APPRECIATION FOR WALTER CRONKITE

And that’s the way it was.

As we remembered the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Walter Cronkite left us.

We shall not see his like again.

For many of us, Walter Cronkite was our primary experience of what the news was. His calm, balanced, delivery of the day’s events, and his wrap-up line, “and that’s the way it is,” helped put the world in perspective.

Not for nothing was he considered the most trusted man in America. Though Walter Cronkite was never afraid to identify his personal beliefs as being liberal, he always remained scrupulously objective in his evening newscast. If Walter Cronkite said it was so, you could rely on it in a way you can’t any more.

A generation of Americans remembers his calm, professional demeanor, his assurance that he was fulfilling an important public trust, and his evident conviction that his calling involved a commitment to candor and completeness in his reporting.

Today, the broadcast and internet media offer a smorgasbord of viewpoints and opinions to suit every persuasion and ideology. When Walter Cronkite was America’s news source, there was no such smorgasbord; the public necessarily relied on its network news anchors to tell it like it was.

Walter Cronkite told it like it was, and for this, I remain grateful.

And that’s the way it was.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, where he serves on the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own.

Cathedral City Honored by California Resource & Recycling Association; Appreciation for Environmental Conservation Mgr. Deanna Pressgrove

Cathedral City has won a prestigious award from the California Resource & Recycling Association for its program for Sharps Disposal by Mail. The award is one of only five presented per year by the CRRA. Cathedral City is once again one of only five agencies in the State to garner such recognition.

The program assists residents whose medical conditions require them to use sharps, whether from hypodermics, lancets, blood glucose monitors, or the like, in disposing of these potentially hazardous items. The program makes available a heavy gauge container and a shipping box. When the container has been filled, the user can place it in the box, which has prepaid shipping, seal the box, and send it to a sharps disposal facility.

The program has been under way for a couple of years now, and the credit for it goes to Cathedral City’s Environmental Conservation Manager, Deanna Pressgrove. Her work in developing and implementing the program has been critical to its ongoing success. Moreover, the program involves no cost to the City’s general fund, as it is funded through state monies made available to support local recycling efforts.

The CRRA award is just the latest of many awards Cathedral City’s staff, including Ms. Pressgrove, have won through their efforts. While we on the Council are often the public face of the City, it is the hardworking and dedicated staff who do the heavy work to ensure that the public is well served. Too often, they do not get the credit they deserve, and it is thus a real pleasure to be able to acknowledge the real contributions our staff -in this case, Ms. Pressgrove- continue to make toward the life of our community.

-xxx-

The views expressed herein are my own, not necessarily the views of the City of Cathedral City or its redevelopment agency, or of any other entity.

A NATION OF STAKEHOLDERS: Reaffirming Ownership of our Public Thing.

Six years ago, on my first Independence Day as a city councilman, I thought I would try my hand at some thoughts for the day. Since then, much has changed in American society. We have a new President, and here in California, a different governor and legislature than we had six years ago. We face challenges at home and abroad that call for careful and considerate action.

Nonetheless, the American Revolution continues, and each July 4, we engage in an important debate about what the American Revolution means, and such a debate is as appropriate on this Independence Day as on any other, and in revisiting my words of 2003, I thought them just as relevant today as they were then.

On Independence Day, the word “freedom” is much in the air. Now there are many kinds of freedom, including the freedom to do nothing at all or the kind of freedom that St. Francis of Assisi personified and which Janis Joplin sang about, that of having nothing left to lose.

But as Americans, as a people who insisting on living their lives in the present tense and in the active voice, meaningful freedom has to imply a lot more. Our American concept of freedom demands active participation in order to work. Because each one of us has a vested interest in the healthy functioning of our free society, we must be more than passive onlookers; ours is an involved, responsible stakeholdership. American freedom must be worked at to be preserved; this Union, and its republican form of government, is as much as a work in progress today as it was on that first Independence Day in 1776.

Independence Day reminds us that the true context of freedom is responsibility; the true rewards of taking responsibility for the well-being of our communities are to be found in knowing that in a community that draws its strength from the active participation of all of its members, each of its members may in safety and security pursue his or her calling, avocation, and dream. In a community where each of us is an involved stakeholder, where unfettered discussion, vigorous debate, and the free exchange of ideas are the currency of the day, we may dare aspire to the kind of wisdom, learning, and civic virtue that the men (and women) of 1776 saw as the glory of our Republic.

Indeed, we do well to remember that America has become the world’s intellectual powerhouse in large measure because our commitment to open inquiry and free speech has made possible a critical mass of research, scholarship, and discovery. Our institutions of higher learning draw scholars from around the world, and it was no accident that, when the dark clouds of fascism, Naziism, and Stalinism threatened to overcome the light of learning in Europe, an exodus of Europe’s finest minds found refuge in this country. Nor was it an accident that when Mao’s China declared war on its intellectuals, many of that country greatest thinkers should have come here as well.

Of course, our America is more than just institutions of learning. She continues to be -above all others- the place people come to. At her best, America has conferred a blanket absolution, and a blanket oblivion; on this side of the ocean, the ancient quarrels of ancestral lands have no place. If America’s refusal to live in the past tense sometimes bereaves us of some degree of historical perspective, it also insulates us from endlessly repeating cycles of grievance and victimhood. At her best, America trusts in her existing institutions to mediate the passions and controversies that can transfix even the most even-tempered society. Indeed, since the time of Alexis de Tocqueville, Europeans have noted again and again how controversies that elsewhere might be handled in the streets and at the barricades are in America usually settled in the courts.

Yet, above all else, what has historically separated America from so many other societies is that sense of stakeholdership which lies at the core of our American understanding of freedom. If we hold dear the rights of free speech, free elections, free inquiry, and freedom from government intrusion into our private affairs, it is because they are the foundation of everything else in our American politics of ordered individual liberties. On this Independence Day, the freedom we celebrate is inextricably wrapped up in our sense as Americans that it is not merely our right, but our duty, to participate actively in the running of our own society.

And withal, we know that our America remains a work in progress, subject to a series of imperfections, doubts, and insecurities. Americans often disagree passionately on a variety of issues. We know that there remain unresolved issues about which the dialogue is as vexed and conflicted today as it was at the dawn of the Republic. We know that we face challenges unimaginable to all but the most prescient of our forebears. Nevertheless, today is our day, irrespective of party, ideology, group identification, or faction. On this Independence Day, we reaffirm, as we have on every Independence Day since 1776, that our country is res publica, the Public Thing that is the possession and the inheritance of all of us.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is attorney. He lives and works in Cathedral City California, and is a member of the City Council there. The views expressed herein are his own. © 2009 by the author