Brother in law’s visit. Doctors I trust. Cooking with gas.

20221026

One of the benefits of the coronavirus episode has been getting acquainted with the work of a number of outstanding physicians. The first change is that I am now on a vitamin regime.  I did not believe in them, but avoiding Covid made it worth the effort to take them. Perhaps as a result, I have not had my usual number of colds. I have not had strep throat for more than a year. I used to get it about twice a year. I also credit them with putting me onto hydroxychloroquine / ivermectin, which seems to have done the trick for two and a half years.

I read this morning from Robert Malone about the therapy that he is using for his gout, and that his wife takes for a horse riding injury. They use near infrared light therapy, which heats tissue fairly deep in your body. I have a bit of gout – much less in the year since I gave up alcohol. I'm going to research to see if I can find one of these devices can give it a try.

Oksana's brother Igor spent three days with us. He is a rugged, handsome guy about 50, 6 foot 2. He has spent his life in the industrial town of Svetlovodsk where Oksana was born. He's been reluctant to move, and has suffered a fate similar to workers in American in factory towns as they shut down. Losing jobs and bouncing from employer to employer.

He was trained as a glass blower and entered the workforce just about the time the Soviet Union collapsed. Like union men in the United States he has been reluctant to redefine what he does. He has videos on his smart phone of blowing glass. I'm not an expert in the field, but it strikes me that blowing glass by mouth through a long tube as you spin the molten glass is probably not the way that they do it anymore for high production glassmaking.

Be that as it may, he was able to spend three days with us, seeing his father as he lies on his sickbed and getting acquainted with our family.  Igor probably would have what would be called horrible political opinions had he formed them. However, Ukraine is a place that doesn’t force you to do so.  He is against the Russians and that's about it.

The way guys get to know guys is by doing something together. I suggested that he accompany the three kids and me to the Sunday farmers market. I carried Marianna and a backpack.  Igor brought his own backpack and we walked the mile and a quarter to the market. He helped negotiate the purchases.  Returning home he brought Marianna on his shoulders.

This accomplished a couple of guy things. I was able to demonstrate to Igor that I could carry her for that distance with no problem.  He was able to show a commitment to the family by carrying her back. We got everything we needed, which included beautiful broccoli and cauliflower, spinach, parsley, dill, farmers milk, cheese, and chicken for him to make plov. It is the Ukrainian version of a pilaf, a rice dish with spices, garlic and meat.

It tasted good. He made it with less meat than I would have. I can tell that this is a guy who knows how to live on a budget.

After a day of Igor's company. I suggested to Oksana that we really should make efforts to bring him closer to the family. He's a resourceful guy, and I'm not going to live forever. He would be useful to have around when I can no longer do stuff. To that end, I suggested that I take him down and show him our two unused dachas half a mile from home.  It might get him thinking about living here in the summer and maybe even building a house.

Oksana observed that he had never had any experience building houses. I countered that this is true of most men, but he's a guy who spent his life working with his hands. Most such men know how to pour concrete, lay brick and block and so on. We could certainly hire people for stuff he could not do.  To build a house here and live in it for free would improve his life and bring him closer to the family.

We finally got everything together for the butane stove. In a comedy of errors, I had received a message from the Nova Posta – that's our UPS – that I had a package waiting that would cost 912 hyrvnya. I hadn't ordered anything for that amount, but I thought I'd better go straighten it out.  I took Igor.

It turned out that I had misread something in the Ukrainian. It was the butane tank that I'd been waiting for! Igor put it on the back of Oksana's bicycle using our bungees.  We took it home and unwrapped it.  We hooked up the tank, regulator and stove.  All we needed was butane.

We had two hours before I had to pick up Zoriana from kindergarten, so I suggested that we go out and get it filled. We had to go to six gas stations before he found somebody that would do it. Here is where Igor and my perceptions of money differ. I told him I wanted to get it filled and if we had to bribe somebody $10 to get butane in that tank I wanted it to happen. So we found a place that would fill it. But Igor, unbeknownst to me, told him to fill only 10 liters out of the 27 it would hold. Cost was only about four dollars. His reasoning was the ten would be enough to cook for a long time. Why get more?

His different perspective doesn’t matter. Ten is enough for the time being. And now that we've got the thing working I'll be able to buy another tank, get it filled all the way up, and keep it out in the shed in case we face a prolonged electrical outage.

It was just in time. Last night we had a three-hour blackout just before dinner time and I was able to cook the casserole on the stove top. It's a bit of noodles overlaid with fish and béchamel sauce. I cooked the noodles made the sauce and then fried the fish and laid it in. It was a little bit different than oven baked, but just as good.

Sometimes you have to let guys be guys.  Going to buy the butane, I strapped the tank to the back of my bike.  Wrong.  Igor said it needed padding underneath.  He put it on his bike, doing it his way.  Just like buying only ten liters without asking me.  The same economizing mindset.

Speaking of letting guys be guys, I dropped this computer and broke off the headset jack inside the computer.  I was going to use a USB headset until I got around to getting it fixed.  Eddie told me he could take the old one out with tweezers.  I said I didn’t think so and told him to stick with his studying.  He ignored me, and by the time Marianna and I got back home he had it fixed.  What can I say?  “Thanks.  I’m impressed.  Now read your geography and biology.”

In other news, Putin is making nasty noises about Ukraine supposedly making a dirty bomb, or going to blow up the dam at Nova Kakhovka, above Kherson. We've heard enough bluster out of Putin over the years, especially this last year, to know that that's just noise. It's incredible to me that it got so much traction in the United States. Putin is playing a losing hand and all he can do at the moment seems to be bluff.

Speaking of bluffs, I see on Google Earth that Kherson sits on a bluff about 20 or 30 m above sea level.  The top of the water in the dam is 13 m above sea level. If they broke up the dam it would flood the low-lying areas on the east side of the river where the Russians are, but not Kherson. I don't think that they want to do that.

Other commentators like Bob Homans point out that if they blow up the dam it will cut off water for Crimea – this is their primary source – and the nuclear power plant will be without cooling water, adding to that disaster. I'm pretty sure that the Russians will do no more than sabotage the generators so that Ukraine can't use the hydropower

Russia is continuing to press the United Nations on the question of biolabs here in Ukraine. I wish them luck. I am sure that biolabs here are producing nothing good.  In my opinion they should be shut down. Zelensky owes a lot to Biden, and I think he feels obliged to be quiet on the subject until the war is over.

It is amazing to me how the people in the United States who have been so doggedly pro-Russian continue their support. They can lament only that Russia is doing such a poor job of it. This includes Mike Whitney, Pepe Escobar and Paul Craig Roberts, all of whom post on Unz. They seem to be absolutely blind to the atrocities that the Russian soldiers have committed and the fact that Ukrainians absolutely do not want to be Russian.  They continue to offer excuses for Russia's failures in the field.

It's a lesson in politics. Similar to how Democratic politicians can continue to rule in big cities in the United States despite failure after failure. I'm glad to have corruption I can live with.

Marianna enjoyed a twenty minute ride on daddy's shoulders as I dictated this into an Olympus handheld recorder.  It isn’t perfect – took an hour’s editing.  Here is the original transcription from my dictation, in case you are curious how this sausage is made.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where they say in Zoriana’s kindergarten that she is a model citizen – rather unlike the citizen we see at home.  Marianna is trying out her Terrible Twos act with Grandmother, and Eddie has a whole day to do his homework. I hope he's doing it. Oksana, having taught the last couple days is also taking a day off, and I'm going to work on my New Normal video after finishing this.

Graham