What If?

In case you wondered otherwise, this is my opinion based on what I perceive to be facts (your mileage may and probably will vary). A lot of not just my thinking about who we are and how we do business/live/school/shop/and all the other aspects of peopling has, I concede, been changed forever by the last two years of COVID and the Greek Alphabet of variants in our lives. 

Just wanted to put that out there in case you mistakenly thought you'd find 'the answer' in what follows. Sorry; as we used to say in the Air Force, 'if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' and before you ask, no, I'm not. 

As we've discovered, or should have thanks to projects like The Lofts at Ponemah Mills, Thermos on the Thames, and The Mill at Indian Leap Apartments, when we reimagine Industrial Age factory space for all ages and incomes, sometimes what we see depends on what we look at. 

And, yes, before this goes any further, I am willing to concede that you can accomplish a lot more not just in Norwich, but anywhere, with a bright smile, a big idea, and a bag full of money than you can with just the smile and the idea. As a matter, my evil twin, Skippy, highly recommends making sure the bag is full to the top

That said, back in 2010, we who lived here approved a bond to foster and fuel development in Chelsea. No one in Norwich was more enthused about that bond proposal or more strident and vociferous (some suggested 'obnoxious') in urging its adoption than I.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy, including the annual Shakespeare Festival, that help determine the gap between the promise and the actual performance when we speak of the number of new businesses established (and still extant), the expansion of the City's Grand List, and the growth in revenues for Norwich Public Utilities. 

How we've done, as I mentioned earlier, has a lot to do with our frame of mind. Could things be better (however you define better), sure; could they be worse (in light of the last two years, how would that be possible?). I'm not peddling sour grapes, just the w(h)ine of observable facts.

A wise man (well, a wise guy) once told me there are six phases to a project: Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, Search for the Guilty, Punishment of the Innocent, and Praise and  Honors for the Non-Participants, From where I sit, we expend too much energy and emotion at the Searching for the Guilty phase at the first sign that our project isn't going according to Hoyle. 

As a city, we do great beginnings but as we press on and approach the middle our resolve seems to falter, and too often we start looking for the exits to bail out or for scapegoats to blame. Here in the third decade of the 21st Century, Norwich needs to be mobile, agile, and hostile (in the last instance I'm talking about a degree of self-confidence in ourselves that may look like arrogance to others. Between us, living here for thirty years I still don't see the self-assurance we should have). 

Trying to re-engineer and rebuild a perfect downtown one building at a time (from Burnham Square to the Carroll Building where Main meets Water Street) keeps coming up short, I'd argue, because we always run out of patience before we run out of money, and then we run out of money. But here's the thing: it's okay; we can try again. 

The infusion of money from the American Rescue Plan, as earmarked by the City Manager and the City Council, can be the start of a process that's partly economic development and, quite frankly self-help. We don't have to be great to start, we just have to start to be great.

We should be proud of our schools and teachers and our terrific public safety professionals and volunteers as well as world-class public works and public utilities infrastructure. The thing we who live here really need to start to believe in is ourselves. Let's spend one moment less moaning and mooning over what we don't have each day, and one moment more celebrating what we do have.   

The world keeps changing and we need to do the same because unless we keep moving forward we will inevitably fall behind. Entropy or Excellence. We can remain prisoners of our past, or choose to be the architects of our future.
-bill kenny