Saturday, July 01, 2006
FLOODS The recent floods in the Northeastern sections of our country come readily to mind when we mention “deep” or “big” waters. When well-known rivers, lakes, ponds and creeks - augmented by excessive downfalls of unanticipated rains upstream and locally, cause them to swell and to exceed their bounds and bed. It is then we start “testing the waters”. It is not, as a rule, something we have especially planned to do, but rather something which comes upon us alarmingly and demands attention. As we watch the water line advance, we may even measure up our possible losses if we do not follow through with definite actions to protect our property. We are, in a political sense, in such a stage right at this time. Even though the Presidential election is two years or more away quite a few potential voters are selecting and backing individuals they profess or claim will make good candidates. The theme of most of these individual campaigns seem to be “he or she can win the election! There seems to be little time or thought involved concerned with a candidate's ability to serve the nation well in times of war, peace or those in-between doldrums when true leadership is more needed than ever. Some place Hillary Clinton in that category and a hint of it rubs off on new-booker Al Gore,, still-here General Wesley Clark, once-more John Edwards, Mark Warner and others. Those with G.O. P. leanings are jotting down names including those of Condoleeza Rice, General Colin Powell, Newt Gingrich, Rudolph Juliano, and John Allen. Thus far I have not heard any drums rolling or trumpets tooting at "sign-em-up" rallies for such as T. Kennedy, A Sharpton, H. Byrd, and other such vote-gatherers. You will notice I have included two favorites from Virginia and you are urged to append favorites from your state as well. It would be interesting if the two contending candidates for the Oval Office job would happen to be from Virginia? Has that ever happened before? If so – when? Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 7-1-06 [c362wds]
Friday, June 30, 2006
D.C. MEMORIES The first time I landed at Washington,D C's then "new" National Airport built at Gravelly Point about four down the Potomac River from the nation's capital, I felt we were,for sure, going to land in the river. The airport was built out into the stream and the approach was all to low over wet stuff. Just time, however,dry land turned up ands we made of it. Moments earlier I had been thinking we would be landing on a site on which in 1746, a man named Captain John Alexander built a mansion which he named "Abingdon". Actually the site was on he shore at the the end of the man-made island where the nation's air craft would now be using. He lived in that house and a descendant of his Phillip Alexander later donate land he inherited on which much of a new city called Alexander - in his honor - was founded. The historic home was purchased by John Parke Custis in 1778. It was here that Eleanor "Nelly" Parke Curtis, stepdaughter of George Washington was born. When building the new airport facilities the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority preserved many of the artifacts found in the ruins of the old mansion when it burned in l930. They can be examined today at the exhibit Hall in the Terminal A. As I recall, airport facilities in Washington, D.C. were dismal in the days before Washington National got going. There may have been some small "landing fields" in the general area bit the only one I can recall seeing an using was called "Hoover Field" and it was a grass and dirt strip right beside highway. can remember old Curtis-Wright "Jenneys" offering "Joy Rides" for visitors willing to try. "Hoover Field" was opened in 1926 and was the only airport I ever knew which had a city street intersecting its one and only runway. Guards on duty there had to stop motor traffic with each takeoff or landing of planes. "Hoover Field" did so well that the following year - 1927 - a second ,privately owned airfield opened right next to it. The two airports merged to become - Washington-Hoover Airport in 1930 when the Great Depression years took over. There was some operation there years later because I remember taking a "Goodyear" Blimp from that site. "Reagan National" has prospered well in spite of noise abatement and crowding problems. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-30-06 [c420wds]
Thursday, June 29, 2006
SNOW TIME I have often wondered, in the past, if I could be considered to be an individual who would be "typical" among men and women of my own era. "Average" may be a better term; someone aware of the world about us and what made it move and be vital in all he or she did of felt concerned about. I usually ended up thinking I was such a person. The age factor kept changing, but that applied to all of us. This morning I found myself sitting for a solid half-hour time period watching and listening to a briefing by the present White House Press Secretary. That ,of course, has to be the newly named holder of that office - Robert Anthony "Tony" Snow. He is certainly one of the best qualified and most capable men to have held that job. I first heard of Tony Snow as a guest host on "The Rush Limbaugh Show" and, is suppose, I thought of him as a west coast personality. I quickly found he had Virginia connections. He was with the "Daily Press" in Newport News in 1981-82 having crossed the waters from Norfolk's "Virginia. He had also worked for "The Record"...so he knew our area and our news needs first-hand. There is one other job - well, two I suppose - he held when he served as "Chief Speech Writer and Deputy Assistant of Media Affairs."