Dakota Beacon

I just talked with my daughter who lives in a small town near the Twin Cities.  It seems that in her little town the fire marshal has come up with another way to make life miserable for the citizens there.  

My daughter and son-in-law used to live in a very pleasant apartment in a suburb of the cities.  The only problem was they longed to enjoy the outdoors, to grill outdoors, maybe plant a garden.  So they went house-hunting about three years ago and found the perfect home - a small town not too far from work for them, an historic property which they immediately went to work restoring.  The house had been vacant for over a year, with bats in the attic. It took considerable investment of resources and time to get them out.  Since then it has been a  methodical and ceaseless labor of love.  Month by month it has been coming back to life - a 150-year-old piece of Minnesota’s history lovingly preserved. 

But now the bureaucrats who run the town have come up with a new way to depress property owners and the value in their properties - a draconian ordinance outlawing any kind of “recreational” fire (which would be anything but a forest fire by the definition given) within 25 feet of any structure.  In a neighborhood full of 150-year-old homes, built in close proximity, this is not possible.  The only way to comply would be to not have a barbecue pit or fire pit at all.  If you put it that far from your own door it would be an infringement on the neighbor’s property rights.  This seems a matter of common sense, like not starting a fire in a full-force gale (which is also addressed in the proposal - anything over 15 mph).  A reasonable distance might be 6 feet.  The rest should be between the homeowner and his insurance company and mortgage holder.  

Any community which goes in the direction of more local government overreach will end up like a little ghost town which declined because there was no reason to live there.  Today the only reason to live in a small town is the quality of life and the sense of freedom one enjoys there.  Detroit would be a ghost town if it were smaller; as it is, it simply decayed into an abandoned hulk surrounded by the rest of the city.  It does not take long - not even a generation - to turn paradise into a ghost town.  Unless the plan underlying this kind of ordinance is a sneaky way to depopulate the town so as to hand it over, free, to some “developer” there can be no up-side in this kind of plan - but then, what is the motivation behind Whitmer’s government?  Or these other American police-state communities?

It seems that with this coronavirus phenomenon our local and state governments have gone hog-wild in attempting to turn America into a soviet-style police state.  There are those in local government who will not feel their job is done until we are all in prison.  In the case of my daughter and son-in-law (and everyone these days) their only pleasure is in their own company and their privacy in their beloved home.  This means the firepit on a pleasant summer evening.  No movies, no concerts, no dining out with friends, no parties, no theater, no gigs for my daughter, no pools, no festivals, no amusement parks, no sports events, no weddings, no family get-togethers, no vacation trips, no library even.  No beaches.  No boats.  No tea shop, no pizza parlor.  Just a quick trip to the grocery store and back and the backyard on a nice day.  Now not that?  

How long can people stay sane?  We are all becoming the Man in the Iron Mask, sitting in a dank prison with the windows closed, watching the world from behind a glass window, denied those things we have bought and paid for.  

My heart goes out to my daughter - she is learning the real price of owning a home:  constant and eternal vigilance.  It gets old.  Why can’t we leave each other alone?  We hear the term “Karen” for people who are avidly trying to take control of others.  That’s too nice a word.  The fire marshal in their town is at the very least, that.  Probably a stronger term would be more accurate.

I suggested to my daughter that it would be well if the town council suspended consideration of anything other than an emergency until the “social distancing” is over and done with, so that people can congregate to discuss, debate and decide for themselves.  That would be a smart move for every governing body in America right now.  We don’t need more things to divide us - we need to help each other survive this increasingly absurd alternate reality.

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