FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.30.13

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Good morning.

It’s a snowy midweek for Whitewater, with about two to four inches expected, and temperatures falling in the afternoon from thirty-two to about twenty-three. The Weather Channel is increasingly dramatic about our weather, but there’s nothing surprising about snow, in the winter, in Wisconsin. It’s only the absence of snow that would be surprising.

On this day in 1948, a Hindu extremist murders Mahatma Gandhi:

Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed by as assassin’s bullet today. The assassin was a Hindu who fired three shots from a pistol at a range of three feet.

The 78-year-old Gandhi, who was the one person who held discordant elements together and kept some sort of unity in this turbulent land, was shot down at 5:15 P. M. as he was proceeding through the Biria House gardens to the pergola from which he was to deliver his daily prayer meeting message.

The assassin was immediately seized.

He later identified himself as Nathura Vinayak Godse, 36, a Hindu of the Mahratta tribes in Poona. This has been a center of resistance to Gandhi’s ideology.

Mr. Gandhi died twenty-five minutes later. His death left all India stunned and bewildered as to the direction that this newly independent nation would take without its “Mahatma” (Great Teacher).

Google-a-Day has a history question for today: “At the time of signing, what was the title of the man who is the first of the two names in the name of the 1901 treaty that nullified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty?”

Film

L’ ONDÉE (RAINS)

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We’ve had a bit of rain in town these last days; here’s an animated film about a place also having rainy weather.

Enjoy.

L’ ONDÉE (RAINS) from DCDA on Vimeo.

Directed by: David COQUARD-DASSAULT
Production: Folimage/ ONF-NFB/ Canal+
Music: Christophe HÉRAL
Year of production: 2008

Posted also at Daily Adams.

City, Development, Hip & Prosperous, Local Government, New Whitewater

Which Homeowners for Whitewater?

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The preceding post, Who Should Live in Whitewater?, was about immigration. Here’s a second question, a bit more specific: which homeowners for Whitewater?

One hears repeatedly that out city could use more families with children. I don’t disagree: it would help our public schools to have a stable, or growing, school-age population.

Here’s where I depart from others’ plans to attract more families with children: I believe that the best program to attract families is one that invites all prospective homeowners who’ll show concern and pride for their properties.

Unmarried couples, married couples without children, married couples with children, unmarried couples with children, relatives sharing a house, houses with tenants: demand from among those who’ll care for their properties should be the principal concern. Each of these kinds of prospective homeowners could advance that goal.

Efforts to target existing families with children have been mostly ineffectual, are wrongly biased, and are misguided (in any event). One knows these efforts have been ineffectual as the fundamental composition among all Whitewater homeowners hasn’t changed much over the last decade. They’re also biased in a way I think wrong: government shouldn’t be thinking about one kind of homebuyer over another. It’s enough to have a buyer who can manage his or her own house properly.

In fact, it’s more than enough to have buyers like that: it’s a community gain. When new homewoners of whatever situation share a common desire to improve their homes, Whitewater becomes attractive to other buyers, including those with children.

The way to get more families with children to find Whitewater desirable is to stop focusing on attracting only those families, and commit instead to attracting anyone who’ll be a good steward of his property.

Free Markets, Immigration, Labor, Law, New Whitewater

Who Should Live in Whitewater?

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It’s a simple question, with a simple answer: anyone who’d like to live here.

Who those many will be, ten or twenty years on, I am not sure. One may be confident that the city will be more diverse, but in which ways there’s no certainty.

(It’s better that there is no certainty, for if there were, we’d not merely know the future, but likely know it because we were trying to control the time from now until then.)

Did some want to bring Arizona’s laws to Wisconsin, and — of all places — Whitewater? One well knows that there were some in this town who wanted exactly that, who dreamed of making something like the Star Packaging Raid the standard practice of this beautiful city. Their dreams were, in truth, the dark nightmares of intolerance and unfairness. They stood against free choice, voluntary exchange, and free markets.

The unreconstructed, nativist impulse to restrict immigration into Whitewater – an impulse that was the fuel of lies, rogue policing, prejudice, and cruelty – is finished in this city, as it is now finished in most of America. (See, along these lines, Rubio Shows Opposition to Immigration Reform is an Inch Deep.)

