.

You can choose to either do the right thing, or not.

Yes, you have a legal right to Annie. You went to the shelter, picked out a dog and adopted her.

But when word came within a matter of days that her owner had been found, you should have honorably returned her, knowing that the system had achieved its goal of reuniting a lost pet with its owner, even if not in the most efficient way.

Instead, when the entreaty came from Eric Anderson, head of animal services, you balked.

As he wrote in an e-mail to The Tribune, “they already felt bonded and attached to the dog and decided not to give it up.”

Gimme a break.

You’ve had the dog for a couple of weeks.

I don’t care if Annie pulls up a chair at the dining room table at breakfast, sleeps with one ear open at the foot of your bed at night and spends the time in between pulling Junior out of the old well in the backyard.

You cannot have bonded in a handful days in any meaningful way comparable to the seven years Hogue and Annie shared.

Bob wonders if the new owners have kids and notes that if so, the decision to return Annie would be more difficult.

No, it wouldn’t.

It would be an excellent learning experience, a chance for a youngster to bring joy to someone else by committing a selfless act.

Instead, we get a display of selfishness.

What kind of example is that?

Again, this is a simple case.

Do the right thing and give the dog back.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

So I had the honor of being feted in the latest issue of the Santa Lucian, the newsletter published by our local chapter of the Sierra Club.

It seems the enviros were none to pleased with my opinion on the debate over Diablo Canyon’s cooling system.

So they devoted an entire page to a nifty little counterstrike with quotes and pointer boxes attempting to disassemble and refute various points in my argument.

If you’re so interested, you can download the pdf here, or just look below to get an idea.

"Taking Issue," The Santa Lucian July/Aug, 2010, Page 8

The crux of the article was that I got bamboozled by the PG&E public relations machine and just acted as a mouthpiece for an evil corporate empire looking to produce as much energy as cheaply as possible, little fishies be damned.

They didn’t say that in so many words, but I’m pretty sure that’s how they feel.

The item opens with some nuclear fear-mongering about the safety of the spent-fuel pools, claiming that Diablo Canyon is preparing to “double- and triple-rack the waste … increasing the risk of fire and radioactive release” — as though there were no other plan to store the expended rods, you know, like that little dry cask operation and all.

Nuclear waste is nasty stuff, and PG&E does have a better plan for storage than filling up the spent-fuel pool until uranium-filled rods were poking out of the surface.

Next, they condemn my lack of concern for the one dinner-sized fish killed by the intake system each day.

In doing so, the article quotes extensively from a publication called “Licensed to Kill,” produced in 2001 by the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, an anti-nuke activist group. (Yeah, no agenda there …)

They reach back to a case dating from 1982-1994 regarding questions about PG&E apparently omitting data about the plant’s impact on the environment.

I don’t know what happened in 1982, but the PG&E guys we met with did acknowledge near total mortality for the larval sea life passing through cooling system … in addition to that one dinner fish.

That is an impact we accept in exchange for the vast amount of energy produced.

I never said this was a perfect world, that there were no impacts. I said the benefit was worth the cost.

The next point takes me to task for downplaying the global impact Diablo Canyon poses based on its influence over the nearshore cove environment.

You know this argument. It’s the butterfly-flapping-its-wings-in-the-Amazon one.

Again, even if it is true that some hypothetical fish in Australia is impacted by warmer water temperatures in one small spot off our coast, that is a risk we take — until someone verifiably proves the damage is so egregious as to make the power generated unworthy.

It is true that Diablo Canyon’s warmer waters have contributed to the spread of withering syndrome, a disease that is devastating California’s black abalone populations. But it’s also true that overharvesting and possibly climate change as well have contributed to the mollusk’s endangered status.

It is disturbing that a species may approach extinction, in part due to the power plant, and I am fully in favor of efforts to mitigate damage of this type — as long as the alternative isn’t equally damaging in other ways.

At the end of the day, impacts of human civilization alter our environment in ways vast and minute every moment of every day.

