Apr 9, 2016
It was Sunday, 8am. The car was loaded – CD’s, snacks, maps, and my own big-font back-road directions. I was headed to Lake Dreher in South Carolina to camp a night with my high school friend Emily, and then to Chapel Hill for four nights with Luli. Freedom! Giggles! Long intimate talks! What could be better? I had just buckled my seat belt when my cellphone rang.
A campsite at Lake Dreher
It was Luli, but not lively Luli. It was her dead voice. She was speaking from the abyss. “Lizzy, don’t come. I can’t have houseguests. I can’t see anyone.” I had never heard it so bad, though I’m careful not to miss our daily phone call when she’s depressed. Of course, when she’s at the bottom, she doesn’t answer the phone.
I called Luli’s psychiatrist, who told me to come right away. I called Margaret, Luli's good friend and neighbor, who promised to keep an eye on her. I called Emily and told her my sister was sick and I was going straight to Chapel Hill. Ten hours later I was driving in the dark, lost as usual in the surreal meanderings of 15-501. I called the motel Joe had booked for me. It was only two blocks away, and in a few minutes I had collapsed on the bed. Luli refused to see me, but agreed I could call her in the morning.
image: aaroads.com
In the morning, she said Margaret and I could come over after breakfast, and the first thing she said when we arrived was, “My sense of humor is returning.” Luli’s depressions can go on for more than a year; this had been only twenty-four hours. She wasn’t all the way out of the pit; she lacked energy and had that frailty of someone who has just emerged from a nightmare. Still, Luli was back. Despite a sharp pain in her gut, which she attributed to a new iron prescription, she was ready to visit. We settled her on the couch with a heating pad.
By mid-afternoon she told me to cancel the hotel and stay with her. Nausea had joined the pain, but she remained pretty cheerful. I ate a delicious supper of salad and Luli’s frozen clam chowder. She ate a few bites of yoghurt and threw up. She persisted in blaming it on the iron pills.
images:chowhound.com, foodnetwork.com
It was 2:30 in the morning when she woke me up and said we had to go to the emergency room. I found the directions on Mapquest; at that hour there was no traffic, and it was a straight shot and short drive. Or it would have been had I turned left intstead of right on Columbia – I blame Mapquest but it certainly could have been me. When I knew I was lost I pulled over, turned on my flashers, and called 911.
image: driversed.com
As I had hoped, a police car pulled up. Officer McDonald said we could wait for the ambulance or he could lead us to the ER, a mile away. I chose that. Luli was in no condition to choose anything – she was doubled over in pain, which now stretched from her belly to her breast.
The parking lot was full. Officer McDonald, his name now inscribed in the Book of Good Deeds, told us to inform the receptionist we’d left our car in the driveway. The waiting room was even fuller than the parking lot. I muttered to Luli, “Tell them you have chest pain.” In classic Eder-family fashion she began by minimizing it, so I interrupted and said, “She has chest pain and vomiting.” We were in triage in less than a minute, with a kind, plump doctor who sent us back immediately to the “cardiac room” a big room with one bed, one plastic chair, and many monitors and machines, right across from the nurse’s station.
image: southcountyhealth.org
Mary Scott, a lovely 14-year old nurse, spoke soothingly as she took Luli’s vital signs, set up monitors, started the IV and – Hallelujah – began the morphine. I sat on the chair, covered with coats and purses, and watched Luli’s lips slowly curve upwards.
The Land of Morphine image:neurorexia.com
Luli is not a whole lot sillier on morphine than she is in real life. She was back, and she proceeded to charm everyone who came in the room, flirting and joking and making it clear that there was a real person underneath all the tubes and monitors. While she enchanted the staff, I wrote down everyone’s name and what they told us.
At 7 o'clock the shifts changed, and brought a new nurse, Peter. Like Luli, he was a New Yorker, and they talked about neighborhoods and theater and everything New York while he learned all about her condition and did a thousand medical things. If he hadn’t been living with his fiancé, I think he would have asked Luli ro marry him. I asked him if we could turn off the lights so we could get some sleep. He had only been at UNC a few weeks, and though he looked all over the room he couldn’t find the switch. He went out in the hall, crossed his fingers, and flipped a switch. “I hope this doesn’t turn off anything important.” The lights went out, an aide found a recliner for me, and we slept a bit.
Nurses work REALLY hard. image:mlive.com
I was too tired to be tired; Luli was drugged. Coffee for me, X ray, CAT scan, blood tests for her. A resident came in with the results – there’s a hernia and an intestinal blockage, we’re going to consult the cardiac team (Luli has a bad heart valve) – and he was gone. Luli was still on morphine, she didn’t care. But I knew “intestinal blockage” was serious. And I didn’t know what they were going to do about it, or when, or ANYTHING.
I went looking for Peter, who was watching two monitors, writing in a patient chart, and eating a bagel. He didn’t know who the doctor was, and I couldn’t remember his name. But shortly afterwards a tall blonde woman came in followed by two young women and a man. They were the surgical team, led by Dr Dreisen. She introduced herself to both of us and carefully explained what they were going to do, down to the different types of mesh they would use depending on what they found inside Luli. If the piece of intestine trapped in the hernia were healthy, things would be pretty simple; if it were infected or dead, they would do a bowel resection.
image: drugs.com
Luli was still stoned, and still charming, but she was calm and lucid. She asked about the possibility of a colostomy. She told about the nightmare of her week-long UNC hospital stay seventeen years ago after a pulmonary embolism, when ineptitude, neglect and cruelty reigned. Dr. Dreisen apologized for what used to be, and assured her they would take good care of her this time. As soon as they had consulted with cardiology they would get her into surgery.
In less than an hour I was following Luli’s gurney all over the hospital and in to a pre-op cubicle in the surgery suite. Another team of three came in, led by the anesthesiologist who specialized in cardiac cases. She was as clear, thorough, and kind as Dr. Dreisen, and even taller. She questioned Luli at length, and responded to each answer with “Awesome.” She explained that they were going to lower a camera down Luli’s esophagus so they could keep an eye on her heart during the surgery. After the long interview, which included medical and personal details, and Luli’s somewhat strained wit, she concluded that we were both awesome. My concern at having a twenty-year-old responsible for my only sister’s heart was allayed by her awesome knowledge of all things cardiological and anesthesiologocial, and the clarity of her explanations.
I sat in the surgery waiting room with all the other people whose loved ones were being cut open. I was exhausted. I was scared. I had a raging case of cystitis and was desperate for pyridium, the pain-killer. I asked the very kind volunteer where the nearest pharmacy was, and she told me there was one in the cancer hospital. I walked and walked to the far end of the complex, to discover that this was the pharmacy where outpatients got their prescriptions. I walked back to the other end, and almost cried when the volunteer in the little sundries shop said yes they had pyridium. I swallowed two on the spot.
It's really four hospitals, and VERY large
I returned to the waiting room, and then Luli’s friend Kathy showed up to keep me company. We talked about everything. Though she was dealing with her father’s severe medical emergencies, her mother’s distress, and the imminent death of an old friend, she was going to spend the night with Luli in the ICU.
At about five Dr Dreisen came out, gleeful. All had gone well, they’d shoved the healthy intestine back where it belonged, and patched up the hernia. From that moment, things just got better and better. Luli is a 71-year-old woman who works out vigorously five days a week. They kept her in the ICU because of her heart valve, but she recovered ridiculously fast. We had gone to the ER at three in the morning Tuesday, and left the hospital at noon on Friday. I stayed with her till Monday. Four weeks later Dr. Dreisen told her she could return to the gym and resume her regular workout, with the exception of the rower and Pilates.
image:crossfitsweatshop.com
Hospital World makes the outside world disappear. There’s nothing but long corridors and elevators, bustling people in scrubs and white coats. I must have encountered two hundred people at that hospital: desk clerks, doctors, orderlies, nurses, cafeteria workers, aides, housekeepers, medical students. I met them at length as they cared for Luli, or briefly as they served me a meal. In elevators they greeted me with “How are you doing?” At the information desk they helped me find Margaret – I was waiting for her in the Corner Café; she was waiting for me at Starbucks. Fourteen hours after we’d arrived at the ER, when Luli was out of surgery and settled into the ICU, I went down to see about my illegally parked car. The parking lot attendant: “We were trying to find you, we didn’t want to have it towed, we paged you, aren’t you Gonzalez?” And there was my car where I had left it.
The parking attendant was one of 100's of kind people. image:hospitalparkinguwo.ca
Clearly management has set the tone for this hospital. I suspect the head honcho is a nurse, because the focus is on the patient, and families are welcome, even in the ICU, where the patients are in private rooms instead of multiple beds around the nursing station. The predominant note is kindness – I think they pump it through the ductwork – followed immediately by knowledge, technical skill, and clear communication. We only encountered a couple of staff who need some coaching: the resident who delivered bad news with no explanation and then disappeared, and a housekeeper and transport orderly who talked non-stop, wearing us both out.
I have read that hospitals are making themselves over, with fine cuisine and chic decor. I don’t care about that. What matters is people who remain humane as they deal with crisis and killing workloads, who know that what is routine and ordinary to them is unique and frightening to patients and families.
I don't want lobster (Lenox Hill Hospital image:NYPost.com)
Even with the best of staff, no one should be alone in the hospital. And no one should be alone waiting to hear the news after surgery. Kathy distracted me in the waiting room with videos of her grandbaby; Margaret organized Luli’s friends and shared night duty with me and Kathy, while other friends spelled me during the day. Staff were impressed by the support, and the anesthesiologist said, “I don’t think my sister would do that for me.” In our case it’s payback. Years ago I arrived at Luli’s house with the flu. She spent a week taking care of me with garlic soup and single malt. After each of my knee replacements she came to Gainesville for a week. She cooked delicious dinners every night, and left us with a freezer full of stews, soups, and chicken pot pie.
image:todaysparents.com
It was an unusual vacation, not at all what I had hoped for. But this dramatic and terrifying emergency, which in the end was merely a hernia repair, brought several unexpected benefits. My sister and I are closer – I wouldn't have thought that possible. I got to know Margaret, who is my kind of people. And Luli, whose brief depression had been brought on by the prospect of cardiac surgery at the place that had ill-treated her so long ago, saw that UNC Memorial had been transformed. She met and admired the cardiac team, and learned all about the proposed valve replacement. I can't say she's excited about the prospect – she'd probably prefer a week in Paris - but she's not dreading it anymore. She'll probably get it done sometime this summer. And I bet that by Labor Day she'll be back at the gym.
Mar 5, 2016
Seventeen years ago, when I was 51, Joe and I donned 35-pound backpacks and hiked down the South Kaibab trail click to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. There we camped for two days, eating huge delicious meals at Phantom Ranch, and then hiked out on the Bright Angel trail. click We started out early in the morning, and I was so exhilarated by the beautiful dawn light and the glory of the Canyon that after we crossed the bridge and began climbing, I started to sing. ‘Yay for me, yay for me, I’m as happy as a bunny in a tree, Yay for me, yay for us, if it came along you know I’d take a bus.’ This proved conclusively that exercise is intoxicating, and annoyed the hell out of four exhausted hikers in spandex bike suits who were sprawled by the side of the trail.
When we emerged from the Canyon, I was both giddy and exhausted. A mother with two young girls stopped us. “Excuse me, did you just hike up from the bottom?” Proudly I said yes. “Would you mind if I ask how old you are?” Proudly I told her. “You see, girls.” she said, “You can do ANYTHING.”
Back when we were young
Planning for our Thanksgiving 2015 trip to the Grand Canyon began a year in advance. Joe reserved two cabins for two nights at Phantom Ranch. Originally, there were going to be ten of us. But two women got pregnant and one man developed knee issues, so they and their partners had to drop out. Other preparations included Amanda saying she wouldn’t go, and me telling the trainer at the gym that I had to train for the hike.
And train I did, until I was rowing at a furious pace, proudly dead-lifting 80 pounds, and doing all kinds of lunges and burpees and other horrors, which became less horrible as I grew stronger. I climbed down and up the 230 stairs at the Devil’s Millhopper, working up to six repetitions, defeated only by boredom. My pulse stayed pretty low through the climbing and rowing, but I quickly grew short of breath. Still, after an echocardiogram and pulmonary tests, my doctor cleared me to go.
image:epicweird
I knew I was fitter than I had ever been. I had strengthened my legs so that as I walked I felt a new sense, or perhaps a youthful sense, of certainty, confident that if I stumbled on loose rock or uneven ground, my legs would not let me fall. I knew I would be slower than the others, but that would give me precious solitude. I looked forward to coming out of the Canyon with the same sense of triumph and pride I had felt seventeen years before.
As Thanksgiving approached, Joe’s emails to the rapidly shrinking group increased. So did Amanda’s resistance. I began to worry that we would have to drag her on to the plane. Since she is 120 pounds of solid muscle, this would not have gone well. Then someone suggested we invite her best friend to come along. To my surprise, Ella’s family agreed she could go. Amanda was very pleased: “At least Ella and I can suffer together.”
Our trip started in Las Vegas, a city at the top of the hole-in-my-bucket-list of places I had vowed never to visit. I was surprised and pleased to find that everything about it made me laugh. And the girls loved it. Our 20-year-old Australian cousin Johanna joined us after a grueling trip from Sidney, and the five of us shared a hotel room surprisingly amicably. Joe’s brother Matt and his wife Amber (one of the pregnant non-hikers) were in town for a conference, and we all went together to Valley of Fire State Park, where we walked a trail of rocks and cliffs entirely covered with ancient Native American graffiti. Petroglyphs are among my very favorite things. That night Amber had a birthday party for Matt, complete with an astounding magician, who delighted everyone, but especially the girls. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a happier beginning to our adventure. My throat was sore and scratchy, but I attributed it to the zero humidity.
Petroglyphs at Valley of Fire image:inzumi.com
We made the five and a half hour drive to the Canyon with no mishaps, checked into our motel, and walked to the rim to see the views. Amanda took a zillion pictures with her new selfie stick. We were up late getting our packs ready, and up very early to eat breakfast and catch the 7am shuttle bus to the Kaibab trailhead. It was freezing cold, clear, and beautiful. I was so excited.
At the trailhead
The girls start down the trail
The other four soon were far ahead of me, and I enjoyed the solitude. The early morning light just adds to the magic of the Canyon. Down and down and down, awed by the constantly-changing views, getting used to the hiking poles, opening my jacket, removing my hat and scarf as I got warmer. I passed people, and people passed me, and we all exchanged cheerful greetings. Younger hikers expressed admiration in that sweet but condescending way that young people talk to old people. I kept drinking plenty of water, and I tried to eat some snacks, but I found I had no appetite. The trail became tricky – lots of ruts and loose rock.
At Cedar Ridge, (1.5 miles down), my gang had waited for me. There were pit toilets, and beautiful views. At Skeleton Point (3 miles down) a lot of people had stopped to rest and have lunch, and I found my gang again. I ate what I could – some cheese and sausage, some bread – but I didn’t feel hungry. Mostly I feasted on the view. After eating a lot, the girls were restless, and we sent them on ahead. They leaped and pranced down the steep switchbacks.
After Skeleton Point, nausea set in. I tried to nibble on trail mix, but I couldn’t keep it down, and didn’t dare put anything else in my queasy stomach. The others were far ahead, and I wondered whether I should turn back, send a message down to Joe with passing hikers. I was afraid he would be angry. I didn’t want to give up my dream of the trip. I wanted to do this, goddamn it. So I continued to Tonto Platform (4.5 miles down), where they had been waiting half an hour. I ate bread and jam, lay down for a bit, and trudged on.
Passing hikers now expressed concern instead of admiration. A woman hiking alone said, “You look like you’re worn out,” and I said yes, annoyed. “You’re kind of grouchy.” “I’m just trying to keep going, I don’t want to talk.” “Let me have your pack.” And then I saw the patch on her jacket – she was a ranger. She took my pack, commented that it was heavy (I always take too much water) and strapped it over her chest, so now she had one in back and one in front. It was a lot easier walking without it, and even easier because she chattered away, distracting me from the hard slog. I asked her if there was any way out besides hiking – maybe there was an extra mule? – and she said no. But she assured me that our route out on the Bright Angel was much easier – the Kaibab trail was a mess, she said, and passed some remarks about Congress and funding. She stayed with me to the foot bridge over the Colorado River (6.3 miles down) and then turned around to hike back up to the ranger station, leaving me with a mile and a half of easy level walking to Phantom Ranch. I had been hiking nine hours, though the trail usually takes about six.
Footbridge over the river
My family was already settled in. Amanda and Ella shared one cabin, which they never left except for showers and meals. Joe, Johanna and I shared the other. The cabins were built in the 1920’s; each had four bunk beds, a nightstand, chair, sink and toilet, and very little remaining floor space. We used the extra bunks for our gear. I had time for a shower in the bathhouse before dinner.
Dinner is served family-style at the Ranch – steak or hikers’ stew, salad, cornbread, chocolate cake. After an all-day hike it is the best meal you ever ate, though the stew, loaded with beef and vegetables, is oddly seasoned with cloves. But I was still nauseated, and could only nibble a bit. I went to bed immediately after dinner, and knew nothing until morning.
Phantom Ranch cabins image:tinyhousedesign.com
In the morning my hunger was as huge as the breakfast – eggs,sausage, bacon, pancakes, potatoes, juice and canned fruit. The day was sunny and warm, and like my appetite, my happiness had returned. Johanna went off by herself, and Joe and I walked the trail along Bright Angel Creek for a couple of hours. In the afternoon we wrote postcards in the dining room, and at dinner I did justice to the meal.
The Creek Trail (little white line at the bottom)
Happy on the Creek Trail
Cactuses on the Creek Trail (Honi soit qui mal y pense)
We didn’t settle down to sleep till 11. About 1am my cold came on full force. With my nose completely blocked I slept little, and lay awake dreading the day ahead. We got up at 5:30. We had agreed I would start before the others, and when they caught up, Joe would hang back with me, and Johanna, Amanda and Ella could go on as fast as they liked. He gave them our credit card so they could check into the motel when they reached the rim. Still hungry, I ate a big breakfast, and started off alone under the stars.
I crossed the bridge. I was happy, proud, grateful to Joe for planning the trip and watching out for me. The vastness, the solitude, the sky brightening and the river gold with dawn, my legs strong, and my head clear now that I was no longer lying down. The colors of the Canyon gradually emerged with the light. We had five miles of beauty and steady walking up hill. Approaching Indian Gardens, the half-way point, where there is a campground and ranger station, the trail is lined with tall feathery cottonwood trees, and the view is green all around you. We were ready for a long lunch break. We took off our packs, sat on the benches, and pulled out the food.
