What were THEY thinking? Is city council REALLY rejecting a nearly $100-million gift to revitalize the whole downtown Garland area?

TXDOT is willing to pay some $100 million to untangle the mess it made of downtown Garland nearly 50 years ago including wrapping Garland High School in major traffic.

Garland is on the verge of missing the opportunity of a lifetime to fix about two-dozen major issues facing its downtown area, using about $100 million in state funds and without raising taxes on our citizens.

Astoundingly Garland City Council on Monday night at its work session turned a cold shoulder to such an offer. Council told TXDOT to cancel its planned stakeholder meeting scheduled at 2 p.m. yesterday, February 21, to talk about the proposal to reroute State Highway 78 through downtown Garland to fix those long-standing, serious matters. The meeting would have reviewed four options open to the city to fix the problems it has been facing for years without a resolution.

At first it seemed council opposed the Thursday meeting because members would be in Austin for a city-expense-paid meeting, but by the time the council session was over, their fury oddly had reached such a fever pitch that it seemed unlikely they would reschedule the meeting at all.

Ironically this rebuff of state funds happened on the very night that council took further decisive action on an upcoming $424-million bond issue that will raise Garland property taxes significantly.

By Tuesday morning state officials were reeling from the rebuff and promising to return to hold a much larger stakeholder meeting in the near future. I was in touch with several of these officials and promised to help to try to find out how something so important to the future of downtown Garland could have so easily gone off the tracks at the council session.

TXDOT has indicated a willingness to be flexible in the design, a fact along with many others councilmembers seemed to have missed.

Council's odd action sent me scurrying to our notes from the September 25, 2014, stakeholder meeting held at our home on the topic. It was one of the first such stakeholder meetings on the issue in Garland and had been widely publicized. Former Mayor Douglas Athas, former Councilmember Anita Goebel, Transportation Director Paul Luedtke, and former city council highway consultant David Dean along with about 25 concerned citizens from throughout downtown Garland were present.

With Athas and Goebel now gone from council, I realized immediately that the majority of current city councilmembers were not on council at the time of the meeting. I also quickly ascertained that most of the current councilmembers are not impacted by the issue—or at least they don't think they are—and probably have little knowledge of the history or the serious nature of the matter, despite a short briefing at council's Friday, December 15, 2017, staff retreat at a local hotel. Even then, the councilmember in whose district much of the rerouting would occur had not yet been elected.

Members of Garland's city council seem to have little knowledge of how the failed, antiquated "couplet of the 1970s impacts Garland traffic today, including the congested "Z" intersection on First Street where Highway 78 enters from Lavon then suddenly shifts to Westbound Avenue B and Eastbound Avenue D.

And some just plainly don't care about it because it is not in their district. (The irony is that fixing the issues in downtown Garland caused by the failed, antiquated "couplet" will make better things happen in other districts too, even if those councilmembers don't realize it now.)

Apparently the groundwork had not been laid properly for the current council to even discuss the issue Monday evening. So much misinformation bubbled to the surface during that council discussion that I needed to listen carefully to try to discern facts from fiction.

Furthermore, the fact that Athas, a political enemy of many on council, once supported the idea seemed to drive the opposition rather than the issue itself. Why throw out an important funding source for Garland to correct serious issues in our city just because of personal political disagreements that have nothing whatsoever to do with the merits of this case? Such personalized, illogical thinking by public servants is beyond my ability to comprehend. What is best for Garland should always drive our city council's decisions.

Despite council's action, several councilmembers said they would "not be opposed" to TXDOT going on with information-gathering and its sharing processes on the reroute of Highway 78 through downtown Garland.

Meanwhile, the downtown area languishes in major need of all that the state is offering. All the political posturing council can muster won't sufficiently cover over the gaping wounds in the area right now either. One downtown business owner told me just this week that something MUST be done to drive more customers into the core of downtown.

Some of our councilmembers don't realize that the State of Texas has been discussing the rerouting of Highway 78 through downtown Garland FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS. It started well before every one of our current councilmembers plus former Mayor Athas ever became involved in Garland politics. It began decades ago when the state realized that the "couplet" concept through downtown areas throughout the state, not just Garland, wasn't working and needed to be fixed or replaced.

