Mark's Blog About Nothing

Clay Feet

2011-06-03T08:08:00.001-07:00

At the age of five in 1957, I discovered the game of baseball. How I came by this discovery I’m not quite sure. I was an only child so no older brother introduced me. My father (I learned years later after his death), described himself as the last kid chosen when sides were chosen and was the kid everyone argued the other team had to take. As a result, he had no interest in the game. I’m guessing it had to do with the presence of baseball on TV and maybe the influence of my friends. Living right outside of New York City, it came as no surprise that my affections should settle onto the New York Yankees. The Yankees of that period were in the middle of the greatest run of any baseball team in history. Between 1949 and 1964, they appeared in the World Series fourteen times, winning ten of them. It was very easy to root for them.

Having become a Yankees fan, my fondest affections settled on their best player, Mickey Mantle. There was something so right about Mickey from the number 7 on his back to the monstrous home runs that he hit from both sides of the plate. Whenever I would catch a game or part of a game on TV, all I lived for was Mickey’s at bats. If he got a hit I was thrilled but if he made an out, especially if it was a strike out, I was crushed. The outcome of the game was almost secondary to what Mickey did at the plate.

I’m not sure when I read the first biography of him but I’m quite sure it was a children’s book about him that I got out of the library. I gobbled up everything I could find about him. I learned about his hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma, his osteomyelitis in high school, his knee injury in the 1951 World Series and all the other details of his life and career. I studied his batting style and could imitate it. I began swinging imaginary bats both right and left-handed so I could be like my hero.

At the time, my friends and I did not understand why he batted left-handed so often (more right-handed pitchers) because he was obviously a better hitter right-handed. We would rail at him when he failed to live up to our expectations, especially batting left-handed. But at the end of the day, we forgave him and loved him with the idol-worship that only young boys have for the sports heroes.

I bought my first pack of baseball cards in 1960. (Don’t get me started on what became of them. That’s still a very sore subject.) I remember the ecstasy when I opened the pack and found a Mickey Mantle card! Talk about a card I would NEVER have endangered in a card-flipping competition. It was also the first year I ever went to a baseball game. My father and I went to Yankee Stadium and saw the Detroit Tigers and Yankees go into extra-innings with Johnny Blanchard winning the game with a single in the bottom of the fourteenth. But it all paled by comparison to seeing Mickey Mantle in the flesh. Sure, he was a distant figure from where we were sitting but it was still HIM! I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember what he did that day.

The next year, 1961, the Yankees were the greatest team I have ever seen play baseball. More important, it was the year of the epic battle between Mickey and his teammate Roger Maris for who would surpass Babe Ruth’s single-season home run total of 60. That summer at camp, my best friend and I made believe we were Mickey and Roger (guess who I was) when we played our whiffle-ball version of Home Run Derby (if it’s not a home run it’s an out). I knew all about Mickey’s many career injuries and I was devastated when in September, he had to drop out of the race because of a wound on his hip. The Yankees winning the World Series in five games was almost an after-thought after that season.

As the years passed, I knew I was getting older but somehow I could never believe that my hero was aging, too. Oh, sure, there were more injuries and more home runs and I realized that he couldn’t run as fast or throw as hard. But, hey, it was still The Mick, my hero! How could he be slowing down? Even when the Yankees had to move him to first base because he could barely run, he was still Superman…at least to me.

I’m not sure when I first learned that my hero might have had a drinking problem. I can’t actually remember ah ah-ha moment when all of a sudden the blinders fell from my eyes. It was more of a gradual process. But what did that matter? He still gave it 100% on the field. It was only later that I would learn about the days showing up so hung over that he could barely play. But he was STILL my hero.

After Mickey retired, my parents bought tickets for my dad and me to go to Mickey Mantle Day in 1969. Every time I see pictures or films of that day I swell a little with pride that I was one of those fans in the ballpark honoring MY hero. And for years afterwards I’d go to Old Timer’s Day just to be able to see Mickey on the field again.

It was in the 1980s when baseball and I had moved on from our innocence when I realized just how much of a problem Mickey had with alcohol. It was after Mickey Mantle’s restaurant opened in New York. Don Imus, who had the morning radio show on WNBC-AM, repeatedly referred to Mickey’s table where Mickey was drunk under it. (As it turns out Imus was no one to talk, being an alcoholic and drug user himself.) But I could no longer deny the truth that the man I idolized suffered from alcoholism and probably had throughout his career.

And when Mickey finally sobered up but had to receive a liver transplant after having destroyed his own from drinking, I had a crisis of conscience. How could I continue to love this man who had proven so fallible? How could I have defended him to friends and acquaintances as being the best player in baseball? Was there something wrong with me that I rooted for such a flawed individual? And when Mickey, in the last few weeks of his life, came clean and warned kids to use him as an example of what not to be, I had my answer. He was and would always be my idol, clay feet and all.

What prompted me to write this is that I just finished reading Jane Leavy’s biography of Mickey, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood. I have read as many biographies of Mickey Mantle as I could find. This one was very tough to read. Not only is it the most honest about Mickey’s failings as a player and a person but it traces his life through its end. While it conveys the many successes of his career, it shows him to be the flawed genius that he was. When I finished reading it I had tears in my eyes.

I have come to accept the fact that the man I have idolized from early childhood and who will always be at the apex of my pantheon of heroes was a very flawed individual. That doesn’t alter how I felt and still feel about him. If anything, his humanness makes him even more endearing to me. If I can grieve that had he taken better care of himself he might have had even greater successes and achieved even greater heights, I can rejoice in what he accomplished despite his flaws. In his poem, The Art of Catching Trains, Rod McKuen has says “Small boys need encouragement. The freight trains in their minds will only take them just so far. Be kind, for small boys need to grow.” This small boy did grow. But there will always be a special place in my heart for number 7. He will always be the golden-boy centerfielder who could do no wrong and will always be young and strong in my mind’s eye.

Losing My Religion; or Why I'm an Atheist

2011-05-14T17:31:00.001-07:00

“That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight losing my religion.” – R.E.M.

I make no bones about the fact that I am an atheist. I am not agnostic. Agnostics believe in the existence of some sort of deity or over-arching creator and/or controlling force in the universe. No. I am what used to be described as a secular humanist and believe that the universe functions all on it's own with certain immutable scientific laws all of which are amenable to objective proof a/k/a the scientific method.

To give the background context, I am the child of Jewish parents. I was brought up in the Jewish faith (at least they tried). I was subjected to five years of Hebrew School (two hours two days a week after regular school plus two hours on Sunday mornings) along with all the stress on attending Saturday morning services, either upstairs with the adults or junior congregation. Hoo-boy did I resent those six extra hours a week along with the extra school work for which I was held responsible. This was made even worse by the fact that the Catholic kids got time off from regular school every Wednesday afternoon to go to catechism class. But my reasons for losing the faith really did not relate to the extra burden of work. It was deeper and predated Hebrew School

One of the first books I had was a little Jewish prayer book for kids, I suspect from my maternal grandfather. In it, there was a stylized picture of e good lord (which flew in the face of the 10 Commandments thing about graven images, but I digress). It showed an old bearded man. From the time I was old enough to understand the concept of the Judeo-Christian deity, I was taught that He was all powerful and omniscient and perfect. Well if He was all powerful, why couldn't he make Himself look like a young guy? When I asked that question, my grandfather told me I was being disrespectful. I was somewhat chastened by that answer but I also noticed that I had not received an answer to the question I had asked.

The second thing that the prayer book did was it taught me the prayer to say every night before I went to sleep. For years, I said that prayer as I lay down to go night night with my stuffed bunny rabbit. Then, one night, it occurred to me to wonder what would happen if I DIDN'T say my prayer. So I skipped it one night, laid down with Bunny...and woke up the next morning feeling NO worse for wear. That was the end of worrying about saying my prayer before going to sleep. When my mother asked me about it I just said I didn't need to say it anymore. She had no good answer other than that I SHOULD keep doing it. No explanation why, just that I should.

Early in my Hebrew School ordeal, I asked the following question. "Why did God speak to people in the bible then suddenly he stopped talking to people?" The answer from my teacher was something along the lines of, "Well, because those were biblical times." When I persisted in attempting to get an explanation of what that meant, I got sent to the principal's office for showing a lack of due respect. That was compounded by the fact that my mother worked for the synagogue so I was in double immediate deep kimchee. (Years later when I heard George Carlin talking about Catholic school and getting answers along the lines of "Well, it's a mystery," I was reminded of this incident. As he put it they made questioners out of them and it made them lose the faith.)

So I was well on my way to losing the faith by the time of my bar-mitzvah. The important thing about passing that milestone was that it meant the end of Hebrew School. When my mother made the hideous suggestion that I continue with Hebrew high school, it was one of the VERY few times my father ever said no to her after I had already expressed my vehement opposition. Hebrew School was like hitting myself in the head with a hammer. It felt so good when I stopped.

I knew that I could not possibly buy into the whole story of Jesus from the virgin birth right through the whole resurrection so Christianity held no attraction for me. Judaism, at least, made some objective sense in that, other than the whole God thing, most things had some reasonable basis. I continued to think of myself as a Jew. Before we got married, my wife converted to Judaism and we were married by a rabbi. Part of that was sheer cowardice on my part in not standing up to my parents and insisting on a civil ceremony. When our daughter was born, we had her named in a Jewish ceremony. But we raised her with an awareness of both religious traditions. We told her that religion was her choice and when she got old enough she could decide for herself. We had a Christmas tree at the same time we lit the candles for Channukah. (And, yes, it's always been a Christmas tree, not a Channukah bush.)

My father had died when I was in high school and for a year, I went to services at least once a week to say Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead). I didn't believe in what I was doing but I felt guilty to NOT do it. When that year ended, I basically had had it with going to services. My mother remarried when I was a college freshman and the family into which she married was very into Judaism. I just could never feel a part of the scene and the alienation increased. Not only was I the one who had lost the faith, I had even married someone who was not born into the faith. Subtly, I always felt like the black sheep.

I'm not sure where I drifted into flat-out atheism but I went through a period where I experimented with Zen. What I liked (and still like) about Zen is that it is independent of belief in a deity although belief in gods is part, hence my having drifted away from it.

I think the final recognition of my total loss of faith came when I was watching an episode of Carl Sagan's classic TV series "Cosmos." In one episode, he said, "We are all star stuff." When I understood that he meant that everything around us with the exception of hydrogen and helium had been created in the hearts of now dead stars, I was blown away. That answered the question for me as to where did I come from. At some point every atom that is "me" was created by the cataclysm of a star exploding. There was the scientific explanation...and there was the final rupture for me and religion. I had become a secular humanist.

Since then, I have recognized that the universe works by immutable laws. Whether or not the Big Bang is actually the scientific explanation for how the universe began, there is a scientific explanation for everything around us. I don't understand mathematics beyond one and one making two, so I can't prove these things myself. But I have learned enough about cosmology to understand the nature of the laws of the universe. I have learned enough about quantum mechanics to understand that Einstein was wrong when he said that god does not shoot craps with the universe. He was wrong in that quantum mechanics teaches that at the sub-atomic level, random chance operates. If we accept the omniscient and perfect god of Judeo-Christian belief, random chance has no place because he has predetermined everything. Sorry. Nils Bohr, yes; magic sky-person, no.

I find Richard Dawkins to be most illuminating. His book “The God Delusion” has provided me with another favorite quote. “We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” If a person believes in any particular deity, whether it be Odin, God/Allah, Vishnu, Zool, he or she, by definition, rejects all other god-beings. Therefore, everyone is atheistic about all those other gods.

If we accept the concept taught in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition that God/Allah is a perfect being, I have several questions. Why did a perfect being find it necessary to create something? If a being is perfect unto itself, it should have no need to create anything. Next question. If said being is perfect, how could Satan have rebelled against him? Rebellion implies displeasure and how can a perfect being do anything except be perfect? Finally, if a being is perfect, why does it need prayer from its creations? And a related issue to that last question is how can a perfect being get mad? Oh, and on the subject of creation, it implies a beginning and an end which flies in the face of the everlasting and always was god being.

I touched on quantum theory earlier. The basis of quantum theory is randomness. Accepting that, there is no way for a being to know everything that is going to happen where everything is subject to random behavior. This explains why a pair of literally identical twins, raised with identical experiences will still turn out different. Random behavior at the sub-atomic level will, inevitably cause a divergence at the microscopic level which will eventually translate to the macro level.

I also believe that humans are only one of many sentient species in the universe. It is estimated that there are as many as 200 billion galaxies in the known universe. Each galaxy has between 10 and 200 million stars. Who knows how many planets orbit all those stars. But, to me, it is inconceivable that we here on our little spaceship earth are the only beings who happened to have a planet that was just right for life to evolve. (Yes, I said it. I also believe in evolution.) Therefore, unless every single sentient race is identical to humans down to the molecular level, how could we have been created in god’s image? It’s impossible to prove, but statistically it just does not wash.

Now, having said all this, I do not begrudge anybody their individual beliefs. To try and force my lack of belief on them is as unacceptable as it is when I find believers trying to force their religious convictions on me. Belief or lack thereof is an intensely personal thing. I may disagree with your belief but I will fight for your right to practice what you believe as long as such belief does not impinge on me or the government. I take the Establishment Clause very seriously and recognize that it protects atheists as much as Jews, Christians of all types and all the other religions out there.

So there it is. These are the reasons for my atheism. It started with my asking questions for which no reasonable answer could be provided. When I began comparing the ideas of simply “believing” or “having faith” with the logic of science, science won out hands down. And I don’t apologize for it any more than I expect you to apologize for your own belief. We are all passengers on spaceship earth. Peace.

Owning a Cat is an Oxymoron

2011-05-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

“Once was a time, in New York's jungle in a tree, before I went into the world in search of other kinds of love, nobody owned me but a cat named Sloopy.” – Rod McKuen, “A Cat Named Sloopy”

The first pet my wife and I ever owned as a married couple was a cat named Gremlin. Actually, his full name was Gremlin Meshugina Kittums. (For those of you not fluent in Yiddish, “Meshugina” means crazy.) With only two breaks, we have always been owned by at least one cat. Notice I said that we have been owned by cats. I first encountered that concept in Rod McKuen’s poem quoted above. (By the way, the full text can be found here: http://www.why-not.com/cats/sloopy.htm and on his album “At Carnegie Hall.”) But until I finally lived with a cat, I never really understood it. You may buy or acquire a cat by other means but it is the cat that chooses who it will own. An axiom is that “Dogs have owners; cats have staff.” And once you accept the fact that you are a life support system for the cat that owns you, you have truly understood life with a cat.

I came to be a cat person quite accidentally. The extent of my pets while growing up was a couple of turtles and a couple of goldfish. We lived in an apartment house and the excuse was always we didn’t have the room. I was also aware that my parents actively disliked cats. I recall my mother disparaging them and my father once kicking one at my uncle’s house that sprang out of nowhere to attack his foot. My fraternity decided to adopt a stray named Ralph with only two dissenting votes, mine being one of them. As the medical bills piled up, those two dissenting votes proved to be prescient.

So, it came as a bit of a surprise, when we acquired Gremlin that he became a source of unending amusement. He had two favorite activities. The first involved the cocker spaniel we also acquired. He would lay in a chair in the living room. When the spaniel walked past, he would leap, wrap his fore paws around her hind paws, tackle her, then bolt. The second was the result of the apartment’s architecture and shag carpet of the 70s. It was a two-floor apartment and the steps were open with no risers and were carpeted. Gremlin would latch onto the carpeting and climb up the underside of the steps, emerging through the one at the top, run down and start the process again. Unfortunately, when we moved from California, we had to leave him behind.

Our daughter Sara’s first cat was a gray long-haired female kitten that we named Kitty because that was a word she could say at the time. Kitty was one of the few we ever bought. She was also one of the sweetest cats we ever had. We have pictures of Sara carrying her by holding her around the neck. The poor animal’s eyes are bugging out and her tongue is hanging out but she never once scratched her. She was also the first cat that took ownership of me. I didn’t recognize it as such because it was an unfamiliar concept, despite having known McKuen’s poem for years. She would wait until I was sitting in a comfy chair or on the couch and drape herself over my shoulders, purring happily. She may have been Sara’s cat but I was her person.

Kitty had died not too long after we moved in with my in-laws while I went to grad school. My in-laws had a black, long-hair named Itsy-Bitsy whose name was shortened to Bitsy because it was easier for Sara to say as a toddler. It amused me that Bitsy seemed to be wherever I was. I still did not understand the concept of being owned by a cat. After we moved to West Virginia, we were without a cat because our landlord would not allow us to have any pets. But whenever we came home, there was Bitsy, attaching herself to me wherever I was. It was a source of never-ending wonder and surprise because I still did not picture myself as a cat person.

When we returned from WV, one of our first acquisitions was a condo and a Himalayan female that we named Kaitu (Like the Himalayan mountain, K-2… get it?). For whatever reason, she took an active dislike to Joy. She didn’t last long and she never really fit in.

There followed several less memorable cats and then came NoNuts. NoNuts was a fairly good-sized buff-colored longhair male who my mother-in-law had acquired. She never really seemed to settle on a name for him alternately calling him Buffy, Tuffy, Scruffy, Muffy or names of a similar sound. They decided to have him neutered and dropped him at the vet the day they were leaving for Florida for the winter. They told us to pick him up and keep him for the winter and they’d take him back when they came back north. As a joke, we started calling him NoNuts, for obvious reasons. By the time they returned from Florida, he only answered to that name and he would not let them anywhere near him. so NoNuts became our cat, one of the very few males we ever owned.

NoNuts was a tough guy who preferred spending time outside but he also took ownership of Joy and was devoted to her. When we moved to a new house, he went out one day and never came home. We were devastated because we had lost three other cats in a similar manner shortly before that. When we were finally able to sell our old house, the night before the closing, we did a walk-through. From the back yard I heard a cat crying. I opened the door and in walked the scrawniest, filthiest, skinniest version of NoNuts you can imagine, with one paw stuck through his flea collar. He had gone out that day and gone where he thought home was. He had lost about half of his weight and had existed by eating the small frogs around the swimming pool. About a thousand dollars in vet bills later, he had become the golden cat. But he was home with us. He stayed with us until he was over nineteen years old, apparently healthy right up to the point where he was suddenly unable to care for himself. We let him go and allowed him to be put down because it was his time. We, especially my wife still miss him.

To me, the gold standard in cats was Butter. We adopted her from the vet. She was a long-haired gray kitten. On our way home in the car, she lay like a lump in my wife’s lap. As soon as we got her into the house, she ran for the darkest corner of the kitchen and would not come out. We left her alone and put out a dish with food and water. Eventually she came out. We were unsure of what to name her but I settled on Feather. That was until she got comfortable around us. She was one of those cats who would repeatedly and strongly butt her head against your hand until you pet her. Thus, the name Butter. The week we got her, my wife had to suddenly go to Florida because her mother was hospitalized. She was gone for almost a month. In that time, Butter started sleeping next to me and attached herself to (well, took ownership of) me. She would drape herself over the computer monitor when I was sitting at the computer and would let one paw hang down in front of the screen. Sometimes, she would crawl into my lap and refuse to leave while I sat at the keyboard. She was one of the cats that went out one day and never came home. I still miss her.

We had three cats that came from one litter: Pyscho, a long-haired black, female, Tribble, a tuxedo-colored short-haired male and Trouble, an almost identical slightly smaller female. Psycho was laid-back and gentle once she grew up. She earned her name as a kitten by climbing the drapes and walking along the curtain rod and by laying on the top edge of a doorway to the half-bath off the family room. Trouble and Tribble wound up being renamed Baby Boy and Baby Girl because we kept mixing up their names. They were just sweet cats. Psycho was also unique in that she was allergic to her own cat dander and had a constantly runny nose. All three of them, at various times, went out and never came home.

After Butter disappeared, we adopted another long-haired gray female I named Suvwi, the Klingon word for “warrior.” When we got her she was a tiny kitten but she faced down my mother-in-law’s French poodle. Okay, the poodle wasn’t very large but he towered over her and she stood her ground. She quickly took ownership of me and was another who would sit in my lap while I was at the computer. I had decided, by then, that the cats were no longer going to be allowed to be outside cats. We had lost too many already.

Sara had a couple of cats that she raised as kittens, April and Trinity. She brought them with her when she moved back in with us for a while. April is a long-haired female calico tabby who is dumb. If T.S. Eliot had written about her in Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, she would be April, the cat of the Short Bus. Trinity was a gray long-haired Tabby. Sadly, she lost her tail due to a wound and something went wrong inside her and she could not eat. In mercy, we had her put to sleep. April is still with us. Her favorite thing is to pull a pair of socks out of my drawer, carry them downstairs in her mouth, then yowl as if she has had a kitten. Like I said, April’s not too bright. In fact, she’s as dumb as a dog.

A friend of Sara’s had a tiny short-haired white female with colored spots around her ears and a calico striped tail. Her name was Rascal or Cally for short. The friend’s younger child turned out to be allergic to cats so Sara brought her home to us. She was tiny, even by small cat standards and we quickly renamed her Little Bit. For the longest time, we could not figure out why Suvwi was constantly beating her up. When Suvwi disappeared, Little Bit was suddenly attached to me. Then it became clear. Suvwi had been guarding her turf and her ownership of me from Little Bit. Now that Suvwi was gone, Little Bit owned me 100%. I have never had a cat as devoted as she is to me. If she had her way, she would be touching me 24/7, 365 days a year. She literally follows me around the house when I get up to do something. If she is awake and I’m home, she is wherever I am. And she’s still tiny. And neither Little Bit nor April are allowed to go outside. At all!

I have long said I will never own another dog with the possible exception of if I was ever to need a seeing-eye dog. But I will never be without a cat. I am a cat person, lock, stock and barrel and will always be. Who knows, maybe I WAS a cat in a past life.

Up, Up and Away

2011-04-28T04:40:00.001-07:00

Some time ago, I wrote about my aviation experiences in the U.S. Air Force. The reality, however, is that I have far more hours as a passenger on various commercial carriers than I had in Air Force aircraft. I will grant you, some of the USAF stories are funnier, especially for having been part of them, but I've seen a great deal more and made far more observations as a passenger.

Do I have a favorite airline? I don't think so, although there are some I prefer to others. Domestic flights along the eastern seaboard I guess it would be Delta. They still give you a drink and a package of peanuts or pretzels. US Airways, on the other hand gives you a drink and only first class passengers get the peanuts and pretzels. Delta also has wi-fi on virtually all their flights although it's $8.95 for the flight which is a tad pricy. International? I'm partial to Continental, if for no other reason than their flights to Europe originate from Newark rather than JFK. I would, however, like the chance to fly Lufthansa as I have heard nothing but good things about them.

Today’s flight was a first for me, partly thanks to my lovely bride. I had one carry-on suitcase with no clothes to bring home so I expected it would be nice and light. I look into it and what doe I see? Two rolls of wallpaper, a tiny frying pan and an electric can-opener. I put my foot down and said that I was NOT going through the security checkpoint with an electric can-opener in my satchel. For the first time, I had to go through a full-body scanner. And wouldn’t you know it, I had to get a pat-down, too. No biggie on either count. But my suitcase? Guess what two rolls of wallpaper look like on an x-ray machine. So, unpack the suitcase, run the wallpaper through the x-ray then re-pack it. And now my sunglasses are missing. Grrrrrr……….. And while we’re on the subject of firsts, I finally experienced a full-body scanner. The only difference is it takes longer than walking through a magnetometer. And then I STILL had to get my left upper thigh patted down even though there was nothing in my left pockets. As I posted on FB, I’ve had better….

Years ago, George Carlin came up with one of the great lines about flying. It goes something like this: “When they say it's time to get on the airplane,’ I say ‘f@ck you, I'm getting IN the airplane.’” Fly with Joy, Sara and/or me and you will almost inevitably hear something to that effect when they begin calling for boarding. And while we're on the subject of boarding, what is this crap about "pre-boarding?" I get the fact that some people need assistance such as elderly, handicapped or parents with squalling brats...er, I mean, young children. But PRE-boarding. I always thought that was the sitting around in the waiting area. One someone steps onto the aircraft, they are boarding. No? Is it just me, then? (And can I give you some advice? If you ever have the misfortune of having to fly Southwest, bring a cane and limp. They have no assigned seating and it’s like a cattle-call. But if you are handicapped, you get to pre-board. SH*T! Now they have me doing it.)

Next comes the carry-on suitcase tango. Now, they have a thing with which you can measure your carry-on bag but, much like driving and stop signs, the measuring thing seems more advisory than mandatory. Folks, I do understand the preference to avoid the luggage carousels and the fees airlines now charge for checked bags. But get a freakin’ grip. There is an old axiom of physics that two pieces of matter cannot simultaneously occupy the same space. The practical airline consideration is that if your bag is too damn over-stuffed IT WILL NOT FIT! Do we understand that?

And on the subject of boarding, I have a limited tolerance for the First Class passengers being boarded first. They do pay a premium, so I can understand that. But in coach, WHY, WHY, WHY do they not board from the aft forward? That two pieces of matter thing applies to two people in the aisle, too. It just seems to me that loading from the aft forward would make it smoother and faster, especially when they’re pushing to get off on time. Just a thought....

How many of you can just about recite from memory the standard safety briefing? Honestly. In this day and age, is it REALLY necessary to explain how a seat belt clasp operates? Could maybe someone at FAA-land rewrite that reg? And if you can't actually recite the safety briefing, can you imitate the two-finger pointing towards the exits? And in the event of a water landing, my best suggestion is pray that Sully Sullenberger is your pilot. ‘Nuf said on that subject.

Here's a part if my USAF background and my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I tend to follow crew directions. When they say it's time to turn off all electronic devices, I turn them off. I do not try to read that extra paragraph or send that extra text message or get that extra high score at Tetris or Pong or whatever. I am stunned by the number of people, adults, I mean, who just ignore that. Now I’m no expert in avionics but I am a pretty good amateur scientist when it comes to gravity. I know for a fact things that go up come down. They tell you to turn these things off for a reason. I don’t care if the chances of a stray electron screwing up the avionics is vanishingly small. If the chances are not zero, WHY TAKE THE F@CKING CHANCE? It bugs me to have to turn off my iPad and not be able to read below 10,000 feet but I also understand that they do these things for a reason.

Stephanie Miller claims that every time she flies it’s on Screaming Baby Airlines. I will admit to being fortunate to have almost never been subjected to infants crying on a flight. That’s not to say it won't happen in the future but thus far I have been spared.

Remember that I like flying and everything that goes along with it. One of the things that go along with flying is rough air. Having been through weather training as part of my flight training I understand a bit of what to expect in terms of winds and turbulent air. Here’s one of my dirty little secrets: I get a kick out of turbulence. I don't mean the kind that is so rough that food and beverage service become impossible. (And, FYI, that is how the severity of turbulence is gauged, how difficult food and beverage service is.) No, I mean the kind that you would pay an A ticket at the amusement park to experience. The worst I have ever experienced was when twenty or so of us were flying to Spokane, Wash. to attend USAF Basic Survival training. Over the Cascade Mountains we experienced severe turbulence which we uniformed smart asses were enjoying. An old lady sitting among us, however, cursed at us because she assumed the pilot was doing it for our benefit. My daughter just thinks I’m insane.

Oh, and of course, whenever possible, I have to sit next to a window. Why you ask? Well, it’s simple. If the GPS (SatNav for you Euro folk), INS and all the other navigational gear malfunctions, I need to be near a window so I can see outside and save the day by doing map-reading dead-reckoning navigation. I AM a qualified navigator, you know. (My fraternity big brother was also in the USAF and he was a KC-135 pilot. That’s the military version of the Boeing 707. He always had the fantasy that both pilots would have heart attacks and he would be the one to save the day by flying the airplane. I also figure I could do a reasonable job in those circumstances. I have over 1500 hours of airline flight time on Microsoft Flight Simulator.)

The first time I ever set foot on an airplane was in July 1969. My mother and I were doing a three week tour to Israel, Rome, Zurich and London. Even then I knew I needed to sit next to the window. My mother was in the center seat. About an hour after we climbed out of JFK, she nudges me and says, “What’s that thing?” I look out the window expecting to see another airplane or a flying saucer or the Starship Enterprise. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary I ask what she’s talking about. “That thing. The thing following us.” Again, I look out the window. Mind you, we were sitting on the starboard side about where the wing root hits the fuselage and the airframe was a 707. Again, seeing nothing, I ask what she’s talking about. Now clearly agitated, she says, “The thing following us right next to us.” I look again and it dawns on me. I ask her if she means the thing that says “EL AL” in English and Hebrew. She says, “Yes! That thing that’s following us.” I then have to explain that the thing she is referring to is an engine and if it’s NOT following us we’re all in deep doo-doo. Later that same trip, on the flight from Tel Aviv to Rome, we were delayed several hours. El-Al was short of airframes and had to rent one from UTA. So, teenage smartass that I was, I ask the crew why we had to get one from Hertz Rent-a-Plane. I followed that one up by asking if the delay was because they were waiting for the glue on the wings to dry. You could get away with that sort of thing in 1969, even in Israel.

I mentioned earlier that airline seat belts are pretty simple to figure out. Ever look at the seat belt arrangement for the flight crew? In addition to the lap belt, there is also a shoulder harness with an inertia-reel locking mechanism, just like in your car. That means that at a certain deceleration, the belt locks and holds you in place. Now, with exception of cars like the Bugatti Veyron or Ferrari 599, most cars top out at well under the speed at which most airliners land. And what do they want you to do in an emergency? Lean forward against the seat in front of you. Why, you may ask? Well, to prevent you being thrown forward when the air frame comes to a rest, usually pretty suddenly. Being thrown forward in such circumstances can snap your spine like a dry twig. (That’s why Yankees catcher Thurman Munson died in his plane crash. He did not have his shoulder harness on and his back broke. Paralyzed, he was unable to escape from the flaming aircraft.) Anyway, as so often, I digress. If your car has a shoulder harness mandated by Federal regulations, why don’t airline seats? Two explanations have been put forward. The first is a crock: it would make people nervous. Does it make them nervous in an eighty-mile per hour car? Then why should it make them nervous in a 580 mph airplane? The real reason is the cost. The airlines don’t want to go to the expense of retrofitting shoulder harnesses. So, folks, as with so many other things associated with airlines, just keep bending over.

And finally, we come to landings. They are another segment of flight where, when you travel with Joy and/or me, you will hear the same sort of things every time. As a B-52 navigator, I learned to dread the prospect of the co-pilot landing the aircraft. They tend to slam the air frame onto the runway and bounce a bit, mostly because they are less experienced and get fewer landings than the aircraft commander a/k/a pilot. So, as soon as we touch down and the air brakes deploy, one of us will make an evaluation as to whether the pilot or co-pilot landed.

There is one final postscript to flying and that’s the getting the luggage at your destination. In all the times I have ever flown, I have only had two incidents of lost luggage. The first was in the USAF days when I was returning from B-52 training. Guess which one they lost. Yes, the one with all my flying gear. That was fun explaining it to my squadron commander until United managed to locate it and get it to me. The second time was the fault of the idiot who mistook my bag for hers. Joy, Sara and I have our own TV reference for the baggage carousel, too. If you have every seen the North Africa episode of “Absolutely Fabulous,” you will immediately understand why one of us will always say something along the lines of, “Gee. I wonder where Patsy and Eddie are.”

So there you have it, my take on commercial aviation. It’s not exactly like flying or navigating the airplane yourself but it’s the best I’ve got. Joy knows I’m like a puppy dog. Want me to agree to go somewhere? Just say, “But you’ll get to fly on an airplane.” You had me at “fly.”

The Winter is Cold

2011-03-02T14:39:00.000-08:00

It starts much like a snowstorm in winter. The clouds gather, gradually blotting out the blue and what little warmth there is from the sun. They darken and lower. Grayness prevails and the temperature falls. Then, almost unseen, the first snowflake descends. Maybe it even melts when it touches something. Gradually more flakes drift down. White spots begin to appear on the ground. The intensity increases and soon there is nothing but a blanket of white. Cold white. Chilling white. Eventually the world has been transformed from colors and warmth to a monochromatic white. Except it’s not really white. It is really all shades of gray. Gray as far as the eye can see. And cold. Very cold.

I cannot think of a better metaphor for how it feels when I sink into a depressive episode. Recognizing that there is a physical aspect to what causes depressive illness, it is consistent that it seems that, physically, I can feel the effects. The world does seem gray and without color. My vision seems to narrow. I have to be exceptionally wary when driving. My doctor long ago said that depression is an accident-probe state. I am fortunate in that the rational part of me is aware of that and does what it can to maintain a watch and help me avoid accidents.

There was a time, a bit over a year ago, when I felt an elevation to my mood that I had never felt before. I felt happy. It was an unfamiliar feeling as I had come to equate “happiness” with the absence of depression. If I wasn’t feeling down, it was as close as I got being happy. (Let me digress a moment and say that I’m not referring to momentary happiness such as when my team or favorite driver wins the championship. Or the lightness of a good joke or something funny on TV. I mean an overall state of elevated mood where one feels good about themselves and the world around them.) But a year or so ago I was feeling happy. My mood was elevated. I enjoyed life and everything around me. I believed, really believed that I had broken through to a new plateau and that I had beaten the demon.

I’m not sure where those feeling evaporated to and how they left me. I just know that one day my “new normal” was back to the same old normal. And what was worse was that I had touched the brass ring. I had seen behind the curtain. And I had believed that I had come out of a lifetime of fear that I would never enjoy life. The reality, however, was that that period appears to have been the aberration. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Only now the sweet taste has become the bitter ashes of those memories.

I have long believed that one of the worst questions to ask is “Why?” The classic answer is “because” or “why not?” That doesn’t stop me from asking it. They “why” in this context is, “Why can’t I be happy for more than a few seconds at a time?” I’m sure a physiologist can provide all sorts of wonderfully scientific explanations about serotonin-reuptake and how SSRI medications help but don’t really cure. Great. I understand the theory. I’m questioning the reality.

If wishes were fishes….We’ve all made wishes. Not too long ago I was asked what would I consider to be a great accomplishment. My answer was to be able to live inside my own skin and like myself. Intellectually, I know I’m not an unlikable person. I have lived with my wife for almost thirty-seven years and she loves me. Most of the time she even likes me. I have friends and colleagues who like and respect me. The rational part of me sits inside my head, peering out from behind the snow bank and screams at the feeling part of me. But that feeling part of me is deaf, dumb and blind to all those blandishments. He is unable to experience what Mr. Rational screams is reality. I can experience, in a detached sense, what Mr. Rational is saying. But Mr. Emotional is unable to see it that way. And the gray persists. And, now that I thin about it, maybe a better name would be Mr. Irrational.

Every time it has happened, so far, I have recovered from the downturn. That’s kind of like a sailor on a submarine saying that every time they have submerged they have returned to the surface. But it only takes once, one time when it becomes impossible to resurface to ruin that record forever. Although not debilitating (so far), there is always the fear that this time I won’t return to “normal.” Having experienced the depths to which depression can drag one, it’s not a pleasant circumstance to contemplate. And fear breeds fear.

Why am I telling you all this? Two reasons and the first of them is horribly selfish. The truth is that writing about things like this gives me some small comfort that I can write rationally and honestly about depression and its effects. The second, however, is an effort to help. I know a number of my friends suffer from similar bouts of depression, It’s not just the “blues.” It’s not just a matter of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. It’s not just saying one day, “I’m not going to be depressed anymore.” It’s a daily and sometime brutal and deadly struggle. If what I write resonates at all and offers the slightest comfort that YOU ARE NOT ALONE it has been worthwhile.

