This week, at chapter 176 of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" (Double Twist), 84-year-old Jacob in his 18-year-old body made his stand. He saw and felt real injustice and made public his stand in front of the National Service Reform Commission. I'm surprised that it only took the old man in him eighty-four years before he could speak out against injustice. And you can bet, that decision will affect everything in Jacob's life and his pod from this point forward. The story is a total of 239 chapters by the time we reach the end of book 5, Double Team.
Comments and email were a bit reserved, perhaps because we are all torn about making a stand regarding today's injustices and social issues. I know I am. I find I know where I want to stand but there are many effective arguments to the contrary. Most promoted by people who are far more vociferous in their arguments than I am.
On the other hand, I got this comment by an elder statesman that seems to support Jacob completely: "As for 'Jacob, you need to be polite', I cry =Bull= =Shit=!!! -Some- things need to be said as they -are-! The 'commission' =needs= to face up to what is happening ... and that includes the high suicide, et al, rate! The people 'in charge' of what is going on, =especially= in the agro fields/areas, should be yanked out of their (relatively) cushy positions and have =seeeerious= disciplinary measures taken for their incompetence and/or corruption [she =slept= her way to help her friend?!!]. There is =no= call for all those suicides. Spin it any way you want, but I'm not backing off. ((Yes, I'm well aware that that sort of thing goes on =today=, too!))"
If I make a cogent argument about something in one of my stories, it is because I have spent days crafting how I want to say it and then my characters toss the argument off as though it was spontaneous. And I still miss the mark at times.
Here's an example. I've been in relative isolation for six months. It wasn't because I was afraid of any disease. It's because that's the way I live. I often go days on end without speaking to anyone when I'm camped, and that period of six months saw me camped in single locations with little contact for longer periods of time. As soon as the lockdown started, I started wearing a mask on my two trips a month to get supplies of groceries and medication. Then I got up to my Idaho summer camp and wore a mask whenever I was near people.
But one friend chose to argue that masks weren't effective, and ridiculed their use. His argument? If your jeans can't stop a fart, how can a cloth mask stop a virus? He argued with evidence presented by a doctor supposedly significant in the discovery of mad cow disease and getting a cure for it. Viruses are smaller than fart particles, a mask won't stop them.
I had no answer for days as I studied and asked myself if masks were not effective because jeans couldn't stop a fart. He's right-as far as his analogy goes. But a single cough releases about 3,000 droplets at about 50 miles per hour. A single sneeze may release 30,000 droplets at about 200 miles per hour. Either could contain as many as 200,000,000 viral particles. It takes about 1,000 to infect a person. And a cloth mask doesn't stop the particles. It stops the propulsion. If I blow on my hand, I feel the air move on my hand. If I blow through a cloth toward my hand, I don't feel the air move. The viral particles are airborne and at 200 miles per hour can be across a room in less than a second. A large room. If I cut the air movement to 5 miles per hour, I reduce the chance of that particle reaching you before the droplets fall to the ground.
So, I keep wearing my mask when I'm in proximity to other people. Not for me. It's so I reduce the risk of infecting you with something I don't know I'm carrying. I don't expect the same courtesy from you.
Equivalent of Jacob's stand? Hardly, but I've already offended my quota of people with my stand on black lives, anti-fascism, and anti-racism. Unsurprisingly, the same friends who won't wear a mask are the ones who think the police should just start shooting the protesters and rioters and get rid of them all. Add to the violence. We should know how well that works.
Some time ago-greater than two years-I made a statement on my First Exit blog that there was no longer such a thing as truth. Social media has made certain of that. People can't even agree upon the facts regarding something they personally witnessed. So, when people cite facts and data and tell me what the truth is, it really doesn't tell me anything about truth. It tells me what kind of person he is that wants to believe that is truth. It's been that way for thousands of years.
Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
"What is truth?" retorted Pilate. (John 18:37-38 NIV)
I finished the first draft of Adams' Apple this week and am awaiting the last two chapters to be returned from my fine editors. In the meantime, I completely rewrote it. I probably undid some of their hard work, but not much. The question is whether I should release it now, or wait until I have run down on other projects a little. It's timely, since it deals with a virus that threatens to end humanity. But at the same time, I hate to keep overlapping stories when there will come a time in a few months that I might not have anything running.
That's not such an issue here on SOL as it is for my Patreon subscribers because they get things earlier than they are offered here. Currently, they are reading the last book of Jacob's story, as well as a re-release of American Backroads complete with pictures from my travels, and a Wayzgoose story named Willow Mills that will probably never make it to these hallowed pages because it has limited audience and a complicated format that is not conducive to the SOL reading experience. I'll get another story ready for release by my alter ego sometime soon. Once again, I'm deep in rewrites.
This week, I'm visiting my daughter in Western Washington while my trailer is undergoing what I thought were minor repairs but are taking more time than they take, of course. She has just told me that for a Father's Day gift she plans to give me a new recliner for the trailer. So, we're about to go shopping. My current recliner is suffering from wear and tear and is in crippled condition. There's at least one broken spring and the seat sags so far that I'm afraid I'll double up and slide out the back.
Did you know a recliner won't stop a fart?