Just after this underpass, notorious as a "speed trap", Highway 78 shifts from overlaying Lavon Drive, to turning on First Street, and then abruptly turning on one ways Avenue B and D. TXDOT wants to straighten out this situation as the highway winds through downtown Garland at a cost of about $100 million, but Garland City Council is balking

The reroute proposal addresses all sorts of issues important to Garland citizens, ranging from providing more and better visibility and access to downtown Garland's Central Business District and providing vastly improved safety for Garland High School faculty, students, students’ family members that drive them to school daily in some of the city's worst traffic messes as well as for First United Methodist and First Baptist church members who attend church in Garland's "couplet".

The reroute would likely be a better stimulus to the downtown area economy than the apartments and city office buildings that the city has built—using Garland taxpayer money—trying to revitalize the city's inner core.

And the State of Texas—and not Garland's poor and overburdened taxpayers—would be footing most of the $100 million bill for this important highway reroute which has the potential to revitalize the city's inner-core and not just the city's central former Square.

And think of the tax windfall that could emerge from a truly revitalized downtown area paid for without even any city "incentives" or funds!

No councilmember seemed to realize they were rejecting an amount equivalent to nearly one-fourth of the bond proposal and which would dovetail quite nicely with some of the proposals in that bond package. Again, the $100-million state-funded Highway 78 reroute would not increase City of Garland property taxes, but the proposed $424 million bond package will.

Compounding further the situation on council Monday night seemed to be a total lack of knowledge about the history of the original rerouting of Highway 78 through downtown Garland nearly 50 years  ago and how the blunders and miscalculations then have created so many serious issues in our city today.

The city keeps trying to put bandages on the gigantic problems in downtown instead of getting to the root of them and allowing the state to fix the broken parts.

The problem started with the couplet itself, which was designed intentionally in the 1970s to divert traffic away from the downtown central business districts.

The thinking then was that "downtowns are dying" and "older neighborhoods are getting in the way of progress".

The couplet was designed to superimpose a highway over an older downtown area, bypassing important elements in an attempt to make them irrelevant.

In Garland's case, once-quiet residential streets Avenues B and D were widened and converted to one way to accommodate the heavy flow of highway traffic. The Central Business District, including the former Square, was bypassed completely.

What was "modern" then quickly turned into a nightmare for cities all across Texas, with Garland being one of them.

Suddenly:
1. Garland High School was surrounded and engulfed in heavy highway traffic on three sides, creating dangerous pedestrian and driving conditions for students, parents, and faculty. (Remember when last year at three separate times GHS students were struck and injured while trying to cross Garland Avenue, which is part of Highway 78? Those were just the most recent examples.)
2. First United Methodist and First Baptist churches suddenly discovered that traffic conditions at their front doors facing Avenues B and D respectively were highway-like, not quiet residential or respectful, and sometimes dangerous, especially for older church members who were accustomed to parking along those thoroughfares (and still do) or walking across, as in the case of the United Methodists, West Avenue B, aka Highway 78 westbound .
3. Residential homes fronting Avenues B and D and on the corners of side streets feeding into those main arteries suddenly found the noise inside those houses almost unbearable. Some homeowners reported damage to their siding, foundations, porches, and others spots due to the highway traffic. The damages are continuing to grow worse as traffic increases in the area.

 But worst of all:
1. The literal bypass of the old Garland Square led to the shuttering of businesses and deterioration of many buildings in the Central Business District.
2. Main Street from First Street to the then-Square began to look more like a slum. In fact the whole east side of the downtown area (east of the railroad tracks) began to rapidly deteriorate into slum-like conditions.
3. The crazy intersection where Highway 78 feeds from Lavon onto First Street and then Avenues B and D became a scary, complicated, snarled, and sorry traffic mess, especially during rush hour.

Then just as suddenly as the "couplet" arrived with its devastation, the folks in Austin realized their BIG MISTAKE and started to unwind it. Almost overnight downtowns across the state became valued, touted, and "in". Talk of a "walkable" city arrived.

One option for the rerouting of Highway 78 would widen and clean up east Main Street and turn it into a beautiful new entrance to downtown Garland. Unfortunately Garland city council doesn't appear to want TXDOT to spend around $100 million fixing the problems in the heart of Garland's downtown area.

Some cities such as Garland were caught in the whiplash of the changes. And that's where we in Garland remain to this day! Many cities, with the help of TXDOT, have already fixed their problems—their outdated couplets. Garland simply hasn't; we suffer from the ill-effects from it.

So can the devastation ever be undone? Can Garland's central core be put back together again in the way it once was? It's worth a try—especially since TXDOT is willing to spend some $100 million to correct the mess it created nearly 50 years ago. The solution is called "the rerouting of State Highway 78 through Garland's Downtown area".

Garland's transportation office in coordination with TXDOT and the North Texas Council of City Governments has drafted a proposal of what might work. It offers four separate options. Two are quite good for Garland's downtown district. A third is OK. The fourth is the cheapest and easiest for TXDOT but the worst for Garland.

Unfortunately, after City Council's negative reaction to the whole discussion Monday night, we may end up with either the status quo, which can't bear the predictions of traffic growth and patterns in the future, or with No. 4, which would be yet another disaster because it wouldn't really undo the mess created nearly 50 years ago—only add to it. Negative reactions such as those expressed on council Monday night will only make matters worse long term.

Garland's best hope is to face the issue head on, with eyes wide open, and negotiate with TXDOT the best plan and best deal it can get for Garland.

The best plans will:
1. clean up (by widening) either Main Street or State Street (or both) from First Street to near the central downtown area near the venerated Roach Feed and Seed.
2. Set the stage for the city to create a beautiful new entryway into downtown Garland from the east.
3. Bring Highway 78 within "kissing distance" to the central downtown area, thus bringing more customers and clients to the customer- and client-hungry area.
3. Divert the heavy traffic away from Garland High School as well as the churches along Avenues B and D, thus vastly improving the safety for thousands of Garland citizens from every council district.
4. Return Avenues B and D west of Glenbrook to more residential-like streets, perhaps even two-way streets like they used to be before the disgraced "couplet" entered the picture, thus improving values and desirability of homes in the area west of Glenbrook. (Think more tax money for the city!)
5. Eliminate or seriously transform those horrible turns and intersections at First Street and Garland Road, including that complex intersection at Garland Road at Miller near Saturn and the railroad tracks.
6. Provide us with a brand-new highway paid for with state money through the center of town, thus perhaps drawing attention away from the miserable streets in much of downtown Garland now.
7. Turn Glenbrook into a portion of Highway 78, thus quickly carrying traffic out of the downtown area and past Central Park and the planned new dog park and ADA-compliant children's playground there.
8. By swinging past the proposed new dog park and improvements at Garland's Central Park those expensive new amenities will become more accessible to ALL Garlandites from throughout our city, who are paying their tax money for those improvements.

I can go on, but you get the idea. Only the most uninformed city councilmembers would look this gift horse in the mouth and reject it. Our city has so much more to be gained by it. I personally can't think of a negative that can't be worked around in this opportunity set before us.

And just to set the record straight: Except for one home that is identified with Garland's early history, the other houses on East State Street are small, post World War II and dispersed between vacant lots—also they are easily movable. I know of no houses belonging to Garland citizens that will be destroyed by the Main Street option. Only Option 4 poses the potential of tearing up an established older neighborhood, apparently portions of Chandler Heights. I frankly can't imagine any Garland citizen supporting Option 4.

Garland citizens deserve a full, transparent, and honest evaluation of the TXDOT-initiated $100 million reroute of Texas Highway 78 through downtown Garland. They deserve to be given the FULL and COMPLETE facts necessary to make an educated decision.

All four of the rerouting solutions TXDOT is studying would get Garland High School out of the dangerous situation for students, faculty, and parents where the school is surrounded on three sides by a winding, twisting Highway 78.

A raised voice for openness, transparency, vision, and explaining how things work—a valuable citizen role with or without holding public office

The afternoon pictured here, almost one year ago, kicked off one of the most enriching times of my life—an experience I urge other Garlandites to experience as well—the gift of running for public office. (Photo by Deborah Downes of Take to Heart Images)

The photo posted at the start of this blog recalls an afternoon that began one of the most thrilling and enriching times of my life.

On the afternoon of February 15, 2018, standing on the front porch of Garland's historic Pace House, I announced my candidacy for mayor of the City of Garland. That kicked off a series of weeks I'll never forget: knocking on doors, meeting citizens, visiting a wide variety of churches and businesses, addressing groups large and small, articulating my vision for our city.

With a dynamic volunteer team gifted with a wide array of talents and expertise, we set high goals. We heard from the people—their heartcries, their needs, their feelings of neglect. They opened their hearts about the city's direst needs. We believed we had heard from the very essence of what Garland is, and we promised to help. 

The outcome of the election didn't make that possible in an official capacity, but throughout this ensuing year I have never forgotten what the citizens of Garland said to me. I have used my journalistic training to continue to write my Louis Moore of Garland blog about the vast diversity and needs of our city.

And that is the capacity I intend to continue to use to try to create a difference in an enduring way. Though filings are now under way for the May 2019 municipal elections and the opportunity for a repeat citywide campaign avails itself, I do not feel compelled—nor called—to be a part of a political race for this year and will not declare as a candidate for mayor.

Conversing with citizens from all walks of life and from all regions of our city was a true blessing in being a candidate in a citywide race. I would wish for contested races in this spring's municipal election so that the ultimate outcome is not "all sewn up" and so that candidates, through campaigning, can hear the heartcries of the people.

I have been absolutely delighted to see any number of changes come about in our city as a result of last year's contested mayoral race and through this blog. 

Garland residents are now more aware of how our political system operates, who some of our behind-the-scenes political gatekeepers and kingmakers are, and who actually funds our elections and to whom many of our politicians, to a large extent, owe their jobs. Identifying the problem always is the first step toward a cure or solution.

Some city councilmembers have picked up my actual wording from the campaign and this blog and now use those words and phrases as their own, which I am absolutely delighted for them to do. I am particularly pleased that so many on our city councilmembers have pressed for causes that I have long advocated—for instance, a new animal shelter and massive renovations in our parks such as Rick Oden Park. Until the mayor's race last spring, few in this community talked about being a "political independent" or about making this "a better community for ALL citizens" or about the myriad of unfunded and unaddressed needs in our city.

I also take great delight in knowing that on the May 4 ballot, Garland citizens will have the opportunity for the first time in 15 years to address major funding needs to pull our city out of the sad condition too many of our streets, parks, and other amenities are in today. The kernel of an idea for a 2019 proposed bond issue that was germinated a year ago in mid-December in a non-televised and non-video-recorded council retreat held at a local hotel under the leadership of former Mayor Douglas Athas was ultimately constituted and moved on to publicly identify more than $1.2 billion in much-needed projects, less than half of which will actually be on the bond election ballot in May. If approved by voters, it will be a good start to pull our city out of the malaise and the declining state Garland has been in for too long.

I raised my voice loudly about the city's tendency to permit so much to occur away from the public spotlight outside city hall. Later I was pleased to see that Councilmember Robert John Smith wrote a new policy, which council adopted unanimously, encouraging as many meetings as possible at city hall, where instant TV access is readily available.

A better Garland—where truth, transparency, openness, fairness, honesty, and prosperity abound for ALL our citizens—is what I desired during last spring's mayor's race. It is what I still want most for my hometown of Garland. Words are not sufficient, but they are at least a beginning.

I hope that all candidates in this year's election are blessed to have a dynamic volunteer team gathered around them, as we did in last year's race, that are multi-talented, dedicated, and deeply in tune with the needs of our city.

I ran for mayor of Garland a year ago not for any personal gain or to fulfill any personal needs in my own life. Throughout my adult years I have been personally blessed by God far beyond my greatest dreams. I need no other honor or role.

I ran for mayor because, as former President John Kennedy said of himself, I can see what can be and am not bogged down with what is. I see a city that CAN rise above current downward trends—such as growing poverty, decreasing educational and work opportunities for so many, increasing racial, language, and cultural polarization, unfair and unAmerican political control by the few and not the many in our city, and other trends dragging my hometown down the hill from where it should be.

I fervently hope that this spring's municipal elections ALL will be contested races, without an insider group believing they have everything "all sewn up", because I believe only in such situations can our citizens truly benefit and can democracy thrive. Why vote for someone when you truly don't know what the person believes? Competitive races give us the opportunity to more fully know what candidates—even those deemed qualified—stand for and not just who has endorsed them to feather their own nests.

While I see too many trends in Garland going in the wrong direction, I remain hopeful they can be reversed. The recent bond-issue discussion has brought to the surface so many of these negative realities. Our needs are legion; our resources are limited. Yet our people are basically good, friendly, and hard-working. The flush of expansion and growing wealth of our neighbors to the north, west, and east of Garland only brings our deficiencies to the surface to see more clearly.

We must, therefore, move forward with confidence in a future that CAN be brighter for ALL Garland citizens.

I have never forgotten what the citizens of Garland said to me during the weeks of campaigning, and in the ensuing months I've pressed on to work for those causes, even in a nonofficial capacity, and will continue to do so. (Photo by Deborah Downes of Take to Heart Images)

Now on a personal note:

On August 30, Kay and I will celebrate 50 years of marriage. The love of my life and my best friend for more than a half-century and I call this golden anniversary our "Jubilee Year".

We have much to celebrate and will be doing so throughout the whole year. We have been blessed in more ways than we can ever count. We have a host of special events and outings planned already to celebrate and walk down memory lane with family and friends and in places special to us. Almost every day between now and the rest of the year we have so many special memories to relive as the days leading up to and following our marriage were filled with special times, incredibly kind people, and an unbelievable outpouring of love and support from so many.

The year 2019 is our golden anniversary year. We are spending the year walking down memory lane and reflecting on all we have experienced in this half-century.

Garland played such an important role for us—both before, during, and after our marriage. From before her birth, Kay was a Garlandite. She grew up here, went to school in Garland ISD schools (a handful at that time), was a member from her early days at First Baptist Church of Garland, and was involved as were her parents in community life fully. When we began dating while students at Baylor, I became acquainted with Garland not only through my bride-to-be but also through her parents, especially during long walks with her father in the downtown neighborhood where the family lived (which also is the neighborhood where we live now).

The era in which we married was filled, like today, with great political turmoil—the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, to name only the two most prominent at that time. Throughout our marriage, from college and graduate school until now, we have lived on the cutting edge of so many other societal trends and causes large and small: From equal rights for employed women, to the adoptee-rights movement, to the ecumenical movement, to the push for freedom for Soviet Jews in that defunct empire, to the pro-life movement, to the rightful recognition for Native Americans and other underrepresented American and worldwide people groups, to the cry for political and social reform and freedom that echo through our land today. We expect to continue to be involved in these and other cutting-edge issues for the rest of our lives.

I am also very pleased that so many of you now read my blog. As a newspaper writer and editor, I learned what it is like to live in the public eye—where, regardless what I say, someone somewhere will have a differing opinion. As a debater in high school and a journalist in college and my whole career, I believe firmly in social discourse, in which various opinions and options are put on the table to be examined and studied from various angles and perspectives. My mind is open to change; I hope my readers' minds are, too.

I will continue to write this blog partly because this is a city without a traditional daily newspaper and existing next door to a bigger city whose Dallas Morning News cares less and less about what happens in our Garland community.

The year 2019 is also important for the nonprofit organization Kay and I helped found—Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street. This spring the group is sponsoring a fabulous drama, with eight original songs in it, entitled Becoming Garland Avenue about the early days in Garland. Besides writing the original script and music, Kay has done an amazing job of recruiting some of the finest, most talented people in Garland to carry the gauntlet for performing the musical live at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 13, on the stage of Garland's historic Plaza Theater in conjunction with Garland's Heritage Celebration 2019. I hope you will attend.

The Historic Magic 11th Street organization also has two other special projects planned for 2019 to focus the spotlight on two underrepresented people groups here. Look for more information on these later.

Instead of our annual spring historic home tour, which has been held for four straight years now, during the Christmas season 2019, our Travis College Hill Historic District in downtown Garland (in cooperation with neighboring Embree) will be lit up and decorated to welcome visitors from far and wide to see our 100-year-old-plus historic homes in their Christmas finery—some on the inside and all from the outside. 

All in all, 2019 is shaping up to be a memorable, exciting, busy, and great year at the home of Louis and Kay Moore, who are proud to say they live in the heart of Garland, Texas.

May God bless you, dear readers. And may God bless Garland.

 

Where have ALL the African-Americans who once led City of Garland departments gone? Just coincidence? And why no black councilmembers to represent this big segment of our population?

