In honor of lost comrades - US Forest Service Engine 57

There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

- Les Miserables

Captain Mark Loutzenhiser
Engine operator Jason McKay
Engine operator Jess McLean
Engine operator Daniel Hoover-Najera
Engine operator Pablo Cerda (died 31 October 2006)

We pray for their families.

Testosterone Tumbling in American Males?

John Wayne must be rolling over in his grave.

The French are probably laughing at us for a change.

An article just published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism describes a study that documents a decline in the testosterone levels of American men. The study apparently measured testosterone in different groups of men in 1988, 1996, and 2003. Men who were aged 65 to 69 in the 2003 study had only 84% of the testosterone that another group of men the same age had in the 1988 study.

The article indicates that smoking, obesity and other factors can't fully explain the differences.

John Kerry would probably say that global warming is the cause. He blames everything on it, including colder-than-usual weather last winter. I think just the opposite. I think John Kerry is to blame for lowering testosterone levels. John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, politically correct speech, and a ban on Christmas decorations in town squares, smoke-free zones are all emasculating American men.

A few weeks after "the 11th" (I find it a bit too clinical to call it "9/11," and don't even get me started on that lame phrase "the events of September 11th") Peggy Noonan published a column called "Welcome Back, Duke." In it she praises not so much the return of manly men, but their return to grace. Let me quote a few key paragraphs, but please, read the whole piece:

A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since Sept. 11. You might say it suddenly emerged from the rubble of the past quarter century, and emerged when a certain kind of man came forth to get our great country out of the fix it was in.

I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in a hundred pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe. Men who are welders, who do construction, men who are cops and firemen. They are all of them, one way or another, the men who put the fire out, the men who are digging the rubble out, and the men who will build whatever takes its place.

And their style is back in style. We are experiencing a new respect for their old-fashioned masculinity, a new respect for physical courage, for strength and for the willingness to use both for the good of others.

You didn't have to be a fireman to be one of the manly men of Sept. 11. Those businessmen on flight 93, which was supposed to hit Washington, the businessmen who didn't live by their hands or their backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said goodbye to the people they loved, snapped the cell phone shut and said, "Let's roll." Those were tough men, the ones who forced that plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.

She goes on to explain how they fell from grace in the 1970's:

I should discuss how manliness and its brother, gentlemanliness, went out of style. I know, because I was there. In fact, I may have done it. I remember exactly when: It was in the mid-'70s, and I was in my mid-20s, and a big, nice, middle-aged man got up from his seat to help me haul a big piece of luggage into the overhead luggage space on a plane. I was a feminist, and knew our rules and rants. "I can do it myself," I snapped.

It was important that he know women are strong. It was even more important, it turns out, that I know I was a jackass, but I didn't. I embarrassed a nice man who was attempting to help a lady. I wasn't lady enough to let him. I bet he never offered to help a lady again. I bet he became an intellectual, or a writer, and not a good man like a fireman or a businessman who says, "Let's roll."

This isn't to blame women alone for the decline of testosterone. Lots of intellectual sissified men participated. We manly men let them. No wonder our testosterone is in decline.

Of course, that medical study on testosterone was done on men in the greater Boston area. I'll bet that New York men would have scored higher.

What’s Wrong with Sliding Scale Zoning?

Every few years Shenandoah County looks at its zoning laws, realizes that they have done little to stem the growth of housing in the county, and drafts a new set of more restrictive rules.

Now is a good time to ask whether the rules need changing again, or whether another approach might be warranted.

The real problem is that the zoning laws don’t apply to the land where the growth is occurring. The growth in our county isn’t happening in Forestville, or Jerome, or Mt. Olive. It’s in Strasburg and Woodstock and the other towns that are not bound by the county’s zoning laws.

Changing the zoning that applies to farmland in Forestville, Jerome and Mt. Olive isn’t going to solve the problem. The change has to be made in and around Strasburg and Woodstock.

The county’s records show that, over each of the past eight years, an average of less than thirty residential lots have been created within agricultural A-1 and C-1 zoning. So where has all the growth come from? It happens when land in the towns is rezoned. Those decisions get made by the town councils, not the county Board of Supervisors.

It’s not fair to a property owner when the county changes zoning laws and removes some of the development rights to his or her land. It’s equally unfair to the rest of us when a town changes its zoning and allows a land owner to bring county land into the town and rezone it for much denser development than would be allowed in the county. That decision leaves the rest of us to pay twice – once for the additional school rooms and other services that growth requires, and again when the county takes more of our development rights away from us in a fruitless attempt to control growth.

We’ll only get a handle on growth when we get the towns to cooperate.

There are things the county can do. One is to work with the towns to create joint development agencies like the one that reviews all plans in and around Berryville in Clarke County. That body, more than Clarke’s sliding scale zoning rules, is responsible for the control of growth in that county.

Another thing the county can do is to encourage the transfer of development rights as a part of the process for rezoning within those development areas. If someone wants to build 50 more homes than the current zoning allows, let them first buy 50 development rights from farmers out in the county. This will let the farmers earn some extra money without selling their land, and preserve farmland forever. If we had such a plan over the past five years, we would have preserved thousands of acres of farmland at no cost to the taxpayer. The transfer of development rights was recently enabled by state law. Let’s put it to use here in the county and its towns.

The county is allowing some incorrect information to come forward from its sliding scale zoning studies. It reports that the proposed scale would, if every lot were developed, add “only” 25,875 new houses in the county, compared to 43,023 new houses under the present zoning. This is based on the fallacy that every square foot of existing A-1 and C-1 land not in the flood plain can be built up. It doesn’t count on the fact that much of the land has no road access or won’t meet septic approvals. In truth, the actual potential “buildout” under existing zoning is probably no more than it would be under sliding scale. Because of the greatly reduced potential of sliding scale zoning, and the greater flexibility it might afford in lot size, access, and timing, we could see as much growth under sliding scale, faster, than we would see under the existing zoning.

But that’s not the main point. The main point is that sliding scale zoning, or ANY new zoning rules that the county adopts, won’t do a single thing to stop the towns from annexing county land, granting major subdivisions, and sticking county taxpayers with the bill.

The solution is in working with the towns, and instituting the transfer of development rights, not pushing more stringent zoning rules on the farmers out in the rural areas of the county.

If we want to preserve farming, we need to make it more profitable, not less profitable. And we need to realize that some of that profit lies in the value of the farmland.