Yesterday, meeting with a doctor at the Mayo Clinic Health Systems Eau Claire Luther/Hospital campus (to check out my shoulder, and yes I do have mild tendinitis in the supraspinatus muscle of my right shoulder, but I am already doing what needs to be done for this condition, while the doctor yesterday and physical therapy to come are sharing yet more exercises I can do to help), she told me ‘you don’t look anything at all like a 59 year-old person’. Sensing, I suppose, a need to explain, I responded ‘I do try to stay in good shape. I take long walks and I run regularly’. To which the doctor replied, ‘So you are an active, athletic person’. I was pleased to be able to respond ‘yes’.
I expect I have long been fortunate that I often tend to appear younger, even sometimes considerably younger, than my actual age, although at times this has left others unlikely to suspect I might be experiencing any issues with growing older, with aging, or that I might be approaching retirement age. I recall conversations only a few years ago with several colleagues who off-handedly referred to ‘when you retire in 15 to 20 or more years from now’ and ‘when you reach the age where I am at’ (when in fact I was already that age), and a surprisingly considerable number of instances in my more distant past where people were stunned when I told them I was a professor, including literally insisting I must be lying and outright refusing to believe I could possibly be a professor.
But it has been awhile since anyone has asked to see my ID before ordering an alcoholic drink, or buying alcohol. That would be a shock if it were to happen at this point in time.
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With the remarkably, and most welcome, summery weather recently, I have not only taken several long walks with Andy, but also run outdoors on multiple successive days, which I have enjoyed. On Monday I went running when the temperature was 84 degrees Fahrenheit, which may have been a bit too challenging for where I am currently at, as I ran the first half of the five-mile circuit I planned and then alternated intervals of walking and running in the second half because the heat felt just a tad too intense in its impact on my stamina. On Tuesday I was able to complete my entire planned circuit without needing to incorporate any interval of walking, as the temperature was 73 Fahrenheit.
I used to relish running in not only warm but also indeed hot weather, even experiencing little to no difficulty ever doing so, but I need to continue to remind myself that was 25 years ago, and I’m still gradually building back up my capacity, my stamina, and my endurance. I also still do need to catch myself so I don’t push too hard, too fast, and too quickly when I am running, to take too large strides, and that, in terms used by trainers I am at present following, I don’t push my rate of perceived exertion up to a 7, 8, or 9 before I am ready to do so, or for longer than I can sustain.
But I am getting there; I am patient with myself because I am just happy to be running regularly once again. One trainer whose program I am following repeatedly emphasizes running eventually becomes a lifestyle, if one is patiently persistent, and I like that, because in my past that’s much what it felt like and I hope to be able to live this lifestyle yet again–into my 60s and beyond.
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This week on Insurgence, Insurgence #821, show #39 of year #16 of Insurgence, I will be playing music from First Aid Kit and Annika Norlin, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, Cathal Coughlan, Arab Strap, Citizen, The Underground Youth, William Doyle, No Master No Servant, For Those I Love, and Snapped Ankles. It should be great fun. As every Thursday, 10 pm to midnight US Central Time, on WHYS Community Radio, 96.3 FM Eau Claire, and streaming via the web, at: www.whysradio.org
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I am making good progress in writing a chapter for _21st Century British TV Crime Drama: a Critical Guide_ on _Chasing Shadows_. I now only need draft the conclusion to the critique section of the chapter; compile and append a works cited listing; and review, revise, edit, and proofread the whole. I should meet my target of finishing all of this by the end of the day this coming Sunday April 11. After that, the next show I will be writing about is _Close to the Enemy_.
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I finished reading several compelling books this past week, including Alice Vinten’s _On the Line: Life–and Death–in the Metropolitan Police_, Darryl Leeworthy’s _A Little Gay History of Wales_, and Guy Standing’s _The Precariat: the New Dangerous Class_.
All I found interesting, but of the three the one I expect will prove most valuable to me, overall, in multiple different ways, is the last, and I am looking forward to reading Standing’s follow-up, which I have just acquired: _A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens_.
Other books I am reading include Sathham Sanghera, _Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain_; Victoria Canning and Steve Tombs, _From Social Harm to Zemiology: A Critical Introduction (New Directions in Critical Criminology)_; Roger G. Dunham, Geoffrey P. Alpert, and Kyle D. McLean, eds., _Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Issues, Eighth Edition_; Alisa Henderson and Richard Wyn Jones, _Englishness: The Political Force Transforming Britain_; James D. Nolan, Frank Crispino, and Timothy Parsons, eds., _Policing in an Age of Reform: An Agenda for Research and Practice (Palgrave's Critical Policing Studies)_; Mark Neocleous, _A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of the Social Order_; Nikesh Shukla, _Brown Baby: A Memoir of Race, Family and Home_; Remi Adekoya, _Biracial Britain: A Different Way of Looking at Race_; David Scott, _For Abolition: Essays on Prisons and Socialist Ethics_; and Robert Winder, _Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain_.
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Andy and I just finished screening all as yet available episodes of the German-Austrian TV crime drama _Murder by the Lake_, which we enjoyed, set by Lake Constance, involving complex and often brutal cases confronting the principal detectives as well as significant challenges and traumas in their personal lives.
We also are continuing with _Bloodlands_, which in suggesting the impact of ‘The Troubles’ remains all too alive in Northern Ireland today appears sadly to be verified by the riots that have been taking place the last six days in unionist/loyalist working class neighborhoods of Belfast and Derry.
And we are pleased that season 14 of one of our long-time favorites, the Canadian TV (steampunk) crime drama, _The Murdoch Mysteries_, has recently become available.
Beyond that, we’ve found it entertaining to watch Aaron Rodgers as guest host of _Jeopardy_, which began this Monday and will last through the end of the next week, and Andy and I have also found it entertainingly diverting to watch episodes of _Celebrity Mastermind_ and _Grand Designs_.
With the last of these shows it is striking how, yes, each episode features a genuinely ‘grand design’, usually of a residence for an individual or individual family or individual family plus extended family, but also so often these projects seem impossibly overly ambitious, while those taking them on often are heavily involved in doing much of the construction themselves, including of most difficult kinds they have no prior experience attempting. With COVID-19 the latest projects have also faced another major challenge, and it is amazing these have been realized, nonetheless, even after taking far longer and costing far more than initially envisioned.
In one of these episodes a young man who strikingly resembled BJ Hollars (which we watched, ironically, the night before BJ’s path and mine crossed the very next day), together with this man’s wife engaged in a most ambitious effort to transform a huge barn on her parents’ property in rural Kent into an innovative residence for themselves, despite the fact that both husband and wife are people who have dealt and continue to deal with cancer, while in the course of work on this project everything that could possibly go wrong did; nevertheless, miraculously enough, they made it through successfully.
Besides those shows we are also continuing to watch the Scottish Gaelic language drama _Bannan_, in which I have become somewhat annoyed at how difficult it seems to be for many people on this fictional Isle of Skye to understand and forgive killing in self-defense, in response to the real likelihood that an extremely violently abusive man would have otherwise killed his wife, son, and as yet unborn child.
Again, as in previous weeks, I expect I am forgetting some shows we are and have been watching, but this is at least a fair representation of the lot.
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Otherwise I enjoyed catching up with my mother in a phone conversation yesterday, Andy and I are continuing to pay extra attention to Casey who shows tendencies toward greater anxiety these days (we have even got him an animal relaxation training device that, supposedly at least, emits sound vibrations dogs can hear but we cannot at frequencies, and in sequences and other patterns, that tend to be calming), as a long-time Cincinnati Reds fans I am happy with the team’s 5-1 start to the new MLB season, I have been watching and following a variety of others sports, and I am hoping tests coming up tomorrow and then next Friday related to the bladder cancer I experienced and for which I had surgery in January show this has not returned.
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Last Friday morning I experienced a panic attack, which I maintain a long history with, for the first time in a considerable number of months. I mention this here to be open about mental health challenges I experience, in the aim of reinforcing for others these are widely commonplace, and indeed ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ even if painful and frightening.
As often as not I cannot distinguish any specific ‘trigger’ for a panic attack, when I experience one, and that’s something else I think it is important to share, as is the fact these are extreme events that are temporarily at least considerably debilitating (not necessarily the same as what it means for many people when they ‘feel panicky'). I felt unnerved for the rest of the day, and needed to take several hours immediately afterward just to begin to recover.
