120. Omaha - the short story

The Boys of Summer on the University of Louisville Cardinal Baseball team will have their season extended a little longer. They won yesterday's Super Regional Championship before a standing-room only crowd at Jim Patterson Stadium by a whopping 20-2. Congratulations to Coach McConnell and the team. They advance to Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska for the College World Series. Rosenblatt Stadium, like Slugger Field home to a AAA pro team, has hosted the college tournament since the 1950s. The series begins Friday when Louisville faces Rice University, and runs through the championship game on June 25th.

Omaha is Nebraska's largest city, on its eastern border along the Missouri River, and opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. The city is near the geographic center of the continental United States, which at Lebanon, Kansas is about 230 miles to the northeast. Omaha is west-north-west of Louisville, about 700 miles away depending on how you get there. Most people would take I-64 west to St. Louis, and then I-70 west almost to Kansas, then I-29 north into the city. My trip would be altered, so as to go through some historically and politically significant towns, such as Vincennes, Indiana; Springfield, Illinois; Hannibal, Missouri; and Des Moines, Iowa. But that is just me.

Omaha has one of those Botanical Gardens, the type that Louisville doesn't, but that has been mentioned as a possibilty somewhere along River Road east of the Waterfront Park. They also have a ballet company, a couple of acting troupes, and a neat downtown skyline. Demographically, the area is smaller than Louisville's metropolitan count of nearly 1,000,000, with a population of about 820,000 in an eight county area. Like Louisville, Omaha's history is closely connected with a river (the Missouri) and a railroad (the Union Pacific). Although the city wasn't there at the time, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which shoved off from across the river at Louisville, made a stop at Council Bluffs, across the river at Omaha, in their trek across the country. Omaha dates its founding from a half-century later in 1854, marked by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Territorial Act, and Omaha was the territorial capital until the first session of the state legislature thirteen years later. Omaha's real growth came as part of President Lincoln's dream of a trans-continental railroad for the Republic. The president purchased land where he proposed the railroad from the east would cross the Missouri joining the railroad from the west. And that eventually happened.

The City of Omaha is bigger than the old City of Louisville by a half in both population and area. Omaha possesses a population of close to 350,000 in the 100 square miles making up the city limits. The old City of Louisville has a population of about 225,000 in an area of about 68 square miles. While the governments of Douglas County and Omaha have merged some services and agencies, the two governments have not actually been combined into one single taxing unit creating an efficient and smooth running engine of economic proseperity and growth - of course, neither have we done that here, where basically all we did was get rid of one city, twelve aldermen, and three county commissioners, and replace them with twenty-six council members. We still have nearly one hundred different taxing districts in Jefferson County - and property owners in the old City of Louisville, what the Mayor calls the Urban Services Disrict, are like residents of the other 94 cities remaining after merger, still doubly taxed, this while services and infrastructure expansion takes place at an alarming rate in the unincorporated county area, where there have been no accompanying and appropriate increases in taxes. But, I digress.

Somehow it always gets back to politics. Sorry about that. I think what I need in these lazy days of summer is some old fashioned religion. Surely there is a Vacation Bible School somewhere around which caters to back-sliding Christians who are more concerned about social justice than the privacy of other people's bedrooms. Surely.