Some experts say it’s possible a new polio epidemic could happen in the United States as more parents opt out of immunizing their children.

Iron lungs crowd a polio ward in Boston during 1955 epidemic (AP)

By the 1950s, polio had become one of the most serious communicable diseases among children in the United States. In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died.¹

Poliomyelitis – commonly shortened to polio – is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus.  It only occurs naturally in humans. In about 0.5% of cases, it affects the central nervous system with muscle weakness resulting in a flaccid paralysis. The weakness most often involves the legs, but may less commonly involve the muscles of the head, neck, and diaphragm.  In those with muscle weakness, about 2 to 5% of children and 15 to 30% of adults die.  Up to 70% of children infected are asymptomatic, about 25% have minor symptoms such as a fever and sore throat and up to 5% have headache, neck stiffness, and pains in the arms and legs.²

Through vaccinations, the numbers of paralytic cases in the U.S. dropped from more than 21,000 in 1952 to 2,525 reported in 1960 and only 61 in 1965. World-wide, the incidence of poliomyelitis declined significantly with widespread use of the poliovirus vaccine. Polio paralyzed an estimated 350,000 individuals per year in the 1980s in more than 125 countries. In 1994, the Western Hemisphere was certified to be free of indigenous wild poliovirus.  By 2019, only 125 cases caused by wild poliovirus were reported globally.  Unfortunately, a vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) – a  strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine – caused outbreaks in 20 countries in Africa and Asia, and paralyzed 369 children.³

1. Beaubien, Jason. “Wiping out Polio: How The U.S. Snuffed out a Killer.” NPR. October 15, 2012. Accessed August 13, 2021. https://www.npr.org/…. wiping-out-polio-how-the-u-s-snuffed-out-a-killer.
2. “Polio.” Wikipedia. last edit August 7, 2021. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio.
3. Estivariz, Concepcion F, Ruth Link-Gelles, and Tom Shimabukuro. “Pinkbook: Poliomyelitis.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated last November 16, 2020. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/polio.html.

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 148 of over 1200 images

Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota, August 22, 2007 (Pentax K10D)

Accomplishment of Lincoln

President Calvin Coolidge at the dedication of Mt. Rushmore, August 10, 1927²

After our Country had been established, enlarged from sea to sea, and dedicated to popular Government, the next great task was to demonstrate the permanency of our Union and to extend the principle of freedom to all inhabitants of our land.

The master of this supreme accomplishment was Abraham Lincoln. Above all other national figures, he holds the love of his fellow countrymen. The work which Washington and Jefferson began, he extended to its logical conclusions.

Mount Rushmore³

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Lakota Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, or Six Grandfathers) in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture’s design and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot (18 m) heads of Presidents George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), as recommended by Borglum. The four presidents were chosen to represent the nation’s birth, growth, development and preservation, respectively. The memorial park covers 1,278 acres (2.00 sq mi; 5.17 km2)[7] and the actual mountain has an elevation of 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

The sculptor and tribal representatives settled on Mount Rushmore, which also has the advantage of facing southeast for maximum sun exposure.

Mount Rushmore was conceived with the intention of creating a site to lure tourists, representing “not only the wild grandeur of its local geography but also the triumph of modern civilization over that geography through its anthropomorphic representation.

In 1933, the National Park Service took Mount Rushmore under its jurisdiction.

Borglum died from an embolism in March 1941. His son, Lincoln Borglum, continued the project. Originally, it was planned that the figures would be carved from head to waist, but insufficient funding forced the carving to end.

(Read much, much more at Wikipedia)

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
2. “Coolidge Dedicates Mountain Memorial to Four Presidents; He Lauds the Achievements of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt.” The New York Times, August 11, 1927. Accessed August 11, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/1927/08/11/archives/coolidge-dedicates-mountain-memorial-to-four-presidents-he-lauds.html.
3. “Mount Rushmore.” Wikipedia. last edit August 11, 2021 (as a result of an error spotted while composing this post). Accessed August 11, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

I created this little video almost ten years ago.¹

Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site features a reconstructed 1840s adobe fur trading post on the mountain branch of the Santa Fe Trail where traders, trappers, travelers, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes came together in peaceful terms for trade. Today, living historians recreate the sights, sounds, and smells of the past with guided tours, demonstrations and special events.²

1. Goad, Micahel. “Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site.” YouTube.  November 6, 2011. Accessed August 11, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuInwYA_OQs.
2. “Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site.” National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://www.nps.gov/beol/index.htm.