- 1991- 1993 for George W. Bush, President. There should not be any doubt how Tony Snow landed the Press Secretary. There is one other point in all of this which speaks well of both George W. Bush and of Robert Anthony "Tony" Snow. Each is aware of of the others imperfections. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-28-06 [c301wds]
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
NEAR MISS
We have just come through a crisis of sorts here in this somewhat withdrawn village in the Shenandoah Valley section of the Commonwealth of Virginia known as Weyers Cave. It is a loose community of a thousand souls at the most joined together, one might say, by the homes which make up the local mail delivery route. We have a post office but the city “limits” are rather vague – extended further into the county at some points than others. We are a rural community as well as a bedroom community. Dwellers herein are farmers, industrial workers who part-time it as farmers and farmer workers who part-time it commercially or industry in one of three cities nearby – Staunton, Waynesboro or Harrisonburg or one of some a fed other villages of small towns nearby such as Mt. Sidney, Verona, Grottoes, Dayton, Bridgewater. It would be difficult to say, for sure, where our bounds might be at any one time. About sixty days or so, a lady who lives in a totally different section of Augusta County asked the Staunton “News-Leader” how she could best make use Freedom of Information legislation to determine how and why our Board of supervisors could keep all proceedings secret. Public funds expended would suggest public awareness assured. The Board refused to make the information public with two members dissenting and the battle was joined. Looking back at it all now during the last days of June 2006, I find it all Our board of super-visionaries took upon themselves a task far beyond their capabilities. The put their trust in secret with an unknown "agency"of statewide powers rather than regional or national. They bought a rather shadowy bill of goods. The contest was a case of amateurs dealing with other amateurs. They let their warped concept of what they thought they were doing rest on a single auto maker. When political factions started warning landowners about possible exactions under eminent domain rulings of recent years the mega-balloon popped. You can't go back and erase all the harsh things which were said, the inconsiderate or undo acts taken by some in their worse moments during the weeks of sand-lot managers attempting to head up major league operations. Overall results may be evident after the next local elections. We should have learned,too, that not all clowns are not in circus tents. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-28-06 [c415wds]
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
PREDICTION TIME There are still some things we can always count on. Right now – at this very moment – somewhere in this modern world of ours, there is a radio announcer who is telling his listeners there are just so-many more shopping days left until Christmas! That’s one of the many expressions from our curious, flexible language which in spite overuse and unseasonable applications concerning potential dangers ahead! I have another one handy which is getting just a bit worn with overuse:“How many Christmas Seasons will have come and gone before anything is done about the gift to the world - made years ago - concerning an overall "Clean Up" of the United Nations organization? We hear about suggested plans for the buildings there among the sagging flags of so many nations, but very little about some much needed "Department of Human Resources" which used to be the office where the Personnel Ax was kept for use as needed. The last such building plan I heard about was one which called on us to buy a sizable building nearby into which we could move all of the present UN offices which would,you see, allow us to work better refurbishing and/or rebuilding the woefully dilapidated structure in which they are currently housed. A strong argument in favor of this second-building plan is that we can then “sell” that temporary building - re-furbished, of course, refurnished and enlarged a bit here and there – to the expanding United Nations organization. We can feel fee to donate any income which might occur to UN Maintenance and Janitorial Services. The needs for two sets of buildings is greater than for one. There are lingering odors in upper floors of the main building from Iraqi oil deals and mis-deals. The only way they can be removed is for someone in charge to send the people packing who put them there. How many years ago was it when all that was happening? Let's see now...if this is the tag end of the month called June, so - we ought to, maybe, hear about something being done at the UN by ten shopping days before Christmas of 2006 or "07! Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-27-06 [c377wds]
Monday, June 26, 2006
ADVENTURE I suppose that, in a technical sense, a person with ninety-plus years belted away as his or her very own, no longer experiences a sequence of events which can be called an "adventure." So much of that which we do today, whatever we try today, seems to fit into the pattern of what everyone else either is doing, of has done. 6, 2006 This past week end I attended a family reunion at Hickory some five or six hours south of our home in Virginia. How could some as mundane as that qualify as an "adventure"? One point, and a main one,is my age is now "Goin' on ninety-one." At that age one is not supposed to go wandering around the countryside without good reason. I had several such points in mind. One was that the reunion was planned for here in Virginia but had to be changed. I decided I was going anyway, but I guess I didn't talk it over with anyone so when I overheard plans being made to leave daughter Barbara here to take care of me and send my wife Vivian off to be our representative at the family conclave. I realized, of course, that I have had hospital adventures which might minimize my movements. I don't get around as well as I once did. I am cane-bound, chair-bound, pill-bound but also still ready and eager to "go." On the trip down,I found I was so afraid I might miss something passing through areas where I grew up that I could not "nap" as had told myself would do. In Hickory, N.C. while staying at the same Hampton Inn we have before I became aware of the fact hat I have become a home-body, used to routines, schedules; lean-upon furniture and the other amenities of retired, post-operative living. Sleep evaded me. The adventure came in staying with it all, having a good time talking and listening to young and old alike. In spite of the fact that I was the oldest person present, I had a comfortable feeling that I was holing my own in conversation, conviviality, and consumption of elegant foodstuffs. There were moments when we I had uncomfortable feeling as well. I have to admit I had some doubt concerning my travel-ability qualifications which underlines the hint of what we might call "adventure" or ninety-year oldsters. It may well be that the reunion pathway for a family is that it gives the old folks a chance to see the young people maturing into individual personalities while at the same time it gives young people a once-a-year checkpoint to learn where they came from and keys to to remarkable tomorrows yet to be. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-26-06 [c474wds]
Sunday, June 25, 2006
WHO DIES FOR WHAT? The news release yesterday reporting that about half a million people have been killed as a result of the current war. We have been shocked to learn that our own military deaths there now amounts to thousands. Why bring up such a topic? Because of what it is costing us is of utmost importance to each of us. We are troubled with having different views and obvious disagreements and differences in our populace concerning the nature of this war in particular. It is, I think, to consider the obvious fact that we are going to get two diverse,”knee jerk” views in asking such a question. This can be both good and bad, and remember that it is not the purpose of this page to attempt to decide which of the two views might be the better way go. The report cited deals with the great number of “civilians” killed. The term itself is antiquated and often miss used. In one sense, we are all “solders” but there are combatants and non-combatants. So many of those killed in Iraq have been, and will continue to be non-combatant persons. Notice how of news accounts refer to,perhaps sixty seven civilians as killed when a zealot Iraqi set off suicide bombs he was wearing at a checkpoint or a market site. Several Iraqi policemen were injured, maybe an American solider wounded, and it is they who get the media headlines. The civilians become a number and those number are adding up fast. Even greater in cost and suffering is cost to the nation and suffering from the high number of wounded among the people. The very nature of a home-made bomb makes it an anti-personnel bomb of horrible injury when small medal objects such a bent nails,rusted screws and hinges are packed within them. All wars are different. They no longer follow patterns. They make their own depending on what is available and this is an especially because of the religious associations. This pattern which is killing or wounding so many needlessly. The time has come for each of us to seriously re-examine that which we profess to believe about this war. Try to give a little and see how our disagreements here are, in many ways, causing suffering to million of people elsewhere. Can you find it deep within yourself to fore-go some little, even petty, political advantage you might gain by stubbornly refusing to concede a minor point which can save lives? Try. Try for half-a-million - very human - reasons. Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 6-25-06 [c446wds]
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