Louis Roney: Women and such

• I love women. I respect women. My mother was a woman, a Republican, and I had a very good upbringing. My wife is a Republican woman and I have a great marriage. Who’s kicking? I think women are not only the equal of men, but in some ways are superior —I think women are simply wonderful! My family’s women furnished the requisites that we males somehow forgot to bring along to the picnic. Let me only say that I would not have gotten anywhere in this world without the help of the quality women who have lavished their own strengths on me. My grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, and of course, b.w. and scads of women, who are very close friends, have all been irreplaceable to me. We men lean individually and collectively upon women from the time we get up in the morning until we go to bed at night. To use a biblical phrase, women are “our strength and our redeemers.” They help us achieve great things and help us keep our feet out of the quicksand of wacky ideas we men-folk often stray into. Women may often share their tears with us, but then they help us along the way by laughing at some of the screwball ideas that have entranced us guys. Women see our strong points and forgive those weaknesses that make them laugh us back into sanity again. The guy that joked, “take my wife ... please!” didn’t deserve the wife he had or any other! I wonder if he ever thanked her for all the time her tact got him out of a mess, and, maybe even saved his job for him. How often did she pump him full of the positive energy he needed to the overcome negatives that had laid him low? Men like to play with fire and are big risk-takers; women are fire extinguishers and lead men home safely from their adventurous tomfoolery. Don’t knock women—Not to me!

• I was happy to receive a phone call from Richard Tolle, whose wife Joie and he were pals of my b.w. and mine when he was running the Lakemont YMCA where b.w. and I often swim. Richard tells me he is retiring in the near future and that he and Joie may be somewhere in our neighborhood again — we hope so. The Tolles have been living in Hinesville, Ga., where Richard is head of the big Y there. Hinesville was the home of three signers of the Declaration of Independence: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall and George Walton, and is now the home of the giant U.S. Army 3rd Division’s, Fort Stewart, the largest Army installment east of the Mississippi.

• My b.w., Joy, is well named. For she manages to bring joy with her wherever she goes. She is the spirit of generosity when it comes not only to material things but, more importantly, in the giving of herself and all her many talents to other people. She has been letting me in on her lagniappe for 34 marvelous years. Together we have accomplished lots of things that have brought pleasure not only to us, but we hope, to others. She is demonstrably some 17 percent smarter than I am, and her intelligence has propped up my own.

• At this time our president is speaking in Holland at the Hague, where he has eluded to, “what would the U.S. do if the Russians attacked NYC with nuclear weapons?” Well, Mr. President, I do not think we should have to improvise on the spot, but simply initiate retaliatory actions that you should already have in place as a red button on your desktop.

Our president seems to have a “Gone with the Wind” syndrome: “I’ll think about that tomorrow!”(But he doesn’t have Scarlett’s charm.) Plan-less, Obama is putting us at the mercy of every passing breeze. Maybe we’ll muddle through as we have always done and be relieved just at having survived. I personally cannot help thinking of the importance of Washington, D.C., where we have our president, Congress and Supreme Court. What would happen if they were attacked? Do we have such emergency plans in place, Mr. Obama?