A broken tooth leads to redemption, april 10
After nine years and over 300 issues, I am going to break a few rules.
First of all, did you know that I had rules? But I am fairly strict with myself, and I have followed these rules.
1. Tell the truth. Most of the time, except I make things up once in a while. But when it really counts I only tell the truth.
2. Never waste anyone's time. It's all about Internet karma. I do not send out junk. I would never send anything to your Inbox unless I thought it was worth your valuable time.
3. No baseball stories, no fishing stories, and no boring stories about my health.
Breaking rule number three, I will tell you about my trip to the dentist this morning. First, I have to back up to the Seder at Patti's house last night. She's Jewish. She's also my landlady and housemate, and so I was invited to her Passover table, an invitation I gladly accepted.
Peter Goldfarb was coming -- this was exciting for me. He brought his homemade chopped liver, and a bit of wisdom. Peter recently sold his B&B, the White Swan, and retired to Mount Vernon.
Marc Daniel came and brought his mouth. Marc has slowed down just a teensy bit, if you notice carefully.
Marianne Meyers came and brought a lovely rice pudding.
But me, I brought crackers, cheese, and wine. It was very hard crackers that I brought -- I shouldn't have. I laid out the cheese until it got soft and buttery, spread the cheese on the cracker, and bit down -- I broke off a piece of tooth.
Darn teeth, they get old and they cost money. My tongue started worrying over this jagged edge in my mouth, but there was a plenty of wine, and Peter Goldfarb makes me laugh, so the evening passed.
We read the story of the Exodus. The youngest boy asked the Four Questions. We had a place for Elijah. Everything was very good. And the company all left by ten o'clock.
I went to bed and I slept poorly. I woke up in a deep melancholy. Tooth loss, children grown up and gone, my lonely life, and so forth.
I figured it was about time for all that. Melancholy is a colorful, natural state -- very different from the boring, fraudulent condition we call "depression."
I got up early and drove ten miles to the Sea Mar Clinic in Mount Vernon. I didn't even bring a book to read. I just waited and dwelled on my tooth loss, and the rest of my miserable life. It was so nicely self-indulgent.
Two hours in the waiting room, no coffee, no breakfast -- just the grim reality.
But I finally got in. They took an X-ray, and the dentist, not Dr. Troutman unfortunately, but the other one, the Korean guy, looked at my mouth and said he would first knock out an old filling and then make a repair.
Everything began to get better. He doused me up good with pain killer, tilted the chair way back, and I almost fell asleep while he worked.
He got that tooth all smoothed out, worry free, with no jagged edges, and I arose from the dental chair like Jesus Christ on Easter morning.
The sun was shining, and I was a new man. Halleluljah.
GARDENING. I have picked up a few small garden jobs here and there. It's strictly "small ball" for me right now. I dream about those plum jobs -- when someone wants me to put in a big garden, and has lots of money and lots of time for such a project -- those are sweet.
But little jobs are good. I spent two hours removing the buttercups from Chris McCarthy's garden on Maple Street. Nasty little buggers.
I spent three hours pulling out ivy on the Benton Street stairs for Jeanne Kleyne.
You know what I dream about? I dream that every single bit of ivy in the whole town of LaConner will be removed -- every single piece from one end to the other. No ivy. None. All gone. Isn't that a beautiful dream?
I see all these Buddhist prayer flags, with pretty colors, fluttering in the wind. So I invented the Jewish Prayer Flag, featuring the Aleph. The Aleph is the first letter of the alphabet. It represents the number one. It represents the spirit, the breath and the wind. It represents everything that existed before the world was created. It is the most beautiful letter.
What you see in this photo is a paper prototype, but I am working with textile people to make it a true outdoor flag.
I already have my first order, too, from dunja, the yoga teacher in Anacortes.
april 14
Obama is Lucky
The U.S. Navy snipers shot the pirates dead. The American captain, already a hero for saving his crew by becoming a hostage, was saved. It was a job well done and President Obama can take the credit -- he's the commander in chief. Obama has good luck and that's good for all of us.
I was thinking of Jimmy Carter, during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, when he launched a secret helicopter raid in a daring rescue attempt. Carter had bad luck. An unexpected sandstorm grounded the choppers in the desert. One crashed, several burned, and the mission was aborted. The hostages remained imprisoned in the embassy in Teheran.
Carter's bad luck lead to Ronald Reagan becoming President. A decent man was replaced by a good-looking actor, and that was bad luck for all of us.
But President Obama has good luck. He didn't talk too much, during the pirate incident or afterward. His defense posture is burnished and strong. Pirates make good enemies, too. They are human. They're in it for the loot -- we can understand that.
It is better to have a pirate for an enemy than a religious terrorist who wants to commit suicide.
But I am a dove on defense, and I hope Obama uses his burnished image to reduce our exposure in the Middle East. I advocate a two-ocean Navy, with one fleet in the Atlantic and one fleet in the Pacific. The Indian Ocean is beyond our capacity to control. Global dominance cannot be our navy's mission. The navy is there now to protect supply routes to our troops, who are fighting in countries where we do not belong. Some say it's not about the oil, but that argument is very labored.
I advocate a more humble and more certain defense posture.
But I'm not a progressive, not by any means. It would be better to call me patriarchal, reactionary, conservative, or traditional. I didn't like the court decision in Iowa granting gender freedom in marriage. I don't agree with that position, and I think I'm smart enough to vote on it, or have my legislator vote on it.
The question of gender freedom in marriage is not a civil rights issue, it is a matter of definition. The law is fair, as it stands now, but it could be changed by legislation.
I oppose gender freedom because it impoverishes our language. To remove all gender distinctions from law reduces our culture to three words -- person, partner, and parent. In this new world, "a person may choose a partner, and may become a parent."
And those are the only words with substance.
Other words become decorative. Words once powerful and meaningful become derivative -- wife, husband, bride, groom, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, daughter, son, boy, girl.
Stripped of any legal bearing, these words become no more than something to play with.
Maybe that's what will happen. Maybe it won't be that bad. New words and new distinctions will arise that might be more appropriate. But I take a dim view of this venture. I'll be riding the brakes on this issue.
A LITMUS TEST. A reactionary position on marriage means that I fail the current litmus test, despite my dovish defense posture. That's just how it works.
POLITICS GETS ME AT ALL SIXES AND SEVENS and sometimes it's better if I don't think about it. I have arranged for leave from my job at the hospital. This is such a relief. For the next two months, I will be working for the Census, which hires people now to do preliminary address canvassing.
It's a nice, dull government job. Good pay. No stress. It's just what I deserve -- for now.
I have dreams of living in California, or spending more time there. Seriously. To be in Los Angeles, because it is a capital of media, and a center for arts. I crave the stimulation.
I'm thinking about such a great artist as Leonard Cohen who lives in Los Angeles. I have tickets to see his performance in Seattle April 23. But I like to go all out. If Los Angeles is good enough for Leonard Cohen, then why not me? I don't need to meet him or even know where he lives. Because it's in the air.
I was in Los Angeles last month for a visit, but I need to return and I am working on a plan to do just that.
It could be that I suffer from ambition, and it could be that I am too old to be struggling to make my mark on the world. I should stay in my rented farmhouse on Fir Island -- which is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places in all of North America. Just stay there.
But I am not settled. It's ambition. It might not be a good thing, but I have it.
Or it could be that I am too proud. But if I was in Los Angeles among truly great artists, like Joni Mitchell, Joan Didion, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits, then maybe I could be humble again.
April 26 leonard cohen, the entertainer
I heard Leonard Cohen sing in concert last Thursday in Seattle. It was wonderful. I knew he was a great singer and poet, but I discovered that he is a consummate entertainer as well. He really did it all.
The audience was huge, over 2,000, in an auditorium built like an airplane hanger, and yet the sound was excellent -- warm and rich. Our seats were not near the stage, but we heard very clearly, with no harsh metal tones.
Of course, there is his golden voice, and he knows how to use it. Many people remarked at the energy of this 75-year-old performer. It was a lesson in how to use what you have, and to fore go what you used to do, and to fore go what you could never do.
With such a focus, one can do handsprings at any age.
There was no taste of nostalgia. I know this man -- he would never do that. There was no going back, no reunion of old times.
No, it was all fresh, every song. It was all about The Future, and what comes next. The man is past all fears, and we are too.
A TRUE CANADIAN. When I heard the notes of Cohen's classic, "Suzanne," I heard the sound of Canada.
"She brings you tea and oranges that come all the way from China" -- With that line Leonard Cohen sings the soul of Canada.
This is a little hard to explain. But it has always been difficult to describe the Canadian experience. Will you take my word for it?
We drove down to Seattle in a plush ride, the 60 miles, the four of us. It was Marc "Zappa" Daniel and his girlfriend, myself, and a friend I invited. Such good companions.
At the concert, I told my friend, "Look around, you might see someone you know."
Sure enough, as we walked out, among thousands, we found Charlie Krafft, the renowned artist, and the former mayor of Fishtown. We were very glad to see him, but not at all surprised.
I've been riding on a cloud for days.
It's all about the Future, my friends. It's coming.
May 3 totally threatened
I saw photos of Third Year law students at Stanford University. They were at a party, wearing dress up clothes. This was a Photo Album on Facebook. One of these law students is a Frog Hospital reader, which is a sign of maturity.
But I gotta tell you, seeing these kids, in their mid-twenties -- I sure hope they don't take over the world. It looked like a lot of brains and no experience. They are not ready for the power and the high salaries and prestige.
You should never go to law school until you have lived -- until you have worked as a waitress for at least a year, or served in the military, or borne and raised children, or done farm work.
I would never let anybody go to law school until they were at least 35-years-old.
And women make half of the law students today. Nobody listened to me back in the seventies when women began going to law school. But I will state my plan, as I said it back then.
Every time a woman enters law school, we need to get one man to retire from practicing law. This way we would not increase the number of lawyers in the country. I proposed a federally-financed buyout program, where a practicing lawyer would surrender his law license for a substantial sum, and then find some other way to make a living.
But we didn't do that. Instead all the women went to law school, and now we have twice as many lawyers as need to have, and they are all very expensive to feed.
I feel threatened by these people. I am old and weak, and I fear they will make new laws that I do not understand, and then punish me.
NOT THREATENED, BUT NOT IMPRESSED EITHER. Tom Robbins is coming out with a new book. He will stage a book signing at the LaConner Brewery this Tuesday, May 5, at 6:30 p.m. All you Tom Robbins fans can come a running.
I don't get this guy. There are all these women who seem to go ga-ga over a man-child, some little farts-in-his-pants Peter Pan type of guy, and they chase old Tom Robbins around the block, trying to recover their lost youth. This is all very second-rate.
That's why I don't live in LaConner. Tom Robbins takes up way too much room.
I saw this clearly after going to the Leonard Cohen concert last week. Cohen is an artist of great stature, whereas Robbins is a writer who sells a lot of books. There is a difference.
So be my guest. Go to the book signing. Meet your "I never wanna grow up, wa-wa" Man. I will be someplace else.
ON FIR ISLAND. I rent a place on this big farm. I could have a very big garden, but I don't. Just a small plot, no bigger than a kitchen table in size. I planted collard greens last month and they are doing fine. In between the collard greens I put in some parsley, and then to get it really crowded, I added some shallots. I like the plants to be all close together.
This small plot is surrounded by a five-foot swath of wood chips. I call it the slug wilderness, as any hungry slugs would have to traverse this barren strip in order to get at my collard greens.
I dug up another small plot next to the house, on the south side, right next to the faucet. I did this because I'm too cheap to buy another length of hose. Being right next to the faucet will make it easier to water.
I'm going to plant scarlet runner beans in this plot. I was going to plant them today, but an old timer warned me -- it's still too early. The soil temperature is still too low for beans. They will only rot in the ground. So I will put the scarlet runner beans in next week. Plus some indeterminate cherry tomatoes that can grow up the same trellis with the beans.
Of course, I will need to build a trellis for these climbers, but I can do that later.
May 7 the ten of swords
It rained hard all day, so I knocked off early. I went home and read a detective novel, Echo Park by Michael Connelly.
But I was restless. I kept thinking about old business, especially my ex-wife. How come I was thinking about her after five years? How did she know I had money?
She had her voodoo working against me. She lives in Pennsylvania now, but she can still tell when I have money. That's when she calls, acting nice.
I'm glad she's so far away because I still love her and I would give her the money.
But I'm here in Skagit County, which is 2,000 miles, mountain ranges, great rivers, and vast plains away -- it's a long drive to Scranton, up there in the Poconos where she lives, in eastern Pennsylvania. The Poconos have great hunting for deer and bear in the fall. Fat bears and silky deer. I'm glad she lives there and not here.
I decided to have my cards read about this. Just this once. I went over to Sheila's house on Beaver Marsh Road. It's twenty dollars. What's the harm?
Sheila had me sit down, handle the cards, shuffle them, cut them, and hand them back to her. She spread them out on the table and said, "Draw three."
First, I got the King of Pentacles. Second, I got the Queen of Pentacles.
"Oh, that's very good," she said. "That's the money. You're prosperous now. You have the King and Queen working together. This is your inner spirit, your male part and your female part in harmony, working for the money."
I smiled, "Yes, there has been a little abundance. I'm not as poor as I was anyway."
"The Pentacles are called Coins in the old decks," she explained. "This is a good thing to have the King and Queen of Coins. It's better to have money, you know. But draw another card now."
I did. It was the Ten of Swords.
"Oooh," she said. "This is so interesting."
The Ten of Swords shows a man lying on the ground, with ten swords stuck in his back, and you start with the obvious, like who is stabbing you in the back.
"So who is it?" Sheila asked.
"My ex-wife," I said. "Maybe this is a joke. Stabbed in the back. Ten Times. Kind of overdoing it, don't you think?
I laughed. "This doesn't make me feel bad. It's like I got killed ten times over so I can finally get some rest now. It's better to be dead because you don't have to do anything, and you don't care."
"You're ex-wife did this. She was the African woman, right?" she said.
"Oh, you knew her, but she had too much witchcraft going for her. She used all these powders and charms. She would tell me to put this powder in my shoe, it will make me stronger, or put this piece of bark in my mouth and keep it there when I go to the office, and then everyone will believe me.
"She used all that voodoo -- the things she wore under her western clothes, beads and charms. And that was only the stuff I knew about. I didn't worry about that. It was the stuff I didn't know about, like what she buried in those holes in the back yard.
"So, yeah, she stabbed me in the back. Got all my money. Wrecked my house. Chased my children away. Left me with nothing," I said.
"But your soul," Sheila said, sitting up right, staring now.
"My soul?" I asked.
"Yes, she took everything but your soul," Sheila explained. "That's why you said you were glad to be dead. The Ten of Swords can be a good card, you know. You wanted to get out of your old self, but you were afraid to let go. So the African woman killed you with ten swords. She was doing you a favor. You said so your self -- that you got some peace after you died. You said it like it was a joke. But it isn't a joke. You have a beautiful new soul now."
"Yeah," I interrupted, "And no money, and no house, plus a lot of debts I can't pay."
"And a beautiful new soul," she said with a big smile. "What else you gonna do? It's all over now anyway. You have the King and Queen of Pentacles going for you now. All that money will be coming back to you. You can buy another house pretty soon."
I thought that was pretty good, the way she read the cards. It's not the kind of thing I do too often, but the African woman was too mysterious and I couldn't find the answer in books, so I asked Sheila to read for me about this.
I left and I gave her some extra money besides the twenty.
Now I'm sitting here in the bookstore, sipping a latte, sitting by the gas fireplace. It's been raining hard and steady all day.
I'm watching time slip away like the tide, wondering what will happen next.
May 13 the scars on her face
The Scars on Her Face
I met Carla Montejo in San Antonio, at La Tuna. It was an outdoor cafe that served beer under the pecan trees. La Tuna was an island of pleasure and ease in the brutal heat of south Texas.
So I went there on a Friday evening after my week at the newspaper. Carla was sitting at the picnic table waiting for my approach.
"It's not polite to keep a lady waiting," she said, with an arched eyebrow.
I walked up to her. "We haven't met," I said.
"But you have been watching me," she said.
"I ... "
"What do you want?" she said.
She looked at me. She had strong black hair cut in bangs over her eyes, and these sculptured eyebrows, which were too perfect. Her skin was white, as if she avoided the sun.
"My name is Fred. Me llamo Federico, si entiendes."
"You think I am Spanish?"
"I don't know your people, but I think you are intelligent and beautiful."
"Intelligent?" she asked. "How can you tell?"
"Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I am a confident man. I trust what I see -- you are educated."
"I'm a librarian," she said.
"Exactamente," I said. "May I join you?"
We drank beers at the picnic table, and became acquainted about her family and mine, about her work and mine. Carla had always lived in San Antonio, except for five years in Atlanta, which she hated. She had a difficult relation with her parents, an ex-husband who was no good -- and a very beautiful teenage daughter, she said.
"My daughter is not ugly like me," she said.
"You're not ... " but I stopped. This was a trap. A woman doesn't say she's ugly. If I were to deny her ugliness, it would be as wrong as saying it was true.
"I was in a car accident twenty years ago, when I was in college. Take a closer look at my face," she said. I leaned across the picnic table, coming near. "You see," she said, using her fingers to outline the scars on her face, the fine tracery of many stitches, the result of three surgeries.
She had no eyebrows. What looked so perfectly arched and symmetrical from a distance had been drawn on her face, just so, just right. Every day, she looked in the mirror and put on her face like that.
"You're not ugly," I said. "I noticed you across the patio. It was your hair and your eyes that I saw. " But I couldn't say more, because of this trap, because of what other men had told her, when her stitches were raw and painful.
She could have been sweet and tender as a maiden, but she was scarred and ugly.
Mexican matrons talked behind her back -- que lastima, she'll never get a husband. Friends came to see her in the hospital, but they avoided her later. I could see all this, and knew that she would be telling me this, in long talks.
We began to go out together. She made me strong, and I began to care for her. I liked her size and her height. We went to movies and poetry readings. I was proud to be seen with her. We walked together in a careful way. If we were in the lobby at a concert, I was glad to be noticed by other people.
She invited me to her apartment for her cooking. "I want you to eat at my table. I will make beans better than anyone you know."
"Good Mexican food? I love it," I said.
The beans were like velvet. The tortillas were wrapped in embroidered cloth napkins. The table was heavy oak. The windows were covered with wooden shutters to banish the heat.
This is what I wanted to learn. Carla knew how to live in south Texas. Her apartment was cool and her skin was white.
I wanted to learn because she and I would be together in this country, meaning I would stay somehow. At least that's what I was thinking about when we sat on the couch after dinner.
But she was too quick, too observant, "Fred, what do you want?" she asked.
I felt invaded, nurturing a thought that needed time to grow. "Paloma... dulcita ...."
My endearments aroused her in a flash of anger.
"You won't ever love me, I'm not pretty enough for you," she said.
I was done for and I knew it. I began mumbling excuses and making signs to leave.
"You're a coward," she cried. "You have no guts. You looked me over and then you changed your mind. What kind of man are you?"
What kind of man? A man who was out of his element and needed a cigarette or just some space. I began heading for the door.
"Get out," she screamed, and she picked up my shoes and threw them at me while I opened the door. "Zapatos, la tuya!" she cried in triumph.
I got to my car , walking in my socks, and I left. I mean, I really left -- Carla, my job at the newspaper, San Antonio, South Texas altogether, and the blasted heat most of all. I didn't stop moving until I got back to the West Coast.
But she was right. I was a coward. She was all in, and I was dithering. I played it safe. I wanted to be careful. What kind of man is that?
STORY TIME. It's story time at Frog Hospital. Last week's story, the "Ten of Swords" was a huge hit and many readers asked for more. There were also several pointed inquiries about how to get a hold of Sheila, the woman who lives on Beaver Marsh Road and reads Tarot cards. I have forwarded those inquiries to Sheila.
May 18 she liked breathing into the phone
The reason I like stories is because I don't like explaining things -- or because you tell stories about things that can't be explained. I'm saying this to people who don't like stories, or who ask me, "Is it true?" The rest of you like stories and enjoy reading them.
The emerging theme of these stories is love marriage.
The standard disclaimer applies: Any resemblance to actual or living persons is purely coincidental.
She Liked Breathing into the Phone
By Fred Owens
It’s not about politics anymore, it’s personal. I think of Nora and her fine hands, her closet full of clothes, her dressing table laden with middle-age lotions.
She stepped out of the tub toweling off, gathered in her robe, and sat down before the mirror.
“Damn,” she said, almost out loud. She looked at her neck and saw the signs of age -- it’s always the neck that shows age in a woman. Nora was matter of fact about this.
She thought about her husband while she fixed her hair. She still loved him.
She was 44 with eyes of shining brown. Her nerves fluttered, sometimes they screamed. Sometimes she stood in the hallway upstairs and felt dizzy -- but not often, not usually. Her life was serene and contented. Her days passed in busy errands and idle moments, and she was bemused by her own happiness.
She dabbed some powder on her face. Her husband never noticed her neck, but she did. “And it’s not getting better,” she told herself. She had put a streak of ginger-brown color, just a tiny streak, more like a wave, in her hair, which was short and dark brown.
She was thin, not from jogging or smoking, but from worrying. She had discovered that worrying can burn up a lot of calories. So she kept thin, and her husband was rich, and her posture was so much more elegant and erect that it had been when she was younger.
She worried constantly about her children, but she was not insecure. Women who worry because they are insecure go straight to the refrigerator and eat. They get fat because they think no one loves them.
Not Nora, her husband and three daughters loved her very much. She was a queen. She was holy. She worried in very comfortable and tasteful surroundings. Her nerves were under control.
The house was large and white, overlooking the pond. It was built near the time when Nora was born. “Almost exactly as old as me, this house,” she said. And who would have thought -- those who knew her when she was younger -- that she would become an outstanding housekeeper.
Not the kind that can’t sit still -- always dusting furniture and ironing sheets, or the kind that bustles morning and night and cans fruit in season. Nora put up some strawberry jam five years ago, but the experience was not satisfying.
No, Nora was a practitioner of intelligent housekeeping. It wasn’t the way her mother did it, but even her mother had a grudging admiration for her domestic style. She ruled her house with her heart and her mind. Actually, the place was not that tidy. Dust lay on the dining room table, enough dust to embarrass the kind of woman that works hard to impress her friends.
Nora would notice the dust in a disinterested way. She would see it on her way to the patio, where she often went to read a book and watch her youngest child at play.
- - -
Nora was at her dressing table. She looked in the mirror and thought about herself. Mostly, during the day, she was busy or thinking about her children. Or she might be talking on the phone to her friends. She spent a lot of time on the phone. She had morning phone friends and afternoon phone friends. She had one late night phone friend for special calls.
She liked breathing into the phone, whispering closely into the ear of her beloved. Her voice came over the phone like a warm, curling maternal way, the way a momma cat licks her kittens. But she was not a real social animal, she didn’t go out much to visit.
On this Tuesday evening in May in Massachusetts, she wasn’t thinking about her friends, or her husband or children. She was thinking about herself.
“Oh, I’ve been through this identity thing before. It’s just a college girl’s torment. I don’t see why I have to think about it anymore,” she said, but she looked deeper, peering past the perfume bottles, and the little snapshots tucked in the mirror frame. She looked at her face in the mirror. Her face was like a sister. She hated her face. She was stuck with it. She knew every line. But now she looked deeper. She looked past her own beautiful brown eyes. Lovers had told her so often about her eyes, and they had gazed at her in wonder.
She kept looking deeper, and she felt foolish. She wanted to glance back over her shoulder to see if the bedroom door was closed.
“I’m not an introspective person, this is selfish,” she thought. Still there had to be an examination. Her life was passing in an orderly procession of picnics and small tragedies, with plenty of time for reading good books, doing chores and watching over the children.
Periodically she knew she must look at herself and be herself, all alone, and not get right up and get on the phone and call Cathy long distance to talk for a half hour. No, this was not to tell, this was to keep for herself...
[We'll be hearing more about Nora in upcoming issues.]
may 22 unusual things by David Maritz
David Maritz lives on Camano Island where he pursues falconry, which is more than a hobby. He is originally from Zimbabwe and makes regular trips to Africa. This is a story he wrote, and I thought it would be a good one for Frog Hospital.
By David Maritz
Ohh the unusual, I wrote to Rochelle, you asked about the unusual!
and I continued..
There have been times that unusual things have happened to me.
If I were religious I would say it was directed by the hand of God. But I am not religious. I think that all belief in faith is no better than a bushman's belief in tokoloshi. Yet things happen that are stranger than coincidence. Thus I teeter 'tween, atheist and agnostic.
Saturday was one of these... Not as strange as some, but nevertheless unusual.
While I was in Africa I had a few facebook 'friend' requests from falconry buddies and I had your last greetings to reply to.
I decided to answer them all in one session.
With a stab of shock I saw in amongst them a new one, a 'friend request' from Meira.
Remember her? Once we came to visit you. Like me she was still wearing ma'adim, her uniform.
I nearly divorced Dorit for her. It was 1979 and I was in the army. Dorit and I had already been to the rabbinate to start the divorce. It was before we had kids. I had already found an apartment in Jerusalem to be near Meira at Bezalel. Off a tiny courtyard in the Sha'arei Hesed neighborhood. It did not have a shower or tub. But I figured I could always run across the valley to the Beyt ha’Hayal, the soldier center, to take a shower. I was so fit I could run forever in those days. So many 'alreadies' already done.
Then I went back to Tivon to pick up my stuff and Dorit cried and cried... great sobbing, heart wrenching sobs, hour after hour.
I was soft in my heart. I did not have the strength to resist those gut wrenching sobs. I said for us to drive around the north and I weakened further, and said I would spend another day with her.
On Mount Tabor we took two photos, me looking back and her looking forward. I labeled them " Mistaklim al ha'avar v'ha'atid b'etzev " - In my heart I already knew it was not going to work out - "Looking on the past and the future with sadness."
I still have them in my album!
and sure enough I lost Meira.
Three years later fate gave me another chance just prior to the War in Lebanon. Once again Meira and I were together and my daughter had just been borne. I was once again going to split from Dorit.
But the war intervened. I found myself dueling with a tank high in the anti-Lebanese mountains. As it's shells broke the sound barrier inches over my head I found myself praying to a 'God Unknown' to let me to see my new-born daughter one more time. In the flash of steel on steel that came through the smoke and dust of my last cannon shot I knew that my prayer had been answered (It was the only T-72 destroyed by tank fire in that war, all the rest were hit by missiles).
Also in that flash I realized that the taking of life is sometimes even more exciting than the making of life. But in living there is also death. I turned inward in guilty penance to that unknown God. The moral pound of flesh extracted was my silence to Meira's pleas.
Months later when I came out of those high bleak mountain valleys, and my remorseful mental cocoon, Meira was gone!..
and it was seven years later and a continent away, when the sadness of the future came to pass. Dorit and I divorced, with all the tragedy that goes with that and three kids.
On a whim I sent a post card and a photo to the address of Meira's parents in Rishon. A while later out of the blue I was stunned to get a phone call in my office at Microsoft. It was Meira.
She was studying in New York.
I was headed on a recruiting trip to Princeton and arranged to meet her at a cafe on the edge of Central Park.
She recognized me first from inside the gloom of the cafe where she was waiting. For a brief hour we walked in the park and sat on a bench and she told me about her life. It seemed she was married and had a daughter. She was working as an architect to support her husband who was studying film. She boasted of designing an arbor for Abe Soffer... whoever he was.
When we parted she did not want me to follow her back to her apartment.
I called her a few more times and I think that her partner heard her speaking to me. I think that she was scared of him.
I heard words in the background and abruptly she said ' I don't want you to ever contact me again '
Stunned, I said OK.
I kept that promise.
That was almost twenty years ago. Yet I have always longed to hear from her. She had hips like bells and hair as gold as the sun on summer barley. I had loved her absolutely but I had been too weak to overcome the obligation of an unwanted marriage.
I knew I had fucked up completely with her. Over the years I pondered the inflection points that nudged me away. I would say to myself "You fucking idiot."
Then came the internet. Every now and again I would search for Meira.. that was easy... but in English was her surname with a 'w' or a 'v'? or a 'i' or 'y'?. I found her under almost all the combinations. Now, it seemed, she is one of the most successful architects in Israel. With her partner, also the head of architecture at her old college, doing such grand projects as the refurbishment of the Israel Museum.
Thus last Saturday my hand trembled as I clicked the facebook request, the one I had waited twenty seven years for, to again be Meira's friend.
It was my birthday.
That's what made it even more unusual. After nearly three decades surely she could not have remembered! Was that 'Unknown God' once again messing with my mind?
I wrote to her....
March 14 at 9:47pm
Is it possible that my Meira has parted the curtain of the past?
Maybe it is not the same? The profile birthday does not mesh... But it certainly meshes with ~ when I first
laid eyes on you.
- David
To which she replied
March 15 at 5:13am
Hi, Is it u?
I am younger and older now.
M.K
Fuck me sideways! That is all she offers after all these years!!
Then I look more carefully at her profile picture. Her genius for design and innuendo seeps forth!
Obviously it is her office and bookshelves, and maybe an aerial photo of Jerusalem on the wall.
And cocked lazily out from behind the end of the shelves..... just her splayed legs. One ankle resting on the bench, the other from its apex on her tall chair, clasped in mid air suspension.
They are her legs, I recognize them... high arched, curved, soft, full female, emanating from those hidden bell like hips, that I remembered.
Suddenly I burn with a desire to pad softly over, to stand before her, and gaze into the hidden and suggestive apex of her life that should have borne me sons and daughters.
I want to stand before her and say I am sorry,... I am so utterly sorry!.... I really fucked up!
I want to stand before her and quote E.E Cummings
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
--firm-smooth ness and which I will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
or your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh... and eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you quite new.
and then turn and walk away...
because we are thirty years, and two continents, and an ocean apart...
and that God is still unknown.
- David
Editor: I like this story quite a bit. David and I kicked this story back and forth and there only needed to be a few changes for the sake of clarity.
Frog Hospital will continue this theme of love and marriage. Some of the characters -- Sheila, the Tarot queen from Beaver Marsh Road, Carla, the librarian from San Antonio, Nora, the lady gazing into the mirror on her dressing table, and the African woman who has several names -- we'll be hearing more about them in subsequent installments.
May 26 The Photo of Natalie Wood
by fred owens
I got over to Beaver Marsh Road for a conversation with Sheila. I came upon her stooped over in the garden, and I gave her a shout, "I love to see women working."
Sheila straightened up, wiping off the sweat. "You watch your mouth," she said.
"Whatcha growing there?" I asked, pointing at one of the rows.
"Those are collard greens. I have a friend in LaConner. He's from Mississippi and his soul will shrivel up if he doesn't get his greens, so I'm growing them for him -- Herb. His name is Herb."
"That's pretty friendly of you to do that," I commented. "Is this some kind of thing you have, you and Herb?"
I got another one of Sheila's strong looks. "No, it's just the collard greens. That's all."
Well, those were the preliminaries, getting that out of the way, we began walking toward the house, and I was expecting tea.
"I don't have any burning questions, I just stopped by," I said.
"You can learn more without burning questions," she said.
"Did you hear about the bear in Seattle?" I asked. "They found a small bear in Ballard, then they saw him in Magnolia. It's all over the news."
"They need a bear in Seattle. It doesn't have to be a real one," she said.
"Oh, it's a real bear all right."
"Okay, if a real bear shits in the woods, how would you know?"
"It ain't in the woods, the bear is in Ballard," I said.
"Anyway," she was looking straight at me and I was close enough to see her freckles, "we need to talk."
We need to talk -- I was terrified. I am not sleeping with her, so why would I need to talk with her? -- but I didn't say that.
"Sure," I said, my discomfort being quite visible.
"Look," she said, sitting down next to me, both of us looking at her garden, "I'll just say it. I can't be in your newsletter anymore. It was nice you wrote that story last month about me reading the Tarot cards. But then the phone started ringing. I mean, it was like the Lonely Guys Hotline. Sheila help me, Sheila, nobody understands me."
"Well, I'm sorry that happened, but I figured that since you're not a real person, it wouldn't be a problem."
"Real?"
"Yeah, you're not real. I just made it all up."
"Okay, you're really on thin ice now. I may not be real, the way you say it, but I have feelings, I have a life, I bleed when I get cut... You think I'm not real? What about those collard greens I'm growing for Herb."
"Well, Herb is real," I admitted, "but that's not his real name."
Sheila was getting upset. Her bosom heaved. Sheila had the amplitude for that, being in the melon class, breastwise.
"So, what if we just didn't use your real name?" I said. " Would that work? Because I got a very strong response when we ran your story. A lot of people would like to meet you. They keep asking me, Where's Sheila? I have to tell them something -- If you look for Sheila, you can find her -- but that's like hippie talk. So I'll just tell them you're not real."
"But I am real," Sheila said. "Just don't tell them where I live."
"On Beaver Marsh Road -- It's too late for that."
"What about the bear?" she said.
"What?"
"The bear in Ballard. There is no bear there," she said, smiling now, calmer. "Tell 'em it's like the bear in Ballard -- just your imagination."
"Well, okay," I agreed. "That might work."
We got that settled. So she invited me into the house for tea. She served Constant Comment, the kind with bits of dried orange peel.
She walked over to her small altar and lit a candle before the silver- framed portrait of Natalie Wood.
That made sense to me, the way I know Sheila. She has a devotion to Natalie Wood. I understand this. It's the kind of thing where you don't need any explanation. You don't learn by asking questions anyway.
Asking questions like Is it real? Or Did it really happen?
NEXT WEEK. Is it more important to be real or to be lovable? In the next issue of Frog Hospital, we'll be hearing again from the African Woman. "I have something to say," she said.
MANHATTAN TRILOGY. This week's recommended films are what I call the Manhattan trilogy -- terribly romantic. The Apartment with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, 1960. Love with the Proper Stranger with Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood, 1963. And Woody Allen's masterpiece, Manhattan, 1979.
FILM TRIVIA. Edie Adams, the blonde bombshell for intelligent men, the widow of Ernie Kovacs, played supporting roles in both The Apartment and Love with the Proper Stranger.
BLACK AND WHITE. All three films are in black and white, and all are set in Manhattan.
May 31
Love Letters from the Sixties
all exclamations points intact
I found these letters in the attic at my mother’s house in Chicago. We were cleaning up after the funeral, and I had kept several boxes of memorabilia, old photos, and high school year books -- all kinds of neat stuff. These letters were tied in a bundle. I hope I’m not breaking a confidence here. I’ve changed some of the names.
The first letters are from Jill Farias. She’s a senior at an all-girls Catholic high school in a suburb of Chicago, and the oldest of six children. She’s writing to Sam, who has been her boy friend for two years, but now’s he gone off to college at the University of Toronto in Canada. The year is 1965.
This is not the diary of Anne Frank or the memoirs of Doris Lessing, but to call them “ordinary” is a disservice to the heart.
Do young people write letters today? I believe they do it on the Internet. I’d like to show these letters to some college students that I know -- and find out what, if anything, has changed since 1965.
And I should apologize for the length. At 2,100 words, this story is too long for the email format being used. My excuse is that I am a terrible editor. I kept trying to cut out certain parts, but I couldn’t do it. So, you don’t have to read it all, but if you do read it all, you will find yourself in a different time and place, and it feels really fresh and alive.
________________________________________________________________________
Jill
le 22 janvier, 1965
le vendredi
apres-midi
Dear Sam,
I did very well on all my exams and I’m getting an “A” in French for the semester. I want to go on the New York senior trip and it’s going to cost $150. Pop says he won’t pay for any of it, but I’m hoping that he’ll relent! The trip ought to be pretty good because Maura and I are planning to get tickets to “Golden Boy” with Sammy Davis, Jr. and the “Fantasticks.”
I’ve decided, and discovered through experience, that unless one goes to New Trier [the public school], there is nothing to do around here. A senior girl without a date might as well resign herself to a life of spinsterdom and bore-hood. Other years it wasn’t too bad because you could always get a ride to Loyola’s (YICK!) sock hops. But this year, just forget it. All it seems that senior girls do is drift from party to party to Rolling Stone to Campus Den to Hubbard’s Cupboard to party again. I’m sick of it and I HATE IT intensely. I think I’d almost rather stay home. Everything’s in a rut -- school, home, etc. I can’t wait for summer to come -- then at least it will be a pleasant rut.
So anyway, when exactly is the weekend that you’re coming home in February? Will you be able to make it to the dance on Feb. 5 ? Please tell me in your next letter because if you aren’t coming, I’ll ask Bob Heineman.
DOWN WITH AMBUSH PERFUME!
YICK! ICK! ZOT!
I despise it. Kathy [Jill’s younger sister] literally pours it on everything. I put on my green mohair cardigan last night and I was almost knocked out. The fumes were too much to bear so I had to take it off. If any poor insect, let alone any moth, had come within 50 ft. of that sweater he would have been killed instantly. I honestly believe that Ambush perfume has a good market as an insecticide. What do you think?
I still miss you.
Love,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
le 13 fevrier, 1965
l’apres-midi
Dear Sam,
How’s your bod? Have you gotten your hair cut yet? It’ll be great to see you Thursday so speed yourself home.
I can’t wait to go to college. No one around here respects my opinion on anything. My parents and my grandmother treat me like I’m an absolute moron. Every time I open my mouth Dad tells me “you don’t know what you’re talking about” and “when you are older, you’ll realize...” etc. I’m sick of it! If I don’t say anything, Mom tells me to quit pouting and “you’d better brighten up or else!...”
I’m getting inducted into the National Honor Society this coming Thursday. Dad won’t be able to make it because of a business trip and Mom acted like she was really going to have to put herself out to show up...”I don’t like to go to these things alone.” She really just doesn’t want to be bothered. Sometimes it seems that they don’t give a damn about me! The sooner I get away the better I’ll like it.
I know I shouldn’t burden you with my problems but it seems like it always ends up that way. I suppose it’s because you’re one of the few people I can trust.
I don’t understand it, but for the last couple of weekends I’ve been terribly depressed and I can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do.
Well, things are looking up. After dinner last night, I went out with Maura and Fitz, and Bob Deirdre. We just went down to the “Huddle” in Evanston for a coke but it was a lot of fun. It stopped my depression. You should have seen us in Evanston, we were running around screaming -- some people call it singing, but truthfully speaking it was screaming -- some song about “on the Russian field we will beat the foe” from the movie, Alexander Nevsky. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun.
Enough of that! If I ever suggest going to a horror movie again, please kick me in the appropriate place! I’ve seen “Psycho” and “Two on a Guillotine” in the past two weeks. “Psycho” was rather disappointing, but “Two on a Guillotine” was awful. I don’t know why I go because once I get inside I’m a nervous wreck and I hate every minute of it. It got so scary in one part that I left, under the pretense of going to the john. Never again!
Signing off for now,
Love,
Jill
P.S. I saw John Donovan last week. Did he ever look neat in his uniform!
________________________________________________________________________
San had invited Jill to a formal dance at his college, and she was making plans to fly up for the weekend from Chicago.
February 22, 1965
Dear Sam,
Mom and Dad want me to take a plane to Toronto. Mom said that if you can’t meet me at the airport, we can just forget about it right now. Both have decided that I’m an idiot for going to Toronto instead of the Senior trip, and Pop is starting to be rather difficult. Anyhow the fam is still rather vague about what flight I can take so I’ll let you know a couple of sentences from now -- after I’ve talked to them again!
Everything’s kind of a mess! My parents want to know exactly whom I’m staying with, etc. so send the information as soon as you can get it! Why don’t you telephone instead? It would be a lot easier! Pop has just announced that he wants to hear from a nun in the dorm who will say that it’s all right for me to stay there. Maybe she could write a letter or something. I really think it would be better if you called so everything could be completely settled. Mom is completely deadset against this trip, but I think things will work out anyway.
Goodbye for now, hope to hear from you soon,
Love,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
Ides of March
Monday night
11:45 p.m.
Dear Sam,
I am very. very sleepy. So what else is new, you say. Nothing much!
Thank you for asking me to the dance. I had a wonderful time for the whole weekend, but I sure wish you had met me at the airport.
[The editor can’t help bursting in at this point. Sam invites his girlfriend to come in for the weekend and he doesn’t meet her at the airport. What a jerk! ]
When the plane took off to take me back to Chicago.I started missing you immediately. However the full brunt (Doesn’t sound like the right word.) finally hit me when my fam was driving me home from the airport and Dad started harping on “5:00 curfews” and “know-it-all teenagers” He’s still a dear anyhow. Anyhow the whole point of this midget paragraph is that I do miss you terribly and wish that I was back up there with you.
I’m getting sleepier and sleepier.
I’ve done lots of thinking on you and me and have come to some conclusions, so I’ll have much stuff to talk to you about in May. It’s not really so far away. I still haven’t heard from McGill University [in Montreal] yet, but I’ll know for sure by tomorrow night because Dad is calling them. Good night for now.
I love you,
Jill
St. Patrick’s Day, 1965
It’s been snowing for some time now, 6 inches, and I’m not going to school. It’s really kind of funny -- here it is 9:30 on a school morning. and I’m still lying in bed. It’s so peaceful around here right now watching the snow coming down and listening to some music. It’s almost like being asleep only I’m not. Things seem to be drifting around me and not really affecting me, just kind of floating by. It gives me a very detached feeling.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking again on different things -- mostly you and me, but anyway why don’t you address letters to me as Miss Jill Farias instead of just plain old Jill Farias? Please tell Michele that I found the jewelry that I thought I had left there.
Sue O’Gara had some old Loyola yearbooks lying around so I caught a picture of you in Freshman year. Ha! Ha! Ha! Even my Freshman pictures weren’t that bad. Such a baby face!
Maureen and Fitz are their usual selves. Fitz is coming in AGAIN this next week-end and staying for a whole week. That doesn’t make too much sense. He’s been in almost every week-end since the end of January --Don’t think that’s a hint because IT IS! I wish you would come home every weekend.
So much for today.
I love you,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
March 27, 1965
Thursday
6:25 p.m.
Dear Sam,
How’re things in Toronto? I haven’t been working at all this last quarter and I’m going to get at least 2 A’s and the rest B’s. Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
I really did a stupid thing last week. I went under the sunlamp without any goggles on....You should have seen my face, not only was it red, it was completely swollen up. My eyes were just slits in my face. I’m glad you didn’t see me. As my face was de-swelling, I caught a cold. The cold made my nose get all drippy-red and made me miserable. I think, on the whole, that my bod is falling apart. For the first time in about a year, I talked to Fitz alone, i.e., without Maureen. It was really nice. You should see his beard. It’s really getting thick. He really looked neat the other day. If I didn’t love you, I’d probably love him. I still love him, but in a different way.
I still haven’t heard from those creepy McGill people. I’ve practically given up. I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. I can see how you could get all mixed up after studying all those philosophers because I haven’t studied any of them -- except Sartre, who I think is an idiot! -- and I’m pretty mixed up. I don’t suppose it’s any comfort to you to say that it’s just a stage that all people go through sometimes in their life. Most of the kids I know are having problems of some sort or another right now so you’re not alone.
It seems as though Fitz has solved his problem, whatever it was, because he is a great deal happier now than I have seen him be in a long time.
Were you just exaggerating when you said you were an agnostic or were you serious? Please let me know because you worry me a lot sometimes, especially when you start talking about becoming an agnostic.
Well, there’s not too much else doing here so goodbye for now.
I love you,
Jill
P.S. I think of you often.
This was the last letter. When Sam came home for the summer that year, things were just too different. He had been out in the world, and Jill was the one who got left behind. So, they broke up.
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Fred Owens frog hospital -- unsubscribe anytime by Fred Owens Love Letters from the Sixt...
May 31
Reply
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Laura Lavigne
to me
show details May 31
That was great, Fred. Thank you for sharing.
Goodness, what a far cry from today's kids!
Thanks again.
Laura
www.lauralavigne.com
(360) 421-1618
Blog Facebook Biznik
On May 31, 2009, at 12:25 PM, Fred Owens wrote:
frog hospital -- unsubscribe anytime
by Fred Owens
Love Letters from the Sixties
all exclamations points intact
I found these letters in the attic at my mother’s house in Chicago. We were cleaning up after the funeral, and I had kept several boxes of memorabilia, old photos, and high school year books -- all kinds of neat stuff. These letters were tied in a bundle. I hope I’m not breaking a confidence here. I’ve changed some of the names.
The first letters are from Jill Farias. She’s a senior at an all-girls Catholic high school in a suburb of Chicago, and the oldest of six children. She’s writing to Sam, who has been her boy friend for two years, but now’s he gone off to college at the University of Toronto in Canada. The year is 1965.
This is not the diary of Anne Frank or the memoirs of Doris Lessing, but to call them “ordinary” is a disservice to the heart.
Do young people write letters today? I believe they do it on the Internet. I’d like to show these letters to some college students that I know -- and find out what, if anything, has changed since 1965.
And I should apologize for the length. At 2,100 words, this story is too long for the email format being used. My excuse is that I am a terrible editor. I kept trying to cut out certain parts, but I couldn’t do it. So, you don’t have to read it all, but if you do read it all, you will find yourself in a different time and place, and it feels really fresh and alive.
________________________________________________________________________
Jill
le 22 janvier, 1965
le vendredi
apres-midi
Dear Sam,
I did very well on all my exams and I’m getting an “A” in French for the semester. I want to go on the New York senior trip and it’s going to cost $150. Pop says he won’t pay for any of it, but I’m hoping that he’ll relent! The trip ought to be pretty good because Maura and I are planning to get tickets to “Golden Boy” with Sammy Davis, Jr. and the “Fantasticks.”
I’ve decided, and discovered through experience, that unless one goes to New Trier [the public school], there is nothing to do around here. A senior girl without a date might as well resign herself to a life of spinsterdom and bore-hood. Other years it wasn’t too bad because you could always get a ride to Loyola’s (YICK!) sock hops. But this year, just forget it. All it seems that senior girls do is drift from party to party to Rolling Stone to Campus Den to Hubbard’s Cupboard to party again. I’m sick of it and I HATE IT intensely. I think I’d almost rather stay home. Everything’s in a rut -- school, home, etc. I can’t wait for summer to come -- then at least it will be a pleasant rut.
So anyway, when exactly is the weekend that you’re coming home in February? Will you be able to make it to the dance on Feb. 5 ? Please tell me in your next letter because if you aren’t coming, I’ll ask Bob Heineman.
DOWN WITH AMBUSH PERFUME!
YICK! ICK! ZOT!
I despise it. Kathy [Jill’s younger sister] literally pours it on everything. I put on my green mohair cardigan last night and I was almost knocked out. The fumes were too much to bear so I had to take it off. If any poor insect, let alone any moth, had come within 50 ft. of that sweater he would have been killed instantly. I honestly believe that Ambush perfume has a good market as an insecticide. What do you think?
I still miss you.
Love,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
le 13 fevrier, 1965
l’apres-midi
Dear Sam,
How’s your bod? Have you gotten your hair cut yet? It’ll be great to see you Thursday so speed yourself home.
I can’t wait to go to college. No one around here respects my opinion on anything. My parents and my grandmother treat me like I’m an absolute moron. Every time I open my mouth Dad tells me “you don’t know what you’re talking about” and “when you are older, you’ll realize...” etc. I’m sick of it! If I don’t say anything, Mom tells me to quit pouting and “you’d better brighten up or else!...”
I’m getting inducted into the National Honor Society this coming Thursday. Dad won’t be able to make it because of a business trip and Mom acted like she was really going to have to put herself out to show up...”I don’t like to go to these things alone.” She really just doesn’t want to be bothered. Sometimes it seems that they don’t give a damn about me! The sooner I get away the better I’ll like it.
I know I shouldn’t burden you with my problems but it seems like it always ends up that way. I suppose it’s because you’re one of the few people I can trust.
I don’t understand it, but for the last couple of weekends I’ve been terribly depressed and I can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do.
Well, things are looking up. After dinner last night, I went out with Maura and Fitz, and Bob Deirdre. We just went down to the “Huddle” in Evanston for a coke but it was a lot of fun. It stopped my depression. You should have seen us in Evanston, we were running around screaming -- some people call it singing, but truthfully speaking it was screaming -- some song about “on the Russian field we will beat the foe” from the movie,Alexander Nevsky. Anyhow, it was a lot of fun.
Enough of that! If I ever suggest going to a horror movie again, please kick me in the appropriate place! I’ve seen “Psycho” and “Two on a Guillotine” in the past two weeks. “Psycho” was rather disappointing, but “Two on a Guillotine” was awful. I don’t know why I go because once I get inside I’m a nervous wreck and I hate every minute of it. It got so scary in one part that I left, under the pretense of going to the john. Never again!
Signing off for now,
Love,
Jill
P.S. I saw John Donovan last week. Did he ever look neat in his uniform!
________________________________________________________________________
San had invited Jill to a formal dance at his college, and she was making plans to fly up for the weekend from Chicago.
February 22, 1965
Dear Sam,
Mom and Dad want me to take a plane to Toronto. Mom said that if you can’t meet me at the airport, we can just forget about it right now. Both have decided that I’m an idiot for going to Toronto instead of the Senior trip, and Pop is starting to be rather difficult. Anyhow the fam is still rather vague about what flight I can take so I’ll let you know a couple of sentences from now -- after I’ve talked to them again!
Everything’s kind of a mess! My parents want to know exactly whom I’m staying with, etc. so send the information as soon as you can get it! Why don’t you telephone instead? It would be a lot easier! Pop has just announced that he wants to hear from a nun in the dorm who will say that it’s all right for me to stay there. Maybe she could write a letter or something. I really think it would be better if you called so everything could be completely settled. Mom is completely deadset against this trip, but I think things will work out anyway.
Goodbye for now, hope to hear from you soon,
Love,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
Ides of March
Monday night
11:45 p.m.
Dear Sam,
I am very. very sleepy. So what else is new, you say. Nothing much!
Thank you for asking me to the dance. I had a wonderful time for the whole weekend, but I sure wish you had met me at the airport.
[The editor can’t help bursting in at this point. Sam invites his girlfriend to come in for the weekend and he doesn’t meet her at the airport. What a jerk! ]
When the plane took off to take me back to Chicago.I started missing you immediately. However the full brunt (Doesn’t sound like the right word.) finally hit me when my fam was driving me home from the airport and Dad started harping on “5:00 curfews” and “know-it-all teenagers” He’s still a dear anyhow. Anyhow the whole point of this midget paragraph is that I do miss you terribly and wish that I was back up there with you.
I’m getting sleepier and sleepier.
I’ve done lots of thinking on you and me and have come to some conclusions, so I’ll have much stuff to talk to you about in May. It’s not really so far away. I still haven’t heard from McGill University [in Montreal] yet, but I’ll know for sure by tomorrow night because Dad is calling them. Good night for now.
I love you,
Jill
St. Patrick’s Day, 1965
It’s been snowing for some time now, 6 inches, and I’m not going to school. It’s really kind of funny -- here it is 9:30 on a school morning. and I’m still lying in bed. It’s so peaceful around here right now watching the snow coming down and listening to some music. It’s almost like being asleep only I’m not. Things seem to be drifting around me and not really affecting me, just kind of floating by. It gives me a very detached feeling.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking again on different things -- mostly you and me, but anyway why don’t you address letters to me as Miss Jill Farias instead of just plain old Jill Farias? Please tell Michele that I found the jewelry that I thought I had left there.
Sue O’Gara had some old Loyola yearbooks lying around so I caught a picture of you in Freshman year. Ha! Ha! Ha! Even my Freshman pictures weren’t that bad. Such a baby face!
Maureen and Fitz are their usual selves. Fitz is coming in AGAIN this next week-end and staying for a whole week. That doesn’t make too much sense. He’s been in almost every week-end since the end of January --Don’t think that’s a hint because IT IS! I wish you would come home every weekend.
So much for today.
I love you,
Jill
________________________________________________________________________
March 27, 1965
Thursday
6:25 p.m.
Dear Sam,
How’re things in Toronto? I haven’t been working at all this last quarter and I’m going to get at least 2 A’s and the rest B’s. Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing.
I really did a stupid thing last week. I went under the sunlamp without any goggles on....You should have seen my face, not only was it red, it was completely swollen up. My eyes were just slits in my face. I’m glad you didn’t see me. As my face was de-swelling, I caught a cold. The cold made my nose get all drippy-red and made me miserable. I think, on the whole, that my bod is falling apart. For the first time in about a year, I talked to Fitz alone, i.e., without Maureen. It was really nice. You should see his beard. It’s really getting thick. He really looked neat the other day. If I didn’t love you, I’d probably love him. I still love him, but in a different way.
I still haven’t heard from those creepy McGill people. I’ve practically given up. I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. I can see how you could get all mixed up after studying all those philosophers because I haven’t studied any of them -- except Sartre, who I think is an idiot! -- and I’m pretty mixed up. I don’t suppose it’s any comfort to you to say that it’s just a stage that all people go through sometimes in their life. Most of the kids I know are having problems of some sort or another right now so you’re not alone.
It seems as though Fitz has solved his problem, whatever it was, because he is a great deal happier now than I have seen him be in a long time.
Were you just exaggerating when you said you were an agnostic or were you serious? Please let me know because you worry me a lot sometimes, especially when you start talking about becoming an agnostic.
Well, there’s not too much else doing here so goodbye for now.
I love you,
Jill
P.S. I think of you often.
This was the last letter. When Sam came home for the summer that year, things were just too different. He had been out in the world, and Jill was the one who got left behind. So, they broke up.
June 3 Summer is Depressing
by fred owens
I got an email from Eric in Baltimore:
Thanks for the good news about summer in the Skagit Valley and going out in boats and summer evenings and all that cool stuff. But I always get depressed when summer comes. For me, it's the end of hope. I'm still stuck in this job, which I hate, and I don't want to hear from people that I should be grateful to even have a job. This job I have is crummy and I'm stuck here.
And Lisa looks like she's going to move out any day now. I know I've complained about how she talks so much, but now it's like super quiet around, or I come home and she's finishing a phone call, but she doesn't tell me about it.
Not good. Depressing. High heat and humidity. I hate summer.
Anyway, I liked that story, “Love Letters from the Sixties.” It was fresh like you said. But this was way before my time, and I wish it had more context, like a background or something -- I'm just telling you how to write your stories.
So Eric writes from Baltimore saying that spring is about hope and new beginnings, but summer is the harsh reality. I feel the same way -- you know --because it never happens like I hope it would.
Another June and all the same old dreck, with or without mosquitoes.
Then, I have to say, these love stories I have been writing are very difficult. They probably don't look like a lot of work, but they are. Also, I get too sentimental -- I'm susceptible to that, like crying at the movies.
I could always write something about politics. Let’s see -- Obama is in Cairo, and everybody under 35 is gay -- that about covers it.
I am sitting at a strong oak table at the Anacortes Library. I drank two Americano doubles, one after another, but I am still very sleepy. I don't know why.
It's 4 p.m. Let's review the day. I woke up at 5 a.m. because the sun is so bright and my window faces east. I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but I only tossed and turned until 6:15 p.m. when I got up.
I made coffee. I put on my shorts and went for a run. The running was good today, going down Fir Island Road and I made it as far as the mail box around the curve from our house -- not very far, but pretty good for this ex-smoker.
Then I showered and dressed and drank a little coffee and left for the Rexville Store to have more coffee with my pals.
David Hedlin was there. He's a farmer. He orders toast every morning, and he likes it with peanut butter and jelly like a whole meal. Toast only cost $1.50 so that's a pretty good deal.
But today when Dave said "Toast," I jumped right in. "Me too."
I looked over at Dave, "Did he hear me?"
Dave assured me that my order had registered with Stuart who makes the toast -- Stuart Welch is the owner of the Rexville Store and our morning host.
At 8 a.m. I drove to Mount Vernon to get my new tires. They cost $267 for all four, with a 40,000 mile warranty. No sense getting a longer lasting tire, because my old Toyota has 240,000 miles on it.
But it feels good to have good rubber so this made me happy.
I got the tires, and then I drove back to my crew leader's house, which happens to be across the street from the Rexville Store.
I mean my crew leader for the U.S. Census job, where I have been working for the past 6 weeks, going house to house with a hand-held computer, getting everybody's address mapped correctly.
That was a great job -- $17.50 an hour, plus 55 cents per mile on the car.
I love the federal government. I adore the government -- this is the most money I have made in years. I could weep for gratitude.
But leaving that all aside, I went over to the crew leader's house and turned in my badge and hand-held computer -- because the job was finished.
I knew it was only temporary, but it still made me sad.
Then, as soon as I was done with that, I called the office of nursing administration at Skagit Valley Hospital, to tell them to put me back on-call for my nursing aide job at the hospital.
My job as a nursing aide is very hard, stressful, and it doesn't pay well. But it's the job I have, so that's that -- just don't tell me I should be luck to have it, okay?
Anyway, the hospital was glad to hear from me, glad to know I was once again available to work on the evening shift, and said they had plenty of work for me.
That's a good thing about hospitals -- they don't run out of work.
Now, it's noon. And it's very hot -- at least for the Skagit Valley.
I decided to do a small gardening job. There's a traffic island next to the Rexville Store -- just a small bit of earth, and you could hardly expect the state or the county to come and tend it. So that's my little volunteer job. I dug up some of the weeds and cultivated the soil. It was really hot and sweaty, but I worked slowly.
I won't plant this little plot until tomorrow morning when it's nice and cool -- everybody knows that it's not wise to transplant delicate flowers in the heat of the day.
After I finished that small garden job, I drove back to the farm, took a shower, and had a twenty minute nap.
Than I drove to LaConner to stop at the Next Chapter bookstore. I saw Lisa, the owner, and she asked me did I have the new poster for our Winter Writers Group. I said yes -- I went back out to my car and got it. Then Lisa put it in a good spot.
The Winter Writers Group meets all summer long, in case you wanted to know. We meet at 10 a.m. every Saturday at the Next Chapter in LaConner.
Before I left the bookstore, I got my first double Americano. But when I got to Anacortes and set up my laptop on the library, I was still sleepy. So skipped out of the library, drove back over to Starbucks and got another coffee.
The caffeine is barely working today -- it must this sleepy, hot summer weather.
As you can see, I've been busy today, but nothing really that hard.
Anyway, I wanted to respond to Eric's request to put the love story in a context -- this is a very good idea. I have enjoyed thinking about my life in 1964, when I was in high school on the North Shore of Chicago.
I have the right attitude for this story--this it not about nostalgia. But this is about a place I can go to, and bring you along, because it still exists, and so does Jill Farias the girl friend who "Sam" dated. She's flopped on her bed, kicking her feet, waiting for Sam to call, because it's 1964 and girls don't call boys. ….
Just give me a little more time ….
June 9 Apologies to Candy Hatcher
By Fred Owens
I am subject to delayed grief, but this Monday, at the coffee shop in Seattle, it was when I finally realized that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is gone forever. It's not ever coming back. I am so very sorry about that. I miss that paper and I miss how newspapers used to be even a few years ago.
I miss the Los Angeles Times when I read it on my sister's kitchen table in Venice Beach -- acres of print, an abundance of more than I could ever read, vast resources of highly-skilled reporters going over stories from every possible angle. The Los Angeles Times is still with us, but it's a pale ghost of what it was.
Now I feel the need to apologize for some comments I made this spring about the demise of mainstream journalism -- I mocked them in their hour of defeat when I should have shown sympathy.
I apologize to Candy Hatcher at the Virginian-Pilot, to Elaine Kolodziej and Susan Hodges at the Wilson County News, to Stedem Wood and Beverly Crichfield at the Skagit Valley Herald, to Sandy Stokes at the LaConner Weekly News, to Tara Nelson at the Northern Light and to Monica Guzman at the Internet version of the Post-Intelligencer.
You are all doing good work. It's getting really tough, and I don't know how this will work out, but ..... Hang in There, and It's Not Over and Don't Quit.
I actually like a well-worn cliche. There are times when nothing else will do.
SCARECROW. Welcome to the world of best-selling authors. Sometimes the vast multitudes are right and there's no reason to be a snob about that. I have been enjoying the detective novels written by Michael Connelly, especially Angels Flight and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Connelly was inspired by the hard-boiled fiction of Raymond Chandler, and his novels celebrate the landscape of Los Angeles.
When I talked to Connelly at the book-signing yesterday, I said, "You love Los Angeles, I can tell." He protested and said, "I get pretty cynical about it, but yes I do."
The book-signing was at the Seattle Mystery Book Store in Pioneer Square in Seattle -- a couple of hundred people quickly lined up at noon for the ritual. Connelly sat in a fat leather chair behind a table, protected by hovering acolytes on each side, obviously weary of the whole procedure as he has been manhandled from city to city on his book tour -- but he's a game fellow just the same, willing to do his duty and sign book after book, while mumbling platitudes of appreciation.
He's left-handed.
That was yesterday. I read most of Scarecrow last night and I finished it this morning. It's very good.
THELMA PALMER. It's possible to write a very good poem on the Internet. This poem is by Thelma Palmer who lives on Guemes Island.
Remembering
By summer dream
a stile rises from the bay
beyond my bedroom window,
that is low and open to the night.
And, there, dead darlings
from my childhood rise and call to me.
One by one they climb the steps,
pause briefly at the top,
sing out their names
and slowly walk back down to water.
"Alfred"
"Lilly"
"Ida"
"Willy"
"Jacob"
"Sena"
"Guttorme"
"Lena"
"Cecil"
"Molly"
"Ethel"
"Polly"
If I call out in trembling
"What do you want?"
they answer back,
"Remembering. Just remembering."
LOVE LETTERS FROM THE SIXTIES. I have been writing about love and marriage these past few issues, and its been very rewarding. I hit a vein of solid gold when I wrote the high school story about Jill's letters to Sam. It was like letting something out of a closet that had been nailed shut for 45 years. Things happen in high school that are very, very important, but it takes some strong medicine to deal with it. I think we've had enough for now.
June 22, America gives iran the tools of democracy
President Barack Obama has been urged to take a more forceful and direct stance in supporter of the street demonstrations in Tehran. "He should speak out. He should send aid and give clear moral support." People are saying that.
As we watch the news unfold with beautiful and tragic scenes of Iranian people speaking out in fear for their lives, we wonder, "What can we do to help?"
Well, there is lot more that we can do, but I want to point out that we are already helping quite a bit --
because we have given Iran the tools of democracy, and those tools are called Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
These so-called trivial social networking sites, designed and implemented in our open (maybe not open enough) society, have allowed the Iranian opposition to communicate and coordinate their efforts.
I have been on Twitter for two months now, and I often thought I was just playing a silly game. A lot of it is silly, true enough. But the mullahs can't jam Twitter, and the people on the streets and rooftops are using this "silly" program to full effect.
So we are helping, and in the best possible way, too. We're not telling them what to do or what to say. We're not sending soldiers or money.
We are simply doing what any neighbor would do. "Here's the tool box. You build the house."
My cousins in Chicago
I have wonderful news. I'm speaking to my cousins in Chicago again. We quarreled 13 years ago over an inheritance, and then papers were filed and lawyers became involved. That really killed it.
My sister and I won the lawsuit and got the money, but we lost the affection of our cousins and that hurt.
It's not like I have much to do with them anyway, but they are my family. Like my cousin Dennis. He's a complete dork. I would never choose him as a friend. And that's the great thing about relatives. They just are who they are, and who they are is no reflection on your character.
So I cherish my cousin Dennis and I hated that we fought over the money.
What happened is that my Aunt Carolyn died in 1996. She never married or had children. She was a legal secretary and held the same job in downtown Chicago for forty years.
We all knew she was going to leave us a little money when she died, but we didn't know about the savings bonds. Aunt Carolyn suffered poverty during Depression and she had to fight for every penny back then. She began buying savings bonds every year, starting in 1935.
Well, it turns out that if you buy savings bonds every year from 1935 to 1996 it starts to add up, and when she died she left us all a bundle of money.
It was money that we didn't deserve and didn't earn, but she wanted us to have it and that was awfully nice of her. Except -- how can I put this? -- I think she liked me and my sister better than Dennis or my other cousins, because she left us most of the money.
The cousins only got half as much we did, and they were really mad about that. I said to them, "Why are you mad at me? It wasn't my idea. Why don't you get mad at Aunt Carolyn instead?"
But long-standing differences came into play as well. The cousins are conservative church-going people who stayed in Chicago. My sister and I are free spirited hippie types who moved out West. Our lives were very different than theirs.
We just couldn't reconcile. It seemed like we no longer spoke the same language anymore.
Compromises failed. People screamed and cursed at each other. They had turned into strangers and it was all about the money.
There's nothing new about this. Families have been fighting over money since Adam and Eve.
But I'm still so very happy that the fight is over, and I think it is news -- good news and something to share with the world at large.
We never resolved the issue, of course, but time healed it -- thirteen years was enough. My sister flew back to Chicago last week from her home in Denver and made a tentative phone call to the cousins. She was greeted warmly. She was invited over for dinner. They said, "Why are you staying at a hotel, you could have stayed at our house?"
My heart felt so warm hearing this from my sister. I know that's a cliche, but it's true. And Dennis, my sister reported, is still a complete dork.
I am in Michigan
I am in Michigan this week, visiting my daughter in Ann Arbor. Eva is in the Business School, going for an MBA.
Ann Arbor is a wonderful college town. There are lots of things to do here that don't cost very much money. The weather has been lovely -- in the low eighties, just warm enough. We have been camping, canoeing, hiking, swimming, and going to shows and museums -- following a light and impromptu schedule.
Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and their economy is in full crisis. Yet, just walking around, seeing the people, the stores and businesses, and the beautiful countryside, you get the feeling that somehow it's going to be all right. Michiganders are good people and they're not stupid either.
It's not over.
June 23 broken roads in Detroit
I saw broken roads and abandoned buildings in Detroit. It can be very sad. When my daughter gave me the downtown tour, I almost asked to leave because I couldn't face the despair, but I stuck it out. It was a hot afternoon, so we ducked into a hotel for an iced coffee. There was a line in the lobby -- baseball fans coming into town for the game. The Detroit Tigers are really hot this year and Comerica Stadium has a sell-out crowd every night.
That evidence counters the sight of the ruins, so I can't support the grimmest scenario.
That same day, we drove out to the countryside to camp by a lake. The campground was full to overflowing with happy people and children riding bicycles. They may have been on their last dollar and escaping from the misery of their doubtful future. But I saw America at leisure -- America like you can only see it in the Midwest -- overfed, in lawn chairs, swatting mosquitoes in the sultry air.
I interviewed a young man studying history in graduate school at the University of Michigan. He's worried about getting a job when he finishes. But that's not news. The humanities have always been a tough sell.
I toured the Business School on the Ann Arbor campus and talked with MBA students and faculty. They are happy people. Business school is not theoretical, it's about how to get thing done. Business school is about developing a project that will solve a problem. And when you have a project that engages your mind and your heart, you tend to be happy.
I have been chided by loyal Frog Hospital readers to get off the happy face and tell it like it is. Well, the news is not all bad. I'm only writing about what I have seen, to the best of my ability.
So I have arrived at a balanced presentation of the state of Michigan. It's an awesome beautiful place, full of energetic, intelligent people, and it's really, really screwed up right now.
June 27 I can’t publish this story
I can't publish this story -- about a friend of mine who died of a heart attack four years ago. I interviewed his wife, and she gave me permission to write it and to access his medical records and narrate in complete detail what was for her a very shocking incident, because he died almost instantly in their home.
But I can't publish it. It's a candid story, and four years after the fact, the widow can talk about it lightly and even see the humor of it. It would be educational for the rest of us, because death by heart attack could happen to almost anybody and we fear it. So it is helpful, under the right circumstances, to face those fears.
But I can't publish it. The story is candid and objective. There is no criticism of the medical care this patient received. They did what they could. He was probably dead by the time the EMTs arrived.
But I can see these yellow lights flashing ahead of me. I work as a nursing aide at a local hospital. I could get into trouble. I could lose my job. I work in a highly regimented hierarchy. People in my position -- we don't get to talk, we don't even get to know anything.
If I publish this, I'll be a marked man. They'll know that I am a very keen observer, even if I don't take notes. It's not the privacy of patients that matters here. That's not what we are talking about. I would never violate that trust.
It's not about telling about things that are wrong. It's just that I know too much. And I know what happens when you know too much.
You need protection, you need backup, and I haven't got that.
I have sailed past the flashing yellow lights before. Tell the truth and damn the consequences. I have been richly rewarded for that behavior. Richly rewarded -- I mean that literally and ironically.
I'm keeping my job. Someday I will leave my job under circumstances of my own choosing -- if that's possible. But I'm not going to risk it today.
july 2, a love poem by Goethe
The best way to learn a foreign language is to read the poetry aloud. You know poetry gets lost in translation -- that's true. You can't turn this wonderful poem into English -- you have to turn yourself into German.
Another reason to study foreign languages with poetry is this -- the most most important quality of a language is not its grammar and vocabulary. No, No, No.
The most important quality of any language is its rhythm -- the cadence, the beat. That's the heart and soul of it. If you get the rhythm and stumble over the vocabulary, the people will love you anyway, be they in Mexico, or Germany, or some African country.
But if you speak 100% grammatically correct phrases without rhythm -- the people of Mexico, or Germany, or Mozambigue will look at you with a cold eye and think you are an ugly foreigner.
Here's the poem, by Goethe, first in English, and then in German:
I Think of You
I think of you,
when I see the sun's shimmer
Gleaming from the sea.
I think of you,
when the moon's glimmer
Is reflected in the springs.
I see you,
when on the distant road
The dust rises,
In deep night,
when on the narrow bridge
The traveler trembles.
I hear you,
when with a dull roar
The wave surges.
In the quiet grove I often go to listen
When all is silent.
I am with you,
however far away you may be,
You are next to me!
The sun is setting,
soon the stars will shine upon me.
Ich denke dein
Ich denke dein,
wenn mir der Sonne schimmer
Vom Meere strahlt;
Ich denke dein,
wenn sich des Mondes Flimmer
In Quellen malt.
Ich sehe dich,
wenn auf dem fernen Wege
Der Staub sich hebt,
In tiefer Nacht,
wenn auf dem schmalen Stege
Der Wandrer bebt.
Ich höre dich,
wenn dort mit dumpfem Rauschen
Die Welle steigt.
Im stillen Haine geh' ich oft zu lauschen,
Wenn alles schweigt.
Ich bin bei dir,
du seist auch noch so ferne,
Du bist mir nah!
Die Sonne sinkt,
bald leuchten mir die Sterne.
O wärst du da!
july 7 dying in the nursing home
Autumn is the time for changes, when a fresh wind begins to blow. Winter is for resting, dreaming, reading books, and getting cozy. Spring is for lovers falling in love. And summer is a good time to die.
The sound of chuff...chuff...chuff from the sprinkler, in a slow beat, the whole day, all the night, in the potato fields outside my window on Fir Island. A three-inch black hose runs from the sprinkler 100 yards down the rows to the slough, where the pump is.
The grass along the highway is all browned-out, pretty early this year. I don't think it will rain until Labor Day, the way it looks. The woods are going to burn, you just know that. And the air is crackling dry -- it makes people irritable.
Well, this is a sad story, but it's about your sorrow, you're dread and your anxiety. The people I'm going to talk about have gotten over most of that. They've moved into a new territory and left so much self-pity behind them.
But not you and I, we are afraid to die, we don't want to talk about it either, and we hate to admit that we imagine it.
The old folks aren't like that. Something good happens around the age of 75. I learned this from thousands of bedside hours at the hospital and the nursing home.
You get a patient, around 60 years of age say, or younger, and they're scared, they're mad, and it isn't fair. Why is this happening to me? Some stupid disease I never heard of, and what did I do wrong to deserve this?
But the old folks, past 75, they have other things on their minds. Like jello, or TV, or remembering things from long ago. It's a kind of contentment that I have seen over and over again. They know what's coming. It does seem fair at this time in life. All their friends are going too.
Their bodies just don't work very well anymore. You have a stroke and you recover, but your right hand just flops around -- useless. You can get depressed if you think, "I'll never be able to tie my shoes again with this useless right arm." You do get depressed, but it doesn't last long.
That means slippers for me, the old man says. Or that means somebody else is going to tie my shoes. Hell, I'll just go around in my socks.
You can't remember things. Okay, you can't -- end of that topic.
At the Nursing Home
The San Juan Rehabilitation & Care Center is in Anacortes, on a side street off Commercial Street. It looks like a 1950’s motel with a flat roof and stucco walls.
It’s a small facility and locally owned, not part of a chain. At San Juan, they try hard to keep it fresh. People are still talking about the time they took the female residents to see the male strippers at the Swinomish Casino. It was a hoot, loading ladies in wheel chairs into the van for the show. That was six years ago when I worked there.
They have dogs and cats lying around, very nice animals. The place looks cozy and feels homey.
They really try with the food, to actually cook something for dinner instead of just putting something in the microwave -- serving the food family style, and less like a cafeteria.
But what I noticed is that the old folks just don’t care about food too much. I think their taste buds and sense of smell have diminished. Most of them did not eat with any relish, kind of picking at it.
It’s worth the effort anyway, because they know you’re trying to make it good for them.
But what the residents really liked was the music. If I was in charge, I would hire the piano man and have him come every day. Live music, any kind, brought big smiles and tapping feet. You take some old guy he can’t even remember his name, but he knows the old songs and some of the lyrics. They love it. The music stays with you, all the way.
There’s music in heaven. Can you hear it?
I quit after less than a year. I got depressed. Everybody died. Honestly, I was more bored than depressed. I just did the same thing day after day after day -- moving patients around, getting them in and out of bed, cleaning up, helping them eat. The same 12 patients, every day, and they all died one by one.
They died, and the room would stay empty for a few days, and they would bring someone else in.
I just didn’t want to do that again for the next 12 patients.
I was trying to stick it out, but I lost it at a staff meeting. I hate meetings. The Nursing Supervisor had some kind of pep talk to give, but I was reading a story by Noam Chomsky in the New Yorker when she called the meeting to order.
I wanted to finish the story. Not because Noam Chomsky or the New Yorker are important, but because I am important, and I wanted to finish the story and not pretend to listen to the Nursing Supervisor natter on.
She looked at me sharply and said to put down the magazine. I looked back at her. I stood up and said, “No, I quit.”
The Nursing Supervisor was a very nice woman, but I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I decided to file for unemployment even though I quit the job. On the blank space called Reason for Quitting I wrote: “Everybody died and I got depressed.”
A woman at the unemployment office interviewed me for my claim. She said, “I used to work at a nursing home. I know exactly what you mean.” She approved my claim.
It wasn’t a very good job. Nursing aides are poorly paid and overworked. The aides are kind of hard up and out of chances. The typical nursing aide is a single mother with an abusive boy friend. She can put a lot of sincere energy into caring for the elderly, but her own life is really stressed.
There was something like a line out side the door of the supervisor’s office with aides bringing in personal problems -- no rent money, car broke down, custody battle with the ex-husband.
Management was kind and innovative about these problems. It was something you worked with. They paid prevailing wages and a little better, but they couldn’t fix the problem.
The Difference between Men and Women
My thoughts here are not presented as a matter of solid science, but I’ll say it anyway. Women live longer than men because they die differently. A man comes in the nursing home -- not walking in, they’re past that -- but in a wheel chair or a gurney from the ambulance -- they come in and they get a room with another man.
Maybe a few personal possessions, photos on the wall, and some treasured objects on the top of the dresser -- there’s no room for expression here.
The social worker and the nurses gives them a welcoming rundown of the facility, and the new routine settles in fairly quickly.
The thing is, it hardly takes more than a week to figure out what’s going on. “I’m not getting out of here alive. This is the last stop. Nobody gets up and walks out.”
(Not true, actually, because a significant number of residents will benefit from rehabilitation and they will leave under improved circumstances.)
But the old man knows the score. It’s over.
Men die more decisively. It just doesn’t take them very long. Gene was an old sailor. He had one of those faded blue tattoos on his chest, a spread eagle, going from his collar bone to his navel.
The stories he could tell -- but he was finished telling old stories. He hurled profanity at the nurses and they loved him anyway.
He couldn’t get out of bed anymore, and what was the use. He stopped eating. We could make him an extra rich chocolate milk shake and he would just take a sip and put it aside. So it was over and he died.
That’s the end. But, as I said at the beginning, you might have a picture of how bad it would be to be stuck in a nursing home -- how sad, how depressing. But you’re really thinking about yourself and you’re afraid it might happen to you.
That’s not real sympathy. Real sympathy is a golden nugget -- small and dense and a little rare. When Gene, the old salt, was dying, he refused the bullshit every time. If you didn’t give him that nugget of real sympathy, he just started cussing until you left the room.
july 15
DATING IS DUMB
By Fred Owens
When I was 12-years-old, there was a new girl in school. She had curly hair, and I had a crush on her. I used to look at her all the time during class.
After school, I walked by her house, up the block, then back down the block. I stopped in front of her house and made to play with the snow, making snow balls and mini-forts and such. just pretending I was doing something, but I was actually just standing outside her house, waiting.I didn't dream of actually talking to her.
DATING IN 2009. If I hung outside some woman's house today, I would be arrested for stalking.
When I was in high school, I dated high school girls. The ritual was well understood. I called them. They didn't call me. I picked them up, opened the car door, and paid for whatever we did. I found a steady girl and we went out every weekend. I wasn't too much of a jerk.
DATING IN 2009. I've been divorced five years and I'm on Match.Com. People say computer dating is dumb. It is, because dating is dumb. Computer dating is just the latest version of an old custom.
Dating is dumb. In fact, dating is the principle motivation for people getting married. Then they don't have to date anymore.
Old dating customs linger in my age bracket. The man usually initiates contact. He journeys to a location convenient to her house for a first encounter. He does most of the talking, because she wants to check him out, asking questions in order to screen for perversion, psychosis, malignant jerk-itis, or chronic creepitude.
After that initial phase, one is supposed to achieve "chemistry" or to "feel a sense of connection" or to laugh.
I don't get that part. Chemistry?
I have just achieved three first dates in this past month. I wasn't hoping for chemistry, just survival. They were very nice women -- wholesome, intelligent, accomplished, good-looking, understanding, and kind of fun. That part was gratifying, knowing that women of a decent quality were interested in getting to know me.
The first date was pretty easy. She took off from work at lunchtime and we spent a pleasant half hour on a park bench looking over the water. She brought a snack and we talked.
Then she said goodbye and it was fun, and I said I would call her, but I didn't. I mean, I still could call her -- the ticket hasn't expired. I thought about calling her today. I still have her number.
The second date, we met at the Honey Bear Cafe in Seattle. She was nervous. She said she wasn't used to meeting men. So I became nervous too. Even so, I liked her, and the conversation was pleasant. But after 45 minutes, I figured that was enough talking, so I kept giving these "we're done" signals because, being a gentlemen, I wanted her to have the opportunity to say "I have to go now."
She missed the signals. She became more nervous, and continued talking. I became silent. Her monologue went on for another 30 minutes. I finally said, "I have to go now" but very nicely.
I still liked her. What's wrong with being a little nervous? I suggested a couple of things we might do together some time, like go to a movie, or rent a rowboat in Lake Union. I selected those two options, because there's not much talking involved
I don't like talking that much, even talking about myself. After a while my jaw starts to hurt from too much flapping. I especially like being with women who do not rush to fill in every pause. I like silent pauses. Actually, I need pauses, because I come from several generations of slow-talking men.
My third date was awesome, like a major event. I noticed her profile on Match.com. She was too rich, too beautiful, and too young, so I did not contact her.
But guess what? She contacted me and said she'd like to know more about me. I was being set up nicely. I wrote back and told her about myself, but I kept thinking she's not going to be interested in a chump like me -- this woman of high income and professional accomplishment. And she's eight years younger than me -- a bit of a difference.
Then I said to my self -- Fred have a little confidence in yourself. She likes you because you're such a class act, one in a million. Yeah, Yeah, that's right, I said, doing a one-man pep rally.
So I'm ready for the next step, but my expectations are rising, and I didn't think that was good.
Beryl (an old-fashioned English name ) replied from her home in Vancouver -- I'd like to meet you.
Not only that, she wanted to come down to Fir Island, because I told her about the trail across the salt marsh and we could walk on the beach. My expectations continued to rise.
She drove down on Saturday afternoon. I met her at the Rexville Store. She was gorgeous, better than her photos, wearing dazzling jewelry and a pair of sunglasses that cost more than my car.
I think I'm in over my head now, but off we go on the hike. She's asking me the usual questions -- the vetting process. Only it's much easier because we are walking down a trail, so I get my necessary pauses.
The fragments of my life do not quite make a whole -- it often seems that way to other people. Well, too bad. My life at work has been about making mistakes, being in the wrong place, and saying the wrong thing.
That's how I got to be so smart -- because I took chances.
Beryl's life at work is very different than mine. She is in command of her enterprise and she expects the seas to part before her.
I'm very impressed by this, but I wish she hadn't brought this attitude along on the date. I wanted to tell her -- I'm a boy, you're a girl, we're on a date, and we're just supposed to be having fun.
I sensed that her life was her career and she didn't really have time for someone like me. And I felt a sympathy in that a woman of high professional status might actually have a hard time finding a date.
But it was lovely on the beach, wading in the water and picking up driftwood.
Afterward, she emailed me and said there was no chemistry -- that word again.
I really liked her brilliant mind. She inspired me to write and that was like heaven. But I doubt that I will see her again.
So I'll keep looking. I feel like that 12-year-old boy who liked the girl with the curly hair. He's standing on the sidewalk in front of her house, pawing the snow with his boots, not knowing what to do or what to say.
It's no different now, although I am much older.
July 18
Goldman Sachs earned record profits this past quarter and will be paying multi-million dollar bonuses to its top people, thanks to all our hard work. Of course, they're bankers, that's why, when we all work hard, they get to have the most money.
The rest of us get to live. Isn't that fair?
But I will get a message from one of my conservative readers saying that Goldman Sachs deserved it and earned it.
I pre-emptively disagree with that. I say we tax them and tax them until they scream and threaten to leave the country. Tax all the high-dollar people.
Use the money to pay for national health care.
IRAN AND TURKEY. I have read several books of history about Iran/Persia, a very fascinating Moslem, but non-Arab country.
What occurs to me is that we cannot afford to leave relations with Iran to the government. Our government and their mad mullah government will come to blows or make some very bad deals.
It would be far better if we had more citizen to citizen contact. It is clear that many Iranians have an understanding and interest in things American. In the Skagit Valley, we should pool our resources and send a delegation over to Iran to establish contact with our counterparts in Iran. What would it cost to send six people? Less than $30,000.
DATING STORIES. The last issue of Frog Hospital, "Dating is Dumb," was widely appreciated and I got a very strong response.
I told the story of three dates I had with women I encountered on Match.com. I changed all the circumstances to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. Even so, I barely got away with it.
I'm worried that the Women's Network will form a vigilante group to get that Date-and-Tell guy.
But one must write fearlessly.
I had my 5th Internet date this morning. We met for coffee. Or, as she said, "We should get together for a cup of jo?"
Jo? Jo? Big warning signs here. Never meet with a woman who says jo for coffee.
It was not a good meeting. The good part is that we spent very little time talking and it was over quickly.
I was going to give up Internet dating, but Stuart at the Rexville Store said to keep going. He said, "It's like hitting curve balls, you got to keep practicing. After a while it gets easy."
I saw his point -- dating is like baseball.
The dates still ask me about my job. Okay, I have a very stupid, low-paying low-status job. I am a nursing aide. I am one of the Untouchables of health care. We are invisible people. And don't give me this noble, serving humanity nonsense. That's just a lot of words with no money behind it.
Goldman Sachs gets all the money -- but they sure as heck don't work harder than I do, and what I do is completely necessary.
Anyhow, the dates seem to think I ought to have a better job. I changed my profile to read, "I am a writer with a day job." Can I make it any clearer?
I'm having a lot of fun writing this. Writing is work. I work very hard to make it look easy, but right now I'm really just having fun.
July 25 forgotten graves
Race Matters: an incident relating to the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge.
Eight years ago, an African-American friend moved out to Seattle from the East Coast because he got a good job at Boeing. He wanted to come up to the Skagit Valley for a visit. He didn't ask me about restaurants or hotels or the scenery. He asked, "What are the cops like up there?"
It's not something I ever think about.
DATING UPDATE. I have gotten over being nervous and awkward. I have become smooth and charming -- not some place where I would want to stay, but I am on the path to something genuine.
The connection between my recent dating experience and the “forgotten graves” is fairly clear. The two great themes of literature are love and death. We are like the salmon. We mate and we die.
FORGOTTEN GRAVES
By Fred Owens
In my family, the graves of our ancestors are forgotten. We rarely visit them.
I was in Chicago for the winter of 1996-97, after my mother died. My sister Katy and I moved back into the old house for a few months, because we needed to straighten things out and because we just wanted to be there.
My sister is a very easy and wonderful person to live with, and we had a really good time. We could do things like put our feet up on the couch, or leave pizza boxes lying around. Mother was gone to heaven and she no longer minded about things like that.
While I was back home for the last time, I decided to locate the grave of my great-grandfather on my mother's side. His name was Ambrose Coeni. He migrated from Switzerland sometime after 1850 and came to Chicago. He changed the spelling of his last name to Cuny. He learned to speak English and he found work.
During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Union army, fighting battles in Tennessee and marching through Georgia with General Sherman.
After the war, he opened a dry goods business on the north side of Chicago.
My great-grandmother came from Alsace, which was a part of France when she was born. I don't know her first name, or whether she spoke French or German as a first language. I don't where she met and married Ambrose Cuny, but they did get married and they raised a family.
She died a long time before Ambrose did. Ambrose Cuny lived to be 97 and he was the last man in his regiment to die. They say he walked alone in the Memorial Day parade in his last years.
That was all I knew about him.
I went to find the graves in Rogers Park, a far northern part of Chicago, where they used to live. The great-grandparents were buried in the St. Boniface parish cemetery.
I went there on a frozen day in January, found the cemetery office, and they looked up the Cuny names and showed me where the graves were -- other maternal relatives were buried there too.
But the surprise -- what made it kind of sweet -- was a listing for a "Baby Owens."
This was a baby stillborn, but baptized, a few years before I was born. He would have been my older brother if he had lived, but he died within a few hours of his birth. My mother and father spoke of this child only a few times, but that was enough to remember.
What I did not know, until that December day, was that Baby Owens was buried in St. Boniface, not in his own grave, but he was placed directly above the grave of my great-grandmother -- they shared the ground together, Baby Owens in an eternal embrace, all nestled in snugly. And old great-grandfather, with his great, stern walrus mustache, standing guard next to his wife and his great-grandson. It made me feel good, the way they did that.
I haven’t been back to St. Boniface since that day. I haven’t been back to Chicago. My family is not much for visiting graves. Let the old bones lie in peace.
They talked about my great-grandfather when I was a boy. Surely, he was a patriarch and well-respected, but it never really mattered that much -- we had no special veneration for the ancestors.
All my old folks are gone now. Not forgotten, but it was always so much more about the future, the way I was brought up. Don’t waste your time mourning the dead, they said. Keep going. Move on.
July 27 the difference between honesty and full disclosure
The continuation of “Dating is Dumb” -- I have said that dating is dumb as a way to re-assure people who are in the midst of it. If you feel dumb or feel like you are back in high school, it’s not you, it’s the process.
The Difference between Honesty and Full Disclosure
By Fred Owens
My car is not date-worthy. This may not be a problem to her, but it’s a problem to me.
The Toyota runs good and it’s been very reliable, but it’s getting old. It doesn’t shine up pretty after a washing. The dents are showing. The upholstery is getting dingy. But far worse -- the windshield is cracked, giving a distinct accent of white trash.
The car is a big chink in my self-esteem. This is not a problem on a first encounter, because we’re going to meet somewhere for lunch or for coffee. I can park the car down the block.
It’s a matter of presentation. They can tell by reading my profile that I’m not exactly rolling in dough. Under work, it says, “I work part-time at a local hospital. I used to be a journalist.” That is not the smell of money, and it helps to screen out those women who are more accustomed to affluence. I wish such ladies the very best, of course.
But for the ones who do get past the income screen, I still don’t want them to see my car. That would be too brutal. It’s better to ease them into the reality.
I expect the same from them -- honesty, not full disclosure.
I Am Not That Cool.
I have been on Match.com for six weeks now, and the response has been very good. Women want to get to know me, and they want to meet me. The explanation is obvious -- it’s my manly magnificence, a gift of nature which I am pleased to share.
But, lest this go to my head, I must realize that I am not really that cool. The truth is that there a lot of really lame men out there, acting like jerks. Mama’s boys, egomaniacal, neurotic, hostile toward women, and with a host of other bad qualities. I don’t really have much competition, is what I’m saying.
It’s true that, as my daughter says, I need to work on chewing with my mouth closed so I don’t make too much noise when I eat, but that only points out some necessary improvements. Women like to have a project when they meet a man. And if they’re sensible, they will look for a small project -- some tidying up here and there. That’s me.
Look in Her Eyes.
I was advised to look in her eyes when we talk. If you are surreptitiously checking her out -- you really think they don’t notice that? They do notice. Look in her eyes.
Okay, I needed to work on that. I went to the video store and checked out a DVD starring Scarlett Johansson. This is the test. When Scarlett Johansson comes on the screen, you only look at her eyes. This proved to be very difficult, but I tried.
Do Looks Matter?
Are you kidding? Looks matter a great deal. I’m looking for a girlfriend just like President Barack Obama. Obama has integrity, intelligence and he’s good-looking too. That’s what I want, only not a man.
Of course, integrity comes first and then intelligence. But I love beauty. Look where I live -- in the Skagit Valley, which is extravagantly beautiful. So, if a woman is beautiful, then there is a happiness, a blessing, a miracle and a joy.
Me, I’m looking good all right myself. I wore my nicer clothes to a meeting last week in Seattle. A gay man tried to flirt with me. It was a long-shot on his part, but I was looking good and he noticed.
The Sound of Her Voice
All kinds of books have been written about how she looks and that a man is a fool to look only at appearances. What is over-looked and never mentioned is the sound of her voice.
This is so important. You’re going to be talking with her a lot. A beautiful voice, a fine voice, a clear voice -- are all so directly connected to inner character. Her voice needs to be something you love, before you even get to what she’s talking about.
What She’s Talking About
Oh, my God. They’re all going to find out. I never listen -- to the words, I mean. I only hear the sounds, the pace, and the rhythm. I notice the body language and the atmosphere in the room. I admit that the content of speech matters less to me than the non-verbal aspects.
I am often lost in thought. Well, I have a mind bigger than a football stadium and there’s always a lot going on in there. But overall, except for missing some key concepts, I am paying attention.
See -- it’s my mind -- because as soon as I wrote “paying attention” I started to wonder why we use that verb “pay” -- why don’t we say lend or give attention? Do we pay attention like it’s money? Just a thought. Could you learn to live with this? What were we talking about?
Are you serious, or do you just want to have a good time?
Actually, these two go together. I am a serious man, and I would like to have a really good time with a serious woman. I would start things out by having fun, and then having a lot more fun, and then continuously having more fun after that. I would like us to have long conversations about almost nothing.
Issues? Who needs issues? You can bet that issues are going to show up sooner or later. That’s when you deal with them. That’s what serious people do -- they have fun, they enjoy themselves, and when an issue lies squarely in their path, they deal with it.
You can gage the size of an issue, like if it’s bigger than a car, or bigger than a house. This gives you an idea of how much effort it will take to resolve the situation. Then you focus and go at it 100 percent -- you’re supposed to anyway.
I’m pretty good at dodging and ducking issues. Most people are, but a good twosome will face reality when it’s necessary, and then get back to the card game -- like the wonderful ending in the 1960 film “The Apartment.”
Jack Lemmon, sitting on the couch with Shirley MacLaine, is concerned about something, he thinks they need to work something out. But she looks up at him with her fabulous twinkling smile, and she hands him a deck of cards and says, “Shut up and deal.” Fade to Black. The End.
July 30 Obama tries to be president
Obama tries to be President of all the people all the time. I think he should be the President of the people who voted for him, and to hell with the rest.
Maybe Hillary should have been President. Now we have a president I like, and he's cool, but what good is that?
Where is Hillary when we really need her? She should be in the Senate right now, fighting for the health care bill. No more Mr. Nice Guy (Barack)
I’m trying to remember why I voted for Obama. I wanted a strong step forward to a single payer health care system, and I wanted our troops to come home from the Middle East. Obama can’t deliver on either of these issues.
Obama is a nice guy. I’m sure that Professor Gates and the Cambridge cop will have a pleasant moment at the White House, watching the President try to be everybody’s friend.
I am getting very disappointed in Barack Obama.
I check the Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg for news from Africa. This is what I found:
I’m no Cannibal
Liberia's former president, Charles Taylor, on Monday denied that he had ever eaten human flesh or ordered his fighters to do so as he answered allegations of cannibalism at his war-crimes trial.
--From the website of the Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg
I Am Not No Cannibal Neither.
The Party’s Over, or It’s Time to stay Home with your Wife in Zimbabwe
Fewer Zimbabweans are getting infected with Aids, and researchers speculate it's due in part to a battered economy that's leaving men short of money to be sugar daddies and keep mistresses.
--also from the Mail & Guardian
Wives are expensive.
Here’s a nice poem, sent to us from Thelma Palmer on Guemes Island. It’s been so very hot and dry this summer -- you would have a very hard time even finding a slug. But they’re here. They’re always here, hiding in little moist spots in your garden
THE SLUG*
By Thelma Palmer
The lonely slug,
hermaphrodite,
it travels calmly,
day and night.
It never races
through the garden,
but sojourns slowly
and begs no pardon
for the silvery trail
it leaves behind.
And if slug searches
but does not find
a mate: don't fear;
but just remember
slug has a long
translucent member
which grows and glows
a lovely blue,
and semaphores,
"I love me, too."
*In honor of Philip McCracken's slug sculpture
July 31 laconner voted least writerly
LaConner was voted the Least Writerly Town in America. The citation reads, “In LaConner, there is no one to write to, there is no one to write for, and there is nothing to write about.”
LaConner received this dubious distinction in a ruling of the BCLJ -- the Board of Conclusive Literary Judgment.
A forlorn writer, interviewed as he was slinking out of town last week, said, “Yes, it’s true. The words are all gone in LaConner. It’s dead. There’s no character, no plot, and no dialog. You can sit and watch the seagulls crap on the Rainbow Bridge -- that’s about it.
“I think it was Tom Robbins that did it. It’s just that he got here first, in the late sixties. LaConner was virgin territory back then, full of life and humor, abounding in metaphor, layered with nuance.
“Robbins did what any self-respecting writer would do. He clear cut the whole place, right down to the stumps, took everything he could grab -- made some good books out of it, most people would say.
“But there wasn’t much left to write about after Robbins was finished -- that town was all wrote up, and you know, I would have done the same thing if I had gotten here first, no blame against Tom.
“After that, the Fishtown poets found a few good stanzas, and some Buddhist rhythms among the leftovers. And there was hope that a good crop of second-growth words might provide material for new writers.
“LaConner might have recovered, but then they tore down Fishtown in 1988. It was A right-wing anti-literary coup from the LaConner Chamber of Commerce that perpetrated this conspiracy against art. And the town has been cursed ever since, like a sterile field under a black cloud, a place of ashes and despair.
“I suppose one could write a sort of nihilistic, absurdist rant about LaConner -- screaming obscenities and shouting -- the meaning is all gone. I can’t live without meaning. There is no meaning in LaConner.
“Look, I have to go. Nice talking to you.”
This fellow -- I had noticed him walking out of town, out past the flagpole on the rotary. I pulled my car over by Hedlin’s Farm Stand, and beckoned to him, when he told me this sad tale. I asked where he was going to go, if he left LaConner.
“I don’t know,” he said, “somewhere else, maybe Arizona. I’m just looking for a story.”
He walked off heading down Chilberg Road, going past the cabbage fields, going someplace else.
But I thought about the curse. LaConner is cursed. I was at the Fishtown Woods Massacre, so I remember what that fellow was talking about. It was in 1988 -- they cut all the trees down. Then they came back in 1989 and bulldozed the poets’ cabins -- just pushed them into the river. And there was no call to do that -- it was just for spite.
It was an atrocity, and the curse is real, and LaConner is not what you see on the postcard pretty pictures. When you look at the soul, you see the 9th ring of Hell, and the tortured scenes of Hieronymous Bosch. Cursed.
Owens lied about his Birth Record
In a press release issued yesterday morning, highly-regarded journalist Fred Owens admitted that he had lied about the place of his birth. He has claimed for some years to have been born in 1946 in Evanston, Illinois, at Evanston Hospital, Marie Owens being the mother, and Fred Owens Sr. being the father.
“I lied” Owens said, in his statement. “I was actually born in Austria. I am Arnold Schwarzenegger’s younger brother.”
Dating is Not So Dumb, although it continues to be Dubious. Dating may even be getting better, and when it does, I won’t say anything about it.
The Seedless Watermelon. It may be hopeless, but Frog Hospital takes a strong stance against the seedless watermelon. Watermelons are supposed to have seeds. It’s part of the color scheme -- red and green, black and white. All four colors are important.
But they decided to remove the seeds, because of these schmucks who haven’t got the time to spit them out. Frog Hospital rages against the time and money spent in developing this useless and dubious “improvement.”
August 5
THE TRUE CONSERVATIVE. I'm not a conservative. I'm what I call a Social Democrat. That's means most of my friends are Democrats and I'm sticking with them, because I'm a loyal kind of guy. Democrats don't like that word -- loyalty. I mean they never use it. Or true. You never hear somebody say, I'm a true Democrat.
Truth and loyalty are words that belong to the conservatives -- Democrats avoid Truth because they suspect that someone might force it on them -- a reasonable precaution. Truth, the Truth -- it too easily turns into the Only Truth and we know of the crimes committed in the name of Truth.
Truth is just a big, scary word. But I think we should have courage and tell the truth. Find out what happens.
As for loyalty, I would call it a subsidiary virtue. It depends on what or whom your loyal to. Albert Speer was loyal to Adolph Hitler -- giving this virtue a very bad name indeed.
No, you need to first pick someone deserving of loyalty, but then what do you do? You stick it out. You be loyal to person, family, cause, and country. The people on the right have it all wrong when they say "My country, right or wrong."
They mean to be loyal, and I agree with that. But we should use instead the words of marriage -- for better or for worse -- for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do we part. For our spouses, yes, but for our country too.
In sickness and in health, until death do we part, and for that reason, that commitment, and that loyalty, we advocate universal health care with equal access for all citizens. And that's the truth.
HAIR. Frog Hospital wishes to kindly explain something -- which not so easy to understand at first glance. I only ask if you could just ponder this thought for a moment.
We had our teachable moment with President Obama, Professor Gates, and the Cambridge cop, prompting a good discussion on race problems in our special country.
Yes, it's a problem, and we could do a lot better -- although nowhere can I find the superior example -- of some country or some society that we can emulate -- some special land of racial harmony. Where is it? Japan? Europe? South America? What I know is that the racial problem is universal, and that light skin is preferred over darker skin in many places and in many times.
So, we should excoriate ourselves whenever we fail, but there is no reason to say we have done worse than others.
Personally, I think it's all about hair. African people have electro-magnetic, sizzling, soft, sculptural, tingling hair. They have better hair. All white people, subconsciously, want to touch it -- African hair.
But they can't touch it. They can't even ask to touch it. And worse, they don't even know they want to touch it.
Except for me. I like touching African hair. If I ever met President Obama, I would want to touch his head. I wouldn't actually say this to him -- should this meeting ever take place -- but I would think it.
Black women, black children -- they all have that amazing hair. They all know we want to touch it, even if we don't know ourselves.
That's the problem. That's why the rest of us get so mad at African people and often treat them so poorly. Because we don't have hair like that, and we don't get to touch it.
Now, as I said, you may not understand this, you may dismiss this idea -- it's crazy, it's from way out in left field. But I'm only asking you to get mellow and not react.
You may also notice that I have pointed out a problem and offer no solution. But to honestly describe a situation for what it is -- that is a good thing. Solutions do not come just because we want them, and that's all I can say right now.
August 6 unresolved patriarchal tendencies
I watched the news -- the journalists, imprisoned in North Korea, sentenced to twelve years hard labor for illegally entering the country. Their names, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, they were young, female, and pretty, gone on a journey to a dangerous land, leaving husbands and children behind. I had a patriarchal reaction -- I thought it would be better to send some ugly old men on these missions, we're expendable.
Comes former President Bill Clinton to the rescue, the knight in shining armor, or, in this case, his now-dazzling white hair -- the good guys have very white hair -- and he found the imprisoned damsels, guarded by the vicious ogre. Clinton battled the ogre and the princesses were free and returned to America
It was such a happy story. Ugly, old men don't get rescued.
What is a Conservative? Conservatives distrust government and say government is the problem.
I take that much further. I distrust government. I also distrust the corporation, the university, the family, the tribe, the church and all other human institutions, because they are all capable of evil.
I want all these institutions to thrive, for the good that they do, but I need the church to protect me against the government, I need the government to protect me against the corporation, I need the university to protect me against the church, and so forth. I believe in the diffusion of power among these competing institutions.
Why do conservatives only distrust the government?
Opponents are Currently Winning the Health Care Battle. Opposition to the health care bill is dominating the news cycle right now. It's a two-part strategy. You have big pharma and the insurance companies writing very large checks to various Congresspersons to "help them clarify their thinking about this ill-conceived attempt at reform."
Boy, money talks, and when it talks, it don't have to talk loud, not if there's enough zeros on the check.
That's the quiet part of the strategy. The public part is the obnoxious disruption of meetings by our Tea Party friends. I have disrupted a few meetings myself at one time or another, so I can't complain of this tactic.
I do strongly disagree with the Tea Party. They are wrong. This is a good bill, coming out of Congress, which means it's a little bit better than a pathetic disaster.
But, as I was saying, the two-part opposition strategy is working right now -- write some very large checks and bring up a big crowd of noisy people.
The Democrats don't have big check writers, except for the trial lawyers -- whom I despise, and I would love to kick those people out of the Democratic Party if could -- anyway, they don't have the big check writers, so what they need to do, and might do, is bring out some very large crowds in support of the health care bill.
I will make this prediction. The health care bill will pass if the Democrats can get at least a half-million people in the street. More likely it will take one or two million people in the street -- I mean, if they're serious.
But if they get a small crowd, less than a half a million, then the bill is dead and the Republicans will win.
That's how I see it.
aug 9, I write for many reasons by Peggy Kass
It's nice when someone can say it better than I can. The following comes from Peggy Kass:
"I WRITE FOR MANY REASONS. Primarily I write to understand myself and others within the context of the world around me. I write to explore ideas and relieve boredom. I write to grapple with pre-verbal sensations when looking at a sunset or caught in the wonder of a thunderstorm. I write to clear my head. I write to share a joke. I write to open my heart. I write to change my past and create my future. I write to connect with others. I write to vent my fury at an injustice either personal or public. I write because I am no longer qualified to do anything else. I write to lose myself in words. I write because it makes me happy."
Peggy Kass writes a blog, a kind of memoir, called A Temporary Life.
I understand what Peggy is talking about here. It expresses my own attitude about the craft of writing, especially this sentence -- "I write because I am no longer qualified to do anything else." I used to say it another way, "I'm good enough as a writer, to be bad at anything else I do."
HEALTH CARE REFORM. Health care reform begins with getting rid of those horrible mashed potatoes with canned gravy. You pay $500 to $1,000 per night for a hospital bed, and they microwave your supper. It tastes like cardboard. It's not nice to treat sick people that way.
Health care reform is about fixing small things.
Health care reform -- real change -- means that every hospital nurse, every day, gets a 15-minute chair massage.
BLACK HAIR. Two issues previously, Frog Hospital discussed the curiosity white people have about black folks' hair. I suggested that white people, knowingly or not, wish to touch black people on the head because they wonder what it feels like.
There was a lively response to this story. Several people admitted they were curious. But let's face it -- if you're under the age of six, you could go up to an African-American and ask to touch their hair, and they might let you. If you're over the age of six, you missed your chance.
Of course, one reader, with experience, shall we say, suggested that I wasn't really talking about hair, I was talking about skin and sexual contact between white people and African-Americans. And this reader said the experience had been very good.
Well, people can interpret my remarks any way they want to, but I say touching hair is touching hair.
NO VOLUNTEERS. Unfortunately, no African-Americans volunteered to have their hair touched by curious white people, so that will not be a solution at this point.
DATING IS DUMB. There needs to be a certain amount of acceptance before there can be a rejection. In other words, you cannot be dropped, unless you have first been picked up. So I can't really say that Date Number Seven dropped me, because we never even got into a conversation. We did encounter each other, as mutually planned, at a social gathering.
But she said, via email, afterward, that she felt no irresistable spark.
No irresistable spark? Well, I guess.... I should have brought a Taser.
I sent a report of this one over to the committee -- Find-Fred-A-Partner.com -- and they said forget it, move on.
But do I need a spark, like a flamethrower or something pyrotechnical?
No, they said, just move on.
DANCING. Conversations are stupid anyway. I'm going dancing. I can dance better than a bear. I have moved to a higher level of subtlety and strength. I have an awesome confidence in this manner of expression.
August 11 the doctor is lying
The Doctor is Lying
By Fred Owens
Doctors lie all the time. I work at the hospital as a nursing aide, so I'm kind of an assistant liar. I can tell by their tone of voice when they're lying. But there are three words that the doctor sometimes says, and when he says these three words, you can totally believe he is telling the truth.....
"I don't know."
"I don't know what's wrong with you."
"I don't know what's wrong with you and I don't know how to fix it."
"I don't know," the doctor said. He's telling the truth. Do you really expect him to know what's wrong with you? Like you walked into his office with a set of instructions stapled to your forehead -- that would make it easy for the doctor. Then he would know what to do.
You know the truth when you hear it -- it doesn't require a medical education to know what the truth sounds like. Here's an example, from where I work. I was on the third floor in the room with an elderly patient who had serious back pain and difficulty breathing. He was having a hard time with it and he asked for more pain medication. I said, okay, we'll hit the call light and ask the nurse.
So, I hit the call light, and the nurses didn't come for a long time, almost twenty minutes. We're waiting. The patient was in pain, although it's less than excruciating, it's not really getting worse, it just gets hard to bear, hour after hour -- even for this impressively stubborn old Norwegian, trying to be stoic, not being a cry baby about it, but he wants some relief, and the nurse doesn't come, and the patient has a world-weary look, weary of a world that he will be leaving soon enough because of his advanced age.
Finally, the nurse comes in the room, and she tells the truth, "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner, but I was eating lunch." Then she gave him the pain medication and the patient felt a little better.
Now, the nurse is supposed to have some one else answer her call lights while she eats lunch, but that didn't happen, and the patient didn't demand an explanation.
Nurses are contractually allowed a 30-minute lunch break at the hospital, but they rarely get that much time. Personally, just for my own sake, working as a nursing aide, I really want my nurses to get their lunch break. Because when they get over-stressed from working too hard and from being on their feet too long, they can get cranky, and it's no fun working for a cranky nurse, because they won't take it out on the patient, but they sure as heck can take it out on me.
But ask yourself, if you were the patient -- do you want a cranky, overstressed nurse looking after you, or do you want her to take the time to eat her lunch and get off her feet for a few minutes?
Of course, you would choose the well-rested nurse -- unless she's having lunch when you want your pain medication -- "It hurts ! Medical Emergency !
But it all works out. Sometimes the nurse gets lunch and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes you get your pain medication right away, and sometimes you don't.
But the really important thing is -- and the only reason I am writing this little story -- is because it is so important to tell the truth. In this story, the nurse told the truth. And that was the end of it.
That is the essential reform that we need in health care -- tell the truth, stop lying.
1. Doctors and nurses are lazy and selfish just like the rest of us. They need to take vacations. They need to go home and get some sleep. They should just say that, instead of lying. "It's too soon to make a decision on your situation, Mrs. Jorgensen, I want to wait for the results of your blood test."
That was a lie. Why didn't he tell the truth? "I've been on my feet for 14 hours and I'm so tired I could fall over. I am desperate to go home and kiss my wife and fall asleep, and I will see you first thing tomorrow morning."
When you hear these words, the lies and the truth, you can actually discern the difference in tone. Love the truth, it sounds much better.
2. Doctors and nurses make mistakes. Where I work, in hospital with around 100 patients on an average day, plus all the outpatient and day procedures -- but just looking at the 100 patients who will be spending the night. And let's say each patient is getting maybe five or six medications, usually by mouth or by IV, at different times of the day, on a fixed schedule, or as needed by the nurse, according to the doctor's orders, which will go into the patient's chart and down the to pharmacy in the basement, which will precisely and exactly get all those orders correct, and deliver all 500 -- at least 500 -- medications to the right floor, to the right nurse, and to the right patient.
And everything will be checked and re-checked, and various levels of professional persons will attach their furiously scribbled initials to the medication chart -- that upon their honor and their name, the right thing is being done.
They try very hard not to mistakes, but sometimes the wrong pill goes to the wrong patient at the wrong time -- with consequence that can be very hard for that patient -- or maybe not. Some times the wrong medication results in no more than an upset stomach.
Either way, wouldn't it be better if they told the truth and said, "We're sorry, we made a mistake." Such candor would cut the rate of malpractice law suits in half. Honesty would save the taxpayers billions of dollars. Nobody's perfect.
3. The first two lies are lies of human nature, the kind of social lies that make life more graceful if a little less honest.
But the third category of lie is the one caused by the distortions of private insurance and the lack there of.
"You'll be fine," the doctor said. That's a lie, and here's the truth, "You don't have insurance. It would be very expensive for the hospital to give you this procedure, and that's less money we'll have for more life-threatening situations. So suck it up, good fellow. You have a vigorous constitution and positive outlook on life and you'll probably be all right."
That's how they lie to the poor people. They tell a different lie to the rich people, the ones with gold-plated insurance policies. "We really need to address this problem right away. While your life might not be in danger, any delay could just make it worse. We've scheduled you for surgery first thing tomorrow morning, so we'd like you to check into the hospital this evening."
That's a lie and here's the truth, "You particular policy will pay close to $50,000 on this pacemaker installation. Now, it's a toss up. You might need it, and you might do just as well without out it. But frankly, we need the $50,000. We'll actually make a good $15-20,000 profit on your surgery and we'll use that money to pay for the medical care of our other patients who don't have such good insurance. Thanks for helping us out with this."
The truth is better than the lie. If honest people tell the truth to each other, all the parties -- patients, doctors and nurses, legislators, insurers, bureaucrats, everybody -- then we will get a better health care system.
Aug 14 I don’t have health insurance
I don't have health insurance. I have a job. I work 30 to 35 hours per week and I've had the job for almost two years now, but I don't get health insurance.
I work at a hospital, as nursing aide, on the medical unit. My job is to look after patients who are disruptive and disoriented -- patients who are in the hospital for a stroke, or cancer, or pancreatitis or whatever, but they're having an especially hard time and they need extra attention -- that's what I do.
I think it's a very hard job, certainly much harder than other jobs I've had. But I get no health insurance.
You would think that a hospital would take an interest in the health problems of its staff. But if I get sick, well that's just my own problem. The hospital will just send me home without pay until I get better.
On my previous job, at a newspaper, I got health insurance. If I worked at Costco or at Starbucks, I would get health insurance.
So why doesn't the hospital give me health insurance? I guess because they don't need to. I guess they can find people, like me, who are kind of hard up and willing to work for just the wages.
The job market out there is not good, and I'm 63, and getting kind of cautious.
What would I do? Go talk to the boss and say, "If you don't give me health insurance, then I'll just quit." The conversation would be very short.
I'm just kind of stuck with it.
I'm only telling you this because people assume, wrongly, that a hospital would give good medical benefits to its staff. This is not true. Hospitals are no better, and often worse, than other employers. Health insurance is an expense they would prefer to avoid.
That means I'm saving the hospital a bunch of money. Isn't that good of me? I'll get Medicare in two years. I just have to hold my breath until then. I've always enjoyed good health, and, you know, I'm not particularly worried about this.
I go to the cheap doctor, where all the immigrants go, at the SeaMar Clinic in Mount Vernon. I can get in for $20 to see the doctor, then they send me a bill for the balance.
I don't get to choose my doctor, I just see whoever is up. It doesn't matter. I am satisfied with the attention I get at this clinic. I am what they call "medically competent" and I am quite good at getting the physician to pay attention to whatever I think I need.
So that's not the problem. The problem with not having health insurance -- the worst part of it for me, anyway -- is that I am ashamed even to admit this. It is embarrassing. Like I have done something wrong. Like I am so incredibly stupid that the only job I can get is the kind that doesn't pay health insurance. You feel lower than a dog. Just not as good as the real people, who have real jobs, that pay real benefits if they get sick.
Such people are valued employees. But people like me are disposable.
Someday I'll move on. I won't be stuck in this nursing aide job forever. Then some other schmuck will take my place.
What a great system we have.
I'm telling you this, about my self, because it's a fact. There are so many wild things being said in the current health care debate -- so many complications in the bill before Congress, so much complete misunderstanding of it -- I just really don't even know what to think, and the more I listen and read about this issue, the more confused I get.
So, I better stick with the facts: I am a nursing aide, at a hospital, I take care of sick people and I'm pretty good at it. I do this work for $10 per hour and I don't get any health insurance.
I don't make a good poster child for anybody's cause. Everybody has a story.
NEXT ISSUE. The next issue of Frog Hospital will explain why all these old white people are so mad. I'm an old white person myself, so I have a particular insight into this situation.
FACEBOOK and TWITTER. "Fred Owens" will get you to my Facebook page, and "froghospital" will get you to my Twitter stuff.
SUBSCRIPTIONS. It's all right to buy a subscription any time of the year. Like right now. For $25 you can become one of the honored subscribers to Frog Hospital. Subscribers have no special influence over what gets written, yet they are held in the highest esteem by this writer. You can mail a check for $25, made out to Fred Owens, and mail it to Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to my Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button and pay that way.
aug 17 no coffee in the break room
I was working in the Emergency Room at the hospital -- I won't say which hospital -- but in an effort to save money the administration decided they would no longer provide coffee packets for the coffee maker in the ER break room. That means ER nurses and doctors, who usually work 12-hour shifts, are doing without coffee these days.
Someone had brought in a jar of Instant Coffee, and I was so desperate that I had some. Do you realize how disgusting and lowly that is?
This situation produced a whole range of wildly conflicting thoughts within my brain.
My first thought was -- Now I know why I have a crummy $10 an hour job after a lifetime of marginal employment.
It's because I am not willing to put up with crap. The time was, faced with a jar of instant coffee, that I would have marched down to the office of the hospital CEO, stormed right past the secretary guarding the door, stomped into the room and hurled the jar of instant coffee at the boss.
I did not do that last weekend. Instead I gave into a feeling of complete cowardice and defeat -- a realization that I had become no better than the people who keep their jobs year after year with an endless capacity to absorb abuse and humiliation.
I began to look around the ER and realize -- you people are all cowards. You need coffee, you deserve coffee, yet you sit there like sheep because you are afraid. Afraid of what?
I know what you're afraid of -- afraid of ending up like me, with a $1o an hour job and no health insurance -- because that's what happens to people who speak up. That's price you pay for freedom. Well, I'm free, but you're all slaves.
And that made me feel a little proud, because I don't take crap. And you can have your house on the hill and your brand new car, if you're one of those silent suckups -- keeping your head down and keeping your mouth shut. You never stick up for yourself, and you never stick up for anybody else, and you always follow the rules, right down to the letter -- so you got your reward, but I wouldn't want to be you for a million dollars.
Later, two days later, it still bothered me that I had not spoken up about the coffee outrage, so I made a small gesture. I was working on the medical unit. The administration is still providing coffee packets on the medical units because, officially at least, the coffee is for the patients.
So, while I was working up there, but on my dinner break, I grabbed five packets of coffee and took them down to the ER break room and left them there.
No one saw me do that, but I TOLD several people that I took the packets down, so they would be sure to know that I did that -- it was for my honor.
And that's how you end up with a $10 an hour job and no health insurance. But I'm not one of those snivelling cowardly fraidy pants -- I'm not one of those weenies, whiners, wimps and crybabies who crowd the freeways and call themselves Americans.
FACEBOOK and TWITTER. "Fred Owens" will get you to my Facebook page, and "froghospital" will get you to my Twitter stuff.
SUBSCRIPTIONS. It's all right to buy a subscription any time of the year. Like right now. For $25 you can become one of the honored subscribers to Frog Hospital. Subscribers have no special influence over what gets written, yet they are held in the highest esteem by this writer. You can mail a check for $25, made out to Fred Owens, and mail it to Box 1292, LaConner, WA 98257. Or go to my Frog Hospital blog and hit the PayPal button and pay that way.
People are having intelligent discussions about health care reform -- but not me. I work at a hospital, and I'm getting stupider every day. I'm starting to worry, because if I work at the hospital much longer I might actually become stupid and stay that way.
At work, everybody treats me like a dummy. It's not personal, I understand that. Everybody treats everybody else like a dummy. Thinking is bad. The most important quality that makes a good nurse is obedience -- the ability to carefully and minutely follow instructions. The good nurse, when faced with a problem, always asks this question: "What is the proper procedure?"
The good nurse consults the manual before tying her shoes in the morning. She can recite from memory everything that she has been told to know, and she knows everything that she has been told to know. But, if she has not been told to know something, then you can be sure that she does not know it.
Such a nurse is a reliable instrument and will succeed in the profession. As long as she doesn't think.
Doctors get to think a little bit, although not very often. I have sometimes observed doctors thinking on the job. This is permitted under certain circumstances -- because it is possible, although rare, for a medical problem to exist -- for which there is no procedure. Even the insurance companies know this is true.
Under those circumstances, the physician may do some thinking. As long as it doesn't get to be a habit. For if a physician developed a habit of thinking, then the next thing you know, he might begin to re-consider procedures which are already clearly established. That would be trouble.
To sum it up. Nurses may not think. Doctors may not think except in exceptional cases. We are all dummies.
This is why I cannot join in an intelligent discussion of health care reform -- I have become too stupid.
LATER. I just got an email from a faithful reader. He said he was getting tired of hearing me complain about my job, and that I ought to write about something more uplifting. He wrote:
I want to express a couple of concerns about this last edition.
1. You insult most of your subscribers. If they can send you $25, they have a job, then they have had to take criticism from their boss. So you kind of belittle the rest of us who accept that the boss can do what he wants.
2. No one likes to read the writing of someone who is bitter, regardless of whether it's justified.
3. For your own mental health, don't sweat the small stuff. Save your energy for bigger battles.
That's a good idea. Today's letter will be the last general complaint about the hospital. After you complain for a while, you need to shut up or do something about it.
MORE LATER. But a coffee rebellion is brewing in the ER break room. As reported in the last issue, the administration cut off supplying the ER break room with free coffee -- meaning the ER staff will have to pay for its own coffee.
This cost-cutting is a symptom of the larger problem. The ER staff gets more patients because of an increasing number of people who have no insurance. The hospital is legally required to serve all comers in the ER, but it is costing them plenty.
So, the solution is to cut off the free coffee supply to ER nurses and doctors who work 12-hour shifts.
Is that a solution? The whole health care mess is made up of a million small problems like this one. And the people who want change are making a big mistake if they think President Obama and the Congress will do very much about it.
Real change in health care will come when it starts from every ER break room in the country. It's not just about coffee.
DATING IS WONDERFUL. Dating is fun. They told me that it's a volume game -- if you meet lots of women, then you'll find somebody you like. Okay, so it's about the numbers. I have been on nine dates in the last two months --
1. Susan in Everett
2. Valerie in Seattle
3. Meriel from Vancouver, although she came down here
4. Heidi at the Semiahmoo Lodge in Blaine
5. Judy for coffee at the Colophon Cafe in Fairhaven
6. Susan from Kingston, although we met in Everett
7. Mary in Seattle
8. Peggy at the Rexville Store
9. Irene by the shores of Lake Union
I have felt it was wrong to keep a list. You put things-to-do on a list, you don't put real people on a list, especially women you had hoped to care about. But they told me it was a numbers game, so that way you get a list.
I liked Irene the best -- but that's because she was the last one. I liked all of them the best right after I went out with them. Except I still might like Irene the best. I will tell you why -- because we sat quietly on a bench next to a fountain and we didn't say much -- I had finally met a woman who is both intelligent and quiet. We had a conversation with generous pauses -- that's the way I like to talk.
I also like her name. Irene is from China. She is a scientist. She chose the name Irene from a dictionary when she came to America. I told her it was one of my favorite names. I asked her if she had heard the song, "Goodnight, Irene."
She had not heard the song. So I sang it for her.
Now, does she want to meet me again? I don't know as of today.
LATER ON DATING. Irene emailed me. No dice. She doesn't want to go out with me again. I am permitted a very short period of analysis when faced with this kind of disappointment. Maybe she didn't like it when I sang the song. Maybe it was the cold sore on my lower lip.
But it could have been anything, so this post-date analysis is concluded, and we move on.
EXPECTATIONS. I have been following the conventional advice about dating. Be looking good. Be sure to get there early. Don't be in a hurry. Be yourself..........And don't have any expectations.
No, No, and No on that last one. I don't just have expectations. I have enormous expectations as big as the moon. I have the highest of high hopes.
My whole life is about expectations. I would never make a good Buddhist.
Of course, when you live with these expectations, you face an equal amount of disappointment. Things don't work out. Things fall apart. Life is a train wreck.
My world view is tragic, because of my expectations. I would make a good Italian. It's something they would understand. Italians are always crying, because they live for hope, and it never happens, and they are left with tears.
That's how I live too.
Aug 30 men at work
SUMMER IS ENDING. The summer has been wonderful. Everybody says so. Days and weeks of shorts and sandals and never close the window. Blue skies beyond what we are used to. True, the farmers had to irrigate a lot because it was so dry, but we loved it.
New England was wet and cold all summer, not a good year for the beach. Texas had a drought, as usual, but this year it is especially bad -- even native Texans have been complaining about the heat.
Wildfires are raging across Southern California. This hardly seems like news, but it is the season.
And meanwhile, up here in the Puget Sound country, we are enjoying the last and laziest days of summer. It has been wonderful.
THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL. More and more, it looks like the Democrats have laid an egg. With a President and a strong majority in Congress -- when they finally get a chance to do something after 8 years of George Bush -- they come up with a 1,000-page bill that is sinking like a stone -- battered by a surprisingly determined conservative opposition.
Reasonable fears cannot be squelched. My reasonable fear is that this bill will add to the cost, add to the paperwork, and accomplish nothing.
Unreasonable fears run rampant -- They're going to shoot grandma in the parking lot ! I don't listen to those people. For conservative views, I read Charles Krauthammer. For liberal views, I read Paul Krugman. This keeps the noise level down.
I admit to feeling pessimistic about health care improving in America.
NURTURING MY INNER PATRIARCH. I need to nourish my inner patriarch because I am an old man in training. I miss the old language, before it became inclusive. Brotherhood -- that was a powerful word and a shining ideal. Is brotherhood gone? Are not all men brothers?
Men at work. Three words once seen at roadside construction. Men at work -- the English language at its strongest with short words of one syllable. It was so easy to understand. Men at work -- I miss it. The language police killed this one.
IGNORING QUENTIN TARANTINO. I am willing to admit that Tarantino is a great artist, but I won't go to see his new film, the Incorrigible Inglourious Basterds. It's too violent. I am famous for being a movie wimp. I walked out of Pulp Fiction half way through because it got too bloody. I'm sorry -- life is painful enough. I can see enough real suffering where I work.
Suffering is real and suffering is even beautiful, but it makes a poor joke.
But, because movies are not the same as real life, we can go backward in time just as well as going forward. So, I recommend -- instead of Tarantino - - the Judgment at Nuremberg, filmed in 1961, and going over a similar theme, about how to bring justice to Nazi war crimes against the Jews.
Judgment at Nuremberg was filmed in black and white, directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark and Maximillian Schell.
It's a powerful film.
A NEW SEASON COMING. The rains will come and the cooler weather too, so here's a poem I found.
WHO LOVES THE RAIN
By Frances Shaw
Who loves the rain
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes,
Him will I follow through the storm;
And at his hearth-fire keep me warm;
Nor hell nor heaven shall that soul surprise,
Who loves the rain,
And loves his home,
And looks on life with quiet eyes.
I found this poem in an anthology, but could not find any information about the poet -- who must have lived in a wet country like ours.
A Tribute To
A Fallen Hero
Sgt. Mitchel Mutz
1983 - 2006
I wrote this story three years ago, when I worked for the Wilson County News in South Texas. It was a difficult interview, talking to Mitchel’s mother and father in their living room, only a few days after he died.
But afterward, when the story was published, the Mutzes felt I had got it right.
I had not known Mitchel, nor had I met his parents before the interview.
I have a very definite opinion about the conflict in Iraq, but you have to get that out of the way when you write a story like this.
And I would suggest, when you read this, to clear your own mind. Let the soldier and his family tell it the way they choose to.
Three years ago. It’s not good to forget these things.
FALLS CITY, TEXAS — The last time Sgt. Mitchel Mutz called home was Oct. 21, the day his brother, Nathan was married.
“He called us at the reception,” his father, Bobby, said. “I heard the cell phone ring in my pocket and I knew it was him.”
Mitchel had stayed up 24 hours straight in order to make that phone call at the right time, speaking in turn to Bobby, Dixie, Nathan, and Nathan’s new wife, Shawna.
“It was the last time I heard his voice,” his mother, Dixie, said. “He told me he loved me.”
Mitchel sent several e-mails after that, short notes that said not to worry, but on Nov. 10 he sent a long e-mail to his brother, Nathan.
The e-mail to his brother described a more dangerous situation at his new location in Baqubah, asking Nathan not to share that information with his parents.
Mitchel’s foreboding came to pass Nov. 15 when a roadside bomb exploded near the Humvee that he and Sgt. Schuyler Haines, his platoon leader, occupied.
It was not surprising to Mitchel’s parents that he spent his last moments with a man he admired.
“Mitchel and Sgt. Haynes were pretty tight,” Bobby said. “Sgt. Haynes was 40, older than the other guys. He didn’t have kids, but he was like a father to some of his soldiers.”
Haynes was from New York City. He was buried in a military cemetery in Albany, New York.
“We’ve spoken to his family several times on the phone,” Dixie said, indicating a mutual understanding.
Mitchel was a scout in the First Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood.
He served in that role during campaigns in Najaf and Falluja, and it was a dangerous assignment, occupying advance positions and scoping out the terrain for troops that would come later in force.
“That’s what he wanted to do,” Bobby said. “That’s the kind of kid he always was. He wasn’t one to complain. He never regretted joining the Army.”
When Mitchel was sent back to Iraq this summer for his second tour, he told his father he was getting bored at Fort Hood and he was ready to go again.
Kim Moy, his fourth and fifth grade teacher in Falls City, remembered a much younger Mitchel Mutz. “He was a very sweet boy,” Moy said. “He had such good manners.”
“He came to school every day with a pack of his friends from the neighborhood, and you couldn’t get them apart,” she said. “Sometimes they would have furious arguments, but they were all basically pretty good kids.”
Mitchel’s boyhood home, where his parents still live, is only two blocks from the school.
Bobby and Dixie said it was just like what the teacher said, “Those boys were together morning, noon, and night, playing football in the street,” Bobby said. “There were four or five boys and one girl, and that one girl played just like the boys did.”
Sometimes they went fishing at a tank just past the end of the road or played other games, but the overall image is one of rip-roaring, good-natured fun, and lessons learned, and chores done, and other good things about growing up in a small town in Texas, where everybody knows you and you can’t get away with too much, because everybody will find out.
That closeness is what made so many people in Falls City sad about losing Mitchel.
“It was like it happened to my own child,” one neighbor said. “I knew him since he was a baby. Around here you do for someone else’s child just like you do for your own.”
The town’s grief was palpable.
Mitchel’s “big” brother. Nathan, is four years older than he was.
“They squabbled a lot when they were young,” Bobby said. “Mitchel would irritate Nathan, but Nathan would always stick up for Mitchel when that was needed.”
As the two brothers grew older, they grew closer, Dixie said, “but they were very different from each other.”
Nathan went to Texas A&M and then became a Texas state trooper, stationed in Floresville.
Mitchel loved the Aggies and always liked going up to College Station when his brother was in school.
“That’s one of the things he talked about just recently,” Bobby said. “He said when he got out of the Army, he wanted to go to Texas A&M.”
Bobby encouraged his son to continue his education and suggested that he begin taking classes online while he was still in the Army.
The Mutzes had no more words for a future that did not come to be.
“We’re holding up as best we can,” Bobby said.
“We’re very grateful for the love and support we’ve received from so many people,” Dixie said. The Mutzes have received cards and letters from people all over the country, expressing sympathy and gratitude.
“It’s been hard to bear, but that makes it a little easier,” Bobby said.
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