February Observations

For the past few months, Iowa has been getting inundated with political commercials, phone calls, and politicians stopping everywhere. With caucuses held on February 1, it has thankfully come to an end, at least for now.

I don't get into politics much at all. Unfortunately, it looks like most politicians primarily just follow their own opinion or that of whoever pays the best. Our pastor at church gave a couple sermons on the importance of being involved in the political arena and making a difference for our country.

What he said is correct, I should get into it more, but I guess I don't see much good to try to promote. I'm not registered with a certain party and see good points, and bad points, from each. I always say I vote for the better of the two evils at election time and would have a hard time promoting one particular candidate.

Now that political reports are calming down, the nightly news has turned to other topics. For two nights, my local CBS station has been reporting on head injuries from playing football. One particular item was something called CTE from having too many concussions. It has no cure, or treatment, and causes many significant problems for sufferers such as memory loss and other symptoms. A man in central Iowa recently committed suicide after suffering from CTE.

A study of former NFL players showed that over 96% of the population has the condition. Multiple suggestions were given for better padding and improved testing after head injuries to try to improve the statistics. With this and other physical problems due to football, why don't they just outlaw playing it?

No, you will never eliminate absolutely everything that causes long-term injuries of any type. However, you can improve lives by stopping harmful behavior. As our pastor also said last week, it's just a game.

Maybe living the quad life with daily experience of physical problems makes me see it differently. At least after today one sport will be done for several months. We'll see what comes up in another week.