Why is it that we struggle, fumble and flail, throwing tons of money at multiple efforts to treat symptoms of problems, yet never attacking directly or, worse, not even recognizing, considering or acknowledging the cause? There’s another huge problem to solve yet again, and so we pontificate, bloviate, prevaricate and obfuscate while battling to solve that problem, when we know deep down that the problem will really not be solved – it will come back to bite us again and again, because we have not really solved it – we’ve just attacked the symptoms. 

A good example is all the Trump “news”. This dreadful person still dominates the headlines every day even though he’s been out of office now for three years. The latest series of legal indictments seem to indicate that he might finally be held accountable for his crimes, will be declared guilty  and will then actually have to don that orange suit and disappear into a prison. Then we will all heave a sigh of relief – he’s finally out of our sight and out of our minds; he’s not the headline in the news any longer; we will have put Trump into the past and we can relax. The nightmare is over. Politics is returning to normal. Back slapping and hight-fives all around. We’ve fixed our country, we’ve preserved “American democracy”. 

Yeah, right. Not so fast. Will finally holding Trump accountable for his crimes be the “fix” we’re looking for? Will it “turn the page”? I don’t think so. We have to examine the cause of the Trump problem. It wasn’t Trump himself – he was a symptom. We have to ask how did someone like Trump get elected? Why does he still have such a hold on the disaffected? No, unfortunately, the real problem – our weak and corrupt political system and all its attendant supports – is still intact. The corporate and billionaire money is still flowing to the PAC’s. The armies of lobbyists in DC and their corporate masters are still calling the shots in Congress. Inequality is still growing by the day. Wages are still down while corporate profits are up. The wealthy and the corporations are still not paying their fair share of taxes. The monstrous Federal debt continues to grow to unimaginable proportions. Millions of families still struggle to pay rent and put food on the table. Deindustrialization – moving factories overseas – continues unabated. Unions continue to be attacked. The number of homeless is still growing. Medical bankruptcies continue to rise. People are still being gunned down in the streets. Our Department of “Defense” continues to suck up the bulk of our discretionary budget to support the American empire’s 800 military bases worldwide, counter the “threat” of China or Iran and fund the foolish and dangerous proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Our Supreme Court continues to betray our citizenry with nonsensical “originalist” interpretation of the moribund US Constitution, badly in need of substantial amendment. And our corporate media, instead of discussing and debating these problems, taking a stand and helping to solve them, is still pouring out useless garbage 24-7 for our consumption. 

These conditions created Trump and allowed him to be elected. And unless we correct them there will be another Trump and we will very rapidly be pushed over the brink to fascism, where we have been teetering for at least a decade now. This is the real problem. It is not Trump himself but our country itself and its ever shakier foundation and condition.

Another example of concerning ourselves with symptoms rather than real problems and beating around the edges is the changing climate which is causing disaster after disaster in the US and around the world and threatens ever more untold, unimaginable disaster and death, unless met head-on and successfully dealt with. 

In early July of this year, here in Vermont we were dealt a tremendous climactic blow – the heaviest rain in the shortest time in the history of the state. Here in Dorset, we received well over nine inches of rain in 36 hours – almost an entire summer’s worth of moisture in that short time. At our home we escaped more or less unscathed, but other parts of the state sustained severe flooding and significant destruction of property. So with the help of the Federal government state officials are scurrying about rebuilding washed out roads and bridges, repairing and restoring flooded buildings, rebuilding violated riverbanks, strengthening dams and building levees. There now, we are investing millions of dollars in all of these repairs and preventative measures, so we’re ready for the next inundation. Not so fast – the real problem – global warming from climate change caused by burning fossil fuels – is still out there. That nine plus inches of rain may be doubled the next time or the dear state of Vermont may not receive any rain at all next summer, turning the Green Mountain state into the “brown” mountain state, who knows?

And the country and the world have been horrified at the death and destruction wrought by the worst wildfire disaster in the history of the US in Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii. City and state authorities are now discovering that fire hydrants didn’t work, that the warning system was faulty and the sirens didn’t go off, that the phone system didn’t function, and that the proliferation of dry non-native grasses provided the tinder that spread the fire. Also they have discovered that the fire likely started because of poorly maintained electrical transmission lines from the good old investor owned, profit based Hawaiian Electric stinting on necessary maintenance in order to increase payouts for its stockholders and big salaries for its executives. 

But the real problem is global warming. Let’s not “peripherize “ (new word I just invented – means “beating around the bush”) the problem. Let’s direct our energies and funding to eliminating the use of fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gases in order to save the rich and welcoming climate of this world of ours. Yes, of course, we have to repair and replace what’s been destroyed but let’s not lose sight of what really needs to be done. Let’s not put the billions of dollars into merely treating the symptoms but into correcting the cause. And a NYTimes headline this morning “Finding Climate Havens” – how typical of our mainstream media – masking and papering over problems with avoidance strategies. And from the Washington Post- “Extreme Heat is Punishing the Country: Here’s How to Prepare for More”. Really – this is their answer to the climate catastrophe we’re facing? Nothing about the rapacious lying oil and gas corporations, nothing about the US still being the world’s number two biggest polluter and the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. Nothing about the absolute necessity of nations coming together to cooperate on attacking climate change instead of fighting or reducing the influence of our “adversaries”. No, on this subject all we get is beating the drum for our proxy war with Russia in Ukraine or acquiescence as we encircle China with military bases.

Now let’s take a look at another problem that we’ve “peripherized” – student debt. Yes, Biden’s yet unfulfilled promise of cancelling student debt continues to create controversy. Indeed, there is the issue of “fairness”. People who have borrowed heavily and successfully repaid their loans may be upset that this possible expected benefit will arrive too late to benefit them. Or, the thousands of students who have borrowed to attend worthless schools or that were unable to finish and receive a diploma are upset that they continue to pay back loans that did not help them. And then there are the people who resent the fact that students from wealthy families who have chosen to finance much of their education through borrowing even though they did not have to, may receive this unneeded and undeserved windfall benefit. And finally, there are those who are upset that students who have borrowed huge sums for diplomas leading to potentially high return careers like medicine or law, are less deserving to have their loans forgiven than those who have borrowed to earn just a basic bachelor’s degree. 

But dear reader(s), who has borrowed when and for what and how much and whether that loan should be forgiven is not the real problem here. The real problem is that higher education costs in our beloved country have ballooned and spiraled upward for decades and are now out of control. Higher education costs far too much at any level and at any location in the US to be adequately borne except by the wealthy or by borrowing. Other advanced countries have recognized the value of an educated populace and have successfully made most higher education completely free. We have gone in the opposite direction, steadily reducing state and Federal support of our higher education institutions, even “corporatizing” them in many instances. Yes, the distinguished “college president” who used to preside over the operation of a venerable institution of higher learning, even teaching a few courses himself or herself, has given way to “university CEO’s” – manager types, driven by hordes of expensive “consultants”, whose main function is to increase endowments and donor contributions, increase the number of highly paid administrators, build showy expensive capital project monuments to collegiate sports, and paying for it all by increasing tuition, cutting programs, limiting the number of highly paid professors and replacing them with poorly paid teaching graduate assistants. A perfect example of this kind of destruction of higher education at a public university is what has happened recently at the University of West Virginia. 

Senator Bernie Sanders is right – we need to reduce the cost of higher education – to make it like it was in the ’50’s, 60’s and 70’s. where the cost of tuition and room and board at an institution of higher learning could just about be paid for through modest savings and part time jobs. Or it should be free, as it was in many state universities several decades ago, the best example of which was the University of California system – absolutely free until Ronald Reagan became governor, not wishing to “subsidize intellectual curiosity”. He continued this practice as president, slashing government support for higher education over his two terms as did one of his successors, George W. Bush. This is the real problem – steadily rising costs at all of our institutions of higher learning, including land grant state universities, created to serve the higher education needs of any state resident qualified to attend. So this is the real problem lurking in the controversy surrounding the student debt issue and I have not seen anything from President Biden or his Education Secretary Cardona or their state level counterparts about serious efforts to reduce the cost of higher education at state universities. 

And finally, I have to mention yet again the sorry state of medical care in the US. It is well known that we spend far more on healthcare than any other advanced nation in the world, and yet get the worst results. Longevity measures are shamefully far behind other developed nations, as are maternal and infant mortality rates. Medical bankruptcies are rife in the US yet are unknown in other advanced countries. US performance in handling the recent covid pandemic was shameful, resulting in thousands of unneeded deaths.

Yet our politicians, virtually all receiving campaign contributions from pharmaceutical and health insurance corporations, continue braying about “reducing the cost of drugs” or “increasing access to medical care” or “building on Obamacare”. Virtually every single effort we have made in the last several decades to extend or improve medical care has consisted merely of variations to the same tired old theme embodied in the ACA, Obama’s supposedly “signature program” – which consists basically of giving more government money to health insurance corporations or giving individuals more government money to help buy their shoddy products. 

And our useless mainstream media, both newspapers and TV networks, continue to ignore the problem. Even the few occasionally perceptive columnists writing for major papers continue to miss the mark. An example was the very disappointing recent Nick Kristof New York Times column titled “How do we fix the scandal that is American health care?”, in which among solutions proposed were cliches like “expand access to care” and “rethinking health behaviors”. Come now, Kristof barely touched on the biggest problem, the real problem in American healthcare – that it is privatized and profit driven. Poor and rural areas of the country will continue to be neglected because there is little or no profit to be made. The health needs of patients will continue to be served based on the quantity of profit to be made. Copays and premiums will continue to rise, doctor recommended procedures will continue to be denied, all for benefit of the bottom line and Congress will continue to allow public programs like Medicaid and Medicare to be privatized and become additional profit centers for healthcare corporations.

To improve our shameful outcomes, corporations and profit simply must be removed from the equation and this can only be accomplished by moving to a single payer system funded by the government, like Medicare for All. Healthcare behemoths like United Healthcare, Cigna and Humana, make their billions in profit to send to wealthy shareholders and to pay obscene salaries to their executive by increasing receipts from patients and government entities and reducing care for patients. Profit is their main concern – not health. And until this is corrected we will never cover 100 percent of our population or increase positive health outcomes as other wealthy countries routinely do. This corporate system of healthcare is the real problem.

Before I conclude this article, I have to mention one more area where we beat around the bush, peripherizing and rarely if ever defining or attacking the real problem. This relates to the growing ranks of poor along with a shrinking middle class, increasing homelessness, malnutrition, food insecurity, and a sense of hopelessness and anger – all symptoms of a much deeper problem centered around what we conveniently call “low wage jobs”. In the US where minimum wage laws are woefully inadequate and unions have been systematically weakened, we have allowed employers to pay as little as possible to employees in order to maximize profits. We need a massive effort to do away with “low wage jobs”. Every single person who works in this “wealthiest country in the world” should receive a living wage at the very least, no matter the nature of the work. There should be no category like “low wage job”. This is the real problem which has caused a host of other symptoms. All employers who pay workers must be required to pay a living wage and if they cannot afford to do so, let them raise prices for what they produce or the service they provide or go out of business. If MacDonald’s can pay a living wage in Denmark, they can pay a living wage in the US. If we can achieve this goal – providing a middle class living wage to all workers – enough to afford housing and other necessities, we could do away with the plethora of inefficient, bureaucratic programs like SNAP, CHIP, TANF and all the rest, which merely treat symptoms and are at best maintenance programs, not the necessary means to truly liberate and extricate people from the ranks of the poor. I do not believe as has oft been quoted that “the poor will always be with us”.

There are many other instances of devoting massive resources for symptoms while missing the problem itself. For example the main cause of the housing crisis and homelessness is the corporatization of the housing market, the purchase of millions of homes and apartment houses by “investors” and private equity which has driven home ownership and rentals steadily higher and out of reach for many. Another is the constellation of symptoms around the abortion issue like “right to life”, “killing babies”, “fetal rights” and adoption, have caused us to lose sight of the real basic issue, which is simply the right of women to control their own bodies. And yet another certainly is disguising the Ukraine war as a fight for democracy and freedom rather than a way for the US to fight and “weaken” Russia through killing Ukrainians rather than Americans – in Mitt Romney’s selfish words  And one of the biggest problems we face in our country today, that of gun deaths and mass shootings, remains unsolved and is actually getting worse. And we beat around the bush, blathering about mental illness, poor law enforcement or lack of training and a plethora of other non-solutions, while we know that the problem is simply that there are too many guns on the street and there are insufficient laws regulating their manufacture, sale and ownership.

So whether it’s mere willful blindness, denial or a simple unwillingness to attack the problems themselves because of their size and seriousness, we nevertheless continue to waste billions of dollars and millions of words describing and treating symptoms instead of attacking the real problems. Clearly we must instead extend and sharpen our vision to distinguish between symptoms and problems, define what the real problems are and then summon the courage and the will to assemble and mobilize resources sufficient to attack them directly and finally solve them.

It is with pride and confidence that I and my family can claim a special relationship with the Grand Canyon. I first saw the Canyon in 1964 and was struck speechless by its glorious beauty and immense silence. The many other times I saw the Canyon – most recently in the winter of 2012 and just this past March of 2022 – I was also speechless. The Grand Canyon defies description and understanding. Something so vast and so beautiful inspires and requires reverence and contemplation. Human voices seem sacrilegious and out of place. Smiles and sighs are appropriate.

I have also experienced the Canyon in a way many observers have not – I have hiked, not only down to the bottom and back, but also rim to rim to rim: from the South Rim down, then up to the North Rim; then back to the bottom and up the South Rim again. I have to say that hiking is truly the only way to completely experience the Grand Canyon, to touch it, be enveloped by it, to be surrounded and inundated by its beauty.

Early encounters

In 1964 I took a two week – 16 days including weekends – summer trip with my then wife Elaine to the southwest, an area of the country which as New Jersey natives, we had never seen. The dry air, hot sunshine and fluffy white clouds against the bluest of skies were new and spectacular, as was the New Mexico and Arizona scenery. Seeing southwestern vegetation for the first time, especially the archetypical Sahuaro cactus in Arizona, was thrilling. But nothing matched the drive steadily ascending the Kaibab plateau, first through piñon and juniper and finally Ponderosa pine and then suddenly the plateau falling away and exposing below us and all the way to the horizon the most beautiful rock formations and colors I had ever seen – the Grand Canyon, certainly one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, natural spectacle on our planet. 

We stayed several days, enjoying the Canyon from its many South Rim viewpoints and taking dozens of pictures, the first of hundreds taken over the years. In 1966 we returned to the southwest on another two week road trip and saw the Canyon again and loved it again, wondering how we could move to Arizona permanently to be close to the many natural spectacles in this lovely state, especially our beloved Grand Canyon. 

Prior to this second visit, we had read an account in the the New York Times describing the mule trip down to the bottom, lunch at Phantom Ranch and then the trip back up. Accordingly, prior to our car trip we scheduled this event about six months in advance and enjoyed the experience during this 1966 visit. However, we were a bit embarrassed – there we were, two healthy young people in their twenties, riding down and back in a mule caravan passing group after group of fit and suntanned hikers, making us feel a bit lazy and wimpy. Actually though, being a naive easterner I didn’t really realize you really could hike the Grand Canyon at all. Indeed I thought the only way down and back was on these mule trips. Anyhow, that was the first time I had really experienced the Canyon from the inside instead of the top – a great experience, and easy too!

The opportunity to move to Arizona presented itself in 1968 when, after three years of teaching in New Jersey, I responded to a recruitment advertisement my mother had told me about and obtained a teaching job with the Bureau of Indian Affairs first in Pinon and then Rock Point, Arizona from 1968 to 1970. During these two years, we drove all over Arizona and New Mexico to enjoy the many sights and of course, visited the Grand Canyon several more times, enjoying it just as much as the first, and still finding ourselves struck speechless at each visit. 

Later visits

After a decade of being single I met Bobbie Keches at my school in Duxbury, Massachusetts, the woman I would eventually marry. On a trip west to meet my parents and brothers, Bobbie and I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time together.

We stayed several nights in one of the rustic cabins in the Maswik Lodge housing area and enjoyed the Canyon from many viewpoints, especially Yaki Point. It was there where we clambered down the dangerous remnants of an old trail or stairway, hanging on to trees, bushes and a few chunks of old rebar and concrete, to a now inaccessible viewpoint, a wide flat promontory about 50 feet below the main viewpoint, upon which was perched a large but climbable hamburger shaped tan rock. Bobbie and I sat on this rock, removed and apart from the Yaki Point view area far above us, drank a couple of cans of Coors as we shared a cheese sandwich and as the sun went down I proposed to her and she said yes.

This special place will always be dear to us and is something we always seek out on all of our trips to the Canyon since, just to take another look. It is of course unchanged from when we sat on it back in 1981 but has now been rendered completely inaccessible by the park authorities. Every trace of what we then employed to climb down is now gone.

Early in our marriage we took the children to the Canyon several times, including the North Rim. On one trip Bobbie attended an educational workshop scheduled at the Canyon, so of course we all came along. And during that visit, since this was before Park authorities had rendered it inaccessible we could still climb down to “the hamburger” at Yaki Point, our personal little viewpoint. we somehow got the children down also and took some memorable pictures at this special spot where, in 1981, we decided to get married.

Also, there was one time when we traveled to stay several days at the Grand Canyon in the wintertime. In early January when the  South Rim was entirely snow covered and very cold, we stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge. Since we wanted to experience a sunrise, we got up before daylight, went to the restaurant and got our thermos filled with hot coffee, bundled up in our down coats and watched the sunrise in the below-zero temperature and sipped our coffee.

And on one more recent wintertime visit to the Grand Canyon we encountered a rude surprise. The shortest way to the Canyon from Phoenix is to drive straight to Flagstaff from Phoenix on Interstate 17, the take US 180 from there to where it meets State Route 64 which continues north to the Canyon. US 180, it should be noted, ascends to a fairly high altitude as it goes north, leaves the city and skirts the San Francisco Peaks. On this disastrous occasion, we traveled on a snow packed highway, not noticing that there was little to no traffic. We obviously had missed a warning sign of some kind because US 180 abruptly ended at a barrier and a huge pile of snow and a “Highway Closed” sign, perhaps 15 miles north of the city. Accordingly we had to turn around, drive all the way back to Flagstaff and go west on I-40 to the town of  Williams and State Route 64, which eventually brought us to our destination, several hours later than we had planned. So on subsequent winter trips to the Grand Canyon, we have assiduously avoided US180 for fear of encountering another such unexpected closure.

First Rim to Rim to Rim Hike

Sometime during the fall of 1989 I learned from my friend and professional colleague Hugh Callison that he and his wife had successfully hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim the previous year, having been invited by a friend who worked for Honeywell and was a member of a group who took this hike annually on Columbus Day weekend. Having expressed interest, Hugh invited Bobbie and me to join the group that fall. Accordingly, we made reservations for Friday night at Yavapai Lodge on the South Rim and for Saturday and Sunday nights in a cabin at the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim. Friends and spouses not hiking but wishing to join the hikers on the North Rim, would drive there via US 89 and Arizona 67 and bring extra clothing and other equipment. so we hikers did not have to carry much with us.

Hugh had advised us on how to equip ourselves. A fanny pack with water bottles was essential, as were moleskin and small scissors for any blisters that might be incurred. A light nylon warm-up jacket and pants to wear over the hiking shorts for the very cold first part of the hike were desirable, as were flashlights since we would be hitting the South Kaibab Trail before daylight. A good supply of trail mix and energy bars for snacking along the trail were advisable. Also suggested was some ibuprofen to keep the joints from aching too much. And some money for snacks at Phantom Ranch at the bottom. 

So, having driven up to the Canyon and staying the night at Yavapai Lodge near the South Kaibab Trail trailhead at Yaki Point, we were up very early, dressed and ready to go at about 4:00 AM. We drove to the trailhead, parked and joined the rest of our group of hikers and began the trip as a procession of twinkling flashlights. Far below us, we could discern the faint moving light of other flashlights from a group or two who preceded us. And as we descended we could also see moving lights far above us from individuals or groups that had began their descent after us.

As the sun rose and it got lighter and warmer, the workout pants and jackets came off and were stowed in the fanny packs or tied around the waist and we could enjoy the sun and breeze in shorts and T-shirts. Hiking down the South Kaibab trail was obviously quite easy since you were going downhill, not up. The only strain was on the thigh muscles, which you stretched since each step was lower than the previous one. Also of course, though easy hiking, blisters still sometimes occurred, requiring a pause to sit on a rock, remove the offending boot and sock, locate the completed or developing blister, cut a piece of moleskin, apply to the area, pull on the sock and boot and get back on the trail.

As the sun rose, we were able to enjoy some of the broad vistas of the Canyon, first from Ooh Aah Point where we could finally see the east side of the Canyon and later from Skeleton Point where we could get our first glimpse of the Colorado River, still far below us. Other highlights encountered on the South Kaibab Trail were Cedar Ridge, a wide flat area on the trail which contained some primitive bathrooms and a good look at O’Neill Butte, which loomed before us during a good part of the hike.

After crossing the suspension bridge over the Colorado River we arrived at Phantom Ranch, the perfect place for an extended rest before the strenuous uphill hike in front of us. Here we bought a souvenir or two, wrote a few postcards for friends which would be postmarked “Phantom Ranch”, munched on a couple of handfuls of trail mix or energy bars, downed a couple of ibuprofen tablets, refilled our water bottles and got back on the trail. 

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is about a thousand feet higher than the South Rim and the North Kaibab Trail is significantly longer than the trail we had just left.  It begins at Phantom Ranch and ascends gradually at first on the way to the much steeper trail up the North Rim. Our first rest stop was at Ribbon Falls, about five miles up the North Kaibab Trail. After hiking through “the box”, where the trail goes through the black Vishnu Schist, a metamorphic rock that is some of the oldest exposed rock on the face of the earth, and a very hot part of the trip – low altitude, dark color and little exposure for a cooling wind or breeze.

A short hike on a minor trail to the west brought us to the falls, a lovely area at which a fairly substantial stream falls about 60 feet onto some beautiful moss-covered rocks. Behind the falling water is shady and cool, a great place to grab a snack, drink some water and rest a few minutes before returning to the the main trail and resuming the hike up to the North Rim.

Continuing the hike, the next rest stop was a campground called Cottonwood which provides tent sites for hikers wishing to camp overnight and provided us day hikers with water with which to refill our canteens, some picnic tables at which to sit for a short rest and basic toilets if needed. So after a short stop it was back on the trail for the last seven or so miles to the North Rim.

Now, tired from the hike down to Phantom Ranch and over to Ribbon Falls and back, these last miles are the most arduous of all, with the trail becoming steeper and steeper. At one point the hiker has the opportunity for a detour to Roaring Springs, the point from which the pipeline for bringing water to the South Rim originates. You can hear the water – it’s not called “roaring springs” for nothing – and imagine what it looks like but I have never taken the short trip off the main trail to see it. I’ve always been too tired for a detour and trying to save the rest of my energy for the remaining uphill miles.

A few other highlights of this part of the north rim hike bear mentioning. First, there is the “red wall” part of the hike, where the trail is blasted from a sheer wall of red rock. Above one sees hundreds of feet of smooth rock, and the same looking down. And needless to say, the views from anywhere on this part of the trail are spectacular.

And another section of the trail is especially vexing because, as you are heading up the steep trail, praying that you’ll have the strength and stamina to keep putting one foot ahead of the other, and thankful for every foot of altitude gained toward reaching the rim, suddenly you find the trail going downhill, sacrificing and effectively erasing much of that progress. Yes, the trail actually descends, in order to cross the Red Wall Bridge, built over the chasm created by Bright Angel Creek. After crossing the bridge, the trail ascends again, regaining the altitude you just lost, and taking you steadily up the remaining 3.5 miles to the trailhead. 

Another landmark on the trail is the Supai Tunnel, pleasant to go through because its passage means you are just 1.7 miles to the top, although a rather daunting 1385 feet in altitude. Also, going through the tunnel, although quite short, takes you from the desert-like landscape of the Canyon proper to the lush vegetation and forest of the North Rim. The tunnel marks the terminus also for the North Rim mule trips, which unlike mule trips from the South Rim, do not take the rider to the bottom of the Canyon. And the amount of mule manure and urine deposited on the floor of the tunnel provides ample impetus for the hiker to get through quickly.

Finally at the trailhead after your exhausting hike from the South Rim via South Kaibab Trail to the North Rim via North Kaibab Trail, you are not yet home. It is approximately two miles from the trailhead to the North Rim Lodge, where presumably a nice dinner and a much needed night’s sleep are waiting for you. Most hikers, our groups included, usually have non-hiking friends or spouses driving around to the North Rim ready and willing to meet you at the trailhead and give you a welcome lift to the Lodge.

On this first 1989 rim to rim to rim hike, after dinner at he lodge, the welcome day’s rest, another restful night’s sleep in our cabin, and the long hike downhill to Phantom Ranch, Bobbie and I decided to return to the South Rim via the less steep but significantly longer Bright Angel Trail. Hugh and Nina Callison and the rest of their party had returned the same way they came, on the South Kaibab Trail and drove to the trailhead to help celebrate our last few yards up the trail and memorialize the end of this adventure with a photo. With that one day’s rest in between, we had hiked over 44 miles down and up both directions during this first Rim to Rim to Rim experience.

General Notes and Observations

I should parenthetically note some other aspects to hiking the Grand Canyon. About the trails – the main ones are Bright Angel Trail and South Kaibab Trail on the South Rim and North Kaibab Trail on the North Rim. There are other minor trails that are frequented only by more experienced and daring hikers but generally, when you “hike the canyon” these are the trails you use. 

When deciding which South Rim trail to take either up or down, the potential hiker needs to consider some serious differences between the two. Since it is longer, 7.8 miles from the Rim to the Colorado River plus a hike of an additional mile or so along the River to Phantom Ranch, the Bright Angel Trail is not as steep as the South Kaibab trail which is 6.3 miles. Also Bright Angel starts out a little lower in altitude, descending 4460 feet to the River, while the South Kaibab descends 4800 feet. In addition, it should be noted that the views are better from the South Kaibab trail because the trail mostly follows ridges and promontories and trail segments cut into cliffs, while Bright Angel follows stream beds and other more natural courses. Obviously this means that the hiker is exposed to the sun and the elements on South Kaibab trail but hikes in significantly more shade on Bright Angel. One more serious difference is that the South Kaibab trail is the main route for the mule trains which carry day trip passengers between the South Rim and Phantom Ranch and which carry supplies down to and waste materials up from Phantom Ranch. And the rule for hikers when overtaken by or meeting a mule train is to stand on the outside edge of the trail, allowing the mules to traverse the inside, quite frightening when there may be a significant sheer drop from the outside of the trail. Also of course, since both the South Kaibab and upper segments of the North Kaibab serve as mule routes, there is the problem of avoiding the considerable manure on the trail. A final major difference between the trails is that Bright Angel has several shaded rest stops along its length, including Indian Gardens, where water may be obtained. South Kaibab has absolutely no water and the only shade is that occasionally rendered by the attitude of the sun on the cliffs cut into by the trail.

Another parenthetical note about hiking the Grand Canyon that might be useful is to mention how different canyon hiking is from mountain climbing. When you hike to the top of a mountain and return in one day, the first part of the journey, the ascent, is quite strenuous and you become exhausted but can look forward to the return when you are descending which is comparatively quite easy and much quicker: tough part first, easy part last. But in canyon hiking, the first part is deceptively easy – you can truthfully say – wow, that wasn’t bad at all. But now, the really difficult part of the journey is still ahead of you – getting back to the top: easy part first, difficult part last – just the opposite of climbing a mountain. And generally speaking, a descent of either a mountain or canyon is usually about twice as fast as the ascent.

Another factor worth remembering, especially where the Grand Canyon is concerned, is the temperature differences between the rim and the bottom of the Canyon. Beginning a summertime hike in the deceptive coolness of the 7000 foot altitude of the Rim, becomes an over 100 degree ordeal at the bottom. That’s why our rim to rim to rim hikes were always scheduled in the fall, to make the bottom temperature tolerable. Really, going from the rim to the bottom is like going from Flagstaff, Arizona to Phoenix, Arizona in climate difference – about 30 – 40 degrees. 

Another note is that it’s wise to take one or two “tuneup hikes” on some other canyons or mountains before attempting hiking the Grand Canyon, either down and up one of the South Rim trails or definitely attempting to hike rim to rim to rim. Such preliminary hikes can stretch out and strengthen the thigh and calf muscles which will be sorely stressed on the real hike and make the inevitable soreness after the Grand Canyon hike much more tolerable and less debilitating.

1990 Hike with Conrad

One of the highlights of a long and happy relationship with my son Conrad was the Grand Canyon hike we took together, just the two of us, in 1990 when he was almost eight years old. We had reserved a night at the Bright Angel Lodge and two nights at Phantom Ranch in the bottom of the Canyon near the Colorado River. As I recall we had scheduled this event during the still cool weather of the April spring break.

We began the trip with a leisurely sight-seeing jaunt through Flagstaff and environs, including some clambering around the huge cinder beds near Sunset Crater National Monument and a stop to inspect the spectacular ruins at Wupatki National Monument on the way back out to Highway 89 north of Flagstaff. The Sunset Crater area is quite interesting – most prominent is the crater itself, a readily recognizable cinder volcano cone, surrounded by wide areas of cinder mixed in with a few other dormant volcano remnants. When I had first seen Sunset Crater, tourists were allow to go up to the rim of the crater on a long cinder trail which wound up the cone. But since the annual army of hikers had caused significant erosion the trail was closed in 1973.

On the morning of the hike itself, we took it easy and bought a nice hat and a walking stick for him at the Bright Angel Lodge store. On this particular morning, contrary to the rim to rim hike I had taken, there was no particular hurry. We only needed to get down to Phantom ranch in time for dinner. The only thing we had to carry was our fanny packs with some snacks and water, and our backpacks with changes of clothing for our stay at Phantom Ranch. So we drove over to Yaki Point to the South Kaibab trailhead, parked the car and started our journey.

The trip down was, as always, spectacular. The South Kaibab Trail takes the hiker down into the canyon on a route with perpetually great views.  The other major South Rim trail, Bright Angel Trail, which I have only taken once, on the return trip up from the Canyon on my first rim-to-rim hike, takes a more gentle but longer route, one which follows a number of stream beds in smaller branch-canyons, thus limiting the hiker’s views. In contrast, the South Kaibab is cut into canyon walls and follows ridges and promontories, thus the  broad views of the grandeur of the Canyon. But the South Kaibab is definitely steeper and more of a physical strain when going up; however, I have always claimed the the more severe grade is balanced by the fact that it’s significantly shorter.

We enjoyed our hike down, pausing for drinks and snacks occasionally and to take some pictures. After crossing the suspension bridge over the Colorado River, we made it to Phantom Ranch well before the dinner hour, so after registration we were able to stroll about and enjoy some of the scenery there at the bottom of the Canyon. After a marvelous steak dinner, we went to bed early and after our hike down, slept well. At bedtime we encountered a thin old gentleman who had just arrived, having hiked the latter part of his journey in the darkness. It turned out that he has been “hiking in the dark” for a number of years, enjoying the pronounced silence of the Canyon at night. He was quite elderly, which really impressed us. I of course hoped to be still hiking the Canyon when I got to be his age.

The next day after breakfast was served in the Ranch dining room, Conrad and I availed ourselves of the delicious box lunch provided by the Phantom Ranch kitchen, put them in our backpacks, filled our fanny pack containers with water and hiked the five plus miles on the North Kaibab Trail to a beautiful spot – Ribbon Falls. On our rim-to-rim hikes, a detour to this lovely area off the main trail was a requirement for it is truly a magical spot. A good sized stream flows over the edge of a small canyon wall, falls about 60 feet and sprays a magical “ribbon” of water on huge moss-covered rocks. 

Although a “day hike” from Phantom Ranch, the trip is fairly strenuous. Even though the trail appears flat, there is a gradual but significant increase in altitude of about 1200 feet. Also, in going to Ribbon Falls one will have traveled about one third of the way to the North Rim in distance, although certainly not in altitude or difficulty. Also, the first three or so miles on the trail takes you through “The Box”, the area walled in by the black Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the canyon that retains much heat.

Eventually, we arrived at the falls, climbed about, took some pictures and found a nice cool spot behind the falls to sit on some rocks and have our lunch. After lunch we hiked back, a total distance of about 11 miles, mostly through “The Box”, so we were quite tired and took a little rest on our bunks before dinner. However, poor little Conrad, having hiked down the South Kaibab trail the day before,  and endured this 11 mile hike the day after he arrived, fell into a deep sleep from which I chose not to rouse him. So I went to dinner alone, ate my steak took most of his meal back to the bunkhouse for him but he never awoke until the next morning. 

The next day he was feeling great so we had a big breakfast and began our hike out, again on the South Kaibab Trail. We got to our car at the Yaki Point parking lot at about three that afternoon and headed back to Phoenix, flush with pride and pleasure at what we had accomplished and shared. This trip will live in my memory as one of the greatest things we ever did together as father and son, among many.

Other Experiences

Several of our rim-to-rim-to-rim hikes were made memorable by certain conditions or incidents. On one such hike, I cannot remember the year or any other distinguishing features, I realized with horror that I had forgotten my hiking boots and would have to hike the Canyon in the sneakers that I had worn for the trip. Ordinarily this would have been no big deal if the sneakers had been of better quality and provided adequate support for my feet. As it turned out, while I could feel no pain or abnormality while hiking, after the hike, I discovered that I had seriously injured my feet by not having the sturdy support usually provided by quality hiking boots. A visit to a podiatrist revealed that I had developed plantar fasciitis and was fitted for custom orthotics which, after wearing for a few months, healed the foot problems. This experience forever underscored for me the importance of wearing appropriate footwear while hiking. 

Over the years we took scheduled these hikes, our group’s membership evolved, taking on an identification of its own instead of Honeywell’s. On several occasions, superbly conditioned Washington School District teacher and tennis friend Adrian Young, accompanied us. Adrian usually led the way, literally bounding down and up the trails and always arriving first at the destination. My then teenage daughter Katharine, once accompanied by lifelong friend Jennifer Tryon, then on another hike, by school friend, Tiffany Viehmann. and son Conrad, seasoned by his first hike to Phantom Ranch and back in 1990, came along several times as well on the entire rim to rim to rim hike. Bobbie came along once or twice more as well.

On another rim-to-rim-to-rim hike, this one as I recall in 1993, we were hit with something never experienced before or since on these hikes – bad weather. Generally we could always count on reliably sunny days for these hikes – the only problems being the frigid start of the hikes because of cold early morning temperature on the South Rim, the heat reflected off the walls of “The Box” when beginning the trek on the North Kaibab Trail from Phantom Ranch, and the steadily declining temperature as one began the steep ascent up the last several miles of the trail, accentuated by the exhaustion and energy drain one feels toward the end of the hike, when cold in felt most keenly. 

But on this particular hike, which included the Callisons, a friend of theirs, son Conrad, then 10, colleague Adrian Young, and, for the first time, my close friend, art teacher and tennis partner Joe Arpin, it clouded up and began to rain as we began to ascend the more difficult parts of the North Kaibab Trail. Our already tired legs had to lift boot-clad feet, now made significantly heavier by mud adhering to the soles, and the rain on the mule manure on the trail changed this normally dried and unconcerning material to a sticky, noxious mess. There was some relief from those conditions on certain better-protected parts of the trail, including the Supai tunnel, but we got steadily wetter and colder as we ascended, presenting the very real danger of hypothermia for some of us. And to add insult to injury, the rain became flurries of cold snow that evening, though accumulation was insignificant.

This time Bobbie had chosen not to hike, lucky her – she stayed dry and warm – and met us, along with Adrian’s wife Kathy and son Aaron who had also driven around, cold and wet at the trailhead with nourishing drinks and the prospect of a warm ride to the North Rim Lodge. After two nights, a full day of rest and clearing weather, most of us were ready for the hike back with the exception of Joe, who chose to hitch a ride with Bobbie on her drive back to the South Rim to meet us at the end of the day.

Every time I hiked the Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim, I was part of a fairly large group of anywhere from six to a dozen people. And since not all spouses hiked, there was always someone driving around to the North Rim, a long four hour drive, to take people’s “stuff” – overnight bags with changes of clothing, favorite coffee pots in the Callisons’ case, snacks and so on. Also these other people, whoever they were on a particular occasion, were kind enough to greet us at the trailhead, when we were exhausted and freezing cold, the sip of hot chocolate or the gulp of whiskey provided was most welcome. For actually, when you finally emerged onto the level ground of the North Rim trailhead after an exhausting day of 22 miles down and up, there were still a couple of miles up the paved highway to the lodge, so we hikers were so thankful to be sitting in a warm car, truck or van sipping something reviving and giving our feet and legs a rest.

But on one such hike, with my son Conrad in 1994 when he was 12 years old and I was 52, there were just the two of us. There was no one driving around to the North Rim so we had to carry much more that we were used to – not only our fanny packs with water containers and snacks for the hike, but backpacks as well with our extra clothing, socks, underwear and so on for our two nights and a day at the North Rim Lodge. Furthermore, there was no one to meet us, once we staggered up those last few yards on the trail, totally exhausted and freezing cold. So we had no choice but to head up the paved road to the Lodge where we had a cabin reserved and hold out our thumbs for the several cars that passed us. But no one stopped so after this brutal hike we had to walk an extra two miles in the waning light and waxing cold, and got to the lodge just when it got completely dark. Unbelievable.

However, after a dinner at the Lodge restaurant and a relaxing day the next day, we were ready for the long trek back. But this time we sought the help of some other hikers we met and obtained a ride to the trailhead at 5:00 AM. So we rode in the back of someone’s  pickup truck huddled against the cold to the trailhead. But at least we rode and didn’t have to walk. The hike back was uneventful and although daunting, from the North Rim to the South is lots easier than the other direction – more of the miles are downhill rather than uphill. We found the car parked in the space in which we had left it. I produced the car keys from somewhere and we drove back to Scottsdale. This was the last time Conrad or I hiked the the Grand Canyon.

Now finally finishing this article – the most difficult part of which was locating the proper photos  out of hundreds taken at the Canyon over the years, I am now 80 years old. I am in relatively good health and sometimes I am tempted to do this hike again. But the nightmare of something happening to me – failing limbs or muscles, a fall or tumble, something broken and the required helicopter rescue that makes the local evening news, has been an emphatic deterrent. At this point in my life I am content to simply and fondly remember and relive these Grand Canyon adventures through simply sitting here, writing about them and looking at pictures. I will leave additional hikes, whether simply down and back or rim to rim to rim, to other family members with younger, more pliant and dependable limbs, like my veteran Grand Canyon hiker spouse Bobbie, eight years younger than I, or an equally seasoned and skilled hiker, our son Conrad.

Addendum

Bobbie and I just returned from our most recent trip to the Grand Canyon. Although Bobbie and daughter Katharine and granddaughter Valentina had met Conrad on a brief trip to the Canyon for Mothers Day in 2015 (I think I was already at out summertime home in Vermont) this was the first time for me in a dozen or so years.

Our first glimpses were thrilling of course. You have to “listen to the silence” of this great natural wonder and always hope and pray for similarly inclined observers looking on with you. And again, so amazing for that time of year, early March, with daytime temperatures barely above freezing and a strong wind blasting through our light jackets, virtually all the viewpoints were quite crowded. And we had to take one of the every fifteen minute buses from the Park Headquarters to many of the viewpoints and to enjoy the view from our favorite spot, Yaki Point. 

And yes, as expected, there was our oft-noted promontory just below us, where back in 1981 Bobbie and I had decided to get married and where a few years later we had taken some lovely shots of the children. Well, what did I expect – that the slow passage of geologic time had finally eroded it away after just 41 years, after it had doubtless been there for thousands of years and will likely be there an equal amount of time hence? No, it was there alright and all the memories of what had occurred there so long ago, came flowing back readily. But, amazingly, there was one significant change – a small tree which was not there forty one years ago, nor any of the times we had seen it since, was growing upon the promontory. 

Accordingly we walked around Yaki Point, which is, incidentally, very near the South Kaibab trailhead and a variety of stables for the mules which in warmer weather make the trip with tourists on their backs like Elaine and in 1966 or bags of provisions on their backs to supply the needs of Phantom Ranch from spring to fall as it hosts the many riders and hikers who make the trip down to the bottom, we tried to get a few different shots of our special place. We prevailed on the good will of some fellow tourists to  get a couple of shots of us with “our” promontory featured between us.

So as this article makes clear, our little family has indeed maintained a special relationship with this mightiest and most beautiful of all natural wonders on our globe. And if wife Bobbie and son Conrad accord me one of my final wishes and toss my ashes into the Canyon from Yaki Point, the relationship for me will finally conclude in a most appropriate fashion. 

In March of this year I celebrated my 80th birthday in the warm and welcome company of my wife, my son, brothers and one remaining sister. I had invited them all fearing that perhaps several would be unable to attend. But I was pleasantly surprised to see them all there, with spouses and a couple of my nephews, save my brother Robert who lives in Germany. We shared a dinner at a restaurant very special to Bobbie and me – Gertrude’s, located in a heavenly location in Phoenix, the Desert Botanical Garden. And the next morning, all were able to join Bobbie and me and son Conrad and his fiancee Tara at the Scottsdale house for breakfast.

Now that I’m 80 years old and breathing the rarified octogenarian air enjoyed by but approximately five percent of the US male population, I must pause a moment, reflect and take note.

Looking back on these 80 years, there is much to regret – I should have made a different decision here; I should have worked harder on that; I should have been a better politician there. But that’s all over and whatever happened I cannot change any more than I can change the character or personality traits that influenced these decisions. And one more regret, the manifestations of which I still wrestle with today – I wish I had stopped to smell the roses more often, taken the time to relax, enjoy myself, sleep late, linger over my morning coffee, sit and read poetry or a novel. But it seems that I’ve been locked into a duty and task-driven existence that has controlled me with its weight and momentum.

But on the other hand there is much to feel good about. I’ve had a reasonably successful career and, while certainly not wealthy, own a few assets and have earned and enjoy a decent retirement. I’ve worked in education all my professional life, a field that I have loved and a fact that I’m quite proud of. All of my experiences dealing with children, parents and teachers for every one of those 45 years in education have brought me much joy and fulfillment.

I am thankful to say that physically I feel pretty good for a guy in that five percent. All the organs seem to be still working okay. Recent tests have revealed persistent elevated levels of cholesterol which I am trying to bring down. Other numbers have revealed some potential kidney problems, not uncommon as we age. And I continue to deal with the BPH problem with which I have wrestled for a decade or so. Additionally, recent tests related to my heart function have been satisfactory.

The large joints, despite (or maybe because of?) years of running in my 30’s, 40’s and 50’s are working adequately. Yes, I am stiff from time to time and I still encounter pain in my left knee, on which I have had several surgeries over the years and now my right, which to now has never bothered me. The arthritis which assaulted me several years ago while in Vermont and to which I attributed to Lyme Disease is noticeable in several finger and toe joints and has likely affected the knees. Lyme tests (2) were negative but I am well aware of the capricious and inconsistent nature of Lyme test results and of Lyme disease itself, so I still have some lingering suspicion. At any rate, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees (for the most part) and ankles seem to be functioning despite occasional pain.

Thankfully I have exercised for most of my life. During my 30’s I got into running through my association with a good friend and managed to continue, mixing it with hiking, gym visits and other exercise to a greater or lesser degree through my 40’s and 50’s and into my 60’s. That bad left knee forced running from my life in my 70’s but I have managed through gym membership while in Arizona and some dumbbells and an elliptical machine in the basement TV room here in Vermont to keep the exercise up. Yes, on some days it’s  absolutely the last thing I want to do but somehow I have forced myself to keep going and it’s been good for me. I do think that it’s an important reason for my relatively good health at this age now. As I enter the upper reaches of old age I have tried to heed the maxim promoted by a friend from my Scottsdale gym who, even while hobbling in three times a week on a cane, says, ”Ralph, at our age we just gotta keep moving”.

Weight is another thing entirely. Despite the exercise, I have always struggled with weight and have given in to a steady gain over the decades. Around 160 in my 20’s has grown to 170 in my 30’s, and given way to 180 plus in my 40’s to now, Presently I am striving to get down to 185 and it’s been tough going.

And one more thing about health at eighty. It could be my imagination but I really do discern a change in how doctors and other medical personnel deal with me. There appears to be a change in attitude – a reticence, resignation, nonchalance, disinterestedness, almost lackadaisicalness, when emerging or worsening health concerns appear. It’s rather like they are all thinking, “He’s 80 years old, what does he expect?” or “Improving this or that condition is unrealistic; things can only get worse – look at his age” “or “There’s little we can do about that – you’re 80 years old and your recuperative powers are limited”. Yes, it could be me thinking these thoughts and unfairly attributing them to the medical people but the feeling is unmistakably there, regardless of whom it is coming from.

A more positive aspect to dealing with medical problems at 80 is that my age gives me license to be more discerning and selective regarding the drugs that are prescribed for me. If the potential side effects of a particular drug, whether prescribed or over-the-counter, concern me, I can accept or reject the drug. I’ve made 80 already – that’s pretty good – I can accept the risk of taking or not taking that drug, or rejecting the drug entirely in favor of a more natural remedy that I think may work just as well. I mean, what can happen ? – I’ve already made 80.

And one more observation about turning 80. Decades ago, when certain frailties and concerning physical conditions first reared their heads, I worried about them perhaps developing into truly life altering or life threatening conditions as time went on. Well, it so happens that time did go on and the conditions did not get appreciably worse, nor did they seriously affect my quality of life, and (obviously) did not kill me. Here I’m talking about chronic conditions like Reynaud’s Disease, encounters with skin cancer (I’ve had two melanomas removed from my back), digestive problems, joint problems, heart concerns, clinical depression and others. Thank goodness, they’re all no worse or no greater concerns now at 80 than they were decades ago when first encountered. So basically, I’ve outlived the effects of those potentially life altering maladies.

