As a kid I underwent five weeks of painful "immunization" injections to supposedly protect me from the poison ivy I was about to encounter at summer camp. The shots didn't work and actually may have backfired. I spent three weeks in itching agony (at one point spending a couple of days with an eye swollen shut). Since that time I've been suspicious of medical miracles. (Remember the Swine Flu vaccine back in the Seventies? I always figured it was a secret method of turning people into Republicans against their will. . .).

A guy in our office gets a flu shot every year. He's the only one who gets sick. He loses his voice, stays at home in bed, hacks and coughs but insists he doesn't have the FLU--he has a bad COLD. Oh, okay. Me, I just take my vitamins and make sure I have a moist towlette handy if I touch anything in public during flu season.

Enlightened parents are starting to share my arched eyebrow regarding the injection of vaccines willy nilly into their childrens' bloodstreams. Shot-happy doctors love vaccines, and will happily inject chemicals meant to combat measles, hepatitis, polio into infants' arms. On the other hand a Colorado Springs couple discovered that a shot called DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, Pertussis), nearly killed their infant daughter.

Vigilant parents are starting to question whether or not their child needs the shot in the first place. In my perfect world, everyone else is vaccinated so that I don't have to be. Problem is, there are enough little perfect worlds out there: people choosing not to inoculate their children against absolutely everything, that we may see some of these arcane diseases crop up again.

Federal Express has suspended until further notice deliveries after 4pm in Gary Indiana. It's too dangerous. Pizza Hut will not ask its drivers to venture into the inner-urban areas of Kansas City after dark. They might be killed. We are seeing the beginnings of nightmare scenarios the not-so-distant futuristic movies such as "Escape From New York," and "Bladerunner," have graphically portrayed. Can we expect, as these fictional pieces suggest, that the inner city areas will become battlegrounds into which no sane person would willingly venture? How lovely. Why have we turned our gaze overseas when our own cities are becoming war zones? Have we given up on Gary Indiana, Kansas City and our own nation's capital Washington D.C.?

Like canaries in a coal mine, the delivery services with their unprotected drivers, are the first to shy away from the dangers. What's next, ambulances and firetrucks? Followed by the police themselves? If I were the mayor of either Gary or Kansas City, you can bet I would consider the actions of Federal Express and Pizza Hut a wake-up call and take action to reclaim my city.

If I were attending elementary school today, in 1997, I would be on drugs. They would force me to drink the "funny orange juice," every morning before settling in behind my desk for a long day of the Three 'R's. No wait, now there are four: Reading; W(r)iting; A(r)ithmetic and Ritalin. Are we drugging our best and brightest because they happen to be pests in a boring environment?

When parents and teachers lose control of, or simply don't want to bother with disciplining a child, they are turning in increasing numbers to a dangerous stimulant so powerful that it has the opposite effect on a young person's central nervous system.

Drugging a child into submission is a full-scale admission of defeat. Every single characteristic of the impressively named "Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) I personally exhibited in spades throughout all twelve years of my elementary and middle schooling. (Usually this meant my desk was moved up front next to the teacher's where she could conveniently whack me with a yardstick as I inserted one-liners into her lecture.) I guess now that it's illegal to whack a kid with a yardstick, they've taken the easier way out: drug the little SOB's.

ADD didn't exist before The Age of Victimology: the 1980's. As we entered a decade of blaming everyone and everything but ourselves for our behavior (it's either Society's fault, a "disorder" or a "sickness" we cannot control without a "professional's" help) the drug companies saw their in. Now children (rumored to be numbered between 1.5 and 2.5 million in the U.S.) who were guilty of simply acting like children (bored, fidgety, distracted) are being force-fed a powerful narcotic to supposedly "help them calm down and learn."

The fact more people aren't alarmed about this practice is terrifying. Twice as many children are being forced to take Ritalin in 1997 than in 1990. If the numbers continue to increase at this rate, we will have 20 million little obedient junior junkies doing their ABC's in a drugged fog by the year 2000.

Never mind Ritalin's side effects, ranging from the potential danger of serious psychological dependence to suppression of childhood growth. I wonder how you can simultaneously ask a child to "Just Say No," while the parents and teachers are acting as pushers? There's a lot of money to be made between the drug companies and the doctors. And I suppose it's only human nature that a parent would prefer to believe their child is "sick" rather than admit their own failings as a parent. Attention Defecit Disorder is very big business. All at the ultimate expense of the child for the convenience of the adults.

I was born and reared in Kentucky (my gramma always used to say, "Kids are goats--goats are raised--children are reared,"). Way back when, during the Civil War, Kentucky was a border state where brother fought brother and the resources were sold to support both sides' war efforts. It isn't surprising to see the occasional Confederate flag hanging around here and there to this day.

To the people whose ancestors died defending the South, displaying a Confederate flag says less about slavery than it does about individual control over one's own land and destiny. I hope. At least that's what I was taught. But another view, and especially for blacks, is that the flag represents an approval--some think a nostalgic tribute--to the idea of slavery.

Today up in Maryland, the local chapter of The Sons of the Confederate Veterans are fighting mad over the state's recall of their personalized license plates displaying the flag their forefathers followed into battle. Apparently the Civil War isn't over yet.

They want their, they want their, they want their VH-1! Late last year Denver-based communications giant TCI began liquidating many of its money-losing new-media ventures to concentrate on its main cash cow: cable television. Shortly thereafter, they replaced Comedy Central with The Cartoon Network (hey, they're both about laughs right?) and replaced VH-1 with something called Animal Planet. (Since MTV is indistinguishable from Animal Planet at times, that might have been a better switch system-wide.)

The Comedy Channel went dark just a couple of weeks prior to the 90-minute series-end finale of the wildly popular English comedy "Absolutely Fabulous." This did not sit well with the show's rabid fans and telephone protests were organized. The dropping of music channel VH-1 affected Aspen, Colorado viewers among others. Aspen residents include some pretty well-off rock stars who apparently like to catch themselves on the tube now and again. Not only did fans of the music channel demonstrate outside TCI's Fort Collins offices, VH-1 organized a plea from the stars themselves dispatching newcomer Jewel and old-timer Don Henley to speak on behalf of the channel at a news conference. TCI relented, and will replace both VH-1 and Comedy Central, Leaving one to wonder if TCI's recently settled lawsuit against VH-1's parent company Viacom had anything to do with this or whether it is possible that TCI's program management can be this out of touch with its subscribers' tastes and desires.