Only E-mail unites us now

Things, like the seasons, keep changing. For better or worse? That depends.

Most neighbors would agree we have it much easier than ever .Besides our gorgeous springs here, we’re living longer and staying healthier. And Americans remain united, if only via the computer.

Otherwise, unity as a desirable trait has given way to diversity, now venerated beyond belief. "United" States? How quaint.

Don’t believe it? What President today would have voiced the following widely held sentiment of a mere century ago: “We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."--Theodore Roosevelt in 1907.

How unlike today. For now our leaders cannot even agree how or whether to protect us against a continuing tide of illegal aliens from Mexico. Worse, the leader in the U.S. Senate declares we’ve lost a war still in progress, thus adopting a bizarre definition of patriotism.

Unity? In your dreams. Beyond the gentle red state and blue state political dichotomy, here in Virginia we’re about to see our few native Indians given formal tribal status. Good for them but unsettling for the rest of us—that is, if you believe casino gambling (sure to evolve here someday as it has elsewhere via the tribes) will be bad for Virginia’s citizens. How about some really extreme diversity. Consider a 70-acre enclave in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the outskirts of Hancock, New York. Called Islamberg, it’s “great if you’re an exponent of the Jihad or a fan of Osama bin Laden,” according to a recent Website entry.

The place is home to hundreds--all in Islamic attire, and all African-Americans. Islamberg’s neighbors routinely hear sounds of gunfire. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of retaliation. "We don't even dare to slow down when we drive by," one resident said.

Yeah, we have loads of diversity here in the USA. We’re diverse as all get-out. Unless it’s the politically incorrect kind.

Voters in Farmers Branch, a Dallas,Texas suburb, have voted two to one for a ban on leasing of apartments to illegal immigrants. Isn’t that mean? But not to worry. The ACLU (and maybe even the Mexican government) is sure to get that restriction thrown out forthwith.

And remember a few years ago when Sen. John McCain said the flying of the Confederate flag in South Carolina was that state’s business, he got his clock cleaned.

Now Ken Burns is revising his coming documentary on WW II to include Hispanics, following ethnic protests. As paratroopers jump out of planes, they’ll holler “Salma Hayak” instead of "Geronimo!” The latter, a famous Apache, although born in what used to be Mexico, just didn't hack it.
Clearly there are many things to get upset about nowadays, including the foreboding of a Vietnam-like collapse of American will in Iraq. Analyst Max Boot, writing recently in the Wall Street Journal, signed off with this conclusion:

“It’s still possible to stave off catastrophic defeat in Iraq. But the only way to do it is to give Gen. Petraeus and his troops more time—at least another year—to try to change the dynamics on the ground. The surge strategy may be a long shot but every alternative is even worse.”

As for me personally at this latter stage of life, I still think Teddy Roosevelt rightly extolled Americanism. I’ve seen it at its finest. Ronald Reagan leaps to mind. Our country’s racial and ethnic problems, given time and patience, have given way to genuine progress.

My grandchildren seem to doing all right in their cultural environments, so very different from those when I was growing up. Shoot. I never went to school with a black until I entered the Army. Our all-white basketball team at Texas A&M was predictably inept. I never met a Mormon until I moved to Virginia in the 1960s. Now there are lots of them, and, like Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, all seem to be as nice and good as I wish I were.

Finally, I’ve found even Catholics to be okay, based on over 50 years of direct evidence, namely wife Carole Lee.

Even so, beyond diversity as a nation we’re also becoming softies. To wit: Senate Bill 311 would prohibit the transportation, movement, sale or processing of a domestic horse for slaughter. How delicate and concerned we are.

How like India, with its cow worship.

Do You Go with the Crowd?

“Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it istime to pause and reflect." ---Mark Twain

Most folks apparently agree that:

--People cause global warming, --Organic food is good for you,--Ethanol helps save energy,--Smoking is bad.

I don’t. Maybe that’s why writing this column, now in its 11th year, is such a pleasure. You see, with these words on paper I can let off steam without getting too tacky or downright libelous.

For me it’s much better than speechifying. I’ve tried that, and if you ever heard me give a talk, you’d agree. Thinking on my feet isn’t the problem; it’s getting the thoughts out of my mouth.

Problems of column writing are different. For example, after getting many pieces into print, we columnists tend to return to the same old subjects again and again. I certainly do. See above.

So maybe I’m too preachy. Even fanatic? I hope not. It reminds me of what Winston Churchill once said:

“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

An apt quote is useful for conveying the idea of broad literacy. It might even be relevant. I saw a neat example in the Washington Post. Reporter Joel Garreau wrote critically about the new dollar coin, launched despite past flops of both the Susan B. Anthony and the Sacagawea coins. He then quoted Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” Sweet. But I digress. Back to my above list:

* Is our world getting hotter? Sure, it’s also what’s happening to a few other planets like Mars, I hear. So we yappy little fly-specks currently infesting one small planet claim we’re the culprits, not the sun, and that we can do something about it. We’ll waste billions and die trying.

* Are foods grown in manure better for you than on conventional farms? Some folks must think so, or they wouldn’t be paying extra for organic foods.

Remember the recent fuss over contaminated spinach? The media did handsprings trying not to mention the possibility that organic farming might have been guilty, and perhaps offend big advertisers..

But guess what? It was. Here’s friend Dennis Avery:

“Organic food activists are being served a heaping platter of organic crow now that we finally learn last fall’s outbreak…was caused by organically grown spinach. On Feb. 27, California food regulators admitted…that the tainted spinach that ultimately killed 3 and sickened over 200 was traced to a 50-acre organic field--contrary to the repeated denials of organic activists.”

