We've Come a Long Way Baby...Not

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "The Play's The Thing":
"If we lived in a village, the chat would be in the square, the common, at the well or the water pump"
Of course it would ... if we lived in a 19th-century village.
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I forgot to add the village pub. My impression is, every medieval village had one.

 Oh yes!  And ....they had strolling minstrels and jesters to bring the  news camouflaged as song and dance and comedy.  

My point is, people don't change that much  We still talk about what's  going on around us.

People like Shakespeare wrote plays .George Bernard Shaw wrote books . Harper Lee wrote a single magnificent  novel and  Margaret Mitchell did the same. They are  celebrated in epic films.

Leon Uris wrote Exodus. It too became a movie and stirred our souls.

Newspapers and radio came into being  and spread the selected word.

Television came into our lives and informed us about the world around us.

Now we have the social media and we enjoin the conversation and reveal ourselves as never before.

I make a comment that something could mean this or that. Someone else castigates me and warns me against making statements of fact
unless I know it to be true.

Here's what I know to be true.

A fund-raising  event was held at the Aurora Legion  on March 24th
2009, in accordance with previous practice, under the auspices of the municipality,   to raise funds for a parade on July 1st.

No proceeds were reported. No answers  provided . No attempt  made to obtain answers. Stonewalling,in unacceptable places, took place.

Subsequently, the same "fund-raising" goup requested  $12,000 from the town treasury to pay for bands in the parade.

$10,000 was included in the town's budget for the purpose. But they wanted more.

A delegation came to council and stated, in much the same tones  and terms as Susan Morton Leonard 's letter,  if  the additional money was not provided, there would be no parade.

The additional money was provided, funded by taxpayers dollars, to pay for an  event ,which from the time it began, had never been a burden to taxpayers.

 Not until Sher St Kitts appeared on the scene.

The next year,the amount was increased by another $2,thousand
to allow the volunteer extraordinaire, to hire herself an assistant to assist  her in her volunteer efforts to provide the bands to make a parade.

Now ,Susan Morton Leonard fronting for  St Kitts. is writing  a letter expounding  entitlement  and  demanding financial support in  the same insulting and disrespectful terms for the jazz festival. It worked before .  In 2011, $5,000. were provided.
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In 2009,  a special ceremony  with a cake yet, was held to honour St Kitts and recognise extraordinary voluntary  contribution to the community.

Things are not quite  the same now.
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Councillors Gaertner and Gallo are still around. They have been joined by Councillors Ballard and Humphryes. They are all of a mind and  still willing to collect taxes and distribute them with the same extraordinary deviation from  the meaning of trust in managing the town's business efficiently and effectively.

In some ways, we have come a long way baby, but not far enough yet.