Amazing the risks we are willing to take sometimes. Anyone who uses a motorcycle is an example. People frustrated with rigid seat belt laws often point out the irony of how we allow motorcycles at all.
Seat belt is a good example of the "creeping" power of government or bureaucratic authority. The powers-that-be like to tell us we'll be left alone, that we can maintain our freedoms. Then they come up with all sorts of reasons we need to be protected from ourselves. A friend reminded me recently that seat belt laws began with assurances from government that it would never be a primary offense. "Oh my goodness, we'd never do that."
Well of course they could, and they did. So in a sense I sometimes agree with the libertarian types, maybe even Ron Paul, even though my current inclination is to be Democratic.
Someone told me the Morris mayor got a seat belt ticket. I had to laugh at that. The mayor is someone who told me a year ago that he was "almost glad" the newspaper ran its front page article scaring the hell out of us about how "the water softener police were coming," in effect. He said the community would really have to be committed to cutting down its salt usage.
Are you all sure we aren't just satisfying the ego of some state bureaucrat who's trying to show off about how "pollution" can be reduced? Chloride in the river? Is it that big a problem? You all ought to know how bureaucrats can get carried away on such matters.
And even if some concern is warranted, is Morris sharing the burden of adjustment with other communities on the Pomme de Terre River? I have spent the last year not even knowing if I have addressed my own personal water situation properly. I got a rude awakening as I approached this: awakening to the confusion or conflict between certain parties. I assumed, naively I guess, I could approach the City of Morris and get some orderly directions on how to proceed. I got anything but.
"Two city council members have disconnected their softeners." That is not orderly advice. Aren't there more than two on the city council?
Who could have imagined?
It is scary to realize how we cannot predict the future. For example, if I were to return to the time of my youth, the 1970s, and inform that 50 years hence there would be no talk at all about having a Sesquicentennial celebration in Morris, can you imagine the reaction? The Morris Centennial of 1971 was grand and huge. So, nothing in 2021?
We are distracted with the pandemic, yes, but I doubt there'd be any talk or interest anyway, just based on my sense of things. Consider: we were allowing our once-grand Prairie Pioneer Days to die on the vine. First it retreated to fall, then it got cut down to one day. One day? For PR reasons alone, couldn't it have been left at two days, just to save ourselves embarrassment in the eyes of other communities?
Rae Yost joked in her newspaper article that the name should maybe be changed to Prairie Pioneer Day. I congratulate her on that. It's the sort of thing I would have written back in the days when I tested the "red lines" for propriety. I had that trait because of having cut my writer's teeth during the 1960s. First it was up to "the press" to fight the government's lies to the American people about the Vietnam war. And then, Watergate. Enough said.
My, what a tangled web we weave.
So, I return to the Morris of my youth, the 1970s, and I begin to tell people of things to come. Seat belt law will be rigid and unyielding. You'd be pulled over by a squad car with flashing lights, subjected to the humiliation of all that, if you're casually driving through town, or as a friend explained to me, driving from one parking lot to another downtown. "No mercy," as the dude in "Karate Kid" said.
My, the folks of 1970s Morris would be in shock. Would we even want to be alive in 2021? Well of course we would - nobody would ever think that (to paraphrase Robert Stack at the end of "Airplane"). But what a sea change we'd have to contemplate as the future loomed.
My goodness, try telling people what cigarettes were going to cost 50 years hence! And then tell them that many people would choose continuing to buy them. Have you ever been in line to pay for something at Casey's? So many people still ask for cigarettes. Nothing better to spend your money on?
A popular movie of the '70s, "All the President's Men," showed Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein lighting up a smoke anywhere and everywhere, finally to the annoyance of Robert Redford. I think Hoffman was lighting up in an elevator when Redford said "is there any place you don't smoke?"
Try telling people of the '70s that 50 years hence, smoking is prohibited in restaurants and bars! Don't even think about lighting up! Many of us were always annoyed some by cigarette smoke but we accepted the reality of that. That is, up to a few years ago.
The government or bureaucracy can never erase all the risks we accept. I personally have adjusted to the risk amidst us of distracted driving. I show greater alertness as a pedestrian or if on bike.
On Sunday I was driving from McDonald's after getting a burger and noticed something which perhaps in a vein of levity I could suggest is a distracted driving hazard. I suggested this to a friend in an email later in the day. And, what was this "distraction?" It is a prominent billboard with a picture of a woman who many men would characterize as quite "good looking." And this I must share with some caution, due to a new red line in our society about "objectification of women."
There's something else we could point out to the (Neanderthal) world of my youth: you'll have to move on from the "wolf whistle culture," the culture of the Dean Martin 1960s TV show. As with smoking, we used to just accept such attitudes and entertainment. If forced to think about it, we'd have to realize that any time you describe certain women as "good looking," you're implying that certain other women are not. It should have been plain as the nose on your face.
For the record, there is a billboard on the north end of Atlantic Avenue, close to McDonald's, that shows a woman who in dated culture would be described as a "10." If you don't realize it's dated, update your brain.
I joked with a friend that the picture might be a distracted driving hazard as it might divert the attention of certain men. Can you all accept this in a vein of levity? Maybe not. I will be 66 next month and you must understand about people like me: we do not see lack of seat belt as a cardinal sin, we revere the "36-24-36" women, and we accept that some people want to smoke around us: cigarettes, cigars, maybe even pipes.
But my, our world goes through changes. And I'd be totally happy to conform on the water treatment thing, if I could find City of Morris people, staff and/or council, who didn't have their heads totally up their butts on this. How unforgivable.
Addendum: Ah, objectification of women, a relic in large part. Reminds me of when my best friend in college leaned over toward me just as class was starting one day, noticeable enough to maybe get reprimanded by the teacher, so I felt my friend must have something very important to say. What he said was: "Brian, why don't you write an article about all the wide-ass chicks on campus."
My podcast for Dec. 28
Yes it's post-Christmas, try to keep your cheer. Oh it's harder this year due to circumstances, right? We were at least spared the "derecho" of August here in Morris. My podcast for today shares from a Christmas message I got from a friend in Cedar Rapids IA. He filled me in on the severity of the "derecho" storm of August. Storm didn't get the media attention it should have. The storm was right out of hell. I invite you to listen:
 |
| Is this the ideal of a "good looking" woman? In my opinion yes, but that's just me. She's Deb, on billboard too. This isn't the same picture as on billboard. |
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment