December 13, 2008

• Holidays are Hazardous

  I hope I have time to write what I had in mind for today’s blog.  Doug will be wanting the computer soon, so I don’t have all day.  I keep having to get up from here to toss more wood in the fire because the temperature outside is in double digits below zero and I’m trying to get it up above 50° F in here.  To add to the distractions, I have felt a series of sharp little bumps:  small nearby earthquakes. 

  In the past hour and a half or so, as I’m writing this, NEIS has recorded three moderate quakes in Alaska.  A triangle drawn between those points would have me somewhere in the middle.  The ground movements I felt probably weren’t directly from any of those shocks.  The recorded quakes were small, and what I felt had none of the attenuated rolling sensations suggesting distance.  I’m probably picking up on minute movements in the Susitna Fault, a mile from here, too small to make the NEIS list.

  Holiday hazards…

  Everyone is familiar with the usual temptations to overeat or drink too much.  I won’t deny that they are huge hazards of life-threatening proportions.  People will undoubtedly die, and even more people be injured in the U.S. this holiday season because of their own indiscriminate eating and/or their own or other people’s excessive alcohol consumption.

  Alcohol isn’t the only dangerous drug likely to be consumed to excess, either.  We don’t even have to consider illicit street drugs, though they are hazardous enough themselves.  Prescribed anti-depressants, over-the-counter sleep aids, stimulants from health food stores, and painkillers of all kinds have the potential for lethal effects if abused, and holidays are traditional times for drug abuse.

  I tossed that in because it is rather obvious and I would be remiss if I didn’t.  That was not really the holiday hazard uppermost in my mind when I sat down here.  I was thinking about the potential for social faux pas and political incorrectness.  This was brought to mind by a recent Xanga featured question regarding the greeting, “Merry Christmas!”

  I am not engaged in any public contact work where I am expected to greet anyone.  I am not usually inclined to say much more than “Hi” to the neighbors I meet at the spring or the general store unless someone chooses to engage me in conversation.  I am not likely to offend anyone of a non-Christian faith with an inappropriate holiday greeting because I don’t go around spouting seasonal platitudes.

  It has been quite a few years since I engaged in the holly jolly seasonal hullabaloo.  I have been so far out of town, so to speak, for so long, that last year in mid-December when I spent a few days in the hospital, the oft-repeated, “merry Christmas” wishes of hospital employees struck my ears as jarringly false.  I looked at faces and listened closely, and neither saw nor heard any indication of sincerity.  They sounded more hollow than the usual “Have a nice day.”  If I were inclined to take offense at such things, I would have been offended, but not on grounds of religious belief or political correctness.

  I fondly envision a society in which nobody feels obligated to mouth any sentiments they don’t wholeheartedly feel, and where everyone feels free to say what’s really on his or her mind.  Toward that end, I avoid empty words and someone who says to me, “How are you?” is likely to hear the truth even though I know it’s not what she wanted or expected.

  This holiday season, if you can’t bring yourself to stray that far from the herd, you might take a little fling at what we did forty-some years ago when I was riding with outlaw bikers.  On Christmas eve, we walked through San Francisco’s Tenderloin, greeting every person we met with a hearty growl of “Merry mother-fucking Christmas.”  With such a greeting, one is at least an equal-opportunity offender, not singling out any race or religion.  If you do it as we did, arm-in-arm, four-abreast down the sidewalk, in boots and leathers, people will be unlikely to get in your face about it, as well.

  Have a blessed Yule, y’all.
  

   

  • 5:03 pm
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