Category: Life with Pratts

Tripledemic!

Sunday I was at a great science museum. Don’t take my word for it. A world famous chemist recommends the Museum of Science, Boston.

I was at the MOS with my sister, who works there, and her family. Mingling among the crowds I wore a new Powcom KN95 from Bona Fide Masks. It came off during lunch at a nearby Cheesecake Factory, and when I drove a niece and her beau to the airport.

Tuesday at the library I also wore a mask. Later, I watched the CBS Evening News.

In the middle of the night I started coughing. By noon today, Wednesday, my throat was sore and one of my ears ached. Despite the precaution of wearing a protective mask, I caught something, but it isn’t Covid.

I had a flu shot, so if that’s what it is, I’m doing a lot better than the last time I caught flu ten years ago. It feels like nothing more than a mild cold.

Sixty-Seven Minute Man at 67

I’ve finally returned to running for more than an hour straight. The pace isn’t what it was in my younger years, but I’m very pleased with being able to go the distance without ankle trouble. I’ve been carefully working my way back up to this since Daylight Saving Time.

Here’s a bit of what Jim Dawson says about “Sixty Minute Man” in his book, What Was the First Rock ‘N’ Roll Record: 30th Anniversary Edition, Updated and Revised.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947521969

Why important: It was the first raucous, bluesy R&B hit to cross over to the pop charts, the first shamelessly double-entendre pop it, and the first million-seller by a formative R&B vocal group.

Mem Drive and Mass Ave.

I first thought about mentioning my peripheral connections to MIT after reading this item in Technology Review at the end of June.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/29/1053303/how-mit-ended-up-on-memorial-drive/

My conversation this week with an MIT astrophysicist has nudged me into action. Did we discuss cosmic rays? Black holes at the center of galaxies? Or was the topic her particular area of expertise, the search for dark matter?

No, it was something quite Earthbound and mundane. A contractor had sent her to me for a reference.

Unknown to me for many years, when my family moved to Massachusetts, my father’s cousin Jane was at MIT, getting her PhD in Political Science.

Dr. Jane Pratt, 1943-2013

In the 70’s my father worked at the MIT Sloan School of Management for a few years. In the 80’s my twinster Jean worked at MIT while I was working at a nearby company named after MIT, founded by a couple of its grads. A friend who’s reading this is an MIT grad.