SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010
KLMNO
EZ RE Local OPINIONS 6
washingtonpost.com/localopinions localopinions@washingtonpost.com
CLOSETOHOME ARLINGTON
Cuccinelli’s consequences Recent coverage of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II
[“Cuccinelli basking in court victory,”Metro, Dec. 15; “Cuccinelli: Virginia should consider opting out ofMedicaid,” Virginia politics blog, Dec. 7] reminded me of two rarely discussed aspects ofMr. Cuccinelli’s “strategy”: the disastrous potential consequences and his failure to offer alternative solutions. Mr. Cuccinelli wants to scrap the entire health-care lawimme-
diately—all the consumer protections, including those that re- cently covered children with preexisting conditions, the seriously ill uninsured, those who’ve reached lifetime benefit limits and young
adults.Now he proposes we consider opting out ofMedic- aid, which covers the most vulnerable Virginians. If he succeeds, consumer protections against insurer abuses will vanish. What does he offer the million-plus uninsured, the seriously under- insured andMedicaid recipients in place of what he seeks to dis- mantle? Apparently nothing. The attorney general’s actions drawcheers from partisan politi-
cal groups but ill serve ordinary Virginians struggling with health care. What will it take to make him realize the magnitude of the in- surance crisis in Virginia and to use his office to protect rather than undermine consumers’ interests?How many lives must be lost, how many bankruptcies and foreclosures will occur while we wait for him to get it?
James Lindsay Jr., Arlington
WRITE FOR US Local Opinions, a place for commentary about where we live, is looking for submissions of 300 to 500 words on timely local topics. Submissions must include name, e-mail address, street address and phone number, and they will be edited for brevity and clarity. To submit your article, please go to
washingtonpost.com/localopinions. NEXT WEEK’S TOPIC The year in review: Sum up what 2010 meant to the D.C. region (see below).
BLAINEP.FRIEDLANDERJR.
Why the Arlington Planetarium matters more than ever
The Arlington Planetarium
each year teaches people about theplanets, the stars, celestialme- chanics, physics and concepts of time. Ironically, the planetarium itself has runout of time. The Friends of Arlington’s Da-
vid M. Brown Planetarium is try- ing to save and refurbish the building. The old cosmic theater, where tens of thousands of stu- dents first fell inlovewithmillions of stars intheheavens, confrontsa daunting deadline. The group needs to raise$241,000byDec. 31, the first leg of a $402,000 goal set by the Arlington County School Board. So far, it has about $123,000. Back in the halcyon days of
2010
moon shots, John Glenn god- speeding around Earth and Neil Armstrong stepping up for man- kind, schools all over the country built planetariums. Arlington’s was constructed 40 years ago, and it shows its age. Arlington students obtain a
YOURYEARINREVIEW Local Opinions is seeking 300-word essays on the Year inD.C.
(and the rest of the region).We’re looking for insights and anec- dotes to sum up 2010. What will we remember most? What changed? What stayed the same? What trend bears watching? Last year, readers wrote about the Obama inauguration, Robert
McDonnell’s victory in Virginia, theMetro crash and the Redskins’ travails.Writing on living through the Great Recession, Christo- pherWalsh of Arlington concluded: “One saying defines ‘grace’ as being grateful for what you have, rather than spiteful about what you don’t have. A little grace fell over theWashington area in 2009 and has lingered. I hope it lasts a long time.” To be included, send an e-mail to
letters@washpost.com, with
D.C. 2010” in the memo field, by Tuesday. Please include day and evening phone numbers and disclose any personal or professional involvement that you have in anything you’re writing about.
Local Blog Network
voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions Some of the region’s best bloggers share work on the All Opinions
Are Local blog. Below, one of last week’s posts.
The new immigration battleground Ever wonder why white opposition to darker-skinned immi-
grants seems to be centered in outer suburbs such as Prince Wil- liam and Stafford counties? An analysis of newCensus data pro- vides the answer. The reason, the American Community Survey reports, is that
immigrants from Latin America and other places are flocking to small towns and outer suburbs rather than concentrating in the center of large cities, as had been the case for immigrants for the last two centuries. According to aNewYork Times report, Los Angeles County, a
traditionalHispanic draw, showed little immigrant growth while immigration exploded in suburbanNewton County outside of At- lanta. Closer to home, Stafford County sawits immigrant popula- tion triple during the past decade. Other Virginia hot spots are Prince William and Loudoun. The Times noted that manyHispan- ics are drawn to outer suburbs by lower living costs as well as by once-plentiful construction jobs that went bust with the recession. This helps to explain why Stafford County is proposing to get
tough on illegal immigrants, and why Prince William County, led by board of supervisors chairman and rising state politician Corey A. Stewart, cracked down starting in 2007. Prince William’s lawprodded manyHispanics to leave the
county, regardless of their immigration status or citizenship, be- cause they felt they were being profiled by police. Stewart wants to take the Prince William experience statewide with his “Virginia Rule of Law” campaign. The sad truth is that these settlement patterns are sparking rac-
ism that had seemed to be abating in America. Peter Galuszka, Bacon’s Rebellion
JOHNW.FRECEANNAPOLIS Arriving naked at the airport My face flushed hot when I
realized Iwas about to fly naked. Headed to the airport in the
predawn drizzle, I was only 10 minutes fromhome when, with a shock, I could not recall grabbing my cellphone off the
charger.Pan- icked, I thrustmyhandtomybelt, only to find an empty BlackBerry holster. I uttered an expletive. Loudly. “I need to call my wife,” I
thought. “Maybe she can bring it to me.”Well, that wasn’t going to happen. My second instinct was to turn
around, speed home and retrieve thephone.But Ihadjustgottenon the interstate,andthenearest exit was 15 minutes up the road. I quickly did themath and doubted I had the time. As I tried to decide, the turn-
around exit was approaching at 70 mph. I began asking myself cosmicquestions:Howimportant
is a cellphone anyway? What did we do before we all had cell- phones? It was only a two-day trip. So what if people can’t call me? So I can’t get my e-mail seconds after it’s sent. So I can’t call the co-worker I’mmeeting in Kansas City to tell herwhere I am — and she can’t call me. Heck, I can’t even get her phone number because I cannot access my con- tact list. To my embarrassment, I real-
ized I also couldn’t even call my wife or daughter on their cell- phones because I always used speed dial to reach them. I never memorized their numbers. The exit arrived. I kept going. At the airport, I kept my eyes
peeled for a pay phone. I spied a bank of three halfway between security andmy gate. I pulled out my only quarter, only to discover that the price for a call had inflat- ed to 50 cents in the years since I
lastmade a pay call. I got change, called home and
toldmywifewhat I had done. “Oh,myGod!” she exclaimed. At the gate, I began to wonder
whether people could tell — if theywere looking atme out of the corner of their eyes and whisper- ing, “Hedoesn’thave a cellphone.” I looked enviously as a business- man scanned his iPhone formes- sages. I could almost sense my e-mail piling up. By the time I landed in Kansas
City and got on my laptop, I had accumulated 35messages, or one everyfourminutes Iwas intheair. For the rest of the trip, I felt a
weird sense of loss. When col- leagues learned ofmy plight, they reacted with sympathy and sad- ness. Too bad about poor John, they seemedtobe thinking.When I heard the chiming ring of some- one else’s phone interrupt the drone of ameeting, I felt a tinge of
nostalgia. As I looked around the conference table, I saw others in devout BlackBerry prayer — headsbowedandhands religious- ly clasped around their BlackBer- rys beneath the lip of the table. Notme. When I at last settled in for the
journey back to connectedness and the flight attendant demand- ed that “everythingwith an on-off button be turned off,” I felt no pressure to jam in those final three e-mails. But as soon as the wheels
toucheddowninBaltimore,about a third of the passengerswhipped out their phones to tell somebody they were on the ground and electronicallyaccessible. I feigned indifference, nonchalantly mak- ing small talk about the weather outsidewith another passenger. “Let me check,” he said, whip-
ping out his iPhone. “Fifty-seven degrees.”
top-quality education, and the student population in the county brimswithdiversity and vibrancy. But it’s this very population that makes thepossibilityof losingthis key facility so dispiriting. To understandwhat lies ahead,
onemust examine stark statistics from higher education and the sciences. There are fissures along ethnicandracial lines:TheAmeri- can Institute of Physics (AIP) ex- amined census data and found that between 1998 and 2008,His- panicAmericans earnedmore col- lege bachelor degrees. The num- berwent from78,000to 131,000, a nearly 70 percent increase. In 2008, about 22,000 Hispanic Americans earned bachelor’s de- grees inbusiness andsome 10,000 earned bachelor’s degrees in edu- cation. But in 2008, only 229 Hispanic
Americans earned bachelor’s de- grees in physics. And just 192
EVY MAGES/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Fifth-graders visit the Arlington Planetarium.
graduated inthe geosciences. AIPstatistics compiled forAfri-
can Americans are just as trou- bling. Of the 760 universities that award physics degrees, 495 did notawardany toanAfricanAmer- ican student in the past year. Zip. Zero. Zilch. In fact, over three decades —
AIP statistics kept from 1977 through 2006—only 288 African Americans earned doctorates in physics in the United States. (Overall, more than 35,000 phys- ics doctorates were awarded in that time.) That’s a disgracefully lownumber considering thatAfri- can Americans comprise almost 13 percent of the population. My point: Interest in science
doesn’t start incollege. Itbegins in elementary, middle and high
school. It begins when kids discover
their cosmic love in places such as the Arlington Planetarium and the National Air and SpaceMuse-
um.CollegiateEnglishandhistory majors rarely change direction to- ward science. A love of science must benurtured early on. At its height, the planetarium
notched 23,000 student visits an- nually, mostly from kindergarten through fifth
grade.Currently, the planetariumoperatespart-time— getting visits from far fewer stu- dents — generally kindergarten through second grade. And, of course, the occasional high school astronomy class. Arlingtonmust keep and refur-
bish its planetarium, and the school board has a duty to help
resolve the ethnic and racial dif- ferential in the sciences. The task given to the grass-roots group Friends of the Arlington’s plane- tarium—raising$402,000inonly one year—is laughingly impossi-
ble.The schoolboardmust extend the deadline. The Arlington County School
Board has a chance to become a leader in a national movement, save a planetariumand showoff a gem—atnocapitalcostwhatsoev-
er.TheFriendsofArlingtonPlane- tariumwants topayfor
it.Give the group a little time — and the di- verse students of Arlington will get more chances to fall in love with science.
Blaine Friedlanderwrites the Sky Watch column in The Post.
C5
DAVIDBATESTAKOMAPARK Lost in the haze at Metro Center On Monday, Metro demon-
strated that it continues to strug- gle to deliver professional and safe service to commuters. As I got off a Red Line train at
Metro Center to catch a connect- ing train downstairs during my morning commute, I detected a faint smell of smoke, as if froma trash fire. As I made my way toward the stairwell and escala- tor leading to the lower platform, the smell grew stronger, and I could see a gray haze around the lights near the ceiling of the upper platform. When I reached the top of the
stairs, I sawwhat looked like two Metro Transit Police officers and two other Metro employees in neon-green vests standing in a thick haze at the bottom. They
were looking up at me and several other commuters. These Metro personnel gave
no indication if we should stay upstairs, if we could come down or if we should evacuate. In fact, they communicated nothing to us. Lacking any guidance, some of my fellow commuters pro- ceeded downstairs and disap- peared into the smoke. Behindme, the escalators con-
tinued to run, carrying other confused commuters down to the smoke-filled platform. Some commuters — including a wom- an with a worried look on her face and a toddler in a stroller — were coming up the escalator out of the thickening haze below. Once I realized that the smoke was getting thicker and that no
Acrowd of rush-hour commuters pushed its way toward the lower platform, where they might be overcome with smoke or panic and flee to the exits.
trains were arriving on the lower platform, I decided to stay up- stairs and catch the next Red Line train out of the station. As I returned to the Red Line
platform, I heard an unintelligi- ble announcement over the pub- lic address system. (Let’s face it,
Metro, your PA system is useless —it has never been able to deliver clear messages, and I doubt it ever will.) Imanaged tomake out a fewwords like “emergency” and “delay.” This much I had already figured out onmy own. Another Red Line train ar-
rived, and hundreds of rush-hour commuters worked their way to the stairs and escalators to the lower platform. I thought about shouting a warning to them, but I didn’t know what to tell them. This lack of communication
was the real problem — not the fire, which turned out to have been caused by a light fixture and was not serious. Nobody from Metro was telling us any- thing. As a result, a crowd of rush-hour commuters pushed its way toward the lower platform, where they might be overcome with smoke or panic and flee to the exits. This pathetic demonstration
of Metro management-by-chaos underscores that Metro person- nel still don’t seemto have a clue
as to howto respond to emergen- cies. With such a heavily used tran-
sit system in a major metropoli- tan area of the country, one would expect that, at very least, Metro managers would have a plan for dealing with a small station fire. One would also imagine that
part of that plan would involve directing commuters at an emer- gency scene away fromthe threat and preventingmore commuters from being dumped onto the crisis scene by arriving trains. And this was merely a small
fire, a contained event that Met- ro management managed miser- ably. Such a performance does not bode well for Metro’s next emergency.
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