Dateline – Seattle, Washington

It’s check out how things are going with the nonagenarian father and the family weekend which occurs every four to six months depending on work and performance schedules, the balance in the travel fund coffer, and phases of the moon. I’m delighted to say that all appears to be well within the family circle and my father continues to stump around relatively independently and is not wreaking too much havoc on the functioning of his senior living facility. Now I can relax for a day or so before facing the trip home. The trip here was uneventful, just long. It usually takes me about 10 and a half hours door to door but this one was thirteen as I changed in Detroit rather than Atlanta in order to save a few hundred bucks on airfare (which has more or less doubled between BHM and SEA since the end of the pandemic).

Haven’t seen much of Seattle outside of the Aljoya Northgate senior living community but what I have seen is gray and dreary and a good deal colder than Alabama. But, as a child of this climate, I do know how to dress for the weather and I don’t have much issue with mist or gloom. When I come up here, I do a talk for the assembled multitudes in the community conference center which was scheduled for earlier this afternoon. I have perfected by Q and A schtick over the years and a good time was had by all as I fielded soft ball questions about arthritis, incontinence, various medications, sleep patterns, and all of the other things I usually get from elder audiences. Nothing too far in left field this time and a request that I delve more into the politics of health care next time I do one. Happy to get up on that soap box if people will submit questions that lead me down that path.

I’ve been toying with a bunch of ideas which kind of come together under the heading of what I call ‘The Uncertain 80s’ so I’m going to take a few paragraphs to explore that rather than discuss the latest temper tantrums emenating from the toddlers in the executive branch as I think it’s a bit more germane to most of my regular readers, if not due to personal experiences, than due to their participation in family life and society where these issues are very much raising their head.

When I refer to the uncertain 80s, I am not referring to the decade of shoulder pads and excessively moussed hair, but rather to a particular decade of human existence which we experience between our 80th and our 90th birthdays. For most of human existence, humans of the privileged classes who lived to age could expect to reach roughly 70 or so in good health but very few would celebrate an 80th birthday as a robust independent individual. This was codified in Western thought by a phrase of Psalm 90 “The days of our years are threescore years and ten’ (KJV). It’s part of the reckoning that led us to set retirement age in the mid 60s. There was common acknowledgement that after sixty or so things began to physiologically change and that bodies and brains began to slow as the chronic dieases of aging began to take hold and make themselves known.

But life expectancy in the US started to rise fairly rapidly starting in the 1970s – from 70.8 years in 1970 to 72.6 years in 1975 to 73.8 years in 1980. Some of this was the great strides made in medical care. Some of this was the opening up medical care to those of older age through Medicare which began in 1965. Some of this was better understanding of environmental and industrial hazards which caused premature death and new laws and rules to reduce accumulated health risks over time. In the 1970s, your chance of making it to your 80th birthday was a little under 30%. Today, the chance of making it to your 80th birthday is about double that or 60%. However, your chance of making it to your 90th birthday is only about 20%. The 80s, therefore, is the decade which, for most of us, where everything changes.

The Baby Boom officially began celebrating their 80th birthdays about seven weeks ago (as the official demographic start is January 1, 1946 – roughly nine months after the first troops returned from the European theatre). We’re going to have roughly 7,000 new octogenarians daily every day in this country for the next twenty years. Famous names from the first year or so of the boom who have already passed the eighty mark include Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler, and Dolly Parton. Other first year boomers who turn eighty this year are Sally Field, Susan Sarandon, Tim Curry, Sylvester Stallone, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Cher. They remain a vital cohort still active and contributing and still, as many Silent and World War II generation individuals remain living, considering themselves a youth generation even though thre are three adult generations below them (Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z).

What is going to happen over the next ten years? It will be different for every one of these newly minted eighty somethings. Some will sail through the decade in robuts good health (likely a minority), others are going to face significant challenges which will cause them to question all sorts of life choices. And we, as a culture, have done little to prepare ourselves either to answer these questions or to ready ourselves for the demands these individuals will make on healthcare and on society as a whole. Thus the uncertain 80s.

Some of the issues are going to be biologic and physiologic in nature as vital organ systems begin to malfunction or wear out. Those with active minds are going to want to keep going leading to strains on systems such as hemodialysis, chemotherapeusis, radiation therapy, and other technologies that can get a few more years out of failing organs. We are already seeing this with the uptick in chronically ill individuals created by the pandemic. Many of these need the services of specialists in long term management of disease such as physiatrists, neurologists and rheumatologists. Getting appointments for establishment in these specialties is now a slow and laborious process. Expect to wait a minimum of six months. Even a small increase in chronic disease burden can have huge ripple effects as these individuals require careful monitoring and multiple appointments over an indefinite future.

No matter what is done, a large chunk of the population will die between their 80th and 90th birthdays. And roughly 10-15% of total health care costs and 30% of total Medicare costs come in the last year of life. This population will send health costs in this country, alrady the highest in the world, ballooning by hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars without mechanisms in place to raise these funds.

Some will maintain robust physical health but enter the twilight world of dementia. Dementia appears to be part of the human condition. Most studies suggest that all humans will develop a variant on Alzheimer’s should they continue living indefinitely. The brain wasn’t designed to last for a century or more. It’s not going to add a lot of dollars to the general health bill as our health culture considers dementia, a chronic illness without much of an acute phase, not worthy of medical treatment and pushes the costs of long term care back on individuals, families, and, for those without resources, states under the Medicaid program. Long term care medicaid enrollees are just over 5% of benificiaries but are 40% of the cost of the program. In some states, long term care is already taking 15-20% of state budget allocations and that the demand is about to mushroom.

I am being called for dinner. I’ll try to get back to this tomorrow and complete these thoughts. Feel free to ask questions that need to be answered with part II.

It’s a short work week this week as I have to get up at some ridiculous hour on Friday to hop a flight to Atlanta and then another one to Seattle. It’s time for my half yearly jaunt to the Pacific Northwest to check up on the family. I don’t have a lot planned for the few days I’m there so I might try to get a major piece written for this space on some topic or other. I’m thinking of delving into what I call ‘The Uncertain 80s’ – the decade that generally has huge transitions and consequences for most Americans whom haven’t abused their bodies too much. The majority hit their 80th birthday relatively robust and independent but the number who remain that way on their 90th birthday is… limited. Given that the earliest Boomers are just now entering that decade, it might be interesting what that means from a health policy and cultural point of view.

I seem to have finally cleared the virus from hell and am more or less functioning normally. That was a couple of weeks I do not wish to repeat. I hope that’s it for the season. I figure I’ve paid my dues. The shoulder is not perfect but somewhat improved following the steroid shots of a couple of weeks ago. I’ll take what I can get. If you see me wandering around town with a large navy blue soft collar around my neck, you’ll know that it’s acting up a bit. I have found putting that on for a while helps about as much as anything else. I may not want to admit it but older age continues to barrel down the tracks at me. My famous Beatles birthday is creeping up week by week. Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?

I’m still in a bit of a rut with writers block in terms of major projects. Now that I’m feeling better, I can’t just put it down to viral syndrome and I suppose I had better light a fire under myself. I usually do my best work when writing to deadline, so maybe I’ll set myself some artificial ones. (You vill hav zat chapter done by Dienstag!) In the meantime, I’m actually sort of enjoying not having too much to do to fast. I don’t allow myself a lot of down time so having a bit makes a nice change. I’ve broken out the xBox again. I haven’t gotten any better with a controller. I’m just not a digital native and I’m always pushing the wrong button at the wrong time and getting killed.

I’ve been paying very little attention to the national news. From what I can tell, it’s more of the same – an administration determined to smash things and push the US into irrelevance from an international perspective. If I were a US corporate executive and looking at the loss of global market share as the administrations destroys international agreements and norms which makes supply chains (already damaged from the pandemic) even more rickety as Europe and the BRICS nations look elsewhere for product, I would be horribly frightened at the coming decades. Once these kinds of relationships and networks are destroyed (relatively easy as we are proving) it will take decades to rebuild them and a change in administration will not be enough to undo the damage. If I were a European policy maker, I couldn’t count on any long term stability returning and would hold everything American at arms length until there were a period of a decade or more of relative stability and I don’t see anything in the crystal ball of political futures that suggests we are going to get that at any time soon, maybe not even for the remainder of my life span.

The current measles outbreak in South Carolina seems to have seeded itself in Florida. This is an uh-oh moment. South Carolina actually has a relatively robust Department of Public Health that has been doing all of the correct things to try and mitigate the spread. Florida’s Department of Public Health is run by people who are even loonier than RFK Jr. and his cronies so there is not likely to be a particularly robust response if it spreads. I’m imaging it getting into the crowds at Orlanda theme parks and spring break beach watering holes. Then we might get a good look at the true future of where the US is headed. And I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. I also checked the prevalence of the usual major respiratory viruses (flu, covid, RSV) and it looks like everything is declining nationwide (although Alabama is a bit of a hot spot). Keep those hands washed.

The drums of war are beating in the Persian Gulf as we seem to be working with Israel in a major move against Iran. Our track record in the Middle East over the last seventy-five years isn’t the best so I don’t think much good will come from any military action. Another distraction from the Epstein files which have still not been released in their entirety as required by law. What has been released show just how deeply Trump was involved in Epstein’s various projects so it’s interesting to speculate just what might be in the withheld portions. I’m not going to join the various keyboard warriors on the left whose grandiose conspiracy theories make the Hillary Clinton / Comet Ping Pong Pizza fracas look like a Barbara Cartland novel.

I have to get up tomorrow and do rural VA house calls again. Yesterday I was in Lacey Springs. Where is that you may ask? Go an hour north to Cullman, turn right and go 40 minutes to Arab, turn left and go fifteen minutes towards Huntsville. Tomorrow I think I’m out on the banks of Lake Logan Martin somewhere. I’m getting very good at North Central Alabama geography and no where to find a Circle K, a Dollar General, and a Jack’s almost anywhere. Mad skills as the kids say these days. That’s my getting up, getting dressed, going out and doing good on a Thursday. What’s yours?

It’s Valentine’s Day again. It rolls around every year. Of the American Hallmark holidays, it’s the one with which I have the most ambivalent relationship. The stores fill briefly with red, white and pink chocolate boxes and artificial flowers and stuffed animals to be replace on February 15th with a combination of faux Irish in emerald green and the Easter Bunny, baskets, and jelly beans. I’m more or less ignoring it as I have in recent years as there’s no one special in my life and as things have been progressing over the last eight years, there’s unlikely to ever be. I have made my peace with living alone, traveling alone, dining alone and all the rest of it. It doesn’t bother me and I have a full life and a multitude of friends to keep me on my toes so romance doesn’t feel really necessary.

Tommy hated Valenine’s day with a passion, just like he hated pretty much all of the other Hallmark holidays. He loved getting gifts from me when they were spontaneous. He hated gifts given through the dictates of culture and the calendar. I made the mistake of bringing him flowers one Valentine’s to his office. I thought he was going to throw them at me. I made sure flowers in the future were on a random Tuesday. Steve didn’t care much about Valentines one way or another. However, at Valentines 1990, we realized we had been together roughly a year, having met sometime in mid-February 1989. We both tried to figure out the exact date we met but neither of us could remember so we just decided we would use February 14th as our anniversary as it was easy to remember. Every year we would each try to find the other a truly tacky Valentines geegaw as an anniversary present. I think he won with the Dalmatian creamer lifting its leg against the red fire plug sugar bowl. Happy 37th wherever you are.

I’m not scared by a lot in life, but I did something rather scary yesterday noontime. The LGBTQ faculty/staff group asked me to share the story of my journey in academic medicine and how I survived the last forty years or so as an out gay man in not the friendliest of environments. I can write about myself. I am safely removed from my audience behind my laptop and don’t really havve to make myself vulnerable at all. Telling my story to others in person is something else again. I did it. I think it was well received as I put all my usual humor in it but I’m the last person to be able to judge. It has reminded me that I should be working on a theatrical monologue based on The Accidental Plague Diaries and, at the moment, I’m not. I’ve been using the fact that I’ve been sick for over two weeks as the excuse but I can feel my physiology settling back into its usual baseline so that excuse won’t hold water after his weekend.

I have most of 2026 mapped out between rehearsal/performance committments and travel plans. I’ve only got one big unknown left. I want to take my usual late spring trip somewhere and I don’t have that figured out yet. I have some ideas and there are some intriguing possibilities which would have me meet up with friends in a couple of different exotic locales but none of it has solidified as of yet. My fall trip is locked in for the second half of October. Flying to Bucharest for a couple of days, a two week river cruise up the Danube to Budapest. Then a couple of days there, and Halloween weekend in Prague. Should be fun. I haven’t been to Eastern Europe before. I was in Budapest in 2019 and liked it very much but, in all of my wanderings, I have never been to Prague. I seem to keep going around it for some reason. I am rectifying that omission and Halloween is a bonus. I have no idea if there are any particular Czech traditions around that holiday. I guess I’ll find out.

There’s a great deal I could say about the current political situation. 2026 feels like its the longest year on record and we’re only six weeks in with another forty-six to go. I don’t think I’m going to delve into too many specifics as there are so many writers far better than I who have made it their mission to analyze our peculiar moment. I strongly recommend Heather Cox Richardson for the historical perspective and Joyce White Vance for the legal perspective. The biggest thing I have noticed since the last time I wrote one of these missives is that some of the institutions capable of course correction are starting to awake from slumber. The courts have been ruling repeatedly against executive overreach and the administration, having effectively destroyed DOJ with Pam Bondi’s efforts to turn it into weaponized lawfare against Trump’s perceived enemies; leading to the replacement of great legal minds with knownothings who don’t seem to understand even the basics. DOJ has been hopelessly outclassed time and again in court. We still remain, at least on paper, a nation of laws and judges of different philosophies all seem to be agreeing on some rather basic principles when making their rulings.

Congress has also come back to life some. Johnson has such a slim majority that he can’t afford to lose any more seats. Unfortunately, as congress has turned itself into a gerontacracy, especially on the Republican side of the aisle, they’ve been dropping like flies and all of the special elections have been swinging 20-30 points towards Dems from two years ago. There’s rare bipartisan support for getting the Epstein files out there. I’m not completely sure what to make of them and the more heinous allegations. I want there to be hearings or court proceedings with witnesses under oath. If DOJ isn’t taking them seriously, the rest of the world is and inquiries by foreign governments into bad actions by their nationals and security risks to their countries are going to pop a lot of things wide open as I’m pretty certain DC doesn’t have the only copy of most of the documents.

Chaos abounds at DHS, especially regarding vaccine policy. The more extreme end of the antivaccination movement is taking advantage of this to float legislation in various states that would make any vaccine mandate for any reason illegal. No requirements for vaccines for schools, health care workers etc. If we lived in a world where an indiividual’s choice regarding vaccinations only affected their life and health, this would be fine. We don’t For all of us to stay safe, especially to protect those few who cannot be vaccinated for very real physiologic reasons, vaccine levels in the population must be high. If vaccine rates start to fall significantly we will lose herd immunity and any number of vanquished diseases will return. They will not respect your politics, your socio-economic status, your religion. Bacteria and viruses have no brains. They simply propogate and replicate in the most expeditious way they can.

As Europe has recognized that the US under Trump is no longer a reliable ally, they are industriously reorienting away from us. This seems to be happening rapidly in the tech industry where European companies and governments are trashing Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Oracle data systems and the like for European or even Chinese products. I wonder what the titans of Silicon Valley are going to think when there’s a major decline in their market share. They’ve been busy propping this regime up for lower taxes. I don’t feel sorry for them, or for us. I’ve always thought the US had a grossly inflated sense of self worth and needed to be taken down a peg or two. It seems to be happening.

I don’t have much this weekend other than a wedding on Sunday afternoon. I suppose I should get up, get dressed, go out and do some good today. Or maybe I’ll play XBox.

Now is the winter of my discontent. I no sooner get over the various ailments of last week when wham bam alakazam some new horrible virus dropped me Wednesday evening and I’m just beginning to surface again. Last winter it was a whole string of respiratory illnesses for about ten weeks. This year it appears to be various GI tract bugs. I know this is all TMI but I’ve spent a lot of the last 48 hours or so barely able to move so it’s sort of uppermost in my mind at the moment. I’m hoping that this is the last of the onslaught. I really have no interest in feeling like this with some new variant week after week until April. I’ve got other things to do. At least it’s given me an excuse to neglect the various writing projects that lie listless and abandoned in files on my desktop.

I’m in the process of retrenching my life in preparation for retirement which ticks closer inexorably every day. There are days where I think I’m foolish for sticking to out at 65 – I’ve got a lot more to give. And there are days when I realize that I was built in a different time and era for a different purpose than that prized by the brave new healthcare world we’ve been busy putting together since the pandemic. I neither completely understand nor trust AI and it’s creeping into everything we do in medicine and it’s full of new tricks this old dog has no real interest in learning. Time to let the digital natives take over, work out the kinks and put the tools into proper alignment with the wielders. My plan continues to be to back out of clinical practice in early 2027 (lining up with UAB’s throwing out their current charting system and replacing it with a whole new system and I’ve been through too many of those sorts of transitions to go through yet another one but to continue as emeritus faculty as long as they want me around.

As part of this whole process, I had to dismantle my academic office after more than 27 years of occupancy this past weekend. Files that had not seen the light of day since the 1980s sometime were opened and most of the contents tossed immediately into the very large recycling bin that UAB generously provided for the purpose (I ended up filling it three times). Looking back over the whole arc of my career as I handled documents generated over the last four decades or so made me recognize just how much things have changed technologically, philosophically, and socially. There were papers typed on my trusty Smith-Corona. Dot matrix printed documents, some with the tractor feed edges still attached. Correspondance on various letterheads. And the amount of paper began to decrease rapidly after about 2000-05 when almost everything became digital. All of my Kodachrome slides from my lectures in basic geriatrics developed in the 90s when PowerPoint was in its infancy were still there. No longer. I packed up what I thought might be useful for personal archival reasons and have told the powers that be to do what they will with the rest. Colleagues can pilfer the remains or it can all go to the landfill. Ten thousand years from now, some future civilization will probably happen across a modern American landfill and start excavating and drawing some very strange conclusions about our society.

What with viral illness running rampant through my personal system, I was slowed down enough to take a look at the latest news in public health. From what I can tell, the inmates are continuing to run the asylum at DHS and CDC and our other previously great health institutions. Things are becoming so shaky in the vaccine world that the major manufacturers are discussing withdrwaing from the US market. In the past, access to vaccines was considered so vital that the manufacturers were legally protected from damage claims but the current regime is aiming to turn all of that on its head, mainly based on spurious evidence and conspiracy theory. The numbers of measles cases keep rising. I keep expecting a polio outbreak to follow. (It will be a few months – it’s generally a warm weather disease). Covid remains mercifully low and we seem to be tailing off a bit on this year’s nasty influenza outbreak. When vaccines no longer remain easily available in the US, I’ll be in a position to be able to arrange for boosters on a trip abroad but I am well aware that’s not usual.

I have a number of conservative friends. It’s fine with me. Your opinions are yours and my opinions are mine. What I do not tolerate is opinions created out of AI slop, internet memes, and made up garbage that have no basis in fact. Facts are facts. I can look at them and interpret them in one way and you may look at them and see something completely different. And you may be able to persuade me to your way of thinking assuming you use fact, logic, and cogent argument. But tossing all of the facts out the window and replacing them with non-fact is a non-starter.

There are reasons why I tend to see the world the way I do. Some of it is family roots. My mother, although born in the US, grew up in a culturally British family (her parents immigrated in the early 30s) and she brought much of that sensibility into the rearing of her children. My father escaped from a narrow close minded religious upbringing determined to have children open to inquiry and to be self reliant. All of us kids are very self-sufficient. I was the most academic minded of the bunch which took me to prep school (which was basically a liberal arts college education) and then to Stanford where I had a double science major and spent every night I could in a theater creating art. From my teens, I was determined to find balance in my world between the grind and creativity. The people I was around at Stanford were scions of some of the most powerful families on the planet and I saw how that world worked. I had no real interest in being part of it. ABout this time, I realized I was gay and being placed in an out group for the first time changed both my understanding and my attitude towards society. My medical education gave me a combination of ‘trust the science’ and ‘question the science’ and also taught me that science without human understanding isn’t worth all that much. My career, as it developed in geriatrics, primary and community based care, and especially house calls, has taken me into the private worlds of all social strata, from mansions passed down through generations to the small apartments of recently arrived refugee immigrants bewildered by a supermarket. All of this has given me a very developed sense of empathy, and understanding of human beings. Doctors aren’t all that different from priests. People confide their most intimate secrets and fears and it is your responsibility to guide them through some of the worst times of their lives.

All of this has made me hold liberal opinions on most social issues. I know the varied worlds of humanity and expression and we all pretty much want the same things; we just need different tools and opportunities to achieve them. The authoritarian/conservative idea that this is best achieved by making us, by force if necessary, into a homogenous population with a single set of beliefs is anathema to me because it is in our plurality and our differences, and even the little frictions between us that gove us art and beauty and culture. I learn new things every day from a new taste from a cuisine I was previously unfamiliar with to reading a book written by an author from a different culture to attending a film or play that explores a world beyond mine and I can’t imagine why people don’t want those sorts of experiences. I am not so liberal on financial issues. I have yet to see a problem solved simply by shoveling money at it. I have seen problems solved when science helps understand the true nature of a problem and root causes and then money is distributed to targeted solutions.

So this is why I oppose our current administration. At its head is a man who has been proven to be ethically and morally corrupt time and again for more than fifty years and who seems to feel that posting an insulting racist meme against Barack and Michelle Obama is an appropriate way to celebrate Black History Month or that using federal resources to try and relitigate an election five years past, where he lost more than sixty times in court, is a wise expenditure of the public trust. Pretty much every branch of the government, taking their lead from the executive, have ignored law and judicial decrees, trampled on the constitution (especially the Bill of Rights), and is using the power of the government to reward the faithful and punish those of other opinions. If after all we have seen over the last decade, you remain faithful to whatever vision this regime is selling this week (it seems to vary depending on the mood in the Oval Office), I have to wonder. I used to wonder about your education and your understanding of our world. Now I wonder about your moral compass.

Rant Over. Things do not appear to be improving in Minneapolis. And we may getting an ICE storm of our own locally. Sources tell me that ICE has rented out 200+ hotel rooms in the south suburbs. If they clearly identify themselves, use judicial warrants, and stop bullying people on the street just because they can, I might ignore their presence but their track record isn’t very good and I’ll be damned if I tet them terrorize my friends and neighbors for photo ops. I haven’t heard of any detention facilities being constructed locally but if I do, I’ll be out protesting that. Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime. It is a civil offence. The place where people who have committed no crime are herded together in squalid conditions has a name. It’s called a concentration camp and I will not let one exist in my backyard unnoticed.

A few words about The Kennedy Center (I will not refer to it by its other name any more than the Gulf of Mexico is anything but that). I looked up its legal standing. It operates under a charter through the Smithsonian and is responsible to its Board of Trustees (replaced with lickspittles by the president). It can be shut down on presidential whim through the board. The idea that it needs a complete overhaul is nonsense. It underwent substantial renovations in 2019. There is one inconvenient fact that may delay much of anything happening. As the building is not on the mall, it is subject to the City of Washington DC in terms of construction and demolition permits and I have the feeling that the city bureacracy will be in no hurry to fast track any work there that has not been thoroughly vetted.

In the meantime, we’ll get Indy Cars on Pennsylvania Avenue and a cage match on the White House lawn. Although at the AEW match last night, the crowd kept erupting into chants of F**k Ice so even that demographic may not be as friendly to the administration as they think.

Get up, get dressed, go out, do good.

I’m more or less back on an even keel save a certain level of writer’s block. I keep hoping I’ll balance this laptop on my knees and prose will simply begin to flow and weave itself into something really worth reading of making a piece of something grander. But it doesn’t. And I’m stuck with these occasional essays on the life and times of… Some of you seem to enjoy them. I cannot fathom why personally. But that’s probably as I am condemned to live them and the ideas that produce them keep ratting around in my overly tortured brain. I do have something that I have to finish up in the next couple of weeks as it’s a lecture I’m due to give on the 13th. An hour on what it has been like to survive in academic medicine as an openly gay man over four decades. I’m still working on just how much truth to tell.

As I look back over the last few days, what strikes me is how stagnant everything has been despite multiple screaming headlines about this, that and the other. Despite some cast changes, ICE continues to terrorize the citizens of Minneapolis with many well documented reports of thuggish physical attacks on immigrants and citizens alike with minimal, if any justification. The judiciary are apparently starting to wake up with multiple orders affecting ICE operations and individual cases which the agency seems to be blithely ignoring for the most part. I think we’re up to well over 100 judicial decrees that the agency has violated. Those over the agency appear to be doubling down with little care as to the perceptions (or realities) of the operation. There have been actions in other cities (especially Portland, Oregon where ICE was busy lobbing gas weapons at citizen families with children who were lawfully protesting ICE – a story that seems to have gotten minimal play in the national media). If ICE were sticking to their stated objective of finding and removing proven criminals under final order of deportation, there wouldn’t be much fuss, but they’re operating with a bizarre combination of impunity and immunity which is riding roughshod over pretty much anyone they feel like free of consequence. And Americans tend to hold their civil liberties sacrosanct and dislike it when they are trashed leading to the current situation.

As folk are pretty much fed up, every special election continues to swing between 15 and 30 points towards the Democrats these days which suggests that there will be a major change in congress and perhaps the start of a reckoning in a year. However, the story out of Georgia with the FBI kidnapping the ballots of an election of five years ago in an attempt to prove skullduggery gives me a bit of a pause. Once those ballots were removed, chain of custody and safety was broken and who knows what compromised federal law enforcement is going to ‘find’ and what they will try to do with that information. Fortunately, elections and election procedures remain the purview of the states and not the federal government although I imagine there will be significant attempts to rewrite that rule book and a free and fair election in November of this year is not a foregone conclusion.

Then there’s the gift that keeps on giving – the Epstein files. Millions of pages were released this past few days. Survivors names were not redacted but perpatrators were. If even a small percentage of the more explosive allegations contained are true, it suggests a level of complicit rot on both sides of the aisle that’s going to require an independent truth commission to root out. Will we get that? Not in the current political climate. There’s just going to be a lot shoring up of defenses and deflection as wealthy and powerful men who believe themselves beyond accountability and impervious to rules behave in the way that wealthy and powerful men have always done since the days of ancient Sumeria.

Today is the 1st of February, the traditional start of Black History month where we celebrate the contributions of the African-American community to our cultural development and highlight some of the hidden stories of our past – some shameful, some triumphant which deserve to be better known… except in Trump’s America where anything not aligned with a WASP-centric view of the world is DEI and suspect. I’m going to read Ta-Nehisi Coates even if he has been struck from the ‘approved’ reading list. (I read somewhere that MLK Jr’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail – one of the most foundational and best written documents of modern American history is being quietly removed from high school curricula around the country as being anti-white. Strikes me that those doing this haven’t ever bothered to read it.)

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. I shan’t be tuning in to Punxsutawney PA as I have better things to do but I cannot help but wonder if Punxsutawney Phil isn’t the reason for the stasis we find ourselves in at the moment. Maybe, shadow or no, we’ll be able to begin moving forward following his pronouncement on the fate of winter. Perhaps tomorrow is the judgment day, tomorrow we’ll discover what our God in heaven has in store… And now that all of you, at least the theatre kids, are humming along. Get up in the morning, get dressed, go out, do good and stay warm.

Getting older is a bitch. I’ve known this intellectually for decades – how could I not given my chosen career path? But I’ve gotten to the age where it’s becoming more of a personal and less of a theoretical battle. In the last week, I’ve had a new pain in the right hip, worse with weight bearing, which is likely more arthritis acting up, another set of steroid shots in my cervical nerve roots in an attempt to get my left shoulder girdle muscle spasms to quit taking over my life and, to top it all off, I came down with something yesterday that knocked me off my feet by late afternoon with general malaise and various wonkiness. I did what I usually do. I put on my woolies, went to bed, put myself on soup and crackers and it’s mainly gone today. I’m assuming it’s just a weird winter virus. Fortunately it doesn’t appear to have major lingering effects.

But enough about me and my various ailments which you really had no interest in. Weeks like this, however, have made me adopt the English translation of a Norwegian idiom when asked how I am – ‘Still upright and not crying too much’. But that idiom could apply to the entire sociopolitical moment in which we find ourselves. We’re at an inflection point. They happen with regular periodicity in Western culture, roughly eighty years apart. Why that timing? Likely because it takes that long for adult living memory of the last one to disappear and for the social structures carefully created by the survivors of the last to prevent a future one to weaken to the point where the next becomes inevitable. We’ll come out of this one, one way or another and there will be much pledging of never again and a reshaping of society to new forms to curb the worse excesses. But somewhere around 2100, when today’s children are in their 80s and 90s, the cycle will likely repeat.

80 years ago – the early 1940s. World War II which led to the construction of social structures to protect the children who became the Baby Boom from the horrors their parents had endured. This included a sanitized Norman Rockwell vision of US history and society, minimizes or eliminating those pieces involving out groups such as racial, ethnic, religious, and gender minorities, which the current administration is trying to repurpose despite decades of cultural work to understand the complexities of our nation. (I read somewhere that the National Park Service has moved on from removing all mentions of slavery, Jim Crow and other mistreatment of African Americans at national historic sites to all mentions of Native Americans and how they were displaced, starved, and massacred). We have, just down the hill from me, the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument dedicated to the courage of sixty years ago which finally broke Jim Crow. I hate to think what has been removed there as DEI is kind of the point.

80 years before that – The Civil War. Telling that story without discussing the evils of slavery or the attempts of a wealthy elite to impose their economic and political world view on a population which was growing and changing in a very different way strikes me as counterproductive at best. 80 years before that The Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation and finally the Constitution which we have managed to live by for 225 years or so although the current administration appears to find it optional. 80 years before that the religious battles and schims which led to such things as the Glorious Revolution in England and the Salem Witch Trials in this country. 80 years before that, more religious strife which led to the Puritans fleeing England and ending up eventually in the Plymouth Colony. The rhyming if not necessarily the repetition of history.

The continued issues in Minneapolis seem to be causing rifts in both the administration and the Republican party. There’s been a lot of backpedaling in some quarters after it becomes more and more clear that the death of Alex Pretti was an extrajudicial execution and then there has been doubling down on obviously false narratives. Some of this has been awfully petty. Mr. Pretti’s coworkers tried to arrange a memorial gathering at the VA hospital where he worked as an ICU nurse. It was forbidden on administration orders. It doesn’t surprise me. After all, the VA police prevented even VA employees from parking in the Birmingham VA parking deck, just off the Pride Parade route, this past summer as that would be supporting ideologies with which the administration does not agree.

Some have said that perhaps the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are a Kent State moment. Maybe. After all, there have been a total of three murders so far in Minneapolis this month, two of them committed by ICE/Border Patrol. I don’t think this is over yet by a long shot. I think there will be shooting into an unarmed crowd with multiple casualties, the murder of a child, or other atrocity before there is enough of a rift for things to really change. What is happening, however, is a recognition by people who have always been in the in group in society that they are not part of the in group under this administration and they can therefore be targeted. Those finding themselves in this position need to befriend and, more importantly, listen to members of communities who have been out groups for decades or centuries and who have always lived life knowing they are a target. There is so much wisdom available if we will only reach out – and not be surprised at some early rebuffs. Where have we been before when they were crying for help? But persistence and person to person networking has always worked and what we need now.

No one would be fussing about detainment and deportations if they were handled, as under previous administrations, by the book with judicial oversight and obeyance of court orders and honoring of visas, asylum claims, marriages and the like. But we have an administration which is run in order to create content for a daily reality show where what’s needed is optics and domination of the news cycle and, most importantly ratings. Bureaucratic processes in offices and courtrooms don’t make good TV. Undertrained people cosplaying as Call of Duty characters against a background of snow and ice with various quasilegal crowd control techniques are many things but boring it not one of them. It’s not a mode of governance that’s been tried before in this country and I don’t think it’s terribly successful. Documentarians of the future are going to love it as they’re going to have a wealth of primary source material to choose from. Those of us living through the creation of all of that – maybe not so much.

I’m taking one more early night to try and get rid of the crud and then, in the morning, I’ll get up, get dressed (with fewer layers as we seem to be out of the deep freeze), go out and do what good I can.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Charles Dickens is on my mind as I’ve moved on to another one of the lesser known novels in my quest to have read all of his fiction prior to shuffling off this mortal coil. I am roughly a third of the way through ‘Dombey and Son’ and I haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether I like it or not. It has all of the hallmarks of Dickens. The little jokes placed in even the most somber settings. The lively supporting cast. Sharp social commentary. But it doesn’t rocket along the way David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby does from one adventure to the next. And it’s a bit thematically lugubrious, concerned mainly with misplaced priorities in life and how those damage relationships.

It’s too bad we don’t have an American Dickens at the ready to dissect Trump’s America. If I were to try my hand at fiction that’s the sort of thing I would likely produce. We have had some Dickensian writers – Patrick Dennis, Armistead Maupin, Barbara Kingsolver but no one that has been able to disguise social critique through the adventures of a family as they pass through the follies and foibles of modern American life. If anyone is aware of someone who is writing like this, let me know so I can give them a try. Because if there were ever a society that was due for a whipped cream with knives dissection via comic fiction, it’s this last decade in the USA.

Trump’s America is, of course, on full display in Minneapolis where yet another American citizen was executed by ICE on the street earlier today. The 3,000 ICE agents occupying the city now have two deaths of American citizens on their hands for a rate of 1/1,500. Given that the murder rate in America is approximately 4/100,000 and the murder rate by undocumented immigrants is roughly half that or 2/100,000, statistically ICE is about thirty times more dangerous to public safety than the undocumented community. Add to that the dozens whom have perished in ICE custody and the fact that ICE is not providing any medical care for detainees and I know which side I believe has the moral upper hand. DHS and the Trump administration have begun the character assassination of the deceased, focusing on the fact that he was armed. Interesting how the second amendment is sacrosanct except in this situation. Compare Mr. Petti who had a permit and did not appear in the films I have seen to be threatening anyone, but rather coming to the aid of a woman who had been attacked by ICE, to Kyle Rittenhouse. But then consistency has never been a particularly strong suit amongst the MAGA faithful.

There will be more blood and more death. The butcher’s bill may come due again in Minneapolis or in Maine or in some other American neighborhood yet to be named. It won’t stop until those with a sworn duty to defend the constitution – congress and the court system – shrug off their collective torpor and start demanding that the constitution (and especially the fourt and fourteenth amendments) are sacrosanct and not to be ignored for the sake of a few rapidly thrown together executive orders. And this is where the best of times comes in. Yesterday, a significant fraction of the population of Greater Minneapolis came together with a united message of what is happening here is unacceptable. And that’s all it really takes. Society standing together and demanding the rule of law over the rule of ego and whims.

The other thing that should be kept in mind is that ICE cannot win in the long run. Roughly 1/7-1/8 of the total number of ICE agents are currently on the ground in Minneapolis. And Minneapolis is the 46th largest city in the country. There are 346 municipalities in the US with a population of over 100,000 The number of agents that would be required to cow the population into full compliance is astronomical and unobtainable. Do not comply in advance and remember the Good Trouble of John Lewis.

I have a number of somewhat conservative friends who probably think I am a bleeding heart libtard when it comes to immigration issues. I have no issues with those found guilty of having violated law by a court being deported according to the appropritate civil procedures provided in law. I do have huge issues with racial and ethnic profiling, the death penalty meted out by officers with minimal training, warrantless searches and seizures, grabbing those who have done everything ‘the right way’ at their administrative hearings and tossing them into detention, detaining the spouses of American citizens, attacking random people on the streets for minimal cause, detaining people in inappropriate and unsanitary environments and all of the rest that’s going on.

Turning now to matters of public health. The nasty influenza A strain that was making people deathly ill around the holidays appears to be receding, just in time for influenza B to start making the rounds. Keep those hands washed and get your flu shot. It’s still not too late. Covid has been quiescent most of this winter. DHS and the CDC continue to be a mess under leadership chosen for ideology rather than science. The chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, Kirk Milhoan, came out this past week and stated that he wasn’t sure that we needed polio vaccines and that they should never be required if parents did not wish them given. Maybe I should buy stock in the manufacturer of iron lungs as that’s where this particular bad idea is going to end up.

I am finding it very difficult to write at the moment. I can turn out these essays but most of my other projects are stalled as I cannot turn off my brain, flooded as it is with the angst of the moment, and get those creative juices flowing. I don’t have much theatrical the next few months and it would be a great time to really get some work done on something meaningful but I get home in the evening, open up my laptop, and nothing happens other than scrolling through AI cat videos. I’m giving myself some grace. One thing I have learned about myself over the decades is that when the time is right, the words will flow.

There has been much hysteria the last few days about the weather. Apparently the fact that it gets cold in January and can freeze has never occurred to anyone before. I’ll walk to work if I have to. I’ve done it before. I did not rush out to the grocery store to buy bread and milk as I have no particular need of bread pudding.

Get up. Get dressed. Go out (but be careful if the roads and walks are slick). Do good.

I’ve been off from work all this past week due to the rehearsal schedule for South Pacific with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Chris Confessore which had its first performance last night and its last performance tonight at 7 PM (if you’re local to Birmingham, you still have time to make plans to be there – tickets at the door). I hadn’t had a decompress week for quite some time and it’s been good for me, giving me time to savor the compact rehearsal process for the show (five total rehearsal days – I was called for three of them) and two performance days. It’s also given me entirely too much time to catch up on the rather insane political machinations of the moment. I can’t say that’s been the best for my constitution and there’s something to be said about being kept busy by ordinary life so that all of the unmanageable events rocketing through the national character aren’t occupying too large a space in the psyche.

South Pacific has been a lovely experience. The majority of the cast are locals whom I have known and worked with for decades and we’re having fun together. I must admit to a heavy case of impostor syndrome. I know their credits and achievements on both a local and national level and then I look at myself as a performer and think what the hell am I doing up here with you? But I guess I know a little bit about what I’m doing as i was able to get the laughs and other audience reaction I wanted last night. The audience was well primed. That overture played by a full symphony practically brought the house to their feet and it was pretty clear they were going to follow wherever we led. And the antiracisim themes, even if they’re a bit creaky having been written in the late 1940s, make a significant impact given the current state of affairs in this country. I get to do it one more time in a few hours and then this, like the other eighty something shows I’ve been involved in since I began performing routinely some 23 years ago, will be packed away in the box labeled ‘happy memories’, to be replaced by another project. At this point, that looks to be a double bill of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci in mid-April. I could squeeze something into a February/March slot but I have no plans to do so. I have a number of home projects that require attention.

At the moment, all eyes are on Minneapolis where the federal government has found it wise to send some 3,000 agents to conduct enforcement actions against undocumented immigrants. That’s roughly five times the size of the Minneapolis police department so there’s no wonder the city feels like it’s paying host to an unwelcome occupying force. Why Minneapolis? There are far greater numbers of immigrants in most Texas cities. I assume this is a need for the Trump administration to showcase their power for the cameras as a warning or deterrent to other American cities to roll over and let ICE do what they feel like doing. And so the news footage keeps appearing of operatives dressed like characters out of Fortnite (camouflage being so useful on American streetscapes), threatening anyone they please and skipping ahead to the whole ‘Papieren bitte… schnell schnell’ phase of authority/citizen relations. Minneapolis also gives Trump the chance to practice vindictive retribution against Tim Walz for being Kamala’s running mate and to use the Somali community, as exemplified by Ihlan Omar, as a convenient scapegoat. Haitians eating neighborhood pets is so last year. Somalis are apparently stealing suitcases full of taxpayer cash through fraudulent day cares and flying it out of the country. (I have yet to see any corroborative evidence behind most of the wild allegations permeating the right wing news sphere).

The process of acculturation by immigrants in the US has a long history and follows reconizable patterns. The initial immigrants arrive, often band together in communities with other immigrants for mutual support based around ties of language, religion and culture. Their children are often divided between heritage and the new opportunities America brings. Their grandchildren are generally thoroughly American. The process takes somewhere between forty and seventy years for each new group to assimilate. It happened with the Irish, the Scandinavians, the Italians, the Poles, Eastern European Jews etc. The Somalis arrived in the 1990s with the disintegration of their home country into civil war so they’re only about half way through the process. Of course they’re not going to be totally assimilated. Give them another twenty-five years. Nearly 90% of the Somali community in Minneapolis are US Citizens (either naturalized or native born). It’s not some invading army.

Why didn’t they pick some other city to unleash their onslaught? They weren’t about to choose one in a ‘loyal’ red state. In regards to blue state cities, they likely didn’t want one with difficult topography so Seattle and San Francisco were out, one that’s too large geographically (there go Los Angeles and Chicago), and one where they thought they could probably cow the locals (good bye New York and Philadelphia). I did not have on my bingo card that the wine moms of Minnesota were going to be the shock troops to first start offering some significant resistance to what ICE does but here we are. As much as the right would like to believe in some sort of devious Soros funded cabal of paid agitation, my read is different. I think the people of Minneapolis looked around at their city and at what was happening and more or less decided to publicly state that this is not who we are as Americans. This is not how we do things. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in our neighbors whom we have gotten do know over decades as being decent people and they are using their constitutionally protected rights of assembly and protest to let ICE know exactly how they are viewed. And the polling on the administration’s handling of immigration issues, once their strongest suit, is absolutely cratering. They’re likely to double down. After all, the Big Beautiful Bill, has given more money to ICE than most countries defense budgets. But they’re eventually going to run out of applicants willing to continually harrass fellow Americans. Especially when prospective agents start reading the fine print and figure out that vaunted $50,000 signing bonus is only payable after five years of continued service and, if they do not complete that five years, they must pay back any additional bonus monies proffered.

As for dear leader, who seems to have spent a lot of this past week falling asleep on camera, he managed to pull a true Rhoda Penmark moment with Nobel Laureate Machado in the Oval Office, only with fewer shoes involved. He can put his new shiny gold toy with all of his other shiny gold toys but it must gall him that it can’t truly be his. And I have to wonder about the circle of sycophants who arrange all of this, and the members of other branches of government whose inaction continues to enable the executive’s overreach. I assume at least some of their children are reading Harry Potter and recognizing their parents as so many Cornelius Fudges and Dolores Umbridges. There must be some uncomfortable conversations at home. Unless, of course, their children have been carefully taught.

Saber rattling regarding Greenland continues. Now it’s been awhile since I have sat down and read the entire constitution but I do seem to remember that it states that any treaty signed and ratified by the US shall be deemed ‘the supreme law of the land’. This, of course, would include NATO. Any military strike on Greenland, as a violation of NATO would therefore be prima facie illegal and unconstitutional and it would be interesting to see if the US military would be willing to follow such orders. I assume the more intelligent in the administration who understand that such a move would tank the US economy, if not lead to World War III, will keep all of this at a strictly rhetorical phase.

DHS remains relatively quiet. DOJ continues with its two current functions – retribution against Trump’s political enemies and protection for Trump and his circle against inconveniences such as laws. The VA, my deparment, hasn’t asked me to do anything immoral, unethical, or illegal as of yet. I’m going to continue getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good.

And our slow slide into fascism continues to accelerate. Dear leaders name and face on any institution or inanimate surface that takes his fancy. Propaganda posters on various federal websites deliberately aping 1940s style master race artwork and slogans. The appropriation of Nazi slogans, the most recent being ‘One of Ours, All of Yours’ on Kristi Noem’s podium at her most recent press conference regarding the state of affairs in Minneapolis. It stems from the Nazi’s reprisals against the citizens of Lidice, Czech Republic after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It’s one of the best documented Nazi atrocities and I need not repeat the story here.

The actions of ICE and the killing of Renee Good continue to be a national Rorscharch test. Self identified Republicans are roughly 2/3 in favor of ICE’s actions while self identified Democrats are less than 5% in favor and self identified independents are less than 20% in favor. Translation, the majority of the US population is horrified at what is unfolding and the consequences of those policies while the administration steam rolls ahead and congress remains complacent. With numbers like that, most politicians begin back pedaling and self correcting with an eye on the next election cycle but there’s been little of that happening. Which makes me afraid that there is a plan in place which will prevent a next election cycle, at least one which is conducted in a fair and open manner. What is the plan? Who knows. The most likely is continued provocation of the populace until something happens which will justify a military response/martial law. But it could be something like an executive order ‘postponing’ elections until voting machines and processes ‘can be verified’. And congress will likely continue to roll over, at least as long as Mike Johnson remains in charge.

The Epstein files remain a wedge issue. Congress did pass a law requiring their release and DOJ has so far not complied with the terms of the law. This of course has now led to the slow wheels of the court system getting involved. I don’t think we’ll see significant unredacted files for quite some time. In the meantime, a new accuser, Sascha Riley, has surfaced with lurid and stunning allegations. None have yet been vetted through testimony under oath but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find out that there’s at least some truth behind the sensationalism. The longer the delay, the more the portion of the population who have bought into secret pedophile cabals running the world from the basement of pizzerias are going to get restive. And they tend to vote Republican.

The administration is pressing full steam ahead on trying to rewrite American history, both recent and remote, to suit their narrative needs. The laughable and easily disproven lies regarding January 6th are spreading throughout the administration and into the Smithsonian and are likely to end up in approved school textbooks shortly. More insidious is the attempts to undo the entire Civil Rights movement as some sort of discrimination against white males. It trivializes the sacrifices, the blood spilt, the survival of lynchings and other Jim Crow horrors as if that sort of domination should somehow be honored. The administration has decided not to pursue any federal investigation of whether Renee Good’s civil rights were violated, a standard procedure after any fatal incident involving federal law enforcement leading to the resignations of most of the senior staff of the Civil Rights division of DOJ.

Sabers continue to rattle in three different directions. First, in Venezuela where it’s completely unclear who is actually in charge, dear leader is running around stating he’s the president. The Venezuelans might disagree and I imagine there’s law preventing the President of the US from being the president of another nation at the same time (but I’m too lazy to look it up right now). The administration seems to think that they’ll be able to pump oil by the millions of barrels right off the bat. The large oil companies, who lost billions in contracts and equipment when Hugo Chavez nationalized the industry a couple of decades ago, aren’t so sure and would like to be paid back for their losses before they invest anything new and try to rebuild a thoroughly degraded infrastructure. This, of course, has annoyed dear leader who took on the chair of Exxon Mobil, Darren Woods, for daring to speak truth to power. I’m sure there are some small upstart companies headed by Trump cronies who will be more than willing to snare government contracts and taxpayer dollars but I don’t think we’ll see much ROI.

Second, there’s Greenland. Any actual attack on Greenland would destroy NATO and likely push the US into a war of some sort with the EU. I think there will be a lot of rhetoric and an attempt to buy off the population with a casket of beads a la Peter Minuit as that’s the sort of diplomay that dear leader can understand. Cooler heads will likely allow a greater US military presence than currently exists at some point but it will probably end there. The army is currently having trouble keeping the troops fed at Fort Greely near Alaska as DOGE cuts decimated their support staff. Not sure how they think they’re going to support more folk in the arctic. It’s not exactly an easy place to relocate a civilian work force.

Third is Iran which is going through another set of upheavals and rebellion against the mullahs who have been in charge since the 1979 revolution. This is hardly new. There have been multiple other uprisings, all of which have been put down. Is this one different? Time will tell. Iran has been severely weakened by it’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah which have been smashed recently by Israel. There’s also the issue of water. Iran is in a massive drought and the regime has seriously mismanaged water policy for decades by subsidizing monsoon crops like rice which require an enormous amounts of water. Tehran’s reservoirs are nearly out, it’s undergoing water rationing and there’s been talk of moving the capital. The current administration may not believe in climate change but it’s out there with very real world consequences. Then there’s the religious politics of the region. The Iranians are Shia and most of the Arab world is Sunni. The Shiites and the Sunnis have been sworn enemies for nearly 1400 years now but I don’t think most of the higher administration has any real understanding of Islam and they’ve gotten rid of most of the operatives in the State Department who truly understand these nuances.

That’s enough depressing news for the day. For those concerned about my personal health and pain level, I’m doing OK. I invested in a really good soft cervical collar and I have found if I put that on for about an hour or so a few times a day, it really helps keep the pain level down, far better than the various medications I have tried. Two weeks until shots in the neck and with luck that will be the end of that for at least six months.

Rehearsals for South Pacific begin in an hour. So I am getting up, getting dressed, going out, and doing good by creating some beauty.

I’ll warn you all in advance that my cervical spondylitis has been causing left shoulder girdle spasms for well over a week now and the constant pain is making me just a tad grumpy. I have various nostrums to relieve it but the things that work the best, like muscle relaxers, interfere with my cognitive processes so I cannot use them around working hours. If I’m a bit more waspish in my opinions than usual, I plead for forgiveness in advance. I get a new round of steroid shots in the left cervical nerve roots three weeks from yesterday and I am hoping that will bring me some longer term relief. It did this past year when I was awake and able to tell them when they had hit the right spot. We’re trying that technique again. Last night I had a double whammy as I had obviously eaten something that disagreed with me so there was misery all around and at least one of the cats got a free flying lesson off the bed when he sat on the remote and cut off the program I had been watching.

I have, however, been able to dodge the gamut of respiratory viruses that are making the rounds. I am desperately trying to stay out of harm’s way through Saturday night the 17th when I finish my commitments to the Alabama Symphony Orchestra and their concert production of South Pacific. Mine is a speaking, not a singing part but I still get to share the stage as a principal with a number of my favorite local performers including Lucas Pepke, Caleb Clark, and Chris Carlisle plus all the insanely talented musicians in the orchestra under the baton of Chris Confessore. Two performances only – Friday the 16th and Saturday the 17th at Alys Stephens Center – 7 PM. I’m willing to take whatever the cold and flu season dishes out after this is over. I have the rest of my performance season scheduled out. Symphony Chorus for a special concert piece commemorating Selma in Feburary. Chorus in Il Pagliacci/Cavalleria Rusticana for Opera Birmingham in April. Chorus for Carmina Burana with the Symphony and Alabama Ballet in May. Directing The Tempest for Bell Tower Players this summer.

I have looked up the Covid numbers. What else is a plague doctor supposed to do? They’re actually not bad and there hasn’t been a surge in early January as there usually is two weeks or so post Christmas. I suppose that its behaving in a more endemic fashion is good news, but we’re only one unusual mutation away from being back where we were a couple of years ago. The mutation in Influenza A from subclade J to subclade K is a bit of a problem as it’s anitgenically different enough to get around this year’s flu vaccine more effectively than normal. The combination of this and low vaccination rates explains why we’re having a terrible flu year. ERs and hospital wards are full. So far this season, we’ve had about 120,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths from the flu. It’s a fraction of the deaths we were seeing at the height of the pandemic from Covid but it’s still a good deal higher than usual for flu. (We generally have about 20,000 flu deaths a year in the US but we’re on track for more like 50,000 this year).

I really hate to wade into politics as it’s nothing but insanity and bad news, at least from my perspective. In the last few days the president announced he was going to take possession of Venezuelan oil, sell it, and deposit the proceeds in offshore accounts he would manage. I don’t even begin to know where to parse out the illegalities and corruption in that plan. Fortunately, in my remote youth, I took a course at Stanford entitled Introduction of Petroleum Engineering (easy A) so I learned a thing or two about the issues with extractive industries. Given the state of their infrastructure, not to mention their economy and politics, no significant Venezuelan crude is coming to market prior to the 2030s. He also announced that he is going to increase the defense budget from one trillion to one and a half trillion dollars. This from the leader of the party that was taking a hatchet to the government only a few short months ago on the pretext of deficit reduction and we can’t afford it. This is a non-starter as congress would have to figure out where that five hundred billion is coming from and I can assure everyone it’s not being paid to the US by other nations as tariffs. As a corollary to this, the president also sternly lectured the CEOs of the big defense contractors and floated the idea that their companies should be run as he desired and their compensation capped at a limit he determines. This sort of state capitalism would have been roundly derided as communist or Marxist coming from another direction. Then there’s his immediate family members using his control over finanical levers to set up cryptocurrency banks.

We seem to have backed down from invading Greenland (which would completely destroy NATO) in favor of potentially buying it by offering the inhabitants bribes of somewhere between $10,000 and $100,000 apiece to hold a referendum to secede from Denmark and join the US. As there are only 57,000 residents of Greenland, it wouldn’t be that expensive – only 5.7 billion dollars on the high end, but the Greenlanders seem to remain disinterested. If such a harebrained scheme were to go through, I wonder if I might ask Denmark to buy me for $100,000. I wouldn’t mind living in Copenhagen. My guess is all he really wants is the ability to build some new bases there to counter Russia and China via the polar route as Arctic ice continues to melt and the rest is posturing. Speaking of Arctic melt, he is also withdrawing us from all of the international climate change organizations and we will soon be the only nation not participating.

The big story of the day is, of course, the killing of Renee Good yesterday in Minneapolis. Looking through the comments on various news stories and social media channels it is, like so many other incidents of the last few decades, becoming a bit of a Rorschach test reflecting our own personal biases and political leanings back at us. The administration is doubling down on portraying her as some sort of crazed leftist agitator intent on mowing down ICE agents while the picture that is emerging from sources on the ground is that she was an apolitical young mother who had just dropped her son off at school and got caught at the wrong place at the wrong time in a situation that rapidly escalated. The administration is claiming absolute immunity for ICE officers as part of their official dute which is not how policing has ever worked in this country. Murder and manslaughter are state charges but the state is being edged out by the FBI. Unfortunately, the FBI has been so compromised by Trump through Kash Patel and Dan Bongino nothing will come of that investiagation.

There was a physician present who tried to render aid and who was prevented from doing so by ICE agents. I looked up Minnesota’s Good Samaritan law. In an emergency, under the Minnesota statute, a physician is not just protected from liability if they offer assistance, but they are also expected to offer assistance within the scope of their knowledge. In some states, preventing a physician from doing this is an illegal act. I haven’t been able to determine if this is the case in Minnesota. I didn’t go to law school. But it might be another way for the state and local authorities to reign in the bully behavior of ICE goons.

This is not the last person that’s likely to be killed by ICE who are operating outside of law and restraint. The number of detainees who have died in custody in suspicious circumstances is well into double digits and there have been other shootings and reckless force incidents involving protestors and observers. This is just the first one that comfortable white America can’t ignore as she was one of them. Is this a George Floyd inflection point? Probably not. I think it’s going to take a lot more blood on the pavement before the apolitical and the distracted and the narcotized by cheap entertainment start to stand up in enough numbers and demand that things change.

When I heard the news, I immediately thought of the movie, Schindler’s List. Not the horrific concentration camp scenes but a scene much earlier in the film, when a column of Jews is stopped by the Gestapo and made to clear snow from the street and an elderly man with one arm, proud to be an essential worker, is callously pulled out of line and shot in the head. It’s the first act of deadly violence in the film. Steve and I went to see it when it first opened on a Christmas Day showing (meaning that a majority of the audience was Jewish) and as that loud gun crack reverberated through the movie theater, you could feel a collective weight of sadness settling over those gathered. The rustles of weight shifting in seats, the munch of popcorn, all those other ephemeral sounds fell away from that moment through the end of the film some two and a half hours later.

Do I think we’re going to end up in the same place that Germany did in 1945? I doubt it. Too many of our eyes are open and too many of us stand up to be counted. But it’s a reminder that the road to perdition begins with baby steps and that even small acts of violence of the state against the citizenry have enormous power and consequence.

Wash your hands. Cover your mouth when you cough. Stay home if you’re sick. Avoid the obviously ill. Light a candle.