This Tuesday, December 27th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Guardians of the Galaxy @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building. Guardians of the Galaxy is a 2014 science-fiction comedy based on the Marvel series of the same name: “Kidnapped by aliens when he was young, Peter Quill now travels the…
City
City
Local Assumptions and Outlook, Winter 2016
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This post is a quick summary of thoughts on the local outlook, including the local political economy. 1. Politics & Economy. I’d say the outlook is for turbulence in the national political-economy, and stagnation in the local one. See, The National-Local Mix and The Local Economic Context of It All. The way out of several years’ local stagnation…
Charity, City, Culture, Hip & Prosperous
An Oasis Strategy
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
There’s a wide difference between believing that we’ve difficult national or local times ahead and losing confidence. I’m as confident today as ever that Whitewater has a bright long-term future. There’s simply hard work ahead between now and then, and more hard work now than we might have hoped (national trends being what they are). What to do?…
Charity, City, Good Ideas
The Whitewater Community Foundation’s First Annual Campaign
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Please see a news release about charitable work in our small city — best wishes to all who are supporting the campaign – Whitewater Community Foundation is concluding its first ever Annual Campaign Thank you to everyone who donated! We reached our modest goal of $50,000, and the donations are still rolling in! Thank you to…
America, City
When Are We?
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
City
The Search for a Composer
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
At Whitewater’s Planning Commission, a smart, educated resident (to whom I have no personal connection) mentioned how very much Whitewater could use a reliable publication, so that residents might be properly informed of community developments. The unexpected in this was not lost on me, as only a few feet away from the resident, at the commissioner’s…
City, Government Spending, Local Government
At Whitewater’s Planning Commission: Millions But Still a Politician’s Unsatisfied
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Last night, Whitewater’s local government conducted its (mostly) monthly Planning Commission meeting. It’s mostly because there aren’t always enough new projects each month to justify holding a meeting. At Item 4 on the agenda, the commission held a public hearing “for consideration of a conditional use permit for an automotive shop at 113 E. Main…
City, Culture, Local Government, School District, University
On Lake, McHenry, and Walworth Counties
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In August, I wrote that dorm-construction wasn’t the big story at UW-Whitewater, but rather it was the federal lawsuit against former Chancellor Telfer and [then-current] Athletic Director Amy Edmonds. Even in her mundane story of residence-construction, the Journal Sentinel‘s Karen Herzog got it wrong: the bigger story was an increasing number of out-of-state students (now about…
City, Film
Film: Tuesday, December 13th, 12:30 PM @ Seniors in the Park, Love the Coopers
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
This Tuesday, December 13th at 12:30 PM, there will be a showing of Love the Coopers @ Seniors in the Park, in the Starin community building. Love the Coopers is a comedy account of how “four generations of the Cooper clan come together for their annual Christmas Eve celebration, [when] a series of unexpected visitors and unlikely…
City, Culture, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, Marketing, New Whitewater, School District
How Big Averts Bad
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
If it should be true that small-town Whitewater faces a choice between difficult times now or an extended decline before an out-of-town-led gentrification, that her decline will otherwise be slow but no less signficant as a result, that stakeholder (special interest) politics grips the city, and that this stakeholder politics is really an identity politics…
City, Culture, Ethnicity, Liberty, Politics, Race
Philosophy or Identity?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Imagine a choice between living in a universally free society where one was of the racial or ethnic minority, or living as a member of the racial or ethnic majority in a universally oppressive society. Which society should one choose? A man or woman, committed first to liberty, would choose to live in a free…
City, Local Government, Politics
The Simplest Explanation for Whitewater, Wisconsin’s Politics
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
In my last post, I mentioned Noah Rothman’s perceptive post on the failings – and they are many – of a non-ideological politics, a politics without principle. Whitewater’s politics, unlike that which Rothman describes, certainly isn’t a politics of radical populism; there’s no radicalism in Whitewater whatever. (Those who see radicalism here likely see unicorns…
City, Indolence, Local Government
Indolence Over Something as Simple as a Parking Lot Repair
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Embed from Getty Images Here’s a simple observation: if full-time department managers in a small town’s government can’t develop and execute repairs to the city’s parking lots without repeated prodding from the town’s part-time council members, then there’s not much that city government can do. Full-time, publicly-paid leaders should have enough pride in their town…
City, Culture, Economics, Politics, School District, University
Plain-Spoken in a Small Town? Not Most Leaders
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s a quaint – but false – notion that people in small towns are uncommonly plain-spoken, even blunt. One sometimes sees examples of this in films or books, where residents are depicted as folksy straight-talkers (“shucks, I don’t cotton to no one abusing nobody,” etc.). I’ve never heard anyone in Whitewater speak so colorfully, and I’ve…