Sometimes the gods of the theatre smile and make sure that everything turns out all right. Sometimes they don’t. Fortunately, The Tempest received the blessings of the former. Our first tech run on Monday was semi-disastrous. First dress on Tuesday was an improvement but still marred by some unfinished costumes and a couple of missing cast members. Final dress on Wednesday, was another leap forward with pretty much everything in place but with a few scenes still shaky due to folk being uncertain of line sequence (and I saw a few notecards out on stage…) Opening Thursday – every performance was in place. Any lines that were dropped were covered seamlessly and would only be noticed by a scholar following along with a transcript. The complex staging scenes were executed the way I envisioned. Audiences over the first three performances have thoroughly enjoyed by somewhat goofy Polynesian fantasy take on the material and have been very complimentary. A few whom I trust and who know Shakespeare well have said I have taken a play that is difficult to stage and sell to a modern audience and made it an enjoyable two and a half hours. Full of enough spectacle and color, even on our teeny tiny budget to keep people engaged even when they aren’t completely sure of the language. I take that as meaning I did my job. If you’re in the greater Birmingham area, you can catch tomorrow’s matinee or one of four performances next weekend.

A few people are talking about what should we do for Summer Shakespeare next year. I do not plan to direct. The production will coincide with my retirement so I have no idea what I’m going to be up to at that point. Possibly off on an around the world cruise. Or maybe locked in a cabin somewhere with a bottle of gin, some Judy Garland records, and a packet of razor blades. If I were to do another, I think I would like to do Twelfth Night but it’s time to let someone else take the reins. Actually, what I would really like to do is King Lear but we’re not ready for that one.

There were various issues getting through the last week. We had to cut the hazer after it set off the fire alarm in the middle of Act I during first tech. The tech crew will have to experiment with it some and with ventilation before we bring that out again. There was a case of Covid (it has not spread). Compared to last year when we were battling a light system that completely stopped working and a car accident that kept us from having any costumes for dress rehearsal, it was a piece of cake. I spent the whole week channeling Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love. Maybe I was on to something.

I’ve been living with The Tempest for about three months now and I’m still not completely sure what it’s about. Perhaps it’s why I love Shakespeare so much. Four hundred years later and we still haven’t completely penetrated all of his secrets and meanings. And has anyone understood the complexities, the joy, the terror, and the opacity of human life as well as he? I always do a bit of reflecting on how the play I am working on reflects current events and what society is up to today. Prospero is an autocrat. He deliberately and wilfully manipulates all of the other characters in the play for his own ends. His population is small but he places each of them in a place where they, in general get what they want.

My first thought was that Prospero is a Trump figure but then I realized something. Trump’s autocratic impulses are about one person and one person only. Prospero’s are not. At the end of the play, he has his rightful place as Duke of Milan but he has lost his powers, his daughter, and his servants so that they can fulfill their proper destinies. And he is OK with that and comes to terms with it in his famous epilogue. He is the anti-Trump. Using powerful means for selfless rather than selfish ends. It’s the underlying arc of the story of Jesus, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Harry Potter vs Vodemort, a powerful Jungian myth which keeps cropping up in cultural tales as it’s what we know is necessary for the betterment of society as a whole.

I wrestled a whole lot with trying to figure out who are Ariel and the spirits and who is Caliban and Sycorax, his mother (a character frequently mentioned in the original but never seen) – I put her on stage as I had just the right actress at age 87 to provide a balance of old earth magic and age and wisdom against Prospero’s learning and empiricism. I wanted to leave the audience understanding that Prospero is not the sole center of power, but part of a larger cosmos which we may not yet fully understand. It also helps humanize Caliban. I must admit I was a bit goofy with the spirits giving them hakas and hulas and the all spirit kazoo band. It’s not the tack I would have taken if I had a larger budget but many of my ideas had to be constantly adjusted based on technical capabilities and what performers could handle. I’m a fairly fast and flexible thinker and my mantra of taking the simplest solution to problems as we put the production together ended up serving everything well.

I’m tired. Not only have I been Tempest tossed, I’ve also been helping a number of friends through life meltdowns and mental health crises. I think everything is calming down but I feel in need of a glass of wine, bad television and hiding away from the world for a few days. I can feel my brain getting older and more rigid and less able to absorb everything that is tossed at it these days. I’m just hoping it’s not the first fingers of my mother’s genetic dementia crawling along my cerebral cortex.

The tech period for The Tempest begins tomorrow. I’m trying something different this year. A dry tech without the cast to try and get all of the tech elements right so that we have a prayer of getting through everything at first tech on Monday night. IF I’ve done my job right over the last six weeks, things will go incredibly smoothly between now and Thursday. But then again, I thought I had done my job right last year and our tech period was one major disaster after another. The elements are ll there for an enjoyable show. We shall see if they gel. I have my Geoffrey Rush Shakespeare in Love hat on and am waddling around thinking ‘It will all be all right – it’s magic’. Given that it’s a play about magic. I’m hoping for some good karma. For those of you in the Birmingham area, head on out to East Lake Methodist next weekend or the one after; you can get tickets on line or at the door.

As I peruse the political news of the last week or so, Peter Allen’s song ‘Everything Old is New Again’ keeps running through my head as the administration keeps running out retreads of its greatest hits in some sort of vain attempt to distract the American public from the abject political and moral failures they’ve managed to achieve over the last year and a half. They seem bound and determined to somehow overturn an election that happened six years ago without any real evidence that’s been disputed and litigated multiple times through multiple courts. They seem bound and determined to bring back the McCarthy era smears of ‘communism’ that we moved past some seventy years ago. I suppse it makes a certain amount of sense when one considers that one of the chief mentors of the current president back in the day was Roy Cohn. For my younger readers, if you don’t know what that particularly odious figure was, google him and find out. Then there’s the spectacle of Jeanne Pirro and the DOJ trying to extricate itself from the laughable case of the Olympian and the reflecting pool. I hope bar associations are taking note and that plaintiff firms are starting to line up clients.

