Coronavirus - What's Really Going On?

As the conversation around COVID-19 ramps up and the virus spreads worldwide, people seem to be hungry for real information. The problem is that there are still many unknowns, and even the Centers for Disease Control is unable to fully answer questions about something they don't yet understand.

I have a minor medical-related degree. During the time I earned it (and actually for years before) I cultivated a deep interest in epidemic disease. It has always fascinated me. Because of that I come at this current crisis with a bit of a different perspective, and I dare say with a bit more understanding than your average news consumer. The most frustrating thing to watch, for me, is intelligent, educated people downplaying the seriousness of the situation. Here is why.

First, I think we need to look at some real numbers that actually are relevant. One thing that is NOT relevant is to cite numbers of infection and death from flu every year. That isn't the same virus, and it has nothing at all to do with this one. Additionally, this one is far more virulent (it spreads faster and more easily) and has a higher fatality rate.

Here are real numbers. We can't rely on numbers out of China - that we know based on their behavior and false information to this point. We can know what is happening in Italy, which is currently the country next to China in terms of the spread of the virus. As of today, Italy reports 10,149 diagnosed cases (many more will remain non-diagnosed and unknown), and of those 631 have proven fatal. This means that the rate of death is a little above 6%. In other words, a little more than one in twenty people infected are dying. (Common logic suggests that of those non-diagnosed, about 1/20 could die as well.)

In contrast, in any given year the common flu virus kills about 0.1 % in a Western country, or about one person in one thousand. 

Just yesterday, I heard an educated person declare - "Well, the flu killed at least 20,000 people in the U.S. this year, and COVID-19 only 26."  But that is a ridiculous comparison!  The CDC estimates about 34 million people in the U.S. have had flu this season; there were indeed about 20,000 deaths so far this season. That is a death rate of about 0.06%, or a little over one in 2,000. Now, let's say 34 million people got COVID-19 - which is within the realm of possibility. Given the current stats (they may change over time as the behavior of the virus changes and more information and data is gathered), about 2,040,000 would die. This is a different virus, and it behaves differently. It is many times more dangerous and infectious than is the common flu virus. This is a "known". A spokesman for the CDC this morning said in a press conference that COVID-19 is "ten times more" infectious. He was speaking in a generality. It's actually not only apparently more infectious but as I explained by the math, about 15-20 times more fatal than flu.

We know this one is bad. How bad, no one is certain yet. There are a lot of unknown factors that make its course difficult to predict or to prepare for. For me - and I'm sure epidemiologists would agree - the most alarming are these:

• We still aren't certain how it's transmitted, and it is spreading very quickly. Given other coronaviruses (the past 18 identified), we assume the germs linger on inanimate surfaces, and can be passed object to hand to face. We suspect it is also traveling through the air; when one person coughs or sneezes, another inhales that air and gets it.
• We don't understand much about "carriers" in relation to this virus. For example, are people who are simply carriers (show no symptoms) able to easily transmit the virus? And why are some people more immune - children, for example, don't seem to be acquiring the virus as easily as adults. 
• This virus is believed to be able to mutate quickly and dramatically. That means that what may be true about it today, could change by next week, making it more deadly. 
• It is spreading faster than we can contain it. Even in the U.S., where our president wisely halted airline flights from critical regions and closed the border, we were able to slow it but not stop it. It has gained hold here within a mere few weeks, and is set to explode.
• There is some evidence that it does not leave the sufferer immune to a second bout of illness. 
• We don't know what the incubation period is - that is the time between when you are exposed to when you show symptoms. That's why the recommendations for self-quarantine vary from 2 days to 14.  This is important because we don't know yet whether a person with no symptoms (yet) can transmit it. If that is probable, this will be a much different journey for all of us. 

People ask what we can know for certain. I would offer the following.

• Our lives will be affected. Every life. Schools will close, events will be cancelled. Things we take for granted with be changed. This will be temporary, but no one knows how long it will be. People will see churches close, workplaces close - people will work from home. Non-essential services and businesses may close. Although these are temporary changes, they will leave permanent effects on the way we see our world and do business and live. 
• The virus will spread, into nearly every corner of the Westernized world (so far, sub-Saharan Africa and much of South America has escaped, but that may change soon). One widely-respected epidemiologist predicted yesterday that about 80% of us will be infected in the U.S. About 50% of those will acquire pneumonia. And about 6-10% of those infected will die. Every family will be touched. 
• We know that this virus targets the lower respiratory system, much like SARS did. In fact, once this virus becomes life-threatening, it is technically a sub-strain of SARS. Those most vulnerable are people prone to respiratory illness and have conditions like emphysema, asthma, COPD. The elderly will be especially hard-hit. 
• It will affect the way we do business, the stock market, buying and selling. Goods we take for granted may become scarce temporarily as international and domestic transport suffers. 
• Medical supplies will be an issue. Over 90% of our everyday supplies come from CHINA, and the Chinese govt. has already discussed denying the U.S. supplies as a political weapon. The equipment your doctor's office uses is largely manufactured and maintained from - elsewhere in the world. (President Trump has already expressed this problem and a desire to change it.)
• Treatment will become problematic in areas where the virus has taken hold; isolation beds are not common and will be filled quickly. (The average hospital has 10.) Clinics and hospitals will become over-burdened and available care scarce as resources and staff are stretched to the limit.
• Numbers of those infected will double about every 5 to 10 days. It will explode, in other words. There is no shot, no drug, that will stop a virus once it takes hold. Again, our best defense is to avoid crowds, keep hands off face, avoid people who are ill or who have traveled recently. 

Americans need to reconsider their view of disease. Too many Americans casually go to work sick or send sick children out, and infect others. It's selfish and it needs to stop. We need to start thinking about how we infect others and take care of each other better.

It's interesting to me, from a scientific standpoint, that this virus is avoiding the very young - although children are assumed to be carriers and may spread it. The Spanish flu - 1916-18 - killed millions worldwide; it was also a virus (rather than a bacterial disease). It also targeted people from 25 to 35 years of age. In the medical world, this is known as a "W Pattern": where most viruses target very young and very old, these viruses have a peak in the middle as well - and kill young, healthy adults. To this day, scientists don't understand why Spanish flu did that - and COVID-19 seems to adopt the same pattern. 

Spanish flu shared something else in common with COVID-19: it mutated unexpectedly, quickly and unpredictably. Its initial trip around the world looked much like this virus. A few vulnerable people died here and there. People had a world war to contend with and paid it not much attention. But just as it seemed to be waning, it turned on its heels and came back stronger, more virulent, and started the real killing. In the end there had been 3 distinct waves of it, over two years. 

As a teen, I first began reading about the Black Death - the plague of 1347-51. Although most scientists agree it was some form of Bubonic plague (from a simple bacterium) or a combo of two or three types of plague, we still don't know exactly what happened. Seven-hundred year old bones from mass graves tell us that the bacterium causing plague was present, but what part it played isn't apparent. What fascinated me was what the plague did to the social fabric and course of history. No one was spared - no social class. It changed the economy, the class structure, the religion, and even the way Europeans viewed the world. Some changes were not for the better. It came also from the Far East, and traveled the world. Before it was over, from one quarter to as much as two thirds of Europe was dead. In our age of modern medicines, we won't see that. But we may see some big changes and shifts in attitudes and social fabric. 

Interestingly, the plague of 1347 did not wax and wane with the seasons as do most epidemics. Thus, it didn't die out for years. The Spanish flu - a virus - didn't either. There is early evidence that COVID-19 may be oblivious to weather changes. I think all are hoping that is wrong and that, like the more predictable common flu virus, it will die out in summer months (remember the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere). 

During my education, I came to understand that within my lifetime we would see a devastating pandemic. But everyone thought it would be bacterial. As we abuse antibiotics (and we do just that when we don't take them as directed, when we take a family member's and not one specific to our illness, when we take the wrong antibiotic, when we demand a doctor give them to us for a virus for which they are worthless) we weaken our resistance to disease and render antibiotics useless. One day, a bacterium will pop up that we can't stop (things like MRSA - "flesh-eating bacteria" are the early warning signs of that day coming), and we will be introduced to a world before antibiotics where our ancestors lived in constant fear, and seeing a child or a family member die an early death was commonplace. This viral threat is a bit unexpected. 

Our scientists are working not only to find a vaccine (which will protect those uninfected, not cure those who have it), but to decrease the time it takes to develop it - in the U.S. (the world leader with France) - that means about two years. They are trying to do it in one year to eighteen months. However, in a country thrown into chaos, manufacturing enough to go around and then to vaccinate everyone who wants it, is another question entirely. Our president and his administration is not being "paranoid". Yes, the Democrats are politicizing the tragedy - did you expect anything else? They may sing a different tune when their family members fall seriously ill, or heaven forbid their colleagues die of it. The administration and the CDC is walking a tightrope between trying to inform us and also trying to prevent a catastrophe born of poor preparation. It is believed that many of the deaths due to the flu epidemic of 1916-18 could have been prevented, had the president taken more decisive action around isolation, funding, containment, and public education. 

I still think the worst will be a bacterial disease. But the behavior of COVID-19 is alarming. The number of unknowns means that we have good reason to be on the alert. While things like hoarding toilet paper is a bit silly, we need to stop joking about it. I suffer from chronic asthma. My best friend has COPD.  My mom and dad are elderly - my dad 87.  When this virus hits our little city in the next few weeks, I will be very fearful for the people I love.  It's really no laughing matter to me. Two years ago, I nearly died from the flu. It jolted my reality a bit. 

Meanwhile, when I see people insist it's all a big hoax, I sigh and assume they will very soon understand just how ignorant they were. It is a certainty that their views on disease will be altered. They aren't wrong to scold people who are in a panic about it. We need to be calm and learn as we go. But to assume there is no danger is equally ignorant. Equally as stupid. I wonder how much wiser we will all feel about six months from now as we look back on the pending disaster we once scoffed at.

For me, understanding the reality and preparing well for the worst case scenario, is the wisest thing that any of us can do. 

Abusive Women as Heroes

I've lately become hooked on the NBC show "Chicago P.D.", and during the past two months I've binge-watched six seasons of available episodes.  This is crazy for me, because I truly don't watch major network TV. At all.  But this show has been a pleasant surprise: great writing, great performances, grittiness without pandering to gratuitousness or smut - just good television.  Reportedly, real police advisers participate in all episodes to make sure the raids and shoot-outs look as amazingly realistic as they do. You all know me - I'm a sucker for action done well.

One character in the latter seasons, though, is keeping me up at night - and not in a good way. The character of Hailey Upton - a tough young cop who was meritously promoted to detective after a year on an undercover assignment (as opposed to by time on the job and/or conventional experience). She is the newest addition to the team.  Unfortunately she's also the most arrogant. The writers seem to have failed to give this decent actress the opportunity to flesh out a character - as I saw one astute fan online put it, she has three dimensions: angry, angrier, and bitchy.  And that's about it.  Is that what the writers think a strong woman looks like?

What disturbs me about the Upton character is two-fold:  I see a fan-base of millennial-age women cheering her as "ass-kicking", tough as nails, some sort of female hero icon; secondly, I see a societal trend toward some forms of abuse being acceptable by virtue of one's gender; like so many societal shifts, it is first illustrated in things like music and TV shows.

Hailey Upton, played by Tracy Spiridakos. 

Let me explain. This character is not a nice person. She's self-centered. She's rude. She's conceited. She is not a team player. Actually, she embodies a lot of the traits that we in the real world know would get as fired pretty fast.  I can hear the objections now: "But she's a Strong Woman!"  I would argue that she isn't that at all.  I think too many young women nowadays - as judging from their social behavior, the people they profess to admire, and the entertainment media they react to - think that excessive rudeness - particularly toward men - is being a "strong woman".  Call me old-fashioned, but I'm pretty sure that being a strong woman has something to do with things like self-control, generosity, compassion, humility, simple kindness and self-sacrifice.

But those traits are traits we traditionally think of as feminine. And because traditional forms of
feminine identity are now frowned upon, these traits aren't "cool" enough. That means that in place of things like self-sacrifice, compassion, empathy, self-control . . . young women have put aggression, intolerance (for anything they themselves deem not in keeping with their kick-ass view of things), controlling, self-aggrandizement, and impatience. They see a TV character who screams at men, "puts them in their place" (never mind that, as in the case of Hailey Upton, the men are usually just good men trying to do right in the world), and aggressively pushes her own agenda in peoples' faces, as the ideal woman.

Upton, no doubt bitching out Rusek (Patrick John Flueger) as usual. 

This is the most disturbing aspect of the Upton character:  the young male detective she is sleeping with - Adam Ruzek - bears the brunt of most of her abuse. She has zero patience with him, she reminds him of her superior rank, she insults him and his family members, she constantly browbeats and berates him at every turn. She displays no respect for him. A few episodes back, we have her pursuing him through the precinct hallways, biting at his heels like a tenacious chihuahua, shrieking, "You're going to tell me what's going on RIGHT NOW!" ....There just has to be a more mature, respectful way of communicating with a colleague than that. The few moments she attempted to show any compassion for him were weak and nearly humorous, given her excessive bitchiness any other day of the week.

The writers have not offered the male character so much as the opportunity to say to the little witch: "Look, your rank be damned, you speak to me like that again, this is OVER."  No.... he is simply expected to shake his head and take it.  Over and over and over.  I am angry about it as a fan, because it is so disrespectful to his character - who really would not take this. He's a gentleman - he'd give her the benefit of having a bad day the first time. But after that?

And this is my larger point:  Upton continues to perform what amounts to real emotional battering upon Ruzek, week after week.  And I guarantee, if we had a male character emotionally bash a female with whom he was sleeping, week after week - there would be a huge fan outcry.  He would not be seen as a "strong male".  He'd be seen as an abusive jerk.  And that is exactly what Hailey Upton is. But in the modern PC up-is-down,  male-is-female, wrong-is-right culture we are in, we can have a character abusing another and make a hero out of the abuser - just as long as the genders are arranged correctly. 

Dawson and Rusek, about to surprise some perps.

How have we come to a point where a woman who displays all the characteristics of a batterer, is a hero?  And that a man who is emotionally battered is expected to man-up and take it?  This is progress? Seriously?  Again, call me old-fashioned, but abuse is abuse.  I don't enjoy watching it either way.  In my fan fantasy, I have Ruzek telling her off good and kicking her to the curb until she learns some manners.

Chicago P.D. is part of the NBC "Chicago One" series of shows, which also includes Chicago Med and Chicago Fire.  All three air Wednesday nights consecutively, with Chicago PD bringing up the finale. Chicago P.D. seasons 1-6 are all available on Amazon, and current episodes can be seen on HULU.  Visit Chicago P.D. on Twitter for episode updates, cast info, and more. 

What's Really Going On in France?

Marine Le Pen is the voice of the pro-nationalist,
conservative movement in France.

"I don't know what the world is coming to," lamented my elderly mom over lunch last week. And then she said something more chilling, motioning toward my dad, "I'm glad we're almost to the end of our lives."  Then she seemed to catch herself, glancing at me sheepishly, and adding some comment about my having many years ahead.

She's right. The Western world is shifting, and it's happening faster all the time. I often wonder if this is the way people felt as WWII approached... that terrible feeling that malevolent ideas are taking hold in too many quarters, that what was always safe and reliable is suddenly in jeopardy. Worse of all, the terrible feeling of foreboding that many of us feel now may have existed then as well; I'm convinced that many in the 1930's felt that something terrible was coming - they could not know its nature or how devastating it would prove to be.

I wonder how many people, as they blithely go about their daily lives, hear that the rise of the immigrant population in Europe and the reports of violence it brings, assume that the outcries come from a few of the ignorant or "racist" and there really isn't much to be alarmed about.  It occurs to me that it is exactly that attitude that your average German took as the Nazis built a regime under their noses. It may be the same assumption that the Austrians and French and Belgians took, a few years before they were invaded and conquered. A conquered population never sees it coming. 

The U.N. Migration Pact - a sort of contract put together by the U.N. with the help of the E.U. which not only calls for more immigration but dictates the way the media and the people will be expected to handle it - is meeting with some resistance - which is heartening, but not nearly enough resistance - which is horrifying. Countries like Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, and the Czech Republic are refusing to sign the agreement, despite threats of financial and economic punishment from the tyrannical E.U.  One must admire the moxie of these former Soviet block nations - the memory of living oppressed under the mantle of communism and its sister socialism is fresh for them. Their freedom was hard-won and only a few decades old. They remember restrictions on their daily lives in terms of freedom of speech, in motility, in physical safety. They remember a media owned by the government and totally under its thumb. They remember a world where the only true information had to be delivered between parties in clandestine whispers. The E.U. would happily see that world return.

Last time the People of France had to riot against the government,
several thousand govt. elites lost their heads. Literally. The French
don't muck around. 

Countries like Sweden, Germany and France are not as wise: they have lived within the luxury of Freedom for far too long, and the people of these nations are standing idly by, watching waves of Muslim immigrants literally and figuratively trash their once-beautiful countries and the corresponding rise in violence and taxes, and just as they did in the 1930s they are pretending the monster isn't there.  Italy, having recently elected a hard-line nationalist leader, seems to be the only hold-out so far - they refused to sign.

In France, riots are portrayed by the French media and beyond as the result of some high taxes. The rest of the world then assumes the French are having some silly tantrum.  But the media is lying: the riots are about something else: tyrannical government control.  For decades, the French government has raised taxes to unsustainable limits, has force-fed the people Islamic immigration, and now means to force-feed them the quasi-myth of global warming and climate change.  When Macron proposed to raise gas taxes by some 30% and more, of the cost of a gallon, he really meant to tax the people out of driving gas-fueled vehicles. Reportedly, the proposal included a goal of taxing one gallon the U.S. equivalent of $49 within ten years. Yes, you are reading that correctly: $49 dollars tax per gallon. Why? Because no one can drive at that price but the very rich. And in keeping with Macron's and the EU's goals of taking power from the people and giving it to the EU, through various national puppet regimes, and forcing enormous overnight changes in energy use - forcing adherence to climate change theory that has not met with scientific scrutiny! - a tax hike like that would have ended life as the French know it. 

Macron backed off on the tax as of late yesterday. It's rather comical, because in doing so, he showed his weakness - he will only push so far before he will cave, and now the People know it.  It was a defeat for Macron far beyond these riots, and it was a defeat for the E.U.  The people were rioting against a government out of control; they are tired of immigration, they are tired of Islamist ideology-fueled murders and terrorist attacks. They are tired of forced compliance with energy change. They are tired of having no say in big issues affecting their lives. These things fueled the riots. And the riots will not end with Macron's capitulation. They will end when the French feel they are regaining control of their lives, and the E.U. will be fighting that every inch of the way.  The monster is not only real, but he is rising.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the nationalist conservative party that nearly took Macron's throne in the last election, has addressed the nation in the past few days (the French must be wishing they had elected her now...).  She spoke vehemently against the Immigration Pact. Interestingly, Le Pen - who is a lawyer by trade - recognized four main points the pact is selling:

1 - The future waves of mostly-Muslim immigration will be openly organized and promoted by the host countries (and the E.U. and U.N. behind the scenes).

2 - Through release of welfare benefits, tax-fueled monies, and even displacing the native population from their homes in favor of incoming immigrants, the host countries will submit to being "pillaged".

3 - The establishment and institutionalization of "parallel communites" in the form of diasporas. Let me translate: Muslim neighborhoods and no-go zones will be established using government resources, in which Shariah Law will replace French law. They will use their own courts and own schools, if they choose. They will speak their own languages. They will live on welfare at the governments invitation and they will never be encouraged or expected to assimilate.  Yeah - that's a great idea.

4 - Pro-immigrant propaganda will not only continue but will increase, and any media or person in public speech openly criticizing immigration, the activities of immigrants, or the government's policy on immigrants, will be criminally punished. In other words the news media will damn well report only what the government wants it to.  Anyone remember Pravda?

One has to wonder how soon it will come to pass that even private speech that disagrees with immigration - or the other EU policies - will be illegal. The Nazis did that; they encouraged school children to report their own parents for unacceptable speech.  Our public schools and those of Europe have been indoctrinating children for a while now; such encouragement to the children would be successful.

The Eastern European countries, Italy, and voices like Le Pen's are struggling to stop the coming tide.  The E.U. is hell-bent - by its own public statements - on creating a globalist one-government European society. The E.U. is made up of socialist globalist millionaires, who frankly want what dictators always want - to control everyone. The U.N., largely due to laziness and stupidity on the part of Western countries (they are too busy becoming socialist globalists after all), has evolved to be Muslim controlled. Even its human rights committee is almost entirely made up of Muslim nations that routinely do things like deny women equal rights or even safety and mobility, throw gay off buildings or lynch them publicly, turn a blind eye to beheadings and terrorist activities, and finance the genocides of Christians and Jews.

My mom is right. Something terrible is taking shape. Not enough people have their eyes open. Coming years will test our courage as individuals, our commitment to what is morally right, and our resolve to defeat what is truly evil.

Sorry, Media Pundits . . . Windsor was Already "Woke" - by Lichen Craig

When I was a teen, back in about 1976, I went with a group of kids to the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee to do some charity work: we were helping to repair the backwoods shacks of some of the poorest of America'a poor.  One evening, some of us - a group of upper-Midwestern church-raised teenagers - went to a local service in a small town. It was for me, and many of us, the first exposure to what my grandmother might have been more familiar with and what she would have called "fire-and-brimstone" preaching. It was the dramatic, loud, hyperbole-laden preaching that invites congregation participation. We were not prepared for it.

You have to understand that I was raised in the Congregational denomination. It's dignified, open (the first Christian denomination, in fact, to openly welcome gays - back in the 1970s) and totally without ornamentation. Our interiors are plain, in keeping with our Puritan roots in America; our sermons are straightforward, scholarly, and hopefully humble on the part of the minister (we don't call them "preachers" - they don't preach, they serve). Our services are calm, but not boring, never about grandstanding or entertaining. (Or maybe "boring" is subjective!)

The union of two cultures: American and British

So here I was, a well-mannered, intelligent girl, staring dumbfounded at the man jumping around and screaming in front of the congregation - shrieking about the damnation awaiting us all if we didn't "repent" (I hate that word - it's so accusatory, so devoid of respect for the human spirit, so divorced from the loving God I was taught about). I glanced around at my companions and caught the eye of one young man, who was obviously stifling laughter. He winked at me, sharing the joke, and I nearly lost my composure. I really didn't wish to insult my hosts. I quietly got up and left, barely making it outside the tiny church building, before bursting into laughter.

When I had it out of my system, I went back inside, just as the service was ending. As I'd been taught, I walked up to shake the preacher's hand and thank him for the church's hospitality to our group. He
commented that I hadn't stayed for the end. I must have turned crimson as I carefully explained that I just wasn't used to that style. He laughed... to my relief... and said it was an acquired taste; he joked that I was leaving just before they were going to "bring out the snakes".  He was not offended in the least. There are many ways to send God's message. (He was, by the way . . . a white man. The style isn't unique to the black South - although the media has forced its association nowadays with black culture - it is unique to southern Baptist and charismatic history.)

Bishop Michael Curry at the Royal Wedding a Windsor

Much is being made of the sermon at the royal wedding this past weekend. If you didn't see the wedding, you really should watch a stream of it (check the Royal Family's YouTube channel - your friends and family will never know you did it!), not only because it was truly beautiful in terms of visual richness, history, symbolism and tradition, but because the sermon was truly special. It was very inspiring, from an excellent speaker - Father Michael Curry is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America (the Episcopal is the American version of the Church of England) and he happens to be black. The style of the sermon was good old-fashioned southern preaching.

Something troubles me about the reaction of some of Americans to the sermon, and to the occasional black-inspired elements within the wedding. There is a sort of over-emphasis on race-based identity politics that has saturated American society, and it is itself uniquely racist because it assumes an individual's feelings and reactions based upon skin color. Here everyone, from the neighbor down the street to mainstream news anchors, is making comments - from snide, elitist ones to gushing ones - about how bothered the British at the church were about it. Bothered or surprised or annoyed or awed, depending on the view - and wishful thinking - of the speaker.

But here is my take: I don't think they were any of those things. Assuming they were is not only viewing people through the prism of skin color - itself a bigoted attitude - but it assumed these poor cavemen in Britain have never heard a black preacher. They have - trust me on that. They don't care.

Bride's mother Doria Ragland, Prince Charles and wife. 

Now, let me explain here that I have traveled extensively in Europe, since about forty-five years ago. I have in fact lived there. I married a European, I have close friends that are European. I have studied the histories of a few countries - including England - to an extent far surpassing most Americans and many Europeans themselves. From that background, I am about 99% certain that I know how they really reacted, generally speaking: they reacted the way I did all those years ago in Tennessee. And it wasn't about skin color!

This wedding was happening in one of the oldest chapels in England. Over a dozen royal unions have happened in that chapel, over many centuries. Its walls are saturated with European royal history. With hundreds of years of a certain tradition. The casualness, the theatrics, the over-emotionality, that a Southern-style sermon involves, would have struck some of the attendees as, well, a bit uncomfortable. Not because of the ethnic background. But because of the overly-dramatic nature of it within that setting. It's a theatrical performance, in a venue where reverence and understatement is the tradition. I did not notice any "shock" on anyone's faces - as some American news pundits have insisted. (Don't they realize that the queen, in her nineties, always looks that grumpy?) I noticed some suppressed mirth - with which I can totally relate. It's the sort of nervous laughter that comes at an inappropriate moment in reaction to an ironic situation - like when a speaker at a funeral says something untrue or too revealing, or inappropriate. Or...like hearing an over-the-top sermon in a traditionally dignified church.

Don't get me wrong. I liked the sermon - when I thought of it apart from where it was given. I'm not sure that giving it there, at that place, in that situation, was the most respectful thing to do. After all, the bishop was a guest in that chapel, that country, and to that tradition. Not the other way around. I heard someone say that it was so melodramatic that it detracted from the bride and groom. I would tend to agree. It certainly has dominated talk of the ceremony, even days later. Did we really need a veiled  lecture on American civil rights and racial division at a wedding, in a country that ended slavery decades before America did?  I don't think so, but that's me.

The out-of-left-field analyzing by the American Left - and some of the Right as well - has extended to commentary on the black choir, the black cellist (the choir was based in Britain, not the U.S., and Heaven knows all black cellists must come from America! Good grief...) and the implication that those Dark-Ages-befuddled Britons have just never seen anything like it. Nonsense! They have, they do, they don't care. They likely thought the whole thing pleasant and interesting, and were positive about it. News reports all back that up.

Along with the exuberant black gospel choir, the attendees also likely enjoyed the cathedral choir and its selections from white European Christian traditions - with several outstanding boy sopranos (one black) and the traditional hymns - two of the most beautiful and ones many of us grew up singing. I thought to myself as the thundering sound of that choir filled the soaring, echoing space of the beautiful, ancient building during the final hymn, that when such a choir is that good one can't help but believe the sound is as close to the sound of angels as we get on earth. As I had that thought, the camera focused on the bride's face, her joyful face turned upward, her eyes filling with tears as she listened. Apparently, she had enjoyed both choirs.

I don't know why people can't put race, and identity, and assumptions about others, aside. The wedding was about both traditions, two ethnic groups. Why glorify one and diminish the significance of the other? Why glorify one skin tone and diminish the other? In either direction? The reluctance to appreciate either tradition, and favor the validity of one over the other, is in fact ethnocentric, and yes... it is racism.


I heard one news pundit - a black man - gush that the bride was black. No, she isn't. She is - like our
past president - of mixed race heritage. Half her heritage, half her blood, is white. The celebration was a reflection of that, and of both heritages. With his stupid, inaccurate comment he showed his own bigoted mindset. Another pundit - a white man from the South no less - could barely contain his joy as he shrieked, "Windsor is woke!" He said this in front of a British commentator, and I cringed to think how insulting and incredibly ignorant she must have found that comment.

Too bad that so many Americans - so blinded as they are by the desperate rush to seem more virtuous and progressive than the next person - or perhaps so much less white - don't appreciate the two heritages equally. Because once, when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was equality we talked about. That was the goal. It wasn't bringing the "dominant" race to its knees - which really is the same hate and ugliness reversed, isn't it?  And the really pathetic thing about it is that now these people make the same mistake that others did about the Native Americans - in overly-romanticizing one culture at the expense of overly-demonizing another, a person really just demonstrates that they have no real understanding of the true history and value of either one.

Meghan Markle - now offically the Duchess of Sussex - was not the first royal with African blood. (Yes, American pundits, you read that right.) She won't be the last. As was the case centuries back, when a woman with black blood married into the royal family, she is accepted, she is welcomed, and it isn't nearly as big a deal as some Americans would love to trumpet that it is. The British are actually, yes, that enlightened! Because you see, Windsor was already woke.

I am weary of every event becoming a big analysis of race relations - even something as joyous and apolitical as a wedding. I hope that in coming decades the pendulum swings back to the middle: that calm, wonderful place where equality - equal appreciation for all races and ethnicities - is the goal. Only then can the words the bishop offered about love of all people for one another, ever come to mean anything.

Girl at a Funeral by Jamie Horan

In the summer of 1996 when she was about a eighteen months old, Haeley, our second child, stepped through a neighbor’s railing just off the side of his third front step and got herself into a bit of a jam. Summer, her three-year-old big sister, burst into the house, “Dad, Dad, Haeley’s stuck! C’mon, c’mon!  Hurry, dad!” Out we went!

Military funeral of Major Douglas A. Zembiec, 2007. 

I got there amid the normal panic that seems always to accompany these kinds of things, people yelling “bend the bars,”  ”put grease on her ears,”  “call the fire department,” etc.  She stood there on her tippy toes, my neighbor holding her up from behind carefully to avoid hurting her neck. Her head was a bit too big to pass through and was awkwardly turned sideways on the concrete step. I got in front of her, and chuckling a little bit said, “hey dolly, stay still for me.” I reached down, as my neighbor and I gently turned her sideways and moved her back though the way she went in. I lifted her up to calm her and she grabbed me around my neck with all her might. I began laughing softly to put her at ease and before long she was laughing, too. There were many such calamities with Haeley, each starting with a bit of real danger and ending in a belly laugh.

The summer of 2015 found us all together in a limousine. Haeley, in her intrepid way, had the year before entered the United States Naval Academy. As we readied ourselves for the day, she asked if I thought she should wear her uniform to the service. “Well," I said, "Pop was a WWII veteran and in his honor, I think it would be the right thing to do.”

She did not like wearing her uniform off USNA grounds, but as a first-year (Plebe), she was obligated to do so while traveling to and from the academy. She expressed this dislike to me on more than a few occasions. Once, while I was taking her to the train station after a brief stint home, she appeared to be a bit shaken. I asked if she was okay, and she told me she was afraid for us - me and her brother - when she was traveling in uniform. I knew why, of course. She, like all U.S. service personnel, was a target in that uniform and she knew it. On this bright and cloudless day though, I doubt these thoughts were in her mind. Today, we were burying her Pop-Pop.

 It wasn’t until we arrived at the cemetery that I fully realized there would be an honor guard. There was talk of it of course, but the undertaker who’d arranged the service was non-committal; he said that he would try to arrange it, but as it was July 4^th week, he was not certain that those he relied on for that task would be able to make it.

As Pop’s immediate family, we were in the second car, just behind the hearse.  As we pulled up to the

Navy funeral of Commander Charles Keith Springle, 2009.

grave site - the procession of attendees’ cars lining in behind us - I noticed with satisfaction from the opposite window a dozen or so older men in uniform standing at attention, their commander saluting as we came to rest in front of them. I thought immediately of how proud Pop would be that these men, themselves all veterans of foreign war, would assemble to honor his life and the effort he willingly applied to the great cause of mankind, which had compelled so many as boys and forged so many as men. The bright sun shone off of their polished insignia, momentarily blinding any whose eyes were caught by the glare. Proud but not prideful, they assembled silently in two rows behind Pop’s carriage along with several younger pallbearers.  These now very old men had donned their uniforms with an earned pride and deliberation that imparted to me a sense of reverence. I watched as a small detachment of them began to take positions around our car. They opened our doors and stood solemnly as we climbed out.

As I exited the car, looking for small ways to be useful, I noticed my daughter Haeley in the midst of several of the honor guard. One man in particular was talking quietly to her as the others listened intently. Seeing her in her “dress whites” had apparently attracted their attention. It occurred to me that she was part of this world now, and I was happy for her. After watching for a moment  I got moving, helping my mother-in-law to the front of the assembling procession, seeing that my wife and our two other daughters were okay and finally, checking back on “Diddaboy” (our then eight-year-old son, Eman), who was only too happy to be pulled from the busyness surrounding him in the car.

A few minutes passed and the procession began:  Dad’s flag-draped casket led the way up the small hill, followed by the priest and the rest of us. We assembled at the grave, where one white chair was located about eight feet from the center of the sarcophagus.  Mom, now ninety years of age, was then seated in this chair, with her daughter (my wife, Annamarie) and the remainder of our family standing on either side of her. I glanced behind me at the crowd of about fifty people. Some were smiling gently and chatting. I nodded in affirmation at one or two and turned back as the funeral director began to talk, interrupted almost immediately, as though to break the tension, by a noisy crow in a nearby tree. 

During the preparation for the funeral, Annamarie and I had assisted Mom with the selection of the passages that our priest would read.  Now as he did so, we all stood and reflected on those words, Pops’s life, our lives, our impending ends, and our hopefulness for the hereafter. As he finished, I heard the guard commander call the guard to order. They marched in lock step, to a place in front and to the side of us, where they halted, turned, aimed and fired. They fired three volleys, each time crisply returning their rifles to their ready. With the same precision and without pause, the bugler began to play Taps as the echo from the last shots faded.

At his moment I looked down the line to my left to see Haeley, standing crisply at salute along with all the remaining guard. At its finish, her hand fell slowly and deliberately to her side.  I recall being so impressed with how she’d left us as a smart, confident and adventuresome kid, and stood here now as  a thoughtful, diligent and responsible young woman.

The commander then turned and stood at attention at the head of Pop’s casket.  We waited there as five guardsmen approached the casket, marching as they did as young men. Of the five, three moved to one side and the commander assumed a position as the third man on the other.  In perfect unison, they gripped, raised, snapped, creased and folded the flag over the casket, where it made its way to the commander’s hands in that perfect triangular form. I could hear whispers behind me. People were chatting affirmations in small bits trying not to interrupt, but unable to conceal their admiration for this venerable tradition. The crow cawed again and again, but no one seemed to notice.

And then it happened. From the corner of my left eye I noticed Haeley break from the rank and step forward. One slow step - then another - and again! Stop! Pivoting to her right at a crisp ninety degrees, she stood there, perfectly still. In what seemed like a long-rehearsed interplay, the commander, now facing Pop’s casket, snap-turned to his left-face as Haeley, in her blinding white uniform and gloves marched in lock step toward the waiting commander, who himself mirrored her movements exactly. They stepped forward one step - then another - until they stood apart facing each other at the center of the grave.

The chatter had completely stopped. There was no sound. I glanced up at the crow, who seemed to be as stunned by this as any of us. No one moved. We were now a collection of transfixed figures, as though cast there in stone by some unknowable force. Slowly, Haeley extended her gloved hands to receive the flag, which was placed neatly between her palms. She took one step backwards, then turned on her heels and stood squarely in front of her grandmother. Tears the size of nickels fell from her face like heavy rain, yet she stood solid and still in her frame. There was a gasp from somewhere behind me and I heard a woman’s voice whisper “Oh, my Lord!” No one saw this coming. I stood there and, closing my trembling jaw, swallowed hard as I felt my heart rise in my chest.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Stepping forward and bending slightly at her waist, as still as granite, she knelt before her Mom –Mom, the woman who had been there every day of her life. Patiently, without the slightest adjustment in her body or the faintest quiver in her voice, she extended her hands. It had fallen so quiet, I could hear the pat-pat-pat of Haeley’s tears hitting the flag as she held it. Glancing down and to my left, I saw mom looking up at her granddaughter with wide eyes. She smiled faintly, as though the heartache she’d carried to the graveside had suddenly lifted. She seemed to be floating there, not only unaware in that moment of her grief, but seemingly oblivious to her purpose there.

“Mom-Mom. On behalf of the United States Army and on behalf of a grateful nation, I present to you this flag of the United States of America as a symbol of our gratitude for Pop-Pop’s service to his country. “

Haeley stayed in that position, holding her grandmother’s hands until she steadied. Slowly, she rose to attention, took one step back, turned and marched slowly until in front of her original place, she fell into the rank, lowered her head and wept, shaking from shoulder to knee. I wanted to go to her - to once again pull her though that railing - but this time I could not.

I turned to see if anyone had really absorbed what I had just witnessed. Seemingly everyone was weeping quietly to themselves. Many held their hands on their foreheads or over their mouths; others, like me, stood with watering eyes and beaming smiles. They knew. They knew what I knew: that this was a singular event and they would not see it again.

All of us, I’m sure, experience moments in our lives which impact us in a visceral way. They imprint a mark on our souls, and although the years pass, we recall them in ways more tactile than abstract. Our hearts still skip that beat. We still breathe in the same spotty rhythm we did in those moments. Sometimes these memories remind us of our great regrets, our failures in character or judgment.  Other times, these remembrances return us to our moments of greatest joy, moments that we knew when experiencing them would never leave us. People often say “You can’t take it with you.” No matter where you finish, you leave as you came.  I don’t think that’s true.  When I go, this mark comes with me.

Author’s Note:  Haeley will graduate from the United States Naval Academy on May 25^th, 2018.