Let’s assume you’ve a choice of the weather in your town, between very cold with no snow, or thirty degrees with snow (say, a few inches at least).
Which would you pick?
I don’t mind the cold, but I’d take the milder temperature with snow, as there’s winter fun to be had in the snow.
How ’bout you?
Good morning.
Friday brings snowfall to Whitewater, in the morning, with only a slight accumulation likely. We’ll have a high of twenty-six, with 9h 42m of sunlight, 10h 44m of daylight, and a waxing gibbous moon.
On this day in 1915, a milestone of telephony, as Alexander Graham Bell tests a transcontinental phone line:
On October 9, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston. It was the first wire conversation ever held. Yesterday afternoon the same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco. Dr. Bell, the veteran inventor of the telephone, was in New York, and Mr. Watson, his former associate, was on the other side of the continent. They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk thirty-eight years ago.
Impressive, even now.
Google-a-Day offers a history question: “What Frankish ruler is associated with the Carolingian Renaissance?”
An improvisational dance, perhaps.
I’ve written before about Williamsburg, a neighborhood within Brooklyn. (See, TNIW, The Williamsburg Neighborhood in Brooklyn, and The Pickleback.)
It’s not because Whitewater will one-day look like just like that neighborhood. There are at least two reasons Williamsburg is relevant.
First, that neighborhood shows how very different ethnicities (Italian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Hasidic) can live near each other (albeit with the occasional kerfuffle). If Williamsburg can make a go of it, so can Whitewater, with a smaller and less diverse demographic.
All the town-gown issues, for example, that Whitewater has ever seen are mere minnows compared to Williamsburg’s possible – but successfully met – challenges.
If you’re at our university, or in our city, and you’ve not bridged our own gaps, then you’ve only yourself (and those like you) to blame. If Williamsburg can do it, so can we. We’re no less American than residents of this Brooklyn neighborhood – we can deliver on the promise of a diverse city as well as they can.
Quick note, so that we’re all very clear: smearing the memory of a deceased college student for the act-utilitarian purpose of assuring others that we’ve no greater crime problem isn’t bridging the town-gown gap. See, along these lines, The True Measure of Institutional Greatness.
There’s a second reason I’ve written about Williamsburg. Although Whitewater will never look like Williamsburg (and certainly doesn’t need to do so), she will one day look almost as different from how she looks today as she does today from contemporary Williamsburg.
We’re at the beginning of this transformation now, one that has over ten years to go. There’s no one Williamsburg culture now, and they’ll be no one Whitewater culture then. There is, however, an ethos there are will take hold here: that there’s no one way, no one set of expectations, no one narrow standard that all must meet.
We have the beginnings of this New Whitewater, but they’re still small shoots. Creative ideas in art and culture are slowly emerging, but they’re still tightly controlled, and often used to advance an single, doctrinaire message (one group, one way, one city, all exceptional and flawless).
It’s a message all right, it’s just an insecure and laughable one. We’ll know we’ve progressed when art isn’t a mere handmaiden of that message.
That narrow vision reached its high-water mark sometime between 2004-2012, yet all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t make Whitewater’s politics so simple-minded again.
We’re slowly on our way.
Good morning.
Thursday brings an increasingly cloudy day, with a high of sixteen, to Whitewater.
Can’t say I much care for canned products, but it’s a milestone of sorts:
Jan 24, 1935
First canned beer goes on saleCanned beer makes its debut on this day in 1935. In partnership with the American Can Company, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company delivered 2,000 cans of Krueger’s Finest Beer and Krueger’s Cream Ale to faithful Krueger drinkers in Richmond, Virginia. Ninety-one percent of the drinkers approved of the canned beer, driving Krueger to give the green light to further production.
By the late 19th century, cans were instrumental in the mass distribution of foodstuffs, but it wasn’t until 1909 that the American Can Company made its first attempt to can beer. This was unsuccessful, and the American Can Company would have to wait for the end of Prohibition in the United States before it tried again. Finally in 1933, after two years of research, American Can developed a can that was pressurized and had a special coating to prevent the fizzy beer from chemically reacting with the tin.
The concept of canned beer proved to be a hard sell, but Krueger’s overcame its initial reservations and became the first brewer to sell canned beer in the United States. The response was overwhelming. Within three months, over 80 percent of distributors were handling Krueger’s canned beer, and Krueger’s was eating into the market share of the “big three” national brewers–Anheuser-Busch, Pabst and Schlitz. Competitors soon followed suit, and by the end of 1935, over 200 million cans had been produced and sold.
The purchase of cans, unlike bottles, did not require the consumer to pay a deposit. Cans were also easier to stack, more durable and took less time to chill. As a result, their popularity continued to grow throughout the 1930s, and then exploded during World War II, when U.S. brewers shipped millions of cans of beer to soldiers overseas. After the war, national brewing companies began to take advantage of the mass distribution that cans made possible, and were able to consolidate their power over the once-dominant local breweries, which could not control costs and operations as efficiently as their national counterparts.
