Oh, Say, Can you See?

When I was young a few centuries ago, there were rules for the proper display and care of the national flag. As school children, we were taught the basics: raise and lower the flag with respect, fold it carefully, don't leave it flying in raid or snow, and when it gets tattered, replace it, sending the old one to be burnt with all due reverence. It was drilled into us that showing proper respect for our flag displayed our patriotistm.

Since 2001, more and more people and businesses have started to fly the flag. As I drive around town, it seems half the houses have a flag displayed. Flags are flown not only at government offices, but seemingly at every bank, grocery store and gas station. Everybody wants to display their patriotistm.

But are they?

I've been keeping my eyes on a huge flag flown by a local branch of a national bank. No matter when I wander by and look, that flag is up that flagpole. Even at night, although the flagpole isn't lit. Even in rain. Even in snow and sleet. It has flapped so hard in the wind that the edge has become quite tattered. It rather looks like something 'the cat drug in'.

Where's the respect?

Game or War?

Is it a game, or a war?

As a driver, you probably have routes you frequently drive – to and from work, the grocery store, your favorite restaurant. When the freeze of winter lets up for a couple days, you breathe easier, knowing you needn't worry about ice. Then >BAM!< you hit a pothole. You swear to yourself, but you don't have a blow out, so you drive on.

The next day, you try to locate exactly where that pothole is. Was it beside this drainage grate or the next one? >BAM!< Okay, it was that one. Meanwhile, more potholes have appeared, and a routine drive has become an adventure – a mix of an obstacle course and the desire to not become bumper cars.

One day, you turn the corner {not too tight, because there's a big—now hug the curb, or you'll hit the--} and you realize those holes have been filled. Hooray! You keep watch – who knows how far the road crew got? – but your drive is far smoother, and you sigh in relief.

The next day, you don't watch as closely, and >BAM!< you hit a pothole, one of the same potholes you avoided last week. Every one of them is back, with no sign of the patches they'd been given.

Every city has potholes, and every city wages war on them. Well, except San Francisco. I understand SF went for 2 decades without doing any street maintenance. I can't imagine what those streets were like at the end of that. Were the street crews laid off, or assigned jobs that they (possibly) were not qualified for?

This morning, I daydreamed about arming cars with road patch missiles. The press of a button would shoot out a 'smart' glob of asphalt, which would find the impending pothole and plop into it just before the tire ran over it. "Take that! And that! Die, you Evil Potholes!"

Okay, probably not going to happen in real life. So, why doesn't somebody create it as a videogame? Wouldn't be any weirder than some of the games I've seen kids play.

The Pothole War Game. Wonder which side would win?

How Cities Spend Money

Okay, so governments have been hit by dire financial straits. In the midst of cutting back on replacing worn out equipment and cutting back services, they find new ways to spend the money they 'don't have'.

Take Omaha for example. Yeah, I beat up on Omaha quite a bit. That's because I have several friends who live there, so I get to hear about all the stupid things that happen.

So, what's the stupid method Omaha found to spend money it didn't have? Other than the obvious one of building a new convention center and a new baseball field to replace the perfectly good ones they already had.

It popped up on at least one of the local radio stations, and it wasn't even a news story. It was a traffic report. Several traffic reports, actually, scattered over a few weeks. "This traffic report sponsored by the City of Omaha."

I'm pretty sure 'sponsored' means 'paid for'. I don't know how much it costs to sponsor a traffic report – several traffic reports – but it's not something I'd want to do on my retirement pension. Common people have a saying, "Every penny counts." I don't think government heads have heard it.

Why would they sponsor a traffic report? Obviously, as a bit of PR, to show the citizens how much the government cares for their well-being. I see it as a waste of money, because if the city had not sponsored those reports, I'm sure the station would have found a business to do it. So, another example of money wasted on the unnecessary. No wonder governments are in such bad shape. Financially.

Spending Money

I've been hearing for years about how the City of Omaha is in dire financial straits. Even before the general population knew much about it, my friends who worked for the city would complain that their legally negotiated contract was broken by the City, which claimed it could not afford to give them the miniscule "cost of living" raises that contract had promised. The union would negotiate a three-year contract, and its members be lucky if they actually got the promised raise in one of those years. This happened several times.

