Category: Commentary

 “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.” – Elie Wiesel

I got into trouble during the last presidential election. I made my views too well known. I angered people and lost longtime friendships and relationships. I still grieve that some did not understand that my fervor was never about myself or meant to hurt others. It was simply my way of making observations that seemed so clear to me. I was warning them of dangers that I saw. I had hoped that some of them would understand my love for the United States of America and all of its people, but sadly for some I became an enemy, a naive communist who was just the opposite of what I thought that I was. 

I decided that I would be more circumspect in making my beliefs public in the current political maelstrom. I admitted that I had not changed the viewpoints of anyone with my editorial blogs. I wanted to go under the radar again lest I inadvertently ruffle the feelings of someone that I love. I felt that my personal ideals had been mostly ignored and had at times been interpreted as deluded or even insulting. I was determined to be mostly silent, but something happened that made me realize that silence hurts innocent people and that I must never give up attempting to alert people to the cruelty and oppression that is threatening our beautiful democracy and the hard fought freedoms that it has engendered. 

I was a child of the Cold War. My parents endured the Great Depression and World War II. My father was a history buff and my mother was someone whose parents had fled from oppression in their country that would one day be called Slovakia. I grew up with truths about how powerful figures use the good will and fears of people to enhance their own self interests. My teachers taught me how to watch for propaganda. They showed me how to think critically and how to analyze conflicting arguments. They engaged me in deep analyses of  human behavior. My grandfather helped me to see the long arc of history and its march toward progress, but also the ugliness that can stain the good that humans have achieved.

I don’t claim to have all of the answers but gravely fear for my nation in its present state. I know that when I speak of the issues that threaten our democracy I am preaching to the choir and alienating those who do not share my views. The reasonable thing to do would be to be silent and yet I wonder if silence is the fertilizer for the growth of authoritarian nations like Russia. If enough of us fear speaking the about what we believe to be true are we in a sense complicit in hurting the people around us?

The death of Alexei Navalny in a prison in Siberia awakened my sense that we should never simply look the other way when we perceive wrongdoing. He was perhaps the loudest and most important voice against the authoritarian policies of Putin and his government. He was poisoned once before and nearly died which only intensified his critiques of the current state of Russia. He might have stayed safely abroad but he understood that to keep his truths alive he would have to return to his native country. He clearly realized that he would be in danger but nonetheless kept his voice alive for the sake of his countrymen. 

Navalny predicted his own death. He told his followers that when he was gone they needed to continue to protest the actions of Putin and his loyal followers. He was a hero not unlike the founders of our nation who might have been hanged for their revolutionary beliefs. He gave his life for his love of Russia and his hope that one day it would be a land ruled by democratic principals. Navalny inspired me. 

I am but a small voice making noise in the wilderness. I do not believe that my words will necessarily have any impact on the way others believe but I know that I must be true to my principals by being unafraid to speak them. If I allow fear to guide me I am admitting to defeat of my ideals. I truly believe that the United States of America can return to it’s greatness but not of the variety described by Donald Trump and his followers. 

We have aspired to be a nation that welcomes a diversity of people and ideas. We have been at our best when we allow all voices an opportunity to speak their minds. We are most likely to solve our problems when we do not avoid speaking of our history with honesty. We do not want to turn back to a time when one race, one religion and one sex dominated life. We have moved past the idea that only one group of people are worthy of making decisions for the rest of us. It should be okay to take down memorials and flags honoring those who attempted to destroy our union. We need to talk openly about what happens when we rank people from best to worst or plant a seed that some among us need to be spurned simply for being different. We must be certain that Donald Trump and those who support his lies should not hold important offices. 

Our democracy is on the precipice of danger as are democracies in Europe and around the world. Our upcoming election is not about which old man should hold office but about who will keep the principles of democracy alive and who will kill them. The choice is clear but if too many among us simply sit this one silently out the man who loves dictators like Putin will be in charge. Trump has already bragged that he will be vindictive toward those who have voiced opposition to him. He will turn on patriots like Liz Cheney. Anyone who has ever pushed back with be at his mercy. Do we really want that to happen to our country? Do we want to create prisoners like Navalny in our own land? I think not. We have to use our voices at the polls this November by voting not for Trump and Republicans who have been afraid to cross him, but for a Joe Biden who was duly elected in 2020 and who guided us through some of the most difficult times in recent history. He may be old and we may not agree with everything that he believes but he is a champion for democracy and freedom. There is no more important issue!

