A video from elphaba16 on Reddit shows what happens when a muffin is left unguarded —
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Monthly Archives: June 2022
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, June 14th, 1 PM @ Seniors in the Park, The Batman
by JOHN ADAMS •
Tuesday, June 14th at 1 PM, there will be a showing of The Batman @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin Community Building:
Action/Crime/Mystery/Drama
Rated PG-13, 2 hours, 56 minutes (2022)
When a sadistic serial killer begins murdering key political figures in a grim, dystopian Gotham City, The Batman steps out of the dark shadows to investigate the city’s underlying corruption and question his own family’s Wayne Foundation involvement. Starring Robert Pattinson (The Batman), Zoe Kravitz (Catwoman), Paul Dano (The Riddler), and Colin Farrell (The Penguin).
One can find more information about The Batman at the Internet Movie Database.
Enjoy.
Courts, Daily Bread, Law, Open Government, Public Records
Daily Bread for 6.9.22: Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Public Records Access
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 76. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:32 PM for 15h 16m 24s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 69.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1973, legendary horse Secretariat wins the Triple Crown.
On Tuesday, a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce v. Evers, 2022 WI 38 was a welcome win for advocates of government transparency. Although the particular circumstances involved COVID-19 data the state had collected, the ruling’s reach extends beyond any particular set of data.
In this case, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (and two other trade associations) sought to prevent the State of Wisconsin from releasing to the public a list of all Wisconsin businesses with over twenty-five employees that had at least two employees test positive for COVID-19 (or had two close-case contacts). The Wisconsin Department of Health Services had collected this information, but the private trade groups sought a court ruling barring release of those public records.
The case began when the Journal Sentinel requested from DHS public records about COVID-19 under Wisconsin’s Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31–19.39, and Manufacturers & Commerce in response sought a court order to prevent the release of those records.
A lower court granted a temporary injunction against release, but a court of appeals ruling reversed that lower court decision. The trade associations then appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent the release of the records on COVID-19 cases or exposures. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals decision, ruling that Wis. Stat. § 19.356(1) of the Public Records Law limited judicial review prior to an agency’s release of records:
Moreover, concluding that the Declaratory Judgments Act “otherwise provide[s]” for pre-release judicial review of a public records response would effectively repeal §19.356(1). As discussed previously, the legislature enacted §19.356 to limit the rights to pre-release notice and judicial review that this court created in Woznickiand Milwaukee Teachers.11 See Moustakis, 368 Wis.2d677, ¶27. Although those rights may have been enforceable via a declaratory judgment action while they existed, the legislature abrogated them when it adopted §19.356.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce v. Evers, 2022 WI 38 ¶ 19.
The decision and dissent appear below —
Centuries-Old Shipwrecks & Golden Treasure Discovered in Colombian Waters:
City, Culture, Daily Bread, Education, Freedom of Speech, Local Government, Open Government, School District
Daily Bread for 6.8.22: Residents’ Ongoing Concerns Over the Whitewater Unified School District
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will see showers and thunderstorms with a high of 65. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:31 PM for 15h 15m 39s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 58.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1950, the iconic Volkswagen Type 2 “Bus” begins production.
The Whitewater Unified School District’s board met last night. One finds — month over month — that in the community there is increasing concern about the district’s course and the responsiveness of the board to that concern.
A few words about residents’ remarks, including their comments on retaliation, in practice and principle.
In practice. At a meeting of the Whitewater Unified School District’s board on 5.24.22, there was expressed both concern (and reassurance in reply) over the possibility of retaliation for speaking against district plans. On the night of that session and twice afterward, I’ve watched that meeting in full. The May session saw forceful, prepared remarks from the board before residents’ public comments.
(One resident mentioned during Tuesday’s 6.7.22 board meeting that the board’s May statement before public comment felt ‘invalidating.’ In the two weeks since that meeting, I’d guess that others in the community share that view. Credit where credit is due: one cannot say that the board did not make its sentiments known to the community through those prepared remarks. If the board’s statement was meant to quell public upset, however, then one can say that the May statement was unsuccessful.)
Any public institution should offer genuine reassurance against retaliation for speech against government; a well-ordered public institution should not need to offer many of these assurances.