We make innumerable trade-offs, always looking to strike the best balance between the good of the planet and the good of all its inhabitants.

Occupying the top rung of the uppermost ladder of the food chain, we hold a special responsibility, which is why have agencies like the EPA and the Department of Fish and Game, to help look out for interests who have no voice.

From there, we make choices.

Hopefully PG&E can find ways to limit its impact on the marine environment, and if it is ultimately forced to abandon once-through cooling, come up with another method that preserves this energy source without creating other new equally onerous impacts.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

So the federal government has plunged head first into the Arizona immigration debate.

It’s about time.

As opposed to focusing on civil rights, its case is based on the constitutional standard that the federal government has “pre-eminent” authority to set immigration policy.

In other words, what part of “the supreme law of the land” don’t you understand, you Arizona numbskulls?

Personally, I prefer the higher-road argument that the law is fatally flawed and unconstitutional from a human rights perspective, but if the feds want to take this tack and let the ACLU handle the other, that’s fine, I guess.

Either way, we’ll get a definitive ruling on the matter once and for all from a bona fide legal mind as opposed to the likes of Gov. Jan Brewer and the bill’s author, state Sen. Russell Pearce, who called the Justice Department lawsuit “an absolute insult to the rule of law.”

Apparently in Pearce’s narrow little world, Arizona is a fiefdom unto itself and has no responsibility to recognize that the nation has a “rule of law” of its own and one that is higher and more important than the hare-brained schemes of one state’s two-bit legislators.

What’s next? After the law gets struck down, will Arizona threaten to secede from the Union?

It’s about time we had a moratorium on modern-day politicians who think they know more than the Founding Fathers and whose greatest motivation is not to form “a more perfect union” for the United States as a whole but to simply get re-elected and hold onto whatever insignificant piece of turf they’ve managed to con their way into.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.

So the case of John Norris has at least temporarily ended in a hung jury, with the panel split 9-3 in favor of acquittal.

If you haven’t been following the news, Norris is the San Miguel man who fatally shot his wife after apparently stumbling while carrying his Taurus 1911 handgun.

He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, which is a step below murder and focuses on negligence rather than intent.

Way back in November when I first wrote about this case, it just seemed like an accident, even though the excuse that the dog tripped him may sound a little far-fetched.

Yes, he could have been more careful.

Yes, he should have made sure the gun wasn’t loaded.

But sometimes the world simply doesn’t cooperate, despite our best hopes.

Sometimes we are not as perfect or careful as we might like, and forces conspire against us in the most tragic ways.

That’s really what seemed to be at work in this case, based on Norris’ reaction after the shooting, his explanation and the type of charges prosecutors filed against him.

The fact that nine out of 12 jurors agree should be enough to set this case to rest.

That’s saying three-quarters of those tasked with deciding Norris’ fate do not believe in his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

They don’t believe he was negligent to a criminal extent that deserves punishment beyond what he’s already experienced.

The practical result at the moment is a hung jury, which is sort of legal limbo. Not an outright acquittal, but probably enough to indicate this case isn’t worth pursuing further.

That decision is now in prosecutors’ hands, and they would be foolish to spend any more time on this case.

The case also makes me wish we had a slightly adjusted system of jury votes that allows for some majority to achieve acquittal, and 9-3 sounds like a pretty good threshold, especially in manslaughter-type cases where no malice was intended.

How about this: To convict, you need a unanimous verdict, and to acquit, you need at least three-quarters voting not-guilty, as opposed to a complete unanimous verdict the other way. Now, anything in between (even 11-1) drops us into the netherworld of possible interminable litigation in a case that may not merit it.

Tasha Norris is dead. Her children have been without their father for several months.

How much more suffering d0 we need to impose?

What do you think about this case? Share your thoughts here.

Contemplating the prospect that Avila Beach could or should aspire to something greater borders on a fool’s errand for all kinds of reasons.

Yet that is the spot we find ourselves in now, these dozen or so years since much of Front Street was razed to scoop out all the oil and tainted sand.

