Steven Harper's Blog, page 36
July 4, 2021
Kidnapping the Flag
The right-wing kidnapping of the American flag is disgusting, as this article points out. I don't feel comfortable flying an American flag at my home because I'm afraid people will think I'm a conservative nutbag.
And I don't feel comfortable visiting a place that flies the American flag (except a government building) because I'm afraid they'll BE conservative nutbags. And that's wrong in so many ways.
https://news.yahoo.com/fourth-july-symbol-unity-may-151636825.html
comments
And I don't feel comfortable visiting a place that flies the American flag (except a government building) because I'm afraid they'll BE conservative nutbags. And that's wrong in so many ways.
https://news.yahoo.com/fourth-july-symbol-unity-may-151636825.html
comments
June 29, 2021
Steven and the Biopsy
At a relatively recent appointment with my urologist, he voiced concern about my PSA levels. He ordered a couple of other tests, including an MRI, and said the chances of cancer are very low, but also decided I should have a prostate fusion biopsy "just in case."
In case you've never heard of this phenomenon, a prostate biopsy is a special procedure in which a probe the size of a drinking glass is inserted into the rectum and pressed against the prostate. The probe takes a sonic image of the prostate, which is overlaid with an MRI which has been marked with places of interest. A computer moves the probe, using the MRI and the sonic image as guides and it snaps a thin needle through the rectal wall into the prostate, then rotates itself and snaps another needle through--twelve times in all. Although the procedure is supposed to be "tolerable" to aware patients, it's much more common these days to use general anesthesia.
My own appointment was set for late July, then I had the chance to move it up to late June, and I took it. This way, the appointment wouldn't be hanging over my head most of the summer.
Regular readers of the this blog know what I went through with the great kidney stone horror a couple years ago that left me a near basket case of anxiety and PTSD. I've gone through a great deal of therapy since then, and I thought I would be pretty okay with this procedure. I was wrong. As the day got closer, I became more anxious, to the point where I was going into the closet to sit with my head between my knees multiple times per day. At bed time the night before, I was crippled with anxiety so bad, I couldn't do anything but curl up on the bed and shake.
If it were a liver biopsy, or a lung biopsy, or even a marrow biopsy, this wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It's the combination of being anesthetized and the unavoidably sexual nature of the procedure that set off the triggers. A ball of fear forms in my stomach and paralyzes me, and no amount of self-regulation seems to stop it. I know that to the medical team, this is a dull, routine procedure they do a dozen times a day, hundreds of times a week on an endless parade of faceless patients. I know that the moment I leave the room, they'll completely forget me, much like a grocery store clerk forgets customers the moment they walk out of the store. I know that the team is there because they want to help me, not hurt or mock or judge. Not one bit of that knowledge changes the way I feel.
On the day of the procedure, Darwin drove me to the hospital in Mt. Clemens, an hour away. It took me a long time to make myself get out of the car, and when we walked in through the sliding doors, I couldn't lift my head. I stared down at my shoes and followed Darwin inside.
Somehow, I got through the intake process and the nurse took me to a prep room while Darwin stayed in the waiting area. The nurse assured me Darwin could come back to see me once I was set up. I answered the same sets of the questions from multiple questioners. Then the urologist came in. He wasn't =my= urologist, who doesn't do biopsies, but was part of the same practice. After he went through the spiel, he asked if I had questions.
"This isn't a question," I said, in a canned speech I keep handy. "It's more of a statement. I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and this kind of operation sets off all kinds of alarms and triggers. I cope by demanding a lot of information and requiring everyone to tell me every single thing that happens. I need you and the rest of the team to keep that in mind for me."
He nodded sympathetically and said the team would be sensitive. He also rather awkwardly patted me on the shoulder. I felt a little better.
Darwin came into the room at that point, and we waited together for about an hour before my turn came up on the rotation.
The nurse injected me with Versed, which I don't like because it messes with my memory, and wheeled my bed down to the OR. I'd already done some recon about this procedure and, as I warned, asked a great many questions about the equipment and commented on how it worked, somewhat to the team's surprise. The procedure is performed with the patient on his side, but the last thing I remember is getting an oxygen hose affixed under my nose and how it got momentarily tangled in the EKG lines.
But I have clues.
Here's the other thing, the odd thing. I recorded the procedure.
I bought a finger splint and a small voice recorder, thin and flat and the length of a finger. Before we arrived at the hospital, I put the splint on and slid the recorder under it so it looked like part of the splint. The nurse who put my IV in noticed the splint, in fact, and asked about it.
"I hurt my finger," I said. "Need to wear it for a few days."
"Ouch," she said, and went on with her work. No one else noticed it or commented on it, though one team member pointed out that I'd forgotten to take off my wedding ring and had me give it to Darwin. Just before the procedure started, I flicked the recorder on with an unobtrusive gesture. Later at home, I downloaded the sound file it had created and listened.
The reason I did this wasn't to play Gotcha! with the medical team or hope to hear something I could use in a lawsuit. It's so that I =know=. It's a way to maintain control.
As I said, the last thing I remembered in the OR was the oxygen line tangling in the EKG wires. But later, when I listened to the recording, I heard myself say things, and I abruptly remembered saying them. I said at one point that I wasn't feeling the first shot of Versed, which is normal for me, and the nurse saying she'd give me a booster dose.
"Don't you worry," she said cheerily. "The drug always wins!"
I only remembered that after I heard the recording. It was strange, like the memory had been pushed down but was able to emerge thanks to my own voice.
I must have fallen asleep before they could get me onto the table because one of the nurses said, "I need help lifting him," and I don't remember that at all.
The rest of the recording was . . . dull. The team talked very little, and when they did, it was often about stuff that wasn't related to the procedure, which reaffirmed for me that the procedure was routine and didn't require their full concentration. None of the conversation was about me directly, which I also was glad to learn.
One of the more unnerving aspects of the recording was that it clearly caught the SNAP of the needle every time it took a sample.
I also caught the doctor's phone call to Darwin when the procedure ended. Darwin, who also listened to the recording, said it was odd hearing the doctor's end of it.
My memory started up again in the recovery room. A nurse was on the phone talking to someone about how they didn't have any more beds in the area and the other people in the ORs would have to wait. That was on the recording, too, and listening to it helped center where and when I was.
Another nurse asked me if I was in pain. I was. Darwin had said he felt no pain whatsoever, but I was hurting, and the pain was increasing steadily.
"Do you want something for pain?" she asked.
Experience has taught me that when a nurse offers you pain meds, you take them, so I said, "Yes," and she gave me a pill that made me even loopier than I already was, though the pain ended.
I asked when my husband would be allowed to come in, and the nurse said it wouldn't be until I could sit up in a chair. This didn't make sense to me--what difference did it make to the hospital if I could sit in a chair or not? But I was still half-sedated and couldn't protest much. Eventually, Darwin was ushered in, and I felt quite a lot better. (Next time, if there is one, I'll insist up front that he be brought in the moment I'm awake.)
We waited together until I was more awake. "Do you want to wait here longer or go home?" a nurse asked. I said I wanted to go home. I couldn't get into the wheelchair or the car by myself, though by the time we got home, I was able to manage the stairs. I crashed on the bed for several hours.
I have a follow-up appointment in a couple weeks, though I'm sure the results will show up on the patient portal long before then.
Today? Today, I'm still anxious. The ball of fear keeps twisting my stomach. I'm having a hard time concentrating on anything. I can't eat due to nausea. Part of it is after-effects from the anesthesia. The larger part is the emotional side. I can't shake the feeling that I was violated, even though I have concrete proof to the contrary.
So I spent this afternoon looking for a counselor. I need someone to talk to.
comments
In case you've never heard of this phenomenon, a prostate biopsy is a special procedure in which a probe the size of a drinking glass is inserted into the rectum and pressed against the prostate. The probe takes a sonic image of the prostate, which is overlaid with an MRI which has been marked with places of interest. A computer moves the probe, using the MRI and the sonic image as guides and it snaps a thin needle through the rectal wall into the prostate, then rotates itself and snaps another needle through--twelve times in all. Although the procedure is supposed to be "tolerable" to aware patients, it's much more common these days to use general anesthesia.
My own appointment was set for late July, then I had the chance to move it up to late June, and I took it. This way, the appointment wouldn't be hanging over my head most of the summer.
Regular readers of the this blog know what I went through with the great kidney stone horror a couple years ago that left me a near basket case of anxiety and PTSD. I've gone through a great deal of therapy since then, and I thought I would be pretty okay with this procedure. I was wrong. As the day got closer, I became more anxious, to the point where I was going into the closet to sit with my head between my knees multiple times per day. At bed time the night before, I was crippled with anxiety so bad, I couldn't do anything but curl up on the bed and shake.
If it were a liver biopsy, or a lung biopsy, or even a marrow biopsy, this wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It's the combination of being anesthetized and the unavoidably sexual nature of the procedure that set off the triggers. A ball of fear forms in my stomach and paralyzes me, and no amount of self-regulation seems to stop it. I know that to the medical team, this is a dull, routine procedure they do a dozen times a day, hundreds of times a week on an endless parade of faceless patients. I know that the moment I leave the room, they'll completely forget me, much like a grocery store clerk forgets customers the moment they walk out of the store. I know that the team is there because they want to help me, not hurt or mock or judge. Not one bit of that knowledge changes the way I feel.
On the day of the procedure, Darwin drove me to the hospital in Mt. Clemens, an hour away. It took me a long time to make myself get out of the car, and when we walked in through the sliding doors, I couldn't lift my head. I stared down at my shoes and followed Darwin inside.
Somehow, I got through the intake process and the nurse took me to a prep room while Darwin stayed in the waiting area. The nurse assured me Darwin could come back to see me once I was set up. I answered the same sets of the questions from multiple questioners. Then the urologist came in. He wasn't =my= urologist, who doesn't do biopsies, but was part of the same practice. After he went through the spiel, he asked if I had questions.
"This isn't a question," I said, in a canned speech I keep handy. "It's more of a statement. I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and this kind of operation sets off all kinds of alarms and triggers. I cope by demanding a lot of information and requiring everyone to tell me every single thing that happens. I need you and the rest of the team to keep that in mind for me."
He nodded sympathetically and said the team would be sensitive. He also rather awkwardly patted me on the shoulder. I felt a little better.
Darwin came into the room at that point, and we waited together for about an hour before my turn came up on the rotation.
The nurse injected me with Versed, which I don't like because it messes with my memory, and wheeled my bed down to the OR. I'd already done some recon about this procedure and, as I warned, asked a great many questions about the equipment and commented on how it worked, somewhat to the team's surprise. The procedure is performed with the patient on his side, but the last thing I remember is getting an oxygen hose affixed under my nose and how it got momentarily tangled in the EKG lines.
But I have clues.
Here's the other thing, the odd thing. I recorded the procedure.
I bought a finger splint and a small voice recorder, thin and flat and the length of a finger. Before we arrived at the hospital, I put the splint on and slid the recorder under it so it looked like part of the splint. The nurse who put my IV in noticed the splint, in fact, and asked about it.
"I hurt my finger," I said. "Need to wear it for a few days."
"Ouch," she said, and went on with her work. No one else noticed it or commented on it, though one team member pointed out that I'd forgotten to take off my wedding ring and had me give it to Darwin. Just before the procedure started, I flicked the recorder on with an unobtrusive gesture. Later at home, I downloaded the sound file it had created and listened.
The reason I did this wasn't to play Gotcha! with the medical team or hope to hear something I could use in a lawsuit. It's so that I =know=. It's a way to maintain control.
As I said, the last thing I remembered in the OR was the oxygen line tangling in the EKG wires. But later, when I listened to the recording, I heard myself say things, and I abruptly remembered saying them. I said at one point that I wasn't feeling the first shot of Versed, which is normal for me, and the nurse saying she'd give me a booster dose.
"Don't you worry," she said cheerily. "The drug always wins!"
I only remembered that after I heard the recording. It was strange, like the memory had been pushed down but was able to emerge thanks to my own voice.
I must have fallen asleep before they could get me onto the table because one of the nurses said, "I need help lifting him," and I don't remember that at all.
The rest of the recording was . . . dull. The team talked very little, and when they did, it was often about stuff that wasn't related to the procedure, which reaffirmed for me that the procedure was routine and didn't require their full concentration. None of the conversation was about me directly, which I also was glad to learn.
One of the more unnerving aspects of the recording was that it clearly caught the SNAP of the needle every time it took a sample.
I also caught the doctor's phone call to Darwin when the procedure ended. Darwin, who also listened to the recording, said it was odd hearing the doctor's end of it.
My memory started up again in the recovery room. A nurse was on the phone talking to someone about how they didn't have any more beds in the area and the other people in the ORs would have to wait. That was on the recording, too, and listening to it helped center where and when I was.
Another nurse asked me if I was in pain. I was. Darwin had said he felt no pain whatsoever, but I was hurting, and the pain was increasing steadily.
"Do you want something for pain?" she asked.
Experience has taught me that when a nurse offers you pain meds, you take them, so I said, "Yes," and she gave me a pill that made me even loopier than I already was, though the pain ended.
I asked when my husband would be allowed to come in, and the nurse said it wouldn't be until I could sit up in a chair. This didn't make sense to me--what difference did it make to the hospital if I could sit in a chair or not? But I was still half-sedated and couldn't protest much. Eventually, Darwin was ushered in, and I felt quite a lot better. (Next time, if there is one, I'll insist up front that he be brought in the moment I'm awake.)
We waited together until I was more awake. "Do you want to wait here longer or go home?" a nurse asked. I said I wanted to go home. I couldn't get into the wheelchair or the car by myself, though by the time we got home, I was able to manage the stairs. I crashed on the bed for several hours.
I have a follow-up appointment in a couple weeks, though I'm sure the results will show up on the patient portal long before then.
Today? Today, I'm still anxious. The ball of fear keeps twisting my stomach. I'm having a hard time concentrating on anything. I can't eat due to nausea. Part of it is after-effects from the anesthesia. The larger part is the emotional side. I can't shake the feeling that I was violated, even though I have concrete proof to the contrary.
So I spent this afternoon looking for a counselor. I need someone to talk to.
comments
Steven and Physical Therapy
There's something wrong with my shoulder. I blame the pandemic.
See, I keep a bag of masks in the car, and it eventually migrated to the floor in the back seat. After several weeks of reaching behind the driver's seat, my right shoulder and arm started to hurt when I made this particular move. Some time later, this pain spread to other times--when I raised my arm too high, or put my elbow backward, or when my shoulder just decided it would be fun to cause me agonizing pain.
This is no exaggeration. One day at work, a spasm hit me so bad, I had to stop teaching and sit down until it passed.
I made an appointment with a joint specialist, who gave me an x-ray and pronounced that I'd injured my rotator cuff and it was quite possibly the result of reaching behind the car seat so often. He gave me a painful shot of cortisone and sent me across the hall of the office building to sign up for physical therapy.
So now twice a week, I go down to this strange-looking gym, with beds and elastic straps and pulleys and weight machines and medicine balls in it, and a physical therapist puts me through exercises designed to stretch and strengthen the injured muscles and tendons.
I can't say I enjoy them. They're repetitive and tiring and even painful. I work through them for half an hour or so. Then the therapist massages the affected areas, and then I sit with an ice pack draped over my shoulder for several minutes. It's been three weeks and I'm not noticing any real improvement, though the therapist says that's normal.
At least it's all covered by insurance.
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See, I keep a bag of masks in the car, and it eventually migrated to the floor in the back seat. After several weeks of reaching behind the driver's seat, my right shoulder and arm started to hurt when I made this particular move. Some time later, this pain spread to other times--when I raised my arm too high, or put my elbow backward, or when my shoulder just decided it would be fun to cause me agonizing pain.
This is no exaggeration. One day at work, a spasm hit me so bad, I had to stop teaching and sit down until it passed.
I made an appointment with a joint specialist, who gave me an x-ray and pronounced that I'd injured my rotator cuff and it was quite possibly the result of reaching behind the car seat so often. He gave me a painful shot of cortisone and sent me across the hall of the office building to sign up for physical therapy.
So now twice a week, I go down to this strange-looking gym, with beds and elastic straps and pulleys and weight machines and medicine balls in it, and a physical therapist puts me through exercises designed to stretch and strengthen the injured muscles and tendons.
I can't say I enjoy them. They're repetitive and tiring and even painful. I work through them for half an hour or so. Then the therapist massages the affected areas, and then I sit with an ice pack draped over my shoulder for several minutes. It's been three weeks and I'm not noticing any real improvement, though the therapist says that's normal.
At least it's all covered by insurance.
comments
June 21, 2021
Joyous Litha!
The storm blew itself out last night, and we have a bright, breezy Summer Solstice today!
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June 20, 2021
Burying Shawn
Right at the beginning of the pandemic, Darwin's brother Shawn passed away in Arizona. Darwin and Shawn weren't super close, but Darwin was still upset, and, worse, the pandemic prevented us from traveling down there. On top of it all, Shawn's family down there ended up pushing most of the arrangements onto Darwin. From a distance, he arranged to have Shawn cremated and his ashes sent up to Michigan. Darwin wanted to have Shawn's ashes buried up in Onaway, Michigan, where his family has a burial plot, but the pandemic prevented that. And so the ashes waited in our house in Commerce, and then the house in Albion, and then the condo in Waterford.
Now, though, the pandemic has calmed down, thanks to the vaccine, and I told Darwin that this would be an ideal time to bury Shawn. We both had time now, and things are going to become extremely busy for us very soon. He agreed. We decided to head up to Onaway on Friday, inter the ashes, spend the night, and come home on Saturday.
I called the village and explained the situation to the clerk. There was some back-and-forth while she checked records and such, but in the end she said everything was arranged and could we meet at the cemetery on Friday at one o'clock? We could.
Meanwhile, the cremains were still in their original cardboard mailer. Darwin very much liked the rosewood box with a tree carved on it that I'd found for my dad's ashes, so I ordered another one just like it for Shawn. When it arrived, we transferred Shawn's ashes and sealed the box.
We made the three-hour drive in good time and arrived in Onaway. It's a tiny town fairly close to Mackinac City that seems to depend on tourists for its living. The graveyard is also tiny, and Darwin easily located the family plot. It helped that someone had already dug a hole and left a traffic cone to mark the spot. We were about half an hour early, and Darwin examined other family graves and shared stories about the people.
Eventually, the clerk arrived with a Department of Public Works worker in tow. Darwin handed over the burial paperwork that had arrived with the ashes from Arizona, and she accompanied us to the site, where Darwin placed the box into the grave. He wasn't up to saying anything, so we had a moment of silence. Darwin couldn't bear to watch the actual burial, so he and I took a walk while the worker handled that part. And so it was done.
