Gary, Indiana...Cesspool

I grew up in Northwest Indiana, and went to high school on the outskirts of Gary.

Gary doesn't hold a place in my memory as a particularly fun place to hang out in general...although I know that the decent people outnumber the bad and there actually are some livable areas near the lakeshore.

Somehow, I stumbled across a mention of Gary today and started reading up on what's changed in the years since I've left. I ended up kind of slumped back on my chair, here, shaking my head in pity for the people there.

Through some odd sequence of events, they ended up with a charlatan of a mayor named Rudy Clay and nothing good can possibly come of this.
I was able to dig up articles of the shady way he took office and his monkeyshines since being in office, including driving around with a security posse of his cronies (one of whom is named "The General") in a Hummer.

But, I figured, there's always going to be naysayers. Anyone can find a few signs of excess or eccentricity to poke fun at.

So I read the mayor's biography on his website. I don't think we'd tolerate this kind of disorganized writing from a grade school student! Certainly someone who takes such little care (or displays such incompetence) in the way he presents himself to the world has no business running a city.

"But Dan," you might say, "your posts here are often filled with grammatical errors, run-on sentences, non sequiturs and countless other flavors of literary skid marks!"

If you did say that to me, you'd be right. However, this site provides me an occasional creative outlet and chance to vent on things that irk me. Further, for my readers who are family members and personal friends, it provides a sort of ongoing casual conversation place for us.

But for anyone else who happens upon our conversation here, I'm basically anonymous. I don't use my last name and have never mentioned the name of the company I work for. If I were representing anyone publicly, I would take a great deal more care in the thoughts expressed here.

I'm not quite sure how I got so fired up just by reading about this mayor, but it blows my mind how a city can accept the same crap over and over again...and the only thing someone seems to have to do is throw a few "...marched with Dr. King" items in the resume.

Selah.