I Is it spring or not?

am beginning to wish this weather would make up its mind whether it is spring or not. If you remember that nice warm week we had the first part of March, then you will know when I put my early garden in. Just about everything has done well, so far. The peas are as pretty as any I’ve seen, standing there in their little straight rows, they are about 2 inches tall. I love the look of an early vegetable garden. Even the potatoes are starting to stick their thick, curly green heads through the soil. They remind me of an old groundhog sticking his head out of his burrow and wondering if it’s time to get up.

My onions were a little spotty, at first, but they have picked up, and I am sure to have enough radishes to keep my sister happy. She loves them. For some reason the leaf lettuce just did not come up like it should. Linda bought a second package and planted it, but even that didn’t half come up. I finally broke down and bought a little square of leaf lettuce plants that they had at the co-op. I planted them Saturday and the wind that came through here Saturday night just about wrung their little necks. I have never used those plants, so I don’t know quite what to expect.

I don’t want to give the climate change people too much grief, but I wonder if they are going to say that all the wind we have had lately is a part of climate change. I couldn’t tell you. It might be. All I know is if it gets terribly hot in the summertime, all I hear about is global warming. And then we get three feet of snow in the winter, and that, too, is because of climate change. They got it coming and going, as my dad used to say.

Let’s get serious for a minute. Since man first discovered fire, and how to make it and how to use it, the human race has contributed to the overall warming of the atmosphere. That’s just fact. The question soon becomes to what extent do man’s activities contribute to the overall warming of the atmosphere? If our country had had the foresight of some of the European nations, we would have quit building and operating coal-fired and oil-fired power plants years ago, and replaced them with nuclear units. Get out your Funk and Wagnalls and compare the percentage of power production coming from nuclear units in the U.S. to, say, France, and you will see where we lag behind.

I am not, as you can see, a climate change denier. But it kind of frosts me that many of the same people who cried out against the expansion of nuclear power for the generation of electricity are the same ones rubbing their hands together and crying about global warming and climate change. One has to understand, of course, that electrical power generation is just one area of discussion on this topic. Automobiles, factories, construction and all sorts of things from mining to forest fires to volcanoes put

particulates and gases in the air and have some impact on our climate. Even such a seemingly benign thing as raising cattle has an impact, when you consider the methane gas equation.

The other part of this argument that gets my dander going is, as a country, we attend all these climate change conferences and come away with great fanfare and photo ops and an agreement that straps our citizens and entrepreneurs with more and more restrictions while China and India also sign on the dotted line, but they don’t have to do anything for 20 or 30 years. That’s insanity at its finest.

VOLUNTEER FIRE AND RESCUE SQUADS

One last rant and I’ll let you get back to doing something productive: Our county is in the throes of thinking and considering what to do about our volunteer fire and rescue squads. My personal vote is that, within limits, major changes to what we have today, should be pushed as far into the future as possible. Folks, when you live in the country or when you decide to move to one of the most rural counties in the Commonwealth, you make some sacrifices. It sounds a bit harsh, but one of those sacrifices is the timely availability of fire and rescue services.

I know, firsthand, the difficulty of recruiting, training and keeping good volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians. If our county is going to do an overhaul of what we have now, it should not be and cannot be a slapdash decision, made within the confines of a couple of Board of Supervisors meetings. It must be approached slowly and carefully, with input from all the impacted

My personal vote is that, within limits, major changes to what we have today, should be pushed as far into the future as possible.

parties. There must be careful and thorough studies of the impacts and costs. Most importantly, one of the possibilities to be considered must be to maintain the system we have at present.

I fear our county is moving in a direction that, dare I say it, is liable to end up with two sets of citizens, much the same as the complaint now prominent on the federal election scene, that we have two classes of people, the haves and the have nots. I hope and pray that the people in positions of power and authority in Rappahannock County will remember those who put them there and that they have the wisdom and compassion to do what is best for all the citizens of Rappahannock.