Comin' Through the Rye

This was one of my annual activities back in the day.  I would work up this field, about 1/3 of an acre, in front of my deer blind and plant rye grain.  I would usually do this sometime in August so that it would be up and growing before the November seer season.  This photo was probably taken about two weeks after planting when I went back out there to spread fertilizer.  

The field would not produce grain until the following summer, but that was okay because what I was after was fresh green grass in November when it would be an unseasonal treat for the deer.  I don't know how much the deer valued the grain because they have plenty of natural food that time of year.  I would mow the field before working it up and replanting next August.  

Breakup in Beaglesonia

Breakup is the time of year between winter and spring.  The snow and ice are melting, but green up is a long way off.  Breakup usually occurs sometime in March, while green-up usually waits until May.  Ironically, the time in between is our wildfire season.  After the snow melts away, all the dead vegetation from last summer dries out.  Wildfires, however, are usually not a problem when you live in the swamp.  

I used to kid my wife about living on waterfront property this time of year, but she never did buy it.  That's because our intermittent marsh dries up in the summer, not enough to cultivate, but enough that it can be mowed to keep it from reverting to trees and bushes.  My plan was to develop it into year-round water so that the ducks and geese that dropped in for a visit during breakup would stick around for the fall hunting season, but it was not to be.

Beaglesonia in Winter

 

This is our driveway after a moderate snowfall.  We are looking from the house towards the county road.  You can't see the road from here because the driveway makes a sharp turn to the left just before it meets the road.  I configured it that way to take advantage of the highest ground available.  Total distance is about a hundred yards.

Here's me sitting on the tractor getting ready to start plowing.  We are not looking down the main driveway here, we are looking across the parking and turnaround area towards one of my tractor trails that leads to the deer blind, about a quarter mile away.  

That was a good story the Uncle Ken posted the other day.  It sounds like something close to his real-life experience, perhaps slightly embellished as we creative story tellers tend to do.

  

A-Hunting We Will Go

 

I took this picture one morning on my way to my deer blind.  When I was quite young my father took me with him on several deer hunting trips to Freesoil, Michigan.  We stayed with a family of farmers who rented out a few of their spare rooms to hunters.  They lived across the road from the Manistee National Forest, so we could walk to huntable land, loading our guns as we exited the farmhouse.  I thought that was so cool and vowed that I was going to live in a place like that when I grew up.  My dad claimed that this was impractical in the

modern world, and maybe he was right, but I did it anyway.

  

Deep in the Heart of Texas

 I've been hanging at the downtown Senior Citizen writing class these last few weeks and this is what I came out with:

Deep in the Heart of Texas – Ken Schadt.

 

I was standing right across from the train to Texas and suddenly it hit me.  I didn’t have to do this.  I could cross the street to the Greyhound station and go right back to Champaign where all my beer drinking friends lived.  They were probably beginning to drop by the Esquire this very minute.  I could take the bus back and I would be sitting at the bar before happy hour was over.

Sure I could do that, but I would have to bum beer money  off of  one of my pals, because I didn’t have any money, because I didn’t have a job.  And that’s why I was taking the train to the boomtown.  I got on the Texas Eagle.

By midnight we were crossing the Mississippi River at St Louis with the gambling boats gleaming in the night.  I dropped off to sleep after that and then it was a misty dawn when we were passing through Little Rock, then we went west for most of the day, miles and miles of miles and miles of Texas as the songwriter wrote.  At Dallas we went south until we hit Austin about the time the bars there were closing. 

I was up first thing in the morning, waiting for my cat to arrive. The day before I took the train I took my cat to the vet’s where she would be given a sedative and then Don would pick her up and take her to the Emery office to begin her long ride by plane and truck to Austin and now she would arrive at my apartment in one of those red and white trucks, which were driving up and down Lamar, but none of them pulled into the driveway in front of the apartment and then it was dark and there were no more trucks.

I went down to the payphone with a pocket full of quarters and called up Don.

“My cat’s not here.”

“No, no she is not.”

“Where is she?”

“Detroit.”

“Detroit?”

“Detroit Michigan.”

“What?  How?”

“Didn’t I warn you about your dumb scheme to send a cat by delivery truck?”

“What?  You never said a word.”

“Oh, well I meant to.  Anyway don’t fret, they are driving her down hear even as I speak.  I will be at their office later in the morning and I’ll bring her back here so don’t you worry.”

“What is she doing in Detroit?”

“Oh that.  I talked to the guy and he said they put her in the plane here and the plane flew to New Orleans and Baton Rouge and everything was fine, but then when they stopped in Austin they forgot to take kitty out of the airplane.  Then there were a few more stops and when their trip ended she was still on the plane.”

“How was she?  How is she”   

“Well she was hungry, but they got a can and she ate it all down,”

She didn’t talk much but she always cleaned her bowl.  “Well, so, wow.”  Can they send her back here tomorrow?”

“No they can’t.  I asked.  It’s winter now you know,  no more cats in the air by themselves from now until  Memorial Day.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing.  But I’ll tell you little buddy, sometimes it gets a little lonely out here in the trailer court, maybe I could use a little buddy myself for company over those long winter months.”

“She doesn’t talk much,” I warned him.

“Neither do I,” he answered.

I was 40 years old.  I had never been married or had any kids.  Didn’t even have a job.  All I had was the cat.  And now she would be a thousand miles from me in a stranger’s trailer until  spring.

 

That was my first morning in Austin and in my second I met my white winged warrior.

I was leaning over my railing looking east towards the dawn, over the honking revving traffic of Lamar.  On the other side and maybe half a block up there was a little patch of live oaks where I saw a sudden flash of light and then it was moving.  It was a bird, a large one, a pigeon, a great big white pigeon, broad wings stretching out as it rose in the sky,  rising higher and coming across Lamar and setting down right on the railing a few feet from me, where he tucked in his wings and looked at me, like specifically at me, like he wanted something from me.

Well peanuts of course.  Isn’t that what brought them down from the cliffs to our rooftops, from scrounging for seeds to accepting a friendly handout from those humans?

And I had nothing.  I wasn’t expecting a guest.  “You wait right here.” I told him and dashed down the stairs and across the street to the Safeway and came back with a little bag of dry roasted peanuts.

But he was gone.  Well shit.  I shook the bag in the air but nothing, but when I turned around there was whoosh of feathers and there he was giving the peanut bag the eye.  I shook one out of the bag and then another and it was looking like the start of a beautiful friendship.

 

In my third morning in Austin I met my next door neighbor.  Her name was Mona, but she liked it if you called her Mona Lisa.       

Mona Lisa wanted to know if I had a girlfriend.  I said I had a cat, she smiled.

“Want one?”

“One what?”

“A girlfriend?” she answered  pointing her thumb at herself.

Well what guy doesn’t want a girlfiend? I looked for words.

But I was too slow, she was laughing, “Just a joke,” she said.

And then she wanted to know if she could see my cat, and so I had to tell the story.  It was a little bit comical and I told it like it was some kind of joke,  but she wasn’t laughing.  She was wondering when they discovered that they had a cat on their plane.  Well I didn’t know, maybe she was under some other box.  Well wouldn’t they have heard her?  I told her that she was a quiet cat, which she was.

Mona looked up into the sky.  “They could have dumped her, “ she said, “They could have not  wanted anybody to know that they messed up and gotten rid of her.  Maybe they just didn’t want to do the paperwork.”

“ Oh I am sure she was on some other list, and anyway nobody would just dump her, people don’t do shit like that.”

“Some do,” she answered.

When I left Champaign I had to get my cat to the vet’s by four.  I had been kind of putting it off all afternoon, but then it was four o’clock, and I had to do it right then.  She was a quiet cat and she didn’t say anything when I lifted her up and put her in the cat carrier and then closed the transparent top above her.  She just looked at me from inside the carrier.

Beaglesonia in Summer

 

Back in the day, I used to spend all winter dragging logs out of the swamp.  Then I would spend most of the spring and summer cutting them up and splitting the larger pieces.  The really small stuff had already been cut up at the site and brought out in the front-end loader.  The device you see on the left is my hydraulic splitter.  I think I have some pictures of it in use, and I will show them to you when I come across them.

The splitter can be adjusted to operate either horizontally or vertically.  I found that vertical worked better for my purposes.  As I split each block, I would stack the pieces in the loader and dump them in the structure you saw in the background of the first picture.  Then in the winter I would use the same loader to bring them into the garage where the wood furnace is located.  It's hard to believe that I was ever capable of doing such work, but I was.

Institute Head count.

A brief google search on my part reveals that daylight in the swamp basically means shake a leg, which could also mean get up and boogie.  I sent Old Dog an email and he confirms that while he is not about to get up and boogie, he could if something moved him too.  Me too, could get up and boogie, well not much of a hoofer, but I can walk till the cows come home and feel just fine.  Apparently cows when they are eating God's good grass tend to linger a bit.

Just keeping Beagles caught up with the health of his associates.  We don't want to be those oldsters that can go on and on about our conditions and the various meds we take, though when prompted I have to stifle the urge to yak on on the subject till the cows come home.  

Nice pics Beagles, keep them coming.

Daylight in the Swamp!

I have heard of at least two versions of the origin of this phrase.  One version is that this call was used to wake up the lumberjacks in the morning, meaning that, since it's daylight in the swamp, it's time to be up and working.  The other version is that it was the lumberjack's mission to let some daylight into the swamp.  Either way, I thought it would be an appropriate title for these "before" and "after" photos.

Testing Photo App

 

I bought one of those gadgets that Old Dog told us about, and now I'm trying to figure out how to use it.  Uncle Ken requested scenery shots, and I don't think I have many of those.  This one dates back to 2017 and was taken from the roof of our house.  It looks like early spring, so I was probably up there cleaning the wood furnace chimney.

Speaking of Uncle Ken, I hope he is recovering well from his last procedure.

Sounds Serious

Sorry to hear about all the medical trouble that Uncle Ken is having.  What else can I say?  The medical people I have been dealing with have been much more willing to share the results of all the tests and procedures that I have been going through the last few years.  If anything, I have frequently suspected that they were overstating my problems, but time has proven that they were mostly right after all.  

They tried to put me on oxygen years ago, but I just couldn't see myself dragging those tanks around. Turns out there is indeed a better way.  It's called an oxygen concentrator.  It's a portable machine that takes in atmospheric air and strips the nitrogen out of it, delivering a high concentration of oxygen to your nose through a rubber hose.  It's not as intrusive as it sounds.  It would be easy to forget that I'm wearing it except that my wife tells me when I've had enough.  She says it makes me talk like a machine gun, but I have been accused of that all my life, although, come to think of it, not lately.  Maybe this means I am getting back to my own self after all these years.  One can only hope.

I have bought one of those DVD/CD players that Old Dog told me about, but I haven't had the chance to try it out yet.  I could be doing it now, but then I wouldn't be writing this post.  Maybe tomorrow.

more adventures from State Street

 How are we all doing?  Meself, not so hot.  I had that second stent put in and came out of it like the first one, feeling like a million bucks.  But then about bedtime I got this pain in my chest, pretty strong, no way I was going to get any sleep that night.  And the advice that they had left me with in the morning was that in case I was feeling pain in my chest I was to CALL 911!!!

Pretty specific.  Lots of people at the towers are well up in age and meatwagons are not rare.  But, I dunno it just seemed too dramatic, and what if one of my neighbors saw me being wheeled into one of them?  Oh Lord.  I compromised, I called a cab.  When it didn't arrive I had second thoughts.  What if I just dropped dead on State Street?  How embarrassing.

Anyway it came, and the half mile ride was ok.  I imagine riding in a meatwagon would have been bumpier and that siren!?  Actually they can't hear the siren from inside, something they installed some years ago to keep the drivers from going deaf. And that is why they always have it set at blast.

And then after passing through the metal detector I was in the ER.  Northwestern's ER is like a block long and kind of like the tv shows, everybody is yelling and you have those on death's doorstop and those out of their heads.  Actually the staff is pretty calm (we do this every day) and efficient, I assume, I never knew what they were doing, and they just rolled their eyes when I dared to ask.

They shipped me into a room where I was tethered to machines and there was actually an alarm that went off if I tried to step out of the bed.  The first night my nurse was a pretty good guy, and the next night she was a nasty woman.  Every now and then they'd roll me out for some test or other, but again nobody told me nothing.

And then after two days I was freed.  Had a meeting with my doctor a few days later and had the temerity to ask what was going on.  He kinda shrugged.  I had heard a rumor a couple times that they were adjusting my meds so I asked him if that was what was going on and he answered, "Sure."

While he was fiddling he had noticed that an artery that he thought wasn't worth bothering with had kind of come to life and now he wants to do that one.  I guess, isn't the more blood the better?

So I have an appointment for one more in about a month and in the meantime I am going through this cardiac rehab thing which seems to be mostly piddly little exercises and very complicated dietary requirements.

And that's the way things are going for me right now.

Quick consumer tip

...but they are all on CDs and my current computer doesn't do CDs.  

Ah, the bane of the modern age; aren't you glad those images aren't on floppy disks?  I had the same dilemma and found a quick and relatively cheap solution: a portable USB DVD/CD drive, around twenty bucks from Amazon.  Amazing little device, considering I paid hundreds for a CD drive for one of my computers decades ago, and it just works.  Plug it in and you're in business.  The hardest thing to do is wallow through hundreds, even thousands of images; you'll learn to appreciate extra-large thumbnails.  I think the drive I have can also write to CDs and DVDs, so there is more fun to be had.

Just one mutt's opinion.

Time Marches On

I have some pictures of the Freehold, but they are all on CDs and my current computer doesn't do CDs.  When I ordered my new computer, I just assumed it could handle CDs, but it turns out it can't.  I suppose things like streaming and the Cloud have reduced the demand for CDs to the point that CD capacity is no longer included as a matter of course in new computers.  I could get it as an add-on, but I was getting to the point that I rarely used it in my old computer, so I haven't bothered.  I seem to remember that the same thing happened with floppy disks, cassette tapes, and VHS.  On the other hand, I hear tell that vinyl is making a comeback after I finally disposed of my old collection.  

I haven't hunted or cut firewood in several years now.  When we had that big ice storm last year, I found that I was no longer able to pull the starter cord on my chain saw, so I went out and bought one of those new-fangled electric models for $800 with battery and charger.  I have only used it a couple of times.  Just one more thing that I can no longer find the time or energy to do.  My neighbor and my daughter help me out when the trees start to encroach the driveway or the drainfield, but other than that, I have been allowing the forest to reclaim its own.  

The deer are still here, we see them out the window now and then, but the snowshoe rabbits never did recover from those ice storms we had back in the 90s.  Grouse have never been plentiful around here, but we do see them on occasion.  

We have decided that moving to a regular apartment in town would be more trouble than it would be worth.  What we need is assisted living.  My daughter knows of a place near her in Charlevoix that we might consider, and another one in Harbor Springs that she might check out for us.  All we really need to stay in Beaglesonia is more help, including reliable snow plowing service.  Time will tell what choices we will need to make, if we live long enough.

Meanwhile, God speed the recovery of both of my esteemed colleagues.

one more stent

 So are the Beagles' going to live through another winter in the freehold if something doesn't open up at the Brook?  None of my business but how would living in Geezer City be harder than the Freehold?

1986 huh?  I got amazed looks from the whippersnappers when I tell them that I moved in here in 1992.  Oh the changes I have seen in this place.  I would be more than happy to tell the whippersnappers, but they can tell when an oldster is working himself up to telling a long story and they are backing away from me and smiling and nodding before I can get a word out.

I knew the address once and did a google maps search of the freehold, and it was well, out there.  I think Beagles has posted some pictures of the place kind of in the background of what he was showing, but I wonder if he could post some of the place closer up.  Can you still get out to the swamp?  Are the deer stands still standing?  Ever step inside and peer out to see if you make out a deer in the distance?  The Deerslayer in the Winter?

I am getting my second stent Tuesday.  They plan on keeping me there overnight which is something I dread probably more that the four hour ordeal while they do whatever they do.  I will be doped up but I will not be on no swirling ship, I will just be dazed and confused, bumped here and there and basically bored stiff.  But then that long hospital afternoon and the evening and then midnight and then the wee hours.  I will be bringing some books but I may be to fucked up to read them.  And blah, blah, blah, but I will have to remember that I am alive, and I expect I will be feeling just fine in the morning waiting on my sister or my nephew to come get me and put me in a cab and my beautiful cat will be as pleased as punch when I roll in the door.

I assume that Old Dog is going through cardiac rehab like me.  Kind of stupid, some piddly exercises.  I guess there is a whole psychological reckoning but Who me?  I ain't like depressed or anything.

The worst thing is the diet.  I eat pretty good since I mostly eat vegetables, which they like, but there is a problem with salt, seems like it is everywhere.  But they do have a problem with beer.  One a night would be perfectly fine with them, but they don't like me grouping four or five together on Fridays and Saturdays.  It becomes an event, kind of a peak of blood pressure and whatever else.  And my four cheese pizza, forget about it.  Pepper and black olives is sort of ok, but they want me to just have three slices.  I have spent a lot of time with Chaz and he is an enormous help.  Some stuff offsets some other stuff but then that changes something else and Chaz keeps recalculating and maybe it won't be too bad, and the social dinner with friends having drinks is bad but can be overlooked.

Here is something I have to remember, a bunch of people who had all kinds of expensive educations and use these really expensive science fiction equipment devoted it all to me for four long hours and now they are going to do it again.  For a bum like me.  God bless America.

Homecoming

It took long enough but The Old Dog is once again happily ensconced in The Geezer Chateau, arriving yesterday.  A month at my sister's home was plenty; the last time we spent prolonged time together was about sixty years ago, so it was quite a learning experience for both of us.  No arguments ensued, which is a good thing since there are firearms on the premises.  Retired police officers (Brother-In-Law) are seldom bleeding-heart liberals if you catch my drift; I know when to keep my mouth shut.

-----

All in all, not a bad adventure with minimal pain or discomfort.  I may have had a Tylenol or two but that was it, no heavy meds required.  Lots of other meds though for a while; not sure what they all do but since there have been no adverse side effects, I don't care.  Good to be back to a normal reality, catching up on stuff.  My niece did a fine job of watering my plants and delivering my mail so there were no paperwork surprises, even managed to renew my lease.  This might end up being a nice summer.

The Brook

The one we have in Cheboygan is called "The Brook", although there is no brook on the premises to my knowledge.  It's part of a chain with several other locations, so maybe there is a brook near one of them.  They have two classes of residents, "independent" and "assisted living".  We were shown one of the assisted living units, and it didn't have much of a kitchen, just a sink, a microwave, and a small fridge.  That's okay because we hardly cook anymore anyway.  We get "meals on wheels" from the local senior center, and most anything else we want can be cooked in the microwave.  We will probably eat most of our meals in the dining room, but the meals on wheels people will deliver to the Brook if we ask them to.  

It's quite expensive, you're talking upwards of ten thousand a month for two people depending on what services we utilize.  There is a cheaper place in town called "Medi lodge", but I have heard bad things about it.  That's where they send you when you have exhausted all your resources and are reduced to government assistance.  Hopefully we will be dead by then, or at least so senile that we won't know where we are anyway.   

the bethany

 My Mom lived in assisted living for maybe 15 years.  She was in her late 80's rambling around in that big old bungalow on Homan Avenue and my sister was living in Kenilworth and she was worried about Mom living so far away, but my mother was adamant about staying in the family manse.

Until she wasn't.  One day, out of the blue she declared that that big old bungalow was too big anymore.  My sister and I checked out a few places and decided on the Bethany which turned out to be a pretty good decision. It was a nice place.  They had activities for the residents, and parties for Christmas.  I loved the Christmas party.  There was a small park in front of the building where, as they began to tell the story of Saint Lucia, if you looked closely you could just make out in the park in the dark of night some very faint lights, moving just a little closer, a little closer as the story of Saint Lucia unfolded and then suddenly

Suddenly they turned on the lights which were in the trees and there in the path was Santa Lucia 

There were some kind of gifts, there was cake, and there was ice cream.  There were Christmas carols, and all that Christmas crappola that make it such a beloved holiday.  After Mom died I wondered if I could just go there by myself.

She could come and go as she pleased, though I think she had to sign out.  They had a mini bus that would take them places like Navy Pier and Margies Candy Store where they all got black cows.  They were living large.  Mom had a full kitchen where she could have cooked her own meals if she chose to.  She did not choose to.  She had been cooking meals her whole life and now she was done with all that.

They had a big dining room where they sat 4 at each table and the food was served to them.  The food was warm and the helpings were ample.  My mother was not all that crazy about the dishes but she always cleaned her plate.

I was subbing then.  I would get home from my gig and get on the Brown Line and off at Damen, a nice little part of the city, looked like it should have a toy train running through it, and walk about a half mile to the Bethany.  Mom would just be finishing her supper and then we would go to this big front room where sometimes the son of one of the residents would play old timey songs on the piano and you could sing along or not.  We would chat a bit about nothing in particular.  Ashland Avenue went by in front of us, and I would ask her, "Mom what street is that," and she would answer serenely.  "Cottage Grove."  She had never lived or worked or visited anybody on Cottage Grove.

I would leave for the Ten Cat after about an hour, feeling like a good son.  It was just a little over a mile to the Ten Cat. A very pleasant and interesting walk I still take sometimes. Jake would usually be at the bar and we would have a seminar.  

And for no other reason then that I love the photo, here is this one.

Still Here

We decided against the move to Geezer City.  It would get us out of the swamp for the winter, but living there would involve more work than living here.  Both of us are trying to make our lives easier, not harder.  Our helper lady has two more clients besides us, and one of them is planning to move away, so we might be able to engage her for more hours per week.  We still plan to move to an assisted living facility if we manage to outlive the people ahead of us on the waiting list.  Assisted living is something between those geezer apartments and a nursing home.  They feed you, do your laundry, and clean your apartment for you.  They also have nursing care available if the time ever comes when you need it and are still alive.  We aren't that far down the road yet, but let's face it, we're not getting any younger. 

All our stuff will remain on the Freehold until such time our daughter decides to sell the property.  Then it will all be hers to dispose of as she sees fit.  She has requested that we put the land in her name before we get too senile to make that decision.  We might do that somewhere down the road, but we're not there yet.  We have owned Beaglesonia since 1986, but we have only lived here since 2000.

We have both tried to minimize our medication.  I take two pills for blood pressure, one for fiber, and one for dizzy spells.  I also use two kinds of prescription eye drops for glaucoma, and another OTC one for dry eyes.  My wife only takes one blood pressure pill and Tylenol.  Different doctors have tried to get us to take more stuff, but we have managed to evade them so far.  We have read that Americans are generally over medicated, and we tend to believe it.  

cormorants.

 

Posted this in fb about a week ago, inspired by this spring's invasion of the Chicago River by cormorants.  Beagles responded:

Cormorants arrived here decades ago. They had not been seen here in living memory, and everybody thought it was a good thing, but it wasn't. They ate up all the fish and pooped them all over the place. Since they were federally protected, it was illegal for even the state DNR to use lethal controls. Fortunately, a loophole was found. They started coating their eggs with vegetable oil. This insured that the eggs would never hatch, but the cormorants didn't know that, so they wasted the whole breeding season trying to hatch them instead of laying more.

The treadmills in the exercise room face south over the river which is good because the treadmill is very boring.  I liked to watch the birds, in this case gulls. To me they kind of knit the city together diving and rising on columns of hot air, beautiful and graceful birds.  

But then a two or three years ago I began to notice other birds flying along the river east to west.  They were darker and  flew like they were in a hurry, no gentle gliding like gulls, they had long necks and looked like Stuka jets.  I googled around and turkey buzzards seemed a likely candidate, this is their turf, about the same size, but the resemblance was a little off.

This year they came in force.  They are native birds and they are in the burbs, but the Chicago River is new territory for them.  Well it was so filthy, and now it is pretty damn clean.  The second annual swim meet in the river is later this year.  

As you know I face the lake and in the mornings I could see them entering the river from the lake and flying in like a fleet of Stukas or those helicopters in Apocalypse Now.  (You could almost hear The Ride of the valkyries.)

Unlike gulls, who are not averse to a handout from a human, the cormorants ignore us completely.  They fly close to river and then dive beneath the surface and chase a fish a considerable distance before they emerge with a glint of silver.

Well I am smitten, but you will notice our county cousin is not.  Well we slickers are inclined to view all pigs as Porky and ducks as Donald.  So adorable.  

Google agrees that they have terrible and acidic poop which can kill trees and weaken steel bridges.  But as for eating fish, not so bad a thing because you are getting rid of old sick fish (just like us) and make way for younger fresher fish (those jerks wearing shorts when the temp is in the teens), culling the herd so to speak.  Nature is cruel.  The rabbit is happy when Mother Nature gives it more hoppity feet to outrun the fox, but not so happy to see her give the fox sharper teeth.  But I know Beagles used to fish the Cheboygan River and bring back dinner and I guess to a fisherman every fish a cormorant catches is one that the fisherman doesn't get to

I guess they are passing through on their migration, and only a few stay all year, though in time like Canada geese have learned, this is a nice town to toddle around in.  In the meantime I will be awaiting their return in the fall.

What's up?

Almost May, two months and a few days away from John Meis's fabulous Fourth of July party in Urbans, brats and beers, and fellowship among my fellow beer drinking buddies.  I am guessing this is the 50th.

I'm not going to give an estimate of the turnout, but back in the day it was two kegs of beer and then a hat was passed around and we got a large car full of beer just before the liquor stores closed.  Anymore I get a case and a half of beer and when I leave there is still beer.

Well as Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying so it goes.  

I remember a time, maybe when the party was at its one keg and a car almost full of package stage and the conversation drifted to conditions and pills.  Geez-a-loo they were all off and running, everybody was talking about all the pills they take and it sounded like listening to the grandparents talking when I was a kid.  I would never be like that.

Well I guess you guys have a similar pill armada.  Got two new ones with the stent, one of which if I forget to take it for awhile I will be dead, and one that I have to take twice a day.  My memory is not too hot but I can easily remember once a day, but twice a day, a little iffy.

I wonder if Beagles has moved into that swinging geezer apartment building.  How many years did you live in The Freehold?  What happened to all your junk?

Too be honest I was scared to take the Aztec route of Old Dog, and the stent sounded somehow, um, safer.  But now I have to get another stent.  They tell me I will be on the table for four hours and will have to stay overnight.  Shit, when the subject of stents came up I thought I would go in in the morning, out in the afternoon and ready to resume all my bad habits.  Now I have to do cardio rehab for maybe three months.  

Speaking of bad habits.  I was down to maybe one cig a day.  But now none at all.  I fantasize about maybe a year down the road if I am all hunky dory.  Maybe having a puff, but probably not.

Well.

So it goes

   

Water, Water, Everywhere but Here

 Y'all might have heard about all the flooding in Northern Michigan, but you'd never know it looking out our window.  Our water table hit a peak about a week ago, and it's been downhill ever since.  Even at the peak it was no wetter than usual for this time of year.  Turns out that the Freehold is not in the same watershed as the Cheboygan River, which is only two miles away as the crow flies.  All the flooding seems to be concentrated along the waterfronts of our major lakes and rivers, and the Great Beaglesonian Swamp is not directly connected to any of them. 

Last I heard, youse guys both seemed to be recovering nicely from your medical problems.  Hope that is still the case.  My wife and I, not so much.  We are on a waiting list for a local assisted living facility.  When I asked the lady how many people were on the list ahead of us, she couldn't say exactly, but that it didn't matter.  It seems that, when a vacancy occurs, the next several people in line are often dead, so we could move up very quickly.  Meanwhile, our daughter has found a geezer friendly apartment complex close by in town.  They have a vacancy right now, and we are going to look at it on Friday.  It's not the same thing as assisted living, but at least it would provide us with a safe haven for this winter. 

