{"id":188,"date":"2006-05-07T11:17:10","date_gmt":"2006-05-07T16:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2006\/05\/07\/santas-brother-grandfather-claus\/"},"modified":"2006-05-08T01:59:34","modified_gmt":"2006-05-08T06:59:34","slug":"santas-brother-grandfather-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2006\/05\/santas-brother-grandfather-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa’s brother Grandfather Claus"},"content":{"rendered":"
Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock<\/h6>\n

St. Nick came from a family himself, but little is known about them. One relative everyone has heard something about is Grandfather Claus, who is Santa’s brother, with obviously a family of his own, children and their children.<\/p>\n

Santa as everyone does know rewards good little girls and boys with presents at Christmas. (And their first cousin Hanukkah Harry loads up the Jewish children.) The bad children either get nothing, lumps of coal or bundles of switches. Switches are sticks for spanking, not electrical switches fired by lumps of coal-fired power generators.<\/p>\n

Grandfather Claus handles adults. He rewards them whether they’ve been good or bad, and at any time of year. If a law or rule is established, and you violated it before it was set up, Grandfather Claus makes sure you go scot-free. Good people are helped when confusing tax laws are set up and they sign up for the wrong deductions — “Ignorance of the law is no excuse” doesn’t count here — as sometimes<\/i> they are forgiven, thanks to him.<\/p>\n

In my Fayetteville, if you are a developer and want the first building 3 to 5 times the height of all the other buildings in the neighborhood, all you have to do is ask for it before the master plan or ordinance or comprehensive zoning that the city’s been working on for years actually goes on the books.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Grandfather Claus! Can I shoot varmints in city limits? Can you marry me to my underage cousin? Can you allow my village to keep its school district even though it’s so small many college-prep classes are not taught? Maybe Grandfather Claus can.<\/p>\n

Actually though, sometimes he cannot. Retroactivity needs to be written into the code, as a clause. What gets interesting is that commentators, not to mention developers, assume grandfathering must be a right, must be somewhere in the Constitution. They’d be surprised to learn the phrase began in the Jim Crow era, to keep blacks from voting.<\/p>\n

Long after adults stop believing in Santa Claus, they still believe Grandfather Claus is a given, the guy Santa shared bunk beds with at the North Pole when they were kids. Santa plays fair, and Grandfather plays fair, each in their own way.<\/p>\n

Here, the question is whether in the future the brothers Santa and Grandfather Claus can party down on Dickson Street or elsewhere in downtown Fayetteville, with tall, largely vacant buildings (because in a decade it’ll be obvious they can’t get enough tenants).<\/p>\n

There’s the “Legacy Building (seven stories), the Lofts at Underwood Plaza (nine stories) and Marriott Renaissance Hotel (16 stories),” to quote the Northwest Arkansas Times, in its editorial<\/a> about the 16- and now 10-story Divinity Hotel and Condos project, which Brick<\/strong> predicts will have a revolving Cracker Barrel restaurant at the top.<\/p>\n

So the next time you stay at an older hotel — obviously not one of these — look to the ceiling. Not even Grandfather Claus will stay in a roadhouse that doesn’t smoke sensors and maybe sprinklers. In some places, even the latest Fire Code revision that forces new hotel construction to include those may not require them to be retrofitted in existing inns. The elves call that Claus for alarm. -30-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Copyright 2006 Ben S. Pollock St. Nick came from a family himself, but little is known about them. One relative everyone has heard something about is Grandfather Claus, who is Santa’s brother, with obviously a family of his own, children and their children. Santa as everyone does know rewards good little girls and boys with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-home-street"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":385,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2007\/12\/i-saw-a-real-santa\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":0},"title":"I Saw a Real Santa","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"December 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Taking a note from a weekend column, I spent an hour at Northwest Arkansas Mall, about 4:30 to about 5:30, on Christmas Eve, to enjoy the crowds without being a part of them, (Phil's father in the essay, having gifts all bought, enjoyed the spectacle), though if something caught my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6336,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2019\/04\/your-vote\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":1},"title":"I Would Appreciate Your Vote","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"April 30, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Candidate Ben Pollock Official U of A photo, summer 2014 I am running this week for a position on the University of Arkansas Staff Senate. The online balloting ends Monday, May 6. If you are a U of A staff member, you may choose to vote for me, and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education, Coarsely"","block_context":{"text":"Education, Coarsely","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/education-coarsely\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"My Razorback roots go deeper than I thought. My maternal grandfather, Ernest Mendel of Fort Smith (born in Hot Springs), evidently attended the University of Arkansas. 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Pollock","date":"January 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2008 Ben S. Pollock DATELINE MIRTHOLOGY -- In the Mall of the Ozarks where the Toasts of the Town shop, where the vivacious news anchors and the handsome sports anchors check out the best duds to wear on the air, the meteorologists also lurk. They grab the nice clothes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Body, Home, Street"","block_context":{"text":"Body, Home, Street","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/body-home-street\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4169,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/02\/bowled-over\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":3},"title":"Bowled Over","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"February 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"February flies by, and not just because it's a couple of days shorter than other months. Here in Arkansas the weather at the end of the month is worse than the beginning, marked by the Super Bowl on Sunday the 3rd. Like the other 49 states, prit' near all of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"First lady Betty Ford tosses football to President Gerald Ford at Bethesda Naval Hospital in October 1974, following her surgery for breast cancer.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Betty-Gerald-Ford-300x207.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3228,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/11\/crotchety-old-ppl\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":4},"title":"Crotchety Old Ppl","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"November 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2011 Ben S. Pollock Reflections on the Paul Simon concert at Kansas City's Midland Theater on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When a conversation turns to popular music, sometimes one is lectured on who has the definitive voice of the generation. Most of the time one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Brick Bats Reportage"","block_context":{"text":"Brick Bats Reportage","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/brick-bats-reportage\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3059,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2011\/07\/walk-it-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":188,"position":5},"title":"Walk It Off","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Book Report Bad Dad by Dave Lieber 175 pages, cloth, Yankee Cowboy Publishing, 2011 What an unusual little book. Fort Worth Star-Telegram metro columnist Dave Lieber includes newspaper columns here, but it's not a collection. 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By the title,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mr. Boo Klist"","block_context":{"text":"Mr. Boo Klist","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/mr-boo-klist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}