deannews0303

DEAN'S QUARTERLY NEWLETTER Vol. 6, No. 3, 03/03/2003

HIGHLIGHTS AND LOWLIGHTS OF WINTER 2003:

California, Arizona, Colorado – All went well making the rounds visiting people in the West except that El Niño rains caused me to miss a flight connection between Phoenix and Denver via San Diego (a stupid route, I realize), causing me to resort to a 21-hour Greyhound bus ride from San Diego to Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Let it be a lesson to us all. Don’t book a single day’s travel on multiple airlines. Although most airlines request that you arrive two hours in advance, they’ll accept your ticket up to 30 minutes before a flight, and I was just under that. It’s true that I only allowed 1 hour and 15 minutes between flights, but in some cases, even if you allow several hours between flights, weather and other conditions can create long delays, and the second airline isn’t obliged to honor your ticket if the first airline is late for any reason.

Traveling through the West, I first caught up with my friends Hatem and Kathy Mostafa in San Diego, California, then with my mother in Apache Junction, Arizona, and then headed off to Colorado (via San Diego) to visit my friends Tim and Elizabeth Malloy in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and my cousin Darin Oman and his wife Anne in Boulder, Colorado.

Hatem and Kathy are doing about as well as can be expected with the trauma of separation and an anticipated divorce after 22 years of marriage. It’s deeply painful indeed, but both appear to be doing their best to adapt to the new set of circumstances they face.

My mother, meanwhile, is keeping active since her heart attack in September. Among other things during my visit, we enjoyed a back country road trip through remote regions northeast of Phoenix, where the cactuses are very tall and the water is very short. Here we are at a nearby reservoir.

During my silly 21-hour Greyhound bus ride through the basins and ranges of the West from California to Colorado, I was reminded that many Americans will gladly regale you of all the finer details of their dysfunctional life stories whether or not you wish to hear them and without ever exchanging names with you.

Tim and Elizabeth seem to be doing very well settling into their elegant new home (kind of a 1950’s Ozzie and Harriett, Father Knows Best or Leave It to Beaver style home) in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. We soaked in the hot springs and strummed guitars through long hours.

Meanwhile, pinching to remind themselves of their luck are my cousin Darin and his wife Anne, who still can hardly believe their fortune of living in such a beautiful place at the foot of the Eastern Rockies in Boulder, Colorado and enjoying satisfying jobs at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Darin showed me some of the cool high-tech toys he plays with, such as 3-D animated simulations of trends in global climate change. We also enjoyed the sights of a wintery Rocky Mountain National Park, and I took in the aromas from a tour at the Celestial Seasonings tea company. Here is Darin with me in the Flatiron Range a short walk from their condo, and later playing guitar and didgeridoo.

Button down the hatches and hold onto your hats – These are indeed odd and disconcerting times in which we live, particularly here at the crosshairs. A recent poll showed that 3 out of 4 people in the Washington, DC region are either somewhat or very concerned for their own safety and that of their family’s in the face of terrorist threats and heightened government alerts. Officials now believe Al Quaeda terrorists possess the capacity for creating and delivering so-called dirty bombs, capable of unleashing radiological, biological or chemical agents over localized areas. I’m not certain what security duct tape provides anybody, or for that matter the 80,000 gas masks being issued to government employees and others at the Pentagon. A mile downwind from the Pentagon and with shifting breezes from the even closer U.S. Capitol and the White House, I’m enough of a cartographer to know that my office at the Department of Agriculture sits at the vortex of all potential toxic plumes.

There are only a limited number of responses people can have: 1) fear, 2) denial, 3) fatalism, 4) faith, 5) apathy, 6) ambivalence, 7) preparedness, 8) flight. So far, I’ve oscillated round-robin style through subdued measures of each, but I suspect the amplitude to pick up considerably if I live to witness a significant destructive attack occurring.

In the meantime, we’ll keep on keeping on. Otherwise, it’s been nice knowing you.

Winter 2003 movie reviews

COMING UP NEXT QUARTER: Boston and who knows?

Check in and let me know what's up with you.
You can contact me by clicking on this E-mail address: mail@deanoman.com.

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Best wishes to all,

Deano

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