Category: Non-fiction

Posted in Health, Non-fiction

How do you Handle COVID19?

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Doctor is in a home visit to a senior man and takes him sample for corona virus testing

How do you handle possible exposure to COVID19? Now that COVID is not in the news every day, have you dismissed it as a force in your life? Do you still take precautions? What is your level of precautions? Totally paranoid or dismissive? Different people handle the threat of COVID19 in different ways depending on their age, chances of exposure and even their politics. In my opinion, COVID19 is a public health issue and not a political issue no matter how hard our politicians may have tried to make it so. I prefer to look at the virus as a matter of public health. It has, after all, killed millions of people worldwide or caused illnesses they already had to kill them. If you look at the COVID statistics for your country or area, you may see that COVID still seems to be a pandemic and is still not simply endemic in most places since we are still having significant deaths from it and outbreaks from time to time. We can classify the flu as an endemic problem.

Personally, I have known of more friends and acquaintances getting COVID19 in the past six months than in the entire first couple of years of the pandemic. I’m assuming they are getting the Omicron 5 variant which is now predominant and is supposed to be incredibly transmissible. Whatever variant they are getting seems to be pretty bad. Hospitalizations and deaths are down. Most people I know have tried to recuperate at home. They have reported to me several days or a week of being violently ill with several weeks of recuperation afterward. It has taken time for them to get their energy back. The people I know who are older have had a hard recovery from COVID19, especially if they have underlying medical conditions which most of us develop as we age.

How do you protect yourself from COVID19 or do you? I’ll share with you what I do. I am an older American and I do have an underlying medical condition. I’ve had both COVID19 vaccinations and both boosters. If I’m talking to neighbors or friends on a one-on-one basis, I try to stay at least 6-10 feet away from them because I feel social distancing is important and effective. However, if I think I’m going to be in a crowd, even a small crowd, I wear a mask. For example, if I’m going to shop at a store like Wal-mart or the grocery store, I always wear my mask. I either use disposable masks and only wear it once or twice or I launder my masks often. If I need personal services like the hair salon or nail salon, and certainly when I go to medical appointments, I wear a mask.

Let me say a word about masks. I hate them. They make me claustrophobic and I feel like I’m going to have a panic attack. I wear them anyway.

I still don’t attend big events at all. Sporting events, concerts and other large venue events are out for me as are bars and nightclubs. The virus is going to have to abate before I feel comfortable with these large events. I will occasionally go in a restaurant, but I like to choose those that have patio dining. I wear a mask.

Perhaps the thorniest problem I have encountered is get-togethers with family. Some of my family have taken COVID19 seriously and some have not,. I”ll have to admit that, in the interest of family unity and peace, I don’t wear a mask when I’m with my family, even extended family. I trust them to tell me if they think they have been exposed to COVID. I realize this may be my downfall!

Since the scientists predict that COVID19 will become endemic, we’re all going to have to figure out how to manage possible exposure to the virus. It’s an individual choice although in my area, medical facilities still require masking. But, in general, we as responsible individuals have to decide our own response that will protect both us and those with whom we are in contact.

Comments and discussion are encouraged and welcome!

Posted in Flash Fiction, Non-fiction

Gun Control: Guns vs. Our Children

Posted on by R.M. Carlson
Gun control
44 Magnum hand gun with copy space

Often, I write fiction on this blog, but occasionally, I will write what is essentially an op-ed piece about an important issue, gun control in this case. Gun control, and any laws we might pass concerning gun control, is controlled by the U.S. Congress. The shame of it all is that the U.S. Congress is controlled by the gun lobby. In other words, money from the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t have effective gun control laws in the U.S. due to the inaction of Congress who think more about lining their pockets than about the children affected by the gun control laws. Children like those destroyed at Sandy Hook and just yesterday, in Texas.

What are we thinking? Why do we elect Senators and Representatives who won’t support or vote for serious gun control legislation in the U.S.? What if it were one of your children in the schools that have experienced mass shootings? Don’t give me a rant about the Second Amendment or your so-called liberties. Those are excuses. Why do you have an issue with strict laws aimed at illegal guns on the streets if you are a licensed gun owner and don’t plan to use your guns in the wrong way? Why do you have that AR-15 in your garage? Do you need it to hunt food? Even those among you who are hunters know the answer to that. It doesn’t take an AR-15 to kill a deer.

There have been over 200 mass shootings in the U.S. since the beginning of 2022. Two hundred days haven’t even passed yet. Is it any wonder that home schooling is on the rise? Our society in the U.S. is fracturing and even though gun control isn’t the only issue, it is surely one of the bigger issues. Do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?

Posted in Non-fiction

A Brush With a Red Fox – #SoCS

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I live in the country so wildlife is abundant. Deer, raccoons, the occasional bobcat. Even the elusive red fox. The road to get to my house is just barely a two-lane road. Traffic is increasing on that rather dangerous road as more and more people build homes near me.

A few days ago, I was driving home from town and that’s when it happened. My brush with the usually elusive red fox. Even though they live in the forest all around me, you seldom see them. They are shy creatures. You’re lucky if you get a peek at one. This day, I got more than a peek. Far more.

I was driving up a hill on our road and I saw an animal in the road. There is no mistaking a red fox. He was standing in the middle of road. Just standing there. That is very odd behavior for a red fox. I was afraid he would run in front of me, so I stopped. It was fascinating to look at him but terribly disturbing. I had never seen an animal so thin and emaciated. This fox was sick or he wouldn’t have been standing in the middle of the road.

I pulled up to him, but I was afraid to get out of the car. Rabid animals often come out of hiding and approach people. I sat there and wondered what to do. He needed to get off the road before someone ran over him.

Within a few moments, someone pulled behind me and two men got out of the car. They realized why I was stopped. We all looked at the fox and the men mentioned the possibility of rabies, although there are other illnesses that could have been afflicting the fox.

They told me to drive on so I wouldn’t hold up traffic and they pulled their car off to the side. They were going to try to get the fox back into the woods. I came home terribly sad but concerned about just the possibility of rabies. A case of rabies near a populated area is cause for concern.

I reported the fox and his condition to the heath department. In turn, they were going to call Fish and Wildlife. The goal was to find the fox and determine his health condition.

I hope they’ve found the fox. It’s hard to think about any animal being so ill. It disturbed me for the rest of the day and days after.

 

Posted in Flash Fiction, Non-fiction, Politics

Trump and Voter Suppression

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

american flags and pins on white background
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

After reading a number of news sources, I’m left wondering what the current President of the United States has to do to get thrown out of office. He is trying to shut down one of America’s great institutions – the United State Postal Service. Can you imagine? When he first started talking about it, an optimistic person might have thought that his concern over mail-in voting was an opinion he formed legitimately. After you hear Trump talk about the Post Office and mail-in voting, many of us realize that his concern is not legitimate at all. A number of states have had mail-in voting for years, The incidence of fraud is less than one-half of a percent. What’s more, he’s allowing one state, Florida, his state of residence, to have mail-in voting. This is fair?

It is apparent that Trump is trying to suppress the vote. He knows that many people will not go to a polling place to vote for President in November 2020 due to fears over the pandemic. A pandemic that his administration failed to even try to control until it was too late. Instead, he tried to say that the COVID19 virus would magically disappear and offer solutions which were medically unsubstantiated. Even dangerous. Trump thinks that if he gets rid of the Post Office and any chance of mail-in voting, he will have a better chance of beating Joe Biden in the race for the Presidency.

The unbelievable thing is that Trump is not even trying to hide that he is engaging in voter suppression. He admits it. He is actively trying to cause people not to have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote and he is breaking laws regarding election tampering in the process. What does this man have to do to get thrown out of office? Kill someone?

The latest news is that Trump is having the mail sorting machines removed from post offices around the U.S. Leaving postal workers without any way to sort the mail is such terrible thing that it almost defies believability. Of course, mailed in ballots will swamp the post office and without any way to sort the mail, it will take months to receive and count the ballots.

Trump installed one of his political campaign donors as Postmaster General. He is, of course, complicit in this effort at voter suppression. The Republican Senators that sit by and allow him to do these things are complicit. They are just as responsible as he is. Trump and his Republican cronies in the Senate should all be voted out of office in November and the Postmaster General should be removed as soon as possible.

Any voter that puts their stamp of approval on what Donald J. Trump is doing, from actively breaking the law to morally bankrupting our government deserves what they get if he is elected. The rest of us need to vote, regardless of where or how we have to do it. If we don’t vote him out of office, the future of our country is, indeed, at risk.

Posted in Non-fiction

The Pandemic and the American Emotional Response

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

 

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Photo by Edward Jenner on Pexels.com

We’re in the seventh month of the pandemic in the U.S. When I talk to friends, family, and strangers, I hear them speak of a range of emotions. Depression, anxiety, despair, rage, overwhelming sadness, grief. It’s hard to sort it all out. I feel all those emotions myself combined with a few more. Panic, desperation, claustrophobia, and even happiness. What we feel is a reaction to the unknown and it manifests in each person differently.

The situation we face, at least in the United States, is one we’ve never faced before. To one degree or another, what sums up all of those emotions is fear. We’re afraid. We fear we’ll get sick and that our loved ones and friends will get sick. Even those people who deny that COVID19 exists, and there are many of them, feel fear. They fear that their lifestyles have been taken away from them and they don’t know if it’s permanent or not. It’s quite likely that all of us have both fears. The fear of illness and the fear that nothing will ever be the same.

At the first of the pandemic, many Americans were in shock. Those that were most prepared for the situation we faced were The Greatest Generation. They are the ones who lived through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and so much more. Very few are alive who lived through the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1917 and 1918. To our dismay, The Greatest Generation is rapidly disappearing. They could teach us so much if we would listen.

Imagine the unknowns The Greatest Generation faced. During the Great Depression, some literally did not know where their next meal was coming from or if they could continue to provide shelter for their families. Then came World War II. Most able-bodied men between the ages of 18-35 were sent off to war or enlisted voluntarily. If you were an enlisted man in combat,  you had no idea if you’d ever go home again, ever see your family, or even live through the day. If you were a woman who had not enlisted, you were home without the 24/7 news cycle that we have today. You had the radio and sketchy, spotty news reports. You sat by the radio and listened to the American President, FDR, whenever he came on to give a report. Most of the time you didn’t know if your husband, brother, son, father and many of members of your family were alive or dead. We think we are scared due to the pandemic or feel any of the other common emotions right now? Imagine how they felt.

During the first part of the pandemic, despite our shock, we had to get ready to isolate ourselves. That involved stocking up on food, supplies, medicine. There were runs on grocery stores that caused fear and anxiety since we didn’t know if we would be able to get what we need. Since I have a co-morbidity, I have been at home since February with very few exceptions. I haven’t seen anyone in my family during this time and I’ve only seen a friend once or twice. There are a lot of people out there just like me.

I feel everything every other American feels. I’m angry that the coronavirus was allowed to get out of hand in our country and blame the lack of leadership at the top for that happening. I carry a high level of anxiety most days, I worry if I get out, I’ll get sick even though I wear a face covering and take all the recommended precautions. I miss my friends and family. If I allow myself to think too much about the pandemic, I feel panic and despair. I listen to the statistics every day about the deaths this virus has caused, and I feel grief and overwhelming sadness for those families. I feel claustrophobic daily even though I’m luckier than so many people and have a house and yard in which to move around.

Mostly, when I think about it, all of these emotions culminate in fear. Fear of the unknown. I wonder what life will be like after the pandemic. I even wonder if there will be an “after.” The virus could be here to stay. A vaccine will only be moderately effective.   Will Americans ever have the freedom we once had and probably did not appreciate? The virus deniers are determined to live their lives anyway and there is something I admire about that while fearing their lives will be cut short.

Perhaps, besides fear, my primary emotion is gratitude for what I have. I still have a job while many don’t. I’m with my husband here in our home and we try to take care of each other. So far, we’ve been able to get the food and medicine we need. The pandemic makes us look at the very basics of life.

I still have hope for the future although it isn’t as shiny as it once was. The pandemic has devastated not only the American economy but also the American society. Will we ever get back to being the “shining city on the hill?” No one can answer that question right now.

Posted in Appalachia, Non-fiction

Appalachia and Comfort Food: Tonic for the Soul

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I guess, when life gets too much for us, we go back to our roots. My roots lie in two very diverse places, but one of my feet stands in the Appalachian region of Eastern Kentucky. I think that the cooking, when I was growing up, was perhaps the best in the world! Even now, when I’m way past all grown up, I want to eat what my mother cooked, and what her mother cooked. My comfort food comes straight from Appalachia with only a few exceptions.

I still seek out roadside vegetable markets that crop up in the summer all around where I live. I now live on the fringes on Appalachia and, just about every week in the summer, I’ll take a drive 50 miles south in search of homegrown vegetables. I did that on Saturday and have a refrigerator stocked full of wonderful vegetables grown in the region.

Today was a very stressful day for both my husband and myself. About mid-afternoon, all I could think about was cooking some of those vegetables the old-fashioned, Appalachian way. I knew that eating what I grew up on would be a tonic for my soul. During this pandemic and the uproar in our country, I think we’re all looking for a little tonic.

I started to cook dinner and grabbed the green beans. I wanted green beans and cornbread. I’ve already given you my recipes in another blog post, so I’ll skip that. I put the green beans on to cook after spending two hours stringing them. I made the cornbread, with buttermilk, and put it in the oven. While the cornbread baked, I sliced fresh tomatoes, small cucumbers, and a cantaloupe for dessert. I took the cornbread out to cool and waited on the green beans. I don’t cook my beans with meat anymore, my one nod to health. I slice up a sweet onion and season them with onion, salt, and pepper. Delicious!

Dinner was wonderful and I was much calmer and less anxious after eating my comfort food. What’s your comfort food? Try it during the pandemic. Maybe it will be tonic for your soul too.

Posted in Non-fiction, Politics

Protect Your Voting Rights!

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

american flags and pins on white background

Americans today have an issue with maintaining their right to have free and fair elections. There are issues about voter suppression; specifically, the defunding of the postal service and voting by mail. There is also evidence that Russia is, once again, trying to manipulate our 2020 Presidential election.

In the 2016 Presidential elections, it is known that Vladimir Putin of Russia and his intelligence agency tried to manipulate the election and succeeded, at least to some extent. The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Marco Rubio (R-FL), knows that Putin is trying to do it again in the 2020 Presidential election. Putin is, and always has been, in favor of bringing down American democracy.

Russian interference is affecting your voting rights.

Several states have had 100% voting by mail for a number of years. Those states are Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. There has been less than 1/2% fraud. Despite that, Trump is against the vote by mail option, even though many people prefer to vote by mail this year due to the spread of COVID19. In the face of the facts that there has been virtually no fraud in the elections of those five states, he insists there is fraud. Then recently, he allowed the state of Florida to vote by mail. But no other state! Why, if he believes, fraud is likely? Trump is trying to suppress the vote because he knows that fewer voters are always better for Republican’s running for office than more voters.

Voter suppression through the vote by mail option is affecting your voting rights.

The U.S. Postal Service has been operating on a shoestring. Trump is trying to defund the postal service by installing one of his cronies as Postmaster General. The new Postmaster General fired the top personnel and any overtime work has stopped. Postal workers have been encouraged to leave mail undelivered and work shorter hours. Trump’s goal is to make sure that the Postal Service can’t handle the load of mail-in ballots which is another voter suppression tactic.

Voter suppression by defunding the United States Postal Service is affecting your voting rights.

Trump does nothing to stop Putin’s antics regarding our votes. He is actively trying to suppress our votes by defunding the Postal Service and trying to stop vote by mail.

Is this a man who should be President of the United States? Americans need to take back their right to vote.

Posted in Non-fiction

Teach……and…….Light

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

Teach and Light. I’m choosing to write about both of these Discover Prompts together because in the mind of this college professor, the two are inextricably linked. Since I’m an introvert, I didn’t really choose teaching as a career. It chose me. I ended up, almost by accident, in a PhD program after completing my Masters degree in Business Administration. I intended to go into industry to use my MBA. Friends of mine were pursuing their PhD’s and….shall we say….they talked me into it. I thought I would use it to do research, perhaps for the government or a private think tank. This is the beginning of the story.

When entering the doctoral program, there were teaching and research assistantships available to my class of students. I applied for both, but there weren’t many research assistantships available. I was awarded a teaching assistantship. I had never wanted to teach! Since I was at a major university, I was being thrown into the deep end.

School started that fall. The coursework for a PhD student was very challenging. On top of that, I was assigned two undergraduate finance classes to teach. 60 students in each. I don’t remember ever being so nervous. I got through those first weeks of classes. Gradually, I began to enjoy it. My doctoral coursework consumed me at the same time. I loved what I was doing. Teaching, learning, making the best friends of my life. I’ve never worked so hard in my life, yet my life had never before, and has never since, been so rewarding.

As I relaxed in front of the classroom and started really focusing on my students, something occurred to me. When I would do a good job explaining a concept to them, I would see their eyes light up as they “got it.” That became my goal as a professor. To get my student’s eyes to light up.

As I moved through a 27-year university teaching career, some days were good and some bad. But even on the worst day, what keep me going was that light in my students’ eyes. Now retired from teaching, that’s what I miss. I believe that light is what new teachers and professors should strive for.

Posted in Non-fiction

Day 7 – Below

Posted on by R.M. Carlson

I don’t really want to talk about “going below.” Allow me to tell you why. At this point in my life and in the history of the United States of America, when I think about “going below,” I think about the current U.S. government. Currently, on April 8, 2020, the citizens of the U.S. are virtual prisoners in their homes. Yes, I know that the COVID19 virus has done the same thing to most other countries of the world as well. Allow me to explain.

We have an incompetent idiot as the President of the United States. I can say that because we also have a Constitution with a First Amendment that guarantees us freedom of speech. At least, last time I looked, we still had a constitution. If Donald Trump had his way, we would not.

When this man was narrowly elected three and one-half years ago, I said then that he would destroy us and he almost has. He has shamed the Office of President over and over again. He has sucked up to the dictators of the world and shunned our allies. He has destroyed the environmental protections that have been so important in the U.S. because his predecessor put them into place and he is trying to undo everything President Obama did. He has done so much more that is beyond the scope of this post. He must be defeated in November 2020.

For the purposes of this post, he has massively mishandled the COVID19 disaster. Did other viruses make prisoners of us in our homes? Ebola? SARS? MERS? I could go on. No, they did not because we had a competent government then. Donald Trump is far more interested in lining his pockets and doing anything it takes to win re-election than doing what is best for the U.S. He ignored COVID19 back in 2019 when it was first discovered. He kept letting possibly infected individuals into the country. He kept right on trying to win the favor of the President of China through negotiating trade deals…..or trying to. China is a communist country and they will never, and I repeat NEVER, have the welfare of the United States in mind. One only has to look at history to know that. If you don’t consider history, you are doomed to repeat it.

We have lost over 10,000 people and will lose many more. We currently lead the world in people carrying this infection. We have to practice “social distancing” in order to protect ourselves and others. China is the country where you have to wear a mask to walk down the street, not the U.S. Or not until now. Now we do. Like Communist China and because of Donald Trump and his incompetence. We have lost one-fourth, at least, of our economy which is sending his into a deep recession and possibly a depression. Trump just keeps spending money inflating a massive deficit. Inflation will come next. Unemployment may reach 32%, unheard of since the Great Depression in the 1930s.

If this man is re-elected, we are doomed. Voting for him would truly be “going below.”

Posted in Non-fiction

Hidden – #writephoto

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I wish I could have spent the last ten days hidden among the wild things along the bank of the stream behind my home. Having been confronted by a terrible tragedy that can happen to any of us as we make our way out in the world, it’s made me wish for the greenery of summer to hide me away and the babble of the brook to keep my ears from hearing.

A severely impaired child and a grown-up young man lost their mother ten days ago. A man lost his wife and almost lost his own life. That little girl almost lost her father as well. A family lost a daughter and a sister. The world lost a beautiful woman. A community lost a friend and a participant. My street lost a neighbor and I lost one of my next-door neighbors.

We lost her to a traffic accident. A severe one and something that could happen to any of us. It was violent and her death was instant. In the blink of an eye, so many lives were affected and her life was snuffed out forever. We don’t realize how our lives affect so many others.

It’s made me do some real thinking about the fragility of life and how we take our lives for granted. We waste time, days, even hours and minutes, that we shouldn’t waste. My neighbor walked out her door never dreaming she would never be back. I’m sure much was left undone. Things she wished she’d said and done. She didn’t know time was coming to an end for her. Most of us don’t. Many of us procrastinate doing the important things. Telling people we love them. Making arrangements for people we care for. Spending more time with our friends and family.

There are things in life which you wish you could unsee and unhear. I wish I could unhear the news about my neighbor. I wish I could unsee the look in her husband’s eyes when I saw him today. Still in shock but with pain deep inside. So many people’s lives will never be the same.

As for me, these are the first words I’ve written since I heard the news. My fingers and my mind have been frozen. I think of the poem called “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry and wish I could be at that babbling brook behind my house and that I could unhear the terrible news about my neighbor.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— “The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry