Mask Mandates

The photo at the left shows Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and the most influential woman in America, at a large dinner party in Napa surrounded by a crowd of invited political guests. Even though she is around 80 and in a high risk group, she is not wearing a mask and neither are her guests. Despite her words to the contrary, are her actions telling us that masks are not really needed if we have been vaccinated? 

Actually I have wondered about the effectiveness of masks in protecting us from the coronavirus from day one. I know some people attribute the absence of flu last year to the use of masks, but I believe that social distancing and the fact that children and teachers  have not been in school did more to stop the flu than anything. In any event, the masks have obviously not stopped the coronavirus which still remains with us after more than a year of mask mandates. 

Last fall, I visited my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor (ENT) because of sinus related symptoms. He did a test and the results showed that I had a staph infection. Although staph infections can be severe, mine was not. He prescribed an inexpensive anti-biotic that did the trick. He said that he was treating an above average number of staph infections this year.

 I asked him if he thought the increase could be related to the masks that everyone was wearing to protect against the coronavirus. “Definitely,” he answered. He went on to explain that most of the staph infections he treated were in the mouth and nasal passages. Could it be that the masks are causing more harm than good?

About the same time, my local newspaper contained an editorial with this banner headline: “Wear a mask for the sake of strangers.” It went on to explain that “anyone whose face is now uncovered in public is truly unmasked as a nonconformist…. But by scorning masks many outliers express disregard for the rest of humanity.” The editorial went on to complain that there will always be people who resist social norms and laws, and applauded the Governor’s intention to impose monetary fines on non-compliers. 

However, there was not one bit of science in the paper’s editorial. Why are we wearing masks? At the beginning of the pandemic my local state representative in her regular newsletter urged all of her constituents to wear masks, and she provided a link to a scientific study. 

I went to the link and discovered that it was a study of the efficacy of wearing masks in a hospital environment. Well, duh! Who would doubt the value of doctors and nurses wearing masks in an operating room? The masks are worn to protect patients whose defenses are breached in the course of surgery. Any open wound is prone to infection. Moreover, medical professionals are trained in the proper use of masks, and usually discard them after one use. Even so, many patients still develop infections while in hospital settings.

 But what about the general public? In a follow-up the same state representative sent out a mask update warning people to use the masks properly. She wrote,

Use the loops to take your mask on and off.

Do not touch your mask while you are wearing it.

Be sure your mask covers your nose, mouth and chin.

I love advice like this that is almost impossible to follow for ordinary people. Just look at people adjusting their masks while putting them on or taking them off. Imagine not touching your mask inadvertently. Also, how many times do you see people with their masks only covering their chin? Ordinarily, our skin protects us from germs of all kinds even when they land on our chins but when you move the mask from your chin to cover your nose and mouth, you are potentially bringing all sorts of bacteria into your mouth and nasal passages.

 

Although politicians and media commentators continue to urge people to wear masks in public, I have seen no study that would indicate that they are effective in keeping ordinary people from infecting others, or being infected by others. Indeed, a Google search for studies of mask effectiveness fails to find any conclusive scientific studies. Controlled scientific studies of public mask wearing are almost impossible to conduct. Actually, when government officials claim that two masks might be necessary, they are tacitly admitting that one mask is not effective. Social distancing and frequent washing makes more sense to me.  

Nevertheless, it is now regarded as a kind of crime against humanity to appear in public without a mask. Although there is no scientific study that children can infect others, all children must wear masks in school. Does anyone remember the many diseases that children brought home from school in previous years? Why weren't masks needed then?

 On a somewhat related note, my local newspaper ran a front page story last year with the headline: “Doctors drop use of lead X-ray aprons.” Apparently, doctors at Yale Hospital are abandoning the lead shields because they have found that they actually do more harm than good. 

Describing it as a monumental shift in medical practice, the radiology director at Yale explained that over the past 50 years “they were taught over and over again to shield, to shield, to shield … to protect the patient. However, research has found that the lead shield not only does little if anything to protect the gonads from radiation that might cause genetic defects or cancer, but that it may result in an increase.”

Fifty years of science out the window. It will be interesting to read the final scientific verdict on the wearing of masks. We have already discarded the practice of continually wiping down surfaces. Will the masks be next?

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Afghanistan: Issues and Questions

  

 

Issue 1: A month ago President Biden said that the Taliban presented no imminent threat in Afghanistan. He claimed that the Afghan government army had over 300000 well-trained and fully armed soldiers compared to only 75000 Taliban fighters.

Did the President lie to us or was he seriously mis-informed by the intelligence and military community? After the collapse  and disintegration of the Afghan army last week, he now claims that he received mixed signals from the intelligence community.

However, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff insists that he knew of no intelligence that would foretell the collapse of the Afghan army. On the other hand, a Republican congressman claims that the House committee on which he serves received repeated information from the President’s National Security team warning of imminent danger.

Issue 2: In his brief remarks after the fall of Kabul, President Biden took full responsibility for the debacle and claimed that “the buck stopped here.” However, he then went on to blame the Afghan army  that he had praised so highly just a month ago.

