Immediately below, in the preceding post, I cite the Wisconsin Historical Society on the Pratt Institute, a center for spiritualism, formerly of Whitewater.
Here I refer to the Morris Pratt Institute, not the noted graduate school in New York.
The Morris Pratt Institute is now located elsewhere in Wisconsin, but occasionally someone will tell me that Whitewater, Wisconsin is an odd place because of the center for spiritualism once located in town. There are also assorted stories about witches having lived in town, and while here having placed various curses on our small city.
I cannot say if anyone once cursed our town, but I am fairly certain that at least a few of our residents might be considered scary.
That’s hardly what makes the town so odd in politics and culture. The answers are far more mundane: that we insist on grandiose claims of our local exceptionalism, that we lack a press that watches politicians closely and unsparingly, that we waste time and money on marquee public works projects, and that many of our politicians and local bureaucrats are excuse-making and self-flattering.
We began as a city of self-reliant individualists. We’ve become a place of fussy and vain bureaucrats. We have lost touch with the true exceptionalism of America, and replaced it with a sad local counterfeit.
It didn’t take witches and kooky seances to make us this way; we did it all on our own.