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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Happy Easter 2013

A portion of the Urbi et Orbi Message, Easter, 2013:

We too, like the women who were Jesus’ disciples, who went to the tomb and found it empty, may wonder what this event means (cf. Lk 24:4). What does it mean that Jesus is risen? It means that the love of God is stronger than evil and death itself; it means that the love of God can transform our lives and let those desert places in our hearts bloom.

A Bird Ballet

A bird ballet | Music Video from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo.

Description from filmmaker Neels Castillon:

We were shooting for a commercial with my DP waiting for an helicopter flying into the sunset, when thousands and thousands of birds came and made this incredible dance in the sky. It was amazing, we just forgot our job and started this little piece of poetry… Enjoy !
Thanks to the birds…

And thanks to Ariane Cornic (Masterfilms) and Philippe Pangrazzi who let us shoot during our working time. Please watch it in HD or download it in best quality (if you have a vimeo account).

Made by: Neels CASTILLON
DP: Mathias Touzeris
Music: Hand-made – Alt J / Buy on iTunes here:
smarturl.it/AnAwesomeWave
Location: Marseille, France

PS: Now I know it’s called a murmuration and the birds are Starlings. BBC Nature says “starlings are known for these wonderful swirling aerial displays, done at dusk as they get ready to roost for the winter.

Local Politics: The Singer-Crone Council Race

One often looks at two candidates and thinks: if only they could both lose. Other times, as now, one looks at two candidates, and thinks: it’s a shame they can’t both win. The latter situation is preferable, and it’s the one in which Whitewater finds itself with an at-large council race between Patrick Singer and Andrew Crone.

It’s to the advantage of the city that we have smart and dedicated candidates, both now incumbents on Common Council.

Months go, when Andrew Crone was first appointed to the seat he now holds, I wished him well. He’s been a good choice (as Cort Hartmann, an applicant he narrowly bested, would have been.) By professional background (and I think by temperament, too), he hopes to effect mediation between the city’s competing interests. We could use more of that, surely. There’s been an unfortunate tendency to favor enforced resolution (arbitration) over a consensus approach (mediation) from our city’s old guard.

Mr. Crone’s past accomplishments on city commissions, and his broad, forward-looking view, are both attractive. On the evening of his appointment in December, he mentioned looking ahead even fifty years from now. The long view is the right one; better to set aside a near-sighted gaze for a more-encompassing view.

Established incumbent and council president Patrick Singer seeks the at-large seat, too, after having served multiple terms as representative of the Fifth Council District. He’s smart and knowledgeable and hardworking.

Over the years, I’ve agreed with some of his positions, disagreed with others. (But then, although I believe in the inevitability of a New Whitewater, I don’t believe it will be – as I am – particularly libertarian. ‘New’ isn’t a partisan term; nor, truly, should it be. One can’t reasonably expect agreement on every position.)

Looking out over Mr. Singer’s work on council – across two municipal administrations and numerous legislative colleagues past and present – what will one find? Management of a sometimes querulous council, dealing with a former administration, establishing an orderly process toward a new one, navigating differing views of left and right, all during a deep recession: these have not been easy times for this small and beautiful city.

For it all, Patrick Singer has been an accomplished legislator. Where others have faded and flagged, he’s yet motivated. (Steadily, too; where peers or administrators have lost their cool, he’s stayed calm.)

Whitewater is fortunate to have good candidates; that, by itself, is a measure of progress. Both these gentlemen have offered much for Whitewater; I’m sure they will long after April 2nd. I believe, though, that Patrick Singer has served notably well on Council. I hope Whitewater sees it that way on election day, too.

Daily Bread for 3.30.13

Good morning.

Saturday brings a chance of showers and a high of fifty-three. We’ll have 12h 37m of sunlight, 13h 35m of daylight, and tomorrow have three minutes more.

On this day in 1981, “President Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley Jr. Also wounded were White House news secretary James Brady, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia police officer.”

Shark cages protect divers, but sometimes not so well as the divers might like:

Google-a-Day asks a film question: “Who scored the musical version of the movie that’s based on Patricia Resnick’s story?”

Whitewater’s Candidates for April 2nd

I’ve posted earlier about a March 16th candidates’ forum in Whitewater. This post continues a discussion about the upcoming election, in which candidates for council aren’t the only candidates on our local ballot.

A few additional remarks appear below, about the races and candidates.

Unopposed is a bad thing. Most of our races, for common council or school board, are single-candidate affairs. Three council members are unopposed, two of whom are incumbents. Both school board candidates are unopposed.

That’s good for incumbents, but bad for our politics.

Pressing issues. The council candidates all had issues they considered most pressing: town-gown issues, retaining residents in town, growing the tax base, or the disconnect between students and the city.

They’re all solid concerns, and related ones, too.

University relations. Divisions between residents, as students and non-students, an unwillingness to live in town, and slow growth are connected problems.

