Trump voters denied (March 7/18)

Sending an aardvark after a polar bear

                        by Robert LaFrance

            First thing this morning, just to make my day, my cousin in Florida sent me an email. I looked at the computer monitor where the email resided. “Having a great time in Port Charlotte, Florida,” my cousin wrote. “It’s 87ºF here.”

I looked at the thermometer hanging outside my office window. It read –21ºC. The pine trees along the road were bending over backwards in the wind and the drifting snow was filling every possible path to anywhere.   

            It took every bit of my will power not to fling that computer monitor straight through the triple-glazed window and show my cousin that I was not one to be impressed by 87ºF weather in February.

            Jeez, I hate her.

            I think we have this winter thing beaten now. Anybody agree? Here it is March, the month that comes in like a lamb, as they say, and goes out like a lion, or vice versa. Five or six more major snowstorms, freezing rain, and the despair of all of us after a long, long winter and it will be Spring, a word whose first letter I always capitalize. Officially, it is only three more weeks. Can’t wait. No flooding please.

            And, speaking of winter and weather generally, I see that Environment Canada has gone back to using the phrase “northern New Brunswick” in their forecasts without explaining what it means. Is it everywhere in the province north of Woodstock? North of Grand Falls? Or does it take in only Kedgwick to Caraquet to Baie de Chaleur? It’s a major problem.

            If you ever see someone who knows what this and other weather phrases mean, could you get him or her to define the phrase “wintry mix”? I tried Googling it, but all I got in reply was “a mix of winter precipitation”. About as helpful as sending an aardvark to bring down a polar bear.

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            Watching television one recent evening, I was happy to see that the problem of ‘identity theft’ had evidently been solved by the simple method of persuasion.

            A company named “Condorex Unlimited” was advertising their service. The computer owner (that’s me and you) only has to send every data file on our computers to C.U. who would then guard it like a border collie guards a flock (gaggle, herd) of sheep. Problem solved.

            But then I thought about it. If I wanted to perform a seamless identity theft, I would buy some television commercial time and ask computer owners to send in ALL their files and I would protect them. Note: Condorex Unlimited is not the company’s real name.

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            As one who reads voraciously – which means I have a better chance of knowing the meaning of ‘voraciously’ – I come across a lot of ideas in the space of a week. Recently reading a book of essays by E. B. White, I came across the information that when the Nazis conquered northern France in late 1940, they started ‘re-Germanizing’ the area called Alsace-Lorraine that had once belonged to Germany.

            One of the first things they did – and I did check a couple of other sources – was to take French names off tombstones. A name such as Henri Cheval would have been ground off the stone and replaced with Heinrich Norgler. I am not even lying this time. Those Nazi rascals were something, weren’t they? Not satisfied with changing tombstone inscriptions, they went on to add another 15 million or so in western Europe, plus at least that many in the USSR and around the world.

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            Closer to home than north-eastern France in 1940, I am here to remind you that we New Brunswickers are facing a general election on Sept. 24 of this year. That is uncomfortably close to my (and, coincidentally, my wife’s) 36^th wedding anniversary that occurs the next day.

            Although I have suffered mightily these past decades, some New Brunswick voters probably feel they have suffered more than the occasional whack with a rolling pin atop the crown of the head.

            Don’t look for me to try and steer you toward one party or another, because I am truly apolitical; I suppose what concerns me most is that every eligible voter goes to the polls and that every eligible voter’s ballot is counted. Accordingly, let us look at what makes an ‘eligible voter’.

            We can find the list of qualifications on the NB government websites, but I cringe to think that Elections NB may look at the Irish qualifications’ main rule. “The voter, all other qualifications in place, must not have been declared legally insane within two days before the polling day”. Too bad that rule hadn’t been in place in the good old USA in November 2016.
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