QUINCY WRAPUP: I’ve been involved with a lot of events over my life, from civil rights protests to rock concerts to science fiction conventions, and I’ve never been involved with an event that ran with such well-oiled efficiency. I was going to say “ruthless efficiency,” but of course it was cheerful, considerate Midwestern efficiency and not ruthless in the least. The Quincy folks were charming hosts, and threw a dinner party for us last night where all the food was homemade, and delicious.

I wasn’t able to be there, but everything I’ve heard has been very positive, and I’m not surprised.  I know it’s considered silly to think your hometown is better than other places (although no sillier than thinking your town is worse than other places, which seems much more common around here), but there really does seem to be something special about the Quincy area.

I first noticed this in 1993, when Harry Smith of CBS News was here to cover the flood.  When he got back to NYC, he nearly got choked up when talking about the way the people here came together and worked to save the levees and each other’s homes and property.  He wasn’t saying this in Quincy on local TV, like a rock star shouting out “It’s great to be in [your town here] tonight, you guys rock the hardest!” He was saying it to his national audience, and really seemed to mean it when he said he’d never seen anything like it.

And now Glenn Reynolds, another guy who’s been all over the place, singles Quincy out as something special.  Maybe it really is.  I know we’ve got our share of crime, corruption, poverty, and so on, so it’s not like life is perfect here.  But it’s pretty darn good.  And when something happens that gives people a chance to come together and work against a common threat, whether it be a flood or out-of-control government spending, the people here really shine, rising to the occasion in a positive way.

Enough gushing from me.  More from Reynolds:

One interesting note: I’ve said this before, but those in the GOP who think that the Tea Party movement is for their benefit need to think again. Roger Stone spoke, and while nobody had anything against him in particular, several people told me that they thought the GOP was trying to co-opt the Tea Party Movement, and they weren’t happy about that. My advice to the GOP — and, for that matter, to those Democrats who care — is to try to find a way to address the Tea Party crowd’s interests, bearing in mind that if you don’t they’re just as happy to throw Republicans out of office as Democrats.

That’s true; the attempts to paint the Tea Party crowd as a Republican gang are simply false.  I’m sure many voted Republican in the last election, but that doesn’t mean they were happy about it.  They’re fed up with outrageous spending, and wary of the taxes or borrowing (and future taxes) that will be necessary to pay for it, so they’re opposing the people in power who are doing it, who are mostly Democrats at the moment.  There weren’t Tea Parties under Bush because while he spent a lot, it didn’t get crazy until the last year when he was on the way out, and we felt like we were rich enough to afford more then.  Obama has taken Bush’s spending policies and shifted them into overdrive and then switched on the nitrous.  We’re looking at 4-8 years more of this; it’s no surprise that people are getting upset about it, regardless of party.

If the Democratic party would reverse its positions on abortion and guns (or at least moderate them halfway) and adopt a more fiscally responsible position than the GOP, it could get a lot of votes from the kind of people who are going to Tea Parties.

One last quote:

But it probably doesn’t matter. Based on the level of organization, commitment, and sheer likability I saw this weekend, the folks from Quincy are going to wind up ruling the world anyway . . . .

I think he’s onto something….

Seriously, though, I hear a lot from Quincyans about how bad Quincy is, how there’s nothing to do, people are racist, whatever. It’s nice to hear an objective opinion once in a while that says we’re actually a pretty good bunch of folks.

Last night we went to see a group called the Decatur Park Singers.  They were supposed to perform outside at Clat Adams Park, but it was moved into the Civic Center due to the chance of rain.  They’re a group of about 20 college kids, mostly from Milliken University, who travel around performing as their summer job.  They sold CDs and bag chairs to help make money, but they weren’t pushy about it, and it was otherwise paid for by corporate sponsors.

I wasn’t expecting much, honestly.  After all, it was free; how good could they be, right?  Well, they were very good.  They were all great singers and musicians and danced well together, and seemed to be having a great time.  They did a Sesame Street montage that didn’t do much for me (I’ve never seen the show), but I bet the kids who got to go up front for it liked it.  They did songs from pretty much every era, from the Battle Hymn of the Republic to something by Miley Cyrus.  There was even some good 80s music in the mix.  One of the performers was Matt Sullivan from Quincy, who I’m told has performed with the Quincy Little Theater, so he got a big hand from the crowd when he was introduced.

