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Author Archive for JOHN ADAMS

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.11.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Thursday will bring thunderstorms to Whitewater, on a day with a high of seventy-one. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset 8:33, for 15h 17m 33s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 29.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1982, Universal Pictures releases E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

It’s Gene Wilder‘s birthday:

On this date Gene Wilder (aka Jerome Silberman) was born in Milwaukee. Wilder graduated from Washington High School in Milwaukee in 1951. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Iowa in 1955. and studied judo, fencing, gymnastics and voice at the Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England. Wilder won the Clarence Derwent award for the Broadway play “The Complaisant Lover” in 1962. He continued to perform on Broadway in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1963), Dynamite Tonight (1964), and The White House (1964). Wilder made his film debut in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), then earned an Oscar nomination the following year as the accountant Leo Bloom in The Producers, the first of three films he made for writer-director Mel Brooks. Wilder is known for his work in such films as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), Blazing Saddles (1973), and Young Frankenstein (1974).

After his second wife Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer, Wilder co-founded Gilda’s Club, a support group to raise awareness of the disease. [Source: Internet Movie Database]

Here’s Puzzability‘s Thursday game in this week’s Disappearing Acts series:

This Week’s Game — June 8-12
Disappearing Acts
They’re all trick questions this week. For each day, we started with the name of a magic or mentalist act as it would be billed. We removed all the letters that appear more than once, leaving just the singly occurring letters. Each day’s clue gives the unique letters in order (with any spaces removed), along with the word lengths of the act’s name in parentheses.
Example:
AYOUDN (5,7)
Answer:
Harry Houdini
What to Submit:
Submit the name (as “Harry Houdini” in the example) for your answer.
Thursday, June 11
PADTR (4,3,6)

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.10.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of eighty-four. Sunrise is 5:15 and sunset 8:32, for 15h 16m 54s of daytime. The moon is waning crescent with 40.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1692, Bridget Bishop becomes thew first person executed during the Salem witch trials:

Bishop was accused of bewitching five young women, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, Jr., Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard, on the date of her examination by the authorities, 19 April 1692.

A record was given of her trial by Cotton Mather in “The Wonders of the Invisible World.” In his book, Mather recorded that several people testified against Bishop, stating that the shape of Bishop would pinch, choke or bite them. The shape also threatened to drown one victim if she did not write her name in a certain book. During the trial, anytime Bishop would look upon one of those supposed to be tortured by her, they would be immediately struck down and only her touch would revive them. More allegations were made during the trial including that of a woman saying that the apparition of Bishop tore her coat, upon further examination her coat was found to be torn in the exact spot. Mather mentions that the truth of these many accusations carried too much suspicion, however.

William Stacy, a middle aged man in Salem Town, testified that Bishop had previously made statements to him that other people in the town considered her to be a witch. He confronted her with the allegation that she was using witchcraft to torment him, which she denied. Another local man, Samuel Shattuck, accused Bishop of bewitching his child and also of striking his son with a spade. He also testified that Bishop asked him to dye lace, which apparently was too small to be used on anything but a poppet (doll used in spell-casting). John and William Bly, father and son, testified about finding poppets in Bishop’s house and also about their pig that appeared to be bewitched, or poisoned, after a dispute with Bishop. Other victims of Bishop, as recorded by Mather, include Deliverance Hobbs, John Cook, Samuel Gray, Richard Coman, and John Louder.[citation needed]

During her sentencing, a jury of women found a third nipple upon Bishop (a sure sign of witchcraft) but upon a second examination the nipple was not found. In the end Mather states that the biggest thing that condemned Bishop was the gross amount of lying she committed in court. According to Mather, “there was little occasion to prove the witchcraft, it being evident and notorious to all beholders.” Bishop was sentenced to death and hanged.

Here’s Puzzability‘s Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — June 8-12
Disappearing Acts
They’re all trick questions this week. For each day, we started with the name of a magic or mentalist act as it would be billed. We removed all the letters that appear more than once, leaving just the singly occurring letters. Each day’s clue gives the unique letters in order (with any spaces removed), along with the word lengths of the act’s name in parentheses.
Example:
AYOUDN (5,7)
Answer:
Harry Houdini
What to Submit:
Submit the name (as “Harry Houdini” in the example) for your answer.
Wednesday, June 10
DOUHEI (4,7)

City, Culture, Local Government, Marketing, Politics

Marketing Whitewater Over the Last Decade

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Yesterday, I mentioned that I would share observations from a longtime resident about marketing efforts on behalf of Whitewater.

First the observations, then my remarks.

….Ten years ago I think all the rhetoric about a perfect Whitewater was meant to set the tone for those already living in and around the town. They wanted to make sure everyone believed the narrative.

The top-tier insiders already understood the game plan, which was mostly to make sure those moving into the area understood that their resources were kindly accepted, but their ideas were not. The idea was to give the impression that the place was perfect, and the perfect management team was already in place, watching over everything, and all newcomers need do was go along, support the status-quo and be happy they had arrived.

