95. Polio

On this day, February 23, in 1954, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Jonas Salk inoculated 137 schoolchildren in the first major trial of his polio vaccine. It was a success, and children across the country were vaccinated. The dark days of 1952—the worst year for polio in the U.S., with 58,000 cases and 3000 deaths—were over. We—the children of the 1950s—could swim again in the “dog days” of August, and Life Magazine would not add more pictures of “iron lungs” that breathed for the afflicted and gave others nightmares.

 

The world is not quite done with polio; there are still a few new cases each year in war-torn countries. And some survivors of childhood polio, now in their 70s and 80s, are experiencing post-polio syndrome—muscle loss and joint pain and fatigue. But Bill and Melinda Gates and Rotary International, with thousands of volunteer and paid health care workers wading into the remaining hot spots, might soon make it another smallpox. A scourge that traveled the world, left its mark in history, and is retired to a laboratory.  

 

There might be more public knowledge and memory of polio than there is of the influenza epidemic of 1918, SARS, or swine flu. Maybe because of the pictures some of us still carry in our heads of iron lungs, of memories of seeing and knowing people with shriveled muscles, and memories and stories about President Roosevelt. FDR was stricken at 39 and stood to speak with braces and much difficulty, but he launched the “March of Dimes,” which would eventually fund Salk’s research and polio’s cure. 

 

I think there are bigger lessons here. America has always been a capitalist country, but strong social movements and, eventually, government programs have brought universal education, workplace safety, Social Security, and some semblance of universal health care into being. In the 1950s, the years of Salk and my own education, Republican and Democratic administrations agreed on a “mixed economy”—differing only on the mix. 

 

But since the 1980s, when deregulation became gospel and supply side economics was a hit song, for-profit solutions to public problems has been the go-to. Now, as we battle the current pandemic globally, we might think about the March of Dimes and listen to Dr. Salk. When asked whether he had applied for a patent for the vaccine, he replied, "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" 

 

I’m encouraged by the free vaccines in our country, and by halting but persistent efforts to make sure that vaccines reach poor neighborhoods and poor countries across the globe. If governments and “Big Pharma” can get a dose of Salk’s altruism, Covid-19 will have changed the world. 

 

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94. For my grandchildren

I have six grandchildren, five of them between the ages of 16 and 23. Two of the five live with me now; the other three are in the Portland area, only one in that “hybrid” thing we still call high school. Two of the five are haltingly, fitfully, trying to go to college. 

 

For all of them, it is hard times. When I was 22, I left on the biggest adventure of my life, five years of living and learning in Turkey and visiting a dozen other countries from England to India. We didn’t worry about airport security, let alone facemasks and distancing. We ate from street vendors’ barbecues and dined in fine restaurants. I learned to love lamb, yogurt, and anise-flavored raki. It was a time of trying out the world.

 

My grandchildren now work—but don’t play much. They’re watchful of who they are with and how close they are, and, unlike some of their peers, don’t attend Covid parties. They don’t feel invincible, in part because one of them did contract Covid-19. Although he is recovered and super healthy now, there are times when he feels like he did “when,” and wonders if he is one of those with lingering side effects. At a time and ages when they should be playing, learning, tasting different foods with new friends, testing themselves in the world, they’re fearful of the new. 

 

Of course, a half century ago some of my peers were testing themselves in an entirely different way—in a war in far-off Vietnam. That war—and our hopes with President Kennedy and then the nightmare assassinations of Kennedy, Kennedy, and King--marked our generation. They brought young people together to protest, make music, and yes, explore drugs. 

 

Ours was a raucous testing of self against a rapidly changing and sometimes dramatic and traumatic world; we expressed our individualism in sharing music, drugs, and politics. My grandchildren live against a grinding, dull, limited world. They watch their steps and their breaths, reach out by phone and computer, looking for friendships and love in a world that has made dating an online commodity and “gaming” together a strange kind of long-distance—sometimes international!—friendship. 

 

And like us and their parents—our children—our grandchildren live under constant threats of heat and cold, wind and fire, and, of course, the pandemic itself. They hunker, like we all do, in small family and close friend pods, wanting to not be alone in the world. 

 

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93. Covid Hits the County

The first 8 or 10 days in February saw 27 new cases of the coronavirus and our fourth Wallowa County death. Numbers have continued to mount—with one or two cases each new day. Our sense of splendid isolation from Covid-19—and many other ills of modern society—has cracked. 

 

Most of us now wear our masks like we put on a sweater on a cool day or take one-a-day vitamin. Some few still fight convention and find an argument for personal freedom in walking into Safeway or the hardware store without a mask. While we mask wearers have become “naturals,” unthinkingly pulling it over the nose as we go through the Safeway door, the anti-maskers must have to constantly think about this expression of personal freedom. 

 

They forget, of course, the admonition of most gospels of freedom—the staunchest libertarian puts a boundary at the point at which his or her liberty infringes on the liberties—or the wellbeing—of others. 

 

Advocates of the “Swedish solution”—herd immunity—are quieter now. Although there are still stories of Covid Parties on college campuses, the idea being that enough young people—who mostly rebound quickly—will get the disease, heal up, and create the herd. I’ve not heard arguments from herd immunity folks about what are now called “long haulers,” people who contracted Covid-19, maybe even with mild symptoms, and then, weeks later, have heart, liver, or muscle problems. 

 

I know of no local cases, but in an interesting parallel, I do know two who suffered from polio more than 50 years ago and are now suffering from “post-polio syndrome”—muscle weakness and pain, etc. That long ago viral scourge is not done with us yet!

 

I know a few who wear masks and keep their distances carefully—but worry that the vaccine will not work or work ill on them. They will keep the Covid at bay on their own terms, without the help of big pharma, because no vaccine has ever been developed this quickly, because Bill Gates had something to do with it, or maybe because they just don’t like shots! 

 

There are, even among the careful mask wearers, staunch anti-vaxxers. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is national leader in this group. The son of the assassinated former Attorney General and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has a long and successful career as an environmental lawyer—which puts him in the “liberal” section of our country’s sometimes strange politics. He leads a group that promotes the idea—debunked by most medical experts, that autism is linked to vaccinations. 

 

Among the anti-vaxxers and the reluctant waiting for more information there are stories of deaths after vaccinations. A friend says she knows of four healthy people who have died after being vaccinated. Robert Kennedy apparently claimed that baseball legend Henry Aaron was killed by the Covid-vaccine. Aaron, 86 years old, in a wheelchair and poor health, stepped up to take the vaccine to encourage more black Americans to do so. The Atlanta coroner found his death to be natural, having nothing to do with Covid or with the vaccine.

 

I’ve searched the press for stories of vaccination deaths; you would think that they would be prominent. Although there are stories of strong reactions, including one in our hospital—I can find no substantiated death stories. With millions of vaccinated, you would assume a few deaths. The most complete story I found was about 23 deaths in Norwegian nursing homes. Examination showed that “common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.” Their advice was to stop vaccinating the elderly who are sick.

 

In the U.S., over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered from December 14, 2020, through February 7, 2021. During this time, 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people who received the vaccine. On examination, none of the deaths has been attributed to the vaccine. I think the message is that .003 percent of any group of 41 million will perish in a two-month period, and/or that vaccinating the very ill might speed their dying.

 

I guess there are still a few who believe that it’s all a big hoax, a plot to sell vaccines, or to promote the work and wealth of Bill Gates. But they are quieter now, and from press reports, the skeptical of all kinds are quietly taking their places in line and getting their shots.

 

I got my first shot last week, joining farmers and teachers, old friends and newcomers, Republicans and Democrats, at Cloverleaf Hall, where a joyful group of professionals and volunteers efficiently moved us towards immunity. I invite my “younger” friends and neighbors to get in line and grow Wallowa County’s herd of the immune. 

 

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92. A bit of humility

Our exhibit this month at the Josephy Center is called “Who’s Your Buddy?” It features paintings, photos, and ceramic renditions of dogs, cats, and goldfish that the contributing artists play with, talk with, live with. Some are striking, some fawning, and all show the overwhelming human reach towards something beyond self. 

 

Yesterday the local Center For Wellness gave us a noon “Brown Bag” program on “Emotional Support Animals”—at least that is how we advertised it. What we got was an amazing woman named A.K. talking about the two canine companions that help her make it through her days and nights. A.K.’s dogs are “psychiatric support” animals that she and others have trained. She explained that she suffers from severe PTSD, among other maladies, and quietly extolled her dogs for waking her from nightmares, guiding her to and from her apartment and outside destinations when mental lapses descend like fog on the brain, and even bringing her medicines. She could not live on her own without them.

 

The conversation included emotional support animals that we had advertised, and talk too of the pets that many of us don’t call that, but unthinkingly rely on for conversation, companionship, and help in raisiing our children. There was no surprise when someone brought up the dearth of animals in shelters and pet stores as the pandemic carries on.

 

 A.K. showed us just how substantial and important our animal friends can be in this time of the pandemic. For an inspiring half hour, check this one out:

https://youtu.be/5IOPiHK_N1U 

91. Remember--and wait

I got my first shot yesterday. I had a phone call last week setting up a 2:15 appointment this Tuesday. I showed up at Cloverleaf Hall at the Wallowa County Fairgrounds a few minutes early, got my ticket—a vaccination card with the date on it, got my shot at 2:10, then a piece of masking tape with “2:25” inked on it, got scheduled for the second shot on March 9, and took a seat alongside old friends to wait for 2:25.  

Cloverleaf Hall was a large and new metal building, built to replace an old fair hall that had burned, when I came 50 years ago. I first worked for the Extension Service, and set up tables and chairs in that building scores of times. I cannot count the fairs, dances, public meetings, 4-H meetings, and annual Cattlemen’s Balls that I have attended in that hall. 

 

But I remember the first one clearly. It was a “Sons of the Pioneers” concert. Lloyd Doss, then proprietor of the Imnaha Store and Tavern, was a Pioneer who no longer toured, but went to California to record with the group, and in this instance brought them here to take pictures for an album cover—and to perform at Cloverleaf Hall. The cowboys and cowgirls from up and down the Imnaha joined a huge crowd in welcoming the Pioneers, and the ceiling shook when Lloyd “Tommie” Doss was introduced in his cowboy finery. They were all dressed in fringe and color, and the matching hats floated over guitars and harmony, with Lloyd’s rich baritone easy to pick out.

 

They packed their equipment at midnight, but local vet Fred Bornstedt took the stage with his own guitar and own battered cowboy hat and sang and played as we sipped beer and booze that we’d openly carried in as the night wore on.

 

Yesterday was 50 or 51 years away from the Pioneers. Lloyd and Naomi Doss and Fred Bornstedt have passed on, and my older self waited, with other seniors in that place I danced young—to be sent home, to wait for a second shot. And to wait for some clearing in this national fog of Covid-19 that seems to grow closer to us in Wallowa County by the day. We’ve been lulled by our remoteness from the big scenes of overcrowded urban ER rooms and our own small numbers, watching the out-of-state license plates for almost a year now, wondering when our turn would come. Yesterday there were 7 new cases—a record. 

 

We wait, remember, and wait some more.

90. The Race(s)

Yesterday’s news of anti-vaccine protesters at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles follows on the Capitol siege and a year of sporadic resistance to safeguards against C0vid-19—and denials from partial to total about the virus itself. The California story is notable, because California is a Blue state with Democrats in control of most reins of government—and because California will soon eclipse New York as the state with the most Covid deaths. 

I wait my turn—my appointment is for Tuesday, February 9—to get my own vaccination, and watch the daily numbers of Covid positives among the 7,000 of us here in Wallowa County, Oregon. We’ve been a poster community, our schools up and running, our hospital and health care system on top of testing and tracking, and the rush of summer tourists apparently unable to bring us the virus. We’ve not been affected by the church outbreak in nearby La Grande, or by the relentless numbers of positives in Umatilla County to the west. But recently, in the last week, daily numbers of positives in Wallowa County moved from 0 to 1 with the very occasional 2, to daily positives with a high of 5. 

 

It feels like I am—we are—in a race to get our vaccinations as the virus finally makes its way through the long windy road from La Grande, or up and down Rattlesnake Grade from Lewiston, Idaho (a state with recent jumps in cases and deaths amid protests at masking and distancing). There are only two roads in and out in the winter, with one more open just a few months each year. We wait—and watch the Idaho license plates on Main Street and the daily numbers from the Oregon Health Authority (1 on Friday; 3 yesterday) against the days we get vaccinated and the weeks before efficacy. 

 

The country too is in a race, on one side the protestors, naysayers and deniers, who are wary of coronavirus vaccines, or don’t believe in vaccines at all, or who believe that the virus itself is a concocted story promulgated by Democrats or aliens. On the other side are the hundreds of thousands of health care workers who continue to risk their own lives to stop this thing; the survivors mourning lost relatives; the children and grandchildren who have parents and grandparents like me, 78 years old and in good health but nevertheless deemed “at risk”; and the new Biden administration and its efforts to get a grip on the pandemic and move on to the economy and climate change. 

 

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89. Skating

 Skating

 

How people leapt at the idea and mind’s eye visions of ice skating… Thank all of you so much for stories of skating on a frozen river in the Yukon, playing pick-up hockey in New Jersey, skating in “wild” places away from closed and bounded rinks; picking up skates after six years and taking a grinning selfie. You wrote of “flying on ice,” of “skating in the wilds,” and of a grandfather who skated on Wallowa Lake.

 

I want to read something more into these memories, that maybe now, with Pandemic hopefully—hopefully slowing and politics hopefully—hopefully settling, that there’s a soul-calming—at least for many of us—that has released pent-up tension and allowed us to remember times when we “flew across the ice,” skated wild rivers, chased frozen pucks, and, today, as one so concisely said, find “a place to feel young and strong again.”

 

So thank you all for sharing your memories—and please remember Gerry too, a Vietnam vet smarter than a whip, who could quote Joyce and Ray Carver, who struggled much and accomplished much—we skated and skied and read books together many times—finding a loving relationship and a teaching mission and grateful students at nearby Eastern Oregon late in life—before cancer took him away. If you are of my age or a bit younger, and you are lucky, you’ll have people in your life like Gerry—or maybe you are a Gerry yourself.

 

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88. Memory break

I know that it was 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday in February, and I think it was in 1988. It was cold and the sky was magnificent—like today’s sky.  

Gerry McNamee walked into the small corner of Ralph Swin hart’s engineering office on Enterprise’s Main Street—where I shared Ralph’s computer and managed my new Pika Press publishing company and started dreaming a new thing called Fishtrap. (Pika Press stumbled on for a few years, publishing a few books that did not become best sellers but pleased some local history buffs and baking enthusiasts; Fishtrap lives on.) Gerry said it was a fine day to go ice skating on Wallowa Lake. 

 

So, we did go ice skating on Wallowa Lake. Out of the car at the foot of the Lake, we toted skates to the frozen shore. It was a beautiful day—the temperature must have been in the single digits; the sun had climbed over the East Moraine, and there was a fine layer—maybe a quarter inch—of hoar frost on the ice-covered lake. We tied on our skates, pulled on our mittens and pulled down our stocking caps—and glided off.

 

I learned to skate young in Minnesota, but we moved to California when I was ten and I’d not made the transition to roller skates (this before the aligned single rollers, when roller skates were clunky, many wheeled things you strapped to shoes).  I’d taken it up again after moving to Wallowa County in 1971, but was only a workmanlike skater. I was not graceful skating backward and making sharp turns skate over skate. 

 

But on that Wednesday on Wallowa Lake Gerry and I were speedskaters. We headed for the broken topped pine a mile or two up the eastern shore. We swung our arms and listened to the swoosh of skates through frost on ice. I don’t think we stopped for breath until we reached that goal. Then we laughed and chortled at our private pleasure. No one else in the County, no one else in the whole world was there that day to earn that pleasure. 

 

Gerry’s gone now; I’d be afraid to get on skates at the Lake—though I might risk it on a small rink with side rails to catch me. But the mind and memory are sometimes wonderful, and on this cold Thursday in 2021 I can still hear the swish of four skates and see a glorious grin on Gerry McNamee’s face the day we skated the Lake alone. 

 

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87. Corruption

When I read the story of the wealthy Canadian couple who flew their private plane to a remote Indian reserve and posed as motel workers to get Covid vaccinated, I felt sick. And this morning, reading about people cutting in line—medical workers with no patient contact: administrators and psychiatrists and radiologists who work remotely; political wives and ex-wives who have been able to jump the lines—I felt pain in the gut.

 

We’ve had four years of turmoil over issues of race, religion, and fabricated realities, but somehow, effective vaccines were speedily developed by conscientious scientists, medical experts, business executives and government workers—and now we bow to favoritism and greed!

 

I’m told that one of the hallmarks of Roosevelt’s New Deal was the absence of corruption. Yes, one can probably find instances of people making the dishonest buck or nudging their communities or institutions ahead in the Works Progress Administration line, but one never hears talk of it when the stories of CCC crews and the money sent home are told; no one talks about payoffs when Post Office Murals and state by state information books written by out of work authors like John Steinbeck are celebrated; and although there were fights between public and private power companies, I’ve never heard that the Rural Electrification Agency was politicized. 

 

For my money, President Biden should step up on a national platform and decry all cheaters and line-jumpers. He should make sure that vaccines get to poor, black and brown neighborhoods, to garbage collectors and mail carriers before it gets to hospital CEOs. He should tell private companies involved in vaccinations to do their jobs and get paid for doing them—but to forgo adding the 20% or 40% profit figure atop expenses. 

 

The way out of the mess we are in is to do it together—fairly. I’ve heard seniors say that being healthy and in a secure living situation, they’ll wait for the garbage collectors and grocery clerks to go first. How can we get the country to do that?

 

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86. Hard Promises

The inauguration is over; President Biden has signed a flurry of executive orders, had a few cabinet appointments approved, and the Senate has negotiated a small delay in taking up the Trump impeachment—hopefully allowing Biden to complete his cabinet.

 

Dr. Fauci is back in front of the cameras, with renewed vigor and occasionally a small smile. He made a kind of apology for previous imperfect statements—he had not wanted to directly contradict President Trump. Smiled now remembering his distressed look in the background as Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine. Fauci says that we can now expect talk and action reflecting the best that science and medical advice can give us. 

 

Fauci does predict a continuing high coronavirus death toll—3,000-4,000 per day—even as the number of new cases declines. Others on Biden’s health team are trying to get a handle on vaccine distribution, still touting the goal of 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days. 

 

This, it seems to me, is a hard critical promise that the new administration can and must make good on. Meeting it will have the practical effect of reducing transmission, and the social/political/psychological impact of keeping the promise. Biden has told his staff that they need ambitious but doable goals, and they need to fess up if and when they don’t meet them. 

 

* * *

 

Baseball’s Hank Aaron died yesterday. I’ve watched homerun number 715 replayed a dozen times on the news. Number 715 broke the legendary Babe Ruth’s record for career homeruns, and spawned a year of hate mail and death threats as Aaron, a black man, approached Ruth’s record. 

 

Aaron was raised in Alabama, started in the Negro leagues at 17, and played a couple of seasons of white minor league ball in the Deep South. Jim Crow was strong and Aaron often couldn’t eat or stay in hotels with white teammates. He went to the major league Milwaukie Braves in 1954. When the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1965, Aaron was concerned about living and playing in the South again. So he talked with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy, and they told him his work was as important as theirs; he should play ball and be a black leader in Atlanta. He promised—and held to that promise with grace through death threats and the Civil Rights years.

 

Promises are promises, and hard promises met move us ahead. 

 

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