The Krishna lunch you hold in your sweaty palms is sacred. It’s a time-honored tradition for you. Walking over to the limited shade on Plaza of the Americas, you cross your legs and sit in the grass. The smell of vegan goodness wafts up from your plate. The sunshine is bright but not unpleasant, illuminating everything including your lunch in a warm Floridian glow. “What a nice day it is,” you think to yourself as you plunge a plastic fork into a small mound of Halva. The chirping of birds, melodic chanting and acoustic guitar drift in the air. Laughs and cheers from students practicing on a slackline punctuate your sunny afternoon. The atmosphere around you is filled with harmony, peace, love and good food.
Your first bite is interrupted by a roaring engine noise, startling you and causing your first bite to fall into the grass. You turn around in annoyance to see a red sports car stopped at the intersection of Union Road and Newell Drive. The tires screech and the driver does a burnout, rolling black rubber indelibly into the pavement. It lurches off, and you get one look at the license plate. It reads:
DARTS AND LAURELS
First things first: A laurel to Krishna lunch for saving cows and chickens with tasty, meatless substitutes.
The news this week saw its fair share of big stories, and everyone is worried about Hurricane Florence, so let’s dole out some meteorological darts and laurels. The military is sending out more than 7,000 service members to be ready to assist civilians during and after the storm, so a laurel to them for putting themselves in harm’s way for the residents of the Carolinas. Florence will be no small storm. Its storm surge is already swelling waters, foreshadowing the mass flooding to come. About 4.9 million people will experience more than 10 inches of rain throughout the next five days, according to the National Weather Service. A second laurel to those who are taking action to get out of the storm and those who are bracing responsibly for it if they cannot leave.
There isn’t a big, bad villain in this story. We’ll just award a lone dart to whoever named this storm Florence. It’s hard to be mad at it when it was seemingly named after a middle-aged aunt.
Another big story this week was Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos opening a $2 billion charitable fund to help homeless families and open preschools in low-income neighborhoods. Well done, Jeff. Your charitable giving has landed you a laurel for looking out for those in need. But Bezos seems like a wealthy guy. How much is $2 billion to the richest person on Earth, anyway? His net worth is about $164 billion, according to Bloomberg. His spending $2 billion on the fund is comparable to the average American spending $1,187, according to NBC. We don’t know exactly why, but that merits a dart. Another look at Bezos in the news shows he hasn’t signed the pledge to give away most of his wealth like Bill and Melinda Gates have.
It was Aristotle who once said, “the unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.” There’s another dart for making the fund seem like a sacrifice. That’s now one dart for every billion he pledged to charity. That’ll show him.
Flu season is just around the corner. UF Health doctors are urging everyone, including you seemingly invincible 20-somethings with immune systems built like castles, to get a flu shot. Do it. Get the shot. It’ll only hurt for a minute. If you don’t do it for you, do it for those around you, so you don’t infect others if you fall prey to influenza. If we find out you got us sick, have no doubt: We will award you a large and sharp dart.
