John Doe - Super Star

Maybe you are this kid, say a 26 year old kid, give or take a year or two. And you are a super star, you know the sports variety type and you earn a salary of close to $10 million a year with benefits. And you work for this company, well kind of a company, a sport franchise. But still you are working for someone who is paying you really big bucks to do something other than mow your lawn weekly.

For the past several years you have gotten away with being a kid. Partly because you are famous, and partly because you are rich and partly because a jillion people let you get away with it.

But what no one cared to tell you or counsel you when you sat down with them to negotiate your latest salary deal was that with wealth comes responsibility. What you could get away with at sixteen when you were nobody and poor doesn't play the same way when you are twenty-six and rich and famous. Now you have to pay the piper for your deeds.

Fairly or unfairly you have to accept responsibility for your actions. Maybe it is time for the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, etc..... to spend some time and money on counseling and what it means to be a responsible and rich adult.

Too many super stars end up with ruined lives and ruining lives because no one had the courage to pull them aside and say "hey, be careful.... you are going down a path that could get you in a heap o'trouble".

I really hate it when kids I like are talented and they end up doing stupid stuff. It makes me sad on so many levels.

But my door is always open if you want to talk........ But get some help, please.

Forgive me Father...

“Never, never waste a minute on regret. It's a waste of time.”

-- President Harry Truman

"Here we are, 70 years after the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I'm wondering if we've come even one step closer to a moral reckoning with our status as the world's only country to use atomic weapons to slaughter human beings. Will an American president ever offer a formal apology? Will our country ever regret the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Will it absorb the way they instantly vaporized thousands of victims, incinerated tens of thousands more, and created unimaginably powerful shockwaves and firestorms that ravaged everything for miles beyond ground zero? Will it finally come to grips with the “black rain” that spread radiation and killed even more people -- slowly and painfully -- leading in the end to a death toll for the two cities conservatively estimated at more than 250,000?" ~ Christian Appy

We must never forget what we did here, what happened to innocent people here and why our justification for it seems to change over the years. Will we ever have regrets? Or is it just a waste of time.

Small State Provides Big News

In browsing the news this morning I came upon an opinion piece in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus. The item was titled "The Problem Grows" and goes on to mention many of the same events that I have devoted time to here in past Artichoke Annie's musings on This and That.

• Interesting that the PBS show NOVA would leave out the nightmare of Fukushima when they choose to make a special on the event.
• Interesting that we hear little of nothing of the fate of the US sailors that were aboard the USS Ronald Reagan who were exposed to Fukushima fallout while on this compassionate mission.

So many stories that remain untold, silenced, or covered only in the dark back pages of newspapers. Certainly these stories are not making top billing on our evening "Infotainment News" broadcasts.

~ ~ ~

The opinion is that of  Alfred S. Blakey, Barre, VT and I print his entire opinion piece here for those of you that may not stumble upon the  Barre-Montpelier Times Argus:

Opinion | Letters

The problem grows

August 05,2015

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Seventy years ago this week the world changed. Nuclear weapons were dropped on Japan. You would think that if any country would understand the hazards of the power of the atom, nuclear power in all its forms, that country would be Japan.

Seventy years later the world ignores the damage it is doing today.

The PBS show NOVA did a special on Fukushima last week. The report was very careful to leave out the nightmare that has become Fukushima Daiichi. The uncontrolled groundwater leaks into the Pacific Ocean. USA Today reports “Millions of fish dead in Pacific Northwest — Ocean conditions have ‘gone to hell’ — salmon covered in fungus, red lesions all over, big gaping sores — Extinction concerns”

USS Reagan sailors were the first people to be hit by a plume outside of plant and there is now a report, “Third death from exposure to Fukushima fallout.”

Buildings sinking next to Fukushima reactors — “We know structures decaying, getting more unstable — ‘Plant deterioration investigation’ underway — Molten fuel thought to be eating away structural materials.”

And not just Japan!

Reports of erosion “undermining foundation” of a major dam upstream of U.S. nuclear plants — “Extensive network” of seepage paths found — “Water flowing through from multiple sources and multiple directions” — Nuclear plants doing Problem Evaluation Reports on ‘complex and urgent’ situation. 

Power Reactor: CALLAWAY, MO — Event Number: 51253 — leak shuts down U.S. nuclear plant — Radiation levels ‘above normal’ — ‘Steam plume’ seen in reactor building, workers can’t find where leak is coming from due to safety concerns.

Years, decades even, to recover. I wonder, is a dream of just one generation of children that do not know war, hunger and death as an everyday existence really that difficult to realize?

Alfred S. Blakey
Barre