The weather has been...well...Boone weather today. It is cloudy, rainy, and there is ice on everything and people are beginning to worry about getting home. Appalachian State has canceled classes tonight and warned everyone to check the Web in the morning for whether there will be further cancelations. All in all, just another dreary day in the High Country.
Actually, the weather is pretty much a match for the funk the nation finds itself in. It seems everyone is pissed at the big banks, angry as heck at Congress and the White House, and, if Massachusetts is an example, angry enough to send any brainless bonehead to Washington in an effort to get change.
It's only been a year, but it seems the Democrats have set a record for how long it took them to completely turnoff supporters and ignite a progressive protest across the nation. If I weren't a teetotaler, I'd go home tonight and pour me a tumbler of scotch.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Who? What are we?
What will we remember about Christmas Day 2009? Will we remember it as a celebration of a Savior’s birth, or will we remember it as the day we, as a nation, showed the world just how feckless and cowardly we are?
Do you remember the 2000 hit movie “Gladiator,” starring Russell Crowe as the Roman general Maximus who was betrayed by an emperor, had his family murdered, and escaped death at the hands of the Praetorian Guard only to find himself in slavery, captured by a North African slave trader who sold him to Proximo and a life in the arena.
One scene in that memorable movie stands out for me and, and at least in my mind has come to represent what I see out of the Washington and media elites whenever some uneducated or obviously mentally deranged scavenger from some Third World country decides he wants to blow up himself along with a bunch of Americans.
Maximus is chained to Juba, played by that marvelous African actor Djimon Hounsou, and they stand with all the other newly purchased slaves in their rags and filth waiting for the crude door to this backwater arena to open and lead them to their fate. The excitement in the scene grows as each character comes to grip with what awaits them. Horns sound. The crowd screams in its bloodlust. The gladiators on the other side of the door, identities hidden behind grotesque animal heads, swing their arms and swords, axes and other implements of death. Maximus and a few others stand tall, tamping down their own fear ready to lead and conquer.
Remember? As a member of the audience the day you saw this film, weren’t you ready for Maximus to avenge himself? You had picked your side in this fight. That’s the image we want the world to see when they see an American. Isn’t that so?
But what image do they see all too often? It’s the image of the little, sniveling coward standing in line, chained to a huge German slave. Tears streak his dirty face and piss slides down his legs to pool at his feet. The others move away from him. The stench of death already rests with him and when the door opens the first to die is the coward.
Wow! I can heard it now. I’ll be accused of not supporting our troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. As a U.S. Marine veteran I’m convinced our men and women in those theatres of operation are performing outstandingly. But of course the British Army was just as professional in the 19th century when it fought two wars against Afghanistan tribesmen. The first, from 1838 to 1842 ended badly for the Brits. After invading and ultimately reaching Kabul and seating their man on that country’s throne, the British faced insurrection and, ultimately, defeat in the mountain passes as the remainder of its combined Brit and Indian force and 12,000 civilians were wiped out.
It is not the brave men and women on our frontlines that I see as the sniveling cowards. It is all the rest of us who refuse to sacrifice for this struggle. Especially, it’s this daily image of conservative lawmakers and talkers who rant and rave about the inadequacies of our mission, blaming the current leadership, Democrats, for all that’s wrong but never once offering anything that might indicate they have really thought about this war and what our strategy ought to be. Despite all the failure. Despite all the abuse. Despite the war crimes we have committed and, probably, continue to commit, no one offers sound advice for getting ourselves out of this mess, and no one shows any willingness to talk with those in the other party to work it out. The failure, my friends is not with our brave men and women in uniform. It is with the feckless cowards who stroll the protected halls of Congress doing nothing to protect our soldiers, sailor, marines and airmen.
We are constantly bombarded with vitriol from the right. Conservatives in Congress take a perverse pleasure in seeking failure for the country as they see their only route to power as coming with the destruction of those currently in power. We ought to remember this. Democrats, then the minority in both Houses of Congress, crossed the aisle with extended hands offering to work with their Republican colleagues and the Republican administration in 2001 to defeat the people responsible for 9/11. That happened. It is in the historical record. But Republicans decided they controlled Congress so there was no need to be bipartisan. The White House decided it was their way or the highway, not only for the domestic political world but for international strategies as well. That attitude continues in Washington, and not just with the war effort. It is an attitude that will ultimately destroy us.
For me, I am beginning to see strong parallels to these Afghan wars with our own. I’m also beginning to see strong parallels to the Vietnam struggle, despite what our leaders and military analysts say. Cambodia, a neutral country bordering Vietnam was sucked into the maelstrom of war as it was used by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong for safe havens to escape American and South Vietnamese forces in the 1960s and 1970s. Sound familiar? Our leaders at the time opted to carry out secret bombings of that tragic little country, and finally, when that had not worked, invasion. The result was a country toppled into the quagmire of our war. In fact, we opened the gates of hell for Cambodia as the result of our failed strategy was Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It is estimated that 1.7 million people died in the Killing Fields of Pol Pot’s regime.
We bomb the tribal regions of Pakistan trying to kill Al Qaeda leaders using drones and missiles. We badger the Pakistani Army to fight the war for us in the tribal regions, and in Afghanistan we face a growing and persistent threat from the Taliban, the former leaders of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, the government we toppled in 2001 when we attacked after 9/11. Eight years later we are still fighting them. Just like the Brits in the 19th century, we face an insurrection. We have tied ourselves to a leader the people of Afghanistan hate, don’t trust, and whom we do not trust. The Afghans don’t want us there, yet we are afraid to pullout. The Taliban is using that growing hatred of Americans to grow its struggle for regaining control of that backwater little country. And, Al Qaeda is willing to see American blood spilled on any battlefield as long as it leads to the collapse of another super power.
Finally, who will be the next Pol Pot? Is he sitting in some mud hut in the tribal areas today? If we Americans are truly like Maximus, we will not let that happen. However, if we are truly like the sniveling coward with piss on his legs, then we are really at the end of our run as a world power. Which are we?
Monday, September 14, 2009
Two apologies: Night and Day
Serena Williams, after a day and a half to cool off, has offered a sincere apology after her behavior Saturday was deemed inappropriate and threatening by U.S. Open officials.
At least there seems to be one person in this country who, after taking some time to reflect on their actions, is ready to admit they screwed up--BIG TIME. Not so the congressman of South Carolina, Joe Wilson.
The only thing Wilson has proved is that James L. Petigru had it right on the eve of the Civil War when he said South Carolina was too small for a country but too big to be an insane asylum. Joe Wilson certainly appears to be a descendant of those South Carolinians who believed it was OK to kick start a war that would destroy their region and leave 600,000 American from North and South dead.
Here it is several days beyond the episode. Wilson has given his grudging apology claiming he just lost it. Like I and most football fans lose it before the TV in the privacy of our living rooms when we scream at the idiot coaches or hapless players who are spoiling our afternoon.
Wilson apparently believed it appropriate to shout out from the floor of the House at the President of the United States and call the man a liar.
I put that behavior in the same tasteless and threatening arena as those bozos who carried guns to where the president was speaking during the August recess.
Well, we know there are lies and damn lies and I don't know which kind Wilson was accusing President Obama of, or of which Joe Wilson is guilty of himself. One thing we know about our political leadership in this country, most if not all of them lie from time to time. We voters are capable of deciding who is lying and who isn't without Joe Wilson's help from the floor of the House.
We expect Wilson to act like a grown up. And we expect Serena Williams to act like a grown up. She and her sister have commanded center court in tennis for several years. They are well on their way to, perhaps, becoming the best to play the game. There was no need for this outburst, and certainly no need to appear so threatening while using language more appropriate to the parking lot outside a strip club.
But she has apologized, twice, for her misdeed. Good for her. But Wilson is another matter. He is the poster child for a fringe element that seems to have grabbed control of the Republican Party. This radical element is the same that used to control the Democratic Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the South. The Democrats at the time were a regional party, pretty much based in the South like the Republicans today.
Party members were basically in bed with industrialists and bankers (sound familiar?), and used race baiting tactics to keep poor whites and blacks at each other's throats. It worked until the 1960s when, for some reason a southern president decided Civil Rights had to be honored in this country and forced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and other legislation that finally began to remove the second-class status of blacks. The flow of white voters switching parties began to grow in the South, picking up a really fine head of steam when Ronald Reagan decided to announce his candidacy for the presidency in the heart of old Dixie, Mississippi.
Joe Wilson seems happily at home with that pedigree. After LBJ gave it up the Republicans began to attract those in the South who were wanting a better home for their race baiting souls than the one the Democrats then offered. Republicans have become a marginal party, but one still capable of making mighty mischief as they obstruct progress. However, unless their plan is to forment armed insurrection, I don't see how they plan to widen their influence and once again challenge the nation with its political theories.
I tip my hat to Serena. She and Venus are still the best. Joe, it's time you learn how to really lead. And voters of South Carolina, it's time you moved away from Petigru's directions to a lost traveler, "My dear sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum."
At least there seems to be one person in this country who, after taking some time to reflect on their actions, is ready to admit they screwed up--BIG TIME. Not so the congressman of South Carolina, Joe Wilson.
The only thing Wilson has proved is that James L. Petigru had it right on the eve of the Civil War when he said South Carolina was too small for a country but too big to be an insane asylum. Joe Wilson certainly appears to be a descendant of those South Carolinians who believed it was OK to kick start a war that would destroy their region and leave 600,000 American from North and South dead.
Here it is several days beyond the episode. Wilson has given his grudging apology claiming he just lost it. Like I and most football fans lose it before the TV in the privacy of our living rooms when we scream at the idiot coaches or hapless players who are spoiling our afternoon.
Wilson apparently believed it appropriate to shout out from the floor of the House at the President of the United States and call the man a liar.
I put that behavior in the same tasteless and threatening arena as those bozos who carried guns to where the president was speaking during the August recess.
Well, we know there are lies and damn lies and I don't know which kind Wilson was accusing President Obama of, or of which Joe Wilson is guilty of himself. One thing we know about our political leadership in this country, most if not all of them lie from time to time. We voters are capable of deciding who is lying and who isn't without Joe Wilson's help from the floor of the House.
