View from the Mountain

So where's the local reality in the news?

I sometimes wonder if I'm living in a different world than the folks who publish the newspapers.  Then again maybe they've just outsourced the news.

I snapped this picture on the waterfront in Swansboro, NC. recently come in on the departing shrimp boat in the picture.  The knowledgeable old salts at Clyde Phillips Seafood had told me they had some larger shrimp because the shrimp boat had been working Pamlico Sound where apparently they grow a little larger.

We had just come from another store where someone had said that it was pouring rain just a few miles to the west.  We had heard some thunder so I guessed it was one of those scattered afternoon thunderstorms we had hear about the evening before in the 11 pm television weaher forecast. 

Waiting for breakfast at Michael's on Emerald Isle, I had checked the weather forecast on front of the Raleigh News & Observer.  It was calling for PM showers on Wednesday and downpours on Thursday.  Since I happened to make it home with the front page, it wasn't hard to verify what I thought I saw.

After buying our shrimp we left Swansboro at 3:45 pm.  We didn't arrive home until 9:45 pm last night.  The drive took us an hour longer than usual.  We even stopped for thirty minutes near Warsaw, NC when it became impossible to see on Interstate 40 because of the heavy rain.  By this time I was getting a little suspicious of the typical afternoon thunderstorm forecast especially since we had already been in heavy rain for nearly fifty miles.

We tried listening to the radio for information, but finding a radio station that identifies its geographic location and which tells you anything about the weather is not exactly very easy these days.  The rain seemed to slack a little so we decided to push on with the idea that we had little interest in repeating a harrowing night drive in heavy rain that we had done a couple of months earlier.  We finally decided to call our son who can be counted on to be connected to the Internet.  I asked him to have a look at weather.com and see what the Raleigh area looked like.  He said the area had swirling bands of precipitation reminiscent of a hurricane.

It had been so dark in the heavy rain in Warsaw that the GPS had switched to night lighting.  As we moved towards Raleigh we actually caught a brief glimpse of the sun, but most of the time there was rain.  As we got through Raleigh, the rain started getting worse.  I decided that in the continuous rain I would rather be on a nearly empty two-lane road going 60 mph than on a busy Interstate going 70 mph.  We exited at Hillsborough and drove right through part of today's news without even knowing it.  Fortunately North Carolina has done a really good job of putting reflectors on Route 86 from Hillsborough to Danville.  On the Virginia side the new section of Route 58 were in good shape.

The only thing I can say about Route 220 is that except for one small, newly repaved section near Rocky Mount, there is more reflective paint on the word "School"  sign painted on Route 419 near Oak Grove School than there is on all of Route 220.  The reflectors are in equally bad shape.  In fact the lack of good reflectors and fresh reflective marking on Route 220 is an indictment of the current transportation deadlock. Route 220, which is a dangerous even in good conditions, is perilous in poor conditions.  People who were on it last night in the tropical deluges that we encountered know just how dangerous it was.  We ran into a couple places where the road was flooded, but you couldn't tell it was flooded because it was raining so hard and the flooding was impossible to see coming around blind curves.

We managed to get home safely but no thanks to the poor condition of Route 220.  Just before we went to bed, we listened to WSLS and their VIPR weather forecast.  They were absolutely aware of what was happening out on the roads.  Imagine my surprise when I walk out in the rain to retrieve our Roanoke Times.

The front page has a story "Hurricane John lashes Mexico's Pacific coast tourist resorts."  There is no mention of the tropical downpours which we drove through for two hundred and sixty miles.   I turn through the paper and find a story on page seven which says "Carolinas brace for a drenching from Ernesto."  The article has nothing to do with the drenching rains on Wednesday night, it's talking about the potential for rains on Thursday.  Of course I'm trying to reconcile this with the forecast from WSLS that areas of Virginia could see an additional six to ten inches of rain on Thursday.  My nineteen years here in the mountains have taught me that anytime we have back to back large rain events we end up with flooding.

A check on my AccuWeather account this morning confirms that there is the potential for lots of rain in our area on top of the tropical deluges that hit around Roanoke last night, and that flood watches have been posted.

So where's the newspaper reporting on this event?  Finally at 11:11 am this morning, the Roanoke Times on line site has a "breaking story", "Flash Flood watch still in effect."   The problem is that if you were reading the paper and depending on it for your news, you were out of luck.  I guess the reporters had all gone to bed when the rains came last evening and set the stage for flooding.

Have newspapers been forced to cut down so much on local reporters in order to stay competitive that their news is basically staged news like the story, "Va. Tech to fix flow into stadium" or news because of a death like the "Who's to blame?" front page story today.

I'm not trying to lay a load of blame on the Roanoke Times which I truly appreciate as an example of a very good local newspaper.  I guess what I really want is for them to stay on the job in my local area.  I don't need weather channel hysteria.  I would like enough local reporting to validate my experiences.  Last night I drove through torrential rains, and if the Roanoke Times happened to be my only source of news, I might start to question my sanity.

I know the Roanoke Times has good local reporters because I read their stories, like Beth Macy's recent columns on immigration.  There's also a delicate balance between too much local news and not enough international news. On the other hand, too much news that is not really news is big part of the reason why so many younger people are abandoning newspapers.

Part of the news is validation of personal experience.  To a certain degree you read the paper to reinforce your own personal knowledge of what is happening.  The trust that a newspaper builds starts with a reader agreeing with the newspaper's interpretation of events they've witnessed.

I guess what I'm asking is that our newspapers not cede reporing to the television and the Internet.  I read newspapers because I put a lot of value in the printed word.

Yet if the printed word misses the flooding and tropical deluges in its own backyard, can I still trust it for other things?

In this case, the answer is yes,  because our local paper, The Roanoke Times,  misses very little.

I hope this current small failure to see the real news isn't an indication that there are fewer strong ties to our local area.  We also need the news to be accurate, so having a story about North Carolina expecting tropical rains after they've already received a good dose of biblical rains doesn't build a lot of confidence.  Readership confidence in your writing is easy to lose and hard to rebuild.

I guess the next time I travel, I'll travel with a weather radio.  Maybe it is time to hook up a computer and hope for connectivity along the way.

I'll still be reading the newspaper, but maybe with a hair less confidence in what I read.

You can teach an old dog new tricks

My posts have been a little sporadic the last few days.  It's not because I'm on summer vacation.  It's actually because I finally decided to start a long term project.  Last winter I spent some time thinking about what I would like to do with the next part of my life.

I spent the first eleven years after college raising purebred Angus cattle and selling farm machinery.  The next twenty four years were spent in the world of technology mostly with Apple Computer.  While I'm not immediately giving up my technology roots, I am starting to prepare for a new career in a few years.

We've spent the last three summers searching for a place on the coast.  It turned out that I spent so much time looking at real estate that I decided that just maybe being a real estate broker would be something that I would enjoy in a few years.  Starting to prepare for a real estate career when the real estate market is looking weak might look counter-intuitive on the surface, but I firmly believe as real estate continues to be the largest single investment that many of us will ever make, that the expertise of a good real estate broker will be valued more and more.  Buying and selling real estate is a far more complex process than most people realize and there are significant risks which a professional can help mitigate.

My first thought as began the process of going back to school was that my brain had grown too inflexible to go to class. I got over that initial concern and enrolled in series five weekends of class, consisting of 9-5 classess Saturday and Sunday.  I chose the JY Monk Real Estate School more from the availability of classes than any information I could find out about them.

It turns out that I'm really happy that I did.  Kevin, our instructor in the picture to the left, was exceptional.  His knowledge was not only from books, but also from years of experience in real estate.

I'm still a long way from being finished with my license or knowing exactly what to do with it.  I am also very entrenched still in high technology.  However, these days it pays to have more than one way to earn a living up your sleeve especially when you're 57 years old.

The learning was very intense and challenging.  It was a pleasure being in classroom with people who really wanted to learn.  There was no question about paying attention.  There were no cell phones ringing or computers for distraction.  It was pure note paper, pens, and interactive teaching, followed by tests and then a four hour exam which leads to another four hour exam.