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 147 of over 1200 images

Surprise Lilies, West-Central Arkansas, July 27, 2018 (Pentax K-3 II)

Lycoris squamigera²

Lycoris squamigera, the resurrection lily or surprise lily, is a plant in the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae.[2] It is also sometimes referred to as naked ladies (a name used for several other plants). It is believed to have originated in Japan or China. It is now cultivated as an ornamental in many places, and naturalized in Korea.

Lycoris squamigera is an herbaceous plant with basal, simple leaves, which are not present when the flowers emerge from the crown. The leaves sprout and grow in the spring, then die back during June; flowers appear in late July or early August. The flowers are white or pink and fragrant. The flowers spring dramatically from the ground in mid to late summer; it usually takes only four to five days from first emergence to full bloom.^[4] This suddenness is reflected in its common names: surprise lily, magic lily, and resurrection lily.

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
2. “Lycoris squamigera.” Wikipedia. last edited March 22, 2021. accessed August 10, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoris_squamigera.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

It was awful to see the Jack rabbits coming down the hill on fire and they would head for the stacks of hay, running into them and then setting them on fire. I don’t know how many there were, but the hills were covered with dead Jack rabbits.

It was early in the Great Depression, just 14 months after the stock market crashed.  In one of the richest agricultural regions of the world, farmers were suffering, especially those who eked out a living on the margins. Tenant farmers around England, Arkansas were out of options.  During one forty-three-day stretch, the daily high was 100° or more on all but 1 day.¹ Livestock was frail, the land was parched, the local bank had failed and the food bins were empty. In 2006, a long-time resident recalled, “People straggled along the county roads begging for food” from homes and churches. “There was no welfare, no Social Security, no nothing back then.”²

H. C. Coney, a tenant farmer in Lonoke County, Arkansas, worked forty-one acres of cotton land near England.  Forty-six years old and married with five sons, he had been a renter all his adult life.  “I have tried to get able to buy me a home,” he later related, “but about the time I thought I was about to reach the goal, along came 1930 and buried me alive.” While Coney had been hit hard by the drought, his family had enough that they weren’t yet starving.³

In a magazine article, Coney was quoted as saying, “We all got pretty low on food out there, and some was a-starvin’. Mebbe I was a little better fixed than most, ’cause we still had some food left. But when a woman comes over to me a-cryin’ and tells me her kids haint’ et nothing for two days, and grabs me and says, Coney what are we a-goin’ to do? then somethin’ went up in my head.” He said he got his truck, picked up some neighbors and drove into town where a crowd of hungry men became a mob.⁴

The goal was to demand food from the Red Cross.⁵  Though the original group of farmers numbered about 50, some of them armed, reports said that from 300 to 500 came together in town.⁶ Lacking forms required for people to apply for aid, the Red Cross took the brunt of the anger over promised food that had never been delivered.

Coney and his small party first sought out the mayor and the police chief. By this time a sizable crowd had collected, and it soon became apparent that there were many others desperate for food. A local lawyer named George Morris tried to calm the gathering. He was interrupted by shouts: “We are not going to let our children starve.” “We want food and we want it now.” Meanwhile merchants made panicky calls to Red Cross regional offices in Little Rock and St. Louis. The St. Louis authorities suggested that they issue $2.75 worth of food for each family but hedged about reimbursement: food orders could not be approved unless they were made on the regulation application blanks. The Red Cross promised to rush a fresh supply. The England merchants, many of whom were broke themselves, finally decided that it was better to distribute free food than to risk being looted. By late evening, from three to five hundred persons had been provided with food. As Morris said, “These men and women who came here today just simply got hungry, that’s all. Why, one man told me they were impostors, but when I saw those women standing before me, crying openly and begging food for their children, they can’t tell me they are impostors.”⁷

