Good morning,
Whitewater’s forecast calls for a clear day, with a high temperature of sixty-seven degrees.
The City of Whitewater’s public hearing concerning distressed status from Tax Incremental District 4 has been postponed, pending selection of a citizen representative to the Joint Review Board.
[Update, 8:10 AM — I’ve promised a post or two about Tax Incremental District 4, but those posts will now, like the hearing about TID 4, wait for another day. TID 4’s condition is a story on its own, and, I think, is connected to subsequent projects in the city. An explanation of TID 4’s fiscal history at a hearing will prove significant, perhaps, for more than one reason. It makes sense to hear what municipal officials say at that hearing.]At 4:30 p.m., the Whitewater Community Development Authority will meet. The meeting agenda is available online.
In the online version of Der Speigel, there’s an interesting story entitled, “90 Beds in 90 Days,” about “hitting the town with Berlin’s couch-surfing nomad,” Christine Neder:
Christine Neder, 25, recently moved from Munich to Berlin. She didn’t have time to bother with the hassle of searching for a room, so she made a bold decision: For 90 days she would seek out a new room every night, looking for people willing to host her on social networking sites like CouchSurfing and Facebook. Neder is a fashion designer and writer.
The Web makes Neder’s task far easier, and she describes her adventures in a video, available online. (Neder is apparently something of a performance artist, with different online ventures, so I doubt that her couch surfing is entirely of necessity; opportunity likely plays a role. She hit on the idea not simply on short-notice, but as she remarks, while on holiday.)
The BBC describes the practice, for other travelers:
I can’t see this catching on outside of a small part of America, in a few big cities. I wonder, though, if couch surfing is what the Web has done (or is doing) to the hostel in Europe.