Playing it loud to cover the hollowness

FIRECRACKERS: All hell broke loose last Poya day at a Dhamma school in Kegalle when its students suddenly abandoned their class and rushed out en masse. They were drawn out by a burst of firecrackers at the venue of a political meeting nearby.

The organisers of the meeting was requested by the Chief incumbent of the temple housing the Dhamma school against holding the meeting the particular venue which was only a stone’s throw away from the temple since it would clash with the Dhamma school sessions.

But they (the organisers) went ahead with their plans disregarding the advice of the monk.

They had a pressing reason to hold the meeting since a breakaway (Reformist) faction of their party had only the previous day held a meeting in the area and were determined to nullify the effect of that meeting.

The organisers perhaps were trying to steal the thunder from the rebels by lighting firecrackers never mind the disruption caused to the tranquil setting of a Dhamma school.

Sri Lankans as a people always say it aloud. We can never resist to give vent to our jubilation in explosive celebrations. Come election day firecrackers ring the night air at the victory or fall of a political party.

The country also celebrated the capture of a local revolutionary leader with bursts of firecrackers. There were also firecracker celebrations at the violent death of a former President of the country.

Sri Lankans, it seems, have a morbid fascination for firecracker celebrations. The question arises why do we need to greet our politicians with bursts of firecrackers. Today not only firecrackers but we see whole fireworks displays rendering the air at political meeting venues.

Do the politicians want to camouflage their hollow promises with cracker bursts or is it that they need the boost of some superficial sound to drive them into frenzied oratory. Are the fire and thunder of politicians we see on our TV sets the result of being worked up firecracker boosts.

Or are the fireworks symbolic to denote all promises and pledges going up in smoke after disintegrating into colour with which these yarns were spun. Or does it all boil down to a deliberate exercise to lift the ego of two penny politcos who are wanting in substance and culture.

The organisers of the aforesaid rally may have wanted to herald the arrival of their party leader to the sound of firecrackers and may have succeeded in their attempt to draw an audience even if they are Dhamma school children.

But what is to prevent political party supporters in the future picking up similar venues to draw the numbers. As a nation which likes to say it loud fire crackers have always been a popular mode.

Firecrackers were also a mode used by a woman suicide bomber to synchronise the blast which felled the Presidential candidate of the same political party involved in the Poya day drama.

Therefore it is advisable if one does not play with fire. But politician as we know are known to play with fire and burn their fingers by which time it is too late to salvage anything. Sri Lanka can do without such types.

- Rambler

Couple to tie a ‘deadly’ knot

MARRIAGE: It’s not the traditional “till death do us part,” but Scott Amsler and Miranda Patterson believe getting hitched in a graveyard is just thinking outside the box.

Come September, the Illinois couple expects to pledge their undying love among the dearly departed in this St. Louis suburb’s city cemetery, even though those who approved the request are dead set against seeing it become a trend.

The wedding wouldn’t be out of character for Amsler, 27, a computer expert for a financial company by day and rehabber of old hearses by night.

The graveyard, he said, just has a certain tranquility and thriftiness for nuptials the young couple insists will be small, private and traditional — except for the bagpipes, Amsler’s refurbished hearse and the throng of eternally silent witnesses.

“People are going to think how they want. I don’t actively try to convince people that my interests are normal or logical,” Amsler said. “I’m not a freak or Satan worshipper or cult member. It just goes with our theme.” Deep down, the couple said, it just seemed right.

Amsler and Patterson, who recently moved to Collinsville, Ill., became an item not long after they met in November 2005 at a birthday party where Patterson, 21, was to have been the celebrant’s blind date. Amsler showed up in a retooled hearse that caught Patterson’s eye.

“I wanted a ride in it but I chickened out at the last minute,” she said. By their first date weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, Patterson knew Amsler was the one. Not long afterward, she quit her factory job in Sullivan, Mo., and moved in with Amsler in Troy, Ill.

Amsler proposed last June, affixing to the side of the 1965 hearse — which the two call “Edgar” — a plate with a simple message: “Will you marry me?” Seconds later, the ring slid onto a crying Patterson’s finger.

She received Edgar as an engagement gift and had only one stipulation: The wedding had to be outside, in a gazebo.

Her worries were laid to rest while she and Amsler drove to her dad’s house. While travelling on Interstate 44, Patterson spotted a gazebo on a hilltop, only to find it was in a graveyard. No worries.

“The view was just gorgeous,” she said. “I said, `This is where I want to get married.’”

When the couple called last fall for permission to use the three-acre cemetery, which dates to the Civil War, City Clerk Jo Ann Hoehne told them the local cemetery committee would have to decide.

“When I spoke to them, they were just a normal young couple who wanted to have a wedding some place they thought was nice and serene for a very small, intimate wedding,” Hoehne said. “They weren’t any cult group or anything like that.”

Bill Hohman, a 71-year-old alderman on the cemetery panel, wasn’t sure what to think.

“It’s strange to me. This is kind of an unusual thing around here,” he said of the country town where the roughly 5,700 residents “roll up the sidewalks at nine o’clock, and everyone goes to bed.”

The committee last month signed off on the couple’s request despite concerns about the appropriateness of the setting for the occasion — and fears that a burial might be scheduled for the same time.

Hohman, though, vows to introduce a measure to make Amsler-Patterson nuptials the last among this town’s tombstones. “Once the horse is out of the barn, you have to have an ordinance,” he said.

But Patterson said she and Amsler have respect for the living and the dead. “We’re not going to do anything stupid or horrible. We just want to have a wedding,” she said.

“Some of the ladies I work with said, `Are you crazy? Why would you get married in a cemetery?’ Does it matter where we get married, just as long as we get married?”

- AP