Zatera Ul

Reading the local newspapers is always interesting. In the last one, there was a story about a guy starting up a hot dog stand or some such thing in a neighboring suburban town.

Points of interest to me:

1. He asked permission from the City Council first (there being no existing ordinances governing hot dog stands).

2. The council members were quite gratified to be consulted beforehand, and immediately jumped into writing up a new ordinance for him.

3. The requirements of the ordinance is a little inconvenient for the guy, but the difficulties are not insurmountable, and it gives him the goodwill of the city. It will also work out well for him in the longer term, because the ordinance happens to limit the total number of food stands that can be open.

So there is an example of working within the system. Another example that this brings to mind is the book The Good Soldier Svejk. (I don’t have all the Czech characters right at hand, but it would be written Schweik in German.) In the book, poor Svejk works within the system, somehow always managing to come out on top. Good book, full of irony, but rather long, and the reviewer’s comment that “the author was probably drunk most of the time he was writing it” is almost certainly true.

Another local article concerned one of St. Paul’s reservoirs that is being retired. Basically a huge underground tank, they are mothballing it because it is actually too big for current needs (between modern water conservation and the disappearances of a brewery and various manufacturers) and because they don’t want to pay for repairs. They ran a picture, and it looked just like the part of Dwarrowdelf with all the pillars, except shorter. Would’ve made an awesome underground skate park.

More locally, I recently read that one of the local charities has six hundred volunteers. Considering the size and relative affluence of the city, I think they are in danger of outnumbering the people they are trying to help. I remember the local Target donated gift cards for volunteer appreciation gifts, of all things. It does seem like the volunteers for charities are usually the ones who get helped first; this is probably unavoidable, given the social dynamics. I spent many hours of my poor student days working away at a couple of worthy causes, and received many good meals in return.