Category Archives: disasters

Angry People Who Will Not Be Slaves Again

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Our friends Hugh and Lisa Waggoner took us with them recently to the Fox Theatre production of Les Miz.  Midway through the play I was struck with the thought that we were sitting in our comfortable mezzanine chairs listening to incredible voices sing of fighting for freedom while 5,300 miles to our east thousands of people were huddled in cold and dark shattered buildings while thousands of others were dying, fighting for freedom—for real.

And that’s when the lyrics of the songs began to ring differently in my mind. And the words of two contemporary men began a point-counterpoint.

I had a dream in days gone by                                                                                 So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed…
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed…

Vladimir Putin, February 23, 2022: “We have been left no other option to protect Russia and our people, but for the one that we will be forced to use today. The situation requires us to take decisive and immediate action…Its goal is to protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide by the regime in Kyiv for eight years. And for this we will pursue the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, as well as bringing to justice those who committed numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including citizens of the Russian Federation.

Sit yourself down
And meet the best                                                                                                    Innkeeper in town
As for the rest,
All of ’em crooks
Rooking their guests
And cooking the books.
Seldom do you see
Honest men like me
A gent of good intent
Who’s content to be
Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm…
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!

Volodymyr Zelensky, February 23, 2022: The people of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine want peace. But if we come under attack, if we face an attempt to take away our country, our freedom, our lives and lives of our children, we will defend ourselves. When you attack us, you will see our faces, not our backs.”

Here upon theses stones we will build our barricade
In the heart of the city we claim as our own
Each man to his duty and don’t be afraid

Putin: “What is happening today does not come out of a desire to infringe on the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. It is related to the protection of Russia itself from those who took Ukraine hostage and are trying to use it against our country and its people.”

(Later): what is happening today is unpleasant, to put it mildly, but we would have got the same thing a little later, only in worse conditions for us, that’s that. So, we are acting correctly and in a timely manner.”

We’ll be ready for these
Schoolboys

Zelensky, December 21, 2022, to the American Congress:  The battle continues, and we have to defeat the Kremlin on the battlefield, yes. This battle is not only for the territory, for this or another part of Europe. The battle is not only for life, freedom and security of Ukrainians or any other nation which Russia attempts to conquer. This struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live, and then their children and grandchildren.

And little people know
When little people fight
We may look easy pickings
But we’ve got some bite
So never kick a dog
Because he’s just a pup
We’ll fight like twenty armies
And we won’t give up
So you’d better run for cover
When the pup grows up! Last Update

 Zelensky, to the American Congress: Dear Americans, in all states, cities and communities, all those who value freedom and justice, who cherish it as strongly as we Ukrainians in our cities, in each and every family, I hope my words of respect and gratitude resonate in each American heart.

Freedom is mine. The earth is still.
I feel the wind. I breathe again.
And the sky clears
The world is waking.
Drink from the pool. How clean the taste.
Never forget the years, the waste.
Nor forgive them
For what they’ve done.
They are the guilty – everyone.
The day begins…
And now lets see
What this new world
Will do for me!

Zelensky: It will define whether it will be a democracy of Ukrainians and for Americans — for all. This battle cannot be frozen or postponed. It cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide a protection. From the United States to China, from Europe to Latin America, and from Africa to Australia, the world is too interconnected and interdependent to allow someone to stay aside and at the same time to feel safe when such a battle continues.

They were schoolboys
Never held a gun…
Fighting for a new world
That would rise up like the sun.

Zelensky: Our two nations are allies in this battle. And next year will be a turning point, I know it, the point when Ukrainian courage and American resolve must guarantee the future of our common freedom, the freedom of people who stand for their values.

It is time for us all
To decide who we are
Do we fight for the right
To a night at the opera now?

Have you asked of yourselves
What’s the price you might pay?
Is it simply a game
For rich young boys to play?
The color of the world
Is changing day by day…

Red – the blood of angry men!
Black – the dark of ages past!
Red – a world about to dawn!
Black – the night that ends at last!

Zelensky: I know that everything depends on us, on Ukrainian armed forces, yet so much depends on the world. So much in the world depends on you.

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes!

December 25, 2022:

Putin: “I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens.”

Zelensky: ““It’s terror, it’s killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure. The world must see what absolute evil we are fighting against.”

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.
There’s a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window.
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

We gave the players before us a standing ovation, our hearts lifted by the ultimate triumph that had been played out before us.  In cold Ukraine, grim and courageous heroes were standing against great odds, hanging on and praying for help that will keep them free.

Freedom is mine. The earth is still.
I feel the wind. I breathe again.
And the sky clears
The world is waking.
Drink from the pool. How clean the taste.
Never forget the years, the waste.
Nor forgive them
For what they’ve done.
They are the guilty – everyone.

It is a long way from the auditorium in St. Louis to the desperate battlefield that is Ukraine where soon would come another dawn.

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more! 

Freedom is not won or defended on a fabulous theatre stage. It is defended and won on the world stage one day at a time.

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

We must make sure there always is a tomorrow for Ukraine.

(Les Misėrables is a musical based on the novel by Victor Hugo with music by Claude-Michel Schongberg and lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer.)

It’s Going to Happen Here

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Wherever you are when you read this you should resign yourself to the fact that somebody is going to kill a bunch of people in your town. Just pray you are not in the church, school, hospital, shopping mall, business, office—nowhere is safe from the loon with a gun and a grudge.

So just get ready to mourn.  Maybe you should get ready to die.

You just never know.

This is being written on Thursday, June 2, 2022.  Education Week calculates the Uvalde, Texas school shooting was the 27th school shooting this year, the 119th school shooting since 2018.

That’s just schools.

The Gun Violence Archive has counted 212 mass shootings in this country this year—incidents in which four or more people were killed or wounded, not counting the shooter.

Thoughts and prayers offered, or maybe somebody just thinks about thoughts and prayers because it’s easy to say.

But nothing seems likely to change.

We hear the same demands for SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING after every incident.  We hear the same claims that doing SOMETHING won’t solve ANYTHING—every time.

Truth is, our policy making system is paralyzed by fear that doing something will antagonize the most rabid supporters of gun rights, that elections might be lost, campaign funding might be switched to others, will violate the sacredness of the Second Amendment (and, by the way, spare me the BS about the First Amendment existing only because there is a Second Amendment, not after 19 children and two adults will no longer experience First Amendment rights because somebody decided to exercise his Second Amendment right.).

No part of the United States Constitution is immune from interpretation and no law is absolute. The Second Amendment is not above limits.

It is easy to be pessimistic about any kind of political effort to reduce these tragedies because there is a sickness within a political system that seems to think it proper for candidates to campaign by showing us their prowess with the kinds of weapons used to kill students and shoppers and hospital personnel, among others.

The irony of those who think they can show their defense of American values with commercials showing them shooting weapons of mass murder is that their commercials tacitly endorse phrase first uttered in 1927 by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong: “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

This kind of appeal for political support is abhorrent.

Unfortunately, it seems to work.

And that’s sick.

Is there a legitimate use for a weapon, or its replica, designed specifically to fire large quantities of bullets except in the military services the weapons were designed for in the first place?

Self-defense you say. Let’s see.  A character in Buffalo, NY was defending himself against dangerous shoppers at a mall.  Another character was defending himself against threatening fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas.  And a third was defending himself against his doctor.

And those are only the latest examples as we write this.

Do you feel safer knowing that dangerous shoppers, threatening fourth graders, and a doctor widely respected for his volunteer service are no longer threatening the peace and dignity of society?

THE ONION, a satirical newspaper that often looks at the absurdities of life, has published the same story 21 times after 21 mass shootings.  It re-published all 21 of them on its web page last week. The headline is always the same:

‘NO WAY TO PREVENT THIS,’

SAYS ONLY NATION WHERE

THIS REGUARLY HAPPENS

The text is always the same except for the dateline:

TULSA—In the days following a violent rampage in Oklahoma in which a lone attacker killed four individuals in addition to himself, and seriously injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said New Mexico resident Ellen Robinson, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

The shame of it is that the article is true.

And that’s why all of us need to be rehearsing our statements of shock and sorrow, or our survivors should be rehearsing statements of shock and sorrow, because these incidents will not stop on their own.

And as long as they go on, we might as well consider it inevitable that it’s going to happen here, wherever “here” is to you.

—-because there’s no way to prevent it.

And your town and my town are as likely candidates for this “distinction” as any place.

It is going to happen here.

Give up.  Expect it.

Nobody’s going to stop it.

Are they?

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A Christmas Story

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It was a scrawny little tree, bought from the remnants on the tree lot just a few days before Christmas.  It only took one strand of blue lights to decorate it, it was so small and spare of limbs.  My mother had put some strips of cotton on the limbs to simulate snow.

Outside, the real snow was shoetop deep and slushy. The little Illinois town was about to button itself up for Christmas and I hadn’t bought my parents anything.  I was fourteen.

We’d done a lot of shopping in the last two weeks, a whole lot of shopping.  But not for Christmas.

About two weeks earlier, I had dashed out the front door of our farmhouse, avoided tripping over Mac the dog, who liked to run with me to the school bus, climbed aboard, found a seat and away we went without a backward glance at the house—-

—that was a smoldering hole in the ground the next time I went back to that corner.

Augie Adams, an angular, friendly fellow who rented our pasture for his horses, greeted me that afternoon when I was summoned to the principal’s office from my PE class.  “Do you know where your mother is?” he asked me, a tension in his voice I remember but did not then recognize.  “She’s driving my dad around on his territory,” I told him—my dad was a district manager for a farm equipment company and still wasn’t allowed to drive because of a summer heart attack.  Augie immediately relaxed and then told me, “Your house burned down and we pulled her car out of the garage but we couldn’t find her.”

And that was how I learned just before Christmas that all I had was what I was wearing.

Just before Christmas.

My parents rushed to the school to pick me up and then we went out to see what there was to see. The fire department had no chance to save the house or the garage.  They did put out a pile of brush nearby.

My parents stayed with a farm family down the road. I stayed with a classmate in town that night and the next morning we headed to Decatur and to the Montgomery Ward store to start our lives over.  We found an upstairs apartment in a house in town.  The president of the student council at Sullivan High School came into study hall a few days later and gave me an envelope, saying, “The student council thought you could use this.”

Inside was a $100 bill.

All these years later, I think about what I lost in that fire—a baseball card collection that might put my grandchildren through college if I still had it: fifty years of National Geographics a spinster aunt had given me when she broke up housekeeping and went to live with relatives, a rolltop desk, a model airplane collection.  I think about the pictures and other things that were the family archives.  I think about my parents, who had survived the Depression and the Kansas Dust Bowl, and the World War, and now dealt with starting all over.

I don’t remember what I got that Christmas—maybe because what was under the tree was so secondary to what we’d had to get for the previous couple of weeks.

But I do remember that I had to get something for my parents.   And so that evening, maybe it was Christmas Eve—I don’t recall—

Dad gave me four dollars and I set out for downtown before the stores closed to find something.   And in Anderson’s Gift Shop, I found something kind of special—-remember, this was 1955—-liquid pencils.

(Ballpoint pens had only been around for about ten years by then and the first ones I had didn’t work very well. We were still a pencil and fountain pen family, as were many families.)

The liquid pencils looked just like the familiar yellow pencils we used at school but they had a ballpoint cartridge in them with black ink so the writing kind of looked like number two pencil writing.

So we had Christmas with that little tree. We probably spent part of Christmas Day having a big dinner (dinner was a mid-day meal then, supper was at night). I don’t remember but this was in the days when families still had a lot of relatives within 30 or 40 miles and holiday and weekend Sunday afternoons were often spent visiting Aunt This or Uncle That.

A few years ago, the alumni association back home asked me to emcee the homecoming banquet.  I asked the student council president to join us that night to let all of the old grads know what was going on at the “new” high school—which then was about fifty years old.  And when he was done, I repaid the student council for its Christmas present to me in 1955.   That hundred dollar bill all those years ago was the equivalent to about $800 now.  But I decided to round up the total a little bit and gave the council $2,000 for a fund to help some other students who might suffer a devastating loss in the future.

Sometimes a Christmas gift deserves a gift in return, even if it’s not for several decades.

This isn’t the stuff of a Hallmark movie.  It’s just a Christmas story and there’s a lot I don’t recall about that time—-I do remember that by New Year’s Day we’d gotten a 36-foot trailer to rent and had moved it out to the site of our old house, there to house my parents, my grandmother, me, and Mac the dog. My father and I spent New Year’s Day pulling buckets of water out of the cistern and dumping them on the coal pile in the basement that was still burning inside three weeks after the house burned.

We built a new house, the dirt from the basement filling the ashes-filled hole where the old house had stood. And we celebrated several Christmases there before Mom moved to a place in town. We had trees every year but I don’t remember them.

But I do remember a tree that was so forlorn in the tree lot that nobody else wanted it and what it meant with its blue lights and its cotton snow as my family rebuilt our lives as well as our new house.

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Christmas is a time for story-telling.  For remembering.  Perhaps you had—or will have in these next few days—-a Christmas of special meaning.  If you’d like to share that story, use all the space in the comment box with this entry.

 

 

The Future of Water (update)

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We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.

The Future of Water

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A good part of Missouri has gotten an excessive drenching in the past few days.  But we—and perhaps you—have friends to the west who are being baked well-done by record heat and who are watching forests burn and water reservoir levels drop and disappear.

We might think we are glad we don’t have their problems—although our monsoon week is hardly without problems of its own.

For several years, Nancy and I enjoyed going to the Four Corners area for a week each fall to do archaeological work on or near the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, adjacent to Mesa Verde National Park. We first recorded rock art from the days of the Anasazi (a Pueblo word meaning “ancient enemies”—we don’t know what those people who lived in the area until the 1200s called themselves because they left no written language). Although popular telling of their story has it that they just suddenly disappeared 750 years ago or so, archaeologists and anthropologists think they know where their descendants are, and they have developed some theories on why they fled the Four Corners area.

It’s thought they are the ancestors of the present Hopi people. One of the factors—the final straw—leading to their departure from the Four Corners area is believed to have been a 45-year drought that left them without the food and other resources needed to survive.

All of this has been brought to mind by recent reports that Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, has declined to its lowest level ever because of a drought that is now in its 22nd year. The condition is critical for 25-million people including the cities of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, Phoenix, and Tucson.  The lake has hit a record low, down 140 feet since 2000, creating the bathtub ring you can see in recent pictures. One-hundred-forty feet is about the height of the Statue of Liberty from base to torch tip.

Some states already have imposed water rationing and they expect to tighten restrictions as conditions worsen. Agriculture is in dire straits. Adding to the awful conditions is the rise in major fires in forests that haven’t seen protective rain for years.

It’s hard to understand that green and verdant Missouri faces some water shortages of our own. Today.  Right now.  And stewardship of our water will become more critical as our population increases, as agriculture is under increased pressure to produce more and more food in an increasingly populous world, and as our economy grows.

The Department of Natural Resources 2020 update to its Missouri Water Resources Plan warns, “Although Missouri is fortunate to have rich water resources, localized shortages do exist because of the distance from adequate supplies, insufficient infrastructure or storage, water quality constraints, and other limiting factors. In many areas, surface water supplies are subject to seasonal fluctuations; supplies are frequently at their lowest when demand is the highest.”

Farther into the study we are told, “On average, the 6.1 million people and numerous businesses in Missouri consume 3.2 billion gallons of water each day. Of that demand, 78 percent is supplied by groundwater, while the remaining 22 percent is supplied by surface water.”  Three fourths of our water comes from under our feet.

We often heard testimony in legislative committee hearings on the dangers of agricultural runoff or industrial pollution going into our streams and rivers, our surface waters. A major concern, yes.  But that’s only one-fifth of the water we use or think we need to use.

Studies indicate our population will rise to about seven-and-a-half million people by 2060, well within the lifetimes of some who read these entries—them or their children—putting more pressure on water, a finite resource.  The report suggests a number of policies and practices that need to be started now in anticipation of that growth.

We need to do more than read about them. Our generation has to start something that later generations can continue to meet Missouri’s water needs.

The greatest pressure on our water supply is agricultural irrigation—65% of our water withdrawals go to farming. Major water systems (that provide us with water to drink, to bathe in, to do our dishes, and flush our toilets) are another 25%.

The study says the agricultural counties of Butler, Dunklin, New Madrid, Pemiscot, and Stoddard Counties—all in the southeast corner of the state—are projected to have the greatest growth in demand in the next four decades. High demand also is expected as our metropolitan areas become more metropolitan.

DNR says the state “generally has plentiful water sources.”  Now, it does. But the report also says, “many supply-related challenges exist.”

Much of the groundwater originating from bedrock aquifers in northern and west-central Missouri is highly mineralized and unsuitable for most uses. In northwestern Missouri, precipitation is generally the lowest in the state, and the lack of surface water availability during prolonged droughts can result in water shortages. Timing is also important in determining the availability of water, since peak demands often coincide with the driest times of the year and multiyear droughts can lower aquifers and drain reservoirs that typically provide ample supply. Even when available, the quality of the water may not be suitable for all intended uses without treatment.

We already are facing a critical problem in dealing with our water supplies. The DNR report says, “More than half of the state’s community public water systems became active prior to 1960, meaning that without repair or replacement original water pipes, mains, and equipment are nearing or exceeding their average expected lifespan…Many small drinking water utilities have indicated that they lack the funding not only to proactively manage infrastructure needs, but also to meet current water quality standards and adequately address water losses.”

At the other end of the process (to coin a phrase): “Similar to drinking water infrastructure in Missouri, a significant portion of wastewater infrastructure may be approaching the end of its expected life.”

Need an immediate reminder of how precious Missouri’s water supply is and how carefully we must use it and prepare for its future use is no farther away than the greatest of our rivers?

This past April 7, the Missouri River Basin Water Management Division for the Corps of Engineers noted the snowfall in the upper basin had been poor.  “We expect upper basin runoff to be below average,” said Division Chief John Remus. The Corps thinks the snowmelt runoff into upstream reservoirs to be 83% of the annual average this year.

Water is going to become more precious.  You and I might not notice it.  But our grandchildren could.  We aren’t going to turn into the Southwest by the end of the week.  But we have to understand that the way we use water today can’t be the way our next generations will use it.  And we need to prepare for those times.

Unlike the ancient pueblo peoples of the Colorado plateau in the 12th and 13th Centuries, we won’t have anyplace to go when the great drought hits us.

If you want to read the entire 2020 Missouri Water Resources Plan you can find it at:

https://dnr.mo.gov/mowaterplan/docs/2020-mo-water-resources-plan-highlights.pdf

The Pandemic re-defines work

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Most of us probably have pondered what kind of permanent changes will remain in our society when the Coronavirus pandemic is finally considered vanquished.  With variants emerging and some of them appearing to be causing a bump up in our health statistics this month, we might not be learning the answer to that question for a while yet.

Clearly, the idea of “work” has been altered by this pandemic.  What will “work” look like when this finally blows over?   A few days ago, National Public Radio ran a story focusing on how the pandemic has changed, is changing, or will change the workplace.  Audie Cornish, the host on the afternoon news show, “All Things Considered,” interviewed three people, one in particular.  NPR was good enough to provide a transcript of that interview on its webpage. We thought the discussion worthy of passing it along to those who might have missed the broadcast or who don’t listen to National Public Radio.

CORNISH: Why and how to bring employees back into the office – those are the kinds of decisions company leaders are having to make. And they’re thinking about how to give employees flexibility, how the pandemic has impacted innovation and company culture. We spoke to a variety of CEOs – Christina Seelye, CEO and founder of video game publisher Maximum Games in California, was one of them.

