Last night, I went bowling.
I wonder if maybe I should’ve gone to the City Council meeting. NAC asked me to cover his blog temporarily and the meetings are usually his beat. I especially worry that the support I’ve gotten from NAC in the past might be lost if I don’t at least get something in print to show some solidarity.
It would’ve been easy to get out of the bowling commitment. Our team has a substitute list and the bowlers on it are capable. I’ve even thought of quitting the team altogether. It’s a long-term commitment and there are certainly other ways for me to spend my money and Thursday nights. Some of them would undoubtedly make me more popular with family and friends in the most immediate of senses.
I made the commitment to the team a couple of years ago, though. The subs didn’t. And if all the bowlers handled their commitments so casually, the league would fall apart in short order.
Unfortunately, that realization didn’t help with my frustration. I’ve been trying the same things repeatedly for several years now and my scores have never improved. To that end, I decided to spend my lunch hour-and-a-half at another bowling alley for perspective. I met a new pro. He examined both my ball and my roll.
As is to be expected from someone in the retail bowling business, he suggested some changes. My ball was drilled wrong and my grip needed work. As it turns out, I literally didn’t have a handle on my game.
I hated to spend any money. I have a house to fix up and my car needs tires. Our anniversary is this weekend. How much is my team worth anyway?
I left the alley with a new ball, a new grip, a lesson, and three perfect strikes under my belt. Apparently, I’m “coachable”.
When I gathered with my teammates last night, it was much the same as always. We shuffled the roster around this year but the new faces are really just the old faces wearing different colored shirts. Half the guys on the other team used to be on our team. A couple of the guys have formed a partnership of sorts outside our usual league night. They’re constantly discussing strategy and the best way to embarrass the captain.
One of them is an old guy that’s been around for decades. He scoffs at new equipment and insists that his ever lowering average has nothing to do with his cracked ball and worn out shoes. “These lanes," he says, “were built in the Fifties. That ball you have wasn’t made for these conditions.” The other is a newbie who’s convinced that the minutiae of the game are the secret. He’s constantly telling us to move two inches that way or to aim about a degree and half in the other.
I struggled with the changes in the first game. I’m pretty sure that’s the only time I’ve ever gotten a nine and left the head pin standing. And I did it more than once. We lost.
The second game wasn’t much better. My directional control improved a little but my speed was off. I didn’t know what the ball was going to do when it left my hand and I was hesitant to go for shots. We lost again.
By the time the third game started, my old teammate (who blamed his own poor performance on back trouble) was calling for my old ball and the newbie suggested I just needed to use his ball cleaner to save a few more pins.
I stuck with my new everything and let the oil accumulate on my ball. Just as the lanes were breaking down and the other players’ usual big hooks started failing, I found the pocket. Six times.
I still left a couple of open frames but my 192 was enough to cinch the game for us and even held up to win us the series. As the rest of the team left for the bar down the street, the captain shot me a knowing grin and we discussed which team members would be going to the state tournament and which ones would be staying home.
Anyways, sorry I didn’t make it to the meeting, NAC. Maybe next time I’ll have a better story to report.
Here’re the links:
City weighs sanitation and Scribner Place by Kyle Lowry, Tribune
City tries to keep garbage workers by Ben Zion Hershberg, The Courier-Journal (short shelf life)
A worthy effort much enjoyed in these quarters, bluegill. Thanks for the tale of pals hanging out.
ReplyDeleteKyle Lowry's blow-by-blow seems to have stirred things up a bit...no one has ever seen a newspaper story that so captured the events as they really are, at least not in this town.
Let's hope the hammer doesn't come down too hard on her. I certainly appreciated her candid portrayal of the city council meeting.
Agreed. Although I missed last night's fado, Ms. Lowry captured the usual spirit of the event well.
ReplyDeleteI hope Ben Hershberg had an opportunity to read her work. That is, if he's not at the courthouse doing research.
Drinking Pabst or Carling at the bowling alley Jeff? lol
ReplyDeletejbarthold: It's the echo chamber effect at work here. I'm all for mobilizing in support of the Scribner Place redevelopment project, but what the city council did on Thursday was merely symbolic.
ReplyDeleteUnder the rules of procedure, city council cannot rescind their vote. The active resolution commits the full $400,000 from future EDIT funds, backed by the full faith and credit of the city, and possibly to be reduced by whatever amount the county kicks in.
