Fate of the Poets

On Friday I traveled the length of the East Bay via Bart to the southernmost station at San Jose. All along the route I saw homeless encampments like those in the inner cities of the Bay Area. 

The situation with homelessness has reached unprecedented proportions in this area. It's beyond the point where anyone can pretend that it isn't a crisis. 

Because it is.

There have been so many attempts to explain this problem that they make my head spin. It's easier to write the whole thing off to mental illness, drug addiction and other pathologies than the uncomfortable possibility that homelessness may be the logical outcome of the American way of life.

Here in the heart of Silicon Valley, the competitive pressures are as severe as anywhere on the planet. You can see and feel it when you're around young people, even pre-high-school students in good families.

Already these kids are aware that there are billionaires in the neighborhood who live in mansions, drive cars every bit as expensive as mansions, and ride private rockets into space for fun.

As far as can be determined by the average 12-year-old, these guys (they are all guys) probably out-performed everyone else in school or anything else they tried. They probably got the best grades, the highest test scores, the strongest recommendation letters, and the most-favored-student status all along the way.

They probably never stumbled, screwed up, or made a mistake.

In other words they must have been supermen, close to perfect.

That these myths are far from the truth rarely penetrates the insular worlds of youth culture. Nor does the reality that even ending up as a billionaire hardly equates with happiness,  satisfaction or inner peace.

That the children's lives are probably not going to turn out to be that extreme is one of the realizations you hope sinks in over time. You just hope that they don't end up at the other extreme either --  camped along the train tracks, eating out of a dented can and seeking their next unobtainable high.

What kind of social system could be established that avoids both extremes? That strives for balance instead. Because that's the society I'd like my grandchildren to inherit.

Not this one.

***

Speaking of balance in life for our youths, I'm dismayed by efforts by some school systems in this area to mandate vaccinations for children under the age of 12.

As strongly as I support vaccination for adults, it simply is too soon to be certain that these shots are safe for children.

After all, the vaccines are still in the process of obtaining full approval by the FDA for adults. And there is evidence that they may have long-term deleterious effects for some adults.

Children, whose bodies are still developing, tend to have very strong immune systems -- that's why they can fight off invasive infections like Covid better than older people.

That said, their immune systems are still developing as well, and if in the long term, these novel vaccinations turn out to weaken their bodies' inherent ability to fight off the infections of the future, we will regret rushing to vaccinate them prematurely should we mandate them now.

No it is time for reason to prevail. Hold off with vaccination mandates in the schools. We don't know that that is a wise idea -- not yet.

[NOTE: Thank you to my friend Susanna Camp for today's poem.]

***

THE HEADLINES:

* U.S. delegation to meet Taliban in first high-level talks since pullout (Reuters)

* The inconsistency of American Feminism in the Moslem World (New Yorker)

* Islamic State claims responsibility for Afghan mosque blast that killed nearly 50, injured dozens (WP)

* Taliban say they won’t work with US to contain Islamic State (AP)

* The imminent impact of redistricting: Sharper partisan elbows, less compromise (WP)

* For Teen Girls, Instagram Is a Cesspool (NYT)

* Push for global minimum tax of 15% on profits takes big step forward, with 136 nations now backing it (WP)

* Adele’s musical comeback celebrated in Vogue (Reuters)

* The incredibly stark difference in COVID death rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated in California. (SFC)

* Germany investigates possible ‘Havana Syndrome’ sonic attack on U.S. Embassy staff (WP)

* Biden becomes first president to commemorate Indigenous Peoples’ Day (WP)

* Giants Silence Dodgers in First Game of Historic Playoff (Reuters)

* Renowned Ornithologist Always Secretly Wanted To Be A Bird (The Onion)

***

"The Keeper of Sheep"

  Poem #XLVIII

By Fernando Pessoa

From the highest window of my house 

I wave farewell with a white handkerchief

To my poems going out to humanity.

And I'm neither happy nor sad.

