Lift Up Your Hearts!

Why are people so upset that some government workers are losing their jobs? Why are we not rather rejoicing that vast areas of waste and downright corruption and fraud are being exposed? For as long as I can remember—and that's well more than half a century—governmental inefficiency and waste has been a standard joke. But it's not funny. It is unethical, and has led directly to our country's unimaginable debt, and the financial disaster we are bequeathing our children and grandchildren.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency are heroes in my book. Why is it that the same people who just months ago wanted to force us all to switch to electric cars are now so upset by the thought of layoffs that they think it's reasonable and useful to destroy Teslas?

It really stinks to lose your job. We've been there, more than once. But government employees have been living in a fantasy world of job security. Private companies, from small family businesses to massive corporations, frequently face situations where they must let employees go: sometimes when the workers have done something unethical, sometimes when they are not doing their jobs well, and often because cold, hard, economic facts force the business to downsize.

Where was all this weeping, wailing, and wrongdoing when American manufacturing went overseas? When our IT jobs went overseas? When millions of workers were imported to keep agricultural wages artificially low? When slave labor became acceptable because otherwise the plantation system would fall apart? (We once fought an especially grievous war over that one.) All these caused millions of American families to become unemployed or to settle for low-paying jobs without the benefits we once had. Did Americans then rise up in protest, or did we just sit back and enjoy the benefits of cheap goods?

It stinks to lose your job, but as far as I can tell, the government employees facing that threat have been offered generous severance packages, much nicer than what most people get when they find themselves out of a job. Why should governmental workers be protected from what ordinary Americans face daily?

Sadly, too many federal judges are showing that they are living in the same fantasy world, by ruling that the government cannot fire its own employees, reorganize its divisions, or effect layoffs of its own workers. What business could possibly stay afloat under such conditions? What part of the Constitution guarantees that a government employee, once hired, has a right to keep his job forever? I can only hope that higher courts have better sense—and that the errant judges are overruled before the damage done becomes irrevocable.

And what's wrong for an employee to be asked to give an accounting for the work he is doing? I admit I don't like the idea of cutting out remote work, which was a positive step forward for job satisfaction and family life. But remote work—or any work for that matter—can only succeed if the tasks actually get done, and I don't see why it's a bad thing to require some accounting of the work that justifies one's paycheck.

I don't remember where I heard the following, but it neatly expresses the problem.

I know a guy in the IT sector who says that a man slept at his desk regularly through the day, but they could not touch him, unless he really botched up. That is someone who is stealing from this company. He is stealing his wages for work not performed. 

That struck me in particular, because of a situation from my own experience. I also knew an IT guy who regularly fell asleep at his desk—or on the floor of his office. He was also one of the most treasured employees because he got the work done, and then some, without counting the hours. He was brilliant, and did his work in a manner that worked best for him. The company had no objection to his unusual schedule because they appreciated what he brought to the table.

I would like to see a system that facilitates such flexibility. Requiring a brief summary of the week's accomplishments can allow such people to shine.

Doubting that most of America's workforce is as brilliant as my friend, I believe we could all benefit from such an exercise. The psychological advantage of focusing on "what did I accomplish?" instead of "did I put in my hours?" could be great.

As a genealogist, I've read a lot of obituaries, and written a couple myself. I don't think I've ever published one for someone I wasn't related to, but Tucker Carlson's obituary for his father, which I copy here from his X post, deserves special mention.

I very much enjoy listening to Tucker's interviews, and if I hear only a small fraction of his output, that's the fault not of his work but of higher priorities calling on my time. He's a controversial figure, but whatever you think of him, the man can write. And speak. And interview the most interesting people.

This obituary is remarkable as much for what it doesn't say as for what it does. Not knowing any of the people involved, I can't attest to the accuracy of Tucker's depiction of his father, but his spare brush strokes paint a vivid picture of a man who accepted the many slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and yet lived his life in duty and delight.

Obituary for my father.

Richard Warner Carlson died at 84 on March 24, 2025 at home in Boca Grande, Florida after six weeks of illness. He refused all painkillers to the end and left this world with dignity and clarity, holding the hands of his children with his dogs at his feet.

