Good News

Sometimes I think Morning Fog is too focused on being critical, on pointing out what's wrong rather than what's right.

Could that be the reason I haven't written a lot lately?  Is it possible that the world suddenly changed, becoming in a trice the "best of all possible worlds" in which Voltaire's Candide professed to believe?   Well, no, I rather doubt that.  A brief look at the day's news from Syria (refugees, mayhem, the senseless destruction of world-heritage art) or the mass killing du jour, should put that notion rapidly to rest.

Nevertheless, there have been a couple of recent blips on the world screen that offer a hurrah moment.  Let me focus on those today: 

I. 

First, I applaud President Obama's executive order re-naming our nation's highest peak -- no longer Mt. McKinley, it will revert now to its local name, Denali.  This seems (to me) the right way to go. 

It's nice to hark back to a name that can be identified as native-American, but the broader point is to prefer names that reflect local and/or historic usage, rather than some politician who will be totally forgotten in a couple of decades.  

McKinley was no great shakes as a President; his main claim to fame appears to have been to get shot, which served to place his name not just on the recently de-commissioned Mt. Denali, but a school in nearly every town in the country.  Let's continue the trend and return to "Idlewild" for that airport in New York, and move on to "Mt. Whitney," preferably and more interestingly known as Tumanguya.

II.

More recently, a young man named Dylan Marks was shark-fishing from his kayak along the Pacific Coast when he snagged a hammerhead and ended up with a serious bite wound on his foot.  The "regular" Morning Fog might question the wisdom of shark fishing from a fragile craft like a kayak (however, this seems to be a bit of a fad at the moment), or of dangling his foot over the side while doing so (but hey, dude, that's probably a typical California posture - the Laid-Back Loll?).

But today's posimistic Morning Fog applauds Mr. Marks for his attitude after the event:  He resisted the bait dangled by his TV-journalist interviewer, who tried to get him to say he had been attacked.  No, he insisted, he respects the sharks; this particular one most likely bit his (Marks's) foot out of confusion and fear; it was not an attack.  Furthermore, Marks claims he will give up shark fishing.   A cool and sensible response.  Let's have more of those!

 

Comments

[PiedType]

I cheer the name return to Denali. Personally, I've called it Denali for so long that I'm not sure I'd have remembered McKinley if asked. It is, after all, in Denali National Park. And why, for heaven's sake, if you're in Alaska, wouldn't you use a revered, native Alaskan name? I love the color and heritage of Alaskan names, even though I can't always pronounce them. Let's not strip Alaska of its unique heritage.

Kudos to the young man for not taking the reporter's bait and calling his incident a "shark attack!" Reporters are such colossal idiots sometimes.