Hit bottom yet?

Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate who is running for the governorship of Ohio against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, is 60 years old.

Acton was removed from her birth mother, Donna Arthur, by court order because of an abusive environment when she was 12 years old. That was 48 years ago. Nearly five decades. Arthur hasn't spoken to Acton since then.

Now, in a particularly revolting political moment, Ramaswamy has repeatedly circulated an online campaign ad featuring Arthur criticizing her daughter as both "a liar" and suffering from mental health issues. Arthur's ad also questions Acton's claim that her daughter lived in a tent as a child as a result of homelessness.

What the ad doesn't address is the fact that Arthur's husband at the time, Cledith Arthur, was indicted by a grand jury and charged with the rape and abuse of Acton and her brother, Phil Stearns, in 1978. I repeat – when she was 12. That's pedophilia as well as sexual assault. Sound familiar these days?

The stepfather skipped the state of Ohio, ran off to Pennsylvania with his wife, and never appeared in court. Donna Arthur, apparently chose living with her abusive child-raping husband than to support her own blood daughter.

Court records and news reports from 1978 support Acton's account of her childhood experience. FactCheck.org also found records that connect Cledith to the campground where Acton said she lived in a tent. So there's that.

In light of this, a desperate Ramaswamy, who trails Acton in recent polling, refuses to pull the ad and has doubled down on his assertion that Acton is a lying liar.

Ramaswamy even enlisted the support of convicted felon president Donald Trump – now there's a character witness for you – who told Ramaswamy to continue to run the ad because it was a "very powerful" ad and that it hit political paydirt.

This is coming from the guy who is mentioned thousands of times in the Epstein files. You remember the Epstein files, right? The files that were ordered to be released – totally unredacted – by a bipartisan act of Congress. It was signed into law by Trump himself.

And yet, here we are, sifting through the heavily redacted files that have been released while still waiting for more than a million remaining files – maybe even more – that haven't been released. What's the hold up? Or maybe we need to ask: What's the cover up?

Ramaswamy's attack ad on Acton is pretty vile stuff and it brings me to wonder where the hell this country's moral compass is located. In one of Trump's recent midterm campaign rallies, he backed Ramaswamy's view. The crowd behind him cheers idiotically. Wait, what? Cheering a rapist? An abuser of children?

Ramaswamy has Trump's support. He also has the support of vice president J.D. Vance. So the top two leaders of the Republican Party are backing the story of a woman who has turned her souless heart from the child who was raped and abused by her justice-skipping husband. And GOP followers are cheering this?

Where is that moral compass again? 

Oh, that's right. It's still falling. It still hasn't hit bottom. 

 

Early voted

It seems as though Kim and I had been waiting impatiently for the opportunity to vote early in this year's midterm elections.

More precisely, waiting forever. The waiting felt interminable, in the same way living in the current Trump administration feels interminable.

So Friday, after Kim got off from work, we made a beeline to the Davidson County Board of Elections to exercise our constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. Somewhat surprisingly, there was not the usual crowd of poll watchers, down-ballot candidates or party partisans in the parking lot to wade through.

But there was at least one. "Would you like a brochure to review the Republican candidates?" she asked. "No!" exclaimed the usually soft-spoken Kim in her loud, stop-annoying-me voice as we quick-stepped our way to the polls. After a moment or two passed, Kim turned to me. "You know what I should have said? I should have told her 'Hell, no!'" She snickered.

Kim's gentle Southern accent, which has captivated me for decades, made it sound more like "Hail, no!" I snickered, too.

When we got inside the door we were greeted by poll workers who reminded us that we needed to have our photo ID available. Kim already had her driver's license in hand. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket, flipped the flap that covers the license window in my wallet and ... my license wasn't there.

Wha...??? Where's my license? It's always there. What happened to it?

Panic set in. How can I vote? I was more concerned about not being able to vote than I was about going through the potential bureaucracy of replacing my license.

Kim was already in line. I sat off to the side, pulling every card out from every conceivable pocket in my wallet. Sweat was forming. My fingers were shaking. Where the hail is my license? It's got my Real ID on it. Without Real ID, I'm nobody. Apparently.

Kim was now checking in to vote. I gave my wallet one last search. And behold. There, behind the plastic window that's usually reserved for my license, there is another slip-in pocket that serves as a card holder, but not for display. Somehow, that's where my license was. I got in line.

And I voted. I voted against illegal wars. I voted against unilaterally raising tariffs. I voted against rogue law enforcement roaming our streets and murdering our citizens. I voted against rising inflation. I voted against rising prices. I voted against the chaos that has swallowed this nation. I voted against a convicted felon president having free reign to employ his twisted vision of American government with the support of a Republican controlled Congress. I voted against presidential corruption. I voted against tax breaks for the very rich.

I don't know how loud my voice is, but I felt good about voting. I always do. I never feel more American than at this moment.

On the way home, we tried to figure out how my driver's license got to where it ended up. Kim remembered that there was a routine license check on a side road in town about a month ago. I had to take my license out of my wallet, and when I put it back, I unknowingly slipped it back in the pocket behind the display window. Nobody could see it.

Oh, well. It was worth the panic. It all worked out.

I voted. Now it's your turn. 

 

 

The jab ... and the jab

Back in late September, Kim and I were wondering when the best time would be to go get our flu shots this year. We knew the time was approaching.

We haven't missed our annual shot in more than 40 years and we weren't about to miss it this year, either.

Then, a week or so ago, a news item popped up indicating that this year's flu strain was expected to be particularly virulent, and the best time to go for the vaccine would be ... right now, if not sooner. So Kim went ahead and lined up appointments for both of us at Lexington Family Physicians for this past Thursday.

Oh, and by the way, let's get the Covid shot, too.

So we did. Flu shot in the right arm, Covid jab in the left.

 While I was getting my injections Thursday, the first thing I thought of was all the antivaxxers who are so insistent on not protecting themselves or (more thoughtlessly) the herd from catching the flu or Covid.

Every once in a while, an antivaxxer will post some nonsense about how well the antiparasitic Ivermectin works and that the Covid-19 vaccine, by contrast, has caused the death of millions.

A simple Internet search quickly debunks many of those claims:

• Since the Covid-19 vaccine rollout began in 2020, more than 13.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That covers 70.5 percent of the world's population (8.5 billion) who have received at least one dose. If you noticed that more doses have been administered than there are people, remember the initial vaccinations were a multiple step process.

• Perhaps the more pertinent question would be how many lives have been saved by the Covid-19 vaccine? According to The Lancet Infectious Diseases hosted by the National Institute of Health (NIH), Covid-19 vaccines saved an estimated 14.4 million to 19.8 million lives from December 2020 to December 2021 – or a 63 percent reduction in total potential deaths.

In the United States, the Commonwealth Fund writes that independent modeling indicates over three million lives have been saved and tens of millions more have avoided hospitalization.

Just keep in mind that Covid-19 is a moving target and that the vaccination is aiming at a constantly changing virus, and thus requires unending vigilance and research. Consequently, the Covid-19 vaccine formula is updated every year to match the virus variants, much in the same way the flu vaccine is prepared.

• One of the antivaxxer assertions that tickled me claims that thousands of virologists supposedly have questioned the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine, but according to WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), just the opposite is true: Covid-19 vaccines are safe, effective and have saved millions of lives. Those suggesting otherwise are either deliberately lying or otherwise reporting false or conspiracy-based misinformation to support a political agenda. Laugh at them.

I've always been worried about influenza. Years ago, when I first learned of the great Spanish influenza outbreak in 1918, I was shocked to learn that an estimated 50 million to 100 million people died in that pandemic worldwide.

The virus claimed 675,000 American lives, more than the combined American combat casualties of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

Up until I reached my late 30s, I thought the flu was pretty much just a bad head cold. Silly me. But for nearly as long as Kim and I have been married, we've gotten our flu shots. And as far as I can remember, we've never gotten the flu.

I've never quite understood why some people avoid getting flu and Covid shots, especially when the evidence is clear that the vaccinations actually protect the community. I mean, it's my understanding that even if you don't get the shot and you don't display any flu symptoms, you can still carry and transmit the virus with a simple sneeze or touch. Why would you do that? It seems to me the object here isn't only to keep yourself safe, but also your friends, family, neighbors and colleagues as well.

I have this picture in my head of a young child crying real tears as she is being administered the flu shot. For some reason, I think this is a lasting image that many people carry into adulthood. I bet deep down folks opposed to vaccines just don't want to feel the needle's sting again. It's the only thing that even remotely make sense to me.

These shots didn't hurt. 

C'mon. Get your shots. 