April Fool

"It could be worse"

No kidding!  On March 31st the Aztec priests took me to the top of the pyramid, raised their obsidian knives to the heavens and tore out my heart.  Just kidding, just another routine triple-bypass; no drama but I'll have an impressive 9.5 inch scar in the middle of my chest.  Things went so well that they cut me loose on Easter Sunday for my own Resurrection and am doing a recuperation at my sister's home in Niles, a clash of realities but I can deal with it.  No complaints except for the healing part.  And the follow-up appointments, therapy sessions, and paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork.  No need for a cane or walker, nice to be on my feet walking around.

So that's how my month has started; how you guys doing?

It Could Be Worse

 That's what I say every time I start feeling sorry for myself.  Sounds like both of my esteemed colleagues are in worse shape than I am, at least heart wise.  I don't know about my shortness of breath issue.  I always figured that was connected to that bout with rheumatic fever that I had as a kid, but now I'm not so sure.  They said they fixed my heart issue when I was in the hospital last summer, but my breath is still as short as it ever was.  I am sucking on my nebulizer as we speak, and I have purchased a portable oxygen concentrator, but I can't seem to find the time to get into a reliable routine with either one of them.  That's why we are looking into assisted living.  If we could get someone to pick up some of our household chores, it might free us up to spend more time on our health therapy regimes.

Meanwhile, as Red Green used to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for you.  We're all in this together."

The stent

 Common alternative names for urgent care centers include immediate care, convenient care, walk-in clinics, and acute care clinics. These facilities provide prompt, non-life-threatening medical services, often with extended hours and no appointment necessary. 

We have three of them downtown, one for Rush, one for Northwestern and one for UChicago.  It is nice living downtown where we have all of them and the big factory hospital at Northwestern.  

The urgent care I went to was UChicago east on Grand maybe a half mile from my house and I walked it also walked to Northwestern from there.  My only symptom was that pain in my chest and left arm and I never had that pain when I was doing normal stuff.

Anyway I went in Monday morning for my stent and everything went pretty smooth.  One bad moment was when one of the docs dropped in just before surgery and told me that the operation is successful 9 times out of 10, like this was good news, that I only had a one in ten chance of never getting off the gurney?  Chatz had told me my odds were more like 99.99%.  I asked my primary doc about this later, and she kind of laughed and said that what he was talking about was that about ten percent don't follow the rules afterwards and those are the people who didn't make it.

The operation took a couple hours but it was like a colostomy where you are half in the bag and time passes easily.  Then they put me in the recovery room and told me that I would have to stay there six hours to make sure that my groin where they put the balloon in did not start leaking, or spurting, or whatever.

But that was ok because I was assured that I would be going home right away after it was done.  But then with about an hour to go the nurses discovered what they thought was a leak in my groin.  They couldn't figure it out and the clock was running and maybe I would have to stay overnight.  But then a friendly doc dropped by and said, "Oh that?  That's nothing."  And I got to go home and see my cat.

I guess I could be pissed at those nurses for keeping me there because they could not figure out that it was nothing.  But you know, it could have been.  Northwestern, they treat you like a piece of meat, but do a pretty good job of making sure you get home alive.

I will still have another stent put in in about a month, but it should go easier, I think.  Anyway it's a month away.

And I got more pills to take.  And the doc stressed that if I don't take them every day I will die.  I tend to be forgetful so now my bathroom is adorned with post it notes to remind me.

The other thing is something called Cardiac Rehab which I will go into in the next post.

Heartbreakers

It's starting to look like there are peculiar cardiac issues arising at The Institute.  Last year Mr. Beagles had some blockage blasted away in lieu of stents and very soon Uncle Ken will get stents of his own.  Kind of nice living so close to a world-class medical facility, isn't it?  But the term "urgent care" facility is new to me; how does that work?  I had Mr. Google look it up for me but it looks like those facilities are unevenly distributed with a couple near the ivory towers of Marina City.  Did you walk there or take a cab and was the trip to the ER via ambulance?  None of my business, just curious how these situations get handled.

-----

I'm in the middle of a coronary adventure of my own with a couple of "procedures" in the near future.  Couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, very scary, gasping for air.  Took some aspirin, dialed 911, got dressed, packed minimal necessities and waited but not long.  No sirens; the responders were in ninja stealth mode and they wheeled me out with some oxygen.  Quick trip to what used to be Swedish Covenant Hospital two miles away and their ER pit crew went to work.  Lot of action for a while they wired me up with monitoring sensors, IV hook ups, a little nitroglycerine pill under the tongue but still could barely breathe so they slapped a  high pressure oxygen gadget on my face and I settled down a bit.  Definitely a heart attack, or so they say (I believe it), and indications of internal bleeding of unknown origin or just severe anemia.  A baffler to be sure, or in medical parlance, "idiopathic."  Anyhow, tests were in order and I ended up spending a week there; not as bad as I thought and the food was more than tolerable.  Had an angiogram, the one that goes through the right arm, which indicated serious blockage with the coronary arteries, too clogged for blasting or stents.  Time to make reservations at the Triple Bypass Resort.  Got my first colonoscopy too, with some not-so-good news.  Not to be an alarmist but there's something that's got to come out, rhymes with "dancer."  Could be worse; it's small and not spreading but the heart stuff has to come first.  So 2026 is turning out to be the Year of the Long Knives for The Old Dog.

In retrospect there are things that I should have paid more attention to, and didn't.  Any shortness of breath I attributed to a previous diagnosis of mild emphysema, weakness in my legs due to lack of exercise, that sort of thing.  It could be one of those "guy things" where you only seek medical attention at the very last moment and I just squeaked by.  Whew!  That was close!  No complaints about the hospital stay; I felt like I was treated like a king.  Solid information from the nurses and doctors as I picked their brains, nothing held back, no waffling, and I took copious notes.  So I feel fine, maybe better than fine, as I deal with a new reality.  And the beat goes on...

