4 July-August 2008 Applegater
TRENDS AND OBSERVATIONS
Growing and shrinking trends
BY RAUNO PERTTU
Our daughter Emily has grown
up. Last week, she passed her qualifying
exam for her PhD program at Berkeley.
This means that, with two or three
more years of research, she will finish
her degree in biological engineering.
On June 14, she will marry Creighton
Helms from Medford, now a Coast
Guard officer based in San Francisco.
When Emily asked me to consider
a father/daughter dance song, the old
Harry Belafonte song, “Turn Around,”
came to mind because it seemed so
appropriate. In my mind I still see her
and her friends running up and down
the basketball court and my wife Jan and
I driving the noisy group to and from
games and pizza parlors.
My mother, who passed away in
January, will be attending the wedding
in spirit. With the death of my mother,
our last parent, Jan and I became the
oldest generation. Emily and our son
Kirk are still early in their lives. Jan and
I are at a—how do I say this—more
mature stage. Although our lives
remain insanely busy, it’s a time when
I increasingly recognize limitations in
many forms.
I recently went to the Grants Pass
antique street fair and determined that
either most of the items for sale weren’t
really old because I remembered using
them when they were new—or perhaps
I’m also an antique. Up until she died,
my mother told me she still considered
herself to be that eighteen-year-old girl
of 70 years earlier. I know what she
meant. Our internal mirror sees us as
that young, energetic person we once
were. It’s a shock to go to a reunion
and see all those old people, and easy
to decide that, while they might have
aged, I haven’t.
Even in my enduring self-image
of youth, I often stop to realize the
incredible changes that have occurred
in my short years. Many have been
for the better. Some have not. I also
realize that most problems may have
altered their appearance, but remain
basically unchanged. Our baby-boom
generation thought we could correct
the world’s problems. That would have
been nice.
Still, we’ve made some progress.
Our social progress is reflected in
two of the three current presidential
candidates being a woman and an
African-American. Our scientific
advancements and technical progress
have been spectacular, and are reflected
in our ability to buy everyday products
inexpensively that would have been
inconceivable a few years back. Our
consider the biggest changes in my
lifetime, and on future challenges for
our children’s generation, I focus on
broader issues.
The foremost issue remains
our growing population. While the
world’s population has doubled from
three billion in 1960 to more than six
billion today, our concerns over it have
puzzlingly diminished. This growth
continues to be a key contributor
to many of today’s problems and
shortages.
For example, as China, India
and other poorer nations become
middle-class, their increasing resource
needs are triggering soaring energy and
Our internal mirror sees us as that young, energetic
person we once were. It’s a shock to go to a reunion
and see all those old people, and easy to decide that,
while they might have aged, I haven’t.
progress in medicine also has been
spectacular, although an increasing
number of people aren’t able to afford
those benefits.
Forty years ago, our consensus
was that much of the world would
soon collapse into hunger and poverty.
China and India faced imminent
starvation and disaster. The collapse
didn’t happen. Today, our consensus
leans toward China and India becoming
the dominant economic powers in the
world. They are on track to become
such, but have many serious problems
to solve before our new expectation
becomes future reality.
In my youth, the Cold War and
its created crises in Cuba, Vietnam, and
Eastern Europe were nagging worries.
Today, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan are
replacement worries. The troubles in
Israel and their part of the Middle East
have remained consistent.
However, when I pause and
minerals prices. Energy and mineral
resources are the lifeblood to the
growth of these new economies and to
maintaining the economies of today’s
already rich nations. We must develop
improved efficiencies and technologies
or shortages of raw resources will
become a critical barrier to improving
and even maintaining the world’s
standard of living. Merely finding new
ore deposits and oil fields won’t solve
the world’s growing resource needs
for more than a few more decades,
and finger-pointing by politicians
won’t improve the situation. I believe
this problem of raising the world’s
standard of living, and of protecting
and improving our environment in the
face of a growing population, is our
children’s most difficult task. As an
eternal optimist, I also believe it is a
solvable task. So far, all the doomsday
scenarios of each decade have failed
to come to pass, although we have
an unending ability to create new
doomsday worries.
Another continuing change in
the world is one I personally regret, and
it is interwoven with that troublesome
population trend. When I was young,
the world was still a big place. It had
seemingly unexplored jungles in Africa
and South America. It had mysterious
lands with strange customs. It still had
wild frontiers in places like Alaska. It
was easy to get away to unpopulated,
pristine places.
Much of the myster y and
adventure have faded from today’s
world. The jungles are being cut and
replaced with farmland. Those once
mysterious foreign lands are now the
scenes of disaster and conflict on
our nightly news. The empty frontier
places of my youth now twinkle at night
with the lights of new residents in the
former wilderness. To me, the world
is diminished as a result. Our children
and their children, who grow up in
this shrunken, homogenized world,
probably won’t recognize the loss.
Rauno Perttu • 541-899-8036
jrperttu@charter.net
Brain Teasers
Submitted by Marvin Rosenberg
Test your brain with a
MAGIC SQUARE.
Fill each of the nine
spaces below with
numbers one throught
nine (one number in
each space) so that
every vertical, horizontal
and diagonal adds up
to 15.
For this MAGIC TRIANGLE,
place the numbers
1,2,3,4,5 and 6 in the circles,
one in each circle.
The sum of each side of the
triangle must be the
same number. (hint:12)
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