2008 was a very tough year, tougher for some than for others, but tough all around. Nobody will be glad to see this old geezer pass, I’m pretty sure. But there is a little “count your blessings” item in the news, which could give us all a little lift. Bad as things may be, at least we don’t have any of the rather horrible and perplexing diseases enumerated in a Wall Street Journal article appearing in the December 30 issue. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome will do for a starter: in this affliction, you perceive your body parts as grotesquely distorted and misshapen, as Alice did when she sipped from the bottle and nibbled on the cookie or whatever it was. Related to this is Alien Hand Syndrome, in which one hand seems to go off on its own, as in the movie Beast With Five Fingers. The sufferer will find one hand unbuttoning the shirt that the other has buttoned. Melinda Beck, the author of the WSJ piece, also refers to the disobedient hand of Peter Selllers in the Stanley Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the “disobedient hand” has a literary pedigree of some length. Years ago, I read a mystery story called The Hands of Mr. Ottermole in which the killer turned out to be somebody who had ideas entering his hands. Maybe this one is no fair, since he was using both hands, but still. And there is Foreign Accents Syndrome, in which the patient begins to speak with inflections and vocal pitches that sound like, German or Russian or Bengali or something.
Paris Syndrome and Jerusalem Syndrome are there too, but I’ll let you look those up yourself.
Syndromes

Today is a dreary day, with a cold front promised for tonight, and the chance of some freezing rain along with it. Yesterday and Saturday were on the warm side, for December, and today we’re grabbing for parkas and gloves. Last weekend the Dickens Evening on the Strand celebration was held and this past weekend the Lone Star Motorcycle Rally was in town. Both events resulted in pretty heavy hotel bookings and good seating for those restaurants that were open, and that’s good news for the tourist side of the local economy. Two cruise ships are operating out of the Port of Galveston. Since the ships can get out into Galveston Bay and then into the open sea fairly quickly, Galveston is an attractive base. More and more smaller businesses and stores are re-opening, or are slated to. There should be a big rush of re-openings after New Year. Over ten thousand building permits have been issued by the City of Galveston since the hurricane. Contractors are starting to work on our house, and on the neighbors’ on both sides of us.That makes about a dozen repair or rebuilding projects underway on our street. A block over, you can see several trailers parked in driveways or on lawns. People are living there while they rebuild, and for some, it’s a good option. You can be close to the property, the comfort level is not bad, depending on the vehicle, and it’s much easier to schedule appointments with builders and suppliers if you live on the Island than if you have to drive in from some other place. But, there are still a large number of residences and other buildings, badly damaged in the storm, that don’t show any signs of activity,or even interest, on the part of their owners. Some of the marginal and dilapidated buildings will doubtless be razed, and others may be awaiting insurance settlements or other funding before work can begin. A great part of the public housing inventory was ruined, and a number of people will be housed in FEMA trailers that will be set up in various parts of the city. Eactly what to do about public housing has become a topic of discussion. It might be cheaper to start over with new buildings than to attempt a rescue of the ones damaged by the storm. Galveston residents who are toying with the idea of leaving the Island face the decision about where to go. It isn’t easy, starting over in a new place, even if material and financial concerns don’t limit your choices too much. You can overhear conversations on that topic and after one or two, they all become pretty much of a muchness as Alice said. Pre-IKE Galveston offered a number of advantages to residents: University medicine, an active cultural and artistic scene, commerce, mild winters, a sea-side resort relaxed quality, fishing and birding opportunities, and all of it concentrated in a fairly small area. There are not many places with that menu of advantages, so a decision to move elsewhere involes difficult choices.

