Too Old To Fly

May 30, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 72 The far right is itching for a fight. Pandemic-weary Americans are itching for a fight. African Americans and other oppressed minorities are itching for a fight.  President Donald Trump is begging for a fight! The fight has begun. It will end in November with an old-fashioned right-wing coup d'etat. Win or lose the election Donald Trump will be our president in 2021. Here is how it will happen. Trump is behind former Vice President Joe Biden in the national polls and in several states that are key to his reelection. Any other candidate would take this information, soften his or her tone and try to broaden their base. Not Donald Trump. He’s the fireman who runs at a blazing building  armed with only a jerry can and pours gas on the flames. When peaceful protests of the senseless killing of an African American man in Minneapolis turned ugly this week, the president did nothing to calm the nation. Instead he tweeted: “When the lootin

May 28, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 70 The Covid-19 virus is simple, plebeian, utilitarian and incremental. It is not profound. It is not discretionary or selective. It does not just infect and kill Democrats or Republicans. It is not on the red team or the blue team. It is not progressive or liberal or conservative or libertarian.  It does not just target capitalists or socialists or fascists or communists. It does not infect only Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, Zoroastrians or even atheists! It is not a Chinese disease or an American disease or a Brazilian disease. The  Covid-19 virus is not political. At all! The virus has a simple mission; it wants to infect everyone and kill as many people across the globe as it can. It will eventually get us all if we allow it.  It is doing a good job so far. It has infected about 5.8 million people worldwide and killed more than 358,000, according to this morning’s worldometer tally. More than 100,000 Americans hav

May 26, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 68 Farming is not for everyone, especially if you plan to make your living that way. We have been farming since 1983. My then teenage nephew who had been milking cows in Massachusetts since he was 12 heard we were leaving DC to return to Vermont and farm.  He offered sage advice well beyond his years: “Rob, if you want to be a successful farmer, you have to keep one foot in the real world.”  In other words make sure you have a real job.  Of course I did work off the farm in Vermont, for about 35 years until I retired in 2015. From the outset the farm was more than a hobby but less than a full-time job.  We milked cows by hand and once I got viciously kicked in the chest while doing so. I was knocked on my butt 30 years ago by a feisty ram named Bernie, after Vermont’s most famous politician. The ram earned the name because he was always angry and had a shaggy mane like Bernie Sanders who at the time was an unsuccessful, fringe-party candidat

May 24, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 66 Saturday is trash day! Every week the process is the same: load the trash and recyclables into my aging Chevy pickup and drive five miles to the transfer station. There is no curbside pickup here in the boonies and the transfer station is a young guy parked at the local car wash with a high-sided pickup and a trailer. He told me once: “I do this Saturday morning so I can drink beer Saturday night.” Trash goes in the pickup, recyclables in the trailer.  Both are filled to bursting in about three hours and are driven off to a regional waste center another eight miles away. The separated waste is stored and eventually loaded onto separate, humongous tractor trailer containers. The trash is eventually taken to a large landfill about 60 miles away. The recyclables are hauled to processors for domestic use or to ports to be shipped to markets overseas. That is how it is supposed to work. These days more often than not both trucks head north to th

May 22, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 64 Welcome to life on the Covid 19 plateau. Plan on living there for the foreseeable future. The Covid-19 plateau is not the breathtaking high chaparral found in the deserts of Arizona and Southern California. It is not the metaphoric plateau that keeps our mood swings in check. Nor is it the place where most interpersonal relationships reside after a few euphoric, passion-filled years. The Covid-19 plateau is annoying, inconvenient and deadly. It was supposed to be short-lived. The experts told us so. Coronavirus cases and deaths were supposed to climb to a peak, stall for a bit and then drop steadily. There were many models that showed this. In fact, there were models that showed this for every state and the District of Columbia. The experts lied to the American public early on when they told us masks were not necessary. They were trying to prevent binge buying so medical masks could be preserved for front-line health care workers and first re

May 20, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 62 Homo sapiens crave intimacy.  Not just sexual intimacy but also a physical and emotional closeness with friends, family and even co-workers. It is not surprising then that social distancing is not instinctive. It is not baked into our psyche.  It does not live in our DNA. It is not even desirable. This begins at birth right after the obstetrician or midwife smacks a baby on the butt, generates a welcome-wail and hands her off to bond with mom. Those first hours are all about developing the intimacy we will crave our entire lives. Babies are swaddled and cuddled by cooing grownups. Small children get hugs and head pats every time an adult enter their personal space. Then they get a second hug and pat when the adult leaves their personal space. Teenagers rebel against everything including unsolicited intimacy. That is why they flee when a red-faced, ancient auntie attempts a boozy embrace before Sunday dinner. Adults, because they are tight

May 18, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 60 Lightning-fast broadband internet. Now more than ever America needs it! Unfortunately almost 25 percent of rural America, or about 14.5 million million users, do not have it. Slow internet service has been a problem for years but the Covid-19 pandemic has made it much, much worse at a time when speed is much, much more important. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has declared that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) must deliver at least 25 Mbps download speed and three Mbps upload speed to qualify as broadband. In urban/suburban areas this is no problem. But many rural Americans are lucky to plod along at 4 Mbps download and during high use times it can shrink to far less than two. My sons are scattered around cities in the northeast. They reported the following speeds during prime time Sunday night: * Boston - 95.7 download/ 5.81 upload * Providence - 92.5 download/72.4 upload * Brooklyn -155.6 download/34.9 upload * Rural V

May 16, 2020 The 73rd Year Day 58 The Covid-19 virus continues to kill seniors living in nursing homes almost three months after the first case and deaths were reported in a Washington State facility. The Washington outbreak alerted Americans that the virus had swum ashore and was targeting our most vulnerable, percolating among seniors warehoused together in nursing homes. A Covid-19 surge was forecast! The states scrambled to react, adding hospital beds, expanding ICU units and launching a world-wide, competitive scramble for ventilators and masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment. The surge came in first New York City, New Orleans and urban New England. Many places are still surging. The scramble for PPE is ongoing. But there are enough hospital beds. And this begs the question: “Why is anyone still dying in a nursing home? If a patient is sick enough, surely they should be sent to a hospital if there is any chance their life may be preserved. It makes me wo

May 14, 2020 The Long Haul Day 56 Newspapers can not catch the Covid-19 virus but this pandemic is killing them off anyway. The ink-stained broadsheets and tabloids that defined my youth and my career were disappearing at an alarming clip long before the virus touched our shores. Advertising revenue had evaporated and most small, mid-sized and regional newspapers have struggled to replace badly needed operating capital through online subscriptions. In 1970 there were 1,748 dailies across the country. By 2018 there were only 1,248. The number will dip much lower before this crisis is over. The newspaper wonks have long predicted that a few national dailies like the New York Times and the LA Times will survive intact. Others predict regionalization will support a few others. The Boston Globe set up a bureau in Providence, Rhode Island a year ago, a first step in what may be the creation of a newspaper for all of New England. This is hardly breaking news. But for me,

May 12, 2020 The Long Haul Day 54 It is time to squeeze a few testicles, first at the White House then  in a few statehouses across the country. If you have been to court for any reason or watched a courtroom drama in a film or on television you have seen witnesses stand with their right hand raised, left on a bible and solemnly swear before god “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” If you have never heard this oath, you have been in quarantine way too long. The origin of this universal declaration is fuzzy. My favorite etymological explanation states that the Romans were forced to squeeze their testicles while vowing to tell the truth. This gave birth to the Latin word testis or testify. If ever there was a time for transparency and a little testes squeezing, it is in the middle of a pandemic. Americans want the truth. They can handle the truth. They deserve the truth. But the truth about Covid-19 is getting harder and harder to find. It was elu

May 10, 2020 The Long Haul Day 52 Happy Mother’s Day! Vermont is staring intently into the jaws of the new normal and I have no idea how to behave. My pals are all planning to play tennis Wednesday. Tennis is a real passion; I like the game, the social interaction and the exercise. I play year-round but in this unforgiving climate the outdoor season is short and precious, each opportunity to play under the sun is to be seized and savored. The tennis emails have been flying since Governor Phil Scott announced earlier this week that some outdoor, recreational activities could resume as long as masks are worn and social distancing rules are followed. He mentioned golf but not tennis but my friends, all seniors, see that as an omission not a restriction. Next came the news that the nets were going back up at the local high school. A private clay court that we use was set to open this weekend. The outdoor season is upon us. Still I am reluctant to play. As the pandemic rages

May 8, 2020 The Long Haul  Day 50 Unanswered questions! There are a ton of them. Here are just a few: * Why are politicians relaxing or eliminating stay-at-home orders  when they know thousands of vulnerable Americans will die? * Why are Drs. Fauci and Birx still working at the White House? * Who do Americans believe and who should they trust? * Why is access to Covid-19 data getting worse not better? There is a plethora of reporting everyday on the steady march of Covid-19 through the midwest from its original epicenters in Seattle, New York and Boston. Much of the reporting is breathless; the statistics are scary and can be overwhelming. The challenge we all face to survive is taking us into uncharted territory. Unfortunately our response to the challenge is old, dangerous and well documented. The questions raised above are all linked; the answers are simple. Politics trumps all else; pun intended! Remember the three wise monkeys, one each