I Am the n of 1

Are you getting the COVID vaccine?

That decision was made for some people well in advance of the release of the vaccines. Some people heard what the needed to hear from corporate media outlets, while others heard the directives from state and local government officials. Once the vaccines were released, they did what the needed to do to find and secure their doses, even if some of the tactics used might be considered by some to be questionable. I would never “out” anyone, but I have, between my husband and I questioned the tactics of some people we know.

Many people did what I have done and spoke with their primary care physician, or a specialist, who has provided personal care for them. Ideally those doctors have done their due diligence as medical professionals and have looked at the available date regarding vaccines and can make appropriate recommendations to their patients. Several of my family members sought input from their primary care provider. My doctor gave me her feedback on the subject and answered one particular question I had asked her regarding antibody testing.

For some getting the vaccine was never a question. Many people were eager, if not desperate, to be vaccinated. For others, the vaccine is out of the question. For many of us, the vaccine is a difficult question without a satisfactory answer.

Even though I spoke with my doctor, with whom I have had a professional relationship as her patient for more than 15 years, and even though I have done a great deal of reading, even though I have taken the time to do a risk benefit analysis, I still have not come to a conclusion that I find to be convincing.

People would wonder why I could possibly do anything other than step in line and roll up my sleeve. Techniques vary between near bribery, like a promise for a return to all of the things we love and miss if we get our shots, to berating the questioning. The Detroit Free Press recently ran an article in which a nurse who works at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor angrily chided local residents guaranteeing that they will either choose the vaccine or end up on her floor with the virus.

For me, bribery that comes from the government, especially the government of this state, is just another lie, or at best another goal post that will ultimately be moved, just as goal posts have been moved since “two weeks to flatten the curve,” now well over a year ago.

The threat of an angry nurse, well I don’t want to be too judgmental. She is likely very frustrated. I volunteered, completed observation hours, and even worked for a short, dark period at St. Joe’s in Ann Arbor. I was a central monitor tech, watching assigned monitor pods of patients who were on telemetry units throughout the hospital. I know that CMTs and nurses alike work 12 hour shifts with only one 30 minute break. I found that to be ridiculous then, and I still find it to be ridiculous. Do you want the people who are responsible for your care to be walking around half awake: Probably not.

Even understanding that level of fatigue and frustration, the morality associated with getting, or not getting, this virus, and now with getting, or not getting, the vaccine is bizarre. People don’t direct the level of animosity that they direct at people who get the virus or reject the vaccine, even temporarily, toward people who get any other infection, even an STI!

Still other people wonder how I could even consider taking the vaccine, based on everything from my faith to my libertarian-leaning political philosophy.

My worldview does call me to consider everything in light of the faith to which I adhere, but I rarely find that faith is in conflict with modern medicine. Those instances are rare, though they would be significant should they arise.

I am aware of the of the PerC6 cells that were used in creation of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that are not components of the mRNA vaccines. Those for whom the components, mechanisms of testing, or any other consideration, are a matter of conscience should take those things seriously and should have the freedom to follow their conscience and to make the choice that they believe to be morally correct.

I have personally taken vaccines and shots since I was young. I used to go weekly for a shot to treat my seasonal allergies, and I quite frankly would do it again as successful as that treatment was.

My libertarian philosophy, that is a challenge. After having evaluated much of the evidence surrounding the government’s response to the virus, note that language – not the virus itself, but the government’s response especially in states like Michigan that are still not open and still mandating behavior, I have come to the conclusion that many government officials are not remotely following the science but are making random decisions that are at best inept and at worst sinister power grabs. Evidence is emerging in our state in court that this was indeed the case in Michigan.

Ultimately, even though I have done my due diligence, that I do whenever I am prescribed anything new or hear or read about anything new – even natural products, I am wary. I am wary like I always am before accepting or taking anything new because I am the n of 1.

No one else, not politicians nor virtuous, vaccination proponents nor angry nurses nor my doctor herself, however well-meaning she is, knows exactly how the vaccines would affect me.

If the decision regarding the vaccine was easy for you, either for or against, you are among the fortunate ones in some ways.

Understand though that whatever your decision, the most important thing is that you have the right to make your decision, to do your own risk-benefit assessment. Each individual should maintain that right, whether or not the decision that another person makes is the one that you would make, and no government agency should compel an individual to choose as you would have them choose.

Not only is there no government entity in existence that is capable of making a risk-benefit assessment for each of its citizens, but also there is no government entity that has the moral foundation from which to make those kinds of choices for the individual.

If you took the vaccine but were hesitant, or if you haven’t taken the vaccine and may do so at some point, or if you have declined it after much consideration, then you too understand the conundrum of being the n of 1.

A Tale of Two Women

They have experienced the worst of times, and they have enjoyed the best of times.

Their lives have been similar in ways as they lived through turbulent times in our nation and have seen, and have experienced personally, some of the wrongs that were committed during times of racism and oppression in our nation. They have also witnessed, and have worked in different ways to bring about the changes that have taken place in our nation as it has moved to right the wrongs of the past. At times during their lives, they would have had a great deal in common as it related to their worldviews.

At some point though, it seems that their lives diverged.

Maxine Moore Waters was born in St Louis in 1938. In 1971, she graduated from the California State University, Los Angeles with a degree in sociology. She began her career as a legislature representing California’s 29th district in 1991. She has since continued on that course as a congresswoman representing the Democratic party in California’s 43rd congressional district.

Perhaps many would choose Waters as a person to emulate or recommend as a person to whom their daughter could look for direction or inspiration.

But if one were to listen to the words of Waters in the recent past, one would hear anger directed toward many of the people of this country, including some of the people who she has been elected to represent, and one would hear contempt for the constitution that she has sworn to uphold for the past 30 years, as well as for the country that has ultimately given her the opportunity to live the life she has chosen to live.

In June of 2018 Waters was filmed making the following remarks to her supporters gathered at the Wilshire Federal Building: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Her reference to “that Cabinet” was directed toward members of then President Trump’s administration.

Her most most recent comments, once again on film, gaining public attention came just prior to the verdict in the Derek Chauvin: trial “We’ve got to stay in the streets, and we’ve got to demand justice,” she urged the crowd, who earlier had been chanting. We’re looking for a guilty verdict” in the Chauvin case, Waters said. “And if we don’t, we cannot go away, we’ve got to get more confrontational.”

In both cases, Waters’ comments were considered by many as irresponsible at best, and inciteful on a level unbecoming for a nearly lifelong government official. In both cases, her words are available for the listening.

Waters will continue to represent her district as she won reelection in 2020. Her current term will end in 2023. Perhaps she will retire at that time as she will be nearing, or past, her 85th birthday, and she can truly appreciate the good things that her career has brought her.

Carol Miller Swain was born in Bedford, Virginia in 1954. Swain attended Roanoke College, Yale Law School, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Swain has recently retired from her career as a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. Now listed in searches as a “conservative commentator,” Swain has said “the world is my classroom.”

During an interview with Candace Owens, Swain shared some of the details of her life including growing up in a “two room shack” with nine siblings, her mom, and her stepfather. Swain spoke of the kind of poverty she experienced in rural West Virginia during her youth, living without plumbing in that shack with walls that were basically “cardboard with wallpaper over the top of the cardboard.” She spoke of failing a year of school after having missed 80 of 180 school days during a particularly harsh winter; the family had neither the clothing nor the boots to protect them from the elements should they have attempted to make the trek to school.

Swain married at the age of 16. She pointed out during her interview with Owens that she was not pregnant at the time of her marriage, wanting viewers to note that even then she believed it was important to be married prior to beginning a family. By the age of 20, she was the mother of three children. She then shared that she had suicidal ideations in her early 20s, taking pills, but always planning and desperately hoping to be “rescued.”

Swain told Owens, “I should have died of all of that, except God had a plan for my life that was bigger than me.”

Swain’s life progressed from those difficult times to a successful undergraduate experience at Roanoke College and continued on to graduate school.

Swain recalled one encounter with a professor while she was attending grad school: “One professor screamed at me one day: ‘You’ll never be able to change the fact that you’re a black woman.'” Swain continued with her reflection on that incident: “The message was that you’re black; you’re handicapped; and there’s nothing you can do about it. It was graduate school, and the theories of oppression was when I learned you’re poor; you’re black; you have children; you’re female; you’re oppressed. By then I was already successful. It was too late, but had I gotten those messages as an undergraduate, I’m just not sure how I would have dealt with it.”

It is quite likely that Swain has been deemed a “conservative commentator” due at least in part to her battle against many of the theories that are now being taught at universities throughout the country. She is a proponent of seeking out varying ideas and of challenging one’s self rather than falling victim to the mentality of victimhood that she encountered during graduate school. For several years Swain has publicly expressed her concerns about the Marxist nature of BLM, and more recently she has been openly critical of critical race theory.

