Cadmaven

THE DEATH WATCH-LAST

2007-12-21T22:03:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

This is going to be the last entry for the Blog. I will be writing in it in bits and pieces since I don’t have an exact date but in case I should die suddenly in my sleep, I will have written down some last thoughts. I will leave instructions that this document not be made public until I am dead. Since I am trying to give an honest account of my last days and I don’t have an exact date this is the only thing I could think of.

------

Michael died quietly today at about 6:30pm, surrounded by his three children, Jessica, Zachary and Caleb, his loving wife, Sue, and his "favorite son-in-law" Chris. He evidently didn't get around to having any random thoughts between the time he decided to jot them down and the time he died today. Thanks to all of you for reading the blog, and for your comments, which meant the world to him.

- Michael's daughter Jessica

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-EIGHT

2007-12-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

12/17/2007 1:33 AM

I spent the last few days in the most horrible conditions I could ever imagine. I had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t go because I was afraid of hurting myself. By the time I went to the bathroom I had already crapped in my pants. I then had to void myself with the catheter which required standing up and standing there on groggy legs. When I made it back to my sitting position I was overjoyed, but all I had to look forward to was more of the same. Why? I dreamt that all these separate parts rebelled and did their own things and didn’t perform what they would normally do. It seemed to work in my dream. I don’t want my joints to hurt so I can stand up and go to the bathroom, And when I stand up I don’t want to feel groggy so I’m afraid of losing my footing. If I can stand, then I ought to be able to pee.
The longer I sit here and just think about not doing anything the longer it’s going to be before I get a chance to pee. I’ve been procrastinating for an hour so I think it’s time to move.

12/18/2007 5:07 PM

I just had a blood transfusion which is supposed to make me feel better because it takes care of my lack of iron. So far, I just feel well enough to write this. I really feel awful. I fear getting up on my own and I am always scared of hurting myself. I really don’t know how long I’ll be able to live this way. It’s hard for me to stay awake and even read the newspaper. I’ve lost interest in writing for the blog and I’m only writing this to let you know how miserable I am. I might feel better tomorrow because of the transfusion. These random thoughts might become shorter but I will try to keep them current. I don’t see the doctor again until after Christmas.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-SEVEN

2007-12-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

12/13/2007 3:29 PM

It finally happened. I never saw it coming but I fell down. I had just stood up to fill my feeding bag with water after my food ran out this morning, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor with water all over me. I had not passed out so I quickly covered the bag that was partially filled with water and then tried to recover as much of the water that was left in the bottle. I made it to my feet and then my chair without any damage to either myself or the furniture. There was stuff scattered all over the room but no great damage to the room. I did learn my lesson that when they said I would be groggy, I now know what “groggy” means. I will be more careful in the future.

12/14/2007 2:42 AM

I guess I just changed the whole dynamic of my existence by making my life that extra careful which now represents the slowing down of my existence. Sue immediately rearranged the furniture and said that when I go to feed I will get a water bottle separately hung so I won’t have to make any changes during feeding. She said she will fix up the downstairs bathroom so I can shower here instead of going up to the second floor for my shower. Who am I to argue with her after my falling down? I got my patch changed last night and took two sleeping pills when I went to bed at 9:30PM. I just woke up and although it is early, I do feel well rested. I have an easy day to look forward to so at least I won’t be trying to break anything.

12/14/2007 3:59 PM

All’s quite since I’m afraid to move out of my chair and it takes me all day to read the paper. This new patch keeps me sleepy. I’ll see if I can find an Oregon Sunset to add to this write-up. Letha is going away for the week-end at Melissa’s and tomorrow Sue and I are driving down to see Zachary. It’ll be nice to get out for a change.

12/15/2007 1:20 AM

Since I was afraid of getting hurt last night while I was home alone, I decided to get to sleep early. I voided myself while Melissa was here and immediately after she left I turned out all the lights and tried to sleep. I just woke up about ten minutes ago. I voided myself and I’m going to try to get back to sleep.

12/15/2007 1:42 PM

It turned out to be a miserable night. Since I was home alone I was afraid of getting myself hurt by falling down when moving from place to place. I didn’t move very much, in fact, not at all. I was not in pain but I also couldn’t sleep so I was in and out of sleep in fits and starts. By the time Sue got home at 8AM I had to go to the bathroom really bad. She also gave me some extra pain medication and the sleeping pills I hadn’t taken the night before. I finally got to sleep. She is still asleep so we plan to call Zachary as soon as she wakes up.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-SIX

2007-12-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

12/10/2007 5:16 PM

Today, Monday, I had a 10:15AM appointment for taking more blood for the Clinical Trial and an interview with the nurse practitioner. They took 16 vials of blood. I was going to discuss my sleeping problems and my pain management with the nurse practitioner and she suggested that I try a narcotic patch which stays in place for 72 hours. In that time period the pain medication is released slowly and is supposed to level off my pain to a manageable level. I can still take the pain meds I am taking now to supplement the patch. Sue put the patch on as soon as I got home and she got the prescription filled. The nurse practitioner also suggested I double up on the sleeping pill I’m taking at bedtime. I have to be very careful because one of the side effects of the patch is dizziness. I sure got a lot of attention while I was there because I told them I was hurting since I drove myself and didn’t want to drive while under the influence of the pain meds. There was the nurse practitioner, Laura, the test coordinator, Katie, the nurse, Kathryn and the trial doctor. Since I had also told them about my fatigue they said it was probably due to a few factors. The cancer is a contributing cause and this trial medication is also a contributor plus the fact that I am slightly anemic. Since I am not taking chemotherapy they cannot offer me a booster shot for the anemia BUT they can offer me a blood transfusion. I will give that some thought. The transfusion will require about two hours to completion. I don’t think I will try to drive myself to the hospital any more. This whole experience today just took too much out of me.

12/11/2007 4:49 AM

How exciting! I just woke up after a really good night’s sleep. I went to bed last night at 11:30PM after taking the pain meds and two sleeping pills. This is the best sleep I’ve had in a very long time. I got up to go to the bathroom on very shaky legs and gave myself the pain meds but I felt too shaky to get my breakfast. I feel OK sitting up but standing is an adventure. We’ll see what happens next.

12/11/2007 5:31 PM

I have had a really drowsy day. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open for very long. This new patch has kicked in and it certainly makes me feel comfortable and pain free. Tomorrow I will try to drive Letha to the bus and pick her up from the bus as well as drive her to her sewing class. It’s too cold to sit in the car for sewing class so I just hope I don’t sleep through her pick-up times. I will use the same routine tonight for getting to sleep and I can then look forward to a good night’s sleep.

12/12/2007 5:24 AM

I was actually up at 5:00AM, planning my strategy and getting ready to start the day. I am having my breakfast now. The night was AOK so I feel very well rested. The house heater just kicked on so I’m starting to get warm. I hear stirring in the house so others are up too. I will be ready to start the day when my food runs out.

12/12/2007 10:05 AM

I have been in and out of sleep all morning. I barely got through page one of the paper. I took Letha to the bus at 7:15AM and I got back to my chair but it took me about an hour to get up and give myself the water bottle. This new patch has really changed my lifestyle. I wonder what’s going to happen this afternoon when I have to take her to sewing class and then to dinner. It feels like I can sleep all day. My mind is definitely affected since I have to talk myself into doing anything. I’m going to try to read the paper now and then maybe read some of my book. I don’t have any concerns about the pain so I guess it must be working. In general I would say I’m feeling pretty good.

12/12/2007 7:25 PM

I made it to the bus to pick her up and I dropped her off at sewing class as well as picked her up again. I made a dinner for her and made my own dinner set-up. I got plugged in for dinner as soon as I voided myself and then promptly fell asleep until the dinner ran out. I’m just sitting here now getting myself ready to take on the water.

12/13/2007 8:55 AM

I’m going to try to explain yesterday afternoon even though I’m not sure I understand it myself. Sue came home just before eight and she was surprised I wasn’t watching TV. I never did turn on the TV all night. I had the laptop in my lap, open, and ready to write more for the blog. The next thing I remember was it was about 9:30PM, the lap top was still on an on my lap and I had been fast asleep. The cat was in the laundry basket and I had run out of water. Sue put the water in my feeding bag and I promptly went back to sleep. I woke up at 10:25PM and decided to make preparations to get to bed. 12/12/2007 10:40PM I was still trying to figure out what to do next since I had a headache. I found some Tylenol and took them along with the sleeping pills and the pain meds. It was a sequence that seemed like it took place in a dream.
I woke this morning with big plans for the day but it seemed I was unable to carry even the slightest chore because I was so fatigued. I hope a restful day will do me some good.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-FIVE

2007-12-10T05:59:00.000-08:00

Random Thoughts

12/5/2007 10:59 PM

It’s been an up and down two days. Yesterday I thought I was having some heart pain in the early evening, which turned out to be just a slightly rapid heartbeat. Tonight, at about the same time as yesterday, early evening, I felt very hot and my stomach was doing flips. It turned out to be the last throes of a diarrhea attack. I was just afraid that I would not be able to control it. Overall I have felt fatigued the past two days and this might be due to taking my pain meds every four hours. I tend to sleep easily while sitting in my chair. Since I haven’t needed to drive anywhere I’m keeping up with my pain meds and I certainly feel better in my legs and my arms. My jaw, however, doesn’t seem to be as receptive to the medication. The constant spitting is getting to be a real ordeal and even when I’m able to go for long stretches without the need to spit, it goes on all day. The quality of the spit varies from mostly liquid to real throat generated phlegm. When I get ready to sleep I don’t seem to have any problem having to spit often, unless I recline too steeply in my chair. I’m afraid to try to sleep in the bed because I would be disturbing Sue. I might try it on some night when she is working. My wake-up call is always the bladder alarm which occurs between 3:30AM and 4:00AM. It wouldn’t be too bad if I could go back to sleep after I void myself but the pain starts kicking in at that time too. I try to plan my early mornings around the 6:30AM time slot for my shower so if I take the pain meds at 5:00AM I can take them again at 9:00AM, 1:00PM, 5:00PM, 9:00PM and at bedtime, around midnight. I sometimes pass up the 5:00PM and take the pain meds at 8:00PM instead. When I have a hospital appointment, and don’t have to fast, I try to get my feeding done before Letha has to catch the bus. That means I start to feed myself around 5:00AM.

12/6/2007 10:33 PM

One thing I forgot to mention is that I feel cold all the time. If I get the room comfortable for myself, others in the room are burning up. I guess I overlooked the fact that with weight loss and the level of pain I am now experiencing, I also am having a problem maintaining my body temperature. Today was a very quiet day which I spent alone with the house temperature at a comfortable level. The actual temperature was such that I would have felt very hot under normal circumstances.

12/7/2007 3:23 AM

I had a problem getting to sleep last night so I may be taking a lot of naps today. I can’t put my finger on anything in particular but the amount of sleep I’ve been getting lately is less and less. I feel sleepy during the day but I don’t feel tired, if that makes sense. I’m trying to keep a record of every small detail of my life to see how this new medication has affected me. So far I haven’t seen any gross changes.

12/8/2007 2:18 AM

With all the little naps I seem to take during the day, I find myself wide awake at 2:00AM. I guess that after a little while, I will feel sleepy again and get back to sleep. This spitting business is starting to interfere with my sleep and I suppose that is a new development for me. I used to be able to sleep without a spitting problem, but know I seem to have to need to spit more often and even in the middle of the night. I’m also not too sure about this sleeping pill that I’m taking so I’ll ask the doctors about a possibly new pill. If I don’t feel better after this week-end, I will also ask about a stronger pain medication. The pain in my jaw does not seem to be affected by the pain meds that seem to work very well on the leg and arm joints. Having visitors and trying to talk a lot is very tiring and makes my spitting problem worse.

12/9/2007 3:54 AM

Some days I feel so weak that I have to talk myself into moving from one position to the next. Yesterday, Saturday, was one of those days. I was never able to catch up with my sleep from the night before and I felt very weak all day. I ate my three cans in the morning plus the required amount of water but I kept fading in and out of sleep all day but still felt tired. When I knew I had to get up to go to the bathroom I just sat there telling myself to get up but not moving. It was a very strange day. I feel better now but I still couldn’t sleep past 3:00AM. I forced myself to keep trying to sleep some more for the past hour. I will try again in a little while because it is too early to get up yet.

12/10/2007 5:49 AM

It was a rough night last night. I tried to go to bed early last night, 8:30PM, with disastrous results. I was wide awake at 2:00AM and I had to void my bladder, take some pain meds and another sleeping pill. I finally woke this morning at 5:30AM but not feeling well rested. I think it was a bad idea to try to go to bed early. I have to try to get a better sleeping pill.

Ownership vs. Stewardship

2007-12-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

I have been curious about the origins of these concepts for a long time but I never took the time to look into it but since this question came up again recently during the writing for my Blog, I thought that this was a good time to find an answer. My sole concern was with land and the question I had was, “Where did the concept of land ownership derive?” Specifically I always thought it was very funny that the European “White Men” wanted to buy land from the “Primitive Red Men” when they came to the “New World”. The American Indian had no concept of land ownership since they lived off the land and moved on as the seasons changed or their food source moved.

In the little reading I’ve done just recently it turns out that there is a biblical perspective to the question of ownership of material things, not just land. According to the following quote, we only “own” what God permits us to have. Society does not seem to have this same view so I wonder is it a form of Heresy to claim ownership? I am also faced with the dilemma of a non-believer owning anything.

“Ownership vs. Stewardship
One of the fundamental concepts to grasp in the area of personal finance from a biblical perspective is the question of true ownership of material things. Do we actually “own” whatever wealth that we accumulate during our lifetime, or are we more like “managers” of the resources that God permits us to have? Society tells us that whatever we purchase belongs to us, but the Bible tells us a very different story. Psalm 24:1 clearly states, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (NIV). The Bible even explains who the source of our wealth really is. In 1 Chronicles 29:11-12 the Bible says, “Yours, O Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all. Wealth and honor come from you; you are the ruler of all things” (NIV). Knowing that God is the true owner of all things relieves us from the responsibilities of ownership, and places us in the position of manager (or steward) of whatever resources God has entrusted us with. When we view our material possessions from this biblical perspective, we begin to realize that how we handle our wealth here on earth will have eternal significance on the day when we meet our Lord face-to-face.”

Another quote that I found takes a slightly different approach.

Stewardship vs. Ownership. . . “my” district, “my” church, “my” department, even “my” ministry. Private ownership is something we are enculturated into from childhood in our society, not a matter of semantics. We probably need a deliverance service to deal with this epidemic!
Stewardship in leadership implies recognizing accountability, responsibility, and investing wisely of all resources on behalf of the One we serve to whom it all belongs. Entitlement and territorialism are incongruous with biblical stewardship.

I was unable to find any reference to ownership vs. stewardship exclusively for land so I am also including the write-up by Ted Schroder of a C.S. Lewis book, “The Screwtape Letters”. Although the subject of this book goes beyond what I had sought I thought it was interesting enough to share. (It is a bit lengthy) I have yet to find any reference that describes how we came to the modern concept of ownership.

OWNERSHIP VERSUS STEWARDSHIP
Ted Schroder
October 24, 2004

C. S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, has the senior devil advise his
Subordinate to influence his subject. "Let him have the feeling that he
starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him
feel as a generous donation that portion which he allows to religious
duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total
from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious
sense, his own personal birthright."

"You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go
on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot
find a shred of argument in its defense. The man can neither make, nor
retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift. He is
also, in theory, committed to total service of the Enemy [God]; and if
the Enemy [God] appeared to him in bodily form and demanded that total
service for even one day, he would not refuse. ... The sense of
ownership in general is always to be encouraged. The humans are always
putting up claims to ownership which sound equally funny in Heaven and
in Hell and we must keep them doing so. Much of the modern resistance
to chastity comes from men's belief that they 'own' their bodies... It
is as if a royal child whom his father has placed, for love's sake, in
titular command of some great province, under the real rule of wise
counselors, should come to fancy he really owns the cities, the
forests, and the corn, in the same ways as he owns the blocks on the
nursery floor."

"We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion.
We teach them not to notice the different sense of the possessive
pronoun - the finely graded differences that run from 'my boots' through
'my dog,' 'my servant,' 'my wife,' 'my father,' 'my master,' and 'my
country,' to 'my God.' They can be taught to reduce all these senses to
that of 'my boots,' the 'my' of ownership. ... We have taught men to say
'my God' in a sense not really very different from 'my boots,' meaning
'The God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services.'"

"And all the time the joke is that the word 'mine' in its fully
possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything....
They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their
souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever
happens." (101-104) St. Peter writes: "Each one should use whatever gift
he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in
its various forms." (1 Peter 4:10) St. James writes: "Every good and
perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly
lights." (James 1:17)

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-FOUR

2007-12-04T00:19:00.000-08:00

When I was working for an engineering firm in Corvallis I shared an office with a born-again Christian. Over the span of that year and a half we both learned a lot from each other and became really good friends. We had kids of about the same age and his first complaint was that the public school system didn’t teach enough about Christianity. (His words were that the system was too secular) It was from him that I first learned of the organization of non-conformists and the non-conformists manifesto. I pointed out to him that by definition a non-conformist was one who didn’t want to conform with anyone. I, therefore, found it difficult to believe that non-conformists would want to get together with other non-conformists. The “manifesto” was also an item I questioned on the same basis and he never was able to produce it so that I could read it for myself. He had heard about it from a pastor at his church.

The Atheist Alliance Inc. (AAI) is a democratic association of independent, autonomous atheist societies. Applications for Alliance membership from independent local, regional or international atheist clubs, groups, societies, organizations, and associations are always welcome. AAI welcomes individual members. In addition, individual atheists who do not have an already established atheist organization in their area may receive a free membership with Atheist Internet Outreach; Established as a member organization of the AAI, our Outreach Program is designed to assist isolated and/or disaffected atheists with freethought issues of the day... Atheist Alliance International is registered in the United States as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, educational organization. Donations to AAI are tax deductible for U.S. taxpayers.

I ran across this organization of Atheists, the Atheists Alliance Inc. and this organization does have a “manifesto”, so maybe he wasn’t that far from the truth. It’s easy for me to make the leap from non-conformist to Atheist, although others may not agree.

I find this extremely humorous because it goes back to my question of the need to have a building, a person and others in order to communicate with the unknown. Why would a group of people that don’t believe in God want to get together? Is this a case of circling the wagons and defending oneself against an enemy? Is it some sort of group therapy to bolster one’s insecurities? “Are you really sure that you don’t believe?”

Now that I’ve bored you with why I am an Atheist and how I view the world of the non-believer, here are some definitions I did find on the “web”.

Atheism is not a religion in the sense that Christianity, Islam, and, Judaism are. Atheism is not generally perceived as offering a complete guideline for living as do most religions.
Atheism is confined to one factor: the existence or non-existence of a deity. Atheism can involve the positive assertion that there is no deity.

Each atheist has a personal moral code. However, it is generally derived from secular considerations, and not from any "revealed" religious text.

In one way, most people in North America are Atheists. Christians will generally deny the existence of the Mayan, Hindu, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Sumerian, Sikh, and many hundreds of other Gods and Goddesses, even as they assert their belief in the Christian Trinity. Thus, the difference between a typical Christian and a typical Atheist is numerically small: The strong Atheist believes that none of the many thousands of Gods and Goddesses exist; the Christian believes that one God exists in a certain structure -- a Trinity -- whereas all of the other thousands of deities are nonexistent, artificial creations by humans. Although the numerical difference is much less that 0.1%, the philosophical difference is immense.

There exists massive discrimination against Atheists in the U.S.

Part of this may be based on the historical linkage between Communism and Atheism. Most Communists are Atheists. But many people do not realize that most Atheists in North America are not Communists.
Another reason for this discrimination is the common belief that a person cannot be motivated to lead a moral life unless they hope for the reward of heaven, and fear the punishment of Hell. In the past, this belief had been codified into law. Conscientious objectors opposed to participating in warfare were thrown in jail if their opposition to killing was not based on belief in God.
Still another cause of discrimination is a widespread linkage between theism -- the belief in the existence of God -- American citizenship, and Christianity.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-THREE

2007-12-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

(I have had several letters and comments about my attitude towards dying and some, including my cousin, have questioned my beliefs. The focus of this discussion is religious and requires the definition of some terms that are loosely used such as “soul”, “conscious”, “God”, “heaven”, “hell”, “atheism”, “afterlife” etc. I have tried to respond to these questions by explaining what it is I believe but I have not tried to explain why I believe what I believe or don’t believe. In an attempt to do just that I started by defining “Atheism”, as I think of it, and went to the internet to locate definitions that have been written by others. The result is an extensive collection of definitions from which I have chosen those that best fit my own belief. In addition I have tried to layout where I am coming from with my belief and how I came to believe what I believe. I am trying not to sound defensive since I don’t think I have any reason to defend my beliefs nor am I interested in anyone else believing what I believe. The net result has become rather lengthy, so I will try to find a suitable dividing point and get this all done in just two parts.)

In 1948 I was Bar Mitzvah’ed and when my father’s father died the next year I went to the Synagogue, with my father, every morning and every evening for an entire week. That was the last time I set foot in any building for the purpose of praying. There has always been a question in my mind why it is necessary for a true believer to need a building, a religious leader and fellow believers in order to communicate with a God.

It was soon after the death of the brother of a good friend of mine that I started to question the existence of God. He was young, happily married and a father of small children who succumbed to a disease, probably cancer, that killed him and I felt that if there was a God then he should not have died. Over the years there have been many instances of tragedies that are left unexplained if one believes that there is a God. When a believer is asked about the Holocaust the answer is usually along the lines of, “every once in a while God has to let the Devil have his due so that He can show the power that He has over the Devil”. I don’t buy into that story.

