Quarantined
and should NOT be used for any reason other than reading enjoyment |
- Personally
Like most American children of my generation, I lined up with my classmates in the mid-1950s to get the first vaccine for polio, which was causing 15,000 cases of paralysis and 1,900 deaths a year in the United States, mostly in children. Likewise, we lined up for the vaccine against smallpox, then still causes millions of deaths worldwide each year. I’ve continued to update my immunizations ever since, including a few exotic ones for National Geographic assignments abroad, among them vaccines for anthrax, rabies, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid, and yellow fever.
Having grown up in the shadow of polio (my mother was in an iron lung), and having made first-hand acquaintance with measles (I was part of the pre-vaccine peak year of 1958, along with 763,093 other young Americans), I’ve happily rolled up my sleeve for any vaccine recommended by my doctor and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with extra input for foreign travel from the CDC Yellow Book. I am deeply grateful to vaccines for keeping me alive and well, and also for helping me return from field trips as healthy as when I set out.
- My family
In 1949, my Mother contracted poliomyelitis; spending several months in the polio ward at Los Angeles General Hospital. I still remember her laying inside an iron lung, laying on her back, looking at the world through a mirror above her face.
At that time, little was known about how the disease was spread, and Jonas Salk hadn't yet developed a polio vaccine. The first three months, our entire family was quarantined. Every morning, every day, everything we had worn the previous day was washed in heavy chlorine bleach. While the clothes were being washed, all the floors were scrubbed and waxed. I remember putting on heavy cotton or woolen socks and 'ice skating' around the kitchen floor in an attempt to buff the floors to a high sheen.
After the floors were clean and sterile, we would open newspapers and lay them on the floor. We would put a couple of boxes of crayons on them and we would 'go to work'. We would look for stories and articles that were connected. We would solve crossword puzzles and what are called rebus puzzles. A rebus is a puzzle where you would add or subtract letters or pictures, trying for a final solution.
To help break the boredom, my father developed what we called the 'Travel Game'. Imagine that yesterday's game found us in, for example, Cairo, Egypt. Today, we throw a dart at our map of the world to find out where today's target will be. Let's say, for example, that today's target is London, England. We would have to figure out how we would get from Cairo to London; train, plane, or boat. Based on the mode of travel, we would have to plan our itinerary, with a list of each country we would traverse, and each major city we would visit. We would have to compute monetary exchange rates, languages spoken, and what type of clothes to carry, based on the current radio weather reports. We would have to determine what kind of food we might encounter, making up possible menus. We would then try to find recipes for some of the items on 'The Menu' and try to cook them for dinner that evening.
From this game, I learned to cook. I learned how to plan and how to make backup plans. I developed a voracious appetite for books and puzzles.
As an inventor, engineer, and cryptographer, I learned to solve puzzles which have helped me throughout my life.
I think that it is an important life lesson as well. When given a challenge, do you buckle under, or do you buckle down?
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