• I want to cry

    A terrible pall has enshrouded my weekend.

    It started with a ring of my doorbell. An unassuming man with a pen and a composition notebook was standing at my door, clad in his company t-shirt… a tree service. He allowed as how they were working on a tree down the street, and noticed my tree. I was immediately suspicious, but I listed to his spiel. We get these kinds of solicitations all the time… “Hi, I’m from Acme Windows and I wanted to see if you wanted to take advantage of the same great deal on replacement windows your neighbors are getting….” Usually I just say no thanks and close the door, but I was bored this morning so I humored this particular interloper.

    He asked me to follow him on a short walk down the street. We turned back towards my house and he asked me if I saw the large, leafless, and dead area at the top of our biggest tree. “Yes,” I replied cautiously. “Lets walk back. Up close you can see that your tree has a rather large mistletoe infection.”

    It turns out that wasn’t so bad. According to this guy, a little trimming would take care of the problem. The real bombshell came next.

    “I don’t mean to scare you, but you’re probably going to have to remove this tree in the next few years.”

    The conversation ended, and I retired to my internet connection.

    There I did a little research on my own. I had heard from various sources that the tree in my front yard is a “water oak,” so I checked out the “Florida Trees” reference at the University of Florida (on the web). The water oak did indeed match the tree in my front yard.

    As I read through the detailed description of the tree, my heart broke.

    A rapid-grower, Water Oak has a relatively short life span of only 30 to 50 years…. The tree often begins to break apart just as it grows to a desirable size. For this reason, Live, Bur, Shumard, Red, White, Swamp White Oak and others are much better choices.

    Trees are slow growing treasures. You can’t just go to a nursery and replace a 40-50 foot oak tree. I’d give up my car and ride my bike everywhere if I could.

  • Saying the obvious

    I’ve been trying to post this entry for most of this week. Between the news, blogs, and private discussions I’ve been trying to put my finger on how I feel about the POTUS.

    By the way… I like saying POTUS, particularly when it comes to this president. When you stress the first syllable, with a slightly snide curling of the lips, it kind of sounds like an insult. “Shut up you potus!” (Maybe it’s just me.)

    Everyone’s got an opinion about the big lug, but I can’t decide where my feelings lie.

    In recent weeks rumors have circulated that George “I was a cowboy president” Bush would relent to reality and begin a draw down on the number of troops in Iraq. The other day he gave a speech which puts those rumors to bed.

    Violence has spread to the green zone, the most secure area in Iraq and the epicenter of “the surge.” The White house is beginning to hint that the Iraqi government isn’t meeting the benchmarks Bush himself suggested as a barometer of progress. The U.S. military is on pace to surpass 1200 deaths this year, which would eclipse the previous high (849 in 2004) by a little more than 40 percent.

    You may be saying to yourself, “sure there are more deaths, but there are more servicemen deployed, doing more fighting, so there’s naturally going to be more casualties.” There’s just one problem: according to The Brookings Institution (bottom of page 5), 113 soldiers died in the seven weeks prior to the surge (in Iraq), and 116 in the seven weeks after the surge. To me, this suggests the increase in fatalities could be due to the actions of the enemy, rather than our troops presenting more targets.

    Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Mr. Bush continues to assert that we’re making progress… that we’re going to “win” this “war.” I think he actually believes it too… that’s what I find so troubling. Lots of folks accuse Bush of lying, and I may have said it too… but I’m not really sure. Part of me thinks he really believes what he says. Part of me thinks he ignores evidence that runs contrary to his worldview. If he’s right, then the evidence must be wrong – or so he thinks. And personally, I’d sleep better if I thought he was just lying. More and more it sounds like the ravings of a “true believer,” or a delusional fanatic. At this point, who’s fanaticism is more dangerous – our own political leader, or the ones we’ve been fighting? I’m afraid the difference may be narrowing every day. What’s worse? This arrangement of dueling fanatics serves to fuel each other.

    Making matters worse, the Democratic leadership in congress finds itself too inept, apprehensive, or both, to do anything about it. They seemingly want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be against the war in Iraq, but they don’t seem to want to do anything which might make them in any way responsible. This is either a political calculation (geared towards the next election – which may back fire), or a true act of cowardice; borne of a fear that the consequences of their actions (in an admittedly volatile region) could land them in private sector employ (or early retirement).

  • Our health

    If you’ve been paying attention to the news in the U.S. you know health care is on people’s minds. Talk has been spreading almost as fast as the ranks of the uninsured/underinsured.

    Michael Moore has fanned the flames of debate, spawning talk about the universal coverage offered by our fellow industrialized nations. We hear lots of stories in the U.S. about Canadians crossing our border to avoid waiting in line for certain tests or procedures. The garden-variety opponent of universal coverage brings it up constantly. ”I would never stand for a system that made me wait for a test I needed.”

    That’s easy for a fictitious couple to say in a televised attack add, or for a healthy middle class couple with (what they think is) good coverage (which they’ve never really had to use). What I want to know is this: how many Canadians would trade their system for ours? How many of those folks coming to the U.S. for a procedure or test would really choose to ditch their universal system in favor of ours?

    I’ve heard a few anecdotes which suggest there aren’t many.

    We bemoan big government, but could it really do worse than the quagmire we’ve got now? Almost every time I’ve had to deal with my insurance providers, I’ve yearned for the relative tranquility of the lines at the DMV.