Public Vivisioning Meet.

The first public forum meeting of the Carthage Downtown Visioning Committee is scheduled for Thursday, February 24 from 6:30 until 8:30 p.m. in Memorial Hall. The Committee was appointed by Mayor Mike Harris to work with Drury University to develop a long term vision for the downtown area.

According to the flyer posted in e-mails to the Committee:

"A small group of students from Drury University are working with the city of Carthage to develop a vision plan for the future. This meeting is open to the public and everyone is welcome to come and share their thoughts."

The group hopes to develop a "tool kit" of community values to be used by the the Committee after Drury completes the semester study. The students are expected to help the committee "organize, assess, research, explore, evaluate, critique and prioritize visions for consideration and implementation over the next 15 to 20 years."

Several public meetings are scheduled for the program.

I’ve been seein’ several versions of an email that is reminiscent of the "good ol’ days." Baby boomers seem ta be lookin’ back at what they consider a simpler time.

Seems most view the nostalgic time as a pleasant one. ‘Course we all heard stories growin’ up by parents and grandparents ‘bout how it used ta be. The difference is their stories were tempered by a couple a world wars and the great depression. The boomers were sheltered from a good portion of such experience.

Overall the parents of boomers musta done a fair job of raisin’ their kids. They seem ta have a good share of fond memories. Hopefully the second generation boomers find a few good memories ta hang on to also.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

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Weekly Columns

artCentral

ART NOTES from Hyde House

by Sally Armstrong, Director of artCentral

As we struggle to welcome Spring to our area after an all too long period of deep snow and inactivity, it could not be at a better time that we also prepare to welcome again our patrons and guests back to Hyde House Gallery on the night of February 25th to greet the first artist of the 2011 season for artCentral! As I wrote in the past two articles, Brenda Sageng will be displaying a group of new paintings as well as some of her beautiful watercolors and oriental inspired painted hanging banners. It should prove to be just the prescription of cheerful color that most of us need at this time of the year. I printed this artist’s statement a few weeks ago, and you may remember that she is a relatively recent art graduate from two of our local institutions, her bachelors in studio art coming from Missouri Southern in 2004 and her masters in Art from Pittsburg State in 2006. Since that time she has been nurturing a growing reputation in the local art community, having entered a number of competitions and won a number of top awards. In a statement about this exhibition, that we have titled "IN THE LIVING GREEN" after a poem that Brenda wrote, she said, "The core curiosity guiding these works is my enduring fascination with the forms, related functions, and essence of the small parts of larger organisms. My questions are both scientific and spiritual in nature: How does the shape of the leaf relate to the tree from which it grows? Why does a butterfly’s wing carry the same skeletal shape as the cells of a leaf? Why is the Golden proportion so prevalent in nature that we unconsciously replicate it in our own creations?" I will continue her thoughts with the answers in next week’s article.