C. S. Lewis, author of "The Chronicles of Narnia," once offered that "(I)t may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird but it would harder, still, for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg."
I'm not sure if he had yet read the Hampton Project Municipal Development Plan created by the Norwich Community Development Corporation at the direction of the City Council or if I'll run into him tonight at 6:30 when a hearing on the plan is held in Council chambers of Norwich City Hall. He and I should really do breakfast some time.
Might I suggest we owe it to one another to attend or watch on public excess (sorry, access), assuming it's offered so that we have some sense of what is being risked and what is being gained.
Actually, I not only suggest that but insist on it, because my biggest concern (and why I've taken my time reading the plan and fully intend to attend the hearing) is that I don't know what I don't know. And I may not be alone in being that way but there aren't nearly enough of us willing to admit it to themselves or to one another.
I'm dismayed by some of the comments posted online and offered in person critical on this proposal to "do something" as I call the subject of tonight's hearing but that offer no suggestions or alternatives. Let's be real: we already know what happens when we do nothing in Norwich. If you're new here or you've just forgotten, take a look around you. See what I mean? We are what happens when all we do is talk.
Twice a day I drive past that bag of bricks and glass near 395 and no matter how hard I wish it would be come a thriving hotel (perhaps offering pony rides to guests), it hasn't happened. Not yet and not ever at the rate we're going.
We can keep wasting each other's time and our own breath about the original choice of sites or who should have done what to whom and when but that's boxing with a pillow- when we get done, we're tired and all that's changed is the shape.
How about giant billboards on 395, North and South as the descent down the hill begins, telling motorists to just close their eyes for the next mile so they don't see our failure of both a hotel and to find a resolution?
Or we could hire Christo to wrap the building and conceal our own inability to act for our own good? Certainly an idea not without appeal especially since if we never do anything, we can't do anything wrong.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but NOT to your own facts. The hearing starts at 6:30 tonight in City Hall. I'll save you a seat in the middle.
-bill kenny
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