Thoughts of Medical Training for the Old and Decrepit

On December 23, 2020, I received a book published on December 21, 2020. That, in itself, is pretty amazing; I have never received a book that close to publication before. The book is by John Lawrence and apparently is the first of a planned four-volume set. This one is titled, "Playing Doctor."

It is a very funny, easy-to-read book about the foibles of him becoming a physician, quite unlike any other story I have read - and I have read many. He never wanted to go to med school, never took the required classes, and never focused on it until it all changed for him. The story of that change is what this book is about.

This post is about my own interest in medical training and the disappointment that nothing ever came of it.

My continued interest as a 70-Something is confirmation that I, too, should have become a medical professional. I never wanted to go to med school or be called "Doctor;" I was thankful that the physician assistant (PA) profession had been invented by Eugene A. Stead, MD, and the first class of four Navy corpsmen would enter the same university in 1965 that I eventually started, Duke University, thus opening the door to later candidates like me.

One of my biggest regrets was not finishing the program. Funny thing about that: Duke seemed to want me to pay for it upfront at the same time then-President Reagan decided that student loans were a bad thing and had his Secretary of Education at the time, William Bennett, work on cutting funding. He was successful and you can see how those two factors might clash. That I was unable to continue is one of the regrets I live with to this day.

It is also probably the reason I keep reading books about medical training, physicians, and why PAs remain my provider-of-choice when I have one. I also like physicians who have a sense of humor. John Lawrence, MD, is one of them. I highly recommend the book.

New Vaccines and Who Should Get Them First

 So three companies have highly-effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus. There is a worldwide need and the burning question for them and the politicians who guide them is this:

Who gets vaccinated first?

Many writers have written treatises on the topic, so mine will be short. Some have suggested giving the vaccine to the most vulnerable first; the elderly, those with significant health issues, and preexisting conditions have been suggested.

I disagree.

While saving a life--any life--is highly desirable, the already-sick and elderly are not the first group of people that should be given the vaccine first. Why, you ask? Because they are neither likely to spread either the disease nor increase resistance to it.

No, the people who should be given the vaccine first are the social butterflies and those who insist on attending large gatherings where mask-wearing and social distancing are not seen as necessary. Vaccinating them will help spread the resistance and will allow a faster 'herd immunity' than would happen with any other single group.

So find all the authoritarian cultists around the world, young people who think they are not going to "get" the disease, and those who want to crowd into a bar with other non-wearers. Vaccinate gig workers and those "essential" workers who have no choice but to continue working in places with patrons who might not wear a mask or see the value in protecting others lives. Definitely give the vaccine to health care workers and those on the front lines of protecting us.

After they have been vaccinated, they will go out into the world - remember, this a worldwide suggestion, not just for us - and not be part of the super-spreader group they were before. The active virus will not be transferred and fewer people will get sick faster.

Then the vaccine can be given to those people like me who don't go anywhere and who avoid crowded spaces. The economies will improve and life can begin to return to something recognizable as 'normal.' Doing anything else merely slows the process.

Think about it.

Choices and Magical Thinking

Humans are the only species in the Animal Kingdom that can make logical decisions. We were given the ultimate talisman to rule the Kingdom at the top of the food chain. We have thrived and advanced for a very, very long time. So why do we continue to make the decisions we do, hoping that magical thinking, somehow, will result in a different outcome? 

The answer, to me, seems clear: we can also make no decision and we can make a bad decision. Take this observation from an editorial board member at The New York Times:

"We know a lot more [about coronavirus] now...we know that temperature checks won’t prevent outbreaks (at least one-third of people who transmit the virus have no symptoms at all), but that routine surveillance testing can catch outbreaks before they become catastrophes. 

"We don’t know how safe schools are, or how safe they might be made. But we do know that bars and restaurants are hubs of viral transmission.

"And yet, as we enter the third — and potentially worst — coronavirus surge, pandemic fatigue and magical thinking have us acting like all of this is brand-new. Schools are closing while restaurants remain open. State and local leaders are dithering on mask mandates. 

"Too few communities have effective programs in place for contact tracing, quarantine and isolation."

However bad it looks right now, this pandemic won't last forever; they never have. Our goal as a nation should be to protect as many people as possible in the tough months ahead. Magical thinking will not get us through this. Making good choices will help.

Well, little boy, what have you done good this year?

 What, indeed. But let's not wait for Christmas to answer the question, eh? Oh. And let's skip over the poor grammar, too.

I bought a high-quality ukulele in April and Fender gave me three months of lessons free. I moved forward in my long-held goal of learning two specific songs on the ukulele. It is still a work in progress.

This month, I watched what has become a very popular movie about chess. I know how to move the pieces, but not how to "play" - a computer game 'thinking' only one move ahead beat me in less than a dozen moves - so I bought a high-quality chess set. I put two chess books on hold at the library on "opening chess moves" and "winning chess strategies." One of them is by Bobby Fischer.

When they arrive, I will be notified. Then I will go pick them up--curbside pickup only--and become a better chess player for the first time in my long life.

From whence the readers? And why must they be that way?

Over the weekend, I read a regular blog by one of my favorite writers, Claire Berlinski, who wrote that she saw an unusually large, sudden increase in her readers. She wondered why, so she did some checking.

It turns out they came from an unusual and unexpected source.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has been a regular reader of her work for years and mentioned her blog, “Claire’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts,” on Fox News. She now has many readers from that dark side of the spectrum. Well done, Claire. May they stay long enough to read at least one of your blogs, interesting and thought-provoking as they are. I have my doubts, but one never knows.

However, in keeping with the head-in-the-sand approach to the novel coronavirus and its deadly disease, COVID-19, taken by many on the right, plus Speaker Gingrich's and the new readers from Fox News's "lack of concern," she also wrote this telling bit:

"The novel coronavirus is now the leading cause of death in the United States. If you fear that you or one of your loved ones will die from this virus, it is not irrational at all.

"In April, more Americans died from Covid-19 than from accidents, chronic lower respiratory disease, cancer, or heart disease. Particularly if you live in New York State or New York City, you would be insane to be unconcerned..."

How hundreds of thousands of infections and almost 80,000 deaths in the USA alone fails to raise concern in even the most isolated, jaundiced individual is beyond me.

If you want to read some of Claire's musings that attracted a former Speaker of the House, point your web browser to: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/

Regrets. We all have them.

These days of quarantine, I find myself being drawn more and more to British shows that star older people for some reason.

This one is called 'Edie.' Edie is an 80-something woman whose husband had dies and who rediscovers a long-forgotten goal she had as a much-younger woman - climbing a Scottish peak. Her adult daughter is frustrated by much of what happens in her life, so she sells the family flat and stashes her mom in a 'retirement home,' where she spends her time making flower arrangements and listening to a bad singer sing songs she hates, badly at that.

She lasts less than one week.

Then she finds that postcard with the peak. She calls her daughter, leaves a message, and takes the train to Scotland.

Of course, this is a movie about aging, a film about last chances and opportunities pondered and taken. The last chance to do something longed for, to visit a place dreamt of, to make that one final climb up a peak from long ago. For some reason, that is what attracts me. Well, that and British police dramas.

But as I sit here in my empty house with a full fridge, fancy knives, and high-quality pans, I do not think about food or eating. I tend to think of those things I never did.

Or at least things I imagine I never did.

There is probably some word for that, one kind of like reminiscing about things not done. [Can one truly 'reminisce,' which is defined as "to think about past experiences or events," about things not done, yet dreamt about?]

So. what "things" do I imagine I wanted to do and never did? As a Traveler, with a capital "T" and defined as one who has traveling blood in his veins, as opposed to one who travels (small "t") for work or a living -- like a truck driver -- I can look at a photo of someplace and want to see it in person. A lake in Scotland, a river in Thailand, a mountain in Nepal, a valley in Alaska. Bahá'í Houses of Worship on all continents and local Houses in various countries.

