Covid-19

51 Cranky old man, Covid-19, and the garden.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 10 Comments

Truth be told, I’ve always been a bit cranky. In the past though I was generally able to dampen my initial crankiness at what I perceived to be other people’s ridiculous behaviour, in the classroom, around town, in national and international politics, or on Facebook. I was able to step back, take a deep breath, and allow a sober second assessment of consequences and effects to take shape in my mind, making for a more measured response to the momentary ‘crisis’ whatever it might be. Oh, there were times when I reacted swiftly and even lashed out at people. I usually regretted those later. Ranting at the TV news was pretty common sport in the past when we still watched TV, a practice that I passed on to at least one of our daughters. I still rant like in the old days, but it’s more likely to be at a Facebook post or a news release posted online. However, ranting in private is different from personally and immediately striking out at someone for their perceived shortcomings.

Now it seems that my ability to generate a sober second thought is attenuating and my patience is wearing thinner. My private rants are turning into public displays of my impatience and I am now much less likely to bite my tongue when I think that people are being ridiculous or unreasonable. Of course that violates the first rules of teaching which, in my mind are patience and empathy. I feel really bad about that. My quick trigger reactions may be a consequence of my age and the fact that I have incurable cancer. It may be entirely idiosyncratic, but it could be that something else is afoot here.

Covid-19: the great disruptor

It could be that I’m not alone in my descent into more readily expressed displeasure at whatever affront, real or imagined, presents itself. Covid Times have created the conditions of uncertainty and disruption of habit that are hard for humans to take.

We, humans are creatures of habit and we don’t necessarily adapt readily or willingly to changes in our environment that require us to change the ways we live. We tend to react in our own ways to threats to our precious habits. Some of us hunker down even more deeply into already established patterns of social isolation. Others of us, like me, are more ready to express our pissedoffedness at the world. Now, more than ever seems to be a time of reaction rather than reflection.

It seems that people are now more than ever prone to stand on questionably acquired ‘knowledge’ rather than commit themselves to a course of study and learning that may lead to a more nuanced appreciation of economics, politics, current events, and other people’s actions both local and distant. And, since Trump, the ignorant minority is emboldened to speak out more often and vigorously. For us ‘experts’ who have spent a lifetime in study and reflection counteracting the tripe that comes out of YouTube and Facebook daily from people who have acquired whatever ‘knowledge’ they have from a marginal and peripheral relationship with analysis and evidence seems to be a lost cause. So, Covid-19 seems to have released some pent-up frustration at the world and our place in it and some people seem to be less reluctant than ever to stay silent in the face of it.

Covid-19 has definitely changed the goal posts in any number of ways, but life pre-Covid-19 wasn’t all that rosy either.

Pre-Covid-19, there were already serious cracks forming in the security and (often illusionary or delusional) stability of our lives. Personal debt dogged many of us to the point of financial ruin (and still does). Relationships were strained and addictions to alcohol and other drugs were on the rise as people self-medicated in attempts to deal with the emptiness that scoured their every wakeful moment and pitter-pattered through their dreams. Many of us were already leading precarious lives with no promises of a future with less stress and greater comfort and peace. General social distress was already reaching a breaking point when Covid-19 broke onto the international scene.

One thing I found particularly distressing was, and still is, the general ignorance of our global economic structures and their relationship to our nations, their sovereignty, and our individual choices. Very few people have any kind of a grasp on the intricacies of global supply chains and the interconnections of a myriad of corporations, factories and logistics experts on the conduct of business. The globally most powerful corporations have been masters at hiding the truth about mass production, distribution and sales. People think that ‘China’ is flooding our markets with cheap product and that our poor domestic corporations are suffering from this unholy competition. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Global corporations, many of them with very unfamiliar names, control global trade and often subject local businesses to rules and practices that benefit global finance capital rather than citizens. Look closely at the things you buy and more often than not these days you will not be able to locate where a product is manufactured. A label might tell you that a product was produced for such and such a retailer by such and such a manufacturer (with an address in Canada) by a factory in China, either owned by a ‘Canadian’ corporation or contracted by them, but it won’t tell you where a product was made. There is now a big silence about the true picture of global commodity production. But because no changes have been radical and the information to consumers has been accomplished slowly and inexorably completely under the radar with government complicity, it’s very hard for people to figure out what’s going on. Our lives are being orchestrated by forces hidden from us until something like Covid-19 comes along to expose some of the weak underbelly of globalization.

