Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 59. Sunrise is 7:25 AM and sunset 5:51 PM for 10h 26m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 12.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ends and Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
Someone remarked yesterday of the perspective here at FREE WHITEWATER that, these fifteen years on, the rhetorical approach was less combative than it once was. The implication was that this libertarian blogger had somehow changed.
I’ve not, and in any event that scarcely matters. What matters is that Whitewater has changed, and all the rest is merely a reasoned response — through the same principles — to those changes. The multiple afflictions that have beset this community since the Great Recession left the community more fragile than it once was. Much of what was formerly troublesome in Whitewater has simply withered away, replaced with new problems emerging from different sources.
Not to see as much — a condition that grips a few trolling, agitated residents — is to be blind to Whitewater as she truly is. Striking: the now-faded boosters didn’t describe Whitewater correctly years ago, and a populist faction that has supplanted them doesn’t describe Whitewater correctly now.
Those present and former factions have shared between them a common myopia: it’s hard to see one’s surroundings clearly while staring in a mirror.
A changed response to some, and a new focus on others, is no more or less than a realistic acknowledgment of changed conditions in Whitewater.
Update: An explanation on meaning — a town that has experienced multiple injuries over more than a decade has a fragility that must be considered and respected. One responds differently to those who are robust (as the boosters once were) from those who are ill or recovering (as the town now is). One responds differently to those who are seeking improvement from those whose actions and proposals are a detriment to the city.
Footage Shows How Quick & Devastating a Mudslide Can Be: