The joys of no noise

Kim and I try to go for an evening stroll as often as we can, usually after we've had dinner and before all the good stuff comes on TV ("good stuff" being relative, of course. Usually, for me, it's a ball game of some sort).

Anyway, the stroll up town is usually our quality time together. Kim is still an 8-to-5 working person, meaning unless it's the weekend, the lunch hour is about the only time we have with each other until she gets off work.

So, after dinner, we walk. We usually head up to Main Street because we like to look into the store windows. It's also the time when we get to talk. Usually, it's about how Kim's day went, but we also map out our strategies for the rest of the week, whose birthday is coming up, when is the next fire pit.

But talking on Main Street is getting tougher these days. I don't know when it started, but suddenly, cars without proper mufflers seem to be taking over. Sometimes they travel together. Sometimes they try to out-loud each other at intersections by gunning their engines (why would you do this when gas is $3.30 a gallon?). It's like American Grafitti has come to Lexington. Consequently, there are times when Kim and I can't hear each other talk, even when we're walking side by side.

When did Main Street become Pit Row?

OK, OK. I know what you're thinking. When did I turn into such an old fart? Cruising Main Street is pretty much a young man's game, I guess, designed to impress – who, exactly? But, geez, when the rest of the town has pretty much rolled up its sidewalks by 7 p.m. on school nights, is this noise really necessary?

And it's not just Main Street. Loud cars don't just suddenly materialize out of the blue in front of Lanier's. They have to get there, and sometimes, it's through residential areas. Heck, we live just five blocks off Main Street as it is. We can hear the noise from our front porch. It's really unnerving when loud vehicles come roaring through our street to get to Main.

I wonder how those residents living in loft apartments in town must feel? The residential district is, essentially, Main Street itself.

Lexington does have a noise ordinance. In Chapter 8 of the Code of Ordinances (Police Administrations and Provisions, Article II – Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions; Division 2 – Noises; Section 8-31, Generally prohibited, under (a), it states "Subject to the provisions of this section, it shall be unlawful for any person or persons to make, permit, continue or cause to be made any unreasonably loud, disturbing and unnecessary noise in the city..."

The ordinance goes on to define (1) "Unreasonably loud" (2) "Disturbing" and (3) "Unnecessary." I could write word for word those descriptions from the ordinance, which all seem to apply here, but if I did, this blog would take until Tuesday to finish.

I did talk to a police officer about this one night while on our walk, and while she did take note of the noise ordinance, she did point out that it would be very difficult to enforce. The offending vehicles are transitory and probably would be gone by the time a police officer arrived. I guess. Maybe they could set up a noise trap, I don't know.

I think my best hope in all of this is that eventually, the thrill of making noise with your car on Main Street simply runs out of gas.

Why we play the games

Did anybody really see this coming?

The Atlanta Braves are going to the World Series. They'll be going up against the cheatin' Houston Astros. That's a big deal for Braves fans. And national interest, I think, is hovering just above life support when the Series begins Tuesday night.

I have a thought or two behind this Fall Classic ennui.

In a weird happenstance of the baseball playoff system, the best teams in the game are nowhere to be found.

In a regular season of 162 games for each team, the American League East champs, Tampa Bay, finished with 100 victories. The Rays were eliminated by the upstart wildcard Boston Red Sox, winners of 92 games, in the league division series.

Meanwhile, the Astros, with 95 victories to win the AL West, eliminated the Chicago White Sox, who won the AL Central with 93 victories.

The Astros, who are seeking some sort of redemption for a sign-stealing scandal a couple years ago, then eliminated the Red Sox in the league championship series.

Pearls on the diamond.

 It was worse in the National League, where the West Division San Francisco Giants posted the best record in baseball with a whopping 107 regular season victories. But the Giants ended up being eliminated by the Los Angeles Dodgers, coming out of the wildcard berth with an equally astounding 106 victories.

The Braves, meanwhile, came out of baseball's weakest division, the NL East, with only 88 wins to claim the division title. And yet, they advanced to the league championship by knocking off NL Central champs Milwaukee, which had 95 victories.

The 88-win Braves then stunned the 106-win Dodgers last night to advance to the World Series. That 18-game disparity between the two teams may suggest a lot about the state of baseball right now, but it's also why you play the games.

Imagine: three teams that won 100 games or more are going to be at home watching the Series on television.

Before expansion, World Series teams were determined by the winners in each league of a 154-game season. The long season was clearly the most accurate method to determine the best team to advance directly to the World Series because, over the course of six months, it considered injuries to key players, managerial brilliance or faux pas, winning and losing streaks, front office capability, and sometimes, just dumb luck.

Expansion, by necessity, brought divisional play to the postseason. Consequently, the best teams over the course of the regular season were sometimes eliminated in the playoffs by perhaps lesser teams that just happened to get hot at the right moment. 

Which is where we are right now. The Series pits one team – the Astros – trying to overcome the bad taste of a sign-stealing scandal in 2017 and 2018 for which it was fined $5 million and forfeited first- and second-round draft picks, against a team – the Braves – who feature a homer-hitting outfielder who wears a pearl necklace.

The Braves used to be America's team, thanks to a cable superstation, TBS, that broadcast all of the Braves games across the country back in the 1980s and '90s. You could find Braves fans in Idaho, for crying out loud.

But now streaming, cable packages and other avenues of broadcast have given fans alternative opportunities to cheer for teams without tomahawks on their jerseys.

Although, I don't know, a guy wearing a pearl necklace might bring some of them back.

It's not entirely clear why Joc Pederson is wearing pearls at the plate, but his fashion statement is catching on. Burly men oozing testosterone through their beards and goatees can be seen sitting in Truist Park clutching their pearl necklaces during crucial moments in the game. I suppose I ought to salute these guys for being secure in their sense of gender identity, but I'm guessing it's really a baseball thing that has more to do with superstition and not messing with baseball fate than it does with chromosome identity.

I suppose a man could walk into a restaurant today wearing a pearl necklace without drawing a second glance – as long as he was wearing a Braves hat.

But who would ever have thought there'd be pearls on the diamond? What if his necklace breaks and pearls go rolling all over the field? That would be something for Sports Center.

Anyway, who's going to win the Series? This is a tough one for me. On paper, Houston is the better, more complete team. But there's that scandal that still lingers over the Astros in the same way that the New England Patriots can't quite shake Spygate and Deflategate. Look, sign stealing has been in baseball for as long as there has been baseball. The difference here is that the Astros got caught and are paying the price to their reputation.

The Braves are a good, young team that could be around for several more years. And really, they're just a few hours drive from Lexington. I should be pulling for them if for no other reason than proximity. And they did defeat one of the best teams in baseball.

I just don't know. OK, if I have to pick, Astros in six. Cover your nose and hide your jewelry.

To boldly go...

Sending 90-year-old actor William Shatner into space on Wednesday through the auspices of the private Blue Origin enterprise (see what I did there?) was not a monumental achievement in space science, but it was still significant, I think.

To me, it was more than a bunch of rich white guys playing astronaut with their rockets and space suits. To me, it was moving science and astrophysics to another plateau. It's remarkable to me that the current privatization of space exploration has produced reusable booster rockets that can fall back to Earth and land upright on a target.

The fuel used in the Blue Origin rocket is a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which leaves no carbon footprint when they react with each other to provide the thrust to reach the Karman Line – the border between outer space and the Earth's atmosphere. Wow.

But through all of this, there is a friction between the need/desire for space exploration versus the need for social justice/awareness.

This friction first caught my attention with the Project Mercury program in the 1960s. I was a teenager and caught up in the excitement of America's fledgling space program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was the guiding force behind the program, using ex-Nazi's like Werner von Braun – along with millions of tax dollars – to beat the Russians to the moon.

A number of my precocious friends questioned the need to go into space when hunger, disease, homelessness and famine still plagued us on the planet, and it's a worthy question.

But here's the thing: the space program was never a linear project. In finding ways to launch men into space, there was also spawned other sciences, inventions and tools for the benefit of mankind.

Like digital imaging breast biopsy; laser angioplasty and fiber optic catheters; fiber optic forceps; cool suits to lower body temperatures; light emitting diodes to help in brain cancer surgery; programmable pacemakers, and tools for cataract surgery can all trace their roots to space science.

The list goes on: insulin pumps, artificial limbs, Lasik surgery and solar cells, not to mention communication advances, weather satellites and GPS systems.

Space exploration can also help us appreciate the value – and fragility – of our planet. Space science may eventually help us get a handle on climate change.

NASA is operating on an annual budget of $23.3 billion, which is about 0.48 percent of all U.S. government spending. Seems like a bargain to me, given the benefits we now enjoy.

And why would you muzzle the apparently human instinct to explore and find out what's going on beyond the next hill?

So, on the one hand, sending an overweight actor into space might not be the look that is needed to keep space exploration going. It does look pretty frivolous. But on the other hand, the planet's resources are finite – even the sun, our solar battery, will eventually decay and implode. If the human race is destined to go where no man has gone before, it has to start somewhere at some time.

My new ground rules

Last week I wrote a blog about 175 healthcare employees in the Novant Health system who opted not to get vaccinated for Covid-19. Consequently, they were fired by their employer after having a week or so to think about whether or not to comply with the company's vaccination mandate before making a decision.

So they made their decision. No vaccine. No job. Their choice. I applauded Novant's resolve, especially as it comes in the midst of a national nursing shortage. But in my opinion, it was the right call, and that's what I wrote. (It should also be noted that Novant had 99 percent compliance from its workforce of 35,000 employees, an indication that its employees thought that keeping their jobs was more important than a false sense of lost personal freedom during a pandemic that has killed 700,000 Americans).

I published my blog and then posted it on Facebook, my preferred social media platform, like I usually do.

Then the comments started rolling in and that's where I stumbled and did something I promised myself I was never going to do: I got into a tit-for-tat war of posting links with one of my readers in a public forum, each one of us trying to prove his point by outlinking the other. It's easy to get caught up in that nonsense, and it's not wise.

I should have known better – and now I do. I will no longer respond to readers' comments with whom I disagree. It's exhausting. It's time consuming. And it's fruitless. You're never going to change someone else's mind on matters you are both passionate about.

I will not censor a comment. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and I am wary of anything that smacks of censorship or an abridgement of our First Amendment right of free speech. That freedom still exists on my page.

I consider my blog to be something akin to an editorial page in a newspaper, and the comments are the letters to the editor. Keep in mind many newspapers edit letters to the editor, or choose not to run certain letters at all. I have done neither to this point, so, please, continue to comment away.

But make no mistake: I am not surrendering my stance on an opinion I own simply because I am not responding to a comment. If you think you're getting the last word with me and that you've won the debate, it's an illusion. The way I see it, I've already said my piece in my blog. I might consider responding to you in a private message, although that option is still a work in progress. But our personal exchanges will not be made in public.

One thing I will no longer tolerate is insulting or disrespectful language to another reader's opinion. It's hurtful and beneath all of us. I will demand civility to another person's opinion, whether you think that person is correct or not. That's not negotiable. I may block you or delete you if that happens.

This is my blog, and I can say what I want. Here, I'll make it easy for you – these are some of the things I believe:

• Masks work.

• Mandates work.

• Vaccines work. Yes, you can still catch Covid after vaccination (nobody said vaccines had 100 percent efficacy, especially with this particularly insidious virus), but it appears the vaccine most likely will keep you off a ventilator, out of the hospital and out of the morgue. That seems very true when combined with masks and mandates.

• The mainstream media is not the enemy of the people. I get most of my information for my blogs from the Associated Press, Reuters, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and several other reliable organizations. Anything not in the mainstream, I believe, tends to deal in conspiracy theories or misinformation. I also rely on my own critical thinking, my own eyes and ears, and my own common sense. That's why it's my blog.

• The Democrat Party is not the enemy. It is the opposition. As a former Republican myself (I am now Unaffiliated), I wish I could say the same thing about the Republican Party, but the Jan. 6 riot and the subsequent attempted GOP rewrite of the insurrection, the absurd Fraudits designed to sow seeds of doubt about our democracy, the Big Lie, voter restrictions trying to overturn the will of the people, and other democracy-destroying assaults, have changed all that.

• The GOP has no platform other than obstruction. If it does, please tell me what it is. It is no longer a party of governance. Lincoln is weeping.

• I believe in science.

• I believe there was Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

• I believe most political memes on the Internet are Russian or Chinese in origin and are designed to further divide us. It's working.

• I believe the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. Anything else is a lie.

• I believe Jan. 6 was not tourists strolling through the Capitol while Congress is in session. It was an insurrection before our very eyes. Anything else is a lie.

• I believe Dr. Fauci is a dedicated public servant striving to save lives.

• "I believe in the soul, ..., the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf...". Oh, wait. I got confused. That was Crash Davis from Bull Durham. Then again, I don't think he's wrong.

I hope this helps. There are plenty of other things I believe in. And every now and then, I'll write a blog about some of them.

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Nursing the situation

One thing I haven't figured out yet is why anybody in the healthcare industry – and particularly nurses – would object to being vaccinated for the highly contagious Covid-19 virus.

You know, the virus that has killed more than 700,000 of us.

So this past Monday, when Winston-Salem based Novant Health fired 175 employees for failure to meet its vaccination mandate – even in the midst of a nationwide nursing shortage – a voice deep inside me shouted, "Yes! It's about time."

The objections to vaccines seem to be extremely counterproductive and flies in the face of common sense. How can an unvaccinated healthcare employee (and this includes orderlies, administrators, janitorial workers, food vendors and others, not just nurses and doctors) be allowed to work in a facility dedicated to healing diseases, not transmitting them?

I'm guessing the real objections are being made in response to having to follow mandates. Nobody wants to be told what to do because, well, we're Americans and we have a Constitution that guarantees us our rights to be stupid whenever we want to be.

Resisting Covid-19 vaccinations might sound good on the surface for some, but how does that stack up against vaccination mandates that have been in place for decades? You can't enroll your kids in public school unless they've been vaccinated for a number of diseases. You must be vaccinated to enter the military. Why do you accept being vaccinated for polio and smallpox, but not for Covid-19?

Why do you not want to be vaccinated when 98 percent of Covid-19 deaths are among the unvaccinated?

Mandates are everywhere anyway. Is it government overreach to wear mandated seat belts? Don't stop signs and speed limits tell you what to do on the road?

Our form of democratic government was given birth through a midwife mandate when Gen. George Washington required that his troops be vaccinated against smallpox in 1777. I don't suppose it gets more American than that.

Some vaccine reactionaries claim our personal freedoms and our own ability to choose what is best for each individual are under (government) assault, but this strikes me as a red herring. We're in the midst of a global health crisis, and because we are, mandates are necessary. They're necessary because we keep spreading the virus. In the middle of a pandemic, it's not about personal freedom. It's about personal responsibility. It cannot be otherwise.

As far as healthcare employees are concerned, taking personal responsibility is the foundation of the Hippocratic Oath, which doctors take upon graduation from medical school. Not legally binding, it's designed to give the rest of us a sense of security in what otherwise could be rampant quackery. One of the Oath's promises is, "First, do no harm." (So, doctor, take the vaccine.)

And nurses take the Nightingale Pledge, part of which reads, "I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous..." (So, nurse, take the vaccine.)

Today's numbers show the virus is receding in many areas, which is good news. That's probably because more and more people are being vaccinated. But winter is approaching and we've been here before. We know what obstinance looks like. Maybe we'll take vaccination more seriously this time around.

Mandates are probably our best way out of this mess. In the end, it could be this is all a trial run for the next pandemic. We better pay attention.