Happy 4th of July. In true Seattle fashion, just as I am considering going out to a party and fireworks viewing, the heavens have opened and a heavy, but warm rain is sluicing down over central Birmingham. So much for my idea of walking from Highland Park to Southside so as to not have to battle traffic. There’s another hour or so before the big fireworks show is due to start so I’m going to sit here and write for a minute and see whether the weather cell which has been parked overhead remains or decides to travel on and soak Leeds, Pell City and other points east. It does give me a minute to let my mind wander back over other 4ths I’ve experienced. Setting fireworks off in the back alley in Laurelhurst – with about 50% of those being in a summer drizzle was perhaps the most consistent streak of celebration. Since then, things have been a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
The first fourth of July of what I would consider my adult life (I mark that from September 1980 when I left for college at Stanford University) would have been in the summer of 1981. I spent that one on a research vessel in the Bering Sea, running water sampling machinery on the night shift. It was an easy gig, relatively well paid, and I had little to do other than punch buttons, eat, watch films, and read. I managed War and Peace in less than a week that summer. The actual day of the 4th we took off from work and we trawled the bottom with a net, bringing up a bunch of fresh king crab which the galley prepared and served up that evening. It was delicious. I believe this was a day or two before we hit the Pribilof Islands where I spent an afternoon checking out the seal rookeries. Seals and sealions are big nasty smelly things up close and they can move remarkably quickly on land and you don’t want to be in there way if their temper is up.
Three years later, on July 4, 1984, I was on the roof of Notre Dame on my first (and so far only) trip to Paris. I kept a travel diary that summer which I still have lying about somewhere. I should really find it and read it and see what 22 year old me was thinking and feeling about the world which was just really beginning to open up to me, at least during that halcyon summer between college and medical school. I was back in Europe for the fourth of July some thirty five years later. July 4, 2019 was spent on a boat cruising up the Rhine River past the Lorelei rocks and in the shadow of the various Germanic baronial chateaux that line the crags above the gorge. In between there was one spent innertubing on the Boise river, one spent on a Maui beach, a few at various places in California, and a performance of Politically Incorrect Cabaret on the end of a pier in Biloxi during a windstorm. You can’t say I haven’t led a somewhat varied life.
There’s a lot of pessimism floating around this fourth about the state of our politics and the potential outcomes of the next election cycle. Our politics do not reflect the will of the people because not enough of the people take the time to educate themselves in issues and vote accordingly. And that’s just the way the powers that run the country like it. If we don’t turn out in record numbers in November and vote for the vision of what we think the country can and should be, we will deserve the outcome. There’s a lot that’s currently wrong with the American political system at the moment from the corrupting influence of big money, to ossified apparatuses of state, to a gerontocracy unwilling to make way for a new generation and new ideas. Both sides sense this and have radically different ways of wanting to handle the issues. I choose the side that will allow for a diversity of ideas and opinions rather than the one which will demand us all to fall in line behind an authoritarian, particularly of the kind currently on offer.
My publisher and I are continuing to throw around ideas for new books. We are looking at using Covid and the radical changes that has caused throughout society as the jumping off point to explore how we as a people have changed over the last five years, what the repercussions have been on the health care system and health policy, and just what the physical and psychological toll has been on us all as individuals as Covid continues to shape our lives. One thought I have is that we all have Long Covid. Some of us have physical symptomatology due to body changes following infection but those of us who escaped that have not escaped other effects in terms of changed social structures, workplace patterns, job duties, or economic consequences from shattered supply chains and other inflationary pressures.
Speaking of Covid. Numbers are going up again relatively rapidly with a 20% jump in hospitalizations and 15% jump in mortality in the last week or so. It’s hard to get a good handle on what’s happening due to the balkanization of the public health system but there seem to be some peaks coming from rapid spread of LB.1, a new omicron strain. I have heard rumor of some hospitals needing to go back to masking protocols but haven’t had good confirmation as to that. If you develop respiratory symptoms, stay home until you are fever free for 24 hours. After that, you can venture out but I would wear a mask for five days. Covid tests are harder to come by than they were but they are around. There should be a new booster available this fall which should be updated to boost immunity against the new strains such as LB.1, KP.1, KP.2 and FliRT. None of these appears to be significantly more virulent than the omicron strains that have been around for the last year, they’re just getting better at spreading person to person.
The rain has stopped. It’s 30 minutes to fireworks time. Perhaps I can venture out… With an umbrella.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 