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Authors Posts by Leah Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

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Endurance. Wikipedia photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Like a hand reaching out from its watery grave, the stern of the ship with the name “Endurance” became visible in the underwater drone’s searching beacon of light. A century after the ice crushed and sank the vessel, along with the hopes of explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew for being the first to walk across Antarctica from sea to sea via the South Pole, the biggest shipwreck discovery since the Titanic connected us with those men a century ago. For many of us, the find was thrilling.

The three-masted ship is remarkably preserved in 10,000 feet of water below the surface ice, and from the photos, even the spokes on the wheel in the stern are hauntingly intact. Armed with the latest undersea equipment, marine archeologists, engineers and scientists, using the last data recorded when the ship sank, were able to find the wooden Endurance, survivor of one of the most heroic expeditions in history, at the bottom of the Wendell Sea near the Antarctica Peninsula. The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s group Endurance 22 announced the news. The darkness and frigid temperatures had made such search efforts in the past impossibly difficult but also created an inhospitable environment for bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that might have devoured the ship. Instead it stands at attention since 1915 on the sea floor.

After the ship sank, Shackleton and his crew of 28 loaded food and anything else they could into three lifeboats and set up camp on ice floes, and when those disintegrated, camped on Elephant Island. 

The Endurance. Photo from Wikipedia

Recognizing that they had somehow to get help if they were to survive, Shackleton, his captain, Frank Worsley and four other carefully selected men sailed across 800 miles of treacherous waters in a 22-foot boat to the nearest place of habitation, a remote whaling community on the island of South Georgia. Once they arrived, they had to scale steep mountains to get to the station on the other side. Shackleton’s decisive and heroic leadership ultimately saved the entire crew and is studied in business schools and management programs to this day. His planning and improvisation made the escape possible.

Shackleton died in 1922. Curiously the wreck’s discovery happened exactly 100 years to the day that Shackleton was buried. And while Endurance was photographed and filmed, nothing was removed or disturbed, and it is protected as an historic monument.

An Anglo-Irishman, Sir Ernest Shackleton was born in County Kildare, Ireland, and moved with his family to south London. His story seems a fitting way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. He led three different English expeditions to the Antarctic, walked to within 97 miles of the South Pole during the previous Nimrod expedition of 1907-09, and climbed Mt. Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano. For those feats, he was knighted by King Edward VII on his return. Ultimately he led a final expedition in 1921 but died of a heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. He is buried there. 

Despite the fact that he was largely unsuccessful in business ventures and died heavily in debt, Shackleton was voted eleventh in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons in 2002. He was to be the one others prayed to have lead them when under extreme circumstances.

The saga of Ernest Shackleton and the Endurance captured my imagination when I worked for Editor Alfred Lansing at Time Inc. I was 22 and had never met anyone quite like Al before. A volunteer in the Navy when he was 17 (he lied about his age and somehow got in), Al had a reddish-blond crew cut, bright blue eyes, a huge smile and a tattoo on his right forearm well before tattooes were a common occurrence. He smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes, was one of the best storytellers I had ever met, and wrote adventure stories on the side for what were then called men’s magazines.

It was Alfred Lansing who wrote the book “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” four years earlier which had received a National Book Award nomination. Listening to him tell the story, I was hooked for life on that adventure and the marvel of Shackleton’s leadership. Sadly, both men died at an early age.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

The idea was that if European nations were interdependent for their economic welfare, then they would not make war on each other, but would rather work together for their greater good. And for more than 70 years, the concept held. Where wars were the way for nations, and before there were nations, for regions to enrich themselves by raiding their neighbors, stealing their treasures and claiming their land, now that was eschewed. Finally, there was to be peace.

England and France, France and Germany, Spain and England among others, all put their guns and their history away and did business with each other. This was the vision articulated by the United Nations after World War II ended, and it came to pass. The economists and philosophers were right. No one would make war on neighbors who were making them money. And for the most part, nations realized unprecedented wealth and the security that peace brings.  Economics was to be the field of battle, not the military. And with unrestricted trade, globalization took hold. War was a distant memory.

Until now. Incredible as it seemed to the rest of the world, Russia invaded the Ukraine less than two weeks ago with the aim of annexing that country. Such action, as Russian military surrounded Ukraine on three sides, would be an ill-conceived throwback to a more appalling and unwise time. Or so we thought.

As the Ukrainians defiantly rise to meet the invaders with military weapons, the rest of Europe and countries elsewhere in the world are responding with their weapon of choice: economics. It is a testament to the thinking and planning of those leaders seven decades ago. And so, with remarkable unity, the European Union is striving to blow up Russia’s economy rather than blowing up Russia’s cities. The pain for the Russian leaders and the Russian people is to be felt in their pocketbooks and not in their cemeteries. At least, that is the intent.

But of course, as in every war, it’s the civilians who most suffer and pay the price for their leaders’ actions. If they aren’t shot to death, they may be starved to death, as their money becomes worthless and their businesses are ruined. Still, the Russians will do better without Coca-Cola than the Ukrainians without water.

And that is another remarkable consequence of attempts to isolate Russia. Not only are governments withdrawing trade and financial dealings in this siege, but also international corporations are cutting ties with the invading country, even if the companies bear the price. McDonald’s, which employs some 62,000 workers in Russia, Starbucks and Apple have closed their stores, among numerous others. Americans have indicated overwhelmingly in a recent Quinnipiac University national poll (71%), that they will tolerate the increased price of gasoline if Russian imports of oil and gas are ended. The Biden administration has heard them and is closing off those imports. Of course, the prices at the pump were going up anyway due to considerable current inflation. Why not put the blame on the Russians!

So do shared economic interests prevent wars?

There should have been a corollary put into that concept: assuming all the governments are made up of reasonable persons. Much now is being made of President Vladimir Putin’s mental state because most of the rest of the world cannot understand why he is embracing this “special military operation.”

He did not even tell his lower rank soldiers that they were about to engage in a war. Who knows how the Russian leader thinks? Is he unreasonable or is this merely the opening salvo he, and perhaps his “friend,” Premier Xi Jinping of China, are plotting for a long game?

Of one thing the world can be certain. When autocrats are planning something that surely would be roundly condemned, one of the actions they take is to close down the media and crack down on free speech. Signing a new censorship law, Putin has now criminalized independent journalism for reporting “fake news.” 

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John Landy (right) with Roger Bannister in 2004. Photo from Wikipedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

These are difficult times, but we’re not going there. As President Joe Biden pointed out in his State of the Union Wednesday night, the war in Ukraine, inflation, Covid and climate change are some of the troubles before us. Further, for Pete’s sake, the owners and the players of major league baseball are so far apart in their negotiations that we don’t even have an opening day. And it seems that potholes on local roads multiply overnight. Let’s talk about other things.

Have you ever heard of John Landy? I had, but not by name. Many of us know who Roger Bannister was. It was breathtaking news when he broke the four-minute mile at 3:59.4 as a runner on May 6, 1954. Until that day, humans were not expected to run that fast. Bannister always gave credit to the guy behind him, and in the subsequent race billed as the Mile of the Century, on August 7, it was John Landy.

Landy, an Australian academic, was also a runner. Graduating from Melbourne University that famous year with a degree in agricultural science, Landy and Bannister, an Englishman and medical student at Oxford at the time, ran against each other on Aug. 7 at the British Empire Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was to be the first time two men would better four minutes in the same race. Landy had previously run on June 21, in Turku, Finland, scoring 3:57.9. (The current record, by the way, is 3:43.13, held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.)  

They were the only two who had individually broken the four-minute mile record earlier that year, and their race generated huge excitement. Bannister finished first. Eight-tenths of one second separated the two. Bannister saluted Landy for offering the fierce competition that pushed him just a little bit harder to win. You might wonder how I know all this. Landy died last Thursday in Australia at the age of 91, and there was an appropriately in-depth obituary about him in Sunday’s The New York Times, so I attribute all this information to obit writers Frank Litsky and William McDonald.

“As expected, Landy led from the start, building a 15-yard lead. But Bannister … closed in on the last lap and Landy could sense him coming. Rounding the final turn, he peeked over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was. But Bannister was on his right, and as Landy’s head was turned, Bannister stormed by him, and won in 3:58.8. Landy came in second, in 3:59.6

“Only later was it learned that Landy had run the race with a wounded foot. By his account, he could not sleep the night before the race, so he got up and, barefoot, walked the streets — only to gash a foot on a photographer’s discarded flashbulb. He allowed a doctor to close the wound with four stitches, but only after the doctor swore that he would keep the incident quiet,” according to The NYT.

