David's Anthem Journal

My Last (Unpublished) Newspaper Column

After writing 44 published columns for the Henderson Home News and other weekly newspapers of the Greenspun Media Group, I have tendered my resignation as a columnist. The reason boils down to creative differences over some of the subjects I have chosen to write about. The following column, which was to be published this week or next, suggests reasons why Hillary Clinton may choose New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson as her running mate if she is nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate. My editor, however, suggeested that it reads as if I were endorsing a Clinton- Richardson ticket, whereas my response was that it was an analysis of an emerging potential political reality. In the end, of course, the publisher's management makes the final call, which they did. So I have decided to move on. I greatly enjoyed my time as a Greenspun columnist, and certainly appreciated the generally warm responses my columns received from within and outside of our SCA community.
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Your challenge for today is to guess what the following men have in common: Frank Knox, John Bricker, William Miller, Thomas Marshall, Joseph Robinson and John Sparkman.

All of them were on Republican or Democratic tickets as candidates for vice president of the U.S. during the 20th century. And the fact that most of them are long forgotten points to an important political reality: It is not necessarily the celebrity or accomplishments of the VP candidate that qualify him, or her in the case of Geraldine Ferraro, for this high office. Rather, what usually gets them onto the ticket is the expectation that they will complement their running mates by virtue of geographic diversity and their ability to deliver a dedicated support group of voters who might not be enamored of the top person on the ticket.

Can a person campaigning for president actually be positioning himself for vice president at the same time? Well, you’d never get a presidential candidate to admit it, because the choice of a running mate will always rest with the presidential nominee. But Internet bloggers and some newspaper columnists are speculating that this is exactly what one candidate, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, may be aiming for.

Richardson has built one of his most active campaign organizations in Nevada and has publicly indicated that he views our state as his best chance to increase his national visibility with favorable results in January’s Nevada Democratic caucuses. This could put him in line to become Hillary Clinton’s running mate if Sen. Clinton captures her party’s nomination.

If Clinton wins the nomination, here are some reasons why I am willing to go out on a limb and predict that she will choose Gov. Richardson as her running mate.

The first reason is geographic diversity. Clinton represents New York State and will be strong in the northeast, as well as other regions. Richardson is a popular governor of a state in the increasingly influential southwest, where it is thought that states such as Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada could tip the vote in the Democrats’ favor next year.

The next reason is ethnicity. Richardson is half Hispanic, the son of a Caucasian American father and a Mexican mother. Though born in California, he grew up in Mexico City and has always had special appeal for Hispanic Americans and as an advocate for Native Americans. My expectation is that if Richardson is on the ticket, his popularity will spill over to other racial and ethnic groups who see themselves as moving rapidly into the mainstream of American political life.

Our increasing American diversity can no longer be ignored. Statistics released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that non-whites now make up a majority in nearly one-third of the nation’s most populous counties, and nearly one in every 10 of the nation’s 3,141 counties has a population that is more than 50 percent minority. I wrote several months ago of a major campaign being mounted by a Spanish-language television network to register Hispanic voters, and this demographic would likely gravitate toward a presidential ticket including Gov. Richardson.

Another reason why a nominated candidate Clinton is likely to partner with Richardson is his closeness to the Clinton family. Not just a faceless bureaucrat, Richardson served as Pres. Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, leaving that post when he was named Secretary of the Department of Energy. And he served as an international troubleshooter, negotiating hostage releases with Iraq, North Korea and the Sudan. Due in part to these activities, he has been nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

To say that Richardson has been a popular governor would be an understatement; when reelected New Mexico governor, he captured nearly 70 percent of the vote, including 40 percent of Republicans.

The bottom line is that Richardson’s credentials are unusually impressive for a potential vice-presidential candidate, placing him several cuts above the type of person typically selected by a presidential nominee.

I am not advocating the nomination of any particular candidate for president. What I am stating, however, is that if current front-runner Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, I believe she will select Bill Richardson as her running mate.

The advice of those who have Sen. Clinton’s ear may have a lot to do with this outcome. Consider, for instance, the recent words of Nevada University System Chancellor Jim Rogers, who is Nevada Co-Chairman of the Clinton campaign: “I would love to see Hillary as the candidate for president and Bill Richardson as vice president,” Rogers said. “For me, that would be close to perfect.”

Newspaper Column Published May 17, 2007: A Few Things On My Mind

This is my column appearing on May 17, 2007, in the South Valley News and other weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group. The column below includes one short item that is not in the publshed version.

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Pull up a cozy chair and I’ll tell you a few things that have been on my mind lately.

We’ve been pretty lucky here in my adopted hometown of Henderson, a fast-growing city with a richly deserved reputation for being well managed and progressive. That’s why I’m troubled when a local public official, though certainly not guilty of any crime, chooses to place himself in a position where the label, “appearance of impropriety,” seems to be stuck to his forehead.

The official I’m referring to is Henderson Police Chief Richard Perkins, a career officer who advanced through the ranks over the past 23 years until he was named Chief last July. But Perkins also had a distinguished political career, finishing as Speaker of the Nevada Assembly when he retired after 14 years of service in that body.

Being chief of a major metropolitan police force would be the culmination of most law-enforcement careers, and Chief Perkins is amply rewarded for reaching that pinnacle, pulling down an annual salary of more than $157,000. With a comfortable income and the respect of his community, what more could a public servant ask for?

Well, in Chief Perkins’ case this is apparently not enough. Not content with being Chief, he has started a consulting company that we’re told has him doing business and lobbying his friends in the legislature on behalf of clients whose names he will not release to the public.

Call me old-fashioned, but I want a handsomely paid police chief who is available 24/7 if an emergency arises, not off somewhere serving his unnamed clients. What I see in this is a man who is not able to make the clean break with part of his past –his legislative past- and devote himself at all times to his police work. It is hard for me to believe, with all the challenges facing this expanding community, that there isn’t enough police work to keep Chief Perkins busy. And it is the appearance of impropriety that worries me most, as it should worry Chief Perkins.

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While a gaggle of Republicans and Democrats crisscross the country in pursuit of their parties’ presidential nominations, a Wall Street Journal story last week told of a rising movement, still flying below the radar screens of almost everyone who is not Hispanic, that is likely to have a great influence on the outcome of the 2008 elections. The story reports that Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcast network in the U.S., is in the early stages of a massive campaign to encourage millions of eligible legal permanent residents, the majority of whom are of Latin American origin, to become U.S. citizens and register to vote.

After the Univision-sponsored citizenship drive began several months ago in the Los Angeles area, the number of citizenship applications more than doubled over the same period last year, and the L.A. District Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said she has never seen anything like this in her 39-year career.

As Univision prepares to extend the citizenship campaign to Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix and other cities, the Wall Street Journal story quotes the director of the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Research Center as predicting that the surge in naturalizations will benefit Democrats at least twice as much as Republicans.

A pollster who specializes in ethnic markets says that if the campaign is successful in registering Hispanic voters, at least four states in our region that went Republican by narrow margins in the 2004 presidential election could swing to the Democrats: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

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I had the pleasure of attending the grand opening of the new Ovation Lounge at Green Valley Ranch last week. This handsome 500-seat performance venue pretty much completes the list of amenities that were missing when the resort opened more than five years ago. The tiered seating, which includes chairs that can be removed for dancing on the spacious floor in front of the stage, offers perfect sight lines from anywhere in the room. GVR’s general manager Bob Finch has done an excellent job of bringing the resort up to par with the best facilities on the Strip.

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Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but am I the only one caught off guard by the Postal Service’s postage increase this week? I had to run out and buy some two-cent stamps, but I do like the fact that the new 41-cent stamps don’t carry a reference to their value on the face of the stamps. The plan is that you can buy as many of these stamps as you want, and you will still be able to use them, with no extra postage required, when future price increases are enacted.

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When is a “lifetime warranty” not a lifetime warranty? I acted on one of my pet peeves recently by calling several local branches of national muffler- and auto-repair chains to ask about their advertisements claiming lifetime warranties on the work they do. Without exception, their warranties are good only for as long as you own the vehicle. So the “lifetime” they refer to is not that of the customer or of the vehicle itself, but only for the lifetime of your ownership period. “What if I want the repair because I am selling my vehicle to someone as soon as the repair is made?" I asked. The answer was the same from every company: “Your warranty ends as soon as you sell the vehicle.” Seems rather strange that these companies don’t trust their work enough to guarantee that their repairs won’t fail, no matter who owns the vehicle.

Newspaper Column Published May 3, 2007: A Little Ditty About The Jingle Queen

This is my column appearing May 3 in the South Valley News and other weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group. The subject of the column is a resident of Sun City Anthem.
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One of the most popular and successful singers in music history lives right here in Henderson, but it’s likely you’ve never heard of her.

That’s because she made her mark in an aspect of the business where the singers are anonymous, but the subjects they sing about are not. Literally billions of people throughout the world have listened to her over the years, almost every time they turned on their televisions or radios.

Her name is Linda November, and she is known as the “Jingle Queen” after having sung on more than 22,000 commercials. At one time, she had more than 700 jingles playing simultaneously on national television and radio. In case you question jingle singing as a way to earn a living, Linda estimates that she has earned more than $10 million in royalties over her career.

Just as we often associate certain popular songs with memorable moments in our lives, we also tend to recall some of the great commercials that have made us laugh, shed a tear, or otherwise move us emotionally. Invariably, Linda had a hand –or more accurately a voice- in many of them.

According to advertising experts, the number one jingle of all time featured a single word, repeated over and over, as a cute orange tabby sang “Meow, Meow, Meow, Meow” in support of Ralston Purina’s Meow Mix cat food. Those Meows were voiced by Linda, and the Meow Mix commercials alone made her a wealthy woman.

Do you remember the famous commercial starring Pittsburgh Steelers football player “Mean” Joe Greene, who exchanges his football jersey with a young fan who offers him a bottle of Coca-Cola? As the music swells and viewers get teary-eyed, Linda sings about “A Coke and a smile.”

Then there are the jingles that touch the soul in ways that result in their being recorded as pop songs. A classic you’re sure to remember features Linda and a chorus singing “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”

Name the advertiser and the odds are great that Linda has sung their praises. The list is endless: General Electric; Dentyne; Greyhound Bus Lines; Chevrolet; Burger King; Wendy’s; McDonald’s; AT&T; Dr. Pepper; Smucker’s Jams; Perrier; Diet Pepsi; Kleenex; Heinz; Campbell Soups; Colgate’ Prudential. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It didn’t start out that way, as Linda’s original aspirations were much loftier than singing commercial jingles. At four years old, her parents were amazed when she heard a relative play “Mississippi Mud” on the piano, then sat down at the keyboard and flawlessly played the song. By five years old, she had started piano lessons. “But my piano career ended in my teens,” she says, “when I decided it was more important to have long nails than playing the piano.”

Blessed with a warm soprano voice, New Yorker Linda decided a career as a singer was within her reach, and one day, at just 17 years old, she was honored to audition for legendary composer Richard Rogers, wowing him with a rendition of one of his own compositions. Rogers predicted a successful singing career for her, but suggested that the chunky Linda lose some weight and alter her appearance to look less ethnic.

“That advice may have cost me a Broadway career,” Linda says. “I dropped dozens of pounds and got a nose job. But shortly after that I auditioned for ‘Fiddler on the Roof.’ They loved my voice, but turned me down because they said I didn’t look Jewish enough.”

How did Broadway aspirations lead instead to a lucrative career in jingles? “My manager had been sending me on singing gigs at industrial shows for big companies,” she says. “These were like regular Broadway production shows, though on a smaller scale, and they often featured songs and lyrics by well-known composers, which helped me to build a reputation in professional circles.”

In 1964, at age 20, Linda was hired for her first commercial jingle, a spot for FAB detergent, which ran on national radio for 13 weeks. “When my check arrived, and I saw it was for $18,000, I knew I was on to something,” she says.

Linda became so popular as a jingle singer that the money was rolling in. “It would be a slow week if I pulled in $70,000 in residuals,” she says. “I was part of a group who called ourselves ‘The Golden Dozen,’” she says. “We were six girls and six boys who frequently sang together. The agencies knew they could call on us and we would show up at the studio on time, record the jingles, and usually be out of there within 90 minutes.”

Though commercials were her bread and butter, Linda has also appeared onstage as a “group singer” with many great artists, including Frank Sinatra, Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, Barbara Streisand, Tony Orlando, Engelbert Humperdinck and Frankie Valli. And these days she remains active as a member of The Cast Inc., a local organization made up of entertainers, musicians and non-entertainers who support the Las Vegas community and lend a helping hand to performing artists through assistance with their career opportunities.

I asked Linda if “November” is a stage name. “Not on your life,” she said. “My family originated in Austria, where they were calendar makers. Somewhere along the way they adopted the name ‘November’ from that month of the year. As far as I can tell, everyone in the world named November is a relative of mine.”

Newspaper Column Published April 5, 2007: Thoughts on National Health Care

This is my column appearing on April 5, 2007, in the South Valley News and other weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group.
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We’re already seeing the effects of moving the 2008 Nevada Democratic caucus up near the front of the line, as the parade of presidential candidates into our state is well under way. Two weeks ago, for example, a national showcase was provided for the candidates, who trooped into Las Vegas for a union-sponsored forum on health care.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject lately, because I am only a year away from being launched into the Medicare system. And I like what I’m seeing, as Medicare, like Social Security, seems to be an example of a government-administered program that, for the most part, actually works.

Judging by what the candidates are saying, at least the Democratic candidates, the national debate on health care will play a larger role in this presidential race than ever before, with the shortcomings in our health care system being characterized as a national crisis.

Some facts about the American health care system seem to be going unchallenged: More than 45 million have no health insurance. At $7,100 per capita, we spend more than twice as much on health care as any other industrialized nation. We have the same life expectancy as the residents of Costa Rica, though Costa Ricans spend less than 1/16th per capita of what we spend on health care. Despite all the money we spend on health care, the United States ranks only 26th in the world in life expectancy and 28th in infant mortality.

Remember the concept of universal health care coverage, a Hillary Clinton proposal widely thought to have been a major contributor to the Republican Congressional sweep of 1994? Well, it’s back, in one flavor or another, and with it come words that cause fear and loathing among insurance companies and social conservatives: single-payer national health insurance.

Socialized medicine, you say? Just a back-door way of subverting the American free-enterprise system?

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) is a nonprofit organization of more than 14,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support national health insurance. The group advocates a single-payer system, similar in structure to Social Security and Medicare, in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing while the delivery of care remains largely private.

PNHP argues that we spend more on health care while getting less than the rest of the industrialized world because we are saddled with a patchwork system of for-profit payers. By their very structures, private insurers waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care, such as billing, sales, marketing, and excessive executive pay and benefits. Additional costs are incurred when doctors and hospitals must maintain expensive administrative staffs to deal with these bureaucracies. All in all, PNHP says, a single-payer system could save more than $350 billion per year, enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we do now.

One myth that PNHP works to counter is the claim that national health insurance amounts to socialized medicine, which it cites as an example of how opponents of the concept distort the public debate. The group explains that socialized medicine is a system in which doctors and hospitals work for the government and draw salaries from the government, a system that no responsible advocate seems to have endorsed. Under virtually all single-payer national health insurance proposals, the government would pay for care delivered by the private sector, similar to the way Medicare works in this country. Doctors in private practice would be paid on a fee-for-services basis from government funds, and the government would have no involvement in the management of medical practices or hospitals.

In response to claims that the proposed system would be just another bureaucracy, advocates of the proposal note that the United States already has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world, with over 24 percent of every health care dollar swallowed up by paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, and other non-clinical costs. They also point out that that the Medicare program operates with just 3 percent overhead, compared to 15 to 25 percent overhead at a typical HMO.

What about the red-hot issue of keeping drug prices under control? Well, having all patients under a single system can lead to a lot of clout. The Veterans Administration, for example, can purchase drugs for a 40 percent discount because it buys in bulk, and it helps explain why drug prices in many other countries are lower than ours.

Even more attractive, in this writer’s eyes, is the fact that PNHP suggests that all medically necessary care would be covered, including doctor visits, hospital care, prescriptions, mental health services, nursing home care, rehab, home care, eye care and dental care.

The question of single-payer national health insurance is much more complex than can be addressed in the limited space of this column. Part of the discussion, for instance, must include a financing method that might include a payroll tax on employers and a small income tax on individuals, though this is likely to be less than both groups are now paying in health care costs.

What is most promising about the proposal is that we may now see the intellectual side of a debate that was so easily dismissed in the partisan political atmosphere of the early 1990s. For the sake of our uninsured and underinsured millions, it is a debate that must take place.

An Unpublished Column: You CAN Get There From Here

During my two years or so of writing columns for the weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group, I have occasionally submitted one that my editors thought unsuitable for the editorial page where the columns regularly appear. The reason usually is an editorial judgment that the column appears to be more of an ad for a business than a straight article. The following column, which was scheduled for publication earlier this month, was deemed to fall into that category, though I considered it more of a human interest story that deserved publication. As a tribute to the wonderful lady who made herself available for the lengthy interview that resulted in this column, I want to share it with my blog readers.

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There is one thing that anyone driving around the Las Vegas Valley will eventually want: directions. This rapidly growing region is adding new streets and byways at a breakneck pace, and it is inevitable that you will need a reliable source to tell you how to get to streets that didn’t even exist as recently as six months or a year ago.

Maps are a handy reference tool, but they are rarely updated quickly enough to help drivers needing the most current information. And I, for one, get headaches trying to make out the tiny streets and words that appear on most maps.

I like to be told verbally how to get from Point A to Point B. Let’s say, for example, that I wanted to locate Roy Rogers Drive in Las Vegas. Rather than trying to find that street on a map, I’d rather be told this: Go North on U.S. 95; take the Craig exit and bear right; go 5 streets and turn right onto Torrey Pines; go 2 streets and turn right onto Mira Mesa; take the first right onto Rubidoux; go 2 more streets and turn left onto Roy Rogers Drive.

Back in 1975, when there weren’t nearly as many streets to learn about, a cab driver named John Caldwell, who had written directions for every area street on index cards, thought it was a great idea when his dispatcher suggested he compile all his directions into book form. Thus was born the Official Directions Street Guide, a book that provides directions, in narrative form considerably more condensed than the sample given above, to every street in Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas and Boulder City.

In the mid-1980s, Maureen Cooper, a teacher of special-needs children, was working on weekends as a bookkeeper for a florist who had acquired the Directions Street Guide from John Caldwell. “When I learned about the Street Guide,” Maureen says, “I realized it was a great idea and wished I had thought of it myself.”

Wishes sometimes become reality, and Maureen jumped at the chance to buy the Street Guide when it was offered for sale in 1990. “Though I’ve owned the business for fewer than 20 years,” she says, “things were pretty primitive when I got started. I had to buy a computer and learn how to use it. I used fire department maps to help me identify new streets, and I constantly badgered municipal officials for information about subdivisions and streets that were going in.”

Things have really changed for Maureen since she went into business. “After four years of publishing the Guide,” she says, “I was able to retire from teaching and generate enough income to do this full-time.”

Maureen has only one employee: herself. “Thanks to modern technology, I can do it alone, though it is a full work week. I receive my information on new streets and developments by e-mail from all the cities, so I don’t have to chase them for it. In most cases, I can enter the street information directly into my database without having to personally visit the street.”

Some streets do require personal visits, she says, especially if they are in new developments where she must determine if the streets are in gated communities and need to be identified as gated in the Guide. “There’s enough driving involved that I cover anywhere from 10,000 to 14,000 miles a year,” she notes.

The growth in size of the Directions Street Guide mirrors the tremendous growth in the Valley. “The 1997 edition had 343 pages,” Maureen says, “and the 2007 edition has nearly 700 pages.”

She also says she has never had to advertise. “Without advertising, I can keep the cost of the Guide fairly low -$26.95 for the current edition- so that working people who can most benefit from it, such as cabbies and delivery drivers, can afford to buy it. At first I sold it by word of mouth, but I have gradually built a small network of sales outlets, 40 places such as Borders Books and stores that provide mailing and printing services. The first year I owned the business, I published 2,000 copies and sold 1,400. I should sell close to 15,000 copies this year.”

Taking advantage of the latest technology, Maureen has established a Web site for the Directions Guide, which allows her to offer quarterly updates, for a fee, after annual publication of the Guide in September. The site has also allowed her to expand online coverage to Mesquite, Pahrump and other areas, and the Guide information can now be downloaded onto personal devices such as the Blackberry, as well as GPS navigation devices.

“It makes me feel very good to be providing a product and service that is genuinely helpful to people,” Maureen says. She adds that although she is now in her 60s, she has no plans to sell or retire from the business. “I’ve had one job or another since I was 11 years old,” she says, “and I can’t imagine giving up something that I love so much.”

I’ve purchased several editions of the Directions Street Guide since moving here in 2000. In addition to its usefulness in helping me get around the area, it is enjoyable to just turn the pages to find fascinating street names. How else would I have known about Toy Soldier St., Hocus Pocus Place, Sir Lancelot Circle, Bombastic Court, and so many other evocative names?

Newspaper Column Published February 15, 2007: I Am Related To You, And You Are Related To Me

This is my column appearing February 15, 2007 in the South Valley News and other weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group.
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It was on a Sunday several years ago, as the sun set on a small cemetery in the middle of a field in Freeport, Kansas, that Henderson resident Raymond Downing had a spine-tingling experience.

Downing had recently become a genealogy buff and was early in the process of tracing his family history back nearly 600 years. He was becoming skilled in using resources such as the Mormon data repositories, along with popular Websites and software to do much of his research. But his greatest pleasure was in driving to states where many of his ancestors lived and visiting the places where records and other information could be found: court houses, deed registries, the homes of people who were possibly distant relatives, and of course cemeteries.

Let Downing tell the story: “My research suggested that I might find the headstones of some relatives in this little cemetery. Sure enough, several of the plots were there, including that of my great-great grandmother. I made my notes, took some photographs, left the cemetery and was preparing to drive home when a car pulled up and three women got out. Though we were just two cars in the middle of nowhere, they paid me no attention as they entered the cemetery. Then, as I watched, they stopped in front of a grave belonging to one of my relatives.

“Now I had to know who these women were, so I went back into the cemetery and approached them. ‘Pardon me,’ I said, ‘but are any of you related to the person buried here?’ This grave, it turned out, belonged to the brother of my great grandfather, and one of the women was his great granddaughter, making us cousins several times removed. That was a moment I’ll never forget, and we’ve remained in touch, sharing family history and memories, ever since.”

I used to be skeptical about the claims of friends that they were descendants of famous historical figures, but that was before I started paying attention to the well-reasoned proposition that we are all descended from a common set of ancestors, meaning that in one sense we are all related to every other person on the face of the planet.

In his book “Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes,” respected science writer Steve Olson says that one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries of the past two decades has been the realization that our DNA contains vast quantities of historical information. Because DNA serves as a link between generations, Olson says, it contains a record of the human matings and migrations that eventually produced everyone on earth today.

“The most surprising result of genetic research,” Olson says in a publisher’s interview, “is that everyone now alive is descended from an original group of anatomically modern humans. This group may have numbered just a few thousand people altogether, living in eastern Africa about 7,500 generations ago. That may seem like a long time ago, but in evolutionary terms it’s the blink of an eye. Human groups have not been separated from each other long enough to develop anything more than superficial differences. And because groups of modern humans have continued to mix throughout history, human populations have always remained genetically connected.”

Back to Ray Downing: “I realized that I knew Dad’s line back to his grandparents, as the names had been entered in my ‘baby book’ that Mom dutifully prepared decades ago. But the genealogy bug did not invade my being until 1997, when I received a computer disk in the mail. A distant cousin in Germany had put together much of the genealogy of Mom’s family line going back to 1660 in Bavaria. The information, inserted into a genealogy program on the disk, was fascinating. The church documentation of names and dates was all included.”

Now that he was hooked, Downing scored one research success after another. “I took my Dad’s male ancestry line back to Devon, England, in 1530,” he proudly notes. “Actually, the Downing surname originated in Devonshire in the 1400s, but records earlier than 1530 were destroyed by a fire. The first family emigrant to America on the male side was Thomas Downing in 1717. A Quaker, he left England for William Penn’s Pennsylvania settlement, where he established a mill and the area eventually became known as Downingtown, Pennsylvania, in his honor.”

Downing’s great grandfather, Benjamin Downing, was a Civil War veteran who eventually moved to Kansas, where he built homes and held numerous public offices. “I often wondered if a photograph of him in his Civil War uniform had ever existed. Well, that photo hangs today on the wall of my den, purchased on e-Bay for $300.”

Are there any truly historic figures in Downing’s line of ancestry? “I learned that I am one of those famous Mayflower descendants,” he replies. “John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, who came over on the Mayflower, are my eight-times-removed great grandparents. John Adams is my third cousin, six times removed, and John Quincy Adams is my 4th cousin, five times removed.”

Tracing his ancestry in an unbroken and fully documented straight line, Downing made an interesting discovery of recent vintage. “Diana, Princess of Wales, is my 10th cousin twice removed,” he says, and the heir to the British royal throne, Prince William, is my 11th cousin three times removed.”

The family tree built by Ray Downing has about 5,500 names on it. “But I’m not done yet,” he says, “so check back with me later.”

Newspaper Column Published February 1, 2007: SCA Residents Take Unusual Around-The-World Trip

This is my column published February 1, 2007, in the weekly newspapers of the Greenspun Media Group, including the South Valley News.
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Henderson resident Ron Morse and his wife Jackie recently returned from an around-the-world voyage on the ship MV Explorer, during which they visited Mexico, Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma (Myanmar), India, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia and Spain.

This was no ordinary 104-day day cruise, however, for the MV Explorer is the floating classroom for the famed Semester at Sea (SAS), a decades-old program that brings students to visit and study the cultures of other countries. During the 50 days the ship is traveling between countries, the students earn up to 15 college credits by taking daily classes selected from as many as 75 different courses covering communications, economics, geography, history, philosophy, and just about any other field of study you’d expect to find at a typical college or university. Then, during port stays that typically last five or six days, the students have a chance to enlarge their world view with on-shore excursions to historic sites and factories, in-home visits with local residents, lectures from authorities on the local culture, and much more. In past years, international figures such as Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro have met with the students.

Semester at Sea has had several academic sponsors over the years, but its current affiliation is with the University of Virginia, in partnership with an organization called the Institute for Shipboard Education. Students in the program are enrolled for one term as University of Virginia students, and the credits they earn are almost universally accepted at the students’ home schools.

Ron Morse was a member of the 25-person faculty for the Fall 2006 SAS voyage. This adventure was not even on his radar screen until a friend recommended him as a professor for the program. The semi-retired Sun City Anthem resident is well qualified; his credentials include the chairmanship of the Las Vegas World Affairs Council, professorships of Japanese Studies at UNLV and the University of California, and five years as a professor of economics and business administration at a university in Japan. He holds a Ph.D. in Japanese history from Princeton University, is author or editor of more than 20 books on Asia, and was formerly director of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Every SAS student takes mandatory daily class in Global Studies, an upper-level geography course providing an overview of the countries visited and complex issues encountered during the voyage. The on-board classes are augmented with interport lecturers and students who come aboard to share their specific expertise about a country or region.

Morse taught three courses during the semester: Japanese Foreign Policy; Global Energy Policy; and War & Peace, which looked at our current presence in Iraq and Afghanistan in comparison to our reform policies with Japan and Germany after World War II. Students in these and many of the other courses were required to do field-experience reports and write research papers, receiving academic grades for their work.

Placed into service in 2002, the 24,000-ton MV Explorer is one of the fastest cruise ships afloat, and travels with a permanent crew of about 200. Fully equipped as a floating university, the ship quickly becomes home to students, faculty, and the 33-member support staff which includes deans, counselors, a doctor, and various coordinators. The ship includes classrooms with wireless high-speed Internet access, study areas, and an 8,000-volume library keyed to supporting the travel itinerary. Other facilities include two dining rooms, a student union, a campus store, swimming pool, fitness facilities, wellness center, and a computer center where students and faculty can access the Internet as well as send and receive e-mail.

A typical SAS cruise carries anywhere from 550 to 650 students from more than 200 colleges. Even with available financial aid, the cost is not cheap for the 100-day fall cruise, $17,000 or more, depending on choice of cabin.

Passage on the MV Explorer Semester at Sea is not limited to college undergrads. A Lifelong Learning program allows “senior” adults to share the experience, and about 20 older travelers were aboard for the most recent cruise. A special staff coordinator is provided to assist the seniors, who are encouraged to audit and participate in the courses, as well as have access to the faculty lounge and share in special events for faculty and staff. “I’m interested in writing,” Jackie Morse said, “and I found it especially rewarding to audit a writing course taught on the ship. In addition, we made some wonderful friendships that are continuing now that we are home.”

Because some of the faculty and staff bring their children on the cruise, onboard education is provided for them, too.

Ron Morse says his SAS teaching stint made a deep impression on him. “At first, going from a retirement community to an academic environment with college kids took some adjusting. I soon learned that this would be a completely enriching experience, not just some academic program that happened to be on a ship. Everything we taught was not theoretical, but could be linked to real-world in-country experiences. I saw many of the young people change over our three months together. For many, it accelerated their maturing process, and I’m sure it was life-changing for some”

“These kids learned how easy it can be to respect people from other cultures as human beings with the same wants and needs that they have. As they grow into tomorrow’s leaders, they will remember that while governments may not always be nice, the people usually are.”

If you’d like to know more about the Semester at Sea, you’ll find a wealth of information at the Semester at Sea site.

Newspaper Column Published January 18, 2007

Here is my column appearing January 18 in the newsapers published by the Greenspun Media Group, including the South Valley News:

Here’s what a prominent American said about our involvement in Iraq: “If you’re going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that’s currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime, or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military when it’s there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”

This well-known American also said, “How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?”

These prophetic words were uttered by none other than Dick Cheney. Not Vice President Dick Cheney, but Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in two 1992 symposia at which he claimed the first President Bush made the right decision in the Gulf War by not chasing Saddam Hussein all the way to Baghdad.

Now, more than 15 years later, we find that the untenable scenario painted by Mr. Cheney is all too real, as history tells us he got it right the first time. Here we are, mired in a conflict justified by a false premise, surrounded by warring factions with one thing in common: They see the U.S. and its troops as the enemy. Meanwhile, we see our president proposing not to scale down, but to add 20,000 more troops at a time when support at home for the war, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, has dwindled to about 30 percent, and nearly 60 percent want us out of Iraq within 12 months.

Over the years, our great nation has given support to many embattled countries and their leaders, but I can’t recall ever seeing or reading about any situation resembling the current one in Iraq, in which the key leader seems not to be working with us in harmony, but instead seems to be protecting Shiite factions that provide him with support. In recent days we have witnessed Prime Minister Nuri Al-Malaki demanding that our troops dismantle roadblocks erected to help in a search for abducted Americans, and then insisting that we release a group of Iranians suspected of helping to provide support to Shiite insurgent factions.

Folks, we destabilized a country and are now caught in the middle of a civil war with no realistic exit strategy. We now have a Congress controlled by the opposite party, with questions being asked now that should have been asked a long time ago; and we even see a number of prominent Republicans jumping the administration’s ship of state.

In a New York Times op-ed piece, Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a frequent television military-affairs commentator, analyzed the President’s recent speech to the nation in which Mr. Bush announced his latest Iraq strategy. Cordesman said that while the president cited the 2005 Iraqi elections as a milestone exercise in democracy, all they did was assure that Iraqis would vote along ethnic lines, with an outcome that would further divide Sunnis and Shiites. He also faulted the president for believing that an increase in Baghdad security would turn the country around. The problems in a dozen major cities such as Basra, Mosul and Kirkuk are very severe and the new American strategy will not make them go away, Cordesman wrote.

I’m no foreign policy expert, of course, but it seems to me that several options for extracting our nation and its courageous armed forces from this quicksand need to be more closely examined. One is Sen. Joseph Biden’s proposal to divide Iraq into three autonomous regions for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with a sharing of oil revenues to guarantee economic stability for each region. Another option, barely spoken of due to our unwillingness to have diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria, is to invite all the Arab countries of the region to share in the stabilization and policing of Iraq without a significant U.S. presence. It is all these countries that have the most to lose in the long run if Iraq evolves into an even greater battleground than it is today.

When our troops are serving in battle in faraway places, war always has a local face. It comes to life for me when I speak with residents of my community who have children and grandchildren stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the executive director of a local charity told me last week, her son has completed two tours in the mid-east war zone, and she is dreading the possibility of his having to be put in harm’s way a third time. I wonder how we can justify asking our brave troops to put their lives on hold not once or twice, but at least three times and for longer tours, all for something that started with the bogus claim that the enemy had weapons of mass destruction.

Let us all share the sentiments of architect Robert Fielding, who closes his commentaries on KNPR-FM with these words: ” “Let’s bring our troops home safely ….and soon.”

Newspaper Column Published January 4, 2007

Here is my newspaper column appearing Thursday, January 4, 2006, in the newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group, including the South Valley News.

--------------------

A review of the past year
is common at this time,
but to be a little different
I’m doing it in rhyme.

Where shall I start,
well how about Iraq,
where our brave young men and women
remain under attack?
Shiite killing Sunni, Sunni killing back,
I wish it were just a movie
and simply fade to black.

Meanwhile there is Darfur,
where genocide takes life.
May the world at last awaken
and end this needless strife.

When Al Gore used to speak,
it would make me take a snooze,
but when he talks of global warming,
we must listen or we’ll lose.

Illegal immigration makes
some people blow their tops,
but businesses are asking,
what will happen if it stops.
Who will man the mop and pail,
and who will pick the crops?

And those who see our future
have advice for us, so heed it:
Work harder on your Spanish,
since you’re surely gonna need it.

We thought we knew a lot of words,
but each year brings us more.
So many we must strive to learn,
how can we keep score?
I’m told IPod and Podcast
are important to my life,
but I’ll need help in explaining
that I need them to my wife.

I used to think an earmark
was a medical condition,
but now I’ve come to see
upon some due reflection
that a politician needs them
to aid his reelection.

Macaca is the word this year,
as George Allen did discover,
when the country threw his party out
like a cad rejects his lover.

The Supreme Court took a turn to the right
with Roberts and Alito now joining the fight.
Some are gleeful, some are dismayed,
at what might be the future of Roe vs. Wade.

From Abramoff to a scandal with pages,
our political year was one for the ages.
Reid and Pelosi now rule the roost,
so let’s hope they can give good ethics a boost.

Here at home our own pols
had to learn the hard way
that when you are weak
you sometimes must pay.
Dario, Mary, Erin and Lance
found this out when Galardi
paid them to dance.

Gibbons squeezed through
and will now lead our state,
but a word of advice
to him and his missy:
don’t accept any calls
from women named Chrissy.

Question 5 was a winner
and will now limit smoking.
Yes, I know it’s Nevada,
but I’m really not joking.

Obama and Hillary, Giuliani and McCain;
Were big in the news and will be again.
Will one of these folks
win our hearts and then reign?
Or will it be someone who comes from behind,
someone to whom we are currently blind?

Michael Richards and Mel Gibson
each had a crazy fate.
Let’s hope our sons don’t see them
as folks to emulate.
And may our daughters’ love of Britney
not drive us to despair,
for a trend we really should avoid
is leaving home sans underwear.

Wall Street had a banner year
with big money to be made.
Don’t forget this as you struggle
to get your bills all paid.

I’ve finished what I have to say,
and I hope my words rang true,
for I am TIME’s person of the year.
Oops, I forgot that you are, too.

Wishing a happy and healthy
2007 to all!

Newspaper Column Published November 30, 2006

Here is my newspaper column appearing Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006, in the weekly newspapers published by the Greenspun Media Group, including the South Valley News.

In a memorable scene in the film “The Graduate,” a family friend gives a single word of career advice to young Benjamin Braddock: “Plastics.”

Today, as Thanksgiving recedes in our rear-view mirrors and we focus on Christmas, the word “plastics” takes on new meaning in the form of the numerous credit cards we are pulling from wallets and purses to pay for the plasma TVs, Xboxes and iPods that are among the holiday season’s must-have items. After all, why deny our loved ones -and ourselves- all these wonderful toys when we can simply say “charge it” and worry about making the payments later?

Credit experts want you to worry now about the credit you run up, and the ability to make your payments on time, because just a few late payments, or too many outstanding balances, can come back to haunt you when applying for credit down the road, whether it is to buy or refinance a home, to purchase a motor vehicle, or even just to keep the rate low on your credit cards.

These same credit experts strongly advise consumers to add the word FICO to their vocabulary. Created by Fair Isaac Company, hence the name, FICO is the standardized credit-scoring system that businesses use to determine the credit-worthiness of consumers. Virtually every adult who has purchased something on credit or incurred installment debt, no matter how long ago they did so, has a FICO score. It pays you to know what your score is and to know what you can do to improve it.

Henderson resident Pamela Bank owns a business called Better Credit Solutions, which works to raise the FICO scores of individuals, most of whom are prospective borrowers referred by more than 40 local mortgage companies. “A perfect FICO score is 850,” Bank says. “If your score is at least 600, you will be deemed a good credit risk by a lender, and anything from 700 on up means that you are thought to have excellent credit.”

According to Ms. Bank, calculation of the FICO score is based on a standardized formula. A person’s payment history, including dates, frequency and severity of late payments, counts for 35 percent of the score, with recent delinquencies counting more than old ones. An additional 30 percent is based on how much debt is owed on each account relative to the credit limit for the account. The age of the oldest account and the average age of all accounts, referred to as length of credit, counts for 15 percent. Credit-application history is worth 10 percent, and types of credit held by the debtor adds the final 10 percent.

“In the end,” Bank says, “one’s FICO score doesn’t guarantee whether they will or will not receive the credit they’ve applied for. It’s up to the creditor, whether it’s a department store, a credit-card issuer, a mortgage lender or whomever, to interpret the FICO information provided by the three major credit-reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, in accordance with their own credit-granting policies.”

Ms. Bank offers these tips to help assure a healthy FICO score:
• Make each installment payment early enough so that it is credited to your accounts by the due date of the payments. A payment credited even one day late may reflect adversely on your credit report.
• If carrying a balance on a credit card, it should be less than 30 percent of the card limit. A balance of 30 to 50 percent is regarded as neutral, and anything above 50 percent will usually cost points on the credit rating.
• Credit ratings may be lowered if too many inquiries to the credit bureaus are made. If there are more than three inquiries in a 90-day period, the rating often drops. An exception is multiple inquiries within a 14-day period related to the same transaction, such as inquiries by home lenders.
• When seeking financing, even if through a company such as a clearing house for mortgage lenders, the consumer should give authorization to have credit “pulled” only once. Too many pulls can result in higher interest.
• If financing a major purchase such as a motor vehicle, arrange credit in advance and then shop for the product. Dealers make extra money from referrals to lenders, and the borrower may not always get the best deal as a result.

Ms. Bank notes that many companies in her field, broadly described as the credit-repair business, give the industry a bad name by promising more than they can legally deliver. “I improve clients’ credit scores by reviewing their credit reports with them to assure that each entry on their report is correct,” she says, “and then by knowing the ropes when it comes to dealing with the credit bureaus to get erroneous entries removed or corrected. Savvy consumers can certainly do this for themselves if they want to invest the time and effort. But services that guarantee the removal of bankruptcies and other negative credit information, even if the information is accurate, are operating at the boundaries of the law and should be avoided.”

Consumers are legally entitled to receive, free of charge, an annual credit report from the three major credit bureaus mentioned earlier in this column, although there will be a small fee if you want the FICO score that goes with the report. A Website for ordering these reports is www.annualcreditreport.com. In addition, www.myvesta.org is a non-profit Website packed with tips and information on managing your credit.