Coucil* (for Council*)

A gentleman from the great state of Florida gave a wacky workshop last week on how to deal with women on the city council, who apparently "ask a lot of questions" and don't like to read financial data. The voters of Austin, Texas, had just elected their first largely female (10-1) council and staff naturally wanted some help with this nutty anomoly, so they turned to Jonathan K. Allen for his wise counsel. He advised them to be "patient" and to try and reframe monetary issues in ways more palatable to females. He suggested "playing nice" with the people you meet on these boards and things because you never know when they just might get elected and be the ones on top! When he got to the inevitable subject of Hillary, however, he suddenly seemed to stammer: "If Hillary Clinton just runs, just runs for the office, you are going to see even greater numbers in leadership positions," then adding: "If she wins, you will see even greater numbers starting at the bottom on top." I'm not sure what that even means, exactly, but it's true that there is no stopping progress. Or for that matter, regress. As someone famously once put it: "It's turtles all the way down." (An image depicted in various ways over the years, but perhaps nowhere so dramatically as in Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss—although the message there is a somewhat different one.) Also known as "Which came first? The chicken or the egg?" and "Who created God?" We probably should table those questions till our next council meeting, however, and end today by reporting that there were 32 cases of this typo in OhioLINK, and 1411 in WorldCat.

(Black-knobbed sawback hatchlings, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid