Is living in a community good for your health?

It’s a question which has gained currency again as an epidemic of loneliness and tiny, isolated living quarters sweeps the nation, fueled by social media’s illusion of connection and the high cost of housing, and manifested in a growing number of stress-related diseases. Numerous medical studies have underscored the benefits of long-term relationships in nurturing the health of both partners, but the most comprehensive of all the “healthy communities” studies dates back some 50 years.

The study, entitled “The Roseto Effect,: A 50-Year Comparison of Mortality Rates” and written up in the American Journal of Public Health in August, 1992, is a longitudinal look at how a closely knit, caring community experienced a documented, decades-long reduced rate of heart disease and other stress related illnesses. It is meticulously measured medical proof of the health benefits of living in a thriving , connected and caring community over a generation.

Roseto, Pennsylvania, settled by Italian immigrants from Southern Italy in 1882, started as a closely knit community which emphasized family cohesion and intergenerational support. The study, conducted by a team headed by Dr. Stewart Wolf, the Chairman of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma, and affirmed by major universities and medical journals in the United States and abroad, demonstrated conclusively that a socially cohesive community, where elders were revered and people were nurtured by others, recorded heart & stress related diseases far below the national average and the averages of neighboring towns, without such connection among community members.

Roseto became a “living laboratory” for social cohesion and a model for healthy communities, demonstrating that neighborliness was good BOTH for the body politic AND the human body. In an updated report on the Roseto Effect out of the University of Chicago entitled “The Power of the Clan: 1935-1984”, the clear finding was that “mutual respect and cooperation contributed to the health and welfare of the community and its inhabitants.”

Like a goal of the Bay Area’s pioneering affordable/sustainable community developer Thriving Communities (www.thrivingcommunities.com), the culture of cooperation prevailed in Roseto, “ and radiated a kind of joyous team spirit as they celebrated festivals and family landmarks” together. “People are nourished by other people,” Dr. Wolf found. In short, the studies found, people are good for other people’s health, especially when living in a caring, family-like community.

Wolf’s medical conclusions went even further: “The characteristics of a tight knight community are better predictors of healthy hearts than low levels of serum cholestoral or tobacco use,” he wrote. “We looked at the social structure of healthy communities and found that they are characterized by stability and predictability. We also found that there were higher stress-related illnesses in isolated people; that the sense of being supported, reduced stress.”

In 1999, the same year the Napa Valley based company Healthy Buildings USA was formed (www.hbusa.net), the British Medical Journal reinforced Dr. Wolf’s cornerstone conclusions about the value of community and socialization upon good health by finding that “ people who perceive themselves as socially isolated, are two to five times at greater risk for premature death for all causes.” The British Journal went on to report that “social and productive pursuits are equivalent to and independent of the merits of exercise.” Imagine that: living in community—a real, thriving community populated by real human beings, not a virtual on-line community—is at least as good for your health as exercise! So, unplug your headphones, and talk to your neighbor.

Is living in a thriving, nurturing community good for your health? The evidence is clear, long established and well-documented: thriving, socially cohesive and caring communities are medically proven to work for people’s well-being. When you add to that formula a community with a high level of concern over environmental sustainability, respect for nature, careful water use, affordability, respect for fundamental human dignity and compassion for your neighbors, the results may well re-define the “American Dream” for new generations.

With Apple unveiling its newest gizmo, the Dick Tracy watch, it’s time to look at two  technological toys that have come under attack.

Drones, those darting, dive-bombing Deus Ex Machinas, are finally facing a few flimsy regulations, after one landed on the White House lawn in the middle of the night, because its operator was drunk. Fortunately, that DWI delinquent drone was not carrying a nuclear payload or deadly chemicals.

At the same time, museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, are banning the use of “Selfie-Sticks”, as dangers to their own users and other patrons, as well as to the priceless artwork that self-absorbed numbsculls might knock over in their headlong haste to capture a head-shot of themselves right next to the sculpture of the Head of King David, which dates back to 1145 AD.

In the spirit of Apple’s new Watch, I’ve got a creative solution to these techie mind-twisters,  eliminating the need for “Selfie-Sticks” and putting responsible limits on drones, holding “droners” directly accountable for their operation.   It’s called the CellDrone, and I’m offering my idea to Apple or China’s DJI Technology Company, the world’s biggest maker of drones.

The CellDrone would work something like this.   Designed to fit in your pocket like an Iphone, the CellDrone, is twice the thickness of your average mobile phone.  Once turned on, the CellDrone can be used as a normal Iphone to make phone calls, send texts, scan social media, find pizza places, play music, search contacts, or take photos.

However, here’s where the CellDrone soars!   A new button on top of the phone, when pressed three times, transforms it into an Optimus Prime-like Drone before your very eyes.  In order to operate the CellDrone, you’ve got to turn on your matching CD (for CellDrone) WristWatch—way cooler than the Apple Watch– and press the “activation” button three times as well.  Multiple, coordinated button-pressing is required to avoid accidental activation, like “butt droning” especially if the CellDrone user is in a tightly enclosed space, like a subway car, bus, bathroom stall, or a micro-apartment.

Once the CD Watch is coordinated with the CellDrone, the user can give voice commands to the CellDrone through a microphone in the CD Watch.  The new voice recognition system in the CellDrone/CD Watch is highly sophisticated and precise, able to distinguish a Brooklyn accent from a Southern Drawl or Mandarin Chinese, as well as the slurred speech of inebriated or stoned users.  Sorry, Siri.

When the CellDrone user wants to take a “selfie” photo from a distance greater than arms-length, he or she simply activates the CellDrone, sets the distance on his CD watch (cannot exceed 10 feet) and speaks into the CD Watch the word “Photobomb.”   The CellDrone then snaps multiple photos of the user and others with the user.  Unlike a “Selfie Stick” which can poke people in the eyes, puncture art canvases or knock over statues, the CellDrone is programmed with a remarkably sensitive sonar field which can “feel” the presence of any object within a few inches.  Upon sensing a strange object within its field of “photobombing,” the CellDrone will, bat-like, automatically land and attach itself to the CD Watch, which acts as its control tower.

If the CellDrone user tries to move more than 10 feet from the device, the CellDrone will not fly, regardless of the volume or number of voice commands.  If the CellDrone user tries to abuse the CellDrone for other than “photobombing” purposes, the CD Watch is pre-programmed to immediately contact 9-1-1.  Tweet that, ISIS!

While the CellDrone is intended for close, personal photographic use only, and not for the delivery of packages, bombs or anthrax, nor intended to cross the flight paths of commercial jetliners potentially causing deadly air collisions, the CD Watch will be required for ALL Drone users, commercial or personal.    What the CD Watch technology would mean for every “droner”, is that ALL drones, regardless of size or payload, once activated, will automatically return to the wrist of the user.  The used drone can only be removed from the CD Watch at a fully licensed Drone Removal Clinic (or, DR. Clinic), where a full history of the usage and user of the Drone will be taken, along with the user’s picture.   CD Watches—and this should please potential producers — can never be removed from users’ wrists,  are waterproof, and can register how far you run, walk, bike or swim.

This advanced CellDrone technology and CD Watch system will wipe out “Selfie-Sticks”, protect priceless art, and avoid accidents between humans and drones, holding “droners” strictly liable for their actions.  Now, for the swarms of military and spy drones being used…

Is Marin County, California, with one of the highest median household incomes in the nation at $90,535, out to show the world that income has no bearing on intelligence?

Where vaccinating children against childhood diseases is concerned, that seems to be the case.  Affluent Marin County, with many of the most expensive and exclusive schools in the country, has the highest rate of clustered, non-vaccinated school age children in all of California.   Not proudly, California leads the nation in unvaccinated kids, with eight percent of all Kindergartners, or some 41,000 children not being vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella last year.  Compare that to the leading state in the nation for vaccination, Mississippi, with a 99.7% compliance rate—where personal and religious belief exemptions are NOT permitted– and only 140 children in the entire state entered school last year without their required shots.

Think about that, the next time you dump on “dumb”, poor  Southerners.  Mississippi’s median income, the lowest in the nation, is $35,693, or a bit more than one-third that of chic Marin’s.  Mississippi requires immunization against all childhood diseases for entering all schools, Head Start or Day Care.  No vaccine; no school.  Simple. 

California’s Department of Health, on the other hand, appears to be smoking too much weed.   In its latest report (January 30, 2015) on “Vaccine Opt-Out Rates” it hails the fact that “Opt-Out Rates Drops, First Time Since 1998”.  Yet the decline is less than one-half of one percent and over 500 schools across the State—many in the Bay Area—have “Opt-Out” rates of over 10%, despite DOH’s admission that:

“Vaccine rates need to be 90 percent — or higher — depending on the disease to create what’s known as herd immunity. That means that enough people are vaccinated to protect those who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons or whose immune system is compromised. This includes people being treated for cancer or HIV patients and more. When vaccine rates are high, a disease introduced into a community cannot take hold.”

So what’s to brag about here, DOH?  California is leading the nation in reported cases of Measles right now with 91, and the U.S. is far out-pacing the rest of the world in 2015, reporting 490 Measles cases to 32 in Asia and 2, (yes, only 2) in Africa.  The rest of the world would be wise to keep Americans out of their countries, unless we can show proof of vaccination, especially since Measles is more contagious than Ebola. No immigration without vaccination goes for us, too.  In 1989-91, when 17,000 cases of Measles were reported during the last Measles Epidemic, 70 people died in California. This is not a parlor game of libertarian rights. Humans are dying.

The California Department of Health statistics for the past 7 years reveal that a number of Marin County schools (Greenwood School, Mill Valley; San Geronimo Valley Elementary School, and the New Village School, in Sausalito ), and several in San Francisco, and Sonoma County,  allow from 50 to 75 percent of their students to attend school unvaccinated, putting all their classmates—and everyone in the region– at risk of contracting Measles, Whooping Cough, or whatever disease is the latest rage.  The worst offender on California’s DOH list of over 7,000 public and private elementary schools is the Grace Christian School in Carmichael, CA (Sacramento County), where 93% of the students’ parents have invoked a specious, and dangerous, “personal belief exemption (PBE),” to prevent their child from being vaccinated.

Before you get too cocky about Carmichael being a “religious school” in “rural” Sacramento County, not the sophisticated urban/suburban Bay Area, Public Enemy # 2 on the DOH’s Dumbest list is the Berkeley Rose School, in sophisticated, smart, agnostic Berkeley, where 87% of its students are unvaccinated.  Other eye-openers on the DOH’s Dumbest list were many Waldorf Schools stretching from San Diego all the way up to the Santa Rosa, to the Waldorf’s flagship Summerfield School and Farm, where 42% of the students are unvaccinated. Astounding.  So smart; so stupid.

Under California State law, children entering kindergarten are required to be vaccinated against: Polio; Diptheria, Tetanus & Pertussis (DTaP); Measle, Mumps, Rubella (MMR), Hepatitis B, and Chickenpox (Varicella)—UNLESS their brilliant parents “opt-out” of the vaccines, under the State’s “Personal or Religious Belief Exemption (PBE).”   Marin County has headed the pack of anti-vaxxers for years, asserting their stupidity with the State’s highest PBE rates, in the face of overwhelming medical evidence that vaccines prevent disease.

Marin County as Moron County when it comes to vaccines? It sure looks like while Marin residents may have left their hearts in San Francisco, their brains are buried somewhere deep under the Bay.

I converted to Judaism in the Spring of 1980, when Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority were bullying those of us who were not Christian lovers of Jesus in the United States.  That group included my wife and son by birth, and me by choice.

I became a Jew after years of searching and study.   Coincidentally, I completed my conversion from Catholicism when Christian fundamentalism was raging out of control in a country founded, ostensibly, on keeping the Church, and organized religion, separate from matters of State.

At the same time, my work as a labor journalist led me to do an article revealing the right-wing web of organizations behind fundamentalist Christian groups, and their connection to Republicans crusading for office in 1980.   My passion for Judaism drove me to compile the first Holocaust Education curriculum ever produced for the National Education Association, for use in classrooms across America.  Intentionally, I set aside a portion of the curriculum detailing the Nuremburg Laws—State sponsored laws, which, essentially, criminalized being a Jew.

That spring, when Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, I considered the Israeli raid as a matter of self-defense, necessary for the security of Israel.  Friends and colleagues accused me of becoming a Zionist since my conversion to Judaism.  “I was a Zionist before I was a Jew,” I replied.  “I have always believed in the necessity for and the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

Thirty-five years have passed since my conversion to Judaism.  In the decades since becoming a Jew by Choice, I was blessed to work on a project for peace with the heroic writer Elie Wiesel, and to be mentored, almost daily, by Mario Cuomo’s kind and wise Community Relations Specialist, Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz of Queens, NY, who arranged a fact-finding trip to Israel for me in 1991, with the Jewish Community Relations Council of NYC.   On that mission, public officials from across New York met with such Israeli Leaders as Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Interior Minister Arik Sharon,  Health Minister Ehud Olmert,  Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, Shimon Peres, and Israeli-born Arabs who were members of Israel’s Knesset.  The following year, I accompanied Governor Mario M. Cuomo on a trade mission to Israel, meeting with a wide array of Israeli officials in a new, more progressive  government, led by the former military leader, now peace advocate, Yitzhak Rabin.

I sat next to Prime Minister Rabin, while Mario Cuomo sat across from him, and Matilda Cuomo sat next to Rabin’s wife, Leah.  I studied Rabin’s face line by line, his eyes full of sadness from witnessing too much death and suffering.  Later, I learned that Rabin, haunted by the thought that he was leading young Israeli soldiers to their slaughter in the 1967 War—Israel’s greatest military victory—experienced a nervous breakdown during the War.

I followed Rabin’s face carefully in our meeting with him in September, 1992, and saw the sadness slip away each time he spoke of his hopes for bringing peace to the land of his birth, the land he loved and for which he risked his life.  I can still hear Yitzhak Rabin’s somber voice warning us of the grave threats to peace posed by political extremists among Jews, Palestinians and others.  Just the day before, in a public park in Jerusalem, we witnessed right wing Jewish extremists shout down then 80-year old Mayor Teddy Kollek, because Teddy believed all faiths, not just Jews, should be able to worship freely at their Holy sites in that Holy City.

Our meeting ended, and Yitzhak Rabin shook our hands.  The last word he uttered to each of us was “Shalom.”  Four years later, Rabin was assassinated by a fundamentalist Jew, the very kind of Right Wing political extremist—on either side– he foresaw as a threat to peace.

Now, BiBi Netanyahu is poised to put his political career above the security interests of Israel by snubbing an American President and interfering in the foreign policy of the United States by campaigning with US right-wing extremists in Congress to invoke new sanctions against Iran—sanctions which could push the Middle East closer to a regional war, at a time of intense instability.

Yitzhak Rabin, who knew the horrors of war first-hand, would have batted back the bellicosity of Bibi and Speaker Boehner, and, instead, seized the opportunity of creating a nuclear-free Iran and the slender possibility of  “Shalom” for Israel, and the world.  To do any less, is to betray the legacy of Israel’s founders, freedom fighters, soldiers, citizens and Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, who believe that the path to peace is a sacred obligation.

Are the Koch Brothers terrorists?

Two Japanese citizens kneel next to “Jihad John” as he demands $200 million from Japan to spare their lives. In Paris, 17 citizens are assassinated and hundreds more are slaughtered in Nigeria. ISIS, Al Queda, Boko Haram and terrorist cells around the world are a clear danger to international security, world order and human life. Such acts of terrorism, wherever they occur, are amoral, destabilizing and inhumane.

In his 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama identified another present threat to national security: “The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. Let’s act like it…” Such an expansion of the definition of national security risks is consistent with statements on climate change made by Pope Francis last summer.

“This is our sin, exploiting the earth,” Pope Francis said. “This is one of the greatest challenges of our time…Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.”

The popular Pope and the President have formed an alliance, combining moral authority, with military and diplomatic might. They’ve declared saving the earth to be a fact-based, moral crusade, in the interest of international security and human life. In this war, the terrorists are fossil fuel companies like Koch Industries whose business success, depends upon destroying the earth, the air and the oceans.

In a follow-up to two major scientific studies on the catastrophes of climate change—on land, and in the oceans—released within days of each other, President Obama underscored the battle lines:

“…No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. 2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record,” he said referring to the recent NASA study. Congressional climate change deniers, busy tweeting out denials, stopped mid-tweet.

“Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century,” Obama emphasized. We’re literally boiling in oil, the President could have said.

In late 2014, Pope Francis, not a scientist himself, was more direct than the President: “The monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth.”

Expected to make climate change into a moral crusade during 2015 to influence the global conference on climate, Francis continued: “Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.”

Perhaps emboldened by having Pope Francis on his side in normalizing relations with Cuba, President Obama doubled-down:

“I’ve heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they’re not scientists, that we don’t have enough information to act. Well, I’m not a scientist either. But you know what? I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA and at NOAA and at our major universities, and the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe.”

Then, the President who commands a different set of troops than the Pope, and is duty-bound to act on issues of national security, pointed to the Pentagon’s national security threat assessment.

“That’s why,” Obama said, “ I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts. I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action.”

If Congress won’t be permitted to “endanger the health of our children,” why allow the Koch Brothers? If the Pentagon considers climate change to be a threat to National Security, doesn’t that make the Koch cartel a well-financed force of global destabilization? Are the fossil fuel feudalists a new kind of “terrorist” cell? Are they holding us all for ransom?

The Pope, the President, the Pentagon, leading scientists—even China, a fossil-fuel producing nation choking on its own waste—agree that climate change is a dangerous threat to global security and human life. Yet, accelerating that threat is part of the Koch/fossil fuel business plan. By comparison, Jihad John’s demand for $200 million more to operate his business, looks like a bargain.

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