Here, however, is the practical problem that confronts the district: there are too many people, too concerned, for this district’s board alone to settle these concerns. School boards and common councils have nowhere near the community clout they did twenty years ago. The decline in public boards’ strength within Whitewater, in particular, has not come because people have become more skeptical of government. It has come because the socio-economic changes since the Great Recession have made the community both more outspoken and more divided on dozens of issues. (I’d be happy to say that increased support for limited government has come as a matter of libertarian principle, but it of course hasn’t. It has come from cultural shifts beyond politics.)
Whitewater’s a beautiful place, well worthy of one’s love, but it’s not an easy place. (A candid confession: I don’t love this small city in spite of her sometimes irascible nature — I love her with that nature. Never have I loved a place more; the happiest moment of an enjoyable trip elsewhere is always when I return to this city again.)
Regardless of why Whitewater is as she is, as a matter of practical conditions, her school board cannot (for long) shield a superintendent from community debate (and in the same way, Whitewater’s common council cannot shield its city manager). It’s possible to do so for a meeting or two, but that’s not a long-term strategy.
This is especially true when significant numbers of residents, rather than city or district employees, are among those expressing concern. These concerns, especially for the district, now reflect residents‘ policy and cultural objections. The school board (or common council) can push these objections back for a while, but neither public body is influential enough to resolve them on behalf of appointed leaders.
If chronic concerns are to be resolved, then the resolution will require the appointed leaders of the district and the city to do so on their own, in extended public conversations with residents. There’s no other effective way; both public institutions will otherwise be engaged in repeated and debilitating community skirmishes.
Who can improve the position of the superintendent in this community? Only the superintendent in conversation in public meetings with residents. Who can improve the position of the city manager in this community? Only the city manager in conversation in public meetings with residents.
How can that condition be improved? In public discussions, on the record, with residents, through question and reply, month after month until conditions improve or until it becomes obvious no resolution is possible.
A private ‘call tomorrow’ (as offered during the 6.7.22 school board meeting) isn’t helpful. District success (if any) depends on comprehensive discussions in public meetings.
It doesn’t help the superintendent — in fact, it undermines her — when board members or subordinate administrators intervene on her behalf to represent district views. Honest to goodness, I’m not sure why this isn’t obvious, but it should be. Others’ intervention, even if well-meaning, is counter-productive to her situation.
A few words about communication: the first place to look for failures of communication is with the communicator. If the government is misunderstood, the first place to look for the source of that misunderstanding is with the government, not with residents. If a lawyer is misunderstood, the first place to look for the source of that misunderstanding is with the lawyer, rather than with paralegals, secretaries, or clients. If a blogger is misunderstood, the first place to look is toward the blogger, rather than toward readers.
As for speaking by the government, there is an obligation for leaders to speak plainly and at length about their plans for this community. There has been too little of that over the last year in the district and in city government, both. See Big Changes Require Big Explanations. Those formally educated owe it to the community to meet the standards of the schooling they have received, both in direct address and patient reply to questions.
(By the time the superintendent and some board members were turning around during the 6.7.22 meeting to answer a resident’s questions on early childhood programming, it was obvious there has been a failure of prior district communication about the early childhood program.)
It’s almost as though no one cares enough to offer effective guidance. While I would not expect government officials to take this libertarian blogger’s advice, it’s sound advice nonetheless.
I have no personal dislike for Whitewater’s superintendent or city manager. (Truly, to ascribe those feelings to me would be a mistake.) One can see, however, that existing controversies need to be resolved, as these controversies among residents are now widespread.
The problem is more significant than what some public employees think (although that matters). These concerns have become residents‘ concerns. Whitewater is an economically-challenged community that does not deserve, and cannot afford, chronic objections that have not been addressed directly by a superintendent (or city manager).
In theory. Speaking on controversial subjects invites the possibility (whether big or small) of retaliation. Almost as destructive is a waxing view in Whitewater that there has been or may be retaliation for speaking out. Perception can be destructive all on its own.
(As for retaliation in the case of speech, one prepares for difficult outcomes even if those outcomes are improbable. One does better — much better — if one begins every effort seeing oneself as a dark-horse underdog. A person may meet all sorts of reverses along the way, but should plan beforehand how to overcome them, pressing on with his or her case.)
