Forty-six years later and still looking for an answer

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   Is it a hoax? How could anyone be skeptical of Manmade Catastrophic Global Climate Change? That’s what I get when I write that it seems to be a hoax. The controversy started about seventeen thousand days ago.

            April 22, 1970 was a pleasant Southern New Mexico day on the campus of New Mexico State University. I was a sophomore Journalism major covering the first Earth Day.

            It was a shock to me when an organizer proclaimed most people on Planet Earth would be dead within ten years (1980) from Manmade Global Cooling. This would drive the temperature of Earth down.

            I asked a question that afternoon that was not answered then nor has it been addressed in the forty-six years since even though I keep asking it. I’ll get to that question after I explain why I became a skeptic.

            That afternoon I thought it would be nice to drop the temperature in New Mexico though it would be a problem for farmers in Canada. Occasionally, over the next few years there would be stories predicting Global Cooling but nothing happened.

            Ten years later in 1980, the theory changed dramatically to identify a completely different danger: Manmade Global Warming. All people on planet Earth would be dead within ten years (1990) because the planet would become too hot. Shuckins, I thought, first cooling was going to kill us and now warming. I became skeptical and wrote that it seems a hoax to give government more power and money.

            Some readers roasted me for my skepticism in advance of the theoretical roasting from Manmade Global Warming. Then ten years went by without any change.

            In 1990, it was twenty years after the introduction of Manmade Global Cooling and then the change to Manmade Global Warming. The proponents of the theory now said we would all be dead within ten years (2000) unless everyone on the planet stopped using fossil fuel. Also, the word “Catastrophic” was added.

            Fast forward to the year 2000 when Catastrophic Manmade Global Warming was certainly going to kill everyone on the planet within ten years (2010) per the mainstream media. But our climate didn’t change as had been predicted for thirty years.

            With the Internet becoming so prevalent there came many false stories claiming vast climate changes unsupported by scientific data. Rather, political agendas drove the research where millions of dollars were awarded to universities for finding the desired political outcome: there is Global Warming.

            Example: recently we learned the United Kingdom gave $11 million to the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Warming but the organization just published findings of Climate Change without doing any research. This fraud and others have been discovered but the mainstream media doesn’t care.

            This is now in the category of a religion where you must believe in the political advocacy regardless of the real data. This year we’re told Catastrophic Manmade Global Climate Change is more dangerous than nuclear global war. What utter crap.

            Since this is political there’s a huge push to silence skeptics. Valerie Richardson in The Washington Times April 14, 2016 wrote, “Bill Nye, ‘the science guy’ says in a video interview released Thursday that he is open to the idea of jailing those who deviate from the climate change consensus.”

            Regardless, the question I have asked over and over during the last forty years has not been answered. If humans can change the climate of Earth, what’s the best temperature? Before we change Earth’s temperature we must consider what is the best for all humans?

            How do we decide this issue? We have the push to lower the temperature via carbon trapping but do we want the temperature of Planet Earth to go down and have less carbon available for plant growth?

            In 1970, at the first Earth Day, I was introduced to the theory of Global Cooling. Forty-six years later I still call this a hoax designed to give power to governments. I am still upset that no one will address the best temperature on Earth question.

            If telling the truth about this political hoax is a jailing offense in our country, I will serve my time in a country without a Constitutional First Amendment.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is available at Amazon.com

Forty-six years later and still looking for an answer

Swickard: Wind and solar are a-changin'

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Marshall McLuhan

            That’s the problem with the future which always creeps up on us. There are huge changes in our society coming but most people don’t see them because they don’t believe in relatively sudden technological changes.

            Example: many people don’t believe wind or solar power will have any effect upon them. They see it as the government throwing money so politicians can get votes and donations. Wind or solar to them are boondoggles when the government gets involved for political reasons. And in today’s world I must agree. Today’s world.

            That leaves the future of wind and solar generation which is much different and closer than most people realize. Currently, except for harvesting government subsidies these technologies are only of use in houses in the sticks where bringing a power line in would cost the same as building a battleship.

            However, the use of wind and solar will change. As 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Bob Dylan wrote in 1964: For the times they are a-changin’ You must believe to see the changes coming. That may catch people and governments unaware and could mean they are today investing in the wrong technologies.

            Solar and wind generation has three major shortfalls compared to traditional generation: first, the density of the power while generating it. Secondly, the continuous dependability of the power. Finally, the transmission and generation cost. All three are deal breakers for adopting wind or solar in today’s world.

            There is another problem adopting the current commercial wind and solar generation. It is the thousands of dead birds smacked by wind generation blades or fried from flying into solar death rays. Our current efforts are not the way to have these technologies become mainstream.

            The change that will enable solar and wind generation to become mainstream is when innovation dramatically lowers the cost to store that wind and solar power cheaply at the end-user’s home. This would allow wind and solar generation to become the technology of choice without any government subsidies.

            Can this happen? Yes, here’s a way to look at that possibility of massive change.

            Twenty years ago, the technology in my life involved seven different media devices. I used a Canon F1 camera, a Sony tape recorder/player; a Motorola cell phone, a Gateway home computer with modem, a digital storage unit to back up my computer files and a VHS video player plugged into my Sony television.

            Seven devices that are now contained in my Samsung smartphone. And, I now have Wi-Fi which allows me as a writer to do things I could only dream of doing twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I had no idea so much change was on the horizon.

            That is the same scenario for the dramatic shift to home-based electrical generation and storage. It starts with the move to power vehicles with stored electricity rather than fossil fuel. Currently, the cost per mile of an electric vehicle is above that of gas or diesel powered vehicles. But like the change in my media devices, the core issue is the cost of storage which is dropping dramatically.

            Take computer memory sticks. Just a few years ago it was ten dollars for one megabyte of storage in a memory stick. Now it is ten dollars for a hundred gigabytes. All in a couple years. The same will happen in power storage which will allow homeowners to have their own wind or solar storage.

            I could write more but that is enough to point out that having the expectation of oil and gas being a major benefit to budgets in years to come might just be proven wrong by the dropping storage costs in whole home batteries.

            Stanford University’s Tony Seba has written about this in, “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: The industrial age of energy and transportation will be over by 2030.” It is a very thought provoking dialog about how technology will change our world soon.

            It isn’t if conventional power will end being useful, only when. That point is when home power storage costs less than the transmission of traditional energy. Then it will make sense to change.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Wind and solar are a-changin'

Swickard: Unspoken terrorism in New Mexico

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  This month is the centennial celebration of a large dam in Southern New Mexico that was officially named the Woodrow Wilson Dam. Nope, that name didn’t stick. We know it as Elephant Butte Dam.

            The celebrations this month tell many stories about how the Rio Grande Project was started and how the engineers constructed the first phase of the dam, completing it by 1916. At the time it was constructed, Elephant Butte Dam was the largest man made dam and lake in the world. Electric generation was added in the 1930s.

            But there is more to the story of this dam. If we were alive one hundred years ago we would have been aware of German sponsored terrorism in the United States. Most people remember the Pancho Villa Raid on Columbus New Mexico in March 1916 but there was more terrorism going on at that time.

            There was even an attempt to destroy Elephant Butte Dam which historians note but isn’t mentioned in any of the celebrations. New Mexico author Eugene Rhodes wrote a story of this attempt entitled, No Mean City, in the May 17 and 24, 1919 Saturday Evening Post.

            Rhodes died in 1934. In 1975 there was a collection of his stories published: The Rhodes Reader: Stories of virgins, villains, and varmints. This is where I found the story. The book is still in print at Amazon.com.

            The September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center was not the first major terrorist attack on New York City. There was a large terrorist attack on New York City at 2:08 a.m., July 30, 1916. The target was a huge munitions supply terminal called Black Tom Island.

            German terrorists attacked Black Tom Island because it was shipping ammunition, powder and artillery shells to the Allies. These were loaded onto ships bound for France and Great Britain.

            In 1916, America was technically neutral in the European War. However, America leaned heavily toward the Allies by supplying munitions to the French and British. The German High Command considered America an enemy so they created a terrorist organization inside America.

            The German saboteurs started fires in the ammunition transportation areas. The resultant blast leveled Black Tom Island and peppered the Statue of Liberty with shrapnel. Citizens in the New York City area were terrorized by the explosions that broke most of the windows in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

            The story is detailed in a 1989 book by Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 1914 -1917.

            The perpetrators were agents of the German government. In that era, the largest terrorist supporting government in the world was Germany. There were more than fifty major acts of terrorism in the United States from 1914 to 1917 sponsored by the German government.

            That same month, German agents attacked the Senate Chamber of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Several people were killed in that attack. Financier J. P. Morgan was shot but survived a terrorist attack. America struggled with how to control terrorism.

            But what is not part of that discussion was the attack on New Mexico’s Elephant Butte Dam. After talking to several historians, it seems plausible that the ultimate aim of the destruction of the dam was to keep our country home dealing with this instead of coming to the side of France and England. Our country already had ten thousand soldiers in Mexico trying to capture and bring to justice Pancho Villa.

            Even though the Germans were engaged in the destruction it appears there was an attempt to make it seem Mexico did this because of our invasion of their country. Or, worse, British agents did this to try to pin it on Germany.

            In 1993 I wrote a screenplay, Hero’s Choice: between duty and honor lies every hero’s choice. Unfortunately, the eight saboteurs were killed in the attack on the dam so much of what I could write had to be fiction because there were no German survivors to tell their side of the story.

            Still, in celebrating the one hundred years of Elephant Butte Dam, we should acknowledge some of the rest of the history. It was a dangerous time back then as it is now.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Unspoken terrorism in New Mexico

Swickard: A nice society without punching

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   As a youngster, I had hopes for when I grew up that technology would help America become a better place to live. It was standard dinner table conversation to talk about the advances of technology. Why, we even had a telephone. That was something that my grandparents never had on the ranch.

            When I was seven we were at my grandparent’s ranch and witnessed the first object sent into space, the Soviet Launched Sputnik as it flew West to East. My uncle said to me, “Remember this moment for the rest of your life because with that up there our world is changing.”

            We didn’t have pavement at the ranch south of Carrizozo so it was a long dirt road to go to Alamogordo. When we were just North of Tularosa there was an overpass which was paved and then the road was paved the rest of the way into town. We would all say at once, “Ah” and revel in how smooth the road was when paved.

            When I was eleven we even got a television set, black and white of course. And then the world was at our call by getting a kid to turn the channel changer or deal with the volume or smack the side when the picture would roll.

            I was one of the side smackers when the horizontal oscillator would go out and the picture would roll. My brother and I would jump up and smack the roll out of the television until it stopped rolling. Occasionally, the television would just go dark. Go figure.

            We were a community with good and bad people, with saints and sinners side by side. But there was an overarching rule that people had to act decent within the community or would be cast out. The reason I am thinking fondly of a kinder gentler time is because I am up to my neck in rude people.

            When technology gave us a connection to most of the seven billion people on Earth I never thought that I would regret that technology. But I do since it seems to have brought out the very worst in our citizens. In the older days including when I lived as a young man in several small communities there was a price to pay for being rude to someone.

            Often it was a punch in the snout. And since everyone saw everyone at the Post Office and the local café if you were snarky to someone there would be an immediate consequence from that person and likely several of the town elders who didn’t like that kind of behavior.

            But we have a society that screams rudeness because even if you do not like the way you are treated it is next to impossible to find the culprit and administer the thrashing that the skunk deserves. So many citizens just write something snarky back and the circle continues.

            Worse, in politics it is required for people to lose whatever tiny bit of genteelness and be as rude and disgusting as their vocabulary allows, all in the name of politics. Where will this end? Who knows?

