Merry Christmas!  I hope that everyone is having a great holiday--full of good food and good company.

This is the first holiday season that I haven't sent out a single card or even a form letter to those old friends with whom I communicate only once a year.  I just haven't had the energy to do it, even when I tell myself just to do two or three a day.  My laziness certainly doesn't mean you're not in my thoughts, and I thank all those of you who have remembered me this year.

Today is day 5 of not taking the chemo.  The break seems to be helping with the stomach problems but not with the fatigue.  I still crash three times a day, my mind and body both suddenly shutting down completely.

I'm going to have a new test, an echocardiogram, on the 31st before having the regular series of tests on the 10th.  What an exciting way to spend New Year's Eve day!

Best wishes for a peaceful and joyful holiday season.

Yesterday was my once-every-six-weeks visit to the KU Cancer Center.  This time there would just be blood tests, the expensive bone-strengthening shot, and a consultation, and the first appointment wasn't until 1 p.m.

Like the Friday before, the morning began with lots of black ice on the roads, slide-offs and rollovers, but by the time we were ready to leave, the roads were dry.  The best pan-fried chicken in America is at a restaurant called Stroud's (the Food Network concurs), which has an old farm house north of the city but has opened a branch close to the Cancer Center.  This restaurant is open only on Fridays and weekends, so I thought it was a perfect time to go.  All of our KC friends were busy, so it was just going to be the two of us--and half the population of KC.  There wasn't parking within a half-mile of the restaurant, so after four trips through the parking lot, we gave up and went to First Watch.  We parked at the Center and then walked the block and a half to the restaurant.  It was so cold and windy that I didn't think I was going to make it.  Once inside, I couldn't stop shaking from the cold.  Even a  bowl of tomato basil soup didn't help much.  And then we had to face the return trip.

First came the drawing of the blood.  My nemesis Marci was there, but thankfully I got a much more efficient phlebotomist, so that took about five minutes.  There was some confusion as there was a Mr. Falconer there, and we both kept getting up when our similar names were called.  Although the appointment was with Dr. Van, who is always very late, Jennifer, the physician assistant, saw us first and gathered all the information, and then Dr. Van promptly appeared.  I had lost seven pounds since the last visit, though my weight sort of fluctuates and at the last visit was the highest it had been in some time.  The blood work revealed nothing unusual.  Most of the discussion focused on "quality of life" issues, since the last month hasn't been a lot of fun, and my energy level has been particularly low.  (So far, I haven't written a single holiday letter or card.)  Dr. Van's suggestion was that I take a serious break of four to six weeks from the chemo.  Any break scares Mohamed, who suggested a one-week break.  But I think we need something more serious, so we compromised on three weeks.  Dr. Van said that there was no risk.   I'll go back in three weeks rather than six and have all the scans.

Once I finish this blog, I'll take a handful of pills, but the Votrient won't be among them. 

I stayed awake for the trip home, but then completely crashed for two hours.  Even after I woke up and had something to eat, I wasn't particularly coherent nor felt very good.  I watched "The Big Heat" and then at 10:30 fell asleep for the next eight hours.  And now begins Day One sans chemo.

It's been a long time since I've blogged.  I've thought about it many times, but then somehow I don't have the energy.  Plus, the entry would probably be mostly complaints with nothing exciting to report. (I didn't leave the house from Saturday night to Saturday night.)

Worse, the complaints are nothing new--the same old problems, just exacerbated.  The most difficult is the fatigue.  I have three good hours in the morning, and then I crash.  I used to sleep for about an hour; now it's more like 90 minutes or two hours.  Then I struggle awake for lunch and another couple of sentient hours before I crash again for two hours.  That used to be it for the crashes, but now I experience another one at 5:45. 

My appetite is generally pretty good, but nothing stays inside me very long.  The trips to the bathroom are as frequent as ever. 

I've had stage 4 kidney cancer for over three years.  The most optimistic prognosis you can find is a year or less, so my body has been battling overtime for a long time now.  Meanwhile, every morning for 2½ years,  I've ingested toxic chemicals--targeted chemo, but toxic none-the-less.  So if my body is a little exhausted these days, maybe it's entitled to a brief retreat.

We've generally had a mild winter so far--some cold weather, a little snow, but nothing severe.  I hate the dark and cold and always look forward to the winter solstice.  Even though there will be many more days of early darkness, at least the darkest are behind us. 

Friday is my once-every-three-months series of tests at the KU Cancer Center.  I'll publish the results on Saturday.

Happy Thanksgiving!  As for many people, it's my favorite holiday--neither patriotic nor religious and, for those of us who are lucky, with a groaning board covered with a surfeit of delicious food.

One semi-obligatory ritual is going around the table so that everyone can say what he or she is thankful for.  Jimmy Kimmel says we should all just saying 'togetherness' and then walk around the table kissing everyone on the top of the head.  It is togetherness that we all say in one form or another.  My list:

Togetherness--seriously.  Since I don't have family, it's a day to be grateful for all the friends who make up a faithful, if voluntary family.

The Internet in all its forms, which provides hours of entertainment, the means to keep in touch with friends all over the world, and ways of learning surprising new things.

MSNBC, which provides a 24-hour a day "variety" of shows with talking heads who all think like I do. 

Votrient, which, despite its unfortunate side effects, has kept me alive and kicking more than two years longer than the initial prognosis. 

My husband--and the fact that for the first time in 68 years I can say that.  Thanks to Iowa who made the marriage possible and then easy, to the friends who drove long distances to attend, and to all the well-wishers who congratulated us on our return.  Most of all, thanks to Mohamed, who continues to love and support me without ever a moment of complaint or reservation. 

The last few days have been tough ones, but it's good to take time to remember all that I have to be thankful for.

And while we're celebrating life and light, Happy Hanukkah!

Fifty years ago, I was an eighteen year old freshman at State College of Iowa, soon to become the University of Northern Iowa.  At noon on Friday, November 22, I had eaten lunch at the cafeteria in the Union, returned to the dorm to pick up my books, and headed to my 1 o'clock Intro to Lit class, taught by Loren Taylor, my favorite professor in my three years at SCI.  Dormitories were different in those days.  I had two roommates in a room designed for two students.  There were no mini-fridges or phones or televisions in the room.  There was one common room per floor with a television, but it was rarely used during the day.  As I walked across campus to the classroom, there seemed to be fewer students than usual, but it was Friday afternoon, so the absence could be dismissed as students leaving early for the weekend.

When I got to the classroom, perhaps half the students were there.  A few of them said that President Kennedy had been shot, but that seemed unthinkable and no one had much information.  We waited for 15 minutes to see if Prof. Taylor would show up and then left the classroom.  In the dorm, everyone was in the common room.  Walter Cronkite had announced the President's death at 1 p.m.  For the rest of the day, the room was packed as we tried to fathom what had happened.  South American dictators were assassinated, not American Presidents.  The idea that RFK, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X would also be killed in the next few years couldn't have occurred to us. 

Three years earlier, I had been an eager volunteer in Kennedy's campaign.  The night of his nomination (on my birthday in my time zone), my parents let me stay up late.  Nerd (a word that didn't exist then) that I was (am?), I had made a giant chart of all the states, the number of their votes, the possible nominees.  I dutifully filled out all the little squares until Kennedy finally secured the nomination.  I went door-to-door in my Republican home town passing out brochures.  Although I've always portrayed Story City as fairly liberal, there was a lot of anti-Catholic sentiment.  The pastor of the largest Lutheran church in urging his parishioners to vote against Kennedy had announced from the pulpit that he would rather his daughter marry a Communist than a Catholic.  (There was some backlash against that statement.)

I don't remember much about the weekend following the assassination--what activities went on as scheduled, which were cancelled.  The common room in Baker Hall, my dorm, was always packed, the black-and-white TV always on, grief, anger, and incomprehension mingled.


Thanksgiving Tip:  Don't forget to spatchcock your turkey.

I resumed taking the chemo yesterday after a six-day break, the longest I've ever taken, though also the first in a year or so.  The point was to let my body "reboot," but after 2½ years of taking the Votrient daily, I'm not sure the level of toxic chemicals in my body could significantly decline.

The break certainly did help with the stomach problems.  My appetite improved, and with one unfortunate exception, rushing to the bathroom wasn't a frequent priority.  In addition to my reliance on sushi as a staple, I've added pad thai from a new restaurant that has take-out.  One order lasts me for three meals, and I don't get tired of it.  I realize that pad thai doesn't sound as if it would be easy on the stomach, but somehow it doesn't create problems.  Our friends Raylene and Doug brought over a baked pork chop, rice, and vegetable dish (and a pumpkin pie) that was good for three meals.  Poor Mohamed!  He doesn't know what he's missing.  I feel bad for him because he's so intent on making sure I eat as well as possible that his own eating patterns suffer.

On the other hand, the break didn't change the fatigue or the aches.  I can access my KU charts electronically, and the new thyroid medication brought the number down dramatically so that I'm now well within the normal range.  But it hasn't done anything to increase my energy.  Exactly three hours after taking the Votrient, I crash for at least an hour.  After a shower and lunch, I have another bout of fatigue--this one leading to at least two hours of sleep.  But now I've added a third crash at about 6:30--not as long, but just as sudden and demanding.

