I’ve caught colds my entire life; two or three a year. I sneeze, cough, and it usually starts with a sore throat. (Whereas I very rarely have gotten flues, with a temperature and symptoms that go on for a week.) The last time I caught a cold was in January, following our holiday overlay in Las Vegas. Now, after returning from Austin last weekend, I’ve caught another. In a rush as we left Larry’s house and went directly to the airport, I wore casual clothes and was not carrying a mask (such as I usually wear on airplane flights given my imuno-suppressed status). So, serves me right, I suppose.
That’s why no post yesterday.
Yet last night my partner said an interesting thing. We were talking to his kids on the phone, who were planning a Father’s Day lunch for us on Sunday. He mentioned to them I had a cold, so we probably could not join them. Later I said I probably picked something up on the plane, since I didn’t wear a mask. He said no, no, it’s because we were in a very hot climate for several days (95F in Austin everyday) and then returned to a cool climate (lower 70s most days). He’s said things like this before, and usually I don’t respond. He grew up in China, and comments like this one suggests to me that he retains a deep cultural belief in Chinese medicine, what with all its herbs and teas and how cold weather brings on cold viruses. Despite his Ph.D. in biochemistry that he acquired in the US.
This time I said, what? You don’t believe in the germ theory of medicine? He didn’t reply.
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With little energy except to sample a few books in between naps, these past couple days, this afternoon I picked up (prompted by a Facebook comment) a book of stories by Zenna Henderson, one of the few female SF writers in the 1950s and 1960s. Henderson was famous for a series of stories about “The People,” published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction across those two decades, about a colony of humanoid aliens stranded on Earth after their spaceship crashed. Continue reading →
