Monthly Archives: September 2021

By Morf Morford

Tacoma Daily Index

Wear your mask, save a business that was the motto, the organizing principle, of Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber for most of 2020 and much of 2021.

Its a simple, yet powerful, even empowering, statement.

It would be difficult to come up with, or even imagine a simpler, cheaper, less intrusive act with greater impact.

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Wearing a mask, after all, costs very little, is painless and, at least according to the Chamber, has massive, over-reaching, long lasting repercussions.

In other words, the ROI (Return On Investment) is unparalleled and huge.

There are many principles at work in this deceptively simple phrase.

The Harvard Business Review, for example, has a recent article titled The power of small wins https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins?.

One aspect of this thesis is that of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress, however small, in meaningful work.

The Navy SEALs have a similar core principle set achievable micro-goals.

Even making your bed each morning, they say, leads to, or at least initiates, a sense of accomplishment that sets the tone for the rest of the day.

Besides being a concrete act, wearing a mask (or even making your bed) is a job (however small) completed, a task finished and set aside.

Wearing a mask is also, in more ways than most of us could ever have imagined possible, a statement of solidarity, a sense of community.

And with that sense of community, there is the underlying sense of feeling that those wearing masks are contributing to a resolution that everyone, it is presumed, wants to work toward.

Who of us, after all, would not prefer to be part of the solution, rather than one who perpetuates the problem?

In other words, a simple, personal, individual act is a direct, concrete step toward what we all want to save as many business as possible.

A business, after all, is more than an economic unit it is a vision, a dream put into action, a collaboration of energies, passion and yes, resources and of course, a provider of essential goods and services to a community.

The end of a business is the end of much more than the evaporation of jobs and economic stability.

The end of a business, especially a local business, impacts neighborhoods, networks within the larger community, nearby schools, possibly first jobs or learning experiences for young people.

Get vaccinated and wear a mask

Save a business and protect our community

The Chamber has since (in the past few months) changed its website byline to Get vaccinated and wear a mask- save a business and protect our community.

This is a similar message, of course, but not one that is as immediately visible as wearing a mask.

The irony, of course, one that will be studied and analyzed for many years to come, will be why so many refused even this simple, no sacrifice solution to preserve even their own financial well-being.

An economy, local or national, depends upon thousands, if not millions of willing, individual personal decisions.

There was a time, not so long ago, when a common threat inspired us to put aside our differences and unite against a shared enemy.

We have at least one threatening our lives and livelihoods today (climate change is, by any standard, at least as much a threat as any pandemic).

But contrary to our history, if not human nature, we have taken this threat to split even further into warring ideological camps, each with their scripts, arguments and alternative facts.

In a saner era, in the face of a severe flu or other highly contagious (and dangerous) disease, parental instincts would kick in and parents would clamor for the highest level of protection for their children whether that might be vaccinations or any other medically authorized procedure.

Weve been through this as a nation with mumps, Chicken pox, measles, polio and a host of others.

We took care of our children and, in some cases, as with smallpox and polio, effectively eliminated menacing and destructive diseases.

To put it bluntly, those policies were good for families, good for our country and, not least, good for our economy.

Students need to go to school, and, as we have all noticed lately, those essential workers really are essential.

Just a few sick people can, as we have all experienced recently, mess up our supply chains in every category from lumber to car parts, or as many of us have seen here in the Puget Sound area, disrupt ferry schedules.

Its not that complicated.

In fact its very close to the near universal Golden rule; treat others as youd like to be treated.

As we take care of ourselves, we take care of our community, and as we take care of our community, we take care of ourselves.

I listen to the arguments against the mandates. Personal freedom and freedom of expression is very important to me and who we are as a nation. But there is no such thing as a right without responsibility.

There is literally no excuse for disrupting an airline flight, or assaulting a store employee or threatening a political figure over masking or vaccination policies.

I must admit that it is embarrassing to even say this; medical professionals with years, if not decades, of experience are more reliable sources of health impacting information than breathless, ranting Youtube videos.

For many years after World War II, a common question by children, usually directed at their fathers, was What did you do in the war?

The assumption of that question was that we all would do our best to fight a common enemy or make a difficult situation a little more tolerable maybe even better.

The idea that anyone would make a difficult situation worse, or would profiteer from anyone elses pain or even death was appalling if not disgraceful.

Prolonging the difficulties was certainly not what any respectable person would do.

Some day this pandemic will be over.

And the question we will all have to live with is What did you do during the pandemic?

Read more:

Get vaccinated and wear a maskSave a business and protect our community - Tacoma Daily News

While there has been much discussion about how effective various public health measures are against COVID-19, there has been less discussion about the moral and ethical issues raised by the pandemic. What are our moral obligations in the face of COVID-19?

To discuss these issues we reached out to Karey Harwood, a bioethicist and associate professor of religious studies at NCState. Harwoods work focuses on ethical issues related to biomedicine and biomedical technologies, as well as how religious beliefs inform our understanding of these issues.

This post is part of a series of Q&As in which NCState experts address questions about the vaccines on issues ranging from safety to manufacturing to distribution.

The Abstract: Does anyone have a moral obligation to get vaccinated or wear a mask?

Karey Harwood: Yes, people who are healthy enough to be vaccinated have a moral obligation to get vaccinated.

Simply put, no person is an island. Our immunity to disease is a shared resource that we all have a responsibility to protect. It can be difficult in a highly individualistic society to find ways to think about collective responsibilities. But really, its not at all strange or radical to think about responsibilities that we willingly share for the good of the human community. Whats strange is how Americans have grown alienated from these ideas. For the same reason it would be wrong to poison drinking water (a shared resource), or to abandon all the rules of the road (also a shared resource) while driving, it is also wrong to knowingly endanger our collective immunity to disease.

A utilitarian argument for universal vaccination would say herd immunity is a worthwhile and defensible goal because it creates the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism would even tolerate some risk of harm to a few individuals for the benefit of the many. However, we dont need absolutely everyone to get vaccinated to create and sustain herd immunity. People who cannot safely be vaccinated should receive a medical exemption, period. No one is asking for heroic sacrifice. We just need more people to step up. Unfortunately, the goal of herd immunity keeps slipping away because far too many people are refusing vaccination without a good reason. As we all know, this gives new variants of the virus a continual supply of hosts.

It is remarkable that people were so much more willing to take the risk of trying the experimental polio vaccine in the 1950s or I should say subjecting their children to trying the polio vaccine than they are now to take the fully FDA-approved Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19. The science and safety of vaccines has improved significantly since the mid 20th century. Why hasnt public confidence kept pace? I think the answer to that is complicated. The fear, paranoia, and misinformation surrounding the COVID vaccines have clearly affected peoples judgment, but the reasons for the alienation from a sense of community and shared humanity run deep.

As for masks, wearing one has seemed from the beginning of this pandemic like such a small ask. We see old black and white photographs of people wearing cloth masks during the 1918 flu pandemic, going to ballgames, going about their business. We dont get the sense that these people were angrily protesting masks and shouting, live free or die. Unless there is a medical reason why a person cannot safely wear a mask, yes, there is a moral obligation to wear one to reduce the transmission of disease. Notwithstanding the cases of violence that have erupted over the issue of masks, my sense is that most Americans, most of the time, have adapted quite readily to mask wearing. Because that is what humans do they innovate, adapt, and work together for the good of the community.

TA: Does anyone have a moral obligation to get tested if they are experiencing symptoms?

Harwood: Getting a definitive test result is always a good idea if the illness being tested is transmissible and the test to identify the illness is accurate. A false positive or a false negative doesnt provide any useful knowledge. But knowing for sure that you have strep throat rather than allergies, for example, is crucial information for getting the right treatment and justifying isolation from others.

Individuals who are experiencing symptoms of COVID which by now we know better how to recognize should get tested with the most reliable test (PCR test) because the results (whether positive or negative) provide crucially important information for the good of the local, state, national, and global community. Being sick with COVID is not a solitary event. It is contracted from others and can be passed on to others family members, fellow students, co-workers, fellow shoppers at the grocery store. People who test positive should notify the people close to them, insofar as they are able to do that work, and notify their employers or schools. We could and should build better systems for contact tracing and notification that would share the responsibility and the labor of notification. I think that would be prudent and fair. But step one is getting tested so that steps can be taken to reduce further transmission of disease.

TA: Does anyone have a moral obligation to tell others if they have been diagnosed with COVID?

Harwood: With a positive COVID test, there is unquestionably an obligation to quarantine. Its almost unthinkable that someone who knows they are positive for COVID would step onto an airplane, or attend a social gathering, and yet we know there are instances of this happening. People have their reasons for thinking their personal priorities trump public health, but such thinking demonstrates an appalling disregard for others. Indeed, one can easily imagine criminal liability for such behavior. [Editors note: here is an example under North Carolina law.]

