The Witch Sisters

The witch sisters were probably born on a piece of scrap mat board from the bin under the cutting table.  Like bluish wisps of Bond Street smoke from my father's pipe, the sisters materialized into our childhoods.  They were among his most lasting and private creations.

The stories were told in varied places.  Some on the front porch swing, accompanied by a sound track of rain and thunder as we watched the really "good" storms.  Some in the station wagon on the road to Tippecanoe, Brown County, or LaPorte.  And of course in countless bedrooms, where the audienced squeezed into a single twin bed, even though there were always at least two in the room. 

They are especially remembered on Halloween.

The three sisters were named Granchubula, Rasstassable and Singesingeable.  We were able to see their pointy hats and warts and flowing black dresses, all drawn on mat board or brown wrapping paper.  Purple was always added somewhere to their clothing.  My father didn't spare any detail, and he often told the stories as he drew the pictures.  Sometimes he would make an elaborate drawing first, enticing his audience into the tale.  The stories were alternately scary and funny.

Granchubula was the matriarch and the oldest sister.  She looked after Singesingeable, the middle sister, and Rasstassable, the youngest.  They lived in an old tree in Mrs. Jacob's huge wooded property next door.  It was said to be a gnarled oak tree with a huge knot at its base.  My sisters would occassionally gather the courage for a foray to see if they could find it.  Of course, my father wouldn't give away the exact spot. 

The witch sisters worked by day in what was known as "The Broom Room".   It was a six story room for making broomsticks.  It had all the required materials - straw, sticks, and whatever else was needed - all carefully illustrated.  The Broom Room was the place where naughty children were taken by Granchubula.  Their punishment was to spend a certain number of hours or days making brooms with the sisters.  When they finished making the brooms, they'd be tested; flown up into the cavernous space.  The punshment seemed to be fairly adminsitered by Granchubula, but resented by the younger sisters.  In fact, Granchubula was often found admonishing her sisters for inapproriate acts; some unseemly even for witches.

Everyone's favorite witch was probably Singesingeable.  She always carried fire - whether it was a lantern, torch, or matches.   She was resentful and confrontational, and would always throw fire on those that got in her way.  Or she'd burn things up.  We loved her.  Rasstassable lived in the shadow of the other sisters and unfortunately I can't seem to remember much about her.  But she had some big personalities in her family and it was easy to get overlooked.

The memories of the sisters are becoming somewhat foggy, like the Halloween scenes they lived in.  But, in retrospect, the most remarkable part about the witch sisters is that a father of seven would find the time and the energy to give them life - and to share his creativity and excitement with all of us.  Which we still all have, thanks to my dad.

On the sleeping car to Tulsa

I don’t know what kind of train it was, but it could have been an Amtrak or a Rock Island or anything. We were huddled together in a sleeping car, our family headed to Tulsa.  I remember lying by the window and watching with fascination as our train clattered past what seemed like every town in America.

I remember the neon signs.  There were planted like so much corn and soybean - Coca Cola, Pepsi, RC Cola. I’m sure there were beer signs too, but I was too young to recognize them.  But it was the sense of isolation I felt in these towns that left a profound impression on me.  Their taverns and frame houses, mom and pop stores, and empty spaces.  The more dismal and remote they were, the more they interested me. I don’t know why – they just did.

There were Edward Hopper diners near the railroad tracks with small town people clustered around the counter. Frame houses with tarpaper walls. And businesses that had tiny windows on upper floors where people lived.  Real people a world away and yet right next to us.

The images I recall now are in the monochromatic tones of my memories from the sixties. It was eerily soothing on that train, like looking out the window of a spaceship into the vastness of space. Protected from the loneliness and the vacuum of those small towns - and it felt comforting.

Last night I traveled to a small town in Michigan.  I inadvertly drove through different neighborhoods, looking for a gas station.  As I wandered, I found a town that looked like a skinny kid who dressed in ill-fitting, outdated clothes but couldn’t afford anything that looked or fit better.  Everywhere, it was evident that there had been no real growth here in decades.

It was surprisingly dismal, even though the protective Michigan trees tried to conceal the fact with their fall ochres and reds.  There were run-down taverns in residential neighborhoods where they shouldn’t be.  Shabby stores with things in the windows that were faded and uninteresting.  As I drove around, I glanced at the small windows in the upper floors of businesses and houses with sagging front porches.  I felt the vacuum and the isolation.  And an unexpected sadness.

