Winter

What can I say about this year’s winter in central Virginia?

It’s still winter, according to the calendar. But it’s winter only on the calendar. I’ve had to mow my lawn twice, and the grass was so high the first time that I could barely push the mower through it. I would have mowed before the grass got so tall, but the weather was too hot. (It seems like every year the lawn-mowing season begins earlier and ends later than it did the previous year.) I run the air conditioner in my Jeep when I’m out and about. I turned off my home’s central heat weeks ago when the temperatures began hitting the mid-80s every day. Central Virginia will get a little relief this week, with daytime high temperatures forecast to be “only” in the upper 70s. This is winter?

Maybe not. Winter is pretty much an arbitrary thing. There’s an astronomical winter which, in the U.S., begins on the solstice and ends on the following equinox. There’s a meteorological winter which, in the northern hemisphere, extends over the three coldest months – December, January, and February. In Scandinavia, winter begins on 14 October and ends the last day of February. In Celtic nations such as Ireland, winter is defined as the three month period having the shortest days – November, December, and January. Many countries in Europe recognize St. Martin’s Day (11 November) as the first day of winter. Some countries consider Valentine’s Day (14 February) as the first day of spring. And of course, countries in the southern hemisphere have their winters during the months of June, July, and August.

Year to year, cold weather begins on different dates and ends on different dates. It could be a long, cold winter one year and a short, mild winter the next year. As for me, as long as the weather is cold enough to kill the mosquitoes, I’m happy. After that, I’m ready for spring.

The Stretch of Time

I know that most if not all of my readers think that I’m young and hip. That’s because I look young and hip ... at least, in my own head. But sadly, here’s the reality.

When I was a tadpole, I remember looking at my grandparents’ telephone. There was an earpiece you could lift up and put to your – where else? – ear. And a nice lady named Mabel, or possibly Martha, at the central office would say, “Number please.” You would give her the number of the phone you were calling – it would be something like “35” or “679”, and she would physically connect your phone with the other phone by plugging an electrical cord (your phone line) into a jack (the other phone line) on a patch panel.

Off I went to grade school. One day the class was excited because there was a big change coming to telephones and the teacher was going to explain it to us. Sure enough, the teacher told us that soon telephones would have something called “dials” and when you wanted to make a call you would lift a handset to your ear and you would hear a “dial tone”. Then you would poke your finger into one of ten holes in a round disk and spin it around once for each digit in the phone number you were calling. After that, the connection was automated. Goodbye Mabel. Or possibly Martha.

My family moved into a new house. We had a telephone but it was connected to the phone company by something called a “party line.” This meant that we shared our phone line with our neighbors. Our neighbors had children – little girls who liked to play on the telephone. My dad would pick up the phone to call someone and he would be unable to place a call because the neighbor girls would be on the phone laughing and giggling. So one day he called the phone company and he ordered something rare in those days: a “private line”, our very own personal phone number that belonged only to us and no one else.

The little girls that lived next door grew up. One of them married a preacher and they had a baby girl of their own. That baby girl grew up, married, and had two baby girls of her own. Those girls are now age 16 and 14, and when they aren’t talking or texting on their smart phones they’re using their phones to post messages to Facebook or to tweet about their favorite boy bands.

And here I sit with three phone numbers of my own. Whereas my parents shared a phone number with their neighbors, I have a mobile phone number, a magicJack phone number, and a Google Voice phone number. It’s only through dent of determination that I don’t have even more phone numbers. It’s been years since I’ve had an old-fashioned landline telephone. I don’t expect to ever have one again.

In 60 years, today’s tadpoles will be senior citizens. No one can imagine what phones be like in that far-off day. But one thing is sure: whatever today’s phones evolve into, it will be something that no one today would ever recognize as a telephone.

Socialism: Good, Bad, or Ugly?

I’m glad Obama bailed out the automobile industry. I think it was the right thing to do. The unemployment rate is high enough. Do we really want to see how high it would go if the auto industry collapsed? That industry generates millions of jobs. It’s not just about the people who make the cars and trucks. It’s about the people who work for hundreds if not thousands of companies that make parts for the industry, and it’s about people who work at thousands of dealerships around the country: salesmen, mechanics, accountants, advertising people. And it’s about people who make a living supporting all those people: from the waitress at the diner where the mechanics eat lunch, to the shopkeeper who sells the sales manager a suit, to the semi-retired senior citizen who drives you to work in a dealership minivan after you’ve dropped off your car for maintenance. Allowing the auto industry to collapse would tip the first domino in a very long chain.

