The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried
“The clearest way to reduce deaths is to push to vaccinate more of the elderly—yes, still!”
Sarah Zhang reports in The Atlantic: “even though America’s vaccination and booster rates look better in the older groups compared with the young, they are still too low. As a result, deaths in the United States are still too high.”
Category: Health
How to get better at making every type of decision
Allie Volpe describes certain human biases that can complicate the making of decisions, particularly decisions about complex or life-altering questions. She also offers concrete suggestions about how to deal with these biases and how to manage the decision-making process.
Category: Mental Health
The Dog Breeds That Are a Woman’s Best Friend
“Especially when one lives alone.”
Because men generally die at a slightly younger age than women, many women face a period of widowhood. Social scientists have long known that having a pet to care for can reduce feelings of loneliness or depression for widowed people, either male or female.
When my husband and I were looking at various retirement communities in preparation for our retirement relocation, something I noticed was the number of older adults out walking their dogs. This article, though emphasizing women, provides some advice appropriate for either men or women looking to take on a pet.
I have one consideration to add that this article doesn’t mention. Most retirement communities I’m familiar with allow “small pets.” If you anticipate moving into such a community, I’d advise you choose one of the smaller breeds described here. A boxer, golden retriever, or mastiff probably won’t be welcome in a much down-sized living situation.
Or maybe you’d rather consider a cat?
Category: Assisted Living, Retirement
There Will Be No Post-Covid
Charles M. Blow, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, expresses something I’ve thought for quite a while now: As much as we’d all like to get back to normal, normal won’t ever be the same again, and we are going to have to learn to live with that reality.
Or, as Blow puts it: :the America we knew ended in 2019. This is a new one, scarred, struggling to its feet, dogged by moral and philosophical questions that on one hand have revealed its cruelty and on the other have forced it into metamorphosis.”
Category: Health, Personal
Activist Learning: How Anti-Vietnam War Academics Reinvented the Strike
The escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965 brought about the creation of a new form of protest—the teach-in. It was so effective a vehicle for dissent that the academic community quickly became the main source of opposition to the war. Though it was later eclipsed—notably in the media and, thus, the popular mind—by younger noisier protests, for about a year and a half the nation’s faculties, with the assistance of graduate students and some undergraduates, provided the leadership and the intellectual framework for the growing challenge to the escalating conflict. An initially small group of professors literally taught the rest of the country why the war was wrong.
This excerpt from The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s by Ellen Schrecker brought back memories for me. I was a student at Boston University, a very politically active campus, from 1966 to 1970.
Categories: History, Personal
Her dad died. So her favorite NFL star took her to the father-daughter dance.
“Philadelphia Eagles player Anthony Harris flew across the country to escort his 11-year-old fan to the event”
Amid all the incivility and protest, I hope we take a moment to appreciate and publicize stories such as this.
Category: Personal
© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown
Retreading for Retirement 