Opinion piece written in a parallel universe

To The Eagle:

The editorial in last week's Eagle restored my faith in a boyhood dream -- the then popular science fiction concept of parallel universes. It is refreshing to see that the concept is alive and well here in the 21st century, but it is still as much of a mind boggler as it was back in my callow youth in the dead center of last century. For instance in Eagle universe, President Jimmy Carter made us world leader in clean energy, but I missed out on that, because in my universe I was sitting in long gas lines watching stagflation destroy my farm and business, all to the lively background of the Iran hostage crisis.

But Eagle universe has its drawbacks too. While I was enjoying the unprecedented straight 25 years of prosperity that Ronald Reagan delivered, over here in Eagle universe that was a great "decline that lasts to this day." And though The Eagle has indeed been kind enough to publish many of my letters over the past decade touting nuclear energy, exposing the global warming and green energy scams and celebrating the wonderfulness of producing carbon, obviously none of these ideas have warped the fabric of the Eagle universe.

And of course, in my space/time continuum, the health care bill strongly resembles Dr. Frankenstein's cobbled together monster, produced in darkness and secrecy with maximum sinister chicanery and it appears to me that around 65 percent of the public is up in arms about it, rather than settling down. The Eagle seems to feel that we are attempting to pass solutions on to future generations, while in my universe it looks a whole lot more like an avalanche of debt, deficit and taxes.

So when you get right down to it, I'm still having a lot of trouble with the parallel universe idea, but there is another possible explanation: it was, after all, an April Fool's Day editorial.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island