05 March 2010

Life as a Human on Cincy

I feel very positive about Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati in general today. With this fantastic, bright sunny weather, preparing for all our Spring activities like soccer, gardening and Opening Day Parade. And then meeting great new neighbors with childern yesterday, I just feel like a new day is dawning downtown.

And when you feel like this, it is good to get reinforcement from outsiders now and again. Yesterday, I read a piece in the "Life as a Human" site:
I loved Cincinnati and its people.... there were troubles in Cincinnati, but it also felt more alive in some way. Cincinnati is an edge place. It’s a meeting of red state and blue state, of urban and Appalachia, black culture and white culture, industry and environmentalism.

Everyone should visit Cincinnati. It’s an important touchstone for understanding the complexity, the challenges, and the hope of America. A perfect place to hone our elemental media, and practice En’owkin, the Okanagan concept that translates as “Please give me the viewpoint most opposite of mine so I can increase my wisdom.”

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Isn't Vitamin D a wonderful thing??!! Loved the article and the perspective. Have worked with Peter Block before and think he's amazing. Love the shift of his thinking.

Randy Simes said...

Seem like great people, but I'm not sure I saw one person under the age of 30 in the room, with the vast majority appearing to be at or near retirement age.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was a good piece, albeit a bit condescending. There was also an awful lot of superficial, cliche buzzwords, and pabulum. And do we really need out of town veteran journalists (even those "that matter") to come in with whiteboards and start diagramming how they can "change the narrative?" (don't answer that....rhetorical).

I found it reeking ever so slightly with the whiff of journalistic elite in the guise of "stepping out of the progressive circles" in which they more typically run.

That said, however....I'm not going to slag on them too much. Postive reinforcement from outsiders is always nice, welcome and appreciated. But maybe Peter Block should step out of his ivory tower in Mt. Adams a bit more and see what is really going on in the city. He might be surprised by what he finds.

There are people here already working to "change the narrative," and we've been doing it for a while now.

--casey

Quimbob said...

Don't trust anybody under 30.