During my work in trying to reduce the volume of books from my inventory, I have thought a lot about censorship. I hereby state unequivocally that I have always been against censorship, and the current hysteria at certain school board meetings in our nation grates against my position. Having been a news reporter back in my day, I attended some pretty wild school board meetings. The parents who would show up to protest (almost anything) to do with teaching, teachers, or education in general. My favorites were objection to requiring girls to wear special gym clothes, which were always ugly; the great brew-ha-ha about students smoking; the length of boys’ hair; and the frantic issue of expelling pregnant girls from school.
So anyway, I won’t belabor the subject and cut right to my current thoughts.
I have a great number (several hundred) childrens’ books, most of which came from two of my main inventory sources, who were school teachers. I have decided not to donate “all” of the books to the Goodwill because of the current censorship craze some places in the United States. I also don’t want to list multiple-lots of random childrens’ literature, or even grade-level non-fiction or series books (I think they call them chapter books now.) Also, I do separate the occasional book that even I would prefer kids not have access to. Even these I would classify as “age appropriate.”
Six-year old girls don’t care about “how Susie got her boyfriend” but 11-year-old’s might. That’s what I call age-appropriate, but even that is subjective, and I am not comfortable deciding who gets to read what, and I would never in a million years support any legislative or otherwise action that would entitle random outraged parents to close down a board meetings.
Now when it comes to general fiction, or non-fiction, that’s another thing. When I come to certain titles that I believe to be subject to …let’s say… “parental supervision” I set them aside— no, never into the trash, just aside to be reconsidered or duly noted as a listing on ebay. I hasten to add that I never list any material that I consider porn, and on occasion a girly-magazine hidden in a Woman’s Day collection will hit the trash, censorship bedamned.
so far so good… Happy days are here again…. yay! So far President Joe has reversed several of the worst issues (in my humble opinion, already President Biden: stopped the Wall, saved the Dreamers, put a plug in the Pipeline, and saved the Environment…rejoined the World Trade Organization; made Dr. Fauci a Happy Camper.
Granddaughters The First- Granddaughters all made President Biden proud with their coordinated Inaugural outfits. oooh, and all but one of the granddaughters are over 21, so that makes them fair game for the Pick-on-the-POTUS-Kids-corps. The Biden Girls look like fun, probably not yet corrupted by fame and fortune…
Old Home Week Like a family reunion, or Homecoming weekend, its always fun to see folks we haven’t seen since the last time: The former Presidents and other past and present dignitaries, not packed into the crowd as usual because of Covid-19… um, in hindsight they might have been warmer. It was 42-degrees in Washington D.C. during the inauguration ceremony. Mother Nature treats us all the same temperature-wise.
Entertainment Wow….star studded indeed. Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Garth Brooks: they all did their performances tastefully, appropriately, and relatively-briefly, considering the cold. I know there were others that contributed their talents to the event, I apologize for not mentioning them individually.
The youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman was excellent. We need to hear more about her.
As the race for the first coronavirus vaccines rounds the final turn, an obscure but influential panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers is emerging as a crucial referee.
The group of academic scientists, doctors and federal healthofficials will scrutinize safety and efficacy data on every coronavirus vaccine candidate, and make a pivotal recommendation to the FDA on whether to greenlight or shelve each shot.
Although its decisions aren’t binding, the panel has taken on an outsized importance leading up to its first coronavirus meeting on Oct. 22. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that a shot could come before Election Day — and has accused the FDA of standing in the way of progress. Meanwhile, the agency is trying to hold the line on new, stricter standards for authorizing the emergency use of any vaccine,and safety concerns have paused late-stage trials of two of the four frontrunner vaccine candidates.
The political backdrop, and plummeting public confidence in the race for a vaccine, could make the first coronavirus gathering of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee one of the most-watched in FDA history. Topics the group expects to cover include some of the thorniest and most fundamental questions in vaccine development, such as when a vaccine can truly be declared safe and where to set the bar for efficacy during a deadly global pandemic.
“It’s a group of nerdy virologists sitting around,” said Paul Offit, a University of Pennsylvania vaccine expert who sits on the panel and co-developed the rotavirus shot. “You don’t see many situation comedies about a group of fun-loving virologists and epidemiologists. For a reason.”
Nevertheless, the FDA is preparing for tens of thousands of people to tune into the panel’s initial meeting — a departure from past practice for similar advisory committees attended largely in person by DC-area experts and academics. Such meetings normally attract an online audience of just 100 to 1,500 people, an FDA spokesperson said.
