Why do I Keep Writing About This? Politics I Mean.

 

I'm just a little writer, a five-foot nine writer, sitting behind my computer punching keys. I didn’t come over on the boat, but my ancestors did.

I write, not because a ton of people read me, but with writing perhaps I will gain some understanding. For as Isaac Asimov said “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”

After the Republican nominee was selected in 2024, I went into mourning for a month. My daughter and I were railing against the possibility that that nominee could be elected.

Then, when Kamala Harris spoke at the Democratic Convention, I leaped for joy. For a moment the heaviness lifted. I believed in possibilities. Joy could again ring throughout our land.

I was wrong.

I thought women would rise up in mass, "No way." They would say. "You are not disrespecting us again. You are not taking away our rights to medical help in times of need. You are not allowing our little girls to be impregnated and then allow them no choice. How many of those pro-lifers have had teenage sex? How many single mothers raised their children alone? How many old farts have gone to sex parties where they were served underage girls?"

I was wrong. Not enough women said that.

After the election, I figured I wouldn't read about what was happening or write about it.

I was wrong about that, too.

But the rattling sounds came to me from the Midwest to the West Coast—it was of democracy being attacked, of freedoms being dismantled, of people being frightened and shipped off. Like a train wreck, it was impossible to ignore.

And then a lady Bishop, like David standing up to Goliath, spoke out to the giant to be merciful to vulnerable people.

That took courage.

Now she is being attacked for disrespect, for speaking from the pulpit, her turf, the church.

If she had called out the President in private, it would not have caused a ripple.

Yes, we have separation of Church and state, but this was a person-to-person comment and having an assemblage of governmental people waltz into a church under the guise of tradition certainly brings the image of the state into the church.

And the complainers probably don't know that in 2022, this Bishop, while ministering to a group of protestors—bringing masks and such, were dispersed, (security brought Billy clubs and tear gas), so that the nominee could walk safely to the front of the church, the very church where Bishop Budde officiates, and hype his Bible for sale.

Didn't the Christ of the Christian Bible throw the money changers out of the synagogue?

I understand that many thought politics was corrupt, money was running the government, our administration was funding the wars, that the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. They saw that the middle class was melting away.

We were told we were living in garbage cans, our cities were insulted, lies were flying, data couldn't be believed, people were being demonized, science couldn't be trusted, and there were differences of opinion regarding Earth Warming. Yet, probably lurking in the backs of many minds was the probability that the earth would not survive, and thus, neither would they.

We Homo sapiens can handle fear and stress in small doses, but when it is continual, it wears down the spirit.

Without HOPE, the spirit dies.

Our still small voice, our intuition, our spirituality was drowned out by the blooming of rhetoric.

Time was ripe for a despot to step in and tell us he could "Make America Great Again.”

Americas didn't see that America was great already.

Our country is like a living individual; it makes us ashamed sometimes, does wonders other times, it grows, evolves, and sometimes takes one step back while taking two ahead. But underneath it all, we know it beats with a proud heart, and that it is step by step, inch by inch, moving forward.

But Americans wanted a quick fix.

We, the people, were peddling as fast as possible to keep our family together, raise our kids properly, keep them safe, manage our finances, make ends meet, and worry about the media's effect on us personally and the country in general. It was bombarding us at every turn.

When a pandemic hit, it brought on an entirely new set of problems—deaths in our family, fear for our lives, our elders at risk, and when inoculations came, many railed against them saying they were not safe that they would damage us, they weren't tested sufficiently. We were sick because of additives in our food, we didn't eat properly, and we needed someone to save us.

We lost jobs. We lost businesses. We lost our support systems. There was a rift between friends, spouses, and lovers. All the while, the media kept fear in front of us.

We knew that Russia had influenced the earlier election, but I guess not many believed that they would do it again. Keep those Americans off-kilter, and they are easily manipulated.

One side said we were being lied to. The other side said the same. We knew we were being lied to. One man was clear with it. We could see lies coming directly from his mouth. At least we knew what he was about.

