|
The
High Life of Summer
|
| This summer has seen the stock market sink faster than a
stock broker without a parachute, and with it the dreams of
many an investor who was betting on that last quarterly report
to be the best before he sold out and high-tailed it to Arizona. |
| And as stock prices fell, this summer has seen temperatures
rise higher than they have in years. And along with rising
temperatures came higher electric bills, higher water bills,
and more frustration just trying to stay cool and healthy.
Let's face it it: It's been miserable. |
| This summer also has seen the general malaise of the entire
economy which headed south to Uncle Joe's Miami house to wait
out the crooked CEOs, the overly ambitious accountants and
the greedy investors. A recovering economy is still enjoying
the pool at Uncle Joe's, but I understand it's packing its
bags to come back home. |
| Bankrupt WorldCom, questionable AOL and troubled Arthur
Andersen all shadow the Herndon and Reston communities where
many of those employees live. |
| Some economists are scaling back their predictions that
growth will be about 3.5 percent annually, while government
economists say that growth will pick up again should the stock
market rebound. Confidence is not exuding from Washington.
However, politics is, as usual. |
| Also this summer, former representative James A. Traficant
Jr., the Ohio Democrat, was expelled from Congress after being
convicted of corruption charges. This week he was sentenced
to eight years in prison. He was charged with accepting bribes
and kickbacks and was convicted of tax evasion and racketeering.
Makes some of presidents look like saints. |
| This summer has been so cock-eyed that even tearing down
the old Citgo gas station on the corner of Elden and Station
streets was pushed back at least a half-week until the demolition
permits were in order. Will we ever in our lifetime get that
piece of property cleaned up? Will the Phoenix ever rise from
the ashes of a gas station abandoned 17 years ago? |
| But with all the downers of the Summer of 2002, hope still
survives during this summer of great discontent. |
| One of the greatest of all achievements I have read about
this summer, or for many summers, was the rescue and survival
of the nine coal miners in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Think, for a moment, about the odds those nine men and their
rescuers faced. |
| They were trapped more than 240 feet underground; they had
little food or drinkable water; it was black as coal down
there; 50 million gallons of water were rushing into the four-foot-high
burial chamber where the miners found a place to hold on¤it
was only a matter of time before water filled the cavity,
if hypothermia from the 52-degree water didn't get them first.
The miners had accidentally breached a wall into an old mine
filled with water. |
| Their only communications to the surface, where dozens of
men rushed to save them while a weary nation watched, were
weak tappings on air pipes which the rescuers could barely
hear. After a while even the tappings stopped. |
| But it was enough for the rescuers. They started drilling
a large, 2-1/2 foot rescue shaft through 240 feet of rock
when the drill bit broke off about 40 feet down. The men in
the chamber heard the drilling stop and wondered, only for
a moment, if the men above had given up. But being miners,
they know the rescuers would stop for nothing. |
| Success seemed unlikely. Time was the enemy. History was
not on their side. But hope was. Hope was all they had. Hope
is what they lived on. |
| "We still believe there are miners alive," David
Hess, Pennsylvania secretary of environmental protection was
quoted as saying during the rescue attempt. "This is
a very tricky and dangerous situation, and I don't want to
raise expectations." |
| "Coal miners are a special breed. If anybody can get
them out a coal miner can," said a mine official. |
| The rescuers forged ahead, fished out the broken drill bit
from the 30-inch rescue hole, and drilled the rest of the
way into the tiny chamber, where nine cold, weak and grateful
coal miners waited to be taken out one by one through the
small opening. |
| It's not often you hear of miners being rescued against
those odds, and it is because of that we could hear a grateful
nation's sign of relief. |
| The families and other miners cried. |
| Hope had won over despair. And this long, hot, troubled
summer finally had something to cheer about. |
| Hope springs eternal, and that is why this summer¤ "if
God's willing and the creek don't rise"¤will soon only
be one more chapter in our history books. |
| And that's Our Town this week. |
