Who knew this picture would engender
such feelings in people who saw it?
This is the picture I was talking about
yesterday, the one that I purposely went out to take. Loraine and I
were walking down Fourth Street on our way to Cal's (because Third
Street is closed for construction) when I happened to notice just
how...big the new UP Health System hospital looked as you glanced up
Spring Street. When we got back from Cal's I grabbed my camera and
took the picture, along with the ones I shared with you yesterday. I
also put a few of them up on the “You Know You're From
Marquette...” page on Facebook, and that's when the fun started.
There were people who enjoyed the shot,
or who just recognized that it's a unique viewpoint from which to see
Marquette's newest building. But then there was a sizable contingent
of people who took the sight of the picture as an opportunity to rail
against the hospital, the roundabouts leading up to it., development
in general, and how “Marquette has changed since I was a kid”
with some rather vitriolic language.
Yikes!
Look. I realize that some people don't
like change. I realize some people don't like the current owners of
the hospital facility. And I realize that some people just like to
bitch about things...just because they like to. But some of the
intense anger being poured out in the post actually made me think
about taking the picture down. I put the pictures up because (I
thought) they provided a unique look at the ever-changing face of
Marquette.
I guess not everyone saw it that way.
As I mentioned in a reply to one of the
comments, one of the things I love about Marquette is that it adapts
and changes with the times. Where the hospital now sits used to be a
grimy, dirty railroad yard. It's been re-purposed into a facility
that both cleaned up the industrial waste and allows over 1,000 to go
to work every day. If Marquette didn't adapt that way, it would be
dirty, shrinking, and, to be brutally honest, like a lot of the rest
of the U.P.
And who wants that?
That's why some of the comments
surprised me. Yes, Marquette is growing and Marquette is changing.
But that's a good thing. If you don't adapt, you die. There's a
reason Marquette is one of the few places (if not the only place) in
the U.P. that's growing in population. You need to change with the
times.
That's just a fact of life.
And here's a curious fact—I did a
check on a random sample of the people who complained the loudest,
and it seems like a big chunk of them were people who don't even live
in Marquette any more. They may have been people who grew up here or
who went to school here, but they live elsewhere now. Yet they spent
their valuable time complaining because the city in which they used
to live is trying to keep up with the times, and is not the same
place they remember.
I mean, what would they prefer? A city
with a grimy lake shore and a dying downtown and people moving out in
droves? Is that the Marquette they remember so fondly? Is that the
Marquette they prefer? Well, then, maybe they should move back here,
buy the new hospital, turn it back into a rail yard, and then support
everyone put out of a job by their actions. Those of us who call
Marquette home are doing our best to make sure it's a vibrant place
to live. Unless you live here, maybe you really shouldn't criticize
everything that's being done to make it a better place. Sure, you
may not agree with everything being done, but we're doing our best.
If you wanna move back and help out, great. But if you don't, maybe
just ease up on the armchair quarterbacking just a little bit.
Sigh. It was just a picture. I just
didn't realize it's a picture that would cause such a reaction.
Who knew?
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