My take on the issues

I regarded Trump's election as a flip of the bird at the condescension of liberalism's most prominent faces, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I also saw in it an embrace of discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, homosexuals, transsexuals, and secularists. Because I too despise Obama, Clinton, and groups such as Black Lives Matter, I sympathized, yet I regarded a vote for Trump as like setting your child's head on fire to kill the lice.

I had these thoughts today because of a chain of comments between myself and a Georgia blogger (http://rhymeswithplague.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-world-is-not-ending-today-after-all.html), a chain that ended with him observing, sadly I thought, that Atlanta has become notable for its diverse cultures and religions. He would like life even less here in Oregon's Willamette Valley, because it is one of the most liberal, and least religious, parts of the country, although this isn't to say that conservatives and Christians don't abound. I didn't know how much they abounded until the "Make America Great Again" caps and bumper stickers started appearing during Trump's election bid. Sad to say, those who publicly supported Trump risked having their property vandalized, and one local man was even assaulted by a mob. Before moving to a liberal area, I imagined that being liberal meant being tolerant. After all, their bumper stickers read, "Honor Diversity."


I suspect that the few conservatives who read this blog regard me as a liberal, and that my liberal readers are sometimes offended by my conservatism. When we like someone, we want them to fit into our tribe, and this means that we must agree with them on important concepts. The purpose of this post is to present my views on current issues. You will find that I don't fit anywhere.

Diversity. I think it breeds disharmony, so I would prefer, in the interest of harmony, to live in a land that was overwhelmingly composed of people who trace their roots to Western Europe, which is to say, people who are as much like myself as possible.

LGBTQ. I'm fine with gays--I even like gays, and, yes, I think they are different from heterosexuals in ways other than who they sleep with. Transgenders? As many of you know, my father believed himself to be a woman, but I have no idea what influence that has on my attitudes. Suffice it to say that I want homosexuals and transgender people to have equal rights in every way, but I'm personally weirded-out by transgenders in particular. 

Hispanics? I don't want people sneaking into my country, although those who were brought here as children didn't sneak in, so they deserve special consideration. I especially resent the liberal equation of people who swim the Rio Grande with those who spend months or years working to gain legal citizenship. No country can maintain its identity if has open borders.

Women's rights?  I'm reticent about women going into professions that require explosive strength, and I'm especially leery of them going into combat, but I think that if we're going to have equality, it needs to be all or nothing, so I can hardly oppose women doing anything they want to do as long as they can pass the same tests as men. 

Abortion? I believe that people who equate a fetus with a human being are full of it, and so it is that I support the freedom to choose. While abortion is regrettable, I think it beats the alternative, which is to force the very women who are the least equipped to care for a child to either bear children or to face the possibility of death from botched abortions, while allowing women of means to spend whatever it takes to get a safe abortion. When my teenage sister got pregnant fifty years ago, she flew from Mississippi, where abortion was a felony, to Colorado where it was legal. The trip put a strain on my parents' finances, but if there was ever a young girl who would have been a parental disaster, my sister was that girl, which means that the responsibility for parenting would have fallen to my already overwrought parents. I have another family member who raised not one but two of her unwed daughter's children after her daughter walked away. This is the price of illegal abortion. The children who are so parented are rarely well-parented, and the responsibility for their care is rarely paid for by those who would outlaw abortion. In fact, the very people who most vigorously oppose abortion also stand in vigorous opposition to government support for poor families.

Religion? If, as religious people claim, love was their guiding principal and their kingdom really wasn't of this world, no one would oppose them, but the sad truth is that religion perpetually wars against freedom and perpetually supports factionalism. Thanks to the power of religion, one-third of the world's nations have blasphemy laws, the penalties for which range from a fine (in Western Europe) to execution (in much of the Moslem world). Century in and century out, religion stands in unbroken support of hatred and intolerance. If, in the name of freedom and equality, you oppose religion's use of government to force sectarian values and practices upon the public, religious people will claim that you are persecuting them, and will take every means to silence you. As most religious people see it, there is no way but their way.

America's blacks. I don't regard the black race overall as making a positive contribution to life in America. In the sixties, their struggle was praiseworthy for its high ideals. Now, their primary struggle revolves around police shootings of black people, primarily black criminals. By making heroin dealers the poster children for their movement, groups such as Black Lives Matter cannot inspire the same public outrage against injustice that was aroused the world over by the likes of a young college student named James Meredith and a hardworking bus rider named Rosa Parks. I don't know why black Americans lag behind whites and yellows in every standard of success and well-being, but they appear to blame their failures solely upon white oppression. Since the masses of white people disagree, the accusation is a non-starter. I'm ashamed to say this because it contradicts my belief that everyone deserves a fair trial, but when I hear of a heroin dealer being shot dead in the street, I just think to myself, good riddance, no matter what his race.

Creationism. The only people who believe in creationism (re-marketed as "intelligent design") are those who regard the Biblical account of creation as scientifically accurate. They insist upon--and often succeed in--having "both sides of the controversy" taught in school, but there are no "both sides." There is instead what science can verify versus what religion accepts upon credulity, aka "faith." The difference between evolutionism and creationism is the difference between astronomy and astrology. The more credence we give to pseudoscience, the harder it will be for us to compete in a world in which science works and religion fails.

The environment. Most of America's political conservatives are Catholic or evangelical Christians who argue that their deity wouldn't have created a world that man could destroy because such a world would place the power of man above the power of God. The result of their thinking is that if humankind can't seriously harm the environment, then humankind need take no responsibility for protecting the environment. Because this is "faith-based" thinking, evidence to the contrary is irrelevant. As for non-religious people who oppose environmental protections, they fall into two camps. The first are libertarians who don't want the government telling them what to do, regardless of the consequences. The second group are capitalists who don't care how many species we drive into extinction until it gets down to animals like cows and chickens that they can make money from. They likewise don't care how many people die in droughts, super storms, firestorms, and so forth, as long as they're not among the dead, and as long as they're making money. With them, it's money first, money last, and money in the middle. Laissez-faire capitalism was made by and sustained by such people.

Gun control. I am ashamed to live in a country in which 5% of the world's population owns 50% of its guns; a country that exports millions of weapons a year to criminals and to oppressive dictatorships like Saudi Arabia; a country in which 30,000 of its own citizen die every year from gun violence, and tens of thousands more are wounded. The Las Vegas shooter only made the news because his victims were white and because he ran up the average number of people killed in a single place in a single day. The supporters of "gun rights" point to the Second Amendment to the Constitution ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"). We're talking here about a document that was written when the only guns were single shot muskets that were slow to load and relied upon relatively weak black powder. What's more, the stated goal of "the founding fathers" was to arm the citizen militias that substituted for a standing army. 

Prior to the recent mass shooting in Nevada, Congress was getting ready to pass legislation that would make it easier for people to buy silencers, not because honest citizens need silencers but because the NRA (National Rifle Association) is a white, richly-funded, physically threatening, one-issue lobby, that opposes any restrictions to gun ownership or to the types of guns that Americans can own. For example, the NRA supports the use of bullets that can penetrate police body armor; they favor selling guns to violent felons and to the criminally insane; and they hold that everyone should be able to walk the streets with guns on their hips or hidden in their clothes. They even argue that the answer to gun violence is more guns, their argument being that this will enable the good guys to whip out their guns and shoot down the bad guys before the latter can hurt anyone. Because this solution is absurd, it is my belief that the NRA simply doesn't want to admit that it values gun ownership over human life. I also believe that it only wants all of these guns so that white people can protect themselves against black people, and so they can wage war against their own government if that government tries to take away their guns. They're monomaniacs, at best, and I think it pleases them to know that black men are fourteen times more likely to be shot than are white men. 

Am I out of issues?

A book buying celebration

A work by F. Hopkinson Smith

I went to the doctor last week for my six week check-in (which was a week overdue) and was told that I’m doing better than most. I hadn’t known how worried Peggy had been because she had the misguided notion that I would worry if she told me, although I don’t remember an occasion on which I took-on her fears. Only after leaving the doctor’s did she confess that the knee’s continued swelling and heat had concerned her greatly.

Brian (the surgeon) suggested that an exercise bike might be beneficial, so we went to Sears where I spoke with a 20-year old salesman who said that, when he was fifteen, he had undergone one of the ten post painful surgeries (in terms of recovery). It was necessitated because his ribs were turning inward and would have killed him had he not had a metal plate inserted and spent a month flat on his back. Then I celebrated the good report by going to St. Vinnie’s and buying seven books. I rarely buy so many, but they had been moved from the rare book room into the main part of the store where I was able to get them for under $5 each and after that to Costco where, because I was using a cane and wearing a compression stocking, a woman who was anticipating a knee replacement approached me with many questions. But enough of all that, because I want to tell you about the seven old books I bought in the hope that, if you don’t already, you too might come to love old copies of old books.

(1) All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (1898-1970). I read this book twenty years ago, but was thinking just last week that I wanted to re-read it. The German edition appeared in January 1929, and my English edition was published in November of that same year. By its release, Little, Brown, and Company had put out seven editions (presumably, all in English) and fourteen printings. My copy is inscribed “Merry Christmas, 1929. From Mabel to Paul,” leaving me to wonder if Paul had fought in The War to End All Wars.

The store had two copies from the same printing. The other was sent to the States from war-torn Saigon, with the inscription, “Read to Understand.” The preface to the book reads: “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war.” I’ve read those words twice since I got home, and I’ve cried twice. How is it that I ever entertained the stupid, stupid belief that war makes men when the truth is that it’s more likely to break them!? I suppose it was because my culture glorifies war, war, and more war, always in the name of peace, although I suppose it’s possible that testosterone also played a part.
 
(2) Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) is best (and most infamously) known for The Calling of Dan Matthews, which is about a preacher who, like Wright himself, left the ministry to save his integrity. The book I bought today is Their Yesterdays from 1928. I first browsed this same color illustrated copy three months ago, but passed it up because it seemed too spiritual. I don’t believe in omens, yet I can’t say that finding the same copy of the same book meant nothing to me, and it’s also true that much of what he says resonates—for instance: “He had said to himself, ‘When I am twenty-one, I will be a man.’ He did not know then that twenty-one years—that indeed three times twenty-one years—cannot make a man.” I suppose it’s common for boys to pick an age at which to expect manhood. I remember that, at age seventeen, I saw a 19-year-old male mentioned in my local newspaper as “a man,” an concluded that my 19th birthday—at the latest—would be the day that I would wake up feeling different. When nothing happened, I advanced the magic number to twenty-one, and when it too failed, I looked pessimistically to thirty. At 68, I still feel like a minor fraud when I call myself a man, there being too much weight on the word for it to ever be achievable.

(3) The Workers East (1897) and (4) The Workers West (1898) were by a economist named Walter A Wyckoff (1865-1908). Wyckoff was so wealthy that his butler saw him off—in July, 1891, when he  set out walking with old clothes upon his back and without a penny in his pocket. He traveled America for eighteen months, taking day laborer jobs as he went, and writing eloquently about his experiences. This was not a rich man’s lark, but a profound effort to understand the lives of the poorest of the laboring class. One of my two copies of the set is gloriously illustrated, and the set itself had at least two previous owners. The inscription identifying the first owner reads, “Here’s to this little world of ours, which is not growing worse to women, like you, who are doing their best to make it better. V.J. from Tom S. Dec 10,1910.” The second owner was Air Transport Local 1881, IAMAW, Burlingame, CA.” Because the U.S. postal service only instituted zip codes and two-letter state abbreviations in 1963, the second listed owner must have come along decades after the first, which makes sense given that air transport would have been unknown in 1910.

(5) A 1945 edition of Richard Wright’s 1937 book Black Boy. Wright (1908-1960) was from my part of Mississippi, but, because he was black, I only heard of him after moving to Oregon and happening upon his book Native Son at St. Vinnie’s. (I also discovered Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man at St. Vinnie’s and found grim humor in the fact that, given my hitherto complete ignorance of his existence, the title seemed to prove the book’s thesis.)

(6) The Guest, 1946, by Christopher LaFarge (1872-1944). I hadn’t heard of LaFarge, but was intrigued by the book club insert’s promise of a book about a sixty year old “spinster” who lost her grip on reality after her servants abandoned her during the approach of a hurricane.

(7) Light that Faileth (1891) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). I’ve never read Kipling, but I have read Jack London, so when I learned that London was a major fan of  Kipling, I decided to read him too. One period reviewer wrote that the book had, “a man-loving [surely a euphemism] and misogynistic undercurrent” and was, “…a metaphor for the failing gallantry of 19th-century man confronting the new woman.” My literary idol, Margaret Deland, was among those responsible for creating this subspecies, only to bemoan the fact that some members of her creation were behaving in ways that she considered coarse, if not trashy; that the exalted concept of ladyhood was being lost; and that men were starting to treat women with the same crudity with which they interacted among themselves. One-hundred years later, the word lady has been lost from our language, and the only time I hear the word gentlemen is on the evening news when a cop is referring to a criminal as such. For example; "After strangling Ms Smith, the gentlemen proceeded to kill her dog..." My copy of the book was owned by an Ada Johnson, and how I wish I could talk to her about it!


I want books that long dead eyes read, upon which long dead minds reflected, and into which long dead hands inscribed, because they allow me, in some small measure, to feel that I’m gazing into those eyes, discoursing with those minds, and touching those hands. They penetrate to my soul, and to hold them is to hold the sacred. New books are like new houses in that in that their faces are blank and their souls in infancy. Without them there would be no old books, and the factual ones are often superior, but I’m glad I have little need of them. No matter that new books cost ten times more, I would feel like I was slumming if I walked into a new book store.

As for the authors themselves—as opposed to individual copies of their works—many of the titles I buy are either unavailable new or they’ve been reprinted in paperback, xeroxed editions that I abhor. Without old books, my life would be impoverished. I would still have Mark Twain and Conan Doyle, but I wouldn’t have Margaret Deland and F. Hopkinson Smith, although both were famous during their lifetimes (Smith for his art as well as his books). It’s commonly believed that authors who deserve to remain famous will remain famous, but in my experience, authors are like clothing fashions, the difference being that clothing styles often come back around while, once they’re lost from memory, literary work are rarely rediscovered.

Bobbing for Spiders and Other Critter Tales

Daddy's Little Huntress

I didn't grow up calling a tabby cat a tabby cat. I grew up calling a tabby cat a brindled cat. Peggy, well-traveled Air Force brat that she was, considered this but another example of rural Southern backwardness. I recently pointed out to her that American authors who wrote between the Civil War and the Great Depression (such authors constitute most of my reading), commonly use the word brindled.

Peggy is an arachnophobe, so there is hardly a day that goes by but what I don't have a new opportunity to display manly gallantry by facing down spiders while she screams, "Don't let it get away!" and then, "It's going to get away!" When it doesn't get away, she implores, "Are you sure you killed it?" followed by, "Is it really dead?" followed by, "Are you sure it's really dead?" Because I deny her the indulgence of getting me out of bed to kill spiders, she is forced to either do the job herself or to enlist the help of our ferocious huntress, Scully. Scully is SO ferocious that she'll throw her whole body at a gnat. She's a cat possessed, and regularly leaves the boys standing back with their eyes wide and their ears back as if to say, "We're all crazy about killing things, but this chick's SCARY CRAZY!" 

Last week, Peggy woke up first, and found the kitchen occupied by a spider that, in her eyes, was the size of a small grizzly. She implored Scully to kill it, and Scully said, "No problem, but I'd like to bob for it first, and proceeded to drop the spider into her water bowl. After she had batted it around for awhile, the spider finally succeeded in climbing upon Scully's nose whereupon Scully slung her head from side to side and sent the spider flying. Because it was too soggy and discouraged to "play," Scully then gobbled it down.

It takes a man to do this to a cat

When Brewsky was a young cat, he was so stubborn that I lived in awe of how far he would go to get his way even when he surely realized that I was going to out-stubborn him. For instance, when Peggy and I got out of bed, Brewsky would want to continue sleeping. I would indulge him a little, but the fact was that I wanted to get the bed made. I would eventually put him on the floor and proceed to make the bed, or at least try to make the bed, the problem being that he would jump back in before I could get started. His record for doing this on a a single occasion was twelve. Yes, of course, I could have put him out of the room, or scolded him so severely that he wouldn't dare cross me, but I enjoyed the contest. When the bed was finally made, I would put him back in, and we would share a little schmooze.

Wendy, 1977-1994

When we lived in the country, we had a little black schnauzer named Wendy. Sometimes when she was asleep on the porch, I would sneak off into the woods and call her name. Because I had thinned the trees, I could see her from quite a distance as she jumped up excitedly and started searching for my track. After she found it, it was a small matter for her to come to the tree I was in, but once there, she NEVER thought to look up, but would instead go round and round the tree trying to figure out where I went next. She would eventually give up, and not knowing what else to do, follow my scent all the way back to the house and start out again. When that didn't work, she would do sweeps that took in several acres. Eventually, I would sneak down from the tree, and we would share a joyous reunion.

The older Wendy got, the more she went from being submissive to standing up for for what she considered her rights. For example, she would balk at giving up her seat next to me in the car. The day came when Wendy completely refused to give her seat, even to Peggy. When a human tried to get in anyway, Wendy would push against him or her with all thirteen pounds of her schnauzerly might. I mostly left it up to my passenger to deal with the situation, but when a man whom I had just met asked if he should sit in the back, I made her move, although I believe that, in most situations, non-humans should be shown the same consideration as humans.

In Mississippi, we lived fifty miles from Peggy's parents (her father had by then retired from the Air Force), and would often go up and spend the night. They didn't want dogs in their house, and I didn't go anywhere without my dog. In summer, I felt good about making Wendy a bed on their patio because flea season in Mississippi is no joke. However, Wendy would have been miserable outdoors on a mild night in winter, and her very life would have been endangered on a cold night in winter, so Peggy's parents grudgingly agreed to let her stay in the laundry room. She interpreted her confinement as punishment, and remained in a state of near frantic despondency through every visit. If I had it to do over, I would have given my inlaws a choice between either allowing Wendy into the den--which opened into the laundry room--or of Peggy visiting them alone.

Later on when we lived in Minneapolis, I dutifully put Wendy's coat on and took her for a walk everyday in winter although she so hated going that she would run up to the front door of every house we passed hoping someone would let her in. If I had that to do over, I would only take her walking on windless, sunny days.

Despite the fact that Peggy has since come to adore cats, she used to be a self-proclaimed cat-hater, and was even plagued by dreams of being pursued by demonic cats. One rainy wintry day, a wet, shivering, and hungry mother cat came to Peggy in distress (during her cat hating period, cats regularly sought Peggy's companionship). I don't remember the details, but suffice it to say that, "cat-hater" though she was, Peggy did what she could to help that cat and her kittens. If Peggy had said, "I'm not going to help that cat because I hate cats," I would have wondered how this woman who I married all those many years ago could have been heartless all along without me knowing it.

Wendy and me

Wendy visited more states than most people. She hung-out in communes, witnessed a lot of sex and drug use, regularly flew with me in my small Cessna, spent her days at construction sites when I was a re-modeler and on roofs when I was a roofer. We hitchhiked together, having the misfortune one wintry day of having to walk most of the twenty interstate miles between Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Tallulah, Louisiana. When Paul Winter invited his audience to howl at an outdoor concert at a former Shaker community in New Lebanon, New York, Wendy joined in, but when Paul signaled that it was time to stop, Wendy didn't get the message. People who were seated nearby smiled as they watched her throw herself into her music, while people at a distance craned their necks trying to determine who was being rude.

Wendy loved Peggy, but she only felt secure with me. One day, I left her and Peggy at a friend's home while I drove to the store. On my way back, I met Wendy walking up the road looking for me. A few months earlier, she had done the same thing when I left her with some other friends, but Peggy hadn't been there that time. Despite her devotion to me, if I--or anyone else--tried to pet Wendy, she would move just out of reach and lie back down. I had imagined that the only dogs that avoided the touch of humans were dogs who were afraid of humans, but Wendy wasn't afraid of people (cats were another story). That said, she took a long time to become friends with people despite the considerable effort that a lot of them made to hurry her along.

Bonnie. Soft name. Hard dog.

Our last dog was a blue heeler named Bonnie, who, like Wendy, didn't make friends easily. However, Bonnie did something that Wendy never once did, and that was to bite people. I was out walking with Bonnie one day when a woman who was working in her yard came over and asked if she could pet her. I warned her that Bonnie would bite, but like many people, the woman took my warning as a challenge. She asked if she could try to win Bonnie over with bologna, and I said, sure, but I didn't think it would work.

The woman looked at me like I didn't know much about dogs (she had probably heard the saying about a dog not biting the hand that feeds it), so she got a piece of bologna and tore it into small pieces, which Bonnie happily took one at a time from her hand. When the meat was all gone, the woman slowly reached out her fingers in the direction of Bonnie's head, and I could hear Bonnie's teeth clacking together a millimeter short of the rapidly retreating hand that fed her. That woman looked as if she couldn't believe what had just happened, but no one could win Bonnie over that easily, although she was extraordinarily loving around people she liked. I've had many dogs over the years, and I always told myself that I wouldn't keep a dog that would bite, but not only would Bonnie bite, she would bite me, yet if I ever adored a dog, Bonnie was that dog, partly because she had a pronounced sense of dignity and a pronounced intelligence to go with it. More about her later.

Progress Report, Smoke Report, Surgical Error Report, Kasha Report

Three weeks post knee replacement, I've gone from using a walker, to two crutches, to one crutch, to a trekking pole (an adjustable walking stick with a strap), to no aid at all around the house. Instead of working out three times a day for twenty minutes, I work-out almost continually throughout the day (as I write this, I'm flexing and straightening my knee. My major goals for the first six weeks are achieving a normal bend in the knee (120-degrees) and being able to completely straighten the knee. Last Friday, my bend was 105, which was good, and I was three degrees from achieving complete straightness.

Yesterday was house-cleaning day, and I excitedly anticipated being able to help, but after two and half hours on my feet, the knee started to swell (more than it is normally swollen), turn red, and feel hot. The PT said that I could expect swelling to be a problem for two or three months, and, of course, it negatively impacts my therapy goals. There's nothing I can do for it but to lie around for hours everyday with my knee elevated above my heart, and ice packs draped over my knee. It's enough to drive a person crazy. At this point ALWAYS feels like the stiffest knee that a normal person ever had in his life, and it NEVER stops hurting, but it's not pain that's through the roof. One good thing I can say about the pain of exercising is that it was many times worse when I started than it is today, and that by itself is enough to keep me motivated to work-out. 

Until a few days ago, the only outdoor walking I did was to and from the car for my physical therapy appointments. This was because the smoke from the many forest fires (I live in Oregon's Willamette Valley) has been so bad that people are advised to stay indoors. Fortunately, Peggy and I have air conditioning, something that not everyone here has because really hot days are rare--or at least they used to be. 

The smoke has been SO bad of late that there have been days when the sun never appeared; we couldn't see the nearby hills; and we could even see smoke by looking toward the shrubbery in the backyard looked smoky. Peggy taped cardboard over our bathroom vent fan; laid towels along the bottoms of doors to the outside; and avoided opening outside doors if she could help it. Picture a bad air day in Beijing, and that's what much of Oregon looks like. Peggy has had bronchitis and an ear infection from the foul air (she was prescribed steroids and is much improved), and many people are wearing masks. We get some smoke from forest fires almost every year, but this is record-breaking, and it has been going on for over two weeks. Fortunately, it has gotten some better during the last few days due to a front moving through. We even had our first rain in months, although it only lasted a few minutes. Every summer here is a drought summer, but as with the heat, the droughts are getting worst.

Once all the steri-strips fell off so that my incision was visible, my physical therapist (Kasha) pointed out that the incision was crooked (she thought this was a lot funnier than I did), and indeed it looked like what you would expect if a drunk man with palsy tried to draw a straight line seven inches long. I knew that Brian didn't have palsy, and after much reflection, I eliminated as untenable the possibility that a sex kitten of a nurse might have goosed him during surgery, and this left me with but one inescapable conclusion, namely that Brian had operated on me at 7:00 in the morning while drunker than a skunk, and that he had put my new joint in upside down and backwards. I knew this had to be the case because if the situation were otherwise, he wouldn't have been chewing gum to mask the alcohol odor, and I would be able to straighten the knee completely. Also, when I bend it, it would bend in the back like a normal knee instead of in the front like a bird's knee. I think that the best option at this point is for Brian to replace the right knee too, and to put it in upside down and backwards, so that it will match the left knee. Naturally, I would expect him to do this for free. It's a sucky situation, but I'm sure it happens all the time, and I don't hold it against him. Actually, it reminds me of a funny story.

If you've had surgery at either of the local hospitals in the last thirty years or so, you know that the surgeon will come around and put a mark on the spot where he or she is going to operate. He will do this while you're still awake, and you're expected to verify that he's marking the correct place, the goal being to avoid the embarrassment that comes when doctors operate on the wrong patient, amputate the wrong leg, perform hysterectomies on ninety year old men, do tummy-tucks on four year olds, and other fox paws (fox paw is French for fuck-up). As many of you know, Peggy spent her last 24 years as a nurse in an OB unit that was devoted exclusively to labor and delivery patients. Word came down one day that all of the doctors would be forevermore expected to mark the abdomens of all of their C-section patients in order to insure that they (the doctors) wouldn't do something embarrassing like removing a woman's ring fingers. The doctors considered the new rule too stupid for words, and the nurses backed them, so it was soon discarded.

But back to Kasha. I liked her quite well when we met, but she's an avid cyclist, and when the smoke became bad enough that biking was making her throat hurt, she became so despondent that I started to dread seeing her. She would bitch about the smoke; about not having air conditioning at home; about her gym being closed for servicing just when she needed it most; about her difficulty with getting a baby sitter; and about injuries from old bike wrecks; but especially about being unable to ride her bike. I was one appointment away from either having a serious talk with her or simply going to another therapist when she immediately turned herself around and became as good a therapist as I had thought she was when we first met. I even told her after my last session that I had enjoyed working with her, which surely isn't something she hears much from knee replacement patients because these sessions are painful. She looked like she could have cried, and I went away feeling very glad that I hadn't fired her before she could pull herself together.