Media Making It Harder

 I'm increasingly bugged by a particular behavior by news media: mischaracterization. My case in point today is the common phrasing of changing vaccine recommendations as "puzzling" or "confusing". 

Horseshit.

It's about as simple as it gets: as the virus changes so must our response to it. Calling this simple concept "puzzling" is like wondering why the needle on your car's gas gauge moves as you drive. 

Another seething pet peeve is the ubiquitous use a "crisis" to describe things that happen every damn day. A "crisis", by definition, is an unexpected, serious, and short-lived event that does require unique resources to resolve, but when it's resolved, it goes away. Calling the immigration situation at the southern border a "crisis" is simply hyperbole. People have been crossing the border for generations. Our government's commitment to handling that situation, though, is variable across decades. That's not a crisis, that's poor public policy.

Hiding from Smoke

 The air quality in Colorado  has been degraded by wildfires on the west coast pumping smoke into my part of southern Colorado. The Air Quality Index right now is 105, meaning there are 105 parts per million of particulate matter - smoke particles, burned residue from houses, cars, trucks, etc - making it unsafe for at risk people to breathe outdoors.

Being one of those "at risk" people, I've been secluded indoors for 2 days so far, a total of 12 days out of the last 20.  Even at that, my chest aches and my voice has faded to a poor whisper. The forecast for tomorrow is more of the same.

Don't tell climate change "is coming". It's definitely here.

What Was She Thinking?

 In Mesa County Colorado County Clerk Tina Peters, a conservative Republican, Lauren Boebert bestie and MyPillow Guy devotee, will not be allowed to supervise this fall's elections.

According to the Colorado Secretary of State, Jenna Griswold, Peters violated vote rules by allowing a private citizen to observe a software update to the county's Dominion voting machines. The unauthorized person obtained hard drive images and the passwords needed to access the systems and posted them on the Internet. Peters later lied to the SOS, claiming the unauthorized person was an employee. 

The SOS has now decertified Mesa county's voting equipment and directed the county either replace it all or find a way to re-certify the current gear. 

The good news is no election results are in question as a result of this spectacularly stupid move by Clerk Peters, who's now under criminal investigation by Mesa county law enforcement. 

The bad news is the county is on the hook for significant capital funds to replace the vote counting equipment before November.

The sad news Peters still has her job. 

I'm Not Crying

 

I Can Breathe Again!

 Today marks the first day local air quality has improved enough for me to be outdoors. Because of the California wildfires and diabolical wind patterns, smoke has become a genuine threat to southern Colorado people like me with lung disease. This morning, though, I can see the mountains again for the first time in nine days. The air isn't yellow any more.

It also means Reuben, my boxer, gets to go for his usual walk with me. Gotta go, see ya!

JAMA Editor Resigns

 A podcast and a tweet sponsored by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) regarding systemic racism in medicine has resulted in the resignation of two senior staff of JAMA, including the Editor in Chief.

At its heart, the podcast and the tweet question the existence of racism in American medicine since "racism" is against US law.  

Let me be clear. I spent 50 years in health care, much of it in hospitals from the 1970s through the 1990s. In those days, medicine was unabashedly sexist and racist. In those days a (female) nurse was required to give up her seat at the nursing station to a (male) physician when he arrived to make rounds on his patients. The (female) nurse was also expected to carry cigarettes and lighter - whether she smoked or not -  to meet the (male) physician's nicotine needs as he sat in her chair at the nurse's station writing progress notes. 

American physician culture has always been 100% patriarchal. Powerful white males are pretty much the vessels of racism in medicine. 

I hope JAMA is sincere in this. I hope the structural sexism and racism inherent in the system is facing a moment of reckoning.

Life Lessons

On Friday I learned that falling backwards onto a walking stick cactus is really much more painful than you'd think.

On Saturday I learned that attending an outdoor music event during a hailstorm is really much more painful than you'd think. 

Today I learned there is such a thing as "light brie", which is much more painful as well as much more confounding than you'd think. 

Can't We Do Anything New Anymore?

 Can't we do anything new?

Hollywood insists on sequels to and "reboots" of old films.

Instead of a permanent residence, NASA is trying to get back to the Moon.

Mitch McConnell is still a vile little monster with a hammerlock on the Senate for the second consecutive Democratic administration.

Publishers encourage serial novels, just as Charles Dickens did in 19th century Britain.

Even Trump's "America First" is a re-visitation of some frankly racist movements in the 20th century.

And now Trump wants to resuscitate Newt Gingrich.

... former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party. His template is the 1994 "Contract with America," a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term. And, as a cherry on top, he’s teaming up with its main architect — Gingrich — to do it.

Living in a decaying civilization isn't so much horrific or terrifying as it is stultifyingly repetitious. 

 

 

Sometimes When I Think I Don't Know What to Think

 Over the weekend I had a pair of realizations that feel like they're maybe profound, but damned if I can see why.

First, with the passing of my mother two years ago, there is no one left on the planet who has known me from birth. 

Second, I am now older than my dad was in my clearest memories of him. 

See? there's got to be something important here, right? 

Lauren Boebert Stupidity Watch

 It's not possible the profound poverty of personal knowledge. 

Retirement, Day 3

This has been the longest Saturday in the recorded history of Saturdays.  😄

I Haven't Flown in So Long

In the 14 months since my last commercial airline flight, the world disappeared. Sars-cov-2 made troglodytes of us all. We became experts at binge-watching dysfunctional animal owners and figuring out which food delivery service our favorite restaurants use. I learned to recognize new staff members by their eye makeup: I'm not sure I'd recognize them without masks.

So when the pandemic began its painfully slow decline and travel began to become safer for an aging man with chronic lung disease the idea of travel began to take up more of my attention. This coincided neatly with an invitation to fly to Minnesota to attend my great grandaughter's dance recital. 

Now, in the Before Times I was a frequent flyer. I routinely qualified for TSA Pre Check. But without a recent history of flights that wasn't likely to be a available. I was resigned to the usual drudgery of opaque ticket kiosk interfaces, slightly grim TSA officers scrutinizing my ID, the invasive electromagnetism of luggage imaging and body scanners, the truly awful airport coffee, the worse Bloody Marys.

So I was unprepared for the new reality. Evidently the year+ of minimal business gave the airline industry time to refine their processes.The check in kiosk offered a clean, simple interface. The TSA agent smiled as she compared my briefly unmasked face to my ID behind her Plexiglas shields, the scanner operators were cracking jokes about SHOE BOMBERS, for crying out loud, and the airport Bloody Mary, reliably overpriced, was actually pretty decent. A far less Soviet vibe to the whole affair.

Still, the airports seemed weirdly empty, even for a Thursday morning. I've never been able to hear the echo of my own footsteps in an airport before. The loudest sounds came from immigrant housekeeping staff holding animated phone calls via Bluetooth as they sanitized departure lounge furniture.

It was a beautiful day to fly. It felt like my inner Cave Dweller was emerging from the dim recesses into the dawn. It felt, if I remember the sensation rightly, like optimism.

A Poem I Like

 

It’s Important I Remember that the Moral Arc of the Universe Bends—

Cortney Lamar Charleston

but it doesn’t break, and neither breaks toward justice nor away from it. It simply bends, as the bow does before propelling the arrow where it may, agnostic to everything but flight. I don’t mean to make morality a weapon in this way, but it already is one and has been for some time. The shackles, after all, were explained as saving us from ourselves, our naked savagery, though it was their whip that licked us and left a kind of tactile text on our bodies. The Bible will have a man beating on someone as easily as it will have another taking one, turning the other cheek, civilly disobedient even when the bombs blow up in their church, not to say saying no to violence isn’t commendable, just to say a strong case can be made for cracking a skull or two like an everyday egg in hopes whatever golden light resides inside shines through, throughs the crimson tide for the rest of time so the tide will, mercifully, recede.

Copyright © 2021 by Cortney Lamar Charleston. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 3, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

This Week in Organized Crime

 It looks like someone ought to be keeping track:

• Trump apologist and Big Lie enabler Sidney Powell is facing both a $1.3 billion defamation suit from voting machine vendor Dominion Systems and an effort by the state of Michigan to sanction her over her Big Lie activities in that state, plus $12,000 in attorney fees. In the Dominion suit, her attorneys are - seriously - arguing that  

  “no reasonable person” would believe that her false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election were “truly statements of fact.”

   The Michigan Attorney General has asked the court's permission to include those remarks as evidence in a suit asking Powell and others to be sanctioned. 

  “As lawyers, fidelity to the law is paramount.  These individuals worked to further conspiracy theories in an effort to erode public trust in government and dismantle our systems of democracy. Their actions are inexcusable.”  

•  Deep State believer and Orange Acolyte Victoria Toensing had her house raided by the FBI, evidently as part of the same investigation the feds are conducting into Rudy Giuliani's business dealings in Ukraine. They got her phone.

• Donald Trump, Jr. has his own problems stemming from an investigation into the Trump inaugural celebrations that directed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trump Hotel, which apparently tripled its room rates for the events. Mother Jones is reporting sworn statements by Junior are contradicted in numerous emails, planning documents and perhaps even by testimony his sister Ivanka gave in connection to the same investigation

• And Rudy Giuliani's troubles persist with that FBI raid that snagged his electronics and offered his son Andrew the opportunity to show us all why he's been kept away from media all this time. 

  "When federal agents raided my father’s home at dawn yesterday morning, the Biden Justice Department sent a clear message to America: If it can happen to the former mayor who led New York City through 9/11, it can happen to you, too."

Another Last Time

 In today's chapter of The Last Time I'll Do This Before I Retire ...

Tomorrow, May 3, 2021, is the last Monday of my working life.

Pulled the Trigger...

Waiting for the bullet to leave the barrel. I submitted my resignation yesterday. Just two weeks before I retire. 

Still waiting to see how I feel about that.

Dunning-Kruger Chart of Current Politics

 Sadly, this very accurate chart includes Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, my mis-Representative in Congress. 

Sunday Menu April 25, 2021

 Tonight's dinner will include:

• Grilled boneless ribeye
• Asparagus alla Carbonara
• Bacon and Egg Potato Salad

Paired with a 2017 Pas Robles Syrah

Antifa on the Danube

 I snapped this from a riverboat cruising the Danube, somewhere near Austria.

History Lives in Decay

 Abandoned land office in Walsenburg, Colorado.

 Memo to Lucerne, the company behind this otherwise delicious salad dressing: It's pretty weird to follow the packaging instructions to "refrigerate after opening" only to have the product coagulate in the bottle. Maybe a heads up about what olive oil does when it's cold? 

The Five Stages of Relief

 Time is ticking before Retirement Day: it's now 22 calendar days, 14 work days. Next week will be my last full work week, and next Friday will be the day I submit my resignation letter, making all of this official. 

I've noticed a few changes in my reaction to events. There's a pattern to it, in a way. As an old hospice nurse, it looks for all the world to me like Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief, but I'm not dying. I'm releasing from obligations to others and accepting choices that will belong to me and me alone. At last that seems like an exciting condition, so I've re-christened it the Five Stages of Relief. Here's what that looks like.

• Stage 1 Recognition: that retirement is a real thing and it's about to happen to me.
• Stage 2 Apprehension: wondering who I will be without this career that has consumed so much of my life.
• Stage 3 Planning: While still processing Stage 1 and 2, I realize the calendar won't stop for me and there are things I have to do in advance - like applying for pension benefits. Which I did in mid February.
• Stage 4 Anxiety: I spent half of February, all of March, and most of April working on Stages 1 and 2 while also waiting for the official approval of the pension application. I have a date in mind, but it's subject to change depending on the Social Security Administration's decision.
• Stage 5 Giddiness: The pension application was approved a week ago. I've gotten used to the idea my career is completing, and looking back I've been generally more successful than not. I've also begun to tick off the last time I'll perform certain work functions, many of which are merely required without being useful. As I finish each of these required-but-revolting tasks I get a little bit giggly, knowing some other nurse will have to deal with it next time. 

And as the number of working days dwindles to double and then single digits, I feel lighter in some indefinite way. I'm daydreaming about road trips, both short and lengthy. As music venues come back to life I find myself planning which events I want to attend. In some ways it seems appropriate that my freedom to make choices is coinciding with the world returning to a kind of pre-pandemic state where those choices aren't automatically foreclosed. 

"Little Ben Clock Says Quarter to Eight..."

 Another week closer to to Retirement Day, now in four weeks. Sort of an eventful week, too. 

Anyone working in health care is familiar with surveys. Hospitals get visits from the Joint Commission on Health Care Organizations. Their labs are surveyed by the College of American Physicians. Nursing homes and home care agencies are visited by surveyors from their respective states. Typically, these surveys are a requirement for reimbursement, so they can be a big deal for the organization. This week, a trio of surveyors from Denver arrived unannounced (as is routine) to survey my current employer. 

I've tried estimate how many surveys of all types I've been involved with over the last few decades. It's about 30, I think.  I've learned to maintain all my required documentation in a survey-ready state, which leads to far less anxiety, so when my boss dropped in to announce the survey I wasn't too concerned. And, in fact, when we reached the exit conference Wednesday afternoon the surveyors were mostly complimentary. My interview with the survey team was about 40 minutes. When it was over, I made a sort of curtain call speech, telling them I was on the cusp of retiring, and thanking them for making my last survey such a  pleasant experience. I got a standing ovation. 

On Thursday afternoon we had scheduled a meeting for the Quality Assurance Committee. We hadn't held one since last fall when the COVID-19 precautions made assembly risky and then various staff were absent due to quarantine requirements. A week earlier, I sent a reminder email to committee members asking them to save the date. Then, while my agency was handling the survey process, I spent three days writing a report summarizing all the data collected in 2020 plus a summary of the first quarter of 2021. 

I was the only one who showed up.  Oh, well. I did my part. 

So I had a high and a low to mark the beginning of my last month in the business. About right, I think.

Now, on to explaining the title of this post. It's a lyric from a Grateful Dead song, "Cumberland Blues". The "Little Ben clock" is a mechanical clock some readers may not have experienced. Generally fairly accurate, these clocks are powered by an internal spring that requires manual winding regularly with some sort of key or crank.

As I get closer to Retirement Day, my friends are asking me how close I am, and when I say "a month", for instance, I'm often told something along the lines of, "Congratulations! What an achievement!"

But, you know, it doesn't feel like an "achievement". Writing that last QA report was "an achievement". Getting through that survey without any deficiencies cited was "an achievement". Looking at 27 days before retirement feels more like I'm a Little Ben clock that hasn't been wound lately, as I feel the pace of my workday slow down more and more. In about a month, my career clock will tick one last time. That's not an achievement, that's just another expression of entropy. 

Time Flies

 Today, President Biden will announce the withdrawal of US and NATO troops from Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, or 6,708 days since President George W. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished". 

It's Been a While

Currently writing from Taos, New Mexico. I like to visit here a couple of times a year, but with the pandemic road trips have been pointless - why travel to where there's nothing open? But having full vaccination and New Mexico hitting a positivity rate of 1% or less (are you listening, Colorado?) it just seemed like the right time to hit the road. 

I've already had the best huevos rancheros at Michaels, moving on to rainbow trout tonight at Martyrs. Tomorrow will probably involve a short drive up to Taos Mountain ski place, formerly the home of the late and lamented Taos Mountain Music Festival.  Or maybe a visit to Angel Fire.

Some parts of my pre-virus life are returning while I'm facing the end of signified chunks of it. Weird how it seems symmetry prevails.

And the Countdown Begins ...

 In 5 weeks, 36 days, my nursing career will come to an end. My retirement date is May 14, 2021, 40 years to the month after graduation from nursing school. All told, I've been in health care 52 years in once capacity or another. On balance, it's been a pretty fine ride.

But it's strange to experience the feelings as the end approaches. A lot of my identity is wrapped up in being an RN. I'm not sure how the end of that will affect my self image. Looks like I'll know the answer to that soon, though. 😀 

So I've decided to revive this blog. I have some goals for my retirement: long road trips, getting re-acquainted with my guitars, and writing 350 words a day. The writing will start here, with shares to social media as appropriate. The first topics will, naturally, be intertwined with my progress toward May 14 and the days that follow. I'll try to describe the ways I see the processes involved, like applying for Social Security and what it's like to have Medicare. But maybe more importantly, I want to use this blog to examine my feelings about it all. 

So, stay tuned, if you've a mind to. I'm doing this for the most purely selfish reasons, but that doesn't mean it won't offer some value to someone else. At the least, I'll try to be amusing.