Backyard Sinkhole

     This is a pic of a sinkhole in the back yard of one of my neighbors. The water runs from the street down two homes joint driveway and has created a huge sinkhole in one home's back yard. The owner has filled it 2 or 3 times, but until the street/sidewalk is fixed and the water flows down, it will continue to open up.
    The real issue is they have a small boy who is irresistibly drawn there. Eventually, it will be so deep that if he falls in, nobody will be able to see him. The sidewalk situation has always been undemocratic, now it's dangerous.
  

Has Council Learned Its Lesson?

The Cascade City Council found itself in a predictable imbroglio Monday night. After having given Jesse Loewen over $250,000 to redo the old bank building, a parade of other people are looking for similar help: Nicole & Nate Meyer want money to tuck point their downtown building. And why shouldn’t they get it?  

 Handing money to businesses for profitable activities seems to be the norm. Also on the agenda was $11,004.48 paid twice yearly to Brothers Market and $6,985.74 to McDermott Oil.

After the meeting was over, we were reminded that the city paid $92,000 to match a RISE grant to build a road for Premium Plant Products in the industrial park. But perhaps Council has learned its lesson. Mike Beck was told to follow the ordinance on the books with his current project. 

Also on the agenda was the runoff problem on Main Street north of the grade school. The water pools there and it froze in February. A couple kids coming from the elementary school fell down there. I went home and got my Yaktrax!

 Monday I complained to council, the city should be maintaining the sidewalks since half Cascade doesn’t have them, and the ordinance arbitrarily obligates some citizens for expenses it doesn’t obligate others for. You have to wonder what a court of law would make of an ordinance like that.

            The owners of the sidewalk didn’t appear, but the situation isn’t going away, and is likely to get more dangerous--check this space tomorrow for a description and PIX! 

Easter Advice to a Grand Nephew

My niece’s son is doing a paper for which he has to interview a relative. He asked me what

advice I would have for him. First I said, "Know who/what your friends are," but that is so very difficult to do, so very easy to say, as to be absolutely facile, fatuous non-advice. It would be far more honest to say I don't have any.

Then he asked about the Las Vegas shooting, which was so very senseless...”Well, I suppose not any more than the Parkland, Columbine or any other...” I can't make sense of it in any context except historical--you yourself live in a part of the country that is closer to its frontier-water-wars-and-guns past than here (Iowa). Not that it was substantially different, if you look at the role of guns in displacing the Indians, from the East coast to the west. Violence is where we, as a culture, have always gone for solutions, so how can we act surprised? This society has huge problems right now: no surprise guns are coming out of the woodwork.  I have read that this is characteristic of the Christian and Islamic religious traditions, therefore, the Crusades, etc. The Buddhist tradition to a lesser degree.  I was not in Korea long enough to say.

I have spent longer, have closer friends in France, Germany and Israel, and speak European languages better allowing deeper assessment. I see evidence that the wars and revolutions in Europe have affected the people in profoundly positive ways. I remember going to lunch with a German friend one time, disagreeing with her and saying, "We couldn't even have this conversation in the States!" She thought I was being silly.

Notre Dame burned early this week. I also recall going to midnight mass there with my friend Sylvie and her Jewish boyfriend Christmas 1979. We left and went across the street to The Hunchback Café and because we felt embarrassed at the priest’s comments about Jews. 

How long before we recover from our history? I wonder.

Spring Break--Pix of Pix!

Spring Break was glorious--left the 4 ft. high snow drift in my back yard and drove south to Charlotte, NC, where I stayed overnight at my nephew's house. Next morning he put me on the early train to NYC. I arrived at there 8:30 p.m. in time for a big city supper of mussels in garlic sauce cooked  my friend Abigail. One of life's most refined blessings is friends who are adventurous cooks.
         The next day we went to the Frick Museum, which has a lot of pretty art. If you like pretty pix, they have lots. If you like your art edgier, go to the Whitney or the Modern Art.

         Probably Andrew Wyeth's most famous
painting, Christina's World  his depiction of his neighbor marooned in a field. "Christina" had handicapped and the painting brilliantly puts the viewer in that place. For most of us, climbing the hill would be effortless. It is impossible, mile high mountain for Christina, who won't find--in her condition much solace in the house if she does get there. For her, it will be the same "ole."
        I particularly enjoyed seeing the painting because there is far more contrast between the pink of Christina's dress in the original than in any of the printed versions I have seen.
   Art provides a prospective on the world that a viewer can almost nowhere else.