WHAT’S YOUR PLAN for voting? Nope, not “who” you’re voting for. The question is “what,” as in: What vehicle will you take at what time of day to travel directly to what address to hand over what kind of ballot to what type of official in what is the most important election in our lifetime?

Please don’t say you’ll think about it. You won’t. It’s an invitation to procrastinate: Oh, gee, I feel terrible but I just… I mean couldn’t… actually, I didn’t … well, y’know ….

Already have a plan? Good. Tell somebody about it. Maybe you can be voter buddies. Promise yourself something really good once you’ve voted. Read more…

THERE’S A VACCINE that’s safe, works pretty well and there’s enough of it to go around. It’s the flu vaccine and the CDC recommends almost everyone who’s older than six months should get one.

There’s no evidence it will have any effect on Covid-19, except that it’s possible some unfortunate people could come down with both flu and Covid-19 at the same time. Those two viral illnesses together could make someone very sick. But flu alone is bad enough to convince reasonable people that a flu shot is a good idea. The 1918 flu pandemic killed millions worldwide.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, usually referred to as CDC, has surveillance networks that track how widespread the flu is each year and how effective vaccines are at preventing or moderating the impact of flu around the country. The effectiveness varies from year to year; flu vaccines don’t provide 100% immunity and often are far from it. But vaccines do improve the odds. Get a shot and you might avoid the flu completely. Or you might get a milder case. And when enough people get vaccinated, it means that if the flu makes you so sick you need hospitalization, there will be a bed available. That’s because other people are staying healthy. Read more…

THE COLOR MATCHED EXACTLY. The blood orange tint in photos of the California sky this week was the same as the color of the sun as it set here in Ghent. In California there have been days as dark as night. Here the sky was a cloudless gray.

The tints of sun and sky come from ash released by the fires on the West Coast, 3,000 miles away. The weather report says the particles from burning forests, homes, businesses and schools are so high in the atmosphere that they won’t affect our lungs. The forecaster didn’t predict whose lungs the particles would affect. Maybe it’s birds’ and fishes’.

Distance doesn’t insulate us from bad things that happen far away. In this case, the smoke from California echoes across a continent, so it’s not a big leap to imagine the same thing happening globally. Read more…