31 August 2015

Bizarre Pansy Creature


⚘ The bizarre pansy creature wishes you a happy new year (לשנה טובה). 📅

Nineteenth or Twentieth Century Roʼsh hash‐Shana greeting card in the collection of the Yeshiva University Museum. (Photograph apparently by the Center for Jewish History. Per their Web site: “This material may be used for personal, research and educational purposes only.” Per the corresponding page on Flickr: “No known copyright restrictions.”)

25 August 2015

Sciatica ideographs


These are the ideographs (three emoji characters and an Egyptian hieroglyph) that I used in my sciatica post, arranged like a comic strip to be read from left to right and lightheartedly portraying how my walking was affected by sciatic pain.

🚶 PEDESTRIAN
💥 COLLISION SYMBOL (here representing the sudden onset of pain)
😧 ANGUISHED FACE
𓀗 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH A019 (“bent man with cane,” “be infirm; old …”)

Graphic by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.
• The glyphs for the first three characters (🚶, 💥, 😧) are from the Twitter Emoji set, developed by Twitter with the Iconfactory, under a Creative Commons license.
• The glyph for the final character (𓀗) is from the open‐source Noto Sans Egyptian Hieroglyphs font, commissioned by Google, under the Apache License.

21 August 2015

Sciatica I have.

I regret to say that I’ve been diagnosed with another ailment. For the past two weeks, I have had pains in my hip and thigh that led to occasional difficulty walking. I also have some numbness and weakness of the muscles in that leg that led to my knee giving out and my falling into a sitting position on two occasions (on the 13th and 15th, both times while socializing in community organizations).

Sunday night and Monday morning, the pain was at its worst, almost unbearable. It had largely subsided by ten o’clock so I walked to the doctor’s office and was diagnosed with sciatica. My primary care physician’s associate told me how nerve pain is very persistent and how physical therapy doesn’t work for everyone and how they would talk to me about pain management if physical therapy didn’t work for me. Then I went home and looked at Wikipedia—not the most reliable source, I acknowledge—which gave a very different story: “Often all that is required is time and in about 90% of people the problem goes away in less than six weeks.”

Wednesday morning, I limped to the nearby radiology building for a spinal x‐ray, but that night and Thursday morning, I was nearly pain‐free and was able to socialize. I’ll be starting physical therapy next week, but I’m feeling pretty well as I write this; today, only a little pain has returned and it’s intermittent. I’ll keep folks informed should they be interested.

🚶 💥 😧 𓀗

03 August 2015

August


🖻 “A Heading for August,” headpiece by Wesley R. de Lappe in “St. Nicholas League,” St. Nicholas, Aug. 1904, 944. (In the public domain.) Internet Archive, Flickr.