Black History Month 2019 in Garland finds the city without an African-American city councilmember or plan commissioner and with three prominent African-Americans recently gone from city department leadership.

Quietly over the past few months Garland has been losing its top department heads who are African-American.

This fact was duly noted to the membership at a recent meeting of the Garland chapter of the NAACP.

The most recent departure was that of Lonnie Banks, head of Garland's Environmental Waste Department, whose retirement party was held on January 30 after 29 years of exemplary service to Garland and 10 years of combined service in Longview and Marshall.

Lonnie Banks' retirement party was January 30. He headed Garland's Environmental Waste Department.

Priscilla Wilson, senior managing director of human resources, retired in December with little attention after 15 years and 7 months of service to the city. Kristen Smith, director of human resources/civil services, says she knows of no plans to fill Priscilla's position. 

Jermel Stevenson, Managing Director of Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Arts, whose 3-year tenure here was marred by the fight over dog and skate parks, suddenly stopped showing up in the middle of the bond-committee meetings.

One had to listen very carefully to the bond-committee's videotapes to realize what had happened—that suddenly new faces were on the screen representing the Parks Department and that the central personality was not there.

Former Garland Parks director Jermel Stevenson visited with my wife, Kay, during a Garland event last fall. He is one of three African-American city department heads suddenly gone.

I tried to contact both Priscilla and Jermel by email to discuss their departures but neither replied.

All this has occurred while the city has no sitting city councilmember who is African-American. B.J. Williams, the most recent African-American on city council, became ineligible for reelection last spring after six years representing District 4. No African-Americans appear to be in the wings in any council district either. The few who might be look at city politics and shake their heads. Nor are there any members of the Garland Plan Commission who are non-white—in a city where the majority of the citizens are affiliated with one of three minority racial groups!

A sad commentary to be occurring at this particular time of the year, which is Black History Month.

Anglos/whites are no longer the majority group now. They've been eclipsed by the growing 39-40 percent who are Hispanic and overshadowed by all the other minority groups lumped together. About 13 percent of Garland's population of 234,000 is African-American. The fourth biggest people group here is the 10 percent who are Asians (not just Vietnamese, which some of our politicos seem to mistakenly believe).

In case you are doing the math, these are the important numbers: (13 percent blacks + 10 percent Asians + 39 percent Hispanics = percent, leaving 38 percent for whites and other minority groups.)

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not big into quotas, but something is seriously wrong with this picture.

At the same time, this month the city's leadership will choose our new police chief. One out of the four finalists is African-American. He is Captain Charles Rene, an assistant chief, who has been with the Garland Police Department since July 1989.

If Garland Police Assistant Chief Charles Rene isn't chosen from the list of four finalists for Garland police chief, he is likely to become one of the most sought-after candidates for police chief in other cities across the U.S.

As I told Charles personally face-to-face recently, if he is not chosen, which is possible since he is up against highly skilled and well-mentored Garland Police Assistant Chief Jeff Bryant, an Anglo. he will then become one of the most sought after police-chief candidates in the country. Given the national controversy over the recent shootings by police of African-American individuals and also Garland's reputation as having an excellent but tough police force, many cities across the United States will likely pay Rene big bucks to come their way. Garland will then lose the highest-ranking and second-longest-tenured African-American in its police department.

The saga and its complexity go on and on!

Perhaps the brightest rising star in the African-American community in Garland right now is Garland ISD trustee Robert Selders Jr., whose business is in downtown Garland. Unfortunately he lives in Rowlett. This enables him to run for election in GISD but not in the Garland municipality. Wherever he lives, I'm sure he will have an extremely bright future there. But that doesn't help the City of Garland very much!

So, whither Garland's African-American community that has worked so steadfastly and so diligently for so many years to find its role in the political structure in this city?

Identifying and grooming new leaders and potential candidates who are African-American must become a major thrust in our community not only for the African-Americans but for ALL of us. Otherwise, we risk turning back the clock several decades to a time in Garland and the United States that is embarrassing even to recall.

As too many in Garland and this country seem to have forgotten: We ALL rise or fall together! 

Martin Luther King Jr. said, in his final speech in Memphis the night before he was assassinated, that ". . . we as a people will get to the promised land." With the backward steps Garland seems to have taken in the last year, one can't help wondering whether we as a city are still heading in the direction of that honored individual's great dream.