We expect Wilson to act like a grown up. And we expect Serena Williams to act like a grown up. She and her sister have commanded center court in tennis for several years. They are well on their way to, perhaps, becoming the best to play the game. There was no need for this outburst, and certainly no need to appear so threatening while using language more appropriate to the parking lot outside a strip club.
But she has apologized, twice, for her misdeed. Good for her. But Wilson is another matter. He is the poster child for a fringe element that seems to have grabbed control of the Republican Party. This radical element is the same that used to control the Democratic Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the South. The Democrats at the time were a regional party, pretty much based in the South like the Republicans today.
Party members were basically in bed with industrialists and bankers (sound familiar?), and used race baiting tactics to keep poor whites and blacks at each other's throats. It worked until the 1960s when, for some reason a southern president decided Civil Rights had to be honored in this country and forced Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and other legislation that finally began to remove the second-class status of blacks. The flow of white voters switching parties began to grow in the South, picking up a really fine head of steam when Ronald Reagan decided to announce his candidacy for the presidency in the heart of old Dixie, Mississippi.
Joe Wilson seems happily at home with that pedigree. After LBJ gave it up the Republicans began to attract those in the South who were wanting a better home for their race baiting souls than the one the Democrats then offered. Republicans have become a marginal party, but one still capable of making mighty mischief as they obstruct progress. However, unless their plan is to forment armed insurrection, I don't see how they plan to widen their influence and once again challenge the nation with its political theories.
I tip my hat to Serena. She and Venus are still the best. Joe, it's time you learn how to really lead. And voters of South Carolina, it's time you moved away from Petigru's directions to a lost traveler, "My dear sir, take any road, you can't go amiss. The whole state is one vast insane asylum."
Monday, July 27, 2009
Six minutes: That's all it took!
I read an article in this morning's New York Times by Dan Van Natta Jr. and Abby Goodnough in which it was stated that the call to police about someone breaking into Henry Louis Gate's house was made at 12:45 p.m. the day of the incident. Gates was arrested at 12:51 p.m.
That's six minutes. Six minutes to go from a voice on the end of a telephone line to a cop slapping the cuffs on a 58-year-old, 5-foot seven-inch black man who needs a cane to walk.
Let's break that down if we can. The article didn't provide a timeline for the events, but lets say the call came in at 12:45. It still requires, let's say 30 seconds for the dispatcher to get the necessary information and get that relayed to police in the vicinity. Sergeant Crowley was nearby and responded. OK, let's say it took him about a minute to get there. That puts the time at 14:46:30 or there abouts. Let's say further that it took Crowley about 30 seconds to park his car, get his whatever in order as he walked from the car to the house and knocked. That takes us to 12:47. That leaves four minutes for this situation to deteriorate to the point that Dr. Gates was arrested, and, if you remember, Gates at some point provided Sgt. Crowley with his driver's license and Harvard ID, clearly establishing the residence as his. So it really wasn't four minutes.
And, when Crowley didn't respond to a follow up call after he called in his response, the Cambridge police dispatched six other units to that quiet residential street.
This just further convinces me the police were out of line on this one. Four minutes or less for a cop who wasn't getting the deference he wanted from an uppity black man to slap the cuffs on a senior citizen.
I'm more convinced than ever that too many cops strap on their self-importance when they put on their uniform and that gets in the way of good community policing. Bottom line, I'm more convinced than ever that race was at the heart of this encounter and while Dr. Gates may very well have been confrontational with the policeman, that isn't a crime as long as it remained verbal. Come on, give the man a chance to vent then cool off. Unfortunately that's not the image of police one sees on the cop shows and the reality shows. The image one sees then is of heavily armed Darth Vaders shouting and threatening violence if the suspect doesn't comply. And, at what point does a suspect become a suspect. In this case Dr. Gates should never have been the suspect.
And one always hears that Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the Union. Really?
That's six minutes. Six minutes to go from a voice on the end of a telephone line to a cop slapping the cuffs on a 58-year-old, 5-foot seven-inch black man who needs a cane to walk.
Let's break that down if we can. The article didn't provide a timeline for the events, but lets say the call came in at 12:45. It still requires, let's say 30 seconds for the dispatcher to get the necessary information and get that relayed to police in the vicinity. Sergeant Crowley was nearby and responded. OK, let's say it took him about a minute to get there. That puts the time at 14:46:30 or there abouts. Let's say further that it took Crowley about 30 seconds to park his car, get his whatever in order as he walked from the car to the house and knocked. That takes us to 12:47. That leaves four minutes for this situation to deteriorate to the point that Dr. Gates was arrested, and, if you remember, Gates at some point provided Sgt. Crowley with his driver's license and Harvard ID, clearly establishing the residence as his. So it really wasn't four minutes.
And, when Crowley didn't respond to a follow up call after he called in his response, the Cambridge police dispatched six other units to that quiet residential street.
This just further convinces me the police were out of line on this one. Four minutes or less for a cop who wasn't getting the deference he wanted from an uppity black man to slap the cuffs on a senior citizen.
I'm more convinced than ever that too many cops strap on their self-importance when they put on their uniform and that gets in the way of good community policing. Bottom line, I'm more convinced than ever that race was at the heart of this encounter and while Dr. Gates may very well have been confrontational with the policeman, that isn't a crime as long as it remained verbal. Come on, give the man a chance to vent then cool off. Unfortunately that's not the image of police one sees on the cop shows and the reality shows. The image one sees then is of heavily armed Darth Vaders shouting and threatening violence if the suspect doesn't comply. And, at what point does a suspect become a suspect. In this case Dr. Gates should never have been the suspect.
And one always hears that Massachusetts is the most liberal state in the Union. Really?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Procedure and state power are at issue
One doesn't have to spend much time reading the news to come across another example of how stupid we as social creatures have become.
I'm referring to the flap surrounding President Obama and his comments about the arrest and detention of Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.
Anyone who remotely follows the news in this country is probably familiar with the events recently when Dr. Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, found his front door stuck and as he and his driver, another black man, were pushing against the door to open it were sighted by a neighbor who called the police.
That's where Sgt. James Crowley came into this picture. Crowley is a white police officer and it is the controversy swirling around the interactions between these two men that has the nation buzzing. Was it racism? Was it an over-agitated senior citizen refusing to back down? What really happen?
Let me state my position on this. First, I don't know if racism was overtly at the heart of this situation, but I bet it was there covertly, buried so deep in the psychi of both men that neither could respond in any other way than for Dr. Gates to become angry at being confronted in his own home by an agent of the state, and the policeman seeing an out-of-control citizen confronting him in anger and disbelief. Second, I believe that President Obama did nail it when he made the observation that arresting a man who had demonstrated he was in his own home, wasn't confronting his neighbors with illegal or inappropriate behavior, and who was confronted by what he perceived to be the jackbooted authority of the state was stupid on the part of the police.
Why do I feel that way? Easy. While many don't see the modern American policeman as some Darth Vader figure dressed in black and armed to the teeth with expression stern and eyes masked behind dark glasses, I want you to look at the photograph that went across the country. There is Dr. Gates, a slight man as compared to the giants who have cufffed him and are leading him off his own front porch. There were three of them in the photo, three of them. You have to wonder where these men parked their compassion and understanding. Instead they choose the stern "make and example" position that cops usually take. Their immediate response was to follow procedure to the letter and that's what they did. That's what initial investigations have found, anyway. But that is my point. Perhaps the "procedure" is at fault. Obviously these men, all adults with years under their belts as police, found it too difficult to step back in a situation not going to their liking and choosing instead to not use their mind, compassion, and understanding of a tense, but certainly not life-threatening or bodily-harm threatening situation. Instead they choose to humiliate Dr. Gates.
Perhaps it is time the Cambridge Police review their procedures for cases like this. I certainly feel that once Dr. Gates established his identity and that he was in his own residence, the police, without a duly sworn warrant, were wrong. While many might disagree, it is my opinion that at the point Dr. Gates established that it was his residence, that no crime was in progress, his IV Amendment rights came into play and the police were then at fault.
It seems that on a regular basis we hear of police overstepping the bounds of their authority. Whether it's the tazing of a student who refuses to leave a library, or the killing of a senior citizen who refuses to leave his humble home when confronted by the local SWAT brigade ready to haul him to a rest home, or the simple arresting of a distinguished citizen who happens to be black for becoming angry at being confronted in his own home by one of the state's dark knight, it shouldn't happen. Procedure is always cited as the reason no one is held responsible. My contention is procedure is at fault and should be changed.
I'm referring to the flap surrounding President Obama and his comments about the arrest and detention of Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research.
Anyone who remotely follows the news in this country is probably familiar with the events recently when Dr. Gates, returning home from a trip overseas, found his front door stuck and as he and his driver, another black man, were pushing against the door to open it were sighted by a neighbor who called the police.
That's where Sgt. James Crowley came into this picture. Crowley is a white police officer and it is the controversy swirling around the interactions between these two men that has the nation buzzing. Was it racism? Was it an over-agitated senior citizen refusing to back down? What really happen?
Let me state my position on this. First, I don't know if racism was overtly at the heart of this situation, but I bet it was there covertly, buried so deep in the psychi of both men that neither could respond in any other way than for Dr. Gates to become angry at being confronted in his own home by an agent of the state, and the policeman seeing an out-of-control citizen confronting him in anger and disbelief. Second, I believe that President Obama did nail it when he made the observation that arresting a man who had demonstrated he was in his own home, wasn't confronting his neighbors with illegal or inappropriate behavior, and who was confronted by what he perceived to be the jackbooted authority of the state was stupid on the part of the police.
Why do I feel that way? Easy. While many don't see the modern American policeman as some Darth Vader figure dressed in black and armed to the teeth with expression stern and eyes masked behind dark glasses, I want you to look at the photograph that went across the country. There is Dr. Gates, a slight man as compared to the giants who have cufffed him and are leading him off his own front porch. There were three of them in the photo, three of them. You have to wonder where these men parked their compassion and understanding. Instead they choose the stern "make and example" position that cops usually take. Their immediate response was to follow procedure to the letter and that's what they did. That's what initial investigations have found, anyway. But that is my point. Perhaps the "procedure" is at fault. Obviously these men, all adults with years under their belts as police, found it too difficult to step back in a situation not going to their liking and choosing instead to not use their mind, compassion, and understanding of a tense, but certainly not life-threatening or bodily-harm threatening situation. Instead they choose to humiliate Dr. Gates.
