Many people have noticed that the Rogers Park blogging scene has grown strangely quiescent lately. This is the first time I've written a post of any length since January, and a couple of other Rogers Park bloggers seemed to have fled the scene completely, notably Craig Gernhart, who has taken his blog private. Others are posting far less often, and most strangely of all, none of us wrote much about the municipal election this February, even though this election was the most noteworthy in twenty years, giving us a new mayor and many new council members. I can't help but sense fatigue and disappointment in our local bloggers, but a few of them remain extremely involved in the community and are fully occupied with projects that will contribute greatly to the betterment of Rogers Park. At some point, people want to do more than just discuss an issue, and get their hands and hearts into actually making a difference, and that is exactly what a few prominent Rogers Park bloggers are doing.
So a number of momentous events went unremarked on by the local punditocracy, but that doesn't mean they weren't noticing, or doing anything.
For some reason, the whole issue filled me with distaste, suddenly, as my favorite candidate for Edgewater's 48th Ward, the talented, outspoken Phil Bernstein, looked to be headed to overwhelming defeat by legacy pol Harry Osterman, and most of all as my own ward, the 49th here in Rogers Park, had to choose between bad and worse. It was really all I could do to motivate myself to even vote, and had there not been a Mayor to select, I might not have. Well, and the 50th elected a promising new alderman, Debra Silverstein, and Rahm Emanuel looks more promising every day, surprising me vastly. Emanuel appears to be very focused on cutting unnecessary expenditures and restoring the city to financial viability, and is intolerant of nonsense, unlike his predecessor.
Meanwhile, life has been happening and not exactly the way I need it to, and many other interests and urgent personal matters came between me and this blog. Getting re-employed at a better job and scaring up more money have become extremely urgent matters, and a personal project, the commercial website I've been putting together, have both been claiming a large part of my time and energy. Focus and energy, or lack thereof, have been problems, but most of all, there has simply been so much to discuss, that I hardly know where to start, really.
Now that I've recovered from my disappointment over the outcome of a couple of aldermanic races, and celebrated a couple of others, such as James Cappleman's well-deserved victory in the 46th and Silverstein's in the 50th, and the election of a mayor who displays real intelligence, I can focus on my usual areas of interest, like the urgent need for preparing Chicago for a different energy regime, developing new sources of energy, and improving the quality of life in our North Coast neighborhoods and making them as attractive and comfortable as possible.
