Commentary

We live in stressful times that can lead to serious medical problems. Despite being a top spender on health care, the U.S. is an outlier on life expectancy, sitting in the bottom half of dozens of high-income nations. Alarmingly, the last two years saw the biggest U.S. life expectancy drop in a century, sinking to 76 years for Americans born in 2021 — the lowest life expectancy since 1996 and a drop from 79 years in 2019. This despite a global trend in increasing life expectancies.

In 2022, Maryland was determined to have the longest Emergency Room wait time in all 50 states. Maryland has sustained this low ranking since 2015 — years before the COVID pandemic began. According to recent data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Maryland patients spend an average (median) time of 228 minutes waiting in the ER. In fact, we are the only state with an average wait time greater than 200 minutes.

WNBA superstar Brittney Griner, arguably the highest-profile American hostage ever, is finally free. In a swap negotiated by President Biden’s administration, Russia has released Griner for arms dealer Viktor Bout, ending the basketball player’s nearly 300 days in captivity. But this is just the first step back toward normalcy for Griner — and the first step toward ending state hostage-taking, an issue Biden earlier this year declared a “national emergency.”

There’s an explosive, tender feeling queer folks experience when we sight a young queer in the wild. It happened to me a few years ago while watching a parade, when I caught sight of a teenager in a spangly uniform cut just for him, dancing in a sea of ponytailed drill team girls. He was beaming, nailing his moves and sporting a hint of blush and lip gloss. With a flourish, he tossed his baton; it glimmered and fell back down to his outreached hands. I told the person I’d recently started dating about it.

Across Maryland, this has been a big week for turning over new leaves in local government as newly elected (and reelected) officials were sworn into local office from Oakland to Snow Hill. Normally, this moment offers a time for post-election healing, some bipartisan camaraderie and perhaps a little high-minded purpose. Families gather for the ceremonies. Speeches are made. Everyone is congratulated, and lots of photographs are taken. But not so much in Harford County.

The reelection of Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) in Tuesday’s runoff testifies to the discernment of Georgia voters and offers a refreshing reminder that character still counts. Republicans won every other Georgia statewide race last month, but about 200,000 citizens who voted for Gov. Brian Kemp (R) refused to support GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker. Most Georgians, especially his fellow Black Americans, were embarrassed by the former football star’s ignorance and incoherence on the issues, disturbing allegations of hypocrisy on abortion and a history of domestic violence accusations.

Do you remember when Christmas shopping involved leaving your house? When you could walk around a downtown department store or perhaps the local mall and nobody kept tabs on you, noticed how often you visited certain outlets, what you looked at or what you didn’t look at? I do. It was glorious. Why, I could put a shopping list in my pocket and only I, the actual author of said shopping list, knew what was on it. Well, aside from Santa Claus or possibly the Lord Almighty. How cool was that? We called it privacy. What a quaint concept that was. It implied that while I might be well aware that I was in the market for a “Tickle Me Elmo” for one of the kids or a matching plaid scarf and mittens for the spouse or even fuzzy bedroom slippers for my mother-in-law, large anonymous corporations or their agents did not necessarily have to know.