Alamedan Displays Impressive Cobweb Collection

The Alameda Daily Noose and I have discovered that there is still a barn located on what used to be agricultural land on Bay Farm Island. Although it is completely disused, the barn houses the largest known collection of cobwebs in the city. After much cajoling, the owner of the barn (who wishes to remain anonymous) agreed to allow tours of the cobwebs on alternate Thursdays of any month ending with the letter "h," as long as no-one touches anything.

The barn's owner is considering replacing it with a combination garage and hot-tub, but has agreed to allow the cobwebs to be transported to the Alameda Museum for permanent display. So, if you want to see the cobwebs in situ, you'll have to hurry. Apparently, the owner has already begun the permit process for his project, so the barn may be gone as soon as May of 2012.

Green Living by Janet Marchant: Greening Your Halloween: Episode III - Revenge of the Silk

If you're like me, you keep those pesky spiders on the run most of the time, whisking away their sticky webs as fast as they can build them around your house. But Halloween is when the araneaeid order plots its silky revenge at my house. In fact, I encourage it! This year, I'm decorating with 100% natural cobwebs. My pet spider, Nancy, is already hard at work dressing up our front porch and yard.

Whenever I run across other spiders in the house or yard, I introduce them to Nancy in the hopes that they will make friends and start spinning webs together. So far, the other spiders always disappear overnight, sometimes with their webs half-finished, but at least Nancy seems fat and happy.

As you can see from the photos, Nancy has already done some great work on one of the few remaining trees that we haven't cut down for firewood yet, and she has started on the door, too.




Unlike synthetic cobwebs, natural cobwebs are biodegradable. They also cost nothing, which will save you some green! So why not start today on your organic, free-range Halloween spider webs? You'd better hurry, though, because there's not much time left for your neighborhood spiders to set up camp and secure victory in the field of decorations.

Green Living by Janet Marchant: Another Successful Take Our Bikes to Work Day

My goodness, I was so busy trying to avoid touching things last week that I didn't have time to touch on the very important subject of Take Our Bikes to Work Day, which was yesterday. I hope you had as much fun as I did! I will definitely participate next year, too. It's so easy and fun, and introducing our bicycles to the professional work world can really help them grow.

We all know that riding bicycles is good for the environment, so any way you can figure out to ride your bike more is a boon to our planet. Of course, the streets in Alameda are too dangerous for bikes, because they are all over capacity and infested with dangerous buses. Instead of riding on the streets, I rode my bike around my front yard a few times before loading it on the car rack to take to work with me yesterday.

Usually, my family's bikes only get to go out on occasional weekends, so a little freeway trip, on the back of my hybrid S.U.V., really blew the cobwebs off them, and most of the dust, too. Then, during my lunch break, I was able to ride each of the bikes around the parking lot a few times. Whee! It's so unusual to be able work that kind of recreation into an ordinary work day, and all that riding in circles gave me a delightfully dizzy feeling that really helped with my environmental writing. Who knew saving the planet could be so much fun?

This Just In! Reader's Property Values Under Attack

Roger,

As the month of October has gone on, I have noticed gradually that the homes in my neighborhood are growing more and more dilapidated, and my neighbors are becoming less respectful of our fair city. As I drive around my street and the nearby streets I see the same thing everywhere. It's as if nobody cares about how their house looks anymore, and everything is going to pot. And what irks me is that this means that it's sending my property values down, down, down!

Let me tell you some examples of what I have seen around town:

• People are leaving uneaten food, like whole squashes and pumpkins, around on their porches. Please people, if you have harvested something from your garden, I'm proud of you, but can't you store it in your basement where you are supposed to? Leaving them out front is just asking for vandalism — I see that a lot of neighborhood kids have cleverly drawn, or even cut, faces out of them.
• The spiders (or is that the squirrels?) have been spinning outrageously ugly webs on the bushes in front of many people's houses. I can't blame the owners for that, but at least they would have the common decency to clean up once in a while! A broom works wonders to whisk away cobwebs.
• This is unbelievably morbid, but I am pretty sure that the dead are being buried in people's front yards, of all places! Look, I know the economy is tight, so maybe you cannot afford a fancy funeral and cemetary, but if you grandmother passes away, at least bury her in the back yard so that her final resting place is not visible from the street!
• I've seen a few scarecrows put up here and there. Scarecrows? In the city? Unless somebody has come up with an ingenious way to scare the squirrels away, I really don't see any need for scarecrows, and it just creeps people out. Honestly!
• The windows in many houses are looking just terrible. Sometimes I see that the residents have put up a picture of some frightful creature, or maybe some words like "BEWARE" or "HAUNTED." Why in the world would anybody want to simulate a house that is haunted? There is nothing more that drives property values down than a neighborhood that has an allegedly haunted house.

Are my neighbors just trying to perpetuate some sort of scam, perhaps so they can drive down the property values to a point where I and other right-minded Alamedans, are forced to move out?

Please Roger, I hope you can help us get to the bottom of this nefarious plot to ruin Alameda.

Pleadingly,

James V. Wherdonfield