ROVIN’ AND RAVIN’ WITH MIKE

Good News in the Summertime

I was riveted to the story of the Air Force’s efforts complete with in-air refuelling to drop medical supplies to a scrupulously unnamed woman with breast cancer in Antarctica at a time of year when a landing was impossible. Maybe it was the idea of the Antarctic, so cold, almost inviting, this time of year to those of us who summer not quite so far south. Maybe it was the simple, workaday heroism, so well put into words by Major Greg Pike, the pilot. "My most difficult mission that I've ever gone on of any air drop I've ever done," said Major Greg Pike, the mission pilot. Of course, it would be good to think similar efforts are being made to bring medical care to the millions of Americans who do not have medical insurance.

Just when we thought there hadn’t been any good news since the invention of air-conditioning, happy stories have been popping up all over the place. It’s about enough to make me trade in my lifetime membership in the pessimists’ club. As always, I find some especially good news just in the existence of the Internet, and our own little neighborhood in cyberspace, Peanut.org. Stick with this article and its links, and you can hear sounds from the South Pole, a recitation of the Koran in the Arabic in which it was originally received, and a classic song by a great singer who died almost forty years ago. But, on to the recent headlines….

But, this is summer, and as our Congress-people are demonstrating, summer is not a time to settle or even bring up medical care issues. So, turn up the air-conditioning, and log onto these two fascinating Antarctic sites for some haunting images, sounds, literature, and even slang. Spend a year at the South Pole, and enjoy live WebCam images from Antarctica.

"Newborn" was how Sergei Krushchev described his feelings as a new citizen of the United States in Providence, Rhode Island recently. Why would anyone care about one of the almost 250 new citizens sworn in by a judge whose Canadian father once took a similar oath? Well, this was not just any immigrant. This was the son of a funny little bald-headed man who, despite his shoe-banging tantrums at United Nations Headquarters was the stuff of which nightmares and bomb drills were made for those of my generation.

Nikita Krushchev, Sergei’s father was a crude, bad-tempered peasant who was unexpectedly made a player on the world stage, and I choose my words carefully, because he always had a theatrical side, with his dramatic threat to bury us. We wish Sergei, his wife Golenko (who took her oath of citizenship standing by his side) and their fellow new citizens all the best, as we smile at the irony. When someone reminded him that Russia still has its share of old style communists, he replied, "You can find many crazy people here also.'' To remind yourself of the nuttiness of a certain Russian, Sergei’s father, you can read the speech he made to the UN General Assembly, September 23, 1960.

A special reason to celebrate my birthday this year was the victory of the US Women’s Soccer team. Without getting into the politics of Title IX, the simple fact is that in a society in which sports are so much a part of daily life and language, women need opportunities in sports. Frankly, we all need the excitement that the Women’s World Cup championship match generated, which had the largest audience of any women’s sports event in history and the largest American audience of any soccer game ever.

Cheers for the great athletes of both teams, but pardon me for booing that the game ended with penalty kicks. Penalty kicks have so little to do with what happens in the game of soccer that it would make as much sense to require Mark McGwire, after slamming a ball into orbit, to don ballet shoes and pirouette around the bases. But, ignore my ravin', and enjoy a great deal of information about some great athletes. And, if you, like so many folks in our country, just don’t see what the rest of the world sees in soccer, consider a discussion of that problem.

When I first came up with the title for this column, I remembered that the word gospel means "good news." Some of the good news is that there are some amazing study aids for the Bible and the sacred books of other religions on the Internet, using a variety of search engines and formats to bring the best of modern technology to ancient spiritual treasures. For a quick sample of such sites, look at the Bible, the Dhammapada, a simple summary of original Buddhist teachings, Scripture study in Judaism, Hinduism’s Bhagavad-Gita, Islam’s sacred text, the Qu’ran or Koran.

Even though I usually try to keep these articles upbeat, there is a dark underside to many of them, especially since the last two films reviewed here have been very gloomy. This outing is uncharacteristically best read through rose-colored glasses, perhaps even read while listening to the great French singer Edith Piaf (whose voice has been heard recently in Saving Private Ryan and Babe: Pig in the City) sing her classic "La Vie en Rose." Thanks to our friendly, downright rosy Internet, you can hear her sing and even follow an English translation of the song.

So, dear readers, keep a smile on your face, a song by Piaf in your ears, your feet dry, and your heart full of the noble thoughts that the scriptures of the world’s great religions offer you. Pretty good for one little free-net column, wouldn’t you say? But, if you want something else, here’s a little trick for those of you with Microsoft Word for Windows. Type a colon followed by closing parenthesis, like this :) and wait for the amazingly appropriate results.

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