SAD GAS AD

The gray gloom finally lifted. I am hopeful this is not just a temporary lifting. This morning when a cloud of fog burned off to reveal, once more, the fine Blue Sky of Texas, I felt uncharacteristically happy for a moment or two. I was starting to develop a very serious bout of SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder) as the days of gray stacked up one after another. The air even managed to warm up a little bit. To 60. It almost makes me want to go swimming.

But instead of swimming I went to the balcony of the apartment which I've been tasked with looking after, basically feeding the cat, while the owner is in Puerto Rico attending to her bi-annual Puerto Rican Nationalist duties.

The balcony is on the third floor, in a building on the top of a hill, thus affording a good view of what passes below. It can be both entertaining and unsettling what one sees from that vantage point at times.

I don't know if it rises to the level of being unsettling, but it seems every Saturday there is this Fort Worth area car dealer who has a small plane flying over the freeway trailing a banner. I would think this would not be allowed as it is very distracting to be driving and to look up to try and read what is flying above you.

So, I was minding my own business, enjoying the balmy temps, sitting on the Puerto Rican's balcony, sipping a mint julep, when I heard the drone of a prop plane. And then the weekly Saturday Huggins Honda banner came into view. Is this not both visual and aural pollution?

As I sat on the balcony, slowly sipping my mint julep, and feeling evermore relaxed with the SAD symptoms fading further and further, I looked down to see a Fort Worth transit bus pass by. On the bus in bold letters it said "POWERED BY NATURAL GAS".

Well, also in my view from the balcony as I sipped my mint julep is a Chesapeake natural gas drilling operation. These drilling operations are all over this area, to the consternation of many and the profit of few.

So, I was thinking, as that bus passed, why no one local has proposed that since these buses are being powered by natural gas and since that is what is being sucked out from under us here in this blessed zone of Texas, why not use some of our gas to power our buses and remove the fares, the masses then more willing to use mass transit and less cranky about not getting any benefit from having to put up with all the noise, pollution and aggravation of all this Barnett Shale natural gas drilling. It seems perfectly fair and logical to me. Which means it will never happen.