It's good to look forward, even in uncertain times

As a 16.5-year Naperville resident looking toward the end of the decade, I realize I've lived here long enough to recognize some of the city's cycles.

Along with traditions such as the Naperville Woman's Club's 50th Fine Art Fair, held last weekend under mostly sunny skies at the beautifully landscaped Naper Settlement, the end of every decade naturally seems to bring visioning to a head.

For instance, local attractions such as North Central College, Naper Settlement, the Riverwalk and the DuPage Children's Museum each are looking toward the future, each with challenges to fund long-range plans to sustain their growth and development with private dollars.

Even the city of Naperville is having an open house from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday, July 23, at the municipal center to update its Downtown Plan through the year 2030.

Strategic planners say looking forward to avoid becoming stagnant is a good move even in uncertain times.

That's likely why a number of Naperville nonprofit organizations also are exploring options for more space to provide a variety of human-care services that have a humongous impact on our quality of life.

Decades from now, I hope we look back on wise decisions that helped our residents and strengthened our community.

Looking through local history, I was surprised at some of the milestones Naperville is marking this year. So much seems to have happened in years ending in nine.

The Naperville Municipal Band, for instance, is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding in 1859.

The Naperville Cemetery Association increased in size when the group purchased a five-acre parcel from Caroline Mitchell and Elizabeth Martin in 1909. (Much more came later.)

Local officials gathered in Central Park to commemorate DuPage County's centennial in 1939.

Naperville's mayor-council-city managerial form of government was approved by referendum vote in 1969, the same year the Naperville Heritage Society took root.

The Naperville Area Humane Society was established in 1979, about the same time as plans began to develop for the Riverwalk and Naperville's sesquicentennial celebration.

North Central College's Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium, with 5,500 seats, was completed in 1999.

Also in 1999, our city was in the throes of planning Celebration 2000 to mark the turn of the new millennium with ways to heighten community spirit. Residents served on fundraising committees for big bashes in North Central's Merner Fieldhouse and the Naperville Municipal Center as well as for the Millennium Carillon at Rotary Hill and the Millennium Wall and Labyrinth in the Riverwalk Amphitheatre.

Before long, dozens of fundraising initiatives prompted people to worry about "donor fatigue." As we welcomed the new millennium, those engaging causes became known as the "challenges that unite us." In time, we re-energized and many unmet needs found success.

Fast forward to today.

It is time to make decisions, to consider what we want the future to be. We need to move forward, but we need to move carefully.

Perhaps you've seen the roller baby commercial on YouTube or on television. The ad begins with a diaper-clad baby who clicks a button on a boom box to start "Rapper's Delight." As the music plays, dozens of roller skating babies move in sync, scaling fences and performing acrobatic stunts better than any teen I've seen at one of our skate parks.

The computer-generated video is adorably realistic, and it brings to mind Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message." The pop culture book written about 20 years before the advent of the personal computer emphasized how new technology (television!) affects social organization.

The more I thought about the entertaining video of roller babies, the more the animated lifelike images reminded me how much we - and especially today's young children - can be duped by the art of technology if we fail to distinguish fiction from reality.

From computer-generated videos to Internet opinion blogs to architects' renderings to PhotoShopped photographs to Tweets to trillions of dollars, what's reality these days anyway?

To meet our future challenges, we'll be better off grounded in facts than in faulty assumptions.

As we update the landscape and identify the unmet needs in this generous community, friends, neighbors and business associates will have opportunities to assemble, participate and question. We can share wisdom and passions as we offer our opinions and sometimes selfish views.

Just stay focused on facts. Pay attention.

• Stephanie Penick writes about Naperville. E-mail her at spennydh@aol.com.