Omicron vs the Common Cold and Best Wishes to the Queen

It seems to me that that covid i.e. omicron is nearly everywhere now,

and it is inevitable that even the most vulnerable i.e. elderly are going to be very hard to protect.

My first concern is naturally my parents,

my Mum is 80 and clearly suffering from various conditions related

to old age (toothache and a nasty rash recently) but is in general in robust health physical health.

My biggest concern is my Dad who is 82 and has been in and out of the hospital several times

in the last two years and hasn't had covid yet.

My brother passionately believes that covid is now typically

only a mild common cold (this has been a theme of a few weeks now).

I was pushing back, I've just had covid two weeks ago now and it was nasty,

but yes for myself it pretty mild i.e. a million miles from being hospitalized.

Still, I was quite sick/weak for a few days and while I thought I have fully recovered

a week ago, I have had some fatigue and headaches this week.

My brother annoyed me today, by his aggressive assertion that

omicron is typically only a mild cold, which many people hardly notice,.

When I complained that I have been pretty ill and so have several of

my friends in recent weeks with covid, he also started mocking me, along the lines of "I know David thinks he nearly died of covid". 

Today I held my ground asking where is the evidence that "omicron is typically no worse

than a mild cold", there might be some truth in this? I was hoping for some sort of report/link/evidence… and my brother

got rather the hump and left the family call… my parents then blamed me for being

too hard (was I being insufferable or are my parents just hoping for a quiet life?). 

Well I do see the queen is now sick and the briefing from Buckingham Palace is that :

“Her Majesty is experiencing mild cold-like symptoms but expects to  

continue light duties at Windsor over the coming week."  

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/20/queen-tests-positive-for-covid

and 🤞 she makes a speedy recovery, although I'm a bit sceptical about Buckingham Palace briefings?

The Queen undoubtedly has the best health care that money can buy, but I believe she has only

just tested positive so predicting recovery times seems a bit premature?

Don't spit on Spinoza.

Amsterdam is a famously liberal and diverse city, not just in the 21st century but going back centuries and centuries. 

Amsterdam's rich cultural history and it's reputation for toleration has also built up over the centuries, for example, Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) was pushing the boundaries of the Amsterdam Jewish community in the mid 17th century with his then-radical ideas that God is everywhere and in everything:

 “Most religions teach that God exists somewhere outside the world, perhaps in heaven. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77) was unusual in thinking that God is the world. He wrote about ‘God or Nature’, to make this point–meaning that the two words refer to the same thing. God and nature are two ways of describing a single thing. God is nature and nature is God. This is a form of pantheism–the belief that God is everything.”
— A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories) by Nigel Warburton

I find this thinking beautiful and clearly resonates with many modern thinkers, but is possibly antithetical to religious extremists who believe this sort of thinking is dangerous?

There are boundaries to freedom and even Amsterdam struggles with some more extremists movement, who don't believe in equality for women or still see being in a same-sex relationship as a perversion. There appears to be a correlation between such religious zealots and a dislike of more liberal-thinker like Spinoza.

Before my Dutch wedding, we met outside the Amsterdam Gementee by the statue of Spinoza who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite philosophers. Not just an advocate of seeing God in Nature, but also geometry and mathematics: 

“Spinoza did not just admire geometry; he wrote philosophy as if it were geometry. The ‘proofs’ in his book Ethics look like geometrical proofs and include axioms and definitions. They are supposed to have the same relentless logic as geometry. But instead of dealing with topics like the angles of triangles and the circumferences of circles, they are about God, nature, freedom and emotion.”
— A Little History of Philosophy (Little Histories) by Nigel Warburton

The Leopold Bloom, the hero of Joyce's Ulysses, an Irish man from Hungarian-Jewish family background, is also a fan of Spinoza who is mentioned a couple of times, including this famously comic scene, were Bloom gets attacked by a bigotted fool with a biscuit box:

“—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.—He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.—Whose God? says the citizen.—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me. Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuit box here.”
— Ulysses by James Joyce

and checking, I see this Ulysses-Spinoza on Wikipedia:

1922: Leopold Bloom is shown several times to be an admirer of Spinoza in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Thoughts from Spinoza, an anthology, is represented on Bloom's bookshelf towards the end of the novel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza   

So I'm in good company with Leopold Bloom and Joyce! Well we live in remarkably broad and diverse society, none of us is divine, we all have our strengths and weakness, and I always try to be open to new ways of thinking plus putting myself into the perspective of others. But there are limits to toleration and I really struggle with those who want to spit on Spinoza?

NB Spinoza lived where the Moses and Aaron Church is located now, and there is strong evidence that he may have been born there:

By Amsterdam Municipal Department for the Preservation and Restoration of Historic Buildings and Sites (bMA) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza#/media/File:Mozes_en_A%C3%A4ronkerk.jpg

Moments of Joy 003 - George Takei and the Amsterdam Queer Bookclub

We had a really good discussion of George Takei autobiography in graphic novel format. Unfortunately, he didn't elaborate on this LGBTQIA+ activism, but it was still a really good discussion plus we were introduced briefly to George Takei husband, which was a fun and light-hearted moment in the book.

We were not convinced that America is such a "role model of modern democracy", every country has its problems and challenges and American exceptionalism can be a bit grating at times? I had assumed that the book was written pre-Trump. George Takei has a very popular TED talk made in 2014, although this book does touch on Trump and the resurgence/re-usage of refugee camps on US soil. Quite heartbreaking for George Takei who grew up in a camp in an internment camp in Rohwer, Arkansas.

Personally, I don't believe either democracy is dead in either America or UK but the last few years have seen very worrying trends, especially the Cambridge Analytical scandals which eventually cost Facebook $6 billion dollars i.e. US government fine and another $0.005 billion dollars to the UK government  

In response, Facebook apologized for their role in the data harvesting and their CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress.[7] In July 2019, it was announced that Facebook was to be fined $5 billion by the Federal Trade Commission due to its privacy violations.[8] In October 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a £500,000 fine to the UK Information Commissioner's Office for exposing the data of its users to a "serious risk of harm".[9] In May 2018, Cambridge Analytica filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal 

On the topic of graphic novels we also discussed these books:

* Fun Home (by Alison Bechdel i.e. of the Bechdel film test fame*)

* Our Dreams At Dusk

* My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness

* I Think Our Son Is Gay (I need more humour)

We also discussed reading some of Sarah Waters' Historical Fiction, especially her first three novels seen in Victorian London

* Tipping the Velvet (1998)

* Affinity (1999)

* Fingersmith (2002)

* The Night Watch (2006)

* The Little Stranger (2009)

* The Paying Guests (2014)

I am a huge Sarah Waters fan and would love to re-read them all! I see that last year I was musing on these books attending English Classis status in the future:

Sarah Waters - one of my favourite writers and IMO going to become a classic

https://davetravelogue.blogspot.com/2021/07/queer-literary-classics.html

NB I've also been watch Star Trek (mixed with Black Mirror) during lockdown, not especially for background for this book but rather as seminal SciFi Television works and programs often referenced at the SciFi bookclub. A nice moment of synchronicity.

NB2 The Bechdel test for a film: * At least two women * The women need to talk to each other * They need to talk to each other about something other than a man

Meditations on Joy - part 002 - Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You

Somewhat to my husband's frustration, I do love an absorbing story and over the last couple of month's I've been particularly enjoying Sally Rooney's latest novel.

As per the Guardian "love-quadrangle review", there are four principal characters in this novel, i.e. all with strong voices and significant character development, but the primary narrator is Alice, a hugely popular but discontented writer, struggling with her new rock/writer-star celebrity status. 

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – author of her own discontent

… a love-quadrangle storyline à la Conversations With Friends. Eileen, employed by a Dublin literary magazine, beds her girlhood crush, Simon, a political adviser; Alice, now living by the sea in Mayo, falls for her Tinder hookup, Felix, a warehouse worker. Their relationship crackles with the flinty repartee that is the shining currency of all Rooney’s fiction.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/beautiful-world-where-are-you-by-sally-rooney-review-author-of-her-own-discontent

This was my first Sally Rooney, people have been telling me for a while I should be reading her and so I was happy when she was chosen for the book club at work. One of the epithets the author doesn't like is as a millennial writer, or more precisely, she is being dubbed the first great millennial writer by some? 

My younger colleagues saw her as writing for millennial's. However, they focused on the details of being in their late 20s or early 30s and living in an expensive, metropolitan hub city like Dublin or Amsterdam. And yes, there are many parallels for young professionals living in these two cities; the conversation even briefly drifted onto New York with the revamping of Sex and the City? 

However, I suspect the epithet "millennial writer" annoys Sally Rooney because yes there is something in the fresh rebellious tone of her writing and this epithet can be seen as somewhat patronizing. The book is packed with both exciting people and exciting ideas, especially the defence of socialism and complacency of those who see the last 50 years as a vindication that the "right-wing thinking has been proved right" plus the "left-wing think is a bit simple and naive"? While I hope no one would try to defend the old USSR, I like that she is pushing back against "end of history": 

“Human beings lost that when the Berlin Wall came down. I’m not going to get into another argument with you about the Soviet Union, but when it died so did history. I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us.”  

— Beautiful World, Where Are You

  

I think the visionary Jeannette Winterson with her "superior arguments of socialism" would approve of Sally Rooney's perspective and push-back against the triumph of naked capitalism:

“It was a real advance in human consciousness towards collective responsibility; an understanding that we owed something not only to our flag or to our country, to our children or our families, but to each other. Society. Civilisation. Culture.

That advance in consciousness did not come out of Victorian values or philanthropy, nor did it emerge from right-wing politics; it came out of the practical lessons of the war, and–and this matters–the superior arguments of socialism.

Britain’s economic slow-down in the 1970s, our IMF bail-out, rocketing oil prices, Nixon’s decision to float the dollar, unruly union disputes, and a kind of existential doubt on the Left, allowed the Reagan/ Thatcher 1980s Right to skittle away annoying arguments about a fair and equal society.”  

— Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

  

But putting politics aside, my favourite character was Simon, quiet, elegant, peacefully getting on with his life. I perceive him as a role model, of those many "gently religious" folk, who have the self-discipline to keep their faith, find the good and relevant in their religious convictions without getting drawn into extremist and/or intolerant positions?

I was chatting with a couple of friends after Church last month and mentioned that I was reading this great new novel: final there was with a strong Christian character who is not a complete idiot. My two friends, who are probably a bit more orthodox than myself were a bit shocked but also amused (I hope). Simon is likeable, relatable, handsome and possibly the nicest character in the novel. He is also the perfect counterbalance to his neurotic girlfriend Eileen. There are two strong romances in this novel: while Alice and Felix bump along and slowly fall in love, with a modicum of bickering; Eileen is more intensely besotted with Simon and in one memorable scene they have the best phone sex ever. Well, it is the best phone sex scene I've ever read and I can't help musing that only an accomplished author could have phone sex with such elegant dialog? I will not quote any of this, partly as it is the romantic context and build up which makes this scene so perfect.

I will leave you one last quote, demonstrating the quixotic humour and eye for quirky details, which made this book so a joy to read, Alice is writing to Eileen (this is largely an epistolary novel):

“I miss you. I was sitting in the Musée d’Orsay this morning looking at sweet little Marcel Proust’s portrait, and wishing John Singer Sargent had painted him instead. He’s quite ugly in the painting, but despite this unfortunate fact (and I do mean despite!) something in his eyes reminded me of you. Probably just the glow of brilliance.”  

— Beautiful World, Where Are You

 

patronize | ˈpatrənʌɪz | (also patronise) verb [with object] 1 (often as adjective patronizing) treat with an apparent kindness which betrays a feeling of superiority: ‘She's a good-hearted girl,’ he said in a patronizing voice.

metropolitan | mɛtrəˈpɒlɪt(ə)n | adjective 1 relating to or denoting a metropolis: the Boston metropolitan area. noun ...
2 an inhabitant of a metropolis: a sophisticated metropolitan.

epithet | ˈɛpɪθɛt | noun an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or thing mentioned: old men are often unfairly awarded the epithet ‘dirty’. • an epithet used as a term of abuse: people jeered and hurled racial epithets.

besotted | bɪˈsɒtɪd | adjective 1 strongly infatuated: he became besotted with a local barmaid. 2 archaic intoxicated; drunk.

Meditation on Joy

It has been a pretty good week, I'm not normally a fan of Amsterdam in the winter and January is the cruellest month. Still, we had three consecutive sunny days. each started with a cool fog, with the feeling of isolation and mystery, but this fog soon burnt off into beautiful winter sunshine, I felt briefly blessed!

One of the things I like about my new job is that they have been organising lunchtime meditation sessions, which works surprisingly well even though we are back on zoom? The meditations are well-led, focusing on traditional mindfulness plus acceptance of mental state i.e. whether you are feeling up or down, feeling focused or unfocused…  this week we had introduced the theme of meditating on joy i.e. focusing on joyful moments and focusing on positive memories moments and feelings. 

This wasn't easy at first, but it was a well lead session and after a few slightly uncomfortable minutes, I was surprised at how many genuinely joyful moments I was able to bring to mind, after a bit of searching. Then it occurred to me how often my thoughts get tangled up in all the problems, tensions and petty arguments which can trick to unpick and step away.

I have a Facebook friend Geoff: a nice guy, a very distant relative but also my only openly gay relative. He has been running a series called "Moments of Pleasure". His last post in this series was on Dec-31 "Moment of Pleasure No. 565: New Year Fireworks". Although I don't exactly share Jeff's taste, sometimes I'm 100% behind his choices e.g. "Moment of Pleasure No. 519: Julie Walters" (one of my favourite actresses) and his posts are nearly always good fun and thought-provoking in a light-hearted way. 