What’s also worth sharing is that even though I have been exceedingly open for a good number of years now about the fact I am a person who lives with persistently recurrent tendencies to experience serious to severe mental health challenges, and I have strived to be empathetically reassuring and otherwise helpful to many others, often, even long before I was this open about myself, in the immediate aftermath of last Friday’s panic attack I struggled with feeling guilty and ashamed I had this experience. Even though it is wrong, and certainly unhelpful, to think so, I nevertheless contended with feelings that I ‘should’ be able to prevent this kind of thing from happening, and that it is my own fault, or indicative of my own ‘weakness’, that it did happen.
Unhelpfully stigmatizing frames of understanding concerning mental health/mental illness continue to circulate and exert damaging impact, even for someone like me who well knows panic attacks are not convoluted efforts to call attention to one’s self, not manifestations of an excessively ‘dramatizing’ personality, and not even indicative of what is commonsensically often identified as ‘a cry for help’. The truth is when I experience a panic attack I don’t want anyone’s attention, I want to get away from just about everyone else and be by myself until I recover, and I prefer not even touching let alone dwelling upon details of what has happened to me subsequently. It's just too unsettling, and too scary, to do so.
But I am writing about this here because I recognize I am in a position usefully to contribute to improved understandings and engagements with mental illness, which I think is most important and can indeed prove critical in helping people with mental health challenges be able to live their best possible lives.
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I could readily write about a vast many issues ‘in the news’ at present, but in the interest of time, for the moment I will only comment on two others.
I continue saddened and angered by the present state of hatred directed against people of Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic and racial identities in this country, as well as by the worry, fear, and other damage this causes to people’s lives and well-being. I thought about how disturbing it was that one of the organizers of the rally, march, and vigil last Friday here in Eau Claire shared that despite long enjoying running, and finding it helpful to his health and well-being to do so, he feels uneasy running these days because he feels he needs to be on guard all the time against potential threats, and attacks.
I also thought about how, besides numerous major notorious historical examples as well as many more recent examples here in the US of waves of racism directed against people of Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic and racial identities, early in my own life I recall the Vietnam War prompted this, as did the economic success of Japan, as did the seizing of the US embassy and the holding of hostages in Teheran at the time of the Iranian Revolution. Anti-Asian and Pacific Islander hate maintain too long and continuous a history in this country.
I also find it appalling and ridiculous so many state governments here in the US are targeting transgender people for abusive legal discrimination. What too many of people behind these efforts seem not to grasp is no one decides to identify as transgender or gender non-binary on a whim, and in fact this is a most difficult and fraught process, with no one what's more choosing to do so simply in order that they can achieve any kind of advantage in playing a competitive sport.
Unfortunately, transgender and gender non-binary people face considerable prejudice, discrimination, and abuse in the UK as well. I found it disturbing to read about the hostility Torrey Peters received after her novel _Detransition, Baby_ was nominated for The Women’s Prize for Fiction but I am pleased many writers, publishers, and sponsors around the world have responded strongly in solidarity with Peters: “The letter was condemned by numerous authors around the world, including previous nominee Elif Shafak, who congratulated Peters on her nomination and said: ‘After seeing yesterday’s unacceptable, unethical open letter, we need to say, again and again, #TransWomenareWomen. Trans women writers are my sisters’. Fellow 2021 nominee Naoise Dolan called the novel ‘a masterpiece that I’m incredibly proud to be on the longlist with, and that letter is a transphobic disgrace’” (_The Guardian_ 7 April 2021).
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As a final comment I am sure I will be most excited and happy to return to full-time teaching come the Fall 2022 semester, while undoubtedly experiencing some trepidation concerning the length of the gap between then and the last time I was teaching and doing institutional service full-time, but I have also begun to think about how I can aim to carry forward some of the benefits of this period of leave when I do return so I don’t become overwhelmingly absorbed in that work to the point I put my physical and mental health at risk, which I unfortunately have done in the past.
If I can continue to walk and run regularly, as well as do other regular exercise, sustain regular time to read and write that is not just for classes I am teaching, and do enough other things that usefully divert and rejuvenate it will be a great accomplishment.
But that’s a long ways off yet, and I try these days not to become too focused too far in the future so I can concentrate effectively on where I currently am at, and what I currently am about.
All best regards to everyone.