Pain in the Ass

I suppose one shouldn't use the pulpit (however obscure it may be) to lash out at someone or something in a moment of anger, but dammit, I’m mad.

I was supposed to have a colonoscopy today. Actually a colonoscopy and an endoscopy at the same time. They were going to get me coming and going. The initial visit at Coral Ridge Gastroenterology Associates went well enough. The front office explained the preparations in detail, ran my insurance and found that I would have no further out-of-pocket costs, and even scheduled transportation to and from the Outpatient Center.

So I enjoyed breakfast yesterday, my last meal for some 30 hours, and at 6:00 PM downed some foul tasting liquid as instructed. If you've ever had a G.I. experience, I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Suffice it to say I stayed indoors for the evening, never far from the bathroom.

At 6:00 AM this morning I repeated the process. I wondered if the eternal drainpipe would stop flowing in time for my ride at 9:30. At the original consultation I had been told that the transportation agency would call me the day before to give me an actual pickup time. Since they never called, I phoned the practice last night but it was after hours. I called again this morning, apparently before hours, and left a message.

Eventually I got a return call. “Oh, Mr. Johnston, we’re so sorry. This never happens. I had the paperwork right here in front of me but I forgot to arrange your ride. I apologize. I’ll see if I can reach them in time.”

She called back shortly thereafter and informed me that the procedure would have to be postponed until the afternoon.

“But, I’m hungry!” I whined.

She told me that I could call Sarah at the Outpatient Center and see if they had an earlier slot. Now I was thinking we were talking about arranging transportation. When Sarah told me that there was nothing available until later, I asked if I could keep my 11:30 appointment if I arranged my own transportation. Oh, no, I was informed. It was the procedure that was not scheduled, not the transportation.

So now I’m hungry and pissed off.

About a half hour later, the Outpatient Center calls again just to inform me of my financial responsibility, a $250 copay. Snap! That was it.

“Cancel it,” I said. “I’m having breakfast.”

Minutes later the doctor’s office calls and the woman who had screwed up in the first place is wildly apologizing, assuring me that she had cleared the insurance and that the Center should have known there was no copay.

More apologies. But it was too late.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Please stop saying you’re sorry.” (Cue Madonna) “This whole thing has been screwed up on your end and on their end.” (No pun intended.) “We’re done. I’m having breakfast now. If I ever do have a colonoscopy, it won’t be through your practice.”

If you go (and you’d be nuts if you do): Coral Ridge Gastroenterology Associates, LLC, Dr. Manuel E. Barbaian. Pompano Beach, FL.

Coral Ridge Outpatient Center, 5301 North Dixie Highway, Oakland Park, FL.

Henry Flagler

Henry Flagler was one of those nineteenth century industrialists who believed he could accomplish anything he set his mind to. He made his first fortune as the co-founder, along with John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil. In fact Rockefeller once said that Flagler was the brains behind the enterprise. Ruthless competitors, they took Standard Oil from a small refining concern in Ohio to a virtual monopoly of the oil business. But dominating one industry was not enough to satisfy Flagler’s ambition.  He, like myself, was not a fan of cold northern winters so he took a trip down to St. Augustine, Florida, to check out the local scene.

He found a sleepy Spanish provincial town and immediately saw the opportunity to make a lot of money luring other winter-weary northerners to its agreeable climate and seaside beauty.  So he built a hotel.  The Ponce de Leon Hotel, named in honor of the Spanish explorer who allegedly found the Fountain of Youth a few blocks away,  was the grandest of hotels, built with poured concrete and brick accents in the Spanish Renaissance style.  Interior elements were provided by Louis Tiffany. It was the first hotel wired for electricity from the outset, made possible by his buddy Thomas Edison.  Patrons of Mr. Flagler’s hotel needed deep pockets: the minimum stay was the entire winter season, whether you stayed all four months or not.

I visited the Ponce de Leon, which is now part of Flagler College. It houses the dining hall and serves as the women's dormitory.  What a contrast to the dorms I inhabited at Carnegie-Mellon.  I was not able to take the guided tour as I am still limping and wincing from the sciatic nerve flare-up that struck me two weeks ago.  But just sitting in the courtyard for a while and taking a look at the grand entrance hall and rotunda was worth the effort.  I had expected a stone interior, something resembling a gothic cathedral, but instead found it is all carved wood. Exquisite.

Flagler needed a way to get his patrons to St. Augustine so he bought the short line railroad from Jacksonville. He discovered that he enjoyed running a railroad so he decided , in typical Standard Oil fashion, to buy up all the other railroads in the region and expand southward to West Palm Beach. But the winter of 1894-95 was so severe that only the southern tip of Florida, where the town that is now Miami stands, escaped the freezing weather. So Flagler set his sights there, extended the rail line, and pretty much built Miami.

Meanwhile another industrialist, Robert Plant, was snatching up railroads in the state. As befitting robber barons of the era, the two men made a gentleman’s agreement: Flagler would keep to Florida’s east coast if Plant would stay on the west.  This left Flagler with only one direction to expand  – south.

At the time Key West was the largest city in Florida and a bustling port. Although engineers said it couldn’t be done, Flagler extended his line 128 miles down the Keys, mostly on causeways and trestles. His Florida East Coast Railroad was now the railroad that went to sea. It’s premier passenger train was the Havana Special, an all Pullman deluxe overnight run from New York to Key West with connections to passenger steamers bound for Cuba.

A hurricane on Labor Day 1935 wiped out nearly one third of the line and the railroad decided it was cost prohibitive to replace.  Flagler had passed away twenty-two years prior to the disaster but one can’t help wonder if he had been alive, would he have rebuilt the line? Could one still have taken the Havana Special for a vacation in the Conch Nation?

Remnants of the overseas railroad exist throughout the Keys. Much of U.S. Highway 1 was built on the original pilings. As to the rest of Flagler’s railroad it is alive and well today. The Florida East Coast Railroad is the longest “short line” in the country and one of the most profitable railroads. Long coveted by rivals CSX and Norfolk Southern, it remains fiercely independent and a competitor worthy of Flagler’s heritage.

