It's 9AM.
Sundays we play ball.
And if we’re not playing, we might be watching.
The morning was foggy, and I only got in a two hour nap before the three hour drive.
Not so bad with a pot of joe to help me scoot up to Fayetteville.
I’ve talked about urban renewal and Pine Bluff before.
They’re trying, and succeeding in two spots.
Main Street, where the roadway is beautified and they’ve built a new (smaller) library and a business incubator for local small businesses.
And plan for a lot more in five years or so.
And the first two blocks of Main where they’ve added flowers and light poles.
We just need you to ignore the empty buildings, the crumbling bricks and broken windows.
Plus you can’t look past Main because the surrounding blocks look like they were imported from Ukraine.
An hour north, we’re building some things in Little Rock.
I’ve counted six new storage unit facilities going in along the Interstates leading into and out of the city.
We like to buy stuff and keep it in the closets, is my guess.
But NWA, or Northwest Arkansas is building townhomes.
Driving in to Razorback stadium there were a lot of brand new places for people to live.
Lots of sidewalks and bike paths and greenways for walking.
And even in the drizzle/fog, people out and about.
I wondered at the difference.
Wal Mart money is one.
We’ve got a couple of billionaires who call the mountains home, and they put a lot of dollars into mountain biking and craft brew joints and making corridor a place people want to go.
Tyson, JB Hunt, and even a few billionaire grads, like Jerry Jones and Warren Stephens.
AR has a lot of people who have daddies and granddads who made a ton of money through stock and make the mountain burgs into top ten places people want to live.
PB is trying, but no one goes to town to see flowers hanging from light poles.
There just aren’t that many botanists in the world.
I worked at one of the old buildings when it was open.
Cohen’s Department Store.
It is a huge open space with a loft AND a third floor with fifteen foot ceilings.
I asked the current owner to turn it into a brewery, a brew pub or even just a meeting space to give people a reason to go downtown.
His response was to put a food trailer and two picnic tables in the vacant lot next to the building.
I dropped by one Saturday morning to find it covered in trash, broken beer bottles and one of the tables flipped over.
It made me think a good time was had.
But highlighted one of the big differences between the Delta and the Mountains we have that divide this state.
Trash.
I walked four blocks in Fayetteville and didn’t see any.
No wrappers, no 40’s in brown bags tossed out of the windows. No McDonald’s bags which seem as ever-present as birds.
Just cigarette butts, the bane of non-smokers who wonder at the audacity of flickers.
But no litter.
And I wonder…
Is that the chicken or the egg?
It’s a mindset, of course.
It might just be I hit the only stretch of roadway that had been cleaned as we walked into Baum stadium to watch some college kids play the game we love.
The could have swept the street because they knew I was coming, and I would notice and I would compare.
Except
I’m not that important as a visitor or in the grand scheme of city planning.
The new Mayor of PB did something her first week in office.
Set a schedule of weekly trash pick ups to “Clean Up the Bluff.”
They have been on going and local churches have added to it.
Picking up after others.
The efforts sometimes feel like an episode of Groundhog Day.
Because it doesn’t touch the root of the issue.
Pride.
Turning a city, any city really, into a place people want to go or want to hang out.
Maybe it starts with picking up after yourself.
Which is what a Navy Admiral said when he suggested making your bed every day.
Do the little things that add up over time and it becomes something bigger, better and greater.
Like picking up.
Like building a bike trail, and then a bike park, and then a Greenway that stretches through the region.
Which philosopher said consistency creates excellent habits?
We are the sum of what we do over and over again?
The Hogs lost, but we had fun, and will return again in a few weeks for a tournament.
There might not be fog.
I wonder if there will be litter. (I don’t think there will be.)
The drive home made me ponder being more consistent.
And taking a bag on my walk/runs just to pick up after others.
It might not make a difference in the grand scheme.
Or it might.
What are you most consistent with doing?
Today is a free book grab to find some of your favorite authors:
Plus I should have this ready for you tomorrow:
Chapter One – Work in Progress
And more this week.