DUMPSTERS AS IMAGES

It appears that the spring monsoon has caught up with me again this spring, so as much as I’m urged by cats, I don’t want to get up in the morning.  I turned over and dreamt a nightmare — that the Scriver Museum of Montana Wildlife was burned up in a prairie wildfire and I tried to put the approaching fire out with a wet blanket though my mother wanted me to stop.  I failed anyway, so I got up to open cans for the pesky cats, crossing back into reality.

When I returned to bed, I had a happier dream.  Trump’s airplane was diverted to Venezuela where a dictator had hopes of a wildly profitable kidnapping but was chagrined to discover that no one wanted to pay any ransom at all and Trump’s check — written on Deutsche Bank — was declined, stamped “insufficient funds.”  The dictator attempted to sell Trump to another 3rd World country but no one would have him.

Normally, toward morning I have one of two dreams.  In one I’m living in East Glacier in the abandoned two-story yellow house and going over to Bob’s workshop through snow which is mysteriously in the same town.  In the other I’m starting college in one of the several colleges I’ve attended.  Judging from the splendid traditional buildings, I’m at the U of Chicago and full of expectations.  These are happy dreams.

By now I’ve outlived my end-of-life plan and may have outlived my country as I’ve known it.  The land here remains the same, which is my salvation — though it’s not assured, given the resourcefulness of profit-makers.  I mean, frakking and windmills have made changes I don’t really feel yet, but I might.  Certainly at night I can see the red danger lights of the windmills and the strobing cell towers in every small town.  

It certainly was not expected by anyone that protecting species would mean that people in Valier found the footprints of grizzly bears in their morning alleys.  Worldwide flu pandemics were a story from my mother’s childhood when she survived it but her doctor didn’t.  Now my unwashed clothes pile up because I’m afraid to go to the laundromat in a Montana hotspot for covid-19.  More afraid than I am of meeting a grizzly.

The thought of dying for some cause has crossed my mind, since so many do and are honored for it, but I am not proud enough of my country — maybe for my landscape, my eco-niche, since I AM it every day when I get up and face the sky.  What good would it do for a dumpster country?  I don’t have any “standing” as I was told when I tried to counter the corruption in dealing with Bob’s estate.  The most readers I have on a hot topic is about 1,000 people and many of them are there to look at the post about Tom Selleck’s wardrobe because the last image is him in a Speedo.  Still, the publishers of my bio about Bob Scriver only printed 500 copies.  

The issue of a literary executor has come up, but I’m lucky to even have an inheritor in my dispersed and deceased family.  None of my relations ever read what I write.

I’ve been appreciating the sentiments of Sarah Kendzior, though Montana is far from being the Midwest and if you’re going to "flyover" this place, you’d better be pretty high in the sky or you won't clear the Rockies.  One can read the first few pages for free at this link below.  It’s mostly about St. Louis, which the white intruders to Blackfeet country used as their jump-off point to travel up the Missouri/Mississippi drainage to Blackfeet country.  They had no consciousness that the watershed had been created by the melting of the glaciers ten thousand year earlier and Kendzior doesn’t think about it either, but I do, because I don’t think about politics.  I think about geology and deep time. The planetary poles are melting.

https://read.amazon.com/kp/kshare?asin=B07QNFCSPH&id=y-G0DHCeQfmh4nY4wUjqqg&reshareId=FF8DD2B9RHD3WFH8MPSP&reshareChannel=system

I do appreciate the phrase of “Images tied together by the logic of feelings”  Politkovskaya as quoted by Sarah Kendzior.  This is the key to much of my writing and therefore line of thought.  It can be zigzag or convoluted, but rarely needs to be “re-wiggled” as the English land-recovery tweet posters describe work on their brooks that had been turned into chutes.

My senior year (1957) I was double-cast as Maria Feodorovna, the Empress asked to authenticate Anastasia.  The old woman had survived/evaded the Russian purge of her time.  At one point my line was something like: “The red ants have invaded the country.  They will fail but then ants of a different color will take over.  They will still be ants.”  (Unless they are giant killer hornets!)  

No one ever resolved the Anastasia question, but I’ve come to value ambiguity and identity shift anyway.  Who am I when the continents sail around on tectonic plates and totally transform themselves, carrying along the doomed small lives of animals and plants.  Who are hominins to aspire to permanence, only imaginable because of short lives?  If one is capable of empathetically entering someone else’s life and learning from it, why isn’t that a good thing?

The wars among nations, political “parties”, and religions are not as relevant as planetary issues, like whatever are the forces are that encourage domination and hoarding all over the globe?  Why is there a yearning for democracy at one point and a flight from responsibility at another point?  The consequences are massive, many causes are suggested, but no one really understands them except as “Images tied together by the logic of feelings”.  We are nearly drowning in images.  What the hell is the logic of feelings?  

I submit it is the logic of attachment and empathy, but so what?  They are more likely to be stories than equations, but they certainly carry feelings.  One formal system defines feelings as the inner “gut” guide to whether you are on the right path forward for survival.  Are the two banks of the stream of life on one side chaos and on the other side slavery?  Then where is the middle?  I note that it is a process more than a single state.  A culture is not a dumpster but . . .

INNUMERANT CAPITALISM

Michael Erard is the author of an essay on Aeon, an online feed of valuable thought and entertaining observation that is slightly more sophisticated than many outlets.  The authors are often high-prestige and worth following in other venues, like YouTube lectures.

https://aeon.co/essays/the-roots-of-writing-lie-in-hopes-and-dreams-not-in-accounting?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=b0c7e6cf67-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_05_04_01_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-b0c7e6cf67-71327272

The premise of this essay in Aeon is that though most people learn that the roots of modern literacy are in math, keeping track of transactions and developing the geometry of land ownership after floods of the Nile River, there is another early use of symbolism (preliterate) that is in painted caves or arranged circles of stones meant to record astronomical phenomena like midsummer.  Clearly the division between the use of math and words -- both symbolisms that began the creation of cultures and nations -- is real and defensible.

Almost as soon as the test for “innumeracy” was devised, I had to admit that my score was low, which was a quick blow to my arrogant pride in my IQ.  (It's not very big.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_%28book%29

The next blow came from repeatedly flunking a college course in Statistics.  I finally passed the first of a two part course, but the professor I could understand retired before I mastered the second part.  The residue of this struggle is in realizing that most of the numbers that dominate the news, particularly about the pandemic, are bogus.  Evidently people who become reporters never passed statistics either. 

The third humbling realization came from moving to Valier.  Everyone here is an expert at arithmetic — the guys from doing constant back-of-the-envelope figuring about managing wheat fields or stock outcomes and the women from bookkeeping and comparative shopping, often online.  This is not a culture that values poetry, though they enjoy a good story. I am a person who finds numbers toxic, not a good fit and a worse employee.

The Aeon essay claim about the “religious” uses of words is valid in my experience, even if you consider patriotism to be a formal religion, based on national allegiance and the similarity of the group, which is reinforced by credos, pledges of allegiance, and singing in unison.  Much of our “feeling” about what is right and successful comes from watching the guy next to us — never more than in an agricultural community.  Chanting in a group wearing the same hat is part of Trump’s successful strategy in this red state, even if we have a blue and honored governor.

I take a slightly different approach to capitalism than most people.  I see bureaucracy as needing numbers as a guide, which makes bureaucrats controllable by simply miscounting or by hiding actual numbers.  Thus, the fairly successful illusion that this pandemic is less widespread than it really is.  Luckily, resourceful people have learned that if they are prevented from testing individuals, they can still measure sewage to figure out how much the virus has infected the population.  And to discover the extent of a-symptomatic infection at the level of fatalities, it is possible to graph death rates for various periods and places.  Maybe not all the isolated deaths have been properly reported, but it’s hard to hide rotting bodies, even when the dead were living rough because they were homeless.

If bureaucracy is always seen as capital maximization, its value as “venture capitalism” to start new businesses is lost.  “Capitalism, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most means of production are privately held and production, prices, and incomes are determined by markets.”  But the exchangeability of money and land have created a major opportunity for corrupt forces to “launder” the bookkeeping that lets them steal ownership of assets.

It’s not just the unreality and exchangeability of capital that open the door to games, but also the dependence on credit with interest.  Even the altruism of venture investment is denied when interest is too high, a practice so old that it’s in the Bible.  “Usury (/ ˈ j uː ʒ ər i /) is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. The term may be used in a moral sense—condemning, taking advantage of others' misfortunes—or in a legal sense, where an interest rate is charged in excess of the maximum rate that is allowed by law.  (American Heritage dictionary).”

Many games have been devised: bundling assets of various quality, convincing mutual funds for retirement to be entrusted to companies that could go bankrupt, mincing ownership into small parts but running the whole by a corrupt and secret committee.  

The use of credit and even of interest is effective and even benign or necessary unless it is joined with the governmental ability to set up "situations", like wages that are not high enough to meet the cost of living, to force people to borrow at high rates.  This is easier to recognize when mafia indulges in protection rackets — pay us or we’ll wreck your store and kill your family — or drug dealers create a craving for both the drug itself and a means of paying for it that is illegal, so that the government’s management of law enforcement is made the source of extortion.  Pay or be turned in, maybe to corrupt courts.  This is one reason our prisons are crammed, giving rise to a new capitalism racket, the private monopolization of public duties with a secret element.

Another aspect of capitalization operates in plain sight — indeed, where gambling is made a celebration and addiction — is the stock market.  This has become a major management tool of capitalism that aggregates the actions of many into profit and loss as though the consequences could be known.  When controlled by computers, worldwide, and enormous numbers refer to things that don’t exist in reality — like monetary compensations for loss — it has the ability to force people into borrowing with usury level loss.

In fact, because of the ability of computers to handle money or other elements in such enormous quantity as rivals the human genome with its billions of genes, we are on another level of reality.  We have as different an understanding of what things are as we did when the genomic identity of species began to be compared with the taxonomies we had previously assumed.  We are challenged to explain the nature of land ownership, the basis of nations, and what wealth means, if they are only marks in a journal of transactions.  To finance a nation on the basis of taxation when the reports are so skewed and rearranged by the definitions, those tricky words, and so based on wealth that is not land, begins to seem foolhardy.  The rule of law means nothing if it is in pencil on flammable paper, but even less if it's only a computer algorithm based on demographics of domination and revenge.

If a number idiot like myself can see this, partly because of wrestling with pledges to support congregational church budgets, how do others stand for these games?  Are they hooked or merely deluded?

INVISIBLE BUT POWERFUL

John Godbey, my seminary professor and assigned counselor, worked hard to get me to define what “virtual” meant.  Specifically, he wanted me to make a place for “God” in my system and I didn’t want to.  I don’t trust anthropomorphism.  And it is worrisome to name things that can only be perceived by their impact on what IS seen. 

“Virtual definition, being such in power, force, or effect, though not actually or expressly.”  (Same one-sentence definition in several websites.)  

When I formally withdrew my membership from the neighborhood Presbyterian congregation in 1957, the minister (who would have been more persuasive if he had had better personal character) wrote me a return letter (I was in college) that used the existence of the newly discovered planet Pluto which had only been found by realizing its impact on the paths of the other planets.  But eventually Pluto was seen, an actual solid object.  No exploration of space has found God.

But some of the ideas coming from Porges have meant I must consider “virtual” connections and structures among humans that are located only in humans’ unconscious  capacities that are not observable directly.  They come close to being virtual.  The word echoes “virtue” but doesn’t mean praiseworthy.  No judgement about good or bad is relevant, though Porges himself identifies them with compassion, through empathy (feeling with, participating) rather than some principle of good behavior.

Beginning in the circle of enrapturement between mother and baby (which is not always likely or even possible in some socioeconomic circumstances) which comes out of care like feeding, cleaning, embracing, stroking — all natural mammalian things to do — the possibility of participation in a “liminal” space and time is built by experience with eye-gaze, single cells of a special kind, identification with other people even in stories, and attachment. ("A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. "  Wikipedia)  

What I call “attachment” is called by others “love” or even compassion.  I mean “attachment” to name the invisible bonds formed by experience between people or even between a person and his/her environment or habits.  This can only be seen by others through behavior but to the individual is a “feeling”.  It is a major part of identity, but not always felt consciously until it is challenged some way, perhaps broken so that it causes grief.

A form of attachment is what causes people to join together to further some goal that can’t be achieved by an individual.  This is present in many mammals but is not expanded as it can be among humans because of their ability to communicate, even over time through writing, even after death.  This results in culture, which is attachment to environment or the organizations we call government or religion which are kept in place by attachment.  We can see the institutions, the places, the ecology, but we cannot see the attachment except through behavior or testimony from those who feel them.

The feeling that we call “sacred” or “holy” or hierophanies is more intense than attachment, particularly in terms of something like “fusion with all being,” which is to say participation in all the known but also the unknown.  It is too intense and mysterious to be sustained, and can be labelled “madness.”  The impact on the larger society depends upon the nature of the philosophy and strategy to which they are committed.  If it is one of preventing change, people who have epiphanies can be made into martyrs.

In my case at seminary, I never had a sacred epiphany — I was simply acting out of what I thought was logic — that an unseen and uncontrolled concept didn’t exist.  But for Godbey, who did feel it and remained Christian in a sense, it DID exist.  I’ve met others who say that “feeling” a personal, palpable, human (anthropocentric) relationship with — at least — Jesus, is the whole key to their Christianity.  If it’s an illusion, it’s heartfelt and there’s no reason or method for arguing except logic, which isn’t always useful.  If it’s simply a very intense and meaningful metaphor, that has nothing to do with the level of epiphany that I’m trying to understand.

Maybe it’s not possible to understand.  But if it is, I think the clues are likely to be in the realm of what we used to call the psychological, a term I’d like to avoid because it is used by logical people to attack those who trust their feelings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT_63UntRJE

Here is a link to another way to approach the virtual human structures and non-verbal communications that is palpable, perceived but unseen, entering though the ears instead of the eyes, but existing in the brain as a composite, a construct, with near-religious attachment.  This music was used in the movie of “Out of Africa” to express the love/attachment between Isak Dinesen and Dennis Finch-Hatton, carried in the “place” of Kenya and the story related in the book of the same name.  In my brain it is connected to the East Slope grasslands of the Rockies and a whole complex of events, memories, sensations, and so on.

Thus, the arts are a language, communication of something invisible but effective, life-changing, expressive and — well, one doesn’t quite dare say “eternal.”  Yet eternity is fluid, ever-changing.  One can imagine the continuity sometimes breaks, becomes a terrifying void.  The Friday vespers in seminary that were remembered later were the ones that wove these forces into an experience by using music and words.  In addition, people have described moments of unexpected sacred intensity that happened by accident of light, place, relationship that interacted to kindle something in the person.

I wish I’d been far more personal with Godbey. His formality and deafness were obstacles, but if I’d thought to talk about Garrett Theological School, the Methodist seminary attached to NU, or about Morocco or about meeting his wife in Casablanca -- even his childhood in Nebraska -- we might have found virtual forces we recognized. 

AFTER THE PANDEMIC

A timely book I’m reading is ‘’The Knowledge; How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm.’’ by Lewis Dartnell.  (2014).  It’s about just what the title says.

Here’s the darkest paragraph.

In this sense, the ‘’best’’ way for the world to end would be at the hands of a fast-spreading pandemic.  The perfect viral storm is a contagion that combines aggressive virulence, a long incubation period, and near 100 percent mortality.  This way, the agent of the apocalypse is extremely infectious between individuals, takes a little while for the sickness to kick in — so that it maximizes the pool of subsequent hosts that are infected, but results in certain death in the end.  We have become a truly urban species since 2008 — more than half of the global population lives in cities rather than rural areas  and this crammed density of people, along with fervent intercontinental travel, provides the perfect conditions for the rapid transmission of contagions.  If a plague like the Black Death, which wiped out a third of the European population and probably a similar proportion across Asia from 1347 to 1351 were to strike today, our technological civilization would be much less resilient.

Most of this book is as practical as possible — where to find food, how to tell whether you should eat it, how to take advantage of the basics when you are pushed back to the level of the plow, the lever, the wheel, the energy of water and how to use it.  He recommends going back to the rural land where the chances of finding workable wood stoves, windmills, and wells for water are much better.  But he also admits that if one needs a fort, an abandoned prison is as good for keeping enemies out as it once was at keeping them in.  This wry awareness is a pleasure to read, even in spite of the subjects.  There are omissions: no mention of computers.

‘ . . . radioactivity . . . can be a source of peaceful power, but also allows you to determine the age of our planet, offering a glimpse down the dizzying hole of deep time.  In earth sciences we’ve missed out on the theory of plate tectonics, for example: the mind-blowing concept that the vast continents are scudding across the surface of the planet like leaves on a windy pond, occasionally crunching into one another to crumple up entire mountain ranges.  These profound realizations that the world has not always been as it is now, and is bewilderingly old, are required to understand the theory of evolution by small changes from one generation to the next.  All of these represent kernels of knowledge that a recovering society would need to re-explore and unpack for themselves. . . 

This wondering but basic view of knowledge takes me back to the book called simply ‘Making’ by Tim Ingold. (2013)   I do not think it is an accident that both of these books come from a context of English thought by those who remained when the others went off to do empire-building.  These people are content to deeply explore where they already were.  ‘Making’ is about hands-on creating basic things from flint-knapping, weaving baskets, casting metal.  in some ways the title should not be ‘making’ but rather ‘participating’ because it is about an attitude towards materials that is like having empathy for other humans — being part of them.  Developed in a small seminar or workshop with students, Ingold gathers up ways to become part of the sensuous existence around us, to feel in our muscles the tensions, temperatures and potentials of materials. 

For instance, when flint-knapping, one senses the potential fracture lines that can cleave stone easily.  When a rap with a blade hits that line and divides the substance, one feels it viscerally.  When basketweaving — feeling the resistance in the willow wands— the countervailing tensions of the weave — it is a participation that tells one’s muscles where and how much to put one’s force next.  

Likewise, what Dartnell is proposing is the understanding of science through participation in the forces that create the world, not that one needs to go get electrocuted, but that one needs to stand still and really open up to understand lightning.  ordinary objects, soap and pots, canvas sails and charcoal bits, acid vs. alkali, all elements neglected in an urban life.  Simple ways to clean water or create an electrical current are the beginnings of thoughtful technology to restore culture in a direct and living way.

Both Ingold and Dartnell emphasize the need for others to swap ideas and report information.  Neither of them is ‘psychological’ or emotional, so they don’t talk about the cellular brain and body mechanisms of learning, but speak of remembering, trusting, sharing that build the brain towards brilliant and muscular science.  They don’t discuss it from a distance, they just participate in it.

Here’s another source article that even points out the advantages during the lockdown.  

‘Jugaad is an old Indian concept of improvisation under resource constraints. It means developing solutions that work by overcoming and/or bypassing constraints or rules imposed by social norms or by legal compliances. Jugaad also means seeking opportunity in adversity, doing more with less; thinking and acting flexibly, and following the heart.’

http://www.khabar.com/magazine/cover-story/the-post-pandemic-world?utm_source=May+2020+-+Digital+Edition+Eblast&utm_campaign=July+2018+Digital+Edition&utm_medium=email

In an unconnected twitter tweet a man discovered that it was possible for him to cook and do it well, to follow recipes and later to innovate, to use ingredients he had never considered. Now his hands know his food as well as his mouth does. He is joyful.

I was thinking about transportation in a deserted city without a car and it was obvious that skateboarding was the way to go, even better than a bicycle that needs tires.  If obstacles prevent rolling along, one can take the skateboard under the arm and walk.  After months on a skateboard, the world must be a different place than it is from a closed car,  but it is dependent on a surface that’s not likely to exist in the country.  Nevertheless it is a powerful and direct way to participate in the world.  One seeks the opportunities, the fittingness.  That’s participation.  It’s the way to survive after the pandemic.

GETTIN' CLOSER

In the “old days” when one went to the doc, one supplied a “pee” sample for analysis.  The office had a bathroom with a little door-through so the container could be passed through to the nurse or lab tech without embarrassing everyone.  They also used to take temperatures.  

Now we begin to realize that checking urine for sloughed off epithelial cells is an important clue to a corona virus that attacks the epithelial linings of the body, and a fever is one of the first signs that the body is fighting something.

Epithelial Polarity
Karen L. Edelblum, Jerrold R. Turner, in Mucosal Immunology (Fourth Edition), 2015

Epithelial cells are uniquely positioned at the interface where self and non-self meets. In the lung, epithelial cells must separate the airways, and potential harmful materials within them, from the blood stream while allowing the free diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The intestine is an even more challenging environment, for in addition to preventing luminal toxins, microbiota, and microbial products from accessing deeper tissues, the intestinal epithelium must support vectorial, or directional, transport of nutrients, ions, and water. The development of epithelial polarity requires accurate delivery of specific transport proteins to either the apical surface (i.e., the surface in contact with the lumen) or the basolateral surface, which interfaces with the interstitium. These transporters are not only critical for promoting active transcellular transport, but also establish transepithelial gradients that provide the driving force for passive paracellular transport.’’

EXPERIENCE REMARKS

The first time i saw a body ‘parted out’ — that is, eviscerated and skinned — i was impressed that each organ and those that were related were wrapped in a silvery thin tissue almost like Saran-wrap.  

We don’t normally see epithelial cells except as our outer skins but we read about ‘’pericardial infection’’ filling the bag around the heart with fluid to the point of stopping the heart.   So in terms of the tension between the cross, the Procrustean rational logic of the crux, versus the observing, exploring, and saving of the bundle as in the feminist and indigenous basic metaphor, epithelia may be at the heart of things.  The basic bodily crux demonstration is the skeleton, our symbol of death, and yet its structure defines us. It is not invulnerable.  The bundle might be the heart but it could also be guts.  Certainly it’s more visceral than structural.

MORE TECH

‘’Epithelial cells are firmly joined together by adhesion specializations. These special structures serve to anchor the cytoskeleton of each epithelial cell to its neighbours and to anchor the epithelium to underlying or surrounding extracellular matrix materials.

Epithelial cells are further specialized by modifications of their surfaces to fulfil their specific role, which may be absorption or secretion or to act as a barrier.’’

Epithelial tissues also operate as filters or for diffusion of fluids like milk.  They can regulate, which means keeping various elements within the bounds of homeostasis.  Epithelial cells keep order in the body by separating, anchoring and attaching to each other.  This information is remarkably vivid when applied to society as a whole; that is, our social ‘cells’ in terms of ‘tissues.’  it becomes a near poetry.

‘’Frederik Ruysch, working in the Netherlands, introduced the term epithelia in the third volume of his Thesaurus Anatomicus in 1703. Ruysch created the term from the Greek epi, which means on top of, and thele, which means nipple, to describe the type of tissue he found when dissecting the lip of a cadaver.’’

Epithelium is a sex organ, not just the lip or the nipple, but the sensitivity, the taste and smell.  We should be cherishing the linings of us while we live.

‘’Cell polarity refers to the intrinsic asymmetry observed in cells, either in their shape, structure, or organization of cellular components. Most epithelial cells, migrating cells and developing cells require some form of cell polarity for their function. These cells receive information about their surroundings via extracellular biochemical and mechanical cues and translate those information into polarity of the plasma membrane, its associated proteins and cytoskeletal organization. Once established, cell polarity is maintained by transcytosis, in which vesicles carry incorrectly-localized membrane proteins to the correct regions in the plasma membrane. In addition, tight junctions, which act as ‘fences’ against transmembrane diffusion, lock the asymmetry in place. Therefore, mechanobiology plays an essential regulatory role in both the establishment and maintenance of cell polarity.’’

Clearly we could use this set of functions to describe ‘citizen polarity’ — where each belongs and how to get them there.  This ought to be a concern of education.

‘’The apical  [apex= top] membrane faces the lumen [the channel or passage in the middle] and is rich in PAR and Crumbs protein complexes. The basolateral [bottom and sideways] membrane contains the Scribble complex and faces the extracellular matrix.

''The Scribble polarity complex or module is one of the three polarity modules that regulate cell polarity in multiple epithelia including blood-tissue barriers. This protein complex is composed of Scribble, Lethal giant larvae (Lgl) and Discs large (Dlg), which are well conserved across species from fruitflies and worms to mammals.''

Ah, if we could identify the human version of ‘lethal giant larvae’ while they are still children.  

NOTE THIS;  ACE2 must be enabled by the the cofactor TMPRSS2 to let a corona virus get into a cell.  

TMPRSS2 transmembrane serine protease 2 [ (human)]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/7113

‘This gene encodes a protein that belongs to the serine protease family. The encoded protein contains a type II transmembrane domain, a receptor class A domain, a scavenger receptor cysteine-rich domain and a protease domain.’

So this is a human gene that has four parts; one about what goes across a membrane, one that receives, one that scavenges, and a ‘protease (also called a peptidase or proteinase) which is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases the rate of) proteolysis, the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids. They do this by cleaving the peptide bonds within proteins by hydrolysis, a reaction where water breaks bonds.’ A very busy gene.

It was clear from early on that the linings of the lung alveoli were affected.  It’s only as the symptoms pile up that we see the hearts, lungs, kidneys, and guts — all lined with epithelial variations.  But that means we can search among whatever those epithelia had in common before they specialized, either through evolution or through gestation, something primal and therefore possibly can tip us off to something that can protect the whole system.  For all our love of binaries, we fail to recognize that there are two sides to every disease problem -- our side and the virus side.

https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-not-human-made-in-lab.html

WALKING INTO THE EYE OF THE STORM

Long ago I learned that things that are terrifying can often be dispersed by walking through them.  For instance, the boy across the street — a mischief-maker on whom I had a crush — told me that there was a kind of bats in our neighborhood that had headlights and used them to seek out victims.  They would tangle in my hair, the pride and joy of that red-headed girl with curls and cause me to have to have my head shaved.  Then he used a small flashlight to terrorize me, much to the delight of my little brothers.  I really WAS terrified.  But it was fake, imaginary, an invention.  In the end I found out.

