April 30, 2018
Dear editor;
I was pleased to find I am in the company of great thinkers, such as Nietzsche, who need to get away to contemplate or write because of a mind full of thoughts.
A lot of times I think about our government and our participation as citizens.
At the Aurora City Council, citizens can speak only for three minutes. City staff members and petitioners can speak as long as they wish. If you go beyond three minutes the Council loudly will stop you along with a well-educated person with a stop sign. A three-minute egg at least gets a bell. Often murmuring is heard that “we” don’t speak positively, but with three minutes it is like a parent late for work telling teenagers their room is a mess and children want praise for their report card.
Water Street Mall: The presently-elected feel it was not comfortable, that the trees had grown and it needed to be improved for events. Will the next elected feel comfortable? Do the new landscapers know that trees grow? Lee Harvey Oswald could not shoot John Kennedy in Dallas today because the tree grew. I know that because I stood in the window. Last year’s events had more vendors and individuals in the events than those who attended. While waiting for a meeting with no where to go I was told it was not safe there and to beware of the individuals. After that person left, two aldermen came out of the building. Just coincidence, made me laugh!
Hurray: 18-21 no cigarettes! We care! Yet at 21 you have the same lungs you can harm and soon do it with marijuana. Just delaying it. American cigarettes and alcohol have more additives than any in other country just to get you hooked. But do not worry the West Side of Aurora is becoming a huge clinic. Just drive Lake Street from Sullivan Road to New York Street. We have softened some of it to Behavioral Health and Memory Care which really means your brain is sick and deteriorating. Cigarettes and alcohol are big business for government, so don’t anticipate removing that which possibly can harm.
One Aurora. I was wondering if gender has become fluid rather than stable can culture just be? I am designated white, but I am not sure what our definition is. We do not have boards, meetings, churches or festivals and parades where white is defined. I know there is a lot of guilt and fear.
I would like to change to be an Other. They are at the bottom of forms. Do they have a culture, boards, parades? Are they mad at others up the list or can you just be? Can I be African American, Asian, or Indian, or must I stay my mixture of Swedish, English, French, which I guess is white whatever that truly means? The way Aurora is dividing, one eventually will need a passport to travel to markets and culturally-designated areas and events? Will the Others ever rise to take their place? I did hear of an intercultural marriage in Aurora: An East Sider married a West Sider!
Aurora government is getting job training: It took me back to an interview of a Russian youth being asked what he wanted to do with his life. His response was “The government hasn’t told me yet.”
No, Aurora City Council, I don’t give out, in today’s terms, a lot of “likes,” but we as citizens need to let you know it is our dollars locally, state, federal you are spending. We are the folks, the citizens, not special interest groups. We need to be concerned. Being elected does not give way to doing what you feel is good without accountability and questions. Concerning that at City Council only statements can be made, no questions.
Freedom is not lost in a day, but as former U.S. secretary of state Madeline Albright said, it is taken as a feather plucked, one at a time.
America is a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We must rise up in the little things to protect the whole.
Marjorie Logman
Aurora
