Day 96-7: Ulcers Are for Hecklers, not ‘Crackpots’

My relentless correspondent (no, not Nina, whose emailed accusations mount like the snows in her native South Dakota) reports that the LES DIY is still holding well-attended meetings and that morale is strong. She suggests I shuck off my “romantic egotism” and attend a meeting tomorrow night. Drink is pledged afterward, even for “snotty self-indulgent Randian nonmembers.”

If ‘Evelyn’ had promised to reveal herself at said meeting, I’d be sure to attend. But I don’t think she goes to these things. So instead of driving Anna to tears again, I’ll just hope she’s feeling better—sunbathing, swimming, cooking tasty grub for her friends,

HOPE-SIMPSON: LONG-LIVED, VISIONARY REBELI’ll head upstate early in the morning to find refuge. It’s what Crusoe would do. Now that I think the earth is well sprinkled with human H5N1 survivor ‘bots colonized by virions, Round Two should really suck.

 I’ll post sporadically until I’m settled. I’ve arranged for someone to fill orders for personal protection equipment that come in while I’m gone.

A final note regarding the fabulous Dr. Hope-Simpson (for those who email that he and I are crackpots): When a couple of Australian doctors, J. Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall, tried to tell the world that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacterium named Heliobacter pylori—and not booze, spices, and insufferable spouses—they were scorned for years. That must have made winning the Nobel Prize more fun.

Hope-Simpson took lots of honors, but never that one. Two scientists who separately followed up on his work with chickenpox (varicella zoster virus) and herpes zoster each won a Nobel.

Hope-Simpson was a gutsy man whose Quaker faith made him resist fighting in World War II. He was lively enough to remarry in his 90s. His obituary shows a balding, bespectacled man with an amiable expression. It bespeaks that he maintained a good sense of humor and professed to love life, even as he was leaving it.