The Enid Event Center downtown is haunted by 2 dead businesses + "retreat" edition UPDATE at bottom.

Once upon a time, what seems to be like forever ago, Enid had its own non-government TV station that was actually broadcasting on actual broadcast air (not cable).  Those who remember the ghost of its deceased owner, Rex Faulkner, will also remember  how the station was before the station was sold off.  Yeah--in the name of desperate fund raising, it presumed to go into competition with an east side business, now also deceased: Walls Bargain Center.  And Walls was an inventory liquidation sale outlet, one of a major chain of stores, that eventually decided that the business of that genre wasn't significant enough in Enid to warrant staying open, and so it permanently closed.  The chain still has successful stores elsewhere in Oklahoma--just not in Enid anymore.

Liquidation sales was the essence of the Walls business model; it was not the business model of KXOK and what KXOK did was out of fund-raising desperation. Fast forward to 2016, and we get to see both ghosts of businesses past on cable now, in this form:

Like I said--the Enid Event Center is haunted, and not by just one ghost.

That's Enid for ya--keeping it classy. Perish the thought that Enid should EVER be too classy to be your friendly neighborhood junk peddler.

Successful Walls business locations across Oklahoma:

They're just not successful in Enid.  I wonder why.
Seriously ponder why Eskimo Joe's doesn't want to come to Enid except around Christmas time, why the New China buffet closed and Pizza Hut moved AWAY from Owen K. Garriott (Route 412). We don't have a Denny's anymore, and there's a reason for that, too. Still wanna hide behind the "Enid's growing" declaration that you got suckered into for purposes of passing that Enid Public Schools bond while you're too scared to notice that Enid claims to be growing while it's losing sales tax money hand over fist at the same time?

How does a community grow into more people buying stuff, and lose sales tax money at the same time, people?  Do the math.  Oh--that's right: the only math Enid Public Schools ever taught was the math it also claimed you'd never use in your life after you graduate.  That's why no one on the City Commission knows how to draw a line from Point A in Grant County to Point B in Kingfisher County across Garfield County--that would be Euclidean Geometry.

The failure of Enid Public Schools to value, let alone teach, mathematics is costing the City of Enid actual big money, people.  I don't mean the Vanhooser Basic Arithmetic, folks--I mean the mathematics from which analytical skills come.  The City of Enid is looking at a list of word problems it has no clue how to figure out because it was taught that what you learn in math class is stuff you'll never use after you graduate.  Those youngsters you think are going to learn coding by osmosis or something aren't going to be able to cut it in coding without analytical skills and yes--mathematics.  You know that Right To Farm bill contemplated by the Oklahoma Congress, the one that DEMANDS that farming be based on science?  You need math skills for that, even to be a farmer...so...the kids you're sending to Enid Public Schools won't even qualify for a farmer's job when they graduate.  Picking produce next to an illegal immigrant, maybe, but not farming.

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In other news, my milkweed kids are coming along quite nicely in their waterbottle containers, as you can see by this Ferry Morse Butterfly Weed seedling:

I'll be posting others on my 2016 Monarch blog page.

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Saturday UPDATE, City of Enid's 5-grand "retreat" edition: ....but first....on the portion of this post where I address how much Enid Public Schools is actually costing the City by failing to put importance on mathematics as distinguished from arithmetic...I was doing some research on the origins of Common Core, despised by conservatives who USED TO be the ones complaining about how the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch in the car market in the 1990s, how they were taking over the American auto market.  The talkingpoint line used back then was "American children have computer games--Japanese kids have homework".  It seems that Oklahoma conservatives in particular have a short attention span when it comes to being "pro business" at a time when corporations found American students sub-standard compared to the students elsewhere across the globe.  

Now, Trump might whine about how Carrier and other businesses took American jobs overseas, but it's overseas where corporations find competent workers, and that's the same reason we have special visas for foreigners to come to the U.S. to work at U.S. jobs, and (voila!) businesses that contemplate moving to Enid also insist on the construction of apartment complexes so that they can import qualified staff instead of hiring unqualified locals.  High quality jobs demand high levels of competency and a near-exclusive fine arts focus of Enid Public Schools just won't cut that mustard, folks.

Oklahoma hates Common Core because it knows it can't possibly measure up to international competency standards while it continues to whine about how America needs to be great again thinking that mathematic illiteracy is great.  The City of Enid had to hire an expert from Tulsa because there's no such thing as an Enid-grown expert.  Dwell on that, folks.  And now we have a City Commission that has "retreats" far afield from Enid because even in the City Commission's own view, Enid isn't good enough to stay in.

Dwell on that, folks. Dwell on that a long, long time. It might eventually dawn on you that Enid can't afford to permit ANY of the current City Commission to run for re-election unchallenged.