2020 Year In Review

 This year sucked. 

Yes, I'll Let This Come Between Us

Everyone always talks about how you shouldn't let politics come between you and your friends and family. I totally agree. Politics is an important topic, and what you believe politically definitely matters. But relationships should take priority over political differences. 

I've embodied this my whole life. Throughout my adulthood, most of my closest friends have held different political opinions from my own. The vast majority are registered Republicans or Independents. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one that is a blue-blood Democrat.

I believe whole-heartedly that the Trump administration represents an unprecedented danger to American society and politics. Because of that, I would certainly not seek out a new relationship with someone I knew was an ardent Trump supporter. But I would not, and have not, let support for Trump get in between me and any of my existing relationships. Thankfully, I don't have very many Trump-supporting friends and family (but I do have a few!). 

Be that as it may, I've finally found something that I will, in fact, let interfere in my relationships. And that's the pandemic. Like everything else in this deeply fractured country, the pandemic has been politicized. But it's not political. It's about science and medicine. It's about the health and well-being of society. 

We can differ on whether shut-downs are effective, or about the balancing of physical health against mental and economic health. Those are legitimate debates. But what's not debatable is the seriousness of this disease, or wearing a mask when you're in public. 

Having now spent 9 months (and counting) working the front lines of this pandemic, I have seen what this disease can do. I've seen people die. I've seen people sicker than they've ever been in their lives. I've witnessed the long-term effects on the heart and lungs. I've seen people on ventilators for weeks, turned face-down in their hospital bed as part of a therapeutic, gravity-based protocol. I've seen an ER overrun with Covid-positive patients who are short of breath and having chest pain. 

If you refuse to acknowledge the severity of this disease; if you act like this disease is just another flu; if you refuse to wear a mask in public; if you support retailers and restaurants that flaunt mandates; if you argue that this is all just unnecessary hysterics... 

If you do and say these things, then no, we can't be friends. Yes, I will let this come between us. 

This is a deal-breaker.  

Clair de Lune

Two of the most famous classical piano pieces are named after the moon. Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven was one of the first classical pieces I ever learned, back in high school. The other is Clair de Lune by Debussy, which literally means Moonlight. Beethoven didn't name his piece - he called it "Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia" - meaning simply "Sonata almost like a fantasy." (A fantasy was a type of semi-improvisational solo piano piece.) 

Debussy, on the other hand, did name his piece Clair de Lune, although that wasn't his original name for it. Written early in his career, around 1890, he originally called it Promenade Sentimentale - "A sentimental walk." It was the third movement of a 4-movement piece. But he didn't publish it at the time.

Fifteen years later, in 1905, a publisher convinced him to publish it. He agreed, but only after making significant changes to the music. He also decided to rename the third movement Clair de Lune, after a poem that he liked. 

I can remember my Dad playing the opening of Clair de Lune when I was a kid. He'd learned it when HE was a kid, and still remembered the first few bars. He did the same thing with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. It was his tinkering with Moonlight Sonata that first inspired me to learn that piece when I was a teenager. But I never played Clair de Lune back then. 

So this year, I decided to learn Dad's old favorite. I don't think he ever learned the difficult middle part, so I've managed to outdo him on this one. (I outdid him on Moonlight Sonata too, learning the more difficult second and third movements, as well as the first.) 

Two New Songs

My uncle is an old Buddy Holly fan, and he asked me to do a Buddy Holly song. I decided to do Oh Boy, because it's always been my favorite Holly tune. 

When I was in high school, M and I spent a lot of time talking on the phone. For some bizarre reason, her phone picked up a local oldies radio station. Anytime she was on her bedroom phone, you could hear the oldies station in the background. So old 1950s rock n' roll hits were frequently the background music to our hours-long conversations in high school. Oh Boy was played frequently and I loved the background vocals - they were so emblematic to me of 50s pop music. 

Anyway, this is my rendition of Oh Boy (without any backing vocals of course). I created the backing track online by writing out the drum and bass lines and then playing it in the background as I played and sang guitar live. 

And the next song is Goodbye, by Elton John. This is the last track on his 1971 Madman Across the Water album. I have no idea what it's about - like a lot of his songs from the early 70s, it doesn't really make any sense. But I love its melancholy beauty. 

Fixing Our Political Party Problem

As of this writing, the 2020 election still hangs in the balance two days after Election Day as states finish counting ballots. In the interim, I've been thinking about how we could solve our little problem of massive, widespread political unrest and division. 

The first step, of course, would be to have a normal, non-divisive human being in the White House, someone who actually seeks to unite rather than divide. But that's not actually what I want to talk about. 

Instead, I want to talk about fixing our existing political parties. There are a million things that should happen - chief among them would be extensive changes to campaign finance, including a complete ban on television, internet, and print advertising. I would also argue that campaigns should be 100% publicly-funded - no private donations, and definitely no Super PACs. 

But as for the parties themselves, they should be each be split in two. Mainstream Republicans get hurt in elections by their association with right wing extremists. Similarly for mainstream Democrats. 

Biden's failure to secure a resounding victory on Election Day was partly due to the Trump campaign successfully tying him to the left wing and its outrages. For instance, many reports have argued that Biden lost numerous Cuban and Venezuelan voters in Florida because attack ads painted him in league with socialists and communists - something that is very close to those particular voters' hearts. 

This could be avoided by splitting the parties. The left wing should break away from the Democratic Party and form its own organization. AOC or some other firebrand could be its leader. Similarly with Trump and his right wing supporters. That would then leave the traditional Democratic and Republican parties to the moderates who don't want to be associated with the fringe. 

Obviously, in Congress, the left wing party would largely vote with the Democrats, and the right wing party with the Republicans, but in major elections, Democrats and Republicans wouldn't have to suffer because of the outrages of their extreme elements. It would be much harder for an attack ad to tie Biden to AOC and socialism if all those socialists weren't actually members of, and influencers of, the Democratic Party. The same would be true for Republicans. 

Four parties would, of course, solve one set of problems only to create different ones. What happens when the candidate is a Democrat and the left wing party refuses to support him/her? Conservatives then run away with the election. Beyond that, it could create headaches in Congress. 

But I can't personally see how more parties would be a bad thing for American democracy. I've argued elsewhere that the U.S. is the only major democratic country on earth with only two political parties, and that's despite having the third highest population. Canada has 5 parties currently represented in its legislature, despite having only a fraction of the U.S. population. India literally has dozens. 

So when I become king of America, this is the first change I'm going to make. The second will be to ban guns. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. 

Quitting Social Media

So, I wrote a seven- or eight-paragraph post about why I'm quitting social media, but I just deleted it all. 

Rather than ramble about how social media is destroying society and how I don't want to be part of that anymore, I'm just going to say that I'm getting off social media after the election. I don't know yet if I'm going to delete my accounts, or just log out and remove the apps from my phone. But my intention is for this to be a permanent state of affairs. 

Some of you know that I keep a Twitter account called Scenes of the Bluegrass where I post pictures of Kentucky that people submit to me. It has about 8,000 followers. I will probably keep running that account. 

I will continue to update this blog with occasional posts, and I intend to keep my YouTube channel where I post my music. You can follow me there if you're interested in seeing my videos. You can also sign up to get my new blog posts by email. It's right there on the right side of this screen under SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL. 

Washington's Nightmare Comes To Life

So I wrote a book on the history of American political parties a few years ago called Washington's Nightmare - so-named because at the end of his presidency, George Washington warned Americans about forming and supporting political parties. He called political coalitions "truly our worst enemy" and noted that they represented a "frightful despotism." 

I think it's fair to say we're currently living Washington's nightmare in real-time, every day. 

More relevant now than ever, if you haven't picked up a copy of my book, maybe now is the time to do it. It's a brief survey of the history of party politics in America, covering all the major parties that have come and gone throughout American history. It includes chronological looks at the Democratic and Republican parties and how they have changed through the years.  

You can buy Washington's Nightmare here. It's available in both Kindle e-book and paperback formats. If you like podcasts, I also wrote a six-part series based on the book for American History Tellers and Wondery. They're currently (as of Fall 2020) re-airing the series, which originally ran in 2018. 

George Floyd's Arrest and Cause of Death

Sometimes during slow nights at work, I like to pass the time by watching YouTube videos. One type of video I like watching are police-related vids - high speed chases, dash cam videos, officer involved shootings, etc. It's like watching a cop show, but for realzies. 

Anyway, I've watched hundreds of videos of officers arresting people, getting involved in shoot-outs and foot chases, perps resisting arrest, etc. 

So my first thought on seeing the video of George Floyd was that he probably violently resisted arrest, so the cops were holding him down firmly. Cops do this all the time with violent offenders. Since he was talking, it was clear that the knee on his neck wasn't actually choking him, despite that being the widely-accepted narrative. This is also something that suspects do all the time - resist arrest, then cry and complain when the cops take them to the ground. I typically don't have a lot of sympathy in those cases (of course, normally, they aren't actually dying). 

But there are more videos out there of the Floyd arrest that give a bit more context than the one that has been most widely circulated (the one with the knee on the neck). These include surveillance videos and another cell phone video, both of which actually show part of the initial arrest. 

So here are my thoughts after watching all these videos, and applying what I know from working in hospitals and from watching lots of these kinds of videos.

1) There's nothing in any of these videos to suggest that Floyd died because of anything the cops did. Pressing a knee to the back of someone's neck doesn't choke them. And the fact that he was speaking proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he could breathe. 

2) The arrest videos show that he was not violently resisting arrest, as I had initially assumed. However, he does appear to be giving trouble to the officers, because it takes two of them to get him out of the car and handcuff him. It's impossible from the videos to say why or what kind of trouble he was giving them. But it wasn't a simple arrest situation. 

3) He appears to already be in some kind of physical distress while being arrested. This may be why he was giving them trouble. After handcuffing him, he staggers to the sidewalk before collapsing against a wall for several minutes while a cop talks to him. Then the cop helps him to his feet and escorts him across the street to his squad car. There, he collapses a second time and multiple cops help lift him and take him around to the other side. Once there, he collapses for the third and final time. Unfortunately, you can't see on the videos what happens after that. The next video available shows him with the knee already in his neck. Perhaps body worn cameras will clear that up, but none have been released yet. 

4) Initial reports said cops thought he was drunk. Based on the arrest videos, I can see why. Instead of being drunk (or maybe in addition to being drunk), he was probably already having whatever medical emergency caused his death. Based on his age and size, he may have been having a heart attack. He may have already been in the middle of it before the arrest even started. 

5) None of this explains why the cops were pinning him down or why the one cop kept his knee on the man's neck for so long. Again, hopefully body cams can clear that up. What's clear is that they shouldn't have laid on top of him as long as they did. The cop with the knee almost seems to be defying the crowd. You get the impression he didn't want to look weak by moving after they demanded it, so he just stayed in place for no good reason. Despite that, I don't believe his knee caused Mr. Floyd's death. There's certainly nothing in the available videos to suggest that.  

An inability on the part of the public for calm, rational analysis of things like this is why we have riots and looting afterward. And unfortunately, the press, politicians, voices on social media - all these people make matters worse by instantly starting a bandwagon on one side or the other, and everyone seems to just fall in line. In the end, people like me are left wondering if anyone on either side of the political aisle has the ability to think sensibly or impartially anymore. 

A Lesson from Fred Flintstone

When I was a kid, I LOVED cartoons. I would wake up at 6:30 on Saturday morning JUST to watch cartoons. In fact, my whole Saturday morning was arranged around a strict cartoon schedule that ran from 7 to 11 and culminated with a glorious 90-minute binge of the Smurfs.   

During the mid-1980s, TBS aired old Flintstones reruns in the afternoon. My daily routine during those years was to get home, get a snack (usually microwaved hot dogs), and head in to the family room to watch the Flintstones - two thirty minute episodes (that is, unless a Cubs game was on WGN, in which case I chose baseball over cartoons).  

I can say with fair certainty that I've seen every Flintstones episode multiple times. 

There's one in particular that I am constantly reminded of these days. In this episode, Pebbles has recently been born to Fred and Wilma. Fred, being a doting father, has fallen head over heels for his new baby. Intent on documenting her childhood, he immediately runs out to a store and buys a fancy new video camera. 

He proceeds to become obsessive about making home movies and showing them to everyone he can find. At first, it's all great. Barney and Betty and the others really enjoy coming over, hanging out with Fred and Wilma, and watching videos of cute little Pebbles. 

But, as usual, Fred doesn't know when to stop. The behavior continues, day in and day out. Barney and Betty begin to grow fed up with the non-stop barrage of Pebbles vids, even as Fred's obsession grows stronger. They begin avoiding him to keep from getting corralled into another home movie session. 

Then Fred really goes overboard and secretly plans to show Pebbles videos to all the members of the Water Buffalo Lodge. Telling them it's a "bathing beauty" video, the lodgers are naturally put out when it turns out to be videos of Pebbles in her baby pool. 

More zany cartoon drama ensues, before Fred finally learns his lesson and hangs up his video camera for good.  

Believe it or not, there is a point to retelling this plot from a 1960s cartoon. You probably already have an idea of where I'm going. I am constantly reminded of this episode by certain people on social media who don't seem to realize that no one wants to see a constant barrage of pictures of their kids/daily lives/vacations/dinners, etc. If the writers of this episode could see where society has gone, they'd turn over in their graves. We've got 100 million Fred Flintstones running around the country now, posting every photo and video in their camera roll to Instagram and Facebook. 

I'm obviously not gonna name names, but I've got several followers on Instagram who I swear to God post dozens of pictures of their kids every week. One of these people is worse than all the others. Since Friday, she has made 15 posts on Instagram (as of this hour), with a total of 29 pictures and 1 video. Among these are 3 pictures of wine glasses, two pictures of legs laying out in the sun, pictures of fire pits and backyard pools, and two dozen pictures of her kids and husband.

This is pretty much a normal three-day stretch for her. Not everyone is quite that bad, of course, but several others come pretty close. I've got one follower who I swear must post every picture in her camera roll when she goes on vacation. Each day it will be multiple posts of dozens of photos, including some that aren't even good pictures. It's obvious she's just going through her camera roll picture by picture and posting them all, so that we can enjoy her Disney or beach trip right alongside her. 

What, precisely, is going on in the minds of these Fred Flintstone wannabes? Why do they think their hundreds of Instagram contacts want to see ALL of those pictures? I get that maybe your mom might want to see the pics of her grandchildren, or your best girlfriend might want to see what you did on vacation. But you've got 700 followers! Why IN THE WORLD would you post all these pictures or think that ANYBODY wanted to see them? 

I realize the answer here is to just unfollow them. Like Barney and Betty, avoidance is the key. But these are friends and acquaintances of mine, and I like to see SOME pictures of them. I mean, that's why we follow people on Instagram in the first place, right? 

I guess I see this sort of thing as breaking the unwritten rules of society. Like Fred, who couldn't see that no one was as interested in his own kid and his own life as he was, some people just don't seem to realize that they and their kids aren't the center of everyone else's lives. Yes, there's such a thing as too much. 

Elegy for the Victims of the Pandemic

I never intended, planned, or expected to be working on the front lines of a global pandemic. If you had told 25-year-old Scott that he'd be doing this at age 45, he'd have probably fainted.

But the winding, hilly, curvy, tortuous path I've followed in life has led me to be in this place, at this time. I am an X-ray tech at a hospital in downtown Cincinnati. I work at night and spend the vast majority of my 12-hour shifts X-raying patients in the Emergency Room and on the various floor units of the hospital.

My hospital has spent the last few weeks preparing for a surge of COVID-19 patients. They've placed zippered, air-tight curtains over all the ED rooms that don't have doors; they've cleared out a whole wing to accommodate COVID-19 patients; they've banned all visitors from the hospital; and they have ceased all elective procedures and surgeries. We've seen a steady increase over the last week or two in patients with respiratory symptoms and expect the numbers to continue to increase.

As my friends and family know all too well, my religious beliefs these days wax and wane depending on my mood. As this blog testifies, I have long ago given up the traditional beliefs of my youth. But in these last few weeks, I've found myself continually thinking of the countless sermons and Sunday School lessons I heard growing up about great biblical characters who were faced with circumstances they didn't exactly ask for. 

I think of Abraham and the famous story of God asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac, only to stop him at the last second after Abraham proved his faithfulness. I think of David, the shepherd boy, facing off with Goliath, the warrior champion of the Philistines. And I think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, begging God not to make him "drink this cup." 

I don't want to drink this cup. I don't want to be on the front lines of a global pandemic. But this is where my life's path has brought me. I don't normally talk about things like this, but I have always felt that I was built/made/designed for something important. Maybe that's just my white, privileged, upper middle class, male ego talking. But it's how I've always felt. 

To use words I might have used in my youth but wouldn't normally dream of using now ... being on the front line of this pandemic is what God has called me to do, whether I like it or not. I'm here, and I have to do it. It's important. And I'm made for important work.  

I realize that, as an X-ray tech, I'm not exactly saving lives or even risking my own health as much as others. Nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists are putting themselves at far greater risks than I am, if for no other reason than because they spend more time with the patients than I do. But I'm part of the team that is fighting this battle, and I've accepted the cup that I've been given. I intend to do the best job I can with it.   

All of this is sort of a long introduction to a piano piece that I have written to honor and remember those who have lost their lives in this pandemic. I originally intended to write a really sad lament, but it turned out a little different than I expected. Though I began it in a minor key, I very quickly transitioned into the relative major. Those of you who aren't musicians won't understand what I mean by that, but minor keys are usually associated with sad or dark music, while major keys are typically associated with happy or upbeat music. 

Writing a sad song in a minor key is easy. It's been done a million times. But I've always appreciated and enjoyed sad songs written in major keys, because it's harder and less common. Maybe you'll think this song is sad, and maybe you won't. But whether it's sad or not, it's my tribute to those who have lost their lives in this pandemic - a pandemic that I have been called to risk my health and devote my services to.