No single vaccine is expected to be ready for review by Oct. 22. But the advisory group is on standby to discuss the merits of each shot as drugmakers file applications for FDA authorization or approval — making the panel a prominent player in the final crucial months of the United States’ vaccine push.
“We don’t work for the government nor do we work for the industry. We’re just supposed to come there and look at data,” said Offit.
The 20-member committee is a mix of physicians, statisticians, vaccine and infectious disease experts along with two drug company representatives and a consumer representative, in this case a lawyer. A five-person cluster hails from FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, but the rest work outside the government.
The vaccine group is one of dozen expert panels convened by the FDA to review data or discuss a hot-button issue in a specific field — others are for food, tobacco and drugs, for instance — and advise the agency on what they should do.
Although the FDA does not have to follow its advisory committees’ advice, it generally does. Commissioner Stephen Hahn and other agency officials including vaccine chief Peter Marks have repeatedly pointed to the Oct. 22 vaccine meeting as evidence that the agency is led by science and data, not politics.
“It’s critical for FDA to make the public aware of our expectations of the data requirements to support safety and effectiveness,” Hahn tweeted Thursday with a link to the upcoming meeting, adding that a discussion between outside scientific and public health experts will help the public understand the vaccine review process.
The biggest issue on the table — and the subject of recent disputes between FDA and the White House — is when a vaccine maker can declare their shot safe and effective. Committee members also told POLITICO that they expect to discuss diversity in volunteer enrollment and the impact that emergency authorization could have on ongoing trials for other shots.
“We want to assure the American people that the process and review for Covid-19 vaccine development will be as open and transparent as possible,” Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement to POLITICO.
While a specific vaccine is not on the table for Oct. 22, the discussion about enrollment, safety follow-up and the bar for efficacy could have implications for all the manufacturers in late-stage trials.
Pfizer, considered a frontrunner as it works through Phase III trials, told POLITICO last week that it does not plan to submit data ahead of the meeting. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, two other manufacturers in the sweeping final stages of trials, have each paused those studies because of serious side effects in a patient. AstraZeneca, which announced the halt in September, still has not restarted its U.S. trials.
Manufacturers have refused to promise to file within a specific timeframe, noting that their speed will be dictated by the data they collect — and unanticipated factors, like pausing a study for safety reasons, could slow them down.
FDA also bolstered its expectations for vaccine makers earlier this month, saying each needs to follow at least half of the participants in their Phase III trials for two months before applying for an emergency-use authorization. The new standards all but shut the window to any company filing before Election Day, prompting the president to accuse career scientists of holding back progress for political reasons.
“We don’t live in a bubble. We hear and see what is happening around the world and the concern that many people in the public have expressed of, in their words, the vaccine is being rushed [and] corners being cut,” said Archana Chatterjee, dean of Rosalind Franklin University’s Chicago Medical School and member of the committee.
The intense public scrutiny and vast demand for a coronavirus vaccine, along with the record speed at which shots have been developed — many using untested technologies — make the FDA panel’s October meeting unlike any before, said Chatterjee.
“Part of our job is to make sure that we can act as we always do,” she said. “To the best of our ability, reassure the public that we are doing our job free from any kind of interference from anyone with regard to the safety and effectiveness of those vaccines.”
By function, FDA advisory committees meet on testy topics. Recent hot-button issues before other panels include e-cigarettes, cancer-linked breast implants and how to fix opioid approvals amid an addiction crisis. But nothing has captured the president’s attention more than finding a vaccine to help end the pandemic that has killed nearly 220,000 people in the U.S. and ground the economy to a halt.
“I think this upcoming meeting will be important to establish the ground rules for evaluating vaccine safety and efficacy, in anticipation of [emergency use authorization] applications that could come from multiple manufacturers in the coming year,”said Paul Spearman, a professor and director for infectious diseases at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. He usually sits on the FDA vaccine-advisory committee but will not participate on Oct. 22 because he is involved in Covid-19 vaccine trials.
Panel chair Hana El Sahly, a virologist and microbiologist at Baylor University, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center biostatistician Holly Janes, are also recused from the Oct. 22 panel because of potential conflicts. They and Spearman may be recused from future meetings on specific vaccines depending on their research, leading FDA to draw other experts temporarily into the committee.
An FDA spokesperson said the full committee roster, including possible temporary replacements, will be published 48 hours before the Oct. 22 meeting.
