Tribalism and Culture

I was at a Christmas party the other night with a bunch of people I barely know. Someone mentioned the currently fashionable trend of DNA testing to establish one's ancestry. In a moment of indiscretion, a lapse of judgement, a wine-induced madness, I said what I think about it: despicable. I was rebuked by a very nice couple who pointed out that people were finding out that their ancestry was more diverse than they imagined and that that was a good thing. I could feel myself building up a head of steam. I was brought up to believe that argument is a contact sport and what better way to celebrate the solstice than to count dialectic coup. But the indiscretion was, indeed, momentary. I have come to believe, to understand, really, that no one needs to hear my opinion, including me. But I've been thinking about it.

On the one hand we have Morgan Freeman sleuthing out that Gwyneth Paltrow is 80% Martian or whatever, tearing down any inclinations to give in to interplanetary exclusionism, right? On the other hand we have all those television commercials where some sad sack finds out that he or she is 25% Scythian so now they get to wear pig-blossom arm bands. Either way it smells like tribalism!

I am a Human Being from Earth. Isn't that enough? No? My species first appeared in Africa. How about now?

If my grandparents' great-grandparents' grandparents were from someplace other than Trostinietz, does that mean that my grandmother didn't cook the food I associate with my childhood? Does it mean I shouldn't love kneidlach? Does it, perhaps, explain why I don't like gefilte fish? Just because there is no Hellenic component to my ancestry, must I appreciate mousaka less? Am I, as a human person from this planet, not entitled to be curious about life in a yurt, or what fermented mare's milk tastes like, or how do you say, "I want some more of that!" in Kyrgyz if I have no central Asian genes? I call bullshit.

What do we get from knowing which of the thousands of migratory paths out of Africa led specifically to each individual? Do we need that indisputably personal connection to be interested, curious, appreciative? Sure, I admit I have taken pride in some ambiguous connection I have with Albert Einstein and Groucho Marx but I think I would be just as happy to have Douglas Adams and Ming Tsai on my team. Anyway, it's not something I'm proud of. It's tribalism. However big I find my tribe is, even caring about it in the first place is an indication that I don't get it.

Tribalism is just racism's slightly more genteel older brother and the brat is only ever a short goose-step away.

Bat Day Afternoon

18 Sept 2017  

I’m 67 years old. Apparently, that doesn’t necessarily convey immunity from the same boneheaded behavior you expect from a 7-year old.

I was watering some plants in the morning (before the heat gets serious) when I noticed a brown patch on the ground. It was a bat. Clearly it was either sick or injured, otherwise it wouldn’t have been there. I have handled bats before, always with a towel or gloves. But this time I just picked it up. I didn’t go get some gloves out of the shed. I didn’t pop into the house for a towel. Hell, I didn’t even take off my shirt and use that. I just picked it up. So of course it bit me. Well, right away I knew that wasn’t good.

I dropped the poor little guy and he just lay there on the grass, folded into his wings. He looked a little sheepish, except for, you know, mostly looking batish. I figure he realized it hadn’t been in his interest to bite me, just like it hadn’t been in mine to pick him up. Biting me solved nothing. It just made it worse. For both of us. But mostly for him. Whatever was going on with him before, now he was headed (pun intended) for the place they send little bats from which there is no return. I found some old plastic sprouting pots and put him in one (no touching this time). I rinsed off the wound, which was bleeding considerably, and hurriedly finished my watering (no hydrophobia yet, at least).

Let me say a little bit about the actual bite. It was intriguingly surgical. It didn’t hurt, per se, more of a pinch. The teeth weren’t like needles but rather more like teenie scalpels. Chomp! And then it was done. In spite of my immediate oh-crap-this-is-bad reaction, it was definitely something interesting.

But this is a saga about threading the health system needle, so we’ll leave little Draculito in his plastic dungeon, in the shade of what may or may not be some variety of passiflora bush, and embark on the task of figuring out what I’m supposed to do next. A quick search on the Web turned up little of any use. Pretty much just variations on “Don’t mess around. Do something!” I called my local (municipal) Animal Control office. The guy who answered the phone, the head of the department, put me on hold while he went to find someone who might know what the procedure was. I was on hold for a long time! When he finally came back on the line he said they would come by in about 15 minutes and collect the animal to be controlled. It was more like 45. He said I should call my doctor and “get started”. Who knows what he thought that meant?

While waiting for the Animal Control guys, I called my doctor. Now, I don’t know if this is universal but I figure it’s probably fairly common: I spoke to a receptionist. She did not consult anyone. She did not consider any alternatives. She set up an appointment. Have a bad cough? Come in for an appointment. Wile E Coyote dropped an anvil on your head? Come in for an appointment. Got bit by a bat? Come in for an appointment. The soonest they could get me in would be 2:00 that afternoon. Fine. I’m glad it wasn’t the anvil thing.

When Animal Control showed up they were still a little confused as to the state of the bat, and why I would have touched it at all, and how I managed not to kill it. We had to go over that for awhile. Then, it turns out, this was a police matter. Now, I suppose that normally when a citizen calls Animal Control about a bite, it’s a dog bite and the dog has a titular human owner, and that human may or may not have some legal jeopardy pertaining to said bite, and, well, ok, maybe the police need to file a report. But for a bat?? Anyway, Animal Control called the cops and a nice little boy with what looked like 50 pounds of gear on his belt showed up to restore order, or at least file the proper paperwork. So that happened.

Around 1:00 I left to run some errands that were in the same area as my doctor’s office, and then showed up a little early for my appointment. As it turns out, my doctor, who wasn’t there, had been consulted and everyone involved: the receptionist, the intake nurse, the attending nurse practitioner, all of them knew that my being there was unnecessary and that I would have to go to the ER. But no one told me that. I waited, while I could have been waiting in the ER. The intake nurse went through her routine, which the ER intake nurse had to repeat. Finally, the nurse practitioner came in, listened to my breathing, listened to my lame Batman jokes, and then told me I had to go to the ER and that the doctor had already informed them and they were expecting me. It’s a good thing they had already measured my blood pressure since I’m sure at this point it tripled!

I went to the ER. It’s just next door to the building where my doctor’s office is so that wasn’t a big deal. And, indeed they were expecting me. Or, at least the triage technician was expecting me.  “Oh”, she said, “you’re the bat guy. I’ve been waiting for you all day.” (So why did I just now find out about it???). More vitals. More Batman jokes.

More waiting. Two hours of it. Nurses took my information. A girl with a clipboard took my insurance card. An intern washed my wound (still visible but barely). I made a lame joke about super powers. “That’s spiders”, he said, not missing a beat. During that time the ER doctor was on the phone with Austin. He was on the phone with the CDC in Atlanta. He was trying to find out what was supposed to happen, where it was supposed to happen, and who was involved in its happening. He never did find out.

They gave me a shot. It’s one of a series of shots. The doctor didn’t know where the rest of the series would be administered, but he knew it wouldn’t be there. As it turns out, the protocol now, as opposed to just a few months ago, is to do nothing until the animal is determined to have or not have rabies.

So now we wait on Austin.

20 Sept 2017
 The Health Department called: positive for rabies. Now I need to get the rest of the rabies shots as well as something called immunoglobulin. In order to do that I have to find someone to administer the shots. The lady at the Health Department said that some doctors don't want to do it. So I called my doctor. This time the receptionist agreed she needed to consult someone so we're just waiting to hear back from the doctor. Whoever I can get to agree to administer the vaccinations, that person needs to write me a prescription which I take to the State Health Department office, get the vaccine, go back to that provider who will inject it. It strikes me as peculiar but then, I handle bats.