Moving On

One of my long-time friends died Monday (2 days ago). I've know him for about 45 years. He went to the hospital recently and they treated him and then moved him to a nearby rehabilitation center. He was improving and expecting to go home soon, but then his heart stopped. It just stopped. They couldn't revive him. The rehab staff rushed him to a nearby hospital, but they couldn't get his heart started, either. 

I have another good friend in the hospital now. He's a sturdy man and is putting up a fight but whatever germ he is fighting is tough. I hope he makes it through this ordeal.

I was in the hospital in 2004, and again in 2011 and in 2013, 2014, and 2016—all trips were due to the same problem: atrial fibrillation, also called a-fib. I also went to the ER twice but wasn't admitted. I've given up fighting it. Now I just live with it.

So I know about being in the hospital. I don't wish that on my worst enemy, much less on my good friends. But it happens, especially as one gets older. My father's life ended in a hospital. My mother's life ended in a hospital. I would like my life to end in my own home. But it's mostly out of my hands. 

Some say there is no past and no future. The past still exists and the future has already happened. What is happening now is that our consciousness is moving through the spacetime continuum, and so we experience time passing and we experience getting older. We experience space passing, too, as we drive our cars, fly in jet planes, or go for a walk. But really, it's already happened and there is no future and no past. I've already died, sometime, somewhere, in that part of spacetime we call the future. I'm being born right now in that part of spacetime we call the past.

It's over my head. I just live my life and watch the world go by, as people are born and people pass away. My turn will come. Everyone's turn will come. Meanwhile, we do the best we can, we do what we can to make the world a better place for those generations coming behind us. Light a candle in the darkness and let your light shine while it can. Try to be a positive force in the Universe. And if you do good deeds, don't ever expect people to appreciate it. You must be satisfied with knowing that you've done your best.

Writing Advice

One of my readers (LL) asked me for writing advice, so I'm going to write about writing.

The answer to "how to be a writer" depends on what kind of writing you want to do. Is it fiction or non-fiction? Is it a blog or a book?  Et cetera.

Here are some answers, in no particular order of importance:

Google has writing tips. Grammarly has writing tips. And so on. I've never read anyone's writing tips, I just sit down and start typing. I suppose it helps that I've always been a voracious reader and have a fairly large vocabulary. I also use an online thesaurus when I know there's a better word but I can't quite think of that word. A thesaurus is a great tool. I bought my first paperback thesaursus when I was a teenager and parked it beside my parents' old Woodstock typewriter. Yes, I was writing fiction that early. Poetry, too.

I try to throw in a lot of adjectives. I want to create a scene in the reader's mind.

In blogs, I normally write using the first person point of view (using the pronoun 'I') but sometimes, especially in fiction (fiction can exist in a blog, too) I might take a step back and write in the third person ("he" or "she"), viewing myself from outside myself, as an observer. This is easy to overdo, especially if the identity of the observer isn't extremely clear to the reader.

When I was younger, I felt that it was important to get all the details of a true story exactly right. But today, I think it's okay to "embellish" a story a little bit if it makes the story more fun for the reader, assuming that the purpose of your writing is to entertain. (Don't embellish or distort facts if you're writing a book about using power tools.) However, just because I think it's okay to sometimes embellish the truth doesn't mean that I do it in my writing. I think you risk losing the readers' confidence in you. If it's supposed to be a true story, keep it factual. If you're spinning an anecdote about something stupid you did years ago, you might embellish a little bit if it makes the story more entertaining, but don't spin outright lies. If you want to do that, then write the story as fiction using a fictional protagonist. These stories are usually written in the third person.

In blogging, I think it's nice to add images to your post. It makes the blog more visually appealing. I don't use enough images. But take care not to overdo it. You want to let the reader create the scene in her own mind. You'll recall that novels can be great at describing scenes and events without having photos on their pages.

Another thing: before you publish your writing to the Internet (assuming that's your intent), proofread. Then proofread some more. Publish your blog post and then proofread it again. You'll be surprised at how often you find a mistake or something you can phrase better.