Today, I think the campaign is much quieter, and it’s more about attracting new people to the area. Same idea: it’s perfect here; just come. I hear and see less of it though. I think their energy level has decreased over time….

1. I think these observations are, generally, spot on. The more one considers how Whitewater’s insiders craft messages ostensibly for people outside the city, the more evident it becomes that these messages are effectually for people already in the city.

One comes to this conclusion in significant part because messages supposedly intended for newcomers are so awkward, smarmy, or self-serving of town notables that it’s almost impossible to believe local authors could possibly believe newcomers would be persuaded.

Whitewater is beautiful, with so much to recommend to others, but official messaging about the city is under-thought and over-done. It’s as though someone chose particular Hollywood scriptwriters as Whitewater’s public-relations team.

See, along these lines, The Failure of Marketing (and the Marketing of Failure).

2. Whitewater’s town squires – with a few striking exceptions – do look less energetic, and less creative, with each passing year. They’re running out of sham claims. (There are only so many times you can tell people you’ve built a flying car before they’ll stop believing.)

3. To the extent marketing about Whitewater is really about local self-promotion within the city of a few to many others also within the city, then it’s evidence of a myopic political culture.

One needs to look farther, and gazing outward, bring the best that one finds to local discussions. Starting and ending from what one sees close at hand is a less-advanced approach.

That narrow approach is easy, of course, so it suits the lazy, entitled, etc. Most people are very sharp; some, however, become complacent, and thereby underuse their abilities.

Years of prior error mean that even genuine efforts to speak to newcomers will be unpersuasive.

Under these conditions, insiders lose the ability not only to see what outsiders find attractive, but what outsiders find unattractive or embarrassing. This is why insiders are so often startled by outside criticism – they don’t adequately imagine what people outside their small circles think. By the time there’s outside criticism, it’s already too late.

The problem: looking only close at hand produces limited insight, and limited insight leads to looking no farther than close at hand.

Errors of this kind beget more, and perhaps even worse, errors of this kind.

Thereafter, what myopia does not conceal pride will insist is unimportant: one starts with not knowing, and later insists knowing is unimportant.

4. Acknowledging actual problems and flaws is more useful to this city and her residents than all the sugary tales one reads. See, How to Make Whitewater Hip and Prosperous.

This is why, every day, it’s better to begin anew, working hard, and living the life of a dark-horse underdog.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.9.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have a sunny Tuesday in Whitewater with a high of eighty-six. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:32, for 15h 16m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 52.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets at 5:30 PM this afternoon.

I’ve added a video to When Green Turns Brown, in response to a request, showing the principal discussion of Common Council on 6.2.15 regarding a public meeting about upgrades to Whitewater’s wastewater plant. The video is also available on the right sidebar of this page. (There’s a later discussion, toward the end of the 6.2.15 Council meeting, that’s worth posting and considering another time.) I’ve also updated yesterday’s post from the WGTB series to include the video.)

It’s worth mentioning again that When Green Turns Brown in a series about a small town’s digester energy project, based on the importation of waste from other cities into Whitewater. Other facility upgrades are not primarily a concern of this series, but are secondarily important only as they implicate managerial ability.

On this day in 1973, Secretariat became a Triple Crown winner by taking the Belmont Stakes. American Pharoah, of course, just won his own Triple Crown.

Here’s how the two horses ran the Belmont, with side by side video that the Wall Street Journal crafted:

Les Paul is born on this day in 1915:

On this date guitarist Les Paul (aka Lester Polfus) was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Best known for the guitar that bears his name, Les Paul was a country-music guitarist, jazz-pop musician and pioneer in music technology. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar and over the next decade he developed revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay, and multi-tracking. Paul was also well known for recording with his wife, singer Colleen Summers (a.k.a. Mary Ford).

Their biggest hits included “How High the Moon” (1951) and “Vaya Con Dios” (1953), both reaching #1. The recordings of Les Paul and Mary Ford were not only popular hits, they also showcased Paul’s pioneering use of overdubbing, or the layering of guitar parts one atop another. In 1952, Les Paul introduced the first eight-track tape recorder as well as the solid-body electric guitar he is known for. Built and marketed by Gibson, the Les Paul guitar has been used by such guitarists as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. [Source: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame]

Here’s Tuesday’s game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — June 8-12
Disappearing Acts
They’re all trick questions this week. For each day, we started with the name of a magic or mentalist act as it would be billed. We removed all the letters that appear more than once, leaving just the singly occurring letters. Each day’s clue gives the unique letters in order (with any spaces removed), along with the word lengths of the act’s name in parentheses.
Example:
AYOUDN (5,7)
Answer:
Harry Houdini
What to Submit:
Submit the name (as “Harry Houdini” in the example) for your answer.
Tuesday, June 9
AVCORFL (5,11)

Business, City, Development, Economics, Economy, Health, Local Government, Planning, Politics, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

Meetings & Motivations

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 11 in a series.

This is series about a proposed digester energy project for Whitewater, one that would rely on importing other cities’ unwanted waste into Whitewater for processing.

A series like this is only indirectly about general wastewater upgrades, at whatever price. It’s about waste importation, and officials’ claims that importation would be clean and profitable. It’s necessarily and directly about the consequences of waste importation, fiscally, economically, environmentally, and as an expression of a city’s business and political culture.

Updated 6.9.15 with video.

Planning for a Public Meeting from John Adams on Vimeo.

During a recent Common Council meeting from June 2nd, at item C3, Common Council discussed a public presentation about upgrades to the wastewater facility. Part of that discussion implicates the digester proposal, but much concerns other matters.

During that discussion, at C3 and again later, City Manager Clapper expresses his confidence in the full project, including implicitly a plan to import waste into Whitewater (he’s not alone in that confidence, among those in attendance).

Part of City Manager Clapper’s confidence comes from a mild or positive reception that he’s received from selected stakeholder groups.

This raises two questions, not needing to be enumerated, but implicated in the entire project and this series.

First, why would anyone doubt that the response to city officials, from among selected audiences, would be other than mild or positive?

Second, does anyone at the 6.2.15 meeting actually believe that my questions are designed simply toward a political vote on the project?

Of the first, there are good examples from across America of waste-importation projects like this one, and how local government approves or rejects them. I’ve no idea what Whitewater’s various engineering firms have said about these votes (if anything), but then, it’s always better to do one’s own research. What Mr. Clapper is now seeing is common, almost predictable, in the short-term in these situations.

Of the second, I’m not interested solely in the short-term, of Whitewater getting or rejecting an importation plan. If City Manager Clapper wanted a vote on this project tomorrow, including importing as much waste into Whitewater as he could shovel, he’d receive easy political approval for that idea.

But looking at this project as a matter of approval or rejection isn’t looking at this project, it would be looking at approval or rejection of it.

Looking at an importation plan (and that’s what this series is about) has value far beyond Whitewater, as an examination of how communities consider, approve, and implement these supposedly green and supposedly energy-generating ideas. What matters most happens only after a program like this starts running.

There’s Whitewater’s importation plan, there are the longterm implications of Whitewater’s plan for Whitewater, and there are the implications of Whitewater’s plan generally, for any community, as a supposed digester-energy project.

These three aren’t the same.

I’ve a guess – and it’s just a guess – about why the obvious, long-term motivation of my series doesn’t (at least doesn’t seem) apparent to City Manager Clapper.

I’ll write about that tomorrow, using an observation a longtime resident sent me about marketing efforts for Whitewater.

Original Common Council Discussion, 6.2.15
Agenda: http://www.whitewater-wi.gov/images/stories/agendas/common_council/2015/ccagen_2015-0602.pdf
Video: https://vimeo.com/129697983

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 6.8.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy, with a high of seventy-nine, and an even chance of thunderstorms in the late afternoon. Sunrise is 5:16 and sunset 8:31, for 15h 15m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

 

On this day in 1867, Frank Lloyd Wright is born in Richland Center:

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called “the best all-time work of American architecture”.[1] Wright was a leader of the Prairie Schoolmovement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States.

His work includes original and innovative examples of many building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio. Already well known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American architect of all time”.[1]

Puzzability begins a new series, entitled Disappearing Acts:

This Week’s Game — June 8-12
Disappearing Acts
They’re all trick questions this week. For each day, we started with the name of a magic or mentalist act as it would be billed. We removed all the letters that appear more than once, leaving just the singly occurring letters. Each day’s clue gives the unique letters in order (with any spaces removed), along with the word lengths of the act’s name in parentheses.
Example:
AYOUDN (5,7)
Answer:
Harry Houdini
What to Submit:
Submit the name (as “Harry Houdini” in the example) for your answer.
Monday, June 8
SGFANOY (9,3,3)

CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Gluttony, Government Spending, Local Government, Public Relations, University, WEDC

Another Six-Figure WEDC Loan to an Unworthy Applicant

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Across the state, revelation after revelation shows that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has been a mistake, a wasteful political endeavor contrary to sound economics. Locally, support for the WEDC, from Whitewater’s Community Development Authority, Chancellor Richard Telfer, City Manager Cameron Clapper, etc., shows not only that they’re ignorant of sound economics, but so politically inept that they’d pick the WEDC as the vehicle through which they’d assert their self-professed sophistication.

Initial public-relations efforts on behalf of the WEDC (whether flashy from the state or dull from local officials) now look like nothing so much as a coat of paint on a brothel.

Months after Gov. Scott Walker’s flagship job-creation agency was formed in 2011, it gave a forgivable $686,000 taxpayer loan to a Sheboygan company planning to build a combination helicopter and corporate jet — even though the company had no experience in aircraft manufacturing and underwriters hadn’t reviewed the company’s finances in years.

But Morgan Aircraft hasn’t created the 340 jobs it promised by the end of 2015, did not make the promised $105 million investment and is not expected to repay the loan….

See, $700,000 WEDC loan to aviation company unpaid @ State Journal.