Kidzdoc Has 20/20 Vision in 2020, Part 3

  

The award winning poet Terrance Hayes, one of The New York Times' Black Male Writers for Our Time, was born in Columbia, South Carolina, and received his BA degree at Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina, where he earned Academic All-American honors as a member of the men's basketball team, and an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh (a.k.a. Pitt, where I attended medical school). He has taught at Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt, and he is now a Professor of English at NYU. His poetry collections have been chosen as finalists or won several major literary awards, including Hip Logic, the winner of the 2002 National Poetry Series, Lighthead, the winner of the 2010 National Book Award, How to Be Drawn, the 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry, and American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, his latest book, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Currently reading:

    

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Journey to Portugal by José Saramago
In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

Books read in 2020:

January:
1. Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life by Louise Aronson
2. The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
3. Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World by David Owen
4. A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley

February:
5. My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine," The Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones by Dennis McCullough, M.D.

March:

April:
6. Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts
7. Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire by Ungulani Ba Ba Khosa
8. Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
9. Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
10. Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life by Lina Magaia
11. The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

May:
12. Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison
13. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera
14. Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire
15. Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
16. The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer
17. Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
18. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes
19. Mean by Myriam Gurba
20. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy

June:
21. The Tradition by Jericho Brown

20 Classic Works of Fiction by Authors from the African Diaspora from the Shelves to Read in 2020

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa
Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Emigrants by George Lamming
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat
The Fisher King by Paule Marshall
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Maps by Nuruddin Farah
Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o ✅
Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill
A State of Independence by Caryl Phillips
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau
Train Whistle Guitar by Albert Murray

20 Non-Fiction Books from the Shelves to Read in 2020

Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johnny Pitts ✅
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o ✅
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
Blood in the Water: The Attica Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison ✅
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy ✅
Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundation of Body and Soul by Roy Porter
Frantz Fanon: A Biography by David Macey
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer ✅
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Journey to Portugal by José Saramago
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World by David Owen ✅
Why Niebuhr Matters by Charles Lemert
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom ✅

Black Male Writers for Our Time

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Friday Black ✅
Jeffery Renard Allen: Song of the Shank
Jamel Brinkley: A Lucky Man ✅
Jericho Brown: The Tradition ✅
Marcus Burke: Team Seven
Samuel R. Delany: Dark Reflections
Cornelius Eady: Hardheaded Weather ✅
Percival Everett: Glyph
Nelson George: City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success
James Hannaham: Delicious Foods
Terrance Hayes: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin ✅
Brian Keith Jackson: The Queen of Harlem ✅
Major Jackson: Roll Deep
Mitchell S. Jackson: Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family ✅
Yusef Komunyakaa: The Chameleon Couch
Rickey Laurentiis: Boy with Thorn
Victor LaValle: The Ballad of Black Tom
James McBride: The Good Lord Bird
Shane McCrae: In the Language of My Captor
Reginald McKnight: He Sleeps
Dinaw Mengestu: All Our Names ✅
Fred Moten: The Service Porch
Gregory Pardlo: Digest
Rowan Ricardo Phillips: Heaven
Darryl Pinckney: Black Deutschland ✅
Brontez Purnell: Since I Laid My Burden Down
Ishmael Reed: Juice! ✅
Roger Reeves: King Me
Maurice Carlos Ruffin: We Cast a Shadow
Danez Smith: Don't Call Us Dead
Colson Whitehead: The Nickel Boys ✅
Phillip B. Williams: Thief in the Interior
De'Shawn Charles Winslow: In West Mills
George C. Wolfe: The Colored Museum
Kevin Young: Book of Hours

Recommended Black American Women Authors

Elizabeth Alexander
Osa Atoe
Toni Cade Bambara
Gwendolyn Brooks
Octavia E. Butler
Lucille Clifton
Edwidge Danticat
Toi Derricotte
Bridgett M. Davis
Vievee Francis
Renee Gladman
Yona Harvey
Carolivia Herron
Zora Neale Hurston
N.K. Jemisin
Gayl Jones
Tayari Jones
Adrienne Kennedy
Jamaica Kincaid
Ayana Mathis
Shara McCallum
Toni Morrison
Harryette Mullen
Gloria Naylor
Lynn Nottage
Morgan Parker
Tennessee Reed
Sonia Sanchez
Safiya Sinclair
Tracy K. Smith
Martha Southgate
Natasha Trethewey
Jesmyn Ward
Phyllis Wheatley

Literature and nonfiction by contemporary Latinx authors, as recommended by Myriam Gurba, author of the memoir Mean:



Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera ✅
Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli
Black Dove by Ana Castillo
Bless Me, Última by Rudolfo Anaya
The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez
Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez
Everyone Knows You Go Home by Natalia Sylvester
Native Country of the Heart by Cherríe Moraga
A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande
The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli ✅

Also: Mean by Myriam Gurba ✅

2020 Booker International Prize Shortlist:

Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann (German – Germany), translated by Ross Benjamin
The Enlightenment of The Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar (Farsi – Iran), with an anonymous translator
The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Spanish – Argentina), translated by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (Spanish – México), translated by Sophie Hughes ✅
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Japanese – Japan), translated by Stephen Snyder
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld (Dutch – Netherlands), translated by Michele Hutchison ✅

Planned reads for April:

Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts ✅
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrence Hayes
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life by Lina Magaia ✅
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor ✅
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli ✅
Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa ✅

Book #6: Afropean: Notes from Black Europe by Johny Pitts

  

My rating:

I purchased this book on first sight during a visit to Daunt Books in London last September, as the topic was of great interest to me. As an African American male who has traveled to western Europe 2-4 times a year for the past 13 years, visited seven countries, and intends to retire there by the end of this decade I feel very comfortable and well treated as an American tourist, but I also recognize that my experience is very different from Blacks from Africa and the Caribbean, particularly recent ones, who are often viewed very differently than I am. I have also largely failed to connect with Black Europeans, save for those in the Netherlands of Afro-Surinamese descent, who often mistake me from one of them and greet me in Dutch, because of our similar mixed racial backgrounds and appearance. I read this book in order to gain greater insight about the Black communities in Europe, and their experiences living there as native born citizens and recent immigrants.

The television presenter, photographer and author Johny Pitts is an Englishman with a particularly unique background, as his father is a Brooklyn born singer in the moderately successful R&B group The Fantastics, who met Johny's Irish mother in a club in the town of Sheffield in South Yorkshire. He grew up within two cultures that he could not completely identify with, due to his mixed race, and he was subjected to racist abuse during his childhood. As he reached adulthood he became interested in the experiences of Blacks living in Europe. After years of saving money he embarked on a five month journey, in October of 2010 or 2011, I believe, to discover everyday and better known Afropeans living in major cities in Europe, to learn about their personal experiences and to determine what they all shared as members of the African diaspora living outside of their ancestral lands.

According to Pitts, the term "Afropean" was a 1990s creation of a Belgian-Congolese artist, Marie Daulne, and the American musician David Byrne, and it is the name of his blog (https://www.afropean.com), which he uses as a forum for himself and others to share stories, photographs and personal accounts of what it means to be Black in Europe.

Afropean begins with a description of Sheffield and Pitts' experiences growing up there, and the journey begins with a Eurostar train ride from London to Paris. Pitts and the reader, who is made to feel like a travel companion and confidant of the author throughout the book, join a small group of middle class African Americans on a tour of Black Paris, which was notable for the often boorish and prejudicial attitudes of the tourists toward their poorer and less polished Black brothers and sisters. He spends most of his time in Clichy-Sous-Bois, a well known banlieue (suburb) which is in close geographic proximity to the French capital, but isolated from it due to poor transportation to central Paris, poverty and a high concentration of African immigrants, which left Pitts dispirited in comparison to his experiences in the city. A short SNCF (French Railways) train takes him to Brussels, and a visit to a much more diverse and welcoming community in the Belgian capital, and subsequent rail journeys take him to Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Marseille and the French Riviera, and Lisbon. He also makes a brief airplane journey to Moscow, whose citizens have become extremely hostile and violent towards African university students after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and he escaped serious injury or death after he chose not to enter the car of a Muscovite who wanted to give him a "ride".

Pitts describes several vibrant multicultural communities where Blacks and Whites live harmoniously, such as Château Rouge in Paris, Matongé in Brussels, and the area that houses the Young African Artist Market in Berlin. He also travels to impoverished and segregated neighborhoods, including the Bijlmer section of Amsterdam and Cova da Moura, a favela on the outskirts of Lisbon, in addition to Clichy-Sous-Bois. He also describes how the people living in the communities came to live there, their experiences in their countries, and notable Afropeans from these areas, past and present, including the soul jazz duo Les Nubians, Otto and Hermina Huiswoud, who were members of the Harlem Renaissance but emigrated to Amsterdam after World War II due to their communist activities, and British author Caryl Phillips, who he met for the first time in Brussels. He also describes the experiences and homes of famous people who lived in these areas, particularly authors James Baldwin and Claude McKay, along with the notorious Congolese dictator Joseph Mobutu.

Afropean was an enlightening look into the lives and struggles of ordinary and famous Black Europeans, and I enjoyed the journey I took alongside its author. I'll follow his online blog, in order to learn more about my Afropean future brothers and sisters, and copy him by making more of an effort to engage ones I encounter during my future visits to the continent.

Happy new one, Darryl. Hope things are well!

>9 kidzdoc: Great review Darryl. I have it in the tbr mountain.

>10 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! I'm doing well, and enjoying No Work Monday as you are. I feel fine, even though I was exposed to a teenager last Wednesday and Thursday who probably has COVID-19, even though she tested negative. She presented with nausea, abdominal pain and vomiting, with an unclear etiology. I ordered a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis w/ contrast, which demonstrated ground glass opacities in her lung bases, which is common in COVID-19 but unusual in other conditions. She didn't have fevers or any respiratory symptoms, but after my radiologist friend called and told me what she saw on the CT scan I transferred her to the unit where our COVID-19 patients are being cared for on Thursday afternoon (poor thing, she sobbed when I told her that she may have COVID-19, as she was worried about her mother and her health). I developed a cough, mild mucus production in my chest, and a slightly elevated temperature (99.4 F) on Saturday, and I was worried that I had contracted SARS-CoV-2, but I felt fine on Sunday morning and have been asymptomatic since then.

>11 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks, Caroline!

I finished listening to the recorded version of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. I picked this book because I had the paperback edition of it on my shelves and I had a used copy of the recorded version so I could listen to it in my car. I also wanted to read this book because Alvarez is one of those authors who got caught up in the American Dirt brouhaha back in January. Alvarez gave American Dirt a positive review. Alvarez is a political refugee - sort of - from the Dominican Republic. Garcia Girls was written in 1991 and is the fictionalized account of the experiences of her family.

I liked this book. It is not this authors most recent but it was what I had on my shelves right now. It is written in three parts and each part covers a different timeline in the life of her family, starting with the sisters in their adulthood first and ending with them as young children living in the Dominican Republic. I listened to most of this book and each sister had a different narrator which worked very well and fit the structure of the book. It might even have enhanced the interpretation of the story.

The book is about the problems of assimilation that children of immigrants have when they come to this country. In addition to the normal misunderstanding and cultural sociological conflicts with parents and the normal problems between parents and teenagers, there was an added economic layer that was a factor in the book. The family was quite wealthy in the Dominican Republic and regularly traveled back and forth to New York City where they shopped in high end stores. When the father was involved in a political revolt against the dictator Trujillo the entire family was forced to leave and became political refugees. Once in New York they were no longer among the wealthy class. Even though the father was a medical doctor in the Dominican Republic he was not granted a medical license in New York state because he did not finish medical school education in France and did not have a recognized degree. This drop in status was a source of contention between the sisters and the parents and contributed greatly to family discord.

This is a work of fiction but the author makes it clear in the author notes at the end of the novel that this is a fictional account of many family events. She also tells that when the book was published her mother read it a refused to talk to her or acknowledge her for ten years after the publication. The author does not say what was the problem and merely states that her mother had an adverse reaction to the novel. Like most novels of this type this is basically a coming of age novel and is filled with warmth, familial love, and humor. The author has an accessible writing style that makes this a book that can be read by teens and adults alike.

When the libraries reopen I am going to try to find her newest novel In the Time of the Butterflies and see what the differences are between the authors work of 1991 and that of a few years ago. This novel is not a work of heavy duty thinking dealing with philosophical ideas of great import, but it is enjoyable reading. In light of the recent controversy the notes at the end of this edition (written in 2011) provide better insight as to the author's life and thoughts about writing than does the novel. I would say this is enjoyable reading, but don't expect earth shattering insights about the Latino experience of the majority of Latino immigrants in the U.S.

>12 kidzdoc: It's interesting to me how differently covid presented in the young woman you describe. I wonder if it was an individual aborition or perhaps an example of how covid presents differently in teenagers. Thankfully you thought outside the box and got to the root of the problem. I'm not sure many doctors would have taken the time. I sympathize with her angst at the thought of having exposed her family, as I had similar feelings when I learned I had it. I'm very glad that you are feeling better and appear to have dodged the bullet.

So glad you are feeling well now. Stay as safe as you can. Do you have PPE?

Happy new thread Darryl! I'm glad you finished a book and that it was a good one. I am slowly catching up with the messages people sent me following my father's passing, so apologies for the delay in answering yours.

>14 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. COVID-19 was not in my differential diagnosis when I ordered the CT scan. She was having moderate abdominal pain but kept vomiting and looked absolutely miserable, and since my conversations with her and her mother, physical exams and labs didn't reveal what was ailing her I decided to perform a quick imaging test to see if it would help. There are several diseases that could cause bibasilar ground glass lung opacities, but not many in an otherwise healthy teenager; vaping could do it, but that usually causes much more extensive lung injury, and those patients have significant respiratory symptoms. A minority of people with COVID-19 have presented with only gastrointestinal symptoms, namely abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, but fever and diarrhea are almost always present, which she didn't have at that time. Some of these patients develop respiratory symptoms as well, and it's possible that the lung findings on CT scan were reflective of early disease, as she did not have cough or difficulty breathing. Whether it's COVID-19 or not it was certainly an unusual case; I'll have to ask my partner who saw her starting on Friday if she received a definitive diagnosis.

I did wear personal protective equipment (PPE) when I saw her, namely a yellow surgical mask, gown and gloves when I saw her on Wednesday and Thursday, so I was well protected, especially since she didn't have sneezing, cough or diarrhea (I don't know if the virus is transmissible from diarrheal stool).

She was an absolute sweetheart, as she was worried about her mother and not herself, even though she felt like crap. Despite their reputation and the opinions of some of my partners I like the vast majority of the teenage inpatients I see, and although it's hard to top an adorable infant or toddler I enjoy being able to have mature conversations with the kids who i take care of in the hospital.

I hope that you're feeling better!

>15 sallypursell: Thanks, Sally. Yes, we are all wearing yellow surgical masks in the patient care areas (PCAs) and around other areas of the hospital, and utilizing enhanced contact precautions for patients under investigation for or proven COVID-19. Like the rest of the country our PPE supplies are extremely limited, so we are conserving them as best we can.

>16 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire! I hope that you, Karen, and especially your mother are doing as well as can be expected, given your father's recent passing. Please let me know if there is anything I can do, or if you need a sympathetic ear.

I plan to make pan fried zucchini buns this afternoon, as I have all the ingredients I need to do so. I'll go to Publix midday, so I'll make them after I come back, and post a photo on Facebook, as I always do. I'll get to use my new KitchenAid mixer for the first time, as well.

Afropean was a superb read, and it met the hype as one of the Best Books of 2019, as chosen by The Guardian, New Statesman, and BBC History Magazine.

I'll resume reading Lost Children Archive now, but I probably won't finish it today. It's been very good so far.

Happy new thread, Darryl. Stay safe!

>1 kidzdoc: Am looking forward to hearing about the Lewis book on the AACM. Need to hear more of their music.

>9 kidzdoc: I highly recommend Marie Daulne's album Adventures in Afropea 1, with her group Zap Mama. Riveting songs in French, English and (I think) several African languages. Varied styles.

Pan fried Zucchini Buns! mmm- sounds great- are you going to start a cooking thread on Club Read? I am not on Facebook so I rely on library thing for news.
I'll put on my brother's bear bread recipe and the cauliflower/ ginger/tomato recipe that I make if you do.

>18 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley; you, too!

>19 dukedom_enough: I agree, Michael. I haven't listened to much of the AACM's work, and I'll do my best to finish A Power Stronger than Itself by the end of the month.

Thanks for recommending that album by Marie Daulne. I found it on Spotify, and I'm listening to the first track now.

>20 torontoc: Ooh, thanks for the reminder, Cyrel! Yes, I'll create a cooking thread now.

I saw a YouTube video this morning of vegetarian quesadillas that the British chef and restaurateur Jamie Oliver made for his family, and as I result I decided to make jalapeño cream cheese chicken enchiladas for lunch instead. It's my favorite new recipe, and it would be a good one to start the cooking thread with.

>21 kidzdoc: Yum! The upside of this whole stay-at-home thing is my kids are beginning to enjoy cooking. They each are responsible for dinner one night a week. Last night my son made his own from-scratch macaroni and cheese and tonight he wants to tackle twice-baked potatoes, asparagus and grilled steak. My daughter made stuffed shells the night before and I made butternut squash fritters before that. Definitely fun.

And hubby finally came out of quarantine. So nice to actually see him after 16 days!! He is completely wiped, but hopefully each day he will get a little stronger.

Stay well, Darryl. And happy new thread!!

>21 kidzdoc: Yum! Looking forward to the cooking thread as meals have become some of the focus of the free time we all have here, in my case planning and making, while the kids are very invested in what's for dinner on any given evening.

I'll add Afropean to my list of books to look for.

And I agree that teenagers are generally fantastic people. Having two of my own, and with all of their various friends in the house (not now, obviously!) I've gotten to enjoy the company of a wide variety of them and they are impressive.

The 2020 edition of La Cucina is now up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/318928

>22 Berly: The upside of this whole stay-at-home thing is my kids are beginning to enjoy cooking.

Yes! Well over a dozen of my local friends and colleagues have said the same thing, and posted photos of their kids' often impressive creations. Yout family's meals sound very tasty.

I'm glad that your husband is out of quarantine and on the mend.

>23 RidgewayGirl: Well done, Kay. I look forward to seeing what you and your family have been making.

Afropean was a good choice for me to read, especially given my distracted state during this pandemic.

The teenagers I care for in the hospital give me great hope for the future.

Happy new thread!

Hi Darryl. Hope we all have a great spring!

Happy new thread, Darryl! Glad you're feeling better, and you sound more upbeat too.

Happy New Thread, Darryl. Just stopping by to see how you are and what you are reading. Sounds like you are much happier with your new and reduced schedule.

>25 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle!

>26 rocketjk: Thanks, Jerry! It will certainly be a quiet spring, if nothing else. Now that my one day work week is over I'm only scheduled to work one more day, on Thursday, between now and May 13th. The inpatient General Pediatrics census in the hospital I work in continues to be extremely low, between 1/3 and 1/2 of normal, and we are calling off three or four hospitalists every day; I worked a 12 hour shift on Friday, and was called off on Wednesday and Thursday. I seriously doubt that I'll be able to spend the month of June in Lisbon, as I had planned, so unless I'm able to travel to Philadelphia to see my parents that month I'll spend the vast majority of the remainder of the spring at home. That is anything but the worst thing in the world, as I can catch up on reading for pleasure and work related tasks on what promised to be a very busy year in January.

>27 lisapeet: Thanks, Lisa! I'm grateful to still have a job and a full salary, despite hardly working, especially since most of the nurses I'm working with are also being called off but not getting paid. It certainly isn't fair for me to be paid to sit at home, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of us are furloughed for all or most of the summer.

>28 avaland: Thanks, Lois! I'm definitely happier with my reduced schedule, especially since it will mean that I won't have such a hellish schedule during the late autumn and winter starting this year.

I finished Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa this week, a historical novella about the end of the Gaza Empire and the last ruler of Gaza, before it was captured by a Portuguese colonial army and transformed into what is now Moçambique. I read it for this quarter's Reading Globally theme, Writing from Southern Africa, and I have three more books by Moçambican authors that I intend to get to this quarter, Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life by Lina Magaia, The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiiziane, the first Moçambican author to publish a novel, and The Tuner of Silences by Mia Couto. I'll probably also read Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by the Zimbabwean author J. Nozipo Maraire, and look for other books from Southern Africa on my shelves.

I've now acquired all but one of the novels shortlisted for this year's Booker International Prize, so I'll get started on them next week, after I finish Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli tomorrow. The prize winner will be announced on May 19th, and I'd love to finish the shortlist by then.

I'll also review my reading plans for 2020 (20/20), and select books from those lists. I'm committed to reading half of the books from Myriam Gurba's list of contemporary Latinx authors in >6 kidzdoc: this year, and my next book after I finish Lost Children Archive will be Dominicana by Angie Cruz.

>29 kidzdoc: Darn! I am adding voice tracks to this coming Monday's radio show right now. I've got the music tracks all downloaded, but seeing your post here reminds me that I was going to see whether you thought you might listen in and, if so, whether you had any requests. Next time!

Montana will probably move into Phase 1 opening next week. We've had only slightly more than 400 cases and 10 deaths with only 4 new cases listed today. The lack of testing is a major hurdle.

It will be a big relief to the the hospitals of the state that they can restart elective surgeries and start calling people back to work.

>31 rocketjk: I had meant to type that I'm off on Monday, and will definitely listen to your program! I always listen to music or NPR whenever I cook, and the 4-6 pm time period is a perfect one for me to make dinner.

Hmm...let me think about any tracks I would like to hear. Since I just started reading A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music by George E. Lewis and because I'm not familiar with much of their work I would be interested in learning more about the members of the association. I'm not working on May 4th or any day in June, my month off from work, so I'll listen in on those days as well.

>32 streamsong: I'm glad that Montana hasn't been hit hard by COVID-19, Janet. I just saw an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that mentioned that the updated model of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation for Georgia indicates that our peak was reached on April 7. The Georgia Department of Public Health's web site is wonky at the moment, so I can't see the daily COVID-19 updates. Ah, it's working now...the peak looks to have been on April 6, dropped significantly on April 10, rose sharply on April 13-14, but has plummeted since then. However, the IHME model also suggests that relaxation of social distancing will be safely possible no earlier than June 15. Our governor is a typical far right gun totin' marginally educated Southern conservative who sounds like a throwback to the 1950s, and I wouldn't be surprised if he announces an end to the statewide shelter in place order at the end of this month. Atlanta's mayor, on the other hand, is a far better educated liberal African American woman, who instituted restrictions 1-2 weeks before Guvna Bubba did, and she may not follow his lead in lifting restrictions here. Atlanta is the state capital of Georgia, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

>34 kidzdoc: I really shudder to think how this will play out here in New York. Aside from the fact that the city was hit so hard, it's such a hub for travel, commerce, culture, etc., and will have to take other states' curves into consideration before opening anything back up again. I do feel like we have good leadership in Andrew Cuomo—and am sadly aware of what an anomaly is to type those words "good leadership" in 2020—but I can't even imagine the machinations and discussion that will have to go on behind the scenes before anything changes.

>35 lisapeet: Right, Lisa. Cities like New York, and to a lesser degree, Atlanta, will certainly have to rethink summer and early autumn events, particularly those that attract large crowds or large numbers of visitors from elsewhere. The 80+ year old Atlanta Dogwood Festival, a three day fine arts affair which attracts roughly 200,000 visitors to Piedmont Park, close to where I live, was supposed to have been held this weekend, but it's been postponed until the first weekend of August — is that too early? The city is jam packed with visitors during Labor Day weekend, with tens if not hundreds of thousands of attendees at Comic Con, 72,000 fans in attendance at the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Classic college football game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and tens of thousands more (including Kay, Lisa, myself and other LTers) going to the Decatur Book Festival in nearby Decatur, just east of Atlanta. Actually two football games are scheduled to be held here that weekend, West Virginia vs Florida State on Saturday, and Georgia vs Virginia on Monday. It's very possible that the Atlanta Falcons and/or Atlanta United FC could be playing home games as well. Will it be safe to hold events like these in early September? Do I want to be around any people from Florida or other states with lax or nonexistent shelter-in-place orders this calendar year?! (Heck, no!)

I have been trying to up my Latinx author reading since the brouhaha back in January. I have now read one work of fiction and one nonfiction off my TBR list. Of course, I had counted on getting books from the library and so I have been limited to what I have in the house. I can be more selective in a month or so when I can get to a library.

I read, or rather listened to the audio recording of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. This autobiographical work of fiction, or fictionalized autobiography, was by Julia Alvarez. The narration on this was very well done with different narrators for the four sisters. It made for some good listening. I want to read In the Time of Butterflies at some point.

The surprise for me was When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmerelda Santiago. I really enjoyed this memoir. I literally grabbed it off the shelves as I was leaving work back on March 13th. It was so good that as soon as I can get to the library I will get her second and third books. Almost a Woman and Turkish Lover take her life up to the present. I can't believe how caught up in her life I became while reading this memoir. The first one is about her childhood and ends when she is accepted to attend a prestigious High School in N.Y.C. I am usually a rather neutral reader if memoirs, and this one captured me. I don't know if it was the fact that I read it mostly while on my patio when taking breaks from the temporary desk in my house, but it was very good.

My next book will be Finding Mañana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus by Mirta Ojito. That will give me something to compare with the Santiago book, as I will be reading it using the same reading tactics - as long as it doesn't rain.

>37 benitastrnad: That's great, Benita.

I would appreciate it if you refrained from using the word brouhaha on my thread to describe how I and other people of color, especially Latinx, have reacted to the controversy over American Dirt, as I find it to be quite disrespectful.

>29 kidzdoc: Dear Darryl, I know how much you like to spend your holidays in Europe, but I think that this will not be possible for a long time. The borders between the countries are closed. Only people who work for professional reasons (systemically important) or freight traffic may cross the borders. Furthermore, social distancing, stay at home and here in Switzerland there are no groups larger than five people. These restrictions apply until June 8th, but we don't know what will come afterwards. Next Monday, in addition to the grocery stores, garden and construction centers are also allowed to open. The schools and other shops are scheduled to open on May 11th. Nobody knows yet how this should work with the schools, because the measures of social distancing will still apply. The libraries and museums are scheduled to reopen on June 8th. Restaurants, bars etc. have no date when they may open. It can take a lot longer.
We are not planning a vacation this summer, as the motto stay at home will continue to apply for a long time and the borders will probably remain closed for a long time.

Take care and stay healthy. Better times will come again, unfortunately not so quickly.

>39 Ameise1: I'm fully aware of that, Barbara. I haven't given any serious thought to going to Lisbon in June, and, now that the Edinburgh festivals in August have been cancelled, I'll hopefully be able to get reimbursed for the cost of the apartment that I booked for two weeks there. It was a nonrefundable reservation, so I don't know if that will be possible. If not I may consider spending two weeks in that lovely town, unless I can't get flights to and from there or unless the city is so shut down that I wouldn't be able to do much. I hope to be able to make shorter visits to Lisbon and London this autumn, especially since I probably won't request any additional vacation this summer.

Georgia remains under a strict shelter in place order through the end of the month. The governor is supposed to make a statement today about extending this order or ending it sooner, but I seriously doubt that he will not institute some relaxation of the restrictions starting no later than May 1.

>38 kidzdoc:
I am sorry. I didn't mean to offend. What I was trying to say was that whatever it was made me realize that I needed to up my reading game and read some of the materials that I have been putting off for some time.

>41 benitastrnad: No problem.

I’ve been reading your thread, Darryl, I just haven’t managed to get to the end until just now. Enjoyed your review of Afropean and glad you are healthy.

I was confused by your comments on Brouhaha. I looked it up and found some consider it antisemitic. !! Had no idea. The reason it’s considered antisemitic is because of supposed origins that may be more imaginative than factual. Certainly I’ve never considered its use that way myself (I’m Jewish, of course). Curious, if you don’t mind, what your reasons are. I hope I’m not offending.

One quirky take here: http://languagehat.com/brouhaha/

>43 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan.

noun: brouhaha; plural noun: brouhahas
a noisy and overexcited reaction or response to something.

That's all I'll say about this topic. I absolutely do not wish to discuss it any further.

np Sorry

>45 dchaikin: No problem.

Darryl, have you seen this news?

Sian Cain. The Guardian, 04/20/20: International Booker prize postponed due to coronavirus

"The winner of the £50,000 award for the best novel translated into English, shared equally between author and translator, was due to be announced on 19 May. But prize organisers say that the announcement of the shortlist on 2 April exposed the difficulties that readers were having getting hold of books during the lockdown.

"Only one of the shortlisted books, Japanese author Yōko Ogawa’s novel The Memory Police, has sold more than 5,000 copies. Three of the books – The Discomfort of Evening by Dutch newcomer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Iran’s Shokoofeh Azar, and The Adventures of China Iron by Argentina’s Gabriela Cabezón Cámara – have sold fewer than 1,000 copies."

Interestingly, amazon UK has had The discomfort of evening on sale at 99p recently, which I would have expected to boost sales. Mind you, I'm not tempted myself ....

>47 Sakerfalcon: Yes, I did see that announcement, Claire, but thanks for reminding me that I wanted to post it here, and in the Booker Prize group, this week. I have five of the six shortlisted books, and I should receive my copy of The Discomfort of Evening from The Book Depository any day now. I'll start reading Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor tomorrow.

Several of the publishers postings to librarians have discussed how poor book sales have been in the last month. The NY Times Book Review podcast has implied that sales have simply disappeared. Nobody is sure why. It would seem to be counter intuitive. More time at home should equal more reading time, but it doesn't seem to be that way. I wonder if readers are reacting like I have and are reading books off of their shelves rather than purchasing new ones. And of course, all the librarians and bookstores are closed, so selling books has become much harder. Bookstores have always seemed to me to be places of social gathering - like coffee shops, so taking the social out of the bookstores ruins the experience of purchasing in many ways.

The NY Times Book Review podcast said that the sales figures have been really devastating to authors, as without sales, they can't get new contracts. This may change publishing forever.

>47 Sakerfalcon: They also made some rather strange choices going from longlist to shortlist. There were a few things on the longlist that must have been much more marketable, like The eighth life and Red dog, not to mention the Houllebecq and the Vila-Matas.

>49 benitastrnad: sounds like income uncertainty and loss of jobs is having an impact. I wonder how the impact changes across book types and sellers. Amazon must be less effected, but have their book sales also disappeared? Anyway, hope people buy books again.

>49 benitastrnad: I'm saddened that book sales have plummeted, at least here in the United States. I submitted a donation last week to the GoFundMe page for City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, which has remained my favorite bookshop here or abroad since I first visited it in 1998, as it was in danger of closing, since the physical shop was closed and it wasn't able to fulfill online orders. Fortunately that campaign was a huge success, and the bookshop is on stable footing, at least for the moment.

I have ordered several books this month, including all six of the novels chosen for the Booker International Prize shortlist, five from Amazon and one from The Book Depository, as it, The Discomfort of Evening, is not yet available in the US. I certainly have plenty of books to read at home, though. I would suspect that a good percentage of readers are out of work, given that there have been 22 million claims for unemployment in the past four weeks, and that those who are out of work are not buying books.

>50 thorold: I haven't looked at the entire longlist in detail, but I'm excited to be introduced to five new authors; the only one familiar to me is, of course, Yoko Ogawa. With a solid effort today I should finish Lost Children Archive, and I'll start on the shortlist by reading Hurricane Season by the Mexican author Fernanda Melchor, who is one of the most highly regarded young writers in her country. After I finish the shortlist, hopefully by late May or early June, I'll look at the other books on the longlist.

>51 dchaikin: Right, Dan. I also suspect that income insecurity is the main cause for the sharp decline in book sales.

>52 kidzdoc: I read Tyll last year and enjoyed it very much, like most of the Kehlmann I’ve read. A sort of postmodern take on Mother Courage. I’m intrigued by the concept of The adventures of China Iron, not too sure about the Dutch book, but I’ll probably end up reading it out of curiosity... Did you notice that the author of Lost children archive is one of the judges?

>53 thorold: Yes, I'm definitely aware that Valeria Luiselli is one of the Booker International Prize judges this year!

I'm really looking forward to finding out what you think of Lost Children Archive. I initially picked it up from the library, but quickly realized that it was a book I both wanted to read more slowly and to highlight passages.

I've also started ordering my books from bookshop.org since I can choose a local independent bookstore to profit from my purchase, although my local has both curbside pickup (which I have used and is easy) and free next day delivery via Susan, one of the booksellers.

>55 RidgewayGirl: ~Sigh~ I wish that was an option here. I know of places where libraries have drive-thru windows as well. But librarians and booksellers are "non-essential" employees and are staying home along with everyone else in NYC.

>55 RidgewayGirl:
And with local curbside pick-up you get to get into a car and get out of the house. I went 7 straight days without getting out of my yard, and I was surprised by how inward looking I got. The books kept me thinking about what might be going on outside of my yard.

>56 ELiz_M: I miss the library so much! But it is fun that I won't have to renew any of the three books I had out when they closed since I've had plenty of time to finish them and the new due date is sometime in May.

>57 benitastrnad: Yes, for awhile they stopped the curbside service, but now that our Governor is urging stores to reopen, their compromise is to have both free delivery and curbside service. I'm glad they aren't opening though. I like every single one of the staff and don't want them to risk their health because people want to browse.

Well, there's a lot of controversy about curbside and drive-through pickup at libraries. Having library workers interact with other people and material that has nonporous surfaces, where the virus can live for days at a time, puts them at risk in the same way other frontline workers are. And, similarly to the folks working at checkout counters or carrying mail or stocking grocery shelves, it's usually the lowest-paid employees or part-timers who are being asked to do that, sometimes with the only other option being losing their job, because they can't otherwise work from home—and library workers on the low end of the scale are some of the lowest paid city employees around. It's verrry political in the library world and in many places considered to be bad practice, so if your library doesn't have curbside service that's what's behind it.

But a lot of libraries are reallocating their collections budgets to increase their ebook collections, which are germ free!

Anyway... sorry. I'm like a little wind-up scottie dog on this subject.

>59 lisapeet: No, that's good information. I'm all for keeping our library employees healthy! And my library has been increasing their ebook collection rapidly.

>55 RidgewayGirl: I finally finished Lost Children Archive this morning, and I absolutely loved it. I gave it 4-1/2 stars, and after I gather my thoughts I'll write a review of it, most likely this weekend.

Thanks to Liz's post I placed my first order with Bookshop.org yesterday, as I requested three books from Myriam Gurba's list of recommended novels by contemporary Latinx authors, The Book of Unknown Americans, The House of Broken Angels, and Signs Preceding the End of the World, along with a book by one of the NYT's Black Male Writers for Our Time, In the Language of My Captor.

>61 kidzdoc: Those all sound great, Darryl. I'm interested in every single one of those.

>61 kidzdoc: Excellent choices! I absolutely loved The House of Broken Angels. I ordered The Memory Police and Myriam Gurba's memoir, Mean from bookshop.org and plan to read them soon.

>63 RidgewayGirl: Mean was terrific.

>62 lisapeet: Thanks, Lisa. I intend to read all of them this summer.

>63 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad to hear that, Kay. I ordered a copy of Mean directly from the publisher earlier this week, and I'll also read it this summer.

I've been enjoying Myriam Gurba's Twitter feed, including this post which generated plenty of comments when I posted it on my Facebook timeline:



She liked my choice and the rationale for it, and I enjoyed her reply:



>64 lisapeet: I'm also glad that you liked Mean, Lisa!

>65 kidzdoc: Her twitter feed is a delight, although I often have to think over what she's saying and examine my own biases.

The quarantine house thing is fun. House 2, as long as we can band together and lock Dale Carnegie in a closet, would be my choice. I lean towards House 6, but I'm pretty sure everyone is just going to be drunk all the time, which would be fun for an evening, but tiresome over weeks.

>66 RidgewayGirl: Agreed. I thought that Carnegie would cause Fitzgerald to start drinking heavily before noon, and send Woolf over the edge. Rachael (FlossieT) also suggested locking Mailer and Hemingway in a closet, and I proposed building an Octagon and letting them engage in a WWE fight to the death, until I remembered that both were already dead. Rachael & I agreed that house #6 would be particularly entertaining during happy hour. We all thought that Rand would get her ass whupped by the other occupants of the house in short order.

>65 kidzdoc: Oof. Pitfalls everywhere with that assortment. I can't go with #1 or #2, as they leave out large chunks of the population (although it would be nice to see the ladies in #2 bond). #3 would make me both crazy and depressed. #4 and #5 might be bearable, except for LRH and Nabokov, who is untrustworthy. So maybe #6, but Mailer and Hemingway would raise the testosterone level beyond bearing.

I got to meet Myriam Gurba briefly at the #DignidadLiteraria rally/conference in NYC back in February, and she was SO energized and energizing. So sad that nothing came of that meeting, though perhaps the coronavirus was a legit excuse... but I doubt anything was moving ahead anyway. I guess we'll see. (I think Houses #3 and 4 are set up just so everyone else can pick on Rand and Hubbard... and good riddance.

Baldwin and Stein? I don’t want anything to do with the scientology kook, but those two would be pretty special. I’ll take house #4.

Glad you enjoyed Lost Children Archive - It was far and away my favorite non-James Baldwin book from last year.

House #1 for me. I just want to meet Flannery O'Conner.

I regret not taking the Dutch translation of Lost Children Archive with me, when I visited the library in March. I had it in my hands and put it back, thinking I could take it next time, and then the library closed...
In the meantime I did read Tyll and liked it.

>68 ffortsa: Right. That's the problem — and the fun — of this challenge. Each house has at least one problematic author. It's very easy to make a House #7 of your handpicked authors. I chose #4 because it has two of my favorite authors, Baldwin and McCullers, and because it would be interesting to see the two of them, and Stein, argue with Hubbard.

>69 lisapeet: Very nice! I would love to see and meet Myriam Gurba in person. I would argue that her article about American Dirt and the #DignidadLiteraria movement has been successful in highlighting the failing of the publishing industry to publish and promote Latinx authors, raising the cultural consciousness of some readers, and highlighting Latinx writers who most of us are unfamiliar with. I and, I think, most of us would agree that authors can and should have the freedom to write about subjects and characters outside of our own groups, but the author and the publisher should be responsible and sensitive and ensure that the portrayal of the people represented in the group is accurate and authentic, especially if the book is as overhyped as Cummins' novel was.

>70 dchaikin: I would love to be in the company of Baldwin, McCullers and Stein during a quarantine. I know nothing about Barbara Pym, and I would certainly want to lock Hubbard in the attic.

That's very high praise for Lost Children Archive indeed.

>71 rocketjk: Agreed. I'd also like to meet Flannery O'Connor, as she is another of my favorite authors.

>72 FAMeulstee: I hope that you can locate a copy of Lost Children Archive soon, Anita. Now that I have all six books chosen for this year's Booker International Prize shortlist I'll plan to read all of them in the next three weeks, starting with Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. Today is the first day of a 19 day stretch off from work, due to our extremely low inpatient census in the hospital in which I work, so I'll have plenty of time to finish them all by mid May.

Barbara Pym shows up in CR a lot and those post typically leave me wanting to read her books.

Enjoy the quiet days off, Darryl.

>74 dchaikin: Sounds good, Dan. I'll look to see if you read any books by Barbara Pym, and what you think of them.

>75 RidgewayGirl: Thanks, Kay; I certainly will. Despite Georgia Governor Kemp's decision to allow certain key business such as tattoo parlors, nail salons, gyms and bowling alleys to reopen today I'll avoid those places and continue to shelter in place, save for once or twice a week trips to Publix and other local markets.

I'm impressed with your willingness to put off your new tattoo!

Given that my Governor is trying to follow Kemp's lead, I was happy to note that at the Publix today, there were more people wearing masks than had been the case before.

>77 RidgewayGirl: he’s only able to put off the tattoo because he hasn’t really gotten into our (CR’s) Ducks discussions yet. 😉

>76 kidzdoc: I haven’t read Pym. I would like to correct that.

>73 kidzdoc: Actually, I could also have picked Book 4 just to meet James Baldwin.

Touching base to make sure that you and yours are all ok, Darryl.

Pleased to see that you were so enthused by Valeria Luiselli's most recent novel (and her first written in originally in English). I read her Story of My Teeth earlier this year and it was obvious that she is going to be a huge literary star. She is married to Mexican author Alvaro Enrigue whose book Sudden Death I hope to get to soon.

I have recently read Terrance Hayes's American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and it is an impressively powerful and incendiary collection. If I were to quibble a little, other than the prescribed 14 lines they are not identifiably sonnets (each line should have 10 syllables in iambic pentameter; if we ignore the rhyming structures which don't matter anymore) but that doesn't detract from his articulate expression of vital themes.

I am a little bit lost at the moment with my muse and bedfellow marooned with Kyran in Sheffield whilst Belle and I are here with Erni in Kuala Lumpur. Yasmyne meanwhile is holed up in Norway. Since Ramadan started yesterday I am feeling the distance more so.

I started a new thread over at the other place yesterday and almost put up a picture of you, Joe and I in St. Pancras enjoying a beer each. That was an enjoyable day.

Take care of yourself, friend.

>65 kidzdoc: I would choose House #1. It is Oscar Wilde whose company I am sure would have been an absolute delight. Just keep me out of House #6 - Hemingway and Mailer what a dreadful combination.

>77 RidgewayGirl: I'm impressed with your willingness to put off your new tattoo!

Actually I couldn't decide which of these tattoos I wanted:

  

Given that my Governor is trying to follow Kemp's lead, I was happy to note that at the Publix today, there were more people wearing masks than had been the case before.

Excellent. I went to my local Publix (in Ansley Mall, about a mile north of the Atlanta Botanical Garden and Piedmont Park) when it opened at 8 am yesterday. All the customers were wearing masks, as were the supermarket associates, and there were plastic shields at the checkout lanes to provide further protection.

From now on I'll take advantage of Publix's special hours for front line health care providers, which is 8-9 pm on Thursdays, and 7-8 am on Fridays.

I must confess that I did visit my barber yesterday before I went to Publix, as it drives me crazy when I go for more than two weeks between haircuts, as I keep my 'do "high and tight". We set up a 6:30 am appointment, as both of us are early birds, and we were the only ones in the shop until his 7 am customer came at 6:50. He owns the shop, operates by appointment only, and is now scheduling customers at 30 minute intervals, so that there are few if any people in the shop at any one time.

What shops are now open in South Carolina? From what I read, and saw from Facebook posts of a good friend of mine, who is a pediatric hospitalist at Prisma Health Children's Hospital in Greenville, some businesses and communities in the state are not following the governor's recommendations, similar to here, where many of the Intown restaurants have announced that they will not begin dine in service tomorrow.

>78 dchaikin: he’s only able to put off the tattoo because he hasn’t really gotten into our (CR’s) Ducks discussions yet.

Ooh, a duck tattoo...yes, that's the spirit!



>79 rocketjk: Actually, I could also have picked House 4 just to meet James Baldwin.

Yes! As long as L. Ron Hubbard kept to himself — or was locked in the attic by his fellow housemates — #4 would be my favorite quarantine house.

>80 PaulCranswick: Good to see you, Paul. I'm doing well, as I'm symptom free and sheltering in place, save for once or twice a week trips out of the house. Due to our extremely low inpatient census my partners and I are hardly working, as we've called off three or four hospitalists every day for most of this month. I only worked one day this week and last week, and three days the week before that. I've also decreased my FTE (full time equivalent) status, so I'm workin 60% of full time (0.6 FTE) rather than 80% of full time. For my group no one is working more than 80% of full time, as a 1.0 FTE is quite rough, especially in the late autumn to early spring months.

My father has been doing much better over the past couple of weeks, after his stroke and days long seizures at the end of January and early February. He will probably never return completely to baseline, but he is at least 75% there. My mother is doing better as well.

I hope that your mother is doing well. Sorry to hear that the family is split; hopefully everyone will be together soon.

I own one book by Álvaro Enrigue, Hypothermia, which I haven't read yet. I'll plan to read it thi summer. I'll finish American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin sometime next week. (Hmm...apparently the touchstones are hung over after staying out too late on Saturday night.)

>81 PaulCranswick: House #1 is appealing, due to Brecht and O'Connor. I think she would put Hunter S. Thompson in his place, as I don't think she would put up with any crap from anyone.

That is a very fine 🦆 tattoo. Nothing better than a pink gun-toting 🦆 with sunglasses permanently inked on your cheek.

Which businesses are opening up here in Greenville and what their plans are is random. One local bookstore has reopened, but my favorite has chosen to stick to free delivery and curbside pickup. I'm not out and about enough to see what's going on outside of the places I get emails from, who are largely staying closed.

>83 dchaikin: Agreed. It's the classiest facial tattoo I've seen recently.

>84 RidgewayGirl: I haven't been out that much either. However, apparently none of my favorite Intown restaurants have announced that they will commence dine in service tomorrow.

>76 kidzdoc: I can lend you something by Barbara Pym next time you are in London. Not sure her novels will be quite your thing, but they are fun. She is sometimes described as a C20th Jane Austen for her examination of the little ups and downs and absurdities of everyday life in small town/village England. She also wrote a couple of satires of academia based on her work with anthropologists.

>86 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, Claire! The satires about academia would interest me the most.

Speaking of my next visit to London a recent discouraging article about the tourist industry in Spain makes me wonder if I'll be able to visit Europe at all this year.

Post-Pandemic Travel: Spain, The Second Most-Visited Country On Earth, Weighs A Fraught Revival Of Its $200-Billion Tourism Sector By The End Of 2020

>87 kidzdoc: I seriously doubt traveling will be possible this year, Darryl.

>76 kidzdoc: >86 Sakerfalcon: etc. — Yes, it would be fun to hear what you think of Pym, Darryl! She's so very English and 1950s and middle-class-spinsterish on the surface, but there's always something very subversive not far off. I'd love to hear her in conversation with James Baldwin, I'm sure something fascinating and unexpected would have come out of that.

>65 kidzdoc: I love Myriam Gurba and will immediately follow her on Twitter.

One of my favorite things about Twitter generally is how accessible writers are there. For some reason seeing photos of Joyce Carol Oates's cats or knowing what Rebecca Makkai had for breakfast delights me during this time of isolation.

Because I feel connected to all people who have ever lived here including you and Terrence Hayes, I'll assume you want an update on how Pittsburgh is faring during Covid-19. As you know from your parents, Pennsylvania is still fully at home with all non-essential services closed up tight.

CMU and the state government are partnering to make data-driven decisions about how and when to open parts of the state. Obviously Philly and Pittsburgh will face restrictions longer than the rural, Trump-loving center where the protests are happening. As someone who is immunocompromised, I'm so thankful that we no longer have a Governor Bubba. I feel like I can trust the folks in charge at the state and city level to make wise decisions.

My partner is a lab tech at Shadyside Hospital. They are at about 60% of normal census and definitely seeing some of the Covid blood clotting lab results that have been recently discussed in the news. I work for the Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurer that owns the other local hospital system. We're working frantically to build IT infrastructure for things like increased telemedicine and administrative work from home. I'm grateful that we are a non-profit and have gone the route of coverage for all Covid-related medical diagnosis and treatment with no copayments or deductibles rather than the price gouging and arguing about pre-existing conditions of other insurers. It's not universal healthcare but at least my soul can live with it.

.

Going to follow Myriam Gurba and read the Afropean blog now.

Thankfully my reading has finally picked up over the past week, as I'm no longer distracted by my parents' health, as they both doing much better, and the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming less worrisome to me, at least for now. I was supposed to have spent this week and next in London visiting friends, nearly all of whom are currently or formerly active in LT, but I'll take a staycation for the next two weeks instead.

I plan to finish The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, which was chosen for the 2020 International Booker Prize shortlist, and American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrence Hayes by tomorrow, then start writing reviews of them and the other four books I've read but not commented on this month.

My planned reads for May:

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison
Dominicana by Angie Cruz
Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by Shokoofeh Azar
The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiziane
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann

Hmm, I might try to join you for Dominicana next month.... Though I am notoriously bad about fulfilling shared read obligations!

When I saw the title The first wife I assumed it would be about Mormons. The actual book looks much more interesting (although mormons are interesting too).

>88 FAMeulstee: I'm afraid that you're right, Anita; my brain tells me that travel to Europe won't be possible until next spring at the earliest, especially since there is a realistic chance that a second wave of COVID-19 may combine with what may be a busy and possibly severe influenza season this autumn and winter, but my heart finds it hard to accept that I won't visit friends in the UK, the Netherlands and Portugal for at least 18 months, especially since this will mean that my plans to learn Portuguese and explore places to retire in Portugal will be put off for at least another year. (Yes, I know, First World problems.)

What did you think of The Discomfort of Evening? I'll have to see what you and Ella thought of it, assuming that you've both read it...actually, I'll wait until I finish it, either today or, more likely, tomorrow, but I'm greatly enjoying it so far.

>89 thorold: Will do, Mark. I'm not sure when I'll find time to read anything by Barbara Pym — but, given the pandemic, I may have time to do so this year.

>90 nancyewhite: Hi, Nancy! Thanks for the update about Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania during the pandemic. Your governor is far more educated and intelligent than the (not my) governor of Georgia is; Kemp was elected because he out-rednecked his opponent in the Republican gubernatorial primary, who was overheard saying in a private conversation that the race was focused on "who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest." I've been impressed by Governor Wolf's management of the pandemic, and I have the complete opposite opinion about Kemp, whose decision to open massage parlors, tattoo shops, gyms, bowling alleys and nail salons, along with restaurants for dine in service, has been harshly criticized by most Georgians, including those who identify as Republican, most restaurant and shop owners in metro Atlanta, many of whom have decided to stay closed, and, most surprisingly, by trump himself.

One of my closest friends from medical school is a pulmonologist at UPMC Shadyside Hospital, in my old neighborhood (I lived on Ellsworth and Summerlea, one block east of Negley). We are in close contact, thanks to Facebook, and she's been keeping me abreast of the situation at Shadyside, and in the city.

Myriam Gurba's Twitter feed is always educational and thought provoking, and often very humorous. I should receive my copy of her memoir Mean this week or next, and I'll plan to read it in June. I haven't been looking at Afropean.com much, but thanks to your reminder I'll start doing so.

>92 katiekrug: Sounds good, Katie. I'll be more likely to read Dominicana if someone like yourself is doing so alongside me. I imagine that others will read it next month, since it was chosen for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist.

>93 Sakerfalcon: I would certainly say so, Claire. I'm reading it for the second quarter Reading Globally theme, Writing from Southern Africa. According to my copy of The First Wife Paulina Chiziane is the first Mozambican woman to publish a novel. I seriously doubt you could convince me to read a book about Mormons.

>94 kidzdoc: I understand it is hard to accept it will take a long time before you can safely get to Europe again, Darryl, I miss you too.
Yes I read The Disscomfort of Evening last month. Here is the link to my (short) review: https://www.librarything.com/topic/316411#7111681

Back to >90 nancyewhite: I just finished participating in two WebEx meetings, one for physicians in the Children's system and my group's monthly business meeting, and the vast majority of time was spent in discussion of management of COVID-19 patients. The system now has order sets in Epic, our electronic medical record system, for evaluation and management of suspected COVID-19 cases. Hypercoagulability has now been recognized as a common feature in pediatric cases, and we have been instructed to check DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation) screens on all newly admitted patients, and trend it for at least two days, as it can be an early marker for clinical deterioration. A large majority (greater than 90%) of COVID-19 cases in children in China were asymptomatic or had mild to moderate illness, but the ones who had severe disease or were critically ill commonly had hypercoagulability with abnormal DIC screens, along with a severe inflammatory response, shock, and multiorgan system failure which can develop very rapidly and has been difficult to clinically diagnose early. Because of that our COVID-19 inpatient management order set recommends initiation of Lovenox, a subcutaneously administered form of low molecular weight heparin, to all COVID-19 patients without risk factors (family history of bleeding disorders, low platelet count, active bleeding, etc.), even infants less than two months of age, to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE, or blood clots in the venous system). Unfortunately trump will be disappointed that intravenous disinfectants or insertable UV light boxes were not included in this order set.

>96 FAMeulstee: Right, Anita. I was looking forward to meeting up with you, Frank, Ella, Connie, Sanne and others in August for the Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam before I flew to Edinburgh for the Festivals. The festivals have been cancelled, and from what I read the Grachtenfestival concerts aren't likely to be held, or at least not in the regular form.

I'm glad that you liked The Discomfort of Evening. The translation by Michele Hutchison is very good, and I'm enjoying it so far.

>97 kidzdoc: The stroke thing scares me. I generally haven't been too phobic about the virus so far—I'm one of those people who only gets a head cold every few years, so I figure my immunities kick some ass—but that kind of sudden event freaks me out a bit. I'm getting so used to working from home... maybe I'll see how much I can milk the fact that I turn 57 at the end of this month (though I don't like to draw attention to my age if I can help it, even if folks do know how old I am).

It sounds like Alabama is going to gradually open up starting on Friday (May 1). I don't know the state protocols because I have been paying attention to what the city of Tuscaloosa is going to do and so far it remains in quarantine status. However, I received word from my supervisor today that we will be going back to our buildings on campus by May 13. That is OK with me as I work in a building that has three floors and only 3 people working in it. We will not be open to the public until sometime in June. This sounds like a reasoned and cautious approach to me.

>97 kidzdoc: I have The Discomfort of Evening in the pile for the next couple of weeks, glad it seems to be hitting the spot Darryl.

>91 kidzdoc: Yes, we are all going to have to enjoy staycations. I have a couple of weeks off in May. One of my plans is to settle with some of my many art catalogues, and actually read them, rather than just graze them from time to time.

whoops, turn my head and you've started a new thread!
Hope all is going well for you Daryl. I'm finding it hard to concentrate on much of the reading that I had lined up for this time of isolation but have finished a couple of titles through dogged persistence.

Have read two books by Olaf Olafsson...The Sacrament and One Station Away I found his writing style to be intriguing. Then discovered that he is known for leading the team that developed Sony's PlayStation platform. I'm not sure that either would be your cup of tea.

My sanity is preserved weekly by the updates provided by Dr. Inderpal Randhawa on YouTube every Friday afternoon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUtV9qY45EA
It makes me feel that there might be "an adult driving the bus".

Stay well.

Hey Darryl, I'm putting my radio show together now. If you think you're going to be listening on Monday and have a request, let me know. Cheers!

>30 kidzdoc: You remind me I have a couple of newer books by Couto in the pile.

>101 tangledthread: Agree (if I may step into your conversation), Olafsson's writing style is intriguing. I would call it a gentle, even prose infused with empathy for his characters.

I'll start May with a particularly timely book, Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison, a professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford. Needless to say this has direct relevance to the current COVID-19 pandemic, and I should finish it by early next week. I'll also start Petals of Blood, a novel by the great Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o that dealt with the corruption of a postcolonial African country which was so controversial after its publication in 1977, along with his play I Will Marry When I Want that it led to his arrest and imprisonment by Kenyan authorities at the end of that year.

>96 FAMeulstee: Anita, I think I "enjoyed" — if that's the right word — The Discomfort of Evening more than you and Ella did. I finished it late last night, and I gave it 4 stars, as it doesn't quite get to the 4-1/2 star mark for me. I'll have to carefully consider my review of it, so as to not spoil it for anyone else.

>98 lisapeet: Right, Lisa. I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation several years ago, and although it's well controlled on medications (diltiazem, a calcium channel blocker, to regulate my cardiac rhythm, and naproxen, to prevent platelet aggregation) I'm at increased risk for thromboembolic events, particularly strokes and pulmonary embolism, and that risk would be heightened if I was to develop a severe case of COVID-19 that caused decreased myocardial function and rhythm disturbances, not to mention my increased risk of ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome) being asthmatic.

I found out today that two of my dearest friends, one of whom is a member of LibraryThing, were diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier this week. Both are health care professionals; one has fully recovered, and the other is sick at home, but doing relatively okay at the moment.

>99 benitastrnad: Sounds good, Benita. As expected, Governor Kemp allowed the shelter in place order in Georgia to expire at midnight last night, but many Intown businesses, including restaurants, are, sensibly, not providing dine in services, and most of us are continuing to isolate ourselves at home. I took advantage of Publix's early opening for first responders and health care workers on Friday morning from 7-8 am, bought plenty of groceries for the coming week (save for chicken, which it was out of), and I'll stay at home and not go out until sometime next week.

>100 Caroline_McElwee: Good idea, Caroline. I'm not working again until 13 May, so I'll mainly read, do spring cleaning, and also watch online broadcasts of plays from the National Theatre and Shakespeare's Globe. Several of us (myself, Fliss, Margaret and Claire's friend Lucy) participated in this week's very difficult inaugural NT at Home pub quiz, which featured five questions from well known stage actors Lenny Henry, Helen Mirren and Lesley Manville, followed by a three part bonus question by Ian McEwan. You can view the quiz online, and the video is roughly 15 minutes in length.

>101 tangledthread: Hi, tangledthread! My reading output has been less than it should be, as I've been both distracted by the current pandemic and staying busy with almost daily WebEx coronavirus meetings from Children's, Emory University and the CDC, and a regular review of the latest literature on diagnosis and management of patients, even though I'm not working. One benefit to this is that I won't have to worry about completing Maintenance of Certification requirements to maintain my status as a board certified pediatrician at the end of the year, as the American Board of Pediatrics has decided that all of us are spending plenty of time learning about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, which is certainly true in my case, and for that we'll receive credit for the work we've put in, beginning early next month. I'll still have to submit a hefty fee for the ABP to be able to declare that I remain board certified through 2025, which is a hard requirement for me to be listed on all insurance plans and to remain an active member of staff at Children's. That's a big load off of my shoulders, although I'll still have to study to prepare for the Pediatric Hospitalist board exam next year, as I have to take and pass that exam to remain on staff in my current role.

>102 rocketjk: Excellent, Jerry! I don't have any requests at the moment, but I will be listening again on Monday.

>103 avaland: Which books by Couto do you own, Lois? Have you read anything by him? (I have not.)

You may....all input welcome. I liked your review of The Sacrament

That sounds like a lot of concentration, and oh so necessary right now. I'm glad that it will cover your Maintenance of Certification requirements.

Have a good weekend!

Glad to see you're doing well, Darryl, and have a chance to stay home and catch up on reading and projects. I'll definitely have to look up plays from Shakespeare's Globe. Happy weekend!

>103 avaland:, >106 tangledthread: You both are making me curious about Olafsson. I'm not sure or if I'll get to him, though.

>107 tangledthread: Right. Tony Fauci and other experts are forecasting a second wave of COVID-19, which will likely happen in North America this autumn and winter and possibly coincide with what may be another unusually busy influenza season. I shudder at the thought of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza coinfection, and I hope that many more children and adults will decide to get vaccinated, especially since the intranasal influenza vaccine has been shown to be an effective substitute for the intramuscular vaccine the past two seasons, which will allay the concerns of needle phobic parents and grandparents. (Hopefully a large percentage of the anti-science anti-vaccine community will make a concerted effort and educate themselves in response to this crisis, rather than quoting incorrect information ad infinitum like brainless robots.) Many experts also see potential parallels between the 1918 influenza pandemic and this one, in that cities like Philadelphia that relaxed their restrictions too early in spring and summer 1918 experienced a vicious second wave later that year, which my colleagues and myself in Atlanta fear could occur here, even though cases so far in children have been relatively mild and far less lethal. Unfortunately nearly all of the data regarding treatment and prognosis has been performed in adults, and we are blindly extrapolating that information and applying it to children, who as we always say, are not little adults. We desperately need increased testing capacity, in Georgia and the United States, to determine how many people, particularly children who are asymptomatic carriers or mildly symptomatic, are out there and what their infectivity rates are, preferably by the time school opens in August or September. We've learned a lot in the past two months, but there is so much more that we need to learn, as soon as possible.

>108 bell7: Hi, Mary! I'll look at the NT at Home and Shakespeare's Globe broadcasts more closely in the next few days. Actually, why don't I do that now? Back in a few minutes...

>108 bell7: NT at Home is currently broadcasting, for free on its YouTube channel, the two versions of the 2011 production of Frankenstein, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. The NT Live broadcast I saw in my local arts theatre in Atlanta that year had Miller as the Creature and Cumberbatch as the Doctor, and in the other version their roles were reversed. It was a great production, and I may watch the one in which Cumberbatch is the Creature next week.

https://youtu.be/tl8jxNrtceQ (Cumberbatch as the Creature)
https://youtu.be/dI88grIRAnY (Miller as the Creature)

On Thursday NT at Home will stream Antony and Cleopatra for one week. I haven't seen it, so I'll definitely be watching. One earlier NT at Home broadcast was the 2015 production of Jane Eyre, which was absolutely brilliant; I saw it with Debbi & Joe Welch in the NT that year, and for me it was especially exciting, as I hadn't read the novel and didn't know what to expect. Unfortunately I can't find this full length broadcast at the moment; I'll post a link here if I locate it.

NT at Home: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nt-at-home

Shakespeare's Globe is currently broadcasting the 2009 production of Romeo and Juliet, but only through tomorrow, so I'll definitely watch it this weekend.

https://youtu.be/eSAlPJ0FG_0

The 2018 production of The Two Noble Kinsmen starts on Monday, and will be streamed for free for 14 days. Here's a like to Shakespeare's Globe Watch page:

https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/watch/

>110 kidzdoc: I'm landing to watch both versions of Frankenstein this week Darryl.

>104 kidzdoc: Enjoy your time off to read. Sorry to hear your friends have/had the virus, I hope the second gets through it ok.

>111 Caroline_McElwee: Sounds good, Caroline. I'll likely watch the version of Frankenstein with Cumberbatch as the Creature early next week.

I'll be in close touch with my dear friend who is currently ill this weekend and early next week.

>109 kidzdoc: That is interesting about the flu vaccine being effective with nasal delivery. My son's pediatrician told us that it wasn't as effective - he'd been getting the flu vaccine that way because of a needle phobia he's fortunately grown out of. We've made it a competition in our family - to not only all be vaccinated, but to time our jabs as close to October 15th as possible. And having had to take my mother to the ER a few years ago during flu season, it's clear that there is no way for the health system to cope if COVID is added to the flu surge - my mother spent 30 hours in an ER, and 26 of those spent on a gurney in the hallway between where the ambulances came in and the nurses' station. It was an ordeal.

Oooh! Thanks for the NT links! We'll be watching the Benedict Cumberbatch version tonight.

>113 RidgewayGirl: This is from the CDC's influenza page (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/):

How effective is the nasal spray seasonal flu vaccine?

Influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) can vary from year to year, among different age and risk groups, by vaccine type, and even by virus type and subtype. Prior to the 2009 influenza pandemic, the nasal spray vaccine was found to be effective against different influenza viruses. After the 2009 pandemic, several U.S. studies among 2 through 17-year-olds found that the nasal spray vaccine was effective against influenza B viruses, and was similarly effective against H3N2 viruses as inactivated influenza vaccines, but was less effective than inactivated influenza vaccines against the 2009 pandemic H1N1 viruses, leading ACIP and CDC to recommend against use of the nasal spray vaccine in 2016.

Since the 2017-2018 season, the manufacturer of nasal spray vaccine has used new H1N1 vaccine viruses in production. Some data suggest this will result in improved effectiveness of against H1N1. However, no U.S. studies have evaluated effectiveness of this updated vaccine component against H1N1 viruses. ACIP and CDC voted to resume the recommendation for the use of nasal spray vaccines based on evidence suggesting that the new H1N1 component will result in improved effectiveness of the vaccine against these viruses. There is no expressed preference for any influenza shot or the nasal spray vaccine.

The nasal spray vaccine is an important option for providers, patients and parents in the U.S. and other countries where it continues to be recommended.

>114 tangledthread::You're welcome!

>110 kidzdoc: Hope you find the Jane Eyre; Lois & I will definitely be interested.

>109 kidzdoc: Oh that reminded me of the anti-vax POS book I read portions ofearlier this year. It makes me mad even thinking about their nonsense and all the people they hurt with their BS. I try really hard to understand others POV i don't agree with, but with them I just can't.

>117 stretch: I have a very good friend who is an anit-vaxxer. She refused to take the flu vaccine and became very ill with the flu a couple of years ago. She is now as terrified of COVID-19 as I am and is happy to stay at home. I wonder if she'd be willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine once it's available. I'm not asking her. Here's hoping she will as in no way do I want to lose her.

>110 kidzdoc: I’m reading Antony and Cleopatra now! Noting

>110 kidzdoc: Oh fabulous, thanks so much, Darryl! I've saved most of those links as tabs to enjoy watching over the next few days.

We had a Zoom meeting with our Dean on Friday morning and we are not going to go back to work in our buildings until the end of May. The city of Tuscaloosa did open up a bit. Small numbers of people will be allowed into retail stores, but no in building dining yet.

The worst thing is that the University system announced that it would stop matching 403b contributions starting with our May paychecks. This came as a complete surprise to everyone. The reason given was that the three state universities are going into the hole at a rate of $70 million + each month and there is no hope of rescue from the State. The biggest cause of the monetary loss is the closing of the UAB hospitals and clinics. Budget cuts of 11% were put in place in April and when the new fiscal year starts on October 1, 2020 another 16% will be cut. I guess now the economic fallout begins.

Hi Darryl--Just popping in to see how you are doing. I see you are very busy with Shakespeare and Frankenstein--good choices! Sorry you have had to delay your trips abroad, but the time will come. Hope your friend recovers quickly and that you stay well. : )

>116 dukedom_enough: I've not had any success in finding a currently available link to watch the free version of Jane Eyre, Michael. A couple of articles have provided links that were operational two weeks ago, but the videos are now marked as private. Are you close to any cinemas that show National Theatre Live rebroadcasts?

>117 stretch: Right, Kevin. I've been seeing far more hard core vaccine refusing parents in the past couple of years, some of whom go so far as to refuse the routine vitamin K intramuscular injection given to all newborns after birth. This refusal is presumably based on a long discredited study that purportedly shoed a link between this injection and childhood cancer. All babies are vitamin K deficient at birth, which makes them unable to form blood clots and puts them at risk for severe and potentially fatal internal bleeding during the first six months of life.

My biggest problem with anti-vaxxers is that most of them are protected from vaccine preventable illnesses, yet their children are vulnerable, and often suffer terribly if they develop bacterial meningitis, tetanus or other horrible infections. I think that these parents are guilty of medical neglect, a form of child abuse, and should be liable for criminal prosecution if a child of theirs acquires a vaccine preventable illness that can be clearly shown to be caused by vaccine refusal, an admittedly very high bar. For example, an unvaccinated child who is diagnosed with meningitis caused by the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae would have to have the organism typed by the state health department to see if it is type B, which is covered by the HiB vaccine, or a non-typeable strain, which wouldn't be and is far more common.

Although I and my colleagues fully support healthy eating habits — I myself am trying to do better, and limiting my red meat consumption to no more than two meals per week — I have seen more babies who required hospitalization for malnutrition, whose parents are anti-vaxxer vegans and are essentially starving their kids. Talking to them and other extreme anti-vaxxers is essentially impossible, as they seem to have memorized the anti-vax literature and spout it back at us, again, like mindless robots. There are also a couple of, for lack of a better word, cults in the African American community in metro Atlanta, in which people who share extreme beliefs about vaccination and nutrition live together and support each other.

