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

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

America’s Public Health Disaster

Posted on March 17, 2020 by admin

Every day seems to bring shocking news. Restaurants and schools close, conventions are canceled, overseas travelers face unexpected obstacles in coming home. The United States of America, like much of the rest of the world, is facing a crisis unlike any in our lifetimes. While I understand many of the protocols because of a background in disaster recovery, my intellectual and professional focus has dealt with natural disasters, not pandemics, so I will not claim any special expertise. I’d rather listen to the medical experts who have studied the issue in depth.

But at 70, I can relate on a personal level to the concerns of older citizens who are most at risk in a way that I know I never could have done at a younger age. While I remain physically fit, I am also aware that maintaining that fitness requires real effort, sometimes more effort than it might for someone half my age. More importantly, I have become more aware that a fitness routine does not guarantee immunity or invulnerability to some of the impacts of aging. Consequently, while exercising, not smoking, and a sensible diet can afford me significant confidence about facing a challenge like the current novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic, it guarantees nothing. All the recommendations about avoiding unnecessary travel, social distancing, and sanitary precautions still matter greatly in improving the odds against illness.

Already, I confess, some of the simplest impacts of aging have slowed down my production of this blog or at times made it more irregular than I would like, and that is despite no longer working full-time. I do some consulting, some writing, and some teaching, in various proportions, and my days are full, although much of my time currently is also devoted to a volunteer job—serving since January 1 as chair of the American Planning Association’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. That presently has me involved in trying to disentangle commitments for some of our events at APA’s pending National Planning Conference in Houston, scheduled for April 25-28, preceded by some leadership meetings I expected to attend. Tonight, the APA board of directors canceled the conference. Our division executive committee had decided to cancel our division reception in Houston, only to learn that the restaurant planned to close anyway. Life is like that these days. A colleague and I were scheduled, as part of our APA division’s outreach program to planning schools, to discuss hazards in planning at a university graduate class later this month, but that shifted to possibly remote to simply waiting for another school year as most colleges have adopted online learning for the remainder of the spring semester. As I said, life is like that these days.

But back to the subject of aging. One learns we simply cannot control everything, no matter how hard we try. As I detailed in a July 4 blog post last year, life for me had generally gone along well until I began to realize in late spring that my sight was becoming fuzzier and clouded. What began with a visit to an optometrist in April to see if my prescription for eyeglasses needed updating ended in late June with cataract surgery in both eyes, and considerable lost time due to an increasing inability to read a computer screen. That put me weeks behind in preparing a transition of the University of Iowa graduate class in urban planning I teach each fall to an online forum, and with other factors coming into play as the year went on, I never got completely ahead of the curve until the semester was over in December.

But at least cataract surgery, in most cases, is a one-and-done proposition. You get the implants, you have new vision with only reading glasses for assistance, and life goes on. But by late fall, I learned that another malady would force me into hemorrhoid surgery, which took place immediately after the holidays. With certain complications due to an enlarged prostate gland, it sidelined me for the first half of January until recovery was complete.

Now, it may well be at this point that I will not face further difficulties for some years to come. I certainly would be pleased if that became the case. These were the first surgeries of my entire adult life, but they stalled my activities to some extent, and they are a small glimpse of the sorts of things that make many other seniors feel far more vulnerable than I do. It is small wonder that many of them fall victim more easily to scourges like the coronavirus. The elderly and the physically challenged have predictably proven far more prone to the severest consequences of COVID-19, including death.

We also know, however, that many other Americans, and many citizens of other nations as well, will suffer serious economic dislocation as a result of the restrictions placed on economic and social activity in order to stem the upward slope of infections and death. While U.S. accounting is hampered by the lack of testing kits and public access to testing in key regions of the country, the alarm bells are ringing loudly. As I write this, the number of confirmed cases has quintupled in the past week to more than 5,000. We do not yet have any idea when we will reach the peak of this frightening mountain, and how high that peak will be. But we already know that the far smaller nation of Italy has, as of this moment on March 17, more than 31,000 cases that have resulted in more than 2,500 deaths, despite doing far more in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. It is not that we have a smaller problem, but only that we may have begun our steep ascent a few weeks later. Nearly every day, new nations report outbreaks. This is clearly not a “foreign” virus, but a global pandemic.

We have built-in problems in the American system, most notably the lack of universal health coverage as a result of endless political spats over creating a system that better protects the working poor. Many of the restaurant and factory workers who may face layoffs will lose whatever coverage they had, or may no longer be able to afford it, at the very time when they are facing an existential public health threat. This threatens all of us with the possibility that some workers, unknowingly carrying the virus, may feel compelled to work if they can or simply be unable to visit the doctors they need to see. Our myopic approaches to health care have set us up for massive vulnerabilities in this regard. We seem not yet to fully understand that we are no stronger as a nation than our weakest links. One result of this crisis, however, may be a profound rethinking of the role of the federal government in ensuring some form of universal health care availability. The consequences of making health care unaffordable to the poor have never been laid bare before for us in the way that the coronavirus may do. Disasters can force soul-searching under the right conditions. The question is how deeply we are prepared to think about the issue.

The other question we have never faced before is how we will emerge from this crisis. After weeks or months of social distancing and self-isolation, how will we decide the time is right to emerge from our mental caves and greet other again, and join large crowds again? And how will we feel when we do it, and how comfortable will it feel? My hunch is that the human race is highly adaptable, but that there will be no very clear demarcation point when it is okay to say that the war is over.

This particular disaster may end not with a bang, but a whimper, followed by some happy parties among the most extroverted but also the most fearless, perhaps the most reckless, among us. I like to count myself a “compulsive extrovert,” my invented self-description, but I also like to think I know when to exercise some social caution based on circumstances. This may be a disaster where people like me eventually start to poke our heads out of the foxholes we reluctantly entered, not out of fear of social interaction, but to be sure the landscape is no longer infected.

But when the day comes, it will surely be nice to join a big party where the beer flows and greetings are plentiful.

Jim Schwab

Returning to Blogging as Usual

Posted on January 17, 2020 by admin

This blog has gone quiet for weeks until now, the second time since last May. My last post was about a month ago, linking readers to a newly released podcast in the Resilience Roundtable series for the American Planning Association. I will be doing more of those in coming months and will keep readers posted. After that, of course, followed the holidays, and some of my hiatus was associated with taking a little time off.

But as in the seven-week break early last summer, the extended break this time was primarily for medical reasons. Without going into details, I had some difficult surgery January 3 that was immediately followed, in post-op, by some complications from a pre-existing condition that made for a difficult release. I am just emerging from the recovery from all that, trying to assume most of my normal duties and functions but not always finding my usual level of energy to perform them, so jobs lag. I have had plenty of ideas for articles, but not the time or energy, but that is quickly changing. It just takes time.

Look for more very soon. One modest benefit of even a modest-length convalescence is the opportunity, when one is awake and comfortable enough, to read with focus. I did not waste the opportunity. Now I am ready to start sharing some of what I learned.

Once again, I am grateful for my readers, whose numbers have grown despite my absence from the scene, which tells me that people find recent or older writings via friends or the Internet, get hooked, and register as subscribers. That trust is precious to me, and I aim to continue earning it.

Jim Schwab

Twenty Thousand and Rising

Posted on August 30, 2019 by admin

What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen. I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling.

I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4 holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical history concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to Colorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a mad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, as an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move my class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change possible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a hard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related files, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.

I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that struck much of eastern Iowa and some neighboring states in June of that year, the planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related to natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities in Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such expertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they soon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the program, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such a course at the University of Illinois-Chicago with colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class the following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has continued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the subject matter for “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” has also changed. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching materials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script is rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation points to that statement.

Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I was preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for URP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to do in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture videos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that, from the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful and have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit of their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make clear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take. Some past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard mitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the challenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change, demographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.

Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that will change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my students had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday, August 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After Labor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels, to San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and Washington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter for at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost time with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest.

Jim Schwab

I Can See Clearly Now

Posted on July 4, 2019 by admin

Some readers may have noticed that it has been seven weeks since I last posted to this blog (May 13). That delay was not by design but resulted from circumstances. For two weeks immediately after that last item, I was largely on the road, but that has happened before without slowing my pace. What followed most certainly did.

In early April, after sensing some eye strain in late winter, I responded to notices from Pearle Vision that it had been more than two years since my last eye exam. My last prescription for glasses was in 2016. I figured an updated prescription would cure the problem, as it had before.

This time, the optometrist noted some indications of cataracts, though he stated that an ophthalmologist would have to determine whether they were serious enough to require surgery. I took note and arranged for such an exam. There was a little discussion of floaters, and I indicated they had not been a problem. He ordered new lenses, and by late that week, they were installed in my existing frames. I thought I was good to go.

I was dead wrong. Before the weekend was out, I returned to complain that the new lenses had done nothing to cure some blurring, which I attributed to a long-standing combination of astigmatism with my well-defined myopia. I had been near-sighted since childhood and had glasses since I was ten. I am now 69. Glasses have been part of my existence for six decades. The optometrist conceded that he had not tested for astigmatism, noting, to my surprise, that the 2016 exam had shown no sign of it. Astigmatism, which causes blurred vision, can wax and wane over one’s lifetime. In mine, apparently, it had become much less pronounced than I had realized. But he conducted a free second exam and made minor adjustments to the prescription to solve the problem.

By then, there were only two days before I left for San Francisco for the annual National Planning Conference of the American Planning Association. I had to leave with the existing lenses and wait for the new ones to arrive. Pearle called while I was still in California to say that they had arrived, and I visited their store the very evening I returned. I tried on the new lenses. There was still no benefit in clarifying my vision. I decided to be patient and see what would happen—but nothing. I began to realize other factors might be at work.

In scheduling the ophthalmology exam, I contacted the highly regarded clinic at Northwestern Medical Center, part of the Northwestern University hospital system. They first offered an appointment for May 14 because they were booked for a few weeks, but I was already in their system because of a different issue a year before. I had to decline; I would be flying to Winnipeg that day to speak at the Manitoba Planning Conference. The following week, I would be in Cleveland for the annual conference of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. We finally settled on May 30. My own schedule produced the delays.

Dr. Pyatetsky and me during a post-op appointment.

At that appointment, I met Dr. Dmitry Pyatetsky, who conducted the exam. He quickly informed me that my right eye had a serious cataract that needed surgery. The left eye had a smaller cataract, and the wise approach would be to follow with surgery on the second eye. Cataract surgery basically involves breaking up the cataract, which clouds one’s vision, and then replacing the natural lens in the eye with an artificial lens that provides 20/20 vision. I would no longer need glasses, except for reading and computer work. For the first time in my adult life, I would spend most of my day seeing clearly without glasses. Moreover, Dr. Pyatetsky chose to waste no time. Surgery on the right eye was scheduled for June 20, just three weeks later, preceded by some preparatory appointments including a biometric exam to acquire precise eye measurements. That exam also determined that there was nowhere near enough astigmatism to justify Toric lenses, which can correct astigmatism but involve an out-of-pocket expense in the low four figures. I would have spent the money if there had been a problem to solve that insurance would not cover, but I was relieved to find out otherwise.

In fact, I was relieved by many things I learned about modern eye surgery. We live in an age that has made routine many procedures that used to be either problematic or downright dangerous for past generations. I was aware of this already on an intellectual level, but this experience made it personal.

Just a year ago, as an adult nonfiction book awards judge for the Society of Midland Authors, I had read The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, a remarkable piece of medical history by Lindsey Fitzharris, for which our Honorable Mention was merely one of several prizes, topped by the 2018 PEN/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing. This graphic, often gruesome story made me acutely aware of the benefits we enjoy from medical advances, for only two centuries ago, it was demonstrably dangerous to visit doctors or hospitals, who understood nothing about germs and infections and seldom bothered to clean the instruments with which they performed their surgeries. The result was a high death rate but no grasp of their cause. The story details Dr. Joseph Lister’s struggle to prove that sanitation was essential, in the face of a medical profession in the Victorian era that preferred not to believe that its own practices put patients at risk. One can, of course, read much more about this monumental shift in medical thinking that put many benighted practices behind us. Nearly 15 years ago, in reading Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of President James A. Garfield, by Kenneth D. Ackerman, I learned that Garfield’s death in 1881 was more the result of medical malpractice and the refusal of his doctor to accept modern bacterial science than a direct result of the assassin’s bullet. Historically speaking, we are not so far removed from the Dark Ages, yet the medical advances of recent decades have been stunning.

As someone who will turn 70 late this year, I am experiencing a growing appreciation of all that is possible with modern medical practice. Old age no longer need be the cavalcade of horrors that it once was. What is true generally is certainly true of modern ophthalmology. The time is not long past when cataracts were simply a fact of advancing age. The Bible is replete with references to lost vision as a result of age, such as “Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see” (Genesis 27:1). The situation was common well into the 20^th century. Although medical history documents surgical procedures for cataracts dating back for many centuries, a close reading of the techniques mostly reveals what must seem a catalogue of horrors from the perspective of modern patients. Couching, in which the lens was pushed into the rear of the eye with a curved needle, was replaced in the 1700s, at least in Europe, by extraction, which broke up the cataract and sucked it out. Johann Sebastian Bach underwent couching but remained blind and, in his case, died four months later. Nothing about these procedures sounds pleasant or painless, or without profound side effects.

It was not until the 1940s that British ophthalmologist Harold Ridley hit upon the use of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), a type of plastic that lacks any inflammatory qualities (so long as it does not touch the iris) as an artificial lens implant, now known as the intraocular lens (IOL). Among the inspirations for this approach to restoring sight was the observation that Royal Air Force pilots in World War II showed no adverse impacts from absorbing PMMA when their fighter plane shields were shot out by German planes, leaving tiny shreds of PMMA shrapnel in their eyeballs. This biological tolerance for PMMA paved the way for the first transplant of an IOL in 1949 in London. Subsequent innovation introduced the use of phacoemulsification, which permits the use of ultrasound to emulsify the natural lens and eliminate the need for removal with an incision. In short, the past half century of medical improvements in this field has made a world of difference for patients like me in 2019. The surgical success rate is now somewhere around 99.5 percent. Especially considering that I had almost no other health problems that might interfere with recovery, I was happy to take those odds. In fact, by the time the second surgery was conducted, on the left eye, on June 26, I was mostly just anxious to get it all over with.

The reason was simple. Until April, I was not even aware I had a cataract and had never given the possibility of it much thought. However, by May, aware that new glasses had solved nothing but increasingly aware of my own blurred sight, I found myself increasingly limited in my ability to read or work efficiently. One turning point came while I was in Manitoba. My agreement with the Manitoba Planning Conference was both to lead a three-hour workshop on the opening day (Wednesday) and provide a keynote address on the closing day. The workshop posed little challenge because I had converted a lengthy article I had produced for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Natural Hazard Science, on “Planning Systems for Natural Hazard Risk Reduction,” into a teaching format with substantial audience participation. It was a small group in a small room, I knew the material thoroughly, and my need to rely on the screen to see my PowerPoints was minimal. Nothing challenged my visual acuity. Then, on Thursday, I was introduced to the format in the ballroom for the next morning’s keynote, in front of 250 Canadian planners. Two large screens would be on either side of me, facing the audience, but speakers should face the audience and not be looking at those screens, so another, smaller screen was set at the base of the dais, away from audience view, but allowing me to see the slide on display.

Presenting the keynote at the Manitoba Planning Conference in Brandon, Manitoba.

I quickly realized there was one problem: I could not see the slides clearly. I knew right then that I did not want to be squinting at slides in the middle of a tightly timed, 45-minute presentation. I simply had to know the slides intimately so that the broad image reminded me of what I wanted to say even if I could not quickly or clearly discern the details of a graph.

And so it was. I undertook the extra work of memorizing those details overnight because only rarely do I speak from a script. I prefer to be able to remember what I want to say about each slide, but under ordinary circumstances, I can also see that slide in front of me, on a laptop screen or, in this case, a screen sitting on the platform. In this case, I had to wing it. I did it, and all was well. The main lesson was that I realized I had a noticeable problem two weeks before the ophthalmological exam confirmed it. For some people, cataracts grow slowly and can remain small enough not to merit surgical attention for months or even years. In my case, the cataract grew quickly, and my life had to adjust accordingly.

Dr. Pyatestsky with his assistant (and sister) Julia, who plans to start nursing school.

All that said, the adjustment has changed a significant aspect of my life permanently. I have reading glasses for computer work and reading newspapers, books, and the like. But for all other purposes, including driving and physical activities, I now benefit from 20/20 vision. I am grateful to the medical staff at Northwestern, including Dr. Pyatetsky, for their outstanding care and patient services. They have been excellent. I am also simply grateful for living in the 21^st century. There was a time when people like me had few options once they had grown old “and their eyes grew dim.”

Instead, I can enjoy life, exercise safely, and continue to contribute to the world and community around me. I consider that the very essence of satisfaction with life.

Jim Schwab

Gratitude on Parade #4

Posted on January 27, 2019 by admin

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
I am devoting much of this week to people who contributed in significant ways to my early publishing career. For the last 35 years or more, I have mixed journalism and writing skills with technical and professional knowledge to fulfill my aspirations. Many people helped make that possible.

One of them was my advisor for the master’s program in journalism at the University of Iowa, John Erickson. I have no photo to offer from way back then or more recently. He is now emeritus professor, and I hope enjoying a well-earned retirement, but I have not heard from him in a long while.

Nonetheless, way back in early 1984, when I needed to decide on a master’s project to complete my degree requirements, I met with him to state that I wanted to turn my project into a published book when I was through. We had the choice of a practical journalistic project or an academic investigation on some subject related to mass communications. I chose the former, in the form of an oral history project concerning a major issue in Iowa at the time–the growing farm credit crisis.

Completely unfazed by my audacity, John quickly wrote out two titles of books he thought would help me think through my strategy. Both concerned oral history and interviewing techniques. I ordered the books, went to work, and began networking across the Midwest to find farmers to interview on the subject, eventually taping interviews with more than 70. When I had about 140 pages of a book completed, John insisted that was enough for the project and I should turn them in–and complete the book later. Three years after earning my degree, Raising Less Corn and More Hell was released by University of Illinois Press. Only after that, for fear of jinxing success, did he tell me it was the first master’s project in the school’s history, at least to his knowledge, to achieve commercial publication. But he provided steady encouragement all along the way and always seemed to know I could pull it off. Call him my chief enabler. I never gave him nearly enough credit, so this is my feeble partial payment. Thanks, John, wherever you are.

Posted on Facebook 1/22/19

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
Two days ago, I noted the important role played by Professor John Erickson in the development of my first book. As i roamed the Midwest collecting the interviews that were at the core of Raising Less Corn and More Hell, there were many people who were helpful, but some were especially supportive of my project from the moment we first met.

Among those people were Gary and Mary Beth Janssen. Gary went through tough times as a farmer in northern Iowa, and he and Mary Beth eventually moved to Emporia, Kansas, after she studied to become a teacher. In Kansas, Gary began to grow organic vegetables and provided fresh produce to local schools for school lunches.

But in the 1980s, while I was researching and writing my book, Gary provided numerous contacts and referrals within the farming community to make my work possible. We grew close enough that he and Mary Beth drove to Omaha for our wedding in June 1985. After the book was published, Gary was an enthusiastic grass roots promoter. Without him, much of it might never have happened.

Unfortunately, Gary died of complications from colon and liver cancer in September 2013. Mary Beth has survived him, and I am still grateful to both of them.

Posted on Facebook 1/24/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
I have discovered that my biggest obstacle to completing one of these tributes every day is not writing; that part is very easy for me. I barely know what writer’s block is. It is the fact that, Facebook being what it is, I prefer to find photos of the people for whom I am expressing thanks, and when, as I did this week, I reach into the more distant past, sometimes finding those photos is a challenge. For many people involved in helping me see my first book to completion, it just takes a while. Many photos I had in the 1980s preceded my ownership of a computer and have never been digitized, if I even had a photo in the first place. It is turning out to be a major undertaking with major competition for my time. I have had to compromise. Some photos are still on their way from sources I had to track down.

While I figure that out, I want to honor someone else of more recent vintage. At the end of 2013, a year in which I took 23 trips on APA business, five more teaching at the University of Iowa, and some personal trips, I realized I needed to do something serious to stay resilient. I enrolled in a new health club (X Sport Fitness) and arranged for a trainer just before New Years’ Day. I was about to undertake the new routine when I had to delay it because of a pinched nerve in my shoulder that occurred on that holiday. A few weeks later, I began my new routine with a good trainer, but he left abruptly a year later.

Then came Mike Caldwell, one of the most talented, thoughtful, creative, and dedicated personal trainers I am likely to encounter in that business. He pays very close attention to my development and ensures the routines are well attuned to my current situation. I have learned a great deal about fitness techniques and achieved things, now at 69, that I never did when I was much younger. I could not ask for more and have no regrets. Particularly at my age, fitness matters, and good advice in that arena matters even more. So here’s to Mike, a true pro at what he does.

Posted on Facebook 1/26/2019

Jim Schwab

Gratitude on Parade

Posted on January 5, 2019 by admin

Gratitude on Parade #1

Okay, call me a copycat. If an idea is good enough, why not copy it proudly? On New Year’s Day, I read in a Chicago Tribune column by Heidi Stevens about a woman, Jen Kramer, who began a daily effort on Facebook a year ago as #yearoflove. Every day she posted about someone who meant something.

It occurred to me that we all have many people for whom we should be grateful, and we may not always do a good job of saying so. I thought hard about whether I could sustain a daily effort for a year as Kramer did, and then I thought, you’re a professional writer. How hard can one paragraph a day be? So I decided to take the plunge, starting that day, with #gratitudeonparade. Friends will begin learning why I am grateful and to whom. Some of it may be random, and some may be well planned. It’s a daring commitment, so I’ll see how it goes. But I have a feeling I may learn much about myself by trying.

Once a week, I will compile these short entries into a composite blog post to expand the audience. So, if you miss the daily feed on Facebook, feel free to visit www.jimschwab.com/Hablarbooks.

Posted on Facebook 1/1/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade
Gratitude should start in the most logical places. My mother, Hazel Schwab, who has outlived almost all her peers, would probably prefer that I not state an age on Facebook (she does not own a computer and has never used the Internet), but I want to state that she has shown me and three siblings the power of determination and the will to live and resilience many times over. She and my father early on made sure that we were in a good school district and encouraged education, even though they finished high school but never attended college. When I moved to Iowa, later married in Nebraska, and ended up in Chicago, I knew she would rather I had stayed in Cleveland. Reluctantly at first, however, she learned pride that I had spread my wings and soared professionally, even if she never fully understood exactly what I did–it was a bit esoteric by her standards, not easy to explain to her friends. (Even my wife wondered what an urban planner was when she first met me.) But she was tough of mind, and if we did not always agree on some things, we learned to disagree. But by now I have watched her survive and surmount so many challenges, it is hard to escape the conclusion that I owe some of my own dogged persistence to my mother. Thanks, Mom. You get the first tribute.

With my brother, Jack, his son, Kyle, and Kyle’s two young sons, Ryan and Dylan, at Christmas.

Posted on Facebook 1/1/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade

I suffered a disappointing discovery yesterday while composing my blog post. Long-time friend and former University of Iowa professor Michael F. Sheehan had died on May 30. I was mentioning his role in my career and searched for an appropriate link only to find a May 30 obituary. He was 72. A physically fit ex-Marine, I expected he would live longer, and the obit does not say how he died. I had not talked to him in a long while, but I still felt a loss. He was the pivot point in a vital decision that changed my life.

In late 1981, I was pursuing options for graduate school after two and a half years as the executive director of the Iowa Public Interest Research Group. Mike was a fierce advocate for the environment and knew me in that role. At lunch one day, I mentioned that I had just explored a Ph.D. program in the University of Iowa’s political science program, but had a disappointing conversation in which I had told the head of the department’s MPA program that I had lobbied in Des Moines in my Iowa PIRG role. He responded, “That wouldn’t be relevant here. If you had done a study of lobbying . . . .”

Mike reacted to this curt dismissal of real-life experience by simply asking, “Why don’t you apply to our urban planning program? We love people like you.” I did, and the rest is history, so to speak.

But it was more than that turning point. In his classes, Mike had high expectations for me and tolerated no flimsy excuses if I fell short. That was of a piece with his approach to life. He never hesitated to be a thorn in the side of polluters, the powerful, and the pompous. By the time I completed my degree, he was entering law school so that, as they say, he could “sue the bastards.” The advocate in his soul triumphed over the academic. Several years later, still in his needling mode but living in Oregon (where he remained), he joked that I was the best of a “mediocre lot” in my class. But this time, I was ready with a verbal ambush. My first book was out, and the reviews were appearing.

“Do mediocrities get their books reviewed in the New York Times?” I asked.

I could hear the chuckle over my one-upmanship. “You know, I’ve been bragging on you, Schwab,” he replied. It was like that with him, and it was always fun. Today’s tribute of gratitude may be too late for Michael Sheehan to read, but it is owed nonetheless. Here’s to the man who guided me into a career I have never regretted.

Posted on Facebook 1/2/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade

Yesterday, I offered tribute to Michael Sheehan, who persuaded me to try a career in urban planning. Today’s honoree gets to enjoy reading his tribute, fortunately. University of Iowa Professor John W. Fuller followed closely on Mike’s heels by quickly hiring me as a research assistant as soon as I was accepted into the program. I worked with him year-round for more than three years in the Institute for Urban and Regional Research and in the Legislative Extended Assistance Program, neither of which remains extant. The latter produced policy studies each year from four-year colleges and universities for the Iowa legislature at the request of its leaders. In my final year of graduate study in both Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism, John sold those leaders on my combination of writing and analytical skills to produce what he promised would be a plain-English assessment of the farm credit crisis, arguably the biggest issue facing the state as the 1985 legislative session commenced. John knew I could also draw upon research I was doing for my master’s project in journalism, an oral history of the farm credit crisis, to humanize the report’s conclusions.

As the due date in February 1985 approached, I was so grateful for this remarkable opportunity that I pulled an all-nighter in the LEAG office at the Oakdale Campus in order to ensure that the 100-plus-page report could be printed and delivered to Des Moines on time. As for that master’s project, it eventually became a book—Raising Less Corn and More Hell—published by the University of Illinois Press in 1988. Just a few months later, he and Kathy regretted missing our wedding in Omaha because they were on an academic exchange at Universidad de los Andes in Venezuela, but later that summer they returned with a beautiful Andean marital blanket as a wedding gift.

But John was never done manufacturing opportunities. Two decades later, when the 2008 floods were swamping Iowa and the School of Urban and Regional Planning was seeking expertise to add some hazards training to the curriculum, it was John who spoke up and asked, “Why don’t we bring back Jim Schwab?” That was the beginning of an ongoing relationship that has allowed me to teach and mentor my own crop of students ever since then as an adjunct assistant professor, teaching an annual course on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery.

John and Kathy have offered their own home as a place to stay when I visit. This is not at all unusual. He and his wife, Kathy, have hosted and housed innumerable international visitors, students, and others for decades. They are among the most generous people I know. John is a profile in professional dedication and has been a powerful asset for the students he has taught for nearly four decades.

John Fuller (left) with me at his daughter Libby’s wedding near Cedar Rapids, April 29, 2017.

Posted on Facebook 1/3/2019

GRATITUDE ON PARADE
#gratitudeonparade

Last night, I failed to post my daily installment of Gratitude on Parade, but I will make up for it. My excuse is that a groin muscle strain flared up late in the day, making it uncomfortable to continue working, so I sat back and watched television instead. Jean was watching the Joy Reed town hall on MSNBC with Nancy Pelosi, so I joined her.

When such days occur for me, and they are rare, I think about people with much more serious illnesses or injuries, and how they demonstrate personal resilience. They all have lessons to teach the rest of us—to be grateful for their examples, and for our own generally good health. One of those people, who I know thinks the gratitude should run the other way because I have filled in for her as acting chair of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division for much of the year, is Allison Hardin. Allison, a planner for the city of Myrtle Beach, SC, was doing fine as the real chair through April, had the misfortune of nearly being killed in a serious auto accident in which a young man drove into the sports car Allison’s son Robert was driving, and in which she was a passenger. A long string of examinations, surgeries, and treatments has followed for both, and Allison has shown great courage in moving from wheelchair to walker to her own two feet while nurturing her son back to health as well, with the help of her husband. Through it all, she has coped with mountains of delayed e-mail on her job, tough decisions about her own future, and the usual major insurance and medical issues that accompany such a calamity. Allison has occasionally reminded me that she is aware that, while we planners talk about community resilience, it really all starts at a personal level.

I remain happy to be her “acting chair” of HMDR because, frankly, I have never faced a predicament like hers, hope I never do, and have no clear idea how well I would handle it But at least I have an example if I ever need one.

Allison, second from right, after presenting me with my “retirement” t-shirt at the HMDR reception at the APA National Planning Conference in New York, May 2017. Miki Schmidt and Susan Fox of the NOAA Digital Coast staff are to our left and right.

Posted on Facebook 1/5/2019

The Voice of Humility

Posted on December 18, 2016 by admin

There are times when we lose control of our plans, when we simply surrender to the power of microbes and let things ride. We may have made promises to get things done, and they will not happen. We must ride out the storm instead.

I have posted nothing new in two weeks not for lack of the desire to do so—indeed, I had several books and documents I planned to discuss on this blog—but because I had to surrender to the reality of pneumonia. I am on the rebound now, and I generally have a long history of quick and effective rebounds, but fever, chills, and the hacking cough that are typically prime symptoms of pneumonia had me in their firm grip for a week and a half, starting just a little less than two weeks ago and petering out just three days ago under the impact of antibiotics. As you can imagine, it was no fun.

It was not just a matter of sustaining this blog. I missed six straight days of work at the American Planning Association, and when you count the weekend between those days, you see the overall stretch of futility that ate up my time. I lay on the couch, on the bed, under blankets, alternately sweating and freezing, arranging for a visit with my doctor, then getting a chest x-ray to confirm the diagnosis. It is, of course, impossible to get comfortable, let alone maintain any significant energy level. I also needed to grade papers for a graduate seminar on disaster planning that I teach every fall for the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning. The grades are due shortly, yet I had none of the energy or attention span needed that first week to review 15- or 20-page papers that were basically case studies in disaster recovery. I finally got them done in the last few days. Meanwhile, here in Chicago, it was cold outside, not a great outdoor environment for anyone who had elevated temperatures. The fear of experiencing a setback until I was well on the road to recovery kept me from being very adventurous. But by yesterday I was willing and able to shovel snow.

Sometimes it seems that life is piling on. Just as I was descending into illness, without initially knowing it was pneumonia, my 5 ½-year-old laptop suffered the loss of its graphics drive, and the cost of repairs drove me to replace it, but it took me two days after learning this news from the Geek Squad before I could muster the energy to go to Best Buy, which owns Geek Squad, to choose a new computer. Even then, as I stood in the aisle waiting for a sales clerk to complete his business with another customer, I was looking around for a chair for fear I would not be able to stand long enough. But I did, and I chose a new Dell laptop, and then came the business of installing software and transferring my data. I left that to the Geek Squad. But altogether, presuming I would have had much ambition for such things, it meant that I had no functioning computer for almost four days. And then I still had to find the patience to learn how to make certain new features work. But I at least had the ball rolling again.

I will raise my voice again, in this blog and elsewhere, soon enough. But I was reminded that we all have these vulnerabilities. Unlike the Hazards Planning Center at APA, this blog is a one-man show. When that one man is under the weather, it all comes to a halt. But I am back. Happy holidays to all.

Jim Schwab

Just an Ounce of Empathy

Posted on July 27, 2016 by admin

Free clip art from Bing.com

Disability was one noteworthy theme during the presentations Monday night at the Democratic National Convention—how we perceive it, how we react to it, how we treat those with serious physical and mental limitations. It is no small subject, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump did himself no favors earlier in the year with his mocking imitation of a New York Times reporter, which the Democrats have already been using in ads to question his character. And rightly, for it does make you wonder what prompted such an immature outburst.

But I am not writing to dwell on the missteps of Trump, nor on the virtues of Hillary Clinton in this regard as extolled by speakers with disabilities on the stage in Philadelphia. That comparison is one of many people can decide for themselves. I am about to suggest a simple way of thinking about the issue that all of us can readily use even if we are not among the estimated 56 million Americans afflicted with such shortcomings.

It may be apparent to some that this blog suffered a short hiatus on my part since my last post. To some extent, that was because I found myself very busy chasing deadlines after my return from the Natural Hazards Workshop in Colorado on July 14, a day later than anticipated because of a flight cancellation due to storms in Chicago. I was then squeezed for time, with just six work days left until taking a vacation this week, with two of those largely devoted to participating in a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency symposium on urban sustainability. Nonetheless, by last Friday, I managed with some extra effort to clear the most urgent action items from my desk in preparation for a week off.

Then it hit. Maybe I was more vulnerable because of the time pressures, or maybe it was just something that caught up with me. There is no way to know, but my neck grew tight, and by the time I got home, fever and chills set in and my wife insisted on taking me to the emergency room. After three hours of tests and x-rays, strep and tonsillitis and similar problems were ruled out, but it was clear my right-side lymph nodes were inflamed and some sort of infection had taken residence inside my throat. The doctor gave me antibiotics, which I am taking for ten days, and they seem to be effective. But the illness certainly ruined an evening in which I was going to get a haircut and shop for groceries for an outdoor barbecue party in our backyard for my wife’s birthday on Sunday. I was pretty useless on Saturday, worn down and unable to swallow or talk without considerable effort, although I did help shop for groceries, including a birthday cake. I was not good for much more, and I was growing hungry because eating was such a chore.

That remained the case for much of Sunday, though I was energetic enough by then to join the party. I did not have nearly enough energy to play grillmaster in the hot sun, so someone else took over who enjoyed the job, fortunately. But all I could eat and swallow was watermelon and some cake and ice cream, none of which excessively challenged those inflamed lymph nodes.

Why share all this? My illness will pass, but when I watched Anastasia Somoza, a quadriplegic who also suffers from cerebral palsy, discuss attitudes toward disability on stage Monday evening, it reminded me of a thought I have had before. What if the condition I was suffering temporarily were something I had to live with permanently? How would I want to be treated? How would it make me feel, and how would it affect my outlook on life? Admittedly, a viral or bacterial infection generally does not leave lasting impacts, but there are other ways all of us can at least project ourselves into such situations to begin to understand how it feels to be the perennial underdog in life.

This thought actually first occurred to me more than 15 years ago, when I suffered a debilitating herniated disk in my lower back as a result of lifting a box of books the wrong way after having our house repainted. The pain was immediate and agonizing. I had to grab the rails to ascend and descend the stairs in our three-story house. Although I never needed surgery, and I am very glad because back surgery is generally brutal and barbaric (my father underwent it in 1968), I did undergo three months of strenuous rehabilitation therapy that required the discipline on my part to do sets of exercises three times daily between therapy sessions. I was determined not to suffer permanent impacts from the injury and followed the routine to the letter, ultimately achieving release from therapy two weeks early. There is a great deal to be said for willpower, and there is nothing wrong with having the pride in one’s willpower to struggle through such a situation successfully, as I did. I soon resumed jogging, and the experience is certainly a factor in my ongoing effort to remain physically fit.

But there is a great deal wrong with thinking we are better than anyone else because of such success. There is a great deal right with using such examples to encourage others faced with similar circumstances. The one thought that stuck with me afterwards was, What if I had not been able to recover successfully? What if I had suffered a permanent injury, like many veterans or just those born with serious physical limitations over which they never had any control? I know how humbling it was even for those three months to be unable to sleep in comfort, to be wary of being bumped by anyone in close quarters, and the challenge of climbing stairs. It does not seem so hard to me to be able to extrapolate that sort of experience into some empathy for those who may never be able to function as fully as the rest of us.

So, as you listen to this whole discussion about disability rights and how we treat each other, remember that this ought not to be a partisan matter. It was a Democratic U.S. Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, one of my personal heroes, who introduced and fought for the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it was a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, who signed it. Harkin was motivated in part by the experience of his younger brother, Frank, who was deaf. Disabilities cross party lines and so should our empathy and understanding of what it takes to include and respect all those who face challenges. By now this should be as settled an issue as universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery. Let’s be human, folks. In this particular instance, it does not take much to imagine ourselves in someone else’s wheelchair. Just think of the extraordinary exertions on behalf of others of one of our famous past presidents—Franklin D. Roosevelt. Enough said.

Jim Schwab

Home of the Brave

Book Reviews and Discussion with Jim Schwab

Category Archives: Personal health

Collateral Damage

Isolated Adjustments

America’s Public Health Disaster

Returning to Blogging as Usual

Twenty Thousand and Rising

I Can See Clearly Now

Gratitude on Parade #4

Gratitude on Parade

The Voice of Humility

Just an Ounce of Empathy