Then and now, how different is it?

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By Ande Jacobson

When I was growing up, it was a turbulent time. Being a child of the 60s and 70s, I saw some thrilling scientific advances, as well as numerous disturbing events throughout my childhood. Both the positive and negative had an impact on how I viewed the world, but I always thought that things would continue to get better for society overall.

We had lots of books at home – both of my parents were avid readers of all sorts of material, and they instilled in me a healthy love of learning. We had numerous academic texts (both of my parents were medical professionals, so they had an extensive medical library), and we had our Encyclopedia Britannica along with the Great Books as more general references. We even had the Children’s Stories Great Books collection to round out things from the literary side. We had numerous dictionaries, lots of history books, and shelves overflowing with literary works including both fiction and nonfiction on countless subjects. We also had our library cards for both pleasure and for those times when our research needs exceeded what was available at home. Learning was fun. Continue reading →

The kids will be OK

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By Ande Jacobson

Last to Die, is the tenth book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series and was first released in 2012. Like the previous book, the Kindle version of this one includes a bonus short story in the Rizzoli & Isles canon entitled John Doe also from 2012. For the main story, Gerritsen weaves a complicated web of unlikely connections that build to a surprising conclusion. The focus is on three unfortunate children, Teddy Clock, Claire Ward, and Will Yablonski. The first part of the book gives some background on all three, and they have a strange connection in that they not only lost their families in tragic accidents, they lost the families that took them in afterwards in equally horrific fashion. The three seemingly had no connection to one another other than being their family’s last survivors. Through a series of unlikely events, they all end up at the Evensong School in an effort to keep them safe while the authorities investigate what happened to their families. Before meeting at the school, the three didn’t think they had ever met and didn’t think they had anything in common, at least at first. Julian Perkins also plays a major role in this story, and he and Dr. Maura Isles help one another with the investigation. Anthony Sansone also joins the fray in an important but peripheral capacity. Of course the police regulars including Jane Rizzoli, Barry Frost, Darren Crowe, Lieutenant Marquette, and others are prominent in the story as well. Continue reading →

When myth and reality merges

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By Ande Jacobson

The Silent Girl, is the ninth book in Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli & Isles series, first released in 2011. This book is a treat in that the Kindle version also includes a bonus short story in the Rizzoli & Isles canon entitled Freaks from 2010. Gerritsen considers The Silent Girl a very personal story in which she ties in ancient Chinese folklore that her mother had related to her. Her mother learned these fables and legends during her childhood in China, and they add an ethereal element to the story that infuses the mythos into Jane Rizzoli’s world in unexpected ways. As often happens in Gerritsen’s books, she starts in the past giving readers a foundation they don’t realize connects until much later in the story. This time, although the story starts in San Francisco in the past, it quickly returns to Boston in the present where Maura Isles is testifying in court. Maura’s background matches that of the author to a point – both author and protagonist majored in Anthropology as undergraduates at Stanford and attended medical school at UC San Francisco. From there they diverge in specialty and position, but that’s merely background. The trial in the story sets the scene for why Maura is at odds with most of Boston PD for much of this story. Her factual testimony is key in convicting a police officer accused of killing a young man while in custody. Although the court case has nothing to do with the crimes being investigated in the bulk of the story, it makes the connection between Maura and Jane all the more poignant despite the growing rift caused by Maura’s crossing the thin blue line through her court testimony. Continue reading →

A landline alternative

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By Ande Jacobson

Some services that have been around for more than a century have improved over time. Unfortunately, sometimes that improvement stops and regresses the service, and we lose something we didn’t used to think about not being there when we needed it. A good old-fashioned telephone can be one of those things. Growing up, we always had a phone with multiple extensions throughout the house. At first they were clunky rotary phones that weighed a lot more than it seemed like they should, but they worked even when the power went out which happened frequently for a time. It seemed like if the wind blew, we’d lose power. If it rained, we’d lose power. But even when it was dark, our phone worked. Continue reading →

Ski trips can be dangerous

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s eighth book in the Rizzoli & Isles series, Ice Cold, was first released in 2010. This time Gerritsen doesn’t dig into her anthropology background. Instead she uses her medical background on the living rather than the dead in this heart-stopping adventure. Reeling from her recent breakup with Father Daniel Brophy, Dr. Maura Isles attends a pathology conference in Wyoming of all places. In November. Before readers catch up with Maura’s adventure, they are first introduced to an insular community in Plain of Angels, Idaho. The compound is home to a small, religious group serving their leader, Prophet Jeremiah Goode. As is often the case in Gerritsen’s mysteries, this opening chapter from the past provides key pieces of information that will become crucial later in the story. In this look back, readers see that the prophet leads what can only be described as a cult. While the activities might jolt the hairs on the back of a reader’s neck, no specific crime is yet revealed. Continue reading →

What is imagination?