This is one case where our elders are definitely wiser.  I’d say close to 3/4 of the crowd was retirement age.  A lot of this may not have seemed like their kind of music, but it was a fun night out and the price was right.  Smart folks.

We’ll definitely try to catch them again next year, and hope the weather is better so it can be outside the way they planned it.  And I’m going to try to pay more attention to events like this that are outside the usual fare.  People who say there’s nothing to do in this town just aren’t paying attention.

When the QTP is successful in altering the budget, removing the water / sewer increases, and ending the Quincy Raise-a-Palooza Festival, we vow not to celebrate by convoying city vehicles to Westview for a round of golf.

I don’t write much about politics on this blog, for a few reasons.  Everyone else is doing it, so there’s little to say that hasn’t already been said better elsewhere.  It’s also easy to get obsessed with it and spend way too much time writing about it (I must have written a book’s worth during the 2000 election, just in one PC-gamer newsgroup), to the detriment of other topics.

But worst of all, it gets depressing.  We conservatives are doomed to lose most of the time in politics, because it’s simply not in our nature to spend a lot of time and energy thinking about and getting involved in government.  We see government as a necessary evil that should be assigned certain tasks necessary to protect a nation and make it possible for people to live in it without killing each other.  Things like defending the borders and resolving disputes between the states—you know, things actually in the constitution.  It’s only natural that we’ll spend less effort on changing the government than modern liberals like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who think government can put a chicken in every pot and a doctor at every sickbed and a smile on every face  if we just put the right people in charge of it.

photo from flickr.com

So conservatives are destined to go down swinging most of the time—or to take a called third strike while we’re not looking because we’re going to church or spending time with family or running a business.  Chronicling that decline is a depressing business, and makes it easy to fall into too much cynicism and sarcasm.  (Which there’s a fair amount of in that last paragraph, for example, even though it’s all true.  And there’s some more.)  That’s just not the feel I want for my blog where I’m also talking about faith and growing chickens and peas in the backyard, so I only step into politics when I think I have something useful and new to say.

Still, there are small victories for conservatives now and then, even if they’re usually a backlash by the moderates in the middle against the progressives pushing their victories too far too fast.  The Tea Parties are a good example of that.  One thing that impresses me about the Tea Party movement is that they’re focused on the right thing: the spending.  Sure, high taxes are bad, but the spending is the real core of the problem.  Everyone dislikes high taxes, even the people who vote for them.  We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the guy who complains about taxes and then holds his hand out for his ag subsidy check, his federal research grant, or new pavement on the road past his house.

Attacking the spending is harder.  No matter how many trillions of dollars the government takes from us (or borrows—or just prints) and spends, every single one of those dollars is the most important one in the budget to someone out there.  The most ridiculous and wasteful pork barrel project pays someone’s salary.  So when you say you want to cut spending, you’re saying you want someone to be paid less or fired.  Sure, lower taxes and spending means a more productive nation and ultimately more jobs, but that’s little consolation for the university researcher who’s looking for a new job because the grant for her research on the effect of cow flatulence on the environment just got cut.  Every dollar spent goes to a real person who wants it very much, maybe even needs it.  So cutting spending means making tough choices, which is why we try not to think about it except when it gets so far out of hand that we have no choice.

So my hat’s off to the Tea Party folks, who are putting the focus on the real problem in a civil and peaceful way.  If nothing else comes of it, at least regular Americans who aren’t semi-pro protesters are learning a little about the process and getting involved.  Just be on your best behavior, folks; the DHS has its eye on you.  (Thanks, George.)

But the challenger didn’t present much of a case for shaking things up, leaving too many questions unanswered in the debates and then saying things out loud that everyone was talking about, but that a smart politician wouldn’t have said into a microphone.  People weren’t sure what to expect from him.  Although the economy is slowing and things aren’t booming like they once were, life in Quincy is still pretty good, so voters decided to keep most of the same people in charge.  That didn’t seem like a completely unreasonable decision under the circumstances.

