“Can I visit a farm in Vietnam?” I asked my friend Greg Farris when we were planning our overlapping trips to Vietnam.
“No problem. My wife Chau is planning to visit her relatives who are farmers and you can come along.” Greg was also a GI in Vietnam in the 1960s. He married a Vietnamese co-worker and they have lived in California for decades.
Our cat population on the farm currently stands at two, down sharply from a baker's dozen since two years ago. The short haired female’s name is Baby, a distant descendant of a female we received from some neighbors back in the ’80s.
So I’m kind of thinking of this column in terms of numbers—number of days until things happen, number of days since something has happened, number of any random thing that comes to my mind....
The latest expression of political smoke and mirrors seeped into the national crevice last week with the claim by presidential candidates John McCain and Hillary Clinton that what U.S. consumers need to ease their economic pain is a vacation from the federal gasoline tax over the summer months.
This bold initiative, as it turns out, would save the average consumer a whopping $28 on their gasoline bill. Meanwhile, the move would drain federal funding for road construction and maintenance by some $9 billion dollars.
Coming on the heels of Bush’s ill-conceived “economic stimulus package” that will provide a token tax refund for every taxpayer, this latest charade makes perfect sense. Let’s waste more tax money by giving the illusion of tax relief.
One of the active presidential candidate has called this bluff for what it is—a political parlor game for the sake of a percentage point or two in the polls. Mr. Obama, you may have earned our vote, not just our appreciation. —DR
I haven’t been to many college president inaugurations in my time—in fact, I don’t recall attending any until this past Friday night.
The inauguration of Tabor College’s 13th president, Jules Glanzer, was a most impressive evening and it didn’t seem at all like it took an hour and 40 minutes.
The thought suddenly occurred to me sometime last week that this was it; my high school career was coming to an abrupt close without my permission and there was nothing I could do about it.
I’ve been living this year as if it wasn’t actually going to be the end of anything. Yes, I’ve been counting down the days until summer vacation, but then in another three months I would be walking right back through the doors of Hillsboro High School. A fifth-year senior.
“It seems there is something about anonymity which brings out the worst in us. If you doubt that, come with me into the often-weird world of Internet chat rooms and message boards.”
—Pat Sajak
The collective message of this graduation season will be something like “…and just remember that you can be anything you want to be.” And it’s not just true for the graduates. You too can be anything, or anyone, you want to be…on the Internet.
Opinion 
