Happy (but prudent) Friday the Thirteenth, and Happy (but imprudent if you want) French Fries Day. Tomorrow is my birthday. I turn 43. I've decided that the decimal system for calculating age is too harsh, what with the counter's left digit increasing relentlessly every ten years. The hexadecimal system seems more humane, so I'm going with that. Dog years aren't very scientific (and who would want to celebrate his 9 and 4/7th birthday?). And if I used the binary system, the screen would be filled with 0's and 1's, so 43 it is.
My parents must have been prescient in knowing they'd have a francophilic son. I always loved being in France on le quatorze juillet. There are parades, flyovers, and a gigantic fireworks displays at the Eiffel Tower. The French don't call the 14th of July Bastille Day. A couple of years ago when I was in Paris for the summer, I was watching the French version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." One of the questions was "What do Americans call the 14th of July?" The four choices were Liberty Day, Revolution Day, Independence Day, and Bastille Day. The contestant ruled out Independence Day, because that was the American holiday, and Bastille Day, because that didn't make any sense and then unwisely chose between Liberty Day and Revolution Day losing his chance at being a millionaire.
This year my birthday will be spent in Topeka, but tonight TJ and John will come from Kansas City for dinner at our French restaurant (I have to keep up the French connection). TJ visited me every single day that I was at KU Med after the surgery on my femur. Tomorrow afternoon, my Bulgarian friends Ivan and Stefan will come (Ivan is now an American citizen), and then later Scott and his wife Kelly (a pediatrician at KU Med) will come in for dinner. Le tout Kansas City vient chez nous. What great friends I have--here, in KC, around the US, and in France. I'm very grateful to all of them for all that they do for me, keeping my spirits up with bright, lively, and often funny conversations.
The fourteenth of July is always a little bittersweet, since my father died on that date exactly thirty years ago tomorrow. After a three-year battle with lymphoma, he died in the same hospital in Ames, Iowa, where I had been born 37 (decimal) years earlier. The experience at the hospital wasn't a good one; the general atmosphere was one of indifference. It was not only discouraging, but the experience scared my mother. She had been in Story City's small hospital, where everyone knew and cared about each other, and she thought that the bigger the city, the less caring the hospital would be. When three years later, she had moved to Topeka and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she was frightened of what she assumed would be an even more impersonal attitude here. Instead, her few days in the Topeka hospital before her death (three weeks after the diagnosis) were as comfortable as possible. A couple of the nurses had gone to nursing school at Washburn and knew me, and they paid her extra attention. My experience at KU Med, where I had my surgery and where I now go for treatments and consultations, has also been as pleasant and reassuring as possible. Of course having the best, most competent doctors is the primary criterion for treatment, but it's impossible to underestimate the psychogical component of feeling that the doctors and nurses and other staff actually care. And for that atmosphere I'm also very grateful.
I don't remember last year's birthday very well. The biggest gifts were Mohamed's presence in my life and the fact that after 46 days in the incredibly uncomfortable abduction brace, it had finally come off. I remember wondering whether I'd be around this year (the prognosis wasn't encouraging), but here I am, looking forward (with a little help from my friends) to turning 44 a year from now.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
For twenty-five years, one of my closest friends in Topeka was Mona, a woman twenty-five years older than I was. I can date the friendship exactly: from 1973 to 1998, when we stopped speaking. Mona was born in Cairo to an Egyptian father and a French mother and educated in France. Her father was the Minister of Irrigation for King Farouk, and her family was the richest I had ever known; they lived all over the world. One of her sisters had married a Russian, who owned the largest travel agency in Colombia and lived half the year in Paris. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his import-export business in France. For the six months that Alec lived in Paris, where he had a mistress, whom everyone in the family knew about and whom I met once, his wife lived in Colombia; six months later they'd change locations, his wife moving to Paris while Alec lived in Colombia. For Mona, this relationship was proof of French sophistication and a rebuke to what she saw as American Puritanism. Alec and his wife had separate apartments in Paris's rich 16th arrondissement. Alec's was a penthouse with suede wallpaper; his wife's wallpaper was silk. One summer when I had a sabbatical to study in Paris, Alec offered me free use of the separate apartment in his building that he had for his bonne de chambre. The maid's apartment had a piano. Here's another example of what seemed to me their wealth and sophistication: once when I went to Mona's, there was a painting lying on her kitchen table among a litter of papers. "What does it look like to you?" asked Mona. I said that it looked like a Daumier (the operative word for me was 'like'). "It is," said Mona. "My brother stopped at our vault in Switzerland and brought it to me."
Her family thought it was very strange that Mona had chosen to live in Topeka, but Mona's greatest love in life were wolves and coyotes, and for the entire time that Mona and I were friends, Mona had three coyotes, five dogs, a cat, and a cage of doves. I always pronounce 'coyote' as a two-syllable word since that how I heard it for all those years. The coyotes had individual runs, and every morning until she was in her 90s, Mona entered the runs to clean them. When Mona would go to France, I would housesit. I'd take care of the menagerie, hating cleaning the doves' cage the most. I didn't go into the coyotes' runs, though over the years, a couple of them would let me pet them through the wire. I had to be alert because they'd often turn and try to bite my hand. Mona would buy 50# buckets of chicken necks for her coyotes and for the wild ones that came into the ravine behind her house. She skinned the necks that she was giving to her own coyotes and put the others in baggies to be set out at night for the wild coyotes. She insisted that I take the chicken for the wild coyotes out after dark. I did what I was told, but always wondered whether the coyotes might not wait for their food till I was safely back in the house.
My friends all worried about my stays with the coyotes, but the only problem I ever had was with one of her dogs, Numa, a Rottweiler. It was totally my fault. As I let the five dogs out, Numa got into a fight with a smaller dog, and although I know better, I tried to separate them. Numa turned on me, and we wrestled, eye-to-eye over my arm, which Numa succeeded rather well in shredding. I finally got back in the house (not before Numa had added insult to injury by biting my derriere). I didn't trust my driving abilities, so called a friend to take me to the hospital. When we got back to the house, I realized I didn't have a key to the front door, so the only entry was to climb over the fence into the backyard where Numa was waiting. Over the fence I went. Numa, who was normally the sweetest of dogs, ran happily over and sniffed the bandage, welcoming me home.