And, of course, the piece de resistance, was the attempt to crucify the 85 year old Anthony Fauci on live television through a perjury trap that he deftly avoided by remaining mum on all subjects behind the fifth amendment. For all the keyboard warriors out there claiming that taking the fifth is an admission of guilt, take a look at Trump’s depositions in 2022 regarding his business practices. The current regime has moved on from trying to rewrite the modern history of the insurrection into some sort of rowdy picnic into trying to completely rewrite the history of the pandemic. Now I know a thing or two about the history of the pandemic, having written roughly 900 pages about it as it was happening so I remember what actually happened pretty well. (If you need refereshing, The Accidental Plague Diaries Volumes 1-3 are still available).

Our current leading candidate for governor (presuming he isn’t 86d for not meeting the constitutional requirement for Alabama residency) was running around demanding Dr. Fauci be prosecuted for murder as vaccines killed nine million Americans. I did some quick searching regarding death certificates and found that during the pandemic period when vaccine was available (December 2020-December 2022) the total number of deaths in the US from all causes was only about seven million so every heart attack, every cancer, every car accident, every drowning, every suicide and every other death during that period must have been caused by vaccine, plus the other two million folks that never got a death certificate.

As a reminder, covid, during the pandemic, killed about 1.25 million Americans. That was roughly one in three hundred people. The total number of cases of possible vaccine injury death verified through authorities and not some story somebody heard from their neighbor’s chiropractor was, according to some sources 55. That’s out of some 650 plus million doses of vaccine administered in the pandemic. 0.33% chance of covid death vs 0.000000085% chance of vaccine injury death – you decide.

The blatant falsehoods and shear ignorance of normal practice of population protection in the face of pandemic infectious disease, protocols arrived at over centuries of human experience that have been burning up the back channels of social media this past week are disgusting and incredibly disrespectful to the families who lost loved ones, the healthcare workers who sacrificed their physical and mental health, and everyone that did their part out of a sense of shared community. Was Dr. Fauci perfect? Of course not, he’s human. Did he do a good job given the information he had and what the science told him? I believe so. But much of what he treid to do was sidelined and politicized until after the change in administration in January of 2021, nearly a year into the pandemic. While he was being ignored and vilified stateside, other countries did listen to him and his recommendations and took them seriously. Most of them had much lower casualty rates than we did. Credit where credit is due. The vaccine, which arrived in record time and helped break the back on transmission was produced under the first Trump administration.

For an in group to coalesce and feel good about themselves, they must have an out group on whom to project all of their anxieties and fears. And we have a lot of of those left collectively after the pandemic which I don’t think we’ve really properly dealt with as a society. So that fear becomes anger and cynical leaders turn it on convenient targets for deflection and other political purposes. And, in terms of public health, what has it gotten us? 20% of the employees of the Department of Health and Human Services have been fired. Measles, a disease that was considered eradicated, has come sweeping back with more cases so far in 2026 than from 2000-2025 combined. Foodborne illnesses are on the rise. Babies are bleeding to death as vaccine contrarianism has risen to such a point that parents are refusing to allow their newborns a routine Vitamin K shot to help their clotting factors work properly.

Those of us who work in clinical health care, caught between a corporate mentality that puts profit ahead of patients and a patient population that is increasingly rejecting medicine and science in favor of magical thinking beliefs and a complete misunderstanding of what medicine can and cannot do, are heading for the exits. As I look around, few of my generation are still working and those that are all have their exits mapped out (me included). I really have to get back to work on the new book that lays out some of the coming implosion in the system because as more and more crazy things become commonplace, I think it’s going to be a lot more spectacular than I was originally imagining. I’ve decided I don’t want to be at ground zero, but rather on the periphery sipping a cocktail.

I went to see Christopher Nolan’s new film version of The Odyssey last night. As it was shot on IMAX cameras for IMAX presentation, I decided that was the proper way to see it. Fortunately, the McWane Center, Birmingham’s children’s science museum, has a proper IMAX theater with the huge curved dome screen and it occasionally plays the summer blockbusters so I invited a friend to dinner and a movie. He had never been to the IMAX before. We’re suffering through the outer bands of tropical storm Bertha this weekend with fits of rain and occasional gusts of wind so a night in at the movies seemed just the ticket.

I was very impressed with the film and it takes its place, in my mind with some of the other classic Hollywood epics that are about a good deal more than they’re about such as David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings. I don’t think it should be taken as a straight forward adaptation of the Homeric epic that’s been around for three thousand years. When you do that you get caught up in the minutia as to whether this costume is historically accurate or whether that actor looks like what that historical figure might have actually looked like. It’s silly to do that. The collapse of the Bronze Age Mycenaean civilization (which is the background of The Iliad and The Odyssey) was true enough but the legendary stories of the men, women, and gods of that time have little to ground them in historical fact. I think it’s best to think of the film as an interpretation of a legend for a 21st century film audience and just accept it as what it is.

Nolan gives us a non-linear narrative telling of the story through various unreliable narrators making it impossible to know the objective truth. In the liminal spaces of the story, magic can exist and we can believe in the gods such as Zeus and Poseidon manifesting themselves through natural phenomena. The sea, in particular, varying from an inviting blue to a threatening gray, to a deady black is as much a character as any human. The only one of the gods who takes on human form is Athena, but as the film develops, it becomes clear, that she may simply be a personification of Odysseus’ guilt has he grapples with the heinous transgression against men and gods he created with the Trojan Horse.

Using a cast of fine actors, many of whom were at their idyllic cinematic peak some decades ago, we get worn lived in bodies, etched with time and grief and not the perfect physiques of sword and sandals epics of days past. Nolan splits the long running time of the film (which never drags and earns every minute) between Odysseus (Matt Damon) trying to return home and long delayed by Calypso (Charlize Theron) and events on his home isle of Ithaca where his Queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) try to keep order in his long absence while their home is continuously invaded by suitors for Penelope’s hand which would confer the Kingship.

The film’s script was written predominantly in 2024, prior to our most recent change in administration, with principal photography beginning in February of 2025, shortly after Trump took power. The theme that is introduced early in the film is that the most fundamental ethical and moral tenet of the society is Xenia, the law of Zeus. Welcome the stranger and treat them as you would wish to be treated. It’s sort of a Mycenaean variation of the Golden Rule which found it’s way into Christianity via Jewish scripture (composed at roughly the same time as Homer) and which also existed in other Mediterranean cultures and religions of the period. Hospitality was everything. In a world where journeys were terrifying and potentially deadly, depending on the kindness of strangers was everything. Odysseus’ trick with the horse shatters this precept and we are left by the end of the film to contemplate what will happen to a society which drifts so far from its ethical roots.

We have been doing the same thing in modern society. America was built and grew great on pluralism and assimilation and allowing anyone who wished to come and share in our society and values to come and prosper. We have spent four hundred years welcoming the stranger, not always perfectly, but with movement after movement towards a more perfect union. And now we are trying to tear it apart. The Trump administration is accelerating this but I have a feeling that even had the Democrats won the last election, we would still be seeing these deep seated trends. Rather than welcome the stranger, we are making them disappear from our streets through paramilitary personnel and fear. We are creating spaces not fit for livestock where they are confined and enriching people for doing so. The administration si trying to make the parts of history that tell stories of people unlike the mainstream disappear from museums and public record. In the name of anti-wokeness, the ability of hearing and learning from other perspectives is being curbed.

Somewhere in our military, there is a mind as brilliant as Odysseus’ who is busy creating a plan to end the current conflict in Iran. will the plan be a war crime? Will the blowback from it create confusion and moral uncertainty in our already weakened society? Will the leaders of our military, people who seem to think that injecting the troops with dangerous drugs in an attempt to make them more ‘masculine’ is a swell idea activate something from which we cannot turn back or recover? As I was watching the sack of Troy unfold on film, I coud not help but think about men hyped up on testosterone and amphetamines and the casual destruction of innocence that guarantees. They want to create a primal warrior. Are they ready for what happens when that primal brain is unleashed? It’s likely already happening behind the closed doors of ICE facilities. I have a feeling that when all of the truth comes out about ICE, Epstein, Iran, the current administration, all of it. That we will all need to atone.

It’s been a week full of life’s little mysteries. Like why are two of the bathmats from my master bath suddenly missing. And just whose unit above mine leaked water down the pipe alley flooding my utility closet and causing the parquet tiles in the hall to buckle and warp yet again. And why do the cats insist on peeing on any laundry accidentally left on the floor. And how can supposedly competent and educated adults employed by our federal goverment make such idiotic pronouncements on a daily basis.

We are now four weeks into The Tempest rehearsal and have three left to go. The show is staged and the scenes all have their arcs and necessary dramatic shape. Now comes the stitching of all of the pieces together. I have ten rehearsal hours to accomplish that task before we try running the whole thing and see what we’ve got. For the most part, the process has been relatively smooth. I wish people were further ahead on their lines than they are as it’s really hard to judge a performance when the actor’s face is buried in the book. I lost an actor this weekend to another commitment (the joys of community theater) but fortunately, I was expecting something like this to happen and had a secret plan B up my sleeve for dealing with it. All departments seem to have a grasp on what I’m hoping to achieve and seem to be moing towards the finish line with despatch. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some major detail but I’m pretty adept at creative problem solving on the fly. I’ve told the cast and staff that my mantra for the next two weeks is ‘simpler and cleaner’. Whatver the problem, we’re going to take the simplest and easiest path forward.

I was reading an article yesterday on the future of health care in the US and was struck by a statistic that I had not seen before. Somewhere between 10-12% of US physicians will leave the profession before the age of 50. In earlier generations, this was unheard of. Medicine, as much a calling like the priesthood as a profession, was something not to be entered into lightly as you would be spending your working life in a single track. Given that it takes anywhere from seven to twelve years after college to become proficient in a specialty, you aren’t ready to be turned lose until your thirties. Personally, it took me a total of 26 years of education from Kindergarten to completion of my geriatrics fellowship. After that kind of investment, you kind of want and need to stick around. I have. When I retire next year, it will be after 34 years of clinnical faculty positions.

This statistic does not bode well for our future. There is a significant shortage of physicians in this country, especially in primary care fields. (The educational system and the money is all tilted towards subspecialty care). We’ve been able to balance the numbers in recent decades by importing medical trainees and physicians from other countries and they have filled the gaps by taking jobs that US graduates have little interest in, especially in small town and rural America. The current administration, with its anti-immigrant stance, is trying to slam the door on this practice by rewriting the rules. The most recent one is to limit foreign students to four years to complete their course of study. Fine for a Bachelor’s degree or even an MD, but residency/fellowship training is ofen years longer than that

Covid did a number on the health care system. 20% of those working in clinical health positions in 2019 no longer do so. The older generation retired due to the stresses and strains of that period. Younger people reevaluated their lives. For the most part, the physicians soldiered on but now, five years later, things are beginning to fall apart. A profession that had minimal attrition is now due to lose 10% of the providers who should be in their most productive years.

Why are younger physicians leaving? It apparently boils down to four things which anyone who has been employed in health care over the last few decades could easily identify. The first is the hassle factor. Clinicians no longer run the healthcare system. Administrators do. There is a fundamental difference between the training and the thought process of the two. The shift to corporatization means that processes are put in place to benefit the C suite, not the boots on the ground. Healthcare now operates like any other big business, manufacturing patient encounters rather than widgets. Things like the electronic medical record, supposedly for patients and providers, is really designed for administrative tasks and is simply forced into a clinical role. My first job at age fifteen was as a data entry clerk. I have come full circle.

The second is the stress of the job. We spend our days with people on what is often the worst day of their life and we do that every work day, day in and day out. I’m lucky.. Some of my life experienes have given me a large pool of resilence and coping that most human beings don’t get. I have no idea where I would be if that were not true. The stress of the job places great strains on marriages and family relationships. And there is a culture in medicine that says you should be tough enough to take it and they should never see you sweat, much less cry. It’s no wonder the suicide rate in the profession is as high as it is.

The third is the unrealistic expectations of patients and their families. And let me tell you, honey chile we ain’t seen nothin’ yet as this is going to get exponentially worse as the Baby Boom enters its senior years en masse. It’s everything from the refusal of families to accept that their ninetysomething year old relatives will inevitably get sick and die to the people who want to spend hours discussing the research they did with Dr. Google on some spurious website to battles over the correct use of medication to the amount of anger displayed by people having to wait for service. I developed a technique for coping with most of this years ago. I tell patients that I am there to give them expert advice. They can take it or leave it. i don’t go home with them and I don’t run their lives. If they don’t take it or they do the opposite and end up making things worse, I don’t lecture or blame. I just keep moving forward with them. I’m their partner, not their nanny.

The last is a lack of satisfaction with the job. This probably flows from all of the above. Personally, I’m quite satisfied with the job. I enjoy what I do as it suits me so well. My favorite definition of geriatric medicine is ‘creative solutions to unsolveable problems’ and that’s my sweet spot as a person and personality type. If I just had to take care of my patients, I would probably stick around another decade, but the same things that are driving out the young uns are operating in my professional life as well and so I hang up my shingle next year and work on other things.

Yes, I’ve been following the national news. I give up when I read things like the administration wants to punish Canada as smoke from Canadian wildfires is crossing the border and leading to increased air pollution. Last I looked, weather patterns, airflow, and the physics of particulates was not under the control of any particular political apparatus. Where do they find these people who go on national media and make these hare brained statements. Unfortunately, the media, through tis corporate ownership which wants to play nicey-nice with power, finds itself in a position where it seems unable to call out idiocy as being idiocy. I don’t mind doing it for them.

It’s late. I’m going to bed.

I woke up this morning to the news that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina had died suddenly last night. And to speculations of a nefarious assassination due to his recent trip to the Ukraine. Occam’s razor suggests to me that his death was natural causes brought on by an age over seventy, a long history of excess alcohol use (ask any bartender in Charleston), and the inner demons and self loathing that must have eaten away at his soul given his status as a closeted gay man actively working at all opportunities against gay rights and for his abandonment of everything he originally stood for in politics for short term political expediency and a place in the White House inner circle. I’m sure there are people out there who loved and cared about him but I imagine those are far outweighed by those who viewed him and his choices with loathing and opprobrium. You can’t please all of the people all of the time but pissing off the many to please the one for callous political considerations has never been a goal of mine.

This event, of course, changes political calculus going into the midterms, especially since Mitch McConnell seems to have joined the cat inside Schrodinger’s box. All evidence points to McConnell being either dead dead or brain dead but with vital signs making him technically alive. You would think a good investigative reporter could clear it up with a couple of phone calls but the administration and DOJ’s heavy hand on the first amendment in recent months seems to have cowed that branch of journalism into submission. When I was a resident, Racquel Welch checked into UC Davis Medical Center for a surgical procedure so as to be away from the prying eyes of LA. Everyone on staff knew she was there, what room she was in and why within twenty-four hours. And this was a time before cell phones and instant electronic communications. I can guarantee you that pretty much everyone on staff at whatever hospital McConnell is purported to be at knows something.

I haven’t a clue how the midterms will go. It will depend entirely on turnout. If the population gets off their butts and goes to the polls, the Republicans are likely to be routed in the house and just might lose the senate as well. But the Democrats, as an organized body, have a long history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory through a combination of internecine strife, over reliance on purity tests, and the placing of party standing over electibility. Will the administration try to monkey with the election? They’re already trying and, if there are some more negative monkey wrenches thrown their way, they’re likely to double down. Everything from the SAVE act, which will disenfranchise millions to fix the statistically non-existent problem of undocumented people voting (even the Heritage foundation could only track down fewer than 100 cases by combing through every national election since the Reagan administration), to the vacationg of the Federal Election Commission (thank you SCOTUS for granting the presidency that power) so that there is no functional federal agency to make sure elections happen on the up and up, to the weaponizing of DOJ to go after local election officials.

The administration is also busy firing on the 1st amendment with DOJ issuing subpoenas to reporters who printed a relatively inoffensive story about Trump’s gold plated Qatari jet and how it did not have all the defensive capabilities of the older Air Force One planes. This dissing of his pet vehicle irked Trump so much that he’s determined to find out who gave the reporters that information and is using DOJ to try and get them to reveal their sources to a grand jury, completely against journalistic ethics and constitutional protections. But then again, the only amendment that appears to be sacrosanct to these guys is the second.

After destroying the East Wing and the South Lawn, the administration appears to have started on the North portico. No one really knows what’s going on underneath the tarp but I imagine the ionic columns will reappear as corinthian, likely with gilding as well. The conspiracy theorists have been running amok with stories about new fortifications so that the administration cannot be removed come January 20, 2029. I’m not inclined to believe these as of yet but, once again, I wonder at the lack of investigative journalists asking the workmen what they are doing from day to day. I’m sure they’ve all been forced to sign NDAs but a couple of drinks usually gets around those. The administration has also confused the National Guard with the Praetorian Guard and ordered them to remain on duty in DC through the date of the next inauguration.