It’s likely that the politics of those residents most concerned about this superintendent, for example, are different from mine. No matter — their concerns and complaints deserve to be heard and answered.
Again, it should be plain that this sort of ongoing controversy is not in Whitewater’s interest, educationally, economically, or politically. There is simply no margin for leaving these issues unaddressed.
How very odd, how very strange, to watch this unfold in Whitewater.
Salisbury cathedral peregrine falcon takes first flight:
City, Culture, Daily Bread, Education, Fire Dept, Freedom of Speech, Local Government, Open Government, Police, School District
Daily Bread for 6.7.22: Big Changes Require Big Explanations
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:31 PM for 15h 14m 50s of daytime. The moon is in its first quarter with 49.4%% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater Unified District School Board meets in closed session at 6 PM and open session at 7 PM, while Whitewater’s Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1942, the Battle of Midway ends in American victory: “Military historian John Keegan called it ‘the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare,’ while naval historian Craig Symonds called it ‘one of the most consequential naval engagements in world history, ranking alongside Salamis, Trafalgar, and Tsushima Strait, as both tactically decisive and strategically influential.’ “
There have been in this small city, over these last two years, significant policy actions from both the local municipal government and the public school district that, being big, require big justifications.
Strange, but perhaps not so strange: Whitewater’s city government and school district came through a pandemic only to become enmired in greater controversies on the other side of COVID-19. It’s not so strange because, in fact, the pandemic has only exacerbated existing cultural divisions in the city. They were present before, and are stronger now. Those divisions require caution that policymakers have not exercised. It’s a minefield now; racing about only leads to unnecessary injury.
As was true with Old Whitewater’s failure to understand the shifting local terrain of the years since the Great Recession, so officials in city hall and the district’s central office do not understand the ground on which they walk. Old Whitewater was, of course, sure that it was right although local conditions proved them wrong. See Old Whitewater’s 3 Big Mistakes. (Even now, some from what’s left of that kind will not admit they botched the last fifteen years. Doesn’t matter; they did.)
Now, after all that has happened, it should be obvious that there are limits to local government action. The power for positive change from government is limited; Whitewater is in need of private economic and cultural rejuvenation that local government lacks the money and skill to effect. Whitewater’s socio-economic maladies exceed the ability of local policymakers to cure through their own efforts. See The Limits of Local Politics and 6 Asides Before the Local Spring Elections in Whitewater (‘local government in Whitewater has less influence each year to address constructively the significant problems in this community’).
When government does act, it always owes an explanation. When it acts in big ways, it owes big explanations.
From city hall, there’s a need for detailed explanations of the lakes restoration program, the planned takeover of the local fire department, the absence of a permanent police chief, and continuing failures to fulfill the clear requirements of Whitewater’s own transparency ordinance.
From the school district, there’s a need for detailed explanations of what the district expects from an operational referendum, of significant policy changes that affect students and families, and why this district has an unusually high amount of staff turnover.
These explanations should, and as a practical matter must, come from those hired as full-time leaders of the city government and school district. Whitewater’s city manager has been in office for ten years, and the school district’s superintendent for two years. That’s more than enough tenure to address the community directly and respond to questions on key issues.
It’s not through a common council or a school board that these appointed officials should be speaking. They were hired and are obligated to address concerns directly, in their own voices, and to respond thoroughly and patiently to community concerns.
If they are unwilling or unable to do so then they are unsuited to their roles. Both Whitewater’s city manager and superintendent are graduated from accredited institutions of higher learning. Those with advanced degrees should produce advanced work. They have an obligation to the schools they attended and the community that employs them to meet a high scholastic standard.
Our small and beautiful city should accept no less.
Intolerance for dissent, in particular, is unworthy of both academic standards and the American constitutional tradition. Any public official who came to Whitewater with the expectation that residents should stop talking and fall in line came to the wrong city.
As for patience, no one can say that this libertarian blogger hasn’t been patient in addressing city and school district policies over the last two years. It was fair to give policymakers time to adjust to the return of ordinary conditions as the pandemic eased into an endemic in Whitewater.
There’s no virtue in excess, however; patience like other virtues has a proper limit.