So, too, I still have pains in my back and right hip, the one with all the titanium.  (Whenever I hear Sia singing "Titanium," I assume she's singing to me.)  I take three Percocet a day, but they
don't really seem to help, though of course I don't know what the level of pain would be without the Percocet. 

Otherwise, fall is definitely here, and our yard is mostly covered with leaves.  The semester is winding down, though Mohamed still has two papers to write.  Kimber is obsessed with either a family of rabbits or a possum that's living under our back deck.  And I'm writing a blog entry after a week of silence.

Yesterday it was time for our once-every-six-weeks visit to the KU Cancer Center.  Because Mohamed has classes Friday mornings, the appointment had to be in the afternoon.  Between the morning waits to eat after taking thyroid and chemo meds and the not eating for four hours before a CT scan, I was hungry, tired, and a little grumpy by the time the exams began.  Because of the tight schedule, they drew blood at the same time they put in the port for the CT scans.  The department where they do x-rays, MRIs, and CT scans was very busy, so the wait was long, but luckily, a new New Yorker had arrived just as we were leaving Topeka, so I had good reading to fill the time.  The scans themselves go quickly.

Then it was time to go to the second floor and wait for Dr. Van, who was "only" 40 minutes late.  He apologized for his lateness, and I wondered why since he's never been on time in the last 2½ years.  But I shouldn't complain because all the news was good: the kidney tumor hasn't grown, nor have any of the other spots in the area scanned, including my lungs.  I felt a little silly in that when Dr. Van said they had scanned the lungs, I insisted that they hadn't, that they had just done the pelvic area as usual.  And then the scans appeared on the computer screen, those of the lungs included.  I really hadn't thought that I had gone farther into the machine than usual, and they hadn't asked me to remove the chain around my neck with its small green sapphire and small gold chai.  But I couldn't argue with what was on the screen.  Everything continues to be stable--very good news indeed.

The last couple of months haven't been great.  After we reduced the Votrient from 600 to 400 mg per day, the diarrhea had improved for a couple of months, but by September, it had returned, along with a lack of appetite (though I had actually gained a couple of pounds at yesterday's exam).  For the last three weeks or so, I've had a number of aches and pains, especially in my back.  We considered changing the chemo to see whether that would mitigate the stomach problems, but since the Votrient
has been so effective, we're reluctant to try something new.  Or we could reduce the dosage, but we were all hesitant to do that as well.  So I'm going to take a break of a week in taking the Votrient to give my body the opportunity to "reboot."  We'll see whether that helps.  And we'll continue to monitor the pains in my back, since there are small tumors in my spine and ribs.  If they don't improve, at my next session, they'll do an MRI.

After the good news, neither of us having eaten all day, we stopped by the cafeteria, which was closed.  There was a vending machine, but the way the sun was reflecting, it was impossible to read the labels on the sandwiches.  I ended up with a meatball and cheese sandwich, which I gobbled down and for which I later paid the price.  I stayed awake almost the entire way home, but then conked out for an hour.  Neither of us made it past 10:30, but at least we went to sleep relieved and grateful for all that modern medicine can do.

A number of you have expressed concern about my shift to less frequent blogging.  As I said, one main reason is that, given my rather quiet life these days, it was becoming difficult to think of subjects for the blog.  Everyone has said that blogging about health matters, even if nothing really changes much, is always welcome.  I'm touched by the sentiment, but even I get bored writing about how many hours I sleep, the number and quality of my bathroom trips, the fluctuations of my appetite.  I can always write about politics, though I haven't been as involved as usual, and as far as reading, I've been plugging away at Madame Bovary for a month or so now, falling asleep after reading a page or two.  I'll have to admit, however, that my energy level has been particularly low the last three weeks with the last few days being particularly bad.  I sleep even more than I did before, and I can't concentrate for very long.  A few new aches and pains have developed, and they make getting around even more fatiguing.  I'm sure I've just strained a muscle or two from sitting so much in the same position, not one that enhances good posture.  I keep promising myself that tomorrow I'm going to pull myself together and be more energetic and productive.  Tomorrow...

Maybe a month or so ago, I wrote about Joe, the friend of a friend, who was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer in circumstances similar to my own diagnosis: neither of us had had any symptoms of kidney problems, but both of us had developed pains--his in the ribs, mine in the scapula--that we attributed to physical activity but that wouldn't go away.  We kept meaning to get together to discuss our treatments.  Although the beginnings of our cancer were similar, the ends were not.  Joe died 48 hours ago--a little over four months from diagnosis to death, while I'm still putzing along 2½ years after the diagnosis.  It hardly seems fair, but then again, we don't live in a world where fairness obtains.

For the first time in the 25+ years I've lived here, we didn't have a single trick-or-treater last night.  The number of kids who come has always fluctuated, but there have always been at least 15 or 20.  Our street isn't exactly conducive to kids: there are only seven houses on each side, and there are no street lights, so it's very dark.  Still, the weather was good, and it was rather surprising--and disappointing--for their not to be any costumed visitors.

After 215 posts every third day over the last 21 months, I find that I'm running out of things to say and that the regular blogging is no longer an unalloyed pleasure.  So I'm going to move to an irregular (and less frequent) schedule.  I'll focus on health matters, though I'm sure there will be political topics that rile me up enough to write a blog.

Thanks to all of you who have followed along for nearly two years now.  Check back from time to time, as I will continue to update the blog.

Tempus fugit ... except when it doesn't.  I have a paradoxical relationship with time these days--almost unaware of its passing day to day, all too conscious of its passing hour by hour and month by month.

At the daily level, one day is pretty much like the last.  Yesterday I was writing a rare check, and I was ready to guess that the date was about the tenth--only nine days off when I took the time to look at my phone.  When friends ask how the last few days have been, I often can't remember.  Was yesterday a good day or a bad one?  You'd think that would be an easy response, but they all blur together.  I have no schedule, except that every third day I write this blog, and, as many of you have probably noticed, it's become more and more difficult to vary the content.  Luckily, Mohamed does have a schedule, so I'm vaguely aware of which days we need to set the alarm and he'll be off to school.  But even that doesn't affect me much.  Time on a daily basis is marked more by naps vs. bursts of energy than by the difference between days.  I know that no matter what time I get up, after three hours, a black wave will strike, and I'll fall into bed and sleep for an hour.  I know that when I wake up, I'll finally shower and have lunch--and those will be my big accomplishments for that period.  By 1:30 or so, the wave will strike again, and this time I'll collapse for two hours.  That schedule is absolutely predictable.  Except for another flagging of energy about 6:00 or 6:30, I'll be good till 11 or so.  Monday or Thursday, weekday or weekend, it doesn't make any difference.  And most of the time, I'm not sure anyway whether it is Monday or Thursday, weekday or weekend.  It may be frustrating, but that's the way it works. 

But on another level, I'm very aware of and good at counting time.  It was three years ago this month--October 2010--that my left shoulder had hurt so long that I decided I needed to see a doctor.  I was still teaching, and as a leftie, I couldn't lift my hand high enough to write on the board so that the students could see what I'd written.  It was three years ago that I went to my doctor and had an x-ray that seemingly showed nothing.  It was three years ago that I began six months of misdiagnosed treatment--cortisone shots, physical therapy for a torn rotator cuff or then bursitis.  And it was exactly 2½ years ago that I had an MRI and first heard the word 'tumor.'  Since the prognosis for stage 4 kidney cancer is less than a year, that meant that I was given six months tops.  But I didn't really have time to concentrate on that because I had an immediate operation on my right femur and hip and had to spend the next 46 days (every one of which I counted down) 24/7 in an abduction brace.  The 46 days did come to an end, and I took tentative steps.  I mastered the seven steps to the two upstairs bathrooms. 

October 2011, my latest "expiration" date, came and went.  As did October 2012.  As is October 2013.  I count the months all right.  And as much as get tired of looking at the bottles of pills and swallowing my Votrient, as much as I get tired of being tired, of taking a shower and putting on clean clothes as my major accomplishment of the morning, I know how fortunate I am to have the Votrient to take.

Cancer, shmancer, abi gesund.  The only problem is that I can't remember if I was 'gesund' yesterday or not.

So after sixteen days with nothing accomplished, the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis are over...for another three months.

The Daily Beast stole my line:  Is Ted Cruz the Miley Cyrus of the Republican party?

Tea Party representative Jack Kingston of George was on "All In" last night.  After Chris Hayes had said that the shutdown had cost the economy $24B, Kingston said that it had been a "minor inconvenience" that allowed Republicans to express their dislike of Obamacare.  Hayes interrupted: "Do you think there is a single American who didn't already know what Republicans think?"  Kingston was so flustered that he couldn't say 'shutdown': "The government shirtdone...shortdorn...sh...sh...closing..." 

The pundits don't seem to agree about much, except that this was a disaster for the GOP.  What about Speaker Boehner's future?  One said, "the jig is up," and he's done as speaker.  Another said he would be finished, but there is no one else who wants the job.  (I thought Eric Cantor, always walking one step behind, had his knife unsheathed.)  Still others said Boehner came out of this stronger because, despite the fact that he got no concessions, he stood up with the Tea Party and gained a bit more of their confidence. 

Other than the obvious economic damage--both to the overall economy and in personal lives--sixteen days passed when nothing was accomplished.  Major issues and problems were ignored: jobs creation, stimulus programs, the disappearing middle class, the increasing number of poor (and, according to a Pew survey, for the first time ever an increasing number of people label themselves as poor rather than as middle class; no matter how inaccurate the latter description might have been, there was still a sense of hope and belonging), climate change, immigration reform, and the list could go on. 

For the last three days, President Obama and other Democrats have been talking again about comprehensive immigration reform.  It's probably the next issue that the Congress will address, and the thought seems to be that there is some hope, as the President now has more evident strength and the Republicans are in disarray.  Will the Tea Partiers dare confront the President and such Senate leaders of their own party as John McCain?  Their comments over the last 24 hours certainly don't indicate that they are chastened by the humiliation they're trying to spin as victory. 

Meanwhile, the "supercommittee," led by Sen. Patti Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, has two months to create an overarching budget compromise so that the governance by brinksmanship doesn't happen again in three months.   Already the Republicans have won some preliminary battles: the sequestration cuts are still in effect; the budget number in the CR is at the level the Republicans wanted.  Dealing with the fiscally ultra-conservative Ryan is already not going to be easy.  Even if the committee can accomplish something, it's an uphill battle to end the sequestration and to get the numbers back where the economy will actually be stimulated and jobs will be created.

Every nine years, director Richard Linklater has done a film about Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Céline (Julie Delpy):  Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and this year Before Midnight, which I finally saw this weekend.  The trilogy (so far) traces the couple from their first accidental meeting on a train and the hours that followed to this film, which records their last night of a six-week holiday at the home of a famous British writer on the southern tip of the Peloponnese.  Jesse has a son from an extremely unhappy marriage who leaves to return to his mother in Chicago.  Together, Jesse and Céline have twin daughters.  The three films are about speech; nothing "happens" in the movies.  Rather, we listen to the two main characters (there is a scene in this film with the novelist host and some Greek guests, but it's just a brief interlude, and it too is all talk) as they express their thoughts from the most trivial to the most serious, though how seriously we take these latter observations is up to us.

The mood of this film is much less buoyant than the earlier two.  Indeed, for the first time, the endless talk becomes exhausting, though that feeling is intentional as Delpy's character particularly keeps circling back to the same themes.  How patient Jesse is to continue to listen and to try to please her.  Céline has coarsened in the nine years since we've seen last seen her.  Her body and her legs have thickened, and her attitude is heavier and less playful.  Jesse hasn't changed as much, and his worries, especially about his separation from his son, are more conventional.  He is now the stable one with glints of silliness still making him appealing--to us and to Céline.  It's Delpy's movie, for she provides the emotional swings to Jesse's ballast.  At the end, though Céline has tried to leave three times, she finally can't resist--for now at least--Jesse's winsome devotion.  Nine years from now, if there's a fourth installment, the characters will have just turned fifty.  All that's predictable is that they'll still be talking.

Meanwhile, James Franco has adapted William Faulkner's 1930 novel As I Lay Dying.  The novel is short by Faulkner standards, but it plays incessantly with point of view, as each section is a first-person narrative by one of the characters.  Some characters have many sections; Addie, the dead matriarch who is getting revenge on her husband by making the family carry her body through fire and flood to the town where she was born, has only one.  Midway through the novel, though she has been dead since the beginning, Addie speaks.  In addition to the playing with narrative, Faulkner also makes ample use of the grotesque: Vardaman, the youngest son, fearing his mother can't breathe in the coffin, drills air holes into it--and into his mother's face.  Another son breaks his leg as they transport the coffin, and they fix it by putting cement around it with nothing between the cement and the skin. 

Faulkner is, of course, notoriously difficult to try to film, and As I Lay Dying entails its share of complications.  The most ludicrous film version of a Faulkner novel is a 1959 version of one of Faulkner's greatest novels, The Sound and the Fury (Franco is also filming this) in which there is not one moment that isn't laughable and in perhaps revealing Hollywood fashion, the greediest and most self-centered character from the novel, Jason IV, is made the hero.  The only truly successful adaptation of a Faulkner novel, I think, is the Clarence Brown version of Intruder in the Dust (1949) with Juano Herdandez giving a great performance as the intractable Lucas Beauchamp.   Franco's As I Lay Dying has received mixed reviews, especially for his use of voice overs and split screens to approximate Faulkner's shifting points of view.  The cliché is that great novels rarely make good films.  The unity of form and content is too tight; the author's style and perspective are too distinct.  It doesn't sound as if Franco has given the lie to that analysis, but I'm looking forward to his attempt, which is clearly made out of love for Faulkner and his novel.

A few days ago, my friend TJ was tweeting song titles, altered by adding a word.  #addawordruinatitle   I thought literature might also benefit from the same treatment:

The Divine Situation Comedy
A Mid-Summer Night's Wet Dream
Anna Nicole Karenina
A View from the Dental Bridge
Angela's Cigarette Ashes
Long Day's Journey into Night Sweats
Lawrence of Saudi Arabia
Gravity's Reading Rainbow

And cheating a little bit:

Great ExpectORations
A Zero-Emissions Streetcar Named Desire

Contributions, anyone?

Mohamed is an economics major, and as I look uncomprehendingly at his texts and assignments, I'm struck by how much analysis depends on mathematical modeling.  This standard, traditional view relies on the theory of the rational man: the belief that in making economic decisions, people are basically rational and try to maximize gains and minimize losses.  Even if not everyone is completely rational, in the aggregate people are.  Recently, however, the model has been challenged by social economists, who argue that significant economic decisions are influenced by numerous non-logical factors and thus that no purely mathematical model will be indicative of how the economy will behave.

I first came across this new approach in Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational.  Ariely, an Israeli socio-economist, lists a variety of ways in which economic man is influenced by non-rational factors and gives case studies for each of his points.  It's clearly written and fascinating to read.  I borrowed one of Ariely's examples for use in my composition classes.  Although I think students write as well as they did 45 years ago when I started teaching (better even), one problem I encountered in the last years of teaching was increasing plagiarism.  With Internet resources so easily available, the temptation to "borrow" a paragraph (or more) here and there was just too strong for many students.  Of course, it was increasingly easy to find the plagiarism--no more going to the library and searching through books and articles.  I had students who left the URL on their paper, and many students who copied-and-pasted and didn't bother to change the font to match the rest of the essay.  My Ariely-inspired solution was to require that every essay, word processed as they were, concluded with a handwritten, signed, and dated statement that began, "I swear that . . ."  Rationally, one would think that if a student was willing to steal a paper, s/he wouldn't have any problems writing the statement.  Instead, the students simply couldn't sign their name to a lie, and plagiarism was reduced dramatically.  Irrational, but predictable.

Cass Sunnstein, a legal and political philosopher, has recently ventured into socio-economics.  His new book advocating what he calls "libertarian paternalism" is Simpler: The Future of Government.  But his previous book, Nudge, is the one that brought him to the attention of the general public, especially via numerous talk show appearances.  As a libertarian (an awfully slippery word), he disapproves of most government mandates and prohibitions.  As a paternalist, however, he believes that people often act irrationally and that the government's job is to provide 'nudges' to encourage more efficient behavior.  Perhaps the most important category of nudges is one which, while still allowing for freedom of choice, requires people to opt out of programs--health care, retirement plans--rather than to opt in.  Given the failure of most people either to have sufficient information or to process the information they do have (and the vast amounts of money spent by interest groups to make sure that it is their interests that are protected), inertia usually wins out and people don't take the initiative to opt out--indecision working toward their benefit.

The field of socio-economics hasn't worked its way into most curricula yet, and it doesn't have the scientific air of mathematical models, yet it seems to me a much more realistic view of human behavior than the traditional methods.  Attractive as nudges might be as a policy tactic, however, they don't really address, let alone tackle, the enormous systemic problems that are destroying the American middle class and further enriching the already enriched.

post script to yesterday's post

Yet another example of the depths to which the right will sink:  Stuart Varney on Fox was asked whether, once the shutdown is over, the 800,000 furloughed government workers should receive retroactive pay.  His answer was no; he ranted that they lived on our backs and made more ill-gotten money than most people in the private sector.  Is Varney really so delusional that he thinks that a park ranger makes more than he does?  Or in the world of Fox news is any fiction justified if it serves the narrative?  His final comment about the furloughed workers: "I want to punish them."

These people are like whack-a-moles.

Day four of the government shutdown, and the Tea Partiers can barely conceal their pleasure--or their hypocrisy.  Fox News has called it the government "slimdown" and prominent graphics read "The Obama Shutdown."  They repeat endlessly that no one is being seriously hurt--until they seized upon the closure of the World War II Memorial for a shameless appeal to "patriotism" as their signature cause.  Texas Rep. Neugebauer, flag pin in his lapel, large plastic flag protruding from his pocket, berated a young park ranger for not letting people in, telling her that she should be ashamed of herself.  She took his hypocritical abuse graciously, but once, smugly proud of himself, he turned around to leave, he was confronted by a more aggressive furloughed employee who didn't treat him with the respect Rep. Neubegauer expected.  (Does the Texas Congressional delegation have more assholes than is statistically probable?)

