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Posts Tagged ‘Gery L. Deer’

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Labor Day is about people

In Local News on September 7, 2026 at 10:28 am

Deer In Headlines – SPECIAL EDITION

By Gery Deer

Labor Day has become one of those holidays whose meaning can easily be obscured by the celebration.

For many Americans, it means the unofficial end of summer. It means cookouts, a three-day weekend, back-to-school sales and maybe one last trip before fall settles in.

But Labor Day was never really about a day off.

And, despite its roots in the labor movement, I don’t think we should think of Labor Day as being simply “about unions,” either.

It is about people.

It is about generations of working men and women who decided that earning a living should not require sacrificing your health, your dignity, your children or virtually every waking hour of your life.

Those workers fought for things we now consider ordinary: reasonable working hours, safer workplaces, fairer wages and limits on child labor. The eight-hour workday that became part of the national labor agenda did not materialize because employers suddenly decided everyone should have more time with their families. It was the result of years of pressure, organizing and sacrifice.

Eventually, those efforts helped produce laws establishing minimum wages, maximum working hours and workplace standards. The Fair Labor Standards Act became law in 1938, and other protections followed over the decades.

Today, many of us walk into work without giving much thought to how extraordinary that history really is.

We expect fire exits. We expect machinery to have safety procedures. We expect children to be in school rather than in factories. We expect employers to pay workers in accordance with established wage laws. We expect some protection against discrimination. We expect qualified people with disabilities to have an opportunity to work and, where required, receive reasonable accommodations.

Those expectations were inherited.

Someone fought for them.

And that is precisely why Labor Day may be more relevant today than it has been in a very long time.

We are entering another period of enormous economic and technological change.

Workers are worried about higher costs. Employers are worried about higher costs, too. Businesses face pressure to increase productivity while controlling expenses. Employees wonder whether the job they have today will still exist five or ten years from now.

And sitting squarely in the middle of all of this is artificial intelligence.

AI has enormous potential. I use it. Many businesses are finding legitimate ways to use it to increase productivity, improve communication, analyze information and eliminate repetitive tasks.

But technology should improve human work, not simply make human beings disposable.

That distinction matters.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is already incorporating potential AI exposure into its employment projections. Nobody can predict with certainty exactly what AI will do to every occupation, but we would be foolish to pretend that significant disruption isn’t coming.

The question, then, is not whether technology will change work.

It always has.

The question is what values we carry with us while it does.

If an employer can replace 100 people with software, what responsibility does that employer have to those workers? What opportunities should exist for retraining? How do we make certain productivity gains benefit more than shareholders and executives? How do small businesses compete when enormous corporations can invest billions in automation?

And perhaps most importantly, how do we prevent economic fear from becoming an excuse to weaken standards people spent generations establishing?

That includes workplace safety.

It includes fair wages and reasonable hours.

It includes protection against discrimination.

And it includes equal opportunity for people who historically had to fight simply to get through the door.

Federal law today prohibits disability discrimination in hiring, firing, pay, promotion, training and other conditions of employment, and qualified workers with disabilities may be entitled to reasonable accommodations. Those protections exist because our society eventually recognized something important: talent, ability and human value do not belong exclusively to people who look alike, come from identical backgrounds or move through the world in the same way.

The same principle applies to protections against discrimination involving race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

These standards are not inconveniences left over from another era.

They are part of what makes a modern workplace modern.

Yet laws and protections are never self-preserving. They remain meaningful only when people understand them, value them and insist that government leaders enforce them.

That means we have responsibilities beyond posting a Labor Day graphic on social media.

We can pay attention to legislation affecting workers instead of waiting until something directly affects us.

We can ask political candidates specific questions about workplace safety, discrimination, disability rights, wages, automation and worker retraining.

We can refuse to accept the idea that protecting employees automatically means being hostile to business. Good businesses need good employees, and good employees need businesses capable of succeeding. Those interests are not natural enemies.

We can also stop allowing politicians to turn every workplace issue into another ideological cage match.

Whether the person trying to weaken long-standing employee protections has an “R,” a “D” or anything else after their name should be irrelevant. If a proposal makes workplaces less safe, permits discrimination, eliminates reasonable protections or treats working people as expendable economic units, we should be willing to challenge it.

Political radicalism should not be allowed to erase workplace protections simply because the people who originally fought for them are no longer here to explain why they were necessary.

And employers have an opportunity here, too.

Businesses can choose to view employees as investments rather than expenses. They can use AI to make talented people more productive instead of reflexively asking how many salaries the technology can eliminate. They can create workplaces where people are paid fairly, treated respectfully and given opportunities to advance.

Employees can participate as well by learning their rights, understanding the responsibilities that accompany those rights, supporting coworkers who are treated unfairly and being willing to speak when established standards are threatened.

Labor Day should remind us that progress is not permanent.

Every generation inherits certain protections from the generation before it. Then it decides whether to preserve them, improve them or quietly allow them to disappear.

So today, perhaps the best way to honor the men and women who fought for safer workplaces, fairer wages, shorter hours, an end to abusive child labor and greater equality on the job isn’t merely to enjoy the day off.

Learn what they fought for.

Learn what protections exist today and why.

Pay attention when someone proposes weakening them. Ask questions. Vote. Contact elected officials. Support businesses that treat their employees well. If you employ people, make your workplace an example of what responsible employment should look like.

And as artificial intelligence and automation reshape the workplace, insist that technological progress remain connected to human progress.

The people who came before us fought to create a world in which earning a living didn’t have to mean surrendering your dignity to do it.

The least we can do on Labor Day is remember that.

The better tribute is making certain the people who come after us don’t have to fight for all of it again.

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Are you present, or performing?

In Health, Opinion, psychology, Uncategorized on August 24, 2026 at 10:23 am

Deer in Headlines

By Gery Deer

Most of us spend our days performing. Not acting in the theatrical sense—no stage lights, no applause—but performing, nonetheless. We perform competence at work, patience in traffic, and happiness on social media. By the time evening rolls around, many of us deliver a full day’s worth of lines with little meaning.

Think about your own morning. You check email while eating breakfast. Are you tasting your coffee, or just swallowing it? That small moment may hold the difference between performing life and actually living it.

Performing is when you do something because the deadline is first thing tomorrow and someone expects a result. Presence is when you do something because you noticed something that refuses to leave you alone—like the barista who always draws a careful leaf in the foam even though almost nobody looks.

For most people, the gap is subtle. It’s the difference between doing the thing and the thing having you. You can move through an entire day answering emails, making small talk, nodding in meetings, checking boxes—and never actually be there.

Presence sneaks up on you differently. It’s the moment you stop mid-sentence because you heard a bird outside and realize you haven’t listened to anything but noise all week. It’s noticing the weight of a conversation instead of rehearsing your reply while the other person is still talking.

Social media has turned performance into a sickening staple. We curate our moods, polish our opinions, crop the messy edges out of real life until what we share is more like the reflection of ourselves in a funhouse mirror. The result is a strange pressure to appear more together, more informed, more inspired than we actually feel.

There is a place for performance. Teachers perform to hold the attention of their students. Leaders perform to steady a room. Writers, speakers, even columnists perform a little to shape chaos into something readable.

But performance was never meant to replace presence. When the show never ends, we start losing small human signals: the pause before someone tells the truth, the tired look behind a joke, the quiet satisfaction of finishing something that mattered.

The cost of such nonstop performance is exhaustion. Not the dramatic burnout people post about online, but the quieter fatigue that comes from always being slightly on stage. You measure your reactions, edit your sentences, and move through the day as if someone might be evaluating you.

Presence, by contrast, is disarmingly simple. It begins with that moment when you realize you’re just running the script. But you can change that.

Maybe slow down long enough to taste the coffee or look up when someone speaks instead of nodding while staring mindlessly phone. Maybe step outside and notice the weather or the graffiti on the bakery wall.

None of this will make you more impressive, build a personal brand or make a post go viral. What it might do is return you to your own life.

Presence can steady people. It lowers the noise enough to notice what actually needs your attention—a hard conversation, a good idea, a tired friend, a quiet, ordinary moment that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

And strangely, the more present you become, the less life feels like something you have to manage. Problems are still there, deadlines still exist, but being human was never supposed to be a full-time performance.

It was supposed to be lived in small attentive pieces: a conversation where you are fully engaged, a walk where you notice the season changing, a calm moment where your mind is not rehearsing tomorrow.

The challenge is not abandoning performance entirely. Sometimes the job requires it. Sometimes some of your day requires polish and composure.

The real trick is remembering to step off the stage when the moment passes. Look up from the script. Listen for the bird outside the window. Taste the coffee while it is still warm.

Because the goal was never to perform your way through life. The goal is to actually be there while it happens. And if you catch yourself mid-performance today, that pause might be the most honest moment of the day. Stay for it even if nothing else changes.

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A home run

In Local News on July 10, 2026 at 12:06 pm

Deer In Headlines

By Gery L. Deer

My family never went to baseball games when I was growing up, and I’ve never really been a sports fan. But since the Cincinnati Reds farm team came to Dayton in 2000, I’ve always enjoyed a warm summer evening at a Dayton Dragons game, when, for a few hours, the world just seems to get a little bit lighter.

At an evening game, there is that moment when the sun begins to sink noticeably low on the horizon, the stadium lights slowly flicker to life, and the sky turns from blue to purple. The air begins to cool, and Day Air Ballpark feels less like a building and more like a living thing. 

A baseball park has a heartbeat, a pulse made up of thousands of conversations, vendors calling, children laughing, gloves popping, and the grounds crew making everything look impossibly tidy. Fans drift through the gates wearing some measure of Dragons spirit, from a ball cap to a full jersey with a player’s name across the back. 

Some arrive carrying gloves, hoping for a foul ball. Others carry children, souvenirs, and enough snacks to survive into the next day. Everybody seems to know the ritual. Find your seats. Easy, since there are no bad ones. Then you check the scoreboard and settle in. It doesn’t take long before the smell of the hot dogs and pizza call to you like a siren song, especially if you skipped lunch just to make room for it all. 

Speaking of food, there’s no shortage of choices. There are burgers, nachos, ice cream, specialty sandwiches, candy, popcorn, beer, soft drinks and probably something involving barbecue sauce that I’ve overlooked. Me, I’m a little old-school. A baseball traditionalist. My game foods are, in this order, a hot dog with mustard, a Dr. Pepper, a bag of peanuts, and pack of Cracker Jack. By the way, what happened to the prizes? We need to talk about that some other time.

Actually, the concession stand itself is part of the whole experience. You stand in line, trying to decide what you want. You hear the crowd react to some amazing play you missed, and inevitably run into somebody you haven’t seen in years. Suddenly, you are catching up between orders of nachos. 

If you’re the type who’s never met a stranger, there are plenty of folks there just like you. You can tell a tired tale of the one that got away to a whole new audience or bond with the person beside you over a shared dislike of the umpire’s last call. For nine innings, more than a thousand people have something in common. Nobody cares what you do for a living or who you voted for.

In my opinion, every game is a unique experience. Double plays, a T-shirt fired from a cannon that lands in someone’s hot dog, I mean, what are the odds? And, unbelievably, people actually talk to one another. Other than the odd selfie, surprisingly few are staring at their phones. That alone may qualify as a minor miracle.

As darkness settles over the ballpark, the moon peeks through the summer sky above downtown. Then, suddenly – Crack! The bat connects. It is going, going, gone. The ball sails over the fence as the outfield defense looks on. The air horns sound. Fans roar. The runner waves as he casually rounds the bases, while players with names like Friend, Vu, Faile, Montero and Confidan become part of our summer vocabulary.

Between plays, the entertainment crew, the Green Team, keeps everyone smiling with appearances by team mascots Heater, Gem, and Blaze, and interactive contests. Fans might throw water balloons or race around the bases wearing colorful inner tubes to prove, without a doubt, that dignity is optional when a free T-shirt is on the line. Soon, everyone is standing for the seventh inning stretch and a rousing chorus of, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

No matter who wins at a Dragons game, every fan from 9 to 99 gets a gift: a couple of hours when the world seems lighter. It’s familiar, unhurried and somehow exactly where you need to be, even if it’s only for one summer evening.

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Four Stars Is Enough

In Local News, Opinion, Uncategorized on May 3, 2026 at 11:35 am

Deer In Headlines
By Gery Deer

Modern society has developed a strange habit of seeking approval from people who often have no stake, no expertise, and no genuine interest in what they are judging. We have turned everyday life into a performance staged for an invisible audience armed with star ratings and comment boxes. The irony is that most of the people who hand out these ratings are just as unqualified as those receiving them, yet we treat their opinions as if they were carved into stone.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that five stars should be the goal, the standard, and the measure of a life well lived. But five stars is a fantasy. Real life is messy, inconsistent, and rarely perfect, no matter how carefully we curate it for public consumption. And yet, we chase that perfect rating as if it will unlock some hidden validation that finally tells us we are enough.

The truth is far less dramatic. You can earn five stars online and still feel empty the moment the notification fades. Nothing about your actual life changes because someone you will never meet clicked a rating on a screen. We have mistaken attention for value and validation for truth.

If you step back for a moment, it becomes clear how absurd it all is. Why are we letting strangers—whose only qualification is a profile picture and a scrolling thumb—decide how we feel about ourselves? The answer is uncomfortable: because we have built systems that reward approval over authenticity. And once approval becomes the currency, we stop asking whether it is worth anything.