In all the years that I have not believed in God I have never tried to persuade anybody towards my belief or the lack there of. I have asked rather leading questions when I was attacked for my beliefs and this may have been interpreted as preaching my beliefs but that is not nor has it ever been the case. People usually try to put me on the defensive when they hear I am an Atheist because it makes them uncomfortable and I think that they are afraid to ask these questions of themselves.

When my children were growing up we didn’t go to church but I never denied the kids the right to attend a church if they were invited by a friend. We had Mormon friends who invited my kids to services and prayer meetings and other church activities, and I never stood in their way of attending these activities. I also recall some Seventh Day Adventist friends and Jehovah’s Witnesses that invited my kids to attend activities at their churches. Again, I never stood in their way. I also never spoke about Atheism to my kids. I strongly believe that a person has to make that kind of choice when they are old enough to make their own decisions and not be “brain washed” as a child to attend Sunday school and learn the tales of the Bible without a better reference than the words of some pastor or minister.

The following is a quote that reflects what many people define as “religious freedom”. My definition includes the freedom to not believe in any God.

George H.W. Bush, as presidential nominee for the Republican party; 1987-AUG-27: "No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God."

Now that I have been told that I am dying it would be very easy to blame God or ask “Why me?” Is there something that I did in my lifetime that was so bad that I am being punished by God? When I die will I be sent to hell for eternity? And there are many more questions like this that one could think of IF one believed in a God but at this point I consider it a privilege that I don’t believe in either heaven or hell or a hereafter. It’s one less thing I have to worry about.

Isaac Asimov, "On Religiosity", Free Inquiry magazine: "Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism."

When we lived in Connecticut we knew a couple, of our parent’s vintage, who threw a party every year just before Christmas. The wife was an alcoholic and got very upset if there was anyone at her house that wasn’t drinking. In fact she had glasses that had pointed bottoms so that you could not set down a glass with anything in it. Knowing that I did not drink made her uncomfortable so as soon as we arrived at her house she ran over to me with a glass of tomato juice without booze, what is known as a “Virgin Mary”. She had to make sure I at least was holding a drink. I feel that people that hear that I am an atheist react the same way, they can’t just accept that without trying to preach to me or question the concept, even going so far as to suggest that I’m really an agnostic.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-TWO

2007-12-02T05:56:00.000-08:00

I guess it’s time to get back to my health and the Clinical Trial I’m involved in, so here goes. Friday I got my last infusion, which took an hour, and then I had to sit around for six hours while they took my vital signs every fifteen minutes, for the first hour, and then every hour after that. There were also several blood draws during this six hour period. Next week, and for the following month, I am scheduled for a series of tests which include CT Scans and Ultrasound and EKGs. I had a chance to meet the doctor conducting this Clinical Trial and he asked me if I’ve noticed any of the side affects that are associated with this infusion. So far my only reaction has been an overall itching feeling on Friday. It didn’t last very long and it was not very intense. Other participants, I was told, have broken out in rashes. Every day prior to the infusion I met with a doctor and they checked me over to see if there were any noticeable changes yet. My only comments, based on their questions, revolved around the level of pain I was experiencing. In order to be able to drive myself to these clinical visits I have cut back on my pain medication so by the time I get home I am pretty tired and worn out from the level of pain I have had to endure. In anticipation of Friday being a very long day I asked my son to pick me up at the clinic and drive me home. This was a great deal of help because that allowed me to take my pain meds during the day without any concern for my ability to drive. This worked out very well and I drove him home the next morning.

The doctor in charge of this Clinical Trial also mentioned the fact that I may start feeling some effects of the medication this week-end. So far I have noticed that I feel a little more tired and I seem to have gained four pounds this past week. I take my weight every morning and since early October I have been maintaining the same weight within a pound or two. This four pound jump seems significant to me so I will certainly keep close tabs on this from now on. The next several weeks may show some affects from these meds in a positive direction which will certainly make me feel good about having decided to get into this trial.

While I was at the clinic on Friday I got to talking to a man that was getting chemo for brain cancer and he told me that he was the first one to get into this same Clinical Trial. He is a lot younger than I am so when he was offered another Clinical Trial by this Oregon doctor and the NIH, in Bethesda Maryland, he jumped at the opportunity. Unfortunately when they ran a scan on him they discovered his brain cancer which made him ineligible for the trial. The cancer that was first found on him was on the big toe of his right foot. By the time they discovered that the sore that would not heal was cancer, it was diagnosed as being stage four. The cancer has since metastasized to his lungs and his brain. He seemed to feel that the meds used in this study were beneficial, although I failed to see the logic at this time.

Regardless, the reason for my interest in this Clinical Trial was that it might slow down the cancer I have with fewer side effects than going back on chemo and there is the possibility that I could be doing some good for someone else.

I may have mentioned that I just finished Carole Radziwill’s book “What Remains” and one line she uses in describing cancer is, I think, memorable.

“Cancer tiptoes in like a teenager past curfew”.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY-ONE

2007-12-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

The inevitability of death is not the issue but rather the fact that the date of that event is known and almost close at hand. In the case of my father, I very well remember the last time I saw him but I didn’t know at the time that he would die within the month. I grieved after the fact, which is normally the case. In the case of my mother, it was just a case of her wanting to die, or just being sick of living, and her never getting past the question, “Why me?”. Again I did my grieving after the fact. What concerns me now is that those around me know I’m dying and their grieving is starting while I’m still alive. I am not suggesting that I hide the facts but I don’t know how I would react in their situation so I have a problem trying to ease their pain. My daughter says I have nothing to apologize for but I don’t want to contribute to their suffering by doing insensitive things.

On a lighter note, here are some definitions and quotes I found interesting.

Soul music is a music genre that combines rhythm and blues and gospel music, originating in the United States. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying."[
Soul food is an American cuisine, a selection of foods, typically associated with African Americans of the Southern United States. In the mid-1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement was just beginning, "soul" was a common adjective used to describe African American culture, and thus the name "soul food" was derived.
The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?
- Joseph Addison
The soul is one with its faith.
- Cyrus Augustus Bartol
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
- Bible, Matthew (ch. XVI, v. 26)
It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
- Albert Einstein

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTY

2007-11-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

My cousin again raises some interesting points in answer to my latest entry so I thought I would share this with you. This also may turn into a two parter because it now looks too long for one sitting.

Let me start with part of what he wrote.

What is this SOUL we keep talking about? In eulogies we often say that the deceased “will live with us forever” meaning that we are not going to forget him for a long time. Now let me tell you about this theory I have been entertaining for a long time, regarding the human soul. You are probably aware, Michael, that during your lifetime, you have known thousands of people, some of which became to be (as we say) “close to your heart”. Each of these people has left his mark on your consciousness. Some, very little, and some much more. Now, if you regard this consciousness of yours, you can say that it consists of a large amount of imprints, left by events you have been experiencing and of images and impressions of friends, relatives and others, some alive and others who have died.
Take your father, as an example: He, most certainly, keeps “living” in your consciousness. Physically he has been dead for a long time, but he, from time to time “comes to your mind”. According to this theory of mine, this image of your father is a part of his soul. His soul does exist, as well, in the consciousness of others (mine, for instance). So, what actually is this soul?

My first response was the following note I sent him via e-mail yesterday;

It is always a pleasure to hear from you, especially since you delve into such interesting subjects. This latest letter is going to require some research since I am not sure that I fully agree with the use of the word “soul”. I’m not sure that Shakespeare said “The show must go on” but I do believe that he said “A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. I agree that a piece of someone lives with you after they have died and I agree that there is a part of the person who has died within the ones who loved him or her, but I’m not sure that I would call it the “soul”.
Although I agree that I have known a lot of people in my life and some of them were closer to me than others, I can’t agree that what I remember of them is their “soul”. I have always felt, and I got this idea from my father, that when someone dies you ought to remember them as you knew them when they were alive and healthy, not sick and dying. I do remember and have thoughts about my father, especially if I find myself in a tight situation or a situation that requires tact and a good word, but I would have a hard time describing that as a soulful experience.
I will pursue this concept further after I do some research and give it some thought but, as I said, it is hard for me to identify this process as dealing with a “soul”.
After doing some “web research” I came up with the following items:
“The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. In these traditions the soul is thought to incorporate the inner essence of each living being, and to be the true basis for sapience. (Sapience, usually defined as wisdom since it is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment. Judgment is a mental facility that is a particular form of intelligence or may be considered an additional facility, above intelligence, with its own properties.) It is believed in many cultures and religions that the soul is the unification of one's sense of identity. Souls are usually considered to be immortal and to exist prior to incarnation.
The concept of the soul has strong links with notions of an afterlife, but opinions may vary wildly, even within a given religion, as to what may happen to the soul after the death of the body. Many within these religions and philosophies see the soul as immaterial, while others consider it to possibly have a material component, and some have even tried to establish the weight of the soul.”

This is a definition for “soul” that I found on-line and reinforces what I believe, that “soul” is tied to religion and the concept of an afterlife. Since I don’t believe in either I reject the use of the word in the way you have described it. In fact, there are some African peoples that won’t allow their pictures to be taken because they believe that by taking their picture you take something away from them. They may very well agree with your use of the word “soul”.
What you have described is what I would call memories. In addition, what you refer to as “consciousness”, I would prefer to think of as experiences. The concept of “conscious” also implies a thought process that is outside of the control of the individual.
I don’t agree that your theory is “metaphysical”. It is a religious belief that relies on the existence of a so-called “higher power”, and that takes away the individual’s ability to think for himself. It is this “consciousness” and “soul” that symbolize the faith upon which religion is based.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-NINE

2007-11-29T01:21:00.000-08:00

It’s Midnight of the Wednesday of the week of my Clinical Trial. It is referred to as day three of the trial based on the schedule I got that goes through January 2008. This was a relatively easy day, compared to Monday, since I only had to wait and have vitals taken every fifteen minutes for two hours after the infusion. I started the day with blood being drawn at 9:15AM and I was out of there by 2:00PM and home at 2:43PM, just as the school bus passed my driveway. I really felt, on balance, that I had had an easy day. I sat down and watched a movie with my little girl and settled into my regular TV chair about the time she was headed for her bath at 8:00PM. The next thing I remember was waking up at 11:15PM. I guess I was a lot more tired than I thought. Friday, which is scheduled to be a long day, might really wear me out so I’ve arranged for my son to come to the Clinic and drive me home. I have decided that I’m not a very good judge of my own weariness at this time. Part of it is the tightrope act I’m doing trying to balance the amount of painkiller I’m taking when I plan to drive myself. The amount of pain I have to endure in order to be able to drive myself is a lot more tiresome than I imagined.

Since my little evening nap has made it impossible to get to sleep now I thought I’d delve into some other thoughts I’ve lately had on this whole Death and Dying question. As I already mentioned, I was a bit taken aback by people’s reaction to my thoughts about my own death. I guess my problem is, and has been, my inability to see their perspective on my dying. The bottom line is that my loved-ones are more affected by my dying than I am since they have to deal with whatever transpires in their lives when I’m not here.

I am almost finished with a book titled, “What Remains” by Carole Radziwill, which is an autobiographical account of the time she and her husband spent “fighting” cancer during the first five years of their marriage. It has certainly opened my eyes to the sorts of things my loved ones are going through and will have to go through in the near future. My only means of supporting them now is to maintain my attitude and face death with pragmatic reality. I don’t want to fall back into the position of “Why me?” or dwell on my death as the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I do face daily challenges in trying to overcome the pain that this disease is imposing on my body but on the other hand I try not to dwell on these as a handicap that others may need to deal with. Looking back on these past few weeks I see where I have made some mistakes in dealing with family and friends and I hope that I can rectify these errors in judgment before I end up antagonizing everyone around me. Rather than trying to get everyone to understand that I am not afraid to die I have to have more sympathy with what they are going through. The entire concept of “Death & Dying” is not about the one who’s dying but rather about those he leaves behind. The memorial services that are conducted after a person dies are meant to appease the living, whose lives were touched by the one who died. The French have an expression, “Chacun a son gout”, which translates into, “Each to his own taste” and I interpret that to mean that everyone has to approach the memorial in his own way. My own approach to the death of a loved one was to always try to remember that person at the time when one had fond memories of that person.

I don’t think I have exhausted this topic so I will let it rest for now, to be continued as I get brain waves and friendly feedback. I realize that I have just spent in excess of an hour on this topic and I am ready to attempt sleep again. I plan to pursue this topic further in my reading and I hope to make my passing a better experience for those near and dear to me,

The Cremation of Sam McGee

2007-11-28T15:11:00.000-08:00

The Cremation of Sam McGee
by Robert W. Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ‘taint being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”

A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows—O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
Then I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked;” . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-EIGHT

2007-11-27T04:00:00.001-08:00

It’s Monday and I’m sitting in the Chemo Lab waiting for my test drugs to arrive. I thought I was prepared but I guess I should have brought some reading material since I can’t seem to connect to the internet from this office. The first thing they did was draw some blood and I was told that there would have to be a follow up in 24 hours after the infusion, which is a new wrinkle to my schedule. Katie gave me a shot of KLH, whatever that is, which is part of the study. Apparently the infusion takes about 90 minutes and then they watch me for an hour so I think I’ll be able to get home before the kid’s bus gets there at 2:45.today.
What I thought was going to be a long day has turned into a very very long day. They started the infusion at 11:45AM and it lasted an hour during which time they took my vitals every 15 minutes. What I didn’t know was that they had to take the vitals for five hours after the infusion. The last word is that I won’t be done until 6:45PM. It is now 1:45PM and I will call Sue at 2:00PM. She is supposed to work tonight and is sleeping now.
I have an IV just inside the bend of my right arm and the blood pressure cuff on my left arm so my arms are stiff and even if I had some reading material it would be difficult to turn pages.
I suggested to Sue that she could possibly report late and I would be home as soon as I could. She suggested that I could pick The Kid up at the hospital but to keep my cell phone on and she would call me. I finally realized that the strange music I was hearing was the ringtone on my new phone so I finally answered it and the plan now is that I come home as soon as I can. It’s now 4:00PM and I plugged myself in for dinner. I may not get to the water part until I get home.
I got my dinner and water done by the time the last blood was drawn at 6:45PM and I wobbled out of the building, and drove out of the parking garage, into a steady rain, at 7:00PM. By 5:00PM I was the only one left in what had been a very crowded room with Chemo patients and six nurses. I drove into our garage at 7:20PM so in reality Sue was exactly one hour late getting to work. I feel really badly about inconveniencing her in this way.
It has been a very very very long day.

I tried to get a better handle on the time schedule for the rest of the week and I came up with the following;
I need to be back at the clinic at 12:30PM Tuesday for the 24 hour follow-up blood draw.
On Wednesday I need to be in the office by 9:15AM and the day should only last about four hours.
On Friday, however, it looks like another long day so I was told to be there at 8:00AM so that they could start earlier and then I would stay until the five hour blood draw was taken. I hope to be better prepared for Friday.
My travel kit worked out very well but from now on I will substitute a book for the laptop which should make the back-pack lighter and a little more useful. If I hadn’t been able to void during the day nor been able to take some pain meds, I doubt that I could have driven home on my own.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-SEVEN

2007-11-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

It’s Sunday so I thought I would take a rest from heavy ideas and just mellow out before my Clinical Trial Tests start on Monday. I’m attempting to take my pain meds every four hours, as prescribed, rather than wait until I feel the need and I think it is really working out much better. Since I’m not planning to go anywhere by driving the car myself I can follow this plan very easily. The one thing I have to do for Monday is pack up my “travel-kit” of items for an all day stay at the hospital. In the past I have found that they are not prepared with the proper items for me to void or eat or get pain meds. I will also be taking a laptop with me so that if there are any quiet periods I can keep up with my daily diary.
If nothing of any great importance takes place on a day-to-day activity I may not be writing in the Blog everyday. With the screenwriters strike on now and The Daily Show only showing re-runs, in respect for the strike, I find myself in a news void. I still cannot bring myself to watch network news but I do read the Oregonian every day. If anything peaks my interest, I will be sure to let you know.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-SIX

2007-11-24T03:59:00.000-08:00

A point that my cousin brought up, about human beings behaving within certain restrictions, based on his belief that they were motivated by God and the fear of God, leads me to unload on you the concept that I have that “man” (human beings) are really not part of the biosphere we call the Earth. Although I do believe that “man” is an animal and, therefore, exhibits animal like tendencies, I also believe that “man” strays from some of these animal tendencies to beg the question whether “man” is of this Earth.

If we look at the “Third Rock from the Sun” and consider the Earth, the place we call home, as a Biosphere then we have to believe that this Biosphere has to exist in balance with itself. That is to say, everything that occurs in nature is balanced by something else that occurs in nature. Plants do not grow wild at the expense of some other plants nor do animals multiply beyond their means to survive nor does one species over run the existence of another species. The Biosphere is in balance. The living and dying occur to maintain this balance.

Except for “man”.

Where shall I begin?
“Man” cannot adapt to the environment of the Biosphere without the need for clothing and shelter.
“Man” kills for sport, not just for survival.
“Man” engages in sex for pleasure not just for procreation.
The good that “man” does, and gives himself awards for, are for items to repair the things that “man” does to destroy the Biosphere. Namely, polluting his own environment.
“Man” contributes nothing to the balance of the Biosphere.
“Man” kills others of his own kind for reasons far beyond the need to balance the Biosphere.

It’s as if “man” was dropped into this Biosphere and did not evolve from within this Biosphere. There may be evidence of a genetic link to apes within “man” but a case can as easily be made that there is a link to chickens and fish yet the fact remains, “man” does not seem to fit into this Biosphere.

If you accept this concept then there is nothing that “man” does that can be considered against “man’s” normal nature. “Man” operates under a different set of “laws” that may not necessarily be in synch with the “laws of nature”. The things that “man” does to survive are not necessarily in tune with the Biosphere and therefore lead to the destruction of the Biosphere.

The broadness of the category of “man” needs further dividing since a lot of the concepts that I attributed to “man” are really those of European “man” or those from a “civilized” society. Those that we call “primitives” or “primitive man” lived much closer to the laws of nature than the “civilized man”. For example the American Indian, or Native American, had difficulty with the “white” mans concept of land ownership. As far as the “primitives” were concerned they were the stewards of the land and, therefore, lived in concert with the land. They did not build permanent shelters at the expense of the flora around them nor did they kill for sport but rather to meet their needs for food and clothing. The plains Indians moved with the Buffalo because the Buffalo was their basic provider. I wish I knew more about where the concept of ownership superseded stewardship when it came to land but I suspect it has a religious base. These selfsame “primitives” were also pagans in their religious beliefs and in my way of thinking the concept of many Gods and a respect for the laws of nature are in direct conflict with the notion of one God and the superiority of “man” to allow “man” to destroy the land at the expense of those around him. I highly recommend a paper entitled “The Tragedy of the Common”.

As you can probably tell by now, I have a real problem with the use of the terms “civilized” and “primitive” as it is applied to people today.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-FIVE

2007-11-23T04:02:00.000-08:00

(Here is part two of my answer to my cousin's letter.)

Nobody considers Fire or thunder, as “God” anymore. However, I consider it axiomatic that the “infinity” of time and space, for us, human beings, is going to remain the domain of GOD for a long time.

I don’t agree that nobody considers other Gods. The world is populated by many more members of religions other that Christianity and Judaism and among these religions there are still many gods to worship. I also don’t agree with the infinity of time and space being only God’s domain since I don’t recognize God, yours or anyone else’s.

So. “not believing in God” – as I grasp it - does not constitute a denial of his existence. As a matter of fact I rather tend to assume that the universe did not “create itself”. Nevertheless, I find it bizarre to attribute to God human qualities or behavior, like “hating”, “loving” “rewarding or “punishing” etc.., and of “Him” having any “interests” whatsoever, like that I kiss the Mezuzah on entering a room, or that I don’t cheat my customers. So, logically, there is no reason for me to fear God (to be deterred by him), and I can be as selfish as it suits me,

There are very many Christian faiths that do not adhere to this God that one need fear and I have yet to see any evidence that the fear of God is a deterrent to any criminal of any age or belief.

So far so good, but let me ask you this: How do you explain feelings like COMPASSION, PITY or REMORSE? What is it that prevents us from being CRUEL (especially to defenseless creatures)? What is CONSCIENCE? If it isn’t GOD that deters us and causes us to be decent human beings, what is? What I mean is that we don’t have to be believers and we can define ourselves “atheists” as we chose to be. All this can not exclude God from our heart.

This finally leads me into a concept that I have long held and that is that “man” or “human beings” are just animals and, therefore, have animal instincts. The fact that they are a different sort of animal is a story that takes a different direction and I will gladly expand on that at some other time. For this discussion I contend that “altruism” is not a natural behavior in the animal kingdom. Selfishness is much more a part of the natural behavior of animals, including human beings. Any act of charity, including the work of Mother Theresa, is based on the selfish self satisfaction that is gained in the process of helping others. The so-called feelings you name, compassion, pity, remorse, cruelty, conscience and the old stand-by guilt are all mitigated by some outside force, and it is not God. If it were, our prisons would be nearly empty because there are very few Atheists behind bars. The deterrent is the law, the badge and the gun. “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-FOUR

2007-11-22T00:03:00.000-08:00

(As I proceeded to write this portion of the Blog I had a feeling that it was going to be too lengthy for a single entry so I have split the following into two parts. Please reserve comments until you have absorbed the two parts.)

I fully expected to hear from some religious person about what I have been writing in my Blog but I was really surprised when I got this letter today from my cousin in Israel. First of all he is Jewish and as far as I know, not a very religious Jew. He has lived in Israel since WW-II and as a young man helped to settle the Holocaust survivors into what was then known as Palestine. Rather than copy the entire part of the letter that deals with religion I will take excerpts from his letter and comment accordingly. He is eight years older than I am and our paths have crossed several times over the years since I was about four until we last saw each other for my 60th birthday.

First, about your attitude toward the fact that you are, as it seems, about to die. You say that you are not afraid of it. I’m sure that some may think you are bluffing, but I don’t think so. Being eighty years old, death for me is not something very remote or irrelevant, and the thought of dying does not scare me either. After all, death is nothing more than not existing anymore, and this is not and should not be frightening. Nevertheless, we, human beings (animals as well) cling to life by instinct...
This leads me to your defining yourself, in your Blog, atheist. Consequently, you probably don’t believe in “life after death”, reincarnation, heaven or hell, etc… For you, like for me, death most certainly, means the ultimate end. So, Michael, if Atheism, for you, means that God does not exist, one can give you a good argument.
After all, as I see it, the universe is a creation. If so, who is the creator? How and when was the universe created? All theories dealing with the subject, including the “Big Bang” theory, do not provide us with a satisfying answer, since you can keep asking “what was there before?” And if they tell you that the universe is definite in size, what is there beyond its limits? And if you mean to say that time and space is unlimited, this is certainly something inconceivable by the human mind. So, for me “God” is a concept we use to explain all phenomena which are inconceivable. Those areas get narrower, along with progress and knowledge.

My biggest argument with organized religion is that it expects an answer for everything. Science is always in search of an answer and the easy route of “God is the answer” does not sit well with me. The exact date of the start of the universe is a debated question among religious folk and they all come up with different answers based on their interpretation of the Bible, or whatever book they are using as The Bible. Why is that really important? In “Inherit the Wind” the argument is made that God did something on a day which preceded the creation of the sun and the moon and yet we measure a day by the rising and the setting of the sun. That “day” might have been a billion years or more.

From the Leader of the Stupid People

2007-11-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Bush hails the defeat of Measure 50

The president is out of line when he interprets Oregon's vote as support for his veto of a children's health bill

(from the Oregonian-Monday, November 19, 2007)

In its $12 million campaign to bring down Oregon's Measure 50, Big Tobacco's strategists created a dense fog of ominous warning about the proposal to raise cigarette taxes.

They claimed that it would irresponsibly amend the state constitution. That it would be fiscally unsustainable. That it would be unfair to low-income smokers. That it would lead to the taxing of other products.

Not once, however, did the tobacco ad blitz ever claim Measure 50 would mean excessive spending on children's health care. Yet that didn't stop President Bush last week from shamelessly asserting that defeat of the measure showed Oregonians to be fed up with overspending by Democrats.

Oregon voters, he said last Tuesday in a speech in Indiana, "rejected the plan to raise tobacco taxes to further enlarge a government health program."

The president is entitled to crow about Measure 50's defeat. His side won, and the victory was a blow to congressional Democrats' goal of raising federal tobacco taxes to help expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP.

But Bush distorted the truth in his interpretation of the vote. Oregonians rejected Measure 50 not because it was too spendy but because they were swayed by the tobacco industry's misleading claim that most of the increase in cigarette tax revenue would not go to children's health as promised.

That may have been the single most influential attack on Measure 50. If not, it was certainly the most dishonest attack.

Yes, of course, most of the new revenue would not go directly to children's insurance during the program's first phase. How could it? Enrolling tens of thousands of uninsured kids would take months; much of the initial new cigarette revenue would have to be held in reserve.

After the Nov. 6 trouncing of Measure 50, Bush got on the phone and reportedly congratulated Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the only member of Oregon's congressional delegation to oppose the SCHIP bill, which the president vetoed last month. Bush should be more influenced instead by a different Oregon Republican, Sen. Gordon Smith, one of the most persistent voices in Congress in support of increasing spending for the children's health program by $35 billion over five years.

One of the anti-50 campaign's fascinating successes was the splintering of Oregon's political left. Already furious with Bush for eroding the constitutional balance of powers and for vetoing SCHIP expansion, many socially progressive Oregon voters were open to Big Tobacco's dire warnings about tampering with the state constitution and taxing smokers to pay for health care that the state general fund should provide.

Tobacco strategists skillfully channeled that liberal anger into a drumbeat that always began: "I'm all for children's health care, but . . .."
Bush may be right that Americans, like Oregonians, aren't enthusiastic about raising federal cigarette taxes to help provide children's health care. But he's dead wrong to interpret that as support for his refusal to insure more needy kids.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-THREE

2007-11-20T14:49:00.000-08:00

Today turned out to be a very long day. I had to be at the hospital at 6:00AM for the installation of a temporary central line. Immediately after this was inserted into my neck I was wheeled into Dialysis for the procedure they refer to as “Phoresis”. What they are trying to do is get a background count on my platelets before the anti-body is introduced into my body to see if the anti-body can generate more platelets to fight the cancer cells. The machine they hooked me up to is like a dialysis machine in that it takes my blood out of my body and passes it through the machine before it returns it to me. The machine has a centrifuge which separates out the platelets from the whole blood and collects it for the trial so they can get an accurate count. In about a month’s time after I start getting the anti-body I will go through the same procedure again. From start to finish the process takes about three hours so the bottom line is, I didn’t get home until 2:00PM. Having not eaten or had any pain medicine since early morning, it was a very long day.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-TWO

2007-11-19T05:15:00.001-08:00

On the rare occasions when I have no place to drive or don't plan on driving myself I have tried to increase my pain dosages and frequency and the results are significant. I am able to sit comfortably in any chair or sofa without having to place my legs in strategic positions. I don't feel dizzy or high while I am pain free but I do find that I tend to doze off while watching TV or reading a book. Although I feel well rested I still tend to doze when I am sitting and I can see that this would not be very good if I were sitting and driving. I find that I try to stay particularly alert while driving and I try to maintain a certain level of pain just to keep me aware that I am not that influenced by the drugs.

I made a mistake today. I thought that since I was just sitting around watching football today I really didn’t need my regular dose of painkiller. I was so wrong. The progress of my cancer has now reached the point where the pain occurs whether I am moving or not. Up to now I was pain free when I was stationary so I just assumed that there was no need to take the pain meds unless I planned to move. My first indicator of my error in planning was when my jaw started hurting while I was just sitting. The second indicator was that I couldn’t find a comfortable sitting position. The final blow was when I finally decided to take the painkiller and I was in so much pain I could hardly move. I have learned my lesson and I hope I don’t make the same mistake again. But, to err is human, so I’m sure it’ll happen again even though I don’t look forward to it happening.

This ought to be an interesting week. Monday I have to get a blood sample taken and on Tuesday morning I have to go to the hospital to have a central line installed. Thursday is Thanksgiving so I will be “eating” all my meals before we leave the house and I just hope we remember to take the pain meds with us. The week after Thanksgiving is when the Clinical Trial really starts.

I got my new laptop on Saturday and since I got it especially for the wireless capability I wanted from my recliner but somehow I couldn’t get it to work. It is a nice computer but somehow I need to get some keys or spit-balls-of-wisdom on how to get the parts I have to talk to each other. I still have high hopes.

MORE STUPID PEOPLE

2007-11-18T11:07:00.000-08:00

Experts try to flesh out meaning of student's stick-figure violence

Suspension - A first-grader kicked out for a drawing is thought by some to be too young to make a real threat

Friday, November 16, 2007

KATE TAYLOR
The Oregonian Staff

The stick-figure drawing that ignited controversy and prompted a southern Oregon school to suspend a 6-year-old student this week had experts debating the ability of young children to grasp violence as well as how school officials should respond to trouble signs.
Little Butte School officials in Eagle Point on Tuesday suspended Ryan Weathers, a first-grader, for drawing a stick figure shooting another stick-figure in the head, and possibly for threatening to shoot fellow students.
"At that age, there's a disconnect between the action and the consequence -- it's hard for (children) to connect behavior with outcome," said Megan McClelland, associate professor at Oregon State University's College of Health and Human Sciences. "The part of the brain that's involved in planning and thinking long term is still developing."

The boy's family could not be reached, and school officials didn't return phone calls Thursday. But school officials earlier stated in a disciplinary report given to the boy's family that besides the offending picture, the boy threatened to shoot two girls in the head, according to the Medford Mail Tribune.
It's not clear how the threats occurred, but parents who learned of the drawing complained to school officials. Then school staff suspended the boy for at least one day. Douglas Weathers, the boy's father, told the Medford paper earlier this week that his son's picture mimicked a drawing displayed by a character in an episode of "The Simpsons."
In a 32-year early childhood teaching career, recently retired West Linn teacher Coleen Ahmann said she'd rarely seen violent pictures drawn by students. But one thing she learned through teaching is that what adults see is not always what children have drawn. Before acting, school staff must be sure they've done enough listening to the child, she said.
"If something like that happened in my class, I probably would have taken some private time to talk to the little guy or gal and clarify" what was going on, she said. Then, if the situation merited it, she'd involve a counselor, and then, perhaps, a parent. Together, they'd do a lot of talking as well as listening to the child.
On Thursday, she and other child development experts debated whether such a young child could understand what a threat is, let alone carry it out.
"I would say they (children) would have a poor sense of what threatening was," said Deborah Sipe, child development center director at Portland Community College's Sylvania campus. "It's more likely that they would understand wanting to strike out in a general sense because they feel someone's causing them problems or causing them pain."
There are simply too many steps in the structure of a threat for such young children to grasp, McClelland of Oregon State University said.

"They don't understand 'If I do this, you will die,' " she said. "They are just starting to fill in the gaps."
Yet Katherine C. Pears, a research scientist at the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, said that by age 2, children generally begin understanding that other people have different feelings and perspectives than they do.
Which, she said, is why adults commonly address trouble between children by asking "How would you feel if . . ..?"

"By 6, kids ought to be able to take another person's perspective," she said. Children should understand "the message that you caused pain in another person's world. Of course, individuals vary widely, and some kids may not be there yet, while other kids are way up in moral reasoning."
Discussion and support are vital, said Sipe of Portland Community College.
"It's good to pause," she said. But not to simply oust the child to protect others. Schools must summon their counselors, call the family in, gather around the child and find out what's going on, she said. They shouldn't isolate the family, she said.
Besides being gentle, the intervention should be swift, said Pears.
"There's a great deal of research showing that the earlier you intervene," she said, "the better your chances are of having positive outcomes for the kids."
But Douglas Weathers said school officials overreacted.
"He's not a violent kid," said Weathers, who planned to hold his son out of school until early next week. "He did not mean any harm."

Kate Taylor: 503-294-5116; katetaylor@news.oregonian.com

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY-0NE

2007-11-17T15:03:00.000-08:00

Death & Dying-2

I have received quite a bit of correspondence with reference to the Blog I have been writing since I was diagnosed with incurable cancer. The common theme is that the writers believe I’m doing something remarkable in detailing my feelings about “Death & Dying”. What I find remarkable, and rather sad, is that others find what I’m doing remarkable.

Some how and somewhere society has made a disconnect between the reality of death and made a myth of dying. I don’t seem to be caught up with these obstacles to the reality and therefore I am proceeding as I see things unfolding. The letters, however, have brought out this disconnect and maybe I can help by delving further into my feelings about “Death & Dying”.

People, in general, fear dying. Not necessarily just for themselves but for others close to them. It is more than they are afraid to die. One drives at a safe speed so they won’t hit anything and get killed. Is this due to a fear of dying? I doubt it. People aren’t really faced with the prospect of dying until they are ill or actually in that accident they were trying to avoid.

At one time I had a difference of opinion with a school counselor with reference to a 9-year-old boy that was having trouble in school mainly because he was such a nice kid that his teachers never pushed him to learn. I took it upon myself to work with him so that he learned how to read and I was very demanding in my efforts. The school counselor took umbrage with my methods and suggested that what he needed was to be “motivated”. She really got upset when I suggested that fear was a great motivator. Apparently I was more prophetic than I realized. Fear seems to be a real and VERY popular motivator.

Kids are threatened to behave with certain key phrases like, “God will punish you for that” or “You won’t go to heaven when you die” or “You’ll get coal in your stocking at Christmas”. Fear!

Our leaders in Washington are constantly not only talking down to us but they use large dosages of FEAR to get us to believe what it is they are trying to sell us. The whole basis for Rudy Gs campaign and apparent popularity is FEAR.

Let’s talk a little bit about “Heaven & Hell”. An obvious religious reference and, therefore, steeped in FAITH. Without setting out to destroy the entire concept I would like to raise some questions I have had for a very long time. When someone is dying they are told they are going to a better place, namely heaven. When someone has died there loved ones are told that they are in a better place, namely heaven. All through their lives they know of the existence of this better place. The song goes, “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die”. So why aren’t more people rushing to get there? Suicide is a sin and yet it seems all the hype about heaven would encourage more suicides.

The fear of hell has never seemed like a big deterrent to crime as the badge, the gun and jail. Based on the crime rate in this country, those don’t seem like good deterrents either. Is there a real behavior modification in a person due to the fear of going to hell vs. going to heaven? I wish I knew the answer.

Death is not a thing that one need fear. It is part of the natural process of life, from birth to death. Of course when someone dies young it is a sad occurrence. Death at the hands of another human being is also sad and there may be fear involved when the death is related to some crime like a serial killer but in the case of naturally occurring death, such as from an illness, does not need to be feared.

If you believe that death is preordained in the natural order of things then you should be able to face death with an open mind and very little fear. Death is inevitable. It is when death causes anxiety that it becomes a concern. At this time my only concern is the preparations I have to make to ease the burden on those I leave behind.

The tight rope that those around me have to walk is to maintain a relatively normal life style and not exclude me just because I’m ill. Soon they are going to have to do things without me and they should not be afraid to plan for those occasions.

I am straight with what I have to face but my biggest problem is trying to help others face their own realities. I don’t ever expect to get that right.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWENTY

2007-11-16T04:34:00.000-08:00

Random Observations-V

I just finished reading Philip Roth’s latest book “Exit Ghost”. It turned out to be very apropos because it dealt with a 71 year old man that was going through a procedure to narrow down the opening in his urinary tract so that he would be less incontinent. His incontinence was due to the removal of a cancerous prostate. His description of having to change his diapers often and his fear of going swimming in public hit home. He also was impotent as a result of the surgery, which annoyed him no end. The most heartening part is when he tells of making a date with a slightly older woman, who has had brain surgery and still has brain cancer. He himself has to keep a notebook for all his conversations in order to keep track of where he’d been and where he was supposed to go. They made a date to meet for dinner via telephone and each wasn’t sure the other would show up. He went to the restaurant and waited to order till she showed up but after waiting an hour just sipping water he realized that he might be in the wrong restaurant. He didn’t have her phone number with him so he rushed to call his hotel and got the message that she had been waiting for an hour in another restaurant and that she understood why he had not shown up. It is never clear as to who was in error but the whole story is very sad because neither person was surprised when the other failed to show and was willing to accept that fact. I guess that getting old is a real bitch.

I have started to carry a Palm Pilot with me for my appointments and scheduled events and as long as I keep the battery charged I should be in good shape. I can set alarms as reminders and I also carry with me a set of addresses and phone numbers, in addition to the ones already on my cell phone.

So far my head still seems to be on straight and I am carefully monitoring my driving performance while on painkillers. I have not any problems yet and I hope to avoid problems in the future.

It’s 6:00PM on Thursday, which turns out to have been a VERY LONG day. I doubt very much I’ll be able to get anything posted to the Blog today. The day started with an appointment with the oncologist and then I continued the day with the Clinical Trial coordinator who took me through a day of tests. First, I got evaluated by the Dialysis nurse to see if my veins were good enough to take Ivs when they run their tests. Her assessment was that I ought to have a central line put in by a doctor so that they would not have to get IVs every time they ran the tests. (I am having this line installed next Tuesday)
My next appointment was to have some radioactive material injected into my blood stream for a later-that-day bone scan. I had to kill two hours before that appointment so I got a chance to read the paper and do the crossword. Immediately after hat I was supposed to get an Ultrasound of my abdomen but the CT scan of my chest and abdomen was done first. After the Ultrasound I had o lay low for another two hours before they could do my bone scan. It was almost 5:00PM when I got through with all those tests plus I had an EKG thrown in at sometime between tests. I had not eaten all day nor had I taken any pain meds since early morning so by the time I started to head home I was a wreck. I am having my dinner now and expect to be asleep very soon. Net result is no posting Thursday.

THE DEATH WATCH-NINETEEN

2007-11-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

Death Is Not The End

by Bob Dylan

When you're sad and when you're lonely and you haven't got a friend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all that you've held sacred, falls down and does not mend
Just remember that death is no the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

When you're standing at the crossroads that you cannot comprehend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all your dreams have vanished and you don't know what's up the bend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

When the storm clouds gather 'round you, and heavy rains descend
Just remember that death is not the end
And there's no one there to comfort you, with a helpin' hand to lend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

Oh, the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines
In dark and empty skies

When the cities are on fire with the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end
And you search in vain to find just one law abiding citizen
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

THE DEATH WATCH-EIGHTEEN

2007-11-13T04:51:00.000-08:00

Random Observations-III

I’m tired.

I’m so tired.

This constant spitting is getting very tiresome and I’m getting very tired of losing more of my independence by the minute. I have pain in my jaw and even my teeth are hurting and yet the painkiller is allowing me to move because without it I can hardly walk. I may try to increase the dosage tomorrow but the increase will also decrease my independence.

I’m tired of being an afterthought and I don’t see the near future changing drastically. I guess my only choice is to stay cool and play it one day at a time.

Two close friends died this past year; one was on a cruise ship when he collapsed and died when his internal organs came apart and the other just died watching TV in his house. Neither of them showed any signs of illness. They both died quickly without preamble. I’m concerned that my own situation is going to drag out so far that I may antagonize my so-called loved ones just waiting for the final day. I am trying to stay alert and composed on a daily basis so that I can feel I am still of some use. I don’t want to become a burden that needs to be pampered and looked after over a long time period. My routine is pretty straightforward but I have the feeling that I’m being expected to do less and less as if I were already gone. I can’t let this feeling get to me because I may find myself becoming antagonistic when I should remain cool.

This is starting to look like a tight rope I will have to learn to walk.

It would sure help if the spitting could be stopped. I think I can handle the pain in my bones, legs and jaw if I could eat some soup or have a cup of coffee. The tastes in my mouth are not pleasant and I even tried to swish some sweet coffee and chocolate milk in my mouth, which helped for a little bit. Swallowing even small sips was very difficult but I’ll keep trying.

My handicaps are so subtle that for all intents and purposes I look healthy. My walk is slow and deliberate, my conversations are limited because of the saliva buildup, and my voice is low because of the voice box damage. My eating schedule requires that I spend several hours in the lounge chair both in the mornings and afternoon. My bladder situation requires that I void myself periodically so that I have to plan my trips away from the house carefully. My bowel movements have also been erratic lately so again I have to be careful about where and when and how long I leave the house.

Starting next week I will make an attempt to do a better job in regulating my daily activities so that a more regular routine will boost my feelings about my lifestyle. I am still not sure that the doctors really understand their definition of the quality of life. My biggest hurdle will be the people closest to me and maintaining my cool.
All the above was written late at night and now it is early in the morning and I just read my Horoscope, which says, “Just say no to worries and anxieties. Although you are likely to be pessimistic things are much better than you might think today”.

I am really looking forward to this clinical study because it will give me places to go and things to do that will be a big break from my daily routine. Again, my problem is with the ones who think that I have to be treated with kid gloves. I am not about to keel over if you think I will lose my temper. I am mellower now than I’ve ever been and my blood pressure is so low I am almost comatose. This can’t all be attributed to the drugs. The key for me is just keeping my cool. There is no way to explain ones feelings under these circumstances but I would have expected that adults would have a better understanding. Just treat me as normal not as if there was a death sentence printed on my forehead.

I can feel that my health is going downhill on a daily basis so I am more conscious of the need for the painkillers but I certainly don’t feel any changes occurring in my thought processes so I am sure I can maintain my cool. Thanksgiving is coming up, which will be a test of my public persona.

The difference between finite and infinite

2007-11-12T01:40:00.000-08:00

The concept of the difference between finite and infinite is not strictly mathematical. What I have come to realize is that when I stopped working, and was placed into forced retirement, I had to do some math to figure out how I could live on my meager savings which were in various forms of IRAs and retirement packages. It boiled down to making a comparison between what I was earning annually and how many years I could live on my retirement savings based on the life style I had grown accustomed to. Well, it turned out, that wasn’t a whole lot of years. Truth be told, I really never planned to retire so that over the years that I was working I lived for the day and didn’t do a whole lot of saving for tomorrow.

That part of the story is what happens when you divide what you have by the number infinity

When that number becomes finite, the whole story changes and now instead .of calculating what I have to spend per year for an unknown number of years I can now try to figure out how I can spend all that money in the time I have left, and enjoy doing it.

The IRS has a hand in this as well since they have not been able to tax me on the IRA type funds, they wrote a law that says I’m required to take out a certain percentage of my IRA funds and annually have that as income that they in turn can tax. So even if I don’t ask for any money the money manager has to send me a check every year.

This new spending plan is going to be fun to deal with so I hope I play my cards right and cash out before I have to cash in.

THE DEATH WATCH-SEVENTEEN

2007-11-11T05:12:00.000-08:00

Random Observations-II

11/10/07-Saturday-4:00AM-This was starting to look like a very busy day for me what with a 9:00AM Soccer Game and an 11:00AM Riding Lesson and a 3:00PM visit from my ex. In between I had a tentative appointment to see a laptop Toshiba I found on Craig’s list. With all this to look forward to I decided to eat early so I could be ready for the 8:15AM departure for the soccer game. I had really planned to go it alone but Sue, the wife, had other ideas since she is always concerned about my driving while on my pain drugs. It was a good thing she insisted because by the time I had finished my “breakfast” my stomach was acting up and I was barely able to sit through the soccer game. I never did make it to the riding lesson because I was just afraid to be too far from home and my own toilet. The net result was a stomach cramp for most of the day even after numerous visits to the throne room. By the time I was ready for “dinner” I was so worn out I fell asleep during the feeding and I had to force myself to get ready for “bed”. The fact that I also had a coughing fit in the morning that really seemed to wear me out. Altogether I was one tired puppy and slept through from 10:30PM to 3:00AM, bladder call. I guess the lesson of the day was, don’t take the iron supplement everyday and don’t plan to do as much in the future. The bright spot of the day was that I won the laptop I was bidding on in Ebay so soon I will be able to access the Internet from my “bed”.

Death & Dying

2007-11-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

My little girl had to come home early from school Friday. She was sad about my dying and told one of her friends that she was sad and why. Some other kids overheard her and started to laugh. She felt worse at being laughed at so she just wanted to come home.

What did the kids find so funny about death?

There is something very wrong with a society that does not understand death and dying. The truth of what society is all about is in the reaction of the most innocent, the children. We are not allowed to see the caskets arriving from Iraq because this government decided to hide the fact that people are dying and outlawed the media from showing these daily events. Death is not funny but it is certainly the news. Dying is not funny but it is certainly a reality.

Video games with death and dying are by far the most popular video games but the reality of the death and the dying is lost in computer graphics, which we all know are not real. This disconnect, between computer graphics and reality is what makes death laughable.

A few months ago there was a minister at a local church who was also the youth pastor, who proudly described the paint-ball outing they were going to have as a way of teaching teamwork to the kids.

Paint-ball is a game where each ”player” gets a handgun with paintballs for ammunition that the “player” is supposed to aim at another “player” and shoot them with a paintball. There are all sorts of obstacles and barriers to hide behind and teams are made up to “fight” another team. What is missing from this “game” is the fact that you have one human being firing a weapon at another human being with the object to kill that other human being.

No wonder the kids laugh at dying!

Somewhere along the way I misplaced the biblical disconnect between, “Thou shalt not kill” but only in paintball.

I wrote to the church, and any member whose name and address I could find, about my feelings about this planned activity and got zero response.

Is it any wonder that death is only a laughing matter?

I own guns and have owned guns for over 50 years although I am not a hunter. My children all know the difference between real death and playing at dying.

THE DEATH WATCH-SIXTEEN

2007-11-09T04:09:00.000-08:00

Random Observations

11/7/07-4:30AM-Jaw is really hurting, both sides. I woke because of my bladder but I couldn’t go back to sleep since my jaw is hurting. I think I’ll get myself a pedicure. I watched “On Golden Pond” last night and I seemed to focus on the talk of death and dying which now seems such a personal and private matter. I guess all our expectations differ and, therefore, so do our reactions. So far I seem to be reacting selfishly and as long as I’m not in a tizzy over dying then I would prefer that others also maintain their cool. I will probably mellow out in the near future and start to be more understanding of other’s concerns. I don’t yet know how this will manifest itself but I just expect it to occur.

11/08/07-Thursday-4:00AM-The bladder alarm clock at work again. I awake with a dry mouth and very sore jaws that seem to get better immediately after taking the painkiller. The accumulation of the nighttime saliva does no seem excessive. I have not seen any appreciable difference in the restriction in my esophagus since the radiation treatment stopped so I can only conclude that the attempt was a failure. The net result for me, therefore, is not a great improvement in my quality of life. The spitting is by far the biggest incentive I have to investigate the use of the Doctor assisted suicide law here in Oregon. I can live with the need for painkillers and I can still function pretty well while “drugged” but as far as quality of life goes, the constant spitting is getting very old.

I really need to get a better laptop since this old Sony just can’t handle the wireless card that I got. I will need to have wireless access because I anticipate I will be bedridden shortly and I don’t want to lose touch with the Internet while confined to a deathbed.

I feel less and less like doing anything because it takes so much effort just to get up and the fault is strictly mine. As soon as I hear any stirring in the house I will stir myself and get some painkiller which will help me through the next stage, showering and getting dressed.

11/08/07-8:00PM-The spitting seems to have diminished a bit so I can only suppose there might be some improvement in the near future. At least I can still hope.

11/09/07-Friday-3:30AM-Woke up and decided to have breakfast early. I got a couple of blood tests yesterday and I’m supposed to get another today, all part of the precursors to the clinical study I signed up for.

“The indifference of the dying…”

2007-11-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Ever since I first heard that I had cancer, in March of 2006, my attitude towards the everyday, mundane items of life has been, “I don’t care.” All those things that had some importance in my life, from the type of toothpaste I was using to the decisions of the Attorney General of the United States towards illegal wire tapping of US Citizens, meant something to me. I had an opinion about everything and I cared about all sorts of diverse issues.

Not any more.

I don’t care.

Knowing that one is dying, within a finite time frame, seems to change everything. For one thing, I’m less tempted to buy myself something I’ve always wanted and I try to do things sooner than I expected since I’m not sure I’ll be around to do them.

There also seems to be a need to shed myself of those personal items in my life that I held dear and that I owned as part of my “collection” of things. I am anxious now to rid myself of those items that might be considered the “estate” among the wealthy. I don’t now understand the mindset of holding onto things for when I have the time to enjoy them. I now have the time but I lack any ambition to enjoy them.

On the other hand I have acquired a whole new set of items that concern me and they fall into the category of not leaving my loved ones to deal with the petty shit that I might leave behind. Un-paid bills and financial burdens that were never any body else’s’ responsibility.

This is stuff I do care about.

I have grand children to whom I’d like to impart some “spit-balls-of-wisdom” that I don’t think anyone else is capable of doing. I may have to compact this time-line now in order to fulfill that need.

The things I’m starting to miss already are those things that the nine year old will go through that I won’t be around to see. Graduation from grade school, boys, middle school, high school, learning to drive, utilizing her talents for writing, performing and athletics.

I look back and see places where I failed my own children because I thought I’d be there forever and I thought I could always make it up when the time came. In some cases I didn’t make it up yet and now I’m running out of time. Somewhere along this last time-line I have to care.

My first order of business is to get my little house of cards in-order and then deal with issues as I see them, without expecting to ever see the outcome of my actions.

STUPID PEOPLE

2007-11-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

I always thought there were a lot of stupid people around and now I know that the number of stupid people in the state of Oregon is sufficient to vote NO on a measure to add a tax to cigarettes so that the money could be used to care for uninsured sick kids. Apparently there are more stupid people in the state than there are smokers. The whole affair is very sad because on top of just being stupid the votes were the result of Big Tobacco spending about Twelve Million Dollars on this NO on 50 campaign. The TV programs were blasted with slick, misleading ads that won the so-called minds of the voters, the stupid ones.

The lesson that “Money Talks” and that the bigger the money the bigger the lies and the bigger the results in favor of the big money, is unfortunately the only truth of this entire sordid affair.

If only the $12,000,000.00 had been spent on helping the sick kids instead of defeating the insurance for kid’s measure.

On the national scene we have a group of, supposedly intelligent people that just agreed to pass on the name of a nominated new Attorney General for the complete Senate approval, who isn’t sure whether “water boarding” is a form of torture. Their sensible and intelligent reasoning is that the selection is so much better than his predecessor that the definition of torture is not as relevant as the need for a better organized AG office for the USA. The definition of the legality of torture that the administration would like to have on the books must not include anything they are doing now or have done in the past.

The criteria of using the lowest common denominator as a source of comparison for the AG position are a pathetic reflection on the thinking in DC. Yes, Alberto was bad but just because an interim AG is an unknown, why just select someone that will be a good housekeeper?

The bottom line for me is that there are people out there that are in jail for using “water boarding” as part of there interrogation methods and yet the administration is trying to say this method is not torture so that GW can keep saying, “…the USA does not torture”.

THE DEATH WATCH-FIFTEEN

2007-11-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

Today is today and I saw my GP, essentially just to say good-bye so for a change of pace:

What about Rudy?

Who is this Rudy Giuliani that is running for President? By what stretch of the imagination does he see himself as qualified to be President? At best he was a mediocre Mayor of NYC before, during and after 9/11 but by virtue of being connected with the tragic events of that day, just because he happened to be the Mayor at the time, he thinks his world –wide name recognition gives him the credentials to run for the Presidency of the USA.

On his record as Mayor alone he will be hard pressed to go down in the history of NYC as even one of the top ten best. In fact, he may have been one of the worst. To add insult to injury, he had nothing to do to prevent the events of 9/11 but certainly may have contributed to the loss of life based on his handling of the communications between the Police and the Fire Departments prior to 9/11.

In the aftermath of 9/11 he was the cities face and cheerleader with his NYPD and FDNY hats that he wore at every possible public event. It now turns out that he may be involved in the deaths of as many people who died on that day as a result of his “taking over” the clean-up of the building collapse without any knowledge of the side effects he was dealing with. Other locales, like the Pentagon, at least called in professionals to protect the clean-up workers against the dangers of the inhaled dusts.

The story even gets worse as his popularity rises based on his Karl Rove type hype and his trying to ride the GW Bush coat-tails. He has opinions on torture, an important element of his Mayor of NYC background, and homeland security as well as wide spread wire tapping. What saddens me the most is that there are people out there listening to this nobody.

THE DEATH WATCH-FOURTEEN

2007-11-05T05:07:00.000-08:00

11/1/07-Thursday-5:15AM-Good nights sleep. In need of painkiller first thing.
11/1/07-4:50PM-Had lunch with some people I used to work with and it was fun to see them and watch them eat. I can feel it when I need another shot of painkiller. I’m trying to limit my use of the painkiller to a real need scenario and when I will be staying home.

11/2/07-Friday-1:45AM-Can’t sleep. Just lying here wide-awake. Thinking about eating something.
11/2/07-4:00AM-Bladder wake-up call.
11/2//07-5:40AM-Time to get up for real. Need painkiller first.
11/2/07-10:00AM-Tube feeding done and ready to meet the day.
11/2/07-4:45PM-Dinner time!

11/3/07-01:30AM-Bladder wake-up and painkiller time.
11/3/07-2:00PM-Really hurting after going to noon soccer game. I really needed the painkiller and a good rest. The spitting hasn’t abated yet but the radiation may still take time to work.

11/4/07-3:45AM-Bladder wake-up call. Daylight saving went off last night so I’m not really sure of the time but the bladder is still calling.

11/5/07-12:40AM-Rough evening. I kept falling asleep during my feeding so that now that it is bedtime I’m not tired. The spitting situation has not improved and spending a lot of time talking has only made it worse. I had a lot of visitors today and although the time spent was pleasant, the after affects are hard. Big on my To-Do list for this coming week is getting my doctor to evaluate all the medications I am taking since some of the items I’m medicating are long term items.
11/5/07-4:50AM-I got my regular bladder wake-up call so I can start the day a bit early.

It looks like I’m all caught up chronologically with this Blog so as of tomorrow I will start an up-to-date daily diary.

THE DEATH WATCH-THIRTEEN

2007-11-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

It’s 1:15AM on Tuesday the 30th of October and I can’t sleep. I think I slept for a little bit between 11:00PM and now but I awoke for no apparent reason. My entire life cycle is upside-down so I expect that within a few minutes I will feel tired enough to try to sleep again. The painkiller has worn off so getting up and around is a bit of a pain. From now on I will pay closed attention to when I take the painkiller. Under the influence of the painkiller I was able to function very well.

It’s 5:00AM and I got my wake-up call from my bladder again. This time I could have slept longer but the timing was perfect get my breakfast and wake up my little girl to get ready for school. The weather looks clear and crisp and not rainy just before Halloween.

I had my Zometa Treatment this afternoon, which lasted all of fifteen minutes. I get another treatment next month and between now and then I just have to watch for side effects, of which there are possibilities of many. This treatment is supposed to strengthen my bones, which are now cancerous. I hope that it at least will diminish the pain.

Tonight will be interesting because one of the side effects is supposed to be difficulty in sleeping.

I woke up at 3:00AM with the words, “We are Marshall!” ringing in my ears. I stayed up to midnight to see this movie and I wasn’t about to let their story go down so easily. I will go back to sleep tonight but I had to make sure my system was purged of the feel good nature of the ending.

The net result of my Zometa Treatment is that I had a very sleepless night and I have spent the day with stomach cramps. I hit at least two of the long list of possible side effects.

Unless something outstanding occurs during the next few days, I will put the Blog on Limbo until the Blog catches up with the real time world. I will keep posting everyday but the next entry will appear on the day it is actually written.

THE DEATH WATCH-TWELVE

2007-11-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

MONDAY-29 OCTOBER 2007

3AM and I feel well rested after taking a painkiller at around 6:30PM with my dinner and an Ativan at bedtime, around 11PM. There seems to be a definite improvement in the frequency of my spitting although the character of the spit seems also to have changed. As I said before, I can only hope that the situation keeps improving after today’s last treatment. I’m almost tempted to try a cup of soup very soon. I have a couple of errands to do today and I should really try to get some bills done today. Tomorrow looks like it could be a long day with the meeting with the research team.

The World Series is over now that the Red Sox swept the Colorado Rockies in four games and we get off daylight saving next weekend. The last soccer game for the season is on the 10th and Halloween is in two days so there is a lot to look forward to, as well as Thanksgiving, which is just around the corner. I have to set myself some more milestones and keep getting grateful when I reach them. All-in-all I just hope to stay alert and not get into a vegetative state too soon.

I had may last radiation treatment and talked to the Oncologist who helped me fill out the form describing what my last wishes are for treatment in case I lose consciousness. It is a bright pink form and we’re supposed to post it on the refrigerator so the EMTs can spot it easily. At least I’m getting my paperwork done. The final results of the radiation treatment won’t be evident for a few weeks but I feel better already.

He doesn’t feel that my demise is immanent so he said just hang in there and take my pain medicine and incase I run into a situation where something hurts beyond the painkiller’s abilities I should call him and he can have the local area zapped with x-rays and make a quick repair. It’s reassuring to have this kind of support. I feel badly for the Oncologists that have to report the bad news to me so I try to reassure them that I am fine with what is happening and I promise not to go berserk with “Why me?”

THE DEATH WATCH-ELEVEN

2007-11-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

VISTAS!!! It seems like I have been viewing the world around me as memorable vistas as if I can capture the moment like an image from a digital camera. Upon reflection I guess it all started when I first heard the word cancer associated with my body and me. At first it was a very conscious effort to remember what was in my line of sight as if it was going to be my last. Since then it has become a subconscious thing and it only came to mind this evening. As things are happening to my body I am being made very aware that I can’t take anything for granted. My need to spit seems to have abated since the radiation treatment started and I expect that these next two days of no treatment will show further improvement. On the other hand the cancer is progressing throughout the rest of my body so that I really feel a greater need to use the painkillers. I’m glad to say that my brain seems unaffected and although I am conscious of a shorter fuse to my temper I am still in touch with reality. I have not lost my sense of humor but I also feel close to the edge when it comes to minor irritations. I don’t yet know how these items will balance out but so far I’m trying to maintain an “I don’t care” attitude, which should keep me from petty conflicts. Another thing, which I don’t look forward to, is becoming dependent on others for things I know I should be able to do myself. It’s hard for me not to react negatively when asked if I need help with something.

SATURDAY-27 OCTOBER 2007

It’s 5:30AM and there seems to be a definite improvement in my esophageal constriction. The quality of my spit has been changed to almost exclusively phlegm and the quantity has been reduced so that I am not spitting as often. Again, I am in high hopes that by the end of the weekend my entire swallowing problem will become manageable.

It being Saturday I must prepare myself for visitors and I will also try to start the day on painkillers. I had nothing planned of an independent nature today so I will allow myself to be catered to and try to maintain a relatively kind disposition. This may be a real test today!

SUNDAY-28 OCTOBER 2007

It’s 4:10AM and it is my bladder that is responsible for my wake-up call again. I went to sleep last night after the Red Sox victory in game three of the 2007 World Series, on the Vicadin painkiller and the Advil sleeping pill. I slept very soundly from midnight to four. I anticipate that I will catch some more sleep after I void my bladder.

Yesterday went very well with having taken painkillers starting early in the day, through the day and in the evening. I was able to get around during the day without limitations due to pain and I drove to the stables and home with no ill affects. I had no signs of fatigue nor did I feel the loss of control throughout the day. Admittedly, in the evening near the end of the game, I did start to dose easily. I will be on my own today so I plan to take the painkillers on a regular basis until approximately 3:00PM when I have to drive to the stable again.

THE DEATH WATCH-TEN

2007-11-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

TIME CHECK-24 October 2007

Since my time line ran afoul of my ability to get back into this Blog I thought I out to re-establish the real time line. I just posted the second of my write-ups and it is about a week behind. Today’s activity was my second of five radiations and tomorrow I have an appointment with the Oncologist. Hopefully, he will be able to give me a realistic time-line and a plan for my quality of life. Right now I’m still not sure that what I am experiencing is really associated with the cancer. I will also be seeing the radiation Oncologist after my last treatment on Monday. I’ll keep writing and posting but I wanted to benchmark the real time of these items.

11:30PM-I am having a problem sleeping since I am constantly gagging on my own saliva and I have to cough up and spit out. Some of the spit resembles flem (0r is it phlegm). My left jaw hurts and my knees are hurting so badly that I fear they will buckle under me. I need to support myself just to climb a single step. I also am feeling some chest pain since I am coughing quite a bit. As soon as the gagging dissipates I will try sleeping again. My most comfortable position outside of the recliner that I sleep in is the driving position behind the wheel of the Vette. My knees do not hurt and my back and chest are not under any stress. I do, however, still need to spit often. Talking leads to spitting fits and telephone conversation is a real chore.

So far I have not seen any change to my situation as a result of the radiation but it’s only the second of five treatments so I still have high hopes.

TIME CHECK-25 October 2007

It’s 4:00AM and I woke to the duel messages from my bladder and my saliva build-up. I decided to start my breakfast now so that I can leave for the hospital as soon as I meet the school bus at 7:24AM. It seemed to work well yesterday even though I did have to nap a bit to catch-up on my sleep. Today is my appointment with the Oncologist so I hope to find out the full extent of my cancer.

The bottom line after my appointment is that they don’t know anything about a time-line. I could live six-months, plus or minus, more or less. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and I probably won’t live another five years. I guess it is all up to me to decide how I want to live till I die. Since my legs are hurting the doctor says to take painkillers and starting next week he will start me on a regimen to strengthen my bones. I should try to do whatever I feel capable of doing and ask him for the means to get those things done. I am also looking into a clinical study to see about getting dosed with chemicals that should help the body build anti-bodies against cancer. There will be fewer side effects than with chemo and neither promises to increase my life expectancy. I can only hope that the radiation decreases the blockage in my throat and then I’ll only be left with the cancer induced weakness.

TIME CHECK-26 October 2007

My bladder woke me at 3:30AM after a very deep sleep. I’m sure that the use of a couple of shots of Vicadin (painkiller) helped with my sleep. I also didn’t feel as much discomfort or pain from walking. I will start breakfast very soon so that I at least have something on my stomach prior to the next radiation treatment. This will be treatment #4. I do see some results already in that I seem to be spitting less but I am also experiencing more phlegm coming up. I guess I should have had a simpler symptom time-line for the doctor since he wanted to know when things started to hurt. My fatigue is directly related to the cancer so knowing that will allow me to overcome that aspect of my daily routine. “We shall overcome…someday!”

In trying to establish the “which-came-first” scenario I am still not very clear. I guess I was experiencing some leg and knee pain before the new cancer was uncovered but the pains really escalated after the doctor told us that the cancer had spread to the lungs and the bones. The balancing act I now have to work on is the amount and quantity of painkiller I take at the expense of my ability to function. The leg pain is going to be my benchmark to begin with and I will adjust my daily schedule according to how the painkillers affect my functionality.

THE DEATH WATCH-NINE

2007-10-31T12:22:00.001-07:00

I find that I empathize with the bull in the bullring. When the bull first enters the bullring he rules over all that he can see so he runs the entire length and breadth of his territory, the walled in round pen of the bullring. When the matador first enters his space, the bull charges with the authority that he believes he has over his domain since he has been bred to have the aggressive attitude that brought him there in the first place. After the matador shows off his bravery, using a very large cape, by allowing the bull to charge the cape and pass very closely to the matador’s body, the Picadors enter the ring to weaken the bull with spears from horseback. Their function is to destroy the bull’s muscles at the back of his neck so that he loses the ability to raise his head and, therefore, is unable to complete his normal aggressive thrust and head toss. At his point the bull’s territory has diminished to the space he feels he can cover in short bursts of speed. In reality, the space under his perceived control is now about half of what it was when he first entered the ring. To further add to the pageantry of the event, embarrass the bull and show off the matador’s bravery, the matador may elect to tag the bulls withers with colorful flags attached to spikes imbedded in the muscle. (Some matadors prefer to use others to imbed these little spears) The net result is more pain for the bull, which again reduces his controllable space, and a target for the matador’s sword at the moment of truth. The next stage of the event is when the matador takes a smaller red cape and a sword with double edge and a curved tip to prepare the bull for the kill. It is at this point that the space the bull is defending becomes very small and in order for the matador to get the bull to charge he must approach the bull and get within a step or two whereas in the earlier parts of the event the bull had sought out the matador anywhere within the walls of the bullring.

I can’t remember when was the last time I ate solid food. I certainly can’t remember what it was I ate. I only know that I miss eating whole food and that I still have a memory of what things tasted like, although that may also be fading fast. When I first started to have problems with my ability to swallow and was told there was nothing that could be done I resigned myself to a life of protein-boosted milkshakes, which included yogurt, banana or fruit cocktail additives. Good flavor but still not as good as solid food. Pureed soups were also on the menu and they certainly added spice to a bland world. Eating out was not a problem either since I limited myself to clear soups. Farina for breakfast was also a possibility. As we approached our planned trip in June I started drinking Ensure because it is a high protein over the counter drink that would be available anywhere we traveled. My situation took a nosedive when the restriction became so bad that I couldn’t even swallow my own saliva. The stomach tube became a must and I started on the dilation procedures with the GI doctor. A clear soup sounds awfully good to me right now. I was hoping that the dilation procedures would lead to again being able to eat solid food but as each procedure failed to even allow for soup my expectations were drastically reduced.

Now that I have the knowledge that the restriction is in fact a cancerous growth I am getting ready for the radiation today as a means of at least stopping the constant spitting due to the restriction. Soup is already looking like a far off dream and just as the bull’s territory was diminishing due to forces beyond his control, my wish to eat solid food again has vanished from my horizons.

I had my first radiation treatment this afternoon and I will have a treatment everyday for the next three days and then again on Monday for the last of the five treatments. I have no hope of regaining my ability to swallow whole food but I would be grateful if I could at least swallow my own saliva. My expectations are getting reduced the closer I get to the moment of truth.

THE DEATH WATCH-EIGHT

2007-10-30T09:57:00.000-07:00

It’s 3AM on Monday and there seems to be a new development. The jaw and the knees still hurt but the need to spit seems to have diminished. I slept well from 12:00 to 3:00 and I will try to sleep some more but as of this minute I don’t feel sleepy.

It’s 2AM on Tuesday and I can’t seem to get to sleep. I have my first radiation treatment today and I have an appointment with the Oncologist on Thursday. I may just be having an anxiety attack but I really would like to get some sleep. My knees are really hurting now and I have difficulty walking. I am staying away from pain medicines now because I’m afraid it will inhibit my ability to function and I certainly can’t drive under the influence of painkillers. Sue won’t let me go to the Oncologists alone even though I really don’t need help. She feels that I will be keeping things from her about what the doctors have to say. That may very well be true, even though it might be unintentional.

THE DEATH WATCH-SEVEN

2007-10-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to let my hair grow out so maybe I’ll have a Mullet or a Pony Tail when I cash in my chips.

My lower lip went numb, today, which is a new development. My jaw on the left side really hurts if I try to chew but since I don’t eat this is not a very big problem. My knees are very sore too, but only when I walk or go up and down the stairs. The knees might be as a result of spending so much time sitting down with my knees straight. Sitting behind the wheel of the Corvette and driving the standard shift car is very comfortable so the only slow steps are getting in and out of the car.

It’s 2AM and I woke and started to write because I didn’t feel sleepy anymore. I will probably try to sleep some more but I find that I don’t seem to need as much sleep as before. I guess that sitting for such long periods spreads out my rest requirements and I do find that during the day I do tend to doze off.

THE DEATH WATCH-SIX

2007-10-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

The spitting seems to be necessary more often and at times the coughing comes in fits and spasms. I feel like there is something growing inside of me trying to choke the life out of me. It’s like the part in “Alien” when the thing explodes out of his chest. Admittedly, it was at this point that I stopped watching the movie. For some lucky reason the spasms seem to stop when I try to sleep and I seem to be getting a good nights sleep sitting in the lounger. I do wake up rather early, around 4AM, at which time I don’t feel the need for more sleep. It might be my bladder that is sending me the wake-up call so I just stay awake and type this for the Blog on the laptop.

My daily routine has a pretty regular schedule now because I have to get my nourishment via the feeding tube. The time line may shift slightly so that I can get our little girl to the school bus on school days. On those days my breakfast doesn’t get started until 7:40AM. Today I will try to shower around 6AM and start my breakfast by 6:30AM since we have a soccer game this morning, Saturday. The feeding time allows me to get through reading the daily newspaper and also do the crossword puzzle.

I’ve ordered a wireless card for the laptop so that with the new wireless modem I have I will be able to get on the Internet directly from the feeding station. There always seem to be items I think of checking while using the laptop that I forget to check when I work at the computer. For example, I wonder if there is a web site or a chat room for people who can’t swallow whole food? I have yet to try to find that.

THE DEATH WATCH-FIVE

2007-10-27T12:02:00.000-07:00

I spent the day, yesterday, having the feeling that I was being consumed internally. I feel physically weak as well as mentally weak and although it takes a bit of effort to do something I am reluctant to do it because my mind says, “Why bother?” I start my first radiation treatment next Tuesday so hopefully having someplace to go on a regular basis will help get my “get-up-and-go” into gear and help me through the day.

I keep trying to put future events into my time-line so that I can get a better perspective of what I am looking forward to, which is how I will try to get the doctors to respond.

Will I be around for the World Series?
Will I be here for Thanksgiving?
Will I be able to celebrate my next wedding anniversary?
Will I be able to vote in the next election?
Will I see another birthday?
Will I see a new president inaugurated?
Will I see an end to the war in Iraq?

THE DEATH WATCH-FOUR

2007-10-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

It’s Wednesday and I just got back from getting fitted for my Radiation treatments, which consisted of my lying on my back in a form that will be adapted to me so that with the lasers aimed at my tattoos I will be correctly position for the radiation. They will be using the tattoos that they made for my earlier treatments but the target will be set a bit higher since the tumor is in a different location.

Ever since the doctor said that the cancer had spread into the bones I have had pain throughout my body. I suspect that this may be due to the chair sleeping I’ve been doing and the mind set rather than the cancer. I will be getting a better picture of what to expect when I see the doctor next week.

THE DEATH WATCH-THREE

2007-10-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Tuesday is here and I still have not heard from the doctor’s office about an appointment so I guess I’ll work on my “Estate Plan”. There are a few things that I should try to take care of so that my loved ones won’t be burdened. I can’t believe that I have to talk to a lawyer to prevent my wife from having to pay inheritance taxes on my meager retirement funds.

One of the problems I will have to face is the veritable plethora of long faces on people who have learned of my condition from my wife. I tell those I want to tell in the way I want to tell it but invariably I get the “We’re praying for you …” and I lack the nerve to reply honestly.

There is a quote from Shakespeare that I recall from my youth that seems apropos at this time. First I have to tell you the story of my recollection. When I was about ten I was at an all boy’s summer camp in Maine and I was in a play called “The Valiant”. I played a priest in a prison where a prisoner was about to be executed and my roll was to walk ahead of the prisoner while reading from the Bible, on the way to the Electric Chair. My only line in the play was the quote, which until recently, I thought was from the Bible.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once."

--From Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37)

THE DEATH WATCH-TWO

2007-10-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

(When I started to write this Blog again I had planned to keep the entries relevant to the dates like a daily diary but unfortunately I got caught by my own lay-off. Apparently the Blog was sold to Google since I stopped making entries and when I wanted to post a new entry I actually started a new Blog. Hopefully, I can get this corrected so that the entries will stay in the same order BUT they won’t be chronologically correct. )

The results of the biopsy, taken on Monday, alerted my Radiation Oncologist who called on Wednesday to set up an appointment with him, preceded by a CAT scan. The following Monday I had the CAT scan and Tuesday morning I saw the doctor. He felt very badly about having to tell me that not only was this cancer located in a new part of my esophagus but that there seemed to be some extra spots on my lungs. The spots were too small to identify clearly and the lung is a very difficult place to biopsy so he suggested I get PET scan, which isolates cancer sites. The bottom line seemed to be that what was happening now was not curable and that we had to work out a treatment procedure. I scheduled a PET scan and also visited with my other Oncologist. He agreed that the PET scan was the first thing to do and then we could discuss options for my treatment. The first order seems to be to try to reduce the size of the constriction with radiation and then see if chemo seems worthwhile doing based on the extent of the cancer spread.

Thursday I had the PET scan and by that afternoon the doctor called to say that the cancer had spread into the bones. As I write this, it is Monday and I am waiting to hear from the doctor’s office about scheduling the radiation treatments after which we will discuss what further treatments are possible. I will probably get a better idea of my Time-Line, although I’m not sure how much of this the doctors can predict.

I plan to tell the doctors that I have only two requests, one that I don’t die on a holiday and two that I don’t die in pain. A question that I will have to ask my lawyer is that if my life insurance policy has a suicide clause, does that apply here in Oregon where doctor assisted suicide is legal. I have yet to discuss the doctor-assisted suicide with my doctors. Working in a Catholic hospital may prevent their participation.

Further thoughts at this time revolve about my loved ones and how they are reacting to the news of my terminal illness. I have not had the experience of trying to ease the impact on them because I only know that for myself I am not concerned. I guess I will be exploring these items in future items I hope to write.

THE DEATH WATCH

2007-10-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

I have not written in this Blog since February because I really had nothing much to write about and I had very little incentive to just sit and write nonsense. However, since February I have been fighting with a worsening condition related to my esophagus. I started to have trouble swallowing and I was told that it is a very common occurrence to have scar tissue build up in the location of radiation treated cancer.

In April I had a CAT scan and it was determined that I was Cancer free and that not getting the esophagus surgically removed was not a bad decision.

Since February it has been harder and harder to eat food but I was told that I had very few options short of actually cutting out the entire esophagus and attaching my stomach directly to my throat. I didn’t particularly like that option. Another option was to have a feeding tube re-inserted. I had the feeding tube that I had during Chemo removed when I got my taste buds back. As the condition worsened, however, I was reduced to drinking protein shakes and Ensure. I was losing weight, which was a good thing, but my general health seemed to stay good.

Just prior to going East for my 50th class reunion even the liquid diet was becoming more difficult. The crises hit about a week before we were headed home when I even had trouble swallowing my own saliva. I had been crushing all my pills for high blood pressure, diabetes etc. but that now also became impossible. Obviously I was also not getting enough water into my system so I was getting dehydrated. By the time we got home I was in bad shape and my physical condition was not helped by the delay leaving Boston and the entire airport waiting due to missed flights. By the time we got home I really felt like I needed to be hospitalized. The doctor we called suggested I go to the Emergency Room at the hospital where my Oncologist was located so that’s what we did. My only goal was to get a stomach tube put in and I was prepared for feeding through the tube from now on.

My hospital stay turned out to be a bit longer than I anticipated because my Oncologist wanted to get a complete picture of my condition so before I had the stomach tube inserted my dehydration was stabilized and I met with a GI doctor to see what could be done about the closing of my esophagus. The GI doctor suggested he could insert an endoscope and try to dilate the scar tissue, in ever increasing amounts, so that an opening could be created. In addition, he said that it looked like the constriction was too high up in the esophagus to allow a stent to be inserted. I left the hospital with a stomach tube and a clean bill of health with reference to my blood pressure and my diabetes. I have not taken any of the medication since.

Although I started the endoscope procedures with the GI doctor, I had an underlying belief that the cancer had returned. In the period between June and October I had almost weekly procedures, which only temporarily fixed the problem. After a procedure I could swallow soup for a day or two but just prior to the next procedure I was back to having to spit out my own saliva. It got to be a real drag. My regular GI doctor went on vacation and his stand-in was the one who found the new cancer.

Thus begins The Death Watch.

Hey, Tim Hardaway!!!

2007-02-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

'I AM HOMOPHOBIC': 'I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people,' Tim Hardaway said.

Hey, Tim Hardaway!!!

How would you feel if some white player said he wouldn’t play on a team with a black?

That was the case in men’s basketball only a few short years ago. In fact the “color” barrier was broken in short spurts that only allowed two black players on the floor at any one time.

As far as I’m concerned, a bigot is a bigot is a bigot. Your comments are as bigoted as the guys that put on the white robes and burn crosses.

The Cash Shrink-Wrap Iraq War

2007-02-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

This week’s hearings in the US Congress seem to have cast more shadows than light on the US management of reconstruction programs in post-war Iraq.

Yesterday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) concluded four days of hearings into issues relating to US oversight and military contracts in Iraq, as part of their wider investigation into “waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers’ dollars”.

One of the more staggering revelations centers on the $12 billion that went missing on the watch of former Ambassador Paul Bremer, who presided over the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq between May 2003 and June 2004. While questions about the missing billions focused on theft and corruption, it was also suggested that some of the money may have ended up in the hands of the Iraqi insurgency, which has so far claimed the lives of 3,118 US troops.

The committee heard that the US Federal Reserve shrink-wrapped 363 tons of $100 bills into brick-shaped bundles and shipped them off to the Green Zone in Baghdad. “Who in their right minds would send 360 tons of cash into a war zone?” asked Mr Waxman. “But that’s exactly what our government did.”

Mr Bremer conceded that there had been little in the way of accounting procedures or accountability, but he said that only a cash economy existed in post-war Iraq. “The country was in chaos and the banking system was a shambles,” he said. “We had to simplify the contracting rules. Such regulations are simply not designed to deal with wartime conditions.”

Mr Bremer handed the cash over to the Iraqi Finance Ministry, who then doled it out to other ministries, where up to 90 percent of the staff were “ghost employees” – people who either weren’t actually on the staff, or simply did not exist.

Mr Bremer continued to provide the funds for these government payrolls, despite his knowing that they were bogus, because he feared the Iraqis might become unruly and start rioting. He said the Bush Administration had no clear strategy for Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
From the outset, Mr Bremer also stressed that it was Iraqi money, not American tax dollars, that had disappeared. The missing billions had come from the proceeds of Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the UN oil-for-food program and frozen bank accounts and assets from Saddam Hussein’s government.

Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, testified that President Bush had designated this collective fund the ‘Development Fund of Iraq’ (DFI) and ordered that it be held in trust by the US to provide for Iraq’s reconstruction. Regulations were adopted governing oversight of the money’s disbursement and its use by the Iraqi government. However, an audit confirmed that the CPA ignored these provisions and failed to implement sufficient oversight.
During the hearings, Mr Waxman also raised questions regarding US reliance on private military contractors, who have been given “an unprecedented role in providing security services” during the war in Iraq. He said that in the “indecipherable world of contractors and subcontractors … sorting out overheads, subcontracts, sub-subcontracts, profit and performance have been nearly impossible.”

In one example, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root (KBR), the largest military contractor in the US, could not account for $22.3 million it had been paid in two audits conducted in 2004.

The sub-subcontracting process, in which several companies tack on overhead charges, often doubles costs to US taxpayers. Mr Waxman cited one case in which Blackwater had paid employees $600 a day to perform work, yet the final charges further up the line had been $1,500 a day because several layers of subcontractors had tacked on their charges to the primary contractor.

Despite the considerable profit margins permitted in cost-plus military contracts in Iraq, relatives of Blackwater employees who were killed in Fallujah in 2004, before their bodies were burned and dragged through the streets, accused the company of sending the men on dangerous missions while not providing them with equipment such as armor, maps, heavy machine guns or rear gunners.

“When the decision was made to save millions of dollars by not buying armored vehicles, our husbands, fathers and sons were killed,” said Kathryn Helvenston-Wettengel, whose son Stephen ‘Scott’ Helvenston was killed in the attack.

Other relatives who testified said that Blackwater had promised the men $600 a day but then did not honor commitments to protect them according to the terms of their contracts. However, Andrew Howell, general counsel for Blackwater, has argued that Blackwater abided by its contractual obligations.

The privatization of war fighting reflects the Bush administration’s mission to downsize government in an effort to achieve efficiencies. The Pentagon has estimated that there are now about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, along with the 132,000 US troops currently deployed.

However, privatization has come under fire because hiring contractors is increasingly costly and lacks accountability.

“This is a rent-an-army out there,” said Rep. Jim Webb (D-Va.), a Vietnam veteran. “Wouldn’t it be better for this country if those tasks, particularly the quasi-military gun fighting tasks, were being performed by active-duty military soldiers in terms of cost and accountability?”

Meanwhile, illegal activities within the military were highlighted on Wednesday when Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced that three Army Reserve officers, a US contractor and an American businessman had been indicted on a total of 25 charges including bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and transporting stolen property.

Referring to the shrink-wrapped stacks of cash shipped into the Green Zone, Mr McNulty said, “These defendants actually took bricks of stolen cash ... and smuggled them out of Iraq and back to the United States for their own personal use.”

It has also been alleged that the reservists helped to steer military contracts worth millions of dollars to the US contractor who is now their co-defendant.

WAR ON HANUKKAH?

2006-12-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

Joel Stein:

Think Christmas has it bad?
You don't hear Jews complaining about the War on Hanukkah.

THERE IS A WAR on Hanukkah. I know this because, even by late last week, I had absolutely no idea it was Hanukkah.

Usually my grandmother sends a card, or the radio plays that Adam Sandler song, or one of those Chabad people in a Mitzvah tank picks me out on the street as Jewish and hands me candles, causing me to worry that I'm balding and short and my nose is too big. Apparently, disseminating self-loathing is a mitzvah.

War is a zero-sum game, so when Christmas is winning, Hanukkah is losing. Crumbling under pressure from conservatives, Wal-Mart, Macy's, Target, Kmart, Walgreens and Kohl's dropped "Happy Holidays" and brought back their "Merry Christmas" campaigns. The Seattle airport put back its Christmas trees after removing them last week when a rabbi complained. That controversy never would have happened if Gentiles simply realized that absolutely no one ever listens to rabbis. If we did, kids who went to Hebrew school would actually speak Hebrew.

Meanwhile, as Christmas piled up victory after victory, the city of Fort Collins, Colo., refused to display a 9-foot-tall menorah next to a Christmas tree in its town square. Instead, it sits in CooperSmith's Pub & Brewing. There's nothing sadder than watching a 9-foot-tall menorah drink away its pain.These should be good times for Hanukkah and the Jews. After all, the Christmas story offers nothing besides a guy who erases all our sins, but the tale of Hanukkah centers on a magical, super-efficient oil that causes an eightfold decrease in carbon emissions.

But instead of this being our year, we had the worst run-up to Hanukkah in 62 years: Iran hosted David Duke at its Holocaust denial conference; Mel Gibson got a Golden Globe nomination; Jimmy Carter equated Israeli policy with apartheid; Ehud Olmert — the least-smooth Jew since Jerry Lewis — accidentally admitted that Israel has the bomb; and the subtext of "Charlotte's Web" is that pork is irresistible.

So until the world backs off on its war against Hanukkah, we're not going to play your reindeer games. We may not have enough Mitzvah tanks, but we do have other weapons just as annoying. Until Hanukkah gets its proper respect, we're pulling our singers from Christmas albums. No more Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow.

You'll quickly find you don't have many entertainers of your own when you're at Banana Republic listening to that one Kristin Chenoweth album over and over. You have deployed your most annoying Gentiles against us: John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly. So forget Al Franken. Once we find the alley that Pauly Shore is sleeping in, he'll be singing the dreidel song outside your house. We'll force storeowners to greet you with a "Happy Hanukkah" — and not the secular version but the one with the "Ch" in front and all the accompanying spittle.

We're also going to shoot you. Us Jews hear war, we take it seriously.Because if you're going tribal, we're going tribal. And though our tribe is small and often out of shape, we're scrappy. So think twice before you spill out too much vitriol about this war on Christmas that you're winning. When the empowered convince themselves that they're under attack, they often convince themselves that cruelty to the powerless is justified.

These are the scary sugar plums that dance in Lou Dobbs' head.

I realize these are difficult times. I understand the desire to declare "our" unified Christianity in public places, to fence out the Mexicans, to fight against the luxury of Muslim free speech, to pass English-only legislation. But a great nation, as our Constitution figured out, fights its populist instincts. And uses Latin to confuse its citizens.

And if getting along means accepting a manger and not hearing "Happy Hanukkah," I'm willing to surrender in this war. As long as you realize that without those of us who don't celebrate Christmas, this nation would lose its purpose.

And the chance to have this dumb debate every year.

Though, if we keep it going for another two years, I think I can sell CBS on a claymation holiday special, with John Gibson singing about the "Island of Misfit Toupees."*

jstein@latimescolumnists.com

IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION THEN YOU MUST BE PART OF THE PROBLEM

2006-12-13T11:16:00.000-08:00

Good soldier finally defies the bad war

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

With 71 percent of the American public now opposing the president's handling of the disaster in Iraq, that Oregon maverick, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., finally realized "the current course (of the war) is unacceptable."
With the election long over and the rejection of his party almost complete, Smith, a "student of history, particularly military history," suddenly remembered an 80-year-old Winston Churchill quote that compared Iraq to "an ungrateful volcano."
And with the ABC lights and This Week's George Stephanopoulos in his face Sunday, asking about his "dramatic change of heart," Smith allowed that, yes, he remembers "every day that I sit in the seat of Mark Hatfield."
Give Smith credit: He just illustrated the dramatic difference between sitting in that seat and actually filling it.
To compare Hatfield's storied opposition to the war in Vietnam and Smith's belated protest of the war in Iraq is a glorious stretch. Hatfield was voting against Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam policy in 1965 when that stance was both inconvenient (Bob Duncan used the issue against him in the '66 gubernatorial race) and unpopular. He condemned the administration's "consistent policy" of "misleading the American public" long before the '68 Tet offensive fixed public opinion against the war.
Gordon Smith? He sat on his hands when it mattered. He didn't search out the Churchill quotes until the Iraq Study Group laid its cards on the table. He remained quiet while life in that "ungrateful volcano" degenerated into the deadly carnage of sectarian violence, which has steadily escalated since the February 2006 bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra.
"I have tried to be a good soldier in this chamber," Smith explained last week. "I have tried to support our President, believing at the time of the (2002) vote on the war in Iraq that we had been given good intelligence and knowing Saddam Hussein was a menace to the world. . . . I have been rather silent on this question ever since."
Silent? "Our lives begin to end," Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the day we become silent about things that matter." But Smith was hardly quiet. Last June, he rose on the Senate floor to condemn an amendment calling for a phased deployment of U.S. troops, arguing, "As I have studied history, I have never found an instance whereby victory is won by announcing retreat."
"Al-Qaida is counting on us to go home," Smith said then. "Al-Qaida is counting on us to set a date." He invoked the terrorist group six times, and Sept. 11 once, to insist -- even at that late date -- Iraq was a test of American will in the war on terror, rather than an increasingly barbaric civil war.
There is no future, Smith said Monday, "in the crossfire of an ancient civil war. It's not our problem. It's not something we can fix. . . . That's why the American people, in their wisdom, ceased to support this conflict."
Thirteen months ago, former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., reached that very conclusion. He opened his mea culpa with the words, "I was wrong" -- in voting for a war that was sold on the basis of deeply flawed and politicized intelligence -- and hit most of the themes Smith touched on last week.
Smith said he stayed "silent" at the behest of an Oregon soldier in Kirkuk. "I believe even that soldier would now tell me to speak up, when I can make a difference," he said Monday.
A month after the election? Six months after casting the war as a referendum on al-Qaida?
"If I wanted to effect change, I had to speak now," Smith insisted. "I had a duty to speak now. The confluence of events -- the election, the Iraq Study Group, the new secretary of defense -- definitely makes it much more likely that I can effect change."
I imagine quite a few of the legendary strategists in Washington would agree with that sense of duty. Mark Hatfield just isn't one of them.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com http://steveduin.blogs.oregonlive.com

Auto racing loses a gentleman

2006-12-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

Auto racing loses a gentleman
The renowned Portland racer was second in the 1962 Indianapolis 500, had 43 career top 10 finishes while winning the admiration of his peers
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
PAUL BUKER

Portland's Len Sutton, one of the greatest race car drivers of his generation and the second-place finisher in the 1962 Indianapolis 500, died in his sleep Monday morning at his Portland home.
He was 81, and his wife Anita, the love of his life for 59 years, was close by.
"He's at peace now," said Rolla Vollstedt, the Portland race car builder and Sutton's lifelong friend.
Sutton suffered a heart attack in 2004, and bouts with lung cancer and prostate problems had slowed him, but as recently as last summer, the Northwest legend was behind the wheel of the 88-year-old Vollstedt's roadster, barreling past cars on the outside lane at Sunset Speedway in Banks -- after race promoters implored him to be careful for insurance purposes.
Sutton was a popular driver known for his outgoing personality. He cheated death many times in his career, starting out in an era when drivers wore T-shirts, coveralls and flimsy leather helmets. The cars had no roll bars and could easily burst into flames.
"We weren't going all that fast," Sutton said in a 2005 interview, "but fast enough to get killed."
Sutton worked at Oregon Air National Guard as a propeller mechanic before a chance meeting with Vollstedt in 1947 at the old Union Avenue Speedway in North Portland got him hooked on racing.
He and Vollstedt dominated the Northwest roadster and sprint car circuit before they ventured into the big time. Sutton drove Vollstedt's rear-engined, Offenhauser-powered cars in the 1964 and 1965 Indy 500. The two remained close long after their racing association ended, meeting for breakfast each Friday at Bill's Steakhouse in Parkrose.
"I knew something was wrong because last Friday, he didn't make it," Vollstedt said.
Vollstedt owned cars raced by two-time world champion Jimmy Clark and notable U.S. drivers Gordon Johncock, Johnny Rutherford, and Bobby Unser but he said Monday that Sutton, in his low key way, was "on a par" with those other drivers before he retired in 1965.
While horrific racing accidents claimed the life of Oregon drivers Les Anderson, George Amick and Art Pollard over the years, Sutton survived several close calls, raced in seven Indianapolis 500s, and won United States Auto Club championship races at Trenton, Springfield and Milwaukee. Sutton had 43 career top 10 finishes.
"I guess it just wasn't my time," Sutton would say of his ability to either walk away or be carried away -- still breathing -- from numerous accidents.
Sutton crashed into a ravine trying to avoid a herd of cattle in the 1954 Mexican road race.
He was in a full body cast when Anita drove him back to Portland.
In 1961, Sutton lost his brakes chasing A.J. Foyt at Milwaukee, hit the wall, and broke several vertebrae in his back. Anita dutifully drove him home again.
He got through the inferno that took the lives of Dave MacDonald and Eddie Sachs at Indy in 1964, with Anita in the grandstands, anxiously searching the track, waiting for her husband's car to emerge from the smoke and flames.
Sutton's first appearance at Indianapolis, in 1958, was nearly his last: a wind gust flipped his car in practice. It landed upside-down and slid nearly 1,000 feet. The Indianapolis News story the next day noted, "Sutton was at first believed dead by observers on the scene."
When Sutton regained consciousness, he wondered what all the fuss was about.
"Maybe they were just looking for some headlines that day," Sutton said in the 2005 interview. "All I had was a skull fracture, a bunch of hide torn off my back and hand and a broken shoulder. It wasn't a big deal as far as I was concerned."
An ambitious young driver named Mario Andretti watched Sutton race in the late 1950s and they would become friends. Sutton's career was in its twilight when Andretti burst to stardom.
"I loved the man," Andretti said Monday. "I'm totally saddened by this. . . . I remember as a kid, seeing him in 1956, 1957, when he came to the East Coast. For some reason or another, I was always impressed by his demeanor. There was just something about him. And later on, when I got to know him, I always had a special feeling for him. He was truly, truly one of the gentlemen of our sport."
Donald Davidson, the noted Indianapolis Motor Speedway historian, wrote the introduction to Sutton's 2002 book, "My Road to Indy."
"Back then, you got the impression that race drivers were these intense, tough guys but I was amazed how truly nice a person he was when I first met Len in 1964," said Davidson, who worked Indy 500 radio network broadcasts for several years with Sutton in the booth serving "as the driver expert."

Chris Economaki, the world-famous motorsports journalist and TV commentator, said he first encountered Sutton when Sutton was racing midgets back east and Economaki was the track announcer.
"It was just amazing to me that a guy from the Pacific Northwest would be racing in New England," Economaki said. "Here was a guy who came from an era when you didn't get paid unless you earned the money. There was no salaries, no bonuses, no retainers. You got a percentage of what the car won, so as a consequence, you had to do a lot of traveling. Len had to hustle to make a living."
Economaki was impressed with Sutton's versatility.
"Most drivers had their specialties," he said of 1950s and 1960s-era racing. "There were drivers who drove midgets, or drivers who drove sprint cars, etc., but Sutton drove everything. And he drove everything well."
Economaki remembered Sutton as a skilled driver, "but he was a much nicer person and human being."
Among his numerous honors, Sutton said he was proud to be a member of the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, joining ageless stock car racing legend Hershel McGriff and Portland sports car racer Monte Shelton, who noted simply of his longtime friend, "he was almost too nice to be in racing. You couldn't find a mean bone in that guy's body. And yet, when he raced, he was really good."
Sutton is survived by his wife and his two daughters, Christy and Hollie.
Funeral services are pending.

Paul Buker: 503-221-8167; paulbuker@news.oregonian.com

Friday the oneth

2006-12-01T11:47:00.000-08:00

I’m still around. I have not dropped off the edge of the earth. I have just been too lazy to write. In fact, I feel remarkably well. I was engrossed with the 87th Precinct and then shifted to stories about Lew Archer and then I went on to blood, gore and mayhem with Alex Cross, to avoid watching the TV news of blood, gore and mayhem.

After the pre-Halloween party I spent half a day on a second grade field trip to an historic firehouse in Portland. Two half days with eight year olds was enough for a whole year for me.

The month of November was the wettest on record for Portland and it also included freezing temps. It’s strange to be looking forward to December and winter.

I did hear from a head-hunter so the job front does look promising. I may yet get back to work although my daily routine is acquiring a life of its own;

6:30AM Rise and shine
6:45 Wake the little princess & start to fix breakfast for the two of us
7:45 Head out the door for school
8:00 Head for the gym and my daily work-out
9:00 Return home, exercised, showered and refreshed, to read the newspaper and do the crossword puzzle.
2:00 Pick-up the little princess after spending the day reading, running errands, reading, working at the computer and reading some more.
2:30 to 4:00 Spending time with the little princess on homework, projects or reading while she works on her computer.
4:00 Wake Sue!!!
6:00 Dinner, and then it’s my TV time. Football on Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights.

This would easily change if I got gainful employment. I’m not really ready to retire.

21 Nov Party Time

2006-11-21T18:05:00.000-08:00

Monday, Monday

2006-11-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve been working out now everyday that L goes to school and I feel a lot better for it. I started off at five minutes on the treadmill and after two weeks I’m up to 20 minutes and I have no effects or pain in my butt.

I enjoy watching the geriatric crowd and listening to the oldsters conversations. Today an octogenarian was asked if he listens to Hard Rock or Heavy Metal on his Ipod. He answered that he listens to 24 hour news on MSNBC radio. What a downer. Unless Jon Stewart gets on the radio with The Daily Show, I wouldn’t listen to the news.

One man at the gym thinks I look like Fidel so he’s always asking me if I ever wear camouflage. I have a free session with a Personal Trainer as part of my membership but I’m not sure I look forward to that. The Personal Trainers I’ve seen so far seem like sadists.

Tomorrow I am going to help in the second grade for a Thanksgiving Party and L has decided to lay out my clothes for the big day. I may even take pictures.

TWO LOST DAYS

2006-11-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

I guess I had a bit of a relapse and lost two days when I didn't feel like turning on the computer. It started Tuesday Morning for some reason that I couldn't define and lasted till Wednesday Evening. I'm better now but these unexplained relapses are getting disturbing. I'm abivalent now about tomorrow but I always look forward to Thanksgiving. I feel fortunate that there is no tragic event in my life that occured at or near a holiday so the when the holiday rolls around I don't have bad memories.

I hope this is the start of a good set of days and I will hopefully write more tomorrow.

Monday the Thirteenth

2006-11-13T11:13:00.000-08:00

This past week-end with the “girls” (my Grand Daughters) was really great as I always enjoy their company. We played a rousing game of Monopoly and the two sisters got very cut-throat, as was expected. In “Monopoly according to my rules”, the properties are dealt out and then the trading begins. When I told Sue about the game in front of the little one, she volunteered that her cousins are on each other’s cases at home in such a way that even the dogs stop to get pop-corn just to watch.

The rainy weather was augmented last night by some high winds which really set our wind chimes in motion. This morning there was a bit of debris in the back yard but no trees were turned over.

Due to the inordinate amount of free time I seem to have I have been reading books by an author that I just discovered, Ed McBain. He’s only been writing books for 50 plus years and has only written 40 87th Precinct books in that time frame. I can’t believe that there was never a TV show based on his books. The Eight-Seven sounds like a cross between Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue and I’ve rally enjoyed the dozen I’ve already read. Since I joined the Library I have an unlimited source for books but I may not be able to find all 40 that he wrote.

Friday the TENTH

2006-11-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

Although my memories of 11/11 are of Armistace Day, celebrated at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, I am now facing the Veterans Day celebrated on the Tenth because the Eleventh is a Saturday. Somewhere there is a conspiracy to make for three day weekends and the hell with the significence of the date. I think it's a retailers conspiracy so that there can be three day sales that last till Tuesday.

I have the distinct pleasure of having three grand daughters in my charge on a rainy, no school Friday and although a visit to the Veterans Memorial would be appropriate, I doubt that the idea will be greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm on this rainy day.

I have proudly made it through the week with my promise to keep this Blog active and I now look forward to Monday. I will have to do some prep work over the week-end.

This is becoming a good year for the under-dog; Oregon State beat USC and last night Rutgers beat Louisville. The Blazers even beat the Lakers. The Democrats won both houses and GW lied again and admitted it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SEVEN

2006-11-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that what I am going through are "belated mental growing pains, trying to understand the peculiar shape of my life".

I am looking for work but without enthusiasm. I am working out daily and this seems to be stabilizing my routine. I am sleeping better and I seem less edgy. My "not caring" has even translated to the political front and although I'm glad the Democrats won and that Rumsfeld quit(?), I'm not all that overjoyed. It might also be due to the fact that after Nixon I figured I could survive anything.

I won't really be glad until the body bags stop coming from Iraq.

So far, at least for this week, I'm keeping up with my exercise program and the Blog.

SIX

2006-11-08T10:39:00.000-08:00

SIX

It seems to be harder and harder to get back to writing this piece so I will have to set-up a schedule and write daily, just the way I do in my journal that I started at the beginning of my Cancer. If I transfer this document to my BLOG I will have to assume that no one is reading it and that I will be like the tree that falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it so, will I make any noise? Probably not!

As of the First of November I am planning to visit the Gym every day after I drop Letha off at school and then after the Gym I will schedule BLOG time. It will be interesting to see if I can follow through on a “forced” schedule.

FIVE

2006-11-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

FIVE

I guess one other thing I’ve discovered is that I really don’t seem to care. About anything! I got good news from the latest tests and I am not all thrilled about it. I have this niggling feeling that I have to do something but I can’t seem to get started even doing anything, even writing this diatribe or my blog. I really have to pursue a scheduled type activity even if it’s for no money.

FOUR

2006-11-06T12:03:00.000-08:00

FOUR

It’s taken me a month to get back to this so I guess there isn’t a lot of improvement. I still have nothing to do on a regular basis except the cross-word and the dishes. I am getting closer to doing some exercise because I am thinking about it more. I am slowly getting my big bills paid and I am sleeping a lot better. I may be ready for going without sleeping pills. I have an appointment Friday for my EUS and if the news is bad I may be feeling worse again. I have sent in some more applications for jobs and I am hoping for a part-time teaching job although if it is in the evening it will screw up our routine at home. Time to do the dishes.

THREE

2006-11-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

THREE

It’s getting easier getting to the computer and writing this document. I have been sleeping better lately and my fatigue factor is definitely improving. This all adds up to having a better attitude. I am still trying to face the reality of not having any income and in addition finding something worthwhile to spend my time doing. I did spend some time yesterday checking out some possible part-time work but I’m not sure I am ready yet, health-wise. I seriously have to do some exercise and get my self moving.

TWO

2006-11-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

TWO

I have learned a valuable lesson from this writing exercise and that is that when you feel depressed you don’t feel like doing anything. It has taken me a very long time to get back to this diatribe just to sit down and write some more. Every time I felt like writing I didn’t have the get-up-and-go to get it done. I guess I was smart not to date the first item because it’s been at least three weeks since I wrote it. I will probably read it now to see what else needs writing.

As an up-date, it’s good news that I’m writing because I am starting to feel better about myself. I still have no where to go on a regular basis but I am going to spend time on the computer more often and do job searches etc. I have an address list to compile and some items I ought to get together for my blog. If I can discipline myself to write to the blog I may find some purpose to my life. I got over the shingles in about two weeks and had the feeding tube removed today. My energy level is improving and I am going to start some sort of exercise activity. My back and legs feel better for walking since I lost a few pounds and I am maintaining about 220 pounds which is a drop from the 270 I was at a few months ago.

I’ve filed for un-employment and this means I have a once a week chore to do.
That’s all for #2, and I hope #3 won’t be far behind.

I'm Baaaaack, I hope!

2006-11-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

I decided to share some of my inner thoughts with whomever might be out there . It is my own brand of therapy so here goes with the first installment;

ONE

I guess it’s about time that I set down my feelings into words. I never actually knew what depression was until recently. I am writing this rather haphazardly so it will read like a stream of consciousness but I really don’t want to spend the time to organize my thoughts. It will only discourage me to keep writing.

I first noticed something strange happening to me after the Radiation/Chemo stopped and I was surprised at how fast I went downhill, at least in my level of fatigue. I seemed to be totally unable to move to take a small step without a lot of mental preparation. All during my Radiation Therapy I had to be somewhere at a certain time every morning and I never had a problem getting there or functioning immediately thereafter. I left the Radiation lab and went to the office for a few hours and didn’t feel overly tired or unable to function. I was alert and able to perform my job and answer questions on the phone. I was feeding my self via the stomach tube so I kept pretty stationary in the afternoons. I went to bed without difficulty and slept well with the aid of a sleeping pill. I stopped taking any sort of pain medication pretty early on in the treatment. Tuesdays were my Chemo days which required my having a driver since the regimen included some sleep inducing meds. On those days I did not go to the office and dozed in the afternoon while connected to me feeding tube.

This all changed the day my routine stopped. I now think it had a lot to do with the fact I had no place to go in the morning. I could not function. I awoke after what I thought was a good night’s sleep but I felt fatigued and groggy. I attributed the grogginess to the sleeping pills so I stopped those and slept just as well but awoke less groggy. I still suffered from fatigue and a real lack of energy. It’s really hard to explain sitting and thinking about getting up and going into another room and having to take time to make body parts get started into motion.

It seemed like I was experiencing this feeling for a month after my treatment stopped and in the middle of all this I was also having to face the closure of the office and being out of work involuntarily for the first time in almost 50 years. The debts of my past with no income for the future caught up with me mentally as well and so now I am dealing with a case of Shingles, a stress related virus.

Another contributor to my depression is the bladder condition which doesn’t seem to be improving at a satisfactory rate for me and my Doctor is not very encouraging.

Well, so much for #1.

Taking a hint from my daughter...

2006-08-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

The One Book Meme

The One Book meme, courtesy of James Tata.

Here's my list:

--One book that changed your life. USA by Leon Uris. --One book that you’ve read more than once. None! I re-read parts of Twain and Dickens to my children when they were growing up. -

-One book you’d want on a desert island. A large book with edible pages.

--One book that made you laugh. Ogden Nash Books

--One book that made you cry. From Here to Eternity by James Jones because of the disclaimer that the book was a work of fiction except for the parts about the stockade.

--One book that you wish had been written. Can’t think of one

--One book that you wish had never been written. The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. The swastika on the cover was enough to turn me cold and I wouldn’t have the book on my book-case.

--One book you’re currently reading. Assassins Gate by George Packer.

--One book you’ve been meaning to read. The next Harry Potter book.

...just a thought for Friday

2006-08-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

"By the Hoof of the Wild Goat"
By, Rudyard Kipling

By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,
So she fell from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Now the fall was ordained from the first
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
But the Stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Oh Thou Who hast builded the World,
Oh Thou Who hast lighted the Sun,
Oh Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn,
Judge Thou
The sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the goat from the light of the Sun,
As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now--even now--even now!

...just a thought for Wednesday

2006-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

the cockroach who had been to hell
By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

listen to me i have
been mobbed almost
theres an old simp cockroach
here who thinks he has
been to hell and all
the young cockroaches make a
hero out of him and admire
him he sits and runs his front
feet through his long white
beard and tells the story one
day he says he crawled into a yawning
cavern and suddenly came on a
vast abyss full of whirling
smoke there was a light
at the bottom billows
and billows of yellow smoke
swirled up at him and
through the horrid gloom he
saw things with wings flying
and dropping and dying they veered
and fluttered like damned
spirits through that sulphurous mist

listen i says to him
old man youve never been to hell
at all there isn t any hell
transmigration is the game i
used to be a human vers libre
poet and i died and went
into a cockroach s body if
there was a hell id know
it wouldn t i you re
irreligious says the old simp
combing his whiskers excitedly
ancient one i says to him
while all those other
cockroaches gathered into a
ring around us what you
beheld was not hell all that
was natural some one was fumigating
a room and you blundered
into it through a crack
in the wall atheist he cries
and all those young
cockroaches cried atheist
and made for me if it
had not been for freddy
the rat i would now be
on my way once more i mean
killed as a cockroach and transmigrating
into something else well
that old whitebearded devil is
laying for me with hisgang he is jealous
because i took his glory away
from him dont ever tell me
insects are any more liberal
than humans

archy

just a thought for a Tuesday

2006-08-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Ostrich
by Ogden Nash

The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I'm glad it sits to lay its eggs.

I'm BAAACK!!!

2006-08-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

I hope to start keeping up with this Blog now that I got good news from all my tests and my Medical team. The map above was supplied by my cousin from Israel.

My "BEFORE" Portriat by Gwenn

2006-07-01T18:21:00.000-07:00

One Face at a Time

I have located the place we've all been looking for at one time or another.........

2006-06-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

...and here are some more members of my Health Team!!!

2006-06-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

Mary, my cocktail waitress/nurse
Erica & Sara in radiation

Here's the kind of Christian we need to hear more from:

2006-06-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Episcopal Church outside Washington as part of his campaign to restore his poll standings. Bush's campaign manager made a visit to the Bishop, and said to him "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity because of the president's position on stem cell research, the Iraq war, Katrina, and the like. We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of$100,000 if during your sermon you'd say the President is a saint.

"The Bishop thought it over for a few moments and finally said, "The Church is in desperate need of funds and I will agree to do it."

Bush showed up for the sermon and the Bishop began: "I'd like to speak to you all this morning about our President. George Bush is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel. He took the tragedy of September 11 and used it to frighten and manipulate the American people. He lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq for oil and money, causing the deaths of tens of thousands and making the United States the most hated country on earth.

"He appointed cronies to positions of power and influence, leading to widespread death and destruction during Hurricane Katrina. He awarded contracts and tax cuts to his rich friends so that we now have more poverty in this country, and a greater gap between rich and poor, than we've had since the Depression.

"He instituted illegal wiretaps when getting a warrant from a secret court would have been a mere administrative detail, had his henchmen lie to Congress about it, then claimed he is above the law. He has headed the most corrupt, bribe-inducing political party since Teapot Dome."The national surplus has turned into a staggering national debt of $7.6 Trillion, gas prices are up 85%, and vital research into global warming and stem cells is stopped cold because he's afraid to lose votes from some religious kooks.

"He is the worst example of a true Christian that I've ever known. But compared to Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush is a saint."

Some more members of my Health Team

2006-05-25T14:34:00.000-07:00

Christine Cha, MD
Radiation Oncology

Matt Solhjem, M.D.
Radiation Oncology

Failure

2006-05-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

See what happens when you "Google" "failure" and pick, "I'm feeling lucky"!!!

Alert for Livestrong Day

2006-05-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was the first day of the rest of my life and my newest hero is Lance Armstrong. I would appreciate it if you could support his efforts. I started Radiation & Chemo on Tuesday so for the next six weeks there will be a battle being waged inside my body.

Wednesday, May 17, is LIVESTRONG Day!

Help Lance and the LAF raise awareness about the health policy issues facing cancer survivors.

Learn more about LIVESTRONG Day

Submit your LIVESTRONG Day Event

The BIRDS is coming!!!

2006-05-05T15:17:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that the Homeland Security Agency published a 227 page document that told how little they can and plan to do in case the Avian Flu becomes a reality.

White House Plan Defers Leadership In Bird-Flu Fight

washingtonpost.com

White House Plan Defers Leadership In Bird-Flu Fight

By David BrownWashington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration plan for an influenza pandemic released yesterday hinges on sharing authority with global agencies such as the World Health Organization, and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, with governors, mayors and school superintendents.

The 227-page road map acknowledges that the federal government cannot -- and should not try -- to fully manage the response to an event that is likely to start overseas, eventually take hold in even the smallest U.S. communities, and last for months.

"The impact of a severe pandemic may be more comparable to that of war or a widespread economic crisis than a hurricane, earthquake, or act of terrorism," the authors of the plan wrote. "The center of gravity of the pandemic response will be in communities [and] the support the federal government can guarantee to any state, tribe or community will be limited."

Another HUMP-DAY Thought

2006-05-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

the lesson of the moth
By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

i was talking to a moth

the other evening

he was trying to break into

an electric light bulb

and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows

pull this stunt i asked him

because it is the conventional

thing for moths or why

if that had been an uncovered

candle instead of an electric

light bulb you would

now be a small unsightly cinder

have you no sense
plenty of it he answered

but at times we get tired

of using it

we get bored with the routine

and crave beauty

and excitement

fire is beautiful

and we know that if we get

too close it will kill us

but what does that matter

it is better to be happy

for a moment

and be burned up with beauty

than to live a long time

and be bored all the while

so we wad all our life up

into one little roll

and then we shoot the roll

that is what life is for

it is better to be a part of beauty

for one instant and then cease to

exist than to exist forever

and never be a part of beauty

our attitude toward life

is come easy go easy

we are like human beings

used to be before they became

too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him

out of his philosophy

he went and immolated himself

on a patent cigar lighter

i do not agree with him

myself i would rather have

half the happiness and twice

the longevity
but at the same time i wish

there was something i wanted

as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

Stephen Colbert Has Brass Cojones

2006-05-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

I can't believe that someone really believes Stephen Colbert is what he believes he is on the Colbert Report, but here it is!!!

Jon Stewart Defends Colbert's Dinner Speech

NEW YORK Probably to no one's surprise, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's "Daily Show," hailed the performance of his stablemate Stephen Colbert at Saturday night's White House Correspondents dinner. Colbert's lampooning of the president and the press has generated a good deal of praise and criticism. "It was balls-alicious," Stewart said. "Apparently he was under the impression that they'd hired him to do what he does every night on television"--that is, make fun of conservatives, public officials and the press in the guise of an O'Reillyesque talk show host."We've never been prouder of him, but HOLY ----," Stewart added.He also described the annual dinner as "where the President and the press corps consummate their loveless marriage." Colbert then followed Stewart, on his own show, "The Colbert Report," describing the "honor of appearing" at the bigd inner. He said the room was full of "power players" so he "fit right in.""Best of all, I got to meet my main man, President Bush," he said, and even had a chance to shake his hand. "He has very soft hands," Colbert revealed, "which was surprising. He must wear gloves when he is clearing brush."Colbert made fun of his mixed reception at the dinner, re-running the tape of one of his jokes with the audience barely reacting. He described this as "very respectful silence," and said that actually the crowd loved him. "They practically carried me out on their shoulders," he said, "even though I wasn't ready to go."

My Health team + One

2006-04-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

The latest member of my Team is the one that installed my feeding tube & Porta-Cath last Wednesday.

Jozsef Lukacs, M.D.

Jozsef Lukacs, M.D. serves as a Staff Radiologist in the Interventional Radiology section of the Department of Diagnostic Imaging at Providence Portland Medical Center andalso serves as a Staff Radiologist for the Portland Endovascular / Interventional Radiology Clinic (PERC).
Dr. Lukacs received his MD degree from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. After training for one year in Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, he entered Radiology Residency at the University of Texas, Health Science Center and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston Texas.
Dr. Lukacs completed a Fellowship Training in Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiology at Stanford University Medical Center. While at Stanford, Dr. Lukacs worked on research projects, including laser disc surgery of the spine, thrombosis and aneurysm repair. Current interests include arterial and venous stenting, aortic aneurysm repair, thrombolysis, laser treatment of varicose veins, uterine fibroid embolization and tumor therapy. Dr Lukacs has special interest in treatment of back pain, including vertebroplasty, chronic pain management and minimally invasive disc removal.
When not practicing medicine, Dr. Lukacs enjoys time with his family. They have traveled throughout the world and enjoy the outdoor offerings of Oregon, including windsurfing, hiking, skiing, boating and SCUBA diving.

SUZANNE-Too

2006-04-25T11:25:00.000-07:00

According to the writer, Leonard Cohen, he wrote this song in 1966 and his album came out in 1968. I seem to have an earlier recollection, which is probably wrong, but since it doesn’t impact the story I will go along with those dates. I do remember that when I heard the song it grabbed me in some very deep parts of my innards.

“For she's touched your perfect body with her mind”

That line was the coupe de grace and turned me into putty.

That was the background, so here’s the story. In 1968 I was traveling to Majorca two to three times a year to handle an import business that I was running after my father passed away. I would spend three weeks at the Victoria Hotel, primarily a tourist hotel, and conduct my business meetings in the mornings and late afternoons.

Majorca is the largest of a group of islands in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain, known as the Balearic Islands and at the time I was going there the area was known as the “Scandinavian Riviera”. There were, therefore, a lot of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian women of all ages that would arrive by the planeload and the social activities at the hotel included a live band and dancing every evening. Working in Spain meant that there was a siesta built into the workday where the time after lunch was designed for rest so the afternoon workday didn’t continue until after 4 PM. Dinner hours usually started after 8 PM. Except for the tourist hotels, the luncheon meal was usually a much larger event than the evening meal, which was usually a light supper.

On one particular night in June, which just happened to be my birthday, I was hanging around the nightclub part of the hotel, listening to the music and dancing with some of the single women that were there and generally feeling alone because there was no one there that I had ever met before and I somehow wasn’t very interested in anyone there.

Immediately adjacent to the dance hall was the outdoor pool and I wandered out there to be alone with my thoughts. As I was sitting alone in the semi-lit area a group of four people, three young men and a young lady came out of the dance hall and were frolicking around the pool. I was immediately attracted to the young lady who was the center of attention of the three men without seeming to be associated with any one man. They ran around and “frolicked” for quite awhile around the pool area and I didn’t think that they noticed me nor did I feel that I inhibited them in any way. They were not speaking English but I could not identify what language they were speaking. The best I can do to describe the young lady is to say that she seemed the “free spirit” type and she was certainly in control of her surroundings and her companions.

The next day was a holiday in Spain so I took off early in the morning to visit some tourist attraction on the other side of the Island with some friends and I didn’t get back to the hotel until late in the afternoon. As soon as I walked into the hotel the Concierge asked where I’d been because there was a young lady asking for me all day long.

I went to my room to change for dinner. There was a knock on my door and there she stood, the beautiful young lady that I had seen the night before at the poolside. She told me that she had been looking for me all day and that she had wanted to meet me since she saw me last night and that she thought I looked so sad last night and that she was leaving in half an hour on a boat that she pointed out to me in the harbor and that she was German. There is no way to describe the range of emotions I went through during that 15 or 20 minutes that we stood and talked and I honestly don’t even recall the conversation but I will never forget the face or the outfit she was wearing.

We hugged and said good-bye.

That evening I stopped by the Concierge’s desk and asked him if he knew who the young lady was but all he could tell me was that her name was Suzanne.

“For she's touched your perfect body with her mind”

SUZANNE-One

2006-04-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

SUZANNE

(from the album 'SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN')

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

You can hear the boats go by

You can spend the night beside her

And you know that she's half crazy

But that's why you want to be there

And she feeds you tea and oranges

That come all the way from China

And just when you mean to tell her

That you have no love to give herT

hen she gets you on her wavelength

And she lets the river answer

That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that she will trust you

For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor

When he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching

From his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him

He said "All men will be sailors then

Until the sea shall free them"

But he himself was broken

Long before the sky would open

Forsaken, almost human

He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him

And you want to travel blind

And you think maybe you'll trust him

For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand

And she leads you to the river

She is wearing rags and feathers

From Salvation Army counters

And the sun pours down like honey

On our lady of the harbour

And she shows you where to look

Among the garbage and the flowers

There are heroes in the seaweed

There are children in the morning

They are leaning out for love

And they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that you can trust her

For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

My Health Team

2006-04-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

Melvin Yamase,

M.D.Board Certified:
Internal Medicine

My primary care Doc

Todd Crocenzi, M.D.
Medical Oncology

My Team leader!!!

John Handy, MD
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Director, Providence Thoracic Surgery Program
Co-Director, Providence Thoracic Oncology Program
The Dr. (Harley Boots et al) scheduled to do the surgery after the Chemo.

Steven K. Seung, M.D., Ph.D.
RadiationOncology
The Dr. I'm seeing on Thursday to start my Chemo.

Betty Kim, MD
Gastroenterology
The Dr. that discovered my EC.

Alan Savoy, MD
Gastroenterology
The Dr. that did the EUS.

A thought for tomorrow's EarthDay

2006-04-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember Dan Quayle? He once said;

"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

Just a "Hump-Day" thought

2006-04-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

April is here, time to cut loose of politics

By Garrison Keillor

Columnists should not write about politics. Take it from me, it's a bad idea. You pick up your bright sword to harass the heathen Republican and your prose style goes limp, your verbs droop and words such as "comprehensive" and "funding" creep in and you become thin-lipped and hissy, like Miss Whipple in study hall telling the boys in the back of the room to shape up or be sorry. Well, they aren't going to shape up. What will shape them up is the day of reckoning and it's not here yet.
It's spring in Minnesota, the snow is gone except behind the garage, so it's time to turn over a new leaf and let other people rag on the president. He is who he is, and anybody who hasn't formed an opinion of him is not paying attention.
I am going to sit and read poetry and wait for the enormous old crab apple tree beside our driveway to bud and then blossom, a mass of brilliant purplish flowers like a Mardi Gras float parked beside the house -- you can almost hear the brass band playing, "Just a Little While to Stay Here." Or maybe it's a funeral and the purple flowers are from the deceased's old pals who are shuffling along beside the coffin, hankies in hand, on their way to the graveyard and then to O'Gara's for a commemorative bump of whiskey. You can get all this just by looking at a crab apple tree. Visions of the vast grandeur of the sensuous world, intimations of mortality.
What vast grandeur do you find in Washington these days? The Abramoff-DeLay saga is the story of weasels. Small-time grifters and flimflam men wheedling favors and skimming money off the top. Nobody in the Republican majority could be shocked by any of this, so why should you and I?
The people who are getting reamed by this administration are people under 30, and they are, like, OK with that. They walk around with little wires coming out of their ears and 10,000 tunes on their iPods, and if you go, like, global warming, they are, like, whatever. And you go, government deficit, and they are, like, duuuuuuuuuuuude.
Our country has been entered into a 30-year war against Islam, and I will not be fighting it. I am, like, 63. In fact, I am not only like 63, I am 63 and will soon be 64 when I hope you will still need me and feed me. I am sitting pretty. If the polar icecap melts, it's no problem in Minnesota: The ocean isn't going to wash up on our doorsteps. No hurricanes on our horizon. None of my friends are penguins. If Iran gets the bomb, are they going to fly all the way to Minnesota to drop it?
Politics is a slough, and maybe we should let the weasels have it for now. Even if two more Republicans follow the current occupant into office, this country will still be around in some form or other. Cities may crumble and we may be forced to reside in walled compounds and hire security men to escort us to Wal-Mart and back, but much will remain, such as love, for example, and the quickening one feels in the spring. Flowers will bloom in whatever wreckage we make. Somewhere, someone will sing the old songs about love walking in and driving the shadows away.
People have been falling in love through every dismal era of history and through every war ever fought. Enormous black headlines in the newspapers and agitated talk in the cafes and yet she waited for him on the corner by the hotel where they had agreed to meet, and as traffic streamed past she watched the buses pulling up to the curb, looking for his familiar shape, his beautiful face, his slight smile. Under her arm, a newspaper, and inside it a columnist shaking his tiny fist at corruption, but it isn't worth 2 cents compared to what's in her heart. When her lover steps down, the air will be filled with bright purple blossoms and they will embrace and turn and go into the hotel, and on this, the future of the world depends.
Take the day off, dear reader, and ignore the world and let the president play his fiddle. Find the one who means the most to you and make yourselves happy. If that be ignorance, make the most of it.
The Garrison Keillor column, is distributed by Tribune Media Services.

So Quoth the Hypocrite

2006-04-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

Quoting Bible to attack gays is hypocritical
By Leonard Pitts Jr.

An open letter to Donna Reddick:
I'm writing this for Desiree. She's a student at Miami Sunset Senior High, where you teach business technology. A few days ago, she sent me an e-mail recounting an incident that happened on campus last week.
It seems that on three successive days, the morning announcements, which are televised throughout the school, featured student-produced segments on the subject of gay rights.
On the first day came comments from students who took the pro position. On the second day came remarks from a counselor who spoke of the need for students to respect one another. On the third day came you.
You and a few students, actually. One told classmates homosexuality was ''unacceptable in the eyesight of God.'' Another said gays were ``unrighteous.''
The coup de grace, though, was you invoking Sodom and Gomorrah and telling students homosexuality was ''wrong according to the Bible'' because God ordered humanity to multiply, which gay couples cannot do.
Desiree was, to put it mildly, upset. In the e-mail, she accused you of bigotry and wondered how a gay student could feel assured ever again of fair treatment in your class. I tend to agree. She also suggested that you crossed the line between church and state, an accusation about which I'm more conflicted.
It seems to me there's a difference between proselytizing for a religion and explaining how one's faith has influenced one's opinion.
You're entitled to think what you think, no matter how stupid it might be.

But I'll leave those questions for others to parse. My biggest frustration lies elsewhere. Put simply, I've had it up to here with the moral hypocrisy and intellectual constipation of Bible literalists.
By which I mean people like you, who dress their homophobia up in Scripture, insisting with sanctimonious sincerity that it's not homophobia at all, but just a pious determination to live according to what the Bible says.
And never mind that the Bible also says it is ''disgraceful'' for a woman to speak out in church (1 Corinthians 14:34-36) and that if she has any questions, she should wait till she gets home and ask her husband. Never mind that the Bible says the penalty for going to work on Sunday (Exodus 35:1-3) is death. Never mind that the Bible says the man who rapes a virgin should buy her from her father (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and marry her.
I'm going to speculate that you don't observe or support those commands. Which says to me that yours is a literalism of convenience, a literalism that is literal only so long as it allows you to condemn what you'd be condemning anyway and takes no skin off your personal backside.
As such, your claim that God sanctions your homophobia is the moral equivalent of Flip Wilson's old claim that the devil made him do it.
You resemble many of your and my co-religionists, whose faith so often expresses itself in an obsessive focus on one or two hot-button issues -- and seemingly nowhere else.
They're so panicked at the thought that somebody accidentally might treat gay people like people. They run around Chicken Little-like, screaming, 'Th' homosex'shals is comin'! Th' homosex'shals is comin'!'' Meantime, people are ignorant in Appalachia, strung out in Miami, starving in Niger, sex slaves in India, mass-murdered in Darfur. Where is the Christian outrage about that?

Just once, I'd like to read a headline that said a Christian group was boycotting to feed the hungry. Or marching to house the homeless. Or pushing Congress to provide the poor with healthcare worthy of the name.
Instead, they fixate on keeping the gay in their place. Which makes me question their priorities. And their compassion. And their faith.
If you love me, feed my sheep.
For the record, Ms. Reddick, the Bible says that, too.

Just-a-slow-Monday thought

2006-04-17T08:45:00.000-07:00

The Cow

by Ogden Nash

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk.

Thursday the 13th

2006-04-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

It just seems like a good day to bitch so here is a little saga of trying to get a TV repaired.

Ace Electronics Repair, Inc.
6360 SE Foster Road
Portland, OR 97206
503-772-9761

The saga begins;

During the week of 7 February 2006 I started to try to make arrangements to get our 27” Phillips TV repaired. When the TV is turned on it shuts itself off within seconds.

I finally located Ace Electronics via the Yellow Pages and in conversation with the person who answered the phone, I felt that he knew what the problem was and could fix it. I explained that I was not in any condition to deliver the TV and what prompted my call was that they advertised pick-up & delivery.

I was told that there would be a $30.00 pick-up & delivery charge and that the cost of repairs could run between $96.00 & $120.00 and that the work was guaranteed. I agreed to the terms and then I was told that they would like about a three-hour window to arrange for the pick-up and someone would call approximately one hour before pick-up. The arranged pick-up time was set for Friday 11 Feb 2006, between 3 & 5 PM. (Scheduled by Bill Canfield)

At 5PM on that Friday when no-one had yet called or showed up I called and was told that due to the high winds the trailer they used to pick-up the TVs was not safe. I was also told, “someone should have called”. We re-scheduled for Monday PM.

On Monday, 13 February 2006, at approximately 5PM, “Jerry Cork” came and picked-up the TV.

One week later I called to check on the progress of the repair and I gave the person who answered the ticket # (9764) and I was asked for our phone number and someone would call within the hour. No-one ever called.

During the next two weeks my wife called several times with the same results. “Please leave your phone number and someone will call you back.” No-one ever called.

On 8 March 2006 I refused to accept the response that we had been getting and I demanded to know what was going on. I spoke to a “Rick” who sounded like he was in charge and he did call me back and told me that they had completed the repairs and had been trying to get a hold of us for the past week. We had never received any calls. The TV could be delivered that afternoon but I had to be prepared to have $150.00 for the repair plus the pick-up & delivery. I did not have that cash on hand so I gave him my American Express Card number.

That evening, around 5:30 PM the TV was returned and I signed the AMEX receipt.

That same evening the TV stopped working. I was where I had been a month before, a non-working TV, but $150.00 was no longer in my possession.

I called the next morning and left a few messages about how upset I was and when I finally got through and talked to “Rick” I was told that he would look into the problem by talking to the technician that repaired the set and see if a home visit could fix what was wrong. He also gave me a whole load of electronic double-speak, which said that these things don’t always work the first time. He said the technician would be calling me to see what needed to be done. I pointed out to him that my seven-year old said that they just took the TV and didn’t do anything and returned it. I have in my possession the same TV that is not operating and I am out $150.00.

Needless to say, no-one called. This was Thursday, so Friday my wife tried to get an answer and was rudely treated to the extent of having the person on the other end of the line hang-up on her.

It’s Monday 13 March 2006 as I write this and my conversation with “Rick” this morning went something like this;

“I spoke to the technician and he says the repair required is too extensive for home repair so bring the TV to the shop and it will be repaired.”

“Warranties do not include pick-up and delivery charges”

“I don’t have any means of picking-up the TV in the near future.”

I was not even given the option of paying for pick-up but the conversation ended when he hung up on me.

I have in my possession the same TV that is not operating and I am out $150.00.

UP-DATE-Thursday, March 16, 2006
· On Monday, 13 March 2006, I made arrangements to have the TV picked-up on Tuesday and I was then to receive a phone call with an estimate of the repairs.
· On schedule, on Tuesday, the TV was picked-up.
· Yesterday, Wednesday, I got a phone call with an estimate of the repairs and I was told the replacement part would take about three days to get. When I asked if it looked like anything had been done on the TV to repair it I was told that there was no evidence of any work and the part that needed replacing had certainly not been recently replaced.

Little Pedro

2006-04-12T07:05:00.000-07:00

It was the first day of school and a new student named Pedro Martinez, the son of a Mexican restaurateur, entered the fourth grade.

The teacher said, "Let's begin by reviewing some American history. "Who said 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death?’? "
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Pedro, who had his hand up.
"Patrick Henry, 1775."
"Very good!" apprised the teacher.

Now, who said, "Governmentof the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth?"
Again, no response except from Pedro:
"Abraham Lincoln, 1863."

The teacher snapped at the class, "Class, you should be ashamed! Pedro, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do!"
She heard a loud whisper: "Screw the Mexicans!"
"Who said that?" she demanded.
Pedro put his hand up. "Jim Bowie, 1836."

At that point, a student in the back said, "I'm gonna puke."
The teacher glared and asked, "All right! Now, who said that?"
Again, Pedro answered, "George Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991."

Now furious, another student yelled, "Oh yeah? Suck this!"
Pedro jumped out of his chair waving his hand and shouting to the teacher, "Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky."

Now, with almost a mob hysteria, teacher said, "You little shit. If you say anything else, I'll kill you!"
Pedro frantically yelled at the top of his voice, "Gary Condit to Chandra Levy, 2001."

The teacher fainted, and as the class gathered around her on the floor, someone said, "Oh shit, we're in BIG trouble now!"
Pedro whispered, "Saddam Hussein, 2003."

Finally someone throws an eraser at Pedro, someone shouted "Duck"!
Pedro: "Dick Cheney 2006"

Forfeiting our own moral authority

2006-04-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

From today's Oregonian-Steve Duin writes about the Police Chief. When I find an item like this that better expresses my feelings then I will re-produce it rather than attempting to paraphrase the ideas.

Three weeks. Three excruciating weeks.
That's how long Portland Mayor Tom Potter spent listening to the pragmatists, the apologists and his own conscience.
Before he was cornered last Thursday by the press, that's how long Potter was allowed to ponder the more challenging questions raised by those who would excuse the conduct of his police chief: When did we decide to lower the bar?
When did we stop caring about holding people to a higher standard?
When was accountability eliminated from the list of demands we submit to our public servants and community leaders?
When did we resign ourselves to mediocrity?
When did we give up?
These questions have been around a lot longer than the latest sex scandal. I ask them each time President Bush tries to articulate a thoughtful argument, each time Gov. Ted Kulongoski talks about a second term, each time I remember Karen Minnis is speaker of the Oregon House.
Whatever happened to quality?
When did we drop the bar so low that anyone could crawl over it?
But the Foxworth case is particularly raw, a fresh reminder that shame and competence have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Three weeks -- now almost four -- after he received indigestible evidence that his police chief has the appetites and discretion of a porn star, Mayor Tom Potter remains paralyzed as to how to proceed.
Peering into the utter abyss of Foxworth's moral authority, the mayor doesn't blink. Asked whether the chief is still capable of running a bureau that's now laughing in his face rather than smirking behind his back, Potter said, "As of today, Chief Foxworth is doing what I have asked him to do. If that were to change in the future, if he was unable to carry out his duties, then I would reconsider my decision."
Moments later, the mayor reflected on the public's disdain for city government: "Of course, I worry, but there's nothing I can say. What I can try to do is behave in a manner that restores trust in government. I try to do the right things for the right reasons. I don't make political decisions."
Oh, really? What decisions do you make then?
Is there really some confusion about the nature of Foxworth's duty? His primary responsibility is to represent the best in us. That's part of the bargain when we pay his salary, outfit his office, fund his retirement and forgive him his personal cellular calls.
He failed. Trust is lost when someone pretends not to notice or professes not to care.
I don't know that Derrick Foxworth's failure is all that egregious when compared with the failure to safeguard this country's security or its long-term interests in the Middle East; the inability to fund Oregon schools; or the refusal to take up the mantle of leadership.
But when we shrug, when we apologize for him, when we act as if we're embarrassed to expect something more from the man who leads the force, the fragile bar -- of our standards and our discourse -- drops that much closer to rock bottom.
Does anyone still think that matters? I'm not nostalgic about politics. I appreciate that the public-service arena has long been a refuge for con artists, opportunists and frontmen for the special interests that forever angle for an unfair advantage.
But when did we decide we had no choice but to surrender to those cynical clowns?
When did we stop pondering how high we could aim and start worrying about how low we could go?
When did we forfeit our own moral authority, and the will to say, "Enough"?
If the revelations of the past week don't force the mayor and the rest of us to answer those questions now, I hesitate to contemplate the sordid scandal that will.

Steve Duin: 503-221-8597; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland, OR 97201 steveduin@news.oregonian.com www.oregonlive.com/weblogs/papertrail

Misquoting Jesus

2006-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

I am reading a very interesting book which I started reading because it looked like it would answer some nagging questions I had about the Bible.

The book is “Misquoting Jesus” by Bart D. Ehrman and the following paragraph is from his introduction to the book;

“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament, and my investigations into the manuscripts that contain it, lead to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is. This was a seismic change for me. Before this-starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalists days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton-my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, in errant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way. The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs. Many of these authors no doubt felt they were inspired by God to say what they did, but they had their own perspectives, their own beliefs, their own views, their own needs, their own desires, their own understandings, their own theologies; and these perspectives, beliefs, views, needs, desires, understandings, and theologies informed everything they said. In all these ways they differed from one another. Among other things, this meant that Mark did not say the same thing that Luke said because he didn’t mean the same thing as Luke. John is different from Mathew-not the same. Paul is different from Acts. And James is different from Paul. Each author is a human author and needs to be read for what he (assuming they were men) has to say, not assuming that every other author has to say. The Bible, at the very end of the day, is a very human book.”

For me, this explains quite a lot. I always wondered how come the New Testament was written in Greek, a language that very few people in the Middle East knew. If the so-called, old testament, was the word of God, and written in Hebrew-why the change? This book is very enlightening on many fronts but for me the bottom line is that it supports my long standing belief that God did not create Man but rather that Man created God.

CHIMES OF FREEDOM

2006-04-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

CHIMES OF FREEDOM

Words and Music by Bob Dylan

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll

We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing

As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds

Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing

Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight

Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight

An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched

With faces hidden while the walls were tightening

As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain

Dissolved into the bells of the lightning

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake

Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked

Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail

The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder

That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze

Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder

Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind

Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind

An' the unpawned painter behind beyond his rightful time

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales

For the disrobed faceless forms of no position

Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts

All down in taken-for-granted situations

Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute

Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute

For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Even though a cloud's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed

An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting

Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones

Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

An' for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught

Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended

As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look

Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed

For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse

An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Man and the Biosphere

2006-04-06T08:18:00.000-07:00

It is my contention that MAN has contributed absolutely nothing to the Biosphere.

I agree with the following definition:

The biosphere is that part of a planet's outer shell — including air, land, surface rocks and water — within which life occurs, and which biotic processes in turn alter or transform. From the broadest geophysiological point of view, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere (rocks), hydrosphere (water), and atmosphere (air). Our planet Earth is the only place where life is known to exist. This biosphere is generally thought to have evolved, beginning through a process of biogenesis or biopoesis, at least some 3.5 billion years ago.

That being said, it seems to me that all these prizes and medals given to MAN for the inventions that “help” mankind are really attempts at repairing all the things that MAN has destroyed. The fact that MAN has not contributed to the Biosphere goes even one step further, in my mind, that MAN is not really even a natural part of the Biosphere since MAN does not live in balance with the rest of the Biosphere. That is to say that the Laws of the Biosphere are that as an inhabitant of the Biosphere one does not add or take away from the so called, “Balance of Nature”.

If we were to assume that MAN is a natural part of the Biosphere then there is nothing that man does that can be considered to be “bad” for the Biosphere since if MAN belongs in the Biosphere MAN can do nothing to destroy it so the concepts of Pollution don’t apply. However, if one follows the concepts of the “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin (1968) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) then one realizes that some restrictions have to be put on MAN.

So where does MAN come from? What is the role of MAN in the Biosphere? If we are to believe the Darwinian concept of MAN evolving then we have to address the paradox of where and when did the course of nature change to introduce into the mix an entity that destroys it’s own environment?

Based on my limited knowledge of the American Indian, a so-called Primitive People, they lived off the land and were very much a part of the land, or the Biosphere. They didn’t think of land ownership, nor did they kill animals for sport and they worshipped the elements of the Biosphere that allowed them to survive. They were nomadic, in many cases, and followed their food and clothing sources without leaving a path of destruction in their wake. There were territorial disputes but the main concern was survival and not acquisition of property. It wasn’t until the “White Man” came to these shores that the Indians were introduced to ownership of property.

Maybe the search for my answer ought to come from the ownership of land. Somewhere in the history of MAN there was a transition from being land “stewards” to land owners.
Stewardship-: the conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care

The other consideration seems to be the need for shelter and the concept of staying put somewhere rather than moving with the seasons to avoid the need for better shelter.

For example, the logging industry was a direct result of the need to clear land for farming so the concept of keeping the logging industry from clear-cutting land now flies in the face of the logic that created the industry. Re-planting is another concept that is foreign to the use of “natural resources” as necessary.

I sure don’t have all the answers but I am not sure that the answers don’t include one or two of the following.

One, the Religious Creationists might be right. God created MAN in his own image and stuck MAN on the “Third Rock from the Sun” as an experiment. Having already experimented with other forms of life that didn’t make it, God introduced an element to mess with the ”Balance of Nature”.

Or Two, MAN arrived on the Earth from another planet that MAN had already destroyed with the destruction of the environment on that other planet.

Think about it!!!

The Health-Line Up-date

2006-04-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

Michael’s version of “Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events”

I can paraphrase this to read,

“Michael’s Series of Unfortunate Events” or How a Pain-in-the-ass Lead to My Chest Being Opened Again.

The chronology of events is probably the best place to start;
*For several years I have had a problem walking more than half a mile before I get these excruciating pains up the backs of my legs and into my buttocks. (The pain-in-the-ass)
*At the beginning of 2006 I told my doctor that we had to do something and he suggested that there were two courses of action we could investigate, namely, vascular and neurological.
*I went to see a vascular surgeon after I had a vascular test done on my legs to discover if there was any blood flow restriction. (I had this same test done about a year before and there was some restricted flow noted at that time) This doctor’s conclusion was that the problem was not vascular.
*I was then scheduled for an MRI, which is a very noisy machine.
*As a result of the MRI there were two findings; One, I had a distended bladder and two, I had some restrictions in the spine in the lower lumbar regions.
*I scheduled a visit to an Urologist first because that sounded like an important issue and I was putting off the Neurologist until after the bladder issue was resolved.
*The visit to the Urologist revealed that I was carrying around almost 3 liters of urine in the bladder and that although my urine passed on what seemed a regular manner, it was only working after I exceeded the 3-liter limit. In other words, I was not emptying my bladder. The downside of this was that this could lead to kidney failure so I have to contend with a non-functioning bladder. There was also the possibility that the pinching in the back could be contributing to the bladder failure.
*My next visit was to the Neurologist that showed me the MRI and we discussed the feasibility of operating on my back and opening up some areas that looked constricting to relieve the leg pain problem. He could not address the bladder issue with any confidence. In preparation to the surgery he wanted me to get checked over by my doctor.
*After a visit to my primary care physician the plan was to get a CT Scan of my kidney/bladder area to see if there was something on the kidneys contributing to the bladder problem and then to also have a stress test to check out my heart since I had the five vessel by-pass 12 years ago. *All this to prepare for the back surgery.
*I showed up for my CT scan at 7:00 AM, on an empty stomach, and drank a chemical cocktail prior to the actual test at 8:00 AM. Unbeknownst to me the CT scan had two parts, a lower abdomen and a pelvic scan. I left the hospital, got some breakfast and went to work. Later that morning I got a call from the hospital scheduler who told me they had forgotten to do the pelvic scan so I had to go back for a 4:00 PM appointment.
*I had a scheduled appointment with my primary care doctor and he told me that one of the radiologists had reported to him that he saw something on the CT scan in the Esophagus. The kidneys did not look bad so he wanted me to have an endoscope of my esophagus.
*The endoscope exam requires a list of dos and don’ts of which I was informed on the Friday before my scheduled Monday PM test. I had to stop certain medications I normally take and I couldn’t eat for four hours prior to the test and I couldn’t drive myself to the test. This being the start of Spring break for the kids meant we had to do some juggling and a stepdaughter ended up taking me to the test. My Heart Stress test was scheduled for Thursday of that week and I had made an appointment to see my eye doctor on Wednesday for my annual exam.
*A very nice young lady doctor did the exam wherein I was sedated and then in the recovery she informed me that she had found a 10cm tumor in my lower esophagus and she felt it was cancerous. I didn’t hear much after the “C” word but she biopsyed the tumor and made an appointment for a another CT Scan on Tuesday and an appointment with an oncologist for Wednesday afternoon, and an appointment with a thoracic surgeon.
*I cancelled my eye exam and Wifey and I went to the oncologist on Wednesday. He explained that all the years that I had been suffering with acid-reflux had caused the lining of the esophagus to be awash with stomach acid, for which it was not designed. The damage to the cells eventually caused some of the cells to mutate thereby producing the cancer. He felt that from the evidence he had on hand it looked like the tumor was limited to the esophagus and was growing inward rather than outward through the esophagus wall and into the lymph nodes and then into some other organs in the vicinity, like the heart and lungs. He wanted me to have another test known as a PET scan and then possibly an EUS or Endoscope-Ultra-Sound to better determine the extent of the cancer.
*It is this phase of the “Staging” that I am going through right now. I just had the stress test Thursday and I had the PET Scan on Monday and the EUS, if required, on Thursday. Between those two I will see the oncologist again today, Wednesday. Chest surgery is the best option to get rid of all the cancer at one time, if it hasn’t migrated.The entire process started to get rid of a pain-in-the-ass and may end up trying to get rid of a fatal growth in my chest.

Bizarre is the only word that comes to mind. It reminds me of “…for want of a horseshoe nail the kingdom was lost.”

A thought for today!!!

2006-04-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

William Shakespeare

As a ten year-old I was in a play where I played a priest accompanying a death-row prisoner to the electric-chair and these are the lines I had to say. I think the play was called "The Valiant". I never forgot the lines but since I was holding a book and reading these lines I always thought these were lines from the bible.

Just a feel good story!!!

2006-03-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

For those of you that may not read the sports pages of the Oregonian, here's a feel good story.

Larranaga is a breath of fresh air
John Canzano
Friday, March 31, 2006
INDIANAPOLIS G eorge Mason University upset Connecticut, North Carolina, Wichita State and Michigan State to reach the Final Four, so naturally, coach Jim Larranaga's first news conference here began with a clinic on whistling.
What?
You expected he'd crawl under the table and bite his lip at the thought of facing Florida?
Well, apparently you don't know Larranaga, who is from the Bronx. He was here to set the record straight about the distinctive way he whistles to get the attention of his players during games.
"I've read some articles where some of my friends from the Bronx are taking credit for teaching me," he said Wednesday. "When I was reading that, I really had to crack up. I learned from my father when I was 4, 5 or 6 years old. He never whistled with his fingers or anything like that. He just learned how to whistle and taught me how to do it."
When Larranaga was a kid, his family lived in the bottom unit of a seven-story apartment complex known as Chester Park. His father was maniacal about safety, installing several alarm systems and drilling the family on procedures in the event of emergencies.
"(There were so many locks), it took forever to get in with your key," Larranaga said. "So when I got home from school, I would whistle to my mom to let her know I was home. It was a very distinct whistle. She would yell out of the window, 'Hi, Jim,' come and greet me at the door."
It's true that 11th-seed George Mason finds itself as America's newest sweetheart, but there's also something about Larranaga, who worked at Bowling Green for 11 years and was an assistant on the Ralph Sampson Virginia teams.
"One of my concerns when I came to George Mason was what kind of identity problem we would have," he said. "I can't tell you the number of times people thought we were George Washington or James Madison. A lot of times we get that James Mason or George Madison. It cracks me up because it's something we can't change."
Don't change, coach.
Not one bit.
Not even after some major-conference university hires you away next season, hands you more money, better facilities, a bigger recruiting budget and a larger office.
Don't change. Because right now, you're everything that is right about college basketball, right down to the way you want to talk about anything but basketball.
While the coaches from UCLA, Florida and Louisiana State spent their time discussing whether or not college basketball will ever see another undefeated champ (consensus: it won't), here was Larranaga discussing the Bill of Rights.
"George Mason was a statesman, the first governor of Virginia, and the gentleman who is responsible for the Bill of Rights," he said. "Also the university was an extension of the University of Virginia originally. It broke off from Virginia about 35 years ago and became George Mason University, a university that stood on its own.
"It has grown from a small commuter school . . ."
This went on and on, with Florida coach Billy Donovan paying careful attention from the peanut gallery. You half expected Larranaga would finish his informative discussion, dismount the podium and leave the room walking backward from giving so many proverbial campus tours this week.
There are great coaches and teachers at all levels of basketball. Not just the ones who do American Express commercials and coach at major universities.
That's the lesson you see in Larranaga. Most of the country didn't know who he was until his team caught lightning in a bottle in March.
So, well, yes. Who is Larranaga?
You find out he's 56, married to a woman named Liz, and has two children. And that he has a degree in economics from Providence, where he was a four-year letterman and team captain of the basketball team. And that he doesn't always recruit the biggest, most athletic player, but instead relies on advice from a sports-psychologist friend in choosing which player to pursue.
In this tournament, Larranaga used a zone defense effectively against North Carolina and Connecticut. Yet you learn that his team didn't play zone during the regular season, opting instead for Larranaga's trademark "Scramble" defense.
"We actually put in the same 1-2-2 zone that we used back in 1984 (at Virginia) the week between (our conference) tournament and the selection show," Larranaga said. "I told the guys, 'If we get in, we may need this.' "
His players said, "But coach, we're not a zone team."
Larranaga explained: "Yeah, but in the tournament, there are certain circumstances where we might want to use it."
And they did.
George Mason's wrecking ball through its bracket caused NCAA selection committee chair Craig Littlepage to joke, "Maybe we seeded them too low."
No, sir.
Everything about this has been perfect.
John Canzano: 503-294-5065; JohnCanzano@aol.com To read his Web log, go to www.oregonlive.com/canzano

I'm baaack!!! ...sort of.

2006-03-24T08:46:00.001-08:00

I'm still trying to catch-up with my work that piled up over the past two weeks so I'm not 100% into Blogging yet. However, I was so upset by the USA performance in the "World Baseball Classic" that I wanted to share this "Opinion" with you.

THE INTERNATIONAL PASTIME
Friday, March 24, 2006
David Sarasohn

This week, there's the usual gleaming sun in the skies over Florida and Arizona -- at least compared with the March skies over some other places -- but there's a new shadow over the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues.
There's a little less spring in spring training.
For a multitude of Marches, baseball fans could look to the south, and whatever delusions they cherished about the prospects of their own team -- Happy April Fool's Day, Cubs fans -- they could at least feel confident that one of the squads they surveyed in spring was the best baseball team in the world.
Now, it's hard to be sure of that -- unless you regularly check out the Japanese Pacific League.
This beanball of reality struck Americans earlier this week, when the first World Baseball Classic was won by Japan, beating Cuba 10-6. Japan and Cuba reached the final game by defeating the Dominican Republic and South Korea, two other teams that don't think every baseball game has to begin with "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Ken Burns will not be making an eight-part documentary about this.
This was not a U.S. Olympic team of college ballplayers, arriving with a ready-made excuse. This was a team of top major league players, including the left side of the New York Yankees infield, two players with the annual income of a Cuban province.
At least we beat South Africa, with its proud baseball history going back to, maybe, last October.
Admittedly, the U.S. team was missing some of the top Americans, such as Barry Bonds. Of course, using Barry Bonds in international competition might violate the chemical weapons treaty.
This outcome was not heartening for a country whose baseball season ends in what it likes to call the World Series -- a competition now in danger of being renamed the United States Plus Toronto Series. Considering that the Fall Classic is the goal at the other end of spring training, you could see how Florida and Arizona might fall prey to March Malaise.
The United States likes to think of itself as the world's baseball superpower, and its baseball heft and national status are intermingled; George W. Bush just agreed to continue the century-old tradition of the president throwing out a first ball. He's doing it for the Cincinnati Reds; you'd hate to think he might have to do it for the Yomiuri Giants.
But not only did the United States fail to display international dominance, it can't even claim supremacy in North America. In the classic, it lost to both Canada and Mexico. Not only are we not world champions, we're third in the Nafta standings.
And the champion is not even the Dominican Republic, whose team was thick with U.S. major leaguers, but Japan, which had only two.
As Robert Whiting explained in his book on Japanese baseball, "You Gotta Have Wa."
Say wa?
Wa, wrote Whiting, literally means a kind of peace, but really conveys an immersion of the individual into something larger than himself. And while U.S. baseball players may be full of Creatine, human growth hormone and injected testosterone, they seem to be low on wa.
When Ichiro Suzuki of the Seattle Mariners -- who rescued something for American baseball by being both a major league all-star and a world champion -- said before the semifinal game that he wanted to beat South Korea so badly it wouldn't want to play Japan again for 30 years, it did seem a little, well, pre-war.
But nobody could say it was pre-wa.
That kind of feeling might explain why stadiums were full of dancing and chanting Japanese, Dominicans, Koreans and Mexicans, but generally relaxed Americans -- as well as explaining why the championship turned out the way it did.
Of course, it still doesn't explain how the U.S. team lost to Canada.
For the rest of spring training, baseball managers and players will answer questions about going all the way, meaning one day hoisting in their stadium a banner reading, "2006 World Champions."
But maybe, just to be technically accurate, whoever wins the World Series maybe should play the winner of the Wa Series.

David Sarasohn, associate editor, can be reached at 503-221-8523 or davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com.

Friday & still alive!!!!

2006-03-17T13:13:00.000-08:00

Amidst the Flowers a Jug of Wine

Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,

I pour alone lacking companionship.

So raising the cup I invite the Moon,

Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.

Because the Moon does not know how to drink,

My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.

The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,

The practice of mirth should keep pace with spring.

I start a song and the moon begins to reel,

I rise and dance and the shadow moves grotesquely.

While I'm still conscious let's rejoice with one another,

After I'm drunk let each one go his way.

Let us bind ourselves for ever for passionless journeyings.

Let us swear to meet again far in the Milky Way.

Li Po

Thanks, Carla J. Martin

2006-03-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to locate the connection that I have been making for years with reference to the story of “The Devil & Daniel Webster”. It is in my recollection that I heard the key ingredient of this story is that when it is suggested that he attack the devil with any means possible, Webster’s reply is that when you beat the devil at his own game you are left with the lack of all those things you were trying to defend. I can’t verify this from the written item so I might have heard it in the film version. The bottom line for me is that Webster understood that you have to fight the bad guys with the LAW and not circumvent the LAW to get what you want even though the bad guys don’t necessarily follow the rules.

This story of the over-zealous TSA Lawyer is just another example of someone that should have read “The Devil & Daniel Webster”. (As well as our President and his AG)

Thanks Carla for making me want to write my Blog today.

"The Devil and Daniel Webster"
by Stephen Vincent Benet

This is the article that pushed my button today.

Judge Weighs Next Steps in Moussaoui Trial
By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer