I'M IN THE 14TH YEAR OF THIS BLOG

Eleven years ago I posted on MEMORIAL DAY AND WARS. In 2012, WHY MEMORIAL DAY? Five years ago the title was WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEMORIAL DAY AND VETERANS DAY? This is the day before, but I never let it go by. Tonight, by the way, PBS has its annual Memorial Day Concert on the Mall, featuring Colin Powell, Gladys Knight, the Four Tops and Steve Buscemi, of all the people. I was working in the U.S. Senate when the first mall concert was held. This was on 4 July 1980 for the initial Capitol Fourth.

Thinking about 42 years ago made me nostalgic. I'm now into the 14th year of this blog. This period is equivalent to going from kindergarten through high school and heading off to college. But this second time was every day. Back then there were weekends, holidays and summer vacation. In fact, early in the 14th year, which would be June of 1958, I left Hawaii for the very first time. I boarded a brand new PanAm 707 for Los Angeles.

My brother picked me up at LAX, and in the short period at the airport I could hardly breath, and my eyes watered. The Los Angeles smog was something I did not expect. I wondered how badly this affected your lungs. To the left and below are photos taken that year.

Oxnard in 1958 had a population of 40,000, and had mostly lemon orchards, although this was also the lima bean capital of the world. The size has mushroomed to more than 200,000 because Los Angeles people consider Oxnard, 60 miles away, to be a good escape. A couple of years ago I read that the average new single-family home here, at just under $900,000, was higher than Honolulu. In June it is cold in Oxnard, for the ocean current dominates. It could be 115 F just 20 miles away in Santa Paula. Oxnard would stay in the 60's.

My brother worked at the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory, and got me a summer job there. He drove me to Stanford University in September, and as we approached the campus, I saw a sign that said: Leland Stanford Jr. University. My first thought was, I didn't realize Stanford was a junior college. Here I am at Wilbur Hall, when it had just opened that year for the first full class of freshmen.

Someone sent me Ronald Reagan's Memorial day speech of more than a third of a century ago. He mentioned Private Martin Treptow's pledge during World War I:

She also sent me what you don't see on Memorial Day, as sung by Jackie Evancho. A memorable moment worth your while.

As today is Sunday, I'll close with Calvin and Hobbes:

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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