Perhaps it is time the Cambridge Police review their procedures for cases like this. I certainly feel that once Dr. Gates established his identity and that he was in his own residence, the police, without a duly sworn warrant, were wrong. While many might disagree, it is my opinion that at the point Dr. Gates established that it was his residence, that no crime was in progress, his IV Amendment rights came into play and the police were then at fault.
It seems that on a regular basis we hear of police overstepping the bounds of their authority. Whether it's the tazing of a student who refuses to leave a library, or the killing of a senior citizen who refuses to leave his humble home when confronted by the local SWAT brigade ready to haul him to a rest home, or the simple arresting of a distinguished citizen who happens to be black for becoming angry at being confronted in his own home by one of the state's dark knight, it shouldn't happen. Procedure is always cited as the reason no one is held responsible. My contention is procedure is at fault and should be changed.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Our Creaky Old Space Program
Today is the 40th anniversary of man finally stepping onto the surface of a world on which he wasn't born. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to do that, and shortly after Buzz Aldrin became the second. For a few brief hours they froliced on the surface of our moon, totally alone except for the tenuous radio link to earth and with their orbiting comrade, Mike Collins.
For those of us watching from our living rooms, bedrooms, diners and wherever we could gather to watch those static-filled TV images of this historic event, it seemed that we Americans were finally stepping onto a path that would take us to the stars.
If it were only so. Here we are 40 years later, and we haven't returned to that outpost that circles us a quarter of a million miles away.
That's right. We sent six other crews to the moon and five of those were able to land and send back breath-taking images of our engineering prowress. Unfortunately, the politicians of the day from the White House and Congress couldn't wait to shutdown the program. Three missions were cancelled, and the vast engineering system that built the powerful Saturn V rocket was dismantled. Instead of looking to the outer planets and dreaming of further adventures, we decided to build a space bus and for almost 30 years have been satisfied with NASA's version of Ralph Cramden circling in low earth orbit.
Don't get me wrong. The Shuttle was able to put into space the Hubble Space Telescope and when it proved near sighted as heck, we found men who could go aloft and fix it. That alone justified the program and proved man has a role in space. But the dream, the adventure, the mystery of deep space exploration was left to our imaginations. And we American quickly filled our minds with Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, and numerous other nameless space westerns.
Of all the movies about space, the one I like best is Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys." Why? Because it showed us what is really true about our present space effort. The adventure of space is dying off as quickly as our mid-70-year-old former moon walkers line up for the rest home and death. How much longer can a 78-year-old Neil Armstrong try to ignite the flame of adventure once again for a generation that sees him and his deeds as just words on the page of a history book?
I remember those days. I was home on leave from the Marine Corps. I was stationed at Cherry Point MCAS in North Carolina, and being around pilots and high-performance aircraft was a real ego booster. I remember sitting in the bedroom of Steve Neighbors, a friend of my brother, watching the images as Walter Cronkite acted like a teenage boy who has just been told by the prettiest girl in the class that she would go to the prom with him.
How were we to know that in just a few short years it would all be over and the only monuments to this achievement would be a few crumbling concrete foundations that marked the spot where once mighty, thundering rockets shook the world as they carried a few lucky men on the greatest adventure ever.
A couple of years later I was stationed in Iwakuni, Japan, and while there purchased a Moon watch. The Omega Speedmaster Professional was the only watch certified by NASA for space missions. I still have that watch. Of course it is like the space program. The seals and gaskets that keep out dirt and moisture have long since deteriorated to the point that if I wear it on a rainy day the crystal will cloud up. It needs an overhaul. But like our country I can't affort the price of sending it to a recognized Omega repair facility for this work. The United States talks big about going back to the moon and setting up a base there. It talks equally as brave about going to Mars. But so far there isn't a spacecraft on deck to do either mission and probably won't be for many years to come. Our shuttle, that aging delivery van of a spaceship, will be retired after a few more mission to the International Space Station. And the space station, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the efforts of several countries to manufacture and place in orbit the various components needed to build it, will be decommissioned and crashed into the ocean in 2016.
Talk about lack of vision. It's no wonder we haven't made it back to our nearest space neighbor. Perhaps it's time we overhaul the space agency. Start over with new people, those who haven't bought into the current stagnant and fetid play it safe pond that has worked so hard to lower our sights. Let's dream again.
For those of us watching from our living rooms, bedrooms, diners and wherever we could gather to watch those static-filled TV images of this historic event, it seemed that we Americans were finally stepping onto a path that would take us to the stars.
If it were only so. Here we are 40 years later, and we haven't returned to that outpost that circles us a quarter of a million miles away.
That's right. We sent six other crews to the moon and five of those were able to land and send back breath-taking images of our engineering prowress. Unfortunately, the politicians of the day from the White House and Congress couldn't wait to shutdown the program. Three missions were cancelled, and the vast engineering system that built the powerful Saturn V rocket was dismantled. Instead of looking to the outer planets and dreaming of further adventures, we decided to build a space bus and for almost 30 years have been satisfied with NASA's version of Ralph Cramden circling in low earth orbit.
