Nostalgia: "Let's Suspend the Rules"---or "The MP3 Player----a True Story

Recently my daughters gave me a MP3 player for Father's Day. Yes. It is one of the inner secrets of The Observer that although the podcasts of The Observer are downloadable as well as the audio from meetings, I have been stuck with sitting by the computer and listening rather than biking, running or other pleasurable pursuits and enjoying the audio.

After unpacking the MP3 player I asked the youngest to explain SLOWLY how to download some stuff from the special hard drive that holds audio from yesteryear. I watched her closely, mindful of the value of all the audio as posterity was depending on me to preserve it.

Imagine my surprise when in listening to it that she had mixed it so I could listen to Tom Petty and then Bill Connors, and then Roy Orbison and then school board meetings. What an eclectic mix.

One of the first tracks that came on right after "Billy the Kid" was a track on "Let's Suspend the Rules."

This was a very famous meeting at Evansville City Council---it was the second Council meeting of our new Mayor. There had been some mixup in the selection process of committee assignments and it was necessary to "Suspend the Rules" to correct it.

Right after this, Bill Connors had reflected that with respect to "collector streets" we seemed to have these rules on the books but alas, they had never been followed. He ended his reflection by asking; "Do we really mean it?"

Alas, this meeting was one that I was still learning the ropes on recording so it is real faint. However-----the question is very relevant:

Do we really mean it. About the rules. Are we a people that just suspend them when it gets inconvenient?

How lucky I am that I get to have the question asked of me every day or so, right after Tom Petty and the Heartbrakers.