Yet Republicans who criticize Obama for not doing more to reduce unemployment were, ironically, united in their opposition to the bailout and boasted proudly that they would have let the industry go bankrupt. The bailout was against their orthodoxy, so by definition it was a bad idea. But you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. You can’t accuse Obama of not doing enough to reduce unemployment and at the same time accuse him of being a socialist for saving a million jobs. Well, you can – and Republicans do – but there’s a name for it: it’s called “two-faced.”

Remember the Chrysler bailout of 1979? I don’t remember hearing people call President Carter a socialist just because he helped Chrysler survive. Maybe that’s because people didn’t hate Jimmy Carter. There were reasons why some people disliked Carter: he refused to go to war when Iranians captured our embassy in Tehran (weak), he established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China (cozy with communists), he made good on a long-standing American promise to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama (gave away what was “ours”). But no one called him a socialist – a label that Obama-haters frequently apply to the current president.

Socialism may be the bogey-man to Republicans, but America has plenty of socialist programs. If the government plans for and provides goods and services to its citizens and those goods and services are paid for by taxes and fees collected from the public, that is socialism in action. Here is a partial list of socialist organizations and programs in America:

• Defense Department
• Social Security
• Medicare and Medicaid
• Police protection
• Municipal water systems
• Municipal sewage treatment
• Municipal garbage collection
• Municipal airports
• Street lights
• Public education
• Interstate highway system
• City streets and state roads
• Air traffic control system
• Bridges
• Parks
• Museums
• Libraries
• Weather and spy satellites
• Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
• NASA

America is a mix of capitalism and socialism. However, the most essential products and services are socialist in nature (provided by government) while less-essential products and services are free market (provided by business).

Just to be clear: if the government takes part ownership of an auto company in return for guaranteeing loans to that company, that’s not socialism. Socialism is when the government takes control of the auto company and decides where the cars will be built, how many will be built, and where the cars will be sent after being built. That is called “central planning” and it’s a key part of socialism. Simply owning stock in a company isn’t socialism, it’s just a way of making sure you’ll get your money back if the company is successful.

I favor free markets over socialism; however, the government obviously has a place. Government defends our borders. It provides police and fire protection, sanitation services, clean water at our kitchen faucets, and a basic level of education for its citizens. In other words, government provides services that are essential for public health and safety. The government doesn’t own but does regulate certain businesses, such as electric and gas utilities, because their products are essential for the public good. A citizen’s access to health care is something that most of the world considers essential for public health and is therefore regulated by government in most countries. It’s time for all people to accept the idea that government has a place in a nation’s health care system, just as it has a place in ensuring safe neighborhoods and workplaces, ensuring that goods get to their markets, and ensuring that the buses, trains, and airplanes we depend on for travel have been properly maintained. A wealthy nation should not be satisfied with any health care system that falls short of universal coverage. It doesn’t have to break the bank. If it does break the bank then we’re doing it wrong!

It took a century of struggle and a disastrous war to abolish slavery in this country. It took decades of mass protests, murders, and lynchings to establish equal rights for the descendants of slaves. I mention this only to point out that it sometimes takes a very long time to change minds, but that doesn’t mean the effort will never bear fruit.

Health Care: Out of Control

It has been said that America doesn’t have a debt problem – it has a health care problem. The U.S. government provides health insurance for 60-65% of the American people through programs like Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and the Veterans Health Administration. The cost of health care is a large part of the nation’s debt, it’s a large part of what is driving up the debt, and it’s out of control. What do I mean by “out of control”?

In 2004, an attack of “a-fib” (an irregular heartbeat that is dangerous because it can cause a stroke) put me in the hospital for two days. I had no health insurance and went home with a $7744 hospital bill and physicians’ bills totaling $1148, for a total of $8892. At the time, it seemed like a lot. After all, I didn’t get a new kidney. I just lay in bed and took meds and had some tests done.

Over the years since 2004 I’ve wondered what the cost would be if the a-fib happened again. In October, 2011, I found out. I experienced another occurrence of a-fib and ended up in the hospital again.

This time the hospital bill was $42,241. Added to that were physicians’ bills totaling $3172. In seven years, the medical bills for treating the same medical condition blossomed from $8892 to $45,413.

Out of control. And any attempt to rein in costs is met with howls of outrage by conservatives who claim that the government wants to kill grandma. Even the Tea Party is telling Obama and Congress, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” So the government has taken the default position of doing nothing and letting the problem – and the debt – grow. But I think we all know that ignoring a growing problem is a strictly limited-time option.

It’s possible for us to work together for a realistic, practical solution. That solution exists. Or we can use fear-mongering and bumper-sticker slogans to protect our own special interests. But there will come a day of reckoning.