Dysmey Blog Archives > long mid-may week
It has been a long week, almost wholly concentrated on this past Wednesday.
I took the day off this past Wednesday in order to get the new permanent crown put on my lower right front molar. No Novocain was used this time, although the dentin needed to be desensitized because I was feeling tinges of pain coming from there while the dentist was removing the aluminum crown and installing the permanent one.
The temporary crown did the job, but I could feel the pain when the crown came in contact with anything metal like a fork. The permanent crown transmits no heat or touch. It wears like enamel and does not wear out the teeth above it. It is resistant to the acids from germ-metabolized sugar, although it would be folly to let plaque form around it. And, despite its metal content, it is cheaper than its alternative, porcelain.
I also got a teeth cleaning after the crown was in place. I will pass on the chores I did after the dentist's visit.
I visited the local newspaper to pay off the bill for the advertisement for last year's Museum Days book sale, which the library friends group supposedly did not pay for. I learned from the secretary, whom I personally know, that the group did pay for it. I also found that the dispute between the paper and the library friends group (and the board) is more a matter of different assumptions of what the paper is supposed to be.
I think the real problem is that the library friends group, director and board think that the Madison-Grant Shopper (not the paper's real name, but might as well be called that à la The Simpsons) ought to work like a real newspaper. But it is not a real newspaper: It overly relies on advertisements, since it is mailed out for free.
The editor can't make The M-G Shopper all ads, or the locals would refuse to read it. But he runs it on the assumption that something is news only after it has taken place, and that all events must be posted and paid for by the Monday before the next release. The only exceptions are for town board and school board meetings.
The library board is appointed, not elected, so I suppose it does not count as an exception to the editor's policies. But at least we know what we are doing and do not fight amongst ourselves. :) Oh, yeah, the new library is paid for now, and its renovations are coming along just fine. It should be ready to open by the end of August or the first week of September.
I also learned that the person who reported on the last town board meeting got the interim town marshal wrong. She wrote that it was one of the board members who got the post. But the guy, I learned, is disabled and could not assume the post even if he wanted it. The real appointee was the father of the marshal who was forced out months ago for reasons unknown (apart from the State Police and FBI investigating him). It is kind of nonsensical, isn't it: The board passed an anti-nepotism ordinance; then hired the father of the guy that spurred passage of that ordinance; and then kept delaying the appointment of a permanent marshal, prompting the most vocal member of the board to raise a ruckus. The issue has spilled into the Marion paper.
Usually the town board's follies are of the quiet variety. As an example, last year's folly of wanting to install a water department drive-up window for the old folks was dropped after criticisms that someone who is too frail to walk up to the water counter would be too frail to drive.
This year the meetings have been more raucous.
The town board deofficialized the old summer sports board, which had become like a large American corporation — fat, dopey, and loose with its money. In a case of poor timing, it dumped the old summer board during sign-up time. The resolution was handed to the old summer board by a policeman, freaking out the parents present at the sign-up. Then the town board approved another summer sports board set up on the fly.
Then the town board allowed the old summer board to gather its equipment out of the town-owned park sheds, because it did not want the equipment on town property for one moment longer. The old summer board then sold the equipment to pay off its remaining debts before it disbanded.
That made lots of people in town weep and gnash their teeth. Why? Because a lot of people believed that the equipment was either town property or else was common property. This is false and naïve: It never occurred to the complainers that (as the secretary of the local paper pointed out) the summer sports board is not like a public library board. It is a town-sponsored business monopoly. Parents paid for the privilege of letting their kids play baseball during the summer; and once the fees changed hands, that money — and the equipment it bought — belonged to the summer sports board, not to the town or its citizens.
Anyway, the new summer board, which assumed that the equipment would be there, had to quickly scrounge up its own equipment in order to start the new season. That season will have reduced teams, as some parents signed their kids up on baseball teams in neighboring towns, fearing there would be no baseball season at all in Fairmount.
Normally I don't give a wooha about summer sports. Its only connection to me is that I could hear the games out my bedroom window back at the folks' house. But, even though the town has the oldest average age in the county, it still has a lot of kids because the younger citizens are unusually prolific. That is why Fairmount has not shrunk as much as it could have. It is also why parent-related issues tend to be the important ones here. And those issues tend to explode like an ink pack on a wad of stolen bills, because some of our citizens (like anywhere else, I might add) are so nasty they make outhouse rats fear for their lives.
Well, at least we don't have parents out in the field having impromptu gladiatorial fights to the death, like some towns have had.