            Kids learn potty words from watching movies and are incredibly inappropriate with each other and adults. Yes, I understand that there is free speech, but that just means someone can say that your mother is a big pile of dog snot legally. And often illegally you will punch them in the snout. But not if they are online and there is no way to bring them to a moment of atonement.

            The worse thing about this rudeness in politics is we Americans who inherited a mighty fine nation from our parents and grandparents are not being good shepherds of that trust. Rather, we ignore the incredible debt being place around the heads of our children and grandchildren while we complain that we haven’t gotten enough political plunder for our votes.

            All I do now is shun those rude people when I notice them on Facebook or at a meeting. I have reached a time and station in life where punching people in the snout is not an option. Maybe I should design an app called the Snout Puncher.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s newnovel, Hideaway Hills, is available at Amazon.com

Swickard: A nice society without punching

Swickard: Arresting citizens before they commit crimes

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “…society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind. It is really extraordinary that our people refuse to apply to human beings such elementary knowledge as every successful farmer is obliged to apply to his own stock breeding.” Former President Theodore Roosevelt, 1913.

             It is revolting that the philosophy of eugenics from the past is raising its head again. Reasonable people destroyed the eugenics movement in the last century but we must confront eugenic thinking as it rises again.

            Note: America should take Theodore Roosevelt off Mount Rushmore and replace him with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., or movie star and WWII B-24 pilot Jimmy Stewart. I respect Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln but despise Progressive Era eugenicist Theodore Roosevelt.

            In the late 19th and early 20th century the Progressive Era Movement embraced the philosophy of eugenics as a method of improving the dominant population by weeding out what elites considered undesirables. The German Nazi Party took eugenics to an extreme by killing millions of people.

            Fast forward to elites in today’s society advocating eugenics without the name. Example: people are saying the government must stop crime before it happens by identifying those undesirables who are going to murder, rape and rob in the future.

            They say an all-powerful government is needed to insure our safety. Already the elitist government can take property from citizens who are neither charged nor convicted of a crime. It is called, Civil Forfeiture, which the elites in government love for the power and money it brings. That leads to something even worse.

            In the website American Intelligence Report, Kristan Harris reports: (Chicago) Police are arresting people for crimes they’ve not committed yet using a new computer algorithm software that identifies criminal behavior and predicts future crime. Suspects were arrested this year as a result of being put on a predictive policing Strategic Subject List and Chicago Special Order S10-06 which equips law-enforcement with the ability to arrest citizens before they commit a crime.

            My concern is that the government will extend this to other classes of citizens. With the bitter fight for gun control in our nation perhaps the government will start with gun owners. They are already tagging members of the military and former members as potentially dangerous.

            But it isn’t just now that this is mainstream. Bill Mauldin in his 1947 book, Back Home, wrote: During a period when veterans were big news, every time an ex-soldier got himself in a jam the fact that he was a vet was pointed out in the headline… But the sad fact was that such headlines gave added impetus to the rumor that always appears in every country after a war that the returning soldiers are trained in killing and assaults and are potential menaces to society.”

            There isn’t more of a betrayal than to send citizens into battle and then view them as a class of killers who are dangerous to the society because of what they learned and did to protect our freedom. Today the leaders of our country, in general, didn’t serve in the military nor do their children serve.

            Returning veterans are not treated well for their sacrifices and as Bill Mauldin pointed out it goes back into World War Two and beyond. Journalist Tom Brokaw in his book, The Greatest Generation, praises the soldiers of World War Two fifty years after they served.

            But we have the 1947 words of Bill Mauldin to remind us that WWII soldiers faced an ungrateful society when they came home. As did the Korean and Vietnam soldiers.

            The politicians who see our former military members as dangerous and take action before these men and women do something are as bad as all of the eugenic progressives combined. We are already betraying our former soldiers by having a Veterans Administration that is shameful in provided care.

