Month: April 2023

Some lessons from Infectious Disease class are long forgotten.  In some cases, the data I do remember are way outdated. But Hantavirus is one I’ll never forget. It’s still – if left untreated – just as fatal as ever. I guess one reason it sticks with me, besides the severity, is the unusual mode of transmission:  Mouse droppings. So, if you’re seeing a patient with severe upper respiratory symptoms and you ask him/her if they’ve been cleaning out old chicken coops or forgotten corners of a dusty barn – these are favorite places for mice to leave a special “something” behind – and their answer is “yes?” Well, “Hantavirus” is way up there on your list of possible diagnoses.

The reason all this is relevant right now is that today I finally got around to clearing out the back corner of our “wood room.” This is the room where my home office is located. It hadn’t been touched in the nearly 8 years that we’ve lived here. Please don’t ask why. There are just some things you’re better off not knowing. But anyway, that back corner was still stacked with boxes of old unused stuff. And of course on the floor in between all those boxes sat the perfect medium for Hantavirus. We won’t even think about the mice who hunkered down there. But that’s my story and I’m sticking by it. Warts and mouse droppings and all.

Anyway, I started coughing and wheezing from breathing in all the accumulated dust. So I told my wife that if I were to keel over and end up being wheeled unconscious into an ER somewhere, she should tell the Infectious Disease resident on call to “Think Hantavirus.” Not that I’m skeptical of residents on call – but there you have it. My wife was not amused.

 

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Under the rubric of “all’s well that ends well,” I’m still standing. And not only that, but I uncovered some long lost tidbits in the boxes, including this priceless photo array of me and my 5th grade classmates at York Springs Elementary. Can you tell which one is me? C’mon, squint. Hint: Besides Mr. Messersmith – top row, center – only Joe Weigel and I are rocking the necktie look. And in Joe’s case, it’s a bow tie.  There. Who said we don’t make it easy for you, huh?  On the off chance these thumbnails are too small for you, you can see the same photo on my FB page, here. And of course, the same shot of me is featured (and enlarged) on the “About DEW” tab of this site, here.

As promised, most of the names are named in my mom’s looping script from the back side of the photo below. And yes, Mom was just a little OCD. Not that I inherited any of it of course.  🙂

 

 

 

 Hurry up and wait.

Some days  – like today – that’s the message,

though the news is hardly new.

 

 

Fact is, I have said this before.

And if you don’t believe me, see #3, here.

Yeah, that’s right, the new implementation date is end of July.

So, as always, it’s a good news – bad news kind of deal:

Good for me and health care coverage,

bad for – well, you know – retirement and all that.

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Last but not least, the  hurry up and wait stop sign visual above brings to mind my favorite signs – road side and otherwise – from past posts, which I’m revisiting below, starting with a dual meditation on “easements” and ending with… well, you’ll see.

 

 

Here’s some good advice for those living the swamp life…

“You can distinguish an alligator from a crocodile by paying attention to whether the animal sees you later, or in a while.”

Stay tuned to this station for more useful life hacks.

 

Just watched Hitchcock’s “The Birds” on Netflix. First time I’ve seen it since I was 10 years old. A couple of things stand out here over a half century later:

1) Lead actress Tippi Hedren in her big screen debut plays a character named Melanie, same name as Hedren’s real life daughter, actress Melanie Griffith.

2) Alfred Hitchcock always put himself in a cameo role in each of his films. In this one, the opening sequence shows him walking two fluffy leashed dogs out the revolving front door of an office building opposite Hedren walking in.

3) Hitchcock’s enduring preoccupation with Freudian analysis bubbles to the surface in a comment by supporting actress Suzanne Pleshette who says off-hand to Hedren while discussing lead actor Rod Taylor’s off-kilter relationship with his creepy mother played by a middle-aged Jessica Tandy: “A clinging possessive mother? Wrong! With all due respect to Oedipus, I don’t think that was the case at all.”

4) Speaking of psychopathology, and a wry nod to Anthony Perkins’ twisted relationship with his mummified mother’s remains in Psycho: If Alfred Hitchcock wasn’t already in intensive psychotherapy during the time he made these two movies, he really should have been.

5) Strikingly, although set in 1963 and with the Bodega Bay populace under attack by rampaging hordes of seagulls and crows, not one single person seems to have owned either a shotgun or had any ammunition containing bird shot on hand. Not. One. Single. Person. My, how times have changed. Anyway, where are Clint Eastwood and Bruce Willis when you need them most?

 

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6) At the time of The Birds’ 1968 TV release, it became the most watched film on television, surpassing Bridge on the River Kwai, and holding on to the top spot until 1972’s Love Story.  As I said before: My, how times change.

7) I remember having bad dreams after watching The Birds on TV. But in all fairness, those nightmares were nowhere near as terrifying as the ones I had after watching the Twilight Zone episode called “The Incredible Shrinking Man.” Another story for another day? Perhaps.

8) Hedren was injured, cut by broken glass, during the famous scene where birds attack her in a phone booth. She also repeatedly was subjected to sexual harassment by Hitchcock during filming. Sadly, that was apparently par for the course in those benighted times. As payback for spurning his advances, Hitchcock substituted real birds for mechanical ones in the penultimate bird attack in the bedroom scene without letting Hedren know in advance. Alas: Maybe times haven’t changed that much after all.

9) Though most of the birds in the film were real, the special effects budget for mechanical birds was around $200,000 – an astronomical sum at the time. Still, the Academy Award for special effects that year went instead to the movie version of Cleopatra. The Birds won… exactly nothing.  Hmmm, where are Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor when you need them most, eh?