Natterings From Nepantla

Having a zoo membership, and with nothing better to do yesterday morning, I went up to the zoo to stare at animals for a while. Highlights: beavers awake for once and patrolling their pond; an African pygmy goose perched on the railing of the walk-through aviary, peeping furiously at passers-by; a wad of three or more lemurs somehow balanced on a branch, sleeping in that position; and half a dozen very asleep big cats.

That kept me away from the news for a few hours, and then in the late afternoon I was signed up for a Starfinder session. By the time that was over, the results were rolling in.

I honestly expect the next couple years to be full of partisan trench warfare between the various branches of government, with nothing much getting done, but that will still feel like an improvement over the last two.

If you want to be nervous about world politics all the time, just join some communities that have members all over the world!

So for instance I was watching the Alberta referendum because I know a number of Canadians through science fiction fandom. Then a prominent member of my favorite anime Discord, who's in Brazil, confessed that he was depressed and strung out over the impending elections there, so several of us outside Brazil kept an eye on the results with him (staying up very late, in some time zones). And then, I don't think I know any actual Israeli citizens, but I do know a few people who know people there and care a great deal about the eventual outcome of the Israeli election.

And then, next Tuesday, it's our turn here. Except of course it isn't the same; what happens in the US affects the whole world, so the rest of you have to pay attention to our election.

Anyway, I have done my bit and dropped off my ballot over a week ago. I live in the state that got rid of polling places almost 30 years ago. It's very convenient for voting, but it means having nothing to actually do on Election Day unless you're dropping off your ballot at the last minute. If the weather is halfway decent I'll probably go to the zoo or something.

darkoshi's post about Halloween Radio got me thinking about what music really feels like Halloween to me. For a long time I think the top of the list has been "The Little Black Kiss". Partly it's the spooky feel with the organ and weather effects and all, but I think the essential features are (1) spirits or monsters (2) dancing or doing other party-like things, even if the overall mood of the song isn't upbeat.

With that in mind, some other variations on the theme:

• "When the Night Wind Howls" from Ruddigore
• Danse Macabre
• "The Monster Mash"
• "Grim Grinning Ghosts" (aka that song from the Haunted Mansion)

What music says Halloween to you?

Written for the booknook October review-a-thon.

Title: A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient
Author: Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum
Genre: Memoir

At age 70, Ed Rosenbaum has a long, proud career in medicine to look back on. He was able to make it into medical school at a time when those schools openly limited the number of Jewish students. In World War Two, he served in a mobile surgical unit that participated in the invasions of Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. After going into private practice, he became part of the volunteer faculty of what was later Oregon Health & Science University, heading its rheumatology division for thirty years. Throughout his career, he has maintained the utmost standard of empathy and care for his patients, or so he believes.

A bout of persistent hoarseness is the beginning of a saga that will show him he has a lot left to learn.

This book is best known for being the basis of the movie The Doctor, but it is the typical Hollywood usage of "based on" which means "has almost nothing to do with". Rosenbaum was a rheumatologist, not a surgeon, practicing in Portland, Oregon, not San Francisco, and all characters, symptoms, and even the results of treatment in the movie are entirely fictional.

The experience in the book is a series of small realizations, which begin even before the eventual diagnosis of throat cancer. First Rosenbaum delays seeing a doctor for his own problem, then dithers about getting a second opinion, which he recognizes as behavior he's seen in his own patients and previously never understood. Then, after drug treatments produce no result, he is sent to a speech clinic, where he has his first taste of the trouble with the power imbalance between doctor and patient:

"Here, feel how tight this muscle is in your neck." And [the speech therapist] placed my hand on a neck muscle.

"You're right," I said. I really didn't notice any difference in the muscles, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. That was dumb, but it is a common reaction of patients: don't upset the doctor or he or she won't like you and won't take good care of you. I was startled by that insight. Had I known that before? Would it have changed my relationship with my patients? I wasn't sure.

Ultimately it turns out to be cancer, and Rosenbaum is sent for radiation therapy. The second and longest part of the book is a day-by-day chronicle of every radiotherapy session (and the agonizing weekend days in between). Interspersed with the session descriptions are his reflections and anecdotes about his childhood in Omaha and his past patients-- sometimes to explain how they shaped him, sometimes to look back and realize now that he could have done much better.

In addition to discovering the experience of the patient, Rosenbaum lets the reader in on the world of the doctor. Rivalries and quirks of the medical profession sometimes shape patient care in ways unrelated to the illness. And doctors become hypochondriacs, he says, because they know about all the worst possibilities. Part of what delays him at first is knowing that he might have cancer. Later, he has enormous anxiety about the radiotherapy because he knows the history of X-rays first being a fabulous new tool and then being discovered to cause cancer. He also knows the percentages about whether the treatment will work and all the errors that could be made along the way. But then on the weekends, he is consumed with fear about the cancer regrowing during the break in treatments and having a chance to metastasize.

It is not much of a spoiler to say that the author of this first-person narrative survives the experience. Rosenbaum's cancer is cured, and eventually he is back at work at his practice. But he has grown frustrated with the healthcare system, partly for longstanding reasons but partly also because his experience as a cancer patient has shown him a lot of way things could be improved. And even when he tries to improve himself, he finds his is holding himself to a standard he cannot achieve.

Rosenbaum would soon retire from his medical career and spend much of his remaining twenty-plus years as a writer and speaker, advocating for changes in the practice of medicine. This book is more than enough to explain why. For a look at the forces still shaping healthcare today, or just a positive story of a successful treatment and lessons learned, highly recommended.

I only checked out three premieres, but two of them led to shows that are really engaging my brain.

One is The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom. Despite its laid-back fairytale vibe, it's actually been able to throw a lot of information into the first couple episodes without feeling infodumpy. Two of the seven brothers have complicated romances going on, the backstory owes a lot to the Year Without a Summer, and the ED is trying to commmunicate big spoilers about the giant squirrel.

This is also the sort of show where, when one of the knights tells his brothers that he thinks he's developed a crush on a eunuch (I said it was complicated), the part that weirds everyone out is he's attempting to form a relationship outside of his own social class.

The other is Tetsuryo! Meet With Tetsudo Musume, which is based on a line of toy figures but you would never guess that from the show so far. It's about a young woman starting college and winding up in the Railway Travel Club, leading to excursions and lots of interesting train facts. (This week: a visit to the easternmost train line on Honshu, which uses physical tokens in place of an interlock mechanism!) I would not recommend this show to anyone who isn't a fan of either trains or the chill travel genre, but I'm having a blast.

The other show I checked out was #I'm Looking for a Zombie. The kids are nice enough but it had too many ogling camera angles and as-you-know-Bob dialogue for my taste.

Written for the booknook October review-a-thon.


Title: Consider the Consequences
Authors: Doris Webster & Mary Alden Hopkins
Genre: Romance

Helen Rogers has fallen for wealthy rake Jed Harringdale. Her parents would rather she married the dull but dependable Saunders Mead. Which way should she turn? It's up to the reader to decide: Jed, Saunders, or a much more exciting path that involves neither of them...

Consider the Consequences was first published in 1930 and is believed to be the first gamebook-- the form which was later popularized by the Choose Your Own Adventure series. For years there were only a few known surviving copies, locked up in academic libraries and private collections, but in 2025 Pushkin Press stepped forward to issue a reprint.

There are three sections. The first and longest is about Helen, who can choose a suitor or instead go to the big city, get a job, and possibly make a deliberate choice to live as a single mother. The second is about Jed choosing how much to grow up or not, and the third concerns Saunders, forced to take over as the head of his family after his father's untimely death and try to provide for his younger siblings.

Webster and Hopkins wrote the book to be a party game. The introduction suggests reading it aloud and allowing the audience to vote. It also anticipates that people may wish to bookmark a section and come back to it to see how the other choice would go. A full map of each section is also provided for anyone who might want to just check out all the endings.

The big contrast with most later gamebooks is that where the genre is now dominated by fantasy and science fiction adventures, Consider the Consequences is about navigating adulthood. Each story covers years of time. There are divorces, deaths, second chances at love, and sometimes opportunities to correct past mistakes.

Each ending concludes with a paragraph of the form, "The consequence of this character making this choice/being this sort of person is..." but not typically in a moralizing tone. Instead the point is usually about choosing how to live with one's fellow human beings and to take care of oneself. Almost a hundred years later, it still holds up very well.

Another thing I did last week, and forgot to mention, was get a flu shot, since PRGE starts on the 9th. It's the biggest event I go to all year, and attracts people from all over, so I usually try to time my flu shot to 2 weeks before it starts.

New this year, my local pharmacy had a choice of a traditional formula or a new mRNA-based vaccine for people in my age group. The latter is a little more effective, but I've had strong, uncomfortable side effects from mRNA covid boosters and so decided to stick with the traditional one. If there is ever a case where the mRNA vaccine is dramatically better, then I may be willing to deal with the side effects.

(The thinking is that people who get these side effects aren't reacting to the vaccine itself, but the nanoparticles delivering it. R&D is underway to develop less obnoxious nanoparticles.)

My timing is a bit earlier than what's generally recommended, but this year, YLE is reporting that the Northern Hemisphere flu season is starting unusually early.

Sunday: Spent a good hour or so taking apart some of the blackberry bramble. Finished clearing space along the back of the house so that there would be enough maneuvering room for the crew replacing the gutters on Tuesday.

Monday: Had the talk with my boss to finally nail down an exact date for my last day (October 8).

Tuesday: Gutters got replaced.

Thursday: The on-and-off drizzle forecast for the evening instead turned out to be our first real downpour of the season. The gutters worked as advertised. The cats were unhappy, partly, I think, because it hasn't rained that noisily in a while, and partly because now the noise is different with the new gutters.

Featuring a review of a comic book I picked up at Worldcon. Also I checked the ESFS constitution to see if being an associate member of the EU would make Canada eligible to host a Eurocon (no).