Tuesday, July 29, 2003
A few months back, around the time that battle-ready American soldiers were parked just outside of Baghdad, (or maybe they had already rolled their tanks in -- I don’t really remember), the Board of Selectmen in my town approved a couple of miles’ worth of yellow ribbon to be wrapped around every tree that lines the two tree-laden main roads leading in and out of the town. All of that canary yellow fluttering in the spring breeze was a very touching and impressive sight at first, and certainly a proud show of town spirit and unity. Not to mention that this gesture really showed up the contiguous towns to the north and to the south who hadn’t thought to do it first. Yes, our little town was feeling very patriotic, and I think just a little smug.
Today on my way to work, I noticed that the ribbons that haven’t fallen completely off the trees are now a bleached-out, tattered white – a few months of sun and seaside winds haven taken their toll. In fact, the ribbons look like shit and I can see that the Board of Selectmen will soon be put in the uncomfortable position of having to decide what to do about it. Keep replacing them? Take them down? After all, we have to think ahead a bit here. We might be in Iraq for quite a while to come. Two years, five, ten, fifteen? Add a couple of Nor 'easters, a hurricane, and a few windy, hot summers into the mix and we're talking potentially a lot of yellow ribbon that will need replacing.
It’s really a shame Ann Landers isn’t around anymore because she would probably have known exactly what to do in this situation. I sure don’t. I mean you can’t take the ribbons down now can you? It would definitely call our sincerity into question – as if putting them up was nothing more than a nice Hallmark moment that made us all feel better at the time but now we've gotten sick of these faded rags drooping from all of our nice trees. Not to mention the message we would be sending to the soldiers still over there…Sorry Guys, but now that most of the CNN Iraq war coverage is over, the volunteers who enthusiastically tied on all of those ribbons have moved on to new causes. And besides those ribbons were really kind of making the town look tacky…
Good luck Selectmen.
Today on my way to work, I noticed that the ribbons that haven’t fallen completely off the trees are now a bleached-out, tattered white – a few months of sun and seaside winds haven taken their toll. In fact, the ribbons look like shit and I can see that the Board of Selectmen will soon be put in the uncomfortable position of having to decide what to do about it. Keep replacing them? Take them down? After all, we have to think ahead a bit here. We might be in Iraq for quite a while to come. Two years, five, ten, fifteen? Add a couple of Nor 'easters, a hurricane, and a few windy, hot summers into the mix and we're talking potentially a lot of yellow ribbon that will need replacing.
It’s really a shame Ann Landers isn’t around anymore because she would probably have known exactly what to do in this situation. I sure don’t. I mean you can’t take the ribbons down now can you? It would definitely call our sincerity into question – as if putting them up was nothing more than a nice Hallmark moment that made us all feel better at the time but now we've gotten sick of these faded rags drooping from all of our nice trees. Not to mention the message we would be sending to the soldiers still over there…Sorry Guys, but now that most of the CNN Iraq war coverage is over, the volunteers who enthusiastically tied on all of those ribbons have moved on to new causes. And besides those ribbons were really kind of making the town look tacky…
Good luck Selectmen.
Comments:
Post a Comment