As for an obligation to tell others of a positive COVID diagnosis, it depends on the nature of the contact and the nature of the relationship. Notifying people with whom you share living space, e.g., family members or roommates, would be obligatory, as would be notifying the guests at a party you threw while unknowingly coming down with COVID. But calling up everyone in the lecture hall where you attended class? Such an obligation would be burdensome, unrealistic, and arguably an erosion of your privacy. Better would be to notify the school and let a team of paid and capable contract tracers promptly identify and notify those individuals who need to know.

TA: What are the ethics of workplaces requiring vaccination?

Harwood: Now that the Pfizer vaccine has received full FDA approval, employers are justified in requiring vaccination of their employees. They are not asking their employees to do something dangerous or take an unnecessary risk. They are not being unduly paternalistic. Requiring vaccination protects everyone in the workplace and it reduces community spread overall, thereby protecting vulnerable people who cannot get vaccinated and all children younger than 12 who are not yet eligible.

TA: In places that are requiring vaccination, there are often religious exemptions. Given your expertise on the relationship between religious traditions and biomedical ethics, what are the theological justifications for these exemptions?

Harwood: It certainly seems that people are straining credulity in what they characterize as a religious reason for requesting an exemption from vaccination. Some are turning to religious exemptions as a last resort, when the nonreligious personal belief exemption is no longer available. So there is an expediency to this use of the religious exemption that undermines its authenticity in many cases.

One might expect a group like Christian Scientists to refuse vaccination across the board, but this is not the case. Although Christian Scientists normally rely on the power of prayer for healing, rather than modern medicine, they recognize their obligations to public health: For more than a century, our denomination has counseled respect for public health authorities and conscientious obedience to the laws of the land, including those requiring vaccination. Christian Scientists report suspected communicable disease, obey quarantines, and strive to cooperate with measures considered necessary by public health officials. We see this as a matter of basic Golden Rule ethics and New Testament love.

By contrast, some white Evangelicals have adopted a problematic understanding of moral purity that compels them to avoid what they perceive to be polluting or contaminating medical procedures. It is not hard to see this fear of contamination among people seeking religious exemptions from vaccination. However, as philosopher Ruth Groenhout has observed, Evangelicals obsession with purity puts them, ironically, into precisely the position of the Pharisees, the only group of people consistently criticized by Jesus for privileging their own moral purity and observance of the finer points of the law over providing assistance to the needy or care for the ill (Matt. 23:1-39. Luke 11: 37-54). The New Testament provides little comfort for religious believers who focus so exclusively on their own moral purity that they are willing to see others suffer for it.

Groenhout goes on to say that in her reading of the New Testament, Jesus advocated an ethics of service and assistance to all (Matt. 26:14-39, Luke 22: 24-27, John 13: 1-17), but especially to those seen as ones enemies (Matt. 5:43-48, Luke 6: 27-36) and to the sick and poor (Matt. 25:31-46).

So, although people may cite verses from the Bible to explain their desire to refuse the vaccination, and they may claim that their beliefs are sincerely held, these things by themselves do not constitute a plausible and coherent theological justification for a vaccine refusal.

Read the original post:

Vaccine Q&A: Do I Have a Moral Obligation to Wear a Mask or Get Vaccinated? - NC State News

William Henry Dewey was born into slavery in 1858 in New Bern, a riverfront town in Craven County, in the rural Inner Banks of North Carolina. His mother died when he was a child.

By the age of 13, Henry was working as a waiter boy for Dr. Attmore, a popular young white physician who had served in the Confederate army. Henrys older brother, Miles, was employed as a boy (domestic servant) for a series of white families. By the time he turned 16, Henry was apprenticing as a barber; and when he turned 20, he married Presbaretta Etta McIlvaine, another freed slave from New Bern. He found work at the barbershop in Gaston House, a landmark hotel in downtown New Bern. When he turned 23, Henrys boss died, and he took over the shop, offering shaves for ten cents apiece. His brother Miles became a hand on the railroad, but his lifeless body would be found in one of the cars a couple of years later; cause of death unknown.

Unlike his brother Miles, who had been completely illiterate, Henry was not only very literate but a gifted orator and writer, although, as a profiler later notes, his means for the acquisition of books were very limited. In 1883, he organized and became president of The Philosophian Literary Society of New Bern, which, he wrote, was organized for the purpose of circulating pure moral principles, to cultivate a love for the true, the beautiful, the good, and to qualify its votaries to become leaders of the people in all departments of Art, Science and Literature.

His appetite for the fruits of the political arena was even greater. North Carolinas second congressional district was a national hotbed of Black politics in these waning days of the Reconstruction Era following the Civil War. Known as the Black Second, Deweys district included many of the states Black-majority counties, and New Bern was its largest town. The Republican party at that time, Lincolns party of Emancipation would elect four Black congressmen to a total of seven terms between 1874 and 1898 from the Black Second, together with numerous Black state legislators. And Dewey was right at the heart of it.

In 1882, Dewey, described by the local paper as the young barber at the Gaston House, took the floor of the Republican County Convention to introduce a resolution endorsing George H. White, a Black lawyer and school principal in New Bern, to be nominated for district solicitor. It was a controversial choice, and the debate became so heated that, the local paper reported, pretty soon the whole floor was in a ferment. Everyone was on his feet; the Chairman called for order, and there was evidently a good deal of feeling stirred up. White would eventually go on to not only be elected solicitor, but also to become the last Black congressman to serve North Carolina for nearly a century.

From 1884 to 1889, Dewey organized the annual Emancipation Day celebration of the 13th Amendment each January. The Black residents of New Bern would parade the streets with bands, assemblies, prayers, speeches, poetry, and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. This New Bern tradition continued well into the 20th century (and still survives there today as part of the annual Juneteenth celebration.)

Even as Dewey, the Practical Tonsorial Artist, continued to offer ten-cent shaves at his Hairdressing and Shaving Saloon at the Gaston House, he also waded deeper into politics. He was hired to work for local political campaigns. He organized an Excursion Extraordinary to the Congressional Convention in nearby Kinston in 1886. He was appointed to the executive committee of his party in his ward, and to the executive committee of the Freedmen in and around New Bern. He became a prominent statewide figure in the G.U.O.O.F. (Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America). The local paper published a description of Dewey as a man who stand in the fear of God but fearless of man.

In 1886, while still at the barbershop, Dewey bought and became the editor of The Peoples Advocate, the only political newspaper in the county and the only one intended for a Black readership. He soon renamed it The Golden Rule. While there are no known surviving copies of it, its existence is well-documented. It was a four-page broadsheet published every Saturday.

In 1887, a controversy over a school bill erupted. The bill consolidated the various schools under all-white management in exchange for a longer school year for the colored school. Dewey opposed it. In a letter to another local paper, he wrote, I am opposed to centralization of power in one race over another. The bill says separate schools, but one committee of white people. After twenty-four years of enfranchisement my heart beats as high as the Anglo Saxon who condemned taxation without representation.

A battle ensued in the newspapers. Henry Dewey says he votes for nothing that is managed exclusively by white people, responded one critic; Henry Dewey is a better barber than a politician. He is not a great leader among his people. H. has lost his balance when he endeavors to teach his race to hate the white people, wrote another. Dewey exploded back in print, I desire for myself and a majority of the horny-fisted sons of toil, to ask you in all fairness and candor, did you mean [it] when you said that the negro, the poor man has no right to manhood, therefore he ought not to vote contrary to the rich mans opinion? If you did let me tell you it would have been better for the poor man, better for the race of which I am proud of being one in part, that you never were born, I would to God have never allowed you to deform the face of nature, to darken the light of this day. Soon after, embroiled in endless newspaper battles and ongoing lawsuits, Dewey sold his barbershop, and in 1889 moved ninety miles away from his hometown to the city Wilmington and opened a new barbershop. But it didnt last long.

By 1889, the political climate for African-Americans in North Carolina had begun to shift away from the empowering years of the late Reconstruction era. The era of Jim Crow, discriminatory voter laws, and white supremacy was metastasizing. The borders of the Black Second would soon be redrawn. In what would be called the Negro Exodus, some 50,000 Black North Carolinians left the state over the next fifteen months. There were many reasons for the exodus, but many point to the passage of the Payne Election Law, a voting rights bill that granted broad discriminatory powers to local registrars, as a principal one. It is perhaps a good riddance to let the disturbed element have an escape, lambasted the Wilmington Morning Star. Most families migrated south or west; but a few, like Henry Dewey and his family, went north. His last mention in the New Bern newspapers was a passing detail in December 1889, listing Wm. H. Dewey [of] Waltham, Mass. visiting at a local hotel.

The Dewey family had fled North Carolina for Massachusetts. From Waltham, they settled in Haverhill, where Henry opened a barber and hairdressing shop. He organized a 31st-anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation at the music hall in Haverhill for New Years Day 1894, featuring prayer, poetry, dance, and a speech by Dewey himself. But whether his event failed to move the residents of Haverhill, or whether he had lost his appetite for such things, this was evidently the last time Dewey tried to organize a public event.