Funny, about this: for all the talk of university-city cooperation, university officials have done too little to assure a better municipal climate for the students on whom their careers depend. Support for students on campus should extend to advocacy on behalf of students when they’re off campus.

If that had happened in a diligent way, years ago, there’d have been better progress by now. Working for the university should include advocating for students while they’re in town, rather than looking on them (and complaining about them) as a unruly hindrance to the city’s progress.

Some of these gentlemen working on campus want to boost the university as though it were composed only of men like themselves, the projects for which they’ve taken taxpayer funding, and the occasional athletic accomplishment in which everyone naturally can take pleasure.

Those men wouldn’t have jobs, those projects wouldn’t have homes, and those teams wouldn’t have victories without a campus of many thousands of students.

Accelerating public project schedules. Consider the following question: what could someone on council do to expedite a given public project?

It’s a predictable question, and an impartial one if one isn’t asking about one’s own area of employment.

I’d ask a few questions of my own, in reply:

(1) Do we need another public project?
(2) Are there private alternatives to additional public spending?
(3) What’s the lost opportunity of spending on that public project; are there greater public needs?
(4) Is there a justification for an expedited public-project schedule? Those wanting something more quickly should offer a clear and convincing justification for that request.

Houston. There was a joke during the 3.16 forum about zoning, to the effect that Whitewater wasn’t Houston, a place with very limited zoning regulations.

That’s true, we’re not: Houston has a decidely lower unemployment rate than America’s national percentage.

Wanting to grow the tax base means more than the sugar-high of other peoples’ tax dollars for white-collar projects. Until we’ve solid, private growth like that of Houston, jokes about limited zoning elsewhere offer laughs but – for us – nothing more.

Tomorrow: The At-Large Race between Patrick Singer & Andrew Crone.

Daily Bread for 3.29.13

Good morning.

Good Friday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-nine.

Dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend, but sometimes a dog is dog’s best friend:

On this day in 1929, a desk phone:

…President Herbert Hoover has a phone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House. It took a while to get the line to Hoover’s desk working correctly and the president complained to aides when his son was unable to get through on the Oval Office phone from an outside line. Previously, Hoover had used a phone located in the foyer just outside the office. Telephones and a telephone switchboard had been in use at the White House since 1878, when President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first one installed, but no phone had ever been installed at the president’s desk until Hoover’s administration.

Google-a-Day asks about geography & exploration: “What explorer first visited the U.S. river, which is the largest within its state, creating a natural boundary with Mexico?”

Local Politics: Sideshows

Whitewater’s in transition. Part of this is a shift – slow but inexorable – in the political culture of the city. (See, along these lines, New Whitewater’s Inevitability and Horses and Automobiles, Contemporaneously.)

There’s more than one way to wage a local race, and our city is getting a taste of the difference between a concentration on the candidates’ policies and peripheral developments that only distract attention from substantive policies.

There’s nothing surprising that a popular candidate, with a longstanding career in Whitewater, would have supporters properly and timely file fundraising documents in support of his campaign. It would be more surprising if he didn’t have those supporters and that support.

By the way, what’s the reported amount of the candidate’s current spending in question, compared with the city’s population?

Wait for it — it’s 2 cents per city resident. That’s cents, as in pennies, the small copper coins with Pres. Lincoln’s portrait on them.

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(A single first-class stamp is 23 times as valuable as that.)

The total amount reportedly raised so far is merely 13 cents per city resident.

That’s all.

This a modest amount, raised and reported under law, from voluntary contributions.

It’s also too funny that an open supporter of the candidate’s opponent presents this news as though it were a revelation, a development, an issue, a topic, an item, a rare event, etc.

There’s a better name for it.

This is a sidehow, a distraction from actual policies and positions on which sound government depends.

What have candidates done, what do they profess, and what will they truly do?

That’s what matters.

Tomorrow: More about upcoming local races.

Getting the Word Out

Every so often, one hears that local government – the city, our public school district, the university – needs to get the word out. There’s a message to be sent. That’s good and right, of course, as the alternative would be concealment of policies or other public acts. Government should communicate more, not less, often.

Those who run the chief public bodies of the city do not lack for the required intellect or education to do so. All around the city are thousands of residents similarly talented and capable – this city does not have a few clever people, but instead has many.

Although it’s good to spread public announcements so far as one can, government’s obligation is not simply a message, but a message as thoroughly detailed and explanatory as the occasion requires. I’ve written along these lines before: officials have a duty to speak and write, on their own, to the full measure of their abilities.

Why do I say this? Because if officials will not offer their best analyses in their own words, then they will have not have met the standards this city should expect of all leaders. Many thousands in the city could do this – her officials can easily meet that same standard.

(Obvious side note: like all libertarians, I’ve a commitment to open government, but no interest in serving as government’s herald. Independent is better than dependent. It’s Adams, after all, not Mercury.)