Anyway getting back to my own Meditation on Joy, while I have the normal friends, family, pets, travel, exciting news moments of joy, which were suggested in the meditation, one extra and common source of joy for myself is discovering a good story and/or writer, typically either a new novel or revisiting an old story and finding something new. Sometimes when I revisit an old favourite, I find that I have forgotten just how much I like this story and sometimes it can be even better on revisiting.

In recent years, especially since covid I've found myself spending more time in novels, either reading the original or listening to an audiobook version and sometimes listening to a dramatisation. I'm a big fan of BBC Radio Play, I've just finished the DH Lawrence collection which was joy itself. In my 20s and 30s, I was very keen on DH Lawrence and read many of his major novels plus The Virgin and The Gypsy which is one of my favourites, along with "Women in Love", I'm less keen on "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" (a bit of a let down for me).

Now I'm in my 50s I prefer EM Forster over DH Lawrence but they are both great writers and joy to read.

meditate | ˈmɛdɪteɪt | verb [no object] focus one's mind for a period of time, in silence or with the aid of chanting, for religious or spiritual purposes or as a method of relaxation: I set aside time every day to write and meditate | it was here that the monk spent much of the day reading and meditating on Scripture.

joy | dʒɔɪ | noun [mass noun] a feeling of great pleasure and happiness: tears of joy | the joy of being alive. • [count noun] a thing that causes joy: the joys of country living.

novel1 | ˈnɒv(ə)l | noun a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism: the novels of Jane Austen | a paperback novel.

F*!king vegans and welcome to 2022

It has been a fractious start to 2022 for my family, our New Years Day zoom call got the year off to a bumpy start, with my brother reviving a pretty vicious argument from 2019 around brexit, The Spectator and Rory Sutherland who I just don't find that funny, even before he pushed for a hard-brexit with extreme anti-EU rhetoric loosely conflating the EU membership to the Klu Klux Klan membership!

So back in Jan 2019, we had a fairly big family row, my brother was banging on how great Rory Sutherland was and I was struggling to get through to him that I didn't find him that funny. Even my mother, who is a huge Spectator fan, seemed to side with me for once, this is from an email we exchanged at the time:

"I find the KKK and EU membership conflation in the Spectator more worrying (and Rory Sutherland is a top Advertising Executive, so really should better than to play with fire)." 

However, my mother seems to be a fan of the Spectator and Sutherland again? But maybe I don't forget and forgive that quickly?

So why does Sutherland still get under my skin? Well I do get he is a very talented and popular guy, but like some of Boris Johnsons' more glib jokes/slurs:

"if gay marriage was OK - and I was uncertain on the issue - then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men, or indeed three men and a dog."

I find more than a touch of toxic masculinity in both Sutherland and Johnsons, both of whom I see as stalwarts of The Spectator? 

Anyway, our second family zoom call of 2022 went slightly better, but it was still pretty difficult. Now as my family really ought to know I have been following a vegetarian/vegan diet for the vast majority of my adult life. I started following a vegetarian diet when I was 21 and I'm now 51. 

About 6 or 7 years ago, I started following a pretty strict vegan diet after reading The China Study

(by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell), which I think is an amazing book. I also read their follow-up book "Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition", which discusses why despite the ever-growing body of strong scientific evidence that people who follow a "whole-food plant-based diet" typically have long and healthy lives, as well as being a significantly more environmentally friendly diet i.e. win-win for me. Especially for me, as I think this diet tastes great and I just don't like eating meat that much.

The only problem with a strict vegan diet was that it can be awkward for family and friends? My brother holds vegans and vegan diet in total contempt and likes to regal discussions with horror stories that it will destroy your health and you'll have to eat some utterly disgusting concoction as a cure, this is an old argument (15 or 20 years ago) but there was something about having to eat refined human effluent!? 

My mother is also a bit intolerant of vegetarians and vegans, nothing as gross as my brother's nonsensical objections. My mother doesn't like having to prepare a 2nd course or dish for vegetarians and vegans. Actually, I do have quite a lot of sympathy for my mother on this one: while I do wish my family would eat more veggies and less meat & dairy, I do also appreciate that big family occasions are a lot of work for the host to prepare and these traditional occasions are accompanied by traditional cooking / big dishes. So while I do wishes my family were a little less conservative in their tastes and a bit more open to alternative thinking and ways, I do feel for my mother on this one.

Still, I'm pissed at my brother again, he ought to know that I have made big compromises to fit into my extremely conservative family and he is still banging on about "f!*king vegan diets" in 2022. After last weeks highly fractious call, I was do everything to keep calm but this was hard not to react to?

Fingers crossed for next weeks family call!

fractious | ˈfrakʃəs | adjective(typically of children) irritable and quarrelsome: they fight and squabble like fractious children. • (of a group or organization) difficult to control; unruly: King Malcolm struggled to unite his fractious kingdom. 

toxic masculinity

The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions of masculinity to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with harm to society and men themselves. Traditional stereotypes of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such as misogyny and homophobia,    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity  

stalwart a stalwart supporter of the cause: staunch, loyal, faithful, committed, devoted, dedicated, dependable, reliable, steady, constant, trusty, hard-working, vigorous, stable, firm, steadfast, redoubtable, resolute, unswerving, unwavering, unhesitating, unfaltering. 

Eulogy for Joan Didion

I wanted to write this month about Joan Didion anyway, amongst two other very famous feminist writers.

But now, a few days after Christmas, I see the Joan Didion obituaries coming in. On the one hand, I feel sad that such a great writer and commentator has passed away, and on the other hand, I think, good for her; she had a pretty amazing life and continued in that way to almost the very end. The very end being an impressive 87 years, Joan Didion seemed like a workaholic writer who loved her work but maybe didn't care too much for either sleep, nor eating her greens. 

So who are the other two feminist writers I have in mind: Doris Lessing and Sally Rooney.

Doris Lessing was a disillusioned communist, proto-feminist and master of the inner-space narrative. Doris Lessing was written some wonderfully insightful, sensitive and inter-twined tales within the Golden Notebook. These tales cover a wealth of emotions and historical themes; there is a lot of sex, well, there is a lot of straight sex, some of it good, some of it wild & wonderful, but also some it not so good. The gay sex, like the gay characters, was disappointing and a bit painful to read, one weak spot in an otherwise wonderful story.

I would have imagined that the disillusioned London Communist (Lessing) and the disillusioned Californian Hippie-come-Hipster (Didion) would have had a good amount in common and mutual sympathy, but maybe Didion was jealous of Lessing's celebrity status? I can only guess.. they should have been kindred spirits. During the Amsterdam non-fiction book club this month, we discussed this point and Evie suggested that Didion's strict training as a writer at Vogue and the need for bright, concise and on-point prose "Didion didn't just hit her exact word counts, she hit her exact character counts", could have clashed with Lessing flowing & lyrical inner-space narrative style, taking hundreds of pages and with no definitive conclusion? 

Sally Rooney has been dubbed a "millennial writer" (I'll come back to what that might mean later); she is also known for writing about sex in a direct and exciting manner, not normally associated with more sophisticated, modern, feminist writers. Actually, I expect her first two books were more salacious, but I haven't read them. In her 3rd novel, there isn't that much sex however there is one really quite a remarkable phone sex scene. Two things stand out: firstly, only a writer and/or poet could have that hot phone sex. While part of me is jealous, this was a joy to read. Secondly, this scene doesn't seem salacious. Despite the sticky ending, it is pivotal to the plot. I really wasn't sure where this wonderful story was going, but after this scene, I realized A ends up with B, plus C with D and Jane Austen would have approved of this underlying, classical romance theme. Salley Rooney is the hot young, Irish writer of our age, I suspect like F S Fitzgerald will be being read in 50 or 100 years from now! Her characters will connect to future generations, the same way as we still Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker, Dick Diver & Nicole… Anyway, Rooney seems connected to the "communist writer" theme, which broke Lessing's spirit and all the "communist writers" intrigued Didion (a recurring topic in her book "The White Album") and slightly counter-intuitively, 50+ years later on Rooney is powerfully arguing needs re-evaluating. 

My personal opinions are and have always been pretty centre-left, but as I get older, I get more frustrated by the "harder-left" as they appear to be a distraction to what we can achieve in small steps now, for example, in the last UK general election, which seemed to be a choice been a swing to the hard-left (although the FT argued that maybe Corbyn's policy would just bring the UK back into line with other western European countries?) or carry on with hard-right (even more extreme free-market plus less local & national government). Maybe Rooney's powerful intellect and fine writing can re-invigorate left-wing politics, the failure of free markets to curb CO2 emissions so far may mean that future generations will eventually push back and impose more limits and give great guidance to businesses in the future. 

I would love to have known what Didion would have made of the upcoming decades, but for now, I'm grateful for excellent writing and sharp descriptions of the 60s, 70s and 80s… she takes you to places in American culture that very few other writers have so perspectively described, a wonderful legacy and RIP Joan Didion, God bless America.