VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, January 26, 2019
East Oregonian
A5
The light of winter
E
ngraved on the chunk of Formica
pinned to her blue smock was the
word “Delphine.” She was one
of a dozen clerks handling the Satur-
day crush in a grocery store with aisles
wide enough to accommodate forklifts.
Delphine was not smiling the industrial
smile that company finks and mystery
shoppers have forced upon the workers.
She slapped the bacon down like
she was squishing scorpions. She ham-
mer-threw five pounds of spuds against
the backboard, scooted the catsup with
enough force to score against a Cana-
dian goalie, smacked that bottle with
the maple syrup, bowled a strike on the
orange juice with a back-handed grape-
fruit, then helicoptered a dozen eggs into
the pile.
“That’ll be 17 dollars and 35 cents.”
I don’t want to become a grocery
clerk when I grow up. Even a union clerk
doesn’t draw enough of a wage to com-
pensate for standing in a laser-infested
stall, handling raw chicken, greeting
cards and grouchy patrons for eight hours
a day. But Delphine was cranky beyond
the realm of occupational peeve, so while
I was smoothing the creases out of a
20-dollar bill, I stomped on thin ice and
asked her how she was doing.
“Not worth a nun’s fanny. I have
SAD.”
I said I was sorry to hear that and
asked why she was sad.
“I did not say I am sad, Ding Dong,
I said I have SAD, Seasonal Affective
Disorder, get it? That’s $17.35, forty,
fifty, eighteen, and two’s twenty. Have a
nice day.” Delphine and I weren’t good
enough pals for me to ask if this disorder
got any more severe, so I just retrieved
my bag of mangled food, and began look-
ing for my pickup in the icy parking lot.
When I reached my writer’s sanctu-
ary, I fired up the magic box and began to
study Seasonal Affective Disorder, which
is thought to be caused by the lack of
sunlight in mid to polar latitudes during
winter months. The operating phrase is
“Latitude is Attitude,” meaning that in
North America the farther north one lives
during the period between September
and March, the more likely one is to go
bat guano haywire. Somehow, those who
were born and live above the 65th paral-
lel like the Inuit and Sammi don’t seem
to be affected.
The typical symptoms of SAD include
depression, lack of energy, increased
need for sleep, a craving for sweets, and
weight gain. Symptoms begin in fall,
peak in winter and usually resolve in
spring. Some individuals experience
great bursts of energy and creativity in
spring or early summer. Folks who work
in buildings without windows may expe-
rience SAD-type symptoms at any time
of year. Some people with SAD experi-
ence periods of mania. If the symptoms
are mild, no treatment may be necessary.
If they are problematic, then a mood sta-
bilizer such as lithium might be consid-
ered. There is a smaller group of individ-
uals who suffer from summer depression.
About 70 percent of those with SAD
are women. The most common age of
onset is in one’s 30s, but some cases of
childhood SAD have been reported. For
every individual with full-blown SAD,
there are many more with milder “win-
ter blues.”
Let us leave aside the possibility that
we are being fed another slice of scien-
tific cowpie. If we do need to suck down
a couple of shots of Jack Daniels with our
French fries, can’t finish a sentence with-
out someone butting in, or have trouble
getting from the couch to the toilet with-
out knocking over a lamp, does this mean
that we are sick, and if it does, what can
we do about it?
Phototherapy is the cure. We need
light. The smarty pants folks on the web
recommend 10,000 lux for two hours a
day. One lux is the amount of light that
one candle sheds on a square meter. The
average room is lit to the tune of about
500 lux. The medical device to generate
all this healing light is a box containing
eight to ten 100 watt incandescent bulbs
if you can still find them.
Some individuals who use a 10,000-
lux box may only need 30 minutes of
daily light treatment. However, the
amount needed varies widely from indi-
vidual to individual. The treatment is
most often done in the morning. Some
folks may get insomnia when they
use the light in the evening. Initially,
researchers felt that one needed full spec-
trum light. Now, studies suggest that
even fluorescent lights will work.
It works best if one maintains the
same distance each time from his/her/
its face to the light source. The treatment
should be repeated daily for twenty days
and as needed after that. The light should
strike one’s eyes, but don’t look directly
into the light source. It takes up to three
weeks for light therapy to show effects.
And there has been recent research
J.D. S mith
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
using light therapy for PMS, obesity
and non-seasonal depression. When I
checked the mirror this morning it looked
like Delphine and I both need to stare
into the light.
———
J.D. Smith is a columnist for the East
Oregonian.
The embargo on Cuba failed. Let’s move on.
H
AVANA — It has been
Venezuela and Nicaragua.
60 years since Fidel Cas-
Let’s make room for nuance:
tro marched into Havana, Cuba impoverishes its citizens
so it’s time for both Cuba and the
and denies them political rights,
United States to grow up. Let’s let but it does a good job providing
Cuba be a normal country again.
basic education and keeping peo-
ple healthy. Cuba’s offi-
Cuba is neither the
cial infant mortality rate
demonic tyranny con-
jured by some conser-
is lower than America’s
vatives nor the heroic
(its real rate may or may
worker paradise roman-
not be).
ticized by some on the
I’m not a Cuba expert,
left. It’s simply a tired
and I don’t know how
little country, no threat
this country will evolve.
to anyone, with impres-
But Cuba has a new
N icholas
sive health care and edu-
president, Miguel Díaz-
K ristoff
cation but a repressive
Canel, who is associ-
COMMENT
ated with experiments in
police state and a dys-
functional economy.
opening up the economy.