Well, maybe we should have thought about it a little harder.  In response to these tough economic times, our city officials just voted themselves some healthy pay raises.  They’ve been doing that for at least ten years, but in past years everyone else thought they were getting rich too, thanks to the debt bubble.  Now that the debt bubble has burst, many people are having to get by on less, or at least plan to get by on less when they retire now that their investment accounts have dropped.  Not our city officials; they’re determined to keep living larger every year.  No getting by on less for them.

Here’s a graph showing the change in income for the mayor and his head cronies over the past ten years.  I got the numbers from Quincy News, which got them from the Herald-Whig (which supported the incumbent in the election).  (Click the graph to open full-size in a new window.)

Quincy Income Inequality

(A note: The blue line at the bottom is “Other People,” in case the colors aren’t obvious.  The “Other People” numbers are the median personal income for Adams County, and the third one is from 2007, since the Census Bureau doesn’t have 2008 out yet.  I doubt it rose much from 2007-2008, though.)

In a way, nothing has changed over that time.  They were making 2-3 times as much as the rest of us ten years ago, and they still are.  That just means the difference keeps increasing.  Whenever Republicans are in charge, we hear a lot about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the widening gap between rich and poor.  Well, here’s a good example of that, and Republicans had nothing to do with it.  The truth is, this is the natural progression of government whenever you have the same people in charge for a long time, regardless of their party affiliation.  The longer the same people are in power, the more they feel like they deserve to skim off the top, and the more they gain the ability to game the system for themselves and their friends.

For readers who aren’t from around here, I should point out that $50K is a healthy income in Quincy, where you can get a nice house for $100K, a good sit-down dinner for two costs under $50 almost everywhere, and bars routinely run $1 drink and beer specials.  That income doesn’t make you a rich person here, but since when are “public servants” supposed to be rich anyway?  Eighty thousand is gobs of money in this area.

So why is this news today and not two years ago or ten?  Because we don’t feel rich anymore; we don’t feel like we can afford to have a government that’s on a perpetual shopping spree.  When our home values and mutual funds were climbing by double-digit percentages every year, this didn’t seem that important.  Sure, we disliked government waste and corruption in principle, but we could afford it.  Now we’re not sure we can.

A thousand people turned out for a Tea Party in Quincy the other day, to express concerns like, “Hey, wait a second, maybe we can’t afford all this.  Could we just slow down for a bit, maybe take a second look at the way we’re throwing money around and see if it’s all really that necessary?”  In local terms, that means:   “Do we really need a city budget of $31 million when $20 million was enough just ten years ago?  If the schools can cut back, why can’t the city?”  But when a few of our city council members said the same thing and tried to hold the budget up so those questions could be asked, the mayor accused them of trying to stop progress.  That’s the last refuge of the scoundrel politician, honestly.  “Progress” doesn’t mean simply doing something rather than nothing.  A bad budget isn’t progress, and blocking it doesn’t mean you’re somehow against getting things done.

Now the latest news is that the day after they voted themselves this big new budget full of raises, they took the afternoon off to play golf.  Is that really appropriate?  Am I being anti-progress for even asking the question?  Will I be placed on Homeland Security’s watch list of right-wing extremists now, along with all the Tea Party attendees?

I voted for Bellis (the challenger), so in a way I can say at least this isn’t my fault.  But I didn’t get out and support him either, so maybe that’s speaking too soon.  Not that I alone could have changed the result, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only conservative-thinking person who kept his mouth shut because he couldn’t get excited about another election so soon after last year’s mess, or who was put off by Bellis’s poor campaigning skills.  It didn’t bother me personally that he admitted he didn’t have all the answers at the debate, or that he was rude enough to say in public that when you get big wads of cash from Chicago it’s tainted, but it did bother some people.  Now it looks like we’ll be paying for our lack of enthusiasm for a while—literally, in the case of this budget.

We went back this morning to continue our March Toward Destiny, but it was cut short.  After I won (4-0, thank you very much), we were down two matches to one, and it was lunchtime, so I left.  They didn’t call me back for the next round, so I guess our last two players didn’t continue the comeback for the 3-2 win.

