Two Years Before the Mast, thoughts on hardship

I am reading Two Years Before the Mast, an account of life aboard a U.S. merchantman in the 1830s. The author was nineteen when he left Harvard and shipped out, and the book was published when he was twenty-five. If I were to cite only the most memorable passages from the fifty pages I have read, I would need ten pages. I could not have approached such poetic insight or descriptive powers when I was so young, and I seriously question whether I could do so now. I might, after all, mistake my talent for writing just as I mistake my talent for singing, for my every note is as soothing from within as it is grating from without. Some people have even doubted that I am capable of forming a note—or at least more than one of them.

On Monday, November 19, 1834, a young Englishman on Dana’s ship fell from the rigging into the sea. He was so weighed down by ropes and tools that he never surfaced.

“Death is at all times solemn, but never so much as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and ‘the mourners go about in the streets;’ but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness to the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which gives to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore—you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are often prepared for the event. There is always something that helps you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed…but at sea the man is near you—at your side—you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then too, at sea, to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and, for months and months, see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is suddenly taken from among them, and they miss him at every turn…. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit has made them seem almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

“All these things make a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time…. There is more quietness and seriousness. The oath and the loud laugh are gone. The officers are more watchful, and the crew goes more carefully aloft. The lost man is seldom mentioned…”

How much more beautifully poignant is this description of grief because of the last sentence. I suppose it is true at all times and in all places that there is much that men do not share with other men.

“Whatever your feelings may be, you must make a joke of everything at sea; and if you were to fall from aloft and be caught in the belly of a sail, and thus saved from instant death, it would not do to look at all disturbed…”

Yet, I cannot say that there is no good in this prohibition. I have read many accounts of men who were trapped on mountains or in Polar Regions, and I have learned from them that the Stoicism, if not the outright cheerfulness, of some made the survival of others possible. Indeed, Earnest Shackleton’s men were so elevated by his bravery that they reported having been ashamed to voice their own discontent during the long months of cold, hunger, and mortal danger. Yet, how often have men like Shackleton survived unimaginable hardships with a cheerful countenance only to become despondent when those hardships were past. The ability to flourish in times of peril does not insure the ability to so much as exist on ordinary days.

When I consider my own state, I cannot see that I have a genius for either times that are good or times that are bad. While it is true that I have never been tested by the worst that man or nature offers, it is also true that I have never sought to be tested. The men who I read about went looking for the worst time after time. I’ve read of men whose fingers and toes were lost to frostbite, yet still climbed mountains. I do not know what to make of them, and so I continue to read. Especially when the long months of winter are upon me, and I can barely muster the will to get out of bed each day, I seek the literary companionship of those who were determined to keep going no matter what.

Books entitled Angels in the Wilderness, In the Land of White Death, and Ice, helped me survive December. Now that the daffodils are tall, the willows are swollen with buds, and each day is longer than its predecessor; I know I will last until better times. I am tempted to say that a forlorn day in summer is more agreeable than a happy day in winter, but this would make no sense, so I will not say it.

In her regard for the seasons, as in many things, Peggy is my opposite. The only good she can say about sunshine is that it makes the snow to sparkle most agreeably.

Questions of respect, of morality

I watched Saddam’s hanging, both the authorized photos and the secret taping. Peggy speculated that he died bravely because he lacked normal human feelings. Perhaps. Perhaps the presence of cameras helped too.

Would George Bush have died as well? Would I? Hang me outdoors on a warm sunny afternoon, and maybe. But in winter, before dawn, in a room that was cold and gray, surrounded by people who tormented me.... Peggy said she wouldn’t want to see the tape because she wouldn’t want it to get stuck in her head. I am glad to have it stuck in my head because it was a powerful—and even an inspirational—moment.

There was nothing in his life that so became him as the leaving of it. -Shakespeare

His last words were, “You go to hell.” They weren’t good last words, but defiance surely beats cowardice. Peggy thinks that terror would have been a more appropriate response. Maybe it’s a gender thing, but, despite the understandability of fear, who wouldn’t prefer solace, and what better solace than courage? Even if Peggy didn’t think less of me because I died trembling, she think better of me if I died with dignity.

If Peggy is right about Saddam’s lack of normal human feeling making his death easier, what does this say about the desirability of normal human feelings? And what does it say about good men like Nathan Hale who died bravely, or other bad men—like Ted Bundy—who died as cowards? I could not look at Saddam Hussein standing tall and proud in the midst of his masked haranguers and not feel respect. It is a grudging respect to be sure, but even the devil deserves his due.

Another difference of opinion arose between Peggy and me this morning. We were talking about our little dog, Wendy, when Peggy said she would give $100,000 to bring Wendy back to life. I never thought that Peggy loved Wendy more than I, but I would not give $100,000 to bring Wendy or anyone else back. So what then, would I give $10,000? Yes, but I hate to be forced to admit that I only value the life of a beloved dog—or a beloved friend—to the tune of a certain number of dollars. Besides, the issue is more complex than that.

For example, I might not pay a large sum to bring Wendy back, but neither would I have accepted any amount of money to end her life prematurely—except for humanitarian reasons—even if she hadn’t been my dog. There seems to be a paradox here. While I make little effort to rescue ailing and destitute dogs, I would not choose to profit from their deaths. But how might I defend this position? After all, I could use the money to help many other dogs. This leads me to wonder whether I care more about dogs or more about my self-image. It is the kind of dilemma that would never torment Peggy, because the right way would be obvious to her, and she would follow it regardless.

