John Philip Sousa is one of those iconic Americans who was a lot more than most of us realize.

His marches were only one-third of what he composed. I learned that from Dave Becker, conductor of the North Coast Symphonic Band, whose Sousa concert last Sunday afternoon at the Liberty Theater was a delight.

Not having seen the North Coast Symphonic Band for more than a year, I realized they have raised their game by a couple notches.

In addition to favorites such as The Washington Post march and The Stars and Stripes Forever, the band played works that would have been part of a Sousa Band performance – Gilbert and Sullivan, a fanfare based on Verdi’s Otello and Amazing Grace.

Dave Becker is one reason why the Symphonic Band is better rehearsed. After 29 years as director of bands at Lewis and Clark College, Becker retired to Manzanita. A friend who was retiring as the band’s conductor suggested the position to Becker. “I was looking for things to do,” he said. “It’s been a good marriage.”

The band’s players are an amalgam of locals with day jobs, retired persons and some from outside the region. “We have a couple ninth graders,” said Becker, “and players in their eighties.”

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Every year on Sousa’s birthday, Nov. 6, the Marine Band marches to his grave and plays the march which Sousa wrote for the Marine Corps: Semper Fideles. You will find a video of this al fresco stirring moment on YouTube.

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There’s nothing like discovering a new restaurant. At the urging to Matt Winters, my wife and I had lunch at the Peninsula Golf Course. Matt was right. The food is terrific. My wife had a po’boy oyster sandwich, which we have never found around here. She was enthralled. I can report that the burger was excellent as well.

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“Power Customers Face Nuclear Bill” was the headline in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. The story reminded me of the collapse of the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) in the 1980s. That became the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history.

The Journal’s article is about expensive repairs that are necessary at aging nuclear plants in New York, Ohio and Illinois. The cost of these repairs will undoubtedly eventually be borne by ratepayers, not shareholders.

No form of electricity generation is unambiguously positive. Hydroelectric dams have given us extraordinarily low electricity rates, but they decimated the salmon population and thereby transformed the economy of the lower river.

The missing element in nuclear power is waste disposal. Nationally, we forget about that until the Department of Energy tries to find a repository site. The Wall Street Journal lately has reminded us that President Obama killed the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, as a favor to Sen. Harry Reid.

Our national discussion of nuclear power has typically been light on cost accounting. Costs of waste disposal and decommissioning of reactors were not part of the initial concept. We should always remember that it was Wall Street, not environmentalists, that pulled the plug on WPPSS.

— S.A.F.