Darwin wanted a marker on the spot, and the clerk had told us that the best (only) place to get one was the funeral home in Onaway. So we headed over there. The funeral home was right across the street from village hall, in fact. We entered the place, and eventually a woman in a black shirt and slacks came up from the basement stairs to ask how she could help us. When we explained we wanted a gravestone, she said that the funeral director was the only one who could help with that, and he wasn't available just then. Perhaps we could make an appointment for next week? We said we lived three hours away and were only in town until tomorrow morning--Saturday. Could we make an appointment for then? She laughed this off. "Saturday? No, never."
"Is this something we could ultimately handle over the phone?" I persisted.
She thought about that, then laboriously went down the stairs to the basement again. When she came back up, she said that we could indeed do it over the phone. She gave us some pamphlets and catalogs for headstones, and we left.
"That was weird," Darwin said. "The director couldn't meet with us on a Saturday? Do people not die on Saturdays in Onaway?"
"You know why he couldn't meet with us now and why she kept going into the basement to talk to him, right?" I said. "The embalming room is in the basement. He was . . . occupied with another client. The funeral is probably tomorrow, which is why he couldn't meet."
"Ah," said Darwin with a nod, and we drove off.
There was no place to stay in Onaway itself, and I had found us an Airbnb in the unfortunately-named town of Indian River, about twenty minutes away. We'd driven through Indian River on our way to Mackinaw, in fact, and had even eaten at a restaurant there a couple times, but had never spent significant time there.
The Airbnb turned out to be a studio apartment that had once been the host's attached garage, and it was very nice and exactly what we needed. We explored the town a little and got ice cream at a charming ice cream and candy store on the main street. We also stumbled across Burt Lake entirely by accident.
Burt Lake has been a resort area since at least 1910. It's an enormous lake that connects to another lake, that connects to yet another lake, which finally connects to Lake Michigan. Burt Lake is large and clear, with a delightful public beach just a few blocks from downtown Indian River. Darwin and I got there as the sun was setting in a spectacular blaze of red and pink and orange. A quay juts out into the lake, and we walked down it, enjoying it very much.
Cottages and vacation homes of all sizes ring Burt Lake, and you can see by the architecture that most of them went up in the 1910s and 20s, though they've been meticulously maintained and updated. Back in those days, it was the thing to board a steamer and chug around the network of lakes, as many publicly-displayed photos of women in long skirts and tiny hats and men in high collars and tweed jackets attest. It was also common to tie a string of rowboats behind the steamers for the more daring among the vacationers. As a result of all the boating and of the river that divides the land into a series of tiny islands near the lake, there's a series of little canals and eddies and streams (both natural and artificial) around the area that are crying to be explored on a kayak or canoe. Darwin and I were completely charmed and we both agreed that our next trip to northern Michigan would be to Indian River so we could swim and boat and explore to our heart's content.
We conked out hard at the Airbnb, and in the morning we had a delicious breakfast at a very nice café, where we people-watched an elderly Amish couple, a group of good-old-boys, and a breathtakingly handsome young man who looked like Clark Kent in a ball cap. He arrived alone, ate alone, and left alone. We wondered what his story was.
And then it was home. For all that it was for a sad reason, the trip was a fine one.
comments
Now, though, the pandemic has calmed down, thanks to the vaccine, and I told Darwin that this would be an ideal time to bury Shawn. We both had time now, and things are going to become extremely busy for us very soon. He agreed. We decided to head up to Onaway on Friday, inter the ashes, spend the night, and come home on Saturday.
I called the village and explained the situation to the clerk. There was some back-and-forth while she checked records and such, but in the end she said everything was arranged and could we meet at the cemetery on Friday at one o'clock? We could.
Meanwhile, the cremains were still in their original cardboard mailer. Darwin very much liked the rosewood box with a tree carved on it that I'd found for my dad's ashes, so I ordered another one just like it for Shawn. When it arrived, we transferred Shawn's ashes and sealed the box.
We made the three-hour drive in good time and arrived in Onaway. It's a tiny town fairly close to Mackinac City that seems to depend on tourists for its living. The graveyard is also tiny, and Darwin easily located the family plot. It helped that someone had already dug a hole and left a traffic cone to mark the spot. We were about half an hour early, and Darwin examined other family graves and shared stories about the people.
Eventually, the clerk arrived with a Department of Public Works worker in tow. Darwin handed over the burial paperwork that had arrived with the ashes from Arizona, and she accompanied us to the site, where Darwin placed the box into the grave. He wasn't up to saying anything, so we had a moment of silence. Darwin couldn't bear to watch the actual burial, so he and I took a walk while the worker handled that part. And so it was done.
Darwin wanted a marker on the spot, and the clerk had told us that the best (only) place to get one was the funeral home in Onaway. So we headed over there. The funeral home was right across the street from village hall, in fact. We entered the place, and eventually a woman in a black shirt and slacks came up from the basement stairs to ask how she could help us. When we explained we wanted a gravestone, she said that the funeral director was the only one who could help with that, and he wasn't available just then. Perhaps we could make an appointment for next week? We said we lived three hours away and were only in town until tomorrow morning--Saturday. Could we make an appointment for then? She laughed this off. "Saturday? No, never."
"Is this something we could ultimately handle over the phone?" I persisted.
She thought about that, then laboriously went down the stairs to the basement again. When she came back up, she said that we could indeed do it over the phone. She gave us some pamphlets and catalogs for headstones, and we left.
"That was weird," Darwin said. "The director couldn't meet with us on a Saturday? Do people not die on Saturdays in Onaway?"
"You know why he couldn't meet with us now and why she kept going into the basement to talk to him, right?" I said. "The embalming room is in the basement. He was . . . occupied with another client. The funeral is probably tomorrow, which is why he couldn't meet."
"Ah," said Darwin with a nod, and we drove off.
There was no place to stay in Onaway itself, and I had found us an Airbnb in the unfortunately-named town of Indian River, about twenty minutes away. We'd driven through Indian River on our way to Mackinaw, in fact, and had even eaten at a restaurant there a couple times, but had never spent significant time there.
The Airbnb turned out to be a studio apartment that had once been the host's attached garage, and it was very nice and exactly what we needed. We explored the town a little and got ice cream at a charming ice cream and candy store on the main street. We also stumbled across Burt Lake entirely by accident.
Burt Lake has been a resort area since at least 1910. It's an enormous lake that connects to another lake, that connects to yet another lake, which finally connects to Lake Michigan. Burt Lake is large and clear, with a delightful public beach just a few blocks from downtown Indian River. Darwin and I got there as the sun was setting in a spectacular blaze of red and pink and orange. A quay juts out into the lake, and we walked down it, enjoying it very much.
Cottages and vacation homes of all sizes ring Burt Lake, and you can see by the architecture that most of them went up in the 1910s and 20s, though they've been meticulously maintained and updated. Back in those days, it was the thing to board a steamer and chug around the network of lakes, as many publicly-displayed photos of women in long skirts and tiny hats and men in high collars and tweed jackets attest. It was also common to tie a string of rowboats behind the steamers for the more daring among the vacationers. As a result of all the boating and of the river that divides the land into a series of tiny islands near the lake, there's a series of little canals and eddies and streams (both natural and artificial) around the area that are crying to be explored on a kayak or canoe. Darwin and I were completely charmed and we both agreed that our next trip to northern Michigan would be to Indian River so we could swim and boat and explore to our heart's content.
We conked out hard at the Airbnb, and in the morning we had a delicious breakfast at a very nice café, where we people-watched an elderly Amish couple, a group of good-old-boys, and a breathtakingly handsome young man who looked like Clark Kent in a ball cap. He arrived alone, ate alone, and left alone. We wondered what his story was.
And then it was home. For all that it was for a sad reason, the trip was a fine one.
comments
Dad's Memorial Service
Last week we held a memorial for my father Waldis Piziks. It took some planning.
My sister Bethany offered to hold it at her house up in Cadillac. She has a shaded outdoor horse pavilion which would be a perfect way to hold it outside, where Dad liked to do such things. It was both shaded and sheltered from potential rain.
A couple days beforehand, I made a batch of piragi, the ham-filled rolls that are the number one favorite food in Latvia and which must be present for every special occasion. These I packed into a cooler, and Darwin and I drove up to Cadillac. Along the way, we stopped in Saginaw. First we picked up Dad's ashes from the funeral home. I signed a form, and the funeral director handed me a heavy white box, which we put into the back seat. It felt . . . very strange.
We also stopped at Ted's Meat Market. For decades, Ted's was the go-to place for the large Latvian expatriate community in Saginaw, since they carried Baltic favorites like rye bread, summer sausage, sprats, and herring. It used to be a huge place, and busy all the time, but these days, it's sadly shrunk to less than half its original size as the native Latvian population has dwindled. I bought bread and fish and sausage to have on hand at the memorial, and it occurred to me that this was probably the last time I'll ever stop in at Ted's.
In Cadillac, we checked into our hotel and, after some back-and-forth texting, headed out to meet the others for supper at a restaurant. My brother Paul and sister Bethany were there. So was my mother Penny and my aunt Sue. Kala and Aran were there, too. (Max couldn't get out of work to come, and Sasha has a hard time with travel of any kind.) The restaurant was the food arm of a golf club, and while the dining room was grand and airy, the service was terrible. It took an enormously long time for anyone to take orders, and even longer to get the food to us. Bethany and Paul even went out for a little stroll on the long balcony that overlooked the golf course. And the food itself was definitely sub-par. Since we weren't in a big hurry, we chose to make jokes about the situation.
All in all, we didn't get back to the hotel until nearly ten. I went to bed soon after.
In the morning, we headed over to Bethany's house. She has a large house and a horse barn on several acres in the country, exactly the kind of place Dad loved. Mom and Sue were making potato salad in the kitchen. Paul and Bethany and I went outside to set up chairs and tables and Dad memorabilia in the arena. It turned out to be tense work. Small things that went wrong had a way of turning explosive, and we knew it wasn't the small things themselves; it was that we didn't have the emotional energy left to handle them. I largely coped by disconnecting. Whenever Bethany or Paul got annoyed or upset about something, I mostly nodded and said, "Okay." With one exception:
Darwin had been dispatched to pick up the food Bethany had ordered from a local BBQ restaurant, along with the flowers. He called a few minutes later to tell us the restaurant had messed up badly. They didn't have the order prepared, and although Bethany had confirmed--twice--that they would make vegetarian baked beans (no bacon or brisket in them), they told Darwin that, oops, they hadn't made any. The only beans they had were those with meat in them.
I got on the phone with them and tore into them. They had screwed up food for a funeral, of all things. "You'll get that order together right now while my husband waits, and the beans will be free," I said. "Get to work on that now, please."
"I can't authorize that," the woman on the phone said. "The only person who can do that is Jason."
"Then get Jason on the line."
"He's not in today."
Now Bethany got on the phone, and she ripped them up worse than I had. She was upset in the extreme, and again it wasn't really the beans--it was everything else. The restaurant--Primo's by name--finally and reluctantly agreed to take the beans off the bill. But when Darwin arrived with the food, we discovered they had just given us a pile of shredded, dry meat and containers of barbecue sauce. The meat hadn't even been simmered in the sauce. We could have gotten better from the supermarket. Don't ever to go to Primo's in Cadillac. They're incompetent, and their food is awful.
The flowers we got, however, were wonderful. Bright and colorful and fresh.
We set up a memorial table for Dad--flowers, photos, his hat, other mementos. I found a rosewood box with a tree carved on it to contain his ashes, and the three of us sealed his ashes inside. (Later, as Dad requested, we'll scatter them on Lake Huron.) We set it in the middle.
Other people arrived. In all, we had a group of fifteen or twenty people.
I had written a service. The three of us talked about who should run the memorial. Dad wasn't part of a church, so we had no minister. I was leery of the three of us doing it. There's a reason close family members rarely take this role at a funeral--it's an emotional and difficult time. But Bethany and Paul and I all speak in public for a living, and they were sure we could handle it. I had written the service, so I ended up being the director.
At the last moment, I noticed some e-messages from out-of-state relatives asking about a Zoom link. In all the rush, we'd forgotten we'd promised a Zoom viewing for them. Fortunately, we're good with Zoom, and we quickly set up a meeting and got everyone online who needed to be.
We started the service, and as I predicted, it was difficult to get through. I read the eulogy I'd written--something I never imagined myself doing for my own father--and had to stop several times, and in unexpected places. Bethany and Paul also spoke, and we called on other people to share memories. Several people did, including those who had Zoomed in.
Afterward, we headed into Bethany's back yard to eat and talk. We spent considerable time doing both. :) And then came the monumental cleaning up! It was getting dark before everything was finally finished. I put Dad's ashes back into my car and Darwin and I went back to the hotel, where I all but collapsed.
In the morning, Bethany, Paul, Darwin, Mom, and I met for breakfast at a restaurant where I think we were the very first customers our teenaged waiter ever had. He was clumsy but determined, and we liked him for it.
And then we drove home. I put Dad's ashes on a table in the living room, awaiting the day we scatter them. They're an odd presence there. It both does and doesn't feel like they're what's left of him.
I'm glad Darwin was there throughout. His presence made so many things easier to deal with.
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My sister Bethany offered to hold it at her house up in Cadillac. She has a shaded outdoor horse pavilion which would be a perfect way to hold it outside, where Dad liked to do such things. It was both shaded and sheltered from potential rain.
A couple days beforehand, I made a batch of piragi, the ham-filled rolls that are the number one favorite food in Latvia and which must be present for every special occasion. These I packed into a cooler, and Darwin and I drove up to Cadillac. Along the way, we stopped in Saginaw. First we picked up Dad's ashes from the funeral home. I signed a form, and the funeral director handed me a heavy white box, which we put into the back seat. It felt . . . very strange.
We also stopped at Ted's Meat Market. For decades, Ted's was the go-to place for the large Latvian expatriate community in Saginaw, since they carried Baltic favorites like rye bread, summer sausage, sprats, and herring. It used to be a huge place, and busy all the time, but these days, it's sadly shrunk to less than half its original size as the native Latvian population has dwindled. I bought bread and fish and sausage to have on hand at the memorial, and it occurred to me that this was probably the last time I'll ever stop in at Ted's.
In Cadillac, we checked into our hotel and, after some back-and-forth texting, headed out to meet the others for supper at a restaurant. My brother Paul and sister Bethany were there. So was my mother Penny and my aunt Sue. Kala and Aran were there, too. (Max couldn't get out of work to come, and Sasha has a hard time with travel of any kind.) The restaurant was the food arm of a golf club, and while the dining room was grand and airy, the service was terrible. It took an enormously long time for anyone to take orders, and even longer to get the food to us. Bethany and Paul even went out for a little stroll on the long balcony that overlooked the golf course. And the food itself was definitely sub-par. Since we weren't in a big hurry, we chose to make jokes about the situation.
All in all, we didn't get back to the hotel until nearly ten. I went to bed soon after.
In the morning, we headed over to Bethany's house. She has a large house and a horse barn on several acres in the country, exactly the kind of place Dad loved. Mom and Sue were making potato salad in the kitchen. Paul and Bethany and I went outside to set up chairs and tables and Dad memorabilia in the arena. It turned out to be tense work. Small things that went wrong had a way of turning explosive, and we knew it wasn't the small things themselves; it was that we didn't have the emotional energy left to handle them. I largely coped by disconnecting. Whenever Bethany or Paul got annoyed or upset about something, I mostly nodded and said, "Okay." With one exception:
Darwin had been dispatched to pick up the food Bethany had ordered from a local BBQ restaurant, along with the flowers. He called a few minutes later to tell us the restaurant had messed up badly. They didn't have the order prepared, and although Bethany had confirmed--twice--that they would make vegetarian baked beans (no bacon or brisket in them), they told Darwin that, oops, they hadn't made any. The only beans they had were those with meat in them.
I got on the phone with them and tore into them. They had screwed up food for a funeral, of all things. "You'll get that order together right now while my husband waits, and the beans will be free," I said. "Get to work on that now, please."
"I can't authorize that," the woman on the phone said. "The only person who can do that is Jason."
"Then get Jason on the line."
"He's not in today."
Now Bethany got on the phone, and she ripped them up worse than I had. She was upset in the extreme, and again it wasn't really the beans--it was everything else. The restaurant--Primo's by name--finally and reluctantly agreed to take the beans off the bill. But when Darwin arrived with the food, we discovered they had just given us a pile of shredded, dry meat and containers of barbecue sauce. The meat hadn't even been simmered in the sauce. We could have gotten better from the supermarket. Don't ever to go to Primo's in Cadillac. They're incompetent, and their food is awful.
The flowers we got, however, were wonderful. Bright and colorful and fresh.
We set up a memorial table for Dad--flowers, photos, his hat, other mementos. I found a rosewood box with a tree carved on it to contain his ashes, and the three of us sealed his ashes inside. (Later, as Dad requested, we'll scatter them on Lake Huron.) We set it in the middle.
Other people arrived. In all, we had a group of fifteen or twenty people.
I had written a service. The three of us talked about who should run the memorial. Dad wasn't part of a church, so we had no minister. I was leery of the three of us doing it. There's a reason close family members rarely take this role at a funeral--it's an emotional and difficult time. But Bethany and Paul and I all speak in public for a living, and they were sure we could handle it. I had written the service, so I ended up being the director.
At the last moment, I noticed some e-messages from out-of-state relatives asking about a Zoom link. In all the rush, we'd forgotten we'd promised a Zoom viewing for them. Fortunately, we're good with Zoom, and we quickly set up a meeting and got everyone online who needed to be.
We started the service, and as I predicted, it was difficult to get through. I read the eulogy I'd written--something I never imagined myself doing for my own father--and had to stop several times, and in unexpected places. Bethany and Paul also spoke, and we called on other people to share memories. Several people did, including those who had Zoomed in.
Afterward, we headed into Bethany's back yard to eat and talk. We spent considerable time doing both. :) And then came the monumental cleaning up! It was getting dark before everything was finally finished. I put Dad's ashes back into my car and Darwin and I went back to the hotel, where I all but collapsed.
In the morning, Bethany, Paul, Darwin, Mom, and I met for breakfast at a restaurant where I think we were the very first customers our teenaged waiter ever had. He was clumsy but determined, and we liked him for it.
And then we drove home. I put Dad's ashes on a table in the living room, awaiting the day we scatter them. They're an odd presence there. It both does and doesn't feel like they're what's left of him.
I'm glad Darwin was there throughout. His presence made so many things easier to deal with.
