#1,066: The Snow Shoveling Queen of Eau Claire, Wisc.

     The Snow Shoveling Queen of Eau Claire, WI

This coming Wednesday, February 4, 2026, marks precisely 21 years since I posted my first blog essay, entitled As Dad Used to Say. Back in 2005, as a handful of you will recall, the name of the blog was Beating the Bushes - a none-too-witty double-entendre. Looking back to that first post, political reality seems to have been one heck of a lot less perilous and a tad more urbane, than it is today. And while this observation is undoubtedly true, that first blog did end with a kvetch that seems more appropriate for 2026: Unless we, the loyal opposition, mount a serious unified campaign in both 2006 and 2008, America is going to become a second-rate nation.  It’s time to begin beating the Bushes . . . 

21 years ago, Beating the Bushes (not to be renamed The K.F. Stone Weekly until the election of Barack Obama in 2008)  started with less than a hundred readers, made up mostly of family and students at a couple of South Florida universities.  Over the years, I am humbled to report, its readership has grown, if not like Topsy, then most  pleasantly. Today, there are thousands of readers located on several continents. Back in 2005, the vast majority of readers agreed with just about anything I wrote.  And while that might have been somewhat OK for my ego, it didn’t make my work all that challenging.  With growth in readership came folks who took deeply partisan - not to mention occasionally brutal - umbrage at my opinions and point of view. And while I have yet to become completely inured to be called a "fool,” "idiot” or “f . . . ing libtard,” it does keep my juices flowing.

Among my favorite readers (of both this blog and its companion, Tales From Hollywood & Vine, which began life about a decade ago), there is a delightful woman up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin who, for the sake of privacy, I will simply refer to as Barbara.  Originally from an Albanian family up in snowy, snowy Buffalo, Barbara has lived in the same house in snowy, snowy Eau Claire for half-a-century.  Prior to retiring from gainful employment, Barbara specialized in TESOL: Teaching English to Students of Other Languages. She got her break as a writer by nationally publishing educational materials on the subject.  This led to her writing essays, reminiscences of growing up in Buffalo (“The City of Good Neighbors”), the daughter of recently-arrived immigrants from Albania, and poetry.  As an adult, she married, moved to Eau Claire, raised a family, became politically active (she’s a consistent, contentious progressive) and took to riding a bicycle all over town.  And then there was all the snow shoveling . . . 

As of 2024, Eau Claire, Wisconsin consists of 72,331 hearty souls. And hearty - not to mention both healthy and helpful - they must be. Sitting at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers it is a really cold, snowy place. The average annual temperature is only 46 F; its average annual snowfall is more than 55.5”, reaching an average depth of more than a foot. Needless to say, for much of the year the city’s streets, parks and residential areas are encrusted in white.  In Barbara’s neighborhood, the city is responsible for clearing enough of the snow in the residential areas to make it possible for people to get their cars onto the roadway and get to work . . . or the grocery store.  What they are largely not responsible for are the sidewalks.  

                                   Brrrr!

Years ago, Barbara decided that she would take it upon herself to do that which the city could not (or would not) do: shovel the sidewalks around her house. Since she lives on a corner lot, that meant a lot of shoveling. And of course, that also meant shoveling nearly every day during Eau Claire’s long, long winter. Over the course of time, she started clearing the sidewalks further away from her property . . . and eventually across the street. Before too long, she became a fixture; an elderly woman with long hair, bundled up to the 9s, brandishing a shovel with an 18-inch blade, clearing the sidewalks from one side of the neighborhood to another.

And mind you, today, this shovel queen/cum/writer/poet/bicycling enthusiast par excellent is 85 years young! 

Not too long ago, the City of Eau Claire decided to accept nominations for the “Shoveler of the Year.”  Intrigued, Barbara entered the contest and, much to her amazement, won.  In her application for the contest, Barbara wrote: “I am the person who shovels this area and my lovely house, which I take pride in owning. My house is on a corner, so it has two streets to shovel, and I put de-icer on icy spots. Plus, I always shovel the corner curbs that have snow piled high from City plows, so pedestrians can cross at corner walkways.”   As the senior queen shoveler, she was interviewed by the local press and even appeared on the evening news.  In her weekly posting, Eau Claire City Manager Stephanie Hirsch noted: Barbara shared that she wants to be sure that people coming and going to the nearby hospital and elementary school can walk safely and comfortably, without having to go through slush. Barbara said that she grew up in Buffalo, New York (which gets even more snow!), and she treasured the neighborhood mindset of everybody shoveling. She said she learned growing up to take care of her property and neighborhood. You are amazing and inspiring!  Thank you Barbara!!

Of late, the nation  has learned the ways of neighborliness which are part and parcel of life in Minneapolis . . . like Eau Claire, a place of constant cold and snow.  In places with such climates - and I must include Traverse City, Michigan, the current home of Pete and Chasten Buttigieg and their children - it is really, truly the norm for people to come out and help one another.  Living with the potential - and reality - of extreme isolation during near sub-arctic winters has a tendency to bring out the best in people; to make sure their neighbors have both heat and food in the house . . . a ride to the doctor . . . the knowledge that they are not alone.  People like Barbara  . . . who go above and beyond . . . remind us that there are still good, feeling, tender folks out there who still give a damn about their neighbors.  At such a time as this, it is a delightful tonic.

But even more, my friend, fellow activist and constant reader Barbara shows that combining the proper attitude with energy (as well as the fortune of inheriting good genes), helps make that old saw about “Growing older is mandatory; growing up optional,” more real than one can imagine. 

I congratulate you, my friend on your victory, and wish you more years of writing and reading, of protesting and poeticizing, of biking and beaming.

Let me close with my favorite of your poems, Hope for Dummies, which sums up your incredible philosophy of life in a mere 10 lines:

Hope for Dummies

It would be easy to say
take two aspirin today
and when you wake up
it will all be okay. 

But, as everyone knows
that ain’t how it goes. 

Treasure this day.
Never give up.
Imagine what’s lost
if Hope slips away?

You go girl!  Keep on shoveling . . . 

Copyright©2026 Kurt Franklin Stone
  

#1,045: Zelig Eshhar: A Giant Amongst Us

      Zelig Lipka Eshhar, PhD (1941-2025)

You’ve got to feel a bit sorry for British writers Aldous Huxley (best known for Brave New World and The Doors of Perception) and C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters and his 7-volume The Chronicles of Narnia). Not because they were unknown, unsuccessful or unread, for such is certainly not the case. Both men sold tons of books, saw many of them turned into motion pictures, and one - Huxley - was honored with having a seminal rock group (The Doors) take its name from one of his books by a grateful a turned-on fan named Jim Morrison. 

The reason I feel sorry for them is pretty much the reason I feel badly for the recently-deceased Israeli Immunologist Zelig Eshhar.  “Who in the hell is Zelig Eshhar?” I can hear you ask, “ . . . and what does he have in common with two British authors?”  The answer to the first part of the question forms the basis of this week’s post; the answer to the second part is pretty simple.  Both Huxley and Lewis had the bad fortune of passing away on November 22, 1963: the day JFK was assassinated in Dallas.  On just about any day ranging from, say, April 12, 1945 (the death of FDR) to June 5, 1968 (the day RFK was assassinated in Los Angeles), Huxley’s and Lewis’ deaths would no doubt have been frontpage-above-the-fold headlines, all across the globe.  But no: their passing barely received notice on the back page; that which Grandpa Doc would have playfully referred to as being “beneath the truss ads on page 97.” 

Zelig Eshhar, PhD, had the bad luck to pass away during a month in which more than a half-dozen celebrities shuffled off this mortal coil; the list includes such well-known people as:

• The “Prince of Darkness,” John Michael “Ozzie Osbourne”,

• Singer Concetta Rose Maria Franconero (Connie Francis),

• WWE wrestling legend Terry Gene Bollea (aka “Hulk Hogan”),

• Cosby Show alum Malcolm Jamal Warner,

• Jazz legend Chuck Mangione,

• Composer Lalo Schifrin (“Mission Impossible”),

• 60’s teen idol Robert Cabot “Bobby” Sherman,

• Brian Wilson, the front man for “The Beach Boys” and

• M*A*S*H actress Loretta Swit, aka “Hot Lips Houlihan.”

Whereas the vast majority of people have no problem identifying the celebrities listed above, most folks - with the possible exception of Epidemiologists, Immunologists, Oncologists or those who engage in Medical Ethics - have the slightest idea of who Zelig (Lipka) Eshhar was. And while Professor Eshhar’s contributions to society were neither entertaining, hummable nor particularly understandable, they did affect the lives of millions upon millions of people all over the world . . . and perhaps for the rest of time.

So just who was this man, and why do I refer to him as a “giant amongst us?”

Zelig Lipka was born on Feb. 25, 1941, in Petah Tikva (Hebrew for Door of Hope), in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine, and grew up in Rehovot (Hebrew for Wide Expanses). His parents were both from Poland; his father, Jacob, was a truck driver who brought agricultural products to market, while his mother, Sarah, was a teacher. At age 18, Zelig, (now named Eshhar [אשחר], Hebrew for the Buckthorn plant, which is found all over northern Israel) enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) and joined a brigade on a kibbutz.  After his military service he stayed on at his kibbutz, where he started his scientific career as a beekeeper.   

Between 1963 and 1968 Eshhar earned his B.A. and M.A. in biochemistry at the Hebrew  University in Jerusalem, and a PhD in chemical immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.  His doctoral dissertation was on the role of T-cells.  (T cells are a type of white blood cell called lymphocytes. They help the body’s immune system fight germs and protect us from disease. There are two main types: Cytotoxic T cells destroy infected cells. Helper T cells send signals that direct other immune cells to fight infection.)  Dr. Eshhar went on to study at Harvard Medical School under  Baruj Benacerraf, who would share the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery that the strength of an individual’s immune response is controlled by a group of genes.

While at Harvard, Dr. Eshhar began to focus on cancer as a target for T-cells.  In an interview he gave to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in 2017, Dr. Eshhar was quoted as saying “Benacerraf discovered a distinctive molecule that characterizes the cancer cells, and he wanted to get a handle on it. That was my task, and I gained recognition when I succeeded because no one had done it previously.” 

After years of doing research at both Harvard (Dana Farber) and the National Institutes for health, Dr. Eshhar returned to the Weizmann Institute.  In his research, Dr. Eshhar learned that by enlisting the help of “a receptor that sits on the T-cell and binds with molecules of the foreign invader (e.g. a cancer cell), the binding activates the T-cell’s killer mechanism, which eradicates the alien cell. Eradication occurs, for example, when a virus invades a body cell.”

T-cells and antibodies in patients and animals are part of the immune system, capable of distinguishing tumor cells from normal cells. These cells, however, are not enough to fight the cancer cells, which manage to “evade and avoid them,” as Dr. Eshhar explained it. The end result is cancer and an immune system that is not efficient enough to thwart it.

Dr. Eshhar’s eureka moment came when he decided to combine the antibodies with the T-cells, he said: “Two are better than one.”

Dr. Eshhar turned what had been a theory into a reality.  He wound up extracting the T-cells and genetically engineering them to include a molecule that has the cancer recognition skills of both the antibodies and the T-cells. The modified T-cells are then injected into patients.

In making this combination, he was able to produce a hybrid known as a “chimeric antigen receptor T-cell . . .  the short version of which is “CAR-T”, which essentially grabs onto the antigens (proteins) that appear on cancer cells. When reintroduced  in to the bloodstream of a subject who has a blood cancer (such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma or multiple myeloma) these newly-created T-cells have the ability to target and destroy cancer cells.  To date, the process has shown itself to be extremely effective.

According to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “Eshhar’s invention was no minor tweak in the lab; it was a conceptual leap.  The notion that these genetically engineered immune cells could be re-engineered to home in on cancer,transformed what once seemed a distant vision into an imminent reality.”  Dr. Gottlieb, (himself a survivor of Hodgkin’s Disease) currently sits on the board of on of the American Enterprise Institute and various pharmaceutical companies.  Next year, HarperCollins will be publishing his new book, “The Miracle Century: Making Sense of the Cell Therapy Revolution” in which he writes extensively about Dr. Eshhar and the creation of CAR-T therapy.  I for one am excited about reading his book.

Ever humorously humble, when asked to describe himself during an interview, he answered, simply: “I am a PhD and a doctor of mice.”  When asked to estimate how much money he thought he might make from selling the rights to his patent for CAR-T therapy, he flatly stated: “I am not a banker and I don’t know the laws,” I don’t know how much I will get. I prefer not to relate to this. Research is what interests me, to improve the treatment and make it more effective.”

May Zelig Eshhar’s memory be a blessing for all those who worked with him and all those who will find hope and health in the future.

Indeed, there has been a giant amongst us . . . 

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone