Exactly eleven years ago, at this hour, Tommy and I stood before a judge in the King County Washington Criminal Court (right after the Grand Theft Auto Case that had dragged on a bit longer than anyone had expected) and said our ‘I Dos’. Tommy, who always hated ceremony of any kind, wasn’t too thrilled with it but it meant something to me as I never expected that a legally binding marriage contract would be available to me within my lifetime and yet, there we were – signed, sealed, and delivered. It wasn’t a wedding with the usuall fripperies and the only people in attendance were my father and my cousin Jenny as witnesses. It was followed by a dinner in the backyard of my sister’s house with the rest of the family and a few friends. We had been together for over a decade at the time and didn’t want a fuss made. Later that evening, in bed, we both changed our Facebook statuses to married and were highly amused at the rapid appearance of exclamations of surprise and good will as we had told no one in Alabama of our plans.

Our marriage didn’t last. Tommy’s death four years later saw to that. But I did have a marriage and it’s recorded in various legal databanks for posterity. That means something. As I sit here and watch the current administration industriously trying to rewrite history, weaponize politics against individuals with whom they disagree, and blithely erase data which might contradict their belief system, I sometimes wonder if the record of my marriage will survive? It really won’t make any difference in the history of the world one way or another but as a member of a suspect class in a time when conservative forces are trying to eliminate the rights of members of suspect classes, I feel it’s important that my marriage, and all of the other legal same sex marriages that have come into being over the course of the last couple of decades continue to stand as evidence of lives and achievements.

The various DC meltdowns over the Epstein files and their Schroedinger’s cat like existence and the finger pointing regarding the tragedy of the flooding in Texas have knocked most other stories out of the headlines over the last week or so. I don’t care who or what is in the Epstein files. If there’s evidence of criminal wrong doing, let justice take its course. I don’t believe in the bizarre conspiracy theories that are being swapped around on the seamier side of social media. The number of people who would have had to have been complicit and never talked makes it unlikely that it’s anything other than garden variety sleazebag behavior among the class with more money than sense. If there’s one thing that forty years in medicine has taught me it’s that human beings are terrible at keeping secrets. Someone always spills the tea. This is why these exotic and far reaching conspiracies are just not possible. There’s always a repair guy or a maid or a low level functionary who sees or reads something and they don’t keep quiet. Just like the nonsense about chemtrails. The number of pilots, airline ground crew, chemists, transportation workers, and manufacturing plant employees that would have to be in on it and then keep quiet for decades is impossible.

I don’t have much to say about the flooding. One of the girls killed at Camp Mystic was the daughter of a colleague here at UAB and my heart aches. Murphy’s law was in full force that night regarding weather, official reactions, federal responses, and all the rest and sometimes tragedies occur. We have two choices. Sitting around finger pointing and shifting the blame or learning form what happened and making changes in our behavior to lessen the chances of this tragedy recurring. Given that a nearly identical tragedy happened back in 1987, I can bet as to which one is likely to take place. The average American, and their governmental representatives have decided since about World War I that development and building is about profit and natural forces are immaterial. Just because you build does not mean the flood plain vanishes, the storms don’t form, the fires don’t race up the hillside and the earth won’t shake.

What has been driven off of the front pages, and even the middle pages, is what’s happening in public health. Measles, a disease that had more or less been eradicated, has come roaring back with a vengeance fueled by vaccine politics and misinformation that has infected the entire body politic. Measles is so contagious that it’s the canary in the coalmine. It’s always going to be the first one back if public health fences start to fall. Other previously eradicated or controlled diseases are likely to follow. And the building of unsanitary concentration camps in swamps may accelerate this. DHS has decided to cease all reporting on H5N1 bird flu so there is no way of knowing where it is, whether it’s increasing, if it’s showing more signs of human to human transmission, or anything else that might be useful. Keep in mind that it’s mortality rate in humans is approaching 50% so it might be a good thing to know what’s going on with it. Out of sight, out of mind is not a useful public health strategy. Covid-19 numbers remain relatively low in terms of hospitalization and mortality but it’s still out there. About one in two hundred Americans is infected at any given time and the biggest issue currently is multiple subclinical infections which can still lead to long covid. I have found that I am requiring a good deal more sleep this last month or so than usual and am having to budget in time for naps. This is new for me. I don’t think it’s just my advanced age. I truly wonder if one of my endless series of respiratory infections this past winter was subclinical covid that didn’t show up on testing and this is my version of long covid. Covid shots should still be available this fall for those who want them. I am still going to get mine. Chance of severe complication from covid vaccine = 1/1000000. Chance of severe complication from covid 1/50.

Our illustrious head of DHS, RFK Jr. has cancelled the next meeting of the US Preventive Services Task Force. When he did this for the advisory committee on immunization practices this past spring, it was in preparation for firing all of the vaccine scientists on the board and replacing them with, from what I can tell, a lot of anti-vaccine cranks. I don’t know if he’s going to do the same with USPSTF but I won’t be surprised. Why should you care? USPSTF is an impartial group of experts in public health who go over all of the evidence regarding health screenings and rating them as to their effectiveness and whether they should be pursued in the population at large. Language in the PPACA requires health insurance plans to cover any screening that USPSTF rates at an A or B level (it’s a cost effective measure that saves lives). If USPSTF falls, then insurers will have no mandate to cover screening tests for cancer or other diseases. You’ll still be able to get them, but they’ll cost you a lot more.

I’m still hearing about fallout from the Big Beautiful Bill signed last week. Now people are actually starting to read those thousand pages and project out what they mean. In regards to the Medicaid cuts, and yes they actually exist, they won’t hit Alabama as hard as a lot of other states. We never took the Medicaid expansion and we have always had one of the stingiest of plans so there’s almost no fat to cut. There are no able bodied guys eating Cheetohs and playing video games on mama’s couch receiving Medicaid in this state. Able bodied men are essentially ineligible. Nor does Alabama Medicaid enroll undocumented adults. The very narrow margins that exist in rural healthcare in this state will almost certainly be upended and we will lose rural hospitals and clinics. UAB is going to be heavily impacted between Medicaid cuts, grant cuts and reduction of indirects. In 2023 (the last year for which I can find numbers), UAB was the state’s largest employer and provided just over 5% of the state’s total GDP. Major cuts there will have ripple effects absolutely everywhere. I’m still trying to hang in there for another couple of years but if all hell breaks lose after next year’s budgets come out, I may need to gracefully exit stage left, pursued by bear.