But a message requires a medium. Some things don’t mix well. Most people believe in God, and most people like Disney characters, yet the clergy wisely don’t deliver sermons in mouse ears.

The initial medium for government’s intended message should be one of its own responsibility, with a style and composition equal to the occasion. If that’s not the foundation of a message, then too much is lost for too little gained. Relying on others’ stunted composition and shoddy reasoning only undermines a message. Someday, that’s a message that local government will, itself, receive.

Daily Bread for 3.28.13

Good morning.

A sunny Thursday with a high of forty-four awaits.

Over at the Washington Post, they’ve an annual contest in which readers submit Peeps candy dioramas. This year’s winner of the seventh annual contest was Rest in Peeps:

Other finalists present political, dining, and artistic themes —

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Peep

 

Zero Peep Thirty

 

Peep’s Chili Bowl

 

In Wisconsin history on this day in 1954, a recall campaign begins (but later falls short):

1954 – McCarthy Recall Campaign Begins in Sauk City
On this date, “Joe Must Go,” a bipartisan grassroots campaign to recall Sen. Joe McCarthy from the Senate, began in earnest with an organizational meeting in Sauk City. The campaign had to collect 403,000 signatures in 60 days to force a recall election. With little money, a hastily thrown together organizational structure, and unenthusiastic or non-existent support from existing organizations (including farmers and organized labor), the group was still able to secure 335,000 signatures. Later in 1954 Sen. McCarthy was publicly censured by his Senate colleagues.  [Source: The History of Wisconsin, v.6: Continuity and change, 1940-1965 (Madison, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973-1998).]

Google-a-Day poses a geography question: “What’s the southernmost province of the country that occupies approximately one sixth of the Iberian Peninsula?”

Daily Bread for 3.27.13

Good morning.

The middle of our week will be mostly cloudy but with a high of forty, and northwest winds 5 to 10 MPH.

Downtown Whitewater’s board meets this morning at 8 AM.

Dogs are said to be man’s best friend, but they’re dog’s best friend sometimes, too:

On this day in 1912, Japanese cherry trees are first planted along the Potomac as a sign of friendship between Japan and America:

In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, plant two Yoshina cherry trees on the northern bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial. The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese government, of 3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.

The planting of Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac was first proposed by socialite Eliza Scidmore, who raised money for the endeavor. Helen Taft had lived in Japan while her husband was president of the Philippine Commission, and knowing the beauty of cherry blossoms she embraced Scidmore’s idea. After learning of the first lady’s interest, the Japanese consul in New York suggested making a gift of the trees to the U.S. government from the city of Tokyo.

In January 1910, 2,000 Japanese cherry trees arrived in Washington from Japan but had fallen prey to disease during the journey. In response, a private Japanese citizen donated the funds to transport a new batch of trees, and 3,020 specimens were taken from the famous collection on the bank of the Arakawa River in Adachi Ward, a suburb of Tokyo. In March 1912, the trees arrived in Washington, and on March 27 the first two trees were planted along the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin in a formal ceremony. The rest of the trees were then planted along the basin, in East Potomac Park, and on the White House grounds.

The blossoming trees proved immediately popular with visitors to Washington’s Mall area, and in 1934 city commissioners sponsored a three-day celebration of the late March blossoming of the trees, which grew into the annual Cherry Blossom Festival….

On 3.27.1920 Wisconsin, a national first:

On this date Janesville was chosen as home base for the National Guard’s first tank company in the United States, the 32nd. When activated for duty during WWII, the unit was called Company A, 192nd Tank Battalion. This company fought in the Philippines during World War II. Many of the ninty-nine Janesville men who became prisoners of war and were tortured during the infamous Bataan Death March, were affiliated with this tank company. Its story is told in a compelling collection of documents and interviews created by high school students in nearby Maywood, Illinois. [Source: Janesville Gazette.]

Google-a-Day asks American history question: “What was the charge of the 1807 indictment by the man who was chosen as Vice President on February 17, 1801, by the House of Representatives after thirty-six ballots?”

Daily Bread for 3.26.13

Good morning.

A chance of flurries but a high of thirty-eight: early spring in Whitewater. Today, we’ll have 12h 26m of sunlight, 13h 23m of daylight, and a full moon.

Whitewater’s Urban Forestry Commission meets today at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1979, a peace that now seems faded and tenuous by contrast with more hopeful times:

In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sign a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties….

For their achievement, Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace. Sadat’s peace efforts were not so highly acclaimed in the Arab world–Egypt was suspended from the Arab League, and on October 6, 1981, Muslim extremists assassinated Sadat in Cairo. Nevertheless, the peace process continued without Sadat, and in 1982 Egypt formally established diplomatic relations with Israel.

Sometimes someone just wants to play:

Google-a-Day asks about South Africa: “What structure on the South African coast has a range of 63km and releases flashes every thirty seconds?”