Saturday, October 22, 2022

Saturday Sermon

 

Willie Nelson Fixed This


People in London complain because COVID asset strippers killed off landmarks, like Simpson's on the Strand, the Savoy Tailors Guild and great bank branches like Lloyd's Law Courts and the Aldwych/Strand Barclays, which is now an annoyingly overpriced restaurant. And pubs, the Tipperary on Fleet Street (oldest Irish pub in town?) is now no more. 

How very tragic, and I mean that. Hopefully USD will continue to grow in strength so we can buy and save these places, for posterity and the good of all. You can imagine, there we are on the Strand and the monkey produces a battered $20 bill. Helpful simian, "Thank you, monkey, we shall buy this place."

But seriously, Londoners who think they have it bad should visit this rural Texan haven's town square and take stock.


Gary...

Quackers "ice cream parlor" and burger joint? Shut. Axe Throwing startup in our old Citizen's bank, shut. Antique shops, they tried to reinvent this town as an antique shop, shut x 4. Burger King? Shut. 2 of 4 car dealers? Shut. Gold Nugget Pawn? Shut. And the list goes on, small town mercantile carnage. But don't worry, your kid can get a sex change as zhir goes to a highway strip mall for puberty blockers. What a crock.

There's an issue here and a big one. Why can't we, the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the face of the planet make beautiful, livable cities and towns? And for a fact we mostly don't, we've produced one urban sh*thole after another, see Detroit, Chicago, Gary, Dallas, Fort Worth, Atlanta, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Upstate New York and on, take your pick.



Why? Market forces, greed? Sure, all of that and more besides, but it doesn't have to be this way. We have more than enough power and creativity to build places to live in to uplift heart and mind. To do so, we must change or convert our collective soul.

Acknowledging that such a thing exists would be a good start. And then, just maybe, seeing we were wrong to enthrone secular, temporal power in the heart of our towns, in the courthouse on the square. This would've been a cathedral or collegiate church in a better age. I won't bang on.

Let's fix our cities and towns.


Your Pal,

LSP

14 comments:

  1. That was the beautiful old city hall building?
    And yes, it would be nice to build nice cities. Seems like there was a time when they thought about doing that.
    You all be safe and God bless.

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  2. "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe." Thomas Jefferson.

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  3. One thing that came from the ruins of the Hill County fire was an umpti-million dollar program to save courthouses. With a daily newspaper in North Texas at the time, I covered the Red River County courthouse renovation and the renovation of Honey Grove City Hall. My tax dollars at work, willingly donated.

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  4. Ugly cities with hurtful politics are led by the new left, Or old liberal ideas. When politics overwhelm common sense Walla Detroit, Cleveland etc. etc. appear. Good leaders produce better outcomes.

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  5. That's the old court house, Linda, and it's still there after being very well renovated after a fire, thanks, Willie Nelson. And yes, we're not here on the planet for very long and we should make the places we live in beautiful.

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  6. He certainly had a point, Wild.

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  7. Nice one, Sarge. They did well in Hillsboro, next step? Let's get the shops on the square open again.

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  8. I certainly wouldn't argue with that, Ole Scrapper. And you have to wonder at the civic leadership of this town. Why, for example, didn't they route industrial traffic around the town's center? As is, a truck route. Huh, I've lived in quieter places in central London.

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  9. The problem with urban s-holes is that they are full of savage inner-city people.

    The last time that I was in London - in 2019, it felt like downtown Cairo or Nairobi. It's not the London I knew in the 1970s.

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  10. It has changed, LL, no doubt about it, and I remember the pre internet city.

    The big change, imo, took place in the mid '90s when the place exploded with wealth. You could see it like a wave as Bentley Turbos filled the streets of South Ken and everything accelerated.

    It's a bit quieter now, bouncing back from Covidiocy, but still has greatness. We must RV there before too long.

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  11. The asset strippers have no interest in small towns, much less the rural life. It follows that such are not merely neglected, but rather actively worked against by public policy.

    Asset strippers are historically an urban folk who will not deign to perform actual physical work. Nor do they take delight in creation of practical things. No, for them it is the life of the mind: deep thoughts, fomenting revolutions, promoting perversion, and financial sleights-of-hand where the money somehow ends up in their pocketses. It is, after all, their precious. (Just watched the LOTR films again for some damn reason.)

    Mike_C

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  12. Ha! As I read your excellent comment, Mike, I started to think, please don't laugh, "Has he been reading Lord of the Rings?"

    And yes, the asset stripper has no regard for country life or life in general, bar their own. They're filled with satanic avarice and greed which hides under the veneer of luxury and ease.

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    Replies
    1. “Nor do they take delight in creation of practical things.”
      This was the sentence that got you thinking “Tolkien”, right? Because that’s what I thought as I was typing it.

      -M

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  13. Nor do they, M.

    And I fear you're psychic!

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