Click on the image to read about the late, great Janet Smith.

A week ago today we learned that a very, very dear friend passed away. Janet Smith, who was also a neighbor, had staved off ovarian cancer for nearly two years. Janet was a tenured professor in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). But that’s just a title. She was a teacher, a mentor, a world-renowned researcher, and an advocate. She was not an ivory tower academic. She was a force of nature. She was 59.

To give you a sense of her broad impact, nearly 400 people attended a Zoom tribute to her yesterday.

I was going to try to tell readers about her in my own words, hoping it would be therapeutic for me. But the enormous scale of her impact (where to start?), the depth of our love for her and her husband, and the freshness of the wound make that impossible.

That may change, but meantime, I invite you to read her official obit from UIC:

https://today.uic.edu/obituary-janet-smith

Janet was also a committed faculty union member: She was President of the UIC United Faculty union. It issued its own statement.

http://uicunitedfaculty.org/uicuf-president-janet-smith-has-passed-away/

And here at the Urban Affairs Association:

https://urbanaffairsassociation.org/2022/01/18/uaa-has-lost-a-respected-and-inspiring-activist-scholar-leader-mentor/

Click on image to see the short clip.

And maybe give a look to this YouTube clip about “battling cancer” from the late comedian Norm Macdonald—who recently died from cancer himself.

I think Janet would have approved.

Our last in-person visit to a school was in February, 2020. As always, lots of questions from the kids. (photo by Jamie Ceaser)

After two years of teaching memoir-writing classes via Zoom, visiting third-grade classrooms via Zoom, sitting on panel discussions via Zoom, participating in my book club via Zoom, visiting family members via Zoom, I’ve been looking forward to life in person again.

Be careful what you wish for.

The calendar Gods have conspired. Starting January 26, a week from today, I have six, count them, six, in-person events scheduled in one week’s time.

Happy to report that all six events require mask-wearing and full vaccination status. And of course, due to that Greek letter that I never needed to know how to spell before, any of these in-person events could be cancelled at the last minute. As of today, though? My in-person schedule looks like this:

1. Wednesday, January 26: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community
2. Friday, January 28:12:40 p.m. to 1:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Indian Trail Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
3. Tuesday, February 1: 10:50 am, visit third-graders in person at Ravinia Elementary School in Ravinia, Illinois.
4. Tuesday, February 1: 2:40 pm, visit third-graders in person at Braeside Elementary School in Highland Park, Illinois.
5. Wednesday, February 2: 12:15 pm, lead memoir-writing class in person at senior living and retirement community.
6. Wednesday, February 2: 6 pm, participate in panel discussion in person at South Loop Neighbors Speakers Series: Authors Night at Half Sour, 755 S. Clark, Chicago, Illinois.

It’ll be nice to cap off the week at Half Sour – the authors event is free, four local authors will give ten-minute talks about our books and our lives as writers, and keeping the talks short should allow time for questions after. . The event includes an hourlong social hour with a cash bar from 6 to 7, then our little talks at 7 pm.

But wait. There’s more! Ellen Sandmeyer from Sandmeyer’s Bookstore will be carting copies of our books from her store in her little red wagon, and of course we authors will be more than happy to sign them for our book buyers.

A nice neighborhood event, I think. Very flattering to be one of the chosen authors along with Amy Bizzarri (111 Places in Chicago that You Must Not Miss), Sylvester Boyd (The Road from Money), and Greg Borzo (Chicago’s Fabulous Fountains). And who can argue with an author’s night that starts with a 6 p.m. social hour? After that long week of coming-and-going, I’m sure to enjoy a little glass of wine before my ten minutes of fame on 02/02/22. Ge whiz. I may even wear one of the two new dresses that have been sitting idle in my closet since I bought them in January, 2020. Look for me there…in person!

A few years back I posted about how we often anoint wunderkinds as “creators” of a new technology. The point was that scientific and technological advance reflects collaboration, not wunderkinds. That every advancement is sort of a collective milestone in the eternal scientific drive to learn more and do things better.

Right now the commercials we see from the companies that are producing the covid vaccines that are essentially self-anointments. What these companies accomplished is remarkable. But it’s only part of the story.

A NY Times piece (Halting Progress and Happy Accidents: How mRNA Vaccines Were Made) a few days ago illustrated yet another example of how science is a collective effort—the development of the Covid vaccines specifically, and, more broadly, mRNA vaccines. These vaccines hold great promise beyond our current predicament.

And it all started with AIDS, AIDS research and the efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine. From the article:

In December 1996, President Bill Clinton invited Dr. Anthony S. Fauci to the Oval Office to brief him on that era’s grave pandemic, AIDS, which by then had killed more than 350,000 people in the United States and six million more globally.

Dr. Fauci, the top government scientist investigating the virus, was feeling oddly hopeful. For the first time since the virus emerged, annual AIDS deaths in the country had fallen, thanks to several new drugs that were tested and approved after years of intense public pressure by patient activists.

But the most valuable tool remained missing from their arsenal: a vaccine. And the president was impatient.

As the men walked out to the Rose Garden, Dr. Fauci recalled, the president turned to him and said: “You’ve known about AIDS as a disease since 1981. How come you guys don’t have a vaccine yet?”

Dr. Fauci, taken aback, told the president that research efforts thus far had been largely uncoordinated. Then he made a bold pitch: a research facility where scientists from different disciplines could talk to one another and collaborate, with the goal of putting vaccines into arms rather than proving that their own discipline had the answers.

Mr. Clinton turned to his chief of staff, Leon Panetta. “You think we can do that?” he asked.

“You’re the president of the United States,” Mr. Panetta recalled saying. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”

To date, the HIV vaccine effort has failed. But it spawned breakthroughs that enabled the mRNA vaccines. And the government’s role in all that has been critical.

mRNA vaccines also required the muscle and ingenuity of private sector medical companies.

Arguing incessantly about government vs. the private sector leaves us stranded in today’s binary world. It’s not either, it’s both. Arguments about the balance are legitimate, but to address big problems, we need both.

I’m as fatigued as everyone else when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. The omicron variant news made a lot of people feel like we’re starting over again. But, for a glass-half-empty kinda guy, I’m optimistic that we have the spiky little pest on the run.

I know that runs counter to news about case counts.  But I’ll quote CDC Director Rochelle Walensky during a recent NPR interview:

…we are standing on the shoulders of now two years of science and a lot of information…

In point of fact, we’re standing on the shoulders of decades of research when it comes to the vaccines, and hundreds of years of life science research. But her point was this: It’s amazing how fast and how much we’ve learned in the last two. Two years ago today, covid felt like a rumor. Two years ago, come this March, it took me five days to be approved to get a covid test, and once I did my drive-up swabs, it took another four days to get the result. I learned the result after growing so ill that I went to the emergency room. The positive test came in while I was there.

Before my hospital stay, I quarantined for days, staying in our bedroom and only coming out for food and drink. I carried a bottle of Clorox and spread a layer of bleach on anything I touched. People were wiping down grocery bags and groceries themselves. (Note: It was and STILL is important to wash your hands thoroughly and often, and to avoid touching your face.)

Now, even with the omicron rush, I can get a test and have results the next day (at the worst). I  know that the surface cleaning didn’t matter a whole lot. I know that masks help and that some masks help more than others. I have had three vaccines counting the booster.

Omicron appears to be much less dangerous than previous flavors, and if South Africa is any indicator, it’ll burn itself out pretty fast. And for those unlucky enough to have caught omicron, there is evidence that in a delicious irony, having had omicron appears to build resistance to the more dangerous delta variant.

Now, if we can get the laggards to get vaccinated, we can also shrink the number of petri dishes that covid can mutate in. At this point, if someone hasn’t gotten their jabs, probably no amount of information or persuasion is going to work. But these economists may be onto something: simple incentives and disincentives.

It’s been two years of a weary slog, but it’s also brought light to how remarkable we humans can be. And also: that the government matters, as explained in this Scientific American article. The government funded much of the research that led to the mRNA vaccines—though big Pharma will reap enormous profits from them.

That’s for another post.

In any case, I’m hopeful. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Hey Y’all,

Sorry I’ve been absent the last couple weeks. The first week I just was worn out … work and life had  been hectic.

The second week … um, I just forgot. Even Beth forgot, and she’s usually the one that keeps me on my toes.

And now we’re in holiday mode. Despite omicron and the pandemic, I’m uncharacteristically optimistic about 2022. For one, 2022 is just a really nice-sounding, round number. For another, I think this omicron thing will burn itself out pretty fast (it already has in South Africa, where it was first detected). For still another, Beth and I just had a splendid visit with a beloved friend, whom we hadn’t seen in two years, reminding us both of what that’s like, and that such things can happen if you do them carefully.

Hoping to do a lot more that kind of thing.

Mostly, I’m feeling grateful. For my health. For my family. For you readers. And for our friends. See you next year.