Much of it, of course, is romanticized, like the desire to fly an airplane without a radio across the country I had 40 or more years ago.

Long ago, I read a book by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, called Biplane, written in 1966 that described his mostly-accurate flight much earlier in his life in a time when he could make such a flight in mostly uncontrolled airspace from North Carolina to California after he bought an old World War I trainer biplane. He bypassed airports with operating air traffic control towers, landed in farmers' fields to spend the night, dealt with storms and cold and rain and birds ... and unhappy farmers. He ran out of fuel just short of the runway at his destination, crashed, survived, and wrote a book about it. I do not know how much of it is true and how much is fiction and I do not care. I still have that well-worn book and read it from time to time.

The 80-something protagonist in this movie, Edie makes that one trip that she has wanted to make for her entire life. She braves the loss of an oar in a rowboat, a steep climb that her knees really do not want to make, loss of her protective tent...and she makes the last few steps to the top alone and unaided, to cast her glance over the far distance she has longed to see. And she plants her 'flag' at the top, a pebble she picked up along her journey.

As a 70-something, I ponder all those things. The trips not taken, sights not seen, flights not made. Pilgrimage not made. And I reminisce. Or whatever the word is for thinking about a dream not realized.

Longing, perhaps. Not regret.

The turn of a phrase

Readers of my words will know that I love this English language I speak and always have.

I do not recall any particular focus on it as a child of a U.S. diplomat father and a stay-at-home mother growing up in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, but I do know 'English' was always my best and favorite subject in school and in college. No matter what it was, whether English literature, American history, creative writing, or just plain reading, I recall the joy of crafting sentences and paragraphs and the special joy of reading a much-better writer's own phrases.

While reading a lengthy piece about a man who was wrongly convicted of murder and spent almost 50 years behind bars as an innocent convict, I caught one phrase that really touched 'that' spot in me.

"...a sturdy jug with a satisfying handle..."

What an amazing collection of simple, yet completely comprehensive words. Who would have thought the adjective 'satisfying' could so immediately create a mental image of the perfect container?

I just sit and shake my head at the wonder of this language and the artists who practice it.

It Is All About Supporting the Musicians

As many readers know, I am much more music-obsessed than TV-oriented. I do watch, but only rarely and for (generally) short times. Music, however, is on from the time I get out of bed until I return to it.

I subscribe to Spotify. I tried Apple Music for a while, being part of the Apple Corps, but I found it not to meet my needs. Spotify, on the other hand, I learned to program so I can hear what I want to hear and ignore the rest. They give me six Daily Mix sessions that change, well, daily, and two weekly mixes that showcase new artists, new music from my chosen artists, and an occasional horrible song; Spotify gives me the option of never hearing the song again.

A reader might also know that sales of physical music media - CDs and records, mostly, though vinyl has seen an increase in sales recently - has plummeted for decades. From the days of music piracy made famous by Napster and other online sites to modern times, the way we listen to music has changed. Only big-name artists now put on expensive concert events. We don't steal music, which is good, and we do not buy much, which is not. We have stopped downloading paid versions of those physical media, too. 

This sea change in how we hear music hurts one group more than any other...the musicians who create the music.

They no longer get a portion of the sales of their discs and downloads and there is much less opportunity for a new artist or band to gain an audience without those sales. The sale of physical media and electronic downloads has been replaced by music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, among others.

My membership in Spotify helps pay the artists a bit. Because of the anti-theft laws worldwide, musicians now get paid for their songs, though not much. Before those laws, the membership money went to the service provider, not the record company or the artists themselves. I have spent some time learning how that works; how does the artist in, say Australia, get paid when I listen to a song of hers hooked to a device here in America?

My study has shown that the artists are paid in a very different way than if I was to buy a compact disc or a vinyl record or even to pay for a download. per play, per song. It is a fraction of one U.S. penny, so the importance is the number of plays worldwide. I own nothing, download nothing, and cannot increase my own music library without the actual purchase of a CD or vinyl record or by downloading a file to my computer. Doing so, of course, would be prohibitively expensive; my current CD library has over 2.000 units that I have build up since CDs started being created in 1982.

[An interesting side note: since I got rid of my players and many (most?) computers no longer come with a way to insert one to play, I no longer have a way to play any of those CDs. They have become obsolete! My collection of over 1,000 vinyl records has become relevant again and I do have a way to play them, though I do not have the space to put up my turntable and accessories.]

Here is what I have decided. Since I cannot afford to make a one-time purchase of an artist's production, I stream as much as I can. Mostly, I pick one of the Spotify Daily Mixes - I really dislike hearing the same song over and over, which is one reason I have not listed to broadcast radio for years...listening to commercials is another, something that is also missing on a paid streaming service. Often, I pick one artist and listen to that for hours or days. The artist will be paid a bit more money because more of the songs will be played, thus making Spotify pay a bit more for each.

A couple of weeks ago, it came to me that my e-devices sit unused overnight. I have several and perhaps I could use them to help fill the coffers of a musician while I sleep. So I tried it and it works! Before I go to bed, I pick an artist I want to support - most recently, that has been Shadi Touloui-Wallace (https://www.shaditolouiwallace.com) a young Australian Bahá'í and a very talented musician now living in Vancouver, British Columbia - and put her songs on repeat with the volume down.

I listen to her music for the eight hours I am asleep and she reaps the benefits of those extra payments.

If reading this makes sense to you, doing the same is something you can do if you have Spotify - I do not know if it works with any of the other streaming services like Apple Music. Pick your favorite artist, choose the songs by that artist, put them on random and repeat, and go to bed. 

When you get up next, you will have helped a struggling artist make a few pennies just by sleeping. If many of us do it, think of how rich we can make our faves. Heck, maybe one day, they can put together an arena tour!

Stay-at-Home Is a Good Thing

Why is believing in "stay-at-home" orders difficult to believe in the face of a severe lack of testing to determine the true breadth of coronavirus? From The New York Times:

• "As President Trump pushes to reopen the economy, most of the country is not conducting nearly enough testing to track the path and penetration of the coronavirus in a way that would allow Americans to safely return to work, public health officials and political leaders say."

The USA has a population of about 330 million. According to the Johns Hopkins real-time model, so far we have only given 3.3 million tests. That is 1% of the population.

One percent is less than a rounding error in any statistical model, yet we want to make national policy based on it?

I trust scientists, science, and public health officials. I do not trust politicians whose focus in on putting money in the hands of businessmen and businessmen who pander to politicians. I will obey the stay-at-home order in my state until I can be relatively sure that my own risk is minimized. That might even be longer than the current order ends on April 30.

I know many are in very different conditions than I am, living alone, retired with a pension and Social Security, a debt load that, while heavy, is manageable. I also know there are pressures on others that I do not have, and I equally sure that the risk of severe illness and death is far greater for my age-group. Making a small sacrifice is not a big deal for me.

Life's regrets. We all have at least one, right?

As I get into the last third of my time on this plane of existence, I ponder back to specific moments in my life. These moments might be precipitated by a thought, a song, or a television show.

Today, I had one of those experiences. I was watching a movie shot by a fellow over ten years living and working in Antarctica. He wintered over at the McMurdo Station, by far the largest inhabited outpost on the continent, for all those years, meaning he did not leave on the last jet that left in the summer. It is a beautiful movie because it is a beautiful place. I think his movie does not adequately convey the difficulties that come with living and working in extreme cold, in cramped spaces, with the same few people, in a world without light.

Kind of like Alaska, only colder. Much colder.

I recall spending my first winter there in 1977. My job was flying around the Interior, often above the Arctic Circle, in winter. Cold temperatures, blowing wind, reduced visibility...and did I mention cold temperatures? I recall having to drain the oil from my airplane's engine into a sealed container and sleeping with it in my sleeping bag; if I didn't, the oil would coagulate in the engine and would have lost all its lubricating properties, thus killing the engine permanently.

Watching the story of wintering over in Antarctica made me recall my time in the Navy in Coronado. I was what was called a 'Radarman,' meaning my job was to operate various kinds of shipboard radars under various conditions. While I was in Vietnam, I also had to repair the boat navigation radars that were installed on the two types of boats we had, the LSSC, Light SEAL Support Craft, and the MSSC, the Medium SEAL Support Craft. Even though I was not a trained ET, Electronics Technician, I knew enough about electronics and am smart enough to have figured out most of the common failures and repairs.

So I was very excited when I read that the Navy was seeking volunteers to winter over at McMurdo Station. One of the positions the Navy had was Electronic Technician, so I got the application and looked at it. I met the time-in-grade requirements and the description of the arduous winter conditions did not scare me - remember, this was many years before my time in Alaska - and I had the experience I thought would suffice. I had also read that not many sailors applied, so there wasn't much competition, which I considered a mitigating factor to my not being an ET. I was excited, so I sent the application in.

Then I waited. A good while later, a personnel clerk from somewhere in the Pentagon called me saying he had one question.

"Have you ever been to ET 'A'-school?"

My heart sank. Why? 'A'-school is the initial training a sailor gets after boot camp; it prepares the sailor for assignments based on the battery of aptitude tests given to all recruits in boot camp. Because I chose UDT/SEAL training during boot camp and was taken out of my 'normal' boot camp training, I took no aptitude tests other than those given to me before boot camp. Since I had volunteered for UDT training - the modern process is very different - I was sent to Coronado and not to any 'A'-school.

So, my answer to his question was 'no, my knowledge came from experience.'

And that ended my progress on the path to wintering over in Antarctica. So I watch the movie with a combination of sadness, longing, and a bit of lustful wonder...

Could I qualify now, as a 70-something, for a job with one of the contract companies now?

Will we experience a repeat of history?

Will we see a repeat of history? 

Will the world experience another, perhaps even greater depression?

Newly-elected, President Herbert Hoover came to office just before and "pursued a variety of policies in an attempt to lift the economy" during the initial part of the depression. Because he headed the federal government, he had many tools at his disposal, as did President Obama during the later Great Recession. Hoover, however, was a former businessman and politician and a conservative. The Great Depression became the central problem of the Hoover administration, but he was one who "opposed directly involving the federal government in relief efforts."

Sound familiar?

This 'minimal-government-involvement' mindset goes against many of the major economic thinkers and the financial processes put in place after the Great Depression to prevent - well, they hoped it would prevent - a proliferation of the conditions that gave rise to the greed and myopia that caused the Great Depression, and subsequently the Great Recession.

That mindset, however, fits very well with the elimination of the administrative order...

Gratitude for being a grandparent

This is from an article in Medium by an author I read:

• What’s amazing to me is how consistent this struggle is among every parent I talk to. The texts and social media posts bouncing around my circle all echo each other. We feel like we’re failing at both. Our kids don’t just need us — they need more of us. Our kids are acting out, abandoning the routines they already had, dropping naps, sleeping less, doing less — except for jumping on top of their parents, which is happening much more. We’re letting them watch far greater amounts of screen time than we ever thought we’d tolerate. Forget homeschooling success — most of us are struggling to get our kids to do the basics that would have accounted for a Saturday-morning routine before this pandemic.

What amazes me about this is the consistency the author conveys and what I see in my own, much smaller circle made up of people I either knew in high school or Bahá'ís I have known since the 1970s.

Namely, they are older and without at-home children. Often, as in my case, there is no spouse, no other human in the house.

We do not have to worry about homeschooling, keeping pre-teens from going crazy or damaging things (dogs, furniture, walls...themselves), and balancing whatever paid work there is with the necessity to give "enough" time to those children and perhaps a spouse.

A person I know is the parent of three children, all under the teenage years. There is a spouse and both parents have stay-at-home jobs now. The challenges my friend deals with are unlike anything in one's life experience. There are the stresses created by keeping children contained within a relatively small space (house and backyard), of keeping a large breed dog de-stressed by walking as often as possible, and dealing with a spouse's stressful new job, started just about the time the novel coronavirus began to make its presence felt.

There is very little 'downtime' for this new breed of parents. Considering this pandemic involves a novel coronavirus against which not one human on Earth has any immunity, there is no historical basis on which to rely; the decisions are far more frequent than day-to-day. They come minute-to-minute. There is no consistency; what worked an hour ago might fail now. There is no manual, no helpful book by an experienced pediatrician.

There is just the Now.

As I sit here in my own small cave, alone, writing these words, I am reminded that there was a time when I was one of those parents with a houseful of children, all needing attention, direction, guidance, and discipline. The difference, of course, is there was no novel coronavirus waiting to inflict incredible sickness on a body just around the corner.

My heart goes out to all parents with children, the children themselves, and the teachers who will have to deal with a wide variety of homeschooling results when they finally go back to school. The time between now and then will be stressful and chaotic for them.

I am glad I am a grandparent.

What noise down yonder pathway comes? Tis the piper come for payment.

It is time to pay the piper.

For the decades since the Great Recession, governments at all levels from the federal to the states and localities have cut public health funding almost out of existence. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has had its budget whacked. In Maine, then-Governor Paul Le Page cut the state's health department nursing staff from 90 to less than 20. As Detroit neared bankruptcy, all of their health educators, the people who teach others how to be health-wise, were released. 100% of them. A former Oklahoma state representative, an emergency room doctor, said it is easier to cut public health than to cut personal benefits or access to care. 

 

And cut they did. While you might be inclined to blame the current Republicans for all this, there is plenty of blame to go around. This process of cut, cut, cut has happened under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Politicians cannot be accused of taking the long-view on something as seemingly benign as public health.

Until a pandemic shows up. One has.

Now the piper is demanding payment. A rapidly-increasing death toll is a cost of not being prepared, of being slow to react, and of misreading signs of a coronavirus against which not one person on Earth had immunity.

 

We have waited until the house is on fire to start interviewing firefighters. It is time to start thinking of mankind as one family living on this Earth. It is time to start thinking more long-term than we have. We need to prevent fires, not just put them out.

What do Facebook and East Nashville and Ankara have in common?

As I sit here this day reading a news report about the horrendous tornado that struck East Nashville, Tennessee, in the early morning hours a couple of days ago, resulting in significant damage, destruction, and death in a highly-populated area, I am reminded that Facebook, a medium that is often scorned, has a valuable place in the world.

On my own Facebook feed, I read threads about Bahá'ís whose apartment complexes were damaged beyond salvage, those whose domiciles were completely destroyed, and those who have not yet been heard from.

Leave aside the fact that for Bahá'ís, this is a very spiritual time of the year, our Nineteen Day Fast, and that we pray for divine guidance on every day. Things might change - as I write this, 26 have been killed and many people are still unaccounted for - but so far, none of my Facebook friends have family members who have been injured or worse. The only way I could possibly know is through Facebook. Some share their stories - as much as they can, having just survived something that has, no doubt, shaken them to their core - and some help others in small and large ways without expectation of thanks. They all have a very long, arduous path in front of them.

At times like these for them and their friends, near and far, being able to connect with those friends and for those friends to rally whatever support is needed - like a GoFundMe page that has already been established for one, resulting in several thousands of dollars already - the social medium called Facebook is a valuable helper. And I am sure there are thousands of others sharing stories and support on Facebook beside Bahá'ís.

So what do Facebook, East Nashville, and Ankara have in common?

Facebook. A place where high school friends from 50+ years ago can reconnect with their old chums and meet new ones.

Facebook. A place where those suffering a grievous killer tornado can go to ask for help, no matter how timidly or unwantedly...and have those requests answered quickly by others not in similar situations.

So yes, Facebook can be a bad place, a place easily abused for political, financial, or other nefarious desires. It can also be a place to meet, laugh, cry, ask for and give help when needed.

Amtrak isn’t known for pampering anyone. Or is it?

Here is a paragraph from a Bloomberg article, "Getting Americans into Train Travel," posted on Feb 5, 2020.

