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I heard from Danae that she is sick today too; her symptoms make her think stomach flu. She probably got it from me, and I feel bad about that. I feel worse that I'm not in a position to dash down to Chicago and take care of her as she took care of me, though she says that it isn't hitting her as hard. I hope she feels better soon and am thinking of her.

I'm also a little concerned that my GI issues have not abated at all. I'm not processing food quite correctly I think, and am having dealing with the byproducts. I'm drinking lots of fluids to ensure I stay hydrated. I'm still getting worn out a lot more easily than usual, which I expect is a combination of that and not getting all the nutrition out of the foods I eat.

I've been avoiding yogurt since dairy can be harder to process, but maybe I should try some and see if that helps restore intestinal flora?

I went to work today, and that went pretty well though, as noted, I was finding myself getting easily tired. I forgot to bring my lunch, so I ate stuff from the cafeteria on campus. The food was remarkably uninspiring. Bleh.

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Earlier this morning, my stomach was making loud enough noises that one of the household cats sat staring at me on the bathroom floor.

My condition seems to be worse, and I stayed home again today where I've been largely sleeping and making the bathroom circuit. I feel like my innards are a game of labyrinth. When I get back to bed and lie down, gravity makes things roll around on the game board, and pretty soon I'm back to the bathroom so it can drop out the hole, so to speak.

Maybe it was overly ambitious to have hamburgers last night. I'm going to have to go shopping soon to get some more bland foods. And some Gatorade, 'cause I'm probably getting dehydrated or low on electrolytes again. I'm glad there's a Walgreens just a couple blocks from home.

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I have to note that I'm a bit annoyed with my youngest brother. I asked him whether he'd be willing to make a shopping trip for me since I'm feeling dehydrated and having a hard time being away from the toilet. I wouldn't hesitate to do that for him if he was sick. He doesn't want to do it though. "It's too cold." I'm frankly surprised and hurt.

Satin Sheets on Groupon!

Oh my; Groupon has full size satin sheet sets for $25. They have white, black, red, zebra, even purple leopard. *giggles* I don't need purple leopard satin sheets, but I do kind of want the red. And the black. And the white. I love satin! I have two sets of satin pillowcases (from Big!Lots) that make me happy! *sighs* But I probably don't need to buy satin sheets. Regular cotton ones would be more practical and last longer. Right?

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Well, that was easy. Only zebra and purple leopard spots are left. No more hard decision. *laughs*

Reading about Community, Success of Religiously-based Politics

I'm still reading Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone.

One of the points he makes about endemic civic disengagement and the collapse of mechanisms to create social capital is that there are a couple points of exception to this. One of those exceptions is in the form of evangelical religious movements. While less radical religious movements and secular groups in general are seeing across the board drops in participation, evangelical religious groups are maintaining and growing membership.

There seems to be an increasing dominance of mainstream conservative politics, as embodied in the Republican party, by this kind of religious fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Thinking about that in light of Putnam's causal analysis of nation wide disruption of social capital makes me wonder if there's something that more secular people like me who like the idea of fostering relationships among members of the general public that lead to mutual investment in society and government can do. Is there something we can learn from the success of religiously based conservative social organizations?

I look forward to getting to the last part of Putnam's book, where he says he's going to talk about some possible solutions to the problems he's been outlining and analyzing. I can also see myself using this book in a lot of potential future work of my own. I'm reading a library copy, but I'm going to pick it up used on Amazon for future reference.

Bowling Alone also makes me think about Peter Lovenheim's In the Neighborhood. It's about about how a group of physically proximate people, the inhabitants of a given neighborhood, lack connections between each other. The lack of community within the community. I see it as a small-scale, individual example of what Putnam is examining on the scale of the nation. Lovenheim wonders some of the same things that Putnam does: where has the sense of community that we associate with the past gone? How could it be restored?

This is a body of literature that is personally meaningful to me; I've conjectured that one of the reasons I'm drawn to anthropology is a sense that I haven't ever understood other people. In the same way, I think I'm drawn to the idea of community (to use the term loosely) because I've never felt very much a part of one. Putnam and Lovenheim make me wonder how many more people feel the same way? When I've talked before about my academic interests, I've talked about investigating community. Seeing how it changes through time in a given city, or seeing whether technology like the internet causes it to become unfixed in place. Putnam's argument, though it's over ten years old at this point, would seem to be that it's not just unfixed; it's dissolving.

Once I'm through the book, I'm going to see if Putnam has written any updates since his book's publication in 2001. And I think I'll look around for other components of this body of literature on community. As I noted, I've had interests in this direction for a while, and I want to explore more.

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I made the trip to Walgreens for crackers and stuff. And my mother happened to be going out to the store a little bit ago, so I asked her to pick up some yogurt and bananas for me. Hopefully that will help. Walgreens has Cadbury Creme Eggs out for Easter already. I still have two more of the Halloween "Screme Eggs" left in my fridge, so I think that's a win. I'm not quite sure what I've won, but I do love Cadbury Creme Eggs....