Month: November 2021

Tweaking ‘thoughts and prayers.’

When I first got engaged in the Fibro community, a guy gave a horror story about his situation. His health sucked. His mental ability had been drained away. The people who loved him (or were supposed to) cast him aside like a broken vacuum cleaner.

I told him I’d pray for him if it was okay. His angry response surprised me.

Will you? he demanded. Will you drop to your knees and stop what you’re doing and really pray or were you just saying that to justify yourself?

For the record, I did. Right there on Facebook. Because as much as I struggle I can’t imagine someone who’s life gets destroyed like that by something very few care about, let alone understand. I don’t remember his name, but once a week or so, I still pray for him, specifically, that God help him and that he find peace.

In the wake of tragedy, prayers have become viewed as a cheap currency to solve expensive problems. They’re a way to avoid the messy issue underneath and remove any responsibility to do something tangible.

The criticism is brutal and unforgiving–and it’s not entirely wrong.

Not sure Morgan Freeman every said this, but you still probably hear it in his voice.

Jesus gave up his Godhood, come down and experienced first-century footwear and food-related discomfort, then be tortured to death. He didn’t do that so we could be comfortable around ugly things. He didn’t choose between excruciating pain and breathing (which happens when you’re crucified) so we can build a wall and lob our prayers over to those outsiders who didn’t make the good decisions we did—all comfortably free of their reality.

For the record, I responded to a request for prayer today and prayed some very specific things. And it helped the person I prayed for. I didn’t just air wish them good thoughts and check the baseball transactions.

People don’t ask for prayers over a hangnail. If they ask, they deserve a well-considered response.

But maybe after we say the prayer–we should and it should be specific–maybe we should add a little side prayer, just between God and us.

God, please also open my eyes for an opportunity to put my prayer into motion. I’m willing to give of my comfort and my view of how things should be if you ask me to. Lead me where you want me to be and help me follow, regardless of the path. And when I resist–and I will; sometimes I’m scared and greedy when it comes to my comfort–please gently help me see beyond my limited vision and trust your direction.

If ‘thoughts and prayers’ are considered stupid and useless and if our job is to extend God’s love as he extended his, then we need to look hard and see if we helped people reach that conclusion.

That means we have to consider things we don’t like. Take positions we don’t fully understand or agree with, if that’s the message we get. And we have to listen when we go our own way and God nags us to go His way.

Your mileage may vary, but we spend too much time worshipping comfort and making God a comfort-producer. Like Aslan, he’s not safe, but he’s good.

We need to do our best to choose the danger. I suck at that, but I know it’s something to work on.

Help us me like Dr. McCoy.

If you surrender to God, he might shake things up (I don’t wanna be a snow globe)

Every year, like clockwork, if you go to church during advent, you hear about the Angel Gabriel coming to Mary and letting her know that she’ll give birth to the savior of the world. And Mary asks how this can be because she’s a virgin (a reasonable question). Gabriel explains it, and Mary thinks it over a bit and says, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it happen to me as you have said.” And then Gabriel leaves.

This year, as in past years, we were challenged to have a moment of surrender, as Mary did.

And, as in past years, me and a lot of other people do what we were supposed to do and said, “Challenge accepted!” And then a few days go by and not much changed.

This year, as the Fibro has complicated some of the things I want to do, I’ve thought about the challenge I try to accept each year. This year, some forced humility has changed my approach.

For one thing, in spite of the Fibro and the Moderna hangover that’s lingering, things are pretty good. I don’t want my life to get shaken up like a snow globe. That’ll mess up the good things. Surrendering to God’s plan means opening yourself up to that.

I don’t wanna be a snow globe!

Being a pregnant unmarried teenager in Mary’s day was a Very Bad Thing™. In the Gospel of John, they wanted to throw rocks at a woman until she died just for having sex outside wedlock, let alone getting pregnant. It didn’t happen much, but it was possible. More likely, she’s be shunned, like the woman at the well, who got her water at noon when it was hot because the pure women wouldn’t abide her being there with them while it was cooler.

I’m not good at putting my comfort at risk. No one is. It’s possible, if you surrender, God will make you rich and powerful and give you the grace to do that well. It’s also possible that your fibro will crash or you’ll lose your job or your house will burn down. This is the God who said, “my power is made perfect in weakness.”

When the world blows up around you, it’s entirely possible you’ll be pissed off at God. (If so, you might as well go with it; it’s not like you can hide it.) More likely, you’ll be so busy fighting the fire that you’ll forget about God completely. If he put the fire there (or allowed it), it’s likely he’ll understand.

At the very least, it’ll involve me putting myself further back than number one. It’ll mean I have to look beyond what’s best for me and what makes me comfortable. I don’t like annoying things and having crap go wrong. I like comfort.

This message has been stuck to my monitor for a month or so. Not sure where I picked it up.

But maybe surrendering isn’t entirely up to us.

U2’s Moment of Surrender includes the lyric “It’s not if I believe in Love, but if Love believes in me.” I fiddled with the capitalization a bit to make a point–if we’re relying on God, we’re relying on God. In Mark’s Gospel when a father has asked for his son to be healed, he says “I want to belief; help my unbelief.” In the story Jairus’s daughter, she’s pretty sick and he’s freaking out. Jesus says, “Don’t be afraid. Just believe.” I like to think he said this calmly, reassuringly.

If you want to believe, God’s unlikely to say, “I’m sorry, you’re not at 100.00% belief. Good bye!”

Even Mary, the woman with rock-solid faith, was freaked out at Gabriel coming to visit, and he had to tell her not to be afraid. She needed questions answered.

The pastor who gave yesterday’s message said she had everything arranged the way she wanted it and God said, “No, I want you to do this other thing.” So she ignored it and did what she thought was best. Eventually God nudged her along without any actual smiting.

Uh-oh, she didn’t say yes fast enough. In a place where the hockey team is called the Lightning. I suspect smiting shall ensue.

In the message, she pointed out that Mary got some pretty quick re-enforcement from Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s mom). Not to mention the fact that Joseph could’ve turned her out, but didn’t. He supported her, too.

When we surrender, God’s not gonna say, “Okay, good. You’re on your own now.” If we’re open to the possibility of help, it’ll appear.

So once again this year, I want to do what Mary did. It took <cough cough> years, but I’m smart enough not to be all Barney Stinson about it. “God, I’ve thought it over and I accept your challenge.”

Pretty sure this misses the mark.

More like, “I’m probably going to need constant reassurance and support and will probably screw it up several dozen times. But I really want to do what you want. Can you save my heavy, dirty soul? Please send me help.”

That’s a real prayer.

Banning books sucks, no matter how you go about demanding it

I recently read a book in which two daughters take turns getting their father drunk so they can use him to impregnate them after he passes out. The story is told factually, almost clinically. The book is extremely popular, one of the best-selling books of all time. It’s not Harry Potter, or any of the 50 Shades series. And it’s not something written by Toni Morrison or Alison Bechdel. All of those books have been the targets of efforts to ban books in public or school libraries.

Two Spotsylvania County (VA) school board members helpfully suggested offending books be burned.

In spite of its shocking and graphic content, this book isn’t what Texas governor Greg Abbott was referring to when his asked his Education commissioner to refer any “instance of pornography being provided to minors under the age of 18 for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.” However, this book is freely available to minors and its consumption is even encouraged in many homes.

I’m talking, of course, about the Bible, specifically, the book of Genesis, where Lot’s two daughters get him drunk and effectively rape him because when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, there was no one left to make babies with.

The American Library Association has recently reported a sharp uptick in challenges to books in public libraries, specifically school libraries. Specific targets include books about LGBTQIA+ relationships, racism in American society, and, you know, sex and stuff.

I attended a Catholic high school, where every year, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition mysteriously vanished somewhere between the Time-Life printing press and the school library shelf. It was silly because a lot of the kids who might look at it either received it at home or could walk down the street to Fay’s Drug Store and buy a copy.

Not available in our Catholic School library (but on the shelves at Fays Drugs).

The same model applies here. Adults have been trying to ban scandalous content since at least the first time Elvis Presley wiggled his hips. And while I don’t necessarily think it’s appropriate for a sixth-grader to read about the Red Room of Pain (50 Shades), they’re going to be exposed to the idea that racism exists and that sometimes straight white dudes have certain advantages non-straight non-white non-dudes don’t have.

They were at first.

In school, no one ever said, “I’m gonna kick your ass because you’re a white guy.” But someone decided I was a “gay boy” and that was a different story (for the record, I’m not, so to the extent I was targeted, it was short and minor).

One of the things I remember about my world opening in college was when a fellow classmate said in class that the US never did anything in its existence that wasn’t done of selfish, evil intent. I disagree with that statement, but being exposed to it was good for me. It made me broaden my perspective.

It’s not just conservatives who play the “this book must not be read card,” though. They just do it a little later in the cycle. In 2019, Kosoko Jackson wrote a widely anticipated debut novel called A Place for Wolves in which two black gay boys fall in love against the backdrop of the Kosovo war. Considering the fact that Jackson is both black and gay, you’d think the book’s biggest worry would be people like Governor Abbott. You’d be wrong.

A single Goodreads review snowballed into a Twitter storm that caused Jackson to withdraw the novel because of its treatment of the war and of Muslims.

Amélie Wen Zhao, pulled her young adult fantasy Blood Heir because she didn’t depict slavery correctly in her fantasy world. The marketing copy “oppression is blind to skin color” helped cause another Twitter storm that resulted in her pulling her book back.

In both cases, the authors apologize to the “Book Community,” presumably the same folks who are aghast at efforts like Governor Abbott’s to censor books.

There’s a key difference. Democratic Governors haven’t called for prosecution of anyone who provides A Place for Wolves and Blood Heir to minors. Beyond that, the model is exactly the same, except it’s different groups of angry, narrow-minded people demanding that everyone else kowtow to their idea of decency–by banning books they’ve never read.

When I was a kid, my mom, a Catholic, didn’t care for Billy Joel’s Only the Good Die Young in part because of the lyric “Catholic girls start much too late.” That’s fine. But she also said radio stations shouldn’t be able to play it. When I helpfully suggested that she use the car’s radio tuner to resolve the issue (I may have been flippant about it), she didn’t like the suggestion.

In a free society, you should get to promote your ideas to the free market of consumers, who can accept or reject them. It’s reasonable to point out, “hey, I read this and I think you got my culture wrong and this is a little hurtful to me.”

It’s not reasonable to say “hey, that guy over there–someone I don’t know–objected to this book and though I haven’t read it, I object, too. It must be pulled (and a little grovelling wouldn’t hurt, either).”

That’s anathema to free society.

If you want people to get the shot, being a putz about it won’t convince them

Wednesday afternoon, I got my Covid booster. I woke up around 2 Thursday morning feeling achy and hungover. Then, because I’m a genius, I got up and ran a 5K. Thanksgiving and yesterday sandwiched quality time in bed around moving furniture. Today I’m not feeling as bad, but I don’t feel great.

The reaction to this shoot isn’t as intense as shot number two, but it’s lasted longer. The fever hasn’t been as intense, but the body pains were a lot worse. Overall, by the time I’m done, it’ll be the better part of three lost days.

There is no way in hell I’m doing this once every six months.

Well, aren’t you a selfish little piece of crap? You know feeling some minor flu symptoms for a couple of days is a far cry from feeling the full effects of Covid. And if it weren’t for people like you who won’t put yourself out a tiny, little bit for others, we’d be past this right now.

After all, we have the Omicron variant which (dun-dun-DUNNNN!) could be the one that makes the vaccines worthless (like every since post vaccine variant before it could’ve). The Daily Mail (UK) isn’t waiting for the scientists. It’s already declared the variant “ultra-infectious and vaccine resistant.”

No worries. The vaccine makers are saying they’ll have boosters for any variant that beats the vaccine within a hundred days.

My second dose made me sicker than I’ve been in 20 years and the booster was just a tick behind that. It would be reasonable for me, while I still feel like ass, to say “Yeah, I don’t think I want to be doing that twice a year.”

And now, with the Omicron variant, we could have yet another booster to go on top of the current booster within 100 days of the time we figure it’s needed. I could go through all this fun again before baseball season starts.

Or have some armchair scientist berate me for not wanting to deal with it all again quite so quickly.

And that’s a big part of the problem with Covid. It started with masks. Last Christmas, I had to take a step back from being the mask police because I would go to Publix and lose my mind about people with their mask below their nose and that one time when–O!M!G!–five people didn’t have a mask on at all! I made a decision to step back and keep things in perspective.

Then it moved to vaccines.

For the record, I’m fully vaccinated. And I think other people should be, too. But ultimately, I can’t make that decision for them. And treating them like the dog who just pooped on the rug isn’t going to convince them. It’ll just make them defensive and piss them off. In general, if you’re trying to convince people to see things your way, you probably shouldn’t call them stupid, selfish bastards who wouldn’t know common sense if it punched them in the face.

It’s gone beyond the vaccines to the idiots who went to the Super Bowl, a selfish jerks who went to Lollapalooza, and the hicks from Dumbf***istan who went to the season-opening FSU football game in Tallahassee–none of which turned into the super spreader events science and well-meaning keyboard warriors dictated they had to be.

Right now, I’d rather poke my right eye out and get a New York Yankees tattoo on my arm than get another stupid freaking Covid vaccine stuck in my arm.

Given that my current schedule means, if I get sick, I’ll be giving up Thanksgiving and Memorial Day weekends, it’s a bit of an imposition. As much as I’m whining now, if that’s what I need to do, that’s what’ll happen.

You can lecture me about it if you want; it’s a free country. I would rather you just said thank you and went on your way.

Always take your results in context

Three months ago, I could’ve run yesterday’s 5K in less than 30 minutes. After all, I was running a sub-10 for longer distances on hills pretty regularly. Yesterday’s 5K was flat enough to make pancakes on.

I probably came in at a little over 11 minutes a mile yesterday and it was a damn lot of work to do it.

I’m prouder of that slower pace than I would’ve of the faster pace back in September.

Two things happened back then–my legs started hurting in a way that wasn’t right and I had a fibromyalgia flare. So, for a month, I did nothing. Then I started doing yoga every day. Then, this week, I swapped out some of the yoga for resistance exercises and running. I’ve run a total of four times in November, counting the 5K.

I still have two of the three half marathons I signed up for this winter and I still intend to do them.

But when I woke up this morning, everything hurt. I felt hungover (I had one beer last night). It could be the booster shot I got yesterday. It could be the workout I did. It could be fibro. Or a combination of all three.

Suffice to say, if we didn’t have people coming, I’d spend the rest of the day in bed.

But I got the run in. It was long and it was hard and I wanted to stop several times (like every second of the last mile).

But I made it and got my medal and t-shirt and probably placed in the lowest quarter of my age group. But I don’t care. I’m building this back in what I hope will be more sustainable. If I could get to sub-10 on hills last year, I can do it again this year.

But for now, what I did is what I did and I’m kind of proud of it, because #ffibro and it’s my best.

Sometime context matters more than the clock.

PS — I ran a 10:41, which isn’t horrible. Twenty-fourth out of forty-one in my age group.

My Thanksgiving wish for myself (and then others)

This morning I put a tablespoon of yogurt and almost half a gallon of milk in a fancy pot and pressed a button. By this afternoon, I’ll have enough yogurt out of that machine to supply my breakfast for almost a week.

A tablespoon of yogurt, a carton of Fairlife milk. Pour them in, press the Yogurt button and eight hours later, BOOM, a mess of yogurt.

This week, I’ve done yoga, running, and resistance training. I’m employed–and stayed that way through the Great Recession, my personal dumpster fire of 2015, and the Covid. My wife and kids are in good health and are relatively happy.

Things are pretty damn good right now.

I worship a God who had provided some pretty amazing things for me. He has blessed me well beyond what I have a right to expect.

I’m grateful for these blessings, and I try to express that gratitude each morning on Facebook with a post. The posts are numbered to remind me how many things I have to be grateful for.

But if God has blessed me so much, why am I so fickle? Why am I so quick to forget the number of times he’s bailed my ass out when I didn’t deserve it? Why am I so forgetful about the almost 2000 blessings I’ve called out on Facebook and the almost infinite number of blessings beyond that?

Though my soul, it can’t be bought, my mind can wander. And it does.

It’s not the end of the year yet, but that’s what I’ll concentrate on in the waning weeks of this year and throughout next year.

I know I can never earn God’s love. And I know I don’t have to. But I want to be less fickle. I want gratitude to Him to permeate my life. And for the many blessings I have to flow through me on to others.

I want to show appreciation by being the me He created me to be.

If I can do that, then I won’t just be a blessing to myself, but to others, as well.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tucker Carlson is a danger to the American Republic.

“In this sense, the release of Patriot Purge wasn’t an isolated incident, it was merely the most egregious example of a longstanding trend. Patriot Purge creates an alternative history of January 6, contradicted not just by common sense, not just by the testimony and on-the-record statements of many participants, but by the reporting of the news division of Fox News itself.”

This is a quote from former Fox News contributors Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hays, posting on The Dispatch. Both Goldberg and Hays quit the network over Patriot Purge, Tucker Carlson’s three-part “expose” that claimed to present “the truth” about the January 6 insurrection.

In Carlson’s mind–at least is on-air mind, the truth is that the insurrection was a false flag operation, instigated and carried out by the left to act as a trigger to imprison patriotic Trump supporters and send them to a Gitmo for Americans. Or something.

This man has no apparent soul.

This shouldn’t be a surprise from a guy who based an entire previous expose that the FBI orchestrated January 6 on a site called Revolver.news, which is currently filled with links to external news sources, and stories like “Are you ready to be an American Kulak” and the important exclusive “How to support Revolver News.”

Please send us money to create new content for our BS site

For the record, I tried very hard to read the piece Carlson based the FBI-instigation show on, but it was like following the long ramblings of a drunken three-year-old. It didn’t prove a thing. It merely asked questions and made assertions, which it then treated as fact.

In a sane world, when someone bases an episode of a primetime news show on Revolver.news, he loses that show and any future viewership. In this world, he gets great ratings and leads people like Hayes and Goldberg to resign from the network. He gets people like Chris Wallace and Bret Baier, respected journalists, to protest to senior management.

For his part, Carlson is acting like Trump. He says that the resignation of Goldberg and Hayes, longtime conservative thought leaders “would substantially improve the network…No one wants to watch commentary that stupid.”

More telling, Fox had no intention of renewing Goldberg or Hayes contracts when they expire next year. They seemingly have no problem keeping Carlson on the air and promoting conspiracy theories that have widely been debunked. The network seems to be purging the people–conservatives–who don’t toe the pro-Trump line, including people who don’t buy into whatever ridiculous conspiracy theory the Trump-obsessed faction of the Republican party comes up with.

Since its debut in 1996, Fox News, along with pretty much any conservative media, has been called a propaganda machine that Hitler would be proud of. For much of its life, it hasn’t been.

Now, it is.

I’ve always been pretty much a free speech absolutist, but Fox News is pushing stories it knows to be lies in order to make a lot of money and foment unrest. Tucker Carlson is no moron. He knows Revolver.news isn’t credible. He knows January 6 was inspired by Trump and carried out by his supporters.

He doesn’t care. He’s in it for the money and the power. And if people, including his viewers, get killed in the unrest he’s generating–well, I guess shit happens.

Blanket progressive reforms may ultimately prevent important reforms

It’s not a cause for celebration for this country to have as many incarcerated people as it does. One of the positive outcomes of the social justice protests of early 2020 was to cast a light on some of our criminal justice processes.

Unfortunately, in some places, the pendulum has swung too far the other way. In San Francisco, some stores are closing early because of shoplifting. Walgreen’s is closing several locations. Shoplifting has become endemic in San Francisco.

Just this past weekend, a Nordstrom and Louis Vuitton in San Francisco and a pharmacy in Oakland. Yesterday, they cleaned out a Nordstrom at the Grove, an upscale mall in Los Angeles.

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a law saying shoplifting is a felony below the state-imposed limit of $950, if the shoplifter is part of an organized ring that aims to resell the stolen goods. That’s a step in the right direction but may also be very difficult to prove.

Otherwise, shoplifting below that limit is a misdemeanor that’s rarely prosecuted. In other words, in places like San Francisco or Los Angeles, you can walk into a store and walk out with $900 worth of merchandise and you probably won’t be charged.

Shoplifter stealing purses from a San Francisco Nieman Marcus

The shoplifting and the store closures are hurting residence in the high-crime areas and those people tend to be people of color. San Francisco supervisor Rafael Mandelman called Safeway’s early closure an equity problem. He’s not wrong. The people served by these stores can’t just jump in their ride and go to the next-closest store. The policies that allow this activity are hurting the people and neighborhoods they’re supposed to help.

The tension between the reasonable drive to reduce incarceration and the need to protect the public isn’t likely to go away. Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon is facing a second recall effort after his sweeping changes to his office. In all cases, LA district attorneys are forbidden from charging youthful offenders as adults. They cannot ask for sentencing enhancements, such as gang activity and repeat offenders.

LA District Attorney George Gascon

His office recently created headlines when it advocated the release of Andrew Cachu, who murdered 41-year-old Louis Amela after one of Cachu’s friends attempted to steal his bike outside a restaurant. While Cachu’s friends were beating Amela, Cachu shot him in the back. He was six weeks away from his 18th birthday but, because of the violence involved, he was charged as an adult.

During the trial, Cachu’s brother Jorge was charged with witness intimidation after rocks were thrown through the car window of a witness. Both Cachus were members of a gang.

Because Cachu was charged as a juvenile, under California law, there were actions required by the DA’s office to keep him in prison. Because of Gascon’s directive, those actions weren’t taken. Cachu will be released from prison after less than six years. There’s no record of rehabilitation for Cachu and because of his age (25), he won’t qualify for the services youthful offenders receive on release.

In essence, Gascon’s blanket directives are putting a ticking time bomb on the streets. In the process, he figuratively spit in the face of Amela’s family. Given Gascon’s approach and actions, it’s not much of a stretch to think he believes the criminals are the co-victims in their crimes, and maybe even the primary victim.

The DAs office used to work with victims’ families to prepare for parole hearings. Former DAs, lead by Kathleen Cady have stepped into this breach. Alisa Blair, a former public defender and a “special consultant” to Gascon (whatever that means), recently called Cady a monster.

The largest district attorney’s office in the country is releasing unrepentant killers after six years, but calls a former DA helping victims a monster. If that doesn’t show an absolute bias in favor of the accused, I’m no certain what does.

Any Republican, including Trump zealots, will point to Gascon and Chesa Boudin, who succeeded Gascon in San Francisco as representative of what a wing of the Democratic party stands for. They’ll say they want to export their vision to the rest of the country.

And they won’t be wrong.

Other progressive DAs aren’t taking the same absolute measures as Gascon. Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, also a progressive, will still allow prosecution of juveniles as adults on a case-by-case basis.

As crime rises and some of last year’s reforms are reversed, actions like Gascon’s may actually result in fewer reforms as voters trace rising crime rates and spectacular footage (like the San Francisco bike shoplifter) back to their policies.

As a society, we would benefit from a lower incarceration rate. But we have to be smart about the reforms and make changes to increase justice, not to make a sweeping statement.

We aren’t entitled to a zero-risk environment

As a kid, I had a crush on Stephanie Zimbalist. So it wasn’t my favorite moment in the miniseries Centennial when her character got bit in the neck by a rattlesnake and died while cooking at the campfire.

Stephanie Zimbalist, pre-rattlesnake

Yesterday, in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a band was walking down the street when someone ran them over with a red Ford Escape plowed through them at a relatively high rate of speed. I saw multiple videos of what happened, including one from a few feet away. I won’t link to them here. If you want to see them, they aren’t hard to find.

After seeing the videos last night, I told my wife that if we had kids marching in a parade this week, I’d tell the not to. There are too many people who might decide to copy the person who killed five people. Although my wife and I both marched in holiday parades, our experiences were different. She marched in big parades. I marched in Gloversville, NY.

In my parade, there was security, but it was aimed at keeping people from accidentally getting on the parade route, not stopping someone from driving through a marching band and the Dancing Grannies at a high rate of speed.

My thoughts were well-intended and academic (our kids are adults and aren’t in parades these days). They were also wrong.

A lot of people cooked over a fire in the west back in the day. Very few (maybe none) of them got bit in the neck by a rattlesnake and died. And a lot of people will march in parades this week. Probably none of them, from this point forward, will get hit by a car and die.

We’ve become too risk averse–almost claiming as divine right a zero-risk environment. Depending on who you talk to, you have the absolute right to be surrounded by masked people in public at all times–or to not be pressured receive any Covid-related vaccine ever. Because of risk.

In Pasco County, where I live, the 7-day average for Covid cases is 31. The seven-day average for deaths is 2. Odds are very good that those two people had underlying conditions. In the state of Florida, the case rate and death rates are near all-time lows.

That doesn’t mean you should run out a swap spit with strangers because there’s no way you can possibly get sick. But it means right now, the risk of infection is very low and the risk of death for most people here is functionally zero.

In fairness, some of that has to do with vaccines. I’m fully vaccinated. I’m getting my booster this week. If you choose not to, I’m personally fine with that. I think you’re wrr wrrr wrrrr, but in a free society, that’s your choice.

Early in the pandemic, when we didn’t know much, we locked down everything. And the rates were miniscule in Florida. As time’s gone on, we’ve learned. When I was in New York, during the late summer, as the Delta variant surged, rates were relatively low where I was. Now, rates in New York are climbing.

Meanwhile, infection rates were higher during the summer in Florida than they were last winter. And now they’re low. It’s almost like the rates are attached to people staying inside together and not, say, music festivals in Chicago and college football games in Tallahassee.

Lollapalooza wasn’t the death of all Chicagoland

We all get to react to things–it’s natural and human. There was nothing wrong with my immediate reaction to the Waukesha attack last night. But my reaction was emotional, not rational.

But we also need to understand that life entails risk. I was at more risk running a Tough Mudder than I am from the Covid right now or from parade crashers.

And as I learn from available data, I can adjust. The data would seem to indicate that we’re okay in Florida, but maybe it’s time to be a little careful in New York. It would seem to indicate that parades are pretty safe places to be.

Nothing is certain. I could contract the Covid and die. There would be a rash of copycats. A few dozen campers could get bitten in the neck by rattlesnakes and die.

That risk is a necessary part of life. The only way to eliminate it is to stop living.

Ode to the person who told me to go be Mick

This morning I almost posted something that mildly ridiculed the lady who was bundled up in a winter jacket with a scarf on, walking her dog. It was 69 degrees out. A voice entered my head that said, “You don’t know what she’s going through. Maybe she’s having cancer treatments and 69 degrees is really cold for her right now. Maybe walking her dog is a big deal, a highlight of her day.”

It’s Capitaland’s favorite temperature right here at PYX 106. (Very obscure Albany radio reference.)

I didn’t make the post or go for the easy laugh.

That voice belonged to someone I’ve known–mostly online–for the past twenty years. Someone who helped me see the good in me when I couldn’t.

Mick Jagger is an ugly guy, she’d say. But when he’s on stage he owns the place because he goes out there and he’s just Mick. Go be Mick.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Franck Castel/REX/Shutterstock (9175101br)

Last week, this person severed ties with me over a post I made about a woman who was way over the limit in the checkout lane and had the rest of the line waiting while she went to get more items. I said something to her and she gave it back to me.

The Go be Mick person said I was wrong. An argument ensued–we’ve also argued online for twenty years or so–and then she cut me off.

Sometimes hers was the voice in my mind that piled on when I felt bad about myself, that arranged the available facts in such a way that I was the prime mover of evil, or at least unbearable stupidity. And sometimes hers was the voice in my head that made me look at things differently, like this morning with the lady with the scarf.

There’s enough negativity online right now. I try to balance that with some positivity, with light jokes, likes for people who did something cool, or posts to help people feel good about what they’ve accomplished.

I’m sad about that broken relationship and that my post seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

But the voice in that person will go on. Sometimes it’ll help me temper my snarkiness a little. And that’s probably a good thing.