steadily depressing low down mind messin’ living with the covid blues …
Adapted from the great Jim Croce and his song, Steadily depressin’, low down mind-messin’ Workin’ at the carwash blues.
Well, I had just got out from the county prison Doin’ ninety days for non-support Tried to find me an executive position But no matter how smooth I talked They wouldn’t listen to the fact that I was genius The man said, “We got all that we can use,” Now I got them
Steadily depressin’, low down mind-messin’ Workin’ at the carwash blues
Well, I should be sittin’ in an air-conditioned Office with a swivel chair Talkin’ some trash to the secretary, sayin’ “Hey now mama, come on over here,” Instead, I’m stuck here rubbin’ these fenders with a rag And walkin’ home in soggy old shoes With them
Steadily depressin’, low down mind-messin’ Workin’ at the carwash blues
This batch o’ the COVID has been nutz and no fun.
We have held it off with all the vaccines but it finally got us.
Came down with over a week ago.
Since then there have been some bad days and there have been some worse days.
There have not been any good days.
I did have some hours where I felt some pep, some get up and get go in the past 10 days, but it didn’t last.
I live in the what is called the low country of South Carolina, along the Atlantic coast, just north of Savannah.
I work closer to the beach than I live and I am able to spend my lunch time breaks walking along the wave line dodging the people who are spending untold amounts of money to be here for just one week.
We get to the beach when ever we can and in season, I spend a lot of time in the water.
I don’t worry to much about the things that live in the ocean.
They leave me alone and I leave them alone and we do just fine.
You see, Ms. Weise writes that “One concerning shift has been in the range of box jellyfish, some species of which can be deadly.
“The box jellyfish that we have an abundance of in Hawaii has recently caused injuries in various beaches in Florida. The changing range of these jellies and increasing human population density, these things all work together in U.S. waters,” said Angel Yanagihara, a research professor in the department of tropical medicine at the University of Hawaii who studies jellyfish venom.”
The only thing I know about box jelly fish is what Bill Bryon wrote in his book on travels in Australia, In a sunburned country (Broadway Books, New York, 2000) when Mr. Bryson said this:
(Remember this sounds much better if you read in the slow cadence of Mr. Bryson’s audio readings – especially that last sentence.)
But all of these are as nothing compared with the delicate and diaphanous box jellyfish, the most poisonous creature on earth. We will hear more of the unspeakable horrors of this little bag of lethality when we get to the tropics, but let me offer here just one small story.
In 1992 a young man in Cairns, ignoring all the warning signs, went swimming in the Pacific waters at a place called Holloways Beach. He swam and dove, taunting his friends on the beach for their prudent cowardice, and then began to scream with an inhuman sound.
It is said that there is no pain to compare with it.
The young man staggered from the water, covered in livid whiplike stripes wherever the jellyfish’s tentacles had brushed across him, and collapsed in quivering shock. Soon afterward emergency crews arrived, inflated him with morphine, and took him away for treatment.
And here’s the thing.
Even unconscious and sedated …
he was still screaming.
The idea of Box Jellyfish off the Carolina Coast would certainly make an impact on I spent my free time.
I had do some more research and was happy to have wikipedia tell me that 51 species of box jellyfish were known as of 2018. These are grouped into two orders and eight families.A few new species have since been described, and it is likely that additional undescribed species remain.
And not all of them have the terrible stings and venom as described by Mr. Bryson.
I was fascinated by the caption of a photograph of a jelly that had washed up on the beach that read: Box Jellyfish species Chiropsalmus quadrumanus; contradict the belief that Cubozoans are semelparity.
I was relieved!
And I don’t even know what it means.
Great words anyway!
I have yet to be stung, bit, tasted or in anyway made contact with by anything that lives in the ocean side from bumping into a dead cannon ball jelly fish so that doesn’t count as being something that lives.
I have read all the literature on what to do if I am ever stung by a jelly fish.
In my mind are countless remedies that are listed on posters, websites, beach guides and other informational websites so I feel I know what to do if I ever did get stung.
Then I got to the bottom of the Wikipedia page on Jellyfish.
Who ever wrote the contact had read all the same source information I had and had had enough.
For Wikipedia states:
Although commonly recommended in folklore and even some papers on sting treatment, there is no scientific evidence that:
urine,
ammonia,
meat tenderizer,
sodium bicarbonate,
boric acid,
lemon juice,
fresh water,
steroid cream,
alcohol,
cold packs,
papaya,
or hydrogen peroxide will disable further stinging, and these substances may even hasten the release of venom.
Heat packs have been proven for moderate pain relief.
The use of pressure immobilization bandages, methylated spirits, or vodka is generally not recommended for use on jelly stings.
Well GEE WHIZ .. there goes all my reading.
What does work?
Well this article says vinegar and that vinegar is made available on Australian beaches and in other places with venomous jellyfish.
But just to cover itself, the article also states, “A 2014 study reported that vinegar also increased the amount of venom released from already-discharged nematocysts; however, this study has been criticized on methodological grounds.”
For me?
Happy that Box Jellyfish species Chiropsalmus quadrumanus contradicts the belief that Cubozoans are semelparity, I will continue to walk along the beach.
If I could somehow block Bill Bryson out of my brain …
best and the brightest? nobody said it better words come back to haunt
At the Trump Inauguration in 2017, it was reported that after the Inaugural address of the New President, according to three people who were present, Former President George W. Bush gave a brief assessment saying, “That was some weird shit.”
The Trump years …
The COVID era …
The Biden / Trump Debate …
Nope there aren’t any better words.
There was a term that was used by the author, David Halberstam, to describe the Kennedy / Johnson Administration.
The best and the brightest.
At least that is how the book was titled.
The Best and the Brightest.
When in fact, it should have been titled, The Best and the Brightest?
Mr. Halberstam would later write that the phrase “… went into the language, although it is often misused, failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”
In other words, in describing the Kennedy / Johnson Administration reaction to Vietnam, Mr. Halberstam was saying, THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?
THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?
Instead it became a badge of honor.
That these people WERE the best and the brightest and they were there to serve.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sure.
Ironic ain’t it?
This election cycle the irony flows thick and fast on both sides of the aisle.
THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?
THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?
That is some sad shit.
On the other hand, something did come through to me lately and that is a sense of hope.
Yes, I did say a sense of hope.
Not that the problems presented by the current political cycle will be solved but that have become magnified out of context.
The people involved in politics today, the best and the brightest, are just too small to be of concern unless you are a 24 hour TV news station and you have to fill 24 hours of news so these small people become big.
If the HEADLINE is big enough, the NEWS IS BIG ENOUGH said Charles Foster Kane.
Well, maybe, the sky isn’t falling.
Well, maybe this just a bump, a bad bump.
I am remined the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where the ‘elected official of the people’ forbids anyone to go outside the city walls … ‘as the Turk is out there’ and when finally Baron Munchausen sneaks outside the gates, the isn’t anyone there at all.
The good news is this election will be over in 4 months.
The best news is that we get to do this again in 4 years, and maybe this time, the best and the brightest just might show up.
We DO have to get there and to get there we will, as President Bush put it so well, go through some weird shit.
just stay in bed and read a book – basically you just suffer through it
Doctors advise resting as much as possible while sick. If you’re up for it, take a lap around the block — “you should not be completely inactive,” Dr. Sax said — but don’t push yourself.
“Some people like to take long walks,” Dr. Smith said. “I just stay in bed and read a book. Basically, you just suffer through it.”
Dr. Davey Smith, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Diego and Dr. Paul Sax, the clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on how to deal with having the FLiRT variant of the COVID virus as quoted in the article, A Guide to Managing Covid This Summer By Dani Blum who joined The Times in 2019 and has reported on Covid-19 since the early days of the pandemic.
Why was I reading this article?
Because after 4 years of NoVid and staying covid free hidden away in the low country (despite being a travel mecca) we finally got the covid.
Along with feeling like we have been run over by a truck, having covid has been as much fun as we ever imagined.
The day I came down with it we had been at the beach and I had been battered by big waves and voiced the opinion that those waves really beat me up.
But it wasn’t the waves beat me up, it was the COVID FLiRT variant.
Oh BOY!
Disappointed that we finally got the crud but I was more surprised at the reaction I got when I went to the local doctor-in-a-box for a professional covid test and to check on the latest covid guidelines.
The clinic I went to said thy don’t do covid tests anymore without an appointment so they can order in a test.
There are no guidelines – stay home if you can – where a mask maybe
They even said that if they, the PA and the Nurse I chatted with, get it, they are expected to be at work if they feel able …
Oh well.
I don’t feel up to taking a lap and getting out for a walk in the 90+ heat and humidity is about as attractive as it sounds.
Luckily, I guess, I can work remotely so I have been all week, but one of these days, when I am sick, I am going to follow Dr. Davey Smith’s advice and just stay in bed and read a book.
hatred of chaos falsenesses of memory bridges of delight
Remembering also the memories of these things, and the deep magic wrought upon them by the falsenesses of memory: the shell become a jewel, the sand become a desert, the waves become the ineluctable hatred of chaos, the weeds and mosses become as bridges of delight wonderfully windswept, archangelically designed, fairylifted and void-defying, between one fever of darkness and the next; whereover nimbly I send my messengers, and they return, swiftly, with that fantastic nonsense which feeds the soul.
From Landscape West of Eden as printed in Selected Poems by Conrad Aiken, Oxford University Press. 1961.
In just this one fragment of the 44 page poem Landscape West of Eden, Conrad Aiken uses grand words and phrases like:
memories of these things deep magic wrought upon them falsenesses of memory the shell become a jewel the sand become a desert the waves become the ineluctable hatred of chaos the weeds and mosses become as bridges of delight wonderfully windswept archangelically designed fairylifted and void-defying
All combining into fantastic nonsense which feeds the soul.
In the New York Times Review of the poem, written on May 5, 1935, Mr. C. G. Poore starts his review with, “WHEN Gertrude Stein became a national institution she incidentally gave readers courage to say they could not understand what they were reading. The custom has spread.“
But Mr. Poore closes his review with these words: “We admire Mr. Aiken’s Integrity, but we just do not understand what he is talking about. The fault is with us; poems about angels obviously should not look for understanding to earthly creatures.”
The fault is with us.
Poems about angels obviously should not look for understanding to earthly creatures.
No Haiku For You 