Of course, the proper use of such money as we already have is not an issue that concerns just me. Almost every dollar that either of us spends is a dollar that could have been used for what we would acknowledge to be a higher end. Instead of a new computer, we could have fed hungry children. What does this about our values?

I shudder to think, so I won’t think. I will go to the bank and deposit a $506 check that just arrived from the woman who bought my father’s house.... I like having money because money makes me feel safer than most of the other things that make me feel safe, and the truth is that I value my safety—and even my comfort--more than I value the lives of destitute children. Their numbers are unending, but there is just one me.

....The rain started back as I was leaving for the bank, so I didn’t go.

Peggy and I don’t talk about deep things much because they make her eyes glaze over. I consider it another paradox that she is more ethical than I, but that her values don’t arise from reflection. This used to frustrate me no end until I went through a string of lovers who could talk about deep things all day long, and still go out and act badly. This made me appreciate Peggy more. Now that Gerald Ford just died, I think of her as a little like him. She might not be razor sharp in some ways (although she is smarter than I in others), but if you’re looking for someone of unquestioned integrity, she’s your woman. When Ford replaced Nixon, someone asked him if he had considered creating a list of ethical guidelines so his staff wouldn’t get themselves into a Watergate-like fiasco. He replied that his own behavior would serve as their guideline. Like Ford, Peggy would consider it redundant to enumerate such standards.

An observer might suggest that, in many cases, my own depth appears to be a prelude to rationalization, but I would argue that, even though this is sometimes true, only one who cared about ethics would bother to rationalize. I would also argue against the possible implication that people who don’t think much about what their behavior means are more likely to behave well. Right and wrong are not always so obvious. If they were, life would be easier. Even in my own head, I often find myself in dilemmas in which my ambivalence is such that I feel screwed no matter which way I go. Some problems don’t admit of outcomes that are fair to everyone.

Dead climber

They found one of the Hood climbers yesterday. He was dead. The young wife of one of the other men said it was impossible that her husband would die because he had promised to be home for Christmas, and because God wouldn’t allow it. I feel deeply for that woman because she has a lot of sad things to learn about life, and a celebratory season is an especially bad time to start learning them. I suspect that, for as long as she lives, joyful bells will never again chime in her heart at Christmas.

Party greed

I went to the Eugene Mineral Club Christmas party today. Someone on the board must like Chinese food because the party is held at the same Chinese restaurant each year. I’ve been to several seasonal celebrations lately, so I would have sat this one out except that my term as membership officer is up, and I was eager to turn my files over to the new guy.

This was my first time at a gift exchange where people whose names were drawn could either open a gift or take away someone else’s gift. If you did the latter, the person whose gift you took could either open a gift or take away yet another person’s gift (but not the one you took from them). Many of the gifts were handmade jewelry and lapidary that took hours to create. Some people really didn’t want to surrender such gifts to the person who wanted to take them, and the resultant tension was painful to watch. Everyone wanted to pass themselves off as good sports, yet several people palpably wanted to say, “Go to hell. I’m keeping my goddamn gift.”

A few gifts truly were white elephant gifts (which is what we had been told to bring). There were ugly coffee mugs, a hideous candleholder, an enormous—and used—cast iron Christmas tree stand that someone must have brought to the party to save themselves a trip to Good Will. People who got these gifts looked as if they were praying that someone would take them away, but they were, of course, stuck. I didn’t bring anything, so I refused to take anything.

What I did do was to become very depressed. Here were people, many of whom were up in years, desperate to hang onto trinkets that would soon be ripped from their hands by death even if someone else didn’t take them. The ugliness of greed and the imminence of destruction overwhelmed me. I felt as if we had come together to whistle in the face of doom. All of life seemed hollow, and mass suicide struck me as a more appropriate response to the human condition than Chinese food and a gift exchange. Life is either too serious to take lightly, or too insignificant to take seriously; and I can’t decide which. I just know that neither is any good.

The DAC

I’ve been working out at the Downtown Athletic Club this week on a free pass. The DAC is a rich man’s club, and I had misgivings about going there. I was raised very strongly to believe that, on the one hand, there were rich people and, on the other hand, there was everyone else; and that what was on the first hand was better. My parents taught me this without beating around the bush about it, but I also got it at school where everyone—teachers included—deferred to the rich kids.

I thought about this when I got that free pass, and I worried that I would stand out poorly (I guess that was almost a pun). But one truth was that I had used up my free pass to the poor man’s gym (Oakway), and another truth was that I quite enjoy Jacuzzis, saunas, steam rooms, and swimming pools; especially when they’re free.

My father—and probably my mother—would not have known what a sauna or a Jacuzzi was. They might have heard the words at some point, but the words would have meant nothing to them. I even get them mixed up a little because some people call a Jacuzzi a spa or else a hot tub. I’ve settled on calling it a Jacuzzi, so I won’t have to think about which word to use.

I was quite curious what the DAC would be like, i.e. what does the rich man’s gym have that the poor man’s gym lacks. Well, it has a lot, so much in fact that it would take me a while to list it all. Their website (www.downtownac.com) lists a lot of it, but doesn’t really do the place justice. Mostly, I was curious about how I would get on with all the rich people since I haven’t known a lot of rich people and haven’t liked the ones I did know. My father’s boss was rich, and I hated that man because he was a deacon at the First Baptist Church, but he didn’t extend his Christian principals to his employees. Like a lot of Southern Baptists, he considered tithing as a ticket to heaven that excused greed in other areas. But the worst rich people I’ve known were the ones who inherited their money because they grew up thinking they were entitled to it, and that having it made them better than everyone else.

You might say I went to the DAC with a bad attitude, but I also went with a curious attitude. Right off, I learned a lot that I didn’t know about rich people. Some of it I would have known had I thought about it, but I actually spend almost no time thinking about rich people. To begin with, rich men and poor men look remarkably alike when they’re naked. Rich or poor, the young ones look like gods, and the old ones look like dried figs.

Upon making this observation, I started trying to think of a way to tell naked rich people from naked poor people, and I thought that maybe I could do it by listening to what they talked about. What I discovered is that the people at the DAC aren’t as friendly as the people at Oakway, so they don’t talk as much. I can’t say for sure that this is true of all of them, but I can say that it is generally true. Yet, some of them do talk, and I do listen. So far, they’ve mostly kvetched. For example, a couple of them were bummed about hearing cell phones going off in the locker room; and others complained about how slick the drive is from the South Hills, the part of town where the rich people live. I agreed with them about the cell phones, but I thought the other was an odd complaint because the streets coming out of the South Hills are at a thirty degree angle, and that part of town gets a lot of ice—things they would have known when they moved there.

The first person who I spoke to at the DAC who didn’t work there was Peter DeFazio. I didn’t know at first that he was Peter DeFazio because he was looking the other way. What happened was that my woman tour guide had told me that there was a way to get from the men’s locker room to the pool without having to go through the main hallway. She couldn’t very well take me into the men’s locker room to show me where the door was, so once I changed into my swimsuit, I started looking for it. The locker room is huge, and I walked around it twice without finding the door, so I asked this fellow who was getting dressed to point me in the direction of the pool. He turned around, and damned if it wasn’t United States Congressman, Peter DeFazio.

DeFazio campaigns on being a man of the people. He refuses pay raises, dresses ordinary, and drives a 1963 Dodge Dart. As soon as I saw him in the DAC, I felt like I’d been had. Like maybe the Dodge is just a prop, and maybe he turns down pay raises because he’s so stinking rich that the extra money wouldn’t mean anything. I mean here’s a man who is in D.C. much of the year, yet he has a membership at the DAC! Well, maybe someone gave it to him for all I know, but seeing him there made me wonder what he is really like, and it reminded me that no one can be taken at face value. All these years, I wondered when I would see DeFazio riding around town in his Dodge, and now I doubt that I will. I had really believed in him, you might say, and now I’m reminded that even I—with all my cynicism—can be taken.

But back to what I’ve learned about rich people…. Another interesting aspect of rich people is that they lose their keys a lot. I know this because I lose my keys a lot, so when I went to the desk to ask if anyone had seen the key to my padlock, the woman pulled out a box and started going through it while I described my key as best I could remember it. I couldn’t see the box because of a counter that was in the way, so I kept talking, and she kept looking, and I thought that, golly, this is taking a lot of time—what is wrong with this picture? Right away I knew, so I leaned way over so I could see what was in the box, and it was LOADED with keys, and there was my old rusty padlock key right on top. As I walked away, I wondered why she hadn’t put the box up where we could both go through it. All I could think was that rich people don’t like looking for their keys—they had rather pay someone to do it even if it takes longer.

The people who work at the DAC are all very nice. I get greeted coming, and I receive warm wishes going. There are also a lot of employees. There has to be because rich people use as many towels in a day as most of the people in Ecuador use in a year. They need two for the steam room, two more for the sauna, one for the pool, one for the shower, one for the Jacuzzi, one when they shave, and so forth. I really have a hard time making myself use more than two towels, and I only use that many so I will have one to sit on and one to lean back on when I am in the sauna or the steam room.

I like to look out through the windows when I am in those rooms. I watch naked guys use the urinals, which isn’t really all that interesting except maybe to a gay man, but when there’s nothing else to look at, I look at whatever is moving. I also watch loads of towels being wheeled away, and tall stacks of neatly folded towels being put in their place. I suspect that there are employees at the DAC who do nothing but stock towels.

I would join the DAC if it didn’t cost so much. For my purposes the poor man’s gym would serve as well, and it is a lot friendlier; but the DAC is closer to home. It is no more than fifteen blocks away, whereas the Oakway is too far away to count all the blocks. I would have to bike clean across the Willamette to get there, and while I can make the trip in about fifteen minutes, it is farther than I enjoy biking in the dark and the rain, and alongside one of Eugene’s busiest and noisiest streets at that.

Tonight, as I sat all alone in the sauna, I thought about how I could offset the cost of joining the DAC, and all I could come up with was stealing towels and reselling them, or else breaking into lockers. I wouldn’t really do either of these things, but my mind runs to crime quite readily when I am looking for a solution to a problem. This trait is so strong in me that I have trouble believing that everyone isn’t this way, although I know that Peggy isn’t, and that she is sorry I am.

But to return yet again to things I’ve learned about rich people…rich people are damn good swimmers. I had never paid much attention to people swimming, but when I was in the Jacuzzi yesterday, some young men were in the pool, and as I watched their powerful and confident strokes, I thought to myself that here is beauty. Rich women are good swimmers too, but women swimmers are like women in a lot of sports in that they can be good, even great, but they can never develop the raw power of a man. Women look their best walking or standing (or lying). Men look their best when they are engaged in athletics. I say this even though I suspect that women probably make better distance swimmers than men because women float better.

I’m afraid that my own swimming is not up to DAC standards because the only stroke I’m confident in is the dog paddle, and no one but me does it. I figure I’m as good as a lot of dogs at dog paddling (my hands and feet being broader than their paws), but my breaststroke is bastardized and inefficient, and I worry that my sidestroke is a tad off too. As for that other stroke, the one that people first picture when they think about swimming—the crawl, I think it is—I don’t even attempt that because it wears me out, and I splash so much that someone might try to rescue me.

The pools (yes, there are two) are in the basement, and people on the upper levels can look down at me, and people on the sidewalk can look in. If I worried all that much about how I look swimming, I wouldn’t swim at all, but I don’t worry, so I swim a lot. I’ll start out with ten minutes in the Jacuzzi, ten minutes in the pool, ten minutes in the steam room, ten more minutes in the pool, and then ten minutes in the sauna. After all this, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the head, but in a good way. It’s amazing how much difference even a little bit of the right activities can make. I leave the DAC as mellow as if I had gotten a massage.

I mentioned to Peggy that one of the things I don’t like about gyms is that I come into such close contact with other people’s bodies, partly because a lot of nude people take turns sitting on the same surfaces (sometimes on towels, sometimes not). She was greatly surprised that men use the sauna and steam room—and walk around the locker room—naked. She thought they wrapped towels around themselves. “That’s just in the movies,” I told her, “and it’s no more real than women in the movies who step out of the shower with towels wrapped around themselves.” At least it has been my experience that men who go to gyms are not men who are shy about their bodies. Maybe women are different. Rich or poor, I’ve never heard men talk about their issues with their bodies. They might not like the way they look, but they don’t obsess about it.

Rich teenagers who come to the DAC often look like sullen street people. They pull the look off so well that I would think they were sullen street people if I saw them on the street. I wouldn’t be surprised but what they spend hundreds of dollars for pants with holes in the knees; and it strikes me as a very degrading, disgusting, degenerate, and dissolute situation when rich people go around faking poverty. They get away with it in this country because the standard of living is high, but if I were some Third World guy who was barely able to keep clothes on my back, and one of these DAC people got off the plane looking like me, I’d want to kill him. He would be worse than men who have never ridden a horse but dress like cowboys. Frigging be what you look like. At least have that much integrity. I hate affect. It’s impossible for most of us to avoid engaging in it from time to time, but I still hate it.

I feel a little of that kind of fakeness just going to the DAC. I suspect that a lot of DAC members actually have less real money than I do, and I know that if I got it into my head that I wanted to join, I could do so without the expense being a hardship. Joining the DAC would simply mean that I had less money to put into savings each month—it would not mean that I couldn’t afford something else, or that I was sliding deeper into credit card debt. But I wouldn’t fit. I would be a pretender. I’ve heard guys at Oakway Gym grouse about how the cost has gone up to $35 a month. The DAC costs something like five times that much plus $750 just to join.

Joining the DAC is not just a matter of money but of lifestyle. It’s real slate on the floor, real ceramic tile in the bathrooms, and real cherry on the walls. There’s nothing wrong with these things if you’re willing to pay for them, but I’m a pine, formica, and linoleum guy. That’s what I’m used to, and that’s what I’m happy with.

I’ve been tongue-in-cheek in a lot of what I’ve said about the DAC—sort of a taking a position of reverse snobbery—but I don’t really have anything against it. In fact, if I valued having money less, I really would join because it’s the closest gym to where I live, and it’s also the least crowded. I might even make friends there if I went enough.

Casualties of winter

“The National Weather Service in Portland has issued a Blizzard Warning for the Cascades…winds of 40 to 60…gusts of 75 to 95. Gusts reaching 100 to 130 on peaks and ridges. Snow accumulations of a foot or more...whiteout conditions occurring frequently. Do not travel. If you must travel...have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded...stay with your vehicle.”

Relatives of the lost climbers have flown in from all over the country, but I believe the search will soon be called off. No matter how much relatives might want it to continue, the risk to the searchers must be weighed against the odds that poorly equipped climbers who have been at 11,000’ for eight days are alive. So far this winter, an eight-year old boy was lost (and never found) at Crater Lake; two snowmobilers were lost near Mt. Bachelor (both were found but one died); and a family was lost in their car (the woman and two children were rescued, but the father died).

There could be other exposure-related deaths that I am unaware of since the newsworthiness of a story depends upon how long the drama continues and how appealing the victims are. For example, the prominent parents and their two baby girls received national attention, whereas the male snowmobilers were hardly mentioned even locally.

Lost on Hood

I went to bed last night thinking about the three climbers (two Texans and a New Yorker) who have been stranded on Mt. Hood for a week. One of the three was injured at 11,000 feet, and the other two dug him a snow cave, called for help on a cell phone, and started down the mountain to guide rescuers. None have been heard from since, and seventy mile per hour winds and whiteout conditions have made the mountain unsafe for searchers.

I have read almost every book the Eugene library has about mountaineering accidents. Just last night, while the local news was focused on the Hood climbers, I finished a story about a man who spent two nights alone on Denali with compound fractures to both ankles. Despite being cold, he was forced to stuff his legs into a snow-filled backpack to stop the bleeding. He sat on an eighteen-inch ledge, not knowing if help would reach him before he died. The dense cloud cover finally cleared enough for a helicopter to lower a rescuer by a 200-foot rope.

Many climbers have lost all their fingers and toes to frostbite, if not their hands and feet as well. Yet, many of these people go back and re-climb the very mountain that nearly killed them. Climbing is a strange passion, and one which I might have known nothing had Peggy not caught the bug.

She is now reading a book (Angels in the Wilderness by Amy Racina) by a woman who broke both legs while hiking alone in a remote region of the High Sierras. Even as Amy lay on the granite looking at her bones protruding from her flesh, one of the thoughts that crossed her mind was how sad she would be if she never got to make another such trip.

I become junior deacon

I decided at the last minute tonight to attend my Masonic Lodge. My ambivalence about Masonry is such that the last minute is usually when I decide to attend. As I biked, I rejoiced in the thought that the officers for the coming year had been installed over the weekend, so at least I wouldn’t get corralled into being one of them. Upon arrival, I learned that the incoming master had arrived so late to the installation that it was called off and was to be held tonight instead.

I furthermore learned that he wanted me to serve as junior deacon. The primary duties are to say a few memorized lines and to bar the entry of anyone who isn’t qualified. I said I would accept the position only if I wasn’t required to wear a tux. The master said he wouldn’t insist on it, but the senior deacon lost no time in sorting through dead men’s clothing in search of one that would fit me.

I am happy for my new position. It will be my first Masonic office since I served as secretary in 1995.

One moral, one not so moral

Peggy put down .25 hours of overtime on her time card last week. Payroll read it as 25 hours and paid her accordingly. Peggy, being Peggy, reported the mistake. Lowell, being Lowell, grieved over the $1,600 loss.

Peggy regards ethical standards as almost inviolable. Certainly, she would lie to a murderer about where she had hidden his gun, but in ordinary life her behavior is consistent. Last week, she was so sure that a clerk at Kinkos had undercharged her by a few pennies that she left me waiting outside with our bikes (in the cold dark night) while she went back to double-check (that’s right, she had already checked once). Even if there had been an undercharge, I doubt that Kinkos would have come out ahead paying the clerk to correct it; but the issue for Peggy had less to do with Kinko’s profit as with her morality. My morality is so disappointing to Peggy that she can scarcely believe I am as bad as I say I am.

Letter from the Chair

From the desk of the Chair
Dept of Psych, Sociology, Anthropology, and Dendrology
Mississippi A&M
Rareback, MS

Dear Mr. Thomas:

Please accept my apologies for not getting back to you sooner. Our department recently received a $950,000 government grant to determine whether farmers whose farms are foreclosed undergo a period of career re-evaluation; and I have been doing field research in Honolulu.

I am sorry within reasonable bounds that some of your friends were upset by their low scores on The Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College Test of Intelligence, Personality, and Sexual Desirability, and I hope I will not sound callous when I say that, as a psychologist, I am but little interested in people’s feelings. However, I am extremely interested in the reputation of myself and my department, and I take their suggestion that the test lacked credibility with the same gravity that I take death threats to my seven children.

They must surely be aware that Mississippi A&M is an acknowledged leader in psychological research throughout the tri-county area, especially among dairymen. And as you doubtlessly know, our 1958 study, Drawbacks of Breeding Roosters for Monogamy, won wide acclaim among the 1,200 readers of Coxcomb County Poultry Tracks, and I have no doubt but what we have been praised from time to time elsewhere as well.

I can, however, do what psychologists do best, which is to offer your friends an implausibly positive interpretation to an irredeemably bad situation. To whit: the maximum test score was, as you will recall, 100, and some of your friends made as low as 30. They can interpret this in either of two ways. The neurotic way is to feel badly that they scored piss-poor in all three areas covered by the examination (intelligence, personality, and sexual desirability). The healthy alternative is to console themselves with the thought that they just might have scored extremely high in one category and piss-poor in the other two (the questions not being identified as to category). It is a case of whether the glass is all empty or merely two-thirds empty.

For example, of the three categories covered, your friends might decide that only one is of any great importance in their lives. Let’s say, for sake of illustration, that a given friend has little use for intelligence and personality, but holds sexual desirability in high esteem. He could, as well as not, imagine that he scored 100 in that category and zero in the other two. Of course, he could not know with certainty that this (or any other category) was the category he excelled in, but what would be the harm of imagining it?

It is not inconceivable that the simple belief that he is a sexual magnet might increase his desirability to members of the opposite sex (or the same sex—or even another domesticated species, as is sometimes the case in farm country). This is what we psychologists call the placebo effect, although in this instance it might better qualify as the libido effect.

The only other way in which your friends might find consolation is in the knowledge that their poor showing will be of little if any importance after they have passed from this life. On the other hand, if we really are reincarnated, and what we are in this life determines our status in the next life, they could be in big trouble. Fortunately, I can offer a positive interpretation for this scenario as well, but you will first need to contact my office with your insurance information.

Yours
Stu D. Prunus, L.P.N.

A valid test

The Mississippi Agricultural and Mechanical College Test of Intelligence, Personality, and Sexual Desirability

Directions: Answer all questions with either a yes or a no. Do not answer the same question more than once to inflate your score.

1) Do you question whether talking films were really an improvement?

2) Do you go to bed at night anticipating your morning coffee?

3) Do you laugh so hard that you cry over things that other people don’t find funny?

4) If you were your dog, would you want the person who you are to be your master?

5) Do you identify equally with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

6) Do you make up songs and sing them to your dog? If you don’t have a dog, do you make up songs and sing them to other people’s dogs?

7) Do you plan to give generously to charity, but only after you’re dead?

8) Is your wife glad she doesn’t understand you because she worries what it would say about her if she did?

9) Did you develop an inferiority complex because your shrink didn’t treat you for free for the privilege of writing you up in a professional journal?

10) Did you spend some of your happiest moments working in tight places like attics and crawlspaces, places that scare the bejesus out of almost everyone you know?

11) Is your idea of a really good time digging holes in your backyard in the hope of uncovering Atlantis, or at least a mastodon fossil or an arrowhead?

12) When you are through digging holes in your backyard, do you clean and oil your shovel and tuck it in for the night?

Score eight and one third points for each yes answer. Score zero for each no answer. A score of 100 means that you are smarter than God and more personable, desirable and moral than anyone else in the whole world. A score of less than 100 means that you are a hopeless twit. Put your answer in the blank following this paragraph, replacing the answer of the person who sent you the test. Only send the test to the person who sent it to you and to other people who you think are as smart, attractive, and personable as yourself. Otherwise, you risk being the subject of bitter envy. If you don’t believe that this is a valid test, you clearly scored less than 100.

My score:100

Baxter stays over

Baxter had to stay at the vet’s last night following surgery for bladder stones. We thought we could provide better care of him at home, but the vet wanted to keep him drugged, IV’d, and catheterized. Bonnie not only didn’t miss him; she seemed happy he was gone. If the situation were reversed, Baxter would have spent the evening sad and dismayed. He’s a cuddler, and would snuggle up to Bonnie if she would let him, but she gets up and walks away. Her callous disloyalty angers me, but I can hardly hash out issues with a dog. Instead, I spent a lot of time last night playing ball with her. I also gave her an empty gallon jug. She gleefully attacked it until it was barely recognizable.

Bedtime came, and I fantasized spending the night in the vet’s parking lot so as to be near Baxter. Peggy automatically got out his chicken flavor toothpaste. Baxter loves having his teeth brushed. He thinks its some kind of weird treat, so he goes into the bathroom ahead of us each night, and licks as much toothpaste as he can from the brush.

The legalities of healthcare

Peggy said that her recent fetal monitoring workshop (like all her workshops nowadays) focused heavily on avoiding lawsuits or at least making your behavior look good in the event of a lawsuit. I suppose the general public thinks that this fear of being sued keeps healthcare providers on their toes, but the truth is that working in a climate of fear creates an emotional distance between providers and their patients and hinders proper care in other ways as well. In Peggy’s specialty, for example, it results in a lot of unnecessary C-sections because doctors want to look like they did everything possible for their patients even though much of what is possible is also hazardous. C-sections, after all, are major surgery.

I suspect that some of the fear that nurses and doctors carry with them everyday (especially after they’ve been sued a time or two) partially accounts for the dehumanizing quality of modern medicine. Only those who have been sued can imagine what a nightmare it is, for only they have been through hundreds of hours of depositions, trial rehearsals, and testimony, that endlessly rehashes a few moments of time that were heartrending even if no one was in the wrong. And it can go on for years, destroying your reputation and costing you everything you own.

Going to court is like going to war in that right and wrong are irrelevant. Courts are about public relations; courts are places where the only thing that matters is how much money you have to spend on the cleverest lawyers and the most credentialed witnesses. To make things worse, really bad people have an invulnerability that really good people lack because really bad people have no ideals to lose. Really bad people never had the faith that, if you do your best, others will respect you for it and you will come out okay. Really bad people can remain unmoved in the presence of a baby that will never live a normal day; whereas really good people feel sickened and guilt-ridden even when they know it wasn’t their fault.

Medicine, regular and otherwise

Peggy and I spent Thanksgiving on the coast with Bob and Mary Pat. I was thrilled to discover that one of their other guests was a doctor because I had never socialized with anyone of higher rank than a postal worker. And even he was a retired postal worker, a fact that made me lose all interest in him just as if he had been a retired president whose only claim to fame was that he used to have the power to annihilate the world.

Since the other doctors I have seen asked for a list of medications, I began going over mine, but he changed the subject. Nonplussed, I didn’t speak to him anymore, and I folded my arms and turned my back every time he spoke to me. Only later did I reflect that he might have been a gynecologist or a pediatrician. I didn’t think of this sooner because whenever I have gone to a doctor, he or she was the right kind of doctor 100% of the time, so I naturally assumed that this would always be the case.

No matter. My regard for doctors has dropped appreciably over time. I still regard them more highly than lawyers but, like lawyers, they are often clueless, disrespectful, impatient, and more interested in my money than my welfare. Years ago, there was a public outcry for doctors to provide holistic care, but specialized medicine is where the biggest money is, so that is where most doctors have gone. No one has a doctor anymore. He has one his nose, one for his knee, and one for each of the other parts that are bothering him. If this is not good enough, if the patient also wants a doctor that cares about him, he will need yet another doctor, yet his psychiatrist will no more look at him as a whole person than will his podiatrist.

Instead of doctors, we have ever more specialized technicians. This would not be so bad if the technicians were at least effective, but it is still true that most people who go to a doctor either get better, get worse, or stay the same; and that the percentages of each are not greatly different than if they had stayed home.

With such thoughts in mind, I researched alternative therapies for my arthritis. When I met an Ayurvedist socially, I looked up his alma mater and several other colleges of Ayurveda on the Internet. I found that there is no governmentally required certification, that diplomas are issued after months instead of years, and that Ayurvedic instructors typically boast of being “skilled” in things like astrology, numerology, and homeopathy. The same is true of most alternative schools. People who consider scientific research to be unrelated or even inimical to truth scare me even more than regular doctors do.

Baxter is to have surgery tomorrow for bladder stones. I never take a dog to a vet but what I wish he or she could doctor me too. Vets take the time for a thorough examination; they act like they actually give a rip; they are not pretentious; their charges are reasonable; they provide estimates; they call you back if they are unavailable when you call them; and they take the time to explain what is wrong and what can be done to fix it. What’s more, no dog has a different vet for every part of his body, yet I see no reason to think that their care is inferior because of it. In fact, I rarely take a dog to a vet but what the vet helps the dogs; whereas I rarely take myself to a doctor but what I come away the same or worse, but in any case poorer.

Hardtack

My Manly-Man Cracker Recipe

9 cups flour (I combine a mixture of whole grain flours with a half-cup of ground flaxseed)

1/2 tsp salt

Appx 3/4-cup oil (less oil = stickier dough)

1/2-cup honey (more or less according to taste)

2+ cups warm water (warm water mixes better). Add slowly, and vary the amount as necessary. You want a dough that is uniformly moist but not so wet that it sticks to everything.

This is a big recipe and can be halved. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to make.

There aren’t too many ways to ruin a batch of crackers (1 burning them, 2 making the dough so wet that it sticks to everything, 3 making the dough so dry that it is crumbly), so feel free to experiment with the ingredients, and remember that the first two problems are correctable.

I use a Kitchen-Aid mixer, and add the ingredients in the order given. Hands also work well for mixing the ingredients, but a spoon is a hard way to go. I flour the dough as I roll it out, and I cut it into squares to save time and trouble, but you can use a drinking glass to cut it into uniform rounds if you prefer. I sometimes roll sesame seeds into the top of the dough.

Poke holes in the rolled dough with a fork (I hold one in each hand); otherwise, the crackers will have air pockets. Bake at 325°, preferably on cookie sheets that have an air space in the middle (this kind of sheet helps prevent burning the crackers on bottom. I have been tempted to bake the crackers at a lower temperature (say 125°) to try to re-create the toughness of hardtack, but have never had the patience to watch them.

Flip the crackers once or twice during baking. Move the top cookie sheet to the bottom and the bottom cookie sheet to the top when you flip them. This will help prevent burning. I suppose it takes about 25 minutes to bake a batch, but I never time it. I do check on the crackers every three to five minutes—more often as they get closer to being done.

Thick crackers naturally take longer to bake than thin ones. Thick crackers tend toward chewiness; thin crackers toward brittleness. I remove some crackers from the cookie sheet ahead of others because the ones on the edge cook faster. Don’t wait until the crackers look really brown, or they will taste burned. Spread them on a countertop to cool and harden. I freeze them but have kept them for two months without any refrigeration (when traveling).

To Portland and back

Peggy had a workshop on fetal monitoring in Portland Wednesday, so we drove up on Tuesday and stayed in a motel. She had hundreds of pages to read in preparation but, as usual, procrastinated. If I postpone something important, it is only because something else is more important, and not because I decide to clean my closet for the first time in ten years.

She passed the test only to have to come home for a dental appointment the next day. Tests, dentists, and assigned readings are three of the four things Peggy hates most. Writing is the fourth, and her “Message from the President” for the Oregon State Button Society Newsletter is due today.

We left Portland after dark during heavy rains and winds gusts of 53 miles per hour. All ten lanes on I-5 looked like one big parking lot so we took side streets, but they were little better. When we finally got out of the city, another driver took umbrage with me over who was entitled to be in a certain lane, and he followed us until I pulled over so Peggy could pee in a jar that we carry. When he veered in behind us and jumped out of his car, I thought, “Isn’t this just perfect? The wind is howling, the ruts in the interstate have turned into rivers that thunder against the fender wells, Bonnie is shivering in terror, my night vision is so bad I can hardly see the road even on a good night, the windshield wipers are working their hearts out to no avail, we just spent two hours going twenty miles; and now some fool is going to shoot us.”

I hastily left him standing in the storm and just as hastily took the next exit. Wouldn’t you know it, there was nothing but trees at the next exit, but fortunately he either didn’t see me turn or decided that killing us wasn’t worth a bad case of pneumonia. I always take a gun camping, but this experience made me vow to take it to the city as well.

Some interesting facts that I picked up on our trip:

By the third trimester of pregnancy, the embryonic fluid is nearly one-third urine.

A fetus’ heartbeat can reach 500 beats per minute, but it is very, very bad when it does.

Nurses sometimes test fetus reactivity with an instrument called a vibro-acoustic stimulator. This is basically a mechanical voicebox that sends 85 decibels of racket directly into the fetus’ ears, scaring the fetus so badly that it makes every effort to leap from the mother’s abdomen. (I told some friends about the device, and they asked with shocked expressions why nurses would do such a thing. The truth being pretty mundane, I said, “Mostly they just do it around Christmas time when they’ve had too much to drink.”)

Earth days were twenty-one hours long during Cambrian times. Due to the friction of water on the ocean floor, the days have been slowing by.002 seconds per year. Eventually, the earth will stop rotating and the same side will face the sun all the time. If the sun is on my side, I would anticipate an increase in property values. If it is not, the entire year will be like an Oregon winter.

100,000 women were raped by the Russians during the invasion of Berlin. 10,000 of them died, mostly by suicide.

Hitler died at age 56, so I’ve beaten him at least—hooray! I’ve also beaten Dan Blocker (43), John Candy (43), David Janssen (48), Steve McQueen (50), Marty Feldman (49), Michael Landon (54), and Robert Urich (55), all of whom died of natural causes. Every person I beat puts me one ahead. Ahead of what, I don’t know, but it feels good.

If, instead of driving, we had flown home from Portland in the little Cessna we once owned, we would have needed to fly 53 miles per hour into the wind merely to stand still. At that speed, we could have landed without the wheels rolling.

Forgetting

I lost seven pounds in six days this week through fasting and a diet of raw fruits and vegetables. Two hours divided among a sauna, a steam room and a Jacuzzi yesterday didn’t hurt either. I look gaunt, but I sleep better when I weigh less, and I hope the loss will help my knee as well. Unfortunately, the short-term effect is that I feel cold, weak, and shaky.

I have a hard time going at something slowly. I overdid it at yoga and got tendonitis, so I figured that, well, I’ll look into spas and water exercises—you can’t hurt yourself at that. So, what do I do? I sweated so much that I couldn’t remember a good friend’s name. Hell, I couldn’t remember my own name. I actually signed my old name to a credit card receipt. “This is what senility will be like,” I thought. “I will end up arguing with nurses about what my name is, and they will be right.”

When a person changes his name, he doesn’t think about what a drag it will be when he’s so old that he forgets the past fifty years. States of being in which a person loses his concept of personal identity fascinate me endlessly because I think they must be close to what death is like. I simply cannot conceive of complete non-being.

Bob

Bob and Jean, a couple in their fifties, came over last night for the first time. They smelled of marijuana, but I made no mention of it, although I have not had any for fifteen years and would have liked some very much. Bob carried a cloth sack, and in that sack was a bottle of Wild Turkey. I drank my last strong liquor about the time I smoked my last marijuana. Delicious! Peggy tried it and squinched her face predictably. No more drank she, and none drank Jean who sulked the entire evening—something to do with Bob we assumed.

Bob said they had recently ended their friendship with another couple because the man drank too much. Here he noticed that the level of whiskey in my third glass had dropped by an inch, so he added another three. As Bob became ruddier, friendlier, and more enthusiastic about everything in the entire world, I wondered if his complaint had concerned the quantity the man drank or how he behaved under its influence. “Oh, man!” he exclaimed joyfully and repeatedly as Peggy showed him her button collection, and as he sidled from the far end of the couch to a position just short of my lap. I made the decision that I was not going to awaken with a hangover, so my infrequent sips became smaller as the evening progressed. After our guests left, I emptied the whiskey that remained in my glass into a jelly jar for later and grieved that Bob took the bottle.

I learned through my readings about the Himalayas that there are cultures that condone hard drinking but deplore acting drunk. This was news to me, my heaviest drinking having been done as a teenager in the company of other boys who believed that acting like fools was the raison d'etre of the drinking experience.

By the time I was in my twenties, my liver was showing enough wear that I rarely drank anything, but I numbered three alcoholics among my close friends. One was Lynn, a skinny, barrel-chested man who, according to his doctors, was already long overdue to die of emphysema. Lynn and his wife came over one night to play cards, and he brought along a fifth of whiskey. He emptied it by himself in the space of three hours without showing much effect. In fact, we were still playing cards when he dropped like a rock onto the floor. After he was loaded into his car and driven home, I thought to myself that here was a man who could hold his liquor. I admired him for that, having made a fool of myself on too many occasions.

Last night, I realized after my second sip of whiskey that a fellow like myself who is unaccustomed to drinking anything more than a small amount of weak wine could get drunk on Wild Turkey before he knew it. I resolved to avoid this but knew that, in any event, my days of using liquor as an excuse for acting like a fool were over.

The secret to slowing down

I’m not getting the trike. I’m just not. Too much ambivalence. Everyone thinks I should, and I know that a person needs to jump in there sometimes and take a chance on something, but I’m not doing it this time.

One of the things I really liked about the trike was that it was so relaxing. I get tense on my bike because I can’t seem to slow down. Every time I go somewhere, I wonder if this is going to be the time that I wreck. The trike won’t go fast. It’s like a car that wouldn’t go over 85 in its prime, and its prime was twenty years ago. By comparison, my bike is a zephyr, and how can you hobble a zephyr?

Easy. GEAR DOWN! So, I put my big gearshift in second and my little gearshift in third, and, voila, I have a two-wheeled trike. Now, I can cruise around in the rain (I love cruising around in the rain) and actually see the fall colors and actually hear the patter of raindrops on my helmet. Like with the pain, I need to relax around my bike. I’ve got to relax around my bike. It’s really time that I tried something different because I’m hurting worse and in more places all the time, and I can’t ignore the fact that this just really/might/probably/could mean that I’m doing something wrong, something that I have the power to change.

A new approach

I awoke this morning in pain and had the same thought that I have been coming to a lot lately. Namely that the secret of dealing with pain is to stay relaxed. Whether its physical pain or emotional pain, pain increases anxiety, and anxiety increases pain. If I can get off the roller coaster when the pain first hits, I can spare myself this frantic buildup of negativity. Just let the pain be. I can’t stop it anyway, so why make it worse?

Gotta relax…go lightly…roll with the punches…stop running from it…stop blaming myself for it…stop feeling sorry for myself because I’m not strong like my father…stop wanting it to go away so I can wake up normal…look for the good in it…let it make me better…say that it is what it is, and that I’m more than it…say yes to life and not just to feeling good.