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The Voters of Dixville Notch

  With the most important election of my life weighing on my mind and soul, I am reminded of this political junkie’s exploration of history and loss of innocence.    Since I am a political animal I have long been fascinated with the “first in the nation” vote that comes out of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.   Due to a curious New Hampshire law (i.e. when all the registered voters in a precinct have voted the polls may close) the handful of registered voters of Dixville Notch, started gathering at midnight on Election Day, voting as a group and then closing up.   They achieved notoriety as the first Americans to vote (they weren’t, but they had good press agents) and the media presented it as a grass roots event. In my naïveté I accepted this story as it was sold.   Here were the simple, down-home, plaid shirted, suspender-wearing folk of New Hampshire gathering around a wood fireplace in a cabin in the woods.   The whole thing was reminiscent of Calvin Coolidge being sworn in by ke
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Bald Eagles and Avian Flu

  Our national symbol, the bald eagle, is suffering from a spiking death rate from avian flu.   As much as I love and worry about this magnificent bird, it is the avian flu part that keeps me up nights. Several years ago, my book club chose The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson as one of our selections.   It is a non-fiction book about the search for the source of the cholera epidemic in London in 1854.   It is an excellent book, and, like most good authors, Johnson gives us not just historical facts, but their relevance to our modern world. He also gives us lots to think about.   In the last chapter of The Ghost Map Johnson talks about why workers in the poultry industry in Asia are given flu shots.   The shots don’t keep them from getting avian flu, the shots keep them from getting the basic, human influenza.   Why?   Because doctors and scientists want to make sure that there is no way for the deadly avian flu to mutate into human influenza because human flu, while not so deadly a
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Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit

  This is still my favorite column about September 11th.  I choose not to forget.     I had slept in, taken my morning walk late and was just making my first cup of coffee when my daughter called me.   “Mom,” her urgent voice said, “I saw the plane fly into the tower.   I saw it, Mom!   I was watching the television in the break room and that plane just flew into the second tower.”   That is how I learned that our country was under attack.   America once again began an emotionally tumultuous day—Pearl Harbor laid out before our eyes.   My husband and I are in the habit of having a glass of wine with dinner and toasting to any small, significant or touching thing that happens during our day.   That night, as I raised my glass, we both quietly spoke the words that were uppermost in our minds, “To the United States of America.”               Of all the lessons that can be taken from that day, one of the least discussed and most poignant is what happened to St. Paul’s Episcopal Ch
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Hey Dude: A Tariff Talk About Shoes

  “A lady never admits her feet hurt…”  says Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes .  This is just one more line from a list of good ones from a fun movie.  I also learned (the hard way) that a comfortable pair of shoes may not solve your day’s problems, but they can make tackling them a little easier.   Being dedicated to comfortable footwear, I was willing to take my granddaughter’s recommendation to try a pair of Hey, Dude shoes.  I plan on buying more of these casual canvas slip-ons because they fit the reasonable requirements for consumer consumption: desirability, quality and cost.  Besides being a Marilyn Monroe fan, I am also a trained economist and as such I am smarter than Donald Trump.  He wants to put a tariff on my Hey Dudes. He also insists that these tariffs are paid by the country the items come from and not the American public.  He is, of course, wrong. Let me explain. A tariff is a tax on goods imported from another country, not by the country
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Nixon’s Last Flight on Air Force One

  Fifty years ago today, Colonel Ralph Albertazzie, then pilot of Air Force One, was flying over Jefferson City, MO with President Richard Milhous Nixon and his family on board.   He was taking the Nixon’s home to California. Passing the mid-Missouri air control, he received word that Vice President Gerald R. Ford had just been sworn in as President of the United States. Albertazzie contacted ground control and gave this message: "Kansas City, this was Air Force One. We are now re-designating as SAM 27000." The reversion of the plane to its assigned tail number indicated there was no longer a President on board. Nixon had resigned a few hours before and was heading into a shameful retirement.   The resignation, the shame, the enduring stain on what was, in many ways, a laudable Presidency was the result of Nixon’s Presidential hubris and latent moral flaws.   I met Richard Nixon once.   I was at the Western States Young Republicans’ Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico
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