So where are we all headed and why are we in a handbasket? I wish I knew. I’m just trying to keep my head down and make it through my projected retirement date at which time, if I so choose, I can isolate myself in my condo and ignore the outside world. Knowing me, that’s unlikely to happen. We have three basic paths to follow over the remainder of my lifespan. The first is the path of fire. The divides infecting politics and the economy spill out into the streets and eventually into military action leading to civil war. Our wealth inequality is greater than the conditions that brought about the French revolution and one could draw parallels to the conditions before the Russian Revolution as well. The second is the path of ice. The federal government ossifies and becomes more and more ineffective. We’re already seeing this in the legislative branch which has, for the most part, has ceased to function in terms of doing the will of the people. The end result of this becomes the Medieval papcy or the World War I era Austro-Hungarian empire. The last is the path of resetting the balance. We’ve done this before. We were in similar times from about 1885-1930 and the reforms of the Progressive era and later the New Deal moved power away from capital and back towards the people keeping either of the other futures from happening and creating postwar America which became the envy of the world. We’ve been busy dismantling that piece by piece for the last fifty years. Those who are proposing a restructuing in that way are being branded as communists (as if the people throwing that term around actually know what it means).

I’m all for capitalism (it’s treated me well) but I strongly believe that it has to be monitored and managed or else, as in Monopoly, one player ends up with all the money and everyone else ends up broke. And that’s no way to run a successful society. Put money back into the commons and get the profit motive out of the sectors of the economy in which it doesn’t belong – healthcare, education, corrections. And let younger generations have their place at the table and bring new ideas and new ways of doing things. The gerontocracy in DC is not healthy for either those participating or the country as a whole. Just because we can now live into our eighties does not mean that we have the bodies and brains of thirty and forty year olds at that age. Take it from the geriatrician

Happy Fourth of July. I can’t say I feel much like celebrating given the current state of our society but we’re not done for yet so I suppose I will get myself up and out of the condo this evening and find myself a place from which I can see the civic fireworks as they explode over the statue of Vulcan, about a half mile down the ridge from me. Those of us over the age of sixty are, I’m sure busy comparing the state of our patriotic celebrations of today to those of the Bicentennial of fifty years ago. Those went on non-stop for over a year and everyone participated. American flags were plastered everywhere you could think to put one. The fire hydrants were specially painted to look like Uncle Sam. We had a Bicentennial Minute every evening on CBS. Of course, it was a much easier time to keep the country united. Everyone watched the same TV shows on the same three networks, comity existed in governance, and the news was limited to half an hour at six for the national and another half hour at 5:30 (repeat at 11:00) for local. If you want a look at the bicentennial in all of its mid-seventies kitschy excess, try to find the 1990 film The Spirit of 76 in which time travelers from the future led by David Cassidy (!) are sent back to 1776 but, due to a glitch, end up in 1976 instead.

The summer of 1976 was a summer of transition for me. I was fourteen and had completed middle school and would be going on to high school in the fall. I was a bit nervous. My parents had decided that I would do better at a private prep school then at the local public high school that most of my friends would be attending. So I was very much in an excited and scared mode. I also finally began to grow. I was just about five feet even when I graduated 8th grade that June and, about five foot five when I started 9th grade that September. We’re late bloomers in my family. The boys don’t grow until age 14. I was very much gawky awkward what with my legs and arms being different sizes from week to week and I began a career of orthostatic hypotension and fainting when I got up from lying down as my blood pressure was not yet used to my brain being somewhat higher than it had been and tripping every time I went up a staircase as my legs were longer than my brain understood and I wouldn’t pick my feet up high enough. It all evened out by about the middle of 11th grade but it did leave some psychologcal quirks. I was a tiny child, usually the smallest boy in my grade level all through elementary and middle school. Even though I topped out at above average height for a man, I still feel somewhat small inside and don’t always understand my height. It does, however, give me certain advantages in terms of looming.

Now in my mid 60s, I’m starting to lose my height in the way everyone does as they age and their spine changes and settles. I’m down about a half to three quarters of an inch. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. I shall not run around, in my older years claiming a height and weight I obviously do not possess unlike a certain chief executive. I have many personality traits but narcissistic personality disorder is not among them. I’m a few pounds heavier than I want to be. (It’s come creeping back a bit since I lost ten pounds with my March illness). But in general, I feel like I am in reasonable shape going into retirement. My major concern is that I do not balance as well as I should so once I get some time back, I’m thinking I need to sign up for yoga or pilates to work on that before I fall over, hit my head on a random piece of furniture, and become a meal for the cats. Speaking of going down at home. Mitch McConnell was apparently found down at home and had CPR in the field before being transported to the hospital. Mr. McConnell is 84 years old and has obviously not been in good health for several years. He appears to have survived the rescussitation but statistically, essentially no one of that age who receives field CPR ever recovers to their prior function. He will not be returning to the senate. I shall not miss him.

The shenanigans in DC are too fast and furious for me to keep track of these days. There’s some sort of State Fair on the mall which appears to be sparsely attended (and which people are being carried out of with heat stroke as you can’t bring in your own food and drink and water is $11 a bottle and there’s a heat index of well over 100). I caught one of the vapid blonde MAGA commentators (I don’t know which one – they alll look the same) stating that the Democrats had geoengineered the heat wave to make Trump look bad. Where do they find these people and why are they given air time? They’re busy arresting people for touching the Reflecting Pool claiming the botched repair job is being vandalized by nefarious actors (with no proof offered). There are plans to bulldoze the oldest part of the famous cherry trees along the Tidal Basin for a golf course. The ballroom boondoggle keeps having new grifts and taxpayer burden revealed.

When government and civic life become entirely about profit and the grift and monetization of the commons to enrich the well connected, there is a hollowing out of society and a fraying of the bonds that hold us together, united in purpose. A few more years of this, and the whole edifice may come crashing down on our heads. The young have already figured this out and are abandoning both the Republican party and the traditional neo-liberalism third way that has been the mantra of the Democratic Party for the last forty years. More than half the population can no longer afford health care. The age of first time home buyers has risen to forty. Forty percent of women of child bearing age have considered emigrating. More and more young people are foregoing children as they can’t afford them We’re trashing our future by continuously adopting policies which harm younger generations and this has never been a recipe for long term societal stability. Democratic Socialists like Mamdani are trying to create a new way of formulating progressive politics. MAGA land simply calls anything that might actually help our young people communist. It’s as if Eugene McCarthy has returned.