Don't get me wrong. The Shuttle was able to put into space the Hubble Space Telescope and when it proved near sighted as heck, we found men who could go aloft and fix it. That alone justified the program and proved man has a role in space. But the dream, the adventure, the mystery of deep space exploration was left to our imaginations. And we American quickly filled our minds with Star Trek, Star Wars, Alien, and numerous other nameless space westerns.
Of all the movies about space, the one I like best is Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in "Space Cowboys." Why? Because it showed us what is really true about our present space effort. The adventure of space is dying off as quickly as our mid-70-year-old former moon walkers line up for the rest home and death. How much longer can a 78-year-old Neil Armstrong try to ignite the flame of adventure once again for a generation that sees him and his deeds as just words on the page of a history book?
I remember those days. I was home on leave from the Marine Corps. I was stationed at Cherry Point MCAS in North Carolina, and being around pilots and high-performance aircraft was a real ego booster. I remember sitting in the bedroom of Steve Neighbors, a friend of my brother, watching the images as Walter Cronkite acted like a teenage boy who has just been told by the prettiest girl in the class that she would go to the prom with him.
How were we to know that in just a few short years it would all be over and the only monuments to this achievement would be a few crumbling concrete foundations that marked the spot where once mighty, thundering rockets shook the world as they carried a few lucky men on the greatest adventure ever.
A couple of years later I was stationed in Iwakuni, Japan, and while there purchased a Moon watch. The Omega Speedmaster Professional was the only watch certified by NASA for space missions. I still have that watch. Of course it is like the space program. The seals and gaskets that keep out dirt and moisture have long since deteriorated to the point that if I wear it on a rainy day the crystal will cloud up. It needs an overhaul. But like our country I can't affort the price of sending it to a recognized Omega repair facility for this work. The United States talks big about going back to the moon and setting up a base there. It talks equally as brave about going to Mars. But so far there isn't a spacecraft on deck to do either mission and probably won't be for many years to come. Our shuttle, that aging delivery van of a spaceship, will be retired after a few more mission to the International Space Station. And the space station, despite hundreds of billions of dollars and the efforts of several countries to manufacture and place in orbit the various components needed to build it, will be decommissioned and crashed into the ocean in 2016.
Talk about lack of vision. It's no wonder we haven't made it back to our nearest space neighbor. Perhaps it's time we overhaul the space agency. Start over with new people, those who haven't bought into the current stagnant and fetid play it safe pond that has worked so hard to lower our sights. Let's dream again.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Western North Carolina: A Rich Man's Paradise
I live in Western North Carolina. The natives of this region are called mountaineers, the team name for Appalachian State University and West Virginia University. Appalachian is in Boone, North Carolina, and of course WVU is in Morgantown. This region that stretches from northern Georgia and Alabama to Pennsylvania (I'm not including the northern portion of this mountainous spine to east coast America) was the home for small, hard scrabble farms on which lived families that barely could raise enough to eat and depended upon the annual burley crop to make a little money.
The region was filled with small towns and crossroad stores. To shop at anything resembling a department store usually meant a long trip by car over roads that were an insult to the word. The people and their families had lived there for a century and a half.
In North Carolina, poverty in this region reigned, and it wasn't until the families began to flee off the mountain to find work that there was a change. Where did they go? To the small towns along the western edge of the state's Piedmont, places like Old Fort, Marion, Glen Alpine, Morganton, Valdese, Hickory, Wilkesboro, and on and on, places with new wealth from the textile and furniture plants newly established there. And for me these towns were the rivals of Marion High School. Our Rippers, as the athletic teams were called, played the teams from each of those towns either in football, basketball, or baseball, if not all three. But time has run its course and there is no Marion High School, Morganton, Valdese, Hickory high schools any longer. They are all relics of a past that no longer exists, much the same as those cotton mills and furniture plants are empty shells in communities that have watched an entire way of life disappear in the past decade and a half.
In the early days of the last century logging was king. If you find old photographs of the period you quickly note that the mountains are stripped of their trees. The logging companies of that day cut everything and left little or nothing behind. In Watauga County the railhead was in Todd, and the line went down the mountain to the east. The principal load in those pre-Great War days was logs sent to build a mighty nation, if you accept the propaganda from the period. Actually, the disappeared forests only fed the personal wealth of the old and newly established rich in this country. It was one of many boom times our nation has experienced since its founding, a building of wealth that ultimately led to a widened gap between the rich and the poor that when it ended always seemed to hurt the small man more than the big man.
Today, those denuded green hills of the pre-war period are once again covered in lush forests. Environmentalists fight to keep from happening what happened in those first two decades. We fight to keep the trees from being harvested yet again for wealth-creation, but we turn a blind eye as they are felled to create the open spaces needed to build the vacation homes of the rich and powerful in this state and others from the southeast.
Old family land has been broken up and sold as the children moved away to escape the back-breaking poverty of their parents. This out migration continues today as our young try to find a better life someplace else while the sons and daughters of the priviledged wish to stay here where no well-paying jobs exist.
The land that was once dotted with farm fields and old barns is now covered with burgeoning vacation tracts. The McMansions and Super Log Homes of the well-off citizens of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Burlington, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh cover the ridges behind their guarded gates. They come here to sit on their expensive wooden decks blind to the remaining poverty of the region and with an unwillingness to pay their fair share for the services they use or the problems they create.
The population of the state has tripled just since I was in high school. While once we numbered about 3 million inhabitants from Murphy to Manteo, today we number about 9.25 million, a figure that puts a strain on the state to provide just the basics in a fair and equitable manner.
The three universities on this end of the state stand as examples of how times have changed.
Western Carolina University and Appalachian were established as teacher-training institutions in the late 19th century. In fact, neither became full-fledged universities until the 1960s. The third institution, the University of North Carolina Asheville began as a junior college in the '20s called Asheville Biltmore College. It basically supplied the first two years of college for the priviledged sons and daughters of Asheville before they left for Greensboro and Women's College, or Chapel Hill to finish at Carolina, or just enough post-high school training to supply Asheville's businesses with the limited trained help they needed to serve the rich and powerful of another era who found Asheville to be a pleasant escape from the clamor of life up north.
Today only Western Carolina seems still to honor its roots by continuing to recruit the region's students, many who are still first-generation college attenders. UNCA and Appalachian have long since grown beyond that to attend to the upper middle class denizens of the metropolitan areas of the state along the I-85 corridor that stretches from Charlotte to Durham.
Many of these students fall in love with the region and want to attend school here after vacationing away from the super hot and muggy Piedmont summers. Both UNCA and Appalachian have only too gladly become expressions of privilege and entitlement that define this particular demographic in our population.
Western North Carolina remains an escape. Today it's an escape not only from the insufferable heat of the lowlands, but also from the growing economic calamity speading rapidly across the face of our nation. Yes, we will suffer, too, but for a time we are protected by the gated communities of upper middle class America, and of the rich and powerful who vacation here in the anonymity the region offers. Did you know that Paul Newman, before his death, maintained a vacation home near Grandfather Mountain. Rita Moreno could often be spotted shopping at Mast General Store in Valle Crucis. And Wayne Huizenga, who made a fortune renting movies and hauling trash before he owned the Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers and Florida Marlins, is reported to have flown in and out of Banner Elk on his private jet to helicopter around big ticket sports stars and movie actors like Dan Marino and Kevin Costner, among others trying to sell secluded getaway homes the likes of which no local could ever afford.
We've become a playground. Our low-tax local governments keep taxes low to keep what they perceive as the gravy train running. But these communities often don't produce a lot of new revenue for these governments. Afterall, if you fly in your private jet and helicopter to your home away from home, and you stock it with food from New York, LA or some other exotic location because the local markets just don't have what you are used to eating, then how is the local economy benefitting? The truth is it isn't. And when you throw in the incentives local government provide the developers of these communities to get them to build here and not somewhere else, the economy often comes out losing, not gaining.
The state's budget mess is a calamity. Cuts in public schools and in higher education seem to signal the end of the current binge. While the priviledged might be pulling their belts tighter to get through all this, the locals--capenters, electricians, plumbers, sales clerks, janitors, teachers and teacher aides, and all the rest who have to work to get from payday to payday without going broke, they are being hurt and to hear the bitter back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, well, one can only hope they all come to their senses soon and realize that we are in this together. If they don't figure that out soon, the lower economic classes will go under but sooner or later, so will the upper economic classes. And if we go, so goes the world and if you have that many dissatisfied people, conditions are rife for violence and war.
Most of our great science fiction writers, they were futurists in the best sense of that word, seemed to believe that some worldwide calamitous war would send us into a Dark Age to rival that which fell on western civilization when a corrupt and broke western part of the Roman Empire fell in 476 to the Germanic Odoacer who deposed the last western emperor. For us it might not be that we are defeated, even in a weakened state, but that we commit suicide. We have spent ourselves into international poverty. We owe tremendous sums to our enemies who have financed us for decades. And our military has demonstrated it can no longer project a powerful enough footprint to force our will on the unwilling in this world.
For those of us in Western North Carolina it means that once again we become a region defined by poverty rather than bounty, by ignorance rather than knowledge, and by sickness rather than our good health. One can only pray that in time we learn to overcome the problems confronting us.
The region was filled with small towns and crossroad stores. To shop at anything resembling a department store usually meant a long trip by car over roads that were an insult to the word. The people and their families had lived there for a century and a half.
In North Carolina, poverty in this region reigned, and it wasn't until the families began to flee off the mountain to find work that there was a change. Where did they go? To the small towns along the western edge of the state's Piedmont, places like Old Fort, Marion, Glen Alpine, Morganton, Valdese, Hickory, Wilkesboro, and on and on, places with new wealth from the textile and furniture plants newly established there. And for me these towns were the rivals of Marion High School. Our Rippers, as the athletic teams were called, played the teams from each of those towns either in football, basketball, or baseball, if not all three. But time has run its course and there is no Marion High School, Morganton, Valdese, Hickory high schools any longer. They are all relics of a past that no longer exists, much the same as those cotton mills and furniture plants are empty shells in communities that have watched an entire way of life disappear in the past decade and a half.
In the early days of the last century logging was king. If you find old photographs of the period you quickly note that the mountains are stripped of their trees. The logging companies of that day cut everything and left little or nothing behind. In Watauga County the railhead was in Todd, and the line went down the mountain to the east. The principal load in those pre-Great War days was logs sent to build a mighty nation, if you accept the propaganda from the period. Actually, the disappeared forests only fed the personal wealth of the old and newly established rich in this country. It was one of many boom times our nation has experienced since its founding, a building of wealth that ultimately led to a widened gap between the rich and the poor that when it ended always seemed to hurt the small man more than the big man.
Today, those denuded green hills of the pre-war period are once again covered in lush forests. Environmentalists fight to keep from happening what happened in those first two decades. We fight to keep the trees from being harvested yet again for wealth-creation, but we turn a blind eye as they are felled to create the open spaces needed to build the vacation homes of the rich and powerful in this state and others from the southeast.
Old family land has been broken up and sold as the children moved away to escape the back-breaking poverty of their parents. This out migration continues today as our young try to find a better life someplace else while the sons and daughters of the priviledged wish to stay here where no well-paying jobs exist.
The land that was once dotted with farm fields and old barns is now covered with burgeoning vacation tracts. The McMansions and Super Log Homes of the well-off citizens of Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, High Point, Burlington, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh cover the ridges behind their guarded gates. They come here to sit on their expensive wooden decks blind to the remaining poverty of the region and with an unwillingness to pay their fair share for the services they use or the problems they create.
The population of the state has tripled just since I was in high school. While once we numbered about 3 million inhabitants from Murphy to Manteo, today we number about 9.25 million, a figure that puts a strain on the state to provide just the basics in a fair and equitable manner.
The three universities on this end of the state stand as examples of how times have changed.
Western Carolina University and Appalachian were established as teacher-training institutions in the late 19th century. In fact, neither became full-fledged universities until the 1960s. The third institution, the University of North Carolina Asheville began as a junior college in the '20s called Asheville Biltmore College. It basically supplied the first two years of college for the priviledged sons and daughters of Asheville before they left for Greensboro and Women's College, or Chapel Hill to finish at Carolina, or just enough post-high school training to supply Asheville's businesses with the limited trained help they needed to serve the rich and powerful of another era who found Asheville to be a pleasant escape from the clamor of life up north.
Today only Western Carolina seems still to honor its roots by continuing to recruit the region's students, many who are still first-generation college attenders. UNCA and Appalachian have long since grown beyond that to attend to the upper middle class denizens of the metropolitan areas of the state along the I-85 corridor that stretches from Charlotte to Durham.
Many of these students fall in love with the region and want to attend school here after vacationing away from the super hot and muggy Piedmont summers. Both UNCA and Appalachian have only too gladly become expressions of privilege and entitlement that define this particular demographic in our population.
Western North Carolina remains an escape. Today it's an escape not only from the insufferable heat of the lowlands, but also from the growing economic calamity speading rapidly across the face of our nation. Yes, we will suffer, too, but for a time we are protected by the gated communities of upper middle class America, and of the rich and powerful who vacation here in the anonymity the region offers. Did you know that Paul Newman, before his death, maintained a vacation home near Grandfather Mountain. Rita Moreno could often be spotted shopping at Mast General Store in Valle Crucis. And Wayne Huizenga, who made a fortune renting movies and hauling trash before he owned the Miami Dolphins, Florida Panthers and Florida Marlins, is reported to have flown in and out of Banner Elk on his private jet to helicopter around big ticket sports stars and movie actors like Dan Marino and Kevin Costner, among others trying to sell secluded getaway homes the likes of which no local could ever afford.
We've become a playground. Our low-tax local governments keep taxes low to keep what they perceive as the gravy train running. But these communities often don't produce a lot of new revenue for these governments. Afterall, if you fly in your private jet and helicopter to your home away from home, and you stock it with food from New York, LA or some other exotic location because the local markets just don't have what you are used to eating, then how is the local economy benefitting? The truth is it isn't. And when you throw in the incentives local government provide the developers of these communities to get them to build here and not somewhere else, the economy often comes out losing, not gaining.
The state's budget mess is a calamity. Cuts in public schools and in higher education seem to signal the end of the current binge. While the priviledged might be pulling their belts tighter to get through all this, the locals--capenters, electricians, plumbers, sales clerks, janitors, teachers and teacher aides, and all the rest who have to work to get from payday to payday without going broke, they are being hurt and to hear the bitter back and forth between Republicans and Democrats, well, one can only hope they all come to their senses soon and realize that we are in this together. If they don't figure that out soon, the lower economic classes will go under but sooner or later, so will the upper economic classes. And if we go, so goes the world and if you have that many dissatisfied people, conditions are rife for violence and war.
Most of our great science fiction writers, they were futurists in the best sense of that word, seemed to believe that some worldwide calamitous war would send us into a Dark Age to rival that which fell on western civilization when a corrupt and broke western part of the Roman Empire fell in 476 to the Germanic Odoacer who deposed the last western emperor. For us it might not be that we are defeated, even in a weakened state, but that we commit suicide. We have spent ourselves into international poverty. We owe tremendous sums to our enemies who have financed us for decades. And our military has demonstrated it can no longer project a powerful enough footprint to force our will on the unwilling in this world.
For those of us in Western North Carolina it means that once again we become a region defined by poverty rather than bounty, by ignorance rather than knowledge, and by sickness rather than our good health. One can only pray that in time we learn to overcome the problems confronting us.
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