Surprises are nice, too, if you can fit one in. For example, my lady friend, Nuria, left me this morning. She just walked through the front door and left me. Surprise! And while I was still in bed! She did leave a note for me:

"Good morning Amor"—is that any way to talk to someone you love? I just don't understand women. I mean, I don't understand. And who is this "Amor" person she's seeing?

'Til next time.

A Lolita Moment

“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges.”

― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita 

That paragraph from Lolita speaks to me. My mother was photogenic (though there was no freak accident). I had my "pocket of warmth in the darkest past." I recall from my childhood "remnants of day suspended," and I still can see the midges in the air and smell fragrant honeysuckle entwined within the hedges.

I was born in 1946 in Jacksonville, in the state of Florida. My birth occurred a mere 81 years after the Civil War ended and ratification of the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery. Those events—slavery, the Civil War—have always seemed like ancient history to me. Yet, the passage of time from the last day of slavery in America to the day of my birth amounts to only a single human lifetime.

My grandfather, my mother's father, was a quiet, easy-going man. He was born in 1884 in rural Virginia. Slavery still existed when his parents were born. I sometimes think about the impact of that evil institution on Caucasions of that day—not slaveowners, but ordinary people: farmers, merchants, country folk, city folk. I think about how the attitudes, beliefs, and prejudices engendered during slavery have rippled down the years, affecting my grandfather's life, his daughter's life, my life. I am the third generation of my family to be born after the end of the era of slavery.

My grandmother, as I remember her, was a heavy-set woman with a nervous disposition. My grandparents were always elderly when I knew them, and yet they were somehow ageless. I thought they were probably born elderly and hadn't changed at all since birth. Grandmother read the Bible every day for a half hour after lunch, which she called dinner. (The last meal of the day was supper. In olden days, the word "dinner" referred to the largest meal of the day, usually eaten at noon. No one used the word "lunch.") She was strict about not allowing profanity in her house. Uttering the word "darn" would bring me a reprimand. When I was 13 and 14 years old, I had a morning newspaper route, and after delivering papers I would often stop by her house and visit with her. She always prepared breakfast for me, which consisted of a tall stack of pancakes, butter, syrup, and bacon. (I ate as much as I could hold and never gained an ounce of weight.) She was an easily frightened woman, and after her death there was speculation in the family that her death may have been caused by some kind of nervous event that today would be called a panic attack, which might have precipitated a heart attack.

Those were the people who produced my mother. She was born in a slightly more enlightened era: 1916, a time when women still could not vote. (The 19th Amendment would not be passed until 1920.) Even as a boy I recognized that my mother was a very photogenic woman. She was pretty. She was, like her mother, a nervous woman who was easily frightened. Most of her immediate family did not understand her fright and had little patience with her. There were some who ridiculed her fright when it appeared.

My father was a hard-working, hard-drinking, often angry man, born in 1922 in the heart of Dixie: Alabama. He was a product of his milieu. He was a racist, but he wasn't a hater. He was never a hater. His racism involved the simple belief that Caucasions were superior to other races in certain respects. He never extrapolated that belief into an action against another person or another race.

For example, on one bright, summer day (I was working in Burlington, North Carolina then) I was visiting my parents, and my father suggested the two of us drive to the countryside and stop at a certain black church. My father worked with a man who was a deacon at that church and that is how he had learned that the church's air conditioning had failed. My father was an air conditioning mechanic; I was an electrical engineer. He figured the two of us could get that a/c system working again. And we did. The repair was pro bono. My father neither asked for, nor expected, payment for the work. His reward was knowing that the people attending that church would no longer suffer in the midday heat.

I have a brother, born five years after me. We were never close—too many years between us. I was serious, intent on becoming an electrical engineer when I grew up. My brother had no ambition that I can recall. He attended university for four years but because he kept changing his major, he never earned a degree. Later he went to a technical school and became an optician. He's worked as an optician ever since. He may be retired now. I don't know. The last time we spoke, and it was brief, was in 2010 when I called to tell him I was driving to Florida for our cousin Ron's funeral. We spoke on the phone for less than a minute. The previous time I saw him was in 2004 when he was passing through town.

So my father's DNA will not be propagated into the future. He had two sons, but I had no children and my brother had one child. That child had no children other than the daughter of a woman he married, in other words, his stepdaughter.