And speaking of respect, Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman announced that the Tea Partiers would not be disrespected.  They would hold out till they got what they wanted, though he didn't know what that was.

With its six Republicans in Congress, Kansas isn't spared the inanity.  Rep. Tim Huelskamp, trying to assure us that a shutdown wasn't a bad thing, said he didn't know anyone who was affected by the stalemate.  Given the bubble in which he lives, I'm not surprised that he doesn't know any of the nearly nine million women and children threatened with losing their WIC benefits--or the Head Start children who will lose their place.  But even he must know some of the 800,000 government employees who are on furlough from "non-essential" services like the CDC and FDA.

My tongue has several bite marks from not responding to the anodyne comment by a friend that she agreed with an editorial recommending compromise.  What does that even mean?  The 80 or so Republicans who are blocking the budget aren't going to consider compromise as they've made clear innumerable times on many battles.  The ACA was passed four years ago, and the final law was the result of many, many compromises on the President's side, far too many for those of us who favor a single-payer system.  And for the last four years, the hard-core conservatives have done nothing but hold their breaths until they get their way.  The act is in force, and it isn't going to be defunded.

My hope is that the Republicans are right about one thing: once an "entitlement" is in place, it's not going to be taken away.  The European, single-payer health care systems didn't spring full-blown into existence; they most often grew incrementally.  Parts of the ACA have been in effect for some time; the exchanges, despite the resistance in many states, went into effect at the beginning of this month.  The bureaucracy is in place.  And, no matter how much Republicans want to wish the law away, it's not going anywhere.

I read another hopeful editorial.  The author argued that the districts that have been gerrymandered to create safe, white, conservative districts encourage the representatives to take ever more extreme positions, farther and farther from mainstream America.  Eventually, he believes, these representatives, safe in their own districts, will become isolated from the rest of the voters, leading to the self-induced extinction of the wing nut faction of the Republican party. 

Before Dr. Van Veldhuizen prescribed yet another pill, this time a thyroid supplement, I had already been thinking about writing on the ambivalent feelings I (and I assume lots of people who take many medications) have with their pills--something like Patience/Patients and the Pill.  My routine looked like this: every morning 10 or 11 pills (there's one extra on Sundays), followed by an hour wait before I can eat anything and my daily shot in the stomach; two pills at lunch; four pills at 6:30; one last one before bed.  On the one hand, I trust that Dr. Van knows what he's doing, and certainly, given the initial prognosis, the pills are doing their job.  Still, there are mornings when I don't think I can face laying out the pills.  At this point, I hardly know or care which is which; I take them from the bottles in a certain, arbitrary order.  I take the biggest pill first, then the chemo, and then I just shove them in my mouth and gulp them down, two by two, with swallows of OJ.  And sometimes I just feel sheer frustration: what's wrong with my body anyway that it can't do its job and take care of itself on its own without needing calcium supplements, massive dosages of Vitamin D, extra iron.  And now a thyroid supplement.  Some mornings I want to skip the whole thing and just let my body have its will.  Patience and prudence (a good title for a British novel?) prevail.

The new pill has created a new schedule.  I have to take the thyroid medication first thing in the morning before I've eaten anything.  Now I have to wait an additional thirty minutes to an hour before taking any other meds or eating anything.  So this morning I waited 45 minutes and then laid out and gulped down the next ten pills.  Now I'm waiting an hour after the chemo before eating.  It's a pain.  In the meantime, Mohamed has given me my shot.  That's also a routine.  He tries to find a place on my middle that isn't too bruised or knotted, swabs it with alcohol, and says every morning, "This is going to hurt.  I'm sorry, sweetie."  Luckily, he does the injection smoothly and it almost never hurts.  I say, "Thank you, baby," and the day can begin.

Although everything went well at the consultation with Dr. Van on Friday, there was one exchange that was a bit disconcerting.  If I have a question or problem, I e-mail Dr. Van, and he always responds within 24 hours.  As I did with my students, I find this system a much more efficient method than playing phone tag, and I can cc Jennifer, the physician assistant, so she gets the info at the same time.  Dr. Van explains things thoroughly at consultations and will sometimes give his opinion twice--once to me and once to Mohamed.  But at the end of Friday's consultation, he said three separate times, "Now if anything happens or you have any problems, feel free to call me immediately.  You can e-mail but you can also call me directly."  Neither of us said anything at the time, but he was so insistent that in retrospect it sounded almost as if he expected something to happen.

All is going well, however.  I've taken all my pills, had my shot, and waited what  now is at least 90 minutes before the next step: eating breakfast.  Sounds good to me and my growling stomach.

Yesterday began with an unexpected, but pleasant surprise:  Mohamed's sister sent a camera pic of his birth certificate.  His mother had finally found the document after we had pretty much given up on recovering the original.  The green card application had been stalled until the original was found or a government-issued replacement was obtained. (The passive voice may be appropriate, since we didn't know who was going to be the agent to do either of these things.)  Now there are two more steps before we begin filling out forms and sending checks: the birth certificate must be translated by a government-approved translation service and Mohamed needs to make an appointment with the one doctor in Topeka who is authorized to attest that he has no communicable diseases.  These doctors are designated as U.S. Civil Surgeons, and why there are so few of them (there are only a handful in Kansas City, for example) I don't know.  Other than that, I think we have everything we need to file the application.  After filing, there will be a wait of three or four months, and then, if the application is approved, there is an interview with the CIS in Kansas City to determine whether our marriage is "real" or a marriage of convenience. 

One of Mohamed's classes was canceled yesterday, so we were able to leave Topeka early for our appointment at the Cancer Center and add a lunch with our friend T.J.  We met at Room 39 on Restaurant Row, or 39th Street just across State Line Road on the Missouri side of Kansas City.  It caters to the locavore crowd and is quite reasonably priced for such a restaurant.  It is also, unfortunately, extremely noisy.  I love duck, which isn't often available around here, and when I saw duck confit on the menu, I was extremely happy.  That isn't, of course, the most healthful preparation of duck, and by the time we arrived at the medical offices, my stomach was reminding me of that fact.  Still, I enjoyed the duck, and it was fun to see T.J. after two or three months.

We got to the Center at 2 and signed in.  My nemesis, Marci the Maladroit, was nowhere to be seen, and I was called immediately for the blood tests performed by someone competent.  There was supposed to be a 45-minute wait before we saw Dr. Van, and we had planned on going to the third floor to get the shot of Xgeva, but Dr. Van's nurse was waiting for us, and we went directly to the area with his consultation rooms.  First, as always, they took my vitals--all good although I had again lost a little weight.  (I always wear my shirt tails out now because the waist of my jeans has to be big enough, but then the legs and butt have lots of loose and baggy material, which is really unattractive.)  The blood work results were already there.  Basically, they were like always.  I'm slightly anemic, the Vitamin D count was low, but I take once-a-week massive dosages of the vitamin, and the thyroid count was also low, so I'm going to add a thyroid supplement to my daily regimen of pills.  Perhaps that addition will help relieve the fatigue.

Finally, we went to the third floor for the shot.  There was something of a wait (by this time, I'm tired, and we're both impatient), but we still got in long before the scheduled time.  The nurse, like all but one of them, believes in the slow injection of the medicine.  It burns as it goes in, and I much prefer the nurse who just shoots the medicine in in one fast motion. 

And then we were done for another six weeks and drove back to Topeka.  For the first time ever, I stayed awake for the trip home, though the moment we got here, I headed for the bed while Mohamed went out for sushi for my dinner (and Chinese food for his)--one-stop shopping at our neighborhood supermarket.

Friday started well with the birth certificate surprise and continued positively with the results at the Cancer Center. 

My mind is absolutely blank this morning, so I'll spare us both trying to fake it.

Friday we return to the Cancer Center, though just for blood tests, the bone-strengthening shot, and a consultation.  At least for the Saturday post, I'll have the results to report.

Sunday morning miscellany--

Writing a blog may truly be a new genre.  It's unlike making diary or journal entries, which are meant to be personal and self-reflective, because there is an audience of others, ill-defined as it may be.  It's unlike writing a letter, since the public nature of a blog means that certain stories, particularly my favorite kind, the foibles of friends, can't be posted for all to see.  It's unlike an autobiography because it's spontaneous; what one writes is going to be read immediately after it's written.  There's no time for subsequent revisions.  It lacks the perspective of later modifications.  The organizing principle, at least in my case, isn't entirely focused, no matter what the original intention might have been. 

