Placards of City Eminencies (Early June)

"There are usually two types of merchants."

The names of our illustrious city forefathers, our illustrious city foremothers, our forepersons and forefigures, the names of illustrious contemporaries, grace our tidy civic spaces. We see their names cast into bronze plaques. We see them engraved into steel plaques, etched into glass, chiseled into stone, whether native basalt or imported marble. Their names grace our excellent all-ages community amphitheater. They grace our innovative museum audiovisual annex. Rows of roses, of peonies and rhododendrons in municipal gardens, all bear the names of illustrious citizens, past and contemporary, which our city supplies at scale. They inspire us to be more than merely who we are. There are no fatalists commemorated, no moaners and bemoaners. They have charted their own course, fixed keel to the breakers. They have have listened to the mercantile gulls as they wheel and squawk above our bustling harbors.