I plummet with Cliff


I don’t get on well with tolerant people. Don’t ask me why, but the more tolerant someone is, the less he is able to tolerate me. Likewise with loving people. As soon as someone starts talking about much they love the whole world, I lose any hope that they will find my company bearable.

I just took a walk with Cliff, the significant other (or shack-up honey, depending upon your level of tolerance) of a friend. First, he bemoaned the failure of society for letting a man freeze to death on the sidewalk, as recently happened here. I pointed out that the man hadn’t asked for shelter and had drunk himself unconscious on a night of record cold. Cliff could barely tolerate my callousness.

Then the subject of changing the name Centennial Boulevard to Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard came up. Cliff assumed that my objection was racist. I don’t know why he assumed this other than for the fact that I am from Mississippi, and tolerant people usually take this to mean that I just have to be racist. I don’t think I ever did convince him that my objection actually arose from my belief that no street name should be longer than four syllables. Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard has seven, not counting the three in boulevard. Cliff was right in arguing that everyone abbreviates it to MLK, but I thought that this proved my point. Take Eugene’s presidential streets. It’s not Ulysses Simpson Grant Street or James Knox Polk Street; it’s just plain old Grant Street and Polk Street, so why not King Boulevard?

Besides, when you look at the kind of people who are referred to by all three names, it’s serial killers for heaven’s sakes (Lee Boyd Malvo, John Allen Muhammad, David Parker Ray, John Wayne Gacy, George Walker Bush—need I continue?). Okay, Mark David Chapman and Lee Harvey Oswald weren’t serial killers, but at least they were killers. My point is that two names are adequate for everyone but murderers. Anybody know Christ’s middle name (his middle initial was H)? How about Mother Teresa’s (maybe it was Dear)?

Not content to let Cliff think I was but half an asshole when I could go for the full monty, I added that if someone's parents had the audacity to give them a name that was longer than three syllables, they should have the courtesy to abbreviate it. For example, how megalomaniacal do you have to be to expect everyone to call you Elizabeth when you could go by Liz, Beth, or Libbie? I mean, come on, how much of a person’s day do you expect them to spend saying your name?

If a person boasts of his tolerance but can only tolerate the opinions of people who agree with him, then how is he better than the rest of us? Or if he says he is loving but only loves those who love him, how is he more enlightened than you and I? Maybe I’ll ask Cliff about these things someday when we take a walk together, someday when hell freezes over and its drunks perish.

How it feels


I bore even myself with my health updates, yet of those who have read my preceding medical adventures, some might want the latest. My fellow sexagenarians will probably be the more interested because musculoskeletal problems befall us all even if we smoke Pall Mall, drink alcohol, snort aerosol, and bejewel one ball.

Peggy and I saw my new doc yesterday. I was tying a hangman’s noose when he walked in (the kind with the 13 windings). If I were a doctor, this would give me cause for alarm, and he did look alarmed and even clucked as he sat down. He needn’t have worried. I have loved knots for many a year, and I often turn to them when I am stressed. Its grisly connotation aside, the hangman’s knot is without peer, both for beauty and strength. It’s also fun to tie.

“Here’s the thing, doc, one of your fellow orthopedists says I have arthritis; one says impingement; and one says superior labrum anterior posterior. What do you say?”

“Yes.”

“Yes! What do you mean yes?”

“I mean they’re all right—they ARE doctors, you know. However, every problem isn’t contributing equally—if at all—to your pain.”

“So doc, if, being doctors, they’re all right and you’re right too, what do you plan to do about it?”

“Well, my handsome young patient, there’s choice A, and there’s choice B. Choice A is to stab you with an arthroscope and fix whatever is amiss. Choice B is to give you steroid shots in both shoulders, send you for some more physical therapy, and see how you feel in six weeks. I recommend Choice B, but you seem more than a trifle frustrated with non-surgical approaches, so it’s your call.”

I was frankly more worried about washing out with a fourth doctor (I have been to each of the three orthopedic groups in Eugene plus one loner doc) than of surgery (after 28 months of pain, I WANT surgery), so I was relieved that I liked Mark Fletcher. He listened well, took his time, seemed to care, gave me options, didn’t turn apoplectic when I called him Mark, and introduced himself to Peggy (doctors often ignore the patient’s spouse). Do I think shots and exercises will help? No, but I’ll give them a try rather than challenge his judgment. He is, after all, recommending a treatment that will cause him to miss out on a quick buck. Then too, the opinion of a surgeon who advises against surgery is not a thing to be sneezed at.

I’ve had three steroid shots to my neck, one to a knee, and one to a shoulder. None of them hurt much afterwards. These shots still hurt WAY MUCH. Without Percoet, I can scarcely move my arms, and I’m obliged to support one hand with the other when I do move them. I naturally wondered what went wrong that the other shots didn’t hurt and these do—is Mark yet another dud doc? An orthopedic website identified the problem as a cortisone flare, meaning that the drug crystallizes and stays that way for a day or two. It isn’t anyone’s fault. At least there’s that.

Ortho four


I wrote the following for my new orthopedist. He is the fourth I have seen. So, why is this worth putting in my blog? Because it illustrates what a circus a seemingly simple problem can become when put in the hands of the “experts.” These people have god knows how many years of training, yet the patient, who has no training at all, quickly sees their limitations and realizes that he must become the final authority over his own care.

You will note that I address the doctor by his first name instead of his title. This is because tokens of subordination stick in my throat. If I should be introduced to the queen someday, this could be a problem as I will refuse to so much as curtsy. Even if my resolve should weaken, and I should curtsy just to keep the old bag in good humor, my aged knees would probably become stuck, and I would have to spend the rest of my life curtsying to every man, woman, child, and dog that I met.

Osteonecrotic means dead bone.


Dear Mark,

I was overwhelmed by the prospect of verbally updating you on why I came here, so I decided to write it out.

In August of 2006, I began taking yoga for nine hours a week to strengthen an arthritic knee. A month later, I fell on my head while practicing a handstand. My neck felt compressed when I hit, but it didn’t bother me much afterwards. A week or two later, both shoulder joints started hurting almost overnight, and I was forced to give up yoga. My shoulder pain slowly got worse despite the fact that I drastically reduced my physical activity.

Nineteen months later (April 2008), I saw an orthopedist (Lisa Lamoreaux) who ordered x-rays and diagnosed the problem as arthritis. I questioned her diagnosis because the pain had started suddenly and at the same time in both shoulders.

In July 2008, I saw another orthopedist (Matthew Shapiro). He rejected Lamoreaux’s diagnosis, and said he suspected bilateral impingement. He ordered an MRI on both shoulders. He also gave me a cortisone shot in my left shoulder, and said that if I experienced relief, it would confirm his diagnosis. I experienced complete relief for about a month. He said that the MRI further confirmed his diagnosis.

I began taking an anti-inflammatory and going to a physical therapist (Lonnie Ward). I was given various band exercises to do, but they caused so much pain that I quit therapy altogether. A deep tissue massage that I got to relieve the pain made it much worse. I stopped doing anything involving my shoulders that I didn’t have to do, but the pain was so great that I was almost in tears for weeks. I was unable to even walk, bike, or drive for any distance, and sleep was nearly impossible. Shapiro prescribed Elavil, but it was woefully inadequate. By the time I obtained narcotics from another doctor, my pain level was going down, so I took very few of the pills.

Shapiro recommended subacromial decompression surgery, but said that a tingling problem in my right arm that had developed over the summer was caused by a nerve in my neck, so he wanted me to see a neurologist (Michael Balm) before he did surgery. Balm disagreed with Shapiro, saying that the tingling originated in my shoulder rather than my neck, and the tests he did in his office (EMG, NCS, etc.) seemed to confirm this. He said he would order a neck MRI anyway to reassure Shapiro. Based upon the results of the MRI, he ordered a CAT scan. Based upon the results of the CAT scan, he said that my C5 vertebra was probably malignant and speculated that the cancer had spread from my prostate.

A surgical neurologist (Andrea Halliday) biopsied the vertebra and determined that my C5 was not cancerous but osteonecrotic. Based upon the MRI that Balm ordered, she said that I had some nerves in the C6 area that were being squeezed where they left the vertebra, and she sent me to a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist (James Kassube) for a series of cortisone shots. Halliday was confident that these shots would not only eliminate the tingling in my right arm, but would completely take care of my shoulder problems. The shots did eliminate the tingling but did nothing for the shoulders.