It was Dr. Roger Bannister, however, whose name “became synonymous with singular athletic achievement,” according to Wikipedia. He died in 2018, making Landy the winner in longevity.

A testament to Landy’s sportsmanship occurred in 1956 at the Australian track and field championships in Melbourne. (Bannister, by the way, retired from competitive running in 1954, to concentrate on medicine.) As Landy was running in the race, hoping to break the record again and participate in the coming Olympics there, a 19-yeaar-old competitor, Ron Clarke, was bumped and fell down ahead of him. When Landy leapt over his body, he inadvertently spiked his right shoulder. 

Landy stopped, ran back to Clarke, brushed cinders from Clarke’s knees and said, “Sorry.” “Keep going,” Clarke said. “I’m all right.” Clarke got up, and he and Landy started after the others, who by then were 60 yards ahead. Landy caught them and won in 4:04.2, according to The NYT.

Landy, in his own words, had “an extraordinarily interesting life.”  I hope you find his story uplifting in what is today a darker time.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

In an attempt to make Ukraine more real for all of us, this country on the far side of Europe, I am including the information below that was taken from Wikipedia on the internet. I hope it helps us visualize what the situation is there. 

Ukraine is an important agricultural country and can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

• 1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;

• 3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world’s volume);

• 1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;

• 2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;

• 3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;

• 4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;

• 5th largest rye producer in the world;

• 5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);

• 8th place in the world in wheat exports;

• 9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;

• 16th place in the world in cheese exports.

It is the second-largest country by area in Europe and has a population of over 40 million — more than Poland.

Ukraine ranks:

• 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;

• 2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;

• 2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves);

• 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);

• 2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;

• 3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)

• 4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;

• 7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an important industrialized country and ranks

• 1st in Europe in ammonia production; Europe’s 2nd’s and the world’s 4th largest natural gas pipeline system;

• 3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;

• 3rd in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);

• 3rd in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;

• 3rd largest iron exporter in the world

• 4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;

• 4th largest manufacturer of rocket launchers, in clay exports and in titanium exports

• 8th in exports of ores and concentrates;

• 9th in exports of defense industry products;

• 10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).

Ukraine matters.

These are some reasons why its independence is important to the rest of the world.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

If it was President Vladimir Putin’s intention to be the center of global attention, he has certainly succeeded. Not much can push the latest COVID news off the top spot. Maybe inflation and how it is affecting the average resident can, but that’s nothing compared to the dominance of the situation in Ukraine and the speculation about what Putin’s next move will be. There seem to be numerous Putin specialists who profess to have studied the Russian dictator’s every move for many years and know what his plan is. Or, does he have a plan? Is this a story that he is writing as he goes along? This makes for lots of rhetoric among the pundits. 

One thing is sure. The serious possibility of Russian aggression has caused North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to stand together and reaffirm their alliance. Perhaps this was Putin’s test. There was little reaction when the Russians invaded and took over Crimea in 2014. Would anyone really care if they took over all of the Ukraine?

Well, the answer to that question is decidedly YES. And the United States has stepped forward to reaffirm it alliance with and leadership of NATO by organizing the threat of severe economic sanctions against Russia, sending military equipment to Ukraine and finally sending a symbolic number of troops to NATO countries that border on Ukraine, namely Poland and Romania. A small number of soldiers also went to Germany, perhaps to bolster the resolve of the newly elected German leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to honor its alliance. 

Germany has the most to lose as far as its energy supply goes. Some 38% of the European Union’s natural gas comes from Russia, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office. Much of it is imported by Germany to heat homes in winter and enable factories to operate. The loss of that source of energy would certainly cause economic pain to Germans and other European residents, who would have to pay more for significantly less supply. And of course, that furthers the impact of inflation.

Russia’s overt demands include halting NATO’s expansion and reducing its military exercises and presence in Eastern Europe. Specifically, Putin wants guarantees that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO, which its current leadership has indicated it would want to do in the future. However, noted globalist and New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, suggested in the issue of February 16, that Putin’s fear is that “Ukraine becomes Westernized. He fears that one day Ukraine will be admitted to the European Union.” If  such an event were to happen, which Friedman believes young Ukrainians dream about, they feel it could “lock in their frail democracy and lock out corruption and Putinism.”

Friedman goes on to point out that “Putin seized Crimea and first invaded part of Eastern Ukraine in February-March 2014. What else was happening then? The European Union’s 28 member states were forging a new E.U.-Ukraine Association Agreement to foster closer political and economic ties, signed on March 21, 2014.” Putin’s greatest fear, according to Friedman, “is the expansion of the E.U.’s sphere of influence and the prospect that it would midwife a decent, democratic, free-market Ukraine that would every day say to the Russian people, ‘This is what you could be without Putin.’” 

Meanwhile, Putin is deciding, according to Friedman, “If  I go ahead with a full scale invasion and it goes bad — wrecking Russia’s economy and resulting in Russian soldiers returning home in body bags from a war with fellow Slavs —could it lead to my own downfall?”

Whatever Putin’s thoughts are, he has used the threat of military force to bring the Western leaders to the table for extensive talks. Perhaps the diplomats will remake the Eastern European map without resorting to war. 

Until there is some sort of resolution to this stand off, what can we, here in America, expect? We will have to deal with the possibility of growing shortages and accompanying inflation, which in fact we are already experiencing at the gas pumps. 

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Maybe it is a Hallmark holiday, but with St. Valentine’s Day approaching, love is definitely in the air. Perhaps Chaucer started it with his poetry about Valentine’s Day in the 14th century. There have been many iterations since. At the least, it’s a time to reflect on the loves in our lives. And there are many. Let us count them together.

Saint Valentine’s Day has traditionally been associated with romantic love, as people—give each other material declarations of their affections. These start with cards, some of them originally composed and handwritten, others store bought and ceremoniously delivered. Red roses are the usual accompaniment and perhaps even generous amounts of chocolate. All of that helps to endure a cold winter’s day and night. It certainly helps the local economy.

So many other loves exist, some of them deeply in our hearts. The love we bear for our children makes for family bonding. It has been said that if children loved their parents as much as parents love their children, the human race would end because the children would never leave their homes. From the marvel at first sight of those tiny fingers and toes to the day we walk them down the aisle to start their own families, we love them, disregarding all the aggravations that happen in between. For most, this is an indissoluble love.

And yes, most of us truly love our parents, the mother who taught us to read, the father who taught us to swim. We go from thinking they are all-knowing demigods to wondering if they are the stupidest humans on earth, and ultimately to respecting them for all they have given us despite their various shortcomings. We are awed by their indestructible love for us and at the same time acknowledge that they are but human. 

We have been impressed with the number of entries for our Love My Pet section that is running in the newspapers and on the website and social media this week. We certainly love our pets, maybe because they can’t talk. And they are unfailingly loyal and forgiving. Well, dogs, are. I’m not so sure about cats. In some cases, we regard them almost as our children. 

A carpenter of undetermined ethnicity, who was doing some work in our house, once pointed to our golden retriever and proclaimed, “In my next life, I want to come back as an American dog.” 

We love our true friends, those who are there to prop us up when we fall as well as those who share our good times. We can also genuinely love our teachers. A caring teacher can make a profound difference in the direction of a child’s life. For example, my sixth grade teacher, in an unexceptional neighborhood elementary school in New York City, stayed after hours, for a few weeks, to coach half-a-dozen of us so that we might pass a citywide test for an exceptional junior high school. Two of us did, and to this day I love that woman, though after that year, I never saw her again.

We can love members of our clergy, who are predictably there for us with advice at critical times and with solace at times of deep loss. Yes, that is their job, but some do their jobs beyond measure. We can love our doctors, who take an oath to watch over our health, but again, some are deeply caring. For these people, we are more than grateful. They love us, and we love them back.

We can love the natural world around us, a world that is filled with songbirds and butterflies, squirrels and foxes, wild turkeys and seagulls to delight the senses. We love the first sight of crocuses announcing the beginning of spring and the early flowering magnolia trees. 

