Margret Sloan

My brother called on Friday to tell me that he’d be riding in the Rolling Thunder this weekend. I saw last night on the news that they had a great turnout of motorcycles and parade viewers along the procession route in Washington DC, and that they even had the pleasure of President Bush come to the event. He was presented with an honorary leather jacket and although this is WAAAAAY out of his league, Bush seemed to be a good sport about the whole thing.

I have a girlfriend who decided to ride in Rolling Thunder this year, too. She has become quite the patriot since 9/11 and I hope she met some guys on the ride that opened her eyes and her mind to a totally different lifestyle from her little cocoon of a teacher’s life in suburbia that she’s enjoyed all these years. I can’t wait for her to call and tell me all about her biker experience.

I’m a little nervous about my nephew’s plans to go to South Africa this summer as part of his college studies. The news there has not been good this week, with a lot of violence and even riots over a wave of African immigrants.

My nephew is a real sweetheart - a humanitarian and he has always had a strong interest in helping people. The college program takes a lot of precautions to protect the students, but such an unstable culture as the African countries exhibit makes me very concerned. He’s leaving the U. S. at the end of the month, so it occurred to me that something he might appreciate taking with him would be a calling card. You know, the prepaid phone cards that let you make international calls at very cheap rates?

I found an internet site that sells the phone cards in different denominations and has different types of cards, from single use to ones you can reload. From reading about the rates between the United States and Johannesburg, it is much much cheaper to call FROM the U. S. to South Africa than to call the U.S. FROM South Africa. So I will get him a card with at least 20 minutes of calling time that he can keep in his wallet and in case of emergency he can at least call home and let us know he needs help. Otherwise, because of the expense, his mother should call him at a pre-arranged time to save money, so I’ve buying a calling card for her, too.

I have no idea why I am so fascinated with earthquakes, but I have a morbid curiousity with them. I look at the USGS earthquake maps almost every day. I see patterns and clusters of quakes and it is amazing how Mother Nature can impact our daily lives with such unpredictable occurrences as earthquakes and tsunamis.

The earthquake in China was devastating. The reported number of people killed keeps growing, by practically hundreds by the hours. The last time I looked it was over 12,000 dead and 18,000 missing or trapped in the wreckage of schools, office buildings and apartment homes. My heart goes out to these people and I hope that the rest of the world steps up to help provide aid to these victims.

There has been so much speculation about global warming and the climate changes we are experiencing in North America. I know the winters are not as cold and snowfilled as when I was a kid, but we do seem to have a lot more severe thunderstorms and tornado threats.

Again tonight we are having severe weather warnings. I’m glad for the rain, as last year was a drought for most of the southeastern states. But the wind does a lot of damage and the tornadoes do kill people when buildings collapse or cars flip over.

I wish the government had a better handle on the global warming and could lead the way for the rest of the world - especially China - to treat our Earth with more respect and care.

I find it very interesting that the citizens in the U.K. get much more care and compassion from their government than we do here in the U.S. They take workplace safety very seriously, and back it up with laws to punish the corporate offenders.

The new Corporate Manslaughter Act goes into full force and effect next month. This new Act is a strengthening of previous legislation that tried to do the same thing, but it unfortunately was limited to prosecuting just the individuals in the company who it could be proven had enough seniority and responsibility for the company to be deemed the “directing mind” of the company.

The new law has lifted that limitation so that the entire company can be held liable if there is a death as a result of the company’s gross negligence.

I was reading about the new Corporate Manslaughter Act on a website that focuses on workplace safety issues. The website is uncluttered yet full of information. There are easy to follow links to more information on a variety of safety issues. Since these issues are important to me, it is also interesting to me to read the perspective of people outside of the U. S. that are dealing with this, too.