Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV: From "Trek" to "Torchwood" (Part Seven: Conclusion)

Previous installments:
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Reviewing the Literature
Part Three: The Star Trek Universe (part one)
Part Four: The Star Trek Universe (part two)
Part Five: The Doctor Who Universe (part one)
Part Six: The Doctor Who Universe (part two)

CONCLUSION: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

"You cannot destroy an idea!  That future; I created it, and it's real!"

-         Benny Russell, "Far Beyond the Stars" (Behr)

In 1998 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine aired an episode called “Far Beyond the Stars” that transported us from the twenty-fourth century to the twentieth in a story about the power of the imagination.  This was a “fun” episode of Star Trek, one where the actors were able to parody themselves.  They also got to take off their makeup; alien became human again.  Human faces put on alien enemies, and they were still enemies, conquering imperialists turned policemen.  Human faces also put on alien friends, breaking down the wall between the fictional world of a space station and our own history, our own reality; stripping back the layers of spectacle to reveal what those of us critically engaging with sci-fi TV already knew: these are stories about us.  This was a story about a man named Benny, a Black American writer at a science fiction journal in 1950s New York City who writes a story about a space station.  He is writing about Deep Space Nine, and through his imagining it (and writing the story down), the station became a reality, with his words literally transforming into the actions taken in the universe we had come to know.

This was an incredibly complex, multi-layered story, at once looking critically at the racism of the United States and the exclusion/marginalization of people of color and women in science fiction writing (and perhaps science fiction television writing?), all while linking together the power of ideas, stories and the futures we create through them.  Quite bluntly, this was one of my favorite episodes of science fiction television, across franchises.  If any story I’ve ever seen embodied the idea that I started this project with (that our imaginings create our futures) it is this one; and powerfully so.  “You are the dreamer, and the dream” says Benjamin Sisko’s father/the mysterious street corner preacher (Behr), and we truly are always both.  We imagine the future we want to build, and we work toward bringing it into existence: through story, through activism, through teaching each other what matters about our past and present; and so we must imagine carefully and fully and critically.  You are the dreamer, and the dream.  It is this image that I want to leave you with.  It is this image, this idea, so eloquently put in this episode of DS9, which has changed forever how I view the stories I love.

In looking at where science fiction television was, how it represented people and the tactics chosen in story-telling, when I was a child watching Next Generation, in comparison to where it is now in Doctor Who and Torchwood (even with the missteps I see in the latest incarnations of both series) I am incredibly encouraged by the turn to more complex, nuanced, and “gray” storytelling.  There is immense potential in the model I see Davies using on DW and TW, and I hope the next generation of sci-fi TV writers takes it even further, pushing the boundaries into more structural critique and more explicitly re-centering marginalized people through their stories.  Indeed, if the response to characters of color being central, if still secondary, characters in the recent Hunger Games movie/book is any indication, there is much work left to do expunging the centrality and invisibility of Whiteness and overt racism in our communities.  I hope my analysis around the way Whiteness has functioned in TNG and Doctor Who will help others consider where the same is at work in their favorite stories (science fiction or otherwise), and that my analysis on the re-centering of stories will help us imagine more productive, justice-oriented ways to imagine and tell our stories.

This has been an incredibly personal journey for me, helping me to see both where my urgent sense of the need for social justice has in part come from, as well as some problematic ways of seeing and understanding the world that I internalized.  I hope it has been as productive for you, reader, as it was for me.  In exploring the political narratives of these shows I have attempted to put on display the way in which their stories  replicate and challenge kyriarchal structures of power, in the hopes that through understanding these dynamics fan-scholars can interrupt normative conversations in geek culture, teachers can liven up class discussion with examples of important issues played out for the students, and we can all encourage ourselves and each other (in whatever capacity) towards an ever more insightful critical media literacy that challenges the kyriarchal structures of power embedded in our fiction, our politics, our economic systems, and so on; because these narratives are indeed embedded in all facets of our social life, and they do contribute to the oppression of real people throughout the world.  We must resist.  From all sides, through all the means at our disposal, and particularly through those means wherein we ourselves have been most invested and wherein our talents lie.  For me, that is in stories.

