This week's topics endeavor to turn away from the unabashed partisan politics of Washington. The Optimist; the Czech presidency; growth and Amazon; gentrification and school financing; change in MT; crisis in southern Italy; Denver's South High School; 2nd Amendment; States' Rights; "old" vs "new" China; reading non-fiction.

The Optimist, 28 January. This week's heartwarming stories. An Alzheimer's proposal; a different reading club; a new use for fish skin; baseball in Puerto Rico; sharecroppers to homeowners; and more.

Czech republic. Is the current president and leading candidate for re-election up to the task? The question here, in this centrally located EU country, is one of physical health of President Zeman. Like our own president, Zeman is far from beloved: seen to be physically failing, a bit foul mouthed, too close to the Kremlin, setting a bad example with his unabashed smoking and drinking, too anti-Muslim; just a bit too many toos? His large margin of victory in the 27 January runoff says, "apparently not."

Amazon. Metro Denver is among the 20 municipalities on Amazon's short (?) list for a second headquarters operation. Good news? Governor Hickenlooper was candidly of two minds. Given Denver's growing shortage of affordable housing and mounting traffic congestion was the prospect of 50,000 relatively high paying jobs, perhaps, too large a prize? That plus an undercurrent of feeling about how much would be too much in the give-away Amazon might seek in incentives, i.e. cheap land, lowered taxes, etc.

Gentrification and charter schools. As noted in the Amazon entry, affordable housing is a problem in the metro area. One area not often mentioned is the effect on schools, as this Denver Post article notes. It is increasingly likely that the questions about school financing will more to the 'burbs.

A first in Montana.  Wilot Collins is the newly elected mayor in Helena, the first African American to lead a Big Sky city. He defeated a 4-term Anglo incumbent by 338 votes, garnering 51.8% of the vote. Collins, an immigrant from Liberia, quickly joined the MT National Guard and will retire later this year; his daughter is on active duty with the USN. However, with a Facebook page filled with racist messages from people (some/all Montanans ?) he does not know, Collin's term will be interesting, to say the least.
     The author concluded, "It is worth wondering how the toxic tenor of national political debates might change if more of us practiced forbearance and gratitude. What would happen if, in the words of Montana’s first African-American mayor, we opened our arms to one another and said, 'I am here to listen?' "

Immigration to southern Italy. This book review of Tears of Salt looks at the crisis caused as immigrants fled northern Africa across the Mediterranean. Pietro Bartolo, an Italian MD living on Italy's southernmost island, has had a front row seat as this grim migration unfolded.

Denver South High School. Kudos to students and faulty at South. This Christian Science Monitor book review of The Newcomers is about a high school ESL program. Full disclosure: The author, Helen Thorpe, is the ex-wife of CO's current governor, John Hickenlooper.

Second Amendment. This book review from the Christian Science Monitor investigates, yet again, the "true" meaning of this controversial, one sentence-long  part of the Bill of Rights. " 'A fraud on the American public.' That’s how former Chief Justice Warren Burger described the idea that the Second Amendment gives an unfettered individual right to a gun. When he spoke these words to PBS in 1990, the rock-ribbed conservative appointed by Richard Nixon was expressing the longtime consensus of historians and judges across the political spectrum."
     The history of the NRA has been tumultuous. The NRA was founded by a group of Union officers after the Civil War who, perturbed by their troops’ poor marksmanship, wanted a way to sponsor shooting training and competitions. The group testified in support of the first federal gun law in 1934, which cracked down on the machine guns beloved by Bonnie and Clyde and other bank robbers. When a lawmaker asked whether the proposal violated the Constitution, the NRA witness responded, “I have not given it any study from that point of view.” The group lobbied quietly against the most stringent regulations, but its principal focus was hunting and sportsmanship: bagging deer, not blocking laws....Cut to 1977. Gun-group veterans still call the NRA’s annual meeting that year the “Revolt at Cincinnati.” After the organization’s leadership had decided to move its headquarters to Colorado, signaling a retreat from politics, more than a thousand angry rebels showed up at the annual convention. By four in the morning, the dissenters had voted out the organization’s leadership. Activists from the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms pushed their way into power. 

States' Rights. This term is normally thought of in conjunction with human right's issues. Now, however, with CA having become the ninth jurisdiction (8 states, plus D.C.) to have legalized recreational marijuana, the term has a new meaning: the mounting tension between these states and the federal government which continues to list marijuana as a schedule 1 regulated (prohibited) substance. Marijuana-related businesses find themselves in a legal limbo, e.g. they have no legal right to use a federally or chartered bank and moving marijuana or related products (i.e. cookies, candy, oils, etc) across a state line is illegal. The current US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, pushes ahead with plans to prosecute marijuana-related businesses.

Old vs New China. This report by Ann Scott Tyson takes the reader on a tour of present day China with Ms. Scott, a reporter (and Chinese speaker) who first visited as a cub reporter in November 1983. Her insights are well worth the read. She says, "By the time I left in 1992, China was a second home. I spoke and often dreamed in Chinese. In many respects, I knew China better than I did my own country." On this most recent trip, she was visiting her son, who now lives and works in Shanghai.

Reading, non-fiction. The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Daniel Ellsberg. In today's uncertain world, one with a nuclear-armed North Korea and a US president not prone to long term thinking/planning, Ellsberg's revelations about the uncertainties of nuclear war planning/execution in the Cold War era are, once again, bone chilling. For any readers familiar with Herman Kahn's seminal Rand Corporation work, On Thermonuclear War, Ellsberg's revelations will be even more enlightening.
     Ellsberg is, of course, better known -- then and now -- for his role in the publishing of the Pentagon Papers. This being the 50th anniversary, the "Papers" are again in the news. This New Yorker story concerns some little known facts about the case, i.e. those who helped him, but have remained in the shadows. The "Papers" are the subject of the Academy Award-nominated film, "The Post," for which Meryl Streep has also been nominated as Best Actress.

Thank you for reading.