Southbound 2013

It’s been a very long time since I added any articles to this blog but I’ve decided to start writing again. Rather than the random philosophical rants I’ve posted in the past, I’ve decided to write about travelling full-time in an RV with my two cats.

This week I started my third annual pilgrimage south. Yes, I’ve become a snowbird. I’ve never quite understood that term, snowbird, as applied to folks who spend their winters somewhere warmer than their usual home base. Wouldn’t it  make more sense to call us sun birds or sun seekers? I guess it’s like a nor’ easterly wind. It isn’t blowing towards the northeast, it’s blowing southwest. Guess it could also be called a snowbird wind.

Skidaway Island State Park, Savannah GA

I’ve arrived in Savannah, GA. I’m staying for the second time at the most beautiful state park I’ve ever camped in – Skidaway Island State Park. I was lucky to find available one of the best sites in the park. It’s a huge pull-through site, easily a quarter acre, surrounded by palmettos and live oaks bearing Spanish moss. Very private. The cats love it.

It wasn’t so great for the cats the first time we were here. In those days, I had taught Osito to walk on a leash and I was attempting to teach Brindie the same. Brindie, you will recall if you’re an avid reader of this blog (which you aren’t because I don’t have any avid readers) is the stray cat I rescued several years ago at The Woods campground in the Poconos. You’ll find the rescue story here. 

I had put a harness and leash on Brindie and thought that we would have a nice little training session outside. Instead, she panicked, flailed around, did back flips and in the chaos I dropped the leash. She took off into the woods still wearing  the harness with the leash dragging behind her.

Brindie and Osito

She eventually came back around 11:30 that night sans leash and sans harness. The next morning I went around and told the neighbors who had all been on alert and anxious to help. The full account of that mishap is here.  Since that time I have become comfortable with letting both cats out on their own if the situation seems safe. The biggest concern is traffic, and not annoying other campers, especially the type that might be inclined to inform the park ranger!

So that was two years ago. Now the cats are fine, it’s me that’s a mess. Monday I felt great. We were on the first day of the journey staying at Kiktopeke State Park at the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula. I took a short stroll along one of the nature trails that afternoon and returned to the coach to enjoy dinner, some TV and an early night.

The next morning when I stood up, a pain shot through my left leg. It was so intense that I screamed. I was barely able to walk. Somehow I got everything stowed, broke camp and drove to my next destination – the famous tourist trap known as South of the Border. The campground is fine for an overnight stop and it’s not expensive.  I pushed on the following day towards my first multi-day destination, Savannah. Fortunately the leg didn’t hurt too much while sitting in the driver’s seat and wasn’t needed for driving.

I finally got to a medical facility yesterday. The doctor said it was my back, not the leg which was causing the pain. He gave me a couple of shots and called in four(!) prescriptions at a nearby Kroger. Still limping and wincing I headed for the supermarket.

Attack Vehicle

I parked as close as possible to the door but resisted the urge to pull into a handicapped space even though I certainly qualified. It would have been just my luck to get a ticket or towed. As luck would have it, someone had left a motorized shopping cart in the space next to me. I thought, what the hell? The next minute I was whizzing down the aisles, terrorizing the able-bodied. Since I had to wait 15 minutes, I went on a joy ride. What a sight I must have been. Unshaven, wearing paint stained shorts and flip flops, and looking like death warmed over. So what better place for a cranky, old cripple to cruise around in? The wine racks, of course!

It’s now Thursday. I feel much better. I can walk a good fifty feet without having to sit down. Still, I had to reluctantly cancel my tour of the Mercer-Williams house, the one made famous in John Berendt’s book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. I’m hoping to be enough improved to try tomorrow.

Say Hello to my Toad...

...and say farewell to my faithful truck.

Ranger Rudy has served me well for eight years. It runs beautifully, looks great, and aside from a faint odor of cat urine seems almost new. It has less than 50 thousand miles and best of all, it’s paid for. I remember exactly why I bought a pick-up truck back in 2004 – I was annoyed at the delivery charge for bringing mulch to my house each spring. So I decided I’d haul it myself. As it turns out, not a single shovel of mulch even soiled Rudy’s dark emerald green bed. It did haul a lot of plywood in my model railroading days and more recently it pulled Penelope Pop-Up to various campgrounds in the Northeast.

Ranger Rudy was named after a beloved cat who kept me company for fifteen years and Penelope Pop-Up was named after another departed feline friend.

Ranger Rudy was very good at towing. It is rated to tow 500 pounds more than my behemoth motorhome, the vehicle with the powerful V-10 engine which gets all of seven miles to the gallon. But Rudy isn’t so good at being towed. In fact, unless you load it on a trailer it can’t be flat towed at all. (That’s with all four wheels on the ground, the preferred method for pulling something behind a motorhome.)

It was inconvenient not having something smaller to drive around after setting up the motorhome in a park. I worked around it as best I could. In both Savannah and Nashville I stayed at campgrounds where the narrated tour bus comes to pick you up. In the suburbs of Atlanta, I stayed in a campground that was a short walk to the city express bus stop. In Fort Lauderdale I rented a car. But often I felt stuck in the campground. There were nearby attractions I wanted to see but not so badly that I was willing to break camp – stowing everything in a motion-safe place, bring the slides in, the jacks up, disconnecting the hoses and electrical cables, and then driving around in a 35 foot long, 12 and a half foot tall tank.

I needed a dinghy that I could tow behind the motorhome. Some people call a dinghy a “toad” presumably because they are “towed” behind the coach. RVer’s have such a sense of humor.

So Ranger Rudy had to go. Yesterday I traded her for a Suzuki something-or-the-other SUV, a car that ranks on the automotive sexiness scale in a tie for last place with the Ford Pinto. I really wanted a Jeep. Now that’s a sexy car. It conjures up images of macho men in the outback, surfers enroute to the beach, the studly older brother of my childhood best friend.

I weighed the pros and cons. The Jeep is fun. The Jeep is heavy, expensive, lacking in cargo space, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, noisy, rough, gets terrible gas milage and has a nasty tendency to roll over. The Suzuki is practical. Both are four wheel drive vehicles that can be flat towed. Seemed like a dead heat.

In the end it all came down to money. Whatever I decided to get, it would be have to be a used vehicle. Let someone else pay all the initial depreciation. The Suzuki dealer made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He would take Ranger Rudy in exchange for the something-or-other and give me a check for $500. That’s right, he paid me to take it off his hands.

I haven’t named the something-or-other yet. I haven’t even decided if I like it. It’s kind of fun, has a ton of room inside, a sunroof, and lots of other gadgets. Oh yes, it can be towed. It’s a silver blue color that matches the motorhome.  It isn’t very sexy but then again, neither are toads.

The unnamed coach and the unnamed something-or-other, i.e., the toad.

The Tumble Bug

When I was a boy, amusement parks were smaller and simpler than they are today. The rides may not have subjected you to as many G forces but they were thrilling none the less. They were bumpier, louder, and more raw. You could smell the grease in the gears and the ozone created by electrical arcs in the big unshielded motors.

One of my favorites, aside from the wooden coasters, was the Tumble Bug. It was manufactured by Traver Engineering and its successor, R. E. Chambers of Beaver Falls, PA, from 1925 until the mid-1950’s and could be found in amusements parks across the nation, indeed, around the world.

The name varied from park to park – Tumble Bug, Turtle Ride, or just the Bug. It consisted of five or six cars shaped like turtles, some versions even had metallic heads and tails. The shell was hollowed out to allow riders to sit inside on a circular bench and there was a chrome wheel mounted like a horizontal steering wheel in the center to hang on to. These cars rode around an undulating circular monorail. They were held to the track by spokes radiating from a post at the center of the ride.

One of the unique aspects of the Tumble Bug was that it needed a little coaxing to get rolling out of the station. The operator, usually a teenager not much older than the riders, would start the train moving slowly forward until it stalled on the first hill. Then he would throw the motors into reverse to back the train through the station until it stalled on the hill behind it. Again he would throw the motors into forward and this time the train would almost make it over the hill, at least the first turtle would. One more back up and we were ready to rock and roll.

The train of turtles then went around the track, three hills in all, raced through the station and around again. That’s it. Even so, you got tossed around pretty good and if you didn’t hang on, you could find yourself halfway out the opening where you get in and out of the car. They didn’t have safety restraints or legal departments in those days. We kids used to stand in line for 20 minutes to go around a circle for 3 minutes and we loved every second of it. As soon as the ride ended, we would rush down the exit ramp, turn, and get right back on line to ride again.

There are only two operating Tumble Bugs left in the world and they are both in western Pennsylvania – one in Kennywood Park and one in a little park on Conneaut Lake. I made a pilgrimage to the latter to ride the Tumble Bug.

I had been to Conneaut Lake Park once before, in my twenties. I was working at a state psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh at the time and several of the social workers arranged a weekend trip for some of our more “presentable” patients. The park was a magical place reminding me of West View Park, north of Pittsburgh, where my school district held its annual picnic. It was a busy, happy place with lots of excited kids and adults rushing from ride to ride, spilling cotton candy along the way, punctuated with the shrieks from riders on the Blue Streak coaster as it thundered overhead. There were long lines for many of the popular rides, including the Tumble Bug.

When I began planning the itinerary for my three-month RV road trip, there were two places that I absolutely had to go: Key West to see Dominique Lefort and his performing house cats and Conneaut Lake Park to ride the Tumble Bug. I arrived on a Saturday afternoon in June and while I set up the motor home in Camperland (which was once Fantasy Forest) I was thrilled to hear the unmistakable rattle of the anti-rollback safety ratchets on the wooden roller coaster across the street. I thought it was odd that I didn’t hear it again for almost 15 minutes, but at least it was running and I would soon be inside the park.

Time has been unkind to Conneaut. The park has limped along for the past decade, always on the verge of closing, torn apart by warring factions on its board, and generally ignored by today’s thrill seekers who prefer super parks like Cedar Point which is only three hours away. The parking lot was nearly empty, the paint is peeling from the signs which proudly proclaim “Since 1892”. There were no staff at the entrance, but the gates were open. There is no admittance charge.

As you enter the sweeping curve of the walkway, the first ride you pass isn’t even a ride. It’s just a few crumbling concrete footers, and a circular picket fence. Next to it is an abandoned Tilt-a-Whirl with trees growing up through the track. The park appeared nearly empty.

Further along were several working rides which were sitting idle due to lack of customers. I rounded another curve and there it was – the Tumble Bug! And it was open for business. I almost ran over to it, except my knees don’t allow me to run anymore. I watched as it started forward and stalled on the first hill. It rocked back and forth, as it always has, until it had worked up enough momentum to get out of the station and on its way – all two passengers shrieking in delight. It sounded more metallic, more strained, than I remembered but, after all, I was witnessing an eighty-year old mechanical device that had somehow been kept patched and cobbled together enough to still operate.

After buying tickets at the kiosk, I returned to ride the beast myself. As it turned out, I was the only rider and the young man at the controls gave me an extra-long ride, too long actually. It got boring in a hurry. But who cares? I was on the Tumble Bug. I was the only one on the Tumble Bug on a perfect summer day, one of the only two such rides in the world. Where were the people?

I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the park, or what was left of it. The Pavilion had burned to the ground several years ago; the midway was a sad glimpse of a forgotten past. The carousel, which was a classical beauty, had one dad and his daughter riding. About the only place that had a crowd was a loud beach bar on the lake that was overrun with bikers.