The New York Times reported the next day, “Five hundred or more farmers and their wives, half of the men said by City Marshal W. S. Wayne to have been armed, stormed the business section here late today demanding food and threatening to forcibly seize it in event it was not forthcoming.”⁸

Drought and a severe heatwave in the previous year resulted in major crop failure across a large region of the US, leaving many farmers unable to feed their families, particularly in Arkansas.  The drought impacted twenty-three states across the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys and into the mid-Atlantic region, the worst centered on eight Southern states, with Arkansas sixteen percent worse than the others based on weather statistics. It had been preceded by a devastating flood in 1927, financial upheaval from the 1929 stock market crash and killer tornados just before the drought began in the spring of 1930. Rainfall that summer was the lowest on record—35% below the 1929 total.  July temperatures, normally in the 90s, reached 107°F.  By August 2, Little Rock had seen 71 consecutive rainless days.  August temperatures peaked at 113°F, with many days exceeding 100°.⁹

In the 1930s, most farmers set food supplies aside to carry them through until the next year.  When times were bad, it might not be enough.

T. Roy Reid, assistant director in charge of the state Agricultural Extension Service said, “Every county in Arkansas is affected and of the seventy-five counties only one, Benton, will have sufficient food for its farm population and livestock feed to tide it over the winter.” The chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Meteorology said in early August 1930, “I don’t like calling this a catastrophe, but I don’t like to think what may happen if the drought isn’t broken in the next two weeks.” It did not break. Without crops to sell or gardens to live off of, family food supplies dwindled quickly, with tenant farmers often hit hardest, depending on fishing, hunting, and the few surviving garden plants: greens, turnips, and onions.¹⁰

A meeting of the Arkansas Drought Relief Committee, chaired by Harvey Couch, concluded that relief was probably not needed, though State Health Commissioner Charles Garrison warned of increased pellagra¹¹ deaths. Neither the Arkansas governor nor the General Assembly initiated measures for statewide food relief.  Governor Harvey Parnell, a plantation owner, supported local assistance as the first resource.¹²

In England, the American Red Cross received the brunt of the farmers’ anger.  Responsible for handing out food vouchers to the needy, the office in England had exhausted its supply. Though reports said many of the farmers were armed, there was no violence.  The farmers were appeased when local merchants voluntarily distributed food without payment, only Red Cross promises of reimbursement. While farmers dispersed and went home with food, one witness—a part-time stringer for the Associated Press newswire—dialed his editors.¹³

England is just twenty miles from Little Rock. Reporters must have rushed to the town that afternoon. The story, as told by the Associated Press and others, became nationwide news.¹⁴

“Disease and Hunger Stalk England, Ark. School Children in Rags; Help Needed at Once,” reported the Chicago Daily Tribune. The finger-pointing, the debates in Congress, and media-spinning began. “Drought-stricken Arkansas became a metaphor for anxieties spawned by the Depression,” wrote historian Ben Johnson.¹⁵

“The England food riot stands out as a cancerous abscess upon our distribution in this land of enormous surpluses,” wrote the Newark (N.J.) Journal. “They [England farmers] live in a country whose president, it has been said, has a heart that beats in sympathy with suffering humanity; but whose heart is, in fact, as cold, selfish and unsympathetic as the heart of a water-moccasin.”

