White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

PBS Has a Future by Leaving the Past Behind

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Over the years, I have often been critical of the Public Broadcasting Service. That in spite of the fact that for 28 years, I have produced and hosted a program, “White House Chronicle,” which is carried by many PBS stations.

It is an independent program for which I find all the funding and decide its direction, content and staffing.

My argument with PBS — brought to mind by the administration’s canceling of $1.1 billion in funding for it and National Public Radio — is that it is too cautious, that it is consciously or by default lagging rather than leading.

Television needs creativity, change and excitement. Old programs, carefully curated travel, and cooking shows don’t really don’t cut it. News and public affairs shows are not enough. Cable does them 24/7.

My co-host on “White House Chronicle,” Adam Clayton Powell III, a savant of public broadcasting, having held executive positions at NPR and PBS, assures that they aren’t going away, although some stations will fail.

I believe PBS has often been too careful because of the money, which has been dribbled out by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Some conservatives have been after PBS since its launch.

It is reasonable to look to the British Broadcasting Corp. when discussing PBS because the BBC is the source of so much of the programming that is carried by PBS — although not all the British programming is from the BBC. Two of the most successful imports were from the UK — “Upstairs, Downstairs,” which aired in the 1970s, and, more recently, “Downton Abbey” — were developed by British commercial television, not by the BBC.

Even so, the BBC is a force that has played a major role in shaping state broadcasters in many countries. At its best, it is formidable in news, in drama and in creativity. It is also said to be left-of-center and woke. Both of these are things PBS is accused of, but I have never found bias in the news products. What I have found is a kind of genteel poverty.

I once asked the head of a major PBS station why they didn’t do more original American drama. “It would cost too much,” was the response in a flash. Yet, there are local theater companies aplenty who would love to craft something for PBS if they were invited.

Sometimes the idea is more important than the money. Get that right, and PBS will have something it can sell around the world. It should be an on-ramp for talent.

Maybe, stirred by its newly induced poverty, PBS can lead the television world into a new business paradigm.

First, of course, take advertising and don’t be coy about it, as “Masterpiece Theater” is about Viking cruises. Take the advertising.

Second, see what is happening across the television firmament, where more TV is now viewed on YouTube than on TV sets. This happens at a time of the viewer’s choosing. PBS needs to jump on this and create a pay-per-view paradigm so that when it has a big show, as it did with Ken Burns’ “Civil War” years ago, it can prosper, as well as selling the show around the globe.

PBS is a confederation of stations, each one independent but tethered to PBS in Washington, which provides what is known as the hard feed. These are programs pre-approved for central distribution by PBS. Independent producers aren’t acknowledged on this, nor do they get listed as being PBS programs.

I remember how I had heard that WHUT, Howard University’s television station, was open to new programs. So I took a pilot over to WHUT. One young woman said “yes” and a program was born.

PBS needs to open its doors to new talent, new shows and uses of new technologies. Leading the pack in broadcasting innovation would be the best revenge. New money will follow.

NPR is a different story. Its product is successful. It needs to be open to new funding, including much better acknowledged corporate funding. If Google or some other cash-laden entity wants to underwrite a day of broadcasting, let it. Don’t give it the editor’s chair, just a seat in accounting.

Postcard from A Coruña: A Summit in a Spanish City in Ascendency

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I am one of those who believes what Seneca, the ancient Roman writer and statesman, said, “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”

I don’t know if the stoic Seneca said that before or after his exile to the island of Corsica by the emperor Claudius.

Anyway, earlier this summer, my husband and I had the opportunity to visit a city in the country where Seneca was born: Spain. Both the city and the purpose of our trip imparted a new vigor to our minds.

We were invited to participate in the Ecosystems 2030 (ES2030) summit, held in A Coruña, a port city on a promontory in the Galicia region of northwest Spain, from June 26-29. The summit is the creation of a man with a vigorous mind: Omar Hatamleh, the head of AI at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the executive chairman of ES2030.

The annual summits in Spain — where Hatamleh lived and studied — gather speakers and participants from a wide swathe of professions, connecting the unconnected and spurring ideas. His stated aim for summiteers is for them to ditch linear thinking and “to successfully embrace disruption, transform your organization, and thrive over the next decade.” Hatamleh has used the same formula — cross-industry innovation — for meetings he has organized at NASA.

The agenda for this year’s summit, the fourth of 10, was “Women in Leadership.” And the women who addressed the summit were wonder women from private and public entities including Pilar Manchon, Google; Aylin Uysal, Oracle; Rika Nakazawa, NTT; JoAnn Stonier, Mastercard; Maria Fernandez, Sony Music Entertainment; Deepti Pahwa, an innovation and leadership coach to C-suites and entrepreneurs; Nancy Namrouqa, Jordanian minister of state for legal affairs; and Jennifer Stumm, a concert violist and founder and director of Illumina, a Sao Paulo-based music collective, festival and social group “working for greater equity and goodwill in classical music by young musicians around the world without access to private instruction or mentorship.”

In formal addresses and in conversations at lunches, dinners and in hotel lounges, these women shared their thoughts about new ventures and innovation in the AI age, the future of AI governance, e-commerce, privacy and social media, and even board member leadership. Their talk was of how they are shaping new frontiers not how they shattered barriers in the private and public sectors —refreshing and inspiring.

The summit was a movable feast, convening mostly at the avant-garde Palexco Conference Center, which is located at the city’s port and has a roof that resembles the wings of a giant seabird, the mayor’s office in the neoclassical-style City Hall, built in the early 20th century, and the two-Michelin-starred Pepe Vieira Restaurante & Hotel.

The restaurant and hotel, part of the Relais & Chateaux group, is located “in the upper area of Raxo, the smallest municipality of the municipality of Poio, in Pontevedra,” according to directions on its website.

It was an experience getting to the restaurant, which is about an hour-and-a-half drive from A Coruña through a sea of Galician vineyards and villages where the backyard of every house had wine grape vines. No grape escape.

The website says, “For a better experience in finding ‘the last kitchen in the world,’ follow our instructions, since Google has already gotten lost several times along the way.” That is truth in advising.

Pepe Vieira is located on a terraced hill overlooking the Pontevedra estuary. It is surrounded by woods, au naturel landscaping and “biodynamic” vegetable gardens, enjoyed on the patio or inside the dining room which has huge, picture windows.

Chef Vieira prepares dishes, combining “ancestral local produce, rediscovered through research with historians, scientists and anthropologists” with ingredients from afar. He prepared a variety of small dishes for us, including hake with Albariño lees, tapioca pearls and sorrel oil. His decision to locate the restaurant far from city pollution and his combination of gastronomy and sustainable gardening earned him a Michelin Green Star.

A Coruña is far from the anti-tourism protests in Madrid and Barcelona. While it is one of the chief ports of northern Spain, the country’s second-largest fishing center and has a shipyard for building fishing vessels, it also has a significant real-estate market for vacation homes — and welcomes tourists.

Cruise ships stop there and disgorge passengers who visit the Old Town and the New Town; the city’s churches, from medieval to modern; and notable landmarks, including the Roman Tower of Hercules, an imposing, square-shaped lighthouse dating from the reign of Trajan (98-117 AD). A characteristic feature of the houses is their window balconies, glazed for the Atlantic gales, giving A Coruña the name “Crystal City.”

Spaniards from the south come to this Galician city in the summer for the cool wind and the surf. As with many cities on Spain’s Atlantic coast, A Coruña is a surfer spot — with a bronze statue of two surfer dudes riding the waves in a fountain on a seafront avenue.

Photo Credit: Linda Gasparello

A Coruña has been discovered by the foodies, who have long flocked to San Sebastián, also on the Atlantic coast, close to the border with France. On the last night of Ecosystems 2030, the summiteers dined on some of the tastiest octopus in the city at Pulperia de Melide. The Galician dish of octopus sprinkled with paprika is a favorite of mine.

Seneca insisted on eating moderately, not indulging in luxuries or delicacies. He wrote,“Our aim is to live in accordance with nature, is it not?”

I don’t know if Seneca traveled to A Coruña, called Brigantium under the Romans. But I can imagine him being a happy stoic there.

Ukrainian Stray Dogs and Cats Threaten Europe with Rabies

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Amid the war in Ukraine, an epic tale of another war in that country has been unfolding.

It is a tale of “tails,” which is what Ukrainians call their pet dogs and cats: a tale of a great-hearted man and woman who have been battling against the spread of rabies in Ukraine from the exploding stray dog and cat populations and to Europe, where the disease has been largely eradicated.

The great hearts are Dan Fine, a retired tech entrepreneur and founder of the Ukraine War Animals Relief Fund, who resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Krystyna Drahomaretska, 27, an architect-turned-manager of the Under the Sun animal sanctuary in Odesa.

Appearing on the PBS program “White House Chronicle,” Fine explained, “Ukrainians are a pet-loving people — some people had nine dogs. But when the Russians invaded Ukraine, over 8 million people were forced to flee their homes and abandon their pets. This resulted in over 1 million stray dogs and cats, and 65 percent of them weren’t sterilized.”

Foraging for food, the surging stray dog and cat populations are contracting rabies from foxes, wolves and other wild animals, whose populations are also surging, due to a wartime ban on hunting. “It’s a perfect storm,” Fine said.

Rabid stray dogs and cats are biting people. Rabies has the highest mortality rate  — almost 100 percent — of any disease on earth. “Bites from rabid animals affect children the most — 55 percent,” Fine noted.

In the spring of 2022, he went on his first mission to sterilize, vaccinate and microchip the stray dogs and cats of Ukraine. After treatment, many are returned to the streets because the animal shelters are overflowing — and were even before the Russian invasion. The Ukrainians, who are a religious people, don’t believe in euthanasia, he noted.

