We can’t change sun’s path, but we can be part of local solutions

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on August 24, 2017.

This week, the eternal marathon of the sun across the sky gave a rare glimpse of extraordinary beauty, the majesty of the cosmos with a total solar eclipse.

In Medicine Hat, however, this was nothing more than a — as usual — case of poor planning.

Firstly, the moon’s coverage of the solar orb — as viewed locally — provided only an 80 per cent “partial eclipse.”

This is frankly not good enough for Alberta’s fifth largest city, nor for any town promoting itself as a tourist destination, a good place to raise a family or set up a business.

Are we not the sunniest city in Canada? Should not we also be the darkest during an eclipse?

Perhaps this should have been thought out a little more.

Across the path of shadow on Monday — from Oregon to the Southeastern U.S. seaboard — festivals, live television coverage, and events were promoted.

The value of advertising for the local economy alone would be, pardon the pun, astronomical.

Also, why schedule it at 11:33 a.m. on a Monday?

Perhaps planners don’t have anything better to do in the middle of a work day, but regular people do.

Now, if you’ve read this far, hopefully you’ve realized how absurd the above points actually are.

No one planned the eclipse. No one’s to blame.

In fact, the whole spectacle was quite interesting.

It was, they say, what it was.

Yet, these are the typical arguments that Hatters quickly fall back on for any number of issues that they see as falling short, beyond the realm of common sense, or simply forgotten.

Any one can be applied to a number of issues with only minor alteration.

The “city” or “bureaucrats” or, increasingly “the media” should be doing something to correct some failing in the community.

We need high paying jobs, says the business sector. We need an active downtown, people call out from their couch.

We need better concerts, chimes the chorus after Bob Dylan cancelled a local date this summer, likely, but not officially, due to poor ticket sales.

We need common sense at City Hall, say many who either won’t run or won’t vote this fall (about half of people don’t).

These examples, and many others, differ from the any nonsensical argument about the eclipse in one important way: We have, to a degree, the ability to influence them.

Too often though, Hatters and people in general, seem resigned to defeat if they can’t achieve immediate and total victory.

That’s not a plan for any success.

Medicine Hat is not the boom town it was in 2005, but steps can be taken to gird the local economy over the long term.

Medicine Hat won’t host Taylor Swift, Nickelback, or any other megaband in the short term, but that doesn’t mean we have to deride those artists.

Medicine Hat city hall is wrestling with a whale-sized hole in its budget, but that doesn’t absolve anyone providing responsible and reasonable public services in a progressive growing city.

Nor do any of these problems absolve Hatters from their role in being part of the solutions.

Indeed, Medicine Hat certainly has its advantages, but not among them is the power to move the sun in the sky.

Stand still and you’re falling behind, but keeping a community vibrant, active and engaged is not a sprint.

We’re all running in that marathon, and we should strive to win it.