Since my teacher wife has Columbus day off and it’s a bit difficult to get stuff done with her enjoying that down time, my goal is to compose a quick Quick Hits. But if past experience is any indicator, by the time I’m finished it won’t be nearly as quick as I’d hoped.
It will always be Columbus Day to me
Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
If Indigenous People Day is your cup of tea, then by all means celebrate it accordingly. One of the things I love about this country is the capacity to make our own celebratory decisions without fear of repercussion. Well, perhaps with the exception of Fox New. December will soon be upon us and we can choose to observe Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, or my personal favorite, Festivus.
But I wish my choice to celebrate Columbus Day wasn’t met with the kind of liberal and progressive derision you might encounter when someone accidentally misuses a pronoun.
Was Chris a dick? Yes he was, but so was everyone else back then. Those liberals and progressives with the absurdly naïve view that Native American tribes sat around the campfire eating smores and singing Kumbaya with each other might want to consider the Iroquois Confederation, the Ojibwa, and particularly the mass murdering Aztecs. They were every bit as murderous and opportunistic as their European counterparts.
The truth is, we’re all products of our times and people were particularly brutal in the 16th Century. In light of recent events, I’m not so sure we’ve improved much in that regard. And if you think you’d have treated Native Americans differently, I have news for you, you would’ve been the one leading the cavalry charge. Just look at how black Chicagoans are reacting to migrants coming into their neighborhoods. Yikes! No bigotry there!
Even if Chris wasn’t a dick. Even if he was 1492’s equivalent of Fred Rogers, the outcome would’ve been the same. Ninety percent of Native American fatalities in that era were caused by Smallpox and other similar diseases to which those tribes had no immunity. So, even if the East and West met in perfect peace and harmony, the West would’ve gotten the short end of the stick.
But leave it to the always amazing Jesuits at Xavier University to come up with a holiday compromise – Explorer’s Day! As many of you already know, I graduated from Loyola University of Chicago and, depending upon whom you ask, those Jesuits had quite the positive effect on me.
As that great philosopher Bruce Springsteen once said, “Trust the art, but not the artist,” so what’s wrong with honoring the spirit of exploration, something that uniquely defines us as human beings?
Explorer’s Day it is!
This doesn’t bode well for municipal projects
On September 18, the Geneva city council rejected the lone bid to build a brand-new East Side electrical substation because it came in $800,000 over the estimated $1.1 million cost. Yikes again! My first reaction was, “just one bid?” And my second was, “How could the only bid arrive at a massive 73 percent higher than any reasonable expectation?
So, I sought the council of a mayor and a two Kane County aldermen and apparently, that kind of thing is happening everywhere in northern Illinois.
The first issue is constructions firms are so busy in the post-COVID boom era that they can pick and choose what jobs to take, and dealing with local government is always a more difficult proposition than working for the private sector.
The second problem is that the persistent inflationary supply chain complications are particularly affecting the commodity prices that drive construction projects. That makes it almost impossible to come up with an accurately project estimate.
That’s why the Geneva project can only attract one bidder, and that bid has been artificially inflated to cover all possible construction cost fluctuations.
So, our city councils will either have to adjust their bidding expectations accordingly, or they’ll have to put off these projects until prices become more predictable – if the project can be postponed.
As if participating in local government wasn’t nearly challenging enough!
Proof that I’m not making it up!
I understand how my penchant for hyperbole and satire might make you, on occasion, say to yourself, “Oh, c’mon Jeff! Did that shit really happen? But the truth almost always is, not only did it really happen, but one of my readers will invariably come up with something that tops my over-the-top example.
It just happened again! Here’s what reader Anton emailed me in regard to point-of-sale systems “suggesting” 30 percent tips:
I’ve had my season tickets for Champaign football games for quite some time, and Big Ten venues recently started selling beer during games to realize the untapped earnings they’d been missing.
The University of Illinois just installed get-it-yourself beer coolers where you grab your own can and walk it to the self-checkout. There’s a person checking IDs, and as you stated, the kiosk asks for a 20, 25, or 30 percent tip.
On one recent occasion I left a zero tip after which I was questioned, “What’s wrong? What was wrong with the service?”
I told him “I grabbed my beer, walked it over here, and ran my own credit card. You checked my ID. What service did you provide?”
“I keep the beer cold!,” he answered.
Away I sauntered, shaking my head.
Yikes, part three! I cannot begin to understand the kind of warped entitlement mentality that would make anyone believe they deserve a 30 percent tip for simply standing there.
Given this rapidly rising level of greed, my tip is that we stop tipping altogether.
In regards to the Geneva sub-station, in my 50+ years in construction the engineer’s estimate, as you mentioned, was often wrong. Once the contract is signed and the cost of material and equipment goes up the contractor is stuck. Electrical equipment is especially volitile right now.
Rico,
That’s exactly what Mayor Kaptain and a couple of Geneva aldermen told me. It will eventually settle down, but the question is when?
Jeff
As a descendant of the Vikings, I have always thought that Columbus day was bogus.
Not to mention that how can you discover a country that was already populated?