>This is going to be a short one. I got sidetracked and waited too long to start writing; I have to get up for work in what seems like just a few hours.
The last few weeks – my first month as a resident of New Bern, I should say – have been a real eye opener. I’ve gotten myself “right in the thick of things” with all the development/potential development that’s occurring in this city and surrounding towns. While I’ve yet to wriggle my way into a position to make much of an impact on the numerous dilemmas, I have witnessed quite a bit. That $500 million Will Stout-orchestrated yachting community featuring two cloud-poking condo towers deceptively known as “Real Harbour Marina” looks like it’s going to get shot down. Communities like Bridgeton should follow suit: it’s no bigger than my hometown of Portville, N.Y., and I couldn’t imagine how drastic a change it would undergo if something like Bridgeton Harbor were put in. I really feel for the lifelong residents of that town – it will never be the same. Of course, by the same token, it’s as much their own fault as it isn’t. Many are probably happy it‘s going to be built … for now, anyway.
Despite the mishaps in Bridgeton, N.C., I can’t help but regain optimism regarding mankind in America. I watch with satisfied eyes as residents, politicians and visitors make note of and complain about “the progress of man” and its ultimate effect on local humanity. At the very least, it seems, they realize taking measures to increase area populations just because bigger numbers look cool and have more commas – you know, “growth for the sake of growth” – is far from a good thing. What’s come from seeing all this? I realize people can do something to stop it … at least here, anyway.
That last segment of the preceding sentence makes me think of Wilmington; the paragraphs above that make me chuckle when I read things like what’s on the front page of the Star News’ website tonight. Still trying to balance a car-addicted population that’s based solely on the ideology of growth and ways to get people from point A to point B (remember, it HAS to be via the automobile traveling on roads because it’s Wilmington and, come on, there’s no better way to get the kids to tennis practice at the entrance of your development than in a 345-horsepower SUV that gets eight Iraqi civilian lives to the gallon), they’ve lowered themselves in the Port City to putting gawdy anal secretions like this in their streets:
How’s that for progress?
I’m done with getting hung up on the everlasting, general predicament known as Wilmington, N.C. Fact is, I don’t care about the place, view it as a black mark on America’s resume and won’t give a damn when the city swallows itself. It will of their own making, a product of lack of foresight on the parts of both officials and residents, and I just won’t care when their beloved Jesus’ mighty hand comes down and pops the entire place like a zit. It’s really just a bunch of hillbillies with money running around scattered and lost, trying to manage a city of 100,000 out-of-towners. It’s like one giant town hall full of retards a couple blocks from the place where Matlock was filmed trying to “do what’s best” for disconnected citizens who moved there to either go to college or die. Good luck with that one, guys … too bad you’re too simplistic to understand what you’ve got on your hands.
Stories like this make me laugh because there’s a real easy solution, one that I promoted the whole time I lived there: drive less. But it’s Wilmington, so it really wouldn’t surprise me when local church officials and church goers would contest to that suggestion that liberals are trying to promote their big government ways and take away the freedoms “they’ve” earned. Fighting, or even getting one’s self up in a tizzy, over Wilmington is like trying to cure an AIDS patient of a hang nail. That place is fucked.
Just Carrying On ... 