In the wake of the Unocal cleanup, Avila has come back stronger and better than ever — no longer funky but eminently more visitable with features and resources that never would have been realized otherwise.

Still, many businesspeople there seem unsatisfied and wring their hands over the difficulties they have making a living year-round, saying, in effect, that aside from the beach, there’s no “there” there.

That is as it is and probably should be. Here’s why:

Space limitations: Avila is probably too small a town to accommodate any kind of transcending tourist draw, the kind that would turn the area into something more than a three-month destination and, as local businessman Michael Kidd put it, give people a reason to visit on a Tuesday in January.

The fact is, the “Tuesday in January” crowd would only come for something utterly unique and dramatic.

Think Hearst Castle or the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the kind of indoor-outdoor, one-of-a-kind experience that would compel people to plan vacations around it. Or at least think elite hotel and conference center, to possibly lure business crowds in the off-season.

The downside of such an attraction is that whatever crowds it might draw in the winter you could multiply by 10 in the summer, a prospect that is impossible with Avila’s limited physical space, lodging and amenities.

Probably with Avila, we’d be better off just hoping to draw in the “Saturday in January” crowd. Forget Tuesdays.

Access and traffic: There are only so many cars little two-lane Avila Beach Road can handle, only so many parking spots in this diminutive town.

As it is on warm summer weekends now, you might find yourself hoofing it to the beach from several blocks away, Boogie Boards, beach bags and coolers in tow.

In addition, by the very nature of its removed location, Avila already asks visitors for a certain level of commitment, meaning there are a particular number who just won’t want to travel that far off Highway 101 unless the side trip is truly compelling.

Even if they did have a reason to come, would it create unbearable traffic and clogged, unpassable streets?

Available land: Say we could somehow solve the traffic and parking issue, maybe add a few hotels and whatnot. If we could create the infrastructure to support a major tourist draw, where would it go?

There just isn’t much available, with the exception of one notable spot: Fossil Point, the expansive and stunning blufftop property that was formerly home to Unocal’s tank farm.

This is a knock-’em-dead location, to be sure, with all kinds of marketable potential.

Its perch atop the hill overlooking the curve of the bay and its seaside panorama is unlike anywhere else on our county’s coast, looking out over steep cliffs at a south-facing beach with a pretty harbor, sailboats and hills in the distance.

It is not hard to imagine what a luxury hotel might look like on this property.

It’s not even that hard to imagine what a Chumash cultural center might look like.

Or even an amphitheater carved into the hillside. Imagine all those musical events moving from the grass at the Avila Beach Golf Resort to the hill above town with its sunset views?

All would be interesting options that could add a level of desirability above what’s in Avila now without reaching theme park levels.

The problem is, I see very little chance for anything overly ambitious happening on this property because the way the discussions are going now, there are simply too many cooks in the kitchen and one of them is the Emeril Lagasse of California planning: the Coastal Commission.

The only difference is, when Coastal Commmissioners say “Bam!” it’s usually in the form of a hammer to the head of any private property owner hoping to do something productive with his land.

You want to sell the plot to Marriott to build a five-star hotel? Bam! Not on our coastline, you won’t!

Not that I’m against the Coastal Commission. It’s a hugely valuable agency that has protected our shoreline from commercial abuses, but it also presents a huge hurdle for legitimate landowners looking to develop their property in a reasonable way.

Would the Ritz-Carlton at Fossil Point be a legitimate use? Maybe, maybe not.

I think it’s worth discussing, but I bet the chatter won’t even get close to that idea with surveys showing open space leading the way as the No. 1 public desire for the land.

The problem, of course, is open space won’t bring in the “Tuesday in January” tourist dollars.

And who will step forward to pay current owner Chevron for non-revenue-generating open space?

In the real world, I don’t see anything productive happening to that property for years — maybe decades — into the future, if ever.

Which leaves us back not entirely where we started, with pretty little Avila Beach, better than it ever was but maybe not as good as it ever could be.

What do you think? Share your thoughts here.