“NO ONE WAY WORKS, it will take all of us

shoving at the thing from all sides

to bring it down”

-         Diane di Prima (Revolutionary Letter #8)

“Impermanent spirals embed themselves in asphalt, concrete, in dust. Slowly, slowly, they eat into the foundations of the structures of power. Deep transformations take time. Regeneration arises from decay. Si se puede! It can be done” (Starhawk)

Find my bibliography below the cut...

DIY: Treating Eczema Without a Doctor

As my husband and I are in the boat of: just barely paying our bills and still eating, and cannot afford health insurance, I have had to get creative over the years in treating health concerns that have come up.  I have become pretty excellent at internet research, keeping up a stock of herbal treatments, etc.  Sometimes, it was all for naught and we had to dig into our savings (when we had them), dig into our available credit lines, or borrow money from family to go to a doctor (or dentist) and get the treatment we needed.  We are both fortunate that such occurrences are rare as we are generally in good health and able-bodied.  That said, there have been a couple things that have really challenged me: UTIs and eczema.  In the case of UTIs I have more often than not treated them successfully at home and when that proved impossible their treatment is covered as "reproductive care" for people assigned female at birth under California's Family PACT and so I have been able to go to the doctor and get medication (I'm not talking about that here because it is a riskier thing to treat at home and my results have been spottier).

This latest bout of eczema, however, is not covered under such care, last I checked we made too much for Medi-Cal, and as it occurred around my eyes, specialist treatment was indicated.  Even accessing local resources such as UCB or UCSF would have taken a chunk of money we simply don't have.

Fortunately I was able to treat it at home by combining just about every frequent piece of treating at-home advice I found online.  Given how fucking awful eczema is, I thought I might share what finally worked for me here in the hopes that others might be able to treat theirs more quickly and with less hassle.  That said, I AM NOT A DOCTOR.  Your biochemistry might react differently to this regimen and you should always be tuned into just how severe your outbreak is and what you need to do for your own health and sanity.  It should also be noted that I had to treat this flare for about a month, with two periods of rapid improvement and a whole lot of stagnation in between them.  Caring for things like this at home is not necessarily easier, or better for you, it just is what it is and sometimes it's all we have.

OK, so here's what finally did it:

coconut oil (I used organic, virgin, unrefined coconut oil) (used liberally)
an herbal salve specially made for eczema and other similar skin conditions (used liberally)
another herbal salve, kind of used as an "all purpose" ointment in my house (used liberally)
hydrocortisone 1% (used 1x a day, sparingly) (steroids aren't great for long term use in general, and I would say you should ONLY use it when you're dealing with a temporary flare and not a chronic issue, you also have to be extremely careful with it around your eyes as steroids can cause major damage to your eye)
anti-histamine medication (taken as directed, I just got a generic type from Costco)
pro-biotics (taken as directed, I opted for dissolving wafers)
evening primrose oil (capsules) (taken as directed, you can find these wherever they sell nutritional/herbal supplements)

Rinsing the effected area with cool water and then applying the salves helped immensely, usually did this several times a day.  Cool compresses were a lifesaver when the outbreak started, I was about to rip my eyeballs out of their sockets until I started doing this; it was EXTREMELY effective in relieving the itching.  Unfortunately as soon as I took the compress off the itching was back, so I spent two days with a cool compress over my eyes (applying the salves several times a day as well).    After this rabid itching died down there was less of an itching but a major desire to scratch or rub the area anyway (and if you've ever had the kind I do, it feels so good and rewarding to scratch that you want to do it very, very badly), raised and thickened skin accompanied by very noticeable redness and swelling of the surrounding skin tissue.  It was in this state that I spent most of my time the past month.

Frustrated by this plateau in recovery, and a subsequent flare in itching and the spreading of the thickened/raised skin to my cheeks, I did more online research and this is when I added the evening primrose oil and coconut oil to the regimen - improvement from there was so marked that I have to recommend these two components very highly.  It could have been a coincidence, but I doubt it, adding them was a last-ditch effort to throw everything at the problem before a doctor.  It also might be one or the other of these, and I would say if you already have coconut oil in the house, try that before going out and purchasing evening primrose (or vice versa).  But after two days my skin is looking virtually normal again (though I can still feel the thick bumpiness, which is receding more slowly, and occasional itching) and I can tell that I'm on the way to long term recovery.

