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.

And so it begins… with the attack on Caracas, Venezuela last night and the arrest and capture of President Maduro and his wife who are being transported back to the US to face charges of narcoterrorism. I should have started with And so it continues… as it’s just the latest chapter of a saga that’s been going on for quite some time, both in Venezuela and in terms of American foreign policy in general. I can say that the whole narcoterrorist angle is a bunch of hooey. Even the most cursory look at where illegal drugs that cause destruction on American streets originate shows that the vast majority enter the country from Mexico where they are synthesized in illegal Mexican labs from precursors manufactured and shipped from China. Breaking Bad, especially the Gus Fring plot line, is a more accurate description of the drug trade than the propaganda issuing from the executive branch in defence of the current action.

I know a few Venezuelans. None have lived in the country for some decades but I’ll be interested to get their perspectives in what’s happening there these days as there are still family ties and they are likely to have some information on what is acutally happening on the street. I am becoming more and more distrustful of national media who seem to be doing a complex limbo dance under the bamboo of Trump’s will. I am no expert in Latin American history and politics, but if I recall the last few decades correctly, things have gone south between the US and Venezuela starting in the lat 1990s when former president Hugo Chavez came to power and, amongst other things, nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry, much to the consternation of US oil companies who lost lucrative contracts. There was a coup in 2002 which attempted to remove him, but it failed. I don’t know that the US was directly involved in the coup but the US government was quick to recognize the interim president as the legitimate ruler, only having to back down when Chavez was rapidly restored to power. Chavez went on to continue to be a thorn in the side to the US and Europe due to his consistent opposition to the dominant neo-liberal economic policies favored by the West.

Chavez died in office of cancer in 2013 and was succeeded by his vice-president, Nicolas Maduro who, in 2015, pushed through a number of political changes which made his essentially a dictator ruling by fiat. Maduro’s heavy-handed tactics seem to have turned most of the population against him and he has held onto power through intimidation, coercion, and fraudulent elections. He’s hardly a good guy but he is a sitting head of state and invading a sovereign nation and kidnapping the head of state is against international law. There are ways and means to accomplish this within international law but they would require competent diplomats and an executive branch run by intelligent individuals, neither of which seem to be in much supply these days.

But international law has never held the US back from fiddling with other countries sovereignity when there’s something it wants. The Kingdom of Hawaii, overthrown over the interests of the sugar magnates in 1893 and the various interferences in Central America at the behest of the plantation owners, especially the banana growers come to mind. Then there’s the times when the US has either gone to war or helped engineer coups over political and economic ideologies that are anti-capitalist such as Vietnam and the Chilean coup of 1973 that overthrew Salvador Allende. Our track record in recent years in regime change isn’t great. the human and economic disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria can all be placed at the doorstep of our foreign policy.

Is the current action a distraction against a failing domestic economy and the disturbing allegations of the Epstein files? Is this an attempt to unify the country on a war footing a la ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 2003 (for my younger readers – it wasn’t by a long shot)? Is it just a ploy for Trump and Hegseth to flex their alpha male muscles through beta male activities? I suppose we’ll all find out eventually.

On a completely different note, the flu is here and it’s bad. We have some years where flu activity is much higher than others depending on the circulating strains and this one is shaping up to be a bad one with near record hospitalizaitons happening in some locales and higher than usual death rates. Most of us aren’t in danger of dying should we happen to get it, just of being in for a rather miserable week. The antivax activity has driven down the number of adults receiving flu shots (currently about 45% of US adults have had one – it’s recommended for all adults unless there’s a contraindication). What this means is that it will be much easier for the virus to travel through the population. So, keep those hands washed, stay away from the obviously ill, remember your social distancing, and consider masking up in certain situations.

On the personal front, I’ve been rewatching Stranger Things over the last few weeks and am finally into the last season which recently dropped on Netflix. My takeaways so far. The Duffer brothers have an incrediblle eye for period detail. I’m roughly five years older than the teen characters (Nancy, Steve, Jonathan, Robin) so I have a young adult’s memory of the time and I have picked up very few flaws in their recreation of the world of forty years ago. The fact that the series was filmed over a roughly nine year period while only about four years elapse over the course of the story means that the kids are now much too old for the parts they are supposed to be playing – this is especially true of Will. The show suffers from some of the same issues as Game of Thrones. An enormous international fan base, invested in years of story telling and watching the young actors grow up before their eyes has led to feelings of ownership over the characters and storytelling and therefore disagreements with the artistic choices of the creators. I haven’t finished the whole thing yet, but I’m willing to go on the journey to its end. I’ll try to finish it up tonight and tomorrow, my last day off before I’m back to the grind.

Be the anti-administration: get up, get dressed, go out, do good, avoid breaking international law.

