I had a glimpse of what it means to fight for survival last week, when my family and I visited Jamestown, Virginia. The first permanent English colony in North America, Jamestown was the capitol of the Virginia Colony from the time of its settlement in 1607 until 1699. There, adventurers, gentlemen, malcontents, and misfits banded together to fight off mosquitoes and Indians and struggle with hunger, unpotable water, insufficient farmland, and swampy conditions as they struggled to build a viable colony--which is to say make money for the Crown and the people who paid their passage as well as for themselves. When tobacco became an export in 1612, fortunes turned for the colonists, thanks to the leadership of John Rolfe and his lovely wife Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. A time of peace, prosperity, growth, and democracy ensued. Today, Jamestown is a tourist site with three replica wooden vessels, an Indian village, and an English fort. We visited on a col