Let me tell you about hurt

We incurable optimists, don’t you see, think there’s a halo around us, fending off bad things that afflict the common folk.

And as time goes by, we become even more, well, optimistic. We hear but don’t much feel for others’ tales of woe.

For instance, take chest pains. Please.

They must feel like a bad cough, I had thought on those rare occasions I gave them one.

Then, Shazam!

The roof fell in, right on top of my chest. I buckled, staggered, and hollered: “Call 911.” The good counter workers did just that, at Aquia Towne Center’s McDonald’s on a recent afternoon.

What a terrifying shock to the ego. After all, I had always had ideal blood pressure, low cholesterol and a good safe heart rate.

So why me? Aside from the 30 extra pounds I have added, ever so slowly since retirement a decade ago, heart trouble just wasn’t in the cards. But this time I got dealt a new hand, as hurried tests at Mary Washington Hospital proved.

So, two short days after the McDonald’s scene I was lying all inert for what they quaintly call a cardiac catherization. Why couldn’t it be called Valentine Checkup?

Granted, it never hurt, not even in recuperation from the procedure.

Even so, my optimistic frame of mind took a vacation. They wouldn’t crack me open, would they? I could go home soon and get away from those “heart healthy” hospital meals, and my depleted carcass would never again get hit by those excruciating chest pains, or worse.

Now nothing is sure.

The one saving grace in the whole confidence-smashing episode happened right after I gave it all up at McDonald’s.

In only a few minutes, here she came, sweeping through the door and leading the charge of the Potomac Hills Fire and Rescue Squad. Thank God you’re here, Terry.

She’s instantly my personal savior, getting me into the ambulance and quickly relieving my pain. Terry Gamlin is a long-time family friend. Yes, it’s a small world, thank goodness, at least in my own little moment of great distress.

The rest of the people at the hospital also did a good job on me…I think. I hope. They seemed to. But what if?

It’s that easy to see how fast the gloom can overtake the old Morning in America optimism of us Reaganites still kicking.

Upon reflection, maybe my personal ordeal was just symptomatic of a summer that has turned out pretty sour anyhow.

I hate to recall the recent deaths of four friends and the near-fatal strokes of a fifth, leaving him barely alive. My step-mother once said the really hard part of growing old is having to bury your friends.

Then there was the accidental drowning in the Rappahannock of friend Lori Knowles’ husband

Then came the shock of learning about the heat-stroke death of the young football player for Stafford High School. That hit home for me, but not because I had known him or his family.

I related especially to the ordeal of his training-camp workouts, plus the fact I long ago played his same position and wore the same jersey number.

I recalled an August training camp in Texas, where I, like young Joey Roberson, was looking forward to my junior year in high school and to playing on the varsity team—which I almost did but not until my senior year.

Our school had switched from spring training for the team to a summer regimen. Our coaches thought it would be a great idea to place us in a real camp, with dormitory life, for two weeks. So they did, down on the steamy hot Gulf of Mexico near Corpus Christi.

Not only was that a shock for us west Texans, used to a hot but dry climate. Also, although we didn’t consider it brutal at the time, we did it all without air conditioning anywhere.

That dismal camp was a bonehead idea. The school switched back to spring training the very next year. Luckily nobody suffered major physical setbacks despite being exposed to harrowing conditions.

Just as we shouldn’t have had to tolerate such abuse back then, the same thing goes for today’s high school football teams. Do we have to state the obvious?

High school football is only a game. Or should be, although it was a religion in my day, when nearly every home game in our 10,000-seat stadium was a sellout.

But in the name of common sense in today’s Stafford, please cut out the hot summer training and if not, at least practice at night. What are the lighted fields in all our high schools for otherwise? Virtually all the games that count are played under the lights anyway, so there’s no virtue but real danger in making teams sweat during daytime practices. For now, I thank my lucky stars, Terry and providence that I’m able to keep griping like this on paper.

Never forget 9/ll

September 11, 2001: Never forget.....