            Who knows what will come of the Chicago “arrest them before they commit a crime” but I sense that former military and gun owners are in the cross-hairs of this all-powerful government. Their eugenic moves must be stopped. And we should honor our military and former military members. Without them America would not be a free nation.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: Arresting citizens before they commit crimes

Swickard: Budget special session possibilities

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez will call a special legislative session because of lower oil and gas revenues than projected. If there are budget cuts, will some government workers get fired? Or will there be a tax increase a month before the November election? Both solutions may cost votes for legislators in close races.

            Cutting the budget usually means someone loses their government job because much of the state’s budget is used to hire people. Often the way those people in charge respond to budget cuts is to fire the most crucially important people first because the citizen outcry may protect their budget.

            Organizations often target doctors, EMTs, fire and police along with in-classroom educators. That always gets lots of citizen outcry and media attention.

            Years ago in Albuquerque there was a budget crunch in the police department so they fired the street policemen in the worse section of town. Did they touch administrative people? No, because the citizens of Albuquerque wouldn’t care if those employees were fired.

            The citizens of Albuquerque capitulated and added more tax revenue to the budget rather than lose critical police protection. Some politicians claim that everyone employed by the State of New Mexico is essential to the state. They proclaim loudly to the media that taking any money away from existing programs will result in catastrophic damage to our state.

            The talking point: there are no workers on the state’s payroll who are not completely essential. Further, we citizens will be told we must consider that state employees are just like us with bills to pay and kids to raise so being fired is featured in the media reports letting us citizens know that firing state workers will destroy lives.

            Another option being discussed is to increase taxes. That way no one is fired. But in the middle of an election voters can express displeasure quickly. Increasing taxes is unlikely this time.

            One thing not being discussed much is that they can raid the New Mexico Permanent Funds. Some people call them “Rainy day funds.” The quick way is to confiscate needed financial resources from the New Mexico Tobacco or other small funds.

            The two funds with plenty of money are the New Mexico Land-Grant Fund created in 1912 and the 1973 created New Mexico Severance Tax Fund. It is dangerous to take money from these funds because these two funds are set to provide about one seventh of the entire New Mexico budget next year.

            It is not easy to raid these funds because legislators in the past realized the glimmering pot of money would be quite attractive to politicians who only thought short-term. States like California had vast financial resources which were taken in a short-term political frenzy years ago. Now California is close to bankruptcy.

            New Mexico’s budget increased more than fifty percent under former Governor Bill Richardson from 2003 to 2010. It went from about four billion dollars to almost seven billion dollars a year.

            The long-term solution is to increase the economy and the budget will be corrected as long as New Mexico doesn’t elect another free spender like Richardson. There is never enough money for free spenders.

            New Mexico revenues are down because the oil and gas industry is cyclically at a low point. It is a cycle but the government increase is linear. There are always difficulties when the energy resources go down.

            Roy Blunt wrote, “The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy and more jobs that relate to American energy.” That is what New Mexico needs however the problem for New Mexico politicians is that the environmental lobby has lots of power and does not want New Mexico to increase energy jobs.

            So the source of money from the energy sector may not be politically available to some legislators. There are no other easily increased revenue sources. Raising taxes usually results in people and businesses leaving the state thereby actually lowering collected revenues.

            New Mexico’s government is still far larger than just a few years ago with the same number of citizens. Ultimately New Mexico’s state government is about creating jobs and political power. Tough decisions cannot be avoided at this time.

 Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is available at Amazon.com

Swickard: Budget special session possibilities

Swickard: The “I deliberately lied” society

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.  “When in doubt tell the truth.” Mark Twain

             Mark Twain’s quote is from a long past society. In the 21st century people seem to view truth as to be avoided always. Our society which is connected by the media and internet absolutely worships at the altar of innuendo, myth, purposeful misdirection and downright lies.

            What are the three hardest words to say? Some think it is “I don’t know.” Many people say that. Others think it is “I was mistaken” which isn’t heard often. The three hardest words to say are “I deliberately lied.”

            Yet it happens all of the time. We’re inundated in this “I deliberately lied” society where making up stuff is valued more than telling the truth. Example: this presidential campaign.

