Blogtrek

Blogtrek

2006/01/25

Detour Which Way?

In sorting out my photographs recently, I happened on a picture I took in late October of some year in the 1980s, near my home. I took it because of the lack of direction it gives. The sign on the left says turn right, and the sign on the right says turn left. So which do I do? And doesn't it remind you of many situations in real life, when someone tells you one thing, and another says the opposite? Take for example, Michael Lynch and Kenneth Deffeyes, who tell you completely different things about whether we are going to run out of cheap oil in a few years. An example is when I went to a conference last July, and the first thing I was greeted with were people saying that the first thing I needed to do was to go to the waiver table to sign waivers for the nature trips I had signed up for. So I did that. Then I went to the registration table, and they told me that I needed to have gone to that table first before going to waivers, contradicting the people at the entrance.

The entire thing reminds me of a poem I wrote recently, called "Where's the Way?". And if any time you are stopped by police for going down a wrong road in a construction project, just show them this picture.