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Worry about the things you can change and pray for the things you can't, my mother always said.
It was good advice but I could never take it.
Maybe that's why I'm finding gray hairs at age 24.
I'll admit it, I'm a worrier. Whether I can change them or not, I worry about
a lot of things.
I fail to recognize my own limitations. I try to change things that I know
rationally I cannot.
In my latter college years I lived in a very industrial neighborhood of Louisville.
While I loved my house, the neighborhood had its drawbacks.
It certainly wasn't a pretty thing at which to look.
Once booming warehouses and industrial plants were often left vacant after
industries grew up and moved out.
Old buildings, some dating back to the early 1900s, were found in ill repair.
Another problem was that the structures were built long before there were
real powerful planning and zoning commissions in place.
This left towering vacant, dirty and dilapidated structures standing next
to people's homes. Not pretty.
But while the aesthetics of the neighborhood were annoying, it certainly
wasn't the worst part of the area.
The worst part of the area was the railroads.
Trains rumbled through on a regular basis. The sound wasn't so bad but the
waiting was.
Nearly every day on my way to or from work, I'd get stuck waiting on a train
to pass.
These weren't the little dinner trains you'll see riding through Bardstown
either.
These were industrial haulers. I always worried while I sat there and watched
them pass.
Always, my first question was: What were they hauling?
Would industry haul any kind of dangerous chemicals through a residential
neighborhood?
I never knew for sure what was in the train cars. It was probably better
not knowing.
But what if we did know that something hazardous was passing through our
neighborhood? Not even our neighborhood, but our city, county or even state.
What if the whole world knew? What if terrorists knew?
All of us were a little scared in late 2002 and early 2003 when weapons of
mass destruction were said to be in Iraq.
But obviously we didn't know if they were there or not. (Well except Michael
Moore, knew all along that they weren't and tried to tell us. I guess he had
better intelligence than the Pentagon.)
But imagine if WMDs were rolling through Kentucky on trains and the whole
world knew it.
We'd be even more afraid, wouldn't we? I certainly would.
But what would anyone do about it if sarin nerve gas or VX liquid were rolling
through the state?
Anything?
A Congressional committee discussed the issue Wednesday.
It's bad enough that those chemical weapons are sitting in our state. There's
a depot near Richmond filled with them.
The chemicals are there to be destroyed. But to save a few bucks the Pentagon
is considering re-locating the chemical weapons' facilities, such as ours,
elsewhere.
Kentucky Congressmen Ben Chandler, Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning are vocally
opposed to movement of the facility, as they should be.
Personally, I'm taken aback by the idea.
That the Pentagon would even consider such a ridiculous idea only further
reveals the hypocrisy of this administration.
They used the politics of fear to push us into a war half of the country
questioned.
They've told us to duct tape our windows and buy safe rooms over barely creditable
hints of a terrorist attack.
They take our fingernail files when we get on airplanes.
Yet to save a few bucks they would put this entire state in harm's way.
What happened to all the terror threat we've been told to worry about?
Should we only worry about terrorists when it's politically convenient for
the Bush administration?
Our congressmen should be applauded for their opposition to the idea, and
the cost cutters at the Pentagon should have their heads examined for even
proposing it.