‘Star Wars’ Fan Builds X-Wing Replica to Raise Money for Ukraine:
Daily Bread, History, War
Daily Bread for 6.6.22: D-Day, Seventy-Eight Years On
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Monday in Whitewater will be rainy with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:16 AM and sunset 8:30 PM for 15h 13m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 38.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1944, Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, begins with the execution of Operation Neptune—commonly referred to as D-Day—the largest seaborne invasion in history. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops cross the English Channel with about 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. By the end of the day, the Allies have landed on five invasion beaches and are pushing inland.
On that day, Gen. Eisenhower issued a D-day statement to the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6/44:
Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert F. Sargent’s Into the Jaws of Death depicts the peril Americans faced, and overcame, to liberate Europe.
A robotic Petri dish: How to grow human cells in a robot shoulder:
Music
Monday Music: Still, Suite for Violin and Piano: III
by JOHN ADAMS •
City, Daily Bread, University, UW System
Daily Bread for 6.5.22: UW System Spring Enrollment Down for Whitewater, Other Campuses
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered late afternoon showers with a high of 75. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:30 PM for 15h 13m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 29.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1947, in a speech at Harvard, the United States Secretary of State George Marshall calls for economic aid to war-torn Europe in a program now known as the Marshall Plan. (Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for the plan.)
Rich Kremer reports Spring enrollment down at most UW campuses compared with [Spring] 2021:
Spring enrollment data from the University of Wisconsin System show continued declines at many two-year campuses and some four-year universities.
Enrollment across all state public colleges and universities showed little change, with an average 1.6 percent decline this spring, according to final UW System data. The average among all four-year universities was down 1.4 percent while the decline across the state’s 13 two-year campuses dropped by 8.6 percent.
….
Of the UW System’s four-year universities, UW-Superior saw a 5.8 percent increase in enrollment this spring, with 136 more students than spring 2021. The only other university to post spring enrollment gains was UW-Madison with an increase of 3 percent.
Jeremy Nere, UW-Superior senior enrollment officer, said part of that growth was due to recruitment of more international students from places like Ethiopia and Nepal.
UW-Whitewater saw an overall decline in spring enrollment from 2021 to 2022 of 2.7%, with declines of 2.2% on the main campus in Whitewater and 12.5% at the Rock County campus.
Of enrolled students, an appreciable number do not live in Whitewater, so the total enrollment figures for the Whitewater campus (9,874) overstate the local economic impact of actual student residents. For UW-Whitewater, these figures suggest a decline but not collapse. (There has never been a moment when, despite occasional worries on campus, collapse has been a prospect for UW-Whitewater. Changing enrollment and leadership may create that impression, but that view is overwrought.)
Whitewater and other communities will have to adjust, however, to a smaller number of resident students. Growth of the campus population in the last decade (growth that peaked around 2016) has proved temporary.
The administrative attaboys one heard at that time were too soon and too many.
See also Ongoing Enrollment Declines at UW-Whitewater, Elsewhere.
Rare albino Galapagos giant tortoise faces the world:
Daily Bread, Language
Daily Bread for 6.4.22: 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee Ends in Epic Spell-Off
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will see a brief shower or two this morning followed by scattered afternoon thunderstorms with a high of 70. Sunrise is 5:17 AM and sunset 8:29 PM for 15h 12m 00s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 21.3% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1989, the Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army, with between 241 and 10,000 dead (an unofficial estimate).
Daily Bread, Gubernatorial Race 2022, Kleefisch, Michels, Politics, Trump, WISGOP
Daily Bread for 6.3.22: Trump Puts His Finger on the Scale
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see sunny skies with a high of 74. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:28 PM for 15h 10m 55s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 13.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1621, the Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherland.
If a mid-May poll is accurate, then with about two months to go, the WISGOP gubernatorial primary is close: “27 percent of the respondents said if the primary were held now, they were most likely to vote for [Tim] Michels while 26 percent answered [Rebecca] Kleefisch.” Michels has bags full of his own cash, so he has the means to overwhelm Kleefisch in advertising over the next eight weeks. (Michels has in his own hands an amount of money that Kevin Nicholson hoped, but has not received, from donors.)
