FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.15.13

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Good morning.

Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-five.

Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets at 8 AM, Downtown Whitewater’s Design Committee at 3 PM, and the Whitewater Community Development Authority meets at 4:30 PM.

On this day in 1969, Woodstock opens in Bethel, New York:

…the Woodstock Music Festival opens on a patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New York town of Bethel.

Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near the town of Woodstock, New York. The longtime artists’ colony was already a home base for Bob Dylan and other musicians. Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more. Plans for the festival were on the verge of foundering, however, after both Woodstock and the nearby town of Wallkill denied permission to hold the event. Dairy farmer Max Yasgur came to the rescue at the last minute, giving the promoters access to his 600 acres of land in Bethel, some 50 miles from Woodstock.

Early estimates of attendance increased from 50,000 to around 200,000, but by the time the gates opened on Friday, August 15, more than 400,000 people were clamoring to get in. Those without tickets simply walked through gaps in the fences, and the organizers were eventually forced to make the event free of charge. Folk singer and guitarist Richie Havens kicked off the event with a long set, and Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie also performed on Friday night.

Puzzability continues its weekly puzzle series entitled, Tourist Traps:

Tourist Traps
We’re crossing a lot of bridges on our summer vacation. For each day this week, fill in the two-word name of a U.S. tourist destination so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the tourist site, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the tourist site’s name followed by the second word in the clue.

Example:
GRIND ___ ___ GOAT

Answer:
Stone Mountain

Here’s today’s puzzle:

Thursday, August 15

LADY ___ ___ BOTTOMS

Beautiful Whitewater, City, Development, Good Ideas, Hip & Prosperous, New Whitewater, Planning

Tidying the Town

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A new school year begins, and thousands of students on whom the economy of this city depends are returning to Whitewater. Volunteers, as they’ve done previously, will help tidy up the town. These volunteers have, I think, held similar clean-up efforts in June and July.

It’s a fine idea. (I’ve not been part of those efforts, and deserve no credit for them; one simply notices others’ good work.)

Charitable work like this is important for our small city. One doesn’t have to be an urban theorist to understand that cleaning up matters, but the idea of idea of this sort of small-scale responsibility runs deeply through theorist Jane Jacobs’s Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Whenever I see volunteerism like this, I think of her great & profound book; whenever I read something of Jacobs’s book, I think of small & effective volunteerism like this.

And yet, there’s a sadness in this. A small group of residents commits itself to making Whitewater cleaner and more beautiful, yet not far away another small group of officials schemes to bring trash and toxins to the city as a revolutionary achievement.

These wholly conflicting projects aren’t those of different countries or cities, but a contemporary disparity within a small place. It’s a disparity between a lingering way of the past and a more responsible one of our future. (For more about Whitewater along these lines, see Horses and Automobiles, Contemporaneously.)

These conflicting ways won’t persist beside each other forever. One is fated to wither.

We’ve bumps and obstacles ahead, but I have a firm confidence about how our city will develop: we have a more open, responsible, diligent, and vibrant Whitewater ahead of us – a New Whitewater.

Along the way, there will be much to do.

City, Local Government, Open Government, Public Meetings

The Open Government Presentation

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Last week, at Common Council, the city heard a presentation from City Attorney McDonell on Wisconsin’s Open Meetings and Public Records Laws.

In the embeded video below, from 1:07:00 to 1:43:03, readers will see that presentation.

(Sadly, it starts off poorly, with a deprecating joke about the subject matter being boring. That’s false, of course: these laws aren’t boing. They’re vital to open and honest government. One simply has to believe and embrace these ideals with the enthusiasm they deserve.)

Common Council Meeting 08/06/2013 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo.

For those who would like to review the provisions of Wisconsin’s laws directly, the respective statutes for the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.81-19.98 and Wisconsin Public Records Law, Wis. Stat. §§ 19.31-19.39 are available online.

For a website with supplemental information about these laws, one may consult the site of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

(This spring, I had the pleasure to attending an awards ceremony honoring Lynn Adelman, now a federal judge, but years ago a state senator and principal author of Wisconsin’s Public Records Law.

By chance, I found myself sitting at Judge Adelman’s table that evening. I was one of many ordinary people attending, but the evening was an extraordinary pleasure: now in his seventies, Lynn Adelman is as sharp and clear in his commitment to open government as anyone in all Wisconsin.)

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.14.13

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Good morning.

The middle of Whitewater’s week will be mostly sunny with a high of seventy-one, with light, northwest winds of around 5 mph in the afternoon.

On this day in 1945, the Japanese people, themselves, learn that will surrender unconditionally to the Allies:

…an official announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is made public to the Japanese people.

Even though Japan’s War Council, urged by Emperor Hirohito, had already submitted a formal declaration of surrender to the Allies, via ambassadors, on August 10, fighting continued between the Japanese and the Soviets in Manchuria and between the Japanese and the United States in the South Pacific. In fact, two days after the Council agreed to surrender, a Japanese submarine sank the Oak Hill, an American landing ship, and the Thomas F. Nickel, an American destroyer, both east of Okinawa.

In the afternoon of August 14, Japanese radio announced that an Imperial Proclamation was soon to be made, accepting the terms of unconditional surrender drawn up at the Potsdam Conference. That proclamation had already been recorded by the emperor. The news did not go over well, as more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers stormed the Imperial Palace in an attempt to find the proclamation and prevent its being transmitted to the Allies. Soldiers still loyal to Emperor Hirohito repulsed the attackers.

America receives the news of Japanese surrender with pride, joy, and relief:

Puzzability continues a weekly puzzle series entitled, Tourist Traps:

Tourist Traps
We’re crossing a lot of bridges on our summer vacation. For each day this week, fill in the two-word name of a U.S. tourist destination so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the tourist site, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the tourist site’s name followed by the second word in the clue.

Example:
GRIND ___ ___ GOAT

Answer:
Stone Mountain

Here’s today’s puzzle:

Wednesday, August 14

MODERN ___ ___ RIGGER

Business, CDA, City, CRT, Development, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Planning

Yet Another Exercise in Standards Beneath Whitewater

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It should be a universal truth that Whitewater and Wisconsin deserve a far higher standard of diligence and review than whatever our CDA chairman believes his “gut” tells him would be good for our city and nearby area.

In fact, that kind of intestinally-based level of judgment has failed this city time and again, and is beneath the level of care that any well-organized, reasonable American city deserves.

You’ll see another example of this sort of serial mediocrity in a breathless story at Whitewater’s news site that a recycling company, unable to get a permit to mix toxic substances into (supposedly safe) floor tile, was denied (so far) permitting in Wisconsin. The company now insists it will build in Arkansas.

A company known only to a few, develops an industrial process that the State of Wisconsin won’t even certify, apparently created at a third-tier school far away, using ingredients known to be toxic, with grand financial claims that have no independent verification whatever, and one is supposed to accept it all at face (or stomach) value.

To accept these contentions would require a child-like credulity unsuited to normal men and women. It’s as though any bad idea, however silly or dangerous, should fly into one’s ear, and from ear to brain to keyboard to ordinance.

It’s just another simple-minded attempt to prey on a city’s legitimate economic concerns to stampede acceptance of whatever ill-considered proposal a few unelected men shove forward, including proposals to give themselves additional authority.

Add a logo at the top of the story, I suppose, and suddenly all the necessary and legitimate questions of safety, value, cost, accountability, etc., just melt away.

They don’t, and they won’t.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 8.13.13

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Good morning.

It’s a beautiful Tuesday ahead for Whitewater, with mostly sunny skies and a high of seventy.

Whitewater’s Parks & Rec Board meets today at 5:30 PM.

On this day in 1961, Soviet-backed East Germany began construction of the Berlin Wall:

Shortly after midnight on this day in 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the democratic western section of the city.

After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into Soviet, American, British and French zones of occupation. The city of Berlin, though technically part of the Soviet zone, was also split, with the Soviets taking the eastern part of the city. After a massive Allied airlift in June 1948 foiled a Soviet attempt to blockade West Berlin, the eastern section was drawn even more tightly into the Soviet fold. Over the next 12 years, cut off from its western counterpart and basically reduced to a Soviet satellite, East Germany saw between 2.5 million and 3 million of its citizens head to West Germany in search of better opportunities. By 1961, some 1,000 East Germans–including many skilled laborers, professionals and intellectuals–were leaving every day.

