1. This thought is sort of a follow up on my plastic heroes post. Today, I received another letter from my city council. It informed me that Q-fever has been found in my area and listed symptoms I should watch out for. Q-fever is a disease that goats get and - unlike most of the big animal diseases that make the news - this one can be fatal to humans. Thousands of goats in the Netherlands have been put down and many farmers have thus been bankrupted.
I was pretty annoyed because A. one of the reasons I live in cities is to avoid things like weird goat diseases and B. the letter came in an unmarked envelope that wasn't even addressed to me by name. I could easily have overlooked it. To me, a threat to my life is more important than recycling my plastic. My city council obviously disagrees.
2. I watched Tiger Woods' apology speech today. Who didn't? He stressed that his wife Elin had never attacked him with a golf club. He said that that story was defamatory towards her. I disagree. To me, the tableau of the betrayed wife's taking her revenge is the only uplifting part of this whole nasty story.
Well, maybe not the only one. I was a little bit touched by the sight of Tiger's mother giving him a hug at the end. No matter what a person does, no matter how bad they are, their mother will still love them. That's a great blessing in this life. And I think that's something everyone can agree about.
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"She stopped, she looked at her brother. 'Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life-.' But what life was she couldn't explain." Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party
