Sunny Sunday with a Scotoma

so no driving until clouds arrive

I have to begin today’s post with a fact that many of you may already know but about which I have been woefully ignorant all my life. The sum total of the length of all the blood vessels in one human body can reach more than two times around the circumference of the Earth. I know, it seems impossible, but I checked the facts and they all agree that we have about 60,000 miles of combined arteries, veins, and capillaries. And the Earth is just under 25,000 miles around at the equator. All my life I have been intensely curious and reading what I thought was a wide variety of sources. But I have never read or heard that before. So, live and learn.

And now to the things that have fallen out of my pile today. Four different documents caught my attention: The first two are official government pamphlets from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, one entitled “Medicare & Your Mental Health Benefits” (CMS Product No. 10184, Rev. July 2019) and the other “Medicare Hospice Benefits” (CMS Product No. 02154, Rev. February 2019). There may be later versions available now and it would be worthwhile to check it out if you are interested. I believe I came by these documents when a friend encouraged me to see if there was any help to pay for the extremely expensive drug I now have to take twice a day. It turns out there are State Pharmacy Assistance Programs (SPAPs) that help certain people pay for prescription drugs. The application process was not onerous and I am glad to report that Connecticut and Medicare are now helping me make ends meet again. I’m sharing this information this morning because it took me a while to shake off the feeling that I was now “on welfare” a condition I studiously avoided even as a single mother back in the day. (I should probably say sanctimoniously avoided, even though one of my best friends at the time could not understand why I didn’t seek help then. Why it felt odd to me as a child of socialized medicine in Britain, I have no idea.)

The last two items are books that poked their noses out of the stack next to the piano, and I realized that they are perfect for a follow-up to my previous ramblings. The first book is Death by Video Game by Simon Parkin Copyright 2015 (his first book, by the way). I read this book quite a while ago and had forgotten about it, but I realize that it was a perfect introduction to the book on Fancy Bear by Scott Shapiro about hacking (recommended by The Freedom Academy’s Asha Rangappa) which I mentioned in a previous post. So much has developed in the virtual world and I for one am trying desperately to claw my way back to what I can touch and feel.

This leads to the philosophy of one day at a time and the memoir by Hunter Biden called Beautiful Things Copyright 2021, described on the jacket as a “deeply moving memoir of addiction, loss, and survival.” Hunter has had quite a journey and shares his story very honestly. The blurbs on the back are from a panoply of bestselling authors, and I will share what Stephen King had to say: “In AA we say it doesn't matter if you come from Yale or jail, all addicts are the same. In his harrowing and completely readable memoir, Hunter Biden proves that anybody—even the son of a United States president—can take a ride on the pink horse down nightmare alley.” The prologue to the book is entitled “Where’s Hunter” because the writing was begun in 2019 when the then-current president was invoking that question from the White House lawn. The current situation of presidential politics lends itself to a close read of Hunter’s memoir, preferably before Election Day 2024.