Google-a-Day asks an aerospace question: “Who commanded the crew of seven of the Columbia on the 38th flight of the Shuttle on STS-35 in December 1990?”
Another of the countless reasons to love America, to find this creative country endearing: a 1976 film adaptation of H.G. Wells’s Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth.
Tempted? The whole film is available online, for instant streaming free of additional charge with an existing Amazon Prime membership.
Enjoy.
Like many towns, Whitewater has a downtown, and a merchants’ association, in our case Downtown Whitewater, Inc. (DTWW). I’ve written occasionally about DTWW, and not long ago in support of continued municipal funding for that organization. See, The City of Whitewater’s 2013 Budget: Downtown Whitewater, Inc.
There’s been a wider effort to reorganize and consolidate the work of DTWW, the local Chamber of Commerce, and the city’s tourism effort. As we’re a town of only about fifteen-thousand, it’s sensible that we could sharing between groups whenever possible.
Also, as with other towns, the City of Whitewater subsidizes DTWW, in an amount of $20,000 for 2013. It’s a moderate expenditure, but offered in the context of a former municipal administration that budgeted poorly in the last decade, and wrecked one of its own tax incremental districts.
There’s no money to waste. More important still, there are needs throughout the city, of poverty and hunger, that could well use additional funding.
There’s a hard path ahead, to keep the city’s downtown from cratering, to hold out until broader forces outside the city transform both the downtown and all the community.
They will. In the meantime, there’s no swimming back to shore, and treading water will only lead to going under. It’s a steady Australian crawl, from now until better times.
A successful effort will require merchant-centric proposals, diligent cooperation from the city government to justify and make good existing taxpayer-funding, and a limit on people who want to run things as though the downtown were a society organization. There are many good charities worth joining, for those with that impulse.
A simple goal: More stores, fewer empty spaces. Either we move in that direction or we don’t.
If all this were accomplished, and fully, there’d be time to look backward to anniversaries, reminiscences of earlier times, etc.
It’s not finished, and until it is, there’s no good point to any of that. One should acknowledge and reward a year’s hard work, from those who have actually done that work.
Beyond that, efforts should concentrate on producing evident signs of a healthier downtown at year’s end. It’s a simple goal, one that I’m sure our city can meet.
Clear skies of cold air
Actress admires her image
Others look away
Posted also at Daily Adams.
Stories, even short, science-fiction stories, offer lessons beyond their pages.
Near the final pages of Wells’s War of the Worlds, the narrator ponders his future, months after the Martians succumbed on our world. He considers the possibility of another invasion:
A question of graver and universal interest is the possibility of another attack from the Martians. I do not think that nearly enough attention is being given to this aspect of the matter. At present the planet Mars is in conjunction, but with every return to opposition I, for one, anticipate a renewal of their adventure.
But as a leading scientist looks out into the skies, that scholar supposes that the Martians might have already begun a new campaign, not against Earth, but against Venus:
Lessing has advanced excellent reasons for supposing that the Martians have actually succeeded in effecting a landing on the planet Venus. Seven months ago now, Venus and Mars were in alignment with the sun; that is to say, Mars was in opposition from the point of view of an observer on Venus. Subsequently a peculiar luminous and sinuous marking appeared on the unillumined half of the inner planet, and almost simultaneously a faint dark mark of a similar sinuous character was detected upon a photograph of the Martian disk. One needs to see the drawings of these appearances in order to appreciate fully their remarkable resemblance in character.
The book ends without readers knowing with certainty whether the Martians went elsewhere, or whether they might attempt a second invasion of Earth. Humanity would be better off if they went somewhere else, if they were to go somewhere at all.
All is not lost, however, as the narrator wisely concludes. To be forewarned is to be forearmed:
In any case, we should be prepared. It seems to me that it should be possible to define the position of the gun from which the shots are discharged, to keep a sustained watch upon this part of the planet, and to anticipate the arrival of the next attack.
In that case the cylinder might be destroyed with dynamite or artillery before it was sufficiently cool for the Martians to emerge….It seems to me that they have lost a vast advantage in the failure of their first surprise. Possibly they see it in the same light.
I read this story as a child, and its hauntingly beautiful scenes have remained in my memory so many years later.
So, too, its hopeful message, not of creatures but of people: that having had a disappointing time of it, one may through that experience learn to act more skillfully and decisively should there be subsequent, similar challenges.
That’s why, despite the devastation of the Martians’ attack, I’ve always thought the book was a hopeful one, with an encouraging message.
One would have the advantage, and seize it to the fullest, the second time around.
Good morning.
It’s a warmer day ahead for Whitewater today, with a high of eighteen, and a forty percent chance of flurries. We will have 9h 38m of sunlight, and 10h 39m of daylight. Tomorrow will have about two minutes more light.
Downtown Whitewater’s board meets today, at 8 AM. Among the agenda items under consideration at that meeting is a discussion item to “Clarify board seats up for election; identify new board candidates; prepare slate of officers.” The item is set for ten minutes of discussion.
The DTWW Board is free talk about that topic for whatever time it might like. Still, identifying new board candidates is no ordinary item; much depends on a good team. Not a team from among those who’d like to pad a résumé, but a team that can make a difference for Whitewater’s downtown. The city’s undergone a reorganization among a few related organizations, and committed to significant funding for another year.
At the end of the year, one should be able to see how that amounted to something tangible.
On this day in 1973, Pres. Nixon announced an agreement to end the Vietnam War.
On 1.23.1957, a creative Wisconsin athlete passed away:
1957 – Edward Bulwar Cochems Dies
On this date Edward Bulwar Cochems died. Cochems is credited with developing football’s forward passing attack. He was also considered one of the University of Wisconsin’s finest athletes at the turn of the century. In response to a 1906 mandate from football’s rule committee that allowed forward passing and required a team to gain ten yards in 3 downs, Cochems invented an aggressive forward passing strategy that revolutionized the sport. He coached at North Dakota, Clemson, and St. Louis University. He is buried in Madison’s Resurrection Cemetery. [Source: Bishops to Bootleggers: A Biographical Guide to Resurrection Cemetery, pg. 218]
Google-a-Day throws out an intricate pop culture question: “What is the stage name of the man who is the father of the actor who played the journalist Jane Craig was attracted to?”
TNIW, a short film of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.
About a month ago, Whitewater’s common council filled an at-large vacancy left after Marilyn Kienbaum’s passing. I thought the process – applicants speaking on behalf of their possible appointment – was a good one. See, Common Council Session of 12.18.12: A New Councilmember.
My remarks here aren’t about those four initial applicants, but about applicants, generally.
Without appointed positions for boards and commissions in the city, we’d either have myriad elections or no one representing their neighbors outside of those few on our common council.
And yet, and yet, there’s a risk with appointees: where do they really stand? It’s not a problem with those running for office, as during an election, someone’s bound to ask: what’s your platform?
That doesn’t always happen with would-be appointees: they most often apply for meritorious and principled reasons, but a few may apply because they’d like to be noticed, think they’d be one of the adults in the room, or through an overweening sense of entitlement.
Offering a statement of conviction – a brief declaration of views – has two advantages.
First, a straightforward declaration of political belief gives those appointing someone a principled reason to advance or set aside an application. This benefits all the community, to choose after considering an applicant’s convictions over status or ambition or an unrealistic sense of entitlement.
Second, though, an appointment process that asks applicants to speak on their own helps sincere applicants. For someone who feels himself or herself entitled, and who is able to wheedle a way onto a committee, there will be no benefit to speaking plainly on behalf of one’s candidacy. (After all, if someone can get onto a board through scheming self-promotion, the right route, through hard work and clarity of purpose, will be unnecessary.)
But a process that asks an applicant to speak on his or her own behalf emphasizes the individuality of the applicant, and keeps that person from seeming only the servile protégé, friend, or tool of an existing office-holder.
An applicant who’s too closely tied to an office-holder is an applicant with a limited political career. When the office-holder moves on (or scurries away), the appointee is left with nothing except a reputation as a cat’s paw.
A political career based on an individual’s clearly-stated convictions will have high and lows, but it will have a future, too.
Social climbing, trying to Gatsby a town, so to speak, sometimes works – it just doesn’t keep working.
When it stops working, there’s no way to make it work again. This is one of the most certain consequences of a failed administration: when it disappears, its special friends and coddled appointees are finished politically, too.
It’s a shame, that someone should throw away his or her public role within in a city, by relying too much, and trying too hard, through manipulation over conviction.
I’m reminded of Roosevelt’s observation about Herbert Hoover’s political oblivion, as historian Richard Norton Smith recounts FDR’s remark:
Not even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could bring Hoover back into the mainstream of official Washington, D.C. Within days of the attack, Roosevelt summoned Bernard Baruch to the White House for a discussion of how best to organize the home front for victory.
Courageously, Baruch said that the best man for such an effort was Herbert Hoover. What’s more, Baruch knew him to be available. FDR shot down the idea with devastating sangfroid. According to one who was there, the president said, “I’m not Jesus Christ. I’m not raising him from the dead.”
Hoover’s conduct was different, of course, but the result was the same as in our time. From some mistakes, there’s no way back.
Better for appointees to have great careers, and perform solid work for their communities, by standing on their own.
