Traditional Family Portraits.

Victorian Family Portraits - 'Haunted When It Rains'

Just as we do today, during the Victorian Era it was tradition to take at least one family portrait. Traditionally, family portraits can be of the entire family or just the kids. More on this tradition later...

Park Ridge is mostly a traditional community of mostly traditional families with mostly traditional values, and mostly law-abiding citizens. Park Ridge is a nice place to live and raise a family, mostly.

Another tradition is for principals at local schools to write a message for the school take-homes. Last week, a PRU reader forwarded to us a copy of the traditional message from the principal's desk at Lincoln Middle School which included, in part, the following:

From The Principal's Desk

Parents,

I am ashamed to tell you that I had the Park Ridge police come to my office yesterday complaining about the number of traffic violations that are occurring daily at Lincoln Middle School because parents, not students for the most part, are not obeying the law.

Please parents, my teachers, Mr. Gleason and I have been trained to teach middle school students and are compelled to give them the best education possible. As adults you should be doing the same by setting good examples. One good example would be to obey the rules of the road. You should have learned those rules when you earned your driver's license!

When you don't follow life's safety rules around this school, you put a child's life in danger. Follow the rules, not because it's the law, but because it will save your child's life!

My parents taught me always “to think of others more highly than yourself”. That translates to me, as drivers of a motorized vehicle, to relax. You will get to your next destination, but maybe not on time. If not, leave earlier, make better plans or just accept that on a given day you will be late and that's life. Guess what, any of those possibilities may happen on a given day, so just think of others more highly than yourself (our kids) and leave it at that. You will save lives!

With every new year we are given the opportunity to make resolutions that are designed to produce changes. Most people make at least one resolution, and I would like to propose one resolution to all of our parents that is designed to save a student, and your child's life.

I would like every parent to resolve to observe the following three Lincoln transportation safety rules:

1) I will not drop off my child on the north side of Crescent between the corner of Lincoln Ave. and the 9 spaces allotted for pickup and drop off on Crescent Ave.

2) Whether in the morning or after school students I will not drop off my child in the middle of the street either on Lincoln Ave. or Crescent Ave., which basically means you are double parking.

3) I will not park on the north side of Crescent between Knight and Western from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on school days only. This area is reserved for our busses.

Whether you make this a resolution or not, violators of the above three safety rules plus the remainder of Lincoln's transportation rules WILL BE ISSUED TICKETS. THE PARK RIDGE POLICE DEPARTMENT WILL PERIODICALLY BE AT LINCOLN TO WATCH THAT YOU ARE OBSERVING THE LAW. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

The remainder of our safety rules include:

o When dropping off students in the morning on Lincoln Ave. the preferred drop off site is on the west side of the street which is the side closest to the main doors.

o If parents choose to drop off their child on the east side of Lincoln Ave., they must instruct their child to cross Lincoln at the crosswalk by Crescent and Lincoln. Walking across Lincoln Ave. in any other part of the street will be considered jaywalking.

o In the afternoon, pickup is on the west side of Lincoln Ave. only. No one can be picked up on the east side unless they use the crosswalk at Crescent and Lincoln to cross Lincoln Ave.

o There is no parking on the south side of Crescent between Lincoln and Knight.

o There is no parking on the south side of Crescent Ave. between Knight and Western between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. on school days only.

o When our busses have their warning arms extended and lights flashing while students are getting off and on the bus, cars may not drive past the arms when they are in the loading zone.

o Barricades are also put up on Lincoln Ave between Knight and Western from 2:55 p.m. until 3:10 p.m. on school days to help insure the safety of our students while they are entering the busses for departure from school. Cars are not permitted to drive around the barricades.

o Helmets are required if students want to ride their bike, skateboard or roller blades to and from school. We will warn a student but after the warning they may lose the privilege of riding a bike, skateboard or roller blades to school.

In case any of you Park Ridge parents out there think this is a problem only at Lincoln Middle School, we assure you it is not. We've seen some pretty piss-poor driving at ALL of our local schools.

Back to the issue of traditional family portraits... Taking a family portrait is a very traditional practice, as is the practice of including a protrait of the kids in the annual family Christmas card.

So Park Ridge parents, keep up the irresponsible driving around our local schools and maybe it will become a re-newed tradition in Park Ridge to take a family portrait like the ones above.

You see, in the above Victorian family portraits, the kid in the first photo, the kid on the father's lap in the second photo, and the kid on the big chair in the third photo are all dead. Victorian post-mortem photography was a tradition, and often the last and only portrait of a family as it once was.

And when another kid gets killed in an accident (because it's never on purpose) near one of our schools, maybe the PTO can take up a collection to buy a gift certificate for the family to have a Victorian-style post-mortem family portrait taken - in "living" color, of course; a modern twist on an old tradition. That would look great in the annual family Christmas card, wouldn't it?