So what is it like to board a Navy ship? Well the last time a photographer and I boarded this ship, the destroyer USS Milius, we were landing in a helicopter as the ship patrolled the Persian Gulf and enforced the UN Mandate on Iraq before the war began back in February 2003. Now we get the chance to do a proper boarding in San Diego, where the ship calls home. The crew has just returned from a seven month deployment and will stay in this area until some time next spring. It is good to be back on board the ship and good to see her in such great shape and in such good hands.

With the first doses of 2009 H1N1 vaccine expected in early October, many Americans will have already been exposed to the virus — which was first identified in April. A common question is whether someone who’s already been sick still needs to get vaccinated — or whether they’re already protected.

The short answer is: Yes AND yes, according to experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“People who have actually been infected with the 2009 H1N1 virus likely do have some immunity,” said Jay Butler, MD, chief of the CDC’s 2009 H1N1 Vaccine Task Force. “But the important issue is whether or not they know that’s what they were actually infected with.”

Most suspected H1N1 cases are diagnosed without laboratory confirmation.

“Early in the epidemic, we had other strains of influenza circulating,” Butler said. “There are other viruses that can make people ill as well. So, even if someone has had an illness that’s similar to influenza, even if there was perhaps a credible diagnosis of H1N1 infection made, our recommendation would still be to receive the vaccine so that you know that you’re immune.”

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Last Spring a handful of kids in and around Huntsville, Alabama came down with the flu.  As you would expect, they were too sick to go to school, so they stayed home.  But what might surprise you is that nearly 51,000 kids joined them.  All over the city school was closed.  Doors were locked.  Classrooms were empty, playgrounds deserted.  The only sign of life in three school districts for days were cleaning crews scrubbing everything from floor to ceiling with the hopes of stopping the H1N1 virus.

Some parents in North Alabama publicly criticized state, county and federal health officials for telling three entire school districts to close, calling it an overreaction.  Many were left scrambling to provide care for their children who, for the most part, were healthy.

But Danny Walker disagrees.  He has a son in the fifth grade at Harvest Elementary School just outside of Huntsville.  Walker says he wasn’t surprised when all the schools closed in the area.

“I think the schools erred on the side of caution because of the health risks that were involved,”  Walker told me in the school library.  “Overall I think it turned out to be a good plan because it stabilized the spread of the flu.”

Terita St. Julian has a son in the second grade.  She agrees with Walker that health officials and the school districts did what they thought was best last Spring when faced with this new thing called The Swine Flu.

“The school handled everything very well and so I was prepared and able to keep my son home and stay with him.”

Madison County Schools Superintendent Terry Davis calls the decision a collaborative effort between all three school districts, the Madison County Health Department and the State Health Department in Montgomery.

“It was a tough decision because by law we have to go to school for 180 days,”  Davis said.  “So we knew for every day we closed that was one day we would have to push on into the summer.”

But this year is different.  In many cases, school will not be closed.  The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta says instead try to keep schools open unless the spread of the flu interrupts the day to day operations within the district.  They are also telling teachers and principals to separate any students that show symptoms and then send them home right away.  And this year, more than ever, kids are being taught in class proper hand washing, using hand sanitizer and using their sleeves to cover coughs and sneezes.

It wasn’t my intention to cover a ceremony unveiling the Civil Rights Trail in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.  Instead, I was assigned to work on a story about Mayor Larry Langford’s announcement that the city of Birmingham would refund civil fines and penalties levied by the city almost 50 years ago during the civil rights movement.  But when I called the Mayor’s office last week, hoping to track down anyone who would file for such a refund, I was told many of them would be at this historic ceremony at the historic center of Birmingham’s Civil Right’s Battle.

We arrived at Kelly Ingram Park about a half hour before the ceremony started. City staff were still busy setting up the speaker’s podium and testing microphones as guests began to fill rows of chairs that were staged near the pavilion in the middle of the park.  When I introduced myself to Mayor Langford, he immediately connected me with a man who was simply sitting among the guests in the audience.  His name was Melvin J. Short.  He was probably in his mid-60’s and I noticed he held an envelope in his hand. As I talked to Mr. Short about why he was here for the trail unveiling, I learned that simple business-sized envelope held a piece of history — a real-life documentation of the struggle for basic human rights in Birmingham four decades ago.  He was born and raised here and remembered clearly what it was like living under the Jim Crow Laws of the segregated South.

“Back in the sixties you couldn’t eat in the restaurant, you had to go to the back door. You couldn’t ride in the front of the bus, in other words you had no rights,” Short said.

Short was known as a “foot soldier” – average citizens who enlisted themselves in the battle to end discrimination, racial segregation and violence. The strategy was to commit acts of civil disobedience, like drinking water from a whites-only drinking fountain, boldly walking into the front of a segregated restaurant and ordering food or taking a seat in the front of a city bus. The idea was to overwhelm the jails and law enforcement resources, a strategy that proved to be very effective. For black residents in 1960’s Birmingham, these simple acts of daily life meant being arrested and fined.

“I had signed up at the church to be arrested because we knew we were going to get arrested…to go to city hall and rink some white water,” Short said, referring to the whites only drinking fountains. “What we wanted was equal rights, our rights were being violated. So that’s what we were going to jail for.”

Short said he spent a total of 12 days in jail for two separate instances of defying Jim Crow laws. Alongside others who “signed up” to be thrown in jail, Short was fined $48, a hefty amount for a young man who only brought home $30 per week. He even had the pink slip of paper dated April 26, 1966 inside that envelope, proving his arrest and the fine he paid to the court clerk. After 43 years, Melvin Short will get his $48 back. Mayor Langford says refunding the fines to people like Short is long overdue.  But for the mayor, it’s not a pardon for the people like Short who marched and struggled for their rights. It’s a pardon for the city who he says wronged so many people so long ago. “

The City is sorry for what it did because it can never be a crime to fight for human decency and human rights,” Langford says. “Healing is not easy and sometimes two words can do more to heal a nation than anything else on the planet. And those two words are simply ‘I’m Sorry.’” Short wasn’t aware that he was entitled a refund of the civil fines he paid in 1966. He says he will fill out forms and wait for his $48 check from the city. The mayor says all requests need to be verified before money is refunded. However, in Short’s case, having a 43 year old receipt is hard to deny.

Here’s a tiny silver lining in the bad economic news that’s been smacking us in the face almost every day for the past year. The recession apparently has solved a problem in the healthcare industry, at least temporarily. A study out of Vanderbilt University shows that a decade-long nursing shortage has nearly disappeared in the past year. Researchers found that more nurses are delaying retirement or coming out of retirement because of demolished 401K’s and partners who have lost their job. The nursing shortage might be over for now, but experts warn as the economy recovers and baby boomers age we could see an even worse shortage over the next decade. Check out the story that we shot at Vanderbilt Univeristy Medical Center and Emory University Healthcare.