I missed several events here locally due to sickness a couple of weeks ago. This time when nature intervened in my calendar, it didn’t completely derail events, just made them more interesting.
Cell & Gene Therapy Symposium / Vendor Show
This one-day trade show at the Friday Center in Chapel Hill was inspiring, in a practical and non-academic way. Did you know that multiple people have died from their treatments being contaminated with tuberculosis? I didn’t, but the FDA does, and they are very concerned about it. They just approved two treatments that could eventually be given to 100,000 African-Americans living with sickle-cell anemia. They want to get this right the first time.
The way they want to achieve this is not through simple testing of samples, which is a treat-it-when-you-find-it emergency room sort of mentality, but through a public health prevention model. Design a production process that makes contamination impossible (or at least much less likely) from the beginning of the bench research.
See PBS’s recent documentary series The Invisible Shield for more detail on the philosophy and history of public health, meaning how they came to see the world in terms of preventing problems rather than stoically / heroically cleaning them up.
The absolute best moment of the day for me was running into Megan Damico, who I knew a little bit from her time as a grad student at UNCG. She ran a program to help birds that had flown into windows on campus (they don’t always break their necks; sometimes they’re only stunned). Now she’s doing science policy and workforce development for the Biotech Center, funded by the North Carolina Sea Grant. Super-relevant to my ongoing efforts to reboot the departmental internship program, and until Thursday, I had no idea.
Rotary District 7690’s Annual Conference
At the last district conference in Charlotte, the gimmick was that two districts were collaborating. This year, it was Not Your Mama’s District Conference, in the tiny town of New Bern, North Carolina, a place I had never been. It is well outside our actual district, about three hours by car to the east, where the Neuse River runs into the Atlantic Ocean. Founded by this guy.
The Baron led a semi-charmed life, surviving:
yellow fever (which killed some of his household servants),
capture by the local Tuscorora tribe (who killed his traveling partner),
the burning of the town by that same tribe,
being hauled before the Assembly to answer for his actions,
and yellow fever again (which killed his current host, the governor of Virginia, Edward Hyde).
He never got rich but lived to the ripe old age of 82 — pretty impressive for the 18th century — while lots of people who listened to him and joined his schemes did not. According to Wikipedia, he was at least partially responsible for nearly 400 deaths.
See, now that’s interesting to me. A well-meaning but ambitious fool causes lots of trouble for other people. Wouldn’t that make a great theme for a Rotary conference? A cautionary example?
Wouldn’t that be fun?
You Look So Serious
That’s what our immediate past president’s mother said to me before the awards banquet on the last evening of the conference. “I am serious,” I replied, with an absolutely straight face, which I thought was funny. I also thought it was a real gut-buster that the only thing I could keep down at that moment was Pepsi Cola, which I never drink under any other circumstances. New Bern being the proud birthplace of Pepsi Cola, they conveniently had glass bottles of the stuff at the center of every banquet table.
The Cure to All Your Troubles at hersheystory.org
‘Pop Culture’: Patent Medicines Become Soda Drinks at centerforinquiry.org
Pharmacists claimed the added ingredients “made medicines taste so good, people wanted them, whether they needed them or not, and that’s how soft drinks evolved.”
I want to contrast the Baron above with Joseph Priestley, who:
discovered oxygen;
founded the Universalist Unitarian church;
with Benjamin Franklin, proposed the idea of the carbon cycle;
and also invented the first practical carbonation process for drinks in 1772.
So why does the town of New Bern celebrate the idiot Baron with a fiberglass bear sculpture and not a true hero of science and humanism like Joseph Priestley? His invention has undoubtedly made more money for them via Pepsi Cola than the non-existent silver mines that von Graffenried was obsessed with. The Chamber of Commerce should appreciate that.
And why am I being such a downer, anyway?
Well, They Tried to Kill Me
OK, that’s over-dramatic. But it was unpleasant, and not entirely my fault.
See, I’m from Kentucky, specifically Kentucky of the 1970s, when fish came in a can.
I do not have deep personal or cultural experience with shellfish. Sure, I’ve read about them in books. I know that you’re supposed to check them, to see if they’ve opened during cooking. But I was paying more attention to the table conversation than I was to the state of the adductor muscles in my mussels. And they were delicious! So I was probably a little too aggressive, and swallowed one that was under-done.
I spent that first Friday night of the conference throwing up at least a gallon of liquid, plus everything I had eaten that day, including the orange-flavored Italian flan-type dessert that I can’t remember the name of. Bright, bright orange. So bright.
That was a little rough, but nothing compared to that one time in India, when I spent four days rolling on the floor with stomach cramps.
So I was laughing ruefully at myself all that next day, while I was in a great breakout session, planning peace conferences for high school students, all high-minded and prosocial, while my gut gurgled and giggled at my presumption. I spent the afternoon napping instead of doing excursions (like the Nicholas Sparks book tour), and by the time the banquet rolled around and those Pepsi Colas appeared, I was extremely grateful for carbonation as an industrial process and primed for hilarity.
See, people kept apologizing to me. Oh, I’m so sorry you don’t feel well. As though they were in some way responsible for the situation.
Who Knows What is Good or Bad?
It reminded me of a famous Daoist parable, about a farmer who lives an eventful life (like the Baron), and his neighbor, who is continuously overcome with emotion at the farmer’s “good” and “bad” fortunes. Performative empathy. The wise farmer is always unmoved, and waits to see what will happen next.
I originally learned about this parable not from a TED talk but from a documentary about actor and comedian Bill Murray, who now lives largely in Charleston, South Carolina, where he owns a seafood restaurant and part of the local minor league baseball team.
It points out an early rant from Meatballs
Tripper: And even, and even if we win, if we win, HAH! Even if we win! Even if we play so far over our heads that our noses bleed for a week to ten days. Even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side of the field. Even if every man, woman and child held hands together and prayed for us to win, it just wouldn't matter, because all the really good looking girls would still go out with the guys from Mohawk cause they've got all the money! It just doesn't matter if we win or we lose. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!
The group: IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER...
and investigates the absurd and spontaneous things that Murray does with his time, now that he’s rich and famous and universally adored. Like showing up at some random person’s dinner party and doing their dishes. That’s classic Zen master behavior. Deeply generous, but also deeply confusing to the uninitiated.
Rotarians are deeply generous, deeply committed to doing good in the world. They also love their awards. I find that funny, but also a little bit nauseating. Just a little.
And therein lies the bigger joke.
Speaking of bacteria, my latest article is out in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine's Earth Day extravaganza.
https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/