Lollipop trumps gloom
Is the glass half full or half empty?
As an optimist about most things and especially the future of our Nation, I’d say it’s better than half full. Much better.
Right about now, though, I’ll bet somebody is already pecking out an email in response:--Don’t you know the turn-tail Democrats run Congress now?--What’s there to like about Iraq, or George Bush?--How bad must the Redskins get?--Been caught in I-95 traffic lately?
Well, since you put it that way, maybe my “much better” is a bit much.
Yet, as the tune “Put on a Happy Face”goes, we must remember some positive things. And we are still early in the new year. There are lots of possibilities.
Your correspondent has had on a happy personal face for some time now. Four stents inserted into my person in September have made a world of difference. I feel a lot better, and (ahem) weigh 25 pounds less.In this regard, my glass is filling as fast as I’m not.
And by the way, it’s time to take to heart the seasonal diet admonitions that flourish during every station break. Seriously, in honor of the Martin Luther King birthday, I recently sat through an Oprah show. She had on a diet guru, Bob Greene, author of “The Best Life Diet.” I went out and bought a copy, and in the process further enriched the Oprah enterprise and helped her educate those little girls in South Africa.
I’ll skip the part where he recommends organic foods. I don’t think they are any better than the rest, even if they cost much more for having been grown in cow doo-doo. (Incidentally, when I was a little kid, my mom taught me to say, not "number 2" like most kids back then, but "cah-cah." I wonder if she had read up on the word Macaca, also?)
Beyond his book and now to another subject rich with rhetorical fertilizer, consider our economy. Contrary to many politicians’ claims during the election campaign last fall, we haven’t gone to hell in a handbasket. Rather, as reflected recently in the stock market--which happily had its Santa Claus rally and then its “January-effect” gain to new alltime highs for the Dow-- the economy is perking along nicely. Just about everyone’s working and making pretty good money.
I know, it’s all been hugely unfair, according to a glowering Jim Webb, Virginia’s new smart-aleck senator (who's aparently taken facial scowling lessons from Jane Fonda). He ignores how much we’ve prospered since this brash guy graduated from college in the 1960s. As a Wall Street Journal piece noted, the percentage of home owners has increased from under 20 percent to 70 percent, stock ownership by Americans has jumped from 10 to 60 percent, and there are a lot more people now in the financial top tier (the upper middle class and above).
Yet, let us acknowledge that some politicians exist to whine. There was Barbara Boxer charging at a recent House “hearing” that she and Secretary of State Condi Rice had little stake in the outcome of the Iraq war, being without soldier-age offspring and all.
How cute and utterly beside the point. She did nonetheless bring to mind that the war, after all, has inconvenienced remarkably few of us. It’s a drop in the bucket compared with the Vietnam, Korean, or both world wars. How soon we forget what real sacrifice was. Seems like the less we have to lose the more we rave and rant.
Despite the loud chorus of the give-uppers on Iraq, and the many mistakes as acknowledged in the war’s conduct, we should prevail.
A good idea: “we might need to back away from the center of the conflict and let that fire burn, while keeping our troops in the north and perhaps on the southern border…and let conflict burn itself out," – Gen. Charles G. Boyd, in the National Interest.
Even better, we need to kill a whole bunch of the cut-throats and scare the rest of them silly and, yes, forget the niceties.
But enough! It’s time I honor the preferences of friend and neighbor Fran Milligan for the kind of stories I spin about more pleasant things, like my Yorkie pup Lollipop. I do have to admit that she (the pup) is getting old, nearing 10 years. But it seems only yesterday that I devoted a column here about her. Truth is, it was in January 2000, way before 9/11.
Regardless, Lollipop remains as serene as ever. Little does she know or care that other pooches of her breed are multiplying like crazy. After all, she’s fixed. More to the point, her fellow Yorkshire Terriers have become virtually the most popular purebred dogs in the USA, second only to those lumbering Labrador Retrievers.
Also, proving that fame can be fleeting, star dog Lassie and her Collie friends aren’t even among the 25 most popular breeds anymore.
So buck up, President Bush. Fleeting fame is the lot for many of God’s good creatures.
