I will be converting my blog to substack shortly under the name Darkly Optimistic. Over the past couple of years, my blog posts have been more darkly than optimistic, a sad reflection of the trough that we are in.
So I thought I’d spread just a little bit of optimism in my
post this week.
I spent two week in Pinehurst, North Carolina and tried to
limit my visits to social media, as working in downtown Chicago and living in a
nearby suburb under Governor Pritzker can be quite taxing on the old mental
health. Even a short stay in a small
town and periodic breaks from social media can have a salutary effect on a
person.
While there seems to be a deluge of bad news for the last
couple of years, even including talk of civil war and a national divorce, I did
make a few observations while I was away from a large urban center that gave me
some hope for the future, and I came away with one overriding thought:
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Here were my experiences:
I drove around North Carolina for two full weeks and not a
single driver cut me off or gave me the middle finger. This is a daily occurrence in Chicago.
Not a single homeless person rattled a cup in my face. Not a single one was huddled in a
doorway. In Chicago, you can’t walk 3
blocks downtown without confronting one.
Most interesting was attendance at church. I was surprised by the attendance at late
Sunday morning Mass. The local parish
church is fairly large and it was fairly full.
I also noted that there were a number of entire families, many of whom
had 3 or 4 small children. And nearly
everyone was dressed up. Very few people
had on jeans or shorts. Most women wore
dresses. Men had collared shirts. Little boys had their hair combed with Brylcreem. Three women wore veils. For the first time in a long time, the
phrase “your Sunday best” meant something.
The next day brought some beach time. Again, there were many families with small
children. I was struck by the fathers,
attentive to their wives, playing with their children, all of them fit. One young man carried his two year old son on
his shoulder, both in identical white beach shirts, sporting the same
sunglasses, same facial expression, and same facial features. No doubt what gene pool that little boy came
from.
Just being around these families was energizing and hopeful.
Gibson’s Bakery
At the same time, the ruling came down that the Ohio Supreme
Court declined to hear the appeal of Oberlin College in Gibson’s Bakery’s claim
against it. The school will have to pay
a $36 million dollar judgment for defaming the bakery, now that the school has
run out of appeals.
I won’t regurgitate the facts here. The case is fully and fairly presented (both
sides) in Bari Weiss’s September 1 podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oberlin-accused-the-gibsons-of-racism-now-it-owes/id1570872415?i=1000578020237). As someone who has worked with many family
businesses over the course of my career, it was hard to listen to the facts
surrounding Oberlin’s vendetta against the bakery. Oberlin’s president either had awful
attorneys or chose to stick her fingers in her ears and hum when they gave her
guidance. The Gibson family, as so many
families that run bakeries, viewed their calling as a labor of love and were
pillars of the community. To hear the
school students and administration set out to gratuitously destroy a
multi-generation business was appalling.
The impact on the family and its employees was devastating. I know that the Gibson’s work harder than any
of those protected school administrators (and deliver more value for society).
But the final resolution gave me some hope. At least parts of our judicial system is
capable of resisting Woke ideology and is capable of delivering justice. It was gratifying to hear that Oberlin will feel
the sting of just consequences, even if those administrators don’t personally
suffer any loss (after all, they are insulated, unlike the Gibson’s).
I celebrated by ordering a Gibson’s baseball cap and a box
of bakery goods through the Gibson’s website.
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