Resolution wish list
Ah, the time of resolutions is here again. What happier
year could there be than one in which resolutions for improvement are
kept?
With many good wishes for a Happy New Year, we’re
offering this wish list of resolutions for reading, raving and general
amusement.
Ketchum City Council: To avoid the hot seat by
refraining from trying to ban smoking in all local restaurants.
President Clinton: To lie low after he leaves
office, read a lot, write a lot, and let Hilary have the spotlight.
President-elect George W. Bush: To acknowledge loss
of the popular vote; to vow not to take the Republican agenda too
seriously, and to keep his hands off Clinton’s executive orders that
created new national monuments in the West.
Rev. Jerry Falwell: To acknowledge that the country
elected Dubya, not the Rev. Jerry Falwell.
American people: To review the electoral college
plan for electing a president and decide whether or not to throw it out in
favor of the popular vote.
Voters in counties with punch card systems: To make
sure the systems are replaced within four years to ensure all votes are
counted and to save the nation another Florida debacle.
Speeding skiers and boarders: To rethink the joy of
speed on Baldy in the face of the hard and fast laws of physics, and court
judgments against skiers/boarders involved in accidents in Colorado and
Idaho.
Sun Valley, Bellevue, Hailey, and Blaine County: To
follow Ketchum in adopting a Dark Skies Ordinance to protect the
incredible view of the Milky Way in the crystalline altitude of the Wood
River Valley.
Golden Eagle developers: To bring the height and
width of their project’s giant berms into compliance with county
ordinances and to drop the charade of trying to convince the county to
grant variances to make the manmade hillettes legal as built.
Blaine County Commissioners: To hire some help to
allow them to manage the big picture and to leave the micromanaging to
others.
Retiring Blaine County Commissioner Len Harlig: To
write some poetry and smell the roses.
U.S. Forest Service: To stand tough in the face of
those who claim that the nation must get rid of forest fires by cutting
down the trees that "cause" them.
Idaho Legislature: To back off on the ideological
attack on Idaho Public Television and give it the funding and equipment it
needs to bring educational programming on all kinds of issues and subjects
to Idahoans.
U.S. Supreme Court justices: To take a night class
in constitutional law and its practical application.
Cell phone users: To turn off the infernal
contraptions when driving in traffic.
Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler: To leave Idaho
and its peace-loving citizens and never come back.
New technology investors: To remember that the
rules of business in a free market are the same for businesses that
manufacture widgets and those that produce electronic information.
Idaho Department of Transportation: To repeat
daily, "More lanes do not mean happiness."
Bureau of Land Management: To stay out of the real
estate business in Blaine County by resolving to manage its lands here
instead of selling them off.
Valley commuters: To adopt a friendlier (read
safer) attitude toward others during rush hour and to sign up for the
Rideshare program.
Outlaw snowmobilers: To refrain from trashing the
new agreement between cross-country skiers and snowmobilers by sticking to
designated use areas.
Wall Street: To learn again to pronounce recession
(ree-seh-shun).
Picabo Street: To believe, believe, believe in more
medals in 2002.
Idaho wolves: To swear off beef and lamb.
Ketchum Planners: To believe their eyes, if not
their calculations, when they see a building that looks taller than city
ordinances allow.
Valley medical community: To learn to take its own
temperature.
California: Not to covet its neighbors’
electricity and to keep its mitts off Idaho water.
National Marine Fisheries Service: To go in for a
spine transplant so it can once again provide good advice on the best
options for salmon recovery.
Second District Congressman Mike Simpson: To write
a bill creating a Boulder-White Clouds Wilderness Area, introduce it and
get it passed.