A bridge to stop suicides, a response to a protest critique

To the Editors:

Because I missed the last two commentary deadlines, here are two short letters:
1. A few weeks ago, The New York Times reported that our lovely neighbors to the North, the Torontonians, are duking it out over whether or not to construct a suicide shield for the Toronto Bridge. Apparently most end-of-their-ropers call the bridge home. The city is proposing to build million dollar walls that would prevent people from throwing themselves over.
One Canadian lamented, ‘But I’ll have no more view!”
A stronger argument against goes: the money would be better put to use on welfare, shelters, health care insurance, etc. to make possible suicides’ lives better, therefore preventing them from killing themselves, because we all know the sadly crucial dilemma of the new world spirit revolves around money.
But the Torontonian government has read Michael Ondaatje’s book, ‘In the Skin of a Lion’ in which a nun is almost swept over the same bridge by a strong wind but at the last moment caught by the arms of a construction worker. And now the Toronto government fantasizes about fashioning itself as a pair of arms meant for saving lives.
I’m delighted to see books still hold some sway in this world. Maybe someone should lend the Toronto government a copy of Sylvia Plath’s, ‘Ariel’ or James Baldwin’s, ‘Another Country.’
2. Last week’s ‘Grape’ disparaged of some Oberlin student attitudes after the February 15 protest in NYC. Characterized as drug-using, non-normal citizens waving grammatically incorrect signs, the College students apparently responded erroneously on the bus ride home when they remarked of their experience, ‘It was fun.’
Although I think the article is unjustified in attacking this response (after hours of trudging and yelling in the cold, anyone could be too tired to expand on that thought, especially if asked by someone who had just shared more or less the same experience), I do understand the letdown of such a common throwaway reaction. Momentous occasion is rarely well articulated in everyday conversation. In a post-literate world, we often live a long time before coming across meaty conversation, and in the information age many articles aren’t even well written.
I also understand the difficulty throwaway statements pose for Americans who want to be taken seriously. ‘It was fun’ is a sad cultural motto; but we’re the entertainment capital of the world. We brake for fun. And other nations have theirs. The Italian equivalent is, ‘Era bellisimo’ (‘It was very beautiful’); in Great Britain they say, ‘Jolly good;’ and in Russia the expression goes, ‘We ate.’

—Will Schutt
College senior