Was it COVID Brain Fog or Writers Block?

It’s time to let the creative juices flow once more!

It's been a while since I have done it.
Put words to the page and then I've spun it.
Sending to readers a timely missive.
Hoping my followers aren't too dismissive.

I'm not sure of precise causation
That caused two weeks of blog cessation.
What was it kept my fingers napping
Instead of on the keyboard tapping.

It started when two lines appeared
On the COVID test I'd commandeered.
The first line meant the test was working.
The second confirmed the virus's lurking.

Two Moderna shots then double boosted.
Yet still in my nose the microbe roosted.
With coughs and sneezes and feeling sickly.
Into quarnatine I disappeared quickly.

So empty moments were now my friend.
Hours  of leisure I thought I'd spend.
Writing blogs 'bout things that were popping.
I might have been sick but the world was not stopping.

My mind was all foggy, could not concentrate at
The things going on that I'd want to debate at.
But now it's much better and I'm seeing clearly
Here are some things I missed most severly.

There were hearings in DC that were causing a ruckus
They told how Trump and his friends were trying to f*ck us.
Thanks to Adam, Elaine and of course Ms Liz Cheney.
We were sure mesmerized learning about how insane he.

The planet is hotter, it's like a fire pit glowing
Who knows just what to our kids we're bestowing.
Heat waves, deadly storms, and still the President's action
Was blocked by refrains from coal's friend Hot Joe Manchin.

But up in the cosmos there was such delight
As the Webb telescope provided a sight.
Of the universe edges as they were at formation
I say it's Big Bang, some say God's creation.

Those topics I missed while my brain it was snoozing
So my silence for weeks I hope your excusing.
I'll do what I can to get back up to snuff.
For reading this verse, I can't thank you enough.

_________________________________

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Security Vs Privacy–Which Matters to You?

I was listening to an online Homeowners Association Board meeting the other night (Barb does an exemplary job as Board President) as a resident gave a presentation about an item not on the agenda.

Jack had done some research and wanted the Board to know about a crime reduction security product that could be available to our subdivision. The product consists of a security camera to be placed at the subdivision entrance (we only have one) to photograph each entering automobile and transmit the license plate and other identifying information of the car to a database of vehicles reported as stolen or wanted for involvement in other criminal activity.

Any matches are immediately flagged and sent to the local police dispatch center for a real-time response. The police can apprehend the driver and prevent a crime from occurring in our subdivision. And by the way, all data is stored “in the cloud” for 30 days.

The Board asked Jack a few questions but since the item was not on the agenda Barb appropriately limited the discussion and let Jack know this would be considered at a future date.

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of a system like this horrifies me! Every time I or a guest of mine enters my own subdivision, the police will have a permanent record of the entrance. Who will have access to that data? For what purposes might it be used? What has happened to any sense of privacy?

Yes, our subdivision currently has a security camera. It records comings and goings and if, and only if, a crime is committed in the subdivision, those recordings are reviewed to see if the perpetrator can be identified. I get that. But to me, that is very different than the prospect of screening every car in real-time.

I know that surveillance is part of our daily lives. I know that every time I go past a toll plaza on the Tri-State the I-Pass system creates a permanent record. And I know credit cards and cell phones also leave never-disappearing traces of my whereabouts. But these are systems and devices I choose to use. And to the best of my knowledge, they are not immediately cross-referenced to a criminal database.

I value at least a little bit of privacy, even though I am not as privacy-conscious as I should be. I still use Google to do my online searches rather than the (claimed to be) more private DuckDuckGo. I probably use unsecured WiFi when I shouldn’t. I’m sure I make a thousand other mistakes that destroy my privacy. But do the local gendarmes really need a record of when I come home at night?

Security vs Privacy. It is a delicate balance. But this proposed security system is too intrusive for me. In the security vs privacy battle, I vote for privacy on this one.

How about you? Tell me what you think. I promise I won’t be tracking you!

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The Fight Against Cancer Never Rests. Northwestern’s Rebecca Blank and WXRT’s Lin Brehmer Have Revealed Their Battles.

Rebecca Blank and Lin Brehmer (Photos courtesy of Chicago Tribune)

Two days this week, two announcements that saddened me, one of which really shook me.

A 1975 Northwestern graduate, I wear the purple proudly. A family trip to Ryan Field for a football game is an annual event. So I was disheartened to read the email this week that Rebecca Blank, the incoming university president-elect at NU has stepped away from her role to face a battle with aggressive cancer. I wish her the best and trust that my alma mater will again find a top-notch academic to fill the role of university president.

The other notification has struck me more deeply. I missed the Tweet yesterday, spending a lovely afternoon on Lake Michigan, but this morning, the first news story I read was about WXRT radio guy Lin Brehmer. He too is stepping away for a while, taking a sabbatical from his role as the midday jock on my favorite radio station to begin chemotherapy for metastatic prostate cancer.

