Sunday Sundries, 246

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: A woman approached me at the coffee shop last week, apologized for interrupting (I was reading), and wanted to tell me how much she and her daughters had enjoyed speculating about the Peter Rabbit figure sitting on my table when they drove by every day to school. She wanted to know the story of the rabbit; I told her; she said her daughters would love to hear it--and off she went, after offering to buy me a coffee--or treat. My waistline declined the latter, and I already had the former. But ... what a kind thing to do ..

2. We didn't see a movie this week (almost went to the marathon movie--but didn't), but we were thrilled to see that one of our favorite series, Doc Martin, has another season to stream! We've finished the 1st episode (via Acorn TV) and are now going to slow down so that they don't go away so fast. LOVE that show ... (Link to some video.)

We got a special little thrill in the opening of Season 9, "To the Lighthouse": It had scenes filmed at the actual lighthouse that inspired that 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf--and Joyce wrote her master's thesis on Woolf.

3. I finished one book this week, the latest novel by Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me. It's narrated by a sort of anchor-less man named Charlie who uses his entire inheritance to purchase a life-like robot, one of the few in this early stage of life-like robots. Its/His name is Adam. (The Eves, apparently, sold very quickly for, uh, a variety of reasons.)

Charlie is also obsessed with Miranda, a young woman who lives upstairs in his building, and they ... ain't gonna tell you. (I liked the choice of the name Miranda: It's from The Tempest, and it is she who utters, when she sees the first young man she's ever seen, that now-famous line:

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't! (5.1)

(In the Bard's day, brave meant splendid, worthy, excellent, etc.)

Anyway, things quickly get complicated in their lives as Adam learns, learns, learns, ... and loves. (Guess the object of his affection?)

How it all works out is both satisfying (to some) and damning (to others).

One of the things I really liked about the novel: McEwan plays with time. We seem, almost, in an alternate kind of England, a kind of what-if? place. For example, that great innovator in computers, Alan Turing (1912-54) is somehow still alive and now a revered old man in the country; Charlie meets with Turing a couple of times about Adam's situation.

In the background we also see the sorts of fights and political divisions that characterize both the UK and the US--and any number of other places.

And, over all, the eternal questions: What is love? Are are we really capable of it?

4. Speaking of which ... on Real Time with Bill Maher this week his before-the-panel guest was Salman Rushdie, whose new book Quichotte (based on Don Quixote) I wrote about on this site a week ago.

During the conversation, Rushdie mentioned a poem by W. H. Auden, "September 1, 1939," about the beginning of WW II. Rushdie quoted a line from it--"We must love one another or die"--a line that, of course, continues to resonate. 

I looked up the poem in my "complete" edition of Auden; it's not there. But it is available online. It's a bit long to paste here, so here's a link to it.

Oh, and another coincidence: Today, Writer's Almanac reminds me, is the birthday of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author, of course, of Don Quixote, 1605. Cervantes died the same year that Shakespeare did.

Somewhere, we have a reproduction of that famous image of Quixote and Sancho done by Picasso.

5. Last night we drove to Books-a-Million in the Falls and looked around--didn't buy anything (very unlike us). Trips-to-bookstores used to be something we did every weekend--sometimes more than once. Not so often these days ...

6. Friday night, we'd gone down to Szalay's Farm Market--great-looking corn ... not much of the season is left, I fear. Lots of pumpkins!

7. I got the results on my bone scan last week (via the UH patient portal): Things look stable, according to the report. But I'll wait and see what my oncologist says when I see him in a couple of weeks. Will then do an update here ...

8. Last Word: a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

downtoner, n.  An adverb or adverbial phrase that reduces the effect of the following adjective, adverb, noun, or verb (such as rather, fairly, sort of, etc.). Opposed to amplifier, intensifier.’]

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: down adv., tone v., -er suffix1.

?1900  C. Stoffel Intensives & Down-toners  ii. i. 129 Shading off in various directions, these ‘down-toners’ express a moderate, slight, or just perceptible degree of a quality.

1931  G. Stern Meaning & Change of Meaning  338 Intensifiers used ironically instead of down-toners. ‘A lot you know about that!’

1987  S. Adamson et al.  Papers 5th Intern. Conf. Eng. Hist. Ling.(1990) 502 The adverbial meanings [of just] may at first seem somewhat different... You just missed the bull's eye (downtoner).

2015  J. Butterfield New Fowler's Mod. Eng. Usage (ed. 4) at Kind n. She kind of wasn't listening (in which kind of is a ‘downtoner’).

Rabbit Redux

I did some posts last week about a dead rabbit—well, part of a dead rabbit (only its head remained)—that I found in our driveway last week. A bit on Facebook. A bit on this blog. I even wrote a wee poem about the experience.

Joyce and I were quite sad about it. I often saw the creature (male? female?) in the early morning when I began my walk over to the coffee shop. Later, we would see him in the back yard—or along the driveway, where, as I said last week, Joyce would have a conversation with her (let’s go with this pronoun for a while). The rabbit never bolted—just listened respectfully (which is exactly what I’ve learned to do the past half-century).

After I found the head and (carefully, carefully, carefully) told Joyce about it, she went out to a garden store and bought a little rabbit thingy to stick in the ground; she buried the head; a bit later we had a little service for her (Joyce said some things; I read the poem aloud).

All of this I’ve reported.

Then … Wednesday evening, back home from our 4:30 appointment to get flu shots, we were prepping for supper in the kitchen.

And Joyce cried, “Look back there!”

I looked back there—in the back yard.  And there, browsing, a rabbit!

“O joy unbounded” (A song in Trial by Jury, in which I appeared at Hiram High School, fall of 1961.) (Link to song.)

Could it be … our rabbit? Was that Driveway Head from some other rabbit? Dropped there, inadvertently, by a trotting fox? A winging owl?

Or is this new one a sibling? An interloper? A multiple life (like a cat)? (Or, perhaps even more likely, a projection of our sorrow!)

We should have done a DNA test, right?

Anyway, Joyce and I moved quietly out onto the back porch (screened and glassed), and I got the pic you see at the bottom of this post. (A pic proves reality, right?)

For the nonce, we have tacitly agreed to consider her “our” rabbit, indeed. And I plan to see her in the mornings; Joyce is thinking about some conversations to have. And we will continue to feel our unbounded joy.

This Indecisive State We're In

The furnace sighs this morning as
It breathes its heat to us.
But soon it will cease burning, which
Seems somewhat treasonous.

And later on this afternoon
The AC will kick on,
And it will reign throughout the night
Until the blink of dawn,

And then the heat will rise again
Through conduits and grates--
Yes, once again confirming that
There are some puzzling states.

Ohio, where we live, is one.
It can't make up its mind.
"Should it be cold or hot right now?"
Our seasons--ill-defined.

Today: Another Bone Scan

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

10:45 a.m.

Joyce and I are sitting in a Starbucks at Legacy Village up near Cleveland. About an hour ago, I had my “nuclear shot,” an injection, the preliminary step in a nuclear bone scan. We’ll wait here until, oh, about noon, when we’ll head back to Seidman (a few miles away) for the scan, which takes about forty minutes.

I have these scans periodically. My oncologist is regularly checking carefully to see if my prostate cancer, which has metastasized into my bones, has been spreading—or finding a nice little spot to nestle down and reproduce. Its last “nice little spot” was in one of my vertebrae, a cancer-home that a course of radiation significantly disrupted last year.

But metastatic cancer is a patient foe: He/She will wait a bit, find a more favorable location, and move in. And dare us to do something about it.

Meanwhile, I sit here with nuclear material coursing through my veins, flooding me with glitter that the scanning machine will be able to detect. A scan, by the way, printed out, looks like, well, a picture of a skeleton. And if any bones of that skeleton feature any glowing spots, guess that that means?

To pass the time, we are reading. Joyce is nearly finished with Brock Clarke’s new novel, Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? (which I’ve already read—and loved), and I am typing this and will soon continue reading Ian McEwan’s new one, Machines Like Me, a novel about the arrival of robots in our world. I say “our world,” but the world McEwan writes of is sort of an alternative world—it’s like ours; it’s unlike ours—e.g., computer pioneer Alan Turing  is still alive, now an older, celebrated hero in England. (I can’t type Turing’s name without picturing Benedict Cumberbatch, who played him (so well) in The Imitation Game (2014).)

And then, as I said, about noon, we will drive back to Seidman, where I will lie on a table while a machine whirs over me (I will have to change positions a number of times so it can record different angles on my … skeleton). To help the time move more quickly I will whisper poems I’ve memorized, hoping, I guess, that the sounds of Dickinson and Shakespeare and Millay and Shelley and so many others will appease the cancer gods for just a little longer. (Won’t they want to hear more?)

I’m pretty calm right now—how could I not be with Joyce about four feet away from me? This cancer-journey of mine is about fifteen years old now, and she has sat with me, held my hand, calmed me, for all of it. So, really, isn’t gratitude sometimes just a pathetically inadequate word?

The Moviegoer

I've been a moviegoer for as long as I can remember--and, yes, I've read Walker Percy's 1961 novel with that title: The Moviegoer. In Enid, Oklahoma, where I grew up, there were four movie theaters downtown (each with a single screen, by the way--multiplexes were an unimaginable heaven in the future) and two drive-ins (I remember seeing Brigadoon once--and the Disney cartoon of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow). My family went now and then; I liked to go on Saturday morning, when, for two Royal Crown bottlecaps (easily acquired in the unpaved parking lot at the J & J Grocery near our home) and a dime (nickel?) I could sit in the theater all morning on Saturday and see cartoons, the news-of-the-week (here's a link to an old one, if you want to check it out), a serial, a cowboy movie (the best kind, of course). And ... Coke, Snickers, popcorn, etc.

The movies were among the very few air-conditioned spots in Enid--and how about that great experience, afterward, of walking out into the sun and having your visual purple destroyed! (Oh, it's so bright out here!)

When we moved to Hiram, Ohio, it was a little sadder: Hiram College had a Sunday movie night (which I virtually never missed). The cost was 40 cents for adults, 15 for kids. The college screened recent Hollywood films; otherwise, the nearest theaters were in Ravenna and Kent (each a half-hour or so); the nearest drive-in, the Midway, between Kent and Ravenna (where I saw lots of films, including The Incredible Shrinking Man).

When I got married in late 1969, I found in Joyce an eager movie-going partner. On our honeymoon, in fact, we saw the latest James Bond film (On Her Majesty's Secret Service), a film which ends with the murder of Bond's new bride (played by Diana Rigg). (Not a good honeymoon choice.) Link to film trailer. Oh, Playing Bond (for the first and only time): George Lazenby.

Anyway, we went to movies all the time, and when our son was born, we were soon taking him along; he loved it from the git-go. And he would, in fact, cry when the films ended.

Time marched on, and Joyce and I continued going to films all the time--at least once a week, sometimes more (especially in the summer, those delightful days when There Were No Papers to Grade).

We frequently drove 45 min (or so) up to Cleveland Heights to the Cedar-Lee, which still is the best somewhat-nearby venue for independent and foreign films.

But ... Time Marched On. Health became an issue. We didn't go as often ...

Since July 6 this year we have seen only four films: Rocketman, Booksmart, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Ad Astra.

But only part of this has been due to health and energy. The main reason is this: There's just not a lot out there that we want to see.

Horror and superhero films, cartoons, naughty teenagers doing and saying naughty things, wildly violent films--these and similar genre just don't interest us anymore. Nor do the endless Star Wars sequels, though we might go see the one that's already being advertised: The Rise of Skywalker.

We took our young son to see the first Star Wars in the summer of 1977 (the summer he turned five)--and he has ever since been as addict to the series, as his sons now are.

So it's not as if Joyce and I are anti-video. Or snobs. We're not. We stream bits of shows each night, about an hour before Lights Out (won't tell you when that is: too embarrassing ... okay, it's 8:30), and we really enjoy the ones we've been watching: Line of Duty, Waking the Dead, Elementary, Doc Martin, Luther, etc.

But now, it seems, the movies are not exactly aimed at our demographic, and I understand now why my parents rarely went as they grew older. It wasn't because they were boring; no, it was because they were bored. And they could tell the films were not for them.

Sunday Sundries, 245

1. AOTW: Okay, this is a little petty, I know--and I fear that by even mentioning it I am identifying myself as the actual AOTW ... but here goes ... At the health club there are some guys (I'm occasionally among them) who shave, etc. at the sinks in the men's locker room--and then neglect to clean up the countertops, leaving it for the locker-room attendant to do. It takes fewer than 30 seconds (this I know--because I am not among the messy-countertop-guys), but so it goes, and so I confer this week's AOTW award on the Countertop Creeps.

2. Joyce and I went to see Ad Astra last night at the Macedonia Cinemark, and we (for the most part) enjoyed it. It's the story of a veteran astronaut (Brad Pitt) who must undertake a secret mission to Neptune, where some experiment appears to have gone haywire, and the entire solar system is at risk.

Brad plays a guy without much apparent affect (which is odd for Pitt): He's placid, resigned, has low BP and pulse.

Involved in the story is Brad's father (Tommy Lee Jones), a celebrated astronaut from an earlier generation, who ... ain't tellin' you.

Also appearing: Donald Sutherland, who will not remind you of the character he played in the 1970 M*A*S*H film by Robert Altman. Man, we all age, don't we?

The look of Ad Astra is amazing. I was telling someone today how sci-fi movies looked so tacky in my youth, and now? Director James Gray must have worked forever on the damn thing.

I wish they'd worked a little more on the dialogue, though. A little predictable here and there--sometimes cliched.

But I've liked BP since the first time I saw him (in Thelma and Louise, 1991). Ad Astra is a solid film--not a great one, I don't think.

A little worrisome: There were not all that many people in the theater.

Link to film trailer.

3. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first (which I've been picking away at most nights on my Kindle while awaiting the arrival of Morpheus) was The Wire in the Blood, the 2nd novel in Val McDermid's series about Carol Jordan (a police officer) and Tony Hill (a psychiatrist/consultant to the cops). We had streamed all the Wire in the Blood episodes on BritBox (I think), and I decided to start on the books. And, until my friend Chris corrected me (as I've said here before), I'd thought Val McDermid was, you know, like Val Kilmer--a guy. Nope.

This one is about the pursuit of someone who is killing young, star-struck girls. Some other folks get offed along the way, too, but soon the focus narrows to someone who couldn't possibly be guilty--a huge TV celebrity ...

Soon ... on to the 3rd by McDermid! What a guy ... uh ... woman!

     - The second was the latest novel (2019) by Salman Rushdie, Quichotte, an alternative spelling of Quixote that is pronounced, he tells us key-SHOT, a term that has some plot relevance later on.

It's a contemporary story about a contemporary Quixote pursuing his own Dulcinea (who, here, is not a modest woman but a mega-celebrity)--only it's more: It's also the story of the man who is writing the story--only it's more: It's also the story of "Sancho," who appears in quite a surprising fashion—only it's more: It's also the story of contemporary America (of our divisions, our interests, our failures, our drugs)--only it's more: It's also ... (This could go on and on.)

I have to say that I was dazzled throughout. Surprised often. Moved often.  Amused by the improbability, the magical realism (or whatever you want to call it). And stunned on the final page.

Sentences appear to flow almost magically from Rushdie, streaming across the page, glistening, delighting, shocking, ....

4. We had a kind of natural tragedy at our house this week. I came outside a couple of days ago and found the head of a rabbit in the driveway--a severed head. (No Godfather thoughts, I swear.) It appears to be the head of "our rabbit," a friendly fellow who's been around for months. Joyce would actually stop and talk to him by the garden; he would appear to listen--would not run away. I took a picture of it, which I've decided not to post--a bit grim and, in a way, as I've said, he was kind of ... ours.

I did write a eulogy for him (it's on Facebook, but I'll post it here, too), and this afternoon Joyce and I are going to do a little memorial for him where she buried his remains in our garden.

Elegy for a Rabbit

(Discovered in Our Driveway)

September 19, 2019

Some vicious thing’s beheaded him—

Performed for hunger? Or a whim?

An act to simply demonstrate

That savagery proves you are great?

The head lay in our driveway—though

There’s one thing here that you should know:

His final gaze showed no surprise—

No horror, terror in his eyes—

A normal, placid rabbit look,

Which indicates the thing that took

His head, his life, had been so swift

That death was somewhat like a gift.

What did it? Dog? Coyote? Fox?

It seems in ways a paradox:

A killer with a kind technique—

So swift there was no time to shriek.

Or maybe death came from the sky?

An owl? A hawk with eagle’s eye?

Perhaps this possibility:

Some creature from mythology

That winged in from, oh, Ancient Greece

And gave the rabbit last release?

Or something from the netherworld

That broke the soil, then came uncurled

And lashed out with its razor-claw

To slice the head before it saw?

The rabbit in his dying light,

Was dead before he thought of flight.

The killer came while humans slept—

And at its craft was most adept.

The tortoise, though, was not amazed—

He knew when Rabbit’s eyes were glazed

That he was inattentive, bored,

And that’s how victory can be scored.

A rabbit’s speed can take your breath—

But tortoise-slow, compared to death.

 5. Last word--a word I liked this week from on of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - anthropoglot, n. An animal with a tongue resembling that of a human, or able to imitate human speech; spec. a parrot.

Forms:  18 anthropoglott,   18– anthropoglot.

Origin: Either (i) a borrowing from Latin. Or (ii) a borrowing from Greek. Etymons: Latin anthropoglottus; Greek ἀνθρωπόγλωττος.

Etymology: <  post-classical Latin anthropoglottus (1771 or earlier) or its etymon ancient Greek (Attic) ἀνθρωπόγλωττος speaking like a human being (Aristotle) <  ἀνθρωπο- anthropo- comb. form + -γλωττος -glot comb. form.

 [1771 Encycl. Brit.  III. 327/1 Anthropoglottus, among zoologists, an appellation given to such animals as have tongues resembling that of mankind, particularly to the parrot kind.]

1828  N. Webster Amer. Dict. Eng. Lang.  Anthropoglot,..an animal which has a tongue resembling that of man, of which kind are parrots.

1832  D. J. Browne Etymol. Encycl.  Anthropoglot,..In Zoology, an animal having a tongue resembling a man's, as the parrot.

1849  W. J. Broderip Zool. Recreations(new ed.) 64 The sound could hardly be termed more than an articulate whistle:—how different from the pronunciation of those anthropoglotts, the parrots.

1902 Ludington (Michigan) Chron.  15 Oct. 1/4 It truly was the chance of a life time to see..the screeming [sic] anthropoglot.

Latin Thoughts

I've been thinking about Latin the past few days. Joyce and I are going to see Brad Pitt's new film, Ad Astra, tonight, and that title (Latin for "to the stars") propelled me back to my freshman year at Hiram High School (1958-59), to the classroom of Mr. Augustus H. Brunelle, an iconic figure at that high school, a scholar who had taught there for decades, who would teach me Latin I and II, English II and III, German I.

