The following is the introduction to the RNA’s gentrification position paper, which will be discussed and voted on at the Feb. 11 RNA meeting. After the introduction, the paper goes on to explain the three main elements in detail. It was crafted and modified by Jerry Patzwald, chair of the RNA Development Committee, and other members of RNA.
diversity
Posted inCommentary & Opinion
Materialism and Idealism in American Life
by George Santayana
The pioneer must devote himself to preparations; he must work for the future, and it is healthy and dutiful of him to love his work for its own sake. At the same time, unless reference to an ultimate purpose is at least virtual in all his activities, he runs the danger of becoming a living automaton, vain and ignominious in its mechanical constancy. Idealism about work can hide an intense materialism about life. Man, if he is a rational being, cannot live by bread alone nor be a labourer merely; he must eat and work in view of an ideal harmony which overarches all his days, and which is realised in the way they hang together, or in some ideal issue which they have in common. Otherwise, though his technical philosophy may call itself idealism, he is a materialist in morals; he esteems things, and esteems himself, for mechanical uses and energies. Even sensualists, artists, and pleasure-lovers are wiser than that, for though their idealism may be desultory or corrupt, they attain something ideal, and prize things only for their living effects, moral though perhaps fugitive.
Posted inColumns
Stewardship Means Caring for the Natural Part of Our Community
“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources’, but it does affirm their right to continued existence in a natural state.” — Aldo Leopold, Sand Co. Almanac 1949
Posted inFurther Down Stream
November 2002
Sewer work on Humboldt – St. Casimir and St. Mary of Czestochowa parishes merger-related rumors laid to rest – Strive media/GTV – Holton-Burleigh gas station update – Construction Grant for Beerline bike path approved – Pagan Unity Council formed – Gun violence – Pedestrian bridge over river to Caesar’s Park – Riverwest Shady Bars
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