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What Our Campaign against Smoking Can Teach Us about Our Attitude toward the Unvaccinated

By Gerald Early

Smokers are not precisely analogous to the unvaccinated but there are important similarities. Smoking and COVID-19 are associated with severe respiratory illness. Both can harm the general public: second-hand smoke with smoking, and the easy passing of the coronavirus unless mitigated by mask-wearing and social distancing. It is the fact that the general public can be harmed that generated our response to the unvaccinated and to smokers.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

Good Dog!

By Jeannette Cooperman

We expect so much more of ourselves than we do of dogs. We judge ourselves more harshly, compare more viciously. Granted, a show dog can outdo most narcissists in grooming hours, but that is the human companion’s doing, not the dog’s. Other animals do not judge themselves at all, and maybe that is what frees us to relate to them differently.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

How Are These Crimes Different?

By Jeannette Cooperman

What makes the difference here? White man versus Black female? A harsh prosecutor, in Owens’s case, at a time with little oversight of the legal system? We will likely never know. But there is so much talk about inequity and injustice that it sometimes washes over me. Seeing the particulars unfold is a lot more painful.

Uncategorized | Dispatches

What Can Be Said About 9-11? When?

By John Griswold

“Flags of Valor,” a memorial outside the St. Louis Art Museum, September 11, 2021. Photo by John Griswold.     When 9-11 happened I was teaching at the University of Illinois. My wife was six weeks pregnant with our first son. We were getting ready for work but stopped to…

Uncategorized | Dispatches

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