It’s true that I am secretly class x. ;-) It’s also true that I am so isolated from that sort of enviornment that I just sort of drift along doing what I do and trying not to be too obviously not mainstream. Alas. The nature of my daily job propels me into Florida’s Creative Class, but I hate to be using all my creativity there.

Actually, I am intrigued by the recognition of a creative class, but uncomfortable with the structure imposed by appending the concept of class to it. Humans are, by their nature, driven to creativity. I recognize that we are talking about a group of workers/producers who are by nature creative and intelligent, not necessarily artists and writers only. On the other hand, the concept of creativity as something we each own in ourselves is something that the American education system has tried to both squelch and encourage, and thus, has completely manhandled a brilliant thing and resulted in a certain and sizable number of kids walking around with inflated esteem and jack for ideas. The thought of a creative class as something definable and actual in Western society seems, to me, to suffer from this same sort of dissassoiative identity disorder: a class of people rigidly defined as creative while at the same time denying the creative capacity of people who fall outside the demographic boundaries.

I don’t know if this is sufficiently elucidated to make my point; I have the vague sense that something is not right here with an apparent inability to put my finger on it or ponder it to d3th before I start shooting off my mouth.

I was flipping through the Onion last night, noted that Milwaukee had its own Pecha Kucha talks 24 February, and was sorry I missed it. Of course, the topics were advertized as subject random, so I’m sure there was not the sort of tie-together that Jodi was able to organize. But it would have been a good way to spend an evening.

People tend not to think of Milwaukee as the sort of place where that might happen. While Chicago remains my great city love, it will go on and thrive without me. Milwaukee is exciting to watch as it changes. We are so often considered a bunch of blue coller beer factory workers, but the Laverne and Shirley era is long over. Most of the manufacturing left Milwaukee a long time ago, and the transition from that era was tough. Now, however, the local state university (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) is looking to open a new school, the School of Freshwater Sciences–quietly, while no one was looking, Milwaukee became a world hub for water technology, and the proposed school is a reflection of that. How exciting. In this economic disaster, Milwaukee is doing better than much of the country, in large part because it already sufferred through the loss of its former “personality.”

If a bunch of beer-swilling, hog-riding, blue-collar Lenny and Laverne’s can do it, so can Windsor.