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.