Come Monday it will be five years since Marian Serva, my good neighbor across the street, got killed by fanatical Islamists. She was their enemy, as were nearly 3,000 other unfortunate American civilians that September 11 morning who were defenseless and, in her case, working in the Pentagon.

The victims were not, in the parlance of war-speak, collateral losses. They were the targets. As we have since learned many times over, the civilians and not the soldiers are these animals’ targets of choice. It’s happened with the suicide bombers and with their crazy brothers who gleefully decapitate the innocents they kidnap.

They hate us because we aren’t like them. And not just Americans but anyone not on their side. Shelby Steele has reasoned it out very well. In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, he wrote:

“…Islamist extremists don’t hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism—not their continuance—forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.”

Against such inborn hate, our troops in Iraq get special training in how to avoid civilian casualties. When we have to do door-to-door combat, the most difficult kind of fighting, and it hits Iraqi civilians, it is truly collateral.

Collateral losses used to be of little concern when Americans were literally fighting for our country’s survival. We mercilessly bombed German and Japanese cities to obliterate their war-making industries, and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to speed the end of World War II. They did. No regrets; they saved countless American lives.

Today we are fighting to save innocent Iraqi bystanders so as to convince them to form a democracy and be our friends. Our troops have to cope with these dual aims like never before. Is it any surprise they don’t always succeed in the heat of battle?

Then along comes congressman Foghorn (aka John Murtha) referring to the infamous Haditha killings in which some Marines in a firefight apparently killed some civilians also.

“They killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” he bawled. If you had just seen a buddy blown apart in battle, would rage have made your blood run cold or hot?

The same 32-year career congressman, later arguing for a “redeployment” of U.S. forces out of Iraq, suggested sending them to Okinawa. So distant, yet so mindful-- that pivotal WWII battle against Japan in which some 2,500 U.S. troops gave their lives (just under the number killed so far in Iraq) when our national population was half of today’s.

Murtha helped turn the Haditha incident into a major rallying cry of antiwar Democrats. The legal charges and countercharges are flying.

I recently read a news account in the Washington Post about the behavior of Marine Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, one of the commanders up the line at the time. The narrative was going fairly objectively until about the tenth paragraph of the page-one story.

Then the reporter, Thomas E. Ricks, turned lefty:

“Commentators likened the incident [at Haditha] to the Vietnam War’s My Lai massacre and predicted that it would damage the U.S. effort in Iraq more than the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal had.”

Did Ricks then hasten to add a “however” paragraph, to cover such topics as which commentators were likening and predicting, plus any contrary arguments that may have surfaced to justify the raid?

Are you kidding? This is the Washington Post running with a long, inflammatory news story that is damaging to the U.S. military. The editorial page is, comparatively, more fair and balanced. And in the article itself, there was no qualifying of the status of Ricks as an objective reporter, or the inconvenient fact that he’s written a book, “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq.”

Expect this slanted war coverage in the papers to get even more one-sided as we proceed towards November and the election. Most papers have already turned totally antiwar. It’s glaringly obvious.

But do let me change the subject before I start chewing on my keyboard. I need to shake this less than, yes, robust mood. Try these spicy asides:

* Call ‘em “Sue.” The NCAA’s edict against University of North Dakota’s use of the name of its mascot, “The Fighting Sioux,” has prompted the state to sue. The NCAA claimed the name disses native Indians.

* Hillary! “Hillary Clinton called for Americans to save gas by returning to the 55 mile per hour speed limit.”—Jay Leno. Cultural note: Texas has recently upped its maximum speed limit on some Interstates to 80 mph.

* Colleges price gouging. “College tuition fees have risen faster than inflation since 1975…tuition has risen 40 percent since 2000. Students at state schools now pay a whopping average of $12,127 per year, while their private-school counterparts pay $29,026, yet Congress has not hauled university administrators in for a ‘price gouging’ inquisition as they have with Big Oil executives.”--NAM blog

Sadly, I remain unrobust.

