Filed under: Bipolar, Civil Rights, Depression, Flu, Google, Health, Society
I was going to title this “I’m sick and tired . . . of being sick and tired.” After yet another night of coughing jags, tossing and turning, getting up to take OTC meds every couple of hours, and generally being miserable in this tenth day of this flu.
But then I popped that phrase into Google, to see why it echoed so from my childhood. And a couple of clicks later I found this, and was humbled.
My tendency to feel sorry for myself is not one of my most attractive traits. I can only say that it usually is a sign that I am bottoming out, and before long I will be climbing back out of my own personal pit of despair (whether it is caused by health problems, my mild bi-polar condition, or some other source). It’s that Emerson quote, again.
So, sorry about that, Fanny Lou. Didn’t mean no offense.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, General Musings, Heinlein, NYT, Robert A. Heinlein, Science, Society, Terrorism
A good friend uses this quote from Robert Heinlein (from Time Enough for Love) as part of her .sig:
“There is no such thing as luck.
There is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.”
Which is a nice reformulation of my favorite Louis Pasteur quote:
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Which is why I grieve for the future of my country when I read things like this:
Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment (from the NY Public Library following the 9/11 attacks), she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
“This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
“That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”
What book? The Age of American Unreason, just released last week.
Susan Jacoby has a number of other books to her credit, including Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. She has a history of supporting rationalism, and this is her latest effort to get people to pay attention to the toxic mix of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism. From her website:
This impassioned, tough-minded work of contemporary history paints a disturbing portrait of a mutant strain of public ignorance, anti-rationalism, and anti-intellectualism that has developed over the past four decades and now threatens the future of American democracy. Combining historical analysis with contemporary observation, Susan Jacoby dissects a culture at odds with America’s heritage of Enlightenment reason and with modern knowledge and science. With mordant wit, the author offers an unsparing indictment of the ways in which dumbness has been defined downward throughout American society—on the political right and the left. America’s endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism, feeding on and fed by a popular culture of video images and unremitting noise that leaves no room for contemplation or logic.
Edenists, anyone? Grieve. Grieve for the future.
Jim Downey
(Cross-posted to UTI. Thanks to ML for the initial NYT story.)
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Flu, General Musings, Guns, H. G. Wells, Health, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society
Wow. It’s been a while since I was this sick, this long. Nothing life-threatening, just the flu that’s going around. Of course, I was completely worn out by the last few weeks of caring for Martha Sr, with no reserves to draw upon to fight this virus, so it comes as very little surprise that I haven’t been able to just shrug off the bug and get better.
It is this sort of experience that drives home the statistics pertaining to how many soldiers over the ages died due to disease rather than battle – I don’t have the numbers right at hand, but generally it has been concluded that at least as many soldiers have died due to illness than from battle related injuries, at least up until the last century. Why? Because soldiers are frequently pushed past the point of physical exhaustion, denied adequate sleep, with poor quality or inadequate food, and under conditions which foster rapid transmission of disease from soldier to soldier.
And that’s one of the things that I always chuckle about when I read about TEOTWAWKI scenarios on this or that forum. Often, particularly when such threads come up on a firearms-related forum, people will get way too preoccupied with guns and ammo, and lose track of the fact that those tools are completely useless if you are too sick or too tired or too hungry to employ them. Get sick, and your superior collection of guns or other tech mean nothing. H.G. Wells knew this, while most of us have forgotten it.
I’ll write more when I am up to it.
Jim Downey
My aches and pains from this cold/flu have reached the point where it is tempting to go sit in a doctor’s office just in order to get some antibiotics. Not that they would do any good, mind, as it is almost certain that what I have is a viral bug rather than a bacterial infection. All the symptoms are in place: cough, watery eyes, runny nose, lack of any real fever. Yet when you are miserable enough, long enough, you get a little desperate. You want antibiotics, just so you feel like you’re “doing something” to beat the disease.
And that, actually, was where Communion of Dreams had its origin: in the over-prescribing of antibiotics and the routine use of same in factory farming of livestock. I started playing around with what would happen if misuse of antibiotics lead to a bacterial ‘superbug’ which we couldn’t treat. Eventually, I went a different direction with the idea, and decided that a viral agent was more appropriate, and for different reasons (which I won’t go into here.)