 

 

 

 

 

Press here

When convicted felon president Donald Trump denied White House access nearly a week ago to journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico, claiming that those news organizations only reported negative news from the White House, I wasn't particularly surprised.

Nor was I surprised when he seemingly defied a judge – District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump-appointed judge – ruled that the affected organizations had to have their access reinstated for at least 14 days as their legal challenge continued to turn.

Access was eventually restored Thursday afternoon by the temporary restraining order.

You knew it would be. Trump's endless quarrel with the media – particularly those outlets he considers to be left leaning and progenitors of a made-up term he labels "fake news", as an assault on the First Amendment. You know, the amendment that guarantees freedom of the press. It's why it's the very first amendment to the Constitution. It's first for a reason.

It's first because it's designed to provide accountability as a check to a president's questionable actions – like starting illegal wars, or illegally raising tariffs, or illegally denying due process. Stuff like that.

But what do you expect from a felon president who was granted almost total immunity for his actions by an obviously corrupt Supreme Court? What do you expect from a Republican-controlled Congress that has basically surrendered its first-branch-of-government (Article I) power and authority to the convicted felon president with hardly a whimper?

How does a convicted felon remain as president in a democracy?

I think the thing that surprises me the most is the support that Trump is receiving not only from the party-line Court, but from a segment of the electorate that tends to agree with his assessment of the media – that it creates fake news.

There's no such thing as fake news, just like there's no such thing as a deep state. Those are simply labels created by a paranoid government that feels as if its power is being threatened. Those that believe the government in power are called the base.

So who do you believe when you get your news? The main stream media? Podcasters? Bloggers? The government? Those who align with your own perceptions?

It's a tough call.

I spent my career in newspaper journalism and in my experience the professionals with whom I worked went out of their way to provide the truth. The thing is, what is the truth? Who perceives what truth is? Who defines what truth is? How is truth influenced by life experiences? Is truth even obvious? Is truth founded on evidence?

For me, truth is molded by my upbringing, by my values, by my logic, by my sense of what feels right and what feels wrong. That's what I rely on to determine what is true and what is conspiracy theory.

It's why I believe in vaccines. It's why I believe in the law. It's why I believe in the Constitution. It's why I believe what I see by my very eyes and ears.

It's why I don't believe in a convicted felon. 

 

 

Another class reunion

The last time I heard somebody ask me to sign their high school yearbook was 57 years ago, but then, that's the kind of life I've lived. You know, the kind filled with oddball change-ups and unpredictable curves that you never really see coming. The kind that just kiss the corner of the plate and the ump cries out "Steee-rike!"

Linda Radle, myself, and Hannah Pennewell

 So here was Linda Radle. We weren't particularly close back in our high school days – basically just anonymous students passing each other in the hallways – but I think she somehow recognized me by my name tag. We struck up a friendly conversation, with me pointing out that I actually didn't graduate with her class because we moved away in my senior year.

Then, out of nowhere, it seemed, she whipped out her class of 1969 yearbook. "Will you sign this, please?"

I was taken aback. Then humbled.

"Just sign it in the space here on the page where your picture would have been," she suggested.

I don't know if it's because I've reached a certain age, or what, but it's moments like this that tend to make me misty eyed. All my hearts fall off my sleeve like autumn leaves.

So I wrote, as best as I can remember, "Linda, it only took me 57 years, but I finally got to sign your yearbook." I think I added another clever sentence or two, then signed it, "In renewed friendship, Bruce Wehrle." She seemed pleased.

Bruce Buratti and myself

 This reunion was going to be different than any I'd been to previously. This time, the organizers combined the Southern Lehigh classes of 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969 because, you know, we're dying off now. It's not that easy to coax people to come to that little school that lies in the shadow of Allentown,  PA, especially as we get older and driving becomes a little more problematical. But I thought it was a brilliant move, since most of us also had friends in classes other than our own and whom we hadn't seen for years. Plus, the event was being held over two days, with a casual picnic lunch on Friday and a more formal catered luncheon at a local college on Saturday.

This gave me a chance to meet up with Bruce Buratti. He and I were teammates on the Solehi cross country team. He was a year ahead of me in school.

He recognized me immediately and we started reminiscing from the get-go. Here's an interesting tidbit: we're two guys named Bruce who ran for the same cross country team in high school, and then went on to spend their entire professional careers as sports writers. To top it off, both of us were inducted into our respective county sports halls of fame. What are the odds?

I spent so much of my Friday talking with Bruce that I actually missed having my group picture with the present members of the class of 1969. No matter. We could try again Saturday. Except that when the call came Saturday for another class picture, I was off somewhere talking with Bruce. Again.

Steee-rike!  

Morag, myself and Kim

Reunions can be hardest on spouses because they don't know anybody there and I kind of wondered how Kim would navigate her way through this – especially for two days, 500 miles from home. It's not as if she could hop in the car and drive off (Well, she could have, I guess. She has her own keys to the car. But that would have been a totally different story).

Anyway, in one of those moments when Kim was alone in a room full of strangers, a woman named Christie Davies (Class of '68) approached her and asked about her. Who was she? What class was she in? Kim explained that she was married to me, but Christie had no clue who I was. We never crossed paths in school.

A bit later, Kim told me about this nice woman who made her feel comfortable and she pointed her out to me. I went up to Christie, showed her my name tag, and thanked her for talking to my wife. Christie was friendly, outgoing and funny. We talked for a few more minutes. And just like that, I had made a new friend from out of the reunion ether.

And then there's Morag. You might remember that I've written about Morag Christie-Churm before. She and I met as teenagers in the summer of 1967 when we both had summer jobs at the community swimming pool and, well, the friendship that started then has now spanned seven decades. It's one of those tasty change-ups that you never expect. Whenever Kim and I head north, Morag (Class of '68) graciously offers us a place to stay for a couple of days, without fail.

Damn. There goes another heart off my sleeve.

Morag was more or less the ramrod behind this reunion, serving as coordinator, accountant, proofreader, ass kicker and whatever else it took to put something like a two-day reunion together. Plans are already in the works for another reunion in three years, which would make it my 60th. 

There were others I remembered: Hannah Pennewell, who represented the Class of '69 on the reunion committee; Tom Schaeffer, the class president; Duane Wetzel; Ed Alosi; Linda Yost; Arthur Urffer, and Glen High, to name a few. 

I have to say, for a bunch of septuagenarians, the folks in the four classes looked pretty good. Healthy. Sharp. Glad to be in each other's shared company. Humbled to be shaped, in part, by the high school that brought us together.

For sure. See you in three years. 

Modeling my new T-shirt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voting rights

If you ask me (and I know you didn't, but here goes anyway), the right to vote is the most sacred of our American freedoms.

It's the lubricant of our democracy. In a world full of despots, parliaments, oligarchies, theocracies, anarchists and communists, our 250 years of free and fair elections are, I believe, what most clearly defines us as Americans.

So why is there an assault on our right to vote? Why is the Voting Rights Act being decimated by the Supreme Court? When the American vision should be welcoming all of its citizens to vote, why are limitations being imposed on who and where we can vote?

Why, for crying out loud, did officials in Tarrant County, TX – the third largest county in the state, which includes Fort Worth – approve a plan on Tuesday to reduce the number of polling locations by 92 for the rapidly approaching midterm elections?

It might be an easy guess. The Tarrant County Commissioners, in a party-line 3-2 vote decided by three Republicans, reduced the number of polling locations from 316 to 224.  Fewer polling stations is expected to cut down the number of potential voters – and thus the number of Democrats who show up in steadily growing purple Tarrant County.

Most appallingly, the polling stations at the University of Texas-Arlington and Tarrant County College have been dropped, denying students an easy opportunity to vote. That's what this is really about – access to the ballot. Fewer voting locations usually means it's more difficult for older voters, rural voters or students – to arrive and exercise their franchise.

For a Republican Party that is in (desperate) fear of losing majorities in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in the midterms, restricting voting locations and attempting to explain that there are still plenty of places to vote is absurd. It's all about control.

The excessively corrupt Trump Administration has been whining about rigged elections for more than a decade now without any evidence, even though he has won two presidential elections. This whining is nothing more than pre-planned fear-mongering (think Project 2025) and red meat for the MAGA base, even though numerous studies and investigations have shown that elections have been overwhelmingly free and fair.

The Brennan Center think tank published a report years ago, "The Truth About Voter Fraud", and found that most incidents of fraud are traceable to other sources, like clerical errors or poor data matching processes. Consequently, the Brennan Center concluded that incident rates of fraud measure between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.

The Brennan Center wrote than an American more likely "will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls."

In another study by the bi-partisan Brookings Institute, election data from the conservative Heritage Foundation found that voter fraud measures less than 1 percent over the last 38 years. In other words, no election was altered by voter fraud over those years. Imagine that.

When Trump complained about the "rigged" 2020 election, Trump's then-Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security, Christoper Krebs, declared the elections were the most secure in American history. He was fired by Trump days after the election.  

Early voting begins in North Carolina on Oct. 15 and the midterm election will be held nationally on Nov. 3, only 57 days from now.

To this point, the only attempted tampering with our elections seems to have come from Trump himself.

Our right to vote is under attack. It's being assaulted by gerrymandered districts. It's being assaulted by Supreme Court decisions that have dismantled Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It's being placed in doubt by the repeated unsubstantiated lies of an astoundingly failed president.

Exercise your franchise to vote. Get to the polls the best way you know how. And vote.  

Dolly

There was a time in my life when I didn't give a flip about country music.

In fact, I don't think I developed a serious appreciation for any kind of music until I reached high school. Probably about the same time that the '60's hit the scene. I think what happened was that, for two summers, I worked as the maintenance guy at the community swimming pool. I was at the pool from opening to closing every day through the summer and consequently I got a steady diet of popular music over the PA system: Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Hollies, CCR – the whole 60s package. My life changed.

Dolly

 Decades passed. Still no country, though.

Then, finally, in the 90s, I heard Whitney Houston sing "I Will Always Love You" and was taken in with the lyrics. Beautiful lyrics. Moving lyrics coupled with a soul-melting melody.

About the same time, my wife, Kim, introduced me to the country side of the road and I began an appreciation of artists like Patty Loveless, Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood, Alison Krauss and a few others.

Somewhere along the way, I heard Dolly sing "I Will Always Love You."  Then, to my surprise, I learned she wrote the song.

Say what? I didn't know that. Why would I think a country star could write a tune like that? Not only that, she wrote it in the '70s. In 1974, to be exact. Where was I? Oh, yeah. Listening to Eagles and Yes and the Police.

I guess I would hope to tell you that Dolly soon became a favorite of mine, but it didn't happen that way. I was never particularly enamored with her singing voice and I thought those breast augmentations, makeup overloads and ridiculous wigs more or less turned her into a silly caricature of herself. Show business, I guess.

And yet...

As her fame increased, so did her authentic self. Her immense wealth allowed her to become a philanthropist and in 1988 Parton founded the non-profit Dollywood Foundation. The foundation was originally created to inspire the children of her home county in Sevier, TN, to aim for educational success and to decrease the county high school's dropout rate.

Out of that was created the Buddy Program, which pledged $500 to each seventh and eight grade student who eventually graduated from the local high school. Consequently, the dropout rate fell from 35 percent to 6 percent. 

But it became something even bigger than that. By 1995 Parton created the Imagination Library, an offshoot of the Dollywood Foundation which gifted a book monthly to children under the age of 5 in Sevier County. But the program eventually grew to international heights. To date, Parton's literacy program has donated more than 200 million free books. At one point, the Library of Congress called Parton "a titan of children's literacy."

The library was founded in honor of her father, who never learned to read nor write.

Now get this: in 2022, employees of Dollywood, the theme park co-owned with her entertainment company, would have their college tuition and related fees paid for by the park. Parton was her own department of education. 

This is making me cry.

In 2016, she created the My People Fund, which provided $1,000 per month for six months to families who lost their homes in the wildfires of Sevier County. When the program ended a year later, more than $12 million had been raised and distributed. Parton was her own FEMA office.

She was also her own department of health and human services. In 2006 she pledged $500,000 for a hospital and cancer center in Seveirville, TN.

Then, in 2020, Parton donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University to help in the research for a COVID-19 vaccine. Indeed, her donation expedited the critical early development of the Moderna vaccine. She famously had herself vaccinated at Vanderbilt to help set an example.

A few months later, Parton donated another $1 million to Vanderbilt for pediatric infectious disease research.

I'm still weeping.

Parton, as previously noted, was also essential in donating to natural disaster relief. In 2024, she donated $2 million – including $1 million personally with the balance coming through her foundation – to relief efforts after the onslaught of Hurricane Helene through the Appalachian Mountains, causing at least 106 deaths in North Carolina alone.

Although she was politically neutral, she was an advocate for the gay community, supporting same-sex marriages as well as voicing support for the trans community.

Many of these donations and pledges came quietly and, consequently, we may never know the true extent of her philanthropic career.

Maybe it's just enough to know that she will always love you.