Power needed, but NIMBY

We all want modern power at our fingertips—to see that critical game on TV, to surf the net on our PC and remain cool during Stafford’s occasionally wretched summer evenings that often drip humidity.

Residents here in Northern VA. have been fortunate in having enough electricity to maintain our upscale lifestyles most of the time. Perhaps the memory grows gentler with age, but power failures—at least in north Stafford—seem to have been infrequent and short over the past quarter-century.

When they have happened, it’s mostly because of storms hitting trees and cutting power lines or lightning striking electric substations or transformers.

We are luckier than in some other places (Ernesto was a pussycat here) or perhaps better prepared. St. Louis has endured a lengthy and damaging storm-caused power failure this summer and California’s long heat wave has overtaxed its inadequate power-grid system once again.

Remember in the summer of 2003 there was that huge two-day failure in the Northeast that darkened cities from Ohio through New York City. Something having to do with energy power switching apparently didn’t work right. Memphis suffered a long powerless spell then also.

Power shortages have been rare here, I would argue, because our electric utility was one of the first to get nuclear plants on line, at North Anna and Jamestown. They have been safely and hugely productive ever since, and planned expansion at North Anna is underway. Good for them, and for the fine recreational amenity, Lake Anna, created in the 1960s to facilitate its plant.

There have been huge failures due to inadequacy elsewhere, however, and northern Virginia’s power grid is also said to be highly vulnerable. So it’s no wonder people are wondering how to remedy the problems. The solutions are not hard to come by. Implementing them is.

Build more nuclear generating plants. Build more hydroelectric dams. Produce more of the natural gas that powers many electric plants. String more electric power lines. (In the past decade, electric use has increased twice as fast as carrying capacity.)

Things like that, so easy to understand, face huge obstacles.

Why? Partly it’s Nimby (not in my back yard).

A larger factor is religion. The religion of environmentalism generates fanatics beyond comprehension.

Rage against the building of new electric power lines, and against major utilities in general, is now on display here. Dominion Virginia Power wants to string a new line through built-up areas in north Stafford. Other opponents are lining up to protest expansion of the nuclear facility at Lake Anna. Elsewhere it’s much the same, as America’s energy consumption grows faster than production and distribution. Anti-power Web sites abound. Just Google “power line dangers” and see for yourself.

And wait until all-electric cars really do get better and trendy. Nice and clean; but it won’t be long until we’ll have sundown brownouts when commuters drive their cars into the garage and plug into the juice for recharging. That will surely happen unless generating capacity and distribution can be allowed to grow.

I can understand residents not wanting a huge highline tower in their back yards.(Mine is not enhanced by the nearby towers.) And if Dominion Power can be persuaded instead to bring in the new lines over less populated areas, that’s good. But when such opposition extends to rages against power environment-wide, I have problems.

“The madness of crowds” comes to mind. A good example arose years ago in the banning of DDT, the pesticide that cleansed America of malaria. But then environmentalists stoked fears that it’s too harmful to wildlife, keeping DDT from being used to save children’s lives in Africa. It’s cheap. It works. But by successfully opposing it, the radical environmentalists probably have killed more people than Saddam Hussein ever did.

The same kind of madness is on display whenever Al Gore preaches that we’re the cause of global climate change, and not the sun. And otherwise sane people cheer: “The scientific debate is over!”

No, it’s hardly begun.

“The media treat global warming like it’s a new idea. In fact, back in 1938, British amateur meteorologist G. S. Callendar argued that mankind was responsible for heating up the planet with carbon dioxide emissions. That was decades before scientists and journalists alerted the public about the threat of a new ice age.”— Media Research Center.

And again, here’s my old friend and noted skeptic on global warming, the Hudson Institute's Dennis Avery: “The vast majority of our warming occurred before 1940… The Antarctic has been cooling since the 1960s. The Arctic, except Alaska, was warmer in 1930 than today.”

But everyone knows global warming is getting worse and DDT kills birds, and electricity from atomic plants is evil. Right?

Not everyone.