Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 81. Sunrise is 6:26, and sunset is 7:18, for 12h 52m 25s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1946, United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes announces that the U.S. will follow a policy of economic reconstruction in postwar Germany.
Kamala Harris sometimes uses the expression “what can be, unburdened by what has been.”
The sound implication is that the present is burdened by what has been, but can be unburdened with effort.
Whitewater is like this, as the city is burdened twice-over by her past. First, she’s afflicted by a small faction of ordinary men possessed of extraordinary self-promotion and self-dealing. See A Reminder on Whitewater’s Fumbling & Stumbling Old Guard, The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town, and The Special-Interest Hierarchy of a Small Town (Adjacent Support).
Second, that small faction diverted attention from basic needs, including the ability of adults to discourse on a proper high-school level, leaving a small number in the community as little more than ignorant (lit., lacking knowledge or awareness) or confused tale-bearers. See Formation, General, Formation Hasn’t Stopped Mattering, and Formation, Moral.
Special interests’ particular avarice, afflicting the town with general stagnation, was worse even than economic: it has led to a decline in acculturation among the portions of the community those interests variously patronized or ignored.
They’ve left the next generation with a significant burden to overcome. Whitewater has made solid progress these last two years, and although we have years to go, we will overcome the burden of the past.