What can we do for men who took pride in blue-collar work?

Is there any future at all for blue-collar workers in this country?

The quarry

In the wonderful 1979 movie "Breaking Away," four recent high school graduates are trying to decide what to do with their lives.

They spend part of their time swimming in a quarry that once was filled with stone that men from their fathers' generation cut to build large buildings in Bloomington, Indiana.

One night one of the boys is out walking with his father, who spent decades working as a limestone cutter.

The boy is telling his dad that students at the university (Indiana) call the kids in the town "cutters" to put them down, and his dad tells him he was proud to work as a cutter. There was one thing strange about it, though.

"I was proud of my work," he said. "And the buildings went up. When they were finished the damnedest thing happened. It was like the buildings were too good for us. Nobody told us that. It just felt uncomfortable, that's all."

It's just an example, but it's a good example of the type of jobs that used to be available to men with strong backs who may not have had much in the way of education. By the 1970s, those jobs were starting to go away. In the 40 years since, the guys who used to do those jobs haven't just fallen through the cracks. They've fallen off the edge of the Earth.

And if they thought the buildings made from their limestone were too good for them, wait till you see how they feel about the country that has thrown them away.

There just aren't enough janitorial and security guard jobs available.

Alzheimer's an ever-growing fear for aging Boomer generation

I'm not really a big fan of glorified romance novels, although in the course of my nightly reading to my lovely wife, we've worked our way through Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks.

Sparks' "The Notebook," book and film, were both a big deal about 10 years ago. I'm not sure why both of them only came across my personal radar this year, but I watched the movie and then went out and picked up the book.

The Notebook

The story is of a man and a woman who have been in love for most of their lives, and after roughly 50 years together, are nearing the end.

The man is all but crippled by arthritis and heart trouble, but his memory is all there. The woman is in better physical health, but is in an advanced stage of Alzheimer's Disease.

This wasn't always such a big deal, but with all the publicity the disease has received the last 20 years or so, it has become one of the greatest fears of almost everyone at or past retirement age.

It has never been a great fear of mine. It doesn't run in my family. Nearly everyone has lived into their 80s or 90s, and other than some memory problems for my grandfather, no one has come close to Alzheimer's. I'll be 65 in December and I'm fairly confident something else will kill me before Alzheimer's.

My wife has been more concerned about it. For one thing, she has a much better mind than I do. When she used to do some of her work at home, I would look at discarded legal pads and see the most complex equations imaginable. I was always pretty good at math, but I didn't even know what all the symbols represented.

Nicole

I've never had to apologize for my intelligence, but if you were to compare intellect to a cross-country race leaving from New York, my vehicle would run out of gas somewhere on the plains of Kansas while hers would cruise into Los Angeles with petrol to spare.

So she has far more to lose than I do. I could sit in a chair and watch "Rocky & Bullwinkle" reruns for hours at a time and not squirm once. Most of the television my wife watches consists of DVDs of the Great Courses. For her, learning really is a lifelong thing.

But it was just 16 years ago that her own father was dying of Alzheimer's. She sat with him in his room in a Toulouse, France, hospice and read to him for hours. He may or may not have known his youngest daughter, but what she did for him made him happy. And when she kissed him on the cheek, he smiled and said, "Encore! Encore!"

But the family connection concerns us, although we have faith that the worst won't happen. She is the love of my life -- at least the most recent third of it -- and I will be with her as long as we are both alive. And when and if the good times end, I will remember them as long as I remember my own name.

Sometimes the best people among us are the ones who suffer the most

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

July 2005

I've never been a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, although the quote above from "A Farewell to Arms" is one of two by Hemingway that I love.

I expect to live a long time, largely because I am neither very good, very gentle or very brave. I suppose the world has broken me more than once in nearly 65 years, but there will be no special hurry to kill me.

Nearly every reach I've made for a dream has come up short, and if I'm not quite done reaching, my arms seem shorter than they ever were.

But my lovely wife Nicole is good, gentle and brave. She did work that really mattered and she was one of the top two or three people in the world in her field. I remember her telling me once -- proud and a little shy at the same time -- that there were concepts she understood that no more than a couple of other people could grasp.

She spent several decades working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. If you're not familiar with JPL, it's the space science equivalent of Metro Goldwyn Mayer, the 1927 Yankees and CBS News back in the days of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

When it comes to children, some things are way beyond forgiveness

I was never fortunate enough to be the father of a baby.

I have two wonderful children, but I didn't come into their lives until they were 12 and 7. Other than very faint memories of my own younger siblings, the only first-hand experience I had was in October 2008 in Beijing when I held my tiny granddaughter in my arms and she fell asleep on my chest.

October 2008

It was an incredible moment, one of those that I will remember till the day I die. I know other people who feel the same way. My wonderful friend Mick Curran has three children, and he was in the delivery room each time.

I learned that when I turned a page in one of his photo albums and saw a full-page color shot of his firstborn, half in the world and half out of it. I have since become a lot more cautious looking at photo albums.

But that's not the point of this. Like many other people, I have been horrified by the story of the Georgia father who has been charged with murder for leaving his infant son in a hot car.

Cooper Harris, just 22 months old when he died, was left strapped in his car seat in a locked car for seven hours with the temperature in the high 80s. His father had taken out two insurance policies on him, had been visiting websites about living a child-free life and others where he was exchanging obscene photos with various women.

Victim and father

When he "discovered" his son's dead body in the car, he didn't even call 911. He started calling relatives, presumably setting up his story.

I really don't want to say much more about Justin Harris, other than to suggest that he may already have realized he made a big mistake.

I don't believe in capital punishment, but there was a phrase that always struck me as very evocative.

"He was beaten within an inch of his life."

That seems fair to me, although I also think it's quite possible Mr. Harris will develop if not a penchant at least a tolerance for being the passive partner in frequent anal adventures.

If he even gets to live. Most inmates have very little tolerance for other inmates who hurt children.

Lexington, Pauline, Madison and Ryan

I actually knew someone in California who went to prison for child molestation. I believe he was killed by a fellow inmate before he had served a year. I had a great deal to do with sending him to prison, and I expected something like this would happen.

I certainly don't feel bad that it did. The man molested seven children, including his own 3-year-old daughter. The world is a better place without him.

The world is also a far better place because my daughter Pauline, her husband Ryan and their children Maddie and Lex are part of the world.

And because a third grandchild -- a second granddaughter -- is coming this October. Little Albanie Yvonne will add another star to my sky.

I have never understood how anyone could harm a child. If it were necessary, I would give my life for any of my grandchildren and also for my daughter. If you don't see the name of my son-in-law there, it isn't that I wouldn't. Heck, I've had a long life. I probably would put my life on the line to save him if needed. I'm still thinking that one through.

Kelsey, Sean and impossibly young me.

But there are other wonderful children I love too. My Massachusetts nephews, Jacob and Nathan, are both nearly grown. My friend Mickey's children Sean and Kelsey are full-grown adults now, and I have loved both of them since they were tiny kids. I don't mean to leave his daughter Shannon out of it -- she's a great kid -- but she came along so late I have never had the chance to get to know her.

No one I know, no one I value as a human being, would ever knowingly hurt a child. To me that's the easiest division between worthwhile people and worthless people.

Just to give one more thought to the tragedy here in Georgia, let's assume for a minute the Bad Dad didn't intend to kill his little son.

It's a real stretch to believe, but let's say Cooper's death was an accident and Bad Dad just forgot he was in the car.

It doesn't matter.

He's still worthless. It's terrible enough to forget and leave a dog in the hot car, but a little kid?

Sorry, Justin.

No forgiveness for you.

Declaration's 'unalienable rights' are really only means to an end

"Does the end justify the means?"

That's one of the oldest, toughest philosophical questions of them all, and where I generally would fall on that question is that it doesn't. That in fact there are no ends, only means, and it is the means we use to achieve our goals are what define us.

But today is Independence Day, and I have a different motive in asking the question. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Liberty, a means to an end.

You can ask almost any American and they'll tell you those are the big three, pretty much in that order. We've even got a political party of a sort that rates Liberty as the most important thing in the world.

Anybody who has been a regular reader of my writing knows how I feel about them. Whether it's "Every man for himself" or "I've got mine, Jack," to me Libertarianism is pretty much the ultimate in political selfishness.

It's actually sort of silly, too.

You see, Liberty isn't an end.

It's a means to an end, and if we want to be honest about it, so are Life and the pursuit of Happiness. On the most basic level, Liberty means you are free.

To do what?

If you are free, no one is telling you what to do or not to do. You are free to do what you want. So Liberty is a means, not an end.

Ditto with the pursuit of Happiness. You can call Happiness an end, certainly, but pursuing it is only a means to an end.

As for Life, it's mostly a condition. You're either alive or you aren't. Being alive is a means to an end. You have to decide what sort of life you want to live, either one serving others or one serving yourself.

In the end, being alive, being free and pursuing happiness aren't the things that matter most. What matters most is how we use them, what we strive to achieve to make the world a better place before we leave it.

There really are no ends for us.

Only means.