Driving in from the airport,
Fidel is gone and his brother Raúl
I saw billboards denouncing the
is fading from the scene.
American economic embargo
In the 1960s, we were scared of
as the “longest genocide in his-
Cuba. We feared that neighboring
tory.” That’s ridiculous. But the
countries would tumble like dom-
inoes into the Communist bloc,
embargo itself is also absurd and
and the Soviet Union attempted
counterproductive, accomplish-
ing nothing but hurting the Cuban to place on Cuba nuclear missiles
people — whom we supposedly
that could have threatened Amer-
ica. But today even as those fears
aim to help.
After six decades, can’t we
have dissipated, our policy has
move on? Let’s drop the embargo
ossified.
but continue to push Havana on
President Barack Obama took
improving human rights, and
the necessary step of re-establish-
ing diplomatic relations and eas-
on dropping support for other
ing the embargo, but President
oppressive regimes, like those in
Donald Trump reversed course
and tightened things up again out
of knee-jerk hostility to anything
Cuban and anything Obaman.
Cuba is changing, albeit too
slowly. About one-third of its
labor force is now in the pri-
vate sector, and this is just about
the only part of the economy
that is thriving. I stayed in one
of the growing number of Airb-
nbs in Havana, and people were
friendly, even if governments are
not: When I said I was from the
United States, I inevitably got
a big grin and a reference to a
cousin in Miami or New York or
Cleveland.
Plus, extra credit goes to a
country that so lovingly pre-
serves old American cars. I rode
in from the airport in a pink 1954
Cadillac.
In another sign of flexibility,
Cuba recently hammered out a
deal with Major League Baseball
that will allow Cuban players to
travel legally to the U.S. and play
on American teams.
Yet, sadly, the Trump adminis-
tration is threatening the deal.
Consider the persistence of
North Korea and Cuba, and
there’s an argument that sanctions
and isolation preserve regimes
rather than topple them. China
teaches us not to be naïve about
economic engagement toppling
dictators, but on balance tourists
and investors would be more of
a force for change than a seventh
decade of embargo.
Moreover, trade, tourism,
travel and investment empower a
business community and an inde-
pendent middle class. These are
tools to destabilize a police state
and help ordinary Cubans, but
we curtail them. America blames
the Castros for impoverishing the
Cuban people, but we’ve partici-
pated in that impoverishment as
well.
Cuba’s government is not
benign. It’s a dictatorship whose
economic mismanagement has
hurt its people, and Human Rights
Watch says it “routinely relies
on arbitrary detention to harass
and intimidate critics.” But it
doesn’t normally execute them
(or dismember them in consulates
abroad like our pal Saudi Arabia),
and it tolerates some criticism
from brave bloggers like Yoani
Sánchez.
It is revising its constitution,
and my hope is that over time —
despite ideologues in both Havana
and the United States — relations
will continue to develop. Some
American seniors who now win-
ter in Florida could become snow-
birds in Cuba instead, relying on
its health care, low prices, great
beaches and cheap labor. You can
hire a home health care aide for a
month in Havana for the cost of
one for a day in Florida.
China’s economic boom began
in the early 1980s partly with fac-
tories financed by Chinese over-
seas, and after the American
embargo ends, Cuba will have
similar opportunities to forge
mutually beneficial business part-
nerships with Cubans overseas.
That would benefit both sides.
For 60 years we’ve been feuding,
like the Hatfields and the McCoys,
in a conflict whose origins most
Americans don’t even remember
clearly.
So come on. We should all
be bored by a lifetime of mutual
recriminations and antago-
nisms. Let’s put aside the ideol-
ogy, end the embargo, tone down
the propaganda and raise a mojito
together.
I propose a toast to a new
beginning.
———
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist
for the New York Times.
The next test for Kamala Harris
San Francisco Chronicle
he rise of Sen. Kamala Harris was
made possible by her ability to navi-
gate between the poles of politics. She
was elected San Francisco district attorney by
unseating an incumbent to her left, became
state attorney general by defeating a Los
Angeles prosecutor running to her right, and
won a U.S. Senate race in 2016 in a landslide
over a 10-term Democratic congresswoman.
Now comes the big test: running for the
Democratic nomination for president in a rap-
idly growing field in which she will be neither
the furthest left at a moment when the party’s
base is agitating for purity, nor the most expe-
rienced choice for voters desperate to bring
seasoning and stability back to the White
House.
But Harris, who announced her candidacy
Monday with the slogan “For the People,” has
always managed to find a winning lane. She
begins the campaign among the upper tier of
contenders, though the support is so diffuse at
T
this early stage that it would be foolhardy to
anoint anyone a favorite.
That Harris made it official on Martin
Luther King Jr. Day was an unmistakable sig-
nal that she planned to accentuate her multi-
cultural heritage — Jamaican father, Indian
mother — as an asset for voters who have
been repulsed by the racism and xenophobia
tolerated and even encouraged in the Trump
era.
Not surprisingly, her announcement drew
a few shots from the left (focusing on her role
as a prosecutor), and the Republican National
Committee put out a statement scoffing at her
as “arguably the least vetted Democrat” and
“unqualified and out of touch.”
And so begins her quest to answer those
and other questions sure to arise about her
experience and ability to connect with voters
far from San Francisco, in geography, culture
and ideological perspective.
Those of us who have followed her career
from the start expect her to be prepared,
determined — and formidable.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks to members of the media at her alma mater, Howard
University, Monday in Washington, following her announcement that she will run for
president.