As an optimist about most things and especially the future of our Nation, I’d say it’s better than half full. Much better.
Right about now, though, I’ll bet somebody is already pecking out an email in response:--Don’t you know the turn-tail Democrats run Congress now?--What’s there to like about Iraq, or George Bush?--How bad must the Redskins get?--Been caught in I-95 traffic lately?
Well, since you put it that way, maybe my “much better” is a bit much.
Yet, as the tune “Put on a Happy Face”goes, we must remember some positive things. And we are still early in the new year. There are lots of possibilities.
Your correspondent has had on a happy personal face for some time now. Four stents inserted into my person in September have made a world of difference. I feel a lot better, and (ahem) weigh 25 pounds less.In this regard, my glass is filling as fast as I’m not.
And by the way, it’s time to take to heart the seasonal diet admonitions that flourish during every station break. Seriously, in honor of the Martin Luther King birthday, I recently sat through an Oprah show. She had on a diet guru, Bob Greene, author of “The Best Life Diet.” I went out and bought a copy, and in the process further enriched the Oprah enterprise and helped her educate those little girls in South Africa.
I’ll skip the part where he recommends organic foods. I don’t think they are any better than the rest, even if they cost much more for having been grown in cow doo-doo. (Incidentally, when I was a little kid, my mom taught me to say, not "number 2" like most kids back then, but "cah-cah." I wonder if she had read up on the word Macaca, also?)
Beyond his book and now to another subject rich with rhetorical fertilizer, consider our economy. Contrary to many politicians’ claims during the election campaign last fall, we haven’t gone to hell in a handbasket. Rather, as reflected recently in the stock market--which happily had its Santa Claus rally and then its “January-effect” gain to new alltime highs for the Dow-- the economy is perking along nicely. Just about everyone’s working and making pretty good money.
I know, it’s all been hugely unfair, according to a glowering Jim Webb, Virginia’s new smart-aleck senator (who's aparently taken facial scowling lessons from Jane Fonda). He ignores how much we’ve prospered since this brash guy graduated from college in the 1960s. As a Wall Street Journal piece noted, the percentage of home owners has increased from under 20 percent to 70 percent, stock ownership by Americans has jumped from 10 to 60 percent, and there are a lot more people now in the financial top tier (the upper middle class and above).
Yet, let us acknowledge that some politicians exist to whine. There was Barbara Boxer charging at a recent House “hearing” that she and Secretary of State Condi Rice had little stake in the outcome of the Iraq war, being without soldier-age offspring and all.
How cute and utterly beside the point. She did nonetheless bring to mind that the war, after all, has inconvenienced remarkably few of us. It’s a drop in the bucket compared with the Vietnam, Korean, or both world wars. How soon we forget what real sacrifice was. Seems like the less we have to lose the more we rave and rant.
Despite the loud chorus of the give-uppers on Iraq, and the many mistakes as acknowledged in the war’s conduct, we should prevail.
A good idea: “we might need to back away from the center of the conflict and let that fire burn, while keeping our troops in the north and perhaps on the southern border…and let conflict burn itself out," – Gen. Charles G. Boyd, in the National Interest.
Even better, we need to kill a whole bunch of the cut-throats and scare the rest of them silly and, yes, forget the niceties.
But enough! It’s time I honor the preferences of friend and neighbor Fran Milligan for the kind of stories I spin about more pleasant things, like my Yorkie pup Lollipop. I do have to admit that she (the pup) is getting old, nearing 10 years. But it seems only yesterday that I devoted a column here about her. Truth is, it was in January 2000, way before 9/11.
Regardless, Lollipop remains as serene as ever. Little does she know or care that other pooches of her breed are multiplying like crazy. After all, she’s fixed. More to the point, her fellow Yorkshire Terriers have become virtually the most popular purebred dogs in the USA, second only to those lumbering Labrador Retrievers.
Also, proving that fame can be fleeting, star dog Lassie and her Collie friends aren’t even among the 25 most popular breeds anymore.
So buck up, President Bush. Fleeting fame is the lot for many of God’s good creatures.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
5:40 PM
