It is Christmas Eve, and the Little Village by the Bay is preparing for the last paroxysm of activity before buttoning up for the holiday tomorrow. I don’t know if that includes putting up the Mad Santa lighted display on top of the Hospital.

Every year for as long as I can remember, the gigantic Santa has blazed his apparent displeasure across the bay at the Springs. They have never done anything back, except have higher real estate assessments, but maybe you have to live here full time to be sensitive to the nuances.

Speaking of nuances, not all the people will be buttoned up. Helena, the 28-year-old nurse assistant who helped me walk Raven yesterday has the Christmas Day shift, starting at 0515, tomorrow morning. She cut a deal with her three and five-year-olds to have Christmas today, and the tots were happy to agree.

I am really impressed with most of the folks who provide the safety net for our elderly. It is not universal, but the people Up North are genuine and real and their hearts are big.

I would not have contemplated low-flow toilets on the holiday. Normally, I don’t think about them at all, unless I am visiting a new construction home. Of course, most people who bought them at the height of the bubble have already walked away from them, or hung themselves, but I got to talking to the plumber the other morning about replacing the toilets if it turned out that was the problem with the home hydraulics.

“The new ones don’t work. Trust me, you don’t want ‘em,” he said, adjusting his ball-cap. “The ones you have are the old-school kind with 3.5 gallons in the tank. The new ones are half that.”

“But isn’t that more sustainable?” I asked. “Less water use and all that?”

He smiled. “Not if you have to flush two or three times,” he said. “Plus the extra wear and tear on the valves which have to be replaced on everything eventually. All the new construction around here have them and people complain like crazy.”

“Well, why not just replace them with ones that work?”

“Can’t do that. Anything more than 1.6 gallons is illegal now.”

“You are kidding. You mean there is a black market for old toilets?”

He smiled. “You can either salvage existing ones, or smuggle them in from Canada. Same deal with the lightbulbs.”

“I would hate to have that on my rap sheet,” I said. The plumber nodded sagely, with the sort of sly smile that made me suspect he was a guy with whom I could do business, should the contingency arise in which an efficient albeit illegal toilet needed to be found. A wink is as good as a nod, you know?

So I was buzzing around town trying to catch up on details and thinking about politics in the local, rather than the national context I am usually stuck with.

Raven was elected to the city council several times, rising eventually in seniority to be the Mayor Pro Tem in a city with a full-time professional City Manager.

Raven’s legacy deal was a bypass around the city, something the local merchants strongly opposed since it would lessen traffic past their establishments and promote the Big Boxes located on the tribal land outside of town.

It should go without saying that they were successful in their adamant opposition to getting places quickly, and getting from the South Side of town to the North is still a pain.

The visible legacy of the Council here in the Little Village by the Bay is the city block smack in the middle of the downtown. The Council approved the plan of a hot-shot out-of-town property development company and facilitated the acquisition of the several properties that occupied the site.

“Village Pointe” or something was to be the name of the new condo-hotel complex. I do not know if eminent domain was invoked, since this was to be the signature of a new re-birth of the downtown, and the voters backed the measure by like 500 votes out of a couple thousand cast.

Of course, that all happened after Raven was retired from the governing body. The Council put their stamp on the downtown in 2005, and managed to get the big pit dug to provide the foundation of the glorious new future on what had been the block holding the local theater, shops and restaurants.

In 2008, as you know, for a variety of perfectly good reasons, the developer went bankrupt, and the signature development is a really big hole in the ground, ringed by wire fence and black plastic that has been shredded by the winter wind.

Everyone seems to have gotten used to it now. I had pretty much become inured to the fierce red glower of the Right Jolly Elf on top of the hospital.

At least he is gone this year.

Ho Ho HO!

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
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