My Adventures as a Teen Aged Philosopher

Some of the stuff I retrieved from my parent's house last year just got tossed into a box. In some cases I looked briefly at an object, said "ugh" but felt it needed to be kept.  This is one such.  

I attended Minnehaha Academy for high school.  A private school, it likely gave me a better education than the public high school on our end of town.  It even had classes in religion, philosophy, etc.

I took a philosophy survey class as a junior or so.  It was a small group, maybe four or five of us students.  It was taught by a man named George Fisher, who had been a Catholic priest.  Here's the cover of the notebook from that class....

There was an awful lot of doodling and marginalia in this book.  Some of it related to philosophy, note the yin/yang.  Other stuff I'm not sure.  I might have been taking geometry at the same time to account for some of the shapes and formulae.  It starts out fairly coherent...

But towards the end I was clearly going off the rails.  I think Neo Platonism pushed me over the edge.

The class probably did me some good.  In this world sometimes you have to be philosophical and if you can't square it with Plato, maybe St. Thomas Aquinas will suffice.  The only student I remember, and the only one who seemed to understand this stuff, was named Winston Cavert.  I got to wondering where he ended up....turns out he also went to medical school but had a rather more impressive career than your humble scribe.  He went into infectious disease and became a Professor.  Cheers, Winston, if you stumble across this!

My Get Rich Quick Product Idea

Ah, getting older.  Well, it does beat the alternative.  But you do have to attend to more "maintenance" as the birthday cake candles glow a bit brighter.  

As a retired MD I'm a bad patient.  But there are things I believe in strongly enough that I even talk myself into them.  Like colonoscopy.  Turns out I have a bit of  family history, my grandfather dying of it at just a few years older than I am now.  So, there's nothing for it....

The procedure is not so bad.  I just insist on the good meds.  Much as Fentanyl has caused suffering and tragedy when used illicitly, it - in concert with its good pal Versed - makes for a dreamy, detached state. 

Now the prep, that's just not fun.  But necessary.

Suffice to say that you have to drink some stuff that gives you very kinetic, ate a bad burrito in Mexico level diarrhea.  Don't plan anything on that prep day.

The prep meds usually come in small - but deadly as it happens - colored glass bottles.  Now, on to my make a million bucks idea.

I used to be a fair home brewer.  And I'm pretty sure you could concoct a beer flavored prep solution.  Great beer?  Oh, no way.  But better than the horrid sensation of glugging down what tastes like concentrated Dead Sea water?  I think so.

But you'd have to market it well.

I've tried asking AI to show me some example "brands".  In some cases it was unwilling.  I mean, the obvious is BUTT LITE.  But that stuff can hardly be considered beer.....  So, how about:

This is actually almost spot on for the little green bottles of Affliction.  They are perhaps half the size but just that color.   

I actually enjoy the occasional Heineken, and once had a very memorable tour of their flagship brewery in Amsterdam.  For a variety of technical reasons there were some parts of the tour we could not take that morning, and each time we were promised "Well, that will give you more time in the tap room".

Apologies for the satire Heineken, I actually  think highly of your product.

Now, there are a number of US beer brands, current and historic, that would not need any alteration at all to be good colonoscopy prep names.  If, and this is a gigantic if, their copyright lawyers looked the other way and whistled, I could see several names being quite compelling just as they are.

Schlitz, Blatz, any others you'd like to suggest?

But perhaps your tastes do not run to European or US beers.  I've enjoyed some Mexican lagers as well.  Modello and Dos Equis do not sound immediately promising, but what about:

Should of course have a crown on the label, and actual Corona comes in clear bottles.

I've always felt that the silly times we live in make satire darn near impossible.  So who knows, perhaps somebody has already tried this concept....

England 2026 - A Poison Garden

Here's another in the series of "Digger's Day Out" jaunts.  Alnwick Gardens.

These are adjacent to Alnwick Castle, which would also be worth your while.  Among other things it was used as a filming location for Downton Abbey.  Also Harry Potter.  They offer special Broomstick Class on the open square where young Potter first learned to fly a Quiddich broom.

In both cases the pronunciation is "Ann-ick".  Not to be confused with a spot near Hexham that is spelled Annick but pronounced differently.  You get used to this after a few visits to the area.

Now I'll say up front that neither the Castle nor the Garden are a cheap day out.  You have to go into this as we did, with the knowledge that your travel dollars (or whatever currency) are helping to maintain something wonderous and worthwhile.  OK, on to the Gardens....

The centerpiece is this grand array of fountains and waterfalls.  It's the sort of thing that you really can't capture with a photo.  But here it is from the bottom looking up:

And from the top looking down. The structure you see on the end is a nice restaurant/garden center complex.  Very dog friendly by the way, albeit with ongoing discussions between dogs and the small groups of ducks that waddle around begging for scraps.

Every now and then the fountains fire up and do interesting things.

The garden proper has all sorts of plants.  Early in the season not all are at their best, but enough were that the gardener types in our group were impressed.  Me, I was just as happy to wander through the hedge maze and find a naughty monkey sculpture...

We all have our particular interests I suppose.

There were some side trips adjacent to the Garden that we did not visit.  For a small extra fee you can visit an area called Lilidorei.  This seems to be a gigantic play area for kids with a sort of fantasy theme and what claims to be the world's biggest play structure.  

