THE HOSPITAL WINDOW

Two men, both seriously ill, occupied the same hospital room. One man was allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from his lungs. His bed was next to the room's only window. The other man had to spend all his time flat on his back. The men talked for hours on end. They spoke of their wives and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in the military service, where they had been on vacation.

Every afternoon when the man in the bed by the window could sit up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things he could see outside the window.

The man in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where his world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and color of the world outside.

The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats. Young lovers walked arm in arm amidst flowers of every color and a fine view of the city skyline could be seen in the distance.

As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and imagine the picturesque scene.

One warm afternoon the man by the window described a parade passing by.

Although the other man couldn't hear the band - he could see it. In his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words.

Days and weeks passed.

One morning, the day nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find the lifeless body of the man by the window, who had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened and called the hospital attendants to take the body away.

As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch, and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone.

Slowly, painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow to take his first look at the real world outside.

He strained to slowly turn to look out the window beside the bed.

It faced a blank wall. The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his deceased roommate who had described such wonderful things outside this window.

The nurse responded that the man was blind and could not even see the wall......

She said, "Perhaps he just wanted to encourage you."

FACTS ABOUT MONEY

2. 'E Pluribus Unum', the phrase on the back of every U.S. coin, refers to the original 13 colonies. It has 13 letters and means "one out of many" or "many joined into one."

4. We call a dollar a 'buck' because in the frontier days, the pelt of a male buck was worth a dollar.

6. Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note. It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896.

8. If you work a 40 hour week from the time you're twenty years old until you're sixty-five, you need a wage of $10.68 per hour to earn a million dollars in your lifetime.

9. Most people won't bend over to pick up money lying on the sidewalk unless it's at least a dollar. (We wonder, is that due to the value of the money or the fact that 65% of Americans are overweight?)

10. When it comes to flipping a coin, three times as many people will guess 'heads' than 'tails'.

11. 92% of us would rather be rich than find the love of our lives.

12. A person who drives 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket is three times more likely to be killed in a car accident than he is to win the jackpot.

13. Of every tax dollar paid, more than 50 cents goes to pay for past, present and future military expenses. The budget of the Department of Defense for 2005 alone is nearly $500 billion.

14. Sunday newspaper coupon inserts are the second-most read section of the paper, after the front page.

15. Have you ever wondered how long paper money lasts? A $1 bill lasts 18 months; a $5 bill two years; a $10 bill three years; a $20 bill four years; and $50 and $100 bills nine years. Bills that get worn out from everyday use are taken out of circulation and replaced.

16. What time is it on the Independence Hall clock on the back of the $100 bill? It's hard to see without a magnifying glass, but the clock is set at about 4:10.

17. The average wedding in America costs a staggering $20,000.

18. More than one-third of American women consider money more important to the success of a marriage than good sex.

19. More than 80,000,000 people call the IRS Information Hotline every year. One-third of those calls go unanswered. And according to the Treasury Department itself, 47% of the answers the 'get-through' callers receive are incorrect.

20. The costliest real estate investment: an American businessman recently paid more than $800,000 for a "huge sprawling mansion in the heart of [New] Delhi", without having seen the property first. Upon visiting India to take possession of 'his house', he found it was the Prime Minister's residence.

THE PEAK OIL DEBATE

We're running out of oil.
Such is a wisdom so conventional--in the media, in the world of political and economic theory, in the popular mind--that it has attained the status of unassailable truth. The argument goes like this: Oil is a fossil fuel. Finite quantities of it have pooled at various sites around the planet over the eons and, like all finite resources that are exploited, someday it will be gone. The only remaining question is whether that someday will come sooner or later.
Sooner seems to be the consensus, if the slant of a spate of recent books on the subject is a good indicator. The titles indicate that they're all pretty much telling the same story. Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage; The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies; Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil; The Coming Oil Crisis; The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. Whew

Most of the end-of-society-as-we-know-it prognosticators have been influenced by the work of a geophysicist named M. King Hubbert, developer of the theory named after him, "Hubbert's Peak." Hubbert was the first man to apply principles of geology, physics and mathematics (in combination) to the projection of future oil production from the U.S. reserve base. He summarized his conclusions in the form of a bell curve that sought to predict the productivity of a given oilfield, from the point of discovery through exhaustion. The same methodology could be applied to the sum of all the world's known fields as well.

