- By Casey Stevens
- Opinions
Print 
'Thoughts' could be described this week as 'scattershot', quick shots or sheshoutslves, I guess. Maybe if I go quickly from thought to thought I can help with the artificial intelligence dictation program that I'm using in place of my unavailable email. I do like artificial intelligence. It works pretty well. I never thought I would miss the convenience of editing my email before hitting the 'send' button. Some things I'm still waiting on to return to 'normal'. What's normal me sitting at a library, computer terminal, writing 'Thoughts'. One man's ceiling is another man's floor, you know.Let me start with a quote from Daniel Henninger, of the Wall Street Journal. Then take off on a flight of pure fantasy and imagination. Here's the quote:
"I'm not sure traditional metrics and analysis apply in this election. We are in a constantly shape-shifting campaign that has been overwhelmed by the unprecedented intensity of events and how people are processing the experience.
Henninger then goes on to look at how the polls are all over the place, depending on events and prejudice. Seems the only 'sure bet' is that all bets are off in this strange and frightening election year. And either everyone has a poll they believe is true or no one believes polling anymore. (Ask Harry Truman),
So here's my modest proposal. I was walking on the lower trail of Taughannock Park last week and passed by probably two to 300 people on the way up to the Falls and back. How many were wearing masks? How many were not? Well, why not count each group and say the mass wearers are Biden voters and the non mask wearers are Trump voters. It could be done weekly and the results could be trumpeted as a new way to predict November's results. Silly? Well. So our internet polls and polls conducted by cell phone by my own skewed thinking. Of course, I think statistical analysis is always a 50-50 affair. It either is or isn't.
Anyway, it would be a fun exercise if I wanted to walk the trail each Saturday and keep a running tally, why not? We need something to wonder about besides if America will survive this election and its aftermath.
Since I placed myself in a local landscape, then gorge, why not move over to the Six Mile Creek Gorge and the people who congregate there on these hot summer afternoons. You've no doubt heard about the number of rescues performed there by Ithaca Fire Department professionals who have rappelled down to injured partygoers (that's a kind way to put it, not questioning the injured parties' intelligence quotient). In the month of June, there were six rescues and maybe more since then. Idea: city and other government budgets are stressed and the rescue costs money. Yes, yes. When the injured party is rescued from their stupid people trick like jumping off the dam, et cetera, get their driver's license and file a complaint against them in city court, an appearance ticket, if you will. Levy a fine and if paid, okay. If the party is a no-show to their court appearance, then the entire cost of the rescue is billed to the party and notification to Albany or whatever state the license is issued from, so that renewal it's not possible the same as accumulated parking or traffic tickets. What's a fair cost for the rescue? Let Common Council figure that out. Maybe the Mayor will argue that jumping off a dam, 30 or 40 feet on city property is a first amendment issue. Free speech don't, you know.
I see Florida, (land of the free and home of the hanging chad), has a new law signed by its illustrious governor, Ron DeSantis. Don't know whether he was wearing a mask at the time or a blindfold, but it appears that local election officials in the Sunshine Dtate will be allowed to use a 'secondary system' to speed up recounts and verify the accuracy of the voting results.
County supervisors now have the option of employing new auditing systems that are 'separate' from voting machines and software used for initial ballot counts. Note the word quotation 'option'. So there are 67 counties in Florida, but not a requirement to utilize the same auditing system.
Critics of the bill cried foul because there is only one vendor currently eligible to supply the machines and software. Did I hear someone say 'tampering'? I think I'd rather trained monkeys were counting our ballots this year.
Finally, a quick note/reference to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York. He cited the complaint by a parishioner years ago about naming a new church after Saint Mary Magdalene, sayin we shouldn't be memorializing a sinner. His response was an interesting piece of insight: "If we can't name churches after sinners, the only titles we would have left would be 'Jesus' and his 'mother'."
His point, being that in the current race to tear down, deface and hide statues of America's not so proud past is the modern equivalent of Puritan or Nazi book burning. The destruction of monuments only impoverishes our sense of history.
My own thought is that every time we allow an historical monument to be defaced or destroyed or torn down, we are denying our history and can hardly expect our children to learn from the vacuum that is being created by this political vandalism. Am I ashamed of certain parts of our American past? I'd be a fool to deny the shame that I feel when I think of slavery and the way we treated the original inhabitants of this hemisphere. But if we demolish the misbegotten monuments to the people who inhabit our history, how will our children learn of our progress?
Will we be cleansing our textbooks, as we have much of our 19th century literary canon?
Okay. And I won't apologize for pointing out that 20th century totalitarian regimes of all stripes have made eliminating, revising and cleansing the past their first order of business to control their subservient populace.
Santayana was prescient. We're bound to repeat history as we conveniently forget it. Thanks for listening.
v16i29