Lughnasa and the Herme Full Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: Gabe coming up today. We’ll see Oppenheimer together tomorrow. (He said he was going to wear a suit.) Prolia. Bone density. Resistance work. 2 hour workout yesterday. Ann. Her good work on The Trail to Cold Mountain. Zoom. Skype. Pixels. Computer GPUs. CPUs. Screens. Keyboards. ChabotGPT4. AI. Skynet. The Internet. Laptop. Desktop. Tablet. Smartphones. Our world of small miracles. The James Webb. Starlink. The Book. The Chair. Vision.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Internet
One brief shining: “Charlie,” the woman in the blue coat called through a cracked door so I got up and went to her; she had her left leg wrapped in blue with an orthopedic black boot up to the calf and resting on one of those little scooters you see every once in a while now; her name was Carol it said on her blue coat, “Sit here,” I did and she placed a small tray with a syringe near me, had me turn to face the wall since the Prolia shot goes in the back of the arm, she stuck me, I said thank you, and left.
I mention Carol because her demeanor was so calming and warm. An instant connection. This woman cares. I could feel it. Kindness came off her in waves. Due to my delicate condition I see lots of medical professionals over the weeks and months. Few of them are robotic or uncaring, but many, most of them are hurried. And I know why. The era of corporate medicine times “patient encounters” and the ability to upcode. A patient’s feelings or the end result of a visit are not part of the metrics. In spite of those cute little surveys sent out after each encounter. Be ye not fooled. They are not striving to improve their service though they may be trying to improve how you evaluated your visit. Not. The. Same. Thing.
Fell back asleep this morning. Happens some times. Up at 8:30! Oh, my. I chuckled at myself. Today is Trail to Cold Mountain day. Editing the script, refreshing memory, going one page deeper into memorization. Acting class tonight.
Gabe’s visit will include Oppenheimer tomorrow. Looking forward to having him here. I need to see these kids more often. Not sure how to do that. Their lives are busy now and I can no longer hop in the car to go see them without losing a day after to recovery from the drive. A conundrum.
Let the silly season be seen as well underway. A NYT article reports Trump and Biden tied in a hypothetical rematch. Not sure I can stomach much more of this. Already. And we’re a year plus away from the voting. How he wrote wonderingly can this be? A man with indictments already in two investigations and other indictments likely in two others against a man whose performance in office has not been flashy, but has been much, much better than I anticipated. And in the midst of genuine crisis after crisis. Covid. The Ukraine. Inflation. The economy post Covid. We are well and truly divided.
Read this George Will column for a cogent explanation as to why this upcoming election may be so painful. Here’s a quote from it: “In a National Affairs essay with that title [The Emotive Presidency], Mikael Good, a Georgetown University political theory student, and Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, argue that “Trump’s masterstroke” was to realize that, for his core supporters, his governing is of secondary importance.”
