Priorities. Where are people’s priorities?

We all want life back to normal, like yesterday. We want power, water, Internet, cable, phones, heat, the ability to cook in our ovens, etc…. But how do we get there? Prioritize. First, let’s make sure everyone is safe, then we can get to the luxuries we are accustomed to.

First, people need to check in to reality. Let’s not harp on the vocabulary Rudy is using in our emergency update calls. Yes, you can’t actually postpone Halloween since it is a fixed date, but we all know he meant the activities, i.e.; trick-or-treating, since you know it’s DANGEROUS for kids to be walking around most of town right now. (Remember, priorities, people’s safety.) Or how about the fact that most of town seems to forget that the non-working lights on Main Street equate to a four-way stop sign? It seems people are in more of a hurry these days than normal…I drove to Stop & Shop today and witnessed more people cutting others off and doing things that are definitely illegal at any time, but maybe they don’t care if they get in an accident and land someone in the hospital, at least they’d have heat and power then… And let’s all drop the “woo is me” attitude. Most of town is in the same boat, or a worse one than you. And many other communities are far worse off than us, let’s just be glad our whole town wasn’t under water. We need perspective here, we’re all spoiled and used to having a lot of luxuries in life. Let’s be adults and realize this could be a lot worse!

But now, to why I’m really pissed. Last I knew, Ridgefield had 80 blocked roads. And 64% of us don’t have power. My house has no phone, cable, power and the road is blocked, sort of. Thanks to a good neighbor, I don’t know which, the branches on the pine tree blocking my road were sawed off. My neighbors and I are able to drive under the tree (I say a quick prayer each time hoping the tree doesn’t decide to give way) to get off of our dead end at the edge of town. But when I was driving to town to use the Internet and try to get some work done, what did I see? The town and a tree crew at the Little Red Schoolhouse – removing the tree that fell on the roof and caused minor damage to the roof and chimney. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all about preserving the history of our town and I want the Little Red Schoolhouse to remain open after storm relief, but, I’m more interested in having fire trucks and ambulances able to get to my neighbors and my houses before first. I’m not even asking for power yet, how about just enabling emergency services to get to all of us? The town might be able to send in an ATV instead of an ambulance (yes, they do it, they did last year after Irene when a neighbor needed to be taken to the hospital, but tell me, how is clearing the Little Red Schoolhouse supposed to help anyone on my block, or any of the other blocked roads, when God forbid, someone’s house catches fire?

Now, before you decide to criticize my bluntness, or the lack of grammatical editing that I couldn’t be bothered to do, think about the things that really matter. Why don’t you use that negative energy of yours to go help everyone who needs it? Cause guess what, most of the region could find something productive for you to do.