So I decided to brave the Blue Streak. It’s an out and back wooden coaster built in 1937 and designed by Ed Vettel, who also designed the Big Dips at West View Park. I had the naïve idea that I would shoot video with my cell phone as I hurdled along the track. Instead I hung onto my phone desperately with one hand, while I kept my other hand over my eyes, not because I didn’t want to see the ride, but because I had lost my hat on the first hill and I didn’t want to lose my sunglasses as well. That left me with no hands to hold on. It was the ride from hell. Strange wailing moans came from somewhere, and since I was the only person on the coaster, they must have been coming from me.

As I left the park, I walked past the Tumble Bug one last time. It was closed. A maintenance truck was parked in front and several workers were huddled over the train. I asked the operator what happened. He told me that the hydraulic brakes had sprung a leak and that the ride would be out of commission for the rest of the day, maybe all weekend. (Maybe forever, I thought.)

West View Park closed decades ago and was bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall. I have a feeling Conneaut may not be around much longer either. Why does that make me sad? Is it true that you can never really go back?

Cat Man

I don’t have an official bucket list. That’s mostly because my contrarian nature would never allow me to have anything that recently exploded into popular cultural as a result of a movie designed to appeal to mass audiences. We are refined, don’t you know? But let’s face it – we all have a few things we would like to do before we die.

One of my greatest wishes for many years has been to see Dominique Lefort and his famous cats perform at sunset on Mallory Square in Key West. Every day at sunset, crowds assemble at Mallory Square to watch various performers such as one man bands, jugglers, unicyclists, and tight rope walkers but mostly they come for the spectacular sunsets. If it’s a good one, it is rewarded with a round of applause from the onlookers.

Dominique has trained domestic cats, household kitty cats, to perform circus acts just like the big cats. He has cats that walk tight ropes, jump through hoops of fire, leap across great distances between platforms far above the ground and generally do things that cats aren’t supposed to do, or at least not on command and not with apparent enthusiasm.

I have something of a history with Dominique. I first saw his act in Key West some thirty years ago. I was amazed and delighted. About ten years later, I was watching a National Geographic special about cats and there was Dominique and his cats in a featured segment. I still remember his response to the interviewer’s question on how he managed to train his cats to do such daunting tricks. “With love,” he said.

When a friend of mine returned from a vacation in Key West last winter, the first thing I asked him was whether the Cat Man still performed at sunset. I didn’t expect he did. I wasn’t even  sure he was still alive. “Yes!” my friend told me. “He and the cats are still there.” (It isn’t actually the same cats; they’ve been replaced over the years with new recruits.)

I knew I had to get down to Key West as soon as I could. Who knew how much longer the show would go on?

I arrived today with forecasts of dire weather threatening to make the trip a disappointment. But in the late afternoon the skies cleared and the sun came out. And so did Dominique and his amazing cats.

Scratch one item from my bucket list,  I mean, the things I want to do before I go.

http://www.catmankeywest.com/

Cat Trouble

Osito on my lap

These are entries from my journal as I travel the east coast with two cats in a motor home. I am on day 14 of a three-month journey.

Tuesday, 10 April, Skidaway State Park, GA

This is an absolutely beautiful campground. Each site is huge and separated by stands of tall trees and bushy palmettos. My site had to be close to half an acre. Osito was out enjoying nature on his cat run but poor little Brindie was stuck inside the coach. I felt so bad that she, who I had rescued from a campground two years ago where she had free run of the place, was now confined. To add insult to injury, she sat looking out the window enviously at Osito enjoying the outdoors. I decided to try her on her harness one more time. She allowed me to “saddle her up” without objection, but when I carried her outside she began to shiver. I should have quit then, but no. I set her on the ground. She sat still at my feet for a moment then tried to walk away. As soon as she felt the tug of the leash, she went crazy. She was flailing around, literally doing back flips, snarling and growling. In the chaos I dropped the leash and she took off into the woods.

I searched and searched to no avail. I was worried sick that the leash might snag on something and she would be trapped. Although I recalled that most of the times I tried putting her in a harness she pulled a Houdini-like escape maneuver and got free. Not only had she escaped but my cell phone flipped out of my pocket and was lost.

I enlisted the help of my neighboring campers. One woman came over with her phone and kept calling my number but we never heard my phone ring. (It turned out it fell out of my pocket inside the coach, where I found it on the floor next to the sofa. So much for clear recall in a crisis.)

Everyone was very concerned and promised to keep a lookout for Brindie. I spent the next 12 hours searching for her. At 10 PM, I got a call from a couple in a pop-up telling me that they heard a cat cry in the woods behind their site. I thought Brindie may go to them because in the past she has always gone camping with me in a popup. I took a flashlight and searched in the woods, stopping to listen frequently, scraping up my arms and legs, but nothing. I gave up for the night.

Then at 11 PM, I got another call from the popup people wanting to know if Brindie had a white patch on  her chest. There was a cat sitting at the edge of the woods looking at them. Well, Brindie does not have any white fur so I said it wasn’t her.

Thirty minutes later I heard a shy little meow outside my coach. I saw something move underneath. When I shined my flashlight there, I saw Brindie who in that light, actually did appear to have a white patch. I called her, and in a moment, she came to the door, hopped up the steps, looked at her food bowl, and demanded to be fed. There was no trace of the harness or leash. Which is fine, because I’m never trying that foolishness again.

Sunday, 15 April. Sawmill Camping Resort, FL

I took Osito for a walk on his leash this afternoon. He walked beautifully along the trail through the woods, up to the pond, and around one side of the pond. I marveled at how good he is at walking, just like a dog. Well, maybe a little slower and with a lot more stops for sniffing. As we returned by one of the campground driveways something spooked him and he went berserk  -- thrashing around at the end of the leash, spitting and growling, desperately trying to get away. I tried my best to restrain him, not certain that he would find his way back to the coach if he got loose. (Why do I always make the same mistakes?) In the ensuing struggle he scratched me up pretty good and apparently bit my hand. He cowered up against a stone railing where he continued to spit at me. He was panting heavily, actually gasping for air. The harness strap under his belly had come undone but the neck strap was still holding him.

I moved closer to him and sat down trying to talk to him in soft, comforting tones. He didn’t run away but he did hiss at me a few more times. Eventually he seemed settled enough that I could try to fasten the other harness strap and to my relief he allowed me to do so. I waited a while longer, all the time praising him in as calming a manner as I knew. When he seemed approachable, I picked him up, still gasping, but he allowed me to carry him back to the camper. As soon as we were inside, he flopped on the floor, still hyperventilating, while I washed the blood from my arms and hands and bandaged myself up.

Still feeling sick from earlier in the day, I lay down on the bed for a while. I was awakened by Osito, who had jumped up on the bed and was nuzzling my face. All was forgotten and back to normal. Forgotten by him, that is. The puncture wound on my hand was throbbing with pain and half of my hand was swollen into a big puffy mess.

I worried that the wound was infected. Once before when I was bitten by a cat I ended up staying for 5 nights in the hospital on an intravenous antibiotic drip while the hand surgeon puzzled over my x-rays trying to determine if my hand would have to be amputated. (It wasn’t.)

What would I do if this bite required hospitalization ? I had no transportation other than the motorhome and how would I care for Osito and Brindie while I was in hospital? I decided to monitor the situation closely and make a decision the next day.

Monday, 16 April, Sawmill Camping Resort.

Had a rough night. The pain in my hand kept waking me up even though I was popping two Ibuprofen  every couple of hours. I also felt physically sick, something that may or may not have been related to the bite. There was something even more troubling. A red trace had developed from the wound site up the back of my forearm all the way to the elbow. I knew what that meant. Infection, big time.

Still, it was laundry day and I managed to do three loads while I puzzled what to do. I asked at the office for the location of the nearest medical facility and information on taxi service. The man at the counter called a clinic about 12 miles away and told them I was coming. As I walked back to the coach, Chuck, a man I just met in the laundry, asked what I had decided to do. I told him I was going to the clinic and that I was calling a taxi to come collect me.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he said. “I’ll drive you there.”

I really didn’t want to impose on anybody but he insisted.

“I’m retired,” he explained. “I have nothing better to do and all day to do it. Besides, we all look out for each other here.”

So with that, he drove me to the clinic, waited there for me, then drove me to the pharmacy and finally back to the campground. What a saint. I invited him to dinner the next night.

The nurse practitioner who saw me verified that I had a serious infection and that it was a good thing I had come so soon. She gave me a tetanus shot in the arm, and a penicillin shot in the butt, and a prescription for antibiotics. She felt certain that I wouldn’t need hospitalization this time. Thank heavens for that.

Leaving New York

Well, the U-Haul is packed and my two cats and I are on our way. Leaving New York. It has been an enjoyable six year experiment but now it’s time to move on. For the next three months we will be travelling through the eastern states in a 35 foot motorhome. We won’t exactly be roughing it; In fact the kitchen in the motorhome is an improvement over what I had in the New York apartment. The motorhome (I haven’t come up with a good name for it yet) will be my only home. I will have no permanent address. I’m going off the grid. At least as far off the grid as one can get while still having continuous internet access and satellite television. It’s still kind of scary though, this voluntary homelessness.

During my travels I will keep a journal which I will periodically post here. Several friends have suggested, demanded actually, that I change the name of this blog. They don’t think I am a bitter old queen. They think I should change the name to something more upbeat, something more optimistic. I don’t know. I’m kind of fond of the name of this little blog and it has acquired a small but dedicated following. It’s a minor miracle that someone else hadn’t already taken the name when I first started blogging. So I’m leaning towards staying with “The Bitter Old Queen.”

In a few days I fire up the big V-10 engine and head for exotic destinations far from New York. As far as my meager savings will take me at 8 miles to the gallon of ever more expensive gasoline. If we (I’m not being royal, I count the cats as part of my family) find some oasis along the way, I might just shut off the engine and stay.

Next stop, Savannah.

An American Christmas

As we celebrate this holiday season we might well contemplate some less than joyful facts. More than 46 million Americans are living in poverty. That was the official count by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for 2010, the most recent data available. Nearly half of all Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 are below the poverty line. One out of every two! That alone accounts for why so many have been forced to live at home with their parents or with roommates years beyond the time when my generation moved into our own homes. And here’s the most disturbing figure from the Census: One of every five children under 18 in this country lives in poverty.

What exactly does “living in poverty” mean? According to the Census, a family with two adults and two children earning less than $22,113 per year is in poverty. A single adult age 65 or older who makes more than $10,458 per year is not in poverty. Really? My rent alone is more than double that amount. Admittedly I live in New York which is notoriously expensive, but still. Can you imagine living anywhere in this country on less than 11 thousand dollars?

There are lots of theories floating around as to why poverty is at an all-time high and continues to rise. The recession obviously plays a major role. There is simultaneously a heightened awareness, largely due to the Occupy movement, of the increasing divergence between the wealthy and everyone else. Conspiracy theories abound to explain this trend. But as everyone knows, the real culprit is the lack of jobs. Good jobs. The kinds of jobs that pay the 50, 60, 70 thousand dollars a year or more that it really takes for a family of four to prosper. Those jobs have disappeared and barring something dramatic, they are not coming back.

Why aren’t they coming back? The answer is stamped or printed on just about every Christmas or Hanukah gift you bought this year. Made in China.

It’s almost cliché to bewail the export of jobs overseas and perhaps a little too easy. I’m not sure I believe some of the usual excuses. For example, are the high costs of transportation really offset by lower foreign labor costs for some three dollar piece of extruded plastic crap for sale at the Dollar Store?

American manufacturers are at a disadvantage for a variety of reasons. In this country we regulate pollution, worker safety, product safety, energy consumption, and much more. As we should. As a result, we close our plants and import products from countries which make no attempt to regulate industry and which seemingly have no regard for their people. This needs to stop.

