or the past three years, I have had the great privilege of working in a home office that overlooks several hundred acres of prairie. As I gnash my teeth over the struggles of my professional life, I can look up and watch the very real life and death gnashing of my prairie neighbors as they struggle to survive the winter. Coyotes and deer routinely lope by. A variety of hawks – red-tailed, rough legged and Harrier - also make their living on this prairie, and at night I can occasionally hear the great horned owl. While the coyotes may occasionally get lucky and bag a feeble deer, all of these predators rely on voles as their preeminent food group. These voles and other field mice are the lowliest of mammals, residing at the very bottom of the food chain. Coyotes will sniff along the snow and then make a little leap, pounce and when they stand up I can see the small vole briefly squirming in its grip. The coyote then puts his head back and swallows the doomed vole in toto. Red tailed hawks swoop down grab a vole and carry it back to the tree and then proceed to rip it to shreds. Even without binoculars you can see the fur flying.
These daily dramas made me wonder what life would be like at the bottom of the food chain. Voles have a life with absolutely no hope for the future with the sure knowledge that inevitably they will be snatched and crushed to death with one clench of the jaws. As we move up the food chain, we begin to value animals as individuals. Two years ago, I was delighted to see the three legged coyote again and again and cheered on his gritty survival. I also remember the international incident several years ago when a seal had somehow been trapped in some ice floes, and the rescue of this individual animal became a nightly news event as multiple nations achieved a momentary détente to collectively break open the ice to create a passage for the seal to reach open water. Such glories were ridiculously out of reach of the lowly vole, which exists not as an individual, but only collectively as a species, whose primary function was to feed those above them.
Our two suburban dogs have been largely oblivious to voles, preferring the ridiculous futility of chasing squirrels. However, one day a vole somehow got into our basement, giving the dogs a sustained hunting opportunity. For several days they ineptly ran around the basement trying to capture the poor creature. Finally Fred seized the vole and brought it upstairs, dumped it on the rug and triumphantly looked around soaking in the expected adulation. This modest success seemed to reawaken their long dormant hunting skills and ever since, the dogs have become blood thirsty hunters on their walks. They began to hunt like coyotes, using the sniff and pounce method, but found limited success, particularly since they were on a leash.
I have steadfastly shirked any responsibility for these dogs, announcing early and often that they are, in fact, not my dogs, but rather belong to the rest of the family. One day no one else was around so by default I became the dog walker. We headed outside in the bitterly cold wind, and the dogs immediately started sniffing and straining against the leash along the brush at the edge of the driveway. Fred pawed at the ground, jumped up and pounced. At first I thought that this was a cute imitation of his long lost coyote cousins, but then to my horror realized that he had actually bagged a vole. I was thrown into a quandary regarding my conflicting roles as guardian of defenseless creatures vs. letting Fred claim his right to his kill. And a kill it was. There was no struggle; the limp head of the vole hung out of Fred’s mouth. It was as if the vole was embracing its role as a nameless victim, immediately raising the white flag as soon it was grabbed, saying “Go ahead eat me for lunch, I’m happy to take one for the circle of life team.”
I was in the midst of reading the book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which dissects humans’ complicated food chains, which are largely hidden from view by a pervasive industrial agriculture. The author Michael Pollan explores his conflicted carnivority by becoming a hunter and stalking a wild pig in the California brush. To his shock, he finds that he thrills to the chase and exults in his kill. He reconciles his disturbing stirrings of innate predatory behavior by drawing the line between pure recreational bloodlust and putting food on the table. These thoughts were semi-coherently ricocheting through my mind as I grabbed the vole’s head and tried to yank it out of Fred’s mouth. Clearly Fred was lusting for the kill as he tugged back. We have dutifully provided him with three squares a day and the occasional table scrap, therefore I made the judgment that Fred’s resistance represented the inappropriate joys of purely recreational sport hunting. At the same time I had to admit that Fred’s diet consisted of EXACTLY the same meal every day of his life. While I think that I could survive on a steady diet of BLTs, I must admit that I might appreciate an occasional spice in the variety of life.
Suddenly I felt a give in my tugging. I noticed that Fred had not eased up, and could only imagine that I was about to yank the head off of this poor vole in the name of some sort of confused stewardship. Fred had caught the vole fair and square, rejecting his identity as a pampered pet, and establishing himself, however briefly as a real player in the prairie food chain. If Fred wanted to eat the vole, who was I to interfere? I let go and in one gulp the vole was gone. We finished our walk, came inside and Fred immediately reverted back his original identity - a pampered pet with unlimited spare time, sunning himself on the cozy couch overlooking the prairie, occasionally looking up to vicariously bark at a passing deer. Later on, I found a totally intact vole that had been upchucked on our dining room rug.
It would be nice if Mother Nature could make a master - - - - chart
That way everybody could tell predator and prey apart.
Alas, it might come as disturbing news for voles and various - - - -
To learn that they are no more than a meal to the hungry owl.
But when chasing a deer a - - - - could explain,
“Don’t take it personally, it’s just the food chain.”
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Warfighting
y medical career has focused on the niche business of technology assessment for health insurance companies. Specifically, I have analyzed the published medical literature on literally hundreds of medical technologies to determine whether or not they would be still considered investigational. Insurance companies generally will pay for investigational technologies. This odd little profession has suited me, since I have had a front row seat on the continual parade of interesting, whiz-bang and bizarre medical technologies, the latter of which you would not even subject your dog to. About two years ago, I departed the world of insurance companies and started work as a consultant to medical device companies, where I was now tasked with reversing the very medical policies that I had previously created.
It was one such project that was now taking me to California. I had spent several months researching the treatment options for fecal incontinence, resulting in a 30 page treatise of tables, facts and figures, which, surprisingly enough, were oddly compelling. It turns out that when that sphincter down there is blown - sort of like when the elastic gives out in the waistband of your skivvies - there are not too many options besides the obvious techniques of diet adjustment and close proximity to a toilet. My client had come up with an implantable device that applied electrical stimulation that was designed to put the spunk back in the sphincter and make everything copacetic. By a weird coincidence, a previous project for a different client involved the subject of urinary incontinence. I felt pleased that I was now conversant with the ins and outs of our two most socially important sphincters. It reminded me of a professor who used to say, “I just hope that I die with all my sphincters intact.”
My report provided the background resource document for the upcoming strategy session, where members of the team were supposed to anticipate the insurance company’s reaction to this new product. Would insurance companies pay for it? Were the consequences of fecal incontinence fully appreciated? How do you define fecal incontinence? While that may seem simple, one person’s inadvertent skid mark could be considered a near fatal embarrassment by a more fastidious person. What kind of standards could be imposed for objectively evaluating the severity of incontinence? Just before I left, I received a slim book that we were asked to read in preparation for the meeting. I had slipped it into my bag without really looking at it, figuring I would read the book on the plane.
I was taken aback to find that the book was called “Warfighting: The US Marine Corps Book of Strategy,” which is required reading for all marines. The cover of the book featured a close up profile of a frenzied horse with a wild eye and widely flared nostril, straining mightily against the reins. There was a large vein popping out along the length of his nose. The horse looked like it was about to explode in fury. What could this 100 page book possibly have to do with fecal incontinence? The inside cover noted that Warfighting shows how to use the Marine Corp’s battle strategies to manage your way to victory in every confrontation, whether corporate or personal.
One of the endorsers on the back cover of the book was Ed McMahon, identified as a “television personality,” who blurbed, “Being a good marine transfers easily to being successful in your chosen field.” Now it seems to me that Ed McMahon, as a chuckle-headed second banana to Johnny Carson, does not represent the leadership skills of a Marine. I recently happened to stumble across McMahon on the show “The Dog Whisperer,” where a dog trainer comes to your house to whip your wayward dog into shape. Ed and his wife had some sort of yappy lap dog that had totally taken over the household – it may have been that the dog kept trying to bite Ed when he tried to get into bed with his wife. And since I also try and keep up with my People magazine, I can tell you that overextended Ed was one of the most high profile victims of the mortgage meltdown; the bank has foreclosed on his house. It looks like Ed needs a crash refresher course on Warfighting to take control of this situation.
Although I was perturbed about reading a book about war strategies, I wanted to be a gamer, so I settled in. The jacket advised that as we read the book, we should substitute the word “combat” with “competition,” “soldier” with “frontline worker,” and “enemy” with “rival.” Now my interest in the project was really the science behind fecal incontinence and the challenges of investigating it. I really had no interest in treating insurance companies like the enemy, grabbing market share and hitting projected revenues. But I guess that is why my colleagues get stock options and bonuses and I do not.
The book starts out by defining war, which like the definition of fecal incontinence, should be self-evident, but in this book takes 19 pages. There are such obvious statements as, “violence is an essential element of war, and its immediate result is bloodshed, destruction and suffering,” and, “at least one part to a conflict must have an offensive intention, for without the desire to impose upon the other there would be no conflict.” I think that we can all agree that if nobody is willing to fight, there is no war, but maybe I am oversimplifying this in some way. Subsequent chapters extol the virtues of surprise and boldness, which most recently has been translated into the catchier phrase, “Shock and Awe.” It turns out that surprise and boldness is a relatively new tactic for the military, replacing the previous attrition strategy which was based on superior firepower. “The attritionist gauges progress in terms of … body counts and terrain captured.” While attrition rode the good guys to victory in WWI and II, the limitations of this strategy became glaringly apparent in the guerrilla war that was Vietnam.
As I finished the book, I realized that there were two gaping holes in this treatise that may leave the marines on the front lines scratching their heads. First, there was no guidance on identifying the enemy. While US soldiers helpfully garb themselves in distinctive uniforms, this seems to be a one way street, since our opponents do not extend us the same courtesy. Secondly, there is no definition of winning the war, i.e. how do you know when it’s over? Now here is where fecal incontinence shines. The enemy was me, since I originally wrote the negative coverage policies that I was now fighting against. Winning is easily defined – it would be when access to electrical stimulation becomes not a privilege, but a federally mandated right, such that anyone with even a smidge of fecal incontinence could raise an unfettered hand and say, “Implant me!”
Do you think that combat and undaunted courage are not in your genes?
Well maybe it’s time that you took a lesson from the US - - - - - - -.
Perhaps you could attend a - - - - - - - on the theory of Warfighting,
Or you could just read the book if you respond better to writing.
And then all that - - - - - - - is to know when the job is over and done,
Then you can raise your weapon in the air and say, “Yipee, I won!”
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Rendering Judgment
recently heard a friend describe her declining atheletic prowess as like “a horse who should be sent to the glue factory,” which set me to pondering about the fate of loyal farm animals when they make the inevitable transition from livestock to deadstock. And I had always wondered whether glue of my childhood, good old Elmer’s or the intoxicating rubber cement, was somehow derived from Old Dobbin. Though I had not put much thought into it, I had assumed only the hooves of horses were used for the glue, so it seemed a bit wasteful to send the whole horse to the factory. But perhaps that is the whole point of the phrase – someone has grown so useless that only the hooves, which are nothing more than a big old toenail, are of any value. I called up the fellow that lives near my parents’ gentleman farm and asked him what happens if one of his beef cows unexpectedly went hooves up. “Well I just call the renderer,” he said, “ and they come with a ramp and winch and just haul it away.” When I asked him where, he said “well I don’t know, but I think that they make glue from their feet.” Picking up dead animals and taking them to a glue factory must certainly be an entry level job to a pretty grisly enterprise.
There is no better testament to the power of the internet when I can type in “animal rendering” and discover a 314 page manuscript entitled, “Essential Rendering Techniques,” authored by the National Rendering Association. Here was my first glimpse into a huge and vital industry that annually process some 100 million hogs, 35 million cattle and 8 billion chickens producing 54 billion pounds of renderment, There are some 20,000 rendering plants sprinkled across the country. Field trip anyone?
I could envision a huge bubbling vat at the centerpiece of the plant, a relentless gaping maw that ground up endless Dobbins, Elmers and Elsies into a myriad of products. The first step in the process is to steam the carcass at high heat, allowing the fat to float to the surface. The fat has many industrial uses, but plenty of human uses, such as for soaps and lotions. McDonald’s also came under fire for using the beef tallow to cook their fries. Everything else becomes bone meal and pet and animal food. The renderer’s website refer to themselves as the “first recyclers” and points out that without their services the countryside would be overwhelmed with rotting carcasses and mass graves. But at the same time I could sense a little skittishness. Basically using the meat scraps as food forces these animals to be cannibals, and there was the disquieting specter of mad cow disease. When I clicked on this topic, up came a blank screen entitled “under review.”
Prior to the centralization of rendering plants, our forefarmers would sell their deadstock to local Mom and Pop operations, and actually make as much money off the carcass as the live animal. While there was no mention of a “glue factory” in the 314 page document, it is quite possible that the hooves were processed separately. For example, Julia Child, in her classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” points out that you can make your own gelatin by boiling pigs feet. Gelatin is essentially the same thing as glue, but with a higher water content. The image then emerged of self sufficient farm wives boiling hooves to make glue for their children’s art projects. I then recalled Elmer’s glue, the staple of countless childhood art projects, and its symbol of the smiling cow on the label. Could the cheerful smiling cow reflect the bovine origin of Elmer’s? Oddly enough, Elmer’s glue was initially made by Borden’s, which also was one of the first commercial diaries. The symbol of Borden’s milk was Elsie the cow, and thus Elmer was contrived as Elsie’s “husband.” It was somewhat unsettling to think that Borden’s both made milky white milk and milky white glue, but it made sense as a vertical integration strategy. Elsie could be milked endlessly and then when barren, renamed as Elmer and sent to the proverbial glue factory and then off to grade schools all over the country.
In my childhood there were two principle types of glue, either Elmer’s or rubber cement. (Airplane glue was only a fringe product for me since building plastic models was a male dominated activity.) I wondered if the preference for one of the other was one of those polarizing issues, much like the debate between mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. (I like mayonnaise.) One entire summer my family debated the relative merits of Wheat Thins and Triscuits, and it seemed that everyone had an entrenched opinion, despite the fact that Wheat Thins are clearly superior. But not so for Elmer’s and rubber cement, as both have their distinct appeals. Personally, I am a rubber cement fan, though I have dabbled in Elmer’s. First there was the intoxicating odor of rubber cement and the cute little brush attached to the cap. You could take the rubber cement and smear it on your hands and then clap your hand together and let the glue set, just so. You could then mush your hands back and forth and slightly separate them to see the little stalag-tighty and –mighty tendrils of glue. Now for the best part, rolling the little globs of cement into rubbery boogeroid balls. That was the end point for me, I was perfectly happy rolling the little balls around and peeling the glue off my hands. However, some of the boys might throw them at each other, put them in each other’s hair, or sneak one into the pages of a textbook. As I recall, rubber cement was labeled as flammable, and thus rubber cement could have been a gateway drug for both glue sniffers and arsonists.
Elmer’s glue had less appeal since it didn’t smell or ball up. But you could paint a thin veneer of Elmer’s on your hand, let it get dry and shiny and then peel it off like sunburned skin. While rubber cement might have appealed mostly to nose pickers, Elmer’s might particularly appeal to those who liked to nurse scabs and pick them over and over again. My friend Maria used Elmer’s to feign some sort of tragic skin disease. You could horrify your friends by sadly explaining that you had contracted leprosy and now your skin was falling off in sheets. In our safety conscious age, I am sure that rubber cement has been banned from schools and that Elmer’ glue has been replaced by glue sticks. A shame, since as far as I can tell, you can’t repurpose glue sticks.
As the first recycler the renderer lets nothing go to waste,
He boils dead carcasses to make pet food, candles and - - - - -.
Such clever repurposing is something Americans should admire,
But a - - - - - of mad cow disease cases has the industry under fire.
As we dig into a McDonald’s burger here is a scary prediction,
Perhaps we are now - - - - - closer to this brain rotting affliction.
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What Beaches Teach Us
ike many others in my peer group who first started typing on a manual typewriter, I have had an ambivalent love-mostly hate relationship with computers from the get go – continually feeling intimidated and frustrated with impenetrable jargon that requires a call to India to get a computer up and running, a new standard of typing excellence that tolerates no typos, and power point presentations with stunning visual effects to keep the audience from nodding off. However, for our son Ned, it has been pure love ever since the day we opened the door and let the devil walk in.
We started innocently enough with a reality game called Oregon Trail, where we were supposed to outfit a family traveling west on a wagon train. The only part of the game that Ned liked was the option of heading out to shoot game, leaving the women and children alone on the Conestoga wagon, succumbing to croup, dropsy, mosquitoes or random catastrophes, such as getting caught in a wagon wheel. We were constantly hungry because Ned was not a very good shot and would quickly run out of ammunition. Everyone in our wagon train would always die before Salt Lake City. My friends George and Martha played with their daughter Sarah, who actually successfully got her wagon train all the way to San Francisco without any attrition. She said that the key was to stop in Navoo and stock up on pemmican and buy some mules and a cart before heading across the plains. But Ned insisted that we could probably make it if we just bought more ammunition.
For Ned, this reality computer game served as a gateway to the true devil of online fantasy games, involving epic battles between vicious take-no-prisoners fantasy armies. The computer screen would be dripping with blood and emitting agonizing death throes. At one point Ned got very involved with a lurid game called Tribes. One night at our family dinner, he got up and excused himself saying, “I am going to be late for my team practice.” I assumed it was a school team, so was surprised when he informed me, “I have a practice with my online Tribes team because we have a match tonight at 11.” That was probably my breaking point. “Why can’t you get involved with something that has some sort of redeeming qualities?” I said. “Every time I go by your room I hear gunfire and it depresses me.”
He actually came up with a rather quick witted reply, “Look, I am learning life skills like how to strategize, plan ahead and be on a team. Besides I notice that you regularly watch Law and Order, and so it seems to me that you watch plenty of death and violence yourself.” I thought of trying to explain the difference between senseless anonymous killing and the obvious appeal of trying to unravel the motives of a tragically dysfunctional family, but felt that I would only be digging myself a deeper hole.
Time for Plan B. We were taking a spring break trip to Paris, and I thought that a side trip to the Normandy beaches would be an effective real life antidote to online violence. We arrived at Omaha beach on a beautiful spring day. The beach was pristine, peaceful and empty, an impossible contrast with images of the hell-on-earth D-Day beach. I had read the book the Longest Day on the plane ride over, which showed pictures of overwhelming carnage - abandoned vehicles spewing forth acrid smoke, barely living men staggering around in a trance-like state and of course plenty of dead men. The awkward bodies were partially submerged in sand, indicating that they must have been abandoned there for some time as the tide moved the sand around them. I did not know if the beach was abandoned out of respect, or come a warmer day in summer, the beach would be swarming with vacationing families with the sidewalk filling with strolling sweethearts and vendors selling ice cream from pushcarts. It was hard to guess which scenario would be more poignant.
The next stop was the Omaha Beach museum. There seemed to be plenty of small museums in the area filled with relics collected by local residents. This museum included various dioramas, but also pictures and letters that were found on the dead soldiers. It was at this moment that Ned began to appreciate the concept of a soldier as an individual and not an anonymous member of an expendable army. The next stop was Pointe-du-Hoc where there was a German pillbox overlooking a bluff. Peeking over the bluff, you could see that only the most heroic and downright lucky American could have ever made it to the top through the bullets raining down from the German pillbox. The top of the bluff was spring-green and grassy, but the pock-marks from incoming artillery shells were still easily visible. The whole area looked like a close up of the surface of a golf ball. That evening we stayed at a farmhouse bed and breakfast, which was used as some sort of make shift hospital during D-Day. Pictures on the walls showed the home overtaken by nurses and the wounded in the very rooms we were staying in. I felt that I had scored another direct hit with Ned.
However, nothing could have prepared us for the emotional wallop of our visit to the American Cemetery the next day. The last turn in the long forested driveway opened onto seemingly endless rows of glistening tombstones. We walked quietly through the rows, touching the tops of some of the stones or looking down to read the names of the fallen. And just when I thought I could not bear it any longer, we turned the corner and saw the cemetery continuing unabated for another several acres. Before we had left, our friend Ray Murphy mentioned that his uncle was buried in this cemetery and I thought it would make it a nice focus if we could find his grave. Ray’s uncle had died before he was born and in fact there was no one left in his family who had known his uncle personally. This is probably the fate of many in this cemetery as the living memory of World War II slowly slips away. Somehow this seemed to make it more important to find a specific grave and bring it back to life as a real person and a family member. Although Murphy is not a particularly unusual name, I was still surprised when the database showed that there were several dozen Murphys buried here. Unfortunately, I did not have the details on Ray’s uncle, but thought it would be sufficient to find a representative grave. We did indeed find a Murphy grave, placed some flowers and took some pictures. Even though it turned out that we had guessed wrong, it really didn’t matter since Ray was immensely touched. Even so, I wanted to track down the true living relatives, or relatives of any of the other deceased, to let them know that their Murphy was well taken care of and appreciated in this lovely and heartbreaking cemetery on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach.
We drove into town for dinner that night and unanimously agreed to forego the German restaurant and settled for a quiet dinner at an Italian restaurant. We didn’t talk too much about the day or its implications, and in fact, when I mention this story to Ned, he claims that he does not recall too many details of this visit at all. However, shortly thereafter I was gratified to realize that the gun noises stopped emanating from his room, he had dropped out of his Tribe and ever since then his focus has remained on online sports games. Mission accomplished.
On D-Day the infantryman heads for Omaha Beach full of anxiety and hopes,
Knowing that his legacy as a solider will depend on how he - - - - -
With bloody beaches and slaughtered bodies strewn across the sand.
While the enemy has his - - - - - trained on him and death is near at hand.
He claws his way up the bluff and collapses, momentarily safe behind a - - - - - of trees.
He pauses to thank the Lord on quaking and bended knees.
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My Brother Charlie
y parents were married in 1950 and three and a half years later they had three children, my older brother Ralph, me, and my younger brother Charlie. When Charlie was around two years old he developed a very high fever and was rushed off to the hospital. The doctor told my parents he had polio. Sometime around that time it also became apparent that he was not learning to talk and everyone seemed to assume that even though he no had no other physical problems, his inability to talk was related to polio. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood when asked about my family I would say “my brother Charlie had polio and that’s why he doesn’t talk.” I remember my mother saying in retrospect that she was always so grateful that Charlie was undemanding as an infant, and could sit in his own world for hours in his playpen. Although it seems so obvious in retrospect, I never heard my parents mention the word autistic. I had been so ingrained in the polio/doesn’t talk scenario that I didn’t realize that he was autistic until several years after I had completed medical school. The sad truth was I never really thought about it.
Part of the reason that I never questioned Charlie’s polio is that when I was about 8 or 9 Charlie moved to Lochland, a residential facility in Rochester, New York, and there was probably a good 20 year period when I never saw him. I have very hazy memories of Charlie before he moved out; I don’t recall wondering why he didn’t go to school with me, why he didn’t have friends over, or what he did all day. Recently we got our old family movies turned into DVDs and I was surprised to see Charlie totally mixing in with the rest of us. (Of course the movies had no audio). There was Charlie looking for Easter eggs wearing shorts pants, a sport coat and a bow tie, Charlie riding a tricycle, and blowing out candles on a birthday cake. I cannot even imagine the growing anguish of my parents as they realized that even though Charlie was so normal in many ways, he would require life long care.
For several years when Charlie was first at Lochland he would come home for summer vacation. This was great because my mother always rented a trampoline for the summer that we could all use. I remember Charlie jumping by himself for hours, sometimes suddenly yelling the syllable Geee (with a hard G)!! and then laughing at some secret joke. He was also a good singer and could wordlessly sing various show tunes my mother would send him. This was also the time when we would watch the Ed Sullivan show on TV, which often seemed to feature odd circus acts from Eastern Europe. One that I remember was a bunch of guys wearing white stirrup pants with suspenders, who balanced spinning plates on the tops of long poles. Well, Charlie seemed to have the same skills. He could jump on the trampoline while twirling a wet washcloth on his index finger. No one else in the family could do it. He could also do the same thing with a Frisbee, and I think that he was pretty good at a hula hoop. Charlie was also an enthusiastic eater. I remember that he would grab a canister of Redi-Whip from the icebox, squirt it directly into his mouth and then laugh. It was obvious that he had a pretty good sense of humor.
One of the great mysteries of Charlie’s mind was that although he could not communicate he understood everything and was perfectly capable of doing household chores, such as emptying and loading the dishwasher. One day my mother asked Charlie to take out the garbage. We had two garbage cans outside; one was an incinerator at the edge of the driveway and the other one was a regular garbage can right out the back door. Charlie seemed to mistake the incinerator for the garbage can and lit the garbage can on fire. I remember the day distinctly. I was getting dressed for school, and in fact was wearing a pink and yellow candy-striped pair of culottes that I had made myself that perfectly matched my pink sweater. I looked out the bathroom window to see the fireman raising an axe as the flames licked up the side of the house. There were pools of water in the driveway. My father was wearing his going to work clothes which included his felt hat and my mother was standing in the bathrobe she used to wear while she made us all breakfast. Although they were standing with their backs to me, I could see their body language of deep sorrow.
After this incident, my parents decided that coming home to visit was too disruptive for Charlie. While they visited him four times a year, I don’t think any of my siblings saw him for decades. Now I wonder why my parents did not take one of us on each of their visits to Charlie, but on the other hand I am also ashamed to say that I never asked to go. Charlie moved to different residential facilities along the way and spent some time in Florida. When that facility collapsed, my parents even tried to set up their own facility in Florida, called “Great Days.” I noticed these efforts with only passing interest, and I am even more ashamed that I did not pitch in to help on a daily basis. It was very clear that my parents loved Charlie and that he was part of our family, but I think that my parents were trying not to burden us with his care. Perhaps they knew deep in their hearts that it would be our turn soon enough. Ultimately Charlie ended up back at Lochland. Finally one August about four years ago I made my first visit to see Charlie at Lochland. It was the last visit for my mother, whose heroic efforts to compensate for her eroding mind were beginning to show cracks. Shortly after this visit, Alzheimer’s disease overwhelmed her and she never saw Charlie again.
Lochland is housed in a magnificent estate overlooking Seneca Lake, one of New York’s Finger Lakes. As we walked up the steps, I began to hear odd noises - some yelling, inappropriate laughing and then Charlie’s characteristic Gee! Charlie came up and hugged my mother briefly saying, “Muma, muma, muma.” I said, “Hi Charlie, I’m your sister Bobbie,” and gave him an awkward hug, in part because I was startled to notice that Charlie and I are virtually identical twins. This was something that I did not appreciate in all the photos that we had of Charlie, and it was eerie looking into his faraway eyes to see a sort of warped version of myself. Charlie was clearly pleased to see my mother since he knew that he would get some treats, but he soon he wandered off, retreating into his own world. We were left standing in the huge living room of this old mansion surrounded by other residents and staff of the house.
I took a deep breath. Glancing at my watch, I realized that our visit was less than 15 minutes old and it was already clear that we had to start killing time. I turned to the woman next to me and struck up a conversation. I had a such pleasant chat with Cameron that I assumed that she was one of the staff people. All of a sudden she leaned over to me and said, “Wait right here, I want to give you a present.” She rushed back and presented me with a load of hangers that she had decorated (sort of) with different colored yarn. Oops, first mistake, turns out that she was a resident. There was another sloppily dressed man standing awkwardly in the corner who looked like a resident. Later on I realized I was making dangerous assumptions when I saw him driving the Lochland van.
That morning I met with Charlie’s psychiatrist and for the first time I formally heard that Charlie was autistic. Later that day we met Charlie’s “advocate” a woman named Charlene who was supposed to be especially attentive to Charlie’s needs. My parents had been singing the praises of Charlene for several years since she would frequently take Charlie to her home for dinner or even on vacation with her family. Now that I belatedly knew that Charlie was autistic, it didn’t make complete sense to me to change his routine and environment. Sure enough, Charlene would report that they had a great outing, but that Charlie had broken something, like her computer, and then Charlene would send my parents a bill. Charlene suggested that we take Charlie out for dinner to the Sizzler steakhouse. This seemed equally crazy – why would you take someone with virtually no impulse control and an infinite appetite to an all-you-can-eat buffet? This was my first initiation into the sandwich generation and it was the most stressful meal of my life. Charlie would continually try to slip out of the booth and hit the dessert line again and again, and then yell when I tried to stop him. My mother wasn’t sure where she was either; she would get up but then not remember where we were sitting and I would lead her back to our booth. At one point I was retrieving Charlie when he startled another diner by grabbing his lemon meringue pie off his plate and then laughing mischievously. Charlene was trying to show off how well she controlled Charlie by continually jabbing her index finger into her forehead to get his attention but this strategy clearly wasn't working. It was merely incidental that the food was predictably wretched.
The next day was Charlie’s birthday - I think that it was his 50th birthday. Charlene had arranged a birthday party at her house, inviting all the residents of Lochland plus a variety of other disabled adults. Charlene’s husband was one of these enviable guys who could fix anything, but the consequence of this great talent was that his yard was strewn with appliances – there were dishwashers, lawn mowers, cars and an RV all in various stages of repair or disrepair. Charlene had really gone all out and made many different casseroles, all of which seemed to have mayonnaise as the principle ingredient. She had laid them all outside and as the bright sun relentlessly beat down I began to see oil pooling everywhere and the mayonnaise getting that nasty gelatinous look. The yard was now filled with people either in wheelchairs or staggering around, Charlie had no clue that this party was for him and just wanted to eat the dripping and drooping cake that was on display, I had lost track of my mother and I didn’t want to make the same blunder of mistaking a staff person for a resident.
I was utterly exhausted when we finally reached the soothing, relaxed atmosphere of the airport. We happened to fly over Buffalo and I got my first glimpse of Niagara falls. I leaned over to point this out to my mother, who only noticed the fluffy clouds and commented that she thought it was odd that there would be so many snow drifts this time of year. I also saw that when she tried to do the crossword puzzle she just added extra boxes if her word didn’t fit. I thought about all the times that she had made this trip by herself and how she had somehow assimilated all this sadness into her life, and how she had spared the rest of her children from this burden. I vowed that I would not view my care of Charlie as burden, but consider it an opportunity to spend time with my brother in a beautiful part of the country.
I have had some missteps in the past five years, but by and large I would have to say that I am learning visiting Charlie, if you don't mind having your heart broken from time to time. I have discovered a National Wildlife Refuge some 20 minutes away that has fabulous birdwatching. I took Charlie on a walk there on my last visit, and even though he peed in the middle of the trail, I was actually happy to realize that he was smart enough to know that was acceptable in the woods. There is a great yarn store in downtown Geneva that I always stop by. We no longer take Charlie out for dinner, but go to the grocery store and let him pick out something special to have back in his apartment. One time we made a cake together and he did a masterful job of licking the bowl, then washing it and putting it back on the shelf. Charlie loves watching the movie “Sound of Music,” and occasionally when he sings you can catch snippets of “Edelweiss.” One night as we were watching he curled up on the couch and put his head in my lap. I gave my 55 year old look alike brother a head rub just the way our mother did so many years ago.
What's in a Sandwich
When someone says sandwich, I used to think of peanut butter and jelly,
Or maybe pastrami on rye from the corner - - - -.
Or the Earl of Sandwich who spent - - - - days in luxury’s comfortable lap.
His friend Captain Cook made him famous by putting his islands on the map.
But now mostly I think that sandwich is the generation that I'm currently in.
And I - - - - if I told you that sometimes this doesn't stretch me a bit thin.
Click here for answers
Whiter Shade of Pale
s I sort through the various missed opportunities and regrets in my life, I keep coming back to two things; the time that I absolutely blew my college interview at Stanford (when asked to describe “who I was” to some pompous interviewer, I said, “that’s personal and I don’t wish to discuss it!), and the fact that I never saw the Beatles live. I was first introduced to the Beatles at Ty Winterbotham’s house. There was some sort of slumber party going on and she had the 45 of “I Saw Her Standing There” blaring into her living room. It was a magical moment as everyone danced together and shouted the lyrics “When she crossed that room, my heart went boom and I held her hand in my-eeen!” Please note that the early Beatle lyrics were nothing but doggerel.
While I was not a passionate Beatles fan, they did hold an abiding interest. John was married, Ringo was just too butt ugly to generate any appeal and Paul was of course the cutest. That left George as the more creative favorite. As a parent, I kept impressing on my young children that it was very important that they know all the names of the Beatles, and I would periodically spring pop quizzes in the car. Unfortunately Frances always confused George Harrison with George Bush! My father initially dismissed the Beatles as freaks, and confidently stated, “They won’t last a year.” It must have been 1964, because I triumphantly remember buying the album Beatles ’65.
We did manage to go to a few concerts. The Dave Clark Five stands out, because they were thought to be a knock off of the Beatles. I remember closing my eyes at the concert and pretending they were the Beatles, but the effort fell short. Another concert I distinctly remember was the Rolling Stones. My mother had agreed to drive us down to McCormick place, but announced that she was not going to waste her money on this and would spend the time at a museum instead. However, when we arrived, she reframed the event as a sociology field trip and decided that she would try and sneak into the concert. We wished her good luck and scurried to our seats on the main floor.
At the first chord, probably “I can’t get no satisfaction,” we started screaming ourselves silly, for no other reason that we were so thrilled to be part of a joyous mass hysteria. When I see the black and white footage of the Beatles arriving in the United States, I think how great it would be to one of the teenagers in one of the crowd shots – a teenager with smudged, tear-streaked cheeks, wearing a cute buttoned-up shirt rumpled by the press of the crowd, hanging limply over a cyclone fence in the remote hopes of spotting one of the Fab Four. Now that would be something to show the kids. If only I had gone to Woodstock. In the middle of the Woodstock sound track, as an illustration of the mayhem, an announcer says, “Allan Fay, come to the blue tent, it’s a bummer, man.” Just think, it could have been, “Liza Blue, come to the tent, it’s a bummer man.”
As we limply exited the auditorium, we found my mother totally pleased with herself. She had indeed managed to sneak in. She told the usher that she was ticketless because she had left the auditorium to deal with her splitting headache. She then produced the bottle of aspirin that she had just bought as a prop. She feigned a grimace of agony, and as an added touch right out of an Excedrin TV ad, lightly pressed her fingertips to her temples. She then said that she had left her young daughter inside, who was probably beside herself with worry at that point. The overwhelmed usher fell for it, and let her in. She made her way to the top row of the topmost balcony, “I was in hysteria heaven,” she exulted, “The blond singer looked exactly like Lulu Runnells!” The blond singer was Brian Jones who would die of a drug overdose the following year, and Lulu Runnells was one of Lake Forest’s most fashionable socialites.
They say that every generation must have its own music, but the rock and roll of the 60s has transcended generations. The Beatles and Rolling Stones are all well-represented on my kids’ iPODS, and they are always amazed when I already know the lyrics to “their” music. I can even introduce them to some new music. One of them was Procul Harum, who were something of a one hit wonder with their song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” also known as AWSoP on the internet fan club site. With the exception of Louie, Lou-ay, one of the advantages of early 60s music was that the lyrics could be distinctly heard and understood. But by the time of the 1967 release AWSoP, while you could still hear the words, the lyrics had moved far beyond the innocence of the early 60s. There is much discussion of the meaning of AWSoP. Two theories are most plausible to me. One is that the “Whiter Shade of Pale” refers to Marilyn Monroe and her doomed love affair with JFK; the crowd calling out for more refers to her memorable and slutty singing of Happy Birthday, Mr. President, to a sold out crowd in Madison Square Garden. The other obvious theory is that the “Whiter Shade of Pale” refers to cocaine, and the lyrics are a delusional mess. I am very literal and linear person, so the following fanagram represents an attempt to tidy up the lyrics.
Whiter Shade of Pale
I hit my head bang bango, while turning cartwheels ‘cross the floor,
I begin to - - - - - - like I’m seasick, but the crowd calls out for more,
The room was humming harder, as my soul did - - - - - - away,
When we called out for another drink the waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later as the doctor told his tale
That my face, at first just ghostly, turned a - - - - - - shade of pale
Click here for answers
(Real lyrics:
We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick, as the crowd calls out for more.
The room was humming harder as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink the waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later as the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale)
No Place Like Home
y meeting downtown finished early, and so I arrived at O’Hare hours ahead of time for my evening flight to Atlanta. I settled in to read, and then deep into my novel, I became irritated at the flashing lights above me. As I got up to move my seat, I realized that I had been at the airport so long that I was now in the midst of an entirely new weather system, and what I had assumed was the malfunctioning flicker of fluorescent lights was really a tremendous thunder storm. I was disenheartened to realize that I was in for a long vigil at the airport. No book can be that good, and lets face it, it is just too hard to get any work done. I immediately began to ponder my professional and ethical obligation to attend this all day Saturday meeting. Did my commitment to attend really extend to an all nighter at the airport? I was just one of many, would they really miss me? Just as I concluded that the answer to those questions were unfortunately yes, the departure board twitched and my flight came up CANCELLED! And then in a fit of due diligence I confirmed that there was no later flight that evening, and no early AM flight the next morning that could get me there on time. I was free! I called the conference organizers to relay the sad news and also ask them what to do with the ticket. The ticket was nonrefundable, so they told me that it was mine to keep. I was free and had a free ticket!
When I got home the house was dark, as Nick had made other plans in my presumed absence. As a NetFlix subscriber, a couple of movies were awaiting me, one about an immigrant who tries to eke out an existence by being a drug mule, and the other was about a hardworking 1950s British housewife who was an abortionist on the side. When I established my movie queue on NetFlix, I clearly had put myself on too high a plane. I had selected a steady diet of movies that were supposedly thought-provoking, unsettling, unflinching, tragic, long-suffering and ennobling. Not a guilty pleasure among them, just the ticket for the end of a long tiring day. Therefore, I turned to network and cable TV, a vast wasteland since we had cancelled access to the movie channels in lieu of NetFlix!
I despaired as I scrolled through dreary options, but then joyfully stumbled across the Wizard of Oz, and I thought this would be a perfect evening to relive my childhood. Before the days of cable, VHS or DVD, you had but one chance per year to see the Wizard of Oz on network TV, and it was an occasion you really didn’t want to miss. I remember that it always seemed to be on at the beginning of November on a late Sunday afternoon. You would be horsing around outside, playing in leaf piles or playing touch football, when someone would announce, “Hey isn’t the Wizard of Oz on tonight?” We would rush inside, trailing the fresh air inside and get cozy in the TV room, still slightly feeling the autumn chill. My most salient memories of the Wizard of Oz were the flying monkeys which always scared the Beejeezus out of me, and that I always got misty eyed at the end when Dorothy said goodbye to the scarecrow. Now I would get to see the movie again after a span of about 20 years.
My first discovery was that I don’t think that I had ever seen the very beginning of the movie before; I think I missed the part were the farm hands Hunk, Hickory and Zeke clearly established themselves as the future Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion. All these years I thought that I was a most clever girl to figure this out at the end; it was something that I always kept to myself as my secret insight. I also never stopped to wonder whatever happened to Dorothy’s birthparents, which would certainly be a ripe topic for a prequel, given Hollywood’s formula for creating movie franchises. Additionally, Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are quite old enough to be her grandparents, so it would seem that an entire generation of relatives got wiped out somehow. Perhaps a prior tornado, which would certainly be ironic, since Dorothy’s last name is Gale.
Apparently in one of the earlier stage versions, Dorothy was accompanied not by a dog, but by her pet cow Imogene. While Toto is an upgrade over a cow, I admit that I find common ground with the crabby Almira Gulch - Toto is yappy and annoying, albeit loyal. As I watched Dorothy pop Toto into her little wicker purse, I realized that she might have been the original trendsetter for toy dogs as fashion accessories. I am not proud to admit that I indulge in People magazine from time to time, but this is how I know about those wretched anorexic starlets whose little hairless dogs are peeking out from their oversized Gucci bags.
Of her traveling companions, I think that I was most mystified about the lion, mainly because he walked on two legs instead of all fours. But it must have been something more, because if I was willing to accept a man made of tin, I should have been able to accept a bipedal lion. And now I think I figured it out. As a child at the zoo, one could not help but be impressed with the manly attributes of the king of beasts, not only his glorious mane of hair, but his readily apparent male anatomy. And so, when the lion emerged from the woods and stood up, something was missing, the full frontal as it were. And if we may succumb to the obvious stereotype, perhaps that was why he lost his courage.
My respect for Dorothy grew enormously as she moved on down the road. In the sepia world of the Kansas farm, she was helpless, frantic and casually dismissed. In her fantasy world, she became a better version of herself, formulating and sticking to a plan, and developing a mentoring and equal relationship with men. She was a brilliant role model clearly ahead of her time. The original actress slated for the role was Shirley Temple, who charmed audiences with her perky cuteness. How fortunate to have a plucky and confident Dorothy instead, a picture of undaunted and competent courage.
Was the Wizard of Oz the first movie to use the ticking clock? This race against time is certainly a staple of every single James Bond movie. Perhaps 007 owes a debt of gratitude to the Witch, who inexplicably doesn’t dispatch Dorothy forthwith. While the special effects of the grotesque flying monkeys are clearly very primitive, I don’t think that I have seen a better death scene than the melting witch. Brilliantly nonviolent. How many times has this been reenacted in community theaters and school gymnasiums? What fun to scream out a tortured, “Help, I’m melting,” and then slowly slip down through a trap door.
The good bye sequence at the end always left me teary, though I tried mightily to conceal it, perhaps pretending to scratch my eye, or attending to an itch along the side of my nose. This time as I listened to Dorothy’s earnest explanation of the key to returning home, I realized that it was basically incomprehensible. Here are the verbatim words, “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.” What? Somewhere there is a starchy grammarian who is shuddering at the triple negative: “won’t look/isn’t there/never lost it." Try as I might, I can’t decipher this, but fortunately, by the time she clicks her heels together, she has condensed this to the more memorable, “There’s no place like home.” I think that from time to time, we can all agree with that.
Why Dorothy is a Good Role Model:
Dorothy was not really scared as she was tossed and turned in a tornado - - - - .
And when she landed amongst the Munchkins she was but briefly nonplussed.
Forthwith she became a problem solver, and headed to Emerald City in competent style,
Relying on - - - - and brains instead of the more typical coquettish smile and guile.
She made true and equal friends with men like the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion,
And her farewell to them at the end - - - - at my heart and makes me feel like crying.
Click here for answers
Clean Slate Club
he implications of the 50th birthday are hard to ignore and difficult to embrace. One by one friends are starting to undergo joint replacements and drop out of my tennis and paddle tennis groups to pursue more forgiving sports like golf. I have been lucky to avoid any obvious physical limitations as I chug my way through this decade, but my entire philosophy towards sports is incrementally changing. Ten years ago, I looked forward to each new paddle tennis season with the promise of getting better, based not on improving my physical fitness, but mastering some basic mechanical skills, like learning how to put a spin on the ball or positioning myself correctly. While I consider myself athletic, I do not consider myself an athlete in whom the effects of waning physical prowess would be immediately noticeable. For me, a slowed reaction time could be more than compensated for by being in the right place at the right time, and huffing and puffing through a long point could be addressed by finishing the point with the deft placement of a spin in the corner. However, this strategy may have run its course and my goals for each new season have become more realistic – I just wanted to maintain my level and not get worse, particularly since my social life is built around sports. As my friend once said, “Lose your legs, lose your friends.”
Other health messages for 50 year olds come fast and furious with advice on how to maintain breast, prostate, heart and bone health and the marketing geniuses at the drug companies try to reposition aging as a disease. For example, the inevitable loss of bone that comes with aging has been repositioned as the “disease” osteoporosis, and diseases, of course need treatment, and lucky for them aging is a life long disease needing life long treatment. Most ominously, age 50 triggers a multitude of cancer screening recommendations. While breast cancer screening is considered optional at age 40, at age 50 it is strongly recommended. Millions of women make the yearly migration to the tit squisher and just keep their fingers crossed that they won’t hear the sound of the other shoe dropping, at least for this year. Men have their blood test for prostate cancer, but of course colonoscopies are for everyone.
For obvious reasons, I put off a colonoscopy for several years. However I would have to say that this has been one of the more rewarding experiences of this transitional decade. First of all, it was easy and the bowel prep that makes everyone cringe was no biggie. I just did it and the next morning I felt clean, cleansed and purified. I felt like I should waft through the house in a flowing virginal white gown singing that enduring Presbyterian hymn of renewal,
“When the morning wakens, then may I arise,
Pure and fresh and sinless, in thine holy eyes.”
And the colonoscopy itself – also no biggie. The nurse will just slip you an IV mickey and then next thing you know you are getting ready to go home. When the doctor came in to tell me that everything looked fine he added, “I must say you did a wonderful job with your bowel prep. It really made my life easier.” I was giddy with pleasure over this compliment, because like most patients I wanted the doctor to really like me. Plus this was one of the nicest things that anybody had said to me in a long time. I blushed in response and mumbled, “thanks, no problem.”
Based on my experience there are a lot of things worse than a colonoscopy and one of them is taking the dogs for a walk. Now lest you think that I have developed an eccentric habit of pleasure purging, I want you to know that this comparison primarily reflects my distaste for walking the dogs. I like a nice contemplative walk as much as the next guy, but the mood is seriously undermined by tugging dogs, winding leashes around trees and confronting other dogs. And as long as we are talking about effluent, there is nothing more distasteful in my mind than walking around with a steaming pocket full of pooh. One time a particularly distasteful pick-up job prompted such a strong spasmodic gag response that I pulled a muscle in my neck. Furthermore, when I go for a walk, I would like to do some birdwatching, but I have found that these are totally incompatible activities. Not only are the dogs apt to scare the birds away, but it is also very difficult to focus binoculars while the dugs are tugging on the leash. One time I spotted a particularly captivating bird, and with the doody bag in hand, raised the binoculars to get a better look. As I tried to focus, the dogs strained at the leash causing my hand to jerk around. The warm and odorous bag started swaying and rhythmically tapped me in the nose. Bring on the colonoscopy!
Clean Slate Club
A colonoscopy is supposed to be the way you mark your 50th birthday,
Recommended so that some evil polyp won’t - - - - - your life away.
Yes the bowl prep is nasty, and I’ll spare you details that are graphic,
But at - - - - - I’ll say the old porcelain throne saw some heavy traffic.
However, it’s not bad, and the grisly stories you hear are just scurrilous scuttlebutt,
The truth is that I loved flushing out old - - - - - food, and all the bacteria in my gut,
And at the end I felt as clean as a newborn babe, in a purified and exalted state,
As if starting life both fresh and anew with a momentarily clean colonic - - - - -.
Okay, I have overstated the case, and I put it off for more than three years for sure.
But don’t end up among the cautionary - - - - - of those who missed their chance for cure.
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Worms in Dirt
can easily come up with several reasons why I put off a colonoscopy for several years, but it is harder to explain why I did not promptly redeem my coupon for worms for my worm farm. I had initially been captivated with Charles Darwin’s fascination with worms, which culminated in the 1881 best seller with the improbable title of, “The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations of Their Habits,” published some 40 years after he first became besotted with worms. He was just back from the voyage of the HMS Beagle, and although visions of evolution danced in his head, he was fearful of the church’s reaction to his godless “descended from apes” theory. Therefore, he simply kept his percolating ideas to himself, and was only prompted to bring forward the “Origin of the Species” when he heard that another truly gifted scientist, Lord Alfred Wallace, had developed the same theories based on his observations in Indonesia. So in the meantime, Darwin, with his insatiable curiosity, busied himself with worms and other observations, such as beetles, orchids and climbing plants.
Darwin was clearly enraptured by the collective industriousness of earthworms in their ability to transform the soil, in essence acting as nature’s plow. In human terms their achievements might be akin to somehow asking every human being to run in the same direction at the same time, thereby changing the spin of the earth. But Darwin’s curiosity took him further. He wanted to know if worms could hear, and so regaled them with music to see if they reacted. At night he observed earthworms dragging leaves and twigs into their holes. He wondered if they were intelligent enough to optimally grab the object by its narrow end, so that it could be most easily pulled into their holes. He set out paper triangles and then counted the times that the triangles were drawn into their holes by the apex rather than the base and concluded that worms did indeed make decisions.
Therefore, wanting to recreate the Darwin experience, I requested a worm bin for Christmas, but the plastic tub with ventilation holes sat idle for several years while I came up with litany of excuses for not getting the project underway – it was too hot, too cold, we were about to go on vacation, we had just come back from vacation. But basically I knew my hesitancy was tied to my reluctance to be responsible for the care and feeding of anything other than my immediate family, no matter how low maintenance. We have no houseplants, and although our family has two dogs, I hope that I have made it very clear that they are not mine.
But finally I sent off the coupon and a little box of “red wigglers” arrived two weeks later. The recipe for starting the worm farm involving ripping up several pounds of newsprint, and then adding water and dirt, stirring until there was a big sodden mess. The last ingredient was the worms, in a seething and mad embrace in the tight confines of the shipping box. I dumped them in, and spread them out a little bit with a fork. The direction said to leave the top open, since their aversion to light would encourage them to dive into the comfy nest that we had just made.
The next day I was supposed to feed them our vegetable leftovers, and when I opened the bin, there were actually dozens of worms that had migrated to the top of the bin and were trying to worm there way out into the mudroom closet. Hard to believe that worms could make me feel inadequate. I added the left over salad and beans and shut the lid. Every three days (or more accurately when I remembered) I would add another wad of leftovers, but each time I opened the lid with trepidation, fearing the sight of masses of worms trying to escape my best efforts, or some foul odor, or galloping mold. We had visited with some friends who had tried vermiculture in the past but had abandoned it. Viv asked me, “what type of bin do you have, will it be easy to clean out the ‘juice’ at the bottom?” I could tell that she was trying to prepare me for the worst, and that juice was a euphemism for some sort of fetid swill.
It was clear that I was no Darwin (actually I already knew that). Darwin was truly fond of his worms, and had an intellectual and playful relationship with them – I was not getting any sort of big warm fuzzy from my worms. But Darwin was not dealing with my tiny red wrigglers, which looked more like maggots, but rather with large plump earthworms which must have had a more engaging personality. The end came swiftly late one night. I was struggling with both personal and professional issues that despite my best efforts were beyond my control. I felt helpless, and I needed to take decisive action somewhere in my life and find resolution somewhere. As I wandered around the house fuming, my eyes lit upon the earthworm bin. Here was something that I could resolve. Grabbing a flashlight, I carried the bin outside. With one big heave ho and a sigh of satisfaction, I dumped the entire thing into the weeds along side the driveway.
Worms in Dirt
As Darwin - - - - - - along the Galapagos coast,
He discovered evolution but was fearful to boast.
He knew his godless theories would leave the clergy inflamed,
And for the ensuing chaos and schisms he would certainly be - - - - - -.
To avoid heretical - - - - - - he wrote a booked about worms instead
Believe it or not, “Formation of Vegetable Mould” was a best seller that was widely read.
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Don’t Drink the Water
or two crystal clear days in June I was sequestered in a conference room in a swanky Chicago hotel listening to presentations on mouth sores – an exquisitely painful side effect of cancer therapy. The room darkened and the group was treated to lurid slide after slide of glistening red and oozing mouth sores. Oblivious to the sight of people wincing in pain and general misery, some of the oncologists were already multitasking, answering e-mails in the guise of taking notes on the computer, or discreetly answering a blackberry partially hidden underneath the desk. My job was to write up the proceedings of the meeting so I was supposed to pay attention and look sharp - even though I knew I would rely mostly on the transcripts that would eventually come my way. So my multi-tasking had to be even more subtle. I glanced out the window and realized that there was a little sliver of blue peaking out between the dense office buildings. Restlessly, I reached for some ice water, and realized that here I was just three blocks from Lake Michigan, one of the jewels of the largest body of fresh water on this planet, and the Peninsula Hotel thought it fit to provide me with water from Fiji. What ever happened to the pitcher of iced tap water?
With nothing else to do, I pored over the labels of the bottle, both front and back, and began to envision the marketing strategy that had successfully convinced people that Fiji water was something special. I imagined the chief marketing officer assembling his/her minions and saying – “okay this third of the room, you guys are the image makers. You brainstorm on the front label depicting Fiji. Now you guys over there, you are going to work on the label on the back of the plastic bottle. Your job is to come up with as many “disturb points” as you can to convince the consumer that tap water is unhealthy and even dangerous. Now finally, you guys in the way back of the room, I want you to devise the pricing strategy. Let’s show hotels and restaurants how they can turn good ole H20 into a profit center.”
I must say the guys assigned to the front label did not get too creative, going with the standard image of a sun-kissed Pacific island with colorful hibiscus and bougainvillea flowers. The bottle itself was tinted light blue, giving the water itself and azure blue hue that was designed to evoke the popular image of pure, simple and pristine island life. However, the guys assigned to the disturb points really went to town. As I looked across the table, I realized that the Fiji water across from me had a different label, and there was yet another different label to the right and left. Now this was worth investigating. I managed to squirrel away another bottle from the buffet table, and another as I feigned a bad back to get up and walk around. Now arrayed in front of me was a series of disturb points trying to convince me that drinking the local water was an act of supreme folly.
Two labels played off of the same theme of the splendid purity of isolation, i.e. since Fiji was thousands of miles away from the nearest industrialized content, it had cleaner clouds, purer rains and ! tah dah! cleaner water. This was an obvious dig at all of us who enjoy the fruits of an affluent economy, and are polluting the world and raising its temperature in the process. The United States is presumably Fiji water’s most significant client – who else would commit the environmental absurdity of hauling fresh water all the way across the ocean, and then pay about $5 per galloon for what could be had for free. It is horrifying to realize that given the cost of manufacturing the bottle itself and transportation costs, it actually takes more water to make the bottle than it actually holds. The label also proclaimed that “Fiji is one of the last virgin ecosystems on Earth,” which to me immediately cries out for a definition of a “virgin” ecosystem and who is the judge of lost virginity.
Although the first couple of labels point to the clean air and rains, the next couple of labels took a different tact and suggested that the water does not come from yesterday’s cleansing rain but instead from an ancient artesian aquifer deep within the earth where it is protected from external elements. “It’s the way nature intended water to be. Untouched.” Personally, I don’t think that nature has any specific agenda or intent; it/she just takes what is given, processes it and spits it out. The artesian reference is intriguing. As I recall many years ago there was an ad campaign about some sort of beer that was made from Artesian water. These marketers seemed to throw up their hands in despair in trying to explain the beneficial hydraulics of an artesian system and instead tried to simplify matters by pretending that the Artesians were some sort of secretive elves. The Fiji water people probably figured that since “artesian” sounded scientific, who needs to explain it?
A few of the labels veered from disturb points and attempted to find positive attributes of Fiji water – presumably attributes that Fijians would like to enjoy, except that their precious resource is being siphoned off and sold to elitists half way around the world. One label claimed that Fiji water had a “unique and refreshing taste,” which is a very confusing premise to me. My opinion is that the major attributes of water are that is cold and has absolutely no taste. If it had taste, it would be called something else, like lemonade.
Apparently since Fiji water is loaded with silica, they used the time-tested strategy of turning a potential negative into a positive. Thus one of the labels extolled the health virtues of silica, such as its ability strengthen bone, connective, tissue, teeth, skin, nails and hair. And then finally the trump card, “Silica is what gives Fiji water its soft mouth feel.” Whoa, in addition to its taste, Fiji water has a feel, and it is soft. When someone says water, I think wet, and when someone says “soft mouth feel” I don’t think of water – pudding perhaps, but not water.
I was so engrossed in my water project that I was startled when the lights went up, and the conference moderator turned to me and said, “Dr. Brown, would you like to make any comments on mouth sores and how you will be approaching the manuscript?” Fortunately I have been doing this long enough that I always roll out the same boilerplate comments that 1. work will begin in earnest when I receive the manuscripts, 2. that I will send an outline to the taskforce chair, and 3. I appreciated the opportunity to learn about mouth sores (and Fiji water).
The following fanagram contains two sets of anagrams, a set of three lettered words, and a set of four lettered words.
Dont' Drink the Water
The entrepreneur gathered his - - - - - and key marketing staff,
And had them stare at iced water in a large carafe.
“How can we get people to pay for water and stop drinking from the - - -?
So let’s brainstorm now, everyone please put on their thinking cap.
I know this sounds silly, but kindly set all your doubts - - - - -
Good marketers have gotten people to pay for what’s free when they really tried.
For example, people may be more - - - to buy water if they think its perfectly pure,
Or comes from a country like Fiji with an exotic allure.”
Other - - - - - included its soft mouth feel, or a taste fresh and clean,
Harvested from a snow capped mountain, virgin and pristine.
Well these geniuses deserve a - - - on the back; their wildest dreams were exceeded.
They managed to create a market for something that is totally unneeded.
Click here for answers
The Same Old Story
he basic plot lines of forbidden love, the overwhelming desire for what you can’t have, undiluted jealousy have been the fodder for umpteen movies, cheap paperbacks, great works of fact and fiction, and certainly scads of episodes of Law and Order. But you add in the detail that the basic tawdry love triangle included three astronauts and now things get interesting. Astronauts are NASA’s finest, whose steely intellect was certainly supposed to supersede any distracting and cheap emotions. We have been led to believe that these rocket scientists do not put their pants on one leg at a time. And yet, here is the story of a women so besotted by another ‘naut that she raced cross country to confront her rival in the airport parking garage.
One can only imagine if this love triangle had played out in the tight confines of a space capsule. We have all heard about the cachet of love at 30,000 feet involving a stewardess and an incredibly tiny airplane bathroom, but love in zero gravity would certainly put you in elite and rarified company. From the lunar mssions in the 1960s I recall a tense thirty minutes or so when the space capsule would slip from sight and communication as it circled around the moon; 30 minutes when the tightly wound astronauts briefly escaped the all seeing supervision of NASA. And here is where the passions could play out – as the capsule emerges from the blackout, the revenge would be revealed to the stunned scientists at mission central. A ravaged space capsule with one dead astronaut and the other two in a disheveled and amorous embrace.
This plot line is plenty juicy, but then of course there is the captivating detail of the diaper. The love crazed astronaut was on such a tight time schedule that she could not spare a minute to go to the bathroom on her cross country drive, so she simply donned a pair of diapers. It turns out that astronauts are different than you and I; they put their DIAPERS on one leg at a time.
Ah, potty humor, another eternal humor device, a universal guilty pleasure that has been used to provoke snickers, teehees, chuckles and guffaws from Chaucer to Shakespeare to the space age. The fact of a diaper would have certainly plenty, but we were given the irresistible detail that this was no ordinary Depends, but a NASA-issued space aged diaper. It also brought to the fore the persistant nagging question of how astronauts attend to their bodily functions in space, but I doubt if any thought the solution was as prosaic as a diaper. Apparently diapers are standard issue for astronauts during take off and reentry. This is the 3 hour period when the astronauts are totally encumbered by their space suits which are air pressurized and equipped with a parachute in case they have to eject. Personally, I think that the space suits are just for show as I can’t imagine any hope of survival if you had to eject from a hurtling space craft. Anyway, while taking off and re-entering, astronauts are basically lying on their backs with their legs above them, resulting in blood pooling in the torso. The heart interprets this as fluid overload, and sends signals to the kidneys to unload fluid and produce more urine. While this might be an elegant physiologic explanation of why astronauts need to pee while awaiting lift off, let’s not forget they are also plenty nervous.
I have experienced first hand that NASA tries to anticipate everything, and thus it was no surprise that they had invented some special diaper. In the early 1990s I attended a boondoggle conference on medicine in space, which included both NASA representatives and a bunch of cosmonauts flown in from Russia in the spirit of détente. The focus of the conference was what sort of medical capabilities would have to be built into a 5 year mission to Mars. For example, what would happen if one of the space travelers developed appendicitis or an abscessed tooth? There was much discussion of how to equip an OR in space, including some sort of device to clip the surgeon and equipment to the OR table so he or his scalpel wouldn’t float away in zero gravity. Another session focused on whether or at what point a mission could be aborted if an astronaut developed cancer or some other life threatening illness. While the marines and other armed services embody the culture of “no solider left behind,” the discussants concluded that space age travel is an exception, and the astronauts would have to understand that there was no turning back once they were at least halfway to Mars. The final discussion centered on what to do if one of the astronauts actually died on board, i.e. what was the obligation to bring the body back to earth versus turning someone’s loved one into an eternally orbiting piece of space junk? Storing the body turned out to be somewhat complicated due to decomposition, but in their can-do spirit NASA determined that they could certainly engineer special body bags. With this point resolved, the next and last issue was how many body bags should be included on the space ship. The panel concluded three body bags should cover a worst case scenario.
So NASA makes diapers, and the question is how are these diapers better than their earthbound counterparts? What is the point of difference, absorbancy, durability, comfort? Stories abound of government contracts for $10,000 screwdrivers and $100,000 toilet seats, so in her mad cross country dash, the crazed astronaut might have absconded with thousands of our tax dollars.
One of the early marketing tactics of NASA was to point out that many of the innovations required for space would ultimately be translated into everyday products that Americans could enjoy. While I am sure that there are many behind-the-scenes technical marvels that grew out of the space program, the only tangible benefit I can recall from the space program was the powdered drink Tang. The manufacturers must have negotiated a lucrative deal with NASA, since this faux orange juice was relentlessly promoted as the official breakfast drink of the astronauts. At the time Tang was the first powdered juice drink, and coupled with the American fascination in the space program, I think that everyone felt a bit of pride in drinking Tang, even though it was totally wretched. Americans have long become jaded and cynical, but since NASA is perennially strapped for cash they might as well grab the publicity and sell the rights to someone to be the official diaper of NASA. Perhaps someone can once again capture the marketing punch of NASA ingenuity.
The Same Old Story
NASA - - - - - - - her courage and intelligence as one of a kind,
But recently it became apparent that she had gone out of her mind.
She - - - - - - - to catch the eye of a fellow hunky astronaut,
But her unrequited love left her totally distraught.
Her wild cross country race was borne from the depths of her - - - - - - -,
As she rushed to Florida to lure her rival into a mace-laced lair.
Now here is the part of the story that I find most enthralling,
She wore space age - - - - - - - so she wouldn’t have to stop when nature came calling.
Click here for answers
Shoo Fly
y summer vacations have always been spent hiking in the north woods of Michigan. Both the days and Lake Superior’s waters are crisp and clear, and the only fly in the ointment are literally the flies that occasionally arrive in hordes. Horse flies are generally a minor annoyance, since they do not arrive in droves, but occasionally one will relentlessly circle your head for hours on end. Their endless droning can drive you to distraction, and then when the droning stops, like a landed grenade, you may have mere seconds to avoid the incoming bite. My strategy is to constantly swing a branch over my head, in the hopes of nudging a horse fly into another orbit around an adjacent hiker. Perhaps this is a breach of trail etiquette; once you acquire a horse fly, maybe it should be yours until death do you part, but personally, I am very satisfied when my in the midst of my wild swinging, my stick lands a glancing blow to the horse fly, and then suddenly I hear a fellow hiker curse as the fly assumes a new orbit.
It is the beach fly that can be the scourge of an August vacation. They predictably arrive with a south wind, and within hours of a wind change, it seems that the beach is inundated with flies in plague-like proportions, coating people and dogs, following both inside and into the dining hall with unappetizing results. The first hint of the descending horde might be the gathering number of flies noted on the person walking ahead of you, and then the growing realization that your back is probably covered as well. I remember one memorable hike where I looked down on my pant leg and was struck dumb by a patch about the size of the palm of my hand that was covered with a seething orgiastic mass of flies. Perhaps they were whipped into a frenzy by an inadvertent smear of mayonnaise on my pants, perhaps this was some sort of breeding ritual, but this incident has left a searing memory as something truly revolting, and also left me with the knowledge that you cannot outrun flies.
Flies are also challenging since, unlike mosquitoes, they are difficult to catch and kill. I remember sometime in my teenage years, someone came up with the more successful alternative to merely trying to swat the fly, but instead actually clapping right above the fly. Apparently those huge complex eyes could detect the swat but not the clap. I also recall a few memorable summers where one of my peers had developed sufficient hand eye coordination that he/she could actually snatch a fly from off a pant leg, then shake it madly in the fist, finally slamming the disoriented fly onto the table or ground. If that weren’t enough, you could then pluck a hair from your head and tie it onto the fly’s thorax. When the fly came to, it would fly around, tethered on the world’s smallest leash, to the great amusement of all.
I also remember the now bygone tactic of flypaper, that gooey yellowish strip of paper that you could hang in critical areas, watch as the flies slowly accumulated over your head or in the kitchen, and then could discard when the fly paper was completely filled, or you were totally grossed out, whichever came first. My mother used to hand out the flypaper to each of us siblings with the challenge to find the best place to hang it. Whoever had the most flies on their strip of paper, would win. Yes, we Browns were a competitive family.
A few summers ago when the south wind blew, I tried to approach the beach fly issue more intellectually. Really, where did all these flies come from, and why did they appear so reliably with a south wind? Could they really have been blown all the way here and why were they dumped on the beach? It seemed odd that they could truly have been blown there, because the interior woods were relatively still, and the simple fact that there were so many of them in such a short period of time. Throwing many years of higher education at this problem, I came up with three possible theories; 1. either they were blown there; 2. they were born there during the hot dry weather, or; 3. the flies were always there, but just became more active during the warm weather. My theorizing came just at the time that Edie Farwell was planning her nature school in the fall and was looking for guest lecturers. I volunteered to give a lecture, figuring that this would give me the incentive to research the possibilities.
It turns out that the term “flies” refers to the general insect order of “Diptera,” which includes some 120,000 species; in fact 1 in every 10 animals is some type of fly. For example, a mosquito is technically a fly. Diptera are unified by the presence of a paired set of wings, and a life cycle involving a soft wingless larval stage transforming to a hardened winged stage. Some of you may be recalling the sadistic moments in your childhood when you pulled wings off flies, and are thinking, “hey I only remember two wings, where’s the other set?” Well, the hindwings of flies are reduced to mere nubbins and are called “halteres.” The halteres function as balancing organs during flight and are responsible for the acrobatic movements of flies. The focus of my nature lecture to Edie’s class was a search for the halteres with a magnifying glass. If that failed, I was going to show the kids how to immolate flies with focused light. I think we spotted the halters so the flies escaped a fiery death.
I was overcome with sheer number of different kinds of flies, but it seemed most likely that the beach flies were either house flies (Musca domestica), cluster flies ( Pollenia rudis ), or stable flies (Stomoxys calcitrans). House flies don’t bite since their spongy mouth parts only allow them to ingest liquids, cluster flies crawl through small openings into a house, but the stable fly seemed to fit the bill. The stable fly breeds in the fetid and fecund environment of rotting vegetation (common along ocean beaches) or a mixture of manure, urine and straw. Stable flies can have a big impact on the diary and cattle industry, since harassed animals either grow slowly or do not produce as much milk; this economic impact has fueled most of the research. Many variants of fly paper and traps are common around stables; one website even recommended outfitting cows in a pair of old trousers for protection. I have never been clear about the distinction between trousers and pants, but would intuitively agree that trousers would be a better choice for a cow.
A literature search on the scientific name Stomoxys calcitrans revealed that there is considerable research interest in why flies accumulate along the beach. In particular I discovered several articles specifically on the beach fly problem around the Great Lakes and its impact on the tourist industry. Dr. Carl Jones and Dr. Jerry Hogstette were authors on several of them and both were gracious enough to spend some time with me on the phone. The technical description of their research is a combination of aerobiology (the dispersal of organisms in the air) and phenology (the study of the relation between biologic phenomenon and climatic change), and Dr. Jones admitted that research money to solve the problems of beach tourists has dried up a bit since 9/11; money for aerobiology research is now focused on more on terrorist tactics. The most prevalent theory of fly dispersal still focuses on weather patterns. Dr. Hogstette hypothesized that young adults (< 2 days old) are the most sensitive to changes in barometric pressure which prompts them to fly up where they caught up in the moving air above the tree tops where they are blown along. Swarms of flies have been spotting at up to 18-25,000 feet, moving along at 18-25 miles per hour. The next step is to flush the flies out of the air current. Competing weather fronts often collide over large bodies of water, and air may be very still at their juncture, allowing the flies to drop down through the cracks, so to speak. There are anecdotes of fishing boats, some 60 to 70 miles off shore, that will suddenly have a cloud of flies rain down upon them.
While the theory made intuitive sense, it didn’t explain why the flies always seem to drop in right along the beach, and often at a time when the sky is cloudless and there is no hint of a colliding weather front. Dr. Hogstette explained that the flies could be dropping out over a broader area over the water, but are sucked back along the beach due to the air rising over the hot sand, creating a vacuum. Furthermore, flies appear to be attracted to water, perhaps due to the distinctive UV light patterns, or the contrast of a sandy beach with the dark water. Dr. Hogstette provided the fascinating detail that these stable flies actually had their origins in Africa, and thus are invasive species arriving in this country around the 1850s. Perhaps they are still responding to environmental cues that were appropriate for their African habitat, but are inappropriate for Lake Superior. Dr. Hogstette would like to study stable flies in their natural environment, but the research dollars in Africa are naturally targeted to the more lethal tsetse fly.
There are still many unknowns, in part due to the technical difficulties of dispersal research. Either you can release tagged laboratory raised flies and hope to recapture them at the target site, or you can catch random flies and hope to ID their environment of origin. Critics of laboratory flies point out that these coddled flies are not hardened to the savage natural world, and thus may behave differently, while the identification of the random flies poses technical difficulties. Dr. Jones has experimented with identifying the pollen clinging to the fly as one technique, but one that requires painstaking microscopic examination of each fly. By identifying pollen patterns, one might be able to match it up with known pollen patterns in other parts of the state, and from this one might be able to determine how long the flies had been airborne.
I was also able to contact Dr. Jim Silek who works at the Public Health Entomology Research and Education Center in Panama City, Florida. In Florida they actually spray the beaches if the flies become too dense. The trigger for spraying is a landing rate of 5 flies per minute, which is simply tested by sending someone outside and counting the number of flies that land in a minute. When I mentioned that I have personally experienced a landing rate of probably 100 per minute, Dr. Silek was extremely impressed, “wow that’s a lot.”
Dr. Silek’s research focuses on control measures that the individual owner might use. His article was intriguingly titled, “Attractiveness of Beach Ball Decoys to Adult Stable Flies.” In this article he tested different colored beach balls covered with an adhesive substance, i.e. essentially big, round globs of flypaper. When the ball is completely covered with adherent flies, it can be popped and placed in a garbage bag for disposal. Alternatively he suggested that outdated political lawn signs could be covered with goo and repurposed as fly trap. Dr. Silek kindly sent me reprints of his articles and also how to purchase the adhesive. (Tangle Trap Insect Trap Coating, Grand Rapids, MI Tel: 616-459-4139). He said that coated beach balls could be hung from a tree or pole at eye height around the perimeter of the property. When I asked how many beach balls I might need, he suggest one every 20 to 25 feet (!) or so. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the beach in question was about 3 miles long.
Several of my interviewees told me that the flies on the beach issue is a particular problem for Lake Superior, the coastal part of New Jersey, several lakes in the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the beaches of northwest Florida. In particular Porcupine State Park in the western UP has been closed due to intolerable flies. I had originally thought that beach flies were probably endemic at most beaches, but no. Several years ago I wrote another essay on snapping turtles that had as its theme my quest to rationalize my innate loathing of snapping turtles. While not the initial intent of this piece, I now can also begin to appreciate our flies on our beaches. Stay with me, since this will be a hard sell, but the flies on the beach represent another of nature’s clever puzzles that is peculiar to our environment. The stable fly represents an intricate combination of weather, instinct, and a little bit of intelligence, and the conundrum of its behavior has stimulated the human mind to study pollen on the legs of a fly, put sticky goo on old lawn signs and trousers on cows.
Shoo Fly
One of - - - - ' - great pleasures is a peaceful unmolested hike
Towering trees and crisp breezes without bugs are two things that I like.
But this pleasant mood can be ruined by an agitated swarm of frenzied - - - - -
An orgiastic mass seething on your pants right before your eyes.
So I asked an entymologist to check his - - - - - for ideas on what to do,
But his feeble advice was just to take beach balls and cover them with goo.
Click here for answers
Just Another Golden Scepter
bout 25 years ago, the entire United States appeared to be caught up in King Tut mania, and Chicago was no different. The Art Institute of Chicago was host to a traveling Tut exhibit, and the lines stretched around the block, full of people anxious to see the precious artifacts. My husband had been lucky to snag a couple of tickets through an alumni group, so off we went one spring evening. There we were jammed into the exhibit halls, thigh to thigh and cheek to jowl with other patrons, pressed against the glass display cases which held one fabulous gold object after another. I happened to be wedged against another couple, where the wife was clearly entranced by the exhibit and lingered breathlessly at each display case, much to the annoyance of her husband and those jostling behind her.
“Come on honey, let’s go,” he begged. “Haven’t you seen enough?”
“No there is another exhibit ahead of us that I have not seen, and this is our only chance,” she replied.
“I don’t think that we need to stay and see that, after all it is just another golden scepter.”
“Just another golden scepter,” the words struck me as extremely amusing and sad, emblematic of Americans’ appetite for wanton excess followed by boredom and ennui when it is presented to us, which only breeds a further insatiable desire. Here in this exhibit hall, the enduring craftsmanship of thousands of years, the achievements of an ancient culture, the back story of hundred and thousands of slaves preparing a tomb and riches to prepare a boy king for a peculiar afterlife – all overwhelmed by the dazzle of too many golden scepters. Unfortunately, I agreed with my jaded wedge-mate; I was ready to go.
Over the years as I have attempted to learn and become more aware of my natural environment, I have kept the phrase “just another golden scepter” in my mind. Everyday, our dear planet earth certainly hands us a profusion of golden scepters, even as we simply step outside the door to take the dog for a walk. I only have to look at my dog, joyously sniffing nature’s aromatic bounties to realize this, but I am typically just too lazy and complacent to appreciate the visual gifts before me. One of the distinguishing features of humans being should be our intellectual curiosity and powers of observation, gifted to us either through dumb luck, dogged evolution or some greater power, but if we can just remember to use them, we can transform the most quotidian occurrence into a marvel. Leaf through any natural history or wildlife publication and you will find a wealth of guided trips that will whisk you off to some exotic location to plop you down in front of one of the great wonders of the world. And while I am jealous of those trips, I also realize that with a little applied brain power I could probably find something just as spectacular (intellectually if not visually) in my own back yard.
So what is going on in my backyard? Probably everything, if I could sharpen my powers of observation. A minimal amount of applied brain power should be able to produce astonishing results. I would only have to look to Victorian England as an example of back yard natural history. The late 1800s have been referred to as the Era of Discovery, marked by the fruits of the burgeoning industrial revolution and world wide explorations. Here was Darwin and Lord Alfred Wallace developing theories of natural selection based on observations from the Galapagos and South Seas, respectively, with collections of exotic animals filtering their way back to home port. All an enterprising Englishman would have to do is hop on a boat and travel to the nearest exotic island, and with a little leg work and luck, could probably self name three entirely unique and glorious species. But perhaps these trips, which admittedly carried with them the threat of scurvy, bizarre tropical diseases and death, would be akin to the adventure travel of today, and many English opted for a more local pursuit, back yard beetle collecting. In his autobiography, Darwin describes his zealous beetle collecting:
"One day on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one..."
Some can find nature without ever stepping outside. In first grade Frances had the assignment of preparing a quiz for their classmates where they would provide three clues to an animal. If the class could not guess, then the student would show a picture. The assembled parents were treated to the typical lions and tigers and bears, and then it was Frances’ turn. At the time, I was involved in a project on asthma and therefore had done some research on house dust mites, whose feces are a common allergy trigger. My daughter must have seen them.
She stood up and said, “What has six legs, no eyes and two million of them live in your bed?”
The class’ horror was compounded by the gruesome picture she then displayed - a largely magnified view of the microscopic translucent and hairy bug - and the thought of 2 million of them plus their feces mingling with you as you slept was creepily fascinating. So there you have it, you can even find nature compelling without getting out of bed.
This summer I was sitting at a picnic table eating lunch and reading a book. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a bug marching across the table toward my sandwich. I casually swept the bug off the table, and then was immediately filled with remorse - I might have just casually dismissed one of the seven great wonders of the insect world. I spotted the insect squirming upside down in the leaf litter and carefully lifted it back to the table. This was one magnificent beetle, with tall legs that reminded me of the huge wheels on monster trucks that can handle any terrain. There were two long wildly swinging antennae and large clawed forearms that must have been uniquely adapted to something. I was happy to share my lunch with just another golden scepter.
Just Another Golden Scepter
I want to tell you a few things about asthma that might give you a fright
Most allergic coughing and sneezing is caused by the house dust - - - -.
Just think that every - - - - you go to sleep in your comfy bed,
You are sharing it with an eight legged animal with a hairy head.
And here is another - - - - that will surely make your skin crawl.
There are millions midst your sheets and that’s not all
You will - - - - a shriek and say no more information please,
When you learn that it’s their feces that’s making you sneeze.
Click here for answers
The Fruited Plain
his summer marked our debut performance as gardeners. Our new house came with a dedicated, fenced in garden and underground automatic watering system which would have been handy if we could ever figure out how to use it. We had a very casual and expedient approach; we got some seeds and simply threw them into the mulched ground in vague unmarked rows; the potatoes I planted were old forgotten withered things from the bottom drawer in the pantry. Over the next 10 weeks we were absolutely bowled over by our harvest. We can take minimal credit for this resounding success, which mostly reflects the resilience of nature in the face of our inattentive care. How can it be? We started with seeds no larger than the stye in my lower left eyelid that is currently driving me nuts. One month later we had a profusion of brilliantly colored radishes.
I had always imagined farmers in the winter poring over Burpee seed catalogs for lack of anything better to do. But I quickly realized this a well advised strategy. We were faced not only with mountains of radishes, but rows of lettuce, cilantro and arugula. Clearly we should have planted the lettuce in successive rows so that we wouldn’t be inundated all at once. And I am not sure why we didn’t appreciate that cilantro and argula are essentially both garnishes and multiple rows of each were clearly overkill. In a given year, I might eat one spaghetti squash, but there must have been 50 spaghetti squash out there all gleaming in the brilliant summer sun. I belatedly realized that the vines had extended through the fence, and there were even more spaghetti squash nestled in the lawn beyond, looking like oversized Easter eggs. I am not sure what we did right, but the unexpected payoff came one morning when I was at the farmer’s market buying raspberries. The true farmer looked at me and said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere? You look like a farmer!” I quickly looked down to see if I was wearing an apron, or had dirt under my fingernails. Perhaps there was a smudge on my face, but I took it as a compliment.
We were immediately faced with how to consume all this bounty. It just seemed so ungrateful to throw away produce that was standing so tall and proud. The first challenge was all the radishes, and I quickly decided to include them in everything we ate. Our most consistent dinner guest is my father, and so over several weeks I added radishes to everything we served him. I have come to realize that my father has very distinct and categorical tastes, but these can be overcome with a little imagination and sleight of hand. He is not keen on ethnic food and he will say, “I don’t like French or Italian food, is this Italian?” The taboo on French food is based on the fact that “those frogs” were never sufficiently grateful for being bailed out of two world wars. The Italians were simply on the wrong side of the war. However, I discovered that my father can’t really identify ethnic food. I can serve him a fancy chicken pizza with roasted radishes, and disguise its Italian origin by calling it a quiche, but then don’t tell him that a quiche is French. A beef enchilada can be repurposed as “a sloppy Joe with a different kind of bun.” My father is also not very up to date on food in general. One time I was sitting in the kitchen with my back to him as he was making himself a sandwich at the counter behind me and he asked, “Bobbie, what is glaucoma?” I answered that it was a disease of the eye that can ultimately cause blindness, and so on. I then turned around and saw the quizzical look on his face as he was holding a large spoonful of guacamole.
So I started cooking radishes, cleverly mixed them in with roasted potatoes, baked them in a quiche, put them on the grill in tinfoil with onions and whoever walked in the house left with a radish door prize. And slowly and steadily whittled away at our oversupply. But as soon as we finished the radishes we were confronted with endless spaghetti squash followed by potatoes. Potatoes are about as low maintenance as you can get. They grow quickly and take up a lot of room and thus don’t need weeding. And then when its time to harvest, you take a big shovel to uproot them, so there is a little surprise factor about what has been lurking beneath all summer long. I exulted with my first shovelful as I saw multiple little potatoes emerging from below.
I was instantly reminded of an incident with my mother, dating back to 1976, the bicentennial year. There were some orioles nesting near our house, and mother put out some red, white and blue yarn on the bird feeder, hoping that the orioles would weave them into a bicentennial nest. The yarn went unused, but we did spot the pendulous oriole nest hanging from a branch. As we stood there looking at the nest with binoculars, my mother said, “that nest looks exactly like a scrotum,” and then she walked away. That was the only thing she has ever said to me of even a vague sexual nature. And now nature had repeated itself with these unearthed potatoes. Midst the black earth clinging to the curly, kinky rootlets lay the diminutive globular potatoes.
Adam and Eve on the Fruited Plain
Adam couldn't help notice that while working in his - - - - - -
Something grew large then started to harden.
My God, it's Eve, a gal who likes to strut her stuff.
Thus Adam was the first man to - - - - - - at a woman in the buff.
His eyes - - - - - - over her body, so supple and sleek.
He was left breathless by her beauty and unable to speak.
But he already knew the - - - - - - of something this big,
Quickly he ran to find a leaf from a fig.
Click here for answers
Brain Food
itting in the shelves of everyone of my first cousin’s homes is a copy of the cookbook, “Have Fun with Herbs,” self-published by my grandmother in the late 1950s. So I thought it would a fitting family unity exercise to dedicate a weekend when all of us, spread across the country, would concoct one of the recipes and then share our experiences in remembrance of my grandmother on her 110th birthday.
As I perused the book, I realized that while being a cherished family item, “Have Fun with Herbs” was seriously flawed as a cookbook. There were many instances where the temperature of the oven was omitted, and that maddening phrase, “cook until done,” was frequently used. Its dated quality was charming; it seemed that many recipes focused on the novelty of frozen vegetables. For example, example the recipe for “String Beans and Mushrooms” called for a package of Birdseye French Style frozen beans and a can of mushroom soup. Other expressions included eggs that were “high and scarce,” describing the high price and scarcity of eggs presumably during the war, or “an egg of butter,” referring to an estimated quantity of butter in the era before quarter pound sticks were wrapped with tablespoons conveniently marked. My cousin Susie thought that the theme of the recipes was to add wine early and often, while I detected that many of the recipes included the unhealthy trifecta of butter, cream and eggs.
I was hosting a smattering of local relatives and had considered a variety of unique menu items for our memorial meal. A buffet of tripe and tongue seemed to fit the bill, but this proposed menu was greeted with outright hostility by the senior members of the group. When asked which he preferred, Uncle Frank said that he would prefer not to come, and my father begged to have something different. I got the message and was secretly relieved, since wrestling with a big slab of a tongue, or working with slitherly tripe was a little off-putting.
I then focused on my fond memories of the desserts served at Sunday lunches at my Grandmother’s house. My usual seat was on Granny’s right, and she would give me the initials to dessert and let us guess. There was some sort of homemade strawberry ice cream that was somehow held together with melted marshmallows, and Junket with chocolate shavings served in little Pyrex dishes. But HM, good ol’ honey mousse was one of the favorites and I decided to make this for the dessert. As I reviewed the recipe I was not surprised to see that it consisted of honey, eggs and cream and gelatin. The amount of cream in the recipe seemed overwhelming for this health conscious age, so based on Susie’s observation, I made the executive decision to substitute a cup of sherry for one cup of cream.
Then the recipe called for placing the sweet creamy concoction in a mold - and I found just the thing. At Christmas time, I had gotten a catalog from the Anatomical Supply Company (1-800-ANATOMY) which primarily sold posters and models of body parts -i.e. the circulatory system, the ankle, etc - for doctors’ offices. But I also discovered that they sold molds of body parts as a novelty, and I purchased molds of the left hand and a brain. Buloop, bloop, bahloop, the honey mousse was poured into the brain and allowed to set. Working with gelatin can be a little dicey, as too much or too little will result in pure rubber or bloop, respectively. But as lunch time approached, I was pleased to note that a slight jiggle of the mold revealed a good consistency. The next challenge is to get the mousse out of the mold in one piece. My young niece Della and I secretly went into the kitchen and sort of vibrated the thing and then used a little knife around the edges. Holding our breath, we tipped the mold on to a plate. With a whoosh, the brain plopped on the plate in one glorious and glistening piece. The Anatomical Supply Company had helpfully provided recipes with their molds, and the brain mold suggested that watermelon jello would produce a most life like brain. They obviously never considered the attributes of honey mousse - the ecru colored honey mousse shimmied and shimmered on the plate - if this mousse was any brainier it would have been Einstein’s. We gave Uncle Frank the honors of serving dessert - and told him that since he rejected other organ meats for the entrees, we had found a suitable substitute for dessert. The poor man was initially panic-stricken at the sight of the life like human brain, but then he erupted in peals of laughter. As predicted this mousse packed a wallop - the diluted creaminess was more than compensated by the alcohol content - and our group of 10 could barely polish off the frontal lobes.
- - - - - - - are meant to be broken is my basic cooking strategy and scheme,
So I when I made honey mousse I added liquor instead of cream
And then I put it a mold of a brain that was anatomically correct and - - - - - - -,
So that when it was served, it looked like the perfect human sacrifice.
Picture Uncle Franks’s anguished scream as it - - - - - - - the room
The poor man thinks he has to eat what only cannibals consume.
