Inherit The Wind [or, The Meek Shall Inherit Hempstead Town]

“He who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind.”
-Proverbs 11:29

Creationists continue to make the argument – much to the chagrin of adherents to Darwin’s evolutionary theory – that life here on earth is so complex, there must necessarily have been a higher hand at play. [SEE New York Times, In Explaining Life’s Complexities, Darwinists and Doubters Clash.]

While many of us thought that the debate had been settled with the Scopes Monkey Trial, let no one dispel the fervor with which Creationists – science and reason tossed hastily into that wind – advance “hand of God” over “survival of the fittest.”

Heck, I’m no Mathew Brady – and certainly no Williams Jennings Bryant – but I can tell you, with most certain conviction, that evolution is bunk. Nothing changes over time. Once the plan is laid, everything follows the script. Evolved from Apes? Nonsense! If Apes were as dumbstruck as us humans, they’d be extinct by now!

Forget the National debate, the inspiration of the ignorant who, but for the dogma, wouldn’t know an amoeba from a two-headed serpent. All we need do is to focus the microscope on that microcosm of single-celled organisms – Hempstead Town Hall – to lay to rest, once and for all, the absurd notion that there ever was such a thing as evolution.

Inbreeding aside, Town Hall provides the proving ground to demonstrate that the more things change, the more they stay the same. A single cell – call it the Nassau County GOP – placed, by Divine right, in a petrie dish in Hempstead in 1907, and left to its own devices. Fast forward to 2005, nearly a Century after this immaculate deception, and bear witness to the complexities that only a higher authority (with one heck of a wicked sense of humor) could have wrought.

No sir, it is not possible for such a complex system of patronage, taxation and governmental inefficiency to have “evolved.” Don’t be foolish. Only the Creator could fashion a family tree where nearly everyone on payroll is related. Only the Maker, through his “I’m Impotent” vision, could have brought forth Sanitary Districts, Water Districts, Lighting Districts, Sewer Districts, you name it, we’ve got a district for it! Only the Almighty, in his infinite wisdom (who are we to question?), could make us believe we are feasting on filet mignon when, in fact, we are gnawing on whale blubber. [“Thou shalt pay twice as much to eat fat, and thou shalt enjoy it!”]

Evolution? Ha! At Hempstead Town Hall, by the graces of the all powerful Designer (no Halston He), time stands still. The illegal accessory apartments complained of twenty years ago – as surely would have “died-out” in a Darwinian universe – confound science. They persist and proliferate, as is the plan of the architect of man’s brief foray in this township.

As if one needed further evidence that evolution is a myth – a left-wing, pinko, New York Times conspiracy contrived by the Hollywood elite and perpetuated by the Michael Moores of the world – let us do a case study of the static. The Courtesy Hotel - West Hempstead’s puddle of stagnation, out of which, most assuredly, new life would have by now arisen had evolution played a role in Hempstead Town’s development.

For more than 10 years, local residents and activists have been calling for the closure of the infamous Courtesy Hotel – a hotbed of crime, the only punishment for which inures to the detriment of the community.

Calls to “Condemn the Courtesy,” having prompted over the years Town Hall diatribes, citizen Petition drives, and much dribble for the local media, yielding little forward progress, the boiling brine from which all life is said to have sprung notwithstanding.

A decade and several months later (a speck, of course, on that evolutionary timeline, despite the myriad arrests for drug trafficking, prostitution, rape and assault), the battle to shutter the Courtesy rages on.

Assurances from Town Hall that “we’re working on it.” Passing homage to Darwin in the taunts of “these things take time.” Ten long years of stirring the pot, looking for signs of life incubating in the womb of community. Nothing.

And then, just when all hope seemed lost, Divine intervention.

Town Supervisor, Kate Murray, “buoyed” by a Supreme Court decision, announces on June 8th that a “Blight Study” (unlike any Blight Study done before. And, believe us, they’ve been done before) is underway in the area of the Courtesy, its findings to be made public within a week’s time. [No word as of August 21st. True, the Lord works in mysterious ways, but is not a week still 7 days? Then again, how long is a day in the Biblical scheme?]

But never mind the Blight Study. There are greater revelations still. The Town Board will hold a hearing – and no doubt, a vote – on Tuesday, September 6th (7 PM at the Town Meeting Pavilion) - to consider what, only yesterday, was unthinkable and untouchable – a Condemnation Proceeding.

It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to predict the outcome of that vote: 7 in favor of going the Condemnation route, none opposed. [Barring, of course, word from the Designer to Councilman Santino that the people of West Hempstead are destined to “enjoy” another thousand years of the Courtesy, and shall be “willing” to pay the price, accordingly.]

“Yes,” you say. “There is a God!” To hear community leaders posture it, this is the biggest news from the Town since the electric vacuum cleaner was invented (which just happens to be the very same year the GOP came to dinner at Town Hall and never left – 1907).

Still, we have to ask the tough questions: Why now, when the masses have been clamoring for Condemnation for over 10 years, all the while being chided by Town officials, "No, no, no. That's not the way to go?"

Why has the previously unacceptable and heretofore unpalatable suddenly become the raison d'etre for the goobers (get it? “Raison.” “Goobers.” Oh, never mind!) at Town Hall? Those same "tools" – the power to both create and destroy - were available to the Town long before the Supreme Court opined on Eminent Domain. Why were they never used?

What, pray tell, has given the Town this sudden urge to tweak what has always been nature’s course. To meddle with what is? To dabble where no other dared? [While Kelo vs. City of New London may have "buoyed" Supervisor Murray, it didn't change the law or make new law on the taking of private property. The Court simply reaffirmed what towns and municipalities have been doing for years. Of course, we should give the Town Attorney's office the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they just didn't know the law or simply failed to understand it!]

Even after moving to condemn the similarly unsavory Oceanside motel, having won a much ballyhooed victory in the “taking” of this no-tell motel, Town officials refused to take the same action against the Courtesy, citing the "costs" to the West Hempstead community. Why this abrupt (but surely not unexpected) Epiphany?

Ah, the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away – by Eminent Domain, no less!

And what ever became of the Town-commissioned "Blight Study," the results to serve as the basis for immediate action to close the hotel under the Town's Urban Renewal Ordinances? Heaven knows. For us mere mortals, that there was a study is information enough!

Action that should have been taken more than a decade ago - with closure of the Courtesy to have likely followed within 18 months (typical time frame for such proceedings) - is now the fodder of a Town Hall horse and pony show. Intended to showcase all that the Town of Hempstead is "doing" for a community that has come undone, the peculiar timing of this new-found zeal to close this Devil’s lair - just 9 weeks before a critical election for the Town Supervisor – is both dubious and unsettling.

Ah, but the Designer has it all figured out. A community’s collective prayers answered – albeit far removed in time and space from the lips of the faithful who first uttered those pleas. [Well, at least we didn’t have to wander the desert for forty years!]

Expecting a miracle in West Hempstead – or elsewhere in Hempstead Town, for that matter? Don’t put away your Rosary or hang up your prayer shawls quite yet. In fact, don't be the least bit surprised to see this election season come and go, as surely as fall flows into winter, with the Courtesy still flourishing, and a community's essential revitalization still floundering. Just as long as they’ve got your vote on November 8th.

Feeling had? Helpless? A victim of a cruel hoax? Don’t worry. There’s absolutely nothing any of us mere mortals can do. We are but sinners in the hands of an angry God. The by-product of this all-pervasive Intelligent Design. That very same Intelligent Design that has pre-ordained the GOP as the sole and rightful occupants of Hempstead Town Hall, and has left for the rest of us to, well, inherit the wind!