I’m trying to decide what to write about this evening. One of the downsides of the end (or at least the pause) in the pandemic is that I can’t just look at the latest Covid related headlines, check the statistics and assume the muse with hit me with an angle that will let me churn out another entry in the now completed Accidental Plague Diaries. For the ten or twelve of you eagerly awaiting the publication of the third and final volume, it is complete and edited. It’s being put into proof form as I write this. Once that’s completed and thoroughly checked, I’ll have a publication date. Sometime between mid August and October is likely. When the third volume comes out and the whole saga is complete, all 300,000 words and roughly a thousand pages, I’ll have to think about what to really do with the project. I really need a PR firm but that’s a bit outside of my budget.
I could write about politics. About how one of the senators that purports to represent me in ‘the world’s greatest deliberative body’ seems to have zero understanding of white nationalism, racism, or any other ism when you get down to it. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with him for another four years. Perhaps he’ll have started allowing senior military appointments again by them (personally holding them all up in a fit of pique as the military believes that reproductive decisions should be made by physicians, not polticians). I don’t quite understand why the senior party leadership don’t take him out behind the woodshed but they appear to still worship at the altar of Ronald Reagan’s eleventh commandment ‘Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republican’. The problem with this, in the social media age, is that the most extreme voices are being amplified, the Overton window gets yanked further to the right, and silence becomes complicity as the business of governing becomes more and more dysfunctional.
I could write about the war on education and literacy happening left, right and sideways in the name of protecting the children. Moms for Liberty has sprung out of nowhere in two years to become a well oiled machine pushing policies completely lacking in educational value, destructive to minorities of all stripes, and of dubious morality at the local and state levels. I am very suspicious of any grassroots group that goes from zero to a hundred in a very short period of time. That doesn’t happen without a lot of money and organizing knowhow. So I always ask two questions – who is funding it and who benefits? It doesn’t take a lot of poking around to see that the money and organizational savvy is coming from the usual suspects on the right – groups like the Alliance for Defending Freedom. Groups that are funded by a handful of right wing billionaires whose goal is the overturning of the New Deal society and the eradication of any constraints on capitalism and if people and social institutions are hurt by their methods, it’s necessary collateral damage. Those that would truly benefit are those who are investing in the materials necessary for alternative right wing private education. They would love to see the public schools knocked down and replaced with the equivalent of the Southern White Academies that sprang up as a response to desegregation, but on a national level. Well funded with public dollars, but closed to those who are not like them with the remaining public system underfunded for those that would not be welcome in the gated community.
I could write about the continued slow collapse of the health care system in the US. My last checks showed that if you were to move new to Birmingham and wanted to establish with a new primary care physician, the earliest appointments available now are in November. In another year, it will be more than six months. The combination of the aging of the boom, the increase of the population, and the pandemic’s creation of a significant new population faced with the challenges of chronic illness are leading to a spike in demand. The retirement of roughly 20% of the workforce, the economic pressures which push newly minted providers into certain high paying specialty areas, and the massive growth in administrative hassle factors are at the same time reducing supply. It’s not going to get any better for the foreseeable future. Add to that the paralysis in long term care systems due to a lack of workforce, supply chain issues, and a fixation of the system for short term profit over long term problem solving pretty much guarantees havoc is going to reign for some time. And people wonder why I am contemplating retirement.
I could write about the experience of turning fifteen enthusiastic community volunteers into a troupe of Shakespeareans. They’re turning up for rehearsal, they’re full of energy, they’re working on their lines. I seem to have made some relatively smart decisions conceptually on how to put A Midsummer Night’s Dream together so that the show should be a reasonable entertainment when it is completed and ready for the public as of August 10th. That’s four weeks from tomorrow. I’m going for a sense of brio and summer popcorn flick so, if you’re expecting King Lear as performed by the RSC, you might be disappointed but if you just want to be entertained for a few hours with hijinks and some lovely language, you might have a good time. I’ll post the ticket link and other information when it’s ready. It runs the weekends of the 10th and 17th so mark your calendars now.
I could write about my personal continued march towards decrepitude and irrelevance. I through my back out last week. It’s nothing new. I’ve done it every five to ten years my whole adult life. It doesn’t happen because of anything I’ve done or overdone. I’ll just bend over to pick up a piece of paper or get something out of a low drawer and wham – the lumbosacral muscles go into spasm, pain sears through my lower spine and pelvis and I cannot move or bend without grave difficulty. It goes away in a week to ten days and is usually only bad for the first two or three. Heat, Tylenol, the occasional muscle relaxer and I can continue to live life. This was the first time this has happened since I’ve lived alone. All other times, I had a roommate or a partner around who could help haul me out of bed, fetch things, and take the brunt of my waspish disposition when I was in pain. I had to figure out how to get myself out of bed doing a strange crab like eight point turn as I wiggled this way and that until I could get myself finally to a standing position. I had to get my own glass of water from the kitchen. As I scuttled around, looking like Quasimodo after a three day bender, the cats watched me in what I assume was detached amusement – never bothering to offer to help. I am now on day eight. I’m moving fairly normally but I still have to be somewhat careful. I should be fine by the end of this weekend – until I need to pick up a dropped pencil or something and it spasms again.
But maybe I won’t write about any of that. Maybe I should just wait until the muse strikes. I’m waiting…
Life, The Universe, and Everything 