My Happy Heart

I was in the hospital last week for a procedure to help stop my heart from racing. Every so often it would take off and act like I was running a sprint or climbing twelve flights of stairs -- as if! This procedure is an amazing technological feat in which a laser-fitted wire is inserted through your groin into your heart and then the naughty nerves that are misfiring are zapped. And, if all goes according to the medical textbook, my heart starts taking it easier so I don't have to. So far, so good.

I have to think that decades of intense deadline pressure in the newspaper business followed by decades of intense pressure in the corporate world made my heart a little cranky, just like it did the rest of me. Like Howard Beale in the movie "Network," I think my cardiac chamber decided it was mad as hell and not going to take it any more. So it staged a protest and I don't blame it. Fortunately, the protest was short-lived.

Since I retired, my heart has been quite happy. It loves beating on Whidbey Island, where the air is clean and the climate is mild and everybody's nice as can be and only a few folks try to shove their disagreeable opinions down your throat. Washingtonians are an interesting breed. Quite progressive on political and economic issues and quite libertarian on social issues. An electrician who worked on our house wore a baseball cap that was embroidered with the words "Leave Me Alone," which sums up a lot of attitudes here. Having been away for more than 40 years, I had forgotten all that.

I left Washington in the late 1960s to find my fortune and figure out who I was. My wanderings took me to Vietnam, California and Texas, with sojourns in Japan, New York, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Venice and other fabulous spots. Now I'm back where I began. Hopefully wiser, definitely older, comfortable, but still feeling an urge for adventure.

When you hear your doctor tell you that you have a "heart ailment" that "needs attention," it does give you pause. And anytime you spend a day or two in a hospital, you get an in-your-face reminder of how fragile and temporary our physical lives are. "Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay," as the lyrics of the song "Cabaret" sum it up. The other thing that a diagnosis and heart ablation procedure do is make clear an irony of life: Just when you get pretty good at this job, your machine wears out.

I've never been afraid of what comes after all this. In fact, I await it with a journalist's curiosity and a believer's confidence. But, as I sit here on this beautiful morning looking out at Penn Cove while the clouds lift off Mount Baker in the distance, I'm especially enjoying the gentle beat of my heart.

The Fraught Aughts

I am so happy that the first decade of the 21st Century -- the Aught Years -- is over. Aren't you? It would be better if we just not talk about it and let the historians chew for awhile. But before we shove it in a file and forget about it, let's wallow for just a minute, shall we? It won't cost much -- just a few tears.

I've read the macro versions of what happened: Median family income is below what it was in 1999. There was no job growth -- nothing, nada, zip -- from 2000 to 2010. The average net worth of the American family is less than it was 10 years ago. Two wars launched, more than 4,000 Americans dead so far -- not counting almost 3,000 on 9-11-01. The national debt has more than quadrupled in the past decade, and the Chinese could foreclose and take possession of us if we fall behind on the mortgage.

Add it all up and I'll have say this out loud: The American standard of living has declined. We can't really brag about the world's strongest economy right now. The free enterprise system gaveth but now hath taken away. Sorry, Glen Beck, but I don't feel very much like waving the flag of Capitalism at the moment. If fact, I wish some of those Capitalists were behind bars making flags.

Yes, the Aughts were fraught, and my own fortunes testify to that. During the Aughts I made more money than I ever had before, but I paid more income tax just for 2007 than I made from 1985 to 1990 -- combined! My retirement nest egg is smaller today than it was in 2003 and the bank basically now charges me to keep my savings because interest rates are below the inflation rate. We sold our house in 2005 and made a killing; but the house we have now is worth less than we paid for it.

And, adding insult to injury, I have more than 200,000 frequent flier miles from all those business trips I took during the Aughts, but I can't really use them because the airlines don't give away many seats any more. Or else they want you to take a trip around the world and change planes to get from Point A to Point B. So much for all that free travel I expected during my retirement. But who wants to travel any way with people putting explosives in their underpants?

Did anything good happen during the Aughts? Well, yes. There were the IPhone and Kindle and texting and Twitter and Facebook. And they started letting us use our cellphones as soon as the plane lands, so we call people to tell them we just landed and we're waiting to get off the plane and we'll see them in an hour or so depending on traffic and we love them. We added at least 40 more channels to our cable menu, so we always have lots more infomercials and shopping networks and reruns of "Law and Order" to numb our brains. And we got to see and hear Beyonce and Rihanna and Kanye and 50 Cent . . . everywhere, all the time. Meantime, both Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como passed from our midsts during the Aughts, leaving me musically bereft.

All in all, the Aughts were a lost decade -- sound and fury signifying nothing, to quote The Bard. We all enjoyed the orgy of house refinancing while it lasted. Who didn't like seeing the value of their home going up $1,000 a day? Don't be left out! Refi today! Do it online! Buy two more houses with your equity! You'll be rich and you won't have to work for it!

But it was a fluff decade, based on borrowed money without enough ingenuity and innovation. We got fat both physically and intellectually. We had a President who had trouble putting words together, yet too many of us actually admired his inability to be articulate. The entire decade was built on a false expectation: What goes up can't come down. That canard is at least as old as Tulip Mania in Holland 400 years ago and as new as the Tech Bubble that burst as the Aughts began. Where have all the flowers gone? When will they ever learn?

The last Aughts -- from 1900 to 1910 -- were a different story. We had a President, Teddy Roosevelt, who used his bully pulpit to bust trusts, spread the wealth and articulate an optimistic vision of our country. He ended wars (the Russo-Japanese conflict) instead of starting them. He formed the national park systems, which is why Yellowstone and the Everglades and so many others aren't condo developments today. Meantime, entrepreneurs like Henry Ford were starting companies that changed how we live, and innovators like the Wright Brothers were lifting us into the sky. Ragtime was blending Anglo settlers' music with the rhythms of former African slaves; an original American culture was forming. It was a magnificent time, full of hope and change.

I think I'll take my Teddy bear and go to bed.