It was easy to decide what to put on our front page this week. City council had more fireworks than when Kathy Harrison (who made $6000 a year as mayor) fired Kim Dickens for “exceeding her authority.” Council was split so sharply on that firing that it took months for aldermen to even acknowledge each other at meetings.
Twenty years ago? Close, anyway, City Attorney Tim Weaver refused to handle civil cases for the city because his position was reduced to part time. Alderman Bud Umland got so stressed at a council meeting he was taken to the clinic with alarmingly high blood pressure but refused to go to the hospital. That’s stress.
Residents and retailers disagreed – walkers wanted sidewalks that weren’t slick as snails, but preservationists insisted on the ancient sea bottom limestone that was quarried here. One retailer put gripper tape on the limestone sidewalk in front of her shop.
The American Disabilities Act declared that a sidewalk with ¼ inch divot didn’t comply with ADA regs. For heaven’s sake, our sidewalks had (have) minor craters in them. Nevertheless, our downtown streets are more vertical than horizontal, so rubber soles, sobriety, and a good set of lungs come in handy.
City council that many years ago was eerily similar to the one today – it was comprised of city residents who love a town. Not one of them ever said, “Let’s burn the old girl down and start over!”
Those who ran for a seat at the council table all agreed on their affection, even ardor, for Eureka Springs. How to express that love was a personal choice that possibly had financial, historical, artistic, or 4th generation attitude behind it, but everyone prefers better to bitter. I think. Authenticity or safety? Both!
City politics are a matter of public record, and many people rely on a newspaper to provide an accurate account of who said what. However, it’s clear that the person who reports on our city council meetings should be a trained sportscaster.
Which is why we put the council meeting on Page 3 and Alice Walton’s philanthropy on Page 1. Alice Walton realized that surgeries and hospital stays might get our bodies to continue for another month or two, year or two, but changing our behavior absolutely changes our lifespan.
This triumvirate of Washington Regional, Cleveland Clinic and the Whole Health Institute can provide a genuine, affordable remedy to our aches, pains, tumors, plugged hearts, confused vision and all the rest. It can also teach us how to treat ourselves so we can glide into long-term wellness.
Alice Walton has done her research. She has figured out that illness doesn’t have to diminish our spirit, and that there’s a method to getting well. She has hired trained people, and will train others, to explore and teach that.
This medical center will upskill healers. It will provide the Tom Dooleys and Hawkeye Pierces with facilities and knowledge to get us out of a health rut. It will define and locate our hitches, glitches and mysteries, and fix them. This is a marriage of mental movement and realistic (experimental or traditional) cures that will keep us from flying-and-driving to Mayo or Sloan-Kettering.
What this woman has done with her money is for the betterment of humanity, sure, but it’s also a gift to where she grew up – Arkansas. She is doing what our legislators would never in a million years agree to do – be philanthropic.
Being a philanthropist doesn’t just mean you have to give a college $10 mil – you’re a philanthropist when you give skill. Time. Effort. A dollar. Anything you offer that benefits our world qualifies you as a philanthropist.
Alice could’ve bought Twitter. Instead, she is creating a system that teaches ordinary people how to attain and maintain ideal health. She sees the link between the brain and the bod, and understands that when they work well, so do we.
Can you imagine the artwork that will hang in this new health farm?
Page 1, Alice, hands down.
Council will have its day.