PENINSULA PEACE

(An ode to July in Michigan)

Time and time again, I have found peace here at this lovely inland lake

On this beautiful peninsula in Michigan:

Peace as comforting as the early morning sun warming

The waiting lake;

Peace as sweet as almost-forgotten scents of earth, woods, leaves, life released

By the soaking Summer rain;

Peace as soothing as the movement of white wisps of clouds, slow-dancing

Across a vast expanse of blue;

Peace as calming as the lake at twilight,

Quiet, still, serene;

Peace as deep as the infinite, star-studded

Northern night sky;

Peace as loving as the full golden moon laying down a path of

Soft light across the gently rippling night water.

Oh, to be able to keep this peace as a mystical memento

Of a Leelanau retreat,

To bring it home as a spiritual shield against

The city glare and noise,

Until, returning north, I am made new once again by

The peace of this peninsula..

Mary Oleary-McGlinn

(1) If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.

State Motto of Michigan

CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding has delivered a potentially explosive report to the powerful House Appropriations Committee, in which she admits to a startling string of errors in the design and methods used in the CDC’s landmark 2003 study that found no link between mercury in vaccines and autism, ADHD, speech delay or tics.

Gerberding was responding to a 2006 report from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), which concluded that the CDC’s flagship thimerosal safety study was riddled with “several areas of weaknesses” that combined to “reduce the usefulness” of the study.

“CDC concurs,” Dr. Gerberding wrote in an undated mea culpa to Congress, (provided to me through a Capital Hill staffer) adding that her agency “does not plan to use” the database in question, the Vaccine Safety Datalink, (VSD) for any future “ecological studies” of autism.

In fact, Gerberding’s report said, any continued use of the VSD for similar ecological studies of vaccines and autism “would be uninformative and potentially misleading.”

Ecological vaccine studies are large, epidemiological analyses of risks and trends using computerized data from large populations — in this case children enrolled at several big HMOs — without ever examining a single patient in person.

Go To:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cdc-vaccine-study-design_b_108398.html

Also “The Age of Autism” at: http://www.ageofautism.com/

The McGlynn comment:

Further, do not bother to got to CDC News at: http://www.cdc.gov/media/

There is nothing about this on their site. Fantastic Government we have, is it not?!

The Delta in Our Home

By KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND

Baltimore, June 5, 2008

THE spring Saturday was lovely. I was on the rope swing, waiting for my father to come home and for all of us to be called to dinner. Usually, on such a warm weekend day, our family would eat outdoors. My father would grill steaks smothered in mustard. But he was returning late from a trip to the Mississippi Delta, where he’d been conducting Senate hearings on hunger. It was 1967, and I was 15.

After the bell rang, I got to the dining room before the others. The long table was set with linen, silver and crystal. Painted portraits of my brothers and sisters hung on the walls. And suddenly, my father entered. He looked haunted and started talking to me, shaking his head in distress as he described the people he’d met in the Delta. “I was with a family who live in a shack the size of this dining room,” he told me. “The children’s stomachs were distended and had sores all over them. They were starving.” He was outraged that this could happen in the world’s richest country.

“Do you know how lucky you are?” he asked me, and then repeated, “Do you know how lucky you are? You have a great responsibility. Do something for these children. Do something for our country.”

I can’t remember what I said. I’m afraid I may have asked how hunger could make people’s stomachs larger. I wanted to think about how I might act on his advice, but for the moment felt only the importance of his giving it.

I thought of another time when he’d given me very personal advice, in a letter after his brother Jack was killed. “Dear Kathleen,” he’d written then. “You seem to understand that Jack died and was buried today. As the oldest of the Kennedy grandchildren, you have a special responsibility. A responsibility … to be kind to others and work for our country. Love, Daddy.”

After our brief exchange, he went upstairs to change. During dinner, he spoke again at length about the families he’d met in the Delta. He reiterated his message of personal responsibility, which was familiar to the whole family. My father had often quoted St. Luke, that from those who have been given much, much will be expected. And he made a point to take us to places where people lived in circumstances that were far different from ours — on Indian reservations, in Harlem, in Appalachia.

But on that evening his outrage was especially obvious, his sense of injustice palpable. And he wanted his children to feel the desperation of those children the way he had — and to see the need to do something positive about it.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is a former lieutenant governor of Maryland.

I see him standing there in the bright January sun, this tall, slim American, born of Kansas and Kenya,

This graduate of Harvard, this teacher of constitutional law, this community organizer, this respected author, this Senator from Illinois.

I see him standing there, vowing to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

I see him standing there, now with the accomplished, eloquent Michelle,

Their two young daughters sparkling by their side.

I see this American family whom we have made our own.

I see him step to the podium, looking out over the gathered throng of his fellow citizens.

I hear him, his voice sure and strong, with the cadence of King,

His words soaring over our Capitol, our country, our world.

“. . . So, now, let us begin a new chapter in our country’s history.

Together, young and old, black and white, Native Americans, Hispanic and Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Americans from every region of our country-together, let us work to redeem and renew the promise of America for all of our citizens, let us help heal the wounds of the peoples of the world, and let us lead the sacred effort to repair and preserve our precious planet.

There will be times when our mission will seem too difficult; at times, impossible. There will be struggle, set-backs, and sacrifice. But keeping our faith in one another and in the good we pursue, we will overcome the obstacles that lie ahead.

Together, we cannot fail.

Let us begin.”

I see a hopeful America on this bright Winter day in the year 2009 seeing and hearing her new President.

I see those struggling against discrimination, poverty, and fear here in America and around the world

Seeing and hearing him.

I see the young men and women of America, in love again with the possibility of America and their place in that America,

Seeing and hearing him.

I see black American girls and boys, bursting with pride and renewed purpose,

Seeing and hearing him.

I see all of us who have been heart-sick and outraged at the damage done to our

country and the world during the last eight years

Seeing and hearing him.

I see a young Muslim boy, a student in a Saudi Arabian madrasa,

Seeing and hearing him.

I see all and each of these and more, so many more, seeing and hearing

Barack Hussein Obama, the 44th President of the United States of America.

And I see the possibility of a new beginning.

Mary O’Leary McGlinn