Dysmey Post Archive > Pages for 2003 > St. Patty's Day Edition
Today is St. Patrick's Day, where everyone of Irish ancestry (including myself) wear green in memory of the patron saint of Ireland, who (legend says) kicked out the snakes there.
I went to Meijer and bought (among other things) a green tie and socks. No, it does not match anything else I wear, but it's the point, I suppose.
Who would have thought that on this day last week the air was bitterly cold and the snow was piled up to three feet high? Now the temperature is in the seventies (21-25°C), and there are only small patches of snow and ice where the piles were.
As I am on call this coming Saturday, and as I am no longer allowed overtime, I got Monday morning off. It was such a nice day that I took a walk, said hello to one of my neighbors, went downtown to mail some letters, and visited the doctor's and get the diet plan that should have been mailed to me last week.
The diet plan splits food and drink into six groups (starch/bread, fruit, vegetable, milk, meat, and fat), and then into exchanges, as in "you can have this in exchange for that". The list is long, but the quantities for each exchange are small (½ to one cup, or 1 ounce, e.g.). The idea is that you can have variety in your diet as long as there is no sugar.
I appear to be doing OK for starters, but I need to add more vegetables to my diet.
The Indianapolis Star this week is publishing a series of articles on the decrepit condition of Indiana's economy. The state is in worse shape than neighboring states—even Kentucky—due to an overreliance on heavy industry for its tax base. Scores of factories have closed due to overseas competition, leaving thousands of workers unemployed (or forced to flip burgers) and drying up property and corporate tax revenues.
The articles point to a much deeper cause for the state's decrepitude: caution, contentment with the way things are, and a dogged resistance to change. The refusal to adopt daylight savings time is the most visible symptom of a chronic cultural illness that has left the state on its knees. Cowardice and dissension on the part of the state's political and business leaders ensures the illness keeps on.
To top that all off, with an unattractive landscape, with poor schools obsessed with athletics, and with hardly any available technical or scientific jobs, Indiana can't even keep its own college grads inside the state. No high-tech workers, no high-tech industry, no steady tax stream.
The president of the Hudson Institute was quoted as saying that if Indiana were a nation, and the USA the world, the state would be well on its way to Third World status. I contend that we are already there.
Thus, Indiana will keep on declining until it hits rock bottom as the Mississippi of the North—or until its citizens snap out of their contented lethargy.