            Today’s conventional wisdom is that everyone should lie “if we really care about our country.” They say, “I have to lie about this candidate I oppose because the opposition is lying about my candidate.”

            Candidates do not care if they have already been recorded saying the opposite of what they’re now saying. When questioned they proclaim, “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

            Worse, with all of the data available to citizens today it is amazing that the truth suffers more in today’s world than in past societies. As a lifelong historian I have studied most of the history of our country but I do not recognize statements currently being made about the founding and development of America.

            Example: In February 2015, President Obama said, “Here in America Islam has been woven into the fabric of our country since its founding.”

            That is certainly not true. A more truthful statement would be that people from many lands wove the fabric of our country during the last couple hundred years. No one nation or region, certainly no one religion has dominated the founding of our country. However, America has been served well by Protestant, Catholic and Jewish citizens.

            People today confuse opinion from theory from truth. In fact, it seems opinion is the new truth. If I say, “The Sun rises in the East.” I am told, “That is just your opinion since you belong to the other political party.”

            The great divider of our society are two dominant political organizations: Democrats and Republicans. Both groups view truth as only from their perspective. What one candidate is reported to have said is more an exercise in seeing the bias of reporters than seeing the truth.

            A real truth bomb is the recent “birther” controversy. It is contained in the question: was President Obama born in Hawaii? The media acts like it is a one-sided issue where Republicans are acting in very inappropriate ways.

            But the research is quick and easy. However, it doesn’t fit the political agenda so it is ignored. The birther question came into being not by Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton.

            Rather it started as a promotional booklet produced by then Literary Agency Acton & Dystel celebrating the authors they at that time were representing on the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of their company.

            On one of the thirty-six pages is this statement: Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.

            The next page had a description of Ralph Nadar and the 1990s boy-band, New Kids On the Block.

            That’s where the “birther” story started. We know that some members of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign gave this information to the media. Mainstream Republicans repeated it then and in the eight years of Obama’s presidency.

            Did Donald Trump start this? No, but he could have researched it and then not repeated it. Truth has no place in the “birther” controversy since it serves the partisans on both sides. It is great for fundraising.

            An old joke is: how can you tell if a politician is lying? When their lips are moving. Today: how can you tell if the media is lying? Nowadays, they will always lie - so expect it and embrace truth.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is available at Amazon.com

Swickard: The “I deliberately lied” society

Swickard: A lesser nation as our veterans pass

Jesse Jacobs at age 23 flying B-17s in WWII

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

             In my mind the “Day that will live in Infamy” will be less remembered by history than what happened the very next day, December 8, 1941. That Monday many Americans walked into military recruiting offices and volunteered to serve.

            One of those, Jesse Jacobs, passed away last week at age ninety-three. He was a friend of my uncle and myself for many years. While his death was not a surprise, the loss of this national treasure hurts. His friends and family mourn, of course, but there is mourning for the passing of a way of life symbolized by Jesse Jacobs and many more like him.

            Even at an early age there were things he would die for. Country singer Randy Travis has a song, “Points of Light” that starts: There is a point when you cannot walk away. When you have to stand up straight and tall, and mean the words you say. There is a point you must decide just to do it because it’s right. That’s when you become a point of light.

            Colonel Jesse Jacobs, Air Force Retired, was born in August 1923 so he was just eighteen when WWII started. Like many in his generation he volunteered to serve in the military and was a B-17 pilot. Part of his training to fly the B-17 was in Hobbs, New Mexico.

            Eventually he ended up in England. After the war he continued his military career and happened to be stationed in Japan when the Korean War started suddenly. That day he left his wife and child in Japan and flew to Korea to fight for freedom.

            Jesse went as an F-80 fighter pilot. In the last seven years I have sat with Jesse as he talked about an America that went to war willingly and defeated the ones who intended to capture the entire world and hold everyone hostage.

            Adolf Hitler intended to have his country hold all other countries for a thousand years. But he did not reckon on Jesse Jacobs and other Americans who ended his reign of terror at just twelve years.