Avery is a senior analyst with Hudson Institute, and I do mean senior. We once worked together in USDA in the good old days.

Being a good agriculturist, Avery also bemoans the growing production of ethanol from our breadbasket corn fields. After all, corn’s highest use is in providing nutrition for us and the millions starving in Africa, etc.

* Diverting the corn to ethanol, besides being bad in taking more energy to produce than it yields, raises today’s costs of food. It also raises prices of gasoline, since it must by law be mixed with it, cutting its power. Worse, corn growers and their political pals make sure we can’t import much cheaper ethanol to help ease the gas price at the pump.

So we’re forced to burn Corn Belt ethanol while environmentalists lobby to stifle our oil production and exploration. And you thought only Al Gore was wacky?

* And how about (cough,cough) smoking? True, it’s bad for your health, but Virginia has done quite well by it, reaping monster tax receipts from long-time Richmond giant, Philip Morris, the world’s top cigarette maker.

Remember, tobacco, first grown in Virginia, helped the colony get on its feet in Jamestown's early years and produce our country's forefathers.

Nowadays, given the health-settlement payments the tobacco companies keep funneling to state treasuries, when we smoke less the states garner less loot. So just keep puffing, addicts, to sustain Virginia—and incidentally shore up the social security program as you would-be pensioners die off early.

Of course, you may wake up and get more interested in living to a ripe old age. Like me. I quit cold turkey at age 35. I had puffed three packs a day, then got disgusted over my habit. This was before the Surgeon General condemned the weeds (and before any silly claims against second-hand smoke arose).

As Phil Harris used to croon, “Tell Saint Peter at the Golden Gate that you hate to make him wait, but you’ve just gotta have another cigarette.”

I memorized the song, then smoked and quit and ain’t dead yet.

Virginia ablooming

It’s springtime and men’s passions naturally turn to baseball, sex and booze.

Some of us also get a yen for other things, like (please don’t laugh)….. azaleas.

It’s true. And now is when these lovely flowering shrubs are blooming in all their glory around here, especially this year and unlike the bad scene last spring. My own numerous varieties of the azaleas are really showing off their widely diverse blossoming colors and characteristics.

Many of mine also, like myself I must admit, are showing the effects of aging, since I started growing the plants nearly 30 years ago in my yard in Aquia Harbour. Back in the 1980s I even started a little business of selling young starts I’d grown from cuttings.

It was much fun for a long time, but then my back gave out before my interest did, and so I had to close down Azaleas of Aquia a few years ago.

It was most enjoyable. Notice I didn’t say profitable. As a spare-time entrepreneur I found I had too little expertise to succeed business-wise.

But it was hugely successful in one respect: It impressed my old man back home in Texas. A successful rancher himself and a prominent tractor dealer before that, he had been satisfied I suppose earlier in my career when I advanced to become a division director of information in a USDA agency.

Yet, all along he considered my long stint as a Washington bureaucrat a “gravy train,” as if I had made good money doing things nobody in the real world of business valued very much.

Things changed when I started up my little backyard bidness. That’s all he wanted to hear about. In retrospect, I’m happy he was too old to ever get to see my nursery’s layout for himself. It wasn’t expansive, to say the least. But It provided lots of happy talk that he was ever so eager to engage in, Besides, as I once predicted to Aquia Harbour’s former manager Fran Hopkins when I first got permission to start a nursery here in 1987, even if it failed I would still wind up with a yard full of azaleas. I did. I wish she, and Dad, could see them now.

True, some of my azaleas have their problems, growing old along with me. Some of the oldest are getting too big and twiggy, with branches dying from the bottom. But like old friends, seeing them go is painful. So they stay a bit longer.

Happily, many keep on being beautiful just about every spring, although last season was a distinct disappointment. I’m not sure why.

They’re looking great now. That Eastertime frost nipped some of my early bloomers in the bud, turning them brown. But that’s to be expected if you want to grow such early varieties.

Because when they avoid getting frosted, they put on a fine show. “Geisha,” a Glendale variety, is a favorite that blossoms profusely here most years. It’s also one of the hardiest of my plants.

Another early bloomer that defies even the cold snaps that endanger my “Geishas” is “PJM.” That’s the deep purple one blooming at the same time as the forsythias and usually before the redbuds.

“PJM,” like its variants “Olga” and “Aglo” that bloom a bit later and are pinker, acts more like a rhododendron in its growth habit and is very hardy.

Azaleas can be selected for their season of bloom. Some, like the “Gumpo” varieties, may not start blooming until June. And they’re usually not nearly as showy as those reaching full bloom about now.

The newest kinds on the market, and priced accordingly, are azaleas bearing the brand name “Encore.” They have the characteristic of blooming off-season, say in the spring and again in the fall. I have growna few, but have been disappointed. Their blooms are relatively sparse and largely unnoticeable, especially in the fall. I’d stick with the older dependable varieties.

For instance? Try “Hardy Gardenia.” Its lovely creamy-white flowers bloom in late April against a background of glossy green leaves on a plant that seldom reaches hip-high. This was a best seller for me.

Or “Damask Rose.” This old timer has big beautiful blossoms in early May. Like one of its nice newer relatives, “Ho Oden,” it tends to spread out and get big and leggy, but it’s survived many years here, staying in fine shape.

To tell the truth, I love any azalea that’s in full bloom. After all, it’s springtime.