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For Labor Day Weekend – Busy

September 4, 2009

Years ago, I was lucky enough to do field work in India studying Indian trade unions.   (More about that some other time.)   This is a poem about a wonderful trade union leader, who very kindly took me under his wing, allowing me to travel with him to various union headquarters around the state of Gujerat.

Have I learned anything?

Ah this is better.
This is sitting down.
This is getting some tea.
This is biting into an orange peel, just slightly, before peeling.
This is biting into the orange.
I think about the labor leader I knew in Ahmadabad.
How they would bring him his coffee
in the morning, me my tea.
He had given up tea, he said,
when Gandhi said to, and ever since,
taking a hot slurp,
he had never drunk it.
Because of the British.

In the same way, in the car,
he took out all his toiletries, one by one, handing
them to me for examination:
a small soap still wrapped in its green labeled paper,
collected from an Indian hotel,
his razor, his comb—he combed
his close cropped hair before handing it to me as if
to show its use—a small towel–
he really didn’t have very much–a small
scissors.  His feet were up
on the seat.  Now
he brought one to his knee, shifting
his white cloth dhoti, and
clipped the toe nails quickly, first
one foot then the other.
He collected as he clipped
the small white crusts of nail, then
opened the window a bit wider
to toss them out.

“You see how I am always busy,” he said.  “Never
a moment idle, wasted.  I am busy all the time,
you see how I am doing it.”
He took the toiletries back from me.

I finish my breakfast slowly,
just sitting.

(For a different side of Labor Day weekend, i.e. the very sad end of vacation side, check out the Last Voyage of the Summer, below.   And, as always, check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above.)

<!–[if !mso]> <! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } –>

Have I learned anything?

Ah this is better.

This is sitting down.

This is getting some tea.

This is biting into an orange peel, just slightly, before peeling.

This is biting into the orange.

I think about the labor leader I knew in Ahmadabad.

How they would bring him his coffee

in the morning, me my tea.

He had given up tea, he said,

when Gandhi said to, and ever since,

taking a hot slurp,

he had never drunk it.

Because of the British.

In the same way, in the car,

he took out all his toiletries, one by one, handing

them to me for examination:

a small soap still wrapped in its green labeled paper,

collected from an Indian hotel,

his razor, his comb—he combed

his close cropped hair before handing it to me as if

to show its use—a small towel–

he really didn’t have very much–a small

scissors. His feet were up

on the seat. Now

he brought one to his knee, shifting

his white cloth dhoti, and

clipped the toe nails quickly, first

one foot then the other.

He collected as he clipped

the small white crusts of nail, then

opened the window a bit wider

to toss them out.

“You see how I am always busy,” he said. “Never

a moment idle, wasted. I am busy all the time,

you see

how I am doing it.”

He took the toiletries back from me.

I finish my breakfast slowly,

just sitting.

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Last Voyage Of The Summer

September 4, 2009
Last Voyage of the Summer

Last Voyage of the Summer

Enjoy the weekend!

If you like both elephants and bodies of water (in close proximity with each other), check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at Amazon and at the link above.

Categories: children's illustration, elephants
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Blank Mind – DNRs

September 3, 2009

What to write about when your mind is blank and Robert Pattinson is managing to keep out of the lime light?  (It seems that Vancouver, where Pattinson is now filming, is somehow a more polite city than New York.  Who woulda thunk it?)

How about DNRs?  Do Not Resuscitate orders.

Now there’s a subject for the brain dead.  (Sorry.)

What do they mean exactly?

Does putting in a DNR mean that they won’t put those duckfeet paddles to some one’s heart if it’s just missed a bit or two?

Or do the DNRs only come into force after death has held sway for a full two or three minutes?

(Do those paddles even work after two or three minutes?)

In other words, how open to interpretation is a document like that?  Do hospital staff obey it as a matter of rote?  Is it a bright line?  Black and white?

Or can it become applicable only when the person will no longer be himself if resuscitated?  Or is already not himself?   Or is being tortured?  Or is really really likely to be tortured?

I have read that an extremely significant portion of medicare payments goes to the payment of health care costs incurred in the last month of life.

On the one hand, this makes perfect sense.  The last month of life falls at just about the time someone is sickest.

But some studies (such as the one discussed below by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization) also seem to indicate that a portion of these expenses result from patients not having discussed their “end of life wishes” with their doctors, (of not having, for example, a DNR).  This type of discussion would ostensibly allow doctors to avoid a situation of having the patient suffer a medically-extended death (rather than life).

I’ve talked to many people about health care proxies, living wills, final wishes.   At least 95% of the ones I’ve talked to say that they do not want their lives to be extended when there is no chance of recovery to a meaningful life.   (There’s also the occasional person, sometimes a medical professional who is insured by and employed by the hospital in which they expect to receive treatment, who says that they want to be kept alive at all cost, with every possible form of treatment, and collecting their full salary.)

Weirdly, it’s not even clear that all the extra treatments do prolong life.  A study of advanced cancer patients by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization reported in the March Archives of Internal Medicine, suggested that people who receive less invasive and aggressive treatment live longer than those who receive the more “comprehensive” care.

I have to say that I’ve never heard of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and that such an organization may well have a bias against aggressive care.   Still, the study makes a lot of sense to me (a confirmed disbeliever in advanced institutional medical care).  My dad, for example, hospitalized at the moment, is in danger of being sent to rehab (for who knows how long) to recover from the damage that a day in the ER and a day and a half of hospital care have done.  The hospital’s occupational therapist said that they wanted him to get back to “where he was” before he started their treatment, which consisted almost solely of tests.  I, however, do not believe that rehab is the place for this; “where he was” before they started “treatment” was at home.

Still, it’s all very confusing.   Especially the bit about the DNR.   The doctor asked me about one.   “I’m not saying it’s likely to happen right now,” he said, “but what should the staff do if they go into his room and find that he’s died?”

It’s a harder question to answer than one might think.  First there’s the whole problem of finding one’s voice.

Maybe a little counseling would help.

Except, wait a second.  Aren’t the counselors on these issues the notorious “death panels?”

Scratch that.

Categories: Health Care
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Robsten and Government “Death Panels”

September 2, 2009

Until recently, I’ve never focused much on celebrities.  Even recently, I’ve only focused on one celebrity.  (If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know which celebrity that is.)

My biggest number of posts on a single subject have probably been about him (Robert Pattinson, if you are new to this blog.)  The second largest number has probably centered  on the stress and isolation of modern life.  (I’m including in this number some of the ones not technically categorized under stress, but which probably should be, i.e. those on single parenting, marriage, Friday night gym, even some on writer’s block.)   I’m guessing that there’s a link there.  (Yes, between parenting and stress, but what I’m really talking about is stress and a friendly, middle-aged interest in Robert Pattinson.)

But although both stress and my Manic D personality continue in full force, my interest in RPatz is slowly beginning to fade.  (My family members will soon be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief.)

(Of course, Rob’s next movie is due out in November.  Who knows what that will inspire?)

But putting Pattinson himself aside—(by the way, he just gave a really very charming interview in—STOP IT RIGHT NOW!)

But (ahem) putting Pattinson himself aside, what continues to fascinate me is the coverage of him by the blogosphere, the little internet “news” outlets, the entertainment weeklies.

It’s really quite amazing.

The stories remind me of a big supernova daisy where one little comment by Pattinson,  Kristen Stewart (his co-star), an “insider”, or some other celebrity who has never actually met Pattinson, will generate huge petal-ly loops of increasingly remote speculation.

When Rob has managed to evade the paparazzi for some time (as has happened recently), the celebrity “news” media even stoops to openly fictional stories based upon the activities of the character he portrays.  See, e.g. the recent cover of one entertainment rag which proclaims him and Stewart to be “ENGAGED!” on the set of third Twilight movie.  What I believe the story is about (I really really really have not actually read it) is the engagement of Pattinson’s and Stewart’s characters.

The whole celebrity daisy phenomenon has set me to wondering how mainstream news is reported.

And, frankly, the reporting of the health care debate has led me to believe that the mainstream news world is really not that different from the fantastical Twilight realm of Pattinson and the paparazzi.

The furor over government “death panels” comes especially to mind.   This uproar, which has no basis in reality, seems especially ironic given that currently much medical care for the elderly and the disabled is already provided by the government in the form of medicare and Medicaid.  (The number of persons in nursing homes and disabled adults supported by Medicaid is already legion.  Medicaid planning is a huge and accepted area of the law.  Reports of Medicare and Medicaid recipients being denied care by government panels are relatively small, certainly as compared to reports of non-Medicaid patients denied private insurance coverage.)

The death panel outcry reminds me of last summer’s netroar over Kristen Stewart’s alleged pregnancy (with RPatz as father, of course.)  The seed for this was apparently a blog in Australia (Stewart was in L.A. at the time) which reported that Stewart had asked a friend to purchase a pregnancy test for her.  Dozens (maybe even hundreds) of  headlines inquiring into Stewart’s childbearing status immediately followed.  Soon, they featured photos of Stewart in skin tight pants which were magnified to huge blurry proportions.  Arrows were drawn on the photos to point out a supposed tummy bump.  (The slender Kristen was not only supposed to be pregnant but showing.)  Pictures of Rob Pattinson wearing a sheepish, guilty father, expression were posted at the side.

Of course, the death panel rumors really are somewhat different.  They originated in Alaska.

I love Alaska; I love Australia; I love the Mississippi.  Check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at the link above.

Categories: News Media, Robert Pattinson
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Faulkner Letter

September 1, 2009

I had the rare privilege yesterday of holding very very gently in my own hands an original letter from William Faulkner.

Email is a wonderful tool.  It does not require you to remember to buy stamps, or, once you’ve finally bought the stamps, to remember where you stashed them, or once you’ve actually stamped the envelope, to make sure it’s slid into a mailbox before the end of the next calendar year.

But it can’t be touched.  You can’t press the paper to your lips or heart or nose or wave it by your ear.

Even if you do print it out, the paper is fresh, unruffled.  (Unless you’re one of those people, like me, who forgets to buy computer paper as well as stamps, and ends up printing on old slightly rumpled sheets salvaged from the bottom of a bookshelf.)

There is a magic, a wonder, that embues an original letter (even if sent from a less stellar correspondent than Faulkner).  This magic derives not only from the fact that you, the recipient, can touch it, but (perhaps more importantly) that the sender has touched it.  That the sender has actually handled it quite a bit, typed, perused, folded, enveloped it; that this same letter then traveled miles and miles jostling about with thousands of other completely separate but similarly handled missives.  (A wondrous magic, that is, unless the sender happens to be the IRS.  I got one of those yesterday too, and the magic was noticeably less palpable.)

I think suddenly about a recent highly publicized study, by Yuegang Zuo of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, that found that approximately 95% of U.S. currency bears traces of cocaine.  Apparently, the contamination is so widespread because the fine powder is easily dispersed by sorting machines.   Most bills—the ones that collected the drug through sorting—have very low levels of contamination, but some show a high concentration;  Zuo posits that these are bills that were actually handled with the drug in some way;  currency to which the drug stuck even after many sortings.

Then I think of the letter again, the fact that it had once been held in Faulkner’s hands, the same hands that typed out The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August, and Absolom Absolom!.…  I’m suddenly certain that there must be Bill’s DNA all over the page (William Faulkner’s DNA!), and frankly, I’m glad I didn’t think of this at the time, or I might have leaned down and licked it.

Ah.

Categories: correspondence, Letters, Uncategorized
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Overheard/ Seen

August 31, 2009

Overheard/Seen

1.  Overheard in a Grand Central Station tunnel:   “A woman scorned… she can be nasty, man.”

“Oh boy.  You make a woman mad, that’s the end of it.”

Chuckling.  (Gently.)

2.   Seen on elevator news screen (more or less):  “Test shows that the part of the brain that signifies anger is far less active when the person angered is lying down.”  [The actual test, I discovered later, had to do with the brain’s response to insult and was conducted at Texas A& M University by a team led by Eddie Harmon-Jones.]

Analysis

The first point is one I’ve trying to impress on my husband for some time.  Luckily, my very sweet husband, like the men underground (who really did smile, laugh, and ruefully shake their heads), usually  seems to get it.  That is—and I don’t mean to sound sexist here—that anger is sometimes to be expected (and accepted) in a wife.

(Just a note, the scorn the men seemed to be talking about was not the bitterness of unrequited love, so much as the irritation of unappreciated labor.)

Women do an awfully lot these days, what with many serving both as a significant, if not primary, wage earner, as well as chief cook and bottlewasher.  A little frustration now and again should be seen as par for the course.

Which brings me to point 2.

“I’m not going to take that lying down,” appears, in the light of this study, to be an exceedingly poor method of resolving arguments.  Especially for married couples.

Maybe, given applicable brain patterns, arguments between partners should be scheduled for bed, or at least, by mutual agreement, immediately moved to a prone position.

I’m not really sure I needed a cognitive scientist to tell me that this strategy would likely lead to prompter conflict resolution.  Still, it’s always nice to know more of what makes the brain (ahem) light up.

Check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above or on Amazon.

Categories: marriage, Stress
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Ted Kennedy and My Grandmother Pearl

August 31, 2009

Thinking about Ted Kennedy again this morning after watching Obama’s eulogy.  Sorry, if this seems belated.  I don’t watch t.v., so missed what I’m guessing was wall-to-wall coverage.  (I wasn’t even online much this weekend, due to a stay in a house without internet access.)

But I’ve felt bad that my earlier post re Kennedy focused so much on my childhood feelings about his brothers’ deaths, and so little on Teddy himself.  (There was something awfully narcissistic about that—sorry!)   Seeing/ hearing Obama’s eulogy made me want to write more.

First, about Obama himself.  He really is such a graceful wonderful speaker.  I’m sure he has assistance writing speeches; yet, one also feels that most of the words are his own.  I, at least, am continually amazed by the breadth and maturity of his vision, by the genuine quality of his compassion, by the subtlety of his understanding, all of which he can actually express.  I don’t quite understand how we got lucky enough to have someone like him as President.  I pray everyday that he’ll be kept safe.

As for Teddy:  I was a child, at least on my mother’s side, of New Deal democrats.  FDR was spoken of in hushed tones.  Even the murmur of his initials seemed to express the phrase: “and there was a man.”

When JFK was inaugurated, my maternal grandmother, Pearl, (who, as a mother during the Depression, was probably the main FDR worshipper) was visiting us in Washington, D.C.  Although in her 70s, she got up very very early to shovel snow, determined that we’d get to the inauguration.  Later that morning, my metal chair at the Mall was frozen solid.  That’s all I really remember of the ceremony in fact; the icy silvery chair that my thick tights half-stuck to as I tried to scoot to some warmth.

Given all of that, I could not help but like Teddy’s politics.  (I really really loved my grandmother, see e.g. post re elegy.)  (This is, weirdly enough, partly why I named my dog after her, see e.g. post re Robert Pattinson and my dog, Pearl.)

But I also admired Teddy’s resilience, his plodding, legislative, energy.  As a parent, especially a more or less single parent, you really do learn that the devil is in the details.  There is much in the parenting life that is grand and exciting, public and acclaimed (let’s say, your child graduating from college), but very very much that is not grand, far less public, and not much acclaimed (let’s say, making the dentist appointments in the face of resistant schedules, re-reading the problematic English paper, sending the right shoe that got left at home, making sure that the health insurance coverage forms are properly filed. ) (As kids reach college age, this usually means filing all forms at least twice.)  You can’t help but feel that Teddy, as a dogged senator, did a lot of the day-to day shoe-sending, and virtually all of the filing of the health insurance forms.  (Okay, he had a great staff.  Still, he hired them.  And his was the voice on the phone.)

Of course, one admires his strength through all the tragedies life forced on him.  But you also have to admire his strength in the face of those he sort of courted.  Yes, again he had the help of his staff, and wealth, and alcohol, and finally, a really terrific wife.  But still, he kept on, genuinely trying to help people, to push policies that he thought would help.

My grandmother would have approved.

Categories: Ted Kennedy, Uncategorized
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Robert Pattinson and My Dog Pearl

August 30, 2009

My online astrologer wrote that the troublesome opposition between Saturn and Jupiter this weekend might bring up a host of old, but nettling, problems.  I don’t actually pay that much attention to my online astrologer these days.  Any astrologer who predicted, as he did, that the economic downturn of 2008 would improve markedly at the end of August 2008—that is, a couple of weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers—has lost an identifiable percentage (let’s say 65) of my confidence.

That said, it was a nettling weekend.  I felt the other side of manic, that is depressed enough last night, to actually seek out images of Robert Pattinson on my blackberry. (I had no internet connection.)  (Yes, it was pathetic.)

The images were very very small, and frankly, some of the ones that were retrieved were irretrievably model-ly.  Plastic.  They looked about as much like my preferred Pattinson as elevator music sounds like real music (i.e. not much.)

Still, I persisted, thumbing the little keys to next and next, until I finally got to a couple of tousled-haired, sweet smiles.  I felt immediately a bit better.

Yes, it’s very weird.

Seriously.

In my defense, my interest really is not combined with any fantasies about Pattinson, not even a narrative line.  (Other than the fantastical stories of the Twilight books, I suppose. Though, those are not my fantasies.  I don’t even identify with them except perhaps with the heroine’s physical clumsiness, and …loyalty, and, okay, there’s the whole unrequited love aspect.)

Still, feeling stressed, I guess, yet non-manic, I sought out the little postage stamp pictures.  (See e.g. post “From Rat Race to Rat Rut.”)

The whole scenario reminds me of my dog (my family’s dog) whose name is Pearl.  Pearl is a very cute dog.  White tousled fur, black-nosed and eyed.  An easily anthropomorphized face whose (very cute) expressions run the gamut from “delighted”,to  “quizzical”, to  “I want,” to “pretty please” to “I don’t want” to “oh no!”

She looks a bit like a classic cartoon, a children’s toy, which is to say mopsy, fluffy but ragtag, bemused.

I am Pearl’s groomer.  Which is to say, she is not terribly well-groomed, certainly not symmetrical or in any way poofy.

People absolutely love her.  Passersby stop and stare at her when we walk.  They smile.  They laugh.  Small children reach out their hands.

The public reaction to Pearl has often made me feel that perhaps my whole purpose in life, the secret but true reason I was put on this earth, has nothing to do with my work, my wonderful wonderful children, or even the payment of taxes.  But simply to walk this cute little dog around, and, by doing so, to brighten peoples’ days.

Which may be, at least a part, of Robert Pattinson’s purpose.

Does it have something to do with tousled hair?

Hmmm…..

Check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above or on Amazon.  Thanks!

Categories: dog, Robert Pattinson
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Cow-ardice

August 29, 2009

Can’t help it. I’m afraid of them.

Not one on it’s own perhaps.

But in the U.S. there is hardly ever just one cow out on its own.

There’s usually a crowd.

Okay, I’m even fine with a crowd, if it’s behind a fence. But I’m not so happy if it’s me with a crowd not behind a fence (that is, on the same side.)

Yes, I know all about the archetype of the gentle cow. The patient, dull, cud-chewing cow. The sweet-breathed cow. (Though this last has always been a bit hard to swallow.)

I’m even familiar with “la vache qui rit,” the laughing cow, red and smiley, staring knowingly from a wedge of processed cheese.

But when I’m in a field with a bunch of them what comes immediately to mind is the less classic archetype of the “BIG cow.”

And, “is any of them a bull?”

And, “why are they staring at me?” (Their eyes like another set of their huge black nostrils only disconcertingly, gleemingly, intent.)

I can’t help but feel that if several ran at me at once, at least some of them would be a whole lot faster than they look.

I imagine the run of cows to take the form of an avalanche. One starts a determined scamper, sort of like the first pebble or snow ball, and then suddenly, they’ve all taken off.

After me.

I squint now. Is that huge one in front a bull or not?

(I should point out that the cows in the fields near me are beef cattle rather than dairy. This somehow makes them feel inherently more aggressive, i.e. even the nursing mothers aren’t swayed by udders.)

I run into the cows this morning (up in upstate New York) as I cross over from a deeply forested stream bed to the next field where I hope to ascend to some open air.

The stream bed is beautiful, but, with all this rain, it is more peaty, musky, rotten-loggy and slippery than ever. Teeny fluorescent orange and yellow mushrooms sprout from the dark forest floor like wild flowers; interspersed are paler, bigger, knobbier ones.

I felt extremely enterprising before leaving for the walk. As a result, I carry a small thermos of tea in one rain coat pocket, a small cup in the other.

If one of my daughters were with me, we would probably be “herping” (engaging in herpetology), which means turning over damp rocks to search for salamanders. (There are tons, it turns out.)

On my own, I am merely searching for a nice open, not too damp, spot, for a nice spot of tea. A cuppa with a view. I even have my notebook in tow. (Stuffed into the waistband of my trousers.)

But, as I climb up to the field, there they are. Too many too count, especially since I instantly shrink back from their sight. Huge. Brown. Knobby kneed. All seemingly staring at me. Especially that imposing one in the front, whose underside is not completely clear to me.

Needless to say, I back down the dark bank to the stream bed.

And am now sitting on a regular bed, in a comfortable, if slightly musty house (it really has rained all summer), thermos open to my side.

The only hint of cow, the milk in my still-steaming tea.

If you prefer elephants to cows, check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson), link above or on amazon.

Categories: cows, Stress
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Dog’s Birthday This Weekend

August 28, 2009
Best Not To Let Her Make Her Own Cake

Best Not To Let Her Make Her Own Cake

Five Important Points Re Dog’s Birthday

1. Your dog will not be upset if you don’t get her a present.

2.  But if you do, a pig’s ear will usually suffice.

3.  Except that if it’s an old dog, maybe skip the pig’s ear.  (If you have a nice carpet, that is.  Or any carpet.)

4.  Either way, it’s best not to let her make her own cake.

5.  Even if she begs.

(Sorry I meant to put in picture of begging dog as well as baking dog, but I didn’t have one scanned.  I’ll get one soon.  Have a great model at home. )

If you like elephants as well as dogs, check out 1 Mississippi (Karin Gustafson) at link above or on Amazon.

Categories: children's illustration, dog
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