Welcome to Bizzaro World!

There have been more mass shootings than days so far in this crazy year; gunmen are threatening our current and second to last presidents; a catastrophic hurricane season is predicted; the west is baking, the east has been under water, and there's a war going on in Europe, the biggest since WWII, which amazingly is being fought more like WWI than a war of modern armies. We're talking artillery, mines, and trench warfare. All that's missing is the mustard gas used at Ypres in 1915, and there may be even more hideous weapons to come in Ukraine.

Oh, and Lahaina burned to the ground.

But if all this doesn't sound that crazy, you need look no further than the current state of the Republican party, which was once affectionately known as the Grand Old Party. No more. Take a quick look at the morons and clowns that the "GOP" has elected to our nation's congress. You know them: Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, and on and on. That's without even mentioning the two mental giants Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos, who together make Sarah Palin look like Albert Einstein. Meanwhile, Fox News anchors seem contractually obligated to refer to something called the "Biden Crime Family" at least once every eleven minutes, portraying our current president in one minute as a doddering old fool who literally doesn't know where he is, and labeling him a criminal mastermind in the next. (Pro tip: He can't be both.)

Still not convinced? Well, yes, welcome to Bizzaro World!

Republican voters are hurtling towards nominating for president a twice impeached, four times indicted convicted sexual predator to run for our nation's highest office. Far more skilled pundits than I will detail his countless sins, high crimes and misdemeaners, and malignant narcicism and sociopathy, so I won't even try. What I will try to do, and the purpose of this post, is to alert you to the publicly stated blueprint for a second Trump presidency. 

It's called Agenda 47, and, as usual, Trump says the quiet part out loud.

What is included in this plan? Chauncey Devega at Salon.com has said it best in an excellent article called "Be Very Afraid: Trump's Agenda 47 Is No Joke."

"Agenda 47 would consist of an end to birthright citizenship, further criminalizing transgender people and the LGBTQI community more broadly, expanding the thought crime and other censorship laws to end the teaching of "critical race theory" and to defeat "Woke" and "Black Lives Matter", attacking academic freedom and replacing it with "patriot education", implementing a national stop and frisk law, pardoning the Jan. 6 terrorists, putting homeless people in camps or some other designated area under threat of arrest, building high tech "freedom cities", ending the professional civil service and replacing it with right-wing political appointees and other such partisan agents, gutting the Department of Justice and other parts of the government that opposed Trump's attacks on democracy and the rule of law, executing drug dealers, starting a trade war with China, and making "peace" with Vladimir Putin by withdrawing support for the Ukrainian people and their freedom struggle. In many ways, Agenda 47 is a continuation of the fascist and other authoritarian policies Trump put in place during his first regime but now made even more extreme and cruel." 

And if any or all of this appeals to you as the right direction for our country, then you and I are done. No more whatabout-ism, both-sides-ism, or any other false equivalencies, period. It is often said that we should always be voting for something rather than against something, but that doesn't apply here. Even if you love Trump and hate everything the democrats say and do, you must vote against this cruel and evil plan to dismantle the diverse democratic Republic that we have worked so hard to slowly build.

Portland, OR

August 26, 2023 

A Dispatch From Dresden

 

First off, I’d like to apologize for the long, long lag time since my last posts. The last eight or nine months have been quite challenging for me in a number of ways, but I’m back with A Dispatch From Dresden!

 

As many of you know, for six out of the last seven years I have traveled to Germany for a month of German language and culture classes at the Goethe Institue in Munich (Europe was closed in fall 2020). When I learned last year that the Munich branch had closed its Gasthaus, the only reasonably-priced option for a month’s stay, and also discontinued the four-week intensive course, I started looking for alternatives. I learned that not only did the Dresden school still have the four-week option, but they had also opened a brand new Gastaus in 2021.

 

So here I am, exactly halfway through my month-long visit to the beautiful city of Dresden.

 

Several things have come together over these last two weeks that are pretty darn incredible. Before I left for Germany, I picked up the newly-released, highly-rated 800+ page biography of Vladimir Putin, penned by the acclaimed biographer Philip Short. It is unique in that it not only traces Putin’s life from birth, but also stretches all the way to the present, including the Ukraine invasion and war. Early last week I got to the part where Putin, a veteran KGB officer by that point, is sent to Dresden to be second in command to the KGB station chief, who traveled frequently, leaving Putin in charge most of the time. The descriptions of his life in Dresden with his young family and his KGB and East German Stasi colleagues was made all the more interesting by my actually being here in Dresden. Short even lists some of the addresses, including that of the KGB headquarters at Angelikastraße 4, in an upscale residential neighborhood near the river Elbe called Waldschlosschen (“Little Castle in the Woods”). It was an historic mansion “leased” – free of charge – to the Soviet government from the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or communist East Germany). I Google Mapped the address and discovered that it was about 20 minutes by bus from my Gasthaus, so on a very rainy Tuesday after class I went to have a look. It is pictured below.

There is a legendary story, likely much exaggerated according to Short, of Putin and an armed Soviet soldier walking out to the front courtyard and confronting East German protesters who had just received the news of the fall of the Berlin wall. According to the tale, Putin calmly told them that Angelikastraße 4 was Soviet military territory and that the Soviet occupants had nothing to do with the politics of the DDR. The first part was true, but the second was a preposterous lie, one worthy of his pal The Donald many years later. To stand in these historic locales has been an experience I will not soon forget, and it has added incredible depth to my understanding of the biography.

 

Along the same lines, all of the above took place at the same time Mikhail Gorbachev was initiating Glasnost (Openness) and Perestroika (Restructuring), which led to Gorbachev’s ouster and the eventual collapse of the Soviet system. Over a hundred pages of the biography are dedicated to this period, with great insights into Putin’s mixed and sometimes contradictory feelings about those strange times for Russia. Again, to be here while reading all of this is pretty mind-blowing, not to mention that the Gorbachev story is all over the press due to his very recent death.

 

But the most fascinating part of my week was at its end.

 

Last Friday night I was celebrating the completion of my first week of classes at Augustiner am Frauenkirche with a few Vollbier Hell’s and ein halbes Bauernhendl (half a free-range chicken). The common outdoor tables filled up quickly, and I was at a table for 10, with two couples at one end and yours truly on the far corner. A German gent approached and asked if the seat across from me was free. Of course I welcomed him, and he ordered a beer.

 

After a few minutes, I figured I’d try to start a conversation in German, as I typically do. He seemed around my age. To break the ice, I asked him if he lived in Dresden. He said yes, he lived in an apartment just a few blocks away in the Altstadt. What happened next was one of the most incredible conversations I have ever had, and it was so relevant to everything you have already read in this post as to be almost scary.

 

We went through all the normal stuff: where I was from; why I was speaking German, etc. Then he very earnestly apologized for speaking only a few words of English, when pretty much everyone younger learned English starting in grade school. We spoke for well over an hour, which was fairly challenging for me as it was all in German, but we shared our life stories, his much more than mine. Walter was born within six months of me in 1952, in a small town called Cottbus, between Berlin and Dresden and close to the Polish border, deep in the former East Germany. He told me that when he was in school, English was a forbidden language; they were taught Russian. The look of pain in his eyes when he recounted his youth and teen years, the citizens’ debilitating fear of and hatred for the Stasi, the incentives to rat out your neighbors and even family members for non-communist statements and thoughts. At this point I wasn’t sure I had understood correctly; I said, “Did you say non-communist thoughts?” He said yes, exactly.

 

He worked as a senior technician on the electrical power grid in East Germany, and after the German reunification in 1990 he worked to upgrade the grid to Western standards until his retirement five years ago. He was actually working on a project in East Berlin on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin wall fell.

 

It was a very emotional conversation. Towards the end I told him I felt guilty for the life I have led in the west, understanding until now only in an intellectual sense what the Iron Curtain, the Cold War, and the Soviet Empire actually forced regular folks of my age to endure. He responded without hesitation. He said he would not be sitting in the beautiful square looking at the rebuilt and restored Frauenkirche if it were not for the United States. I told him that I had read a great deal about Dresden’s history, including the amazing story of the Frauenkirche, the international fundraising for which was instigated by former RAF and USAF flyers, most in their late eighties or nineties, who had bombed German cities. He continued: “As a people, we were defeated, we were tired, and we were starving. Any other victor would have occupied Germany, or at least left it to perish, but the USA rebuilt not only Germany, but all of Europe, with their own money, and Europe would otherwise be completely different today.” We concluded our conversation on this high note, and parted with smiles and mutual best wishes.

 

This conversation has awakened me to the human costs of war and tyranny. I will never forget looking into Walter’s eyes as he related the realities of life in the former DDR.

 

 

Dresden, Saxony, Germany

September 11, 2022

 

 

 

Three Takeaways From Three Weeks In Germany

Those who know me are keenly aware of my admiration for Germany’s society and culture. I have spent a month in Germany studying the language and culture at the Goethe Institute in Munich for six of the past seven years. You will read a lot of high praise in the following post, but I am not intending to present modern-day Germany as some kind of utopia; it most certainly is not. The country is deeply divided over Germany’s role in the EU, immigration, and other issues, and like most modern democracies is experiencing a troubling rise in radical far-right political movements. So much for the negatives …

 

1. Germany is controlling Covid 19, including the Delta variant. 

 

Upon my arrival in Munich in mid-September, the first thing I noticed was that 100% of the people in the airport and on the S-Bahn train into the city were wearing masks. In Germany, cloth masks don’t count; everyone had either a surgical mask or the EU equivalent of a KN-95. When I checked in to my hotel, the first request after my passport was for proof of full vaccination. I had the CDC card ready, so I had no issue, but I did ask what they did if a customer checking in did not have this proof. The response was that they had a testing facility on site with complimentary rapid testing.

 

My traditional first stop after check-in and a shower is always Zum Augustiner, an old traditional Bierstube on the pedestrian street between Carlsplatz and Marienplatz. There I enjoy my first glass of Augustiner Vollbier Hell, the most popular beer in Munich, which is not exported outside of Bavaria and is easily the best beer I have ever tasted. Arriving at the front door, I instantly realized that things were different. First, proof of full vaccination was required to get in the door. Then you were given a contact tracing card, upon which you entered your table number, arrival time, phone number, and address in Germany. Over the following weeks I came to learn that this was the policy everywhere in Munich, with no exceptions, encompassing restaurants, beer halls, outdoor beer gardens, clubs, museums, and hotels. You literally could not dine in at McDonalds without proof of vaccination.

 

I was surprised to learn that around 18% of adult Germans say they will never get the vaccination. However, in exercising that freedom of choice, they accept that they can not participate in virtually any public activity. With that laser focus on mediation measures, you would think that Covid was rampant in Munich. Not so. Last week in the USA, the area with the highest Covid positivity rate was Alaska, with 87 positives per 100,000 residents per day. In greater Munich, population 1.6M, the positivity rate per 100,000 residents was 2 per week. Pop-up rapid testing sites were everywhere, including all department stores, and all were free of charge. As a country of 83 million people, Germany has roughly the same number of daily new Covid infections and death as my home state of Oregon, population 4.6 million.

 

2. Germany is serious about battling climate change through conservation. 

 

Germany has long had one of the most far-reaching and successful recycling programs, in addition to near universal power-conservation technologies. Virtually every apartment bulding and hotel has motion-activated hallway lighting. Escalators almost never run continuously; they too are motion-activated except in the busiest locations. Germany has by far the most privately generated solar power of any EU country, with the power companies required to purchase surplus privately-generated electricity at market rates.

 

In the last few years, the country has made a real commitment to a cultural change focused on conservation, rather than the lip service that many industrialized countries pass off as environmental awareness. Germany has a program called Re: Imagine, in which recycling is the last element rather than the first. The signage is all over the public spaces like train stations, and reads: Re: Imagine: Re: Think, Re: Duce, Re: Use, Re: Cycle. The goal is nothing short of changing the way the German society looks at consumption and conservation of any and all resources. 

 

3. Oktoberfest 2021 was canceled. Somebody forgot to tell the Bavarians.

 

Unbeknownst to me, my first Saturday in Munich would have been the first day of Oktoberfest. Since the weather that day was decidedly not typical Munch in September (74F and sunny), I canceled my reservation at a dine-in restaurant and headed to the Augustiner Keller Biergarten, the second biggest beer garden in the world with just under 5,000 seats. As I approached the entrance (with vaccination check and contact tracing card, naturally) I saw the traditional horse-drawn wagon bringing in the wooden barrels of Oktoberfest beer, just like the big parade to d’Wiesn (Theresienwiese, the Oktoberfest grounds.) Inside, the place was completely full; it took me about 15 minutes to find a table with only two occupants, who graciously welcomed me to their table. All of the standard Oktoberfest shenanigans were on full display, including guys (and ladies) standing on their table a chugging an entire Maß (liter mug) of beer in one drink, hundreds of folks singing traditional Bavarian drinking songs at the top of their lungs, and drinking lots of beer. The only thing missing was the tables full of noisy, shit-faced Italians and roving bands of crazy Aussies.

 

Over the next three weeks, this scene was played out in every beer hall and beer garden I frequented. At the traditional Oktoberfest, every “tent” has a band that plays all day and evening every day. These bands were re-purposed to all of the beer brand’s indoor and outdoor halls and gardens, so there was traditional Bavarian music literally everywhere daily.

October 13, 2021

Portland, OR

The Masks of Portland

 

Greeting from the "anarchist jurisdiction" of Portland, OR. Here's a sampling of the 99% of our folks who wear masks, and the creative ways they match their clothing and/or send a message ...

Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

Kenneth Womack is arguably the premier Beatles scholar on the planet, having written no fewer than nine books on the Fab Four, including an exhaustive two-volume biography of the Beatles’ legendary producer, George Martin. I do not use the word “scholar” lightly. Womack’s books are extensively researched, and are attributed with literally hundreds of detailed footnotes. He also writes for the on line magazine Salon.com, typically on the anniversaries of an album release or other noteworthy event in Beatles history. It was at the end of one of these, an article celebrating the anniversary of the Beatles November 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, that his two latest Beatles books were mentioned. The title of the first intrigued me: Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles.

 

Abbey Road has long been my favorite Beatles album, and I would have likely read it anyway, but it was the “Solid State” that really got my attention. From the book I learned that before Abbey Road, all of the Beatles albums were recorded on a 4-track tape recorder, with the genius George Martin creating the intricate multi-instrumental and vocal stylings of albums like Sgt. Pepper using track bouncing and countless other innovative studio tricks. Abbey Road Studios was seriously behind the times in studio mixing and recording technology, so in the months before the Beatles started working on Abbey Road, they had upgraded to a more modern 8-track recorder. This also necessitated a new mixing console, as the one they had used for years was a custom-built deck that had only four outputs, whereas the new recorder would require eight. In designing the new mixing board, the engineers decided to use all transistors in the board’s electronics, rather than the vacuum tubes (“valves” in Brit-speak) that were in the old board. This gave the recordings a very different sound, with tighter, deeper bass notes and far less distortion, lending the music a more open, clear tonality. The change is starkly apparent from the opening notes of Come Together on side one.

 

When Abbey Road was released, it did not meet with universal praise. Quite the contrary. Many reviewers panned it, not only because they didn’t like the song compositions (they didn’t) but because of the sound of the recording. “There's just something odd about the sound of this record” opined one reviewer, while another put it even more directly: “It just doesn’t sound like the Beatles.” It was the sound of the new fully transistorized (Sold State) mixing console.

 

Womack’s Abbey Road book is a fascinating song-by-song look at the Beatles creative process on this, their final effort. They went to sometimes astonishing lengths to achieve perfection, or as close to it as possible. There are too many examples to list here (read the book!), but they include Paul spending two full weeks getting the vocal to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer to his satisfaction, George re-recording his overdubbed multiple guitar parts on Here Comes the Sun over fifty times, and the literal weeks of rehearsal of the three-part harmonies that grace the famous side-two medley, painstaking taught by George Martin.

 

The over 100 pages devoted to a detailed description of the recording and assembling of that famous medley are, to me, the most interesting of the book. I vowed not to listen to Abbey Road until I had finished reading Solid State, and when I finally put it on the stereo I was simply blown away. I immediately listened to it a second time, through very good headphones, and was doubly impressed.

 

Read this fantastic book, and put on Abbey Road. You’ll never hear it the same way again.

March 18, 2021

Portland, OR

Guest Blogger on the Novel Coronavirus

 

For just the second time in its nine-year existence, Frank-Incensed welcomes a guest blogger. I first met Ed Butdorf years ago when we both found ourselves in Las Vegas. Ed’s brother Doug was a work colleague of mine for several years, and Ed and I spent a day together while Doug was working a trade show. We have been social media friends ever since. He is 50 years old, an electrical contractor from the rural Ohio town of Wooster, and a husband, father, and avid outdoorsman. Significantly, he had no underlying conditions prior to his infection. Ed is the second of my friends to become critically ill with Covid 19, and he detailed his experiences in a series of Facebook posts. With his permission, I have lightly edited them and reformatted them into a single (and extremely compelling and emotional) blog post. Take it away Ed!

 

 

Infection

 

October 30th: I woke up feeling ill. I had a low-grade fever (in the 99.5 range). I had not yet been able to get out for a flu shot and had assumed that perhaps I managed to grab a case of the flu. My body was a little achy, but nothing too serious. I stayed home in bed all day and tried to recover.

 

October 31st: This day I woke up to a higher fever and I was starting to feel considerably worse. My fear that it might be Covid was setting in. I am one of the very fortunate people in this world who is not only a patient of my doctor; he is also my friend. I hated to do it but I texted him and he called me back quickly (I think he understood my concern). He told me to come to the office on Monday to get swabbed and we would find out for sure if it was Covid. I have in the past had some issues with sinusitis so my doctor prescribed some antibiotics just in case it was a sinus infections. He also gave me a steroid because that was a good thing if it turned out to be Covid. I spent the rest of the day in bed with fever and fever-related issues (body aches, etc.) I was able to get downstairs to watch the Buckeyes with Brenna and Manny. Please understand that we were as smart as we could possibly be around the house during this time of not knowing. All wore masks and stayed 6+ feet apart.

 

November 1st: This day was pretty much exactly like the day before. I couldn’t keep my fever down so I started taking 2 Tylenol every 8 hours and also taking 2 Motrin on alternating 4 hour shifts. This was generally enough to keep it down around 100.5 or so. I was able to go downstairs to watch the Browns game but as I recall, I spent a lotof time asleep. Body aches and fever just made me want to be asleep.

 

November 2nd - November 5th: I got up on the 2nd and felt pretty much the same. I drove to the doctor’s office and a nurse came out to the car and swabbed my nose. I felt the same way and used the same treatment regimen of Tylenol and Motrin for the next few days. I mostly slept. I finally got my test results back late in the day on the 5th. I was Covid 19 positive. I was feeling very scared. So much uncertainty and danger. Hopefully I am young and healthy enough to survive this without serious lifelong problems. Hopefully I won’t end up on a respirator. I had so many terrible thoughts racing through my mind at this point. I was unbelievably concerned that I would infect Brenna or Manny and kill one of them. The emotional distress, guilt and anxiety were nearly unbearable.

 

November 6 - November 11th: My condition continued to decline. The fever became more and more difficult to control. Brenna was a saint! I could have very easily just accepted death at this point but she continued to nurse me and encourage me. I could not have done it without her. When we sent Jake off to college, we were very concerned about Covid and so Brenna bought a couple of pulse oxygen monitors. One for the house and one for Jake to take to school in case he started feeling ill. I monitored my blood ox level very closely and tried to control the fever. I felt AWFUL and most of my time was spent sleeping. There were times when I would feel a little bit better for a few hours but then I would revert back to feeling shitty again. My blood oxygen level was slowly starting to drop and I was doing everything I could to keep it up. My respiratory therapist friend Renee (a saint, by the way) told me to keep using the spirometer that I had brought home from my foot surgery because it would definitely help. I did, I used it and there’s no doubt that it prolonged my time at home before going to the hospital. Ultimately on the evening of November 11th I woke up in the night and couldn’t breathe. I checked my pulse ox and it had dropped to 86 while I was sleeping. It was time to go to the hospital. Brenna loaded me up and hauled me in. 

 

 

Hospitalization

 

November 11th: Brenna dropped me off in the middle of the night at the WCH (Wooster Community Hospital) ER. I didn’t realize that this would be the last time I would get to see her face for the next several days or I would have taken a picture or two. My blood ox level was down to 86 and my fever had been getting up to the 102-103 range. The amazing people at WCH ER quickly hooked me up to about a million machines and started to stabilize my oxygen level very quickly. I remember that even as my ox level came back up, the machine continued to beep at me because my breathing rate was too high. It was like I had been jogging and couldn’t catch my breath even though I was just laying there. It was very scary. I got hooked up to an IV and they started drawing blood and doing tests right away. It seemed like they drew about 20 vials of blood and then I was told that the policy is to be redundant so they then started all over again. I have no real idea what all they were testing me for. At this point I just didn’t care. A little while later the radiology folks came in with a machine and gave me a chest x-ray. This confirmed that I had viral pneumonia. At this point the decision was made that I needed to be admitted to the hospital in a regular Covid room. Once I got to my room the regular team of doctors started to come and check me out, talk about my test results and treatment options. First came the hospitalist, she explained my situation and who my team was going to be. Next was the pulmonologist, he explained that Corona isn’t really a lung issue but a circulatory issue and that this was not going to be an easy battle. He ordered a CT scan of my lungs to better assess what was happening in there. Turns out I had a lot of “Covid crystals” and blood clots. They immediately added a blood thinner and blood pressure pill to my medication list. Last came the infectious disease specialist, who explained the disease and the experimental treatment options available including Remdesivir and the convalescent plasma. At this point I was unbelievably tired and just wanted to sleep. I was starting to feel a little relieved because my blood ox level had started to level off.

 

November 12th: As the doctors came through to check on me, I let them all know that if it wasn’t too late for it to be effective, I want to proceed with both experimental treatment options. They all agreed that it was not too late and that we would get it moving right away. The first thing they had to do was draw some blood to figure out my type. In the afternoon the nurses came in with the first of 5 doses of Remdesivir. It is 250 ml of fluid that gets pumped in through the IV. It was supposed to take about 2.5 hours. I think that is right but honestly I slept most of the time. It really didn’t have any side effects except that i seemed to be a little more thirsty than I was before. The convalescent plasma took a while longer to get. The hospital had to call the Red Cross, who finds some blood with antibodies in my type, then they transport it to the hospital and the lab has to spin it into plasma. It was the evening before they hooked up the plasma to my IV to pump it in. I don’t know if it was the combination of the two drugs or just a side effect of the plasma but my body seemed to go into total shutdown mode that night. I remember tremoring in an almost convulsion-like state throughout the night. I barely slept and the nurses must have been pretty worried about me because they were in there a lotthat night. I really thought about calling Brenna and saying good bye because I felt like there was a good chance I would not live. The nurses were the voice of reason here, thank God, because I can’t imagine how bad that call would have been for Brenna. I continued to just try to sleep and not die the rest of the night.

 

November 13th - 15th: After a VERY tumultuous night of not much sleep I was very tired and lethargic. My team of doctors came in to check on me and they all talked about how bad that night was. They explained that the convalescent plasma started a battle in my body between good and evil. It was a serious war being waged in there and it was going to take some time to get through. They were right. The plasma jump-started my immune system and the Remdesivir stopped the multiplication of Covid in my body, but at this point, Covid was winning and it was not going to give up without a hell of a fight. I spent the next couple of days feeling REALLY bad. At times i was ready to just go and be done with it. It was absolutely exhausting. My mind raced with fear and anxiety and guilt. Each day I got some blood drawn to keep an eye on my kidney and liver function and every day I got another dose of the Remdesivir. I continued to feel pretty bad. On the plus side, my fever had come under control which was a great sign that my body was winning the war with the virus.

 

November 16th: I got my last dose of Remdesivir. My fever was staying at bay mostly by itself with just an occasional Tylenol. I was starting to feel like I had turned the corner and would hopefully get to go home at some point soon. I was very relieved!

 

November 17th: I got to go home today. I can’t explain my relief even though it is clear that I am still in for a long road of recovery. I have to quarantine inside the house away from Brenna and Manny through November 20th and I am still on oxygen. When resting I need about 3L to keep my level stable. When I get up and around to shower and so forth I need to crank it up to 5L. As the blood clots and Covid crystals subside in my lungs I should get off the oxygen. I don’t know how long this will take. Could be days, weeks or months. That first night at home I slept 13 hours. It was clear that I needed a good night in my own bed. My dog was incredibly happy to see me. She snuggled next to me in bed and just licked me for almost an hour. It was clear that she knew something serious was wrong. Dogs are amazing.

 

November 18th - 19th: I am still quarantined in the bedroom but feeling pretty good. I have a table up here and am able to do some paperwork for a couple of hours at a time and then I lay down and rest for a bit. My bride has been an absolute saint and brings me up water and food and so forth. I know this has been a tremendous pain in her ass and I can never thank her enough for the amazing care she has offered me. I love her more than anything!

While I feel like I most likely will make a full recovery, I am begging each and every one of you to take this thing more seriously. Wear a mask, wash your hands and stay socially distant. I did all of the above and still ended up with it. I have A type blood so I was more susceptible and suffered worse than many will. Don’t take the precautions for yourself if you don’t want but PLEASE take the precautions for other with similar conditions to mine. If I was 70 and got this I probably would have died. PLEASE don’t kill someone just because you don’t know their blood type! Wear the mask, wash your hands and stay socially distant. You could save a life and not know it. Consider yourself a superhero for saving lives, it really does matter!

The People

 

Now I will talk about the people who helped me deal with COVID-19. This is by farthe most important part of my story!

 

First, I want to take a minute to address all of my friends, family and loved ones. Loved ones are your loved ones because they love you and you love them back; that being said though, it was unbelievably comforting to me to get all of the many text’s, PM’s and good wishes via social media! It was very difficult to sit in a room by myself for many days without visits from loved ones. The Text’s, PM’s, etc. reallyhelped. Even if it seemed like I was being short with only a thumbs up or a quick “thanks”, all of the wishes helped me survive and I appreciate all of you for doing it!

 

Second, I want to offer a big thank you to the housekeeping staff, sanitation people, and even the boiler operator who came to my room and fixed my TV before the NFL games on Sunday. 

 

Thirdly, and probably most importantly, THE NURSES. These ladies and gentlemen are SAINTS! They are ROCKSTARS! They are unbelievably over-worked! They are putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk every single day to come in to a job and take care of the unlucky!!! I can never say enough thanks, I can never do enough to repay their service!

 

Fourth, the doctors: This is a difficult position even for a trained professional. I could sense that they could feel my despair, my anxiety, my loneliness. They too are putting their health and the health of their families at risk every single day. I was lucky enough that my main hospital doctor is friends with my primary care physician. The two of them chatted and thanks at least in part to the fact that my PCP is also my friend, seemed to create a very nice connection between us. It was obvious that she sensed my despair the most. She had also contracted Covid back in April or May and she also has Type A- blood. She also struggled for about three weeks with recovery. She is many years younger than I am and she is in far better physical condition (cross fit nut). She was a breath of fresh air every day. She placed her hand on me every day to reassure me. It really meant a lot. I am forever grateful.

 

Fifth, my friend and saint Renee. To know Renee is to love Renee! She is the kind of person the world needs more of. She is a respiratory therapist at the hospital so she can kind of covertly cruise around there at will. She brought me pictures of my family, she brought me clean underwear, she brought me good tidings from Brenna. She was Brenna’s eyes and ears to my physical condition. The most important thing Renee brought me though was a hug every time she came to see me. It was the only real human contact I was able to have and even though she looked like she was in a movie scene with all of the PPE, it meant more to me than she could ever know. Every time she hugged me I wept after she left the room. Hell, I’m tearing up right now thinking about it. Thank you, Renee, more that I can ever tell you!

 

All of these people had a huge impact on me. All of these people risked their health and the health of their own loved ones to take care of me. This is why we need to be so, so diligent right now. Forget about yourself, forget about your own loved ones, think about these health care providers. Let them live, let them stay Covid-free, let them go on about their lives as painlessly as possible. PLEASE, wear the mask, stay socially distant, and wash those hands as often as possible.

 

Lastly, don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions you may have. I am certainly NOT a health expert but if any of my advice can help to settle your nerves, I will be happy to oblige. edbutdorf@gmail.com

Portland, OR

November 24, 2020

 

 

 

 

An Ordinary Joe: The Right Man at the Right Time

Although I was born in San Antonio, TX, into a military family, my parents and grandparents were from Wilmington, Delaware. So I consider myself a native Delawarean, and as such have been very familiar with Joe Biden for many years. I am ten years younger than he, and I attended the University of Delaware nine years behind him. I consider myself an independent-leaning progressive, but nowhere close to a radical leftist. As such, up until early February I believed that the very last thing the Democrats needed in a presidential candidate in 2020 was an old white guy. Of course, like the majority of Americans, I wanted first and foremost a candidate who would put an end to the reign of King Donald I. As I listened to the prospective candidates, I thought there were a few, primarily progressive moderates like Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris, who could overcome their relative inexperience and were smart enough to do it by surrounding themselves with experienced players. They were also highly effective communicators who could clearly articulate real policies without being preachy.

I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Our government botched the response to the Covid 19 pandemic worse than literally any nation in the world, and by a huge margin. The subsequent economic collapse, followed by the nationwide, continuing protest of police brutality towards minorities rounded out an unlikely and disastrous trifecta of crises. Our populace is in a state of simultaneous numbness and shock, with people’s reactions being everything from totally ignoring it all (although it’s pretty hard to ignore the economic impacts) to panicked self-isolation. We appear rudderless, not to mention woefully incompetent, to the rest of the world. I’m not going to list all of the honest mistakes, petty disputes and culture warring, and criminal negligence that have resulted in almost 140,000 American dead as of today; far better pundits than I are doing that work daily. We look at other countries’ successes and we still fail to realize that we know how to fix this; we just don’t have the national will to do it. Of course, the leadership vacuum is a huge contributor to our failure as a nation, but we ourselves are most to blame.

So that’s what we lack, but what do we need? Well, let’s imagine that we elected a leader with 40 years of experience in the labyrinthine ways that our government actually works. Who has eight years of experience as our Vice President. Who was hired in that role because of the decades of hands-on experience in foreign policy and cordial relationships with our allies, not to mention the begrudging respect of our adversaries. Of one thing you can be sure: If elected, he will assemble a team of experts in their fields, listen to their advice, tolerate their dissent, and base decisions on carefully thought-out logic and accepted science, rather than surround himself with fawning, spineless sycophants living in daily fear of (and often contempt for) their leader.

Oh, but you say, “What about all his shortcomings; his questionable votes on so many issues; his shameful handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1990?” Joe Biden would be the first person to admit that he’s been wrong and made mistakes, but even his fiercest adversaries across the aisle never question his patriotism and loyalty. No one can work for 40 years at the highest levels of our government and not make serious mistakes. “But, he’s old and senile, or worse, suffering from actual dementia.” Almost anyone who has followed his career, and certainly anyone from Delaware, will tell you that Joe has been the master of the malapropism since he first entered the senate in 1973 at age 31. A comparison of his current speaking and writing ability with our current president would serve him very well, to say the least. He is in excellent health for his age, exercises regularly, and is not overweight. I don’t call the current president nasty names. I still have respect for the office, though it appears tarnished and cheapened to me, most of my countrymen, and people around the world, to the dismay of our allies and the joy of our foes. 

But there is one outsized reason that I changed my mind about Joe for president, fully acknowledging his mistakes and shortcomings.

And that is empathy. Joe has been through hell and back in his personal life, losing a wife and a one year old daughter just weeks after his election to the senate, and his beloved son Beau to cancer in 2015. Due to these and other experiences, Joe has deep and genuine empathy for all those who are suffering grief and any kind of loss, not just family deaths. He deeply cares about the plight of minorities and women, and is the perfect man to battle the Coronavirus to its knees. He is by nature not a cynical man. He is the anti-Trump when it comes to empathy; that much is indisputable.

It's time we put our faith and our fate in the hands of an ordinary Joe.

Portland, OR

July 14, 2020

(And watch Joe's new Texas ad here.)