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| | Email this article • Print this article | Rob Crowe
For those of you who are breathlessly waiting for a report on the cat situation in the Crowe household, here is an update.
We are working through the situation, but it hasn’t been easy.
Stormy, the gray calico, has been in considerable agitation and decided she couldn’t use the same litter box as Caleel so she started using the carpet in the office.
Needless to say, this has created quite an odor and thrown my wife into a greater agitation.
Both cats have been on the verge of extinction several times but she is still tolerating them.
A trip to the vet for shots and the recommendation that we put out a couple more litter boxes and the situation has improved.
Paradoxically, now they both use the same litter box in a different area of the house, go figure.
Still the occasional growling match, but the bite wound on Stormy’s tail is healing and Caleel is less aggressive most of the time.
Kind of like the cat situation, things are cooling off after the election, but not entirely.
First, I’d like to acknowledge the work of Colin Powell as he leaves his position as Secretary of State.
I believe he has been a powerful and steady force for the country.
Although the rumor is that he has been at odds with the some members of the Bush Administration, I think that aspect has been overplayed in the press.
Every cabinet has internal differences and squabbles and in my opinion it is usually a good thing to have some different philosophies represented to keep balance in an administration.
I expect Powell will continue to be as professional as usual as he leaves to pursue other interests.
He has served his country well in many different positions.
I remember during the first Gulf War when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the media was hailing him as the first “black” to have that position.
I’ll admit to being a little surprised at hearing that since I hadn’t noticed.
I don’t really know what that says about me except maybe I’m not as observant as I could be.
Racism is difficult to deal with.
This is tough to say, but I think everyone, regardless of color, is a racist to some degree since we all tend to identify with our own race.
For one thing, aside from the sex of a person, race is the first thing one notices when looking at someone simply because it is usually so obvious.
To state the obvious, it is important to look beyond the skin color in making judgments about a person.
I think I succeed most of the time, but I’ll admit the evidence is scant simply because I don’t interact with many people of color due to living in Aitkin County.
Here the big question is whether your neighbor is a Swede or a Norwegian.
In this vein, it is very interesting to watch the antics of the major media outlets as they struggle with the appointment of Condoleeza Rice as the Secretary of State.
This is a brilliant, attractive and accomplished woman who also happens to be “black.” They should be singing her praises and lauding President Bush for his open minded minority appointment, right? Wrong.
The media that has been preaching at us over the years about our racist attitudes has demonstrated a good bit of racist bigotry of its own.
Degrading racist cartoons by Pat Oliphant, Garry Trudeau and Jeff Danziger have appeared in major newspapers since the appointment.
While there has been some defense of Condi Rice by some organizations, it is notable that the democratic leadership and the NAACP haven’t deemed it necessary to condemn these atrocious samples of liberal racism.
How bad is it?
I like to study issues before commenting on them so I spent some time researching a little of what appears to be Dave Strand’s favorite subject – the ranking of the United States among select nations in regard to how children are treated.
I believe he has commented (and I may be paraphrasing) that we are most hostile in how we treat children.
Using one of his sources, UNICEF, I printed out a table from their report The State of the World’s Children 2003 and studied it a little.
UNICEF has ranked about 193 countries in several categories, but for lack of space I’ll look at the category of “under five years of age infant mortality.” The worst country is Sierra Leone with a rate of 316 deaths for every 1,000 births.
Best appears to be Sweden with a rate of three deaths for every 1,000 births.
The United Kingdom is at seven deaths per 1,000 births, the United States is at eight deaths per 1,000 births, Russia at 21 deaths per 1,000 births and China at 39 deaths per 1,000 births.
This is hardly an indictment of the way we treat children in the U.S.
Also, I happened on a news article in preparation for this column which starts out this way: ATLANTA (Reuters) - The birth rate among adolescent and young teen girls in the United States fell sharply in the 1990s, hitting a 58-year-low in 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news – Web sites) reported on Monday.
I look to have a little balance in perceptions.
We have problems in our country and, admittedly, many children “fall through the cracks.” This does not diminish the efforts of those who strive to make the situation better.
Is Dave one of those? I don’t know.
While he professes to care, he hasn’t convinced me simply because he has demonstrated an uncanny aptitude to try to hammer me with his litany of charts and figures rather than offer any positive solutions.
His attempt to blacken the Governor in a previous column is an example of this.
I prefer not to use the tragedies that happen to children of the U.S.
in this manner.
I ask that he refrain from the same.
Rob Crowe chairs the Aitkin County Republicans and raises kids and cows on a farm near Hill City.
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