On the Road Again

Here's hoping neither a couple inches of snow/rain nor explosive decompression risks will keep me from my appointed rounds.

Appointed rounds =

• delivering a 15-minute presentation on Monday at a weeklong biotech investor/analyst conference on the west coast,

• meeting with member companies and prospective members of my trade association,

• recording an in-person podcast,

• traveling to [another undisclosed west coast location, long as I'm out there],

• ‘celebrating’ my birthday by myself or maybe w/LeBron James & ~19,000 of his friends,

• recording another in-person podcast,

• seeing a friend or two,

• attending a vernissage, and

• taking a redeye flight home.

Not sure if I’ll post an episode of the podcast this week. It’s recorded, but I need to edit, record the intro and all that stuff, and my work/travel schedule may not permit it. So maybe the next email will be a day or two late, too.

At least I got the driveway clear.

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And now, let's hit the links!

Links & Such

• Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Chris Silverman • Silence (monologue) • The Guest List • Jarrett Earnest • Christian Wiman • Danny Fingeroth

• RIP Tommy Smothers . . . RIP Shecky Greene . . . RIP Glynis Johns . . . RIP Les McCann . . . RIP Sidney Wolfe . . . RIP Mbongeni Ngema . . . RIP David Soul . . .

• Also, Donald Wildmon died.

• Listener & longtime pal Vincent Czyz wrote a nice piece about Dawn Raffel’s novella, Boundless As The Sky. That book deserves a lot of readers.

• James Gleick reviewed a book on free will. Read it or not.

• I quit booze in 2012 on the advice of my urologist. I went cold turkey, because why not? It’s not like I had a drinking problem, unlike SOME people I know. Amanda Knox had a . . . much more tumultuous series of alcohol abstentions, and has discovered that the negative presence of total abstention — booze AND caffeine — can give those substances just as much power of one’s life. All I’m saying is, maybe give Dry January a shot, as it were.

• Go Team Liberal Arts!

• MOAR TRAINS!

• I enjoyed this Air Mail piece from a Christie’s exec about his 10 fave pieces in the Met’s European art section.

• Horrifying story from Tom Scocca about his House-level medical mystery (& the awful economics of being a writer/editor).

• That’s part of why I’ve gotten somewhat compulsive about exercising (and including a section about it in the newsletter): as fun as it is to have gotten stronger & more flexible, and as much as it may forestall my physical decline, it also gives me a baseline by which I’ll be able to see that decline pretty clearly, whenever it starts — whether from age, CLL progression, or some other disease. Once I start having trouble doing all these regular exercise routines, I’ll know Something's Up.

• Following up last week’s links on medically assisted suicide & mental health, here’s a REALLY long piece at NYT about a movement to allow long-term mentally ill people (specifically, with anorexia nervosa) to go into palliative care and/or physician-assisted death rather than continue medical & psychiatric intervention. As I wrote last time, I’m interested/fascinated in this topic of mental health being on a par with terminal illness when it comes to end-of-life decisions, and suffice to say, MAJOR CONTENT WARNING.

• On a lighter note, here’s a lovely video I came across this week, from a bunch of years ago, of Iron & Wine’s Boy With A Coin:

Current/Recent Reading

The Lover – Marguerite Duras

Remotely: Travels in the Binge of TV – David Thomson

Blood Of The Virgin – Sammy Harkham

Sound Body, Fractured Mind

I got my full 5-day weights/yoga cycle in last week, but had to double up Sunday again, as Saturday’s podcast + gab-session went long. I’ve held off of running, as my knee was still weird. I was up for it yesterday, but figured if I was going to dig out of all this snow today AND sit on a plane for 6-7-8 hours, maybe I don’t need to risk a lower-body injury the day before, y’know? I got in Friday’s weights & Saturday’s yoga; I think I’ll pass on today’s weights, since I just did 40+ minutes of shoveling heavy/wet snow. Doubtful I'll get anything in beyond my morning 15-minute routine this week, but maybe there's a hotel treadmill in my future.

Until Next Time

Thanks for reading this far! I might be back on Wednesday with a new episode, maybe some art, and Sunday with links, books, & workout craziness, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.

The frozen rain, the swinging gate / The tinge of blood, the hinge of fate / An ill wind and it's getting late / But here we stay / And it is death to wait / But here we stay,