The next twenty-five years (also known as the rest of my life span) are going to get awfully interesting. The Boomers will start their die off in about five years and will cease to become a political force. Their hoarded societal wealth will transfer as they aren’t taking it with them but much of it will transfer into the bloated health care system as they desperately try to maintain youth and health far beyond what the dictates of biology allow. We were the one Western nation that was headed into the mid 21st century in reasonable shape demographically due to our welcoming of immigrants (pretty much all of our population growth over the last few generations is from immigration – native born fertility statistics are low). But we’re busy destroying the American Experiment which for several centuries which has always said that anyone can be an American. Come here, work hard, assimilate. The horrific stories that energe from the insta-gulags ICE has been huilding are such that I’m hoping that quite a few of the private contractors responsible end up frog marched into the Hague or some such equivalent. ICE has really upped its numbers in recent months (but have spread their operations out so they aren’t as visible. They learned a thing or two in Minneapolis). There’s something like 100,000 in custody, half a million lost their temporary protected status, and some of the loudest voices want a third of the country deported. I’m just waiting to see what happens when all of the Haitian workers in East Coast nursing homes can no longer work. Then there was the declaration that Venezuela should be made the 51st state. I can’t wait to see what MAGA land says when we have thirty million new Spanish speaking citizens who will be free to move anywhere in the US they choose.

I think it’s time for hard cider and barbecue

I haven’t written one of these essays for awhile. It’s not due to lack of things to write about, rather due to a certain level of mild hysteria as I try to balance the combination of Shakespeare and work over a succession of fourteen hour days with a bunch of other social obligations thrown in. I used to be able to power through this kind of schedule without difficulty. This year, I’m feeling it. I’m wondering if my illness in March, which knocked the stuffing out of me was some sort of liminal border between middle aged Andy who can keep up with anything and older Andy who has to learn to pace himself and allow time for naps and other rest and downtime. I come home from a full work day topped with a three hour rehearsal and I’m not only barely able to move, I feel the need for an additional day of recovery time… which there is no time for.

We’re five rehearsals into The Tempest, or about 20% of the budgeted rehearsals. It’s about 2/3 blocked and the ideas are starting to come together. Most rehearsals have gone smoothly. Tonight’s was a bit more chaotic as I had the first rehearsal with my chorus of spirits (all eight of them) who come in and out and provide a certain amount of comic relief. I’m using them to break up the lengthy exposition scenes that make up the first forty percent or so of the play and to give Ariel some backup. After watching how things went, I know I have to do a lot of refining and shaping but I think my basic ideas are OK.

It’s ridiculously hot and humid locally and promises to stay this way for at least the next ten days. The HVAC in the church cafetorium in which we rehearse and perform is having difficulties keeping up so it’s a bit warm. Fortunately we aren’t having to work under incandescent stage light or anything else that adds to the ambient temperature or we would all be small puddles of sweat by the end of rehearsal. I really despise Alabama summers. Nearly thirty years now and I dislike them as much as ever. October can’t get here soon enough.

Exactly one year from today, I plan on offiially retiring. There are things that might move that date one way or another over which I have minimal control but in my mind, my last day of work will be June 30th, 2027. Let the countdown begin. I should get one of those clocks that shows the number of days untill retirement and watch those 525,600 minutes dribble away. I’m not sure what this next year is going to look like. I don’t have any performance gigs contracted past August. I do have some trips booked, especially in the fall but holiday period is uncertain. There are a few things coming up in the spring I’m interested in getting involved with but I don’t have any dates as of yet to begin piecing things together so I can make decisions on what shows I can audition for and which ones won’t fit.

I have no special plans for the long weekend other than catch up with work. I’m way behind on progress notes. a theater company board retreat, a friend’s cabaret show, a dinner date, a birthday lunch, a play and a few other things ate up this past weekend and I could get little of the usual stuff done. I shall not miss the hours spent every weekend documenting my clinical endeavors once I leave clinical practice. It’s one of the many reasons I’m retiring. The data entry is more important to the system than the actual clinical care. Healthcare has become all about big data set manipulation and management. And the AI boom is going to make all of this much worse. I don’t envy my junior colleagues their careers. Balancing the needs of administration and corporate on the one hand and the demands of the Boomers who do not believe in the realities of aging on the other.

The big news of the day is the Supreme Court actually upheld the constitution and stare decis for the first time in some years when it came to the Birthright Citizenship case. Looking back at the decisions of SCOTUS over the last few years, the contortions of logic proffered to get the result desired by certain political movers and shakers, has given me a severe case of vertigo. While that one may have come down on the side of precedent and textual reading, there are plenty of others which did not such as the Slaughter decision which threw out nearly a century of precedent which protected independent agencies from executive overreach and more or less reinstitutes the spoils system. And then there’s the decision which builds on Citizens United to more or less let unlimited dark money flow through political parties to candidates.

Meanwhile, ICE continues to round up the innocent and shove them in de facto concentration camps, we’re burning through billions in a weird quasi-Iranian war, the social circle of the executive is busy enriching themselves at the public purse, a wholesale destruction of Washington DC infrastructure, a dismantling of the systems that built and supported the post war society with its liberal consensus, a head of CMS who showed he did not understand how health insurance worked in recent testimony, a head of HHS who promotes fringe theories and junk science, and there still hasn’t been a proper release of the Epstein files or a single investigation or prosecution of the crimes contained therein.

I think I need a valium. Or maybe a quaalude

And day one of the three day weekend is waning to the sound of thunder as another summer storm wends its way up the Jones Valley. If I ever leave my adoptinve home of Birmingham, there are certain things I will miss and the suddenness and ferocity of summer thundershowers is one of them. They drop the temperature to the manageable 70s, at least termporarily, leave everything feeling clean and refreshed outside, and keep me from having to pay too much attention to the plants on my deck. Day two is taken up predominantly by social obligations and day three will be running around getting everything done that hasn’t been done already as I not only have to be ready for work on Monday, but also for first read through of The Tempest.

Twenty-one cast members and a half dozen staff are depending on me to lead them through the wilds of Shakespeare over the next eight weeks. I hope I’m ready. It’s the fourth year in a row I’ve done this so I should have a clue what I’m doing but each project is unique and poses different challenges. Last year, it was politics and major technical difficulties. This year it’s going to be integrating all of the elements in a way that make things at least somewhat magical on a a budget of $19.95. I have been assured that the lights will work this year and I have most of my usual team in place and at least they all know how I communicate and operate so we should all reach the finish line on August 6th at least vaguely together.

I have found the news over the last few days at least slightly more encouraging than in weeks past. While there’s all the usual destructive impulses from the administration against the institutions that built the post-war society, there are at least cracks in the facade. The saga of the reflecting pool remains a perfect metaphor for the second Trump term. Take something that has existed for years, fundamentally misunderstand and misinterpret what it is and how it works. Announce an unneeded fix at a low price. Proceed with a crony contract for a much higher figure. Crony contractor, chosen for politics over skill leaves things in worse shape. Announce a brilliant success while the wreckage is in plain view behind you.

The wreckage, of physical infrastructure, economic systems, world standing, health care, academia, immigrant communities etc. is now piling up so high that even the most fervent supporters of those currently in power are cutting their feet as they dance upon it. I saw a poll this past week showing that a majority (51%) of Americans can no longer afford their health care. The skyrocketing price of food, fuel and rent is decimating the lives of more of my firends than I care to count. Farmers are going bellyup. The Pentagon has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war with Iran which has gained the USA absolutely nothing as the memorandum of understanding signed with a flourish at Versailles (an ultimate troll by Macron) leaves Iran in basically the same place it was at the start of hositilites plus the ability to continue enriching uranium plus given access to previously frozen funds plus hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild infrastructure we destroyed. We can’t fight the screwworm infestation effectively as the programs designed to do that were shut down. Flu is sweeping through military installations due to the antivax attitudes of those in charge. I can’t think of a community that isn’t starting to wake up to the fact that they and theirs are being harmed by the policies of this administration.

The opening of the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago was a reminder of what we were and what we can be again. The focus was on the positive aspects of America, the way in which we can come together despite our differences and work towards common goals. The musical acts were a whos who of legendary performers of the last sixty years. Compare that to the official celebration of our 250th birthday in DC, handed off to more crony capitalists which sent most people with integrity fleeing the other direction when asked to participate. From what I last saw, we’re left with a Trump pep rally in a place where half the house has been demolished, the pool is full of algae, and there’s the remains of a cage fight on the front lawn. I do house calls in rural Alabama. I’m used to those neighborhoods but they aren’t usually beamed out over international network news.

The joy of international visitors to the World Cup getting outside of the usual international tourist destinations and discovering Bass Pro Shop and Wal-Mart and Waffle House breakfasts at 1 am is also very good news. It means that the media narrative ordained by the administration and carried out by their minions of the USA being a dangerous place full of violence and suspicious types is being demolished one lovely experience at a time. Bring on the Norwegians doing the row up escalators, the Scots drinking the bars of Boston dry and leaving traffic cones on the heads of the statues, the Algerians adopted and embraced by the people of Lawrence Kansas. That’s the America I live in and believe in.

I spent yesterday on various chores and had every intent of spending the evening at the Birmingham Pride Parade but I started to feel unwell by late afternoon and decided my wisest choice was to stay home and sleep. Sorry to have missed the parade but after some time in bed and a good long sleep, I am feeling better today. I have more chores today but nothing that cannot wait. I’m working my way through all of the boxes of crap that came out of my academic office, tidied up my terrace, and am slowly restoring my nest to some semblance of order after a period of chaos and excess stuff arriving and needing to be processed. I have 54 weeks until full retirement. The goal is for me to have my life in order at that time so that I can work on putting together new life patterns in an environment which will support them.

As the days dwindle down, I find that I am having a harder and harder time just absorbing the administrative nonsense that permeates modern medicine. Usually I let the endless paperwork, the need to fill out the same request three times due to a misplaced comma, the refusals of insurance to pay for what I deem clinically necessary care, the calls and messages from patients about some new snake oil they heard about on social media or late night television, the lack of budget to improve the infrastructure of clinical services, and the poor performance of other parts of the health care system roll off of me but now I’m doing a bit more talking back and calling out stupid as stupid. I’m in a position where I’m no longer angling for any future forward career movement so I can truth tell. Actually, I’ve always told the truth. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t progress farther in my career. I tell those above me what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.

I’ve had my nose in my script for The Tempest and am starting to work out solutions to specific challenges Shakespeare presents. How do you stage a shipwreck on stage with minimal budget and technical capabilities? How do we handle songs for which no music exists? How do I make the arcane language into something that connects with a modern audience? How do I get my cast of twenty-one working together as an ensemble? Every year when I’ve tackled Shakespeare as a director I kick myself as I feel that I’m really not up to the challenge. And every year what ends up on the stage is pretty good and I get asked to come back and do it again so I guess I’m doing something right. First read through is a week from Monday. I’m ready to launch into what I consider the easy stuff (the court scenes, the love story, the clowning) and hope all my ideas for the hard stuff (the magic, appearing and disappearing banquets, the masque, the shipwreck) order themselves in my brain in such a way that I can communicate them to those who have to help me execute them.

