Friday was historic, still need oil painter

By Kevin Cooper (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Sunday, August 30, 2009

When we think of key moments in our nation’s history, we like to think of them as perfect.

Many of the earliest moments were captured only in vivid written descriptions that led to rich oil paintings depicting monumental events such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution.

Nearly every such painting features people dressed to the nines with perfect hair, positioned in such a way that a viewer of the painting sees at least part of each face.

The truth is someone at the signing of the Declaration of Independence may have had a bad hair day. The crowd probably huddled around the document, obscuring the view. Or, perhaps one of our founding fathers took a shoe off to rest a tired foot.

It’s quite likely the artists featured in our history books probably over glossed over some “real” moments.

My mind wandered to what the “real” history must have looked like late Friday afternoon as the leaders of the City of Natchez and Adams County made history.

Their meeting to discuss economic development was certainly historic. Despite being legislatively mandated years ago by the bill that created the EDA, Friday’s meeting was the first of its kind anyone could recall.

All we need is an oil painter to set the image onto canvas and clean it up a bit so that we can all see the true history that was made.

As city and county meetings go, it was relatively tame.

The only real tension came when yours truly jumped in to try and end a back-and-forth “who’s on first” dialogue over millage between Alderwoman Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis and City Clerk Donnie Holloway.

In a weak moment, I cracked after a few minutes of this and interjected trying to help. It didn’t. Mathis told me she didn’t care to hear my opinion since I wasn’t elected by anyone.

I shook my head, laughed, and continued to watch the back-and-forth charade continue.

Mathis would be wise to stop worrying about who is or isn’t elected and just listen to everyone who tries to help her. Not everyone is out to get her politically. I’m certainly not. I’ve applauded her defiant stands on issues in the past and will continue to do so when appropriate.

Eventually, after a number of minutes Mathis, Holloway and City Attorney Everett Sanders came to a common understanding, but not after all three seemed to get frustrated momentarily with each another.

An oil painter would certainly have cleaned up that incident and a few other things Friday.

The painter would have brushed over the fact that a couple of supervisors came in extremely late.

His strokes would have overlooked an attorney cracking jokes in the corner or the momentary disruption when a laptop was turned on in the middle of Natchez Mayor Jake Middleton’s speaking.

And the painter would have likely used creative license to “wake up” a member of the EDA board who chose to doze for a few minutes.

Governing isn’t easy or pretty. That’s for sure.

And we’re all human.

Historic moments such as the coming together of city and county government to find common ground are not as perfect as revolutionary era oil painting.

And that’s OK.

It’s nice to see that our community seems headed in the right direction, despite a few minor bumps.

Let’s hope Friday’s meeting was the first of many “oil painting” moments ahead for our community.

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.