"...that thou mayest teach them"

FYI

Laying Down the Law

"lay down the law: to tell people what they must do, without caring about their opinions." (Definition of lay down the law from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

In a meeting late Friday, someone not only “lay down the law,” but – oddly enough - came prepared to do so. In what is a nascent conversation of what might prudently be done to more broadly consider what is now referred to in certain documents as the “non-clinical experience in Rochester,” an employee of city/county planning offered up an emphatic reading of the definition of “comprehensive plan” set forth in MN state statute. Concluding with a rather adamant observation, “And that’s all we can do.”

Two things: 

(1) A plan for lived spaces that does not include all the lives that are being lived there and what might be done for these lives to be better lived isn’t very damned comprehensive.

(2) When I asked – as one increasingly needs to do around here – “Who is ‘we’?” a reply came that seemed to very much want to include me. 

Really? Well, we’ll see.