The safety factor of staying the same

Work on Public Square was finished this weekend. Most of it at least. The part dealing with the collapsed water main that resulted in a sink hole at the intersection of Superior and Ontario and major reconstruction for the past month.

While waiting for Christopher Walken to make his "hundredth" appearance on SNL I managed to catch a local news story about how work on Public Square has been completed complete with interviews from locals discussing how difficult the construction at Public Square has made their lives, especially the congestion.

I suppose I had never considered Downtown Cleveland as having a congestion problem. Now the commute into and out of downtown, sure. 77 and 90/2 become a complete bear during rush hours. I can't blame downtown traffic patterns for that as much as the exodus to the outlaying suburbs (and to some extent the solo occupant commuting pattern).

I surmise my only issue with the 'news story' was simple based upon how much of a 'relief' it is to us lucky Clevelanders that Public Square has been rebuilt to what it was only a month ago. That our simple commutes into and out of downtown will no longer suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune but will instead be quick, easy, relatively harmless and unchanging. How difficult it would have been to imagine anything other then the simplest solution proffered. This is my concern. That the 'news' didn't bother digging any further into understanding the issue of Public Square, the conditions that caused the event or even how the city reacted (how were buses rerouted, was there a drop in ridership, were local businesses affected because of the buses or the complete disruption of any access?) and what the end result of any alternate solutions could be.

I would have been extremely interested in a news story regarding any of that. If only we had news agencies that were interested that sort of information. If only we actually wanted to experiment and study what would happen if we were willing to do something differently. This isn't just about the search for the facts or the proper information. A large portion of it has to do with the understanding that sacrifice of some sort needs to be made to offset the self destructive behaviors that, as a society, we ascribe to. Without a willingness to at least explore what change could lead to we have no right to complain, no right to argue that we have been dealt a bum hand. If we lack the understanding that by making small changes in our own behavior we very directly affect the larger outcome than there is no hope for us to come together as a connected community to create a better affect for ourselves.

I say this because there is a very large world out there that we are so quick to turn our backs on. Not environmentally, nor politically, nor religiously, but humanely.