It's just as well. My father and his brother were both heavy drinkers and lived misspent lives in some ways. Neither of them should have had children, but they did and their insanity, though muted, lives on through my brother and myself, though I'm not going to write about my own particular craziness, because (1) it would serve no purpose and (2) I've written about a significant portion of it already, in two blog posts titled Panic and A Conversation. If you haven't yet read them, just follow the links and you'll have enough soap-opera commentary to put you into psychoanalysis.

Memories

It's late afternoon. I'm driving down a very long road with an eye-popping expanse of Pacific Ocean to my left. To my right as I pull off the highway is an old Spanish mission. All Spanish missions are old, of course. I think this mission is San Juan Capistrano. It has to be near LA because my hotel room is in Santa Monica and in my memory I'm driving up the coast from the south of LA. Of course, the mission I see in my mind's eye might be north of LA, in which case it might be San Buenaventura or even Santa Barbara. No, I know I turned onto the 101 and drove through Thousand Oaks then took the Ventura Highway back to Santa Monica. Or did I do that on a different day? This memory is fifty years old, and as I handle it in my mind it begins to tear into pieces shaped like question marks. Why don't I create new memories? Why do I hold onto the old ones? It's like they (the memories), for as long as I can hold onto them, verify I've lived a life. I was here, I remember. I was there, I remember. Maybe time doesn't exist and a part of me is still there in this moment and that part of me is communicating with here-and-now me, showing me a glimpse of a life that is long gone.

I remember Montana. I remember Glacier Park. How many glaciers are left? Are there any at all? Helena, the capital, in August—hotter than a furnace. I remember Wyoming, Yellowstone Park, Old Faithful, the Artists' Paint Pots and the boiling hot springs. I remember the hitchhikers I picked up along the roads. Where are they now? Alive? Dead? Their children would be middle-aged, their grandchildren would be adults, 20-somethings and 30-somethings. 

I traveled with my friend John and my dog Shadow and John's two dogs (their names long forgotten) and whatever hitchhikers we had picked up that day—and sometimes the hitchhikers' dogs. We were a rolling zoo. No, those are other memories of California. The trips overlap in my mind, blurring one into another. There was the road trip in the camper van. There was the business trip in the rental car, and that trip was much shorter because it began and ended at LAX. In a way, I'd like to do it again, but not in 2023. No, I want to do it in 1974, but I don't have a time machine. I don't think I'd enjoy doing that trip in 2023, with the increased auto and truck traffic we have now. Even if I flew to LA and rented a car, there would still be the highway-clogging traffic of LA. Of course, that's the way the traffic was in Chicago fifty years ago. Bumper to bumper, move and stop, move and stop, and that was on the interstate. We got off the interstate to go to the terminal at O'Hare to pick up a topographic map but they didn't have one, and when we got back to the van (our three dogs had managed to set off the van's alarm—we could hear it halfway across the parking lot) and got back on the interstate, the traffic was bumper to bumper, stop-and-go.

From a distance, even the bad parts of a trip are remembered with fondness. Time has filed away the ragged edges of the trip, like a sharp blade made dull with use, the memory no longer has an edge. It has become just a memory of a memory. 

Nuria just asked me what do I want for lunch? My choices are hamburger, pizza, or a sandwich. "Pizza sounds good," I tell her. If you read through all my previous blog posts, you will find references to these and other trips. I should've gone on more trips. I guess they got old pretty fast. 

The phone just rang and I answered it. A woman's voice said, "Hi, this is Ellie. Would you like to sell your house?"

"Yes, after I die," I replied.

"And when will that be?" the voice asked. I hung up.

Now it has begun raining and thunder is rolling across the sky. We're supposed to get severe weather. The forecast calls for hail. 

The oven is hot and Nuria says that in fifteen minutes the pizza will be ready to eat. I'm going to click the Publish button. Enough reminiscence for one day.

Later...

The pizza was good. So was Nuria's homade German chocolate cake. It's raining hard now, testing my roof for leaks. I've got my fingers crossed.

Charlie Daniels

Yesterday, I got news that my friend Homer was in the hospital. He had been there for a week, experiencing "a great deal of weakness and joint pain following a prep for a lower gi barium test" his son told me. He had just been moved from the hospital to a nearby rehab center. I called his room twice but got no answer.

