It just gets better, doesn't it?

I was thinking about writing another Christmas-themed blog as we head toward the Big Day, but then I saw a chyron crawl across the bottom of the TV screen the other day that said RFK's lawyer has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine.

What the bloody hell...?

Here we go. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is president-elect Donald Trump's nomination to head up the US Department of Health and Human Services. Aaron Siri is the lawyer affiliated with Kennedy who filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates under the guise of "medical freedom."

The key word here seems to be "informed."

I am 73 years old, soon to be 74, and I remember back in the 1950s – probably around 1956 or '57 –  when we were given little pink sugar cubes in elementary school. The sugar cube was the delivery device, and the pink coloring was the actual polio vaccine. Mmm, sugar. I probably would have ingested the whole tray if they hadn't told me to take just one.

And now, decades later, we know what sugar can do for us, right?

At any rate, it must have worked. I didn't get polio, and neither did millions of others. I take that as empirical evidence that the vaccine worked.

So now along comes Kennedy, an acknowledged vaccine skeptic, and his lawyer 70 years later indicating that further testing of the inactivated polio vaccine is needed. The inactivated vaccine is different than the oral vaccine in that it is injected and doesn't use a live version of the virus like the oral vaccine did. It doesn't stop the virus itself, but rather helps the immune system to recognize and fight the virus. The inactivated version has been in use for decades with startling success, but Siri is arguing that there were no placebo-controlled clinical trials to prove the safety of the inactivated vaccine.

The thing is, most placebo-controlled trials are considered unethical because there is a percentage of the participants who would not get the shot – and thus be susceptible to contracting the disease.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader and a polio survivor himself, stated on Friday that "the polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and has held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uniformed (there's that word again), they're dangerous."

The FDA is reviewing Siri's petition, but if Kennedy is confirmed as the head of HHS, he could intervene in the petition review process. Great. A nonmedical person making uninformed medical decisions for us. This is the kind of government nearly 50 percent of us voted for because they argued price of the eggs was too high.

As it is, vaccination rates have been falling in this country, which might correlate to a rise in whooping cough and measles. One of the vaccines Siri wants to withdraw is for hepatitis B.

I don't know if Siri's petition will succeed. It very well may not. But after decades of success, why are these vaccines even being reviewed at all? And if they are being reviewed, there's a chance that under an autocratic government with a politicized Supreme Court, these life-saving vaccines could disappear, just like Roe v. Wade did. It's just another form of control, and it's happening right in front of us.

Merry Christmas.

Hallmark holidays

I was surfing through my 2,000 TV channels the other day trying to find something mindlessly different to watch because I wasn't in the mood for critical thinking. We'd just finished with the presidential elections, which proved to me at least half of the nation wasn't into critical thinking, either.

Kim was on the phone with a relative so I knew I had at least 90 minutes of my own.

I made my way through several offerings until I came across the Hallmark Channel. It doesn't get any more mindless than that, so I stopped surfing. I'd already missed the first half hour or so of this particular Christmas flick, but I stopped because one of the actresses, Danica McKellar, had a vaguely familiar face.

Just at that moment, Kim walked in and sat down. She was  89 minutes earlier that I expected and I was halfway embarrassed because, you know, I was watching a Hallmark movie, Crown for Christmas, and not Field of Dreams or Saving Private Ryan or even It's a Wonderful Life.

"Who's that?" asked Kim when McKellar's face came on the screen. "She looks familiar."

So I Googled Danica McKellar. It turns out that she was Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years back in the late 1980s and early 90s.

"Winnie! It's Winnie!"

My Google research told me that she was something of a math wizard, having published several best-selling children's books on mathematics, specifically targeting young girls to help build their confidence.

My mind immediately drifted to Mayim Bailik, who played Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory. Bailik has a PhD in neuroscience.

And then there's Brian May, the lead guitarist for Queen, who earned his doctorate in astrophysics from Imperial College in London 33 years after he first applied. It took him that long because, you know, he was busy touring the world. Stars with other lives, who knew? We will rock you, indeed.

Anyway, back to Hallmark.

As much as we enjoyed watching Winnie, Hallmark's hallmark production values kept getting in the way. At least it did for me.

"All the Hallmark movies are the same," I told Kim. "It's about either a bookstore or bakery or bed and breakfast that is in financial trouble. A beautiful female CEO who recently lost her job or who is an author with writer's block somehow gets involved with the handsome owner of the failing business in an effort to help. He's usually a widower with a precocious child (never more than one kid, though). They fall in love in spite of themselves and seal the deal with a long anticipated kiss in the final 60 seconds of the movie."

Most of these movies are filmed in Canada, I think, and there's always a dusting of snow which makes everything look like a Norman Rockwell Christmas card. You want to live there because everybody is so happy and helpful, which really doesn't explain why the bookstore or bakery are failing in the first place.

I'm already revealing too much about myself here.

I don't know. Maybe there's something to be said for mindlessness. Then again, I guess I'm grateful there's 1,999 other channels to choose from.

Winner, winner, turkey dinner

We are in the midst of eating season, and if you don't believe it, just ask your waistline.

Or your scales.

In my world, the eating season begins Oct. 31 with the annual sugar grab on Halloween. It continues 27 days later with Thanksgiving before waxing high tide at Christmas with cookies and cakes. It then reaches its denouement on New Year's Day with a pork and sauerkraut meal supplemented by collard greens and black-eyed peas designed to make you stop eating forever.

Stacy's incomparable table setting is an art form.

In between, there are virtually two solid months of picking, sneaking, and cheating with M&Ms, potato chips and dip and Cheez-its because we have endless football games in front of us that require mindless snacking as we watch power sweeps and post patterns. Maybe even flag plantings. You probably don't even know you're doing it.

The eating season.

My eating season includes a stretch of a couple days around Thanksgiving where I have to sample my favorite food group: turkey. Usually, I search out a local restaurant that offers a Thanksgiving meal the day before Thanksgiving. It's become something of a tradition in my house.

Sure, it's usually processed turkey and dressing that came out of a box, but, hey, it's the holidays. You make concessions.

Anyway, this year, we had a bonus. Southern Lunch prepared its turkey meal on Tuesday as well as Wednesday, so that gave me an extra day to get a head start on my white meat fantasy.

Thanksgiving with the Wests and Wehrles.

Here's where I give owner Herbie Lohr his props. Tuesday's meal was delicious. I had generous slices of white meat turkey with dressing on top and underneath and swimming in gravy. I ordered mac and cheese as my side, along with a sweet potato casserole that was so good it could have been dessert. Thanks, Herbie. Mission accomplished.

On Wednesday my pre-Thanksgiving meal came from Village Grill. I don't remember VG preparing this holiday dinner before, so I gave it a shot. Their turkey was cut into bite-sized pieces and mixed into their dressing, and then piled high on my plate like an offering to the gods. I also had a side of mac and cheese, along with baked apples. Mmm mmm, good.

I was off to a good start.

But the piéce de résistance came on Thanksgiving day. Because my family is scattered to the four winds and are hundreds of miles away from each other (one brother is in Pennsylvania and another is in Oklahoma), our next door neighbors – Billy and Stacy West – have invited us over for Thanksgiving for several years now.

Billy used his grill to create a moist, delicious bird while Stacy went nuts in the kitchen, making mac and cheese (there's a theme here), an addictive sweet potato casserole, roasted cauliflower and roasted broccoli, collard greens and a pear salad assembled with fresh greens from our shared garden. Oh, and pumpkin pie, too. Kim contributed with an asparagus dish, mashed potatoes and her magical family dressing that she learned from her mother and for which she doesn't even have a recipe. It's somehow summoned from her DNA.

Oh, my.

This was the best meal of all because it was a meal culled from camaraderie. Both of the West's kids were home from college (Emma is in grad school at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston and Sam is a freshman at the University of North Carolina) which fully completed our circle. The conversation at the dinner table was easy, the neighborliness was enhanced. I guess it's why Billy blows the leaves out of my yard every week. I guess it's why I wheel his garbage containers back to their respective spots every Friday. I guess this is what agape love is.

Anyway, the meal was so good we had it again the next day. As leftovers. In front of a football game.

And Christmas is just 24 days away. Pass the cookies, please.