Jane Goodall was one of my earliest role models, and now she is gone.

The Jane Goodall Institute announced the primatologist’s death Wednesday in an Instagram post. According to the institute, Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a U.S. speaking tour.

Her discoveries “revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world,” the Institute said.

While living among chimpanzees in Africa decades ago, Goodall documented the animals using tools and doing other activities previously believed to be exclusive to humans, and also noted their distinct personalities. Her observations and subsequent magazine and documentary appearances in the 1960s transformed how the world perceived not only humans’ closest living biological relatives but also the emotional and social complexity of all animals, while propelling her into the public consciousness.

Yeah, the 1960s…that’s when I was soaking in National Geographic and the pop-sci magazines, and that’s where I learned about her.

Watching the world burn.

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I ignored my doctor’s advice yesterday — I’m so fed up with being trapped in my house that I decided I was going to put my knees to work and go for a careful, slow, easy walk. I did, and I feel fine, except that I’m more tired than I would have been three months ago. This is my new regimen: I do the series of light exercises my physical therapist recommended, then I take off on a short walk. I might as well; the alternative is that I sit at home for the next six months and then maybe I’ll get surgery.

I walked all the way to the Morris theater, then sat for 2 hours, and then walked back. Yay me!

I went to the movie, Honey Don’t. I knew nothing about it ahead of time, other than that it was directed by Ethan Coen, which was good enough for me. I was surprised to discover that, if I had to describe it in only two words, it was Lesbian Noir. Margaret Qualley was a tough talking detective, Honey O’Donahue, who wouldn’t put up with any nonsense and whose two goals were to find the murderer and to get laid…which she did. The clientele at our local theater usually favors movies about Jesus, but I think if any of them accidentally saw this one, they’d have a heart attack and thereby improve the climate of the town.

There were a few men starring in the movie, but they weren’t exactly sterling role models. Chris Evans was a sleazy preacher, drug dealer, and corrupt exploiter of his congregation. Charlie Day was a cop with the usual Charlie Day personality, always hitting on the detective hero and getting shot down. The women were all strong and forceful and working for good…and for fun in bed. All very noirish, but with the genders swapped.

It was…OK. It had the usual Coen touches of turning dark situations comedic, good dialogue, and the characters (and acting) were all good. Where it failed, though, was in the plotting. It was getting interesting, when abruptly one of the lead characters had a dramatic personality change, with no build up, to be revealed as the killer, and then bang-bang the story was resolved, mostly, and we end with Honey picking up a mysterious woman on a motorcycle. Other story lines just ended. It felt like the director decided they had some good sex scenes, never mind the detective story, let’s wrap it up and go home.

It was an hour and a half long, but it desperately need another half-hour of story somewhere in there.

Anyway, I got my exercise in, and that’s all I really wanted. A little movie on top of it would have been nice.

I was supposed to get surgery on my knee for a torn meniscus tomorrow. I wasn’t looking forward to the surgery itself, but to getting everything back on the path to healing. It’s been three goddamn months!

Then, this past weekend, I had a blood vessel pop in my eye. I immediately went in to the eye clinic, and they confirmed that yes, I had a broken blood vessel, and then to my dismay the hospital went on full alert: this could be a symptom of stroke, so I got blood tests, an electrochardiogram, a CT scan, etc. It was a long day. In the end, everything was fine, no signs of a stroke, the hospital could stand down, everyone relax.

Yesterday, the orthopedist called to cancel my knee surgery. I’m at elevated risk of a stroke, you know, so they’re not going to risk it (I commend their caution). Surgery cancelled, they’ll re-evaluate in six months. Maybe in nine moths. I asked my doctor what I’m supposed to do in the meantime, and she said to take it easy and maintain and consult with PT.

I’ve been thoroughly housebound for 3 months already, and have been taking it easy and maintaining and I met with PT yesterday. I guess I’ll continue sitting in a wheelchair and occasionally hobbling about with the aid of a cane, then.

Unless I stroke out and die, which could happen.

I want one of these right now.

This is especially urgent because our current, temporary evil cat knocked my camera down in the night and utterly destroyed a lens, and is now persona non grata, and may find herself kicked out of the house permanently. Fortunately, it was a cheap little pancake lens, but I haven’t yet evaluated any damage to the camera body. Right now I have to figure out how to lock her out of my office.

Although in my case it’s my knee that locks up, and it ends at two. Poor spiders.

I have arthroscopic surgery scheduled for the 26th of September. Hooray! I first went to this doctor in July, and he had hopes that I’d heal up with time — I guess that I was hobbling in on a cane and grimacing with every step told him that he’s going to have to poke holes in me and stitch something up.

Then he thinks I’ll need about two weeks of recovery time, unless they discover something horrible. I’ll try to be optimistic, but optimism isn’t working out so far.

When we got home from the clinic, there was another chrysalis just outside my door. Maybe that’s a promising sign?

My lower limbs have been making this sabbatical half-year hellish. First, there was an unexpected meniscus tear in my right knee; that pain is still there, a sharp needle in that one joint. Then my left knee started swelling up and protesting every time I bent it; that knee has been a weak point for a half century, and I think being more reliant on that leg made it protest more. Then I had a gout flare-up in the left foot, and those of you who’ve suffered one of those know how agonizing it can be. And now, this morning, I wake up to my right ankle experiencing a sharp grinding pain, like it’s going on strike in sympathy with the other joints. Basically everything below the hips hurts right now. I’m also going stir crazy, trapped in my office.

Two things are helping me keep my perspective.

First, years ago I was funded by a cancer training grant, which required me to attend weekly classes on cancer. Many of these were great and useful to me, when they were taught by molecular biologists, but every once in a while they’d bring in a cancer surgeon, which was a very different experience. Most memorable was the guy who had a patient with bone cancer in his lower limbs that spread up into his pelvis. To keep him alive, and to generate the most horrific series of slides I’ve ever seen, they cut him in half at the waist, threw out his legs and pelvis, and tied him off with a knot, where the tag end of his colon and a couple of ureters were left dangling, dripping into a plastic bag.

The happy part of the story is that he lived long enough afterwards to escort his daughter down the aisle at her wedding, which is all he wanted. Also, I’m left with some terrible images that tell me it could always be worse.

Second, I’ve always been kind of an anti-foot-fetishist. I’m a hand man. Feet have always seemed like ugly, malformed hands, so I’m most comfortable keeping them tucked away in a pair of shoes. My recent problems mean I’ve been shoeless most of the summer, and when I am getting up to shuffle around, my attention is often focused on my feet. I have started to seriously appreciate my toes. Really, they’ve evolved to spread out the load at the ends of my feet, and I see them doing an important job that has always been obscured by footwear. Then I notice that they also conform to the substrate — we didn’t evolve to walk on flat floors, but on more rugged ground, and there they spread out so that all five toes are in contact. Sometimes, when I’m trying to get from the bedroom to the bathroom, I look down and have to admire the job my toes are doing.

So I’m getting by. I have an appointment with my orthopedist tomorrow, and hope he can fix one or two of my problems.

Hey, have you noticed that no one is talking about NFTs anymore? It’s like they all just fell into a pit and everyone is embarrassed to say anything about them.

Can that happen to crypto and AI sometime soon?