Nick Muir
Nick Muir, Wayne city council member, IT educator, mentor and community-minded leader talks about community, student and town integration, tough civic choices and people that care. Listen to full audio below:
All posts tagged: Wayne
JV Brummels: Poet and Raconteur
Poet, creative wit, cultural commentator and gentleman of Wayne, JV Brummels speaks of poetry, community, college and hats. In particular, JV reflects upon the town and gown tension in a small college community. Listen below
Lukas Rix on Business, Same-Sex Partnerships and Community
In this vignette, Lukas discusses one of his two businesses, Rustic Treasures, a consignment store selling vintage home items. He also reflects upon his public same-sex partnership with Mark and the nature of community and the importance of investing in it. Listen below:
A word on process
When I conceived the approach to a couple of 830 mile long conversations, I had anticipated setting up a table, a couple of chairs and a canopy in a public space in the towns that I visited and then inviting people to talk with me. It was always apparent, though, that the context of each engagement, the vagaries of the weather and the circumstances of the moment would influence this approach. So it has proven. In Omaha, my set up was outside Millard branch library with the planned arrangement. As I moved into rural Nebraska, however, the heat of the day, the locational footfall or paths people took in their daily lives, and timing all affected the set up of the conversation space. In Pender, the public park was entirely empty, but the pool was full of children. Pender’s Main Street was also quiet and would stay that way until the pizza place and bars got busier in the evening. In Wayne, I was able to set up on Main Street outside a popular retail …
Lukas and Mark
The young professional and entrepreneurial spirit in Wayne, Nebraska has a couple of standouts in Lukas and Mark, who own both Rustic Treasures and The Coffee Shoppe adjacent to it on Main Street. Although Lukas could count on both hands the number of similar entrepreneurs, he observed that their slice of Main Street is a vibrant retail hub. I observed in turn that Lukas is vibrant. His enthusiasm is uncontainable and he’s a chatterbox, but a smart, insightful and entertaining one. Mark is the calm and unflappable one, according to Lukas. The success of their business, Rustic Treasures, can be seen in the numbers, in a year growing staff from a couple to six full-time and four part-time and increasing revenues threefold. But it isn’t just their success that caught my attention, it is that they are a paradigm of the entrepreneurial ethos that every community should be seeking and nurturing. Lukas, for example, told me that he cleans the street of trash every morning along their entire block. They use social media not only …
It’s because you waved
“It’s because you waved,” said Luke. In his early twenties and studying intercultural studies in Omaha, Luke was the first person to stop and engage in conversation with me as part of this project, a couple of 830 mile long conversations. He stopped because of that wave and my welcome. It is premature to begin filtering for commonalities, though I can say that the people I engaged with, whether at Millard branch library in Omaha, West Point, Pender and Wayne, demonstrated a curiosity and willingness to interact. For his part, Luke had moved when he was 13 to Spain with his family (his Dad did missionary work and was a military contractor). Luke lived in Europe for 5 years. It remains to be seen if broad exposure to different cultures is a theme arising out of this project, but it is impossible not to want to explore that thought as I go. It is at this time worth noting, perhaps, my own capacity to be curious and to engage. The point building up to the …
a couple of 830 mile long conversations 