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Monthly Archives: August 2016

Culture

Culture Without Grandiosity Works Best 

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Whitewater’s best accomplishments are mostly social ones, and they are most effective when they’re held simply, without grandiose local claims.  

The Independence Holiday events, City Market, Farmer’s Market, Discover Whitewater Series, semi-annual Science Fair, Make a Difference Day, art fairs, and Christmas parade, among other events, are much to Whitewater’s credit in-and-of-themselves. 

They showcase the city and university, but they do so simply, offering enjoyment or enrichment without flowery claims. 

They’re cultural events (sometimes with political or religious meaning) and they all succeed apart from local politics or grandiose local claims.

That’s the model for success: that less is more. 

City, Culture, Development, Economy

Culture, Economy, Fiscal

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The approximate number of working age adults, from 25-64, in the City of Whitewater proper is 4,134.

This working age population is nestled among a total, estimated population of 14,801.

See, American Community Survey, 2010-2014, 5 year estimates http://factfinder.census.gov/bkmk/table/1.0/en/ACS/14_5YR/DP05/1600000US5586925.

One can draw three broad but reasonable conclusions from these numbers.

Culturally, local publications present a skewed view of the city, in which one would think Whitewater is older, and more middle class, than her whole population truly is.

Residents eager to advance this impression will typically include nearby (but non-city) residents in local accounts, to fortify the impression of the city as one with a predominant, working-age middle class.

Economically, however, it’s clear that the cultural presumption of a unified community on either side of the city’s borders is false.

If there were genuine commonality between the city proper and neighboring towns, we would have a larger and more robust local economy. Instead, many of our neighbors shop and seek entertainment outside the city, and have done so for years.

So much time has been spent pushing the idea of One City, One View, One Future, so to speak, that when transactions go wrong cocooned local residents are surprised: How did this happen? Are we not huge and robust? Who knew?

We’re beautiful and precious, but we’re neither huge nor robust.

A word of support and distinction, here, meant genuinely: I’ve often been critical of much of the Community Development Authority’s work, but one can see (and hear if one listens) that some of those gentlemen have understood the challenges Whitewater faces. Their solutions are not mine, to be sure, but I’ve no doubt that some of them (including Messrs. Knight and Kachel) can and do assess accurately the difficulties Whitewater faces. Neither their intellect nor perseverance is in doubt.

It’s an ancient truism to say that men and women make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing. Community development in Whitewater – broadly understood – has been dealt a difficult hand.

By contrast, the presentation of policy (as apart from community announcements) that one reads in the Daily Union or Banner evinces scarcely even a sketchy grasp of actual, challenging conditions. It’s all deceptively comforting, but that sort of comfort is ephemeral. 

To paraphrase a line from The Usual Suspects, the greatest trick Whitewater’s Old Guard ever pulled was convincing people that local problems don’t exist.  

Time takes her toll, far more effectively than any written reply. She’s not rhetorical, but she is instead quietly, coldly unforgiving.

This leads to Whitewater’s municipal fiscal condition. The working-age base on which the city rests isn’t especially large, and the risk of significant, infrastructure capital spending is that it will produce too little in return. The risk of revenue schemes is that they will either cost too much, produce too little even if we had the initial resources, or degrade local conditions for the state of local government’s appetite for revenue. 

Shared revenue is a weak substitute for local production.

There’s a way in which excessive local spending will do to Whitewater what it has done to other, far larger places: hollow out the city and drive more people to nearby towns.

I’m sure nearby towns are nice places to live, but I would not find any of them half so desirable as living in the city. I’d not trade residency in the city for elsewhere. 

I hope we attract many more residents. Effective attraction requires more than a publisher’s optimism.

Fiscal policies that overburden residents, or revenue schemes like waste-importation that degrade conditions so that prospective residents choose other places to live will always be the wrong policies.

Four thousand one hundred and thirty-four is not a big number, but that’s what makes it a big indicator. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.16.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in town will be mostly sunny with a high of eighty-four.  Sunrise is 6:03 AM and sunset 7:53 PM, for 13h 50m 05s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 95.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph message was successfully transmitted:

On August 16, 1858 the first message sent via the cable, other than technical messages sent by the electricians setting up the system, was, “Europe and America are united by telegraphy. Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men,” sent from England.[10][11]Queen Victoria then sent a telegram of congratulation to President James Buchanan at his summer residence in the Bedford Springs Hotel in Pennsylvania and expressed a hope that it would prove “an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem.” The President responded that, “it is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty, and law throughout the world.”[12] The messages were hard to decipher – Queen Victoria’s message of 98 words took sixteen hours to send.[13]

These messages engendered an outburst of enthusiasm. The next morning a grand salute of 100 guns resounded in New York City, the streets were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches were rung, and at night the city was illuminated.[14]

JigZone‘s Tuesday puzzle is of a marina:

City, Development, Economy, Hip & Prosperous, Politics

The Middle Time, Part 2 

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Over two years ago, I described Whitewater as being in a ‘middle time,’ between former conditions and future ones:

While Whitewater is in a time of transition, from one way of life to a more diverse and prosperous one, she is only at the ‘end of the beginning’ of that transition.  

It’s a middle time now, and if one were to think of this as chess, one would say we’re in the middle game.  As with chess, the boundaries of that middle time are often nebulous, and are hard to define.  

This is still my assessment, very much so. The chances of the immediate past (the last decade or so) enduring relatively unchanged (as they might in a stable community) strike me as astonishingly small. I’m more confident of this assessment with each passing season.

A fair estimate was, and is, that this middle time will last for years.

But now one can offer a guess about two courses that this middle time may take, on the way to a more prosperous future: we may see limited growth until significant internal change, or we may see stagnation (and thus relative decline) until external change through something like gentrification.

On the end of either path we’ll be better off economically, but for longtime residents the futures will prove different: in the former current residents will be (or at least could be) significant players; in the latter they’ll have limited influence (as ‘something like gentrification’ is very much an outside force).

The latter also involves a decline in asset values before a rebound, so it necessarily involves a less desirable path to a future prosperity.

Doing what we have been doing, under this assessment, assures only a harder time until a better time.  

One other point seems clear to me: government intervention to produce positive economic results seems more difficult than ever. A better local economy requires gathering demand, and we’ve seen demand shift outward from the city, not inward.

Culturally, some non-college residents in the city see themselves as kindred spirits with non-college residents in nearby, smaller towns, but that kinship shows no evidence of guaranteeing a common economy.  

If anything, efforts to boost municipal revenue are only likely to exacerbate a city-towns divide, either by taxing city residents too much, or by pushing revenue-generation schemes that will degrade the quality of life in the city. 

This last point is worth considering at greater length another time, but it’s evident that some elected and appointed officials view the city, so to speak, as a closed ecosystem.  

If there’s one thing a college town is not, it’s that it’s not a closed ecosystem. That hasn’t, however, stopped one politician too many from thinking this way. 

City, Film

Film: Wednesday, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Youth

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This Wednesday, August 17th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Youth @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building:

In 2015’s Youth, a retired orchestra conductor (Michael Caine) and his daughter are on holiday in the Alps with his best friend, a film director (Harvey Keitel), to celebrate their 80th birthdays.

The two gents observe with curiosity and tenderness their children’s confused lives, and the lives of other hotel guests (one of whom is played by Jane Fonda). The film received critical nominations for Caine, Fonda and for Best Song (“Simple Song #3). Youth was also a Cannes Best Film Nominee.

The film runs two hours, four minutes, and carries an R rating from the MPAA.

One can find more information about Youth at the Internet Movie Database.

Enjoy.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.15.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in town will be mostly cloudy with a high of eighty-two. Sunrise is 6:02 AM and sunset 7:55 PM, for 13h 52m 41s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 90.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1945, the Allies declare Victory over Japan Day:

Victory over Japan Day (also known as Victory in the Pacific Day, V-J Day, or V-P Day) is the day on which Japan surrendered in World War II, in effect ending the war. The term has been applied to both of the days on which the initial announcement of Japan’s surrender was made – to the afternoon of August 15, 1945, in Japan, and, because of time zone differences, to August 14, 1945 (when it was announced in the United States and the rest of the Americas and Eastern Pacific Islands) – as well as to September 2, 1945, when the signing of the surrender document occurred, officially ending World War II.

August 15 is the official V-J Day for the UK, while the official U.S. commemoration is September 2.[1] The name, V-J Day, had been selected by the Allies after they named V-E Day for the victory in Europe.

On September 2, 1945, a formal surrender ceremony was performed in Tokyo Bay, Japan, aboard the battleship USS Missouri. In Japan, August 15 usually is known as the “memorial day for the end of the war“… the official name for the day, however, is “the day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace”… This official name was adopted in 1982 by an ordinance issued by the Japanese government.[2]

JigZone‘s puzzle of the day is of two dogs:

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.14.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in town will be partly sunny with a high of eighty-two.  Sunrise is 6:01 AM and sunset 7:56 PM, for 13h 55m 15s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing gibbous with 83.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked what readers thought of a man who sneaked a service monkey onto a airplane.  The plurality of respondents (48.48%) thought the proper response was to issue a warning to the monkey-carrying passenger, with just over a third believing that the passenger should be charged for the monkey’s presence.

On this day in 2003, over fifty-million people in the eastern United States and Canada experienced a blackout:

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, just after 4:10 p.m. EDT.[1]

Some power was restored by 11 p.m. Many others did not get their power back until two days later. In more remote areas it took nearly a week to restore power.[2] At the time, it was the world’s second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout.[3][4] The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast Blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.

The blackout’s primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at a control room of the FirstEnergy Corporation, located in Ohio. A lack of alarm left operators unaware of the need to re-distribute power after overloaded transmission lines hit unpruned foliage, which triggered a race condition in the control software. What would have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into massive widespread distress on the electric grid.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.13.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will be partly cloudy with a high of eighty-one. Sunrise is 6:00 AM and sunset 7:58 PM, for 13h 57m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning waxing gibbous with 75.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday:

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)[2] was an English film director and producer,[3] at times referred to as “The Master of Suspense”.[4] He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as England’s best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939[5] and became a US citizen in 1955.[6]

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a recognisable directorial style.[7] His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person’s gaze,[8] forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.[9] In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing.[9] His work often features fugitives on the run alongside “icy blonde” female characters.[10][11] Many of Hitchcock’s films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence. Many of the mysteries, however, are used as decoys or “MacGuffins” that serve the films’ themes and the psychological examinations of their characters. Hitchcock’s films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and sometimes feature strong sexual overtones.

Hitchcock became a highly visible public figure through interviews, movie trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as “the most universally recognizable person in the world”, and “a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius.”[12]

Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker.[13] He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain’s Daily Telegraph, which said: “Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else.”[14][15]

On this day in 1936, a train derails near Janesville:

On this date a freight train derailed one mile east of Janesville on the Milwaukee Road tracks. 18 cars, 13 of them oil tankers, burned in the ensuing spectacular blaze. Although monetary loss was estimated at $150,000, no one was injured. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Cats

Friday Catblogging: Elusive Arabian Sand Cat

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A shy, stealthy cat species has been spotted in the wild in the western United Arab Emirates for the first time in more than 10 years.

It was thought the Arabian sand cat was all but gone in the region, and even the last known sighting lacked any physical evidence.

But the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi has captured not just one, but three, on a set of camera traps.

Across 278 nights, five camera traps were set and together they caught 46 photos of the pale-furred animals….

Via Elusive Arabian sand cat spotted first time in 10 years @ Newshub.

Animals, Poll, Weird Tales

Friday Poll: Hidden Monkey on Plane

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If a passenger sneaks a monkey on to a plane, what should authorities do?

On a flight from Ohio to Nevada, a flight crew discovered that a passenger was concealing a service monkey:

Frontier Airlines spokesman Richard Oliver says the incident happened Tuesday night on a flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Las Vegas.

Oliver says the passenger broke policy by not informing the airline that he was bringing a service animal onboard, and then refused to turn over documents verifying the monkey’s status.

McCarran International Airport spokeswoman Christine Crews says law enforcement officials met up with the plane and determined that the monkey was a certified service animal.

Oliver says the animal was brought surreptitiously onto the plane in a duffel bag and never became loose or uncontained during the flight.

See, Hidden monkey on Las Vegas-bound flight causes stir @ Yahoo! News.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.12.16

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be rainy with a high of seventy-seven. Sunrise is 5:59 AM and sunset 7:59 PM, for 14h 00m 20s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 67% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1898, the Spanish & American acceptance of a Protocol of Peace halts fighting in the war between those nations (with a formal treaty coming some months later):

Although the main issue was Cuban independence, the ten-week war was fought in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. US naval power proved decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison already facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever.[9] Numerically superior Cuban, Philippine, and US forces obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill.[10] With two obsolete Spanish squadrons sunk in Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay and a third, more modern fleet recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts, Madrid sued for peace.[11]

The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the US, which allowed it temporary control of Cuba, and ceded ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million ($568,880,000 today) to Spain by the US to cover infrastructure owned by Spain.[12]

The defeat and collapse of the Spanish Empire was a profound shock to Spain’s national psyche, and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic revaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of ’98.[11] The United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe and a rancorous new debate over the wisdom ofexpansionism.[13]

The war began exactly fifty-two years after the beginning of the Mexican–American War. It was one of only five US wars (against a total of eleven sovereign states) to have been formally declared by Congress.[14]

On 8.12.1939, a film premiers in Oconomowoc:

According to the fan site, thewizardofoz.info, “The first publicized showing of the final, edited film was at the Strand Theatre in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin on August 12, 1939. No one is sure exactly why a small town in the Midwest received that honor.” It showed the next day in Sheboygan, Appleton and Rhinelander, according to local newspapers. “The official premiere was at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on August 15, attended by most of the cast and crew and a number of Hollywood celebrities.” [Source: thewizardofoz.info.

Here’s the Friday puzzle from JigZone: