The W(h)ine Aged like Milk

I'd overlooked/forgotten a personal milestone so I'm inflicting a catch-up piece of nostalgia on you. I'll pretend to be sorry about that and you can just shrug and indulge me, or not. 

A skosh over sixteen years ago, I started putting my screams onscreen in this space and have discovered a much larger universe of like-minded people than I could have ever imagined. Reading over this first posting, I'm struck by how the more things change, the more they remain the same. We need to stop laying traps for troubadours; it's not a panacea, but a start.

And to think that I saw it on Norwich's streets

Driving past Washington Street this morning, it looks like a growth industry is the hardware business, selling neighbors large plywood sheets and paint so they can erect signs to yell at one another on the issue of spot zoning.

New signs insisting on the right to do with their property what they wish, possibly from those who've sold options to developers, angry at 'the select few' (as their sign says) who insist this commercial endeavor be turned away.

Another sign boasts about the increase in tax revenues and the additional (service) jobs a new mini-sprawl, I meant mini-mall, will bring to Norwich (even though the pharmacy hailed as 'new' will be the existing one from across town).

Jobs, much like Einstein's matter, can neither be created nor destroyed, at least in development models. If we take six inches from the front of the blanket and put it on the back, the blanket is NOT a foot longer. 

Everyone's signs ignore or seem to, our inability to look ahead and plan accordingly.

When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
Right now, most of us think any movement, even the circles in which we are turning, is the same thing as direction. Most don't know the difference between smart growth and economic development (all ducks ARE birds but not all birds are ducks) and until we learn that, we're fated to waste a lot of time thinking we're having a contest between 'property rights' and 'NIMBY'. It's not really what it's about.

Meanwhile, those whose agenda is not and will NEVER be that of advancement and enhancement of Norwich's economic basis will prosper while residents remain reactive instead of proactive.
-bill kenny