And, when one turns 80 thoughts naturally turn to a radically diminished future and how many years of life remain. So of course, quite naturally, there are thoughts about death. A dear friend, also my age, mentioned that men turning 80 can generally look forward to about eight more years of life. He didn’t mention what the statistics say about the quality of that life – I would assume that a few of those additional eight years of “life” may consist of an inexorable spiral downward, rife with pain and deterioration of joints, organs and bodily functions. But after those eight years? Yes, death. 

And what about beyond death? Is there anything there? I don’t share the religious faith that so many friends and family members profess – that somehow we live on or our souls live on after we die. This is all reflected in an earlier article I wrote about life and death so I won’t add to it. But some recent articles I’ve read make a lot of sense and add some additional dimensions to what I wrote earlier.

One, composed by that brilliant writer who authors “The Marginalian”, formerly “Brain Pickings”, Maria Popova, offers some really sensible and reasonable explanations in her article “What Happens When We Die”. In her article, Ms Popova quotes extensively from the work of physicist/poet/novelist Alan Lightman. When we die, whether we are buried or cremated, our remains, composed of  the basic elements and their billions of atoms, are eventually scattered around the world and join the air, water, and plants which nurture further life. In that regard I guess, we are indeed immortal, but in a strikingly different way than theologians would have us believe. 

Philosopher George Yancy, in a February 2022 posting of Truthout discusses the complexity of death and its contemplation, in the context of the almost (then) one million covid deaths in the US. He laments the tragic extinguishing of the unique and singular lives of so many people killed in the pandemic and otherwise. No one has come back from death to explain its mysteries to us; we strive to understand death exclusively from this side and can understand only that death is an essential part of life. It can be said that death defines life. Everything we know that lives, also dies.  Yancy notes that all major religions are based on their own explanations of death: they attest to “our human capacity to be touched by the fact of death, to make sense of it, and to respond to its mystery in deep symbolic and discursively differential ways.” But despite its universality, death remains a mystery. And it’s interesting how, when we’re young, the notion of death rarely crosses our minds. It is only with the creeping infirmity and inevitability of old age that we begin to contemplate death, which is really the final phase of life.

I encountered the phrase, “what’s remembered lives” while watching the recent award winning movie “Nomadland” on a streaming channel and was affected by the notion. I was struck by the fact that my sister Barbara and my parents, and various close relatives and a few friends, though having passed away, are quite alive to me. I can hear their voices and their laughter, recognize their mannerisms and movements and enjoy their company and companionship….in my memory. But when I die, they die with me. Well, maybe not profound, but nevertheless interesting. They are alive to me in the individual idiosyncratic way in which I remember them. And they will live as long as my own capacity to recall them exists.

But most affecting for me are the memories of my parents’ personalities – their voices, their laughs, their casual banter with each other as my parents and much later as retirees in their home in Westminster, Colorado. Very alive for me too is the feeling of security and love I felt when I was visiting. Dad never showed the love as demonstratively as Mom. He always maintained a comfortable (for him) distance, unlike the tactile love Mom always showed – the hugs and the kisses which she bestowed so liberally on all of us children.

I cried myself to sleep last night. Well…not exactly, but I did get a bit choked up and shed some tears. For some reason, instead of sleeping, I had begun thinking about how I would like to die, and decided that I would like Conrad and Bobbie next to me, holding my hands and reminiscing about our lives together. And thinking about those years together – the high points and the lows of our shared lives – is what brought the tears (and is bringing a few now as I type).

With Conrad, I would mention and invite his recollection of throwing a football back and forth between us in the back yard of our home at 4919 E Altadena in Scottsdale. What a thrill it was to me to see him reach up and grab the ball while in full stride…if my throw was a good one and had led him sufficiently. I would also remember with Conrad, while at the same house, during one of our memorable Christmases, of his joyfully opening a gift I had wrapped for him – a huge Costco-sized box of Cheez-Its.

And so many of our father-son trips together between Colorado and Arizona are very pleasant to remember. Like the time we camped in Canyonlands, I think in the Ford Explorer, then made hot chocolate to warm us in the cold morning on a little stove we had brought along. Or the several times we traveled in the pickup/camper while little Conrad played “coins” in the back or on the front seat. And of course our wonderful ultimate father-son experience – hiking the Grand Canyon down to Phantom Ranch, staying two nights, then hiking back, both directions on the South Kaibab Trail. Then too, our shared car trip right before he turned 16 from Frankfurt, Germany to Vienna, Austria and back, during which we visited the sights in Nuremberg, Munich, Salzberg and Vienna, including the Belvedere Museum and its collection of famed paintings by Klimpt, Kokochka and Schiele. And later that summer spending time with various Friedlys in Missouri, seeing the gravestone of his namesake, the first Conrad Friedly in the US. And what a thrill it’s always been to work hand in hand on special projects with him – I would ask him to recall helping me with the new floor in Scottsdale, with the basement renovation in Vermont while he was in law school there, and me assisting him with the new floor in his Gallup, New Mexico house. And I could go on and on.

And while holding Bobbie’s warm little hand, I would invite her to join me in recalling some of the precious highlights of our lives together – our first date after I had called her home and asked her out, horrifying her little daughter Liza, then seven years old, who knew me only as her elementary school principal. Then we’d recall our first trip west together, meeting my parents and brothers in Colorado for the first time, and our trip to the Grand Canyon, where we befriended briefly a little puppy that we encountered outside our cabin and where I proposed to her on a now-inaccessible promontory below Yaki Point. We’d recall together our marriage ceremony in Duxbury, Massachusetts, her parents and my parents attending and the loading of a 26 foot U-Haul with what we deemed as “keepers” and necessities gleaned from our two households. Then our “honeymoon” driving the U-Haul across the country to Arizona, later to be joined by Bobbie’s daughters and the formation of our first family home together at 3152 West Kings in Phoenix. And certainly, we’d share memories of Conrad’s birth, our move to the “horse property” home at 6340 W. Surrey in Glendale. And we’d recall together other highlights like the move to Scottsdale, our foray overseas to work for the American School of Kuwait, and all the exciting travels emanating from that and other overseas ventures. And I could go on and on.

But perhaps I won’t be this fortunate. It’s much more likely that like so many people, I will die suddenly with a heart attack, or in the the crushed metal and flame of an auto accident or like yet many others, slowly in a hospital bed succumbing to the ravages of some disease or in a haze of numbing drugs to relieve the pain of failing organs and physical deterioration.

In addition to thoughts outlined above, another thing that I’ve noticed about myself lately is that I’m spending more and more time thinking about the past and recalling significant events in my life, also likely a symptom of old age. Much of my communication and correspondence with old friends and relatives consists of recollection of events from our shared pasts, sometimes complemented with old photos, and opinions and observations about common acquaintances or former colleagues. And if congruence of political opinion allows, we may discuss the current state of politics in the context of what politics used to be when we were younger and should be today. I have to say that these connections have become most meaningful, almost essential, at the age of 80, part of clinging to my identity, my place in the world and my importance as all slip away in old age.

And with a past that stretches back for decades and a steadily diminishing future for us, the same tendency permeates the discourse between my wife and myself. While we dwell on the developing lives of our children from time to time, it does appear that we also linger on the past – our own and the childhoods of our children more and more with advancing age. We have a few aims for the future but certainly many fewer than we had in our younger days. And most focus on the immediate future – this summer, this fall, next year, but not much further. Oh, and it seems that we talk about the weather more than ever.

Since we travel back and forth between Arizona and Vermont, we’ve attached a few goals to those trips, achieving several this past spring – sharing Zion and Bryce National Parks for the first time, then also finally getting to see and enjoy Yellowstone. We still intend to see Yosemite and the Redwoods and get to the Pacific northwest while we’re still physically able, perhaps on next spring’s trip from Arizona to Vermont. Also at some point it would be very pleasant to travel through southern Canada east or west on one of these trips.

My own personal goals, hopes and aspirations during a steadily diminishing future center on maintaining and perhaps even improving our lives in these two homes in which we live and on reading and writing. But maintaining two homes gets increasingly challenging. I don’t look forward to improvement projects the way I used to when I was younger. And everyday home maintenance – cleaning, washing windows, repairing broken faucets, fixing roofs or painting walls and ceilings, gets very dreary and tiresome. Maintaining our gardens and lawn in Vermont too is sometimes a grind – I do get tired of planting trees, mulching the gardens and mowing the lawn.

Other activities used to include music but my arthritis has taken much of the pleasure out of playing the guitar so mostly I just listen. But they still include writing and those goals keep me going each day. I have 30-40 articles in various stages of completion so finishing them one by one, plus adding a few on other topics along the way, give me some tangible and achievable aims for the future. I know I’ll never be the writer I want to be but whatever I can produce gives me pride and pleasure and some motivation for the next attempt. And although I write primarily for myself, along the way a few other readers have enjoyed some of what I’ve written.

So this is where I am at 80 years old – still plugging along and trying to live as full and as complete a life as I am able, living day to day, week by week and month by month until we move back to Arizona, then its the same there until we move back here, always trying to live as best we can, squeezing some pleasure out of our day to day tasks, our occasional sightseeing, communication with children and travels. We’ll see how long it all lasts.

And finally, there’s a wonderful Cheryl Wheeler song about an elderly couple that seems in many ways to reflect what and where we are today. These few lines from “Quarter Moon” summarize much of what I’ve written above and provide a fitting conclusion for this article:

“And they speak about their lives as almost gone
Waiting for the sunset
From an old and distant dawn.”

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I’m sick of it. The somber press conferences giving us the latest numbers of victims, adding those who succumbed in the hospital to those who died in the classrooms. The law enforcement announcements telling us that this or that aspect of the slaughter is “under investigation” or that they haven’t determined a “motive” just yet. Or later the details of exactly what kinds of weapons were used to commit the crime and create the carnage of bloody little bodies. 

And I’ve also had enough of the endless video images of the flashing lights of police vehicles and ambulances and of the crime scene tape around areas where the murders took place. And the sickening parade of crowds of cops strutting around, conferring, trying to “piece together” exactly what happened, assembling a “timeline” of events and delivering tidbits of news to the press. Oh yes, and the endless stream of video showing them armored and armed with their own long guns, sprinting toward the scene (or were they running away in order to protect themselves?) one hour after the murderer entered the school, too late as usual to prevent the deaths but just in time to kill the “suspect” without putting themselves in danger. 

And my God, how many “law enforcement” entities were involved in Uvalde – six, ten – in this incompetent performance? The town police force, Texas DPS, Border Patrol, County Sheriff’s Department, State Police, Texas Rangers, and even the FBI? And the school district had its very own police force, replete with its own “chief”? There they all were at the series of press conferences, all hapless and helpless, uniformed and uninformed, cowboy hats and cowboy boots, all armed to the teeth, admitting that they delayed for over an hour while the gunman shot a few more and victims bled out and died during the “golden hour” when their lives could have been saved. The tragic story of the one Uvalde teacher who survived, provides a dramatic account of police cowardice and delay.

And a couple of other things about the Uvalde disaster bear mentioning. First, I was incensed to see police officers performing a task better suited to almost any other citizens of Uvalde – that of taking bouquets of flowers, tender loving handwritten notes and signs from mourners and placing them among the dozens of mementos already there. Why the police? It seemed almost sacrilegious to me to have these heavily armed “protectors” who had failed the children and teachers of Robb Elementary, performing such a sensitive and loving task.

And why were they allowed or required to perform this task? Oh, I presume because the areas near the school were roped off, “protected” areas reserved for police “investigation”? Why was this pray tell? If I were a parent of a child killed in this dreadful incident or another school parent whose child had thankfully been spared, I would not want a policemen handling or even touching the memorial my child had thoughtfully prepared to pay tribute to a friend or favorite teacher who had died in this fusillade of bullets. Please, if indeed these areas around the school had to be roped off, the town authorities should have allowed clergy, colleagues of slain teachers or other citizens to perform this solemn duty, not a cop.

And of course the parade of politicians wringing their hands and saying we have to do something, yet always unwilling to do anything at all for fear of turning off the spigots of gun money from corporate and gun rights organization sources supporting their reelection campaigns or offending the armed and tattooed bubbas who constitute the bulk of their voting base. And the endless laments of “this is not who we are” when we know good and well that this is exactly who we are – a nation of spineless fools who allow, no, actually seem to encourage, every idiot and damned fool in the country to own a gun. And I’ve had it with the stupid suggestions for protecting students like “hardening” schools, arming teachers, providing more guards or having “one entrance”. How does that last one work for a fire in the school, Senator Cruz?

And then the endless breast beating by dozens of corporate TV talking heads and commentators, all wondering if this is the last time we suffer such an event, or “what it’s going to take” to get Congress to act.

And then later, the sad pictures and sketches of the lives snuffed out in the bloom of childhood – this one enjoyed art, another had a thing for animals, this child made the honor roll, another was a baseball player. And we begin crying, along with the parents and relatives.

And again, our “comforter in chief”, ever-suffering President Biden, shuffling and doddering among the memorial displays and gesturing about one or another, visiting the bereaved and offering useless public cliches that are supposed to make us all feel better. Oh and thank God, “Dr. Jill” was along too, . And the never ending cliches of “thoughts and prayers”, the flags lowered to half-mast, the “moments of silence” and the candlelight vigils.

I mean, how many of these terrible mass shootings are we expected to countenance before we do something concrete, something meaningful, to stop them. When are we going to pass effective laws to keep guns out of the hands of idiots, fools and the mentally deranged. The statistics are staggering – the only nation in the world with more guns than people – four hundred million at present. Forty thousand gun deaths every year along with 400 mass shootings. And so far in 2022 we’ve had well over 200 mass shootings. And now for the first time more children dying from guns than from auto accidents. The rest of the world is aghast at our stupidity and spinelessness. When a mass shooting occurs in another country they do something about it, but not the US. “Exceptional” indeed.

Frankly I think that doing anything different is impossible anymore in this country. Guns are such an integral part of our lives in the US. Every law enforcement officer of whatever stripe, level or description has to have a gun, presumably as Wayne LaPierre asserted, to be that “good guy with a gun” to stop that “bad guy with a gun”. Actually we’d all be much safer if neither of them had a gun. And furthermore, what did the hundreds of good guys with guns milling about Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas do? Not a damned thing, until it was too late.

I can’t get out of my head the image of a queue of new Border Patrol or ICE recruits, most of course scraped from the bottom of the barrel as these agencies scramble to fill their authorized ranks, all lined up and one by one being presented with their guns, belts, holsters and ammunition. Yes, this is the real badge of law enforcement in America – the power to instantly kill and maim. Honestly, do these creeps really need guns? What are they going to do – shoot some poor immigrant striving to achieve a better life for his family? Shoot some poor mother as she struggles through the currents of the Rio Grande with her children? But there they are getting their guns. This is indeed a major part of the mass killing epidemic in our country – guns themselves and their prevalence, whether in the hands of the “good guys” or the “bad guys”.

The recklessness and randomness with which guns in the hands of the police are fired at hapless and helpless citizens is astonishing. Attempting to run away from the scene of a crime or reluctance or recalcitrance (or inability, as demonstrated when a policeman aimed five bullets at the body of a pregnant woman so instructed) to heed shouted police orders, should not result in execution. Examples of cops acting as judge, jury and executioner are far too numerous to list here but one recent incident which I cannot erase from my mind is this one, in which a poor, confused and probably inebriated immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrick Lyoya, tried to run away from a traffic stop arrest, was tackled by the cop and summarily executed with a single shot to the back of his head.

And there’s our august, brilliant, dignified black-robed justices of the Supreme Court. How do they feel when they know they are responsible too for this carnage – the bloody, lifeless bodies of innocent children in a school. These distinguished “jurists” have opened the legal floodgates for this torrent of guns. They have done so by striking down laws limiting ownership of guns and making it perfectly legal for gun manufacturers and gun rights organizations to buy their own congressmen (see my upcoming article “Screwed by SCOTUS”)

And accordingly our corrupt “lawmakers” in state legislatures and Congress go about the business of making it easier to own weapons of war, making it legal for any moron to carry a gun in public, into a restaurant or department store if the idiot wishes. And our Republican leaders in Congress persist in claiming that the real problem is mental illness and school safety, not the number of guns in our country. As a career educator I deplore the focus on “hardening” schools. Schools need to be open, warm and welcoming beacons to the communities they serve, not cold, austere and forbidding fortresses. And arming teachers, as our genius and wise sage ex-president Donald Trump suggested at the NRA Convention in Houston last Friday is ludicrous. Give me a break – teachers have more than enough responsibility in their increasingly demanding roles. They should not and cannot become armed guards as well. Placing armed personnel in schools has not increased safety but has only made schools more dangerous.

I’m sick of it all. This is not freedom, but tyranny of a different sort. I’m personally tyrannized by the omniscience of guns, the ease with which they can be purchased and the ease with which ammunition to load them can also be obtained. And please spare me all the banal platitudes about “responsible gun owners”. I mean, there’s got to be a limit on this too. How many guns does a “responsible gun owner” need? The same goes for “collectors”.  How many of the 400 million guns in this country are owned by collectors and responsible gun owners or hunters? How many of the murderous killers of children in schools, patrons in shopping centers or supermarkets, music lovers at a country music concert have fallen into these categories. No, there are simply too many guns in this country….period.

Isn’t the primary duty of the state to protect its citizens? And wouldn’t the first among them be those least able to protect themselves – our children? Look at how our country has utterly failed at this primary task. And yet we have far more policemen and police departments per capita “serving and protecting” our society than any other developed country (see my upcoming article “Police State”). And perhaps it’s time to ask why we have so many policemen and why we are not any safer or better protected. Oh yes, the cops are out in droves to “keep order” during times of civic unrest, looking and acting far more like agents of a repressive state than protectors of lives and property. In Uvalde they were out in droves, directing traffic, cordoning off areas, doing crowd control and keeping parents from actively rescuing their children, even handcuffing one distraught mother, doing everything except going after the shooter. And yes, their guns were ever at the ready, to kill and injure. Wherever there are people demonstrating, exercising their constitutional right to “peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, there are the phalanxes of heavily armed policemen, replete with their weapons and vehicles of war, to “keep order”. Perhaps it’s time to ask what police really do for us, as Natasha Leonard noted in a recent article for The Intercept.

It might be appropriate to close with a grim reminder of what we have become – a nation of mass shootings which keep happening. On May 27 the Washington Post published a grim list of all the names of those who have died in mass shootings since Columbine, replete with telling photographs of ensuing grief and sadness, with the plea we have heard so many times before – Congress needs to pass sensible gun laws. Now.

What on earth do our Congressmen think when they consider this list? Might they think that something is wrong in our country? Something they need to address? My God, there’s Mitch McConnell again at a press conference, flanked as usual by his do-nothing fellow Republican “leaders” Senators Barrasso, Thune, Ernst and Blunt announcing again what they won’t do, deciding what legislation to block and when to use the filibuster. How long are we going to tolerate a Senate where all good legislation voted by the House goes to die?

Perhaps we just need to admit that our nation is in serious trouble. It is in a steady decline, totally unable to arrest its deterioration because its government is controlled by corporations and money and because of its foolish fealty to a constitution long overdue for a rewrite.

Yes, just the other night, watching Monday Night Football, there was that horrible TV commercial featuring a pathetic Joe Namath and his “Medicare Coverage Helpline”. And early this morning, while working out at my local gym, three of the six TV screens displaying programming from six different channels were simultaneously showing similar commercials in various stages of play.

Are you as sick as I am of these TV commercials featuring Namath or other washed-up celebrities like former “Good Times” star J. J. Walker of “dyn-o-mite!” fame, long-retired boxer George Foreman, or now bonafide Blue Origin “astronaut” Willian Shatner, (for whom no testimonial fee is too small, having shilled for dozens of corporations over the years) offering to “eliminate copays, provide eyeglasses, dental care, dentures, transportation, meals, even to put money back into your Social Security check”? 

 And these irritating TV commercials have only scratched the surface of the flood of other invitations to call the “Medicare Advantage Hotline” or to obtain your Medicare through Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Humana, the healthcare corporate behemoth, United Healthcare, or a mere upstart like WellCare, based in Florida. Even in little old Vermont, our second “home state”, another upstart is soliciting for medicare advantage enrollment. Yes, “from two trusted names – UVM Health and MVP Healthcare” comes “a new kind of Medicare Advantage plan” – UVM Health Advantage, bolstered also by the tired cliche trope “You spoke. We listened.” I seriously doubt that any opinions were either solicited or heeded and I don’t think that the healthcare vultures are listening. This new Vermont company  was simply intent on grabbing yet another chunk of the  hefty profits accruing to companies offering Medicare Advantage plans. 

I have received a flood of Medicare Advantage invitations in my daily dose of junk mail, random emails and even the other day, an invitation from my own credit union:

And a pop up ad on my computer this morning invited me to “Compare Medicare”, that is, to “compare top rated medicare plans”. What? I thought that Medicare was a government program started by President Lyndon Johnson and his Democratic majority back in 1965. I thought that everyone when turning 65 or whatever the age is now, could stop worrying about medical insurance from their employers, or worrying about ceilings on coverage, pre-existing conditions and all the limitations that private insurers place in their plans. I thought that Medicare was a government program which we all helped pay for through our income taxes and deductions from our Social Security stipends. How on earth did private insurers get into “providing Medicare”?

Why this flood of solicitations and advertisements, obviously quite expensive, to solicit your purchase and enrollment in Medicare Advantage? And what is medicare advantage anyway. Why are we taught to think that now, rather than enrolling directly in Medicare when we reach the qualifying age, we should instead rush to Humana, Aetna or any one of hundreds, now maybe thousands of companies advertising “Medicare Advantage”? How did a Federal program become so corporatized? Well, there’s an easy answer to that question – profit. And moreover, it’s profit from direct government subsidies, the best kind – not properly earned profit, the result of comprehensive research, increased investments, new products or a daring business plan – just government money – direct from taxpayers to corporate coffers. 

How did Medicare Advantage begin? Well, the seeds were planted by President Clinton with his “Medicare Choice” legislation, part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Then after spending much of his two terms trying to privatize Social Security and Medicare, George W. Bush did the next best thing to Medicare with the “Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, formalized Medicare Part D and replaced “Choice” with “Medicare Advantage”. Accordingly “risk adjusted” large batch payments then began a year later, paying private companies to take care of Medicare-eligible enrollees. So this semi-privatization of Medicare has thrived, enrolling more and more people because of the massive advertising blitz described above.

But these seemingly interminable flood of advertisements are essentially dishonest and purposely deceiving. When you enroll in a Medicare Advantage program you are essentially dis-enrolling from Medicare itself, giving up all the protections of this government program and placing yourself at the mercy of a health insurance corporation whose sole objective is profit, not keeping you well, although indeed your continued good health means profit for them since they will not be paying very much on your behalf from the money they are receiving from Medicare. However, if you get sick, it’s another story. Let’s look at how Medicare Advantage works.

When you leave Medicare, yes, you have to file your treasured Medicare card away, that card that you waited your whole life to obtain, that card which banished all worries about the effects of chronic illness and fears of potential bankruptcy, that card which finally rescued you from the vagaries of employer provided private insurance and made you more like a Swede or a Dane or a Canadian in that finally, with Medicare your healthcare became a right, not a privilege. Finally, that government which you supported all your working life with your tax dollars is going to return the favor and take care of you and your health with Social Security and Medicare.

So….you file away your Medicare card and sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan. Technically that private insurance company is supposed to provide everything traditional Medicare gives you – that’s part of the bargain. But read the fine print, dig into the details and you will find caveats for your care: huge out of pocket maximums, limits on which doctors you can see and the areas in which you can see them. And God help you if you get seriously ill. This is when medicare advantage enrollees discover the real limitations of the program they are relying upon. Forget the promise of “0 copays” – you will run up a huge bill seeing specialists. Diagnostic tests and lab services will cost a lot. And surgery and hospital costs are exorbitant as well, all totally glossed over in the commercials we see. 

You see, when you are in Medicare Advantage, instead of Medicare taking care of you, Medicare pays the corporation for taking care of you. And how much do they pay? Well, it averages about a thousand dollars per month so if you stay healthy, the corporation puts this into their pockets, sends dividends to its investors and provides bonuses for its executives and CEO. Great business plan. 

But this amount can vary based upon what’s called a “risk score”. If the Medicare Advantage company can claim that a percentage of its enrollees are high risk, maybe chronically ill, maybe showing signs of heart trouble or at risk for diabetes or kidney problems, then they can increase the risk score and obtain more money from Medicare.

Many Medicare Advantage programs provide a once a year “home visit” by a registered nurse as a “benefit” of the program. However, these often redundant visits, ostensibly to keep you well, have another purpose – to discover previously hidden conditions or propensities with enrollees so that the overall risk score can be raised. And many of these visits do exactly that.

Okay, you find yourself quite ill, needing repeated tests of all kinds, repeated hospital stays and multiple visits to specialists and you are going broke and approaching bankruptcy, even while enrolled in a Medicare Advantage program, and you wish to return to traditional Medicare. Well, it’s really not that easy. First, you have to wait until the next “open enrollment” season rolls around. Second, you need a “medigap” policy that will cover what traditional Medicare does not, and if ill, it could cost you much more than if you had purchased the coverage when you first enrolled in Medicare.

And what about the other benefits promised in the myriad TV commercials we’re forced to watch.Yes, dental, vision and hearing coverage, plus “transportation and meals”. Well, all of these are quite meager and subject to severe limitations, such as a maximum amount per year, or per procedure in the case of dental. And the hearing benefit may cover tests but hearing aids may be limited to a specific amount per multiple year period which comes nowhere near paying the full cost. “Transportation and meals?” Read the fine print.

Other problems with Medicare Advantage are simply that it costs taxpayers far more than traditional Medicare, even factoring in the monthly premium most enrollees pay. And this significant step toward total privatization of Medicare again exposes, just like Obamacare, the folly of using government money to pay corporations for what the government could do much more cost effectively. Basically the question to ask is this – why should taxpayer money be devoted to providing profit for corporations and filling the pockets of their investors and CEO’s? Again, it’s a pretty simple procedure – moving money from Medicare to hospitals and health providers to take care of the elderly. Why have the middlemen raking in their profit to do exactly the same thing?

But all these millions of dollars invested in the TV ads, the print ads, the mailings, email pop-ups and the rest, have really paid off for our for-profit healthcare industry. In 2020, private insurance companies offered an estimated 3,148 Medicare Advantage plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). And of those that Kaiser reported, the following are the companies that welcomed the most Medicare Advantage enrollees in 2020:

• UnitedHealthcare: 26%
• Humana: 18%
• BCBS plans: 15%
• CVS (Aetna): 11%
• Kaiser Permanente: 7%
• Centene: 4%
• Cigna: 2%

So this tsunami of advertising has really paid off and after this year’s inundation during “open enrollment” we can rest assured that next year’s will be worse. And we can also assume that millions more elderly qualifying for Medicare will have signed over their healthcare to a for-profit corporation.

But guess what, many of these deceptive ads will not stop, even though the Medicare “open enrollment” period ended December 7. Because for the next few months, although those eligible for Medicare cannot any longer register for Medicare Advantage or move back into original Medicare, if already enrolled, you can switch from one “advantage” program to another. That period is until March 31. So I do expect many of these deceptive ads to continue. We shall see.

Addendum

For those concerned with continued privatization and corporatization of the already largely for-profit US healthcare system, there is another nefarious plot being carried out as I write and as you read. 

Near the end of the Trump administration the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) decided to begin a program, with no input from Medicare enrollees and no oversight from Congress, a program called DC (direct contracting). In fact, this program has provoked barely a whisper in the media, though it has healthcare corporations and Wall Street private equity firms “lined up like pigs at a trough”, all eager to get their filthy hands on some more taxpayer money and further privatize our healthcare systems. So far 53 companies have signed up as DCE’s (Direct Contracting Entities) to administer the program – a mix of healthcare corporations and private equity firms.

Already, without them realizing it, thousands of Medicare enrollees who thought they were enrolled in traditional Medicare, have been quietly and subtly moved into this program, along with their primary care physicians, with the promise of greater Medicare reimbursements for the doctors and more “managed” and “focused” care for the patient. In reality, the program does little to nothing to improve care. What it clearly does is raise the Medicare price for taxpayers and give money to private companies.

What all this boils down to is just what do the American people want for a healthcare program for the elderly. Do they want a no profit government program or do they want a program farmed out to corporations who make profit from the government funds they receive. I know where the American people are. It’s their legislators in Congress who are the problem because private healthcare corporations have been contributing to their PAC’s and reelection funds for decades, corruptly buying their support. We should be furious about this – our legislators should be fighting for us but they’re not. What a country! What a political system! Thank God for the few legislators and the organizations that are fighting back on our behalf – organizations like PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) and legislators like Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Pramila Jayapal.

And we need to ask about the role of this special Medicare office, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Truly it seems that their role is simply to surely and steadily turn Medicare over to corporations, while increasing the outflow of Medicare money to pad their pockets and increase their profits. What kind of “innovation” is this anyhow? This office needs to be investigated by Congress and I guarantee that they’ll find that the office is populated by ex- corporate healthcare executive doing everything they can to help their former employers and waiting until the Washington revolving door spits them out again to repopulate the healthcare industry.

Many of my articles have been based on what I perceive as something wrong with our society, politics, priorities and the like. But sometimes the complaint, problem or suggested solution is too limited for a whole article most of which seem to be in the 1500-2500 word range, so I include it in an article about several topics which I have called my “rants”: the first one and the second. And, having made a little list of my latest complaints and issues, each too limited for a full article, I am offering to my reader(s) “yet another rant”.

First, I have to complain about the the sorry state of health information in the US. We saw this early in the pandemic from the Trump administration’s disgraceful handling of essential information. First, we experienced the cover-up of the severity and deadliness of the pandemic from the chief executive himself, then during dozens of presidential press conferences we were treated to exhortations to treat infections with disinfectants and the like while qualified medical personnel stood by, mentally rolling their eyes in disbelief and wringing their hands in frustration, never themselves offering us anything more concrete than masks, “social distancing” and hand washing. And they couldn’t even agree on the best kind of mask or tell us where they were available. I clearly remember the panic my wife and I felt when absolutely no masks were available anywhere and we were reduced to madly fashioning some from whatever we could find, including sewing a few primitive cloth masks on her sewing machine. In retrospect I don’t know why medical authorities could not have sent several good masks to every citizen, certainly preventing a significant number of infections and saving many lives.

And smooth-talking HHS secretary and former Eli Lily big pharma executive Alex Azar (a perfect example of the “revolving door” between government and private employment) frequently disagreed or talked over and around Trump CDC director Robert Redfield. Then we cringed to see how Redfield sacrificed himself and the lofty reputation of his agency on the altar of Trump by acquiescing to politics, watering down recommendations to mere suggestions, overruling scientists and generally destroying the integrity of his agency and public trust in it.

And we aren’t a whole lot better off right now, with obscenely wealthy corporations like Pfizer apparently running the show and hapless and helpless CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stumbling through her public pronouncements. Early on, with reckless and needless hyperbole, she warned that COVID may be “just a few mutations” away from being able “to evade our vaccine in terms of how it protects us from severe disease and death.” Then she decided to overrule her own agency’s advisory panel and recommend boosters for workers whose jobs require often interacting with the public.

On related matters with booster shots, she first called for boosters for vaccinated people who were over 65 or who had compromised immune systems or other chronic conditions. Now it’s boosters for everyone except children. Oh, I forgot, first it was Pfizer boosters only – then eventually, after panicking those who had received Moderna or Johnson & Johnson, approving those boosters, or, without supporting detail, it was okay go ahead and “mix or match”. Of course with Pfizer calling the shots (pardon the pun) one might wonder what CDC’s relationship with Pfizer really is. In fact, it’s interesting to note that the entity first calling for boosters at all was Pfizer itself, not the CDC. And it was Pfizer and not our government that first announced suitability of their vaccine for children. Hmmm, lots more shots…lots more money for profits, stockholders and CEO. And I’ve already noted in an earlier article that Pfizer fancies itself a quasi government entity, bustling all over the world making deals with foreign governments for vaccine sales, totally independent of the US State Department or federal health agencies.

But it’s not only during the “covid age” when we’ve been misled by our well funded and supposedly brilliant and far-reaching health authorities. Remember the “low fat” recommendations that were supposed to save us from cholesterol, clogged arteries and heart attacks? What happened to that? All of us scrambled madly to avoid fat in our diets. But not a word was said about sugar, the much more likely cause of heart problems than fat as I recounted in my article about sugar. And we suddenly found out that many fats were actually good for us. Really? Why did that take so long?

And then there were the warnings that one of the most nutritious natural foods available to us – simple, everyday eggs – were responsible for cholesterol and clogged arteries, so many of us, including myself, compromised our nutrition by dramatically reducing egg consumption. In fact I recall foolishly boasting to my cardiologist (back when I had one) that I was down to eating just one or two eggs a week.

Yet another example of bad information was the almost universal advice that all of we older people who feared heart attacks should consider taking low dose aspirin every day. Yes, I’m sure the king of aspirin manufacturing, Bayer, influenced this decision – look at all the money they made. Well just recently the CDC reversed itself on this too, because apparently the potential harm of daily intake of low dose aspirin is likely to outweigh any benefits. And why did they just discover this – now, after all these years?

And remember the old “food pyramid” published by the Department of Agriculture to help us with wise food choices? Debuting in 1992, its broad base suggested lots of refined carbohydrates, the middle recommended meat and milk items and fats were confined to the narrow pyramid tip – all of it lousy (and dangerous) advice since we know now how beneficial many fats are and how dangerous refined carbs are. After many revisions over the years, most very misleading and ultimately useless, it’s been replaced by the “plate” – introduced by Michelle Obama and corporate farm advocate Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak (incidentally now still plying his corporate craft in the same position for the Biden administration) – perhaps a slight improvement but ultimately of only marginal utility. Yet both the succession of “pyramids” and “plates” were presented to millions of school children as the nutritional gospel. Poor, innocent kids.

Another issue I have to complain about (again? I think I complained in another recent article) is our corporatization of the fight against the covid pandemic. The worst aspect of the behavior of these corporate behemoths raking in billions in profits is that they have refused to share their patents or formulae for covid vaccines with the world, choosing instead to market them to countries willing to cough up the millions necessary to buy enough doses to vaccinate their populations. Especially egregious is Moderna’s refusal, since their vaccine was developed with the support of millions of federal dollars from the NHA, along with the knowledge and expertise of many NHA scientists. This might be a good place to note that in a 1955 interview, American virologist Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine, was asked who owned the patent. He replied, “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” No one became fabulously rich developing, distributing and administering the polio vaccine. And now?

Moderna, the company that never manufactured anything of consequence before the pandemic, has now placed five newly minted billionaires on the Forbes 500 richest list. And guess what, a full forty new billionaires from other companies have been created from the fight against the pandemic. What should have been a cooperative nonprofit effort by governments all over the world has turned out to be a wild corporate competition for riches and a bonanza for these greedy forty.

Why on earth didn’t we nationalize these greedy corporations and have the government manufacture the masks, the personal protective equipment, the billions of vaccine doses needed all over the world and send it all to poor nations completely free? We all knew that if the whole world did not get vaccinated we would see deadly variants emerge. And sure enough, South Africa, with its less than 30 percent vaccination rate, has presented the world with the Omicron variant threat. Will we now shift into high gear and vaccinate the world? As long a corporations are calling the shots (again – pardon the pun), I think not. Rich countries are at fault for the formation and spread of this latest covid variant – failure to curb corporate greed, read Pfizer and Moderns, and vaccinate the whole world. We could have stopped it and did not.

It might be worth noting that poor, humble little Cuba, wracked by cruel unnecessary US economic sanctions, has all by itself, manufactured effective covid vaccines that it plans to share with the world. Yes, Cuba’s public medical sector, note “public”, no corporations or profit involved, with its strong commitment to public health, has successfully manufactured its own vaccines. One hundred percent of its population has now had at least once dose and the country has reopened its schools and businesses and is now open for tourism as well. What a contrast to our own country where public health and vaccines are a commodity, to be bought and sold, and to be profited from.

Also related to the sorry state of health matters in our beloved country is the fact that the cost of Medicare, deducted from our Social Security checks, is going up. Yes, because the FDA has recklessly and irresponsibly approved a frightfully expensive and likely useless drug, Aduhelm, to treat Alzheimers, which will cost $56,000 a year, Medicare Part B is increasing its monthly premium from $148.50 to $170.10 in 2022, in case prescribing this drug, which experts say should cost no more than $8000 per year, causes a huge bump in Medicare drug spending.

And another item – Republican obstructionism. I can visualize Republican Representatives and Senators getting up in the morning, getting ready for work, and going in and having a simple and stress-free day – not much effort, no thought – just obstruction. If you are a Republican legislator, you don’t really have to come up with ideas, programs or policies to help the country or to assist your constituents. You just have to come into your office and decide what and how to obstruct that day. Pretty simple job description, isn’t it? Honestly, when is the last time you heard or read of a big Republican legislative program? You’d pretty much have to go back to Trump’s infamous “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” in 2017, which did not help anyone except the wealthy and corporations. Otherwise it’s been obstruction all the way. Yet amazingly this intellectually bankrupt political party, a minority party mind you, is poised to take over both houses of Congress in 2022 and because of voter suppression and gerrymandering I am sure will assume the presidency in 2024. 

As part of this obstructionism and non-governing, I have to add the question of why we seem to be the only industrialized nation on earth that regularly brings itself to the point of financial collapse by threatening to refuse to raise the “debt ceiling” or “pass the spending bill” or whatever, potentially leading the US government to default on its debts and cause an implosion of world credit markets. This unrelenting political and financial brinkmanship is practiced periodically by Republicans as blackmail to achieve certain objectives, this time to prevent Biden’s vaccine mandates from being imposed.

And I have a few things to say about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Why is she so revered, worshipped and venerated? If I read another article about how wonderful it was that she shared a love of opera with and even attended performances with fellow justice Antonin Scalia, I’ll be sick. In spite of her notable work as a jurist on issues like gender equity and women’s rights, to me her greatest legacy is her arrogance resulting in opening the door and keeping it open for a generation long conservative majority on the court by staying on the Court for far too long despite her body telling her again and again that she needed to retire. Her first encounter with cancer came in 1999 and even after several more bouts and declaring herself “cancer free” in 2020 she finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer later that year, enabling President Donald Trump to appoint Amy Conan Barrett, his third Supreme Court Justice. 

If Ginsberg had been a little less arrogant and had listened to her body and her doctors, President Barack Obama could have appointed her replacement. Thus to me, Ginsberg’s most lasting legacy was her sense of superiority, of her indispensability. “I’ve said many times that I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam,” Ginsburg said in RBG, after she was asked about the calls for her to retire. “And when I can’t, that will be the time I will step down.” Well there were many times during her struggles with cancer that she could not do her job “full steam” and should have stepped down but her insufferable pride and hubris kept her there long enough for her replacement to be named by a Republican president. So when I think of Ginsberg, I don’t think of her legal ability or her importance on the Court. I can only see her foolish self-centered pride.

On another very important current issue, I cannot believe that my own Democratic Party is messing around with the SALT deduction. This limit on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income was the sole progressive element of Donald Trump’s infamous “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”, likely included in the legislation to “get back” at high tax blue states where state and local taxes were high enough to make a difference on some wealthy taxpayers federal income tax obligations. But now, to appease effected high income taxpayers, donors I am sure, in their states, many Democratic senators have proposed canceling or adjusting this limit. Corporate Democrat Senator Bob Menendez has even referred to it as “the SALT cap nightmare for 99% of NJ families”, a blatant lie, since the cap effects just the most wealthy. But I am furious that any Democrats at all are behind the push to raise or abandon this limit since doing so is quite simply a tax cut for the wealthy.

Another long standing gripe I have is with our Congress pouring money into the Pentagon. The last insult was a short time ago when Congress gave our reckless and feckless military not only all of its latest budget request of $715 billion but also added an unsolicited allotment of another $25.5 billion. And these are the same people that cry about the deficit and wring their hands because there’s no money with which to expand Medicare or provide paid family leave or free community college. The United States spends more on its military that the next 11 highest nations combined, an absolutely incredible fact. And our Pentagon spending is never audited. Our mindless largesse is pretty much a blank check for these uniformed fools to spend any way they wish. And has our vaunted military won any wars recently?

And also making me quite angry is that this monstrous bill for “defense” is deemed a “must pass” by our Congress, while Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill is being whittled down to nothing in an effort to please “King Coal” Manchin and self-styled “maverick”, Kyrsten Sinema. 

And related to the military, I have had to sit through the few NFL games I chose to watch recently and look at a host of coaches, Gatorade boys and various other hangers-on sporting expensive military garb for their “Salute to Service”. What nonsense. Precious few players, coaches and other personnel have ever served in the military. That “privilege”, since the military abandoned the draft, mostly falls to the poor, the marginalized, immigrants, Native Americans and people of color. So is all this hoopla to ease their guilty consciences? What about the cost of the military jet flyovers, the cost of all the clothing? I wrote about this deplorable practice a long time ago, December 2017 to be exact, and can’t believe the NFL is still doing it. Again, as my article suggested – why not give this monstrous pile of superfluous clothing or the money it took to buy it to the needy or to the Salvation Army or other worthy charity? Or why not honor some segments of society that are involved in helping and building, not killing and destroying – like perhaps teachers, Doctors without Borders or Peace Corps volunteers. What a terrible waste of resources….and it is still going on. 

I would also like to say a few words to Republicans who are so concerned about government spending and inflation. Interesting how no one was concerned when a gaping hole was blown in the budget with Trump’s “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”, a piece of legislation which really cut taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, not you and I and which did not create any jobs. Instead of investing and hiring more people, corporations indulged in stock buybacks with their newfound bonanza. It’s demand that induces corporations to invest and hire anyhow, not enormous profits.

I’m no economist but here’s my take on the causes of recent inflation and how to rein it in. First, there was a huge amount of pent-up demand stored in the economy because of the covid pandemic. People didn’t go to restaurants, to the movies or to live performances. Shopping malls were dead zones. While they still ordered some hard goods over the internet and kept the “essential workers” at the post office, Fedex and UPS busy, the net result was that they had tons of money left over, augmented by the checks from the federal government covid relief programs, sitting in their accounts. And as a result, production of all sorts of goods, even agricultural products, slowed. Now that things have loosened up, people are trying to spend this money, putting a serious strain on production and distribution of goods and thus temporarily raising prices. 

Another reason we are wrestling with inflation now and Republicans and Larry Summers are gleefully pointing their fingers at Democratic spending bills, is that indeed we have spent a great deal of money on fighting the pandemic and on keeping the economy strong. But we have not raised taxes at all to pay for these programs. Thus, yes indeed, there is a great deal of money sloshing around the economy chasing too few goods right now. Increased taxation, particularly of corporations and the wealthy, would reduce it. But curiously, the Democrats seem reluctant to raise taxes on those most able to pay, on those who have profited mightily from the pandemic. I find it quite interesting that after the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the Trump “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” of 2017, the Democratic Party, even when in power, has never chosen or never been able to restore them to their former levels. Even Biden’s much ballyhooed Infrastructure and Build Back Better bill, have not been funded anywhere near completely but instead by a few half hearted inadequate increases on corporations and the wealthy and some wishful thinking about what a boost in IRS funding would yield from wealthy cheaters.

In addition, vastly more industries have monopolized in recent years, making it much easier for them to raise prices arbitrarily to increase their bottom line for their investors and their overpaid CEO’s. It’s absolutely astonishing that our government has given up on fighting monopoly and concentration of production and distribution. As a sample, check out the stats in this important publication.

Another thing that really annoys me and should upset everyone else are the continual attacks on the US Postal Service mostly by our Republican friends. The complaints about subsidies for this essential service and calls for it to be “profitable” do not make any sense to me. The Post Office performs an essential service for us. What it charges via stamps and fees for mail processing and delivery defrays a significant portion of that expense and if that’s not enough to pay its bills, the federal government plugs the holes. And why shouldn’t it – the post office serves the whole country. In small towns it serves as place where people meet, chat and gossip while they deliver or pick up their mail. I oppose the continual shrill Republican calls to privatize the Post Office, as if that were any kind of solution. Oh sure, let’s privatize the post office and stuff the pockets of a “Post Office Corporation”, its new stockholders and CEO.

If we are serious about increasing Post Office revenue and making it more self sufficient, we need to consider restoring a role it enjoyed from 1911 to 1967 – providing banking services to customers through the Postal Services Savings System. Many other countries still provide banking services through their post offices. We also need to take a look at how domestic shipping prohibitions and restrictions limit revenue and provide opportunities for competitors like Fedex and UPS. We do not need to reduce costs and increase revenue by cutting personnel and slowing down delivery, as Trump holdover Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is trying to do.

Another item – I am so overjoyed that we now have a “Space Force” general – yes, replete with uniform, lots of medals and a high salary. Don’t believe me? Check out a recent Washington Post column by Josh Rogin. Yes, we not only have divided the entire world into “Combatant Commands”, like European Command, Central Command and a bunch of others covering the entire globe, but, lucky for us, our Defense Department has added a “Space Force” command and now we have a real Space Force general. I am sure before too long we’ll be conducting yet another cold war with China and Russia in outer space as they “attack our space assets” and we have to stock space with bigger and better “assets”. Really I had a hard time telling whether Rogin was writing his article with tongue in cheek. But I guess he was serious, demonstrating once again how sacrosanct the military is to both our Congress and our media. Oh, my God, Space General David Thompson cries that “US satellites are being attacked every day!” We need to retaliate!

And yet another example of Republican hypocrisy – individual rights and sanctity of the body when refusing covid vaccines, yet not where abortion rights are concerned. A woman’s right to control her body is okay if she’s refusing a vaccine and endangering herself and those around her, but is not acceptable when she’s pregnant by rape or incest or her health is threatened by pregnancy or childbirth. Incredible how the far right so selectively yells, “My body, my choice”. And furthermore, how is it that the far right is so reverential about life from conception to birth, yet so non-caring about supporting life afterward – promoting a culture of violence, flooding the country with guns and the world with military weaponry, supporting an obscene Pentagon budget and cheering the death penalty, while making war on medicine and universal healthcare, popular gun safety laws, housing for the indigent and a most spare and basic safety net for our citizens. 

Thus concludes my latest “rant”. Yes, of course, I’m angry and upset about many other things that I experience daily or read or watch in the media but I’ll have to save those for another time. Oh wait, sorry, I have to mention this one. Recently my wife and I have summoned the courage to purchase tickets and venture out for a couple of concerts, our first since the pandemic began. And while announcements were quite consistent in requiring proof of vaccination to enter and mask wearing during the concerts, we were both terribly upset to see about half of the audience remove their masks upon finding their seats and sitting down. Why? And why didn’t the concert authorities insist that masks be kept on. These unserious and careless acts permeate other activities as well. Simple shopping trips in our area have also revealed a reckless mix of mask wearing or not, both by employees and customers, confounding and contradicting what should be a collective unified struggle against this dreadful pandemic. Very disturbing indeed. But what to do? Where to start?

On the day I plan to publish this article, I was subjected to a news report that again made me very angry, so I have to end with a comment on the issue it raised – that of human rights. The US has decided not to award diplomatic recognition to the Winter Olympics in China, although our athletes may attend and compete. Why? Because of China’s “human rights record”. Please… spare me. How dare we condemn the human rights record of any nation while we turn a blind eye to the everyday human rights abuses of our “staunchest ally”, Israel. This rogue nation goes on murdering and maiming Palestinians and stealing their land, homes and livelihoods every single day, with complete impunity. American politicians at every level remain two faced and hypocritical about human rights, fearing that by raising a voice or finger against Israel might turn off the money spigot that funds their campaigns. So no more talk about the human rights abuses in China unless we also talk about them in Israel. 

There, I’m done.

From a very early age we were taught about voting and how whoever gets the most votes wins. Oh yes, when running for class president, whoever got the most votes won. And my New Jersey governor won because he received the most votes and the senators and representatives who represented my state in Congress were sent to Washington because they got more votes than their opponents. Thus power is bestowed on those who receive the most votes in an election. 

But wait…why is this not true on a national level? Chief executives in every democracy in the world win and serve their people when they receive more votes than other candidates. In every democracy, that is, except ours. Our former chief executive, Donald Trump, came in second. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, won far more votes that he did. And in 2000 Al Gore received more popular votes than George W. Bush. Yes, the reason Gore and Clinton lost was the dreadful Electoral College with its  state by state “winner take all” rules set up by our genius “founding fathers”. Perhaps if we could have included some “founding mothers” in that august group that wrote the US Constitution, their sense of fairness could have prevailed and our presidents would have been elected with the popular vote. Just think if Gore has been elected instead of Bush. The trillions of dollars and thousands of lives wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan  wars would still be with us. And I am sure we would be leading the world in saving the climate as well, considering Gore’s long held convictions concerning climate change. 

And what if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016? Yes, news of Bill prowling around the White House looking for things to do would not have been pleasant. But he could have been appointed by his wife the President to some new position, perhaps  “Ambassador to the World” or something like that, just to keep him occupied and out of trouble. But our government institutions would have been left intact, we’d still be participating in the Paris accords for climate change and the Iran nuclear deal would still be extant. We’d still be serious players on the world stage. And the clown show led by Donald Trump and his entourage of fools and incompetents featuring Ivanka and Jared would not have occurred. And perhaps most important of all, the scourge of the Covid 19 pandemic could have been contained and hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved.

But, because our country is ruled by a minority, the Republic Party and its leader Donald Trump had a grand time promoting disaster in Washington. How has this happened in a “democracy”, where the majority supposed to rule? Let’s take a look.

First of course is the aforementioned “Electoral College” method of electing our chief executive. Ostensibly put in place by our genius Founding Fathers to protect the power of small states, which it indeed does, in fact, this quirk of American presidential elections was put in place to also protect the power of slave states. The “three fifths person” designation for slaves was enough to give slave states enormous power in the Electoral College through significantly increasing their representation in the House of Representatives, even though these hundreds of thousands extra “3/5” people could not vote. 

Also simply giving small state a minimum of three votes in the Electoral College, gave them an advantage. And the recent anomalies of George W. Bush becoming president even though his opponent Al Gore had a half-million more popular votes and Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote overwhelmingly yet losing to Donald Trump, has given the Republican Party tremendous power, even though a minority party at those times. Thus it’s no wonder that recent polls have revealed that a huge majority of Republicans want to retain the Electoral College, whereas a majority of Democrats want to elect our president with the popular vote.

Another negative aspect of the Electoral College is that it reveals the apparent uselessness of voting in certain states and the phenomenon of “swing states” in others. With the statewide “winner take all” character imposed by the Electoral College, if one votes in a presidential election in overwhelmingly Democratic New York or California or in overwhelmingly Republican Wyoming or Idaho, that vote, whether Republican or Democrat, does not matter much, since the result is largely already determined. But in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Florida, one’s vote is extremely valuable since the result could go either way. For example, my wife and I could have voted for president in Vermont last November. But why, since the state would vote overwhelmingly Democratic anyhow. So we made sure we voted in our home state of Arizona, which has become a “swing state” and really needed our Democratic vote. The simple result of all this is that is if the president were elected on a nationwide popular vote, every single vote would count and voters would eagerly participate, no matter where they lived. A Vermont vote would be every bit as valuable as an Arizona vote. There would be no “wasted” votes.

The perverse power of Republican minority rule is also exemplified in our Congress and the way it conducts its business. The membership of just one legislative body in Congress, the House of Representatives, is based upon population and is therefore quite democratic. The other, the Senate, since every state gets two senators, is terribly undemocratic, revealing the anomaly of tiny states like Wyoming or South Dakota having just as much power in the Senate as populous states like California and New York. Today, each Democratic Senator from California represents 371 million American citizens, while each Republican Senator from Wyoming represents but 289,000. On a macro level, the undemocratic nature of the Senate is illustrated by the fact that, now divided 50-50, Democratic Senators represent fully 42 million more citizens than the Republican half. In fact, though in control of the Senate many times since 1996, that year was the last that the Republican party actually represented a majority of Americans. Yet Senate Republicans, representing a minority of voters, have effectively blocked a hugely popular minimum wage bill  and passed extremely unpopular tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Another way that the Republican Party, a minority party, mind you, retains power is through gerrymandering. Over ten years ago, while the Democratic Party was foolishly focusing its resources into ensuring the reelection of Barack Obama, Republicans, led by Karl Rove and financed with millions of dollars from the Koch brothers and other right wing billionaires, wisely set their sights on control of state governments, especially state legislatures, which in most states have the power to draw legislative districts after each decennial national census. So after the 2010 census results, Republican legislatures across the country began some very serious gerrymandering, guaranteeing a growth in Republican House of Representatives seats that would last through multiple elections. So even in the House of Representatives, which is by far the more democratic of our two legislative houses, although millions more voters voted for Democrats than Republicans in 2020, Republicans dramatically increased their share of seats.

In the same way that my own part-time residence in a heavily Democratic state like Vermont renders my vote superfluous – whether I vote Democratic or Republican, either way it’s wasted, gerrymandering strives to render certain votes useless as well, by “packing” or “cracking” legislative districts in order to render them uncompetitive. Cracking involves breaking up groups of voters who usually vote a particular way in order to deny them the power of voting in a block. Packing involves drawing districts in such a way as to concentrate voters of one persuasion or another in such a way as to maximize “wasted” votes or to maximize the power of your party’s voteAnd now in 2021, it appears that Republicans, who again control most state legislatures and who again do so right after a census year, are perfectly positioned to take control of the House of Representatives in 2022, even though their total votes will likely not increase and may even decrease. The Republican controlled state legislatures are poised to take their new census information and very precisely and scientifically, create legislative districts across their states that will enable Republicans to win a majority of House seats with a minority of votes. Their plans are well outlined in this New York Magazine article. Ari Berman states for the article that “Republicans could pick up anywhere from six to 13 seats in the House of Representatives — enough to retake the House in 2022 — through its control of the redistricting process in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas alone”. No need to work hard to earn more votes, or come up with programs or policies that voters prefer – gerrymandering will be sufficient.

And additional examples were offered by NYTimes columnist Jamal Bouie who noted that North Carolina’s Republican-controlled legislature has passed a new map that would, in a state that is pretty much 50-50 Democratic and Republican, give it 10 of the states 14 congressional seats. In Ohio, a proposed map would provide Democrats with but two seats out of the 15 allotted to it after the 2020 census, only 13 percent of the total. And this in a state that is only slightly more Republican than Democratic. In both cases, these two states would have to achieve blowout, supermajorities of Democratic votes in order to be proportionately represented. Ari Berman’s prediction noted in the previous paragraph is already coming true. And the minority party’s triumph for Congressional dominance has already been determined as noted by a NYTimes article just this week And as if the Electoral College and gerrymandering were not enough, just the transfer of population from several norther “swing states” to Republican strongholds in the south as revealed in the new 2020 census,  will further cement Republican minority strength in presidential and congressional elections.

One might reasonably ask why Democrat-controlled legislatures and Democratic governors are not doing the same thing right now – redrawing districts to make sure that they sent more Representatives to Congress. Well as it so happens, other than present efforts in Illinois and New York, when the Democratic Party controls state legislatures and the redistricting process, instead of drawing legislative districts to benefit their party, it instead tries to establish independent commissions to draw legislative districts. Thus by striving to be fair the Democratic Party is shooting itself in the foot.

Another way that we are ruled by a minority party is through voter suppression.  Presently the Republican Party is doing everything it can to limit the votes of poor and minority voters. Under the guise of “election security”, promoted by the “big lie” – that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 election and rampant voter fraud gave the election to his opponent, Republican controlled legislatures and Republican governors are making it more difficult to vote. They are doing so by limiting mail in voting, requiring specific types of identification for both in person and mail in voting,  limiting voting days and a variety of other changes to make voting more difficult. Georgia has even made it a crime to bring water or food to a person in a long voting line. And who does voter suppression hurt the most? Poor voters and people of color, who usually voted Democratic, again helping the minority party, the Republicans.

In addition and much more serious is that many Republican-controlled state legislatures are changing how votes are counted and who does the counting. While typically a state’s voting operation is under the supervision of a secretary of state, some state legislatures are wresting control of elections from state and local election supervisors and placing it directly under their control. If this had been the case in Georgia in the 2020 election, the state legislature could have declared Trump the winner, instead of the steadfast Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger refusing to accommodate Trump as he did. 

It’s important to note that simply because of the way the Electoral College is set up, with it being composed of electors equal to the Congressional delegation of individual states, even without all the shenanigans listed above, the minority party retains a 3.5 point advantage there. And in the Senate, because of each state having two senators and a minimum of one representative regardless of size, the minority party maintains a five point advantage. Thus, even after winning millions more votes that Republicans in 2018 and 2020, the Senate is evenly split and Democrats have but a narrow four-seat advantage in the House.

Yet another way the minority party is limiting the influence of the majority party is through packing the courts with conservative Republican judges, picked from the ranks of the Federalist Society. With the help of then majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump filled over 200 vacancies on the Federal bench, including 53 vacancies on Federal Appeals Courts. This was the highest total of any first term president since Jimmy Carter. And of course this includes the incredible number of three Supreme Court justices appointed by a single one-term president. Amazingly just two Republican presidents who were elected by a minority of the popular vote have appointed four of the justices on the Supreme Court, ensuring a conservative majority for at least a generation. And the Supreme Court, as the final arbiter in election law, has done its best to ensure minority rule, with far reaching decisions on the role of money in elections (it’s “free speech”, not corruption) and in voting rights enforcement, to name but two decisions which have further entrenched the minority party.

And finally, the filibuster, the Senate rule not in the Constitution, enables the minority party in an evenly divided Senate to repeatedly block any legislation it does not like, by requiring a 60 vote majority, very difficult or well nigh impossible to achieve in our evenly divided Senate. Consequently Republicans used it recently to block the Voting Rights Bill, called also the For the People Act, which would have constituted the largest federally mandated expansion of voting rights since the 1960’s. It would have standardized voting procedures in all states, allowing mail voting and same day registration, banned partisan gerrymandering, and limited the role of money in our elections by forcing super PAC’s to disclose major donors and creating a new public campaign financing system. Yet because of the filibuster, the Republicans in the Senate were able to keep the bill from even being debated on the floor. 

So it should be obvious that America is indeed ruled by a minority – the Republican Party. And why? It’s pretty much our lousy constitution which badly needs to be changed. It established the Electoral College, determined that each state regardless of size should have two Senators and a minimum of one Representative. It allows anti-majority rules like the filibuster. It determined that elections, even federal elections, should be a state function and it made Supreme Court justice a lifetime job, subject to the vagaries of old age and death, regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls Congress. All these factors enable one political party, a minority, to effectively thwart the will of the people and wield majority power. If the US is to remain a democracy, this must change. 

Why is it that in the United States of America we can’t ever seem to get anything completely done? We look at this problem or that problem and wrangle about how to “make it better” – like maybe “cut child poverty” or “increase the number of people who have ‘access’ to healthcare” but never decide to wipe out child poverty completely or cover all of our citizens with health insurance as so many other nations have succeeded in doing.

Not long ago, before he went on leave, in the New York Times was a column by likely the most caring of their stable of mostly great columnists, Nick Kristoff, who eloquently and sensitively describes the problem of child poverty in the United States and how President Joe Biden’s 1.9 trillion dollar American Rescue Plan will “cut child poverty in half”. Kristoff went on to quote Jason Furman, Harvard economist, asserting that  Biden’s bill is the the “most ambitious proposal to reduce child poverty ever proposed by an American president”. He further goes on to speculate about whether we’re able to “shrink” child poverty.

So what’s wrong with all this? While the intention is truly honorable and greatly needed, it’s the use of words and phrases like “cut in half”, “reduce” and “shrink” that concern me. We never seem to come up with a plan to get rid of child poverty once and for all. Isn’t it possible to do this in the world’s richest country? I would certainly think so. Do Democrats and Republicans both deem child poverty unacceptable? I would think that they do and therefore we need to stop beating around the edges of this problem and attack it head on.

So perhaps we should ask why child poverty exists here in the richest nation in the world? And why do we insist on referring to “child poverty”rather than “poverty”? Does child poverty exist in well-to-do or middle class families. Or can children be well off in poor families? Of course not, so let’s stop separating “child poverty” from the larger and more real problem of family poverty. Why we have poor families, why we have poverty in the first place, is that simply we do not ensure that families have enough money to live honorably and securely. It’s the never-ending curse of “low wage jobs”, where the head of a family can work full time and still be poor, or that the head of a family can work multiple jobs or both parents can work and still not earn enough to keep a roof over the family and keep food on the table, much less take care of health and education needs.

I mean, how long can we continue to kick the poverty can down the road? President Johnson waged his “War on Poverty” well over 50 years ago and so many aspects of his program certainly did “reduce” poverty. But did it rid this wealthy country of the disgrace and shame of harboring minions of poor people, homeless people and sick people? No it did not. And direct efforts to “reduce” poverty ever since them have been cumbersome and incremental efforts limited by work requirements, means testing and the like rather than direct financial support. Even President Biden’s much ballyhooed antipoverty efforts lately have been defined by “tax credits”, providing help for those with jobs who actually file tax returns, but little or nothing for the extremely poor who do not have any regular income and thus cannot access tax credits.

If we are serious about taking care of our children and their families, we would attack the problem of “low wage jobs” directly so that anyone who worked 40 hours a week could afford decent housing and all the other advantages that enable one to live an honorable and hopeful life. And let’s stop listening to the excuses of business owners who say that increasing employee pay would “drive them out of business”. I say too bad. Any business that cannot pay a living wage to its workers should not be in business and should relinquish its role to other entities that can provide the same service while paying its employees  reasonably.

For example, fast food companies have long protested increasing wages to a living level because they would have to raise prices of menu items. This is simply not true. In other developed countries fast food workers are paid a living wage and menu items have not skyrocketed. Apparently the fast food owner, franchisee, or corporation would simply have to be satisfied with less profit. 

This is further illustrated in another very entertaining and informative article by Nick Kristoff focusing on Denmark. 

And unfortunately we have chosen yet another incremental program to “reduce hunger” in poor families – the food stamp program or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) as it is now called. So rather than ensuring that families receive enough money to live properly, we accept their poverty but lend a hand to enhance their ability to purchase food for their families. Again, why the beating around the bush, helping people to live better while staying in poverty but never really getting  ahead. SNAP’s official description underscores its incrementalist approach: “SNAPprovides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families so they can purchase healthy food and move towards self-sufficiency”. Oh sure, how generous.

The same incremental principle has been applied when we try to even up the playing field in terms of internet access. Since poor families often cannot afford broadband connections, rather than make sure they have enough money to purchase this essential benefit, we instead provide yet another program to assist them: the Affordable Connectivity Program. This subsidy for broadband connection for poor is merely one more source of assistance for poor families that can end or be withdrawn when the other political party is in power. This is no way to end poverty or end the curse of “low wage jobs”, the main cause of poverty.

And then there is the issue of healthcare incrementalism. President Obama’s signature major legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, despite its accolades, simply increases the number of people who could afford to buy medical insurance. It has expands coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010. It did so by expanding Medicaid to cover those with low incomes, and by subsidizing private insurance for people with higher earnings. There’s those words again – “increases”, “expands” and “subsidizes”.

And since it functions through the existing jungle of corporate control of healthcare, it does so through funneling more money to healthcare corporations, either directly, in order to “cover preexisting conditions” or something similar, or indirectly, by subsidizing purchasers of healthcare insurance. And, most significant of all, it does not, will not and will never cover everyone.  As I noted in my article about Obamacare, it contains the seeds of its own destruction and ultimate demise, in that the only way it can “extend coverage” is by shelling out ever more money to insurance companies, which has to be definitely limited. There will always be “holes” in the Affordable Care Act, always be groups of people that will remain outside its coverage. Truly the only way to provide medical care to all US citizens without exception and from birth to death is through a single payer program like “Medicare for All” as so many other nations successfully provide.

And yet, despite Biden’s promise to provide a “public option” for those seeking health insurance, this effort has come to nothing. He insists that any effort to extend healthcare to more people will be done through “building on Obamacare”(there’s those incremental terms again – “extend”, “more” and “building”) This will never work since the whole objective of health insurance corporations is to increase profit, not cover all Americans. They will always be trying to limit coverage in some way or increase deductibles or maximums or copays.

And then there are other incremental programs that cover additional individuals but never everyone. One is the Children’s Health Insurance Program” or CHIP,, which was started during the Clinton administration as a halfway step to obscure the fact that Hillary Clinton’s proposed program for health insurance had miserably and spectacularly failed. Ostensibly, CHIP provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid. In most states, thus, it constitutes only yet just another incremental approach to healthcare – covering only “some” children, but not their entire families.

Okay, right now people fortunate enough to have health insurance obtain it in myriad ways – Medicaid for the indigent, Medicare for the elderly, CHIP for children who qualify, medical insurance from employers for those who have jobs and whose employers provide it. Ah, but another problem – the apparently infinite variety of programs, higher or lower copays, higher or lower maximum reimbursements, limiting who or what can provide the care, and on and on – all are related to our profit based system and incremental approach. Why can’t all Americans be covered from birth to death, like Canada does, or Norway, or Finland, or every other developed country in the world – and at a much lower cost? How amazing it would be to simply go to the doctor or hospital, present your identification, get treated and go home, knowing that all providers were fairly compensated but that profit was not part of the system. And of course, Medicare itself is an incremental program, in that it does not provide for all of the health needs of our elderly population, containing the glaring holes of no coverage for hearing, vision or dental needs. This lack is now ostensibly being addressed by a dizzying array of “Medicare Advantage” programs, all provided by for profit corporations who reap those profits from overly generous reimbursements from the government. And their vaunted coverage of hearing, vision and dental needs is woefully insufficient.

And now there is childcare incrementalism – even if the “Reconciliation Bill” goes through entirely, it will only be “narrowing the gap” between what European countries pay for childcare and what the US pays. Reliable childcare is absolutely essential in an advanced nation like ours. Yet people struggle every day, just as my wife and I did when our children were young, to find reliable and reasonably priced childcare, when both parents choose to or must work. Rather than having to seek out childcare among neighbors, friends and relatives, Europeans are able to send their children to professionally run and staffed facilities provided by the state – what a difference from the risky, varying quality here in the “richest country in the world”. And that cost to a family is heavily subsidized by the state as well. But here, even with the long shot effort of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation, which may never pass anyhow, we will only be partially crossing the chasm between what we have and should have. Again, an incrementalist approach to a serious social need.

And also consider our feeble efforts to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, even itself, though a big step, wholly insufficient to provide a decent life for its recipients. Our feckless Congress has steadily refused to raise the minimum wage and every single bill proposed or passed at the state level to do so raises it so gradually to that by the time anyone reaches $15, the effects of inflation will have rendered it already inadequate. Fifteen dollars an hour is in itself merely an incremental goal. If the present federal minimum wage of $7.25 was adjusted for inflation since its inception it would be $22 per hour now. 

And I suppose that the most important example of the curse of incrementalism is our scattershot effort to fight the existential threat of a steadily and inexorably warming climate. Yes, we have some electric cars on the road, many more solar installations than ten years ago, and a steadily increasing number of “wind farms” on the plains, mountaintops and coasts of our country, but not nearly enough to make an impact on our shameful position as the number two carbon polluter in the world. And the country that is number one, China, has rapidly become our “rival” or our “enemy”, making necessary cooperation between the two to combat climate change all but impossible. And fossil fuel companies still enjoy privileged status among the “lawmakers” that inhabit our useless Congress and thus are still largely unregulated and still, would you believe it, subsidized by the US government. And President Biden’s “Build Back Better” program contains revolutionary legislation for the climate promising to “reduce emissions by 50 percent by 2030” so is accordingly incrementalist at best. And even this incremental approach is apposed by “King Coal” Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. So unfortunately, this is the best that the world’s number two carbon emitter, the United States, can do. Michael T. Klare in a brilliant article for Tom Dispatch makes it crystal clear that for the world to save itself, China and the U.S. must unite as climate partners and lead the way for other nations to follow. If they do not, climate catastrophe is inevitable. We cannot any longer be incremental in this most important fight. 

And then of course as a nation we have to contend with covid incrementalism. Certain elements of our society cannot seem to get it through their heads that we have required vaccination for serious diseases for decades, with nary a peep from anyone save the few rabid antivaxxers who are prepared to sacrifice the health of their children on the altar of misinformation and obstinance. When I was a child and the Salk polio vaccine and later the Sabin version became  available, millions of thankful parents and children lined up to get immunized, with little concern  about its origin or manufacturer or concerns about its efficacy. And I do not remember any of the corporate Pfizer – Moderna – Johnson & Johnson wrangling and profit seeking nor any politicization of vaccines that characterize the US struggle and dysfunction with covid 19 vaccines today. And, likely most important, there were successful efforts to immunize the entire world against this dreadful crippling disease so that today isolated cases of the disease lurk in but three countries – Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Covid 19 cannot be controlled until the entire world is vaccinated. But this effort is incremental at best since our government has chosen to protect the patents and formulae of the corporations who have developed the vaccines, despite their development being financed by billions in government subsidies. Many US citizens, including myself, have longed for this “richest country in the world” to lead in immunizing everyone everywhere, just as we did with polio vaccines. But instead we have decided to allow pharmaceutical corporations to selfishly maximize profits. Pfizer has in fact become a quasi government entity all by itself – negotiating sales of its vaccines directly with governments across the world independent of any US government role.

And finally, historically we’ve used incremental means to resolve racial segregation issues – school busing to integrate schools was really beating around the edges of the issue, rather than facing it head on and resolving issues like income disparity and racism that created segregated housing in the first place. We very badly need to address racial segregation head on which would include properly educating our population about slavery, Jim Crow and lynching in this country as well as our country’s and our hemisphere’s disgraceful genocide of its native population. Correction of our nation’s terrible inequality, especially evident in its black and other minority populations, would help too. And what about reparations? This whole issue is far to large to address here in one paragraph but we need to face it and solve it as a nation. Get it done once and for all.

And one more thing. The Democrats need to hire someone like Frank Luntz to help with their messaging. Why on earth have they always called this latest bill the “Build Back Better” bill, which has all the oomph of Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together” or even more maddening and obfuscating, the “$3.5 Trillion Reconciliation Bill”. This bill contains hugely important and popular legislation that will help all Americans – like making Medicare covering vision, hearing and dental needs, establishing a universal pre-K program and a childcare program for all families, making community college free, a substantial push against climate change and much more. While some very popular provisions have already been cut, to garner more Congressional support, some better messaging would have likely had a very positive effect and the entire bill would have had a much better chance at surviving and becoming law.

We always knew when Dad and Mom had a fight. No one ever said anything, there were no raised voices, but the atmosphere in the house changed so that we all knew. It could be the heavy silence between them, or the silence of an otherwise gregarious father, or the concern and sadness in the face of a normally smiling mother. Or it could be big sister Barbara’s lowered voice and guarded conversation. Simply, we knew it was there.

Things were not going well financially. What little my father earned, he kept mostly for himself, and Mom did what she could to earn money for the family. Mostly, as I remember, she did this by raising chickens. Sometimes there were laying hens and we sold eggs door to door in the nearby towns. I must have cut a rather pathetic figure, meekly knocking on a stranger’s door and asking if they wanted to buy fresh eggs. Or sometimes there were chickens raised to sell for food, in which case strangers came to our door, responding to a sign at the end of the lane. Then we had to catch a couple of good looking pullets or roosters by the legs, tie them up and throw them in the customer’s car trunk. We never knew exactly what happened after that – only that a couple more chickens were sold and Mom had some money.

But to raise chickens required some limited capital investment, and Mom and Dad’s differences sometimes interfered with this. Before you could fatten the young ones to sell for meat or keep long enough to become laying hens, we needed to buy the chicken feed and ground oyster shells for calcium. If Mom had kept enough from egg or chicken sales, things were fine; if not, Dad was required to invest in the enterprise, often reluctantly. And if things were tough between them, he didn’t.

Once, we had gone through the entire process for raising chickens for sale – first ordering the chicks, which miraculously came in the mail straight to the local post office. Little fuzzy chirping, cheeping little creatures that had to be fed, watered and kept warm. Chicken mash was fed to them from flat containers, and they were watered from contrivances involving an inverted Mason jar full of water. They were kept warm by an electric light bulb and reflector dangling above them. Thus were they nurtured and fed and coaxed toward avian adolescence and adulthood to be sold as food or if kept long enough, as a source of food. There were the occasional casualties – the chick smaller than the rest, who gradually starved to death because of his inability to get close to the food, and, weakening, became further unable and finally expired. Or there was the chick which was different colored than the rest, who was picked on because of the difference and had to be clever to get the food he wanted, and who maybe became stronger doing so much running away from the rest. 

One such chicken, a black chick in a litter of yellow, actually became a pet of sorts. Hard to believe that that little bird brain could so be trained but he actually came when called. Hollering “Blackie” would cause him to emerge from the bushes and come toward you to get picked up and petted, or to receive a dish of more special food served in a protected area like under an overturned crate.

But once when a flock of chickens was on its way to adulthood, in that stage of growing feathers and shedding the fuzz, that dreadful time in our family came again and we could all feel it. The air was heavy with apprehension, fear and questioning. We whispered to each other as if afraid that the sound of our voices would make things worse. Gradually it became clear that Mom had no more money for feed and Dad wasn’t going to help. And there were fifty plus ravenous chickens out in the chicken house with no food.

Chickens are excitable creatures. Even in the best and most relaxed of circumstances, a suddenly opened door or sudden noise will cause them cackle excitedly and to flap excitedly into the air raising clouds of noxious chicken house bedding and manure dust. So an egg gatherer or chicken feeder or waterer had to move slowly and stealthily. Hungry chickens who had ran out of food were even more excitable and ran toward their feeding dishes as they were newly supplied. Thirsty chickens knew when the water came and crowded madly around the waterers to get it as well. 

But the behavior of our starving chickens was horrifying. A shadow on the window caused them to flock toward it and fly madly at the window and flap their wings against it. They ran wildly toward an opening door, in anticipation of feed. The slightest noise caused wild excitement of the expectation of food. The horror and the pity of this behavior in the face of hopelessness I never forgot. All of us felt helpless, afraid to get involved in why there was no feed, fearful of the fury of Dad, if challenged or questioned, or if sympathizing or taking sides with Mom. But there they were – chickens slowly starving to death and nothing offered for their relief. Whether there really was no money, or whether it just was refused for the purpose of feeding the chickens, we never knew. All we knew was that these creatures were starving to death.

Dad’s frequent absence at that time, and our collective pity and concern for the horrible plight of our chickens forced a decision. With Mom’s permission, I connected the garden hose to the exhaust pipe of our 51 Chevy pickup and ran it to the door of the chicken house. The mad activity of starving chickens at these signs of nearby movement, was quieted little by little as they succumbed to the poisonous exhaust and one by one flopped down to stillness. After an hour or so, a quick look inside revealed piles of prostrate, white feathered forms everywhere and no movement at all. 

The dead chickens then had to be buried and that was my job also. After digging several large holes in the nearby cornfield, I loaded these dead chicken carcasses into a wheelbarrow and trip by trip dumped them into the holes to be buried. Having lifted many healthy chickens, it was terrible to see how little these dead creatures weighed. To avoid touching them, I used a pitchfork to load them and was surprised to see how easily the tines passed through the pitiful thin bodies – feathers, skin and bones, little more.

The job finished, the next thing to do was to try to start over and put this dreadful incident in the past. The situation between Mom and Dad seemed to get better, now that the chickens were gone. Although the traumatic incident remained with us for many years, this remained the major means for Mom to make money. And we waited for another shipment of little chicks to arrive.