A further reflection on Syria:  Let's assume a best case scenario, one where Assad allows the U.N. inspectors in, the sites and size of the chemical weapons caches are accurately located, the schedule is followed and the weapons are destroyed by the middle of next year, and bombing is averted.  Does Obama deserve credit since Assad would never have agreed to these arrangements without the threat of even a limited attack?  Or was Obama played by Putin, who seized on Kerry's offhand (?) remark to look as if he took the initiative and made the U.S. a secondary player?  More importantly, does the plan do anything more than re-establish the status quo ante with Assad still in power?  What happens to the fragmented rebel movement?  Does the civil war continue and the 100,000 dead increase in number?  Although the destruction of chemical weapons would undeniably be a positive accomplishment, how does that affect the more general situation?  One thing that can't return to the way it was is the status of the millions who have been displaced by the civil war: at least two million Syrians have been externally displaced---into Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan, and Lebanon.  Over one million of those refugees are children since 40% of the Syrian population is under the age of 15.  Not only are there the immediate problems of housing, food and water, sanitation, education, and health care for the refugees (and another four million or so Syrians have been displaced internally), but there is the uncertainty of the effects of all these humans on the already fragile states particularly of Lebanon and Jordan.  The number of displaced persons will surpass those from the war in Iraq and soon become the largest movement of humanity since Rwanda.  One small, tentative, potential victory on chemical weapons; many huge, seemingly intractable problems remaining.

Almost every semester, Mohamed takes one of his courses online, and it's been interesting to see the way online courses are taught and which instructors actually make them work while others just coast through with as little work as possible.  Every day there are commercials for previously unknown universities--Southern New Hampshire University, Ashford College in Iowa, and others are inviting students from all of the country.  In Kansas, Fort Hays University has become the third largest university in the state.  How is this possible, since Fort Hays is located in the middle of nowhere?  It's possible because few of the students are actually in Fort Hays; the vast majority are in China, taking all their course work online.  Where do these institutions of higher education get enough instructors?  It's a cinch that the teachers don't move to Fort Hays or to Clinton, Iowa, the home of Ashford.  I learned on Friday, for example, that the instructor of the online course Mohamed is taking this semester teaches online at numerous other schools.  It's what she's chosen to do with her retirement.  And it's moderately lucrative for the instructors--and very lucrative for the schools.  Online courses aren't necessarily of inferior quality; I taught courses online, a couple successfully, I thought, one as a complete disaster.  But what strikes me is how little work an instructor can get by with if he wants to and how little interaction between the teacher and the students and among the students themselves is possible.  In many of the classes, there are no required discussion postings.  In many others, the quizzes and tests are tied directly to the texts and are created and graded electronically; there is no instructor involvement whatsoever.  It's an easy gig if you want it to be.  How well it educates is another question entirely.

About two months ago,, my friend Virginia's neighbor and friend, Joe, suddenly found himself in my position, being diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer that had metastasized into his bones.  One moment his life was routine; a minute later nothing would ever be the same.  In my case, it was the left scapula and its refusal to heal normally that signaled something was wrong.  For Joe, the experience was like that of the protagonist of Tolstoi's classic story "The Death of Ivan Ilych":  Ivan is the most ordinary of men.  One day, doing the most ordinary of household tasks, he "bruises" his side.  He thinks it's nothing, but it doesn't get better.  While the doctors and his family focus on his external health (and the inconveniently altered routine of their lives), Ivan broods on his own past and present, as well as his very short future.  Joe also hurt his side, a minor injury, he thought, that would heal quickly.  But it didn't.  It was more than a bruise; ribs had fractured.  Why from such a small accident?  It didn't seem logical after his having lived a physically active, healthful life.  And then came the diagnosis: kidney cancer (like me, Joe had never had any signs of a problem with his kidneys) that had spread.

Virginia keeps urging both Joe and me to call each other and exchange information.  So far, neither of us has done so.  And it would be interesting to know which chemo Joe is taking and at what dosage, whether he takes the bone-strengthening shot that I take every three months, whether he gets a daily shot to prevent or ameliorate the pulmonary embolisms that often result from cancer.  Joe went to the country's premier hospital for cancer, M. D. Anderson.  What regimen did they prescribe?  Does it differ from mine?  And then perhaps I could be an example for optimism, as someone who has outlived his prognosis by two years now.  And if the conversation stopped there, it would have been a productive exchange.

But might there also be a downside to meeting?  If Joe is angry at life's unfairness, how much more unfair might it seem that I, who certainly can't attribute the extra two years to clean living, am still alive and kicking?  Joe never smoked; I did--and do.  And we would certainly talk about the side effects and the practical reality that Joe's life is going to be "diminished"--and that this change isn't going to get better.  In my case, the first effect was to drive my blood pressure way up, requiring three anti-hypertension medications, each with its own additional side effects.  And then the fatigue, which will change the entire rhythm of his days.  Every time I mention it to my oncologist, he says the same thing:  "You have to remember that your body is fighting cancer and that you're introducing toxic chemicals to combat the cancer into your body every day."  That's clear and accurate, but hardly a consolation when every three hours your mind and body turn themselves off.  For Joe, who has always been physically active, how to say this is just a fact, a new constraint that is never going to change.  And then, of course, almost everyone who takes chemo suffers from G-I problems--nausea or diarrhea or loss of appetite or all of the above.  If a talk were to take place, despite my longevity and seeming energy (timing of meals and visits is important; better if only Mohamed sees the ugliness), we'd also have to discuss what the next months or years are going to be like. 

So far, Joe and I haven't met, and I seem to be talking myself out of calling him--and thinking up all sorts of rationalizations to justify not doing so.

If at about 21,000 pageviews after 21 months of blogging, Rabbit Punched hasn't exactly gone viral, at least now it's gone into print.  Oklahoma Humanities, the journal of the Oklahoma Humanities Council, is one of five such journals in the country that are devoted to serious issues rather just promotional fluff.  The recently published fall issue centers on Medicine: The Humanities Prescription and features several pages of entries from my blog.

I went to the University of Oklahoma for all my graduate work, so there's a tie there, and Carla Walker, the editor of the journal, was my student at Washburn.  She writes an introduction to the excerpts in which she tells a story that's become a motif over the summer: she was used to easy A's until she took a class from me.  Unhappy with her grades, she came to see me to complain but left with "advice that stood me in good stead, as I would build a career on my tendency to edit."  There are six full pages of selections, many more than I had expected, and the individual entries are printed in their entirety.  There are many excerpts from early in the series, when the prognosis was particularly grim and the subject of the blog likely to be death and atheism.  There are also many entries when I discuss poems and how literature reflects on life and death. 

I got to choose the art work that accompanies the article, and I chose a Los Angeles artist, John Fox, whom I've known since 1977.  www.johnfoxart.net  The four samples of his work included are not just lovely and intriguing in themselves, but also make a wonderful complement to the writing.  John's art has evolved through many iterations in the years that I've known him, and these are particularly apt in their organic imagery.

(John's partner, Richard, may be familiar to many of you from the series of H & R Block commercials he did last tax season.  Directed by Errol Morris, the black and white ads feature Richard, a former C.F.O., in a trademark bow tie, extolling the professionalism of Block employees and the pleasure they take in what seems like mundane work.  The ads were certainly memorable; everyone to whom I mentioned them, claiming friendship with Richard, knew exactly what I was referring to.)

There are also a couple of photos with the article.  One is of Mohamed and me at a reception at Washburn.  The other is from 1970.  Carla asked whether I had any photos from when I was at OU, and I chose one from hippie and activist days--me with frizzy hair and John Lennon sunglasses during a protest by OKC garbage workers.

I am very flattered by the publication with the well-chosen samples of the blog entries, the art, the photos, and the many personal connections the selections bring to mind.  Copies of the journal are available for order at www.okhumanities.org

This has been a tough week for a number of reasons, several of them having to do with food.  Last Saturday, five of us went to Topeka's best restaurant, the Rowhouse, for what promised to be a delicious dinner with good company.  I was fine for the first three courses (small dishes from the tasting menu); then suddenly I felt really terrible.  Mohamed and I navigated the very steep staircase to the first floor and went outside for some fresh air, but that didn't help and getting back up the stairs seemed nearly impossible.  I stopped at the restroom, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked something like a zombie.  Usually when I'm in public or with friends, I look "normal," not sick at all.  So it was a shock to see my own image.  The other diners in the room stared--trying to look as if they weren't--as I stumbled back to the table.  And then the feeling passed, and I picked my way through the dessert course with no problems.  By the time we were in the car, I was sick again, and getting home and in bed was the only goal I could think of.

Things didn't improve with my next foray into a restaurant, our favorite go-to eatery, where we have lunch or dinner two or three times a week.  I almost always choose their fish special, which twice now has come with alligator.  (It tastes like rich chicken livers.)  This time the fish of the day was catfish, hardly my favorite, but it was stuffed with crawfish and served with a Creole sauce.  While I was eating, I enjoyed every bite, though the proportion of catfish to crawfish was a little heavy.  But once more, there was a sudden shift, and my whole body, especially of course my stomach, revolted.

After thinking that my stomach problems were basically in the past, this week was a sudden reminder of less pleasant times.  For the rest of the week, my appetite hasn't been great, and I've tried to stick with bland fare.  Tomorrow night we're invited to my friend and colleague Maureen's for dinner in Lawrence.  She's a wonderful cook, so I'm hoping for a calmer digestive system.  I want to enjoy what I know will be a fine meal.

Meanwhile, I feel as if I've been crashing even more than usual.  It's probably just my imagination; I know I've felt this way before.  But I've been sleeping much later than usual, even sleeping through the alarm on occasion--and that's definitely not characteristic.  Exactly three hours after I get up and take the chemo, I think I'm going to take a shower, but the bed is on the route, and it's too inviting to pass by.  An hour or so later, I make it to the shower, have lunch, watch "The Bold and the Beautiful" (we all have our guilty pleasures), and then, even though I've been up for only two or three hours, I crash again, this time for two hours.  As I've said, I'm sure, before, it's very frustrating.  It's difficult to build up any momentum to accomplish things when my mind and body stop working.

On a lighter and completely unrelated note (except that I watch too much TV), here are my choices for the two funniest lines from commercials:

"I need a template for a template."  (Carrie Brownstein for American Express)

And in second place, the Geico commercial that says that Old MacDonald was a really bad speller:
Announcer:  Your word is 'cow.'
Old MacDonald:  "Cow.  cow.  c-o-w-e-i-e-i-o.  [Buzzer]  Dagnabbit!"  (An "old cooterism" says the urban dictionary.)

According to two scholars at the well-known research school, the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, there are six types of atheists:

1.  Intellectual atheists are seekers of information and intellectual stimulation about atheism and enjoy debating and arguing with religious believers.  The latter stipulation rules me out from this category, as I have no interest in debating with the religious.  As Whitman wrote, "Logic and sermons never convince," so there's no point in engaging in debate.

2.  Activist atheists not only disbelieve, they like to be aggressive in telling others why we'd all be better off without religion.  At the moment, but hardly for the first time, an atheist in Massachusetts is suing to have the words 'under God' removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.  I remember when I was a child, and in 1954, the words were added.  Every morning at school began with a recitation of the Pledge, and over night we added those two new words.  Since none of us was paying any particular attention (I was nine after all), at the time the addition didn't have particular significance.

3.  Seeker agnostics don't really belong in the classification at all, since, according to the researchers, they have an open mind and don't have a firm ideological position.  Agnostics are not atheists.

4.  Anti-theists speak out often and vehemently against religion and religious belief.  They are confrontational and believe that "obviously fallacies in religion and belief should be aggressively addressed in some form or another."  I think if I have to be categorized, the researchers would put me here.  I'm not interested in arguing or even really trying to convince another, but I often can't keep my mouth shut when religious people make confident pronouncements.  And since the religious are so frequently vocal, they provide numerous occasions for sarcastic comments.

5.  Non-theists, in this scheme, don't involve themselves one way or the other.  They are simply unconcerned about religion and faith.  This is sort of my default position.  I have no interest in concepts like heaven or hell or, at a different level, hypocrisy within a religious group.  You leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone.  But since believers are rarely quiet, I find myself pushed more often than I'd like into group 4.

6.  Ritual atheists aren't affiliated with any specific religion, but are still find "useful the teachings of some religious traditions."  These are people who are likely to describe themselves as 'spiritual.'  It drives me nuts when people say to me, "Well, you may not be religious, but I can tell you're a spiritual person."  Nope.  I don't have a spiritual bone in my body. 

I'm not sure whether this study actually contributes anything to our understanding of atheists or atheism.  Nor do I have a clear sense of the methodology of the researchers.  It seems as if a late night, dorm room conversations could have arrived at similar categories.  But the study not only was published, but also was reported on by CNN, so the researchers at least have burnished their academic reputation and résumés.

Within the last ten days, Turner Classic Movies has shown two of the greatest movies of all time: D. W. Griffith's 1916 masterpiece Intolerance and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, first shown in 1925, but immediately censored and cut with the mutilated version premiering in 1927.  Both require patience from a modern viewer; Intolerance is three and a half hours long, and the newly restored version of Metropolis is nearly three hours.  Both are, of course, silent and in black and white, though Griffith had some scenes in master prints hand tinted.  TCM preserved a few of the tinted scenes.  Just as eighteenth and nineteenth century British novels, wonderful as they are, are the bane of English graduate students because they are so long and we don't have the same lengthy leisure hours to fill as readers did a couple of centuries ago, so too it's not common to have three hours plus to watch a silent, b/w movie from nearly a hundred years ago.  It's worth it, though.  A few years ago, I taught a senior seminar on the American novel into film to some of the very best students we had.  Not one of them had seen a silent film; none could remember ever having seen a film in black and white.  They groaned when they saw that there were two silent films on the course list.  Victor Sjostrom's The Scarlet Letter wasn't a huge hit, though it's by far the most intelligent and engaging version of Hawthorne's novel, but once Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1924) began playing I had a rapt classroom for the four hours of the restored version. 

Greed is legendary for the series of cuts that were made in Stroheim's original 85 hours of footage, cut and cut and cut, with the deleted film supposedly destroyed.  The four hours that are left in the restored version that currently is in circulation are mesmerizing.  So, too, for years much of what was cut from Metropolis was thought to be lost, but a badly damaged print of the longer version was found in Buenos Aires, and what TCM shows returns much of the missing material, though not all of it has been fully restored in terms of quality.  Metropolis might equally as well have been titled 'Greed,' as the world it creates--expressionistic, fantastic, futuristic--is divided sharply and neatly between the 1% and the rest.  The very rich play in the "eternal garden," while the workers slave mechanically away to support them.  I hadn't seen Metropolis in several years, and I thought I remembered it well.  But this time it seemed different; it felt newly relevant to our own society and our growing divide between the have-it-nearly-alls and the rest of society.

TCM shows a lot of dreck, movies that are hardly classics, but it is one of the last forums for movies that are truly classics.  I'm showing my age, but I can't resist nostalgia for the days when every university had film series that showed foreign and classic movies that weren't going to play in the first-run theaters that dominate movie-going these days.  For several years in the 70s, a colleague and I ran the Shoestring Film Society at Washburn, showing movies on 16mm to an appreciative crowd, for whom most of the movies were new experiences.  But then VCRs, then DVD players, then Netflix put an end to all that.  And the movies that were available didn't broaden our sense of cinema but merely focused on those films that were in theaters a year or two before.  (The eight dollars a month a spend for streaming Netflix is a complete and infuriating waste,)  We brought back the Shoestring Film Society a few years ago, and for the next three years we had a respectable audience, even if the movie was silent or in black and white or in a foreign language.  But there was a problem: the audience was overwhelmingly middle-aged and older, people from the town, not from the university.  Very few students ever appeared to watch the films that we loved.  And so when the university was going to close the auditorium where we showed the movies for remodeling, the second iteration of Shoestring came to an end.  TCM, uneven as it is, is basically all we who don't live in big cities have left.

This is the 200th blog.  When I started, twenty-one months and 21,000 pageviews ago, I had no idea of how many entries there would be.  I started with a sense of urgency, and initial blogs were all about medical issues and procedures, death, and atheism.  As the days passed and the number of entries increased, the subject matter broadened: a lot about politics during the election, a number about poetry and its joys and consolations.  Although all of those subjects still appear, by now the blog is pretty diffuse.  Unless there's something specific, like tests at the cancer center, I write about whatever is on my mind at the time, no matter how trivial it may be.  Usually the night before I'm going to write, I begin to worry that I'll have nothing to say.  It's not exactly writer's block, since I know I won't be silent, but rather a shuffling through current events, possible poems, the state of my health in order to find something that will engage me and, I hope, the readers. 

Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me for longer than any of us expected.  With more good chemo and a little luck, I hope I'll be around for number 300. 

"There are no good options."  It's impossible to listen to a debate about what to do in Syria without eventually hearing those five words.  Whether from a liberal or a conservative, someone pro or con on using military force, politician or pundit--that sentence is bound to be uttered.  Some choices are clearly not options: any that would endanger American troops and/or suggest a prolonged involvement (e.g., boots on the ground, a no-fly zone).

For twenty years, discussions of military action were haunted by the 'quagmire' of Vietnam.  Now, though Vietnam still is there in the background, it's the ghost of Iraq that shadows the debate, particularly among those who, in light of the lies by Powell and Cheney, are unwilling to accept the evidence that the Assad regime was responsible for the use of chemical weapons.  This morning I heard a passionate argument that it was the Chinese and the Russians still in Syria who were responsible for the chemical attacks on behalf of the rebels.  Since Russia and China are supporting the Assad regime, this seemed a strange and unconvincing argument, but the speaker claimed to have evidence to support her point.  Amy Goodman, a progressive, argued that it doesn't make any difference because the U.S. used chemical weapons (napalm, agent orange) in Vietnam and supported Saddam Hussein, who was using gas against the Kurds, during the long Iran-Iraq war.  Therefore, it's hypocritical for us to draw a red line against chemical weapons, and we're prohibited from acting now.

There's also the complication arising from the question as to whether the death of 1,429 Syrians from chemical weapons is somehow more morally reprehensible than the deaths of 100,000 people and the displacement of more than a million more from conventional arms.

Also shadowing the debate is the question, echoing what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, of what is the end game.  What will be the effect of limited, targeted strikes?  On the positive side, there are the examples of Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where such strikes (78 days for Bosnia) were effective and the negative example of Rwanda, where our refusal to intervene is now regarded as a shameful episode in the Clinton presidency.  Two days of strikes might punish Assad (is that a legitimate goal?), but they probably aren't going to change things on the ground.

There are, of course, those like Sen. John ("I never saw a nail I didn't want to hammer") McCain who want more aggressive action.  He would bomb the airstrips in Syria in order to disrupt the daily supplies of arms to the government from Russia and China.  He would also arm the rebels, specifically the Free Syrian Army.  Convinced that we can separate the "good" rebels from the "bad" ones, he wants to send arms to the good rebels.  He's perfectly assured that, since he's been to Syria and talked to representatives of the FSA, the arms won't fall into the wrong hands.  His assurance that we can easily tell the difference and control the flow might be more convincing had the photo of him in Syria showed him standing with members of the FSA and a leader of one of most vicious of the rebel groups.  His office later issued a statement in his defense saying that he didn't know who the man was.  So much for easily distinguishing among the rebel groups.

A year and a half ago, even a year ago, it was common wisdom that Bashar Al-Assad's days were numbered; it was considered self-evident that his regime would collapse.  Now, Assad is stronger than before and the rebels more disorganized and divided.  So we bomb some strategic facilities for two days.  Assad is still in power.  Does our show of force intimidate him into being more flexible in the on-again, off-again diplomatic process?  Or does it just embolden him as one who has taken what the Americans have to offer and is as strong as ever?  Obama is gambling, we assume, that in addition to making a statement about the use of chemical weapons, strikes will facilitate further diplomatic efforts.

President Obama's surprise decision on Saturday to seek Congressional approval has some obvious advantages: it may consolidate support among those, usually progressives, who might tend to support the strikes but who were troubled by yet another presidential usurpation of Congressional power.  Moreover, it puts each member of Congress on the record.  And it may help convince a skeptical American public that air strikes are a good idea--or at least that their representatives have debated the issue and come to that conclusion.  The danger, of course, is that what happened to David Cameron in the U.K. might happen here.  What is Congress refuses to authorize the action?  President Obama has made clear that he doesn't think he needs Congressional authorization.  If they vote no, will he good ahead?  If so, his actions will garner even less support within America.  If not, all the leverage of our threats will be lost.

These are just a few of the thoughts buzzing around in my head the last few days.  I've not even mentioned the sectarian divisions within the country or the proxy position of Syria in conflicts between the West and the East or within the Muslim communities.  There's a good reason, many good reasons, why there are no good options in Syria.

The last month or so was particularly eventful: the trip to Iowa and our marriage, the party Saturday night at Raylene and Doug's, the million dollar scholarship donation in my name, and the reassuring tests at the KU Cancer Center.  Now it's time for a quieter fall routine.  Mohamed is in the second week of school, and by now assignments have begun.  Yesterday I downloaded page after page of  forms and instructions for the green card application.  The applications themselves are fairly straightforward, but each must be accompanied by a lot of supporting documentation. 

Meanwhile, after a rather mild summer, we're in the middle of a two-week heat wave with daily temperatures in the high 90s and no relief at night.  The Merry Maids are here now for their monthly visit; usually we'd sit on the back deck, but it's already too hot and muggy for that to be a pleasant choice, so reruns of "Frasier," all of which we've seen many times, are on in the background while I type and Mohamed is focused on his iPad.

The television runs from morning till late night; it's mainly white noise, though I think I know the words to almost every commercial  (a recent report found that 41% of TV time is devoted to advertisements), a doubly sad commentary.  News coverage is especially dispiriting, both for what's happening  and for its focus on trivia.  When Miley Cyrus's tongue gets more coverage than the situation in Syria, it's no wonder that viewers are turned off--and are turning off.  I could die a happy man if I never heard the word 'twerking' again. 

As you can tell, the quiet routine doesn't lend itself to writing an interesting blog.  Maybe the weekend will lead to some more entertaining thoughts for Monday's entry. 

Saturday night, our friends Raylene and Doug threw a party to celebrate our marriage.  There were 16 invitations to our friends in the Topeka/Lawrence area, and everyone who was invited showed up.  Raylene and Doug are natural hosts, who love to cook and entertain and make it all look effortless.  Everyone has or had some connection with Washburn--some people we see regularly, others whom we hadn't seen in a while.

The first part of the evening consisted of tables full of various hors d'oeuvres and wine.  My favorite was a three-layer dish with a chicken liver paté as the center, but there were plenty of choices, many of them exotic, for the group.  After a couple of hours of mingling, good conversation, and indulging, the next part of the evening shifted from wine to champagne toasts.  I got to hold the floor for a few minutes, thanks to Doug's gracious introduction, to describe both the $5.5M gift to Washburn and the scholarship in my name that some of it will fund and the three-day trip to Iowa for our wedding.  Although almost everyone knew some or all of the details of our marriage journey, it was fun to put it together into a brief, but consecutive narrative.  

Even though we're having our first real heat wave of the summer, some of us repaired to the back deck.  In the spirit of celebration, two of the guys smoked cigars, and a couple of non-smokers decided they'd indulge in just one cigarette.  It reminded me of the old days in British novels when the men retired to the drawing room for cigars after dinner, except that we weren't only men, we certainly weren't British, and the 'drawing room' was full of the summer sounds of locusts and cicadas. 

The evening concluded with coffee and dessert--a flourless chocolate cake and/or Raylene's famous Italian cream cake and/or Doug's homemade bourbon peach ice cream.  One, two, or three.  I don't think anyone went for just one of the choices.  By 11, the party guests dispersed.  Mohamed and I were full and very grateful for the truly lovely and convivial evening, though we felt a tad guilty when we surveyed the tables of food, the empty plates, the glasses and cups with the remnants of wine, champagne, and coffee.  A tad guilty--but not enough, I'm afraid, to stick around to help clean up.  A very good time was had by all, and we're extremely thankful to Raylene and Doug for such a lavish but relaxed and happy evening.

With this entry, I'll hit 20,000 pageviews.  As I said at 10,000, it's not exactly going viral, but still, it's a very gratifying number, especially since when I began, I expected the blog to be short lived.  A special shoutout to the regular followers in Russia and Ukraine.  I don't know any details about international readers except that the difference between those who have just stumbled across the blog and read a few entries and those who keep up regularly is clear.  Here's to the next 10,000 views.

It's all good.  Well, yesterday's trip to the cancer center didn't start all that well: it's exactly 75 minutes from our garage to the center, so we prepared to leave at 7 for our first 8:15 appointment, but our good intentions went for naught, and we were late leaving.  Then, at the first turning, the supposedly leak-proof coffee mug fell over, slopping hot coffee on my jeans and the car seat.  The drive to KC was uneventful until for some inexplicable reason we drove right past our exit from the interstate and ended up in the stockyards district.  Mohamed kept asking me where to turn--I who was completely lost--until he said, "Oh, if we turn here we'll end up at the McDonald's on Rainbow," which was exactly where we needed to be.  And once arrived, I got Marci, my least favorite phlebotomist.  She seemed to be on her game yesterday.  Sure, she dropped the needle on the floor, but she replaced it, got all the blood samples on the first try, and put in the right sized port.

It was all uphill from there.  I had taken some of the revised legal documents (durable power of attorney for health care decisions and living will) with me, and within five minutes they were scanned into the system.  (The day before we had taken care of the last matter at the bank, so now I have no excuse for not starting the green card application process.)  After the blood work, I went for the CT scans.  Usually, this takes about an hour, beginning with the drinking of two large glasses of what they keep assuring me is only water.  But I was the only person there for the scans, and the tech said to drink as much as I could, but not to force myself, and he'd be back in 15 or 20 minutes.  And 20 minutes later, I was lying on the table, jeans pulled down to my knees, listening to the familiar mechanical voice saying, "Breathe in.  Hold your breath.  Breathe."

We had a 45-minute wait before we saw Jennifer, the physician assistant whom we like a lot.  Certain that she wouldn't have the results yet, we debated whether to wait until she did have them or just discuss them on a later phone call.  But when we got in--and unlike Dr. Van, Jennifer is always punctual--the results of both the blood work and the scans were already there.  The very good news is that the kidney tumor has not grown at all.  It has changed its form a little, but it has exactly the same mass as before.  After worrying about the bulge on my left side for the last weeks, we both greatly relieved by the results.  Jennifer examined the bulge, which is clearly visible, but there's no real explanation for it.  It hasn't grown in the last month, so we'll just keep monitoring it, but it doesn't seem related to the cancer.

The drive home was uneventful.  As usual, I slept for a few minutes, and then once home, I crashed for about three hours, despite the fact that there's nothing particularly fatiguing about the tests.  Mohamed brought me sushi for dinner, and since I'd lost weight since the last exam, I felt justified in finishing off the sushi with some double chocolate gelato and Chips Ahoy--the wonderful capacity of the human mind for rationalization!

Last week, Mohamed and I were invited to what was billed as a small dinner at the home of the university president.  We envisioned about eight people, gathered around a dining room table, making awkward small talk.  We were rather dreading the occasion.  Instead, there were 30-35 guests for a dinner on the patio of the president's home.  Topeka has had a mild summer after two brutal ones, and the weather was perfect.  The occasion was to honor Lisa and Mark Heitz, Washburn graduates who have been generous donors to the university in the past--and to announce a further $5.5M gift, the largest single contribution in the university's history.

The Heitzes are remarkably modest, and instead of going for buildings with their names plastered on them, the money will go for scholarships--in law, athletics, and English, which was Lisa's major.  Although the exact distribution of the funds won't be announced till next month, it will certainly be the most significant contribution ever to the English department, and in a time of rising tuition costs and student loan debt which exceeds credit card debt, the scholarship fund will leave a legacy for generations of students.

Lisa always tells the same story about her first English class with me.  She had breezed through high school with solid A's and expected the same in college.  On her first essay, I gave her a C or a D.  She was so furious that she immediately dropped my class.  Later she dropped out of Washburn, got married, and had a baby.  When she decided to return to school, she remembered that in addition to the infuriating letter grade, I'd also written something like "You are capable of much better work than this" and decided that she should give my class a second chance.  This time she did the work she was capable of, and she took several more classes with me.  Who knew 40 years ago that giving someone a disappointing grade would contribute to such enormous consequences?

The dinner was also pleasant in that many people, learning of our wedding, congratulated Mohamed and me (and Lisa and Mark sent us a beautiful bouquet the next day).  This may be conservative Kansas, but at least in the gown part of the town/gown division, the reaction was definitely celebratory.

Normally, the next post would be on Thursday, but we leave early that morning for tests at KU Med--blood work and the newly-scheduled CT scans, followed by a consultation with at least the physician assistant.  I'll wait till Friday when I hope I'll know more to write the next entry.

Lost causes:

Between you and I, for Mohamed and I
very unique
graduated high school
not my forte (last word pronounced with two syllables, hence meaning 'loud')

No way:
Him (or her) and I

Personal peeve:
Educated people who think 'whom' and 'whomever' are always more elegant than 'who' and 'whoever' and thus are correct.  Recent example: John Oliver (who did a fine job hosting "The Daily Show" in Jon Stewart's absence) pulling out a note that read "To whomever finds this."  No.  You can see his logic: 'to' is a preposition and needs an object.  That would be fine if the sentence ended there, but it doesn't.  John, who I'm sure is reading this, the verb 'finds,' like all verbs in English, needs a subject, and the subject is 'whoever.'  The noun clause, "whoever finds this," is the object of the preposition 'to.' 

In yesterday's mail, we received a set of three CDs, the Sounds of the Prairie, as a wedding gift from our friend Margy, a dedicated lover and defender of the Flint Hills and the Kansas prairie.  I woke up early this morning, perhaps worrying about what I would say in today's blog.  It was still dark and cool, as it's uncharacteristically been for a Kansas August these last few days.  The birds are singing loudly and, I assume, happily, though Frost might have a different opinion about that.  But the first sound I heard at 5:20 a.m., even though we live miles from a railroad track, was the sound of a distant train.  I had already wondered whether there would be the sound of a train on Margy's CDs, as I had thought about Thoreau's chapter "Sounds" in Walden, which begins not with the expected sounds of nature, but also with the sound of a train.  For those of us who live in 2013, the hooting of a train is nostalgic, a reminder of a slower, gentler time.  But in the mid-nineteenth century, the attitude toward the train was much more ambivalent.  It represented the intrusion of technology into and onto the prairie.  The frontier was suddenly permeable.  Even Thoreau couldn't escape the sound of the train.

Emily Dickinson has a famous poem, #383, about the intrusive nature of trains:

I like to see it lap the Miles -

And lick the Valleys up - 

And stop to feed itself at Tanks - 

And then - prodigious step

 

Around a Pile of Mountains - 

And supercilious peer

In Shanties - by the sides of Roads - 

And then a Quarry pare

To fit it's sides

And crawl between

Complaining all the while

In horrid - hooting stanza - 

Then chase itself down Hill - 

And neigh like Boanerges - 

Then - prompter than a Star

Stop - docile and omnipotent

At it's own stable door - 

 

Like so many Dickinson poems, there is an abrupt change of tone in the work (here, marked by the word 'supercilious').  The first stanza seems approving; rather than the train as iron horse, it's almost like a domesticated cat, lapping and licking.  But soon the train is all-powerful, condescending, yet complaining.  Its sounds are 'horrid' and 'hooting,' as if in derision.  And the brilliant coupling of 'docile' and 'omnipotent' gives the poem its final kick.

 

I'll listen to Margy's CDs and appreciate the sounds of the prairie.  I'll listen, too, for what sounds of civilization intrude.

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Update on last blog: on Saturday, a couple of hours after I had posted my last entry, the oncologist e-mailed.  He's scheduling a CT scan for my next visit on the 22nd.  Dr. Van didn't seem particularly concerned about my worries, but thought a scan was worth the time just to be sure.  I feel relieved.

Yesterday we went to my lawyer, who had rewritten and updated several documents, including my trust agreement and durable power of attorney for health care decisions.  Until the changes, the decisions about end-of-life care were in the hands of my attorney.  I thought this was a good decision that spared Mohamed the anguish of having to make such painful choices.  But since my medical care is at KU Med in Kansas City, the chances that Mohamed will be there when decisions must be made are greater than that the lawyer will be there.  Moreover, as we prepare (slowly) to apply for a green card for Mohamed, all these documents can be added to the file to prove the "reality" of our marriage.  I also want to get photocopies of the original documents filed over two years ago at the Med Center, where they listed Mohamed as "life partner."  Although after six years of being a couple and after all that Mohamed has been through in also being a caregiver, I can't imagine how any official could question our marriage, I'll have to admit that I keep putting off accumulating and arranging all the material, downloading all the instructions for the four forms we have to fill out (the instructions are longer than the forms), downloading and completing the forms, soliciting attestations from friends, writing the checks, and sending everything to an anonymous bureaucrat in Chicago.  Fortunately, the interview part of the application takes place in Kansas City.  We'll do it, of course, but so far we've made only very small, reluctant, and tentative steps.

After the lawyer, we had a very late and heavy lunch, which soon gave the lie to my claims of G-I improvement.  I managed half a plate of sushi as a late dinner, but that was my limit, and I was up at 2 a.m. paying the consequences.  I did have a culinary pleasure a few days earlier.  We were at our go-to restaurant, where an unfamiliar server was very aggressive.  She told Mohamed that he should have a pork dish, and when he said he didn't eat pork, she suggested pork chops as an alternative.  He settled for chicken puttanesca and a salad.  I had fish which came with alligator croquettes.  And the alligator was delicious; it tasted rather like chicken livers.  Mohamed had a croquette and then worried that alligator wasn't halal.  A web search revealed that it isn't.  Nor is it kosher.  While he was looking at lists of what was halal and what was haram, I found a site with a list of about 1500 foods, divided into kosher and treyf.  What a lot of work it must be to worry about this!  And the reasons for distinctions were so complicated and often contradictory ("this food is technically forbidden, but since Jews have been eating it for many centuries, tradition has now deemed it kosher") that I had further occasion to mutter about the irrationality of religion.  At least, I ate my alligator guilt-free and enjoyed every bite.

I seem to have become asymmetrical.  Mohamed noticed it first: a slight bulge on the left side of my abdomen, the bottom of which is level with my navel.  It doesn't hurt when I press on it, but the flesh feels firmer when pushed than the other, flat side.  We're concerned that it is the kidney tumor (it's the left kidney that has the tumor) that has grown enough to be visible from outside.  I e-mailed the oncologist two days ago to ask whether that was a possibility and if so, whether I should have another CT scan when I come in on the 22nd of this month for what is just scheduled as blood work and a consultation with the physician assistant.  So far, he hasn't replied.  Usually e-mailing has been the most effective means of communication--no phone tag--and he's always replied the same day.  I'll try again today, this time including Jennifer, the physician assistant, in case Dr. Van is out of town.  (Still, he must check his e-mail.) 

I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping calm and carrying on over the last two years, but it's difficult not to be a little scared by this development.  I find myself looking in the mirror before I take a shower, pushing on the bulge and trying to reassure myself that this is just one of the consequences of the body's unpredictability as one grows older.  And during the day, I find my hand wandering under my t-shirt to see if I can still feel the bulge. 

The norm for stage 3 and stage 4 (mine) kidney cancer is not to remove the kidney, since by this time the cancer has metastasized to other parts of the body.  For me, the first signs of cancer were the erosion of bone in the scapula and the femur, and there are tumors in other bones, including the spine.  Perhaps three or four months ago, when the primary tumor in the kidney was growing, but slowly, we talked with a surgeon about removing it.  Taking out the entire kidney rather than just the tumor could be done laparoscopically (spell check doesn't like my spelling of this word, but it looks right to me); removing just the tumor would require full surgery.  I liked the surgeon who wasn't gung-ho to operate.  Removal wouldn't prolong my life; what it might do is make the symptoms less severe at the end.  And there could be additional complications because of my compromised immune system.  We decided against surgery.  Now, however, should my fears be grounded and should the tumor continue to grow, maybe it's time to re-think the decision if only for vanity's sake.  I don't want to look lopsided.  Vanity of vanities--all is vanity.  Sometimes the Bible got it right.