Perhaps the healthier standard is not perfection, but sufficiency. A four-star life acknowledges effort, imperfection, growth, and honesty without demanding applause from people who do not know the work behind the scenes. In the end, maybe four stars is not a compromise, but a liberation—a reminder that our worth is not determined by strangers tapping glass. It is determined by how we show up when no one is watching, by how we treat others in quiet moments, and by whether we can look at ourselves with honest acceptance.

The obsession with public approval has turned many lives into performances instead of experiences. We post instead of living, we curate instead of connecting, and we measure instead of finding meaning. There is a quiet relief in deciding that enough is enough—that not every moment needs applause, not every effort needs validation, and not every choice needs a rating.

Life becomes lighter when we stop outsourcing our self-worth to algorithms and anonymous judges. The most honest score we will ever receive is the one we give ourselves after reflection. And that score does not need to be perfect to be meaningful.

So instead of chasing five stars, maybe we should aim for something far more human: consistency, kindness, effort, and integrity. Those are harder to rate, but easier to live with. When we strip away the noise of online approval, we often find that what matters has been in front of us all along—a quiet life, well lived, not perfectly, but honestly.

That is the real measure, not stars or likes, but substance. And substance does not require applause to exist. If we can accept that truth, we free ourselves from an exhausting pursuit of approval that never truly satisfies, and we return to something steadier, more grounded, and far more real: a life measured not by strangers, but by our own honest standards.

In that space, four stars is not a downgrade, but clarity. Clarity that we are allowed to be imperfect and still be whole. The world will continue to rate everything it sees, but we do not have to participate in every judgment.

We can choose instead to live beyond the rating system and rediscover what it means to be enough without external confirmation. That choice is quiet, but powerful, and it begins when we finally stop asking strangers for permission to be ourselves.

We can live more freely when we decide that our value is not a public vote, but a private truth built from daily actions, intentions, and quiet integrity—beyond the screen and beyond the noise of judgment itself.

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What Grounds You?

In Local News, Opinion, Uncategorized on May 3, 2026 at 11:27 am

Deer In Headlines
By Gery Deer

In a world that never stops talking, the hardest thing to do is listen for silence. We scroll, swipe, click, and chase, convinced the next notification might carry something essential. Most of the time, it doesn’t. It just adds another layer of noise to an already crowded headspace, another reason to forget where we are standing and who we were before the noise found us.

That is why the question matters: what grounds you? Not in some abstract, self-help sense, but in the real, tactile way that keeps your feet planted when everything else feels like it is spinning. Grounding is not a trend. It is a tether. It is the quiet, stubborn force that keeps you from drifting too far into anxiety, ambition, or the endless churn of digital life.

I have come to believe that grounding lives in the senses. It is the weight of something familiar in your hands, the sound of a rhythm you have known for years, the smell that pulls you backward through time without asking permission. It is not complicated, and that is precisely why we overlook it. We are trained to chase what is new, not what is true.

For me, those anchors are unapologetically analog. There is the click of a typewriter key, sharp and deliberate, a sound that refuses to be rushed. There is the feel of bicycle handlebars steady under my grip, reminding me that forward motion does not require a screen. And there is an old truck, a 1967 International Harvester grain truck, that answers to the name Serenity.

Serenity is not subtle. It is steel and wood and history, the kind of machine that demands your attention simply by existing. But for me, it carries something quieter. It carries the low thrum of an engine from childhood, the memory of time spent beside my father, learning without realizing I was learning. It carries the echo of music played with family, the shared language of rhythm and repetition.

In that way, the truck is more than an object. It is a bridge. It connects who I was to who I am, and it does so without asking for an update or a password. It simply exists, waiting patiently, ready to remind me that not everything meaningful needs to be optimized, digitized, or shared.

I suspect we all have something like that, even if we have not named it yet. Maybe it is the smell of coffee brewing before dawn, or the steady weight of a dog settling into your lap at the end of a long day. Maybe it is a song that hits the same way every time, no matter how many years pass.

The problem is not that these things are hard to find. The problem is that we are rarely still long enough to notice them. The world benefits from our distraction. It profits from our attention being constantly pulled somewhere else. Stillness, on the other hand, does not monetize well. It does not trend. It simply works.

When the noise gets loud, and it will, those anchors matter. They give us a place to return to, a baseline that reminds us we are more than our inboxes and timelines. They pull us back into our bodies, into the present moment, into something real. Without them, it is far too easy to drift, to lose the thread of ourselves in the endless scroll.

So ask yourself the question and answer it honestly. What is your tether? What is the thing that keeps you here when everything else tries to carry you away? Find it. Name it. Keep it close. Because when the storm comes, and it always does, you will need to know exactly what holds you to the ground.

In the end, grounding is not about escaping the modern world. It is about surviving it with your sense of self intact. It is about choosing, again and again, to return to what is real, even when what is real feels quieter than the noise. That choice may be small, even invisible to anyone else, but it is powerful. It is the difference between being carried along and standing firm.

Hold on to it, always.

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Are you present, or performing?

In Opinion, psychology, sociology on March 15, 2026 at 5:08 pm

Deer in Headlines

By Gery Deer

Most of us spend our days performing. Not acting in the theatrical sense—no stage lights, no applause—but performing, nonetheless. We perform competence at work, patience in traffic, and happiness on social media. By the time evening rolls around, many of us deliver a full day’s worth of lines with little meaning.

Think about your own morning. You check email while eating breakfast. Are you tasting your coffee, or just swallowing it? That small moment may hold the difference between performing life and actually living it.

Performing is when you do something because the deadline is first thing tomorrow and someone expects a result. Presence is when you do something because you noticed something that refuses to leave you alone—like the barista who always draws a careful leaf in the foam even though almost nobody looks.

For most people, the gap is subtle. It’s the difference between doing the thing and the thing having you. You can move through an entire day answering emails, making small talk, nodding in meetings, checking boxes—and never actually be there.

Presence sneaks up on you differently. It’s the moment you stop mid-sentence because you heard a bird outside and realize you haven’t listened to anything but noise all week. It’s noticing the weight of a conversation instead of rehearsing your reply while the other person is still talking.

Social media has turned performance into a sickening staple. We curate our moods, polish our opinions, crop the messy edges out of real life until what we share is more like the reflection of ourselves in a funhouse mirror. The result is a strange pressure to appear more together, more informed, more inspired than we actually feel.

There is a place for performance. Teachers perform to hold the attention of their students. Leaders perform to steady a room. Writers, speakers, even columnists perform a little to shape chaos into something readable.

But performance was never meant to replace presence. When the show never ends, we start losing small human signals: the pause before someone tells the truth, the tired look behind a joke, the quiet satisfaction of finishing something that mattered.

The cost of such nonstop performance is exhaustion. Not the dramatic burnout people post about online, but the quieter fatigue that comes from always being slightly on stage. You measure your reactions, edit your sentences, and move through the day as if someone might be evaluating you.

Presence, by contrast, is disarmingly simple. It begins with that moment when you realize you’re just running the script. But you can change that. 

Maybe slow down long enough to taste the coffee or look up when someone speaks instead of nodding while staring mindlessly phone. Maybe step outside and notice the weather or the graffiti on the bakery wall.

None of this will make you more impressive, build a personal brand or make a post go viral. What it might do is return you to your own life.

Presence can steady people. It lowers the noise enough to notice what actually needs your attention—a hard conversation, a good idea, a tired friend, a quiet, ordinary moment that would otherwise pass unnoticed.

And strangely, the more present you become, the less life feels like something you have to manage. Problems are still there, deadlines still exist, but being human was never supposed to be a full-time performance.

It was supposed to be lived in small attentive pieces: a conversation where you are fully engaged, a walk where you notice the season changing, a calm moment where your mind is not rehearsing tomorrow.

The challenge is not abandoning performance entirely. Sometimes the job requires it. Sometimes some of your day requires polish and composure.

The real trick is remembering to step off the stage when the moment passes. Look up from the script. Listen for the bird outside the window. Taste the coffee while it is still warm.

Because the goal was never to perform your way through life. The goal is to actually be there while it happens. And if you catch yourself mid-performance today, that pause might be the most honest moment of the day. Stay for it even if nothing else changes.

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Only at this table.

In Opinion, Uncategorized on March 6, 2026 at 11:20 pm

Deer In Headlines

By Gery Deer

It was late evening at a hotel restaurant in Washington, D.C. Most of the restaurant crowd were either deep in their own discussions or had eyes glued to televisions broadcasting college basketball. And there we were. A handful of adults who were born with or a parent of someone with bladder exstrophy, all of us in town as patient advocates preparing to take on Congress. 

We laughed and talked, as burgers, salads and something fried occupied most of the real estate between us. Someone had to move a basket of fries so we could make room for desserts and more drinks.

On the surface, we didn’t look so different from anyone else in the room. Just another group decompressing after a long day. But the conversation? That could have only happened there. Only at this table.

Bladder exstrophy is rare – very rare. So, when you’re born with a condition that requires extensive surgery – or surgeries – and lifelong management, there are very few who can relate. Explaining it often brings sighs of pity, confused expressions, and a host of questions. 

At this table, there was none of that. We didn’t have to define the anatomy. We didn’t have to summarize childhood surgical histories or explain why insurance preauthorization feels less like paperwork and more like gladiator combat. We could start mid-story.

We compared hospital experiences the way other people compare hometowns. We talked about the benefits and challenges of living with something so unusual it was often hard to explain, even to those closest to us.

That shared experience can lead to its own sort of verbal shorthand. It strips away the introductory chapter and drops you straight into the middle of the book. And shared experiences from birth? There’s no need to tiptoe around things, perform bravery or package vulnerability in tidy language. You can be direct. You can be specific. You can be understood.

There was a moment — and I won’t detail it, because some conversations belong only to those who were present — when the tone softened. Someone shared a memory from adolescence, a time when feeling different felt especially sharp. No one rushed to fix it. No one offered a motivational poster response. Instead, there was safety in letting go, in the expression of feelings and thoughts that only others like us could understand.

It manifests as a shared laugh, or a look, or a nod. It’s not dramatic. It doesn’t require a spotlight. It’s a quiet acknowledgment that says, “Yeah, I know.”

Every community has a version of this table. Veterans find it with other veterans. Cancer survivors with survivors. Parents of children with complex needs with others who speak that language fluently. I experience it whenever I talk to those who have cared for elderly parents. Even journalists have our own version — around a busy lunch counter or late dinner table, arguing about headlines.

The table isn’t about exclusivity. It’s about the rare and deeply emotional relief of not having to translate your life for someone else, and timing matters.

We weren’t children navigating surgeries for the first time. We were adults who had built careers, relationships and resilience. We had come to Washington to advocate, to push for better systems. That context shaped the conversation. 

We were recounting the past, but also connecting it to the future. Even more incredible to me was the fact that the congenital flaw that made us the objects of both fascination and ridicule as children was now quite literally our superpower. It was what brought us to Capitol Hill to help others – because we can. 

When we finally stood up, games still flickering on the screens and the crowd still rumbling, I looked at that table and felt the weight of its ordinariness. It was just wood and silverware and a stack of dishes.

But for a couple of hours one evening, amid basketball fans and bar noise, it was something far more. It was a place where five people shared something unique to them – an understanding. No, it was more than that. It was something as rare as the condition that we shared, but as unique as each one of us. But only at this table.

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Jamestown Advocate Takes Urological Care Concerns to Capitol Hill

In Business, Environment, Health, Uncategorized on March 6, 2026 at 11:02 pm

JAMESTOWN – Greene County journalist and communications professional Gery Deer joined more than 300 physicians and patient advocates in Washington in February to press federal lawmakers on policies that directly affect access to urological care in Ohio and across the country.

Deer served on one of two Ohio delegations to the 2026 American Urological Association’s Annual Urology Advocacy Summit, held the week of Feb. 22 in Washington, D.C. He represented patients as a member of the Association for the Bladder Exstrophy Community’s Adult Patient Advisory Council.

The summit is designed to bring the voice of the specialty, and the patients it serves, directly to federal lawmakers — creating a bridge between medicine and policy. Over four days, physician and patient advocates receive briefings on pending legislation, reimbursement policy and insurance practices that shape how — and whether — patients can obtain urological treatment.

Here are both AUA Ohio delegations after a meeting at the office of U.S. Senator Jon Husted (R, OH-13). L to R – Urologists, Dr. Michael Bacchus (OSUMC), Dr. Scott Lundy (Cleveland Clinic), Dr. Kyle Kopechek (OSUMC), patient advocate Gery Deer (A-BE-C APAC), Dr. Bradley Gill (Cleveland Clinic), and Dr. Michael Sourial (OSUMC).

For communities in Greene County and the broader Miami Valley, those discussions are not abstract. Federal decisions about Medicare reimbursement, prior authorization and insurance oversight often determine how quickly patients can see specialists, whether recommended procedures are approved and how long physicians can continue offering certain services.

The Association for the Bladder Exstrophy Community is a global organization supporting patients and families affected by bladder exstrophy, a congenital urological condition that occurs in about one in every 50,000 births in the United States and worldwide. Deer, owner and creative director of GLD Communications, is one of eight patient advocates serving on the national council and chairs its communications efforts.

The council was formed three years ago by Kimberly Allen and Thomas Vincent of Seattle, both bladder exstrophy patients who saw gaps in long-term support for adults living with the rare condition. Since its founding, the group has developed an adult patient provider list, hosted physician-led webinars and organized patient-centered focus groups.

Participation in the AUA summit allows the organization to connect directly with urologists from around the country and to collaborate on legislation aimed at improving patient care. For Deer, the policy debate over insurance preauthorization stood out as especially urgent.

“Of all the legislation we were discussing with congressional representatives, insurance preauthorization was most important to me,” Deer said. “Bladder exstrophy presents a unique set of lifelong conditions and symptoms that rarely line up with those established within the narrow and often inaccurate coverage guidelines of insurance providers.”

Prior authorization — the requirement that physicians obtain insurer approval before certain treatments or procedures — has become a flashpoint in specialty care. Supporters say it helps control costs and prevent unnecessary procedures. Critics, including many physicians, argue it can delay care and override clinical judgment.

Deer said that during the summit he was surrounded by more than 300 of the nation’s leading urologists. Of those, only about 10 percent have treated or even met a bladder exstrophy patient, underscoring how specialized and rare the condition is.

At an invitation-only insurance roundtable attended by roughly 60 participants, Deer raised concerns about who ultimately decides what care is appropriate. Speaking as a patient advocate, he asked, “If these highly qualified physicians wouldn’t have the skills needed to treat someone like me, how is it remotely possible that an AI program or part time medical advisor would be capable of deciding what treatments are necessary and appropriate?”

He continued: “Urologists willing to treat a bladder exstrophy patient take on a long-term commitment and should have the final say in what treatments are necessary. Insurance companies, however, often disagree.”

For patients in southwestern Ohio, including those treated at major centers such as Cleveland Clinic, those disagreements can translate into delayed surgeries, postponed follow-up appointments or denied procedures. Physicians must devote additional staff time to appeals and documentation, while patients navigate uncertainty about whether recommended care will be covered.

Preauthorization remains a significant barrier in complex, lifelong conditions, Deer said, and he believes the issue extends far beyond rare diagnoses. Patients with cancer, kidney disease and other urological disorders may also face treatment delays tied to insurer review processes.

On Feb. 24, Deer and fellow members of the Ohio delegation met with congressional offices representing their home districts. The group included Dr. Scott Lundy and Dr. Bradley Gill of Cleveland Clinic, along with Hill guide Mykelle Richburg. They met with representatives of Sens. Bernie Moreno and Jon Husted and Reps. Max Miller and Shontel Brown. The office of Rep. Mike Turner declined a meeting.


														

			


			

					

				
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Square Kids, Round Desks

				In Children and Family, Education, Health, Opinion on February 22, 2026 at 6:11 am

				

					








Deer In Headlines





By Gery Deer















For decades, we have told ourselves a comforting story about education. If we standardize it, measure it, test it, rank it, and repeat it often enough, we will somehow produce better students and, by extension, better adults. It sounds reasonable. It feels orderly. It also happens to be deeply flawed.





If the system worked as advertised, we would be surrounded by confident graduates who understand their strengths, know how they learn, and are excited to apply their talents to the world. Instead, many students leave school disengaged, uncertain, and convinced they are “bad at learning,” when the real problem is that learning was never designed with them in mind.





Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching the A, B, C’s and started teaching to a test. Those tests promise clarity and accountability, but their ability to predict a student’s future success is questionable at best. Believing a standardized exam can forecast a child’s career potential is like believing the tea leaves at the bottom of your cup can tell you who will win the next Super Bowl. The charts look official. The conclusions feel authoritative. The accuracy is another matter entirely.





What these measurements consistently ignore is the single most important factor in learning: individuality. Every student arrives with a unique mix of curiosity, aptitude, temperament, and interest. Some think spatially. Some think musically. Some learn best by doing, failing, and doing again. Others need time, reflection, and quiet focus. These differences are not inconveniences. They are early indicators of where a student might thrive.





This is why education models that emphasize science, technology, engineering, arts, and math point in the right direction. When done well, they recognize that creativity and logic coexist, that problem-solving is rarely linear, and that imagination is not the enemy of rigor. Hands-on experimentation, design challenges, and interdisciplinary projects allow students to see relevance in what they are learning, not just requirements.





Still, even these programs can fall into the same trap if they are forced into rigid pacing guides and uniform assessments. When curiosity is scheduled and creativity is graded into submission, engagement disappears. Students become compliant rather than curious, efficient rather than inventive.





Traditional public school systems were not designed around individual learning styles. They were built for efficiency and uniform outcomes. That made sense in an industrial era that valued standardization. It makes far less sense in a world that rewards adaptability, specialization, and original thinking. We continue asking students to sit still, move together, and absorb information the same way, then wonder why so many tune out.





