Global Warming

Is it just me or is it really warming up? I moved here 40 years ago and was struck by how cold the winters were then. This week the forecast is for rain and upper 40/s to 50. Gardens weren't safe to put out until June and were closed down by frost the first week in September. Now you can put things out safely by the middle of May or earlier and many things last well to October. Unless I miss my guess, Snowshoe as a ski resort will need to retool in a very serious and clever way to survive. We as a County must realize we are in a big running river of change and that it is no longer possible to survive without thinking and acting in the big picture. The world economy is in trouble, the country is in serious debt. Housing crashed and will take decades to come back. There is no one "saving" industry here to pick up the problems. Each person will have to take more of his/her personal responsibility for the outcome of their life. Education, job skills, work ethic are mandatory personal assets to even survive let alone succeed. I can think of several businesses I could start right now in the county but can/t because there are not enough reliable workers; people who can show up with work ethic, skills and trustworthiness.
All the hub-bub created about drilling and that any resolutions or action would hurt "industry" and that the Commission was anti-business was a gross exaggeration of government's power to do anything overall to effect this problem. Success tomorrow will require each person to pull his oar, nothing less.

Winters definitely have become milder since we moved to Pocahontas County in the mid-70's. For the first fifteen years or so, we could not raise peach trees because the buds would freeze back on days that at some point every winter would go 15 degrees below zero. We had sub 20 degree below zero on occasions. Several periods of zero every winter. The past ten years or so, maybe it hits zero every other year for a day or two, but not lower. At least that is our experience. Of course, last winter it got cold and stayed cold, but not bitter cold. And as you mention, Martin, June and August frosts are a thing of the past (which is welcome), and even May and September frosts, which were almost automatic, are much less frequent.

Of course, I am one of the minority in this country that believes in the consensus of science that human-caused global warming is a most serious crisis that we are now entered into. This vocal majority of climate deniers, along with "business as usual" corporations that profit off our energy addiction (such as the West Virginia's coal god), influence our public policy makers into a status quo that dooms our planet on an increasingly warm and unstable climate trajectory.

You mention education, Martin. How about some good science education? And character education?

--Allen Johnson

Of course, you are both right about education. But here we are again in glowing generalities with nobody ready to deal in cement and dollars. Folks, even County Commissioners, have been heard to disparage 'book learnin'. There is often an anti-intellectual view espoused and certainly nobody wants to spend money on equipment or teachers of high quality or innovations. Better we should put policemen in the schools to scare the kids into submission. That's the goal, eh?

It is easy to understand the value of science education. Character education is harder to define: I think it means learning to read and think critically, somewhere beyond the Fox News mentality. I think it is slogging through a novel of classic hard-to-choose between good and evil, learning to read poetry, some real history with all its real drama and often tarnished heroes. It is learning to write well, to wrestle with the gray areas of life and to define values. Old fashined civics.

We want our teachers to do that while we accuse them of being lazy, feeding at the public trough and move to cut their pay and deny them job safety when they have the courage to demand standards from their students. We don't reward excellence; we reward mediocrity. Failure is hard to define. It is a complex problem, once we get into it and few want to mess with it. Understandable.

Have you noticed? Everybody thinks he can be a teacher, a judge, a psychologist. Most of those same people never say they could be a flight attendant, a butcher or even a low level computer tech. The former takes years of training, internships, review. The latter, not.

Education is expensive and time consuming. It is the job of the community as well as the school, which is the arm of the community.

So, Martin, do you regularly take a class or two through the court house to explain the function of law in our land? Do you explain the value of using law rather than bullying or 'settling it yourself' to kids? Distribute an age appropriate story to illustrate your point and elicit responses from the group that is really an exploration of values?

If you do, Hurrah! Every barrister in town should do it.

What? No money for a bus to bring the kids to the Court House? See what I mean?

Who tells the kids how dropping out of school dooms them to poor income? Who tells our community that kids with pre school ed excel the rest of their lives, end up with better educations down the line, drop out less and make more money in their lives over time without spending time in jail, thereby costing us tax payers less money. Pre-school saves money. Who knows that?

OK, time to get off my soap box.