A man of letters

Letters from Pop pop, Dad, Grandma Jones, and a pre-pandemic pen pal

PAST

I have been writing letters since I was a wee lad. My earliest pen pals were my aunt Julie, who is my godmother, my Pop pop who is my paternal grandfather, and from the age of twelve, my step grandmother Lee Jones. Pop pop would typically write in his blocky print about daily life, books he was reading, and the dogs. My dad consistently wrote me letters, whether at camp, overseas, in college, or elsewhere, sending his love in short messages, on smallish pieces of paper, in his very small and controlled handwriting. Grandma Jones’ letters were often long, very thoughtful and introspective, in an elegant cursive of another time.

In the age of TikTok and soundbites, letter writing is a dying art form, if it isn’t already dead. It eludes me where when and how I learned to write letters. Perhaps I learned by example? But, there is a framework for it. First and foremost, an authentic letter, asks sincere questions, and attends to answering questions from a pen pal in a written response. Humor is welcome, as are insightful observations of daily life. Letters can be an opportunity to share details of one’s life which the recipient might not know to ask about on the phone or in-person conversation.

Especially for those of an introverted nature or for whom verbal expressions of affection are challenging, employing a letter can be an elegant manner of communication. Letters can serve to maintain a sense of connection to each other during long time periods and vast distances between meetings.

In a previous post, I wrote about how much I enjoy writing in cursive, in bold blue ink, and experience this as an immediate expression of my personality and soul. When I first visited France in 1986, spending three weeks with the Tardiveau family near Nantes, I learned that the patriarch Michel was a self-taught expert in handwriting analysis. In fact, he consulted from time to time with the French national police. Years later I showed him a letter from the object of my affection and was thrilled to learn that in her writing, he found an abundant and vivid sexual imagination.

Michel taught me that handwriting is akin to a fingerprint, although unlike a fingerprint, it can be analyzed to reveal a great deal about the person, including their gender, age, level of education, personality, physical and mental health. In the era of AI, ChatGPT, and computer algorithms, it may be that a person with Michel’s talents is no longer in demand.

I have come to view letters as a gift. Opening up the mailbox and finding something besides bills and junk mail, with the distinctive cursive of a familiar, gives me a brief trill of pleasure. In moments of loneliness, a letter can offer reassurance that we are loved. During periods of sadness and loss, they can offer consolation and perspective.

RECENT PAST

Before the pandemic, I corresponded with about fifteen people across Europe. I was able to make contact with these individuals through International Pen Friends (IPF). IPF is a nonprofit which for a small fee will connect you with at least ten pen pals internationally. I had pen pals in England, Scotland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Folded into the exercise of letter writing was both reading and writing in other languages, specifically Spanish and French.

There is some heterogeneity among those pen pals. They are men and women, gay, and straight, working and retired. There is a French bureaucrat, a Finnish financier, Norwegian and German school teachers, at least three nurses, a widow and a widower. Some live in big cities, one lives in a remote village off the coast of Scotland. Their political leanings range from diehard socialist to extreme libertarian. There are several union organizers in the group. Their ages range from mid-40s to the 80s. There is not one person in the group that didn’t get the Covid shots. And that is where things started to fall apart.

In my letters, as in my Substack, I am willing and interested to share some aspects of my private life, both as a form of artistic expression, and also as a manner of teaching. One of the things which I have in common with my partner, Dr. Pierre Kory in our practice at the Leading Edge Clinic, is that we are both educators at heart. It simply is impossible for me to write letters to someone about my daily life, and not share some details of my experience treating people with post acute sequelae of Covid (PASC) and injury from the Covid shots.

One of my favorite pen pals is/was a woman who grew up in former East Germany under communism, and has lived through the transition of German reunification. She understands what it means to live under an authoritarian regime, but also sees the downside of a market economy, in which universal security in the realm of childcare, healthcare, and food security has been undermined. Some of the strongest resistance to the government mandates on vaccination came from groups in former eastern Germany, and correctly, or not, these elements were quickly conflated with right wing extremism, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiment. I remember trying to share some details of this with an old friend who was born and raised in Germany, and his response was quick and simplistic. “I will never be associated with Germans who espouse a Nazi ethos.” Thus, in more than one country and more than one political party, the labeling of political leaders and movements as modern manifestations of the Nazi party is a reliable way to instill public fear and dismissal. In the United States, both the Democrats and the Republicans have each compared the other party’s presidential candidates to Hitler.

The consistent response of my diverse pen pals to the letters in which I shared my experience as a vaccine injured person and clinician who has helped care for more than 7,000 patients since February 2022, has been either patronizing correction of my misguided understanding, or silence. It is painful to have an understanding as a clinician about how to help people heal, listen to (read) them relating obvious signs/symptoms of PASC or vax injury, and have them ignore or deride my responses. In my mind, extensive clinical experience counts for something, but ultimately, it is insufficient to overcome the persistent and strategic brainwashing of the populations of the industrialized countries over the last four years.

Reconsidering my decision to give up correspondence with all of these pen pals, because I simply didn’t have the slack to continue the struggle, I realize that there was at least one person among them who heard what I had to say, and reflected upon his observations of PASC and vaccine injury among his own friends and colleagues. I would give him enormous credit for his intellectual curiosity, and personally, associate that with other character traits, including integrity, and courage. He has been a union organizer and leader; in his profession as a teacher, he has been a lifelong student of language. He has had an inherent interest in understanding not only the language of other cultures, but also the thought patterns behind those languages. I recently decided to write him back.

One of the challenges of correspondence is translating the handwriting of the other person. I have been accused of having handwriting as bad as a physician’s, and it has only deteriorated as I’ve gotten older. My mother and I write each other at least monthly, and God bless her, my mother doesn’t protest, and managing to read my cursive and get the gist of my message by context. I have noted that people who attended Catholic school have consistently better handwriting than those of us who attended public school. Understandably, there have been numerous penpals who eventually, politely, asked me if I could type my letters so they could actually understand them.

My reply to Dag:

Ithaca, October 20, 2024

Dear Dag,

Please accept my apologies for such a long absence in correspondence. In a manner, I feel like the mythical character Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep for 100 years and has been slowly awakening from a long slumber.

Did you and your wife end up traveling to Paris? Has the proxy war in the Ukraine prevented you from visiting your dacha in Russia? Is the Norwegian state department still cautioning against travel to Russia?

Kerrie and I have been trying to spend time outside on the weekends as the sunlight, dappled as it is in the forests, and the quiet of the woods is very healing. It surprises us that we can still discover many new jewels of nature after living in this part of New York for more than 24 years.

During these last years, Kerrie was furloughed from her work at the food co-op and this was an opportunity for her to focus on her stained glass work. She questions whether this makes sense as the art and craft of her work is little valued in modern times. I usually respond to her doubts by reminding her that in the darkest of times we need beauty and a reminder of our humanity, more than ever. Life is so precarious, we don’t know how many hours and days we have left, and if this is what gives her pleasure and meaning, then that is what she is meant to do.

You may remember that both Kerrie and I have been union organizers. She was instrumental in the first attempt to unionize the co-op in 2019. The management beat it back with illegal maneuvering and fear mongering. Recently the co-op workers voted to unionize and management took a far more passive approach. Perhaps they learned from the first pitched battle and didn’t want more negative publicity?

How is your teachers’ union faring? Is there adequate staffing and funding? I remember that during the trip I made to Sweden in Norway in 2019 we learned that teachers in both countries were resisting budget cuts and moves towards limiting the unions’ bargaining power.

I recently started a welding class. It is a first step towards learning more about repairing cars and a far cry from my daily work as a nurse practitioner. There are about fifteen people in the class, and we got to use acetylene torches on the first night. I managed to burn a hole in my sock! I told my cousin Danny about this (he is a welder), and he said “You should try holding the torch with your hands” (instead of your feet). Wise ass!

Kerrie and I are both injured by the Covid shots. Pfizer for me, Moderna for her. We take a crazy number of supplements and medications in addition to fasting, NIR sauna, HBOT, and we are healing, slowly.

Our sleep is restful, but the two colleagues you mentioned whose sleep was altered sound familiar. The spike has injured the pineal gland, which makes 5% of the melatonin in the brain and this impacts sleep. There is a fellow in Miami, Florida named Joe Dispenza, who leads meditation to heal the pineal gland. There are YouTube videos.

I recently started seeing a Norwegian athlete who is badly injured by the Covid shots. The medical system in Norway has utterly failed him. He was told that if he tried any alternative treatments, he would lose access to any care in Norway, and so he only had testing and oral steroids as he has become more disabled over the last three years. I find the lack of curiosity and scientific exploration stunning. Fortunately, I think that I can help him recover, even from a great distance. It’s just that he should be able to get help in his own country.

We are on edge as the presidential election approaches. Ithaca is an ultra liberal city, and never did I imagine that I would be so afraid of the blindly deferential citizens who so easily give up their minds and power. Nor did I expect the quick willingness to wish suffering and deny access to medical care if individuals do not agree to further Covid shots.

So, each weekday morning, I summon the mental, emotional and physical strength to go to my office and work to heal those injured by spike, both vax and unvaxed. I try to keep my attention out, noticing the beauty of our natural world and the little ways people resist. See photos of blooming Ozawa!

Warm regards,

Scott

P.S. The website/link for the references for Turtles All The Way Down is embedded here, and written out here: https://tinyurl.com/TurtlesBookEngRef. (Best to ask in the comments, rather than email me Margaret, as this information is useful to all readers).

P.S.S. The tentative date for our live book discussion of Turtles is Thursday November 14th from 7-9pm EST. I’ll share a link that week.

P.S.S.S. I hope to share a live conversation on Thursday October 24th from 7-9pm about all things Baobab with Jeff Tezak, CEO of Tiiga, an American distributor of Baobab from small community producers in Africa. We’ll be taking questions. I don’t yet have access to Substack’s live video tool and so we plan to use Riverside.fm. If we have technical glitches, I’ll post a recording of our discussion.