I was also impressed with some people I met who were betting a new career could really turn their lives around.  One lady had gone from driving a fancy Lexus to a Mazda with a questionable transmission. It was clear that she planned to work as hard as necessary to be successful in her new career.  I'll bet she succeeds.  Not all the others will make it, but a number of them will.  It was great to see people with the dedication to learn new things, gamble on their own skills, dedication, and hard work.

Understanding what a real estate agent can and can't do for you, makes a huge difference in a house buying experience.  As I go through the next ninety hours of training on top of the first seventy five hours, I'll probably have some comments which I hope end up being educational.   Giving up your weekends is an amazing way to redefine the word busy so I hope to have time to write.

In a week or so we'll be closing on a house on the NC Coast where we'll be spending part of our time over the next couple of years.  It's been a real learning experience.  It took three years to find the right spot.    I'm looking forward to seeing some water sunrises and some beautiful sunsets.  In fact the one at beginning of the post was taken from a parking lot near Morehead, NC recently.  If you're interesting in reading more about our experiences searching for coastal property, you can check out my new website, coastalnc.org.  I'll continue to post here, and promise not to bore people with my new real state information.

Rays of sunlight and hope

I happened to get up around three am last night.  Just before I wandered back to bed I noticed that it was so foggy that I couldn't see our neighbor's house across the street.   I resumed my deep sleep and when I rolled out of bed this morning, the fog was still with us.

I snapped a few shots hoping to get something nice for this morning's post, but fog isn't the best of subjects.  Just before eight thirty am , I happened to notice these wonderful rays of sunshine streaming through the giant poplar that is closest to our deck.  I quickly grabbed the trusty Nikon and snapped several shots.  I think it is a really neat effect.  It also is a good backdrop for my morning topic.

I really don't enjoy writing posts that can be classified as political.  I don't have any politician heroes these days, but I have yet to give up on the political process.  I do think the war in Iraq has gotten beyond political.  It's a really dangerous situation.  Along with many others I'm concerned that the course we're following is actually making things worse rather than improving them, especially if you happen to be a Lebanese civilian or an Iraqi citizen.

I guess this whole war on terror has been used very similarly to the way giant poplar and the fog in the photo blocks the sun.  Now eventually the leaves will fall off the poplar this fall and just as things are cooling down, we'll get some extra sun to warm our deck.  Yet we're still seeing the administration trying to use the "fog of terror" to scare and confuse people.  There's not a lot of truth or sunshine showing in their communications, especially the most recent press conference.

I recently watched a clip of President Bush's most recent news conference.  I was disappointed that he's still convinced that the war in Iraq is the answer to everything.  I tend to agree more with Richard Cohen who wrote this in his article, "Mideast Echoes Of 1938."

When George Bush used the term "Islamic fascists," he had a point. But it's futile to use colorful language when, in reality, you're out of the conversation altogether. This is another baleful consequence of the Iraq war. The United States is not only preoccupied, it is loathed. The leadership it once was able to exert -- especially in the Middle East -- is a thing of the past. If its credibility is to be restored, another president will have to do so. In the meantime, as we always learn, Europe without American leadership is a mere tourist destination.

That's a harsh description of Europe, but the bigger shame is that we've played the war card, and we don't seem to have any other cards in the deck.   I also read Eugene Robinson's, "President on Another Planet."

According to the Iraqi government, 3,438 civilians were killed in July, making it the bloodiest month since the invasion. The president was asked yesterday whether the failure of the U.S.-backed "unity" government to stem the orgy of sectarian carnage disappoints him, and he said that no, it didn't. How, I wonder, is that possible? Does he believe it would be a sign of weakness to admit that the flowering of democracy in Iraq isn't going exactly as planned?

Robinson had seen the same performance that I saw.  It just left me scratching my head.  This morning there was another article in the Post, "The 'New Middle East' Bush Is Resisting"  by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian professor.

President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be quite right about a new Middle East being born. In fact, their policies in support of the actions of their closest regional ally, Israel, have helped midwife the newborn. But it will not be exactly the baby they have longed for. For one thing, it will be neither secular nor friendly to the United States. For another, it is going to be a rough birth.

Then there was Dan Froomkin's Post column,  "President on a Mission."  He pretty well nailed it.

President Bush was on a mission this morning: Trying to stamp out a growing national consensus that things in the Middle East are going from bad to worse, and that it's past time to start bringing the troops home from Iraq...

Pretty much regardless of what he was asked, Bush had the same answer: That anything short of his policies is tantamount to surrendering to terrorists and would be disastrous.

I just find it hard to believe that this country has so little moral capital left after the disaster in Iraq that we appear to be willing to just blindly follow the guys who got us in the mess and have shown zero skill at getting us out of the quagmire.  And yes it is a quagmire, even if that was denied for years.

As is often the case, when I feel too close to situation, I try to find someone looking at it from afar.  This time I resorted to the Toronto Star and their editorial piece, "The `job' in Iraq just keeps changing."  Their comments make a lot of sense to me. 

Just one question: What was that job again? Is it to end the sectarian violence in Iraq? Prevent terrorists from flocking to the United States? Bring democracy to Iraq and thus provide a beacon for reformers throughout the Middle East?...

Yet the U.S. has finite resources, and whatever effect they have in Iraq is blunted by the growing civil war there.

Wow, they can actually call a civil war a civil war. I guess even the Canadians have forgotten about the Weapons of Mass Destruction that started the ball rolling.

It's too bad we still have so many people who can't see the sun coming through the trees yet.  We're squandering lives and resources on a war we will never win and which actually makes an eventual terrorist attack on the US more likely.  Just maybe enough people won't be fooled by the politicians this fall, and we can clean house of those who should have more vigorously questioned this administration on everything from the war in Iraq to torture to illegal eavesdropping.  Now if we had a sex scandal, maybe we could get some action out of Congress.

As the rays of the sun come through the poplars, I hope the will of the people will get this country back on course.  It's no fun being a country that has lost the high ground.  I look forward to fall and a changing of the guard.

 

Computers, Reading & Speedy Chef

On our way back from North Carolina yesterday we swung into Elkin, NC.  A few weeks earlier when getting some gas I had noticed a "Speedy Chef" sign.   

Both my wife, Glenda, and are natives of the Mount Airy, NC area which also has a  Speedy Chef.  Mount Airy (Mayberry) is only about 25 miles from Elkin contrary to this Google map which estimates the distance as 30 miles.

Since we had enjoyed an impressive buffet lunch, we had decided that dinner was going to be a Speedy Chef soft serve ice cream cone.  The Elkin Speedy Chef must have been built years after the Mount Airy one since it has a non smoking section and even windows in the dining rooms.  In the years before fast food restaurants became ubiquitous, places like Speedy Chef were a godsend for families looking for a break from mom having to cook everything.  Many places like Speedy Chef have survived over the years because they offer reasonably priced food prepared quickly in a comfortable atmosphere.  The Elkin Speedy Chef didn't appear to have any employees over the age of eighteen, but that didn't mean that there was a lack of wisdom among the employees.

As we were finishing our ice cream cones in a booth that just happened to the closest one to the food counter, I noticed a small blue Mercedes parking in front of the building where there wasn't actually a parking space.  Then I saw an elderly lady carefully get out of the car and go over to the wall of the building.  She then proceeded to walk around the edge of the building while holding onto the building.  Glenda noticed that she was well dressed, had lipstick on and earrings.  We watched to see if she needed help to get through the doors but she managed it with only a little extra effort.   She quickly went from the door to the counter where she had some support.  Once she had placed her order, she headed for the closest booth which was just behind us.  One of the teenagers from behind the counter quickly came out to clean a close booth for the lady.  Since we were almost done, we offered her our booth which she gratefully accepted.

Obviously every step was both a challenge and a victory when completed.  Having the recent experience my late mother in an assisted living facility, we were well aware of  grab rails for senior citizens.

Some thoughts came to mind.  It was obvious that the elderly lady enjoyed the independence of being able to come out for dinner.  It was clear that she wouldn't be doing this many more times.  Likely if the lady had lived in a larger town, she would have already had to give up on this last vestige of her independence.  Now as I much as I worry about the potential of older drivers having wrecks, I would hate to be the one to take away this pleasure from the elderly lady.  She was definitely a proud lady, and I think we all need to help our elderly citizens hang onto their dignity as long as possible.

Actually maybe small towns are the last refuge of the elderly.  Another thought is that I was pleased that at least one teenager was observant enough to make sure the lady had a close booth so she could minimize her steps away from the walls.

The younger generation isn't getting much good press these days, but at least the Speedy Chef group was aware enough to help an older citizen.  An article, "Writing Off Reading," in the Washington Post this morning gives us a reason to worry about our next crop of citizens.

As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won't be long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun from a preposition, even to distinguish between "then" and "than." Yet they got A's.

I little later in today's Roanoke paper I came across a series of articles about technology in education.  One of the articles, "Keeping up with the natives," quotes  Joe Chase, the acting dean of RU's College of Information Science and Technology.

He said he finds himself surprisingly on the "'Luddite' side of the debate."  He's worried about requiring laptops for students. I guess that puts me in the stone age since I'm not sure laptops even have a place in the classroom.  They're great in the dorm room, but I think they're a disaster in the classroom unless there's a real reason for them to be there, and they're cut off from the Internet.

Now I'm a technologist.  I've worked in high technology since 1982.  I know what computers can and can't do for an individual.  Back in 1994 I banned laptop usage in meetings that I held for my team.  Before I did that, I saw everything from surfing the Internet to playing games during the meeting.  The most popular distraction was doing last minute touches to your Powerpoint presentation.  Any of the extraneous activities meant you weren't paying attention to the meeting.  Assuming the meeting was being held for a good reason, the laptops were ruining the meeting.

You can take two courses of action, one is to try to make the meeting so good that people ignore the laptops.  The problem with that is most corporate meetings are necessary but often boring.  Getting people on the same page in an organization sometimes requires getting them in the same room and banging some heads together.  Laptops, cell phones, iPods, Blackberries are all a distraction in real meetings.

I've recently become a weekend student.  Interesting the course, which I'll talk about in later posts, is a for fee one.  The instructor who is ex-military has banned almost everything technological from the classroom except his laptop.  Text books, note paper, pens and pencils are permitted.  A cell phone even in the classroom and turned off will get you ejected.  Some of the material is boring but important so not having distractions is important.  Unfortunately we live in a world where there is a lot of boring but important information, but if you want or need to learn the information, you need to focus on it, not your iPod.

I used to have some very interesting discussions about calculators and math analysis programs with a former Va. Tech engineering professor.  The next time he wanders back into town, I think he and I need to go to lunch and renew our discussion.  As I read the article, "Tech writes off ordinary laptops for ones with electronic pens," I had to wonder to myself is this just another case of having to have the latest and greatest in the hopes that it will produce the right result in the classroom.

I'm not an educator, but I know that I've learned more in a classroom without my laptop than I would have with my laptop.  I've got a pad of notes.  That doesn't mean I would reject some computer aided help outside the classroom.  It just means that until someone comes up with a better way of learning, a lecturer who interacts with a class, assigns homework, and demands attention is a pretty good way to learn.  Granted if there are 500 people in the class, technology may help, but I would argue just maybe ten classes of fifty would still be better.

The elderly lady in Elkin driving a Mercedes reminded me a little of my mother who also used to drive a Mercedes.  One of the last things mother gave up in life was reading.  She was a voracious reader, there were no great literary titles to brag about, but plenty of romance novels that she enjoyed. 

Just maybe our new generation is so plugged in and computerized that they can't be bothered to read for enjoyment.  Reading demands too much attention.  Googling isn't the ultimate way to get knowledge.  It can be an impediment to real knowledge since it is almost too easy.  We've had a lot of computer salesmen over the years, myself included, working to convince us that computer technology will revolutionize education.  I'm not sure we were right.