Those who sought to torment and roust Whitewater’s immigrants, and to build a career or legacy upon it, may now look around and see the ruin of their ambitions. It would have been better for all Whitewater if this rebuke had come sooner, but come it has.

There’ll be rear-guard actions and ferocious kicking and screaming – but a Know Nothing impulse has met its deserved rejection by the majority, a majority with a respect for tolerance and pluralism.

We’re a better city today, and will be a better city in the generation to come, for having turned away from that dark course toward a better one.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.29.13

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Good morning.

It’s a warm Tuesday of thunderstorms and sixty-degree temperatures ahead for Whitewater.

On this day in 1845, Edgar Allan Poe publishes The Raven:

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “The Raven,” beginning “Once upon a midnight dreary,” is published on this day in the New York Evening Mirror.

Poe’s dark and macabre work reflected his own tumultuous and difficult life. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at age three and went to live with the family of a Richmond, Virginia, businessman. Poe enrolled in a military academy but was expelled for gambling. He later studied briefly at the University of Virginia.

In 1827, Poe self-published a collection of poems. Six years later, his short story “MS Found in a Bottle” won $50 in a story contest. He edited a series of literary journals, including the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond starting in 1835, and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia, starting in 1839. Poe’s excessive drinking got him fired from several positions. His macabre work, often portraying motiveless crimes and intolerable guilt that induces growing mania in his characters, was a significant influence on such European writers as Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and even Dostoyevsky.

Google-a-Day poses a question of literature and musicals: “Who scored the musical version of the movie that’s based on Patricia Resnick’s story?”

Business, City

Design and the Downtown

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Downtown Whitewater’s (DTWW) design committee met today, at 8 AM. DTWW is the publicly-subsidized business-advocacy association for this small city’s center-of-town merchants.

There’s much to be said for design, for the look and feel of a place. In the end, however, there are few more attention-grabbing sights than empty storefronts. (Peeling paint and trash on sidewalks are similarly harmful to commercial success.)

One still sees stores with nothing but empty windows and large for-rent (or sale) signs. No decoration, no displays, just a rental sign, awkwardly positioned in a window.

There’s probably someone who foolishly thinks that merely displaying a large FOR RENT sign makes a shop easier to rent.

It doesn’t.

First, if these signs — alone — worked so well, those vacant shops wouldn’t be crying out for tenants month after month, to no avail.

Second, the empty window space only tells prospective tenants that some landlords in the district are too ignorant to see how debilitating the look of empty space is.

Third, it also tells existing merchants that nearby landlords and agents leaving only signs in their empty windows don’t give a damn about the overall look and feel of the downtown. The sign in a vacant shop may say FOR RENT but the message for the rest of the area is GO TO HELL.

A hundred commercials can’t overcome a prospective merchant’s walk around the block.

Private shops – including empty ones – should be free to decorate as they wish.

They’re not free, however, to assume that most people don’t see and understand the fundamentals of a successful look and feel. One wants this downtown to succeed, but those with property there are going to have to resonate a better understanding.

Emptiness, candidly, is as far from success as one can get.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.28.13

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Good morning.

Monday in the Whippet City begins with drizzle and fog, and a high of forty-one.

This morning, Downtown Whitewater’s Design Committee meets at 8 AM. This evening, the open session of Whitewater’s School Board begins at 7 PM.

On this day in 1986, America suffered one of her most tragic space-faring disasters:

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger’s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

On 1.28.1959, the Packers made a wise choice:

1959 – Lombardi Named Packers Coach
On this date Vince Lombardi was named head coach of the Packers. He had been the offensive backfield coach of the New York Giants for the previous five seasons. Lombardi went on to coach the Packers for nine years, winning five NFL Championships and victories in Super Bowls I and II. [Source: Packers.com]

Google-a-Day asks a history and geography question: “What city, that became a capital in 1991, saw protesters gather to oppose the elimination of a fuel subsidy that doubled the cost of gasoline in their country?”

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 1.20 to 1.26

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