In August, Walter Ulbricht, the Communist leader of East Germany, got the go-ahead from Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to begin the sealing off of all access between East and West Berlin. Soldiers began the work over the night of August 12-13, laying more than 100 miles of barbed wire slightly inside the East Berlin border. The wire was soon replaced by a six-foot-high, 96-mile-long wall of concrete blocks, complete with guard towers, machine gun posts and searchlights. East German officers known as Volkspolizei (“Volpos”) patrolled the Berlin Wall day and night.

Puzzability continues a weekly puzzle series entitled, Tourist Traps:

Tourist Traps
We’re crossing a lot of bridges on our summer vacation. For each day this week, fill in the two-word name of a U.S. tourist destination so that a familiar phrase or compound word is formed by the first word in the clue followed by the first word in the tourist site, and likewise a phrase or word is formed by the second word in the tourist site’s name followed by the second word in the clue.

Example:
GRIND ___ ___ GOAT

Answer:
Stone Mountain

Here’s today’s puzzle:

Tuesday, August 13

PARKING ___ ___ POINT

Inbox Reader Mail

Inbox: Reader Mail

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Here are summaries of a few of the questions or email messages that I’ve received recently. It’s a brief part of a larger correspondence, with no particular theme. I’ve summarized them, but they accurately reflect the questions and my original replies.

Why don’t you write much about the school issues? Don’t you realize that schools are the biggest topic in town? Well, perhaps schools are the biggest topic in town; I’m not sure. I’ll agree that they’re among the biggest. I’ve written mostly on other matters, but just last week I had a post about an upcoming candidate search for our middle school.

(As I’m the one who publishes this website, I’ve the advantage of posting about schools before using that post to reply to a reader’s contention that I don’t write about schools enough. An advantage, I know.)

I’ll follow the district more closely this year.

Aren’t you worried about the direction of the city? I’m an optimist: we’ve had tough times, we’ll yet have more, but reliance on the ineffectual policies of the last decade cannot (and so will not) continue much longer.

I’m convinced that the New Deal failed to produce a better economy, but there is one way in which I admire and respect the New Dealers: they cared about the condition of common men and women. They enumerated the problems they saw around them – copiously – because they rightly understood that a better tomorrow required a candid today.

We have significant afflictions of poverty and stagnation. I’ve no respect for those who address these real problems by not addressing them.

Happy talk in these circumstances is mostly self-serving, sometimes laughable, and always unworthy of us.

We’ll have a New Whitewater, and sooner than many realize.

Don’t you feel sorry for Ryan Braun? Although his mistakes are his own, I do think that’s sad. I feel worse, though, for the team that will struggle either with his role on the team, or with trying to trade such an expensive player. There’s no good news for Braun or the Brewers in any of this.

Is all government spending really bad? No. There’s too much of it, though.

How much work is blogging? It’s not any, because it’s not work. I’m (mostly) a watchdog blogger, but that’s a not job, it’s a commitment. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook pages, and dozens of other new media with which I’m unversed: they’re all means of political or social commentary.

All things are limited by time and cost, but some seemingly less so, as one readily and happily commits to them. They seem, in this way, almost without effort, as the things one truly loves seem effortless.

All people have pursuits like this; they simply differ in which pursuits.

From a discussion with a fellow blogger this morning, about blogging: what’s important for a blogger? There are several important things, but I mentioned a certain point.

One should be one’s own publisher (or one’s own editor, if one thinks of editing principally as the selection of topics and ideas.) This really comes down to writing what one would like to write – what one enjoys – and having control over one’s own agenda.

Bloggers should think of themselves as writers, editors, publishers, all of those roles. This characteristic underlies them all: to be one’s own man or woman.

Let’s have more dog videos. Well, sure: here’s one of a dog who has better ideas than simply fetching. (It’s not a fail – he’s simply focused on a different goal.)

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 8.4 to 8.10

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