My last box of 5000 Swingline Staples? Maybe not.

I knew in 2007 that my new Honda would be my last car. It now has more than 30,000 miles on it, and is holding up fine. One of the grandsons can use it when the time comes, maybe. But I thought the last time I bought 5000 staples that I would not have to buy more. Well, I just had to spend $3.25 for a replacement box from Amazon--promised for tomorrow but you know how those notices have not been updated.  I won't run out before the replacements come. It's all a bet. I may be losing the bet on a couple of unused pairs of running shoes in the garage, now that I am floored with Valley Fever. You want to have everything you need as long as you are functioning but you want to get rid of excesses, such as your Melville archive. Fine, but when you live three weeks or so under an authoritative sentence of blindness and death from cancer you don't immediately go on a celebratory spending binge, especially not as you gradually realize how serious Valley Fever is. But today I bet $3.25 on Swingline.

It's hard to get good Barbecue now, even in Alabama

From James Edmonds Saunders, EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA (1899).

Hubbard, a red headed man of Courtland, had charge of the cooking department, and had wonderful skill in barbecuing. It is now a lost art. All other industries except this have improved. For the benefit of posterity I will explain Hubbard‘s method. When he once put down his pigs and buffalo fishes, flesh side down, over the pit of coals, they were never turned until the drying of the skin showed that they were nearly done, and then when turned the flesh was nicely browned and cracked open in deep fissures, so that when the hot gravy of sweet butter, vinegar and black pepper, was poured on, it penetrated to the bone—a far superior mode to frequently turning and basting. It was to such a luscious feast that the editor of the Herald [Willie Connor] sat down, with the hindquarter of a pig on his right, a half of a stout buffalo fish on his left, and a bottle of whiskey in front. He moved steadily to the attack, frequently washing down the viands with grog. Orrin Davis, always full of fun, watched his eye glisten with pleasure; but at last perceiving that he was wavering in the attack, he rigged a lever in the fork of a sapling, which happened to stand just behind his seat, and passing a cord under his arms, he would raise him and then let him fall suddenly in his seat, so as to settle his food. This was equal to a cotton com press, and the editor, in the best humor, would renew the attack, until all had vanished, except the bones. This was not at all wonderful, for he was the author of the saying that “a turkey was of a very inconvenient size, for it was rather too much for one man, and not quite enough for two.”

Thinking of death after the recent mis-diagnosis. Here, what it took to bury Grandma Ewart in 1804

Good thing I saved my masks from 1955.

Having left the Pines Warehouse for

Dying Tuberculars and visited friends in Singer, Louisiana, I was ready to drive across the country to find better treatment.

Both still seared by 2 week sentence of blindness and death. "Just" Valley Fever.

The right eye is seeing very well but still through a now-thin layer of brown. Day 19 of Fluconazole.
It always seems strange to me that you can't see the brown film.

At Santa Maria many photos of eyes and fast back-tracking

The caregiver has been awaking at 4 in a panic about what we would learn today from the local ocular oncologist.  I had decided it was not cancer but part of the Valley Fever. On Day 15 of Fluconazole I am still getting gradually better, seeing great in the distance but aware of a grayish or brownish film right up close. The film is thinning every day. The thing that worried me was that the great blob of fluid, while shrinking, might leave a circular or oblong ridge  behind it, on the retina, like trash around a pond. Well, the oncologist was downright cheery as he saw how the infection had shrunk. I explained that it will be another week or more before I can see an infectious disease doctor about Valley Fever (he is busy with COVID19), and he agrees that in the meantime I keep taking Dr. L's magic pills and forget we were told in Stanford that I was riddled with cancer. So it's a new field. There is danger everywhere outside the house, and the beach may be wholly closed, but I will find more out about living with VF, soon.  I wonder how far I can walk if I try to walk. 

The thing is, we lived for a good many days with a sentence of blindness and probable death. You don't just say, Oh that was wrong and now I can forget that time. In the academic world I knew many with great reputations who were as incompetent . . . . .

Parker quoted by editor of Dutton Bible, Book of Exodus