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The slow days of August are upon us, known in American
newsrooms as the Silly Season
when nothing important
happens. The means that routine events which would
otherwise be ignored or buried -- things like football
exhibition games, the opening of public schools, the
discovery that yet another congressman's votes can be
correlated with his campaign contributions -- get ample
attention.
This shortage of real news also affects us pundits, and so it's time to delve into the file of matters that are sort of interesting but not qualified to get whole columns:
· Dynastic Naming. Countries with hereditary monarchs have rules for this (i.e., George VIII comes after George VII), and doubtless the Vatican does too. But we haven't quite figured it out in this country, as evidenced by our difficulty in separating George W. Bush, governor of Texas and front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, from George H.W. Bush, his father and former president.
The Texas governor is not a Junior,
so that won't
work. Some irreverent Texans refer to him as the
Shrub,
and others call him W,
sometimes
shortened to Dub'ya.
Those seem undignified, but
other approaches don't work well.
Bush the Elder
is pretty clear, but Bush the
Younger
could also refer to brother Jeb who is governor
of Florida. The same problem holds for francophone
locutions like Bush pere
and Bush fils.
We've found solutions in other American political families: father John Adams and son John Quincy Adams, both presidents, are easy to differentiate. William Henry Harrison and his grandson Benjamin were both presidents, but again, they're easy to tell apart.
Faced with writing about remote presidential cousins who
had the same last name, H.L. Mencken resorted to
Roosevelt Major
and Roosevelt Minor,
but
sometimes it isn't clear which was which, and the same
might be true of the Bushes. So this won't work,
either.
The Gore dynasty doesn't present the same problems. Even though both were senators from Tennessee, Albert the Elder was never a national figure, and further, Albert the Younger was formally christened a Junior, thus providing a distinction when necessary.
Nor has the Kennedy dynasty to date troubled us in the same way; their names are sufficiently distinctive.
But we do need an answer to the Bush nomenclature
problem before serious presidential campaigning begins.
Maybe we can go with George Bush of Houston
and
George Bush of Austin
until something better comes
along.
· Surplus Water. Colorado has been getting entirely too much rain this summer. Apparently, some quirk in the jet stream has given us the water that should be going to drought-stricken places like Maryland and New Jersey.
While Colorado generally welcomes water, this season has not been an unmitigated blessing. Our highways get hammered by mudslides. Ranchers can't harvest their hay because it never dries. Anglers find streams high and muddy instead of low and clear. Campers endure drizzle and mud instead of enjoying sunny days in the high country. Floods have ripped out parts of cities. Our state just isn't built for as much rain as we've been getting.
In other words, enough's enough, but what can we do about it?
When snow doesn't fall from the sky, our ski resorts use snow-making machinery. Can they put it into reverse to suck up moisture from the hillsides?
Sometimes they seed clouds to get it to snow or rain; is there a way to unseed clouds so that they'll float off to Pennsylvania before dropping their water?
I can even recall ski resorts importing Ute rain-dancers
during drought years -- has anyone checked with the tribal
office in Ignacio to find out whether there's a Drought
Dance
or a Sunshine Dance?
Whatever it takes, I hope the governor's office gets on it right away, before more of Colorado slides away.
· Instant Messages. America On-Line and
Microsoft got into a cyberbattle after AOL offered
something called instant messaging.
That is, if you were logged onto the Internet through AOL, other people could find out and send you instant messages that popped up on your screen.
I don't know about you, but the last thing I want when I'm checking email or surfing the web is to be interrupted, especially by something unexpected popping up on my screen and demanding immediate response.
Microsoft could have performed a valuable public service by providing blocking software, rather than finding ways to penetrate AOL's service so that these instant annoyances threaten to become ubiquitous.
Then again, maybe the pop-up messages would have been welcome on these rainy days when there isn't much else to do except sit indoors and wonder how to refer to the Bush Formerly Known As The Bombastic Bushkin.
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