Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Most of us I would guess have been horrified by what has gone on in Israel and Gaza since early in October. But it is a long ways away and doesn’t seem like much of a threat to us.

It was an eye opener for me to learn how small Gaza is. You look at in on a map and it is a small corner of southwest Israel. And you can read that it is 141 square miles and that seems like a lot.

One map showed that it was about 25 miles tall and about 7.5 miles wide although that width kind of varies with the Mediterranean Sea shoreline.

Now think of Pope County. Pope County consists of 20 townships, each six miles by six miles. Each township contains 36 square miles so four townships would have 144 square miles and would have roughly the same surface area as Gaza.

And if you took say four townships vertically on a map like Westport, Grove Lake, Bangor and Lake Johanna, Gaza would almost fit inside that box! And those four townships would have three more square miles of land than Gaza.

Gaza was estimated to have just over two million people living within its borders as of 2020!

Figure that out. That means, if you use two million as the population number, that each square mile would average 14,184 people, which would be more than the entire population of Pope County squeezed into one square mile. And if Pope County had that dense of a population it would have 6,808,320 residents or more than the entire state of Minnesota and North Dakota combined.

If you think Minneapolis is crowded and busy imagine 6.8 million people in Pope County! It is hard to imagine life in such a densely populated area.

So you can see through these numbers that anytime anybody fires a rocket, missile, bullet, mortar or throws a rock it is bound to hit somebody, in fact it would be a miracle to miss someone.

So it should be no surprise that between 10,000 and 15,000 people have died in fighting there. How sad.

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President Jimmy Carter’s four years in office were certainly frustrating for him. In November of 1979 Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held over 50 embassy employees for over a year. The event made the U.S. look weak in the eyes of many and was probably a key reason for Carter’s 1980 reelection bid failing. As a final insult Iran released the hostages just after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration.

But Carter and his wife Rosalynn went on after his term as president to form the Carter Center that was involved in international peace initiatives and honest voting in budding democracies.

Carter also became involved with Habitat for Humanity and every year he would be involved in a building project. His involvement drew thousands into the Habitat fold. And he kept working on Habitat homes as long as he was physically able, which turned out to be 95.

As former presidents go, Carter was among the most active ever for projects benefitting world peace and charitable causes.

Last week his wife, partner and chief counsel, Rosalynn, died at the age of 96. Carter, who himself has been in hospice since earlier this year, attended services for his wife in a wheelchair.

On one hand it is sad to see this couple leave us, they are a wonderful example of serving the public and trying to improve people’s lives through peace and housing.  That is something to be recognized and appreciated.

On another front it is a reminder that as people age their ability to help others does not have to diminish. What a great example for us all!