It’s New Years Day. New Years Eve is for looking back and the previous year and even further into the past. It’s a bit problematic for me (and if you want to know why, you can read the Prologue to Book 1 of the Accidental Plague Diaries – I’m not going to rehash it here) but I did pretty well and even put in an appearance at a friend’s New Years Eve party. I must admit that I did not stay all the way through the countdown as my neck and shoulder were bothering me and I needed to get off my feet and let gravity work on my body in a horizontal rather than a vertical position. This seems to be the best solution to my cervical stenosis and its pain complications but it’s somewhat incompatible with an active life so it’s acetaminophen and meloxicam and tizanidine and gabapentin for the next four weeks until they can shoot steroids into the problem areas again and hopefully make things improve.

So New Years Day must, in counterpoint, be for looking forward. What am I looking forward to? Various things. If all goes according to plan, it will be my last complete regular work year. I got my first job (data entry clerk) in 1977 so I guess I’ll have completed fifty years in the work force at the time of my retirement. I assume that’s enough. Something over 80% of that time was spent in healthcare in one form or other. I feel like I found my niche, helped a lot of people, and did some good in the world so I can’t be too disappointed with my career path over the decades. I have one more year to move it forward and then I’ll have to enter my Eriksonian stage 8 problem solving of figuring out what it has all meant. I’m in the process of cleaning out my academic office (as the whole department is moving and I am not moving with it as I don’t spend enough time in academic work anymore to warrant an office). I’m opening files that haven’t been touched in decades and launching most of the contents into the recycle bin. I am keeping a few things for sentiment’s sake – like the absolutely scathing review I received from the surgeons during my med school rotation. I haul it out occasionally to show discouraged med students that a bad comment or grade is not the end of the world and they’re going to be just fine.

I have performance opportunities to look forward to in 2026. South Pacific with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra is rapidly approaching in the next few weeks. After that, Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci with Opera Birmingham and Carmina Burana with the Alabama Symphony Chorus and Alabama Ballet are penciled in. And then there’s directing The Tempest this summer. I don’t have any plays on the calendar yet but there are a few holes and something is likely to turn up – it always does.

I have a trip to Eastern Europe on the books for the fall through Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. I’m looking forward to that one. I have a slot open for one other trip abroad but haven’t decided yet where it should be. I’m thinking maybe France. I haven’t been to Paris in more than forty years. But something else might beckon. I would really like to get back to Asia.

I don’t know how or what to look forward to in terms of writing for this next year. I’m having a difficult time buckling down as I don’t have structure or deadline. I do my best under pressure. If I’m left too much to my own devices, I put it away and get out a book or turn on the TV. I do have some projects with self imposed deadlines but that’s not quite the same. I really require someone texting me saying ‘I need those pages by Tuesday’ to get me moving forward with all due speed. I have been pulling pieces together from various sources that can be repurposed for my ‘Boom’ book so maybe that’s the first thing that needs to be pushed ahead.

Other things I want to fit in over the next few months: a theater week in NYC to catch up on various productions I have yet to see, a trip to Seattle to check up on the family, and some time at a beach somewhere so I can just walk along a beach and smell the ocean. Maybe I’m asking for too much. When I see the disasters befalling the country and how they ripple through my younger friends and my friends in performing arts careers, I realize I lead an incredibly privileged existence and maybe my energies should be put more towards healing the many hurts out there and less towards self care. I try to balance and do both but it’s not the easiest tightrope.

Get up, get dressed, go out, do good, then have some cornbread, black eyed peas and collard greens.

“What’s today my fine fellow?” said Scrooge. “Today?” replied the boy “Why Christmas Day”. The older I get, the more I understand Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ and why it has had such a hold on the English speaking world and its understanding of traditional holiday festivities for more than 180 years now. The book itself is not long, more of a long short story than even a novella and can easily be read in an evening. It gave to us all of those early Victorian trappings of Christmas that stay with us through the years – from the decorations, to the traditional feast menu, to innumerable strolling quartets of Dickens carolers popping up at a shopping center near you throughout the month of December. I doubt Charles, when he put pen to paper to write a ghost story about the holidays, had any idea what he was actually creating and the impact it would end up having on the world but most literary geniuses are writing to meet the needs of the moment and it’s only in retrospect that we completely understand their insights into the human condition which lift certain works above the mundane.

I played Scrooge on stage a decade ago. It’s one of those parts you don’t turn down if you’re an actor of a certain age. I’d love to tackle him again with another decade of living and life crises under my belt. I think I understand him better now. He’s not sinister, he’s not evil. LIfe just pushes him in certain ways which get his priorities out of joint and, at the end, he’s not a different person than he was; the visits of the spirits simply lead him to recalibrate. The results of loss and mistaken choices have embittered him over time and the making of money has become a maladaptive coping mechanism for dealing with the world. And one of the genius moves of Dickens is his not completely explaining Scrooge’s past. Did his business acumen destroy Fezziwig? What sort of business was Scrooge actually in? We know some of the superficial reasons why Belle breaks her engagement to him but what more was going on?

