Word: umbrellas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...predominance of the umbrella on Harvard sidewalks is surely a sign of the tragedy of the commons. The good of the public realm has been subsumed under the convenience of the individual, and personal expedience has been allowed to trump the interests of the commonwealth. Vision obscured by the opaque nylon, the umbrella user becomes a lumbering cyclone of eye-gouging points. The Journal of the American Medical Association in 1978 published a paper on “orbitofacial wounds” caused by umbrella tips, warning that these injuries often go “unrecognized” and stressing...
...While politicians haggle over whether it’s safe to carry a handgun on the streets, the umbrella menace remains unspoken in the halls of our out-of-touch government. In fact, members of Congress may be seen regularly strolling through security brashly waving their umbrellas. Last March, an aide to Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) provoked an uproar when he accidentally tried to bring a pistol into a Senate office building. Sadly, the national media has taken a far more tepid interest in the scores of umbrellas that enter the building each...
...Fortunately, the same engineering which brought us the umbrella also brought us something far more useful: the raincoat. For those unfamiliar with it, the raincoat wraps snugly around the wearer’s body, poses no threat to fellow pedestrians, and has the added advantage of thermal insulation. Driving rain poses no threat to the raincoat-clad pedestrian, while the umbrella user vainly struggles to position his or her weapon against the onslaught of the wind. And, if one wishes, the raincoat can be augmented by rain-pants and even gaiters to provide an unassailable guard from the weather?...
...Getting umbrellas off the streets doesn’t mean we just have to throw them away, and critics fearing landfills piled up with mountains of umbrellas should have their concerns eased. Walking on Cape Cod, Thoreau found that his umbrella worked better as a sail to catch tailwinds than as a shield against the rain. There are plenty of good uses the enterprising umbrella owner might put his or her old weapon towards. They can be retrofitted into reflectors for studio photographers, or made into makeshift punch bowls...
...utopian post-umbrella world, we will all pleasantly stroll Cambridge’s newly uncongested sidewalks, keeping our eye sockets intact and smiling with benevolence at our fellow pedestria...