Time to Think

See The USA #177

By Hank Silverberg

You probably noticed I did not post a blog last Sunday. I was away the week before on vacation, and frankly, I needed the break after 15 months of the pandemic. I didn't post anything about the trip here on the blog or on my twitter feed (@hanksilverberg) or Facebook feeds while I was away, because I didn't want all the crooks out there to know my home was empty. Police always advise you refrain from telling the whole world you are not home because burglars can read too, and I took that advice.

My family and I, wife, daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons, had all hopped in a six-passenger, three-seat American-made van and took a 1,600 mile round trip to part of the country I had never seen before. I added Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri to my modest list of states that I have visited. It is now at 28. It was a different experience from other family road trips I had been on before Covid-19.

(My View of downtown St. Louis from one of the small windows at the top of the Gateway Arch)

The places we went were interesting, but hanging over our stops at the Louisville Slugger factory in Kentucky and the Gateway Arch, Busch Stadium and Science Museum in St. Louis, among others, was the knowledge that the pandemic is not totally gone. We had to wear our masks to go up to the top of the Arch in St. Louis. The ride up and down, five people in an enclosed tram the size of clothes dryer, was a bit scary, but the view from the top was spectacular. The picture above is from one of the small windows in the observation area 630 feet up.

Our home base for much of the week was a nice little three-bedroom house in Bellville, Illinois, just outside St. Louis. My daughter had arranged for it through Airbnb, and we did day trips from there. (We stopped overnight in Louisville on the way to Bellville.)

Each time we pulled into a gas station or fast food place, I kept watching to see if the people there were wearing masks and what Covid protocols were in place. All of us, except the two young ones, have been vaccinated or we never would have made the trip. We kept our masks on in many of those short stops, but at the baseball park, with about 25,000 Cardinals fans cheering a walk-off win over the Marlins in the steaming 95 degree heat, it dawned on me it was much like the pandemic never existed. I wondered how many of those fans were vaccinated. When I got home and found out that Missouri had the lowest vaccination rate in the country (13% that week), my heart skipped a beat. The risk may have been higher than I thought. But a week later we are all healthy.

This was a new part of the country for me. But frankly, at times it looked very much like many other places I have been in the U.S. It was just a bit flatter.

Here's a game I like to play when I travel to new places in the U.S. Imagine someone blindfolded you, took you to some unknown place and then dropped you off at a shopping mall without telling you where you where. Would you be able to figure out where you are? License plates might help, but if you are in an area near a state border that could confuse you.

National chain restaurants and big box stores have taken away some of the local charm that used to separate regions. And the neighborhood we stayed in, in Bellville didn't look that much different than a neighborhood in Maryland, even though the mouth of downspout in the bathtub had to be pulled down to activate the shower head. (I was told this is common for mid-west plumbing.)

We made a stop in Alton, Illinois to see a replica of

(Me in the replica chair, Alton, Ill)

a chair that was made for Robert Wadlow. He was apparently the tallest man in the world at 8' 11". The description beneath his statue told me where I was, but when I turned and looked around, Alton was not that different in appearance and feel than the Connecticut suburb I grew up in.

Downtown Louisville reminded me of downtown New Haven. Downtown St. Louis, at least the areas I saw, looked a lot like Hartford.

The corn and soy filled farmland of Illinois reminded me a lot of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, without the mountains.

There are "Golden Arches" in almost every town. But don't misunderstand. Every region has its own special heritage and history. There's no Gateway Arch in New Haven, but there is Judge's Cave. Judges Cave - Connecticut | AllTrails There's no bat factory in Hartford, but there is Mark Twain's House and Museum where he wrote Tom Sawyer. Home - Mark Twain House The bottom line is that the United States is a wonderful place. It is rich in culture, history and majestic scenery. Though lots of places look alike, they are all different in some ways, even in plumbing.

People talk a lot about trips to Paris or Madrid or London. Okay, maybe some day. But if you haven't seen the whole USA yet, there's a lot out there. I am determined to see the Grand Canyon soon and then the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. I'm hoping next time mask wearing won't be an issue.

(Note to Readers: After I published this early evening on Sunday I realized I forgot one other observation from my trip. Here it is. The trip took us through Kentucky and it's capital city, Lexington. As I passed the state capitol building on the outgoing trip, I remember thinking, "What makes this state so different from the rest of the country that it has produced two of the most negative, contrary lawmakers in the United States Senate." Kentucky can't be that much different than Virginia, or Illinois. Yet Mitch McConnell and weird Rand Paul, continue to do much to keep this country wallowing in the 20th century and looking backward instead of forward. The few people we met there on an overnight stop on the way home were nice. But their senators seem to be out of touch with the real world. )

A Great Idea!

(Courtesy of Frederick, PD)

There has been a lot of talk in the last year about "defunding police" or "reforming the police" in the wake of the George Floyd murder and other uses of excessive force by police departments across the country. Many of the incidents involve people causing a disturbance. Often that person has a mental health issue that escalates into a violent ending. It's been clear for some time that police in many communities are not trained to handle such encounters. But there's a good idea coming from the City of Frederick, Maryland. The police department there has now set up a pilot program beginning next week. It's called the "Crises Car." The unmarked car will be staffed by two police officers who are not in uniform. They will be accompanied by a civilian mental health professional and an EMT/paramedic from the county fire department.

Police Chief Jason Lando says, "...the Crisis Car concept was designed to get resources to an individual quickly while still providing a measure of safety to everyone involved."

The car will operate weekday afternoons at first during the pilot program. The mental health professionals involved will also be responsible for doing follow-ups with those they help on the street.

News Flash • Frederick, MD • CivicEngage (cityoffrederick.com)

The idea here is to reach individuals with mental health issues and intervene when police are not really the right people to help them. Let's hope more police departments try this and it leads to fewer deadly encounters.

Reporters Don't Give Opinions:

These days I am an Adjunct College Professor and retired journalist. So it's okay if I opine here on issues of the day. In the classroom, my students often exchange opinions. I like to challenge them to think outside the box. That's part of a good education. But I spent 40 years as a radio and TV reporter and never once, never, did I express an opinion about any political or social issue while on the air. Sure, there were some discussions, sometimes heated, in the newsroom about how to cover certain issues, or whether to cover them at all, but that never made it on the air. If I was asked to be interviewed by someone about a story I covered it was always approved by management and I was very careful to report facts and not opinion. And like most private industry, disagreements about any internal policy were discussed inside the company, not on a broadcast.

All this brings me to two TV reporters who lost their jobs this month for saying they would talk with Project Veritas, the conservative group that claims to practice journalism but really bends the truth in almost everything they do.

April Moss, a meteorologist for WWJ in Detroit, was fired after she announced on the air that she was going to talk to Project Veritas about "discrimination" at the station over the Covid-19 protocols. CBS, which owns WWJ, requires employees to wear masks inside the station and follows CDC guidelines on vaccines.

April Moss, CBS Detroit Reporter: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com

She is the second reporter to get fired over this. Ivory Hecker, a reporter, made a similar comment on-air last week and was fired by her station in Houston.

My take is: Good! You don't bash your employer on their air, no matter what the issue. If there is a real discrimination issue, and Human Resources can't resolve it, call a lawyer and file a lawsuit. That's been done successfully before. If you have to take it public for some reason, you don't talk to a disreputable outfit like Project Veritas. There are still a few good newspapers that might like to report on the internal dispute.

For the record, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it is not against federal law for employers to mandate Covid-19 testing as Moss had claimed. WWJ told AdWeek that they allowed Moss to do her weather reporting from home because of her issues with masks and vaccines, and there was no discrimination. Here's part of the statement:

"While we respect and support our employees’ freedom to have their own opinions, they are not entitled to use our station news broadcasts as a platform for sharing personal views."

That's the way it should be. If you are unhappy with the requirements of your job, find another one.

Dumbest Quote of The Week!

The dumbest quote of the week this time comes

from Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma.

It came during a hearing on the bill that would make Washington D.C. the 51st state.

Residents of D.C. have no voting representation in Congress. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has no vote, though when Democrats control the House, she is allowed to speak on the floor and propose legislation. There is no such equivalent in the Senate. So in effect, the city's 705,000 residents who pay federal taxes have no say it how it's spent because they have no voting representative. Attempts in the past to change that have bumped into the U.S. Constitution, so the easiest solution is to make D.C. a state with all the rights and privileges of the other 50.

The GOP has always blocked this idea for several reasons. D.C. has a 50% Black population, which overwhelmingly votes Democratic in local elections. As a state, Washington, D.C. would likely send one Democratic congressman and two Democratic senators to the Capitol, giving that party more power. And that would most likely be two Black senators. So, there's some racism in the GOP opposition.

My numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau. But it's also clear most members of Congress have no clue about who lives in the city they can see outside their office window in neighborhoods like Shaw, Adams Morgan or Anacostia. So here's the dumb quote from Senator Lankford:

"Any individual that (sic) moves to Washington, D.C., understands that Washington, D.C. is unique. It's been well known that when you move to Washington, D.C., at any point, you're moving to an area that doesn't have two senators or a House member,"

Senator Lankford is apparently okay with disenfranchising about 30% of city residents who were born there and spend their entire lives in D. C. That's about 211,000 people who did not "move" there.

U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: District of Columbia

GOP senator on DC statehood: 'No one is compelled to actually' live there (msn.com)

The Senator should go home to Oklahoma and ask the residents of Norman (123 K) and Lawton (92 K) to give up their right to vote for representation in Congress and see what they think. That's about the same number of permanent residents he wants keep disenfranchised in D.C.

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