Brief comment re: Enid Eagle...prefaced by news flash UPDATE

No church should ever feel that it's necessary to put itself in a position like this.

I was out making a video of a walk-around at Exchange Park with the purpose of ending the walk at the big sign that announced a faith-based community improvement project, and I was going to title the video "City of Enid's Tax on Church", basically because that's the City's responsibility, not any church's.

Turns out that this was a gift that kept on giving.  In my driving away, I discovered a couple of whopper pothole farms, too, and in Ward 6--Vanhooser's badly neglected Ward.

Remember that previous post where I announced the campaign kick-off with a Welcome to Ward 5 sign next to a pothole farm? Only the side of the road that the sign was is Ward 5.  Across from that sign is Ward 6, where I didn't show footage that I took of Vanhooser Ravine on Cherokee, just off of Railroad Ave.  I revisited the site to get updated footage (I removed my sign quite some time ago, right after the Commission announced that it was closing "alleys" when it meant those particular streets.  Fancy that--it took an election to get Vanhooser to get off his hinney to close off what should have been closed off years ago).

Well, just cuz he closed the roads near my sign doesn't mean that he's paid attention to his other pothole farms, and I've got 'em on video.  Stay tuned.  Yup, he's trying to re-write his piss-poor record at the last inning, and it's a hoot.

Ah, I've got it!   Ward 6, The Movie: Vanhooserville.  Trailer preview follows.
Some wardsmen claim that there's a woman to blame,
but we know (da-da da-da da) it's their own damn fault.

It's no surprise, is it, that when public officials have things they don't want people to see, they think all people with cameras are creepy.  Even when they're attention-hogs presenting public events.  In public, too. No wonder such people didn't allow cameras in on the study sessions until the last two.  Typically scurry when the light of day shines...right, Eric Benson?  Of course.  Me, I don't mind cameras, but the big question is...can the camera stand it.  Yeah, I'm very much aware of the fact that I have a face that looks like a fugitive from a horror show......oh, wait....I am, actually.  I'm definitely certain Commissioners' worst nightmare. 
Aim a camera at me and I'll even do an Edith Piaf impression, with all due apologies to +KYLE DILLINGHAM . No, I regret nothing. XD

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I note a more journalistically proper article in the paper and noted that it was written by a different reporter.  There's just one teensy-tiny misquote in there, though--I didn't say that my dad was a pilot.  I didn't specify.

For the record, though, Julien Levesque was called a "radio man" at the time, teaching electronics communications to the Scott AFB military students in WWII.  He remained a civilian as he was also a Roman Catholic cleric (not a priest--a brother, which is sort of like a friar). He's the primary reason I got into electronics technology and amateur radio (KC7LJG is the callsign).

Also wanted to put up a shout-out to gri, and mention yet again that I'm not in agriment with what continues to go on in Ukraine.  Gri, I've been 'way too busy to drop by your website, but as soon as I come up for air, I'll make a point of it.

P.S. Gri, you posted a link to my blog on your site?!  Well I'll be danged!  And I'm flattered!

Betting that Tom Boepple got a guffaw out of today's paper

Debate countdown: T minus 55 minutes as of this posting.

Oh yeah, huh.   The paper didn't mention the debate, did it.  Like I've said for years--it's the Enid News-Ain't-Got-Nothin'-To-Do-With-It and Eagle.
XD

...and it's over and it was more like Prime Minister's Questions sans raucous chamber members than it was like a debate.  Points were scored, though. Despite a serious sudden brain freeze with tongue fumble, it all went pretty well.  I just surprised myself as to how un-used to that I had gotten over the years.  Gonna have to brush up on that.  Hey Suzanne, how 'bout being a practice sparring partner? :D

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Enjoying the blazes out of the Enid Eagle's top front page editorial this morning.  Had the article's author submitted that writing to a Journalism 101 class, he wouldn't have gotten above C level simply by his choice of loaded words.  Yup--in the class study of the difference between an objective article and an editorial, the former doesn't contain the author's opinion while an editorial does.

+George Strayline for one knows that "self-described" doesn't cover the fact that I've been in print as a satirist as far back as the mid-1970s, and Tom Boepple, for one among many, knows that "self-described" doesn't cover my artwork either.  Bottom line: the reporter had to come up with something to write without doing his research homework and was basically shooting from the hip where his gut was making his choice of words for him.

Dale, if you had bothered to look at the Education section of the resume I filed with what was filed with the Election Board, you'd have known that my first foray into academia was via the School of Communications, Radio/TV department, and one of the reasons I was drafted into the Alpha Lambda Delta honor fraternity is that I aced all my English/Composition classes including Journalism 101.

But nothing could have done a finer job of rallying my base than you did.  Thank you!  In the meantime, you might want to Google up the definition of the phrases "loaded words" and "slanted words".  You can't claim to be objective when you use 'em, as they're the primary difference between an editorial and a report.  Journalism 101.

Well hey--a person with a heavy industrial manufacturing background *would* know how to make stuff.

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Here we go.  Copy and print as many as you like.

Catching my breath briefly just to say this...

...to my Enid local regulars, there's going to be a formal debate moderated by Frank Baker in the City council chamber on January 28. Tentative time set at 6 pm, possibly subject to change.  Will keep you posted.

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Saturday UPDATE: Heard some most excellent City political scuttlebutt whilst at Winter Chautauqua workshops this AM. Because it's scuttlebutt, I won't repeat it, but I will say this: The City has recognized some complaints as actual threats to incumbents, not just the Ward 5 incumbent, and has made moves to mitigate those conditions complained about.  Nice try, Team Wilson-Vanhooser, but your record remains carved in stone and if you're doing an about-face on your previous positions, it only means that your record is indefensible.  You can't re-write your record.

And so I am commencing to be insufferably smug for the rest of the day.

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Monday UPDATE: A supporter has stepped forward to pay for the printing of some mini hand bills. It's January and the campaign is...well...snowballing.  It's all good.

After the door-hangers ran out, a lot of people around Ward 5 got some version of this under the windshield wiper:

It's not all about just the Ward 5 incumbent, Dale--it's all about that base. You know--the base that Vanhooser gave me.  You're not even close to objective, are you.  Pay attention, son.

Today, it's getting typeset and machine printed.
Message: never spend money you don't have but always work with what you have already paid for...then spend the money that *does* come in on exactly the thing it comes in for.

The cost of the campaign so far is still under $200 which includes the $100 filing fee.

The cost of the unlined index cards used for the above hand bill = going-back-to-school deal of 3 packages of 100 cards for $1.  Staples Rewards discount was used to buy the Sharpies, also on back-to-school sale when purchased.

Staples "cover stock" (not card stock) purchased for making DVD envelopes with was reg. price of $11 and change, on sale for $9 and change, purchased during their "everything that fits in the bag is 20% off" sale.  When the DVD envelope material was cut and set aside, the left over cuttings were used to make the door hangers. The work and effort put into all of it: priceless. ;)

As Paul Harvey would have said, "Now you know the rest of the story."

And a huge thank you to the volunteer ground troops out there.  You're better than any purchased advertising because you're not just getting the word out, you're also making the case. You're the greatest! I see a victory party in your future!

For the pro-Koch Nitrogen people regarding the water issue, I come with unique skills that the incumbent does not have, and we can talk water processing in detail.  I've run and maintained polishers at the Illinois Power Company's Baldwin generating station and I come in knowing more about treatment steps all the way from the initial screen, chlorination (yes, I'm hazmat qualified, and I'm talking about chlorinators fed with straight chlorine gas from railroad tanker cars), floc, mechanical de-aeration (necessary for boiler tube circulation water as well as for turbine steam), and the cation bed, the anion bed, and the mixed bed.  (The most fun I had was checking the control calibrations of a radio operated train, and I'm not talking about the kind of train you find under your Christmas tree.  This was a full sized locomotive which brought coal in from the coal yard and loaded up the crusher hoppers).

At Motorola, it was "DI" water, as in de-ionized water. And if you think that was all fun, just imagine how much fun it was working on those massive boiler feed pumps.  Speaking of pumps, nitrogen as a fertilizer isn't the only nitrogen I'm familiar with.  There's the liquid nitrogen required for cryo-pumps, which produce vacuum measured in Torr rather than in inches of mercury column.  Koch folks who want to talk details of water with a City official, you'll get somebody more literate in that field with me than with the incumbent.

I would be able to read the entirety of a FEMA flood study and actually understand it.

I am also familiar with wiring codes, residential and industrial, 3 phase, and I would actually enjoy talking to and working with the City engineering department.

Speaking of Levesques, I hope the relations out by the Cape Cod and Fall River vicinities are safe. 
 

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Tuesday mini-UPDATE, You-Can-Bet-On-It Edition: I looked up WGBH, clicked on their Contact Us link, and fired off a communique regarding THIS American's Experience doing patent research, and how they got a few things wrong about the phonograph according to patents filed and granted.
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MLK weekend in Enid

People who went to the annual commemorative march yesterday (Saturday) know that I shot footage of it.  Those same people also know that the Enid News & Eagle "photoshopped" the picture they ran in the paper today (Sunday).  And of those who might read this blog, they know that I haven't posted the vid.