            Even talking about WWII is difficult in today’s world because we already know that the allies won. Italy, Germany and Japan were defeated and present no threat to us now. But in 1941 young men had to step forward and do their duty without knowing the outcome.

            Some came back and 420,000 Americans did not. Who knows what good they might have done if they had lived.

            My uncle who served in the navy as a radar specialist for naval aviation sat with Jesse many years and they talked quietly about that long ago generation. I took my uncle to the Senior Citizen’s Center Monday through Friday for lunch and enjoyed the history lessons.

            My father entered WWII out of high school at the outbreak and retired in 1966 with twenty-five years of service. He was a combat photographer and later taught photography at the Air Force School of Photography in Denver at Lowery Air Force Base.

            My sadness is that years ago my parents died while my uncle who I cared for many years died last year. Now Jesse. We are losing those of that generation as of course age takes them. It will be my generation next. What bothers me is that growing up with my “I like Ike” button I was steeped in the understanding of what it took to defeat the forces of evil the last time there was a world war.

            Much of that history is no longer taught in schools and we have people disrespecting our aged military veterans. That is their right but it doesn’t make it right. I wonder: what will these who bash the military do if a country decides to take us over… a country like Russia which is effectively a dictatorship.

            Will they fight? It is doubtful. Even with patriots left, there is little leadership. I bid a farewell to Jesse Jacobs and all he stood for as a point of light. We are a lesser nation for his passing.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, Michael's new novel is available at Amazon.com 

Swickard: A lesser nation as our veterans pass

Swickard: A lesser nation as our veterans pass

Jesse Jacobs at age 23 flying B-17s in WWII

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

             In my mind the “Day that will live in Infamy” will be less remembered by history than what happened the very next day, December 8, 1941. That Monday many Americans walked into military recruiting offices and volunteered to serve.

            One of those, Jesse Jacobs, passed away last week at age ninety-three. He was a friend of my uncle and myself for many years. While his death was not a surprise, the loss of this national treasure hurts. His friends and family mourn, of course, but there is mourning for the passing of a way of life symbolized by Jesse Jacobs and many more like him.

            Even at an early age there were things he would die for. Country singer Randy Travis has a song, “Points of Light” that starts: There is a point when you cannot walk away. When you have to stand up straight and tall, and mean the words you say. There is a point you must decide just to do it because it’s right. That’s when you become a point of light.

            Colonel Jesse Jacobs, Air Force Retired, was born in August 1923 so he was just eighteen when WWII started. Like many in his generation he volunteered to serve in the military and was a B-17 pilot. Part of his training to fly the B-17 was in Hobbs, New Mexico.

            Eventually he ended up in England. After the war he continued his military career and happened to be stationed in Japan when the Korean War started suddenly. That day he left his wife and child in Japan and flew to Korea to fight for freedom.

            Jesse went as an F-80 fighter pilot. In the last seven years I have sat with Jesse as he talked about an America that went to war willingly and defeated the ones who intended to capture the entire world and hold everyone hostage.

            Adolf Hitler intended to have his country hold all other countries for a thousand years. But he did not reckon on Jesse Jacobs and other Americans who ended his reign of terror at just twelve years.

            Even talking about WWII is difficult in today’s world because we already know that the allies won. Italy, Germany and Japan were defeated and present no threat to us now. But in 1941 young men had to step forward and do their duty without knowing the outcome.

            Some came back and 420,000 Americans did not. Who knows what good they might have done if they had lived.

            My uncle who served in the navy as a radar specialist for naval aviation sat with Jesse many years and they talked quietly about that long ago generation. I took my uncle to the Senior Citizen’s Center Monday through Friday for lunch and enjoyed the history lessons.

            My father entered WWII out of high school at the outbreak and retired in 1966 with twenty-five years of service. He was a combat photographer and later taught photography at the Air Force School of Photography in Denver and Lowery Air Force Base.

