I’ve written before about making Whitewater hip and prosperous. Those sketch-posts were part of an ongoing series about the city.
Today, not a suggestion but an observation: the kind of energetic newcomers that Whitewater needs will be unsettling to many of those longtime residents now looking for newcomers. (Some residents would not like anyone new, of course; I’m writing about those who see the importance of new arrivals to the city’s economy.)
New people, especially successful and energetic ones, will not simply fit into Whitewater; they’ll transform it. Arrival is not a pledge to do what has always been done, although there’s more than one stodgy town father who thinks so. The city is not a hidebound club, with cultural membership rules that must be obeyed, although there’s more than one stodgy town father who thinks so.
Ambitious people who come here will come here to make their marks, not to copy others’ marks as mere scribes.
This is why the stodgiest of residents prefer no new residents, and why some others like idea of newcomers more than they would like the genuine articles. It’s the difference, for them, between wanting and getting new residents.
For those who want the present to continue unaltered into the future, there’s a daunting task: work each day and every day, morning and night, to make certain that ‘everything has a place, and that there’s only one place for everything.’
They’ve sure to contend for their vision of Whitewater, however long ago. For the change-opposed, there’s probably an appeal in Whitewater as a real life version of Pleasantville, while still in black-and-white.
Only two things matter about a vision of Whitewater-as-Pleasantville: the transition to color can’t be stopped, and happily not, as Joan Allen was far lovelier in color