Saturday, July 22, 2023

Taking it easy

As the effects of this mild concussion linger, I am respecting the advice of the medical profession and limiting both my screen time and those activities which require a lot of cognitive effort. Of course, after coming up on 19 years of continuous blogging, as many of you have probably come to expect, blogging is not a high cognitive load activity for the Grouse.

One thing that Great Doctor Internet agrees upon by now is that mild exercise actually benefits someone recovering from a concussion insofar as it stimulates blood flow to the old noggin. So I have gone out for short walks the last two days. 

Today took me to the trails around the public library. I have frankly not been a fan of the Town of Chapel Hill's tendency to sprinkle "art" throughout those woods: little quotes from poets, enormous musical instruments, etc. At times they have even elicited in me some affinity for the old saying "When I hear the word culture, that's when I reach for my revolver," which I always thought was a Joseph Goebbels quote but apparently deriving from some middling Nazi playwriter. In general I think that art whose primary patron is the State tends to be dreck, though obviously there are some exceptions.

At any rate, being in a mildly diminished cognitive state, I will confess that when I passed a quote from some poet on a waste-high plaque that was also rendered in braille, it did occur to me that for a blind person this was a rare treat indeed. And that kids on field trips would dig the big xylophones in the woods. As would their teachers, for 10-15 minutes at least. Until it was time to get back on the bus.

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