Trump, nicked after an ineffectual endorsement in Georgia’s GOP primary, has a much better chance to look the kingmaker with a Michels endorsement. And so, on cue, he’s endorsed Michels. Shawn Johnson reports Trump endorses Tim Michels in Wisconsin governor’s race:
While Trump’s endorsement record has been mixed this year, in some states, his support has been enough to help one candidate emerge from a crowded Republican primary. Michels and Kleefisch both visited Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Springs, Florida to make personal appeals to the former president.
“Wisconsin needs a Governor who will Stop Inflation, Uphold the Rule of Law, strengthen our Borders (we had the strongest borders in history just two years ago, now we have the weakest!) and End the well-documented Fraud in our Elections,” read a written statement from Trump Thursday night. “Tim Michels is the best candidate to deliver meaningful solutions to these problems, and he will produce jobs like no one else can even imagine.”
The endorsement gives Trump a chance to claim bragging rights in Wisconsin, two years after he narrowly lost the state and two years before he could be on the ballot again. Kleefisch is backed by former Gov. Scott Walker, once the undisputed leader of Wisconsin Republicans who helped build the state party into one of the nation’s strongest. Walker has campaigned for Kleefisch, but his support never came close to clearing the field.
Walker’s faded in popularity, but ardor for Trump within the WISGOP is more intense than Walker ever received. For it all, Michels would do the primary campaigning, and spend his own money, to win a primary race for which Trump would claim the credit. Trump won’t have made a winner; he’ll have climbed on a winner’s back.
That’s Trump.
What the Pandemic Can Teach Us About Endings:
Cats, Education
Friday Catblogging: Cat ‘Graduates’ from the University of Texas
by JOHN ADAMS •
Dani Medina reports Cat ‘Graduates’ From University of Texas After Attending Every Zoom Class:
Just in case you were wondering if they made graduation caps and gowns for cats — they do! Francesa Bourdier figured it out when she purchased a set for her one-and-a-half-year-old cat so she could graduate alongside her.
Bourdier graduated from the University of Texas at Austin this spring, according to FOX 7. Most of her classes were online, so she was able to have her trusty sidekick, Suki, by her side! “I was pretty much at my apartment for most of the time and I had my cat next to me. Whenever I would have my Zoom lecture on, it’s like she almost wanted to listen in on it, and she would always just sit by my laptop,” Bourdier said.
The UT Austin grad found a matching cap and gown for Suki, making her an honorable member of the Class of 2022.
Congratulations and best wishes to Francesa and Suki.
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Daily Bread, Restaurant
Daily Bread for 6.2.22: Bring Back the Automat
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will see clouds giving way to sun with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM for 15h 09m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 7.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM, and Whitewater Fire Department, Inc. will hold a business meeting at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1966, Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.
For decades during the last century, Americans in Philadelphia and New York enjoyed meals served in automats, waiterless restaurants that served freshly cooked food. Jane Levere describes the experience in Futuristic ‘automat’ dining thrived a century ago. Can covid revive it?:
At first, Horn & Hardart was known for its coffee. Frank Hardart had discovered the French drip method in New Orleans, and he and Joe Horn served up a brew that made their 15-seater Philadelphia restaurant standing room only at lunchtime.
Then, at the turn of the 20th century, a salesman pitched them on a new European machine, a “waiterless restaurant,” or “automatic,” which served food such as sandwiches, chocolate bars and wine automatically, according to “The Automat: The History, Recipes, and Allure of Horn & Hardart’s Masterpiece,” a 2002 book by historian Lorraine B. Diehl and Marianne Hardart, a great-granddaughter of Frank Hardart. In 1902, Horn and Hardart imported this equipment and launched the first Horn & Hardart Automat, at 818 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia.
Their modified version of the device was “fronted by Carrara [marble] or milk glass on which hung four rectangular glass doors that would be operated by a knob. … All you had to do was make your selection, deposit a nickel, turn the knob, and the door sprang open and your sandwich or piece of pie awaited you,” Diehl and Hardart wrote.
Soon they expanded to New York, and they eventually opened nearly 200 automats, restaurants and retail stores in Philadelphia and New York. Through the mid-20th century, automats were ubiquitous in the two cities, serving up convenience with a side of futurism.
….
The arrival of the virus shut down restaurants across the country, then saw them reopen with social distancing and outdoor dining. Face-to-face contact was no longer a plus, but a potential liability. Meanwhile, restaurants grappled with labor shortages. It all made the automat ripe for a comeback.
….
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, located in Manhattan’s East Village, opened in spring 2021. Its founder, Stratis Morfogen, said he “fell in love at first sight” when he was taken at the age of 10 by his restaurateur father to a Horn & Hardart in Times Square.
City, Culture, Daily Bread, Demographics, Economy
Daily Bread for 6.1.22: The End of DYKWIA in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of 73. Sunrise is 5:18 AM and sunset 8:27 PM for 15h 08m 37s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.7% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1980, Cable News Network (CNN) launches.
Every town, big or small, has some tiny number who will, when in disagreement, ask ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ The right reply — in the full meaning of right — should be ‘Well, yes, you are no more or less than any other.’ For those who ask the arrogant question, the right answer will be unexpected and unsatisfying. Someone could drain a bottle of Chivas and not be half so drunk as a man drunk on pride.
It’s not, however, the predictable presence of a few self-important people that defines a culture. It’s the presence of more than a few, holding sway over others, that defines a culture. In Whitewater, the status culture that led to the question ‘Don’t you know who I am?‘ has passed. There may be some in Whitewater who still ask the question, but they’ve no significant social group behind them. They perhaps imagine that they do, but then people imagine many things, and kid themselves about many things.
Here’s why, the question DYKWIA?, a question that emerges in status-based cultures, is now longer significant in Whitewater:
1. The Great Recession. Economic declines needn’t alter a culture, but unaddressed declines will. So it has been in Whitewater: the Great Recession, lasting from 2007-2009, brought change from which Whitewater’s status-based culture could not recover. The Great Recession was a plague that brought other plagues. From that recession came stagnation, addiction, and an erosion of social bonds. Old Whitewater did not understand the significance of the Great Recession on the community, and so carried on with boosterism during and after that economic downturn. This was a fundamental — a decisive — mistake.
Whitewater went from a sunburn to melanoma, but Old Whitewater went on applying cocoa butter.
2. Consequently… From that inability to shift course, local, state, and national stresses moved different groups within the city in different directions. Some moved left, some right, some others into debilitating malaise. The center-left became more active after Act 10, and the right moved from Walker to Trump so completely that Walker soon became an afterthought.
By the mid-Teens, during Trump’s rise, Whitewater’s existing demographic splits (students and non-students, Latinos and Anglos, working class and middle class) became yet more fractured by ideology and socio-economics).
3. Under Division, ‘DYKWIA?’ Means Much Less. Two years ago, when I wrote about a local politician’s misplaced notion that a particular family name was the most important in Whitewater, I wrote about it as an ethically mistaken way of seeing Whitewater through the names of a few families.
I always intended, but never completed, a second part to that post, about the factually mistaken nature of the claim. By the time (in 2017) that the councilman rebuked a student reporter for ignorance of “undoubtedly the best known surname in Whitewater” it should have been evident to him that Whitewater no longer had a single best-known surname. The city had become too diverse, with different groups too particularly occupied, to care about a given family name.
Perhaps the councilman cared, and perhaps he truly believed, but his horizon captured only a part of the city’s fourteen thousand residents. He wanted to rebuke a student reporter for not recognizing a family name, but it should have been obvious that most students on campus, and most residents beyond, cared more about the use of buildings than the names on the side.
When that politician (now out of office) ventured an opinion about the Whitewater’s society, he thought that he was writing about the society in the present; he was instead writing about an irrecuperable past that had already faded by 2017. Stand too close, and one cannot see the forest for the trees…
There’s a sad irony in the decline of ‘DYKWIA?’ This libertarian blogger, and many others in Whitewater, wanted Old Whitewater’s small-minded status culture to end through a universal recognition of the equal value of each person. Instead, that status culture ended for another reason: the city became too fragmented for the question ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ to resonate widely.
Previously: Old Whitewater’s 3 Big Mistakes.
Egypt unveils massive haul of newly discovered ancient artefacts in Saqqara: