Measles on the Rebound.

     If you are a parent, Please make sure your children are vaccinated.  In this week's issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, (no, I am not joking), the Centers for Disease Control report that there has been a sudden increase in the number of measles cases reported this year. The cumulative number since January 1 stands at 118 . Hospitalization rates were highest among infants and children aged <5 years (52%), but rates also were high among children and adults aged ≥5 years (33%).  
     This increase is of course due to two things, globalization of the economy, and failure to vaccinate all of our children. Of these 118 cases, 46 were imported, mainly from Europe and Southeast Asia, the rest were home grown. "The largest outbreak occurred among 21 persons in a Minnesota population in which many children were unvaccinated because of parental concerns about the safety of measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. That outbreak resulted in exposure to many persons and infection of at least seven infants too young to receive MMR vaccine (4)."
     Measles is not a harmless childhood malady, it is a serious viral infection, highly contagious, and can lead to life threatening complications. It is completely preventable.  Why would you take this chance? So I reiterate, vaccinate your children! Everything else is just commentary.  

Chicken Fat Chocolate Chunk Cookies

   I have been cooking a bit of late.  Not much interesting about that say about half of you.  ( Yes, I know that I am famous for the phrase 'Ninety per cent of statistics is made up on the spot,' but bare with me.)  I am going to recommend you listen to a podcast called Fear of Frying.  Fear of Frying is a piece I heard on WBEZ wherein Nina Barrett interviews Ina Pinkney of Chicken Fat Chocolate Chunk Cookie fame.
     Ina is apparently the chicken fat doyenne of New York.  For those of you lucky enough to have been raised on 'gribenes' I need not say more.  Of course I wouldn't eat this stuff on a daily basis, but to have just a taste of gribenes on a rare occasion turns on my nostalgia machinery. For the uninitiated this is like a chicken skin crackling sort of thing, like a kosher pork rind, buried under a dusting of kosher salt, and caramelized onions, (okay, sometimes burned to a crisp onions) and fried, (there! I said it!) in rendered chicken fat.  This sounds pretty tasty to some of us if accompanied by liberal doses of Slivovitz.  This culinary delight has probably killed more Jews than Hitler.  But now we are all taking drugs for hyperlipidemia and hypertension, so maybe once in a while isn't so bad, and we have angioplasty now too, (though only as a last resort).  
     So I recommend Nina's podcast and encourage you to turn on your own nostalgia machinery and think about all the bad things you ate, that mean so much to the person you have become.  After all, you are what you eat.  Now a days I am eating stuff like baby bok choy from the farmer's market, grilled on the Char Broil with New Zealand Lamb shoulder and quinoa from Peru with aji molido.  But next month when I go to Montreal I will stop in at Dunn's Famous for a medium fat, hold the guilt!

Almost 40 years ago I went to Mexico with a young woman I scarcely knew. She would later become my wife and constant companion, but I hardly knew that then and anyway, that's a different story. But she was game, and knew how to have a good time so off we went. I wasn't a really good time, but it was an important trip in many ways. On one level of course I would gain an appreciation of a neighboring culture that was rich and flavorful, but that had a darker side. Violence and machismo and cruelty to animals, and an appalling degree of graft and injustice and poverty that were the gifts (gifts in the manner of a sexually transmitted disease) of the Spanish, the oligarchs and the oil companies, and the fruit companies and the Mother Church. Anyway, I was an idealist and if, the truth be known, a bit of a socialist so I was a little confused by all that I was learning.

My traveling companion and soon to be wife, Golden, took me to meet a woman of her acquaintance who had survived the war by coming to Mexico City from Poland. This woman had been a comrade of my future mother in law in a Socialist youth group in Volynia. As we sat in her apartment overlooking the Reforma, we talked and ate tuna sandwiches and drank coffee. We talked about the war and world events and politics and I expressed a few opinions and this woman, old before her time, said to me, “If you are 18 and you are not a Communist, you have no heart. If you are 50 and still a Communist, you have no head.”

All of this comes to mind in the wake of a conversation I had with my brother today about the nature of idealism. He is over 60 years of age and he is still an idealist. We talked about the American Dream, and when it was lost, or taken from us. Now, Steven is an idealist and thinks that the American Dream of the 1950's is something that can be reclaimed. Disregard for a moment whether this is desirable or not. We are talking about idealism here! I think of myself as a pragmatist, no longer the young idealist chatting away on a sunny Mexico City afternoon in1975, so I debated the other side of the proposition, the darker side. I argued the economics of population growth. There are 6.7 billion of us here on planet Earth and double that by the end of this century. My dear idealistic brother thinks that we could recapture the America of our youth by limiting immigration and paying down the debt right now, and he is angry. He looks around and sees way more than he can deal with. He lives in Los Angeles, one of the world's most diverse cities. He sees double the number of people that lived in the Basin than when he emigrated there from Chicago a generation before. He loved that Los Angeles, (of his youth and his idealistic dreams) and it is changed, and he is angry about that. But he has always been angry about something. I think that drives his idealism. All that anger. All that passion.

I suggested to him that he would always be this way, and I think he conceded the point.

As a pragmatist, I see that change will happen and that it is likely to be the result of chance rather than policy, (too much time working with statistics and demographics I suppose.) Louis Pasteur famously said: "Chance favors the prepared mind." He also said “Whether our efforts are, or not, favored by life, let us be able to say, when we come near the great goal, I have done what I could.” Was Pasteur a pragmatist or an idealist or both? I would be happy if he were both. Maybe he is telling us that we need to be pragmatic and do what we can by preparing ourselves with the data we need to make the best decisions, but to keep up the struggle, to keep that youthful passion, to do everything we are capable of to realize our dreams, whether or not we ever do.

Those of you who know me well, from both extremes of the political spectrum, have  become either frustrated or bored with my political opinions.  You already understand that I espouse  certain positions such as 2nd amendment rights to keep and bare arms, and the international rights of a nation to defend itself from enemies, either foreign or domestic, when that enemy is bent on its annihilation. These positions may sometimes make you crazy. I also believe in nation building. It is not a cliche to say  that it is of paramount importance to think globally but to act locally.  This is not an introduction to some crazy extremist screed about school boards. It is not a manifesto about hunting for our own food. Nor is what I am about to say socialistic, left wing wacko, vegan eating, Volvo driving, (though I think they are fine cars,) pinot grigio sipping (also a fine product) liberal Napa Vally bullshit.

I have personally been involved in nation building for many years.  I am talking about my years working in the Head Start program.  This work is nation building in its truest sense, and it is the most important work I have ever done.

In those emotional days in the fall of 2001, after the Supreme Court appointed W, after the Tech Bubble burst, and after I watched the World Trade center bombing on a TV set outside the Health Care Quality Improvement conference I was attending with my colleague Lorna, I had no way of knowing that I would be making a career change in the immediate future.

Fast forward about four months to the morning Renee Hunter in the personnel office at Contra Costa County Community Services Department had me sign a loyalty oath, to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. (I kid you, not. I had mistrusted anyone who had to ask me for my loyalty since I was 5 years old and I watched the McCarthy hearings on that old RCA black and white TV with bunny ear antennae.)  I took that oath with mixed emotions.  I was about to become...a public employee.

Taking that oath gave me the opportunity to do some amazing work at the country's finest Head Start agency.  I witnessed first hand the struggles that low income people, (especially homeless families with young children,) fight every day in this land of stunning abundance.  Right there on the eastern shore of San Pablo Bay with a multi-million dollar view of San Francisco, Treasure Island, Angel Island, and in the shadow of San Quentin, are the mean streets of Richmond. Pound for pound this is the most dangerous turf in the country.  Now pretend for a moment that you are 3 years old, cold, hungry, and exposed to domestic violence.  Now pretend for a moment that you get two meals every day, some basic dental work, your shots, a loving teacher that really cares about you.  Pretend for a moment you are lucky enough to have Simone B. at the George Miller III Child Development Center as your teacher.  Not only will you learn your ABC's and your colors and shapes, but you and your family will benefit from, parent education, mental health care, screening for physical disabilities, nutritional screening, indeed a panoply of comprehensive services.  Your parents may get a shot at job training through a Community Service Block Grant, and best of all, you get the hope that San Quentin will only be some slumbering hulk across the bay.

My friends who are more conservative than I say its too expensive.  And its not cheap to provide this type of experience to a child. Its probably north of $10,000 a year.  But if the idea of government spending causes you dyspepsia you should be insisting that your tax dollars be spent on this kind of nation building.  This kind of nation building returns 7 dollars for every dollar spent in reduced costs for social services.  I'm not making this stuff up.  It's well documented in the literature.  Read David Kirp's The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politics and Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: Higher Education Goes to Market.

So, it is with relief that I read today, that Obama will not be throwing Head Start under the bus. Check it out. Check it out.

But this is certainly no time to take a deep breath.  Yes we need to rein in expenses.  Let's start with Rep. Michelle Bachmann's  (R-MN) farm subsidy.  Talk about some low hanging fruit.

Reminiscence

Hummingbirds are feeding in the cherry tree, pollinating the tiny pink flowers. My house is surrounded by bay trees thirty feet tall, and beyond them, redwoods even taller, candles reaching up to the overcast spring sky. The tattered Tibetan prayer flags flutter in the breeze. The meyer lemon is fruiting and we have been eating lemon bars for some weeks now. March Madness is a low drone on the television in counterpoint to the tumbling of the dryer full of newly laundered sheets. The sheets put me in mind of a reminiscence jotted down by my grandfather on a February day some sixty eight years ago, on an overcast afternoon in Chicago, chilly and damp, bone-achingly chilly and damp. I would like to share that note with you, that he jotted in liquid black ink, his fluid yiddish cursive on sheets of laundry paper. He had plenty of laundry paper, since he ran, quite unsuccessfully, a west side hand laundry. Be careful, the paper is delicate.

The houses and the streets are covered, as with a white sheet. Everything is white; the snow has covered everthing, and yet it continues. Everything is white and it dazzles the eye. It looks like the whole world is covered with sheets, you see nothing – but snow. And the stillness – it gnaws at your bones, and it freezes your nerves. And the memories, they carry you away, far away. Your past carries you away to distant lands. To lands and villages long since gone from the map.

I see myself, in the small town of my youth, where people lived and died quietly, as if this were the whole world. They didn't have luxuries there, they didn't want them. Their lives were as still and placid as the little lake. In the summer, warm beautiful days, cold in the spring and fall. Big winds and storms that covered the woods and the fields the whole winter. Then there was time. Plenty of time to think and to learn God's ways of life, and to earn a place in the higher world. They thought, and they meditated, and they learned the old ways.

I see myself. I think of my old school, meeting with my friends. It is winter. Everything is white. A deep snow. The houses and the small street, everything is covered with a white blanket. A strong wind blows and the windows are covered with snow, encrusted with ice. We cluster around the oven and we are engrossed with learning. Each lost in his own thoughts. And the school is blackened and smoky. The floor is black, filthy with mud and snow. A mournful image, young children, blue from the cold, sit in the smoke, and they learn, they learn from the antique pages, wrinkled with age, smudged, dirty from years of tears and sweat, from thousands of years. They study Torah. They seek to glean the secrets of the ages. They discussed and debated the wisdom of an older world. A world of traditions which time has long since obscured but which still lives, with with a breath and a pulse, beating weakly.

And the children are alone, half frozen from the cold, trying to warm themselves with their breath, and to discover the secrets of life. From the old, moldy leaves they want an answer. They wrinkle their young brows day after day, night after night, until they come to a conclusion that there must be a better way, a better world, far away, where people can learn whatever they want and think whatever they want and not be forced to know what their parents want them to, and nothing else, with no freedom of choice, right, or opportunity to live their lives, and make their search in the way they want to.

So, they gather together, one to the other, and their oven gets cooler. Their beit hamedrash gets darker. People from the narrow streets and from their small stores, half frozen from the cold, come together to pray and look for a place to warm themselves a bit by the half cold oven. And they rub their hands, one against the other, to warm themselves a bit, rubbing their hands on their books.

I knew there would come a time when I would get older and search for a new land. I dreamt of this even as a child, that there would be a place with new people, a place more free for my children. Years have gone by, and I have my dream. I have left my old home and my friends, my parents, the old houses, the dirty streets, the great heat of summer that couldn't quite dry up the mud of winter. I left the beit hamedrash where the walls grew dirtier, even in my time. This place was buried in my heart, in my younger years. We have left forever our childish souls. I have left on a long journey, that not my parents, nor theirs would ever have conceived.

I have met strange people. That is how the second part of my life started, with others. The life of an immigrant is hard and bitter. He comes to a strange land with no friends, no family. The people that he meets are condescending. They look at his as if he came from the wilderness, without a language, without manners, without a concept of his new land. What he brought with him from the old county made him look ridiculous to the strangers. His clothes, his habits, his speech, even the way he ate made him an object of derision in the eyes of others.

Some felt a certain tolerance for the greenhorn because they had been in the same plight. Some showed sympathy. But to the person who maintained some self respect, for him it was even harder. His existence was tragic, and his death was cheap, very cheap. No one wanted to give him work because there were too many unemployed. Thousands of young men came into the country every day and begged with all their strength to earn enough for a piece of bread. And the people took advantage of them. They exploited the strongest and the healthiest. What happened to this dream of freedom that we had.

For this we left everything. To run in search of freedom, and it would all wind up so cheapened. We had a sense that we were the true children of freedom.

Everyday the immigrants came together with these people who were but half immigrant themselves, and we began to realize that their lives were not much better than ours, maybe worse. We began to get a glimpse of this freedom that people laid down their lives for. We thought that when a person is free he has no fear, he has no shame. He lives in a world under no one, and does what he feels he needs to.

And then we began to learn; customs, language. We looked around a little and we began to understand things we never dreamed of.

And the children grew up in freedom. They knew the things that they learned in the schools, in the colleges. But from the home, from the father and mother, they learned nothing.

The old ones gave a homey Jewish upbringing. What is the need for this? He's a Free Man. And so, the children became estranged from the parents.

The parents didn't understand their children. They had different dreams, different times. You must understand life on its different stages. The children didn't understand the torn souls of their parents, who didn't understand themselves. These people who left the old ghettos and found no new ones, they were the strangers. It is to late to search. The old gods were left in fragments, the new ones haven't been found.