DIARY
A
delicate operation on the brain
by
Robert LaFrance
Driving along Highway 109 near
Arthurette, I saw that my old friend Trout (real name Angler) was brandishing a
Husqvarna weed-eater along the ditch near his front lawn. I stopped to chat and
heard an earful.
“Would you come into my office
(Trout is an accountant) and interrupt me when I was working on someone’s
income tax return? No you would not,” he answered his own question before I had
a chance to. “Would you interrupt a surgeon who was performing a delicate
operation on your brain?”
(Which I would have thought was
redundant since – I would have thought – any operation on the brain, even mine,
would be delicate.)
He wasn’t finished. “Do you know how
many people have stopped to talk and interrupt me while I am trying to get rid
of this grass along the ditch, since the government doesn’t seem to want to?”
Before I could answer that question, he was off again. “Nine people!” he said.
“Nine people stopped just because they recognized me.”
“But Trout,” I said, “I am sure that
I and the other eight people who stopped did so because of our liking and
admiration for you…” I went on for a while in this vein, lying like a cedar log
in a brook. Then he scratched his chin and looked thoughtful.
You are right, ” he said, and put
down his weed-eater, just like he had been putting me down earlier. “Let’s go
have a coffee.”
***********************
Last evening I was talking to
someone at the club when he said he had to go home because his ‘better half’
had threatened she would not go through with their promised divorce if he
stayed out after nine o’clock.
It was unusual to hear that
expression; people don’t often say ‘the better half’ much these days. The
reason for, of course, is that it has been ‘clinically proven’ as they say,
that husbands are the better half.
Still on that subject, we all know
the phrase “see how the other half lives”, meaning that we who are wealthy
should take a look at how poorer people live – for example only being able to have
an iPhone 4 instead of the latest model.
That phrase “the other half” is
obsolete now and has been for a decade or two, or three, because the poor(er)
now make up about 99% of the population and that, if I remember my math, is a
kilometre or two away from half. The average rich guy would have to say he
wants to “see how the other 99% live” and he’s not going to do that, is he?
People were trying to get government to notice them when they voted for the
current (and possibly last) U.S. president.
***************************
The Internet has brought us some
great ideas for making money and one of the best for individuals is
‘crowd-funding’.
That’s where you or I or my dog Fang
go onto an alleged non-profit crowd-funding website and ask for money for our
particular cause. We might want to raise money to build a statue honouring a
certain dead hero so they ask other people to send them money for that purpose.
Of course a certain amount may stick to their fingers, but with the humidity
lately, that’s understandable.
Listening yesterday to a radio
program, I was astounded to hear that one enterprising young man from Manitoba
had turned to crowd-funding to pay for his education. His goal was $100,000 for
a four-year degree course, but I have news for him. According to my
recollection, each of our children’s education cost us approximately one
million dollars a month so that young man was rather optimistic.
Crowd-funding is a simple concept.
You find a crowd-funding site on the Internet and get accepted after you
explain what you want the money for. What could possibly go wrong?
I have been preparing my own
application. I have to work on the wording, but this is the concept: “I want
people to send me money until I have enough. I will let you know when that
happens.”
*********************
Watching the news coverage of the
plethora of hurricanes now pummelling the Caribbean, I am impressed by the
technology in use these days.
One can look at computer models of
Hurricane Maria – that’s today’s storm – and see that the eye is perfectly
round, what they call symmetrical, and that’s supposed to be important. Then
the TV weather people show the probable track of the storm – both the British
and the American guesses – so they can have that on record for the next day
when they say the exact opposite.
One thing I have noticed: In spite
of all the technology today, hurricanes cause just as much damage as before.
The people on the ground in Puerto Rico are getting blown around just as much
as they would have in 1955; it’s just that they are getting warned earlier. -end-
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