Now is the winter of our discontent. Unfortunately, right now there is no glorious sun of York or any other sun visible.

Biopsy-Daisy Redux

2011-02-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

Those of you who remember my original experience with the wonderful experience of a prostate biopsy last year will recall the initial panic-mode into which it flipped me. I’m proud to say that, much as familiarity breeds contempt, it also helps prepare one.

The good news about this round is that it came one year after the last one. How, might one ask, is this good news? Well, that’s very simple. The alternative would have been every six months. (See? Every silver lining has a cloud. Or something like that.) Anyway, six months after the first biopsy, I had my six month check-up. The pre-check-up blood test showed that my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen, the marker for the potential of prostate problems) was down from the previous measurement, a positive sign. That still wasn’t sufficient to ward off another “manual pat down” of the gland in question. But it was sufficient for my doctor to say that, at this point, a six-month biopsy is not necessary. Yes, I walked out of the officer quite content that day, despite having scheduled the NEXT biopsy before we left.

Now, as medical procedures go, a prostate biopsy is really not all that bad. Intrusive in a sensitive area? Yes. Bad? No. I know that now, having been through it already. So last year’s sense of panic, unknown and impending doom was completely absent this year. Would I prefer not having to endure it? Absolutely. But, hey, I’m a veteran now.

The date of this round was exactly one week from the day we returned home from our sojourn in the Caribbean. The day before I left to fly down to Florida, I had gone to the lab to have my blood drawn. (Blood tests, at one time, were enough to cause me to become weak-kneed. And that was before they even inserted the needle. I’m a big boy now, though.) This would be the pre-biopsy PSA screen. It wouldn’t affect whether or not I was going to have the biopsy. That was a done deal. But it’s to continue tracking the PSA level as a guide for future decisions. So, having gotten that bit of unpleasantness and bloodshed out of the way, I headed off to cruise the sunny southern climes.

Apparently, there was a stomach bug of some kind running around on the ship. It didn’t affect me during the trip (although it got my mother-in-law by the time we returned to Fort Lauderdale) but it caught up with me during the week. Having just returned from vacation, I was out for the Thursday and Friday of that week. One thing that feeling miserable does is it prevents you from dwelling on other things. By the time I had recovered sufficiently to say, “Oh crap, biopsy on Monday,” it was already Sunday.

The procedure was scheduled for 0900, so we were up at 0630. There is a minor thing to be done within two hours of then scheduled procedure which is a mini-version of a colonoscopy prep. ‘Nuff said. You figure it out…or not. So, having endured that bit of indignity, I sat down to have a cup of coffee and read the morning comics and sports section of the newspaper.

Now, I may be a veteran and know what to expect, but there was no way I was going through this without resorting to better living through chemistry. I recalled the spacing of the happy pills last time and began replicating the dosage schedule. Now, for me, the gold standard of pre-procedure dosing was my vasectomy where one and a half pills put me into la-la land.

With last year’s biopsy, I did not get the same “knock-out punch” even after three pills. It was just enough, but my index is how aware I am of what’s going on around me. This year, after two, I was all too aware. Apparently, though, my subjective assessment of my mental state and Joy’s objective observation of it were two almost unrelated things. I started to take a third pill and she made me give her the pill bottle before I got another pill out of it. That set off a round of debate between the two of us as to whether I was to be allowed the third magic pill. (Mind you, this is while sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. And because I also had my iPod with earplugs on, I wasn’t doing a very effective job of voice moderation.)

Joy finally said it was too late for me to take another one for it to have an effect before the procedure. Lawyer that I am, I made the counter argument that even if that was the case, the placebo effect of taking another one outweighed her argument. Finally, I suspect, just to shut me up, she let me have another one…but not before she broke it in half. Well, half a loaf….

Shortly thereafter, my name was called an I headed into the torture chamber…oops, I mean examination and treatment area of the office. Having obeyed the instruction to go the head and empty my bladder I shuffled off to the indicated room. Pants and underpants, off, up on the table, iPod earphones in my ears, My Favorites playlist running and curled into a fetal position on my left side. I was as ready as I was going to be.

T.M.I. WARNING: Read the remainder of this paragraph at your own risk for T.M.I. You have been warned! Recalling the last experience, I knew the biggest issue for me was the two injections to numb the area (remember I am needle-phobic). Not this year! I will have to have a discussion with my doctor when I see him for the results and follow-up. Last year, the probe was absolutely no issue. This year, it felt like the probe had not been lubricated! Damn it! And I didn’t even get flowers or dinner first! Maybe that bit of discomfort was to mask the feeling of the injections but they did not bother me as much as last year. OK! All downhill from here. WRONG! After the first probe is removed a second one is inserted as a guide for the biopsy needles. Once again, someone forgot to sufficiently lubricate the probe.

Oh, and before I forget to mention it, once I was sufficiently numb (and this year I could actually feel that) the doctor who would perform the actual biopsy walked in. She walked around and introduced herself. Yes, I said she. (Okay ladies, I know all about the number of OB-GYNs who are men.) That was a bit of surprise. I kind of said “Hi” and went back to singing along with my iPod.

The biopsy itself fells like someone is snapping you with a thick rubber band, but well up inside. Ten snaps later, we were done. Cleaned up and dressed, I walked back out to the waiting room. Now I was just hungry so we went downstairs to the restaurant and got breakfast. The effect of caffeine (coffee) and adrenaline (Wow! It’s over!) caused me to be wide-awake and not feeling at all medicated.

In the aftermath, this time, I felt sore and internally uncomfortable which I don’t recall from last year. That, however, was easily addressed with Tylenol. By the next day that, too had passed. So now it’s just a matter of waiting to get the results (which will be in two weeks). Am I worried? Not overly much. But there’s always that little bit of anxiety whenever the term “biopsy” is involved. But for now, mission accomplished.

Maybe It's Not All That Good a Walk, Either

2010-04-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

Although there is some debate, the line that golf is a good walk, spoiled, is generally attributed to Samuel Clemens a/k/a Mark Twain. The same quote is also the title of a best-selling book on professional golf by author John Feinstein. The cover of the book depicts a golfer (who it is escapes me) kneeling on the green, head in hands, having apparently, just missed an important putt. The golfer's body language conveys the general feeling I get somewhere around my fifth shot on the first hole when I'm hoping and praying that I will be effective enough to remain in single digits for that hole.

As with s number of other things in my life, I came by golf later in life than most. Oh, sure, my parents took me playing miniature golf when I was a kid. (Not often, though, my temper and inability to cope with anything less than perfection as a child made the outings trying.) In high school, several of my closest friends played but I avoided it, partly for fear of having to ask my mother to spend money on golf clubs. In college, I tended to view golf in a similar manner to bridge: if I get into it, I will spend WAY too much time and effort playing. (That, by the way, did not stop me from learning bridge but that's a sad tale for another day.) The summer I graduated, I began playing tennis and that seemed to meet the need for a warm-weather social sport so gold receded even further in my consciousness.

There were some times I was tempted to give it a try. These were generally dispensed with by something that alerted me to the fact that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. One example is when I was in the Charleston, WV Jaycees. We were attending a quarterly regional meeting held at a state park resort. A group of us went out one morning in a misty rain to play nine holes. Well, they were playing nine holes. I was just walking along as a kibitzer. They kept trying to get me to take a shot and finally I gave in. The ball was lying fairly close to the middle of the fairway. One of them handed me a long iron. I had watched their form and had seen golf plenty of times on TV so I had a clue about how to swing. I took my stance, addressed the ball and swung. The divot, which was larger than some islands in the Bahamas, went farther than the ball. When the laughter died down and we replaced the divot, I resolved that there was no need to ever try it again.

During the dark retail sales period of my life, I was working for an appliance and electronics retailer and happened to wait on a couple. The gentleman happened to recognize my name from something totally unrelated in the legal field. We began talking and one thing led to another and we became friends. They were both avid golfers and they invited me to play. Unfortunately, I had to admit that I had never played. He offered to introduce me to the game but I gently demurred. But it got me thinking and within a few weeks, I had walked into Golf Warehouse and purchased an inexpensive set of clubs and the minimum accoutrements. This came as a great surprise to my wife, not the least of which is that I seldom spend money in three digits without consulting her first. It was, however, okay with her and I proceeded to take my shiny new clubs to a local driving range.

I'm not sure what I was expecting. I suppose we all have the fantasy that one day we will pick up a new endeavor and, lo and behold, we find out we’re a natural. Well, let me say, golf was not one of those things for me. I have played baseball and softball from early youth and know the dictum that swinging to hard can be bad. Why this did not percolate through in golf is beyond me. But I kept trying to muscle up and blast the shots as far as I could. Much of the time I would swing and miss, a rather embarrassing thing when the ball is just sitting there waiting for you. Other times, I would hit the ball and it would dribble over the edge. And the times I did manage to get a good clean shot, the ball generally went curving off to the far right.

The first round I played with my friends was nice in that it was pleasant to be playing with friends. It was, however, an exercise in futile frustration. When I did manage to hit the ball well enough from the tee, I discovered that handling irons is a bit different than woods. And actually playing on a course confronts you with the necessity of playing short irons and wedges. This is when I discovered the worst part (worst being merely a relative term) of my golf game. I am more or less okay with woods and long irons and I can kind of putt okay. But give me a short iron or wedge and all bets are off. My short game, in a word, sucks!

So, having survived the agony of looking like a fool on the course (mercifully it was only nine holes), I decided that a lesson or two might be in order. The pro at the shooting range near us was very patient with me. The first thing he asked was why I thought it was necessary to swing as hard as I could every time. I answered that I wasn’t aware that I was. Once I cut down on my effort, I seemed to make better contact. He also noticed that the dreadful slice I had was probably because I was keeping my wrists stiff. These were actually two very valuable observations.

So armed with these insights, I proceeded to get out and play as much as possible. The golf course in our town is private but has an agreement that any town resident can get a card to play at certain designated times without being a member. The only downside to this is that I had no one with whom I could play. I hated being paired or teamed up with other people I didn’t know, especially because my game was so embarrassingly bad.

Here are the things I’ve discovered about golf as I play it:

I am an expert at hitting a ball, from any lie, into any water hazard that exists on the course. The local club has a nice little duck pond at the end of the fairway on the second hole. If I try to lay up, I hit too far and ker-plunk. If I try to hit over it, too short and ker-plunk. I have become extremely adept at using the extendable ball fisher-outer thingy.

If I am using a short iron or a wedge, if the ball goes straight, it is either way too far or way too short. If it goes the correct distance it sprays well right or well left. Achieving the correct range and azimuth are a matter of pure coincidence that rarely happens.

I am great at hitting balls onto paths causing them to bounce very high and generally out of bounds.

If there is a sand trap, I will often find it. If there are two or more, I am very good at hitting from one into another, if I manage to hit the ball out of the first one.

I have developed several methods of determining how successful an outing I have had. The first method, and the far more idiot proof one, is this: If I find more balls in the rough than I lose, it is a successful day. The second, and more problematic, is if I can stay in single digits for every hole I play, it is a successful day. Combining both goals is a rare, but occasionally achievable treat. (A friend gave me an incredible gift for Christmas after hearing me describe this: Golf Ball Finder Glasses. I can’t tell you how well they work because I haven’t had a chance to try them out since she gave them to me.)

Have I had any real successes at playing? I can tell you that I have actually had two pars and a birdie! The birdie came in my second year of playing on a par 4 on the back nine of the course in my town. It was a case of coincidentally putting together three good shots in row on the same hole. The putt was a two-footer and unless you have been in the situation of knowing that if you sank this putt you would win the Masters, you have no idea how much pressure I felt. I still have the ball as a trophy.

What else has happened to me? Well, there was the day it started thunder-storming when I was on the back nine. At the hole next hole there was a small copse of trees. I figured that I’d sit in the copse and wait out the storm and continue on, especially because I didn’t have an umbrella with me. Seems it wasn’t just an isolated thunderstorm. After a half hour of sitting in the woods I realized it was not going to let up. And of course I was at the farthest point away from the clubhouse. I got very, very wet and my car was the last one in the parking lot.

There was the day I took several balls to our backyard along with my pitching wedge. Our backyard was worse than most roughs so I figured it was a good place to practice chipping. Recall that I seldom, if ever, get distance and direction correct with a wedge. On this one particular chip, I got them BOTH wrong and the ball smashed the plate glass window in our dining room. That was the end of that in the backyard.

There was the day I was matched up with three people I didn’t know on the course in my town. They said that I should tee off first on the first hole. I teed up the ball, took a couple practice swings, addressed the ball and swung…and watched the ball soar into the air…and land behind us. As bad as that was, that was the high point of the first three holes. I said goodbye after the third and just gave up and went home.

There was the day that I plopped a shot into the pond on the second hole of the local course. I dropped a ball as the rules say…and promptly plopped that one into the pond. Four more times I followed the rule until I said, the hell with this and threw the ball over the pond…except I didn’t throw it hard enough and it landed on the edge of the bank and the backspin rolled it into the pond. Fortunately, I was playing on my own that day.

I keep asking myself why I put myself through this aggravation. The sad answer is that somewhere amid all the crappy, misdirected, mishit, shanked, hooked, sliced or just plain missed shots, there is always one golden shot that feels perfect. Not only does it feel perfect, it is perfect. For me, this often happens with a wood or long iron. I swing and watch the ball go straight, long and perfect. At the instant of contact, the feel is just perfect. And I tell myself that I can do this more often and my game will improve. And the memory of that golden shot is what I remember when all the aggravation of the every other shot has faded.

Golf, to me, is like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football when Lucy is holding it. We both keep thinking that the next time is the time it will all come right. And we allow ourselves to be talked into giving it one more try. And we line up and know that this time we will succeed where all the other times we failed. And sure as sh*t, Lucy pulls that ball away and we wind up flat on our backs wondering WHY!!!!

Weddings and Funerals 3

2010-03-29T17:38:00.001-07:00

Now that we have the two most significant weddings out of the way, it’s time to turn to the other weddings and a funeral or two.

I mentioned the wedding where the groom’s father and my father-in-law got me drunk occasioning the whole discussion of king-size beds. My mother-in-law noticed that the groom seemed to be pounding back a few drinks himself. When we finally left, she said to the groom, “Be careful how much you drink. Because tonight when you want it to go like this,” and she held her index finger straight up and continued, “it’s gonna go like this,” and she curled the same finger down. The bride looks at her and with the most charming innocence says, “Don’t you worry about his fingers.” My mother-in-law looks her dead in the eye and says, “Honey, it’s not his fingers I’m worried about!”

Shortly before I went on active duty, my college roommate was getting married, He had asked me to be one of his groomsmen and I was more than happy to oblige. My wife (yes, she was now my wife) and I flew up to Rochester, New York. The bride’s father was a rather well-to-do physician with a booming practice in Rochester. The rehearsal dinner was being held at a country club which had every appearance of being one of those rich, upper-crusty country clubs. My wife and I were enjoying ourselves immensely. Of course, it’s up to me to ask the impolitic questions so I turned to her and said, “I wonder if we’re the first Jews ever to be allowed in this place.” She suggested I ask the bride’s father and, having had several glasses of intoxicating liquor of some format, I did. He thought about it for a few seconds and said, “You may very well be. But if anyone says ANYTHING to you, you let me know. I’ll buy the damn place.” The other thing that happened was that one of the pictures of the boys and the girls in the wedding party was posed to make us look like a football team with the guys being the offensive line. The bride kept saying that she wanted to have enough kids to have her own football team. Several years later, after they had two, she confided to me that football team be damned, she was done!

The next wedding we attended was after I had completed navigator training and was assigned to Griffiss AFB in Rome, NY. One of my fraternity brothers, who had been one of my groomsmen, asked me to be one of his. We took the train down to Poughkeepsie, New York where another fraternity brother and his girlfriend (soon to be wife) picked us up. We were planning on picking up a car from my parents on the way home. Anyway, unlike my wife and my roommate’s fiancée (then wife) in Rochester, the bride was not one of my fraternity’s Little Sisters. That, notwithstanding, I had gotten to know the bride fairly well and we had become friends. The wedding went off without a hitch (well, one hitch, they got hitched). Afterwards, we gathered in the groom’s parents’ room for after-wedding drinks and relaxing. Just for giggles, I said to the bride, “Ready for me to break you in for him?” Without missing a beat she said, “Yup. Let’s go!” I leapt up and she took my arm and we started walking out and heading up the hall towards my room. We were almost to the door when the groom yelled, “Wait a minute! You’re not serious?” The bride and I looked at each other and then at him and we both said, “Yeah!” before we fell on the floor laughing.

I’ve mentioned that my daughter and I were forbidden from sitting together. Here’s why. One of my wife’s cousins died fairly suddenly of a heart attack. It was a bad shock to his wife and two grown sons. As a result of how shocking it was, they were all prescribed tranquilizers. The memorial service was to be held at a very old, very dignified church in Hartford. My wife and I, our daughter, and my in-laws attended the service. The wife and sons seemed to be feeling little, if any pain. It seems that in addition to the tranquilizers, they were also rather liberally dosing themselves with alcoholic beverages. Always makes for a good mix. The first discordant note was when the boys attempted to have the family dog attend the memorial service. The reverend put his foot down and put the kibosh on that idea. The service proceeded well enough, Well enough until one of the sons got up to say a few words about his dad. He started out rather incoherently (not all that shocking) and explained that they were all a little out of it due to the drugs and the booze. At that, my daughter and I looked at each other and an unsaid message of, “Oh, this is gonna be good” passed between us. We looked around and we also seemed to be the only ones who had any idea what was coming. He rambled on for a while until he got to the end. “And I just want to say a quote that describes my father. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” and my daughter and I just looked at each other, knowing, just knowing, “for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley!” There was a collective gasp in the church which I think was drowned out by the laughter from my daughter and I. We literally, and I mean literally, fell off the pews laughing. My mother-in-law, along with a substantial number of attendees turned towards us. I am told the look she was giving us should have turned us to stone but we were laughing too hard to notice. That, then was the last time we were allowed to sit together.

We were all invited to the marriage of the son of one of my wife’s cousins which was to take place in Pittsburgh. For reasons of economy, I was sent by airline and was to pick up a rental car and then pick up everyone else at the train station. The train was only about six hours late but that wasn’t the half of the transportation issues. My daughter has always had a very fraught relationship with travel in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If she is there, driving id an adventure, not because she does anything. It just seems that Pennsylvania’s roads have something against her. No matter where we drove in the Pittsburgh area, we could not get anywhere. It seemed that every exit we wanted to take off an interstate was closed, necessitating a trip ten miles up to the next exit and then backtracking to the correct exit on the OTHER side of the highway. This happened at least four times. Pittsburgh is actually a nice progressive city. But don’t try to drive on the highways through and around it.

Now, here I’m giving you fair warning. If blasphemous humor, especially about the Catholic faith bothers you, please skip this entire paragraph. You have been warned. The week before my daughter’s wedding, we attended the wedding of the brother of the young man who got married in Pittsburgh. This wedding was held in a very modern Catholic church on the New Jersey shore. (The entire weekend I was humming Bruce Springsteen songs.) Having learned from times past to separate my daughter and me, my wife was sitting between us, intercepting any attempt for the two of us to communicate. My in-laws were sitting to my daughter’s left and I was on the extreme right. As the ceremony was getting underway, two altar boys and an altar girl came out to light candles. I had never seen girls in this capacity before. I turned to my wife and said, “Altar girls?” And my wife says, just loudly enough for my daughter and I to hear, “Yes. The heterosexual priests need something, too.” My daughter and I lose it because it was so funny and so unexpected and my mother-in-law just had to ask my daughter what had been said. And guess who got blamed for saying it….

In the short period of time that my daughter was married, she and her husband were invited to a pig roast at a friend’s house. The roast was an honest to goodness pig on a spit roast in their friends’ back yard. Everyone arrived and the pig was cooking nicely on the roast, people were drinking and having snacks and appetizers and everyone was having a good time. My daughter and her husband, however, noticed their friends were nowhere to be seen. They went in search of them and found them inside the house. When they asked what was going on their friends said, “Oh, we’re getting married tonight.” The whole deal was a way of getting their friends assembled. Ever since then we have said, “Suppose they gave a pig roast and wedding broke out.”

At the age of 41, my fraternity big brother suddenly died of a heart attack. To say the least, we were shocked. We and another fraternity brother and his wife and I went to the funeral in New Hampshire together. Now, I knew my big brother from my freshman year in college (he was one year ahead of me and also and Air Force ROTC cadet). I knew him as a primary drinking buddy and someone who did fairly well with the ladies. (In fact, my wife might have dated him except I made a move on her before he did.) Along with the four of us, there were probably another half dozen frat brothers and Little Sisters. We sat together in the church. Good thing we did. Before the service began, we all exchanged our favorite stories about him, all of which involved drinking, women and both. The service began and we quickly learned that he had become a deacon of the church. We heard what a good, devout Christian he was and how saint-like he was. We just looked at each other and wondered if we were at the wrong funeral. After the burial, when we talked to his widow, she told us that she would be grateful if we would tell her about him in college. Somehow we never got around to it….

Another of my wife’s cousins’ sons was getting married in Chicago. This was a big deal spare no expense wedding. Buses were provided to bring the guests to the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner, the wedding and the reception. It seems that the Arizona Diamondbacks were playing the Cubs that weekend. Guess what. They were staying at the same hotel where we were staying. My daughter is a very attractive young lady who knows how to show off her assets. As soon as she realized the hotel was lousy with major league baseball players, she was all about spending a LOT of time in the hotel bar. To no one’s surprise, she got to know several of the players (no not “know” in that sense, at least not to my knowledge). She kept talking about what nice guys they were and how much she was enjoying meeting them. But do you think she got her dear old dad ONE autograph? Nooooo. Not a one. Sheesh!

One of my original dance daughters got married in Hartford. As always, a group from the dance school, including my daughter and myself, were to perform at the wedding. Now, understand that when I have to drive, I do not drink at all. My daughter, on the other hand, was driven by her escort. From the get-go I could see that she was knocking back several drinks. I suggested that she might want to slow down. She assumed that I meant that if she was tipsy she might forget her steps. I knew better than that. She has done these dances so many times that she could put herself on autopilot and dance perfectly. No, I knew something even worse. But we didn’t get to that point before a bit more drama. My dance teacher thought she had forgotten to bring the music CDs. Irish dance music being a somewhat specialized area (particularly some of the music we use all the time), the DJ was of no help. I volunteered to hop in my car, drive home the 5-6 miles or so to pick up my CDs. She thought for a second then sent me. I found out later, not five minutes after I left, she found them. So there I was, once again, breaking the speed laws to retrieve something for a wedding. I got back to find everyone changing into their dance costumes, so I quickly change into mine and was able to get into line just in time. The dancing was a great success and, once again, the bride was one of the dancers. When we finished, my daughter looked at me and said, “Uuuuuggghhh. I don’t feel so good.” I said, “Tummy bothering you?” to which she groaned, “Yes.” Never one not to say “I told you so,” I said, “Remember when I suggested that you not drink too much?” She nodded. Now you know why. She groaned out a “Shut up!” and off she went to try and settle her stomach.

The final funeral story comes from my father-in-law’s memorial masses. He passed away in Florida but my in-laws were long-time residents of Connecticut. We went down to Florida for the first of the masses. My wife was caught in a conundrum. She could not sit next to her mother and at the same time sit between my daughter and me. Thought was given to having both of them sit between us but we promised to behave. I’m not sure she was 100% convinced but we sat there next to each other. The first thing that got to us was the incense. We were sitting in the front row (and no, Bob Uecker was not there, either) and the smoke was making us cough uncontrollably. Because of past behavior, this was interpreted as laughter. What we did sit up and take notice was when the priest made reference to how my father-in-law would soon be watching us from heaven. Now, there is some question in our minds regarding the existence of a heaven/hell continuum but we looked at each other said, what is this guy talking about? Thanks for that vote of confidence that he wasn’t there ALREADY!

So there you have it. Weddings and funerals. We have always managed to find humor at the strangest times but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Weddings and Funerals, Part 2

2010-03-25T13:21:00.001-07:00

Flash forward a quarter of a century, or so, and we were now the parents of the bride-to-be. As I recall, we more or less knew it was coming so it was not all that surprising. (Interesting fact: The first time my wife’s mother EVER met me she guessed I was the one.) And before we go any further, here, bear in mind that my daughter is the only child of two only children. This may partly explained how the wedding turned into a rather large production.

Now, I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon, but the position I took on the planning was akin to the position that the people of London took during the Blitz. Hunker down in an air-raid shelter and hope a bomb doesn’t come crashing through. This partly explains why I don’t have that many memories of the planning process. In fact, my wife had a great deal more to do with the planning process than even my daughter. I think that is often the case but I believe the percentage of maternal input on this one was higher than many. So my memories of the process are kind of spotty and involve only those few parts where I had direct input.

One of the places where I wound up having a disproportionate influence was (Are you ready for this?) selection of the wedding gown. Yup. Believe it or not. And the reason this came to be is that I am a native New Yorker and learned to drive in and around the city. There were two bridal gown showrooms in the city where they wanted to look. One was in Brooklyn, one was in Queens. As it happens, I was summarily told that I was to be the, well, chauffeur. Now, I can find my way around the city without working up a sweat if I’m traveling by subway (that’s metro, underground or u-bahn depending on where you live). But traveling outside of Manhattan and certain parts of the Bronx by car? Not so much. So I made sure to get directions on how to get to our destinations on Mapquest. Smart, right? Not so much. This was the trip on which I became convinced that any resemblance between Mapquest and real roads and exits is purely coincidental. The specific exit where we were supposed to leave the highway and travel by local streets…does not exist. The exit before did. The exit after did. Not the one we needed. So, I took the next exit and backtracked. Eventually, we found the place.

We walked into a very sedate, almost somber waiting area. I plopped myself down expecting to be left there, opened the novel I had brought and proceeded to bury my nose in the book. That lasted until the consultant came for the ladies (my wife, my daughter, my mother and one of the bridesmaids). I was schlepped along although they gave me a chair outside the little changing room but not before I looked around and said, “I am in wedding gown hell.” So I plopped myself down, opened the novel and proceeded to bury my nose in the book. Every now and again, they would emerge from the changing room and I would kind of look up and note that my daughter had on a different gown. This went on for many chapters of my novel until she came out in one gown. I did my usual look up, then down…but then I looked up again. I actually got up (making like I was just stretching my legs) and walked over to take a closer look. If there was a gown that had been made for her, this was it. After the consultant had come to get that one and was taking it back, I got my wife’s attention and said, “That one looked beautiful on her. Don’t say anything to the people here but let her (my daughter) know what I said.” My wife told her and she started crying because when she tried that one on she thought it was just right. The fact that I had even expressed an opinion and one that was so positive was all she needed to hear. Not long after that, we went to the second place. This time I was left in the car so that I could read and listen to the Yankees game on the radio. That was an indication to me that unless something REALLY special was seen at the second place, a decision had been reached. In fact, that was the case although we ordered the gown through a local place in Connecticut and had a local dress shop do the alterations and fitting.

I was spared many of the trips to various possible venues for the wedding. In much the same way that when we have moved, I have only been taken to the serious possibilities for a new house, I was only taken to the serious possible choices for the wedding. One of these was a local hotel which turned out to be THE place. My wife negotiated a package for a ballroom for the ceremony, the big one for the reception, the catering, special prices for the rooms for guests and a wedding night room for the bride and groom and the parents of the bride. What I did not expect was the food tasting. Food tasting? You don’t just pick a selection off a list? You have to go taste it? Apparently yes. One evening, there we were, the bride and groom, bride’s parents (that was us), groom’s parents and one of the brides maids and groomsmen who were, at the time, also engaged. The wedding was going to be Memorial Day weekend, so spring fruits were in. That meant that the soup they were proposing was some sort of cold fruit soup. Cold fruit soup? I DON’T THINK SO! Neither did the groom. So, that meant that it was necessary to have, at the reception, two bowls of chicken noodle soup because the two of us were not going to have any fruity soup. The salad was another one of those frou-frou things. I don’t remember what sort of ick salad was decided on but the groom and father of the bride were getting special plates of salad made with real (iceberg) lettuce and French dressing.

The wedding cake tasting, on the other hand, was rather more pleasant. I have no idea how they found it but one Saturday, we went down to Old Saybrook to a restaurant on Route 1 run by a very nice young woman. We had a very pleasant lunch and the sample wedding cake was delicious. And I don’t much like cake with icing. She also insisted that when the time came, she did not want them having a saved piece for their first anniversary. She would make a small brand new cake for them as part of the price. As things happened, this was a rather moot point, but I anticipate.

My other major contribution to the wedding was arranging for a person to officiate. The wedding ceremony was going to be a civil ceremony but no one had any idea where to find someone to officiate. At the time I was one of the DMV hearing officers. Several years earlier one of our female hearing officers had been selected as a judge of the superior court. I suggested her as the person to officiate and she happily accepted. (She did a marvelous job, by the way.)

The month before the wedding was the shower. It turned into a Jack and Jill shower (meaning the guys got to go to it, too.) Here, the major issue was parental…not us, but OUR parents. Well, the mothers, specifically. For reasons unrelated to anything relevant herein, my mother and mother-in-law had not spoken for many years. Since they were both invited to the shower, to say nothing of the wedding, it took some diplomacy on the level of the SALT talks to arrange for them both to be present. Fortunately, all came off without a hitch.

Not too long before the wedding I recall a flap of some sort over the bridesmaids’ dresses. The ladies involved ranged in size and shape and there was some dispute over what would look good on ALL of them. The details escape me but the resolution of it was that I stepped in and resolved it by imperial fiat (okay, as imperial as I ever get). But that was the end of that.

So the Memorial Day weekend finally arrived. The rehearsal dinner was held in the lower level of a local pizza restaurant that has since gone out of business. (No, neither our wedding nor my daughter’s had anything to do with that.) This was notable only in that in negotiating the stairs, my father-in-law fell. Nothing funny there, but things surrounding this wedding were always interesting.

The big day, Sunday, rolled around. Now, understand that the Sunday of Memorial Day to me means: Monaco Grand Prix followed by the Indianapolis 500 followed by the Coca-Cola 600. It is my holy day of auto racing. I made it clear that when we got to the hotel, the ladies would go to the room reserved for the bride and bridesmaids and I would plop myself in front of the TV in the room for the groom and groomsmen and watch the Indy 500 and NO ONE WAS TO BOTHER ME. That was the plan, anyway. That Sunday, Indianapolis was suffering periodic rain showers and the race was very late in starting which I found infinitely frustrating.

Then I got the call. What call you may ask? It seems that my daughter had forgotten her foundation undergarment and without it she was NOT GETTING MARRIED! This was around 2 PM with the wedding scheduled to begin around 6 PM. My wife said she knew where it was and she would run home to get it. I thought about that one for a split second and vetoed it because she needed to keep a lid on the pot that was beginning to boil over. She told me where to look and I hopped into my car and blasted off. I admit it. I was exceeding the speed limit badly but here’s the deal. My daughter was very friendly with many of the police officers in Newington and Wethersfield and the groom’s brother worked for the Rocky Hill Police. Those were the three towns I needed to transit and I figured that if I was stopped, once I explained who she was and what I was doing, I’d get an escort with sirens and lights. So I got home and started to look. Why I flashed on this, I do not know but something made me think it was in a bag from J. C. Penney. I went like a beeline for that bag and there it was! Had my wife gone to look for it she would never have found it. So, back in the car, warp speed engaged, and I had completed my mission.

By this point, it was close enough that I migrated to the ladies’ suite, turned on the Indy 500 and got dressed. The race had experienced some rain delays and, sadly, I was not going to get to see the checkered flag. (Juan Pablo Montoya won it that year.) And let’s not even talk about the Coca-Cola 600 which was scheduled to start at 6 PM.

The wedding itself was fairly anti-climactic. The ceremony was very nice and we had the privilege of walking our little girl down the aisle. I sat between my mother and mother-in-law with each of them holding one of my hands wondering if I was going to pass out with anxiety.

The reception was…well, a reception. Much eating, much drinking and much dancing. The girls from the Irish dance school performed beautifully including my daughter. I’ve mentioned it before, but my favorite picture is of her dancing the hornpipe in her wedding gown and Irish dance hard shoes with one of the other girls literally holding her dress up and out of the way while they danced. Every few minutes, through the reception, my daughter or I would walk out to the hotel bar to check on the TVs and find out who was leading the race and what the score of the Yankees-Red Sox game was. (Martinez outdueled Clemens and the Yankees lost 1-0 and Matt Kenseth won the race.)

Following the reception, we went to the room that had been reserved for us. As we were changing out of our party duds, there was a knock on the door. It was our daughter, still in her gown. It seems that the suite that was provided to the bridal couple…had no furniture. None. Nada. Nichts. Rien. (Heck, at least there was furniture in the suit we got for the wedding night. It was twin beds, but at least it was furnished.) So they did a bit of scrambling as the hotel was full up and found them another room. Shortly after that, there was a knock on the connecting door to our room. The only room they had for them was the one connected to OUR room, a fact that was of infinite humor to my wife and me but somewhat less to the young ‘uns.

Sadly, the marriage did not last long. Literally, before we walked into the room for the ceremony, my wife and I both told my daughter that if she wanted to back out, we would support her. She said no, she would go through with it. There’s a particular picture of us walking her down the aisle. She has the picture and has shown it to every one of her friends. She has told them that should she ever get engaged again, if they see that look on her face walking down the aisle, to tackle her and drag her out.

To be continued…

Weddings and Funerals

2010-03-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

One of the longest-standing family jokes is that at weddings and funerals, my daughter and I are not allowed to sit next to each other. The reason for this is that neither of us has ever been able to take religion and religious ceremony too seriously. As a result, we tend to find humor in the strangest of places and at the strangest of times. Aside from those events, my own wedding and my daughter's wedding have both provided their own bits of amusement as I hope you will see by reading on.

Literally, the exact week before we were to get married, a fraternity brother was getting married and we were invited to their wedding. As it happened, the wedding was in East Jabroo (no, that’s not fair, it was actually Delhi), New York. East Jabroo, however also fits because one of the driving directions we got was “when you go over the mountain, turn left.” We all found that infinitely hilarious but, as it turns out, the direction was precise and unmistakable. That parts of New York State existed that would require a direction like that was a hoot to us. Anyway, the bride and groom were leaving for their honeymoon from the airport in Syracuse, New York (site of the infamous flight through the snow that some of you may remember). They asked if we would mind going with them to the airport and then driving their car back to Connecticut. My fiancée (soon to be wife) and I happily agreed. So there we are in the back seat, happily sated with the wedding meal and wedding alcohol. We both dozed off. We were awakened by the dispute that was taking place in the front. It seems the bride had forgotten her “special pillow” and was beside herself that she would be unable to sleep on their honeymoon. Of course, smartass that I am, I had to chime in with, “It’s your honeymoon. Sleeping in the bed is optional.” That was met with stony silence although I thought it was the height of humor. I was a bit concerned that the car in question would have “issues” on the way back to Connecticut since it was a Ford from the era when Ford stood for either “found on road dead” or “fix or repair daily.” As it happens, we made it back without incident and the “Just Married” sign that adorned their car adorned ours the next weekend when we got married. (And we still have the picture to prove it.)

Our wedding was the culmination of one of those classic big-white wedding planning frenzies. My fiancée had decided to convert to Judaism and that whole process began with meeting with the rabbi with whom I had grown up, a very learned man who could be intimidating as hell. For those of you who do not know, it is traditional for a rabbi to attempt to convince someone NOT to convert to Judaism because if they can shake their conviction to do so, then it wasn’t a conversion for the right reasons. Until you see this actually being done to someone you love, you cannot believe what a terrifying experience it is. By the time he was done with us, she was practically in tears and I was ready to detonate in the mega-tonnage range. But she passed the test and he then was as sweet a man as I had always known him to be and helped arrange for conversion classes.

I may have mentioned somewhere along in these tales of myself that I am extremely susceptible to any sedative-type medication, whether it be pain-killers, muscle relaxants or cold medication. Bear this in mind. My fiancée graduated a semester before I did so I was at school without for my senior spring semester. About once a month I’d visit her for the weekend. I believe it was spring break when I was there that I accompanied her to her conversion class. That week I had a muscle cramp in my neck and the university health services prescribed a muscle relaxant called Soma. I was supposed to take it with aspirin but all I had was Tylenol. When I was younger, I got a mild buzz off Tylenol. The night I was going to class with her, I took the pills before we left...and sat through the class nodding off like a junkie. What the rabbi who taught the class must have thought of me is better left unanswered.

So as not to offend the Roman Catholic part of the family, we opted to have the wedding at the Hartford Hilton, which has since been torn down. (No, our wedding had nothing to do with that. An interesting side not is that we got married in the exact same ballroom in which I would, thirteen years later, take the Bar examination.) It did, however, present a dilemma as to where we were going to find a rabbi. None with their own synagogue wanted to do a wedding where not in their own synagogue. My step-father’s sister-in-law also happened to be a friend of my mother and one of my Hebrew school teachers. She remembered a former student who was a rabbi but was at the time employed as a clinical psychologist at Connecticut Valley Hospital, a state-run mental hospital. That was an interesting experience, walking through the hallways looking for his office.

The rabbi made it clear that he had no interest in being part of the rehearsal. So we did the rehearsal in the back yard of my fiancée s parents’ house. There were five bridesmaids plus the matron of honor and I had to walk down the aisle with every one of them during the rehearsal. I’m thinking they weren’t sure I could figure out the direction to walk or the side on which to stand.

So the night before the wedding, me and the boys (my best man and groomsmen) decided to find a topless bar to go to. Only problem was, none of us, me included, knew where one was in the area. No one we asked knew where we could find such an establishment. (We knew where plenty of them were in Syracuse but this was Connecticut.) Failing to find said genre of establishment, we settled for a garden variety bar, had a few beers and then went to the motel where we boys got to stay the night before. (Interesting fact about that motel: Not too long after we got married, the motel became an X-rated motel with in-room movies, gel beds and really tacky lighting. Our wedding had nothing to do with that.)

The next morning, the bunch of us went to the Olympia Diner for breakfast where we happened to run into some more fraternity people. So we had a nice hearty group breakfast. There were still several hours, so we headed to back to my fiancée’s parents’ house. So as to avoid the evil of the groom seeing the bride before the wedding, we stayed downstairs and played bridge. Eventually we were evicted and headed for the Hilton. I remember what I was wearing (ratty blue jeans, a football jersey and sandals) because when my mother greeted me at the hotel it was with the following comment: “Nice to see the groom is the one dressed like a slob.” Thank you Mom.

The ceremony itself was very nice (so I’m told). I don’t particularly remember it. After that came the first reception. Yes, that’s right, there were two. The one at the Hilton was Kosher (read: very, vey expensive). From there we adjourned to a neighboring town where we had the second reception at a VFW hall. The amusement value here came when the bandleader did the pre-meal blessing…in the name of the Father and the son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Somehow he had missed the memo about the wedding couple being, uh…not Catholic. My mother-in-law was mortified but my parents took it in stride. One of the last events was a dollar dance. (I had never heard of this tradition until several years earlier. We were just girlfriend/boyfriend at the time and went to a wedding along with her parents. There was a dollar dance wherein all the gentlemen had the bride a dollar for the privilege of dancing with her. The idea is to give the couple some ready cash for the honeymoon. My mother-in-law (to be) turned to us and said, “At your wedding it’s going to be a five dollar dance.” I looked at my girlfriend, she looked at me and we both said “Our wedding?” Apparently my m-i-l (to be) knew what we had not quite yet figured out.) There’s a picture of me handing my new wife a dollar with a smirk on my face since she told me no dollar, no dance. I had to borrow the money.

After the reception ended, we went back to her parents’ house to change. I was helping my new bride out of her wedding gown when I heard her mother (who by this time was well drunk) yell, “Mark Gutis! Get out of my daughter’s room while she’s changing her clothes!” I was about to do a big “oops, we’ve been caught” when it suddenly dawned on me: We’re married now and that was just what I said.

As part of the deal with the Hilton, we received a suite for the wedding night. We went upstairs and walked in. There was a nice bottle of champagne (Kosher, of course) in an ice bucket and there in the bedroom, were twin beds. We looked at each other and I said to wait. Down to the desk I went and said, “Um, my…wife (it was the first time I had ever said that and it took a split-second to process) and I got married this afternoon. Right here in fact. The suite you gave us has twin beds.” The desk clerk looked at me and said, “They gave you twin beds? On your wedding night?” I confirmed this. He said to go back and he would send someone to bring us to a new room. A few minutes later a bellman escorted to a suite on another floor where we found a king-size bed. Much better! (OK. TMI alert. Read the remainder of this paragraph at your own peril! The next month, we went to the wedding of my in-law’s best friends’ son. For whatever reason, my father-in-law and the father of the groom took it upon themselves to buy me enough drinks so that I would finally loosen up around my in-laws. We were sitting and talking and a few humorous comments about wedding nights were made. At that point, happily inebriated, I said, “Know what the best thing about a king size bed is?” and they just looked at me. Happily, I continued, “You can mess around on one-third and sleep on the other two-thirds and not have to worry about the wet spot.” My mother-in-law looked at me then at my father-in-law who, recognizing the look, knew he was in some sort of trouble.

So we went to one of the honeymoon factories in the Poconos. Our only criterion in choosing the place was that it did NOT have heart-shaped bathtubs. (They were octagon-shaped.) We did all the things they had to offer including horseback riding. Fortunately, we waited until the day before our departure to do that. By the next morning, we were both so damn sore from riding that we could barely walk normally. Of course that provoked gales of laughter and lots of nudge, nudge, wink, wink as to how we had “really” gotten into that condition.

There you have it. This June 2 will mark thirty-six years of marriage. There have been many other weddings since ours and a few funerals, too. Stay tuned for more of the story.

To be continued….

Life is a Dance

2010-03-17T11:47:00.001-07:00

There’s a song by John Michael Montgomery called “Life is Dance.” For the past ten years or so, I have experienced dance as a life. This is all the more surprising when I consider that I am basically pretty inept when it comes to dancing ballroom style. The times my wife and I have taken dance lessons, we learn the mechanics of the dance and progress to a certain point...and then we have the damndest time following the music and being anything resembling smooth. My perception has been that the majority of that problem is mine because I just do not get the part about “leading.” And maybe that’s why I have found much comfort and enjoyment with Irish dancing.

Some of you know that I consider myself Irish, feel very comfortable with all things Irish and plan to retire in Ireland when my wife finally tells me that I can retire. Why I feel this way I have no explanation. Despite disclaiming any belief in metaphysical things, one of the only explanations I have for this phenomenon is that I was Irish in at least one past lives.

My first brush with Irish dancing came when “Riverdance” came to the United States for the first time in 1996. The show was performed at the Radio City Music Hall and the company appeared on the Today Show. (By the way, why I have such a clear memory of this is beyond me, but I do.) We were on vacation in Rockport, Massachusetts and I had the TV on that morning. The company performed outside the studio on the street and I was blown away by the precision of the entire company. Damn! They were more precise than the Rockettes!

At this point, my memory gets a bit hazy as to the whens and the wherefores but in 1998, my daughter began taking Irish dance lessons. Now, my wife says that our daughter’s primary motivation was that she had fallen in love with Michael Flatley. Whatever the reason, she started dancing. That summer, I had a conference to attend in Chicago and my wife and daughter came along. Coincidentally, the North American Irish Dance Championships were being held at the Marriott in Chicago, two blocks from our hotel. We walked into the lobby and my daughter's eyes lit up looking at the many dancers walking around carrying their dance dresses. We sat down and just took it all in. Finally, I looked at my wife and said, “I am in Irish dance hell!” I then had to return to our hotel for the seminars and the two of them stayed to watch the competition and shop at the vendors.

At that point, Irish dancing was the farthest thing from my mind.

After a brief unhappy stint with one dance school, my daughter changed to the one with which we are currently associated. At that year's dance recital, I watched her dance with several other adults including some men and I began wondering if it was something I could do. But I didn’t dare say anything about it. At some point that year, she got engaged and the planned wedding turned into one of those big white weddings. Among the things planned was a performance by the dancers from the school including the adults. I, then, decided that I was going to surprise her and learn a couple of easy steps to do for her at the wedding as a gift from Dad. I bought a how-to videotape done by Colin Dunne (who replaced Michael Flatley as lead male dancer in Riverdance). Let me say this about that. This was supposed to be a basic how-to tape. After ten years of dancing, I STILL can’t follow those steps. I quickly gave up and said nothing about what I had intended since it was’'t going to happen. I also assumed my inability to learn from the video was my dance ineptitude. (By the way, my favorite picture from her wedding is of her dancing the hornpipe in her wedding gown with one of the other girls holding her gown off the floor to keep it out of the way.)

Shortly after that, my daughter came home from a feis (that’s pronounced “fesh” and is an Irish dance competition) and announced that I was going to learn how to do some Irish dancing because at the feis, there was a parent-child competition. I looked at her and said something like, “Oh, okay,” with only a slight waver of trepidation in my voice. So that summer, she schlepped me to the dance studio with her. Two of the top dancers in our schools (young ladies who became my first adopted “dance daughters” and my dance teacher’s four daughters all began trying to teach me the basics. Now, for those of you who may not know, the basic step is called a three and alternates as follows: R-L-R, L-R-L. It’s almost like skipping but not. As with so many thousands of dancers before me, this basic step was extremely elusive. Being close to 50 years of age, it was also extremely klutzy looking. After several sessions, my daughter finally looked at me and said, “Didn’t you tell me you used to go wizarding across campus in college?” What she meant was that there were times a group of us would link arms and, like Dorothy and her companions in “The Wizard of Oz,” go dancing across campus singing “We’re off to see the Wizard.” I said that yes, we did do that and she said, “Well what you were doing were threes.” And that’s when the light dawned. From that moment on, I was able to do threes without a problem.

With the issue of the three solved, we moved on to sevens, another of the basic steps. Sevens are similar to what in other forms of dance is called grapevine. Essentially it’s a side-step. For whatever reason, this proved even more elusive and it was a good two years before it ever got straightened out and done correctly. Another elusive move was the over-two-three. It’s very similar to a three except that the lead leg is lifted and you go “over” the leg for the 2-3. They finally got that one across to me, sort of, when my daughter said, “It’s just like the way you ran the hurdles.” That kind of made sense when my left leg was in front but not when it was the right leg.

After several weeks of this, the girls who were trying to help me concluded the following: “Ain’t no way this guy is EVER going to learn this.” This I learned much after the fact. My daughter also told me that she was too old to be able to do the parent-child competition but that was all right because there were adult dance classes in the fall.

So we started going to adult dance classes which were pretty much a fun evening of ceili (pronounced “caley”), or group dancing, not unlike square dancing. There’s a good reason for that. American square-dancing derives from Irish ceili dancing. Since my daughter was an adult, she was in class, too. At the end, we all sat down and my dance teacher asked who was going to do the Oireachtas (that’s pronounced “or-rack-tiss” and is the regional dance competition). I looked at my daughter and she nodded her head and said, “Yes. You are.” I don’t think my head exploded but suddenly I was now going to be doing not just a competition, but the regionals. (And I understood the concept of regionals from my high school track days.)

Now, in addition to having to become proficient at 3s and 7s and hop-back 2-3s, I had to learn a four-hand reel and an eight-hand reel (that simply means a dance done with four and a dance done eight to reel music). In the eight-hand, I was paired up with one of the experienced ladies. In the four-hand, I was paired with a woman who, like me, was new to Irish dance. Little did I know, but this lady would turn out to be the only partner with whom I have ever danced a four-hand in competition (and, for that matter, was only not my partner in one eight-hand competition) over these past ten years.

The most difficult thing I found in these dances was spinning. In Irish dance, the gent is always on the left (which means men are always on the left in the dance pairing and if it is two women, the one on the left is called the gent). In the spin, the partners grasp hands together, spin in a clockwise direction while moving around the floor (and the other dancers) in an anti-clockwise direction, all the time doing threes. Sound confusing? Try doing it the first fifty times. It’s still the most challenging part for me in any ceili dance.

That year, the Oireachtas was being held at the Marriott in Stamford, Connecticut. We drove down the day of the adult competitions and walked in…and if I thought I had been in dance hell in Chicago that was nothing! The hotel was over-crowded with dancers, parents, teachers, assorted relatives…all pushing, shoving jostling in narrow hallways and don’t even consider trying to use the elevator. My daughter’s dance partner met us. He was staying at the hotel because his son was one of the dancer’s competing in individual competitions. We went up to their room so I could change into my dance costume. At the time, it was a white shirt with a red tie, blue jacket with a red sash and a kilt. We took the obligatory pictures and went downstairs, back into hell.

My two dance daughters, both of whom were doing individual competitions, had been watching for us. When they saw me and the look on my face, they both started trying to reassure me that all was okay and it really wasn’t as bad as it looked and I shouldn’t get worked up. Honestly, other than worrying about forgetting the dance and embarrassing our teacher, I was not concerned. I have always enjoyed being in front of a group of people whether it’s lecturing or performing.

We gathered together as a team and because I was one of the newbies, I just went with the herd. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I figured those who knew would make sure I got to where I needed to be when I needed to be there as long as I stayed with the group. That was easy enough because my more experienced eight-hand partner and my daughter were keeping a sharp eye on me.

The eight-hand competition was first. I felt fairly comfortable there because my partner was a very strong partner and could move me where I needed to be if I made a misstep. I don’t remember a thing about the dance itself. I do know that we got through it without a problem. Next was the four-hand where my partner was as new to this as I was. (It was only years later that I learned that she suffers from stage fright and just getting on the stage was a major accomplishment for her. My only memory of that dance was that it was not nearly as smooth as the eight-hand had been. But we did not embarrass ourselves or our teacher. And the neatest thing about the adult ceili competition is that people in the audience appreciate the fact that we are actual adults and are enthusiastic for us.

When we were done, my head was spinning a bit, partly from an adrenalin rush and partly from the euphoria of having gotten through it without any major screw-up. I immediately ran over to our dance teacher, hugged her and thanked her and asked if there was a class she could put me in. I was HOOKED!

It was almost an anticlimax, but we finished fourth in the eight-hand and were awarded medals. There’s a great picture of the eight of us with medals around our necks. But to me, the real prize had been discovering a new passion. And if I was never going to be Michael Flatley or Colin Dunne, I was going to have a decade of fantastic memories, make some wonderful friends and be part of a tradition that still makes me feel “just right.”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everybody.

Memoirs of a Cold Warrior, Part 2

2010-03-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

By the time I got to high school, the war in Vietnam was in full swing. We were fighting the evil Commies there so we didn't have to fight them somewhere else...or here. (That sound vaguely familiar?) The MIC had a field day by pushing us into believing in the Domino Theory. Remember that? If we lose Vietnam, then we'll lose Thailand, then Burma, then Malaya, etc. Kind of the opposite of the winning strategy in Risk when you start with the Australian area and expand from there...oh never mind.

By this time I had settled in my own mind that following college I was going to be an Air Force aviator. The only question I had was whether I would earn a commission through the Air Force Academy or ROTC. One of my classmates was interested in the Naval Academy and we figured he had a better chance of getting in and staying in (that old mathematics thing and me) so I opted to not try and go the ROTC route instead.

I have mentioned before that my opposition to the Vietnam war had little in common with the anti-war movement. I opposed the war because I understood that we were not there to win it. Men were dying and being imprisoned as POWs for a flawed strategy and an uncertain political theory. As we continue to discover, it's almost impossible to defeat an insurgency in its own country. B-52s continued dropping tons upon tons of bombs on jungle with no ability to figure out if we were doing anything other than blowing up empty jungle. I even recall the poster that one of the math teachers had in the back of his classroom. It was a big bright flower with the legend, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." Really? Honest? No sh*t Sherlock! I had rapidly lost patience with the anti-war movement when it took on a decidedly pro-North Vietnam aspect. I didn't like the war but I still deeply believed in the necessity of opposing client states of the Soviet Union.

The Tet Offensive begat Johnson's choice of not running for re-election. That begat Nixon as President. President Nixon begat Vietnamization. Vietnamization begat the secret bombing of Cambodia which begat the invasion of Cambodia which begat making the Vietnamese fight their own war which begat the 1972 invasion of South Vietnam which begat the Linebacker bombing campaign and more bombing which begat some progress on negotiations which begat South Vietnam's disagreement which begat North Vietnam balking which begat Linebacker II and B-52s being shot down over Hanoi and Haiphong which finally begat an end to American involvement in Vietnam.

While all this begetting was going on, the arch anti-Communist, Richard Milhouse Nixon went to China. No, not Taiwan/Republic of China, but the big bad People's Republic of China in February 1972. WTF? Nixon and Kissinger going to China to open relations? Well, Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939. (Oh, wait...how did that work out?)

Once I tumbled to the fact that college math precluded any dream I might have had for becoming an aerospace engineer, I discovered that Syracuse University had a very good International Relations and a superb Soviet Studies program. And, joy of joys (no, this was actually before THAT Joy) there was a dual concentration in International Relations and Soviet Studies. How great a major was that for the Air Force?

While I was at Syracuse, the Yom Kippur War a/k/a the October War a/k/a the Ramadan War resulted in the U.S. and Soviet Union going eyeball to eyeball over the possibility of a Soviet intervention. The Strategic Air Command generated its B-52s to a ready state but cooler heads prevailed yet again.

By the time I had figured out that my eyes would prevent me from being a pilot, my heart was set on becoming a navigator. And what was the navigator's airplane? Why the B-52. From the day I started navigator training, all I wanted was to get into B-52s. The good news was that the majority of my classmates considered a desire to be in the Strategic Air Command to be a serious mental disorder. Nope. Not me. I had been preparing for that for years. Me and Jimmy Stewart ("Strategic Air Command"), Karl Malden ("Bombers B-52") and Rock Hudson ("A Gathering of Eagles").

In 1975, North Vietnam launched the final invasion of the south. And all those lives that had been wasted and destroyed to save South Vietnam from the evil Commie aggressors? Oh well, sorry. The scenes of the helicopters evacuating civilians from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) are seared in the memories of many of us who lived through it.

Eventually I was assigned to the 416th Bomb Wing, 668th Bomb Squadron at Griffiss AFB, NY. I was so proud when my wife sewed on my bomb squadron patch with a goat butting with its head in front of a big bomb. And I was even prouder when I certified for my Emergency War Order mission, part of the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP). The SIOP was the master plan of the United States for blowing up the world by dropping many, many nuclear warheads on the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact nations and, depending on the scenario, our new pals, the Red Chinese. The Deputy Commander for Operations was the officer who certified me and his comment was that he had never heard anyone who could pronounce the names of the Russian towns as well as I did. And I didn't even bother taking Russian!

At that time, each SAC base kept four bomber and four tanker aircraft on alert. The crews were restricted to the base and would walk around in their flight suits. When the klaxon went off, they would run out to the aircraft, start engines and be ready to take off within 15 minutes of the klaxon. A message would be broadcast and until it was decoded, we had no idea whether it was a practice, the real thing...or a boo-boo a/k/a an inadvertent klaxon. That happened the first time I was ever on alert. It resulted in the alert crews being restricted to the alert facility. My wife and my (then) baby daughter watched the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations on the TV at the alert facility's family center.

Those bombers at Griffiss were armed with four gravity bombs in the forward bomb-bay (B-61 with variable yields from 0.3 kiloton to 340 kiloton) and in the aft bomb-bay a rotary launcher with six to eight AGM-69A Short Range Attack Missiles (SRAM) with a warhead variable yield warhead from 170 kiloton to 200 kiloton. So you do the math and you can imagine the destructive capability of just one wing. Multiply that by all the squadrons in SAC plus the ICBMs plus the submarine launched missiles and you begin to get some idea why we used to giggle over the fact that they actually gave us a Post-Strike Base. Yes. We were going to take off with nukes raining down all over the U.S., refuel from a tanker, fly across the ocean, descend to the lowest possible altitude, fly a precisely timed and mapped route with nukes going off all around us and still have enough fuel to make it to a base that would probably be a large smoking hole in the ground ANYWAY! And that's to say nothing of the amount of radiation we would have absorbed. Honestly. In training, they showed a movie where they told us that flying through a post-detonation cloud would be safe enough for us to not be concerned. Come on. We might have been be crazy. We weren't stupid.

About the time I got out of the Air Force, cruise missiles were starting to become a part of the inventory. This enabled the B-52 to be able to stand off even farther from their targets and sling nuclear-tipped missiles. Cruise missiles would become one of the most contentious weapons in Europe during the 1980s. And, by the way, when the James Bond movie "Never Say Never Again" was released (essentially the same plot as "Thunderball") it was two air launched cruise missiles that were stolen.

Détente seemed to be the word as Soviet and U.S. relations seemed to indicate a thaw in the Cold War. That lasted until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. Then even Jimmy Carter, the president who canceled the B-1 bomber project, sat up and took notice. The evil Commies were at it again, invading a nation that had done nothing to them. (Hmmm. Where have I heard that more recently?) Carter was followed by that arch Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan.

Since this is about the Cold War and not about economics I'll avoid the temptation of going on about redistribution of wealth under Ronnie's two terms. But a lot of that redistributed wealth got shoveled in the direction of the Military-Industrial Complex. For one thing, he reactivated the B-1 bomber program. Then he came up with his genius Star Wars program.

Europe had become a stockpile of cruise missiles and intermediate range missiles. There were protests in the U.K. and Germany against our basing these weapons on their soil. In 1983, during a NATO exercise code-named Able Archer 83, a dedicated Soviet intelligence group was of the opinion that it was a pretext for a first-strike against the USSR and Soviet forces were generated to a near-ready state. This was based, in no small part, on Reagan's inflammatory 1950s-style Cold War rhetoric. This was yet another case of the world being on the brink of catastrophe before cooler heads prevailed.

Ultimately, Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, for their own reasons, began engaging in a dialogue which resulted in meaningful cuts in the number of warheads poised to go flying. This was a truly positive development for the world because the latest, and last, iteration of strategic nuclear deterrence was known as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The essence of it is this: You don't dare launch on me because if you do, I'll have time to retaliate and we will just wind up destroying each other...oh, yeah, and the world, too. (There is a 1959 Cold War novel by Mordecai Roshwald named "Level 7" in which it comes out that the two sides destroyed the world and themselves by accident and misinterpretation. And Nevil Shute's 1957 novel "On the Beach" demonstrated how a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere would, ultimately, kill life on Earth. It all makes for fascinating reading, certainly scarier than anything Stephen King or Dean Koontz ever came up with.)

Reagan is remembered for his "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall speech" and while it may have given some succor and encouragement to the anti-totalitarian sentiment that was permeating Eastern Europe, greater political and economic factors were at work. (I heartily recommend Michael Meyer's book "The Year That Changed the World", reviewed here http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/04/AR2009090401751.html, for a penetrating, honest and extremely readable look at the events that heralded the end of the Cold War.) And in that dark, depressed time of my life when I had to work in retail sales to earn some money, one thing I bought was a piece of the Berlin Wall. I still have it.

December 26, 1991 was the day the Soviet Union dissolved itself. As so many things in the history of the world, it came with a whimper, not a bang. On May 31, 1992, the Strategic Air Command was reorganized out of existence. (And the body of Curtis LeMay has been spinning in its grave ever since.) Within a three year period, the basis of the bi-partite world had ceased to be. We had won. But what had we won?

MAD may have been the classic example of two scorpions in a bottle, knowing that killing the other would result in its own death. Despite the unthinkably huge number of megatons poised to be slung, there was one thing of which could be relatively sure. The Soviets knew where those warheads were and who had them under control. Their scientists and nuclear engineers were under their control. Once the USSR dissolved into separate states all of which suffered their own economic woes, much was sold to the highest bidder.

We live in a post-Cold War world. Are we any safer? There's probably less risk of an apocalyptic world-ending nuclear exchange than there was in the Cold War. But the most serious attack on what the Neocons like to call the Homeland (and if that doesn't smack of Fascist overtones, nothing does) came in the post-Cold War era. We are engaged in two wars, one of which shows little sign of ending. More men and women are being lost in combat than at any time since the Vietnam war. And the hemorrhage of money to the MIC only seems to be accelerating. Safer? Maybe in one sense, but not really. Poorer? Morally and economically.

Personally, I look back on the Cold War era with a degree of nostalgia. If you ask many Russians who lived through the Great Terror of the 1930s they will look back with nostalgia on Stalin. I seem to have a similar feeling about the world in which I grew up. It was a dangerous world. From the day we detonated the Trinity device in July 1945 mankind had the means to end its tenuous existence on Earth. That we succeeded in avoiding that fate may be more to happenstance than planning. I look back at my service in the Air Force with pride. At the same time, I find it frightening that I was prepared to participate in an apocalyptic spasm of destruction that would have destroyed everyone and everything I know and hold dear. That I have become anti-war sometimes surprises me...but not all that much and not all that often. But I think back on that poster from my high school math teacher's room and recognize the wisdom of it, that war really is NOT healthy for children and other living things.

Memories of a Cold Warrior

2010-03-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, an event that I never believed I would live to see. This was followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Suddenly, the world as I had known it had changed and the Cold War was over. The state of world affairs that had existed since the time I was born had been replaced by…a whole one.

I’m not sure when I became aware of the fact that there was a Cold War between the United States and the USSR. I suppose, the first inkling I had that there was some danger was in grade school when we were subjected to periodic air raid drills, separate and apart from fire drills. The grade school I attended went from kindergarten through 6^th grade and is located in a city that borders New York City on the north. When the air raid signal went off, we filed silently into the hallways (fourth through sixth grades on the first floor, younger children in the basement). We were instructed to stand facing the wall but not touching or leaning on it, forehead on one forearm, the other forearm behind our heads. This was to protect us from falling debris.

OK. Now, let’s stop for a minute and think about this (which, unfortunately for me, is exactly what I did). My first question was how were my little arms going to stop bricks, plaster and other heavy stuff from smashing me into little Mark bits? Secondarily, if the goal was to protect my head from said debris, why were my arms not ON TOP of my head? That, however, contemplated one of two things. It contemplated that, either the big bad Russians intended bombing us with conventional explosives, like we did to Germany throughout World War II, or that we were not going to be close enough to ground zero to be vaporized. Because of my fascination with war stuff and airplanes, I was well aware of the atomic bombs we had detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although too young to understand the physics, I was sufficiently aware of the power of those weapons to realize that the newer generation of H-Bombs, as we called them, made much bigger mushroom clouds. So, at some point, after one of these air raid drills, I raised my hand and asked what was the use of standing in the hallways when we were likely to be blasted into super-heated vapor in a split second anyway? Receiving no satisfactory answer, I persisted in my questioning. This resulted in my mother being called into school to have a discussion with the principal as to why I was trying to scare all the other children. The ultimate resolution of this conundrum was that I just needed to do what the school authorities said and not ask why. (This same answer goes a long way towards explaining why I never really had the ability to accept a great deal of religious belief, but that’s a topic for another day.)

For some reason, our school system had adopted the stand next to the wall with your arms on your head theory of nuclear destruction avoidance. The government also had a marvelous way of making people feel safe in the face of nuclear annihilation: Duck and cover. Here’s the skinny on this genius piece of civil defense. As soon as you saw the flash from a nuclear detonation (assuming it had not burned out your retinas) you had to stop what you were doing and get on the ground under some cover…such as a table, or at least next to a wall, and assume the fetal position, lying face-down and covering your heads with your hands. Oh! Right. That wooden desk was going to protect you from several thousand degrees of heat and the over-pressure caused by the shock wave generated by a 10 megaton blast. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for playing along at home with our game of “You Have Got to Be Sh*tting Me!” This was actually taught from the 1950s into the 1980s! (I always thought a better solution was if you saw the flash, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. But that’s just me.)

Of course, from an early age, we were subjected to fear of the evil Commies. After all, they had started the Korean War, they had permeated our society and government (just ask Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin)) and they had big, bad missiles with which they launched Sputnik. Besides, Nikita Khrushchev threatened “We will bury you!” in a 1956 speech. And no member of the Soviet Communist Party ever lied about anything. Right? So when the kindly school authorities told us that we needed to practice standing in the halls as air raid drills, who were we to question?

A little knowledge is always a dangerous thing. My fascination with airplanes and aviation, especially of the military variety, led me to discover that from some time in 1958, the Air Force kept a fleet of B-52s with nuclear bombs (at least we guessed they had nuclear bombs) in the air at any one time. This program was known as Operation Chrome Dome and was to prevent the dirty Commies from catching all our bombers on the ground in a surprise attack. In addition, when the balloon went up (there’s a great phrase), these aircraft would be much closer to their targets than ones sitting on the ground. That’ll show those dirty Commies! This state of affairs continued until 1968 when a fire on a B-52 caused it to crash land in Greenland with its nuclear weapons, thereby really pissing off the government of Denmark. That was the end of airborne alert. (There were “several” other accidents with nuclear weapons and aircraft. If you’re interested, check here: http://www.lutins.org/nukes.html#bombs.

So, when in October 1962, President Kennedy blew the whistle on the Soviets’ attempt to put offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba (or Cuber, as he said it), some of us were just a wee bit more agitated than others. I can recall my friends saying that there was nothing to worry about with me wondering what they knew that I didn’t. Granted, at the tender age of ten, I was not exactly an expert but I did have a pretty damn good idea what slinging nukes at each other would do to the world. As the saying goes, we went eyeball to eyeball with the Soviets and the other guy blinked or as Phil Ochs put it in his song, Talkin’ Cuban Missile Crisis, “The Russian tried, the Russians, failed. Homeward bound those missiles sailed. Mr. Khruschchev said, ‘Better red than dead.’” What we did not learn until after the fall of the Soviet Union was that there were tactical nuclear weapons under the command of the local commander in Cuba with authority to use them if the U.S. invaded. Also, there were three Soviet submarines in the area with nuclear-tipped torpedoes that were supposed to be used if discovered by the U.S. Navy. All three were discovered but none of the captains used the special torpedoes. In other words, there were loose warheads that were not under any centralized control. It really was a near-run thing.

In 1964, we were gifted with two excellent movies on the dangers of nuclear war. The first was Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and the rather more sober “Fail Safe.” “Dr. Strangelove” is particularly memorable for its all-star cast with Peter Sellers playing three parts, the President, an RAF officer and the good doctor. “Fail Safe” began with a disclaimer that what is shown in the movie could not actually happen. I recall being somewhat skeptical but once I was in the Air Force and admitted to the secret of how Positive Control actually works I was finally convinced. “Fail Safe” also bothered my wife because she said that she could see me as one of the crewmembers of the bomber that presses on against all odds and makes it to Moscow and drops its weapons.

1964 also saw the fall of the Soviet bogey-man. Around the same time the Cardinals were defeating the Yankees 4 games to 3 in the World Series, a cabal led by Leonid Brezhnev managed to depose Nikita Khrushchev. He had been skating on somewhat thin ice, especially in the wake of the Cuban missile adventure and Brezhnev had been plotting since March of that year. Rather than fight it, Nikita gave in to the inevitable and accepted “retirement” to his dacha.

The United States had been getting deeper and deeper into Vietnam and in August, President Johnson got his blank check for escalating the war. The following June, B-52s flew their first combat missions. The bomber that had been designed as an intercontinental delivery system for nuclear weapons was suddenly thrust into the business of dropping iron bombs in a tactical mission. I became aware of this turn of events once the news picked up on what were called Arc Light strikes. I think that was my first inkling that the American experience in Vietnam was going to be a long strange trip…and not all that positive an experience.

To be continued....

Cave Time

2010-02-25T12:12:00.000-08:00

In his best-selling advice book Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus, John Gray posited the proposition that men and women react differently to given stimuli and events. In relation to stress, he explains that men will “retreat into their caves” until they find a solution to their problem. Although there may still be some Neolithic tribes around where the men literally retreat in to their caves, this behavior may be characterized by such things as going to the garage and working on the car, going out with the boys, or other such behaviors.

In case you’re unfamiliar with your gentle writer and his somewhat non-typical to his gender attitudes, let me say a few words about me. I have been called a number of different things in my life (well, many, many things but I mean the ones pertinent to this discussion). Among others, I have been called a traitor to my gender, a girlie man and one woman referred to me as her gay male friend who happens to be straight. I tell you this because in many ways, I do not react in “typical” male ways. (And in another shameless plug, if you want to read more about that, read my earlier blog, “What I Have Learned About Women.”) When stressed or faced with a problem, I tend to withdraw into myself but I still want and need reassurance and support. I may withdraw for a while but eventually I want and need to talk about it. To me, Cave Time has always had a very different meaning than an emotional “time out” as John Gray characterizes it.

I was an only child. And I was not just an only child, I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. And beyond that, I was a grandson and the eldest of all grandchildren in a Jewish family. Now, had I been born into the royal family of any one of several nations, I would have been in fat city. Unfortunately, in my situation, I was the one of whom much was expected. My mother’s father had dreams of me being a senator or governor or, dare we even say it, president. He felt it his deity-given duty to educate me in American history. (Let me say a word or two about him. He was an immigrant from the Ukraine, served in the U.S. Army in World War I, read and memorized facts and figures from the World Almanac and possibly new more facts about U.S. presidents than Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss put together.) To his way of thinking, my chances for success were unlimited. These expectations ran smack into my own belief in the fact that I was an unexceptional and a pretty sad specimen of humanity (a recurrent theme in the universe between my ears). If I got a 95 on an exam, he wanted to know why it wasn’t 100. If I got a 100, he wanted to know why I didn’t get extra-credit. Eventually, I insisted on no longer sharing my grades as good was never good enough. He did not mean it in a malicious manner; he was trying to prod me into exceeding expectations. I could never get across to him that I WAS exceeding them because my own expectations for my capabilities were so low.

Coupled with this family dynamic was the fact that in my neighborhood, I was the one who could be most easily scared, was the smallest and weakest one, was the Jewish kid and, worst of all, was the one who cried most easily. When any one of these things triggered a fight or flight reaction, it was inevitably flight. Eventually, my “friends” would ask me to come back outside but at some point the cycle would renew.

With this as the frame of reference, you may better understand why at an early age I learned Cave Time behaviors that to the present time are hard to break. My father was a model builder and passed the hobby on to me. Model-making is a wonderful hobby but, ultimately, a solitary one. In it, I could retreat into my own world where I could imagine myself flying the airplanes I was building. And when the model was completed, it took its place on the shelves with all the other plastic dreams I had built.

Something for which I will be eternally grateful to my parents is that they passed on a love for reading to me at a very early age. As low as my self-expectations were, I was aware that I read on a level several grades above my age. (This occasionally caused problem such as my mother having to come to school to personally tell my teacher that I was not lying and had, in fact, read a certain book.) I was never without a book and I am still that way.

Books may be the ultimate Cave Time for me to this day. Through the worst of my depressive episodes, as activities fell away and life became a stale, monotonous attempt to make time pass and get through yet another day, I never stopped reading. In fact, reading seemed to be the only place where I could find relief from the blackness encroaching on my existence. Transporting myself to far off worlds where humans and aliens interacted with robots or back in history to fly along with naval aviators over the Pacific fighting the dirty Japs or waiting behind the stone wall while Pickett’s Charge came toward me allowed me to escape the misery of my depression.

I have a very clear memory of being at my cousins’ house and having their friends (all of whom were younger than me) rejecting me as being unfit for them to play with. I just walked away, came back inside and sat down with my book. This behavior amazed my aunt who held up my reading as a virtue to my cousins. What she did not understand was the reading was my only way of escaping the hurt.

As a child, I routinely found myself in the position of being the one who always asked friends to come over to play. I was seldom the one asked. As a result of this, I became very good at playing games by myself. And I’m not referring to games that were designed as solitaire games. Monopoly, Scrabble, board war games were all games where I would play both sides or even more like in Monopoly. When I got into auto racing, I discovered a game called Formula 1 by Parker Brothers. I drove every car in the race. It was sometimes tough not to cheat with the knowledge of what the other “players” were going to do. But I learned to manage this compartmentalization, too.

When games became electronic, this was perfect for me. I could play against the computer and not need anyone else. And when I discovered flight simulators on the computer I was in heaven. Had my wife not put her foot down early in the flight sim experience, I would have been one of those people who would have purchased an old airplane ejection seat and rigged it out with full controls. I have seen rigs that people have built that are, literally, self-contained cockpits. The only way to communicate with the “pilot” when the canopy is down is over a built-in intercom. (We compromised on the Saitek system that has a joystick on one side and a throttle quadrant on the other.)

Cross-stitching is another one of those activities that I can do all by myself. It is self-contained and I can content myself with the sure knowledge that it is creative and much of what I do is done for other people. And it’s an activity that I can do while watching TV or listening to music. It just does not need other people doing it with me to make it work.

Cave Time, to me, has always been a way of life. Even as I have emerged into the world of emotions and emotional connections that have been absent for much of my life, I still find myself more likely to retreat into my cave. This has, at times, become an issue with my wife. It requires a conscious and constant effort to spend time together. Dinner time is one of those times and when certain things are on TV that we both watch I try to remember to come out of my cave and spend the time with her.

But a lifetime spent sitting in my cave and painting on the walls is hard to break. It still comes as a surprise to me that people enjoy my company. That’s not all that surprising considering how long it took me to enjoy my own company. There is still a tendency to keep to myself because I have learned the safety of it. If you don’t interact with other people, you may be lonely but you will never be rejected. But that isn’t life; it’s mere existence. Man is, ultimately, a social creature and even I have had to learn this. To be loved you have to love and that love has to start from within. And if that means sticking my head outside my cave and letting it go where my heart leads, then that is where I need to go. And I have started to do just that.

Boldly Going 4

2010-02-19T12:42:00.000-08:00

Of course the Federation and their Klingon allies prevailed over the Dominion and their Cardassian lackeys in the war that consumed the last couple seasons of DS9. In the final season was what has to rank as my favorite episode, “Badda-Bing Badda-Bang,” an “Ocean’s Eleven” Rat Pack-type caper that takes place in the holodeck world of Vic Fontaine (James Darren). Like the EMH on VGR, Vic was a self-aware holodeck character who bore more than a little resemblance to Frank Sinatra. At the end, he and Sisko perform a duet and we learn that, more or less, Avery Brooks can sing.

I found the ending of DS9 profoundly disturbing. Although we had to wait until Star Trek: Generations to learn Captain Kirk’s fate, at least it gave some closure. In Sisko’s case, we have none. I suspect this was intentional on the part of the producers. Although he and the wormhole entities prevailed over the dark forces arrayed against them, the corporeal Sisko disappeared. Like Sisko’s son and his recently wed second wife, we are left to wonder if Ben Sisko will ever return as a human.

The next installment of the TNG movies, Star Trek: Insurrection premiered the same year DS9 ended. It was starting to become clear that the TNG franchise was beginning to wear thin. The story seemed contrived. For me, it is memorable only in that, for the first time, we see the Captain’s Yacht detach from a starship and Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) has cybernetic eyes and no longer needs to resort to his VISOR to see.

By its fifth season, VGR had already encountered the Borg and the Ferengi, even in the Delta Quadrant. In that fifth season, a new cast member was introduced, Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a human Borg severed from the collective and “civilized” back into humanity. Aside from opening some interesting plot lines, Jeri Ryan’s presence (and the costumes in which she was clad) introduced a blatant sex appeal to the show. This, of course, did nothing but help its ratings. (Sorry. I’m still a Deanna Troi/Marina Sirtis partisan but Jeri Ryan is very easy to look at. And if you’re looking for her, she is now a regular on the TV series “Leverage.”)

Also by this time, after having read through several hundred Trek novels from all four series plus alternate timelines and books written for a juvenile audience, OC/PR boy had amassed a data base which, when printed, ran to hundreds of pages. There were at least four new novels each month that had to be read, indexed and input. The sheer size and scope of the project had become unwieldy. And worse than that, it had become a job. I found myself dreading having to go through the process. It was having a negative impact on my ability to read or do anything else. In other words, it was time to stop and let it go. The day I told my wife of my decision, she said that I might want to back it up, just in case. I said that I had already wiped the files from my hard drive, thus making the decision irrevocable.

One outgrowth of that project related to an on-line group I discovered and joined, the Klingon Imperial Diplomatic Corps (http:// www.klingon.org/). I had taken all the entries that related to Klingons and all things Klingon and contributed it to them. Thus, I was awarded the title Lore Master. To be honest, I haven’t visited the site in years but I believe my contribution is still part of it.

We all knew that Janeway and Voyager would eventually find their way home and it would probably come at the conclusion of the seventh season. By that time Tom Paris and B’Elanna Torres were married and any distinction that may have existed between Starfleet and Maquis crewmembers was a thing of the past. As grand as it was to see Voyager return to the Alpha Quadrant and home, my sense was that the writing was beginning to wear thin and there was a sense of, “Where does the franchise go from here?”

The answer to that question was that it goes back to the past. The final year of VGR saw the premier of what was called Enterprise but eventually was renamed Star Trek: Enterprise. It was based around the original warp-capable starship named Enterprise and commanded by Captain Robert April (Scott Bakula). Having learned a lesson from Seven of Nine’s sexy appearance, there was a female Vulcan liaison named T’Pol (Jolene Blalock) whose costumes and shape rivaled Seven’s.

My excitement about the show quickly began evaporating right from the start. Please recall that as OC as I was about all things Trek, I was well aware of existing “canon.” I could live with the way the Vulcans were portrayed in their attempt to logically “guide” the ignorant humans and their first starship crew. But in the first episode, we encounter Klingons on Earth! And not the human-looking Klingons that humans first dealt with in the original series, but the ones with bumpy foreheads with long hair first seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And it only got worse from there. The Andorians were encountered in ways that seemed to fly in the face of established canon. This almost conscious choice of altering the back-story to make writing more convenient bothered me. There was also a plotline about a temporal civil war taking place in the 27th century with an agent from the 31st century. There were episodes where Earth’s past had been altered and the victorious Germans were occupying parts of the United States in World War II. Suffice it to say, it was a mess. I suspect it bothered other fans of the franchise. And don’t even get me started on the theme song, the first Trek anything with a theme that had words and was sung. The show only lasted four seasons and, honestly, is the only Trek TV series that I have no interest in watching in syndication.

The TNG movie franchise also ended with a whimper with the 2002 release of Star Trek: Nemesis. Picard and the Enterprise-E crew become involved in a coup d’etat on Romulus led by a person named Shinzon (Tom Hardy) who turns out to be a clone of Picard….Well, it’s a pretty contrived, forgettable plot. For me the saddest thing was that Data is killed at the end of the movie. Its one saving grace was that we finally get to see Will Riker and Deanna Troi get married and that Riker finally has command of his own ship. I saw this movie at a late showing with my friend Tom. All he talks about is how throughout the movie I kept sputtering and muttering about how canon was being changed and/or ignored. I have it on DVD, because I have all the Trek movies on DVD but it’s one of those movies that may simply sit there on the shelf collecting dust.

And that brings us to 2009. After a four-year hiatus, we were given what, even I hope is the last Trek movie, simply called Star Trek. I almost want to consider this one not part of the franchise and that it shares only the title with the series. Expressing my own opinion, let me say that I have come to loathe ALL movies that are “based” on old TV series. Movies such as “The Wild, Wild West,” “The Avengers,” “Miami Vice” or “Charlie’s Angels” to name a few, take the original characters and create entirely new relationships, stories and back-stories. What may have worked on the small screen in hour-long bites sticks in the throat as major motion pictures. The 2009 Star Trek suffers from all these sins and just shreds canon, making no pretense of maintaining anything resembling the established timeline of the original characters. It’s a fun movie to watch as a stand-alone movie with no reference to the Trek franchise. The special effects and CGI are top notch and Simon Pegg (“Shaun of the Dead”) is great as Scotty. But calling it Star Trek, to me, is akin to heresy and blasphemy.

So here we have come to the end of my memories of the Star Trek universe. What remains of all the stuff I collected? Almost nothing. If you recall, my wife and I have been trying to lighten our load. Some of the Trek stuff was sold on eBay, but very little. Trek is very passé and there’s too much of it available to even get a nibble. Much of the collectible stuff went in a mass at one of our tag sales. The books (about 6 cartons of them) have been donated to Goodwill. The comic books are awaiting the decision of a friend as to whether he wants them. (I gave the Star Trek and X-Files Barbie and Ken sets to his wife with the agreement that if I ever asked for them back I could have them. But I don’t think that will happen. She collects Barbies so she’s giving them a good home.) And I still occasionally pick up a new novel when I see it on the shelf at Borders or Barnes & Noble and look at it out of sheer curiosity. But other than the DVDs, there is nothing left of what had been a big part of my life. (No, Mark, let’s be honest and call it what it was: an obsession.)

Do I miss it? Yes and no. I miss that feeling of picking up something new and exciting about the franchise. I miss the expectation of seeing how the plots developed and how my “friends” in Starfleet adapted and overcame. But I believe I have moved on. I watch the movies “Trekkies” and “Trekkies 2” and marvel at how close I had come to the people in those movies. Do I still have a fond place for Trek in my heart? Of course I do. But I no longer hold it in a passionate embrace. To be a bit trite, I love it but I’m no longer in love with it. But that doesn’t mean that I still don’t enjoy yelling out the title of an episode within the first few seconds of its beginning.

To all of you who stuck with me throughout this four-day mission, “Live long and prosper.”

Boldly Going 3

2010-02-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

One thing that I neglected to mention is that while I was at Syracuse University, there was a short-lived animated series based on the original Star Trek, featuring the original crew and Enterprise. I believe the reason I neglected to mention it is that it made that little of an impression on me. I had seen all the episodes, but none were sufficiently memorable and all I remember was it introduced a lion-like species, the Kzinti that had been created by SF author Larry Niven.

The next show in the franchise premiered in 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9). Unlike the previous incarnations, this one differed in that it took place primarily on a space station. There would be far less planet-hopping than before. And the officer in command was a Starfleet commander, not a captain, one Ben Sisko (Avery Brooks). His second-in-command was a former Bajoran freedom fighter, Major Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor). The premise was that the Bajorans had taken over a former Cardassian space station that the Federation renamed DS9. Command was shared. One of the regulars was a Ferengi bar-owner, a lovable rogue named Quark (Armen Shimerman) who was constantly getting into and out of scrapes with the station’s security officer, a mysterious shape-shifter named Odo (Rene Auberjonois). The station’s location gives the Bajorans control of the first known stable wormhole into a different, heretofore un-encountered quadrant of the galaxy. The wormhole is also the habitation of beings the Bajorans believe are deities and who have an remarkable affinity for Sisko. Finally, the science officer is a beautiful young woman, Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) a joined Trill, a humanoid with an implanted symbiotic life-form that has many generations of memories, including as an old man who helped guide a young Ben Sisko.

I should mention that Avery Brooks played one of my all-time favorite TV and fictional characters. On the series “Spenser for Hire,” based on Robert B. Parker’s Spenser detective novels, he played Hawk. Hawk is Spenser’s best friend, a frighteningly large and deadly African-American with a shaved head, perpetual sunglasses and a goatee and mustache. He was a truly sinister person but with a heart of gold. Bear this description in mind.

By this time I was in what I consider one of the darker parts of my professional life. To supplement a part-time job with the Department of Motor Vehicles, I was working for a retail store. On Halloween we were allowed to come in costume. I went as a Klingon Starfleet officer, complete with phaser and tricorder. I know a picture was taken of me but I’m afraid it is lost to the winds of time. (Honest, or else I’d publish it here.)

TNG helped launch DS9 because Sisko had been first officer on a ship that had been destroyed in the climactic battle when Picard had been made into a Borg. He hates Picard because his wife was killed in the destruction of his ship and Picard believes he is unfit to command the space station. In addition, Miles O’Brien (Colm Meaney) and his wife Keiko (Rosalind Chao) transfer from the Enterprise-D to DS9 where O’Brien becomes the station’s chief engineer.

In many ways, I found DS9 to be the most cerebral in its stories. One first season episode, in particular, “Duet” in which Kira recognizes a former Cardassian war criminal who she comes to pity. It presents an interesting morality play in that after she decides that prosecuting him would only provide one more death, he is stabbed to death by another Bajoran. If Kira did not come to like him, she at least had come to pity him as only an oppressed person can come to pity a fallen oppressor. It was this kind of writing that kept DS9 fresh and on the cutting edge of the franchise.

Eventually, in 1994, at the end of its seventh season, all good things had to an end. And the final two-part episode was named “All Good Things…” The series ends where it began with Q (John DeLancie) putting humanity on trial with Picard as chief defendant. Of course all works out well in the end with Picard saving humanity, with a hand from Q.

As TNG was coming to an end, a new movie was being prepared that would answer a number of questions. How did Captain Kirk come to die? Did Picard and Kirk ever meet? Where did the Enterprise-D’s enigmatic bartender Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) come from? What the hell was the Enterprise-B? Star Trek: Generations answered all these questions and more. It also brought to a close the original cast movies and opened the curtain on TNG movies. The bad guy is also memorable for being played by the chief Droog in “A Clockwork Orange,” Malcolm McDowell. It also raised one of those Trek imponderables. If the “energy ribbon,” which is so central to the story, appears periodically, why have we never heard of it before? It also saw the destruction of the Enterprise-D.

So those of us who were the true believers in the Trek franchise had to soldier on with just DS9 and periodic movies to content us. Well, not entirely just that. A certain OC/PR individual, your gentle writer namely, had gotten deeply into the book indexing project. In addition, there was a growing number of Trek-based computer games, all of which I just HAD to buy. And then of course there were the assorted magazines, guide-books, supplements, role-playing games, action figures, and a host of other stuff to collect. Collecting, “Aaaahhhhh,” as Homer Simpson would say about donuts. And that’s when it occurred to me that there were also Trek comic books. Yes siree! Sign me up. (This paragraph is also to remind you, lest you think I’m just writing a history of Star Trek, that this blog is basically all about, well, me.)

DS9 produced the formative elements that set up the fourth series in the franchise, Star Trek: Voyager (VGR). We were introduced to the Maquis, a group of outlaw freedom fighters who were still fighting the Cardassians. They were named for the French underground in World War II. Their existence would be crucial to establishing the back-story for VGR.

The next movie, Star Trek: First Contact, entailed some of the Trek franchise’s most popular elements: time travel and the Borg. It was up to Picard, Riker et al on the new Enterprise-E to go back in time and prevent the Borg from altering Earth’s history. Notable was the introduction of an “individual” in the Borg collective, the queen (Alice Kriege) who Picard had encountered when he was a Borg. Also notable was the reappearance of Zefram Cochrane (James Cromwell) who invented warp drive. Previously we had seen a much younger appearing Cochrane in the original series episode “Metamorphosis.” I found this movie full of a lot of fun action scenes and one memorable quote from Worf after killing a Borg, “Assimilate this!”

Meanwhile, in the world of DS9, a change was occurring that would set this series apart from all others. Gene Roddenberry never wanted to have Starfleet engaged in a long war but that is just what it had thrust upon it by the Dominion, the reclusive race of shape-shifters who, it turns out, included Odo. As the series’ viewpoint hardened into war, Sisko was both promoted to captain and took on a new appearance. Gone was his hair in preference for a shaved head and he sported a goatee and mustache. Avery Brooks morphed back into Hawk save the sunglasses.

One of the highpoints of DS9 came in its fifth season (1996), the 30th anniversary of the franchise. Using the original series episode “The Trouble With Tribbles,” Sisko, Dax and Worf are written into it and with the magic of time-travel on the series and great special effects in the studio, they interact with the original series characters. Another fun piece for me was the names of two Federation agents who question Sisko about the time travel incident. Their names were Dulmer and Lucsly, and homage to Mulder and Scully from another of my favorite shows, “The X-Files.”

The previous season (1995) had seen the birth of the fourth series, VGR. Although we had seen female captains before (notably Rachel Garrett of the Enterprise-C), this was the first time the commanding officer star of the show was a woman, Captain Kathryn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew). Thanks to the back-story established in DS9 about the Maquis, the starship Voyager and a Maquis ship they are chasing in a part of space called the Badlands, are both transported into the Delta Quadrant of the galaxy. They are forced to sacrifice the Maquis ship and combine crews which leads to some interesting interpersonal conflicts. Janeway’s first officer becomes the former Maquis captain, Chakotay (Robert Beltran), a descendant of Native Americans with an elaborate tattoo on his face. The ship had not received a medical officer so the Emergency Medical Hologram program a/k/a The Doctor (Robert Picardo) is forced to be the full-time physician. (I often wonder if Picardo was concerned about being type-cast as a doctor because he had played Dr. Richard Richard on another of my favorite shows, “China Beach.”) Of course there was a lovable rogue crewmember, Lieutenant Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeill), his naïve young pal, Ensign Harry Kim (Garrett Wong) and a half-Klingon, half human former Maquis engineering genius with a huge chip on her shoulder, B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson).

In a sense, VGR was a return to the “Wagon Train in space concept” as their entire raison d’etre was attempting to return to the Alpha Quadrant, 70,000 light years distant. Each week was, pretty much, a meeting with new races, encountered on their “trek” back home. I liked VGR, especially the really cool new special effects and CGI. And I liked the fact that a woman was finally getting her due as the featured captain. It came only thirty years after the pilot episode, “The Cage” which was cut and broadcast as the two part episode “The Menagerie.” In it, the second in command of the Enterprise was a woman. (That female, identified only as “Number One,” was played by Majel Barrett Roddenberry a/k/a Mrs. Gene Roddenberry. Subsequently she played Nurse Chapel (original series), Deanna Troi’s mom, Lwaxana Troi (TNG and DS9) and the voice of the computer in the series and movies after the original series.) Before the show premiered in 1966, one of the changes made was making sure that the first officer was a male. After all, who could believe women were capable of commanding a starship? And with that bit of sarcasm, I will close for today.

Stay tuned for the final installment of Boldly Going

Boldly Going 2

2010-02-17T12:46:00.001-08:00

So there I was, waiting for these interlopers, this “next generation” of Starfleet officers and spaceships. We true believers knew that Star Trek meant Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and evil Klingons. But hey, I’ll keep an open mind about Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG).

It started well enough, especially when I first laid eyes on Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis). She rapidly shot to the top of my list of Star Trek babes (where she remains despite the presence of Yeoman Janis Rand (Grace Lee Whitney) on the original series and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) on Voyager). But what was up with this captain with a French name who talks with an English accent? And the Federation and the Klingons are at peace? Uh, details, please. And a humaniform robot named Data? (Okay, an android.) And the Enterprise-D splits into two parts? And Worf (Michael Dorn), a Klingon is a Starfleet officer? And Wesley the boy genius Crusher? (I am convinced that Roddenberry put families and children on the new generation of Starfleet ships just so we could have the boy genius. Interestingly, his character generated a tremendous debate at Star Trek conventions. I recall reading about one that hosted a seminar titled “The Wesley Crusher Problem.”) And what’s with Q? Q? THE Q? I have a lot Q’s! Can I have some A’s? And then they made a very conscious homage to my heroes by having Data fly Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) in a shuttlecraft in the pilot because the good doctor never did trust the transporter. Okay. You had me at Dr. McCoy.

Okay. I’m being picky. I admit it. And despite my initial distrust and condescending attitude I quickly began warming to the new crew, especially when I tumbled to the fact that Data followed Asimov’s Robotics Laws. Be still my heart! And, hmm, what’s this relationship between Picard and the widowed Dr. Beverly Crusher all about? And then the Traveler tells Picard that Wesley is a unique person who needs special nurturing and encouragement. Well now, this COULD get interesting! (Funny story about that particular episode, “Where No One Has Gone Before.” That November, my wife had fallen at home and shattered her ankle, requiring surgical repair. So there I am, visiting her in hospital and I notice it’s time for Star Trek: The Next Generation. So, as history repeats itself, I put the show on and plop myself down to watch it. Gee, Mark, thanks for visiting me. Enjoy the show?) And we actually saw a real central member be killed in the episode “Skin of Evil,” Natasha Yar (Denise Crosby). Maybe they’re serious about making this a really good series with unexpected things.

By the time we encountered the return of Kirk, et al in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, we had met the Borg on TNG. But more about them in a bit. The best I can say about the fifth movie is that it had the original cast members. Bill Shatner, love you as Kirk, find you tolerable as T. J. Hooker and the Priceline.com Negotiator, but the sad truth is you ain’t no Fellini or Hitchcock when it comes to directing a movie. And Spock’s brother, a Vulcan who rejects emotional control? Puh-leeze. But the sight of Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) undulating with bare legs makes the movie entirely worthwhile! (Yeah, okay, sue me for being a pig. I’m a guy.)

At the end of the third season we got our first Star Trek TV cliffhanger. The good news is that meant there would be a FOURTH season, thereby passing the original series in longevity. The bad news is that we had to wait several months to find out how the Borg would be stopped and Captain Picard would be un-Borged. Unlike other humanoids in Trek, the Borg were not an individual species. They were a combination of organic beings and cybernetic technology all bound together in a collective, the ultimate technological monstrosity. Aside from being an Emmy Award-winning episode, this is my favorite TNG episode. (Okay, two-part episode but who’s counting?) And as pleased as I was to see Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes) stay as Picard’s first officer, those of us familiar with how military hierarchies work had to wonder what he was doing to his career. But, all the children were home safely and that’s all that mattered.

It was somewhere around this point in time when I decided to start reading the Star Trek novels. There were quite a few from the original series and a growing number of TNG novels. But of course OC-boy that I am, I wasn’t just going to read them. I was going to index them! There were already several encyclopedic works on the Trek universe on the screen but no one had done a similar thing with the books. What I began encountering, however, was the reality that Paramount (the company that produced Trek TV and movies) considered what appeared on screen as “canon” but that did not include what appeared in the books. So, in addition to indexing and then writing descriptive entries, I was faced with attempting to resolve the discrepancies, if possible, or simply noting a conflict with canon. What a project for OC-me! (And the comic books? No! Even I wasn’t going that far…uh, yet.)

TNG ran an episode called “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (also a favorite of mine) in which a the Enterprise-D is thrown into another timeline where the Federation and Klingons are locked in a protracted war that is not going well for the Federation. Tasha Yar was still alive in this one and we encounter the Enterprise-C with its female captain Rachel Garrett. That ship had to be sent back through the time vortex through which it emerged to help the Klingon colony where a young Worf had lived, thus leading to rapprochement between the Federation and the Klingons.

By the time Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country premiered, we had seen unprecedented changes in the world, typified by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. The Undiscovered Country provided us with a first glimpse at the possibility of the alliance of the Federation and the Klingon Empire that exists in TNG’s time. In that sense, it both paralleled our own real world and paved the way for the events of “Yesterday’s Enterprise.”

The Romulans had become the central enemy of both the Federation and the Klingons and a brief military confrontation ensued. That two-part episode “Unification” was notable for the return of Spock, now a Federation ambassador, Denise Crosby as the Romulan Commander Sela (the daughter of the Tasha Yar who had gone back into the past and a Romulan general) and learning that Data could perform a Vulcan nerve pinch.

Throughout TNG, we had encountered several new species of humanoids, notably the uber-capitalist Ferengi and the reptilian, warlike Cardassians. Introduction of the Cardassians and their brief war the Federation (the episode “The Wounded”) was important in establishing the back-story for what would become the third Trek Series, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (DS9). It was also important to me because it introduced me to the Irish song “The Minstrel Boy.”

Another piece to DS9’s back story was the introduction of a disgraced Starfleet officer named Ro Laren (Michelle Forbes), who was a Bajoran, a member of the race that had been most horribly oppressed by the Cardassians.

You may wonder why I’m going into such nauseating detail regarding these episodes. Honest, there is method in mine madness. When Star Trek originally premiered, little thought was given to maintaining a back-story and internal consistency or even establishing a real history other than some personal stories (Kirk and several women from his past, Spock and his parents and history of the war between the Federation and the Romulan Empire are examples.) Gene Roddenberry had been happy enough to get the show on the air by selling it as “Wagon Train to the stars” so the idea of a long-lived franchise was the farthest thing from his mind. By the time of his death in 1991, it had become apparent that the Trek franchise was going strong and had every appearance of continuing for years to come. By creating the interlocking stories, characters and events, TNG laid the foundation for DS9 which subsequently laid the framework for Star Trek Voyager. But those are stories for yet another day.

Stay tuned for the continuing story, Boldly Going.

Boldly Going

2010-02-16T12:56:00.000-08:00

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

I briefly considered using the opening tag line from Star Trek: The Next Generation where the voice of Jean-Luc Picard intones these familiar words except that they boldly “go where one ONE has gone before.” But I settled on the original said by Captain Kirk because that is where Star Trek began and where my relationship with the show began. (Yes, kiddies, I am that old.)

My interest in science fiction (SF) began early in life thanks to my father’s influence. He had read science fiction since he was a boy and passed the interest on to me. I cut my teeth on the Tom Swift, Jr. series but soon moved on to mainstream SF the man I considered the god of SF authors, Isaac Asimov. There had been other TV series such as the Outer Limits and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone but these were anthologies. When NBC announced a new series called Star Trek, both my father and I were very excited.

We waited eagerly for the debut. Finally the night came and we sat in front of the TV. (Mind you, it was a black and white with a screen somewhat ovoid in shape and it took a minute or so to warm up, got 13 channels and had dials that you actually had to adjust by hand. And no, Fred and Barney were not walking by outside with Dino on a leash.) The opening sequence came on followed by fade to black and the theme music with Captain Kirk’s voice saying the famous words printed above. No sooner had he said, “To boldly go,” when my father yelled, “What? That’s a split infinitive! How could they split an infinitive?” Now, I actually knew what that meant because he was a stickler for grammar and spelling. From then on, every week when it was on, he would mutter the same thing and shake his head sadly as if it meant the end of civilization as we knew it.

We would go to great lengths not to miss an episode. (Bear in mind this was before the VCR was even a glimmer in Panasonic’s or Sony’s minds.) The TV I mentioned above used vacuum tube technology. Periodically, one of these would burn out and would have to be replaced or, worse, something bad went wrong and someone actually came to our house to remove the innards of the set and took it to his shop to fix. That was the case for one episode. We called friends and asked if we could come over and watch on their TV. It wasn’t a show they watched but they were gracious enough to accommodate us. Another week, my mother was in the hospital recovering from surgery. Star Trek was on from 8:30 to 9:30 at the time. Visiting hours ended at 9:00. So there we were, sitting in her room watching Star Trek. I believe it was the episode “The Apple” which would put it in the second season. 9:00 rolls around and the nurse comes in to remind us that visiting hours were over. I’m not sure who looked more pathetic, my father or me, but whichever one of us it was, when we asked if we could stay to see the rest of the show, she just looked at us reprovingly, but closed the door to the room. My mother, who was still groggy from medication asked us why we were staying past visiting hours and we both said to see the rest of the episode. Scored major points there with Mom, both of us.

Callow youth that I was, I took the show at its word that it was going to last for five years. Alas, TV is not about promises it’s about ratings and after three years Star Trek disappeared. By this time my dad had died, but his words about split infinitives echoed every time I heard the opening line.

I was at Syracuse University when the show went into syndication. Every night at 6:00, seating space in the rec room of my fraternity became very scarce. We normally ate dinner at 5:30 and it became particularly important that we get done in time to be in our seats just before 6:00. The game became who can identify the episode fastest. At the start it was sufficient to be able to say, “the Tribbles episode,” or “the one with the Gorn” but after a few months you had to come up with the actual title. (Yes, I was one of the best at it. And while we’re on that subject, no, I am not nor ever was a “Trekkie!” Okay? Are we clear on that? I do not and never did live in my mother’s basement and I HAVE had carnal knowledge of a woman. Okay? Just so we’re clear.)

By the time I got out of the Air Force in 1977, I had become something of an expert on the show, having seen some episodes so many times that even I was tired of seeing them again. And of course, there was always the necessity of naming the episode in the first few seconds which prompted my wife to say, “If you know it that well, why bother watching it?” The only answer I could come up with was, “’Cause it’s Star Trek!” as if that explained EVERYTHING. Honestly. Sometimes women just do not get…hmm, maybe best not to go down that road.

There had been rumors of a Star Trek 2 with new uniforms and a redesigned Enterprise but nothing ever came of this idea…until in 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released. Captain Kirk was now and admiral. Kirk? An admiral? Oh NO! Despite the great special effects and the introduction of some new characters and different uniforms, it was a bit disappointing. It seemed like a glorified expansion of the episode “The Changeling” and, not for the last time, Kirk saves the Earth. And conveniently, the new navigator and the would-be captain disappear so ADMIRAL Kirk gets to keep the ship.

The original series kept appearing and disappearing as various networks picked up the syndication then dropped it. And of course, the same exchanges would take place as soon as I identified the episode. It got so bad that there were times my wife actually beat me to the punch. Then the conversation became, “If I know the episode, you’ve seen it way too many times! Why are you watching it again?” “’Cause it’s Star Trek,” said in a somewhat more subdued voice than in previous times.

I was aware that there were a growing number of novels based on the series and the period between the end of the series and the movies but I also realized that the only “real” Star Trek stories were the ones on TV and the movies so I didn’t bother reading them. (And this brings up a metaphysical question: What is “real” when you are dealing with an entirely fictional future? That is best left for another day and venue.)

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, we were treated to the return of Ricardo Montalban (yes, Mr. Rourke of “Fantasy Island” and the man who told us about Chryslers and their “rich Corinthian leather”) reprising his role of Khan Noonien Singh from the episode “Space Seed.” And Kirk has a son. A what? And one of the regulars on the crew was going to die! What? No! Say it ain’t so, Gene! (That’s Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek for you uninitiated people.) (And by the way, this movie started one of the great trivia questions: Name three regulars from the sitcom “Cheers” who appeared in Star Trek: Kirstie Alley in this movie, and Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth in separate episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.) The only good thing was that we true believers knew that this could not be the end of the movies. We just knew that Spock would be resurrected…somehow.

Sure enough, we were not left hanging for too long. Two years later Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, premiered. This movie is notable for two things. The first is that after stealing the Enterprise, Kirk, et al, are forced to destroy it. The second is Christopher Lloyd appearing as the villain Kruge. Because of his role on “Taxi,” it always strikes me as Jim Ignatowski, Klingon commander! And of course all the while, the original series kept coming and going and the number of episode that caused me to say, “Oh this one again,” was growing. Even I was getting picky about them.

Like clockwork, two years later came my favorite of the original cast movies, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. For a change, no one was trying to kill Kirk and the boys (and girl, let’s not forget Uhura), just a big old probe looking for whales on Earth that was destroying the planet because humanity had let whales die out. (Okay, it’s a bit preachy but it’s also the funniest movie. When we were in San Francisco I asked my wife if I could ask the first policeman I found if he could direct me, and said in a faux Russian accent, to the “nuclear wessels in Alameda.” That was met with a resounding NO. I briefly considered saying, “I never get to have any fun.” but thought better of that...) And of course Kirk and the boys, once again, save Earth. The bad news is that he gets busted back to captain for having stolen and destroying the Enterprise one movie ago. The good news is that he and the whole crew get a brand-spanking new Enterprise, with an “-A” attached to the name and registration number (NCC-1701 if you’re wondering).

And that fall, there was a whole new Star Trek TV series coming, Star Trek: The Next Generation. I will admit, that like Walter Koenig who played Pavel Chekov in the original series and movies, I resented this intrusion. Who cares if it takes place about 80 years after the original series. And who cares that it was also an Enterprise (the “-D” as it happens). And who cares if it’s still Starfleet? And there’s a Klingon in Starfleet and on the crew!? WTF? What are they trying to sell us? Oh sure, the sets were better, and the special effects were cooler than the movies and the sets and costumes had a much higher budget. Who do they think they are, anyway?

For the answer to that question, tune in for the next installment of Boldly Going.

Mortal Stakes

2010-02-15T14:25:00.000-08:00

Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done?
For heaven and the future´s sakes.
from “Two Tramps in Mud Time” by Robert Frost

First, let me tip my hat to Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spenser detective novels. Mortal Stakes is the title of his third novel in the series. The title has always been one of those that has stuck with me and it is lifted from Frost’s poem that I have quoted above. I never really assimilated the import and meaning of the title until the past few weeks.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you are well aware that a week ago Wednesday, I had a biopsy to screen for cancer of the prostate. The results were negative but inconclusive. That means they did not find cancer but cannot rule conclusively that it’s not there and they missed it or that it won’t develop at some point in the future. They noted some “pre-cancerous changes” to the tissue which my urologist says may mean nothing and may never proceed beyond that stage. But I’m 57 years old and these things often happen to men of similar age. (A friend of mine, a long serving army officer, told me that he had his done by a corpsman who seemed enjoy inflicting the indignity of the exam on an officer. He was of a similar age.) The bottom line (yes, pun intended) is that I will need semi-annual or (if I’m lucky) annual biopsies and semi-annual and possibly quarterly monitoring of my Prostate Specific Antigen via blood tests. Why am I telling you all this? Well, read on.

The first surgery of any significance I experienced was in 2003. I had to have a parathyroid gland removed. This one gland (of four) had become enlarged and was causing a condition called hyperparathyroidism. Without getting technical, it is a condition of too much calcium in the blood stream. The only way to address it is surgically. But a surgical excision of the bad gland is, literally, a cure. It required general anesthesia and an overnight stay in the hospital but by the time I left, I could already feel that I was better. It’s that quick a cure.

When my urologist said the word “biopsy” this past January 13, I started crying. It was not that I was frightened that having a biopsy meant that I had cancer. As my wife explained to him while I regained control of myself is that I was afraid of the biopsy procedure itself. For a few days I was pretty shook up and fearful. Then several friends got hold of me and combined sympathy with some tough love. After a few days of processing all of it, I reached the acceptance stage and felt better. I was not going to let a fairly simple medical procedure turn me into a blubbering mass of jello. And as in the past, the reality was far more benign than the anticipation, imagination and fear. (Okay, I was aided by 25 mg of valium, but it really wasn’t that bad.)

The pathology processing and report takes about a week. While I was being biopsied, the office had already scheduled the follow-up consult which was one week later. Throughout that week I felt like I was coping well. My wife thought to the contrary. She has known me for 37 years and is extremely adept at discerning the nuances of my behavior and demeanor, even when I think I’m being perfectly normal. By the time I went back to work the following Monday, I could detect that I was feeling stressed. The first thing that goes when I get stressed is my patience. And I could tell that I was being impatient with everything and everyone. Which raised the question in my mind. Why?

The only cancer that has been in my family was an uncle who died from lung cancer that spread throughout his body. He, like my father, was a heavy smoker. So there was really no history of cancer on either side of my family about which to be concerned. But there it was. The pathologists held the key to my future. Literally, my future. My friends kept telling me not to anticipate what I did not know. While that is excellent advice, it didn’t change the reality that I was going to hear cancer or no cancer (and that’s not like having Howie Mandel say, “Deal or no deal”).

So there we were sitting in a room very like the first one we had been in at the urologist’s office. I had my book with me but could not concentrate on reading, a sure indication of stress. My wife was reading her book; outwardly very calm but I recognized tightness in her. Finally, the doctor came in and sat down, just like the first time. He opened the folder and pronounced the verdict (and that was exactly how it felt): no cancer but inconclusive. I’ve already told you what the import of that is so I need not repeat it here.

As we were leaving, I could tell my wife was not happy. I asked her about it and she said she would have preferred a conclusive answer one way or the other. I understood what she was saying but knew in my heart of hearts that the words “no cancer” were the most important words I would hear that day, that month, that…well you get where I’m going. The next day, I was happy to almost the point of euphoria. I did not have cancer.

This was my first true brush with my own mortality. Throughout my life, I have been blessed with remarkably good health. This is very fortunate because I’m a big baby about being poked and prodded in any medical manner. But it also left me unprepared for encountering medical issues as I have aged. Regarding the parathyroid issue, to this day, I find myself being upset at my body for malfunctioning, for letting me down. And while there is always a danger in going under general anesthesia, I knew I was in no danger of death and that following surgery I would be cured.

But the road down which cancer leads is a completely different thing. I was aware of all the things about how curable and relatively benign prostate cancer is. I am aware of the non-surgical methods of addressing cancer of the prostate. I was as well prepared as I could make myself, mentally, to face the possibility. But if the word “no” had been missing from the doctor’s statement, life would have changed.

What I had thought would be one of those life-altering moments, confronting my own mortality, turned out to be one of those things that went out with a whimper rather than a bang. There was no one moment where I realized that life might end or even that life as a healthy person would end. It has been over a period of a few days that I have even begun to assimilate the import of what I had experienced. I have lived through the death of my father, four grandparents and many other people who have meant a great deal in my life. There was never a time that I can recall where I did not understand the concept of death. I always knew that if something lived it was bound to die, including ourselves. (A friend who teaches high school English is in the habit of asking a class how many of them think the person next to them will die. Everyone raises their hand. Then he asks them how many of them think THEY will die. Only a few hands go up.) There are some people so obsessed with worrying about their deaths that they are unable to live. As badly as I have suffered from depression, I have never been one of those people. I do not fear flying in airplanes even though they sometimes crash (although I will never bungee jump or do other “death-defying activities).

I have not become a person who fears death. But I have become aware of the fragility of the vessel in which the essence of who we are is contained. With the myriad of things that can go wrong with the human body, it is almost more amazing that people, in general, remain as healthy as they do. Evolution has given us an amazing ability to resist disease despite the many biological and environmental challenges we face. But once a word like cancer enters your lexicon in a personal way that entire world view changes.

I stop and look back on the past 57 years and wonder how did I get this old? I don’t feel that old, even if my left knee sometime hurts for no reason or my vision deteriorates every year or I have arthritis in two of my right toes. But my internal sense of who I am still feels like a kid. I like Jimmy Buffett’s philosophy of growing older but not up. But I sometimes feel that 57 means that statistically, more than half my life is behind me. That sense that had been so remote is no longer quite so.

So what have I learned? I have learned that life is a series of events from which we stumble from one to another. I have learned that no matter how much we take care of ourselves, no matter how many physicals we have, the body does not always keep us healthy. I have learned that no matter how much you may not want to have needles inserted into your body, when it is necessary it is going to happen. But most of all, I have learned to value the people in my life and the color they contribute to it. When I needed support they gave me support. When I needed tough love, they kicked me in the bum. And through it all they gave me their prayers and concern. If that’s not life affirming, I don’t know what is. When the stakes are mortal, it is good to be surrounded by people you love and who love you back.

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Annotated...Part 3

2010-02-09T13:49:00.000-08:00

“A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an ‘intellectual’ – find out how he feels about astrology.”
I tend to agree with Dr. Richard Dawkins on this point but extend it past astrology. Dawkins and several other scientist atheists posit that belief in ANY deity is inconsistent with science. One of the best arguments on this point is found in God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist by Victor J. Stenger. But for those of you who believe, I respect your right to do so and do not question your belief.

“Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.”
I don’t disagree with many things that Lazarus Long has to say but this is one on which he and I differ by a wide margin. Lazarus Long and his creator Robert A. Heinlein, while free-thinkers, can hardly be called socialists. I, on the other hand, can. Taxes collected SHOULD be for the benefit of the taxed. Without taxation, government ceases to function. This is the particular mantra of Grover Norquist who famously wants to shrink government to the point where it can drowned in a bathtub. I prefer seeing a truly progressive tax with the government using that money to help the people, particularly the neediest. Where I do agree with Long’s statement is when those taxes are being used to buy things that blow up people in other countries. War has never been for the benefit of the taxed, especially when profiteering capitalists have an interest in continuing the wars for their pecuniary benefit.

“If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.”
It doesn’t matter if the creative work is the written word, art on a canvas, the cure for cancer or theoretical physics. I find that the best writing I do comes from the times I have an idea AND the motivation to get it on paper. (OK, onto a word processor, but you get what I mean.) I have tried writing fiction but it has always felt forced. The one or two good fictional ideas I have had have never really motivated me to write them. So I write when I feel like it. And when I find that I’m having to force it, it reads that way. I read a couple blogs I did some time ago and can easily tell which one’s were forced. So if you create, let it happen naturally. Otherwise you’re creating your own sharashka. (If you don’t understand the term, either Google it or read Solzhenitsyn’s novel The First Circle.)

“A practical joker deserves applause for his wit according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling. But staking out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.”
It will probably come as no surprise but I have always been a class clown. According to George Carlin, there are two types of class clowns: the ones who come up with great ideas and instigate others and the ones who are crazy enough to do those things. I will admit to having been crazy enough, at times, to do my own ideas but for the most part I fall into the idea/instigator category. The one time I committed a practical joke was in university. I won’t go into what I did and I will say there was general agreement that the individual on the receiving end deserved it. But it’s the only time I have ever done a practical joke and if I had it to do all over again, I would not do it.

“A ‘critic’ is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased – he hates all creative people equally.”
This goes a long way to explaining the behavior of the current minority party in the United States. They hate everything the majority stands for. Rather than attempt to find some common ground, they and their tame dog media, stand on the sidelines and snipe. They offer nothing other than criticism and simply hate those in the majority because they are not. As far as theater or movie critics go, I have a few who I use as bellwethers. If they hate something, I’m going to like it.

“Never frighten a little man. He’ll kill you.”
Atilla the Hun, Napoleon Bonaparte and Josef Stalin. Need I say more?

“Never try to outstubborn a cat.”
Cat people, you understand the truth of this. Non-cat people, trust us. It’s true.

“Natural laws have no pity.”
One of the natural laws that most people recognize (at least those who believe the Earth is older than about 6,000 years) is “survival of the fittest.” Darwin posited this as an explanation for evolution and adaptation. If you don’t adapt to changing conditions, you die. Buggy whip makers, galley-oar makers, Betamax VCRs. Adapt or die. The natural laws of physics prove that atoms can be split. These same natural laws, inevitably, led to weapons that threatened to erase life on Earth in something called Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). I happen to have been in the business of being ready to deliver those weapons when I was in the Air Force. Natural laws have existed since shortly after the Big Bang. They are unalterable and potentially very dangerous.

“Anything free is worth what you pay for it.”
Or, a fool and his money are soon parted. Or, if it sounds too good to be true, it is. If Jack had lived in the real world, those magic beans he got might have grown some beans but that would be about it. Any time I am asked for advice, I qualify it with the reminder that my advice is worth exactly what I charge for it: nothing.

“A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.”
Ever notice how many committees there are in any level of government?

“A generation which ignores history has no past – and no future.”
George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Where this is most dangerous is when the people who fail to learn are our political and military leaders. How often has it been said that generals continue to fight the last war? And when our political leaders think that trying the same things over and over again will result in a different outcome, I want to remind them that that comes dangerously close to the definition of insanity. Vietnam. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Our nine year old war in Afghanistan. Is anybody listening?

“Never appeal to a man’s “better nature.” He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.”
This goes without saying. Don’t believe that? Just look at how Ben Nelson’s vote was obtained for health insurance reform.

“Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)”
One of my favorite series is HBO’s Band of Brothers. In it, one of the actual members of Easy Company talks about being afraid all the time. It is how one masters the fear and goes on that makes the difference. I have written about fear in an earlier blog. While fear of a biopsy pales in comparison to the fear of a man in combat, mastering the fear and getting on with the matter of living is a form of courage. It’s like never experiencing sadness means you can never understand what it means to be happy. To dare to love is to dare to be hurt in one of the cruelest ways. But to feel nothing is not living. It is mere existence.

“People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.”
Donald Trump and Ted Turner. Need I say more?

“There is no such thing as ‘social gambling.’ Either you are there to cut the other bloke’s heart out and eat it – or you’re a sucker. If you don’t like this choice – don’t gamble.”
I neither like gambling nor losing money and I am not one who goes for the throat. I don’t gamble. The only card games in which I play are thinly-veiled excuses for male bonding and the consumption of copious amounts of alcoholic beverages and snacks. And we play with cards with pictures of nude and semi-nude women. The drunken decisions on how to designate wild cards are the best part of the game.

“The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: ‘Of course it is none of my business but—’ is to place a period after the word ‘but.’ Don’t use excessive force in supplying such moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.”
And this seems like a good place to end for today.

To be continued….

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, annotated.....Part 2

2010-02-08T15:05:00.001-08:00

“I CAME, I SAW, SHE CONQUERED.” (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.)
There are those of us of the male gender who have learned this and accept it; there are those of the male gender who have not learned it, much to their pain. Women are born knowing it because it is hard-wired in their DNA.

“If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another – but which one? Differences are crucial.”
This brings up two issues. Let me address the second one first, which relates to wagering. Long ago, I discovered that I hated losing money in wagers, so I stopped betting. Now, the only time I will accept or offer a wager is if there is a 100% chance of winning. What I mean by that is I will only bet over a matter of absolutely provable fact that I know to be correct. Example: Mickey Mantle batted .353 in 1956. Were someone to dispute this with me, my final trump card would be to say, “Want to bet on it?” Anyone who knows me knows to concede at that point as I never use the offer lightly. It means I cannot be wrong. My wife loves to gamble. When we go to a casino she plays the slots and blackjack. I read. Okay, I do throw a quarter into a slot so I can look at her and say, “Are you happy? I gambled.” Then I go back to my book. ‘Nuff said.

The first part of this is rather more problematic. Regardless of the subject, if it can be expressed in figures it can be proven, whether it is the atomic weight of cobalt, the number of bones in the human hand or the existence of black holes. If it cannot, it is only opinion. When opinion is expressed as fact, wars often result, especially ones that involve beliefs in conflicting deities.

“Cheops’ Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.”
Cheops was an Egyptian Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom, better known as Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid. If you don’t believe the truth of this statement, Google “cost-overrun.” I submit the proof is indisputable. And following closely on the heels of Cheops’ Law is:
“An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.”

“One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.”
In his book The God Delusion, biological theorist Richard Dawkins, one of the leading atheists expressed the opinion that everyone is an atheist. He just includes one more god than most. Although rather glib, there is great truth in this. Humans have believed in some sort of god-being(s) from time immemorial. Those who believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic one god, by definition, do not believe in gods such as Thor, Apollo, Shiva or Jupiter. Thus, everyone is an atheist to some degree or another. Unfortunately, wars continue to be fought over points of theology, even between believers of the same deity because of the prophets through who said deity chose to reveal the “divine truth.”

“There is no conclusive evidence of life after death. But there is no evidence of any sort against it. Soon enough you will know. So why fret about it?”
I have long held the opinion that the most important thing to do every day is to wake up. After that, the rest is just gravy.

“A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate.”
And capitalists kill for profit. Which is the worst? I leave that decision to you.

“Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?”
And corporate-tocracy a/k/a Fascism is based on the assumption that corporations are more important than people. Oh, wait. The Supreme Court of the United States just said they ARE people. Again, I leave the decision to you.

“Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure ‘good’ government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare – most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the ‘backseat-driver syndrome.’”
A corollary to this is any government will work with effective checks and balances. When any one of the coordinate branches of government arrogates too much power or one of them cedes too much power, the system is out of balance and bad things happen. I promised not to get political in this blog so I will shut up about this now.

“Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other ‘sins’ are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful – just stupid.)”
This has been expressed in many religious beliefs by a name such as The Golden Rule. I submit that whether you believe in a deity or not, if you live by this dictum you and those around you will be much happier. In law, there is a concept of certain crimes being mala in se or more simply, just plain wrong, where most other laws proscribing behavior are mala prohibitum. Even in this context, if one follows the proscription against hurting other people, everyone profits and is happier. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was a slogan popularized by Karl Marx. I submit had Lenin seriously believed and practiced this, the history of the USSR and Communism would have been considerably different.

“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide the lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as ‘empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how ‘pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
Courtesy is never wrong. One of my observations of things that seem to have gone haywire in the modern world is the loss of gentility. Where a handshake was, at one time, sufficient to bind a person on their honor, now contracts run into the tens if not hundreds of pages. Partisan politics, whether in government, the courts or football is the order of the day. We have lost something in a society where a sincere compliment is too often looked on as sexual harassment or other offensive behavior. Politeness is its own reward.

“The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.”
This seems to be the underlying philosophical basis of talk radio, punditry and politics in our society. A recent President of the United States famously took the view that we no longer live in a reality-based world. Really? To subscribe to that view comes dangerously close to the dictum that if you tell the Big Lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.

“One man’s ‘magic’ is another man’s engineering. ‘Supernatural’ is a null word.”
If you don’t believe the truth of this, imagine going back to Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-1693 with an iPod and a set of speakers and playing anything for the assembled townspeople. Guess what they’ll call YOU.

“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and measures you want to vote for. But there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time that truly intelligent exercise of the franchise requires.”
I have never missed voting in an election since I was old enough to get the franchise. I raised my daughter to never miss voting. Why? It preserves your right to bitch for another year. Our society does not demand much of its citizens (besides paying taxes) but exercising the franchise is something that everyone needs to do. If you don’t vote, don’t bitch. The “Reagan Revolution” came from a mandate of 29% of the American electorate. Any questions?

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
Pet rocks. Need I say more?

“Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.”
I could go on at length about this six-word sentence. But there’s that promise I made about politics. I will simply leave you with two words: Dick Cheney.

To be continued…

Biopsy-Daisy

2010-02-04T10:33:00.001-08:00

Many years ago, Billy Joel signed his first recording contract. When the record was mastered at the wrong speed (Cold Spring Harbor was the record), he refused to continue with the contract. He moved to San Diego where he worked as the pianist in a piano bar. He consoled himself with the fact that he knew somewhere, sometime he would write a song about that experience. You may have heard of the song. It’s called “Piano Man” and was his breakthrough hit. Well, not that I’m claiming anything approaching the talent of a Billy Joel, but I had a similar experience with my biopsy which was performed yesterday. I considered delaying writing this until we got the results but I figure that whole experience will result in another blog.

This all began innocently enough (as it so often does) from my routine blood tests prior to my annual physical. I went to my doctor one early Friday morning in December and as is his habit, we discussed my condition, any complaints and my lab results. He was a little concerned that my Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) was a bit high (4.5 as it happens and 2.6 is considered the maximum for normal) and a high PSA is a marker for prostate cancer. He said he was not too concerned because false positives are not uncommon.

So, off to the exam room. We went through the usual stuff, including the holding of the family jewels and turning my head and coughing. (I asked several years ago why doctors ask you to turn your head when they do this. The answer is so that you don’t cough in their face. So much for technical reasons.) Right after that comes the one “invasive” part of a man’s physical. Men, you probably know exactly what’s coming. Women, well, we only have one entry/exit point in that area of the body and the prostate is subjected to a physical exam by a finger inserted therein. He checked, found it to feel normal as well as finding no occult blood. So far, so good. Then he says, that he wants to do another blood test to check the PSA and see if it was actually a false normal. Of course he was apologetic knowing how much I hate needles but I understood. He said that based on the test, he’d decide whether it was necessary to see a urologist. He then proceeded to say that even if it was necessary, they do an ultrasound first. Based on THAT, he figured only about a 10% chance of needing to do a biopsy. So, aside from another needle in the arm, I walked out feeling pretty good.

Several days go by and no word from the doctor so I figured all was okay. But then he calls me and on the phone tells me that the second blood tests was much better and it was 2.7 and he was not concerned. Great! A couple days later in the mail, I receive the hardcopy of the blood tests and my doctor has hand-written on the side, “Based on what I see here, I want you to make an appointment with Dr. ___ for a urology consult. I think the chances of it being cancer are only 3-5%.

WHAT THE F*CK? First you tell me the results were fine and now you’re talking about odds of cancer? To say that this sent me into a tailspin would be an insult to every airplane that has ever crashed. I didn’t care if it was only 3-5%. He’s talking about cancer! So I dutifully call the XXXX Hospital Surgical Group (ain’t that a pleasant thought). This is in early January and they can’t get me an appointment until March. So, having no choice, I take it. So let me get this straight. There’s a chance I have a cancer growing inside me and you can’t get me in for two f*cking months to find out? That was when the panic button inside my head got pressed. (Oh. And for all of you tea-baggers who think that if government control of health care like in Europe means long lines and rationing of care, I suggest you think about two months before finding out if you might have cancer is just that. So take your anti-national health care and stick it in your own same place as where my exam is gonna be.)

I called my doctor back wanting to talk to him and yell about writing me a note about cancer and then my having to wait two months to find out. Initially, he defensively said the appointment was not his fault but I cut him off and proceeded to tear him a new one over what he had done. He has known me for 15 years and knows I have a critically low threshhold for bad medical news and any sort of diagnostically induced pain. Practically in tears I told him that he should have known better than to write anything about cancer. All he had to do was tell me to see a urologist. He became very contrite and admitted that he had made an error in handling it that way. Subsequently he even sent me a note apologizing.

So my doctor’s office got me a much sooner appointment with a different doctor in the same practice. We go through the usual questions, he snaps on the plastic glove and I bend over once again and with that the exam is over. We sit down and he looks at my PSA results and confirms that I am, indeed, 57 years old. The next words out of his mouth are that as a result of those factors we should do a biopsy. It took a second to register. What had my doctor said? First an ultrasound and then a 10% chance of a biopsy? I started crying and the urologist was all concerned that I was panicking over cancer until my wife explained that it was the procedure itself that frightened me. He was nice enough to give me a prescription for valium…one freakin’ 10 mg pill. Great. He also reassured me that the biopsy was nothing compared to a vasectomy and it happens that my vasectomy was really a non-issue.

So, here I am in full panic mode (okay, maybe not full PANIC mode but major fear-ridden mode) not so much over the chances of cancer but over what sticking a bunch of needles into my prostate is going to feel like. Those of you on Facebook may recall that all my status posts were various quotes about fear. I had long discussions with several of my Facebook friends, several of whom have been through extensive and painful procedures. While they provided love and support, they also provided some tough love and told me to not anticipate what I don’t know. One of them who is a doctor (who recently was in Haiti for disaster relief) reassured me that it was not a bad procedure at all.

At some point, it percolated through that I could not live through the intervening time in fear and I made a conscious decision to let it go. I really did pretty well. My wife detected a few things that indicate that my stress level was higher than normal but she’s seen me for 37 years and knows every subtlety of tones of voice and body language. All-in-all, however, I was okay, aided by my own doctor giving me some additional valium. I knew that I had enough to get me through something equivalent to my vasectomy and with the assurances that this would be less of an issue, I was doing pretty well.

So yesterday morning rolled around. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you have something like this coming up. Three weeks ago it seemed so far away. Now it was here. To my surprise, I was pretty calm all morning. I was restricted to clear fluids, so I had my coffee, had a little bite of chocolate and went about acting normally. The minutes crept into hours and suddenly it was 1:00 and time to take my first valium. Now I recall from my vasectomy how quickly and how hard 10 mg of the stuff followed by another 5 mg a half hour later knocked me into left field. This time, I barely felt the effects, so I quickly took another 5 mg. I was still totally conscious of all that was going on around me. So while I was waiting for Joy to park, I knocked back another 5 mg and then when we were in the waiting room, another 5 mg. I was getting concerned at this point because I could feel that there was a slight buzz around the edges but I was entirely aware of everything. This is not good.

The door opened and a female in scrubs called my name. I grabbed my iPod and followed her. She led me to the rest room where she tols me to empty my bladder. Now this, I will admit, was affected by the valium. It was kind of like trying to hit the pot in an airplane lavatory during moderate turbulence. That having been completed, I was led to a room. I was told to remove my pants and undershorts, get on the table and lay on my left side in a fetal position. I doffed my pants, put on my iPod and set it for the playlist of my favorite songs and hopped up.

The doctor told me that first I would feel the ultrasound probe and then a slight stick. So there I am, lying on my side, singing along with Ah-Ha’s “Take on Me” and I feel a sharp sensation in the area of my prostate from the local anesthetic shot. It goes away in about five seconds and I figure, “OK, not bad.” The second one though, yow! He had to caution me not to move but that went away pretty quickly, too. A few minutes the other doctor (the one who did the consult) came in to do the actual biopsy. This was actually the least of it. There were about ten sensations akin to what you would feel from snapping a rubber band on your skin. And that was it.

I hopped off the table and the doctor said, “Any questions?” I asked how long I before it was okay to have sex. He looked at me and smiled and said, “As soon as you’re out of my sight.” I checked with the appointment people but my wife had already made the follow-up for the results for next Wednesday.

We left and I had already said that under the directions of my doctor friend (the one who had been in Haiti) and one other friend I was in search of a bottle of Eger bikaver wine. But first, I wanted food. Much to my embarrassment, what I wanted was a McDonald’s hamburger and French fries. And we could not find any Hungarian wine so I settled on a nice Tuscan Chianti.

So, I am here to tell you, that the procedure itself is really not all that bad. I’m living proof that if I can endure it, any male can endure it. And if your doctor says you should do have it done, do it. Now, all I need to worry about is the results. Stay tuned. Hopefully that will be a very, very short and not-unhappy experience.

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, annotated….

2010-02-02T13:16:00.001-08:00

Although best know for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein created one of the great science fiction characters, a man named Lazarus Long. He was a person gifted with an extraordinarily long lifetime running onto the hundreds of years. As a result of this, he amassed a wealth of knowledge. In the novel Time Enough for Love, there are several interludes in which excerpts from his notebook are found. I have always thought that these present some of the great wisdom of the world and what follows is my homage to them with my own observations and comments. (By the way, I strongly recommend the novel if for no other reason than to read his journal excerpts but in case you just want to read the excerpts, try this URL: http://www.bobgod.com/lazaruslong.html)

“A woman is not property, and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dreamworld.”
Now, I recognize that I can get into some deep kimchi by taking this quote and making observations about certain religions (including the one into which I was born) and how their followers view women but I don’t intend going there as I have no wish to end up on the same hit list as Salman Rushdie. What I will say about this is based on my own experience. I have never viewed my wife as anything but my equal in a partnership. To do otherwise dishonors her. If we start from the assumption that I love her (which I do), why would I want to do something that demonstrates a lack of respect and consideration? The truth is that due to circumstances, she has long been the primary bread-winner in our family, despite the fact that I’m the over-educated chimp. She is retired and her pension is larger than my salary. But it’s far more than the money. It was true when she was a stay-at-home mom early in our marriage. For one thing, people don’t “own” people. (Okay, I know. Slavery still exists in some places.) But more important, she is my life partner and is the person who completes my world.

“Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.”
(Warning: Shameless plug coming up.) This is actually part of my previous blog regarding what I have learned about women. If you want my comments on this, read that one.

“[An ingredient for a happy marriage:] – See to it that she has her own desk – then keep your hands off it!”
In our case, she has her own desk. I do not touch it. She has it organized in her own way and if I need something out of it, I ask. As a corollary, something that Heinlein could not have anticipated was the influence of home computers. Make sure she has her own computer for her desk. Aside from the fact that you don’t want to have to stop that Flight Simulator flight over the Atlantic so that she can use the computer to do the bills, she should have her own space and place with the programs and games she wants. And although I am hardly an IT professional, I am the computer tech-savvy family member. So when she needs help with her computer or printer, she asks. Since I’m hopeless with real tools, it’s a way of contributing to the maintenance of the household in a way I understand.

“A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful – he just hadn’t noticed it at first.”
As it happens, I did notice that she was beautiful. But she has always been the person who was there to reassure me when I was down and to give me a swift kick in the bum when it was needed. The biggest swift kick she gave me was when she summarily informed me that I needed to see a psychiatrist about my depression or she was leaving. By that time, there was nothing she could do to build up my morale because that had sunk into the negative numbers. So, she did what was needed at the time. And it probably saved my life.

“Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.”
If you’re concerned about TMI, skip this paragraph and move onto the next one. My wife has subscribed to this excerpt as long as I have known her and has quoted it many times. I have seen her dressed to the nines and she is every bit a lady in the classic sense of the term. But when the clothes come off and we are in bed (or elsewhere), there is no sense of modesty. Understand, she does not have what society considers a “perfect” body and she has had a number of major procedures that have left scars. Know what? She has never once shown modesty around me, before or since. And any man who thinks women don’t like sex as much as men is unfortunate to never have met anyone like my wife.

“A whore should be judged by the same criteria as other professionals offering services for pay -- such as dentists, lawyers, hairdressers, physicians, plumbers, etc. Is she professionally competent? Does she give good measure? Is she honest with her clients? It is possible that the percentage of honest and competent whores is higher than that of plumbers and much higher than that of lawyers. And enormously higher than that of professors.”
I don’t have much to say on this one but included it because of what it says about lawyers…and by extension politicians.

“Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.”
I am going to use myself as the object lesson for this. Growing up, I never really had to apply myself to schoolwork. I was able to extract the maximum return from the minimum effort and if that meant being a B+ student instead an A student, that was fine with me. As a result, I never learned to really apply myself. When placed in situations where I was forced to, there were times I came very close to fumbling and failing. (Example: When I took integral calculus in university, one point lower on the final would have turned my D- into an F. And I still think that one point was a gift.)

“Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.”
When my wife was pregnant, we did not know the sex of our child to be. We both hoped for a girl (and my wife was sure it was). And when our daughter was born, I rejoiced in the fact that it was a girl. Why? It has something to do with my comfort level around women and my inability to understand certain male tendencies. I have spent the last ten years in an Irish dance school and been around hundreds of young girls. They are just a joy to behold and it is truly bittersweet watching these adorable girls grow into beautiful young women. I certainly experienced that with my own daughter.

“You live and learn. Or you don't live long.”
This is another way of saying, “Darwin was right.” Don’t believe me? Spend some time looking at stupid human tricks on YouTube.

“All cats are not gray after midnight. Endless variety –”
This is just another way of saying that unless you are familiar with cats and comfortable around them you cannot begin to understand how truly wonderful they are. I never had a pet growing up (unless you consider goldfish and turtles pets). It was not until I met one of my mother-in-law’s cats, a long-haired black female named Bitsy who seemed to prefer me to the anyone in the world that I began understanding that we do not choose cats. They choose to own us. They have infinitely different personalities and are as devoted to their person as any dog is to its master. The difference is that cats do not have masters. They are the ones who control the relationship and the sooner you reconcile yourself to that fact the happier will be your relationship with ANY cat.

“If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.”
Wow. How many years on this ball of dirt did I spend before I learned this? And then only after years on anti-depressants. Let me say that this is separate and distinct from loving someone. Through the worst of my bad times I always loved my wife. But Lazarus and I are referring to liking people. In the past, I found that my close relationships were based on deep attachments akin to love rather than liking these people. I didn’t much like myself and believed that unless there was that kind of deep attachment, they would not want to be my friend. But once I began liking the person in the mirror, I came to understand how easy it was to like a lot of people and consider them friends.

“A motion to adjourn is always in order.”
Aside from conforming to Roberts’ Rules of Order, anyone who has ever sat through a too long meeting will realize the wisdom of this. And with that, I will adjourn for today.

To be continued….

What I Have Learned About Women

2010-01-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

I was briefly tempted to write the title and then for the text to simply print “Nothing. The End.” But that would be far too glib, even for me, and not much entertainment for anyone reading it. But, in a very real sense, that would be a factual statement. I cannot actually say I have learned anything about women in the sense that I learned that two times two equals four (I did check that out on a calculator), that World War I ended on November 11, 1918 or that Mickey Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956. Thus, in terms of objective, provable facts, I cannot say that I have “learned” anything about women. And other than clinical or genetic testing, I’m not sure that ANY man can truthfully say that he has. I have, however, from the vantage point of 57+ years of life made a number of observations that, I believe, are worth something and from which some conclusions may be drawn.

One of the things my mother taught me was to treat women with respect. (She also taught me some other things which I will mention later on that were far less valuable.) Now by treating them with respect, I do not mean placing women on a pedestal or like some fragile or idealized figure that has to be protected from the vicissitudes of the world. I also do not mean to treat a woman like the sexist definition of a “lady.” I try to be respectful and polite to everyone. If that means that I open a door or help someone on with their coat, so be it. There is nothing wrong nor sexist in being polite and genteel. In fact, I find it the height of boorishness to not be. Have I encountered women who buy into the theory that any courtesy is, by definition, sexism? Yes I have. Does it deter me from maintaining politeness? No it doesn’t. In those situations, I simply acknowledge the person’s choice and allow them the courtesy of behaving in a way that makes them feel comfortable. And this is as true in the bedroom as it is in public. It is a matter of learning what the person with whom you are with prefers and living up to that standard of behavior.

I have learned that it is entirely possible for a man and a woman to be friends. Some people swear this is a complete impossibility. They believe that by definition, men are looking for only one thing. That may be true in many cases but it is not a universal truth. And I am not referring to straight women with gay male friends. I’m talking about men with a healthy interest in women in every sense of the word. Is there some sexual tension? There may very well be. Is it possible to be attracted to another person and still maintain a friendship without sexual overtones interfering with the friendship? I say it is. I have had and still have many female friends. (This DID cause certain problems for me as a youth. I never quite saw what the problem was if I played…no I mean the innocent type of play…with a girl. Girls were human, too, but it was sometimes tough to be considered a sissy just because you liked their company.) My wife has always been aware of the fact that some of the people I consider my closest friends are women. With one (and that was a big one) exception, it has never bothered her. Part of that is trust in the fidelity of our marriage. But part of it is an acknowledgement that friendship is friendship. Am I attracted to a number of my female friends? Hey, look, I’m a guy and I’m not dead. But I have learned to keep such considerations from “contaminating” the friendship. Am I flattered when a woman is attracted to me? Well, yeah. I have an ego, too. But my friendships have been just that and my female friends know that I am very happily married and that I love my wife.

I have learned that there is no such thing as too many shoes and that the corollary is there may not be too many purses either. I have come to understand that when a man says a pair of black shoes, he means just that. One black pair for the gray and blue suits, one brown pair for the browns, tans and greens, and maybe one pair of each for dress and one pair of each for casual. When a woman says a pair of black shoes it has a myriad of meanings. Are they flats? Are they stilettos? Are they pumps? Do they have an ankle strap? Are they a two inch heel or a four inch? Are they for work or for sporty casual or for the new black spaghetti strap dress? The questions can go on ad infinitum but the important thing is to realize that shoes are important. (If you really need a lesson in this, watch any season, hell, any episode, of Sex in the City. You will understand.) Was Imelda Marcos excessive? Probably. Three thousand pairs of shoes and a thousand purses is, arguably, excessive, even if she suffered from OC/PR. But I have learned never to ask the question, “Why are you buying another pair of black shoes? You already have half a dozen.” Inevitably, the answer will be something along the lines of, “But I don’t have anything to go with…”(the dots being whatever is the newest outfit). Trust me. Just go with it.

And following along those lines, I have learned that if I want to compliment a woman, I often compliment her shoes. I do this routinely. I’m not being insincere nor am I being “gay.” If I happen to think a pair of shoes looks smart and complements her outfit and her, I will tell her that I like her shoes. This is something that matters to many women. It is also a nice way of complimenting them without having to worry very much about being accused of sexual harassment. But let me add this caveat. Doing it insincerely or following it up with some crude comment is not a good thing.

I have learned that flowers are never wrong. If you cannot think of anything else to buy a woman as a gift, flowers are ALWAYS a good idea. (And I don’t mean grab a handful of dandelions or roses out of your neighbor’s yard, I mean flowers purchased in a store. It does not have to be a fancy floral shop, either. I often buy flowers at my local supermarket. They all have floral department and can even do up a very nice gift bouquet.) Does it have to be roses? No, although roses are very nice. In the entire 37+ years I have been in a relationship with my wife, I have given her flowers many, many times. In all that time, I have only given her flowers ONCE as an apology. (And that was a big, bad, relationship-shaking thing I did.) But when it occurs to me, I will grab a bouquet and bring it home. The only occasion on which I regularly give her flowers is the anniversary of our first date. And before she retired they were always delivered at work. (And the couple years where I missed, one of which was in the badly depressed year, she was extremely upset.) Let me tell you. If you want to make your woman feel good about herself, have flowers delivered at work. I guarantee all her co-workers WILL sit up and take notice. (Kind of like the commercial for Vermont Teddy Bears where the guy has one delivered to his girlfriend’s office.) But since repetition is a good way of remembering, here it is again: Flowers are never wrong.

I have learned that remembering certain dates is another good thing. I happen to have an extraordinary good long-term memory and I’m very good with facts and dates. I learned early on that remembering birthdays and anniversaries, at a minimum, is important. It matter how I remember them, whether I write them on a wall calendar, in MS Outlook at work or simply commit them to memory (always dangerous as the sole method). I keep track! I have learned that she remembers these dates. It doesn’t matter so much to her HOW I managed to remember; but that I took the effort TO remember.

I have learned that if you are in a committed relationship (which hopefully implies that you love her), as the Billy Joel song says, “Tell her about it!” Even if I think that I convey that love and affection with every breath I take, she still likes the reassurance of hearing me say that I love her. (And if there is an issue with saying it out loud, the question “why” needs to be asked.) And this does not mean just necessarily saying the words. Words said insincerely are as bad as not said at all. I have discovered that women are sensitive to much of what is unsaid or implied. They know when you are bull-sh*tting them.

Something that my mother taught me that has been counterproductive and that I unlearned is what was behind her warning that, “Some girls will lead you on.” What I finally figured out was that she meant some girls will want to have sex with you. While I have not had a huge breadth of experience with many different partners, I have learned that women like sex, too. I came damn close to fumbling my soon to be relationship with my wife in university by being a “gentleman” and ignoring a very clear invitation. From the moment I left her dorm and walked back to my fraternity in the snow and cold, I kicked myself for being too much the “gentleman” to make the move we both knew we wanted. When I did so the next night, it took a lot more convincing. Lesson learned.

Something else I learned from my mother was that women do not like household items for gifts. One year, I gave her a neat gadget that took a potato and made it into instant sticks for French fries for Mother’s Day. The trauma that she inflicted for that choice of gifts left a scar that took my wife a long time to overcome. Even when she wanted something like a new vacuum cleaner, I could not bring myself to buy it because it was not a “personal” item. I finally learned to listen carefully to things that she says she wants regardless of what they are. I came to understand it was the listening and “hearing” part that was important to her.

I have learned that unless a woman is asking for the solution to a problem, she does not want one. Men are great problem solvers. Often when a woman is complaining about something, all she wants is to have a sympathetic ear. I know that empathy and sympathy go a long way. It has been my experience that providing an arm around the shoulders and a shoulder for her to lean on and a willingness to listen without problem-solving means a lot. The times when I forget that and allow my male hard-wiring to go into problem-solving mode have resulted in annoyance at best and anger at worst.

I have learned that when I get into an argument with my wife (and the same applied to several other women), and I take the glib advice of “apologize immediately even if you’re right,” she gets even angrier. I’m not very good with conflict and used to apologize immediately hoping the issue would evaporate. I learned that such behavior only causes another problem on top of the original one. Where a man would immediately accept the apology as an acknowledgement of having “won,” I have observed that women consider it insincere.

In conclusion, let me say that none of what I have said here has been researched in any empirical sense. These are anecdotal observations that I have made over the years. I report them not as an attempt at behavior modification. I have also observed that while there are some women who prefer “bad boy” types who treat them like crap, by and large, the women with whom I come in contact like someone who evidences a certain degree of sensitivity. In my younger days, that sensitivity and empathy sometime made it very difficult for me to convert a friendship into something more. Ultimately, however, when it did help, it has lasted for 37 years with no end in sight.

The Place for Politics

2010-01-21T12:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I’m borrowing MSNBC’s tagline for today’s title. I watch MSNBC. A lot. Well, a lot, at least in the evening. So you may have guessed from the title that this is going to be about politics. Now, understand, that one of the promises I made to myself as well as any potential reader was that I was going to avoid politics in this blog. Granted, the name is “Mark’s Blog About Nothing” and so much of politics is just that…nothing. But by avoiding politics I meant that I was committed to not using this vehicle to advocate for a particular viewpoint or for and against the insanity happening in the world in general and the United States in particular. (Oops, sorry. Off the soapbox.) No, what I want to talk about is my own development as a member of the body politic. There are some surprising twists and turns.

Growing up in the 1950s, I was subliminally aware that Dwight Eisenhower was President and that Richard (I am not a criminal, damn, there I go again) Nixon was the Vice President. My first real consciousness of the political process was accompanying my mother into the voting booth and watching while she flicked a bunch of levers down. The first Presidential campaign that made any difference to me was the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon election. By the ripe old age of eight I had learned that we were Democrats because, according my maternal grandparents, Franklin D. Roosevelt was the greatest man in history. (This, however, did not stop them from voting for Republican Jacob Javits for Senator. I mean, come on, Javits was Jewish. I have often wondered what my grandparents would make of Representative Eric Cantor, R-VA, but I digress.) I wasn’t quite sure why Democrats were better than Republicans or if they ever were. But we were Democrats. We were pro-civil rights. We were pro-the downtrodden. We were pro-labor (except for the godless Commies and their Workers of the World Unite stuff.). And I never could figure out what the problem was that Kennedy was Roman Catholic. Hell, most of my friends were Roman Catholic. What’s the problem? (Remember, this is before the KKK allowed Roman Catholics to be members.)

The next step in my political education was November 22, 1963. That’s one of those days that you never forget where you were. I was in school in my homeroom when someone came in and said that the President had been shot. My first confused thought was that she meant the president of our school class. Then it sunk in who she meant. Was he going to be okay? Could he recover? And then the news came that President Kennedy had died. Shot dead? Like Lincoln? This wasn’t 1865. How could this happen? (Had I been a wee bit older that question would have been “How the f*ck could this happen.”) And like so many Americans, I heard about the apprehension of Lee Harvey Oswald and then HIS murder on Sunday. And, as a family, we watched the funeral. I recall two specific things that made an impression on me. The first was the rider-less horse with the empty boots pointed to the rear in the stirrups. The other was John Kennedy, Jr. (John-John) saluting.

So Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency and that was fine because he was also a Democrat. The 1964 campaign was a slam-dunk who to root for. Barry Goldwater? Barry Goldwater? Are you serious? He wanted to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age. Little did I know that by 1965 Lyndon Johnson would be doing the same thing, but, again, I digress. I found it mildly interesting that Goldwater’s running-mate, Bill Miller, was a New York Congressman (and his daughter Stephanie Miller has one of the best left-wing radio shows on the air). But somehow, despite the overwhelming majority for Johnson the entire south voted for a Republican. Huh? Wasn’t the Republican Party founded as an anti-slavery party and Lincoln’s election was what triggered Secession and the American Civil War? They voted for a Republican?

By 1968, I had become something of an amateur political enthusiast. I was stunned when Johnson announced his intention to not run for re-election and dedicate himself to resolving the war in Vietnam. But I was happy when the junior senator from New York, Robert Kennedy, announced his candidacy. In April, there began a series of shocks that seemed to build and multiply in my life. On April 4 we were saddened at the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Whether you agreed with his politics (I did) or not, he was still a great man. The on April 7, Jim Clark, my favorite race driver was killed in a crash. (He was my greatest hero next to Mickey Mantle.) It was the first time I had personally experienced the death of someone who I loved. Then on April 20, my father died and life as I knew it changed. But Bobby was on a trajectory to win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency, especially when he won the California Primary. And then Bobby was dead, like his brother from the bullets of an assassin. I half-heartedly looked to Eugene McCarthy who was the anti-war candidate. (Now, understand, by this time I had figured out that the stupid way in which the war in Vietnam was being fought would never lead to a victory. Therefore, if that was the intention, get the hell out now.) That July, my best friend died and I don’t remember much more of that summer. I recall being aware that the Chicago Police, essentially, rioted against the demonstrators outside the Democratic National Convention and of course McCarthy had no chance.

So Richard Nixon was elected President in the 1968 election. And my feelings about the anti-war movement were becoming more ambivalent. I agreed the war needed to end but for different reasons. By 1968, I was sure that I was going to join the Air Force and I intended to fly. My awareness of matters military grew by leaps and bounds and I found myself turning farther and farther away from my liberal roots. The process was accelerated by a senior year high school course in American Deiplomacy taught by a teacher I adored. She is probably the teacher most influential in my life but she was extremely conservative and took no prisoners. Ultimately, this led to my voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, my first Presidential election. (Yes, you read that right. I voted for Nixon.) Why? Well, George McGovern, the Democratic candidate wanted to end the war (which was fine) but he also wanted drastic cuts in the Defense budget. HE WANTED TO TAKE AWAY MY AIRPLANE! Slam dunk. Nixon it was. I even defended him when Watergate broke. I defended him right up to the point where John Dean blew the whistle. I felt betrayed and let down. The sonuvabitch really WAS a crook. (It’s interesting to note that although I was all for Nixon in 1972, in the 1970 election for Senate in New York, I was appalled that James Buckley was elected on the Conservative Party ticket. This was because the more liberal Republican and the Democrat split the liberal vote.)

There was a briefNew York mayoral interlude in 1969. John Lindsay was running as an independent against a Republican and Democratic candidate. I had to convince my grandparents, who lived in the Bronx to vote for Lindsay, not the Democrat. The answer I got was, "We always vote for Democrats." I countered thisby pointing out that they voted for a Republican named Jacob Javits. Of course the answer I got was, "Oh well, but he's Jewish." I have no idea who they voted for (I think they voted for Lindsay because of me.) but Lindsay did win re-election.

Let me take a few moments to explain this conservative turn of mind. Although I had what I believed to be valid political and military reasons for being conservative, I never lost my liberal social conscience. Inequality of any sort got under my skin. Intolerance was something I never understood and could not tolerate, whether it be racial, national, sexual or any other form. I was always a fan of the underdog (Okay, not so much in baseball. I was a Yankees fan and was content to see them win almost every year.) I never understood gaining wealth for the sake of keeping score. How rich is rich enough? (This is an even more pertinent question now….) But I could never find a comfortable fit in the conservative social agenda.

The 1976 election saw me as an Air Force officer. It used to be traditional for military officers to shun politics. Many officers never even voted. I didn’t have a lot of faith in Gerald Ford but I had less in Jimmy Carter and besides, he said he would cancel the B-1 bomber program. So I held my nose and voted for what I believed to be the lesser of two evils. (Amazing how so much of electoral politics comes down to that choice….) By 1980, I still could not support Carter and my wife and I, for the first time, worked on a political campaign. We worked for the third party candidate John Anderson. But later at night, in the dark places of the day, I knew in my heart of hearts there was no chance of his election. As much as I did not like Carter, I just hoped that Anderson could peel enough votes away from Ronald Reagan for Reagan to not win.

It was probably the Reagan Revolution that ended any possibility of my ever supporting anyone but someone with a liberal agenda…or at least voting for the person opposing the conservative agenda. My social conscience screamed in pain as I watched the Reaganites slash taxes for the least needy and cut Federal programming for the most needy. I knew that David Stockman’s confidently trumpeted that there was a safety net to catch those in need. But like so much in politics it was rhetoric at best and a flat out lie at worst. It did not matter that Reagan had reactivated the B-1 program. I was a civilian by then and my military training led me to believe it was a waste of money. And we had Star Wars, then the secret war in Honduras and Nicaragua…and thank you Ronnie for Iran-Contra. Guess we learned nothing from Watergate and it’s fine for POTUS (President of the United States) to ignore Congress and the law. That destroyed whatever vestige of believe in a conservative political agenda I may once have had. How is it that the same people who yammer on about law and order get to callously ignore the law, U.S. policy and Congress and then get to lie about it?

Michael Dukakis was a very nice guy and might have made an adequate President. But watching the Republicans dissect him in an almost clinical campaign of lies and innuendo was as breathtaking as it was disturbing. Here was another case of the lesser (far lesser) of two evils, especially one not in any way beholden to the growing influence of the religious Right. And had I know then what I later learned, how the Bush (Poppy H.W.) Administration told Saddam Hussein that the United States had nothing at stake if Iraq invade Kuwait, I might not have been so interested in the CNN coverage. My interest in aircraft and military operations got the best of me and I sat glued to the TV watching Desert Storm destroy a helpless enemy. And then Poppy gave us Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court. Clarence F*cking Thomas! Rehnquist may have been Nixon’s last laugh at America but at least he possessed a first-class legal mind. Having been a member of the bar for several years by this time, I was aware of how dangerous was the growing shift to the hard right on the Court.

And then in 1992, the clouds parted and the sun began shining on a southerner named William Jefferson Clinton a/k/a Bubba! A liberal! A Democrat! Someone who would stop the rightward drift of the body politic and might even arrest my own growing leftward drift. Okay, the guy had trouble keeping it in his pants, but he just might win! It’s the economy, stupid! We all knew that. And Poppy did fib about “Read my lips. No new taxes.” So Bubba storms the White House and economically, things improve. The middle class was doing better. But I began seeing some disturbing trends. Government was cut (Why is it that the “Liberal tax and spend Democrats” streamline and cut government while the “fiscally Conservative” Republicans bloat it out of all proportions?) along with shifting social spending to the states. And what was the deal with these Free Trade agreements. Why is this a good deal for the United States beyond what is good for the Bonzen? (This is a term for which I have a dear, dear friend in Germany to thank for introducing it to me. It is a slang term for the bosses under the Weimar Republic’s system and those who enriched themselves at the expense of the workers. Sound familiar?) And a little noticed, at the time, sellout to these same Bonzen was the deregulation of media. (Ever wonder why there are seven stations in one market with Rush, Sean and Glenn but not one with liberal talk radio? Thank Bubba for that gift to the Rupert Murdochs of the world.) And the rabid dogs who set at Clinton’s heels in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky fiasco and their unbridled un-Christian hypocrisy pushed me even farther left.

I don’t even want to talk about the Supreme Court’s violation of Florida law which de-facto handed the election to W. I could not even bring myself watch the HBO film “Recount” regardless of how good it was and the presence of Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary on the cast. Yes. I remember where I was on 9/11. I even understood the initial foray into Afghanistan (but not letting Osama bin Laden get away when he was cornered). But Iraq and everything that has flowed from that running sore, tax cuts in time of war for the richest, unfunded mandates, signing statements, rendition, torture, gutting the Justice Department, the Patriot Act, contractors and no-bid contracts, torture, I could go on but won’t. And then the triumph of the Bonzen on Wall Street. Destroy the American and, by extension, the world economy and get bailed out by taxpayer billions. Privatize profits but socialize losses. Is that what Capitalism is REALLY all about? I’m going to have to go with a big yes because that seems to be the way of the world.

I watched in horror as young men and women were repeatedly abused by sending them over and over into a war zone then treating them like discarded rubbish when they are used up or maimed. And torture. I always believed that the United States had a moral obligation to lead the world and to shame nations that tortured people. At first I didn’t want to believe but that change took a lot less time than it did for me to realize that Nixon really was a crook. And the wars just dragged on. Something you need to understand about me is that I am fascinated by military history (history in general, but military in particular). There was also a time when I was trained, ready, willing and able to jump into a B-52 at the blare of a horn and navigate it to points where we would release nuclear bombs on real people. And I am proud of my service and honor the men and women who continue to serve. But I am dead set anti-war. To borrow Nancy “Mommy” Reagan’s drug advice, when it comes to war, “Just say no.” How much blood and treasure to we need to spend? And as the poor became poorer and the Bonzen richer and richer and government spending for anything resembling social welfare was neutered by W, Shooter Cheney and their cabal, I drifted even farther left.

And then Obama provided a ray of hope. Change. Call me naïve. I was willing to buy into it. His soaring rhetoric touched all the right places. Maybe government would once again be brought back into it’s rightful role and again “form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” That lasted until about August when the Tea-Baggers got rolling and so many in Congress showed themselves to be cowards at best and corporate subsidiaries at worst.

So here I am, pushed so far to the left that I am now a committed socialist. I have a firm belief in the role of government being for the governed and if that means government takes over all things like health care and has to regulate the sh*t out of corporations to protect the people, and that taxation should fall most heavily on the richest to help the neediest, I say, "Bring it on!" But today, the U.S. Supreme Court hands the government to corporations. Where does it end? I am afraid that I see no good end. "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains."

I Will Fear No Evil

2010-01-19T14:40:00.001-08:00

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” – Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I apologize about mixing science fiction classics here. The title of this piece is the name of one of Robert A. Heinlein’s best novels. (And I recommend this to you if for no other reason than to read the interludes which are excerpts from the notebooks of Lazarus Long…BRILLIANT stuff!) The Litany Against Fear is from the Dune series originally created by Frank Herbert. Although one of the great classic series of science fiction, it is long, involved and you really have to want to read it. But it is a GREAT series that has been continued and extended by his son. So, having gotten the literary issues out of the way, it’s time to confront, well, FEAR.

Some of you already know that in my last physical, my blood work indicated a potential prostate problem. The fact that I am a 57 year old male, in and of itself, also indicates the potential for problems. I know you ladies have certain “unique” medical issues that crop up as you age. Well, prostate issues are the male counterpart. Surely, you’ve seen the commercials for Flomax. You know, the four past-middle age white guys (ever notice it’s always white guys?) hanging out, going to the ball game, fishing, riding 4-wheelers, doing all sort of male-bonding bullsh*t. (Why is it that they never show four guys sitting around a strip bar getting drunk? One would think that showing potential male problems when lap dances do nothing for them would be more to the point. But I digress.) Other than the blood marker, I have shown no other signs of prostate issues But between that marker and my age, the urologist decided that better safe than sorry and decided to do a prostate biopsy. Yeah, that scary word. And it’s a needle biopsy. Two scary words, especially for me the “n” word. That, of course, set me off on a trajectory of crash and burn anticipating the worst. No, not cancer. I hadn’t even gotten that far in my mental processes. It was fear of the procedure, fear of pain, fear of having to endure the procedure. I wallowed in this fear for about a week or so. I sought reassurance from friends and family. I fretted incessantly. I worried about the worry. Then one day last week, something clicked inside my head (I have a lot of clicks up there) and I decided that I cannot allow fear to paralyze me, including not having the wherewithal to write these blogs. And I have felt much better about everything since that moment. That got me thinking about fear and what it has done in and to my life.

If you’ve followed along here, you already know about my trypanophobia, the irrational fear of hypodermic needles. Where this came from, I really do not know. I do remember that my pediatrician nicknamed me “No Shots” because those were the first two words out of my mouth when I saw him. This would continue throughout the examination right up to the point of getting my lollipop at the end. I never met the man, but I would have given a certain part of my body to Dr. Albert Sabin for inventing oral polio vaccine. There have been times that I almost passed out from having to go through a blood test (and the Air Force is not particularly amused at flying officers passing out for any reason). So there we have the crux of why certain medical procedures scare me.

Webster defines fear as follows: 1 archaic : frighten; 2 archaic : to feel fear in (oneself); 3 : to have a reverential awe of ; 4 : to be afraid of : expect with alarm ; intransitive verb : to be afraid or apprehensive . If you’re keeping score, number 4 comes closest to what I experience, the “fear the worst” part. This has been my MO throughout life. If I fear the worst and it happens, well, then I was “prepared” for it. If it does NOT happen (and it almost never has) I’ll be relieved that I dodged the bullet.

But let’s look at this a bit closer. In much the same way that we exercise a muscle to make it stronger, we also mentally experience things to reinforce them. I’m trying to learn German right now and I realize that (despite what Berlitz and Rosetta Stone will say) some memorization is necessary. Constant repetition has taught me that “lachen” means to laugh and “das Zimmer” means the room. The fear response in my life has reinforced itself many times over. It matters not if it was fear of needles, fear of failing exams, fear of striking out, fear of disappointing people or any number of other fears. Every time I indulged in it, I was reinforcing the response.

Fear originates in the Amygdala and is one of the basic emotions that have allowed humans to survive and evolve into people who can sit at a computer and write about fear, among other things. The fight or flight reaction is connected with this. My response has always been flight. I have a long history of avoiding conflict of any sort except when pressed to the absolute extreme and cornered. Give me an avenue of escape and I’m a member of the “Discretion is the better part of valor” club. While it has given me a highly refined sense of fear, it has not done much to help me cope with it.

As a former professional aviator and someone who loves the feel of being in an airplane, I have never suffered from any concerns about being in a metal tube with wings and a propulsion system (alternatively known as aerophobia, aviatophobia, aviophobia or pteromerhanophobia). But my daughter suffers from it as do several of my best friends. I have talked with them and understand their fear is as real as is mine of needles. One of the most basic underlying premises of this fear is loss of control. You are 100% dependent on a couple of strangers in uniform up front to get this aerodynamic vehicle safely from one place to another. Some people experience a similar thing as passengers in a car, but in a car we seem to understand the risks better. We can see what is going on, we generally can see the driver and cars generally crash in only two dimensions where aircraft have that whole third (vertical) dimension. It is the loss of control that induces fear. And having to put your welfare into the hands of a medical practitioner is yet another form of loss of control.

I count myself blessed to have served in the military but to never have had to go to war. I have several friends who were not as fortunate as me and have suffered grievous injuries. I wonder how I would have reacted in their place. I am extremely pain-averse and fear the experience. One of them tells me that there is nothing wrong with being afraid of pain. In the mini-series Band of Brothers, one of the members of Easy Company talks about being afraid constantly but not wanting to let down your buddies. (Oddly enough, fear of death has never been an issue for me. It’s inevitable at some point. I fear losing friends more than my own demise.) I have no buddies to let down by being afraid and giving in to those fears. But I do have family and I do have friends. Heaven knows, my dear wife has been through it with me enough times. The worst that I can remember was when I had to have a venogram. I turned into a quivering mass of sobbing, terrified, Jello…literally. And when it was over, I had to admit it was not so bad.

This last point has been a recurrent theme that I have never been able to put into perspective. I will freely admit that my list of medical issues have been, mercifully, short. I have been quite healthy throughout my life and have not had to endure many procedures of any sort (with the possible exception of dental issues which has been a chronic problem since my first visit to a dentist). But every time I have wallowed in one of these fear cycles, the reality has NEVER approached the expectation of it.

Anticipation, while it may be a great song by Carly Simon, is a torment I allow myself to experience. Let me give a few examples. When I had my vasectomy, I fretted for weeks before. Before heading to the doctor’s office, I took 15mg of valium. I have a clear memory of lying on the table while the doctor was operating and singing along with the radio to which I was listening. When it was over, my reaction was, “Is that it?” When I had a parathyroid gland removed, I worried the whole summer about what it would be like. A little bit of Ativan and a nurse who obligingly put the heparin lock inside my elbow made the pre-operative period…well, a nothing. After that, I was out and it was over. Before my colonoscopy, I had a flat-out panic attack. Fortunately my daughter and the friends I was with got me calmed down. A little Ativan and the knock-out stuff later, it was over. Every dental procedure requiring Novocain has always been a carnival of anticipatory fear of the twenty seconds or so of the feel of a needle in my mouth, always ameliorated by nitrous oxide and often by pre-visit Valium. I know that once past those painful seconds, it is nothing.

Knowledge is power. In my case, the knowledge of how I have reacted in these situations has allowed me to sit back and coldly examine what I have allowed myself to do. And that’s the bottom line. I have allowed myself the luxury of wallowing in fear like a pig wallows in mud. No amount of anticipatory fear is going to change the reality of what is to be endured. Yes. I intend being tranquilized before the biopsy and I will have my iPod to listen to and sing along with. But I can no longer give in to letting fear paralyze me. I have two dear friends one of whom recently endured a painful medical procedure. I am told that she was extremely brave throughout it. The person who told me about that has been through, in the last year, untold numbers of serious, life-threatening surgeries, injections, medical tests and life-threatening illnesses. She tells me that she, too, is afraid of needles. But you need to just get on with it. Her father is one of those soldiers I mentioned who was wounded. They are wonderful role models. And I am bound and determined to not let them down or make them ashamed of me, not to mention not wanting to put my wife through that sort of thing again. So I return to the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear and understand that science fiction may be its origin but it is wisdom with which I can identify.

It Keeps You Running, Part 2

2010-01-12T14:41:00.001-08:00

So having gotten the miracle cure known as orthotics, I embarked on what I call the golden age of my running experience. Each week I would try to push a little farther and go a little faster. Days when, for whatever reason, I did not get to run, even when they were planned days off, were simply endured. I sought out hills. I learned to lean into the hills and get up on my feet and to push up them. I returned to my sprinting roots and eagerly sought out quarter-mile interval training (something I loathed in high school). I was ably aided and abetted by my, then, neighbor and best friend, who became my running partner. Even after he moved a few towns away, we always got together at least once a week for a long run with some big hills. I’m also blessed in that I sweat particularly effectively. As a result, running in hot humid weather was actually fun. I just had to be sure of replenishing fluids. Cold weather? No problem. I bought a Gore-Tex running suit when they were fairly new and if it wasn’t cold enough I wore running tights. I read every issue of The Runner and Runner’s World and New England Runner. My calendar diary was the one from Jim Fixx’s Complete Book of Running. I read everything by George Sheehan and Amby Burfoot and many other running books. The Runner’s Repair Manual was my injury avoidance bible. I pestered my wife into making dishes from the Runner’s Cook Book. (By the way. There was a recipe for a no-fat cheesecake that was to die for! No, I mean literally. One taste and death would be preferable, it was that bad.)

And races? Sign me up! The first one I ever ran was in Goodwin Park in Hartford on a cold, snowy, windy day. All the other runners were disappointed because the weather conditions made getting a new PR (personal record) very difficult. Not me. It was my first race so I had a new PR and the post-race high of having done it for the first time. I was so proud of the number that I had pinned to me. It meant I was part of the “in-group.” 5 mile and 10-K were my favorites because competing at 5 miles was just a little bit on the easier side and 10-K was pushing my envelope. Thanksgiving morning meant the Manchester Road Race before heading to dinner with the relatives. I eagerly sought out all the races I could, especially the ones with the best T-shirts. I built up to running the New Haven 20-K race on Labor Day specifically because the T-shirt depicted Zonker Harris from Doonesbury crossing the finish line. (Interesting point about Zonker. His real-life analog was distance runner Benjie Durden.) My running shoes and clothing went everywhere with us, whether for a weekend or a long holiday.

Anyone figure out the downside of all this? How about a hint. Obsessive-compulsive behavior. Running became the focus of my world. My day was built around the time I would run. Most work days it was not a problem because I would use my lunch hour and the job I had gave me some flexibility. When I worked in Hartford I joined the Y just so that I would have a place to change and shower. They also had a small banked wooden track on the roof that no one but me used. Weekends I tried to get my run out of the way early, or late in the day after we got home. But until I got that run in, there was a drumbeat in my head that would not go away until I was able to write that day’s run in my log. That log was like a taskmaster. Days when I filled in a distance and time it would say things like, “Maybe you could have gone a little farther or a little faster or both.” Days when I would skip running it stared at me with silent contempt or would simply shake its head sadly conveying what a loser I was for missing a day. As with so many of my other OC behaviors there was no balance. If we had to go somewhere or were on holiday, I would constantly be looking at my watch (a Casio runner’s watch, of course with stop-watch and split capability and a calculator to calculate pace) fidgeting about getting back in time for me to run. If that meant dinner was delayed or that my wife and daughter ate without me, that was one of those trade-offs that had to be made. Need to cut short our trip to the children’s museum so I can lace on the shoes? Sorry, priorities.

(This lack of balance has been a recurrent theme throughout my life. I have long joked that anything worth doing is worth doing to wretched excess. I can assure you after far too many years of this sort of behavior, it is not. Wretched excess leads to overindulgence. When it’s a “healthy addiction” like running, you can rationalize it in your own mind that you are benefitting yourself, even if it is at the expense of others. But wretched excess, when it is destructive behavior of any type, whether it be drinking, drugs, anorexia, aggressive driving leads to tragedy. I am lucky to have avoided any tragic consequences but I live with some of the long-term consequences.)

The “bad year” (1989) when depression wrapped its icy fingers around my neck and began squeezing, marked the turning point for my running experience. Being unemployed, I had plenty of time to get in a daily run. These runs were at least five miles and were generally at 11:00 AM. (I think the timing had to do with there being no daytime TV show that I wanted to watch at 11:00.) It was also a perfect lead-in to my lunch which was almost always salad made with my V Slicer. (Sad to say, that V Slicer may have saved my life that year. Using it was one of the few things that lifted my spirits a wee bit.) But at this point, running had become a means to an end. That end was losing weight. I knew subliminally, at the time, that I was starving myself to death (I can remember TMI ALERT, read the remainder of this sentence at your peril standing at the toilet urinating singing to myself “Pissing my life away” to the tune of the song “Dreaming My Life Away”, but it made no impression on me.) But even running fell under the executioner’s axe as my daily activities degenerated into watching the clock move and going through the motions at my lousy retail job.

By the time I had pulled out of my nosedive, I had lost the sharp edge of my conditioning and I discovered that I had also aged a bit. My knees were becoming cranky when I ran, my Achilles tendons never seemed to stretch adequately, my lower back was sore but most important, the desire (maybe obsession is a more appropriate word) was gone. It was becoming a job. I found myself dreading getting into my running gear. It preyed on me throughout the day. The thought of changing clothes and leaving the shelter of the house had become the driving force and it got harder and harder and less and less often.

In desperation, I answered a local fitness center’s ad for people to participate in a controlled fitness experiment. I volunteered and found that going to the gym five to seven days a week was infinitely preferable. I could work out on the exercise cycles and not have to worry about my knees bearing the burden and I could plop a book in front of me and read while I worked out. After the six month experiment was over I joined as a regular member and continued to work out.

I continued with this gym until I began taking Irish dance classes. Simultaneously, I tried running again and would go for seven to nine mile runs two or three days a week. As the dancing took front and center, the running, once again fell away. Let me preface what I am about to say by saying that I LOVE doing Irish dance. It has given me a wonderful group of friends, it has provided an outlet for my desire to perform for others and it has provided a venue for competition. Having said that, it also became an OC behavior. The person who for a brief period of time was my son-in-law, made a small dance floor in our basement and five or six days a week I was down there practicing everything I knew for an hour. Life began revolving around when I could find an hour to get my practice in. (Any of this sound familiar?)

As a conditioning replacement for running it worked splendidly. How do I know this? I was having some reflux and hiatal hernia issues that were causing my esophagus to go into spasm. This leads to a feeling very much like a heart attack. Although my EKG checked out perfectly, my doctor decided I needed a stress test. This one, unlike the one I had fifteen years earlier, took a LONG time. My heart rate was not getting up high enough. Finally, after a LONG run on the treadmill, it got up high enough for it to be an effective test. At the maximum point, there was some sort of indication that something was amiss. The cardiologist immediately said that I needed to have a second one with the dye injected. This of course sent me into outer space. Run with a needle in my arm? I think not! But he and my doctor were insistent but compromised on a chemical stress test where I could be doped to the gills and injected with something that would artificially stimulate the heart. That having been done, I checked out 100% healthy. The reading had been a false positive. Now I told you that to tell you this. The reason the cardiologist insisted on the second test was because with the profile I demonstrated, he assumed I was a marathon runner and he did not want to take a chance. My doctor, of course, said he would have insisted on it anyway. Thanks, doc. Love you, too.

And so, I find myself coming full circle. I have reached a point in my life where I no longer have the desire to be the “old guy” in dance class among all the kids. Dance classes are just no longer something I want to do, nor do I NEED to do them. So, my wife, now fully recovered from surgery over the summer, and I returned to the gym. I got through a half hour of running on the treadmill and managed 2.2 miles. Fifteen + minutes per mile is a bit depressing when I consider I used to go ten miles at a seven minute pace. But my target heart rate was perfect. And I’m sore today in places I didn’t remember I had. It’s a good lesson in how the major leg muscles are used differently for running and for dancing. But I know the soreness will go away. And I have a group of friends who are rooting for me to make a comeback, including one beautiful and charming young woman who insists that she will have me running. Much as I love her, I have a beautiful and charming woman my age to whom I am married who says that is NOT going to happen. As I happen to live with the latter person, guess who has the greatest influence. But honest. A treadmill is not really running, so it’s okay.

It Keeps You Running

2010-01-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

I thought about writing about running after a lovely and charming young woman I know suggested that now that I am eating healthier, mostly due to her influence, the next thing is that she will get me running. Actually, in truth, it would be to get me BACK to running (but my lovely bride is on record as saying, “No freakin’ way!” or words to that effect and has reconfirmed the judgment just last night.) Running and I have been off and on companions more many years. As a result, doctors of the orthopedic and emergency nature and I have also been companions for many years. It’s not so much that I’m injury prone but…OK, I’m injury prone when it comes to certain bodily exertions.

As a kid, it seems like you can run forever. When the weather is nice, especially on weekends or summer break from school, it seems like you are out all day running from one place to another whether you’re playing baseball, army, Elliott Ness and the Untouchables, tag or any number of other games. You just don’t think about it in the same way that a fish doesn’t actually think about the water in which it swims. It just is and you just do. Even after eating lunch, there was seemingly no break. (This was always a source of mystery to me. If you were at the beach or a swimming pool and you even put your foot in the water for at least an hour after you ate (which magically morphed into a half hour somewhere in my childhood), you would get the cramps from hell and drown. But anything else? Nah. Go run a marathon, you’ll be fine.) During recess periods or gym class the teachers were happy to have you run off that excess energy. Anything to keep us quiet and well-behaved during class….

I recall watching the Summer Olympics on our old black and white TV (yes, the kind that got a total of thirteen stations, had actual dials and knobs that you had to get up to change, a rabbit ear antenna on top and vacuum tubes inside to make it work) and thinking that the running events were the only real Olympic Sport. (OK, maybe swimming, too, but to me swimming is simply not much more than staying alive in the water.) And, of course, the United States always did so well in the sprints and the relays. Guys with odd names like Abebe Bikila or Paavo Nurmi or Emil Zatopek would usually win the distance events but we “real” Americans knew the truth, that the REAL running events were the sprints. (That would all change thanks to Jim Fixx, Frank Shorter and Forrest Gump, but more on that later.)

In high school, I had given little thought to running on the track team. That changed the day our gym coach (who was the assistant track coach) pulled a hurdle out and told us all that we were going to run over it repeatedly. What we did not know was that while we thought we were just doing that day’s gym class, he was auditioning us. He pulled me and one of my best friends aside and told us that he wanted us at track practice that afternoon. Thus began my short and totally non-illustrious career as a high school hurdler. I am short and have always been short for my age. If you look at most hurdlers (most sprinters for that matter) you will see that they are generally tall and long-legged. I was short and proportional. I rapidly learned the technique of hurdling and had little problem clearing the low hurdles. But when it came to high school high hurdles (which were actually three inches shorter than college and Olympic height), I would either slam the hurdle down with my lead leg or, worse, slam my trailing knee into it. One of my more experienced teammates would just stand there watching, shaking his head, picking me up when I tripped and feel and not knowing what to say. If it were being graded it would be technique 9.8, performance 3.2).

I did have a few claims to fame on that track team. One is that I had the best start out of the blocks. I have no idea why but for some reason I was quicker than almost anyone in the county for that first split second right after the gun went off. The coach would use me to test the really good sprinters out of the blocks. I also managed 10.1 in the 100 yard (yard, not meter) dash. Unfortunately, our team had a guy who ran 9.6, one who ran 9.7 and two who ran 9.9 in the 100 yards. My biggest claim to fame, however, was at the beginning of our senior year, the coach decided that one of our best quarter-milers was going to learn the hurdles. Now, let me apologize to the many teachers and coaches for what I am about to say: I was a classic example of the cliché, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” The coach and I worked with this guy because, well he was the coach, but I am a pretty good teacher and my grasp of the technical aspect of hurdling was strong. Suffice it to say, he went on to become national high school high and low hurdle champion in 1970. Despite my placing in a few events, that is the accomplishment of which I am proudest.

My first running-induced medical experience came on this team. We were at an indoor meet and instead of blocks, we started on rubber pads that were braced from behind. Uncharacteristically, I got a horrible start and the guy bracing mine took his foot away a split second too soon and the pad slid backwards. My right leg suddenly extended all the way and I could feel the big muscle on the back of my upper leg pop. One of the shot-putters had to carry me to the bus….

College hurdling was out of the question. If I could not manage a 39 inch tall hurdle there was no way I was managing a 42 inch high hurdle. So, I talked to the coach, a very, very nice guy, and we agreed that I would give sprinting a chance. Unfortunately for me, his workout technique demanded a great deal more medium speed running at a distance than I had ever been used to. To his credit, he ran right along with the runners. We would run constant laps of Manley Field House and each lap, the last man would have to accelerate to the front to lead that lap. I was getting close to my limit this particular day when it was my turn to lead. In an attempt to “motivate” me, he got right up behind me urging me forward. Unfortunately his lead foot and my trailing food got tangled up and I went flying, crashing down on my hip. Thus endeth my college track career.

Running did, however, provide me with one opportunity to help my fraternity big brother…or so I thought. All the Air Force ROTC cadets who were either in their last two years or who had an ROTC scholarship had to run a mile and half run each year under a certain time. (This still goes on in the Air Force.) Big brother appealed to me because I was such an experienced runner and he needed someone who could pace him because he wasn’t sure he could run a good enough pace. I was fighting a cold and tried to beg off but he sounded so pathetic that I agreed. So there I was, running with him to make sure that he did well enough to pass the run. When we were done I dragged myself back to my room, took a cold pill, flopped on my bed sweaty clothes and all and proceeded to fall into a deep, drug-induced coma. A bit later, my roommate opens our door to an insistent knocking and there is my big brother with another one of the guys from the fraternity telling me I have to get up, there’s an important meeting. I wanted to change out of my cold sweaty clothes but they hustle me out because there is no time. Shortly thereafter, I learned that the real reason he wanted me to run with him was to tire me out as part of the beginning of Initiation (a/k/a Hell) Week. Thanks. Love you, too.

One of the first times that Americans, as a whole, took notice of distance runing was in the 1972 Olympics. Frank Shorter won the marathon, the first American to do so since Johnny Hayes in 1908. While I had the greatest respect for the accomplishment, I could never, in my wildest imagination, see myself running distances greater than a quarter mile at a clip (with the exception of my once a year mile and half for Uncle Sam’s Air Force. Sad to say, as college went by and I entered the Air Force, I had let my conditioning go. The year I had to do the test in navigator training, I was too slow. (Back then it was no big deal. I understand now it really is a big deal.) That was a bit of a wake up call but, still, not so much.

In 1977, the late Jim Fixx wrote “The Complete Book of Running” which became a runaway national best-seller. I took subliminal notice of the growing “running craze” but the tide merely washed over me, leaving me unaffected. That began changing in 1979. I was a member of the Charleston (WV) Jaycees and one of our fund-raisers was a five mile race. I worked on the race but did not run but now a little bug was beginning to buzz around my ear.

After moving back to Connecticut the following year, I decided that if this many people thought running was a good idea, I would try it. About six weeks into this initial foray, I was at the extreme end of my run when my knees became so painful that I had to limp home. I stopped running until the pain went away and then returned to it. Six more weeks, same result. So, to an orthopedic doctor I went. He prescribes Butazolidin Alka, an NSAID that I understand is also used on HORSES. I take the pills, the pain goes away and I go back to running. Six weeks later, back to the doctor for another round of the same medication. I think I went through at least four visits before I realized that he was treating the symptom, not the problem. Let’s also recognize that little old OC me had become a complete running devotee (no, that doesn’t begin to state it, I was completely running-obsessed and based my day around my run) and could not do without it the obsession. (The running community likes to refer to it as a positive addiction. That may be but for someone with OC issues it goes way beyond that.) Realizing that the doctor I was seeing was not addressing what might be an underlying issue (I have the world’s flattest feet a/k/a pronation. Can we guess where this is going?), I saw a new doctor. He examines me and proceeds to schedule me for a nerve conduction study and a venogram…on the same day. Know what a nerve conduction study is? They touch nerve points with an electrode to stimulate it. That’s another way of saying they give you a series of controlled shocks that increase in intensity as they go on. Now, add to this, that my mother-in-law, an experienced RN and nursing instructor had informed me that the venogram is one of the most painful medical procedures she had ever endured. By the time my wife gets me to the radiologist, I am a quivering mass of terror and tears. As it turns out, it’s not that bad a procedure. Thanks for the terror warning, Ma. (After the Department of Homeland Security was created I thought she should have had a great career raising the terror threat levels to scare the whole country but she had retired by then.) So after subjecting me to all of this, the doctor announces that his diagnosis is that I have flat feet and all I will need is a good pair of orthotics and I will be able to run pain free, his diagnosis from the first exam. Of course, I ask why the other tests. His answer is that he was 99% sure it was the flat feet but he just wanted to be 100% sure it wasn’t an underlying problem. (Thanks, Doc, love you, too.) He writes me a prescription and sends me to the Children’s Hospital. Happy as I was about what promised to be a miracle cure, I felt really conspicuous being there. Here I am taking up their time to make orthotics for me to be able to run comfortably and there are all the kids who are being fitted for prosthetics so maybe they can just walk. I voiced this to the technician with whom I was working and his response was that it was a pleasure for him to be able to work on a healthy person. That made me feel a wee bit less guilty but not much.

To be continued….

The Cars, Part 2

2010-01-08T13:27:00.000-08:00

The station wagon was sold before we left West Virginia and we came back to Connecticut with the Datsun. It was shortly thereafter that I took an adult education course on auto maintenance. From that time on, that poor car was never the same. The points burned out every time it snowed. No mechanic I ever spoke to could explain the connection between the two but it seemed one of those cosmic jokes the universe likes to play on you for no obvious reason. I made another startling winter discovery. The car had a vinyl liner above the passenger compartment. When a sufficient number of very cold days go by and you accidentally hit the liner, it shatters into shreds. This was also the first car in which I ever had a car accident. It was just a torn fender and it was not my fault.

My parents gave us an old Buick which was my wife’s car for a while. It was dark blue and old but it ran. We then traded in the Datsun on a Honda Civic, a significant step up. This was the car that got me through law school. Unfortunately, even as late as the 1980s, Honda’s were subject to rapid salt-induced body rot. We also bought a used VW Beetle to replace the Buick. Interesting thing about those old beetles is that the heater does not actually heat very much. The air-cooled engine did not get all that hot in the winter. As a result, the heater was tepid at best. While we owned that car, Connecticut was hit by a hurricane. Our next-door neighbor’s tree fell over into our driveway. Would you think a branch could have gone through the VW so we could replace it? No. The branches framed it perfectly. We couldn’t go anywhere for a while, but the car survived, literally without a scratch.

Eventually, the VW was retired and we bought a year old Toyota Corolla for my wife. That was a car that just kept on going without giving a bit of trouble. When we traded in the Honda, I made a huge mistake. It was just when I was changing law jobs and in the euphoria of getting out of a bad situation into what I thought was a good one, we decided that my reward would be a Toyota MR2. Yes. I finally had my two-seat sports car! I’ll be the first to admit it was a tremendously fun car to drive. Unfortunately, it’s the car I most closely identify with the “bad year” of depression. As a result of the depression, and the inattention it causes, I backed into a car parked opposite our driveway. That provoked a reaction of me being unworthy to drive it so I insisted that my wife take it and I would drive her car. That lasted for a while until she decided that she was not going to tolerate a clutch and manual transmission and made me take back the MR2. The next year I got hit head on and a huge cup of coffee flew all over the interior. (No, that accident was not my fault, either.) From then on the car smelled faintly of coffee.

The MR2 was passed on to my daughter and I got my first pick-up truck, a Mazda B2200. That was actually fun and the joke was that since I was a NASCAR fan and had a pick-up truck, now I had to get a gun rack for it. I never did and when that truck finally gave up the ghost, we donated it to the Kidney Foundation which towed it away for us. I moved on to a well-used but extremely durable Jeep Cherokee. That was my first 4-wheel drive car and it worked well in the winter.

My wife took over her mother’s Oldsmobile Cutlass which had a couple of neat features. One of the issues she and I have is the heater. I am always too warm and she is always too cold. The Olds had separate controls for individual “comfort zones.” The only issue with that was when I would drive and she was the passenger and we would wind up messing up the settings for the other one. Hey, you make do. That car ran until one day it would not start. We had it towed to a local service station where they were supposed to do a “diagnostic.” After a week of no word, I went over to discover that the engine had been entirely disassembled and they told us we would need a new engine because after pulling it apart they “discovered” that the engine block was cracked. This they could not have figured out simply by LOOKING at the damn engine. They informed us that at that point we owed them over seven hundred dollars and the new engine would run about two thousand dollars more including labor. When my wife got home, we went over to the service station with the title. I signed it, handed it to the owner and said the car was his and he could sell it for parts to cover his costs. He started to threaten me with legal action and I suggested that if he did I would file a complaint with the Motor Vehicle Department (for which I work) about his business practices. End of discussion.

We sold the Jeep to our next door neighbor and it kept running for several more years. We then bought a blue Ford Taurus for me and a Buick Century for my wife from a used car dealer. She had intended the Taurus for herself but Dale Jarrett, my favorite NASCAR driver, at the time drove the #88 Ford Taurus which was blue. End of discussion there. I was actually quite happy with the Taurus. It was a great car and Ford was justifiably proud of it. (Which is why, of course, a few years later they discontinued producing it. Ah, Detroit. Magnificent management decisions….)

We, actually, my wife, decided that we needed another pick-up truck. We bought a 1990 Ford Ranger with over 200,000 miles for eight hundred dollars. Despite having to put another thousand or so into it, this has been one of the best investments we ever made. At least five people have borrowed it for moving or transporting stuff. We have used it repeatedly to haul stuff to the town dump and storage. It’s still with us although it has some “issues” about passing its emissions test.

The Buick died a rather ignominious death. My wife was on her way to work when someone turned quickly into her path while he was making a left turn. I got a call from her from the Hartford Hospital emergency room. My daughter and I both had dental appointments that morning and I immediately called the dentist to tell them I would not be in. My daughter was, literally, in the chair and they told her. Fortunately, the dentist’s office is next to the hospital so she walked over. There we were, one happy family sitting in the ER waiting for someone to look at her. From 9:30 AM until 3:00 PM, we sat there. Oh, yes, they did x-ray her foot and she had several broken bones. Finally, the chief of the ER got tired of us having to wait and he casted her foot just to get us on our way. We then went to where the car had been towed and it was totaled. The front end was bent in at close to a 90 degree angle. Most remarkably, the air bags did not deploy because the car that hit her hit square between the front bumper sensors. Learned something new there.

Once she was able to drive again, we went to the same folks we bought the Taurus and the Century from and finally bought her a Taurus. For a while we were a two-Taurus family and she still drives hers. Eventually, mine was becoming rather tired, so, we traded it in on a Hyundai Elantra on a day when we swore we were not going to buy a car. My wife is one of the hardest bargainers you will ever meet and she got them to give us exactly the deal SHE wanted. And the best thing about my new car? XM Radio. We got four months free and after that there was NO WAY I was giving it up.

So what have I learned through all this? I’ve learned that I make repairs or perform maintenance on any motor vehicle at my own and the vehicle’s peril. I have learned that a light, two-seat sports car with wide tires and a rear-engine performs very poorly in snow. I have learned that every pick-up truck owned in the United States does NOT have to have a gun-rack, especially if one does not even own a gun. But most of all, I have learned that we are far too reliant on automobiles. This is not a startling conclusion but it is a sobering one. Unless you live in a major urban area in this country, mass transit is non-existent. It’s a sad commentary on the car culture we have allowed to take over our lives and that is slowly strangling us. But, I need to finish up here. I have to hop in the car and get gas. And stop at Dunkin Donuts for coffee, but not the drive-thru window. I WALK into the store to order.

The Cars

2010-01-07T13:27:00.000-08:00

I realize that from the title, some of you might have, for a small portion of a second, had the vagrant thought, "Gee, he's going to talk about Rick Ocasek's group." I will admit to liking some of their music and especially the cover art on Candy-O. But no, this is not about the rock group, it's about my relationship with automobiles and driving.

The first family car I can recall was a Studebaker. I would not be surprised if some of you have never heard of this make. Production of them ended in 1966 which is probably a bit before some of you were born. Anyway, this was the first family car we had. It was replaced by a 1955 Chevrolet four-door sedan that was blue. This is the car I most clearly identify with my early childhood. I have clear memories of driving to the Bronx in it to my grandmother's on Friday nights for supper. I was young enough that my mother would put me into my Dr. Denton's before we left for home and I would sleep on her lap on the way home. (No. There were no seat belts then. If we had hit something I probably would have become an integral part of the dashboard and would not be sitting here writing this.) It was a manual transmission with the gear shift on the steering column. It was in this car that my mother struggled to learn to drive (which she never did). After my father died in 1968, a friend of ours who was a car mechanic looked it over and declared it unfit to keep. We sold it for $25.00 and, from what I understand, it died on one of the bridges on the way to Brooklyn.

In 1963 my parents purchased a Dodge Dart. That was a remarkable car. The engine was a slant six that came in two sizes, 170 and 270 cubic inches (we got the smaller one). It had an automatic transmission that was controlled by a series of push-buttons on the left side of the dashboard. Because it had no clutch, my mother finally learned to drive an automobile. Most important, it had a radio. A radio! Now I could listen to the Yankees games when we were in the car without having to jam my little transistor radio (yes, I said transistor radio) in my ear. This is the car in which I learned to drive. It was also the first car in which I experienced, as Meatloaf so eloquently put it, passion by the dashboard lights.

Freshmen at Syracuse University were not allowed to have cars and parking was at an extreme premium. But by my sophomore year, my mother had remarried and the Dodge Dart was given to me. Living in a fraternity, we had our own parking lot. And everyone's car had a name. There was Ward, the VW Beetle. There were the Oil Burner, my big brother's 1964 Chevy Impala and the Gas Range, his roommate's 1965 Impala. There was the Beast, a 1960 full size Mercury convertible that, when the windshield washer was activated with the top down, the front seat passenger got sprayed. And there was my Dodge Dart which my big brother named Arnold Ziffel for some reason. (In case you don't know, Arnold Ziffel was the pet pig on Green Acres that Mr. and Mrs. Ziffel treated as if it was their child (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Ziffel)). Syracuse winters are long and hard but between 1971 and 1974, the two most reliable cars were the oldest, the Oil Burner and good old Arnold. Arnold was the car in which I courted the woman to whom I am married. He was the car that drove me to a fraternity wedding in Rochester despite persistent overheating. He went with me to Air Force field training in Plattsburgh, NY. And in May 1974, days after I had been commissioned and received my bachelor's degree, and fully laden with all the stuff from my room, we were driving from Syracuse to Connecticut, less than a month before our wedding. I stopped for gas on the New York Thruway about ten miles west of Albany. When I started Arnold up, the engine made a dreadful noise and some ugly smoke emerged from the tail pipe. Knowing as little as I know about cars, we limped away from the service area and made it to Albany where I pulled into a service station. The mechanic took one listen and pronounced it terminal. The main engine bearing was shot. Short of repair, no way was this car making it to Connecticut. We called my fiancée's parents and her uncle and a family friend drove up to Albany and met us at a motel where we had taken refuge from the now pouring rain. In the worst rain that Albany had seen in decades, I had to transfer all my things from Arnold into her uncle's car. That was when I discovered that if it rains hard enough, those raincoats were not entirely waterproof. We drove to a junk yard, pulled the plates off Arnold and left him to his fate. If I had a bugle I would have blown taps. (And then her uncle and her friend were annoyed at me because they expected me to do the driving home and I was soaked and exhausted.)

We used the cars in the family over the summer because I was due to go on active duty in August but in California. We flew out on a Wednesday and were met by friends. The next day we took a lease on an apartment and went and bought a car, an AMC Hornet Hatchback. (I'm sure some of you have never heard of AMC. It was absorbed by Chrysler in 1988.) We needed one off the lot and the only one we could find that had the features we wanted was a manual transmission. I had never driven a manual but my wife had. So she spent the rest of the day giving me a quick and dirty lesson in driving a manual transmission. That was Thursday. That night our friends and we decided to go to San Francisco for the weekend and take the new car. Suffice it to say, I did not dare the hills of San Francisco as a stick shift driver. (We used public transportation in the city. But the following May, after I graduated, my wife's uncle came to visit and we went back to SF and did the scenic drive. I'm proud to say that I DID manage the hills with a stick shift then.) When we left California, my wife was pregnant so she flew home. I caravanned across country with one of my Air Force classmates. We drove from Sacramento, California to Homestead, Florida for water survival training. I had a lot of stuff loaded in the car and it was rather heavy. I had the wonderful experience of driving across the Mojave Desert (Death Valley. Ever heard of it?) in early September with the heater on to keep the car from overheating. From Homestead, I had to drive up the coast to New York where my wife would meet me and then on to Rome, New York to report to my base.

Our first second car was a big old station wagon. My in-laws gave it to us so that my wife would also have a car. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't fuel efficient but it ran well in the winter. Our first Christmas tree was cut down and transported in that car. It was also the first car on which we ever put snow chains.

After I got out of the Air Force, we purchased a Datsun B-210 and gave the Hornet to my in-laws. It became my mother-in-law's car. After finishing graduate school, I took a job in Charleston, West Virginia. We caravaned down. Me in the Datsun, loaded to the gills with stuff including a two-drawer file in the passenger seat, my wife and daughter in the station wagon and my father-in-law and a friend in a Hertz truck driving our hosehold goods. That station wagon came close to being totalled near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Where Interstate 81 merges with another main highway, a tractor-trailer was in the lane ahead and to the right of the wagon. It had a corrugated steel body with metal signs mounted on the side. One of them came loose and came flying directly at the station wagon. My wife did a stellar job of evading it and it missed hitting by a few feet. I happened to have a CB radio in the Datsun and listened to the truck drivers praising how that "beaver" avoided hitting the sign. My wife was thoroughly amused when I told her what they had said.

To be concluded....

What a Tool

2010-01-06T13:48:00.000-08:00

Tim Allen used to star in a TV sitcom called “Home Improvement”. In case you’ve never heard of it, you can take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Improvement. Those of you who are already familiar with the show as well as my happy infelicity with tools will have figured out where this is headed. In the show, Tim Taylor, the main character, hosts a home improvement show. Although an expert in the use of tools and construction, etc., he also constantly injures himself in ridiculous manners. I can only conclude that long before this show ever appeared on TV, my father was channeling it.

Let me talk about my father for a minute. He was one of the most intelligent people I have ever known. He was skilled with his hands both in large and small projects. As a boy, he built wooden airplane and ship models. To economize due to the cost of materials, he would build a model the exact size shown on the plan rather than expanding it. He and my mother, for many years, made custom party favors. But he was also skilled in constructing large furniture. He built a desk in my bedroom that ran the width of the room. He built a huge set of closets to store…well, this is where part of my OC/PR comes in. The bottom line is that he was very, very skilled with his hands and with tools of all sorts. He was also convinced that if I picked up a tool I would hurt myself. Now, I’m not talking about power tools like a circular saw or a drill. I’m talking about hand tools like screwdrivers, hammers, pliers or handsaws. How it was that he allowed me to use a craft knife to build plastic models I will never understand. So there you have the genesis of why I have come to describe myself as (and if you are offended by politically incorrect terms, skip to the next paragraph NOW) a tool-tard. (One of the women with whom I dance who is a great artist in many media is terribly amused by that term.)

While I lived at home, this inability was not a terribly debilitating defect. After all, we lived in an apartment building. The superintendent took care of the work around the building, my father took care of things inside. It was occasionally embarrassing, though. My mother was acting in a local amateur production of The Pajama Game that was being produced as a fund-raiser. My father volunteered to work on the sets and backstage crew. So did I. Answer? No, you may get hurt. That was bad enough, but a friend’s father was also working on the crew…along with his daughter who was three years younger than me. When I tried that argument the answer I got was, “Well she knows how to use tools without getting hurt.” Had I known the term at the time, I probably would have smart-mouthed, “Well, duh!” But I didn’t so I slunk off to a corner and read.

Once at Syracuse University and ensconced in my fraternity, things followed a similar pattern. The frat house was owned by the fraternity not the university so we were responsible for maintenance and up-keep. At the beginning of my sophomore year, we all came back early to re-paint the interior. (I recall the term that we used for the color: sh*t-brindle brown.) So, there I am, asking our house steward what I can do. He hands me a roller, a tray and some paint and he says for me to do the walls. Hey, no problem. Even I can figure that one out. Paint goes in pan, roller rolls in paint, paint goes on wall in even strokes. No problem. Right? Wrong. After a few minutes of this, for no obvious reason, it was suggested that I might be better at doing the trim with a brush. I say, no problem. Even I can figure this one out. Paint can is opened, brush goes in paint, paint is carefully applied to trim. After a few minutes of this, for no obvious reason, it was suggested that I might be better at painting the window frames on the windows that had already been taped. I say, no problem. Even I can figure this one out. Trim paint can is opened, brush goes in paint, paint is applied to window frames. No worries about getting paint anywhere else, the windows have been taped. After a few minutes of this it was suggested that I might be better at…going to Liquor Square and buying several cases of beer to bring back. All righty then. So much for painting.

The first house we owned was in Rome, New York. We moved in less than two weeks before our daughter was born. My in-laws came up from Connecticut to stay with us until after the birth. My father-in-law, who was also very handy around the house, took it on himself to do all the painting and wall-papering. I accepted this as being logical since my days were taken up by the Air Force and then going to the hospital. When I asked if he needed any assistance he very nicely said that he didn’t mind doing it himself. I thought he was just being nice and thanked him.

I learned differently several years later. After I separated from the Air Force, we lived with my in-laws while I was going to grad school. They had a nice big house with a nice big back yard and an above-ground swimming pool. In the summer of 1977, my mother-in-law announced that my father-in-law and I were going to build a raised deck for one end of the pool. I kind of liked the idea because, for the first time, it looked like someone was going to trust me with tools. So there we are, all the wood and all the assorted other stuff needed and I ask what I can do. He wanted to start me off with something simple, so he gave me a circular saw, gave me a quick explanation of how to use it safely and then sent me off to cut wood to size. I’m working for a few minutes, naively believing that I’m doing what I should be doing. The next thing I know, the saw stops working because someone pulled the plug. He takes the saw out of my hand and says, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” He then takes me to another pile of wood where holes needed to be drilled. He gave me a power drill, explained how to use it safely and leaves me to drill holes. I’m working for a few minutes, naively believing that I’m doing what I should be doing. The next thing I know, the drill stops working because someone pulled the plug. He takes the drill out of my hand and says, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” Now I’m starting to get a wee bit peeved. The next tool I am handed is a hammer. I tried to beg off on this because the limited experience I have had with nails is that there has never been a nail that I could not bend with a hammer. I don’t care if it is the most hardened steel on the face of the earth. Two blows and I’ll bend it. But he tells me to give it a try. So I start. Sure enough my technique was perfect. Bent nail after bent nail but I’m still barely getting the job done. The next thing I know, the hammer is pulled from my hand with the admonishment, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” There were several more tools we went through, all of which ended within a few minutes with the same, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” Finally, I said, “Is there anything you want to let me do?” He hands me a post hole digger and tells me to dig the holes for the corner supports and he marks exactly where I am to dig. So, I take the post-hole digger and begin digging the holes as I have been shown. The next thing I know, the post-hole digger is yanked from my hand and before I can say anything, I hear, “I don’t like the way you’re doing that.” At that point I walked away, walked in the house and was headed to our bedroom. My mother-in-law looks at me and starts to give me grief for walking away from the project…until I tell her what happened and that I’m done trying to help. She then went outside and gave him hell for doing what he had done. But the deck got built without my assistance and all I learned was the lesson that Mark + tools = bad combination.

I wasn’t just dangerous with tools like those. I had never lived in a house that had a microwave oven until we lived with my in-laws. At the time, the only hot dogs I liked were the Hebrew National Kosher hot dogs. (By the way, aside from being better parts of animals, Kosher meat products tend to have fewer by-products and factory-farm hormone crap.) Anyway, I knew that all you had to do was put food in the microwave, turn it on for a certain length of time and it would come out hot and ready to eat. So, I put two hot dogs on a plate, put them in the microwave, turn it on…and within a minute, there were sounds that sounded like gunshots from inside. I quickly turn it off and open the door and look. There are the hot dogs, with their ends exploded off and hot dog ick all over the inside of the oven. Yes, I performed a double circumcision of two hot dogs because no one had explained that Hebrew National hot dogs have sealed casings that need to be slit before being microwaved.

Later that same week, my mother-in-law asked me to vacuum the house. No problem. I used a vacuum cleaner as a kid and in my fraternity. This was an Electrolux canister vacuum on wheels. I start vacuuming and everything is going well until suddenly I hear a soft explosion from the vacuum and it shuts off. I look at the back and see that the end has blown off. Oh sh*t! I killed the vacuum! I’m frantic because I don’t know what to do when my wife walks in. Practically in tears, I tell her that I’ve killed the vacuum. Much to my surprise, she starts laughing. I ask what’s so funny and she explains that this particular model is designed to pop the back end and shut off when the bag inside is full. Yeah. That turned into a charming family story.

Cars are another of those things the maintenance and repair of which eludes me. I grew up a fan of auto racing but somehow the workings of the internal combustion engine and how to maintain said engine eluded me. Oh, wait. Maybe it was because if I offered to help my father the answer was, “No, you’ll hurt yourself.” So when the town adult education department offered a course in basic automobile repair, my wife and I decided this might be just the thing for me. It was nice. It was taught in the high school’s auto shop. I learned how to do tune-ups, how to gap plugs, how to set the timing and a host of other necessary basic maintenance jobs. So once the weather got better, I went to the local auto parts store and got the parts I would need to do a basic tune-up on my Datsun B-210. I did it exactly the way the instructor had taught us. I knew that you never take more than one plug wire off at a time. That way, there’s no question that you have them in the correct order. I was so proud of myself, I changed the plugs, set the points, changed the rotor and everything fit back together! I then got in the car and turned the ignition on…and it turned over. But it would not start. No matter what I did, no matter what I double-checked, it would not start. Finally, we called the local service station. They towed the car and promised to check it out. Later that day, we get a call from them. I’m expecting the worst, like it’s the starter or something bad. When I ask what the problem was, the voice on the other end of the phone says, “Whoever tried to tune up your car crossed all the spark plug wires. Don’t they know you only do one at a time?” OK. So much for basic auto maintenance. (That car, literally, was never the same. Every time it snowed, the points would burn out. I have no idea what I did to it but I’m sure I caused it.)

It has become almost a ritual. Every year at Christmas, I always buy some kind of cool tool for my wife. She knows how to use tools. Apparently, in Connecticut where she grew up, tools did not pose the same threat to children that they did in New York. Consequently, she learned to use them. (She has even built small walls. I’ve seen her do it. Of course I was, watching from afar so that I would be sure not to injure myself.)

I’m actually pretty good at assembling furniture like you typically get from Ikea. This has far more to do with the fact that I can follow a set of assembly plans because I have built hundreds of plastic models. Even I can figure out how Part C fits snugly into Part A. And those neat little Allen wrenches they give you (see I actually know the name of the tool) make inserting the screws correctly idiot-proof. But my wife usually cuts up the box it came in because there’s that whole sharp edge thing plus Mark that are a literally a bloody dangerous combination. (I once slashed my thumb on a dinner roll but that story will have to wait for another day.)

A number of years ago, we bought mini-tool kits in plastic cases, a red one for me and a pink one for my daughter. I have actually used that tool kit any number of times. I have discovered that I CAN drive a nail without bending...assuming that the nail is going into plaster wall. If I accidentally hit a stud, bend city. And I have a pretty good handle (no pun intended) on screws and screwdrivers. (Righty-tighty, lefty loosey.) I have tightened and loosened nuts with my pliers and even used the hex wrench. I have jealously guarded that tool kit because it is mine. And it’s the first one anyone ever trusted me with.

Wrestling with Demons

2010-01-05T13:46:00.001-08:00

Whenever I have taught a class, when I introduce myself, I explain that I am actually a frustrated stand-up comedian. Because I have a captive audience, I plan to stand up and do schtick for them. If they happen to learn something along the way, that’s even better. When I started writing this blog, I said it was partly a therapeutic exercise and if, when reading it, you laughed or learned something, well, that’s even better. What I’m getting at is part of my motivation is to entertain and amuse. Sometimes, however, what I write is not all that humorous but is more a part of that therapeutic process I mentioned.

If you read yesterday’s blog about my eating habits (and if you did not, I heartily recommend you do so right now. I know the author and he is a charming and entertaining writer) you may have stumbled on the fact that I used to be very skinny, but not so much now. I briefly considered getting deeper into that point yesterday but decided against it. How that came to change is part and parcel of today’s topic.

Looking back on one’s life, there are things that are much easier to see at a distance. Much as we often miss the forest for the trees when we are walking within it, sometimes distance lends perspective. So to paraphrase the traditional introduction at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous:

“Hi. My name is Mark and I suffer from depression.”

As I said, with the perspective of age and memory, I can safely say that I have struggled with this demon since I was old enough to have memories. I am an only child so I had no siblings with whom to compare myself. I knew, from a very early age, that I was a bit different from the other kids in the neighborhood. I chalked this up to being the lone Jewish kid in the neighborhood or the fact that I was always the smallest and the weakest kid. Those things were, in fact, absolutely true. But I was also the kid who cried most easily and it didn’t take all that much to provoke that reaction. I was one of the smartest kids in the neighborhood but that meant nothing compared to the fact that it was easy to make me cry. Between many of those experiences and being an over-protected only child, I developed a facility for solitary pursuits. I built models, I played games like Monopoly or Risk by myself, I listened to records…and I read. It was probably in reading that I found my greatest escape. More on that later.

I had a long history of what would probably be characterized as inappropriate expression of anger. It took a good bit to provoke an angry reaction because I learned early in life to swallow it. After all, my parents NEVER argued. I’d see parents on TV arguing all the time and concluded that it was just a convenient ploy by the writers. Real people NEVER argued or got angry. (Right?) But when my anger finally emerged it was explosive. It often took the form of abandoning a friendship with someone who had long been my friend. Thus, my mother concluded, I was in need of psychological counseling. I was the only kid I knew who received that “privilege”. That provoked a reaction that said that if my parents think there is something wrong with me, I must really be a messed up person. It became a self-reinforcing loop of knowing that I was a screwed up dude and hating the fact that I was being forced into “seeing a counselor.” (By the way, I finally put an end to that after my father’s death. At the age of fifteen I finally said, “No. I’m not playing this game any more. You can waste your money if you choose. But I won’t go and if you force me to, I will sit and read.” Because HER counselor said that she shouldn’t force me to go, she stopped. I still HATE talk therapy.)

By the time I got to university, I was very set in my solitary ways. Somehow, one of my friends got me to rush fraternities with him. When, lo and behold, one offered to pledge me, I leapt at the chance. The low point of that experience, however, was when one of the seniors, a major in psychology, decided to use our pledge class as a practice “T Group”. That ended with me in hysterical tears swearing I was quitting. Eventually by frat Big Brother talked me down, got me drunk and that idea was abandoned. I also have some very clear memories of sitting in a corner chair in the living room of the frat house with a textbook, desperate for someone to say something to me but unable to reach out and interact. This would go on for days at a time with no recognition on my part what was wrong. It also led to some binge drinking and drunken, teary screaming matches with several brothers. Much of that ended when I began dating the woman to whom I have been married for over 35 years. Even so, there was a deep, hot, bubbling caldera of anger that sat inside and came out as terribly caustic sarcastic humor or would result in a Mt. St. Helen’s type of explosion. There were also times when something bad would happen and I would dissolve into tears and withdrawal.

There were some warning signs early in 1989 (what we call the bad year) that things within my head were deteriorating. The law firm I worked for had a long reputation of chewing up associates and spitting them out. As time went on I found myself more and more depressed to the point of having to shut my door at times just to cry so that I could continue getting through the day. (I thought I was hiding this from everyone, my wife included, but my demeanor said otherwise.) After this firm broke a firm promise to me and told me what a poor job I had done for a year (I learned later I had done a good job but this was their ploy to get me to accept a pittance wage increase), I let a legal head-hunter talk me into signing on with another firm. That lasted exactly four weeks. The SOB who hired me didn’t even have the guts to terminate me himself, he had the office manager do it. (Again, I later learned there was nothing wrong with me other than that the head of the firm changed his mind and didn’t feel like giving me the time and training I needed to learn that type of law. Hence my lack of regard for personal injury law firms.) So as of the beginning of June I was out of work.

For the first time in my life, I was faced with having to go to an unemployment compensation office. All I could think of was that I had a bachelor’s degree, two masters degrees and a Juris Doctor with honors and now I was on unemployment. Resume after resume went out. I had maybe three interviews over the summer and that was it. In November, my mother’s only sibling, her brother, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. After I returned from the funeral in Florida, the downhill pace accelerated. As the unemployment insurance was running out, I took a retail sales job with a department store just to earn some wages.

That Christmas season was a dismal point in my life. This is where the eating thing I mentioned fits in. Essentially, I stopped eating. I would eat just enough for the hunger pains to abate. Breakfast was coffee and some cereal. Lunch was most often a black and white iced cookie. Supper at work became a large Coca-Cola. My daughter tells me that a one point I admitted to her that my weight was down to 112 pounds and I was running 40-50 miles a week. I don’t remember that but I don’t doubt her word. I was literally committing suicide by starvation. That period permanently altered my metabolism and since then, I have struggled a bit with my weight. At some point, finally, my wife told me that either I get help or she was leaving.

My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist who did not do talk therapy but treated depression with medication. The first ah-ha moment I had with him was when he explained that clinical depression, as I was evidencing, is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It wasn’t my fault any more than catching a cold is my fault. That helped but it was really the medication that began pulling me out of the nosedive. Some time in March, we were driving somewhere and I asked my wife if we could stop at Burger King. She asked me why and I said that I wanted a Whopper. It was the first time I had evidenced any interest in food in months and she made a bee-line for the nearest Burger King.

I’d like to say that the recovery process has been one of those miracle things where I got into treatment and SHAZAM! I was cured. But I can’t. It has been fraught with slight ups and many deep valleys. There have been four medications tried and Prozac seems to work the best. (I know. There are some of you out there who hate the idea of Prozac but I’m okay as a result of it.) It has not been easy. I believed that if I could get through the day without feeling bad, it was a worthwhile trade to not being able to feel good. (It’s kind of the opposite of many people with bipolar disorder who accept the downs because the ups are SO good.) It has been a twenty year process fraught with periodic bouts of very low moods for weeks at a time. But I knew that when these periodic lows got bad enough, I needed to see my doctor.

Reading has long been an escape for me and I noticed, in retrospect, that when I got down, I would resort to reading as an escape. There was something about history that was always able to take me away and make me feel part of the past, away from the depression of the moment. These reading binges, combined with the OC/PR part of me resulted in reading a topic for weeks on end until I had become “expert” on it. Hence, my book “topic collections” including, but not limited to, submarines, General George Patton, American Indians, Age of Sail, the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor era, nuclear weapons and strategy and the American Civil War.

At the end of this past summer, I slid into an extended down-turn serious enough that, for the first time since before I was on medication, it affected me at work. The doctor decided to up the dosage. Eventually, this had an effect. But one morning, I woke up feeling euphoric. I was convinced that I had finally beaten the demon. I felt good! I had never felt this way before. I was positively bubbling with positive energy. I could not shut up. By the end of the week, however, I slid down into paranoia and fear every bit as strong as the euphoria. The doctor concluded that it was the result of too high a dosage of

You Are What You Eat

2010-01-04T12:59:00.000-08:00

I sometimes wonder how I became a picky eater. Make no mistake about it. I am a picky eater and have been as long as I can remember. I’m one of those people who generally cannot get certain foods past their eyes or nose. Looks icky? Pass. Smells funny? No thanks. Weird texture? Pass the bread, please.

I know this began at a very early age because as far back as I can remember I have memories of my grandmother telling me that my own children should be as picky as I am to pay me back. (This always confounded me. If I was a picky eater, why would I expect any child of mine not to be a picky eater? I figured we’d be picky together and everything would be fine.) She also used to tell me when I didn’t want something that starving children in Poland (where she came from) would be happy to have what I was turning up my nose at. That ended the day I looked at her and said whether I ate it or not they were still going to starve so what difference did it make. (Yes, I was a smartass from an early age.)

Let me digress a moment and explain a few truths about me. The first is, quite simply, I do not like eating. I recognize the biological imperative and understand that without eating you starve. I get that, okay? But when it comes to eating itself, for me it is a necessity. That, in no small part, accounts for why for many years I was just plain skinny. (Not so much now, though.) The other truth is that were my sense of smell either my vision or hearing, I would be considered handicapped. With smell and taste being as interconnected as they are, the subtlety of food tastes has always eluded me. I know what I like the taste of and what I don’t. But gourmet? Moi? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

For many years, the sight of a green vegetable was sufficient to make me want to run away screaming. Peas, green peppers, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprouts? I think not. And I was subjected to every one of them as a kid. I grew up in the era of the “clean plate club.” If it went on your plate, you damn well better eat it. I can recall many a meal where it became a battle of wills with my mother. She was bound and determined to get me to eat these things and I was just as bound and determined that “they shall not pass”. Eventually, I resorted to the pill solution. What do I mean by that? I’d shovel something into my mouth, pick up my drink and down it as if it was a pill, mastication not required. If I ran out of liquid or was ordered to chew, I’d hold my breath until whatever I had to eat was on its way down my esophagus. (I still cannot abide asparagus and Brussels sprouts and even though they are not green, don’t even get me started on beets!)

And let me say a word about liver and hard-boiled eggs. (No, the word is not, eeeuuuwww, but read on.) My grandmother made chopped liver (some of you gourmets might say pate but honestly, it was chopped liver) with a hand-cranked grinder. She would combine the liver with hard boiled eggs, cooked onions and a little schmaltz (rendered chicken fat). I ate that until she reached an age where she was no longer able to cook for herself. I know for an absolute fact that I hate the taste of liver of any sort and I hate the taste of hard-boiled eggs. How it was that my grandmother’s chopped liver was palatable to me remains one of the great mysteries of the ages. My mother, my wife, many delicatessens have all made chopped liver that I have tried and that word I mentioned before is what comes to mind. I have given up trying.

Traveling to foreign countries presented me with an interesting challenge. Were it not for the fact that chickens are raised in Israel, I would have lived on bread when we there. Were it not for pasta and tomato sauce, I would have done the same in Italy. Ditto for Wiener schnitzel in Switzerland. (When I find something that works I run with it. I’m pretty much a one-trick pony when it comes to finding a safe food in extreme survival situations, you know, like Israel, Italy and Switzerland….)

Growing up in a Jewish household that, more or less, kept Kosher, made the whole issue of learning to eat parts of pigs a moot point. I was in college before I ate bacon or breakfast sausage. Pizza with pepperoni or sausage? Well, if that’s all there is, but here, you can have the pepperoni and sausage. Ham? Looks pretty with all those little cloves and the pineapple slice with a cherry. Eat it? Yeah…no. Pork chops? Uh, don’t care if it IS the other white meat. And don’t EVEN get me started on all those exotic parts that some people find to be delicacies. (Okay. I’ll fess up. I have tried pork tenderloin and found it to be pretty good.)

Dairy products are a whole other category that has long eluded me. As a kid I never liked the taste of milk and was it not for Hershey’s Syrup, Bosco or Cocoa Marsh I would never have had any. (Interesting fact. I eat dry cereal like Cheerios or Special K dry. I don’t care if milk DOES make Snap, Crackle and Pop talk, I’m eating my Rice Krispies dry! I did try chocolate milk in my cereal once. Too messy but Cocoa Krispies make a nice chocolate milk if they marinate long enough.) Although I have come to enjoy some of the solid cheeses such as cheddar or Meunster, and some melted cheeses, like mozzarella on pizza, if something has a cream or cheese sauce, thank you, NO. (Another interesting fact. when I eat macaroni and cheese it HAS to be Kraft and the kind with the orange cheese powder.) I have learned to eat certain Mexican foods with melted cheese but keep that sour cream away from me! Oh, and cheesecake, especially one made by my wife, is really, really good.

In 1979 (I remember because I recall where I announced it to my wife) I decided that I no longer wanted to eat red meat. I was never much of a fan of roasts or prime rib and the steaks my mother used to get were akin to shoe leather. When there began to be a body of medical evidence that red meat was not all that good for you, I saw my opportunity. This became a bit of a festering issue for quite some time because my wife loves all of the above. Bless her heart, for a long time, she tolerated this and would make two different meals for us if she was making red meat for herself. I have since relented and regained a taste for a good steak. But I’m still not much for roasts or the fattier meats.

I have never apologized for my pickiness. If I do not like something, I will not eat it. Sorry if you’re offended, but the taste buds are mine and I will not eat something just to soothe feelings. During the time my daughter was married, her mother-in-law never really seemed to get my eating needs. One of the first times we ate at their, her mother-in-law made chicken, but only dark meat portions. I don’t like dark meat. The next time, she made chicken with some kind of cream sauce. I had rolls for dinner that night. Finally, for one big family dinner, she asked my daughter what she could make that I would eat. My daughter said to simply broil a chicken breast and leave it plain and I would be content. All the previous week my daughter kept reinforcing the message. Just broil a chicken breast. Leave it plain. Come the dinner, her mother-in-law serves the main course. (I don’t recall what it was but it was something I wouldn’t have eaten, hence the need for a plain chicken breast.) She then proudly brings out a covered deep dish and hands it to me. I had a deep, deep foreboding because of the shape of the dish. I open it and look. Sure enough, there was a broiled chicken breast…smothered in Hollandaise sauce. My daughter almost busted a gut trying not to laugh at the look on my face as I gently replaced the cover, placed it on the table, said, “Thank you,” and reached for the rolls. That was the last time we ever ate at their house.

I have never risen to the bait when someone says, “You don’t know what you’re missing.” That, in fact, is a perfectly factual statement. I don’t know what I am missing nor do I care. As I entered middle age, I concluded that I had reached a point in my life where I was old enough to say that I don’t have to try new things if I don’t choose to do so. But as I approach the last few years of my fifties, I have examined my eating habits and wondered just what it is that bothers me so much about trying new foods. After all, if I don’t like the taste it is just a transient phenomenon. It will pass. And, who knows, I might like something new. This has been encouraged by several of my Facebook friends who have been horrified at both my pickiness and my choice of foods. I gave my word to them that when we visit them in their country, I will behave and at least try everything. I have put this into action and have recently thrown caution to the wind and ordered a dish with fish that was unfamiliar to me, tried a feta cheese spread, tried a multiple cooked cheese dip and pledged to try different things that my wife orders. Maybe an old dog can be taught new tricks. But keep those damn Brussels sprouts away from me!

In Sickness and in Health

2009-12-31T12:49:00.001-08:00

I’m well aware of where those words come from but, no, this is not about marriage, weddings, etc. That will wait for some other day. No, this is about my (admitted) limited experience with the surgical side of the medical profession. I will also admit to being extremely pain averse and phobic about hypodermic needles. Those of you who have endured major surgery of any kind have my undying admiration for a) having endured it and b) having endured it with grace. My own experience is limited and I have been ridiculously healthy all my life. So my “coping mechanisms” are not very good and I turn into a big baby over anything medico-surgical. But I do try to laugh about it AFTER it’s over.

My earliest introduction to surgery was at the age of three when my pediatrician determined that my tonsils needed to go. I didn’t necessarily understand what was about to happen although I knew it had something to do with my throat because sore throats had led to the surgery. I was admitted to Cross County Hospital in Yonkers, co-located with the Cross County Shopping Center. The hospital is gone but the shopping center still exists. I was too young to be scared, although old enough to be afraid of hypodermic needles. I recall getting one (in the butt, for some reason) after being admitted. It may have been to make me a bit groggy but I don’t know. I have a thin memory of being laid on the OR table. They were still using ether as an anesthetic and just before they put the mask over my nose, I said, “Be careful with me,” and then I was out. I woke up to a severely hurting throat and the blessed news that my parents could take me home that night. Any of you who have ever heard Bill Cosby talk about his tonsillectomy will know that the big promise was: ice cream! That’s right. So when we got home did I get ice cream? Uh, no. But I did get chocolate pudding. And I clearly remember sitting on the couch in the living room eating it, wearing blue pajamas and paging through the latest Lionel toy train catalog. And my reward for being such a good, big boy? A Matchbox (anyone remember Matchbox cars when they actually came in what looked like a matchbox) car transporter with detachable car trailer and folding ramp.

Flash forward eleven years to Mark on the cusp of puberty. At the time, I had a large, brown benign mole on almost the point of my chin. My parents decided that the mole should be removed because it would get in the way of shaving, something that was in the offing as my voice deepened and hair began sprouting in “other” places. By this time, I had a full-blown phobia of hypodermic needles so that was the major fear. To offset this, I was given a pre-op happy pill of some sort. I was major league dopey when they plopped me on the OR table and it seemed like I was unable to make my mouth move to talk. I wanted to verify, for the umpteenth time, that they were not going to put an IV in my arm. My mouth wouldn’t work, so I went to point to the inside of my elbow, but only succeeded in touching the surgeon’s glove. That resulted in being tied down. The operation itself was a total anti-climax and the surgeon actually walked me down to the doctor’s lounge where he changed into his Navy officer’s uniform for his reserve weekend. He says he knew I was fine when I tried to stand up and salute him.

When I had my USAF pre-commissioning physical, they determined that the three remaining wisdom teeth in my mouth had to go. I arranged for my dentist to do it. It was scheduled for a Friday afternoon and my parents were going away for the weekend. My dentist also was going to do it with laughing gas followed by Novocain. When I reported this state of affairs to my fiancée, she and her mother summarily ordered me to cancel the appointment and come to Connecticut where they arranged for their oral surgeon to do it and for my mom-in-law-to-be, who was an RN, to take me. This was my first experience with sodium pentothal and the count backwards from 100. Bill Cosby talks about being so pitiful that he couldn’t even get out the second 9 in 99. He had nothing on me. I was out like a light. The next thing I remember is waking up with a mouthful of cotton, sobbing uncontrollably. And I said something under the influence of the sodium pent that my wife’s mother, to this day, refuses to tell me. I have always wondered if it had anything to do with our sleeping arrangements at Syracuse University….

The first (and only) time I have ever voluntarily suggested submitting to a surgical procedure related directly to the last time I wanted to endure the worry of whether my daughter was going to cease being an only child. So, there we were at the urologist’s office for the pre-op consult. As we were finishing, I explained to him my phobic reaction to anything of a medical/surgical procedure nature. He told me not to worry, that he could give me a shot of valium before the surgery. I then had to explain the entire needle-phobia (which actually has a real name – Trypanophobia. Go ahead. Like Casey Stengel said, you could look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypanophobia). That, then resulted in a prescription for two 10 mg Valium tablets. (Mmmmm. Valium good….) Surgery was scheduled for a Friday. (Some of you may recall this as being the first day of my Secured Transaction course in Law School which I was going to miss.) It was scheduled for 3:30 PM and I spent the day hanging out with my friends at our local hobby shop. An hour before surgery, I took 10 mg. A half hour before, I took 5 mg more and my wife picked me up to drive me. I have NO memory of the drive to the doctor’s office but she says I argued with her the whole way about taking the last 5 mg which she would not allow. I had borrowed my daughter’s Sony Walkman and I DO remember happily hopping up on the table and laying there while the surgeon was doing his thing, singing along with the radio. It was over very quickly (about 25 minutes) and when we got home, I picked up the phone and called my friend Rich (who was considering the same procedure) and said that the surgery was a piece of cake and that if I could tolerate it, anyone could tolerate it. I spent the rest of the evening sitting on a bag of ice. And, yes, unlike a certain episode of the TV sitcom Evening Shade, my daughter remained an only child.

Between 1985 and 2003, surgery and I remained strangers, other than as a bystander with other family members and friends. That all changed in 2003 when my doctor became alarmed at an extremely high level of calcium in my blood. This led to a diagnosis of hyperparathyroidism. The good news is that it is 100% curable. The bad news is that the only way to cure it is surgery. I went through three endocrinologists and way too many blood tests (plus a bone scan) before anyone could convince me that surgery was inevitable. So, I arranged for it in the period between the end of summer Irish dance classes and the beginning of fall classes. As usual, I received my dose of pre-op happy pills. I don’t actually recall the heparin lock being inserted but I would love to know the name of the nurse who did it. At my request, she put it inside my elbow rather than the back of my hand. If I knew her name she’d be on the Christmas list every year! I recall being wheeled into the OR and having them spread my arms straight out. There was a momentary thought about making a joke about the position but I figured even a non-believer like me was taking no chances at a time like that. The surgery was a complete success and the surgeon who did it had a very nice touch and you can barely see the scar on the front of my neck. (It was also great for about a month and a half that I could get away without wearing a tie at work.)

Although technically not surgery, I’ll conclude with my last procedure. Later that same year, the Monday before Thanksgiving, I got my gift for having made it into my second half century. Yes, that’s right, my first colonoscopy. Now I know all the stories about Katie Couric doing hers on TV and my wife telling me during hers that she was awake and watching it on the TV. NO FREAKIN’ THANK YOU! Again, it began with a happy pill and my last conscious memory was something cold hitting my vein through the IV. And then, I was being wheeled out to the car. I hadn’t eaten anything that morning, so my wife asked if I wanted to get lunch and I said, sure. (Understand, she has had several of these and every time, she’s so chipper afterwards that lunch was always a given. She also did not have to have any pre-op happy pills. Remember that point.) We arrived at the restaurant and she led me to the chair and made sure that I was able to successfully navigate the effort of sitting down. I believe I ordered a hamburger platter. The waitress brought our meals and I think I actually had a bite or two. As my wife describes what happened next, she was eating her own meal, looking at her plate and talking to me. She realized that I was not answering and she looked up. There I was, nose down in the hamburger, out cold. I have no idea what we did the rest of the day.

So here we sit on the edge of the New Year and this is, officially, my last blog of 2009. I have no plans to stop doing this as it is terribly therapeutic and a lot of fun for me to write I hope it is enjoyable for you to read, too. Coward that I am I am hoping this particular topic will not need to be revised as the future unfolds. But as that future unfolds, regardless of what awaits in 2010, let me extend my thanks and love to all of you. You have been a source of unending joy and warmth to me. Happy New Year everyone. I love you all more than I can say.

Babble-on

2009-12-30T12:51:00.001-08:00

I’m going to guess that most of you are familiar with biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Migdal Bavel in transliterated Hebrew for those of you playing along at home). Just in case you’re not, according to the story, the angry deity, to punish the arrogant humans for attempting to build a stairway to heaven (which, by the way, is a great song by Led Zeppelin, too) caused a confusion of languages so that no one could talk to anyone and get anything accomplished. Now, those of you who know me are probably scratching their heads wondering, “Uh, Mark, what’s the deal with starting with a Bible story? You?” Well, read on. You’ll understand or comprend or verstehen.

My first contact with a language other than English (i.e. English as an American speaks it, not the Henry Higgins of My Fair Lady/Pygmalion fame) was Yiddish. Once I was old enough to be able to spell out words, my parents would speak in Yiddish to prevent me from understanding what they were talking about. They actually got away with this through the time I hit early double digits in age by which time I had heard it so many times that, while I could not understand the literal meaning, I got the sense of who and what was being discussed and would then ask why they were talking about that particular thing in front of me. Thus endeth the Yiddish. (It was only after his death that I learned that my father spoke English as a second language. Until he was about three, the only language spoken in his house was Yiddish.) (And if you are wondering, we did a similar thing with my daughter. My wife and I would spell things until she was old enough to spell, then we resorted to a pidgin French. When we found that was inadequate, we started spelling things in the Air Force phonetic alphabet. Thus Mark became Mike, Alpha, Romeo Kilo. My daughter never got that until we explained it to her years after it was necessary to use it.)

Anyway, one of the horrors of my youth was Hebrew School. It’s not that it was such a horrible thing, but it was five years of six hours of classes a week (two hours three days a week) plus homework ON TOP of what we were learning in grade school. Now, let me get this out right from the start. I am not good at learning foreign languages and have never stumbled on a good learning method for them. That will become readily obvious as you read on. So, there I am in Hebrew School struggling to learn an entirely new alphabet that reads right to left and has funny accent and diacritical marks, as well as the language associated with it. That was bad. Very bad. Then in the third year they whip a new wrinkle on us. Now, on top of what they want us to learn, we have to learn ancient Hebrew as written in the Torah, too. This is akin to an English speaker having to learn to read the original manuscript language of The Canterbury Tales. Some crossover to the modern language…but not so much. This led to some severe angst on my part as I was still struggling with the modern Hebrew. Then, in the fourth year they made my head explode. That was when they said now we’re going to read Rashi’s commentaries on the Torah. So far, so good. Wait for it. Stupid me naively thought, well, how bad could Rashi’s language be? It could be very bad because Rashi wrote in Aramaic. So now they want me to learn a third language???!!!! That is when my head exploded and my parents started to become very disappointed with my Hebrew School grades. Parenthetically, once that five year sentence ended, my mother decided I was going to Hebrew high school. I said no and in a first, to my memory, my father said no to my mother. I believe the shock of him gainsaying her was a sufficiently earth-shattering event that convinced her that this time it was not going to happen.

Through all this mess, starting in fifth grade in my hometown, some schools began introducing French and others Spanish. It all depended on which school you were in. I was in one that taught French. Let me just say this about French. At least they use the same freakin’ alphabet and read left to right. Okay, they do have a few accents but I could handle that much. I can’t say I remember much about the first four years of French with the exception of becoming familiar with the fact what we call the first floor was known as the Rez de Chausée and the Premier Etage was what we called the second floor. By the time we hit ninth grade, we were into the complexities of the language sufficient for me to be floundering. My solution? Make the teacher nuts. My seat was in the first row and she could easily see the look on my face, most of which showed blithering confusion. Periodically, she would say, “Monsieur Gutis, comprenenz-vous?” Whether I did or not, my standard answer was, “If you say so.” After several months of this, she flipped out and went into a rant about it not mattering if she said so, it only mattered if I was actually getting it. As the school year was rapidly drawing to a close, I figured that my work on her was done.

My senior year in high school, French class was French literature in French. This might not have been so bad for those who had actually done a reasonable job learning the language. Then there was me. I really loved this particular teacher. She was a tiny blonde woman who was a Polish Jew whose family fled the Nazis to France and then to the U.S. Her first name was Bella. (Remember that, it comes up later.) I loved her, but, again, that meant that it was my duty to make her crazy. When we would read plays, we would each take a part including her. She would really get into acting the part and one day, one of the girls in our class said, “Oh, Miss F., you should have been an actress!” Emoting as badly as any ham she answered, “Oh, yes. Someday my name will be up in lights!” And then I chimed in, “Yeah, flashing on and off saying Bella’s Bar and Grill.” Fortunately, I was saved by the bell, as class ended a moment later. She knew and I knew she knew that I was reading everything in English and faking my way through class and she kept saying, “Come the final, I’ll know who has been reading in French,” and she’d stare at my innocent expression. Here’s her big mistake. She gave us the subjective, essay part of the exam first. She took off every point she could on mine but then I knew exactly what grade I needed on the objective part to get a B. And I made it by one point because I knew the stories and could fill in the blank or answer the multiple choice questions easily. (And this is why I say that my wife and I used pidgin French. She had spent several summers living in France and could speak it well. The limitations were entirely mine.)

In university I had the option of taking a language or not. Three guesses? And the first two don’t count. My major was a dual concentration of International Relations and Soviet Studies. Because it was dual and not straight Soviet Studies, I was able to duck having to take Russian. Honestly? It’s my greatest regret about my university education. I did have enough exposure to Russian, though, that I learned to sound out the alphabet and can, more or less, read Cyrillic and sound out most words. (This came in very handy in the Air Force. One thing that all combat crew members had to do to be certified mission ready was to conduct a briefing of your war mission for a senior staff officer. As navigator, it was my responsibility to indicate how I would navigate the aircraft over the Soviet Union. It was a piece of cake because the Deputy Operations Commander who certified me said that he had never heard Russian names pronounced so well.)

The other thing I picked up in university was the Greek alphabet. No, didn’t take any courses in Greek but I did pledge a fraternity. Among the things we had to learn was the Greek alphabet. I can actually say it faster than the English alphabet, mostly because I never had anyone standing over me and yelling at me to go faster with the English. I can’t understand Greek but I can sound it out by the letters.

My next cold splash of foreign language came in law school. Why it is that people who deal in language made as complex as possible feel the need to make it worse by using Latin phrases is…oh wait. Never mind. Self-explanatory. Res judicata (the thing has been adjudicated), res ipsa loquitor (the thing speaks for itself), ab initio (from the beginning), pro hoc vice (for this occasion), well I could go on but you get the idea. The fortunate thing about this terminology is that I didn’t have to learn the actual translation. I just needed to know when and how to use it properly.

So now I come to my latest assault on a foreign tongue. My wife and I plan on going to Germany to visit friends in the not too distant future. Those of you who know me well know that I am as self-critical regarding my native land and fellow citizens as anyone. One of the things that distresses me is the tendency of American tourists to assume that no matter where they go, people will speak English. I decided that I’m going to be at least able to use some basic Deutsch when we are there. Yes, they will probably be horrified at my American accent and how I butcher the language trying to make myself understood. But at least they’ll know I’m trying. So, in conclusion, let me just say, “Mein freunden, ich liebe dich alle.”

Law of the Jungle, Part 2

2009-12-29T12:45:00.001-08:00

So, there I was, wondering what was the reason for what seemed to be purposeful roadblocks from my editor. Without admitting anything, she promised that she would take another, more careful look at her notes and get back to me. When she did, she conceded that with a bit more polishing, it would be ready for publication.

Before she did that, the elections for the editorial positions were being held. Well now. Wasn’t that just an entrancing evening to sit through? I mean, it was complete with campaign speeches including one from a Hasidic student whose main argument was that because he had dealt with Mosaic law from childhood, he was most qualified to be editor-in-chief. Yeah, okay, dude, whatever. I’ve dealt with Mosaic law since my childhood, too. As one of the (I’ll be kind and say) more mature students (in fact, I think I was the oldest person on Law Review at the time), my support was solicited. My support was not forthcoming for anyone because, quite frankly, it meant nothing to me and besides I hate politics at any level. They were all day students who were engaging in yet one more Darwinian exercise of who can come out on top. I neither remember nor care who was elected. What did matter was what came next.

My editor and I finished up the work on my case note and it was ready for submission. She was very pleased because it was the fastest an evening division student’s case note had ever been finished. It was so fast, in fact, that it was done before the notes from several of the new editors were ready. So guess what. Mine got shelved. Why? Here’s what I was told. “How would it look if an evening student’s case note was published before the case notes being written by some of the new editorial board were published?” My response was that I couldn’t care less (I believe there was actually some obscene language in my response but I may be mistaken). Mine was ready and this was supposed to be a meritocracy. I believe it was George Orwell in 1984 who said, “All the pigs are equal but some are more equal than others.” So I got elbowed aside from the Fall issue and not published until the Winter issue. For those of you who care, here’s the official citation: Expanding Third Party Liability for Failure to Control the Intoxicated Employee Who Drives: Otis Engineering Corp. v. Clark, 668 S.W.2d 307 (Tex.1983), 18 Connecticut Law Review 155 (1985). Yes. Quite the little mouthful, and that was the title after my editor and I shortened it. (There was also quite a bit of irony they day she walked into a DMV hearing representing the alleged drunk driver and I was the hearing officer. I recognized her but she did not recognize me until after we were done and I introduced myself.)

So there I was, finishing up second year with just the summer session course to take. It was a course in Secured Transaction and taught by the one professor all the day students tried to avoid. He was an old school grader. He did not give you a grade, you earned it. There was too much of a chance for something like a B or, heaven forefend, C+ which would just kill a Grade Point Average that was aimed at Wall Street. I realized that the first night of that class was the same Friday night of the day that I had scheduled a wee bit of surgery on my nether regions which would guarantee that my daughter remained an only child. The teacher’s reaction was that it would be serious for me to miss even one night of class but if I thought the surgery was more important….I did miss the class. And I did earn an A, the grade of which I was proudest in Law School. Parenthetically, the class was made up solely of evening division students and several exchange students from a Canadian law school.

So, having completed my case note, I just sat back and watched Darwin at work on Law Review. My few fellow evening division cohorts on the review and I got a kick out of watching them constantly at each other in a struggle of survival of the fittest (or maybe the least unfit). Better entertainment than any reality show. In FACT, what an idea! Law Review: The Reality Show. You heard it here, first.

Third year was boring, enlivened mainly by Criminal Procedure. The professor threw out a couple ideas for projects which would be done in lieu of the exam. I am always for that sort of thing, so my best friend and I volunteered to do an in-depth examination of how the criminal justice system is portrayed on American TV. Watch TV for a grade? Sign me up! We spent a few weeks taping police, lawyer and detective shows and watching them. We each made notes of particular bits and then arranged them to start with the arrest and carry it right through the court process. We edited it together, wrote a script and presented it one night in class. It was eerie how well it went. Our professor was almost struck speechless. Apparently we had gone above and beyond. That earned us both an A+ without having to worry about the exam, plus that year’s award for excellence in Criminal Procedure. That was fine. The important thing was we had fun and avoided an exam.

As we got into fourth year (ugh!) we were now in that sweet spot for interviewing with prospective employers. I had been working with a friend who was in private practice and I intended to go in with him once I was done so interviewing was a waste of my time. Here’s a piece of advice: Don’t believe everything a lawyer tells you. This guy was going on about what great ideas he had and how we were going to be pioneering new areas. As they were areas that interested me, I was excited. Then, one day, his secretary, who really liked me, literally took me by the arm and dragged me into the ladies room. She told me to get the hell out as this guy was into some bad financial and legal problems and that I did not want any part of them. I left, completely mystified. I took a day off from work and went skiing by myself. Somewhere in that day I realized I had to go in a different direction. Unfortunately, the “recruitment season” was long over.

So fourth year drifted on. It was not just boring it was the death of a thousand cuts made worse by the knowledge that those day students you had started with were now actually practicing law (well, a few were studying to take the bar exam again, nyuk, nyuk). Through a friend, I was able to get a new position as a Law Clerk with a small firm that would take me on as an associate after I was admitted to the bar. (That’s yet another sad tale of broken and false promises but not really pertinent here.) And then, one day, we were sitting under a tent, caps and gowns adorning us. I, as a fair number of my fellow evening students, had fancier robes, as a bunch of us already had several degrees, including one guy who was an MD. Each division had elected a graduation speaker. Their topics all put it in perspective. The day student’s speech began with high-sounding ambitions and goals but ultimately boiled down to this: If you want us to be able to do noble and pro-bono work, you need to make law school cheaper. We have these huge student loan debts so we have to work for big salaries and can’t afford to be noble. And thank you for playing along! Next contestant! Our evening division speaker was married and the mother of several small children. What she talked about was how nice it was going to be to finally, after four years, be able to sit down to dinner with her husband and children and not have to be constantly on the treadmill of classes and work that meant that they hardly saw her. (In August, after the bar exam was over, we were walking in a store and jokingly I asked my daughter why she didn’t hate me anymore. As serious as can be she looked at me and said, “Because you’re home now.”) After the graduation ceremony, one of my friends said to my wife, “What’s next for him, medical school?” Serious as a crutch my wife said, “Over my dead body.” All righty-then!

So next came the bar exam. I am convinced that law school prepares you, not to practice law, but to have the necessary background to study for the bar exam. The bar exam prep course teaches you how to take the exam. Assuming you pass, you then go to work for someone who, hopefully, teaches you how to practice law. Suffice it to say, I passed. Good thing, too. That was an experience I never want to go through again. I thought that Air Force survival training, learning what it was like to be a prisoner of war would be the most stressful experience I’d ever have. It was nothing compared to the bar exam.

My career as a lawyer was not typical and is fraught with missteps and blind alleys but at the moment I’m in a fulfilling position doing something I believe in. But at a particularly dark moment in my past when I was struggling to find a new law position (which never really materialized) and I needed a paycheck, I went to work for a retail store for the Christmas season. I recall it very clearly. One day I was working in the Men’s Department in the island where ties and accessories were arrayed. A very attractive young woman was paying by check and I asked her for a photo ID. She showed me her UConn Law School student card. I politely asked if she was a student. In fact she was. As I completed her transaction and handed her the bag, thanking her by name, of course, I told her that she should consider getting into something else. She asked why she would ever want to do that and I gently explained, “So you’re not selling ties at Christmas to earn a paycheck. Happy Holidays.” And off I went to the next customer.

Law of the Jungle

2009-12-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

I was inspired to write on this topic by a charming young woman whose grades have virtually guaranteed that she is a lock for law school next year. In all the excitement of congratulating her, I thought back on my own experiences in law school. And SHAZAM! Today’s topic.

There is an old joke about lawyers coming out of Jewish families. A lawyer is a Jewish mother’s son who can’t stand the sight of blood. (In my case, very descriptive.) The truth is there was never a chance of my becoming a doctor. I really can’t stand the sight of blood, mine or anyone else’s. Couple that with the sciences, especially chemistry, not being strong subjects and you have the makings of someone who has no chance of seeing the inside of a medical school other than as a patient, experimental subject or cadaver.

I remember as a kid loving the courtroom scenes in the old Perry Mason show starring Raymond Burr. I’m not that big of fan of mystery stories so I’d say to me parents to call me when the courtroom scenes came on. (And, by the way. If you murder someone and Perry Mason is the lawyer for the innocent person who is accused, DO NOT GO TO THE TRIAL. Guaranteed, you will feel compelled to confess, thereby ruining your whole nefarious plan.) Anyway I liked the court scenes and always had it in my mind to go to law school. This desire was overridden by the compulsion to become an aviator. Because the Air Force was paying for my education with my promise of becoming a navigator, the idea of delaying commissioning for another three years was a non-starter.

After I got out of the Air Force, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I settled on getting my master’s degree in library science (MLS). There was a joint program where you would wind up with both an MLS and a Juris Doctor but I passed on that. So I became a librarian. Periodically, I would mutter something about going to law school and someone would say, “Well why don’t you apply?” I always had a ready excuse until one day when I muttered it and got the question, I had no excuse.

The first step towards law school is the Law School Admission Test. I don’t know how it is now, but when I took it, it was basically a test of logic and logical thinking. (Yes, I know what you are thinking. How does doing well with logic contribute to the practice of law? Short answer. It don’t.) Thanks to a friend who is a mathematical genius who taught me the process of logical thinking, I did well enough to be admitted to the University of Connecticut Law School in September 1983.

UConn is one of the law schools that has a day division and an evening division. Because I was a grown-up with a family and a real job who needed the paycheck, I opted for evening division. Day students finish in three years and have the entire summer off. Evening students take four years and have a summer session course. The biggest difference, however, is the kind of students that the respective divisions attract. Day, the fast track to private practice, attracts the best and the brightest college grads. Many of them have no idea what to do with their lives, so law school is a good place to go to defer dealing with real life. (Gosh, Mark, can you be a LITTLE more judgmental? Why, yes, I can.) The title of this piece, the Law of the Jungle, refers to the cut-throat nature of the way those students carry on. You’ve heard all the stories about hiding books or cutting pages out just to sabotage other students. Well, evening division, for the most part, attracts people like me. We were a little older, we knew what working for a living was like and what having spouses and children were all about. More important, we had learned that much of life requires cooperation. I liked to use a phrase I learned in Air Force training: cooperate and graduate. The Law of the Jungle prevailed in day division.

Law school’s three years, generically go like this: First Year they scare you to death, Second Year they work you to death, Third Year they bore you to death. Let me tell you, Fourth Year you just want to shoot yourself. All the people you started with have graduated and you’re there for ONE MORE YEAR. One more year. By this time your family has almost forgotten what you look like, you barely know what supper not purchased from the lunch truck tastes like and all you know is you JUST WANT IT OVER.

Back to Year One. This is where you start learning to think like a lawyer. If you’ve ever seen the beginning of the TV show The Paper Chase, you’ve heard Prof. Kingsfield, the Harvard professor portrayed by John Houseman (Harvard, by the way, is one of those too snooty for an evening division law schools, so is Yale), “You come in hear with heads full of mush and when you leave, you leave thinking like lawyers.” There is every bit as much thinking indoctrination as there is in military basic training where you need to forget everything you knew and begin thinking the “right” way. (To this day, I lament the fact that I can’t NOT process things through that legal filter.) One of the highlights of that first year is when you get to do a Moot Court appellate argument before your teacher and two of the teaching assistants acting as the judges. Here’s a hint. If you are in the last group of the day, abandon hope when ye enter those portals. One of the TAs admitted to me after the fact that they were bored after hearing the same argument over and over so they gave us a really hard time for sh*ts and giggles.

At the end of that first semester, a group of us got together to study. One of them was the HR manager of a local business and we met in their conference room. He kept making pots of coffee and I kept drinking it. We finished up near midnight and I went home and went to bed…to bed, not to sleep. About 2:30, I was lying there wide awake with my heart racing and wondering if you can have a heart attack without it hurting. Then it occurred to me that about two pots of coffee had induced a caffeine rush that would not quit. Lesson learned about coffee late in the day.

After grades were published after first year, I was shocked to get a phone call from the editor of the Law Review. It seems that my grades were high enough to qualify and would I want to join? I said I would get back to him. Law Review, for those of you who don’t know, is the prestigious student-published journal. (Recall what was made of President Obama being the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review.) My initial reaction was, “Oh great, just what I need: a ton of more work and daily interaction with the young ‘uns in day division. But then my wife and I talked and I decided that if I didn’t take it, I would regret it later. So, there I was, joining Law Review. (Funny story about how I got the call. The top three evening division students were offered it. My best friend, the person with whom I took almost every course and who I studied with and talked with and laughed and cried with throughout the four years, had been number three and she turned it down. I was number four. I asked her, years later, if she regretted passing it up and she said not one bit.)

Second year began as first year had ended. It almost was a seamless process. The biggest difference was that now I was on Law Review! (Yes, that and 75 cents, at the time, would get you a ride on the New York Subways.) The upside was that the Law Review offices had lots of good nooks and crannies with couches and comfy chairs where I could hide for an hour before class and catch a few winks or read. The editor to whom I was assigned, was a charming young woman, ten years my junior in age and life experience but one year ahead of me in law school. We chatted for a while on topics for my case note (which would be my contribution to be published). When I decided on the case, much to her credit, she told me that she recognized that as mature thirtysomething (not exactly how she put it but it was what she meant) she realized that I did not need to be put through the pain of submitting an outline for approval and that I could start writing whenever I was ready.

Classes, meanwhile, seemed almost an anticlimax. I’m not sure if it was the familiarity with the milieu and the process, but I don’t recall any angst, aggravation or worry from classes. Oh, there was one bit of annoyance I recall. Excuse a mini-rant for a moment. Professors who write their own textbooks and make you buy theirs when there are better texts on the subject annoy the hell…no, they PISS ME OFF. The professor we had for Trusts and Estates was even worse. He was unable to get his textbook published, so he had the Law School duplicate copies of his cut and pasted manuscript and we had to buy this “textbook” for this course.

When you are one of the second year Law Review students (translation: drudge) you had the opportunity to do the most mind-numbingly boring task ever concocted by guilty man: cite-checking. A moment for explanation. If you have ever seen any legal writing, you will note that the footnotes, in smaller type, often take up more of the page than the text. Footnotes seem to be the sine qua non of Law Review writing and everything you mention had better be cited to something in some way. So, there you are, crawling around the dusty shelves of the library, checking every single footnoted source from some third-year law student’s case note to make sure that what he or she has cited actually says what they claim. That was a charming weekend.

Meanwhile, there I am working on my own case note (on and Apple II+ computer with a special internal connection that allowed me to use the Apple II word processing program). I’ll be the first to admit that the first couple of drafts were not good and needed a good bit of re-writing. Somewhere around the fifth re-write, when I realized that my charming young editor was reversing certain sections every time I submitted the draft, she and I had a discussion. It turned into a rather heated discussion until I proved my point with copies of all five drafts. She finally admitted that she was trying to get me to slow down. I really could not understand why. Then I found out.

To be continued….