August 2020 – Welcome to Third Age Thoughts

Pets As Solace

I wanted to paint my brother in law and the reference photo that I found that I liked had his pets in it. I thought that is appropriate for my pandemic oeuvre – since pets have been a solace during this time. I know giving Teddy his daily walks has been instrumental in getting me through this! But the photo was a few years old and the pictured pets have departed – so I added his current pets in a painting on the wall and one on the mantle, creating a curious juxtaposition of past, present and future. A big thank you to all the pets!

Taking charge: cower in place 37

– in which Dorn stops cowering from the covid, and starts to fight back.

To misquote Mark Twain, “Everybody talks about the coronavirus, but nobody does anything about it.” This isn’t true, of course: doctors, nurses, first responders and medical researchers are all working overtime to stop the worst ravages of the disease, and find ways to stop the disease altogether. And this is to say nothing of all those who are working as hard as they can to keep the pandemic from hurting people economically, socially, or educationally. Heroes all, as I’ve said before, but today I wanted to talk about people who are taking a very particular stand against the progress of the disease: those who are offering themselves up to further the research into treatments and vaccines.

I’ve mentioned my friend E— R— (here) who is an actual survivor of the coronavirus. Elizabeth, I mean E—, and other Immunati (as they secretly call themselves), are giving their time and their antibodies to find better ways to fight the disease. I find this amazingly courageous, especially as it involves getting blood drawn in a medical setting. I myself haven’t been brave enough even to set foot in any building since February, but especially in a medical building which covid sufferers might plausibly frequent.

Immunati can bring unique resources into the fight against the disease, having successfully beaten back the virus in their own bodies and now sporting covid antibodies, but non-Immunati also have a trait that is uniquely theirs to offer, and that is vital to developing a covid vaccine: they are uninfected, and vulnerable to the disease.

Hundreds of research groups are working on vaccine possibilities around the world, and every one of these that proves promising enough in early trials must undergo human testing. For that a large population of volunteers is needed. The volunteers are innoculated with a test vaccine, which is probably safe, and might offer some protection from covid, or with a placebo, which almost certainly will not.

These volunteers are risking possible unanticipated side effects from the vaccine for only a slight statistical increase in their own safety against covid. They are mostly altruistic and I’m proud to be of the same species as these volunteers. They increase the average honorability of the whole human race (including my average honorability—I’m actually feeling more noble just writing about it).

Vaccine researchers need a group of volunteer testers who, absent the vaccine, had a fair chance of coming down with covid. Otherwise, they can’t tell if the test vaccine is making any difference. Covid infection rates swing up and down, and researchers’ plans to conduct human trials have frequently been forced to change to new locations, as the rate of infections at their original planned location dropped too low for an effective test.

Brazil is now a popular test area, I’m told. The United States will probably continue to be fertile ground for vaccine tests as long as weak-kneed political leadership and selfish “I know my right to be contagious!” individualism allow the disease to spread nearly unchecked here.

But there’s another way to test new vaccines that doesn’t depend on natural spread of the disease, and which is even more rapid and effective. This type of testing calls for an even more heroic type of individual—one willing to be intentionally exposed to the coronavirus, to see if the vaccine can prevent being infected by it.

The bravery of volunteers willing to do this is simply mind-boggling to me, especially given the fact that we still don’t have fully effective treatments for the disease, which can be fatal, and can leave survivors with permanent lung, heart or circulatory system damage.

I haven’t yet reported on what I hinted at the start of this post: my own way of contributing to the fight against covid. You may have guessed that I haven’t gone down any of the above avenues that have been taken by more intrepid individuals. (It’s not entirely a matter of me being too chicken—I am in regular contact with an immunocompromised, high-risk individual who I don’t have the moral right to put in danger.) I have not volunteered to put myself at risk of virus infection, but I have volunteered to put another there.

That “other” is my personal computer. I have hooked it up to the World Community Grid, an IBM-organized project that coordinates people (over 650,000 of them and counting) who are willing to contribute CPU time on their computers to tackle massive parallel computing tasks that might otherwise be prohibitive.

I am working on a project (or rather, my computer is) to conduct simulated biochemical experiments on a large number of compounds, to see which might have the right shape to interact with the proteins that the coronavirus uses to infect humans. Any such compounds found are prime candidates for laboratory experiments, to determine if they can actually prevent the coronavirus protein from carrying out its insidious work.

Joining the World Community Grid and participating in this project, called “OpenPandemics”, was surprisingly easy. I just had to download some coordinating software and set it to running. It’s been going for a couple of days now and I’ve seen no difference in my computer’s performance, but I can see from the statistics on their website that I am successfully delivering valid results to their project.

The biggest worry I had about doing this was from having to download someone else’s software, and the inherent risks of picking up a virus, Trojan worm, or whatever hackers are trying to infect computers with nowadays. But I did what homework I could to satisfy myself that this was a legitimate, safe download. I reasoned that I face a similar risk with every single program that I put on my computer, and the main difference is that I am not using this program to do anything for my own immediate benefit, convenience, or amusement. The benefit, if there is one, is “only” to humanity at large.

I felt surprised, and a bit guilty, that the decision to run this altruistic program on my computer was harder than the decision to run Facebook or Candy Crush. But I gritted my teeth and did it, so now I am among those risking (a little) to fight back against the tyranny of covid! Yay me!

If you or your computer want to try this, here is a link to volunteer for the World Community Grid on the Covid project or the other medical or public good projects they are coordinating, from cancer and AIDS research to predicting African rainfall patterns. This particular link somehow allows the Grid to know that I am the one who sent you, which I think gives me extra karmic points or something when the final accounting takes place.

Thanks (and I really mean it, thank you!)
Dorn
8/15/2020

UPDATES: cower in place 36

– in which Dorn adds some postscripts to some, uh, post scripts.

1 My post that peered ten years into the future (here), talking about face masks that translate what you say, was off by ten years in how long it would take them to come to market. According to an article in CNN Business last Monday, a Japanese tech form started making such face masks, that translate what you say into eight different languages.

Apparently the firm Donut Robotics was working on a robot until the epidemic dried up that market, so they repurposed their communication technology into a more of-the-moment product. Smart move, although they could do something with the product look, so that it less resembles a Jason horror-flick hockey mask!

The flexible screens that made me think of moving mouth images on a future face mask already exist, of course. The military has had them for years (the flexible screens, not the face masks), and lately I’ve seen ads for new smartphones that bring back that nostalgic concept of a cell phone folding in half, right across the view screen. Sounds like a gimmick to me!

* * *

2 My brain still hasn’t unfrazzled, apparently. A few days after writing this confessional about my mental state (here), I sent my beleaguered wallet on a trip through the wash cycle.

On the whole, this might have had more of an up side than a down side. My old leather wallet is now clean and fresh, the credit cards and license seem intact, and all those old business cards and bus tickets from when I worked for a living are now in such a state that I am forced to do what I should have done when I retired—throw them out! One must not cling too hard to the past.

* * *

3 I ended my post about the invasive species in my back yard (here) with the admonition that I had to KEEP WATCHING for more invasions. Good thing I did, too. Nothing has reappeared at invasion ground zero, but a couple of days ago, about 25 yards away and vaguely downhill from there, I was admiring what I first thought might be wild elderberries (I think they turned out to be Pokeweed, a poisonous but at least American native plant). Hiding a little ways behind the Poke, I saw the pretty red head of one of those invasive Arum Italicums cautiously peeking out!

I dug it up—carefully this time so as not to be splashed with its toxic alien acid-blood—and looked around for any of its invasive brothers. I didn’t see any, but the area of this new sighting is so large, swampy, and thorny-weed infested that I despair of inspecting the entire area.

Now I worry that some day I’ll wake up and find a hundred new Arums in that patch, more than I can possibly hope to eradicate by hand. Oh, what dangers one careless fling of unknowns seeds can bring! Let that be a lesson for all of you!

Thanks
Dorn
8/11/2020

Trucknapped! Cower in place 35

– In which Dorn tells of gripping adventure.

Rated S (for Shocking!)

I can tell that this long quarantine has really frazzled me. I don’t feel frazzled, but I can tell by objectively analyzing my recent behavior. I attribute my state to the coronavirus epidemic in general, and in particular to the the fact that, for various reasons, Kathleen, Archie and I have not been able to perform our ritual daily morning walks in the park lately.

*“Well, there’s no sense in us both getting a lobotomy.” (New Yorker)*

I find my temper is short, and can be set off by the oddest inconsequential things. Kathleen and I have been married over 40 years, and you’d think we’d have all of our disagreements worked out decades ago. But this week, we actually snapped at each other, and had vehement arguments like brief but violent summer storms. (This is the “shocking” part of the post.)

And I can’t even remember what the arguments were about—something about whether the duvet folds on the left or on the right, I think. If I could remember, I’d be sure to tell you, because you know how I like to tell stories where I’m right and the other person is wrong.

There were other evidences of my brain being fried this week too. I’ve had inconvenient memory lapses. I’m not talking about the normal what did I come into this room for? lapses that all of us Third Agers bear as a badge of honor for sticking it out this long. No, these are weird.

For about a day, I could not find my wallet. I had a distinct memory of opening my wallet to do something, but no clue what that was, or where I was when I did it. Being painfully aware of the headache that canceling all my credit cards would be, I looked pretty hard for it, but no luck.

Night was closing in, and I was starting to resign myself to the prospect of all those cancellations. I went outside to put some yard tools away before the rain started, and found my wallet lying on the table in the back yard, with all the credit cards splayed out. Prompted with this evidence, I’m almost positive that I did that to my wallet, not some nefarious neighbor or errant gust of wind, but beyond that, it’s just swiss cheese up there.

There’s an old saying that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action. My brain again took action against me very soon after. I woke up the next morning and found that my pickup truck was not in its normal parking spot in front of the house. I searched as best I could both my inner world (I racked my brain) and my outer one (I looked up and down the street), until I had exhausted all explanations I could think of, other than my truck had been heisted!

So I called the State Police and reported it. He asked me what must be the standard questions for such a call—When did you last see it? Does anyone else drive the vehicle? Are you sure you didn’t park it somewhere else yesterday? I assured him that no, I didn’t just forget it somewhere, this was a legitimate car theft, and gave him the identifying information.

About ten seconds after I hung up, what really happened yesterday came back to me like a movie flashback.

Frequent readers will remember that Archie is also a Third-Ager, if dogs count Ages in the same way humans do. He is getting set in his ways: he will walk with us in the park if we cajole him properly and don’t make him walk too long, but at home he’s no longer interested in a stroll around the block. Since the park was temporarily closed to us, I devised a cunning plan to get him his exercise: he and I hopped in the car as if we were going to the park, but instead I drove about half a mile down the street with a hill between us and home. I reasoned that Archie might not be willing to walk half a mile away from the house, but he would readily walk that far toward it.

I was right, too: Archie happily did the distance and got his afternoon constitutional. My plan was to walk back to the truck later and drive it home. I think you can figure out the rest…

So I called back the police dispatcher and shamefacedly admitted that my truck wasn’t stolen after all. He wasn’t at all put out. “Happens all the time,” he told me. What he might as well have said, but didn’t, was “Happens all the time to me when dealing with doddering old people.” Young upstart! I’m not in my dotage, it’s just the coronavirus!!

* * *

Today’s post title is, of course, a play on that great adventure novel, Kidnapped! by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Before Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, before the Hardy Boys of my childhood, even long before Tom Swift of my father’s childhood, Robert Louis Stevenson was thrilling young readers with tales of pirates and buried treasures, high lords and desperate rebels.

I confess I’m much more familiar with Stevenson’s other great swashbuckler, Treasure Island, simply because I’ve watched that old 1934 movie with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper so often.

Jackie Cooper, who played the young Jim Hawkins in the movie, was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor (for a different film) at age 9, and kept the record of youngest Oscar nominee for over 50 years.

I used to always get Jackie Cooper mixed up with Jackie Coogan, another famous child star of the 20s and 30s, who starred with Charlie Chaplin in several silent films, including The Kid. Jackie Coogan grew up to play Uncle Fester in the 60s TV comedy The Addams Family.

The other star of Treasure Island was Wallace Beery, whose interpretation of Long John Silver set the gold standard for acting like a pirate captain that was not touched again, arguably, until Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow. Every time you observe Talk Like a Pirate Day, you are really talking like Wallace Beery. Aarrrgh, says I!

(Don’t forget, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is less than six weeks away, on September 19! Mark your calendars and shampoo your parrots!)

Thanks,
Dorn
8/7/2020