PLEASE DO NOT TOLERATE INTOLERANCE. PLEASE?

I went to public school with black kids. From 4^th grade (1950) to graduation from high school (1958). I traveled with students from my high school in ’56, ’57 and ’58 all the way down to the Florida Keys, before any interstates. In New York we heard of racial discrimination in the South, and there surely was discrimination in New York. But our schools, transportation, restaurants, hospitals and other places certainly were “mixed use.”  So, when I saw the KKK billboards about Niggers and Kikes and Spicks  in South Carolina and Florida, and when I saw the drinking fountains and bathrooms marked “white only” I was dismayed and sad. I went to school in Miami in 1958, and the city was segregated. This was 4 years after Brown, but well before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

And then the other day I downloaded a list of really dumb things Republicans have said over the past 40 or so years. Just today, after reading the little blurb below, one of them struck me like lightening.

First integrated classroom In July 1955, six black children completed their first week at Griffin Elementary, a one-room schoolhouse in rural Monticello, Ky. It was the first public school in the state, and by some accounts the nation, to become racially integrated. (AP Photo)

 
I went back to the list to see if I remembered it correctly. Yes, I did. This one is from Dwight Eisenhower, President of the United States

36. “These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.” ~ President Eisenhower commenting on racial segregation after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

He was talking about White parents opposing black children being integrated in Public Schools in the South. And I thought OMG, if the President held that philosophy in 1955, it is no wonder we needed the Civil Rights Act. Throughout this period I was mostly oblivious. A White Boy from New York, liberal and integrated early. Even after experiencing the South as a high schooler it didn’t really sink in. It did in the 60’s though. And stuck. That is why I hate intolerance.(is that an oxymoron?).  So don’t get me started.

But think about where we were a scant few decades ago, how far we have come, and the forces that (who) are now working to attenuate the progress. Please, think about it. And please for whatever you hold Holy, DO NOT TOLERATE INTOLERANCE. Of anybody. For any reason. Ever.

Thank you.

Image: http://brianmengini.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/intolerance.jpg

Fusel Oil and My Father

Max and I (remember Max from some older posts? Old high school bud? Band of “Mad Scientists”?) decided to make some kick-ass alcohol stuff based on apple cider. In those days(1955) on Long Island there was a thriving local orchard industry, and several nearby orchards produce their own apple cider. In the winter only. In three days it was a bit fizzy and in a week it was positively intoxicating. It was really alcoholic. You could get a buzz from a pint or two.

We decided to get a couple of gallons and make “apple jack”, a concentrated liquor made by “freeze distillation” or freezing the liquid until only the alcohol and sugary water was liquid. Then you poured off the “liquor” and got a serious buzz. My father warned us about “fusel oil” and the blindness and sickness it could produce. Yeah Pop.

So we froze the stuff, poured off the syrupy liquor and drank it. Whee!! Got a real buzz, but a terrible hangover too. We moved on to other things and did not become the kings of illegal liquor. But, I was talking to a friend of mine today, a natural products chemist, and asked about “fusel oil.” Blank expression. No idea what it was. So, when I could, I “Googled” it. SHOCK!!!

Old Dad was RIGHT!!! Fusel oil, AKA fusel alcohol (a toxic mixture of several organic alcohols and other crap) is a byproduct of fermentation and toxic as hell in concentrations above normal fermentation. Specifically it is really concentrated and toxic in “freeze distillation”.  We only did that one batch and neither of us went blind. But old Dad was Right. How the hell did he know that? Simple. He was the product of the Great Depression where millions of people made their own booze, and a bunch got into real trouble with fusel oil. Sorry Pop. You were right. But you were DEAD WRONG about the other cause of teenage blindness. My vision is still 20/20.

http://swagreasons.com/i/AppleJack.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applejack_(beverage)

People Who Are Not MORONS are Under Attack

 

So, and atheist student in Oklahoma requested that copies of the 10 commandments be removed from the walls of all the class rooms. Predictably Christians from all over, including the Westboro Baptist Church, screamed “Foul”. “Christianity is under attack” and other nonsense.
What if that same boy had wanted to post a humanist statement in all the classrooms? Or a Muslim student wanted to post some rules from the Qur’an in all the classrooms? I bet the Christian parents and students would have a fit.
That is because they are not for religious freedom; they are for religious imposition, but only their own. One parent said: “If other kids don’t want to read the Ten Commandments, then they don’t have to,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that they have to make everyone else do what they want.”

See the problem? This parent really wants exclusive rights to display religious crap. This is absolutely UNAMERICAN. It really pisses me off, but then I am only an American who believes in religious freedom, not one who believes that this is a Christian Country that has the Right to Impose Religion on us all.

Just saying.

Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/12/atheist-and-christian-high-school-students-protest-over-ten-commandments/#ixzz2TNtyNATu

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZhOJQxLhjsVs0mzx3NiZSmudXYj3E7h4KA8tNndPKcah_JKUNLJjppgaUyVOTm-EqmPmcSqXxZYXTkhC57O8YRU2MOj7Lu9pnekHiVQWa-5V97tqxMKNRR5uAJywwUxNtfrEWlXEhjjmZ/s400/Oppression.jpg

Valley Fever? Be Glad You Didn’t Get Histoplasmosis!!!



Histo clusters like a starry night

Valley Fever AKA Coccidiomycosis is a fungal disease found world-wide, but is endemic in the American Southwest. You get it by breathing in the spores from ground dust. It can be deadly or debilitating, but often goes undiagnosed. Bad breathing problems as lungs swell and squeeze the air out. With swollen lungs, breathing enough air in and out becomes difficult and anoxia results. Not a pretty picture.

Transition to a group of students and faculty from Thomas University returning from a field trip to Nicaragua which included visiting some abandoned silver mines with plenty of bats. A few of us got sick on the way home while others had a delay of a few days. A few didn’t get sick at all, damn them. Two nearly died, and the rest, 10 or so were sick in degrees. Sally and I were really hit hard. High fever, low blood oxygen, swollen lungs so we couldn’t breathe and coughing. The group became a study group for the CDC which was quickly called in to help diagnose and manage the outbreak. A savvy Doc in Thomasville  recognized the cluster of people getting sick and called for help. The Florida Department of Health and the Georgia Health Department also got brought in. We were all very sick puppies.

The CDC doctors knew it was either Coccidiomyciosis (valley fever) or Histoplasmosis but the symptoms are nearly or exactly the same. So they put us through many tests and finally concluded the disease we all had was Histoplasmosis.  Not good. No real treatment except “experimental” drugs that insurance doesn’t pay for, that don’t work all that well and have nasty side effects. The good news is that most people eventually get better, while some eventually die. In our case (Sally’s and mine) our immune system got the upper hand finally and we were left with many little nodules in our lungs, places where the fungus was walled in by health tissue and kept sequestered by the immune system. But we were warned: if your immune system gets reduced, you will probably have an outbreak that, along with whatever caused the immune system to fail, might just kill you.

So we group of hardy adventurers now carry the seeds of a real disaster in our lungs. Which leads me to the advice in the banner: Vally Fever? Better that than good old Histo. (Some of the participants of this adventure  will read this. Hopefully you are all still going strong. We are. But I will never forget the remark of the radiologist who read our chest x-rays: “Looks just like a starry night. See all those little white dots? That’s the bug!!!” He was thrilled. We were less so. )

Article on Valley Fever: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/05/13/181880987/cases-of-mysterious-valley-fever-rise-in-american-southwest?ft=3&f=1001&sc=nl&cc=nh-20130513
Image: https://pathwiki.pbworks.com/f/chest%20xray%20calicified%20densities.jpg