Today I woke up to both snow and a snow job. The Journal News featured an Op Ed piece of all things covering the heroic liberal view that it celebrate diversity, this makes the city great, and by implication, those who are members of other than the liberal wing of the democratic party are divisive, anti-establishment and, by reasonable extrapolation of the unbundling of code, we, thus, are racists, anti-feminists, homophobes, anti-semites, and God knows what else. The Author, Dr. Lipow, a practicing dentist I believe, must be sniffing some random nitrous oxide that has led to delusionary thinking.

Lohud.com: New Rochelle is able to take pride in its diversity

Yesterday during a luncheon attended by Jim Killoran, community clergy and others, the wonderful Mary Bonner suffered a stroke. As of this posting she remains among us. Many of you know Mary as the rock of Habitat, the woman who is on the board and manages the downtown store.

Mary would ask for your prayers for others and I feel she would surely prosper from the prayers of all that participate in any way with Talk of the Sound; visitor, blogger, it doesn't matter.

If prayers are not your cup of tea, simply turn inward and think warmly of this fine woman who is truly a light in this darkened community. She is truly Jim's rock and she has been instrumental in helping me see the world in a different way. That is not easy given the selfishness, the mean spiritedness, and ugliness we experience daily.

To me the luncheon at Coromandel has spiritual significance because people of good will and faith were meeting to discuss what we talk about daily; how to make this community a better place for all people regardless of where they live, what their political views are, and well, you can fill in the blanks.

I believe that it is time for all of us throughout the City to come together and support our local busate corporations atRWinesses. They are a vanishing breed, but if we commit to affirmatively working to advance their cause, we might be able to do some positive work for the City, its small business community, and begin a long neglected process of working towards a common goal.

Simply said, I am toxic, and a mere glance at the newspapers, blogs, or lending an ear to the cable news indicates I suffer from a malady shared by most of world. It is rampant, a disease of the soul and spirit and it must stop NOW! Rationalizations about "critique", will of the Founding Fathers, ideology is no longer helpful. the patient is sick, very very sick and we have not diagnosed the cause of this illness.

The other day there was a post announcing a $500,000 matching grant for Facade Improvement. I expressed my point of view which, if you read my posts, essentially points out that this was not exactly great news for the City and why. Perhaps the rather solemn faces of the people on hand indicates some shared values and so I posted and with the lingering question of why a college head is the BID head (yes I know $$$$$) I put it out of my mind.

The School Board continues to grope and fumble around some fundamental questions on Employment criteria, union & management relations, and community transparency. However they do seem to be actively engaged and, hopefully, that will lead to growing insight, skill, and application that will benefit the citizen in the not too far distant future.

They might start affirmatively with dismissing the Superntendent. This is long overdue and surely there must be some sense of the need for this on the part of some school board members who are most likely those elected most recently. Were this done, a dark cloud would begin heading southeast and arrive somewhere in Suffolk County; a more amenable location for this controlling, unaware and stultifying force who has damaged our district and actually our non-eductional growth and development prospects and possibly done so mortally.

Bob Cox resurrects his early 2009 blog on Full-Time vs. Part Time Mayor and much more therein. The posting to this particular are closed, but Bob has put back on the table a critical issue and I am opportunistically albeit briefly (for me), going to bring it back to a perspective that interests me.

I have frequently mentioned on TOTS and elsewhere that the duties and responsibilities of the mayor of New Rochelle, as indicated in the City Code, Article X to be precise, are certainly not followed as indicated.

There cannot be any dispute on this point; the only question is why is this the case. My position is and continues to be conform to the code or change it.

I cannot imagine that the language contained in any resolution for "strong mayor" would differ from the exercise of the duties performed by Noam at this point. If anyone has kept a copy of the language of the last referendum, please post it.