The ghosts, all four of them (yes four – Marley counts) each give him a different means of better understanding himself through the prisms of past, present, and future. What are ghosts? They exist in every human culture and folk tradition so they seem to be something that are created by human experience, no matter who we may happen to be. I know I am haunted by ghosts. They aren’t physical spectral manifestations but they certainly exist in my psyche, created by my thoughts, guilts, and regrets. I guess they’re a side effect of our prodigious brains and memories. There will always be roads not taken, bad decisions, old injuries to ourselves or to others and ghosts are a handy anthropomorphic shorthand way of dealing with all of that in narrative form.

Over the years, my ghosts have taught me a lot. They’ve helped me reevaluate my past, make different decisions in my present, and have hopefully allowed my future to unfold in ways that might not have been possible a few years before. They’re companions. Sometimes, late at night, they can make me uncomfortable as I ruminate over things that once happened and which are over and done with. But is that their doing, or is it me and how I am feeling and reacting to something in the present and processing it by seeing it through the lens of the past.

I’m old enough now that my life’s companions are starting to slip away and leave the party one by one. Some of them may join the chorus of ghosts in my head as they still have something to say or to teach me. I suppose one of the marks of true maturity is being able to homestly face them all and let them know that I have no regrets regarding where my life is currently headed. (Of course, I’m not absolutely sure where this is at the moment but does any of us really know)? I guess I just need to keep moving forward with enough momentum to keep their rumblings at a dull roar.

As I’m wise enough to be aware of my ghosts, I don’t feel a particular need to try and hold my life, or the lives of others in any sort of stasis. Those at the highest level of government don’t seem to have learned this lesson. The president continues to engage in puerile and awfully repetitive rantings, when not engaged in trying to engrave his name or image on whatever happens to be at hand. ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works ye mighty and despair’. wrote Percy Shelley and yet the lone and level sands stretch away from a shattered visage. I see in him and in the other politicians of his generation a primal need to try and stop time while they try to secure their legacies and reorder the world to their liking. But that’s not how any of this actually works. We live on by allowing the succeeding generations to build on our legacies not by imposing things upon them. I’m teaching the young physicians who are going to take over my clinical practice how to think and problem solve, but not the exact ways in which I have done things. Those are mine and worked for me – they’ll have to come up with what works for them and a new generation.

Will Trump and his ilk reorder their thoughts after spectral visitations? Unlikely. Their public actions suggest that they are unwilling to listen to the ghosts already speaking to them . I can hope that eventually their hearts and minds will let in concepts such as empathy and equity but I’m not holding my breath. We can weigh our options as voters and decide who listens to the voices of the past and uses them to improve the future and give them our votes rather than voting based on an R or a D after the name but that will require engaging in the political process rather than treating it as a spectator sport. In the meantime, I’ve had my Chinese food so it’s time for a movie. May you and yours have a merry Christmastime (remember it lasts for twelve days – until Janurary 6th) and, in the immortal words of Tiny Tim. God Bless Us, Every One.

I woke up early. Generally I sleep until the alarm sounds, I hit snooze a couple of times and then I drag myself out of bed trying to remember what I have to do that day and then wander through the bathroom and my closet doing all those little tasks that make us presentable enough to be seen by other people. If I don’t do these things, I look a bit like Christopher Lloyd’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future and no one is going to take anything I say seriously unless it has something to do with DeLoreans, Flux Capacitors, or 88 miles an hour. I am fortunate that it takes me a total of twelve minutes from the time I walk out the door of my condo until I walk in the door of any of the three offices in which I might start my day. This allows me to set my alarm relatively late. ‘Not a Morning Person’ doesn’t even begin to cover it although I usually reach a point of equipoise after either a large cup of coffee or 10 am, whichever comes first.

At least part of the reason for early rising was a large number of ideas racing through my brain regarding various writing projects. Now that things theatrical are complete for awhile (with the exception of South Pacific in mid-January, but that being an Alabama Symphony Orchestra production, it has a very compressed one week rehearsal/performance schedule and I am taking vacation that week as many of the rehearsals are during business hours), I have several months in which I can get a good deal of writing done if I can make myself focus. Nothing else on my performance calendar goes into heavy rehearsal until mid to late March. Therefore, these musings may start appearing a little more regularly, my movie reviewing alter-ego should get busy again, and I have two major projects in mind on which I want to complete full drafts. As I write quickly when I’m in the zone, I don’t think my goals are overly lofty. We’ll see what emerges. One of the two projects is my long-proposed book ‘Boom’ analyzing the fallout when the immovable object of the older Baby Boomers’ attitudes toward life are hit by the unstoppable force of biologic and physiological reality and what the effects may be on our already rickety healthcare system. The other one I’m not prepared to discuss yet.

Some of my sleep issues are likely bound up with my cervical stenosis and consequent left shoulder girdle pain and spasm. It was worse than ever the last few days (and if I snapped at anyone backstage at Miracle on 34th Street, I apologize – it wasn’t you, it was a pain response). I do have an appointment for them to try steroid injections at the nerve roots again, this time with me awake so I can tell them when they’ve hit the right spot, but it’s not for another five weeks. I shall be consulting with my primary care about temporizing options today. Tylenol is only taking me so far. The problem is that most of the things that are likely to help are also likely to put me to sleep so I can’t use them on workdays. Just one more thing in life designed to give me additional empathy with my patients.

As we head into the holidays in a society very different than the one we had last holiday season, I have to keep repeating the mantra I made up in response to the initial barrage of really bad ideas flowing from the White House. Get Up. Get Dressed. Go Out. Do Good. It’s all any of us can do unless we want to run for congress or some such. There are people who have suggested that I should run for elective office as I’m calm, have a good head on my shoulders, and always look for the win/win when problem solving. Sorry to disappoint you. As an openly gay man in Alabama, I have far too many skeletons in my closet and would rather not see them batted around town like some sort of festive Dia De Los Muertos parade. Instead, I’ll just write about them here- some of them at least. I do curate what I write. Someday I may write a warts and all memoir but now is not that time.

The latest target of the regime appears to be the Smithsonian. I guess they’ve finished hollowing out the Kennedy Center with the official and illegal renaming. Notices have gone out that federal funding will be withheld unless exhibits which do not agree with the administration’s interpretation of American history (which seems to have come from 1940s elementary school history texts). What has made this country great and unique is the fact that it has been created by so many different peoples, each with their own story, coming together to make something far grander than could have been done in isolation. Some of those peoples came willingly in waves of immigration. Some were tragically dragged here in chains. Some were not allowed to achieve full potential due to various waves of xenophobia. But each is important in the American story. This idea that ‘Heritage Americans’ descended from European settlers and immigrants should be the official narrative does a huge disservice to the country. In the last few decades, due to the elevation of other voices and narratives, I’ve developed a much clearer picture of who we are, both positive and negative. How was it that I, incredibly well read and well educated, was completely unaware of the Tulsa race massacre of 1923 until the last decade or so? Trying to bury these stories because they may make some of European descent feel uncomfortable does no good to anyone. I am expecting the administration to close the Smithsonian’s African American history museum and the Native American history museum as they are full of painful truths. They’ll probably sell off the buildings as well. But they can be rebuilt bigger and better when the time comes. The work has been done. The truth is out there. You can’t bury it. Perhaps people will draw the line when Melania is presented with the Hope Diamond. The Resolute Desk has already been spotted at Mar-a-Lago.

Other items of note – the DOJ has once again flouted the law with their refusal to release all of the Epstein files as required by congress. And they have been so busy redacting files (also illegal under that law other than to protect the identity of victims) that all sorts of crazy mistakes are being made. We’ll have to see what congress intends to do. The House will do nothing as long as Mike Johnson is in charge, but his days may be numbered as he is losing control of his caucus. If only the Republican party had not encouraged absurd stories about the government being controlled by a secret pedophile cabal through Qanon. Those adherents are hopping mad at the lack of transparency, and the Republicans will need every vote they can muster to maintain control after the midterms as the average swing away from Republicans to Democrats over the last year is sixteen points.

Another item – CBS news can now no longer be considered a news organization with Bari Weiss having spiked the Sixty Minutes piece on CECOT due to her pro-Trump positions. Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave. I imagine Sixty Minutes will be producing incisive Trump propaganda in the new year but it’s unlikely to be very interesting once all of the real journalists and talent in the CBS News Department depart for greener pastures.

Another item – Turning Point USA had their annual convention the last few days. You could have a selfie in a replica of the Charlie Kirk death tent. The widow Kirk appeared in her mourning sequins as expected. Most of the other speakers seem to have spent the time attacking each other over Gaza, antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and various purity tests. There wasn’t much discussion of policy or how to fix the rather enormous problems we’re all facing. It was a circular firing squad worthy of the Democrats. The more I see of it, the more I believe that MAGA and the alt-right will splinter on the death of Trump. There’s no one in the inner circle with the personal charisma to step up into that sort of imperial leadership role. When will that be? I have no idea, but this physician can tell that he is not a healthy man.

I’ve rattled on long enough and I have patients waiting for me at my clinic so I better wrap this up. Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Do good.

I have a midweek day off today. I don’t get those very often. I scheduled this one because I was supposed to have a school matinee of ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ but that didn’t happen and I decided I’d take the time anyway. I wish I could say I slept in, but I had to get up early and complete a rush job on a legal case review that the attorneys are trying to settle prior to Christmas. I don’t have a drop everything and get this done rate. Maybe I should update my rate sheet. I haven’t decided if I’ll keep up the legal work after I retire. It’s interesting, it pays well, I can do it on my schedule (usually). A problem to be solved another day.

Speaking of ‘Miracle on 34th Street’, it opens tonight at The Carver Theater downtown and runs this weekend. Thurs/Fri/Sat evening at 7:30 and Sat matinee at 2:30. It’s an African-American take on the holiday classic. Tickets availabe online at the Encore Theatre and Gallery website or at the door. I basically have an extended cameo as the judge in the courtroom scene. In my head I’m basing him on Liam Dunn’s judge from the courtroom scene at the end of ‘What’s Up Doc?’ but I’m not sure that I’m entirely succeeding. But then I don’t have Madeline Kahn and Austin Pendleton to play off of.

My left shoulder continues to give me fits. I have more corticosteroid injections into my cervical nerve roots schedulesd for late January. I guess I just have to put up with it and try not to be too crabby with the world until then. If you run across me in person and see that I’m doing weird posturing with my neck and left shoulder, it’s me trying to lift up my cervical vertebrae to reduce symptoms and, if I’m not my usual sweet self, it’s a pain response – it’s not you.

Because of work and dress rehearsals and raiding my condo for things to use as set dressing for the show, and general holiday time mayhem, I haven’t been paying as much attention to the political world as I normally do. But I am trying to piece together the actions of supposedly intelligent adult men and women in DC in the light of events over the last few days. We have the Vanity Fair piece on Susie Wiles (which I have not yet read) which lifts the curtain on the full level of dysfunction and chaos in the executive branch. Why was that done? Is she trying to give herself a plausible deniability out in case everything comes crashing down? But that’s something I don’t get in general. The vast majority of the leaders of the Republican party on both national and state level have spent this past year gleefully supporting words which are demonstratably false, actions which are demonstratably illegal and motives which are demonstratably immoral under pretty much any human ethical or religious system. When the fever breaks, how do they plan to justify themselves to their progeny, to the electorate, to history? Trump is not immortal. Trumpism does not appear to be economically sustainable. I can see choosing to live in a world of alternative facts with others who think the same way but these are people who were educated using logic and reason and science. Objective reality must shine through the cracks occasionally. One can hold a society in thrall and stasis (witness North Korea or mid century East Germany) but the amount of social capital necessary to do so prevents that society from succeeding on the world stage in this global politcal and socio-economic system that’s been constructed over nearly a century.

We have the accelerating distraction of distant war drums in Venezuela. The administration is apparently trying to get American big oil interested in supporting him in exchange for developing the enormous Venezuelan oil reserves. Those companies, not being run by stupid or uneducated executives, are demurring knowing that going all in would likely help make them international pariahs. In the meantime, we all remain accomplices in unsanctioned muder of people in small boats thousands of miles away from our shores – unreachable by those small boats due to their short maritime travel ranges.

Then there is Trump himself. I did not watch his speech last night and will not. He has nothing to say that I need to hear. The reporting on it made it clear that is was bombastic, full of distortions and lies, and mainly regurgitated rally talking points. I can’t imagine it playing well to anyone outside of his more fanatical base of support. From what I can tell, Trump has devolved into an emotional toddler, running around with two basic thoughts ‘No’ and ‘Mine’. Anyone who has cared for a child in the terrible twos knows that just letting them run rampant isn’t the correct way to encourage growth and maturity, but we have an entire political party who seems to think that this is the correct course of action. His new plaques in the White House colonnade with insults to his predecessors that the average 7th grader would find juvenile, just further confirm his inability to lead a modern nation state and make me question the motivations of his well educated and intelligent supporters more and more.

Things seem to be relatively quiet on the public health front, other than the administration canceling grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics which funded a number of important long term child health studies. It appears to be a fit of pique over the Academy’s strong disagreement with HHS’s monkeying with the childhood vaccination schedule based on antivax propoganda. Vaccines save lives. The recent French study on Covid vaccines showed not only did they prevent that disease, but four years on, those who were vaccinated had 25% lower all cause mortality. They did not posit why. I assume that those smart enough to care for their health by seeking out vaccine are also more likely to engage in other healthy behaviors and are less likely to engage in risky activities.

There are a lot of viral cruds running through town and I have had a drippy nose the last few days. Covid, flu and RSV numbers, the dangerous ones, are all pretty low however. It’s just the usual wintertime things. Keep your hands washed. Stay home if you’re sick. Take some Tylenol. Keep your fluids up. The usual.

I’m going to have a bunch of time to write the next few weeks but I have no idea what I should be writing about. I may write more of these long posts. I may put my energy into a book project. I may start something completely new and see where it goes. If there are any requests, now’s a good time to get them in.

I miss Tommy. I especially feel his absence in December given the marathon of activity that accompanied our holiday season in our years together. Thanksgiving with my family in Seattle from which he would need to depart early in order to prepare dozens and dozens of wigs for the huge cast of Red Mountain Theatre Company’s Holiday Spectacular. Then on to getting the kids of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham ready for their pageant – he produced, directed, musical directed, costumed and I ran around with duct tape, safety pins, and hot glue keeping everything together. (It was a real challenge the year we were having the house painted in December and we were busy assembling everything in a rather cramped extended stay hotel room). Then he moved on to Opera Birmingham’s holiday concert – Sounds of the Season where he did the setting, coordinated the production logistics, ran the box office, and put together the patrons’ buffet. I was usually in a holiday show of some sort with its tech week and performance schedule (there was one memorable year where I drove across town between the matinee and evening shows of A Christmas Carol in order to help him with the tech/dress of the children’s pageant). One or the other or perhaps both of us would sing The Messiah with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. Then it was on to Christmas itself – Christmas Eve service at church (more children’s music and adult choir performance) forllowed by formal sit down dinner for his family which he cooked from scratch. Somewhere in there I had to get the house fully decorated and all the trees up. Christmas Day was usually low key and then it was balls to the wall to get everything ready for our holiday open house for our friends, traditionally the Sunday after Christmas and one of the must do events for Theatrical Birmingham. Again, Tommy made all the food from scratch while I had to rearrange the house for two hundred guests. And people wonder why we rarely went out for New Year’s Eve. We were pretty much passed out at that point.