While I must concede that Rebecca Blank is just a name to me, Lin Brehmer has been a daily voice in my life for years. I would time my morning commute to be sure I was in the lab for “Three for Free,” the on-air trivia game orchestrated by Lin and Mary Dixon. A double-digit number of wins soothed my ego still bruised over long ago losses on Jeopardy! and It’s Academic.

And thanks to social media I am one of the thousands of listeners who have a bit of a relationship with Lin. He and I have Twitter bantered over Janet Jackson’s nomination to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, over an awful Guster song, and most recently over my allegation that the station program director required one Cure song per shift. “Just don’t play Friday I’m In Love on Fridays…”

As a pathologist specializing in the diagnosis of urologic diseases, I see about 5 cases of prostate cancer a day. While many, perhaps most, of those men do well, I still feel a sense of loss for each of those husbands, sons, and brothers whose prostate biopsy is under my microscope. I know their lives have changed. So it is for Lin. (No, he is not a patient of mine and I was not aware of his diagnosis or the previous treatment that he has revealed in his Tweet.)

Lin is always everyone’s best friend in the whole world. I know the wishes from all of those admirers are bringing him strength and leading to a successful outcome. I can’t wait to hear his voice on “XRT once more.

And just a final reminder to all of you. Men, ask your primary care physician to check your PSA level. Ladies, remind the men in your life. Just do it.

________________________________

The above is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.

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Highland Park Reminds Us That Guns Kill People and Destroy Our Liberty

I did not want to be the first person to write about the outrage in Highland Park or even one of the first ten or the first hundred.

I was not there on that horrible July 4th morning. Nor was anyone from my family, nor any neighbors. And I don’t know any of the deceased nor any of those left orphaned or widowed or just bereft. I wanted those people to have a chance to tell their stories first.

But I have walked those streets in downtown Highland Park. I’ve had an apple pancake at Walker Brothers, bought canasta supplies at Ross, selected camp stuff for the kids at Gearhead when it was still Uncle Dan’s. This deadly act felt so personal.

My life has been touched by death many times. Natural causes, suicides, and even a few murders. But I can’t think of anything so senseless, so selfish, or so shameful as this tragedy. The gut-punch won’t go away.

We lament today but I fear that except for a handful of people whose lives have been irretrievably altered, nothing will change.

High-powered rifles will continue to be a fact of life and death. Handguns will continue to kill police, to kill offenders, to kill bystanders. And don’t tell me they are needed for self-defense. I’m not buying it, and these guys aren’t either.

I am not sure how and why our country reached this state of firearm saturation. I am not sure what we can do about it. The new Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is a first step, most significant in showing that congressional sanity is a possibility.

Freedom to yield a weapon needs to stop when it touches my freedom or your freedom or anyone’s freedom to live a long, loving, and legal life. That’s what Independence Day now means to me.

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Pudding It On the Line. Who Remembers This?

I caught Dan Bernstein and Laurence Holmes, two WSCR radio hosts, talking about pudding the other day. “You take the banana pudding from Jewel, plop some Nilla Wafers on top, and it tastes like an upside-down banana cream pie. It is the best.”

Well, guys, I may value your opinion on whether a particular White Sox manager should be fired and the likelihood that the Bears will win more than 5 games in the upcoming season, but as for pudding, you know nothing, Lawrence Holmes.

Maybe it’s because of my history as a Jewel employee in the 1970s, but I avoid the fresh food in the Jewel deli section. No, if I want store-bought pudding I am going to head to one of my neighborhood Sunset Foods grocery stores and get a pound of their homemade rice pudding.

I sprinkle a bowl full of the pudding with some cinnamon, mix in some pieces of frozen banana and there’s a treat I can curl up in front of the TV with to watch an episode of Yellowstone or Stranger Things. That one pound is enough to get me through a week of TV melodramas.

There wasn’t always a Sunset Foods in my life. Long ago, my dad and I enjoyed a different store-bought pudding. It wasn’t from the deli counter. In fact, it wasn’t even fresh. It was a frozen treat from Birds Eye, the masters of freezer delights back in the 1960s. Called Cool ‘n Creamy, it was sold in plastic tubs that looked just like the one Cool Whip comes in today. And it was delicious.

Cool ‘n Creamy came in several flavors, Dad and I were fans of vanilla. I would eat mine plain, while he would douse his bowlful with Himbeersaft, an imported red raspberry syrup. We didn’t have cable TV or streaming service back then, but we could still sit in front of our old black and white Zenith and watch Jack Brickhouse broadcast a ball game on WGN.

Sadly, Dad passed many years ago and Cool ‘n Creamy is a long-gone relic of a different age. And I have moved on.

So Dan and Laurence, enjoy your banana pudding/upside-down banana cream pie. I’m going to be digging into another bowl of my rice pudding concoction—and loving it!.

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