There's an expression I love that goes, 'speak the truth, even if your voice wavers.' In an era of social media where yelling at total strangers while pretending to argue with them is done in ALL CAPS, not only is the truth hard(er) to find it seems to me maybe at times it's harder to listen to as well.
We have a November election for all six seats on the City Council (the Mayor is a four-year term) and for nine on the Board of Education. I can't be the only person in Norwich who tries to elect people in whom I have faith they will do their best for our city, not that I always agree with every position they take on every issue confronting us.
All I can ask of them, as I think we should all do of one another, is they do the best they can. Have I voted for people in elected office who've disappointed me? Pull up a chair and let me tell you about it. Kidding about the chair. Of course, I have and so have you.
Have there been elected people whose effort and accomplishments have surprised and delighted me? Yes, as you can tell because my feet are smiling. I'm as guilty as probably you are of losing sight sometimes those we elect are our neighbors, from next door or across the neighborhood who, when the rest of us said, 'well, somebody has to step up and do ....' they said, "I will."
Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena observation is as true here and now in Norwich, as it was at any time since he first said it. In today's version Old Rough and Ready would update the gender references I'm sure, but you get the idea.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Earlier this month as the debate about the Norwich City Budget, our fiscal map for the next year of our collective future was being crafted, generated more heat if not quite so much light, Alderwoman Joanne Philbrick, a neighbor of all of ours who for decades has been involved in making Norwich a place for everyone to come home to was singled out and vociferously criticized for her remarks at a City Council meeting that some, okay, many (myself included), felt were highly critical of our schoolteachers.
What she said may not have been what she meant and probably isn't what we heard but I don't criticize someone else's beliefs simply because they are not mine. However, the hateful and hurtful comments so many of us voiced in response to her remarks may be a reason why we have so few neighbors volunteering to seek office. Who can blame them?
It's easy to support freedom of speech when you agree with the speaker but the true test, and one we as a city did not do well this time is when you find the speech disagreeable. We need to remove the coarseness from our civil discourse and extend to one another the same respect we expect and demand from one another.
-bill kenny
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