Wednesday will be September 11, the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
I’ll mark the day with a visit to the dentist.
That’s as it should be.
I don’t want a trip to the dentist for everyone, but I want everyone to spend the day on ordinary activities.
We don’t need to relive the events of a year ago. To treat it as a National day of observance would give a victory to the terrorists.
At the same time, we need to continue to remember the feats of the people who took heroic steps to save others’ lives, and the work of the police, fire fighters and rescue workers who worked such long hours to rescue survivors and recover remains.
Has TV news judgment gone nuts?
A week ago, Friday, Aug. 30, radio or TV news was on all day. From the time my clock radio started in the morning through the evening TV network news, even the PBS News Hour, the lead story was the settlement of the baseball negotiations.
I was glad to know that there was to be a game on the radio that night, but wasn’t there more important news, like the talk of a war with Iraq?
A week earlier, the sports pages themselves were just as warped. The main sports stories in both the Times and P-I were about where the twin basketball phenoms from Rainier Beach High School were headed for college.
That’s part of the distortion of our values.
You never read about where the National Merit Scholars are going to school.. And they’re more likely than high-school sports stars to live up to their early promise.
I’m not ready for Halloween
Ads have already aimed at Halloween sales.
Talk to me about Halloween when October comes, not in late August and early September.
A disappointing voters’ pamphlet
The Primary Voters’ Pamphlet arrived last week, and it looks more like a sample ballot – a list of candidates – than the traditional voters’ pamphlet, which lets each candidate submit a statement for the voters.
First, there are no statements from judicial candidates, even though our ballots include three seats on the State Supreme Court plus a few on lower courts. For many years, we had a judicial voters’ pamphlet for the primary because any judicial candidate who gets a majority in the primary runs unopposed in November.
When former Secretary of State Ralph Munro convinced the Legislature to pay for a primary voters’ pamphlet, he combined that with the judicial pamphlet to make a complete September pamphlet.
This year, there are not only no statements for judicial candidates, there are none from any candidates for Congress or the State Legislature.
In addition, King County has a dozen city and fire district measures on the ballot, but only the Seattle Housing Levy has a text and statements for and against in the pamphlet.
Later in the week, our daily newspapers came out with more comprehensive voters’ guides, but our state government shouldn’t shirk the responsibility it has developed over several decades of keeping us informed.
Also, in the voters’ pamphlet are the qualifications for being a pollworker. In addition to being mentally and physically able to do the job is the requirement that pollworkers “declare a party affiliation of Democrat, Republican or Libertarian.” By State law this is to maintain balance, but is it needed in a state in which voters don’t declare party affiliation?
’Creation Science’ again?
It’s hard to believe that 77 years after the Tennessee “monkey trial,” we still have people around the nation fighting the teaching of evolution.
One state has mandated that the inside covers of biology books be stamped with a disclaimer that evolution is “only a theory.”
Evolution is, in fact, a theory in the same way that much of chemistry, physics, geology, psychology, sociology, economics and mathematics are made up of theory, meaning a systematic way of looking at the subject that can be tested and modified.
To say something is “only a theory” is to misunderstand science. Theories like evolution have been and will continue to be greatly modified over the years.
This statement at the beginning of the science book is like having a disclaimer at the beginning of the book of Genesis that “this book is open to interpretation, and many people of faith view the creation story as allegorical” or one at beginning of the New Testament that “the inclusion of books herein is the result of a vote by a First-Century church council.”
Many want creationism taught as an alternative to evolution, but the creation story is a matter of faith and evolution is a matter of science, and the two ought not to be mixed.
It may be dull, but vote
I don’t find the coming primary election very exciting. In a few positions, we will have to eliminate some candidates in the primary, but in many positions we’ll just be confirming the candidates for November.
But, in many judicial elections, we will decide the winners in the primary.
Also, it’s important to vote to show our support for the democratic process and for our blanket primary.
We’d like to know what you think. If you have a comment send it to
The Enterprise
P.O. Box 977
Lynnwood, Wash. 98036
Fax: 425-774-8622
E-mail: entopinion@Heraldnet.com
Evan Smith is the Enterprise forum editor.
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