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Dixie Ducklings
Yesterday (Saturday) evening, my husband and I were driving on the Dixie Highway toward Clarkston when traffic suddenly slowed. When we got closer, we saw cars crooked in the lanes and thought there'd been an accident. When we got closer still, we saw the cause was actually a mother duck and six ducklings. She had taken it into her feathery head to bring the kids across the road. Cars had stopped in both the east-bound lanes. But the mother duck was determined to keep on going, and she headed for the west-bound lanes, where cars continued to whizz by, unconcerned.
She and the babies stood in the turning lane for a moment, then she started across. The next car in the west-bound lane saw them and hit the brakes just in time to avoid hitting her. Cars behind the driver screeched to a stop. The mother duck waddled determinedly toward the curb, with the trusting ducklings right behind her.
A car bore down on them, and then managed to stop, but the SUV behind was following too closely. At the last second, the driver swerved. The SUV jumped the curb and stopped on the grassy border, gouging out ruts and narrowly avoiding a crash into the wall of a motel cabin.
The mother duck clambered up the curb and the ducklings scrambled up after her. all of them unharmed.
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June 10, 2021
Missing the Mind's Eye
This article goes discusses a new discovery: that not everyone has a "mind's eye" that can visualize objects or events, and that other people have a hyper-active mind's eye that lets them visualize with great clarity. https://news.yahoo.com/many-people-vivid-minds-eye-182748867.html
But the article doesn't mention the implications on world religion. Many religions stress "inner quiet" or "emptying the mind" as a way to get closer to the divine. When you quiet yourself, you give room for the divine to enter. Christians require stopping thoughts--especially sinful ones--so that practitioners can "listen to god." Skill at meditation is one of the required steps on the Eightfold Path in Buddhism. And so on.
If it turns out that people are actually hard-wired to have an "empty" or a "full" mind, what are the implications on religious belief? Does this mean the meditation/prayer requirement was created and fomented by people whose neural pathways =couldn't= visualize? ("You must empty your mind, as I do." "I'm trying, Teacher, but my mind remains crowded." "You must try harder, Student. I can do it. Therefore you can, too." Except maybe the student literally couldn't, and the teacher was simply the beneficiary of a system created by other literally like-minded people. The Teacher isn't truly wise or more divine--he just appears to be because he was born with a particular kind of brain.
If this discovery about the human brain is true, it means that meditation and other mind-emptying techniques can't possibly be useful in getting closer to the divine. It would be like saying, "You must run ten miles to get into heaven" to someone in a wheelchair. Would the divine exclude people who are physically unable to meet a particular requirement? Not in any spirituality that preaches mercy--and all of them do.
In one stroke, this discovery wipes out a big section of human spirituality. I just don't think anyone's noticed yet.
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But the article doesn't mention the implications on world religion. Many religions stress "inner quiet" or "emptying the mind" as a way to get closer to the divine. When you quiet yourself, you give room for the divine to enter. Christians require stopping thoughts--especially sinful ones--so that practitioners can "listen to god." Skill at meditation is one of the required steps on the Eightfold Path in Buddhism. And so on.
If it turns out that people are actually hard-wired to have an "empty" or a "full" mind, what are the implications on religious belief? Does this mean the meditation/prayer requirement was created and fomented by people whose neural pathways =couldn't= visualize? ("You must empty your mind, as I do." "I'm trying, Teacher, but my mind remains crowded." "You must try harder, Student. I can do it. Therefore you can, too." Except maybe the student literally couldn't, and the teacher was simply the beneficiary of a system created by other literally like-minded people. The Teacher isn't truly wise or more divine--he just appears to be because he was born with a particular kind of brain.
If this discovery about the human brain is true, it means that meditation and other mind-emptying techniques can't possibly be useful in getting closer to the divine. It would be like saying, "You must run ten miles to get into heaven" to someone in a wheelchair. Would the divine exclude people who are physically unable to meet a particular requirement? Not in any spirituality that preaches mercy--and all of them do.
In one stroke, this discovery wipes out a big section of human spirituality. I just don't think anyone's noticed yet.
comments
May 31, 2021
Oh, Look! Teacher Shortage!
The Washington Post's editorial board is complaining about the teacher shortage for summer school. The short version: teachers burned out from pandemic teaching have no intention of teaching summer school, meaning students will have no way to "make up" for lost learning.
The editorial goes on to mention some of the incentives districts are using to entice summer school teaching--mostly bonuses. But it's not enough to get teachers to stick around. My own district couldn't afford to meet my salary requirement for summer school, thanks, though they've posted more summer teaching slots than I've seen in my 26 years teaching there. Just yesterday, they posted about ten new summer teaching slots for special education. I doubt they'll fill them. The special education teachers are more burned out than any of us.
The Post also advocates ending the long summer vacation in favor of year-round schooling (with breaks seeded throughout). It won't happen, certainly not in Michigan. Michigan's economy depends on summer tourism, so we need to ensure everyone can go on a summer trip whenever they want, instead of when the schools dictate it.
And anyway, this summer, we all need the time off so very much. After a year of huge class sizes taught in the awful hybrid model under curriculum we can't control and teaching toward state-mandated tests no one values while being called lazy and living without raises for more than ten years, we're done. You want to get summer school teachers, address the problems in the previous sentence. Then we'll talk.
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The editorial goes on to mention some of the incentives districts are using to entice summer school teaching--mostly bonuses. But it's not enough to get teachers to stick around. My own district couldn't afford to meet my salary requirement for summer school, thanks, though they've posted more summer teaching slots than I've seen in my 26 years teaching there. Just yesterday, they posted about ten new summer teaching slots for special education. I doubt they'll fill them. The special education teachers are more burned out than any of us.
The Post also advocates ending the long summer vacation in favor of year-round schooling (with breaks seeded throughout). It won't happen, certainly not in Michigan. Michigan's economy depends on summer tourism, so we need to ensure everyone can go on a summer trip whenever they want, instead of when the schools dictate it.
And anyway, this summer, we all need the time off so very much. After a year of huge class sizes taught in the awful hybrid model under curriculum we can't control and teaching toward state-mandated tests no one values while being called lazy and living without raises for more than ten years, we're done. You want to get summer school teachers, address the problems in the previous sentence. Then we'll talk.
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Oh, Well--We Tried
Darwin and I like to visit a gay-oriented campground in western Michigan over Memorial Day weekend. Campit Campground is a fun place to hang out and is also near Saugatuck and South Haven, two cities we like very much. This year, with the pandemic restrictions lifting, we were especially looking forward to the trip.
Cue the evil music.
Darwin and I headed out just as cold snap swept into the region. The daily high barely broke 60, and the overnight lows were in the 30s. It made for a difficult trip.
Arrived we arrived and checked into our cabin on Friday, we explored the campground a bit--it had been rearranged--and then started shivering. As the sun sank, it got colder and colder. We tried starting a fire, but it had rained all morning, and the damp wood only gave up a feeble flame. We finally gave up and went into the cabin, which wasn't in any way winterized and was heated, if you could call it that, with a portable radiator that put out a heat equal to a small kitten. The floor was ice cold and almost painful to walk on in socks. Darwin and I spent the night huddled up close under the blankets.
In the morning, I had planned to make breakfast on my camp stove, but it was just . . . too . . . cold to cook outside, let alone eat there. Instead, we drove into town and had breakfast at a little restaurant that had on the tables these odd salt and paper shakers. They had flip-top lids that you levered up with your thumb. They made me think of puppets, and I started doing little dialogues between the shakers for my own amusement. In the end, I propped up my phone and made videos of them. Darwin kept cracking up, and the other diners stared. I'll post some of the videos later.
We headed into Saugatuck for the day. The sun grudgingly warmed up to the low 60s, and we had a very nice time. My recent weight-loss has put me out of my clothes--an XL hangs badly on me now--and I discovered that a Large fits me very well! So I did some clothes shopping and bought some nice summer shirts.
Which I couldn't wear because of the cold. Yeesh.
We enjoyed a great lunch and we admired the boats in the harbor and we did all the other nothing-much tourists without children get to do. We also stopped to buy a space heater (it was one of two left in the store) and a pair of slippers for me.
That evening back at the cabin, the temperature plunged into the 30s. It was just too cold to be outside doing the usual fun stuff that goes on around Campit Campground. Usually they have shows and group cookouts and other events, but this year everyone was hiding in their tents and cabins and campers. Darwin and I huddled inside the cabin again, and the new heater did a much better job of keeping the space warm, but there wasn't much to do in there, especially since that particular area of the campground had no WiFi, and satellite signals were so weak that there was essentially no Internet. I read on my Kindle app on vacation, but it wouldn't function properly on the bad signals, so even that was denied me.
In the morning, we went to breakfast again--I made more silly salt and pepper videos--and headed into South Haven. Wow, it was crowded! The Michigan holiday weekend was in full swing. Though everyone was uncertain about masking. The official line from the state is that masks aren't required for anyone who is vaccinated, and almost no one wore them outdoors, Indoors was a different story. This store required masks for everyone. That restaurant didn't require them for anyone. This shop had no sign--or policy--either way. It was a confusing mishmash of government regulations and private business requirements.
By late afternoon, though, we were done. We went back to the cabin and I conked out in a world-class nap for an hour. When I got up, the temperatures were heading back down again, and it was supposed to be the coldest night yet. Darwin suggested we just go home now. I agreed to this proposal. We swiftly packed up the car, checked out of the campground, and fled back home.
I'm filing this under, "Oh well--we tried."
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Cue the evil music.
Darwin and I headed out just as cold snap swept into the region. The daily high barely broke 60, and the overnight lows were in the 30s. It made for a difficult trip.
Arrived we arrived and checked into our cabin on Friday, we explored the campground a bit--it had been rearranged--and then started shivering. As the sun sank, it got colder and colder. We tried starting a fire, but it had rained all morning, and the damp wood only gave up a feeble flame. We finally gave up and went into the cabin, which wasn't in any way winterized and was heated, if you could call it that, with a portable radiator that put out a heat equal to a small kitten. The floor was ice cold and almost painful to walk on in socks. Darwin and I spent the night huddled up close under the blankets.
In the morning, I had planned to make breakfast on my camp stove, but it was just . . . too . . . cold to cook outside, let alone eat there. Instead, we drove into town and had breakfast at a little restaurant that had on the tables these odd salt and paper shakers. They had flip-top lids that you levered up with your thumb. They made me think of puppets, and I started doing little dialogues between the shakers for my own amusement. In the end, I propped up my phone and made videos of them. Darwin kept cracking up, and the other diners stared. I'll post some of the videos later.
We headed into Saugatuck for the day. The sun grudgingly warmed up to the low 60s, and we had a very nice time. My recent weight-loss has put me out of my clothes--an XL hangs badly on me now--and I discovered that a Large fits me very well! So I did some clothes shopping and bought some nice summer shirts.
Which I couldn't wear because of the cold. Yeesh.
We enjoyed a great lunch and we admired the boats in the harbor and we did all the other nothing-much tourists without children get to do. We also stopped to buy a space heater (it was one of two left in the store) and a pair of slippers for me.
That evening back at the cabin, the temperature plunged into the 30s. It was just too cold to be outside doing the usual fun stuff that goes on around Campit Campground. Usually they have shows and group cookouts and other events, but this year everyone was hiding in their tents and cabins and campers. Darwin and I huddled inside the cabin again, and the new heater did a much better job of keeping the space warm, but there wasn't much to do in there, especially since that particular area of the campground had no WiFi, and satellite signals were so weak that there was essentially no Internet. I read on my Kindle app on vacation, but it wouldn't function properly on the bad signals, so even that was denied me.
In the morning, we went to breakfast again--I made more silly salt and pepper videos--and headed into South Haven. Wow, it was crowded! The Michigan holiday weekend was in full swing. Though everyone was uncertain about masking. The official line from the state is that masks aren't required for anyone who is vaccinated, and almost no one wore them outdoors, Indoors was a different story. This store required masks for everyone. That restaurant didn't require them for anyone. This shop had no sign--or policy--either way. It was a confusing mishmash of government regulations and private business requirements.
By late afternoon, though, we were done. We went back to the cabin and I conked out in a world-class nap for an hour. When I got up, the temperatures were heading back down again, and it was supposed to be the coldest night yet. Darwin suggested we just go home now. I agreed to this proposal. We swiftly packed up the car, checked out of the campground, and fled back home.
I'm filing this under, "Oh well--we tried."
comments