Know ye that I don't plan to.I attended for personal reasons, and I did stay to watch the documentary Grayson Church showed afterward.  There are exactly 3 people who showed up there that had a clue, because they listened to what I said about being just up the river from Memphis at the time, and what wasn't mentioned in the documentary (but what I remember quite clearly) were the Cairo IL race riots going on at the time, just up the river from Memphis TN.  It's why I henceforth had no qualms about living in black neighborhoods or attending black churches back in the day when such a thing was still highly controversial.

Have a nice day.

The Enid News & Eagle would never get shots like these, either.  By the way, in the photo immediately above, the guy on the left-most is also a Chautauqua regular.  I was in good company in more ways than one.

Below, Selma remembered...

...to Garriott...

...and then...the Eagle has landed....

I think I should mention that I had an aunt that lived in Ferguson MO some years back and I remember that 'burb of St. Louis, too. A lot of stuff hitting close to home, as it were, these days.

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P. S. for +Tim Lang :

Student, teach thyself!

I think that nothing says more about how much extra cash that the Enid Public Schools system than this does...

...but it ranks right up there with the cash they had to buy all new equipment for EPS TV and hire a doctorate communications person, plus assistant, to run the thing.

This is also an admission that the EPS administration itself doesn't even know beans about education.  After what I saw at the last EPS board meeting, I believe it.

Hey there, big spender--remember this classic over-reach?

Newspaper polls showed that this would be voted for. Newspaper polls showed that our mayor would be Vanhooser. Newspaper polls show that the newspaper is a failure at polls.

Just think of how the vote saved us from having this shoved down our throats, too.

Separate follow-up post to the previous entry, YWCA thing

Doing oppo research already? I haven't filed yet. LOLz.

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I had an interesting conversation with a supporter after the YWCA luncheon in which she mentioned some U.N. program that sounded like the comprehensive planning that the City Commission had under consideration, as described in the previous post and videos.

In that vein, I think it's important to point out that the City Commission spent $ soliciting comprehensive plans from professional planners in April, 2014, in a special meeting outside of its regularly scheduled meetings. What happened at the last study session was the culmination of that adventure.

Sounds almost exactly like what they did when they spent $ to solicit a master plan for parks, doesn't it.  You know, the one that got voted down overwhelmingly and the City claimed that they didn't see it coming. Deja vu all over again.

In other news, the YWCA luncheon led to 2 more speaking engagements now under negotiations.  I sure liked the write-up in the newspaper this morning, too.

Here we go!

Just got my mom's bicycle in working order, and there will be a camera attached, to show what it's like biking that poor excuse for a bike trail in Enid.  By all means, stay tuned.

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Islam has nothing to do with the situation at City Hall, but the topic did come up for discussion, with a source cited as being talk show radio.  Here's a list the big mistakes they make with the Koran right out of the gate:

1) They're reading it
2) In English
3) Out of proper context of the Hadiths and Sunnah
4) They're pretending that Muslims use it like Christians use a Bible.  They don't.

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Heads up, Enid OK--something big down at City hall--vids & update

If you make a habit out of tuning in to cable channel 12 for the usual live airing of the City Commission, you missed a major study session on cable camera, surprise surprise!

Make a point to catch the repeat sked and be sure to tune in earlier than usual.  For the first time, there was something akin to a teleconference, and the topic was Big Ideas.  As in a long-term master plan for future Enid growth and infrastructure.

Yes, I took my camera there tonight like I have been to every City study session of late, and yes, I have footage of the whole thing, but up until this point, there's never been a study session on City camera before.  Ever.

Some of this stuff included a few things I was already campaigning on (like the City doing a better job of including the colleges in stuff) and stuff I was going to make an issue of (potholes vs shiny-object grand projects like the hiking trail, the bike trail, the failed parks overhaul, additional dog parks...anything requiring matching funds for which the Streets and Alleys Fund was always raided to provide for) just got a whole lot bigger.  Vast plans with vast Big Ideas footnoted by an "education program" to "educate" the public as to how good these vast plans are gonna be when we all embark on the journey to the sky-resident pie.

Everything I thought I was gonna say at the Friday luncheon at the Y just got tossed out the window.

Well, almost. We're gonna be in for a wild, wild ride.  Then again, I wouldn't be me if I wasn't just chock full of surprises from having to think on my feet, now, would I.  Never say never.  When situations warrant change, so changes the charted navigation.

Oh.  I have to add that there is one thing the City did that was smart. Hiring Jerald Gilbert as City Manager. Nobody's better in that position, especially after the last two products of a Manager Farm we got in a row just prior.  There's hope.

Here's the first 15-ish minutes of that study session...sorry, but better quality is not possible on Blogger, currently...

 Higher res version is now up on YouTube.
 Seriously, people--somebody needs to be elected to the City Commission who will pull a Tom Coburn on many of these #vast-plans #half-vast-plans just like the voters did with the City's half-vast mega-plan for our parks. 

The second 15-ish minutes are now available with a warning about my strange sense of humor, which explains some of the odd focus shots I take from time to time, and I acknowledge up front that they're cringe-worthy. XD

Third 15-ish minute segment on YouTube
Fourth segment on YouTube
Fifth and last segment

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Wednesday UPDATE: I hope good Enid citizens caught these articles in today's paper:

That second article admits that this big government overreach was Benson's Big Idea. Trouble is that he had big government overreach Commissioners who also thought this was a good vast idea...which would explain the half-vast execution.  While we were moaning and groaning about the big government overreaches in Washington, look at the big government overreaching coyotes we let into city government to raid the hen house in our own back yard.

How about this Big Idea? Give the job of promoting Enid back to the Chamber of Commerce, whose job it always was. Government doesn't need to be spending big bucks going into the broadcasting business in competition with our commercial entities and we don't need to be paying a PR guy to run interference between the public and their publicly elected Commissioners. Let's be commercial City of Enid instead Government-Is-Here-To-Help City of Moscow.

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Yeah, I know--I should post something about how Je Suis Charlie and a cartoon to show my own support of the First Amendment in this country and Liberte Expression abroad, but I'm a person who knows the history of this oft-cited French tradition of lampooning.  It's actually against the law in this country.  Take a wild guess where the term "libel" originates.  Libel, my friends, is the time honored French tradition referred to, and France is where the U.S. legal system got that term from.

History of libel publications
Paris Digest
Le Monde blog entry, in English
France 24, in English
Paris Match, en francais

Nous sommes tous Charlie

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Thursday miniUPDATE: Sorry you didn't win the Pillar of the Plains award, Frank Baker--I was pullin' for ya.  I'm still a big fan of "It's Mostly News".

 A most worthy gentleman won, though, and I can't imagine the anguish the judges have to go through to pick the winner.  Congrats, Mr. Allen!

Hey Ward 5 City Commissioner, betcha didn't know THIS!

Each one of those campaign signs your team took down are hand-crafted works of art that have a commitment to a private collection.  Of course it's a misdemeanor to remove your general usual average cheap campaign signs, but it's quite another to be an art thief, with the theft being artifacts of a private collection.  If they were destroyed, there's an additional vandalism charge that goes with that.

Now then--this situation was turned into an advantage when knocking on doors, asking as to whether or not anyone saw anything regarding sign removal.  You can remove signs, hon, but you can't un-ring a door bell.

And what has been seen cannot be unseen. People who saw the signs also see that they've been removed by somebody who isn't the candidate whose name was on the sign.  While you and yours might like to think people are that stupid, I can tell you that they're not--I've talked to them, and so I know better than that.

Almost forgot to mention that the signs have been photographed for insurance purposes. Ever hear of the saying, "six feet deep and still digging"?  You might consider putting your shovel down.

+Tammy Wilson +cityofenid

Going all out Habsburg as the 100th anniversary year of the Great War passes.

This is not news to those who know me, though--I do this every January 1st: tune in to PBS to catch Julie Andrews in Austria.  She's taken over for the now-deceased Walter Kronkite, who used to host...and so forth.

I never met a Strauss I didn't like.

But still, I managed to learn something new this go-'round, much to my own surprise. With all the Strauss I've enjoyed over the years, I never put a certain 2 and 2 together 'til now.  That would be Strauss and Sherman.  I knew that Allan Sherman borrowed heavily from classical music, but there's a snippet of his Dropouts March I hadn't pegged as Strauss til this evening.

And with that, the remainder of the day has become a double delight.  I never met an Alan Sherman I didn't like, either.

Ignoramus, there you are
Sitting in your hopped-up car
And your brains ain't up to par
And your ears stick out too far.

The Blue Danube Waltz has just concluded, and the Radetzky March is imminent.
 Happy New Year!

..and here's Allan Sherman...

...but the musical phrase isn't exclusive to either Sherman or Strauss, as it happens.