I picked up an Austin Chronicle on my trip to our State Capitol last week. The Chronicle is the Austin "progressive" weekly that is actually a pretty good read, mostly because the editor, a guy named Louis Black, while not sharing many of my own views, seems analytical and non-hystrical in his opinion pieces.
In any case, it is always the Letters to the Editors in these publications that drive me crazy. In one this week, a furious woman wrote how someone had deposited into a dumpster a dead dog wrapped in plastic. She wrote something to the effect that it was "everyones hope, animal or human, to have a dignified burial", and she was furious that neither the police department nor the animal control department in Austin would jump to at her phone call and provide some sort of more diginifed provisioning of this poor perished pooch.
Think about it a second.
She calls various government agencies to deal with an issue that is not only quite subjective, but apparently doesn't even consider consigning the cursed canineto HER backyard!
The idea seems to be that "we need to do something about this! So long as it isn't me doing it".
When I was younger, I'd occasionally pull over when I saw cats and dogs that were obviously house pets; dead, but not yet splattered all over the road. I'd use a shovel or a stick to push them off to the side. I'd apologize to them on behalf of all us commuters. Then I'd think of the chain of causation stretching from that animal all the way back to the beginning of time. And after I climbed back in the car and drove away, I'd think about how the Bell Inequality may suggest that every quantum of matter or energy exchanged along that animals chain of causation, back to the beginning of time, is observable back there at the beginning, by the prime mover. Maybe we can only exist if observed by that observer. But now that I am older, I mostly think about all the evil people I have known and how I am going to keep my 1990 Metro running.
Posted by: fred mrozek | June 30, 2009 at 09:37 PM
Sounds like an ex-girlfriend of mine.
Posted by: C. Emerson | July 02, 2009 at 08:31 PM
Lighten up Choke…The woman was probably was a dog lover, many of which see the dog as a family member. The sight so disgusted her she wrote a letter. This is not a story about kooky big government. It’s a story about the way the sight made the woman feel. It’s not all about money, power and oil.
Posted by: Scott | July 02, 2009 at 09:36 PM
Scott,
Umm, did you read the same prose as me and just come away with a different message?
I saw nothing in there about oil, greed, etc. All I noted was OC commenting on another Joe/Jane citizen who thought the govt was there to fulfill their every percieved need.
Posted by: Allen | July 09, 2009 at 02:45 PM