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 airport, covering the plight of the flightless.
Thousands of flights were cancelled. Observing 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.
It apparentlyoccurred 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.
What? No post about the Morris COI decision?
ReplyDeleteA 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.
ReplyDeleteIt'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.
ReplyDeleteOne 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.
ReplyDeleteThat Florida driving rule is officially void. Seems it runs against the Geneva Convention. And, no, I did not make that up.
ReplyDeleteTo 5:02 PM
ReplyDeleteA 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 ??