Memorial Weekend....

We will be in the high mountains of New Mexico for the Memorial Day weekend. While we are gone talk amongst yourselves. And don't forget to remember all those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.

With us or against us...

Mohammed in Baghdad who has lived under Saddam offers some advice....

" The new enemy [Islamic terrorists] differs from all the previous ones in that he doesn’t have or even claim to have any constructive ideology. He doesn’t bring us anything other than the seeds of death and destruction “either you surrender to me or I kill you”. As for an alternative ideology, it doesn’t exist. Moreover the willingness to initiate a dialogue was never expressed or shown to be a possibility"
Read more >>>>>

The energy scholar...

Supposed nominee John Kerry has today come out with some specifics concerning his "energy policy". I suspect that the closest scrape that John has had with the energy markets is ordering his chauffeur to go fill up one of his "family's" SUV's. Some of his brilliance....

"Let's make sure our schools are focused on teaching our children, not heating the classrooms and paying for school bus diesel fuel."

Yes John, no matter what other weighty arguments might be delved into on the issue of energy, let's start out with this. Let's do it for the kids!

Kerry says he would spend $10 billion over 10 years on new plants to manufacture more fuel efficient vehicles

Clarify this please John, do you mean you and your wife's Heinz Pickle fortune are going to build plants, or do you mean that the Federal government is going to get into the hybrid car business. The way I understand a capitalist economy...when there is a viable market for hybrid cars, a private manufacturer will step forward and build a plant.

He says his administration would demand that other oil-producing nations increase supply.

Demand away John, but keep in mind that your demands fall on the ears of a group of sellers who don't particuarly like us and don't mind the Great Satan paying top dollar for their petroleum. Personal note John: I'd put "demanding" more oil way down on my list. And by the way, isn't throwing the weight of the U.S. around and demanding that sovereign nations do things with their own assets in direct violation of the liberals credo?


Kerry planned to focus on the national security threat posed by dependence on Middle East oil.

Playing both sides, as he is wont to do, John suggests that we use less of the foreign oil that he is also demanding that we get more of.

John, I'm sure that there is a brilliant man in there somewhere, but perhaps if you had ever had a real job you might realize how utterly full of gibberish you are when it comes to the real world.

Sir Bubba, kinda'......

It's always nice to know a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Now I do. Gen. Tommy Franks will be presented with the award tonight,though due to his lack of British citizenship he will not be entitled to be called Sir Tommy. I know this will matter not a whit to Tommy as he belongs to a higher order....he's a Texan. I hope this means he'll be bringing all his Knighthood pals to West Texas to participate in his favorite pasttime, quail hunting. I'd love to see Prince Chuck again after all these years.

Who We Fight....

During WWII there was a need to perpeputate in the citizenry of the United States a continuing reminder of why such a great national sacrifice was necessary. One of the most effective bits of propaganda that I recall was a documentary series produced by famed Hollywood director Frank Capra called, "Why We Fight". Today we need to know not only "Why We Fight" but "Who We Fight". Former Navy Secretary John Lehman tells us.

"We are at a juncture today that really is more of a threshold, even more of a watershed, than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was in 1941. We are currently in a war, but it is not a war on terrorism. In fact, that has been a great confusion, and the sooner we drop that term, the better. This would be like President Franklin Roosevelt saying in World War II, "We are engaged in a war against kamikazes and blitzkrieg." Like them, terrorism is a method, a tool, a weapon that has been used against us. And part of the reason we suffered such a horrific attack is that we were not prepared. Let's not kid ourselves. Some very smart people defeated every single defense this country had, and defeated them easily, with confidence and arrogance. There are many lessons we must learn from this.

We were not prepared intellectually. Those of us in the national security field still carried the baggage of the Cold War. We thought in concepts of coalition warfare and the Warsaw Pact. When we thought of terrorism, we thought only of state-sponsored terrorism, which is why the immediate reaction of many in our government agencies after 9/11 was: Which state did it? Saddam, it must have been Saddam. We had failed to grasp, for a variety of reasons, the new phenomenon that had emerged in the world. This was not state-sponsored terrorism. This was religious war.

This was the emergence of a transnational enemy driven by religious fervor and fanaticism. Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. None of our government institutions was set up with receptors, or even vocabulary, to deal with this. So we left ourselves completely vulnerable to a concerted attack.

Where are we today? I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy. We are fighting them in many areas of the world, and I must say with much better awareness of the issues and their nature. We're fighting with better tools. But I cannot say we are now safe from the kind of attack we saw on 9/11. I think we are much safer than we were on 9/11; the ability of our enemies to launch a concerted, sophisticated attack is much less than it was then. Still, we're totally vulnerable to the kinds of attacks we've seen in Madrid, for instance. We face a very sophisticated and intelligent enemy who has been trained, in many cases, in our universities and gone to school on our methods, learned from their mistakes, and continued to use the very nature of our free society and its aversion to intrusion in privacy and discrimination to their benefit.

For example, today it is still a prohibited offense for an airline to have two people of the same ethnic background interviewed at one time, because that is discrimination. Our airline security is still full of holes. Our ability to carry out covert operations abroad is only marginally better than it was at the time of 9/11. A huge amount of fundamental cultural and institutional change must be carried out in the United States before we can effectively deal with the nature of the threat. Today, probably 50 or more states have schools that are teaching jihad, preaching, recruiting, and training. We have absolutely no successful programs even begun to remediate against those efforts.

It's very important that people understand the complexity of this threat. We have had to institute new approaches to protecting our civil liberties-the way we authorize surveillance, the way we conduct our immigration and naturalization policies, and the way we issue passports. That's only the beginning. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize the problem, to recognize that for every jihadist we kill or capture-as we carry out an aggressive and positive policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere-another 50 are being trained in schools and mosques around the world.

This problem goes back a long way. We have been asleep. Just by chance about six months ago, I picked up a book by V. S. Naipaul, one of the great English prose writers. I love to read his short stories and travelogues. The book was titled Among the Believers (New York: Vintage, 1982) and was an account of his travels in Indonesia, where he found that Saudi-funded schools and mosques were transforming Indonesian society from a very relaxed, syncretist Islam to a jihadist fundamentalist fanatical society, all paid for with Saudi Arabian funding. Nobody paid attention. Presidents in four administrations put their arms around Saudi ambassadors, ignored the Wahhabi jihadism, and said these are our eternal friends.

We have seen throughout the last 20 years a kind of head-in-the-sand approach to national security in the Pentagon. We were comfortable with the existing concept of what the threat was, what threat analysis was, and how we derived our requirements, still using the same old tools we all grew up with. We paid no attention to the real nature of this emerging threat, even though there were warning signs.

Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut-241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments. The vaunted United States is a paper tiger; Americans are afraid of casualties; they run like cowards when attacked; and they don't even bother to take their dead with them. This was a seminal moment for Osama.

After that, we had our CIA station chief kidnapped and tortured to death. Nothing was done. Then, we had our Marine Colonel [William R.] Higgins kidnapped and publicly hanged. Nothing was done. We fueled and made these people aware of the tremendous effectiveness of terrorism as a tool of jihad. It worked. They chased us out of one place after another, because we would not retaliate".

Address by Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman
The U.S. Naval Institute 130th Annual Meeting and Annapolis Naval History Symposium (2004)

>Book 'em Dano....Murder One! It's my sad duty to inform you that Kono played by Zulu is dead. Or is that Zulu played by Kono? Kono was the crime fighting protege of Kam Fong played by Chin Ho.....or is that Chin Ho played by Kam Fong?

Actually actor Zulu, who played Kono, was really named Gilbert Francis Lani Damian Kauhi and he died May 3rd at the age of 66. I found this out tonight while following some inane link from James Lileks to the very bowels of the Internet. I was shocked, I had not heard. But I suppose that other events took precedence, though why I won't conjecture. Suffice it to say I'll miss Kono, Zulu and Gilbert; we were all close. I took the photo above in Hawaii in 1974. while Zulu, Kono, Gilbert and I were watching Prince Charles play polo on the North Shore of Oahu. People of a certain age will remember that this was at the height of popularity of the TeeVee show "Hawaii 50" and occasionally we used to see the stars around the island. Zulu played Jack Lord's sidekick. I used to see Jack at the supermarket in Hawaii Kai. He looked exactly like he did on TeeVee, except worse. Zulu looked exactly the same, except better. Will miss you Brah, Geev 'um!

High octane B.S......

I've heard it all now. I caught just about 4 minutes of the big network news lead story before I headed out to little league baseball tonight. And this was about 3 minutes too long.

