Rants
Can Culver Think Outside the Box?
I was pretty disappointed in the Culver Town Council at their last meeting where they addressed the wind turbine ordinance presented to them by the Plan Commission. It will probably cost Culver any opportunity to expand their Extended Territorial Zoning Boundary, but as so often happens, the voice of the few has outweighed the apathy of the many. So be it. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about Water Towers!
During the above discussion, Ginny Munroe, Town Council President, expressed a comparison between wind turbines and the town water towers. She complained that she considers the town water towers necessary evils that are blights on the Culver skyline. But what is Culver doing about it? Apparently nothing, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have some thoughts. Ha! I’m not an engineer, so I’m not saying any of these would work, but here are some ideas Culver could explore:
DST – Not just annoying, but Deadly???
I haven’t always hated Daylight Saving Time (DST). As a kid, Daylight Savings Time was kind of cool… Indiana didn’t participate in the nonsense, but since the network TV shows came from the east coast, when DST rolled around, those shows were on earlier. Shows that were past my bedtime in the winter were on the schedule for the summer. Cool!
Then I moved to Georgia after college. Since I moved there in the Fall, my first taste of DST as a participant was “fall back”. This was cool! An extra hour of sleep! But then in the following Spring I experienced DST’s dark side… “spring forward”. What fresh Hell is this? It was just starting to get light in the morning and now we are plunged back into darkness!?! My Monday morning commute, which was never fun anyway, was now an hour earlier and populated by thousands of other grumpy commuters dealing with lost sleep. For the next six years, I spent weeks in the Spring being grumpy and chastising Georgians on this affront to my constitution while expounding on the brilliance of Hoosiers for opting out of the silliness. When I moved back to Indiana I took some glee in poking fun at my friends in the South as they went through the fruitless exercise of DST… That was until 2006 when Governor Mitch Daniels pushed through legislation that forced Indiana to join the insanity. Trust me… nothing cheered up my Georgia friends more during spring forward than laughing at me as I once again joined them in the insane practice.
But now this year, the University of Michigan has come out with a study saying that DST is not just an inconvenience that makes me feel like crap, but it could actually kill me! Heart attack occurrences increase by 25% on the first work day after the Spring time change. That will make my morning commute less stressful! Geez!
I don’t expect this revelation to change anything. DST supporters have a form on insanity I can’t understand, but I do know that they will not be influenced by logic, facts or rational arguments. I’ll just take an aspirin tomorrow morning before heading to work.
Wonka Image Source: daylightsavingstimechange.org
University of Michigan Image Source: Summer Institutes
State of the Union
I’ve always thought the State of the Union address was a fairly worthless endeavor and actually, as an American, somewhat embarrassing to watch. Kevin Williamson put it pretty well in an article he wrote last year for the National Review titled Great Caesar’s Ghost. If you’re interested in reading it, I’ve linked it here. The first paragraph is in the box to the right to whet your appetite.
The whole idea of a State of the Union address rises from Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution describing the powers of the President which says: “He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”
From what I have gleaned, George Washington did meet with the Congress in what was the first State of the Union “report”, but when Thomas Jefferson became President, he deemed the practice of addressing Congress too “kingly” and began the practice of sending written reports. This proved satisfactory for 112 years until President Woodrow Wilson changed the tradition to a formal address to Congress. This has morphed into the political spectacle we’ll be subjected to tonight.
Lest this be considered just Obama or democrat bashing, let me heap some of the blame on President Reagan for making things worse. He is responsible for the odious new tradition of placing “guests” in the audience which serve as props for the political messages in the speech. And as Mr. Williamson says in his article, “The next Republican president should remember why his party is called the Republican party and put a stop to this.” Hear, Hear!
Consider the Sources: Almost totally Internet; some from Mr. Williamson’s article and some from other searches.
Meeting Participation in Culver
Monday night I went to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Culver Redevelopment Commission at 5:00 at the Culver Town Hall. I arrived to find the door locked. I looked at the notice on the bulletin board and it stated that the regularly scheduled meeting had been changed to 4:00 and that they had added a joint meeting with the Town Council which they had moved to the Culver Library at 5:00.
As I’ve said here before I tend to cut volunteer board members a lot of slack. They give a lot of time and often only receive slings and arrows from the public in return. I don’t think that’s an excuse for making public participation difficult. My position as Culver’s representative on the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation Board means that my representation there is closely tied to the work the redevelopment commission does. I attend almost every meeting of the redevelopment commission. It is on my calendar to be there on the third Monday at 5:00. It frustrates me to no end when I make a special effort to be at a meeting only to find that they moved the meeting, with private discussion between meetings. I’m not special. They don’t have to let me know. But I think it’s disrespectful and says something about their relationship with MCEDC. While they have fulfilled the letter of the law by posting it on the bulletin board at the Town Hall I also feel it does a disservice to the community. There is also a page on that same bulletin board listing all of the regularly scheduled meetings. If someone other than myself had gone down to see when the next meeting was, read that list and didn’t check later to see that the meeting had been rescheduled they would have been standing out there fuming like myself.