More of the UTMB medical clinics are being returned to campus from temporary quarters on the mainland. Diagnostic radiology, dermatology, family medicine, and several others now have space here, and are up and running. Many of the mainland clinics are jammed with patients. Getting the hospital back into operating condition (and that’s not a pun) has been more difficult, due in part to very stringent air quality tests, ensuring that various pathogens are not circulating through the air return system, especially in the surgical suites. Cultures are taken every day for seven days, and each culture takes three days to process. The place has to be clean, each day for the seven day period. One miss, and they start over. And, use of the upper floors requires reliable electricity and elevator service. The power company will be changing out some ‘iffy’ equipment this week, so stability in service should not be so much of a worry. De-humdifying and drying out equipment is still running in some buildings, as you can see from the compressors and generators outside and the plastic piping sticking through windows. It’s hard to imagine what could have gotten so wet, so high up, but at least three buildings have upper-floor air vents running to them from compressors at street level. A number of campus buildings, including the Library and several of the research laboratories, have returned to their normal operating schedules, instead of an 8-5 Monday through Friday work week. The campus still feels desolate, especially at the end of the regular working day, when darkness gathers and when traffic used to be quite heavy. As more facilities re-locate here, things should start to feel less “dead”. Someone in the campus catering service said to me that they don’t expect to get back to their old quarters in the hospital building for another six months. Right now they are working out of tents set up on the upper level of a parking garage. Walking the dog at night, I can see the shadowy upper floors of campus buildings, darkened except for the occasional hall or window light. It adds to the gloom and sense of abandonment.

Galveston, UTMB and their intertwined fates are starting to generate attention elsewhere in the state. The Texas Legislature meets next month, and there are some expectations that these problems will be raised by area legislators in an effort to get some subtantial assistance in restoring the campus. Pressure may come from representatives of other counties which were using UTMB as a place to send their uninsured and indigent patients. Now that we are out of that business, these other counties have to deal with this problem directly and they are not enjoying the experience much. Some state senators and representatives are annoyed at the Regents and the Governor, as well. They have quite bluntly suggested that a number of things would be possible if somebody in UTSystem would get off the dime. Spokesfolks for the Regents and for other state officials all affirm a commitment to UTMB’s future. They are widely disbelieved down here however, and even direct and explicit statements from officials themselves, in the press or in testimony to appropriate bodies, are dismissed as official lying, on the principle that actions speak louder than words. A number of faculty members have expressed dissatisfaction at the situation and have said that they have set personal deadlines, at which point they will go elsewhere, taking their grant money and trained staff with them, if they can’t see signs of real progress. This too is downsizing, but of the wrong kind. It’s exactly these people we should be trying to keep, but elaborate explanations about why nothing can be done for this or that reason don’t satisfy, and people here are starting to look for action on the part of the Legislature to get something done.

The Texas Legislature meets only every two years and for a brief period. Usually, a flurry of bill-filings comes first, then follows a longish period of hearings, testimony, debate, log-rolling, arm-twisting and IOU collecting as lawmakers concentrate on favorite items or those being pushed by lobbyists. At the end of the session there is usually a rush to get bills enacted, often in rather disgraceful and rowdyish circumstances, for a body supposedly consisting of adult men and women. It’s hard to calculate the fate of any action intended to aid Galveston, or UTMB, or alter to complex skein of relations governing the UTsystem. But, nothing ventured….

We’re closing the year on a decidedly muted and somber note. The storm and the uncertainty about the future of the county’s largest employer would be bad enough, but the general econonomic downturn is the third in a series of heavy strikes we’ve had to counter somehow. We are all hopeful for some better news in the new year.

We are in a funny, in the sense of strange or peculiar, timie of year. A lot of people here are sick with various coughs, hacks, wheezes and other respiratory distempers. The weather is bouncing back and forth between fabulous and warmish to overcast, damp and nasty. A cold front is predicted for tomorrow. It's also close to that depressing Year in Review season, when the various outlets recap what they think of as the most important events of 2008. I have my own list of candidates, but they wouldn't make any list these guys are working on. But, despite the feeling of pause, as seasons change, the calendar advances, and one administration leaves to make place for another, things keep on happening. Here are some of my picks.
The Chicago Tribune Company is about to declare Chapter 11. This group controls some major US papers, including the banner pubication and the Los Angeles Times and the Cubs baseball franchise. The company was seeking a buyer or takeover earlier, but these are hard times for the papers and the outlook for the kind of profits that have come to be expected was not very bright. In the same vein, the New York Times is about to borrow over $200 million. I don't know where they are getting it, with the credit market supposedly so tight, but I guess they know people. And, they're using their building as collateral. It's hard to believe that outfits like this are struggling so. It's hard for me, anyway. I've always thought the predictions of the end of newspapers were so much moonshine, but that may just have been my own prejudices and slants. I grew up when papers like these could decide elections, bring down high-flyers who seemed invincible, change the national life in major ways. The autopsy will show that the COD was either, the internet, or the general loss of interest in reading...anything, not just papers, or both.
The British Library has released a set of CDs with recordings of important authors speaking, or reading from their works. Joyce, Conan Doyle, Woolf, and a battalion of others are featured. This is the kind of gift for your very bookish friends. A reviewer warns about a sense of disillusion on hearing the voices of these iconic figures. Joyce sounds like a music-hall Irishman for one thing. Conan Doyle talks about spiritualism and sounds like a crank. So, may- be it's better to leave them in print, imagined, but unheard.
Writers
I see that somebody is making a movie out of the Scott Fitzgerald short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button", which appeared in May of 1927 in Collier's Magazine, a publication which has long since gone under, but which was very popular and even influential in its heyday. Bejamin is born old, and then "youthens", living his life in reverse. Brad Pitt has the role, which might make some viewers hesitate. I've seen no reviews, but I hear it should be released in time for Christmas. Scott Fitzgerald is known for his novels, such as The Great Gasby, Tender is the Night etc. He fought a long battle with the bottle and wound up losing. But he wrote over 160 short stories, and some of them are among the best ever done in this demanding form. It would be nice to see a Scott Fitzgerald revival, such as the Jane Austen revival we had about ten years ago. But, don't bet on it. Not in the flicks anyway. There's nothing to blow up, and the subtly and craft of the writing don't make it to screen very well.
Here's a write-up from the beleagured LA Times
Button

I’ve read only one of Neal Stephenson’s many novels, but it was a doozy, as they used to say. The Cryptonomicon was both an adventure story and a basic introduction to cryptology and WWII code cracking history. I recommend it. Stephenson has also written a trilogy of novels, called The Baroque Cycle, about the early days of what we have come to call Science, and about the people who got it all going, in England anyway, during the fabulous and miserable 17th century. When Stephenson writes a book, he writes a book. Big, lots of characters, plot on top of plot, and all of it backed up by plenty of research. Well, he’s released another one and I hope his fans are ready for a departure, because this one is it, double in spades. It’s Anathem and is reviewed in Nature by Dr. Jennifer Rohn, who edits the estimable LabLit blog, which we have shameless ransacked for posting material, always with pleasure and often with profit. The novel is set on an earth-like planet called Arbre, and takes place in the distant future. All the scientists, engineers and philosphers have been herded together into compounds, which are kept segregated from the rest of society. They are being blamed for a series of unspecified catastrophes unleashed on Arbre, allegedly because of their conscience-less messing around with Nature. Surpervised in their activities and limited in the tools they can use, the avout, as they are called, can only engage in theoretical work and low tech tinkering. However, the avout get a second look when it is discovered that some kind of craft is orbiting Arbre and it’s not there to deliver the mail. Finding out what the dudes on the space ship are up to and what to do if they turn hostile is not a job for the ordinary Arbreans, who are portrayed as dimwit maximum consumers in lousy physical condition. So, the avout have a job to do, let me tell you. If you’re turned off at this point, well that’s that. The holidays are coming, so buy it for the most important guy on your list…you. If you’re interested, consider:

Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Atlantic Books/William Morrow: 2008. 800 pp/960 pp. £18.99/$29.95

Dr. Rohn’s review:
Rohn