I'm Just Sayin'.

Now I Know: The Town in Alabama That Has Huge, Random Sculptures - fredjonasmd@gmail.com - Gmail (google.com)

There are things municipalities do to distinguish themselves, and to enhance the lives of the people who live there.  What these municipalities do is different depending on the styles, resources, and other factors of the municipalities.  Not one of these things is the "right" thing to do.  They're just possibilities, depending, as I say.

Our glaring, blindingly conspicuous possibility, which many other municipalities couldn't do (because they don't have them), is improve our medians.  For who knows what reasons, we have persistently chosen not to do that.  We keep them looking terrible, and make them available for people to park on and drive over.

We have, however, begun to create a program of public art in the Village.  We have acquired three sculptures and one mural.  The sculptures were paid for by a limited number of our neighbors, and donated to the Village, and the mural was paid for out of Village funds.  We could do more.  A suggestion was made, and not adopted, to charge each household as little as $6-$10 (that's $7200-$12K) per year to create a public art fund.  That minuscule amount of money would allow the Village to buy one nice sculpture every year or so, or less expensive displays more often.  Or, we could save up for a few years or so at a time, and get something really impressive.

The linked article above talks about an Alabama town that established a program like that, and it was fully funded by one resident of the town.  There are other municipalities in various places (two in the upper midwest, one in NY, San Francisco, and San Diego, that I know about), that have used public money to buy public art.  Kansas City, Missouri, also has a well-developed collection of public sculptures, paid for mostly by the Blochs of H and R Block.

We could do this, and it would be cheap, on a per house basis.  As various people and organizations like to say, we could do it for the price of two cups of Starbucks coffee per year.

Our problem has consistently been a lack of ambition, enthusiasm, vision, creativity, and motivation to improve our lives.  And, as I say, for next to nothing.

I never read the book, but have you ever seen the movie of "The Time Machine?"  Do you remember the essentially mindless Eloi, who would march to their deaths when the Morlocks blasted a tone over speakers, or who would sit inert while one of their own was caught in a river flow, and likely to drown?  That's sort of how we are about improving our lives here.

After many decades, we finally erected a Public Works building, then we acquired our three sculptures, then our mural.  But other than that, we can't do a thing to help ourselves.  We don't even do the most minimal thing any more, which is enforcing our own Codes.  The current fanfare is about establishing some new Codes, but if we don't enforce any of them, then what's the point?  I'm told we're working on enforcing Codes, or that it's one of the allegedly many things on the manager's desk.  But I don't think the check is in the mail, either.

PS: The source of the linked story -- NowIKnow.com -- is free.  They publish posts five days a week.  I have found almost all of them interesting.  If we're still as inert as the Eloi, at least we can amuse ourselves reading interesting posts five days a week.