TAKE CARE - EVERYWHERE
I am writing this by candle light.
We had a power shortage at about one-thirty his afternoon. I took a short nap, played guitar for a while, and my wife and I talked of “cabbages and kings” and one of the “other things” had to do with the lack of power to keep us going one or two vague attempts to shame the Al Quida for zapping a transformer down the street just a block or so away.
“Funny” came out “silly.” Our security is not a matter to be taken lightly and it may be that we a not taking it seriously enough.
Each of us tends to think of our area as being one unlikely to suffer any such attack. Here in the western Shenandoah Valley area protected by the Blue Ridge Mountain range to the east and hundred miles of rolling hills and and pine-strewn flatlands slanting into the Atlantic, we feel ourselves to be relatively safe. As with many others the same designation come “relatives” can be dangerous. It is not always what our are, but what and whom you are next to, which creates a modern day war target.
Now is not the time to relax security measures. Many people, understandably, are fed up with regulations which slow down their hectic pace. Many can point the finger at specific enforcement efforts of existing measures and show how they inefficient they are at times. Only a fool would say that such laws are expected to b e foolproof. We need to respect and obey the ones we do have in place for our mutual well-being.
Even while we feel fettered and needlessly put upon, we are under far less restrictions than almost any nation of people in the world today. I view with alarm the continued massing of large numbers of people at specific sites throughout our country - sports gathering , in particular, and I am very much aware and thankful of the existing security regulations which control who. What and when can flow over, or even near, such massive gatherings of citizens.
The arterial nature of our Intestate Highway system with its connecting roads of all kinds with connecting roads of all kinds is of vital importance, as well. Security must be strict. So, you can see, sitting here in tiny Virginia hamlet, almost at the crossroads of I-81 and I-64, and less than a hundred miles to the north and east we are boxed in by I-60 and I-95.
Do you understand why I “wonder” about a blown transformer just down the block? Think about your area.
.What makes a “target”?
A.L.M. October 26. 2003 [c-455wds]
