Labor Day Greetings, Facemasks, Kennedy Defeat, Trump Panicking, Disability, Late-term Abortion, Authoritarian Control, Virus Hits Home, My Son Remembered

Labor Day greetings when many Americans are out of work. 

Wearing a face mask does inhibit breathing, so must make it hard for runners and joggers, who would otherwise let out big breaths. I notice that workmen often wear their face masks down around their necks.

I’d considered it unfortunate when Rep. Joe Kennedy decided to mount a primary challenge against incumbent Democratic Senator Ed Markey, age 74, though in Mass., all lawmakers are likely to be Democrats. Too bad, Kennedy will now have to wait 6 more years until Markey retires, unless Markey. then at age 80. decides to stay on just to make a point. After all, some of us may be old but we’re not dead yet. Kennedy wouldn’t want to try to take on Warren, especially after this defeat. However, Kennedy has now sent out an email thanking his supporters and vowing to fight on.

Did Donald Trump actually “fix it,” as he had promised? Has anything been fixed since he took office? The man seems to be flailing around wildly, trying to land a blow on Biden, but failing so far.  Mr. Bone Spurs is unable to tout his military service or that of any members of his family.

Trump is accusing Biden, before the fact, of ruining the economic recovery when the Obama/Biden years saw steady growth and when the current recession is occurring on Trump’s watch.

“Dwarf pride” advocates are protesting the use of a drug that increases height in children with dwarfism, arguing that theirs is not a condition needing correction. Similar arguments are made for remedies for those born with profound deafness. Either remedial intervention is likely to remove children from the “community” of people with a particular condition, who typically downplay its severity and emphasize their normality. The more that those with dwarfism or deafness are considered “normal” and the more of them are found within the population, the less stigma they will have to endure in addition to the practical effects of their condition, being considered merely, “differently abled.” Folks with evident disabilities strive to avoid shunning and being shut out as “other,” as per Donald Trump, who says he doesn’t want to even see them. Probably he and others like him fear the same fate, so try to distance themselves. 

Sometimes, someone with a deficit in one area is a savant in another, as in music, art, or math, I know personally of such cases.  
For 24 years, I was married to a very accomplished man who was also totally blind  Sightless folks, like others, have organized to tout their normality and also to press for adaptations in the public sphere, such as installing small warning bumps at the edges of subway platforms. But blind advocacy groups also describe blindness as an inconvenience, not a calamity or a condition preventing employability. Indeed, many adaptations both in technology and in the public sphere, such as curb cuts for wheelchairs, have made life for people with disabilities easier and less isolating.

Is the prospect of reducing a disability worth the risk, expense, and discomfort of attempting a medical remedy during childhood? That depends. When kids with dwarfism were subjected to painful bone lengthening immobilization, it might be argued that gaining a couple inches of height was not worth the cost and risk, but now the prospect of merely taking a medication is a much simpler matter. In the case of a child, parents usually decide.

Because of my own connections working as a Spanish interpreter at NIH, I once suggested to a young man with quadriplegia that he participate in experiments there to regain function in an arm and hand, But he was not interested, saying that he was just fine the way he was, with attendants visiting daily and using his mouth for guiding his electric wheelchair, answering the phone, and using a computer.  

With so many folks staying home and ordering items on-line and so many unemployed package thieves around, it’s no wonder that package theft has become an epidemic, at least in my own Capitol Hill neighborhood. Package thieves follow delivery trucks around to snatch packages before anyone can answer the door. Once, my daughter living in another state sent me some homemade goodies, apparently not of interest to a package thief who left the opened package and its contents strewed out on my front porch.   

Have mentioned before my misgivings about support for abortion after the first trimester, especially after 20 weeks, when I have seen born-alive kids at that stage with personality and ability, though needing to catch up after a very premature birth. Since Roe, advances in neonatal care and children’s rehab have come about and meaningful survival at earlier stages is now possible. But I hope this issue is not raised prominently right now, because Democratic candidates will feel obligated to toe the strict abortion party line, whatever their personal beliefs. Getting rid of Trump must be the number one priority, leaving arguments about policy differences and nuances for later.

 Authoritarian governments like those of China and Cuba have a definite advantage in controlling the Coronavirus over countries where “individual rights” allow more easy spread.

(AP) Prominent Lawyer in Haiti Shot and Killed https://www.yahoo.com/news/prominent-lawyer-haiti-shot-killed-174554455.html

Cuba Welcomes First Tourists in Months https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/cuba-welcomes-first-tourists-months-022824368.html

Here’s a message that I just got and will pass along. September 4, 2020, by telephone from Cuba, the leader of the Emilia Project for the freedom of Cuba, Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet [whom I have met], is notifying us that Juan Luis Bravo Rodríguez, National Youth Coordinator, for the Union for a Free Cuba Party (PUNCLI) and also a participant in the Emilia Project, was detained and held for several hours, yesterday, September 3, 2020, by the repressive branch of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, also called G2. He was finally released late in the evening after being threatened, suffering insults, and the confiscation of his cellular phone. He was finally released late in the evening.  Not satisfied with that, the repressive political branch of the Ministry of the Interior again took Bravo Rodríguez this morning and, as of this writing, he has disappeared and no one knows where he was taken.  

Hawaii, which had the virus fairly well under control, after almost shutting down the crucial tourist industry and all travel between islands, is now seeing a spike in cases, causing a shake-up and reevaluation.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/hawaii-public-health-shakeup-follows-other-states-amid-coronavirus-pandemic

The pandemic has now hit home. My own younger daughter and her husband living in Honolulu, despite their considerable personal precautions and statewide controls, both have come down with the virus. So far, they are at home, experiencing fever, alterations in taste and smell, fatigue and chest heaviness, and trouble with both sleeping and staying awake. My daughter has posted about it on Facebook, so it’s no secret. Talking on the phone is exhausting for her, but she sent this message:  If either of them should experience long-lasting problems or, worse, premature death, I will fault Donald Trump personally. Illness and death have resulted from his cavalier and callous dismissal of the threat, putting his own reelection and personal fortunes above the well being of American citizens. Is that what we should expect from the leader of our country?

My son’s wife, now staying with two children in his new hometown in W Va., is originally from the US territory of Micronesia in the southwestern Pacific. So far, with strict controls over entry, there are no reported cases there.

On Sept. 4, I observed the birthday of my older son Andrew, who died at age 27 in 1994 after an injury on his job. 

Of course, everyone will die, but it seems that each person should have the chance to live out a normal lifespan and certainly not die before a parent. When I reported here on the death of my long-time friend Wanda, who passed away in August at age 105, I did experience her loss. But it seemed like it was time. After my son died, I still feel his loss now, especially on his birthday, and keep his gravestone in my back yard where I can see it every day. But I no longer suffer from the crippling grief experienced for the first years after his death, compounded by the death of my Cuban foster son. Alex, one year later. I was mainly mourning their own loss of a normal existence, but also feeling that my personal efforts over the years in their growth and independence had been squandered. Joining the Peace Corps in Honduras at age 62 and extending my time there, then returning yearly ever since to volunteer with medical brigades, certainly helped me regain my emotional equilibrium, as per my Honduras book (title above, right).