Moreover, President Biden did not explain why he refused to provide air support for the Afghan forces. Kabul, the Afghan capital, is about 300 miles from Kandahar but American or NATO airpower was not used to slow the Taliban advance. In addition, the President abandoned the American air base at Bagram without a shot. Why? Did the President have some kind of secret deal with the Taliban?

Issue 3. Immediately after the fall of Kabul, the President and his allies in the media began  to float a cover story to divert attention from the embarrassing and politically devastating defeat. More than the failure of the Afghan army, it was the failure of 20 years of mismanagement in Afghanistan by four previous American administrations, including the one in which the President served as Vice-President under President Obama. 

This cover story attempts to shift the focus from the bungling of our departure to the failure of the whole mission in Afghanistan. Of course, it raises another question. If President Biden believes the whole Afghan mission was a mistake, why didn’t he and President Obama put an end to it during their eight years in office. 

Issue 4. President Biden claimed that the Taliban numbered only 75000 fighters. How  could such a large country with almost 40 Million people, that is usually regarded as unconquerable, be taken so easily by a force of less than 75000 Taliban fighters? How could Kabul, a city of 6 Million be taken so easily?

It would appear that the Taliban are largely unemployed young men with no visible means of support, homes or families. Somehow, they have become heavily armed and use these arms to live off the land and its people.

Moreover, pictures of those trying to board planes at Kabul airport  show that most are also young men. Young men with no families or jobs are becoming an increasingly dangerous phenomenon not just in the Middle East but all over the world. Just look at Mexico where armed gangs control cities and provinces.

It is also happening in our own country. Last year sections of major cities like Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis were taken over by armed gang members. The looters and burners in these cities were primarily young men with no families or jobs. The shooting and murder rate in cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles has grown dramatically in the last year.

 

In Chicago it is estimated that there are 16000 police officers but over 100000 gang members, who are often armed despite the strictest gun-control laws in the country. So far, the only thing that prevents the gangs from taking over the whole city is their own animosity toward each other. 

Incredibly, politicians and activists in these cities are in favor of de-funding or even eliminating the police departments that protect ordinary citizens. Afghanistan is far away, but what happened there is not that far away.

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Gene Tierney: American Beauty

Gene Tierney was one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In the 1940s her great beauty launched her into stardom but she managed to become a fine actress as well. Unfortunately, behind the glamour was a bad marriage, a daughter born severely retarded due to exposure to German measles, and mental illness that ultimately brought an end to her career and almost to her life. 

 Here are the opening lines of her autobiography, appropriately titled, Self Portrait.

“It is a terrible thing to feel no fear, no alarm, when you are standing on a window ledge fourteen stories above the street. I felt tired, lost, and numb—but unafraid.

I wasn’t at all certain I wanted to take my own life, I cat-walked a few steps away from the open window and steadied myself, to think about it. The fact that I could no longer make decisions was why I had gone to the ledge in the first place. What to wear, when to get out of bed, which can of soup to buy, how to go on living, the most automatic task confused and depressed me.

I felt everything but fear. The fear comes to me now, twenty years later, knowing that at any moment I might have lost my balance. Then the decision would not have been mine. On that day, if I jumped or fell, either way would have been all right. There is a point where the brain is so deadened, the spirit so weary, you don’t want any more of what life is dishing out. I thought I was there.”

         

Tierney had been born in Brooklyn in 1920 but was largely raised in suburban Fairfield, Connecticut. Her parents were well off and even sent her to an exclusive finishing school in Switzerland during her high school years. At eighteen her family made a trip to Hollywood, where on a studio tour an executive, struck by her incredible beauty, asked her to take a screen test. A year later, after acting lessons back home and a small part in a Broadway play, she was back in Hollywood under contract to a major studio.

At first the studio did not know what to do with her. There was something exotic about her good looks and she was cast in a number of roles that had little to do with the person she was.

In 1942, for example,  she was cast as a charming South Sea  island girl in Son of Fury, an action adventure starring matinee idol Tyrone Power. In this film she hardly speaks of word of English, but her breathtaking beauty and innocence makes an indelible impression. 

Here is a list of what I consider to be her best films.

 

Laura: In 1944 Tierney became a full-fledged star playing the title role in this murder mystery that is now generally regarded as one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

Otto Preminger’s  direction of Laura received an Academy award nomination, and cameraman Joseph LaShelle won the Academy Award for best black and white cinematography. 

The cast was superb. Dana Andrews, playing a police detective, turned in his usual solid performance. In his screen debut Clifton Webb played a sophisticated, acerbic, and influential newspaper columnist, and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.

Nevertheless, Gene Tierney stands out in Laura. From the opening credits even her portrait on the wall of her beautifully designed apartment dominates the film. But it is not just her looks. She plays a sophisticated urbanite whose  deportment and manner make everyone in the film, even her maid, fall in love with her. Her costumes, designed by famed Bonnie Cashin, are a lesson in how clothes define and make the man, or woman in this case.

 

It is hard to imagine that a whole generation has not seen this film. But the directing, the photography, the sets, the writing, the great cast, and the haunting song and score that permeates the film make it a true classic. It can be watched over and over again like any great work of art.

Leave Her to Heaven: Tierney’s performance in Laura led to a starring role in Leave Her to Heaven, a 1945 Technicolor drama that almost exulted in her good looks as well as the looks of co-stars Cornell Wilde and Jeanne Crain. 

Nevertheless, it is a dark film. Once again, Tierney gets to play a beautiful, accomplished young woman but this time jealousy and suspicion, that today we would call mental illness, lead to the break-up of her marriage and terrible tragedy.

In one unforgettable and terrible scene, her beauty only accentuates the horror of what is going on while she sits placidly in a rowboat while a young boy drowns nearby. Her performance in Leave Her to Heaven, gained an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: In 1947 she starred along with Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Tierney played an independent young widow with a young daughter who moves into a seaside cottage reputed to be haunted by the ghost of a deceased English sea captain. It is a charming story beautifully told and acted by the principals with a wonderful musical score by Bernard Herrmann.

Whirlpool : In this 1950 suspense drama, Tierney played a sophisticated suburban housewife who turns to a devious hypnotist for help in dealing with a secret mental illness. Her husband, played by Richard Conte, is a psychiatrist who is totally unaware of his wife’s sickness. Perhaps in this film she came closest to portraying her real self and her impending mental illness.

Where the Sidewalk Ends:  This little-known film is now recognized as a quintessential film noir classic. It is like a Laura reunion. Tierney is reunited with Laura co-star Dana Andrews, director Otto Preminger, and cinematographer Joseph LaShelle.The film is another psychological crime drama but centers around Dana Andrews who plays a rogue cop. Tierney, still beautiful, played what amounts to a supporting role. 

Her career would continue through the next decade but mental illness although it could not mar her beauty, limited her ability to work and she never regained her previous success or stature.

 In her autobiography, she tells the whole story not only of her screen career but also of her battle with the illness that brought her to the edge of death on that fourteenth story window ledge. Fortunately, her story had a happy ending.

 

 

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Slavery in Westport CT

 

  

                       

Westport, Connecticut, has long been one of the wealthiest towns in Connecticut. It probably still ranks as one of the wealthiest towns in the country, especially given the recent migration of New Yorkers fleeing the chaos in nearby New York City. 

A recent page 1 article in my local newspaper, the CT Post, indicated that  a complaint had arisen about a “Eurocentric” historical marker outside Westport’s Town Hall. The complaint was lodged by Ramin Ganeshram, executive director of Westport’s Museum  for Culture and History, who noticed that the marker referred to the “first white settlement here in 1648,” but did not mention “the contributions—or explanation—of indigenous people or enslaved Africans.”               

Ganeshram went on to explain that the marker omitted the fact that “the town was built largely through the forced labor of indigenous and African slaves.”

 

According to Ganeshram there may have been indigenous people in southwestern Connecticut for 7500 years, but they built no town or Museum of Culture and History.  Even if indigenous natives were captured in battle, they were of no use as slaves or laborers. Sad to say, the colonists resorted to exchanging them for slaves of African descent in the West Indies.

 

There is no doubt that there were African slaves in Connecticut during the Colonial period, but it is a ridiculous over-statement to say that Westport or any town in Connecticut was built on the forced labor of African slaves. Not only were most of the slaves household servants, but also there were not enough of them to build a town. 

The late Dr. Vincent Rosivach of Fairfield University created a database of slaves in Connecticut that listed only nine slaves of African descent in Westport during the whole eighteenth century. 

Imported in small numbers from the West Indies to serve as household servants,  there can be no doubt that their life in Connecticut was far better than what it was in the sugar cane fields of the West Indies.

To say that Westport or any other town in Connecticut was built on the forced labor of indigenous people or African slaves is not only a gross distortion of history, but also a disservice to the waves of immigrants from Europe who built Westport and most other Connecticut towns. 

For example, perhaps a marker should be placed on the Westport Town Hall to commemorate the role of Italian immigrants in building the town. During my working career I had clients in all of the towns along Connecticut’s Southwestern coastline.  Practically every town along the coastline had its Italian section where the workers lived who actually did most of the construction work.  Even super-rich Greenwich had its Byram section, centered on St. Roch’s church. Saugatuck was the Italian section of Westport whose annual Italian festival attracted thousands during its heyday.

A chess buddy of mine came to this country from Italy after World War II. He had been born in Fiume before the war, but the city was taken over by Communist Yugoslavia after the war. Eventually, his family managed to flee to Italy, and he spent his teen years in a refugee camp. Finally, they managed to emigrate to the USA where he got a job as a laborer with a small construction company. After a while, he decided to go out on his own and become his own boss. 

Against all odds, he made the transition and eventually his company became one of the largest construction and home renovation companies in the area. He built thousands of homes and condos throughout Fairfield county. Westport was his prime location and his work can still be seen throughout the town.

 

It was people like my friend who actually built Westport. They worked for profit but usually harder than any slave. Moreover, their work profited generations to the point where now towns like Westport are exclusive showcases that can afford the luxury of a Museum of Culture and History.

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