That is the fate of the poems.

I wrote them and must show them to everyone

Because I cannot do otherwise,

Even as the flower can't hide its color,

Nor the river hide its flowing,

Nor the tree hide the fruit it bears.

There they go, already far away, as if in the stagecoach,

And I can't help but feel regret

Like a pain in my body.

Who knows who might read them?

Who knows into what hands they'll fall?

A flower, I was plucked by my fate to be seen.

A tree, my fruit was picked to be eaten.

A river, my water's fate was to flow out of me. 

I submit and feel almost happy,

Almost happy like a man tired of being sad.

Go, go away from me!

The tree passes and is scattered throughout Nature.

The flower wilts and its dust lasts forever.

The river flows into the sea and its water is forever the water that was its own.

I pass and I remain, like the Universe.

Just Do It

A significant benefit of last winter's Covid-related shutdown was a substantially reduced number of cases of the flu, normally the scourge of every winter.

But this winter, with fewer precautions in place and most of us out and about much more than a year ago, the flu once again looms as a very serious threat.

Compounding that threat is the very fact that cases were down last winter means that collectively we lost some of our collective immunity against the flu.

This reality illuminates the core issue about immunizations -- they are not really about individuals, they are about the herd.

The only way public health officials and elected leaders can sell things like flu shots or the Covid vaccines is to point out the legitimate scientific evidence that once you as an individual get the shot you are statistically less likely to get ill, or at least seriously ill, than if you remain unvaccinated.

But what is actually at stake is not your individual fate. It is about all of us. The only way to control these highly contagious viral bugs is for enough people to get vaccinated and also to practice preventative measures like masking and social distancing during spikes in the disease.

Therefore, your position on flu shots and Covid vaccines is a direct commentary on how you personally balance your own self-interest with the good of the collective whole.

This is particularly the case in the U.S., the most privileged society in the world. Those who refuse vaccinations under any pretense here qualify as the most selfish people in the world, because of the inequities built into our global systems.

By avoiding the shots, they may or may not be exposing themselves to illness but they are guaranteeing illness and death to the poor, the young, the old, the frail, the weak, and the meek.

I think I read in a good book somewhere that that is not what a moral person true to his or her faith would do.

And that makes those people hypocrites. They may falsely hide behind their religion to argue against vaccination, but if there is a God, that surely means they will never be admitted to heaven.

***

THE HEADLINES:

* Pfizer Asks F.D.A. to Authorize Its Covid-19 Vaccine for Children 5 to 11 -- The agency has promised to move quickly on the request and tentatively plans to meet on Oct. 26 to consider it. A decision could come soon after Halloween. (NYT)

* VIDEO: U.N. Secretary General Calls Vaccine Inequity ‘Stupid’ -- António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, assailed the imbalance of Covid-19 vaccine distribution between rich and poor countries as he sought $8 billion to help narrow the divide. (AP)

* Young, pregnant and unvaccinated: Hospitals confront a wave of severe illness and death (WP)

* VIDEO: C.D.C. Urges Vaccines Ahead of Flu Season -- Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that because flu infections were low last year, immunity was likely to be diminished, making it doubly important to get inoculated. (AP)

* Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of misinformation (AP)

* A blast has torn through a mosque in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Kunduz, a Taliban official said, causing 46 deaths. As desperate Afghans resort to selling their belongings to buy food, international officials are preparing to fly in cash for the needy while avoiding financing the Taliban government, according to people familiar with the confidential plans. (Reuters)

* California fires may have killed hundreds of giant sequoias (NPR)

* Canada’s Employment Returns to Pre-Pandemic Level (WSJ)

* Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov received the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression" in the Philippines and Russia. “Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. [AP]

* Three decades on, German mushrooms still show imprint of Chernobyl (Reuters)

* Senate Approves Bill to Raise Debt Ceiling and Avert Default, for Now (NYT)

* California’s latest oil spill should be its last if we want to protect its environment and economy (WP)

* California chronically undercounts the death toll of extreme heat by as much as sixfold. (Cal Today)

* A team of private investigators say they have identified the notorious serial killer, but F.B.I. and police officials say the Zodiac case remains unsolved. (SFC)

* Google said it would cut off ad money for YouTube videos and other content on its sites that include climate change denial, a major step for the tech company. “Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content," Google's ad team wrote. [HuffPost]

* Trump Tells Former Aides to Defy Subpoenas From Jan. 6 Panel (NYT)

* Chez Panisse is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, a feat for any institution in the culinary world. (SFC)

* Russians Beat Tom Cruise To Be First To Shoot Feature Film In Space (The Onion)

***

"That's the Way Love Goes"

Merle Haggard

Songwriters: Lefty Frizzell / Sanger D. Shafer

I've been throwing horseshoes
Over my left shoulder
I've spent most all my life
Searching for that four-leaf clover

Yet you ran with me
Chasing my rainbows
Honey, I love you too
That's the way love goes

That's the way love goes, babe
That's the music God made
For all the world to sing
It's never old, it grows
Losing makes me sorry
You say, "Honey, now don't worry
Don't you know I love you too?"
And that's the way love goes

That's the way love goes, babe
That's the music God made
For all the world to sing
It's never old, it grows
Losing makes me sorry
And you say, "Honey, don't worry
Don't you know I love you too?"
And that's the way love goes

One Thing to Talk About

Among the people in my age range (60+) are many who are currently dealing with health issues, past and present. It's axiomatic that as you age, your body has ways of letting you know exactly what that is going to mean in your case.

And so when we get together, the conversation more times than not turns to health --our own and that of the others around us.

Furthermore, anyone who has had to navigate our convoluted health care system in this country knows there is a lot to talk about beyond specific medical conditions.

One topic is the many people you meet along the way -- EMTs, doctors, nurses, CNAs PTs, OTs, neurologists, psychiatrists, insurance agents, Medicare reps, AARP reps, Covered California reps, local reps, X-ray operators, CT scan operators, clinicians, PPOs, HMOs, EHRs, counselors, consultants, inpatient, outpatient, rehab and a legion of good-hearted volunteers.

For the most part they are a lot of nice people trying to do their best. And if you don't know some of those acronyms and abbreviations, consider that a good thing. 

But many of us get lost in the system somewhere along the way. It is unnecessarily complicated compared to how one gets medical care in other advanced countries, and even some poor countries.

Many of my peers feel they worked their entire careers, paid into expensive corporate health plans and rarely took sick days only to end up retired on Medicare in a country where not every procedure or treatment they need is covered, and those that are covered require a large co-pay.

Let's face it. This just isn't fair. I'm aware that there is not anywhere near to a national consensus, let alone the political will, to establish a nationalized health care system, but frankly that is what we need -- desperately.

And that is one conversation that it shouldn't be up to the elderly, the retired, and the frail to lead.

***

* How Other Nations Pay for Child Care. The U.S. Is an Outlier. -- Rich countries contribute an average of $14,000 per year for a toddler’s care, compared with $500 in the U.S. The Democrats’ spending bill tries to shrink the gap. (NYT)

* Federal judge blocks enforcement of Texas law banning abortion as early as six weeks (WP)

* A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., which since September has banned most abortions in the second-most populous state. It's the first legal blow to the law, but abortion services may not instantly resume because doctors still fear they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision. [AP]

* A ‘Historic Event’: First Malaria Vaccine Approved by W.H.O. -- Malaria kills about 500,000 people each year, about half of them children in Africa. The new vaccine isn’t perfect, but it will help turn the tide, experts said. (NYT)

* One state, Wyoming, has never taken in refugees. Will it welcome Afghans? (WP)

* The Facebook outage that struck Monday was ultimately a minor inconvenience for most Americans. But in countries like Brazil, it was a destabilizing experience because WhatsApp suddenly went offline with it. More than 2 billion people use WhatsApp. Brazil and India alone are home to nearly one-quarter of them. [HuffPost]

* Cash airlifts planned to bypass Taliban and help Afghans - sources (Reuters)

* Taliban Music Fills the Airwaves in Afghanistan (WSJ)

* Now in power, Taliban set sights on Afghan drug underworld (AP)

* The Afghan War: A Photographer’s Journal -- One of the first things the New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks witnessed after arriving in Afghanistan in late 2001, soon after U.S. airstrikes on Oct. 7 opened the invasion, was the execution of a wounded Taliban fighter. The scene shocked him, upending everything he thought he knew about war and about the Afghan Northern Alliance — the U.S.-aligned fighters who had been his guides and protectors, and the Talib’s killers. (NYT)

* Faced with losing their jobs, even the most hesitant are getting vaccinated (NPR)

* Immunity weakens faster in men than women after Pfizer vaccination, study finds (WP)

* The WHO has started shipping COVID-19 medical supplies to North Korea (NPR)

* U.S. weekly jobless claims post biggest drop in three months (Reuters)

* A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now -- Myocarditis, a rare side effect, occurs mostly after the second dose. So in some countries, officials are trying out single doses for children. (NYT)

* Federal authorities have posted some impressive numbers in the nine months since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in support of his lies about a stolen election. But they've arrested just a fraction of all the potential defendants who were shown on video committing criminal offenses that prosecutors have said warrant charges, writes Ryan J. Reilly. [HuffPost]

* The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday released a sweeping report about how former President Donald Trump and a top lawyer in the Justice Department attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a coup. (CNN)

* Why Democrats See 3 Governor’s Races as a Sea Wall for Fair Elections -- Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all have Democratic governors and G.O.P.-led legislatures. And in all three battlegrounds, Republicans are pushing hard to rewrite election laws. (NYT)

* Dick Van Dyke Finally Confesses To Zodiac Killings (The Onion)

Living On My Time

Every now and then somebody forgets or doesn't notice that when it comes to journalism, I am retired. I don't do investigations, cover events, hit deadlines and most important of all, I don't work for anybody.

So the pitches that land in my inbox daily or via FB Messenger fall on deaf ears.

If it was an extremely attractive work offer, I might be tempted to return to the field, but the odds are long that any such offer will ever come my way. Mostly it's recruiters on LinkedIn or green PR agents in boutique firms with outdated email lists. 

Or people with a personal issue who should hire a PI and leave us retired journalists alone. I don't get involved in people's personal lives.

Free advice is quite another matter. I give that out to younger journalists all the time. My only hope is they get more than they pay for.

I have a great deal of empathy for younger journalists working on a difficult story. Most people have no idea how difficult that work can be and the personal traits that are required to succeed.

In novels and movies, journalists sometimes get portrayed as romantic heroes seeking to hold the powerful accountable, or else ridiculous jerks who chase after celebrities to catch them in a compromising situation.

There are extreme cases where journalists do both of  those things but mostly the job is like any other -- repetitive, stressful at times, often boring and dependent on a bit of good luck now and then.

Honestly, every time I get tempted to return to the types of work life I endured in the past, I remember what it was really like and the prospect quickly dims.

No, I'm much happier reading, writing, socializing, watching my grandchildren grow up and helping other people chase their dreams than I would be once again clocking in on somebody's else's payroll.

And it would take  a lot of zeroes behind the "1" on a check to convince me to change that.

***

THE HEADLINES:

*  Facebook Whistle-Blower Urges Lawmakers to Regulate the Company (NYT)

* In her testimony before a Senate subcommittee, Frances Haugen provided tens of thousands of pages of internal Facebook research, which she previously gave to The Wall Street Journal. Haugen took senators’ questions and made a compelling case for federal data privacy laws. “There’s no one currently holding Mark accountable,” she said, referring to Zuckerberg. [HuffPost]

* VIDEO: ‘We Can Do Better,’ Facebook Whistle-Blower Says (Reuters)

* Whistleblower tells lawmakers Facebook reform needed ‘for our common good’ (WP)

* Zuckerberg defended the company after a whistleblower testified before Congress about the harm of the social media giant’s divisive content. He said that Haugen's assertion that the company prioritizes "profit over safety and well-being" is "just not true," and that it was "very important" to him that "everything we build is good and safe for kids." [HuffPost]

* U.N. agency to pay salaries of Afghan health-care workers to help stave off humanitarian crisis (WP)

* A U.S. Military First: The War in Afghanistan Ended With Zero M.I.A.s -- After two decades of combat, there were no American troops missing in action, reflecting a major shift in military priorities. (NYT)

* ‘Everyone here hated the Americans’: Rural Afghans live with the Taliban and a painful U.S. legacy (WP)

* For Sale Now: U.S.-Supplied Weapons in Afghan Gun Shops (NYT)

* A flood of drugs from Afghanistan may become a bigger threat than terrorism (WP)

* Hundreds of Afghans flocked to the passport office in Kabul, just a day after news that it would re-open this week to issue the documents, while Taliban security men had to beat back some in the crowd in efforts to maintain order. (Reuters)

* Marine officer who criticized senior leaders on Afghanistan has been released from military brig (WP)

* One America News, the far-right network whose fortunes and viewership rose amid the triumph and tumult of the Trump administration, has flourished with support from a surprising source: AT&T, the world's largest communications company. (Reuters)

* Global hunt for looted treasures leads to museums, trusts (WP)

* Nearly 840,000 children under the age of four have contracted COVID-19 in the United States, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Reuters)

* California’s National Guard has been deployed to four hospitals struggling to handle an influx of coronavirus patients. (Cal Today)

* Biden administration expands student loan forgiveness eligibility (Reuters)

* Iran’s Armed-Drone Prowess Reshapes Security in Middle East (WSJ)

* Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants (NYT)

* The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments about the government's ability to keep what it says are state secrets from a man who was tortured by the CIA following 9/11 and is now held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. (AP)

* Military tensions with China are at their worst in more than 40 years, Taiwan's defense minister said, promoting a new arms spending package to lawmakers days after record numbers of Chinese aircraft flew into the island's air defense zone. Biden said that he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the "Taiwan agreement". (Reuters)

* U.N. weather agency says world ill-prepared for ‘looming water crisis’ (WP)

* Can California save its Giant Sequoia trees? (Reuters)

* Sonoma surfers return after a great white shark bite (SFC)

* Google wants to use AI to time traffic lights more efficiently (Reuters)

* Study of America’s 50,000 monuments reveals more mermaids than congresswomen, more Confederates than abolitionists (WP)

* Doctor Has Troubling Amount Of Available Appointment Slots (The Onion)

***

"Tulsa Time"

Sung by Eric Clapton

Written by Daniel W. Flowers

Well I left Oklahoma
Driving in a Pontiac
Just about to lose my mind
I was going to Arizona
Maybe on to California
People all living so fine
My momma called me crazy 
My baby said I'm lazy 
Gonna show em all this time
Cause you know I ain't no fooling 
I don't need no more damn school
Want to just walk the line

Living on Tulsa time
Living on Tulsa time
Gonna set my watch back to it 
Cause you know me, I've been through it 
Living on Tulsa time

So there I was in Hollywood 
Thinking I was doing good
Talking on the telephone line 
They don't want me in the movies
Ain't nobody sing my song
Momma says my baby's doing fine
So then I started thinking 
And I got to weaken 
I really had a flash this time
I had no business leaving 
Ain't nobody would be grieving
Seen I'm on Tulsa time

Living on Tulsa time
Living on Tulsa time
Gonna set my watch back to it 
Cause you know me, I've been through it 
Living on Tulsa time