No one could have been more charming or generous than Mona--when she wanted to be. I ate at her house at least once a week for all those years, and when my parents came to town, she always entertained them. Dinners were in the French style with aperitifs and appetizers, three courses with wine, and afterwards always the question, "Un peu de Drambuie?" My parents almost never drank, so by the end of the meal my mother especially was giddy and giggly. After my father died and my mother moved to Topeka, Mona was incredibly gracious and caring to her. When Mona was good, she was very very good, but when she was mean...
Over the years Mona quarreled with almost everyone. Her meanness was predictable and unrelenting. When she broke with me, whom she called her fils spirituel, I wasn't surprised, since she had also broken with her real son. Mona had a French friend here named Mimi. Whenever Mimi did anything that Mona disapproved of, she would say in front of Mimi, "Poor Mimi. She's just a poor, ignorant French woman," and then she'd add, "I mean 'ignorant' in the French sense so it's not an insult." Sorry, Mona, 'ignorant' is an insult in English and French. Mona had dragged her second husband, Rene, who was a doctor, to Topeka. When I first met Mona, Rene was in the last stages of cancer. The first time I met him, they had come to dinner. By this time, they detested each other. As we ate, Mona suddenly said, "Isn't Rene charming? It's such a pity that he will be dead in a few months." In the late 80s, I was taking another sabbatical in Paris, and at the last minute I decided to take a friend, Ken, who had AIDS, with me. Mona was unstinting in her criticism of my decision. Her last words to me before I left were, "I hope you find someone as stupid as you are to take care of you when you're dying."
And that comment, which came back to me a few days ago, leads me to my point (and I do have one). I was writing to a friend, listing the reasons that I shouldn't complain (though complaining was what I was doing) when I realized that I had omitted the most important reason of all: that (bracketing Mona's word 'stupid') I'm not going through this alone and that I don't take sufficient time to acknowledge how difficult, infinitely more so, all this would be if it weren't for Mohamed. So let me say--and not in a shy way--that we're doing this our way and that plural pronoun has made and is making all the difference.
Her family thought it was very strange that Mona had chosen to live in Topeka, but Mona's greatest love in life were wolves and coyotes, and for the entire time that Mona and I were friends, Mona had three coyotes, five dogs, a cat, and a cage of doves. I always pronounce 'coyote' as a two-syllable word since that how I heard it for all those years. The coyotes had individual runs, and every morning until she was in her 90s, Mona entered the runs to clean them. When Mona would go to France, I would housesit. I'd take care of the menagerie, hating cleaning the doves' cage the most. I didn't go into the coyotes' runs, though over the years, a couple of them would let me pet them through the wire. I had to be alert because they'd often turn and try to bite my hand. Mona would buy 50# buckets of chicken necks for her coyotes and for the wild ones that came into the ravine behind her house. She skinned the necks that she was giving to her own coyotes and put the others in baggies to be set out at night for the wild coyotes. She insisted that I take the chicken for the wild coyotes out after dark. I did what I was told, but always wondered whether the coyotes might not wait for their food till I was safely back in the house.
My friends all worried about my stays with the coyotes, but the only problem I ever had was with one of her dogs, Numa, a Rottweiler. It was totally my fault. As I let the five dogs out, Numa got into a fight with a smaller dog, and although I know better, I tried to separate them. Numa turned on me, and we wrestled, eye-to-eye over my arm, which Numa succeeded rather well in shredding. I finally got back in the house (not before Numa had added insult to injury by biting my derriere). I didn't trust my driving abilities, so called a friend to take me to the hospital. When we got back to the house, I realized I didn't have a key to the front door, so the only entry was to climb over the fence into the backyard where Numa was waiting. Over the fence I went. Numa, who was normally the sweetest of dogs, ran happily over and sniffed the bandage, welcoming me home.
No one could have been more charming or generous than Mona--when she wanted to be. I ate at her house at least once a week for all those years, and when my parents came to town, she always entertained them. Dinners were in the French style with aperitifs and appetizers, three courses with wine, and afterwards always the question, "Un peu de Drambuie?" My parents almost never drank, so by the end of the meal my mother especially was giddy and giggly. After my father died and my mother moved to Topeka, Mona was incredibly gracious and caring to her. When Mona was good, she was very very good, but when she was mean...
Over the years Mona quarreled with almost everyone. Her meanness was predictable and unrelenting. When she broke with me, whom she called her fils spirituel, I wasn't surprised, since she had also broken with her real son. Mona had a French friend here named Mimi. Whenever Mimi did anything that Mona disapproved of, she would say in front of Mimi, "Poor Mimi. She's just a poor, ignorant French woman," and then she'd add, "I mean 'ignorant' in the French sense so it's not an insult." Sorry, Mona, 'ignorant' is an insult in English and French. Mona had dragged her second husband, Rene, who was a doctor, to Topeka. When I first met Mona, Rene was in the last stages of cancer. The first time I met him, they had come to dinner. By this time, they detested each other. As we ate, Mona suddenly said, "Isn't Rene charming? It's such a pity that he will be dead in a few months." In the late 80s, I was taking another sabbatical in Paris, and at the last minute I decided to take a friend, Ken, who had AIDS, with me. Mona was unstinting in her criticism of my decision. Her last words to me before I left were, "I hope you find someone as stupid as you are to take care of you when you're dying."
And that comment, which came back to me a few days ago, leads me to my point (and I do have one). I was writing to a friend, listing the reasons that I shouldn't complain (though complaining was what I was doing) when I realized that I had omitted the most important reason of all: that (bracketing Mona's word 'stupid') I'm not going through this alone and that I don't take sufficient time to acknowledge how difficult, infinitely more so, all this would be if it weren't for Mohamed. So let me say--and not in a shy way--that we're doing this our way and that plural pronoun has made and is making all the difference.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Just a few random thoughts on this Saturday morning: The last 24 hours haven't been particularly good ones, although I slept late this morning, partly because I was up a couple of times in the night to visit the john (equals bathroom, not client), and now that I'm up, my stomach is cramping, so I doubt if this is going to be a very cohesive series of thoughts.
Since my Fourth of July post began with a cynical poem, I want to mention one change that makes me optimistic about our country. When I grew up in the 50s, there were almost no Blacks on TV (except Amos and Andy and Rochester on the "Jack Benny Show"). There were no Blacks in magazine advertisements except in magazines like "Jet" or "Ebony." When African-Americans first started appearing in ads, I remember hearing lots of comments about "token" appearances. Now, when I watch TV or look at ads, what I see reflects what America really looks like. News shows are hosted by Blacks, and panels are racially diverse. When I watch "Dancing with the Stars" (you have to take your optimism where you can get it), the couples are often mixed and scantily clad; they are doing overtly sexual dances; and no one thinks anything of it. That's a huge change in the American psyche in the last 60 years. I've also noticed that people of color also now include Asians, Arabs, and other "browns."
A couple of qualifications seem in order. One is that the LGBTQ community, in advertisements at least, seems still stuck in an earlier era. When I get the monthly magazine from the Human Rights Commission, lots of major companies have advertisements with gay or lesbian couples, but that hasn't moved into mainstream advertising. There are, of course, more gay characters on TV dramas and sitcoms, but in other areas, like news, gays remain relatively invisible (Ellen is the most obvious exception), even after they come out. NBC's legal correspondent, Pete Williams, was outed years ago, but I've never heard him used as a commentator on the law and gays. It will be (moderately) interesting to see what path Anderson Cooper takes.
In the African-American community, the ideas of W.E.B. DuBois have been pitted against those of Booker T. Washington for over 100 years. Washington, always more popular among whites (those of us who grew up in the era of legally segregated schools remember when a high school named Washington was named after Booker, not George, and was always a Black school; none was named DuBois) argued for vocational education for all and scoffed at Black higher education. DuBois, the Harvard educated intellectual, argued for the a more complete education, especially for what he called the Talented Tenth. Among scholars, DuBois always won the debate. Now it seems that the talented tenth are doing well and are rather seamlessly integrated into mainstream society (though the arrest at his home of Henry Gates might call that into question). But what of the other 90%? They seem trapped in a cycle of poverty, de facto segreation, and a draconian legal system. And as Asian and Hispanic immigrants increase in numbers, will 90% of African-Americans become even more invisible?
Political outrage of the week: I had thought that the Saxby Chambliss (what a name!) race against war-hero Max Cleland would be the most disgusting of my lifetime. But now we have Joe "You Lie" Walsh, who never served in the military, attacking Colonel and double-amputee Tammy Duckworth. As Joe Welch once said to Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" And the answer is clearly no.
SCOTUS caution of the week: Although what Chief Justice Roberts did validated the Affordable Care Act, a great deal of his opinion, especially all the time he spent writing about how the ACA was not constitutional under the Commerce clause, wasn't encouraging. And in its next session, the Court will rule on affirmative action in university admissions and probably on whether the cleverly named Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional. I don't think we should be too hasty in buying one of the t-shirts with his picture and the word "Hero."
Anti-climactic private irritation of the week: Two TV commercials that grate on my nerves:
"There's nothing worse than going to the post office and having to stand in line" (stamps.com). Even allowing for hyperbole, that seems overkill.
"Sure, I like reading and all, but who has enough time?" (audible.com) Maybe the guy should stick with the "all" part.
Since my Fourth of July post began with a cynical poem, I want to mention one change that makes me optimistic about our country. When I grew up in the 50s, there were almost no Blacks on TV (except Amos and Andy and Rochester on the "Jack Benny Show"). There were no Blacks in magazine advertisements except in magazines like "Jet" or "Ebony." When African-Americans first started appearing in ads, I remember hearing lots of comments about "token" appearances. Now, when I watch TV or look at ads, what I see reflects what America really looks like. News shows are hosted by Blacks, and panels are racially diverse. When I watch "Dancing with the Stars" (you have to take your optimism where you can get it), the couples are often mixed and scantily clad; they are doing overtly sexual dances; and no one thinks anything of it. That's a huge change in the American psyche in the last 60 years. I've also noticed that people of color also now include Asians, Arabs, and other "browns."
A couple of qualifications seem in order. One is that the LGBTQ community, in advertisements at least, seems still stuck in an earlier era. When I get the monthly magazine from the Human Rights Commission, lots of major companies have advertisements with gay or lesbian couples, but that hasn't moved into mainstream advertising. There are, of course, more gay characters on TV dramas and sitcoms, but in other areas, like news, gays remain relatively invisible (Ellen is the most obvious exception), even after they come out. NBC's legal correspondent, Pete Williams, was outed years ago, but I've never heard him used as a commentator on the law and gays. It will be (moderately) interesting to see what path Anderson Cooper takes.
In the African-American community, the ideas of W.E.B. DuBois have been pitted against those of Booker T. Washington for over 100 years. Washington, always more popular among whites (those of us who grew up in the era of legally segregated schools remember when a high school named Washington was named after Booker, not George, and was always a Black school; none was named DuBois) argued for vocational education for all and scoffed at Black higher education. DuBois, the Harvard educated intellectual, argued for the a more complete education, especially for what he called the Talented Tenth. Among scholars, DuBois always won the debate. Now it seems that the talented tenth are doing well and are rather seamlessly integrated into mainstream society (though the arrest at his home of Henry Gates might call that into question). But what of the other 90%? They seem trapped in a cycle of poverty, de facto segreation, and a draconian legal system. And as Asian and Hispanic immigrants increase in numbers, will 90% of African-Americans become even more invisible?
Political outrage of the week: I had thought that the Saxby Chambliss (what a name!) race against war-hero Max Cleland would be the most disgusting of my lifetime. But now we have Joe "You Lie" Walsh, who never served in the military, attacking Colonel and double-amputee Tammy Duckworth. As Joe Welch once said to Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" And the answer is clearly no.
