Weird

Yes, I think it is weird that there is this great white space at the beginning of the Blog. I look at it as an analogy for the potential in all of us that is not being used. That is fairly pithy for 8 PM!

A week ago Saturday, the City Commission met to work on strategic planning. They each came to the meeting with a laundry list of projects they would like to see done. I am in the process of gathering them into a document that they can prioritize and then set me on a course of “getting things done.” There were a number of very good ideas.

If you didn’t have a chance to go to the CloudCorp Meeting and hear writer Denis Boyles speak, you ought to read (or reread) the article in the Blade-Empire. Here is the URL http://www.bladeempire.com/web/isite.dll?1138650418000. This quote from the story is one I really like:

One of those characteristics that he (Boyles) touched on was demographics. “People who live far away from here think most of the communities are dying, that it’s just a matter of time,” Boyles said. While depopulation is a fact of life along the Republican River, it does not have to define communities.

The problem with depopulation, he said, is that “it breeds a terrible disease–pessimism. In talking to a professor from the University of Kansas, who was in Concordia this past summer, he found a definition of pessimism. “Pessimism is the embrace of what you fear will not be possible,” he explained.

In visiting towns along the Republican River, he said he could see examples of this everywhere he went–where some towns were dying, and others were thriving.

“The difference between pessimism and realism is that pessimism excludes the possible,” Boyles said. “Since Americans are taught to dream to be all they can be, not all they can’t possibly be, pessimism is downright anti-American.”

Sunday night at our church was a Kansas Day celebration (for those out of state, it is the celebration of Kansas being admitted to the Union). Our concluding activity was to sing our State Song, Home on the Range. I think we ought to sing it more often and take to heart the phrase “where seldom is heard, a discouraging word….”

When tied to the message from Denis Boyles heard the night before, encouraging words are what build cities and also what build relationships.