Man, there sure is a lot of anger and frustration in Lincoln these days. Can you feel it? It's palpable to me.
Some of it is justified, and some of it is a tad irrational. But whether or not one person's disgust makes sense to another person isn't really the point. It is there regardless.
Mayor Seng doesn't seem to recognize the problem. She canned the fire chief, said some angry words, and then disappeared. Hardly the sort of leadership that builds trust in the wake of a controversy. The City Council doesn't act like they care. They recently aborted discussion on a controversial topic, fostering further distrust from an already distrustful -- and vocal -- segment of the population. Nobody in the private sector is stepping up, either. LIBA, for example, only seems to make itself known when it wants to be contrarian, and the Updowntowners' decision to kill off July Jamm -- although probably the right decision for them -- didn't exactly boost the community spirit.
There are so many things I want to do and say to try to make things better. But it's tough when I am, for all intents and purposes, just another guy who thinks he has answers. Why should anybody listen? I guess that's why I'm working so hard behind the scenes on Lincolnite. It's my little soap box, for one, but it's also a way to show Lincoln's beauty and to open communication about the community. That's what Lincolnite was intended to be all those years ago when I first started thinking about the project in my dorm room at UNL, and that's still my goal for it today. I'll get 'er there eventually.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. Does anybody else feel the tension in Lincoln? Or is it just me?
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Oh, I definitely agree. In fairness, maybe it’s just a side effect of gradually paying more and more attention, so maybe it’s always there and we’re just noticing it more.
But watching the letters to the editor and the types of feedback that gets posted to the Journal Star website…there are a lot of really angry people who are just itching to lash out at anyone who feels even slightly differently.
I was just thinking about this earlier today. You know how everyone has an example of some kind of wasteful government spending? And I don’t mean things like “The government shouldn’t be hiring single mothers!” and stuff like that. I mean like when you see the sprinklers on in the rain, or when they redo a curb five times, or in front of Spaghetti Works, they’d put in a bench, then a tree, then take out the tree, then take out the bench, then put in a bench…
The city seems to really struggle when it comes time to cut things, and you get instances like Eschliman suggesting cutting parks and libraries. It’d be nice if there were some sort of website set up where people could report and post witnessed government waste. At the very least, it might give the illusion that the city is interested in public input.
The website idea is a great one. It would have to be limited to things that you could take pictures of, and/or explain with minimal commentary. The first things to be posted would be those traffic alert signs on O Street just east and west of 33rd street. Not sure what those are for. I think I may get started on this…
Such a thing seems like it would be perfect for a wiki. Just so happens Lincolnite will soon have a wiki…
If you can come up with a way to structure it into whatever wiki you’ve got coming up, fantastic. It just seems like something everyone could agree on. Because regardless of the political ideology, no one wants to see money thrown away or something valuable cut because of waste.
I haven’t noticed as much lately as I’ve moved to the outskirts of downtown, but when I lived above Spaghetti Works, it became a running joke as to what would get put in next and how long it would last before it’d get removed.
A wiki, you say? I don’t think it’ll be *too* hard to convince me to contribute. 😉
Oh, Spaghetti Works…between the fire escape that took months to repair, the monthly fumigation, and the dankness of the hallways, I don’t know how I was ever convinced to move out.
My favorite are those goofy bike-statute thingamajigs. I walk by one on the way to work and its like wtf?
Funny, Cindy noticed the same theme yesterday. Think she reads Lincolnite? 😊
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