If I had grandkids in tow it would be a tempting option.  For the kids of course.....

But we spent a small additional amount of money for something else, the Poison Garden tour.

I won't give you the entire itinerary and talk, that would not be fair to the very clever staff they have doing this 20 minute or so stroll through a special section of the Garden.  But essentially they have collected a batch of famous poisonous plants in one place.  Famous of course as they have been used in assorted real and fictitious murders, all of which are described in slightly tidied up form.

Rather fun.  After the talk was done I did chat a bit with the guide, letting her know I was a former ER doctor (or A and E in their parlance).  I knew a bit about several of these plants, especially the ones that have/had medical uses.  Small amounts of foxglove, good.  Large amounts, skull n' crossbones territory...

Our authoress was not in the group that visited Alnwick.  But to be sure, we subsequently had another of our Plot Idea chats.  What if a series of poisonings happened, and after a while it became evident that someone had taken the Poison Garden tour and was going down the row using each poison for a different crime????

Meanwhile, in the general category of "name yer poison" our friend who is an aficionado of such things discovered that the gift shop sold a Poison Garden Gin!

I'm sure this will merit a place of pride in her "gin closet".  I have on occasion teased her that it is more like a "gin annex".  Or should I say, "gin Alnwicks"?

The Black Bag at age 75. Or thereabouts.

My dad was an Old School physician.  Although he practiced in Minneapolis, his approach to medicine was not much different than that of the country doctors he saw in his youth, showing up at the various farm houses with a horse and buggy, carrying the traditional black bag.  He still did house calls in an era where they were becoming obsolete.  And he carried a black bag when he went.

I remember it.  Mostly I remember its presence, not it being used all that much.  By the time I was actually paying attention to such matters I think his house call days were nearly over.  But he still toted it when he visited his patients in the nursing homes.

Here's the bag.  I of course found it when the duty fell to me of clearing out the room at my parents house that had a high percentage of his medical stuff.

It looks a little less "black bag" now.  That's partly the lighting and partly the underlying leather showing through after all this time.  How much time?

There's a little name plate on it.  When you look on ebay and such places you'll see claims that this is a "Vintage" item from the 1920's or 30's.  But no, the patent date is from 1940.  My older brother claims that there was actually an even earlier bag once, but it got really beat up and was discarded.  I'd guess this item was acquired in the 1950's when he was back from military service and starting out in practice.  He had two different office locations I think, and also did many home, nursing home and hospital call.

The contents of the bag were sort of a time capsule.  Lots of stuff for treating migraines.  More injectable vitamins than you'd expect.  Some sort of under the tongue asthma medicine I'd never heard of.  And this stuff:

As you can guess from the name it was an anti nausea drug used to treat morning sickness.  I looked this one up, it was discontinued in 1969 for causing liver damage.

That sort of fits with the overall contents of the bag.  I think it was in use early in my dad's career then just set aside in the late 1960's.  If I remember it after that it was either as something sitting in my dad's office, or perhaps just my imagination.

Black doctor bags used to be a thing.  They still were when I graduated medical school in 1982.  Every graduate got one for free, courtesy of a drug company.  I didn't use mine much, just a bit in residency.  I have not seen it for a while but its probably around here somewhere.  In keeping with my new one item in, one or more items out policy I will probably ditch it next time I run across it.

The medications that were in the bag were all so old they were likely inert, but I still took them down to the medication disposal box at the local police station.

My dad's old black bag I'll keep.  I cleaned it up and aired it out on the porch for long enough that the nasty medicinal smells have lessened.  I'll pack it up with various mementos from his career and leave an explanatory note in it for when my kids run across it someday.....

Vademecum

Sometimes the Great Clean Up project has unexpected results.  As the family member best able to judge such things I was charged with dealing with my dad's library of medical books.  Yes, you remember books.  I'll have more on this in a bit, but basically only a handful were worth preserving.  Mostly well illustrated older texts and a few I kept because a small mystery is involved.

And there there are things like this:      

                                                                                                       

This one gave my memory a good old nudge.  Because I remember a concoction called "Vademecum".  I was a bit fuzzy on details, I just knew it came in a tube and was pink.  My brother recalled that it was a European tooth paste.  Hey, its still sold today albeit not by the company that started marketing it in Sweden in the late 1890's.

So what's the connection?  Vade Mecum is a Latin phrase that translates to "Go with me".  It has long been used for portable hand books, often of a medical nature.  The sort of thing that would contain tips to diagnoses and lots of make 'em yourself remedies for same.  The first such use is said to be from circa 1629.  And as modern medicine advanced and this sort of reference became less important, this early 20th century example would have been near the end of the long and distinguished line.  I assume the tooth paste was a marketing concept based on the notion that there were all sorts of great formulas to be found in the Vade Mecum.

A bit more on the etymology of Vade-Mecum, including its link to "vamoose" and "wade", with a tarty chambermaid thrown in for good measure.

Army Medicine on the Eve of D-Day

In the Great House Clean Up the ratio of Trash to Treasure runs strongly to the former.  By about 1000:1.  But a few family treasures are being wrested from the attentions of the Mice.  And some things that just deserve a few minutes of thought.

My dad did an accelerated college-Med School program during WWII.  He graduated from the latter just after the war ended.  So this item would have been part of his reading material about half way through Medical School.

This is the June 1944 edition of THE BULLETIN of the U.S. Army Medical Department.  So, what was actually on their collective minds as the troops were heading onto Omaha Beach?

Well, its 119 pages long.

The first page covers this new fangled stuff called Penicillin, and various articles on this first of the real antibiotics total 14 pages including a delightful account by Dr. Fleming on its semi-accidental discovery.

But that takes a back seat to the various things that could go wrong with any army's most important bit of equipment, the feet of their soldiers!  Combing the totals for Trench Foot, fungal infections, injuries from obstacle courses and such, these add up to 30 pages, about a quarter of the publication.

Actual combat related material does appear, as US troops had been in action in the Pacific and North Africa.  But I got the sense that academic discussion of how to best debride and clean up wounds was a bit perfunctory.  Seems like one of those things you just have to do in real life to learn.

There are lots of little oddities to be found.  Three pages, with lots of illustrations, on how to construct a latrine system in an area where you can't dig pits.  A page on sting ray injuries.  And, given that this publication was created by merging Army medical, dental and veterinary publications, two pages devoted to "CORONARY OCCLUSION IN A RACE HORSE".

And how about ten pages on how to fumigate barracks with highly toxic cyanide gases?!

All pretty interesting stuff, but sometimes it just raises more questions.  For instance:

This was obviously another high priority subject for military medicine, but I always thought the concern was mostly that our boys in uniform - or actually out of same - would consort with  bimbos and perhaps the occasional Mata Hari type.  Indeed, one of my dad's few anecdotes on his military career involved doing what was called "short arm inspections" on the troop ship coming back from Europe!

That the Women's Army Corps were in need of similar moral education came as a surprise.  Were the Army docs worried about the gals consorting with himbos and Mata Harrys???

Help Wanted, President. Looking for a Qualified Applicant in 2024

Every four years, starting in 2011, I've posted my thoughts on politics under the title: Help Wanted, President.  I usually rank contenders on a point scale, giving them credit for various things that ought to help them govern wisely.  And Lord knows, it's a hard job and they'll need that help.  An ideal candidate might for instance have served in the military, had a career in business, and then gone into politics.  Again, in an ideal scenario, he or she would have started out small, perhaps as a State Assembly Person, and worked their way up to a responsible executive role.  Governor of a mid sized, politically diverse state would be very appealing.  I'm not into Historic Firsts as much as some, but I'll give a few bonus credits to a qualified candidate who brings unique perspectives into the Oval Office.  

Well, that's not the kind of election we're gonna have this time around.  There has been effectively no Primary process by which candidates are tested and the field winnowed.  Biden and Trump are both very well known, and each man is loathed by approximately 50% of the electorate.  

And its hard to look to the VP's as a tie breaker.  I believe Kamala Harris is considerably sharper than she is portrayed.  Some of this is the unenviable role of a Veep....don't show up The Boss.  If I were to apply my standard criteria to rating her she does come up a bit light.  She got her prior jobs as Attorney General and US Senator by political patronage in the One Party State that is California.  Her Presidential bid in 2020 was so lame that she had to bail before the first actual votes were cast.  You'd like to think that she's learned a few things in the last three and a half years.  But of course the question for her, and indeed for Biden and Trump, is whether she's learned the right lessons.

Trump's VP selection is not yet known, but will in the tradition of the day immediately be derided as some combination of evil and stupid, somehow even worse than he is, and that's sayin' something.  Who this person is, and what her (?) qualifications actually are will not be relevant.

So we have a classic Lesser of Two evils scenario.  I don't like these.  I've voted over the years for Democrats, Republicans and Independents.  I've had times when my choice won and disappointed me, and others when their opponent has won and turned out to be quite good.  Those who have been sworn in as President since my first rodeo in 1976 have varied wildly in both character and in competence.  The last genuinely good men I've seen in the White House were Ford and probably Carter.  The most effective politician was, despite his moral failings, Bill Clinton.  I'm leaving Obama aside for now....it takes a while for the perspective of history to come into focus.

When I posted Help Wanted in 2016 I described then longshot candidate Trump as "..a large angry man with orange hair."  He is without question an objectionable man with dubious morals and a tendency to bully.  His record is hard to judge due to the distortions of Covid and the continuous efforts of what is referred to as The Deep State to sabotage him.  He also made many poor choices in selecting people for his Administration.  He remains large, orange and angry, and he will want to get even with some people.  Some of whom, in my opinion, have it coming.  But pre-Covid the economy was good, we did not engage in many foreign misadventures and whether you liked it or not, we did have leadership.

President Biden on the other hand, is cognitively and perhaps physically impaired.  The clues have been abundant in the last couple of years.  Sheltered from demanding appearances, slurring and misspeaking, confusing the names of world leaders.  When the real villains of the world see the Commander in Chief stumbling and falling repeatedly they take notice and are emboldened to greater malicious actions.  The real time implosion of the myth of Biden Competence in the recent debate was shocking even as it was unsurprising.  It can't be unseen.  Softball taped and edited interviews with friendly journalists won't help.  Moderate ability to read off a teleprompter is not enough.  Every time he now appears wearing his Cool Dude aviator sunglasses the instinctive reaction is going to be that he is hiding weird, unblinking eyes.  I have a career in medicine and the experience of two parents with dementia, I've seen this movie.  It never has a happy ending.