>118 SqueakyChu: I hope that your "anti-vaxxer friend" — yikes, that seems like a self contradictory term — decides to get a flu vaccination later this year, and a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine once it becomes available, for her sake, and, more importantly, for yours. I can't imagine keeping her as a friend if she didn't do so.

>119 dchaikin: Excellent, Dan! I'll report on Antony and Cleopatra after I see the National Theatre production of it next week.

>120 bell7: You're welcome, Mary! I'll be interested to see what plays you watch, and what you think of them. Although I haven't commented in quite awhile I have been following your 75 Books thread.

>121 benitastrnad: I'm sorry to hear that, Benita.

>122 Berly: Thanks, Kim!

I believe the NT broadcasts are only available for the week after being posted. Once they post a new production, the previous one is no longer available.

Hope you have a good Sunday, Darryl!

>125 katiekrug: Right, Katie. I held out faint hope that I could find a full length production of Jane Eyre at the Bristol Old Vic, where it was first put on before it moved to the National Theatre, or a link to the NT at Home production that was still open. I think the best bet now is to see the NT Live broadcast in your local cinema. I'm spoiled in that my closest cinema, on the other side of Piedmont Park from where I live, is the only one in Atlanta that puts on NT Live and other broadcasts of plays, operas and musicals.



I hope that you have a lovely Sunday as well! I'll probably spend all day reading, as I have plenty of prepared homemade food in my refrigerator, and resume cooking tomorrow. (Hmm, I need to add recipes for the three things I cooked earlier this week to La Cucina, two of which were inspired by our friend Liz.)

Yes, please stay out of Piedmont Park!

>127 RidgewayGirl: Right! Please tell this to my friends from work, several of whom watched the, um, patriotic display of Thunderbirds flying noisingly over Atlanta and Sandy Springs, where the hospital I work in is located, yesterday afternoon in "support" of healthcare workers during this pandemic. Maybe I'm not a red blooded flag flying American, but I found this stunt to be a unnecessary waste of fuel, and I would have appreciated it if the money and effort spent to fund this event went instead to providing adequate PPE (personal protective equipment) for hospital and clinic staff, and to supporting salaries of nurses, respiratory therapists and others who are being sent home — and not paid — due to low inpatient censuses in the hospitals, including mine, and office or clinic staff who have been furloughed, as parents are cancelling planned well child checks and follow up appointments in fear that they or their children will contract SARS-CoV-2 from these facilities.

Now that the shelter-in-place restrictions have been lifted in Georgia, many of the state's residents seemingly think that social distancing and use of cloth and other protective masks are no longer required, which is NOT what the governor or local public health officials have indicated. I won't post any of the photos that a few of my nurse friends posted on Facebook yesterday, but the crowds in Piedmont Park were similar to this photo of the Atlanta Beltline in Midtown from the AJC that was posted online yesterday:



If this nonsense keeps up it will be a busy — and deadly — summer here.

>110 kidzdoc: Thanks for the youtube theatre info. My sons and I are all fans of both Cumberbatch's Sherlock and Frankenstein. That'll go on the watch list for sure!

>128 kidzdoc: What the actual F?!?!
If only there were a vaccine and antidote for stupid. *sigh*

>129 avidmom: - If only there were a vaccine and antidote for stupid. Don't hold your breath. Sigh, indeed.

>128 kidzdoc: Oh, God. That photo makes me hurt. So many people telling the truth, and the right way to avoid infection, it seems a nearly endless din of it here in a big city. But there in that big city, people are still clueless. I fear there will be massive infections coming, which then puts us all at risk.

In comparison to NYC, COVID-19 hasn't been anywhere near as bad here in Atlanta. The large healthcare system I work for (three children's hospitals, two of which have over 300 beds, along with dozens of clinics and urgent care and rehabilitation centers) has only had a total of 24 COVID-19 positive patients, not all of whom have required hospitalization, and the adult hospitals have been very busy but not insanely so, and I don't know of anyone here who has fallen ill or died...yet. The photos on a balmy Saturday here in Atlanta are far less disturbing that similar ones in hard hit NYC:



Business Insider: New Yorkers Rush to Parks as Warm Weather Becomes New Challenge

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Normalcy amid crisis: Sunshine almost enough to forget COVID-19?

Sigh. I would say that in my neck of the woods the issue in warm weather is often people being stuck in small apartments with no AC, but just making a snap judgment from the skin tones, dress, and age groups represented in the majority of the folks in the above photo... yeah, the problem is stupidity.

>133 lisapeet: I might suggest that these folks are more self centered and convinced of their own invulnerability, and unconcerned about passing SARS-CoV-2 to other, more vulnerable individuals. I'm sure that they are all well educated and pretty darned smart, despite their clearly recless decision to mingle in close contact with others, some of whom undoubtedly are asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

Some of my people also behaved extremely foolishly this weekend; this was the scene on Saturday outside of an urban clothing store in Southwest Atlanta that was selling the latest model of Air Jordan basketball sneakers:



At least they have now have something dope to wear to their or their grandmothers' funerals. FWIW, at least most of them appear to be wearing masks.

>134 kidzdoc: Agreed, though my assessment of stupidity has nothing to do with education and everything to do with self-centeredness, inconsideration, and general asshattery. I think there's a big venn diagram at work in all these situations.

Book #8: Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli



My rating:

This inventive, multilayered, cerebral and compelling novel is based largely on the author's experience traveling with her family from New York City to the Arizona-México border in the summer of 2014. At that time there was a crisis at the border, as tens of thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence in their countries made a harrowing trek by foot and train in order to seek safety in the United States, but most were prevented from entering this country, including thousands of unaccompanied minors. Luiselli, who was born in México, chronicled some of theIr stories in her earlier nonfiction book, Tell Me How it Ends.

The main narrator of Lost Children Archive is an audio documentarian and formerly single mother of a five year old daughter who captures sounds of everyday life and people in New York City, who meets and marries a fellow Mexican-American audio documentarian and father of a 10 year old son while working together on a project. Due to their common interests and backgrounds they marry and live contentedly together for some time. The marriage begins to fray, and when the husband decides to go on a trip to Oklahoma to document the journey and resting places of Geronimo and the Apache people, the last of the native Americans to lose their freedom to European invaders to their land, they decide to make a family vacation out of it. Just before they leave the narrator learns about the humanitarian crisis at the border, and she decides to chronicle it during the trip, and to attempt to locate the two young daughters of Manuela, a Central American woman she meets, who were placed in a modern day internment camp in Arizona after their arrival to the border but have become lost since then. However, it is clear that the journey will be the last one the family spends intact, as the husband intends to remain in Oklahoma to complete his project and not return to New York with his wife and children.

During the often claustrophobic journey by car the family listens to audiobooks to pass the time, taking time to sightsee and capture their discoveries by audiotape and Polaroid instant cameras, while spending their evenings in often dodgy motels in small towns in the heartland populated by Americans who are distrustful and occasionally hostile toward the Latino family. They also read books by well known authors that the parents brought with them, most notably "Elegies for Lost Children", which describes the harsh journey of children accompanied by a strange man to an unknown destination and an uncertain future.

In the second part of the book, the 10 year old boy gains a voice as a narrator, and through his eyes we see the stress that he and his sister experience as they watch their parents' slowly fraying relationship, his deep love for his parents and especially his stepsister, and his desire to locate Manuela's daughters and keep the family intact.

Luiselli, unlike the author of an inauthentic and currently popular middlebrow novel, does not attempt to tell the stories of the Lost Children, as she does not know them personally, and, being brought up in a prosperous Mexican family and having spent much of her life outside of her home country, she realizes that she cannot truly identify with the conditions that caused these immigrants to leave their homelands and the experiences they faced en route to the border and after they arrived there.

Lost Children Archive is a superb accomplishment and a very compelling novel based on the author's personal experiences, which brings attention to the plight of the Lost Children encamped at the US-México border in an intellectually satisfying and educational read without descending into inauthenticity or trauma porn. Due to its rich complexity the reader would benefit from a second or third effort, which I will do later this year or in 2021.

>135 lisapeet: Spot on, Lisa.

>136 kidzdoc: Of all the books for me to lend out to a coworker... I may have to spring for a copy myself, or at least check it out of the library once I'm done with my month's work reading. Great review, thanks!

>138 lisapeet: Thanks, Lisa!

“Due to its rich complexity the reader would benefit from a second or third effort, which I will do later this year or in 2021”

I don’t know, maybe this could make a nice CR group read... ?? I would like to reread it as well (I’ve only listened. It would be nice to read it too.)

>140 dchaikin: Great idea! I would be interested in a group read of Lost Children Archive, Dan.

How to test interest? Let’s see if it attracts some comments here. (Maybe Lisa...for example.) Then timing (June will be too soon with online bookshop deliveries running slow. But July might work. A July 4 start might be...gently seditious.)

>136 kidzdoc: Great review!

>140 dchaikin: I'd be down for a group read. I'd planned to get it this year, after reading her memior working as translator for migrants fleeing violence. July seems like a perfect month.

I’ve put a hold in at the library for the ebook of Lost Children Archive. The downside is I’d have to read it on my phone which could get annoying. Guess I’ll decide when my turn comes around whether I can bear reading a book on my phone!

Totally in on a group read this summer. If I'm back in the office by then, that'll give me an excuse to borrow it back from my coworker, heh. And if not, I can either try for a library hold or just do a little philanthropic local indie bookstore buying. It's a good deed to buy books in this economy, right?

I wouldn't be at all opposed to rereading Lost Children Archive. May I suggest adding Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions to that group read. I'd like to see how it resonates against the novel.

I appreciated your comments about why Luiselli might have chosen to center the second portion of the novel on the children that she did, rather than the two sisters.

>124 kidzdoc: I watched Romeo & Juliet and posted some thoughts on my thread. I've got all sorts of tabs open with more videos to watch, so I'm sure I'll post more in the coming days.

If you don't mind me joining in for a group read of The Lost Children Archive, I may see if I can fit it into July as well.

>140 dchaikin: I own a copy of LCA and would be up for a group read anytime.

>142 dchaikin: Great idea, Dan! I would be down for a July reading of Lost Children Archive. I can create a thread later today, after I finish cooking another batch of red beans and rice in my Instant Pot (it is Monday, after all) and listening to today's live broadcast of Jazz Odyssey on KZYX by our own rocketjk, which is on from 4-6 pm EDT. This is the third consecutive broadcast I've listened to (he's on every other Monday), and I'm very impressed by his selections and knowledge of the music.

>143 stretch: Thanks, Kevin! I'm glad that you would consider joining us. I need to get a copy of Tell Me How it Ends ASAP.

>144 lunacat: Hi, Jenny! I hope that you and John are doing well; please give him my best. I hope that you can get a copy of Lost Children Archive by July.

>145 lisapeet: Great, Lisa!

>146 RidgewayGirl: Excellent idea, Kay! I agree completely, and I'll buy a copy of Tell Me How it Ends this week. I forgot to mention both here and on Facebook that I received my first order of books from Bookshop.org early last week, and I was very pleased with their service.

>147 bell7: I fell asleep early last night before I was able to finish watching Romeo and Juliet, unfortunately, but I'm glad that you saw it, Mary. I'll check out your thread to get your thoughts on it. I received a message from YouTube today that informed me that the next Shakespeare's Globe play, The Two Kinsmen, is available for viewing for the next two weeks. I would also highly recommend seeing a play there in person the next time you find yourself in London; it's a unique and unforgettable experience! Debbi & Joe Welch and I have gone together at least twice.

You are more than welcome to join us! Feel free to invite any of the 75ers as well.

>148 ELiz_M: Great, Liz!

I'll have to remember to post the two recipes I wss inspired to cook based on your comment in La Cucina. I'll do so later today or tomorrow.

>149 kidzdoc: great. Lots of interest, it seems.

>146 RidgewayGirl: I want to say good suggestion with enthusiasm, but my stomach turns a little thinking about revisiting those kids, nonfiction kids. It’s going to be more real on a reread. But they go together.

Three Main Pulitzer Winners:

Fiction : The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

(only the fourth writer to win a second Pulitzer fiction award)

Poetry :

The Tradition by Jericho Brown

Drama :

Michael R. Jackson for A Strange Loop

I think Colson Whitehead was the bookmaker's favourite but I am less familiar with the other two writers. I noticed that Jericho Brown is in your list in >4 kidzdoc: and I hope to find some of his work soon.

>132 kidzdoc: The first person, and healthcare professional, to die in St. Louis County was a friend of mine. She had been a nurse a long time, although not as long as I, and had her lungs damaged in Desert Storm.

I think the crisis in NYC is a little too large for me to envision, although, since I worked in the largest and most prestigious tertiary center in St. Louis City (Washington University Health Center/Barnes-Jewish Hospital--1200 beds at that site alone), that would have been my hospital if it got really bad. I had to retire last year, as I told you, and if my health were up to it, I would have gone back to help in the crisis. My husband is thrilled that I can't, but I am grieved to have my nursing career ended.

>141 kidzdoc: I have not read it yet--keep room for me.

I'll schedule both for reading in July: Tell Me How It Ends and Lost Children Archive

>141 kidzdoc:, >142 dchaikin: I'd love to join a group read of Lost children archive, if you will let an outsider in!

>156 Sakerfalcon: definitely will be open to anyone on LT. I suspect Darryl will draw some people from other groups.

>151 dchaikin: Lots of interest indeed, Dan, and far more than I would have expected. Thanks for your great idea!

>152 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. I learned last night that Jericho Brown, the Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of English at Emory University (my pediatric residency alma mater) in Atlanta, was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for The Tradition. It was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2019 National Book Critics' Circle Award for Poetry, as well. I attended his reading from the book at the Decatur Book Festival in September, and bought a copy of it while I was there. For some reason I still haven't read it, although my copy is in my work briefcase. I'll rectify that oversight this month or next.

Emory, which is one of the "Southern Ivies", along with Duke, Rice, Tulane, Vanderbilt and other prestigious private universities in the South, has a very strong English department, with several award winning writers that are or were on the faculty, including Natasha Trethewey, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, Kevin Young, the current poetry editor of The New Yorker and the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, Ha Jin, whose novel Waiting won the National Book Award for Fiction, Salman Rushdie, and Seamus Heaney, who was a visiting professor at Emory during the 1980s.

I took this photo of Jericho Brown during his talk, which was held in the Decatur Presbyterian Church in downtown Decatur, which is just east of Atlanta and is about 5-6 miles from where I live.



Kay, did you and/or Pattie attend that poetry reading with me?

I'm mildly surprised but very pleased that The Nickel Boys was chosen for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I've mostly liked Colson Whitehead's earlier novels, but his last two, The Underground Railroad and this one, have been brilliant.

I'm completely unfamiliar with Michael R. Jackson or his award winning play. I'll have to investigate it.

>153 sallypursell: One of my best friends from medical school completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Washington University-Barnes Jewish Hospital, which has an outstanding reputation. I'm sorry that your health caused you to have to retire early.

How is the pandemic in St Louis?

>154 sallypursell:, >155 sallypursell: Excellent, Sally! I'm glad that you'll join the group reading of Tell Me How It Ends and Lost Children Archive.

>156 Sakerfalcon: You are more than welcome to join us, Claire! I'm glad to have your company in the group read.

>157 dchaikin: Right, Dan. Mary (bell7) from 75 Books has expressed an interest in participating in the group read, and I suspect that at least a couple of other members from that group will likely wish to join us.

>158 kidzdoc: Wow that is a stellar group of Residents and visiting professors at Emory. I loved Rushdie's Midnight's Children and even more Shame and anyone who knows me will know of my admiration of the work of Heaney. I have read and very much enjoyed collections by Trethewey and Kevin Young and both must be amongst the finest living poets in America and elsewhere.

>160 PaulCranswick: I agree with you about Trethewey and Young, Paul. The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), where I attended medical school, also has a very strong set of award winning poets who are current or past faculty members, including Terrance Hayes, Toi Derricotte, who is probably my favorite living poet, and the daughter in law of someone dear to both of us, Adriana E. Ramírez, the wife of Joe & Debbi Welch's son Jesse.

_______________________________

I just made swordfish tacos for lunch for Cinco de Mayo, using a very easy recipe for poached fish. I'll post photos and the recipe in La Cucina now.

>161 kidzdoc: - No margarita? Tsk tsk....

>162 katiekrug: Ha! How did I know that you were going to call me out on that, Katie! I had a glass of Pinot Grigio.

I'm just really looking forward to my tacos and margarita tonight :D

>158 kidzdoc: No, I didn't go to that session. I do like the Presbyterian Church sanctuary as a setting. It adds to the experience in a way the basement of the First Baptist and the conference rooms at the Marriot just don't.

>164 katiekrug: Nice. Homemade, or restaurant bought? I'm very tempted to drive to Decatur to get the Cinco de Mayo special from The Iberian Pig, a fabulous Spanish restaurant, which includes their mouthwatering pork cheek tacos and margaritas. We're supposed to have strong and potentially severe thunderstorms here late this afternoon and evening, though, so I may sit tight and wait to go there until later this week.