Emergency use authorizations, a bar lower than full FDAapproval, have become a contentious issue in the Trump administration. The White House pushed the FDA to authorize the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for the coronavirus, a charge that FDA denies. The agency ultimately revoked the authorization after studies showed no positive effect from the pills. Other emergency authorizations, such as one forconvalescent plasma, have been roiled in bumpy rollouts that were also colored by the president’s calls for FDA to speed its review.
HHS has pushed the FDA to re-brand the authorization of any coronavirus vaccine as a “pre-licensure” to bolster public confidence — something the drug agency has so far resisted over fears of politicizing its scientific determinations, POLITICO revealed this week.
The advisory committee is likely to discuss how awarding one vaccine an emergency authorization could make it harder for other companies to find participants for clinical trials of their own shots, Spearman said, since those shots would be unproven and some volunteers would receive a placebo.
Another hot topic is whether trials have enrolled sufficiently diverse groups of participants. The coronavirus has disproportionately infected, hospitalized and killed Black and Latinx populations, but the two groups have historically been under-represented in trials. Lawmakers such as Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) have also raised concerns that trials aren’t including enough elderly people to determine whether shots are safe and effective in the elderly, since the immune system weakens with age.
Broadly, committee members told POLITICO they are sharply aware of balancing the need for vaccines against the potential disaster of greenlighting something dangerous or ineffective because regulators moved too soon.
“We are in very extraordinary times,” said Chatterjee. “Ordinarily I take this role seriously anyhow, but I think under these circumstances I’ve been thinking about it in a slightly different way.” POLITICO
The lyrics come from a very famous Fifth Dimension song, but this is not a post about music.
The Fifth Dimension
It’s a post about Covid-19 and an update on its spread, and how to live with it. And guess what? Sunshine really does make a difference, in ways that are not immediately obvious.
First up I’m going to start with some research conducted by the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness, Geelong, VIC, Australia. As some of you know, my state of Victoria is at the centre of the largest outbreak in Australia. And we’re not over it [completely] yet.
What the Australian study did was to measure the infectiveness of the virus – ON SURFACES – in a rather unusual way. As the UV in light is known to kill viruses, the researchers conducted their study on the virus in the dark. They also controlled the temperature of…
Back in the day, 1963 more or less, my more or less tranquil household came face to face with a childhood disease that, at the time, was common in the United States. Measles…along with Mumps and Chicken Pox, were not perhaps considered to be a really big deal. Most children encountered the diseases in school, and were almost immediately contagious and parents and teachers alike usually dealt with Measles almost as routine.
My first grader came down with Measles, broke out head to toe in the warm red rash and fever that were characteristic of the childhood disease. Actually considered more of a nuisance than a threat at the time, we settled down into the Measles routine: stay in bed, cover windows to prevent light coming in, drink plenty of liquids, and hope other children in the family did not contract the ailment—while facing the fact that they probably would, as the patient was highly contagious.
At the time we had two younger children, boys less than two years of age. With my already worn copy of Dr. Spock’s Children and Baby Care close at hand, Dr. Spock was the first line of defense against childhood perils as the epitome of encouraging and reassuring information. When “the doctor” recommended that the boys be fortified with gamma globulin injection as a precaution, although he assured me that the risk to them was small. (Note please: I just fact-checked that statement, to make sure that wasn’t part of my sometimes dramatic memory.)
My daughter, however, became very ill very fast. She had the attendant high fever, 106-degrees is the number that I remember, and showed all the symptoms of Measles, including hallucinations, which scared the living daylights out of me. There was the “hard Measles,” with its severe symptoms of fever, rash, delirium, eyesight impairment….and “the three-day-Measles,” which was a different disease altogether apparently.
It so happened that daughter’s first grade class was scheduled to appear in a television segment, performing a skit or song at the local TV station. The performance had been long anticipated, and the children in the class diligently learned their lines, and practiced for the show. Daughter had been looking forward to the presentation, and was very disappointed that she would not be able to participate. We consulted with the doctor, who advised that there would probably be no damage to her young eyes from exposure to the TV set for a few minutes, and we went to elaborate lengths to wheel the TV and its stand into the sick room, and dim the light appropriately…but alas, the poor little girl was too ill to even glance at the television, nor was she even interested.
This little vignette from my past (I took everything very seriously back in the day) comes to mind whenever the subject of Measles comes up. Daughter was personally none the worse for her bout with the Measles. The boys did not get the disease then, and our two little girls who came along a couple of years later were protected by the relatively-new Measles vaccine.
Rewinding to about thirty years before, when I was a child myself, I recall vividly standing in line with all of my other classmates waiting our turn to get out “shots” from the school nurse. This experience was high drama, as we watched with dread as the kids at the front of the line actually got their injection, displaying varying degrees of panic, bravado, or silent terror.
No one had a choice back then…I’m talking 1940s…your kid got in the line and got the shot. Happily, the result was that Measles disease was nearly eradicated.
A quick check on the spelling of “eradicated” I happened upon this appropriate Wikipedia comment:
What diseases have vaccines eliminated? Vaccines have contributed to a significant reduction in many childhood infectious diseases, such as diphtheria, measles, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). Some infectious diseases, such as polio and smallpox, have been eliminated in the United States due to effective vaccines.
This is one of my personal favorite assignments from writing class last year…in response to rules that the work be a limerick and contain certain other attributes of writing poetry. I had great fun writing it—
THE DONALD’S MARCH TO INFAMY
There once was a boy named Donald
Who wanted to be rich, and grow up to be President
ha ha! said the people as he started to
stump
but he knew what he was doing and had all the cards he needed to
trump,
and win the game
opponents screamed like angry cat matrons
and picked on his hair and his noisy patrons
but Donald just said they should “lump it!”
“You haven’t a chance, you’re not one of us,” they wailed
“is that so?” said Donald as he placed a standing order for tea and crumpets
to serve to his fans to keep them from starving on the campaign trail
His crowd of the faithful grew and grew
’til they filled the land
so they bought him a very big trumpet.
This excellent post from friend acflory on her blog MEEKA’S MIND is the best thing I’ve read about the coming Year 2018 and Australian voters in particular and all Voters in general. Thanks for the re-blog!
I’ve always had a problem with ‘-isms’ – communism, socialism, facism, capitalism, republicanism, you name it – because they all seem to miss the point about people. Homo Sapiens doesn’t give a flying fruit bat about politics until things go wrong.
I was a kid in the late Menzies era of Australia [1949-1966], and I remember hearing some adults moan about elections while others moaned about the general apathy of the Australian voter. You see, in Australia, we have compulsory voting…and the times were good.
In fact, by the early 60’s, the populations of the Western world were better off, generally, than they had ever been before. Not quite the age of surplus envisioned by Marx, but close, and some of us really were able to live ‘…from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ That’s what the Age of Aquarius, Flower Power and Free…
As comedian Flip Wilson once said in his “Ruby Begonia” monologue: “The King said: Those who have nothing, shall have less—and that which they have shall be taken from them.” And the people cheered, “Yay King, Yay King…”
It is bad enough that the republicans in the US Congress are hard at work to pass their 2017 Donor/ Corporation tax cut bill around December 19, 2016, which does little to grow the economy; where the economy is on an upswing and unemployment numbers are low, where at least 1 trillion dollars will be added to the deficit; where a major blow will be dealt to Obamacare with the ending of its mandate; and where it is very unpopular with Americans (about 26-29%), but it will please their donor base by which some lawmakers have been honest enough to admit this. If a corporation was acting on this bill, it is so bad that the executives would be guilty of malfeasance and for not honoring their fiduciary duties to their clients.
With this bill, we taxpayers who pay their wages are being shortchanged. Every tax break for the middle/…
Who are all these people who object to the NOT saying the “Merry Christmas” greeting out loud? Why are these innocent words a matter of top importance for the President of the United States? Oh, right…I do understand that they are various Christian and so-called Christian groups who echo what they hear from their pulpits and take offense simply because others say they are offensive.
I never stopped saying “Merry Christmas” to people that I knew to be Christian. But why make such a big deal about it? Actually I approve of general phrases tossed about willy-nilly. Happy Holidays is an all purpose phrase that is (or not) meaningful to other religious groups. To be really politically correct… Jewish people can be wished Happy Hanukka if we want to be specific about the particular “holiday” we greet others. Or of course their is Ramadon, the Muslim holiday. The African American holiday is Kwanzaa.
However…I always try to be careful in assuming any ethnic or religious affiliations. With any luck the check out cashiers and service people will assume the lead and insert their greeting of choice before me. Whatever they say, I follow suit. If they say “Happy Holidays” I say the same thing back… or just “you too.”
ah well… checking back over this small post, I grimace slightly as all the potentially rude or wrong greetings remind me that I may forget someone, mis-label them, or just be ignorant of their orientation. It isn’t that I don’t care, because in most cases politeness or common courtesy dictates what to say. Also, there is always the fall-back phrase “Have a Nice Day.” Or we could all adopt a special greeting such as “Happy Tuesday,” or “Merry Friday.”
Peace be with you…as the Star Wars troops might say.
marching music please…. just try ignoring the band blaring out the Sousa beat, adoring crowds lining the streets… drummers drumming, flutes tweeting, symbols clashing… but I digress. Back in the day I was a Girl Scout leader, and part of my duty as such was to lead the girls down the main street during the Memorial Day Parade (or other parade.) In high heels no less….no, not stilettos…which were not worn by ordinary women for another thirty or forty years.
The Stars and Stripes Forever must be sung very loudly… and if by chance ya don’t know the words (wink wink who does?) just join the singers who use the alternate version….
“Be kind to your web footed friends,
for a duck may be somebody’s mother…”
John Philip Sousa – The Stars And Stripes Forever lyrics
Let martial note in triumph float
And liberty extend its mighty hand
A flag appears ‘mid thunderous cheers,
The banner of the Western land.
The emblem of the brave and true
Its folds protect no tyrant crew;
The red and white and starry blue
Is freedom’s shield and hope.
Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom’s nation.
Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.
Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.
Let eagle shriek from lofty peak
The never-ending watchword of our land;
Let summer breeze waft through the trees
The echo of the chorus grand.
Sing out for liberty and light,
Sing out for freedom and the right.
Sing out for Union and its might,
O patriotic sons.
Other nations may deem their flags the best
And cheer them with fervid elation,
But the flag of the North and South and West
Is the flag of flags, the flag of Freedom’s nation.
Hurrah for the flag of the free.
May it wave as our standard forever
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.
Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray,
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.
These Lyrics are informational only. No representation is made or warranty given as to their content. User assumes all risks of use. Lyrics assumes no responsibility for any loss or damage resulting from such use. All lyrics are property and copyright of their owners, and provided for educational purposes only. http://www.elyrics.net
Then there is the Battle Hymn of the Republic: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord… he has stampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored… deal with the bullets with his terrible swift sword… the TRUTH goes marching on!!! oops…
uh…. folks, I really am embarrassed that I don’t know all the words….when singing the Battle Hymn one is excused if they just mumble over the tricky lyrics. always there is “boompa dee,” “dee dum,”
I’m not good with remembering lyrics…
Now I will never get that out of my head… “Be kind to your web-footed friends…”
This article is excellent on the subject of Christopher Columbus and the “discovery of America.” It is well worth the read, and deserves an A+ for research and attribution, factual information based partially on bona fide original sources including Columbus’s own writing.
Bartolomé de Las Casas, Dominican Friar and later Bishop, is the author of The Destruction of the Indies, which details the systematic horror brought to the Americas by Christopher Columbus. De Las Casas is known as the Protector of the Indians, and was the Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico in the early sixteenth century.
My interest in this topic is the subject of the unpublished doctoral dissertation, which I spent ten years writing. Unfortunately I did not complete the final draft, so it was never published. However, before I die I hope to publish at least some of my work on my blog, at least.
When your relationship with a spouse, partner, friend, family member, and/or child becomes your focus rather than your relationship with yourself, seek Attention Anonymous and learn from others who struggle to set boundaries and desire to maintain stability.
Thoughts of the pressed madman/pressed by burden of self truth/ atlast he howls prior death/ his howl mated with a nightingle's coo/ and a poetry is born
I’ve always had a problem with ‘-isms’ – communism, socialism, facism, capitalism, republicanism, you name it – because they all seem to miss the point about people. Homo Sapiens doesn’t give a flying fruit bat about politics until things go wrong.
It is bad enough that the republicans in the US Congress are hard at work to pass their 2017 Donor/ Corporation tax cut bill around December 19, 2016, which does little to grow the economy; where the economy is on an upswing and unemployment numbers are low, where at least 1 trillion dollars will be added to the deficit; where a major blow will be dealt to Obamacare with the ending of its mandate; and where it is very unpopular with Americans (about 26-29%), but it will please their donor base by which some lawmakers have been honest enough to admit this. If a corporation was acting on this bill, it is so bad that the executives would be guilty of malfeasance and for not honoring their fiduciary duties to their clients.
SOMETIMES 