Was it an entropy (a gradual decline into disorder) that happened? Was our system wearing down? Did we allow our morals, truth-telling, and respect for our fellow man to be eroded? Didn't we hear the bashers coming and didn't stop them? Did we feel powerless and, therefore, needed someone to save us? Couldn't we tell the difference between a despot and a Messiah? Did our belief systems totally blind us to other ways of thinking?

Did we not see that opposing forces were beating on our doors while we were allowing the media to tell us what to think?

Looking at it, it's no wonder we are in a mess.

It's time to put on our big girl panties and get to work.

Will we let a group of big-money people tell us what to do? We are Americans. We built this country with our bare hands. We tilled the soil, moved west, championed women's rights, and put Unions in place so people would be paid a living wage, and be treated properly. We freed the slaves, brought about Civil Rights, and had our lives saved by the black, white, red, and yellow physicians, chemists, and researchers.

We've been inspired by all races and sexual persuasions —writers, songwriters, entertainers, motivational speakers, ministers. We gave women the right of choice with their bodies, we saved cancer patients, we eradicated Polio, and we gave new body parts to people who had faulty ones. We have seen children born with defects live their lives through science, research, and innovation. I once held a little baby with leukemia. They knew he would soon die, and he did. Now, children with leukemia are being saved, living out their lives through the advances in medicine. My sister-in-law died of breast cancer in her 40s, and now women are living beyond it. I lost my mother to cancer when she was 48. Now, although not eradicated, there are many cancer survivors—my husband being one. The present administration is attacking cancer research, too.

Don't tell me America isn't great. We brought water to people who needed it. We brought food to those who were starving. We are Americans. It's time we looked at what's good instead of what we don't like. We have the power to change and to advance; we've done it before. We will do it again.

Remember Grassroots?

They changed our culture, our medical field, and our nutrition.

We were all immigrants at one time. We came here to be FREE.

We ought War Bonds, we gave pots and pans to help defeat Hitler. We protested wars we felt were wrong. We won't be brought down by someone who does not understand all this—a man who has no empathy and has never walked in our shoes. We have mercy. We care for our neighbors. What in the heck are we doing folks? We forgot for a moment, but now we remember.

We're Americans.

And we were once smart enough to chase the fox out of the hen house and to fortify that structure, so he never got in again.

Once it Was Dangerous to Be a Child, and The Heroes Who Saved Them

  Leonhard Seppala and his team with Togo as lead dog.

In January 1925, a deadly diphtheria epidemic threatened the children of Nome, Alaska. Medicine to stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, nearly 700 miles away. Twenty sled dog teams relayed the serum from Nenana to Nome, by way of the Iditarod Trail, in just over five days. They endured blinding snow and temperatures reaching 50 degrees below zero. 

 

Balto, a hardy Siberian husky, led the trip's final leg with his musher, Gunnar Kaasen, and their team of dogs They entered Nome just before daybreak on February 2, 1925. He was considered the hero, however, he was only the last relay. The true unsung hero was a once sickly pup named Togo--see below.

 

Many people living today do not know the scourge of Diphtheria. They don't know that young children choked to death. They don't know that many families lost 3 or 4 children, sometimes all of them.  They don't know how the medical people worked diligently to  create a vaccine to prevent the deadly disease,along with a serum to heal the already ill.  Neither do they know of the valiant dogs that carried the serum 700 miles across Alaska to heal a village ravaged by by Diphtheria. 

 

The scourge of Diphtheria happened before my time, but I remember an impactful black and white film that featured Diphtheria and its horrible ravages, and how Science turned it around. So, I tried to find the movie and found instead, Togo, the hero dog that delivered 300,000 units of antitoxin to Nome, Alaska. (With William Dafoe as Leonhard Seppala, Togo's musher.)

 

Diphtheria is highly contagious, lethal, and mysterious. When medical experts developed treatments and vaccines, the affliction virtually disappeared—but not entirely.

 

See Science,| October 2021

 

How Science Conquered Diphtheria, the Plague Among Children

By Perri Klass 

 

Klass, a pediatrician, is the author of A Good Time to Be Born: How Science and Public Health Gave Children a Future.

 

She writes, "Even Noah Webster, that master of words, did not have a name for the terrible sickness. "In May 1735," he wrote in A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, "in a wet, cold season, appeared at Kingston, an inland town in New-Hampshire, situated in a low plain, a disease among children, commonly called the 'throat distemper,' of a most malignant kind, and by far the most fatal ever known in this country." Webster noted the symptoms, including general weakness and a swollen neck. The disease moved through the colonies, he wrote, "and gradually traveled southward, almost stripping the country of children....It was literally the plague among children. Many families lost three and four children—many lost all." And children who survived generally went on to die young, he wrote from his vantage point of more than half a century later. The "throat distemper" had somehow weakened their bodies."

 

In a Canadian journal article from 1927, a doctor recalled the years before the antitoxin was available when he'd had to watch a "beautiful girl of five or six years" choke to death. Later, the doctor's own daughter came down with Diphtheria, but a decade had passed, and now the antitoxin was available. "To watch the choking dreadful membrane melt away and disappear in a few hours with complete restoration to health within a few days," he wrote, "was one of the most dramatic and thrilling experiences of my professional career."

 

The waters are muddy these days. There is a political war, a distrust in information, false information, propaganda, and greed on the part of those who can benefit from our present pandemic.

 

I ran across this article about Diphtheria from Science and am mentioning it because I believe there are many people alive today who do not know what a dangerous disease it was and how people (and dogs) worked to curb its tide. (And horses, by the way, for they would inject horses with the virus, wait for them to make antibodies, and then extract the serum.) 

 

There have been horrible diseases in the past. We are not unique. And I wanted to remind people that there are scientists at work trying to ease human beings' suffering. 

 

I, too, was worried about the ramifications of this current vaccine. It truly isn't a vaccine, for it has neither an alive or dead virus, but instead a genetic messenger that tells our cells to seek out and destroy the Coronavirus.  

 

People were leery because it is so new, involves genetics, and was developed quickly, without FDA approval (which it now has). More than leery, they were scared and outraged.

 

The hype told us we would be made magnetic. We would be connected to the Cell towers. We would be filled with nano-particles. It would affect our reproduction. It would affect our DNA. (It doesn't. It is RNA, the messenger of DNA.) One reason the vaccination came out quickly was that some scientists were already working at the genetic level. So, they had some idea of where to go. (It still took a year.) Yes, it is all new and fearsome, and it's true we don't know what we don't know. 

 

But to say all vaccinations are harmful is "Throwing the baby out with the wash water." I remember a pediatrician speaking to a group of preschooler's moms. (When I was a preschooler mom) "You have two children," he said, "And we'll keep them alive."

 

They are poisoning us yell some. They are injecting us with nano-particles. They will make us magnetic and hook us up to cell towers. They are killing us. 

 

Now really. If the promoters of vaccines wanted to kill us, why not just let the virus do it? (Oh, but that's too random.)

 

Dystopian novels such as 1984, have become popular of late (Dangers of totalitarianism, government surveillance, censorship), which shows how fearful people are.

 

I used Diphtheria as an example of how babies have been saved. The Diphtheria Vaccine has been  given to babies since 1928. We give it to our babies and go on our merry way without knowing the horrors from which we have saved them.

 

 

I remember Polio, too, and how happy we were to have the Salk vaccine. When I was a child, our mothers wouldn't let us go to the public swimming pools during the hot months of summer for fear of contracting Polio. I knew several people who had it. When I was a very young child, a little girl next door, wore the leg braces you might have seen in the movie Forest Grump.

 

If you don't worry about people, read about Jane Goodall's chimpanzees who contracted Polio, and dragged their hindquarters, and couldn't clean their beds at night. Usually, chimps build a new clean bed every night. You could see how that would keep them clean and help keep fleas at bay. Ravished by Polio, they couldn't build a new bed. Some of Jane's workers would climb up into the trees and clean the beds for the chimps.

 

You see how mixed this is, how muddy the waters are, and what a shame we are fractured and polarized. And one of the cheap medicines, Ivermectin, that can help prevent or assist in the healing of this virus has been withheld from us. The medical community says it does no good. However it has assisted the healing of many, and had caused no harm. Not one person has died using Ivermectin. Yes, and many have resorted to the use of the Horse wormer Ivermectin, because human-grade cannot be obtained, or if found, is exorbitantly priced.  (Not one person has been harmed using the horse paste. Yellow journalism tells us it is toxic to human beings.) We will cry horrors at the use of horse paste, yet we use horse's serum to heal Diphtheria.  (And millions of women use Premarin,  a hormone replacement therapy, that is made from mare's urine, with disastrous results for the mare I might add.) Ivermectin has been proven to be safe. And it has been used for over 40 years with no deaths from its use. If you can manage to get hold of it, the price will be sky-high. While it was once cheap. 

 

Now isn't that a crime?! 

 

If a person with Covid19 goes to Urgent Care asking for a medicine that can help, they are turned away, saying they aren't sick enough. If they get sick enough, they can go into the hospital and be placed on a ventilator where their breathing is done for them. Maybe they will recover, maybe not.

 

I don't know where we are going with all this. At first, I was Pro-choice on vaccines. Take them or don't take them. It's your choice. But I'm tired of the fight. I'm tired of the polarization. I'm tired of the I'm right, you're wrong mentality. The truth is we are all muddling along. But for us to fight each other is ridiculous. To get one's blood boiling over disagreements is a big time and energy suck. Plus, a crying shame when we ought to be pulling together.

 

Diphtheria is still a killer; the mortality rate usually cited is 5 to 10 percent, but fatalities can be incredibly high in areas where medical care is unavailable. A 2011 outbreak in Nigeria had a case fatality rate of almost 43 percent in children 4 and younger.

 

The Sled Dog Story:

 

A statue exists in Central Park New York of a Siberian Husky named Balto who was the lead dog that brought in the diphtheria serum to Nome Alaska, and he mistakenly became the hero. Although all the dogs who made that run were heroes.)

However, the true unsung hero was a Husky named Togo.

Those in the know finally acknowledged that it was the Siberian Husky Togo who was the unsung hero in the delivery of Diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925. Togo as the lead dog, and Leonhard Seppala, as his musher, with The temperature was estimated at −30 °F (−34 °C), and the gale force winds causing a wind chill of −85 °F (−65 °C).^[11]

made incredible time in their mad dash east, covering over 170 miles in just three days. The longest of any team. (Balto covered only 55 miles.)

 

Togo was twelve years old.

  

Some insisted the run would kill Togo, but Seppala wouldn't go without him--thinking he needed him to survive, for the dog had on other occasions saved him and his team.  (The dog probably would have escaped to go with them anyway, for as a pup he would escape the kennel to run with the sleds. )

Togo was made of the stuff that makes movies. He was a runt, sickly, and obstinate.  (He was tenderly nursed by Mrs. Seppala.) Due to his size, Seppala, the breeder, decided he would never make a good sled dog so he gave him away to be a pet. Togo ran through a plate glass window to get back home. At that point, Seppala decided he would do what he was skilled to do, train sled dogs, so he harnessed the scrawny pup to the sled line. The harness calmed him, for then it must have gotten what he was meant to do.

 

Togo ran 75 miles that day--unheard of for such a young dog.

 

Soon Togo was out of harness, and on the lead line.

On the return trip from Nome Alaska, the team was stranded on an ice floe. Seppala tied a rope on Togo, anchored the other end to the floe, and threw Togo five feet across water to the shore. He thought Togo could pull the floe across the divide. To his horror the line snapped. Amazingly, the once-in-a-lifetime lead dog had the wherewithal to snatch the line from the water, roll it around his shoulders like a harness, and eventually pull his team to safety. 

 

 

Togo lead dog

 

 

Togo at peace

“Afterwards, I thought of the ice and the darkness and the terrible wind and the irony that men could build planes and ships. But when Nome needed life in little packages of serum, it took the dogs to bring it through.”--Leonhard Seppala

The National Park Service notes that in 1960, Seppala said, "I never had a better dog than Togo. His stamina, loyalty and intelligence could not be improved upon. Togo was the best dog that ever traveled the Alaska trail."^[10][8]

 

 

 

 

P.S. The Husky who played Togo in the movie Togo was a direct descendant of the original Togo going back 14 generations. Seppala Siberian Huskies are famous, and Seppala was given the Humanitarian award for the best care of his dogs. 

 

In 2001, Togo eventually got his own statue. It is in Seward Park N. Y.