A municipal policy of addressing problems as they crop up, principally on an ad hoc, piecemeal basis, will wear local government down, and only produce worse policies. (Ad hoc policy, that is, literally a for this [purpose] policy.) One should begin each discussion and problem from the vantage of a fundamental philosophy of government, adjusting…
Culture
Culture, Games/Puzzles
Words of Advice from One of Britain’s Finest Philosophers
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Someone mentioned to me today that she would like to play Pokémon Go, but that she was worried that she’d seem silly to others. I replied that as long as she enjoyed the game, and walked about safely, others’ views of silliness shouldn’t matter. She needn’t have accepted my word for it, however. Noted British philosopher…
Art, Business, Culture
The Art Market (in Four Parts): Patrons
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Art Market (in Four Parts): Patrons from Artsy on Vimeo. What motivates patrons to fund artists’ wildest dreams? How has the concept of art patronage changed over time? And what’s behind the dramatic rise of private art museums? In the third installment of “The Art Market (in Four Parts),” we explore how and why…
City, Culture, Local Government, Politics
Do you remember when Gen. MacArthur called for dedication to ‘Duty, Honor, Country, and Local Government’?
by JOHN ADAMS • • 6 Comments
Do you remember when Gen. MacArthur called for dedication to ‘Duty, Honor, Country, and Local Government’? Neither do I. He called, of course, for dedication to Duty, Honor, Country. It wouldn’t have occured to him to exhort a commitment to municipal government. America speaks – when she speaks most movingly – in the language of…
City, Culture, Politics, Puzzles/Tricks
The Colors of a Rubik’s Cube
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Imagine that one sees a Rubik’s Cube for the first time, on a table nearby. Three sides of that six-sided object are visible, displaying small squares of red, blue, and white. Consider this initial puzzle: What colors are the other three sides? How would one determine, with confidence, the colors on those sides obscured from…
City, Culture, Sports, University
Two States of Mind in Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
There’s an easy way to see two different states of mind in Whitewater. Draft a list of eleven people for an athletic honor. Make nine of the honorees athletes or coaches, and two of them an administrator and his spouse. Now, watch and see which people receive the most prominent attention. Some will pick one…
City, Culture, Economy, Politics, School District, University
The City Never Sleeps
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
In the broadest, figurative sense, Whitewater never sleeps. Like any other place, she’s constantly changing, either to her benefit or detriment, but changing nonetheless. (It’s only the parochial myth that she’s already achieved a level of perfection that obscures the obvious truth of constant flux.) Glance away, for one day or forty, and when one…
Culture, University, UW System
12 Points on the Claims of Racial Incidents at UW-Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
I posted yesterday about a statement from UW-Whitewater’s Chancellor Kopper about allegations of racial incidents on our campus. Kopper later walked back one of her concerns, about two students appearing in blackface in a photo (they claim they were just showing the results of a mud-pack facial). See, The Claims of Ongoing Incidents on Campus (Updates).…
City, Culture, Misconduct, University
The Claims of Ongoing Incidents on Campus (Updates)
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Update, Thursday afternoon, 2:30 PM. UW-Whitewater officials are now contending that a photo with students in blackface had a benign meaning. See, Image spurs concerns about race at UW-Whitewater @ Channel 3000. From that story: “Kopper later said the students said they just had a facial and took a picture. She said the students did not…
City, Culture, Local Government, Newspapers, School District, University
Whitewater’s Mentoring Gap
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Looking back ten years (or nine in the case of UW-Whitewater), one finds at the helm of Whitewater’s public institutions leaders who so very much embodied Old Whitewater: Steinhaus, Brunner, Coan, Telfer (beginning in ’07). They were the perfect representatives of Old Whitewater, where Old Whitewater is an attitude, not an age: narrow, grandiose, mediocre, producing…
Blogging, City, Culture, New Media, Newspapers, Press, School District, University
Revisiting Kozloff’s ‘Dark, Futile Dream’
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
About a year ago, I wrote a post on an off-campus meeting at which local notables and a search consultant (Jessica Kozloff) discussed a replacement for Richard Telfer. A story on that meeting, published in the Daily Union, is one of the best accounts of insiders’ thinking. See, from that newspaper, UW-Whitewater chancellor session held, http://www.dailyunion.com/news/article_f042575e-a63a-11e4-bcd8-939679ffcc09.html.…
Culture, Television
Back to 1993
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
City, Culture, Local Government, Politics
Commentary & Chronicle
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
I’ve been writing, happily, from Whitewater for years. Writing like this has, to my mind, two aspects: as commentary and as chronicle. Blogging as commentary is obvious, of course. Blogging as chronicle, however is just as important, if not more so. One writes sometimes to advocate, but always to describe. Longtime readers know that I have…
City, Culture, New Media, New Whitewater
The Lingua Franca of a New Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
If it should be true – and it is – that Whitewater is more diverse than her town fathers care to admit, with the city now a collection of disparate, minority factions, how can one reach a majority with a message? (For Whitewater’s waning notables of this generation, there’s no way to return to their former…