There's a place for computers, I'm just not sure it's in the lecture hall.  If we end up with a society that can't do anything without a computer, we're in for big trouble.  Computers are definitely wonderful, but they shouldn't take the place of hard core learning.  I couldn't create a blog and wirelessly have it sent into the ether for others to read without a computer.  Yet if people stop reading, writing a blog won't be very fulfilling.

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth

Recently we went to see Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth."  Earlier this year, I wrote about Michael Crichton's State of Fear in a post "The Da Vinci Code of Global Warming."  Today in the Washington Post, an article, "Storms' Link to Warming Debated," mentions one of the many challenges that we face in this situation.

Academics have published a flurry of papers either supporting or debunking the idea that warmer temperatures linked to human activity are fueling more intense storms. The issue remains unresolved, but it has acquired a political potency that has made both sides heavily invested in the outcome.

Interestingly this brings to the forefront one of the arguments that Gore makes very effectively in his movie.  He comes up with an analysis of academic papers which show that scientists are nearly unanimous on the issue of our carbon based economy driving up temperatures around the globe.  Yet a similar analysis of popular press shows that the press actually reports 56% of the time that there is still a controversy about global warming. 

It makes you wonder just who has an interest in keeping the public confused.  Perhaps we should ask the folks who met with Vice President Cheney in the secret energy task force.  They might be able to shed some light on people who seem to benefit from the energy crisis. Of course the VP is little busy justifying the war in Iraq right now so we might have a hard time getting him to relay the question.

I find Gore's presentation very persuasive.  I'm sure there are those who might want to ignore what Gore keeps trying to drill into our head.  Yet I believe we are at one of those "connect the dots" times that Gore talks about in the movie.  It's just too hard to deny that our use of fossil fuels are driving up the temperature of earth.  Maybe Gore's mention of the ads last century using doctors to convince us of the safety of smoking, pushed me to point of not needing more evidence.

Surprisingly, there are some good reasons we should heed Gore's advice even if he and all the scientists are wrong.

First, our dependence on foreign oil is a huge drain our country. Financing and fighting terrorists at the same time, makes for difficult policy.  I think even the President may be closing to understanding that one.  It also doesn't take a genius to figure out that we end up breathing what we put into the air.  Cleaner air will be better for us all.  As Gore points out the car companies that are emphasizing economy are doing better than the ones that aren't.  Just maybe if our car companies spent as much time trying to deliver fuel economy as fighting the standards, they might not be in as much trouble.  As a side note, one of the previews before the movie was, "Who Killed the Electric Car?"  I'm looking forward to that one.

I don't think any of us can change our lifestyles overnight, but I know Glenda, my wife, and I had already made some decisions before we saw the Gore movie. 

We both agree our next car will be a hybrid, for a number of fairly obvious reasons, but all of them related to global warming.  We'll keep recycling since it makes us feel better.  We've already turned our thermostats up in the summer and down in the winter.  We'll keep doing that, getting older at least makes the summer part easier.  We're going to support political candidates that push for higher mileage standards and better environment protections. 

Our last car switch went from one that got around 22 miles per gallon to one that gets close to 30 miles per gallon.  We'll watch closely to see what makes sense.  Maybe I can find a hybrid pickup to replace the gas guzzling Titan eventually.

I was encouraged by Gore's comments that bans on certain chemicals have helped to repair the ozone hole that had many people worried a few years ago.

Just maybe if we all work at changing our lifestyles, we can make a difference over time so that our kids will still get to enjoy this wonderful world of ours.  I think being green can make a difference.

Gore quoted Upton Sinclair, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."  That's probably the crux of the matter at this time in history, but a good technology revolution isn't even needed to get us back on track. 

I suspect that technology revolution will come.  Higher fuel prices will drive innovation, and innovation is far from dead in this country or around the world.  Electric cars may have been killed but I remain hopeful that change is possible.  I'm not going to let another Washington Post article, "Limiting Climate Change: The Neglected Obstacle," depress me.  Right now I'm going to remain optimistic, and we'll do our part, and hopes others do the same.

I hope we can get to the point that the majority of people realize that there are some really good reasons to take care of this planet.  Last I checked it was the only one in commuting distance.