Of course, the City Council members couldn't countenance going without a raise two years in a row. None of the mayors in the past decade have been the least bit embarrassed about hiring Personal Assistants for an exorbitant salary. And somehow, they've come up with the money to build a new sports arena to replace a recently renovated sports field.

That's not the way I was raised; when you don't have enough money to pay your bills, you don't go out and spend even more. Maybe that's because I'm working class, not a business person like the mayors and most of the council members. Spending money you don't have seems to make sense to businesses.

Working class people who are in a financial squeeze tighten their belts and delay purchasing anything they don't absolutely HAVE to have. When they do buy, they may buy cheap. Yes, they know it won't last as long, but they're looking for something to get them through the bad time, until they can consider spending a little more for better quality.

Business people who move into politics just don't make sense. They declare finances are a shambles and demand that every department tighten its belt – old fire trucks and cop cars are not replaced, and then the mechanic who can keep them running is let go. But on the other hand, a replacement for a perfectly good sports field somehow becomes a necessity.

And they wonder why the citizens are ready to rebel.

Is This the Dream?

I've been talking to my friend who is working at big bank, trying to make plans for a little daylight get-together. I thought President's Day might be a good time. It's a holiday, so I figured the bank would be closed, but it isn't such a big holiday that restaurants and stores would be closed. It had worked for Martin Luther King Day last month.

However, it turns out she doesn't get President's Day off. This just seems wrong to me. I don't mind that the bank closed for Martin Luther King Day – he certainly deserves to be acknowledged for his accomplishments. But President's Day is intended to celebrate TWO of our Greatest Presidents, and that is certainly deserving some acknowledgment, too.

I don't want to claim racial prejudice – somehow, no one takes you seriously if you're white. But I do wonder if this an example of the Dream that Dr King talked so eloquently about. It doesn't seem likely.

Aspirations

It's an old question, probably older than I am, usually aimed at small children for the entertainment of adults: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And typical answers – at least, when I was a kid – were things like 'ballerina' and 'cop'. Not me. I wanted to be an astronaut, the first female astronaut. But I think even before I got to high school, the Russians sent a woman cosmonaut into orbit, so that didn't work out for me.

My next choice was to be an astronomer. To that end, I majored in math in college. I was incensed when I went to see a college counselor about something, and when he saw I was majoring in math, he asked, "Oh, do you want to teach?" And then, as it turned out, LIFE intruded, and I had to abandon that dream, too.

There was still one dream left, but I was so busy dealing with LIFE that this final dream became only a hobby. Chances are, it will serve its purpose of entertaining me through what's left of my life, but accomplish little else.

It seems almost cruel to ask kids what they want to be when, as adults dealing with LIFE, we know they have very little chance of fulfilling their dreams. When they look back through the decades and realize how paltry their life has actually been, that they spent it pushing papers, or brooms, or water leaks, rather than chasing crooks or dancing on their toes, will they feel anguish over dreams that never survived? Maybe that's why adults do it; because their see their own dreams withering away. Maybe the pain makes them do it.

Hire the Big O

A few years back, the City of Omaha started a new campaign to encourage its citizens to support their local merchants. It was called "Buy the Big O". Basically, the idea was that if you lived in Omaha, you were supposed to buy whatever you needed – groceries, clothes, a meal, a movie ticket, a car, whatever – in Omaha.

Makes sense, right? To the politicians, it did. To the citizens trying to stretch their shrinking paychecks as far as they could, it did NOT make sense. Spend $25 on a pair of slacks in town when they could get the same slacks off the internet (on sale) for $12 and $5 shipping?

And then the city officials had another 'bright' idea and imposed an additional tax on restaurants, bars and caterers. I heard many citizens ponder the possibility of slipping into the suburbs for their entertainment.

And then, not long ago, I heard about a city department that was looking to hire a person. Wow! A job opening! In the midst of such bad news from city hall for so long, this news was like a breath of fresh air. Until I heard they'd chosen to offer the job to a person from Lincoln, a city some 50 miles away.

Now, I've nothing against the people of Lincoln. Evidently, they are just as qualified as the people of Omaha, and no doubt Lincolnites need jobs just as badly as Omahans. However, if Omahans are supposed to 'Buy the Big O', then it only seems fair that the City should make an effort to 'Hire the Big O'.