If we are lucky, we can truly love our jobs. For us, they are more than a source of livelihood, more even than a career. They are a calling. They propel us out of bed in the morning and often are the subject of our last thoughts as we go to sleep at night. They coax out the best in us and provide us with unique satisfaction.

Finally, we need to love our lives. Sometimes to do so takes re-contexting and perhaps re-adjustment. That love seems like a worthy goal. 

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Here comes Russia again. I am of the generation of children that took refuge from an imaginary atomic bomb attack from Russia by pulling our coats over our heads and crouching under our desks. We grew up with the Cold War always threatening Soviet aggression on both foreign and domestic soils. Were there Communist cells, funded by Russia, hidden among us that could erupt at any time? McCarthy whipped the nation to a fever pitch. The United States and the Soviet Union raced each other to influence governments and people, ideologically and financially, all over the globe. 

I still remember the relief I felt, going to the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1959, to view a performance by members of the Bolshoi Ballet, who came to America bringing not only the most breathtaking dancers but also tangible evidence of detente. And then the Berlin Wall came down. I was there. At least I was there in 1989, six weeks before they broke through to West Berlin. I walked No Man’s Land, the barren stretch between East and West Berlin, with cameras trained on anyone who would start the crossing between those two universes, seeking permission from the guards to go behind the Iron Curtain. 

I was in the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. in 1991 with a small group of journalists, being feted with caviar and blinis, when word came that the Soviet Union had crumbled, and then the embassy personnel cried. “The end of a dream,” they sobbed. The end of a nightmare, I thought, as they led us to the exits and fell upon the sumptuous food we left behind. Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Prize, the Russian people were real, not just the Evil Empire, and co-existence was finally possible. In a couple of years our attention turned to jihadists.

Now Russia is dramatically back in our lives. The Russia that for centuries had sought warm water ports and had ruled Crimea for 134 years until 1917. The Russia that again annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine since 1954 and of an independent Ukraine since 1991, with armed intervention in 2014. The Russia that has now lined up reputedly over 100,000 troops on three sides of the Ukraine border, and with aggressive leadership is making demands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is insisting that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization initially formed after WWII as a protection against potential Soviet aggression, that has grown as more Eastern European countries have joined. Putin insists it is a security issue to have bordering Ukraine a NATO member. He also wants military exercises in nearby NATO states to cease and for offensive weapons to be removed from those NATO countries.

So where do we come into the picture?

“It seems to me that the United States does not care that much about Ukrainian security—maybe they think about it somewhere in the background,” Putin said in his news conference. “But their main task is to restrict the development of Russia.”

By “development,” the concern is that Putin wishes to restore the former Soviet empire and that, after Crimea, Ukraine would be the next step. Students of history will remember the lessons of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and the “spheres of influence” imposed by the Yalta Conference (in ironically Crimea). Meanwhile, Putin, with his soldiers and weapons at the ready, is accusing the U.S. of threatening Russia. White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, likened Putin’s comments to “when the fox is screaming from the top of the henhouse that he’s scared of the chickens.”

Now, as of yesterday, the decision has been made to send several thousand troops to Poland, Germany and Romania. Presumably they are meant to show support for NATO and for the principle that countries may decide which alliances they will enter.

Meanwhile everyone concerned, including Putin, has embraced the idea of diplomacy as a path to a Ukrainian solution. For the moment, at least, the spotlight has moved away from constant COVID.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Feeling overwhelmed by all the news of the past few days? 

The latest numbers for COVID victims, the mask debates, the possibility of another COVID variant emerging, the Russians military massed around the Ukraine, NATO and its cohesion and response, the Islamic State re-emerging in Afghanistan, North Korean test missiles, escalating inflation, climate change’s latest effects, how the USA is severely divided, the inactions of Congress on voting regulations, death in the NYC subways, and even whether Brady will finally retire, those items and more could do that to you.  

“A newspaper is a mirror. Each day it reflects some segment of the world’s activities.” 

I am quoting Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former publisher of The New York Times, but the metaphor has been offered by many others. We in the news business capture the events of the moment and provide contemporaneous information, largely without interpretation, for historians to analyze and history voyeurs like me to look back and see who was making news then.

So, in an effort to escape the daily barrage, I checked to see what was happening 100 years ago, at the beginning of 1922. I used as my source front pages from The NYT, compiled by them in a book called, “Page One.” Here is what I found.

“Pope Benedict XV Passes Away Early This Morning; Lingers Hours After World Gets Report of Death; Tributes Paid to the Pontiff by Men of All Religions,” reads the three-tiered, all capitalized headline of the Sunday, Jan. 22, 1922, issue. Other articles on the front page cover different aspects of the main story, including “Men of All Faiths Eulogize the Pope, Protestants Unite with Catholics in Praise of his Great Service to Humanity, and World is Misled by Premature Report of Death; Berlin Started Rumor, Cardinal’s Aide Spread It.”  Immediately notable about the headlines from today’s perspective is, of course, the mention only of men. Women had gotten the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution less than two years earlier. I guess they had not registered on the country’s radar yet as part of the general population. Also on the page is a report that Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister, looked to the coming Genoa Conference as setting the stage for the world’s path to peace and recuperation, but only if the United States attends and actively participates. He was clearly and correctly concerned about our move toward isolation after WWI. 

Also mentioned in another article was the storm of protest that ensued in France when General Pétain, a military hero of WWI, was appointed to the cabinet of Premier Poincare as inspector general of the Army. The fear was that his influence on the government’s future direction would be too militaristic. Petain, we know from our vantage point, went on to become the chief of state of infamous Vichy, France, during WWII. Ireland too made the front page in a story of mutual consent by Michael Collins, head of the Irish Provisional Government and Sir James Craig, premier of Ulster, abut boundaries between North and South that predicted ultimate agreement.

In the issue of Feb. 22, 1922, the three-tiered headline featured the fate of the Army dirigible. “Giant Army Dirigible Wrecked; 34 Dead. 11 are Saved; Victims Perish When Roma Bursts into Flames After Fall; Collapse of Rudder Causes Tragedy On Short Trial Flight.” Roma, 410 feet long, was built by Italy for the United States. The subheads go on to explain, “Hits High Tension Wires, Hydrogen Ignites in Norfolk Flight and Flames Sweep Huge Structure. Few Saved by Leaping, One Lieutenant Breaks Neck in Jump—Other Victims Buried in Wreckage, Rescuers Baffled by Intense Heat — Commander Mabry Stuck to Wheel Till Death Came.” This was the greatest disaster that ever befell American military aeronautics, according to the newspaper.

In going back and reading these news articles, we can see how the stage was set for so many future events. Especially interesting to me is to learn of the roles of individual players in what would become world history.

 

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Stock photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

There has been a lot in the news recently about COVID testing. We can request at-home test kits, and the government promises to send them to us through the mail. Also, we can shortly obtain N95 masks, the most efficient at filtering out microbes from the air, from pharmacies and other health centers. Those should be available to us by the end of next week.

Here is a new angle for consideration. Testing thus far has focused on using swabs inserted up the nose. But there is, perhaps, a more comfortable and more accurate possibility: spitting into a tube. “The virus shows up first in your mouth and throat,” according to Dr. Donald Milton, an expert on respiratory viruses at the University of Maryland who was quoted by The New York Times last Saturday. This means that testing saliva or swabbing the inside of the mouth could help identify people who are infected days earlier, some research suggests. 

Here are some findings from Dr. Milton and his associates. Three days before symptoms appear and for two days after, “saliva samples contained about three times as much virus nasal samples and were 12 times as likely to produce a positive P.C.R. (gold standard) result. After that, however, more virus began accumulating in the nose …” The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now authorized numerous saliva-based PCR tests which work well for screening students at schools.

“Saliva really has turned out to be a valuable specimen type and one that has increasingly been advocated as a primary testing sample,” said Dr. Glen Hansen, of the clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics laboratory at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minnesota. 

Since Omicron “appears to replicate more quickly in the upper respiratory tract and have a shorter incubation period than earlier variants,” if attention to the mouth and throat would be able to detect the virus earlier it would be particularly valuable, according to Emily Anthes, the NYT reporter.

Further, researchers in South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, have determined that saliva swabs of that variant were better indicators of infection than nasal swabs in the P.C.R. tests, although the opposite was true for the Delta variant. But other research studies have had mixed results. As is usual, more research is needed.

There are also other aspects to saliva tests. It is possible that while highly sensitive tests like PCR might identify infection in saliva days earlier, less sensitive tests like the antigen test in the at-home kit, might not. And there are other considerations. What else has passed through the mouth before the test is given? And how will that affect the pH and the result? Also, saliva can be “viscous and difficult to work with,” especially when patients are sick and dehydrated, according to Dr. Marie-Louise Landry, director of the clinical virology laboratory at Yale New Haven Hospital, who is also quoted in the NYT.

In Britain, some at-home tests require swabbing both the throat and the nose. Multiple site testing would seem to offer an advantage. But test manufacturers would have to reconfigure their tests accordingly. Throat swabs need to be bigger. And most importantly, the at-home rapid antigen tests would have to be authorized for mouths or throats, which they currently are NOT. The biochemistry of the mouth is different from that of the nose and may yield a false positive.

Ultimately a variety of test options to meet a variety of situations would seem the best result. For those who have symptoms for several days, a nasal swab might be the choice. Saliva tests might work better for large-scale surveillance of asymptomatic people.

Meanwhile making at-home antigen tests available for everyone is a positive step.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

It’s a new year and I have a new suggestion for our readers. Inspired by The New York Times column that is published on Sundays, called Metropolitan Diary, we would like to offer a similar feature. The Diary is made up of short vignettes, sent in by readers, of anecdotes and interactions that occur as part of city life. Each week, while individually interesting, they also reflect the unique tone of what it is like to live in New York City.

We would like to start a Village Diary, perhaps to run once a month, which would be fun to read and also speak of our existence here in Suffolk County. We would have to depend on you to do this because it would consist of stories and conversations you would like to share. They could be anything exemplifying, “Would you believe this!” to “Why I am proud of the place in which I live,” or “This is what my wife said to me at breakfast this morning,” or even “What they yelled at the umpire.”

As an illustration, I can tell you one of my favorites from the NYT about life in the Big Apple. Two couples were sharing a cab ride to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. The older couple was taking the younger one to their first opera, Verdi’s Otello. The older man was seated in front, and as they rode along, he draped his left arm over the back of the seat and was telling the plot to those in the back. Just as he got to the part of Iago, his green-eyed jealousy, and the misplaced handkerchief, they pulled up in front of Lincoln Center, and he reached over to pay the fare. To his surprise, the cab driver blocked his arm and said, “Nobody leaves this cab until I hear the end.” 

There are a couple of encounters I have thought to send in. One involves parking my car in the theater district. Because I have special plates, I usually park on a block west of the district that has four spaces reserved for those cars. This time, when my friend and I pulled up at the usual place, the spots were taken by cars without proper plates. “Where else can you park?” asked my friend.

As I sat there, my head down, trying to think of alternatives, there was a knock at my window. Surprised, I turned to see a smiling man in an orange jumpsuit. When I opened the window, he asked, “Want a parking space? Wait two minutes and you can have four.” I looked back and there was a long, flatbed truck with a huge hook on the end.

True to his word, he had pulled the illegally parked cars onto his truck in a couple of minutes, and with a wave, he and his load were off. I now had my choice of spot. “You are lucky I am here as a witness,” commented my friend. “No one would believe this story.”

Another such incident involved a friend who was visiting from Boston and was driving us both into the city. Only when she had stopped alongside the electronic machine of the EZ Pass lane at the entrance to the tunnel, did she realize she was not driving the car with the pass on the windshield. “You can’t back up,” I yelled. “Oh my gosh, here comes a cop,” she shouted. Indeed, a police officer was bearing down on us from the next lane, a ticket book in his hand and a deep scowl on his face.

“Whatsa matter wit chou?” he yelled as he reached us. “Don’t ya know hadda drive?”

“I’m so sorry officer,” my friend replied. “I thought I had the other car.” Only she didn’t say “car” but rather “cahhr,” revealing her origin.

“Cahhr? Cahhr?” the policeman repeated. Then, “Go on, get odda here,” and he waved us through the raised gate. We never paid the toll.

Please send any such local stories to [email protected]. We will gladly print them.   

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