Until this major flare I was able to keep minor occurrences under control just with the two salves (particularly the one specifically for eczema) applied a couple times a day.  I will now be adding coconut oil to the combination.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful for someone else, this shit is AWFUL to deal with and finding a combination that works sure felt like a life-saver to me.  Prevention is of course good too, keeping your skin moisturized (moisturizing asap after washing skin is best), not taking boiling hot showers, and not scratching your skin excessively are all things to keep in mind.  In my experience scratching skin is the worst thing you can do; not the odd scratch here and there, but repeated scratching almost always produces a mini (or in this case major) flare for me.  I know too that there have been good results with oatmeal baths once a week if your eczema is the chronic and not flaring type.

Wishing you all the best of luck...

Update: A couple weeks later and everything is under control again.  I ran out of evening primrose oil capsules a few days ago and decided to see whether they were worth investing in again... OH YES.  My symptoms started coming back within a day, mildly, but there.  Bought some and started taking them, next day the symptoms were almost gone again.  You never know how herbal medicines will effect your body, but for me apparently, this is a HUGE help; so I would definitely recommend trying it.

Further update: A month from the original post and things continue to be basically under control, with minor flare ups dealt with easily and effectively with topical treatments and continued evening primrose oil use.  I discontinued using antihistamines about a week ago because after prolonged use they were making me really, really drowsy, all the time.  One further thing I have learned about using evening primrose oil is that it's been pretty important to take the pills regularly, 1000mg, three times a day.  When I have taken it sporadically I have gotten flare ups, but when I take it regularly, so that there is some in my system all day long (trying to space dosages fairly evenly, kinda like a birth control pill but more daily doses), I stay flare-free.

Further update: 6 weeks from the original post and my skin is back to normal.  I'm still taking evening primrose oil twice a day and applying the eczema salve on my eyelids at bed time, but that's it!  I did have a possibly related ailment pop up at the corners of my mouth - little cuts, mostly on one side, accompanied at first by skin irritation around them.  This was INCREDIBLY annoying, made it difficult to talk or eat as opening my mouth was painful (I had something similar happen at the corners of my eyes when my eczema outbreak was at it's worst) but I solved this with lots of my most basic lip balm constantly, my goes-on-everything salve and Neosporin twice a day.  I tried a few other things, but they didn't help much.  A couple days of this regime and the little cuts cleared up and haven't come back.

Further update: Four months later and I had another attack.  After discussing with the hubs we wondered if it might not be a mild pet allergy that has developed over the years or is being aggravated by something else, since it seemed to reoccur after our boycat had been laying against my face post-cat-bath.  On this suspicion I went out and got a small box of Claritin, since that is what an old roommate used to take effectively for her pet allergies.  I saw an immediate positive result, by the end of the day the itching had reduced significantly.  After four days the itching and redness and swelling of skin were all gone.  After two days NOT taking it, they came back.  And now that I've been on it again for two days, it's almost gone again.  I think we may have a winner!  And yes, on return I got generic and it's working fine.

More updating:  Three weeks into this treatment, it's confirmed, this type of antihistamine definitely works.  It works best in conjunction with Evening Primrose Oil.  Any time I stop taking either one for any length of time the symptoms start coming back.  I'm going to keep trying to stop taking the OTC antihistamine though, and only take it when I see symptoms start, as I don't want to be taking it just all the time, preferably.  But thank GOODNESS I finally figured this shit out and have a working attack plan!

Yet another update: almost a year later now and the main thing I have found is that these flares seem to be most related to suppressed stress.  The more I work on that, the fewer and milder they are.  So take note y'all.  If you are ignoring things that are stressing you out, you might want to look to that before anything else.

Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV: From "Trek" to "Torchwood" (Part Six: The Doctor Who Universe 2)

Previous installments:
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Reviewing the Literature
Part Three: The Star Trek Universe (part one)
Part Four: The Star Trek Universe (part two)
Part Five: The Doctor Who Universe (part one)

CHAPTER THREE: THE DOCTOR WHO UNIVERSE (part two)

Section Two: Torchwood  Does It All

Within the diegesis of the Doctor Who universe the Torchwood Institute was founded in response to Queen Victoria's interactions with The Doctor and her belief that England (or, as the fictional Queen Victoria puts it:  "the Empire") must have its own defense against the monsters from which The Doctor so often saves the world.  In time, the Torchwood Institute became quite powerful, using scavenged alien technology to create sometimes incredibly destructive weapons and operating branches out of England, Scotland, Wales and India (as well as one which is referred to simply as "missing").  This was a highly nationalistic organization, and it considers The Doctor an enemy of the state.  When Torchwood London is destroyed the Institute becomes decentralized and Torchwood Cardiff (Wales) is reformed by Captain Jack Harkness "in tribute" to The Doctor, instead of in defense of "the Empire.”  The television show Torchwood is based around the Cardiff branch under the leadership of Harkness, that rogue-made-good who so cunningly “disrupted the heteronormative binary” of Doctor Who.[1]

Both the decentralization of and the reformation away from imperialist project undergone by the Torchwood Institute are important elements of Davies’ creation in this series.  As I discussed in the last section, the framework Davies deployed on Doctor Who allowed him to center his stories around characters drawn from marginalized classes in a way that often undermined kyriarchal norms, but the emphasis on the individual did not leave much room for a structural critique of the social elements leading to the marginalization of those characters or their real world counterparts.  The destruction of Torchwood London was a direct consequence of its over-reaching power and the arrogance of its leaders, made all the more possible by its centralized and hierarchal organization, reminiscent of the organization of the British Empire that gave birth to it; thus demonstrating a contempt/critique of kyriarchal (particularly colonial) institutions. 

The decentralization that followed Torchwood London’s downfall scattered power amongst the other locations: facilitating increased local control over conduct and strategy.  In Cardiff, this decentralization means that the local Torchwood’s mission can change drastically, from an organization that treats aliens rather ruthlessly and their technology as resources to be exploited (also tropes of colonialism), into an Earth-side support system and backup for The Doctor (who is no longer branded an enemy) that attempts to protect the Earth from otherworldly dangers (which means always giving the threatening alien/ghost/fairy/etc. a chance to leave peacefully).

In this section I want to talk about the way in which Torchwood utilizes familiar genre tropes to perform a televisual disidentificatory practice, ultimately building to a discussion of its deployment of a structural critique in Children of Earth.  As I have demonstrated with Davies work on Doctor Who, Torchwood (re)deploys the familiar in unfamiliar ways.  By comforting us with familiar (and often problematic) genre/neoliberal tropes Torchwood is able to subvert mainstream ideas about community, partnership, sex and, most importantly in conjunction with the last section: put forward a critique of structural marginalization and oppression.  In addition, Torchwood queers what appears to be an otherwise normative masculine hero (Captain Jack Harkness).  As a useful juxtaposition, I demonstrate how Torchwood is effectively “the anti-24;”[2] in that Torchwood uses similar tropes and themes to dramatically different outcomes.  This juxtaposition came to my attention in Robin Redmon Wright’s essay: “Narratives from Popular Culture: Critical Implications for Adult Education” wherein she makes the claim that “Torchwood is a soap that offers a narrative of political morality that counters that of 24” (56), an argument that I build and expand upon as a way to exemplify Davies’ continuing strategy of utilizing/manipulating the normative to undercut the same.  One of the key ways Torchwood displays this counter-morality is by emphasizing the importance of the community (or, specifically, the team). 

Jose Muñoz’ theory of disidentification continues to be instructive and useful in this section because “disidentification is not an apolitical middle ground,” in fact, “its political agenda is clearly indebted to antiassimilationist thought,” although “it departs from antiassimilationist rhetoric for reasons that are both strategic and methodological” (18).  The distinctions Muñoz makes clear here are important to my own argument, which suggests that by embodying common tropes Torchwood is able to create new knowledges through a queer deployment of those tropes.  My work here, too, assumes no “apolitical middle ground” but a working on and with these common tropes to intervene in hegemonic understandings of heroism and difference.  Just as its plots deploy the uncanny to discomfort its viewership (Rawcliffe 102), so too do Torchwood’s “queer moments” disturb the waters of the kyriarchal sexual dichotomy (Sullivan 191).  Indeed, almost everything about Torchwood is queer, if by queer we mean unusual or strange and unsettling of norms.

Imagining Social Justice Through Sci-Fi TV: From "Trek" to "Torchwood" (Part Five: The Doctor Who Universe 1)

Previous installments:
Part One: Introduction
Part Two: Reviewing the Literature
Part Three: The Star Trek Universe (part one)
Part Four: The Star Trek Universe (part two)

CHAPTER THREE: THE DOCTOR WHO UNIVERSE (part one)

“I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that [The Doctor] is a man who always leaves. And when The Doctor does go, it’s the people who are left behind who have to pick up the pieces”
– Russel T. Davies (Frankel 56)

In this chapter I move from the United States-based Star Trek of the late 20^th century into the new millennium with United Kingdom-based Doctor Who.  As I said in my introduction, this is a document looking at the past as well as toward the future.  The Next Generation of my childhood is clearly in the past, science fiction television has become darker in both aesthetic and in storyline; it has become more morally ambiguous than TNG or even the “grayer” DS9.   But Doctor Who is still on the air, and Torchwood was recently able to produce a fourth season through a collaboration between the BBC and the US network Starz!.  What this means is that this universe is the dominant producer of new science fiction television stories, and thus the narratives produced by it are particularly meaningful for those who, like myself, desire to use them in our work (whether that be using specific episodes as teaching tools, or using them as an opening for critical political discussions within geek communities). 

Doctor Who and Torchwood also serve as good examples for utilizing contemporary hegemonic narratives in a “negotiated” (Chandler) way for fans to question, discuss and resist kyriarchal norms.  As I have stressed throughout, these spaces of imagination are ones wherein we (those engaged with such stories) can begin to envision what other worlds may look like.  While this universe is not, strictly, located in the future, it is a space of alternate presents, which serves a similar purpose in the social imaginary.  The question thus serving as the foundation for the work in this chapter is: “what stories is sci-fi TV imagining today?” and further, “what, then, is the world we are building towards through them?”  To answer these questions I attempt to thoroughly investigate the tropes, narratives and political meta-narratives of Doctor Who and Torchwood.  As with the last chapter, I take the perspective that these shows both reinforce and challenge kyriarchal norms.  In this case, I argue that they do so in a way reminiscent of Muñoz’ disidentification: working both on and against norms.

In the present day, ideologies of neoliberalism (Reaganism in the US, Thatcherism in the UK) have saturated our ways of seeing ourselves and our world.  In the US, the dominant rhetoric holds up ideas like “personal responsibility” and “colorblindness” as the epitome of what makes for a good person/citizen.  Critiques of representation on television are met with the dismissive assignment of “political correctness gone mad” (as if the worst racism/sexism etc., are guilty of is mere impoliteness).  We are supposedly “post-race” and “post-feminism.” But if you are reading this thesis, you probably already know these ideas aren’t accurate.  The work of Angela Davis, Naomi Klein, Lisa Duggan, Cynthia Enloe, Winona LaDuke, Ella Shohat, and the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence collective, just to name a few, all attest to the various dynamics of continuing systemic oppression that are at work in our prisons, economic systems, militaries/militarism, food systems, foreign policy and even within social justice activist circles. 

It is within the context of these dominant neoliberal narratives that science fiction television of today is being written, and changes in representation from Trek to Torchwood reflect that, as we will see below.  During the years in question in this work, Doctor Who aired on BBC 1 (the BBC’s flagship/most popular channel) in the UK, CBC (Canada’s domestic version of the BBC, both are public access channels) in Canada and the Sci-Fi Channel (a cable channel) starting with season two in the US.  Torchwood aired on BBC 3 for its first season, BBC 2 for its second and BBC 1 for Children of Earth, with ratings going up each season.  In the US, Torchwood was “BBC America’s biggest hit” during these years (Levin, Bowles and Gardner), with its latest season airing on Starz.  Additional viewership came via internet services like Netflix (which offers all of the seasons since 2005 after they have finished airing) that offer memberships for DVD and internet based viewing, and torrent (illegal download) services such as The Pirate Bay.  Through these various means, Doctor Who has achieved a loyal viewership and active fanbase pulling membership from around the world. 

It is this incarnation that I will engage with in this chapter because this project is about looking to both the past and the future, and given its popularity with both viewers and the company that produces it, Doctor Who and Torchwood are the future (or at least the present) of sci-fi television.  I am limiting the discussion solely to the Davies years to maintain symmetry with the Gene Roddenberry-headed Star Trek/Star Trek: TNG and because Davies has expressed consciousness of the politics of his work (Davies).  While political narratives are present whether producers self-consciously include them or not, this figure of the politically conscious man behind the show examined provides a neat theoretical parallel between the franchises.  

