When you see or hear media types citing ‘sources” for information in their reports, understand this often either is because those sources are ashamed to go on the record about it all, or maybe the media doesn’t really have anything and is just making it up and throwing the stuff against the proverbial wall to see if it sticks.
Consider yourself forewarned that this blog post relies on “sources” who relay to me what they see on social media because I don’t partake in that madness.
Apparently, there currently is much ado on social media – the megaphone for morons – about plans for Johnstown’s Central Park, with those plans being to spend $8 million or so to spruce up the place, not that there’s anything really wrong with it now. But, hey, there is free government money to be spent and a lot of hogs ready to run to the trough to eat, so . . .
Cue Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” lyrics:
“So they paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel
A boutique
And a swinging night spot.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone
They paved paradise
Put up a parking lot.”
Mitchell’s musical lament continues:
“They took all the trees
Put ’em in a tree museum
And they charged all the people
An arm and a leg just to see ’em.”
For those who don’t know, Joni Mitchell is your typical troubled leftist sort, a bundle of contradictions. Consider she is alleged to have committed the sin of wearing a blackface costume multiple times in her past and she pulled her music from Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young who was acting as Joe Rogan’s would-be censor. Mitchell and Young both seem to have discovered the lost income hurts and have relented on their boycott.
Did you even know they were missing?
This doesn’t mean that Mitchell’s lyrics can’t be cited for inadvertently having made a point regarding Johnstown’s Central Park proposed revamp.
With much fanfare, those plans were rolled out before the public a while back, each containing varying degrees of removing trees and putting down more concrete.
The centerpiece fountain is out, leaving us to wonder where drunks will frolic in the future?
Also in danger is the Gazebo, or Gay-zebo as my former Daily Bugle union brothers who worked in the composing room used to call it due to them often interrupting same-sex liaisons as they left work in the wee hours of the morning.
We’ve already shipped a reported $1.6 million out of town for someone to draw up some plans and engineering data for Central Park II.
One or more wish list items included a so-called splash pad. We already have tried this in Cambria City, which is where Mitchell’s line about being charged an arm and a leg just to see ’em comes to mind.
There is a massive presentation online about the Central Park plans, with many of the Myopia 2025 operatives credited for their help, input, rubber-stamping, etc.
A simple rule that will stand one in good stead in Johnstown is if Myopia 2025 is for it, you should be against it.
So it goes with the re-imagined Central Park.
Can’t we just string a few more rows of overhead electric lights and call it a day?
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