Rain, Rhetoric, and Reason — A Week in Columbia


My Dear Columbia,

I write to you today having weathered, quite literally, a week that offered rain, rhetoric, and civic drama that only a small borough can produce with such enthusiasm. Do sit down. Pour something warm into your cup. This will take a moment.

On the matter of progress, and whether we are progressing anywhere good: One must ask, dear reader, where all this technology is escorting us, arm in arm, whispering sweet nothings all the while. Drones overhead, phones in every pocket. And now, data centers, those humming cathedrals to the cloud, which is not, as it turns out, a fluffy thing in the sky but rather a very loud building down the road that wants your water and your peace and quiet (and peace of mind) in exchange for services you did not know you needed.

"Progress" marches on, though it rarely asks permission, yet somehow no one seems to have any more time than before. The future arrives whether or not the parking is sufficient to accommodate it.

But here we are again with autumn's other seasonal affliction, arriving alongside the changing leaves and the sudden, aggressive appearance of lawn signs: campaign season, when the smears fly thicker than geese, and twice as messy.

It has always mystified this author how readily good people will vote against their own interests on the strength of a lie well-told and a fear well-stoked. One is reminded that the gut is a marvelous organ for digesting supper, but considerably less reliable when it comes to digesting policy. Yet every cycle, the gut is consulted as though it were an oracle, when in fact it is only ever telling you that the bean souffle was a mistake.

The head reasons, weighs, and occasionally changes its mind when shown new facts. The gut reacts, recoils, and votes for whoever most recently frightened it.

And twas ever thus, dear reader. Democracy has never once required its citizens to be reasonable, only to show up, and show up they shall, guts fully in charge, heads politely along for the ride.

Now, to the business of the week. Council met — and actually listened. A special session convened to wrestle with the data center ordinance, and residents turned out to say their piece. And Council, bless them, appeared to take notes rather than merely nod politely and continue on. One almost didn't recognize the process. It was, dare one say, functional.

Meanwhile, the skies staged their own protest, and a rather more effective one at that. Fall arrived and immediately opened the floodgates—rain, rain, and further rain, drowning nearly every event the calendar had proposed. Albatwitch, that peculiar and beloved local tradition, went soggy. The fireworks fizzled before they could even try. Art in the Park became, more accurately, Art Getting Rained On in the Park. Music turned into the sound of squeaking shoes.

Some say that this is the new normal—the storms and the political weather that arrive with equal disregard for our carefully laid plans. Perhaps it is normal, in the sense that it now occurs with regularity. But don't mistake frequency for acceptability. There is nothing normal, in the older, gentler sense of the word, about weather that throws a tantrum, nor about a democracy where fear campaigns for our gut before facts can even get a word in.

And yet Columbia persists. Council listens, occasionally. Residents show up, occasionally. We endure, as we always have, one soggy festival and one contentious ordinance at a time.

Until next week, dear Columbia, keep your umbrella handy.

Yours in fond and only mildly damp observation,
A Certain Someone Who Notices Everything,
Cassandra 

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