Thanks SM,
Yes, I am a devoted reader of Theodore Dalrymple. I think I may have even linked to a couple of his pieces on this forum over the years.
His latest article in New English Review speaks loud and clear to me:
And death shall have its dominion - Theodore Dalrymple,
New English Review, December 2015
http://www.newenglishreview.org/Theodor ... _Dominion/
I am not nearly so far gone as Dalrymple. I can still tie my shoe laces, though I admit it does take me longer. I'm a fairly decent cook, but even though I used to be one of those people who could eat and eat and eat and never gain weight, I don't have a good appetite these days and some of my favourite spicy dishes of former days are strictly off limits. I've lost weight, but I can still do the dishes.
I used to have a good writing hand, quite nice to look at, or at least that's what many told me, but I have real trouble now and have to confine my scribblings to the keyboard. Fortunately, having been the only boy out of a class of thirty high school kids who took the typing class, this skill is deeply impressed into my repertoire of learned abilities.
Another thing I spend a lot of time with is music. Again, I'm not nearly so far gone as Dalrymple. I remain the insomniac that I've been since my youth, only able to get about five hours of sleep a day and that with the aid of a medical marijuana licence and Zopoclone, which helps you stay asleep, but is no good for helping you to fall asleep.
I do not, cannot take naps. But I'm not all that active either. I listen to music for hours and hours and hours. And though I am certainly no musicologist and a very poor musician, I still have an exceptional memory for tunes and for being able to hear a job well done by musicians who do know how to play.
I'm more than a little irked at governments interference with proper control of pain. Don't worry, mine is not severe, at least not at the moment. But I have known many people who have suffered long exposure to it. Allow me to follow that up with a specific example. There is incredible paranoia about the use of morphine. This is a natural product and an outstanding painkiller. Instead doctors regularly prescribe oxycodone, 80% of which goes directly to the liver to create a host of problems, while 20% goes actually relieves pain-- sort of. Actually, it induces psychotic effects, maybe even seizures. But it keeps the pharmaceutical companies happy. It is produced entirely from petrochemicals.
My first job with the library was to drive around to various rest homes and hospitals to drop off a monthly collection of books from the library for those still able to read. Most were probably not capable of tying their shoe laces, much less reading the latest biography of F.D.R. However, there were some amazing exceptions. One lady was grotesquely contorted with arthritis. They had her rigged up in an adjustable bed where they could get her into a sort of fetal position with an old style physical book clamped to gadget above her head equipped with a light shining on the pages. She used a pencil stuck in her mouth to turn the pages and read a whole stack of the kind of material that was way beyond me.
Well, I post less and less political stuff.
I'm reverting to my childhood: Music, natural history (especially paleontology and cosmology). I still read a lot of human history, especially ethnologies and biographies, but despite what I just said, get tempted to post some of what I read on "liberal" forums where I am inevitably flamed for being a racist and an all around nasty horrible person.
Elsewhere on this forum I have noted how conditions in Vancouver have deteriorated a lot since I lived here. It's by no means just the homeless that are the problem. As I walk the streets and ride the buses and trains, I see an awful lot of crude, rude, and incredible selfish people oblivious to others around them, those tendencies enhanced no doubt from half of them paying more attention to their "smart" phones than where they are walking, running, or smashing into unsuspecting pedestrians. Sometimes you do see some kindness. I get middle aged Chinese women offering me their seat on the train. The young girls never do.
The doctors and technicians and nurses and all the other staff at the Cancer Agency are enough to renew one's faith in humanity. I've mentioned before that Canada's health care system relies a lot on the services of Asian immigrants, but they are all wonderful. Everyone gets a laugh out of my tattoo. Some of the immigrant staff are recent, but many are descendants of long established families. Many in the Asian community, I think most actually, are Christian. They almost all have English first names, and many speak better English than I do. The doctor who oversees my case is Chinese and she is a Christian. This I know from the beautiful but discreetly worn cross that she wears around her neck. We have never talked about religion. But she is up on all the medicine, exceptionally articulate, a sweet and loving person, and compassionate beyond words. She's a life-saver and has been re-converting me to Christianity, not from argument, but from action. I'm part Irish and therefore susceptible to superstition. Forgive me.
Apollonius