Doves

I’ve already mentioned the female dove that exemplified the possibility of instinct being a shallow sort of reasoning. But now I have more to say about doves. We have many doves in our yard, probably because of the high, protective arbor vitae hedge on our back property line where they roost at night

In and around Sun City West there are three kinds of doves: Inca doves, small with faint orange coloring on the wings; mourning doves, medium sized and nearly entirely gray; and white-wing doves, nearly as large as a pigeon and with the characteristic white feathers on the outside of their wings.  They’re an innocuous bunch but not my favorites.  Not that I dislike them.   They strike me as the idiot children among birds.  And if not the stupidest, at least the horniest.

They don’t seem to have a particular mating season.  They mate all year long.  All day long the males will chase after the females and the females invariably play hard to get.  Until, that is, they decide it’s time to give in.  Then they coo and kiss and do a little hugging before the old guy has his way with her.

This morning I watched four of them do some kind of four-way dance.  At least it looked like a dance.  If they were having sex then it must have been from positions I didn’t think were possible.  They were in a tight little cluster, head to head with wings fanning.  I envisioned it as a dove love fest, or maybe a big bird gang bang.  They carried on this way for at least five minutes.  Then a couple of male quail charged them and broke it up.  I guess the quail must be the avian morality guardians.

Dove family life is also peculiar. They don’t seem to have any marital bonds or obligations, the males and females.  Once the bang is over, the male goes his way and she goes hers.  And where she goes is to build a nest of twigs where she lays two or three eggs.  Does he help?  No.  Does he stick around to help with the offspring’s upbringing or to see how his progeny turn out?  No.

A few days ago I noticed the mother dove was up and sort of giving the two little (now rather large) children a tidying up.  I thought maybe this would be the day they’d take off and I wanted to see it.  I went in the house for just a moment and when I came back, they were already gone.  I had wanted to see how Mom acted when she shoved the babies out of her stick nest.  Would she stay with them, sort of watch over them for a while?  Would they be able to fly right off the bat?  I know baby quail can fly right out of the egg but I wasn’t sure about doves.  Did she give them pecks on the cheeks and say goodbye?  Some birds have babies that are recognizably babies trailing along after the parent—quail, robins, blackbirds, to name only a few.  But some seem to be as big as adults when they leave home.  Have you ever seen a baby sparrow?  I think not.  And the doves seem to be the same.  I’ve never seen a dove that looked like a baby or adolescent having to be fed by a mother or father.  One of life’s mysteries.

About a month later, I noticed a dove sitting in the stick nest.  And a male also flew up there next to her.  Was it the same female going to give it another go?  Or was it a new couple out looking for a place to rent?  I could almost hear her saying to him, “I dunno, Harry, it just doesn’t feel right.  And I just hate the drapes.  I think we should keep looking.”  So they did, both flying off to look at other properties. But then, only a few days later, I noticed a Harryless female dove was back, this time apparently to take occupancy.  What a silly bird.  If this is the same dove that just raised two little ones and then led them away, then she must have gotten banged shortly thereafter and now finds herself pregnant again.  What a silly bird. She sounds much too much like too many humans I know.

Golf Swing & Love

I coached golf for several years in high school and I think I was able to teach my young players a thing or three about the game. In fact, from my many years of playing golf, I think I know more about the golf swing than most players and I would probably make a pretty good instructor.  Some good images of what the golf swing looks and feels like: it’s like dancing—rock back to the right leg and then rock to the left; the old baseball image—the batter stands at the plate with his weight on his back leg and as the pitch approaches he lifts the left leg and steps into the ball, transferring almost all his weight onto that lead leg; the bullwhip image—take the right hand back with the wrist lagging behind the arm, dragging the whip behind and then, when the arm starts forward, the wrist falls behind and then forward as fast as it can, and the tip of the whip simply explodes toward the target; the mechanical image—address the ball, then with arms extended, lift the club directly upward toward the face, using only the wrists to cock it upward, then, without changing the wrists in any way, raise the arms to a position behind the right ear—voila!—there it is, the position you want when you reach the peak of the backswing. If you’re a golfer, go to a practice area and try one or all of the above. You may begin to hit the ball better than ever.

Brief aside on the nature of love: From quite a few years ago, I remember when Joey on Friends was going to tell Rachel how he feels about her, and they’d been running and rerunning a preview of his saying to her, “I’m falling in love with you.”  That struck me as false.  Still does. How many levels can one come up with when telling someone you like them as more than a friend?  The honest way and most straightforward way is to say, “I love you.”  Then it starts tapering off: “I’m in love with you,” Joey’s “I’m falling in love with you,” “I’m beginning to fall in love with you,” “I think I’m beginning to fall in love with you.”  Each level is farther away from a commitment.  OMG, Joey, just tell Rachel you love her and be done with it!

AZ/NM Beauty & McBain Jokes

Neither of us can yet get over the beauty and diversity of the American Southwest, Arizona and New Mexico in particular.  In Arizona, the drive up the hill to Flagstaff is a mini-tour of what the state has to offer—heat and desert of the Valley floor, then up and up to the summit before Verde Valley and then the lush vista of the valley as you sweep back down, then up again and around and around until you crest at the upper plateau with that huge view from the overlook, and miles of plateau farm and ranch land before entering the pine forests before Flagstaff with Whitney’s Peak towering over you, then east over toward the meteor strike with the Painted Desert to the north, and then the black lava beds just before leaving the state.  Awesome.

We drive east on Hwy 40, getting our kicks on what Nat King Cole made famous all over the world in its old title, Route Sixty-Six. Western New Mexico has a bleakness about it that I find depressing.  Maybe it’s the evidence of extreme reservation Indian poverty or maybe it’s simply the absence of much animal or human existence.  The one bit of beauty is the multicolored layers of cliff faces and the wind-hollowed sandstone hills along the highway.  Albuquerque spreads greenly before you as you cross the last slope before going down into the valley.  Northern New Mexico, ah, there’s the real beauty of the state.  You start climbing as you head north to Santa Fe and then east to Las Vegas, about 6500 feet above sea level.  The air is delightfully cool after the temperatures near 110º in Sun City West. The high country from Las Vegas to Raton is simply beautiful—lush green pastureland with the Rockies in the western distance.  You climb again into Raton and then climb some more until you hit the Colorado border where the land levels out into sweeping fields of grass to the right and the ever-encroaching Rockies to the left. It’s a trip of nearly six hundred miles, but it’s six hundred beautiful miles.

* * * * * *

I wish I could have met Evan Hunter before he died.  I think he and I would have really hit it off.  His sense of humor, for one thing, was much like mine.  In his 87^th Precinct series, he nearly always salted his books with a joke or two.  For example, in Poison, Carella sees one of the police lab boys about distilling nicotine.  They greet as old friends who haven’t seen one another in a long time.  The man tell him a joke he’s just heard:  A man goes to see a urologist.  The urologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?”  The man says, “I can’t pee.”  The urologist says, “How old are you?”  The man says, “Ninety-two.”  The urologist says, “So you peed enough already.”  .  .  .  Another man goes to see the same urologist.  The urologist says, “What seems to be the trouble?”  The man says, “I lost my penis in an automobile accident.”  The urologist says, “No problem, we’ll give you a penis transplant.”  The man says, “I didn’t know you could do that.”  The urologist says, “Sure.  I’ll show you some samples.”  He brings out a sample penis, shows it to the man.  The man says, “It’s too short.”  The urologist brings out another penis.  The man looks at it and says, “I was really hoping for something with more authority.”  The urologist brings out this magnificent penis.  The man looks at it.  “Now that’s more like it,” he says.  “Does it come in white?”  See, that’s humor I can relate to.

           

Ear Hairs & Dove Instinct

I’ve fought unsightly ear and nose hair my whole life. I remember an older, round little man I worked with in New York when I was a pup of twenty-two. He had a long, thick hair growing out of the tip of his nose, not from either nostril but from the very end of his nose. It was impossible to speak to him without one’s eyes drawn irresistibly to that hair. Was he blind to its presence? Was it invisible to him whenever he looked in a mirror? Did he choose to ignore it out of some hirsute pride?  Or did he think it was impossible to pluck such a long, tough hair? How do such hairs grow and why would they be part of our creator’s plan for mankind? ‘Tis a mystery.

The other day as I was driving to the grocery store, the morning sun was shining from my left. In the rearview mirror, I could see in the sunlight a hair about an inch long growing out of my left ear.  How is that possible?  I pull ear hairs religiously and this one somehow escaped my view.  Or is it that these hairs just grow like Jack’s beanstalk overnight?  I wonder what would happen if I just let them grow.  Would they get long enough to braid?  Would I look like a werewolf?  Or would they, as I see them on some men, just get darker and darker and thicker and thicker until their ear holes become vine-covered cave entrances.  No wonder so many men here have to wear hearing aids.

* * * * *

We have many doves that live in and around our backyard. The one I best remember was a mother who, in our sickly orange tree, chose to build her little stick nest to the north side of our back patio. We could watch her as her two eggs hatched and then as she sat on her tiny offspring between feedings, rolling her eyes at us and pretending she was invisible. Once, when I was out in back and got too close to her orange tree home, she took off and gave me that injured bird bit, where she fluttered across the ground looking for all the world like really easy prey.  And that led me to consider where and how that behavior got started.  I know all about instinct and how its knowledge is passed on genetically.  But there would also have to be some kind of avian reasoning going on at one time or another.  Sometime in the past, a dove must have seen another dove, actually injured, and doing an excellent although unwitting job of luring a predator away from her young.  And the light went on over his/her head.  “Ah ha!  What a good idea.  I could fake it and accomplish the same thing.”  And thus was born the acting job that became instinctive in the breed.  But it first had to involve some reasoning.  A little bird brain that could put one and one together.  Granted, he wasn’t yet up to putting 1309 and 1246 together.  But that could come generations and generations later.  Just as it must have with humans.

Philately & Broken Masts

             My recent post about my mother reminded me of another aspect of her character: She was a bit of a prude. But then, back when she was born, 1901, nearly everyone was a prude. Before I explain her prudishness, I have to refer to the Lawrence Block series about the likeable hitman named Keller. In Hit List, Keller was doing his usual thing, hiring out to kill various unsavory people, but this time he revealed his off-work passion, stamp collecting. He talked quite a bit about how one becomes a collector, and then he remarked on a stamp I knew vividly from my youth:

“And of course there was the Spanish set honoring Goya.  One of the stamps showed his nude portrait of the Duchess of Alba.  The painting had caused a stir when first displayed, and, years later, the stamp had proven every bit as stirring to a generation of young male philatelists. Keller remembered owning the stamp decades ago, and scrutinizing it through a pocket magnifier, wishing fervently that the stamp were larger and the glass stronger.”

When I was a mere lad of fourteen, and I was a budding philatelist, I purchased The Naked Maja, a painting by Goya, from one of my stamp dealers.  It was a large stamp, maybe an inch and a half long and three quarters high.  It was a clean stamp, never released, and the colors were vibrant.  There she was, reclining on her left side on a love seat, left arm raised and resting on her head, legs demurely crossed at the ankles.  And she was buck naked.  Oh, how the young adrenaline pumped.  She was large-breasted, voluptuous, a mother-earth figure to make a boy’s heart yearn.  In Yiddish she would be described as zaftig (juicy, succulent, or in slang, a full-figured, shapely woman).  And my mother found her in my collection and threw her away.  She never said anything to me, and I was too ashamed to mention its absence, but I knew in my heart she’d tried to keep my virginal eyes clean and pure.  Boy, do I wish I still had that stamp.  It would probably be worth some money today.

“We rest here while we can, but hear the ocean calling in our dreams,

And we know by morning, the wind will fill our sails to test the seams,

The calm is on the water and part of us would linger by the shore,

For ships are safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for.”

          My friend Anne sent this to me a long time ago, reminding me that life must be lived out in the unsafe world, not in some isolated safe house. It seems even more appropriate for me now as my life and world have shrunk to isolation. I love this little quatrain. But now, my ship’s main mast has, in a winter storm, broken off at deck level. I guess that might be appropriate as a symbol of my confinement to a safe harbor. Or some might think it’s also a phallic symbol. And, damn it, I guess they’d be right.

Academy Award Songs

It’s been announced that in next year’s Academy Awards they’ll add a category called “Most Popular Film.” I have no idea how they’ll figure out which films will be nominated for this one. Made the most money? Had the most viewers?  Most likeable stars? And won’t it be possible for the same film to win both categories, best and most popular?

The one category I used to look forward to was best original song. It seems like there haven’t been any even nominated that are very good, let alone the one considered the best. I remember what I said about the year when this trend began, 2001. None of the five that year were very good, but the winner was one written and performed by Bob Dylan for The Wonder Boys.  What an unmemorable piece of crap it was.  I keep remembering all the past winners, when songs were songs: “Over the Rainbow,” “Moon River,” “Evergreen,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “All the Way,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Mona Lisa,” “The Way We Were,” “The Windmills of Your Mind,” to name only a short list.  And in the Thirties and Forties—now, get this—the runners-up were astounding.  In 1936, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” lost to “The Way You Look Tonight.”  In 1937, “That Old Feeling” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” lost to “Sweet Leilani.”  In 1940, “It’s a Blue World” lost to “When You Wish Upon a Star.”  In 1941, “Blues in the Night” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo” lost to “The Last Time I Saw Paris.”  In 1942, “How About You?” and “It Seems to Me I’ve Heard That Song Before” lost to “White Christmas.”  In 1943, “That Old Black Magic” and “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to” lost to “You’ll Never Know.”  And in 1944, “I’ll Walk Alone,” “Long Ago and Far Away,” and “The Trolley Song” lost to “Swinging on a Star.”  All of the winners as well as the losers were better songs than almost any of those nominated in the last decade. And in 2001 the Oscar for best song went to creepy Bob Dylan, whose song, “Things Will Change,” is about as unsingable, as unmemorable, as unrememberable a piece of driftwood as any song I’ve ever heard.  I would defy any of my readers to hum that song, or remember any of the lyrics. How could it possibly stack up to any of the songs I’ve listed above?  It can’t.

More Tiger

My Tiger drumbeating goes on. Here’s what I had to say about the 2000 PGA Championship and the Tournament of Champions:.

Tiger shot a 67 in the second round when he was paired with Jack Nicklaus. The round was memorable because it was here that the torch was passed.  Jack needed an eagle on the last hole to make the cut.  He narrowly missed doing just that with a sand wedge.  It was a scene worth saving.  Tiger made a long putt for his birdie and Jack gave him a thumbs up.  Then Jack stroked in his short birdie putt and Tiger smiled in satisfaction.  The mutual admiration between them was obvious.  It incenses me when I hear some of my fellow retirees complain that he’s too cocky and that the media gives him too much attention.  First, he strikes me as one of the least cocky 24-year-olds I’ve ever seen, especially one that has so much to be rightfully cocky about.  He’s extremely well-spoken in all his interviews.  He’s gracious to his fellow competitors.  I think he’s probably won over nearly everyone he plays with and against on tour.  They no long resent his skills.  They just stand back, like Ernie Els, and shake their heads in wonder, tiny smiles on their faces.  One of the commentators on Friday said we’re witnessing a miracle.  And personally, I’m thankful the cameras spend so much time following his rounds.  Personally, I’m thankful I’m living in this time to watch this golfing prodigy, this athletic miracle. He just keeps playing such careful golf, knocking his drives so far he has much shorter clubs into greens, taking his birdies wherever he can, making few mistakes.  His short game is so good that even when he misses an occasional green, he gets it up and down.  His competitors must just go crazy waiting for him to make a mistake and he doesn’t make mistakes.  A year ago I thought if anything shortened his career it would be a back or spine injury, because of the velocity of his full swing.  Now I’m beginning to think it could be boredom.  What if he conquered all the golf worlds and no challengers ever showed up?  Maybe he’d turn to some other sport, like basketball, or baseball, sort of a reverse Michael Jordan.  Couldn’t you just see him hitting balls over the leftfield fences, crunching the ball and then staring it down, striving to hit it farther and farther afield, maybe even aiming for nothing but centerfields to keep from growing bored with baseball too.

In the third round he did exactly as he’s been doing in all the majors, coasting along, making birdies on all the par fives, making no mistakes, letting the others in the field try to catch him.  And I no more than said that when he double bogeyed the twelfth with a bad chip and an even worse 3-putt and Dunlap birdied to tie, a three stroke swing.  I remember reading a science fiction story years and years ago about a young man born with supernatural skills that no one ever knew about.  He was pitching for a major league team and at a very crucial time in a very crucial game, he threw a deliberate strike in the sweet spot just so the batter could hit a homerun, just to keep his boredom at bay, to sort of even up the field.  Maybe that was Tiger just trying to keep his interest in the game going into Sunday.  Naah!  He really didn’t want to do that.

He finished the round sort of limping in with a birdie on 18 to take a one-shot lead over Bob May and Scott Dunlap with a bunch of guys only two or three back.  The final round will go down as one of the best golf matches of all time.  Tiger led by one and Bob May was supposed to crumble.  But he didn’t.  And all the guys in front of them made their runs but then also fell back to make it a two-man show on the back nine.  Tiger made a couple of errors so uncharacteristic of him at the start.  He bogeyed—BOGEYED!—the par-5 second hole while May birdied and suddenly Tiger was behind by one.  Then Tiger 3-putt number five to lose another shot and was behind by two.  But he managed birdies on 8 and 9 to pull it back to one shot.  The back nine was unbelievable, how they each kept matching great shot with great shot, great putt with great putt.  Finally, at 17, Tiger birdied to pull it back to even.  On eighteen they both hit the green in two but left themselves with horrendous putts.  May over-hit his first putt and knocked it fifteen feet past the cup onto the back fringe.  Tiger knocked his over the ridge and within six feet.  May then made his downhiller and Tiger made his to match his birdie.  On to the 3-hole playoff.  Tiger made a twenty-footer on sixteen to take a one shot lead for the first time since the second hole of regulation.  Then both made bad tee shots on the next two but both made miraculous saves for par.  But Tiger’s sand-save par on eighteen was the one that won it for him.  What a remarkable round of golf.  Tiger’s and May’s final totals of eighteen under were new record lows.  So now Tiger either holds outright or is tied for the record scores in all four majors. Amazing.

Then there was the Tournament of Champions in Akron. In the first round, Tiger shot a 61 and set all kinds of records.  He tied the course record for Firestone South, he set a new 36-hole record at Firestone, and he set a new all-time record low score on the PGA Tour for 36 holes (125).  What’s he going to do next?  Probably shoot a 56.  He’s an amazing kid.

In the third round he went birdie, eagle, birdie to go four under after three holes.  Amazing.  But then he cooled off for the rest of the front and shot only, only! A 33, and was leading Mickelson by nine.  And he kept making pars to the end of the round to shoot a 67.  Venturi and the boys all thought he was going to shoot a 59 or better after that great start, but Tiger put it on hold and coast-mode, saying, “Come on and get me, boys.  I’m not going to do any backing up.”  The others all fell back and Hal Sutton got to within eight to take second place.  Mickelson and the other pretenders to the throne were tagging along at nine and ten back.  In fact, Mickelson looked like he nearly spit up on his shoes on the last hole.  Tiger has a very makeable birdie and Phil a fairly long putt for par.  Phil misses, Tiger misses, then Phil misses his tap-in bogey to fall out of the final pairing for Sunday.  Most of the boys are just so frustrated trying to catch Tiger they start to make dumb mistakes.

He won that 2000 Tournament of Champions by eleven, setting all kinds of new records not only for Firestone but also the tour.  He is really some kind of charismatic young man.

I think that's enough about Tiger for a while. Now we have to see if he's really for real in the Fed Ex Cup and Ryder Cup.

St. Andrews & Tiger

In this year’s Open Championship and the PGA Championship, I and the rest of the world saw that the old Tiger Woods is back. You remember, the Tiger who so dominated the tour in 2000? That was a year that will probably never be duplicated by any golfer ever again.

I decided to go back to see what I’d said about his victory at St. Andrews in that magical year. It was exciting and I also had some strange things to say about the course everyone credits as being the birthplace of golf. I guess I should retract my slams to prevent anyone from looking to beat me up. But I'll leave them in. See what you think.

The Old Course (I said eighteen years ago) looked as silly as ever, even kind of glassy fast, where the viewer could hardly distinguish fairways from greens.  It’s just a treeless humpy dumpy place where you find the tee boxes and sort of see a flag way down there somewhere.  You hit your tee shot and hope it runs and runs and stays out of one of the really dumb pot bunkers.  Then you find it and hit a low bump and run toward the flag, hoping the bumps and runs are just right and you end up somewhere near the flag.

In the first round, Ernie Els finished at minus 6 to take the first round lead, with Tiger and Steve Flesch one back. On day two, Tiger shot a six under 66 to go with his opening 67 and led by three at the end of the day.  He’s just too good for the rest of the field. Tiger’s making it look like a walk in the park.  On Saturday, he shot another 67 despite his first two bogeys of the tournament (two 3-putts) and was ahead by six after three rounds.

He and Duval were paired in the final group and Duval birdied four of the first seven holes to cut the lead to three.  But then Tiger put it into overdrive again and won walking away. Everyone kept making mini-charges and then falling back.  Typical of the way the others were playing: Duval hit his second into the pot bunker on 17, the infamous bunker guarding the green on the road hole.  He tried twice to get it out, unsuccessfully.  His third shot was a backward chip to get it away from the revetment wall.  Then out and onto the green, and two putts for a quadruple bogey.  Tiger won by eight (tied the old record for biggest margin), was 19 under par (lowest total compared to par in any major), broke Faldo’s St. Andrews record of 18 under, made only three bogeys in four rounds, didn’t have a six on any of his cards, didn’t get in any of the 120 bunkers.

The kid is unreal.  The bookies hate him.  His competitors love him for the increased purses on the tour, hate him because they’re relegated to playing for second in any tournament he’s in.  Bigots hate him because he destroys their bigoted ideas about blacks.  Young kids (white and black and brown and red and yellow) love him because he gives them such an outstanding role model.  I love him because he makes all the bigots so uneasy.  In an interview after the final round, Tiger was told that Butch Harmon had said Tiger was playing up to about 75% of his potential.  Then he was asked if that was true.  Tiger said, “Yes, that’s about right.  I’ve got some flaws in my game I plan to address in the future.”  Whoa!  Now what are the boys going to do?  He plans to fix the 25% still separating him from perfection?  He plans to shoot an 18 someday?

            There, that’s what I said eighteen years ago. I may have been too negative about St. Andrews. And I may have been too positive about Tiger’s being such a good role model. I say this in light of his extra-marital affairs, the fight and divorce from his lovely wife, and his arrest in Florida for drug use and his booking photo. So, Tiger isn’t really a perfect role model for kids, but he’s still a pretty good human.

Red Lights & Memories

It seems to me that more and more drivers are running red lights, not even touching their brakes when the yellow tells them to stop. And there never seem to be any cops or sheriff’s deputies around to corral them. I had an idea driving home from the mall yesterday.  It involved a way to stop all the red-light runners.  My plan would require a little more technology than we probably now have, maybe a little too much money.  But, hey, if we caught just a portion of those who run lights it would pay for itself.  Depending on the posted speed limits at each light, the time for the yellow should be long enough for anyone driving at the top of the limit to come comfortably and safely to a stop once a yellow light comes on, thus preventing the legal argument that it would have been unsafe to brake to a stop when the yellow is spotted.  If they have to go through the yellow because they were too close to stop, they should have plenty of time to make it through on all yellow.  But if any part of their car is still in the “zone” when the red light comes on, they would be required to pay a fine.  The zone would be marked by a laser beam set to go on with the red light.  A video camera would also automatically go on at the same time to record the licenses of any who were still in the red zone.  And we wouldn’t need any police to enforce it. The first infraction within a one year period would cost $100, without recourse to the legal system.  The second infraction would double to $200, the third to $400, the fourth to $800, the fifth to $800 and a month in jail, the sixth to $1,000 and a year in jail.  After a year, the penalties would revert to step one.  I’ll bet it wouldn’t take very long before NO one was going through any red lights.

I dug out an old tape one of my nieces had made when she interviewed my mother on her 92^nd birthday.  How odd it was to see her again, hear her again after almost twenty years. Most of what she had to say was identical to what she’d told my brother thirteen years before this interview, almost like she’d memorized the testimony and was repeating it not necessarily as she remembered it or as it actually happened, but as she’d memorized it.  The mind and memory are funny creatures.  We can remember some things vividly, things that never happened, only manufactured in our subconscious desire to change what actually happened.  I hope that isn’t true of what I remember about my life (although I’m sure parts of what I’ve said in my memoires may be exaggerated or misinterpreted by me).  I watched the video, and it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be.  She was there as I remember her in her nineties, a little old woman still with a great sense of humor.  Her voice, her inflections, her gestures were exactly as I remembered them.  She was, for a little while, still alive.

21st Century Fears

Oh, how the world has changed, not just in the technological, medical, and scientific advances, but also in the fear most of us feel. I just read an article about a bullet-proof panel that can be inserted in a child’s backpack, and shatter-proof glass for school doors and windows. A bullet could still come through but the glass itself would remain for about four minutes before it would fall apart, long enough for police and SWAT to arrive. These are not the schools I grew up attending, nor the schools I taught in for over thirty years. These are the new, frightening schools in which students are trained to take cover, where teachers are armed, and schools are in lock-down during the school day.

And now we have a renewed threat of nuclear war, with more and more nations now having the bomb or nearly having it—North Korea, Iran, China, Russia, the U.S. We also have a renewed fear that someone could make a mistake, especially when you consider our unpredictable president with his finger near the button that could start it all.  It reminded me of a made-for-television movie from 2000, Failsafe, based on the 1962 novel by Burdick and Wheeler.  This filmed version was done live in black and white, just like the old Playhouse 90, and it was excellent.  Somehow, American planes were mistakenly dispatched to bomb Moscow. Our president, to prove his sincerity about our planes being just a mistake, vowed to the Russian leader that if they made it through to Moscow and destroyed it, he would order our planes to do the same thing to New York City.  What an awful decision, but the only one that would prevent an all-out war of devastation.  George Clooney went out on a limb as producer, but this film was well worth it.  Eighteen years ago, I’d nearly forgotten just how frightened we all used to be about nuclear annihilation.  I remember a dream I had back then in which the sky was filled with planes coming to drop nuclear bombs on us, thinking, “Oh my god, this is it, this is the end of me and my family and everyone else in the world.”  It was the cold horror of knowing that everything, everything, everything would be gone.  How could I forget that dream?  Well, George Clooney and his Failsafe reminded me.  None of us should ever forget how close we came to doing just that, ending the whole damn thing. And now, here we are again, looking for some way to make world leaders realize how stupid and awful the unleashing of nuclear weapons would be. Are you listening, Kim Jong-un, Hassan Rouhani, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and especially you Donald Trump?

PGA & Tully

What a nice four days for tv sports. I spent all weekend watching every shot hit by every hitter in the 100^th playing of the PGA Championship, and the suspense and drama were beautiful. And the outcome for Tiger was wonderful, second place alone behind the winner, Brooks Koepka. He has now pretty much shut the mouths of those talking heads who didn’t think he could even make the cut, let alone contend. If he can get his driver straightened out, he’ll be contending every week from now on. And, yes, Captain Jim Furyk will now have to pick him for the Ryder Cup.

We rented a movie from Direct TV last night, Tully with Charlize Theron, and were both impressed with Charlize Theron more than with the movie. I remember seeing her as guest on Ellen Degeneris where she told Ellen that her last name was pronounced as the one-syllable “throne” and not “THAIR-on.” Odd that virtually no one ever pronounces it as “throne,” odd that she never corrects anyone. Although the movie was very good, Charlize was even better. She seems to choose odd roles in her film career. I know she’s made a bunch but the only ones I remember vividly are the ones in which she plays an oddball of sorts. I remember her in that perfectly awful thing she did with Will Smith and Matt Damon, The Legend of Bagger Vance, a film that pretended to understand golf and didn’t have a clue. She went on to win an Oscar for her portrayal of the monstrous serial killer in Monster, and was nominated for another unusual role as the only woman working in a Minnesota steel mill in North Country, neither film that played on her beauty. And now here she is as a tired, very over-weight mother of two with the third due right after the film begins. It may not have been a tour de force role, but it was pretty close. Tully was listed as a comedy, but there was absolutely no laughter in it. The story about the difficulties of raising three children with very little help from her husband was disconcertingly depressing. There were also a few unanswered questions about how the night nannie, Tully (Mackenzie Davis), came to be there to help with the burden of night care for Marlo’s newborn. The trickery with what was real and what was imagined defied logic. But it was still a film I’ll remember for a long time.

2018 Mid-terms

          The 2018 Mid-terms are just a few steps down the road and they will be a big indicator of where our nation is heading—up, down, or just spinning around. Voter turnout for Mid-terms has been poor in the past, well under 50%. This time, it is essential that everyone eligible to vote should do so. We need an honest assessment of the people’s desires. That means that all the young voters who have been so eager to protest racial injustice and gun violence must get to the polls. All the women who need to continue the “MeToo” Movement must get to the polls. All the conservatives and Trump supporters must get to the polls. We need to know more exactly how many of you there are. What we allowed to happen in 2016 because of voter apathy must not be repeated. Too much is at stake. We need to show the rest of the world how a true democracy can work.

          What needs to be fixed for the 2020 elections? Dump the Electoral College, set term limits for Congress and Senate, set campaign spending limits for all levels from top to bottom, and expand the Supreme Court by at least six. Oh, yes, and stop spending money on a Southern border wall and find a way to repair our failing infrastructure. There. That’s my political laundry list.

Countup

Countdown:

          I seem to be counting up these days instead of down, probably gaining twenty minutes since I last reported. My new normal is still pretty abnormal but I at least have a better attitude about my life. I still have hopes of being able to see theater movies or putting at one of our practice facilities. Or even of braving the hoards at CostCo for a few bargains (I love to shop.) So much depends on my fatigue levels. I want to raise my energy enough to allow me to walk a hundred steps instead of fifty before I need to sit down. And where do I sit down after those hundred steps? I need a walker with an attached seat. Okay, so get a walker with a seat, Dummy.

What else has brightened my outlook? For nearly a year I’ve been irregular, forcing me to use too many laxatives which with frequent use are too hard on the organs. But I learned the hard way this last year that irregularity can be not only painful and frightening, but also depressing. I Googled irregularity and found that several of my medications cause constipation: pain narcotics (I’ve taken 150 mg. of Tramadol every day for a year), Nifedipine (one of my heart meds), iron pills (for my low red cell count), and Levothyroxine (which I take for hypothyroidism, but it’s the condition, not the remedy, that causes constipation). I quit taking the Tramadol and iron, and wonder of wonders, I’ve found my youthful regularity. And my days are quite a bit brighter (as well as lighter).

Countdown complete. My clock now shows 11:22 p.m. What could cause it to begin moving toward midnight? I think it has to do with what I consider an unacceptable quality of life. What is or isn’t acceptable varies with every person and from one age to another. For some, their religion might tell them that they must live as long as possible, no matter what their circumstances. Life is precious, they say, and we must keep life’s candle burning even if the flame is sputtering. These are the followers of Dylan Thomas who suggests that we “rage against the coming of the night.” Although I admire Thomas’ poetry, I don’t plan to hold on to life when life is no longer worth living. When my quality of life is no longer acceptable, I will find a way to end it. What is unacceptable to me? When I can no longer read or write or listen to great music, when the Cardinals, Diamondbacks, or the PGA no longer interest me, when I no longer do anything but sit or lie and stare at a wall or ceiling, when I require full-time assistance for eating, for use of restroom, for dressing and undressing, that will be the time for bailing out. I have a living will stating that no artificial means of keeping me alive are acceptable—no intravenous feeding, no breathing machine, and no life support of any kind. Comfort care drugs? Yes. By all means, yes. If I have a heart attack, do I want to be resuscitated? You bet. But if it leads to that life support mentioned previously, no, a resounding no. What happens if my life becomes unacceptable but I’m too incapacitated to do anything about it? If I can’t find the stored opioid pills on my own and there’s no one around to find them for me, I’ll just have to will myself to sleep. I think there are plenty of examples of old folks doing just that. I’m a strong-willed person and I’m sure I could manage it.

Maybe most of the states in the next ten years will come to their senses and pass right-to-die legislation to help people like me find their easy out. If not, then my wife or one of my children will have to haul me to California or Colorado.

Patients & Patience

Yesterday, I had an unusual experience with a hospital, this time from the outside looking in instead of from the inside looking out. I know that being in a hospital can be dreadful, both because of the illness or injury as well as the feeling of being held captive, of feeling powerless. But the experience for visitors waiting for hospital procedures can be equally dreadful.

          My wife Rosalie had surgery yesterday at the Banner Boswell Medical Center in Sun City. She was there for the removal of cancer from her right lung and her anxiety kept growing from when she first learned of the cancer to the day when she was finally scheduled for the surgery. So she had well over a month for her anxiety to grow like a malignancy.

          Finally, yesterday came and we were anxious to get it over with so that life could resume. We both thought it would be a fairly simple, routine procedure, tiny incision, tiny camera and cutting tool, removal of the cancerous spot, about the size of a fifty-cent piece. Simple, right? Stitch it up and that would be it, maybe a two-day hospital stay, maybe less. Wrong.

          I and daughter Jeri drove her to the hospital at 9:30 for her 10:00 surgery. She was taken in for pre-op right at 10:00. Jeri and I waited in the lounge near the registration desk for them to call us in to see her before the operation. They called us in at noon. Two hours to get her ready for surgery? That seemed to be unnecessarily long. We sat with her there for another two hours, wondering why it was taking so long. During the two hours, we chatted with Norma, her pre-op nurse, Taylor, Dr. Kuo’s surgical assistant, who explained to Rosalie and us what the surgery would involve, an assistant anesthetist whose name I never heard who in whispers (in very heavy dialect from somewhere in Africa) asked her questions about her medications, allergies, past smoking history, what and when she had last eaten or drunk. About the only thing he didn’t ask was when she’d last had a bowel movement. All this information would be in her computer files, questions having been answered two or three times before we’d arrived at the hospital. Then we had a visit from the surgical anesthesiologist who asked her the same set of questions and told her what kind of anesthetic they would be using. And finally Dr. Kuo, the surgeon, arrived to tell us again what the procedure would involve. His final comment was that she would be in surgery for about four hours. Four hours?! Whoa! This would not be what we thought was a simple surgery.

          They took her away at 2:00 and Jeri and I went back to waiting in the outer lounge. Three and a half hours later, we were informed that she was out of surgery, were told it would be about another fifteen minutes before Dr. Kuo could see us to tell us how it went. Thirty minutes later, Dr. Kuo told us it had gone very well, showed us some ghastly photos of what they had removed, and said we could see her in about thirty minutes when they had her back in the post-op section. He had removed not just a little fifty-cent piece of her lung but the entire upper right lobe, which measured in the photos about 13” x 5”. This obviously had been much more than a simple surgery.

          We saw her at 6:30 but she was still so out of it from pain meds and anesthesia she didn’t really know who we were. So we left her there, to be transferred to the ICU unit sometime that evening. And then to a regular room for another two to four days. She and I had both thought she might be able to come home no later than Wednesday, but Friday or Saturday now seems more likely.

          As with all surgeries, big and little, the stress on the patient is great, but I now know, after nine hours of waiting, waiting, that the stress on those who wait is also great.

Movies

You know what I most dislike about being restricted by an oxygen line tether? I miss going to a theater to see movies. I think I could spend every afternoon seeing flicks.  I love the thrill of sitting in a darkened theater with a bag of popcorn and watching a big screen presentation of someone else’s life.  I guess I’ve always liked it, right from the early Saturday afternoon westerns with Tim Holt and Hopalong Cassidy, the Johnny Weismuller Tarzans, the Gunga Dins and the King Kongs.  I saw ‘em all.  I can remember all the horror movies with the mummy and him dragging his dead leg.  I remember vividly the little girl who had a choice of underpasses to go through on her way home after dark, the moonlit one or the dark one.  She chose the moonlit one and the black cat caught her just as she reached her door and then all we saw was the blood leaking under the unopened door.  I remember the fluttering curtains and the book pages flipping in the breeze in The Uninvited.  I remember the “Slowly I turned, step by step, closer and closer” routine in one of the Abbott and Costello bits, or maybe in a Three Stooges.  I remember National Velvet and falling in love with the young, beautiful Elizabeth Taylor.  I remember Lassie, Come Home with the young Roddie McDowell.  I remember the first showing of The Wizard of Oz in 1939.  That must have been about the time I developed such a thirst for the L. Frank Baum Oz series.  My enthusiasm for the cinema must also have something to say about how little we had by way of entertainment, other than what we could manufacture on our own.  And we young kids in our tiny, provincial Mobridge, South Dakota, manufactured a lot of our own entertainment, but the movies were our window on the world back then. I really must figure out a way for me to get back to theater movies. There are too many good ones being made nowadays to just sit and wait for them on rental videos.

Two Viagra jokes:

1. Precaution on the label: “Take pill with 8-oz water to prevent a stiff neck.”

2. What do Disneyland and Viagra have in common? A one-hour wait for a two-minute ride.

Two Letters

I wrote these two years ago in December, shortly after we elected Donald Trump to be our next president. Now, almost two years later, these letters take on a new level of relevance. I wrote them but never sent them. Now, I wish I had. See what you think.

 

Dear Mr. President and Mrs. Obama,
          Too soon, you’ll be leaving your home of the last eight years, and I feel, in light of the recent election, that you may need some words of encouragement on your way to a new life. Thank you for your eight years of service.
          In only a few more weeks, I would have been able to send this letter to Barack and Michelle, two people I’ve come to know and admire over the last eight years, admire for your class, your charm, and your dignity as you both attended to the difficult and often thankless jobs you’ve held. Mr. President, you’ve earned each of those gray hairs that now adorn your head. Mrs. Obama, you’ve earned the respect and admiration of all the people you’ve helped along the way. Your beauty and elegance have made us proud of the image you presented to the world.
          Someday, history will rank you two as a great President and a great First Lady. I already rank you there. Again, thank you for showing us a dignity in our highest office that we may not see again for a while.

Dear President-Elect and Mrs. Trump,
          Too soon, you’ll be staying in your Trump Tower, which costs about a million dollars a day to secure, and I feel, in light of the recent election, that you may need some words of direction for the next four, not eight, years you will be in office.
          I can only hope that you, Mrs. Trump, will display to the world the same class and dignity that Michelle Obama did. I also hope that you can guide your husband to that same level of dignity to show to the world. In only four years, I may be able to address a letter to you as Donald and Melania Trump. I can only hope that these four years will not have seen us descend into another kind of swamp similar to that which you have vowed to drain. I can only hope that any nuclear buildup you now believe we need does not lead us into another cold war with Russia. I can only hope that the same level of prosperity and unemployment that we’ve seen in the last eight years will be maintained in the next four years. I can only hope that people seeking safe refuge will continue to find it in our country. I can only hope that racial equality will improve in these next four years and not go back to the ugly times before the Civil Rights Movement.
          Someday, history will rank you as either a great, a good, or a bad president. I hope for your sake as well as ours that it’s at least a good rating.

Nature's Brutality

We have so many birds here in Arizona, some year-rounders and some just snowbirds like our part-time residents. All the widgeons have flown away north, and a lot of the coots are gone, all the stupid ones, I guess.  Most of the mallard ducks, the ones that were born here have decided that Arizona is better than what they might find up north.

Not long ago, on one of our golf courses, I saw three families of mallards, eight or nine in each bunch, and the familial closeness of them was noteworthy.  In all three cases the father and mother were right there to shepherd the little ones around the ponds.  One group was engaged in practice dives.  These little walnut-sized bits of fluff would tip their heads down and pop under the surface for two or three seconds, then pop up again.  So cute.  I couldn’t help but wonder what it was they were diving for.  Some subsurface food, maybe? Or more likely, just for the fun of it. 

But I was reminded of that brutal scene I witnessed a few years ago.  The state conservation people had taken most of the female mallards out of the golf course ponds, so the remaining males tended to get horny with no resources available.  That made for mallard male homosexuality.  Any port in a storm, so to speak. 

I was playing golf on a hole with a pond nearby, and all of a sudden I noticed a male attacking another male out near the middle of the pond.  He was literally riding the other’s back and pecking him fiercely on the head, even holding his head under water as he had his way with him.  And right behind this duo were another three males.  Whenever the pursued duck managed to get away momentarily, the others would fight over whose turn it was.  I can’t imagine anything more brutal taking place in a prison shower room.  The poor duck managed to free himself and fly to shore, but the others were right behind him and proceeded to nail him there as well. 

My point is that here I am, so enamored of this idyllic scene of mallard family life and just a few years earlier I saw mallards behaving like cell block bullies.  It didn’t matter to them if they killed the one they were attacking as long as they got their sexual way with him.  No sweet, comic little Disney characters these guys. 

We tend to romanticize creatures in nature, and every now and then nature has to slap us in the face and remind us that it’s still a jungle out there, and we’re not so far removed from that jungle that we can ignore the brutality inherent in nature as well as in human nature.

Measure Once

          I’ve always been a mechanical idiot, or maybe that should be a wood-working imbecile. I’m too impatient to do anything mechanical or woody correctly the first time. Yes, if good mechanics and wood-workers adhere to the advice, “Measure twice, cut once,” I adhere to the opposite, “Measure once, cut twice.” Whenever I buy a piece of furniture or something like a bike that comes in a box and needs to be assembled, I ignore the instructions and go it on my own . . . and always discover when I’m finished that I’ve done something backwards . . . and have to take it all apart and do it again . . . this time correctly. Like I said, “Measure once, cut twice.” Well, I did it again.

For the last twenty years I’ve been running off the pages of my journals and the posts on my blog, Doggy-Dog World. I print them by the year using a printer called ClickBook. This printer takes a full page of text, changes it to a half-page size, and then prints it front and back into a booklet. I’ve had lots of experience doing this. After it prints the booklet, I cut the pages on my Boston Trimmer, then punch all the pages on my Rolodex 12-inch puncher. I punch six holes at a rate of about five pages per punching. Then I line them all up and bind them with upholstery thread, after which I duct tape the back to hide the threaded holes. Voila! Finished. And they look good and read easily. Then I line them up by year on a bookshelf. I’ve had lots and lots of practice and by this time I’m a very good book-binder.

Last week I decided I’d run all my Doggy-Dog blogs in a format tight enough that they’d come out in two really thick books, with tiny print but still big enough to read. It came out to 1248 pages. It took me hours and hours to run off that many pages, more hours and hours to cut and punch the pages and then to bind them with the thread and duct tape. I separated them into two piles, the first from 2009 to 2013, from page 1 to page 650, the second from 2014 to 2018, from 651 to 1248. Then, as I began binding the first, I discovered the error of my ways: I had measured once and done it wrong. Yes, I had punched all the pages on the wrong side. And when I bound them all together, they came out as a left-handed book. But they’re beautiful, just a little unhandy requiring them to be read by turning pages from left to right instead of right to left. I wonder if there are any societies whose books are all left-handed. I'd fit right in.