Photo from Flickr.com

That’s okay; we were definitely going up against a lot of better teams in the tournament, even considering the handicap system.  The other team’s second player, a 3-handicap, had to be the best 3 I’ve ever seen.  In our division, a 3 is usually someone who doesn’t look like a complete novice but isn’t great either: who makes most of the easy shots but isn’t very good at leaving himself in good position for the next shot, so he rarely strings together more than a few shots in a row.  Apparently, in the division our opponents from today play in, 3s are capable of running the table.  There are some very good pool players in Quincy, but we don’t run into many of them in our normal sessions.

It was still a good time, though.  It’s rare to get to play on a table that has enough empty space around it that you never find yourself up against a wall or a table or a drunk person stumbling toward the bathroom.  These tables were nice and spread out, so you could always get down on the shot with good form and no distractions.  The tables appeared to have been re-felted for the tournament and the balls were clean, so they were rolling straight and true.  There was plenty of seating around the outside, so teams could sit together (not possible in some tiny bars); and if there were any spectators, they could have a good view.

They even had waitresses running drink orders around.  We weren’t supposed to bring in food or drink, but I saw lots of people ignoring that rule, so I brought in my salty water this morning to keep me from drying out and buying diet soda.  I felt much better afterward than I did last night, thanks to that.

My only real complaint about the venue was that they dragged in a jukebox and big speakers, so it was just as hard to carry on a conversation as it is in most bars.  I spent the day cocking my ear towards people, saying, “Huh?”  I felt like I should have one of those hearing cones.  Maybe that makes sense in a bar, but this was a pool tournament.  Everyone was there to play pool with their teammates or watch someone they knew play pool, not to listen to music.  You might think people in that situation would want to be able to talk to each other without yelling over Eminem or some horrid country tune.  There was enough background noise already, with a dozen pool games going on in a big echoing cavern.  The music was just silly.

That was fairly minor, though.  All in all, it was held in a good place with good equipment and organization, and seemed like they were trying to put on a classy event.  Much nicer than I expected for our little amateur league.  I hope the rest of it goes as well, and they’re able to hold it there again next year.

But I can’t say I miss the smoke. It’s nice to be able to go shoot pool for a few hours and not leave with burning eyes, dry mouth, and a coat that will need to be dry-cleaned before it smells decent again. Last night we played league pool at a bar that’s closing down; so the great legal minds who owned the place decided that, since they weren’t selling alcohol anymore, they could smoke. I don’t know if it was because I’m not used to it anymore, or maybe the thrill of getting away with something had them smoking three times as fast as normal, but it was hard to take. After an hour, my eyes were stinging and there was a definite haze in the air. Luckily, I shot first. Normally I stick around to watch the whole team play, but last night I got the heck out of there as soon as I was done.

That was the last time we play this session, unless we made the city tournament. After playing every Sunday night for the last few months, I’m ready for a break. Especially this time of year, there are plenty of other things to do.

I’m resistant to the way people keep celebrating Christmas earlier and earlier, and then dropping it by about 3pm on Dec. 25th. (Salvation Army bell-ringers who were out by mid-November, I’m loooking at you.) I try to pace myself so I still have some Christmas spirit for the real Christmas season: the twelve days after Christmas. I guess you have to make an exception for Christmas concerts, though. Who’s performing one on Dec. 26th? I don’t listen to Christmas music on the radio or see seasonal commercials on TV, so I’m not in much danger of overload.

Anyway, I thought it was great. I learned that I need to sit closer to the music next time, though. Lots of people behind us had ants in their pants or something and couldn’t sit still, so the constant rustling and my poor hearing made it hard to hear some of the quieter pieces. They did the Mannheim Steamroller version of Silent Night, which has long been a favorite of mine, and I just couldn’t hear it very well. Next time: up close.

They had a harp ensemble that was pretty cool, although I definitely don’t know anything about harp music. I think there were eight harps (and harpists), which is about eight times as many as I would have guessed existed in Quincy. Apparently, thanks to a lady who has been teaching the harp in Quincy for 62 years, Quincy has more harpists per capita than any other town or city in the United States. This town sure excels at some unusual things.

