1010

Monday,  October 10, 2022

 In bed before 10, but awake at 2:50, Lilly lying on the floor between my bed and the recliner, licking her lower leg.  Out of bed at 3:10, doing a load of laundry and running the dish washer.

. . . . . . . .

Starting the morning by reading the New Yorker article online by Dhruv Khullar: How Many Times Will You Get Covid?. "It’s now clear that not only will just about everyone contract the coronavirus, but we’re all likely to be infected multiple times. The virus evolves too efficiently, our immunity wanes too quickly, and, although covid vaccines have proved remarkably durable against serious illness, they haven’t managed to break the chain of transmission. . . People who are reinfected by the virus are much more likely to suffer a range of medical problems in subsequent months, including heart attacks, strokes, breathing problems, mental health problems, and kidney disorders, according to a major new analysis of U.S. veterans. Compared with those who weren’t reinfected, they are twice as likely to die. . . There are some caveats. The study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and many veterans are older men with multiple medical conditions, so they have a higher level of risk than the general population. " I've now been vaccinated 5 times against the virus and, to the best of my knowledge, I've never been infected.  Ditto Geri.  Both of us wondered, however, whether we have been infected with mild symptoms and didn't know it.  Especially Geri, with a problem of sleepiness, fairly often sleeping 11, 12 or even more hours a day/night.  Wondering whether we could be tested to determine whether we've ever been infected.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Got to wondering this morning whether I may have a bit of the insomnia that my beloved sister lived with for so many years but realizing that her's was relentless every single night, and she resisted napping during the day until the last year of her life.  Her dear friend Dr. Metelits advised against napping on the ground -unbelievable - that napping would interfere with sleeping at night.  I've been a dedicated napper since the summer of 1960 and my 6 weeks aboard the USS Coney on the North Atlantic when I learned to grab a nap whenever and wherever an opportunity existed.  Relief from the 24-hour work schedule while a ship is at sea, especially the mid-watch.  Since retirement, I've moved from being anxious about middle-of-the-night sleeplessness to almost welcoming it, knowing I can usually nod off repeatedly during the day or get back into bed for an 'official' nap.  Not so easy of course if I have some commitment during the day.  In any event, this morning, I have gotten a fairly big load of laundry done, a load in the dishwasher, took some stuff downstairs to the workspace, and got a lot of good reading in, including New Yorker pieces on Stonehenge and on Annie Arnaux, all before 6 a.m.  As 6 approaches, however, I'm noticing that I'm starting to fade . . .

. . . . . . . . . 

Call from cousin Christine Klaer.  Cousin Doug Cummings' home in North Port FL was under 4 feet of water, and cousin-once-removed Colleen and husband Alex's house was under 5 feet of water on Sanibel Island.  Everything inside was ruined.  Doug was rescued by National Guard, taken to a temporary shelter at Venice H.S., then to more permanent shelter at the former Venice Hospital, now ShorePoint (?).

. . . . . . . . 

Russia launched missile attacks on 13 Ukrainian cities in retaliation/revenge, timed to coincide with the morning rush hour traffic, for the truck bomb blast on the bridge between Crimea and Russia.  Russia claimed they targeted military command and energy facilities but reportedly the vast majority were civilian targets, including a high-rise apartment and a playground in Kiiv, an art museum and the home of the Ukrainian Philharmonic Orchestra.  This a reminder that modern warfare, meaning warfare at least since the Spanish Civil War (Guernica) and most pointedly including World War II, means warfare waged by one country's military against another country's civilians, slaughters, massacres, carnage, terror bombing.  We did it against Japan and Germany, and England did it against Germany.  Our "small wars" like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were different because of their asymmetrical nature, but lest we get to feeling too morally superior to Putin and the Russians, we should remember Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima, and especially Nagasaki.

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

Why do I do it?  I spent a discontinuous couple of hours watching another French New Wave movie, Alain Resnais' 1963 Muriel or The Time of Return.  It had me thinking maybe all the French people who survived the War and the Occupation came out of the experienced schizophrenic, or simply deranged.  Chaos, worse than Godard.  Why do I do it?

. . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .