You go, grads, now get to work

So it’s time for another crop of youngsters to be hurled out into the cold, cold world. This will come as a shock, their having been taught that it’s not really cold (contrary to common sense) but warm and getting hotter..
Let’s hope that’s not all they have learned. Besides, there’s every good reason to suppose that Stafford’s crop of 2008 will get along all right. Their schools have good reputations for producing intelligent grads. (For example, and congratulations to, North Stafford‘s Ashley Milligan and neighbor Alex Harman from Brooke Point.) Yet, how all those shining faces will do after high school remains to be seen.
For now, celebration is certainly merited, and caring parents deserve an even greater pat on the back than their young grads.
But now what? If it’s college, the would-be freshmen shouldn’t assume the skids are greased for them. They aren’t. Two very promising grandchildren blew their first college tries. One fortunately has gone on elsewhere and earned a college degree, and the other probably will also. Both had been as well prepared as today’s best high school grads. But things change, so don’t let them throw you, parents. It’s all part of growing up in today’s changing world.
Whatever the course of future education for your high school graduate, it’s important that it hasn’t ended with that diploma, which after all, means precious little nowadays. It could mean even less for younger Stafford students if their teachers keep pouting because of us stingy taxpayers. Even so, more education means a longer life. According to a recent study by an American Cancer Society researcher, white high school dropouts are four times as likely to die young as white college graduates, up from a three-fold difference in the early 1990s. And there’s a warning for girls who drop out of high school. Their health suffered the most of all those in the study.
There’s also some good news about high school students. The Centers for Disease Control reports record declines in the rates of teen pregnancies and abortions. The drop in teen pregnancy rates continues a long trend, down by 38 percent since 1990. That reflects, according to Janice Shaw Crouse, a professor of women’s studies, increases in schools offering abstinence education.
You will excuse today’s grad for thinking other thoughts just now. There are those organized flings called senior trips, which kids in my era never would have imagined nor their parents financed. Just so they don’t last all summer. Part of any good education for life is getting and doing a job. One, even if only through the summer before college, will teach more real-world realities than any course could. It jars the grad out of smug satisfaction. And even with today’s economic slowdown, remember that Stafford unemployment is still below 3 percent, way less than the national average of 5 percent.
As a recent blogger noted, a summer job is great preparation for the grown-up world of work. It can instill a sense of personal confidence. It’s also important for parents to help their kids become good employees. Assist them in getting ready for work and getting there on time. Ask what they’re doing. And if there are problems, help them figure out solutions. There’s perhaps no better way to educate your graduate yourself.
More education is surely needed. I was struck by an article recently in this paper about my friend and fellow Staffordian, Frank Withrow. A retired educator and starchy proponent of educational excellence, this Greenridge resident was quoted as saying that the average 18-year-old student with perfect school attendance would have spent only 13,000 of the waking hours of his life in the classroom, but at least 48,000 hours watching television. That says something about high school education here today and, I’d add, why our oriental students who spend much more time in homework outsmart the rest of them all hollow and get ahead quicker in professions.
Yes, but technology today surely improves classroom learning and instills more savvy into students. But wait. Check out a grouchy new book, “The Dumbest Generation.” It claims the kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic, distracting online world at the expense of more enriching activities--like opening a book or writing complete sentences.
Whatever. It looks like those U-Tube youngsters — for good or ill — are going to be instrumental in electing another youngster to become President of us all come November. At least he seems to have mastered some subjects other than video games, if not bowling.

Spent your rebate check yet?

Sorry to say, I already have, and also my wife’s, way back in February, long before they ever arrived.

And, even sorrier to admit, I may as well have thrown them out the window. That’s how stupid I was, incredibly so. Read on and you‘ll agree.

You see, our decade-old fridge started humming and buzzing last winter. “It’s in the guts, which would be expensive to repair or replace,” I was told. So out with the old one and in with a new one, costing about $1,100.

Guess what? The noise got even worse. Out came a Whirlpool repair man. It too had an internal problem, he concluded, so Lowe’s replaced it free, with another identical one that sounded just the same. So, out came still another Whirlpool guy.

He examined it front and back, inside and out. Finally his verdict: It wasn’t the fridge. The noise was from something else. That shook me. But what about the earlier diagnoses? No matter. It wasn’t the fridge. He left me totally flummoxed.

But wait a sec. A tiny old-fashioned light bulb lit up in the recesses of my noggin. I had been running the heat-pump fan continuously for a long time. What would happen if I just flipped its switch off? The noise immediately stopped. The new fridge was purring quietly. Then the Sherlock Holmes in me decided to check the heat pump’s filters. Uh, oh, they were a mess. Replacing them, I turned the fan back on. Voila! No hum, no buzz. No elation.

Everything all better except me and my checkbook. How could I have been so dumb, me being a college graduate and all, and later a government boss with a big office?

Sadly, as I now confess amid my ignorance-induced misery, that refrigerator fiasco wasn’t the only really stupid and expensive thing I had done. I’m not talking about marriage and kids here. Just me. Imperfect, gullible sinner who had lucked out most of his life.

Still, an earlier sucker episode, one that memory had tried for years to erase, came reluctantly to mind.

It was back in my happy times as that bureaucrat downtown in D.C. Strolling around Lafayette Square on a fine springtime afternoon, I chanced upon a fellow who was obviously a bit down on his luck, and furthermore an Aquia Harbour neighbor, he reminded me. Yes, I recalled having seen him on the block. He was getting his car fixed, see, and was only $100 short of having enough cash to pay for it, as he showed me his wallet with some other bills inside.
Chatting amiably, we then strolled over to a nearby cash machine and out belched the bills and I felt wonderfully helpful. He was grateful as could be, saying to stop by his home tonight and he’d pay me back. So I did. And guess what? Where I thought he lived, he didn’t, and nobody had ever heard of him. That little light bulb flickered on.

Mr. Gullible, that’s me. I hastened to think of how I might at least have cut my next income tax return with a deduction for dumbness. The story, however, didn’t end there.

I must look like I’m just waiting to be bamboozled. For wouldn’t you know, in a similar circumstance two or three years later, this same guy again came on to me, this time in a sandwich shop nearby . He’d forgotten me, but I hadn’t him. I stood up to see if any cops were around, but he had already scooted away.

Egos are meant for deflating, I guess. Mine has suffered a few:

--As a young parent at a PTA meeting, I was grilling the new grade-school principal: Do you think we should abandon capital punishment of students in the classroom? CORPORAL, dummy. Laughter all around.
--At my barbershop quartet’s first public performance onstage at a benefit in Culpeper, my voice quivered and quaked while my buddies finished the song to scattered applause. Stage fright? Impossible. I had sung lots of other venues, no sweat. Regardless. Stage fright..
--And oh yes, as a young lieutenant striving hard to be cool in preparing to escort a retiring General Hap Arnold ceremoniously around our little antiaircraft base in Chicago, I totally clutched up and forgot the spiel I had rehearsed. He waited, then smiled and said why didn’t I just show him the gun park. I tried to smile back, mortified by my blown assignment.

Suppressing such deflating moments, I prefer to recall the triumphs, the slam dunks. There were many, let me tell you. Er, memory is fleeting but in a moment I’ll think of some, besides my great good fortune in marrying my beautiful, my first and only wife who remains madly in love with me.

But please don’t mention refrigerators.

Don't Blame Bush for Everything

I’m worried about George Bush. Granted, his administration has prevented any further terrorist attacks since 9/11. That’s good, and may we never really know just how good.

Further, contrary to popular biases, he’s not to blame for today’s recession, slowdown or whatever you call it. These economic dips occur pretty regularly despite the best efforts of the high and mighty politicians. Or perhaps because of them?

No, sorry to say. These periodic declines used to be identified as part of business cycles that end a stretch of good times with a retrenchment and then renewed growth.

The current whatchamacallit will feel bad for a while, considering the added burden of outrageous gasoline and grocery prices and the home foreclosure crises. Even so, if the past is any guide, the nation will start reviving itself, as usual, before long--despite the politicians’ ministrations. I’d guess things will start looking better before the snow flies next winter.
If they don’t, then let’s just say my hopes got in the way of rational expectation, although I’m told that the stock market nearly always performs well in an election year. I sure hope so.

However, Washington Post writer Steven Pearlstein throws cold water, along with the pitcher:
“Don’t be fooled by the latest sucker rally on stock markets or predictions that the ‘worst may be behind us.’ ...these guys [Wall Street executives and strategists] still don’t have a handle on what they’re dealing with--nobody does.”

We’ll see. But speaking of next winter, I hope it will be a frigid humdinger (except in Stafford, of course, as was the case this past winter). If so, it will be a great example of the law of unintended consequences. President Bush offers a handy example.

I don’t know what must have possessed him the other day, but he suddenly caved in and joined the global warming fanatics by saying we should do something about the climate. Well. It’s a good thing he’s not running for anything nowadays, except cover. He’ll never again get my vote, by golly. Perhaps it’s just a joke he’s playing on Congress (which basks in even greater ill repute) to keep them from passing harsher and similarly futile measures (light bulbs come to mind) about the weather. Fat chance. Major blunder.

Yet, reflect a moment. For Bush’s past two terms, would an Al Gore or John Kerry have fared any better? Here, the Creature from the Black Lagoon leaps to mind.

In any event, the greens keep going berserk. Regarding a recent special issue on global warming, here’s Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel: “...we say there needs to be an effort along the lines of preparing for World War II...” You can’t get much sappier than that. Fortunately the public largely agrees, placing global warming well down its list of things that really need addressing.
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(NOW, for my patrons beyond the newspaper column, permit me to digress here to quote a new blast from friend Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, with another example not only of what’s caused global warming but also why the cooler spell could continue:

“Now it’s not just the sunspots that predict a 23-year global cooling. The new Jason oceanographic satellite shows that 2007 was a “cool” La Nina year—but Jason also says something more important is at work: The much larger and more persistent Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has turned into its cool phase, telling us to expect moderately lower global temperatures until 2030 or so.

“For the past century at least, global temperatures have tended to mirror the 20-to 30-year warmings and coolings of the north-central Pacific Ocean....the earth warmed from about 1915 to1940, while the PDO was also warming (1925 to 1946). The earth cooled from 1940 to 1975, while the PDO was cooling (1946 to 1977). Then the strong global warming was accompanied by a strong and almost-constant warming of the north-central Pacific. Ancient tree rings in Baja California and Mexico show there have been 11 such PDO shifts since 1650, averaging 23 years in length.

“Researchers discovered the PDO only recently—in 1996—while searching for the reason salmon numbers had declined sharply in the Columbia River after 1977. The salmon catch record for the past 100 years gave the answer—shifting Pacific Ocean currents”
--Now, back to the good stuff)
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There is one proposed climate-change law I maybe could support, rather than the blather emanating from the sky-is-falling crowd. Adoption of a carbon tax has been promoted as a way to make the world colder.
Well, let’s do it, but only if it would apply if the globe gets hotter, as Canadian climate researcher Ross McKitrick has suggested. And if it doesn’t warm further (and it hasn’t for nearly a decade now), leave the carbon tax on the shelf, just in case.
Come to think of it, like our business cycles, the world’s climate also has a natural recurring pattern historically. And, like the business cycles, there’s not a whole lot anyone can do about altering it.
Not that it’s going to deter politicians from hitting us with a lot of new taxes in the name of making the climate behave. That’s the sad prospect unless someone with backbone stands up and faces them down. I thought Bush might. But he’s history, or will be shortly.
So we face the dire prospect of huge global-warming taxes, which the politicians truly want to get their hands on so they can keep earmarking the folks back home and win reelection.
Am I being overly critical of how state and federal officials manage to spend all our treasure and more? Naw, because I recall another huge feel-good crusade a while back, one that in retrospect is mighty instructive.
Cigarettes were claimed to be just awful, and the tobacco companies finally gave in and agreed to make huge payments to states, which would then use the money to persuade sinners to quit smoking. How naive. As USA Today has written on the subject, “States are spending their tobacco settlement money on everything from building schools to cutting taxes--everything, that is, but smoking prevention.”
It all brings to mind the good old days. Back when I was chain smoking, a pack of Pall Malls cost me a quarter, the same price I paid for a gallon of regular gas at the pump. Now I appreciate what inflation truly means.

Ah spring, birthdays & cannas

What’s new? Well, for one thing it’s springtime. And despite a long drought last year, my flowering plants have survived and flourished so far. Some do look battered but unbowed.
Mother Nature this past year was cruel with the drought. But perhaps our blessedly mild winter compensated. Prettier than ever, my PJM rhododendrons (which look like azaleas) put on a great purple show. They bloom just after the forsythias. They are hardy as nails. I recommend them highly.

Another plant fun to grow is the old-fashioned canna lily. Some varieties can get taller than I can reach. And it apparently takes huge effort to keep them from coming back the following year, not that anyone would wish that fate.

But a few years ago, I thought one flower bed where many of my big old orangey cannas had grown had finally done them in. You see, it‘s better to dig them up after frost each fall, and store the bulbs for replanting the following spring. I had done just that for several years, amassing more bulbs than I could re-plant. They multiply that easily.

Then I got lazy and left them alone one fall. They still came back unaided for another year or so. But then neglect and age and a sore back ensued, and my flower bed became covered with English ivy. That stuff smothers just about everything it covers.

Last summer, feeling rejuvenated by some weight loss from my person, plus four new heart stents, I became active again and pulled up all the English ivy in that bed. Mind you, it had been at least a few years since any canna there had shown any sign of life. Lo and behold, shortly after the ivy’s removal, a few sprouts of the old orangey cannas started growing , reaching over six feet tall before frost last fall.

I dug their bulbs afterward, stored them and then replanted them a week or so ago. I’ll bet they’ll do well this season, just as they had way back when. Ah, springtime, and the joy of flower gardening.

But it’s not--to continue this column’s unaccustomed light and frilly tone--quite so joyful as something else that happened to me and Carole Lee at the end of March this spring. You see, I turned 75 about the same time son Bob turned 50 and son-in-law Al from Denver turned 50-something also.

So quite unbeknownst to us elders, oldest son Bud arranged to corral them all, plus their families, here for a surprise party--three children and spouses, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. They had all hid in Bud’s garage..

We drove over there on a beautiful sunny afternoon, blithely dumb as a post, and then pulled into the driveway upon which they all ran out to greet us, hollering wildly. I’ll not burden you further, but it was one glorious and improbable family reunion. Miracles do happen, large and small. Keep the faith.

I guess that goes for Democrats also. They have, however, been sorely tested this election season, and worse may be on the way, unless Hillary suddenly regains her senses and gives up her quest. But wait. Obama put his foot in his mouth and could do so again.

He still seems ahead, but not for long if he keeps mouthing things like, “My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join me as we try to change it.” And he should clearly stay out of bowling alleys. And never again say any if us yokels bitterly “cling” to whatever quaint traditions we hold dear.

Beyond politics, change is actually happening, I hear, along the border with Mexico. We’re going to erect that fence, after all, it seems. That’s good, although you wouldn’t think so to hear the environmentalists tell it. The fence will cross some spots that had been declared terribly sensitive.

That poor, delicate ecosystem down there on the south edge of Arizona and New Mexico--the preservationists have a point. For there you can see miles and miles of exquisite and riveting...nothing. No suburban sprawl, no traffic congestion, just nothing, except perhaps a chance sighting of human immigrants striving to become illegal.

Better should the plight of truly endangered wildlife species elsewhere--ever so much more varied and abundant--be of genuine concern If we don’t soon come to our senses--after the elections next fall, of course--we’ll start seeing jungles teeming with true environmental treasures being plowed under to provide us with biofuels.

The greens seem to be all for it, and too bad about the survival of assorted monkeys and even my exotic canna lilies.