There’s been one bright spot among the barrage of bad news that we’ve all been enduring for what seems like forever. It’s an indirect result of The World Cup. Last week’s news was all about how the State Department and Border Control were abusing their powers and keeping refs and team entourages out of the country and revoking visas of fans who were hoping to see their team play. This week’s news is about the fans who have made it and who are discovering what a great big loveable diverse messy country this actually is behind the headlines and media images. I, like millions of others, have been captivated by the social media posts of Freddy from Germany, Shaun from Scotland, and Nobunaga from Japan amongst others who while road tripping have discovered Buc-ees, Waffle House, the Grand Canyon, and Bourbon Street. How ordinary Americans are throwing visitors backyard barbecues, driving them to the stadia, making sure their order at Chipotle is correct. The media warfare which stokes the red/blue divide for clicks and ratings, and which is exploited in a cynical fashion by politicians for money and power is not the real America. The real America is a thousand kindnesses, and welcoming the visitor, and absorbing new ideas and customs into our melting pot. Take that Stephen Miller.

The administration’s attempts to remake the capital aren’t faring so well. The reflecting pool has been finished and is now full of algae due to their dismantling of the filtration system put in under Obama which brought water in from the Potomac so it wouldn’t become too stagnant. The Lincoln Memorial, which I prefer to see as a backdrop for Marian Anderson and Martin Luther King Jr., became the staging area for an exercise in crass. We got to see Motocross doing stunts in front of the White House. I’m all for extreme sports if that’s your thing but there is a time and a place and the South Lawn ain’t it. Trumps loss of his name on The Kennedy Center has been met with a piece of spiteful malicious compliance with scaffolding and canvas covering the portico and the name of the building. Can’t wait until they start building that monstrous arch. If it is built, I’m hoping we have a nationwide naming contest for it and that the name not have the letters T R U M or P in it. Although, given the internet, it will likely end up as Archie McArchface.

OK I’ve lolled long enough. Time to get up and be constructive.

The day to day work crap has been falling heavier upon my soul than usual the last few days. I’m not sure why. Probably because I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I’m in the psychological process of beginning to detach myself from the craziness that marks my professional life. And it all appears to be getting crazier at an exponential rate due to the combination of demographic changes and fall out from political impacts on the missions of academic health centers. Eight and a half months before the first phase of retirement kicks in and, if all goes as plans, twelve and a half months until it’s over and out. In the meantime, keep on trudging. The notes will get written. The hands will get held. The referrals will get sent. The refills will get to the pharmacy. They always do no matter how removed I may be feeling.

I’ve been fielding a lot of complaints from friends, acquaintances, patients, learners, and random people on the street on the state of institutional elder care these days. I agree that, at least locally, it’s a bit of a mess. There are a lot of dedicated people in the field but they’re fighting an uphill battle against very strong forces over which we have minimal control and the end result is declining quality, unhappy residents, frustrated families, and a lack of better options. Why is this happening? The usual reason…. money. It’s all about who is getting paid how much for what sort of service.

I’ve gone into excruciating detail in these writings before about the various types of senior living available and how they differ from each other and what sort of services are required. I am not going to write that all out again. If you really want to read it, let me know and I’ll link to all of that in the comments. What’s important in terms of current trends is that the industries (homecare, hospice, senior living, skilled nursing) are subject to the same sorts of market forces as all else in late stage capitalism. Most of these entities began as small businesses, often family run or started by not-for-profit entities such as religious groups for specific social mission. Over the last fifty years, as costs and regulations have increased, it has become more and more difficult for a small operator to exist. This has led to consolidation and larger companies buying up smaller ones to take advantage of economies of scale and centralized management.

If you go up the corporate chain of ownership, there’s been a move over the last three or four decades for the companies at the top of the food chain to be bought or controlled by large investment firms for the purpose of extracting wealth. Amedisys is owned by United Health. Aveanna by Bain Capital. Encompass’s major shareholders are Blackrock and Vanguard. And on it goes. The need to preserve profit plus the centralized management systems means there is very little wiggle room at any individual facility to staff outside of centrally set models, to do things in a different way or to set budgets around community needs rather than corporate needs. Room and board in a reasonable senior facility now runs about $3000 a month with other services added on through an a la carte pricing menu. Need help with medications? You can get those packaged and passed for a modest fee. Need someone to provide actual assistance? That will be $25 an hour four hours minimum daily. (That unskilled sitter isn’t being paid $25 an hour. Going salary is $12-13 an hour. The rest is going up the corporate food chain).

As demographics change, there’s going to be issues moving forward. The owners of facilities understand this which is why the building of new senior facilities has slowed just as the Baby Boom is entering its 80s and the time in the life cycle when they may have need of such places. The owners know that the aging Boomers aren’t interested in the current model and that many of them will not have the resources nor will their family systems have the resources for the hefty price tags associated with senior living. The earlier generations who have taken advantage of them are the last generations who had defined benefit pensions and were able to take advantage of the post war economy to increase their assets in ways that are not currently possible. I haven’t a clue as to what’s going to happen to the Boom as they enter the dementia belt and they and their families will not opt for institutional care and their family systems won’t be intact enough to allow for care at home. Probably a huge spike in elder homelessness, especially if the current administration starts taking an axe to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as they are threatening. I’ve had four decades of creative solutions to unsolvable problems. I’m leaving these unsolvable problems for the next generation of geriatricians. We have some bright young things coming up the ranks. They need not worry about unemployment.

I think I have puzzled together my cast for the Tempest. I’m going to sleep on it one more night to make sure I don’t have a stroke of genius in the night and then get a cast list and script out to everyone tomorrow so people will have plenty of time to look things over before we dive into rehearsal in ten days or so. I still have a lot of things to work on and solve. The one I’m trying to get a handle on at the moment is sound, music and songs. There’s a bunch of singing in The Tempest but, of course, no official music. Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote music for all of the songs in the 19th century but it’s way too art song for our concept. I need something much lighter. Perhaps someone in the cast will want to run with doing some composing and arranging. That’s what I did with Midsummer a few years ago and it worked out really well.

I could comment on national politics such as Schrodinger’s cease fire in Iran, the maltreatment of visitors for the World Cup, the attempt to use the post office to circumvent the constitution regarding state responsibility for elections, and the turning of the national mall into a scene out of Spielberg’s AI but I don’t have the inclination or the energy at the moment. Going to watch Law and Order instead.