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March 8, 2021 This message includes updates on the COVID-19 response from CDC. If you are participating in activities outside your home, like an outdoor yoga class or just picking up a few items at the grocery store, be sure to do so safely. Have an extra mask, tissues, and hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol on hand. When considering activities, think about how many people you’ll interact with, if you’ll be able to stay at least 6 feet away from others, if others will be wearing masks, and how long the activity lasts. Outdoors is safer than indoors. Wear a mask; Stay at least 6 feet from others; avoid crowds and poorly ventilated places.
When You’ve Been Full…
Nevada state Sen. Pat Spearman, a Democrat and chief majority whip, successfully shepherded legislation in 2020 requiring pharmacists to honor 12-month doctors’ prescriptions for birth control pills, over the objections of some male lawmakers. “We had men on a committee making statements like, ‘if you give them a whole year’s supply, they are going to sell them,’” Spearman recalled in a phone interview. “People don’t get them to sell them, they get them to use them.”Women in the Nevada legislature, the only one with a female majority, brought focus to the issue, Spearman said.“There’s no doubt that it would not have gotten done [in 2020] had women not held power,” she said.
From the Editor: Last night I watched — on television — the San Francisco Giants play their rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of the 2020 National League Championship title. They played in Arizona, where the Giants hold their spring training and the game ended in a tie. But it was another location I thought about in Brooklyn, and a game that featured guest Hank Greenburg, a well-known player that my father admired. At that time, Greenberg was retired, I believe, but the fans at the Dexter Park, crowded the stands to see him. Last year, I wrote a brief article, A Baseball Story You Might Not Have Heard About an American Catcher and Spy for the OSS, and thought this year I might follow it up with an lengthy excerpt from a story about the Brooklyn Bushwicks. "Even as minor league and semipro baseball declined in the 1940s, the Bushwicks still outdrew the big league Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves in 1945."
Jo Freeman writes: "Ida B. Wells was an important writer and activist. She was born in 1862 in Mississippi and died in 1931 in Chicago. She lost her parents in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. Wanting to keep her siblings together, Ida got a job as a teacher at age 16 to earn the money to support them. She later took some of them to Memphis where she shifted from being a teacher to a writer. She is primarily known for her tracts against lynching, which led to her being run out of town in 1892... There are some gaps. Very little is said about her frequent work for woman suffrage beyond a few swipes at white suffragists and sixties feminists. There is nothing about her extensive work for the Republican Party, such as being the official Hoover campaign Organizer of Negro Women for Illinois in 1928.
From Medicare: Be sure to bring your red, white, and blue Medicare card so your health care provider or pharmacy can bill Medicare. You’ll need your Medicare card even if you’re enrolled in a Medicare Advantage Plan. If you fill out a form to get the vaccine, you may be asked for your insurer’s group number. If you have Part B, leave this field blank or write “N/A.” If you have trouble with the form, talk with your vaccine provider. Medicare also covers COVID-19 tests, COVID-19 antibody tests, and COVID-19 monoclonal antibody treatments. Here’s what to know: You can’t pay to put your name on a list to get the vaccine. You can’t pay to get early access to a vaccine. Don’t share your personal or financial information if someone calls, texts, or emails you promising access to the vaccine for a fee.
Jill Norgren writes: "This is an intriguing book about change and turning points. It will prod readers to argue with the authors who contend that the United States has done better in past decades and could/will do so again. Putnam and Garrett are particularly interested in climate change, which they describe as an ultimate “we” issue. They observe environmental activists pleading for a moral awakening to the costs of inaction and imagine that this might be the non-partisan movement on which the upswing might be built. We can only hope that the authors are correct and that a new generation of activists, in community, will re-imagine America and that they will not be the ones who charged the Capitol on January 6."
The New York Times: "Three former top Capitol security officials and the chief of the Washington police blamed federal law enforcement and the Defense Department on Tuesday for intelligence failures ahead of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and for slow authorization of the National Guard as the violence escalated. " 'None of the intelligence we received predicted what actually occurred,' former Capitol Police Chief Steven A. Sund told senators who are investigating security failures related to the attack. He called the riot 'the worst attack on law enforcement and our democracy that I have seen' and said he witnessed insurrectionists assaulting officers not only with their fists but also with pipes, sticks, bats, metal barricades and flagpoles. 'These criminals came prepared for war,' Chief Sund said."
Only 58% of Republican voters surveyed say they are very or somewhat likely to seek the vaccine, compared to 88% among Democrats and 72% among those with no party affiliation. More than one-third of Republicans — 37% in all — say they are somewhat or very unlikely to seek the vaccine, compared to 8% of Democrats and 22% of those with no party. The poll described the Californians’ attitudes on the pandemic as “highly politicized,” and found that Republicans are more likely to see vaccinations as a matter of personal choice, rather than as a shared responsibility to protect the health of all Californians. “COVID has brought to the forefront a tension between values about the individual and the community,” said IGS co-Director Cristina Mora. But underlying that longstanding partisan disagreement, she said, are racial tensions and even a disagreement about whether the threat of the pandemic is real.
Reflecting the broad spectrum of American culture, printed magazines from the 18th through 21st centuries have both driven and documented the American experience. The Grolier Club’s winter exhibition, “Magazines and the American Experience,” lays out a chronological history of periodical print media in the United States, highlighting specific genres, topics and events using approximately 200 rare and unique magazine issues. In the colonial era, magazines were the clarions of American thought and identity; the first successful magazine from the eighteenth century proudly proclaimed itself as The American Magazine in 1744, and the first printed statement of American independence appeared in The Pennsylvania Magazine in June 1776.
On any given day, one in every 31 hospital patients has an infection that was contracted during their stay, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal government has penalized 774 hospitals for having the highest rates of patient infections or other potentially avoidable medical complications... Hospitals can be punished even if they have improved over past years — and some have. At times, the difference in infection and complication rates between the hospitals that get punished and those that escape punishment is negligible, but the requirement to penalize one-quarter of hospitals is unbending under the law.
Founded in 2017, the Penn and Slavery Project researches the University of Pennsylvania's ties to slavery and scientific racism. Robots Reading Vogue explores the digital humanities (DH) possibilities presented using data from Vogue magazine. Vogue creates a DH bonanza, as it has been "continuously published for over a century," and is "completely digitized," resulting in some six terabytes of data and thousands of covers and images. What makes the [Open Book Publishers] literary hub unique is that it not only publishes books in traditional print and ebook formats, but it also publishes "free online editions of every title in PDF, HTML and XML formats that can be read via our website, downloaded, reused or embedded anywhere." Black History in Two Minutes (or so) podcast is a wonderful resource to learn the full scope of U.S. history. The award-winning show explores important people and events from the past and present.
Jo Freeman writes: This is a political biography. Published only a week before Kamala Harris was inaugurated as this country’s first female Vice President, this book is an overview of Harris’ life in California politics. The author was able to write it so quickly because he has reported on California politics, policy and justice for two newspapers in that state for four decades; Harris has been politically active for about three.
"Adults living alone who reported excellent overall health had lower rates of both anxiety and depression: Only 23% reported symptoms of anxiety and 16% reported symptoms of depression. On the other hand, among adults living alone who reported being in poor health, about two thirds reported symptoms of anxiety and depression (around 65% and not statistically different from each other on both measures). It is important to emphasize that these questions and analysis do not capture causality. In other words, we do not know whether the mental health of those in good overall health was bolstered because of that good health, or whether poor mental health caused people to report lower levels of overall health. It is likely that both are true: mental health influences overall health and vice versa."
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Ferida Wolff writes: This is a time that nourishes memories. Some of my friends are going through their closets and rediscovering things they had forgotten. One friend found a coat that she used to wear on cold days when walking her dog. Now her daughter wears the same coat while walking her own dog, appreciating its physical and emotional warmth. Another friend looked back on her quilting days and thought it might be good to re-explore that craft. An African Violet plant on my kitchen windowsill brings back memories of my mother-in-law, may she rest in peace, who was a nature lover. She planted gardens outdoors and pots of plants indoors. She especially loved African Violets and gave me the plant that I still have.
On the morning of March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists—Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodriguez — boarded a train from New York City for Washington, D.C. Since 1898, when the United States took control of Puerto Rico, the status of the island has been debated. Over time, three main viewpoints took shape concerning Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States: territory, state, or independent nation. The nationalists who traveled to the Capitol supported the most extreme interpretation of the latter — one which called for violence to draw attention to their goal of complete Puerto Rican independence from the United States.
Given the number of people who have lost their jobs and the likelihood that some will struggle to find work in the post-pandemic economy, achieving and sustaining maximum employment will require more than supportive monetary policy. It will require a society-wide commitment, with contributions from across government and the private sector. The potential benefits of investing in our nation's workforce are immense. Steady employment provides more than a regular paycheck. It also bestows a sense of purpose, improves mental health, increases lifespans, and benefits workers and their families.16 I am confident that with our collective efforts across the government and the private sector, our nation will make sustained progress toward our national goal of maximum employment.
The Department of Defense has taken steps to track reports of sexual harassment and sexual assault involving its federal civilian employees, but its visibility over both types of incidents is hindered by guidance and information-sharing challenges. While employees may not report all incidents for a variety of reasons, DOD also lacks visibility over those incidents that have been reported. For example, from fiscal years 2015 through 2019, DOD recorded 370 civilian employees as victims of sexual assault and 199 civilian employees as alleged offenders. However, these data do not include all incidents of sexual assault reported over this time period. Specifically, based on DOD guidance, examples of incidents that could be excluded from these data include those involving civilian employee victims (1) occurring in the continental United States, (2) employed by DOD components other than the military services, such as defense agencies, and (3) who are also military dependents. Without guidance that addresses these areas, DOD does not know the extent to which its civilian workforce has reported work-related sexual assault worldwide.
"In mid-January, the Trump Administration advised states to expand vaccine eligibility to people ages 65 and older, in addition to health care workers, and residents and staff in long-term care facilities – a recommendation that was reinforced by the incoming Biden Administration. As of February 1, 2021, more than half of all states (29 states and the District of Columbia) have expanded eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines to include people 65 and older. To date, nearly 32 million people, or about 10% of the US population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. According to the CDC, adults ages 65 and older, including residents of long-term care facilities who are primarily in this age group, account for 29% of all people who were administered a COVID-19 vaccine dose in the first month of vaccination, disproportionate to their share of the overall population (15%). Nationwide, more than 54 million people are age 65 or older, in addition to those who are living in long-term care facilities."
The efforts to vaccinate people 65 and older have strained under the enormous demand that has overwhelmed cumbersome, inconsistent scheduling systems. The struggle represents a shift from the first wave of vaccinations — health care workers in health care settings — which went comparatively smoothly. Now, in most places, elderly people are pitted against one another, competing on an unstable technological playing field for limited shots. While the demand is an encouraging sign of public trust in the vaccines, the challenges facing seniors also speak to the country’s fragmented approach, which has left many confused and enlisting family members to hunt down appointments.
A Diane Girard Reprise: I am not usually a demanding woman, but there are pajamas I will not wear. I’m sorry if I offend anyone, but I no longer buy the ones with critters on them. I have tried — but the animals disturbed me. I woke up in the middle of the night, wondering if I had crushed the wee things. And their tiny paws left weird marks on my body, which stayed for hours. I don’t need wrinkles in strange places. I have a sufficient number already. Besides that, critters are entirely too cute and don’t suit my somewhat grumpy personality. I do not want to wear pink frilly nightwear either (not that there’s anything wrong with that) because then I feel silly, as if I’m stuck in a time warp at a pajama party.
Julia Sneden wrote: There's a phrase being bandied around these days: "Road Rage". It has been defined as a reaction to the drivers or the overcrowding on our superhighways. In fact, it's probably as old as the human species: that moment when someone younger brings you hard up against the fact that the inner you is no longer what others see in the outer you. In other words, when you discover that you look older than you feel, and are being treated accordingly. I call it Age Rage. Unlike 'Road Rage', you don't have to do anything to express it. Just feeling it is enough to mark you for life.
Working with primary sources, Nimura documents the courage, drive, and training that the sisters drew upon to establish the dispensary and hospital. They had no personal wealth. Their mission was not merely to aid women who were ill but to educate them in the power of hygiene and sanitation at a time when it was not understood that germs caused illness. Indeed, they were teaching hygiene to mothers at a time when doctors rarely washed their hands between patients. In her excellent new biography, The Doctors Blackwell, Janice Nimura documents another important force for change: individuals. In this book, written with grace and clarity, Nimura describes how the Blackwells brought women to medicine and medicine to women.
"The list of some 200 Trump pardons or commutations, most issued as he vacated the White House, included at least seven doctors or health care entrepreneurs who ran discredited health care enterprises, from nursing homes to pain clinics. One is a former doctor and California hospital owner embroiled in a massive workers’ compensation kickback scheme that prosecutors alleged prompted more than 14,000 dubious spinal surgeries. Another was in prison after prosecutors accused him of ripping off more than $1 billion from Medicare and Medicaid through nursing homes and other senior care facilities, among the largest frauds in U.S. history."
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Rose Mula writes: I’m lucky I don’t have children who want to take my car keys because they think I’m too old to drive. However, not having kids to restrict my independence doesn’t mean I’m off the hook, because Mother is threatening to confiscate my keys. Wait. I need to amplify that statement as well. I’m sure you’re thinking if there’s a question of my being too old to drive, how can my mother still be in the picture? That’s because I didn’t mean my mother; I meant Mother Nature, who is forecasting a miserable winter, complete with semi-weekly blizzards.
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