Category: Misc.

The eclipse came and went last week. I drove north, to Vermont, to be in the path of totality—a technical phrase (and location) that quickly caught on with the public and the press. It was the original title of my debut novel about the 1878 total solar eclipse. But my editor thought it was too obscure and technical a title for the reading public, so I changed it.

Before the April 8 eclipse, I re-read the part of my novel about the main character’s description of the 1878 eclipse he witnessed. While I didn’t have his clear sky view on the open prairie east of Denver, I did witness a few of the same things, including, the sudden chill, the sharpened shadows, the increase in blueish light, the sudden darkness, and the corona. 

Every total solar eclipse never lasts as long as we want it to last. That was certainly the case on April 8. I was frantically busy watching, talking, trying to take photographs, and worrying that I might miss some important part of it.

As Professor Maria Mitchell says in my novel, “We all observed the same eclipse, but all of us may have taken note of different sights and colors. In the end, an eclipse is an individual experience. Depending on where you are, the quality of your eyes, the clarity of the sky in your location. All affect what you observe. This is why we make notes and compare observations among different individuals in different locations. Only then are we able to piece together all of the many—and fleeting—characteristics of the eclipse and so come to truly know it and appreciate its majesty.”

Indeed.

Tuberculosis (TB) is generally curable. “And it’s the world’s deadliest infectious disease. In 2022, TB killed 1.3 million people, according to the World Health Organization — more than covid-19 or malaria or HIV. Each week, 25,000 people die of TB, a bacterial infection that primarily attacks the lungs.

Of the 10 million people who will become sick with tuberculosis this year, between 3 million and 4 million will go undiagnosed, often dying before they can get an accurate test. Fortunately, GeneXpert tests, made by the company Cepheid (a subsidiary of the conglomerate Danaher), can reliably determine within two hours if a patient has TB. A second cartridge can test for what is called XDR-TB, or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, a more complex condition that is nonetheless curable if properly diagnosed.

When it comes to selling their tests for tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, such as AIDS, Danaher has touted its profit strategy to shareholders: “We have a razor blade business model in mission-critical applications,” as CEO Rainer Blair put it in January. Razor companies make a slim profit on the handle itself and then charge exorbitantly for replacement blades. That’s also the printer/ink approach. And it’s Danaher’s: Make the GeneXpert machines relatively affordable, hike the price of test cartridges.

Lowering the price of these tests to $5 would save hundreds of thousands of lives over the next decade. That Danaher last year, bowing to criticism, budged on its pricing for the standard TB test was an indication it knows what the right thing to do would be.” From the Washington Post Opinion pages, March 21, 2024

The fact that TB is still a problem and that a small number of people are making money from its continued existence is the sort of international crime that goes unnoticed by most of the world. Too bad the victims and patients of TB can’t file a class-action suit with the World Court. The etiologic agent of TB was discovered 1882. The first TB vaccine (BCG) was tested in 1921. The first effective antimicrobials against Mycobacterium tuberculosis came along in 1944 (streptomycin), 1946 (PAS), and 1952 (INH). Science and medicine aren’t the problem here. As the full WP article notes, it’s money.

When we were young and had ready access to powerboats, my friends and I would sometimes travel up the Connecticut River to explore or stop at the Gris for drinks and dinner. I recently heard the river was once again home to bald eagles—I’d just seen two eagles in the Blackwater on Maryland’s Easter Shore—and wanted to see more. So, we took a river cruise out of the museum’s steamboat dock in Essex. The boat passed a number of familiar places and stopped now and then to watch a particular eagle. The birds have the annoying habit of sitting for hours at a time on a branch waiting for some poor fish to come close to the surface, and then they’ll take wing. Why waste energy flying when you can sit? I guess they know what they’re doing. 

We passed Hamburg Cove where I once sailed from North Cove in Old Saybrook with a friend in an IC dinghy at the tender age of 12 or 13. My parents had no idea. Farther north, we passed some old ferry-crossing sites and river-side quarries from centuries ago. The last glaciers left a lot of rock behind so why not use it?

The boat churned farther north to Seldon Neck, a large and wild island on the Lyme-Hadlyme side of the river. On a Boy Scout canoeing trip down the Connecticut, we stopped overnight here, and this is where I learned how to rock climb and rappel. Thank you, Mr. Mac. Like everything else, climbing was different 50 years ago from the techniques and equipment used today. Everything changes. Though you can still get killed doing it now. Just like then.

A letter in the Connecticut Examiner: “Fifty Years Have Passed, and Little Has Changed for Connecticut’s Beaches”

Finally, some forty years later, I make the student newspaper at the University of Rhode Island where I got my PhD.

A friend recently reminded me of this quote by Anthony Bourdain: Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyway. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.

Good advice. So I acted on some of it the other night. I ate in a local restaurant. I did not have the cream sauce; I had the whole red fish. I had a negroni. I wanted a second, but I was driving. I took my time eating. I tipped the server and the valet. Everything else Bourdain mentioned I have done at one time or another. I checked in on Jorge this afternoon. And I have eaten an oyster…without contracting a vibrio infection.

Just deleted my Twitter account. I can’t be associated with a bigoted Boer from the Transvaal like Elon Musk. Go home, Elon.

I just finished reading William Doyle’s 2015 book about Kennedy’s PT 109. A great read. Whatever people think about JFK the politician, there’s no doubt he was a real hero following the destruction of his boat in the Solomons. (I can’t help wondering if Kennedy’s later outbursts of anger about the incident were due to a degree of PTSD.) Anyway, the book mentioned there are two surviving PT boats on display at Battleship Cove in Mass. I drove up this morning to see one.

Standing beside the first boat, I was surprised at its overall size. PT 617 was large (80 ft) with a wide beam and an open deck that allowed for easy movement. The interior—seen through cut-out windows—seemed spacious for a dozen or so men. It had radar and heavy guns. At 40 knots and a 500-mile range, it seems like a great machine to run around the South Pacific in…provided no one was shooting at you.

A walk through URI’s Alton Jones Campus. Sadly, the 2300-acre wooded campus has become a financial burden. It reminds me of Walden Pond 40 years ago.

And a book among the barroom bottles. Hope someone reads it.

On my daily (i.e., theoretically daily) walk through the neighborhood and surrounding woods I came across the URI tick people posting signs, dragging for ticks, and filming a little promo spot. The on-campus Tick Encounter group (https://web.uri.edu/tickencounter/) is a long-running research and public service entity that “promotes tick-bite protection and tickborne disease prevention by engaging, educating, and empowering people to take action.”

There are plenty of ticks in R.I. And all over New England. Though in some 60-plus years in N.E. and Maryland, I’ve never had an Ixodes tick bite or any common tick-borne infection. A few years ago, when my GP was filling out a list of annual diagnostic tests, I had her run a Lyme serology just for kicks. It came back negative—no evidence of a past or present Lyme infection. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be mindful of these little blood-suckers and the pathogens they sometimes carry.