Though since then it has lost me friends and relatives, I remain convinced that the best way to handle a threat is to face it and walk through it.  I’m doing that with this variously named “new” corona virus, which has been called SARS-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — curse acronyms anyway), Covid-19 (Corona Virus of the year 2019) and Nouveau Corona Virus (New Crown-shaped virus).  The following link is my latest set of clues.  

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200423/the-great-invader-how-covid-attacks-every-organ?ecd=soc_tw_200502_cons_news_attackseveryorgan&linkId=100000012063445

I’m posting this for Sunday, so to give it a religious twist (for those whose holy day is Sunday) I’ll tell you a story about Alexandra David-Neal, one of the most amazing women of the Twenties.   “Alexandra David-Néel was a Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist and writer. She is most known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet, when it was forbidden to foreigners.”  Following Tibetan holy solitaries, she lived in a cave where she was visited by others who were doing the same and who told her about dragon ghosts.  One day she looked down the access path and saw a dragon coming to visit.  Rather than hiding in the back of the cave, she marched out to meet it and put her hand out to touch it.  Her hand went on through, as though it were made of water vapor.  Maybe that’s what it really was.  (She's in Wikipedia and wrote 30 books.)

So I’m putting out a hand to see about this viral tsunami.  Following the article linked above and taking in a bit at a time, I’m now going to see whether I can understand “Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)” by reducing it to ordinary words.  I’m getting my info from Wikipedia.  I must say that my complaint about Wikipedia has been that it is “edited” (dominated) by arrogant white men from an elite culture that gets everyone else’s story wrong, but when it comes to this sort of stuff, it’s their game.

ACE2 is an enzyme. “An enzyme is a substance that acts as a catalyst in living organisms, regulating the rate at which chemical reactions proceed without itself being altered in the process.; The biological processes that occur within all living organisms are chemical reactions, and most are regulated by enzymes.” (Britannica)  In the case of this virus, it attaches to the cell membranes of organs and on the linings of all the tubing systems, like blood or neural networks or the lungs, so it can travel through the body.  ACE2, one of several versions of this enzyme, controls blood pressure by vasoconstriction operating in tension with a vasodilator.  Many mechanisms of the body are based on homeostasis which is not about sexual orientation (homo = "same" like homogenized milk is the same throughout) but about guarding against extremes — not too much and not too little. The consequences of extremes are disease and sometimes death.

Anything vulnerable to ACE2 interference is hit by this corona virus which prefers attachment to this enzyme, then triggers symptoms on skin (rashes), in toes (covid toes) and in organs that depend on their blood supply.  It can make clots and constrictions in the brain and mess with kidney function.  In other words, it destroys the homeostasis of the body that keeps it alive.

Following are the two most technical paragraphs in the entry.

“Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 is a zinc containing metalloenzyme located on the surface of endothelial and other cells. ACE2 protein contains an N-terminal peptidase M2 domain and a C-terminal collectrin renal amino acid transporter domain.

“ACE2 is a single-pass type I membrane protein, with its enzymatically active domain exposed on the surface of cells in lungs and other tissues. The extracellular domain of ACE2 is cleaved from the transmembrane domain by another enzyme known as sheddase, and the resulting soluble protein is released into the blood stream and ultimately excreted into urine.^”

Surprisingly, this molecule is zinc and usually is in a pouch inside the cell.  (Amazing how tinkertoy-like molecules can be.) This is why some quacks say, “take zinc” for corona viruses.  Endothelial cells, which we know as being skin, are the linings of the various tubings that distribute oxygen and other basic substances, some of them excreted by organs and balanced against each other.

The N and C terminals are about the end connections that form molecular chains to make peptides and proteins.  ACE2 has a little piece that can be cut off (cleaved) and exist independently.  “Sheddase” is the molecule that can do this.  Then the piece floats around affecting other molecules until it gets into the urine and is excreted.

An additional problem with Covid-19 is that the treatments, like ventilators, dialysis and so-on, are so blunt-force that they can do as much damage as the infection.  Some say that only half the people who get ventilators ultimately recover.  The machines are not only expensive, but they require trained operators and constant monitoring.  My health directive asks for NO ventilator or dialysis. (I’m 80.  I live alone. I taped the directive to the back door in case I die alone.)

Taste and smell functions are so sensitive to this kind of trouble that they shut down early, which makes them good first indicators. The first doc the victim sees may be an otolaryngologist — ear and throat expert. (I like the fancy word because it’s so much fun to say.)

ACE2 is a “transmembrane protein” that can let these viruses into the body of the cell. Those spikes that make the corona have a protein that gets them in through ACE2 to become part of the endosomes, the actual machinery of the cell, which is far more complex that we ever imagined.  I won’t try to explain them here, but Wikipedia discusses them.

Because vulnerability to Covid-19 is affected by what we call “race,” I want to mention Oz Hopkins, an imposing Black woman in Portland whom I should have used as a role model long ago.  The first reporter who specialized in health issues that I knew of, she was my age.  I had no idea of all the achievements noted in her obituary.  She was as intrepid in her own way as Alexandra David-Neal, unafraid to walk into the eye of the storm.

https://obits.oregonlive.com/obituaries/oregon/obituary.aspx?n=oz-hopkins-koglin&pid=179755552

"FAWNING"

Probably I’m one of the few people who welcomed the idea that we should all stand six feet apart.  I am not a sardine (esp not a dead one) and do not like being crammed up against others, which seems to be a feature of cities: elevators, buses, and workplaces.

Mammals have built into their physiologies a certain psychological distance which doesn’t appear except in behavior.  If you go towards some person or some animal and the creature backs up, you’re getting into their circle, that unseen perimeter.  It’s not predictable except by experience.  That’s what taught it to them and why they expect to be protective against you.  People who work with people who have been in prison know that the perimeter can be big.  Creep up on a former felon and you are taking a major risk, because to them your approach is also a major risk.  Six feet might be too close for them.

People who work with very small children know that they often haven’t developed a sense of how close to get and some will come to actually lean on a teacher.  Others will stand back, beyond reach even if invited.  My kittens like to sleep in a pile, because of warmth, sure; but also because it is safe to sleep with each other.  They knew it before birth.

People who are prone to approach unknown animals or people may get hurt by trying to hug a buffalo or pet a street dog.  When I was in elementary school, I did not know to keep my distance from an animal that didn’t want to be approached.  When dogs barked at me on the way to school, I didn’t know I was being warned.  I had full sentimental confidence that my good intentions were perceptible and that if I persisted, I could calm them down.  People came out of the dog’s house and yelled at me,  “Stop pestering my dog, little girl!”  Later the tables were turned and it was me who had a personal distance that was sometimes in trouble because people came too close.

Partly this was because of a public role, like being liberal clergy.  The role itself said to some that I was safe, and therefore no perimeter was too close.  Particularly women, usually older, would feel free to adjust my collar or pick lint off my bosom.  Men would want to shake hands, but then not release my hand.  They all seemed to feel that they were nonthreatening and I would not attack them for coming too close.  It was a sentimental interpretation of the role.

They didn’t know how often I had to suppress the fight or flight in me.  They were using “fawning” as a way to keep me acting safely towards them or risk criticism from society. Even without the role, simply being female, certain men in Valier will pound me on the shoulder.  A nurse from Cut Bank once reached down my neck and adjusted my bra straps.  On the job she was accustomed to physical contact with her role entitling her. 

The more fierce traditions, based on rational theology that let them be aloof, never had this problem.  Think Ingmar Bergman ministers. The premise today is that “fawning” on teachers, doctors, lawyers, and priests will control them for the sake of safety.  One should be wary.  Women make children of us all when they ignore a respectful distance.  Men express ownership and dominance when they "fawn" on women.  Trump teaches us that his familiar fondness is just the flip side of attack.

We have learned about the four “F’s” that are alliterating ways we protect against danger.  They have evolved as creatures have.  Even reptiles will FLEE or FIGHT.  There is a previous reaction which is older.  It is to FAINT.  To play possum.  To go dormant, as though dead.  It’s not a learned reaction but deeper, in the unconscious.  Though it can be conscious, few people identify or recognize the fourth mammal strategy:  FAWNING.  Flattery.  

All these responses can be brought up to consciousness with a little support and reflection.  Pete Walker is a specialist psychologist who considers the four F’s.  He suggests that those who depend on fawning, which is close to the way some clergy operate, are like the children described in Alice Miller’s “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” kids smart enough to be parent pleasers and achievers.  Since congregations are socio-economic and the groups tended to be highly educated, prosperous, and focused on being exceptional, both clergy (usually when they were women) and parishioners like this were common in the UU congregations.  It’s a denomination that believes in meritocracy, esp among women who have been patronized contemptuously by men.

I vividly remember a big tech-specialist man who had disagreed with my sermon and who at coffee hour afterwards came to bawl me out so closely in my face that he covered it with spit.  I was grateful to be wearing glasses.  It was hostile intimacy.  I must have terrified him.   I can’t remember the subject but usually in his case it was about clergy having no authority.  

I don’t know why he came to services.  I also suspect his father beat both him and his mother.  If I had done so much as put my hand on his chest and pushed him back, I would have been interpreted as attacking.  That I tolerated him was my form of fawning, when he should have been knocked flat.  The others present seemed on the verge of flight.  No one intervened.

The symbolism of the body, as acquired through experience and expressed by behavior, is not always easy to recognize from the inside, let alone identify in some other “mammal.”  But it needn’t interfere with intimacy.  One of my most intimate and rewarding conversations (lasting a decade) was only email print and image.  Walker suggests that not feeling “seen” is a characteristic of “fawners.”  But I felt seen without ever being seen because the words were close to my experience.  I hope that as well I was seeing the Other.

On the other hand, the rhetoric of many progressives, esp. when they speak of love and inclusion, violate my perimeter.  I was still a Presbyterian when the "passing of the peace" began to include hand-holding and even hugging.  People who push this think they are “feeling” but they are preventing me from “feeling” because what I feel is danger, attempts to own and control.  Is that in me or in them?  Both.  We are an owning and controlling culture, which is why I need distance and solitude to think about other issues as well.

This pandemic introduces a whole new dimension.  

TAG: YOU'RE IT!

This is maybe the third version of these thoughts, partly because research is constantly changing focus and partly because the world is changing.  We are mostly fussing about North America, but this is a world event with no future end.  There are so many elements and unknowns that all of us are only guessing.  Many of them seem contradictory or hard to imagine.  The vocabulary of cell investigations alone are a challenge.

I’m reminded of a fly-killer that was guaranteed effective and very cheap.  When it came, it was a little block of wood and a small mallet.  The directions said, “Place fly on wood and hit with mallet.”  Right. Sure fire! But elusive.

We assume it is an unexpected virus but there are early versions. MERS and SARS were meant to be wakeup calls, but naturally Trump cancelled everything projected to address them.  Bats have 500 versions of corona virus, any of which could morph again.  Fear of bats is not so silly after all.  So far six corona viruses have been found in humans, though four were mild.

“COVID-19: Caused by one virus, the novel 2019 coronavirus, now called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.

Flu: Caused by any of several different types and strains of influenza viruses.”  The symptoms overlap.  Ironically, the precautions for Covid-19 — like handwashing — are also diminishing the number of flu cases.  Why weren’t we doing this all along?  They told us to, didn’t they?

These are RNA viruses, which means that though animals/cells that have a double helix in their genome nucleus (two strands embracing around a corkscrew), the virus only has one, like a spermatozoa not yet met up with an ovum.  (PCR is a test, “polymerase chain reaction”.)

“DNA is used because at the most discriminating level, the structure of DNA can tell you what organism is being looked at. In the case of humans, PCR can identify a person using his or her genetic signature. In the case of COVID-19, researchers have published more than 100 genomes collected from patients to identify key features of the virus that causes that disease, SARS-CoV-2.

“But there's a wrinkle.

“PCR only works on DNA, and the COVID-19 virus uses RNA as its genetic code. RNA is similar to DNA, but only has a single strand. Fortunately, viral enzymes to convert RNA into DNA were discovered decades ago, and have been harnessed, along with PCR, to find unique signatures in RNA, too. In this case, PCR is referred to as reverse transcription PCR, or RT-PCR.” 

The reason there is no “cold” vaccine and flu vaccine has to be redeveloped every year is that they both have single strand RNA, so there is no second entwining DNA to provide backup correction.  Humans, who are double-strand, do have this backup.

Here are links to some of the more interesting and reliable posted articles that I’ve found.

https://discoverysedge.mayo.edu/2020/03/27/the-science-behind-the-test-for-the-covid-19-virus/

https://www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-vs-flu#differences

https://www.webmd.com/lung/coronavirus

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

“SARS-CoV-2 is one of seven types of coronavirus, including the ones that cause severe diseases like Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The other coronaviruses cause most of the colds that affect us during the year but aren’t a serious threat for otherwise healthy people.”

“Covid-19 is closely related to the original SARS virus. Both are members of the coronavirus family, which is entirely distinct from the family that includes influenza viruses. Scientists know the shape of proteins on the new coronavirus’s surface down to the position of individual atoms.” (The Atlantic — Ed Yong, one of the best writers.)

It appears that the proper answer to most of the questions we have is still “yes and no” and “it depends” and “well, there’s a lot of overlap”

I remember a Walt Disney film from my childhood which was shown in schools to encourage vaccination.  It was WWII, so the little vid-game type characters wore helmets.  The vulnerable little red cells were attacked by black spider-like microbes, who were then vanquished by the cells in white helmets.  This was vaccination against bacteria, which are microbes (too tiny to see without a microscope), but not as sub-living as viruses.  Even professionals are very fuzzy about viruses.  A veterinarian recently offered me antibiotics for my cat colony’s eye prob, forgetting that it’s a viral affliction and antibiotics don’t work on viruses because they are SUB-LIVING.  Anti-BIO means against life.

We persist in imagining that diseases are caused by something like insects because the vectors that carry both bacteria and viruses are often in the “blood” stream of insects.  We say “bugs” for diseases, but sometimes the DIS-ease is from genetic glitches (stutters in the physical blueprint) or from environmental damage like bad air or toxic chemicals.  And we assume that ever more potent and exotic substances are the only cure, which are delusions of script-writers and our president, the snake-oil monopoly specialist.  In the meantime we flood our environment with toxics, irritants, and unknowns.

I had a tooth pulled recently and when the young dentist, as he had been taught, asked if I had any questions, I asked him what he did about HIV in his office.  “Oh, we’re very clean!” he said.  “Very scrub everywhere.” HIV is not addressed by scrubbing.  It is about blood exchange.  I had lost a little blood just then.  Luckily, he was wearing latex gloves.  But he clearly hadn’t really registered HIV.  He was in Shelby, one of the state’s Covid-19 hot spots.

Pondera County, where I am, has had 2 cases, both middle-aged women, and both have recovered.  If they infected others, those people were not in this county or are undetected.

LATE TODAY:

Doctors say that when they worked to take clots out of the brain (strokes) new small clots formed as they worked.  This has not happened before.  The victims were young and healthy. This reminded me of a tendency for women who had just delivered babies to have serious strokes.  

The other thing is that David Quammen says he knew a scientist who found and sequenced Corvid-19 years ago, earlier than this pandemic, and put out an alarm, but was shut down by politics.

https://bioneers.org/shaking-the-viral-tree-zp0z2004/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bioneers&utm_content=Shaking%20the%20Viral%20Tree:%20An%20Interview%20with%20David%20Quammen%20-%20Bioneers