Milano on Corona-time Early March

The plan was for Wally to stay at Niguarda until she was well enough to go to another closer hospital for rehabilitation.
On March 2 Irina the 27-year-old daughter of my friend Nadeshda in Moscow arrived for a 5 day stay in Como and Milan.  It was rainy.  We agreed to meet at the funicular to Brunate for lunch on Tuesday March 3.  There were no crowds so we found each other easily and went to a cafe on the lake for a pizza.  She said she had been to many countries in Europe with groups but had not been to Switzerland.  I checked my watch.  I wanted to catch the 1516 train back to Milan and it was 1300.  We caught the Como city bus which goes to the border with Switzerland in Chiasso.  There are buses which stop at the customs gate and those with pass through.  The one we took passed into Chiasso.  No one checked us at all but we were the only ones on the bus.  We got out when the bus stopped and walked back through the customs port to the Como bus stop.  We took the bus to the center of Como.  I showed Irina where the shopping disctrict was while I walked to the train station to catch my train.  All was normal.  No checks, no masks.

Nad told me Irina's return flight on March 6 to Moscow had been delayed to the 8.  Irina bought a ticket for another airline from Bergamo on the 6.  When she arrived in Moscow there were immigration people in full hazmat gear.  She is in self-quarantine at home until the 20 March.

The plan was for Wally to stay at San Luca, the rehab hospital until about March 18 but they started releasing healthy people early to free beds and staff.  Wally came home after lunch on Thursday March 12.  She was feeling good but not like a year ago.  She had done exercises at San Luca but still needed more rest and exercise.

When Wally arrived at San Luca, I could go to her room with no checks and no mask.  By the time she left I had a temperature check at the elevator and could not enter her ward.  We passed laundry through the door.

Milano on Corona-time February 2020

Oskar and I came into Milan in mid-February.  We put Oskar with the dog sitter about Feb. 14.  Wally was admitted to Niguarda Feb. 17 with the surgery on Wednesday the 19. 
All went well.
Niguarda is a very large hospital complex.  I stayed at Wally's flat and took the metro/tram ride in the late morning then again in the early evening.
She was kept there until early March.  There was a little talk of the virus but few people wore masks even in the hospital.

Milano on Corona-time Preface

The last months of 2019 were very active for both my wife Wally and me.
Wally had been treated for breast cancer 5 years earlier with radiation which cooked some of the blood vessels near her heart.  She was not receiving sufficient blood to her heart.  An attempt to install a stent failed.  She needed bypass surgery.

I got a call from Salzburg to play an old man in Robert Wilson's production of Mozart's version of Handel's Messiah in January for Mozart Week.  I skipped 2 days of rehearsals in December when Wally had her initial surgery.

In early January 2020 I put Oskar with the dog sitter and went to Salzburg January 6 on a night train.  Then I returned after the last performance of January 31 on February 1 on a train through Innsbruck and Verona.

Wally had researched the best heart surgeons and hospitals in the Milan area.  She found a good surgeon who worked at Niguarda, a large hospital complex on the north side of Milan easily accessible by metro then tram.

Goal revision

At times you need to question whether your goals are realistic.  A short, stocky body type is more suited towards being a wrestler than a basketball player.

My partner Valentina and I both like to write but it has become apparent that the prospects of having our work published are very slim.  Even at a price of zero.

So our conclusion is that you do creative work, whether writing, painting, composing music, or photography, for your own consumption and satisfaction.  It is similar to cooking.

Fortunately, electronic media make these hobbies inexpensive and easy to distribute.  Much easier in fact than giving samples of your cooking to other people.

My next  effort is a short story entitled "The Wild Bunch" inspired by these guys.

 

Plague Test

This is a test meant to stimulate consideration of values.  There are no right or wrong answers, although some choices are probably more desireable than others.

Imagine a situation similar to that in the Bruce Willis film 12 Monkeys.   An airborne plague is distributed all over the world.  It has a germination period of about 30 days and is expected to reach every person in the world within 2 months.  There is a homeopathic antidote available but there is only enough of the active ingredient available to produce a pill that is 99% effective for 10% of the world population.  1% of the population has natural immunity to the plague.  A weak almost-placebo version can be produced for the 90% of the people who cannot be given the full version.  The placebo will have a 1% effectivity so it will save some people.  If someone takes more than one of the full dose tablets it will amount to an overdose and produce the plague rather than prevent it.  The tablets all appear the same to the recipients.  Only the top level of distributors know which are placebo and which are full dose.

Who do you give the placebo and who do you give the full dose?

James Carville, Karl Rove, and American Political Parties

Carville recently made comments on the Obama administrations handling of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.  His comments were not directed so much at the actions involved as in the public relations handling.  He said Obama should have gone to the site immediately.  I intended to criticise his view but I realized Karl Rove would have advised similar actions if it were a Republican in the same position..
None of these actions are aimed at handling the problem itself but only influencing public opinion.  If the purpose of political parties is only to take votes to hold office, then it is time for a radical change in the way the government is selected.

Remember Three Mile Island...or the Deepwater Horizon

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant spelled the end of nuclear power plant construction in the US for at least 40 years.
The blowout on the Deepwater Horizon and its subsequent demise could trigger a similar reaction to offshore drilling in the US.  At the very least it will mean delays in future drilling operations and the introduction of restrictive new rules for such drilling operations.
This will make American petroleum production more expensive and less competitive with imported petroleum products and as we have seen with Walmart and other American retail operations, it is not where the product comes from, but how much it costs in immediate dollars (as opposed to the long term overall price including government supplied insurance and military protection) which determines where the product comes from.
So, expect to see even a greater portion of American petroleum consumption to be supplied by importation with all the potential problems that that entails.