There were two choirs, one adult and one youth, and they both sounded good. I could have done without the karaoke portion of the program, personally—I’d rather listen to people who have practiced the songs together for weeks than the random crowd around me—but it seemed like people who can sing enjoyed singing along. I especially liked the choirs singing Christmastime is Here from the Charlie Brown Christmas show, and the song the Whos in Whoville sing together in the Grinch show (the cartoon, not the Jim Carrey abomination).

All in all, it was a nice time with a lot of good music, and I hope to attend some of their future performances. When people complain that Quincy doesn’t have enough big-city entertainment options, they should know we do have a pretty darn good symphony you don’t have to drive to St. Louis to see.

I like to win but I don’t obsess about it, because the whole point of the handicap system, like Jason says, is to even the playing field as much as possible. Ideally, everyone has an even chance of winning every night, no matter whom they play. It doesn’t work out that way in practice, because there’s simply too much range between the best and worst players to fit in a 2-7 handicap system—a typical 7 would probably beat a typical 2 100 games in a row—but it helps. For us in the middle 3-5 range, it does pretty well. I do care whether I play my best, which I haven’t done consistently lately, so that’s aggravating.

I enjoy playing league, but mostly because I enjoy pool. When I have my own table at home so I can shoot a little every time I need to step away from the keyboard and think a little, I don’t know if I’ll feel the need to play in a league anymore. (Note to self: make sure pool room and office are neighbors on all future house plans.) Most of the people are friendly and fun, but there’s the usual smattering of dorks and people who take it too seriously, who fret about their handicaps or try to game the system. (I have to admit, they’re nothing compared to the poker players who actually care about cutting the cards, though.)

The bars sometimes don’t make it easy to enjoy. For many bars in Quincy, pool seems to be an afterthought. They need pool for the people like me who would go stir crazy without something to do while we watch everyone else talk over the noise; but it’s not a big money-maker, so they squeeze a table or two into a corner somewhere. Case in point: last night at the Twilight Zone. Nice little neighborhood bar with friendly people and good drink prices, typical of Quincy. But they have two pool tables squeezed into a space that would be nice and roomy for one. So the only place to sit near the action is in the corners, two people per corner, and you have to move every time someone shoots from that direction. The whole team can’t sit together and be team-like unless they go to the other part of the bar, and then they can’t see the game or encourage the one who’s playing.

We run into a lot of that: places where it just isn’t very convenient for a dozen people to show up and play and hang out as teams. Nice bars, just not good pool halls. I’m getting too old for the “When I own my own bar I’ll do it right!” fantasy that every guy has at some point between the ages of 25-35; but if I did, you can be sure everything else would have to adjust to make plenty of room for the pool tables. It’d be glorious, for the few months it stayed in business with that focus.

When I moved to Barry, some businesses were as close as where I parked, so it just made sense to walk, and I had to walk the dog anyway. After living several years in the country where I had to drive 15 miles for groceries, it was a nice change, and it saved a lot of gas. Now that I’m in Quincy, I still walk to the grocery store and a few other places that are close enough. I don’t suppose I’ll be walking the 20 blocks to church any time soon, but maybe once in a while in the spring.

I notice different things walking than driving. There’s a lot of interesting architecture in Quincy; not just in the big houses in the historical areas, but scattered everywhere. Just east of 24th street on College, there are four tiny houses right in a row that are sort of a box-shaped adobe-style, painted in white and bright primary colors. They almost look like toy houses or something from a cartoon. It’d be interesting to hear the story behind those, since they were obviously built at the same time, probably by someone who thought that particular style was the coming thing. There are stuccoed houses, steel houses, houses with cool chimneys, and plenty of other things to see. There are tiny offices and home businesses tucked away here and there that don’t catch the eye at 30mph. You have time to admire flowerbeds, lawn decorations, and chalk drawings kids make on the sidewalk.

I smell different things too. In a few places, I’ve caught the unmistakable odor of sewer gas. I wonder if that’s normal in town, or a problem the city should be notified about? People complain about the smell from neighboring hog farms when they move to the country; I can’t imagine they wouldn’t complain about that smell in the middle of town. Just west of 24th on Oak, across from County Market, there’s a nasty whiff of it there. If I lived in that stretch of houses, I don’t know how often I’d want to spend time in my front yard. Then there are much better aromas: walking past Spring Street Bar the other day started my mouth watering. I don’t know what they serve there, but it sure smelled good. I’ll have to walk over there with my pool cue one of these days and find out.

When I stop at the store, I tie Pepper up outside. I think she gets a lot of attention out there, because once in a while I come out and people are talking to her or petting her—usually kids. Most of the time she’s sitting and watching the door for me, though. I haven’t seen anyone else leave a dog outside while shopping, but it just makes sense to me: if I’m going to walk a dog, why not make a couple stops along the way? Now I just need to get her a backpack and have her carry some groceries for me, like Cesar Millan does.

The furnace had gone out last week, so we had a chilly 8:00am Mass. It was fixed by the time Mass ended, but it hadn’t really built up any heat yet. It was cold enough outside that everyone was wearing coats, though, so we survived okay.

I was the one who printed up the Propers (a sheet of the prayers and readings that aren’t in the missals in the pews because they change from week to week), so I almost choked when I was following along with the reading and got to “nammer” instead of “manner.” Apparently I need to proofread those when I copy-and-paste them from a web site. There were a few other typos; I hope to have this Sunday’s mistake-free.

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about the Latin Mass since all this started. Some people are interested in attending, but they aren’t sure what they’re getting into. I was the same way the first time I went, wondering if there was anything I should learn first, so I wouldn’t goof up and look like a newbie. (Note: the following are my understanding sprinkled with my opinions, not official instructions by any means.)

Don’t worry about goofing up; no one will be watching you. Dress nice and sit about halfway back or more, so you can watch the people in front of you to know when to do what. (We regulars are still shaky on all that, so if you sit up front, you might mess the rest of us up. ) Missals are in the pews, and the Propers will be on a folded sheet of paper you can get at the entrance. There’s usually someone there who will be glad to make sure you have what you need if you tell them you’re a first-timer. The missal tells you what’s happening when, and shows the prayers in English and Latin. Or leave the missal closed and focus on what’s happening at the altar and pray. Trying to follow along exactly when you’re new at it all can be distracting.

Women are encouraged to wear dresses or skirts, but I’ve seen lots of slacks and some jeans so far, and no one’s been kicked out. Try not to wear something that has people asking about your Buns of Steel workout, though. Men should dress nice too. I think almost every guy has a pair of slacks and a shirt with a collar, and if you don’t wear your nice clothes to church, what are you saving them for? But if all you have are jeans and you’re really strapped for cash, don’t let that stop you from coming. (Again, my opinion.)

Many women like to wear a veil or hat, as was required a couple generations ago. I’ll save the reasons for that for another post I’m working on, but don’t feel like you’ll stand out if you don’t wear one. I’m a big fan of hats on women in general, so I hope it catches on.

Since the Mass is the 1962 Roman Rite, there’s no Communion in the hand. Communion is taken on the tongue, kneeling at the Communion rail, as it was for centuries before all the changes in the late 1960s. If a disability prevents you from kneeling or climbing the stairs to the Communion rail, sit in the front pew and I’m pretty sure Father will bring it to you, but you might want to make sure he knows your situation. By the way, Confession is available before Mass, if you didn’t arrive in a state of grace. There should be a Rosary before Mass, but I don’t know if we’re organized enough yet to make sure someone leads that every time.

I think that covers everything you really need to know. If you’ve been thinking of coming but weren’t sure what was required, I hope you’ll relax and join us. The Low Mass at 8:00 takes about an hour; and the High Mass at 11:00 takes somewhat longer. Make sure you join us in the hall behind the church after Mass and introduce yourself. (Hey, I’m known for being anti-social, but I’ll be there.) If you decide you’d like to join, you don’t have to drop out of your current parish, since St. Rose is technically a chaplaincy, not a parish, for now.