Clear Air
Undoubtedly inspired by the recent months of Canadian forest fires, Andrew Sullivan writes about his life-long battle with asthma in a review of the 2020 book Breath by James Nestor (with thanks to Josh Blumenthal for the suggestion):
Among my very first memories was struggling to catch a breath. Every spring in the Sussex [UK] woodlands I grew up around, the pollen descended like an invisible mist, and my lungs seized up. I’d be in my bed unable to lie down flat because if I did, the suffocation would overwhelm me. I would prop my head up on two pillows and try to sleep, my lungs wheezing back and forth like a battered accordion.
Sullivan describes the panic sensation that comes with the inability to breathe. The medical interventions over the years help him as he continues to fight for air against allergies. He learns of his own personal respiratory quirks. Meanwhile, Nestor’s book furnishes him a new interpretive framework for what to do:
For most people, however, the best remedy [to poor respiration] is simple: routinely inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. It’s a division of labor between your two [sinuses] — something that every child should be taught (and in some ancient cultures were). Yet we barely pay any attention to it.
Explanations for how we humans came to breathe the way we do range widely across the field of evolutionary biology. The explanations may or may not be true, of course, since the evidence is thin. For instance, we presume to know where our species started out, and we know where we now are. Archeology and the historical record have provided evidence of where our forebears were in the past. And evolutionary biology connects the bits of information with a neat story line. We love neat story lines—we’re a narrative species, after all.
Why? Because we evolved that way. What better explanation could there be?
Over in the comments on "Happy Birthday, America" (which was Jonah's solo Remnant on July 4--I recommend it; it's just slightly wonkish and decidedly inspiring) I got a lecture from a Charley Warns about property rights, in reply to my post about what the chief twit has done to mess up that place to which I do not log in. I gave a constructive (I hope) rebuttal.
Mr. Warns seems like somebody who knows a lot of things, but not quite everything, about individual rights. Lesson: even people who are more or less in our corner may still need education on the ins and outs of what they say they are for. At some point the simplified version of all that is not enough if one is going to stand up and advocate for principles. And that is one reason why I recommend that particular Remnant episode, because it's pretty much the opposite of a surface treatment of the real meaning of the American founding; it reveals important things in a way that makes one want to stand up and cheer.
I used to have asthma. I’m not really sure if that’s correct, though.
I’m not sure if asthma is something that goes away. If it isn’t, then it’s just been on the down-low for a really long time.
I still have memories of sitting on the couch while my Mom used this weird breathing-machine thing on me. It put out this weird white air, which I think helped prevent asthma attacks.