Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Life, Death and Vax

This is my second rant on Vaxing, but I feel I have to say it again--and more strongly. The past two years of Covid 19 has given modern Americans, and everyone else in the world, a taste of what major epidemics used to be like. Of these, the Black Death in the 14th century and the 1918 Influenza epidemics are probably best known to us, because they were thoroughly chronicled in Western European and American society, but they occurred all over the world, nearly all the time. The introduction of measles and smallpox to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries virtually wiped out the lives of the indigenous people who had lived there for millennia. When outbreaks of an infectious diseases like smallpox or
cholera spread, people in their paths could only wait, hide and pray--in the nineteenth century, for example, newspapers might chronicle the day-by-day progression of an epidemic towards you, but there wasn't much you could do about it. You could wait to contract childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and chickenpox--your parents were probably expecting them to get you and to stoically nurse you through, knowing that in surviving them, you were immune from getting them again. My generation (I was born in 1941) is probably the last to experience some of these epidemics. Sanitary conditions had certainly cut the rate of baby deaths and many of the risks of it to our mothers. We were immunized against smallpox and diptheria by then, but not measles, mumps and chickenpox. I got them all between the ages of 6 and 7. The only one I remember was measles. I came down with it at my grandmother's house, my temperature spiked at 104, and I became delirious. I was put to bed in my grandparents' bed (I don't know where they slept during the 3 weeks I was sick), and my mom camped out there too. I can remember having weird visions in the darkened bedroom. And all everyone could do was wait and hope. Well, I'm still here. The following year (1948), I had rheumatic fever, and was supremely lucky to receive penicillin, just becoming authorized for civilian use.
As more immunizations became available, we rushed to get them. Everyone was vaccinated for smallpox at birth, but when I was in second grade in 1949, a foreign tourist came down with a case in New York. Everyone in my school, students, staff and kids, were marched down to the school cafeteria, and revaccinated. No questions asked. There were only 12 cases of smallpox that year, all in New York, and most occurring in the hospital where the carrier was. Since then, there hasn't been a single case in the U.S--and it's been wiped out worldwise since 1980..
In the early 1950's, prior to the Polio Vaccine, which debuted in 1955, polio came every summer; it paralyzed so many children--and Franklin Roosevelt too--and there were all-too-common photos of children limping along in heavy braces or encased in iron lungs to help them breathe. Public swimming pools, movies and anywhere kids congregated were closed down. I escaped going to sleep-away summer camp that year, and so avoided a situation in which several campers were infected, and one died. I played with my nextdoor neighbor the day before he came down with it and my mother had I fit. We all worked to save money and held fundraisers to contribute to vaccine research, and when it came, we all lined up with enthusiasm to get it. The speed in which Covid 19 vaccines were researched and then made available--for free, has no medical precedent for such a major event. I must say outright that I can't understand why anyone would not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19, or any other potentially fatal disease. Reliable scientific studies have revealed that since vaccines for diseases such as measles, diptheria, polio and numerous other infectious diseases have become available, the mortality rates of children under 15, which was historically averaging 46% until the middle of the 20th century (that for infants below the age of 1 was 26%) has been cut worldwide to 2% or less. I've taken every vaccine I could get, because I can remember what it was like before this was possible. I haven't turned into Frankenstein or a crocodile, and my brain is wholly mine and functionally sharp. Why wait? ___________________________________________________________________ An Article about Historical Diseases and Effectiveness of Vaccines: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/209448... An article about the history of Child mortality:https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past

Thursday, May 13, 2021

Lucy and the Four Bullies

Last week San Antonio Opera did a stripped-down Covid-friendly live performance of Donizetti's Lucia de Lammermoor with rising stars Brenda Rae (Lucia), Scott Hendricks (Enrico), Scott Quinn (Edgardo), and Musa Ngqungwana (Raimundo). This semi-staged production cut to the chase: the chorus was eliminated, so the drama had to be carried by key soloists. It worked very well, and Rae did a spectacular mad scene. Composed by Gaetano Donizetti and his librettist Salvatore Cammarano and first produced in 1835, the plot was based on The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott, written on commission in 1835. Scott himself based it on a late 17th-century historical incident concerning a noblewoman named Janet Dalrymple, who, forced to renounce her true love and marry a suitor approved by her family, stabbed him on their wedding night and though he survived, she shortly afterward died insane.
Scott's novel has many plot twists and retained the real villain-- the girl's ambitious mother, who engineered the estrangement of the original suitor via fake news (in this case, forged letters). The novel, set in 17th-century Scotland, is full of the complicated politics of the time, and pits the heroine's (here renamed Lucy) family against that of her true love (Edgar), who are on opposite sides both politically and as the result of a feud that has been going on for generations. On both sides there are crises of property ownership and many machinations and changes of plan that eventually lead to Lucy's forced marriage to Arthur
Bucklaw, whose wealth and influence can salvage her family's fortunes. Lucy, like Janet, loses her reason, stabs her husband, again not mortally, on their wedding night, and she soon after dies. /a>
The novel proved very popular. In the early 19th century, Scotland was considered wild and exotic, a perfect setting for romantic tragedies (think Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture and the ballet La Sylphide). At least five operas by others, all now forgotten, were based on The Bride of Lammermoor before Donizetti and Cammarano took it in hand, all with plot variations and various characters from Scott's novel that didn't make Cammarano's cut.
Donizetti and Camarrano trimmed the story down and modified it, basically reducing it to the family feud and Lucy's cruel fate. The wicked mother and Lucy's two brothers of Scott's novel are conflated into Enrico Ashton, Lucia's (whose name is now Italianized, as are all the characters) older brother. Even though Enrico and his family have ruined the clan of Edgardo her true love, Enrico, as a result of backing the wrong party politically, is on the verge of ruin. His only hope of salvation is to marry off his sister to someone rich and influential: Laird Arturo Bucklaw. No matter that Lucia and Edgardo have secretly gotten engaged, Enrico forges letters he gives to Lucia, allegedly from Edgardo, saying that he's renouncing the betrothal because he's fallen in love with someone else.
Lucia is already in a fragile state: her mother, presumably kinder and gentler than Scott's wicked Lady Ashton, has recently died, and she's in mourning. She sees Edgardo not only as a lover and a protector, but the way out of a terrible family situation. She's worried though and sees the ghost of unhappy ancestor girl who had died as the result of the family feud out in the family park. Browbeaten and lied to by her family and an allied clergyman, she agrees to marry the laird, but just after signing the marriage contract, Edgardo comes back. Since he doesn't know that she was tricked by the forged letters, he's furious, denounces and curses her, and storms out, without listening to any explanation she might have. For Lucia, that's the final straw, with nowhere to go, and the prospect of a lifelong loveless marriage, she goes mad, stabs her new husband to death, and vents out in a spectacular mad scene in front of the wedding guests, then dies. In despair, Edgardo kills himself in the family graveyard. It all sounds over-the-top and ridiculous now (could Edgardo have been so easily deceived today in the age of cellphones and twitter)? But this opera remains a perennial favorite even if it's melodramatic and contains many set pieces of its period in its solos and ensembles--and the sextette and mad scene are high art and brilliantly crafted. But I think there's a more important reason that Lucia still resonates, for it is a stark (though theatrically over-the-top) tale of extreme bullying. Lucy has to be one of the most helpless and bullied people in operatic and theatrical history. Her brother sees her only as a means of saving himself--her life and self-fulfillment count for nothing. Her true love is her whole world; he has two preoccupations--her and the purity of her love, and his own ambitions, including his feud with her brother, and the minute she appears to renounce him, he objectifies her as tainted and brutally curses her out, refusing to hear her side of the story (as Gordon Lightfoot put it: "Heroes often fail"). Lucy's approved bridegroom seems to be an entitled, brainless snob--his expectation of her is to be a virgin (this is implied not stated), and she'll be ornamental--perhaps soon to be cheated on. Probably worst of all is the clergyman Raimundo who seems to be sympathetic to the girl, but eventually accepts the ruse and who warmly counsels her to go through with the marriage and carry on. In his smooth and silky way, he, another authority figure, is a bully too. Even her female companion, Alicia, doesn't dare to speak out--after all, Enrico is probably paying her salary.
The story transcends its historical time. I watched the Met Opera production of Lucia online with Natalie Dessay, the great Lucia of her generation from 2011. The Met version updated the story from the 17th century to the 1880's--that's fifty years later than when Donizetti wrote it, and it still works. Of course, in those days, once married, as a woman you would probably be ostracized perhaps a pariah if you divorced or were found to be unfaithful. The man you married would control your financial assets, could fool around outside the marriage, and could keep you sequestered at home if he wished--or even commit you to an asylum if you proved too unmanageable. And you had to be a virgin and never be unfaithful--in those pre-DNA testing days, how else could he be assured that the children you bore were really his? And if you were a noblewoman, you probably had better clothes and food than your working-class sisters, but you lived your life more in public. If you "escaped?" what would you do? Where would you go? How would you support yourself? If you were Catholic, you could retreat to a convent: that would exempt you from the childbearing marathon, but you would be essentially shut off from worldly society, and certainly not having any more guys as friends. In the past century, things have changed, and we are now freer to pick and choose, although some studies seem to show that the odds of a happy marriage in this day and age are about the same whether a person chooses or is chosen for. What has not changed since the era of Lucia is the issue of bullying. As humans, we seem to be hard-wired to bully others when the situation arises. Although woman have always historically been viewed as potential victims, bullying certainly transcends gender and knows no real social class: it's been done by American Presidents, any number of dictators, bosses or superiors at work, kids at school. Up until recently at least, most of us have at least assumed civility and respect in public, but this doesn't account for what goes on behind closed doors. Newspapers, television and social media as well are full of it; as a matter of fact, it seems to drive or at least be a major factor in so many books, films and TV series (think Game of Thrones for starters). Mostly we are glad to see endings in these media where justice is ultimately done, but its bullying behavior that is often responsible for its initial miscarriage. After all, aren't mass murders and school shootings ultimate forms of being a bully, though ultimately the homicidal killer probably learned this behavior by being bullied him or herself. We have more social tools, resources and therapies to help avert it now, but it's not always available to those who need or can afford it. Poor Lucia had nowhere else to go, put her only egg in Edgardo's basket--and there it broke. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Walter Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor is available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/471/471-h/471-h.htm ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The San Antonio performance is live-streaming until June 6. It can be accessed at: https://www.operasa.org/lucia-livestream?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=609ac803b71af84e5a362052&ss_email_id=609adc6ab306544dc31ecfc3&ss_campaign_name=Curtains+Up+-+May+11%2C+2021&ss_campaign_sent_date=2021-05-11T19%3A35%3A15Z ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Natalie Dessay's 2011 performance at the Metropolitan Opera can be rented for $4.99 at their website. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Several free You tube full performances are available on their site, as well as some full sound recordings, and plenty of mad scenes too. See the list at: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Lucia+di+Lammermoor _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ An article on the other operas based on Scott's novel is at: https://utahopera.org/explore/2017/03/the-brides-of-lammermoor/

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

In Covid Times, or The Big 8-0: where would I be without Vaxes?

This is a sort of personal musing after such a long hiatus for Covid times. But this morning, this headline was in my daily newspaper: "VACCINATED WORKERS BANNED AT FLA. PUBLIC SCHOOL" The story went on to say that a school has been established by anti-vaxers, and they would not hire anybody who had had a covid shot. I'm assuming these guys were born yesterday. If they were as old as I am (80), they would remember a world without many of them, and the fear and misery this lack used to cause. I'm glad I've reached this age, but 100 years ago I certainly wouldn't have reached it. Aside from surgeries for a few parts replacements, I was born in 1941, and at that time there were no antibiotics to treat sicknesses, and few vaccines to prevent them. We were all vaccinated against smallpox at birth, and as little kids we were vaccinated against diphtheria and tetanus, but that was about it. Lack of birth control aside, one of the reasons that people had so many kids up to the early 20th century and earlier was because it wasn't unusual to lose a few of them to lethal childhood diseases. There was nothing much to do but pray if your child got sick. The shots we take for granted now didn't exist then, and the general attitude was to let your kids catch measles, mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough, and hoped they'd recovered fine, because then they'd have immunity. I managed to dodge the bullet of whooping cough but got all three of the others when I was six and got the measles so badly that I was delirious and had a temperature of 104. I was lucky that I recovered, and with outside effects that sometimes come with it. We tend to forget that Measles wiped out more native Americans than wars did. In the bad old days, people would hear or read in the news about imminent epidemics and knew that they couldn't do anything about it but wait for it to come and pass and hope they didn't get it. In my childhood, before the Polio vaccine, parents would dread each summer, the usual season for the disease. I played with my next-door neighbor the day before he came down with it, and my mom was petrified for a few weeks, until it was evident that I didn't catch it. I did get rheumatic fever, though--that comes off a strep infection and there were no antibiotics then. Luckily, that was just after World War II, and penicillin had just been released for the general public and I was able to get it. Public health measures, when available, were more draconian too. In 1947, I was growing up in New York, and a man landed in the city from abroad with smallpox. No matter if we were vaccinated against it at birth, who knew how long that protection would last? My entire elementary school, students, teachers and staff were taken down to the cafeteria one day and we were all vaccinated again. More than a million schoolkids were inoculated en masse when the Salk vaccine came out, and the rest of us got it as soon as we could. The Covid epidemic is a wakeup call. For a year, we experienced what our grandparents did with far more frequency. Nobody realizes how awful these sicknesses are until you get them. I got my covid shots as soon as they were available. I'm still here and would like to be here for a while longer. _______________________________________________________________________ For an amazing website on the history of Vaccines, see: