If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. This is how Norwich, Connecticut, finds itself today as the new year dawns, and many of us who live here are both surprised and disappointed at the same tired results.
I don't pretend to know if it's true as well where you live, though I have my suspicions. President Jimmy Carter, perhaps presciently almost five decades ago, called it the "American Malaise." I think he belled that cat, especially in light of the year, just passed, that too many of us experienced.
Where I live, Norwich, Connecticut, is a city struggling to dig itself out of a hole that pessimism and cynicism (and a double dollop of greed and shortsightedness) spent decades creating. Some days are better than others, and the key for us is to string together a bunch of those better days.This past November, we elected a new Board of Education, as well as a new Mayor and a new City Council (both with a mixture of new faces and experienced hands).
Some might say we were spoiled for choice. And yet voter turnout, the critical element of any effort to improve where we call home, was barely above 54% of all registered voters (there's a skosh more than 12,000 of us registered in a city of close to 40,000 total)
Some might say we were spoiled for choice. And yet voter turnout, the critical element of any effort to improve where we call home, was barely above 54% of all registered voters (there's a skosh more than 12,000 of us registered in a city of close to 40,000 total)
We can't seem to shake a feeling that government is something done to us rather than for us, and that foreboding seems to trump (pun intended) the brave talk about revitalization, mill rates, enterprise zones, zoning variances, and the other nouns, verbs, and gerunds of political grammar. All of us need to do better.
Perhaps too often at times, we have allowed everyone (and anyone) with a self-printed business card that says 'developer' to talk with us about how little of our money will be needed to get our fences whitewashed, only to find out, too late, we’re on the hook to buy the brushes, the whitewash, the paint and, sometimes, even the fences.
Perhaps too often at times, we have allowed everyone (and anyone) with a self-printed business card that says 'developer' to talk with us about how little of our money will be needed to get our fences whitewashed, only to find out, too late, we’re on the hook to buy the brushes, the whitewash, the paint and, sometimes, even the fences.
We choose to forget that everything, to include missed opportunities, comes with a price and a cost. We wait for someone, somewhere, to rescue us overnight from a situation that took decades to develop to the point we are at now, and cast about for someone to blame as a part of any attempt to find a solution.
Those whom we’ve elected will soon enough feel the sting of our disappointment if they fail to guess what we want before we ourselves know what that might be, or how to achieve it.
We need to learn to speak and work with one another to better use ideas, ideals, and words to build bridges that join rather than walls that continue to divide. The New Year started today. What better time to begin again?
-bill kenny
We need to learn to speak and work with one another to better use ideas, ideals, and words to build bridges that join rather than walls that continue to divide. The New Year started today. What better time to begin again?
-bill kenny