Today, I got news that another friend, Butch, was taken to the hospital this morning. He was suffering from internal bleeding. This didn't surprise me, because I knew he was on meds that affected his blood platelets. They're the stuff in our blood that causes it to clot. Without sufficient platelets in our blood, we would bleed to death. The last word I received is that he is in the Critical Care Unit. 

I and many of my of friends are at the age where anything could happen. I'm older than Butch and younger than Homer. So far, I feel okay. I've got my fingers crossed that I'll be okay for a while longer. But I've got a-fib (atrial fibrillation), an irregular heartbeat that can cause a stroke. I'm taking two meds to help with that, but my doctor wants me to take a blood thinner. So far, I've refused. All meds can have negative side effects, and a blood thinner can lead to a "brain bleed"—a hemorrhagic stroke that can't be stopped. That's what happened to Charlie Daniels, that great fiddle player and leader of the Charlie Daniels Band. He was taking a blood thinner when he developed a brain bleed, and by the time they got him to the hospital and gave him an antidote to the blood thinner, he was dead. A powerful medicine is a double-edged sword. It can save you and it can kill you.

I've got my fingers crossed that my friends will be okay. Meanwhile, for those of you who never experienced Charlie Daniels' fiddle-playing, here's Charlie and his band performing The Devil Went Down to Georgia live at The Grand Ole Opry. Enjoy!

EmiSunshine

It's Sunday. At 9AM I went to the garage and pushed my lawn tractor out onto the garage apron. I filled the tank with gasoline. I checked the oil. I started her up (I don't know why, but lawn tractors are female, like ships and airplanes.) My grass was still wet with morning dew, but the sun was only going to go higher and the day was only going to get hotter. I set the height of the cutting blades, engaged the blades, put the tractor's transmission into gear, and off I went. Nuria helped by using the cordless blower to smooth out clumps of mowed grass. At 10AM we were both finished, though there is still more to be done. I'll have to get out the string trimmer and edge along the sidewalk, and edge along the bricks that encircle her flower garden, and trim various other parts of the yard that are too close to bushes or walls to mow with the tractor. But I can do that later. "Later" is my favorite time to do chores that I really don't like to do—which is all chores. I have a long list (in my head) of chores that are waiting to be done later. The list will likely still have many items on it when I pass into that Big Lawn in the Sky. Really—if, when I die and go to the other side, I look around and see an endless lawn in need of mowing, I'll know I'm not where I was hoping to go.

It's 74°F now and headed upward to 85°. We might have rain tonight, but Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are supposed to have blue skies and sunshine.

Speaking of Blue Skies, I'm making that song the Song of the Day.

And so, the song of the day is Blue Skies by singer-songwriter EmiSunshine (Emilie Sunshine Hamilton) and The Rain.

Norfolk Trip

Today was Wednesday. I drove Nuria to the Immigration office in Norfolk, Virginia. The round trip took about 4-1/2 hours. That included 10 minutes at the Immigration office and about 30 minutes at the Virginia Diner on the way back home. 

The first half of the trip to Norfolk was relaxing, to the point of boredom. There was little traffic on the four lane highway as we drove through farm country. Southeast Virginia grows a lot of peanuts and tobacco.  Virginia’s agricultural production is one of the most diverse in the nation. Many Virginia commodities and products rank in the top 10 among all U.S. states. In 2021, Virginia ranked third nationally for the production of tobacco, fourth in seafood, sixth for apples, pumpkins and turkeys, eighth for peanuts, and ninth for broilers.

Then we got to Norfolk. Crazy traffic. High speed traffic. A maze of roads and exit signs. Highway construction was everywhere. I used Waze to navigate through Norfolk and I can tell you honestly, I would have been in trouble without Waze. I tried to navigate by the large green overhead highway signs, but soon gave up and followed "the Waze voice" coming from my phone. Without that Google app, I think I would have gotten severely lost.

The appointment took less than ten minutes. They fingerprinted two fingers (she had been fingerprinted before, so this was for verification of identity). They took her photo (glasses off, please). She submitted a form containing personal information (name, date of birth, height, weight, eye color, hair color, etc.) It took maybe eight minutes, and then we took a restroom break and left for the trip home.

We had to navigate through crazy traffic again until we got out of the city. Then the trip became an easy, boring drive again. I'm glad the trip is behind us, but we may have to do it again. The immigration office will let us know. 

I wasn't sure my 28 year old Jeep Grand Cherokee would make the trip without problems, but we had no problems. The Jeep drove fine. I kept the cruise control on while going there and back, and the a/c kept us comfortable on the trip home when the temperature was warmer. The Jeep has a Jeep suspension, of course, so we felt every bump in the highway, but that was okay. I just wanted to get there and back without problems, and the old Jeep delivered on that. 

Next appointment: the dentist, this Friday, day after tomorrow. This is my fourth dentist appointment since March. I've got another dentist appointment in late April and again in May. I took a three year hiatus from dental visits during Covid, and now I'm paying in spades. Sometimes a dental visit is relatively painless. Sometimes your body struggles to stay in the chair as the pain becomes almost unbearable—even with the novacaine. It's a roll of the dice when you see the dentist.

I hope you're all having good times. Until next time, be well. 

Trains 3

It's Thursday evening, 10:30 PM. We had a hell of a thunderstorm a couple hours ago, with hail so heavy that I thought it might damage the cars on the street. And perhaps it did. Right now it's dark, so any damage won't show until morning. 

I'm thinking about trains again. Maybe because yesterday's post was the folk song City of New Orleans, written by Steve Goodman as he and his wife road the train and Steve made notes of what he saw outside. He said it took him 45 minutes to write the song. That's not much time to write a hit song, but after all, he was only writing down what he saw and felt outside and inside the train.

I used to love riding trains (as I've said before on this blog). When I was a kid, it was the fastest way to get from central Virginia to Clearwater, Florida, and back. My dad had family in Florida and I was born there. 

The first time I rode a train, I was a baby. Diesel-electric locomotives were in widespread use at that time, but steam locomotives were also in use. I know because until the age of six I lived a half block from railroad tracks and I can remember seeing steam locomotives. One dark night I saw a steam locomotive pulling a train and all the train's brakes were full on. The train's wheels look like rings of white fire due to sparks flying off the wheels. The sparks were caused by the train's brake blocks pressing on the steel wheel rims. The brake blocks were embedded with metallic particles, and those particles were likely responsible for the sparks I saw. And if you're thinking that all those sparks sound dangerous, you're right. When my mother was a girl, she and her parents had their home burn down because of a grassfire set by sparks from a passing train using its brakes.

The years before and during my early teens saw me riding the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Silver Meteor passenger train that ran between New York City and Miami, Florida. I got on the train at the Petersburg, Va, station. After 1967 the Silver Meteor hauled passengers for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. It still hauls passengers today, one of the few long-haul streamliners that survives, along with its sister, the Silver Star, which runs from New York City to Tampa, Florida. But now both trains are owned by Amtrak.

One time I was riding the Silver Meteor headed north to my home town when the train broke in half. I was on the half that had the engine, and we stopped and reversed back to the other half to recouple the two halves. And no, I haven't forgotten that I've written about this incident previously. And yes, I know I'm repeating myself. In fact, here's the link to that 2020 blog post: Trains 2.

And then, of course, there's my original article about trains posted in 2013, titled Trains. I've blogged about trains and boats but I don't think you'll find a post on this blog about the romance of riding jet airplanes. No, passenger planes are a "get on—sit crowded with strangers for hours—get off " affair. There's no romance, no fond memories, of flying. Except for that John Denver song: Leaving on a Jet Plane. But I've always felt that was an anti-Vietnam war song, so even that song is less than romantic and more of a political message.

The clock approaches midnight and the electrical storm is long gone. I'm going to take a shower and go to bed. As a friend used to say to me, "See you when I see you."

Arlo Guthrie

The song of the day is 1971's City of New Orleans composed by Steve Goodman and sung here by folk singer Arlo Guthrie. It describes a train ride from Chicago to New Orleans. The song has been sung by many singers including Arlo Guthrie and Willie Nelson, who both had hits with the song. Other artists who recorded it include John Denver, Judy Collins, and The Highwaymen.

In the lyrics you hear the verse "Freight yards full of old black men." I've wondered about that line and it's meaning. I think Goodman was referring to coalers, switchmen, and other yard workers. But maybe he meant something else. Leave a comment if you know. (If the video doesn't start, click here to watch on YoutTube.)

Dress Code

I am planning a trip to Virginia Beach. It's for business, not pleasure. Trust me, I wouldn't willingly put myself into that tangle of cloverleafs, bridges, tunnels, and heavy traffic if I didn't have to. 

I was going to use Nuria's Garmin, but it doesn't have a toll-avoidance feature, and my Jeep doesn't have EZ-Pass, so I have to use a different map. I plotted the trip on Google Maps and sent the map to my phone. My phone has Waze, which is a Google app, so I think it will work out better. With Google, I can avoid tolls, meaning I can avoid tunnels. And besides, who likes paying $7 every time they go through a tunnel. Double that amount if you include a return trip, and I most definitely will be returning.

Virginia Beach is right beside Norfolk. Using the road-view of Google Maps, I made a short tour of the boardwalk on my PC. It brought back memories of a trip to Virginia Beach that I made many years ago with my family when I was a teenager. 

Our family was touring Virginia Beach, planning on getting a room, but it was lunch time and so we stopped at a hotel. We entered the hotel and approached the dining room. An employee was guarding the doorway, and he wouldn't let us enter the dining room. He explained that my father couldn't enter because he wasn't wearing a sport coat and tie. 

What?! This is Virginia Beach, not some fancy Manhattan dinner club. You mean guests at a beach hotel can't enter the hotel's restaurant unless they're "dressed up"? Plans to stay at that hotel were immediately canceled. In fact, my dad was so outraged that he canceled plans to stay anywhere in Virginia Beach, and we returned home.

We never returned to Virginia Beach, but we made plenty of vacation trips to North Carolina's Outer Banks. There, if you wanted, you could go to a restaurant wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, and plenty of people did that. On the Outer Banks our money was good everywhere, and there was never a dress code. 

Plans

It's Sunday. On Wednesday after this Wednesday—April 12, in other words—I plan to drive Nuria to the immigration office in Norfolk, Virginia. Norfolk is a large city, as Virginia cities go. It's on the Atlantic coast with intruding rivers and has a number of highways, bridges, and tunnels. One factor that makes it seem bigger is that it merges seamlessly with the cities of Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. It's a metropolis. For example, Los Angeles is not as big as it seems, but it merges seamlessly with so many other cities and towns around it that LA seems huge. There's Torrance and Long Beach and Pasadena and Anaheim and Huntington Beach and the list goes on. Norfolk isn't that big, but when you're driving through it, it seems just as confusing. 

Fortunately, I bought Nuria a Garmin GPS a while ago, and I will rely on it. Nuria and I both have Waze on our phones, and Nuria is a whiz with Waze (pardon the alliteration). We should be able to get to the immigration office without significant trouble, unless my car breaks down, and when you're driving a 28 year old vehicle, a breakdown has to be including on the what-could-go-wrong list. (It's not that I can't afford a newer vehicle. It's just that I'm attached to my old Jeep. It's like an old dog that I hate to put down.)

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment (filling). The day before I drive to Norfolk, I have a doctor appointment (dermatologist). Two days after the Norfolk trip I have another dentist appointment (filling). Then, near the end of April, I have another dentist appointment (filling or crown). Then in May I have a dentist appointment (crown), a routine cardiologist appointment, and a routine visit to my internal medicine doctor. All I can say is, I'm glad I'm in relatively good health. I can't afford to get sick.

To sum up, I just got a dental filling and in April I'll be getting two, or maybe three fillings and a crown, or two crowns. I can't keep up. Or I could skip the doctors and dentists this year and buy another car.

Ironically, in Costa Rica, which is Nuria's home country, all of this medical stuff is free. The government pays for health care. That includes doctors, dentists, hospitals, and drugs (excluding cancer drugs). If Costa Rica, and Canada, and most first world countries can afford to pay for their citizens' health care, why can't the USA? I'm sure someone, somewhere, is itching to jump up and explain that to us. Go for it.