Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

It's hard to be an optimist today: So many things seem messed up

It’s hard to be an optimist these days.

I never cease to be amazed at how things can go haywire. It doesn’t give me much hope for the future. Or maybe it’s just a bad day.

So many things seem messed up these days — Jon and Kate, the continuing saga of Anna Nicole Smith, health care, the balloon boy fiasco. I like to think that there is a lot of good stuff out there that doesn’t get reported, and I look for it.

But right now I don’t have much, and it is easy to look at the headlines and wonder what the heck is going on.

Even little things get messed up, like traffic control. As you’ve waited at an intersection for a long train to go through, you may have thought about it being a marathon wait.

But in Des Moines, Iowa, the marathon really did wait for a train.

The lead runner was only about a quarter of a mile from the finish when his route was blocked by a train. He had to wait while the second-place guy caught up with him and both waited for the train to pass.

The leader was able to win the sprint for the finish. Officials said the trains were not supposed to run, but apparently at least one didn’t get the message.

Still that was better than the Sunday marathon and half marathon in Detroit, where three particpants died either during or after running the half-marathon event.

In the make-these-people-stay-at-home news category, a researcher found that U.S. National Parks average 11 search and rescue missions a day, often because people do stupid things. While the average cost for a simple mission like rescuing an injured hiker was relatively small, many searches were more expensive, involving helicopters and hundreds of people.

The researcher found 95,000 operations from 1992-2007 costing $58 million. Maybe we really are a lost nation.

He said the most surprising (and appalling) thing was that most people said they knew going in that whatever they did to get lost or injured was going to be a bad idea.

Speaking of bad ideas, people are trying to save Miami Marine Stadium in Florida, a venue built on an island with more than 6,000 seats. But it also had a floating stage for performances where the audience came in boats. It is abandoned and deteriorating but has been recognized as a significant cultural site and people want to restore it. Money, of course, is an issue.

They have the approval of Jimmy Buffett, the master of boat songs, who once sang there. The stadium perhaps is most famous as the place where Sammy Davis Jr. hugged a surprised Richard M. Nixon at a concert in one of the few spontaneous moments during the tightly scripted Republican National Convention in 1972.