Hubbert's Peak was the point at the top of the bell curve, when production stopped increasing and began its inevitable decline. Hubbert, in 1956, estimated that exploitation of continental American resources would peak in the 1970s, then begin to decline. He was correct. However, when he took a stab at world production and said 1995, he was dead wrong.

The date of the world peak has not yet been reached. To the contrary, it has been pushed back continually, as year over year production has increased in a virtually unbroken line for a century and a half. Unsurprisingly, this has not caused the soothsayers to abandon their crystal balls. They may not be able to fix a date, or to scientifically explain why, but all agree that the tipping point is coming, and coming soon. An April 21 article in the Guardian provided some typical if wide ranging figures. Colin Campbell--a retired former petroleum geologist often consulted by the media on this issue--was the most pessimistic, opining that it'll be next year. The International Energy Agency guessed between 2013-2037, while the U.S. Geological Survey says sometime in the mid-2030s.

Our most important resource, then--lest we forget, it doesn't just run our Hondas and Chevvies, but is a key ingredient in literally thousands of different products, from medicines to fertilizers to plastics, and so on--is expected to start running out at a time when world demand for it is exploding. The result will obviously be political and economic dislocations on an almost unimaginable scale. Even now, nations are taking steps to protect themselves; the war in Iraq was inarguably (even if only partially) waged in order to keep American hands firmly on that country's oil spigot.

The wild card here is that all prognostications concerning the end of the petroleum age are, of course, predicated on oil being a non-renewable resource, a supposition so deeply ingrained that it doesn't even occur to us to question it. But what if that bedrock belief is simply, fundamentally, flat-out wrong?

Crazy talk? Maybe. But as you know, we hardly shy away from controversy at WWNK. What we like to do is pursue a subject no matter where it leads us, and when we decided to write about the end of oil, we did just that. As it turns out, the assumption that oil is a non-renewable fossil fuel has not gone unchallenged. Though seldom heard, there is a competing theory, namely that oil is abiotic, i.e. produced inorganically, as a result of natural processes deep within the earth.

This theory answers one of the most nagging questions about the origin of oil. A 1974 article in the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists put it this way: "All giant [oil] fields are most logically explained by inorganic theory because simple calculations of potential hydrocarbon contents shows that organic materials are too few to supply the volumes of petroleum involved." A 1999 Wall Street Journal article concurred, stating that most geologists, "are hard-pressed to explain why the world's greatest oil pool, the Middle East, has more than doubled its reserves in the past 20 years, despite [the] intense exploitation and relatively few new discoveries. It would take a pretty big pile of dead dinosaurs and prehistoric plants to account for the estimated 660 billion barrels of oil in the region, notes Norman Hyne, a professor at the University of Tulsa."

The abiotic theory has been around for over half a century and is little known in this country, for the simple reason that the bulk of the research was conducted in the old Soviet Union, and most of the papers are in Russian. It received some striking support in the U.S. in 1999, however. The aforementioned Wall Street Journal article told the story:
"Something mysterious is going on at Eugene Island 300. Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the Coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. [Discovered in 1973, its] output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day. Then suddenly... Eugene Island's fortunes reversed... [It] is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million."

Perhaps more intriguing, "scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago," a disparity that the Journal explains by quoting Thomas Gold, a professor emeritus at Cornell University. "[O]il is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the Earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As [it] migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs." Also quoted was Dr. Jean Whelan, a senior researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who studied Eugene Island 330. Formerly a firm believer in the fossil fuel theory, her researches convinced her that the alternative is correct. "Now, she says, 'I believe there is a huge system of oil just migrating' deep underground."
Further backing for the abiotic theory is found in the work of geologist J. F. Kenney of the Gas Resources Corporation. Nature summarized his findings in 2002: "[Kenney's team] mimicked conditions more than 100 kilometers below the earth's surface by heating marble, iron oxide and water to around 1,500° C and 50,000 times atmospheric pressure. They produced traces of methane, the main constituent of natural gas, and octane, the hydrocarbon molecule that makes petrol. A mathematical model of the process suggests that, apart from methane, none of the ingredients of petroleum could form at depths less than 100 kilometers."

As Kenney himself has written, "Beginning in 1964, Soviet scientists carried out extensive theoretical statistical thermodynamic analysis which established explicitly that the hypothesis of evolution of hydrocarbon molecules (except methane) from biogenic ones in the temperature and pressure regime of the Earth's near-surface crust was glaringly in violation of the second law of thermodynamics." As for the practical consequences, he adds, "The [abiotic] theory is presently applied extensively throughout the former U.S.S.R. as the guiding perspective for petroleum exploration and... there are presently more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian district alone which were explored and developed by applying [this] theory and which produce from the crystalline basement rock [i.e. where there could be no organic source for a fossil fuel]."

Who's right? What does it all really mean? We admit that we don't know, but one extremely important question is obvious. If oil may truly be produced abiotically, then why have we been kept in the dark about the origins of something so basic to our way of life?

Piggyback Hero
by Ralph Kinney Bennett

Tomorrow morning they'll lay the remains of Glenn Rojohn to rest in the Peace Lutheran Cemetery in the little town of Greenock, Pa., just southeast of Pittsburgh. He was 81, and had been in the air conditioning and plumbing business in nearby McKeesport. If you had seen him on the street he would probably have looked to you like so many other graying, bespectacled old World War II veterans whose names appear so often now on obituary pages.

But like so many of them, though he seldom talked about it, he could have told you one hell of a story. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart all in one fell swoop in the skies over Germany on December 31, 1944.
Fell swoop indeed.

Capt. Glenn Rojohn, of the 8th Air Force's 100th Bomb Group, was flying his B-17G Flying Fortress bomber on a raid over Hamburg. His formation had braved heavy flak to drop their bombs, then turned 180 degrees to head out over the North Sea. They had finally turned northwest, headed back to England, when they were jumped by German fighters at 22,000 feet. The Messerschmitt Me-109s pressed their attack so closely that Capt. Rojohn could see the faces of the German pilots. He and other pilots fought to remain in formation so they could use each other's guns to defend the group. Rojohn saw a B-17 ahead of him burst into flames and slide sickeningly toward the earth. He gunned his ship forward to fill in the gap.

He felt a huge impact. The big bomber shuddered, felt suddenly very heavy and began losing altitude. Rojohn grasped almost immediately that he had collided with another plane. A B-17 below him, piloted by Lt. William G. McNab, had slammed the top of its fuselage into the bottom of Rojohn's. The top turret gun of McNab's plane was now locked in the belly of Rojohn's plane and the ball turret in the belly of Rojohn's had smashed through the top of McNab's. The two bombers were almost perfectly aligned - the tail of the lower plane was slightly to the left of Rojohn's tailpiece. They were stuck together, as a crewman later recalled, "like mating dragon flies."

No one will ever know exactly how it happened. Perhaps both pilots had moved instinctively to fill the same gap in the formation. Perhaps McNab's plane had hit an air pocket. Three of the engines on the bottom plane were still running, as were all four of Rojohn's. The fourth engine on the lower bomber was on fire and the flames were spreading to the rest of the aircraft. The two were losing altitude quickly. Rojohn tried several times to gun his engines and break free of the other plane. The two were inextricably locked together. Fearing a fire, Rojohn cuts his engines and rang the bailout bell. If his crew had any chance of parachuting, he had to keep the plane under control somehow.

The ball turret, hanging below the belly of the B-17, was considered by many to be a death trap - the worst station on the bomber.

In this case, both ball turrets figured in a swift and terrible drama of life and death. Staff Sgt. Edward L. Woodall, Jr., in the ball turret of the lower bomber, had felt the impact of the collision above him and saw shards of metal drop past him. Worse, he realized both electrical and hydraulic power was gone.

Remembering escape drills, he grabbed the handcrank, released the clutch and cranked the turret and its guns until they were straight down, then turned and climbed out the back of the turret up into the fuselage. Once inside the plane's belly Woodall saw a chilling sight, the ball turret of the other bomber protruding through the top of the fuselage. In that turret, hopelessly trapped, was Staff Sgt. Joseph Russo. Several crewmembers on Rojohn's plane tried frantically to crank Russo's tu rret around so he could escape. But, jammed into the fuselage of the lower plane, the turret would not budge. Aware of his plight, but possibly unaware that his voice was going out over the intercom of his plane, Sgt. Russo began reciting his Hail Marys. Up in the cockpit, Capt. Rojohn and his co-pilot, 2nd Lt. William G. Leek, Jr., had propped their feet against the instrument panel so they could pull back on their controls with all their strength, trying to prevent their plane from going into a spinning dive that would prevent the crew from jumping out.

Capt. Rojohn motioned left and the two managed to wheel the grotesque, collision-born hybrid of a plane back toward the German coast. Leek felt like he was intruding on Sgt. Russo as his prayers crackled over the radio, so he pulled off his flying helmet with its earphones.

Rojohn, immediately grasping that crew could not exit from the bottom of his plane, ordered his top turret gunner and his radio operator, Tech Sgts. Orville Elkin and Edward G. Neuhaus, to make their way to the back of the fuselage and out the waist door behind the left wing.

Then he got his navigator, 2nd Lt. Robert Washington, and his bombardier, Sgt. James Shirley to follow them. As Rojohn and Leek somehow held the plane steady, these four men, as well as waist gunner Sgt. Roy Little and tail gunner Staff Sgt. Francis Chase were able to bail out.

Now the plane locked below them was aflame. Fire poured over Rojohn's left wing. He could feel the heat from the plane below and hear the sound of .50 caliber machinegun ammunition "cooking off" in the flames.

Capt. Rojohn ordered Lieut. Leek to bail out. Leek knew that without him helping keep the controls back, the plane would drop in a flaming spiral and the centrifugal force would prevent Rojohn from bailing. He refused the order.

Meanwhile, German soldiers and civilians on the ground that afternoon looked up in wonder. Some of them thought they were seeing a new Allied secret weapon - a strange eight-engined double bomber. But anti-aircraft gunners on the North Sea coastal island of Wangerooge had seen the collision. A German battery captain wrote in his logbook at 12:47 p.m.: "Two fortresses collided in a formation in the NE. The planes flew hooked together and flew 20 miles south. The two planes were unable to fight anymore. The crash could be awaited so I stopped the firing at these two planes."

Suspended in his parachute in the cold December sky, Bob Washington watched with deadly fascination as the mated bombers, trailing black smoke, fell to earth about three miles away, their downward trip ending in an ugly boiling blossom of fire.

In the cockpit Rojohn and Leek held grimly to the controls trying to ride a falling rock. Leek tersely recalled, "The ground came up faster and faster. Praying was allowed. We gave it one last effort and slammed into the ground."

The McNab plane on th e bottom exploded, vaulting the other B-17 upward and forward. It hit the ground and slid along until its left wing slammed through a wooden building and the smoldering mass of aluminum came to a stop.

Rojohn and Leek were still seated in their cockpit. The nose of the plane was relatively intact, but everything from the B-17's massive wings back was destroyed. They looked at each other incredulously. Neither was badly injured.

Movies have nothing on reality. Still perhaps in shock, Leek crawled out through a huge hole behind the cockpit, felt for the familiar pack in his uniform pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He placed it in his mouth and was about to light it. Then he noticed a young German soldier pointing a rifle at him. The soldier looked scared and annoyed. He grabbed the cigarette out of Leek's mouth and pointed down to the gasoline pouring out over the wing from a ruptured fuel tank.

Two of the six men who parachuted from Rojohn's plane did not survive the jump. But the other four and, amazingly, four men from the other bomber, including ball turret gunner Woodall, survived. All were taken prisoner. Several of them were interrogated at length by the Germans until they were satisfied that what had crashed was not a new American secret weapon.

Rojohn, typically, didn't talk much about his Distinguished Flying Cross. Of Leek, he said, "In all fairness to my co-pilot, he's the reason I'm alive today."

Like so many veterans, Rojohn got back to life unsentimentally after the war, marrying and raising a son and daughter. For many years, though, he tried to link back up with Leek, going through government records to try to track him down. It took him 40 years, but in 1986, he found the number of Leek's mother, in Washington State.

Yes, her son Bill was visiting from California. Would Rojohn like to speak with him? Two old men on a phone line, trying to pick up some familiar timbre of youth in each other's voice. One can imagine that first conversation between the two men who had shared that wild ride in the cockpit of a B-17.

A year later, the two were re-united at a reunion of the 100th Bomb Group in Long Beach, Calif. Bill Leek died the following year. Glenn Rojohn was the last survivor of the remarkable piggyback flight. He was like thousands upon thousands of men -- soda jerks and lumberjacks, teachers and dentists, students and lawyers and service station attendants and store clerks and farm boys -- who in the prime of their lives went to war in World War II. They sometimes did incredible things, endured awful things, and for the most part most of them pretty much kept it to themselves and just faded back into the fabric of civilian life.

Capt. Glenn Rojohn, AAF, died last Saturday after a long siege of illness. But he apparently faced that final battle with the same grim aplomb he displayed that remarkable day over Germany so long ago. Let us be thankful for such men.