DIARY
Whatever happened to ‘shedule’?
by
Robert LaFrance
The snowmobilers have had a good
winter I think. I could hear them every week
as they cavorted through the woods and enjoyed all that snow, but I
would think that at times there was a little too much of the white stuff.
I am writing this on the first day
of March and it’s raining, but as I walked around to get some cobwebs removed I
could hear at least half a dozen machines going through the woods. Occasionally
I could see one or two of them crossing a bare patch and it seemed as if they
went part of the time on bare ground.
I cannot mention snowmobiles without
mentioning the Yamaha 292 I bought,
back around 1980. It was the first and last one I ever owned – or should
I say it owned me? Every time I climbed on it, something fell off, sometimes
even me. My chief mechanics were my nephews Terry and John, for whom the
machine always worked well.
Winter doesn’t ‘turn my crank’
anyway, as they say. Now that we are into March (which came in like a spayed
bobcat and neither a lion nor a lamb) I can see the light at the end of the
stone wall. Another thing that doesn’t turn my crank is the idea of fighting my
way to Florida for a few days of sunshine. All the time I would be there I
would worry about the trip home; will there be big delays because of weather or
Trumpism?
The big story this week, in lieu of
something important, is that vinyl records are making a comeback. I guess all
those records we all have in boxes in our basements can now be brought out into
the sunshine and sold for scandalous sums.
Only last evening I was listening to
one of those fabulous groups from the 1950s and wondering if the record had
been recorded in an outhouse or in somebody’s woodshed. The quality, on a scale
of one to ten, was minus 17. Why in the world would anyone want to listen to a
vinyl record when they can have a CD or DvD with crystal clear sound?
Of course it all comes down to
advertising. Sunrise Records bought HMV Records and the Sunrise owner and president
Doug Putman has been everywhere – radio, TV, print – and telling us all that we
should go back to the vinyl recordings. He doesn’t mention why, except that a
record is something we can actually hold in our hands, replacing digital
recordings that aren’t touchable. Seems to me a CD is as touchable as a vinyl
record though.
As the faithful and longsuffering
reader knows, I sometimes criticize D.O.T. (who will NEVER be D.T.I. to me) but
I want them to know I am just kidding. In fact, D.O.T. should have some kind of
an Oscar for the quality of the potholes we are now seeing along the secondary
roads.
I recently drove to Bath on Highway
105 and was impressed by some of the craters I avoided. Did I really see the
roof of a Chevy Cruz in one pothole, just south of the Victoria-Carleton county
line? I’m not sure if it’s rocket science or not, but it seems to me that when
bad potholes appear they should be filled with some sort of material so that a
Mack truck can’t lose a tire in there. If vehicles knock out that material in a
week, then perhaps D.O.T. could go back and fill them again.
Once again, I emphasize that I do not criticize the
people who actually do the work out there, but government policies that assure
our driving on bad roads. Perhaps the government, instead of hiring consultants
all over the place, can fill the potholes with consultants. Very organic too.
There should be some kind of law
that stores cannot sell or even display garden seeds until the middle of March
at the earliest.
One day in late February I was
coming out of Clarks’ grocery in Perth-Andover when my eye lit on their garden
seed display that had been there for weeks. I don’t know how many weeks; I had
been trying to avoid looking at the radish, lettuce, pea and flower seeds because
I just go home and tremble, looking out at the place where last year’s garden
gave me tons of grub. Then we had a bit of a thaw and some rain and I could see
the actual garden soil. Not an inspiring sight.
In the U.S.A. – and I see I can’t
avoid mentioning that country – I notice there is a department called the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Looking at a recent photo of President
Trump’s cabinet members, I couldn’t help but think “Old Male Billionaires”.
One last paragraph, this one on words
THEY have tried to get us to say and couldn’t. For quite a while we were told
by those who should have known better that the word ‘schedule’ was pronounced
‘shedule’. That didn’t take, and now I think those who wanted us to say
‘left-tenant’ when we meant ‘lieutenant’ have pretty much given up.-end-
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