Again, the gang of four is just grandstanding. They can tell themselves they've rescinded the Scribner support, but they have not. They cannot. It is not rescindable.
I am concerned about those residents of Floyd County who live outside the city. They will have to pay a premium to use the aquatic center under the current scenario ($1 extra? $2 extra?), and I don't think they should have had to.
The YMCA is a good project that is mostly self funded with Caesars and private fund raising.
ReplyDeleteIt's the elaborate swimming facility that is costing the additional bond funds backed by property taxes.
If we cannot support basic city services, we have no business building 5 swimming pools and committing EDIT funds that could be better utilized for business growth downtown.
Too many unresolved questions and unknown numbers to take dowm sanitation without getting to the truth.
We all want growth and improvements to our city, but with decisions like Garner is proposing we will wind up in a huge financial hole with no way out. Just like his Dry Cleaning shops.
Lots of good points. Scribner critics seem to suggest that it's all we're going to do in terms of economic development and that it's somehow using all of our EDIT funds. That's not the case.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth noting that even at the full $400K per year, Scribner Place will leave well over a million dollars per year in EDIT funds available. Most of it comes back into play circa 2007, just as Scribner Place will be picking up steam as a destination.
The question is not what we should do instead but what we should do in conjunction. Workforce development is certainly worth considering as the relatively low education and skill levels in our community are a large part of our downfall.
It isn't necessary to kill Scribner Place to make it happen, though.
Tim, for the life of me I don't see why you insist on defending certain council members who've done nothing to advance your own ideas in decades nor would understand or even acknowledge the demographic which you and Brandon are discussing if they lived next door.
Your own occasional flashes of intellect betray your bitterness for the current administration.
No worries, it's all good.
ReplyDeleteThere's a distinct chance that I missed my allegorical mark by more than a couple of boards, but my post had a lot more to do with current City Council affairs than it did with bowling anyway.
BTW, I agree to some extent with Brandon that you might be dismissing the sprawl argument too easily.
Before your further explanation, my response was going to be based on what it would cost to not curb the sprawl versus what it would cost to support what is surely our best chance of reviving the already existent infrastructure downtown. Basically, rural county infrastructure is maxed out in many ways and growth in some areas is already dependent on existing city infrastructure.
Building your own infrastructure to handle the growth and/or passing stricter laws to control it (which I would favor) are rife with problems which we can discuss in more detail if you like.
Scribner Place alone won't revive downtown but it's an opportunity to take a quatum leap forward both literally and in the more cerebral terms of the area's overall thinking about growth and how to approach it by leveraging what is a relatively small city/county investment to build a human traffic generating attraction that we we would never be able to afford otherwise.
As I mentioned before, I'm very interested in hearing ideas about will work in conjunction with Scribner Place rather than what to do instead.
It's worth noting, though, that you've yet to make any arugment at all regarding why you think Scribner Place won't help revive downtown.
You'll have to forgive some of us around here for being a bit exasperated. We've been dealing with non-thinking, grandstanding obstructionists for far too long. Given your involvement in Greenville, I'm sure you understand the drill.
Your "parking garage" argument in particular, which of course has no bearing on the viability of Scribner Place at all, may have struck a nerve.
At any rate, the cultural struggle we're dealing with in the city may be even more important than the financial one. I would guess you folks in Greenville are in the same proverbial boat.
If you have suggestions for effectively dealing with that, get to writing please.
The logical conclusion to the constitutional point seems to be that the county should duplicate (if desired) everything the county seat (city) has in place, because it is "constitutionally" separate.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, cities are created entities, while counties are just appendages of the sovereign state. The county MUST provide certain services. The city chooses to provide certain services.
Should the city choose to give up responsibility for any function, either the county will be forced to take it up, or the city's (anc county's) residents will be left without.
Constitutionally, the city has zero obligation to fund any correctional facility. The county has an absolute responsibility to do so.
Only one city council member "demanded" the county participate in the Scribner Place redevelopment project. In every other instance I've seen, it was an invitation to participate.
As it stands, the county government is lukewarm about the idea, and any treatment of what they've said so far as a "commitment" is an atrocity to the language.
In sum, I see no point in disputing that city residents are county residents. I'd be really eager to find out what the real point is.
MERGER!
ReplyDeleteWe need a referendum to merge city and county government. Then we can tear down the old and start a new!
It has worked for Louisville, Indianapolis, and other cities!
It is obvious that both governments have their plus and minuses. Let's take the good of both and create one government for the entire city/county.