Silent Killers

Al Wesch (left) was one of 25,000 soldiers stationed at Camp Dix in 1918.

While serving his country during World War I, my grandfather was deployed to Manhattan from nearby Camp Dix, New Jersey, to aid in removing the bodies of Spanish flu victims from the city's hospitals.

Unbeknown to his commander, Major General Hugh Scott, the men of Camp Dix were spreading the deadly disease to New Yorkers.

Between 1918 and 1919, the Spanish flu killed 675,000 Americans. 

Soldiers like my grandfather were the first to come down with the disease, and the chief carriers of the Spanish flu nationwide.

Soldiers at Camp Dix gargle with salt water to prevent Spanish flu, September 1918. Find more photos here.

Cracks

After (in her words) "crossing the line" and offending a respected colleague and Facebook friend, I have resolved, for civility's sake, to stop posting jabs at Trump.

After the president's lazy and inept response to Covid-19, I think my posts are spooking even the most unremitting Republicans among my followers.

Given I've been publishing―with impunity―"never Trump" sarcasms for over three years, my Republican colleague's reaction comes suddenly.

I'm spotting visible cracks in Republicans' denial.

About time.

Republicans' denial to date has been a colossal wall against reality.

It has resembled less your garden-variety credulity than a desperate avoidance of inconvenient truths―a brush-off to the problems of greed, inequity, hate, ignorance, disease and global warming.

But the wall's about to come tumbling down.

The Secret to a Longer Life

The secret to so many artists living so long is that every painting is a new adventure. They're always looking ahead to something new and exciting.

― Norman Rockwell

New research published in BMJ shows that patrons of the arts live longer.

Daisy Fancourt and Andrew Steptoe, both behavioral scientists in the UK, tracked 6,700 seniors (average age 66) for 14 years. 

They found that seniors who visit art museums, galleries and exhibitions, or attend plays, concerts or operas at least once a year have a 14% lower risk of dying than seniors who don't; and that seniors who engage with the arts more frequently―every few months or more―have a 31% lower risk of dying.

Their findings don't depend on race, ethnicity, gender, wealth, health, education, mobility or other activities, such as exercise, club membership, hobbies and church-going.

The researchers concluded that the arts might have a "protective association" with longevity.

"This association might be partly explained by differences in cognition, mental health, and physical activity among those who do and do not engage in the arts, but remains even when the model is adjusted for these factors (italics mine)."

Simply put, the arts protect you from dying.

Painting by Bob James

Manual Therapy

It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. 

— Epictetus

Nothing separates the cowardly and strong like a good pandemic.

In a pinch like today's pinch, we all want to be pillars of strength—to embody Ernest Hemingway's famous formula, "courage is grace under pressure." 

But it takes a strong foundation.

While you're home—if you're home—you can work on your foundation by reading a manual by the first century Stoic Epictetus.

It's aptly titled Manual.

Manual is a short book that's had a long life among resilient people.

And deservedly so. 

Its author was a mensch.

The son of a slave, Epictetus understood suffering. His sadistic master once purposely broke his leg, leaving him crippled for the rest of his life. When he became a freedman in his late teens, he taught philosophy on street corners in Rome, but was banished for his troubles.

Undaunted, Epictetus moved to Greece, where he founded a school that would eventually attract students from all corners of the empire. 

One of those students took shorthand notes during Epictetus' lectures—notes that became Manual.

Epictetus welcomed adversity as training for moments like ours, when courage and resilience are tested. His philosophy gave students the wisdom to "keep calm and carry on" throughout plagues, wars, fires and earthquakes. 

It also taught them to remember we're all interconnected.

It's no coincidence that when the Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer Xiaomi shipped face masks to Italy last week, all the crates were stamped with a Stoic saying:

We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden.

Shad Bake

Hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.

— Erik Larson

It was baked in from the beginning: Trump's hubris could only cause the president to bungle his first "crisis."

History teems with popinjays like him.

One was the Confederate George Pickett, a man many contemporaries described as an "arrogant child."

During the Battle of Five Forks (April 1, 1865), Pickett—yes, the same general who led the futile charge at Gettysburg—was so confident he could repel a Federal attack, he accepted a fellow commander's invitation to attend a shad bake behind the lines, leaving his troops without their leader.

Shad were a fish local to Virginia's rivers, and shad bakes a tasty rite of spring for Virginia boys like Pickett.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, Pickett went off to the picnic without telling anyone he was leaving, where he could be found, or who should command in his absence.

A Federal attack indeed came, and Pickett's leaderless troops were overwhelmed.

His rout resulted in the surrender of the whole Confederate army at Appomattox eight days later.

NOTE: Remember to wash your hands!