How To Conquer Fear

Oh, dear, I should be so frightened. Governor Paterson is predicting rough times ahead. I also learned that my plastic shower curtain may be killing me. Dry-cleaned clothes may contain toxic fumes, Oh wait. I can’t afford to dry-clean my clothes. Tomatoes, no, make that Mexican jalapeno peppers, no, make that serrano peppers, may be behind that salmonella outbreak. Cell phones are now believed to cause cancer. Anyway, you get the point. All is gloom and doom and we are facing a new crisis every single day. So why am I not sad?Several years ago, Myrna Blyth wrote a swell book called “Spin Sisters.” The subtitle was “How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America.”She was certainly right about the fear merchandising, but it’s not only the womens’ magazines doing the selling. Al Gore may not have created the Internet, but he sure had a lot to do with creating a crowd of persons frightened to death of a naturally occurring climate change. Yet Mr. Gore’s enormous mansion uses four times the electricity as an average household, but that’s okay because he buys “offsets.” If you think that makes sense you probably believed his film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Guess who owns a real “green” energy-saving house? President Bush in Crawford, Texas.I should be gloomy but for some strange reason I’m not. I’m a homeowner and the value of my house has probably dropped about $100,000 thanks to the housing crisis. That’s all right. I’m not going anywhere, and it will go up again because it’s a nice house in New York City.I tried investing in the stock market and promptly lost $500. That’s okay, because I did not know what I was doing, and the one good stock I own will go up in spite of the stock market crisis.We lease a Volvo SUV, which now takes $75 to fill. That’s okay, too, because it’s a safe ride for my grandchildren and it’s not as bad as 1976 gas crisis when we couldn’t even get gas. I just quit buying bottled water and ordering pizza.Gas is now more than a dollar higher than it was when the Democrats took over Congress in 2006, which proves that there’s not a whole lot the government can do about the gas crisis but make it worse. No one except McCain is asking why the government hasn’t cut the gas tax, but maybe that’s because it’s a great source of revenue.Governor Paterson is calling for an emergency August 19 economic session to confront the budget crisis. The deficit has grown by $1 billion since he’s been in office and we are facing a financial crisis. If it’s such an emergency, why wait till August 19? Let’s cut spending now.The good news is that the gas crisis is helping the attendance at beaches in Staten Island. It now saves gas to stay close to home. Also, the mayor of Belmar, N.J., Ken Pringle, made fun of Staten Islanders visiting his Jersey Shore town. It’s his loss, because that town depends on Staten Island tourists. Why go to Jersey when we have South Beach, Midland Beach, and Great Kills National Park? Sometimes insults turn out to be a good thing.I wonder if those labor unions and snobs who fought against a Wal-Mart here in Staten Island regret their opposition now that gas is over $4.50 a gallon and we now have an inflation crisis. Wal-Mart still has great prices and $4 prescriptions, but it’s miles away. Well, at least we have Costco trying to move into Manhattan. Good luck with that. Beware the snobs.I just can’t get into that crisis mood that those fear merchandisers are selling. What I see are just plain problems that we used to be able to handle by ourselves. What ever happened to our ability to handle them by ourselves with help from friends and families?Right now we have young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan enduring harsh and dangerous conditions so we can whine about our petty inconveniences. I think about them, and nothing here seems all that bad.acolon@nysun.com

How To Conquer Fear

How To Conquer Fear

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