I went to a second physical therapist (Chris Besonis), and he prescribed isometic exercises. These also proved too painful for me to do.

I went to a third orthopedist (Thomas Peterson) because he advertised non-surgical treatments. Based upon a brief office exam, he rejected both Lamoreaux’s and Shapiro’s diagnoses, and said the problem was superior labrum anterior posterior. He gave me a numbing shot that he said would confirm his diagnosis if I got temporary pain relief, which I did. He prescribed prilotherapy injections. I didn’t consent to them because I couldn’t find evidence that they worked, and I had no idea if his diagnosis was correct.

Last week, I started going to a third physical therapist (Rachel Roach). She said that my symptoms aren’t consistent with shoulder impingement and prescribed yet another form of exercises. I don’t yet know how well they will work. I am scheduled to start Rolfing treatments this week in conjunction with physical therapy. I even went to a Japanese-style acupuncturist for two months last fall but got no benefit from it.

I have been in so much pain for so long that I would gladly consent to surgery if I could but have confidence that it would address the issue. As things stand, I have yet to find even two doctors who can agree as to what the problem is.

The truth, the whole truth, and mostly the truth



If you want to know what a smart dog looks like, take a look at this (I mean the photo, not the word this). Now, I’m not one of those dog owners who thinks his dog is smarter than other people’s children because I know she’s not. I know this because I get audited every time she does my taxes. Of course, CPAs get audited too, so maybe Bonnie is smarter than other people’s children after all. Or maybe CPAs are just really dumb. Remember Arthur Andersen?


Another way that Bonnie is smart is that she always craps in the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor was pretty good about this for the first ten years or so, but then he started getting a little testy. One day he came over all red in the face and trembling. I thought he was just sick, but then he said, “If you don’t keep your goddamn dog out of my goddamn yard, I’m going to burn down your goddamn house.” I can’t describe how heartsick his words made me feel--I had really appreciated not having to buy my own lawnmower.

A few nights later, he woke me up about three in the morning. I heard screaming and cursing, and looked out to see him in my driveway buck-naked, jumping up and down, and holding a gun. I would have been hit by the first bullet if I hadn’t seen the fire leap from the barrel in time to duck. He must have stayed out there for upwards of two hours before he called it a night. Maybe he got cold, or sleepy. I never asked. Bonnie and I thought his behavior was so funny that neither of us could stop laughing for the longest, and we slept until noon. I didn’t send him a Christmas card that year because I wanted him to know that his behavior was a little off, but I did send him one the year after. He still doesn’t send me one, and he never did get me anything for my birthday. Not that I got him anything for his either, but then he wasn't forever reminding me of when his birthday was.

Bonnie is an equal opportunity biter—muscle men in their prime, little children with trikes, old ladies with walkers—she bites them all. She bites me too, sometimes. If I can see a good reason for having been bitten, I take my punishment and let it go at that. If I can’t see a good reason—or even a fair reason—I figure Bonnie is in the wrong, and I bop her on the snout. You might think it’s wrong of me to bop her on the snout. I don’t like to do it either, but when I bop her on the rump, she just bites me again. It is for this reason that I bop her on the snout instead of on the rump.

People say that dogs reflect the personalities of their owners, which means that if your dog bites people, then you probably want to bite them yourself but don’t have the guts. The trouble with this theory is that I have two dogs, and the other dog would never hurt anyone. So, I’m not such a twit after all—ha, ha, ha.

Peggy doesn’t like it that Bonnie bites. “Well, at least nobody will walk off with her,” I say, but this doesn’t seem to make Peggy feel better. One thing about her biting that does bother me is that Bonnie will bite people who not only don’t want to hurt her, but are too frail to hurt her if they did want to. That’s just how she is though—not mean like a pit-bull but wild like a dingo (which is partly what she is). She has a two-phase interpersonal problem solving system. Phase one is to snarl, and phase two is to bite. Since phase one is over in half a second, it isn’t very effective. Phase two is very effective. Whatever anyone is doing that Bonnie objects to stops immediately 100% of the time when she bites them. My own record for problem solving is nowhere near that successful. You might say, “Sure she eliminates one problem, but she creates a bigger problem when she bites someone,” but she doesn’t see it that way. Maybe if the dogcatcher threw her in the slammer she would, but that has never happened.

Bonnie is eleven, and her eyes are getting bad, so people are usually able to move their hands out of the way before they are bitten. A lot of people get really bummed about Bonnie trying to bite them, and they’ll say strange things such as, “I don’t think she likes me.” “Don’t take it personally,” I offer. “It’s just that she filled her friendship quota years ago, so you’ll need to wait for someone to die or move away.” I actually think this is true. Bonnie is very, very sweet to her friends (she only bites family members and strangers), but she doesn’t seem to want any new friends.

Bonnie snapped at one lady who then became determined to make Bonnie like her. What this lady did was to get some bologna and feed it to Bonnie by hand a little at a time. When the bologna was gone, she stuck out her hand with nothing in it because she thought that she and Bonnie were friends now (maybe she had heard the saying about the difference between a man and a dog is that a dog won’t bite the hand that feeds it). Anyway, Bonnie didn’t feel any friendlier than before, and she demonstrated her complete willingness to bite the hand that feeds her. It was at this point that the lady gave up on being friends with Bonnie. My impression was that Bonnie had snapped at the lady because she was mad that there was no more bologna, but I didn’t want to say anything that would make Bonnie look worse than she already did.

I didn’t want to buy Bonnie because she came from a pet shop, and pet shop dogs come from puppy mills. I had wanted some dog for years, but Peggy said it was so painful when our last one died that she was through with dogs. Anyway, when Peggy saw Bonnie in the window at the mall, she decided that she and Bonnie had a psychic bond, so I couldn’t very well nix getting her even if she was a pet shop dog. I did remind Peggy that neither of us knew anything about herd dogs in general or blue heelers in particular but, like I said, how could I put my foot down? A few weeks later, I came home one night, and Peggy was off the wall livid and yelling about how “that damn dog” had to go. What had happened was that Bonnie got mad at Peggy (without good reason, Peggy thought) and nailed her. I thought this was hilarious. “Hey, what happened to your psychic bond—haw, haw, haw?” I asked. This didn’t seemed to help Peggy’s mood the way I thought it would. Peggy is hard to comfort sometimes.

Something else that bothers me about Bonnie’s violent behavior is that if Peggy and I get into a fight, Bonnie always takes Peggy’s side even if Peggy is in the wrong. Peggy can literally walk up and start slapping me around (pretend slapping), and Bonnie will come running and threaten to bite me if I don’t stop. Stop what? All I’m doing is standing there getting slapped. Peggy thinks this is SO funny that she will almost bust a gut laughing, and this causes her to stop slapping me, and that causes Bonnie to go back to whatever she was doing (lying on the floor usually) before Peggy got her riled up. It’s as if Bonnie’s position is, “Okay, Peggy, anytime you want to kill your husband, just let me know, and I’ll help.” The rest of the time, Bonnie seems to like me better than she likes Peggy (I know this because she humps my leg all the time but never humps Peggy’s leg at all). She’s a very funny dog that way. Her sympathy is with whomever she considers to be the underdog, even if the underdog is beating the hell out of the overdog for no reason.

But I haven’t said nearly enough about how smart Bonnie is, so I’ll tell you one last thing. One day Peggy was throwing Bonnie her Frisbee and her tennis ball. She (Peggy) got to wondering what Bonnie would do if she threw them both at once. Would she bring back the one that she liked better (her ball), or would she bring back the one that landed first, or that hit closer to her, or that she was able to catch? Well, what Bonnie did was to catch the tennis ball and put it in the underside of the Frisbee so she could carry the tennis ball with the Frisbee. That’s pretty smart. I know I wouldn’t have thought of it. Would you? I don’t think so.

New Years


Peggy had an esophageal dilation and biopsy on New Years Eve. Afterwards, she was as helpless as a baby, and I was the lion at her gate. Every now and then, she would rouse a little and murmur, “Are you ready to go home yet?” I would say, “Today, sweetheart, it really is all about you, and I want you to rest for as long as you need to.”

We went to a party that night. There were Oregon wines, Oregon beers, and Glenlivet Scotch. I was always partial to Scotch—which I hadn’t tasted in decades—and I drank a bit more than my share. It wasn’t as tasty as I remembered, and I even had the thought that I would have preferred gin or vodka. I so seldom drink hard liquor that I didn’t know my taste had changed.