I was afraid of Latin, but I knew I had to take it if I wanted to go to college--and I did want to go, I think, though when I was in 9th grade, that (college) seemed so far away as to be invisible. Latin, you see, was part of the "college prep" curriculum at Hiram High--and colleges then (well, many of them) expected you to have taken it.

I would discover, as I proceeded through Latin, that I had a few ... problems. Like understanding grammar and usage, for example. Because my mother was an English teacher, and because my older brother was a Book Nerd, and because my dad was a college professor, I heard "proper" usage in my house all the time. And everyone was eager to correct my ... failures.

Mom's technique? Repeat what I'd just said, only employing standard usage--but in interrogatory form and emphasizing the word(s) I should have said. Example:

DANNY: I'm tired and want to lay down.
MOM: You're tired and you want to LIE down?

Can you imagine how annoying this was to a young lad who knew that he was going to be the catcher for the Cleveland Indians and would have no use at all for "proper" English?

Anyway, it was in this fashion I learned standard usage--but I didn't know why these ways were "correct." But on the multiple-guess English tests in elementary school and junior high, I could pick the correct choice by just remembering what Mom and Dad and Richard had said.

That wasn't helpful when I got to Latin I, for I entered that course not really knowing anything about case and gender and person and number and direct objects and whatever.

(In fact, it wasn't until I began teaching grammar myself to seventh graders that I finally began to understand it all!)

Anyway, Mr. Brunelle began our year in Latin I by giving us a bunch of Latin sayings that we had to memorize.

• carpe diem
• mens sana in corpore sano
• ars langa, vita brevis
• fiat lux
• caveat emptor
• ad astra per aspera

There were lots more--but you get the idea. And I still remember the ones I remember.

So, anyway, when I saw the title of BP's new film, I smiled, remembered Latin I, remembered Mr. Brunelle.

(BTW: As I told you, Mr. Brunelle's first name was Augustus, and we high-school wags would, when he couldn't hear us, call him "Gus." So radical! Years later, doing some research on him, I learned that all his friends called him that. It's in his college yearbook! So much for youthful waggishness.)

Today, at the coffee shop, I looked up to see former colleague Jeff Namiotka come in; he teaches Latin at Western Reserve Academy. 

I went over and asked him if he'd seen the title of BP's new film.

Pause.

"Ad Astra," I said.

"Yes!" he remembered. "I've seen something in the news about that."

And I told him about that long-ago Latin I assignment, and he smiled, then hurried off to Parents' Weekend up at school.

So, Mr. Brunelle, I wanted you to know: I haven't forgotten the little Latin I learned--and I most certainly haven't forgotten you!

Mr. Brunelle

Scone Day!

today's batch

For the past half-dozen years or so I've been baking scones about once a week. I say "about" because the scone pan has eight slots (see pic from today's baking), and I eat one only six days a week (Sundays, Joyce and I go “out" for breakfast). Joyce occasionally has one but not often enough that I have to bake them more than once a week.

I use a recipe (modified) that I got online. It's simple. And quick. About twenty-five minutes from "I need to bake scones today" to pulling them out of the oven.

Today's batch (see pic) is cherry-walnut, one of my favorites, though the dried cherries like to resist the knife I use to cut them before I place them in the pan, and I often have to "replace" those cherries that stuck to the knife. But it's a good opportunity to practice my inappropriate speech.

I'll tire of them pretty soon, and I'll do maple-pecan (using local maple syrup). The last couple of weeks I got a craving for dried apricots, and so I baked a couple of batches of apricot-walnut. Loved them.

I don't know why I still like apricots, by the way. Back when I was a pre-schooler, we were living in Norman, Okla., right after WWII. Dad had returned safely, and we were in Norman because he was doing his residency for his Ed.D. I don't have a lot of Norman memories (see pic of our house below), but I do remember that our neighbors had an apricot tree; I do remember that I climbed it; I do remember that I ate wee fistfuls of (green) apricots; I do remember some intestinal consequences.

428 Park Dr.; Norman, OK

But I still love the (ripe) ones.

I've made some fresh blueberry-walnut ones, also, And they were good--if a tad messy.

Each morning I take a scone, freshly zapped in the microwave, over to the coffee shop with me, where the owner and baristas kindly ignore what I'm doing (they do their own baking there--and their products are awesome). So ... I guess you could say I'm rude ... but persistent. (Another word for rude?)

I've posted my generic recipe (partially stolen from the Internet) before, but here it is--in a ... uh ... nutshell:

INGREDIENTS

one egg (or 1/4 cup of Egg Beaters, which I use)
1/3 cup local honey (or maple syrup for the maple-pecan variety; I also use 1 tsp of pure maple extract to maple-ize the taste even more)
1 5.3-oz cup of Chobani plain yogurt
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 cc flour (I use 1/2 cup oat, 1 cup whole wheat, 1/2 cup organic white)
1 stick butter (I use vegetable-based "butter") (I keep it frozen ahead of time--you'll see why)
about a cup of "goodies" (nuts, dried fruit, etc.)

PROCEDURE

pre-heat oven to 400
whisk together egg, honey, yogurt, salt
in blender put flour, baking powder and soda, + frozen butter cut in 8 slices; blend thoroughly
add to the yogurt, etc. the fruit and nuts
pour in the flour blend, stir, adding a little more flour to get the mixture "dough-like"
form into a ball
flatten the ball into a circle
cut the circle into 8 equal parts
use spray oil to slicken the scone pan
put the 8 pieces in the pan
bake for about 24 minutes or until golden brown
cool a few minutes in the pan on a wire rack
remove and cool more
eat/freeze/whatever

Blood tests ... and waiting for results ...

Wednesday, September 11

This morning I began the next round of Whatever Will Be in the treatment of my metastatic prostate cancer. Joyce and I drove up to Seidman Cancer Center in Beachwood, Ohio—about a half-hour’s drive today: I-271 was tolerable, not always the case.

I was due for 10:30 blood draws: (1) my routine PSA test (Prostate Specific Antigen) and (2) some more comprehensive blood tests to make sure it was all right to administer my bi-monthly injection of Xgeva (pronounced ex-GEE-vuh), a drug that promotes bone strength—necessary because another heavy-duty drug I’m on, Trelstar, designed to zap testosterone (the “food” of prostate cancer), also weakens bone strength. So … I take substantial doses of calcium/Vitamin D every day—and get the bi-monthly Xgeva shot. Which hurts more than your average injection, partly because the drug is pretty cold when it enters the body. And the body notices. And whimpers.

As for the PSA test? As I’ve written here before, I have no prostate gland (removed in June 2005 in the first fruitless attempt to stop the cancer—it was too late: It had spread already). But prostate cancer also produces PSA, so if I’ve got a substantial PSA, then I’ve got a … problem.

Some treatments have retarded my cancer. Two different rounds of radiation therapy. Trelstar. And immunotherapy—a process whereby, in three different sessions, technicians removed T-cells from my blood, sent them to Atlanta to be “energized” with a cancer-fighting drug, then re-infused them. Except for the 2005 surgery, the immunotherapy was the least “fun” of all my treatments.

Anyway, my bloodwork for the Xgeva was fine, so I got the shot—got to think Ouch! (Didn’t dare utter it: gotta be a man.)

I’ll have to wait for my quarterly PSA result. It’s been falling recently (radiation, immunotherapy, as I said), so I’ll be expecting it to begin to rise again one of these times. I’m not cured (as of now, I can’t be); I’m just “on hold.”

BTW: The two phlebotomists I routinely see—one at Seidman, the other here at the local University Hospitals facility in Hudson—are wonderful. Although my craven veins like to hide, these two professionals rarely have to stick me more than once. Rarely leave more than the faintest trace behind.

And, oh, we were home in time for lunch.

Thursday, September 12

And now the waiting for test results. I try not to check the portal (Follow My Health) too often because I’ve tried, for more than fourteen years now, to avoid letting cancer-thoughts be dominant in my life. (Not yet, anyway.) Constant worry, I’ve learned, prevents me from doing/enjoying other things I love, and so I try to suppress the worry.

And one of the best techniques that work for me? Writing about it. It seems I’m able in some wacky way to transfer to the screen/page most of my worry. It’s out. For the most part. Not permanently gone—but on spring break.

No PSA result appeared today on the portal.

Friday, September 13

I checked throughout the morning. No result. Nothing, either, the rest of the day …

Saturday, September 15

All day. No news. Until about supper. We were finishing up, talking, and I thought I’d check, you know, one more time.

And this time there was a green dot beside “results”; I knew what that meant.

To check or not to check? That is the question …

But I had to. And so I did …

Two months ago my PSA was 0.29, the lowest it’s been in a long time, due, thinks my oncologist, to the immunotherapy and the (fairly) recent radiation.

6 August 2018                20.13

12 September 2018        11.98

16 October 2018              3.36

9 November 2018            1.93

15 January 2019              1.07

18 April 2019                  0.33

10 July 2019                    0.29

11 September 2019          0.63

As the chart shows, it had peaked a little over a year ago—August 2018—and then had begun its steady decline.

But as you can also see on the chart, my recent score—for the first time in a year—has increased. I’m still less than 1 (which is a comforting thing), but what I don’t know is this: Have I begun yet another climb? Another climb that will result in even further treatments of various sorts?

The answer, of course, is “probably.” All my oncologist can do, for now, is try to retard the damn thing’s growth until “they” find a cure. And “they,” you realize, are my best hope.

Well, "they" and the comfort of Joyce, whose touch, in many ways, can heal.

Sunday Sundries, 244

1. AOTW: Cruising along on Stow Rd. with a tailgater, deeply unhappy that I was going only 5 mph over the posted limit, I watched him roar by us--double yellow line, of course--and then had the satisfaction of being right behind him at the next stoplight.

2. I finished one book this week, Travels with My Aunt, a 1969 book by Graham Greene, that we've owned for nearly a half-century. I finally read it because Brock Clarke in his new book (Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?) cites Travels as one of the principal inspirations for his own book.

And I'm glad I did--read it, that is. I've read a lot of Greene over the years, and one of my early memories from our marriage is typing a paper for Joyce on Greene that she'd written for a modern British novel course at Kent State. (I think it was about The Power and the Glory?) I hadn't read anything by him at the time--but then I did.

Anyway, Travels is narrated by Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager who finds himself drawn into the wild and peripatetic life of his aunt Augusta, a woman he didn't even know existed. They end up traveling all over the place (she's a smuggler!), and we get involved with the CIA and other various law-enforcement officials.

Gradually, Henry learns the story of his parents' lives--and his own--and let's just say that there have been some ... complications, one of which is his own nativity.

I can see why Brock Clarke saw such contemporary possibilities in the novel, and he certainly mined them for all they were worth!

Wild and funny and touching and continually surprising. Both books.

3. We've about finished streaming the most recent season of Line of Duty, a very tense British series about AC-12, an anti-corruption police unit in London. In this season--spent pursuing the connections between organized crime and corrupt cops--the leader of AC-12 himself (Chief Superintendent Hastings) is under suspicion.

So incredibly tense at times that I have to shut the damn thing down--or call 911. But things have settled a little in the final episode. We're inside the station; interviews are going on; the truth is emerging.

4. A busy "social" week for us (and, thus, unusual): We had meals this week with one of Joyce's long-ago WRA students, with one of my long-ago Aurora students, with one of my not-that-long ago WRA colleagues. (I got tired just typing all of this!)

5. Last night I finished streaming--yet again (how many times? let me not count the ways)--all seasons of The Rockford Files (1974-80)--over a hundred episodes. I watched them "live" Back in the Day; I watched them on VHS; I streamed them; I've watched them on DVD. Over and over and over again. An addiction, I know

I can't help it, Your Honor ...

6. Last Word: a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from wordsmith.org

nocebo (no-SEE-bo)

noun: A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin nocebo (I will harm), from nocere (to harm). Modeled after its antonym placebo (I will please). Earliest documented use: 1961.

USAGE: “As Geoff Watts shows, the nocebo’s impact can be very harmful. Maybe it’s because fear is more powerful than hope.” Gillian Reynolds; Radio: Review Pick of the Week; The Daily Telegraph (London, UK); Feb 14, 2015.

Ah, those ATMs ...

My dad, who died in November 1999, never used an ATM. When he needed cash, he did it the old-fashioned way (he went into the bank)--or the less-old-fashioned way (drive-thru). Or, at the grocery store, he wrote his check for $20 over the amount he'd spent. You know ...

ATMs have been around for a long time (the first one appeared in 1969, I just read), and I've been using them for as long as they've been around. And I've never had a problem. (Except for those times when the machine's been "down.")

Until last week.

I'll not mention the name of the bank, for the "issue" remains unresolved. I'll just tell the story. Last Friday (the 6th)  I realized I was walking around with more cash than I needed (and that is a problem I have rarely had in my life!), so I decided I'd put $100 back into my checking account.

So I stopped at our nearby ATM, went through the routines we all know, and fed five twenty-dollar-bills into the machine. Which whirred and whirred and swallowed and vomited forth a slip of paper that said something had gone wrong. I should call such-and-such a number.

I didn't. I walked right into the bank (where I've had accounts since 1979) and told them what had just happened. I answered some pretty odd questions (Did you use an envelope?), questions obviously designed for a dotard (okay, I am "older").

Then I got the "week-to-10-days" thingy.

Today's the 14th, and I've not heard a peep from them.

I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile--a related issue. On some show we watched this week (was it The Daily Show?) there was a segment about how McDonald's is turning toward AI for their drive-thrus. (They just bought a company, I guess, that is advanced in voice-recognition technology.)

My only thought was this: There go a jillion jobs--jobs often held by people who desperately need them.

And so the tidal wave begins to swell, the wave that will soon o'erwhelm us.

I don't remember thinking much about jobs when I started using ATMs--but I should have, for I'm guessing that lots of tellers lost their positions as a result of them.

And now I think about how if I had handed $100 cash to an actual human being inside the bank, then that $100 would now be in my account, snug and safe.

Instead, it's ... where?

In the maw of the monster.

"I Was Wrong"

When I was in high school, I had a math teacher, who, now and then, would make an error at the board. When someone (never I!) would call her on it, her default reply was: "I know--I was just trying to see if any of you would notice." Sure.

People in authority--hell, people in general these days--seem incapable of admitting that they're wrong, that they've made a mistake. On social media, when was the last time you read something like this? Oh, you're right--I was wrong about that. Did you ever hear a TV pundit say something like that?

Me, neither.

No, people nowadays tend to "double down"--to become ever more harsh and judgmental and damning.

Over my long teaching career (about 45 years) I slowly learned that admitting mistakes in front of the class--of apologizing to kids to whom I'd said something hasty or unkind (or both), of letting them know that something I'd told them was inaccurate--was a good thing. For me. For the kids. I wish I'd been strong enough earlier in my career to do so, but as a young teacher, I guess I feared that admitting error was akin to admitting incompetence.

It's not. It's akin to admitting you're human. That you can learn.

And today? In these days of mavens who hold forth on TV debates? Who publish op-eds in the newspapers and online? Who have blogs (!)? Who pontificate on Twitter and in comment sections and elsewhere?

Admissions of error are as rare as a hen's dentures.

It's as if we have come to think that if we acknowledge fallibility, we are surrendering something. That we will lose all future credibility. That the mirrors of our cherished beliefs (and biases) will crack.

I think it would be good if all columnists, all TV commentators would have to do an annual (monthly?!) piece entitled: "The Times I've Been Wrong." I would guess that some of the lists would be very, very long. Combined, all the dire and inaccurate predictions that pundits make--on both sides of the political divide--would consume all the memory of the latest iPhone.

And maybe another regular column called "I'm Sorry."

(Though there are commentators on the Right and Left who assail their allies who do apologize.)

I guess what it comes down to is this: Admissions of fallibility reveal our humanity. Without such admissions we find it harder to feel true empathy, to listen, to compromise. To have hope.

And so I love the image at the top of the page. Two words: Error and OK. That about says it all.

Can It Be?

Last night Joyce and I had pizza (3 Palms!) with John and Kim Mlinek. I've known John longer than any of the others: He was among the first groups of students I taught my very first year, 1966-67, at the old Aurora Middle School; Aurora, Ohio. I was 21 years old that fall and was scared out of my mind.

Another teacher (Judy Thornton) and I split the seventh graders for what the school called "Core": American history, reading, and English. Partway through the year, though, Judy suggested we switch classes for a bit, and that's when I had John as a student.

But I also knew him another way. Very early in the year the principal called the teachers together for a meeting and told us that there was a "bus problem" at the end of the day: We needed to keep the kids a half-hour longer than we'd originally thought.

The idea came up--how about an Activity Period? There was universal approval (so I remember) of this idea, and very quickly the last half-hour of the day at the AMS became amazing. Clubs, activities (including, believe it or not, Riflery).

I got involved in the student newspaper, and I started a drama club, and one of our first activities was to begin writing a script for a spring production. We called it The Founding of Aurora; or, The Grapes of Wrath. I still have that script, and let's just say it's not exactly Shakespearean.

But we did perform it that spring. Two shows. A matinee for the student body, an evening performance for the parents and community. People seemed to like it.

John was among the stars of that show--he played the Rev. Ku Klux (see what I mean about non-Shakespearean?), leader of his ... Klan.

A few years later another teacher and I started the Aurora Youth Theater, which began as a summer program. Our idea was for kids, eventually, to do just about all of it--even the directing. We slowly evolved so that student-directing happened, and John was a mainstay of that operation. (Right now, in fact, he's organizing a 50th reunion of all who'd been involved.)

The AYT went on for a number of years, then fizzled out (don't really remember how or why).

Meanwhile, John and his great friend, the late Dave Prittie, became involved in making 8mm films, in writing plays together. They both went to Kent State, where, in one production, John was Hamlet; Dave, Laertes.*

John has stayed in touch all these years--often coming by to see us. We attended his marriage to Kim in 1999. And just a few years before he had appeared in the very last play I directed in Aurora (spring of 1996). He'd been a part of the first show I'd ever done--and the last. And now ... social media make communication even easier.

John is now getting ready for ... Medicare. (Thus the title of this post!) That's right: The first seventh graders I taught are now into Social Security and Medicare.

So that makes me ... never mind.

Anyway, last night was so much fun--remembering, laughing, cringing. He told me he's considering an offer to play Don Quixote in a Dayton production of Man of La Mancha--a part he's played before. He's done a lot of directing and acting since seventh grade. (Some years ago Joyce and I saw him as Macbeth in an outdoor production in Columbus.)

And he told me a funny story about that show. Macbeth (as I'm sure you all remember), uh, loses his head at the end of the play, and the director was looking for some appropriate sound effect. (The beheading occurs offstage.) They'd blocked the scene so John's legs were extending out onto the stage.

Anyway, they decided that hitting a watermelon with a sledgehammer was good. They apparently did not rehearse it.

And on the first night--splat! Curtain call was moments later, and John/Macbeth had to go out for his bow with watermelon juice and seeds on his costume.

Somewhere, Shakespeare was smiling ...

---

*PS: Spell-check just advised me to change Laertes to lattes.