Friday, February 17, 2006

Anonymous Letters

Yogi Berra is quoted “I do not answer anonymous letters.

One of the problems of responding to the large number of anonymous letters that circulated through the community is the anonymity issue.

Folks are just not willing to step up to take on some one’s battle if they are not willing to identify them selves.

Friday, February 10, 2006

White space Solution

The problem is solved, I think. The HTML expert in our family sat down and figured out the problem with the Blog formatting. I couldn’t stand having the Blog articles apart from the sidebar. Not getting Perfection is hard to accept when it comes to seeing your work on the internet. Thanks for your help Brock. Your dear ole dad is proud of you.

White Space Problem

I am still waiting for Blogger to help me correct my blogging problem. As you might be able to tell, I changed the Blog format. Now, instead of white space ahead of the blog, all the information that was at the left is WAY DOWN the page. I lost the ability for folks to subscribe to the Blog too. That will be a relatively easy thing to get back when the family technical writer is available. He helped me get it right in the first place.

I have been working on the City Commission’s Strategic Planning work session notes. If I didn’t say it in the last post, it is interesting to see the commonality among the Commissioners. It is also interesting to see the variety of issues they presented to one another. We will be discussing these at the work session next week. After we work the list over, I will post it here. Right now it is a 3 page list.

Several months ago, I helped the City of Minneapolis begin this process. I talked to Mayor Bob Hudson this week and it appears they are moving ahead “on their own.” That was the plan when we started. Barry Hodges had just been hired as their City Administrator. Working together with the Minneapolis governing body and the community has given Barry an opportunity to gain a picture of what needs done in Minneapolis. Getting a clear picture is always a benefit when you take over a new job.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Weird

Yes, I think it is weird that there is this great white space at the beginning of the Blog. I look at it as an analogy for the potential in all of us that is not being used. That is fairly pithy for 8 PM!

A week ago Saturday, the City Commission met to work on strategic planning. They each came to the meeting with a laundry list of projects they would like to see done. I am in the process of gathering them into a document that they can prioritize and then set me on a course of “getting things done.” There were a number of very good ideas.

If you didn’t have a chance to go to the CloudCorp Meeting and hear writer Denis Boyles speak, you ought to read (or reread) the article in the Blade-Empire. Here is the URL http://www.bladeempire.com/web/isite.dll?1138650418000. This quote from the story is one I really like:

One of those characteristics that he (Boyles) touched on was demographics. “People who live far away from here think most of the communities are dying, that it’s just a matter of time,” Boyles said. While depopulation is a fact of life along the Republican River, it does not have to define communities.

The problem with depopulation, he said, is that “it breeds a terrible disease–pessimism. In talking to a professor from the University of Kansas, who was in Concordia this past summer, he found a definition of pessimism. “Pessimism is the embrace of what you fear will not be possible,” he explained.

In visiting towns along the Republican River, he said he could see examples of this everywhere he went–where some towns were dying, and others were thriving.

“The difference between pessimism and realism is that pessimism excludes the possible,” Boyles said. “Since Americans are taught to dream to be all they can be, not all they can’t possibly be, pessimism is downright anti-American.”

Sunday night at our church was a Kansas Day celebration (for those out of state, it is the celebration of Kansas being admitted to the Union). Our concluding activity was to sing our State Song, Home on the Range. I think we ought to sing it more often and take to heart the phrase “where seldom is heard, a discouraging word….”

When tied to the message from Denis Boyles heard the night before, encouraging words are what build cities and also what build relationships.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

Thinking

Thinking

"Third-rate minds are only happy when they’re thinking with the majority; second-rate minds are only happy when they’re thinking with the minority; and, first-rate minds are only happy when they’re thinking."
 
--British author A.A. Milne (the creator of “Winnie the Pooh”).