Maybe you should just write a letter...

I love the town that I live in. I realized the other day that I have lived here for 20 years! 2 decades!

So, while I love living here because of the location and climate, watching our city political machine trying to effect change is like stabbing myself in the gut with a dry piece of spaghetti-- irritating and totally ineffectual. My town has these slogans "We're the whole enchilada" and the "Best of this and that IN THE WORLD". The city council has these meetings and meetings and meetings and by the time the $75,000 consultant has been paid, the point is moot, because there is a budget crisis. Sorry citizens, maybe the pits downtown will be filled in the fiscal year 2050.

OK, so I am a bit dramatic, the spaghetti thing was WAY over the top-- lo siento!

The hot topic of the last few years has been the demise of our downtown. There are a lot of reasons that it has happened, but if you raze all your historic buildings and rebuild in the seventies... your downtown is going to be filled with a whole lot of ugly. Anyway my own theory is...if people have a reason to go some place, they will go, there will be commerce, investors will want to rebuild...you know, my usual pie in the sky idea.

One late night in February I wrote the mayor an email (amazing, everyone is on the net these days....hee hee) about moving our Thursday afternoon/evening Farmer's Market downtown?? Like it is on Tuesday mornings and Saturdays....not a big stretch conceptually, I just assumed that someone else had thought of it.

The mayor didn't write back. I waited.

A few weeks later I was civically irritated again and so I wrote a new letter to her and added my old one as an attachment. This time she wrote back and said that she would pursue the idea.

Let's just say there was an article in the paper today about the "New" Thursday market...yep, it is going to be downtown. It is going to be great, people are going to go, there is going to be commerce...who knows what could happen?

Maybe it wasn't my letter...but what a coincidence!!

My marvelous notion for the day is this... is there some thing that bugs you?

1)Think of a positive solution.

2)Write a letter/email/make a call.

3)Let someone know what you are thinking.

4)Tell them again, if you think they didn't understand you.

Change can happen.

JMB