It seems many people now are worried about governments ‘taking away their freedoms’. Well, I have news for those of you who believe this: you have been slaves to the marketplace and an insidious capitalist morality for ages, but you don’t even recognize the bars that imprison you. You believe that a job is the one way to heaven. That no one should be given “free money” by government because that saps initiative. That individual action rather than community is the only thing that counts. You’ve bought into the tired, sick, libertarian agenda that feeds the globalist corporate agenda and leaves us poorer and fighting amongst each other. You believe that government is in charge and that its actions are the sole source of all the problems that you face in life. So delusional. So misguided. So sad.

There is no question that we need to be vigilant when it comes to government. With people like Jason Kenny, Doug Ford, mini-Donald Trumps at the helm of government, you can be assured that the global corporate agenda will be a high priority and the care and feeding of the citizenry will always take second place. Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party are just a softer version of corporate lackeyism. Make no mistake though, Trudeau and his party are solidly behind the corporate agenda. It feeds them and they feed it with subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and with help cleaning up their messes when they decide to go strategically bankrupt or simply abandon ship. But enough of that.

Myeloma be gone…for now!

To change the subject, my cancer seems to be on the run for now. It will come back. Now I just have to deal with the side effects of all the drugs I’m taking, some of which I take to counteract the effects of others I’m taking. Virtually all of them have dizziness as a side effect. It’s a wonder I can even stand or walk ten feet on a good day. But I do walk, a bit wobbly I must admit, but still, I get out there and do things. It’s very gratifying. It’s wonderful. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get out into the garden or into my shop or studio and do things, but I can. I know I’ve already told you this before, but I’m so happy about it, I just want to revel in it.

The garden

I also just want to revel in the garden. I’m working on a video right now of the gardens, but it’s a bit frustrating because things are growing so fast that I keep being tempted to re-video things that I’ve already recorded to give you a better sense of the beauty of the place, Carolyn’s own fabulous art project. Look at these amazing poppies. A couple of days ago there was only one or two blooms. Now look at them and there’s more to come, lots more! [since I wrote this more have opened!]

Poppies along the driveway.

Have a nice day, all of you! Keep your chin up! Don’t get too pissed off! Enjoy whatever you can (unless its murder or domestic abuse).

46 I’m sick, but I’m well.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 11 Comments

I’m writing today to let you know what’s up with me. I still don’t intend to embark on a regular program of blog posting, but things have changed for me over the past while and I thought I’d let you in on the changes to my situation. But first, a bit of a re-cap.

When I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in early October of last year, I was in pretty rough shape. It became clear to us then that I had had myeloma for some time before, probably for years. Over the past few years I’d had to back away from a number of volunteering gigs because I was too exhausted most of the time to be of much help to anyone. I was not much help around the house and property either. I stopped painting and drawing, and sculpture was out of the question. It was no fun at all. I felt rather useless. And because there was no diagnosis for years, I questioned my own sanity and vitality. The cancer diagnosis was patently not what I had hoped for, but it was an explanation for how I felt and for the pain and exhaustion I had experienced for years before. In some ways, I felt a sense of relief.

Then, in November, 2019, I became a full-time cancer patient. Myeloma became the main focus of our lives. We read everything we could about it online. We went to Victoria for a consultation with the oncologist I was assigned to at the BC Cancer Centre. That trip turned out to be a disaster. Aside from the myeloma that was causing me a lot of pain and distress, during that trip to Victoria I had to deal with a flare-up of a chronic degenerative disk problem, and of the arthritis in my neck I’ve had for years. I can’t tell you how discouraging that was. I was practically an invalid to the point that we asked around to see if anyone had a wheelchair we could use because we figured I’d need one.

The chemo regime I was initially put on caused me to get a huge rash all around my midsection, so my oncologists decided on a different cocktail of meds. This was quite discouraging because I wondered if there was any cocktail of chemo drugs that would work for me. Finally, my oncology team settled on the set of chemo drugs I’m on now. I’ve just started my fifth five week cycle of chemotherapy. I’m scheduled to continue on this program at least until late summer.

At first the chemo drugs kicked the shit out of me. By that time, I was also taking a low dose of hydromorphone, a synthetic opioid, to deal with the pain, and I had to take Dulcolax to deal with the inevitable constipation brought on by hydromorphone. My peripheral neuropathy was extremely annoying in that my hands and feet would constantly go numb and tingly. My whole pelvic area seemed to be on fire at times.

The first three cycles of chemotherapy had me questioning whether or not I should just shut it down and deal with the consequences. I couldn’t see myself living for any length of time in this state of pain and exhaustion.

Then, something changed. I don’t know if it’s because my body has been getting used to the chemotherapy or that the meds have been very effective in dealing with the myeloma. Over the past while, my bloodwork has gradually indicated a complete attenuation of myeloma symptoms. My blood seems to be back to normal and the signs of myeloma have all but disappeared. That doesn’t mean I’m cured, by any means. It just means that I may be going into remission. How long that might last is anybody’s guess. When the myeloma comes back, my oncologist will put me on another course of therapy. That could carry on for years to come.

So, lately I’ve had a surge of energy and I’m now able to do things! Oh, I still have pain and I still get tired, but I can do stuff! For instance, I’ve been able to help Carolyn build boxes for her garden beds and yesterday we rebuilt part of the structure that holds up the massive wisteria we have that surrounds our deck. I even used my chainsaw! If you had told me in January that I would be using a chainsaw in April I would have laughed in your face.

So, yes, I’m still sick with myeloma, but I’m now without major symptoms of the disease, and the hydromorphone is dealing with the pain I still have and will continue to have for the rest of my life. I can live with that. Basically, I’m feeling well. My body seems to be tolerating the chemo drugs much better than over the past few weeks. Some of the side effects of the chemo drugs are quite nasty, but I know how to deal with them now. I’ve become a proficient cancer patient.

Now, if we could only get rid of MARS-Cov-2, I could, we all could, get back to some proper socializing and I could hug my grandchildren again. The truth is, however, that my life hasn’t changed much because of the pandemic. I’m highly susceptible to infection because of the chemo and I can’t be around sick people for that reason. Covid-19 has just made it so that we have to be extra careful.

So, I’m cleaning up my studio and my shop. I’m looking forward to doing some painting, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture. I’m working towards restoring our canoe. The fact that I can even contemplate these things has changed my life yet again. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going.

The situation in the world is another thing entirely. The irrationality of modern neo-liberalism in the face of climate change and the pandemic continues to cause me consternation and worry. I hope we, as humans, can collectively get our shit together and build a more modest future, one in which we are in tune with each other and the natural world of which we are a part. I know so many good, caring people, but the structures of global capital run deep and are highly entrenched. Ignorance and denial still characterize large segments of the population. Even with the majority of the population consisting of good, caring people, I have no idea how to fight these massive reactionary forces. Covid-19 has shown us that massive changes is possible and desirable for our quality of life, although it’s probably not a good idea to leave desired social change to the recurrence of deadly pandemics.

45 A hiatus and a recommendation.

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 1 Comment

I’m going to take a break from writing here for a while. I’m not sure for how long, but probably for as long as the pandemic has a chokehold on our attention. My life with myeloma seems to me pretty insignificant in the light of Covid-19. So sayonara. I may still pass along recommendations for your reading pleasure occasionally. The link below will take you to Charles Eisenstein’s website. The article highlighted here is called Coronation and is all about the Covid-19 pandemic and its ramifications. I could have written it myself but he beat me to it. If you’ve been reading my blog you’ll quickly see how closely many of his arguments are to mine. It’s a long piece, but you can handle it.

https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation/

43 – Plugged in!

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Time to reëvaluate! (yes, an umlaut is traditional on the second e in this word). Call me a linguistic traditionalist. So, I’ve posted over forty entries in this blog directly or indirectly on my experience with myeloma. That’s over forty-five thousand words. That’s a lot. Now, the novelty of my daily chemo grind is wearing off and even though I’m thoroughly exhausted most of the time, I’m getting restless. I may force myself to draw this afternoon. There’s some lovely forsythia outside the living room window that I admire every day. Right now it’s vivid yellow, like the daffodils coming up here and there in the yard. I’ll see if I can draw them, if I can steady my hand enough.

With the SARS-2-Cov Novel Corona virus nipping at our heels, it’s tempting to move on to discuss Corvid-19 and leave my myeloma stuff on the back burner. Well, that’s not going to happen. I’m not keen to add anything to the overwhelming internet chatter on the pandemic. You won’t find any tips or suggestions on how to deal with it here. So, I’m going to move on to some extent. I’ll still post entries on my myeloma experience if they’re relevant and new and I will post material on myeloma and Covid-19 if that’s relevant too. For instance, there was a Webinar yesterday organized by Myeloma Canada specifically about myeloma and the pandemic. It didn’t add much to what I already know. In a few minutes the local Myeloma Support group is having a round table by Zoom. We’ll see how that goes. I’ll report back. Reporting back: well, that was interesting. Zoom is unknown territory for most people so it took some time to get the teleconference off the ground. But once launched, we got to see people we had only previously communicated with by email or on the phone. Some interesting conversation around drugs and dosages along with tips on navigating the medical system. Some discussion around what people are doing to stay safe in the face of Covid-19. Physical distancing seems to be the main strategy. I went to the hospital this morning (Monday, March 30th) to get bloodwork done. Chemo patients were supposed to be segregated from the others in the waiting room but somebody didn’t get the memo because that didn’t happen. There was one woman in there who coughed the whole time. At least she was wearing a mask. So was I, for that matter.

This is a great time to be a sociology, not such a great time to have myeloma, but then what would be a great time to have myeloma?

I’ve been re-reading What is Sociology? over the past few days giving me a renewed appreciation of Norbert Elias’ work. His language is different from conventional sociology, particularly functionalist sociology, and it’s a bit of a challenge to work with concepts like ‘figuration’,’ interweaving’, and ‘interdependencies’, language I’m not that familiar with. I get a lot from his work. I have a challenge for you too based on it.

So many of us, following the dominant capitalist morality in our world have a strong commitment to individualism and individuality. We crave to be ‘different’ from everybody else and we downplay our dependencies on others while we extoll the virtues of self-sufficiency. We laugh at people in their late teens and early twenties who still live with mommy and daddy and who obviously haven’t achieved the level of independence expected of them. I used to challenge my students. So, I’d say, “you think you’re self-efficient and independent. Well, think about this: Think about unplugging your home. Think about no more water lines, no electricity coming through the wires you never think about until it’s time to pay the bill. No sewer connection. No internet. No phone. No mommy and daddy wallet. Nothing. Now do you still think you’re self-sufficient? Now, shut down the grocery store to anything not grown or produced locally. I don’t mean just the food, I mean the packaging, the jars, the plastic milk containers. All of these things are produced in factories all over the world. You are connected to every worker in the banana plantations of Ecuador, the battery factories in Mexico, the food processing plants all over the world. You depend on them every day. Do you think about that when you peel a banana or put batteries in your headphones? What if we shut down Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Home Hardware, etc. The tools you buy there: Where do you think they are they made? Mostly China these days, in factories contracted by American corporations looking for cheap labour, and escape from Labour and Safety laws, and taxes. These corporations have exported their pollution to China. Not that that was ever a consideration in their decision-making. I could write a book on globalization and how we tend to misunderstand it based on old ways of thinking about the nature of countries, their sovereignty and their relations with other countries. Now the shit has hit the fan, and the whole globalist agenda is under question. But I don’t want to get into that right now. Instead, I want to challenge you in another way.

So, we tend to see ourselves as ‘substantiates’ (an Elias term), which means we see ourselves as things separate from other things. We contrast ourselves with larger things like ‘the environment’ or ‘society’, both we think of as real. Well, what if you asked yourself: What is it about me that is essential for my survival as an organism? Then, what is ‘outside’ of me that is essential for my survival? To start, let’s think about our biology.

Our survival depends on organismic integrity. That means that our bodies have to hang together. Of course, we don’t often think in those terms. It seems self-evident that our bodies hold themselves together, so to speak, with connective tissue, skin, bone, and various fluids. That said, our bodies soon cease to ‘hang together’ if we don’t incorporate ‘things’ from the outside to ensure this process continues. So, what ‘things’ from the outside of us are critical for our survival? Or put another way, if we didn’t ‘have’ these things, how long would we survive? One ‘thing’ we often take for granted is air. Suffocation is probably the quickest way of killing someone outside of blunt force trauma or other form of violence. No air=death in minutes. Again, passively speaking, the lack of water is probably second on the list of things the absence of which produces death fairly quickly. Probably food after that, although shelter, that is critical protection against extremes in temperature and weather, is also critical.

So, in summary, it’s fair to say that the human organism generally hangs together fairly well in the absence of blunt force trauma, evisceration, and amputations of various sorts. It cannot survive for long, however, without the right environmental conditions, air, water, and food. Nor can it survive without the means of waste evacuation. It’s really quite absurd, then, to think about ‘ourselves’ as independent of the ‘things’ out there that we need for survival. We don’t exist without them. See if you can imagine yourself ‘plugged in’. Imagine tubes entering your mouth for water and food, into your nose for air, attached to your butt for evacuating solids, and a catheter for you know where. The fact is that ‘you’ and ‘I’ extend far beyond the boundaries of our bodies. The way we see ourselves as independent things opposed to other independent things flies in the face of reality. So, yeah, we live in an illusory world.

Of course, the picture is much more complicated than even that. When we are conceived, at that moment, we begin to transform the world around us, into us using the ‘food’ available coming through the placenta and umbilical cord. That process continues after birth at an accelerating rate for many years before it slows down in early adulthood in an arc towards death. That’s where I’m at, on the arc towards death. Entropy rules. It’s no fun, but it rules.

In my next post I address the way we are socially connected over generations, in time, and in space. If Covid-19 is doing anything it’s highlighting our interdependence and mutual interests. Will we finally take our connections seriously?

38 While Covid-19 has me bottled up…

~ Roger JG Albert ~ 2 Comments

Covid-19 has the whole world in an anxiety attack. The appearance of this special strain of Coronavirus is a direct but obviously unintended consequence of globalization. I spoke with Marika and David this morning and we collectively concluded that the appearance of Covid-19 in particular is pretty much due to the rapid expansion of global air travel some forty years ago created partly by the needs of globalization. The shipping container was a major factor in globalization as was the internet, but air travel brought warm human and humid bodies from one end of the planet to the other ripe for the spread of this kind of virus. Wow!

What a world transforming situation we are in at the moment. I don’t think it will have a long term effect on global capitalist production because it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to re-tool ‘Western’ countries that have for some time now created a commodity-production system based on a complex of independent, unconnected factories producing individual parts for products that are then assembled in a factory designed to do just that. Wuhan, in China is a place where thousand of contractors and factories work for American and Western corporations in general making bits and pieces of everything to then be assembled in factories there or here for our consumption as hardware such as drills, heaters, washing machines, television sets, baby cribs, etcetera, as well as clothes, blankets, and sundry other wearables and that sort of thing. Of course, China isn’t the only place where this happens. Name a country in South Asia or South East Asia and the same thing is happening there. Viet Nam actually specializes in nails and fasteners for the construction industry, or to put it differently, Western corporations have chosen Viet Nam for this role. Bangladesh does clothes, so does Sri Lanka. But they all dabble in a range of products depending on the deals they can arrange with corporations who crave the absence of taxes, low wages and the dearth of health and safety regulations in the export processing zones set up specifically for this purpose in these countries.

As far as I’m concerned, Covid-19 has just made it so that I’m even more isolated than I was before. I’m at the pinnacle of vulnerability. I’m over sixty-five, I’m immuno compromised, I have an underlying illness and I’m fighting off some kind of bacterial infection at the moment that the docs are still trying to identify. If I get Covid-19, my chances of survival are slim to none. Well, something’s going to kill me. I’d like to wait a bit though to find out what that will be and I hope it’s not this virus.

I have a lot on my mind at the moment. I mean, what else have I got to do with my time but sit here and think? The reality of my own death is always close to mind and is stimulated constantly by programs like the recent one on the CBC White Coat Black Art program that deals with end of life care and how we as a society deal with it, or more precisely, don’t deal with it. Check it out here.

Most of you are way too young to have seen the movie Fantastic Voyage when it first came out in 1966, but this movie with Raquel Welch and Stephen Boyd was an inspiration for a generation of special effects techs to come. So, get this: a famous scientist is sick. He has a problem with his brain. A group of intrepid (they’re always intrepid) colleagues of his and some other brave adventurers get themselves shrunk in a special ‘ship’ that then is injected into the bloodstream of said sick doctor. Mayhem ensues of course as well as the necessary redemption. The trailer says it all.

The movie is hugely fantastical, but intriguing too. I imagine a little ship in my own veins going into my bone marrow to see what all the fuss is about and maybe do battle with the evil forces that are invading my body intent on killing me. It’s all fun to think about. The movie is a hoot. Thinking about what’s going on in my bone marrow, not so much.

I’m also thinking about life and death in general, following the last three blog posts I put out there for your reading pleasure. Serendipitously, Maria Popova, the immensely creative force behind the website ‘brain pickings‘ put out a piece on the work of John Muir (1838-1914). It’s well worth having a read through. It pretty much expresses in highly poetic prose what I wish I had written about the way I see the universe and our place in it. Popova quotes Muir:

One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

It’s only the last line I have any issue with because I don’t think there is any guarantee that the new will be better and more beautiful than what came before. But that’s really a quibble. The continuity of the biological world, and of the social world, make them seem eternal, immortal. No wonder we tend to deify them. For the BaMbuti of the Ituri forest (as reported by Colin Turnbull in the book The Forest People) before colonialism completely annihilated them, the forest was their mother. They didn’t deify the forest but they recognized that life emanated from her every pore. For other cultures, those living under the threat of imminent disaster, deification was common, something that Weber recognized in his Sociology of Religion a hundred years ago as did many others before him and since then.

Well. that’s all I can squeeze out of this poor brain of mine for the moment. Enjoy your social distance and get out into the sunshine.