12 December 2002

Happy Holidays

The North Koreans are opening up the reactor for the production of enriched uranium at Yong Byon, the one we were in Pyongyang to talk about. I remember being hot-boxed by the Northerners the first night, tired, pushed hard for concessions after dinner, our phone calls back to America from the panelled office monitored so we could keep no secrets from them. The North today says that this is in direct response to our halt in oil shipments. The commentators say this is a way to make us talk to them, since the reactor could not produce power for years, if at all. But it can produce weapons grade uranium.

Trent Lott is backpeddling furiously from his comment at Strom Thurmon's retirement party that the Dixiecrats should have been elected in 1948. There is universal sentiment that the Seate Majority Leader should read a newspaper and figure out what year this is. Even Thurmond doesn't think that. The only 100-year-old-man ever to serve in the Senate was busy putting shrimp and meatballs from the buffet in his pockets. The Senator is famous for that, his staff having to replace the suit jackets from the gravy stains on the pocket.

Out in the North Arabian Sea, there was some embarrassed coughing and the 15 Scud missiles hidden under the cement bags on an unflagged mercant ship bound from North Korea to Yemen were determined to be perfectly legal goods, just like something bought from the WalMart, and were permitted to procede to delivery in Aden. Just defenseive systems, all papers in order, said the State Department.

The European Space Agency just threw $600 Euros into the Atlantic on top of an Arianne 5 booster, a huge set-back for their space program. The American Atlas-5 and Delta-4 work perfectly fine, so there is a crisis in confidence. The space launch crowd is very unforgiving, and satellite builders are reluctant to put their babies on top of rockets that explode.

Ethiopia is bracing for a famine reportedly as bad as the one in 1986. Connie Francis and Dionne Warwick are having birthdays, which is preferable to the alternative, and there is a new report of a link between the acquisition of the potent VX nerve gas by an affiliate extremist group of al Qaida in northern Iraq, a smoking gun which could rebut the 12,000 pages of documents Saddam's people gave us last week..

National Public Radio reports that the mean age at which American women are bearing first children has risen to 24.6 years from around 21.

I pondered on that, since the demographics are significant. In Alabama, Trent Lott's home state, the first child is born at the Mother's average age of 19. But elsewhere, women are wiating until their 30s or later. I am groggy this morning. The rain has stopped. The water has caried away most of the remaining snow, but it is chill and the skies are still gray. I am happy that the frantic swirl of activity last night has passed. I wrapped the gifts that needed to go in the mail and found suitable boxes to put them in. I taped them all together with thick tape and dashed off to the Post Office. It was open in the evening, part of a program they are running to expand office hours and carve back market share. Have you thoguht about it lately? It costs almost 40 cents for a stamp, almost a buck to mail two letters. No wonder people are paying bills on-line.

Waiting in line, a guy noticed my sweat shirt with the words "Petoskey, Michigan" on the front, "Founded in 1895.".

"Oh, did you used to summer there?" he said. I looked at him. He was a trim guy with wiry hair. He was waiting for special service from the window, standing next to an attractive blonde with a carton full of Christmas cards. There was energy in the air, all the counter positions open, boxes moving from customer to bins in back.

"Yeah" I said, balancing a box on my hip.

"I'm from Traverse City" he said, with the emphasis on the word "from."

"Don't give me the T.C. attitude" I said, softening the remark with a smile. "I am from Petoskey, not a summer person."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I used to Ski Patrol at Otsego"

"Far out. Keith the owner of Otsego was my room-mate in Ann Arbor." I said that's amazing, I went to Michigan, too, and what year did you graduate? And did you know that Keith is trying to sell the club?

"1975, Architecture. Yeah, with all the oil and gas money from the Pigeon River property, he probably doens't need the hassle."

"Yeah, but he wants to keep the golf course. I was LS&A, '73. Those were some pretty crazy times."

"I'll say" and he grinned. "They used to have plate glass windows on the bank..."

"Yeah, but they got tired of replacing them after every riot. I showed my son when he got there as a Freshman. I don't think he understood."

The blonde moved her box of cards and said "I spent four years in Bloomfield Hills." She gestured as the green parka she wore. "This is my Dad's parka from there."

"You need a decent jacket in Michigan" I said. The lady waved at me from the next available window and me and my boxes lurched forward. I looked back and said:

"Merry Christmas." I said. I completely forgot to amend it to the more correct "Happy Holidays." I must have been thinking I was somewhere else.