In today’s Impromptus, I touch on a number of subjects, as an Impromptus column should: extremism, the American Dream, the media, Trump, innovation, etc. Here on the Corner, I would like to note something related to yesterday’s Impromptus.
In that column, I wrote,
A few days ago, I was on a country road — a dirt road. A man had a wheelbarrow full of dirt in his driveway. He was going out into the road, to fill potholes.
That’s civic action. Individual action …
After seeing that, a reader sent me a story out of Toronto last summer. City officials said that they would build a staircase at a cost of somewhere between $65,000 and $150,000. A retired mechanic, age 73, thought that was out of line. He would build a staircase himself. With the help of a homeless man he hired, he built the thing for $550, in one day.
The city tore it down — it was not up to snuff, they said — but he had woken them up, and they appreciated it.
Anyway, man is not helpless. It’s good to recognize this, from time to time …