Today's trip to the Big City
I had to go to the capitol today for a training session. (I am a state employee who works in a hick-town for a department that everyone wishes they could forget but can't get rid of.) I was literally in the executive building where the govener works in the heart of downtown Phoenix. I had to drive in major heavy traffic to get there, sometimes with 5-8 lanes of traffic all doing 75mph. (Yes, for those of you who live in places like that, this is a yawn... but I HATE HATE HATE traffic. I tend to panic.) I managed to get there all in one piece with only getting slightly lost for about 3 minutes. (Which I will get back to later.)
So I get to where the headquarters for DOC is housed and then look for the capitol building where this meeting is taking place. (They told us all 1700 W. Jefferson in the Grand Canyon Council room of the capitol building. Like we all just know where that is because we're all there all the time, right?) I parked 30 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start and two trips up and down three blocks and one call to my office later, I finally found the building... facing another street. Nice.
It was opulent. The original capitol building was turned into a museum, and then right behind it (connected with a glass hallway) was the modern Exectuive Building. You should see the whole layout of Jefferson street. There's a beautiful park with tons of memorials and lots of grass. The buildings are huge and the decor shining. Lots and lots of homage to all kinds of things. There were a couple of war memorials, a statuish arizona flag... And the grass wasn't just in the park, it was all over the lawns of all the buildings. The foilage was gorgeous.
And instead of enjoying the awe and grandeur of it all, I could only feel disgust. Isn't that sad? There were several reasons behind my reaction, and much to your annoyance, I'm going to list them. The first one was probably a tinge of jealousy mixed with frustration. Here they have all these beautiful things, and yet I work in an office where the water fountain turns off if someone flushes the toilet. Several years ago, all the grass on all the units where I work was ripped up and many trees and flowers thrown in the garbage to be replaced with peat rock, all in the name of water conservation. And here they've got all this stuff coming out there ears. There was so much money sunk into that place... and I'm still waiting for inter-office envelopes so that I can teach my corrospondence Substance Abuse classes. Printer paper is almost currency around my office.
The other reason I was disgusted. When I was breifly lost, I was merely blocks away from the Capitol street... I glanced down to make sure that my doors were locked and was quickly coming up with an escape route of I got car-jacked. It was that scary. I had passed a street called Van Buren, and I can't tell you how many inmates (that's state prison inmates) I've heard talking to each other, and how many were from various places ON Van Buren. It's become somewhat notorious in my mind, and I wasn't pleased when I looked up and recognized the street sign this morning. So my problem... merely BLOCKS away from the state capitol, where there's beauty and memorials and huge buildings and where the state senate meets and all things lawful of Arizona are organized, is drug infested, criminal ridden, gang-over-run neighborhoods.
I was almost at the point of angry. It was hard to smile at the people who work there and not show how I felt. The people I was seeing weren't the ones at fault. And honestly, those buildings have been there for a very, very long time. Do I expect them to demolish them? The Capitol is representative of the whole state, and how would it look if the sentate met in a dump? But it all still seemed so wrong somehow.
And on a less-negative-more-funny note: I had to walk through the Senators parking lot (lugging a box of brochures, I might add) to get back to my car, and I saw a primer-grey suburban with a red tailgate and white driver side doors! lol!
So how do fix something like this? Where is the balance? What is the answer?
So I get to where the headquarters for DOC is housed and then look for the capitol building where this meeting is taking place. (They told us all 1700 W. Jefferson in the Grand Canyon Council room of the capitol building. Like we all just know where that is because we're all there all the time, right?) I parked 30 minutes before the meeting was supposed to start and two trips up and down three blocks and one call to my office later, I finally found the building... facing another street. Nice.
It was opulent. The original capitol building was turned into a museum, and then right behind it (connected with a glass hallway) was the modern Exectuive Building. You should see the whole layout of Jefferson street. There's a beautiful park with tons of memorials and lots of grass. The buildings are huge and the decor shining. Lots and lots of homage to all kinds of things. There were a couple of war memorials, a statuish arizona flag... And the grass wasn't just in the park, it was all over the lawns of all the buildings. The foilage was gorgeous.
And instead of enjoying the awe and grandeur of it all, I could only feel disgust. Isn't that sad? There were several reasons behind my reaction, and much to your annoyance, I'm going to list them. The first one was probably a tinge of jealousy mixed with frustration. Here they have all these beautiful things, and yet I work in an office where the water fountain turns off if someone flushes the toilet. Several years ago, all the grass on all the units where I work was ripped up and many trees and flowers thrown in the garbage to be replaced with peat rock, all in the name of water conservation. And here they've got all this stuff coming out there ears. There was so much money sunk into that place... and I'm still waiting for inter-office envelopes so that I can teach my corrospondence Substance Abuse classes. Printer paper is almost currency around my office.
The other reason I was disgusted. When I was breifly lost, I was merely blocks away from the Capitol street... I glanced down to make sure that my doors were locked and was quickly coming up with an escape route of I got car-jacked. It was that scary. I had passed a street called Van Buren, and I can't tell you how many inmates (that's state prison inmates) I've heard talking to each other, and how many were from various places ON Van Buren. It's become somewhat notorious in my mind, and I wasn't pleased when I looked up and recognized the street sign this morning. So my problem... merely BLOCKS away from the state capitol, where there's beauty and memorials and huge buildings and where the state senate meets and all things lawful of Arizona are organized, is drug infested, criminal ridden, gang-over-run neighborhoods.
I was almost at the point of angry. It was hard to smile at the people who work there and not show how I felt. The people I was seeing weren't the ones at fault. And honestly, those buildings have been there for a very, very long time. Do I expect them to demolish them? The Capitol is representative of the whole state, and how would it look if the sentate met in a dump? But it all still seemed so wrong somehow.
And on a less-negative-more-funny note: I had to walk through the Senators parking lot (lugging a box of brochures, I might add) to get back to my car, and I saw a primer-grey suburban with a red tailgate and white driver side doors! lol!
So how do fix something like this? Where is the balance? What is the answer?