Everyone split off into groups to play cards. Hearts is something else that I hadn’t enjoyed in decades, and I was excited about playing it again. Unfortunately, no one else at my table had their hearts into it (ha). The woman beside me was about sixty and her hippie party clothes were appropriately complemented by long straight hair—long straight gray hair. She was nothing if not loquacious and, on that count alone, I imagined her as the belle of the ball. I suspected that I wasn’t among her favorites, and immediately felt as if I was fifteen again and had been rejected by the prettiest snob in class. I just as quickly remembered that I was nowhere near fifteen. Oh, what a happy thought: “Been there, done that, don’t ever have to do it again.”

My fellow partygoers mostly thought that it was time for Dick Clark to call it quits, and one man made an ass of himself by mocking his speech. Peggy said she admired Dick Clark’s spunk and looks forward to seeing him each year. I didn’t care one way or the other, but then I never was a fan of Dick Clark. At the magic moment, we all filed out of the house and stood in the drizzle banging pans and lighting sparklers. By 12:15, the belle of the ball and her partner were gone. At 12:30, Peggy and I left. I usually stay at parties until late because the best conversations happen in the wee hours, but Peggy was feeling bad.

When I got home, there was a message from the secretary of my IOOF lodge. He said that one member, Don, is dying and that another, Doyd, is in the hospital with pneumonia. I went to see Doyd today. He and his wife are ninety. She broke her hip and is recuperating in a nearby nursing home, so they can’t very well take care of one another, and the only family they have nearby is a son who doesn’t speak to them. I know someone who has the following on her blog: “Embrace all of life and not just the happy parts.” She is twenty-one and probably doesn’t know how bad some of the bad parts can get. Then again, maybe she does.

Three days after her biopsy, Peggy is still struggling to get up to speed. This is the third time in less than a year that one of us has been tested for cancer, and the waiting never gets any easier.

Twenty years to go



Some thoughts on (almost) turning sixty (on March 1).

If you say to your friend when you’re 29, “I’m screwed-up because my parents were screwed-up,” your friend will look at you and say, “Well, I hope you’re able to get yourself together.” But if you say the same thing to your friend when you’re 59, your friend will just say, “You’re fucking pathetic. I don’t know why I hang out with you.” You can only ride that horse so far.

A life is like a history book in that, all else being equal, the more time it covers, the more stories it has to tell, and the better it can pull seemingly disparate themes into a congruent whole.

I in no way envy the young their youth (being so ignorant in so many ways wasn’t that great the first time around). I do envy them their health, their energy, their options, and the many years that they have left to live.

I have been a fundamentalist, and an atheist, and a lot of things in-between. I have also been a conservative, a liberal, and a moderate. As for a career, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Because I have been all over the map in so many areas of life, a part of me envies people who set out upon a road early on and never depart from it; but a bigger part suspects that they are more rigid than resolute.

The embarrassing part about getting old is that so many people my age are so foolish. I want respect for my experience, yet I don’t respect them for theirs. They might have learned a good bit in regard to practical matters (don’t touch a hot stove or drive fast on an icy road), but they remain appallingly deficient in depth and wisdom. Come to think of it, so do I. It’s just that they’re worse.

One might reasonably have hope for improvement in the young, but it’s harder to hope for the aged. Yet, I haven’t given up on myself. In fact, I’ve concluded that the day I turn sixty will be the day I am finally mature. I will still have odds and ends to work out, but the main themes of my life will be in order in just nine weeks. I can hardly wait.

I haven’t been carded in decades. No one has even looked like they were thinking about carding me in decades. In a way, I miss that, yet when I think back to when I was carded, I didn’t like it then, so maybe I wouldn’t like it now either. Maybe I would just think that there were entirely too many near-sighted store clerks.

I used to think that I was a very interesting person who had had a very interesting life. I still think this, but not too many people seem to agree. Maybe this is because they don’t know of anything I have excelled at.

I’m vague about what it means to excel. If you win an Olympic Gold Medal or a Nobel prize, I guess it means that you have excelled. But it would also mean that most people either haven’t excelled or else they have excelled somewhat obscurely. Does anyone regard himself as having hit that most excellent pinnacle above which nothing else lies? I wouldn’t know, but I have observed that, as a social species, it’s pretty hard for us to feel that we’ve done really well unless other people are out there applauding our efforts. Did Vincent Van Gogh or Emily Dickinson know that they had excelled?

Sitting here writing, I feel as though I should be doing something more important. Time is running out, so I must make the most of it. But what would be more important than this? I don’t know, but this doesn’t feel like enough. Maybe if I felt that I was expressing myself better. Maybe if I felt that more people cared about what I think. I so rarely feel that what I am doing is exactly the thing that I should be doing or that I am doing it in exactly the way it should be done.

I am always reaching for a feeling of rightness that I only rarely touch and never fully grasp, and even when I do grasp it, I might not recognize the fact until a lot later. Right now, I am thinking about a day Peggy and I spent in the Coast Range two years ago. Now, I see that that day was perfect, and I would be happy to relive it forever, but when that day was actually happening, I didn’t imagine that I would be sitting here now loving it completely. To love anything that much, I must have already lost it because, when it’s actually happening, I can always think of one or more teensy-tiny ways that it could be better. Later on, I don’t remember what those ways were.

No matter what your position, I can probably offer a reasonable argument in its favor even if I don’t believe it, simply because I used to believe it.

I used to expect some kind of unspecified quantum leap with every birthday, but it never came. This is what I got instead: I’m ten (double digits now!); I’m thirteen (a teenager!); I’m eighteen (old enough for the army to think I’m a man, but am I?); I’m twenty-one (old enough to vote, but why don’t I feel like a man yet?); I’m thirty (I guess I’m a man—if not now then when?); I’m forty (halfway to being dead—DEAD); I’m fifty (if I were a toaster, I would be halfway to being a genuine antique); I’m sixty (I’ll probably be dead in twenty years).

When I was young, I felt that my life had an ordained purpose that would be revealed to me someday. I wondered and wondered about this as the years went by without anything being revealed. I finally concluded that I was almost certainly wrong. After all, I had been wrong about a lot of other things that I used to think I knew for certain. For example, when I was six, I thought that nothing existed unless I was there to witness it—that people and places came into existence when I was present, and faded into nothingness when I went away. I also thought that I would be a boy forever because time was clearly passing far too slowly for me to ever grow up much less grow old.

If I don’t have a given purpose, then no one else is likely to either. This means that we do whatever we do while we’re alive, and then we’re dead, and that’s the end of the universe as far as we’re concerned. Kaput. Finé. Like a puff of smoke. Like a circle in the water where a child has thrown a rock. Later on, the universe too will die. Kaput. Finé. Like a puff of smoke…

Sometimes, something will happen that seems so timely, so apropos, that I think that, well, maybe there is some higher purpose going on here after all. But then I will say to myself that I’m grasping at straws, and I’ll be mad at myself for being unable to simply get on with living with what appears to be the case rather than forever longing for that which doesn’t appear to be the case.

I think of life as like a book or a movie that isn’t terribly good, but you stay with it because you expect it to come to a climax (otherwise, why would anyone have gone to the trouble of creating it?), and you want to see what that climax looks like. You wait, and you wait, and then the book (or the movie) ends with no climax ever being reached, and you feel cheated and even angry. You wish you had gone out and done something constructive instead of wasting your time. Only with life, there isn’t anything else you can go out and do.

Again, life is like boarding an airplane that moves away from the terminal but isn’t allowed to take off. Hours pass, and everyone says, “Screw this. We want out of here.” Only they won’t let you off. You don’t like it where you are, but you can’t go anyplace else, so you make the best of the situation. Some of us have the ability to do this better than others.

We are not equal. Some of us might try really hard to do well yet not accomplish much, while others of us might not try that hard yet accomplish a great deal. This makes it impossible to judge people because how can you judge them accurately if you can’t accurately identify and quantify what they had to struggle against? You can judge what they do, but you can’t judge who they are. They can’t even judge who they are. No one owns a calculator that can tally the inherent worth of anyone. Worth is always situational. We have all both failed and succeeded.

When he was really old, my father got religion. He was forever telling me about his latest conversations with God. Oftentimes, God would tell him that he had won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I thought that, okay, when he doesn’t get the money, he’ll give up all this nonsense about God. Wrong. Dad interpreted the fact that Ed Mahon hadn’t called him to appear on The Tonight Show as a test of his faith, and believed he would get the money later. Other times, God would tell him that the people at whatever church Dad was going to at the time were “hypocrites who didn’t know God,” and that Dad was to give them hell about it. So, Dad would stand up during the service and give them hell about it. Whenever Dad stopped going to a particular church, it was a sure thing that no one was going to call and ask what had become of him.

Dad’s weirdness about religion didn’t come as much of a surprise, because I had never known him when he was sane. But, sometimes, I worry that I too might become crazy when I am really old. I try to console myself with the thought that, since I never was as crazy as he was, I probably won’t become as crazy as he became. The problem with this is that I don’t regard myself as an exemplar of sanity either. In some ways, my father was tougher than I, and in other ways he was weaker; so where does this leave me? And who will take care of me the way I took care of him?

The time will come when either I die and leave Peggy alone, or she dies and leaves me alone. Odds are that I will leave her. Either way, it’s a piss-poor way to go.

Life goes on


8:30 a.m. I could tell that Peggy hated to go to work much worse than usual this morning, because she complained about it much less. Christmas is special to her, and she so recently lost her mother.

I cleaned house yesterday so little needs doing today. Peggy asked for a light supper, and I have no social plans. I worried that someone would invite me to dinner, but few people know I’m alone.

Christmas would ordinarily be an easy day in Labor and Delivery because of the lack of elective C-sections. Yet, there were nine births during Peggy’s shift yesterday, and she took it as a bad omen.

Peggy’s distaste for her job might be easier for me if I didn’t have it so good myself. Of course, good is a relative term. What I mean is that I have no big remodeling projects left, so my chores consist entirely of housework, yardwork, shopping, and other repetitious activities. Since there are only two of us, I worry that I’m not doing my share. Peggy works thirty hours a week and spends another two hours commuting; how many do I work? I really don’t know. It’s hard to count work that is done a little here and a little there.

I would guess that, however tired of her job Peggy is, I’m equally tired of mine. The best part of housework is that I don’t have to travel to do it, and I don’t have to get along with other people. The bad part is that it’s mind numbing. I would even say spirit killing. We own so much more than we need. This is not an opinion shared by Peggy.

The bad part of Peggy’s work is the unremitting stress, and the fact that everything has to be charted umpteen times on computerized forms that are never designed by the people who actually use them. She thrives to an extent on the adrenalin, but the forms (and what they represent) have turned her against nursing, which has become an ounce of patient care and a pound of covering everyone’s legal ass.

Peggy’s father didn’t decorate for Christmas. I would guess that a lot of widowers don’t, but that most widows do. Peggy said that most men probably wouldn’t decorate while their wives were alive if it was up to them. Probably, but that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it.

On December 19h, we celebrated our 37th anniversary. The Episcopal priest who performed the ceremony warned us that every wedding he ever performed during Advent ended in divorce. That doesn’t seem likely in our case, but nothing should be taken for granted. After all, there was the woman who divorced her husband after sixty years. When a reporter asked why she did it, she replied, “Enough is enough.”

Behold my powerful deeds


As I arrived at the physical therapist’s, a man my age was leaving. As I left, another man my age was arriving. The three of us are in one of life’s predictable passageways. For most of my adult life, I regarded age-related disability as a personal failing, and thought I could avoid it if I ate right and exercised. Now I see that the body wears out no matter what. Even so, I remain an exemplary man, an inspiration to all who know me. To wit:

I drink my liquor straight.

I use six times the coffee grounds of an ordinary mortal.

I eat habaneros with every meal (habaneros being 44 times hotter than jalapenos).

I pee into the wind, and the wind flees before my mighty torrent.

Regarding these things, I say to my wife: “Behold, wife, your man’s powerful deeds and confess that he walks the earth a man among men, the terror of babies and the savior of tyrants.

My wife says back to me: “Forsooth, husband, I do behold my man’s powerful deeds, and I do confess that his few surviving taste buds packed their little suitcases and moved far away; furthermore, his shoes smell like urine.”

So much for the intellectual equality of women.

Trying to communicate about the sacred when beliefs are in conflict



To my surprise, Lynn answered my letter of November 28, regarding her “If You Don’t Believe in God, then Sit Down and Shut-up” forward. Here is her response, followed by my answer.

Hi,

I received your post some days ago but didn't want to send just some flippant response since you obviously spent some time composing your message.

Of course your points are very valid that along the way in history many people in the minority had to speak up in order to be heard and to direct change. In all the instances you list, the minority was suffering great injustices--personal and physical harm, not to mention fear. No one would dispute that.

At least for me, the point of the original post was that the voice of the American majority is being silenced because a few in the minority are offended. I read the article to point to the cases where law suits have been filed against school prayer (which may or may not be valid--I don't think it should be shoved down anyone's throat but if you want to pray, man, you're going to find a way to do it so why can't we all join in? If you don't want to you do what my nephew does when he attends Catholic church and doesn't kneel, sit in the pew and let others pray on their knees. It's called respect.) Other suits have been filed against public display of the ten commandments, which are the cornerstone of our laws. Why can't we put them on the courthouse wall? I personally don't think the founding fathers meant that religion and government should be totally separate. What I think they meant was that the government couldn't force you to attend a particular church or church at all if you didn't want to. However, I don't think they meant that you could say “Because I don't like this then the MAJORITY has to stop.” I don't believe in celebrating Jewish or Muslim holidays but I think they have a right to celebrate them.

Here’s the deal. I teach in a public school, and I can't teach the true meaning of Christmas without it being in the context of Christmas around the world! Should one of Christianity’s most sacred holidays be reduced to Santa Claus and sugar cookies? And don’t even think about Easter and its true meaning. Stick to bunnies and eggs and everything’s ok.

We spend time learning about Kwanza and Hanukkah and Ramadan and Eid, which is valuable to our culture exchange. This, too, is called respect. It helps us know where others are coming from. Why not the same treatment toward Christian holidays and literature? If we're all going to “just get along” then we should all take part in learning about each other.

I’m not sure why it is that lately the “minority” is offended by Christian doctrine that has been a part of this country since its inception. If it has worked this long (“in God we trust” on our money; “one nation under God” in our pledge; the Ten Commandments in public) why is it all of a sudden politically correct to stand against those things? Who does this hurt? We aren’t talking slavery or Nazism or genocide here. We are talking about retaining a core value system that used to mean something in America.

So, perhaps telling them to sit down and shut up is harsh. Yet, that is exactly what Christians are being told to do. Are you saying that it is our turn? Are you saying that, by demanding that our Christian heritage keep its place in our society we are somehow creating an injustice for those who don't believe?

Lynn


Dear Lynn,

I am honored by the time you put into presenting your thoughts. I had much rather hear from someone who respectfully challenges me to think than from someone who merely echoes my opinions. I will take the liberty of responding somewhat. I don't know if you are interested in hearing more of my thoughts on the subject, so no reply is anticipated, although one would be welcomed.

“…the ten commandments, which are the cornerstone of our laws.”

The first four of the Ten Commandments concern our relationship with God, yet God was not mentioned in the Constitution (despite tremendous pressure to do so) because the goal was a secular government. Of the other six commandments—the ones that relate to our relationships with one another—the Israelites didn’t need to be told that murder, theft, lying, greed, adultery, and contempt for one’s parents, harmed the social order because people everywhere already knew this.

“I don’t think they [the founding fathers] meant that you could say, “Because I don’t like this then the MAJORITY has to stop.’”

Are you saying that you would accept without protest the removal of every mention of God from money, public buildings, legislative prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance, and so forth if that was what the majority wanted? While I agree with you that attempts to accomplish such an end often seem frivolous and unnecessarily divisive, I feel the same way about attempts to make such references more widespread.

“I teach in a public school, and I can’t teach the true meaning of Christmas without it being in the context of Christmas around the world!’”

Almost every culture has created holidays that coincide with the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and our present push toward political correctness and multiculturalism has made such subjects very difficult for teachers. I too get tired of the turmoil. Fire stations here in Eugene can no longer have Christmas trees because a Wiccan complained that they are Christian symbols that remind her of witch burnings.

“I’m not sure why it is that lately the ‘minority’ is offended by Christian doctrine that has been a part of this country since its inception. If it has worked this long (‘in God we trust’ on our money; ‘one nation under God’ in our pledge; the Ten Commandments in public) why is it all of a sudden politically correct to stand against those things?”

“In God We Trust” first appeared on coins in 1864 and on paper money in 1957. It didn’t appear on the flags of Georgia and Florida or on the license plates of Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio until THIS century. “One nation under God” was also a latecomer, not appearing in the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954.

