A message to our community from UnityPoint Health-Meriter

Dec 26, 2021

As we move toward the end of the year, I often find myself reflecting on how proud I am of our team – a team that has been giving selflessly over the last 19 months. They’ve ensured that you, members of our community, have access to vaccinations to keep you safe, as well as the highest quality of care for those who do end up sick or hospitalized due to COVID-19.

We appreciated the outpouring of community support we felt in Spring of 2020.  But as many of us have moved on and returned to some semblance of normalcy, healthcare teams have continued to deal with COVID-19 each day. Our teams’ mental health and resiliency is being strained. They are frustrated and right now feel forgotten. Our healthcare team is also fighting misinformation and lack of trust in their expertise. Trust that has been built over 100 years in Madison.

We’ve had at least one COVID-19 patient in our hospital since March 17, 2020, and lately, it’s been about 40 each day and growing. Many are from our community, but we’re also caring for patients from across the state and country. Most are unvaccinated.

We’re also seeing a dramatic increase in very sick patients who often delayed care during the pandemic. Simply put, our hospital is near capacity. We are full – and staffing and recruitment challenges are negatively impacting us in the same ways as many other industries. Regardless of illness or injury, it is a daily challenge to find enough beds and staff at Meriter and around the state. It is harder for us to be there for you. So, I’m writing to ask for you to be there for us.

Here are some of the best gifts you could give us right now:

• GET VACCINATED. GET BOOSTED. WEAR YOUR MASK.
• If you interact with a healthcare worker, remember the intense amount of pressure and long duration of stress they have been under. Be kind.
• Show your gratitude for our providers and team members by sending a note of support here.
• Continue to go to your regular checkups and take care of yourself.

The sincerest of thank yous to our Meriter team, who continues to work so hard every day: providers, nurses, CNAs, food & nutrition staff, environmental services staff, business office staff. The list goes on and on. We rely on so many to provide you the safe, quality care you deserve and expect.

It is our privilege to serve and care for you, and we’ll continue to do just that. I believe we are stronger together and appreciate all this community has done and continues to do to support us. We will get through this, but it will take all of us working together.

I wish you health and happiness in 2022.

Sue Erickson
President and CEO
UnityPoint Health – Meriter

Lincoln and Slavery

It sounds ridiculous and unnecessary, researching Lincoln and slavery. But I'm vetting American heroes with an emphasis on racism, and finding surprises and a slow evolution in Lincoln's words and actions.

Lincoln served in the Illinois Assembly and U.S. House of Representatives as a member of the Whig Party from 1834 to 1849, He opposed both slavery and abolition, saying in 1837: 

"[The] Institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils."

What he did support at that time was the program of the American Colonization Society to settle freed slaves in Liberia.¹

He re-entered politics in 1854 as a leader in the new Republican Party, created after the Kansas–Nebraska Act allowed slavery to expand West.² In 1854 he said:

"If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.---why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?---

You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.

You do not mean color exactly?---You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you."³ (emphasis added)

In the first Lincoln Douglas debate in 1858:

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the Black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position.”⁴ (emphasis added)

But at the same time he noted privately:

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy."⁵

The conclusion is that Lincoln personally opposed slavery, but was willing to publicly tolerate it in the South. His primary goal was to preserve the Union, and he was willing to continue slavery for that. In an 1862 letter to the editor of the New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley, he wrote:

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."⁶

Lincoln eventually issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the Confederacy. He pushed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery in all the United States, and recommended extending the vote to African Americans.⁷ 

But as Frederick Douglass said at the dedication of The Freedmen’s Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, DC in 1876:

" . . . even here in the presence of the monument we have erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare of the white people of this country."⁸ (emphasis added)

Racist, or merely pragmatist? Perhaps Douglass recognized Lincoln's slow change with his qualification of "first years". Or maybe at the end Lincoln felt his first task was safely accomplished.

---

¹ Republican Party (United States), Wikipedia, retrieved 7/6/20. 

² Abraham Lincoln, Wikipedia, retrieved 7/6/20. 

³ Fragment on Slavery, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler et al, The Abraham Lincoln Association, Volume 2, pp. 222-223, April 1, 1854?, retrieved 7/7/20.

⁴ First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, Collected Works, Volume 3, pg. 16, August 21, 1858, retrieved 7/7/20. 

⁵ Definition of Democracy, Collected Works, Volume 2, August 1, 1858?, retrieved 7/7/20. 

⁶ Letter to Horace Greeley, Collected Works, Volume 5, pg. 388, August 22, 1862, retrieved 7/6/20. 

⁷ Lincoln on Slavery, National Park Service, retrieved 7/6/20. 

⁸ Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, April 14, 1876.

Jefferson and Slavery

Shannon LaNier, a TV news anchor, has complex feelings about being descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. "He was a brilliant man who preached equality, but he didn't practice it. He owned people. And now I'm here because of it."Drew Gardner / Smithsonian Magazine

On the first 4th of July after the George Floyd killing I was struck by the contradiction between the Declaration of Independence and an original Constitution that enshrined slavery. How could the man who wrote "all men are created equal" also be a slave owner?

Jefferson the abolitionist

From his earliest days as a plantation owner, lawyer, and member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Jefferson took steps against slavery: 

1. He argued that it was a threat to society.
2. He drafted a new Virginia Constitution in 1776  abolishing slavery.
3. He proposed legislation in 1778 to make slave trade to Virginia illegal.
4. He proposed an ordinance in 1784 to ban slavery in the Northwest Territories.
5. He discouraged labor-intensive crops like tobacco in favor of wheat. 

The U.S. Congress abolished the slave trade into America in 1808, but the slave population in the South was self-sustaining by then. Slavery was only becoming more important to the South's economy, and the number of slaves in Virginia increased 60% between 1790 and 1830 to almost 470,000, or 39% of the total state population.

Jefferson the slaveholder

There was a problem with Jefferson's unsuccessful attempts at abolition: he was a racist. He wrote of "the real distinctions which nature has made" between European and African descent, reminiscent of John Stuart Mill's description of the African "race itself" as too immature for democracy. Jefferson did not believe that Whites and Blacks could co-exist peacefully in a free society, and he proposed resettling freed slaves in Africa. He was influenced by slave revolts in Haiti from 1791 to 1804, and Gabriel Prosser's in Virginia in 1800. 

Jefferson wrote this description of maintaining slavery: 

" . . . we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Jefferson feared the United States would be destroyed by slavery, either in a race war as brutal as Haiti's, or a civil war if part of the country continued slavery. He was right.

More Information

• A selection of Jefferson quotes about Race and Slavery »
• Slavery at Jefferson's Monticello: Paradox of Liberty »

Who knew it was so crowded?

Who knew it was so crowded? @ProjectLincoln #InsideHisHead
“I’m clearly renting space inside the guy’s head.”

How the Trump Campaign Is Drawing Obama Out of Retirement https://t.co/g9AE5hIkHv

— Kevin RussianBounty Walsh (@whaleknives) June 29, 2020

Voting in the Time of Corona

Absentee Ballots are the Future

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R - Rochester) explaining how incredibly
safe it is to vote in-person. Note the left hand thumb loop outside the glove.⁶

The first warning was the March 17 training video for the April 7 Spring Election. Hand sanitizer would be provided, but the supply was limited, and poll workers "should bring their own." The Election Official Newsletter covered the initial public health recommendations that did not yet include masks. In-person training sessions for the election were canceled, and poll workers with medical conditions were asked "to determine whether interacting with the public at the polls could compromise their health."


As late as April 4 plexiglas table shields and sometimes plastic face shields were required, but masks were optional.¹

"If you choose to bring a paper-based or form-fitting mask from home, you will be required to sign a green “voluntary use waiver” form. Cloth masks or other cloth over the face does not require the form. Based on CDC guidance, the City of Madison neither encourages nor discourages the use of cloth masks."

The next sign came during an emergency state-wide video conference of the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) on March 19.²

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe

People who are "young and healthy" should volunteer to work as poll workers. "Our elections and democracy really do rely on work of elderly people. Be a part of the solution and also protect our most vulnerable citizens," Wolfe says.

— Henry Redman (@henryredrobin) March 18, 2020

As if age alone can prevent COVID-19 transmission.⁷ In Wisconsin people under 60 account for 80% of confirmed COVID-19 cases.³ This was posted on the Commission's website the next day:

"The WEC strongly recommends that anyone planning to vote in the April 7 Spring Election and Presidential Preference Primary request to have an absentee ballot mailed to them."

The final straw was the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that in-person voting could not be delayed for the pandemic. It was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.⁴

"Wisconsin Primary Voters Receive ‘I Voted’ Gravestones", The Onion, 4/7/20

With symptomless transmission of COVID-19, it's going to take universal precautions to avoid infection until we have a vaccine.⁵ That's a mask and hand hygiene for everyone leaving home or having visitors. And mail-in absentee ballots.

Updates:

• "80% of Wisconsin Republican legislators voted absentee in April", SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press, Jun 29, 2020

---

¹ Memo from Clerk to City of Madison Poll Workers, Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, April 4, 2020

² "Elections Commission searching for answers on safety of April election", Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner, March 19, 2020

³ "Percent of confirmed COVID-19 cases by age group", Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS), 6/28/2020

⁴ "How a Supreme Court Decision Curtailed the Right to Vote in Wisconsin", Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti, The New York Times, April 13, 2020

⁵ "How the World Missed COVID-19’s Silent Spread", Matt Apuzzo, Selam Gebrekidan and David D. Kirkpatrick, The New York Times, June 27, 2020

⁶ "Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wore protective gear as a volunteer poll worker, said 'you are incredibly safe to go out'", Sophie Carson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 8, 2020

⁷ "Houston Surge Fills Hospitals With the Young", Sheri Fink, The New York Times, June 29, 2020

 

Mastodon

The Chicks: "March March" and "Shut Up & Sing"

March March, by Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer, Martie Maguire, Jack Antonoff, Dan Wilson, Ian Kirkpatrick, Ross Golan

“If your voice held no power, they wouldn’t try to silence you.” - unknown 
Use your VOICE. Use your VOTE.



Shut Up And Sing (2006), by Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck

A political music video featuring Rick Rubin, George W. Bush, and the Lipton Tea Lady.

My Father's Dragon

by Kevin E. Walsh

My Father's Dragon

This is not that story.¹ This is a story about another dragon, who looked like this:

A Komodo Dragon on Komodo Island in Indonesia

Komodo National Park

It’s a story about two Komodo Dragons that President Sukarno of Indonesia gave to America in 1964. They were in return for a pair of trumpeter swans that the United States gave to him.²

  

President Sukarno of Indonesia and Trumpeter Swans of America

The Komodo Dragon is now the largest lizard in the world. It comes from a few islands between Flores and Sumbawa, including Komodo Island. This giant lizard can grow almost ten feet long and weigh up to 300 pounds.

Nobody knows how Komodo Dragons got so much larger than other monitor lizards. It might be the Komodo Dragon found its small, isolated islands encouraged large growth over many years. The islands had plenty of deer and wild pigs to eat, and not many people to bother the Dragons.³

A hatching Komodo Dragon

The map shows those islands, and how Indonesia is in the Pacific Ocean between Australia and the Asian continent. It also shows the city of Jakarta, where we were living (it was spelled Djakarta then), and the city of Manila in the Philippines, where we lived later.

This is what the American Embassy in Jakarta looked like in 1964. Embassies are buildings in foreign countries where Americans work for the United States government.

  

Chancery Building, built in 1958⁴

The man in the white hat is a Marine guard. In 1964 the Marine’s desk was closer to the stairway and in front of a glass wall looking out over a garden in the back.

U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia (circa 1970)⁵

Not just a garden, but a pond, garages, and a small commissary or government grocery store, too.

Chancery Building, built in 1958⁶

The Komodo Dragons were delivered to the Embassy one evening in wooden crates or boxes. They were put in the rear garden to wait for their plane ride to America.

About two hours after midnight,⁷ the Marine at the desk felt something staring at him. He turned around and saw . . .

One of the Dragons!

Looking through the glass!!

It escaped from its box!!!

It was the middle of the night, and the Embassy was closed. The Marines began to call in reinforcements. My father, John Walsh, was on call as duty officer that night. He was one of the people who went to the Embassy.

His title at the Embassy was Assistant Commercial Attaché, which meant he helped people doing business between Indonesia and America. This usually didn’t have anything to do with dragons. This is a story he wrote while he was in Djakarta:

International Commerce, March 30,1964⁸

The people at the Embassy began to look for the missing Dragon. Some armed themselves with steel bars that were used to lock file cabinets. The Dragon eventually got tired, and was found sleeping under a tree in the Embassy garden.

At sunrise, with the help of arriving Indonesian staff, ropes were slipped around the Dragon’s head and tail, and a net was thrown over it. The wooden crate was replaced with a metal one, and both Dragons eventually arrived safely at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.

An official at the Smithsonian Institution later wrote that the Dragon “was successfully caught without harm to either it or its captors.”⁹

National Zoo

 

---

and his great grandkids

¹ My Father's Dragon, Ruth Stiles Gannett, illustrations by Ruth Chrisman Gannett, Random House, 1948
² Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992
³ Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992
⁴ U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia, The United States Diplomacy Center
⁵ Embassy of the United States, Jakarta; WikiVisually
⁶ U.S. Embassy Jakarta, Indonesia, The United States Diplomacy Center
⁷ A Communicator’s Bad Dream: The Night of the Dragon, David W. Smith, Foreign Service Journal, May 1988, pg. 70
⁸ International Commerce, March 30,1964
⁹ Letter from the Desk of David Challinor, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, November 1992

Brahms' First Symphony

I'm listening to Brahm's Horn Trio on my iPhone. And thinking about a performance of Brahm's 1st Symphony I attended.

The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point was playing, and my wife, Kathy, was principal Horn. She was not a student, except as a horn student of the conductor, Pat Miles. She was a UW alumna, and the best of the horn players in the orchestra.

It's fair to say that Brahms liked horn, and used it frequently.

"Brahms loved the old, romantic sound of what he called the "Waldhorn" (or "hunting horn") because he played one as a kid. So when he set out to write his Trio, he knew it would be written for what is today referred to as the "natural horn." In fact, the title on the manuscript reads, "Trio fur Pianoforte, Violine & Waldhorn." — Brahms' French Horn Of Plenty, In Concert

"To Brahms, the horn color, especially in solo passages, always had a very special meaning and he frequently used it in very important places." — Johannes Brahms and the French horn

At the end of the piece, the conductor thrust out his arm at Kathy. She eventually stood, hunched over the horn in her hands like she wanted to hide somewhere.

The rest of the orchestra, and the audience, began a thunderous applause. The audience stood, which is typical and part of Wisconsin nice. But I looked around and saw everyone standing. Maybe this was something special.

I would hear that Brahms horn solo repeated by Kathy over time, even with an alphorn.

  

Now she's raising new generations of horn players.

  

Here's a sample from the Berliner Philharmoniker; Stefan Dohr as 1st horn, Simon Rattle conducting:

Madison Police Department: A Chronology of Deadly Force

Madison Police Department Facebook

Kevin Walsh, November 7, 2017

This series is based in part on the Madison Police Department’s Citizen Academy (now Community Academy), an annual program for the public.

The table below summarizes the Department’s use of deadly force over five years, from November 2012 to September 2017. Of the four cases in that time, I still had unanswered questions about Paul Heenan and Ashley DiPiazza that were addressed in the Academy Deadly Force session.

Madison Police Deadly Force (2012-2017)
Date	Description	Comments
Nov 9, 2012	Paul Heenan Shooting	Dispatch call for “possible breaking and entering”, weapons unknown. Heenan found struggling with homeowner outside and then attacking a single officer, who fired shots 3 minutes after the dispatch call. Heenan was killed.1
May 18, 2014	Ashley DiPiazza Shooting	Dispatch call for domestic disturbance involving a weapon. Subject was found holding a gun to her own head inside an apartment. Negotiator and two other officers were attempting to speak from the apartment doorway. Officers fired shots 49 minutes after the dispatch call. DiPiazza was killed.2
Mar 6, 2015	Tony Robinson Shooting	Dispatch call to check on a person fighting with friends, jumping into traffic, and strangling a person; no weapon.3 Disputed claim of attacking a single officer at the top of a stairway.4 Officer fired shots 8 minutes after the first dispatch call. Robinson was killed. Autopsy showed signs of psilocybin mushroom, THC, and Xanax.5
Aug 11, 2015	Paul Heenan Settlement	$2.3 million6
Jun 30, 2016	Michael Schumacher Shooting	Dispatch call for a home break in. Suspect attacked a single officer with a pitchfork. Officer fired shots 3 minutes after the dispatch call. Schumacher was killed. History of mental illness.7
Feb 22, 2017	Tony Robinson Settlement	$3.35 million8
Jul 10, 2017	MPD Procedure Revisions	Deadly Force9 and Non-Deadly Force10 procedures were revised to emphasize protection of all lives, including individuals being arrested, and resolving conflicts through communication, crisis intervention and de-escalation.
Jul 14, 2017	Ashley DiPiazza Jury Award	$7 million11, civil burden of proof was “preponderance of evidence” rather than the criminal “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Total $12.65 million and 4 killed since 2012.
Sep 15, 2017	New MPD Back-Up Procedure12	To emphasize protection of lives as above, and added waiting for assigned back-up to increase the safety of all involved.

Paul Heenan
Paul Heenan was an unarmed, intoxicated person entering the wrong home, and fighting first with his neighbor, and then a police officer. Officers are trained to approach high risk situations such as stolen vehicles, burglaries in progress, and robbery alarms with guns drawn, even if there is no current information on weapons. This is because of the “reactionary gap” or delay between seeing a gun and drawing your own.

Collected Quotes

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.“

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times, 1931
Versions with "things" instead of "events" have been published since 1888, and without things or events since 1827. Quote Investigator

The History of U.S. Immigration Restrictions

A History of Racism, Jobs, and Resistance to Change

Interview of Samoset with the Pilgrims¹

Recent debate over immigration and closed versus open borders raises questions about the American history of immigration. It seems that every native-born citizen is descended from immigrants; even the first Native Americans were new arrivals at some point.² This article looks at tightening restrictions on immigration after the United States of America began in 1789.

For the first 86 years there were no immigration restrictions at all. The Page Act of 1875 was the first federal immigration law and marked the end of open borders. Rep. Horace F. Page (R-CA) introduced it to "end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women." The first Chinese immigrants to the U.S. were mostly males, arriving after 1848 as part of the California Gold Rush. The Page Act technically barred East Asian forced laborers, prostitutes, and convicts, but in practice the focus was on preventing polygamous Chinese marriage and native-born Chinese. While the number of Chinese immigrants actually increased after the Act, the female population dropped.⁵

Facebook Ignores Privacy Settings

If you're using the internet, you've given away all rights to privacy.

"Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, said the sharing deals did not violate privacy rules because the partners functioned as extensions of the social network." (emphasis added)

In other words, it's all internet.

In March 2018 it was reported that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, used Facebook data to build tools for President Trump’s 2016 campaign. Facebook said then that it had instituted stricter privacy protections. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, told lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook.

However,

• Facebook continued sharing for Pandora and other companies even after an F.T.C. agreement led to an official change in policy.

• Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of all Facebook users’ friends without consent, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages.

• The Russian company Yandex, which has been accused of giving information to the Kremlin, had access to Facebook data as recently as last year.

• Facebook used contact lists from its partners, including Amazon, Yahoo and Huawei, to analyze relationships and suggest more connections.

• Facebook allowed Apple to hide all signs that it was asking for data. Apple had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to disable all sharing.

• Facebook permitted Amazon to obtain users’ names and contact information through their friends, and it let Yahoo view streams of friends’ posts as recently as this summer.

• Sony, Microsoft, Amazon and others could obtain users’ email addresses through their friends, in spite of the user's privacy settings.

Europe has stricter regulation of social media companies. The United States has no general consumer privacy law, leaving tech companies free to monetize most kinds of personal information as long as they don’t mislead their users. The F.T.C. currently has consent agreements with Facebook, Google, and Twitter from alleged privacy violations.

Facebook’s agreement comes from the company’s early data sharing in 2009, when it made some information from its 400 million users accessible to all of the internet. It shared information that included users’ locations and religious and political beliefs to help personalize sites like Bing.

---

Source: Gabriel J.X. Dance, Michael LaForgia, and Nicholas Confessore, "As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants," New York Times, December 19, 2018

 

Look Out Any Window

  

Nick Varvel        Aspen Song Wild Bird Food

Contrasting birds as seen at the feeders.

The American Goldfinch is chrome yellow with sharp, black and white racing stripes. The House Finch is drab brown and white with blurred brown stripes.

Of course, it's not fair to compare male to female.

Was Morgan Freeman in Close Encounters?

The YouTube poster describes it as an "intense scene" with a "very 'simple' setup that delivers a great moment":

I watched Close Encounters again after visiting Devils Tower in Wyoming recently, where the movie has become part of the monument's history. On hearing the voice, I immediately thought "Morgan Freeman." In fact, an online search shows that many others have the same impression. But Freeman is not listed for Close Encounters, not on Internet Movie Database or Wikipedia, for either the movie or the actor. Could he be uncredited, or working under another name?


David Anderson, Richard L. Hawkins, Craig Shreeve, and Bill Thurman in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) — IMDb

A still caption for this air traffic control scene lists four names for the six people in the picture: David Anderson, Richard L. Hawkins, Craig Shreeve, and Bill Thurman. Unfortunately, this scene and still are the most common ones associated with those names. What is the name of the lead actor communicating with the pilots? An image for Morgan Freeman in 1977 could not be found.

    

The answer came from a column in Jet magazine from February 2, 1978:

Where Close Encounters Of The Third Kind becomes a close encounter of the real kind for Black actor David Anderson who appears as an air traffic controller in the sci-fi thriller. In life, Anderson has been with the Federal Aviation Administration for 27 years — 19 of which he's been an air traffic controller.

Anderson's IMDb page shows him appearing in 35 movies and TV shows after Close Encounters, from 1982 to 2007, and lists him in 1985 as a technical consultant, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired).

A Chronology of NFL Protest Quotes

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

— Colin Kaepernick on his reason for not standing for the national anthem, August 27, 2016

“I don't know if you know — the NFL is way down in their ratings. And you know why? Two reasons. Number one is this politics, they’re finding, is a much rougher game than football, and more exciting. And this, honestly, we've taken a lot of people away from the NFL. And the other reason is Kaepernick. Kaepernick.”

— Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in a speech in Greeley, Colorado, October 30, 2016

"It was reported that NFL owners don't want to pick him up because they don't want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that? I just saw that. I just saw that."

— President Donald Trump taking credit for the failure of an NFL team to hire free agent Colin Kaepernick, March 21, 2017

"Yes, I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. And you don’t have doubt about it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say."

— President Trump on the violence in Charlottesville, August 15, 2017

"Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa."

— David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, August 15, 2017

Shocker! CEOs Admit They Won't Invest Tax Cuts in Worker Wages

"Of course the GOP tax scam didn't help working people. CEOs would rather pay themselves than pay us." — Wisconsin congressional candidate Randy Bryce. The evidence just keeps rolling in.

U.S. Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) speak to members of the media in front of the West Wing of the White House February 27, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, May 28, 2018

As America's largest banks post record profits, massive companies continue their unprecedented stock buyback spree, and already-obscene CEO pay packages are set to rapidly expand in the aftermath of the Trump-GOP tax cuts, top corporate executives are now openly admitting that they have no plans whatsoever to invest their enormous windfall into wage increases for workers.

During what Axios described as a "rare, candid, and bracing talk from executives atop corporate America" at the Dallas Fed late last week, Troy Taylor, CEO of Florida's Coca-Cola franchise, said of the possibility of broad wage hikes for workers: "It's just not going to happen. Absolutely not in my business."

"Of course the GOP tax scam didn't help working people," noted Wisconsin congressional candidate Randy Bryce, aka "The Iron Stache," in response to the Axios report. "CEOs would rather pay themselves than pay us."

And CEOs are not merely conceding that "the days of most people getting a pay raise are over" despite the lofty promises Republicans made after they rammed through their $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. As Axios reports, well-heeled corporate executives are also actively moving to "reduce their workforces further" to cut costs and boost their bottom lines.

The NFL and Patriotism as a Marketing Tool

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees (9) kneels down with teammates before the U.S. national anthem was played ahead of an NFL football game against Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium in London, Sunday Oct. 1, 2017. Saints players then stood when the anthem was played. (AP Photo/Tim Ireland)

The NFL owners have decided to fight a recent loss of television viewers with a dose of patriotism (NFL Policy Will Require Players on Field to Stand for Anthem, Show Flag 'Proper Respect', Scooby Axson, Sports Illustrated, May 23, 2018). The issue worsened last year when Donald Trump said that owners should fire players who disrespected the flag. One problem is that it's not clear whether the viewer loss is due to player demonstrations or changes in the broadcast market and viewing technology.

Another problem is that the player's union has not agreed to the new rules. The owners are allowing the players to remain in the locker rooms during the anthem, but the NFL Players Association has said:

Harley-Davidson workers say plant closure after tax cut is like a bad dream

The Trump tax cut is benefiting corporations and stockholders, not workers

Harley-Davidson plans job cuts in Kansas City and will add
positions in York County. (Photo: Keith Srakocic, AP)

Candy Woodall, USA Today, York (Pa.) Daily Record, May 27, 2018

YORK, Pa. — Harley-Davidson workers across the USA are reeling from the planned closure of the motorcycle maker's Kansas City plant, yet it is expected to reap huge financial benefits from the federal corporate tax cut.

The Milwaukee-based motorcycle manufacturer benefited from the tax cuts enacted Jan. 1, then announced cuts of 350 jobs across the company in late January. On Feb. 5 , it approved a half-cent dividend increase and buyback of up to 15 million shares.

Harley’s U.S. sales have been sinking in recent years as Boomers decide they are becoming too old to continue riding and fewer younger people step up to take their place. As a result, Harley said it was forced to cut excess factory capacity.

“Unfortunately there is nothing that could have been done to address the pressure of excess capacity we have in the U.S. market,” Harley said in a statement.

The company maintains that the dividend increase and stock buyback are unrelated to the tax savings.

► May 21: Loud Harleys: Is motorcycle noise sweet harmony or out-of-control din?
► May 11: Harley-Davidson to ship work to Thailand from U.S. plant, union says
► May 10: Shareholders ask questions, but media kept out of annual meeting

Workers say they are dismayed.

“We did everything Harley-Davidson asked us to do,” welder Tim Primeaux said in an NBC News interview that aired last week. "To have it all blow up in your face is kind of disappointing.”

When Harley-Davidson announced in January that it would slash 800 jobs upon closing the Kansas City plant by fall 2019, Primeaux said he and other workers were in a state of "shock and awe."

“It was like I was in a bad dream, just stuck in it," Primeaux told the network.

Second Class Citizens

After the recent passage of WISCONSIN ACT 248, "involving a boycott of Israel," and a City of Madison Mayoral Proclamation (below) declaring an "Israel Day," I thought we might benefit from some facts on the legal status of non-Jewish citizens of Israel.

Americans are too willing to assume that the only democracy in the Middle East has a written Constitution and Bill of Rights like theirs. The examples below are legal discrimination by the Israeli government. This unequal treatment under the law applies to over 1.7 million Israeli citizens in Israel, more than 21% of the population.¹ By comparison, African Americans are 13% of the U.S. population.¹²

A 2005 letter to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Badger Herald argued that Israel was not South Africa:

The divestment campaign in South Africa was appropriate and legitimate because it garnered international recognition of apartheid, an internal system of exploitation and segregation forced upon a black majority by a white minority. Divestment legitimately targeted corporations that profited from this egregious situation. While some have argued that Israel is conducting apartheid policies against the Palestinian people and Arab-Israeli citizens, this comparison is absurd. Arab-Israeli citizens retain the same civil and political rights that any Jew possesses in Israel, with the ability to vote in elections and serve their constituents as elected officials. (emphasis added)

Unfortunately, this is not true. Israeli laws, and the civil and political rights they define, are different for different Israeli citizens. Israel's purpose in this is to maintain its status as a Jewish state, as Roland Nikles commented:

Dissecting Paul Ryan on deficits and spending

He doesn't add up



Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, April 15, 2018

“That was going to happen — the baby boomers retiring was going do that. These deficit — trillion-dollar projections have been out there for a long, long time. Why? Because of mandatory spending, which we call entitlements. Discretionary spending under the CBO baseline is going about $300 billion over the next 10 years. Tax revenues are still rising, income tax revenues are still rising, corporate income tax revenues — corporate rate got dropped 30 percent, still rising. Mandatory spending, which is entitlements, that grows $2 trillion over the next decade. Why does it grow $2 trillion? Because the boomer generation is retiring and we have not prepared these programs.”
— House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), in remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” April 15, 2018

Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who has announced his retirement, made these comments in response to a jab by host Chuck Todd at the longtime fiscal hawk: “You walk away with trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.”

One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan

Self-portrait and calligraphy by Ryōkan

With no-mind, blossoms invite the butterfly;
With no-mind, the butterfly visits the blossoms.
When the flower blooms, the butterfly comes;
When the butterfly comes, the flower blooms.
I do not "know" others,
Others do not "know" me.
Not-knowing each other we naturally follow the Way. ¹

In the introductory analysis of John Stevens' One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan, we are told that the 18th century hermit monk was a living example of a Zen bodhisattva, teaching without preaching and going beyond mindfulness to a mind free from attachment (Japanese: mushin).² Ryokan writes that we follow Buddha's teachings (the Way) by experiencing life without study and analysis, just as nature does.

His poetry is filled with nature, reflecting both joy and sadness in his remote and rural surroundings. But this description of the interdependence of flower and insect life also expresses the teaching (Pali: Dhamma, Sanskrit: Dharma) of dependent origination (Pali: paticca samuppada), held by Buddhadasa to be "a complete description of nature" and "the very heart of Buddhism." ³