There…I said it!

One of my brothers read an article that touted the predictive power of birth order. Essentially the claim was that people act in particular ways depending on when they became members of a family. Eldest children are a kind of experiment for first time parents who may or may not use the best nurturing skills in the initial trial run. As time goes by and more children arrive their techniques become less tentative and more relaxed. This has a lifetime effect on the behavior of the various siblings that can actually be generalized from one family to another, or so some who study such things believe. Then there are the only children like my husband, Mike, who is everything and everyone all at once in the family experience. 

While I seriously doubt that the dynamics of raising a child can be so easily replicated from one family to another, I have found that there are indeed interesting differences from one child to another that appear to share a few commonalities with others that seem to result from birth order or number of children in the family. Then there are the unusual outliers like twins and the not to be eliminated differences between boy and girl babies. In fact, there are so many possible reasons for the kind of people that we ultimately become that adhering to any theory claiming to predict who we will be seems a bit silly, and yet…

As a teacher I was often able to determine which of my students were the eldest in their families and which were the youngest. While it was not always the case, there seemed to be some merit to the idea that first born children tended to feel more pressure to be role models and protectors of their siblings. They sensed that their parents had certain expectations of them that they were almost duty bound to fulfill. There was a seriousness about them that was far less likely to be present in their happy go lucky youngest of the family peers. 

Of course we are all individuals who have been raised by individuals. So many factors influence who we are including the makeup of our families. I think of myself as a kind of strange hybrid because I began life inside a very traditional family with a mother and father but before I was even a teenager I lived in a single parent home without a father. For my brothers the impact of this reality was even stronger given that they barely remember having a man around the house. I suspect that the loss of our father was far more important in influencing our development than the order in which we were born. Nonetheless there are indeed traces of birth order generalizations in all three of us. 

I have always felt that I was born to be the responsible exemplar for my family. Throughout my lifetime I have believed that it was my duty to watch over my younger brothers and be a helpmate to my mother. That seriousness only grew stronger upon my father’s death. Somehow I thought that I should set aside my silliness and demonstrated that I understood how to be responsible and reliable. It became my way of live without much thought as to why I believed that way. It also made me a person who tried to control anything that seemed to be out of order. It made me an excellent teacher, but perhaps a bit too demanding as person with whom to live from day to day. 

I like order in my world which I admit is not always easy to achieve. I do my best to plan ahead, design alternative ways of doing things in an emergency situation. I get up early and stay up late making sure that my family is ready for any eventuality. I have routines that I prefer to follow rather than randomly approaching each day with little thought of what I will do. My personality works quite well in a profession that demands constant attention to even the tiniest details but it can run amok when the confluence of events change the calculus of what I need to do. 

I suppose that who I am and how I act is the product of thousands of factors, just as it is with every person. The order of my birth plays only a very small part in the person I have become. Thousands upon thousands of interactions have left their marks on each of us. We are products of cultures, religious beliefs, educational experiences, family dynamics, places where we have lived and even the habits that we either consciously or unconsciously developed. 

My husband and his father and I sit down each afternoon just before I prepare dinner. It is an alien concept to me but one that my father-in-law has followed for decades. In those moments we talk about all kinds of things and I realize through those conversations how incredibly different each of our upbringings were. Our perspectives on the world and its people vary and the greatest difference is between me and my father-in-law. I realize as we discuss things that his worldview and mine are products of the totality of our interactions which could not have been more different. 

So it is with all of us and therein lie the seeds of discontent with one another. It is impossible to overlay our own wishes on everyone else in the world. If we really understood that simple fact we might be less inclined to attempt to condemn and control ideas from people who are nothing like ourselves. Instead we would realize that the variety that we encounter is not just inevitable, but it is also a good thing. We do not need to be missionaries intent on changing people. If we accept them as they are and earnestly attempt to understand how and why their points of view developed we are far more likely to live in peace with them. 

Embracing our diversity is quite logical if we consider how each of us come to be the individuals that we are. It would be foolish to believe that there is some magical way of producing the same traits and ideas in everyone. It would be a terrible thing if all of us became exactly the same. How gray and ugly our landscape would be if all of the colors and differing textures were not there! How lucky we are to bring so many differences to each other! Nobody wants to have oatmeal all of time and sometimes even a control freak like me benefits from throwing all responsibility to the wind and embarking on an unplanned and adventurous day. Celebrate what makes us who we are!

I have written many times that I am a believer in having all older people turn over the reins of control to the younger generation rather than hanging onto power well into old age. It is not because I worry that seniors are incapable of clear thinking, but mostly because modern medicine allows us to live longer. As such it is often the case that a physically healthy individual might dominate a family or a company or even a political position for so long that the generation just behind him or her never receives an opportunity to assume a leadership role. I often use King Charles as an example of how his mother’s longevity as queen left him ascending the throne at a very late stage in his life. In all probability he will at most have a twenty year reign unless his own health is not as exceptional as his mother’s was. Somehow he lost the best years of his life waiting for his own time to come.

At the present moment in our nation’s history we have two old men seeking the highest office in the land. To quibble over which of the two is too old or too forgetful to hold the office is moot. Both candidates sometimes misspeak or forget petty details. Both are old by any definition. One guided our nation through the difficult times of the pandemic and the economic upheavals that plague the entire world. The other has spent the past four years claiming that the election was rigged and whining about his fate. If these two are our only choices I know which one will get my vote and it won’t be the one boasting that he will get retribution or be a dictator on day one of his presidency, the kind of talk that comes from dotty old men. 

I am younger than either of our likely presidential candidates but not by much. I celebrated my seventy fifth birthday in November. My memory was once as sharp as a tack, but in spite of my ability to learn difficult concepts quickly I have always had trouble remembering dates. I was in awe of a friend who was able to describe events in her life with a clarity that included the exact month, day and year in which they happened. I would be lucky to guess correctly regarding when certain things happened including the deaths of the most beloved people in my life. I only recall the anniversary of my father’s death because it came on Memorial Day back when that holiday occurred on May 31 rather than the last Monday of the month. If someone were to judge me to be a forgetful old woman simply because I cannot tell you the date on which my mother died without looking it up on Ancestry,com I suppose that I would have to resign from teaching mathematics to homeschooled children.

Likewise I sometimes misspeak or misuse a word when I chatter too quickly. It does not mean that I have forgotten what reality is. I laugh these days because I know that if I went back to college I would do exceptionally well on everything but timed tests. I would need a few more minutes to retrieve information from my brain than I used to require. The knowledge is there but if I’m put on the spot I might sound a bit forgetful. In truth I have almost always been that way. My teachers knew not to send me to contest requiring me to answer questions quickly. I have always been flustered in such situations, but when given ample time my mind works magnificently. Little wonder that people subjected to questions flying like bullets sometimes say the wrong thing. 

My father-in-law will be ninety-five in April. He walks into our kitchen each morning and states the day of the week in a kind of question to be sure that he is remembering well. He admits that sometimes he wakes up a bit confused but regains his momentum within minutes. He has to write things down and keep a calendar but who does not need such things? He still manages his own finances and keeps track of the maintenance of his house and his car. We don’t let him drive across town anymore but he can make trips to the pharmacy near our home on a road with a thirty mile an hour speed zone. His mind is clear even if not as quick as it once was.

Recently one of my brothers gave an hilarious description of a trivia game in which his team was comprised of people in their sixties and seventies. Because the questions focused on different eras his team eventually won because they knew the answers to about people and events in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Nonetheless there was one question that stumped them because suddenly their brains would not cooperate. They knew this person had been in movies like Edward Scissorhands and The Pirates of the Caribbean. They remembered his former wife’s name but nobody could come up with his name. The ticking clock seemed to make it impossible for them to retrieve the name, Johnny Depp. Once the buzzer rang they took a deep breath and everyone shouted the answer simultaneously but it was too late. Were they suffering from dementia or was it just an everyday quirk that we all experience?

My preference would be for both parties to choose younger people as candidates for President of the United States. I wish that some of the octogenarians and ninety year olds in Congress would retire. I also know that some the younger politicians are not nearly as mature, experienced or qualified to hold the highest office in the land but surely among them there are exceptional candidates. Both of the men who seem destined to run are old. Both men make gaffes. Both men are forgetful. One man has worked hard everyday for the last four years to steer our nation through difficult times. The other has only complained. For me it is clear who should get my vote. Others will choose differently. Let’s not focus on silliness when deciding in November. We need someone who will work for the American people not someone who can instantly cite a date or come up with a name. They are both forgetful elderly men just as most of us are forgetful people of many ages.    

When my father died our home filled with visitors who came to comfort my mother. Most of them arrived with food for our family. Our kitchen filled with baked meats and casseroles that would sustain us for weeks to come. It was a time of community, generosity and love. As an eight year old child I was touched by the goodness of people who rallied to help my mother in her time of need. 

In the ensuing years I watched my mother performing works of mercy for others over and over again. In spite of having a very tight budget she somehow found the means to contribute to community efforts that brought succor to people who were sick or who had experienced loss. She and others that I knew gave generously to causes without hesitating for a moment. I suppose that such model behavior taught me how to share even beyond my family and neighbors. I realized how incredible it is to know that we are not alone as we endure life’s challenges. 

Recently I learned of a teacher friend of mine who has been bedridden since the beginning of the year. She is unable to sit or walk without intense pain so she not only has been unable to work, but she cannot take care of her household. A group of teachers at her school decided to create a “food train” to keep meals arriving at her home on a regular basis until she has recovered from the surgery that is scheduled to repair her spine. 

I grew up believing that we are a generous nation. My mother would boast with tears in her eyes that the United States of America helped to rebuild much of Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan. Since then I have watched our country send aid all over the world in times of need. I’ve worked with students who were eager to create fundraisers to help people around the world that they would never meet. Often these same students were living in economic want themselves, but like my mother they found a way to share whatever good fortune they were able to scrape together. 

My maternal ancestors came from Slovakia in Eastern Europe. Their country borders with Ukraine and other nations that have historically been bandied about by more powerful countries and principalities. In the nineteen nineties when the former Soviet Union fell apart and walls were taken down my mother rejoiced because she had witnessed her father’s sorrow over the domination of Russia over smaller countries. She often remarked that her father would have been so happy to see democracy come to places that had been pawns for centuries. 

When Russia hosted the winter Olympic games a few years ago I remember feeling that Putin was telling us about his dream and that dream was like a nightmare to me. Somehow he was reveling in the days of old when Russia wielded its force over much of Eastern Europe including Slovakia and Ukraine. It was apparent that he longed for those times and was only biding his time until he found a way to unite the old Soviet nations once again. 

The moment finally came when Putin invaded Ukraine with the claim that much of the land and many of the people should rightfully be returned to Russia. In those early days there was a spontaneous rallying of European nations and the United Sates to help protect Ukraine from the outrageous invasion of their land. There was a unity of spirit with our NATO allies and a sense that the United States would help to supply funds and weapons to keep the defense of Ukraine alive. 

Now such honorable generosity has become mired in geopolitical intrigue and the Republican party in the House of Representatives seems determined to suspend all aid to Ukraine simply because Donald Trump is instructing them to do so. The absurd selfishness of their decision literally hurts my heart. They make lame excuses for their lack of humanity when it is apparent that they simply want a political cudgel to wave at those who insist that we must back Ukraine in its hour of need. 

I am a bonafide pacifist. I abhor war but I know that there have been moments in history when people and nations had to defend themselves. Just as we push back on an individual level when a bully attempts to harm us or someone we love, so too must we send the message that it is never right or just for a nation to invade another in a selfish grab of people and resources. The issues are understandably more complex than my simple analysis but we must always be wary of simply turning a blind eye to injustice or blatant mistreatment of people anywhere on earth. 

The world is on fire right now. These are very dangerous times. Our nation’s resources are being painfully stretched but simply leaving Ukraine to get by on its own will lead to even greater global problems and will send the message to our allies that we can’t be trusted to respond in times of need. This is an important turning point in history that will be judged as a blight on the United States it our country abandons Ukraine. It is not in our best interest to simply walk away. We no longer have the luxury of being isolated from harm by the two oceans that mark our shores. The butterfly flapping its wings now affects everyone in the world simultaneously. If we turn our backs on one of our allies we might expect to get no understanding or aid if we are attacked.

My hope is that the Republicans who are supposed to represent us in Washington D.C. will recognize the folly of their unwillingness to support Ukraine or to even attempt to solve any problems at all for that matter. Just as we should not ignore the difficulties of our families or neighbors or friends, it would be a travesty to put our heads in the sand to ignore the people in Ukraine fighting for freedom from domination by an authoritarian power. I hope that enough elected officials come to their senses to set things right. Ukraine will not be able to hold out until after our elections. I fear that they will fall if we do not help them now. I can’t think of how great a travesty and blot on our character as a nation it will be. The need is great and we have to help now or hang our heads in shame. 

I have never had a big problem with weight. I am larger than I was in my younger days when I might have been described as being skinny, but much smaller than many of my contemporaries. I remember a time when I was so thin that I felt unattractive. I had a difficult time finding clothes small enough to fit without looking as though they were limply dangling on a coat hanger. I actually celebrated when Twiggy came along and made my childlike figure popular. On the day that I married I was five foot six and one half inches tall and weighed eighty eight pounds. I did nothing special to be so svelte. It was just the way I was.  

After the birth of my first child my weight languished in the one hundred ten pound range. A second child sent me ramping up to one hundred twenty pounds where I stayed without any effort until my late forties. That’s when I finally had to take precautions with my eating and force myself to exercise more. Little by little my weight increased in small increments that added up and I began to understand those who struggled to keep the pounds from leading to obesity. I eventually learned how to stabilize and manage my weight so that I don’t tip the scales into a health danger zone. iI takes a bit more effort that I was accustomed to using for most of my life, but I can do it without feeling starved. 

My brothers and my husband have not been as fortunate to have bodies that seem to regulated themselves as well as mine does. Maintaining a healthy weight was a struggle for them as it is for many people. One brother told me that he was always hungry for most of his life. It was as though his brain constantly sent him signals that he needed more nourishment. He would think about food both day and night so curbing his consumption was a battle of wills. He said that he never felt full and sometimes even woke up in the middle of the night thinking that he needed to eat. Eventually he had surgery hoping to curb his appetite and suddenly he felt like I always have. He lost weight and kept it off. He finally ended those incessant feelings that he needed food when he should have been full. 

Recent studies have proven that my brother was not just making an excuse for his obesity. Researchers have indeed found that we have hormonal sensors in our brains that tell us when we have satisfied our need to eat. For some people this system does not work the way it should. Those souls have unusual cravings for food that literally haunt them all of the time. On the other end of the spectrum are people who get messages that they have eaten enough when they have not. Most of us are somewhere in the midrange that keeps us eating properly. 

Now in addition to weight loss surgery there are medications injected into the body on a weekly basis that essentially jump start the normal processes that tell us that we have had enough to eat. People using those drugs report that they feel normal for the first time. Food is no longer an obsession for them. They lose the excess pounds and then stay in a healthy range like I have been able to do. For them it feels as though a miracle has happened. Every aspect of their health is better. Blood sugar levels and blood pressure readings go down. They have more energy and feel younger. They look better and feel confident. 

We have had a tendency in our society to blame obesity on laziness and gluttony when now we are learning that in many ways the urge to overeat occurs because of a faulty mechanism that is supposed to curb appetites. It seems that some of us have the good fortune to remain at healthy weights mostly because our bodies are working just as they should, not because we are somehow better than our heavy counterparts. We take feeling full for granted when the evidence is now showing that the mechanism for insuring that response does not always work as well as it should. 

The American Medical Association is excited about the implications of the weight loss drugs that are proving to be a panacea for people who have struggled to feel normal for years. They are literally urging insurance companies and even Medicare and Medicaid to cover these drugs. They insist that the effects of weight loss that such medications produce will revolutionize our healthcare system. In fact, there are even beliefs that they may work for people with other addictions as well. 

We have all known people who can consume food with the most voracious eaters and never gain a pound. I used to be that way and my father-in-law still is. He is as thin as a rail and yet he is able to consume more food than either my husband or I do in a single day. He eats a very large breakfast each morning and then consumes lunch and snacks until the evening when he enjoys crackers and cheese with his daily intake of wine followed by the same dinner that we all eat. He follows his last meal of the day with cookies or candy or ice cream and yet he stays incredibly thin. I maintain a reasonable albeit more average weight while my husband is much heavier than either of us. If I were to quantify each person’s consumption of food I would have to say that my father-in-law eats the most, my husband is slightly behind him and I definitely eat less than either of them. Because I purchase and dispense the food I know what each of us consume. We are indeed a study in how different bodies react to very similar amounts of food. 

I appreciate that researc

I have never had a big problem with weight. I am larger than I was in my younger days when I might have been described as being skinny, but much smaller than many of my contemporaries. I remember a time when I was so thin that I felt unattractive. I had a difficult time find clothes small enough to fit without looking as though they were limply dangling on a coat hanger. I actually celebrated when Twiggy came along and made my childlike figure popular. On the day that I married I was five foot six and one half inches and weighed eighty eight pounds. I did nothing special to be so svelte. It was just the way I was.  

After the birth of my first child my weight languished in the one hundred ten pound range. A second child sent me ramping up to one hundred pounds where I stayed without any effort until my late forties. that’s when I finally had to take precautions with my eating and force myself to exercise more. Little by little my weight increased in larger and larger increments and I began to understand those who struggled to keep the pounds from leading to obesity. I eventually learned how to stabilize and manage my weight so that I don’t tip the scales into a health danger zone. it takes a bit more effort that I was accustomed to using for most of my life. 

My brothers and my husband have not been as fortunate to have bodies that seemed to regulated themselves as well as mine did. Maintaining a healthy weight was a struggle for them as it is for most people. One brother told me that he was always hungry. it was as though his brain constantly sent him signals that he needed more nourishment. He would think about food both day and night so curbing his consumption was a true battle of wills. Eventually he had surgery hoping to curb his appetite and suddenly he felt like I always have. He lost weight and kept it off. He finally sated those feelings that he needed food when he should have been full. 

Recent studies have proven that my brother was not just making an excuse for his obesity. Researchers have indeed found that we have hormonal sensors in our brains that tell us when we have satisfied our urges to eat. For some people this system does not work the way it should. Those souls have unusual cravings for food that literally haunt them all of the time. On the other end of the spectrum are people who get messages that they have eaten enough when they have not. Most of us are somewhere in the midrange that keeps us eating properly. 

Now in addition to weight loss surgery there are medications injected into the body on a weekly basis that essentially jump start the normal processes that tell us that we have had enough to eat. People using those drugs report that they feel normal for the first time. Food is no longer an obsession for them. They lose the excess pounds and then stay in a healthy range like I have been able to do. For them it feels as though a miracle has happened. Every aspect of their health is better. Blood sugar levels and blood pressure readings go down. They have more energy and feel younger. They look better and feel confident. 

We have had a tendency in our society to blame obesity on laziness and gluttony when now we are learning that in many ways the urge to overeat occurs because of a faulty mechanism for curbing appetites. It seems that some of us have the good fortune to remain at healthy weights mostly because our bodies are working just as they should, not because we are somehow better than our heavy counterparts. We take feeling full for granted when the evidence is now showing that the mechanism for insuring that response does not always work as well as it should. 

The American Medical Association is excited about the implications of the weight loss drugs that are proving to be a panacea for people who have struggled to feel normal for years. They are literally urging insurance companies and even Medicare and Medicaid to cover these drugs. They insist that the effects of weight loss that such medications produce will revolutionize our healthcare system. In fact, there are even beliefs that they may work for people with other addictions as well. 

We have all known people who can consume food with the most voracious eaters and never gain a pound. I used to be that way and my father-in-law still is. He is as thin as a rail and yet he is able to consume more food than either my husband or I do in a single day. He eats a very large breakfast each morning and then consumes lunch and snacks until the evening when he enjoys crackers and cheese with his daily intake of wine followed by the same dinner that we all eat. He follows his last meal of the day with cookies or candy or ice cream and yet he stays incredibly thin. I maintain a reasonable albeit more average weight while my husband is much heavier than either of us. Because I purchase and dispense the food I know what each of us consume. We are indeed a study in how different bodies handle very similar amounts of food. 

I appreciate that researchers are learning more and more about how each of our bodies handle our consumption of food. I like that evidence is demonstrating that the heavier people among us may be that way because of a faulty system rather than some flawed personality trait. We have condemned heavy people and celebrated thin ones far too long. Perhaps one day we will be able to help everyone find that feeling of fullness and satisfaction that seems so normal but does not always exist for so many. Maintaining a healthy weight should not be as painful as it is for so many among us. Scientists may have found the fountain of youth in a drug that sets them free to be healthy and energetic like me. I wish the best for them. 

ers are learning more and more about how each of handle our consumption of food. I like that evidence is demonstrating that the heavier people among us may be that way because faulty systems rather than flawed personality traits. We have condemned heavy people and celebrated thin ones far too long. Perhaps one day we will be able to help everyone find that feeling of fullness and satisfaction that seems so normal to people like me but does not always exist for others. Maintaining a healthy weight should not be as painful as it is for so many among us. Scientists may have found the fountain of youth in a drug that sets those who are overweight free to become healthy and energetic like me. I wish the best for them. I hope this is truly the miracle that they need.