 

The Medical Bureaucracy

 I had a little run in with those people last summer.  Turned out I didn't need a stint, they just shocked the shit out of me to make my heart beat like it was supposed to.  They said I would be okay after that, but I needed to take a blood thinner to prevent clots.  The druggist cautioned me that if I experienced gastrointestinal bleeding, I should go to the emergency room immediately.  Since I have experienced gastrointestinal bleeding in the past from taking blood thinners, but have never experienced clots, I decided not to take those pills.  I subsequently experienced the bleeding anyway, but I never did experience clots.   

Sometimes I wonder if their left hands know what their right hands are doing, but they must or they wouldn't be allowed to practice medicine.  Would they?  I think that they mostly mean well and are well qualified, but that doesn't mean you should give them your blind unconditional trust.  You have to ask questions and advocate for yourself, just to be on the safe side.   

adventures in aging

Every time a big snow blows hard here so that I can barely see the building across the street I think of you Beagles way up north, way up out of town.  I picture your house slung low to the ground and snow piling on the roof and up to the doorway so that if anybody was so stupid as to stand by the road and look all they could see was a muted glow from the kitchen.  I assume the kitchen, sounds like the place to go in a storm, close to the food, maybe you can turn on the burners for a little more warmth, and worrying about how much heating oil or just plain food you have and if it will get to you before, well before.

I've been to the houses of people who live deep in the country and throw open their doors and brag about how there is not a soul around for ten miles, and I think I could not live like that.  The most alone I've been is living in a trailer in the back yard of a house in a city of 10,000.  Now I have about 800 people living in the two towers with me and when I look out the window most of what I see is other windows most of them with people on the other side of them.  

Yes Beagles move to downtown Cheboygan, down on Main Street just south of Lincoln where that medical center is and looks like a Walmart and some fast foods, you could walk there in a blizzard, or at least get a grubhub or a cab.

Speaking of medical centers.  When we had that last cold spell I noticed when climbing the stars that my chest hurt and so did my left arm.  Well it's cold in the stairwell so it must be the cold.  But then the hurting continued when it got warmer.

So I went to urgent care where the guy gave me an EKG and said go right to the Northwestern Memoria Hospital Emergency Room right now.   Well I said, Ill drop by there tomorrow early when it's not so crowded.  "Right Now!" he repeated pointing a finger in that direction.

So I did, it was crowded, but the line moved pretty good.  Right off they wanted to give me an EKG and I pulled out the copy that I got at the urgent care, and he waved  away.  We don't need no EKG from some podunk urgent care we are Northwestern Memorial Hospital by gum.

Well ok then.  The emergency room once you get out of the waiting room is like a block long.  Doctors, patients, jabber, jabber.  I saw three or four docs, or folks who looked like docs, and they talked that doctor talk so I didn't know what they were saying.  Then they put on a gurney and pushed me into a hallway and then it seemed like they forgot about me, but after a couple hours they pushed me into a room.  Small room, no window, tethered me to some buzzing thing, and all I had was the clothes I was wearing and a magazine I'd mostly read, and a bossy nurse.  

It was a long night and a long morning, docs came in and out and I learned that I was going to get an angiogram.  I knew what that was because I had been speaking to Chatz before I went to the urgent care.  They stick a tube down your wrist or ankle and it goes up through your wrist or your ankle and if they see something they don't like they put in a stent or two.  Well I know people who have had stents, not so bad, let's get to it.

They put me on a gurney and wheeled me down to surgery and prepped me and I was good to go.  But first I had to just lay there on the gurney for three hours while people buzzed around me.  Finally I learned that the surgery before me was going well into overtime.  Not a good sign.

Finally they wheeled me into surgery, doped me just a tad and did the angiogram.  They wheeled me out and I was so happy because Chatz had told me once they do the deed you are good to go and I was ready to go.

But it turns out that they didn't put any stents in.  They wanted to talk about it.  I was back in the room with the bossy nurse tethered to that thing, nothing to read, half in and out of one of those gowns.

It turned out that they wanted to that they wanted me to stay another night.

I wanted to go home.  See my cat, wear some clothes, get loosed from that thing I was tethered to.  I was pretty sure I had the right to sign myself out so I asked to.  Well they talked and they talked, this person, that person.  If I stayed they could do it the next morning and everything would be taken care of.  I didn't believe them for a second, once they get you in their clutches they never want to let you go.

I went home and saw my cat.  Wednesday I had a talk with the surgeon, 3 options, open heart, robotic surgery, or the stent.  I was scared to death of open heart, probably unreasonably but scared to death anyway.  That robotic surgery a little weird, I am going for the stent.  I will get in Monday morning and I should be good to go.

The Blizzard of '26

 It started out on Sunday and continued through Monday, as predicted.  We had just finished digging out from the previous storm, and the weather man promised that the next one would be much worse.  Sure enough, it was.  We are still digging out from this one two days later, and we're not done yet.

Of course, I've seen big snowstorms before, but not when I was this old and infirm.  I found it frustrating to look out the window and realize there was nothing I could do about it except watch it pile up and wait for help to get through to us.  I considered at least digging out the front door, but my wife pointed out that if I fell off the porch and couldn't get up like happened last week, nobody would be able to come and rescue me before I succumbed to hypothermia.  Uncle Ken once theorized that the reason married people lived longer than single people is that, whenever they are about to do something reckless or stupid, their wives talk them out of it.  I tend to agree with him.  

We have both resolved that this would be our last winter on the Freehold.  Time to pack it in and move to the old geezer's home, or at least to someplace in town closer to sources of assistance when we need them.  I always wondered why so many people chose to live in a crowded urban setting when they could just as easily live in splendid isolation.  Maybe this is why.  

The Return of the Scourge

 The comment about signing up for Chatz is incorrect.  It costs money to sign up for one of the flavors of Chatz and I'm pretty cheap as I imagine so is Beagles.  I use the free option.  The hitch there is you only get like 10 questions but I find that adequate. 

If you don't like nicknames you don't like America.  Am I right Old Dog?

I did not take offense at being called a piece of shit.  Far from it, I smiled ruefully at the thought that The Universe was paying me back for my earlier dick move which was telling that poor guy to go away, and now I was even with The Universe.

Speaking of smiling I am glad that I brought a smile to Old Dog's face.

What me and Chatz have been chatting about lately is this new story I have begun and am using Chatz as a sounding board for.

And here it is:  

Dan Curley by Ken Schadt

 

CRWR 250 - FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP

In this class you will read and discuss a number of published short stories as well as examine the elements that make them successful. Using these short stories as models, you will write exercises, scenes, and a full-length short story that demonstrate, along with the rest of your work, your understanding of the fictional craft fundamentals.

Credits: 3

Attributes: Humanities

Prerequisites: ENG 153 or CRWR 153

MWF 2pm, 258 Lincoln Hall, Dan Curley Instructor.

 

Well why not?  It fit right into my schedule.  Dan Curley, the name was familiar, short story writer, I remembered seeing his name on books in the campus bookstore.  I figured I was creative enough.  How hard would it be to write a few stories? 

Not that hard at all it turned out.  I cranked them out.  They got a good response.  My characters were believable, the situations were interesting enough without being outlandish, my prose was smooth.

Maybe too smooth, that was the impression I got from Dan.  “Well done,” he would say after reading them, but then he would pause and I could see that he was about to say, “But… “ but then he didn’t say it, and I never pressed him on it.  But I’m pretty sure I know what he was thinking. He wanted a little roughness, a little meat, a little heart, a little soul.  Well maybe but I never was too interested in that stuff, it just got in the way, and who needs it if you asked me.  I wasn’t going to some famous writer, I just wanted to get an A and get on with my life.

And I did get the A, but then so did everybody else in the class who wrote the required 50,00 words.  Getting on with my life however did not work so well, a degree in Communications did not burn down the house when it came time to getting an actual job.

 

But then something came up.  The New Yorker was hitting the skids.  Well not the skids but their readership was slipping, and market research discovered that people thought it was maybe a little too stuffy especially their vaunted short story section.  They had all the top-notch writers as always, guys who all had these powerful agents pushing their stuff, and maybe that was the problem.  What about all those little guys banging away at their typewriters in their mother’s basement in the wee hours of the morning with a bottle of bourbon within easy reach?  Sure most of them were losers, but not all of them, surely there were some of them who had the right stuff, the new right stuff, the stuff that would light up the literary world like a Roman candle if only they could get their right stuff past all those pushy agents and onto the desks of editors, new editors, hungry editors who would look at their work with fresh new eyes and discover fresh new writers.

To this effect the New Yorker was going to hire The Hundred.  A hundred new editors, fresh new guys with fresh new eyes, so that every single story submitted to the New Yorker was now assured that they would get their story read. 

Sounded like a big publicity stunt to me.  Also sounded like maybe a job.

The New Yorker would be sending a crew down to the college the very next week and I made an appointment, though I knew I had little chance.  But then I ran into Dan Curley in a seedy downtown bar.

 

I usually did my drinking in those lively campus bars but that Friday I was nervous about the upcoming New Yorker interview, knowing I had little chance of getting the job and I wanted someplace quiet so I wandered off downtown and ended up at The Brass Rail, and at the end of the bar there was Dan Curley.  My first idea was to walk out before he looked up from his beer, but then I decided to sidle up to the stool next to him.

He lifted his head up from his beer.  “So it’s you,” he said, I knew he had forgotten my name, “The smooth writer who has no soul.”

“That would be me,” I said and offered to buy him a beer.

“Well thank you,” he said and then as the bartender brought over the beers he added, “Sorry for the crack.” 

“No problem,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it, about the stories I wrote in my class, and I think you’re right about that soul thing.”

“Ah, it’s okay, I know you kids have other things on your minds and you want to get an easy A, so you can get on with your lives and do whatever it is that you want to do. I guess I shouldn’t mind.”

I hadn’t expected such a quick turnaround.  He turned his head to the bottles on the shelf behind and I did too and we both sat there with nothing to say to each other.  I had to say something.  “Maybe you should,” is the best thing I could come up with.

“Should what?” he asked still looking at the bottles on the shelf.

“Mind,” and then a little pause with him still looking at the bottles.  “You should mind because, because well literature, um, the arts, writing, taking something out of yourself, something out of your heart, putting it down on paper, putting it between covers, so that someday some stranger will pick it up off a shelf, likely for something to kill a little time but then they will realize that there is something being said and maybe it means something to them, and then, well who knows what, but for that moment it means something.”  I knew it didn’t make sense, but I’d read something like that in one of my English classes, and I put a lot of earnest in it, and maybe it worked.

He took a big drink of his beer and looked at me sideways.  “You’re a bullshitter aren’t you?” he asked.

I took a chance.  “Aren’t we all?” I asked him.

He stared at me, finished his beer, put a fiver down on the bar, and put on his jacket and said, “Early class tomorrow,” and took a couple steps towards the door then turned back to me, gave me an odd look.  “Where are you drinking tomorrow?” he asked. 

“Uh, here I guess,” I ventured.

“Good,” he replied, and he was out the door.