Communion Of Dreams

It’s now been three months since Martha Sr died.

You’d think by now that I’d be caught up on sleep. You’d be wrong. As I look over the last few month’s posts I note that time and again that I mention sleep. It is still the default that I want more, more, more. Even when I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, and am not fighting any kind of cold or flu, a nap in the morning or afternoon tempts me. For someone who thinks of himself as energetic, productive, it kind of goes against the grain. For someone who has a backlog of work running to years, it can be a little maddening.

Yet, sleep is still the default.

* * * * * * *

My sister called the other day.

“Thirty pounds?  Wow. Be careful.”

I assured her that I wasn’t trying to overdo anything. That it was just my body moving back towards a natural set-point, as mentioned in that blog post.

But she has a good reason to be concerned: in our family, weight loss is one of the markers for the onset of the family genetic curse, Machado-Joseph disease. To be honest, this is one of the major reasons that I have always felt a little comfortable in being a bit overweight - it provided some sense of protection against the disease (which was very poorly understood or even known as I was growing up). That’s not how it works, of course, but it was always there in the back of my mind. If you’d lived with seeing what the disease does, you’d be willing to risk obesity, too.

* * * * * * *

Go back to any of the entries from last year under the tag Alzheimer’s, and you’ll see that one of the most common things I talk about is just how tired I was. For years - literally, years - my wife and I had taken turns being “on call” each night, lightly dozing while listening to a baby monitor in Martha Sr’s room. On those nights you’d barely get anything which amounted to real rest. When you weren’t “on call” sleep usually came, but wasn’t as easy or restful as it could have been - having your partner there more or less awake next to you all night wasn’t that conducive. Sure, there were naps whenever we could squeeze them in, but I would still say that my average sleep per 24 hour period was probably about 5 hours, maybe 6. Things did improve once we had a health aide three nights a week, but by then we were in hospice care, which had its own stresses and demands.

* * * * * * *

ATLANTA - People who sleep fewer than six hours a night — or more than nine — are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies.

* * *

The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don’t get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

“The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don’t do so well,” Kramer said.

The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Surprise, surprise.

* * * * * * *

I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic. And it was shaped by conventional standards: get up, go to work for 8 -10 hours, come home. That’s not how I work - hasn’t been for years - but it is still the baseline instinct for me, the initial criteria I use for whether or not I am “getting things done”. So it is frustrating to feel sleepy and want a nap. That doesn’t pay the bills, get the backlog under control, get the next book written or the ballistics research written up.

Three months. Seems like a long time. And our culture doesn’t understand grief well, nor leave a lot of room for recovery that takes time. We expect people to “get over it”, to take a vacation and come back refreshed. It is part of who we are - part of who I am.

But I try to listen to my body. It is naturally shedding the excess weight I put on, now that regular sleep and exercise are again part of my life. Realistically, it is only halfway done - I’ve another 30 pounds or so to go to get back to a point which I consider ‘normal’ (though that’s still about 20 - 30 pounds heavy for me, according to the ‘ideal’). Does that mean I have another three months of wanting naps all the time? Yeah, maybe. Maybe more. I’ll try and give it that time.

I’ll try.

Jim Downey

Via the Bad Astronomer:

Towards the end of World War II the staff of SS officer Hans Kammler made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity.

From a secret base built in the Antarctic, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late ‘45 to found the military base Schwarze Sonne (Black Sun) on the dark side of the Moon. This base was to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to take over the Earth once the time was right.

And, in 2018, it is. Welcome to Iron Sky:

This actually looks really kinda cool. Somewhat like Man Conquers Space. The site has a nice retro sort of feel, with a fair amount of content and a blog. Poke around. Have fun. Tell them to hurry up and finish the damned movie - I want to see it.

Jim Downey.

Via Brian at Liftport, a link to this site hosting the entire series of James Burke’s The Day the Universe Changed. As Brian said in an email:

Jim,

You’re written before that you admire James Burke’s work on television.

While I don’t condone piracy, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out
that a blog is hosting a download of the ‘Day the Universe Changed’.
One episode per day, file will be up for a week and then it’s gone.

I put the first episode on my laptop, let it play and .. my kids liked
it. Which is what I expected but .. you never know.

I might be kidding myself by I think it was firing off neurons in my
13-year old son’s brain. I have no idea what my eight year old really
thought (he said he liked it) but he’s not the type to just watch
anything on TV; if it’s boring he’ll wander away and play with legos
or his dinosaur collection or go fool around in the backyard.

Yes, I have written about the series, and Burke previously. It really is excellent - and you should either add the thing to your NetFlix queue, buy it outright, or at the very least avail yourself of the chance to see it online.

Thanks, Brian!

Jim Downey

See this post at UTI for details.  As a consequence, I didn’t sleep a whole lot.  But the most annoying part is past, I think, and I may nap this afternoon.

Anyway, via MeFi, here is an amazing site about the restoration of three ceramic vases destroyed in a museum accident.  It is a bit surprising just how many of the techniques used are analogous to what I use in book restoration (though usually I am not doing that level of work for my clients.)  Be sure to click the “interactive” selection.

Jim Downey

As if my last post wasn’t enough cheeriness for one day, I thought I should also post an update to this post about the outbreak of EV71 in China. From the AP:

China says hand, foot and mouth disease spreading among children

BEIJING - China reported a jump Monday in the number of children sickened with hand, foot and mouth disease, saying more than 9,700 cases have been reported.

* * *

The outbreak is another headache for China’s Communist government as it prepares to host this summer’s Olympic Games, already tarnished by unrest among Tibetans in western China and an international torch relay disrupted by protests.

WHO’s China representative, Hans Troedsson, said the disease was not a threat to the Beijing Olympics because the disease mostly sickens young children.

Well, I’m glad to know that - can’t screw up our priorities in worrying about kids when there is the Olympics to fret about.

Sheesh.

Jim Downey

Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.

This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:

(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.

“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.

So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:

The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.

“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:

Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”

While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.

Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”

That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.

“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”

Again, emphasis mine.

I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly - and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams - is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.

It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event - and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions - the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).

Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.

Jim Downey

I’m not quite sure what to make of this new comic I stumbled upon via MeFi, but at least the start of the thing is rather interesting. Kind of a Zombie Western thing going, about a fellow who decides that he doesn’t really want to be dead. That this decision comes following his funeral is a bit of a problem for the local townsfolk . . .

Anyway, start with The Decision, and go from there. The Table of Contents lists six episodes so far.

Enjoy. Or not. Your decision.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to UTI.)

Brief follow-up to this post.

This morning Scott Simon of NPR did his weekly meditation on the story of Christopher Ratte and the Hard Lemonade.  It is worth a listen, as usual - Simon looks past the immediate news item to the underlying issues, as I try to do.  He points out that at each stage of the whole debacle the various officials responsible were just “following procedure”, not risking taking some action on their own initiative which would lead to a common sense resolution for everyone involved.  As he notes:

… But you might remember what happened to the Ratte family next time a poll discloses that the American people distrust bureaucracies, public or private, whether they run schools, airlines, or health-care systems - they abide by procedures, not people.  They take lemons, and just make a mess.

Jim Downey

(With thanks and apology to Bob Dylan.)

Nah, other than a mild cold, things are going OK.  But since it is the first of the month, thought I would post a quick note about how stats look hereabouts.

April saw just under 500 downloads of the .pdf of Communion.  This continues to happen in clumps, for whatever reason.  Comparing it to over 1,100 in March, you might think that things have slowed down - but that’s just the clustering effect, I think - there was a substantial cluster right at the end of March.  Had it been a few days later, the stats for both March and April would have been almost the same.  We’re now at about 9,000 total downloads.

About 50 people downloaded the MP3 of the novel last month, bringing that total to just under 100.

I still have a hard time getting a handle on how people find out about the book, or this blog.  In March I signed up for some additional stats/information about the Communion of Dreams website, which gives me all kinds of data, but it still seems that the majority of people who find out about the book do so by word of mouth.  Not a bad thing, just a bit odd.  Particularly in that I get very little feedback or commentary from people - yet they seem to be passing on a recommendation to others to download the book.  Goodness knows that I haven’t done anything remotely approaching a real effort at promotion, so something is happening of its own accord.

This blog is now at 18,000 total views, averaging upwards of 70 views a day.  The somewhat odd thing is that there is a consistent bit of traffic to look at one post: Welcome to the Hobbit House from almost a year ago.  That gets 20 - 25 people a day.  I think that the secret to getting a lot of traffic would be to write about Hobbits.  At least until the new movie is done and out.  So, if you see me mentioning Hobbits just randomly in posts, you’ll know that I am just blog-whoring, trolling for hits.

But hey, Hobbits are cool.  Right?  Just saying the word is somehow comforting:  Hobbits.

Uh, sorry.

Anyway, that’s just a brief look over the current stats.  Something more meaty later, or tomorrow.

Jim Downey