Pie!
Steve Abbott
Coordinator, the Poetry Forum at Larry’s; professor, Columbus State Community College
First, Columbus needs a grander vision, one that looks farther into the future and allows it to take on multiple projects at once and see the building of a community as a long-term project that demands insightful and possibly uncomfortable decisions that will take decades to realize. Our political and business leaders need to think on a longer and larger view. For example, for more than 25 years local leaders have avoided confronting the issues of mass transit and urban sprawl. The result has been increasing de-urbanization and stretching of public services over a larger area, increasing costs and straining the capacity of local government to meet community needs. This has occurred at the same time that the city is working to reinvigorate the urban core, with the result that city goals work at cross purposes. While leaders have dithered, available land and federal support for mass transit has disappeared. The growth of local businesses is limited by how much parking is available near them, so mass transit cannot be ignored. Relying on cars for every transport need has imprisoned the young and the old in our suburbs and turned parents into taxi services.We have to recognize and develop our local school system, from kindergarten to college, as an EDUCATION system, not simply a glorified form of job training. Although job training is important, the function of schools at all levels must be to create informed citizens who understand how to be part of a great experiment in self-government. It’s amazing to observe that people in countries far less democratic than our own are more active in participating in controlling their own lives than our own citizens. Life is about more, the poet Wordsworth noted, than “getting and spending.” It’s time we taught students that THEY are the government, not some group of businesspeople and the politicians they dine with.
Finally, Columbus needs a Public Clown. This individual’s job would be to attend public political, civic and athletic events in the garb of a jester and whose purpose would be to challenge, on behalf of thinking people, the fatuous proclamations of public figures. The Public Clown (PC for short, to note his role in confronting the renewed political correctness of invoking God for every lame purpose, and even a few venal ones) would sound an obnoxious, fartlike horn at the mention of God or “values” in any political speech or after-game sports interview. If the speaker continued, the PC would slap a cream pie in the speaker’s face, and the evening news could devote a brief segment of each newscast to the day’s PC actions in place of the endless self-promotional and cross-promotional “stories” run on local TV.
Steve has been a friend for more than 35 years, and he's absolutely right. But he left out the most important thing Columbus needs to do: de-emphasize football. Because without football, Columbus would have to at long last grow up, look around, and realize what a mess the city's become. Yeah, right. Rah rah.