"Passenger rail hasn’t been easy for a long time in America. The private kind all but vanished in the 1970s when the nation’s corporate railroads talked the U.S. Congress into creating Amtrak. That enabled rail owners to ditch their sickly nonfreight routes at a time when riders were choosing cars and planes over trains.

Amtrak, which isn’t known for pampering anyone, has for almost 50 years been the only option for Americans journeying far from home by rail."

My only question is this:

Has the author never flown on a commercial airliner as a cabin-class passenger? 

In comparison to the sardine-can seating accommodations on today's modern jet, the seats on Amtrak are quite luxurious. Yes, you might have to pay for food - if what you get on many can be adequately called 'food' - and water if you want it...if the particular airline even offers food.

Amtrak is now headed by the former CEO of Delta Airlines, one of those airplane operators who jammed as many seats into the non-first class cabin as they could legally fit, regardless of the increasing girth and average weight of the average American flier. But he no longer has the final say in his new job; Amtrak is a government entity, so Congress has a say.

And we all know about the good the decisions Congress makes...

So Amtrak isn't known for pampering anyone? Maybe, maybe not. I guess it depends on your definition and perspective.

"Are you a Michiganian or a Michigander?"

Perhaps you have heard me or someone else in or from my state use the term "Michigander" to describe those of us living here. What a strange term. What is it? Is it a defined term? What is the source? It really is pretty simple.

In the eyes of the state Legislature, Michigander is the official term for the residents of Michigan and they have a bill that passed unanimously in both the House and Senate a couple of years ago to prove it.

Tucked into an obscure package of bills that modernized the 1913 statute creating the Michigan Historical Commission is a passage that strikes out a reference to Michiganians in favor of Michiganders.

So, yes. It is legal. And the law! Now you know. You're welcome.

"Age is just a number." Yes, but...

This will not be a well-researched blog about age, aging, ageism, age discrimination, or anything else having to do with age. It is really only about my personal feelings or irritation when I read that phrase, "age is just a number."

While it is true that age is just a number, so is 3. Or 130. Or 16. I would not want a 3-year old to drive. Maybe not even a 130-year old. An 80-year old has the wisdom of a lifetime that a 16-year old lacks. So yes, age is a number, but it can be a very important number.

To me, when used, that phrase sounds more like an excuse and a diversion than an explanation. You read people interested in dating say it. You hear politicians - usually much older or much younger than "normal" - say it. In fact, I cannot recall any instance where using the phrase changed my mind or convinced me in any way, shape, or form.

So when I hear a current presidential candidate say "age is just a number" - looking at you, Joe - all it really confirms is that the person saying it - again, looking at you, Joe - is really trying to get a reader or listener to look beyond something that is really quite relevant to the position, that of the President of the United States. It is probably the most difficult job in the world and mental acuity, sharpness, coherence, and general togetherness are critical to success.

Especially considering the chaotic, hyper-partisan, deeply divided country a candidate wants to lead.

Do not use "age is just a number." Ever. In any context, especially when running for president. My life will be much less stressful and I think others' will, too.

So you want to be a writer? (ahem....)

So how do you cultivate the focus and discipline to finish a task? By continually doing the dull stuff. You do it until you’re used to it and getting through is a habit. For example, if you want to be a writer, you write, as Rebecca Solnit explains on LitHub:

Write. There is no substitute…But start small: write a good sentence, then a good paragraph, and don’t be dreaming about writing the great American novel or what you’ll wear at the awards ceremony because that’s not what writing’s about or how you get there from here. The road is made entirely out of words. Write a lot…it’s effort and practice. Write bad stuff because the road to good writing is made out of words and not all of them are well-arranged words.

Make your goal to simply write, and eventually you’ll get to the next boring step—edits.

The work may always be a bit painful, as acclaimed writers reveal. 

“More often than not if I’ve done nine pages I may be able to save two and a half or three,” poet and writer Maya Angelou tells the Paris Review. “That’s the cruelest time you know.”