Bob Grylls, Contributor
The Westmeath Community Hall will be finally functional after a year without a front entrance, including closure due to the pandemic.
The three communities most affected are Westmeath, Lapasse and Beachburg. Lately, I can see these villages arranged in a triangle, not an iconic right-angle triangle but one with its distances between the three somewhat equal. That in turn led to imagining other triangles, whether mysterious or people involved and so on.
Not getting much press for a few years is the Bermuda triangle which happens to be one of the most mysterious places on this planet. Located in the Atlantic Ocean, between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico, this strange region has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes. According to psychiatrist Dr. Kenneth McAll of England, these deaths and disappearances are the consequences of a curse, “He theorized the area may be haunted by the spirits of the many African slaves who had been thrown overboard on their voyage to America”.
A smaller cousin of the Bermuda Triangle is in the southwestern part of Vermont known as the Bennington Triangle. It has a history that predates the colonization of North America and persists to this day. The truth of the Bennington Triangle remains unknown, but the area has mysteriously swallowed as many as 40 intrepid hikers and residents.
Then there are more esoteric and tenuous love triangles. The “love triangle” is a complicated dating scenario where there’s love in the air, but there are more than two people involved. When love is mutual and shared between two people, everything is perfect and simple. But when a third person enters the picture, everything changes just like that. (e.g., “Person A is jealous of Person C who is having a relationship with Person B who, in Person A’s eyes, is ‘his/her’ person.”). A similar arrangement that is agreed upon by all parties is sometimes called a triad, which is a type of polygamy usually implying sexual relations.
My familiarity with a triangle is not a love triangle, although tempted a couple of times, but one used on a snooker or pool table. The triangle is used to place 15 balls into position at the beginning of a new game.
The triangle is literally a musical instrument in the percussion family, first created in the 1500’s and is exactly what the name implies – a metal bar bent into an equilateral triangle shape, with one bottom angle open (ends do not touch). The triangle is suspended by a piece of string or fishing line so that the instrument can hang freely, and the sound is made by striking the triangle with another object. In high school music class, I was introduced to a triangle. But not for long – I couldn’t keep in harmony.
Canadian Tire credit cards display an inverted triangle. When I received a flyer in the mail ‘Triangle Rewards’ stating that if I didn’t use my card (which I don’t have) by October, my balance of nearly $15 would expire. I dropped into Canadian Tire to ask for my money back. It didn’t work out.
There is well-known myth around this neck of the woods that people die in groups of three, but some allege that the three do so in an equal-distant triangular formation. Recently, someone due west of my place did die and another due north. I have this eerie feeling that to complete the triangle, my household would be the next target. Should I ignore this ominous feeling or get the hell out of town?
There are so many things said or printed these days that could be true or untrue. We might as well flip a coin.
