The world around us is always fluid

We are in the part of summer that is generally considered the slowest for our Morris MN. We tend to think of that time as being bounded by Prairie Pioneer Days (PPD) and the county fair. When fair-time arrives, we often start noticing a "nip" in the nighttime air, indicating that fall is indeed on the way.
We feel shortchanged by summer - too brief a flirtation with the summer-y weather.
We can't use the summer PPD as a benchmark anymore. It has been eliminated. I'm not sure how the midsummer point is going to be identified now, probably with the Hancock July 4. But that's Hancock. We read that the Hancock school is going great guns with growth and vitality. When I first began my long tenure with the Morris print media, the common perception was that Hancock was just hanging on. Surely a county-wide school would be on its way, right?
"County-wide school" would have been fighting words for a lot of people. They would be fighting words in the same way as "corporate farms." Do you remember the negative stigma once projected by "corporate farm?" Not to pass judgment myself, I'm just reporting history.
I remember when the traditional family farm started feeling stressed, and large advocacy meetings were held at our UMM P.E. Center. I listened on the radio. You would have thought that lynch mobs would be heading out to get the "corporate farmers." Another big boogeyman was the "middlemen" in agriculture. Lynch mobs for them too. I'm just characterizing the nature of the rhetoric.
I reminded an older retired farmer of those agitated times recently. He got a look on his face like he didn't wish to acknowledge it. The voices of protest then were clinging to a past model that was not going to hang on. Oh, I could cite another boogeyman from the restless times: the U.S. secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz. I remember a local hardware store owner pandering to the crowd and simply saying the downtown merchants "supported you 100 percent."
We can conclude today that those meetings represented a futile cause. A part of us has to feel sad about that. Any time change wrests us from our comfortable norms, there is sadness. New norms take over and we eventually feel comfortable, just as we feel no issue in connection with the vast and efficient truly corporate farms in our midst today. They employ people.
Remember when Bob Bergland had to be spirited away from his office for his own protection, because something like 50 aggrieved farmers were coming to confront him?
I recall one really big meeting at UMM that had the revolutionary tone, though it ended up as so much flailing away. A subsequent meeting was planned along the same lines. My family watched some news coverage of the second event and it seemed much smaller. The movement had become dispirited.
 
A bright spot in summer here
We may be in a slow time of year for Morris but there are always exceptions. One is the Irondale marching band's appearance at Big Cat Stadium. Those suburban Twin Cities musicians have come here many summers to fine-tune. It's a rehearsal exercise. Still they invite the public to come on out and sample the artistry. This happened Thursday night and yours truly was pleased to be there. It's the finest thing to happen at Big Cat all year. Certainly better than football where the male bodies smash into each other.
The promo for the Irondale performance has been mixed through the years. I noticed a little flier with typed text, on at least one bulletin board of a local business. Even if people saw this, not many turned out. That's unfortunate. Of the small audience seen Thursday, certainly many were from Irondale.
I stood next to a friend who teased me about what he saw as the critical or "negative" tone in my online writing. One man's negativity can be another man's fountain of hope. Am I being negative when I warn about Donald Trump, about his "Nuremberg style rallies" which they most surely are, and about his usurpation of power which might now extend to the Federal Reserve?
Yes I'm being negative and critical I guess.
I have been negative about the local Chamber of Commerce decision to end the summer PPD which had East Side Park as its home. How sad because the summer PPD was the only hope for the Killoran stage to get meaningful use. The stage should not have been built unless there was a commitment to ensure it would add life to the community.
Now we hear PPD is going to be at the fairgrounds. I will remind you that the fairgrounds can be a dead and listless place when there is no carnival or midway there.
Am I being negative or critical with how I present my thoughts about the PPD decision? I'd like to think I'm being positive about the wonderful, traditional PPD which was considered a major accomplishment when it was first created. At its height, it seemed to take no back seat to Glenwood's Waterama which set the standard. Well it was comparable anyway.
I felt that once the Miss Morris pageant left the park, it did not seem like part of PPD any more. I felt events could be scheduled at the park right into the evening. And here I'll be "negative" again: I do not feel that in the year 2019, "beauty pageants" (whether they use the word beauty or not) are proper anymore. I think they are sexist. I know they tried shedding their old image by incorporating  "scholarship." Oh, the "Miss Morris Scholarship program," making it clear that it wasn't just a silly cosmetic thing. The ploy was just a fig leaf. The event should just be cancelled. Yes this is a "negative" assertion.
You'll note that I have been "negative" about the sport of football. I am positive however in terms of my caring about the present and future health of the young men who get lured into playing this pointless and dangerous game. Unfortunately we'll probably see a good turnout of humanity for football at Big Cat this fall. All I can do is try to enlighten.
And then I could rest my case although I'll never rest on certain important topics, like the danger that is Donald Trump. If he seizes the Federal Reserve and forces quantitative easing, we could see a surge in inflation that will finally get everyone's attention. I can at least see it coming. The people who think abortion is important will be struck rather quickly by issues more connected to their existential state.
I can only shrug and say I tried to ring a firebell in the night. And this I do with my "negative and critical" writing.

More re. school calendar
I wrote recently on the surprising omission of sports from the Morris school calendar that gets mailed to everyone. Silly rabbit, there's no need for an "on paper" school calendar anymore! Someday we'll look back and think it was quaint. All that "paper!"
Well, a friend shared with me an angle that might upset some people: businesses have bought advertising in the school calendar. Were these businesses given the heads-up that the product would substantially change? Hmmm. Without sports in the calendar, it is of very little value to non-school parents.
I think maybe the school is "conditioning" us, getting us to accept no sports this year, before ending the paper calendar completely the next. In the meantime, the businesses who advertised get the short end of the stick. Maybe they deserve an apology.
One silver lining: maybe the absence of sports will make people less aware of when the home football games are, and maybe our attendance will go down a little. We need to phase out the sport of football if it cannot be axed immediately. You laugh at this? You're a fool if you do.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com