A Bit Too Much

     So it was Easter past and a tradition not of churches for us but of visiting friends we've known for over 30 years.  We've known their "kids" since they were indeed kids (as in 7/9/11) and some are now married with their own kids.  Anyway, part of the dad's Polish tradition is to drink some Żubrówka Buffalo grass vodka ("in tribute to the bison --'zubr' in Polish-- that were fond of the sweet-tasting grass," wrote the site Wine), each shot followed by a bite of either pickled or straight herring on rye bread.  Of course, a few people there had a small shot and followed the tradition out of courtesy, and a few (me) carried it onward to another, and another, and another.  Now this really wasn't me, but then there I was, sliding my shot glass over as if waiting for that famous "flashlight in the eyes" moment when "I've had enough" switches over to "why not?"  (My wife and the other spouses --whom I thanked over and over for letting us "guys" have a pub night-- refrained from joining in and became the "designated" drivers).

     Backing up a bit, I should --and DO-- know better.  At my age, anyway.  And I rarely drink vodka, unless it's that rare occasion where my wife and I will have a Chopin martini before we throw anything into the slots at Vegas (and those trips happen less than once a year, as if we are getting too "old" for Vegas).  But admittedly, it was in Vegas that our bartender asked us which Chopin we wanted.  Huh?  Turns out that they make their vodkas in three different types: rye, wheat, or potato (that bartender, stuck not in some fancy restaurant but near all the noisy slot machines and crap tables, has been the only person to ever ask that).  Of course, there are rice vodkas as well, but my wife and I are far from the ones to ask about such things, that clear liquor with little to no smell almost matches itself with little to no taste when compared to other "clear" liquors such as gin or tequila (in our opinion).  But never mind since our drinking days are rapidly fading into the sunset, our bodies feeling as if they may not make another quick recovery should we dive into adventures meant for the younger folk (and at that Easter occasion, I was drinking with folks in their 30s...yikes).  That said, I did return home and began downing water, as in a LOT of water, knowing that the best thing I could do was to help flush my system, as if I could hear my kidneys and liver crying out, "a little help down here would be nice."  But a good sleep, a relaxing next day, and I was back...phew. 

     But what if I didn't "bounce back?"  I am at the point where half a dozen friends of mine are in that position, facing cancers, or dementia, or MS.  A few of them are getting or seeking treatment, but their waking up and feeling that things will be much better are now long-term hopes instead of realities.  Cancer of the lip and ear, experimental drugs for melanoma, short-term memory loss that makes watching a movie or reading a book almost impossible (the plot vanishes nearly as quickly as it is revealed), Hospice.  The Oscar-nominated animated short below captured this quite well, the hopes and dreams each of us have once we retire, only to discover that little changes.  And the film In the Blink of An Eye conveys something similar, how growing up and survival suddenly goes from simply living to seeing a time of ending, as if life was merely those opposing tracks that circle the city of Tokyo, each going in an opposite direction.  What happens when you think that you were on the train of life, only to see the opposing line pull up across you and realize that you were now on the wrong train and that somehow your time to exit was here...you have arrived at your destination.

    Three things brought much of this to mind, two of which we "know", and the last being a piece on a researcher's error.  Most of us, and especially new parents, are aware of two things that we face as adults but which could be harmful or even fatal to babies: RSV and honey (what?).  Honey is sometimes misunderstood by us as adults when finding that it was used more as a poultice to treat wounds in ancient days (medical grade honey still exists).  But for babies under a year old, their systems are unable to process the possible botulism spores in honey, so much so that ingesting it (such as having a baby suck honey from your finger) can prove fatal to the baby, wrote the Cleveland Clinic.  And unfortunately, as sweet as honey may taste to us, there have been few medical studies about its potential positive properties once ingested (although many suggest that it could prove beneficial --in small amounts, since it is a sugar-- to our microbiome).  As to RSV, that pesky respiratory virus which most of us tend to ignore due to all the anti-vax rhetoric coming from RFK, Jr. (who again, has ZERO medical training), it too can prove fatal to babies.  Most adult parents consider RSV a minor threat with symptoms about as mild as a cold.  There are exceptions of course, for as with any respiratory virus, RSV can prove devastating especially to those with compromised immune systems.  But for babies, RSV is a threat still prevalent in many states, even as late as we are into spring.  RSV is the most common reason babies end up in the hospital in their first year of life, wrote NPR.  "Some of these children are sometimes on ventilators.  And they can be on oxygen because they really can't breathe with this virus," says Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.  And yes, RSV remains the number one reason for infant hospitalizations, wrote the LA Times recently.  And then came the Tylenol "connection"...

     In a published medical paper, a Canadian pediatrician/toxicologist named Gideon Koren felt that certain women carried a genetic disposition to having the small amount of codeine in Tylenol convert to morphine at a near-fatal rate, which can be passed onto their babies when breastfeeding.  A baby had died and Dr. Koren poured through the literature to show proof of the connection, even having his paper appear in the respected medical journal, The Lancet.  There was only one problem...much of the information was false.  Koren and a cohort had made up an additional case of a baby dying to "back up" their position, and even added other doctors' names as supporting them without the other doctors' knowledge (once informed of such, the majority did not agree with Koren's stance).  The medical board in Canada, when presented with the results of over 10 years of data contradicting the published results simply said that the case was closed and would remain published and unedited (The Lancet took much the same position with the online piece still available to view and with no updated disclosure notes).  Koren eventually lost his medical credentials, as did the medical board administrative head; but as the fascinating piece in The New Yorker wrote: In the decades since Koren's first warnings concerning codeine and breast milk, public-health authorities and patient advocacy services have issued guidance to new mothers that ranges from scientifically incoherent to potentially dangerous...a study of some hundred and seventy thousand new mothers, to see if infants of women who were prescribed opioids shortly after birth were at an increased risk of harm [found] that many women who are prescribed opioids post-partum appear to avoid breast-feeding, in order to "protect" their children -- and thereby deprive them of immunological and other benefits.  "The number of infants affected by this globally is now easily in the millions," Juurlink told me [David Juurlink, himself a respected toxicologist who spearheaded the investigation and tried to get the published results retracted or corrected; he was once a colleague of Koren].

    It reminded me of another New Yorker article on AI companionship and the illusion of magic, one illusionist telling the author: "People pay to come to my show, to be manipulated and deceived.  Those are often experiences people avoid at all costs.  But people derive real pleasure from it."  Part of that pleasure, he said, came from the way it forced audience members to hold on to two realities simultaneously: what they were witnessing --levitation, mind reading-- was not real, and yet there it was, in the real world.  One has to wonder if the Hitlers and Stalins of yesteryear, or even the Trumps, Putins and Netanyahus* of today, with their bubbled visions of a better world, also know (or knew, or cared) that they may ruin the lives of millions, both followers and victims.  We as individuals are little different, except that we can still (so far) choose to separate the realities if we wish.  We can choose to imbibe too much, or to vaccinate or not vaccinate our babies, just as we can choose to ingest probiotics or take supplements, inject ourselves with poison (Botox) or IV vitamins, take a coffee enema or have a parasite cleanse, all of which are most often being advised by people such as RFK, Jr., influencers with little or no medical knowledge or training, wrote WIRED.  

Wapoto Smithins family. Photo by Frank Matsura
Courtesy: Okanogan County Historical Society

     None of this is new.  Note this short excerpt from American Harvest: Most Americans have at least heard of the Trail of Tears, where nearly sixteen thousand Cherokee were taken off their land east of the Mississippi and forcibly marched west to present-day Oklahoma.  Along the way four thousand of these men, women, and children died from starvation, exposure, and untreated sickness.  The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Chocktaw, Creek, and Seminole were known as the "Five Civilized Tribes," a nineteenth-century term with no very clear set of characteristics to bind the people together, but which loosely referred to those nations that had friendly relations with white colonists and had adopted the while man's ways.  Many of the Five Civilized Tribes had learned English, had become farmers, and had written their own constitution, as had the Cherokee.  In other words, they had done everything "right."  In 1830, the US passed the Indian Removal Act to relocate the Five Civilized Tribes from their natal land to the center of the country, on a piece of the large tract of land that had been acquired through the Louisiana Purchase.  This land would eventually be known as Oklahoma.  It is worth noting that the Cherokee successfully argued for their right to remain on their ancestral land before the Supreme Court, until Andrew Jackson simply threw out the ruling in 1831 [Trump often compares himself to Andrew Jackson but there are key differences, wrote The Conversation]  When Native Americans say that the language of the white man is tricky and means nothing, this is partly what they are referring to.  And so the Cherokee and the others marched west to "Indian Territory," with the promise that this land would forever be theirs "as long as grass shall grow and water run, and the reserves shall be their own property like their horses and cattle."   Except that white people decided they wanted this land too.  

     Let me pause here, because they may be sounding a bit too familiar to what is happening in today's world...but author Mockett continues: So, with legislation collectively called the Dawes Commission, the government took all the Indians' communal property and divided it up.  Each Indian nuclear family was given a homestead to farm, not only shrinking the land given to the tribes, but forcing them to switch from a tribal to a family system.  In this arduous process, the Indians were also forced to "prove" they were truly Indian in order to receive a homestead.  Freed black slaves and blacks who had escaped to Oklahoma on the Underground Railroad did not qualify for the program.  The leftover land that didn't get assigned to an Indian family became "Unassigned Land."  Almost 148 million acres that had exclusively belonged to the Indians were reduced to 38 million for the Native Americans, leaving more than 100 million for white people.  In 1889, Anglo settlers lined up at the edge of the Unassigned Lands.  Someone fired a cannon, and the white people ran, rode horses, or rode buggies to claim a homestead.  The cannon made a boom when it was fired, and the people who ran after the boom were called "Boomers."  People being people, some people ran into the land before the cannon, and they were called "Sooners" because they ran too soon.  Then, in 1907, Oklahoma was "settled" enough to become a state.  Oklahoma is called the "sooner" state after those "illegals," wrote History.

   These are indeed times of broken words and of making mistakes.  But then, as the icon basketball star Michael Jordan once said: I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career; I have lost almost 300 games; on 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed; and I have failed over and over and over again in my life.  And that is why I succeed.  Each of us have a few decisions ahead of us...let us hope that sense and sensibility prevails, and that the mistakes we may make will only affect ourselves and not others.  As the late Graem Edge of the Moody Blues wrote at the end of Nights in White Satin: Cold-hearted orb that rules the night, removes the colors from our sight.  Red is grey is yellow white. but we decide which is right and which is an illusion.

                        

*An interesting peek at how influenced Netanyahu was by his father, who in turn was influenced by a 15th century sage who believed in a messianic apocalyptic end, came from Jacqueline Rose in The London Review.  In her encounter with Netanyahu in 2002 for a documentary, she dug into Netanyahu's childhood upbringing and the belief that: What should be aimed for is a 'restrained catastrophe', to be managed as a perpetual state of war which will render any definitive settlement impossible.  Never ending the conflict with the enemy will act as an 'adhesive' to maintain the political unity of the Jews.  Mistakes made generations ago, now being carried over...

Jabalia, Gaza, 01/2025 Photo: LRB