One letter to the editor in a Chicago paper stated, “While our well fed senators debate upon various subjects, honest and industrious citizens beg for a little food to ward off starvation. The governor of Arkansas should resign at once and permit someone to assume the office who could meet an emergency.” ¹⁶

On January 7, 1930, humorist Will Rogers, star of stage, screen, and radio, wrote in his syndicated newspaper column, “it took a little band of 500 simple country people …to come to a country town store and demand food for their wives and children. They hit the hearts of the American people more than all your Senatorial pleas and government investigations. Paul Revere woke up Concord. These birds woke up America.”¹⁷

Rogers visited the White House on January 16 where President Hoover turned down his appeal for direct aid to the region.  The following week, he went to Arkansas to see the drought first hand in England, Pine Bluff and the region, accompanied by local media and Red Cross officials. In Little Rock, “Rogers announced on national radio that he was organizing an ambitious tour—hop-scotching on a plane across Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas to perform 50 shows in 18 days—to raise money for the Red Cross drought relief program.”¹⁸

For cities and small towns hosting the “relief tour,” it was uplifting and momentous. Since Rogers debuted in “all-talking” movies in 1929, his popularity had soared. In 1934, the year before he died, he was the number one box-office star, edging out Shirley Temple and Clark Gable. Folk singer Woody Guthrie contended “the second most famous man who ever lived on the face of the earth was Will Rogers.” Jesus Christ was first.

The Arkansas Democrat, which dubbed the humorist a “drought relief crusader,” reported $38,191 was donated by Arkansans during 19 performances that started in Rogers on Feb. 9 and ended in Texarkana on Feb. 12.

The Stuttgart stop was typical. A crowd greeted a late-arriving Rogers and his entourage at an airport. They were escorted by local dignitaries to an overcrowded theater where Rogers was the headline performer.

In Little Rock, Rogers gave two performances. The Democrat reported, “The wit kept the audiences in an uproar of laughter with his wisecracks which have made him famous throughout the civilized world.”

The humorist told a crowd in Helena that Arkansas did not owe him any thanks for his relief tour, that the state had paid him when he married Betty Blake.

“The tour, in conjunction with Will Rogers’ assorted national radio pleas, ultimately saw $3 million raised for the American Red Cross. Those donations checked the growth of an already catastrophic situation. For example, the agency fed 150,000 people per week in Arkansas in January 1931. By the end of February, that number had increased to 500,000 a day,” one historian wrote.¹⁹

In his news column in August, he noted that the farmers of the England area sent thirteen truckloads of food to Oklahoma struggling coal miners. “Say, you talk about a people and a place being appreciative of what was done for them when they was in trouble,” Rogers wrote. “Now that’s remembering, ain’t it?”²⁰

It was the early days of the Great Depression.  Hoover was still president for another couple of years.  The Dust Bowl lay ahead as did a decade of bitter years.

Not much changed for H. C. Comey in the months after the England disturbance.

Early in the spring of 1931, a reporter found him living in his shack on the outskirts of England. The house needed a paint job, and the roof leaked; inside, old newspapers were pasted on the walls to keep out the wind. On the mantelpiece, the reporter saw an atlas, a Bible, and a cheap print of the Last Supper, partly covered by an old cylinder gasket. Coney told him that the farmers had grown “more sociable-like” since the invasion of England: “I think that three winters like this one would see them organized.” But he was mainly concerned with getting a government loan. The regional office at Memphis, Tennessee, had approved his request for $195 to tide him over until his cotton crop matured, but he had to wait for final certification as to his general character by a county committee. The local authorities cancelled the advance. They had not forgotten him.²¹

