Cooperation, planning made vaccination effort efficient

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Jan. 22, 2021.

 

            The path to COVID-19 virus vaccination began at home. We saw the notices about a mobile vaccination event at Fike High School Tuesday, Jan. 19. The question, “should we or shouldn’t we?” took a while to sort out.

            The organizers of the Fike drive-through vaccination plan were reassuring in their careful details for getting thousands of Wilson County residents inoculated against the virus that has killed 400,000 Americans in less than a year.

It was never a question of whether to be vaccinated. The debate, which continued to Tuesday morning at our house, was whether we wanted to spend hours and hours in line for a shot in the arm or postpone a vaccination and risk our health. Our children urged us to get vaccinated NOW.

            Our slight reluctance about joining the event at Fike was based, at least in part, on the four hours we spent waiting to cast our vote on the first day of early voting back in October. The instructions from the Health Department to bring water and snacks, as if you’re going on a very long hike, didn’t reassure me.

We discussed strategies for dealing with the expected long lines. A WRAL aerial video showing a long line of jammed traffic approaching Fike nearly scared us away. Later, we heard that someone, in his eagerness to get the vaccine, had had gotten in line at 3:30 a.m.

            Our tentative strategy for the vaccination clinic was to wait until the first wave of patients had time to get through the procedure. With luck, I thought, the first recipients of the vaccine would leave the Fike parking lot by 10 or 11 a.m. So we packed enough food and water to keep us hydrated and nourished through late afternoon.

            We left our house, less than a mile from Fike, about 10:30 and were pleasantly surprised to see that the expected traffic jams had not reached Nash Street. After a quick debate over the best route to Ward Boulevard, we fell into line behind a string of cars just past the traffic cones and the police directing cars to Harrison Drive.

            I kept a log on my phone that shows we reached Harrison Drive at 10:44. At 10:53, the line was moving slowly. I’ve seen worse traffic jams on I-540. Much worse. The car radio was tuned to NPR, which was interviewing a 12-year-old about how to heal America’s divisions. Really? I thought. (Please forgo your “OK Boomer” responses.) At 11, we reached the Fike property, and at 11:10 we switched the radio to 89.5 FM; the station provided helpful instructions to people headed to the vaccination clinic. The instructions were clear and simple.

            We put on our facemasks as we approached volunteers checking on participants .At 11:15, we had our first contact with the volunteers and public employees running the clinic. Each of us received a green wristband, signifying we would get the vaccine. We put on our facemasks. A volunteer in his fluorescent vest pointed to a discarded paper facemask on the sidewalk and made known his disgust for the litterer. At 11:20, we entered the parking lot and could see a beehive of activity ahead of us. At 11:30, our arms were checked for the wristband. We knew we were getting close, and we relaxed as we listened to an NPR story about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby.”

            At 11:40, we received our vaccinations. The only difficulty was in extracting my upper arm from the warm clothing I wore, having expected to be trapped for hours in a cold car. I wriggled free from three layers, and we continued on through the parking lot, following instructions along the way. At 11:55, we were checked for any negative reaction from the vaccine. None noted. We departed Fike onto Harrison Boulevard at noon.

            In October, we had stood in a four-block line to vote. It took about four hours. In contrast, we got our vaccines and were back home in less than two hours. The entire event was well planned and coordinated with law enforcement, the Health Department, EMS, and dozens of volunteers working together to make the clinic safe, efficient and pleasant. It’s amazing what can be accomplished when we all work together! Thanks to all who participated and made this much easier than I ever expected.

            We have appointments for our second dose in February. We look forward to more of the dazzling cooperation, efficient planning and helpful assistance we experienced with the first dose. It was easy to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19. I recommend it to all.

Frightening siege of Capitol stirs pleasant memories

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Jan. 15, 2021

 

            The frightening siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 left me feeling much the same way I did after the 9-11 attack — drained, grieving, angry, eager to punish everyone responsible. I wanted to gather my children — all gone from our home in 2001 and in college or at jobs. I could not pull them together and wrap my arms around them in a senseless effort to keep them safe.

            Last week’s insurrection made me feel the same way, but it also sparked a different reaction. The rioters on Jan. 6 desecrated the Capitol, the temple of American democracy, the globally recognized symbol of American principles and strength. The rioters, calling themselves patriots, did all they could to ruin that building for whom most visitors, including me, felt awe, pride and sacred respect.

            They paraded through the great Rotunda carrying banners and flags like barbarians laying siege to Rome and carrying weapons like a conquering army; they broke windows and doors, ignoring the historic value in the 220-year-old Capitol; they smeared chemicals or other substances on the statues of great national leaders in Statuary Hall; the chemicals they sprayed damaged magnificent, priceless paintings hanging on the Capitol’s walls; like pre-teens reveling in their immaturity, they live-streamed their haughty contempt for a republic that has stood for 240 years.

            Perhaps worst of all, they defecated on stone and marble floors of the Capitol, showing that they have no more respect or manners than wild animals. They laughed at the damage they were doing. The one positive was their insouciance. The videos and photos they took show them parading through a felonious crime scene. Law enforcement agencies are identifying and charging them based on the prideful evidence they left.

            When I worked in Washington 1972-1975, I visited the Capitol several times, took visiting relatives there, telling them it was my favorite building in D.C. I loved the grandeur of the building. In those quieter times, before the rise of international and domestic terrorism, the Capitol was pretty much wide open. You could climb the steps on the East Front or the West Front of the Capitol, go inside, marvel at the beautiful construction of granite and marble, the rotunda soaring to the Capitol dome, the huge paintings of events in the founding of the United States and other historic times.

            It was the most impressive and humbling building in the nation’s capital. The rise of terrorism in the past 40 years forced changes in access to the Capitol; a new underground visitors center made it possible to screen visitors and prohibit suicide bombers or gunmen, but visitors were denied the feeling of walking up those Capitol steps and entering the iconic building.

            The Jan. 6 insurrection and plans of some of the same groups to disrupt Joe Biden’s inauguration made me remember the novel “Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove. His 1992 book combines historical fiction with science fiction fantasy. The book opens with the 1870 inauguration of Robert E. Lee as president of the Confederacy. The South had won the Civil War because some die-hard slaveholders found a way to time travel to 20^th Century South Africa, where they obtained AK47 rifles and the technology to make more of them. With this advantage, they defeated the United States and assassinated Lee at his inauguration, because he had endorsed freeing all slaves.

            Unless law enforcement does a better job of protecting the Capitol, Congress and the new president, we could have a challenger for Turtledove’s frightening fiction.

Use your stimulus check to do right, do good

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Jan. 12, 2021

 

Have you received your stimulus check? Have you spent it? Did you take the money and run, spending the U.S. Treasury funds on something too frivolous for hard-earned wages? Or did you carefully consider what to do with a largely unexpected windfall and choose something useful for you and the economy?

I admit that I was a little blasé about the checks from Uncle Sam. I wasn’t going to refuse it, but I was not especially eager to get it. The so-called stimulus check is not really a check for most of us. Those of us who paid taxes out of a checking account or who received a federal tax refund directly deposited in a bank account could simply wait to see the new money show up in our accounts. So it’s not a stimulus check; it’s more of an automated funds transfer.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman doesn’t like the “stimulus” moniker. The aim of this transfer of funds is not to stimulate the economy, he has written; its aim is to help the economy and many households recover from the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. This economic downturn is not a monetary problem like a housing crisis or a stock market collapse, Krugman says, it’s more like a natural disaster, such as an earthquake or a hurricane that devastates an area where the disaster occurred. Just as the federal government provides relief after a hurricane, it should provide relief for economic disasters, too, to prevent worse consequences.

One reason for my lack of eagerness about that check was the uncertainty about the government money. Long after the problem was recognized and legislation was drafted to allocate the money, Congress and the White House could not agree on the size of the stimulus (or whatever) checks (or transfers). And then President Trump, who had not been an active participant in the negotiations over the relief package, demanded $2,000 per person checks, not the $600 checks Congress had written into the bill passed by the House and Senate. So I wasn’t really expecting money when I saw it — $600 each for my wife and me, who file our taxes jointly, in the bank account.

What should we do with it? A relative recounted boastfully over the summer that he had spent the first stimulus checks approved in March by stimulating the economy. He spent all his stimulus money, plus some more, hiring local firms to make long-postponed repairs to his house.

Our stimulus checks will also go into the local economy, the nonprofit economy. Having worked for two nonprofits, I know what a struggle it is to raise money for good causes. Nonprofits have been hit hard by the pandemic. Some reliable fundraisers could not be held because of pandemic restrictions. Donors who were out of work or who were tightening their household budgets gave less during the pandemic. United Way of Wilson County suffered a $500,000 decline in donations this year. The Salvation Army has closed its Wilson branch.

My wife and I recognize that these nonprofits and their clients are more in need than we are, we’ll give away our CARES Act windfall and provide a stimulus to local and regional nonprofit organization.

If, like us, you have “enough” to see you through, spend your stimulus checks in the nonprofit sector where it’s really needed. Join us.

‘All enemies, foreign and domestic …’

 

All enemies, foreign and domestic ... Every member of the U.S. Armed Forces swears an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies. Don’t overlook the domestic enemies.

 

The storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by an unruly but well rehearsed mob has shaken America’s trust in its institutions and traditions. Repeatedly, the scene of scruffy-looking insurgents breaking windows and doors to the Capitol and overwhelming understaffed Capitol police was described as similar to “banana republics”, former Soviet republics or struggling Middle East states. These were not the scenes Americans and allies have associated with the United States of America, the world’s oldest and most successful republic.

 

In only a couple of hours Wednesday, America’s pride in its successful foundation of free and fair elections, peaceful transition of power, and checks and balances among three branches of government was shattered by hundreds of people intent on disrupting the final certification of the presidential election.

 

Members of Congress and Capitol Hill staff were terrorized by the gun-toting, flag-waving, looting, furniture-breaking, disrespectful, smirking anti-American traitors. Some posed proudly for photos of themselves with priceless statues, artwork and furniture in the seat of America’s government. It was an attempted revolt, an unprecedented coup against the government. Damage to the Capitol was the worst since the British Army’s burning of the building during the War of 1812.

 

This insurrection was the direct result of President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat in the Nov. 3 election. Again and again Trump has claimed that the election was “rigged,” that his opponent cheated, that voting machines were manipulated against him, etc. He or his supporters filed more than 50 lawsuits in state and federal courts asserting his claims that he was the winner, “by a landslide,” but all of those lawsuits were rejected in state and federal courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Trump encouraged his blindly loyal supporters to go to Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the certification of the electoral vote. He held a rally near the White House and encouraged the huge crowd to walk to the Capitol, telling them falsely that his re-election had been “stolen” and urged followers to “fight” for a reversal of the election outcome. He declared (again) that he would “never concede.”

 

Thus inspired, the Trump followers went to the Capitol and pushed aside crowd control barriers, rushed an entrance, shoving aside the handful of Capitol Police and paraded through the most sacred parts of the Capitol, including the Senate Chamber. They had to be stopped at gunpoint from claiming the House Chamber. Members of Congress and staff were escorted to safety, but some were injured in the process, and one protester was shot and died.

 

Brave and determined, Congress chose to resume the electoral vote validation once the Capitol was secured, completing the largely routine action in the early morning Thursday. Most of the Trump sycophants who had indicated they oppose the validation changed their minds after being repulsed by the unruly Trump supporting criminals who terrified elected officials.

 

Several people have urged a strong, strict response to this breach of the U.S. Capitol, the most iconic structure in America. The people who broke into the building, destroyed windows and furnishings and mocked the sacred fixtures of this 228-year-old symbol of democracy. Security cameras throughout the Capitol complex should allow identification of the hoodlums who broke in. They should be charged with breaking and entering, theft, destruction of public and private property and any and all other appropriate offenses.

 

Prosecutors should make it clear that such wanton behavior will not be tolerated, and America will not allow rioting in government buildings. The enablers of these rioters, the senators who refused to consider impeachment charges against Trump, the members of Congress who bought into the frivolous election lawsuits and gave other support to Trump’s anti-American behavior should be shunned by Republican Party officials and by all voters. Let them pay at the ballot box.

 

Wednesday’s insurrection left me thinking about the 9-11 attacks. The Capitol was reportedly targeted by the one airplane that failed to complete its mission. The rioters did not do as much damage as the Arab terrorists would have, but the fact that these conspirators were fellow Americans makes the shock and pain worse.

 

Americans should also hold responsible those who misled gullible rioters, including those who follow wacky conspiracy theories such as QAnon. President Trump is largely responsible for stoking the flames of false claims about a stolen election, blaming Democrats and other “enemies” for Trump’s loss. Trump has repeated these lies incessantly and shows no restraint, no matter how many times courts and other organizations reject his lies. He should pay a penalty for his inflammatory lying that has endangered individual Americans and harmed democratic institutions.

 

Some members of Congress have suggested removing Trump as unable to fulfill his duties under the 25^th Amendment. Trump has only days left in his turn, so the timing would be tight. A better but perhaps more difficult solution is to impeach Trump — yes, again. His speech to the rioters before they stormed the Capitol seems to fit clearly the definition of inciting to riot. His earlier recorded telephone call asking the governor of Georgia to “find me 11,870 votes” is clearly an impeachable offense. The offenses are clear and recent, simplifying the process.

 

The timing will be difficult, but if Congress (with both chambers ruled by Democrats) could squeeze it in. If they don’t stop him via impeachment, Trump will likely pardon more criminal friends, possibly including himself and his family members. He also can issue executive actions that strike at the heart of democracy and the American system. The most important benefit of impeachment is that it would forever ban Trump from holding public office, ensuring that he will not be able to run in 2024. America cannot stand another Trump presidency.

The calendar turns once again

 

This post was published in the Wilson Times Dec. 31, 2020

 

“______ New Year!” Well, we can hope it will be happy, but the only way for certain is to go ahead and live through it, happy or not so much. Surely, 2021 will be better than 2020; it can hardly be much worse than an unprecedented pandemic year.

Wilson residents will have to get used to a future without the landmark BB&T towers. The tower (just one at the time) was new when I came to Wilson 41 years ago. I got to marvel at the construction of the second tower about five years later and still later attended a meeting in the bank’s wood paneled board room on the sixth floor of the tower. The big windows provided impressive views of the city where BB&T began 130 years ago.

Although the towers ceased to be the bank’s headquarters, thanks to a 1994 bank merger that moved the executive suites to Winston-Salem, the landmark stood proudly as the tallest building along Wilson’s busiest street. Another bank merger completed in 2020 replaced the historic BB&T name.

Then a week before Christmas, the tallest buildings in town crumbled after controlled explosions turned the site into a salvage pile. Thanks you, city of Wilson, the demolition company and others who captured the impressive event on video. I shared videos with my children who grew up six blocks from the towers and with friends who had lived in Wilson.

People are eager to see what the Nash Street site will become when its revitalization plans are completed. A little farther east on Nash Street, a new Wilson Arts Center is taking shape in a former retail site. The Arts Council had earlier moved to the100-year-old BB&T headquarters, a beautiful but cramped space with more charm than practicality.

Nearby, the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park came into its own in 2020, although the popular Whirligig Festival had to be cut back sharply because of the pandemic. 2021 could see the addition of more businesses near the park and a more vibrant downtown with residential living and expanding small businesses.

Every year, people around the world assess the world and their lives; many make new year’s resolutions, promising to do more, do better, accomplish more, help more, etc.

Resolutions are probably a good thing, but the Jan. 1 of each year is not a special date, from a scientific, religious or historic perspective. It does not mark an equinox or a solstice, which have astronomical meaning, or a historic event. It’s just a convenient date for dividing one year from another.

Dare I say it? Happy New Year. Let’s make 2021 better than 2020.