Homemade on both counts. And no margarita mix, thankyouverymuch!

I say go out for the special. If bad storms prevented me from ever going out when I lived in Dallas, I would never have left the house in the spring :)

>165 RidgewayGirl: I was pretty sure, but not certain, that you didn't go, Kay...and, now that I think of it, I remember that the talk that Pattie and I attended without you had to do with AI and its potential misuse in racial profiling. I do like the Decatur Presbyterian Sanctuary, far more than the conference rooms at the Marriott Conference Center.

I haven't heard anything yet about this year's Decatur Book Festival. Hopefully it won't be cancelled!

>167 katiekrug: Excellent. Your husband, and especially you, have ramped up your cooking game significantly in the past couple of years!

Good point regarding the weather.

Even though I only used one fillet to make those three tacos I'm pretty stuffed. If I go to The Iberian Pig it will be relatively late tonight, but I could easily wait until tomorrow or later this week or next.

I need to learn how to make margaritas.

>168 kidzdoc: I'm going to keep hope alive about the book festival. It has become one of my favorite yearly events. I suspect there is pressure to hold the festival, given that authors who published this year are at a huge disadvantage and given the sheer size of it. No word on the website.

We had an enormous thunderstorm here last night around 3:00. I woke up to heavy rain and continuous thunder and lightning flashes and had to run around the house shutting windows in a hurry.

>170 RidgewayGirl: I hope so, too. I was gutted when I found out that the festivals in Edinburgh in August, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, was cancelled, and I would love to be able to go to the Decatur Book Festival, and especially meet up again with you and Pattie. I haven't yet requested Labor Day weekend off, but I think I'll go ahead and do that this week or next.

Yikes. We must have had stormy weather here last night, as I saw small branches and twigs with leaves on the streets and sidewalks when I drove to and from the barbershop I go to this morning, but I didn't hear thunder or see any rain.

>169 kidzdoc: - If they turn out well, I'll share the "recipe" he's going to use for the drinks.

>170 RidgewayGirl: Kay, did you receive today's email from the director of the Decatur Book Festival? She says in her last paragraph:

Now, like everybody else, we are adjusting to a new normal we all hope is temporary. And while it looks like we may not be able to have a physical festival Labor Day weekend, we are in the process of reimagining the DBF and how we might bring books and conversations to Atlanta this year.

>172 katiekrug: Please do! TYIA.

Hurricane Ashley. So true...except that she reappears every damn weekend here. 😂

https://www.theonion.com/hurricane-ashley-expected-to-strike-several-bars-this-c...

Okay, Daryl. You sold me on this one. And Amazon currently has it for $4.99. So I am now the owner of a copy.
Thanks for the review.

>158 kidzdoc: We have an odd governmental set-up with St. Louis City and St. Louis County under different governments.

For the City of St. Louis, wherein Wash U's headquarter's hospitals are located there have been 1362 cases as of today, with 16 new cases today and 78 deaths in all.
The cases in St. Louis County total 3,569, with 48 new cases today, and 189 deaths.
Totaling the two gives us

total cumulative cases 1362 + 3,569 = 4931 cases

new cases today = 64 cases today

deaths in all = 267 deaths

The rates vary, too, of course. In the County, Blacks (and in the city the patients are mostly black) have a death rate of 34.5/100,000, and whites about 13.6/100,000. I have not paid attention to the magnitude of the difference elsewhere, but it's certainly awful, here. All other races = 10.6/100,000.
I can't find rates for St. Louis City. How does this compare to Atlanta?

I studied Nursing at Barnes Hospital School of Nursing, and had all my clinicals at the Wash. U./Barnes-Jewish Hospital. It was a great place for that--you see almost everything. Working there more than 30 years I saw even more. I actually did not retire early, I was 67 years old, but I wasn't really ready to quit, it was so endlessly fascinating.

>175 sallypursell: I haven't yet been able to find specific demographic data for Fulton County, which includes the city of Atlanta, although, oddly enough, part of the city, including the campuses of Emory University and the CDC, are located in DeKalb County. As of this morning there have been 3170 people who have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with 566 hospitalizations and 130 deaths. However, there are three hospitals (adult, pediatric, psychiatric) on Emory's campus and a nearby VA medical center, all in DeKalb County but counted as being in Atlanta, so calculations of the death rate by ethnicity would be very time consuming. However, as has been reported in other states, there has been a preponderance of documented SARS-CoV-2 infections in African Americans; we make up just over 30% of the state's population, but to date there have been 10,905 cases in African Americans, as compared to 9,123 cases in Whites.

I completed my residency at Emory, and we saw patients at what was then called Egleston Children's Hospital at Emory University, which is now Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, Grady Memorial Hospital, the massive medical center for the indigent in Fulton and DeKalb Counties in downtown Atlanta, and Hughes Spalding Children's Hospital, which was the pediatric medical center for Grady but is now one of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta's three hospitals (I work in the third one, Scottish Rite, which is in a wealthy suburb just north of the city). Rotating through the Emory and Grady systems in a major city meant that we also saw practically everything, including babies and children with HIV/AIDS. Pediatric specialty care outside of Georgia's major cities, and in all of South Georgia, is essentially nonexistent, so we take care of kids from all over the state, and on rare occasions kids from parts of Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee that are close to the Georgia border.

Book #7: Ualalapi: Fragments from the End of Empire by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

  

My rating:

This short novel in fragments is a re-examination of Ngungunhane, also known as Mdungazwe Ngungunyane Nxumalo, who was the last ruler of the Gaza Empire, which lasted from 1824 to 1895 and at its height encompassed all of what is currently Mozambique and southern Zimbabwe. Ngungunhane brutally took over power after the death of his father, the previous emperor, in 1884 after he slew his brother, but he was deposed by General Joaquim Mouzinho of the Portuguese colonial army in 1895 after he refused to surrender, which allowed Portugal to claim the territory and name it Mozambique, or Moçambique in Portuguese. Ngungunhane was captured, imprisoned, and died in exile in 1906.

Ngungunhane is generally viewed as a hero and tragic figure by modern day Mozambicans, particularly by members and supporters of FRELIMO, the Mozambique Liberation Front, which was created in 1962 in opposition to the colonial government, successfully gained independence for the country in 1975, and is the majority party in the country. However, Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, the director of the Instituto Nacional do Livro e do Disco in Mozambique, portrays him as a bloodthirsty and brutal man, obese and frequently drunk, whose lust for power, drink and women only grew after he ascended to the throne. The title of the book comes from one of his most trusted warriors, and the reader learns about Ngungunhane from personal accounts from Ualalapi, others in his circle, colonial military men and governors, and a Swiss evangelical who was a respected visitor to Ngungunhane's court before his downfall. The author wrote this book in 1987 to correct the widely held narrative, and as a critique of the corrupt and brutal FRELIMO government at that time.

Ualalapi is a valuable contribution to the history of the precolonial Gaza Empire and its last ruler, although it is a mostly forgettable novella.

>173 kidzdoc: While not unexpected, that is disappointing. But obviously the wiser choice.

Book #10: Dumba Nengue: Run for Your Life by Lina Magaia

  

My rating:

Mozambique gained its independence from Portugal in 1975 after a nearly decade long war between FRELIMO, the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Mozambique Liberation Front), which was largely supported by China, the Soviet Union and non-governmental organizations in Western Europe, and colonial forces. Fearing a spread of the independence movement into their neighboring countries, the apartheid governments of Rhodesia and South Africa created the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO or MNR) in 1975, a militant organization that won support from the conservative United States government during the Cold War as it was viewed as an anti-communist group. RENAMO joined with another rebel group, the Revolutionary Party of Mozambique, and together the two groups enacted a brutal campaign directed primarily at civilians in southern Mozambique, a formerly prosperous area of the country, by burning their fertile fields and villages, killing babies with bayonets, raping girls and women, and capturing young men in order to force them to join their campaign of evil.

Lina Magaia left the capital of Maputo to travel to the south of Mozambique, in order to return to her family, and to chronicle the suffering of her people. Reports of atrocities did reach the Western press, particularly The New York Times, but in keeping with today's far right in the United States, extreme conservatives led by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Patrick Buchanan and the Heritage Foundation dismissed these reports as fake news in the late 1980s, and the Republican led government did not act on those reports.

The term "dumba nengue" refers to a proverb that states that "you have to trust your feet," and those civilians who did so survived, although they returned to devastated homes and decimated crops and livestock, and the area has remained in deep poverty since then.

Dumba Nengue consists of 22 actual accounts of these atrocities, which are difficult to read due to their extreme brutality and Magaia's vivid descriptions, and I could only bear to read a half dozen of them.

>178 RidgewayGirl: Right, Kay. I'll keep an eye out for any new developments, but I won't request that Labor Day weekend off from work for now.

Back to report on the margaritas: they were excellent. He used a "pure" margarita recipe: https://tastetequila.com/2010/margarita-smackdown-the-pure-margarita/.

Left out the spring water (like, seriously, WTF?)
Used 1800 reposado tequila
Used dark agave nectar, but light is fine

>181 katiekrug: Thanks for the tequila recipe, Katie! I'll have to give that a try, once I get the necessary supplies.

>179 kidzdoc: wow. Both reviews on Mozambique were fascinating to me since I know absolutely nothing about the area or its history. But - your last sentence here really struck me.

>183 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan. These books were both educational and very quick reads, but I wouldn't recommend either one who knows about — or doesn't care about — the history of Moçambique.

Hi Darryl, found you!

>184 kidzdoc: Enough to know it was bad. I do think such accounts are important, but very hard to read about.

>185 EllaTim: Hi, Ella! I'm glad that you found me.

I agree with you. It was difficult for me to read those books, particularly Dumba Nengue, but they were valuable and important to my understanding of colonial and postcolonial Moçambique, especially since I'm thinking of moving to Lisbon, which has a large Moçambican population, after I retire later this decade.

Book #12: Contagion: How Commerce Has Spread Disease by Mark Harrison



My rating:

This book looks at the history of pandemics in the modern developed world, starting with the second plague pandemic, known as the Black Death, that began in Asia and spread westward to Europe in the 14th century, and ending with the 21st century Ebola, H1N1 and first SARS pandemics. The Black Death was a result of a relative scarcity of food in overpopulated cities in Europe, which led to increased need for and transport of goods from the East on merchant vessels that also carried rats which harbored fleas infected with the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The second plague pandemic ended in Europe in the 1350s, but the plague bacillus remained, and sporadic outbreaks recurred until the 18th century, with the best known one being the plague epidemic in London in 1665-1666. As a result, European countries and port cities developed departments of health, in order to regulate the flow of goods on ships and keep their populations as safe as possible.

The most widely used technique was quarantine, in which ships, crew and passengers would have to stay on their vessels for 40 days before they were allowed on shore. Quarantining began in antiquity but took hold during the second plague pandemic, and proved to be a very contoversial and much disliked method to prevent the spread of disease: merchants did not wish to have to wait forty days to unload and sell their goods — time is money, after all — and many of them tried to subvert these regulations; buyers likewise did not want to wait; ships with plague infected crew or passengers were unable to receive adequate medical assistance, and because the well were not permitted to leave the ships many of them were subsequently infected and died; and cities whose countries enacted strict quarantines were at a relative disadvantage in comparison to neighboring countries with more lenient regulations. Due to the lack of knowledge about the spread of infectious diseases physicians fell into two camps, one which believed that these maladies were imported on ships and supported quarantining and social isolation of ill residents and visitors, and the other which believed that miasmas (bad air) and meteorologic changes were to blame for the spread of disease.

Subsequent epidemics and pandemics such as yellow fever in the United States and cholera in Europe were also linked to commerce by sea, particularly the transport of goods from Asia, or the transport of slaves from Africa. Mark Harrison, a professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford, provides well researched and detailed accounts of these outbreaks, and how public health officials and the business communities in the affected cities dealt with the crises, some far better than others.

Contagion is a detailed examination of major pandemics throughout modern history in the Western world, and the role that commerce has played in their spread from one country or region to another. I found it to be a dry and very academic read, however, and because I was far more interested in the relation of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to past ones I was disappointed that this book did not provide the analysis through time that I was looking for.

>187 kidzdoc: Sorry you found this book disappointing. Since this is my first agonizing experience living in a pandemic, I don’t often consider that others have lived through similar experiences. In fact, I never paid any attention at all to the Spanish flu...until now! There are so many lessons to be learned from educating ourselves about previous pandemics. It never crossed my mind that I would ever experience one in my lifetime!

>188 SqueakyChu: Same here, Madeline. The author did what he set out to do in the book's introduction, but that wasn't what I was looking for at this time, so it's hard for me to fault him for that. I found it difficult to stay engaged with the book, and given that its average review here, on Amazon and in Goodreads is between 3 to 3.5 stars I suspect that I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

On the contrary, I expected that there would be a major pandemic in my lifetime, and I thought that this century's earlier H1N1 pandemic would be far worse than it was. I think we will see other pandemics in the next 25-50 years, especially since dozens of strains of novel coronaviruses have been isolated in bats in China and we still have not had a truly horrific strain of influenza since the one which caused the 1918-19 pandemic. I hope that the world's leaders can learn from this pandemic, specificially what worked and what didn't, and put nationalism behind us and unite in a common effort to combat future ones. I won't hold my breath, though.

>187 kidzdoc: That's an interesting look on how commerce helps spread disease. I read (when I was reading books pertaining to how to deal with feral cats a few years ago) that one of the possible contributing factors to the spread of the black plague in England was a lack of cats! The cat population exploded so cats were killed. With the cat population dwindling, not enough cats were left to kill the mice. (!)

I hope that the world's leaders can learn from this pandemic, specificially what worked and what didn't, and put nationalism behind us and unite in a common effort to combat future ones. I won't hold my breath, though.

Yeah, not holding my breath here either. Especially when our leaders cannot seem to be able to tell fact from fiction.

I would think it’s a difficult subject to make dry, but I guess Harrison overcame that challenge. Interesting review, nonetheless.

>187 kidzdoc: There was an outbreak of the plague in Asia in the last years of the 19th century. In 1900 it wreaked havoc in Honolulu, and ended with the accidental burning of Chinatown. This epidemic was treated very intelligently, identified by microscopy pretty early in the proper use of microbiology, and the government was handed over to a panel of doctors for the interim.

Late last year I read a good book about this event while reading for my Hawaii project. It was Plague and Fire: Battling Black Death and the 1900 burning of Honolulu's Chinatown by James C. Mohr You have to be interested in the topic, but I didn't find it boring at all. You might try finding this.

>190 avidmom: That sounds right. The Oriental rat flea is the vector that allows Yersinia pestis, the plague bacterium, to be transmitted from rats, its preferred host, to other mammalian species, preferably humans and cats. The bacteria multiply in and block the gastrointestinal tract of fleas, and when they feed on mammals they can be passed on through feces or by regurgitation. When the rats die, presumably from overwhelming bacterial infection, the fleas they harbor need a source of blood, and because they can jump long distances they hop on to any nearby mammals. The more cats there are the fewer flea infested rats are out and about, and the less likely it is that a human will get bitten by one.

Oriental rat fleas are not uncommon, as they were recently isolated in NYC, but the plague bacillus is mainly if not entirely limited to rodents in rural parts of the Western United States. According to the CDC there are 1-17 cases of plague in this country annually, and fortunately the vast majority (~90%) of infected patients are cured with antibiotics, particularly streptomycin or doxycycline.

>191 dchaikin: Thanks, Dan.

>192 sallypursell: Right, Sally. That would have been the third plague pandemic, I believe.

Thanks for mentioning that book; I'll add it to my wish list.

>188 SqueakyChu: My introduction to the Spanish flu was The Great Influenza by John M. Barry. It was interesting, and I think I would find it even more so now.

>194 labfs39: I've heard a lot about that one recently, and I'm really interested in reading it. My library doesn't have the ebook, though, so I may actually end up (gasp) buying it.

>194 labfs39: Thank you for the recommendation, Lisa. It looks like a book I'd enjoy reading, if only to know that we, too, might be able to survive this pandemic.

I grew up in a post WWII USA where my immigrant parents never talked about the war because it was such a painful time for them both. I only learned about details of the war from other sources as a teen and young adult. I'm still learning about the war. No one ever talked about a pandemic! That would have happened more during a previous generation. A pandemic has been as far from my imagination as flying to another galaxy. It's funny how there seems to be no longer such thing as science fiction. Anything can happen, I only recently learned that one of my best friend's paternal grandfather died of the flu in Latvia in the early twentieth century. That brought a pandemic back to me on a personal level. It can, and, in fact, did happen.

Hoping all of our loved ones, family and friends alike, stay safe at this time. .

Darryl, I think I read all the Covid-19 references in your thread and didn't see this raised, but what are you hearing about the kids who have exhibited Kawasaki symptoms? It sounds like it's mostly in the northeast so far, but there seem to be a growing number of suspected cases. I probably would pay less attention - I'm in NJ, in the county with the nursing home discovery recently of 17 bodies piled up - so things are pretty stressful right now without adding Kawasaki. But I have a 4-month-old great-niece who is just starting nursery with her mother going back to work, and they live right outside DC, so it's something I want to watch.

>188 SqueakyChu: >189 kidzdoc: I lived through much of the polio scare, and some of my known relatives died in the '18 flu, as well as a diphtheria epidemic that swept through St. Louis repeatedly in 1921 - 1925. Some were older first cousins of my mother. One family was wiped out, my great-aunt and all her children. I had a very mild case of pertussis as a child. I remember coughing until I was unconscious.

I had a first cousin who was permanently affected by polio, and I believe she spent a brief period in an iron lung.

I had a productive weekend, as I participated in a weekend readathon in the 75 Books group, hosted by Mary (bell7), and from Friday afternoon through early this morning I finished three superb books:

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (4 stars)
Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire (4.5 stars)
Birth of a Dream Weaver: A Writer's Awakening by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (4.5 stars)

I was supposed to be working Wednesday through Friday this week, but due to the historically low inpatient census in the children's hospital I work in I've apparently been called off on Thursday and Friday. That will give me time to catch up on book reviews from this month and last, and get more reading done.

I also made a paella for the first time, using chicken and chouriço (pronounced "shoe-REE-zoo"), a Portuguese version of Spanish chorizo that has less paprika and is darker red in color due to red wine, which I find to be less overpowering than chorizo:



I used a recipe from a Cubana colleague, which I'll post to La Cucina shortly.

This week I'll continue reading American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and Petals of Blood, and start The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer, a mental health nurse in the UK and author of a superb novel, The Shock of the Fall. Rachael (FlossieT) recommended this book to me when we met in London last year, and since she is an almost uncanny source of book recommendations I bought it without a second thought.

>194 labfs39:, >195 lisapeet: I own a copy of The Great Influenza, but I haven't read it yet. I did read Flu by Gina Kolata in the Pre-LT Era, which was very good.

>196 SqueakyChu: I hope that we all stay well, too. However, I think it's inevitable that we'll all know someone who falls ill due to COVID-19, but hopefully none of our family or close friends or neighbors requires hospitalization or dies. My very close LT friend who has COVID-19 continues to improve at home; she is, so far, the only person I know well who has fallen ill.

I also expect that many of us will ultimately be infected with SARS-CoV-2, especially front line health care workers and resonders, and others who interact with the public on a regular basis.

>197 auntmarge64: Absolutely, Margaret. There is a story in today's NYT about 38 kids in NYC who had pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, three of whom died, and for the past few weeks my partners and I have been aware of hospitalized children diagnosed with Kawasaki disease (KD) who also tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, most of whom did not have any respiratory symptoms.

I was just mentioning to my LT friend who is sick with COVID-19 that I took care of a 6 month old infant last month who had classic KD symptoms: daily fevers for 5 or more consecutive days; conjunctival erythema with limbic sparing (redness of the whites of the eyes, except for the area immediately surrounding the irises); strawberry tongue (reddened tongue with prominent papillae), often with redness, swelling and cracking of the lips; generalized erythematous rash, which often starts in the groin area but cannot be pustular or vesicular; redness and swelling of the palms and soles, which can be associated with pain with walking in toddlers; and a solitary enlarged cervical lymph node, which is the one of the five cardinal symptoms that is most often absent. At the time I saw that baby last month we did not know about this association, and because our ability to perform SARS-CoV-2 testing was extremely limited I didn't order that test, and even if I had our ID experts would have not approved the test. We treated the infant with high dose aspirin and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), per protocol, and he made a quick and full recovery. His echocardiogram was normal, with no coronary artery changes or evidence of cardiac dysfunction. He only had mild rhinorrhea without cough, but we all still used enhanced contact droplet precautions (plastic goggles, surgical (but not N95) mask, gown and gloves) before we entered his room. If that same baby presented now we would absolutely test him for SARS-CoV-2, due to the association of KD with COVID-19, and because we now have the ability to perform rapid SARS-CoV-2 testing in house.

>198 sallypursell: None of my family members contracted polio, to my knowledge, but members of the church I attended in Jersey City, NJ, on the west bank of the Hudson River directly across from Lower Manhattan, regularly visited shut ins during the 1960s and early 1970s, many of whom had developed paralytic polio earlier in life. It was not uncommon to see older children and adults who wore leg braces in Jersey City and NYC, and I never learned to swim, as my parents and especially my maternal grandmother, who lived in NYC from the early 1940s to the early 1970s, refused to allow me to go to the municipal swimming pool, or the one at our local YMCA, even though I was vaccinated, due to the outbreaks of paralytic polio in the 1940s associated with public pools in NYC and nearby Newark, NJ before the Salk vaccine became widely available in the mid 1950s.

>200 kidzdoc: Thanks for the insights, Darryl. So are you thinking that a child with KD symptoms who did test positive for Covid-19 might still be treated successfully with the a KD protocol? I guess that's hard to say without other cases, but it makes you think. I guess that's what they're doing with all Covid-19 cases - treating the symptoms and hoping the patients survive long enough to get a grip on the virus.

>201 auntmarge64: You're welcome, Margaret. Yes, for now at least we are still treating patients with KD who also test positive for SARS-CoV-2 with high dose aspirin and IVIG, per our usual protocol. There had been a concern that the use of NSAIDs might worsen COVID-19 infections, but recent studies have shown no difference in outcomes in adult or pediatric pstients who take them. Given that COVID-19 induces a hypercoagulable state in many patients, including infants and children, the last thing we would want to do is not treat patients with KD with high dose aspirin on initial presentation, as that disease already predisposes them to coronary artery thrombi.

As of Friday we've only had 29 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in our entire system, and there was only one patient in the hospital I work in.

In keeping with what my friends who are primary care pediatricians in metro Atlanta have been noticing since March, parents are not bringing in their kids for routine well child visits, including immunizations, and an early report from the CDC that was released on Friday bears this out. Orders for vaccines from the VFC (Vaccines for Children) program have plummeted since a week after a pandemic was declared, including the MMR vaccine. Unless these kids get caught up soon we may be looking at cases of vaccine preventable illnesses such as measles, pertussis, rotavirus and serious bacterial infections that could easily eclipse COVID-19 hospitalizations in children.

Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Routine Pediatric Vaccine Ordering and Administration — United States, 2020

ETA: Your question made me think of a question. We are putting all COVID-19 patients, including infants, on Lovenox (low molecular weight heparin), and consulting Hematology on these patients on admission. If we have patients with KD and COVID-19, do we treat them with Lovenox and high dose aspirin?! I'll have to see if my colleagues have asked that question. (They probably have.)

ETA (2): I should also mention that infants (and adolescents) with KD often have an atypical presentation as compared to toddlers and older children. In a classic case of KD the patients have five or more days of fever, usually in the 39-40 C range, and at least four of the five cardinal symptoms that I mentioned above. Many of the infants I've seen meet the fever criterion, but only have two or three of the cardinal symptoms, usually a nonspecific rash, conjunctivitis and perhaps a strawberry tongue, which could mimic adenovirus (pharyngoconjunctival fever) or influenza. In those cases labs can be helpful; an elevated WBC count and high CRP and ESR, along with mild anemia, thrombocytosis, hypoalbuminemia, elevated transaminases and sterile pyuria would make me lean toward KD rather than a viral syndrome.

>123 kidzdoc: I don't know whether our nearby theaters show such productions. I don't think we'll be going to theaters for a long while, anyway.

>198 sallypursell:. Come to think of it, I suffered from scarlet fever as a child, but I always thought of it as just a childhood thing that I had. I have a friend my age who had polio and now suffers post polio syndrome. I guess I never paid that much attention to communicable diseases growing up as we always seemed to have remedies for whatever communicable diseases struck close to home. Other than that, diseases like rubella, rubeola, and chicken pox seemed to be rites of passage for childhood.

One thing is that people are so globally connected, moving all over the world without restraint, at least until now, making it so easy to spread communicable disease.

>200 kidzdoc: I do personally know two people who have fallen ill with COVID-19. One is an elderly woman who had been hospitalized but not intubated. She is now in a nursing home, but suffers from cognitive deficits. The other is a woman whose husband contracted the virus from someone at his work and he brought it home to her. They were not hospitalized. She suffers from lack of taste which is ironic because I originally met her when she was our waitress at our then favorite pizza restaurant (which subsequently went out of business). We both still crave food from that restaurant.

Dr Rupert Beale, a physician researcher and group leader at The Francis Crick Institute in London and husband of Rachael (FlossieT), one of my closest LT friends, has been contributing articles for the past several years to The London Review of Books, where Rachael works. He is the head of the Cell Biology of Infection Laboratory, which is looking at the antibody response to coronaviruses in general, and SARS-CoV-2 in particular. Last week Rupert wrote an excellent article about the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the UK, US and South Korea, a country that took early steps to provide testing for as many of its citizens as it could, developed smartphone apps to allow tracking of cases and contacts, and had plenty of masks for its citizens to wear, resulting in far lower COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates than all of the First World countries in North America and Western Europe. He also discusses the challenges to making an effective and long lasting vaccine to provide acquired immunity against SARS-CoV-2, as the body's immune system does not appear to be able to ensure long lasting natural immunity, and he is optimistic that we will have a good vaccine by late 2021. This article should be available to read without a subscription to the LRB.

How to Block Spike

>203 dukedom_enough: If you go to the National Theatre Live web site, https://www.ntlive.com, you can select what city you live in, or the city closest to you, and it will display the cinemas closest to you that show NT Live broadcasts of plays performed there or selected other theatres in London, such as The Young Vic and Donmar Warehouse. The listing may not be accurate at this time, though; the Midtown Art Cinema is 1.5 miles from where I live, and it does show performances from NT Live, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and the Royal Opera House, but because the cinema is closed and has no listings for future performances the NT Live web site indicates that the closest cinema to me that shows these broadcasts is in Athens, Ohio! For the time being we can all watch National Theatre Live and Shakespeare's Globe perfornances for free on their YouTube channels.

>204 SqueakyChu: The COVID-19 pandemic has had at least two worrisome sequelae. First, because children are staying at home and not going to school or church or seeing their friends, those who live with abusive parents are at greater risk of suffering unwitnessed child abuse without anyone that can report it to law enforcement officials or child protection services, and we hospital pediatricians are seeing more cases of kids so badly injured that they require emergency care and, at times, hospitalization. Second, parents are not bringing in their children for well check visits, including routine immunizations. My friends who are primary care pediatricians, along with the American Academy of Pediatricians, have noticed this and sounded the alarm for the past month and a half, and, in an article that will appear in this week's issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC has found that orders for childhood vaccines from the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program have plummeted since late March, which is an indirect but reliable marker of how many kids in this country are getting vaccinated. I and my pediatric colleagues are very concerned about this, as kids have already started intermingling in Georgia, due to the warming weather and the relaxation of shelter in place restrictions by the governor, and if these kids aren't adequately protected against vaccine preventable illnesses such as influenza, measles, rotavirus and serious bacterial infectons we could be dealing with significant outbreaks of any of these infections due to inadequate herd immunity.

MMWR: Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Routine Pediatric Vaccine Ordering and Administration — United States, 2020

NYT: What's Scaring the Pediatricians

NYT: The Coronavirus Could Cause a Child Abuse Epidemic

>207 kidzdoc: Thanks!

>202 kidzdoc:

Wait, 29 Covid-19 patients throughout the system? Not just pediatric?

Good lord, no wonder people from other areas don't see a problem. I live in a semi-rural county in NW NJ (Colleen lives here, too) and even here we've had over a thousand cases and 135 deaths. My SIL is an ICU nurse at our small local hospital, where there are 11 ICU beds. They had weeks on end when the staff was stretched out covering ICU beds stashed on other floors. About 15 patients at a time on ventilators. It's calmed down some now, but most of us are aware that a second wave will hit us hard. The state has had 141,000 total confirmed cases so far with 9500 deaths. I guess the map below speaks for itself (the NY Times updates it every day.)

I haven't been following NJ plans (isn't that awful?) because I watch Gov. Cuomo speak to the press every day and he's coordinating with NJ, PA and some other states. Cuomo's so competent and explains things so clearly it's a pleasure to watch. The NYS plan is beautifully planned and starts this Friday, all organized and gauged by ongoing statistics collecting. This is a man unswayed by anything other than reducing deaths - and certainly not by politics or reelection plans. (All the press conferences are available on YouTube if anyone's interested.)

I heard through the grapevine (so it may not be true) that here in Tuscaloosa the hospital prepared 35 beds in ICU for Covid-19 patients and the most they had in the unit at one time was 9. We have had cases here but the numbers have been really low. I think that is due to the fact that Tuscaloosa shut down early. Birmingham shut down early (before Tuscaloosa did) but they have had many more cases that Tuscaloosa. Birmingham and Mobile are opening back up much slower than the rest of the state.

>204 SqueakyChu: I live in St. Louis County, where there have been 4,022 cases, and 293 deaths, for a rate of 29.3 deaths per 100,000. In addition, St. Louis City has had 1,493 cases and thus 480 cases per 100,000.

The first fatality in St. Louis County was a friend of mine, a nurse. I was a bedside hospital nurse until I retired last year. Total cases in St Louis is therefore 5,515, or 421 cases per 100,000.

One of my husband's closest childhood and high school friends is now an immunologist at Stanford. There's a lab named after him there. http://med.stanford.edu/butcherlab.html

He was a recipient of the Crafoord Prize in 2004, which is given in fields where there is not a Nobel Prize. I quote below from the Stanford News announcement.

Pathology professor Butcher takes home Sweden’s other big prize, the Crafoord
Prize goes to researchers in fields not covered by Nobel
By MITZI BAKER

Eugene Butcher, MD, has just won a $500,000 prize that he didn’t even know he was nominated for. When the pathology professor answered his ringing phone last Tuesday – something he said he rarely does – a voice on the other end informed him that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the same group that delivers the Nobel Prize, had selected him to receive the Crafoord Prize.

Butcher received the prize for his immunology work and its application to understanding arthritis. He will split the prize with Harvard biologist Timothy Springer, PhD, who Butcher said has been following a parallel path to his own. They have sometimes collaborated and sometimes competed and even had a business together for a few years. The work that earned the duo the prize was “their studies of the molecular mechanisms involved in migration of white blood cells in health and disease,” according to the Crafoord Prize announcement.

The prize is earmarked for fields not covered by the Nobel Prize: mathematics, geoscience, astronomy and basic biosciences, especially ecology and evolution. One award is given annually, with the category changing each year. In addition to the main fields honored, every third year the prize can be given instead to recognize a finding in the field of arthritis that is advanced enough to suggest concrete medical applications. Although the prize was established more than 20 years ago, the only other time it has been given to researchers studying arthritis was in 2000.

And you know what? I think I had Scarlet Fever too.

Hi Darryl. This article was in the daily covid update newsletter I subscribe to from Montreal. I thought it might be of some interest to you. It's isn't too deep on detail but maybe that's because there just aren't that many details yet:

https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/have-any-montreal-children-been-affe...

>208 dukedom_enough: You're welcome!

>209 auntmarge64:, >210 benitastrnad: That total I referred to was the number of patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 in the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta system only. As of yesterday morning there were a total of 33 positive cases, and none were currently admitted to any of our three children's hospitals.

On the other hand, there was an NPR story earlier this week that gave hard data — not grapevine hearsay, which to me as a physician is about as reliable and useful as Fox News or anything that comes out of trump's mouth — about the situation in Georgia, which came from the CDC. On May 6th, according to the CDC, 79% of all of the inpatient ICU beds in the state were full, and the Georgia COVID-19 Situation Report that was posted by the Georgia Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday said that ICUs were operating at 69% capacity. There are a total of 2,969 ICU beds in the state, according to this report, which doesn't indicate if this includes PICU (pediatric ICU) beds, although I would assume that NICU (neonatal ICU) beds aren't included. As of Wednesday night, when I was on call, there were 19 patients in our PICU, which has 54-55 beds IIRC. Assuming that the other PICUs in Georgia are equally empty that would probably push the overall ICU bed occupancy rate to 75% or higher.

A model from researchers at Georgia Tech predicts that the state will run out of ICU beds by mid August, and the Department of Health and Human Services gave a similar prediction. The leadership of Children's, along with my group, has been proactively discussing the situation for months, as we are anticipating that we may get asked to at least house some of the overflow adult patients in late summer or autumn. Most in my group would feel comfortable caring for otherwise healthy young adults (25 yo or younger) who are ill with COVID-19, but absolutely not older patients or any with comorbidities that fall outside of our scope of practice.

I fear that, although our inpatient service is very quiet at present, things will become much worse starting in mid to late summer.

NPR: As Georgia Lifts Restrictions, Its Hospitals May Be Unready For A COVID-19 Surge

>211 sallypursell: Nice!

>212 jessibud2: There have been numerous stories in the media about the cases of pediatric inflammatory multi-system syndrome (PIMS) associated with COVID-19 that numerous children's hospitals in North America and Europe have been reporting. On Wednesday The Lancet, a highly respected British medical journal, published an article from a group of pediatric specialists from the Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo, Italy that described the cases of PIMS + COVID-19, as compared to cases of Kawasaki disease (KD) before the pandemic struck. The patients with PIMS have been much sicker than typical KD patients, and for the most part have had few if any respiratory symptoms. One of our infectious disease specialists presented the article during our Physicians' Town Hall COVID-19 WebEx Meeting on Wednesday afternoon, and there was an article about it in yesterday's NYT as well, which includes a link to that article:

New Inflammatory Condition in Children Probably Linked to Coronavirus, Study Finds

Due to our continued low inpatient census my two day weekend has now been extended to six days, as I've been off service since yesterday and won't return until Wednesday. I finished The Heartland: Finding and Losing Schizophrenia by Nathan Filer last night, which was very good. He is a former mental health nurse for the National Health Service in the UK, and his superb début novel The Shock of the Fall, won the Costa First Novel Award and the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2013. Rachael (FlossieT) recommended The Heartland to me last year, and as usual she was spot on.

I'll participate in another weekend readathon in the 75 Books group this weekend, and I intend to finish Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrence Hayes, and hopefully Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America by Beth Macy by Sunday night.

I'm glad you're getting some non-work related reading done, Darryl. It's interesting being in SC, which has the lowest rate of testing in the US, and anecdotal evidence backs this up -- I've known a number of people who were very ill with COVID symptoms but as they were not ill enough to need hospitalization, they were refused testing (and in one case, the doctor's office refused to see him or allow him to be tested, telling him that it was bronchitis and to stay home until he felt better - he was seriously ill for most of a month and still not 100%). My own GP closed up without notice (I showed up for my routine annual to find the place shuttered in early April. I had confirmed the appointment just a few days earlier) with a notice posted that any health concerns should be taken to the ER. They've since begun offering video-appointments. But at least we can all go to TJ Maxx at the same time, right?

I found this article in the History News Network. This is a digital newsletter put out from George Washington University for history teachers. The article is about how Kemp got elected in the first place and the historical divide between Atlanta and rural Georgia. I found it very interesting and it explained the history behind some of the voting patterns in Georgia. That history is so embedded in Jim Crow - just like Alabama's.

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/05/06/covid-19-divide-rural-georgia-atla...

I know it's all hands on deck coping with the active virus, but I wonder what kind of work is being done to address the people who have gotten really sick and who aren't deathly ill but who aren't completely recovering either. I know a few people who have hit a point in their recovery—one person I think upward of 53 days—where they're OK at home and can do small things, but still have a lot of lung pain, exhaustion, etc. I have a feeling we're going to see a bunch of chronic fallout from this.

>215 RidgewayGirl: After 6 weeks, I have finally kicked the fever and, according to the CDC, "recovered." Like Kay says, the fatigue and cough is taking longer to pass, although it's much better. I'm not sure if the fatigue is a continuing symptom, or simply weakness and fatigue from having been ill and inactive for so long. Despite having significant symptoms, including shortness of breath, I was not tested (in Maine), and when I tried to get my daughter tested, learned that locally they still are not testing unless you are being admitted or are a healthcare worker/first responder. I have lost all faith in the statistics being reported as having any correlation to reality.

>217 lisapeet: I agree with Lisa P. that another issue that is starting to be problematic is that healthcare workers/employers, etc are having a hard time deciding when someone has recovered from COVID. I was in the medical center yesterday for routine imaging, and the first person I dealt with said that I was still contagious and thus unable to get the imaging. The CDC recommends at least 10 days from onset of symptoms (I was 7 weeks) and 72 hours from fever (I was 8 days) with other symptoms improving, but not necessarily absent. Finally she called a nurse who confirmed that I could have the imaging since I met those criteria. People are scared about acknowledging that people are "well" and rightly so, I think. I'm not sure anyone knows enough about post-illness implications to give a definitive and unchanging response.

>217 lisapeet: I think there is going to be a significant chronic fall-out that will be pressurising our healthcare systems for the long-term.

As I work in healthcare software we are keeping a close eye on future potential trends. My colleague recently bought an oximeter, as a lot of evidence seems to be pointing towards people not realising their oxygen levels are depleting with COVID-19 (i.e. they feel relatively well) until it gets to a seriously low level. Darryl will correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that it is this serious oxygen level depletion which can do a lot of the long-term damage to the kidneys, lung, heart, etc. That aligns with some other reports we saw that suggested the symptoms of COVID-19 are closer to that of altitude sickness than they are to traditional flu.

Darryl, backing up to your discussion of Contagion. Have you read The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett? It ends after the first Ebola outbreak in Africa, so it's a little out of date, but Garrett is eminently readable.

I finally got caught up with your thread, Darryl. I'm sorry that your Dad had a stroke and hope he is getting close to where he was before he was hospitalized.

The low numbers of patients you are seeing at work are not a surprise. The hospital emergency departments in our local hospitals are reporting that visits are down drastically and there is fear that people are staying away who really should be getting medical assistance.

Enjoy your weekend readathon!

I am celebrating the end of Ramadan, Darryl, a time of thanks and forgiveness and I want to say my thanks to all my LT friends for helping keep me somewhat sane these last few years.

I was expecting to see you done with American Sonnets, Darryl. As you know I had some ambivalence towards it and am very interested for your perspective on it. Enjoy your long weekend and I am pleased to see that you have some extended recuperation time.

>215 RidgewayGirl: I'm glad you're getting some non-work related reading done, Darryl.

Thanks, Kay. I have had a very productive reading month so far, as I've already read nine books, including two this weekend, versus a total of 11 from January through April. I work four days this week (M, Tu, Sa, Sun), and after that I'm off service from June 1 through July 8. I had planned to spend all of next month in Lisbon, taking a course in Intensive Portuguese meeting up with deebee1 and her husband, who I met in 2018, and explore the possibilities of retiring there and where I might like to live, either in the capital, elsewhere in the metropolitan area, or in a different city altogether (e.g., Coimbra, Porto, Lagos or elsewhere), but because of the pandemic I won't go. I won't visit my parents for at least two weeks, so I'll have plenty of time to do additional reading.

I've decided to read several TBR books from the cities and countries that I had planned to visit this summer: Portugal in June, Spain in July (that's a bit of a cheat, as I had thought about taking a weekend trip to Barcelona while I was in Lisbon), Scotland in August, and England in September. These are the books I plan to read so far:

June: Lisbon/Portugal
Lisbon Tales (City Tales), translated by Amanda Hopkinson and edited by Helen Constantine
The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa
Journey to Portugal: In Pursuit of Portugal's History and Culture by José Saramago

July: Barcelona
The Gray Notebook by Josep Pla
Private Life by Josep Maria de Sagarra
The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain by Paul Preston

August: Edinburgh/Scotland
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
Scottish History without the Boring Bits: A Chronicle of the Curious, the Eccentric, the Atrocious and the Unlikely by Ian Crofton
And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson

September: London/England
Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga
Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch
Londoners: The Days and Nights of London Now--As Told by Those Who Love It, Hate It, Live It, Left It, and Long for It by Craig Taylor

This may be a bit ambitious, especially several of these books are dense tomes, but I'll be satisfied if I read two of these books each month.

It's interesting being in SC, which has the lowest rate of testing in the US, and anecdotal evidence backs this up -- I've known a number of people who were very ill with COVID symptoms but as they were not ill enough to need hospitalization, they were refused testing (and in one case, the doctor's office refused to see him or allow him to be tested, telling him that it was bronchitis and to stay home until he felt better - he was seriously ill for most of a month and still not 100%). My own GP closed up without notice (I showed up for my routine annual to find the place shuttered in early April. I had confirmed the appointment just a few days earlier) with a notice posted that any health concerns should be taken to the ER. They've since begun offering video-appointments. But at least we can all go to TJ Maxx at the same time, right?

I think that we are all frustrated at the lack of SARS-CoV-2 testing, and the difficulties we've all faced in ordering these tests. The situation has improved in Georgia, though, and I'm now able to order rapid SARS-CoV-2 tests on the patients I care for. Having said that we have had very few positive tests, with only 40 kids through the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta system as of Friday. Apparently there was a 17 yo boy who died of COVID-19 in the city, according to today's AJC, although I haven't heard where (s)he was hospitalized, or if (s)he was hospitalized at all.

>216 benitastrnad: Thanks, Benita. I'll read that article later this week.

>217 lisapeet: I know it's all hands on deck coping with the active virus, but I wonder what kind of work is being done to address the people who have gotten really sick and who aren't deathly ill but who aren't completely recovering either. I know a few people who have hit a point in their recovery—one person I think upward of 53 days—where they're OK at home and can do small things, but still have a lot of lung pain, exhaustion, etc. I have a feeling we're going to see a bunch of chronic fallout from this.

Good question, Lisa. Unfortunately I have no idea what's being done, as the only person I know well who is sick with COVID-19 lives abroad.

>218 labfs39: I'm glad that you're finally feeling better, Lisa!

I agree with Lisa P. that another issue that is starting to be problematic is that healthcare workers/employers, etc are having a hard time deciding when someone has recovered from COVID.

Yes. I haven't looked into the specific CDC and NHS recommendations for this yet, as I have yet to care for a patient or met a parent with COVID-19.

>219 AlisonY: I think there is going to be a significant chronic fall-out that will be pressuring our healthcare systems for the long-term.

Agreed.

As I work in healthcare software we are keeping a close eye on future potential trends. My colleague recently bought an oximeter, as a lot of evidence seems to be pointing towards people not realising their oxygen levels are depleting with COVID-19 (i.e. they feel relatively well) until it gets to a seriously low level. Darryl will correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that it is this serious oxygen level depletion which can do a lot of the long-term damage to the kidneys, lung, heart, etc. That aligns with some other reports we saw that suggested the symptoms of COVID-19 are closer to that of altitude sickness than they are to traditional flu.

That's absolutely right, Alison. I bought a fingertip pulse oximeter for myself, and I've been checking myself at least twice a day, especially since I have asthma. I've also been using my home incentive spirometer twice a day to assess my lung capacity. Lack of smell and taste have also been reported as early symptoms, so I've been assessing that as well.

>220 ffortsa: I've owned a copy of The Coming Plague for many years, but I haven't read it yet. I did order a copy of a new book, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present by Frank M. Snowden, another Professor of the History of Medicine who teaches at Yale, and I hope that this book will prove to be more enlightening and relevant than Contagion was.

>221 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. My father continues to improve nicely, and I'd say that he's about 80-85% back to normal.

The low numbers of patients you are seeing at work are not a surprise. The hospital emergency departments in our local hospitals are reporting that visits are down drastically and there is fear that people are staying away who really should be getting medical assistance.

Right. Except for active COVID-19 cases this phenomenon has been seen throughout the US, in primary care physicians' offices and in hospitals. We've been calling three to four hospitalists every day due to our low censuses, and as of last week our system has been losing ~$1 million per day. My partners and I are so far fortunate that we're still getting paid, especially since we're not working much (today is only my fifth work day of the month, which is why I'm getting so much reading done). We are having to take PTO days if we're called off, which seems perfectly reasonable, but if it stays this way through the summer and autumn drastic measures may be necessary.

This past weekend's readathon was quite productive, as I finished two very good books from start to finish, the memoir Mean by Myriam Gurba, and Dopesick:
Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy.

>222 PaulCranswick: Ramadan Kareem to you and your family, Paul.

I wasn't impressed with American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, which I read last week; I gave it 3 stars, and that may be generous. I'm working today, Memorial Day, and three other days this week, but I'll be off for 5-1/2 weeks starting next Monday, and I'll write a review of it then.

I'm very much looking forward to your review of Mean.

>225 RidgewayGirl: I'll almost certainly review it next week, Kay.

>224 kidzdoc: I'm glad it wasn't just me, Darryl. I think that fact that it had so much potential and showed occasional glimpses of his very obvious dexterity made it all the more of a let down.

>214 kidzdoc: Darryl, I went right out and read The Shock of the Fall after reading your post. It was wonderful!

>227 PaulCranswick: Agreed.

>228 auntmarge64: I'm glad that you liked The Shock of the Fall, Margaret.

I have a daughter who is schizophrenic, and I am looking forward to The Shock of the Fall after reading your review.

>223 kidzdoc: I like the idea of your holiday replacement reading, Darryl. If I can find my copy of The Book of Disquiet I may join you.

>230 sallypursell: I read The Shock of the Fall in 2014 or 2015, but I failed to write a review of it. I will review The Heartland next week, though.

>231 wandering_star: That would be great, Margaret! I'm in no rush to read it, as I'm off work from Monday through 8 July and can wait until you're ready to read it.

Oh - I hadn't spotted the timing. Most of my stuff is already being shipped back to the UK so I wouldn't be able to find it until I am back in the UK and out of quarantine which will be August.

>233 wandering_star: Ah. Hmm...if I don't read The Book of Disquiet in June I could do so in August or later.

>223 kidzdoc: I liked The Crow Road well enough, has a clever plot, but IIRC there's a lot of dysfunctional alcohol intake played up as amusing, not my favorite aspect.

>235 dukedom_enough: Thanks, Michael. I had a nagging feeling that neither Transpotting nor The Crow Road was the other Scottish novel that I wanted to read in August, and I was right. That book is And the Land Lay Still by James Robertson, which I purchased along with Scottish History without the Boring Bits from Word Power Books (now known as Lighthouse — Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop, located close to the campus of the University of Edinburgh) during my first visit there in 2015 or 2016. I'll correct my post in >223 kidzdoc: to indicate that book instead of the other two.

>232 kidzdoc: I should have said your comments, and not your review. I greatly appreciated them.

And please forgive what sounds like name-dropping upon re-reading. I just thought you might be interested.

>237 sallypursell: No problems!

>199 kidzdoc: Darryl--that dish looks amazing!! Yum.

My hubby had a presumptive case (no actual test, but doctor verbally assessed) of C-19 and luckily did not have to go to the hospital although it was touch and go one night. He had the classic high fever, loss of taste and smell, and coughing/difficulty breathing. He is over the worst, but the recovery is sure taking a long time. My neighbor also came down with it (different source) and is having the same slow recovery. It sure takes it out of you! Just glad that both of them made it through okay. And that none of us caught it.

>232 kidzdoc: Glad to see you are making the most of your extra time off work and getting lots of reading in. Wishing you fun with your European reads this summer and I sincerely hope you actually get to get go for real in 2021!

>234 kidzdoc: Don't hold off reading it on my account - but let me know if you do read it later.

>236 kidzdoc: I think you're probably right about that - when I saw the list I wondered whether you would like either of those books.

>239 Berly: Thanks, Kim. The paella was very tasty, and it didn't last long. I'll make paella valenciana early next week, especially now that I have Spanish bomba rice.

I'm glad that your husband is on the mend, and neither you nor the rest of your family was infected with SARS-CoV-2.

I'm still holding out hope that I can travel to Europe later this year. Portugal will actually open up to travelers from the US, the UK and most Schengen countries, save for Spain and Italy, on Monday.

>240 wandering_star: Fair enough. I think it's highly likely that I'll read The Book of Disquiet in June, but if I don't I can wait until later in the year.

I own copies of Trainspotting and The Crow Road, but neither are high on my TBR list, unlike And the Land Lay Still.

I made a really good tasting beef stew today even though I couldn't find the bay leaves. I was sure I bought them two weeks ago at the grocery store, but the stew is still good. Now I have food for another week, my paycheck came through, and I am content. It is looking like we will have our quarantine reinstated because our numbers of new cases has exploded this last week. I may not be back to work on June 15. Oh well - more reading time at home.

>242 benitastrnad: Sounds good.

>224 kidzdoc: I hope that you keep getting paid, Darryl. That concern shows the difference in our hospital systems and probably the difference in their overall response to the current pandemic as they are all answerable to the Ministry of Health. When the pandemic was coming all elective surgeries in the province were put on hold so that hospitals would be ready for the forecast Covid-19 patients.

>244 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg. So far my partners and I, who are all salaried (i.e., not hourly) employees of Children's and are not part of an independent group that has a contract with Children's to provide services, are receiving our full salaries, even though we've been spending most of the spring sitting at home. A few relatively minor non-salary cuts have been made, but no one in my group is in disagreement with that. We're all happy we are getting paid, and, given the situation that millions of our fellow Americans are in, feel a bit guilty that we're earning full paychecks despite working much less. The inpatient census is slowly increasing, from the low to mid twenties to the mid to upper thirties, but it remains well below normal, and at least two hospitals who should be working are staying home every day. So far I've been called off 8-10 days by my estimate, but I've only lost five hours of paid time off (PTO), which I was pleasantly shocked to learn.

June is my vacation free month from work, and I don't report back until 9 July. Given the pandemic and the current crisis after the murder of George Floyd by officers of the Minneapolis Police Department I'll probably stay very close to home, and continue to stay home except for running errands and getting biweekly hair cuts from my longtime barber.

I'll create a new thread shortly.