Planting Potholes, Counting Calcutta, and "Plain English" Decoded

Had a great idea last week. Or rather, Facebook tipped me off to a great idea. There are a lot of potholes around the place generally and someone shared a pic of a flower that had been planted in what appeared to be one of the many road gashes here in town. I loved the idea for the paper and thought I’d loop the city into my scheme by encouraging them to fill one pothole per week for an ongoing series sponsored by Glasgow Flower and Gift. I got our sponsor on board (thanks, GFG!), sent a reporter to place a daisy in a local pothole. She took a quick picture and wrote up a short article about it. All done, right? Not quite. Facebook “likes” are Confederate money—as a friend in the know is fond of saying—you can’t spend them. Too true in this case. Street Foreman Karl Krause dropped by the Courier office and explained that hours of prep and materials are needed to warm up the machinery required for this kind of work, meaning any mission involving one pothole at a time would be a fool's errand. Happily, he went on to detail plans currently unfolding to fill potholes along more than 30 miles of city roads during the next few weeks (weather-permitting). We'll see if we can get him and his crew to pose with a flower next to a few of their better fixes. Look for that next week.

Speaking of Karl, I jumped at the opportunity to shoot some pool with the man and his two excellent daughters (Katie Kuka and Tracy Krause) Friday night at Alley’s during the recent Calcutta festivities. It was a mixed crowd—surprisingly young, for the most part—and the the Krause clan took me without breaking a sweat like the deceptively casual pool sharks that they are. High-fives were had on the street from total strangers during the various musical and gaming offerings and the vibe was friendly and orderly as the early evening unfolded. As for the rest of the night, let’s just say that if an eventual breakfast at the Oasis was on your agenda, you’re made of far sturdier stuff than me. I salute you, friends, even if I do so with a Sprite.

In addressing Virgil Vaupel’s commentary on the subject of “equal opportunity” (see “Equal Opportunity Act Explained In Plain English”), my rebuttal is simple: Regulatory efforts designed to address certain disparities in our communities are indeed unevenly applied. There's a reason for that. Minority groups are often entering the job market, educational systems, housing market, etc., with generational setbacks that must be accounted for in a fair and honorable society. We are fair and honorable, right? If so, let’s act like it and adjust the playing field selectively and responsibly to reflect the history of inequality that affects every single one of us today. To pretend we’re all starting from the same place in America regardless of gender, race, or other considerations is to be blind, or at least willfully insensitive, to important historical trends and events.