The holidays are far less hectic these days. I’m appearing in Miracle on 34th Street for Encore Theatre this next week but other than that, the schedule is relatively empty and very quiet for me the weeks of Christmas and New Year. I’m not traveling as I have to take time off in January for various reasons. I have vague ideas of sitting around reading trashy novels and catching up on Netflix for a few days. I’m sure I’ll find something to fill my time. Maybe I’ll put up all my Christmas decorations. I did very little of that last year. I even had a little time to read some poetry for Birmingham’s Krampuslauf. I wore a holiday variant on my plague doctor outfit.

As I’m not overscheduled to the nth degree, I’ve had the chance to attend some of our holiday traditions that rolled around again this year in a non-participatory mode. The UU Church Children’s pageant was this morning. When I looked at the Christmas tree in the sanctuary, I realized that the prop presents under the tree were ones Tommy had made for some pageant years ago. This afternoon, I went to the opera’s Sounds of the Season. Same thing. There were various pieces of the setting that I recognized as having been devised by Tommy for a previous edition, including a couple of prop presents. Tommy continues to live on. Tommy loved certain aspects of Christmas – the food, the music, the decorations, the fellowhip. He absolutely hated gifts and gift giving. How ironic that it’s his prop presents that survive. Someday they will rip or fade and be replaced by something new but this year, at least, they were unexpected reminders of a life that used to be mine.

Per usual, there is a great deal I could say about modern politics and the current administration. I am choosing, at the moment, to avoid thinking too much about it for my personal mental health. I’m not depressed but I could probably nudge myself that direction if I spend too much time railing against things over which I have no power. I’m going to have to let a number of things based in domestic and foreign policy slide and care for themselves. I will, however, make note of a few things that have bearing on my life as people have asked about them.

The first is the announcement that the VA is going to cut 35,000 staff jobs (including doctors and nurses) on top of the 30,000 cut this past year. To put this in perspective, the VA employs about 470,000 people nationwide and there was a push in 2023 to hire 30,000 new staff to gear up for the needs of an aging population and to assist with the new directives allowing veterans to use VA benefits to seek care outside of the system in the community. So that first cut basically clawed back the increase under Biden and the second cut represents about 7.5% of the workforce, It’s mainly going to happen by not filling vacancies rather than firing staff but it’s not going to make my life any easier. The VA program I work for, Home Based Primary Care, brings fairly complete multidisciplinary primary care clinic services to the veteran’s home if he or she cannot easily access a VA medical clinic. Our goal has been to expand the program so that all veterans in the Birmingham VA catchment area of North-Central Alabama can enroll no matter where they live. We’re close to attaining it – we don’t have coverage in the far Northwest corner around Florence or on the Georgia border to the East. Two more teams would allow us to finish it out but with this latest announcement, that’s not going to happen. We also have a number of team members of retirement age (including yours truly) and it’s going to be very difficult to hire replacements over the next few years when the time comes. Services in general will be harder and harder to come by and weight times will be longer. But that’s been happening throughout the medical system over the last couple of years as there is a collision of an aging population, the changes wrought by the pandemic, and my whole generation of providers stampeding for the exit. Almost none of the specialists I’ve referred to for decades remains.

There also appears to be mass chaos within the health infrastructure of HHS given the caliber of individual elevated to positions of power. This is causing incredible stress to the research arms of academic health centers. As these institutions have been designed over the last eighty years or so to be knowledge factories, significant interference with the funds flow which allows this mission to be completed has led to everything being a bit off kilter. UAB seems to be weathering the storm at the moment but there are signs everywhere of fiscal retrenching and money not being available to hire support staff or upgrade facilities. What is all of this doing to the average American? There is no real health expertise or guidance working with congress on the issue of the spiking healthcare premiums caused by the Big Beautiful Bill and what this will do to both the health of citizens and the health care sector of the economy. We have major outbreaks of eradicated diseases such as measles. There is a coordinated attack on science and reason for political ends happening throughout the government. Can’t have facts that might contradict political narratives getting in the way.

Meanwhile, the Baby Boom enters its eighties in two weeks, there is no policy in place to deal with the very real problems this is going to represent to society and this particular Cassandra is packing up his megaphone and looking for other ways to expend energy. Thirty five years is enough time to have spent on that crusade.

I should have written a long post earlier this week. I had time. I had plenty of things about which to write but something kept preventing me. I think it’s an emotional response to the state of the world and the continuous firehose of news that ricochets between the tragic and the absurd. I know it’s making a lot of my fellow citizens who see the world through a more progressive lens angry. It seems to be provoking glee in some of my more reactionary acquaintances, although I cannot find anything to celebrate in government initiatives based in callousness and cruelty. In me, it’s just creating sadness. It’s not the sadness of clinical depression (which I have experienced in my life) but something more existential, a feeling of needing to say goodbye to all that (to borrow a phrase from Robert Graves who lived through a similar period of societal upheaval in the wake of the First World War).

The early decades of the 20th century, with two catastrophic World Wars and the Great Depression, led the United States to become one of the chief architects of Post-War Western Civilization, a rules based order guided by diplomacy, economic cooperation. The children of these planners and civil servants, the Baby Boom, were to be spared at all costs the horrors that had been visited on their parents. Now, eighty years later, those same children, now in their early geriatric years, are in the process of tearing down the systems their parents so lovingly built to protect them, prefering instead to rapidly institute a society more similar to that of the 18th and 19th centuries – one in which resources are not equitably distributed, opportunities are limited to the connected, and tribalism is not only encouraged but revered.

I don’t see much good coming from any of this. Tribal impulses are hardwired into our brains by evolution as our unit of survival is not the individual, but the tribe. We are social animals and we rise and fall on our ability to work together cooperatively. When we look around and define who we are by our social connections, one of the first things we do in order to make ourselves feel special is to define who or what we are not. We create out groups and underclasses and state that certain belief systems or philosophies should be spurned, if not outright suppressed. As we grew from nomadic bands into civilized urban society, it became clear that open societies more accepting of different kinds of thought or custom excelled quicker than those hwo took more repressive stances. Religion frequently became the means of overcoming the innate distrust of out groups through its messages of compassion and welcoming the stranger. Religious teachers were quick to recognize how strong the impulse to retreat across the moat and behind the walls is and how there must be countervailing messages. Of course, many of the keepers of American Christianity are abandoning this key role of religion and discounting the messages of the Bible which speak to this. I read somewhere that in a number of Evangelical denominations, The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), the key teachings of Jesus, are basically being phased out for being too ‘woke’. Reverend Dale Turner, my pastor at University Congregational Church in Seattle when I was growing up, would be absolutely appalled.

We’re in a period of change. Nothing can stop that. Socio/economic/political forces beyond the control of any individual have been unleashed. There’s lot of destruction in the change as it has happened over the last year. Physical destruction of public monuments, suppression of people and ideas outside of prescribed orthodoxy. Torture and murder condoned by the highest of officers. But the new cannot happen if the old stands in the way. I am trusting that the forest fire engulfing us clears out the brush and the deadwood and allows the cones of the giant redwoods to open and allow a new generation to come up with something better than we have had. Yesterday I was a judge at the Alabama State High School Theatre competition. 2500 theatre kids from all over the state descended on UAB along with their teachers, parents, friends, and other entourage. The Alys Stephens Center and surrounding buildings were bursting with youthful energy and idealism. There were teenagers rehearsing Shakespeare on lawns and perfecting their song phrasing in stairwells. The kids I met through the day were smart, kind, intuitive and a few were enormously talented. The kids are all right if we will just nurture them a bit longer and let them takee center stage. Unfortunately, that will require the Boom to exit stage left (pursued by bear?) and they will not relinquish the spotlight willingly. However, time and biology care not for their wishes and they will become culturally irrelevant around 2040 as their die off accelerates.

I suppose the essential question is which will come faster, the die off of the older generation or the repurposing of society to a model that the Georgians and Victorians would recognize. We are going that way. Despite the platitudes coming from the White House press office, our economy is in serious trouble for average Americans. (And it’s not because immigrants are stealing our jobs or eathing our pets and it’s not because Venezuelan narco-terrorists have somehow figured out how to run fentanyl (a product they do not make) over more than a thousand miles of open sea in small boats with at best a 150-200 mile range). Wealth has moved upward into fewer and fewer hands so fast that we now have greater economic inequities than existed in 1789 France and 1917 Russia. We are and remain the wealthiest society the planet has ever produced. If you run the numbers, mean household income in the US is about $100,000 a year. However, that is skewed upward significantly by the enormous gains of the very wealthy. If you remove the top 1% of earners, mean household income plummets down to about $75,000. If you remove the top 5% of earners, it goes down closer to $65,000. It’s this last figure that’s likely the one we should be considering when discussing economic policy, not the first. What is likely saving our social stability is our relatively recent ability to better control our reproductive habits. We are having far fewer children and revolutions happen when we reach a tipping point of too many mamas not able to feed their babies. Of course this is going to create a fresh set of issues in the late 21st century based in demography… and we’ve done such a good job with the glaringly obvious current one, the aging of the boom, which has been apparent for about sixty years now. I’ve spent thirty-five years of professional life playing Cassandra and telling several generations of health administrators about what was going to be necessary as we approach peak age in 2030. I’ve had zero luck getting any of them to listen or to make forward thinking changes. This, more than anything else, is what is driving me rapidly into retirement.

