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Long Covid

Comment on a report in New Scientist, October 31-November 6, 2020, pp. 10-13.

The latest data show that symptoms of covid-19 persist for up to four months in some people. Probably longer, as the study stopped at that point. The symptoms range from fatigue through “brain-fog” and memory loss through problems breathing. Blood clots threaten to provoke strokes. Headaches are common. Damage to heart, lungs, and other organs has been observed. Hospitalised people appear most likely to suffer these symptoms. The data are incomplete, but it’s likely that around 5% of people who recover from covid-19 will experience more or less serious symptoms two months or more after the onset of the infection.

I think that somewhere between one and five percent will suffer from “long covid”, defined as debilitating symptoms for two months or longer. That’s a serious consequence, since these people will need some continuing care, and/or accommodation at work. The more severe cases will be unable to work at all. The economic losses will be high, combining lost productivity and cost of care. Or, to put it another way: a significant proportion of human and other resources will be diverted from the usual economic activities.

Unanswered questions: Who is most likely to be affected, and why? What kinds of treatment will mitigate long covid? How long will it actually last?

Model Railroad Building tips

 

 Jeff Wilson. Basic Structure Modeling (2005) A well-done overview of the craft, with good co-ordination of text and photos. In the Olden Days, the photos would have been line-drawings. Each chapter deals with one main aspect (plastic kits, roofs, painting, etc). Wilson writes clearly, adding significant detail and tips in the right places, and cross-references to other chapters when the current topic skims over some important content.
     Like any such book, best suited to the reader who has tried the craft and realises they need to know more. Wilson could have emphasised a couple of points, such as the need for painting both sides of wooden (and card) parts. I found it a welcome reminder and organiser of what I already knew, which added up to inspiration for building a couple more small cabins. Just need to decide on the colour first.... ***

Photography for Modellers

 

Mark Hembree, ed. A Treasury of Model Railroad Photos (1991) An odd duck of a book. Four skilled photographers of model railroads (Dave Frary, Malcolm Furlow, John Olson, Paul Scoles) write about how they do it. Beautifully printed, deftly organised text, diagrams, and photos, a pleasure to look at, and to read if you want some insight and instruction. But the puzzle is, Who is the intended audience?  Photographers who want to specialise in scale models? Scale modellers who want to take better photos?
     The four photographers write well. They use 35 and large-format film cameras, hence the emphasis on lighting, exposure, and film choice. Anyone who took photography even semi-seriously in the pre-digital age will feel a few twinges of nostalgia reading about main and fill lights, daylight filters, four-minute exposures and the problems of reciprocity. The advice about lighting, focus, and depth of field is still relevant, and the photos repay study for angle, composition, and so on. The photographers were better known as modellers. That’s why this book is a puzzle: model railroaders looking at layout photos don’t think of them as photographs, but as documents, and inspiration.
     A good book. ***

Pain in Poems: Spike Milligan's Open Heart Surgey

 

Spike Milligan. Open Heart Surgery. (1979) A book published to cash in on the spike in Goon Show popularity in the 1970s/80s. A few of the verses are worth reading twice. Most are diary entries, of interest only to Spike and those who care about him. I like the Goon Show, and love Milligan’s off-kilter squint at the world. But these verses don’t do it for me. Reading them, I feel like a voyeur. The decorations by Laura Milligan relate to the companion verses in their expressions of similar hurts. *1/2

Conan Doyle's Father

 

Michael Baker. The Doyle Diary (1978) Reproduction of one of Charles Altamont Doyle’s sketchbooks, made while he was at Sunnyside, a lunatic asylum in which he spent most of the last years of his life. He was Arthur Conan Doyle’s father. Arthur in his early reminiscences dealt harshly with his father, who was not the financial success he could perhaps have been. Later, Arthur mellowed, perhaps because both his medical and his personal experience showed him that Charles was a sick man, badly treated. Baker tells the story at length, not easy to do, because there is little documentary evidence of Charles life, and partly because there was a good deal of reticence about the details of his ill health. Baker concludes that Charles suffered from epilepsy made worse by alcoholism. Charles was not a pushy man, he lacked his older brothers’ ambition and energy. Dicky Doyle had a successful career as a cartoonist for Punch, for example. Perhaps alcohol was self-medication for his sense of failure.
     The drawings and text of Charles sketchbook show us a man of gentle feelings and sometimes mischievous humour. He describes himself as a “harmless old gentleman”, which on the evidence he was, He certainly wasn’t a lunatic, even by the vague standards of the time. Long-term care homes existed, but were little more than hotels with some medical services, so the asylum was the only place to tend him when he became unable to care for himself and his family.
     I don’t recall where I found this book, or when. And addition to a collection of Holmesiana, and a document relevant to the study of our treatment of the harmless ones among us. **½

Learning to See in the Dark (poems by Lorraine Janzen)

 

 

 Lorraine Janzen. Learning to see in the dark (2003) Janzen was teaching at Nipissing University when she published this book of poems. She is now professor emerita at Ryerson, and has earned a reputation as a pioneer in studying the relationship between text and image in illustrated books.
These poems are readable, and collectively show us a persona that’s sensitive to her world, and not quite sure how to reconcile the light and the dark. The title suggests a method, but there’s no guarantee it will work. As poems, they show a nice talent. Her ability to make something with words isn’t always as strong as her ability to imagine something worth making.
Nevertheless, here are some random lines that made me read twice:

Shuffling the leaves of past and present
I see footsteps everywhere
shadows so deep
you could disappear forever.
...
There’s a ghost
in my mother’s typewriter

It eats the endings of her words
...
There’s a hole in my heart
where you passed through

I’ve kept the bullet
wrapped in burlap

In the spring
I’ll plant it in my garden.

Most of Janzen’s verse is discursive, it’s rhetoric written line-wise to guide the voice into its meaning. You discover a mind alert to memory and meaning, even if not always sure of its insights. A good read for anyone who likes poetry, and certainly, I think, a souvenir for anyone who knows her personally. **½