A Dead Musician, a New Poll

& an Update on Medical Issues

Hello subscribers!

This week only one shorter new Blog post went up, yesterday, marking the 51st anniversary of the death of guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix, who died at the young age of 27 on 18 September 1970. The photo above was taken at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle and shows a typical Hendrix stage outfit. If you’ve followed the DT Blog long enough you may recognize the image, as it featured before as the lead photo for the blog post “Dark Tourism and Clothes”.

And that takes me straight to the second part indicated in this newsletter’s title. I’ve been promising a new theme poll for a while, so let’s have it now. This time my four suggestions are these (a couple were runners-up in earlier polls and are given another chance here):
  

A) dark tourism and nuclear power stations

B) dark tourism and reflections

C) dark tourism and furniture

D) dark tourism and hands
  

Please pick one theme you would most like to see a DT blog post about in the coming weeks by either leaving a comment with your choice underneath the latest blog post, or you can vote by sending a reply to this newsletter. I’m intrigued which one will make it this time.
  

By the way, D), hands, is partly inspired by the frustrating development, or rather the lack thereof, regarding the ring finger on my left hand, which I had an operation on three months ago. By now it should long have healed and returned to normal, but it hasn’t. It’s still not fully flexible, the tendon inside feels (and sounds!) obstructed, I can’t bend the finger all the way, especially not in the mornings. Worse still, also in the mornings it’s gone back to “triggering”, although not in the painful fashion as it did before the op.

But still, the experience now is reminiscent of what happened after I had my FESS (‘functional endoscopic sinus surgery’) in early 2019 that was meant to stop my chronic sinusitis. Once I had recovered from the procedure, which took quite a few weeks, the sinuses were initially fine for a while, but within a few months they returned to exactly the same state as before the op. I was in fact meant to arrange a second FESS in March 2020, but then came the pandemic and so all ENT procedures were put on ice … and I haven’t been back since. I can manage Ok-ish much of the time, my sense of smell and taste are not too impaired and my breathing is only partially affected, so that I rarely need to use nose drops or spray. But quite frequently the inflamed sinuses (especially in my forehead) create very severe headaches that make it difficult for me to concentrate and carry on with my writing.

I’m in two minds now as to whether I should carry on like this or get back to my ENT doc and have another operation arranged – which is not without its own risks anyway (blindness, in particular), and of course the pandemic is also not over yet. So having such a procedure done would also expose me to an increased risk of catching Covid. I’m vaccinated, but that does not provide 100% protection (as I know from a friend in the UK who got it, with rather severe symptoms, despite having been fully immunized). And by the time I could have a second FESS arranged, I’d be in need of a booster jab in any case. So I’m tending towards waiting until it becomes clearer where we’re heading with this nasty virus and its evil variants … Right now it’s not exactly looking good.

Take Israel, for instance, which for a long while looked like it had the virus successfully under control thanks to a rigorous early vaccination programme. But recently case numbers have been going through the roof again, with record figures higher than before the vaccination programme began, and an alarmingly high death rate too. This strongly suggests that a) booster shots are indeed crucially needed – and that within less than the originally estimated nine months – and b) the vaccination rate in the Israeli population was not high enough (at I think between 60 to 70%). Indeed I’ve read that some epidemiologists now reckon that a rate of 85% would be required before there’s any hope of achieving so-called ‘herd immunity’. And that would have to be worldwide! But we are very far from that. In Africa, in particular, the vaccination rate is way below even 10% in most countries. That’s primarily because not enough doses have been made available in poorer countries, so there’s a familiar politico-economical factor at play here. But let’s not get dragged down that vexed topic now.

Instead I’ll bring this newsletter to a close and as usual wish my readers all the best – and stay safe!

Until next time,

Peter