At the risk of irritating free trade advocates, I ask a simple question. If it is defensible to regulate American industry, is it not reasonable to expect the same standards from industries we import from? Obviously it is. We can’t do it by legislation since the offending industries are not under our jurisdiction nor has it proven effective to try to persuade foreign governments to adopt tighter standards. We can, however, control what gets imported into this country.

It’s time to get serious about banning products which have not been manufactured under the same stringent standards that we apply within our borders. But won’t this drive up prices, further harming our beleaguered economy? To some extent it might, at least initially. But the impact can be softened by phasing controls in gradually, starting with those products that are still available from American manufacturers and adding additional products according to how quickly their production can be reintroduced in the U.S.

As to the impact on the economy, how bad could it be to add millions of high quality, high paying jobs at almost no additional cost to taxpayers? Would it not be a more joyful season to see “Made in the USA” on those gifts as you wrap them?

Florida

I almost moved to Florida this week. Like most New Yorkers, I have a love-hate relationship with The City. I have a nice enough apartment, large by New York standards. It has a real kitchen, not a fridge/stove/sink slapped along one wall of the living room, and a nice balcony, big enough for a couple of chairs and a grill. I even have a parking space in the basement. But I’m not in Manhattan. Anything remotely resembling my apartment would rent for at least four thousand a month in Manhattan  and that’s just not in my price range.

And now it’s winter. Cold, grey, lonely, depressing winter. It’s still summer in Fort Lauderdale. That’s where I am right now, sitting by the pool at the guest house. The rents are cheap down here. I found a really nice 2-story townhouse with two bedrooms and two full baths that rents for $200 less than my one bedroom apartment in Queens. The kitchen is beautiful – all granite and stainless steel and recessed lighting. The best part about this townhouse is the large multi-level private deck which fronts on a canal. It’s a five minute walk to all the action on Wilton Drive. I could really see myself living in this townhouse. I could really see my cats spending a lazy afternoon fishing in the canal.

But picking up and moving from New York to Florida involves a lot more than real estate decisions. As I stood on the marble floor of my prospective new living room trying to decide if I should take the plunge or not, I realized that this was one of those moments when you have to confront who you are. Am I a New Yorker? What does that mean? Would I be any happier here than I am currently? What about my friends? What about the summer? It’s unbearably hot and humid in Florida in the summer. On the other hand, I’ve found myself in a rut lately. Sure New York has a lot to offer, but I rarely take advantage of it anymore. Couldn’t I just as easily sit around doing nothing in Florida? For far less money? And have a really nice home in which I enjoyed doing nothing?

The agent waited patiently for me to say something. I had to get off the fence. I had to make a decision. To my astonishment, I heard myself say that I’d take it. I felt good that I was about to start a new chapter in my life. The next few weeks would be hell of course. So many details to take care of. And moving. Who enjoys packing and moving? But I made the choice and now it was time to set things in motion.

Or so I thought. The next day the agent called to inform me that despite having signed a contract and making a substantial deposit, the owner had decided to rent to someone else. I was annoyed. I was relieved. I had come so close to saying goodbye to New York. How could I have contemplated such a silly thing?

It’s a beautiful day in Lauderdale today. Sunny with a few puffy clouds. Warm, but a delicious breeze singing through the palm trees. I fly home tomorrow. Back to the Big Apple. It will be cold. It will be grey. It might be depressing but at least I won’t have to pack.

A Teacher Cries

When I was a boy in high school, I was usually shy and quiet but sometimes, given sufficient encouragement, I could be a real brat. It happened once in my Spanish class. Our teacher, Miss Beardsley, was a stern woman of indeterminate age. She wore her hair in a tight bun which accentuated the angularity of her face. I don’t recall ever seeing her smile. She was also a very strict teacher. From the first day of class, she never uttered a word in English. She was not well liked.

We students were an undisciplined lot, and on one particular day some of the boys began openly heckling her.

“Hey, Mrs. Beardsley,” called out tall Eric, the basketball player, “Oh, sorry, I mean Miss Beardsley.”

Hoots and cheers followed. Several other boys joined in the game.

“Hey Miss Beardsley,” chimed in fat Tom. “How come you aren’t married?”

Caught up in the frivolity of it all, and sensing a chance to score a few points with the popular kids, I blurted out, “Oh, come on, who would ever want to marry a horse face?”

The class erupted into laughter but a red-faced Miss Beardsley hurried to the back of the room and through a door that led to a storeroom behind the class. She quietly closed the door. For a moment we fell into silence but soon the boys, and even some of the girls, took advantage of the lack of supervision to begin general mayhem, wadding up paper into balls and throwing it at each other and similar childish outbursts.

After a while, I went back and carefully opened the door to the storeroom. I don’t remember why. I doubt that I had any legitimate business back there so I must have grown curious as to why our teacher had left the class and was gone for so long. Maybe I was afraid.

I saw Miss Beardsley sitting on a chair, crying. I was stunned, and terribly ashamed. I wanted to hug her and apologize but of course kids didn’t do those kinds of things with their teachers. When I returned to the classroom everyone wanted to know what she was doing. I told them she was grading papers.

Nothing more was said about the incident. The rest of the semester went on. At the end of the year I took my yearbook around to my friends and all my teachers for signatures. I don’t remember what anyone wrote; I don’t even remember most of the people. Except one.

Miss Beardsley wrote, in Spanish:

“Even the smallest blade of grass casts a shadow.”

Great teachers teach us lessons that have a profound impact throughout our lives. Miss Beardsley was a great teacher.

Hair

Last night I stood on the oppressively warm platform at Union Square station waiting forever for the train home. It was unusually crowded for after midnight, a sure sign that there was a problem. A gaggle of twenty-somethings frolicked nearby. I was especially fascinated by two young men who were chattering away, obviously enjoying a night on the town. They laughed at each other’s jokes, often touching, and gazing into each other’s eyes. So young, carefree, and in love.

They were cute. Cute, as in diminutive. Everyone in their group was small. No taller than 5 foot 6 or so and with amazingly narrow hips and tiny little waists. The happy male couple probably had a combined weight less than mine. I often wonder about little people. How do they fit all their internal organs in such a tiny space? Do they have a little half-size liver? Mini-kidneys? Wasp size lungs?

Being much taller, I observed that the boy with the great mop of bushy hair had a small patch on top of his head were the hair was beginning to thin. I felt sorry for him. I developed a bald spot in my early twenties. After I discovered it, I became obsessed with it. I was certain that I might otherwise have been an attractive man. I might have been popular, happy, had lots of friends, a lover, gotten married, moved to a house in the suburbs, bought a riding mower to cut the grass every Saturday, inhaled the aromatic mix of gasoline exhaust and fresh cut grass. But  I’m terribly allergic to fresh cut grass and I’m bald.

I tried everything to hide that little hairless island on top of my head. I grew the rest of my hair very long. It hung down in rivulets of red curls. But there was an empty spot on top. I looked like Ben Franklin. I wore hats before it was fashionable to wear a baseball cap at all times, even while working out at the gym. Finally, in desperation, I had a hair piece made. Actually two hair pieces. Due to the constant need to maintain and reconstruct hair pieces, one of them is always in the shop. At that time, all human hair wigs were made from Asian hair – long, straight, black Asian hair. (Presumably the Asians voluntarily surrendered their hair for the greater good of humanity.) I had decided that as long as I was transforming my appearance, I may as well go all the way. I decided on an Afro, but red.

Unlike a wig, a hair piece does not cover your entire head. It’s not a hat. Rather, it is custom made to exactly fit the bald area. A mesh is cut to size and technicians weave the Asian hair into the mesh. They subject it to a toxic chemical stew to curl it and color it and cut it to the proper length. Then a stylist must blend the new hair with your own hair so that it is undetectable. So once a week I returned to the salon where the stylist would first work on my real hair. Even though my hair is naturally wavy, against his better advice, I insisted on having it set into tight little curls. Then a matronly technician would emerge from a back room bearing my newly restored hairpiece on a platter. It was rather like a coronation. The stylist would apply it to my scalp with double sided tape and tease it and fuss with it and blend it with my hair for at least 15 minutes, spraying Aqua Net at frequent intervals. Finally he would hold a big mirror up behind and above my head so I could see that perfection had been achieved.

When I left the shop I looked great. I had a full head of luxurious hair, in a great Afro bubble. It was impossible to tell it wasn’t all real. At least for the rest of the day. But I had to remove the hair piece before bed. It wasn’t a hair weave or a transplant.  It was more like daily contact lens. Off at night, back on the next morning. And that is where the whole system began to break down.  Without an expensive, hour-long session in my stylist’s chair, I was left to try to recreate the magic on my own. I would confuse the front from the back of the piece, stick it down in the wrong place, fail to blend it around the edges. It looked fake. I would get exasperated and start to sweat. Then the tape wouldn’t stick. I watched the clock tick towards being late for work once again. To make matters worse, the Asian hair was always trying to revert to its natural state: not curly and not red. Some mornings I was sure the front edge had curled up just enough to expose the underlying mesh but I was too frustrated and too late to care. Besides, nobody ever said anything negative. The first few days, all my colleagues told me I looked great; then they just didn’t mention it any more.

But I wasn’t so sure. One evening at one of my neighborhood bars, I thought I heard two guys making fun of me. I walked past to hear what they were saying. One of them was singing a made-up jingle. “I used to be bald, but now I have hair.” And they both broke into a fit of giggling. I’m just being paranoid, I thought. I’m hearing things. But my confidence was shaken.

The breaking point came the night I had a date with Blake. He was a waiter but I knew him from a performance he gave at the Gay Community Center. He played acoustic guitar and sang his own original songs. I’m not usually a fan of folk music, but his voice was so clear and compelling and he sang about struggling to establish a masculine identity in a gay world. I was in love.

When he responded to my personal ad a few months later, I’m sure he didn’t remember me from all the adoring fans in the audience that night. I made a special appointment with my stylist. I told him I had to look better than ever. He worked on me and my Asian hair for an hour. His magic worked. I looked great.

When Blake arrived, we had cocktails and chatted, sitting close together on the sofa. He kept looking at me strangely. Oh my god, I thought in panic, he can tell.

“I remember you from the Community Center,” he told me. “I’ll never forget the nice words you said to me after the performance.”

I relaxed. He wasn’t staring at my fake hair. He remembered me. All would be well.

“But I don’t remember you having all this hair. I thought you were balding on top.”

Panic returned.

“No offense, but are you wearing a hair piece?”

Disaster.

“I mean, it’s just that I have a thing for balding men. I know it’s weird but it turns me on.”

It took a moment for his words to take any meaning. I asked him if he was serious. Did he really like balding men. He assured me he did.

“Hang on one moment.  Just stay here.” I raced into the bathroom and ripped the Asian hair from my head and tossed into the nearest place to hide it, which just happened to be the waste basket. I quickly removed the residue from the tape and flipped a comb around, took a deep breath and returned.

“Oh, much better,” Blake smiled and slipped his arm around me as I sat down next to him.

I won’t tell you about the rest of that night other than to say it went very well. I’ve never worn the hair piece since.

I thought about all this as I gazed down at the thinning spot on top of the small young man on the subway platform. I smiled. It’s nice to be older and wiser. It’s also nice to be taller. He couldn’t see the top of my head.

Road Trip

I'm on an extended road trip through Pennsylvania and New York with Penelope PopUp and Ranger Rudy. My two cats, Osito and Brindie, are along for the ride. Our first stop is Hillside Campground in northeast Pennsylvania. Here's what our site looks like...

David Brooks on the Edge

I admire David Brooks, the editorial columnist for the New York Times, and I often agree with his positions even though he is a “conservative” and I am a “liberal”. What I like most about him is his intellectual integrity: He gets the facts right and his positions are built upon solid logical progression. But he really blew it this week.

In his article, “Tools for Thinking”,  he attempts to summarize the results of a symposium that explored scientific notions which could improve human thinking. First up is John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University, who dismisses those who lament the devolution of the English language brought about by technology. McWhorter points out that there is nothing inherit about email that prevents someone from writing in the literary style of the nineteenth century if he or she wanted to. He states that it was the lessening formality of language in the sixties that accounts for the change. That’s nonsense. Nobody is bewailing the loss of the flowery literary style of the nineteenth century, at least not in emails; what we miss is the informal (but comprehensible) style of the last decade which has given way to LOL-speak. (See my article, “The Loss of Language”.)

He also states that the QWERTY keyboard was invented to slow typists down so that the keys of mechanical typewriters wouldn’t jam. Everything I’ve read says that the design was meant to do exactly the opposite – speed up typing by arranging the keys according to the most prevalent letter combinations in the English language. Brooks should know this and should not have passed along incorrect assertions.

He then quotes Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University who says, “When you focus on education you neglect the myriad of other factors that determine income.” True, but when you focus on income you neglect the myriad of other benefits of education.

To be fair, Brooks does us a favor by introducing some of the ideas that emerged from the Edge symposium. Supervenience, the Fundamental Attribution Error, Emergent Systems, and the like are fascinating concepts, none of which I had ever heard of before. Understanding why we think the way we do is always a useful pursuit. But Brooks above all is a political commentator, and when he suggests that political polarization, rising health care costs and bad marriages can be understood if we just see them as emergent systems, I suggest that he not write his columns so close to the deadline.

The New Media

Quick. Where did you first learn about the demonstrations in Egypt? While you ponder that question, let me ask you another: Is there anything particularly significant, or out of the ordinary, occurring in Tibet today?

I’m willing to bet that most people learned about the strife in Egypt because they heard it on the news or read about it in the paper. I’m equally sure that most of you know there is nothing particularly important happening in Tibet today because there isn’t anything in the news about it.

But what a minute. Aren’t we in the brave new world of electronic information distribution? I’ve been reading for several years now how the traditional media – broadcast news and printed newspapers – are relics from the past. People today get all their information from the online social networks.

To test this theory, I just surveyed several of the social media to develop this list of the day’s major events:

• Hulk Hogan has made a new rap video. 

• Rosie Huntington ate some falafel. 

• A whole lot of people have recently checked in at Starbucks. 

• Overweight cats are still falling from window sills at an alarming rate. 

• Men are pigs. 

• It’s a great day for cashmere. 

• Here in New York, the MTA is intentionally screwing people by making trains late. 

• Everybody is discussing sexual intercourse with snow. 

As I review this list I can’t escape a vague feeling that I’m still missing some of the more important events of the day. I think I’ll stick with the traditional media a little while longer, gate keeping and all.

In other news, Rupert Murdock has launched a revolutionary new venture. The Daily is the first exclusively electronic newspaper and will be available as an app on the Apple iPad. But, again, wait a minute. Haven’t paper and ink newspapers been searching for a way to go electronic for the past five years? Most of the major papers already have an online edition. Some are free; some require a subscription. So what’s new about Murdock’s edition?

A newspaper on a screen is a website whether you call it a website or you call it an app. As far as I can see, there isn’t anything you can do on an iPad that you can’t do on any website except, by making it an “app”, you can limit it to a small subset of users (small in comparison to the total number of people with access to the internet). So what’s the point?

It isn’t the technology that’s revolutionary here. It’s how the money is collected. None of the major players has yet figured out how to make a dime publishing online news. By loosening it’s prohibition against subscription services in the App Store, Apple gets to grab a whopping thirty percent off the top. Murdock presumably gets to ride the wave of popularity of the iPad and the ignorance of its users. They will think that reading a newspaper on a computer screen was not possible until their magical device hit the stores. But once the novelty wears off, are people any more likely to pay for their news than they have been in the past?

Stay tuned or tweeted, as the case may be.

Writing

Writing is hard work. Many of us picture a writer as someone happily sitting at the keyboard in his studio in a New England country home dashing off page after page of perfect prose. I suppose it is that way for a handful of acclaimed novelists, but for everyone else it is moments of inspiration connected by hours of drudgery.

Until I became a writer myself, I had no idea just how hard it is. Thousands upon thousands of hours go into writing a novel. Endless writing and rewriting. Sometimes it is necessary to discard huge volumes of completed work because it isn’t working well, or doesn’t fit into the larger picture. Sometimes a project seems so overwhelming that only the most disciplined, dedicated, or hungry writers keep slogging away at it.

Writing is also very personal. Writing can not be done in a vacuum. All of the best stories you have read were based on the writer’s own life – his or her experiences, feelings, personality – as well as the people in the writer’s life. Sometimes this is obvious; sometimes it is subtle. They may be creating fictional characters but those characters are based on bits and pieces of real people.

Jennifer Bell, the author of Going Down, told her students that if you are not ready to offend the people you know, if you are not ready to lose some of your friends, you are not ready to write. The needs of the story have priority over how people will feel about the way you have portrayed them.

But even more than how your friend’s play into the work, the writer’s own psyche is exposed for all to see. When we put our words out there for others to read, whether it be in a published work, or during a critique in a workshop, it is not just our writing that is set up like a giant target to be torn to shreds; it is our very souls that are on display.

There have been times that I had to fight to keep from shaking while my work was discussed. I’m not the only writing student who has felt that. I have seen some students burst into tears – not because of anything that was said about their words, but because they had written about things that opened old wounds, things that dredged up deep emotions from their past. Now these things were layed out for all the world to witness.

I suspect that the best writers are those that can keep going, wounded and terrified, filled with doubt, to somehow finish their work. Anything less would result in a compromised story, one not worth reading.