CHRISTINA SEELYE: Innovation’s a big one. I think that innovation – I haven’t seen the technology yet that replicates what it’s like to be in a room with people and bounce off of each other.

CORNISH: And Dan Rootenberg, CEO of SPEAR Physical Therapy Company in New York.

DAN ROOTENBERG: I do believe that people learn from each other more. There’s more collaboration. There’s Zoom fatigue. I mean, I’m on so many Zoom meetings. It’s, you know, it’s really exhausting after a while. And so there’s a totally different feeling when you get together.

CORNISH: Those at the C-suite level, they turn to experts at places like McKinsey & Company.

SUSAN LUND: So we’re getting calls from executives and chief human resource officers to say, OK, we’ve now gotten used to everybody remote. But how do we bring people back? When do we bring them back? What protocols do we need?

CORNISH: I spoke with Susan Lund, a partner at McKinsey & Company and leader of the McKinsey Global Institute. They put out a report in 2020 that was updated this year looking at the lasting impact of the pandemic on the workforce.

LUND: If you had told any business leader a year and a half ago that we were going to send the whole workforce home – at least the ones who could work from home – home for more than a year, they would say this is going to be a disaster. And, in fact, it’s worked out quite well.

CORNISH: But brass tacks, were we all more or less productive when it comes to remote work? What did your research find?

LUND: So what we find is that in the short term, people are definitely as productive, that it looks like they’re spending more time at work, in part because they don’t have the commute. They don’t have to go out necessarily to get lunch. They don’t even have the office chit-chat. So on one level, it looks like the number of hours that people are working is actually up. But long term, there are questions about innovation and new products and new ideas are going to be as forthcoming because of the remote work setup.

CORNISH: I want to dig into this data more. But first, who do we mean when we say we? Who’s been able to work from home? What portion of the workforce are we talking about?

LUND: It’s really office-based workers who are able to work from home. Overall, we found that 60% of the U.S. workforce doesn’t have any opportunity to work from home because they’re either working with people directly, like doctors and nurses or hair cutters, or they’re working with specialized machinery in a factory or in a laboratory. So it is a minority of people who even have this option. But overall, so 40% of the U.S. workforce could, in theory, work from home one day a week or more. And about a quarter of people could spend the majority of their time – three to five days a week – working from home.

CORNISH: When we talk about that 40% of people who do computer or office-based work, now a large number of them have had the experience of remote work. With that experience in mind, what are people learning about what a post-pandemic scenario could be for them?

LUND: So when you look at employee surveys, you typically find that the majority of people say, going forward, when we’re vaccinated, when it’s safe to return to the office, they still would like the flexibility to work from home a few days a week. So that’s a hybrid model. But then you do have a segment of people, maybe a quarter, who say I want to be in the office full time. Now, maybe they don’t have a good home working setup. It’s often young people in their 20s who are starting out in their careers. They want the mentorship and the camaraderie. And then you have another small portion who say I would like to work remote 100% of the time and work from anywhere.

CORNISH: There have been CEOs out there quoted here and they’re saying things like, well, we’re going to know who’s really committed to the job.

LUND: Yeah. So there is a lot of issues. So for companies going down this hybrid approach, there are a lot of pitfalls to watch out for. And one is that you end up with a two-tier workforce, that the people – it’s always the same people in the room making the decisions and other people are on Zoom or video conference, and that those on video conference end up being passed over for promotion, not considered for different opportunities because they’re not there. So companies are being thoughtful. The ones who are pursuing some kind of hybrid approach are thinking through these issues. And how do we avoid that to keep a level playing field?

CORNISH: We’ve been talking about this idea of who comes back, whose decision it is, that sort of thing. Legally, what do we know? Can employers force employees to come back? Can employers gently encourage employees to be vaccinated? What have you learned so far?

LUND: Well, it’s a complicated question. So on vaccination, it looks like it’s a bit of a gray area, but it looks like under federal law, yes, companies can require employees to be vaccinated if it impacts the health and safety of their workforce. On coming back to the office, I think it’s a little bit more clear. Companies can require people to work on site – right? – as a part of the employment contract. But what they risk, especially for talented professionals, is that people will go to other companies that do allow more flexibility on some remote work or work from home.

CORNISH: When people look back at this time, will it be considered a reset in some ways when it comes to work, or are we going to be back to where we were in 2019?

LUND: Well, my crystal ball is broken, but I think it will be a reset. I don’t think that we will go back to the same pattern of working. I think that the forced pause for everyone to spend more time at home with family and friends has really caused many people to rethink. I think that this really has been a reset.

Incidentally, Audie admitted that she was conducting this interview from a temporary studio in the attic of her house.

If you’d like to listen to the entire piece, including comments from others, go to:

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/09/1004862350/-why-do-we-have-to-go-back-to-the-office-employees-are-divided-about-returning

 

The Constitution and the vaccine: and the danger of selfish people

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Drew Vogel was one of my early reporters at the Missourinet.  He has had a lengthy career as a nursing home administrator in Ohio and since his retirement from a fulltime directorship has held several interim positions.

There’s a special place in my heart for people who work in nursing homes.  And for those who have been working in the industry during this COVID era, well, I’m not sure I can measure the depth of my admiration. Drew has a blog, too, and last week he let off some steam about people who think it is their constitutional right to refuse vaccinations and put others at risk.

Drew has been on the front lines in the fight against disease.  And we all know that THE front lines have been our nursing home.

He doesn’t mince words about vaccinations and the selfish use by some of the Constitution to avoid the responsibility all of us have to each other.  Listen to this good man.

I have just ended an interim (temporary) assignment as administrator at a nursing home Near Dayton, Ohio.  I have done, without bothering to count them up, something like 13 interim assignments the past seven years.

 I joke that interim work is great because you don’t stay around long enough to get fired!

 In reality, I am lucky enough that I don’t need to work a permanent fulltime job.  But I do need to work – especially since my wife passed away last September.  Work is good for my psyche, my emotions – good for my soul. There is a dignity element also – although no one has ever accused me of being very dignified.

 This recent building was one of my best interim assignments.  The staff was great, hard-working, friendly and fun.  I feel like in those 3+ months I made some friends for life.

 The guys were very positive in their approach to long-term care, in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that they had been through some adversity.

 The facility was COVID-free in the early stages of the pandemic last year until around Thanksgiving. Then there was a major outbreak.

 Ultimately, 75-100 total people – staff and residents – contracted the disease.  By the end of the year about 15 residents had died.  No staff died, but some got very sick.

 When I arrived in January two employees were off sick with the coronavirus, but the outbreak was pretty much under control. Temperature checks, questionnaires and masks were required to get in the door.  Only people with a purpose could come in. Vendors dropped their goods outside – food, oxygen, supplies – and the staff dragged them inside.

 When visitation resumed, visitors were first tested, masked and confined to a room that did not require entry into the building proper.

 In January, the first week I was at the facility, I received my first vaccination shot – Pfizer – and in February I got the follow up injection.  I was happy to receive it.

 However, even though it was free and had been proven to work, not everyone took the vaccine. 

 It is voluntary almost everywhere in America. In my facility some staff and some residents – or their families – said NO!

 The month of March went pretty well.  Then in April, over a couple weeks’ time, a housekeeper, a cook and a therapist tested positive and were sent home to quarantine. 

 Yesterday, my last day, a nursing assistant tested positive – with symptoms.

 The COVID-19 protocol was immediately initiated.  A text was sent to all staff to come in immediately to be tested; all residents were swabbed.

 As of when I left yesterday afternoon, two more cases had been discovered – both residents.  There may be more by now.

 Six cases in April and NONE OF THEM HAD BEEN VACCINATED! 

 No cases in April among people who had been vaccinated – people working side-by-side in exactly the same confines as the people who developed COVID-19.

 As the saying goes, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist ……………..

 I’ve always believed our Constitution is the world’s greatest document – at least the greatest created by a government.  It contains enumerable individual rights.  But those rights cease at the point they infringe upon the rights of others – like the right not to die because of another’s misconceptions, fear and/or puffed-up ego.

 In other words, I am an advocate of MANDATORY vaccines.  Don’t give people a choice.

 Think about it, we need a license to drive a car.  We need a license to cut hair, catch fish, or be a nurse.  Nursing home administrators must be licensed, so do stockbrokers, real estate salesmen and ham radio operators.

 The licensing list in unending.  So why not issue a license to people to go out in public only if they have been vaccinated.

 Radical thinking?  Damned right it is. And I’m aware it will likely never happen.

 But dammit death, like ugly and stupidity, is forever.

 Amen, Drew.  Perhaps one or two self-righteous defenders of their right to privacy at the expense of the right to life of others will read your words and recognize the selfishness of their attitudes.

 

 

The First Day

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This is the first day of the week for most of us after the day of rest on Sunday, the seventh day, in the Christian tradition.  This week will have two “first” days.

Nancy and I will get our first Pfizer COVID-19 immunization shots Thursday morning.

I don’t think I’ve written much personally about this pandemic in all these months but as I went back and looked at the first few entries in what I call “The Journal of My Pandemic Year,” starting in March that it’s obvious this has been a tense time because of the uncertainty that has pervaded our lives—what do we dare do about relations with friends and relatives; when can we go without masks (never, when we‘re going to be indoors with others), a daily  unspoken question about whether we might have picked up the virus somewhere and were soon to be sick, the whole business of—in effect—living only with ourselves day in and day out, week in and week out, month by month as we watched the calendar change and saw only chaos in our national leadership on this and other subjects.  And now we’re only days away from becoming immune.

We’re not down to counting hours yet; that won’t come until we near the date for our second shot. But making it to that first shot after all this time, all this uncertainty, all these days with all spontaneity removed from life, all the game nights we missed playing Five Crowns, or Rummikub or Labyrinth, or Quiddler, or something else with friends; all of the fellowship from church and other events gone—-just getting here while 400,000 other Americans didn’t—

I suppose some folks might feel almost guilty that they made it and so many more did not. I don’t think we do.  Asking, “Why me?” is, I think, a waste of time.  Why NOT me?  I don’t think the uncertainty of life has ever been more present, other than for a few minutes at a time, than it has been in these ten months when it has been part of every hour of our day.

And now I have “Pfizer shot 945 Cole Cty Health Dept 3400 Truman Blvd” written in my Day-Timer for next Thursday, February 4th.

All we have to do is just hang on for a few more days.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Thursday morning, 9:45.

And then the other shot on the 25th.

That shot Thursday morning will be part of what truly will be the first day of the rest of our lives.

 

 

 

Us vs. It—part XII What’s next?

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It’s been a while (August) since we had a Us vs It entry but with vaccines starting to go into people’s arms, we have reached a new stage in this siege.

Even as we remain absorbed by the fight against the Coronavirus, we must start thinking of what comes after.

We will be different when we emerge from this plague. We will see in a glaring spotlight the shortcomings in our American system of doing things.  The list of issues, which must be addressed in ways that bridge a chasm of partisanship, will be long and should be inescapable.

Tough and thorough evaluations need to be made at the federal and state levels of the conditions of our readiness in the current situation and our preparations for readiness for the next wave. The evaluations are too important for Congress or for state legislatures. We need the brutal honesty of something like the Kerner Commission of the late 1960s.

Given social unrest that has flared during this time of the plague, it is good to recall the Kerner Commission not only to prove the point of this post but to highlight what it said more than fifty years ago that is tragically too close to life today.

Many, if not most, of those who read these entries might be too young to remember the commission appointed by President Johnson and headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. It was formed after disastrous racial violence in 25 cities that far exceeded anything we saw in Ferguson a few years ago or that we have seen in some cities more recently.  The commission’s final report was brutal. It warned that this country was so divided that it was on the verge of becoming two “radically unequal societies—one black, one white.”

We won’t discuss here how accurate that forecast might still be—because we are talking about a different issue that deserves the same tough examination and, if necessary, the same brutal honesty in its assessment.  There are many who think the Kerner Commission’s report, and its severe final assessment, fell on deaf ears. The assessment of what our state and nation need to do in the face of massive threats to our health and to our economy deserves the same severe approach but certainly not the same outcome.

We might need new laws and new regulations to make us better prepared in the public and the private sector for the next pandemic.  It would be unwise to dismiss such things as once-in-a-century events.  Our world has changed and is changing and it’s clear that nothing seems to be constant anymore. And we do not know if our changing world produces a climate more susceptible to new and deadly viruses.

Even now, we recognize the failure to find ways to keep rural hospitals open and the inadequacy of internet communications in many areas (that provide telehealth services, in particular) can no longer be ignored and tolerated.  We are learning that science cannot be dismissed and that those whose roles involve anticipating the next sweeping illness or the next world outbreak must regain their numbers and their status.  We are learning that our healthcare system always must be prepared, staffed, and equipped for the worst—and must not be in a position of determining who lives or dies based on personal financial standing.

We need to be ready at the state level. But pandemics have a tendency to overcome even the best state preparations and financial capabilities. A national crisis requires national leadership, national empathy, and national cooperation with states. It is unfortunately true that states can’t print money but the federal government can and money is a gigantic factor in fighting pandemics all the way down to the smallest communities.

Our experiences might teach us new things about distance learning and suggest some significant changes in our country’s elementary and secondary (and collegiate) education systems.

The economic paralysis should teach us to look more closely at a trend in jobs that we have noticed but to which we haven’t given enough attention—-the growing tendency to use independent contractors instead of having fulltime employees.  The independent contractors often get no fringe benefits and that can have some long-term impacts on retirements but especially (as in times like this) on healthcare.  The number of people who live on commissions and tips who have neither opportunities to create retirement plans nor the money to buy health insurance will grow as our economy changes and their lives should not be imperiled when our country is next ravaged by a new pandemic.

Likewise, the pandemic-caused work-from-home operations will have taught us things about large offices and the need for them.  The entire business model of large buildings for a single business, or single floors in a large building for one company might change because of what we have learned about working away from a central headquarters. The sweatshop still exists in our country but it is rare because of labor laws, fire safety codes, unions, and minimum wage laws that have curtailed those conditions.  Will the Coronavirus doom cubicle farms tomorrow?  Will is lead to a rise in union activity?

What will all of this mean in terms of society—-social gatherings, organizational memberships, business-employee relationships, civic clubs, churches?

We will be remiss if we do not anticipate tomorrow’s society based on what we are learning from today’s pandemic.

Our world is changing in so many categories—climate, economics, education, health, communications—that we cannot continue to have society as usual.

If it takes new laws and new regulations to do something as simple as making sure our healthcare institutions and services maintain adequate supplies of protective apparel, equipment and facilities for treatment,  let’s have them.

To those who would say such positions represent government overreach, there is a basic response.  Government has a role when the private sector abuses its liberties or fails its responsibilities. There is no lack of discussion in these times that such things have happened.  There also is no lack of discussion about how government, itself, has failed to meet its responsibilities to the people who entrust it with their well-being.

All of these issues and more need to be addressed so we know what will come after the virus has gone away.  That’s why new Kerner-type Commissions are needed at the state and federal levels. We are at a point in our existence where the blunt findings are needed and cannot be put on a shelf.  And we, as people, cannot be afraid to address the issues that will be forcefully put in front of us.

Here is a key point:

These commissions should not include elected officials as members.  Partisan Foxes do not belong in Pandemic Assessment Hen Houses.

We appreciate the work our public officials are trying to do in difficult times. It is time to work on the instant issue without wasting time casting blame.  But it is time also to start thinking of what comes after, and what comes after must be an unblinking hard assessment of what is present and what is needed to deal with the next health or economic or health/economic crises that will visit us. We cannot be afraid to do what is needed.

It might make no difference to our generation if we fail to act.  But other generations will sicken and die if we don’t.

We are all one big county

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(Normally, we try to have some positive thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane on Mondays but some recent comments on the pandemic seem far more important today)

I suspect the people in this house on this quiet street are not the only ones who are scared today. We responsibly wear our masks whenever we leave the house to go anyplace where there are other people—the YMCA, the grocery store, the bookstore downtown, church (we are back to watching services on the First Christian Church webpage now that the weather has cooled off enough we can’t meet in a park pavilion or in our parking lot and services have moved to our gymnasium).  We wash our hands.  We’ve been “nosed” twice.

But every day we look at the Health Department’s COVID dashboard and we see the numbers of new cases and deaths and the daily record hospitalizations.

Last Friday, Dr. Alex Garza, the head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force pleaded for state officials to go beyond asking citizens to be individually responsible. It is time, he said, for a statewide mask mandate and other steps because this virus is pushing our healthcare system to its breaking point—not just in the St. Louis, but everywhere.  “We’re at war. And right here, right now, the virus is winning that war. It will take significant and decisive action through individual acts and determined public policy to get us through,” he said.

The Post-Dispatch posted a video of his remarks with its web story.  We found his thoughts so important that we transcribed them because we are, frankly and honestly, scared about what is and what is likely to be, we hope you will read what else he said:

For months we have talked about a time, a time when we would run out of options, a time when we would run out of space to care for sick patients and our options would be limited when the virus is hitting us so hard that the healthcare system that we have would be unable to address the people’s needs. That terrible time gets closer with each passing minute, each passing hour, and each passing day.

 The number of people with the virus is skyrocketing in our region. The number of people so ill that they have to go to the hospital is nearly three times what we described as a sustainable level. The number of people with COVID in our intensive care units is higher than ever.

 The real peak of this pandemic has yet to come. At the pace we’re on right now we could easily—easily—double the number of COVID patients in our hospitals within about two weeks. At that point we will not have the capacity we need to sufficiently care for our patients, not just COVID patients but all patients.

 Unfortunately, as has been painfully obvious to even the casual observer, we are past the time when individual behavior alone can address this disaster. Healthcare systems across Missouri need Governor Parson and the state to take additional actions to prevent unnecessary illnesses and deaths.

 When it comes to the virus, we are all one big county now.

 Every day COVID patients are crossing county lines to go to hospitals.  The lack of a mask mandate in one county has implications for residents and healthcare professionals in other parts of the state. The spread in cases is blanketing the state and no locale is safe anymore.

 Secondly, let me be really, really clear on this. A statewide mask mandate is needed to save lives across the state. 

 Secondly, we are also asking the state to work with our system’s emergency managers to start planning for what will happen WHEN the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed. 

 Our healthcare heroes have fought valiantly day after day but we have no reserves. We have no backup that we can suddenly muster to come in and save the day. If we stay on the path we’re on, even just two more weeks, we will not have the staff we need to care for patients. It’s now just a numbers game. We are danger-close.

 Finally we are asking for a statewide safer-at-home policy. Such a policy would limit the face-to-face interaction and decrease the spread of infection. This policy would instruct residents to stay home except for specific things such as schools, going to the store, seeking medical care, among other things. This would greatly help slow the spread of the virus by eliminating social gatherings that we know continue to be the avenue for sustaining this great pandemic.

 Some counties have had only a few deaths and a relatively small number of cases. Should those counties be required to do the things Dr. Garza thinks need to be done statewide?  Their experience might argue for local control, not a statewide mandate. But even in those places, if someone becomes seriously ill, where can they go if the rural hospital that served their area is one of the dozen or so that has closed in recent years, or if that small hospital remains but its small staff operates on a thin capacity margin and can’t treat them?

A vaccine is on the horizon. But we are months away from its general availability. The virus is here. Now.  It won’t wait.  And we do not know where it is lurking, despite the individual precautions we are taking.

“We are all one big county now,” Dr. Garza said. We think he’s right.

We’re too scared to think otherwise.