Hitting The Links: 2/18/24
In which we go on a snow-filled hike and meet a glove-eating dog, + lots of links, & my seeming recovery
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Relief In The Neck
After Wednesday’s email I got a lot of concerned replies about my neck/shoulder injury, for which I’m grateful. I’ve had a run of good days since Monday’s debilitating flare-up, and that MRI on Tuesday showed no structural issues beyond the standard wear-and-tear of a guy in his 50s. My doctor called about it on Friday and was so relieved when he saw the report. Based on the x-rays a week earlier, he told me he was concerned about “disc collapse,” but the MRI gave a much better picture of what’s there and allayed his fears. So I’ll finish up the anti-inflammatories, take the muscle relaxant if I need it, and get back to my general thang in another week or so.
As a test, we took Benny on a long (for him) walk yesterday. Despite our getting another 2-3” of snow yesterday, he insisted on turning the walk into a hike, taking us down the wooded trail off of McMansion Alley, then up the unpaved access road to the cell tower, and on to The Cliff. He gets a little crazy walking in snow, and starts lunging/running sometimes, which means I got a lot of sudden pulls/jerks of my arm/shoulder/neck. Nothing flared up, so yay.
The thing was, throughout this snow-hike, I noticed two fresh sets of prints: sneakers and dog-paws. And I noticed that they were only going in one direction: up. That meant either they had taken a different route through the woods after getting to The Cliff, or that they were still up ahead. (Or that they got eaten by the black bears in the woods, I guess.) Benny did a lot of sniffing of those paw-tracks during the climb.
As we neared The Cliff, I saw a guy & his dog there through the trees. I called out, “Your dog on a leash?” He called out, “Just a second,” and I could see him gather up his dog, who began barking frantically.
Being the most mild-mannered of dogs, Benny refused to take another step, as he just didn’t want to be near all the noise. In this respect, he’s his father’s dog. But I tugged on his leash a few times, and he reluctantly finished the trail with me.
The guy apologized that his dog was so loud, but said Linus would mellow out now that we were here. We let the boys sniff each other, and Benny got at ease, too.
I crouched down and took off a glove, to let Linus, a 6-month-old Lab, sniff my hand. He eschewed my hand and instead started chomping on my glove. When I extricated that, he flopped over on his back so I’d give him belly-rubbies. I did that with one hand while holding Benny at a distance with the other (Amy had his leash at that point); our first greyhound, Rufus T. Firefly Roth, had a weird trip where he’d respond to that submissive pose by trying to bite/nip the other dog, and I had no idea if Benny latently had that in him, too.
And so we hung out & gabbed for a couple of minutes (we live near each other, as it turns out), and I took a few pix before we headed back along the trail. Benny seemed energized and even managed to leap over a fallen tree in a single jump; on the way up, he had to jump onto it, then over. This time, he measured it up, and did some zoomies in the snow before the jump, to build up momentum.
He tested my neck/shoulder a few more times as we clambered back up the trail to McMansion Alley, lunging and trying to race through the snow, but all was well, even when I ran a few dozen feet with him. Back on the road, he surprised us by wanting to walk on to the shopping strip down the street before going home.
He’ll be 10 years old soon, older than our previous greyhounds. Yesterday was like he was 5 again, running in the snow, trying to eat his leash on the way home, and generally bursting with doggie energy. He’s KTFO on the sofa now, but I’m glad we both managed to recapture a little of our younger selves.
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And now, let’s hit the links!
Links & Such
Recent Virtual Memories Show podcasts: Aaron Lange • Donald J. Robertson • Elizabeth Flock • David Thomson • Sammy Harkham • Ed Subitzky
RIP Alexei Navalny . . . RIP King Of Pop-Tarts . . . RIP Bob Moore . . . RIP Paul Neary . . . RIP Bob Edwards . . . RIP David Bouley . . . NYT ran an obit for Brian McConnachie . . .
Bigfoot caselaw. That is all.
Scathing excerpt from Kara Swisher’s Burn Book, about the tech lords and their decision to meet with Trump in December 2016.
In my pharma-life, I met with the Trump transition team for healthcare that same month, along with 3 dozen other policy folks. We each had 2 minutes to lay out priorities we’d like the administration to pursue (or not pursue). Hearing what some of the other speakers — not the transition team members, but my peers — had to say, I was cured of my imposter syndrome forever. (It’s an anecdote I’ll never share on mic, but trust me.)
Apparently, college kids can’t read. That doesn’t bode well for my posthumous pod-legacy.
And W. David Marx points out they won’t have a canon of memes, either. (I still laugh over All Your Base Belong To Us, but hey.) (You have no chance to survive make your time)
Speaking of posthumous: “One thing I think about is, what have you done that actually outlives you? One of the things that you could do would be to enable other people. That’s probably the immortality that anyone can hope for.” That's from this lovely interview with Marilynne Robinson by David Marchese. I’d love to record with her one day.
The numbers involved in China’s (potential) demographic collapse are mind-blowing. (Includes the lines, “The modeling also failed to take into account the traditional preference for sons. If couples could only have one child, they would prefer to have a boy.” When I was in college, I read an article about how the rise of portable ultrasound devices meant that parents in rural areas would abort a pregnancy if they found out a child was female, and how projections were for a 32:1 male/female ratio in some areas. That was 30 years ago.)
Quite the Valentine’s Day essay by Emily Gould.
Want something cheerier? Here’s another piece on medically assisted suicide, about a couple that went Full Zweig.
Nice piece by Dan Nadel about Bill Griffith and his amazing book Three Rocks.
MY favorite bookstore in NYC will always be St. Mark’s (2nd location, on 3rd Ave.), because that’s where Amy & I met for our first date. Here’s what some New Yorker writers chose as theirs.
Oh, so that’s how you start writing.
Looks like I gotta add a whole shit-ton of names to my podcast’s no-fly list.
Current/Recent Reading
RADIANT: The Life and Line of Keith Haring - Brad Gooch
Master Lovers - David Winner
“For who brooded over the meaninglessness of life anymore? Teenagers.”
—Karl Ove Knausgaard (tr. Don Bartlett), My Struggle: Book 2
Fractured Body, Fractured Mind
As mentioned, my doctor no longer thinks I’m one bump from quadriplegia, but wants me to wait another week or so before getting back to weights, yoga, running. I haven’t even done my morning routine in 2 weeks, although I have gotten back to the first part of it, a 2-minute palms-on-the-floor stretch. When I restart all this stuff, my body’s gonna be sore af.
Until Next Time
Thanks for reading this far! I’ll be back on Wednesday with a new episode and some art, and on Sunday with links, books, & non-workout craziness, & who knows maybe a little profundity or something.
Señorita, I’m in trouble again and I can’t break free,