I went to a very fancy party Friday night, a black tie gala raising funds for UAB’s arts programs. Hors d’Oeuvres and wine, a concert by Wilson Philllips, steak dinner at sumptuously decorated tables placed on the stage of the Sirote theater. More wine. It left me with a sort of a glow all weekend. A huge shout out to Rita Polonus Cowell for the invitation and Patti Steelman for asking me to be her plus one. Through various stealth maneuvers, my Birmingham theatre buds of the last few decades have come into their own and now run most of UAB’s performing arts programs. Here’s looking at you J. Heath Mixon, Kimberly Kirklin, Chuck Evans, and Dane Peterson. Keep building on success.
I always feel a little bit guilty when I take part in the ritual of a gala party. There is so much need and want int the world that being surrounded by lavish accoutrements feels like a waste on some levels. But I suppose the difference between someone like me and a denizen of Mar a Lago or the new ‘Rose Garden Club’ at the White House is that I know that such occasions are special and to be savored and packed away into the coffers of reminiscence to be brought out again in the future when a positive memory is needed. They are not an entitlement that I should or would be surrounded by on a daily basis. Besides which, I refuse to spend the money on hair plugs, botox, jaw enhancement and other cosmetic procedures to give myself the super strange android look that has become de rigueur amongst the uber wealthy, particularly on the right side of the aisle.
Listening to Wilson Phillips (part of the sound track of my late adolesence – they had their heyday when I was in medical school and residency) allowed me to open up the above mentioned coffers and think over other special occasions, savored from my past. My brother had a Beach Boys fixation as a preteen and the greatest hits of Brian Wilson (father of Carnie and Wendy Wilson) were constantly emenating from our shared bedroom. In the winter of 1987, when I fell for a man for the first time (this was a couple of years before Steve), we had some magical times together in New York City and, as a treat, he took me to Michael’s Pub to hear the Mamas and the Papas. This was a reconstituted group John Phillips was still leading it using his original arrangements and harmonies but the other three were Mackenzie Phillips singing Michelle’s part, Scott Mackenzie singing Denny Doherty’s part and Spanky McFarland (of Spanky and Our Gang) singing Mama Cass’ part. Mackenzie Phillips, at that time in one of her many bouts of recovery, sat next to me at the bar between sets making a big deal of drinking her Perrier with a twist of lemon. I think we exchanged a few pleasantries but I can’t remember what they were about. She was very petite which surprised me. I got to meet Chynna Phillips briefly at the dinner and told her my life was coming around in circles again. She was amused.
I’ve been asked to write about what’s going on in senior housing and what the trends may look like moving into both the near future and the distant future what with cuts to social assistance programs, health insurance, and the impact of demographics on Medicare, Medicaid and long term care. I am much too tired to take that on this evening. I’ll mull it over the next couple of days and maybe something will spring forth full grown like Athena from the brain sometime this next week. I should also have a much better idea as to what’s coming next in my writing life after this next week. My publisher is back in the saddle. We had a call tonight discussing a number of topics and we’re going to meet for a couple of hours this next weekend while I am in Seattle visiting the family.
My current car book is Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s chronicle of the experiment in the early years of this century to create a utopian Libertarian community in Grafton, New Hampshire. Entitled ‘A Libertarian Walks into a Bear’ it’s one of those novelistic/journalistic treatises that examines the social politics of an American community, similar to John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. A number of Libertarian (the political philosophy that government should have no role in telling individuals what they should or should not do or how they should treat their property) activists moved to the small town of Grafton, took over the wheels of local power, removed regulations and city services, and the whole thing came undone when it ran into the reality of the local bear population. I am drawing a great many parallels to how DHHS and Joseph Ladopo in Florida are dealing with vaccines. Ladopo has basically taken the position that bodily autonomy is an inalienable right and that the government has no power to force an individual to inject something into their body nor does it have the power to supersede the wishes of parents when it comes to their children. (Funny how this inalienable right does not seem to apply to female reproductive services).
The wholesale spreading of misinformation, quackery, and general foolishness regarding Covid vaccines has now come to taint the very concept of vaccination (which we have been doing since the late 18th century). An NBC poll released recently showed that roughly 1/3 of Republican voters now feel that all vaccines should be made optional if not banned outright. Visit any cemetary that dates back before World War II and look at the number of headstones placed for children. They virtually vanish by the 1950s. That is what vaccination has done. Allowed tens of millions of American children to navigate the biologic hazards of childhood and reach maturity. Life expectancy for Americans in 1900 was in the mid 40s. Not because folk were dying of old age in their 40s, but because so many infants and children died of what are now preventable diseases. If you made it through the treacherous gamut of measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and all the rest, you would generally make it somewhere between 50 and 75. People didn’t start achieving their 80s in good health with any regularity until after 1950. And that’s what’s coming next for all of us. Somewhere between eight and nine thousand American celebrating their 80th birthday every day for the next twenty years. OK Boomer.
The problem with pure Libertarianism is that it completely falls apart the minute you have a society larger than about a hundred people. Under Libertarian principles of absolute rights, the government cannot tell me that I cannot set a fire on my land to clear brush anytime I so choose. But what if I choose to do so in high summer when there’s a windstorm, virtually guaranteeing that the fire will spread beyond my property and burn my neighbors’ houses down. Government exists to help us balance our individual rights with the individual rights of others. If a third of Republican voters stop vaccinating their children, I guarantee that the pestilences of the past will return and within a decade we’ll have kids in iron lungs. Public health law is not just about you. It’s about us, all of us, who have to somehow get along together and coexist. Unfortunately, one of our great political parties has pretty much decided that coexistence is for pussies and only dominance matters.
Then we have the debacle of the Savannah, Georgia Hyundai plant. Georgia spent millions in incentives to land an enormous facility to help produce electric vehicles and batteries. The plant is not yet finished and is a complicated build requiring a lot of proprietary high tech and Hyundai had a number of South Korean nationals on the property assisting with the build so that the plant could become operational and hire the locals for the jobs that would be generated. A would be politican, Tori Branum, who decided to out MAGA MAGA called ICE about all the illegal aliens working at the plant. ICE conducted an enormous raid, slapped nearly 500 South Koreans in chains and carted them off. In the past, if visas and work papers weren’t properly in place, there would have been some back channel phone calls and things would have been addressed. Now, we have an international incident with one of our closest allies, a major manufacturer wondering if their investment is safe, and probably every other multinational making fresh decisions about where to site industry in coming years. But, from what I read on the hellscape of X, MAGA has no conception of how badly they have shot themselves in the foot with this one. Ideology above all. It never ends well. Just ask the bears of New Hampshire.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 