October 18, 2021
Saturdays and Wednesdays are my hiking days with a small group of adventurers in the mountains, valleys, streams, and sometimes top of the mountains traverses. This Saturday we took some offshoot trails off of the main Ohana Trail on windward Oahu. The ascent was a good workout on an uncleared but very navitagable trial to our usual lunch spot at the crest of the main Ohana trail. Since I was the organizer of today's hike we went down Iron Maiden a mostly steep winding bike route off the mountain. Just as we started along the narrower but not steeper part it poured (Mauka shower) so the bike dirt packed narrow trail was now slick and muddy. We all had spikes on our boots but quickly they became ineffective so sliding and imbalance down the steeper switchbacks led some of us to just sit down and mud slide to more level areas. Slowly we descended with some of us squealing with delight and trepidation whenever we did our mudslide maneuver. I know one our group was very unhappy with these maneuvers due to the potentiality of falling off the trail with steep descents as if beckoning unfortunately present. Our exit was hidden in the tall grass and disappeared trail but out we came to view a miniature Asian type temple for us to admire. Down the exit road an owner on this private two acre farm land housing sternly informed us we were trespassing but after our apologizing saying we had no other exit to our adventures he told us a little about his farming attempts to pay his high mortgage. Now at my car 1/3 mile down the road I have changes of clothes including bathing shorts and tee shirts which I changed to. The shorts are fifty years old gifts from my father who when he retired to Hawaii near his grandchildren and family he continued selling by the road side these items. I have a hard time letting go of them but my dear Rebecca wants me to part with them since they probably fit well fifty years ago but now... Well she has a picture of me leaving the car after a hike to gather some food at the store and I do look a sight! Nevertheless, in the car I was no longer a mud ball. https://flickr.com/photos/
Sometimes the book review section of the New York Times is a treasure trove of information and delight. I never read the nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka whose book Chronicles From The Land Of the Happiest People On Earth was reviewed. Part of the book deals with nefarious people dealing with body parts. I was reminded of the series Goliath on Amazon Prime in which the drug cartel lord a very evil man has a fetish in removing body parts from people who did not obey him properly. Well another evil psychopath now under the radar of the cartel monster show has been warned and threatened by his handiwork now is taken to viewing some of his victims through a one way glass. The victims take off her below knee prosthesis which delights this psychopath sitting on a comfortable chair with lubricating oil to masturbate with. The issues here are complex, horrifying, and evilly entertaining. Acrotomophilia is what this is called and is considered a paraphilia (disorder DSM IV). Qanon conspiracy theories is another fantasy believed by a great number of people with children as the objectified sex objects.
Another book by Atticus Lish The War For Gloria is another novel in which the protagonist a boy attempts to help his ailing mother now losing motor function due to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis while the world around makes survival very difficult. Then there is Allison's Seed by David Hackett Fischer who proposes that the U.S.A. immigrant settlers from different parts of Britain have folklore and family and life customs that persist to today and help therefore explain our diversity and difficulty in living together. The hypothesis is quite prejudicial suggesting that for example as a culture in the borderlands of Scotland and England the immigrants to U.S.A. settle in Appalachia. "They brought their clannish, violent, independent culture, which had evolved over seven centuries of border warfare. They were, Fischer wrote, “a society of autonomous individuals who were unable to endure external control and incapable of restraining their rage against anyone who stood in the way.” The spirit of the Scots-Irish borderlanders could also be seen in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol; their ancestors staged the Whiskey Rebellion against the U.S. Constitution." I'll skip reading more here since there is a lot out there attempting to explain our sociatal ills but so far unconvincing to me. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/books/review/joe-klein-explains-how-the-history-of-four-centuries-ago-still-shapes-american-culture-and-politics.html?searchResultPosition=1
Suzanne O'Sullivan in The Sleeping Beauties and other stories of mystery illness describes her peripatetic explorations to different parts of the world in which people become afflicted with unexplained illnesses which sometimes are amenable to local homeopathic interventions or remain unexplained. I had some expertise into some of the subjects mentioned in her book. Dissociative Identity Disorder and other dissociative disorders can maybe explain some of her cases of people who lose consciousness, appear dazed, lose their memory and identity etc. My experiences in this arena are related to an early fascination with hypnosis as a teenager in which many of the symptoms reported in the book can be produced in a trance state. The research into hypnosis reveals that some people are very good subjects and therefore can enter into an altered state spontaneously or through external sometimes evil manipulation. PTSD on steroids may explain some of the cases. The victorian age where women were suppressed and then abused explains many of Freud's cases that are similar (Dora).
Paul Offit seems to have written a winner in You Bet Your Life From Blood Transfusions To Mass Vaccination, The Long And Risky History Of Medical Innovation. A chimpanzee heart transplanted into a human resulted in a few hours of life! Sulfonamide was great at controlling and treating streptococcal infections but the diethylene glycol ingredient caused many kidney failures. Cutter Labs who commercialized Salk's Polio vaccine mistakenly had a live smallpox virus in many of the vaccine which then infected scores of people. Nevertheless, this author points out that precautions preventing us from accepting medicines advances kills more that it saves.
Lastly I'll mention Benjamin Labatut When We Cease To Understand The World. The fictionalized pursuit to understand the general relativity theory of Einstein through the Schwartzchild theorem of procession
Finally I came across David Graeber and David Wengrow The Dawn Of Everything review in the Atlantic. My favorite book in this field is Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. The Dawn of Everything appears to me to be a polemic presenting an alternative view of our societal beginnings proposing that earlier prehistoric written history allowed people in many parts of the world to have freedom and free will while our present societies limit these freedoms. At first I was interested but as I read more I'm still with Jared Diamond. Graeber had been very involved with attempting to make us aware of societies' constraints on individual freedoms so I'm sympathetic to his approach but not so radical https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/
On the other hand I'll read Yuval Harari Sapeins A Brief History of Humankind and before this I'll read Diamond's Collapse.
Our family interactions continue to amaze, trouble, and entertain me. Sure I'm attempting to be a good person not causing trouble for others yet observing and sometimes attempting to model and guide are part of my nature. Luckily my partner shares these interests so we can counsel each other and laugh at our story telling attempts to understand and exercise our free will. Our family members sometimes fill us with love and understanding but like life there's thorns to watch out for and thickets to avoid. ie Relatives who do not think that vaccination for COVID is for them. So now were isolated from some of our love ones feeling frustrated at their decision. Like anything else this is a small example of living with people you care about but realize they have their own path in life to pursue even though I may think they're making a risky decision. On the other hand, our precious life is worth little without living it with free will so decisions may not mesh with others but these decisions can be risky. I did after all decide to take that trail which turned into a mudslide scaring me but giving me an adventure. I don't know anyone who is going to escape being human and not subject to the laws of nature.
Leonard
https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardsjacobs/albums/72157603520494610
Comments
Post a Comment