He was born February 10, 1941 at Massachusetts General Hospital to a 15-year-old Swedish-speaking girl and placed in the Home for Little Wanderers in Boston, where he developed rickets from malnutrition. His legs were bent for the rest of his life. After years in foster homes, he was placed with the Carlson family in Norwood, Mass. His adoptive father, a tannery manager, died when he was 12 and he stopped attending school regularly. At 17, he was jailed for car theft, thrown out of high school for the second time, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1962, in search of adventure, he drove to California. He spent a year as a merchant seaman on the SS Washington Bear, transporting cargo to ports in the Orient, and then became a reporter. Over the next decade, he was a copy boy at the LA Times, a wire service reporter for UPI and an investigative reporter and anchor for ABC News, covering the upheaval of the period. He knew virtually every compelling figure of the time, including Jim Jones, Patty Hearst, Eric Hoffer, Jerry Garcia, as well as Mafia leaders and members of the Manson Family. In 1965, he was badly injured reporting from the Watts riots in Los Angeles.

By 1975, he was married with two small boys, when his wife departed for Europe and didn’t return. He threw himself into raising his boys, whom he often brought with him on reporting trips. At home, he educated them during three-hour dinners on topics that ranged from the French Revolution to Bolshevik Russia, PG Wodehouse, the history of the American Indian and, always, the eternal and unchanging nature of people. He was a free thinker and a compulsive book reader, including at red lights. He left a library of thousands of books, most dog-eared and filled with marginalia. His reading and life experiences convinced him that God is real. He had an outlaw spirit tempered by decency.

In 1979, he married the love of his life, Patricia Swanson. They were together for 44 years, all of them happy. She died sixteen months before he did and he mourned her every day.

In 1985, he moved to Washington to work for the Reagan Administration. He spent five years as the director of the Voice of America, and then moved to the Seychelles as the US ambassador. In 1992, he became the CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and later ran a division of King World television.

The last 25 years of his life were spent in work whose details were never completely clear to his family, but that was clearly interesting. He worked in dozens of countries and breakaway republics around the world, and was involved in countless intrigues. He knew a number of colorful national leaders, including Rafic Hariri of Lebanon, Aslan Abashidze of Adjara, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, and whomever runs Somaliland. He was a fundamentally nonjudgmental person who was impossible to shock, and he described them all with amused affection.

He spoke to his sons every day and had lunch with them once a week for thirty years at the Metropolitan Club in Washington, always prefaced by a dice game. Throughout his life he fervently loved dogs.

Richard W. Carlson is survived by his sons, Tucker and Buckley, his beloved daughter-in-law Susie, and five grandchildren. He was the toughest human being anyone in his family ever knew, and also the kindest and most loyal. RIP.

It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.
— G. K. Chesterton

Despite being six foot four and nearly 300 pounds himself, Chesterton wasn't talking about obesity. Here's the context of the quote.

When I began this post (in 2012!), it was intended to be ruminations on Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, which I reviewed briefly here. The quotations I pulled out in preparation are below; almost 13 years later, I'd have to re-read the book to make any sensible comments, so I'm just going to leave the quotes as is, without the ruminations.

Happiness, some people think, isn't a worthy goal; it's a trivial, American preoccupation, the product of too much money and too much television. They think that being happy shows a lack of values, and that being unhappy is a sign of depth.

Some people associate happiness with a lack of intellectual rigor.

Of course, it's cooler not to be happy. There's a goofiness to happiness, an innocence, a readiness to be pleased. Zest and enthusiasm take energy, humility, and engagement; taking refuge in irony, exercising destructive criticism, or assuming an air of philosophical ennui is less taxing.

Other people cultivate unhappiness as a way to control others. They cling to unhappiness because without it they'd forgo the special consideration that unhappiness secures: the claim to pity and attention.

The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.

There's yet another group of people who have a superstitious dread of admitting to happiness, for fear of tempting fate. Apparently, this is practically a universal human instinct and seen in nearly all cultures—the dread of invoking cosmic anger by calling attention to good fortune.

If you don't believe you're happy, you're not. As Publilius Syrus observed, "No man is happy who does not think himself so." If you think you're happy, you are. That's why [Saint] Thérèse [of Lisieux] said,"I take care to appear happy and especially to be so."

A prayer attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo includes the line "shield your joyous ones" [the innocent and child-like]:

Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones;
sooth your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love's sake.

Episcopalians will recognize this from the Evening Prayer section in the Book of Common Prayer:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake. Amen.

Why worry about the joyous ones? ... We non-joyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion—to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.

There's a lot of misery in the world: pain, fear, tragedy, and immeasurable suffering. That is all the more reason to seek, find, create, and celebrate happiness when we can. Let's not play the "more miserable than thou" game. Let's dare to be happy, and encourage the joy of others.

Okay, NOW it's funny. At the time I was not laughing.

The doorbell rang. Normally, I'm more cautious and look before opening the door, but I was expecting a friend and so threw the door open with a cheery greeting. Imagine my shock when faced with a young man selling pest control.

I do try to be polite, so I calmly reminded him of the "No Soliciting" signs at the neighborhood entrances. That's when things got weird.

"Oh, I'm not a prostitute; I'm merely selling pest control."

"Which is soliciting."

"No it's not. Look it up on Google. Soliciting is...."

At that point I exclaimed something loud and unintelligible and slammed the door.

Five minutes later I could laugh.

He didn't even have the excuse of English being his second language, as he had no trace of an accent. Possibly one could blame a failure of 12+ years of school.

But what it sounded like at the time was that he was being cheeky, that this was a practiced response for the many people in our neighborhood who inform solicitors—politely or rudely—of the warning signs they should have seen upon entering. (Unless, of course, they were dropped in by helicopter or parachute.)

Either that, or he had been coached in that response by whatever pimp sent him here.

I've always been open to cute little girls in Girl Scout uniforms selling Thin Mints, and to the earnest band members from our local public school who once a year sell apples as a fundraiser.  Perhaps, however, we should consider these to be gateway drugs. I try to be kind to door-to-door salesmen, because Porter had such a gig one summer during college, and I know that "pimp" is not too harsh a word for the adults who profit by sending the innocent into such situations. That's just sleazy.

I have to give the Jehovah's Witnesses credit: they've taken to setting up on public land just outside of the neighborhood instead of knocking on doors and disrupting people's Saturday mornings. They can read and follow the rules.

Maybe I should resurrect my COVID-era door sign:

This picture showed up on my Facebook page. It's from the Babylon Bee, which I often, though not always, find funny. I wouldn't have given this article more than a passing glance, were it not for the fact that less than 24 hours previously we had seen an excellent and amazing production, by our church's Resurrection Players, of Beetlejuice, Jr.

Trump Issues New Striped Robes For Federal Judges

If you've never seen the show, this won't make sense, but if you have, the association may provoke a smile unintended by the Bee.

I remember the days when we were enthusiastic supporters of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. WFLN in Philadelphia, WXXI in Rochester, WMFE in Orlando. This was primarily because wherever we went, they were the stations of classical music. And PBS was where you could find great shows like Mystery! and Connections and Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

When that changed, I'm not sure. The biggest break for me came when WMFE split off their music and put it on a radio frequency we couldn't receive. It became all talk, all the time, and most of that did not interest me. I remained a huge fan of shows like Car Talk and A Prairie Home Companion, but found little of the other non-music talk worth my time.

I'm pretty sure we stopped our regular support of WMFE when we could no longer get the music, but Porter still listened to their shows during his morning and evening commutes. It helped distract him from the traffic, though it certainly didn't have a calming effect. I believe it was at about that point he started calling it National Socialist Radio. With good reason.

After he retired and spent less time in the car, our public radio consumption became rare, as we'd tune into something for a few minutes, then start to wish that we could cut off our tax contributions to the system as we had our personal money.

Sasha Stone's experience was more dramatic than ours. She was not only a great supporter of NPR/PBS, but was herself interviewed on Weekend Edition back in 2012. (Ms. Stone is another one of those people I would never have chosen to listen to—what do I care about Hollywood and the Oscars?—but once introduced, found her interesting and insightful.) That link takes you to one of her recent Substack posts. Caveat: I have only read the text, and not watched all the videos.

Sasha's own story is interesting enough, but what inspired me to include it here was that part of it pertains to New Hampshire. The context is NPR's substantial political bias.

Just look at NPR’s shameful coverage of the trans issue.... Search for any story that tells the opposing viewpoint ever. You won’t find it. For an ideology that the Democrats insist represents only 1% of the population, it sure is a popular topic at NPR. Searching just in the last year brings up hundreds, if not thousands of stories. They seem to never tire of different ways to tell the transgender perspective to their listeners and yet have no way of telling even one story that represents the alternative viewpoint.

Recently, in New Hampshire, a 23-year-old Democratic representative named Jonah Wheeler voted to protect women in sports, causing a major uproar in the city. His constituents demanded a town hall meeting, but Wheeler bravely stood up to them.

At the same meeting, a young man spoke before the crowd, asking the woman there what she would tell parents of detransitioners like him who had been convinced to have their testicles removed because that would make them women. He now has to live this way for the rest of his life.

NPR had no search results for Representative Jonah Wheeler. Certainly, none for whistleblower Jamie Reed, who was there to support Wheeler, and even stayed after to ensure he got to his car safely. Reed has been traveling from state to state to ensure laws banning “gender-affirming care” are passed.

But over at NPR, she doesn’t exist. And if she doesn’t exist, most of the people you know on the Left will never have heard of her, or this dramatic story playing out in New Hampshire.

If you want to see the videos of the speeches, you'll have to go to the whole essay. I did watch the ones pertaining to the New Hampshire story, which was probably not good for my blood pressure, but at least they're short.

I don't know the solution to the problem of funding the arts, or science, or education, or medicine, or almost anything for that matter. Generally, I'm for markets as free and control as local as possible; it's not so much that they do a great job, as that they do far better than any other system I've seen. It's like the saying that democracy is the worst form of government—except for all the others.

But there is definitely a place for government and governmental action. The trick lies in matching the action with the appropriate level. The further up the food chain we go, the greater the power and the money—and the greater the risk of tyranny and corruption. It also makes it possible, as in the case of PBS and NPR, for a single ideology to dominate, whether it's the medieval Catholic Church or a modern secular movement.

There's a lot to be said for the Principle of Subsidiarity. (See the top paragraphs at that link for further explanation.)

The Principle of Subsidiarity refers to the idea that decision-making authority should be placed where responsibility for outcomes will occur and in close proximity to where actions are taken. This principle emphasizes matching authority with responsibility and situating them as close as possible to operations for well-informed decisions.

Or as I frequently say,

Responsibility without authority is slavery; authority without responsibility is tyranny.

When an organization is financially dependent primarily on the direct support of the public (think NPR's fund drives), there's a smaller (though certainly non-zero) probability that it will become captured by an ideological power that cannot be trusted to serve the public's best interests. When an unelected governmental agency doles out huge sums of money for broadcasting, or education, or medical research, or just about anything, such that the entity cannot survive without the agency's funding, tyranny thrives.

Recently I received a notification from Ancestry.com offering me the opportunity to opt out of Mother's Day and/or Father's Day e-mails, in case they might cause me pain.

Dear Ancestry.com,

I appreciate the good intentions behind your desire not to add to any pain I might be feeling about those days into which our culture has chosen to distill the Fifth Commandment to a particular moment in time. I also understand that in so doing you are just following the crowd of companies that have decided it might be good business to show a little apparent sensitivity, as I wrote about last year in the case of Shutterfly.com.

But Ancestry, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? Honoring our mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers, and their mothers and fathers, is the whole reason for your existence.

The study of genealogy is "Honor thy father and thy mother" writ large. And Mother's Day and Father's Day are two of the most inclusive holidays possible. Everyone has a mother, and everyone has a father. That's basic biology, the facts of life. It doesn't say anything about how good a particular father or mother might have been, and neither, for that mother, does the Fifth Commandment.

