Fragments From Floyd

Can't Hear Thunder

The ear plugs on the flights to South Dakota started the problem. My "fixing it" yesterday with carbamide peroxide ear drops finished it off. I can't hear thunder out of my right ear this morning. The partial blockage is complete and it is maddening. I have several occasions at which I'll need to be able to both hear/listen and speak in the coming days (a rotary breakfast tomorrow morning, for instance) and I feel like I'm walking around with my head in a bucket. And I'll have eight hours of muffled conversation with patients all day long today. How we take these "little things" like normal hearing for granted.

And Other Little Things

...like short term memory. Ronni questions if she's suffering anything more than stress-related interference or task overload. But we all have lapses in memory and invert words at times. In my work, it's important to remember whether a patient's shoulder pain was on the left or right, and most times, I can visualize which side we worked on at the last visit. But sometimes I mask the fact that I can't remember (and don't want to conspicuously stop and check their chart) so I'll get them show me without confessing I've forgotten. "Show me where you're feeling most of the pain this morning" I tell them, and they point to the offending joint, problem solved. What kinds of forgetting are you willing to confess to so Ronni knows she's not alone?

A Hillside of Edibles?

Ann took me on a side trip in our walk along the pasture yesterday to show me her "find"...vast colonies of a shaggy-tattered orange mushroom. I'm pretty sure they are chanterelles, but I didn't have time to photograph or collect them. I'll try to do that tomorrow, if they're still in good shape. Anybody have any experience eating members of the genus Cantharellus?

A Bark With Some Bite

Thieves are debarking slippery elms for their purported medicinal uses. A feed sack full of dry bark can bring a pretty good dollar when the mills have moved to Mexico and there's no work to be found. Doesn't do much for the tree, however. But as I learned the hard way, elms aren't much good even for firewood. Even so, it's a shame that some see national forest as a great shopping cart of commodities for sale. Herbal remedies are big business, but extinction is forever, boys. Think of your ginseng and morels and ramps and slippery elm bark as renewable resources and leave some to make more down the road.

Missing the Water--in China

Unusually hot, dry conditions are causing serious problems for tens of millions in China. Seems we all share the same summer miseries this year on both sides of the beleagered globe.

In central Sichuan province, China's grain basket, millions of acres of crops have withered. Across the country, more than six million acres have been ruined--an area 21 per cent larger than in previous years.

Water levels along the mighty Yangtze river, China's longest river, have dropped dramatically (and this in July and August, the months when flooding is usually expected) falling by more than ten metres in a matter of weeks. Where the river flows through the huge city of Chongqing, the water level is just 3.5 metres (11.5 feet)--its lowest in a century.

Seventeen million people across southwest China no longer have access to clean drinking water as a result of the drought. link