Breaking News From the Empty Nest

7/9/2017

One July 9, we were in Rome, right near the Via Veneto, with our three little children, one of whom had a birthday. My wife found a cake and some candles and borrowed the roof garden of the hotel for a little party.

My wife has taught the children a love of music and art and poetry and cooking and family. I taught them how to say, “Tre gelati, per favore,” so they could walk down the Via to an ice-cream stand and order their favorite flavor.

Today is Corinna V. Wilson’s birthday; her family is fussing over her in Pennsylvania.

I went out on the deck of our family home on Long Island and looked at the empty nest discreetly hidden on a branch. A few weeks ago, the nest held three blue eggs, guarded by the mother. Then there were three wide beaks, waiting for her to get back from our front lawn, where she had discovered a stash of meals.

For a few days, the three birds were flying at low altitude, watching their mother forage. Now they are full size, and they flit and feed and sing.

Happy Birthday.

Mendel

7/9/2017 02:32:57 pm

"For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land."

Happy Birthday, Vecsey clan!

Wally Schwartz

7/9/2017 08:30:22 pm

Corinna and George,

Two birthdays within five days! May you enjoy many more with your wonderful flocks of admirers.

George Vecsey

7/9/2017 10:04:39 pm

The rabbi and the judge. What an honor. GV

Hillel Kuttler link

7/11/2017 01:19:51 am

Thoughts for the parents of an empty L.I. nest on a baby bird's birthday. A mango gelato for me, please.

7/12/2017 09:56:17 am

Shalom, Hillel:
Mille grazie.
GV

bruce

7/13/2017 06:26:16 pm

george,

congrats on your daughter's birthday.

i think my kids are getting so old that they might just catch me.

blue eggs meaning your guest is a robin?

as you know, i walk a lot. hearing birds signing many steps of the way makes me realize just how much i miss them during the winter months.

bruce

Alan Rubin link

7/16/2017 08:10:13 pm

George,

Having been a member of your blog since December 2011, I feel like I’m part of an extended family.

Empty nests are bittersweet. Parents have done their job well when their children have shown person growth, gained maturity and achieved independence. It continues to get better as the grandchildren also come into their own.

We are proud when they work hard to overcome obstacles and setbacks.

The grandchildren are either in college or preparing for the next step after high school.

The cute babies and rapidly developing adolescents are distant memories.

The down side is that we are mortal and our time will eventually run out.

The most powerful incentive for longevity is to be around when the grandchildren have also reached independence and have begun their part of the family cycle.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

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