1. Cowley, Robert. “The Drought And The Dole.” American Heritage 23, no. 2, February 1972. Accessed August 9, 2021. https://www.americanheritage.com/drought-and-dole.
2. Ingram, Dale. “The Forgotten Rebellion.” Arkansas Times, January 20, 2006. Accessed August 8, 2021. https://arktimes.com/general/top-stories/2006/01/20/the-forgotten-rebellion.
3. Cowley
4. Ingram
5. President Herbert Hoover opposed direct relief from the federal government, saying it was counter to the principles of American individualism and that relief should come from state and local authorities cooperating with private charities.  Hoover called on the Red Cross to help meet the disaster relief need.  John Payne, chairman of the national Red Cross, immediately pledged $5 million for drought relief. By the end of 1930, only $500,000 had been dispersed.
6. “England Food Riot of 1931.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, last edit March 19, 2019. Accessed August 7, 2021. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/england-food-riot-of-1931-1308/.
7. Cowley
8. New York Times front-page headline“500 Farmers STORM Arkansas Town Demanding Food for Their Children; Drought SUFFERERS, Many Armed, Get Aid for Hungry Families after Pressing Into STORES—ARE Appeased by Red Cross HELP—ORGANIZATION Feeds 100,000 in the State. Hungry Farmers Engage in RIOTS Red Cross Feeds 100,000 ARKANSANS.” The New York Times.  January 4, 1931.Accessed August 7, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/1931/01/04/archives/500-farmers-storm-arkansas-town-demanding-food-for-their-children.html.
9. “Drought of 1930–1931.” Encyclopedia of Arkansas, March 19, 2019. Accessed August 7, 2021. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/drought-of-1930-1931-4344/.
10. ibid.
11. “Pellagra is a disease caused by low levels of niacin, also known as vitamin B-3. It’s marked by dementia, diarrhea, and dermatitis, also known as “the three Ds”. If left untreated, pellagra can be fatal.”
    • Dix, Megan. “Pellagra: Pictures, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment.” Healthline. Healthline Media, September 18, 2018. Accessed August 7, 2021. https://www.healthline.com/health/pellagra.
12. “Drought of 1930-1931.”
13. Ingram
14. Cowley
15. Ingram
16. ibid
17. Wiegland, Steve. Lessons from the Great Depression For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.
18. Ingram
19. ibid
20. Wiegland
21. Cowley

Rose of Sharon, West Central Arkansas, July 29, 2021 (iPhone 11)

Hibiscus syriacus¹

A species of flowering plant in the mallow family, Malvaceae, Hibiscus syriacus is native to south-central and southeast China, but widely introduced elsewhere, including much of Asia. Common names include the mugunghwa (in South Korea), rose of Sharon (especially in North America), Syrian ketmia, shrub althea, rose mallow (in the United Kingdom).

Hibiscus syriacus is a hardy deciduous shrub. It is upright and vase-shaped, reaching 2–4 m (7–13 feet) in height, bearing large trumpet-shaped flowers with prominent yellow-tipped white stamens. The flowers are often pink in color, but can also be dark pink (almost purple), light pink or white. Individual flowers are short-lived, lasting only a day. However, numerous buds produced on the shrub’s new growth provide prolific flowering over a long summer blooming period.

Rose of Sharon²

Rose of Sharon is a common name that has been applied to several different species of flowering plants that are valued in different parts of the world. It is also a biblical expression, though the identity of the plant referred to is unclear and is disputed among biblical scholars. In neither case does it refer to actual roses, although one of the species it refers to in modern usage is a member of Rosaceae. The deciduous flowering shrub known as the rose of Sharon is a member of the mallow family which is distinct from the family Rosaceae. The name’s colloquial application has been used as an example of the lack of precision of common names, which can potentially cause confusion. “Rose of Sharon” has become a frequently used catch phrase in poetry and lyrics.

Varying scholars have suggested that the biblical “rose of Sharon” may be one of the following plants:

• • A crocus: “a kind of crocus growing as a lily among the brambles” (“Sharon”, Harper’s Bible Dictionary) or a crocus that grows in the coastal plain of Sharon (New Oxford Annotated Bible);
  • A tulip: “a bright red tulip-like flower … today prolific in the hills of Sharon” (“rose”, Harper’s Bible Dictionary);
    • Tulipa agenensis, the Sharon tulip, a species of tulip suggested by a few botanists or
    • Tulipa montana
  • A lily: Lilium candidum, more commonly known as the Madonna lily, a species of lily suggested by some botanists, though likely in reference to the lilies of the valley mentioned in the second part of Song of Solomon 2:1.
  • Narcissus (“rose”, Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature)

A rose is a rose is a rose³

The title for this post occurred to me as a takeoff on the phrase “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”

Of course, I had to research the phrase …and down the rabbit hole I went.

I learned that it was from a 1913 poem, Sacred Emily, by Gertrude Stein, which I ended up adding as a post on my rarely updated A Selection of Poetry blog.

Sacred Emily is a long abstract poem, probably most famous for the phrase “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Some believe the poem to be a dedication by Gertrude Stein to her life partner, Alice B. Toklas.

1. “Hibiscus Syriacus.” Wikipedia. last edited August 3, 2021. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_syriacus.
2. “Rose of Sharon.” Wikipedia. last edited, July 28, 2021. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_of_Sharon.
3. “Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose.” Wikipedia. last edited, June 22, 2021. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_is_a_rose_is_a_rose_is_a_rose.

    

Dust, Drought, Depression and War No. 1

Not a lot of people know that Dr. Seuss, before he cooked up green eggs or taught us to count colorful fish, was U.S. Army Captain Theodor Geisel who spent a few years creating training films and pamphlets for the troops.¹

While browsing the internet looking for information on erosion in the southern states in the first half of the 20th century, I “fell down an internet rabbit hole” and found a 33 page booklet on malaria and the bug that carries it² by Captain Gise. (follow the link for the whole booklet on Flickr)

1. Doucleff, Michaeleen. “Dr. Seuss on MALARIA: ‘This IS Ann … She Drinks Blood’.” NPR. NPR, August 20, 2012. Accessed August 6, 2021. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/08/20/159382005/dr-seuss-on-malaria-this-is-ann-she-drinks-blood.
2. National archives and Records Administration. Accessed August 7, 2021. https://www.archives.gov/atlanta/exhibits/item490-full.html.

Recently on a Facebook comment thread I was reading related to the current COVID crisis and masking for school-age kids, a school teacher included in his comment that maybe there had been some deaths from the coronavirus …since it had been around since the 60s.  He had also denigrated another commenter, saying that she obviously wasn’t a teacher since she wasn’t listed as such by the state while, with his science education degree, he knew how to look at studies and figures (or something like that).

I left a comment just on the part of his comment where he said how long he thought COVID had been around, citing one article from the Mayo Clinic and saying that it agreed with other articles that SARS-CoV-2 had been identified in early 2019, thus the identifier COVID-19. I also mentioned that, with my 30+ years working in a training program accredited, I could look at studies, articles, and figures and kinda figure things out.

Funny thing, when I went back to look at the post, his original comment and all of the comments responding to it were gone.  Best guess—he couldn’t refute, so he deleted.

I can respect someone who does that a whole lot more than someone who makes some comment that’s totally wrong but keeps defending it—sometimes not nicely—despite multiple replies from multiple people refuting his claims.

Again

On a totally different topic, a guy yesterday was saying some negative stuff about an organization wanting to establish a casino here.

I refuted what he was saying and shared some positive information from personal experience.  He came back with, “And you really believe that?”

I replied, “Yeah, I do,”  and shared more personal experiences related to that organization and some that had been shared with us in conversation at our table during a community event by a government official (not affiliated with the organization)  from the organization’s home area.

After I left that response, sometime later, I got a notice from Facebook that he had responded, so I went to look at his new comment.

It was all gone.  He had deleted his original comment and, of course, that took all of the subordinate comments with it.

I’ve done it, too.

I have deleted comments that I have made in the past, relegating it and all of the replies and responses to responses to responses to the internet trash bin.

In every case, it’s been because the responses to my comments have gone off the rails, with no possibility of recovery—no amount of logic or referencing to reputable sources will change their mind or keep them from continuing to heap on their misinformation.

Credibility

One thing that I prized above almost everything else when I was working was the credibility I had with the people I taught.  I was an instructor in an industry environment where we had new students on a regular basis, but also had continuing training with our customers on a more regular basis. In 2017, I had people in some classes that I had taught in the early 1990s.  The credibility of what I was teaching was important.

I feel the same way about what I share online.  I don’t share rumors or anything that is likely to be misinformation.  For many of the “articles” I write, I include endnotes with the sources of the information. I even use a citation app to create those footnotes.

Demonstrate and establish

I’ve found that, on occasion, you can demonstrate and establish one’s position to a point where the other commenter(s) comes around.  It’s rare.

What’s valuable though, is that other people also see and read what you’ve shown and, maybe, just maybe, some might see your point.