Don Walton: Choosing what you love to do

 1 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

Meet Jane Erdenberger.

A corporate securities lawyer for 22 years at Kutak Rock in Omaha, she left her profession to become a social studies teacher at Omaha North Magnet School.

Erdenberger gave up more than $200,000 in annual income to take a job seven years ago that offered her a starting salary that approached $30,000.

[+]Enlarge

“I love it,” she said Saturday as she sat outside Midland Lutheran College enjoying the morning sun.

“I didn’t ever say that about my old job.”

Erdenberger teaches geography, ethnic studies and African American history at a racially integrated school.

Challenging, yes.

Rewarding, yes.

Measured in ways other than financial gain.

Erdenberger was elected Nebraska’s Democratic national committeewoman at the party’s state convention in Fremont.

On a different path

Mike Fahey’s speech to LIBA members last week was instructive.

Fahey cautioned Lincoln to simplify its anticipated revenue sources for a proposed Haymarket arena project.

Sound advice, it would seem.

But the Omaha mayor’s appearance in Lincoln also provided a reminder of how different this city’s proposal is from Qwest Center Omaha.

In retrospect, Omaha overbuilt the convention center portion of that project. It also assumed financial responsibility for a high-class, city-owned hotel.

Lincoln’s planning for a convention center and hotel in the Haymarket does not follow that path.

The arena portion of the Omaha project has been a huge success.

Fahey’s speech provided a glimpse at one of the fundamental  differences between Nebraska’s two largest cities.

Omaha has moved on from building an arena and convention center to preparing to construct a new downtown baseball park.

And Fahey already is looking ahead to an electric streetcar system.

One notable difference between the two cities cannot be overlooked:  Omaha’s collection of superwealthy citizens, most of them at the age of wishing to leave a legacy, makes a lot of this happen through their wealth and influence.

Lincoln has no similar reservoir of such concentrated private wealth.

Finishing up

* Ben Nelson is headed to Israel next weekend and will meet with Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and Benjamin Netanyahu.

* Chuck Hagel will address U.S. foreign policy and the presidential campaign in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Thursday.  

* Lou Ann Linehan, Hagel’s former chief of staff, is working in Baghdad for a year with the U.S. State Department. In 2001-2002, Linehan was deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs when Colin Powell was secretary of state.

* Ted Sorensen, speaking at his booksigning at Lee Booksellers last week:  “Everything I may have accomplished I largely owe to Nebraska (and to) some basic values and skills learned in this wonderful city.”

* Among those at the event was a young man in a blue KU T-shirt that proclaimed: “Barack Chalk Jayhawk.”

* The most recent dustup between Fahey and David Sokol provided yet another reminder that politics in Omaha is heavy metal compared to chamber music in Lincoln.

* Lead band in Omaha: The  High Rollers.

* Lead band in the shire: We’re still holding tryouts.

* If it occurs, Fahey v. Hal Daub in 2009 will be spectacular theater.

* Upcoming E. N. Thompson Forum series looks terrific, starting with David Gergen on Sept. 18, seven weeks before the presidential election. That event is the big annual Nebraska Humanities Council lecture.

* And then: Ted Sorensen on Nov. 18, two weeks after the election; F. W. de Klerk next February; a dialogue on “Illegal Immigrants: A Path to Citizenship?” in March.

* The Yanks are coming; the Yanks are coming.  It must be summer.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com.