Flexibility

We met a couple yesterday who said their life's word is "flexibility."  They stole it from us -- more accurately, from Karen.

I've been thinking about moving to New Zealand.  People who know us may say, yes, no surprise, they've been in Virginia for 8 years.  They were in North Carolina 8 years, and Missouri 6 years, maybe it's time to move.

Actually, we're finally settling in, getting our little farm underway with productive gardens and livestock.  It feels comfortable here, usually.

Then I read a book like Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille, about a group of rich and "powerful" men who implement a plan to invoke the U.S. government's imbedded response to an Islamic fundamentalist attack on a U.S. city.  The response, with the code name "Wild Fire," has been set up to "automatically" launch nuclear attacks on Muslim world centers.  The President has only a 30-minute window to stop Wild Fire.  What does this group of men do?  They place four suitcase nuclear bombs in two American cities to fake an Islamic nuclear attack and provoke Wild Fire.

Of course, our hero, John Cory, and his wife, Kate Mayfield, save the moment, but John warns that it's going to happen one of these days.

I'm not sure New Zealand would offer a real refuge from the madness, but it might be as good as it gets.  Maybe we could find a farm for sale at a reasonable price isolated somewhere on the South Island.  A couple times a year we could visit Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland for some live music and city "culture."  Friends and family could fly in for month-long visits, stay in a bach somewhere on the 3000 acres we aren't using, and help us harvest beyond-organic crops and milk the goats and donkeys.

Virginia says, "When the bombs fall, we could hoe away until the breezes kill us."

Homeland Security

When local teenagers found a radio-telephone left by a public safety employee in the bathroom of a gasoline station, they tried it out, resulting in vehicles rushing to a phantom emergency. Rather than charging them with felonies, I wanted to reward them for pointing out a serious glitch in "homeland security." Recent reports have disclosed that our country's air traffic control system is outmoded and does not provide real-time data; if I remember correctly, it tracks planes twelve seconds after they've been.

Eight years after 9/11/01, homeland security remains elusive. I feel as if we've checked our brains into high school lockers. When I see the fancy new emergency vehicles purchased with federal funds, I think of the Mustangs teenage boys covet and crash. If the things last, they'll be outmoded in three years.

A particularly important failure sticks out. How can we expect to be "safe" if we depend on distant supplies for the basics of everyday life? It's been reported that the average food item on an American table has traveled 1500 miles. If you think that's normal, let me mention that the same average for Italian tables is less than 50 miles. Our number one priority should have been, and should be, developing local and regional resources, not fighting civil wars overseas (Virginia whispers, "could any war be 'civil?'"). We need plans that focus on satisfying basic needs with products available nearby, including food, water and energy. In the event of an emergency, the "battle" will be lost if many of us are thirsty, hungry and power-less.