Climate Control

A couple of days ago I took a walk in our neighborhood, and it was clear that spring has sprung, at least in Atlanta. It was stunningly beautiful, as spring always is in this part of the world. I forget sometimes how colorful spring is. Many shades of green, of course, and around us flowers that seem to lean to shades of blue and yellow. But there is also a wide range of colors in the buds of the trees - especially in coppers, burnt orange, and red tones. Two trees stood out on my walk. I came around a bend and there was a glorious maple right in front of me. A kind of yellow green color that took your breath away with the light that was on it. Maples are one of my favorite trees, and this one was wonderful. We have three flowering cherry trees in one corner of our lot, and coming down the block I could see them from four houses away. They are in full bloom now, white with just a hint of pink. Lovely.

It is early for spring to be this far along. And hot. Today we set a record high for the date. (It's also dry - we ae at present over 6 inches behind our normal rainfall.) And I am worried. When we lived in Dahlonega a few years back, I managed a camp that I had attended as a boy in the 1960s. In those long-ago days, you always needed a light jacket and a blanket for the cool nights that were a part even of mid-summer. By the late 1980s that was no longer true. It never got that cool. Old timers talked about how it didn't snow like it used too. It's hotter, and I am worried.

In the February 20th edition of the Christian Century, Bill Mc Kibben has an article called "Meltdown". It raaises the alarm for us about global warming. Part of one paragraph reads like this:

the temperature rise has been enough to start melting every frozen thing on earth, which
in turn creates it's own problems. In the Arctic Ocean, nice white ice that reflected
lots of the sun's rays back to space isquickly turning into nice blue water that absorbs
much more of the sun's heat, amplifying the warming. ... Scariest of all, the great ice
sheets above Greenland and the West Antarctic appear to be melting faster thasn predicted.
There's the real chance of a catastrophic rise in sea level, one that would endanger the
world's coastal cities, inundate much prime farmland, and drive hundreds of millions
from there homes.

The article suggest that we may have at best 10 years to stop the impendind crisis.

I know there are natural cycles of heating and cooling on the earth. And we may be in a natural heating swing. But even if that is true, the evidence seems overwhelming to me that our actions - my actions - are making things worse. My greatest fear is for my children and my grandchildren. What will they have to deal with? And why is it so hard for me to take the hard actions that are needed in the face of this mess? God help us all. And help us to change our ways.

Jimmy

Iraq

Thomas Friedman and I have not agreed on everything related to the Iraq war. He feels that the war was justified, though terribly waged. I think it was one of the great foreign policy blunders of our nation's history. But he writes engaging, challenging columns that always make me think. And sometimes we do agree. Such was the case with his column in Sunday's paper.

The main point of the column comes in the fifth paragraph. "From the start, the Bush team has tried to keep the Iraq war 'off the books' financially and emotionally. As Larry Diamond of Stanford's Hoover Institution said to me: 'America is not at war. The U. S. Army is at war.' The rest of us are just watching or just ignoring, while the fight is carried on by 150,000 soldiers and their famil;ies." Friedman goes on to remind us that the country as a whole has never been callled on to sacrifice anything in or for this struggle, and the government has not made any financial adjustments to compensate for the war. I think Friedman has it exactly right.

Our son fought in Afghanistan, not Iraq, but we are one of the families directly impacted by this war effort. The year Josh was in combat was the longest year of my life. His experience in trying to get his benefits after being discharged has been disheartening and upsetting. The conditions being discovered at Walter Reed are a national disgrace.For all of the talk of this administration, the evidence I have shows little actual support for veterans. And the failure to get the country as a whole involved in the war effort belies the claim of its importance.

I am not certain what is the best course for us now in Iraq. As opposed as I was to going to war, it never felt to me like we could just pull out once we were there. But staying the current course seems clearly wrong. I would like to see honesty about the situation in Iraq from the adminnstration. I would like to see serious dialogue with all countries/parties that have a stake in the outcome of the war. I would like to see real suppport - not lip service - for the troops that are over there now. If the war is important, call on all of us to pitch in and help out. And for God's sake, take care of the veterans.

Jimmy

Tragedy

The wreck last Friday of the bus carrying the Bluffton baseball team was a terrible tragedy. While I don't know that I have ever used the exit that was the site of the crash, I know that area well. Julie and I used to live a little over a mile from the crash site, and I often drove by the place where the exit ramp comes into Northside Drive as I prepared to get on I 75 to go into downtown Atlanta. Awful.

It's hard to know what to say in the face of an event like this. Debate continues over whether it was driver error or faulty design of the exit, or both, that caused the crash. My sense at this point is that both contributed to the wreck. I do wonder why rumble strips couldn't be added to the exit - and any others like it - as one extra caution for drivers.

The dominant feeling I have is one of overwhelming sadness. Six lives lost, and most of them so young. The ones who died are about 2 years younger than my Josh, which brings it close to home. I can barely imagine what teh parents and family members are going through. I don't want to imagine too much because it is so painful. I do feel like Atlanta rallied around the team and the families in a good way, and I hope that was some minor comfort. I believe also that if we look closely, we can see God reaching out to the families, and if we listen carefully we can hear God crying over the loss of his beloved children.

Jimmy