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By Ande Jacobson

Some time ago, a friend and colleague posited that religious fundamentalists and extremists, which he equated to cult members, had no imagination. He said that’s what locked them into doggedly following their leader’s demands without question no matter how extreme or dangerous those demands were. While he was specifically talking about some egregious situation surrounding the rabid political divisions between the far-right extremists and pretty much everyone else, I started thinking about the concept of imagination overall. What is imagination? How is imagination employed? What are the benefits of having an imagination? Does a lack of imagination make somebody more susceptible to fundamentalism or cult participation, or more perilously, does lacking an imagination make somebody dangerous? For the purposes of this discussion, consider the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of imagination thus:

“imagination n. the faculty or action of forming ideas or mental images. > the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.”

From this definition, imagination, or some level of it at least, seems to be required for any substantial amount of learning in human society. Continue reading →

The things we keep

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s seventh Rizzoli & Isles book, The Keepsake, was first released in 2008. Gerritsen digs even further into her anthropology background branching off into the sub-specialties of Archeology and Egyptology when a mummy discovered at a local museum turns out to be not at all what it seems. As always in this series the past predicts the future, although in this perplexing case, far more secrets than usual are uncovered. The story begins with a quote from Dr. Jonathan Elias, Egyptologist:

“Every mummy is an exploration, an undiscovered continent that you’re visiting for the very first time.”

Continue reading →

Difficult lessons to learn

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By Ande Jacobson

I recently shared what I thought was a cogent, albeit satirical take on the choice before us this November. It was a David Sedaris quote posted by Mark Acres. A friend shared Acres’ post on their timeline, and I shared it to mine.

Several friends commented on the post. Most were either close to retirement or in retirement save for one who posted a somewhat provocative take based on his own demographic – a very smart, engaged, well-educated younger voter who is scared and angry about the future of our country, idealistic, and concerned that he is not seeing the Democratic Party reaching out to younger voters in a way that shows they are listening to their concerns. This sparked a heated exchange between several commenters including me. The older generation was trying to explain the lessons we’ve all learned through hard-earned experience and why a protest vote in this particular election could be very dangerous. To be fair, my younger friend lives in a very blue area of a very blue state, so his vote if he chooses to use it as a protest probably won’t do much damage, but the general concept is one that got me thinking back to my young, idealistic college days and the hard lesson I learned in the first presidential election in which I was eligible to vote.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter ran for reelection against Ronald Reagan. It was clear at the outset that Reagan was trouble. He had already shown his stripes as the Governor of California years before when he made some changes that caused serious problems that the state is still struggling with today. I definitely didn’t want to see Reagan become president of the nation and impose his cruel economic policies on the country as a whole. While I thought that Carter meant well, he was struggling with bad press, and policies that faced strong opposition from the growing moderate and conservative movements. Like many other young, idealistic college students at the time, I ended up voting for John Anderson who, after having lost the GOP primary, ran in the general election as an independent. He was billed as a liberal alternative to Reagan’s hard-right policies. Anderson stood for many of the things I thought were important, though in the end while he garnered millions of votes, he didn’t win a single state, but more than that, he siphoned off most of his votes from Carter rather than Reagan.

The hard lesson learned from that election was that in our two-party system, like it or not, in presidential elections, a third party or independent candidate will pull from the major party candidate they are most like and help the other major party candidate win. Of course, in 1980, I didn’t consider my vote a protest vote. I really thought that Anderson could win at the time not yet recognizing that impossibility in our modern political climate. A third party or independent candidate might win a regional or congressional election, but they cannot win a national presidential contest.

In 1992, Ross Perot played the role of spoiler costing George H.W. Bush a second term and giving Bill Clinton a decisive victory. I personally didn’t mind this result, but it’s still instructive to the pattern.

In 2000, Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the election and while the Supreme Court ultimately decided that contest, had Nader not been a candidate, it likely wouldn’t have been that close. Gore won the popular vote that year, but not the Electoral College once the Supreme Court stepped in an put their thumb on the scale.

In 2016, while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a sizable margin, third party candidates propelled by protest votes siphoned off enough of her votes to cost her the Electoral College win and gave us Donald Trump. We know what happened from there.

Now in 2024, while the presumptive major party nominees are Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden running for reelection and GOP candidate Donald Trump, this isn’t a normal presidential contest. In 2020 when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, Trump wouldn’t concede and still hasn’t publicly accepted those results. For the first time in our nation’s history, Trump refused to support the peaceful transfer of power to his successor. Trump has since been indicted in multiple jurisdictions on 88 criminal charges, and he’s also lost multiple civil cases adding up to about a half a billion in judgements against him so far. The first criminal trial is currently scheduled to begin in mid-April 2024.

While the party platforms are normally created at the conventions for the general election, and in 2020, the GOP didn’t bother with a platform, the records and policies of the two major candidates couldn’t be more different.

The Biden/Harris administration has an impressive record for their first term so far, in spite of razor thin Congressional majorities the first two years and a hostile and dysfunctional House lead by MAGA extremists since January 2023. Theirs is a multicultural administration that reflects the country as a whole.

In contrast, the GOP has their Project 2025 playbook, a step-by-step guide to creating a white nationalist, theocratic autocracy in place of U.S. democracy. It is a guide to further widening the divide between the vast majority of people, and a very small, rich, white, male elite who wants to run everything.

For political norms, if a sitting president chooses to run for reelection, that’s normally the end of the discussion for the party holding the White House. President Biden has chosen this path, and the DNC is supporting his reelection campaign, although officially he’ll be selected at the DNC’s summer convention to launch the general campaign. Biden has been an incredibly effective president despite the hostility he’s faced in our hyper-polarized country. He hasn’t accomplished everything he set out to do, but he has accomplished a great deal of it, and he does the work. He’s not flashy. He’s not begging for headlines, but through his experience and acumen he and his administration have accomplished much of their agenda through tough but fair negotiation, and he’s provided world leadership in the face serious threats to U.S. security and democracy worldwide. Few could have brought together the international coalition he and his team did to support Ukraine, a must for world stability. He’s also come a long way in repairing our nation’s international reputation after the damage done by the previous administration. Still, world leaders are very aware that could change if Trump were to regain the White House.

So what does this have to do with the contentious debate on a Facebook post? It’s a symptom of a larger problem and points to another difficult lesson. My young friend claims that the DNC’s messaging is deaf to the concerns of his cohort when younger voters and workers are the future of the country. They have economic challenges that older generations haven’t fully faced. Housing, education, healthcare, and transportation concerns all weigh heavily on younger people early in their careers. Many may never be able to work off the debts they’ve accumulated by their mid-twenties for things that most in older generations have had for a far more reasonable cost.

Climate change is only getting worse, and the brunt of the changes caused by the billions of people on the planet will be felt most heavily by the younger generations.

The Biden administration has started to repair some of the damage of the last 40+ years of GOP economic policies. They’ve also started to address some of the structural problems facing the nation through the bipartisan infrastructure law, but none of this can be cured in a single administration, particularly with a hostile Congress in the mix. The lesson here is that compromise and cooperation are key to getting anything done. We’ll never get everything we want, but in exercising our vote, we have to look at the issues with clear eyes. We have to understand not only who has a chance of winning, but who is in the best position to accomplish a more favorable overall result on the issues we care about. Between Trump and Biden, that choice for most should be self-evident.

A protest vote, while it might feel good in the moment, really isn’t a solution here. A protest vote against Biden because he hasn’t done everything somebody might want will only help Trump win. The same goes for casting a protest vote for a GOP Senatorial candidate because the Democratic candidate isn’t one’s first choice. The Congressional balance matters. If we want to make forward progress given the extremism of today’s GOP, we need Democratic majorities across the board.

If we value democracy and forward progress to help the vast majority of people, Biden and Democratic candidates for Congress are the clear choices here.

References:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/
https://www.project2025.org/playbook/
https://agoodreedreview.com/2023/08/25/wear-a-raincoat/
https://agoodreedreview.com/2024/02/13/book-a-firehose-of-falsehood-2/
https://www.history.com/news/third-party-candidates-election-influence-facts
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
Jay Kuo’s The Status Kuo
Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse
Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist
https://terikanefield.com/

Teri Kanefield’s blog series on disinformation:

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I’m done with the rage merchants

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By Ande Jacobson

2024 is shaping up to be a year to remember. Watching the chaos swirl across the country with respect to our upcoming election in combination with the extraordinary legal proceedings in play is at times maddening, and at other times hopeful. One way to stop being affected by the highs and lows is to disengage from the rage merchants. That means ignoring pretty much every news show – be it on cable, broadcast television, streaming video, or radio. In most cases, the news isn’t actually news but is instead a compendium of rage mongers trying to outdo one another to gain audience. The hosts are performing for their audiences, intentionally angering them because high emotion sells and keeps people coming back for more. Continue reading →

Is evil born or made?

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By Ande Jacobson

Tess Gerritsen’s sixth Rizzoli & Isles book, The Mephisto Club, was first released in 2006. This time, Gerritsen uses her Stanford undergraduate degree in anthropology to explore ancient myths through texts predating the major monotheistic religious artifacts and scriptures. This book is a dark story, but the academic exploration is fascinating. The investigators cross paths with an eccentric group of sleuths with an international presence who happen to be co-located at the site of a gruesome murder. As is often the case in this series, Gerritsen weaves seemingly disconnected threads together, introducing readers to key characters before the events of the investigation take place. Continue reading →