Winter
So, winter’s going to kick the crap out of us this weekend. Dang, mang, if only there were some way we could fight back.
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I See….
Here’s your word of the day:
◗ Pareidolia
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Human beings have a hard wired need to envision faces, animals, or anything, really, in otherwise shapeless forms. Anthropologists have speculated that this might have to do with the need to keep the early, proto-human kiddies near the cave or the tree limb at night when hungry carnivores were on the roam.
See, those brats who were more prone to see faces, even imagined ones, in the shadows of night would tend to stay closer to home and, subsequently grow up to reproduce. The kids whose imaginations were less than lively might tend to traipse around while everyone else was asleep and thus become a tasty snack for a hungry cat.
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So, when you see bunny rabbits or the face of your Uncle Phil in the clouds on a breezy summer afternoon, know that you’re prob. not going to get swallowed whole any time soon.
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¡Viva La Revolución!
The parking meters that our noble city leaders had installed downtown in July are not at all controversial.
Photo: Chris Howell/Herald Times
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That is, they are universally despised, save for the mayor and the six city council members who voted for them. Flyers have been circulated calling for, if not their heads, the seats of the elected officials responsible for their installation. Some say Mayor Mark Kruzan may not even run for reelection in 2015 because of the hue and cry he’s been hearing outside his City Hall windows since the summer.
Some are being driven to open rebellion or, more accurately, stupid acts of vandalism. To wit: Many of the meters have been sprayed painted, thus obscuring their readouts and making them effectively unusable. Not only that, a few hot-blooded insurrectionists are jamming materials like tape and wood into the meters’ coin slots.
I’m certain once NSA spies and Wall Street banksters get wind of this popular uprising, they will promptly fold their tents and declare that The People have won.
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Off With Their Heads!
Speaking of The People winning, it was whispered into my ear recently that the WFHB Board of Directors actually voted on naming Cleveland Dietz as the station’s new general manager in open session last month.
Yup. After several Board members shrieked in November that they’d never, ever, ever disclose whom they voted for when the august body tabbed Kevin Culbertson as GM earlier in the fall (and, to refresh your memory, Culbertson’s appointment was shouted down by the Vox Populi), the BoD did a dramatic turnaround for the Dietz vote.
The Board noodled in closed session during its December meeting, wondering what to do next to find a captain for the drifting ship. Much of the talk centered on starting the excruciating, six-month national search process all over again. That is, until interim general manager Dietz, who had run the station since July and wasn’t even one of the three finalists presented to the Board by the GM search committee, piped up and said Hey, what about me?
According to knowledgeable sources, Board members looked at each other, shrugged, and said, Why not?
So, it was off to open session, sometime near midnight, to tab Dietz. And the mice in the City Hall walls cheered lustily.
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So what’s the problem with the WFHB Board hiring their very capable Interim Manager as permanent General Manager at an open meeting? According to the by-laws, this was entirely within the lawful powers of the WFHB Board. In fact, they could have done it by e-mail if they had wanted to. Available to the public on the web, at http://wfhb.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/bylaws.pdf :
6.3.5 Written Action.
Any action which might be taken at a Board Meeting, or at a Meeting of any committee established by the Board, may be taken without a meeting if done in writing and signed by all Members of the Board or committee. Approval of such action shall be made as required in the bylaws for the issue under consideration.
Since the alternative was to start up the resume-interview-hire process all over again, I think I speak for many when I say, Thank God they made a decision, and WFHB has an admirable new GM.
No problem at all, Joy. The item was for informational purposes. The only editorializing I did was to point out that the open session was probably only witnessed by the mice in the walls. I like the choice of Cleveland.
Jeffe: What alternative source of city funding do you propose? Without an alternative this sounds very much like typical Democrat cant: “give me this and make someone else pay for it.”
If you think the meters are ‘universally despised’ then perhaps you need to get out of your echo chamber, many of us didn’t despise them to begin with and many more have come to realize the are far from the end of the world. I love the fact that I can now find parking when before I could not, and there is still plenty of free parking available if one knows where to look for it.