Let it snow

As a social worker, I'm pretty much trained to give folks the benefit of the doubt. When most folks would look at a person who is facing difficulties and say that they brought it on themselves, I'm supposed to (and usually do) say that there's other causes of hardship. You never know what someone's life has been like or what their options where when they made what we now know is a very bad choice.

But sometimes, I'm not such a good social worker.

Take the city of Detroit for example. The social work part of me says that Detroit current problems have less to do with mismanagement than they have to do with the effects of racial tensions that have never been addressed, a reliance on a single industry rather than a diversity of economic options and a lack of funding for education--significantly impacted by the aforementioned problems.

But today as i drove to work, i found myself blocked from the main road in front of my building. By a snow machine. Pumping out snow all over the park in front of the office.

There's apparently some sort of winter carnival in this park every year in the last weeks of February. There's ice skating and some sort of snow hill situation (despite the fact that the park is literally flat cement). Perhaps I could understand making artificial snow to help stimulate the business of local shops and restaurants. But with a forecast of 6-8 inches of snow over the next two days, spending thousands of dollars on artificial snow just makes me think that Detroit has brought at least some of its problems on itself.