I finished work early on Friday so I did something I have not done in some time. I took myself to a matinee movie and went to see the new film version of the recent Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along. After paying nearly $40 for a ticket, popcorn, a dink and a bag of peanut M&Ms, I remembered why I don’t head out to the movies as often as I used to. From the mid 70s through the 90s, I went to a film at least once a week, and often more frequently than that. But not at those prices. Most of you who know me at all know that I worship at the altar of Stephen Sondheim and have since I was in my teens. Merrily We Roll Along has a special place in the canon for my generation. I was 19 years old when the original production opened, crashed and burned, shifting Sondheim’s career. The show was cast with performers of my generation and spoke to what it meant to be in that first stage of adulthood when everything was possible and nothing made sense. When the album came out a few months later, it became part of the soundtrack of my college life. I even had a Charlie and Mary in Craig Mollerstuen and Vickie Rozell. ‘Old Friends’ has remained our theme song since 1982 and we still sing it to each other on those occasions when we get together. Unlike the fictional trio, we developed adult lives without betrayals and we remain close. I saw the stage production twice in New York a couple years ago so the film held no surprises for me in terms of plot or musical choices or design or performance. What did surprise me was director Maria Friedman’s decision to film most of the show in close up and two shot. It allowed me, sitting out there in the dark, to understand and develop a more intimate emotional connection with the principal characters as I could see details of facial expression or eye movement that I couldn’t catch from the mezzanine of the Hudson Theater. As the reverse chronology carried them back from jaded middle age to idealistic youth, culminating in the exquisite Our Time trio on a Manhattan rooftop, I found my brain a jumble of memory. Memories of my life choices and the ramifications they proved to have. Memories of other productions of Merrily We Roll Along I had seen (and I’ve seen a lot – I first met Sondheim at one in Seattle at ACT Theater in 1988). Memories of Daniel Radcliffe growing up over eight Harry Potter movies (particular favorites of Tommy’s. He loved to have them playing when he was in his wig studio). I came out of the theater teary eyed and thinking about how everything used to be so clear and straightforward when I was that age and now nothing is and what were my contributions to all of those things that are currently making our world and our politics a mess and is it possible to atone.

I try to be a mensch. It isn’t always easy but I figure that’s what I’ve got to give. That and doing my bit to make sure that the young will get their time. Give them room and start the clock.

It’s the Saturday of the four day Thanksgiving weekend. According to my bedroom clock, the time is now five minutes past kickoff of the 2025 Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn. Most of the state will be glued to their TVs for the next few hours letting out occasional whoops of joy or howls of execration; I could care less. If I had a date, tonight would be the night I’d try that new restaurant that’s impossible to get a reservation for but I don’t so I’m enjoying a cocktail, a rewatch of Stranger Things in preparation for the new season, and the sounds of Liszt drifting in from the piano as my friend continues his diligent practice. He’s a trained pianist, does not own one, so I’m letting him come over and practice on Tommy’s grand. I think he’d like that.

I’m having a fairly quiet long weekend after the craziness of the Soulfood rehearsal schedule and before the craziness of the Miracle on 34th Street rehearsal schedule begins. We’re putting that one up in about ten days. Fortunately, I’m only in one scene with no blocking and a grand total of thirteen lines. I think I’ll make it. So far, without too much taxing of brain or body. I’ve managed to catch up on all my patient care work, write the letters of recommendation for fellow facultys’ promotional packets that I had been putting off, finished up a legal case, done my holiday shopping for the family, assembled my annual gift basket for shippping to Seattle, and started on some major and overdue house cleaning/reorganization. I’ve been in this space for over five years now. It’s time to get rid of stuff I moved in which I haven’t touched since and am unlikely to need in the near future. THis is being pushed by my losing of my academic office as I move towards retirement. Much of what is in there is hopelessly out of date and needs to hit the dumpster but there are some things which will be helpful if I continue writing and some consultancy so I have to find a home for them here.

It’s difficult to get a read on public health issues these days due to a complete lack of transparency on the part of the current administration and a general destruction of the means by which science has been diseminated both to the scientific community and the public at large. There are any number of respiratory viruses running around Birmingham at the moment. The majority are the cruds. Flu and Covid are out there but the numbers appear to be relatively low. Keep those hands washed.

On the other hand all of the other things in DC are also in their usual disastrous state. We have one cabinet member revealed to have given verbal orders to commit murder. We have another cabinet member revealed to have directly disobeyed the orders of a federal judge. We appear to be about to invade Venezuela for no discernable reason other than our president doesn’t like their president. The structure the East Wing of the White House was torn down for has no final design as the president’s expectations are unrealistic. A shooting in DC which leaves so many unanswered questions is rapidly being used for even more immigrant bashing, and in such a rapid and well ordered way that it’s clear they had the plans developed and just needed the pretext.

Those who live and die by the gridiron – have fun tonight and may somebody win. My college football career reached it’s zenith in 1982 when I was in the stands at the Stanford/Cal game that ended with the famous band play and trombone tackle. It will never be equalled so I figure why waste a lot of time going to less memorable games?