ON VACATION

Snack break, hiking in Yorkshire Dales NP

 Summer, 2000

 

The principal purpose of this blog entry is to inform you that I am not going to be posting anything at all for at least a week.  I am going to Flagstaff to visit Kristen and Joe, and I won’t be cursing my computer until at least the 15^th of October.  So, if you need a blog-fix, try re-reading some earlier entries, enjoying Linda’s pictures (their delight never fades) – AND, maybe, thinking about the points I have attempted to raise so as to tell me if, where and how I’m wrong.

However, in passing I should point out to you that today is the 100^th anniversary of the American Cancer Society.  The Bellingham Herald with its nose-for-news unrivaled  anywhere, features a very long and mostly valuable article on the occasion.  (My suspicion - that they used it to fill out the Sunday edition to a respectable thickness - is contemptible.)  The article speaks enthusiastically about the reduction in cancer deaths in the past century, and with optimism about advances in the near future.  The fact is, however, that progress so far has really consisted of picking low-hanging fruit.  Some cancers have proven to be easily curable, and some – to a large extent – preventable.  (Toss away that pack of Camels. Get those mammograms. )  Unfortunately, we are making little or no progress against our other enemies.  Pancreatic, for instance, and to all our great sorrow, ovarian.