The family moved next to Chelsea. Etta bore thirteen children in all, the first in New Bern, and the last born in Chelsea. Only three survived to adulthood: William Henry Jr. (known as Billy), Miles, and Harold. In Chelsea, the Dewey boys became involved, as children, in vaudeville. An 1899 Boston Post theater review mentioned William Dewey, the comedian with the big mouth and Miles Dewey, the acrobatic cake walker performing at the Nickelodeon. At age 15, Miles occupation was recorded as a comedian in the 1900 census.

Then they moved to Vineyard Haven. What drew the Dewey family to an Island town with only two other Black families (one Cape Verdean) has been forgotten. Sometime between about 1901 and 1905, the Deweys opened the William H. Dewey Lunch Room, Hair Dressing and Boot Blacking Parlors near the corner of Main Street and Church Street in downtown Vineyard Haven. It stood across from the stone bank, about where Mikado is today. Etta ran the lunchroom and bakery, known as the Eureka Lunch Room, next door to the barbershop. (Dont forget to try Deweys Famous Home-made Bread, 8 cents loaf, they advertised.)

The barbershop and lunchroom operated until about 1912-13. He was another colored barber, recalled the late Stan Lair (1902-1987) of Vineyard Haven, without detail. I went to school with his boy, Harold Dewey. I remember him well.

There is no evidence that Dewey ever waded into Vineyard politics. As he turned fifty in his new Island home, the activism of his youth had turned into the pragmatism of feeding his family and keeping their youngest child in school. His forays into the newspapers were limited to classified ads. A FIRST-CLASS colored barber, one that can wait upon white trade wanted. Address W. H. Dewey, Vineyard Haven, Mass. he published in the Boston Globe in 1905 and 1906. WANTED A colored barber and a girl, age from 14 to 20, that wants a good home. Address W. H. Dewey, Vineyard Haven, Mass. he published again in 1907. This last ad must have been answered, as the census lists 13-year-old Bernice, adopted daughter, living with them in Vineyard Haven in 1910.

William H. Dewey, Lunch Room, also Tonsorial Artist, he advertised about 1908. Call at the barber shop next door to the Eureka Lunch Room, and opposite the New Bank on Main Street, Vineyard Haven, if you wish to enjoy the sensation of having your hair cut or of being shaved in truly first-class style. This is a new shop with new equipment, but the proprietor, Mr. William H. Dewey, is by no means new in the business. On the contrary he has had an experience of more than a quarter of a century, and as Mr. Dewey is one of those who learn from experience it may truly be said that never before was he so well prepared as he is to-day to completely satisfy the wants of even the most fastidious. At his lunch room, also opposite the bank, meals may be had at all hours. A specialty of home made bread at eight cents per loaf; fresh every day, at lunch room.

The Dewey family moved back to Boston shortly before Ettas death there at the age of 57. Henry died three years later. Their three sons continued in show business. Billy became a professional singer, dancer, and comedian, touring in England and Canada, and starring in the all-Black 1921 Broadway jazz musical hit, Shuffle Along, which is now closely associated with the formative theatrical scene of the Harlem Renaissance. A striking 1910 photograph of him a Black man in blackface, posing in costume exists in the digital archives of Howard Universitys Vaudeville Collection. Miles became a ragtime dancer, and a professional singer, entertainer, and stage performer. Harold, who had attended Tisbury High School, became a singer and performer with the Crane Stock Company of Washington D.C. Sadly, all three died in obscurity in the 1940s and 50s Billys last job was as a porter at the Park Square Greyhound Bus Terminal in Boston; Miles went blind and died alone, spending his final decade living out a meager existence in Roxbury with his seeing-eye dog, Beauty. Harolds last job was with the Tite-Flex Metal Hose Co. in Newark, NJ.

Deweys Vineyard Haven Lunch Room was taken over by Herbie Stevens. (He had a sign stuck up over the front of the counter, recalled Lair; it said, Do not kid the coffee you may be old and weak yourself one day.) The space was soon taken over by the Alley Brothers market, and then by the Cronigs Brothers expanding grocery.

William Henry Dewey died in Tewksbury in 1916 at the age of 58, but no obituary was ever published, nor was one published for Etta a few years earlier, nor later for their three distinguished sons, nor for their other ten lost children. Perhaps this column may serve as a belated memorial.

Go here to see the original:

This Was Then: The Barber of the Black Second - Martha's Vineyard Times