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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, June 12, 2000
Summertime, and the city is seething
You think editorial writers don't get the blues? Think again. Oh, sure, a lot of you think we spend our time cackling madly as we devise ever more noxious proposals and edicts to Ram Down Your Throats.
What do you expect? It's in the job description.
Still, there is the occasional sinking spell. I experienced one such on Thursday evening as I set about the business of wedging the letters to the editor into the appropriate spaces for them in the weekend papers.
Whoa, said I to myself. So much anger. So much resentment. So much rancor. A heck of a lot of us are royally ticked off at . . . well, at darn near everything. Taxes. Garbage pickup. Dead dogs. Ethnic slights. You name it, somebody out there is furious about it.
Why? I think several factors are at work, most prominent among them the steady shift in power away from the old Anglo-dominated establishment to a new dispensation in which Hispanics predominate. Nothing in the world wrong with that, but it does tend to set some people's teeth on edge.
Then you must crank into the equation another factor that has hackles rising everywhere: the disarray in which our governmental entities - the city and CCISD especially - find themselves. The city is paying the price for all those years of dipping into the financial reserves, and CCISD looks to be hunkering down for a protracted battle over Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra.
As I read one irate letter after another Thursday evening, I all but succumbed to melancholy: Are we, I wondered, hell-bent on slip-sliding our way back to the old Sleepy Fishing Village days?
Then I snapped out of it. Come on, said I to myself: You gonna sit there and rend your garments all evening, or you gonna come up with a plan?
Fair enough: After some serious cogitating, I have devised a three-pronged offensive that just might get us off dead center. Your plan may be better (in fact, I hope it is), but here, for what it's worth, is the NewsWretch's take on The Crisis in Corpitos and how to deal with it:
Tae Bo. You've probably seen it in the infomercials, not to mention the TV ads the Tae Bo people are doing for the Subway sandwich shops. It appears to the untotored observer to be an exercise program with martial-arts overtones. Or, perhaps, vice versa.
But, you ask, Tae Bo? Here? Why not? I mean, take a look at those people hopping around at the urgings of their instructor(s). Does something strike you about them? Of course it does: They all seem to be having a wonderful time. They're practically bursting with energy, bonhomie and vitality. I don't know about you, but I think we could use some of that around here. Either it would generate great positive vibes, or it would at least tire us out to the point we wouldn't have the energy to be so cranky and contentious.
We find ourselves some go-to guys. You know: guys to whom you can go turn when you need the strategic nudge, the sage advice, and/or the connections to make good things happen for the community. At various times in years past, Corpus Christi has been rich in such people: Hayden Head Sr., Jimmy Storm, Dr. Hector P. Garcia, Ben Garza and former Caller-Times publisher Edward H. Harte, to name but a few.
Sure, some out there will always view such people with profound suspicion: In their mind-set, the go-to guy is a fixer, a manipulator, a power broker. At the risk of offending, however, I will point out that we don't seem to be doing all that well without him (or her).
Finally, could our weather people do something about pencilling us in for a nice cool snap, about, say, three weeks in duration? La Niña has been doing all sorts of meteorological mischief; why not this? Bring down the temps and the humidity, and maybe, just maybe, we could converse in public without feeling the need to throw furniture at one another.
Brooks Peterson
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