The 4th of July, another American holiday that has lost its way. Independence Day was designed to honor a government of, by, and for the people, not a system that serves the interests of the powerful few. When you vote, please cast your ballot not only as a personal choice for the present, but as a legacy left for the future. Thank you.
Today's walk was mostly refreshing. Two weeks ago, I came to a rather abrupt conclusion that my first molar, lower left, tooth number 19, was trying to kill me and it needed to go away. Nothing is easy anymore; one has to navigate a hyper-specialized and fragmented, bloated, multi-layered bureaucracy before the task at hand is accomplished. Instead of just paying a professional to do a straightforward job, you have to deal with a middleman, a coordinator, a pre-auth specialist, an evaluator, and an app interface. It is a completely exhausting shell game. However, on Thursday, I was able to get an oral surgeon’s evaluation on tooth #19, and within 2.5 hours, I was back in that very office, having my jaw numbed out and the tooth pulled. That was dental appointment number 4 in 9 days. I am currently in extraction recovery.
Yep, no tooth behind it either, and see that root canal post inside #19; that's about 20 years old, and that dental visit is a bizarre story in and of itself. Just a few days before that little installation, there was a late-night mission to extract two impacted wisdom teeth with reckless abandon. There was no hyper-specialized navigation, and there was no oral surgeon, just an intense Operation Midnight Forceps with a “family” dentist.
The dark shadow located directly under the body of the tooth, right in the "fork" where the roots split apart, is a furcation radiolucency. It indicates bone loss, which is typically caused by an infection originating from the tooth's nerve. This wasn't rocket science, but it took another 8 days of that multi-layered bureaucracy to get the thing out of my mouth. The entire process certainly amplified my relief once it was over.
Meanwhile, here are some photos taken on today's very quiet, very peaceful and mostly pain free walk.
Saturday, July 4th.
Acanthus mollis, commonly known as bear's breeches, sea dock, bear's foot plant, sea holly, gator plant or oyster plant.
There were a few female hummingbirds constantly chasing each other away. I didn't get more than a second or two of one landing on something for a photo.
Aquilegia × hybrida (columbine hybrids). Bred by crossing native columbines, they are famous for their upward- or outward-facing, star-like flowers and long, delicate nectar spurs.
This scene ended up altering much of the planned walk. Here I'm within just a few feet of where I was assaulted by an evil pine cone on April 26th. That is squirrel munched pomegranate on the asphalt and that indicated to me that today was a good day to swipe some pomegranates. The campus doesn't do anything with the fruit, only rats, racoons and squirrels take advantage.
I walked another 1/4 mile over to the botanical garden to see if any photo ops jumped out over there but was mostly thinking about how I might be able to gather and carry enough pomegranates back to my car to make it matter. The idea is to masticate the fruit for some juice. My car was parked 1/2 mile away from pomegranate row.
In the garden...
The house finch (Haemorhous mexicanus). House finches also apparently like pomegranates.
Nuttall's woodpecker (Picoides nuttallii) is a species of woodpecker named after naturalist Thomas Nuttall in 1843, because Thomas thought he was really that important. They are found in oak woodlands of California and are similar to the ladder-backed woodpecker in both genetics and appearance.
On my way back to the pomegranates, I started looking in campus trash cans for a convenient and hopefully relatively clean bag of some sort for my scoring some Punica granatum. I couldn't believe my luck, it even has a handle.
You put your faith in a hole like that?
You put your trust and your belief
Above your jaw, and no relief
Have I found