A company whose core purpose is to connect people with their ancestors should know better than anyone that we research, discover, and honor our forebears not because they were particularly good, or bad—and everyone has plenty of both in his family tree—but because they are ours, and without them we would have no existence at all.

I think that's worth celebrating. If you don't, that's none of my business. But Ancestry.com certainly gets plenty of my business, because of its core purpose and resources—so I find its jumping on the current bandwagon of corporate conscience amusingly ironic.

Grace's next appointment is May 6. In the meantime, she has started on the new medication, Koselugo, and has been doing really well. This is the first time she has had to swallow pills, so she spent quite a bit of time practicing with Tic Tacs while waiting for the medicine to arrive. (Swallow one, chew one.) The candies are slightly smaller than the real deal, but they at least taught the idea and technique of swallowing a pill without chewing it. They tried to get the pharmacist to make up practice pills of exactly the right size but without the drug, but he thought that was a crazy idea and refused their request. Considering that the suggestion was made by a friend of ours who is a speech therapist, and speech therapists know all about teaching people to swallow, I'm inclined to think that it was the pharmacist who was the crazy one here. No matter now—Grace has been swallowing the real pills for over a week, and only occasionally needs to try more than once to get it down.

She was able to begin the treatment because although on retest one kidney number was still a little concerning, the other was fine, and her kidney ultrasound was normal. So they're still pushing fluids, but there was no reason not to go ahead with the new drug.

So far Grace has experienced no side effects of the medication. it's very early yet, of course, but we'll take all the good news we can get for as long as we can get it!

Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!

Happy Easter, one and all!

The following post is from April 2017. I still like it, so you get it again (with a few modifications).

Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. — Hebrews 12:2

This is the time of year when Christians make special recognition of Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection. I love the Holy Week services, from Palm Sunday to Easter and everything in between. Having spent much of my life in more determinedly Protestant churches, I missed walking with Jesus through the momentous events between those two happy celebrations. It's a great way to prepare one's heart for Easter.

I have to ask myself: What does Jesus think of the events leading up to Easter? Not our church services, but the actual events, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through his agonizing in the Garden of Gesthemene, his last Passover with his disciples, his betrayal, trial, and crucifixion, and that mysterious time between death and resurrection. What does he think of it all? I don't mean then, while he was going through it, but now. Looking back, if that has any meaning in his case.

I asked myself this question back in 2017 because I was thinking about childbirth. It seems ridiculous to compare the pains of childbirth to those of crucifixion, let alone the mental, emotional, and spiritual agony of all the sins and sorrows of the world, but bear with me here.

Setting aside the difference in scale, I think there are important parallels. In each case, there is pain, anguish, fear, physical and mental exhaustion, and reaching the point where you just know you can't go on any longer, followed by the unimaginable, unsurpassable thrill of victory, of success, of achievement—and the birth of something new, wondrous, and beautiful.

Most mothers I know like to exchange birth stories, in all their glorious and grisly detail. Those are "then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars" moments. But the toil and pain are remembered, not relived. We tell these "war stories" because we are justifiably taking credit for our part in the miracle. The pain has been crowned and glorified by its accomplishment.

Nor do we regale our children with the horrors of what it cost us for them to exist, at least not if we're psychologically healthy ourselves. If our child were to start to focus on the pain of childbirth, we would quickly tell him, "You're missing the whole point. Sure, it was a difficult process, but it was worth it. What matters is not the suffering, not the effort. What matters is that you were born! The pain is in the past, and our family is immeasurably greater because of it. The whole world is greater because you are here. That is the point. Be thankful for what I did for you, but don't dwell on it. Focus on using your uniqueness to be the best person you can be, to bless the family—and the world—you were born into. That, not your grief at my sufferings, nor even your gratitude for them, is what makes me happy and overwhelmingly glad to have endured them. Go—live with joy the life I have given you!"

So I wonder. Is it possible that Jesus has similar thoughts?

It's good to be reminded of the events that birthed our post-Easter world, and not to take lightly the suffering that made it possible. However, some people, many preachers, and even a few filmmakers appear to take delight in portraying Christ's agony in the most excruciating (consider the etymology of that word!) detail possible, even, like the medieval flagellants, attempting to participate in it. Even less extreme evangelists and theologians spend more ink and energy on Jesus' death than on his resurrection.

Could it be that Jesus looks back at that time with joy, knowing that he accomplished something difficult, important, and wonderful? Is it possible that he sometimes looks at us and thinks, You're missing the whole point? That it would rejoice his heart if we thought less about his death and more about how to use the new life he has given us?

Go—rejoice—live!

Reprising my favorite Holy Saturday cartoon.  Actually, it's the only Holy Saturday cartoon I know, but it makes me smile every time.

The following is almost entirely a reiteration of a Holy Week post from 2010. Fifteen years more of life experience has only sharpened the emotions I was feeling then.

Is there anything worse than excruciating physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual torture and death? It takes nothing from the sufferings of Christ commemorated this Holy Week to pause and consider a couple of other important persons in the drama.

I find the following hymn to be one of the most powerful and moving of the season. For obvious reasons, it is usually sung on Palm Sunday, but the verses reach all the way through to Easter.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry;
Thy humble beast pursues his road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
o'er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
look down with sad and wond'ring eyes
to see the approaching sacrifice.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
the Father on his sapphire throne
expects his own anointed Son.

Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O God, thy power, and reign.

The Father on his sapphire throne expects his own anointed Son. For millennia, good fathers have encouraged, led, or forced their children into suffering, from primitive coming-of-age rites to chemotherapy. Even when they know it is for the best, and that all will be well in the end, the terrible suffering of the fathers is imaginable only by someone who has been in that position himself.

And mothers?

The Protestant Church doesn't talk much about Mary. The ostensible reason is to avoid what they see as the idolatry of the Catholic Church, though given the adoration heaped upon male saints and church notables by many Protestants, I'm inclined to suspect a little sexism, too. In any case, Mary is generally ignored, except for a little bit around Christmas, where she is unavoidable. But in Holy Week, it's important to recognize that, whatever else Mary may have been and done, on Good Friday she was a mother who had just lost her son.

Did she recall then the prophetic word of Simeon when Jesus was but eight days old: "a sword shall pierce through your own soul also"? Did she find the image of being impaled by a sword far too mild to do justice to the searing, tearing torture of watching her firstborn son wrongly convicted, whipped, beaten, mocked, crucified, in an agony of pain and thirst, and finally abandoned to death? Did she find a tiny bit of comfort in the thought that death had at least ended the ordeal? Did she cling to the hope of what she knew in her heart about her most unusual son, that even then the story was not over? Whatever she may have believed, she could not have had the Father's knowledge, and even if she had, would that have penetrated the blinding agony of the moment?

In my head I know that the sufferings of Christ, in taking on the sins of the world, were unimaginably greater than the "mere" mental and physical pain of injustice and crucifixion. But in my heart, it's the sufferings of God his Father and Mary his Mother that hit home most strongly this Holy Week.

Who is Bill Maher, and why does he deserve a place in my Heroes category?

No one who knows the deep extent of my ignorance of pop culture (among other things) will be surprised that until I looked him up on that great foundation of American knowledge and ignorance, Wikipedia, I had no idea who Bill Maher was. Now I know he's a comedian, politically and socially liberal, and a potty-mouth. There are issues on which Maher and I agree, and I've reluctantly come to accept the need to endure crude speech because these days I know so many otherwise highly intelligent and reasonable people who for reasons unknown apparently cannot speak without being vulgar. However, I find modern comedy generally too edgy for my taste, so I'm unlikely to add Maher to my list of favorite speakers.

Thus it was only through a friend (also intelligent, reasonable, potty-mouthed, and one of the funniest people I know) that I heard the following monologue (13 minutes).

What I find amusingly frustrating is that Maher's simple description of spending time with President Trump has people on both sides of the aisle asking, "Has Bill Maher gone MAGA?" No, he hasn't; he's just being a reasonable human being, the way that was standard not all that long ago.

I suspect he will take a lot of heat for being reasonable—lives have been ruined for less—and he knew it before deciding to speak out. But he spoke the truth anyway, and that makes him a hero to me.

It was eye-opening, when we first visited Switzerland, to discover that they don't refrigerate their eggs. Nor do they get sick from that practice. Why must we refrigerate American eggs? Here's an Epoch Times article that explains why we are once again being given the short end of the gustatory and nutritional stick.

Being raised in the United States, I was startled during my first trip out of the country. I noticed that the eggs at the store were not refrigerated. How is this possible? ... I gradually came to realize that the United States is the outlier, apparently the only country in the world where eggs go from the chicken to the refrigerator, both at the store and at home.

The United States seems to be the only country in the world that requires the washing of eggs before they are sold. As a result, the outside membrane—called the cuticle—is washed away, leaving them vulnerable to outside bacteria and other sources of spoilage. That’s why they must be refrigerated. ... However, if you don’t wash away the cuticle, they can sit happily on the counter for a very long time and be ready to eat anytime.

It’s because of Big Agriculture and industrial methods of egg harvesting. They pack chickens in huge warehouses inches apart and in tight layers. The whole place is a gigantic mess because machines can’t stop the natural function of the digestive system. In essence, the place is filthy. As a result, washing the eggs is absolutely necessary to remove all the pathogenic muck.

The industry, then, lobbied the government over decades to make this a general rule, providing them with a level competitive playing field with small farmers who run much cleaner operations. ... In effect, the USDA and the FDA have adopted rules on behalf of the biggest players in the industry while forgetting about the small farmers.

Maybe in the future, Americans will have the right to raise and sell eggs without washing off the protective layer from the shells. Maybe in the future, we will stop being seemingly the one outlying country in the entire world that routinely refrigerates our chicken eggs? We shall see.

Maybe in the future we will have better access to eggs bursting with nutrition and with beautiful, deep-golden yolks that come from a natural diet that includes bugs and a variety of vegetation, not something added to a grain-based diet just to make the eggs look good.

We walk by faith, not by sight. — II Corinthians 5:7

The "faith" part is still strong, but the "sight" part is hard to take.

For several months, to all appearances Grace has been as happy and healthy a three-year-old as anyone could want, free at last of medications and living a normal life except for the more frequent medical examinations and tests. Her language has been exploding; she is bright and funny and happy. She delights in her family, and frequently initiates video calls with Grandma, Dad-o, and Noah.

But NF1 (neurofibromatosis type 1)—a genetic disorder that Grace was born with, though it was not discovered until after her second birthday—has long been the elephant in the room. For a year NF1 considerations had to take a back seat because of the immediate need to deal with the dinosaur in the room, her JMML (juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia), which was caused by the NF1 mutation. Thankfully, for all that time the leukemia was the only manifestation of the disorder.

Actually, another problem had been there all along, but was hidden. As you may remember, her audiologist noticed a mild hearing loss in her right ear at her first exam, and again subsequently—but in every case there was something else to blame it on (a cold, COVID). Now, however, the doctors have turned their attention to it, and to a small lump Heather had noticed in that ear. After months of bouncing around—from "no worries, it's just fluid in her ear," to "maybe it's a neurofibroma, we'd better do some testing," to "it might be a fibroma, but that's not causing her hearing loss, so we'd better do some more testing," to "great news, it's not an NF1 fibroma at all, but we're going to take biopsies to be sure," to "oops, the biopsies say it's definitely a plexiform neurofibroma, and the options for treatment are not pleasant." And then on Wednesday, "the neurofibroma is much larger than we thought, and Grace needs to start on a novel medication that has all sorts of potential nasty side effects, for which she'll need to learn to swallow a pill whole twice a day—and take it for at least two years, maybe for life." Knowing Grace, she'll take it all in her stride, but it's rather hard for this Grandma's heart to take.

In Heather's words:

We had our appointment with the NF1/oncology doctor yesterday. It turns out the neurofibroma is even bigger than we thought. In addition to what we already knew, which is that it goes from her external ear where we can see into her middle ear, it also extends down under her ear into her parotid gland which is a salivary gland in the cheek. This is a plexiform neurofibroma, which is something that has actually been there since birth. And it has grown over time. (There are other neurofibromas that can come later possibly, but they are not the plexiforms.) This plexiform right now is benign, but it could potentially become malignant at some point. An initial screening has indicated that this one is one step towards becoming malignant, but they are still unsure of how many steps the body takes to get there.

Grace will be going on a medicine which is designed to shrink the tumor, and it may prevent some other kind of tumors. This medicine can have some unpleasant and even dangerous side effects, including diarrhea and rashes, vision impairment and heart issues. So Grace will be going in monthly and then every 3 months to check on all those functions. Right now, the plan is for her to take this medicine for 2 years, and then reevaluate, based on new research and her body's response to the drug.

One fascinating thing that I learned yesterday is that the longer hair on her right side that we have noticed since she was very young is related to this neurofibroma. The doctor said that because of extra vascular activity on that side it is not surprising that it would cause faster hair growth. When I heard that, I went back to my list of Grace's symptoms that we made before her NF1 JMML diagnosis while we were trying to figure out what was going on with her. I noted that she also would get redness on her right cheek when she ate sometimes. We thought at the time it was an allergic reaction, but it is likely due to the extra vascular activity. (It still happens sometimes.)

This will be TMI for many of you, but there are several medical people who will read this and be curious about the drug. It is called Koselugo (selumetinib) and you can read all about it here. When I think of the terrible potential side effects of this very new drug—it was granted FDA approval only in 2020—I remind myself that until five years ago there was nothing they could do for inoperable neurofibromas but let nature take its course, likely with effects worse than the drug.

Some of you may be wondering (I hear you Grandma!) why could they not see this in the imaging. The reason stated is that the plexiform neurofibromas are a soft and spongy tissue, and is easy to not notice them, and/or think that they are something else. The ENT even said that it's made of the same kind of tissue that your outer ear is made of anyway, so then it's really hard to distinguish.

On top of all that, Heather just added:

Grace's kidney numbers from her lab draw yesterday were concerning to the doctor, so she's getting another draw today and then an ultrasound on Tuesday.

Prayer requests:

• That Grace will be able to swallow the capsule (twice a day!).
• That she will not have any serious side effects. We would also appreciate if she didn't have any other side effects. It's been really nice the last few months to not have to deal with diarrhea.
• That the medicine will do its job, which is to shrink the tumor. I forgot to ask if her hearing loss is permanent or if it could come back with tumor shrinkage.
• That the results of her kidney tests will be good news.

Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Tomorrow (April 9) is a big meeting with Grace's doctors to discuss how to move forward with her ear situation. The results of her biopsies were not great news. It gives one the ping-pong ball feeling: No worries, it's just fluid in her ear—Maybe it's a neurofibroma, we'd better do some testing—It might be a fibroma, but it's not causing her hearing loss, so we'd better do some more testing—Great news, it's not an NF1 fibroma at all, but we're going to take biopsies to be sure—Oops, the biopsies say it's definitely a plexiform neurofibroma, and the options for treatment are not pleasant.

As usual, Heather says it best. You can see some other news and pictures as well on their site.

Grace's NF1/oncology doctor called Jon with biopsy results on Friday. It is the opposite of what we were hoping. Both biopsies indicate plexiform neurofibroma and it's really one big tumor that connects from the outside where we can see to the inside behind the eardrum. Surgery in this delicate area is not advised. We will have a meeting with the doctors Wednesday to discuss treatment. Some good news is that Jon has talked with other NF1 parents whose kids have done well on the medicine.

That news was a blow, but I am doing better after attending a prayer meeting on Friday and church on Sunday. I am holding onto the hope that God is still working and will heal her one way or another and in his timing.

Both Jon and I are going to the meeting tomorrow, so we can be clear on the options, side effects, pros, cons, etc.