Holiday Thoughts

At the risk of seeming politically incorrect, Happy Columbus Day.  

Not Happy Discoverer’s Day (which presumably is intended to equally honor the Scandinavian explorer who allegedly got to Nova Scotia before Old Chris made it to the West Indies).  I know, Christopher Columbus did unpleasant things to the locals when he arrived, so it’s considered (by some) to be inappropriate to honor him with a special day.  

Remember when February had two three-day weekends?  Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday.  When I was a kid I loved that.  I could never tell which was which, but I liked having two Mondays off from school.  Then someone suggested that we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday.  It’s appropriate…a hero of the civil rights movement.  But, there had to be a zero sum gain, so at the same time the government was trumpeting its new holiday to honor Dr. King, it took away Lincoln’s and Washington’s Birthdays and gave us Presidents’ Day.  (There’s no small amount of irony in that.  Lincoln now gets half a birthday so that Dr. King gets a whole one.  Lincoln having laid the foundation for Dr. King’s work, and all.  And let’s not forget that Dr. King chose the Lincoln Memorial as the backdrop for his “I Have a Dream” speech.)

I find it amusing that the Forces of Political Correctness haven’t renamed Halloween.  I mean, Halloween is a celebration of Paganism that doesn’t even bother to cover its nakedness.  Shouldn’t we honor heroes on that day?  And let’s face it, the sugar consumed on and after Halloween makes drill-wielding heroes of our neighborhood dentists.  So let’s change the name to something that is more suitable to our politically correct sensibilities: Dentists’ Day.

Actually, I didn’t set out to write about political correctness this morning.  No, I sat down with a slightly more selfish topic in mind: San Diego street maintenance.  Specifically the maintenance being done to my street right now.

On Friday morning, the street crew came and tore a trench across my street, put up signs and barricades, ate their lunch and disappeared for the weekend by 1 pm.  Hey, it’s a long weekend, I thought.  They’re leaving early to enjoy the long weekend and isn’t that nice? But what about this gaping hole in my street that will have to be here all weekend now?

It turns out that they weren’t leaving to enjoy the long weekend, because it wasn’t a long weekend for them.  They arrived this morning at 6:30 am.

All of that had me thinking (which I’m not happy to do before sunrise on a day off) that San Diego’s municipal leadership really is a collection of idiots.  Think I’m kidding?  The city council overstated the city’s net worth by $640 million dollars for fiscal year 2002.  (By contrast, Enron overstated its revenue by $580 million over five years.)  The city pension fund is a billion dollars in debt.  Yes, that’s right…a BILLION.  

Of course, the city pushed through a bond measure that put more than three hundred million dollars of public money into a new ball park for the Padres.

It’s no wonder we have Carl Spackler handling the day-to-day maintenance of the city’s infrastructure.  (“I have to laugh because I’ve even outsmarted myself.  My enemy, my foe, is a pot hole.  And in order to conquer the pot hole, I have to think like a pot hole.  And whenever possible, to look like one.  I gotta dig a hole and let it sit there for a few days.”)