Fine teamed with Drahomaretska, who, along with other volunteers, caught the strays and transported them to clinics set up through his nonprofit Ukraine animal relief group.

Drahomaretska is nonchalant about the dangers of catching stray tails, even on the front lines. “I am the only female catcher on the front lines,” she said in the TV episode.

To catch stray dogs, she explained, she shoots them with a tranquilizer gun, and they run away. She follows them to wherever they drop, picks them up and carries them to her van.

While pursuing a tranquilized dog, she was injured by a landmine, and she is still on crutches. On another catch, she was bitten twice by a dog she was transporting to a clinic. And she had to go through post-exposure prophylaxis after some slime from a rabid dog got into her eye.

Over five missions, they sterilized, vaccinated and microchipped 8,200 dogs and cats. “That seems like a lot,” Fine said, “But you won’t stop this problem unless you do 500,000 over the next four to five years.”

To drive this mission forward, Fine said they need the investment of another organization. “There are about 200 unemployed vets in Ukraine. They could be paid and mobilized, but we can’t do that alone,” he said.

Fine hopes that “War Tails,” a documentary he and Tana Axelle, also a Vancouver resident, produced about the challenge of stopping the spread of rabies in Ukraine and into Europe, will draw the attention and support of the European Union. They have entered the documentary at the Seattle Film Festival, and they plan to enter it at more film festivals and to get it aired on television.

As Fine sees it, “Ukraine wants to enter the EU, and the EU wants them to enter. And the EU has animal and human health standards. So stopping the spread of rabies into Europe is in their interest.”

Somberly, he added that when the war ends and the rebuilding begins, “they will have to do a culling of millions of rabid dogs and cats. And all that goodwill will go away.”

Postcard from Vlore, Albania

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As Youth Flee Albania, an American Calls It Home

Children on a school outing to the National Museum of Independence in this coastal city form a ring around me.

“What is your name?” asks a self-assured girl, who seems to be the captain of a team of girlfriends, all around age 10. I reply, “Linda.”

A rascally boy steals the question ball from the girls, asking, “How old are you?” But before I could answer, his pal cut in, “You are beautiful.” He scores with me.

The questions in good English kept coming. Some were the same ones I have answered from children who have approached me on trips all over the world. A few children asked, “Do you like Albania?” For that question, just substitute Albania for France, Egypt or Argentina.

But these children had a few questions that reflected one of Albania’s urgent problems: youth migration.

One boy repeatedly asked me in German if I spoke German. Another asked me in English, “Which is the best country? Albania or Germany? My brother lives in Germany.”

My husband and I were visiting Albania with the Association of European Journalists, who were holding their annual congress in Vlore in late October.

Simone Rapple, a member of the AEJ’s Irish section, told me that one girl in the group asked her, “Can you help Albania?”

Help is coming to Albania from foreign investment, a boom in seasonal tourism and support from the World Bank for agriculture, which employs 36 percent of the population. Also, a gusher of funds for public coffers may come from the government’s contract with Shell, which has been conducting oil and gas exploration in the Shpirag region for several years.

But the country — especially in the northern highlands — continues to empty out, according to The Borgen Project, a Tacoma, Washington-based nonprofit group addressing poverty and hunger worldwide.

In a 2022 report titled, “Why Are Albanian Migrants Leaving Albania?”, the group found that about 70 percent of Albanian asylum seekers chose the United Kingdom or France. Men go first, followed by women and children.

Eighty-three percent of asylum seekers cited the high cost of living, unemployment (the unemployment rate for 18 to 34 year olds is 60 percent), exacerbated by the earthquake of 2019, the Covid pandemic, political instability and corruption, according to the report.

On May 8, 2023, The Tirana Times, citing a the latest data published by Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, reported that Albanians led the list of people who were found to have broken EU member states’ migration rules and were consequently deported in 2022, and they ranked second among those denied entry to the EU.

Lack of opportunities has also bred crime. The Borgen Group’s report said, “Boys are being groomed by criminal gangs. Albanian-originated crime networks aim to recruit males mainly to work illegally on UK cannabis farms. Some men fled to escape from local blood feuds still common in Albania.”

On my brief trip to Albania, I saw that coastal tourism is providing employment to youth, and transforming economies in Vlore and Durres, two port cities on the so-called Albanian Riviera.

In Durres, I watched young men and women park their Mercedes-Benzes in front of the venerable Hotel Epidam & Spa and while away afternoons at its sidewalk cafe. Other cafes and restaurants along Epidam Boulevard were also doing brisk, post-tourist season business.

On a midweek evening, my husband and I dined at Meison Bistro & Market, a gleaming and excellent restaurant on the town’s sea-facing main road. It was packed and Alessia Demiri, one of the owners, told me, “We are a family of fishermen, and we are blessed.”

The port of Durres — prized over the centuries by its Roman, Ottoman, Venetian and Soviet occupiers — is getting increased cruise ship and Italian ferry traffic. Vlore, is set to get a city-center marina with 24,000 square meters (25,833 square feet) of residential and retail space. The Vlora Marina will have lots of yacht berths — golden for year-round tourism.

Albania is still slogging through the EU membership process. That — as I have seen in the neighboring member state of Croatia — is sure to lift multiple sectors of its economy, providing jobs that will keep the kids on the farm and elsewhere.

As my husband and I were standing on line, waiting to board our flight from Tirana to Frankfurt, I heard a slim blonde mother talking to her child, seated in a travel stroller, in an unmistakable Alabama accent.

“Are you traveling home?” I asked. She replied that she was visiting her parents in Alabama, but she lives in Albania.

“I miss home, but Albania is a safe place to raise children,” she said.

Sweet home Albania.

Lloyd Kelly: Painting in Solidarity with Ukraine

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“Ukraine Wheat and Sky” by Lloyd Kelly

When war, like the one in Ukraine, breaks out, writers and artists are never impotent. Writers have the power of the pen and artists have the power of the brush.

Through the centuries to this day, they have used their creative talents as war propagandists or protestors. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has inspired works in protest worldwide.

In Louisville, Kentucky, renowned artist Lloyd Kelly has painted in solidarity with Ukraine. 

“When I saw Ukrainian children being bombed by the Russians, I felt I had to do something that shows support for the Ukrainian people,” Kelly said.

His picture titled “Ukraine Wheat and Sky” is small, but not in its message. 

From a distance, it depicts the flag of Ukraine. But moving closer, you can see what Kelly called “its tension and motion.”

“I underpainted it with complimentary colors — blue on orange and yellow on violet — to create a tension. And the diagonal lines [from the blue sky to the golden yellow wheat of the flag’s colors] show a motion, a fluidity, like the wind blowing the fabric of the flag,” he explained.

Kelly said he didn’t want the flag to be sentimental — a dreamy, wispy image. “I underpainted it because I wanted it to be substantial.” A painting of solidarity.

He has felt so strongly about the suffering in Ukraine that he couldn’t sell it. “Selling it just didn’t feel right. So I gifted it to people who support Ukraine in a very concrete way.” 

Kelly’s painting captures on canvas what Ukrainian President Vol0dymyr Zelensky said so poignantly in a television interview with David Letterman, “This blue color is a color of life; a color of the sky, space, and freedom. The flag doesn’t have any images of planes or missiles in the sky, any traces of gunshots.

“These two colors are the country of where I was born, the country we are fighting for.”

Kelly exhibits at The Christina Gallery in Edgartown, Mass. His studio website address is www.lloydkelly.com.

IRENA Panel Urges Youth To Move from Anger to Action on Energy Transition

At the IRENA Youth Forum, young people in conference room listen to speakers.

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ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate change canary, didn’t participate in the 13th assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), held in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 14 to 15. Perhaps it was because she was otherwise engaged in protesting against the razing of the German village of Lützerath for the expansion of a coal mine.

No matter. The urgency always in Thunberg’s voice on climate change was heard all over the assembly, from COP28 President-designate Sultan al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates saying in a session, “Over the next seven years, we will need to more than triple renewable generating capacity worldwide. The world must move much faster than ever before,” to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry insisting in another session that not enough money was being “put on the table” to achieve net-zero targets.

“We’re either not trying to do it or we’re trying to do it on the cheap, and the result is that we’re not doing it,” Kerry said. “The system is broken in terms of how we’re trying to fix this, and we need to respond more effectively.”

Among the 1,500 or so high-flier participants at the assembly, convened to identify energy transition priorities in preparation for the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement on climate change, were hundreds of fledglings — youths from all over the world, ranging from high schoolers to ministers of parliaments under the age of 45 — all eager to get into the energy transition formation.

Ernest Mkhonta, managing director of Eswatini Electric Company, told me, “Actually, I think youth should be leading the formation.”

For the fourth time at its assembly, Abu Dhabi-based IRENA, a lead intergovernmental agency for energy transformation, whose membership comprises 167 states and the European Union, has held a youth forum. At this one, young people heard from a diverse panel on how to move from demonstrating to decision-making in an equitable energy transition.

Passy Amayo Ogolla, a program manager leading implementation of the Sustainable Energy Futures for Eastern Africa Program at the Society for International Development, echoing some of Thunberg’s angry statements on the world dawdling on pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F), said bluntly at the forum, “Friends, we’re running out of time.”

Ogolla, who serves as vice chair of IRENA Global Council on Enabling Youth Action for SDG7 (ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all is the seventh of the sustainable development goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015), noted that today, there are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years, accounting for 16 percent of the global population. By 2030 — the target date for the SDGs that make up the UN 2030 agenda — the number of youth is projected to have grown by 7 percent, to nearly 1.3 billion.

“We must run faster and hold world leaders accountable in the energy transition. We need to create the change that we need for an equitable energy future for all,” she said.

Hans Olav Ibrekk, Norway’s special envoy for climate and security, who called himself an “old-timer” but wanted to be addressed by his first name, said it was great to see young people from 15o countries in the room and “willing to take on the mess that my generation has created. You definitely have your work cut out for you.”

Ibrekk commended IRENA for creating the youth forum, saying,  “We need a new dialog between youth and decision-makers in order to accelerate the energy transition.”

After COP27, he said, the message is that the world needs action and radical solutions: “We need all hands on deck, and we need agents of change. … You represent untapped youth potential for the energy transition.”

Political institutions, for their part, need to make sure that all voices are heard, Ibrekk said. “We can hear you, but we don’t really listen to you.” He urged young people to be responsible and engage in the political process, particularly by voting.

Attracting young talent is one of the major challenges of the energy transition. “We don’t have enough [technically] trained people to do what we have to do,” Ibrekk said. He encouraged young people in the room to pursue “careers of relevance in the energy sector.”

Digitization in the energy sector, he said for example, “offers a huge potential for young people to play an active role in the transition. “We old-timers are not really used to this,” he admitted, “You should use your comparative advantage in this area.” He added that as older energy sector workers retire, “there will be plenty of empty seats in offices” to fill.

The theme of the youth forum was “Empowering Youth To Lead an Equitable and Sustainable Energy Future.” Ditte Juul Jorgensen, European Commission director general for energy, said renewables can be “local and global at the same time.”An example: rooftop solar. “There is a huge potential in renewables to benefit everyone,” she said.

A European Union concern is that in order for renewables to be accessed universally — a key policy point — countries need more access to power generation, including wind turbines, Jorgensen said.

Sahar Albazar, a member of Egypt’s parliament, said the Inter-Parliamentary Union Forum of Young Parliamentarians, for which she serves as president, advocates with governments to “put youth in the driver’s seat” in the energy transition.

She noted that the group of 24,000 MPs under the age of 45 is focusing on the need for wind, solar, carbon capture, and new technologies that help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Having young MPs versed in renewable energy means “we can work with our tools and power to allocate the budgets for things we want to focus on, both locally and nationally, and to put in more incentives for private and world investments,” she said.

Asked how those who haven’t flown up to being MPs can have a place at the decision-making table, Albazar replied, “Can I have a show of hands of those who know the term ‘entrepreneur’?” Hands flew up all over the room.

“So you know the energy that entrepreneurs bring to business and innovation. We need political entrepreneurs, innovators,” she said.

Albazar said her group of young MPs is urging parliaments to use some of its six tools empower young people. The first, she cited, is to get young people into leadership positions. “We want the age to run for office to be equal to the age to vote,” she said, noting that in some countries, 18 is the voting age, but  the candidacy age is 24 or 25.

She said her group is also working to get parliaments to mentor young MPs and to create youth caucuses or committees. “We have your back,” she said.

The final speaker, Felicity Tan, director of global partnerships at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, said her group is working on access to energy.

“Whether it is health, education, empowerment, or whatever you are working on, without energy, it isn’t possible,” she said. “At the same time, by our estimates, about half of the planet doesn’t have access … 3.85 billion people. And that is the North-South access divide right there.”

The alliance is working with IRENA, which is among 19 global partners (governmental, financial, investors), on three specific areas for youth empowerment in the energy transition: education, training and technical skills, and advocacy — “not just giving youth a voice, but giving them agency.”

The first Global Stocktake will be held at the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), taking place in Abu Dhabi from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12.

Postcards from Edinburgh

Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh.

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Eerie Edinburgh

I play a silly game of characterizing cities as things. Here’s how it goes: If London were a holiday, which one would it be? My answer — no doubt influenced by Charles Dickens — is Christmas. Paris is New Year’s, because I’ve spent a few memorable ones there, feasting, drinking bubbly, and giving cheek kisses.

Halloween? New Orleans, with its haunted French Quarter houses, voodoo and vampire lore, is my pick. But Edinburgh can give The Big Easy a run for its money.

In fact, Edinburgh has just been named one of the top three creepiest cities in the United Kingdom by Skiddle, an events discovery platform, based on the combined number of reported hauntings and Halloween-themed events. According to Skiddle, bookings of ghost tours are way up in London and Brighton, which take the top two places in its survey, and Edinburgh.

A terror tour favorite in Edinburgh, Greyfriars Kirkyard, a church cemetery established in the mid-16th century, is a one-stop shop of horrors, replete with ghosts, ghouls, and bodysnatching.

I would’ve thought that the British tourists would’ve been spooked enough by the economic ghosts of 1979 — a stagnant economy, surging inflation, and waves of industrial unrest, trounced by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s free-market policies in the following years.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, who resigned amid the all the Tory turmoil, was no ghostbuster.

Yes! We Have No Newspapers

There is a newsagent on Princes Street, near the Apex Waterloo Place Hotel. Above the door, hangs a sign for The Scotsman,” the Edinburgh daily, flanked by two smaller signs for other city newspapers: The Evening News, and the Daily Record and Sunday Mail.

My husband and I stopped in to buy some newspapers, keen to read the coverage of the Scottish National Party Conference. But we found none there.

Yes, they had Fyffes bananas, and the shelves were stacked nearly to the ceiling with boxes of “sweet biscuits” and shortbread, especially the shiny red tartan boxes of Walkers Shortbread, advertised on the shelf as “Walkers Pure Butter Luxury Shortbread Top Quality All Size Box 3.99 p.”

I walked up to the cashier, a young man of South Asian origin, and asked if he sold newspapers. He said he gave up selling them because he didn’t want to deal with the “all the paperwork and returns for a few pence on a sale.”

Anyway, he adamantly said, “Nobody ever needs to read newspapers. They have nothing in them, only opinions.”

Surely, I said, there’s a newsagent in the vicinity that sells newspapers. Somewhat grudgingly, he told me to go to the WHSmith shop in the train station.

I left the no-news newsagent and walked to the station. I bought 15 pounds worth of newspapers at the WHSmith because I’m a big-spending nobody.

Sir Jim, ‘The Bonnie Baker’

In read in The Herald that Walkers Shortbread’s profits had more than doubled to 62 million pounds sterling this year, boosted by strong demand in key markets.

In the late 1980s, when I was the editor of a global food industry paper, I interviewed Jim Walker, head of the family-owned baking company, which was founded by Joseph Walker in 1898. In my story about Walkers, I dubbed him “The Bonnie Baker.” He is now Sir Jim, having received his knighthood in the late Queen’s Birthday Honors earlier this year.

Walker told The Herald that it had been “a very, very difficult couple of years” due to COVID and supply problems. “Butter has virtually doubled, and the price of flour has gone up as well,” he said.

Butter was a problem for Walkers in the late 1980s, but for quite a different reason.

In the U.S. cookies market, where Walkers wanted more penetration, it was a bad time for butter. Spurred by food activists, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, consumers were demanding that cookie manufacturers eliminate highly-saturated fats, from butter to palm oil, in their products.

On a visit to the company’s headquarters in Abelour, in the Highlands, during that saturated fat-cutting time, I offered Walker this advice: Find a healthy butter substitute.

“No, we can’t,” he said firmly. “Butter is one of four shortbread ingredients.”

I offered him another pat of advice: Extend the brand’s product line with chocolate chip shortbread.

This was probably already in the works, but I’d like to think that I was responsible for Walkers adding another ingredient — and going on to become the largest British exporter of shortbread and cookies to the U.S. market.

Buchanan Fish Fight

The Buchanan clan has its first new chief in over 340 years.

“The last Buchanan chief, John Buchanan, died in 1681 without a male heir. Identifying the new chief required decades of genealogical research conducted by renowned genealogist, the late Hugh Peskett,” according to History Scotland, a Scottish heritage website.

John Michael Ballie-Hamilton Buchanan was inaugurated Oct. 8 in a ceremony in Cambusmore, Callander, the modern seat of Clan Buchanan and the chief’s ancestral home. International representatives of the clan’s diaspora – from North America (count conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan) to New Zealand — celebrated alongside the chiefs and other representatives of 10 ancient Scottish clans, History Scotland reported.

“Speaking before the inauguration, Lady Buchanan, said they expected many neighboring clans to attend – despite, in some cases, a long history of rancor,” The Daily Telegraph’s Olivia Rudgard wrote.

“ ‘Spats’ involving the Buchanan clan include a 15th century feud with Clan MacLaren, apparently started at a fair when a Buchanan man slapped a member of the MacLaren clan with a salmon and knocked his hat off his head.

“It ended in a bloody skirmish which killed, among others, one of the sons of the MacLaren chief,” she wrote.

With apologies to Robert Burns, a Scot’s a Scot, for a’ that — and Scotland is a bonnie place to visit.

 

 

O Pioneering Millennials, There Are Cities with Cheap Houses

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Millennials are supercharging the U.S. housing market. They have lots of cash, and they’re making a dash for cities like Boise, Idaho, Raleigh, N.C., Tampa, Fla., and Austin, Texas.

As home mortgage rates rise and inventory shrinks in those and other A-list cities, millennials, particularly those who can work remotely, might want to consider C-list — C for cheap — cities.

Hey, millennial. Don’t be bummed about being outbid for that pricey “adorable vintage house within walking distance to entertainment” in Austin (actually, a teardown with a honky-tonk a few yards from the back porch). Be cheered that Wall Street 24/7, a news and financial site, has just released a special report entitled “The Cheapest City to Buy a Home in Every State.”

If you’re a pioneering millennial, here are a few cities in the report:

Gary, Indiana could be “your home sweet home” — just like the line from the song in “The Music Man,” which was a hit on stage and screen long before you were born. The median home value is $66,000. Cheap homes abound in this not-so-cheerful city.

Flint, Michigan. The fact that you can’t drink the water is no problem for you because you’ve only ever drunk bottled water. The median home value is $29,000. If you decide to buy a home there, keep buying bottled water from fresh municipal springs — in other states.

Camden, New Jersey. There is great news for home buyers. Trenton has taken the “Murder Capital of New Jersey” title away from Camden, a perennial titleholder. The median home value in Camden is a bargain $84,000 versus $335,600 for New Jersey. Camden is downriver from Trenton, so mind the floating corpse risk.

Minot, North Dakota. It’s a hot market: The median home value is $208,700 versus $193,900 for the state. As for temperature, it’s not. A school friend from Minot told me the saying there was, “Why not Minot? Because freezing is the reason.” Look at those months of frigid temperatures as being the reason to get more wear out of your chichi Canada Goose Expedition Parka.

East St. Louis, Missouri. One resident, in a review on the Niche site, wrote, “I didn’t like all of the abandoned homes and buildings. It looked like the area isn’t livable and then two houses down, it is livable.” The Niche reviewers give the city bad marks for violence, but great ones for the high school football team and the diners. The median house value is $54,000.

The city that really caught my eye in the report was Danville, Virginia – a state where I lived for most of my life.

For years, because I’m interested in architecture, I’ve pored through listings on historic house sites. Recently on one site, there were many dilapidated Victorian houses listed in Danville’s Old West End, priced from $15,000 to $55,000.

For much of its history, Danville was a D-list city – D for disreputable. This tobacco-processing and textile-manufacturing city’s reputation rolled downhill for a century, from the Civil War (where it was major center of Confederate activity; and was the “Last Capital of the Confederacy” from April 3-7, 1865) to “Bloody Monday,” the name given to a series of arrests and brutal attacks that took place during a nonviolent protest by Blacks against segregation laws and racial inequality on June 10, 1963. Of the protests, leading up to the March on Washington on Aug. 28, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, “As long as the Negro is not free in Danville, Virginia, the Negro is not free anywhere in the United States of America.”

Danville’s work in recent decades to create a new identity is paying off. The median home value is $90,500. The city is attracting high-tech companies and millennial workers – new residents who will continue its transformation from disreputable to desirable.

Face Masks: What’s Good for Us Isn’t Good for the Geese

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When I lived in Manhattan, I pursued an unusual pastime. I started it to avoid eye contact with Unification Church members who peddled flowers and their faith on many street corners in the 197os. If a Moonie (as a church member was known derisively) were to approach me, I’d cast my eyes down to the sidewalk, where I’d see things that would set my mind wandering.

In the winter months, I’d see lone gloves and mittens. On the curb in front of La Cote Basque on East 55th Street, the luxe French restaurant where Truman Capote dined with the doyennes of New York’s social scene and dished on them in his unfinished novel, “Answered Prayers,” I saw a black leather glove with a gold metal “F” sewn on the cuff. I coveted such a Fendi pair, eyeing them at the glove counter at Bergdorf Goodman, but not buying them – they cost about a third of my Greenwich Village studio apartment rent in the late 1970s. On the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, in front of an FAO Schwartz window, I saw a child’s mitten, expertly knit in a red-and-white Norwegian pattern that I never had the patience to follow. I wondered whether the child dropped the mitten after removing it to point excitedly to a toy in the window.

In the summer months, I’d see pairs of sunglasses and single sneakers on the sidewalks, things that had fallen out of stuffed weekenders. It wasn’t unusual for me to see pantyhose. Working women in Manhattan, in my time there, could wear a short-sleeved wrap dress – the one designed by Diane von Furstenberg was the working woman’s boilersuit — in the summer, but they’d better have put on pantyhose, or packed a pair in their pocketbooks or tote bags. The pantyhose would fall out of them and roll like tumbleweed along the avenues.

One summer morning on Perry Street, near where I lived, I saw a long, black zipper. It looked like a black snake had slithered out of a drain grate on the street and was warming itself on the asphalt, its white belly gleaming in the sun.

Now when I walk on a city sidewalk, I still look down, not to pursue my pastime but to preserve myself from tripping and falling on them. I sometimes see interesting litter, but mostly I see single-use and reusable face masks.

This fall, as I walked on the waterfront promenade along the Rondout Creek in Kingston, New York, I saw a single-use mask swirling in the wind with the fallen leaves. I grabbed the mask and deposited it in a trash can, worried that it would fall into the creek, ensnarling the waterfowl and the fish.

Mask of Doom: A face mask imperiling ducks on the Rondout Creek in Kingston, N.Y. Photo: Linda Gasparello

In the Covid-19 crisis, masks have been lifesavers. But masks, especially single-use, polypropylene surgical masks, have been killing marine wildlife and devastating ecosystems.

Billions of masks have been entering our oceans and washing onto our beaches when they are littered, when waste management systems are inadequate or nonexistent, or when these systems become overwhelmed due to increased volumes of waste.

A new report from OceansAsia, a Hong Kong-based marine conservation organization, estimates that 1.56 billion masks will have entered the oceans in 2020. This will result in an additional 4,680 to 6,240 metric tonnes of marine plastic pollution, says the report, entitled “Masks on the Beach: The impact of COVID-19 on Marine Plastic Pollution.”

Single-use masks are made from a variety of meltdown plastics and are difficult to recycle, due to both composition and risk of contamination and infection, the report points out. These masks will take as long as 450 years to break down, slowly turning into microplastics ingested by wildlife.

“Marine plastic pollution is devastating our oceans. Plastic pollution kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and turtles, over a million seabirds, and even greater numbers of fish, invertebrates, and other animals each year. It also negatively impacts fisheries and the tourism industry and costs the global economy an estimated $13 billion per year,” according to Gary Stokes, operations director of OceansAsia.

The report recommends that people wear reusable masks, and to dispose of all masks properly.

I hope everyone will wear them for the sake of their own and others’ health, and that I won’t see them lying on sidewalks on my strolls, or on beaches, where they are a sorry sight.

How Tortoise Rides Led to Hope for COVID-19 and Alzheimer’s

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A little boy was taken to the Staten Island (N.Y.) Zoo where he was enthralled to ride Jalopy, a Galapagos tortoise.

Jalopy became a favorite. But then one day the giant tortoise wasn’t there, and the little boy learned she had cancer and had been taken to Arizona for radiation treatment.

“I had never heard of radiation,” said Dr. James S. Welsh, professor of radiation oncology at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois. But his love of that tortoise was enough for him to devote his life to radiation therapy.

Now Welsh is in the vanguard of doctors who hope to save lives by using radiation as a therapy for patients with COVID-19 — and possibly as a therapy for Alzheimer’s, arthritis and other diseases where inflammation plays a role.

Inflammation is present when the body’s immune system mobilizes to fight disease or injury. The problems come when the immune system, according to Welsh and other doctors I have interviewed, goes “haywire.”

Radiation can’t cure COVID-19, Welsh explained, but it can be used to reduce the acute inflammation, known as cytokine storm. This causes a flooding of the lungs and is what kills most COVID-19 patients.

Using very low doses of radiation to fight respiratory inflammation isn’t new: It was how viral pneumonia was treated more than 75 years ago, before the perfecting of a battery of drugs that took over.

Radiation was highly effective against viral pneumonia, with success rates recorded at 80 percent or better. Antibiotic drugs combined with growing public antipathy to radiation in all forms took it off the pneumonia therapy list.

But now it appears to be back-to-the-future time for radiation.

Welsh says that a patient about to enter acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which kills many COVID-19 patients, can be treated with low-dose radiation to clear the lungs. Afterward, the patient can return to the ward to get treatment with antiviral drugs. No ICU, no ventilator, no long-term scarring of the lungs.

“Radiation could be used with a drug like remdesivir or another drug, like steroids. But it is my opinion that radiation will prove superior to dexamethasone or other steroid medicines,” Welsh said in an interview with me on “White House Chronicle,” the PBS television program.

A few clinical trials of low-dose radiation therapy for COVID-19 have begun in the United States and six other countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom.

“Although peer-reviewed results have yet to be published, preliminary data seem very encouraging, and certainly justify the siting of a proposed clinical trial here,” said Welsh, referring to the Hines VA Hospital in Chicago, where he is the chief of radiation therapy. He hopes to launch a clinical trial there in weeks.

The radiation doses for COVID-19 treatment are extremely low. Welsh is planning to use 0.5 gray in his trial, but others use more, 1 gray or even 1.5 grays. Those are above X-ray doses, but well below cancer doses. Brain cancer and lung cancer patients get doses of 60 grays, with up to 80 grays for prostate cancer, Welsh said.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t opposition.

Much of the concern over radiation is associated with the linear, no-threshold (LNT) model that posits that all radiation will have detrimental health effects even at minuscule levels, like normal background. This theory has been contested violently for decades by nuclear scientists, but it remains an undermining orthodoxy.

“Most people and physicians are not familiar with the potential application as an anti-inflammatory in infectious disease,” Welsh said.

Nonetheless, he believes the future beckons. When I asked him about the use of radiation in other diseases where inflammation was a factor, particularly Alzheimer’s and arthritis, he responded, “A definitive ‘yes.’ ”

The beauty of radiation therapy, according Welsh and others, is that about half the hospitals in the country have radiology departments and staff. Treatments for COVID-19 patients could begin almost immediately.

As to Jalopy, she died in 1983 at the age of 77. She was so popular over the 46 years she lived at the zoo that a bronze sculpture of a Galapagos tortoise was erected as a memorial.

And you might say, her memory radiates hope for the future.