Paying the price

It’s the 100th anniversary of the dog sled delivery of diphtheria vaccine to Nome, Alaska. I wrote this column a decade or two ago, and I think it got me in a certain amount of trouble. After it came out there were several places I was never invited back to, which I thought was kind of a pity.

“A while ago I was invited to attend a public forum…a thing put on by Minnesota Public Radio. The discussion topic was energy independence and I must have been on some sort of list so I was received an invitation.

It was pretty interesting. A whole room full of smart, opinionated people, sure of what they were saying and confident in the way they talked.

I didn’t really blend in. Before the event everyone was walking around networking – firm handshakes, snappy business cards. I’m not very good at networking. I usually either sit quietly in a corner or else end up on the loading dock talking to a janitor.

Anyway, as the evening wore on I noticed something. Everyone in the room was talking about energy independence and that was what they did – talk. They worked for think tanks and lobbying organizations and industry group. If there was anyone there who’d distilled a gallon of ethanol or built a solar cell, they didn’t speak up. They were all well educated, well dressed and well spoken.

It made me a little nervous.

For some reason I started thinking about 1925 when a diphtheria epidemic hit Nome, Alaska, and they had to find volunteers to take the vaccine by dogsled to the stricken town.

The guys who volunteered weren’t well educated or well groomed and while I’m sure they had a large vocabulary, a lot of those words wouldn’t end up in a newspaper or on the radio.

But they knew what they were getting into. It was -50, dark, with storms coming in, but babies were dying and someone had to go, and be willing to pay the price.

It’s a story with a lot of heros, but one sticks in my mind – a guy ran into a tree in the dark and the dogsled tipped over and spilled the vial of vaccine. Now it was nearly 60 below zero with a howling wind and he couldn’t find the vial in the deep snow wearing his clumsy mittens, so he took them off and fished around in the snowbank until he found it. He suffered severe frostbite, as he knew he would, but he rescued the container, because that’s what he had to do..

As I sat in the comfortable room, full of well-connected well-groomed folks I would have found it a lot more reassuring if I could have looked around the room and seen someone, anyone, with some scars, wrinkles, and a bad attitude, someone who knows how to get things done and is willing to pay the price.

Because the babies are dying and things are going to get worse and we need more action and less talk by people willing to step up, go to work, and pay the price.”