Wednesday, June 18, 2003
It's a Pretty Messed up World
I rounded the corner right by my house and found a dead dog in the middle of the road. It was a wiry little terrier that had been running loose for the past week or so - I have no idea whose dog it is, and the driver who hit it sure didn't hang around. Someone cleaned it up long before animal control came, but a large red puddle made it clear what had happened. It makes me furious that someone didn't care enough about their animal to leash them, but Newberry is hock full of roaming canines, so what should I suspect? I see dead dogs on the main road all the time, but it was a surpise to find one almost right in front of the house.
I did make it apparent to our neighbors what had happened. I figure it will be more impetus for them to go in with us in putting up a fence. Speaking of which, our other neighbor just fenced the gap between the retaining pond fence and the fenced yard next door. Twelve feet down, sixty-five or so more feet to go.
Also on the way home. I heard a report that the Hispanic population has significantly increased in the last decade. A chair of some cities' Hispanic Chamber of Commerce stated that Hispanics have created, "in effect, a country within a country." What??!? I thought the goal of this country was to create a indivisible nation comprised of a multitude of different people, not fragment into a series of micro-communities. Although this might have been an off-the cuff remark, I think it speaks volumes as to how the idea of what America means might be changing, and how often people don't see themselves as part of a greater, larger whole.
Here's another example of what I mean. In Naples, a little girl was selling lemonade in front of her home - what can be more Americana than that. One of her neighbors, for whatever reason, didn't like the stand being there, so she had the police shut it down for not having a license. Nevermind that the stand taught the girl about business, or that it brought a smile to passersby faces, that it spoke of innocence or childhood, or brought the community closer together. To this one neighbor, it was an eyesore and a nuisance, and she decided that it had to go. And for me, it's like a little bit of the American dream died.
But only for a moment. The city gave the girl a license - free of charge. And the cops bought her lemonade.
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