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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.23.13

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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?”

City, Local Government, Politics

The Political Risk of Appointment (and How to Avoid It)

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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.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.22.13

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Good morning.

Whitewater’s Tuesday will be sunny and cold, with a high of five degrees.

The city’s Urban Forestry Commission meets this afternoon at 4:15 PM.

On this day in 1964, a milestone for Wisconsin:

1964 – World’s Largest Cheese
On this date The world’s largest cheese of the time was manufactured in Wisconsin. The block of cheddar was produced from 170,000 quarts of milk by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation specifically for the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It weighed 34,665 pounds (17.4 tons). The cheese was consummed in 1965 at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association at Eau Claire. A replica is displayed in Neilsville in the specially designed “Cheesemobile“, a semi-tractor trailer in which the original cheese toured. [Source: American Profile, December 16, 2001]

From Google-a-Day, a football question: “What NFL player (Redskins and Broncos) held onto his record as the all-time interception leader until he retired?”

 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.21.13

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Good morning.

MLK day, and the public inauguration ceremonies, will see Whitewater with a 30% chance of scattered snow showers before 9 am. Afterward, it’a a partly sunny day, with a high near of about seven. Wind chill measures will be between ten and fifteen below.

High above all of this, departing Commander Sunita Williams recently recorded a tour of the International Space Station:

On this day in 1924, Lenin died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of fifty-four. Although relatively young at his death, he lived long enough to oversee the killing of countless thousands, by a regime that would yet kill tens of millions more, of a movement that brought poverty and death wherever it seized power.

From 1935 Janesville, an account of temerity:

1935 – Five Janesville Youths Arrested
On this date five Janesville boys, ages 13-16, were arrested for a string of burglaries, including the thefts of cigarettes, whisky and blankets. While in the police station, one of the boys tried to crack the safe in the chief’s office. [Source: Janesville Gazette]

Google-a-Day asks a pop culture question: “What song hit #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was recorded by the performer that received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on November 14, 2002?”

Twitter

Recent Tweets, 1.13 to 1.19

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Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 1.20.13

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Good morning.

It’s a partly sunny Sunday for us, with a high of fifteen, but with a wind chill measure between five below and zero.

If we had slightly milder temperatures, and more snow, we could imagine trips like these from Sled Dog Adventures of Fairbanks:

On this day in 1981, “Iran released 52 Americans held hostage for 444 days, minutes after the presidency had passed from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan.”

Google-a-Day throws a football question: “The club that was established in 1935 to promote safety in the game of American football was named after a player with what nickname?