But at times like this I sure do identify with all those who want antibiotics for every viral beastie to come down the pike. Even if they don’t really do anything.
Jim Downey
. . . I’m not the only one miserable and sick, as noted in this post.
How misery loves company.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Daily Kos, Health, Hospice, Publishing, Sleep, Society, Writing stuff
No, no, not downloads of the novel. That would be something. Rather, that’s the number of words I’ve written in the last year in posts here which have the ‘Alzheimer’s’ or ‘Hospice’ category tags. Why is that significant?
Because I am thinking about using those posts as the basis for a book about being a care-provider. With the feedback I got to my posts here, and those I cross-posted at UTI and Daily Kos, it became evident that there is a real interest in this topic. Because almost everyone either knows someone with Alzheimer’s, or they know someone who has a family member with Alzheimer’s, or they are afraid of developing the disease themselves.
With editing and culling of the current material, I probably have about 30,000 words done. If I supplement that material with explanatory notes and reflections, I can easily boost that to 60 or 70,000 words, which should be more than sufficient for this kind of memoir. And while my thinking on this is still rather vague, I’d probably see if I could pair-up with the Alzheimer’s Association, with some or all of the proceeds of the sale of the book going to help that organization with their research and educational programs.
It’s a thought.
Jim Downey
I mentioned a couple of days ago that I thought I was coming down with something, be it just a cold or some mild version of the flu. Monday and yesterday were marginal, as I tried to get stuff done and see which way things were going to go.
They went south. More specifically, the incipient cold has now settled into my throat and chest. Last night I didn’t get a lot of sleep, and this morning I feel fairly miserable. Ah well. I cannot say that I am surprised – after such a long battle in caring for Martha Sr, and then pushing to get through the memorial and whatnot last weekend, my immune system is shot.
And that’s OK, really. With a modicum of care, I can get through a winter cold/flu in a few days time. Certainly the extra sleep won’t hurt me. And while there are plenty of things I should be doing, no one is going to come banging on my door. I’ll recover from this, then move on. As Emerson said, “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Bruce Schneier, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Preparedness, Psychic abilities, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Terrorism, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers in the first paragraph. The rest is safe, even if you haven’t read the novel.]
One of the major themes of Communion of Dreams is examining the nature of reality. The title of the book alone gives this away, though I am constantly surprised by comments people make which indicate that they didn’t really take that very big hint into consideration when reading the book. Anyway, the whole notion is that we live within a controlled reality, in that there are artificial limits on what we understand of the outside universe. I use dreams as one access point for information which gets around these limits, and then more fully explore the psychic abilities which are latent in humans later in the book.
I’m a big fan of the TV series Foyle’s War, with its excellent acting and attention to historical details. It provides a brilliant insight into what it must have been like in the United Kingdom during World War II, and shows both the bravery and the cowardice of a population under real threat from a superior enemy. In particular, those episodes set early in the war (during the Battle of Britain) show how the possibility of invasion by Nazi Germany pushed people to do both inspiring and dispiriting things, but mostly how the entire population just ‘got on with it’, coping with the threat and their fears pretty damned well.
Which is why when I read things like this, I just cringe:
Hundreds Evacuated from North Sea oil platform after ‘dream’ sparks bomb alert.
A 23-year-old woman is expected to appear in court today after reports of a bomb on a North Sea oil rig sparked a full-scale emergency operation involving the army, RAF and police.
According to one report, the scare started when a woman employee on the rig was overheard recalling a dream she had had about a bomb on the platform. Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, one of the biggest unions representing offshore workers, said: “It was complete madness. This girl had a dream about a bomb being on board and she was a bit shaken. The next thing anyone knew workers were being evacuated.”
He said the rumour that a bomb was on the accommodation block – or “flotel” – had spread to senior managers within an hour. “It was complete madness on behalf of everyone. There was never any reason to evacuate the platform.”
Read the whole thing. It is clear that this was nothing short of bureaucratic panic. What do I mean? I mean that when bureaucrats are given procedures which they have to implement in order to cover-their-asses, they will do so whether or not the situation really calls for it, and no matter how disruptive and pointless the exercise will be. This is the exact same mindset in operation with the TSA’s Security Theater (credit Bruce Schneier), but played out in a more dramatic fashion.
