2011: Get thee behind me
by December 26, 2011 3:27 pm 68 views
Riff Raff, by Michael Tilley
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A college friend recently inquired on his facebook page, “Hey, has anyone seen 2011? I must of missed it …”
His obvious point is a perception that the year flew by. Kind Readers know that physics trump perception. We know, thanks to Mr. Einstein, that time is relatively constant, and it’s doubtful any of us on Earth traveled at speeds that would cause 60 seconds to become anything considerably less.
“The f&%$-ing Mayans stole 2011. Saw it on the History Channel,” noted a comment to the inquiry about 2011. “Sucked all 365 days into one of them funky stone temples. They used crystals and goat bones. Damnedest thing. And 2012 is going to be such a loser year that the NFL just gave up and allowed Madonna to be the halftime act at the Super Bowl. It’s all Carter’s fault for giving up the Panama Canal.”
Maybe that’s not the answer, except for the part about the Panama Canal. And the Madonna thing.
But I say good riddance to to 2011. We should have known this would be a tough year when Miss Arkansas Alyse Eady captured the hearts and minds of everyone but a panel of judges.
And then Mayor Ray Baker died.
The economic recovery promised by advocates of stimulus programs jumped the tracks somewhere between Congress, the White House and a Rube Goldberg-esque federal bureaucracy.
The U.S. Postal Service decided to cease mail processing operations in Fort Smith. And then the USPS went national with an aggressive cost-cutting plan that would put mail delivery on a Pony Express schedule.
Did you enjoy the miserably hot summer?
We learned that two of the seven most ineffective legislators during the 2011 Arkansas General Assembly were from the Fort Smith area.
NASA launched a shuttle for the final time. The end of the shuttle program comes with no clear replacement with respect to getting our folks to the International Space Station — a scientific outpost we spent years and billions building. Really? That’s like building a house on an island and then destroying the only bridge to the island. We sent men to the moon with less computing power than is now in a low-end cell phone, but can’t figure out how to get folks to low-earth orbit.
Warner Smith & Harris, a Fort Smith-based law firm that opened when Judge Isaac Parker was on the bench, closed.
Then there was the whole thing with the 1% prepared food tax in which Loud proved more substantive than Logic. Unfortunately, Loud was helped in its cause by a fumbling crew responsible for the Logic.
Congressional redistricting divided the Fort Smith metro area like an operating room quack with a dull scalpel.
Penn State.
From the good news/bad news file: Golden Living announced a job expansion in Fort Smith, but that it would move its corporate headquarters from Fort Smith to Dallas.
We lost Sam M. Sicard and Collier Wenderoth Jr. and Fred Baker Sr. and H.L. Hembree and Steve Rinke.
Under cover of the excuse of budget cuts, the Fort Smith Board of Directors nixed television coverage of their voting meetings. These are the same folks who profess the need for more transparency with citizens.
The number of manufacturing jobs in Arkansas fell to 1960 levels.
The Republican Party of Arkansas used nefarious means to shut down Matt Campbell’s website. Campbell, a state employee blogging in his private time, had the nerve to embarrass Secretary of State Mark Martin, a Republican, on a frequent basis.
Mitsubishi execs delayed indefinitely the opening of their wind-turbine assembly plant at Chaffee Crossing.
And we lost Maria Haley.
And we lost Ray Reid.
The Whirlpool folks in Benton Harbor, Mich., decided to close their Fort Smith refrigeration plant by mid-2012. Ouch.
Sebastian County Circuit Clerk Ken Blevins.
End-of-the-world enthusiasts point to 2012 as the year during which cosmic events create a great disturbance on this planet. Any chance they could have been off by one year?