Both believers and nonbelievers have always protested these slogans (Teddy Roosevelt wrote, “[It is] my very firm conviction that to put such a motto on coins…does positive harm, and is in effect irreverence, which comes dangerously close to sacrilege... it seems to me eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps, or in advertisements.” –What would he say about putting God on a muddy old car tag?!) Yet, even if no one had protested religious references 100 years ago, why would that preclude a person’s right to protest them today?

“…perhaps telling them to sit down and shut up is harsh. Yet, that is exactly what Christians are being told to do. Are you saying that it is our turn?”

No. I was instead reacting to the implied demand that anyone be denied freedom of speech. I don’t feel strongly about the issue itself one way or the other since I see it as symbolic rather than substantive. You obviously see it as substantive, as do those who bring suit against such references.

Now for a bit of a footnote. I belong to the Masons and the IOOF. Both lodges require a belief in God, but they don’t define what God is. I define God as the awe that I feel toward numerous things including nature, art, and music. I furthermore define God as existing in the intimacy I share with other people (and even animals) and in such virtues as compassion and courage. To many of my fellow lodge members, I would be an atheist, yet I do not regard myself as an atheist because my “spirituality” is of supreme importance to me. Yours is of supreme importance to you, and I envy you the comfort that your belief in a benevolent God and in an eternal heaven must bring. You believe that, in the end, all things will go according to a divine plan, and I do not.

My lodges don’t, so far as I know, say why a belief in God is essential. I’m sure one reason is that the word God is often mentioned in our rituals. I have no problem with this. In fact, I very much enjoy religious observances and, for several years served as chaplain in one of my lodges. Do I believe then that some powerful being heard the prayers I led? No, but I do believe that lodge prayers are a way of affirming our values and bonding us together. If we had a member who said, “Hell no, I’m not going to take part in praying and, in fact, I’m going to try to put an end to it,” that unity would be disrupted. For my part, I would wonder why he joined in the first place and why he was making such a big deal out of such a small thing since he would have the same freedom we all have to define God. But lodges are private institutions that belong only to their members; the government belongs to us all.

I suspect that my lodges also require a belief in God for another reason, and to that one I would object strenuously. I suspect that our founders felt that a belief in a supernatural lawgiver was essential to morality, and that it never occurred to them that people such as myself who have no such belief would join. I would say to them that we don’t need God to tell us that it is wrong to rape, steal, or murder, and I would even suggest that, if a divine voice should thunder from the heavens telling us that these things were okay after all, that voice would be wrong.

I see no positive connection between a belief in a supernatural lawgiver and morality, although—as with the Ten Commandments—moral precepts are often put into the mouth of a deity in an attempt to give them more weight. It is my observation that this is more likely to lead to evil than to good. Moslems are notable today for doing dreadful things in the name of their deity, but for hundreds of years both Christians and Israelis behaved just as badly. If the evil of one exceeded that of the other, it was not because the one was more vicious but because it found more people to oppress.

It is commonly said that these religions were not to blame for the evil done in their name. I deny this totally for I have read the Bible, and I know very well what vile words it puts into the mouth of God. It was one such passage that, at age twelve, set me on a road that led away from Christianity. Moses, at God’s command, has sent the Israelites to annihilate one of the many tribes that already occupied the land that God “gave” the Jews. Utter destruction, even down to the animals, was the rule during such attacks, but here God made an exception:

"Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Numbers 31: 17-18)


And with this cheery verse, I will leave you for now. Again, I thank you for your reply. Even though we disagree in many ways, I am honored to hear your thoughts.

Still dead, I should think

Today, I took the dogs biking; visited a sick neighbor in the hospital; got another neighbor to take me to pick up my computer (Peggy had the van); and went to appointments with two doctors and a physical therapist. Tonight, one of my three lodges holds its biweekly meeting. I had rather stay home and rest, but I feel duty bound to go, it being a small lodge and me being an officer.

I haven’t written about my health issues lately. When I last wrote, I said that my fifth cervical vertebra is not malignant. That’s the good news; the bad news is that it’s dead (osteonecrotic in doctor jargon). No one knows why it is dead, but I’m supposed to have another MRI in February to see how it is doing (still dead, I should think). Now, I am having appreciable pain in another vertebra halfway down my back, and the first doctor I saw today (my internist) speculated that it too might be dead. I didn’t ask if he anticipates another biopsy based upon the results of the MRI he ordered because the answer seemed obvious. Besides, he looked so bummed on my behalf that I didn’t want to make things harder for him than they already are. As silly as this sounds, there is some truth to it.

I told the internist that my shoulders are doing well enough that I would like to give physical therapy a new try with a new therapist. He wrote out an order, and I saw Chris four hours later on a cancellation. He spent a solid hour testing my strength, sensation, and range of motion, and predicted significant disability if things continue as they are. This came as no surprise. He wants to work on my posture and on improving strength and flexibility in my upper neck and shoulders. This came as no surprise either; I have been tackling these problems on my own.

Later, I had my second visit with an orthopedist who only performs non-surgical treatments. Since every other orthopedist I’ve ever seen loves to cut people open, I don’t know if his is a heartfelt position or if he is simply a klutz with a scalpel. I wouldn’t have even seen him following my appointment with the physical therapist if he hadn’t been expecting me. He sent me home with literature about something called prolotherapy. I don’t know much about it, but I wasn’t impressed with what he told me or with his snap diagnosis of superior-cava-something-or-other.

He was the third orthopedist I have seen about my shoulder problems, and all three gave me different diagnoses. I have also seen two neurologists, and each of them gave me a different diagnosis as well. You always hear about the importance of getting a second opinion. I’ve had five. Some were reached—and treatments accordingly prescribed—so fast that I hardly had time to sit down. My last neurologist (the one who did my neck biopsy) literally recommended a second surgery only to run from her office while I was at the scheduling desk to tell me she had changed her mind. I give her credit for having the guts to make herself look bad.

So, you might wonder, why have I seen five doctors about one problem? Do I just really like doctors and want to support them financially as best I can; or am I hoping for ever more prescriptions for ever stronger dope; or am I just entirely too hard to please? Well, I’ve been referred around some, and that accounts for the two neurologists. As for the orthopedists, I left one because she thought my shoulder problem was arthritis, and I didn’t believe her because my shoulders started hurting at the same time and practically overnight. I then went to second orthopedist, and he recommended surgery; so I went to the third orthopedist in hope of finding a non-surgical solution. During all this running in and out of doctor’s offices, I discovered that my backbone is falling apart.

Hence, I am here, now, today, hurting in my back, neck, and shoulders, and feeling quite drained by it all, and really not wanting to take my bike out into the cold night air to go to lodge… I wish I could believe there is going to be a happy end to it all, but I don’t. At least not at the moment, although I keep plugging away as best I can, there being nothing else I can do.

If you don't believe in God, then "Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!"

Peggy’s cousin, Lynn, is a practicing Catholics and the mother of a serviceman who recently returned from Afghanistan. She often forwards ultra-conservative e-mails to me. I don’t like getting these emails because they argue from authority or pander to emotion, yet I don’t want to offend Lynn by asking her to not send them. Instead, I try to dialogue with her. Perhaps, my belief that I am her intellectual superior shows and discourages her from responding, or maybe she is like most people and simply wants to have her beliefs affirmed rather than challenged. In any event, my attempts at communication don’t appear useful.

I will only share the conclusion of Lynn’s last email. Preceding the conclusion was a list of public buildings on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed, quotations by three of the Founding Fathers in support of religion, a mention of religious references on money and in the Pledge of Allegiance, and a reference to the fact that Congress pays someone to open each session with prayer. Following Lynn’s conclusion is my response. Before I wrote it, I asked her if she would be willing to dialogue, and she implied that she would. A month has passed, and I haven’t heard from her.

…“It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, it is very hard to understand why there is such a mess about having the Ten Commandments on display or ‘In God We Trust’ on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Why don't we just tell the other 14% to Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!”

Dear Lynn,

The conclusion of the argument you offer is that, on this issue at least, people who hold a minority opinion should “Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!” in deference to the majority. To begin with, did all those Americans who died for freedom of speech only die so that the majority could speak freely? Would not such a belief abolish any concept of equality before the law? And how about those Christians who were in the minority in their own eras and areas, do you believe they too should have kept silent in deference to the majority? If they had, how would you have Christianity?

Indeed, how could society advance if no one dared oppose the majority? The majority of Americans once supported slavery and the theft of Indian lands. More recently, the majority of Americans opposed equality for women and black people. By the free exchange of ideas, people can grow; without such freedom, society stagnates. Such was the situation in the Dark Ages, and such is it today in many Moslem lands.

You can pull out many quotes to support religion, but quotes can be pulled out to support pretty much any view. For instance, Jefferson also wrote, “In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.” What matters is not what any given individual said, but what the founding documents say. Even so, I would be astounded if you can point to any quotes by any of these men to support your belief that the minority should “Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!” Most of our forbearers opposed the American Revolution, and this can only mean that the war that won our independence was conducted by the minority.

Last, but certainly not least, what do you propose to do with those in the minority who insist on speaking after they’ve been told to “Sit Down and SHUT UP!!!”? It is only by the visible presence of dissent that we know our democracy is working.

Assassinations and memories of the homeland



John Kennedy was killed 45 years ago today. I was 14 and skipping school in Brookhaven, Mississippi, when it happened. My mother was watching “As the World Turns” in the den, and I was in the bathroom on the pot because, after all, everybody has got to be someplace. The cabinet next to me was full of Dad’s colognes that he never wore but that I gave him every Christmas anyway. I was removing these colognes one at a time and smelling them when I heard, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The president of the United States has been shot…”

I didn’t think Kennedy would die because he was rich, and I believed money could fix anything. I also knew that Dallas was near the desert, and I thought the desert had magical powers that could save his life if they would only take him there. I had never been in a desert, but I had seen a lot of them on cowboy movies and TV shows. People would die on these shows only to appear later on other shows. Maybe that’s why I thought the desert had special powers. I’m just guessing.

At school the next day, people were happy about the killing. A girl at a school in nearby McComb asked to be excused to mourn, but the principal wouldn’t excuse her so she stayed home anyway and got zeros in all her classes. Her family was eventually run out of town for their liberal ideas. They moved to Jackson, but were run out of there too. Their last name was Heffner, and someone wrote a book about them.

I was asleep when Robert Kennedy was killed. I don’t remember what I was doing the next day when I heard about it.

I was practicing for a college play when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. Whitworth was a small Methodist school (also in Mississippi), and a lot of the students were preparing for the ministry or missionary work. When someone came into the auditorium and told us that King had been shot, most people cheered. The teacher, who was from Ohio, just smiled. Then we went on with our rehearsal. I was shocked by the cheering (mostly because it was done by ministerial students), but I didn’t think much about it after it happened.

To give more context…during the 1960s, white people in Mississippi believed themselves and their way of life to be under siege by “outside agitators” (which was true) and despised and reviled by the rest of the world (which was mostly true), a world that couldn’t begin to understand the necessity of enforcing racial separatism in order to avoid a mongrelized race that would incur the wrath of God and bring an end to civilization. This point of view made a lot of Southerners rigid if not dangerous. I’m glad I grew up in that place and time and saw all the things I did. Of course, if I had been as rich as the Kennedys and educated at Harvard, that would have been okay too.

Negroes, as they were called, had separate schools, motels, and restaurants. They also had separate restrooms and water fountains in some places, but in most places, they had to do without. Some white cafes served black patrons through a side window, but most didn’t serve them at all. Blacks and whites didn’t socialize in one another’s houses, and a black person was expected to knock at the back door if he needed to talk to a white person at home. Young and middle aged black people were called by their first names; elderly blacks were called Uncle or Aunt. Blacks were expected to take their hats off when talking to whites, and to move aside when passing a white on the sidewalk. The “separate but equal” schools of which white Southerners boasted didn’t exist, and public libraries and swimming pools were for whites only. The black part of Brookhaven, which was called Little Egypt, had narrow streets and no sidewalks. Some of the streets weren’t paved. Blacks couldn’t even be buried alongside whites.

Separatist customs were taken so seriously that no deviation was tolerated. Imagine the outrage of bystanders today if two people took off their clothes and started having sex on the sidewalk in broad daylight, and you will understand how white Southerners would have felt had they seen a black person knocking on a white person’s front door or drinking from a whites only water fountain. A teenage boy was beaten, shot, and thrown in a river with a mill wheel tied to his neck for whistling at a white woman, and my father watched two black men being fatally drug behind cars for being drunk and disorderly in the white part of town.

Even though I lived in Mississippi for all of my first 36 years, I was often asked where I was from. My Southern accent was obvious to people from other places, but there was something about my manner of speaking that set me apart in my native state. This and my ambivalence about Southern values made me feel like an outsider from my early teens. When I finally left the South, I imagined that living among “Northern” liberals in Oregon would feel like coming home, but I discovered that a great many people here stereotyped me as being straight out of “Deliverance.” I found it quite impossible to convince people that I wasn’t stupid and bigoted, especially when they were acting that way themselves based upon nothing more substantial than my accent.

When I was a boy, I lived among people who were proud of their prejudice (Hell, yeah, I hate niggers!”), but when I came to Oregon, I found myself among people who falsely boasted that they had no prejudices. The few black people I have met in Oregon echo my observation, but instead of being scorned by white liberals, they are solicited to be their token black friends. I don’t doubt but what such weirdness is partly why there is an exodus of black people back to the South. Instead of being the most segregated part of America, the South has become the most integrated, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Mississippi where blacks are in the majority. Most weeks, I don’t even see a black person here in Oregon.

Fun at the Chevy dealership


Peggy and I took the van to the Chevy dealership yesterday for an oil change and a grease job. Afterwards, we went to eat. Before I went into the restaurant, I crawled under the van to be sure everything had been done properly. It had not. I could tell this because the grease fittings were still covered with road scum.

After our meal, we took the van back to the shop. The service rep, the mechanic, the shop foreman, Peggy, the dogs, and I, all gathered beneath it (this would be after it was lifted into the air). There was no denying that the work hadn’t been done. “Why wasn’t it greased?” Peggy asked. I hadn’t planned to inquire because I knew there was no good reason, and I didn’t want to cause more embarrassment than necessary. There followed an awkward moment during which everyone pretended they hadn’t heard anything. Peggy persisted. “Did you guys not hear me? I asked why the van wasn’t greased.”

After another awkward silence, the mechanic said he had been distracted by his difficulty in removing the air filter. Well, this didn’t make much sense because the air filter is under the hood, and the grease fittings are under the van, so if you’re working on one, you’re nowhere near the other, but Peggy isn’t up on her automotive topography, and I wasn’t going to tell her. I had noticed that the shop foreman was having to show the “mechanic” where the grease fittings were located, so I had pretty much settled on the theory that the “mechanic” was a new hire who didn’t know his job any too well. After all, a lot of new cars don’t even have grease fittings.

When the job was done, I waited to see what the service rep was going to offer us to make up for our time and trouble. When all he extended was his “sincerest apology,” I asked for a free lube and oil change next time. The dealership manager was consulted, and he agreed to this, but he took his own sweet time in signing a form authorizing the work. Meanwhile the service rep and I talked. He told me about his history in the automotive business (he started in his father’s radiator shop at age eleven, and became a service rep ten years ago following a back injury that made him unable to be a mechanic); and I told him that I’ve had two cancer scares this year, so I’m determined to teach Peggy as much as I can about things she would need to know if she were alone—things like checking up on other people’s work, especially the kinds of work that those people wouldn’t expect her to check up on. This is no easy task, because Peggy doesn’t want to think about being alone.

Bonnie and Clyde


Recent reading. Lots of books. Always lots of books. One about an elderly couple who were the first to walk across the Gobi Desert. Another by a shrink about his childhood. A third by a woman with breast cancer. A fourth by a druggie about his misadventures. Several about alternative medicine. Most notably, a scholarly work about Bonnie and Clyde. Scholarly…Bonnie and Clyde? Sounds oxymoronic, but the author made them and their era his life’s work.

My father was born in 1909, the year before Clyde Barrow. He said he saw Clyde in a bar once, and maybe he did since they covered the same territory and both did their share of bar hopping. Dad also said that the 1930s was his favorite decade. Only when I became old enough to envision the Great Depression did I catch the irony. But he was a young man then. He worked as a carpenter, painter, and merchant seaman. He rode freights, ran bootleg, lived with a lot of women, and got into a lot of fights. He used to show me where the honky tonks stood, and tell me about the people he fought in them. He seemed nostalgic. “Dad, did you like fighting?” “Yeah, I always enjoyed it.” He got into his last fight when he was 75 (he attacked two highway patrolmen with his walking stick), although he did get mad at me one day when he was 84, and go skulking about the house for a while with a butcher knife.

I used to watch The Untouchables on TV. It was mostly set in the ‘20s but some of it in the ‘30s, and it didn’t take much to envision my father back then. I had pictures of him in cocky poses wearing the same kind of clothes and standing by the same kind of cars. When the movie about Bonnie and Clyde came out in 1967, I took Dad to see it. It was one of only two movies that we watched together. Dad thought Bonnie and Clyde got a raw deal. A lot of people did, which was probably why 20,000 people attended Bonnie’s funeral. Everyone hated banks during the Depression, so there was a lot of sympathy for people who robbed them. When Dillinger was killed on a Chicago street, bystanders thronged to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood.

The real life Bonnie and Clyde were even more violent than the movie versions and died even younger. Bonnie was 23; Clyde was 24. Last night, I read about their Joplin, Missouri, shootout. Two cops were killed and three outlaws wounded. The account got to me, especially the part about the dog Snowball that ran away while the machine guns rattled. It wouldn’t have hit me so hard if what had happened in the weeks before the shootout hadn’t been so ordinary and even light-hearted. The movie was that way too. It wasn’t just the graphic violence that gave the censors fits, it was the interweaving of violence with humor and tenderness. But that’s how Bonnie and Clyde lived; to some extent, it’s how we all live, only instead of being dropped by gunfire, we die from cancer and car crashes.

Peggy objects to any attempt to humanize criminals. She doesn’t want to know that Clyde liked hot chocolate with marshmallows, or that Blanche enjoyed putting together puzzles, or that Bonnie wrote poetry, or that Buck taught Snowball to stand up in the back seat of the car and put her paws on his shoulders, or that W.D. joined the gang because he was a kid in need of a family. I’m mostly that way too, but it’s easier, somehow, to humanize the outlaws of old than the ones who just knocked over the local Dairy Mart.

Is it better to be like Peggy and not even try to see the good in bad people? I guess that depends upon what you want to do with them. If you want to hang them from the nearest tree, it’s probably better to dismiss them as monsters. But if you want to think of them as people who might, in different circumstances, have done a lot of good with their lives, it probably isn’t. I don’t know which way is right. Are we too soft on criminals or too severe? I mostly think we are too soft, but I also think that the biggest difference between good people and bad people is how they were brought up. Without Peggy’s softening influence, I would have been capable of some bad things, but that wouldn’t mean there was no good in me. Even Hitler was kind to his dogs. What I see in such behavior is something akin to a seed that might have blossomed into a beautiful flower under different circumstances. We are all born with the capacity for good.

I awakened despondent at 3:00 a.m. last night, so overcome was I by the tragedy of Bonnie and Clyde, and their victims. It’s as if all that suffering and waste had formed into a dense black ball and lay heavy on my chest. I mostly thought about their many months on the run, and I reflected upon what it must be like to never eat in peace or lie down without wondering if you will be awakened by someone shooting at you. The following is from the report of the posse that killed them. It’s one of the reasons why my father hated cops so terrifically that he said any day a cop was killed was a happy day for him.

“Each of us six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols. We opened fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the car got even with us. Then we used shotguns ... There was smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire. After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren’t taking any chances.”

Computer woes, First Christian

My computer has been in the shop for a week. Twice, I complained about the slow service and was told by different techs that I could go to the front of the line for $100. When I finally picked my computer up yesterday, I raised hell about this to the manager, telling her that she has taken the sort of unscrupulous act that rogue employees have always been guilty of and elevated it to company policy. She admitted that it’s a shameful practice, but then contradicted herself by saying it’s only for businesses that can’t do without a computer. I told her that of the two employees who enthusiastically offered to bump me to the front of the line, neither asked if I owned a business. Eager to get me off her back, and not knowing that I had just gotten my computer, she offered to service it immediately at no extra charge. A hundred dollars is a hundred dollars, I suppose, and hers is the only Mac store in town. She’s well known for her role in the Catholic Church, but I refrained from asking if her lack of integrity conflicts with her religiosity.

I attended First Christian this week and enjoyed it very much. The building is old, large, and corridorous, so I didn’t find the Sunday School class I was looking for, but wandered instead into a group of twenty that offered hot coffee and a discussion about the four versions of God found in the Pentateuch. No conservative church would sponsor such a class.

I debated leaving before the service, but was glad I stayed. The sermon was about inclusiveness, and just as the minister was saying that the church is obligated to welcome everyone, no matter how they are dressed, two women walked in, one in an open vest with no blouse and the other in chaps with no pants. They sat down quietly, but the remainder of the homily was pretty much lost on the congregation. The preacher later said that, despite rumors to the contrary, he doesn’t pay people to illustrate his sermons.

I took communion, stayed for coffee and dessert, and was even invited out to eat by a group that dines together every Sunday. If I had not been feeling overly socialized and overly full of cake, I would have gone. For all of my life prior to Zoloft, even the social expenditure that I had already made would have been a strain, yet I haven’t taken Zoloft in years. Perhaps, I stayed on it long enough that the me on Zoloft simply became the me off Zoloft.

Biopsy results

It might have made for more interesting writing if I had cancer, but I don’t. The doctors don’t know what I have. They suggested that I have a follow-up CAT scan in three months to learn if C-5 has done anything else weird. Peggy thinks it is a space alien; it does look other-worldly.

My surgery was at the huge new hospital, and the operating room was also right out of science fiction. For one thing, I counted five large screen, flat panel televisions from where I lay with my throat exposed and my head in a plastic doughnut. On each of those screens was an inside view of my neck, and everything in my neck was in some shade of gray; everything that is except for C-5, which was a brilliant white. It was weird, I tell you, to lie there with these enormous C-5s staring down at me from every angle, and me knowing that a team of strangers in masks was about to stand in the glare of two huge round spotlights; press a razor-sharp knife to my throat; and cause my blood to flow up my neck, down either side, and even into my ears and hair (Peggy did wash blood from my hair).

Yesterday, the surgeon went ahead and sent me to the scheduling clerk to set a date for my next operation, one to unpinch the nerve that makes my right arm tingle. She said she doesn’t think I need shoulder surgery, that this neck surgery will eliminate my shoulder pain. My last neurologist and my orthopedist think differently, but it’s hard to argue with a woman who just cut from the front of my throat all the way to my backbone and made it almost as painless as opening a bag of tortilla chips.

Her assistant walked to the desk with me, and I happened to say something on the way about the pain in my left shoulder. He disappeared and a moment later reappeared with the surgeon. “You have pain in both shoulders?” “Yes, the pain is in both shoulders, but the tingling is only on the right.” I didn’t remind her that she already knew this. “Then that’s a whole other and more drastic surgery, so I want to try a series of steroid shots first. They give some people relief for years.” Okay. Cancel second surgery. Schedule first steroid shot. This is the kind of weirdness that I run into all the time with doctors. They spend almost no time with you, don’t listen to half of what you say, and then send you off for risky tests and procedures.

I back the van out of the garage for Peggy when she goes to work. I do this because it is almost wider than the garage door and scary for her to back out. Today (Friday) was her first day back at work. The van’s CD player took up where it left off on Monday when she brought me home from the hospital. I was puking IV fluids at the time, so the relaxing New Age music struck a different chord this morning.

Peggy and I felt pretty good when we left the doctor’s office on our bikes. Then she remembered a paper she had meant to bring (a form she needed the doctor to sign regarding the days she took off from work). I could tell she was really mad at herself for forgetting it. “Peggy, we just found out that I don’t have cancer. Why are you so bummed about a damn form?” A short while later, my own exhilaration wore off, and all I felt was enormously tired and even a little empty. Once we got home, we had all these phone calls to make to people who were awaiting my biopsy results, and I simply wasn’t going to make them, because I knew everyone would be happy and relieved, and that they would expect me to be happy and relieved too. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel these things; it was just that I was drained of all energy. Within minutes, I had gone from planning a celebratory meal out to wondering if I could stay awake long enough to eat a salmon burger at home.

I can best explain my feelings this way. Imagine that you’re crossing the street a little distracted—listening to your iPod maybe—when all of a sudden an 18-wheeler comes barreling down on you with its air horn blowing, its brakes screaming, and misses you by six inches, the turbulence alone almost knocking you to the ground. Would you feel like going out to celebrate the fact that you were almost, but not quite, killed?

I was surprised by my ennui because I had been relaxed at the surgeon’s office. I had two really distressing events this week, both of which I had known about and dreaded for days. The first was having my throat cut, and the second was getting my biopsy results. Yet, I went to both of these events relaxed. I’ll try to explain. A stressful event is made such by the nature of the event itself, but also by our emotional resistance to the event. In the case of my two events; I knew that they were going to happen, that there was no rational way I could stop them from happening, and that I might as well surrender myself to them, thereby giving them permission to happen. I transformed myself into clay, into water, into a complete pacifist; and this enabled me to approach these formerly dreaded experiences with disinterested curiosity.

So why then, when I had felt relaxed at the surgeon’s, did I feel so tired afterwards? Had I not really been relaxed after all, but had only fooled myself into thinking I was relaxed? These were unsettling questions, and I simply didn’t have the emotional energy to entertain them. Instead, I reminded myself that I had survived a very hard week that had come on the heels of many very hard months; that I had behaved bravely; and that I have earned the right to forgive myself for not being a perfect human being. Being human is a devastating proposition because it also means being flawed. My doctors are flawed; my nurses at Sacred Heart were flawed; I too am flawed; and I forgive us all. May God help us all, and may God save us all because we most certainly cannot save ourselves.

Awaiting a possible death sentence

Twenty-three hours and ten minutes from now, I will be told whether I have metastatic cancer. That moment will either be the beginning of a new life (a life that will include an early death) or it will be, more or less, a continuation of my old life.

Once is how many times I have seen the surgeon who will carry the news (the second time I was unconscious). How might I prepare for hearing my death sentence from the lips of a stranger, a woman stranger? Getting through that moment seems, in this moment, like the hardest thing I will ever have to endure. Mostly, I don’t want to cry. Silly at this might seem, I am, after all, a man, and I possess a man’s vanity.

Along with terror, I feel a strange exhilaration, as if I had bet my life savings on the roll of a roulette wheel. Sure, I could lose big, but I could also win big, and what bigger prize to win than my life?

Post surgical adventures

I don’t have biopsy results. The surgeon said she would replace the bone while I was on the table if the lab could tell right away that it was malignant, but the lab couldn’ tell right away. No news is good news, I suppose—or at least it’s not bad news (I’m too tired and drugged to know which). I am to learn if I have cancer at 3:00 Thursday.

I feel much better than expected, but that could be because of the Percocet. I observed after past surgeries that I would feel good enough that I would think I didn’t need painkillers, only to have the pain return with a vengeance when I stopped them. It’s definitely harder to beat pain back down than it is to keep it down in the first place. Still, I will replace my next Percocet with a Vicodin and see what happens.

I was in excruciating and ever worsening pain yesterday after being intubated, and I got no relief even after being given the highest dosages allowed of at least a half dozen painkillers. One of the funny things about painkillers is that they can knock-you-on-your-ass if your pain level is within their ability to handle, but if it’s beyond what they can handle, you can’t even tell you’ve taken anything.

The nurses were at a loss to understand my pain since it was well beyond what most people experience. They just knew that my oxygen level was below ninety, and that I was reporting intolerable pain even after having taken everything they had to give. They wouldn’t discharge me, yet they couldn’t help me, and they wouldn’t let me use the one device with which I thought I could help myself—my CPAP. They didn’t appear to know much about the machine, but their main objection was that they would have to call the hospital electrician to inspect it, and that this was too much of a bother for something they had no confidence in anyway. When I degenerated to the point of no longer being able to speak (due to the pain and lack of oxygen), they called the electrician.

He arrived in five minutes; picked up the unplugged CPAP; examined it for five seconds; said, “Looks okay to me;” and put an orange sticker on it. Ah, the security that comes from a professional safety inspection. With my first breath, I felt significant relief, and my oxygen saturation soon jumped from eighty-eight to ninety-nine. My theory is that a swollen trachea caused the pain. By opening my trachea with positive air pressure, the CPAP both relieved the pain and allowed the passage of air. Since a CPAP’s normal use is for sleep apnea, I can understand why the nurses didn’t believe it would help a patient who was awake, yet they could have spared me hours of misery if only they had called the electrician sooner.

The morning of surgery

The time is 4:20 a.m. I have to be at the hospital at 5:45. I am calm. What will be, will be, and I am prepared to face it with dignity.

People with their throats cut generally look dead; my first death

I never saw anyone with their throat cut but what they looked the worse for wear; in fact, they looked dead and they didn’t die smiling either. Judy (that would be Doctor Judy) says not to worry, that she cuts two and three throats a week sometimes. What I want to know is how she finds that many people who (a) need their throats cut and (b) are willing to let someone do it.

I had my first serious surgery about eight years ago. It was such a new and unusual procedure that I had to drive 110 miles to the Oregon Health Sciences University to see the one doctor in Oregon who knew how to do it. Dr. Hwang was so young, and little, and smart, and cute—not to mention caring—that I would have adopted him in a heartbeat. He suggested that I have the surgery in two parts to minimize the risk, but I wanted it ASAP, and I had no qualms about trusting him to do it up right. The morning he was to operate, the anesthesiologist came in first (as they always do), and offered to give me a little something for anxiety. I told him I wasn’t the least bit anxious—I was just enthusiastic. He thought I was putting him on, and we got into an argument about whether I was anxious. When he saw that he couldn’t win that one, he left. I thought he might hold it against me, but he and Hwang both did bang up jobs in surgery and, what with being awake but stoned out of my gourd, I enthused all over the place about what great doctors they were.

God, but I miss those days when trust was a given and surrender came easily. By now I know the routine well—the pre-dawn drive to the hospital, the forms to sign, the wrist-bracelet, the humiliating gown, the hasty “vitals,” the endless questions from the endless procession of nurses about why I am there and when I last ate, Peggy’s attempt at casualness, the anesthesiologist’s visit, the trip to the bathroom with a nurse carrying my IV, the stretcher ride to the holding area with the lights passing overhead and the curious strangers looking down at me, the inevitable crashes at corners, and finally into surgery. There, the many people in masks and gowns, the perfunctory courtesy, the move from the stretcher to the operating table, my diseased fingers turning white from the cold, my arms being stretched to either side like the crucified Jesus, the additional warm blankets that are never enough, feeling helpless and exposed, waiting eagerly for an injection of happy juice. Then recovery. I will have stayed awake for surgery if possible, so I pass the time listening to other patients moan and puke, and trying to recollect everything that happened. If the surgeon gives a shit, he comes by to tell me how it went.

Is recovery where I’ll be told if I have cancer? Probably not. I’ll be put to sleep this time, so I’ll be among the moaners and pukers. Probably Peggy will know first, and probably Peggy will be alone. Then again, maybe no one will know. The surgeon said that calcification might make an early diagnosis impossible. If this is so, and if I have cancer, it will mean a second surgery to replace the bone. Or not. I’m not going balls-to-the-wall unless I have a decent chance of survival.

I used to wonder how a doctor tells a patient he has cancer. I thought they would have learned some special words in medical school. I’ve had four doctors this year (three in October and one in January when I had hernia surgery) throw out the possibility, and I was struck by their casualness. The neurologist who brought it up in October told me over the phone. Phone calls from a doctor usually mean bad news, but I wasn’t expecting anything like what I heard. “It might be cancer, and if it is, it would have spread from someplace else—possibly the prostate. You need to see your internist about what to do next. Good bye and good luck.”

If someone who didn’t know English had tried to judge the nature of the call from the tone of the caller, he might have thought that Blockbuster was telling me I had a movie overdue. I imagined that this doctor never gave me or my problem another thought after he hung up. And why should he?

I first watched a man die when I was a fourteen-year-old ambulance attendant. The call came at 7:30 on a Sunday night, right in the middle of Mission Impossible. We found the man alone and unconscious on his partially mopped kitchen floor, and he died as we lifted him into the white Ford station wagon that passed as a Mississippi ambulance. CPR hadn’t been invented, and when I started to apply an oxygen mask, the boss laughed and told me not to waste his money.

As we drove back through town, the streetlights were still burning, the man at the filling station was still pumping gas, and people were still leaving church. I had expected the world to stop, and it hadn’t even slowed down. That was forty-five years ago. My belief that my kind was the center of the universe and the pinnacle of God’s creation also died that day.

If only I have enough time to finish editing my journals, I will be grateful. If I don’t have cancer at all, maybe my other problems won’t seem quite as bad.