HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-07-28, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 28, 2011. PAGE 5.
“Everyone talks about the weather but nobody
does anything about it.”
– Mark Twain
Cheeky though it be, I would like to
amend Mister Twain’s tongue in
cheek meteorological observation.
I would change it to: “Everyone talks
about the weather but nobody gets it
right”.
Environment Canada, I’m looking at you.
Also the Farmers’ Almanac. And my barber.
And the guy next door. And the farmer I buy
my eggs from.
And of course the ever-smirking, bouffant-
coiffed Weather Mannequin who closes off the
nightly TV newscast. They are, all of them,
wrong, wrong, wrong.
If they predict sunshine, we get drizzle. If
they call for calm winds I know my
windows will rattle and my roof may need
shingle transplants. “Zero precipitation”
in the forecast might mean anything
from monsoon rains to horizontal sleet
to hail the size of Guinness-worthy
gallstones.
But that’s okay. Everybody makes mistakes
(ask Michael Ignatieff). What galls my stones
is the fact that…
They never apologize.
Ever! You will never hear Environment
Canada issuing ‘Our bad’ corrections.
Nor will the world ever witness the
Weather Mannequin shuffling on to our
TV screens murmuring “Boy, we really
screwed up yesterday’s forecast.”
I know, I know – I’ve crooned this dirge
before. But I resurrect it today because finally
(alas, too late for Mister Twain by a little over
a century) somebody HAS done something
about the weather.
Are you fed up with the crummy state of
weather prognostication? Ready for a
forecasting service that actually makes you
feel good about impending climactic
conditions?
There’s an app for that.
Seriously. It’s called ‘Optimistic Weather’
and it’s available as an Android
application that you can download for free.
What you get is an accurate assessment
of the current weather conditions for
your locality, plus a forecast for the near
future.
I have no idea what’s coming down
from the sky where you live right now,
but according to Optimistic Weather,
tomorrow will be better – perfect,
in fact.
How can I be sure? It’s easy. Optimistic
Weather forecasts always deliver just that –
sunny skies, balmy breezes, nary a drop of rain
in sight.
Even when an incoming weather system
is undeniably nasty, Optimistic Weather
tries to put a positive spin on it. If a
massive blizzard is on the way, the app turns
into a cheer leader. “Come on!” it urges, “This
is not the end of the world! Maybe the storm
gods will get bored and this will all just go
away!”
Sure, they’re lying through their rose-
coloured dentures – so what? A conventional
forecast that predicts tomorrow will
be crappy has only about a 50 per cent chance
of being right – AND it’ll bum you
out 24 hours before the weather actually
arrives.
I think the comedian George Carlin
delivered the only truly accurate weather
forecast in his Hippy Dippy Weatherman skit
years ago:
“Tonight’s forecast: dark. Continuing dark
throughout the night and turning to widely
scattered light in the morning.”
Let’s be honest: tomorrow, most of us
aren’t going to plant a crop, captain
a fishing boat or parachute out of an
airplane. Ergo, we don’t really, really have to
know what the weather is going to be. What
we could use – as always – is a tiny dose of
good news.
Voila – the Optimistic Weather App.
Alternatively, we could resolve to adopt a
whole new attitude to weather. John Ruskin
was an English philosopher and critic whose
lifespan almost duplicated Mark Twain’s.
Here’s his take:
“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing,
wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there
is really no such thing as bad weather, only
different kinds of weather.”
Sounds like a fair forecast to me.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Optimistic weather for the rest of us
We all have a reading voice. When we
read in our heads, there is a voice we
imagine speaking the words that
we’re reading. A lot of times, it’s just your own
voice, but in your head.
When I read the book A Course Called
Ireland, a book about a man walking the entire
perimeter of Ireland and playing golf on every
course he stumbled upon, I imagined it was an
old Irish man calmly describing the wind-
swept golf links of the Emerald Isle to me.
For this column to reach its full potential
you’ll have to make the little man inside your
head a boxing ring announcer or Bruce Buffer,
the voice of the Ultimate Fighting
Championship. Okay, here we go.
And now, the main event of the evening....
Introducing first, fighting out of the blue
corner: these five municipalities want to see
Huron County Council reduced in size and
they’re willing to whatever it takes with
taxpayer dollars to see that it happens – the
challengers, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh,
Bluewater, Goderich, Howick and Morris-
Turnberry. And now, fighting out of the red
corner: these municipalities were said to have
lost one of their Huron County Council
representatives in last year’s election, but a
bylaw cleared the way and council’s size
remained as it was, except now they’re on the
hook for doing what Huron County told them
to do – forced to defend themselves with
taxpayer dollars are your champions, Central
Huron, Huron East, North Huron, South Huron
and Huron County itself.
Our tale of the tape: the challengers come
into this match with nothing to lose (they will
neither gain, nor lose a representative based on
the outcome) and a bylaw several years old
stating that representatives at the Huron
County Council table would be tied to
population. They want to see fewer faces
around the council table and have hired a
Goderich lawyer to see their will done.
The champions come into this match heavy-
handed. They bring the legal opinion of Huron
County solicitor Greg Stewart who advised
council that a new bylaw would have to be
drafted to change council’s composition, but
the challengers may have caught them napping
on this one.
The champions, while holding the belt, have
just gotten off the couch for this fight. They’ve
been named as respondents in a legal situation
they want no part of. All the while the
champions thought they were sitting pretty in
the catbird seat, the challengers were training,
sharpening their skills for this showdown.
It’s going to be a good one. The challengers
have nothing to lose and if they have their way,
the champions find themselves on the canvas
by the time this thing is done. Losing four
councillors can’t help their confidence and it
will no doubt hurt political representation
down the road.
It’s one side of Huron County against the
other and there’s no telling what will happen
once the bell rings. One thing is certain: no one
will come out unscathed and every Huron
County taxpayer will pay for a legal battle they
had no say in inciting.
And if this is a good battle, and many think
it will be, this could be a lengthy slugfest that
ends in a judges’ decision.
Once the fight starts, however, we’ll all just
have to stand and watch. The action will be
furious and even though we’re all forced to sit
at ringside, every time a punch lands we may
feel a slight sting in our back pockets, right
around where our wallet sits and our tax
dollars used to reside.
Huron’s civil war
Well readers, by the time you’re curling up
with this copy of The Citizen I’ll have been a
day or two into my vacation as our
office prepares to close its doors for the first
week of August, not to be re-opened until
August 8.
Aside from seeing a few plays, attending a
couple weddings, some minor home
renovations, refereeing around a dozen soccer
games, finally finishing the installation on a
home dishwasher, training my puppy, doing
some yard...
Wait, where was I going with this?
Oh yeah, vacation.
I miss vacations. If the above list of “to-do”
items is similar to what you plan when you
have a few days off, then you’ll know what
I’m talking about.
It’s been a very long time since I put my feet
up for any longer than a day and just relaxed,
and it seems as if it will be an even longer
time.
With three different soccer tournaments, one
in Brussels, one in Blyth and one in Goderich,
my weekends are pretty much spoken for
(except for the time I’ve committed to
weddings).
When I’m not running around tempting heat
stroke with soccer games, I’ll be preparing my
home for the winter.
I know it seems a bit early, and I did just get
around to installing an air conditioner,
however there are some windows that need
replacing.
I will have had a dishwasher sitting in my
kitchen for nearly two weeks waiting to be
installed by the time this column sees the light
of day.
So, as you can see, I’ve got a lot of work
ahead of me.
I miss the days of youth, when summer
meant vacation, and vacation still meant
vacation. When I slept in until noon, worked
very rarely and spent as much time as possible
in the cool basement of my house or in
the cool waters of a friend’s pool or Lake
Huron.
I remember the first “school year” I worked
after graduation. It felt so odd to not be getting
ready to take a break and work at a brainless
fast-food job and instead be preparing for the
summer season.
It’s actually quite ironic, in my mind, that
the period I used to look forward to so much
(summer) has now actually become one of the
busiest times of the year with one-and-
a-half weeks to clear the cobwebs from
my head in the middle of months of
regular Citizen articles and dozens of articles
for other publications and special
sections.
The period of September through May
now has no special meaning for me, and
June through August is just exhausting to
think about (and even more so to go
through).
Anyway, be sure to try to encourage your
children to enjoy the power and beauty of their
youth. Be sure they know that someday
summer will be just another season and not the
symbol of a vacation.
Be sure to tell them how much they’ll miss
those lazy days by the pool or the lake.
In all likelihood, they won’t believe you, but
someday they’ll thank you for trying to warn
them that even their language will change,
and the beautiful heat of summer will
eventually become the sweltering humidity of
summer.
To that end, after this vacation-turned-work-
week, I shall be forever taking
staycations.
If you’re not familiar with the term, shame
on you for not watching, or retaining, Corner
Gas – in my opinion, one of Canada’s premier
comedy series.
The idea of the staycation is to do everything
you would do on a real vacation (relax, block
out the work world, ignore the consequences
and repercussions of your actions, etc.) at
home.
You sit in a lawn chair (as Brent Butt,
playing Brent Leroy, did) and pretend you are
somewhere else.
You place yourself mentally somewhere
and just enjoy the time off as your mind
convinces you you’re somewhere warm and
tropical.
Of course, given the weather, I could also
imagine myself somewhere cold and ice-filled
and be happy, but I’ve always enjoyed the cold
more than the hot.
If I end up making enough headway, my
Jamaican staycation may start earlier than
expected and you may notice me relaxing in
my lawn chair on my front lawn, or sleeping
on the back deck with a dog snoozing on top
of me.
If you do, I urge you, leave a postcard, it’s
the only way to communicate with someone
on a staycation.
Otherwise, if you see me out and about,
purchasing plumbing parts with a bewildered
(and exhausted, as well as overheated) look on
my face, you’ll know what I’m doing: working
away my vacation.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
My so-called “vacation” plans
By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and
third by experience, which is the bitterest.
– Confucius
Final Thought