Reading can be a challenge to your attention span. Then again, it’s a way to get one back — if you ever had one. Mary and I have another day of isolation before we can venture out into the real world. We both tested positive for Covid earlier this week while on a family vacation at a beautiful home on the shore of Lake Champlain just a handful of miles below the Canadian border. It was a [...] READ MORE
Sometimes the simplest demands can turn a man into a monster. Because the mask has become so polarizing, the extreme reactions aren’t really about being asked to wear one for an hour. It’s about communicating what side you’re on. — ProPublica, October 7, 2021, “We’re Losing Our Humanity and the Pandemic Is to Blame” In a well-researched October 7 article for ProPublica, Sarah Smith takes a fascinating look at how COVID-19 has turned Americans against each other, [...] READ MORE
Cavemen unite! Who needs science and history? We were almost there, moving quite smoothly toward wholesale vaccinations leading to herd immunity, and then, once again, partisan politics reared its ugly head over an issue that shouldn’t have been political at all. It should have been about saving lives and getting back to normal, having learned lessons that may avert hundreds of thousands more from dying if another pandemic sweeps over our land. Now that the masks are [...] READ MORE
A little needling about chasing the jab. Let me just start by saying that my wife, Mary, and I, being in declining geezerhood, both received our first jab of the COVID Moderna vaccine last Tuesday. I had to drive about 350 miles to accomplish that feat, which is like driving from my house in the George Washington Bridge and back with more than half of it on two-lane roads. I don’t think I was ever more than [...] READ MORE
Speaking up for fellow codgers trying to track down Covid-19 vaccinations. I’ve finally figured out why everything is so screwed up getting the Covid-19 vaccinations into the arms of the most vulnerable among us to the worst effects of this crazy virus. There was apparently a Trekkie at the bottom of what has turned out to be another false promise— Operation Warp Speed. You may know that warp speed is a term from “Star Wars” and is [...] READ MORE
“I told you we shouldn’t be out here after dark!” We seem to have entered a weird time of make-believe where stuff is made up by people who I’m not going to mention, because they wish things hadn’t turned out the way they did. That’s the way it is today. If we don’t like the way things are, we just pretend they aren’t and move on believing what we want to believe. I mean who would have [...] READ MORE
America’s pandemic war zone: grocery stores. Adult content warning: There is explicit content in this article, generally avoided in mixed company describing an act best conducted behind closed doors, that may be offensive to some readers. If you require more specificity before venturing into the following text, the offending word mentioned multiple times is comprised of four letters and starts with the letter “f.” I was watching one of those “Talk Back” programs on a local TV [...] READ MORE
It is better to have a mask on your face than a foot in your mouth. Looking back over the recently departed month of June in the Land of Opportunity, which, in case that rings a bell, was once synonymic for the United States of America, two images are branded into my memory. One is of a Minneapolis cop looking casually at the camera and then down as George Floyd takes his dying breaths. The other is [...] READ MORE
Keeping up with the virus on Fox News. I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public; that the acceptance of a lesser service than public service is betrayal of this trust… I believe that a journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true. — Part of The Journalist’s Creed by Walter Williams (1914) [...] READ MORE
Since we crowd together to spread it, we need to join forces to vanquish it. Like it or not, this strain of the coronavirus is going to drastically change the way we live our lives. It’s started already. We can’t avoid it, and the transformation is going to be drastic, even historic. It has the dual potential of tearing us apart and bringing us together. I’m rooting for the latter. At last count, as I am writing [...] READ MORE