We've had impaired presidents before, and it has gone badly.  Ronald Reagan was not well during the latter part of his second term.  We got Oliver North running an illegal, spooky foreign policy on the side.  Woodrow Wilson seriously botched the reorganization of the world in 1918-19.  We are still paying the price for that.  The parallels between Edith Wilson and the current First Lady are unsettling.

Oh, but we've always muddled through.  Yes, but in times that were less complex and in which the power of the Presidency was more constrained.

I think the current administration - and it is with difficulty I avoid the term regime - has seen this coming for a long time.  And like all desperate factions has been willing to do anything to stay in power.  We've never had a President send armed agents to raid the home of his main rival.  Professions of non-involvement aside, the efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, tied up in court, maybe actually in jail, are the stuff of  banana republics.  Once normalized by success they would be repeated.

So I'm hoping for the best.  As of now Biden vows to fight on.  It's about even money whether that will soon change and Vice President Harris gets to make her case.  Ideally she'd tap a running mate to reassure those of us whose votes can be swayed.  Trump could and should do the same.  He's sharper than Biden, but he's not young either.

Perhaps we'll see  Harris-Beshear vs. Trump-Stefanik.  Each team would have a fair bit of baggage to unload, but our Republic would be better served by this option than what is barreling down the road at us presently.

My previous Help Wanted posts....

For the 2012 election

For 2016....what happened???

2020 The Covid Election - with bonus Woodrow Wilson insights

I feel a little left out

I'm going to go out and tempt fate here*.  With the CDC basically saying that Covid-19 is just another respiratory virus I now feel just a little cheated that I never got it. **

I know many people who did.  Their recoveries had an element of nobility to them.  They took on the greatest malady of our times and prevailed.  Sometimes they got to get up on their soap box and gripe about some person they encountered who DID NOT WEAR A MASK!

I just went through life figuring if I got it I got it, and that beyond a certain point all these precautions and masks would prove to be exercises in futility.  And so it has come to pass.

I think most people took this all in stride.  The small percentage of the population that just went nuts over this were probably unreasonable about other things before Covid and will now move on to being unreasonable about other things.

It is a shame that the whole darn thing got politicized, and that the measures to counter the disease were - in retrospect - so draconian.  I've been working with middle and high school students for 25 years and counting, and can tell you that the damage to academic achievement and to their world generally has been profound and malign.

Oh, something will get me eventually.  That's probably the truest thing I or anyone else could ever write.  But it is my intent to just carry on.  I'm not going to do anything that is clearly stupid....no motorcycles in my future  But while I won't live forever I certainly won't live in fear.

________________________

*Fate being duly tempted I did get dismal-ill on the trip to Florida.  Cough, runny nose, fatigue.  Covid?  Who knows, I just slept it off and treated it - per CDC now - as a poorly timed case of the crud.  Fate....it's always Hubris then Nemesis, isn't it?

** Realistically I probably got Covid in early March of 2020, too early to have testing available.  36 hours of scratchy throat and fatigue.  Nothing that rest and beer could not overcome.

An ER Miracle

If you are expecting a heart warming tale of a miraculous recovery from a serious illness, sorry.  That sort of thing is actually pretty common.  Oh, sure, the first few times you see an apparently comatose patient wake up and look around after you give them a dose of Narcan (reverses opioid overdose) or glucose ( 'cause having a blood sugar near zero ain't healthy),  its pretty impressive.  But this story is about something far, far less probable.

It was a night about this time of year.  There is usually a cold, dark, unhopeful stretch right after the holidays.  It was snowing.  And I was the only doctor working a small ER in Northern Wisconsin.

The ambulance brought in a man suffering from severe depression.  This is of the "no hope, suicidal" variety and as such not something that a pep talk and a prescription for anti depressants that will start working next week is in order.  No, this man needed inpatient psych care.

But there was a problem.  He was a VA patient.

Things have gotten better in recent years but for a long time the Veteran's Administration health care system was legendary for its callous, inefficient, slow nature.  Patients could not get in the door, and if they did they could expect to sit on gurneys in the hallways for a very long time.  Probably it started with the attitude that "You GIs are used to waiting in lines and obeying orders, so just keep waiting around and do what we say".  This of course is not being fair to the many VA employees who cared a lot, nor is it unreasonable to note that some segments of their clientele are patients of the most challenging sort.  For a long time, if you had "better" health care options you used them.  Those who did not, had much higher rates of homelessness, mental health and substance issues.

But that's not relevant to our story.  

The patient was a nice guy.  He was trying to do his best in a situation where he had little support.  He was not one of our "regulars", that challenging cohort whose creativity and tenacity in seeking narcotics was as impressive as it was aggravating.

What I'm about to say next will not be believed by anyone who has ever worked in an ER, or who has had extensive contact with the VA healthcare system.  I understand your disbelief.

Within 90 minutes I had spoken to the nearest VA hospital that had inpatient psychiatric services.  It was in Minneapolis, probably three hours away in good weather, longer under current conditions.  I had him approved for admission, the receiving resident briefed on the details, the records faxed and the ambulance putting wheels to slick pavement.

