In some way I think I knew it was coming and so hurried up my efforts to appear to be hurrying it along.
Once I’d written the song, someone passed it on to a friend and the next thing you know the Time Magazine blog, Techland called me about it asking “Is there a video we can link?” And of course I’d been meaning to do one… so I spent an hour or two putting this together, they wrote a nice piece and linked to it and tweeted about it which caught the attention of someone at Google Maps who got to play the hero and fix it practically while we watched [while at the same time entreating us to use the “report a problem” link as if that’s all we had to do in the first place]. So the system works, sort of.
By that I mean that people who can be adorable and agitate politely to get their problem fixed by making use of their high placed connections can really get things done. Was the world ever any different? I’d feel slightly better if I felt that I’d improved the overall system and not just my place in it, but I think being any sort of activist means always remaining a little dissatisfied. It’s pretty cool to see my town in the right place again. I dropped the local paper’s editor a note about it.