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It doesn’t seem right that the days are already getting shorter in our fair Hemisphere. I’ve never been a fan of the summer solstice, the buoy in the bay that marks the turn of the sun’s race back to its winter harbour.\u00a0 But the prospect of ever-diminishing daytime hours seems especially depressing this time around.\u00a0 I wonder why.<\/p>\n
It doesn’t seem right that the days are already getting shorter in our fair Hemisphere. I’ve never been a fan of the summer solstice, the buoy in the bay that marks the turn of the sun’s race back to its … Continue reading I have gradually lost respect for the coordinator of the White House<\/em> (emphasis mine) Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Deborah Birx.\u00a0 Her public statements seem designed less to inform than to market the effectiveness of Trump administration actions.\u00a0 I like to give health professionals the benefit of the doubt, but Birx has become the Susan Collins of our government’s pandemic response.\u00a0 You really can’t count on what she has to say.<\/p>\nFor-profit hospitals should award their patients points for emergency room visits and overnight stays.\u00a0 You would earn 1000 points for every hour spent waiting to be seen in the emergency room, 100 points for every minute between the time you push the call button and a nursing assistant arrives, 2000 points for each time you had to tell a doctor or nurse what was wrong with you instead of the other way around, and 3000 points for trying to understand anything a doctor says to you while you are laying there weak and exhausted.\u00a0 You would earn one free night in a semi-private room upon reaching Silver status, or a private room if you reach Gold, along with a voucher for a complimentary breakfast and a delicious cookie.<\/p>\nNo policeman arrests himself…. except that one time<\/a> in Mayberry, North Carolina.<\/p>\nMy high-school English teacher annotated my final report card with a two-star review: negative attitude<\/em>.\u00a0 Yes, I did write and circulate a mocking and disrespectful school-satire magazine among my classmates, but to this day I’m not sure how my attitude <\/em>should have affected my English grade.\u00a0 It’s not like I was making crude jokes about Dickens — because those wouldn’t have been very funny.<\/p>\nThe Great Saharan Dust Cloud of 2020 has arrived here in the Carolinas. Looking out our family-room window today, I figured our visibility is about 3000 feet. And even with our doors and windows closed, our eyes have begun to smart. What’s next, locusts?<\/p>\nIt is time for a poet to step forward.\u00a0 Poetry has the power to make people “hopeful as a rainwashed hill of moonlit pines.” [Carl Sandburg, “The People, Yes”, 1936].\u00a0 I hope we are not in a post-poet era but I fear that is the case.\u00a0 Maya Angelou died six years ago.\u00a0 No one has replaced her.\u00a0 Who can name one candidate?\u00a0 (Please, no votes for Taylor or Beyonce.)<\/p>\nOne would like to be optimistic, especially if one is an optimist.\u00a0 One would like to think that the course of human events can indeed be bent in a favorable direction, if only one makes the effort.\u00a0 The rest of this thought is left for one (you) to complete.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"