There are alternatives, and they are no longer fringe ideas. Some learning environments emphasize individualized study plans that allow students to move at their own pace, diving deeper into subjects that capture their interest. Others use project-based education, where students learn math, science, communication, and critical thinking by solving real problems and building tangible outcomes. In these settings, a student’s natural curiosity is not a distraction; it is the engine.





Non-traditional environments often replace rows of desks with collaborative spaces, mentorship with lectures, and progress portfolios with letter grades. Students learn how to manage time, pursue questions, and reflect on their work. They fail safely, revise often, and understand why their learning matters. These experiences mirror the real world far more closely than memorization ever could.





The goal is not to eliminate traditional schools or abandon standards. The goal is to expand the definition of what school can be. Public education should adapt by offering flexible pathways alongside conventional ones, giving families and students real options instead of one-size-fits-all solutions.





When we stop forcing square kids into round desks and start honoring natural gifts, education becomes preparation instead of endurance. That shift does not weaken schools. It strengthens students. And that is the outcome worth measuring.





Adapting these options requires courage, policy support, and a willingness to trust educators and students alike. It means valuing progress over uniformity and recognizing that success can look different without being lesser. When schools evolve to meet students where they are, learning stops being something done to them and becomes something they actively claim as their own. That shift benefits communities, employers, families, and democracy itself long term.

														

			


			

					

				
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Snow Drifts

				In Environment, Local News, Opinion, Uncategorized, weather on February 1, 2026 at 1:34 pm

				

					








Deer In Headlines





By Gery Deer















I was 10 when the Blizzard of ’78 hit our small farm in southwestern Ohio. Holed up in an 8 by 10-foot room of our tiny farmhouse, with no power and only a small, very 1970s cone-shaped fireplace for heat, the five of us survived because of the experience and fortitude of my parents. 





It was 36 degrees in our kitchen that first morning and, without electricity, we had no water, and no other heat source. Plus, we had to figure out how to mix formula for 14 bottle-fed feeder calves in the barn. The temperature continued to drop, the wind was relentless, and a seven-foot snow drift sealed our back door. 





My father and brother tunneled like gofers from our basement walkout, creating a passable though treacherous path to the barn. Diesel fuel siphoned from a tractor filled nearly every one of our 15 or so antique kerosene lamps. Some provided light while others were placed next to open cabinet doors to warm water pipes. As it turned out, those weren’t the only family antiques that were called into service.





Me, my mother, and my brother’s very pregnant wife, melted snow in large canning pots and used the water to feed the calves – one bottle at a time. It took hours. Oddly, the barn was warmer than you might expect since the walls of stacked hay provided good insulation. Mom also found a way to feed us too. She cobbled together foil packs of vegetables and beef and cooked them in the little fireplace.





On day two, the national guard plowed our quarter mile-long driveway, and my father and brother took one of our farm trucks into the village to get supplies for us and the elderly couple who lived at the orchard across the road. It took them almost eight hours to make the seven-mile round trip. Once they made it back, they didn’t go out again. We had enough challenges at home.





Our electricity was out for almost four days. Over the next year, my father gutted our home’s heating system, replacing the electric oil furnace with a wood-burning version he designed. They also added generators, and a 1905 wood-burning cook stove. They were determined we’d never be so crippled again. 





I still use the lessons I learned during that very cold week and the events that followed. Our electricity was knocked out on a more than regular basis, but we were well prepared for most situations, thanks to my family’s know-how and tenacity. As a different kind of pioneer once said, “Failure is not an option.”





This past week, our small part of the world, as well as most of the Midwest and northeastern United States, experienced a similar winter event. As I prepared our home for the coming snow and cold, I was reminded of every moment during that frigid week on our farm all those years ago. For me, it was like my folks were still here because I could hear their words and see their actions in my mind – the lessons of growing up in a remarkable place with uncommon people. 





Sadly, it seems to me that such self-sufficiency is less common than years gone by. Instead of a calm thoughtful response to something like a snowstorm, people today seem more likely to overreact. Not even those who take preparedness to an extreme level can be ready for everything. But for situations like this, we have more resources, better access to information, and more reliable infrastructure than anything available a half century ago. Still, most people panic, clearing store shelves of bread and milk, while doing little to adequately prepare.  





I’m incredibly fortunate to have grown up at a time and with a family who gave me the knowledge and resourcefulness to look after myself in most situations. Probably like many of those reading this, I take whatever steps I can to manage a situation and try to help others whenever possible. General observers might see my heightened sense of urgency as anxiety, but I’m generally the calm one. Even so, there’s always that thing you didn’t plan on. That’s when improvisation, fueled by experience and common sense, can literally save your life.