Are we truly under a Republican administration?

An article titled "Unused prison testifies to waste" by Brian Murphy & Pauline Jelinek of the Associated Press was published on page 3 of yesterday's (July 28) Telegram & Gazette. Murphy & Jelinek wrote about the colossal waste of money that went into building a particular prison in Khan Bani Saad, Iraq. About $40 million dollars was spent to build that prison that is not being used. The article quotes Sayyed Rasoul al-Husseini of the Khan Bani Saad council as saying, "Birds and small animals have found homes in the towers and crannies".

Murphy & Jelinek also mention Stuart Bowen, a U.S. official involved with reconstruction in Iraq. Mr. Bowen referred to the total dollars awarded in contracts to Parsons, the firm that built the jail. According to the article, Mr. Bowen ". . . said the prison was part of a $900 million Parsons contract to build border posts, courts, police training centers and fire stations. Of 53 construction projects in the massive Parsons contract, only 18 were completed." So I ask, where is the Republican supervision and direction?

What would TR say?

Yesterday's Boston Globe (Sunday, July 27, p.A17) published an article, "White House, experts clash over policy for Yellowstone", written by Jim Drinkard of the Associated Press. Mr. Drinkard wrote about the possibility of avalanches occurring on the east side of Yellowstone between December and February and how the Park Service decided to close that entrance during those months. The businesses in Cody, Wyoming being affected, naturally protested. Over 500 people came out to a meeting to make known their views. Their protests made it to the White House -- not too unusual considering Vice President Dick Cheney at one time represented Wyoming in Congress. The result of the White House getting involved is that the east entrance will stay open during the winter. To avoid avalanches, the mountainside will be blasted by howitzers and explosives dropped from helicopters, something the Park Service has been doing for years to keep mountain passes open.

In his article, Mr. Drinkard pointed out the absurdity of the cost needed to support this decision. In order for Cody businesses to reap the benefits of snow tourists, the U.S. government will have to spend over $3.5 million a year. Considering 463 people came through the east side into Yellowstone last winter, Mr. Drinkard calculated the cost to taxpayers will amount to about $8,000 per person.

a David Brooks article

David Brooks is one of my favorite columnists because in most situations he seems to get the "big picture". Last Wednesday, July 16 he wrote an article that appeared on the editorial page of the Telegram & Gazette labeled "Human nature under the microscope". Mr. Brooks discusses human genetics and what scientists know and don't know about how certain genes relate to various behavioral traits. His focus was on what we don't know and he celebrated the fact that we know so little about such a complex system as heredity. He also brought out the fact that much of what we do is based not only on genes but also on environmental factors. He went on to emphasize how difficult, if not impossible it is to trace cause and effect. Mr. Brooks writes: "Studies designed to link specific genes to behavior have failed to find anything larger than very small associates. It's now clear that one gene almost never leads to one trait." He said that it is clear that there are some situations that we know of that cause anti-social behavior, poverty, for instance, but that drawing a relationship between a gene or a situation to a behavior does not work and that even understanding how larger circumstances produce a particular aberrant behavior is very hard to understand.

Mr. Brooks ends his article with these two paragraphs..

"We can strive to eliminate that multivariate thing we call poverty. We can take people out of environments that (somehow) produce bad outcomes and try to immerse them into environments that (somehow) produce better ones. But we're not close to understanding how A leads to B, and probably never will be.
This age of tremendous scientific achievement has underlined an ancient philosophic truth --that there are severe limits to what we know and can know; that the best political actions are incremental, respectful toward accumulated practice and more attuned to particular circumstances than universal laws."

Correction on The Wall

Almost as soon as I posted my trip to DC I realized I had made a mistake, albeit a small one. The Vietnam Memorial is not made of marble but of black granite. Coming from Bangalore, India, it was cut in Barre, VT. The monument was designed by Maya Ying Lin from Athens, Ohio. I also discovered the first known casualty of the war was Richard B. Fitzgibbon fromNorth Weymouth, MA who was killed on June 8, 1956. Sadly his son, Richard B. Fitzgibbon III followed his father into war and was killed just over nine years later.

As I investigated the material on the web at the address "http://thewall-usa.com/information.asp" I also wanted to find out how many service men and women had been killed in Vietnam. What I learned was that The Wall lists 58,260 names. Out of those 58,260, 1200 are still missing, meaning 57,060 soldiers were killed in the Vietnam War. Consider the population of Princeton -- about 3600. That means the number of people who either died or are missing in Vietnam could have filled and re-filled our town over 16 times. As I walked down The Wall I saw mementos friends and family had left behind for their soldiers: pictures of the guys in the unit with an arrow pointing to their loved one, a little bouquet of flowers. As wonderful a tribute The Wall is to those dedicated Americans who gave their lives for their country, I wish there had been no reason for The Wall and that those brave soldiers were living among us.

The First World War

My family & I just got back from visiting Washington, DC, a trip I think every American should make. Besides the incredible (and free!) museums, the monuments and landmarks strike me as something to behold. Feelings of love of country bubbled up inside me while standing in nearly Lincoln's presence and reading his words of "The Gettysburg Address." The names on the Vietnam Memorial continue on & on in the polished marble where I could see my reflection so clearly I took pictures of my family reflecting back from the Memorial. I wished I could have been in Washington on a Tuesday evening at which time the Marine Corps demonstrates drills at Arlington National Cemetery. Folks bring picnic suppers, spread out their blankets and watch the Marine Corps perform their routines.

The World War II Memorial is awe-inspiring with giant bronze wreaths and a beautiful fountain. However the Memorial that affected me the most was dedicated to the Korean War. Larger-than-life soldiers wearing plastic ponchos over heavy back packs patrol the Korean landscape covered with low brush. The soldiers are on the look-out, discussing what lies ahead, what they've just seen; warning each other of dangers. Their guns are heavy, some slung over their backs, others poised in front, each one different. For some reason I am deeply moved by this; perhaps because of the way the statues are designed. The sculptures convey the soldiers' fears & uncertainties about their situation and the dangers lurking nearby and I feel for them.

Walking back to the car my family & I discovered a "new" monument, meaning one we had not noticed on previous visits. Memorials are hard to miss because of their size, but this one is tucked away on the right side of the Mall, heading from the Korean War Memorial to the Washington Monument. It is a white marble gazebo-like structure without any statues and is dedicated by the people of the District of Columbia to the veterans of World War I. My daughter pointed out something quite poignant about this Memorial and that was that it was not labeled with a number one, the way we think about that war, but rather as simply "the World War". What a stark reminder that when that memorial was built people were not expecting another war of that magnitude. When will we start learning from history and stop making the same mistakes over and over again?

Happy 4th of July!

I went to Rutland tonight in spite of the rain to see their "usual" spectacular display which seemed even better and longer than in past years. Because of this evening's earlier downpour, many people stood to watch. Surprisingly it appeared as though there were more people there o watch the fireworks than ever before. What a wonderful celebration in Rutland, bringing folks together to entertain and to remind them that we are a blessed nation. At the same time that a patriotic feeling welled up within me, an uneasiness crept in due to the large number of teen-ager smokers around me. Many teens walked by as I stood with my head bent towards the sky. Unfortunately many of those teens were smoking. As responsible citizens how can we help curb teen smoking? How can we discourage the teens in our lives to never try not even a single cigarette? We want our country to stay strong and healthy. Isn't the state of our country dependent on the state of its citizens?

So on one hand, I was celebrating, thinking how fortunate we are to be living in the United States of America. On the other, I was trying to figure out why so many teen -agers were smoking, especially since word is out and has been for a long time that avoiding cigarettes is the wise and healthful thing to do. After the grand finale a haze of smoke hovered very close in front of me and for a minute I wondered whether that smoke was from the fireworks or the cigarettes.