We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to screen entertainment. And it drives me nuts.

For example, we have Netflix. But nearly every time we think of a movie we want to see and I search on it, I get the dreaded “Titles like…”. Which means “we don’t have it but you might like these.” Like, we wanted to see “Wall Street.” Netflix suggests a bunch of titles that, you know, we didn’t search on. We don’t see anything we want. So I search where “Wall Street” does stream. And I find it’s on other services, which we don’t have. And if we did, we’d still have to pay for the movie. Or we could buy it one-off from YouTube.

Check out Dick Cavett. And the Dick Van Dyke show has aged well, also.

The Balkanization of screen entertainment has me thinking that people who unplug from cable will eventually pay more for a multitude of streams that cost more than their old cable bill.

It also makes me nostalgic for another time.

Enter Decades TV, and oldies-but-goodies TV channel that has everything from Ed Sullivan to…The Dick Cavett Show. Bingo!

Back in the day, my mother routinely favored Cavett over Johnny Carson. As a kid, it was over my head and I didn’t get it.

But now, every night at 8 CT, Beth and I switch to Decades and we are transported in time. Kind of. Because so often the questions and topics are pretty much the same as they are during modern talk shows. That’s pretty striking.

Except the questions are smarter, the guests are civil, and the monologues are funny but not mean spirited.

Cavett was kind of Terry Gross on TV before Terry Gross was on the radio. Thoughtful questions and discussions that go off script.

And I’d forgotten: Guests don’t come and go one at-a-time. They stay, so by the end of the show there may be three or four of them interacting.

Last week, for example, one show had Florence Henderson as the first guest. She was followed by Sid Caesar. Then Jack Klugman and it ended with Robert Shaw (who knew Shaw was also a writer?).

Other combos: Melba Moore, Don Knotts, and…F1 racing champion Jackie Stewart. On another, Jackie Robinson was joined by Joan Baez. And they got into a great political exchange. (Jackie Robinson was a brilliant man.)

Anyway, if you’re of a certain age and want some nostalgia, try Dick Cavett. If you’re not of a certain age and want to know how good we had it, give it a look.

I am pleased to feature my sister Bev Miller as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Thanks to the kindness of my older siblings, I have always enjoyed being the youngest — and most spoiled — member of a large family.

Until now: I’m the only one too young to qualify for a COVID-19 vaccine yet!

My sister, Beverle.

Bev graduated from Grand Valley State, recently retired after a very successful career in computer programming, and lives with her family in Grand Haven, Michigan. This account of her Vaccination Day made me smile. Hope you enjoy reading it, too.

It Really Happened

by Bev Miller

• I received vaccine #1 today.
• Arrived at assigned time at Grand Valley State University in Holland, Michigan.
• Didn’t know there was such a thing, a branch of GVS in Holland.
• Yay, alma mater!
• Process didn’t seem to be quite as simple as what Marilee experienced. Editor’s note: Marilee is our sister in Florida.
• Noticed a cluster of people standing outside.
• Some on an upper landing.
• Another cluster on a lower landing.
• Two guys in full fatigues are there to greet me as I approach.
• I’m told they’re running ten minutes late.
• ”Please return to your vehicle,” they say. “Come back in 10 minutes and you will be processed thru the system.”
• It is 18 degrees outside.
• I did not come prepared to stand outside. Editors note: Bev has an attached garage at home.
• Happy to return to my warm vehicle.
• Ten minutes later, I go back to facility.
• We stand 6 ft. apart outside for 5 minutes or so.
• We are allowed inside.
• As we continue to approach we keep 6 ft. apart.
• At each stop someone in fatigues recites the same instructions.
• Over and over.
• And over.
• At all stops we are greeted with, “How are you today?”
• Me? “Fantastic!”
• My vaccination was even administered by a guy in fatigues (Air Force Reserve).
• Told him this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me in a long, long time.
• He says, “Happy I could be a part of it, ma’am.”
• Could have done without the ma’am.”
• Wait 15 minutes in case of reactions.
• Surprised to be greeted by a girlfriend of mine who is volunteering her time to steer people thru the process.
• On to the room to be scheduled for vaccine #2.
• T’was so exciting!

My post suggesting that clearing snow off sidewalks should be as important as clearing streets after a snowstorm got a lot of comments from empathetic pedestrians. Many wondered if any local organizations are working on issues about keeping Chicago sidewalks walkable in the wintertime.

Check out the Better Streets Chicago site and sign the petition.

And the answer is…yes! circulating a petition now demanding that the City of Chicago prepare a plan and allocate resources to make municipal sidewalk snow clearance a higher priority. I learned about this after a friend signed that petition — once you’ve signed, you have the option to have this letter sent to friends who might want to sign, too. I contacted Better Streets Chicago this morning, and they generously agreed to let me share that letter with you Safe & Sound blog readers here. I hope you’ll sign!

Create Walkable Winters in Chicago

Hi there,

I signed a petition telling Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Streets & Sanitation Commissioner John Tully, CDOT Commissioner Gia Biagi, CTA President Dorval Carter, Chicago City Council to create walkable winters in Chicago.

By failing to clear sidewalks of snow and ice, the City is failing its many residents who rely on pedestrian infrastructure to get around. Often these are some of the most vulnerable residents. The piles of snow and ice effectively traps people who use wheelchairs or other mobility supportive devices. It impedes parents with strollers. It makes accessing the bus difficult to impossible, especially if you have limited mobility. It leaves every user at risk of slipping and falling. The City has chosen not to take responsibility for public infrastructure during the winter.

Act now and sign this petition demanding that the City of Chicago prepare a plan and allocate the resources to make municipal sidewalk snow clearance a reality by next winter.

Can you join me and take action? Click here to sign the petition: https://betterstreetschicago.org/walkable-winters?source=email&
Thanks!

Watch it!

I thought “Defund the police” was a dumb term for a stupid idea the first time I heard it. I’m all for “fund our schools,” but the idea that it’s a zero-sum game between police and schools or other social investments is nonsense.

Clearly though, it’s time to change how police do their policing. It’s long overdue. Video cameras have laid bare the truths about policing that Black and Brown people have known forever.

I believe we can change policing for the better, but after watching the documentary film “Women in Blue,” I think it’s a little more complicated than rooting out racism. (As if that’s not a big enough ask.)

The PBS/Independent Lens production starts in 2017 when the filmmaker, Deirdre Fishel, begins to track four women in the Minneapolis Police Department. (Yep, Minneapolis.) Her impetus was the appointment of MPD’s first woman Police Chief. I don’t want to be a spoiler, but I will say that the movie obviously wasn’t about an incident in the future—George Floyd—but it kind of was. At least if we’re talking about changing the culture around policing.

These women did just that in their very finite spheres just by thinking and acting differently than their male counterparts. The filmmaker had incredible access, and the timeline runs from 2017 through police violence crises and ultimately, to the Floyd killing.

Now, if you’re defensive of cops, don’t jump to the conclusion that this is anti-police. The film makes painfully, frighteningly clear how hard their jobs are. I think regardless of what you think about cops, gender equality in the workplace, or Black Lives Matter, you should see this thing. The female cops struggle and they absolutely shine. And though it’s a rough subject with a rough ending, they give me optimism that we can and will do better.

Dr. Ashenhurst.

I am pleased to introduce Dr. Jody Ashenhurst as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. Dr. Ashenhurst grew up in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and attended medical school at University of Illinois at Chicago. She trained in Internal Medicine at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital under renowned physician Dr. Quentin Young and credits him for teaching her as much about social activism as medicine. “Along the way I created some ‘good trouble’ myself,” she says with a smile. “Including helping organize a doctors’ union at Oak Forest Hospital.” After years of practicing Hematology/Oncology in various teaching hospitals in the Chicago area, Dr. Ashenhurst retired in 2017. She joined the memoir class I lead at The Admiral at the Lake in 2020 and generously agreed to let me share this essay with you — with the Senate Impeachment Trial going on this week, I assigned “Guilty” as a writing prompt.

Guilty

by Jody Ashenhurst, M.D.

I spent my internship and residency at Cook County Hospital and that required me to spend 3 separate months at the Cook County Jail. I was assigned to the Medicine ward at Cermak Memorial Hospital, the Jail’s small hospital.

Only a small proportion of the prisoners were serving sentences, and most of those sentences were under a year. The rest of the inmates at the Jail were awaiting trial. To see whether a prisoner was oriented to time and place, we would ask two questions: “When is your court date?” and “How much is your bond?” I never asked what a patient’s crime was. I knew that these men were not guilty, but they weren’t “not guilty,” either.

We met every morning to discuss problems that had arisen the day before, and then again at lunch. The food in the cafeteria was so horrible that Cook County Hospital sent over sandwiches of “mystery meat” for us. We were not sure whether we or the prisoners and employees had worse food for lunch.

My first day on the ward found me working alone, since my resident was in clinic back at the County. I went around the ward introducing myself and asking how my patients were feeling. As I was finishing up, I came across a burly, unshaven and bedraggled white man who looked up at me and said, “How would you feel if you found out you had killed your mother?” I learned that the Medicine ward occasionally took in some Psychiatry patients when their ward was full.

The nurses taught us to distinguish real from fake seizures. The radiologist only came for a couple of hours every morning but he taught us to read X-rays of facial bones so we could detect orbital fractures after fistfights. If there was something we couldn’t handle, such as chest pain, we could send the patient to County, but we had limited resources. Each prisoner at County was guarded by a sheriff’s police officer, which meant that the County Jail provided three officers for each prisoner, one per shift. There were a limited number of sheriff’s police available. We took great pride in sending very few patients to County, managing them in our jail hospital with limited resources: laboratory tests were unavailable after 7 pm and X-rays were unavailable after 11 pm, like in a small, very rural and unsophisticated hospital.

Because life on the ward was infinitely preferable to that in the tiers, the psychiatry patients found creative ways to get admitted to our little hospital. They seemed to know when a fresh batch of interns arrived to work at the Jail.

One guy was admitted for depression after his mother died. In fact, his mother died every month. Another fellow would be brought to the infirmary wearing tinted wire frame glasses while chewing on a broken light bulb. Crunch, crunch. The first time we panicked and admitted him to the hospital. After that we developed a routine: we had him rinse the broken glass out of his mouth and then subjected him to a very rough rectal examination. He would then be sent back to the tiers.

Were we a little bit sadistic with the rough rectal exam? Guilty as charged.