Ultimately, Swain was indeed successful by the time she entered graduate school and encountered those messages of that might have led another person, perhaps a younger person, down a very different path. And regardless of her critics both past and present, she continues to be successful now.

As she concluded her interview with Owens, Swain offered the following guidance: “You need to hang in there and watch your life unfold. Life is a journey. It took me 40 years to figure out who I am and what I was meant to do. It doesn’t have to take you that long. That’s my message. Be encouraged. Be Yourself. Be strong.”

The lives of each of these women are intricate stories from which not all conclusions can be drawn based on the few chapters that have been revealed publicly. I know less about the story of Maxine Waters than I do that of Carol Swain. Honestly, I was drawn to Swain’s story because hers is the story of a victor, and hers is the message that could inspire others to live the life of a victor.

Still, it is not my place nor my intention to pass judgment on these woman, nor to create a villainess or a heroine. However long it has taken them to find their voices, both women continue to use their voices. It is based on their own words, as heard by thousands of people, that I have drawn my own personal conclusions. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

Light and Water

How do you make a memorable first impression?

I have already shared a link to one of my previous blog posts, but I thought I would formally introduce myself in this week’s post.

I could tell you that I am the daughter of my two parents who remain married to this day. Or I could tell you that I am a big sister, the oldest of four girls, the youngest two of whom were adopted at a young age as foster children in our home. I could tell you that I am an auntie to three nieces and a nephew, two of whom are now productive young adults, one of whom is making her way through the single digits on her way to her 10th birthday, and one of whom I haven’t seen since her first birthday due to unfortunate circumstances.

I could tell you that I am a wife, a second wife, married to a man with two adult children and now three grandchildren born over the course of the nearly fifteen years we have been married.

I could tell you that professionally I have been employed by a newspaper where I did everything from selling advertisements to overseeing publication of legal notices to editing copy, and even to the one thing that I had studied to do – writing a little bit of copy. I have been a purchasing agent for an ingredients broker. I spent one of the most miserable months of my life working at a hospital as a central monitor tech, watching the heart rhythms and vital signs of patients who were hospitalized; I took the job, as did several other people, who had been offered the hope of moving to another position within the hospital, in physical therapy for me, if we put in our one year like good soldiers.

Though all of that information about me is true, the first part of it sounds like an assignment I completed in a communications class, and the second part of it sounds like text one would put on LinkedIn.

The first time I saw this amazing picture, I was so drawn to it that I knew I had to find it, screenshot it, and eventually put it in a place where I would be able to enjoy it daily in my home.

In it I saw the vibrant sunrise that reminded me of the serene joy that I have experienced at the beginning of the day. I was reminded of the mornings when I would get up, dress in my laid out running clothes, tie my shoes, and head out the door into the dimness of the predawn, knowing that I would be running as the world went from silent to awake, hearing the birds sing and seeing the day break across the horizon.

It reminded me of some of the best mornings ever, the mornings when I would awaken in my tent, unzip the tiny half circle window near the tent’s base and see the sun accenting fluffy, popcorn white clouds scattered across the sky.

It drew me with the arc of water radiating color sparkling through crystal. It made me think of the times, both long past and so very recent, starring at the sun glistening on the water whether a local river or one of the most amazing bodies of water that humans get to enjoy, our Great Lakes.

It beckoned me back to times I had spent in the cool water of those lakes, strolling, playing, posing for pictures, and spinning on an inner tube as the waves pulled me back to the sandy shore.

I could almost feel the freedom of pushing off the wall in the pool where I used to swim, the cool water washing over me, the light flickering off of the water broken by my stroke, the sense of weightlessness that one gets as they glide through the water when their stroke technique is on.

Whether still or not, I am drawn to water, but I have been, on more than one occasion, told that I embody the “still waters run deep” phrase. That may be the case. As an often quiet, listener – an observer, I likely appear detached and placid, but in reality I can be just as intense and even fiery. I am a person who likes to ponder, consider, and think things through. I am also a person who will fight to preserve a conviction or principle, and anyone or anything that embodies those principles.

At times lately, I have been overwhelmed by the level of darkness that seems to be moving across our nation like storm clouds on the horizon. But I believe the principle that light shines brighter through darkness. As a member of the community of Christians in this world, I believe that it is the primary role of each of us to reflect the light of the one who was and is the Light of the World.

The first impression that I hope to have made here, a great deal of the story of who I am can be told through light and water. In the light I find wisdom and hope. In the water I find clarity and peace.