Triage

What is the difference between that train wreck in the state of Washington a few years ago and the state of life in America today?  

Answer: Nothing. Let's pretend we are the triage nurse for both cases (Triage: in medical use it is the assignment of degree of urgency to wounds or illness to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.)

Train wreck: Never mind why the train left the rails. Who is injured and who needs first attention?

Coronavirus America: Never mind where it came from, how do we stop it spreading and who needs immediate attention?

Train wreck: Why did this happen and what do we need to do to stop it from happening again?

Virus America: Where did it come from and how do we stop more coming?

Train wreck: What role did the engineer play in the wreck?

Virus America: What role did the engineer play in the trai...er...pandemic?

Train wreck:  Is there some device that would have prevented the train wreck?

Virus America:  Is there some potion that would cure this plague?

First let's acknowledge that our pandemic is much more serious than the train wreck but the triage steps are similar.  In the train wreck an incompetent, ill trained engineer took the train at 70 miles an hour into a curve designed for trains traveling at 35 miles an hour.  Also, a device existed that, if installed, would have prevented the train from going into that curve at that speed.

Like the train wreck, our engineer was not competent to address what needed to be done at the time it was needed.  We are still in triage step one:  taking care of the most needy.  But this whole shutdown of normal life has drawn a blackout curtain around an issue a hell of a lot more serious than the immediate inconvenience of this plague.  The looming threat of extinction of all life forms on this planet is real and, possibly, irreversible. In the current uproar over this latest novel coronavirus do you hear any voices that are taken seriously about the extinction of human beings from this planet? 

We are whistling through the graveyard,  people.  The natural disasters are going to get worse and I don't believe our so-called leaders are going to do anything more than to keep grabbing softer feathers for their own nests.  But it's not all on them.  It's on you and me and everyone else on this small planet. Winston Churchill once said (it's OK to listen to Winney because he's half American), "The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." If it's not them and not us doing anything to hold off Armageddon, that pretty much leaves the cockroaches and they don't care because they'll probably survive.

Keep washing your hands and follow the instructions of the triage nurse. 

Hobos In Blackface

In Grants Pass, Oregon multiple tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad cut through the center of town in an east-west direction, causing the north-south main streets of the town to be blocked when trains are going and coming.  One day in the 1940s, a long freight train was leaving for Portland when two of my friends, Larry Aschenbrenner and Krum (Kroom)Theodoroff, had a sudden inspiration to hit the rails.  They were 14 at the time and no thought other than "Hey, let's hitch a ride on the train!" by one or the other triggered the adventure.

Sprinting alongside the slow-moving train Krum was in front and grabbed the steps of a flat car and swung aboard. Larry caught the next flat car, so the two Kings of the Road waved to people as the train picked up speed.  On that warm summer day they were living large, each with his own private car, speeding through the countryside.

Grants Pass sits in a valley cut by the Rogue River and there are high mountains to the north and south of town. The train slowed as it started up the mountain and the boys began to discuss how they were going to get back home.  Neither hobo could come up with a good plan.  And then disaster struck: the train sped into a long tunnel, where diesel smoke from the engines filled the tunnel air and overwhelmed the two boys. When the train finally found the light at the end of the tunnel, both were  stretched out flat, gasping for breath and painted greasy black by the smoke.

Gagging and coughing, they were terrified to see up ahead another tunnel.  It was too much for Krum who stood up and bailed, rolling head over heels down a bank.  Larry chose to ride it out and in he went to that inky hell.

The town of Glendale is about 35 miles north of Grants Pass and the train would stop there to pick up cars of lumber. Larry was rescued and his parents were called to come for him.  The train station arranged a rail runner to go for Krum, who was bruised and blackfaced but still in one piece.

Would it surprise you to learn Larry Aschenbrenner is the son of a Methodist minister?  When we were young he was the stereotypical preacher's kid with serial acts of mischief, all harmless. Then, after graduating from the University of Oregon's School of Law,  that Methodist upbringing kicked in and Lawrence Alden Aschenbrenner devoted the rest of his life to serving the interests of those less fortunate citizens left behind by societal injustice.  At great personal risk he opened a law office to defend African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and '70s. Larry's book, Civil Rights Lawyers In The South...The Untold Story has just been published and is available on Amazon.  It's a deeply moving account of the role volunteer lawyers from the North and West played in The Civil Rights movement.