Dear Blog Reader:
I hope that this finds you doing
well. It leaves my hands in quiet consternation. Last week, I experienced an incident that has left a sour
taste in my mouth. I usually try to exercise forebearance and let such things
pass without notice or comment. I know what you are saying, "what about
your endless rantings about assassin deer?" Yes, I do tend to go on about
them, but I never mention various hangnails, hemorrhoids, or impolite fellow
travelers on the way to and from work. On the whole, the "ranting
cross" that you have to bear from "You Said What?" is less than
say in the Huffington Post or on Fox News.
For those of you who live in
central Indiana
I am used to the weather people exploiting
a little bit of inclement precipitation to pump up their ratings. This is especially
true since there are no election season ad monies flowing. One has to find a
way to make up for the largess of campaign donations. Tight skirts and
tastefully low cut tops do not ratings make. Actually, they do make ratings but
not as quickly as good old fashioned blizzard warnings. I have often thought
that the weather person was in cahoots with the National French Toast
Association. They used to be able to drive the sale of milk, bread, and eggs
with a gentle winter storm warning. But like junkies that need more and more of
our medication of choice, we don't respond to winter storm warnings any longer.
Bread and milk were perishing on the shelves. Something had to be done; viola a
blizzard warning.
No, I expect the weather people to
overreact. It is in their best interests. I am disappointed in my fellow man
and woman. They showed no sense of perspective or self reliance. At my place of
employment, one half of the people scheduled to work last Wednesday did not
report for work in anticipation of bad weather. Of the half that did
report, 80% got scared and went home at noon. One person literally came to my
office and said "I just saw the Homeland Security road warning map. I am
too scared to stay here for the rest of the day." How did we turn into
such a herd of sissies?
In the past, I may have taken a paragraph
to say if you were scared or felt nervous and needed to go home, I meant no
offense. I am sorry. Not this time
though, I hope you are offended. That was a nothing snow; a snow easily
overcome with a bit of level headedness and patience. We live at a time when
machines, if used properly, can clean twenty inch Saturday evening snowfalls in
time for a noon kickoff for a Sunday wildcard game. I have seen it done. The
ironic thing is that the flight instinct actually put those people who left
early in greater jeopardy. They left when the snow was still falling and near
the apex of the total. Snow plows had not moved yet, and the salt had not
started to melt the roadways. I pushed four nervous people out of their parking
spots so they could head out and place themselves in peril. After pushing them
out, I went back inside and worked until 5:00. I went out to my car and drove
out of a partially plowed lot and home on mostly plowed streets. In fact, my
evening commute only took an additional 10 minutes.
How did we get a place where a
group of bureaucrats can herd us along into greater jeopardy with a stupid PowerPoint
slide and some color coded graphics? I have pondered that question all week
long. It struck me that we have not taught our populace to be courageous. I didn't
think that was possible. Courage was one of the major virtues that many great
civilizations were built on. Wasn't it? Wouldn’t we teach our population the
major things? I remember that the school that my kids attended had a
"Character Counts" curriculum. It had convocations, awards, ribbons,
and handouts. Surely, they taught that most important of character traits;
courage. The Wizard of Oz paid homage to this trait by embarrassing sissies
with the cowardly lion. However, our schools do not.
I checked with my daughter and she
rattled the important character traits off in rapid fire; trustworthiness,
respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, citizenship. How could the omit
courage? Can trustworthiness keep you from full-fledged panic? Isn't citizenship just a 4 syllable word for
listen to homeland security when it says stay home? Don't use the good sense
God gave you to evaluate risk and make appropriate decisions for yourself. You
should listen to that person who has their budgetary existence reliant on a regular
diet of crisis to keep the public scared. ARGH!
Please understand one other thing.
I don't think that courage is doing risky things just to be doing them. It
strikes me that courage is recognizing the risk, weighing the cost and proceeding
in the hope that one can recover from the consequences. The lack of belief,
that recovery from failure is an important part of life, has left us in fear.
The belief that we are stuck in the latest failure paralyzes our ability to
act, to move forward. Courage has a resilience to it; a belief that the current
hard times do not define you. The current hard times can shape a response that
will move a person beyond that point of defeat.
We cannot avoid the hard times. Maybe
one person in a million can be lucky enough to have all of the precautions they
can take work out for them. We might surround ourselves with antimicrobial
soaps, never drive on snow days, never eat yogurt past its expiration date and
except for that one person, those plans will fall short. Isn't it better to
have a plan to recover?
Dan Rather used to sign-off every newscast
by looking somberly into the camera and saying "courage." I think that I will sign off with "Oh
come on!" And . . .
Take care.
Roger
amen!
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