Out of a Cannon

Posted on January 1, 2024 by admin

Image from Shutterstock

I have never been terribly enthusiastic about New Year’s Eve resolutions. This is not because I lack resolve, but because the start of a new year has usually struck me as a rather arbitrary time to gain such resolve or to turn over a new leaf. If one is committed to certain goals and principles in life, then almost any day will do for fashioning new objectives in serving those goals, depending on circumstances. Why January 1? I suspect that it is mostly a reminder for many people that they have not spent enough time thinking about or pursuing their goals. They may need to develop the habit on an ongoing basis rather than pretending that the start of a new year will make things different. Will power and commitment matter. Do you really want to make things different? If so, then why not make the decision on February 4, or your birthday, or even the Fourth of July? Any day of the year will do, as long as the commitment is real. That commitment may arise out of a life-changing event, but it does not have to. New Year’s resolutions often fade into the ether of our dreams because those making them have not developed an adequate habit of connecting their dreams with a determination to make them happen.

All that said, on this particular trip around the sun, New Year’s Day seems for me a perfect day to launch some resolutions, even if many are focused on unfinished business. But I don’t just want to pick up the pace in 2024. I want to be metaphorically shot out of a cannon on New Year’s Eve. I want to start the new year with a passion.

I say this not because I changed how I feel generally about new-year resolutions. It’s because, for me personally, January 1 is a remarkably convenient opportunity for reclaiming lost energy. What happens a year from now may be different.

For one thing, although I don’t want to overemphasize this, as early as April, there were signs that I was facing a reckoning with regard to a medical problem that had been dogging me in one form or another for about a dozen years. Somewhere back then, my physician referred me to a urologist because of high PSA scores. PSA refers to prostate-specific antigens, antibodies that fight cancer or infections in the prostate gland. That led to a long series of periodic biopsies to monitor the possibility of cancer serious enough to merit surgical attention or radiation treatment, but doctors found only the slightest trace of an indolent cancer and never acted on it. Over time, it became harder to take it seriously, but such monitoring at least produced reassurance nothing disastrous was happening.

But that is not the whole story. In 2012, during a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles for the annual APA National Planning Conference, I became very ill. It felt like influenza, but by the time I left the plane, my only priority was to find a taxi for a quick trip to the hotel, where I promptly became seriously ill after checking in. Only a long-distance consultation with my primary physician, followed by a visit to a nearby urgent care center, confirmed that what I thought was the flu was actually prostatitis and required a major regimen of antibiotics for the next two weeks. I spent much of the conference in bed, sweating through a fever and visiting the bathroom frequently, occasionally struggling to attend events, only to succumb again. Fortunately, the antibiotics salvaged a post-conference road trip with my wife, Jean, to visit relatives in northern California and return to LAX along the gorgeous Pacific Coast Highway.

As for my urologist back in Chicago, when I later recounted these events, his eyes widened, and he said emphatically, “People have died from infections like that.” I did not, and I think I was otherwise far too healthy for that outcome, but it was unquestionably one of the worst experiences I have had with any sort of illness. Prostatitis is simply not fun. It is a bacterial infection, not cancer, but it can drive up PSA scores to drastic levels.

Prostate cancer drives them up much more slowly. It is a grinding menace, and because I have known people who died from it, I took it seriously all along. In the meantime, however, a less potent but serious problem developed called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Basically, it involves the enlargement of the prostate gland, a process that is typical as men grow older, but the big question is how big and how rapid the growth. By April, one of those periodic biopsies produced very uncomfortable impacts just as I was about to undertake a full week of online teaching for the Emergency Management Institute, for which I am a certified instructor for courses related to post-disaster recovery. The biopsy occurred on Friday. I was in miserable shape on Saturday, and I was already exhausted when I logged on with the class, another instructor, and our course supervisor at 7 a.m. on Monday. Although the course supervisor said he did not notice much difference in my delivery, it was a case of only making it look easy. When the day was over, Jean could see that I was thoroughly exhausted. It got a little better later in the week, but it was still a struggle.

My new urologist, Dr. William Lin, who had performed the biopsy (the original one retired in March), chose in a follow-up visit to refer me to a specialist who was highly trained in a new surgery called HoLEP (holmium laser enucleation of the prostate), for an evaluation of my suitability for this treatment of a prostate gland that was now about three times normal size. Other than aging, I have not found any indication that the medical profession knows precisely why this happens. It was just my bad luck, I suppose. Dr. Amy Krambeck did not have an opening until August 10, but at that appointment, she and her team made clear that I was well above the threshold for the surgery, and we scheduled it for September 29 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. I also learned that she was regarded as quite possibly the best in the nation at this relatively new procedure, which basically uses laser treatment to hollow out the prostate gland, leaving the shell, thus drastically reducing bladder pressure, the main problem connected to BPH. I’ll let those interested follow the links to learn more. My focus here is still on New Year’s resolutions.

Why? Because the first thing I learned was that for at least a month afterwards, I was expected to adhere to some strict dietary limitations (mostly avoiding acidic foods and beverages) aimed at avoiding bladder irritation and allowing my internal organs to heal as well as possible. I was instructed to avoid most physical activity and not lift anything above ten pounds. The key was an intense focus on compliance, a self-discipline aimed at ensuring the best outcome.

Those who have been following the many blog video postings here in recent months will know that I spent much of my summer on trips designed to develop content for a documentary film about planning for community resilience in the face of natural disasters and climate change. By September, such travel became challenging, underscoring the real need for treatment. I had previously scheduled one more trip for early November in Texas—those blog videos are still coming—and deliberately asked Dr. Krambeck about the wisdom of its timing, which was tied to a Texas APA conference in Corpus Christi. She said I should be fine. I did get through it, but setbacks in the first week of November made me wonder as I worked with one of her assistants to determine their likely cause. They were ultimately blamed on inflammation, which could be addressed with Motrin or Ibuprofen. The trip took place, but not without its own challenges.

The reality is that recovery is often a bumpy road. Dr. Allison Shafron, who will see me on January 2 to assess my progress, texted a patient-portal welcome to “the roller coaster of recovery.” That struck me as curious because we use that same phrase in helping communities and local planners prepare for the long road to recovery after disasters. We even have a graphic slide in the EMI courses to illustrate the idea. By December, some other troubling personal matters were also seizing much of my attention, and I was feeling significant fatigue, sometimes as a result of a bit of sleep deprivation. I was also trying to rebuild strength and stamina by resuming a workout routine that I had suspended for nearly three months. I had to temper them initially to avoid overdoing it, but have gradually ramped up much of the exercise to pre-surgical levels. Some people might wonder if that might wear me out, and the answer is yes, but only temporarily. I have pursued fitness goals, on a noncompetitive basis mostly related to personal health, for years and know that the long-term benefits completely outweigh any short-term fatigue. That includes recovering from medical setbacks and injuries.

The reason for describing this at all is that it relates to my stated desire to be “shot out of a cannon” on New Year’s Eve. During much of 2023, I was decidedly passive about pursuing the sort of consulting work I have done in recent years because I was not confident about meeting the challenges involved while awaiting or recovering from the expected surgery. It did slow me down in ways that I am not used to. But I have also grown impatient to get on with normal life, to tackle new professional and volunteer challenges, and to achieve personal goals. These include raising money for and producing the HMDR documentary film, Planning to Turn the Tide; completing redesign of the disaster planning course I teach for the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs; possible additional course instruction for EMI; and finally, outlining and moving forward on some long-planned book projects. That is to say nothing of reinvigorating this blog with new content, as well as planning at least one personal trip to relax and see the world.

On December 20, I became only 74 years old. I expect to be around for a while, and I don’t plan to occupy a couch. For the first time in years, January 1 seems like a perfect time to fashion some resolutions that I will pursue with joyful vigor. Happy New Year, everyone!

Jim Schwab

Catch Up and Slow Down

Posted on May 25, 2023 by admin

I was lying half awake in bed at 4 a.m., unable to return completely to sleep after using the bathroom. My mind kept rolling over various competing obligations and necessities, and the thought hit me:

“You must catch up while slowing down.”

Frankly, that made about as much sense to me in the moment as it probably does to you upon reading it. One’s subconscious mind can shed strange light sometimes. The whole idea is as paradoxical as it is imperative. And yet, I mention it because I strongly suspect that many people can relate to it at some level.

We get caught in situations. Mine is partial explanation of why it has been weeks since I last posted on this blog, but that is a minor measure of the overall impact of a combined events and circumstances. As a professional urban planner, I can state flatly that life does not always follow our plans. It springs surprises and throws nasty curveballs.

Work piles up, even if much of it, in my case at the moment, is pro bono or volunteer work. The thought that I am sharing occurred last weekend, and I wrote the first four paragraphs above that morning. I got sidetracked until now, but there’s no better time to finish a blog post than now–I guess.

Let’s go back almost two months. On April Fool’s Day, aka April 1, I flew with my wife (Jean) and a teenage grandson (Alex) to Philadelphia to attend the American Planning Association’s National Planning Conference. This was important to me on several levels, including my role as immediate past chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division, which keeps me on the Executive Committee until the end of this year. Even then, I will still be involved, primarily in charge of a documentary film project, but I will save that topic for my next blog post. You can see the work piling up already. Being there allowed me to network with numerous people about numerous issues and projects and attend our division reception, where we announced a fundraising campaign to support the film project. Over breakfast, it gave one colleague from APA’s International Division an opportunity to recruit me for its Ukraine Rebuilding Action Group. But it was also a chance, during spring break for the Chicago Public Schools, to tour parts of a historic city with Alex and Jean.

A much earlier request to speak at a conference in Georgia set me up to fly back to Chicago on April 4 to stay overnight and fly the very next day to Atlanta. The occasion was the Larry Larson Speaker Series of the ASFPM Foundation at Lake Lanier, attached to the annual conference of the Georgia Association of Floodplain Management. Our distinguished panel was addressing issues of disaster resilience from federal, state, nonprofit, and local planning perspectives.

Little did I know my own resilience was to be tested. Wicked weather sweeping through the Midwest and South that week created havoc. By the time I arrived at O’Hare International Airport, having neglected to check for cell phone text messages, I learned that my flight to Atlanta was canceled and no others were available that day. I needed to be at Lake Lanier by that evening, so I conferred with the event organizers. I had to cancel my flight and hotel room and ended up speaking the next morning by video connection, missing out on personal interactions but delivering my comments anyway. Perhaps my own most notable remark was that I no longer wanted to hear any local official say after a natural disaster that “no one could have foreseen” the event. If the event happened, I said, it was always within the realm of possibility. “What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that you may not have spent much time thinking about it beforehand.” Terri L. Turner, a long-time colleague and recently retired development services administrator for the city of Augusta, Georgia, told me later that there was a ripple of laughter in the audience after I said that. Floodplain managers too often know the truth of such assertions.

Within two weeks, I discovered that my personal resilience was to be challenged in more significant ways. By mid-April, I experienced a sudden problem on the bottom of my left foot that appeared to be some sort of lesion or blister. Not sure, the best move seemed to be a consultation with my primary care physician to see what he thought. That happened on April 19, but he was also uncertain and referred me to a podiatrist. However, the very next morning, I reported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for a previously scheduled prostate biopsy, which produced its own complications over the weekend. I might have just waited those out restfully if I had not been scheduled as co-instructor for a week-long online, all-day FEMA class that week, which was largely an exhausting experience. In mid-week, I left right after class adjourned for a follow-up appointment with the urologist to learn the results of the biopsy, which were reassuring but will involve some further measures this summer.

I finally managed to see the podiatrist the following Monday. He determined a need to biopsy the growth, a decidedly painful and messy experience even with a local anesthetic. I went home with a bandaged foot that I needed to protect for several days until it healed. A week later, however, I learned that the growth was benign; surgery would still be beneficial though not urgent.

Somewhere, in between all this, my printer died. I bought a new one from Best Buy but asked that the Geek Squad do me the favor of installing it. After all, I bought it the day of the foot biopsy. Our aging electric mower also died, and I brought our 19-year-old college student grandson to Home Depot to help buy a new one. I let him assemble it and mow the yard. I’m fine with mowing now, but for a few days, it was decidedly not a good idea.

By now, the second week of May had arrived, and a number of commitments beyond the FEMA class were amassing a backlog of work for which I needed a rapid rise in stamina, which I have mostly managed to generate. Nonetheless, I wish I had more energy and more hours in the day. That does not even speak to family obligations as summer arrives and school ends, and I dream of a vacation while arranging to see doctors in August. I’ll figure it all out, but as I said, life throws curveballs. The value of being 73 is that one has presumably learned something about how to handle matters more efficiently and wisely. I am applying that wisdom to regain control over those pending tasks and establish priorities. I am learning how to catch up and slow down at the same time.

My next post, coming very soon, will share the biggest project currently on my plate. I hope you will find it as fascinating and exciting as I do. Resilience matters.

Jim Schwab

P.S.: While editing this piece for publication, I learned that a Sunday feature article in the Chicago Tribune, in which I was quoted, has appeared online here. The article discusses the impact of climate change on urban heat and social disparities in the city. In addition, the two links below provide methodology for the article and searchable maps:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-viz-chicago-heat-disparities-climate-change-20230526-mzsazq6xa5b6rejv3rtvfefwoi-htmlstory.html

https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-how-we-reported-on-heat-disparities-in-chicago-20230525-hsdhhgzgwrc7tffcre6ftanphi-story.html

Thanks to reporter Sara Macaraeg for alerting me to the article’s release.

Going Viral

Posted on November 27, 2022 by admin

Now I know what it feels like, or may have felt like. Kind of. Sort of.

I will never experience, in all likelihood, the very worst the COVID-19 virus can inflict on human beings. I was lucky in many ways. First, the virus just never found me as a target until early October of this year. Second, I am very physically fit for my age, and I don’t suffer from any chronic conditions that often expose people to more severe reactions to the virus. Third, by the time COVID-19 found me, I had the two initial shots of the Pfizer vaccine, and later a Moderna booster. My only failing was not having obtained the more recently released Omicron booster, but there is no question that vaccines made my path far easier than was the case for those who suffered earlier in the pandemic.

I spent most of my COVID time not knowing I had it, though there were indications that aroused my suspicions—just a bit. Late Sunday, October 9, I experienced some mild cold symptoms, but I sometimes have sinus problems that become more persistent as Midwest weather changes in the fall. On Monday, I began to experience more of a cold and struggled through online meetings, two about a video project, one preparing for an upcoming online training workshop. In the evening, I was supposed to volunteer with

It’s a lot easier to get a test now than at the height of the pandemic, when tests were as scarce as the places that provided them. Now you just pull up for an appointment, take the kit through the window, tickle your nostrils with a swab, and hand it all back to the pharmacist.

signature collection to help place our incumbent Chicago alderman, Daniel La Spata, on the municipal ballot next spring, but I called it off because I was not feeling well. By the next morning, I took a nasal swab COVID test at Walgreen’s, but the test came back negative the following day. As a result, I assumed I simply had what I called “the ordinary crud” of a normal cold. Just deal with it for a few days, I thought, and get over it.

I made no real changes to my plans and tried to maintain my normal pace. The previous week, curiously, had included my participation as a consulting expert in two online symposiums, both lasting two and three-quarter hours, on Tuesday and Thursday for a project at Johns Hopkins University addressing pandemic community recovery. I moderated the final panel on Thursday, dealing with the use of metrics, which are essentially statistical targets, for tracking the many variables concerning social equity and public health factors that would guide such recovery. In other words, COVID-19 already had my intellectual attention. I had no reason to suspect It would seize my medical attention as well.

But I was wrong on that count. By that Tuesday, some of the infamous COVID-19 fatigue was settling in, and the cold was tightening its grip. I had planned to attend a program of the Society of Midland Authors at Cliff Dwellers in downtown Chicago that evening. As on Monday night, I never made it. It seemed wiser to stay home. It was becoming a pattern.

Nonetheless, I spent Wednesday morning at a dealership service department. While in the waiting room, I met online with two planned guest speakers for my online University of Iowa class, which meets in the fall semester on Thursday evenings. I was very much looking forward to letting Linda Langston and Kehla West take over the class a week later because, in my opinion, both are impressive members of the natural hazards professional community and could share valuable insights. “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” offers graduate planning and public affairs students serious comprehension of the natural-hazard threats facing our communities. Linda is a former county supervisor of Linn County, Iowa, who had helped lead her community through the 2008 floods that overwhelmed Cedar Rapids and into the recovery that followed. She later worked nationally on resilience issues with the National Association of Counties before returning to Cedar Rapids as a consultant. Kehla works with Region 5 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Chicago. Although she was doing me a favor by sharing her federal government experience, she regarded it as a great honor to be asked to speak to a class in which she was once a student. I was enthusiastic about sharing my virtual stage with them for two hours. The meeting was a breeze.

All right, this is a simulation of what I may have looked like, but it’s probably close. I found myself waking up in a seated position on the couch more than two hours after falling asleep early in the afternoon.

But most days that week, with increasing frequency, the afternoon was not. I no longer even remember which day was which, but I know that on several occasions, I would hit a wall of fatigue by late morning or early afternoon, and work would grind to a halt. One day, this happened around 1 p.m., and to regain some energy, I went downstairs from my home office to sit on the living room couch. I simply disappeared into deep slumber, with no recollection of anything. Sometime well after 3 p.m., I woke up, looked at the clock, and wondered where my day had gone. For someone very conscious of pending deadlines and obligations, it was deeply frustrating. At the end of the day, I like to know what I have accomplished. I did not want to find that I had lost a major chunk of my day to exhaustion. It became hard to believe that a mere cold had done this, but I kept thinking about that negative test. It was not COVID. I was just worn out fighting a cold. But day after day, I watched in growing alarm as the number of tasks falling behind schedule kept growing. The will power and drive that sufficed in normal circumstances to overcome such deficits never materialized, and the gap widened instead. The spirit was willing, but the flesh fell asleep, day after day.

That Thursday evening, I taught my class as usual. But it was not so usual. It became patently obvious that I was struggling with my voice, with sinus difficulties, with watery eyes, with fatigue, but I plugged away for two hours. By Saturday, in a phone conversation with someone about a potential film grant proposal, I struggled again in the conversation because my voice was weak, but I pushed ahead because the call was important, and the proposal deadline was at the end of the month, just two weeks away.

And so it went. If a meeting was on the telephone or online, I could make it work even if I was exhausted after it was over. If it was in person, I would cancel. Fortunately, most meetings, including a debrief with Johns Hopkins about the symposium two weeks earlier, a HUD guidebook review panel, and a Midland Authors board meeting, were online, usually via Zoom. I had contacted my doctor over the weekend of October 15-16 through a patient portal, and he asked me to come in, which I did by Wednesday, October 19. He made some suggestions but accepted the negative COVID test result. Following his advice, I began using a Neti pot to control the sinus congestion—and it works, by the way. In combination with Flonase (after the Neti pot), it has been effective. The fatigue, however, took its own good time to fade away.

The next day, Thursday, I had class in the evening, the one at which Linda and Kehla would speak in tag-team fashion about local and federal perspectives on planning for disaster recovery. That afternoon, Jean tested positive, much to her surprise. In our pre-class banter on Zoom, I mentioned that to Linda, who repeated it to Kehla when she logged on: “Jim’s wife tested positive for COVID.” Kehla immediately expressed her regrets. They taught the class, I offered occasional commentary, and for the most part, I got to rest my voice and conserve my energy.

But I had also decided at that point that getting another test the next morning was imperative. By mid-day Saturday, a Walgreen’s e-mail informed me that I had tested positive. I discussed it with an emergency room doctor, and later my primary physician, who said the symptoms we discussed just a few days before sounded a lot like COVID to him at the time. The ER doctor stated that, based on our discussion of what led me to get tested again, I had probably had COVID all along and may unwittingly have infected Jean. The verdict of these two men made sense to me, but of course, it was now after the fact. I was actually near the end of my COVID experience before I ever knew for certain that I had it.

Alex, to right of candle, after baptism service, with me at far right, Pastor Nancy Goede, Pastor Matt Stuhlmuller, Alex, sponsor Kornelius, and members of my family, including Jean, far left. I later wondered about any unintended exposure I may have cause through unawareness that I even had COVID at that point.

If there was one situation that brought some regret–it seems not to have produced any adverse consequences that I am aware of–it was that, not believing I had COVID, I joined others at our church for our grandson Alex’s baptism on October 16. Mass spreader events were at one time rather scary propositions. But there I was, unaware, part of a ritual and celebration that was a happy event but could have infected others. The following Sunday, I stayed home because by then, I knew I had contracted COVID.

Although I am certain that skeptics of the vaccines (and I know some) would say this was just one man’s opinion, the ER doctor stated that the vaccines had surely helped make my case milder (and Jean’s was milder still), and that the vast majority of those now being hospitalized or dying from the virus are unvaccinated. The statistics I have seen on the subject seem strongly to suggest as much. But people love to argue from anecdotes, which are easier to understand than statistical data, and the resistance will surely continue. The COVID-19 pandemic seems closer to having run its course after nearly three years. All pandemics eventually lose steam.

COVID is no longer half as scary as the ghost lady and her companion on Halloween. Okay, just kidding. But that guy is freaky.

By the following week, with minor help from a cough suppressant the ER doctor prescribed, I was able to regain energy and focus on the tasks that I had neglected for almost two weeks. They were too important to me to do otherwise. One was completing a grant proposal for a film project I am leading under the auspices of the Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division of the American Planning Association. The deadline was October 31, and with significant money at stake, I was not about to blow it. We had been laying the groundwork for weeks, but I needed to write some powerful explanations of our project and submit all the necessary documentation, which I did by that morning. I was able to walk our grandson through the neighborhood for Halloween and pass out candy afterwards, while triggering the spooky voice of our alabaster “ghost lady” without being noticed. She impressed only the very young, drawing only amused yawns from tweens and teenagers.

But that was just the beginning of a list of tasks and projects needing my urgent attention. I had promised to create a case study of Hurricane Michael recovery to present to my students on November 10. I finally completed it just an hour before class. On Saturday, November 12, I hosted with Amanda Torres, formerly the city planner for Rockport, Texas, an all-day training workshop on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, offered as part of my teaching commitment with the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs. I had two documents I had promised to review, for which I sought and received additional time.

During the illness, I stopped my exercise routine. I currently visit the gym twice weekly with a rotating routine of exercises. After the illness had run its course, I still missed the workouts in favor of catching up on work. Before Christmas, I will turn 73. I find the exercise vital to good health at this stage of life, and I became anxious about the six-week gap that developed before I finally resumed the workouts on November 16. I have taken to them with relish. I simply feel better because of it, and I can finally spare the time again. Two days after Thanksgiving, I ran into a former trainer I worked with at X Sport, Michael Caldwell, who told me about his new work with companies on employee fitness and ergonomics, noting the serious toll on many people of failing to pay attention to such issues. I wished him well in his new enterprise. He seemed pleased that I was returning to form, just as he had always respected my resilience in the past after some injuries and surgeries.

But I also know that I am very fortunate. I find absolutely no evidence that I have developed any long-term COVID symptoms. I never fell victim to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic despite a short-term hospital stay in May 2020 on the only floor with non-COVID patients. I have even discovered the accidental grace of hundreds of presumed strangers who, in successive waves in October and November, registered as new subscribers to this blog at a time when I was seldom posting anything. I wanted to change that but just could not get it done. Their attention to my blog despite several weeks with no new posts encourages me to get back into the ring. I must have offered something in earlier posts that still attracts readers, and I hope to keep it that way for a long time. I hope this humble story adds to the blog’s overall value. I shall certainly try my best.

Jim Schwab

My Ode to Negativity

Posted on January 1, 2022 by admin

I am proud to announce that I started the New Year on a negative note. Having had a very mild fever Thursday evening and a very mild nagging cough, I thought the better part of wisdom these days was a COVID test, even though I would have bet serious money that it was something else, like a mere cold. But it did make me slightly uncomfortable. The fever was gone yesterday. So, at just after 8 a.m. today, I walked to a nearby National COVID Center, which offers free tests without appointment and was open today from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I strongly suspected there would be no line, that few other people had roused themselves out of bed, let alone showered and dressed and gone outside, so early this holiday morning.

I was right. I got there, a storefront on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, and the lone public health nurse staffing the place greeted me, the only person who had arrived, the only person the whole time I was there, had me fill out the forms, gave me both the rapid antigen and PCR test, and we chatted a bit while I waited 10 minutes for the antigen result. We discussed our dismay at the apparent lack of critical thinking among anti-vaxxers, and when I said I was trained to think analytically, she asked what I did, and we discussed the relationship between urban planning and public health, which goes back more than a century to Jane Addams days, when health officials and civil engineers and planners made common cause to clean up the city, build sanitary sewers, and pay attention to what makes cities healthy places to live. We discussed college as a gateway to learning how to learn for a lifetime. It was a great conversation. Then the ten minutes were up, and the antigen result (75% accurate, she said) was available: Negative. We must wait three days for the lab to e-mail the result of the 99% accurate PCR test, but I would stick with my original hunch.

But out of an abundance of caution, and a concern for those around me, I am still glad I took the time to find out for sure. You just never know, which is one thing I have also learned in spades as a planner specializing in disaster issues. This pandemic has been nothing if not a public health disaster, which always brings us back to this question of critical thinking. Give me one wish for 2022, and that would be it. The gift of critical thinking for the entire population of the U.S. and the world. I can dream, can’t I?

Jim Schwab

Consider Your Victims

Posted on July 29, 2021 by admin

We are probably all born with a certain focus on our own needs. The first job of a baby is to survive, but ideally, we learn from parents, especially, but also from others around us that somebody else cares and takes care of us when we most need the help. With any luck, we learn to extend that same concern from ourselves to others, and as we grow, we learn how we can support and cooperate with our fellow human beings. Empathy must be taught, and not everyone learns, or learns well.

I would like to believe that this article will reach someone and cause them to think about any potential victims of their actions. Maybe it will, but I also doubt that the most violent among us are reading my blog. I have good reason to suspect that my content over the past eight years, while apparently attracting more than 31,000 subscribers, has not provided much raw meat for those who feel the need to attack others to get what they want. They may not read much at all. But I can hope.

But I must wonder sometimes whether perpetrators of violent crimes, especially those involving theft, give much consideration to their victims. The overwhelming majority of victims of violence mean something to someone. In some cases, they may have networks of friends upon whom they are positive influences. They may be positive assets for local communities, whether those be neighborhoods, religious congregations, schools, or extended families. They mean something to other people, and the community will be weaker without them.

Or do their attackers just see them as vulnerable prey, much as a bobcat might view a rodent when the cat is hungry?

I keep wondering about one such recent victim in Chicago. We have plenty of victims in Chicago, often of gun violence, though in this case no gun was involved. His car was the object of desire, and a 73-year-old man, moving slowly, became the target of an attempted carjacking. The two youths hit him in the head, then pushed him in the chest, and he died of a heart attack. Two young men, 18 and 17, now face serious charges and may end up sacrificing many years of their lives in prison. Their future looks bleak.

Keith Cooper at a 5K “Ditch the Weight & Guns” walk & run in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

Keith Cooper, the victim, was a member of Augustana Lutheran Church, to which I belong, and a vital, active part of the Hyde Park neighborhood that surrounds it. He was a proud Marine Corps veteran, having joined in 1968 at age 21 and served in Vietnam. When you needed a volunteer, he was likely to be there.

Keith with daughter Keinika, her husband Curtis Carlton, and granddaughters Alyna and Mikayla. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

“He just loved to help,” his daughter, Keinika, says. “He was a community-based individual.” When she was growing up, she recalls, he taught his children that “you can’t complain if you don’t do anything.” Ever seeking to mentor those he loved, he brought granddaughter Mikayla, now 11, to Sunday school when he came to church. Keinika said he joined Augustana about ten years ago. He was, however, already familiar with the church from growing up in the neighborhood near 54^th and Kimbark on Chicago’s South Side.

But it was more than growing up near the church. Keith told the current pastor, the Rev. Nancy Goede, that he had been baptized there as a child. Keinika had Sunday school attendance slips from 1959, when he was 12. Later, as a teen, he served as an acolyte. He drifted away in his teens, but returned as a mature adult. In recent years, I often served with him as an usher.

Keith Cooper with daughter Keinika. Photo provided by Keinika Carlton.

He joined the church shortly after two heart surgeries that were necessitated by a torn aorta and involved heart valve replacement. Keinika describes her time in the waiting room as “nerve wracking.” Her father underwent rehab to rebuild his body. For this very reason, she says, when she learned of the nature of the attack the day it occurred, she knew why his heart failed. She knew, she says, that he would not survive.

That is, however, part of the problem with random victimization of an old man the attackers never knew. It probably never occurred to them that their physical assault could result in death. They knew nothing of this personal history, or why he seemed to be moving slowly, if that was their perception, but now they own the consequences. As Judge Charles S. Beach II said in addressing Frank Harris, the 18-year-old, as they were charged in court with murder, “To say that it’s painful for me is an understatement—because anytime that I see a young man such as you before me with such a terrible thing on their shoulders, it’s painful for us and society and just about everyone.”

As Keinika asked during an interview with me last week, “Did you all even think this through?”

Kimbark Plaza at E. 53rd St. and Kimbark in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

What is stunning about the entire incident is that it occurred in broad daylight in a busy commercial strip, Kimbark Plaza. It occurred roughly between 12:30 and 12:40 p.m. in a crowded parking lot, with numerous surveillance cameras. There were reportedly dozens of witnesses in nearby stores, many of whom came out, including an off-duty paramedic who tried to revive him as he lay on the ground, unresponsive, until police arrived. Sadly, he was already dead when an ambulance brought him to nearby University of Chicago Hospital. He had been at Kimbark Plaza to run errands. He often shopped for groceries at Hyde Park Produce.

Meanwhile, having failed to open the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, the two young men fled but were identified and arrested by police about a half-mile away, trying to change clothes in a synagogue courtyard. Harris was about to become a senior in high school, but the two had some prior arrests, including other carjackings in May and last December.

Keith will be sorely missed by those who knew him—and there were plenty who did. As the Hyde Park Jazz Festival grew as an area attraction each summer, it was Keith who helped arrange for some artists to perform at Augustana. When volunteers were needed to park cars for events like the Jazz Fest or the 57^th St. Arts Fair, earning parking fees to support the church, it was most often Keith who could be found collecting the fees and directing people to available spaces. For his 74^th birthday, which would have occurred July 22, his Facebook request was to raise $500 for his beloved church. My wife attended one of his AARP-sponsored driver skills refresher courses at the church for seniors who could then get small discounts on their car insurance. Keith was the host. Keinika says he was involved in a recent Juneteenth festival. I could go on, but you get the idea. Church, school, neighborhood, the city of Chicago, he loved them all and supported them all.

From years of passing conversations with him, I gathered the impression that part of his motivation may have come from his own struggles. At one point earlier in his life, he was briefly homeless. He knew what that felt like and gladly assisted with a monthly community breakfast for disadvantaged people. Bill Tompsett, a retired attorney and long-time member of Augustana, says he helped by greeting people as they arrived, but when he was missing for a few weeks, Keith asked him why. Bill explained that he had hurt his back and could not stand for two hours to greet people. Keith assured him that he could still greet people sitting down, and he resumed his duties. Little things like that mattered. Keith did several jobs in his life, including driving trucks and selling jewelry and books. His daughter told reporters he had “tons of books,” among which he particularly liked black history and science fiction. In retirement, he was driving a Lyft car to earn extra money. Keith knew from personal experience that there are many people struggling to survive in our community, and he sought to help where he could.

It is noteworthy that more than 100 people gathered at Kimbark Plaza on Friday evening, July 16, two days after Keith died, to honor his life and offer prayers, holding candles while West African drums were played.

“Talking drums” performing at the visitation for Keith Cooper, July 24, 2021.

Those “talking drums” were also present a week later, on Saturday, July 24, for a visitation in the Augustana fellowship hall, at which members of the U.S. Marine Corps also presented a flag to honor his service. Dozens of participants in the event responded to Keinika by offering one-word descriptions of Keith such as “kindness” and “commitment.” Two days later, following a moving funeral service, his ashes were interred in the memorial garden outside the fellowship hall, where he joined other saints who preceded him.

Augustana’s memorial garden

The city of Chicago and Hyde Park lost a valuable, generous, and committed citizen because, once again and too often, some people, too often too young, chose a path in which they failed to consider who their victim might be, what he meant to those around him, and what they took from their community as a result. It was all very sad, and I kept thinking during the funeral, all very unnecessary.

Jim Schwab

Our Collective COVID Cabin Fever

Posted on February 28, 2021 by admin

I am not a doubter when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. All I want to do is sign up and let them put a sharp needle in my arm and inoculate me. Do it twice if the vaccine demands it. Even my experience in early February with the shingles vaccine cannot deter me. On a Tuesday afternoon, a pharmacist at the local Walgreen’s provided a shot that I requested at my doctor’s suggestion. It has been two decades since I experienced my second episode of shingles, but I vividly recollected the piercing pains in my shoulders and arms that made it nearly impossible to exercise my fingers on a keyboard, one of the most basic things I have long done to earn a living. I told the pharmacist that I “noticed it but did not feel it.” He put a bandage over the location on my upper left arm, and I left, thanking him.

It was that evening that I noticed my reaction as muscle aches spread from that left arm across my upper chest. Then the chills set in, and I pulled the covers over me in bed. I repeatedly felt my forehead, testing for a fever. Nothing happening. The next day, the muscle aches diminished, but the chills persisted, and I sat in a leather chair with a blanket pulled over me, doing little but reading a newspaper and then falling asleep. I had slept all night, but it mattered not; the fatigue overpowered me. Late that afternoon, I struggled through two online meetings, and my energy again failed me. I spent the next day feeling slightly more energetic until about 3 p.m., when I fell into a deep sleep, again with blankets covering me as I accomplished nothing. My wife says I turned white, but I wouldn’t know. I lacked the energy to look into the mirror.

By Friday, I at least posed a question to my primary physician on the patient portal: Is this normal? He wrote back to say that about 20 to 25 percent of people getting the shingles virus experience such a reaction, which mostly proved that the vaccine was beneficial. My immune system was relearning how to fight the shingles virus. That was vaguely reassuring, and I knew he knew whereof he spoke, but it took one last development to convince me.

Late that Friday afternoon, with the better part of a week lost to malaise, I suddenly felt the fog lift and the fever break, though it was not really a fever. All within an hour. It just stopped. My immune system had learned what it needed to know, and it ceased fighting what was not there. And I was fine. That’s part of how vaccines work, but I could not recall ever experiencing such a reaction to any previous vaccine.

Our backyard after the Presidents Day blizzard.

Amid this experience, however, the snow piled up in Chicago. First came a snowstorm that covered our yards and streets in blinding whiteness. Often, in Chicago winters, these snows come, sit around for a few days until the sun comes out, and they melt away as the temperatures rise.

But not this time. Until February in this season, we had seen little more than timid flurries of pixie dust that barely covered the ground, with green shoots of grass still poking out from below. Now it came to stay, as temperatures soon plunged to zero and slightly below, solidifying the growing accumulation of snow even as we struggled daily to clear a path down our gangway and along the sidewalk in front of our home. I shoveled in front of a neighbor’s home as well, knowing he had recently had hernia surgery. And the very next day, we had to do it again.

Jean wanted her turn at shoveling as a way to get some exercise. She got her wish.

The three weeks of persistent snow culminated in a 17-inch overnight debauchery on Presidents Day that left us staggering and feeling quarantined by virtue of a simple inability to move a car down the alley, or the challenge of climbing over hip-high snow piles at intersections. During those three weeks, our cumulative snowfall mounted to 40 inches.

Our somewhat metaphorical confinement by way of extensive pandemic restrictions now took on major physical dimensions, leaving us feeling imprisoned. Not only was there nowhere to go because the restaurants were closed, but there was no way to get out, either. In place of my brief fatigue in reaction to a shingles virus, I now felt a very real spiritual and emotional fatigue at the mere thought of needing boots and a heavy coat just to step outside. Staying at home felt more like incarceration than refuge. Even the mail, which provides some tangible connection to the outside world, was no longer arriving. The carrier on our route, and probably on many others, was not braving the snow piles and frigid weather, and the mail piled up at the post office until, one day, I simply walked the mile to get it, standing in line for more than half an hour for a pile of paper surrounded by a rubber band, partly containing bills to pay. The process took long enough that, by the time it was over, I needed to use a bathroom and home was too far away. I opted for the nearby Cozy Corner diner, and showed my gratitude by staying for lunch. It’s a very decent eatery, actually, and I enjoyed my California melt with fries. And then I walked home again, through the very snow piles that had impeded its delivery. Watch where you walk when you cross the street.

After weeks of erratic service, the mail came all at once, and not again so far.

By the following Sunday, temperatures rose and stayed above freezing. The snow began to melt, removing the impediments to delivery. Nonetheless, in the past week, delivery occurred only on Tuesday, when the mailbox was suddenly full, but it was an aberration rather than real change. No mail arrived for the rest of the week. This has been an ongoing problem across Chicago, for systemic rather than purely weather-driven reasons, and even more so in some South Side ZIP codes than ours, which is itself bad enough. The Chicago Tribune ran an article about the Trumpian mess in which U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush expressed his impatience on behalf of his constituents about the staffing excuses, saying there were plenty of unemployed people in the city, so “if you have a job, do it.”

The as yet uncollected recyclables in a bin filled to the brim.

That comment formed an interesting backdrop to the other event the same day all mail arrived. The city recycling pickup occurs on our block on alternate Tuesdays, and our bins were full, if somewhat piled around with snow. The trucks seemed to be very selective, leaving our stuff uncollected, so that we are now storing recyclables in paper bags in the garage. I complained to the city Streets and Sanitation Department in an online forum that left little room for comment, then forwarded the complaint and further explanation to our 1^st Ward alderman, Daniel La Spata. I noted that the previous week, the regular garbage pickup occurred without a problem under worse circumstances. He informed me that a private company had been hired for the recycling, similar problems had emerged elsewhere, and added, “Honestly, that’s the difference between public employees and privatized ones, and why we’re pushing back on the latter.” Some might question that comparison in light of the post office problems, but I would suggest that the U.S. Postal Service, to a significant degree, has been the target of efforts to undermine it as a means of justifying privatization and subverting the integrity of mail ballots. In any case, I still want them to empty those blue recycling bins.

During all this, I nonetheless wanted to access the COVID vaccine so that I could move beyond the sense of limitation that nearly a year of closed stores and restaurants, and mask wearing and social distancing, has instilled in all of us. For compulsive extroverts like me, the compounded effect of long-term pandemic restrictions followed by a month of being buried in frozen precipitation is producing a profound restlessness. Put simply, I want out.

I have not yet mentioned that five grandchildren have been studying remotely in our home since September. We are guardians for one, and the others are here as their mother engineers a major change in her life, and besides, my wife is a retired public schools teacher who can mentor them. Throughout February, the Chicago Teachers Union engaged in a vociferous public debate with the Chicago Public Schools and Mayor Lori Lightfoot about reopening schools, arguing over the adequacy of the preparations for protecting teachers and staff from coronavirus exposure. This took place against the backdrop of the larger national debate over online versus in-person education, but I know what I see. The kids are noticeably glazing over and tuning out, and listening to a teacher on a screen is getting old. Students, particularly students of color (most of our grandchildren) and those with working parents, are falling behind, and the schools will have a major challenge in coming years of reversing the impacts of online education. Students in the early grades need human contact to remain fully engaged. None of this is to deny the necessity that drove the schools to close, but the national failure to manage the pandemic has greatly exacerbated the consequences.

We need to get our national act together, and moving millions of doses of vaccines to sites where people can get some sense of relief is the most important step right now. Instead, I’ve found myself checking online daily, sometimes multiple times daily, only to find no availability for vaccine appointments. But my wife finally got her call for March 2, so I remain hopeful. I have no other choice.

That expression of patience is at the heart of our dilemma. I could live with the snow, however impatiently and with some humor, because I knew that warmer days lay ahead, and snow cannot outlast St. Patrick’s Day in Chicago. Unlike Texas, our infrastructure is designed to handle winter. A slow, steady rise in temperature would allow snow to turn to water at a steady pace without triggering floods. We will be fine.

What has been less certain has been the ability of our national public health infrastructure, as disheveled as political neglect has allowed it to become, to respond to the pandemic. But I can also feel a steady warming trend since January 20, however halting it has seemed at times. The big snowstorm, which jostled its way through Kentucky and Tennessee and Arkansas all the way down to Texas and Louisiana, slowed distribution of vaccines, but maybe for a week. My wife learned that she got her appointment because PrimeCare, a local health care provider, had just received a big shipment.

Snow recedes to a manageable level as the weather has warmed.

My turn will come, and so will yours if you’re smart enough to get vaccinated. My outlook will change with the warm breezes of spring, and I will start to think about where I can go and what I can do. We will end this year-long cabin fever that has been induced by a tiny virus with protein spikes that latch onto receptor target cells in a microbiological process most of us do not understand.

But it may be a long time before we stop talking about it. Our collective COVID cabin fever does that. Let’s all talk about what we as a nation can do better next time. Do it over beer or coffee or tea, but make it a productive, meaningful conversation. I’m tired of gripes. I prefer solutions.

Jim Schwab

Collateral Damage

Posted on January 13, 2021 by admin

For those who have noticed, it has been more than five weeks since I last posted to this blog. It has been a rough stretch, but it could have been much rougher. At least to my knowledge, I never have contracted COVID-19. Not that people weren’t asking, especially relatives.

There were the holidays, of course, and who wouldn’t take it easy for at least a few days?

Then came the call on Christmas Eve, around 8 p.m. CST. It was my younger sister, choked up, reporting that our mother had died about an hour earlier at 8 p.m. EST. It was not entirely unexpected. She was living in a small nursing facility near Cleveland. My younger sister and brother live nearby. At 103, our mother had lived a very long life, overcoming more obstacles and health threats than I could imagine, but time takes its toll on all of us. In her last few days, she could barely speak, was on oxygen, and finally on morphine as hospice nurses took charge of her situation.

My mother, Hazel, at 100th birthday in 2017.

Still, Christmas Eve is not an ideal time for such news. It completely dampened the tenor of the evening at our house, as I shared the news first with my wife, and then with six grandchildren who were present. We all went to sleep that night knowing that my mother, who survived our father by more than 13 years, would no longer be a presence in our lives, though she would certainly be a memory. Losing a parent is almost always a tectonic shift in one’s life. Losing a parent in the midst of a pandemic, even if not to the pandemic, adds an extra element of sadness to the event. Funerals have become small events since last March. There is no need to add to the death toll.

We celebrated a slightly subdued Christmas, but we wanted to maintain the joy for the grandchildren, who range from 6 to 17, and their mothers. There was a more than ample dinner, much of it planned before the news arrived, and the kids played with their new gifts. Nonetheless, two of them, Alex, 11, and Angel, just two days away from his 17^th birthday, made clear they wanted to come with Jean and me to Cleveland for their great-grandmother’s funeral. That was already a full load for our 2018 Chevy Malibu.

Christmas, of course, was on Friday, which meant that my siblings in Cleveland would not meet with the funeral home staff until Saturday to settle on plans. Over the weekend, they learned that, because of COVID-19, the funeral home was backed up, and the funeral could not occur until Tuesday, December 29. Their pastor had another funeral Tuesday morning, so he could not arrive until later, so, while visitation was permitted to begin at 11:30 a.m., the service began around 1:15 p.m. Pastor Brad Ross, of Triune Lutheran Church in Broadview Heights, Ohio, kept it reasonably short out of necessity. The cemetery was also backed up, and we would need to complete the interment service no later than 3 p.m. That meant we were all leaving the funeral home no later than 2 p.m. This was a very different environment from the more relaxed and expansive schedule that accompanied my father’s funeral on a sunny May day in 2007. The last pandemic that had ever ravaged the world on the scale of COVID-19 had occurred in 1918 and 1919, just a year or so after my mother was born. I kept thinking of all the changes she had seen in her lifetime, but they were often hard to imagine. The best I could do was try to broaden the lens of my own 71 years, but it never seemed like enough. Cars were new on the city streets when she was born, and she graduated from high school during the Great Depression. Our nation was already sending men into space while I was still in elementary school. We can imagine, but can we relate?

My niece from upstate New York, Cheryl, provided the one family contribution to the service, which was otherwise a short homily and some scriptural readings from Pastor Ross. Cheryl has a beautiful voice. With instrumental accompaniment from a recording, she sang “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Through it all, and it was brief, I had flashbacks to moments of both separation and engagement with my parents, particularly my mother. I was always well aware that she was less than pleased when I said I was moving to Iowa in January 1979, at age 29 taking the helm of a small nonprofit public interest advocacy organization. In her mind, such a move could be justified if I were working for some large firm that wanted to transfer me there, but the type of job I had sought was, in her mind, a waste of time and talent. I stood my ground because I knew already that I was profoundly restless in Cleveland, striving to redefine myself and find a new role in life, and this modestly paid position posed a challenge to my intellect, my moral fiber, and my emerging sense of identity. I was a “child of the Sixties” who believed passionately in positive social and political change, but it was more than that.

Even while in Cleveland, I had often written and spoken in ways that revealed some innate, but not yet well-developed, skills at communication. I had published several op-eds in The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s major daily newspaper. But I did not feel that anything I was doing was plumbing the depths of my skills and beliefs, so it was time to move on and immerse myself in an entirely new environment. Had I been more daring, I might have joined the Peace Corps, like my long-time college friend, Jim Quigley, who spent two years in the Marshall Islands. That surely would have driven my mother over the edge. “Why do you want to do that?” would have been her first question.

Within three years, I shifted gears in Iowa to become a graduate student at the University of Iowa, pursuing two Master’s degrees in urban and regional planning and journalism that have become the cornerstones of my career for four decades. She first greeted that, too, with some skepticism, wondering why I wanted to “struggle” for a few more years like that, but she acquiesced. She had no choice because it was all on my own dime or with my own student loans. To be fair, however, I must emphasize that both my parents strongly encouraged all of us to attend college.

She may also have feared that I would never return to Cleveland. I visited often, but she was right. Cleveland no longer held much allure. In the end, with Jean, who was from Omaha, I ended up in Chicago. Life offered a far bigger palette here on which to paint my career.

A long-time high school friend of mine who also now lives in Chicago, Larry Barr, theorized recently that middle-class parents of our generation—and my parents were blue-collar middle-class—tended to want success for their children through conventional careers. Getting hired by a big company was a sign of economic security. Many of us Baby Boomers had a more creative streak and wanted to discover who we were. That made our parents nervous about our prospects in life. My extended search stretched into three and a half years of graduate school because I used the journalism training to refine what I had always sensed were powerful writing skills that had not yet been refined and tested, and I wanted to push the development of those skills as hard as I could while also refining a clearer sense of my own values in life. I emerged from the University of Iowa, not a different person, but a far more mature and determined person than when I started. In the years that followed, I turned a Master’s Project in Journalism into my first published book, followed by book tours and a review in the New York Times. I was far more confident than when I had enrolled, and my vision of what was possible grew exponentially.

That was the point, Larry suggested in a recent conversation. Skeptical at first of such personal searches for self-definition and meaning, our parents could nonetheless embrace success when it was staring them in the face. The kid is getting published. He’s an author, and a planner. He must have known what he was doing.

A few years later, a second book emerged, my role at APA had grown, and things just kept evolving. During one visit to Cleveland, they listened as I was interviewed with another panelist on the local NPR station. Not everybody’s kid gets such positive public attention. They reported enjoying the discussion.

There was no denying that, whatever differences of opinion we still had—and there were plenty—I seemed to have planted my stake in the world. I might not have become an automotive engineer for Ford or GM, but their doubts had been resolved. (My father would love to have been trained as an engineer, but college seemed out of reach in his youth, which is sad. He had some amazing mathematical and mechanical skills, and the world would have benefited from providing him such an opportunity. He worked as a truck mechanic in a chemical plant, but was a beacon of stability throughout his life.)

Those are the essential reminiscences after all these years, and they all passed through my mind during the funeral. I was a pallbearer and took my place in the procession with nephews and my brother, but before we left, I asked for a moment to grab my overcoat, as I was feeling a bit cold. We loaded the casket into the hearse, and our parade of cars followed to the cemetery.

It was about 23°F., a damp, chilly day as we reached the cemetery in Hinckley, about a 20-minute drive from the funeral parlor. I was not especially comfortable as we brought the casket to the burial site and listened as the pastor intoned a final prayer before we all left, most of us for my brother Jack’s house, where he and my sister-in-law, Tina, had a casual dinner of sandwiches and pasta salads ready for all of us. They also had a small cake for a joint birthday: Mine had been on December 20, and my other sister, Nancy, who lives in Pennsylvania, was born on New Year’s Eve.

I struggled to enjoy it all, but it soon became apparent to everyone—most notably, Tina and Jean—that something was wrong. I was looking pale, feeling cold, and lacking energy. I sat near the fireplace and simply watched a movie, The Princess Bride, that was on the living room television. It was still early in the evening when we left for our hotel room with Angel and Alex, and I fell asleep beneath the covers not long after 8 p.m., a remarkably early time for me. There was by then no question that I was ill.

The hotel, relatively empty and operating post-holidays in pandemic mode, offered a simple complimentary breakfast of either a bagel with cheese, egg, and sausage, or without the sausage, and orange juice in a small plastic bottle. The dining area had been closed months ago. Amenities were minimal. Alex went to the lobby to get the breakfast for all of us, but I passed on the bagel and simply drank the orange juice because I was feeling queasy. Even that proved a big mistake. By the time we had packed the car and checked out, I was getting nauseous. As Jean, who had committed to driving the entire trip without my help, pulled out of our parking space, I said urgently, “Pull up to the front door.” She looked puzzled, and I repeated, more firmly, “Pull up to the front door!” She did so, and in a moment, I was racing for a bathroom, and the orange juice departed my stomach like a liquid missile. Now I knew I was in trouble, and a six-hour drive down the Ohio and Indiana Turnpikes, plus I-90 in Chicago, lay ahead.

On the way home, we discussed what to do about my situation when we got there. I avoided both food and drink the entire time in order not to test my stomach. If it was empty, there would be no emergency. I was decidedly uncomfortable when we visited service plazas to use the bathroom because the weather was at first rainy and cold, though it improved in Indiana. I used her cell phone to call an urgent care center near our home and was told that, unless I needed a COVID test, I could be treated as a walk-in.

In Chicago, however, I discovered that one needed to get the attention of someone inside the urgent care center for someone to come to the door to let you in, and two ladies standing outside indicated they had been waiting a half hour for someone to respond. I said I would become a wreck if I stood outside that long, so I drove home.

After I rested a bit and warmed up, Jean took me to the emergency room at nearby St. Mary’s Hospital. I expected that they would test me immediately for COVID-19, as they had done last May, but to my surprise, the admitting clerk simply asked about symptoms and referred me to a nurse. Within minutes, I was in a treatment room with a doctor. No COVID test ever happened. Dr. Jorgensen ascertained instead that I had a viral sinus infection. Because the infection was viral, not bacterial, they could not administer antibiotics but would have to let me wait it out, while advising that I continue using Flonase to clear the sinuses and Tylenol for headaches or fever. He prescribed Zofran for the nausea, which I used for maybe two days before that symptom disappeared. An attending nurse attached saline fluids intravenously to relieve dehydration that, no doubt, had materialized from my precaution in not eating or drinking during the trip. “We’re putting the fluids where they matter without testing your stomach,” he assured me.

I spent the New Year’s weekend either in bed or lazily reading newspapers and books until I got drowsy. My siblings and in-laws were calling and texting to find out how I was doing, and to make sure I had not contracted coronavirus. I reassured everyone that no such diagnosis was in the works, but some worried anyway. You never know, and we all know someone who has suffered, and one illness can lead to another. But in my case, it did not.

What it led to is my current anxiety. Work piled up as the first week of January rolled on and I struggled to regain my normal energy level, which happened but far too slowly for my satisfaction. I never lost my sense of taste or smell, a key COVID trait, and when feeling energetic enough, I continued to craft some wonderful meals as my inner chef, another part of my creative identity, reasserted itself. Lord, I would hate to discover someday that ginger/sesame-marinated salmon tasted like paste or wallpaper!

By January 6, I was more or less back to work, albeit at a slow pace. Then came another opportunity to feel sick, but the symptoms were emotional and were triggered by the President himself, inciting an angry, deluded crowd of supporters to attack the nation’s Capitol, killing a Capitol police officer, and creating a new day that will live in infamy, alongside Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That some Americans were proudly doing this to their own country was by far the worst part. I found the news consuming what little free time I had mustered by then. Emotionally, it felt like collateral damage to a political system gone badly awry.

By Friday, a new disturbance arrived, though I was able to take it more in stride. I received a notice from the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) that an unemployment claim was filed in my name at a local sheet metal manufacturer, where, of course, I had never worked. It was clearly a fraudulent claim and was followed the next day by a benefits debit card from a bank in Cleveland. I spent Monday of this week requesting cancellation of the claim at IDES, taking other protective measures, and filing a financial fraud report with the Chicago Police Department. I do not believe in letting this activity go unreported. Providing evidence may add ever so slightly to a case against some perpetrator somewhere who needs to be brought to justice. I learned that IDES had been hacked in 2017. If so, although it happened under a prior administration, Gov. J.B. Pritzker needs to take ownership of the solution. Too many such issues in Illinois linger from one administration to the next, with computer systems not updated, problems not fixed, issues unresolved. The avalanche of claims under the current pandemic-caused recession has only exposed existing vulnerabilities. It is time for states and the federal government to get serious about addressing these challenges.

As for me, I am feeling better and getting more done every day, though I am still checking in with doctors in the near term. As for the nation, I hope we can all feel better after January 20, but I don’t envy President-elect Biden or his administration for the work that lies ahead. We have a viral infection in the body politic for which the only vaccines are truth, respect, and common sense.

Jim Schwab

Unequal Exposure

Posted on April 11, 2020 by admin

On April 29, I will be moderating “Demanding Equity: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery,” a 45-minute session in a special three-day virtual conference of the American Planning Association, NPC20 @HOME. The online conference is an attempt to replace the experience of the canceled National Planning Conference, which would have taken place in Houston, April 25-28. For the first time in APA history, the annual event will not go forward as planned. Like numerous other conferences, it was untenable to assemble thousands of participants in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. But it is possible to provide a decent educational opportunity in its place by broadcasting and recording distance learning and letting participants ask questions remotely.

But why do I mention this one session, when APA is offering two dozen? Because it touches on some issues so central to the social and economic impacts of coronavirus, and speaks so directly to what planners and planning can do as we recover from this experience, that I wanted to highlight the subject in this post. It has been said often that the coronavirus does not discriminate. That may be true, but our society has done so and still does, often in ways people are reluctant to consider or admit. The result is that, as happens with most disasters, minorities and low-income people, those with fewer opportunities in life or greater exposure to danger, are disproportionately affected. And so it will be when the histories of this pandemic are written. The evidence is already stark enough for passionate discussion.

To give credit where it is due, the session was the brainchild of Adrian Freund, a veteran, semi-retired planner in Oregon. Before the NPC was canceled, however, Adrian was hospitalized (not because of coronavirus) and realized he would be unable to go to Houston. He reached out through a former president of APA, David Siegel, also of Oregon, to ask me to take over, and I agreed. We are on the same page on this issue. When APA decided to replace NPC with NPC20 @HOME, this was one of the sessions they felt must be included, and I reassembled the speakers to modify our plans for the new format.

All of them have a ton of wisdom to contribute on the subject. Shannon van Zandt is a professor of urban planning and department head at Texas A&M, and has authored numerous articles and led many projects on subjects related to equity in disaster recovery, particularly in the Texas context in which she works. Marccus Hendricks, an assistant professor of planning at the University of Maryland, is a Texas A&M graduate who has focused on infrastructure issues and environmental justice, writing his doctoral thesis on stormwater management in Houston. Chrishelle Palay is director at the HOME Coalition in Houston. Obviously, the panel has strong Texas roots, but there are few states where one can get better insights into the impacts of environmental inequities.

But it is the screaming headlines of the past week that have brought renewed attention to the issue in the context of coronavirus. In Chicago, we have learned that African Americans are dying from the virus at six times the rate of whites. Gary, a predominantly African American city, is the new coronavirus hot spot in Indiana. It is also where it gets personal for me. A 12-year-old granddaughter lives there and, as of yesterday (April 10), appears to have COVID-19 symptoms. Her mother called and was asked not to bring her to a hospital, but to isolate her at home. She will not be tested because, as everywhere else, this nation has not gotten its act together on testing. Will she even be included in the statistics, then, as a known case? Good question. I have no idea how Indiana is tallying such numbers. But she is in for a rough ride in the immediate future, and Gary and surrounding Lake County are certainly not fully prepared.

But what is happening in Chicago, as numerous commentators and public health officials have noted in the past week, is not only not unique, but to be expected. Detroit is emerging as a hotspot with major disparities in racial impact. State health data reveal that, while blacks make up 14 percent of Michigan’s population, they account for one-third of the cases and 40 percent of the deaths so far. In Louisiana, with one-third of the population, blacks account for 70 percent of the deaths. New Orleans has clearly emerged as a southern hot spot for coronavirus infections. Across the nation, one can find similar racial disparities.

Beneath those figures, however, are other disparities that weave in and out of racial and ethnic numbers. Age is perhaps the best-known factor, but so are many others. People in low-income service jobs, for instance, to the extent that they are still working, are more dependent on public transit and much less likely to be able to work from home like white-collar professionals. Public transit contributes greatly to mobility in urban centers, but does little for social distancing. It is still unclear just how transit will be affected for the long term, although it remains a vital link to jobs for many of the working poor. But coronavirus is clearly challenging the economic viability of many transit systems, one reason they were the target of assistance in the CARES Act.

It goes without saying that health care workers are significantly more exposed, but they are not just doctors. Their ranks include nurses, nursing assistants, and many others, some with much lower incomes, who nonetheless are risking their lives every day. Some of them work in nursing homes, which have not been the focus of any noticeable attention at the federal level. There are many ways to slice and dice the data to identify patterns of exposure, including those for access to health care, quite possibly the single most important factor driving disparities in this particular disaster. Lack of insurance coverage and inability to afford adequate health care leave many people untouched by the system and untested until it is too late. Poor or nonexistent health insurance coverage, especially for undocumented immigrants, accompanied by food deserts in many inner-city neighborhoods, endemic poverty in many rural areas and small towns, and exposure to job-related ailments, can produce numerous chronic conditions that make exposure to a new virus fatal or disastrous instead of merely survivable.

It remains remarkable, in view of these factors, that the Trump administration can maintain its drumbeat of opposition to the Affordable Care Act, including the recent refusal to allow newly jobless Americans to sign up for coverage. But this is one of many ways in which this nation, through both federal and state policy, continues to resist expanded, let alone universal, health care coverage to shore up health care deficiencies for the most vulnerable among us. There is both a meanness and short-sightedness that underlies much of this resistance. As I noted just two weeks ago, these health care vulnerabilities, with all the racial and socioeconomic inequities they embody, form the weak links in the chain of overall vulnerability for our communities when pandemic strikes.

And that brings me back to the point of the session I will moderate. One essential element of the planner’s skill set should be demographic analysis. The coronavirus pandemic highlights the critical value of addressing public health in comprehensive plans and other efforts to chart the future of cities, counties, and regions. Issues of national health care policy may be well beyond the reach of planners and their communities, but exposing the glaring disparities that have been made evident as the data on coronavirus cases grows is critical to knowing how resilient our communities are or how resilient we can make them. Access to health care is not merely a matter of insurance, as important as that is. It is also affected by the practices of local hospitals, the access to open spaces for densely populated areas, environmental regulations controlling industrial pollutants, public education around personal health, access to healthy food, the quality of our food distribution systems, and a myriad of other considerations that can be addressed to one degree or another through local or regional planning and through policy commitments to social equity.

That is precisely why, as the White House dithers, and federal management of the coronavirus crisis continues to fall short, dozens if not hundreds of mayors and governors and other local and state officials have stepped up to fill the gap. It is sad that there is not better national leadership in this crisis, but we are learning who our real leaders are. Enabling planners and other policy makers to support those officials with essential and meaningful data is an ongoing task, but if we are going to emerge from this disaster in a better place, identifying the inequities that weaken our communities and finding ways to build resilience across those weak links is going to be essential. There is no good alternative.

Jim Schwab

Test of Moral Imagination

Posted on April 1, 2020 by admin

Okay, now I’m angry. I had not intended to produce another blog article quite so soon, but false prophets are rampaging through the vineyards of the Lord. Fortunately, there are only a few of them reported so far, two of whom have been cited for certain misdemeanor offenses. But with the coronavirus, it takes only two megachurch pastors calling hundreds of people to live church services to let loose the plague on not only their own followers but everyone around them. They need to get some common sense and knock it off.

In addition, Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., son of the founder of the fundamentalist Liberty University in Virginia, has called students back to the campus after spring break, ignoring the actions of almost every other college in the nation to forsake such close contact and take lessons online for the duration of the semester. With several documented cases on campus already, the question is how many more students and staff will be infected.

In Central, Louisiana, Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church was arrested after holding services on Sunday in violation of the emergency order by Gov. John Bel Edwards for Louisiana residents to stay at home for the coming month. Released after his booking, he proceeded to defy the order again by holding services on Tuesday evening. As on Sunday, curious onlookers wondered what he was doing. On Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune, people in the neighborhood were questioning what made the people of the church think they were so special as to disregard Gov. John Bel Edwards’s stay-at-home order. No one is discriminating against anyone’s religious rights because the order does not prohibit online gatherings and similar modes of worship. It aims to limit large crowds to inhibit the spread of a deadly virus for which there is, as yet, no known vaccine or effective cure. That is a matter of public safety. Thousands upon thousands of other congregations nationwide are live-streaming church services as a substitute for assembling masses of people in a Sunday morning petri dish for coronavirus.

I write from personal experience. My own congregation, Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, in Chicago, suspended services more than two weeks ago, but provides recordings, readings, and other online and private opportunities for worship and meditation as we can. I serve as the coordinator for the Adult Forum, the Sunday school session for adults, which predictably draws its fair share of devoted seniors, who are at greatest danger of exposure, and about whom we are most concerned. We are not meeting until further notice. We may miss the interaction and the discussions, but we do not wish to put anyone’s life in danger. Our priority is safety. We want everyone to emerge from this in good health.

In Tampa, meanwhile, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of the River at Tampa Bay Church violated a stay-at-home order by holding services this past Sunday. He later turned himself in to authorities, but the law firm representing him maintains that the church practiced social distancing. Given the human interactions inevitably occurring in large crowds, that may be beside the point. However, USA Today reports that, in a Facebook post, Howard-Browne described coronavirus as “blown totally way out of proportion.” It is worth noting that Florida is nearing 7,000 confirmed cases with 87 deaths so far, and the trend is moving rapidly upward. One wonders if the families of victims share his perspective.

Mark my words: In the face of the pervasive concerns of neighbors and fellow citizens and fellow Christians, such defiance soon turns to arrogance. And arrogance demonstrates egotism, not faith.

New U.S. coronavirus cases per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_the_United_States
(same for both graphs)

New U.S. deaths from coronavirus per day, as of April 1, 2020, courtesy of Wikipedia

Given several thousand deaths to date in the U.S., out of hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases, with untold suffering likely still to come, I have a simple question for these three ignorant gentlemen:

Who the hell do you think you are?

Pastor Tony Spell insists he will do it again because “God told us to.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that. All those other pastors and rabbis and imams and nuns and priests, including Pope Francis, who is not asking anyone to come to the Vatican for Easter because he cares about the lives of fellow human beings, seem to be getting a very different message, which I suggest might sound something more like this:

Take care of my people. Save lives, especially those of my elderly servants, by taking precautions. This is your chance to show how you love each other, protect each other, and lead each other through the valley of the Shadow of Death. Use this opportunity to make your communities stronger. And, for my sake, think about the lives and health of my thousands of servants on the front lines–the doctors, the nurses, the EMTs, the social workers, the police—they are parts of your flock to whom I have assigned great responsibilities. Please do not think me so vain nor so cruel as to insist on the continuation of live worship services during this crisis. This is your opportunity to show that I have gifted you with moral imagination. Use it.

Jim Schwab

Isolated Adjustments

Posted on March 30, 2020 by admin

I miss my gym already, closed just two weeks ago. There was a profusion of equipment to keep anyone in shape, whether you were working on legs, biceps, core, cardio, some combination, whatever. Here at home, I have small barbells, some ankle weights, and perhaps most importantly, a newly tuned 26-inch bicycle. There are other bicycles in our garage, mostly to accommodate grandchildren but also one my wife uses. We were out briefly yesterday for a ride in the neighborhood before the blustery spring winds brought more rain.

Closed entrance to the 606 Trail at California Ave.

A friend joked a few days ago that, after closing the Lakefront trail, adjacent parks, and beaches, and the 606 Trail plus park district field houses and playgrounds, Mayor Lori Lightfoot may have been praying for rain to enforce the stay-at-home, social distancing restrictions in effect throughout Illinois. If so, she got her wish over the weekend, but the weather is changing already, and Chicagoans are likely to take advantage of it. That’s okay, as long as we use those big park spaces that are still open to maintain social distance and help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Alex at a closed entrance to the 606 Trail.

Quite frankly, just one week ago, after picking up my bike from a nearby shop that performed the tuning, I used it to ride a portion of the 606 Trail, feeling the liberation that comes with such a small adventure. That was Monday afternoon, and the closures came on Thursday. I was not surprised. The 606, which is a great community-building amenity in normal times, seemed far too narrow and crowded for public safety in these times. I have not returned. Future rides will be on winding paths in the 700-acre Humboldt Park, where one can move past other human beings without encroaching on personal space. And I can still invigorate my body and spirit with some healthy exercise.

Humboldt Park is open, but the playgrounds are closed.

So, what is this blog post about, exactly? It is about adjustments in the time of COVID-19. But let me be clear. I am sharing the adjustments being made in our three-member household, and everyone else is making their own. Each set of adjustments is unique, yet many of us can learn from one another. I am also painfully aware that we are safer and in a better position financially than many people who have lost jobs or are suffering lost income, or have a sick family member. I can empathize, while knowing their experience will unquestionably be very different. And I wish such people the very best. Our nation is in for one tough slog against a ghastly microbial enemy.

My wife and I are both in our early seventies, but our three-member household includes an 11-year-old grandson, for whom we assumed guardianship two years ago. His mother has long faced mental health challenges. Two weeks ago, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) closed, and as of now, they will remain so until April 20. After that? Who knows? At first, the closure was for two weeks, but that would have ended today. Officials at all levels of government have underestimated the scope and duration of this problem, but the important thing is that they are learning daily and adjusting strategies, as we all are. Universities have suspended semesters and moved classes online. A friend of mine who teaches at an area community college admits to being “dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21^st century” as he learns online teaching skills. I, on the other hand, have already been teaching online for the University of Iowa. My one class each year occurs in the fall, so the question is whether we enroll enough students to move forward by August. The odds seem good, but so much changes so quickly. Again, who knows? I will have to wait for the answer.

I practice what I call “alleged retirement,” which involves a part-time mix of teaching, consulting, public speaking, and writing. At worst, my wife, Jean, a retired teacher, and I can live off our pensions and Social Security. We would have to retrench if I had no outside income, some provided by the university, but we could survive. That makes us feel far more secure than I know is the case for gig workers, restaurant and hospitality workers, travel and tourism workers, and many others affected by shutdowns and restrictions aimed at containing contagion.

Jean in front of Moos School, now closed because of coronavirus.

Meanwhile, precisely because she is a teacher, my wife works with Alex on reading and math, so that lost school days do not translate entirely into lost learning. But that has involved its own learning curve. In the first week, we both noticed Alex’s ability to refocus his time on television and video games. We were busy figuring things out in that week of canceled St. Patrick’s Day events and the Illinois primary, in which Jean was an election judge. But we discussed the situation, and Jean quickly began to insist on specific hours for learning exercises. I am grateful, and hope Alex is, for her knowledge of teaching methods to keep him fresh on everything from multiplication to vocabulary expansion. I can only imagine what single mothers with four children no longer attending school must be doing to cope with the situation. Many in Chicago or rural Illinois or throughout America do not have Internet, or lack personal computers, and lack daily connection with the schools that kept their children busy until just recently. We have a 16-year-old grandson who is a high school sophomore. He is staying with his father, who works long hours in a warehouse to pay the bills. While we provided Angel with a small laptop at Christmas, I have noticed that CPS is not updating information on Aspen, its grade- and assignment-tracking online program, so we have no idea what, if anything, he should be doing in his classes. I used to help him with courses like Spanish, but now I have not a clue what he should be doing. It is as if CPS just vanished into thin air. The only solution from a learning perspective may be to extend the school year in June—but only if we have coronavirus under control by then. Otherwise, you could take his lost opportunities and multiply them by the tens of thousands across the city.

Then there is the drumbeat of coronavirus news to which people can subject themselves if they sit in front of the television all day long. I choose not to do that because I find that one hour of news tells me 90 percent of what I need to know, barring some breaking announcement, and the rest is repetition. I read the Chicago Tribune thoroughly each morning. My wife knows counselors and others who suggest limiting exposure to such news to reduce anxiety. She has taken to using some online meditation one of them has provided, and it works for her. I don’t share the anxiety because I am a different sort of person. My professional experience in the urban planning field is heavy on planning for disasters and disaster recovery. I read the news with an analytical eye, looking for clues to what we, as a society or region or city, can do better, and often turning that into commentary on this blog, but also applying it in various planning tasks. Since I retired from the American Planning Association (APA), many of those tasks have been pro bono activities, such as serving on policy guide task forces and chairing APA’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. There is no shortage of opportunities, and I am grateful every day for the chance to contribute something through all those channels. It’s not all about earning money. Just helping makes our lives richer; how we do it depends on our skill set and interests.

But clearly, the precautions we are all observing can be frustrating and lead to adjustments. Travel, in most cases, is a non-starter for the near future. Little more than a month ago, I was in Rockport, Texas, assisting the APA Texas chapter with a Hurricane Harvey recovery event that allowed Texas planners to interact with planners from New York and New Jersey who could share perspectives from Sandy recovery. Two weeks later, after a quick recovery from a mild case of the flu, I was in Kearney, Nebraska, speaking at the annual conference of the Nebraska Planning & Zoning Association, sharing knowledge and ideas with colleagues there. The first hints of a truly serious public health catastrophe were becoming clear, and that became my last trip so far this year. By March 18, APA had canceled its annual National Planning Conference in Houston, an event that has typically drawn about 5,000 people. Not this year. As a division leader, I am involved in many of the leadership discussions about what comes next in taking many meetings and sessions and other events online, and moving forward. This is happening across the board to numerous organizations of widely varying sizes, with huge impacts on the hotel, airline, and convention industries not only nationwide but across the world. Caught in the maws of this economic and public health earthquake are millions of workers.

Yet, as obvious as this seems to me, with my laser focus on news that matters, I have learned that not everyone is fully aware of its consequences. Alex’s mother invited us to visit her apartment, and Jean declined because we have no way of judging how safe it is. Then, two other people visiting her apartment suggested coming to our house to visit Alex. Again, Jean said that would have to wait, but they seemed only marginally aware of developments like restaurant closures and social distancing. Meanwhile, my mother, whose resilience at an advanced age has been stunning, was released last week from a hospital in suburban Cleveland after a brief non-COVID illness to a rehab facility, where she is confined to her room for 14 days because she had been in a hospital. Visitors are not permitted, as they also will not be when she finally returns to her retirement home. In short, although I have two siblings who live near her, I could not visit even if I chose to drive there.

But that brings me to a closing note. I can stay home not only because I am “allegedly retired,” but because I am not a health care worker. Their adjustments have been the reverse of those of most of us, involving thorough engagement, exposure to life-threatening infection, and long hours of treating growing numbers of patients. And not just in urban areas. As of today, for example, Illinois has 4,596 reported cases, resulting in 65 deaths, spread across 40 of 102 counties. Small towns and rural areas will not be immune. I just heard New York Gov. Cuomo note that COVID-19 has spread to all but one county in his state.

Amidst all our concerns, the ducks in the lagoon at Humboldt Park are blissfully oblivious to human problems with the novel coronavirus.

We’re all making adjustments, most of us in our homes, but our public health workers, doctors, and nurses are making theirs at the front lines. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and everything we can do to support them, especially those who have voluntarily returned to work from retirement, or serve in the National Guard, and didn’t have to take those risks. God bless them all, every last courageous one of them.

Jim Schwab

Home of the Brave

Book Reviews and Discussion with Jim Schwab

Category Archives: Medical

Out of a Cannon

Catch Up and Slow Down

Going Viral

My Ode to Negativity

Consider Your Victims

Collateral Damage

Unequal Exposure

Test of Moral Imagination

Isolated Adjustments