Unfortunately, I did not yet get a good photo of it but my young daughter drew a lovely representation of a tube of lip gloss today. She was practicing her artistic skills while recuperating from a cold and spending a day with Dad on her spring break.
I worried it was a boring day for her, as I worked at my below-minimun-wage tasks, but she never complained.
She seldom does.
She'd stubbed one of her little toes this morning before I fetched her from Bernal, and joked that it really didn't matter whether it was broken because it was such an insubstantial part of the human body.
We fantasized about the small cast that would be required while such an appendage, if broken, healed, and had a good laugh as we drove across town.
Outside, the skies had cleared after last night's Manchester rain, and an uncomfortable wind blew through this town.
Every time I ventured outside today, I shuddered. I hate cold winds.
***
I just finished an enormously long and detailed book, The River, by the British author Edward Hooper, which postulates and investigates the hypothesis that a lot of contaminated chimpanzee kidney culture used to grow polio virus in the 50s helped SIV cross the species barrier to become HIV, thereby causing AIDS, in human beings.
This was, for me, a painful book to read (reread actually, for the second time) because of the author's earnest attempt to be transparent in his process while advancing a theory that made so many establishment scientists so uncomfortable that they went way beyond the norm in undermining and denouncing his work.
This was an effort at investigative reporting, never an easy task, and one that consumed most of the first half of my own career.
Reading the book, and experiencing (through Hooper) his many disheartening attacks by those hoping to discredit his work, I was reminded of where many of the scars I bear originated.
"Kill the messenger," of course, is what society does. But the message, hopefully, lives on for another hearing. Does anyone know the current state of wisdom as to the origin of AIDS? Is the polio vaccine theory advocated by Hooper still in the mix? I've not heard anything in years.
2 comments:
Your writing is great. It's better than ever, actually. More direct and without embellishment, making it easier to understand, and therefore more possible to take that which strikes us, and then easily incorporate into it our own lives -- that's the best that can come from reading.
We must really ponder HIV. We must because viruses will have their way with us in the end. And first, as you point out, we must stop killing the messengers, and we must apply this in a broader sense. We must stop simply complaining and step up. And I agree that the investigative reporters give us the data with which to do this.
As far as the polio vaccine goes, I don't think we have any idea as to the fall-out from the widespread induction of such so-called preventive medicine. It's very scary, when one steps back and looks at the mammoth scale of the "sugar cube." I remember the long lines of cars at elementary schools, each one pulling up to the person handing out each dose in a tiny paper cup to all the occupants in each vehicle. I only wish that I hadn't been under 10 years old and able to make the decision not to receive the vaccine.
thanks for your comment, the encouragement helps at a time i am beginning to rededicate myself to this blog, partly because so many avenues for expression have been closed
Post a Comment