SCOTUS caution of the week: Although what Chief Justice Roberts did validated the Affordable Care Act, a great deal of his opinion, especially all the time he spent writing about how the ACA was not constitutional under the Commerce clause, wasn't encouraging. And in its next session, the Court will rule on affirmative action in university admissions and probably on whether the cleverly named Defense of Marriage Act is constitutional. I don't think we should be too hasty in buying one of the t-shirts with his picture and the word "Hero."
Anti-climactic private irritation of the week: Two TV commercials that grate on my nerves:
"There's nothing worse than going to the post office and having to stand in line" (stamps.com). Even allowing for hyperbole, that seems overkill.
"Sure, I like reading and all, but who has enough time?" (audible.com) Maybe the guy should stick with the "all" part.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
A Fourth of July sonnet by e. e. cummings, one which is particularly appropriate given the rhetoric of the current campaign season:
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beauti-
ful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they dd not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.
I suppose the cliches are more nuanced (i.e., tweaked to appeal to whatever focus group is being addressed) now, but the nearly ninety year old poem is unfortunately still relevant.
Last year on the Fourth, I was counting down the 46 days till the removal of the confining abduction brace. Believe me: I counted every day. And when I was just a week or so from the end, the surgeon called and postponed our appointment for five or six days. It was discouraging to have to reset the counter backward, but shortly after the Fourth I finally got my own small independence day when the brace came off, and I could actually, among other things, take a shower.
We took Kimber to the vet on Monday. The growth turned out to be simply a fatty tumor, which the vet removed. He stitched Kimber up, and she was home by 5--without even a cone on her head. She was very groggy the first night, especially after I gave her a doggy tranquilizer because, like so many animals, she's frightened by the fireworks. She looked (and probably would have sounded) like Deputy Dawg. Yesterday she was much livelier, though once she took the tranquilizer, she was, well, tranquil for the rest of the evening. This morning she seemed back to old self; she ran for the first time, chasing a rabbit (which escaped under the fence). Today will be one more day of fireworks, so one more day when she gets a pill or two to keep her calm.
My own health remains stable. I still crash twice a day, but that's predictable and manageable. My G-I problems seem to have shifted, however. Now, by late afternoon or early evening, I have terrible cramps, and they make the thought of dinner completely unattractive. Mohamed often runs out to bring me sushi, the one dinner that is light enough, that seems healthful (that English teacher pickiness again), and that doesn't seem to upset my stomach. Man cannot live by sushi alone, but I'm making an effort, it seems. The last week I've been taking a Percocet in the afternoon, and that helps. For the last few months I've taken a Percocet every morning, but rarely another one. I don't know why I've resisted. As an old hippie, I liked to brag that I had never met a drug I didn't like, and you'd think that I might have realized that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the pill and the energy and lack of pain that mark my mornings and make them the best times of the day (the pill as well as having slept through the night). It's true that Percocet is addictive, but, as the physician assistant said none-too-tactfully, "We don't have to worry about that in your case." I see the oncologist for the full battery of tests next at the end of the month. My oncologist, btw, looks just like the doctor in the Nexium commercial (tagline: "you wouldn't want your physician trying to do your job") who is inexpertly using a jackhammer. I have a feeling Dr. Van wouldn't be great with a jackhammer either.
I have been saddened this week, however, by the news that someone who was like family--no, who was family (sometimes the distinction between simile and metaphor does make a difference)--during the entire decade of the 70s but whom, as circumstances changed, I haven't seen since 1980, has been diagnosed with cancer of the brain--inoperable, untreatable, and advanced. I don't have the imagination to visualize Billie, her husband, and their three kids as anything other than the way I last saw them--a young, lively, smart, and funny family even though I know that the "kids" are now in their 40s (at least) with children of their own. A few days ago, Billie began taking a shower, thinking possibly about the family vacation that was about to start, and then collapsed. A few days and many tests later, she got the diagnosis and is now in hospice. She had been kept up-to-date about my condition, and then--how quickly the wheel turns--she is the one who is in our thoughts. "Choose life" goes the proverb, and indeed we must as long as we have the independence, physical and mental, to profit from it. As Eliot (T. S.) reminds us, "We who were living are all dying / With a little patience." So it becomes even more imperative to choose life while we can and, in my favorite quote, this from another Eliot (George), " have patience with the makeshift of human understanding" as we do so.
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beauti-
ful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they dd not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.
I suppose the cliches are more nuanced (i.e., tweaked to appeal to whatever focus group is being addressed) now, but the nearly ninety year old poem is unfortunately still relevant.
Last year on the Fourth, I was counting down the 46 days till the removal of the confining abduction brace. Believe me: I counted every day. And when I was just a week or so from the end, the surgeon called and postponed our appointment for five or six days. It was discouraging to have to reset the counter backward, but shortly after the Fourth I finally got my own small independence day when the brace came off, and I could actually, among other things, take a shower.
We took Kimber to the vet on Monday. The growth turned out to be simply a fatty tumor, which the vet removed. He stitched Kimber up, and she was home by 5--without even a cone on her head. She was very groggy the first night, especially after I gave her a doggy tranquilizer because, like so many animals, she's frightened by the fireworks. She looked (and probably would have sounded) like Deputy Dawg. Yesterday she was much livelier, though once she took the tranquilizer, she was, well, tranquil for the rest of the evening. This morning she seemed back to old self; she ran for the first time, chasing a rabbit (which escaped under the fence). Today will be one more day of fireworks, so one more day when she gets a pill or two to keep her calm.
My own health remains stable. I still crash twice a day, but that's predictable and manageable. My G-I problems seem to have shifted, however. Now, by late afternoon or early evening, I have terrible cramps, and they make the thought of dinner completely unattractive. Mohamed often runs out to bring me sushi, the one dinner that is light enough, that seems healthful (that English teacher pickiness again), and that doesn't seem to upset my stomach. Man cannot live by sushi alone, but I'm making an effort, it seems. The last week I've been taking a Percocet in the afternoon, and that helps. For the last few months I've taken a Percocet every morning, but rarely another one. I don't know why I've resisted. As an old hippie, I liked to brag that I had never met a drug I didn't like, and you'd think that I might have realized that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the pill and the energy and lack of pain that mark my mornings and make them the best times of the day (the pill as well as having slept through the night). It's true that Percocet is addictive, but, as the physician assistant said none-too-tactfully, "We don't have to worry about that in your case." I see the oncologist for the full battery of tests next at the end of the month. My oncologist, btw, looks just like the doctor in the Nexium commercial (tagline: "you wouldn't want your physician trying to do your job") who is inexpertly using a jackhammer. I have a feeling Dr. Van wouldn't be great with a jackhammer either.
I have been saddened this week, however, by the news that someone who was like family--no, who was family (sometimes the distinction between simile and metaphor does make a difference)--during the entire decade of the 70s but whom, as circumstances changed, I haven't seen since 1980, has been diagnosed with cancer of the brain--inoperable, untreatable, and advanced. I don't have the imagination to visualize Billie, her husband, and their three kids as anything other than the way I last saw them--a young, lively, smart, and funny family even though I know that the "kids" are now in their 40s (at least) with children of their own. A few days ago, Billie began taking a shower, thinking possibly about the family vacation that was about to start, and then collapsed. A few days and many tests later, she got the diagnosis and is now in hospice. She had been kept up-to-date about my condition, and then--how quickly the wheel turns--she is the one who is in our thoughts. "Choose life" goes the proverb, and indeed we must as long as we have the independence, physical and mental, to profit from it. As Eliot (T. S.) reminds us, "We who were living are all dying / With a little patience." So it becomes even more imperative to choose life while we can and, in my favorite quote, this from another Eliot (George), " have patience with the makeshift of human understanding" as we do so.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
After all my personal history, what is an atheist's perspective on living with cancer? It's clean and uncomplicated. There's no asking why me? since there's no one to ask and there are no final causes. There's no thinking about an afterlife--either with smug confidence or with trepidation. The end is the end. There's no fruitless prayer, since again, there's no one to pray to and no assumption that "He" would be more interested in my fate than that of the other seven billion people on this earth. Each of us who are atheists may react to the facts differently, but for us religion and god are empty categories that have nothing to do with what we're facing.
Some have asked, if what I just wrote is the case, why bother with spending so much time delineating an atheist's perspective. In part, my choosing to do so at the moment I subtitled the blog was a reaction to other people's responses. If friends or acquaintances say that they're praying for me, that's fine; their intentions are kind, and I accept them as such. But when someone said to me that I should put myself in the hands of the Great Physician because He's the only one who could heal me, I have to bite my tongue not to suggest that if He is all-powerful (or at least all-knowing), He could've saved Himself some work by not causing (or in a weaker form allowing) cancer in the first place. Or when, as I wrote before, while watching a black, liberal woman with whom I had agreed completely on the points she was making and thinking it would be fun to have a drink with her, she responded to the death of Christopher Hitchens with a rant about atheists' shoving their ideas in the faces of Christians and suggesting that they (we) should just keep quiet, I know that I can't be silent. I can't imagine that there has ever been such a dominant majority as American Christians who whine so frequently and loudly about their supposed persecution.
And if abstract arguments about the existence of god don't interest me, the power of organized religion in America is also something I can't keep quiet about. In the one year of tax returns that Mitt Romney did release, he claimed an income of $42M, of which he tithed $4.2M to the LDS. If he wants to tithe, that's his business, but that he gets to deduct those millions as charitable contributions affects me. It's not charity to send mssionaries around the world to convert others or to send millions to California in support of Proposition 8. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops is unceasing in its reactionary politics. And, of course, the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian sects are relentless in their conservative politics and their (tax-exempt) attacks on what's left of American progressive ideas.
All of that is well known, and examples aren't really necessary, but here's one that I hadn't known about. For several years now, hundreds of fundamentalist churches drop any pretense of avoiding political discourse (not that there was much to begin with) and have something they call "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." This year, it's October 7, a month before the election. On this day, they explicitly and provocatively preach politics, and then in a further act of provocation they send tapes of their sermons to the IRS, which from lack of funds, manpower, and perhaps will does nothing about it--no investigation of the blatant violations of the churches' flouting already weak restraints. 'Weak' here equals non-existent. So I'll keep my atheist ideas to myself when religious people do the same--and it'll be a cold day in hell, so to speak, when that happens.
On a different note, Kimber, our 75# German shepherd mix, has a tumor on her underside. We take her to the vet tomorrow to have it removed and biopsied. The vet said it's probably benign, but "nothing to mess with" as it could be mammary cancer. We're hoping of course for good results. In the meantime, I assume she'll have to wear a cone for several days. Since she's not the world's most graceful dog in the first place and is so scared of fireworks that she's constantly trying to squeeze into small, safe spaces these days, the next week is going to be hard for her.
Some have asked, if what I just wrote is the case, why bother with spending so much time delineating an atheist's perspective. In part, my choosing to do so at the moment I subtitled the blog was a reaction to other people's responses. If friends or acquaintances say that they're praying for me, that's fine; their intentions are kind, and I accept them as such. But when someone said to me that I should put myself in the hands of the Great Physician because He's the only one who could heal me, I have to bite my tongue not to suggest that if He is all-powerful (or at least all-knowing), He could've saved Himself some work by not causing (or in a weaker form allowing) cancer in the first place. Or when, as I wrote before, while watching a black, liberal woman with whom I had agreed completely on the points she was making and thinking it would be fun to have a drink with her, she responded to the death of Christopher Hitchens with a rant about atheists' shoving their ideas in the faces of Christians and suggesting that they (we) should just keep quiet, I know that I can't be silent. I can't imagine that there has ever been such a dominant majority as American Christians who whine so frequently and loudly about their supposed persecution.
And if abstract arguments about the existence of god don't interest me, the power of organized religion in America is also something I can't keep quiet about. In the one year of tax returns that Mitt Romney did release, he claimed an income of $42M, of which he tithed $4.2M to the LDS. If he wants to tithe, that's his business, but that he gets to deduct those millions as charitable contributions affects me. It's not charity to send mssionaries around the world to convert others or to send millions to California in support of Proposition 8. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops is unceasing in its reactionary politics. And, of course, the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian sects are relentless in their conservative politics and their (tax-exempt) attacks on what's left of American progressive ideas.
All of that is well known, and examples aren't really necessary, but here's one that I hadn't known about. For several years now, hundreds of fundamentalist churches drop any pretense of avoiding political discourse (not that there was much to begin with) and have something they call "Pulpit Freedom Sunday." This year, it's October 7, a month before the election. On this day, they explicitly and provocatively preach politics, and then in a further act of provocation they send tapes of their sermons to the IRS, which from lack of funds, manpower, and perhaps will does nothing about it--no investigation of the blatant violations of the churches' flouting already weak restraints. 'Weak' here equals non-existent. So I'll keep my atheist ideas to myself when religious people do the same--and it'll be a cold day in hell, so to speak, when that happens.
On a different note, Kimber, our 75# German shepherd mix, has a tumor on her underside. We take her to the vet tomorrow to have it removed and biopsied. The vet said it's probably benign, but "nothing to mess with" as it could be mammary cancer. We're hoping of course for good results. In the meantime, I assume she'll have to wear a cone for several days. Since she's not the world's most graceful dog in the first place and is so scared of fireworks that she's constantly trying to squeeze into small, safe spaces these days, the next week is going to be hard for her.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
So that was my religious journey, such as it was. By 1970, it was over (although I have to admit to a year of backsliding into belief in the late 70s). Looking back, I'm struck by how short the period was: from the time I told the minister I couldn't sign the pledge in the workbook to my skipping from one religion to another to abandoning religion altogether; it comprised just a few years. For over forty years now, I've been a contented atheist. As I said last time, no god, no religion, no heaven, no hell, no soul, no spirit. It drives me crazy when believers say, "Well, you may not be religious, but I can tell you're a deeply spiritual person." Nope. Not a spiritual bone in my body. I know many atheists who are interested in debating and defending our position. Just as I was surprised by the existence of an Atheist of the Year award, I was pleasantly surprised and heartened to discover that the park closest to my house is sponsored by the Atheist Community of Topeka. But except when provoked or when talking about organized religion and its effects, I am content to leave philosophical debates about god's existence to others. I don't have an open mind on the subject, and I assume others don't either. Occasionally, though, the subject would intersect with what I was teaching (you can't understand American literature, said Robert Frost, hardly an enthusiast for religion, without knowing the Bible), so here are some random examples of what everyone now calls "teachable moments" (a phrase that seems awkward and inexact to me):
When I first started teaching freshman comp. in 1966, there was an essay in the text by the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. I loved teaching the essay to my generally religious Oklahoma students. Tillich defines God (the capital letter is just for convention) as one's "ultimate concern." He argues, unconvincingly, I think, that since everyone has an ultimate concern, everyone has a god. More effectively, since God is infinite, man is finite, and the distance between the infinite and the finite is itself infinite, man must find ways of approaching an otherwise inscrutable God. This he does through myth and symbols. The Bible must be read in this light: a way of approaching the infinite; thus, anyone who reads the Bible literally is committing idolatry. I'm not sure the students were convinced, but I took a perverse pleasure in watching their reactions.
There was also an essay by Martin Buber, who defined God as the Eternal Thou. Buber talks about the replacement of Thou with It, of I-Thou relationships with I-It ones, and he describes this as the "eclipse of God," a phrase also used by Emily Dickinson. For Buber, the fault lies with man. For Dickinson, it is God who "hid his rare life from our gross eyes" in what she describes as a "fond Ambush." This is a poem that begins, "I know that He exists." What could be more definitive than that? And she ends her affirmation with a period--a rare mark of punctuation in Dickinson's poetry. The short poem darkens quickly, as the oxymoron "fond Ambush" would suggest. We've all seen enough bad Westerns to know that it isn't the good guys who lie in ambush. And by the end, if there is a god, perhaps it's better that he has been eclipsed.
Dickinson has much in common with Frost, whose sonnet "Design" (and what could be more traditional and designed than a sonnet?) takes the most common argument for the existence of God (the argument from design) and turns it on its head. For twelve lines, Frost describes a scene of morning predation (a spider eating on a moth while perched on the ironically named flower a heal-all), and then in the thirteenth line suggests that if this synecdochal scene is designed, it's "a design of darkness to appall." And then Frost concludes, as if a merest afterthought, "if design governs in a thing so small." The thought that there is no designer, so horrifying to the religious, seems less terrifying than the notion that the world is indeed designed.
To give the other side its due, Flannery O'Connor, devoutly Catholic herself, turns an atheist's most common argument against the existence of God (if there is an all-knowing, powerful, benevolent, etc., god, why is there evil in the world) and uses it for her own religious purposes in her story "Good Country People." The main character of the story, Hulga (who has changed her name from Joy) is a nihilist with a prosthetic leg. A mysterious stranger, suggestively named Manley Pointer, arrives, supposedly selling Bibles but with other conquests in mind. By the end of the story, he is revealed as pure evil, and Hulga's nihilism leaves her literally and figuratively without a leg to stand on. For O'Connor, evil is indeed real, and if you believe in nothing, you're as helpless as Hulga to fight it.
And while I'm giving the gods their due, it was always fun to teach St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. Anselm first stipulates a definition of God: that of which nothing greater can be conceived. And then we list his attributes: he's good. How good? He must be all-good because if he weren't, we could conceive of something greater and therefore would have contradicted our definition. He must be powerful. How powerful? All powerful. And the list goes on until finally we get to this attribute: existence > non-existence. Therefore, existence must, by our definition, be an attribute of God.
But all of these examples and many more, including almost anything by the later Mark Twain, were interesting or fun to teach, but only reinforced what I already believed if they were by writers like Dickinson, Twain, or Frost or didn't touch my beliefs at all if they were by writers like O'Connor. I was (and am) the kind of reader that Flannery O'Connor most complained about: I think "Good Country People" is a great, witty, thoughtful story--but I don't believe a word of what it's saying. O'Connor hated readers like me, evidence, she always thought, that the story had failed.
And that's as deep (and as haphazard) as my interest in philosophical debates about god's existence goes. There are more interesting things to contemplate: in an hour SCOTUS reveals its health care decision and the guy who tiled the bathrooms will come to seal the grouting. To amplify Richard Wilbur, love (and disease and justice and practicality) calls us to things of this world.
When I first started teaching freshman comp. in 1966, there was an essay in the text by the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. I loved teaching the essay to my generally religious Oklahoma students. Tillich defines God (the capital letter is just for convention) as one's "ultimate concern." He argues, unconvincingly, I think, that since everyone has an ultimate concern, everyone has a god. More effectively, since God is infinite, man is finite, and the distance between the infinite and the finite is itself infinite, man must find ways of approaching an otherwise inscrutable God. This he does through myth and symbols. The Bible must be read in this light: a way of approaching the infinite; thus, anyone who reads the Bible literally is committing idolatry. I'm not sure the students were convinced, but I took a perverse pleasure in watching their reactions.
There was also an essay by Martin Buber, who defined God as the Eternal Thou. Buber talks about the replacement of Thou with It, of I-Thou relationships with I-It ones, and he describes this as the "eclipse of God," a phrase also used by Emily Dickinson. For Buber, the fault lies with man. For Dickinson, it is God who "hid his rare life from our gross eyes" in what she describes as a "fond Ambush." This is a poem that begins, "I know that He exists." What could be more definitive than that? And she ends her affirmation with a period--a rare mark of punctuation in Dickinson's poetry. The short poem darkens quickly, as the oxymoron "fond Ambush" would suggest. We've all seen enough bad Westerns to know that it isn't the good guys who lie in ambush. And by the end, if there is a god, perhaps it's better that he has been eclipsed.
Dickinson has much in common with Frost, whose sonnet "Design" (and what could be more traditional and designed than a sonnet?) takes the most common argument for the existence of God (the argument from design) and turns it on its head. For twelve lines, Frost describes a scene of morning predation (a spider eating on a moth while perched on the ironically named flower a heal-all), and then in the thirteenth line suggests that if this synecdochal scene is designed, it's "a design of darkness to appall." And then Frost concludes, as if a merest afterthought, "if design governs in a thing so small." The thought that there is no designer, so horrifying to the religious, seems less terrifying than the notion that the world is indeed designed.
To give the other side its due, Flannery O'Connor, devoutly Catholic herself, turns an atheist's most common argument against the existence of God (if there is an all-knowing, powerful, benevolent, etc., god, why is there evil in the world) and uses it for her own religious purposes in her story "Good Country People." The main character of the story, Hulga (who has changed her name from Joy) is a nihilist with a prosthetic leg. A mysterious stranger, suggestively named Manley Pointer, arrives, supposedly selling Bibles but with other conquests in mind. By the end of the story, he is revealed as pure evil, and Hulga's nihilism leaves her literally and figuratively without a leg to stand on. For O'Connor, evil is indeed real, and if you believe in nothing, you're as helpless as Hulga to fight it.
And while I'm giving the gods their due, it was always fun to teach St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. Anselm first stipulates a definition of God: that of which nothing greater can be conceived. And then we list his attributes: he's good. How good? He must be all-good because if he weren't, we could conceive of something greater and therefore would have contradicted our definition. He must be powerful. How powerful? All powerful. And the list goes on until finally we get to this attribute: existence > non-existence. Therefore, existence must, by our definition, be an attribute of God.
But all of these examples and many more, including almost anything by the later Mark Twain, were interesting or fun to teach, but only reinforced what I already believed if they were by writers like Dickinson, Twain, or Frost or didn't touch my beliefs at all if they were by writers like O'Connor. I was (and am) the kind of reader that Flannery O'Connor most complained about: I think "Good Country People" is a great, witty, thoughtful story--but I don't believe a word of what it's saying. O'Connor hated readers like me, evidence, she always thought, that the story had failed.
And that's as deep (and as haphazard) as my interest in philosophical debates about god's existence goes. There are more interesting things to contemplate: in an hour SCOTUS reveals its health care decision and the guy who tiled the bathrooms will come to seal the grouting. To amplify Richard Wilbur, love (and disease and justice and practicality) calls us to things of this world.
Monday, June 25, 2012
If there were few Catholics in Story City, there were no Jews. Well, there was a moment of ambivalence for the good Protestants when Abe Mezvinsky, a Jewish grocer from Ames (and the grandfather of Chelsea Clinton's husband), opened the town's first supermarket. But he didn't live in Story City, and somehow convenience and practicality trumped "moral qualms." At about that time I went off to the State College of Iowa (now the University of Northern Iowa). I have always had nothing but affectionate memories of my time at SCI, though recently, looking back, I don't think I got a great education there. I remember only two professors that were outstanding (one more for his lovable eccentricity than for what he taught), and the atmosphere in the English department was extremely chilly. The chair was a pompous blowhard to put it tactfully. I'm not unbiased, as he gave me a C in Shakespeare. When I went to talk with him about the grade, one of his three secretaries informed me that he never met with students. We were all so naive that we accepted that as if it were normal. There was no advising, and when it came time to apply to graduate schools, I had no understanding of the process. I applied only to Virginia and Duke, and, although I was accepted at both, I couldn't begin to meet the tuition costs. The only faculty member who took an interest in my plight was a new Jewish American literature professor, Joel Salzberg, who steered me toward large public universities that had teaching assistantships. So I wrote last minute applications and chose the University of Oklahoma for no particular reason that I can remember.
If I was happy during my three years at SCI, I loved my six years at OU. First of all, the atmosphere in the department, which I assumed would be like that at SCI only perhaps even more formal, was the complete opposite. The professors were friendly, open, and relaxed. The department chair, Victor Elconin, was a courtly, elderly Jewish professor (and later my disseration adviser) who was always available for both serious and informal chats. At the time, OU had a very large Jewish population. There were three Jewish fraternities and three Jewish sororities, all with their own houses. After Oklahoma and Texas, the next highest states sending students were New York, New Jersey, and Illinois--almost all of the students Jewish. The best and most influential professor I had was David Levy in the history department. He had co-edited the letters of Justice Brandeis; that sort of project fascinated me and later helped lead me to undertake the years long project of co-editing Karl Menninger's letters. For a naive, small-town Iowa kid, my new Jewish friends and professors seemed to represent a different world of sophistication. Friday nights, the Hillel campus center was a hip place to hang out. I had my English and French department friends--a wonderful, smart, lively group; my gay friends (I had finally come out, and in the era of "if it feels good, do it," coming out had been relatively easy and a huge relief); my hippie friends; and my Jewish friends (there was quite an overlap between the last two groups).
Jill, a student in the first class I ever taught and a friend still, taught me dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, and, since I love languages, I remember them all. When it came time to do my disseration, I chose Bernard Malamud. I spent the year before actually writing reading Jewish American literature--from Bret Harte (surprise! Mark Twain said of Harte that he was "a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward . . . [who] conceals his Jewish birth as if it were a disgrace"), Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, and Michael Gold through the great explosion of Jewish literature after WWII, both popular (Wouk, Wallace, Uris) and literary (too many to begin listing). Malamud was a perfect dissertation subject: a small but interesting body of work and a finite amount of criticism. I had an original thesis, which I rode to death in the disseration, novel by novel, story by story, in completely old-fashioned, straightforward explication. Once it was finished and defended, I put it in a drawer, and I've never looked at it again.
Years later, I met my brilliant and militantly atheist Jewish friend Norma; she prides herself on being the second of three generations of atheist (more than just secular) Jews. She was kicked out of AOL chatrooms after infuriating the members of a Jewish forum. She used to worry about the strangers I met in gay chatrooms; I worried more about her after reading some of the vitriolic and threatening responses she got from religious Jews to her arguments. Norma's daughter-in-law (Julia Sweeney, "Pat" from the old SNL) was named Atheist of the Year, some years ago at a convention of atheists in Kansas City. Who knew we had conventions? Norma thought I was incredibly amusing: a sheygetz from the Midwest who knew more Yiddish than almost anyone she knew. Once, to my great pleasure, she compared me to the Jewbird of Malamud's story of that name--a scraggly black bird, resembling a crow, who appears in the apartment of a New York Jewish family, announcing that he's a Jewbird.
But I didn't finally convert. I talked to the rabbi in Norman about conversion, but being attracted to culture or history or personalities isn't the same as believing. And I didn't believe.
Since 1990, all the important men in my life (with one exception) have been Muslim, both Arab and non-Arab (Pakistani, Iranian). It's important to remember, I think, in our highly charged policitcal atmosphere that only 20% of Muslims in the world are Arab. So no one can say I haven't been exposed to Western religions--and have rejected them all, as I have the whole notion of god, theism, and religion. No god, no heaven, no hell, no soul, no spirit--but yet another posting on the subject next time.
If I was happy during my three years at SCI, I loved my six years at OU. First of all, the atmosphere in the department, which I assumed would be like that at SCI only perhaps even more formal, was the complete opposite. The professors were friendly, open, and relaxed. The department chair, Victor Elconin, was a courtly, elderly Jewish professor (and later my disseration adviser) who was always available for both serious and informal chats. At the time, OU had a very large Jewish population. There were three Jewish fraternities and three Jewish sororities, all with their own houses. After Oklahoma and Texas, the next highest states sending students were New York, New Jersey, and Illinois--almost all of the students Jewish. The best and most influential professor I had was David Levy in the history department. He had co-edited the letters of Justice Brandeis; that sort of project fascinated me and later helped lead me to undertake the years long project of co-editing Karl Menninger's letters. For a naive, small-town Iowa kid, my new Jewish friends and professors seemed to represent a different world of sophistication. Friday nights, the Hillel campus center was a hip place to hang out. I had my English and French department friends--a wonderful, smart, lively group; my gay friends (I had finally come out, and in the era of "if it feels good, do it," coming out had been relatively easy and a huge relief); my hippie friends; and my Jewish friends (there was quite an overlap between the last two groups).
Jill, a student in the first class I ever taught and a friend still, taught me dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, and, since I love languages, I remember them all. When it came time to do my disseration, I chose Bernard Malamud. I spent the year before actually writing reading Jewish American literature--from Bret Harte (surprise! Mark Twain said of Harte that he was "a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward . . . [who] conceals his Jewish birth as if it were a disgrace"), Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, and Michael Gold through the great explosion of Jewish literature after WWII, both popular (Wouk, Wallace, Uris) and literary (too many to begin listing). Malamud was a perfect dissertation subject: a small but interesting body of work and a finite amount of criticism. I had an original thesis, which I rode to death in the disseration, novel by novel, story by story, in completely old-fashioned, straightforward explication. Once it was finished and defended, I put it in a drawer, and I've never looked at it again.
Years later, I met my brilliant and militantly atheist Jewish friend Norma; she prides herself on being the second of three generations of atheist (more than just secular) Jews. She was kicked out of AOL chatrooms after infuriating the members of a Jewish forum. She used to worry about the strangers I met in gay chatrooms; I worried more about her after reading some of the vitriolic and threatening responses she got from religious Jews to her arguments. Norma's daughter-in-law (Julia Sweeney, "Pat" from the old SNL) was named Atheist of the Year, some years ago at a convention of atheists in Kansas City. Who knew we had conventions? Norma thought I was incredibly amusing: a sheygetz from the Midwest who knew more Yiddish than almost anyone she knew. Once, to my great pleasure, she compared me to the Jewbird of Malamud's story of that name--a scraggly black bird, resembling a crow, who appears in the apartment of a New York Jewish family, announcing that he's a Jewbird.
But I didn't finally convert. I talked to the rabbi in Norman about conversion, but being attracted to culture or history or personalities isn't the same as believing. And I didn't believe.
Since 1990, all the important men in my life (with one exception) have been Muslim, both Arab and non-Arab (Pakistani, Iranian). It's important to remember, I think, in our highly charged policitcal atmosphere that only 20% of Muslims in the world are Arab. So no one can say I haven't been exposed to Western religions--and have rejected them all, as I have the whole notion of god, theism, and religion. No god, no heaven, no hell, no soul, no spirit--but yet another posting on the subject next time.
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