Happy Fifth of July or, as it is known in theatre circles, Lanford Wilson day. And no, I’m not going to explain that. Google and Wikipedia are your friends. Until they are made to conform to ideology rather than fact. Given our reliance on these sorts of digital tools, it’s now a good deal easier for an authoritarian regime to rewrite history. The right programmer, a few keystrokes, and poof! Inconvenient facts and events vanish from the record. I imagine they’ll start experimenting with the erasure of inconvenient people in the not too distant future. I’d probably end up on that list if anyone actually read these random musings of mine outside of my immediate circle of acquaintance. I’ve been rereading some of my Accidental Plague Diaries in preparation for future writing projects. So much of what was written there, less than five years ago, has been stricken from the current narrative of the pandemic. The books will remain as an acurate reflection of what really happened.

Facts and science, however, remain immutable. Yesterday there were devastating flash floods in Texas and dozens were killed. There was apparently little warning of the rainstorms that sparked the flooding. Perhaps axing the budget of the National Weather Service and taking a number of its data bases off line was not the wisest of ideas. And I’m dure Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton will get right on clearing the debris and putting things to rights now that FEMA has more or less been dismembered. Meanwhile, in Florida, the first rainstorm to hit Alligator Auschwitz (a non uncommon occurence in central Florida in the summer) seems to be disrupting the various tents and there are several inches of standing water on the floors. I don’t think I need to tell you that the combination of stagnant water and crowded human beings is a set up for infectious disease. And once seeded, they are not likely to remain conveniently solely on site.

What is the purpose of the detention camp in the swamps of Florida? Which, if the current administration has its way, will be replicated in a town near you in the ridiculous attempt to deport every undcomumented or paperwork error or funny accented or anything else that strikes ICE’s fancy person in the US over the next few years. The legislation signed yesterday pours billions into this shameful project so they’ll have all the resources they need to do it. The true purpose of something is often not evident. Take the famous example of the McDonald’s Ice Cream machines. (The ones that are always broken). It would seem that the purpose of these machines is to dispense frosty goodness to the great American public but as an investigation by Wired showed, this is not so. The true purpose is to continue to enrich the Taylor Company (the machines’ manufacturer) who also have an exclusive contract for maintenance and repair. The more they break, the more money flows through the service contracts.

Given the economics of these concentration camps, built by companies with strong ties to the administration and major donors to the Republican party, the cost being charged to the federal government comes out to about $250 per bed per day. Hampton Inn would be cheaper. The annual budget for Alligator Auschwitz is an astonishing 450 million dollars. The inner workings are shrouded in secrecy. Just as ICE is refusing Democratic lawmakers access to their federal facilities in violation of federal law, the state of Florida is refusing Florida Democratic lawmakers access to this place despite it having been built with tax revenues – a violation of state law. Nothing good happens behind closed doors. These camps are likely to be a profitable business and healthy investment for those behind them thanks to the largess of the federal treasury. The purpose of these camps will, therefore, be return on investment. And once built, they will not be allowed to be empty as that would reduce the revenue stream. We will start seeing native born citizens rounded up and incarcerated eventually if things do not change. The MAGA drummers are already talking about the need to deport 65 million Americans. This is the entire population of the US of Latin/Hispanic heritage, many of whose families have been here far longer than the arriviste northern Europeans.

I did not watch the signing of the Big Beautiful Bill. It’s big. It’s hardly beautiful and signing it on the 4th of July (which MAGA loved) is a perversion of that date in history. I can hardly wait to see what they have in store for this next year, our 250th anniversary. Fifty years ago, for the bicentennial, we had the rather staid Bicentennial Minutes on CBS every evening. And with only three national networks (four if you count PBS), we all watched them. I’ve heard rumors Trump is going to give us a UFC smackdown at the White House. The bill is full of heinous cuts to social services and various mechanisms to continue the flow of capital to the very few at the top. Most of the pain, however, is delayed with most of the cuts set to go into effect at the end of 2026 (after the midterms) and 2028 (after the general). Because of this delay, a lot of them will be relatively easy to undo by a new congress. Presuming we have egalitarian elections next year, if all of those who dislike what’s in the bill (about 70% of the country) vote against the party that drafted and passed it, it can be made to go away.

I decided to forego the fireworks last night (I wasn’t in the mood) but I did get a little time in the sun and had a large sloppy hamburger for lunch. Today, I’m planning on going to see the new Jurassic Park movie. I’ve heard it’s terrible but I have a fondness for dino disaster tales. I’ve never quite figured out why Steven Spielberg’s original, one of the finest summer popcorn movies evver, has been able to spawn so many grade z sequels. Even Spielberg wasn’t able to capture lightning in a bottle twice. He directed the first sequel and it’s one of the worst of the lot. I have Monday off so it’s a four day weekend for me. With luck all of the little tasks I’ve been putting off will start falling off of my To Do list, struck through in the turquoise ink from the pen that’s currently sitting next to my notepad. That is if the cats haven’t expropriated it for a toy. No matter how many cute little cat toy things I give them, they prefer pens and pencils knocked off whatever flat surface they’ve been resting on. At least it’s just writing implements and they haven’t graduated to vases and serving platters.

And so, with Lisa Murkowski being granted a heaping helping of pork belly and Susan Collins issuing her usual statement of being gravely concerned (which never seems to change her vote), it looks like Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will cross the finish line in the Senate. Thom Tillis, who took a somewhat principled stand against it, has had his political career served up on a silver platter next to John the Baptist’s head. The writing on the wall is clear. If you wish to maintain the perquisites that come with a little R after your name, you will toe the line or you will be excommunicated. It’s not surprising. What’s happening here is no different tan what happened in Rome under the later Caesars or Europe in the age of absolute monarchy. We used to think that we Americans were special and above the problems that graced so many other nation states. Turns out we’re perfectly ordinary. Any American Exceptionalism that used to exist was pretty much toast a decade or so before I was born. We just liked to pretend that it still existed and the result is a culture that’s pretty much a Potemkin village.

I did not listen to the 16 hour reading of the 900 page bill. Neither did the Senate. I don’t think a single senator stuck around for that particular piece of political theater. But then there’s a lot of not showing up happening. Such as not a single influential member of the Republican party on a national level showing up for Melissa and Mark Hortman’s funeral – gunned down by a sick individual influenced by the stochastic terrorism of MAGA rhetoric. And that’s not going to be the last political assassination. Details are murky but someone was taking potshots at the police and fire department in Kootenai County Idaho after deliberately setting a wildfire to draw them into an ambush. I can guess the political affiliations of the shooters. Being from Washington, I am quite familiar with that piece of Idaho and the white nationalist tribe that has been gathering there since the 1970s. (See Gary Yarborough and the Aryan Nations incident in Sandpoint – 1984).

There are still intelligent people on the right side of the aisle (at least I hope so) and they must know that much of what is in the bill is incredibly destructive in its attempts to continue the moving of capital upwards to the billionaire class. All I can think is that some sort of Apres moi, le deluge mania has taken over their brains. We’re rapidly creating a society in which the young cannot economically survive. Children become a financial risk and birth rates fall, not to mention the biologic issues of delayed child bearing. (There are some interesting studies that suggest that autism is most related to older age fathers). We’ve managed to escape most of the demographic disasters waiting for Western societies due to robust immigration. Well, that’s being thrown out the window along with dissident Russian oligarchs.

I think a bunch of this all comes back to the structure of the Baby Boom and their delusion that they remain the youth generation, despite the fact they are six months away from turning eighty. If they are young and immortal, no need to worry about or create a better world for the succeeding generations. They’re babies. Well, the Millennials and Generation Z are starting to wake up to the fact that they actually outnumber the surviving Boom and, as the Boom begins their major die off in the next five years or so, it’s the young who will decide elections, as long as they vote. It’s what propelled Mandami to victory, a huge turnout by NYC voters under 35. They know that they’ve been screwed as a generation by the boom and they’re pissed. The wealth transfer in some ways is the last gasp of the boom to scarper off with the treasure before the invading army captures the citadel.

The measures in the bill, particularly when taken together with the various imperial executive orders and the wrecking ball of DOGE, (I saw a quote from someone in DOGE somewhere saying that they really couldn’t find any waste, fraud or abuse but they were under huge pressure to do something and call it that), have either knocked out or will severely damage the pillars of American society. When the roof collapses on us all in the not to distant future, no one will be able to say they didn’t intend this result You remove enough supporting walls and the building will inevitably collapse. It’s called physics. It’s a science. It doesn’t care about your belief system.

I am, of course, most concerned about what other nightmares are coming for the healthcare system and senior care. I do have the bolt hole of early retirement if necessary but I am trying to hang on for another 22 months. The bill succeeds in killing Obamacare by removing the subsidies that make it affordable. Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of smaller and rural hospitals will close due to cutbacks in Medicare and Medicaid. (And don’t believe the twaddle about there are no cuts. There are. Billions upon billions of dollars). One quarter of the nursing homes in the country will go out of business. If you have a relative in a skilled nursing facility, be prepared to take them home and care for them there. The closures combined with the needs of the rapidly aging Baby Boom will make beds nearly impossible to access. And, if your relative is lucky enough to actually have a bed and is in a state with a filial responsibility law (Alabama does not have one), the cash strapped state will begin garnishing your wages and taking your property as restitution for their care. It’s a mess, but eldercare in this country has always been a mess (it’s one of the things that attracted me to the field). I’ve fought the battles for thirty-five years. It is someone else’s turn.

Not a lot of personal news to report. I had a meeting this evening with the costume designer for Richard II. Rehearsals resume tomorrow. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s either going to end up as brilliant or an unmitigated disaster. I don’t know which yet but I’ll take full responsibility for it either way as the whole conceptual framework is out of my fever dreams of modern politics. Yesterday was my day of civic service for the month. I had a board retreat with the good folk of Central Alabama Theatre (a company that does mainly cabaret shows and small scale musicals) looking at how we position ourselves for the next few decades and then ran from that to my board responsibilities for Alabama Equality which was having a fundraiser entitiled ‘Love Wins’ celebrating enduring LGBTQIA relationships. I approached that one with mixed emotions as death cheated me out of many years of coupledom with both Steve and Tommy. Fortunately, I had taken a relatively simple task of limited scope. I was responsible for the raffle (excuse me – door prize drawing). A trip to Office Depot for tickets, and the creation of three gift baskets filled with World Market’s finest merchandise. Sixteen years with Tommy taught me a thing or two about the creation of gift baskets and I thought they came out rather well. Tickets were selling at a brisk pace when I left (I was dog tired so I didn’t stay for the whole thing) so I guess they were attractive enough to pique some interest.

I also managed to attend Tracy Letts’ new play The Minutes at Terrific New Theatre with a cast of some of Birmingham’s finest actors. I knew a bit about the play going in. (A small city’s city council meeting devolves). Without directly commenting on current politics, it brilliantly showcases many of the tensions we currently face. And the metaphorical ending, which could have easily fallen apart with a less committed cast, showed how difficult it is to escape group think. I went with my friends Patti and Ellise and Ellise drew parallels to MAGA, remarking that Trump is the fire around which they all dance. Birmingham theater has been showing up and showing out over this past season or two with productions that make you think. The Minutes, Assassins, The Crucible, for that is the job of theatrical artists. To hold up the mirror to society to help to teach it to be better. Now if I could only find some young uns to run with Politically Incorrect Cabaret.

And that’s a wrap on the first week of rehearsals for Richard II. I think it’s going to come together well and be the show I’ve had rattling around in my head these last few months. At least the parts we’ve put on their feet are working relatively well. I’ve always liked conceptual Shakespeare. At least as long as the concept helped clarify theme and character. We still do the plays after four hundred years because the ideas and insights into humanity remain timeless which in turn makes it easy to set the plays anywhere and at any time and not confine them to Elizabethan drama. Richard II may be about specific political events in late 14th – early 15th century England but thos are just surface trappings to exam how a man with absolute power undoes himself by his unwise application of that power. It’s something we see all the time – and it’s become pretty much a daily occurence under the current administration. Richard is not our current president. Richard has self awareness and that’s the tragedy. In hindsight he understands what he has done that has caused his downfall. The president isn’t a tragic figure. He’s an operatic one. He’s larger than life and if he is taken down by the gods, he will be unable to comprehend his role in that process. He’s the Duke in Rigoletto, not a conflicted Shakespearean protagonist.

So what has our Duke of Mantua and his court been up to these last few days? NATO still holds (but it’s unclear just what the outcome is going to be for Ukraine or the Baltics – it’s a good thing Russia is running out of men). The Iran/Israel contretemps remains somewhat obscure. Iran’s nuclear program was permanently damaged… no it wasn’t just set back… the news is wrong… congress is wrong… the Democrats are leaking falsehoods… the Democrats were not given the intel for political reasons… I am in agreement that the mullahs of Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I am not in agreement that the best way to deal with the issue is lobbing ballistic missles back and forth. Diplomacy is much more likely to come up with equitable solutions. The trouble is that the current administration seems to have gotten rid of all the experienced diplomats with true knowledge of the parties involved.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth that a Muslim with progressive views has come out of nowhere to be positioned as the next mayor of New York City. The far right are exclaiming that he should be denaturalized and deported. If we’re going to start playing that game, a future Democratic administration could deport the current first lady, the movie star former governor of California, and a large portion of the right wing voting block of Southern Florida. The left wing is soul searching as to how a corporatist third way democratic insider was defeated (despite significant compromise in the past). The current leaders of the Democrats need to wake up to the fact that demography is destiny and that their attempts to keep all power in an entrenched circle is doomed to fail. Their refusal to embrace the candidates of younger generations, public repudiation of David Hogg, and general tone deafness in dealing with the concerns of younger millennials and generation Z do not bode well. They are supporting a system which has continuously economically squashed younger generations preventing them from developing and achieving the milestones of maturity that we have valued in this culture. These are the conditions that breed revolution. If we didn’t live in a time of birth control and these young people had masses of children they couldn’t properly feed and care for, it would already be upon us. There will be more and more candidates like this on the left and they will win more and more elections.

I am waiting for more and more exposes as to what’s acutally going on in ICE detention facilities. None of it is good. They are over crowded, under staffed, and appear to be run by for profit entities interested in government contracts but not in those entrusted to their care. Throw in a bunch of masked bully boys with no professional training and it’s a disaster in the making. When the madness passes and we hear about horrors, I don’t want to hear any ‘we didn’t know’ from anyone. Yes you do. You just don’t want to admit that we could do such things in this country. A better term for the tent city they’re setting up in the Everglades is Alligator Auschwitz as there’s no other proper term for it than concentration camp.

Something I have noticed. Pretty much every report on someone snatched off the street is of how they are ordinary workers, mothers, students. They are gleefully rounding up those that are legal permanent residents who had a run in with the law years ago. There have been almost no reports about gang members being or criminals being taken. First off, there aren’t that many and they aren’t going to be easy to find as they aren’t likely to show up at scheduled court dates. Second, they’re likely to fight back and the passel of quasi-legal bullies aren’t about to enter a situation where they might be injured. If they were really rounding up hardened criminals, wouldn’t it be the easiest propaganda in the victory to parade their mugshots and rap sheets on the nightly news? The lack of such things tells me everything I need to know.

And this brings me back to my staging of Richard II, taking place in a holding cell of a political prison. We should all be thinking about the misuse of power these days and it should inform what we do in terms of voting patterns and holding our leaders to account. Shakespeare had a lot to say about power and its abuse and misuse. I want people to leave this show thinking. I don’t want them feeling that their side in our current divide is right or wrong. I want them to dig deeper than that and soul search about the meanings of political power and what are right and wrong ways that it is used. I hope I’m smart enough to get that on the stage.

Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and, starting tomorrow, we begin the long march back towards darkness. Of course, there are those who would argue that we havve been marching towards darkness since January 20th, no matter what the relative positions of earth and sun happen to be and, given the news of the last week I am a bit inclined to agree. I don’t even know where to start any more when musing about politics and doings on a federal level. The brightest spot is that the center is not holding. As reality continues to intrude on ideology and science continues to trump wishful thinking, a government consisting of sycophants, toadies, and know-nothings seems to be buckling around the edges. Quelle surprise.

The administration’s positions on all major issues are sinking rapidly in every major opinion poll, including those put out by Fox News, leading to various mouthpieces attacking their favorite propaganda outlet for not toeing the party line. Pretty much every special election has had the Dems overperforming and Reps underperforming, often by double digits. This suggests that, assuming we have midterm elections, that there is likely to be a change in control of congress. Hopefully this will lead to a reinstitution of some of the constitutional checks and balances the current congress appears to be snoozing through.

Trump is, of course, trying to get the media spotlight back on himelf, especially after that sad little fiasco of a military parade. Attention is his oxygen. Ignore him and the tantrums get bigger and bigger until he’s back again center stage. The best way to deal with him would be for everyone to go about their daily business and ignore him no matter what comes out of whichever orifice. His current attempts to control the narrative include paving over the rose garden. (I’m not worried about that – it can be jackhammered up again and resodded – and if they sold chances to wield the jackhammer for substantial donations to The Kennedy Center, it would likely be properly funded for a century). He’s also installed flag poles so out of proportion to the White House that the design principle appears to be used car lot.

The Big Beautiful Bill is in definite disarray as there is more and more reportage on just what it will do, especially to the poorest amongst us. Even some of the Republican senators are backing away from some of the crueler measures. The Senate parliamentarian is providing political cover by explaining that significant portions violate the rules of reconciliation and must be stricken in order to use simple majority voting. I’m sure something will eventually emerge but whatever it is, it’s likely to be a Frankenstein monster with a few extra limbs rampaging across the Federal landscape for a while. With luck, a future administration will trap it in a burning windmill.

Speaking of rampages across the government, what has happened to Elon Musk? He was everywhere just a few short weeks ago and he seems to have fallen off the radar other than his usual activity of blowing up rockets on the launchpad. I think he has a long way to go before he can think about making us an interplanetary species. Unfortunately, the Muskrats are still embedded throughout federal agencies, vacuuming up all of our personal data for the benefit of Palantir, and cancelling out decades of scientific and medical discovery. Speaking of medical data, the right wing’s favorite judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk (judge shopping is just fine when they do it) has decided that your reproductive health and HIV health records are not private and can be shared with legal authorities. Expect pregnancy test centers at conservative state borders and confinement to prevent travel for any sort of termination services in 3…2…1.

And then there’s Israel and Iran lobbing ballistic missles at each other on the other side of the globe. The secretary of defense and director of national intelligence appear to have been sidelined due to general incompetence. The secretary of state appears to be unfamiliar with the most basic concepts of diplomacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one in the upper echelons has any understanding of Shia vs Sunni or why the split exists. The war hawks are careening one direction. The isolationists another. And the religious zealots seem to think the more lunatic ravings of Cyrus Scofield are becoming reality. At least Europe, after very publicly sidelining Trump at the G7 meetings, are being the adults in the room and dealing with the issues in the way in which they need to be to keep the planet from going up in flames.

So what’s next? Who knows. I look at the headline digest in the morning from the day before and just kind of shake my head, try to forget most of it, and put my clothes on and head in to work to save the world one patient at a time. It’s all I can do. Rehearsals start on Richard II Monday and I will soon learn if my ideas which work just fine in my head actually work when other people try to put them on a stage. I’ve also got a bunch of non-profit board work to do over the next few weeks to help raise funds for various worthy causes.

I’ve had every intention of writing one of these essays? missives? screeds? for the last couple of evenings but as I’ve bumped up on the end of the day, I have just been too tired to put coherent thoughts together and have crawled into bed and the deathless phrases forming in my mind have petered out in dreamland. I’ve been far more fatigued than usual this week. I don’t know if it’s readjustment after two weeks off and now back to the usual grind or perhaps its post viral slowdown after having had yet another respiratory virus while off in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. Whatever the cause, I hope it wraps itself up soon as I have to begin directing Shakespeare in just over a week and I’ll need all of my wits and energy about me. Fortunately this next week is a short week due to the Juneteenth holiday so that may helpme get back into fighting shape.

There’s not a lot going on in my life other than the usual work stuff, hopefully soon to be made a bit easier by the arrival of my nurse practitioner to help spell my patient care duties in the VA half of my job. That process only took about eighteen months, interrupted as it was by the federal hiring freeze and the like. She’s someone I worked with at UAB for years so I know she’ll fit in very well with the VA rural house call program that’s my major responsibility on that side of the street. So far the shockwaves that are roiling academic health systems and federal agencies have spared my little corner of the world. I’m wise enough to know that it’s a temporary reprieve while the system rebalances. The ultimate endgame will be the usual one – forced to do more with less. I’ve been playing it for decades and know how to respond and how to push back but I am getting tired. I’ll have been part of the medical system for forty one years this August. It’s time to let younger generations take it all on.

There’s not a lot to report on the covid front. Hospitalization, mortality, and complication rates have all been in significant decline in the US for the last six months and we’re now well below where we were a year ago. Will there be a surge again this fall or winter? Time will tell. Vaccine remains available and the recommendations from the experts continue to be for an annual booster in the fall (with an additional spring booster if you have significant risk from the disease due to immunodeficiencies or serious lung issues). It’s unclear if there will be vaccine available this fall given the moves HHS secretary Kennedy is making. Despite his promises to the senate to not monkey with the vaccine system in order to get the votes he needed for confirmation, he went full antivax this past week, firing the entire CDC expert panel on vaccines, all researchers with years and years of expertise in evaluating vaccine science. His replacements have, so far, been individuals whose major qualifications are covid vaccine contraryism, many without significant credentials or expertise. Kennedy’s reasoning is that the prior panel members were compromised by ties to industry (all conflicts of interest were transparent and members recused themselves if an issue came before them that impacted any industry ties they might have), that vaccines haven’t been subject to rigorous testing for safety and efficacy (they have), that vaccines are linked to autism (they aren’t – that’s been debunked in dozens of studies) and that it’s best to start with a clean slate. We shall see. I don’t really want to see us return to a society where pretty much every family lost a child before age 5 due to a preventable disease but maybe that’s just me.

Tomorrow our president is hosting a military parade ostensibly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US Army but more about self aggrandizement and his 79th birthday. To me, it reeks of Soviet Russia or North Korea and not the sort of thing we do in this country but I suppose those with inflated egos must be placated. At least that seems to be the general attitude in the capital these days. The opposition is planning widespread general demonstrations in response. I approve in theory but I’m afraid that they may end up doing more harm than good if agent provacateurs – from either side – lead people into asinine action. Peter Coyote, the 80s indie film actor who now appears to be a professor of zen buddhism released an essay recently regarding protesting in the age of Trump that I found very interesting. It’s easily googleable. Taking a couple of pages from his book, he notes that the optics of demonstations and how they can be portrayed in the media are as important, if not more so, than what actually happens on the ground. We can see that in how the administration has handled what happened this week in LA. A relatively minor disturbance there (less violent and widespread than those after major football championship upsets) became defined by smoke, flame, some half dressed young men waving Mexican flags and it was turned into a narrative of a city in flames with both the National Guard and the Marines called out which has now led to major standoffs between federal and state power. Side issues have included the tackling of a US senator in a Homeland Security press conference, the administration’s continued ignoring of judicial orders regarding immigrant cases, and the president’s backtracking on previous positions as his wealthy friends start complaining about the depletion of their workforces.

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow but if I ran the protests, I would encourage everyone to dress as if for church, leave the flags and the signs for pet causes at home, and carry American flags to represent the people and constitutional power, and be as quiet and polite as possible. An overreaction against crowds of well dressed average Americans decked with the symbols of the country would create a powerful visual statement which could help sway the middle back away from the fascist impulses of the current administration. Those of us in Birmingham should be well versed in the optics of Bull Conner acting in the name of ‘public safety’ back in the early 60s.

Must run – have a show to cast. Hopefully we’re not all living under martial law next week but I put nothing past the collection of zealots of various stripes to whom we’ve turned over our public institutions.

I should be watching the Tony Awards, but I’m being a bad theater gay and using the time go catch up on life before I have to go back to work in the morning. 16 days off has allowed my brain and body to decompress somewhat and there’s a certain amount of prep work I have to do in order to get everything lined up so that I can move forward in the morning. I know this from long experience of vacation returns in my chosen vocation. I routinely tell new medical residents that one of the worst days they will experience will be their first day back from their first vacation. They hit the ground at the start of internship, all hyped up on adrenaline and new experiences and responsibilities; then, in a few months, they get to return to normal life for a week or so and they reset. And then they have to return to the very abnormal stresses and schedules of which clinical medicine training is composed.

I am back home in Birmingham. I don’t have a lot to say about the last few days in New Orleans in the company of Frank Thompson. Good food was eaten. Walks with window shopping and gallery hopping were taken through the French Quarter. Drinks were consumed. Many heart to heart conversations were had. Rapid onset rainfall caused a couple of soakings. It was good for both of us. We’ve been friends for more than 20 years now and even though we no longer live in the same state or get to play together on stage routinely, we remain excellent touchstones for each other in dealing with the vicissitudes of life. The only truly notable event was walking up Canal Street last night when we found ourselves between a group of young Black women on the sidewalk having a good time and a group of young Black women on a party bus stopped next to them having an equally good time. They began having a twerk off. There was nothing for a couple of old white guys to do but to join in, general hilarity from the young ladies and passers by.

I was a good boy and wrote the first half of my sermon on morals and health care during my down time this weekend. Shouldn’t take all that much more to finish it up. I think it reads well so far and will hopefully get the points I’m trying to make across with a minimum of didacticism. I believe it’s scheduled for July 20th at the UU Church of Birmingham but I’ll have to double check that with the powers that be. I’ll also have to run it by ministerial staff to be sure I’m not saying anything from the pulpit I really shouldn’t. But I’m not completely sure what’s actually considered off limits in a UU space given some of what I’ve seen and heard there over the last quarter century. (My silver anniversary of having signed the membership book is next month).

I decided to take a look at the most recent Covid news as I hadn’t for a while. There are various omicron strains. They should all be covered reasonably well by the current formulations of vaccine. Vaccine remains available and the recommendation remains annual in the fall for mature adults, with a six month booster in the spring for those at significant risk due to age or underlying disease process. The CDC, under current leadership is continuing to reevlaute all of this and these recommendations could change. They have withdrawn recommendaitons for vaccination of children and younger adults (most of whom do not have severe cases). The biggest practical effect of this is going to mean that vaccinations won’t be covered by insurance for these individuals. I have no idea what will happen if there’s a mutation that renders current vaccine ineffective or even how to really track what’s going on given the degradation of public health reporting for political reasons. Keep your eyes and ears open.

The very public spat between Trump and Musk appears to have died down somewhat. I haven’t seen anything quite that viscious since a couple of old theater queens nearly came to blows over whether Patti LuPone or Glenn Close was the better Norma Desmond. (The answer is, of course, Betty Buckley). Maybe it was all a performance piece for Pride Month. I have a couple of tasks I’m responsible for for our local Pride celebrations so I better get on the stick and figure out how to get those responsibilities shoehorned into my life.

I am far more concerned about what’s going on in Los Angeles and the stand off between local/state and federal authorities. The administration is obviously trying to provoke response for propaganda purposes and there are moves of dubious legality in regards to martialing the National Guard and putting the marines on alert. We shall see what we shall see. From what I can tell, what’s going on is far less violent and destructive than January 6th 2021 so there’s definitely a bit of a double standard going on in regards to calling protest an insurrection. Domestic reporting on the situation does not appear to be terribly accurate and is fraught with media companies protecting their profits so I am getting my news from the BBC.

Wish me luck tomorrow – hopefully I won’t have left the building screaming sometime before noon.

Dateline New Orleans, Louisiana –

I wasn’t going to write anything this evening or really report on vacation part 2 – the unnecessary sequel and then I happened to open my Twitter app while my friend Frank Thompson was driving us down I–59 from Birmingham to NOLA this afternoon and took a look at what was going down. I haven’t seen a celebrity marriage implode so fast and furiously in public since Ethel Merman and Earnest Borgnine or perhaps Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney. The public mud wrestle on social media between POTUS and the world’s richest man would be the stuff of high comedy if the consequences for all of us weren’t so deadly serious. I have no idea where all this is going. All I can do is sit ringside along with the rest of the world with my jaw dragging on the floor wondering where the hell this is going to end up. I guess we’re all going to find out eventually. I don’t even care which faction ends up on top. I find them all equally obnoxious and so out of the touch with the needs of the country and its citizens that my general reaction is revulsion, in between fits of giggles.

I got back to the US yesterday evening after a highly uneventful return flight from Dublin via ATL. Everything went smoothly. I cleared customs and immigrations with bored waves of the hand from Border Patrol in Ireland (I’m still not sure why we clear there rather than back in the US but it did make dealing with ATL so much easier). All that tells me is that I’m not being subversive enough yet in my writings and I may need to think about upping my game.

As I returned to the US on Wednesday and don’t have to be back at work until Monday, I decided to treat my old friend Frank, whose birthday it was yesterday, to a birthday weekend in NOLA. I haven’t been for a few years and it’s one of my favorite cities. And so, after arriving, he zoomed in from South Carolina where he now resides, a few old friends including Bill McMullen, Leah Luker, and Patti Steelman gathered to celebrate his continued aging at my condo last night and we packed up and left this morning for NOLA, stopping for brunch at Waffle House with Barbara Gerardo in Tuscaloosa on our way down the road.

We got in around dinner time, and I rapidly determined that I was in a very different climate zone than I had been the last two weeks (I did repack between trips) and headed out into the muggy evening for dinner at the Gumbo Shop followed by Hurricanes on the patio at Pat O’Brien’s. I am comfortably numb now, and have no agenda for the next few days other than some gallery hopping and eating and drinking. I did bring Richard II with me to do some work on it but the chance of that happening is fairly small. I also have to start working on this sermon I’m slated to give in six weeks on morality and health care.

Sleep patterns have been erratic the last few days so I’m hoping to just conk out and get myself back onto central time tonight. We shall see.

Dateline – Dublin, Ireland

I apologize for not writing last evening but I was tired and yesterday and today are more or less the same day in regards to travel, just separated by a sleep period. All of the organized stuff was finished. Just me here in Dublin for two days with no specific agenda, a two day Hop on Hop off buss pass if I didn’t feel like walking (and Dublin isn’t all that big so I did walk for the most part – me and the River Liffey became good friends), and lists of things sent from various sources for things to see and do while here. My pedometer is happy. I feel like I caught most of the highlights (but deliberately skipped a few things like the Guiness Tour – I’m not a huge fan of beer). Now I get a decent night’s sleep before getting up around midnight Birmingham time for the roughly 16 hour process of returning home. Apparently Ireland has a most favored nations clause of some sort that allows us to clear immigration here rather than in Atlanta so it’s supposed to be a bit easier. It also explains why there are 10-15,000 undocumented Irish in the USA I suppose. Haven’t seen a single report of ICE interfering with them. I wonder why…

So, a few of the stops and some impressions of Dublin. First, it’s a fairly flat city as it’s built along a number of tidal rivers making walking easy. Second, there are very few large buildings and nothing that would qualify as a skyscraper. I think the tallest I saw were about fifteen floors. Ireland has been a poor country for centuries with its wealth expropriated and exported until relatively recently. It’s time with the EU seems to have turned things around. Prices in Dublin are no longer cheap and real estate throughout the country seems to be zooming up and out of reach of the younger generation which makes me think the young uns will again become Ireland’s most valuable export over the last few centuries, her people.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral – like most medieval Irish architecture more blocky and Romanesque than the soaring Gothic of France or the Perpendicular of England. Still splendid in its own way.

Temple Bar – like any entertainment district anywhere filled with pubs, restaurants, bars, tourist shops, and people determined to have a good time. Some of the winding side streets have some hidden treasures but you[ve seen plenty of places like this before.

Trinity College – Interesting mix of Jacobean and Modern built around a classical quadrangle. Lots of history. The Book of Kells, one of the great antiquities is housed here. It’s not the largest thing and it would be difficult to display multiple pages but I’m really not sure why they had to turn it into an hour long son et lumiere ‘experience’ full of bad animation. I’d rather stay home and watch the Irish film, The Secret of Kells, which is full of good animation. (This whole interactive immersive trend with art puzzles me in general).

The Irish National Gallery – A middling collection of minor old masters. Some very good Irish painting, especially a collection of Jack Butler Yeats (William’s brother – their father was a celebtrated portraitist and there is some of his work as well). The Irish National Portrait Gallery is appended. I especially liked the modern stuff from the last fifty or so years of people whom I know from news and culture.

The General Post Office Museum – A multimedia interactive display of the events around the rising of 1916 and the partiton and civil war of the early 1920s. It’s in the actual GPO building which was the center of the 1916 action. I liked this one a lot and would like to see it expanded. There’s so much more to tell about modern Irish history. I knew the bare bones (mainly gleaned from BBC series or historical novels of the Edwardians and World War I as it’s often in the background) but have learned a good deal more this past week. I’ll need to do some additional reading. If anyone has recommendations, let me know.

The EPIC Museum – a museum dedicated to the Irish diaspora and how Irish individuals and culture have traveled the world and influenced so much in so many places. Again, very interactive and multimedia and laid out through a series of basement vaults under an old 19th century indoor marketplace. A good one to bring the kids.

Not an exhaustive list of everything, but a few highlights. I’m glad I made the trip. I feel like I’ve seen a good deal of the country over the last ten days and have a feel for what it’s like, it’s history, and how it fits into the current world puzzle. Still planning a fall trip in my usual late October slot but haven’t figured out what or where yet. Plenty of time. I’m thinking something slower paced – perhaps with a beach involved.

Looking over the news from the states, Trump issues an executive order on Friday regarding science and scientific research. Perusing it, it more or less states that political appointees can and should censor scientific findings incompatible with poltiical goals and that scientists who publish findings unfavorable to ideology can and should be punished by executive branch officers. This sort of thing has been done before – particularly in Stalinist Russia and Mao’s China and the results tended to be rather disastrous leading to millions of deaths from starvation due to failed crops and the like. History is unlikely to repeat but it does rhyme so expect some sort of major disaster with serious consequences for millions of us when politics trumps science because science and the natural world don’t care who runs the White House. The most likely thing is another pandemic which is significantly worse than Covid and which spreads much more easily as we have destroyed containment mechanisms. But then again, we have a head of FEMA who doesn’t know that we have a hurricane season, NOAA and the NWS are in tatters, and the administration is planning on 40% plus cuts in science research across the board which is going to have huge ripple effects through academia and any town home to a medical school or university with strong science programs. One piece of good news, Trump and Elon are on the outs with Elon offering a scathing read on the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. That didn’t take long…

And I don’t want to hear any ‘that’s not what we voted for’ – it’s exactly what you voted for. All the information was there with what the administration’s plans were long before the election. I can’t help it if you didn’t do the reading.

Dateline – Dublin, Ireland

The organized tour/get on the bus/why am I so danged tired portion of the current vacation is over as of this evening. I still have three nights and two full days here in Dublin during which I can get into trouble if I so desire but I get to do it on my schedule. The first thing on tap for tomorrow is sleeping in. I’m not due anywhere and I am putting out the Do Not Disturb sign and I’m sleeping until my natural urges wake me. As I’m not sure what time zone my body and brain are effectively in – Greenwich or Central or something in between, that could be anywhere between about 7 am and noon. And that’s OK with me. We’re three weeks out from the solstice and at latitude 53 (I looked it up) so it doesn’t get dark until 10 pm anyway.

We departed from Tralee about 8:30 this monring and were in County Cork by ten or so for a stop at Blarney Castle and gardens. The castle and grounds, still in private hands, have become a rather significant tourist attraction. As it was my first visit to Ireland, I felt obliged to visit the castle (not much but very photogenic) climb up the 100 or so stairs to the top, and assume the very uncomfortable position necessary to kiss the Blarney Stone. (It’s disinfected between each supplicant so Tom Lehrer got it wrong in his song. I’m more likely to get covid from crowding up the very narrow ill ventilated stairs than from the actual kiss). I can now scratch that item off the life list and feel no need to repeat it should I return to Ireland in the future. Does anyone still read Richard Scarry to their children? My favorite, which I had as a small child and read and reread until the pages began to fall apart was ‘Busy Busy World’ in which each chapter took place in a different country. In recent years as I have taken to traveling, episodes and illustrations will come racing back to me as I hit that particular destination. My introduction to the Blarney Stone was from this book and the Ireland chapter in which Patrick the Pig learns to talk. (He won’t speak as a small pig – his parents take him to kiss the Blarney stone and then he won’t shut up – a child’s version of ‘be careful for what you wish’). I’ll have to see if I can find a copy to reread. And I will forever be in the Lowly Worm fan club.

The castle may be a bit underwhelming, especially to those who have been to a lot of medieval European sites, but the gardens are to die for. Acres and acres meticulously planted and maintained. At this time of year they were in full bloom (except the azaleas – they were over) and wonderful to wander through. They reminded me very much of Butchart Gardens in Victoria so my advice is go for the gardens and accept the castle as an add on. I may have kissed the Blarney stone this monring, but I don’t seem to have noticed a change in vocabulary or any irresistable urges to speak.

Then back on the road and another three hours or so to Dublin. Different hotel this time – the Radisson which is two blocks from St. Patrick’s cathedral and therefore centrally located unlike the castle in which we all started a week ago. I had a couple of hours before dinner so took a walk, found Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, the cathedral and a few other landmarks, all close by before joining the group for our closing dinner. This was at The Abbey Tavern in what used to be the independent fishing village of Howth but is now a suburban part of Dublin. Corned Beef and Cabbage, Guiness, Apple Tart, Irish Coffee, and entertainment consisting of Irish singing and dancing definitely remixed for the tourist trade. I was not a huge fan. We then said goodbye to Dominic our intrepid tour guide and driver (who was very grateful that we were a small group of 9, got along well with each other, and handled minor travel issues ourselves) and I now have 60 or so hours in Dublin before I have to think about the road home.

For those who are wondering, I still have a bit of a chest cough (as I do after every cold virus), feel a little more fatigued than I think I should, but am otherwise back to normal. And I have another full week before I have to return to work. I just hope I don’t pick up yet another viral crud when I seal myself in a tin can with several hundred of my closest friends and launch myself across an ocean midweek. The work stuff remains pretty caught up but I’m feeling the need to throw myself into Richard II in the not too distant future as there is a lot of work to be done there, especially to pull off the concept which will require a lot of stage time from the actors when they aren’t the focus but still have to be present and I have to help them come up with requisite emotion, backstory, and balance it in such a way that there is interest outside of who is speaking but not a stealing of scenes.

Perusing the headlines, the one I’m most interested in is the absolute stunning success of the Ukranian military at pretty much wiping out Russian air power with their drone operation. That’s a maneuver that’s going to be in all of the military histories and studied at war colleges worldwide from now on. Response from the administration has been muted. I’m wondering how they’re going to spin it given the rather deep tendrils the Russian state has inserted into American politics over the last decade. Bravo Volodomyr. (I’m firmly on Ukraine’s side in this particular conflict).

More and more of the great American public who somehow bought the idea that criminals were flowing in over porous borders and must be immediately removed are now starting to understand that an overly empowered ICE force is going to go after easy targets and that’s going to lead to a lot of hard working people being branded as ‘criminals’ when they’re nothing of the sort, the tearing apart of families including American citizens, the creation of detention centers which are concentration camps in all but name, and misapplication of punishment as those with the power can’t be bothered to verify if they even have the right people in custody and are under intense pressure to step up the numbers. To those who are now saying ‘This is not what I voted for’ I say ‘This is exactly what you voted for and you must learn to live with your guilty conscience or figure out how to begin making amends’. If anyone tries to come after me or anyone I’m around without a properly signed judicial warrant, I’m not staying silent. I guess I’ll find out on Wednesday when I need to clear immigration coming back to the US if I’m yet on any watch lists for more intense screening due to my ‘subversive’ writings.

It’s nearly midnight local time. I feel the need for sleep. Carry on.