Indian Gardens image:cedarmesa.com
Still happy at Indian Gardens
The mules came and the riders creaked down from the saddles, staggered around on their unaccustomed legs. I was so glad not to be on the mules. At narrow sections of the trail the dizzying views threaten to suck you over the edge; I can’t imagine being elevated above mule-height, with no control over the four legs beneath me.
image: grandcanyonhistory.clas.asu.edu
I ate a big lunch, feeling content, and we started off again. The next stop would be in a mile and a half, at the rest house three miles from the rim. But as we got closer, I had less and less breath. My sinuses were clear, but the cold had reached my chest. I could catch my breath after a brief rest, but only two or three steps left me breathless again, and I was really cold. Though I hated my weakness, we quickly realized I couldn’t keep going.
Joe settled me on a bench in the rest house, a small open stone shelter. He wrapped me in an emergency blanket and called the rangers on the emergency phone. The dispatcher asked many questions as he reported on my condition, and said they’d send a paramedic ranger down to help. I felt guilty and ashamed, but mostly I felt enormous relief at the thought of being rescued. I was still cold, but getting warmer under the blanket.
Three-mile resthouse image:visionbib.com
The ranger, a young woman, arrived in about half an hour. She unlocked the emergency stores box, wrapped me in a sleeping bag, and began heating water for ramen on the little stove. She questioned me at length, and then explained our options. She could hike back down with us to Indian Gardens and we could spend the night at the ranger station there, then hike out. Or we could all slowly continue the hike out, and evaluate my condition when we reached the next shelter, a mile and a half from the rim. If necessary, we could spend the night there. She said it might be one in the morning before we made it out, but she could definitely get us to the rim. The helicopter I had been dreaming of was not an option. I learned later that at $20,000 a trip, the helicopter is reserved for cases which have to get to the hospital fast. Even a broken leg only gets you carried out on a stretcher.
Neither Joe nor I was willing to give up the elevation we had gained after Indian Gardens and hike that mile and a half over again. So we decided to hike out with the ranger. I was miserable, but also relieved to have the ranger take charge of my pack and our pace. Joe was relieved too; it was hard to be the one responsible in what had become a dangerous situations. After more ramen soup, we started out, first the ranger, then me, then Joe. We walked at a pace so slow that I didn’t lose my breath, and we stopped to rest, sitting on rocks, about every hundred yards. The ranger kept us entertained with stories. We walked that way for hours. By the time the stars had come out I was falling asleep every time I sat down.
We reached the next shelter about 10:30. The last mile and a half of the trail is a brutal series of steep switchbacks; the ranger said I couldn’t possibly tackle them without some sleep. We would have to spend the night in the shelter. That was bad news, but I knew she was right. The really bad news was yet to come. She only had an hour left in her shift. They’re not allowed to work overtime, and so she couldn’t stay with us. It was Thanksgiving night, and though she checked with the dispatcher, there was nobody else to send down. She would set us up with emergency supplies, but we’d be on our own. Joe was furious, but he controlled his temper. I was just stunned, and horrified. I had felt so safe with the ranger there. And I was still trying to get my mind around the thought that we were going to have to spend the night outside, in temperatures below freezing.
Shelter for the night image:gjhikes
She heated up more soup, and spread sleeping bags on the floor. She covered us with emergency blankets, and spread a tent over us for more warmth. She promised to get a message to Johanna that we would hike out in the morning. And then she left.
I slept hard. I woke several times to take the long walk up to the toilets. The full moon lit the looming cliffs and deep drops of the Canyon.
image: gubbyblog.blogspot.com
We set out again before sunrise. Five hours of sleep had restored me. We had a mile and a half of steep climbing ahead of us, but I had learned how slowly I needed to go, and had no doubt that I could do it. Joe went ahead to tell the girls we were okay. I found my way back to the motel, we packed up, and drove the five hours to the airport. I slept all the way. I don’t remember anything about the flight home.
For ten weeks I battled repeated respiratory and ear infections, with three courses of antibiotics. I learned that you don’t treat a cold with a ten mile climb and freezing weather. Joe remains convinced that I didn’t train sufficiently. This makes me angry, but I know I can’t change his mind. I also know he’s wrong – the only part of me that didn’t fail was my muscles. I was only a tiny bit stiff after both hikes. Nevertheless I was ashamed of my failure. I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t write about it, couldn’t think about it much. I couldn’t look at the pictures; they brought back my fear and desperation.
It was a long time before I realized that I hadn’t failed. I had hiked seven miles down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and hiked back up ten miles. I had survived the freezing temperatures and high altitude, and persisted through nausea and a respiratory infection. It was anything but an elegant hike; it was a slog and a struggle. It’s still hard for me to focus on the details. But bit by bit I am remembering the glorious times as well as the horror. Slowly I am coming to feel proud of what I willy nilly accomplished.
Some people find comfort in their faith in a benevolent and loving God. I find comfort in the indifference of the universe. All the joys and troubles of my life don’t matter a bit in the large perspective, and I am no more significant than a dust mote in space. I felt that comfort as I looked out into the Canyon under the full moon. I was awed by its power. I know I was fortunate to be forced to spend the night in this place.
As for Amanda, our reluctant and resentful hiker? She hasn’t thanked us for the trip. But she never complained during the hike. And in the last month she has said no fewer than three times, “I still don’t like walking. But sometimes I like it if we have to walk a mile or so. I tell my friends, ‘This is nothing. I hiked ten miles out of the Grand Canyon.’ ”
Unless otherwise credited, photos are by Joe, taken with his cellphone.
Feb 9, 2016
Is this the longest running campaign in history, or does it only feel like it? The 2016 presidential campaign has been afflicting us since Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. It feels as long as the War on Terror. I am not a political junkie, but you can’t avoid this campaign unless you turn off the TV and radio, and only read the funnies. The Gainesville Sun’s multi-page coverage, with the heading “Campaign 2016″ and a little flaggy logo, threatens to surpass hearing-aid ads for most pages devoted to a single subject.
I blame the media. Many journalists seem to have a herd mentality, and turn their attention to the same limited number of stories. Far too many of them devote their considerable intelligence to writing or talking about the daily shenanigans of would-be Leaders of the Free World. Tirelessly they analyze the cause, effect, and meaning of each dip and rise in the polls. Breathlessly they await the outcome of each primary, then eagerly move on to the next.
On to the next primary! image by Paul Taggart :potdpdn.online.com
They seem to be amazed that the decision hasn’t yet been made, despite all their attempts to predict the two parties’ candidates, proclaiming a new rising star with each poll. “Bloomberg’s efforts underscore the unsettled nature of the presidential race a little more than a week before the first round of primary voting,” says the Associated Press at the end of January. Isn’t it supposed to be unsettled? Aren’t the primaries supposed to begin to decide it and the conventions finally settle it?
How to reach an intelligent decision. image:washingtonpost.com
If I were Supreme Goddess, I would ban all fund-raising, polls, and public discussion of the presidential campaign until six months before the election. (Goddesses are not constrained by the Constitution.)
image:historyprojectformsmuslim.weebly.com
There have been times when presidential elections excited me: Fanny Lou Hamer and the Missipppi Freedom Party at the 1964 Democratic convention – I was seventeen and still a believer, not yet jaded. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention, and his subsequent election.
image:biography.com
image: rjustin.wordpress.com
But now I am just disgusted and disheartened. If anything good is happening, if any of the candidates actually have solutions, and actually will be in a position to accomplish something when elected, I can’t see it. My feelings are some blend of a pox on everybody’s house, and it’s time for the American Century to be over. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting old, or because I’ve had three viruses since Thanksgiving. But I believe my grumpiness and despair are widely shared. If I’m fed up, so are a whole lot of other people. I’ll probably vote for Sanders in March, and Clinton in November, but my heart won’t be in it.
image: dailymail.co.uk
Jan 8, 2016
Our Christmas this year involved lots of drama and three of us sick, including the dog. You don’t wanna know. But Christmas Day was sweet and peaceful, just Joe, Amanda and me. Herbed mushrooms, scrambled eggs, a pecan streusel coffee cake, few presents, and an interminable game of Uno. 83 degrees and sunny in the garden. Here’s some beauty from that day.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Dec 11, 2015
Last spring I discovered MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses), when my friend Sandra posted a notice on Facebook of a Stanford course, Ten Pre-Modern Poems by Women. My sister Luli and I both signed up.
The professor, Eavan Boland, is an Irish poet and professor of humanities and creative writing at Stanford.click She was aided and abetted by young poets in the creative writing program. After Boland talked a bit about the poet and her time, and described the poem, we read it and gave our first impressions. An illustrated lecture went more deeply into the poet’s life and times, and analyzed the poem. A contemporary poet commented on the poem, and then we had homework assignment. Faculty and students responded to each other in the discussion forum.
Some of the poems – Browning’s “How do I love thee?” and Rossetti’s “When I am dead, my dearest” were very familiar. I’d seen them so often that the words had lost their meaning. But doing the homework, and reading the faculty and students’ remarks, I saw them fresh.
“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach” Image: The Grand Canyon. National Park Service
“When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Plant thou no roses at my head…” image: Flickriver.com
I’d never heard of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, but I loved her poem, “Washing Day,” a picture of the weekly disruption in an 18th century English middle class family when the washer woman comes to do the laundry. It’s full of vivid scenes and pictures: the clotheslines break, the dog knocks over the drying rack. a little boy loses his shoe in the mud. We see the whole population of the household: the wife, husband, maids, children, grandmother, visitors. There are enough characters and action in Washing Day to make an amusing play, or if you are novelistically inclined there are plenty of scenes to get you started.
Laundry Day c.1765. Image: British Museum
For each week and poem there was a choice of three homework assignments, always including the opportunity to write a poem of your own. For me this was the easy way out. Rhyme and meter are in my blood – doggerel runs in my family. I can write a bad sonnet with the best (or worst) of them, but I soon found I focused more on the poem under discussion if I wrote one of the essays instead.
Rosetti’s poem came alive for me again when I went to YouTube and heard it set to music. I listened to three versions with different melodies and performers. The different songs transformed the poem into something new, and led me to examine the original more closely. click
I was enjoying this course so much that I signed up for another one, Harvard’s Poetry in America: the Civil War and its Aftermath. It had a great deal more material than the Stanford course, all of it tempting. It included a baritone singing Swing Low Sweet Chariot under a slide show of engravings and photos, a discussion of The Gettysburg Address, a Confederate nurse’s diary, and John McCain reciting The Cremation of Sam McGee, which he learned in Vietnam when the prisoner in the next cell tapped it out in code. I soon realized that if I added that course while continuing the Women Poets course I would be a full-time student. I don’t have time for that, so I stopped after a couple of weeks.
Union nurses in the Civil War. Image:civilwarsaga.com
I finished Ten Pre-Modern poems in June, and early in September I started taking Modern and Contemporary American Poetry from the University of Pennsylvania. Each poem was accompanied by a video discussion between the exceptionally good professor and his grad students, conducting close readings of all the poems – word by word and line by line, not neglecting punctuation and line breaks. There was a lot of additional material available, as well as very intelligent discussion on the forums. This was the best and most challenging of the three courses. I stuck with it for eight weeks, through the Beats, but with my Voices Rising concert and a trip to the Grand Canyon looming, and from sheer intellectual exhaustion, I stopped.
UPenn Prof. Al Filreis and grad student Anna Strong.. I loved watching these video discussions partly because Al reminded me so powerfully of my late friend Jim Hardy, down to his voice and the twinkle in his eye.
All the courses have participant discussion forums, and participants come from all over the world. I love hearing furriners talk about us, because it reminds me once again how very parochial we are. People from Peru or Pakistan aren’t necessarily affected by the American orthodoxy-of-the-week. In the Harvard course, several recommended Gone with the Wind as an excellent portrayal of the horrors of the Civil War.
image: ew.com
Most forum posts drew no response – I suppose we’re more interested in our own thoughts than in anyone else’s. In the Civil War poetry course, the longest thread by far was started by someone who asked people to share their creative work. The poetry poured in. None of it had anything to do with the Civil War.
Like any college student, I like to gripe. Judging by the professors in these courses, the current fashion in academia, perhaps stolen from literary fiction, is to discuss everything in the present tense. I hear journalists on NPR do this too.
I suppose somebody has decided that it brings history to life, but it annoys the hell out of me. Aside from impoverishing the language, it flattens our sense of history, and creates a false intimacy, a pretense that barriers of different world-views and culture don’t exist or don’t matter. It leads directly to our presuming to judge the outrages of other eras as though we sensitive souls of the 21st century occupy some moral high ground. I’m convinced that wickedness and cruelty, intolerance and exploitation, selfishness and greed continue in humankind at pretty much the same level through the ages. Only the victims and methods change.
image: thinglink.com
image: linkedin.com
The discussion in the women poets course frequently raised issues of class, race and gender. While I’ve been obsessed with these most of my life, I found myself impatient with what seemed to be requisite and rote comments. I finally wrote a waspish response in my essay about “Washing-Day,” which I generously share with you:
Yes, they hired laundresses, who doubtless had rough lives. Maids worked very hard and had little power or independence. The poet could have written about The Washer Woman, but on this occasion she chose to write about what it was like in the household on wash day. I see no need for 21st century readers to tut-tut about the evils of other historical periods – we have plenty of our own. If I read a contemporary poem about a young girl who is a gifted gymnast, I don’t feel impelled to discuss the sweatshops in which the beads were sewn onto her costume, unless the poet is implicitly leading me there.
Gabby Douglas. Image:usa.com
Aside from my quibbles with substance, I found the technology cumbersome. It took four tries to create a damn password for the Stanford course – with each try, they came up with a new rule: must have numbers, can’t use symbols, must be gluten-free.
image:passwordmeter.com
All my passwords are gluten free. image:fixyourdigestion.com
The Harvard course was worse. It ate my three paragraphs of delicious analysis TWICE. It buried all kinds of critical information several layers down in various links: there were eleven pages of FAQ, and then a separate FAQ thread in the discussion section. It took a lot of digging to discover that the course was designed for Chrome, and Firefox users (me) were particularly likely to have problems.
I recommended the course to Luli, but suggested she just read and view the materials rather than try to respond. She claims she once took a hammer to a recalcitrant computer, and the obstacles in this course were so frustrating that I was afraid she would blow up her whole office.
If I had a hammer… image:hongkiat.com
The Modern Poetry course, which Luli was very engaged with, refused to recognize her after a couple of weeks, and though she and I spent hours on the phone trying to fix the problem, she finally had to give up.
It was their loss. Luli’s participation in the Women Poets course had enriched it for me and many others. Thanks to a wild and crazy adolescence, she barely finished high school and never went to college. She’s as widely read and knowledgeable as anyone I know except our sister-in-law Doris, but she hangs out with a number of highly educated writers and librarians, and she thought it would be cool to have a certificate saying she completed a course at Stanford.
Luli got a certificate. Image:stolinsky.com
We enjoyed the course together by phone and email. Luli in academia is a little like Alice in Wonderland – she sees things for what they are, rather than accepting the strange transformations of truth that blossom in the groves of academe. For example, here was her response to my discussion of the You Tube performances of Rosetti’s poem:
cor blooming blimey! what a load! i listened to the ones you mention, plus a passel of others…not all the way through any of ’em, because i thought them all total rubbish. as maudlin as a bunch of drunks. which the poem isn’t. and so many overblown orchestral arrangements for this simple, tongue in cheek song. my god. but, i liked your essay.
A bunch of drunks. image:crujonessociety.com
For all my carping, I think MOOCs are great. However, be warned. Though all of the courses emphasize that you can participate as much or as little as you want, it’s hard to resist doing more than you have time for. It’s like spreading a buffet in front of a hungry person. The Ten Pre-Modern Poems course is the least demanding (after all, it’s only ten poems) and its approach, including the assignments, the least rigorous. But I enjoyed it, I learned a lot, and it didn’t eat up my life. The Civil War poetry course was rich with material, and I will probably return to it. Though I didn’t stick with it long, my impression is that their poetry analysis is more historical than literary. The Modern Poetry course felt like a graduate seminar in poetry – very intense, and very focused on the poetry. I gained new appreciation for Dickinson, Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Ginsberg, and met others I’d never heard of. I do intend to go back to it, though I’m a little daunted by the time required to do it well, and I may tire of the close reading approach.
Here’s a link to find MOOCs. click. Courses in subjects like engineering, computer science, and business far outnumber the arts and humanities. But their search engine is good, and if you’re so inclined you should be able to find the courses I’ve mentioned, as well as other humanities courses.
In the quest for eternal life and vigor, boomers are advised to keep exercising their brains along with their bodies. Eternal life doesn’t appeal to me, though vigor sounds nice, but I love reading poetry, and learning new stuff is fun.
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Nov 6, 2015
Amanda came into my office this morning in a rare friendly mood and said,
“Yes! Now this place smells like old ladies.”
She was standing right by Trisket’s bed, which is under the desk, so I wondered.
“You sure it doesn’t just smell like Trisket?”
“If I leaned over and smelled her bed it probably would. But no, this is old lady smell.”
“What do old ladies smell like?”
“Cinnamon and old libraries.”
That was a relief. She might have said something about pee. I pointed out the musty books that produce the old library smell, then directed her to the dried lavender and roses hanging on the closet door.
“Take a whiff of that.”
“That’s it! That’s the old lady smell!”
“Oh I’m so glad. People always say old ladies smell like lavender”.
“You like that?”
“Yes. I love being an old lady. And I love that smell.”
“You’re weird, Grandma.”
I’ve always loved smells – sweet, floral, sour, pungent, funky. Even nasty smells intrigue me, though I draw the line at those that make me gag. About ten percent of women lose the sense of smell as they grow old – this is known as anosmia. Parosmia- when fragrant smells turn foul – is worse. I hope I never suffer either one.
My garden is full of fragrant plants – citrus, roses, anise, tea olive and many more. The most successful is my HUGE lavender bush. It keeps going through frosty winters and baking-hot summers. I’ve never understood why it’s so happy in my yard. It reminds me of rosemary, but numerous rosemary plants have shriveled in the same bed. (I decide whether plants are similar according to whether they remind me of each other. I am not a skilled horticulturalist.) This year, for the first time ever, it has produced a single little flower. It also has a resident spider.
I love this plant. I tear off branches and carry them around with me for happy smelling. I used to put sprigs in all my drawers and in the linen closet and under the bottom sheet on our bed, until Joe told me he doesn’t like the smell of lavender. So now I make big bunches of lavender to give to women in stressful situations, such as my friend April when she was pregnant and surrounded by babies. I hang bunches out on the atrium to dry, and then crumble them into ziplock bags to give away.
Every room in our house has a different smell, some pleasant, some not so. When I was little, I liked the musty smell of my grandmother’s New York apartment. I cherish the title “old.” click I’m happy that my room – my retreat and my refuge, filled with photos and paintings of women – smells like an old lady.
Paintings by Arupa Freeman click
My mother at twenty
Collage by me (images by many, including Esther Garcia Eder click)