The first section of this chapter will tackle the political narratives of the “new” Doctor Who, that is, Doctor Who circa 2005.  I will argue here that the diegetic parameters of Davies’ stories necessitate a re-centering of these stories onto The Doctor’s companions.  Through this re-centering the implicit messages of these stories changes dramatically, moving away from the tokenistic representations of marginalized bodies on Trek to fully actualized hero-characters on Doctor Who; culminating in a meta-narrative that it is the everyday person (those from marginalized communities and not those from powerful sectors of society) who change/save the world.  Finally, I consider the limitations of this model: that although in making every day people his heroes, Davies’ stories are able to, at their best, resist ideologies of racism, classism, sexism and ageism, they also feed into a neoliberal logic that ignores the power of structures and institutions.

In the second section I examine the way in which Torchwood deploys similar story-telling techniques as Doctor Who to perform a disidentificatory practice and queer an otherwise normative masculine hero (Captain Jack Harkness).  Through this queering of the normative hero and genre tropes, I argue Torchwood can be conceived of as the anti-24, 24 being a US-based drama whose narratives uniformly defend the neoliberal/neoconservative-nationalist-kyriarchal order.  Finally, I contend that the powerful structural critique lacking on Doctor Who is deployed on Torchwood: Children of Earth.  In all these ways, I argue Davies manages to utilize neoliberal tropes in a way that critiques and partially resists the neoliberal kyriarchal order.

Where Do I Go From Here? On Work and Leisure and Life After Grad School

In the latest Slingshot! there is a piece called "Don't Work So Hard - redefining productivity" that really struck a chord with me.

The author basically makes the argument that capitalism structures our ideas of "productivity" and "leisure" and creates a binary system through the concepts of productivity/leisure that shapes the way we experience the world: through productive work and consumptive leisure.  Kermit wants to reject this framework and create their own, or at least "to take apart the tools of the system and use some of the pieces to build new tools for our own autonomous purposes."

In particular, the ending of this piece is what got me wanting to write out my reaction to it:

I want to experience the indulgent pleasure of a vacation and the accomplishment of a productive day at work every day. Rejecting the division between work and leisure necessitates the destruction of both. Work has already taken so much of our time, the projects that interest me are the ones that do not feel like drudgery.

This is largely how I felt about/experienced my work on my thesis (at least the last semester).  One of the things that was so pleasurable about that process was that because I did not have to work another job (and did not have classes to take), all of my time was structured around this one project, and this allowed me to wake up when I wanted, pick the times I wanted to work on it during the day, takes breaks when I wanted, and dedicate time away from it every day.  On the best days it was, for me, precisely what Kermit is talking about here; I experienced a productive days work and the feeling/knowledge of accomplishment that came with it alongside the indulgence of a vacation (sleeping in, organizing my day largely at will, having time to myself, watching television, etc.).  Like Kermit, I found I did need tools likes deadlines and collaborative work to structure my time and "force" me into productivity - tools of capitalism, for certain, but I saw them for what they were and have to acknowledge their necessity (for me).  But this largely WORKED.

Which is probably why, at least in part, it has been hard adjusting to the non-thesis-centered life I'm wading into now.  Job hunting is a whole other can of worms.  "Selling" myself to prospective employers or networking contacts is incredibly distasteful.  Worse, the question of what I "want to DO" has been hard to answer.  I can't help thinking that these things are related to what Kermit is talking about.  If I didn't have to "make a living" what I just did is what I would want to continue to do, while also branching out into projects outside of just writing/critical cultural analysis.  I have been feeling largely "blah" about this whole process, and not driven in general towards some big career, some passion that I absolutely know I want to do.  That's what this project was, and now I continually find myself saying "so now what?"  At the same time I very much want to work, because I want to be able to support (or at least contribute monetarily to) the household and ultimately allow for my husband to go to school as I did; with it being the whole of his "work" for a time.  It is a strange ambivalence, but I think I may be closer to an answer of its cause than I was before; hopefully that will lead me to a plan of action (soon).