One of every eight people in Michigan receives some form of government assistance. Real unemployment levels in towns like this approach 27%, not the 9.5% national average. Youth unemployment numbers are as high as 60%. Those statistics resemble what used to be seen on Indian reservations in places like Oklahoma. Americans thought it reflected poor education, substance abuse, and too much government assistance. And now it’s here in the heartland.

I think back to the sleeping car on the train, and the black and white images as they blur by.  Many of the places I stared at through the windows of the train winding through Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas seemed unreal and even exotic.  On that train, it felt more like the Polar Express or the train to Hogwarts.  Not like the ride here in the real world and in this town.

The lonely outpost

U.S. General Stanley McChrystal has asked for up to 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan.  He says that in part it's needed to defend our current troops against an increasingly violent insurgency and in part to bring a successful outcome to the war.  "Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating," McChrystal said of the war's progress.

Against a picturesque backdrop of poppy fields, American troops saw more casualties this week than at any point since the war began in 2001.  The poppies fuel a drug enterprise that is the economic engine of the country and the empowering force behind local warloads that divide and rule some of the most remote and distant terrain imaginable.

Few americans know much about the geography of Afghanistan.  So let's compare it to South Vietnam, since there are other similarities.  South Vietnam is 67,000 square miles, mostly at sea level.  Afghanistan is 250,000 square miles, with altitudes from 4,000 to 20,000 feet.  There are 19M people in South Vietnam and 28M in Afghanistan.  It is said that as bad as Vietnam was, the troops were never far from emergency assistance - from helicopters, other troops, or artillery.  In Afghanistan, many military units say that when help is needed, it is not readily available or nearby.  And that many helicopters cannot reach the higher altitudes when they're called.

At one point, the U.S. had nearly 550,000 troops in the Vietnam conflict.  There were 58,000 casualties (KIA or MIA) and over 90,000 wounded.  In Afghanistan, the U.S. has lost over 800 soldiers (KIA), and the total number of wounded exceeds 3,400.   Considering that U.S. soldiers covered less ground in Vietnam, it is amazing that there are only 60,000 troops laboring in Afghanistan today (only 32,000 from the U.S.).  

Who has the will to fight this conflict?  Not the average American family with teenage boys.  Not the politician that wants to be re-elected.  Not the Canadians or French or British.  But that's no reason to leave our soliders stranded on a mountain or in a poppy field.  In fact, some military analysts offer that given the geography and the nature of the war (an insurgency conflict) our troop levels should be more like 600,000.  But there are only 60,000.  What is accurate and what is political rhetoric?  Obama is justifiably thinking very carefully about the answer to that question.

There have been arguments for using more drones and fighting a more technology-based conflict.  But on October 4, 2009, when tribal militias and Taliban fighters over-ran a remote outpost, they killed 8 americans primarily by the sheer number of attackers.  The soldiers defending the outpost fired so much ammunition that many of their weapons overheated and became useless.  And while air support did eventually arrive, it was not soon enough to save the 8 soldiers. 

How does more technology help defend an outpost 20 miles from the Pakistan border?   Some type of high-tech barbed wire?   I think of my 18 year old son, and how shocked and outraged I would be if he was unprotected and in danger in a lonely outpost like that.

So, we either need better - or more - technology or more troops to protect our sons and daughters who are fighting a war in a country three times larger than South Vietnam - with about 10% of the soldiers deployed there.  And by all accounts, we lost that war.

Air Force One and the Sun

At the Sarasota airport today, I am looking at Air Force One.  It is a massive 747 jumbo-jet.  The top is painted bright white.  The tail displays the American flag.  The middle layer of color is lavender-blue.  And the rest of the gigantic plane is the cerulean color of the Florida sky.  The cockpit towers three stories above the tarmac.  The engine cowlings are decked out in chrome, like a Harley.   "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" is written in kerned letters spaced with a dignified authority.  The circled presidential seal is under the forward windows.

A cluster of reporters with telephoto lenses can be seen sequestered a hundred yards out from the terminal.   Four helicopters appear in the scattered clouds on the far side of the airport.  Deep bass thumps are heard through the windows as they get nearer.  They land and taxi to positions on either side of the plane.  These are dark green and obviously armed military aircraft.  "UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS" is painted under the slooping propellors.  When the helicopters taxi to a stop, groups of men dressed in black fatigues and carrying gym bags jog to their black Chevy Suburbans.

There is more thumping and a new speck appears on the horizon.   It materializes as a smaller, less menacing Marine helicopter, sleek and pointed like a green reptile.  It lands on the stark concrete and remains motionless.   It's the decoy helicopter.  Another speck appears in the sky.  This is the real one.   It lands and the propellers spin down.   A marine in dress blues opens the door, and several men get out.  One of them is tall and athletic, and he takes long strides toward the reporters.  It's Obama.  He walks alone, with his entourage behind him. 

Surprisingly, he reaches the reporters, stops for a few moments, and turns back toward the steps of the blue plane.  Obama skips up the steps to his flying office.  He does so purposefully and energetically.   He turns and waves; and with a forest of antennas from television vans in the foreground, climbing into the sky, he disappears into the plane.

Passengers turn back from the windows to the gate agents and the boarding process.  The worlds returns to a comparatively boring reality.  For a few minutes, Air Force One brought us a sense of purpose and urgency and power.  It seems to trivialize our own lives.  It's neurotic, but I guarantee you that everyone in the airport feels that to a certain degree.

As Air Force One takes off, I am thinking that maybe Florida will be getting its groove back.  I wonder why it took Barack Obama to remind us that our principal export is sunshine.  That the same photons that sunburn tourists and grow organges and heat the gulf can produce millions of gigawatts of clean energy.   That we can do more than the infant solar farm in Arcadia.   That perhaps the developers and the banks that have built the empty houses and condominiums across this state can now focus on a new commodity.   No house flips.  No scams.  Just sunshine - and power.

Photoshop Camelot

Today Julie was watching a documentary called "24 hours after the JFK assassination.  It chronicled the events that altered our childhoods - and our society - after a gunman (or gunmen) put three bullets into our president on a fall afternoon in 1963.  The program included the same grainy and fuzzily-lit images that appeared on black and white televisions all over the world as the events unfolded.  Today those images look like they've been photo-shopped to make them more eerie and unreal.  Ironically, they're similar in their other-worldliness to those of the Apollo moon landings six years later in July of 1969.  

They are odd, grainy, monochromatic images.  Dallas police driving around in their black cruisers with single lights on top.  Everyone wearing black suits and skinny black ties.  A small-town looking Parkland Hospital emergency room.  And everyone , including the reporters on camera, smoking.  

But there are a few color images, and they seem to always include Jackie.  Jackie accepting roses from someone near Air Force One.  Jackie smiling and waving from the limosine.  Jackie in her pink dress and pill box hat.

As the people moved from shock to anger to mourning, countless millions witnessed Jackie's composure in those televised scenes and drew strength from the woman who represented their camelot.   A figure loved by history and beloved by a generation.  

And now there is a book by C. David Heymann that claims that Jackie had a nearly four-year affair with Robert Kennedy.  I'm not saying I believe it.  I don't want to.  But he claims he "spent nearly two decades researching the book, even digging through old FBI and Secret Service files about the clandestine couple. Tapes of his exhaustive interviews are available at the SUNY Stony Brook library."

Look, Robert Kennedy was a father of 11 children.  His brother was assassinated.  And if there is truth to the story, she had an affair with him less than six months after his brother was killed.   I'm not saying I believe it, but the book also quotes Truman Capote as saying, "It was the coming together of a man and a woman as a result of his bereavement and her mental suffering at the hands of her late, lecherous husband."  Oh man.

Then in 1968, shortly after Robert is assassinated as he walks through a kitchen in San Francisco, Jackie marries Aristotle Onassis.  Five years after her husband was killed, she marries a foreign business tycoon.  She marries a man who publicly fueded with the Kennedies - especially Robert Kennedy.   Many believe she was given a pass by the public.   They loved her.   They forgave her.

Perhaps a generation of Americans have found that, like themselves, Jackie was a normal human being.   That Camelot was only as real as magazine covers.  Because people wanted it to exist.   But that the real world was actually in those grainy, lonely images we watched on TV.   And that the iconic woman that people remember in her pink and yellow dresses and matching pillbox hats was extraordinary, but not perfect. 

Aqua Dog

Rocket takes a late afternoon swim with Tommy

Rocket blasts off

Rocket the dog went happily into his crate at 10pm and, like our other children never did, slept through the night.  He failed the cat test for day two (not even a D-) and baby looked like he was posing for a Halloween picture.  Rocket ventured into the pool.  He chewed through three expensive toys and gagged up some kind of red plastic thing.  He also ate the cat's treats that Julie put our because she felt sorry for them.  "Where are those treats I left out for the cats?" 

We'll be back to the store today to get some rawhides!

Rocket Man

Today we have a new dog, Rocket. He was adopted from the Human Society of Sarasota. He is allegedly a Mountain Cur (as in red neck squirell hunting dog from North Carolina) but we suspect he is Lab mix. He is seven months old and already aging Julie years in the short time we've had him. He sits, shakes hands (paws), and flunked his cat scan test (getting along with cats). We're not worried, baby will be stalking him soon. Tonight it's the crate and the Ambien - we have to try it or he will eat the dishwasher while we're sleeping. The happy note is that he absolutely positively bétter than Molly so far.

Ichabod Crane at Third Base

Last night we were watching the Yankees game.  OK, not together, but virtually together.  I was in a hotel and Andrew and I were exchanging texts.  Julie, would call me when something really interesting happened.  Which did.  A few times.

First, Nick Swisher (from the Yankees) was tagging up on third on a fly ball.  He scored.  But the Angels said he left early and the umpire at third, Tim McClelland, called him out.  On the replay, it appeared he did not in fact leave early.  They have a jumbo-tron screen in the outfield, and they showed the replay about 10 times.  On the big screen, it showed an Ichabod Crane-looking McClelland not even looking at the base.  There's a picture of the base with Nick Swisher - with Ichabod looking straight into the outfield and not at the Nick's foot.  Forty thousand fans watching.  No, wait, more like twenty million on the big, big screen. 

A few innings later, Ichabod was standing on third and probably thinking about some headless horseman somewhere.  When he looks up, he's startled to find that there are two Yankees standing near third base but neither is actually on the base.  The Angels catcher tags both of them with the ball.  Both are out, right?  Crane/McClelland, looking to play it safe, decides to call one of them out and one of the safe.  One hundred percent chance to get it fifty percent right. 

By this time, the world was wondering if Ichabod maybe needed to drink a Monster between innings.   The jumbo-tron replays pathetically showed the evidence another 10 times.  The umpires just stood with their arms crossed and pretended like they didn't see (or weren't allowed to look at) the gigantic video evidence.  I am thinking back to the old SNL skit, where they do the bubble-thoughts of Bill Swerski, the Bears fan, and he's looking really focused but thinking, "Ditka, Ditka, Ditka..."  We don't know what inside of the of the bubbles floating above McClelland's head, but it must have been pretty interesting.

Vice president of the bathroom

I am in the Baltimore airport.  I was just in the men’s rest room where I heard a voice projecting and echoing in the dingy ceramic-walled space. “Yeah, he’ll be the person interfacing with the customer on that...”  Huh?  The discussion was coming from somewhere in the stalls where, in a men’s bathroom, there’s typically only one thing happening, and that’s not a project management conference call.  Except this was evidently bathroom business and a call combined. 

One of the problems with holding a “call in the stall” is that there is a cacophony of other noises emanating from nearby stalls and urinals – including various plumbing and bodily sounds.  “I think he’s a vice president there,” he continued.  Peeing sounds.  Loud flush.  Come on man, where’s your sense of dignity?

There are other issues here too. When you go into the men’s bathroom, there are a few universally agreed-upon and unspoken rules that are always followed.  The most important (after the no-looking when you’re at the urinals rule) is no talking.  You don’t start conversations in there, even if you’re with someone.  You keep your comments to yourself – eyes straight ahead – wash your hands and leave.  Lingering too long to check your tie or hair or whatever is also not acceptable.  “I think that Sherry in Dallas is going to be doing that,” I hear after another flush.  I glance to my side and one of the other guys in there shakes his head imperceptibly.  We agree - he's a rule breaker. 

We can’t help but hear the manager try to manage from his stall.  "Those were supposed to be shipped from Atalnta last week..."

Another problem is that he is simply annoying everyone else. OK, me especially. I want to hang around and glare at him when he leaves the stall but I remember that there’s a California Tortilla Mexican restaurant right around the corner so he may be in there for a while.  Plus, hanging around makes me a rule breaker too.

Once back in the food court, I am still agitated and I am muttering to myself that I bet he didn’t wash his hands.  Then I hear a loud projecting voice: “Susan, we're going to need them shipped no later than the end of the week”.  I look up and see the bathroom talker sitting at the table next to me.  I glare at him.  Better late than never.

Fatty Field Test

Go ahead and eat the whopper, dude. You know they flame-broil the burgers here, which is kind of good for you – it burns off all the fat and bad stuff.  And didn’t you just say “light on the mayo”?  That’s really very responsible.  Plus the whopper has tomatoes (a vegetable), onions (good for your cholesterol) and sesame seeds on the bun (really good for your HDL or whatever the good cholesterol is).  And since you know the fries are cooked in oil with no trans fat, you are a making a consciously smart health choice. Plus you didn’t eat any breakfast, so you’re kind of “owed” the calories from earlier in the day.

Best of all, your choice of a regular soda may actually be life extending, since those artificial sweeteners have all kinds of bad effects on lab rats.  Make it a Dr. Pepper, since you’ll need the caffeine to stay up and watch the Phillies.

Dude, you think you’re overweight?  Check out that lady right there, she’s huge!  I mean does she really think a diet soda is going to make a difference?  You are virtually a marathon runner next to her. 

So now you're ready for the feel-good field test.  The way this works is that you are reassured by your friends or complete strangers that you’re not really overweight.  That you look good. Young.  It validates that your choices really are working.

I was checking into a hotel in Kentucky today and the person at the front desk said that my colleague (who wasn’t there) looked great (he’s been on a 4 month diet).  Seizing the opportunity for a field test, I said, “yeah he’s been telling me I need to catch up with him and lose some weight too.”  I stressed the “some” part with great inflection, and fully expected this very overweight woman to say, “you’re not fat” or “he’s crazy, you look awesome”.  I cocked an eyebrow and waited.  She put a hand on her hip and said “me too, I’m really overweight.”

“Me too”?  Didn’t she know this was a field test?  Ok, I didn’t say, “You?  You’re not really overweight.” She was.   I wasn’t.  That’s why she was selected for the test. I wear a size 34 jeans.  I can squeak into a size large Hanes T-shirt.  I eat vegetables with my whoppers.

I am looking for another field test participant.  In the mean time, I’m thinking about moving over to more healthy fast food.  I hear that the chicken rings at White Castle are pretty good.

Pirates in Cincinnati

In Chicago, the sport of car towing is only slightly less practiced on the streets and alleys than bastketball or even the revered corn hole (bean bag) game.  I kind of grew up with it, so even now when I see a "cars will be towed" sign, I do cringe - even if it's an unconcious vestige from my home town.

Today, a colleague asked me to lunch in downtown Cincinnati.  We parked our cars in an innocent-looking corner lot which had parking meters that asked for 25 cents for 10 minutes.  We only had a few quarters between us so we stuffed them in the meters and headed to lunch.  A change machine was suspiciously absent in the lot. 

When we got to the restaurant, I suggested that we really should go back and feed some more quarters into the machines.  So I cashed a dollar and headed back.  When I arrived back at the lot, a scruffy (and I pegged him as mean) man emerged from a black tow truck (Cincinnati Towing Service, evidently a car laundering service for the parking lot owners) and was peering into each meter.  There were less than 10 cars in the lot.  I wondered briefly if he would just jack my car up anyway for fun.  I think he was glaring at me because of my blue suit.  I rushed over and put another 40 minutes in each meter.  Before I could walk away, he had moved on and had an F150 up on his rig and the gears were grinding it up.

C'mon, it's a quarter for 10 minutes!  To a sane person (me), it sure feels like stealing (OK, car kidnapping).  Legal car theft.  Why not erect a sign up that says "thanks for the quarter, we're watching and when your ten minutes are up, we are taking this vehicle for ransom..."  Just because of a quarter ...? 

Actually, it made me kind of homesick for the buccaneers - no, not Tampa - the Chicago ones - the Lincoln Park Pirates...  And it made me think of Steve Goodman.

The streetlamps are on in Chicago tonight,
And lovers a'gazin' at stars;
The stores are all closin', and Daley is dozin',
And the fat man is counting the cars...
And there's more cars than places to put 'em, he says,
But I've got room for them all;
So 'round 'em up boys, 'cause I want some more toys,
In the lot by the grocery store...

To me, way, hey, tow them away,
The Lincoln Park Pirates are we,
From Wilmette to Gary, there's nothin' so hairy
And we always collect our fee!
So it's way, hey, tow 'em away,
We plunder the streets of your town,
Be it Edsel or Chevy, there's no car too heavy,
And no one can make us shut down.

Dolphins vs. the Blues Brothers

I'm at the Tampa airport this afternoon.  I've always used O'Hare and Midway, and it's hard not to compare the Tampa airport with them...  It's fairly obvious that patronage wasn't on the developers' minds when they designed this place.  It's a culture shock - I think someone actually cares whethere people here have a good experience.  In Chicago, you always get the feeling that, well, since you don't really have a choice on being there, your're sort of a captive audience that will just have to endure the experience. 

In Tampa, they have actual real franchise businesses, at least the kind that are not owned by some politician's minority front company - "Donnie's Hot Dogs" and the "Blues Brothers gift shop" aren't very mainstream.  To be fair, they do have Starbucks at ORD and MDW, but they were only allowed space once "City Coffe" (or some such alderman's nephew's company) failed.  And think of the money Seattle has to pay the city... 

In Tampa, they have constructed panoramic "airside" terminals, filled with artistic creations like ceramic murals of dolphins on the floors and wonderful WPA-era oil paintings of air travel by George Snow Hill, which tower over passengers waiting in TSA lines.  Chicago tries - it does have the occasional flip-chart renderings painted by industrious Chicago Public school students. 

When you leave the Tampa airport, you aren't shaken down by the squeegie squad on Cicero avenue.  You drive across the sweeping vistas of the St Petersberg bridge and, while you may have to endure a senior driver or two, that's about as bad as it gets.  I admit that you can't pull into the Portillo's and get a beef sandwhich but all that every got me was twenty pounds overweight.   So here's to George Snow Hill and TPA and traveling like a tourist...

Pumpkins by the pool

I love the fall season.  One of my best memories is driving from Sault Saint Marie to Marquette (Michigan) one October day. It had all of my favorite elements for a great day – amazing fall colors, a steel gray overcast sky, and the threat of rain.

If I could, I’d follow fall around the globe as the seasons changed.  Yet I’m here in Florida where there isn’t a hint of fall, unless you count the handful of leaves that drop off the “live oak” trees and the pumpkins for sale in front of Publix (that’s kind of like a redneck Dominic’s). What was I thinking?

I still love days like that one in the U.P. My kids call me when it’s raining in Florida and say, “dad, it’s one of your favorite days.” It’s just that Florida is missing so many of the other great parts of autumn. Like cold weather, sweaters, and fireplaces.  Do people here really know about fall?  Or what a real Halloween feels like? Pumpkins sitting on the lanai next to the pool just don't do it for me.

Stealing Normality

Earlier this week, people in St. Petersburg were reminded again that amidst the natural beauty of Florida there are sociopaths that live among them. They learned that a troubled man shot his wife several times at home then put her in the trunk of his car, which he evidently intended to set the on fire. But then he also decided to drive to the Sunshine Bridge, where he stopped at the very top (190 feet above the water), lit the car on fire, and then jumped to his death. The car was left in flames on the bridge as he floated in the bay.

While I was driving on the Sunshine Bridge last night, I noticed that the bridge was partially closed as crews power-washed soot from the normally pristine concrete.  At the time, I didn’t know at what had occurred earlier in the day.   But I'm sure there were thousands of people that did; as they drove past the scorched roadway they were reminded that the world can be a dangerous place.  Families headed to Sanibel Island to look for shells, soccer moms and their kids, and retirees headed to Fort Meyers were all exposed to the pain of someone else’s reality.  And in the process had some of their own normality stolen by an unknown thief.

If a person has decided to take their own life, their actions are unbounded by our society’s moral conventions.  We've seen it at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and other bridges in other towns.  Perhaps the only threat that might exist for someone intent on taking their own life – and destroying others on their way out of it – is that there might be a punishment waiting for them in the next life.   If it were known that the sentence imposed by the next Judge would include a dive straight down to the deepest and most eternal depths - perhaps it would prevent some of these sociopaths from their descruction.

Next stop same as the last

In 1975, when I was attending Marist High School in Chicago, I was taking a CTA bus down 111th street toward home. The bus was crowded with students from Morgan Park High School who got on near Hoyne street. When the bus approached the high school, it became evident that there was something significant taking place after school on campus (I later learned it was an after- school fight between some white and African American students. At my stop – the last one before the imaginary boundary of Vincennes Avenue – the other riders refused to let me off.

It was a scary feeling – I think there was some pushing and punching before I pushed open the doors and fled. As I was running toward home, I was grabbed and punched – in the ear. It didn’t hurt, but it was an unnerving experience.

It was one of the few times growing up in Chicago that I felt personally exposed to the racial tensions that existed in the 70’s.

Well, a lot has changed since then, right? We have an African American president who worked in the same neighborhoods I grew up in – maybe he even rode some of the same buses.

Today in was working in Detroit and I was reminded again that maybe things haven’t changed all that much. At a hospital in one of the poorer areas, I was walking toward the parking lot and talking on my cell phone when a car pulled up next to me with several youths in it and rolled their windows down – with threats and profanities. I was surprised – caught off guard. Maybe I assumed things had changed more than they have.

I wonder just how far America has progressed since 1975. Today, I felt like all that was different was I was missing was my varsity jacket and my algebra book.

100 million reasons to think of H1N1

I've listened to so many people offer their opinion on H1N1.  How the government wants to scare people into getting the vaccine so that they might be able to mix something sinister into the injection.  Or that health departments are exaggerating the severity of the virus to highlight the need for healthcare reform.  Or to enrich the companies creating and distributing the vaccine.

I’ve heard many average people say they think this flu really isn’t that bad – that it isn’t even more serious than a normal seasonal flu virus.  What?

My neighbor, like many people, thinks that this H1N1 talk is all hype.  Like almost everyone, he has no background in virology or epidemiology.  Maybe he knows of the 1918 flu, but is he aware that the 1918 strain is very similar to the one floating around his office this week?  That the microscopic H1N1 particles on the door to his building, on the bathroom faucet, and on his hands are a subtype of the H1N1 virus that, between 1918 and 1920, killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide?  It is.  And in just two short years, it killed as many people as if a nuclear weapon was used on cities across the world.

OK, my neighbor is not a scientist, but he is just using common sense, right?  This strain doesn’t seem any worse than a normal flu bug.

Really?

The real peril is not the first wave of the virus – like the one we’re seeing now – but the strain that is seen once that same virus mutates.  In the flu season leading into 1918, the initial viral strain was also “not that bad” and similar to seasonal flu.  Then the virus mutated.  One third of the earth’s human population became infected – 500 million people.  And up to 20% of those people died.  Many of the people that died were healthy young adults – those with the very best immune systems.  The strongest individuals suffered a “cytokine storm”, where the immune systems over-reacted and often triggered a fatal pneumonia.

Trust me, the CDC and Health Departments across the globe are looking for that next mutation – like the one that happened early in 1918 to the mild first version of the virus.  But anyone that says this is just a mild flu and that health experts are over-reacting is dead wrong – and misinformed.

Now the big question – will immunity via vaccine to the mild version of the flu protect one from the mutated version – if it mutates?  Well I’m not a virologist either, but I would guess that there’s a chance that some protection might be possible.  That’s what people will be asking in the next phase of this process…

Should we trust the experts on virology and epidemiology?  Scientists that have studied the past and are trying to protect us from the next deadly phase of H1N1?  It’s your choice, but I would say that we are blessed to have the choice that people in 1918 did not have.

Barack Obama dreaming

While I'm not necessarily saying that I'm a democrat, I am cut from the cloth that makes up the historical fabric of Chicago's South side.  I've waited with my father one winter night in Bridgeport to see the elder Mayor Dailey as he lay in state before his funeral.  I've seen alderman and precinct captains work with my father on things that need to be fixed in our old neighborhood, where my parents still live in the ghost-house on Prospect avenue.  I've been to parties with hundreds of Chicago policemen at the Sargeant's house who lived next door to us.  All in all, quite the foundation for a political persuasion.  And now I'm here in hot muggy Southwest Florida (which feels like the Phillipines), far from Bridgeport and where I'm forced to listen to Rush and his cronies on the airwaves by day.  But at night, my dreams are oddly intertwined with Barack Obama.  In one, he gives my an I-phone for my support.  In another, I'm on his staff preparing him for a speech.  At one point, he even is working as a sales rep with me for McKesson.  But we always seems to be working on something.  It's become something of a joke in our house - hey dad, how's Obama doing?  Did he give you anything lately?  Did you help him write that speech?  I'm not sure I even like or support him, but there he is - me on his staff and him winning the Nobel Peace prize.