Lessons too simple to learn

We have to keep learning them

Obligations took me away from Pottersville on Christmas Day just after Clarence Odbody, AS2 informed George Bailey he had no identity, no wallet, and no Zuzu petals. It’s a shame Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and the various Scrooges come around but one month each year. The lessons in them seem to be too simple for a lot of us to learn even after many years of revisiting them. And the real-life Potters and Scrooges never seem to get it. Most don’t even know they are Potters and Scrooges. The rest, if they do, don’t care.

Whoever runs Carolina Forward‘s Twitter (speaking of Pottersville) offers a few more observations that are too obvious to gain a firm foothold.

What "It's A Wonderful Life" does a good job of demonstrating is that when you elevate pure profit-seeking as the only valid goal – instead of, say, an economy that lifts all boats – it results in the Mr. Potters of the world taking over and ruining good communities.

— Carolina Forward (@ForwardCarolina) December 26, 2022

A block of hundred-year-old Victorian homes here, long broken up into apartments, were allowed by the owner over years to fall into disrepair.

Demolition by neglect, as they say, became the rationale for selling the now inflated real estate to a devloper for building a trendier and more profitable development.

Getting misty-eyed once a year over George Bailey never stops modern-day Potters from acting like Potters.

And speaking of Zuzu’s Petals on this Boxing Day: