Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Know Thyself

I recently read about an author who claims people repeat the same patterns over our lives. She feels it’s important to notice those patterns and acknowledge them. I was mildly interested in this idea although not swept up by it, mostly because I think growth and change are more important and interesting.

Nonetheless, I may have stored it subliminally because last night my husband and I were having a conversation and a pattern just leapt out at me, one so obvious and ubiquitous I could not believe I had never marked it. We were talking about TV shows at the time, but the pattern definitely applies to books and many other aspects of us.

My husband approaches the library with a sense of mystery and the expectation of revelation. He walks the aisles and checks out the displays seeking seeking something that sparks his joy. He approaches TV the same way, starting with the homepage of the stream and scrolling through, occasionally watching a trailer, but mostly just jumping in.

I approach the library with a curated list of books I have vetted by reading reviews, mostly, or getting a recommendation; I might also search for a book on a topic of interest, most recently Harriet Tubman’s military contributions to the Civil War. I’m also pretty picky about TV shows, and very reluctant to start one without some research.

I’m very willing to drop a show after one episode, or a book after one chapter, if it’s not working out for me. My husband is much more patient with his finds; he will also drop either a book or a show if it doesn’t work out, but he’ll give it more time then I will.

It would be incorrect to say that my husband never reserves books, or that I never grab something that caught my eye on the Lucky Day table. But this basic pattern of being willing to try unknown paths versus planning the route in advance describes us in many ways, not just content selection.

Happily, we have both absorbed some of the others’ energy over the years: I try to be more spontaneous, and he certainly can plan when it’s useful. Patterns can inspire growth.

And now for something something completely different…we made a video of our robot jar opener today. This is a miraculous device. The music is Inisheer’s version of Jay Unger’s tune Wizard’s Walk, the best one in my view. It’s on Spotify if you want to hear more. Meanwhile my physical therapist recommends this and the robot can opener for protection of everyone’s wrists.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/eVQrWZTXXrouHr48A

Posted on by Jo Gent · 2 Comments

My Struggles with RFK

I hate to get sick, which means I’m a big fan of vaccinations: I estimate I’ve gotten 21 since I moved here nine years ago, but I bet I undercounted. In order to protect people who actually can’t get vaccinations, we need a pretty high level of compliance. For those two reasons, I’m distressed that RFK is insinuating that vaccinations aren’t important, and not encouraging them. One of our goals for moving to Spain is to get out of here before flu season hits.

On the other hand…

…I do agree with other things RFK talks about. Those of us who have observed the crash in public health in the United States over the last 60 years find is a little hard to be very impressed by the usual experts. One of my friends told me she was so comfortable with the research over the past 20 years. The past 20 years! The US medical establishment has pretty much been getting an F-minus on public health over the past 20 years.

So the biggest problem with the establishment position RFK = wrong, mainstream doctors = right, is that it’s observably untrue. Instead of bolstering their influence on the public, this pronouncement just reminds everyone of the other untruths we have been told, such as that either party cares about working class jobs, or would take any action that discomfits major donors.

This came to my attention today because of an article about Vani Hari, aka the Food Babe, in the New York Times. Vani has a family and personal background as a prominent Democrat, but she’s working for RFK now because, like so many of us, she was able to turn her health around by changing her diet, and not in the way the doctors recommend, yet she never got establishment Democrats to support that message any more than Republicans would. Specifically, she worked closely with the Obamas in the 2012 presidential campaign, then Barack reneged on a promise to support GMO labeling and Michelle touted Subway as an example of a healthy food source.

Vani became famous in part by forcing industrial food purveyors to remove toxic ingredients using public pressure, and she’s had some big wins, including getting Kraft to remove that nasty yellow dye from macaroni and cheese. All the other first world countries already required Kraft to use paprika for coloration before Vani took them on, and now our kids get that advantage too.

Now that she has changed political sides, the left is going after Vani in a big way. One person quoted in the NYT article said: The desire to oversimplify and demonize what seems scary dovetails really well with a right-wing worldview. But Vani is not oversimplifying or demonizing, she’s sharing solutions that work. The chemicals in ultraprocessed foods combined with their base of highly industrialized, i.e. nutrient-free, farm products are demonstrably deleterious to public health.

The NYT also had this to say about Vani’s change of teams: [I]t has bewildered many on the progressive left who felt they owned what food historians call the good-food movement. So people who have come up with a group of things they think we should eat that has resulted in epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and dozens of autoimmune diseases, think because they branded that advice the “good-food movement” we should embrace it?

Results are more convincing that marketeering.

NYT also mentions that Trump supporters who once dismissed dietary interventions as part of the “nanny state” school of government are championing organic produce and trying to rid schools of ultraprocessed foods. That’s great news, right? In the context of the article, it sounds like the authors think it’s a negative.

I let a lot of the nonsense NYT and The Guardian write about nutrition rest unchallenged, but today I took the bait, and here I am, defending worm brain and his piece of the Trump destruction juggernaut. What a world.

Posted on by Jo Gent

No Drama Living

My husband and I had a consultation with a financial planner based in Italy today. Financial planning is very different in Europe, and he explained some of the changes we would need to make were we to move to Spain, which is our intention, although execution of our carefully constructed timeline is tenuous, mostly because the Spanish consulate in San Francisco is extremely busy right now.

One of the biggest differences is a dearth of places to leave money where it could earn interest. For variety of reasons, European banks don’t want to stash money, and not only do they not pay interest for the privilege of doing so, they often charge. Out of curiosity, I asked, What do Europeans do with their retirement funds?

The planner told me they mostly don’t have retirement funds, that salaries are lower there, so most people don’t set aside savings. That sounded terrible to me, until he explained it.

Europeans, he said, don’t view retirement as a time to stop working and start doing whatever they like to do. They spend their entire lives doing whatever they like to do; no one works 14-hour days, or stresses themself out to make a killing, or has to work multiple jobs to survive. They tend to live in the same house until it’s paid off, raise their families, and form communities, and nothing much changes when they retire.

Remember, he said, there’s no cable news in Spain recycling the headlines of the day into more headlines, endlessly. People aren’t barraged by frantic assertions that they need to act quickly to avert the next disaster. Speculation and fanaticism do exist in the realms of sport, celebrities, and the royal family, but not in a way that derails the routines of daily life.

Elections, he said, come and go without most people spending a lot of time on them, because there is not a lot to worry about. No political entity is going to take away health care, or close schools, or use legislation to “reverse” the discoveries of science. That’s why when a pandemic comes, or there’s a nationwide power outage, the people are mostly calm and compliant.

No Drama Living.

Now I’m really looking forward to moving. I try for No Drama Living every day, and as a retired person willing to ignore the news and able to live as I like on my retirement funds, I succeed most days. But the drama is lurking just around the corner, popping out in a guy you meet at a party whose daughter was arrested at a protest, or a member of your dance troupe who lectures on the “failings” of the “other side” during a team dinner.

Since I am an American, I also feel some obligation to keep up with the current dismantling of our society, mostly by skimming NYT and The Guardian daily, occasionally by contacting a representative or supporting an organization. I also delete quite a few inflammatory emails, despite spending considerable time unsubscribing.

My husband and I are moving, but our friends and family are not, so I’m sure I will always want to keep an eye on what is going on here. But I can easily picture it becoming more of a background hum then a headache-inducing stress. Should I try to be the person who makes the difference? I may have aged out of that behavior.

Or maybe that’s only a thing in the movies. Civil, stable, locally-oriented living is optimal for humanity. Without supervillains, no superheroes are required.

Posted on by Jo Gent

Drowning in Sorrow

Most of the time I’m not, but the moments happen.

There was one this morning. I read about a young Indonesian man, married to a US citizen, caring for their disabled baby, applying to be a permanent resident. He had a good job in a hospital, until ICE came in and told his work colleagues to call a fake meeting in the basement so it could nab him.

They complied. Jesus wept.

ICE doesn’t need any real reason to nab anyone now, but sometimes it enjoys pretending it has one. In this case it retroactively revoked his visa, set to expire in 2026, by changing its expiration date to sometime in March of this year. Then it picked him up based on criminal activity which involved graffiti years ago. The victim had traveled outside the country and returned multiple times since that misdemeanor (not punishable by deportation) offense.

Criminal activity is one of our new opposite word/phrases, like merit hire, as in the sentence, Current US cabinet members are merit hires.

These stories of individuals, usually men around the ages of my sons, illegally torn from there homes and jobs and families and deported if they’re “lucky,” or imprisoned in harsh conditions with no legal recourse if they are not, affect me much more than the threat of losing Social Security or the US betraying the good guys and joining the bad guys. It’s horrific for even one person to be snatched from their life for no reason. Are we just going to get used to this happening again and again?

Well, we have certainly adapted to regular school shootings.

Things are going well for my family and for me, and yet we live in the midst of increasing rancor and lawlessness of the worst kind, that perpetrated by authorities and fueled by capitulation. Now happiness now often seems gratuitous, and our right to pursue it a slender, shreddable veneer.

I haven’t blogged in a while because, well, they always start out like this. I will regain equilibrium shortly and probably not feel like this for a while, maybe even days. But I needed to acknowledge the situation today. Every room is filled with elephants.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 1 Comment

Be As Courageous As You Can

If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny. Timothy Snyder

This may seem rich coming from me, the person who’s trying to move to Spain before flu season starts. I never said I was brave, and I wouldn’t criticize anyone else for not being brave. Well, not any other sub-billionaire individual. Columbia University, on the other hand, has earned my heartiest disdain.

As you probably know by now, when threatened with removal of an amount of money corresponding to 1/40 of its $16 billion endowment, Columbia threw its students, innocent civilians in Gaza, and its integrity under the bus.

In response to threats from the administration, Columbia has said it will allow campus police to arrest students who protest. Since the protesters are opposed to the resumption of the not-quite-completed genocide in Gaza, the clear implication is that Columbia doesn’t think the murder of Gazan children is a suitable cause for the constitutionally-protected right to protest, and certainly not as imperative as continuing the university’s full funding.

One of the scientists working at the University spoke up to agree with the decision, saying the University simply couldn’t continue to operate without money. $15,600,000,000 is a looooooooong way from being without money. I would not be surprised if Columbia were a much richer target than the watchdog- and inspector-laden, process- and law-following federal government for finding examples of that elusive triplet of tricksters, Wastrel, Fraudster, and Abussy.

It isn’t even as if Columbia will now get its money restored and return to copacetic cluelessness. The administration has made it clear that Columbia has been Very Naughty, and while this capitulation is a step in the right direction, there are still many Improvements to be made.

For some reason, Columbia is considered a leader, so expect the rest of the Ivy League to also adopt the slogan, Capitulate Early and Often! The poorer universities probably won’t be too far behind.

If I had had any doubts about deciding to leave the country, they have been obliterated by the incredible level of bending of the knee by every person and entity who one would have thought had the resources to Resist, Dismiss, or even Lead by Example. Most of our leaders in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, are either colluding or accommodating, especially the older, more powerful ones. So many corporations, gigantic worldwide corporations, are throwing years of policies that have worked for them and their customers out the window at the merest hint of the carrot-top’s displeasure.

Then there are the tech billionaires who have gone from Bros to Babies, a shortish but evil slide, in a historical hot second: Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, Musk, Cook, and Chew. I usually try to keep the crudity level at simmer or below in these blogs, but every time I see a picture of one of these jerks I mentally replace it with a more accurate picture of him on his knees licking the President-Elect’s ass.

Shoutout to Bill Gates and Warren Buffet for bucking the trend!

So, my fellow Americans, no leaders are going to help us, just as none is helping green card holder and Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil. And although we can protest our own asses off, the juggernaut has been launched. I’m going to try to dodge it before it explodes my house.

Posted on by Jo Gent

James, not Huck

I recently read both Huckleberry Finn and its re-imagining, a book called James by Percival Everett. James is the best book I’ve read in a while.

At the beginning, James follows the story line of Huckleberry Finn pretty closely, but it’s narrated by the slave in the original, Jim, who thinks of himself as James. Despite being set in 1860, the lives of the slaves very much resemble those of Black people today. They practice code switching when interacting with white people. They explicitly train their children how to do that, and also to behave differently around white people, in an attempt to avoid egregious results. They live with the possibility of being a victim of violence, or of encountering someone who expects them to do as they are told, continually.

Modern Blacks have a chance to live normal lives, though the normality is fragile. For slaves, egregious results were impossible to avoid. Violent acts occurred almost daily, and subservience and obedience were expected by every white person encountered, regardless of age or social status. Even their homes are not safe, with no chance of locking their doors and no possibility of preventing any white person from entering and committing any act with impunity from either the law or the community.

At some point in both books, Huck and Jim/James are separated, and after this the stories diverge quite markedly. James is very exposed by himself, as without a white “owner” nearby he is presumed to be a “runaway,” which he is by that society’s reasoning. He manages to find and carry some books for a while, and his inner dialogue as he ruminates over his readings and imaginatively interacts with the authors, mostly enlightenment philosophers, reveals his intellect and his despair. Hanging onto these books proves impossible; even harder is his attempt to obtain pencil and paper so he can write his own life story. We learn that a white person regards stealing a small pencil stub as a capital offense.

For much of the book, James himself is not living under the thumb of a master, yet occasionally he experiences and observes evil actions when he interfaces with white adults. There aren’t “just” beatings, but lengthy, vicious beatings that strip deep layers of skin and break limbs. There aren’t “just” rapes, but repeated rapes, rapes of children, even rapes of Black women by Black man forced to do so in order to “breed.” People are chained and caged like animals. Every slave is chronically underfed, often near starvation, yet expected to do hard labor for 10 or 12 hours a day. A slave can be hung for an unintended lack of deference, or for knowing how to read or write.

It’s an impossibly fraught way to live.

My husband did not read this book, but we spent some time thinking about how we might be different if we have been born then. Not every white person was a beater or a rapist, but every white person felt free to ignore any Black person, or to tell that person to do something for them and expect them to obey immediately. Every white person thought that “niggers” were inferior, and stupid, and ownable. Even most abolitionists of the time would not assert that Black people were equal to white people. My husband and I agreed there was no certainty we wouldn’t feel the same way if raised in those conditions.

The tension in Huckleberry Finn comes not only from our modern knowledge that these things were never true, but also from the very smart and humane actions taken by the slave Jim. The tension in James comes from us being inside his head and experiencing just how brilliant, honorable, and charitable he is, and how agonizing his life is as a result. This is much more intense.

Huckleberry Finn ends with Jim a free man, though even a casual reader will realize his black skin will ensure he continues to live in fear. James has a more hopeful ending, simply because James has more agency, and perhaps even a slim chance of escaping the evil society of the antebellum US.

A less hopeful takeaway: One hundred and eighty years later, much evil not only remains, but also thrives.

Posted on by Jo Gent · 3 Comments

Why We Might Move

My husband and I are in the process of considering a permanent move to Spain. It is complicated and somewhat expensive, and we have not committed to doing it, but we are seriously investigating our options. We’ve already worked with an immigration lawyer to determine that there is a visa for which we would qualify and received quotes for medical insurance. We have a couple of tax consultations scheduled.

We like the lives we led here during the last nine years, but we don’t think there is a possibility of those lives continuing. Some people are startled that we would consider this, perhaps because they think United States is the best country. We realize it is somewhat craven to abandon our country, but we’re not sure it still exists.

No one can predict the future, but we have some ideas about what may happen. I decided to list them in a blog post because I get the Why? question a lot, and I would like to be able to answer it thoroughly. Here are some of our expectations based on our observations of the current situation, not in any particular order.

  • If the government takes $2 trillion-or-so out of the US economy, it will collapse, leading to a depression here or even worldwide.
  • Now that the US is not tracking disease factors either at home or abroad, and both vaccine development and vaccine usage are at historic lows, the next contagious epidemic disease will be much worse than the last one. Local outbreaks have already begun.
  • Mass firing of working scientist as well as elimination of grant programs has already virtually stopped medical research by the government, so we may lose ground quickly in medical science.
  • Reversal of environmental protections will lead to disruptive extractive industry activities and reduced air and water quality.
  • Reversal of gun control laws will increase–is it even possible?–our level of everyday, anywhere gun violence.
  • Gutting of agencies that maintain safety in areas like food supply and air traffic will result in more foodborne diseases and airplane crashes.
  • Gutting of agencies involved in emergency response will increase loss of life and property for future hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires.
  • Gutting of agencies that gather data on natural phenomena such as weather will reduce our ability to predict extreme events as well as the efficacy of our weather-based industries such as agriculture.
  • Deporting all of our “illegal” immigrants, which seems to include many non-criminals with paperwork in progress, will drastically reduce both the amount of crops we can get from farm to table and the amount of construction we can complete anywhere, exacerbating the food and housing problems we already have.
  • The states that removed women’s reproductive rights already have increased numbers of babies with birth defects as well as increased infant and maternal death rates. This will expand throughout the country should these laws become federal.
  • As far as we can tell, rule of law has been replaced by fealty as the basis of our justice and legislative systems, meaning that even routine services such as passport issuance could be decided based on envelopes of cash or how deeply one’s head is bowed.
  • With unqualified, unvetted personnel leading our security services and even our military, we will lose access to global security intel, making us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
  • The rise of the white male patriarchy systematically dismantling equal rights for people of all religions, ethnicities, and genders threatens most of the population–all women, for example–and is disturbing to us specifically.
  • The elevation of the concept of transferring the country’s wealth from poor and middle-class people to extremely wealthy people is virtually codified already, and seems to be accepted by most. We believe this will degrade the lives of ordinary Americans.
  • We find some of our country’s current policies morally wrong, including abandoning Ukraine, abandoning NATO, eliminating all of our health- and nutrition-based charitable efforts worldwide (USAID), aligning with Russia, seizing assets of other sovereign countries, and trying to force the European Union to be as mean-spirited and anti-citizen as our leadership is.

Any parent reading this will realize that the worst aspect of moving would be being even farther from our adult children, although being far from our friends will be a very close second. I have been trying to encourage the kids to move to another country for several years now, because at their ages they have many more options than we do.

So far they do not agree with me, and perhaps you do not either. Maybe you understand it a little better now, or maybe you just think we’re crazy. Maybe we will move, and maybe it won’t work out. Life was always a bit like a roulette wheel, but it seems to be spinning faster now.

Posted on by Jo Gent

One-Half Nation, Demoralized

Roughly half of our nation, namely the Maga supporters, are super psyched, for a variety of reasons. The anti-DEIs are happy about getting white heterosexual males back in charge of everyone else. The anti-abortion side plus some incels are excited about moving toward a Handmaid’s Tale-style society. The Dominionists are ready to re-create an Amerika that follows the teachings of the Vengeful Christ, whoever that is. A group recently released from (and a subset already returned to) incarceration are busily exercising their right to carry guns, chant, and intimidate average citizens on the nation’s average streets. A small but prominent minority, the Gazillionaires, are thrilled to find that for a few million dollars and utter abandonment of all moral principles plus everything they were taught as children, they may soon become gazillion-illionaires.

Then there’s President Musk, a man of action, who is continuing to live the values he learned as a child in South Africa, as he always has. He isn’t messing around; he’s taking over every government system of the United States and systematically destroying it from inside. He currently has complete control of federal spending and has gutted USAID, a pretty impressive effort for two weeks. He is being helped by executive orders and non-meritocrat Cabinet nominations by shadow president Trump. Did I get those backward?

Whatever. The other half are astounded by how easy it is for a small number of persons to bring our country to a near total halt just because they want to. It turns out that for the past 249 years the reason systems kept working is only because people didn’t try to break them. That is demoralizing.

I wouldn’t say there’s no resistance, but it’s feeble. A lot of this stuff is illegal, but if the enforcement branch is the one breaking the laws, the “normal” way to stop them is through the judicial system, which works pretty slowly, and is riddled with sycophants and capped by a nine-person bench of which six are cultists/corrupts.

There are some protests, and various interest groups trying to get attention, and lots of people and groups asking for money to help, but no person or group has a plan of action that appears to me will be in the slightest bit effective against the combination of power and norm-flouting currently practiced by the scofflaw co-presidents.

The Democrats and their supporting media organizations spend a lot of time being aghast or shrieking about the latest travesty, seemingly feeling that if they show Trump is “bad” we will all immediately conclude Democrats are what we need. Isn’t that the strategy that just lost them the election?

That’s bad, but even worse are the ones who are trying to find a way to compromise with our new administration. As we saw during the campaign when they couldn’t stop consulting their billionaire doners, denounce genocide in Gaza, stem government corruption, break up predatory conglomerates, or take one concrete step to reduce grocery prices, many Democrats are so enamored by hanging out with the cool kids that they’re going to drink the Kool-Aid.

Leaders of our nations universities are very much in this last category. Their organizations are reeling under new DEI strictures, but every single one is carefully tempering comments on the topic, fearful of retaliation.

In other words, it turns out that those of us who should be leading the resistance are either craven or ineffectual. Bernie Sanders would be the exception; he does not appear afraid of retaliation in the slightest. However, he is still focusing on using our nation’s process, spending his considerable energy and influence on finding truly progressive and perhaps bold leaders to run for office in 2026.

I think it is perhaps optimistic to think we will have an election in 2026. Even we do, we need to do something before then. This last election was at least in part decided by gerrymandered precincts and reduced voter rolls, and those sorts of activities will only increase between now and then.

My husband and I are thinking we should leave. That also seems craven, but as two retired people, we are in no position to turn any aircraft carriers around, especially without a strong organization spearheading a viable plan. As people depending on Social Security as part of our retirement plan, we are very vulnerable to impoverishment. We are angry; we’ve spent nine years building a new life in California, and we will have to start over again at this older age. However, that is something we at least can figure out how to do.

Honestly, it’s not clear that we will be able to get out in time. The US has now officially stopped tracking/reporting bird flu, and if it transitions to human-human transmission, which seems inevitable, we may not even find out until it has spread halfway across the country.

Season 2 of Trump v Pandemic could be more of a killer than Season 1.

Posted on by Jo Gent

What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?

I thought the ethical standards of our world were plummeting this century, but the pace of the plummet this past week feels as if a galactic firehose sent a gigantic stream rocketing through our society, whisking every last trace of moral value irretrievably into an abyss. There appears to be no bottom to the mean-spiritedness of our crime-boss-run society at this point. Hundreds of lives are being wrecked every day. It’s hard to think of what one can do in the face of this extreme vitriol directed toward ordinary Americans trying to live peacefully with our families.

Perhaps choose which bridge to live under after the inevitable collapse?

A tiny piece of this is DEI, which corporations, all lovely people to their friends I’m sure, can’t dump fast enough, and some incredible optimists suggest if we boycott them it will matter. In case you agree, the current list includes Target, Walmart, Meta, Amazon, Molson Coors, McDonald’s, Tractor Supply, Caterpillar, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, Toyota, Brown Forman (Jack Daniels), and Harley-Davidson.

Probably the list will continue to grow.

DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, basically the idea being that no person should be denied opportunity or respect based on physical or cultural traits. It sounds so benign!–especially since no brain-owning adult can be completely ignorant of the mass murder and enslavement used to seize and plunder the Americas and provide generational wealth to the perps and their descendants (including moi).

Until last week I had thought that the Red Meanies would leave the rest of us alone once they won, but no, they want us to Suffer, Grovel, and even Die. At least we are clear now on the true nature of humanity. Unlike any other animal, humans like to control, confine, torture, taunt, bully, and debase each other, for no particular reason.

Many of us are craven as well, requiring zero pressure to turn into active haters, though a minority are bold. Companies re-committing to DEI post-deluge include Costco, Apple, Pinterest, Microsoft, e.l.f. Beauty, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, and Goldman Sachs.

I guess there are still a few places I can shop, at least for the moment.

The weirdest thing about this is how Christians have gone from peace-loving lambs to violence-inflicting lions in less than a generation. Think about the things Jesus did in the New Testament: turn the other cheek, be a Good Samaritan, heal the sick, feed the poor, wash feet, and forgive everyone, even those who killed him. He was also not much of a capitalist, reportedly driving the money changers and merchants out of the temple.

Now churches are encouraging open carry at services and running raffles to win AR-15s. Persons acting so un-Christ-like really should choose another name to rally under. But they won’t. That would be a moral choice.

Posted on by Jo Gent

Is My Job Bad for My Health?

Recent news, by which I mean an item recently reported as news although it actually is not news because we’ve known it for a long time, indicated that authorities in the United States now believe that no amount of alcohol is good for our health. The New York Times, always quick to jump on trends whether it can add useful information or not, posted an article in which someone interviewed a fellow whose career involves wine and asked him how it felt to have a career that’s bad for your health.

News flash, by which I mean something you know already because it’s, well, obvious: Since the start of the industrial age most humans have had careers that are bad for our health.

For example, any job that involves doing the following for multiple hours per day:

  • Sitting;
  • Focusing your eyes at a distance of less than 30 inches;
  • Staring at a backlit screen;
  • Being indoors in a home or office that contains any building materials, furniture, equipment, or decorative items that could not have existed 200 years ago;
  • Repetitive motion of your hands and wrists;
  • Standing in the same place;
  • Repetitive bending or stooping;
  • Lung, nose, or skin exposure to toxic substances; and perhaps even
  • Consuming alcohol or ultraprocessed food.

There are occupations that might be hazardous but don’t have to be if you’re careful, well-trained and use recommended procedures and gear, such as working with firearms or munitions, criminals or the mentally ill, heavy equipment, pathogens, or wild animals. Risk-takers such as trapeze artists, skydivers, giant wave surfers, free climbers, and stunt pilots can mitigate their risks, though occasionally some participants will be injured or killed. The thrill, they say, is worth it.

Decades ago I read that forest ranger was the job with the longest health span. That makes sense; the person is outdoors, getting a lot of exercise, looking into the far distance, and surrounded by nature, which is calming to humans, as long as it doesn’t include a predator bearing down on us. Primary and secondary school teachers also seem to be quite healthy, enjoying active retirement for decades, possibly because their work involves movement, occasional outdoor excursions, and a variety of focal lengths. It isn’t really correct to consider children a health threat.

Preindustrial-style family farming is not in my view a healthy employment choice, at least not the kind that involves growing plants in artificial rows created by destroying natural environments. If nothing else, it disrupts your circadian rhythm for most of the year, especially if you are one of the 40% of humans who are not morning people.

I’m retired though, so every day I can choose whether to prioritize my health or not. Often I do not; To be human is to make bad choices. Then there are those aging considerations, the real possibility of doing a head plant after you trip over a chair or burning down the house after leaving the gas burner on. So even if you survived your unhealthy job, as I did, more obstacles await.

I hope this post is not a source of stress to anyone! If we strive to be kind and caring to everyone every day, no matter what we did the day before, we have a good chance to live with no worries and no regrets.