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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-03-03, Page 5Other Views The merry month of Farch "Now is the winter of our discontent...." — From Richard 111 by William Shakespeare Hah! Tell us about it, Bill. You're talking to Canadians here! We could teach you an iambic pentametre or two about winter and discontent. For starters, allow me to blindside you with a snowball from the mittened paw of a Canadian writer: "Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c' est l'hiver". That's a quote from Gilles Vigneault. He's Quebecois, but I like to think that he speaks for the entire Great White North, and in English what he's saying is: "My country is not a country, it's winter." That's a sentiment all Canadians can relate to, marooned as we are in a snowdrift somewhere between Christmas and Easter. Winter seldom makes itself more obnoxious than at this particular calendar juncture we find ourselves traversing as I type. Personal disclaimer: I now live in what passes for the tropics of Canada: the Gulf Islands of B.C. But I earned my stripes and shovelled my share growing up in snowbound places like Thunder Bay, Fergus and Nashville (Ontario). Besides, what the rest of the country gets in white fluffy, we in the islands get in liquid form. You don't have to have webs between your toes to live here, but it wouldn't hurt. Wherever we winter in Canada, we all know that we are in the home stretch. We are well past the longest night of the year, rounding the Horn of the winter of 2015/16. We have several plodding months behind us and at least a few more weeks of potential meteorological treachery before we can safely break out the Hawaiian Tropic sunblock. We know from past experience that winter will bushwhack us at least once — possibly several times — more. We also know that spring is definitely, THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2016. PAGE 5. tantalizingly -- like a stripper down to her last ostrich feather — just around the corner. And how do we designate this last desperate slog towards spring? Well, we could call it the month of Farch. Not an original idea. I copped it from a Toronto author by the name of Bill Sherk. When I hosted a radio show back in the Paleolithic Era, Mister Sherk approached me asking for air time to publicize his radical restructuring of the calendar. What he proposed was to amalgamate the miserable months of February and March into a megamonth — Farch. I liked the idea. It compacted what is traditionally the worst stretch of weather in the year into one pug -ugly calendar month. Plus it adds a socially acceptable expletive to the litany of f -words we already associate with this time of year. Then I considered the downside. The new month of Farch would be 59 days long (60 in leap years). Could we handle that? Nah. Forget Farch. I prefer to keep my months bite -size. And anyway you slice it, Mapril's just around the corner. Old fashioned is sometimes better Recently I came across a tale from the City of Windsor where the installation of new, energy-saving Light -Emitting - Diode (LED) stoplights were causing more headaches than savings. The LED lights, while brighter and less energy -consuming than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, ran into a problem during the winter months: they don't produce enough heat to melt the snow that happens to either land on or get blown into them. This isn't just a minor problem; on Thursday of last week, a school bus allegedly ran a red light, hitting a car in the intersection resulting in six children, a school staff member and the drivers of the car and bus being taken to the hospital. Reports indicate the bus driver claimed the light was covered and couldn't be seen. As a result, work crews in the city are now required to clean off the lights by hand to make sure there are no more incidents. Unfortunately, the city is converting all its signal lights over to LEDs so this might not be an isolated incident. Making this even more frustrating is the fact that this isn't an isolated incident. As early as 2013, other cities, including Charlottetown, were reporting similar issues, so this is a known problem. There, crews had to go out and try and fix the snow -encrusted lights during storms to make sure the roads were safe. Instead of cleaning them all by hand, however, the works employees "vibrated" the light poles, hoping that would clean them and in some cases it did. The fact that LED lights seem to be the way of the future for many infrastructure projects concerns me. Morris-Turnberry has recently started implementing LED lights across its settlement areas and, while lights that shine downwards are far less likely to be caked in snow than stop lights which have hoods and shaped lenses that snow can blow right into, it could happen. While they may save money and electricity, is it worth the cost if they result in some kind of collision that causes injuries or potentially costs someone their livelihood or, worse yet, their life? For me, I'd rather invest in solar panels to power incandescent bulbs that melt the snow of this world. I've never really been a fan of LED lights. I bought a new car right before the normal Denny Scott bitalaisi Denny's Den practice of installing LED headlights became a thing and, for the sake of other drivers, I'm glad I did. LED headlights are a headache at best while driving and completely blinding at worst. They shine with the intensity of the sun, and, while that may seem like a dramatic thing to say, I actually have proof. It wasn't that long ago that my day didn't end until I got to my home in Goderich. I would drive from The Citizen's office in Blyth or from a council meeting or from whatever event I was covering to Goderich and, typically, that meant taking County Road 25 to Highway 21 and entering Goderich over the Maitland River and bridge there. Just prior to the bridge is a steep hill that has street lamps on it. Because of the grade of the hill, those streetlamps are actually below the level of some people's headlights as they are coming down the hill. Normally that isn't the kind of thing I would notice. Someone travelling southbound and coming down the hill while I'm travelling northbound and approaching it is more of a regular occurrence than it isn't, however, one day, several years ago before LED headlights were the mainstay of driving they are now, I was given pause while approaching the hill. In what I can only describe as one of the most interesting visual experiences I've ever had driving, I watched as, one -by -one, the power of the LED headlights of the oncoming car triggered the daylight sensors of the street lamps and shut the lights off as the car was going down the hill. Sensors that are only supposed to shut off when the sun is shining (or at least brightening the world on a gloomy day) were tricked by LED lights. So, there you go, they shine with the intensity of the sun. This is of course secondary to how much of a pain in the rear the lights are when you are facing them while driving. Yes, I drive a fairly low -to -the -ground car, so maybe my experience is a bit worse than others, but in all fairness, no one should have to be blinded while driving at night. My own gripes aside, the LED lights being snowed over in Windsor and Charlottetown bring up another alarming issue: what will happen to the vehicles that rely on them in a heavy snow storm? I know that some companies are producing head light covers that are heated the same way that vehicles' rear windows are heated, but is that something that all vehicles have or could there be a circumstance where the driver of a vehicle with LED lights suddenly can't see or the vehicle can't be seen because a driving snow has caked over the headlights or brake lights? Regardless of the above situation, Charlottetown and Windsor have proven that these LED stop lights may be something that needs to be taken back to the drawing board. It also made me look around my house and wonder what other advancements in my house might have glaring problems that had previously been solved by their lower -tech predecessors. Right now one of my single -cup coffee makers isn't working because it needs to be descaled. It's not a big issue, but it pretty much makes it unusable as is. Looking back, I used to make coffee with a single -cup filter -holder and a kettle. I still have it (because, thanks to our gas stove, it allows me to make coffee even when the power is out). Sure, you had to descale the kettle every once in awhile, but, you did so with vinegar, not some specially -made cleaning solution that won't damage its internal mechanisms. Even simple drip coffee makers will run when they need descaling. Sure, the coffee might not be the greatest when the maker gets heavily scaled but it does still operate. Sometimes low-tech is the way to go. It might not always be the prettiest or the fastest, but, when it comes to reliability, those things were built to last. Final Thought "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison Shawn florni7ii" Loughlin Shawn's Sense The life behind the art The crowning of Spotlight as 2015's best picture at Sunday night's Academy Awards was the icing on the cake of an event that, through its participants, tackled a number of serious and high-profile issues. And all this on a night normally reserved for discussion surrounding best/worst dressed lists and who's spotted getting cozy with whom at Oscar after -parties. From a personal standpoint, the rewarding of Spotlight, a film about a dedicated team of Boston Globe journalists who, through inspired, dogged reporting, uncovered a child abuse scandal bubbling under the surface of the entire Roman Catholic church organization, was chief among the issues. As a graduate of Catholic schools and a veteran of the church for years as a child and teenager, the behaviour of church leadership in systematically endangering children and turning their backs on victims was what drove me from the system. Whether or not my local priest was involved in any nefarious behaviour mattered not to me. What mattered was what I knew the church was doing with money donated by millions of dedicated Catholics — protecting the reputation of child -molesting priests, rather than aiding their many victims. And then there's the journalism aspect of it. What Spotlight showed was that at its highest level, good reporting can change the world, helping millions of people in the process. An investigation such as the Boston Globe's of the Boston Archdiocese is an example of the very best journalism in the world — indescribably difficult for those carrying it out, but incredibly important to those of the community the journalists serve, and beyond. It represents months of research and the meticulous building of a case, just like a prosecutor attempting to convict a criminal — it doesn't happen overnight. This kind of reporting — the kind that can affect real change — is getting harder and harder to come by, as it takes time and money and the story can't be told in 140 characters on Twitter. In a funny twist, I was surprised to see writer and director Tom McCarthy trot up to the stage to accept his Oscar for best screenplay. The last time I saw McCarthy, he was representing the exact opposite kind of journalism. McCarthy, in his capacity as an actor, played Scott Templeton in the fifth season of the critically -acclaimed HBO series, The Wire. He was a major player in the season as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun who, determined to make a name for himself, fabricated aspects of a serial killer storyline on his way to winning a Pulitzer Prize. In Spotlight, however, McCarthy brought to the screen a real-life Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation, authored by Boston Globe reporters. Also extensively explored Sunday night by host Chris Rock is the ongoing controversy concerning how "white" the Oscars are on a year-to-year basis, with no nominees of colour gracing any major categories this year. Rock repeatedly needled those behind the ceremony about the lack of black nominees and even mentioned the growing `Black Lives Matter" movement. There was discussion about global warming, honour killings in the middle east, the crisis of sexual assault on college campuses and Wall Street fatcats whose greed has repeatedly hurt average North Americans. For all the glitz and glamour, there was plenty of substance behind this year's Oscars and congratulations to those who chose to make it about more than the clothes they wore and the agents and publicists on their payroll.