            My sadness is that years ago my parents died while my uncle who I cared for many years died last year. Now Jesse. We are losing those of that generation as of course age takes them. It will be my generation next. What bothers me is that growing up with my “I like Ike” button I was steeped in the understanding of what it took to defeat the forces of evil the last time there was a world war.

            Must of that history is no longer taught in schools and we have people disrespecting our aged military veterans. That is their right but it doesn’t make it right. I wonder: what will these who bash the military do if a country decides to take us over… a country like Russia which is effectively a dictatorship.

            Will they fight? It is doubtful. Even with patriots left, there is little leadership. I bid a farewell to Jesse Jacobs and all he stood for as a point of light. We are a lesser nation for his passing.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, Michael's new novel is available at Amazon.com 

Swickard: A lesser nation as our veterans pass

Swickard: A look at college years ago

One of Michael Swickard's 1968 photos

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   Old folks joke about walking to school in snow, uphill both ways while their grandkids roll their eyes. But those words have some truth about the changes in a couple generations.

            Take myself: I went to college in a different world than kids today who live in the same town and attend the same college. In 1968 I packed my suitcase at my parent’s house in Alamogordo and moved to my uncle’s house in Las Cruces a mile from the New Mexico State University campus.

            My uncle allowed me a bedroom since I barely had enough money saved to pay tuition and fees and then books. There were no student loans so I paid my way through college and could because tuition and fees were about $180 a semester which adjusted to 2016 inflation is $1,200.

            Compare that to $4,400 a semester now charged at the same college and you see that loans are required.

            My possessions were a couple pair of jeans, some shirts and clothes and shoes. I had a four dollar Timex watch, a wind-up alarm clock and a 1930 Underwood #5 manual typewriter borrowed from my grandmother.

            It is no longer 1968 and college students have personal wealth items today in values I didn’t have for the first five years after I graduated and began working professionally. The only thing I didn’t have was debt which young people now have lots.

            I had the choice of going to college or having a car, my ability to earn money would not support both so I came to college on foot. The good of it was I had almost nothing for anyone to steal from me. The first couple years I lived a very small life that did not use much money.

            Luckily my father taught me photography when I was in junior high school so I had a trade to bring which allowed me to make money… typically two dollars a published picture. That was enough to keep me in school and allowed me enough to eat. But eating was another story.

            The first week I was walking to campus one Sunday afternoon to study at the library. As I walked by the Methodist student center just off campus I smell food and it smelled good. So I walked in. The campus minister, Don Murphy was standing there and asked, “Come to eat with us?”

            I replied that I didn’t have any money. He said, “Then you can wash dishes.” The food was great. They say that appetite is a great seasoning. My uncle was a bachelor and didn’t keep much food in his house.

            As I was leaving Reverend Don said, “Did you know that tomorrow the Church of Christ has a dinner, Tuesday the Presbyterians, we feed Wednesday night and the Baptists serve Spaghetti on Thursday.” He gave me a couple other leads to free food and I lived a fine life.

            Every Tuesday was Air Force ROTC which was a requirement for freshmen and sophomore men to take. I enjoyed the classes and actually enjoyed marching. They found that I was a photographer and I was appointed student photographer which meant I went to many functions.

            For a couple years I walked to and from campus once or twice a day through sunlight, dark, rain, dust and gloom of night. Not any snow that I remember but it would make a better story. Those days I had what I called the number but I didn’t share that with anyone.

            The number involved how soon I would be completely out of money and have to quit college. I got down to sixty days but never closer. Importantly, I left college without any debts.

            My graduation was a semester late since I was the first production director of KRWG-TV and helped put it on the air in February 1972. That was an unpaid position and I dropped hours to have the time which I made up to graduate the next semester.

            Yes, it is a different world for college students with computers, smart phones, designer clothes and cars along with a consuming life. Their choice, not mine. I wonder how a couple more generations will change.

Email: drswickard@comcast.net - Swickard’s new novel, Hideaway Hills, is availableat Amazon.com

Swickard: A look at college years ago