Somebody overheard someone else talking about a disturbing dream they had. And they panicked. It’s that simple.
We’ve allowed the bureaucrats to so control our lives out of fear of being held responsible, that we’ve become afraid of our own dreams. How pathetic. How sad.
Jim Downey
(Via BoingBoing. Slightly edited version cross-posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Health, N. Am. Welsh Choir, Predictions, Preparedness, Religion, Sleep, Weather
The memorial in all its details went off just fine yesterday. My wife’s quartet from the North American Welsh Choir did a wonderful performance. The minister conducting the ceremonies (an old family friend) kept things running smoothly and without a lot of inappropriate god-bothering. Friends and family made tributes to Martha Sr. All that you could ask for in a memorial service, even good weather (almost 50 and sunny) for early February here in the Midwest.
We had a relaxed reception at my Brother-in-law’s place, plenty of good food and good company. Then a relaxed evening here with some of the family who came in from out of town. And likewise this morning an early brunch before some folks needed to catch flights home.
And now I feel adrift. Unsure. All the scheduled things are resolved. Other things pending, but nothing which really needs either my involvement or direction. This could be a touch of something I’m coming down with (there were plenty of people with the usual colds/flus common this time of year). My immune system is shot, for the same reasons that my weight is so excessive: lack of sleep, insufficient exercise, general stress. I look forward to getting it back.
But it could also simply be the change borne by Martha Sr’s passing. All the routines, all the usual focus of my life, are no longer applicable. A friend said that it will take time to mash down the grooves of my life and carve new ones, and she’s right. I expect it will take most of the coming year to make the change complete.
So, adrift. The storm has passed, and now things are quiet.
I think I’ll get a nap.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Doctor Who, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Migraine, Predictions, Sleep
I was half expecting it.
As mentioned previously, I suffer from migraines upon occasion. Perhaps a bit surprisingly, the last couple of months have been fairly light in that regard. But I have one now, of the “stress-release” variety.
Last night, for the first time in the better part of a week, we cooked dinner and relaxed watching a couple of episodes of Doctor Who (more on my getting acquainted with the new series later). I had a couple of scotches, but that’s not a lot for me over the course of the evening. I fell asleep later in front of the computer, catching up on news of the world. In other words, I was starting to spin down from recent events.
I went up and went to bed, while my good lady wife did the dishes and caught up on some email. I woke sometime after midnight (not sure when) from the pain of the migraine. Got up, went and took some OTC stuff I hoped would shut it down, went back to bed. Woke up again about 4:30, pain worse. Got up and took some more OTC stuff and something stronger to give it a boost. Unfortunately, those meds include a fair amount of caffeine, so getting back to sleep was not much of an option. I laid down, let them work for a while, then got up.
It may seem odd to you that I would be suffering a stress-release migraine going into what is likely to be a fairly stressful and emotional weekend, what with the memorial service tomorrow and all. I’m fairly introverted, and the prospect of a large public gathering and all that concentrated emotional outpouring is rather daunting.
But that is nothing in comparison to the stresses of caring for someone with dementia who is dying. Even now, all my instincts and conditioned reflexes are concerned first with taking into account where Martha Sr is, who is keeping track of her, what needs to be done next in the usual care regimen. Yesterday, returning from errands I needed to run, I glanced at her bedroom window as I drove up the driveway, to see whether my wife had her up from her afternoon nap and had opened the drapes. This morning before grinding my coffee I went to shut the door from the kitchen in order to muffle the sound and not disturb her sleep. And those are just two of the dozens of examples I could cite from the last 24 hours. It will take months, at least, to set aside these reflexes, to fully become ‘free’ of the ingrained habits of years.
So, yeah, I have a migraine. Not horrid, with the meds I have in me so far, though this post may be a bit less coherent than it could be. I should still be able to play house-elf today in preparation for the visitors we will have this weekend, and to make the memorial book for the service tomorrow. If it doesn’t get a lot worse I should even be able to function well during the public outing tomorrow (I got a lot of experience with that sort of thing while I owned the art gallery). But there it is – perhaps the first marker of the real change in my life. We are, after all, born in pain.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 