How is this possible?  That would be a longer story.  But it is always important to know who makes the decisions in any system and what motivates them.  It never hurts to be relaxed and pleasant in your conversations....none of which should be delegated to others.  Most inefficient systems are actually staffed by good people, you just have to appeal to that goodness and encourage them to do the little bit of extra work that their protocols don't strictly require.  

I hope the old soldier did OK.  I never saw him back in my ER, so most likely things worked out.  As a victory over bureaucratic inertia this was way up there in the difficulty level.  But I don't gloat over this one as I have on a few other occasions*.  A simple and sincere thank you from the patient, which I duly passed along to the VA, was sufficient reward on a cold, bleak night.                            ---------------------------------------------

Medical Software Gone Wild

Bureucraticus Victrix

Tales of the Old Lieutenant

Now and then I do a bit of housekeeping, cleaning out drawers and such.  Recently I came across a big stack of cards.  It was a mixed batch.  Sympathy cards after my dad's death.  Thank you cards from families of robotics students.  Well wishes on my retirement from family practice 16 years ago.  When you switch over to the less personal ER work you don't get quite as much in the way of personal thank yous.

One note was about 20 years old.  It was from the family of a long time patient and thanked me for a story I had told at his visitation.  This was something I had entirely forgotten about, but I sure remember both the patient and the story.

The Old Lieutenant was a classic example of The Greatest Generation.  Small town boy.  Joined the Army.  Became a combat officer in Italy.  Came home, started a career, married his sweetheart and had a bunch of great kids.

Unfortunately he also was of the "smoke 'em if you got 'em" generation, and carried his pack a day habit with him when he took off the olive drab and put on civvies.  He had emphysema, and bad.

I took care of him for many years.  After a while he and I both had things pretty well figured out.  What combination of breathing treatments, steroids, antibiotics and oxygen would pull him through a flare up.  Usually we were on the same page.  But the man could be stubborn.

Once I had him in the office and could see that he was heading for trouble.  His color was not good. He was breathing a little faster than he should.  The long ago sweetheart and I both wanted him admitted but he refused.  Well I was always of the opinion that I work for him not the other way around, so we opted to try him with home treatment.

I was expecting to get a late night call that he was on his way in by ambulance but instead he turned up a few days later in the office doing better.

He did admit that it was touch and go for a while.  Between lack of sleep, low oxygen levels and the side effects of big doses of steroids he was both short of breath and feeling confused.  He found that at least the breathing aspect of this was better if he sat in his lawn chair in his garage with the door open.  A gentle breeze, a little cool air.....it was a minor bit of relief but a welcome one.

And then he looked up and saw a large, hostile raccoon staring at him.

Now, when you have been hallucinating there are limited options for deciding whether a sinister apparition like this is real or not.  He yelled at it.  Nothing.  He waited for it to go away.  It did not.  Finally he decided that either the raccoon was imaginary or it was a seriously ill and deranged critter.  The raccoon perhaps had a similar notion.

But what the raccoon did not have was a shovel.

Mustering his considerable determination he stood up, grabbed the nearest garden tool and beat the potentially rabid raccoon to death.

That's how he knew he'd make it through this flare up, and in fact I had the privilege of caring for him for several years after that.

Nutritious Drinks on the House

In the interest of not being an Old Grump I'm going to say something positive about the modern world.  Man, we get lots more fun packages.  Makes sense of course.  Its the internet and Amazon and the decline of in person shopping.  See it, click on it, money you never actually touch flies away somewhere else and minions show up to leave things on your porch.

Sometimes they are real surprises.  Hmmm, this one is heavy.  I didn't order anything like that.

Lets peek inside.....

What you see first is a huge stack of coupons for money off of Ensure.  If you are under say, 60, you might not know what that is.  Sold as a nutritional supplement for Weak and Elderly folk its kind of like Energy Drink for Geezers.  And under the layer of paper....

The good folks at Ensure decided to ship me 12 pounds worth of Nutrition shakes.  They do this on an intermittent and seemingly random basis.

Of course it is because I was a primary care physician quite a few years ago.  They hope I'll hand the coupons out to my elderly patients.  Who gets the actual bottles of stuff I'm not sure.  Interesting the things that still turn up 16 years after I left primary care and 7 since I retired from medicine entirely.  

Or is this not random at all?  Does some devious computer program keep track of retired physicians and send them boxes of Geezer Juice every once in a while?

Signs of Spring - Taste of Novacaine

On a day with the first real promise of Spring, my view from the dentist's chair.

I'm not a great patient.  It's not my dentist I'm grumpy with, he's great.  No, I am unhappy with my teeth.

We expect our teeth to be loyal, durable soldiers.

Deserters have throughout history been regarded with contempt and shot at sunrise.

A Rare Product Review. Actually a Warning.

One branch of the family is in on a sort of "subscription pantry" deal.  They pay a fee and every few weeks go and pick up a bunch of food.  Lots of it.  Some of it is great.  There's always ice cream.  Some items are perishable.  The warehouse is clearly getting oversupply from restaurant suppliers.  Hope you like bananas.  Or kale.  Or both, 'cause you'll be eating a lot of it for a few days.  And then making banana kale bread with the left-left overs.

Some of the stuff is near or even a titch past expiration date.  A fairly high percentage has Spanish themed packaging.  

But overall it is great stuff, and a family with two ravenous kids does well.

A few things they don't care for or want the tykes to consume.  Give that stuff to grandpa.  This includes most of the soda pop.  Some of the pop is normal stuff.  Oh, maybe the cans are a bit dented or some such, but just fine.  Some of it is odd stuff.  And then there was this:

Here, take a closer look:

It is officially called Mtn DEW Flamin' Hot.  Caffeine, chili peppers, citrus flavor,  fluorescent red dye and who knows what else.  I assume the target audience is a demographic that communicates - after a fashion - in chopped up word fragments and abbreviations with minimal punctuation.  The demon on the label really should have tipped me off, but I was thirsty and took a big swig.  That was forgivable.  The second swig was just stupidity.

This stuff immediately gave me symptoms that back in my clinical days I'd have said suggested an inferior wall myocardial infarction.  Rapid heart rate.  Upper abdominal discomfort.  Mild nausea.  I felt crummy for a couple of hours.  You may notice that the bottle is empty.  I poured it down the sink and sluiced it through with a lot of water.  Straight up I think it would burn through the pipes.

Evidently this was a trial product, only available for about six months.  Its appearance in the sometimes outdated but usually very palatable food pantry stocks may well have been its final, vengeful appearance in the marketplace.

Good riddance.

"A Pox Upon You!" - Modern Sensitive Edition.

In the odd news of last week I found this: "Monkeypox to get a new name, says WHO".  Why?  Well it is the usual strange modern sensibilities. 

'It comes after more than 30 scientists wrote last week about the "urgent need for a non-discriminatory and non-stigmatizing" name for the virus and the disease it causes.'

Wikipedia image: credit Carlos Delgado

This of course begs the question of exactly what stigma and potential discrimination is involved.  Presumably the semantic gymnastics here have arrived at the conclusion that Monkeypox will cause offense to the continent of Africa and the inhabitants thereof.  Never mind that monkeys are also found in South and Central America, Asia, a few hanging on at Gibraltar and some colonies of escapees thriving in Florida.  

I don't make light of any disease, but you have to admit that Monkeypox is a funny concept.  I recall David Letterman going on at length about it back when he was entertaining.

But if that is how the World Health Organization wants to play ball then fine.  Did you know that there are lots of other "pox" diseases?  Here's a partial listing with, as necessary, my comments on why they MUST BE CHANGED NOW.

1. Camelpox.  Clearly offensive to various nations and ethnicities in the Middle East.  It must go...even though the only human transmission of the infection occurred in India.

2. Cowpox.  As a citizen of Wisconsin - America's Dairy Land - I am profoundly triggered and offended.  

3.  Goatpox.  Given the initial reports of Monkeypox turning up at STD clinics I'm not goin' there.

4. Horsepox.  A Pox upon My Little Pony?  I'm on board for that one.

5. Raccoonpox.  Masked thieves.  Offensive to the "justice involved" demographic? 

6. Sealpox.  The Inuit People of the Artic rise up in outrage.

7. Sheeppox.  Not goin' there either.

8. Squirrelpox.  Since this is a disease brought in by immigrant grey squirrels that is wiping out native populations of reds squirrels in the UK, any mention of it must be anti-immigrant MAGA disinfo.

9. Skunkpox.  Fine. A species whose reputation can go no lower.

10. Swinepox.  Certainly offensive to the great state of Iowa.

11. Volepox.  If you know what a vole is feel free to comment and raise the battle standard for Vole Rights.  If you have a Voter Rights flag a few bits of duct tape will suffice.

Special Dishonorable Mention number one:  not a specific vector but Lumpy Skin Disease Virus is in the same family.  It is clearly stigmatizing to most of us over 50.

Special Dishonorable Mention number two:  There is an entire subfamily of pox viruses that affect birds.  To keep my screed short I've left these off.  But Canarypox is obviously a dog whistle reference to the Monkeypox outbreak that got well and truly up and running at a wild party on the Canary Islands.  And somehow somebody will take offense at Penguinpox.  

Observant readers will note that I am giving a free pass to a couple of better known pox diseases.  Chickenpox, while perhaps offensive to those with social anxiety disorder, is actually named not for the domestic chickens but for chick peas.  This admirably Vegan legume does look a bit like chickenpox lesions, at least until they hit the oozing and crusting stage.  And Smallpox.  Oh sure quite offensive to Little People but the disease is extinct, no longer found in the wild and known to be held under the tightest security in a single US lab.  Oh, and also one in Russia which should be OK because they have not had a major biolab Ooopsie in roughly fifty years.  Not bad by the standards of geographically unspecified Communist countries....

Here's the CDC's full list of pox virus diseases.  Expect it to be tidied up shortly.

Covid 2022 - A Look at the Stats while we still can.

Stuff you read on the internet should always be checked, especially things that seem remarkable.  So when I heard that hospitals would no longer be required to report Covid 19 deaths I was pretty skeptical.  But I did find the source, a very dense document from January 9th of this year advising hospitals that as of February 2nd the Department of Health and Human Services would no longer be requiring them to report Previous Day's Deaths from Covid 19.  

There are several possible interpretations of this.  On the one hand it is pretty clear that deaths "from" and "with" Covid have been so blended together that the statistic is not that helpful.  Or if you are of a more cynical point of view the acknowledgment that Covid has not been eradicated is "not that helpful" to the political fortunes of the current beleaguered Administration.  Of course we will still get daily rations of Scary News regards record "cases" and increases in subcategories such as pediatric cases.

Soon we'll be consuming a steady diet of frightening anecdotes. So, while we still have the numbers lets have a look at incidence and fatality.  In most northern states the omicron variant has resulted in record numbers of cases, most of whom - allowing for a whole lot more testing - are younger than in prior waves and are not getting particularly ill.  Deaths are also up but far from earlier peaks.  The demographics of fatalities in places that actually report useful data are worth a look.  Here's my home state of Minnesota.  It's a bit hard to make out, but all those lines near the bottom indicate a very low death rate in people under 60.  Under 20 does not even register.

Digging deeper into their stats you find that the average "case" is 36 years old, the average ICU hospitalized patient is 63 and the average age of those dying from Covid is 80.  That stat caught my eye.  To have an average age of 80 there must be some real oldsters in the sample set.  Indeed, deaths were recorded in patients ranging from age 1 to age 109.  As an aside I can say that other information mined from the Minnesota data indicates that virtually all recent deaths under 30 have significant co-morbid conditions or are just fanciful.  Several were fentanyl overdoses with an incidental positive Covid test noted.

Northern states are always disease ridden in the Winter months.  That's why people move to, oh I don't know, Florida maybe?  And Florida might, hopefully, be showing us the future.  There have been some bad stretches down in the Sunshine State.  All of them gleefully reported.  But through some combination of weather, prior disease, immunization and who knows what else, Florida has massive numbers of positive tests and, well, have a look.

Cases:  Averaging 61,500 a day.  Pretty bad....

And deaths.  While acknowledging that each death is tragic to the families involved, a rolling seven day average of 9 deaths a day suggests to me that barring some new, horrid variant, Covid is nearly over.  I don't have age breakdown for Florida cases by week, but their overall stats since the beginning of this horror mirror those of Minnesota closely.

Sorry to bring up a subject that everyone is tired of and that makes a lot of people uncomfortable.  But if even imperfect statistics are soon going to be discarded, 'cause Science or something, this is our last chance to see beyond the Scary News.

 

Endemic - 2021

Right about now we are at the two year mark for Covid-19.  There are so many things we still don't know for sure, despite spending time, money and other societal resources in unimaginable amounts, but I think it is fair to say that it started in the last few months of 2019.

I should note up front that there are things that you are not permitted to say in various versions of the Public Square.  I'll try not to stumble close to any of them, but to be honest in some cases information has gone from Fake! to Misinformation, to Plausible, to Probable....and back again.  I'm going to assume anyone who has bothered to read this far is not the mindless sheep that the Guardians of the Internet assume us to be, and is capable of weighing competing viewpoints and actually pondering them.

So, what's going on with this data:

These graphs are from Worldometer the morning of 15 November.  They are specific to Wisconsin but are similar to data from across the Northern US.  They indicate a rise in "cases" and a simultaneous near disappearance of deaths.  I'm putting cases in parentheses because that is a grab bag of things from sudden, severe illness down to feeling punk, further down the ladder to runny nose, and ending up with no symptoms or even potentially false positives.  Death is the ultimate in unambiguous and so gets no quotation marks.  Although even there the issue of dying of versus with Covid is a fair question.

At the time of the above graphs Wisconsin stood at just above 60% of the population vaccinated.  The numbers are somewhat opaque, and don't specifically indicate the percentage of eligible people vaccinated.  With the recent increase in the eligible pool coming from approval in younger children there should have been some jumping around of these percentages if they accounted for that approval.  So like many Covid numbers all you can say is that lots of people are getting immunized.  It is reasonable to infer that in the demographic actually at risk for serious illness the numbers are much higher.  I've seen stats suggesting 98.5% rates in seniors with about a third already getting the much vaunted booster.

So, to return to the two graphs - one grim one cheery - I'd conclude the following.  Covid rates are still significant.  But the percentage that are getting seriously ill has dropped to almost nothing.  It is only back of the envelope math, but the overall rate of US Covid mortality is around 2%.  On November 9th three people died of Covid in Wisconsin.  With the usual two weeks or so lead time between infection and demise, and roughly 3000 cases a day in that time frame, the current mortality rate is .1%.  A twenty fold drop.  So how's that possible?

Lots more testing increases the cases number.  Especially in advance of holiday travel.  This is not entirely good or bad, but mostly good.  You should be tested before you go see grandpa in Keokuk.  More testing, especially in the younger demographic, more results and more positive results.

I also strongly suspect that the number of "breakthrough" cases in the vaccinated is considerably higher than reported.  Heck, the acknowledged rate is already much higher than what was being reported a few months back.  Are the increased case numbers 10% breakthroughs?  20%? Higher?

But at least Covid is no longer causing deaths at the rates seen a year ago.  There are multiple factors in play, some optimistic, some not.

Treatment has gotten better.  We were supposed to have a two week lockdown to help the medical system prepare.  If two years has not done it, well we'll never be ready.  And there actually have been some much improved treatment options.

Immunity, both from vaccine and from getting the darn stuff, does seem to protect from more serious disease.  Better data on the specifics (acquired vs natural, various vaccine combinations, assorted age demographics) would be nice, but again after inconceivable expenditure the answers on this as in so much else, are elusive.

And finally, sadly, the cohort of people most likely to die of Covid has already been hit hard.  The ranks of frail elderly people with co-morbidities has been clobbered, with deaths from the disease, from an over strained health care system, from deferred screening for other things, and from just plain loneliness and isolation.

Well that's how it all looked on the morning of 15 November.  I got my booster yesterday*.  I got pretty loopy from the last one and for a brief shining moment understood the complete inner workings of quantum physics, Cosmology and the Drake Paradox.  So maybe all the above data makes total sense to me this morning.

Above is a scene from Time Bandits.  The weird midgets have stolen the map that shows the complete structure of the Universe including all the holes and patchwork.  Those of you who know me, feel free to comment on which dwarf you think I most resemble.

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 *That's my decision.  If yours is different I'll respect it.  If the opinions I express above make you unhappy I'll respect that too.  In the end it's about our own Mortality.  This is the most uncomfortable of all subjects.  We are, all of us, in a fight against Time.  It is a fight that we must inevitably lose.  Sooner or later we all end up on our own personal Last Stand Hill.  So how will you be remembered by those left behind?  Keep in mind that Bravery, although laudable, may not always be the ideal stance.  Don't be like George Armstrong Custer and lead those around you to disaster.  But keep in mind equally that Lack of Bravery, while understandable in flawed humans, will give you no advantage against the ultimate enemy.  Time flies the Flag of No Quarter.

Forgotten Brewery Caves - Rochester Minnesota

As I mentioned in the recent series on Mayville Wisconsin brewery caves, off site storage caves are the toughest to research.  Breweries are relatively visible, well documented and usually in predictable locations.  But what if the brewery had a cave somewhere on the edge of town?  There would be nothing on the maps and if you think about it they would not want to advertise that there was a cellar full of beer tucked away out of sight!

Similar to Mayville this story begins with a house for sale.  At this point it is probably best that I just turn this over to my friend Gabe, one of my Underworld Contacts.  His video is used with permission.  Feel free to skip over the parts that don't interest you.  Like the $500,000 price tag for the house.

Well.  It's hard to know what to make of that.  It is clearly in an area of previous stone quarrying.  But that's not a deal breaker...where else would you find the geology to build a storage cave?  The general configuration and the multiple vents make it difficult to buy this as say, a sand mine.  The visible pick work looks 19th century.  The water tower and the Plummer House above are 20th century.  It is a bit confusing to have the newer pipes running through but that's part of what makes this one interesting.

There were three breweries in Rochester during the 19th century.  There is, alas, little to point to one as a prime suspect for this cave.  My Google Earth fly through suggests that all three were on flat ground and would be candidates for off site caves.  By size alone I should think the Schuster brewery which was around from circa 1857 up to Prohibition would be the best candidate.  Alas, none of the maps of 19th century Rochester extend this far out into what looks to have been a dreary industrial area.

Now of course it is quite tony.  In fact this neighborhood having once been called Quarry Hill has become in local slang "Pill Hill" as it is where the physicians of Mayo Clinic have built and maintained some very nice houses over the years.  I'm out of that world now but there was a time when it was a major status symbol to own a home built by an early Mayo physician.  And near the pinnacle of social standing, and of the hill physically, was the Plummer House.

The property with the caves behind it was once the pump house for the Plummer Estate.  Dr. Henry Plummer built the house in the style of an English Manor house in 1924.  The water tower on the property is said to be earlier, circa 1919.  The pump house proper was built a couple of years later in 1926.  With the Plummer house being so over the top architecturally it is of course possible that they could have hand excavated a cave just for the heck of it in the mid 1920's, but the otherwise pointless side tunnels make it unlikely that it was simply a place to run pipes.  A much smaller service tunnel could have been drilled mechanically and with much less effort in the 20th century.  One small detail from the video that caught my eye was an abortive attempt to hand drill a vent.  It's something I've seen a time or two - Brownsville for instance - and has always struck me as very labor intensive.

A definitive answer?  We might not get one.  The enigma of the cave has attracted some attention and I did find a commentary that references information from the local historical society.  On the one hand a Plummer daughter opined that her father intended to grow mushrooms but never got around to it.  On the other hand the son of a man who helped design the house wrote in a 1980 letter that the cave was pre-existing.  I find this more plausible.

A couple of side notes.  Gabe is clearly a kindred spirit.  His Youtube channel shows a man having a great deal of fun in life.  I recommend it as a day brightener.

And I mentioned that the Plummer House was near the pinnacle of Rochester social circles.  At the very top of course was Mayowood, an elegant mansion built on 3000 acres by Charles Mayo in 1911.  In the Mayoverse this is something akin to the Vatican or the Pantheon.  Many years ago in an interesting phase of my career I was actually invited to a private reception at Mayowood.  I thought it was OK, they served some very nice wine.  I don't recall much else, in fact I found it rather boring.  But our friends employed by Mayo Clinic were astonished.  My blasé attitude aside a private invite to Mayowood apparently was an honor to which many aspired but few were accorded.  

Meh.  The wine was good.