If there were five homeless people in Methow, Washington, FEMA would surely intervene

Jobs, Journalism, Justice

Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column, Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes@realchangenews.org.

Articles by Dr. Wes Browning

How I learned to stop worrying and love the coronavirus

by Dr. Wes Browning | March 19th, 2020

Disneyland is closed.

The governor has banned gatherings of 250 or more people in Washington state. No stadium events until the coronavirus leaves us. Schools in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are shut down for the next 5 or 6 weeks.

Your Seattle Public Libraries will be closed until April 13.

Real Change has cut its hours for distributing the paper to vendors by about half.

There’s going to be less to read during the Great Pandemic of 2020. We’ll have to think of other ways to get through this. Cribbage, Pick-Up Sticks, Parcheesi come to mind.

Read more in the Mar. 18 - 24, 2020 issue.

Unsheltered people are immune: How’s that for magical thinking?

by Dr. Wes Browning | March 12th, 2020

During the many times I was homeless, I never got sick. Not anything. Not a cold, certainly not a flu. Nothing.

When I got into housing, I’d get sick within weeks. I have had some amazing diseases, including a case of pneumonia that almost killed me, a mouth disease that prevented me from eating for two weeks (I dropped 20 pounds) and a lovely skin disease I like to call “that time I molted.” I also lost weight from that, just because I couldn’t enjoy eating while my skin peeled off.

My doctors at the time of the last two couldn’t definitively diagnose either one.

Read more in the Mar. 11-17, 2020 issue.

Vice President Mike Pence is very expert at sabotaging public health

by Dr. Wes Browning | March 11th, 2020

The coronavirus is all over the news today. Probably the scariest news connected with COVID-19 was a Washington Post story with the headline “CDC to cut by 80 percent efforts to prevent global disease outbreak.” What’s so scary about it is it was dated Feb. 1, 2018.

Stop before we get the ’Trump Movie Awards of America’

by Dr. Wes Browning | February 28th, 2020

The South Korean movie “Parasite” won big at the Academy Awards earlier this month, including best picture. The first non-English movie ever to win best picture, and President Trump restrained himself for one whole week before letting loose a cry over it.

It seems he didn’t complain when the news of the film’s award first broke because he didn’t understand that it won as the best film overall. He thought it only won for best foreign film. It was a reading issue.

New immigration paperwork calls for ’Placeholder Family Member, Age Unknown’

by Dr. Wes Browning | February 19th, 2020

One year after becoming U.S. Attorney General, William Barr has finally acted as one by telling President Trump to stop making his job impossible. I’m going to guess that Barr already knows he’s to be fired, since his usefulness to Trump — to help impede the president’s removal from office — has ended, so he might as well unload.

If only potatoes were cream cheese with a gasoline garnish

by Dr. Wes Browning | February 13th, 2020

One of my favorite U.S. Supreme Court decisions of all time is the 1893 Nix v. Hedden unanimous ruling that, for the purposes of applying the Tariff Act of 1883, tomatoes are vegetables.

John Nix was importing tomatoes for sale in New York and was charged a tariff on them because they are vegetables. Nix sued on the grounds that, no, tomatoes are fruit — ask any botanist; they’ll tell you so — and the Tariff Act explicitly exempted fruit.

May the springer spaniel of hope not get lodged in your throat

by Dr. Wes Browning | February 10th, 2020

According to my horoscope, today is the day Brexit happens, and President Donald Trump will be acquitted in his Senate trial. At least it doesn’t say I’ll personally be hit by a garbage truck.

It’s five days before this gets printed, so, as usual, it could always be a Dewey Defeats Truman moment. A garbage truck might hit me after all, in which case you could say “the polls were biased.”

Just because you share a bedroom with tarantulas, that doesn’t mean you’re poor

by Dr. Wes Browning | January 29th, 2020

Growing up in the 1950s, I knew we weren’t poor. For one thing, my parents always said, “We aren’t poor.”

What other reason did I need? My parents had to be experts on the subject. They had lived through the Great Depression. Neither of them even had a TV when they were kids.

You can send your tardigrades to space and back, but don’t eat one. Got that, boomer?

by Dr. Wes Browning | January 22nd, 2020

With Trump’s trial in the Senate going on, it feels like a good time to talk about random news items. I want to distract mystelf from President Trump’s pending acquittal.

I spelled “mystelf” correctly. Mystelf is a legitimate word I made up yesterday to mean my stupid self.