The story was this, "Democrats blame Bush for high gas prices...." I thought that perhaps my tinnitus ridden ears were deceiving me, but no, there was talking head Kerry, lips moving on that horse face, spewing out something blah, blah, blah about the Republicans being at fault for $2 gas. My question to you is this. Have they gone completely insane? Do they really think that they're talking to morons? Even the common folk who send mass emails about vetoing "big oil", I suspect, remember it was the liberal Democrats who have consistantly voted against a national energy policy that would give a few more incentives to us energy producers here in the heartland to develop more Amerkan oil and gas. And wasn't it the liberal Democrats who led the fight against drilling in ANWAR, the artic oil fields, to develop more Amerkan oil? And am I wrong or wasn't it John Kerry hissownself who has a chip in his platform suggesting that we raise the gasoline tax by the small sum of 50 cents per gallon. Payable by you the voter who is assumed to be so stupid as not to remember just who proposed this tariff when it comes time to pay at the pump. The same John Kerry who uses more than his share of fuel powering a fleet of SUV's and a plethora of mansions that "his family" owns.

Have I been living in an alternate parallel universe these last several years or have the Democrats gone completely whacko? This was the most bizarre utterance I've heard from them yet. Or perhaps in turning off the TV I missed the meat of this well thought out arguement. Perhaps their theory now is that since they believed that the war in Iraq was promulgated for the sole reason of obtaining cheap Iraqi oil, Dubya ought to now be delivering the goods. How tragic that oil is at an all time high. I'm going to think about this further as I drive my big car around to empty the tank. I'm going to be filling it up on May 19th.

Don't buy gas on May 19

MAY 19TH HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT UP THEIR BEHIND" DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF GASOLINE THAT DAY.THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.

That was the subject of a recent mass forward email I received from a friend, similar in nature to several others that have passed through my inbox since the price of gasoline has gone up so much. Pardon my saying so but these emails are the most immature, assinine drivel that I've ever read. Generated by wishful thinking SUV drivers I suppose. Somehow my friends forward this palaver without a thought that people they know are in the oil business....like me.

The email in question seeks to have everyone not buy gasoline for a day, thus punishing "Big Oil"...I suppose the same nameless, faceless "Big Oil" that started the war in Iraq.

IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN THE UNITED STATES DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF GASOLINE FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES

I don't know who calculated this....but he or she is an idiot. Actually I'm betting "Big Oil" would welcome a couple of days for suppply to catch up with demand. But since even, it seems, the most moderate and normally sensible people hold "Big Oil" responsible for having to pay more to drive on important trips to secure their Starbucks Latte, let me explain a few things.

1] Important, remember this: Crude oil is at an all time high. "Big Oil" relies on crude oil stocks to make gasoline and the crude oil market is a truly global one, primarily controlled, still, by OPEC...and OPEC is, still, primarily controlled by the Saudi's.

2] You won't believe this but trust me. If it hadn't been for "Big Oil" over the years you'd be paying buckets full of money more for gasoline today. "Big Oil" has spent trillions of dollars since the '30s opening up new fields of supply in such places as Saudi Arabia, the North Sea, Iraq and Malaysia. If they hadn't and you had to rely on home grown Amerkan oil provided by small operators like me, well it wouldn't be a pretty picture for your wallet. We don't have enough oil or cheap oil in this country to support your driving habits. "Big Oil" provided the world with a sea of cheap oil.

3] For the last 15 years, the average price for West Texas Crude was $18.30. In December of 1998 it was $8.65 a barrel, so cheap it didn't even pay for us small guys to pump it out of the ground, so cheap it put 10's of thousands in our area out of work. At $8.65/bbl. no sane person in Amerka drilled any new wells. Except "Big Oil" who provided all the cheap oil and gasoline you wanted. And, by the way, where were the emailers decrying that oil was to cheap and putting Amerkans out of work? I guess I wasn't on that list.

Why is gasoline so expensive all of a sudden? Well...see #1 above, crude oil is more expensive. And why is crude oil so much more expensive now? Who's to blame. There are a number of reasons.

1] Impoving economies around the world. And not only in the U.S. and Europe, but in economies of banana republic and third world countries that in the past have not needed so much energy. Globalization for better or worse is working. You, indirectly, are paying for your cheaper Wal-Mart goods with higher fuel prices here at home. China is sucking in petroleum supplies at an amazingly higher rate to fuel the factories that make your cheap Wal-Mart 10 Pack of underwear and India needs more power to fire up all the computers that are doing your H&R Block tax returns. You get cheap undies but have to pay more to drive your Lincoln Navigator to go get them.

2] Gasoline plant shortages. Chronically there is a shortage of gasoline refinement capacity. Though overshadowed by high crude prices now, the dearth of gasoline plants exacerbates the problem causing wider swings in gas prices when crude oil prices move. Gas plants are expensive, high liability items and no one wants one in their vicinity.

3] The Saudis. I could have said OPEC, but the Saudi's lead that pack, and the Saudi's are worried, and we should worry about the Saudi's. This price rise could be the Saudi's reply to G.W. Bush for his actions in Iraq...a way to vote against him this Fall. They know he means business about change in the Arab world and that means them...the Sheiks, Emirs and Kumquats who collect all the oil royalty checks. They'd rather things didn't change. And somewhere in the price mix is something you'd rather not hear. The Saudi's know that their production is declining. Without the weight of oil weatlth, they are back to being mere sand beggars. From some inside sources in Saudi Arabia, I have learned that more and more of their oil fields are being "water flooded". This means injecting water into the oil formations to float the oil out. This is what you do when production starts to decline. So....rather than sell off all their oil and it's power at lower prices they may have decided to take the market price to a new level. I'd do the same. To get the same total check every month sell less at a higher price. It keeps them in the game longer.

4] You...and Me. As much as we don't want to blame ourselves, I have to. We Amerkans are still fuel grubbing wasteful people on the whole. I was in gas station lines in 1973 and saw the huge oil boom of 1979 go bust in 1983. Nothing much has changed since. In my home two TV's and two computers and a PlayStation often run at the same time with no one watching, we think nothing of driving 2 miles to the store for a few items. Detroit is building muscle cars again. We waste to much energy, because it's been cheap for to long.

In conclusion I have good news and bad news. First the good news. There is plenty of oil left in the world. As we say in geologic terms....one buttload of it. The bad news is that most all of the easy oil, read that cheaply produced oil, has been discovered and is being produced. The oil in the future will cost more to find and exploit for use. So, although, prices flucuate, be ready to continue paying more. So turn off one of your TV's, turn your thermostat up to 78° get a GEO Prism and stop sending me emails about evil "Big Oil". In 10 years you may really be glad there around to spend the bucks it takes to drill a well 20,000 ft. deep, 30 miles out at sea.

The Art Crowd...

One of the things that Julie and I shared in common from the beginning was our love of art. In fact our second date, the day after our first date, was to the Celebration of the Arts festival in Midland. And by gosh, we were there again today.

This time as a married couple with child. Jack went a little begrudgingly, but we think he had a good time playing on the super sized blow-up amusements that seem to keep getting bigger and bigger. You know the ones. Put a kid in a velcro© suit and throw him up against a velcro© wall sticking him to said wall 7 feet up. Fun. But not having developed our apprecitation of the finer things in life, we were glad he had fun.

Our fun was browsing the art and seeing friends and artists again. We have made a habit of buying at least one painting from our good friend Helen Pogue each year and today we bought two. Helen is a true artiste, painting varied subjects and with several different styles but we love her stock in trade....landscapes and buildings of New Mexico. We have five now. They compliment our house very elegantly.

My big treat was visiting at length with Woody Gwyn [above] who over the last decade has gotten to be a friend. For Midland High grads, he is the artist who painted the mural over the stairs near the main entry hall. The mural was painted when he was youngster in high school and since he has gone on to great things. Today Woody relayed to me how he got started on the road to better things in the art world. It seems he conned noted artist Peter Hurd into granting him an interview at his home in New Mexico...thinking that Woody was an established artist. Mr. Hurd was astonished to see an 18 year old boy step out of the car, but being a gracious man talked with him anyway and advised him to skip college and instead attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. Which Woody did and after long years of work he is now nationally known, his works hanging in finer homes and museums including the Presidents home in Crawford where he did a commissioned work of the ranch for George and Laura Bush. I always enjoy talking with Woody, a very esoteric and funny guy, and we hope to be able to accept his invitation to visit him and his wife at their home in Galisteo, New Mexico this summer.

And no, we didn't buy an original Woody Gwyn. The one in the photo above is priced at $32,000. I didn't feel to humiliated though, as Woody told me, "Hey I can't afford my art either".

Tent People....

I went to another funeral today. This time for Joe Martin, an old friend from high school. JoJo, as he was called by most who know him back in those days, was the little brother of a friend in my class. Although as I was ahead a grade for my age, Joe was only 2 months younger than me. 54 is entirely to young an age to leave the mortal world without a fight.

And Joe had had a fight on his hands the last several years after suffering a stroke during an operation. An over achiever, Joe did not let his frailty conquer his spirit. Though he really didn't look the part he had been a star running back at Midland High School and at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. He had been senior class president in high school and voted "most friendly". And he was. He obtained an M.B.A. from SMU and became a CPA. In his last days he had obtained another passion, for art, and in spite of his limitations was attending painting classes at our local junior college. And he was good...and prolific. His sister told us that his garage was lined with his work, all done in only the past several years.

The memorial service for Joe was as I prefer. Not too long but meaningful with stories and laughter offered by friends and family. The service was conducted, coincidentally, by Julie's friend Jan Reid who had married us only months before. And instead of the usual well meaning homily that I barely hear Jan's words were wisdom to my ears. Jan's remarks were that we are merely tent people here on this earth, transient visitors just passing through in temporary quarters until we are called to our permanent home. Perhaps this struck me so because I have actually lived in tents on occasions in my life and I can identify with the luxurious feeling of relocating to more stable quarters....or perhaps as I get older and more of my friends, family and acquaintances leave this earth it seemed to me to be a comforting thought.

Comforting also was the renewal in seeing old friends at the reception held afterwards at the home of Joe's sister Suzanne. Old friends of my family and friends from my high school days that I had not seen in decades. Laughter was endemic and it seemed even in his passing Joe had bequethed us all with the title "most friendly". Thanks JoJo for touching us all.

Mothers.....

It was a grand day, spent with a plethora of Mothers.

As promised young son Jack awakened me at 6:15 to watch the Spanish Grand Prix live and, of course, to prepare the Mother in our lives breakfast in bed. A simple repast, by her request, but accentuated by a grand red rose from our garden. Then every Mothers dream on her special day...we all watched the Grand Prix in bed.

The main event of the day was a lunch put together by Julie with Mothers galore. My Mom, Julies Mom, Mom Julie and her kids, Julies Dad's cousin family and mutual family friends of both my parents and Julies. I have to say, that Julie is a fine and doting Mother...and daughter/daughter-in-law. Bundles of roses awaited all the Moms and her choice of the outside patio at one of the better resaurants in town was superb. The weather and the setting were perfect. Like dining out in San Francisco. Ok, minus the water and view, but fine none the less.

The only drawback to the day was the Big Gold Dog vomiting at my feet as I sat at the computer checking my messages this morning, but not even this could dampen a glorious day. I'm blessed with having some first class Mothers in my life!

What hath I wrought.......?

It's great to have family interests. As a regular reader of Streams could discern in the last several months postings, one of my interests is sports car racing. Not normally an interest that would consume all members of most American families. I have tried to nurture this by interesting Jack in Grand Prix Racing on PlayStation2, by introducing Julie to the beauty, power and grace of Shelby Cobra's and in our family attendance of the Chaparral Racing exhibit at the Petroleum Museum. But perhaps I've gone to far!

Julie not only has not nixed my future plans for a Cobra.....she heartily endorses it and wants one soon.....so she can take it to the Panoz Racing School at the Texas Motor Speedway. Jack is now competing with me for time on the PlayStation and he's getting to be quite the little driver. And, of course, we all have matching Chaparral Racing T-shirts.

So I suppose it should not have come as a complete surprise this Saturday morning at 7:30 to be awakened by a 10 year old voice saying, "Hey Dub [he calls me Dub, short for "W", which is short for Wallace], wake up, the qualifying rounds for the Spanish Grand Prix are on TV live and Ralf Schumacher is about to drive." He knows that Ralf is the driver I use on the PlayStation version and that Ralf and I hold the Circuit de Catalunya PlayStation lap record. So arise I did to watch Ralf with an admirable qualifying drive which put him at pole postition #6.

And so this Saturday evening I must go to bed fairly early as Jack has promised me that he'll be getting me up at 6:30 tomorrow morning to watch the race live. And, of course, this will give us a chance to fix Mom breakfast in bed.......while she watches the race.

But if you're not ready for bed yet, catch the official Formula 1 website. It's a great site with all the info, pictures and data you need....plus track graphics. Try "mousing" over each turn for a picture, looks just like PlayStation2!

Look....it's Ron Ely!

Sometimes we can see things a multitude of times but not see the entire thing at all. The other night I was watching the last hour or so of the movie South Pacific on The Turner Classic Movie channel. One of my all time favorites. Great music, great photography, interesting cast and nostalgic as it reminds me of my time in the South Pacific. So as I watched the full credits unfold, imagine my surprise at seeing the part of the navigator on the PBY "The Bouncing Belch" played by none other than Ronald Ely. Who later became Ron Ely of teevee Tarzan fame.

Interesting because about the time he became Tarzan famous....he had been living in Midland. I carried his groceries out for him several times when I was working a summer job as a stocker at the old Furr's Supermarket here. Seeing as how we were old chums, I wonder why I've never recoginized him in South Pacific before......I've seen it 20 times.

Photo......shop

I've had several nice suprises arising from my Chaparral Racing photos. Last week I was contacted by Paige Summer of the Petroleum Museum saying that she had seen the website and asking if they could use some of the images in their newsletter and possibly the website and some printed material. I was glad to offer them to the Museum and so today I stopped by to allow her to download the digital images into her computer. We had a nice chat during which she added that current Indy 500 winner Gil De Ferran had also seen the website and was interested in prints of my shots of he and his son sitting in the Chaparral. Glad to oblige...so I'll be sending some to he and his wife in Florida.

This proves out some sage advise I was given years ago by a friend Steve Northup, a former combat photographer and now an instructor at the Santa Fe Workshops. In conversation I had asked Steve what was his one secret to taking good photographs. Without blinking Steve said, "take all the shots you can, don't ever let anyone see the really bad ones, you will no doubt take some good ones, and a few great ones and someone will eventually want some of them". Good advice, not that I consider these great shots......but at least someone wants them!

Heroes and Wusses.....

The following comment is from college student Hans Zeiger and was sent to me by another patriotic American, Bob Barker, who commanded an artillery battery at LZ Falcon in 1965 that fired over 18,000 105 mm howitzer rounds in just three days supporting my comrades surrounded by North Vietnamese troops at LZ XRay, Vietnam.

Heroes and Wusses
By Hans Zeiger
May 3, 2004

There are two kinds of Americans in this generation. Former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman was one kind; he fully earned the title of American with his life and earned the distinction of hero with his death. Tillman spilt his blood last Friday after a gun battle with terrorist fighters along a distant road in Afghanistan.

We need only read the vitriol of Pat Tillman's enemies at home to understand that this generation is deeply, intensively divided. In college newspapers and youthful Left-wing internet sites, Pat Tillman is no hero, but a "dumb jock," "Rambo," "baby killer," and an "idiot" who "got what he deserved."

If Pat Tillman was one kind of American in this generation, the notorious Rene Gonzalez, a graduate student at University of Massachusetts at Amherst is another kind. Gonzalez had the audacity to write a column in the April 28 issue of the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian accusing Tillman of "acting out his macho, patriotic crap, and I guess someone with a bigger gun did him in." His sacrifice, wrote Mr. Gonzalez, "was not heroism, it was prophetic idiocy."

This so-called "idiot" died so that Mr. Gonzalez and his fellow left-wing radicals could call him names in the free press. Tillman rejected a $3.6 million NFL contract to take up service in the U.S. Army following September 11. When Tillman left his promising career in pro-football to defend America in the war on terror, the Department of Defense wanted to market him as their poster-boy, but he refused the glory by turning down thousands of invitations for interviews and photo ops. He sacrificed his life and his fortune, but he did not give up his sacred honor.

Honor is a rare thing in this generation. But Pat Tillman had it. He had it when he went quietly into the Armed Services, for he knew that there is no place for self-adulation among the fellowship of patriots. He had it on the field of battle, for he was convinced that the cause of liberty is just. He had it in his final breaths, for Pat Tillman understood that the fight is eternal. And his dead patriot body may be homebound, but still, in the courts of America's God, his soul has honor.

Yet there is a despicable brand of person that thinks nothing of a hero. Mr. Gonzalez stands for the wusses of American, as do the folks at Indymedia.org, a nationwide media network for the dissemination of radically left-wing alternative news. "Indymedia.org has 50 local chapters in the United States," writes Ben Shapiro in his column this week. "Forty-four of them made no mention of Pat Tillman's death. The other six celebrated it."

"Pat Tillman is gone good riddance," read the banner above an article at the Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Indymedia site. The Washington, D.C. Indymedia site proposed this headline to sum up Pat Tillman's death: "Dumb Jock Dies for Pipeline in Afghanistan." Portland, Oregon Indymedia pitched in with, "Privileged Millionaire, Blinded by Nationalist Mythology, Pisses Away the Good Life," "Cottled Sports Star Allows Nationalism to Foster Jingoistic Irresponsibility Resulting in His Death," and "Capitalist Chooses to Kill Innocents Instead of Cashing Check."

In the ongoing experiment called America, the war on terrorism is this generation's war. But there is another battle between ideas about honor and courage and virtue and faith that must be fought in the minds and souls of young Americans. This great spiritual battle was more pronounced in the days of Vietnam, but neither side has yet won. Whether character and honor shall win out in the minds of young Americans will forever determine whether we as a nation can continue to champion liberty and justice in the world.

Ultimately, it is a question of our responsibility. Someone once told me that if someone violates your freedom, you will fight to defend it. But if someone takes away your responsibility, you will be indifferent to the coming seizure of freedom.

I worry more about the loss of responsibility in my generation than I do about the loss of freedom itself. Rene Gonzalez and Indymedia stand for an America without duty, honor, and heroism. But as long as there are Pat Tillmans in America, we can survive.

-------------

Hans Zeiger is a student at Hillsdale College and president of the Scout Honor Coalition. www.hanszeiger.com

Back Home....

It's been a busy week, mainly spent moving my office and buying new accouterments to go therein.

For the last 6 years I've been in association with EGL Resources, a conglomerate of petroleum geolgists, engineers, and landmen [hence the EGL] and it's been a great association. I couldn't have asked for a better group to bunk with.....and teach me a few things about the oil and gas business. We drilled some wells, bought some wells, bought minerals and had our share of successes and failures, but most importantly it's been singificant in the close relationships we all formed. I'm grateful for their help and support.

But it's time to move on with a new venture I've been working on for almost two years. And time to move back to the oldest office building in town, the Petroleum Building. Built in 1928, it's among the prime reasons that Midland developed into a major player in the oil business, for when it was completed it was the only office space in West Texas near the huge newly discovered oil fields of the Permian Basin. The major oil companies located their staffs in the building to manage their new discoveries. And so with the headquarters personal here, Midland grew when so many other oil field boom towns had their day and then faded. It's a historic building and, I think, a beautiful one compared to the modern glass boxes. Built in a sandstone desert style art deco, it has retained it's charm complete with the painted mural in the lobby.

This marks my third tour in the building. The first came in 1979 when I lived in Dallas but was hired as a real estate consultant by the then owners who were going to construct a 45 story modern office building next to the Petroleum Building. I was flown out on their plane every week to work on the new structure and had an office on the ground floor. But the big oil boom of the late 70's and early 80's was soon followed by the big oil bust of the mid 80's so the new building was never built. My second expeience in the building came almost 20 years later when I started with EGL Resources which had just formed, The building was owned by one of our partners.

And so now I'm back for the third stay this time on the SW corner of the third floor floor. A great space overlooking the park at Centennial Plaza and with tree tops right outside my windows. We were fortunate to get this office as it adjoins my partner Del Sloan and and is adjacent to the two engineers who will also be involved in our new venture, Embar Power LLC. Julie has been helping with the decorating and we never knew it would be so hard to find the appropriate furniture. But we're particular. We finally found a rather old Mission Style desk at an antique store that suits my taste to the "T". The file cabinets were another matter. I had thought that with some diligent searching we could locate the old style wooden ones to go with the rest of the motif. But alas none were to be found, so I had to settle for stock wooden models from Office Depot.

But it's starting to look rather good and I'm excited to be embarking on this new phase of my career. Particularly excited since today I got word from the representative of the two large corporations that are involved in our new venture that they are preparing a letter of intent to signify their handshake agreement on our deal. Hard to believe that after two years of research, stops and starts and toil that our dreams could actually be coming true. We're not ready to announce the project yet, but it involves gas, electricity and a new use for an under utilized fuel. Stay tuned.