I find it hard to believe that climatologists can accurately predict what the weather will be like in 50 years when their professional cousins, the meteorologists, are still using phrases like “there’s a 40% chance of rain” when they’re telling me what they think the weather will be tomorrow.
Personal
Giant Space Cat from Savage Chickens
Thanks to Doug Savage at Savage Chickens for this cartoon. I have a limited circle of friends to share Star Trek humor with, but I’m forcing this one on the rest of you too. You can follow Doug on Twitter at @savagechickens
Culver Firemen’s Memorial at Town Council
For those of you looking for the Firemen’s Memorial post I discussed at the Town Council this evening, I’ve conveniently linked it here.
For those of you that couldn’t make it to the meeting, I presented the Firemen’s Memorial to the Town Council this evening. The project is proposed for the northeast corner of the intersection of Slate Street and Lake Shore Drive. The lot is owned by the Town and is currently used as a parking lot for the firemen. The lot is zoned C-1. The basic conundrum was that Culver’s Zoning Ordinance doesn’t have a designation for Monuments or Memorials no matter what the zoning district.
I had discussed this with Russ Mason, Culver’s Building Commissioner, and we agreed that the best solution was to request the Town Council to accept the structure as a Municipal Sign. (The Town Council is exempt from ordinance requirements for their signs.) I presented it as such to the Council this evening. Russ was there to back me up. After a brief discussion, the Council agreed that this was an appropriate designation for a worthy project.
This knocks down another obstacle, so the project is moving forward. Now we’re just held up by the minor problem of fundraising…
This has been a Public Service Announcement… If I were a little more ambitious this evening, I would find a mpg of NBC’s “The More You Know” tag music to play in the background…
MCEDC, Social Media and Just Being Awesome!
One of my ToDo List items as Chairman of Marshall County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) was to see a new website up and running and get MCEDC tied into some of the social media outlets. Thanks to Jennifer, Derek and Pam, this is one I can strike off my list. (The benefits of Chairing organizations is that you can direct other people to do things and then take credit for their hard work. Thanks guys!) If you haven’t visited the new website, you can do so here. It takes most of the good things from the old site and has added some functionality. Some of these originated internally and some were the result of our work with Ady Voltedge on our marketing plan.
The website has been up since the first quarter of this year. In the past month, Derek has added the social media connections. MCEDC is now posting to Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. You can go to the MCEDC home page and there are a couple of places with the connection buttons for these services. Visit the site! More clicks there help our SEO (Search Engine Optimization) ratings and that could mean the difference in attracting new business to Marshall County. If you Google it to find it, that helps even more…
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson
As mentioned here previously, I had the opportunity to attend an event put on by The Remnant Trust last week. An Open House was held at their facility in Winona Lake, followed by a meal and program at a local banquet facility. As with everything associated with The Remnant Trust, it was handled professionally and was very entertaining. I was afforded the opportunity to meet with members of The Remnant Trust board as well as prominent citizens of Warsaw and the surrounding area. It was rewarding to be able to discuss our work on the facility with the people that made it possible.
The Open House included access to the vault where they had character actors portraying two of our Founding Fathers, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. It is always interesting to see these portrayals and fascinating to see how they choose to handle interactions with the modern world. In this case, they chose to handle it as having made the trip from the east coast and being somewhat surprised that the native population was a bit more advanced than their scouts and explorers had led them to believe… They each went through the vault and discussed books that they were familiar with from their time or earlier, discussing how these books had affected their lives and philosophies. Listening to “Thomas Jefferson” discuss the works of Aristotle and “James Madison” discuss the Magna Charta was fascinating.
At the banquet center, the former Presidents continued to circulate through the crowd discussing various issues. A period accurate meal was served with several dishes prepared in the custom of that time including things like lamb with mint jelly, venison and black-eyed peas. Everything was quite good!
After the meal, two videos were shown illustrating the public work that The Remnant Trust pursues. Interviews with grade school children in Fort Wayne that had been given the opportunity to touch and work with the documents was particularly interesting. From the video I learned that using the character actors to present their documents to the public is one of their standard practices. I can attest that it was effective!
The Presidents were asked to make comments on what they had seen there, which they did in historical context. Then questions and answers came from the audience. A couple of questions were obviously asked to test the knowledge of the actors and they rose to the occasion with admirable knowledge. I was quite impressed as several of the questions showed historical knowledge that was beyond me and the actors barely paused before giving eloquent responses.
All in all, it was an enjoyable evening. Educational and Fun! It was quite fitting just days before celebrating Independence Day. Thank you Kris and Miranda for including me!