"Cowardice asks the question...is it safe? Expediency asks the question...is it politic? Vanity asks the question...is it popular? But conscience asks the question...is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because it is right." ~Dr. Martin Luther King

Friday 15 February 2013

There's a Funny Side

My television is situated in a corner alongside the  sliding door to  the deck and garden.

Last week-end as I watched the news, I watched the snow fall. Powdery  soft and dry,  quietly, steadily , inexorably. Aurora got the highest  fall in the GTA with 40cm.

Conditions in various cities I experienced  as if I was there. 
 
Except for stranded cars , streets were busy. People were  shoveling, building snowmen, sliding down hills in toboggans and generally exhibiting exhilaration.

Visitors to Toronto from Ireland had never seen anything like it. 

Cameras and journalists seemeded to be on permanent stakeout at the airportcovering the plight of the flightless.

Thousands of flights were cancelledObserving whiteout beyond the  plate glass windows, it occurred, the real story should have been about flights that weren't.

Days went by. The news showed the airport still full of stranded passengers. 
Images of figures curled, sleeping on  terrazzo  with heads on  knapsacks or sprawled ungainly on small chairs were shown.
over and over. 

Wh6y don't they leave,I thought.

 
It wasn't surprising to hear complaints from people waiting for  someone to solve their   problem. 

One shot showed a line-up with a tall business man. pbviously the leader  chanting  and clapping hands..."we want service".

 I wondered what were they lining-up for? Why were they waiting?

But of course....  they were waiting for airlines tolook after them.

It's that evolution we keep hearing about. People  place  their  well-being in the hands of others and whatever happens, snow, wind, ice or whatever , it's someone else's responsibility.

No doubt they have all arrived safely at their destination by now. 
The inconvenience is already fading from their memory. 

Next time  nature delivers a wallop, they or others like them will find themselves in  the same  circumstances.

Immediately after or concurrently with the storm, the plight ofthe flightless was displaced by severe inconvenience being endured 
by people on a cruise ship which lost power in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

The ship, bigger than an apartment  building. with four thousand o people on board  had to be towed to Alabama. Took five days. 

The greatest trial  was the awful smell of copious quantities of  human excrement.

No doubt  each  complainant  made their own contribution to the overall problem. 

There was  this huge  floating  resort  in the middle of a body of salt water If  power had not failed , the ocean would   probably  be receiving  the offerings of  the plumbing system.
  
Iapparentlyoccurred to no-one, including the ship's civil engineers, to bypass the system to access the ocean.
  
Another  example of modern  man's evolution from self-sufficiency to total dependence.      

     

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What? No post about the Morris COI decision?

Anonymous said...

A little help - Evelyn can you or one of your readers provide the web link to the actual proposal that the Lucid group gave that Council approved in principle this week. (this would be the complete info and not to be confused with the "Gallo" report, sorry couldn't resist that one). I see some reference to a report PR13-007 but this is just a 3 pager and not what the gentleman from Lucid said was a 30+ page proposal. I would like to read for myself what they are planning on doing that is going to generate a proposed $40K profit. Thanks very much.

Anonymous said...

It's still early days but another Conservative Senator would appear to be in trouble. This one resides in Vancouver but just rents a place in his constituency in the North.

Anonymous said...

One of the buses taking passengers to New Orleans after their cruise got into port has broken down en route. Truly a strange tour but they got all they wanted to eat & drink which was apparently the point of that trip.

Anonymous said...

That Florida driving rule is officially void. Seems it runs against the Geneva Convention. And, no, I did not make that up.

Anonymous said...

To 5:02 PM
A follow-up to your comment, please.
Rather than wondering how Lucid proposes to generate their profit, I would really like to know if you have any idea how much the Jazz Gang were bringing in per year. I am not familiar with all the details but would expect that adding concession permits and percentages from vendors as well as controlling all food and drink sales and admission costs would run into high numbers. Then some musicians might even have paid to participate for the exposure. I apologize if those numbers were made available. Just have never heard a ' true tally'. That might explain the fury with which they are opposing Lucid ??