This week's notes. The Optimist; Kavanaugh hearings; health care; lost children; kids without doctors;  immigration policy; sing along; winter in the Rockies; North Korea; tourism's impact; preparing for the next pandemic; unilateralism; energy; 1 October; economic success.

Optimist, 30 September. Link here. No Washington stories here! Lego wheel chair. Who'd have thunked: Dramatic assistance for an injured turtle. Gold medals (Canada and the U.S.) and ice hockey in one family. Typewriter boom? From Paul Schweitzer in Manhattan, another odd story. What did you use when you learned to type? Mine was a non-electric standard Royal. Paralyzed walkers? 21st century miracles are happening. The missing groom. He just left to do his job: put out a fire. MLS, not the NFL. Singing the national anthem: a 7 year-old lady with an unpronounceable last name.  

Kavanaugh hearings. Take your pick of sources for this 21st century congressional circus event; not three rings, mind you, but, nevertheless, high drama! The most likely central question: Why would any woman subject herself to this media circus were she not telling the truth? Of course, many of Dr. Phil's guests may give lie to this.
     Link to the most poignant article I found about how two close friends in America's heartland can have such different points of view of this past week's spectacle -- and its impact as seen by one of them, the writer. Well worth the read!

Americans' similarities. This article highlights what we share. In contrast to the above entries, there is more than you might imagine. This is in spite of the opening paragraph:

Recently Philip Bump in the Washington Post took a dive into Census data and determined that the average American is a 52-year-old white, non-Hispanic woman with a bachelor’s degree. She works in healthcare or education earning a little under $900 a week. The kicker of the piece notes that she, like most Americans, won’t have her voice heard in the midterm elections because she won’t bother to vote.

There is a list of 118 things on which Americans do agree.

Health care. Ken Burns' program "The Mayo Clinic," should be required viewing for every elected/appointed U.S. official. This is what health care should be like!

Lost children. We would like to believe our children can be accounted for. But what of the hundreds of Indigenous children who were "shipped off" by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to various boarding schools to "unlearn" their native languages and culture?

The [Carlisle Indian Industrial] school, which opened in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and closed its doors 100 years ago, this month, was the United States’ most notorious Indian boarding school and the starting point for more than a century of child removal policies that continue to tear apart Indigenous families today. Carlisle, and hundreds of federally funded boarding schools like it, were key to the U.S. government’s project of destroying Indigenous nations and indoctrinating children with military discipline and U.S. patriotism...[and] Carlisle is only the tip of the iceberg.
A coalition of Indigenous organizations...has turned to the United Nations to demand that the U.S. government “provide a full accounting of the children taken into government custody under the U.S. Indian Boarding School Policy whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.”

Kids without doctors. "Idaho [ID] is one of only six states where faith-healing parents are guarded from felony charges — negligent homicide, manslaughter or capital murder — if their children die of treatable illnesses." In High Country News, Leah Sottile looks at the Followers of Christ sect "who believe medicine is a form of witchcraft, and only attempt to heal their sick, including children, by anointing them with olive oil and praying over them." An ID state legislator and former county coroner are forthright in their defense of the sect's members.
     A documentary film, "No Greater Law" features one Follower, Dan Sevy, and his "frontier fight" for their beliefs.

Immigration policy. Who is responsible for setting the nation's limits? Jonathan Blitzer's article in The Atlantic looks at that question.

The Choir: the new fellowship group. Singing along together in ad hoc choirs is gaining new adherents, a new community-building, social phenomenon.

Snow -- real and artificial. Last Monday's cold front left a few, short-lived snow flakes on CO's higher peaks and Arapahoe Basin began testing its artificial "snow guns." Other ski areas will do similar tests in the coming days.

North Korea. President Trump has named Stephen Biegun as the administration's new envoy to the DPRK. Victor Cha, an Asian scholar at Georgetown University, says “There’s 25 years of bipartisan failure on North Korea, so I’m not confident that anyone can land a deal,” said Peter Feaver, who worked on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. “But I am at least confident that Biegun will not be duped by the North Koreans.” 

The economic ploy of tourism. China has one economic weapon over which other nations have no control: Chinese tourists. China was not happy when South Korea opted to deploy the U.S. THAAD missile defense system and in early 2017 it began reducing the number of Chinese tourists permitted to travel to South Korea by 40 percent. The result: a substantial loss of revenue for South Korean businesses.

Today, the target is tiny Palau due to its ongoing diplomatic recognition of Taiwan....The main lever of control is the tour agencies that arrange the group travel that makes up 58 percent of China’s outbound tourism. Like every Chinese company, the tour firms are heavily dependent on their ties to the government and have no choice but to fall in line.

If the tariff "wars" expand, tomorrow's target could well be the U.S., especially China's considerable student population in America's colleges and universities.

Americans, live long or die young? Part of the answer lies in where do you live? The data for the U.S. census tracts (locations) where you live (or are considering) will tell you much of what you want to know. For example: Ferrington, NC: 97.5 years, 13 years longer than Japan, the world's longest-lived country ; Stillwell, OK: 56 years, same as war-torn Somalia. To name but a few factors, consider: household income; poverty rate; history of discrimination; educational level; obesity; smoking rate; rates of exercise.

Ready for the unthinkable? This article from Foreign Policy examines what the U.S. is/is not/should/should not be doing in view of the evidence that pandemics do happen -- and the ease with which modern transportation can spread health problems.

Unilateralism. Is President Trump's "real" foreign policy to be found in Foggy Bottom with the Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, or in the executive office building with John Bolton, the president's national security advisor? For better or worse, the latter seems to be in ascendancy.
     There are, however, subtle differences between Bolton and Trump. How those difference will play out will be purely situational and Bolton will be a driving force as long as he realizes that the president must see himself as the "big dog." (To use a golfing term Trump may be familiar with.)

Bolton’s unilateralism is purely ideological; Trump’s is more transactional. While Bolton’s hawkishness has led him to reject any compromise with rogue states deemed dangerous to U.S. national interests, Trump’s unilateralism springs more from his belief that the United States should use its economic and military dominance to secure better deals from recalcitrant countries.

Energy, renewable and oil/gas. Voters in four western states will have energy-related issues on their ballots this coming November. AZ: Initiative 127; CO: Initiative 112 & Amendment 74; NV: Questions 3 & 6; WA: Initiative 1631.

1 October. An important day on the calendar, national and international. 1949: The People's Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed in then-Peking by Chairman Mao Zedong. It is now officially, "National Day."  2018: First day of the U.S. Supreme Court term -- with only 8 sitting justices. Former president Jimmy Carter is 94 and still actively serving his fellow Americans, hammer in hand, with Habitat for Humanity. Would that all living past presidents were so honorably "employed."
     About the PRC. In 1969, due to a SNAFU by those responsible for scheduling R&R trips for American troops serving in the Vietnamese conflict, I and many other U.S. servicemen were scheduled to be in Hong Kong during the 20th anniversary celebration. (History was not a big part of everyday military planning.) Our takeoff from Cam Rahn Bay was delayed, no reason given, but I suspect there was much dithering at MACV headquarters (in Saigon) and the Pentagon in Washington about whether we easily-identifiable "round eyes" should be turned loose for three days in a city celebrating what amounted to Red China's Independence Day. In 1969, Hong Kong was still under British control, but...... Everywhere the city was decked out in red, many locals celebrating, other not so much. All went well and, naturally, holiday discounts were readily available.

Economic facts. There are the government's figures, then there is the reality of your check stub. This article looks behind the headlines, after inflation is factored in. "Shift to the [Bureau of Labor's] ....earnings data for an average or 'median' working person, and most of those claimed gains disappear. Another catch: The data used by the White House doesn't account for inflation. Adjust the median earnings data for inflation, and the illusion of progress evaporates."

Washington compromise, 2018. Today's sad state of affairs, an unwillingness to compromise, should give us all cause to worry.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy the first week of October.