Vilsack / Schwann's Axis

Okay, there is no truth to the rumor that Vilsack used to deliver Schwann's. I'm just going for continuity here. This picture was taken during a Kerry rally in Cedar Rapids. Caitlin was determined to get her picture taken with Kerry, but we got the Guv, which wasn't so bad. It's interesting how much younger the kids look here, and politically it was just yesterday.

Today is the last day of my vacation and I will descend into the mundane: lawn, housework, planting a bush, mulching said bush. I may get my mom from the Assisted Living Place and let her hang out a bit.

We had a staffing at the Assisted Living Place (ALP) during which the new head of nursing and the new social worker (recently an intern) attempted to persuade me that Mom needed to get into Memory Care (next level up, locked). Their data was pretty shaky and didn't distinguish behavior which occurred when she was drinking, from behavior since she has stopped. (I had thought they might celebrate how much better she's been doing since she stopped drinking!)

They cited the risk of her wandering off, her difficulty writing checks, forgetting whether or not she has eaten. She's wearing the same outfits, forgetting to do her laundry on time. Bottom line: nothing really seems to have changed. She's relatively happy and isn't really causing trouble. I am not clear on why she needs to be moved up a level. I think she'd be bored stiff at the next level.

I did what I always do: I let them know I was aware that their testing has little reliability, and that I would like to work with our neurologist on this assessment, the one who very recently stated that she did not feel Mom would benefit from being moved up a level. The memory care level is a large atrium, really well thought out, with it's own private garden and smaller suites, and lots of memory cues. There are residents there who are allegedly "higher functioning," and then there are many who sit passively, looking off into the distance, or sort squares of cloth (Montessouri). I know sooner or later Mom will move here, with cats, and will struggle with this transition. I feel I owe it to her to assure that it it "later," rather than sooner. I know that once she makes this move, there will be no coming back.

I sense the staff at ALP are impatient with me. I'm better at staffings than the usual resident's offspring, and their presentation data supporting the recommended move was poorly organized and reflected little preparation. I have learned stonewalling from clients over the years and I know the drill: agree to an assessment by the neurologist, play phone tag with the neurologist, have neurologist schedule a meeting with Mom, review of documentation et cetera, schedule a staffing/consultation that includes neurologist. This should take about six weeks. I imagine that the neurologist will agree that it's not yet time to make the move. Then in a few months we'll have another care conference.

I wish I felt that these people at the care center were my allies. There has been a lot of turnover and most of the people I built relationships with are gone. There is a large block of additional independent living units going in next door, built by the same for-profit organization. The people at the staffing indicated that Assisted Living was not memory care, but that was not how it was sold to us when we moved Mom in. I suspect they would like to market to active retired folk and don't want someone wandering in to the dining area inquiring if she's already had lunch. I suspect they feel Mom would be more manageable in a unit where she could recieve more supervision.

My mother has never been managable, and none of us much appreciate supervision. I can stall and duck and dodge, but I know much of my anger is not really because of staffings and poorly organized data. This is my own futile battle against entropy.

I quoted Yeats to my Mom not long ago:

Things fall apart
The center cannot hold
Winding and turning in the spiraling gyre
The falcon no longer heeds the falconer. . . .

Mom said "Oh shut up." I did.

Senior Day at the Fair

I can see the future sometimes.

These fellas were playing on the sweltering portable stage at the Johnson County Fair. The stage is cunningly contrived to cut off all air circulation to performers and simultaneously dampening and muddying sound to the point of incomprehension. The band was playing "Let me Call You Sweetheart" or some such thing. Later they broke into "I Walk the Line" by June Carter.

Brings a whole new meaning to "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine." With apologies to Uncle Shorty, of course, and to Kevin and Will. Gee, maybe I'm seeing the present!

The best thing at the fair was the youngsters in their pressed white western shirts making their horses do amazing feats of control: going up to a mailbox, riding sideways, backwards, jumping. It was great. Not all the kids did as well as the others, but they certainy impressed me.

I was just interrupted by the Schwann's man. He is bringing in frozen fundraiser items. How, exactly does one freeze a fundraiser? I think the Schwann's man is sinister. He drives around in his freezer truck all day, delivering God knows what. I think he goes into houses and freezes people, probably fundraiser types. Then he takes them in to the main processing center in the freezer truck in the dead of night, where they are processed into taquitos and "chicken" ala king. I am concerned that Schwann's is turning us into a race of unwitting suburban cannibals. It's the only explanation, really, for the prevalence of Schwann's trucks in our Corridor. You can't tell me all these guys do is deliver frozen food! There is one Schwann's truck for every seven households in our development. They are fattening us up, people!

In the future, I shall play in a band, dressed in a pressed white shirt and black polyester pants, and will participate in the anti-Schwann's Underground. We will unplug thousands of freezer's before we are apprehended and put on trial. We'll give thousands of processed taquitos a decent burial. That's what makes America great!

Falling asleep in the chair

I missed most of the Cubs / Cardinals game last night. I fell asleep with a full tummy in my big chair. My family ignores me when I do this. I woke up about 2 a.m. and went to bed, doffing my sweaty shirt. My son mentioned that he came downstairs about 11:30 and messed with me for a while but I didn't wake up. God only knows what he did. How far we fall when we become a hapless target for our offspring. Thank goodness I'm mostly nice to him. I shudder to think of what his revenge might be.


Here's a close up picture I like. I took it when I was awake and had some dignity. Or, at least, I was awake.

My vacation coincides with the release of the last Harry Potter book. My daughter has been monoplizing it, but I still get my hours in. Having time to read in the afternoon is a luxury.


Robyn, whose back has mostly healed, would like to organize this week for me. I'm steadfastly resisting. We are going to the Johnson County Fair today, but I refuse to be organized about it. She and I are moving in different energy systems. She is finally able to be active and I am finally able to hold still. I am the immobile entity tending toward immobility, she is the moving object tending to remain in motion. Two shits passing in the night.

If you happen to be falling asleep in your family room, and you see this person looking at you planfully as you drift off . . . BE VERY AFRAID.

Pilgrim's progress

The week we traveled to Southern Illinois was a marathon for all of us. Caitlin, Walker and I drove to Wichita, collected Mom and then went back to Elizabethtown, via St. Louis, to visit, stay at the Rose Hotel, and scatter Dad's ashes in the Ohio River.

Mom got very tired and forgetful, but remembered all sorts of things once we got there. She would have been more rested, but she has always refused to sleep in the car. She has to be sure we're doing okay. This was not dementia. This was Mom. She held the world together.

Caitlin took these two pictures. We were standing on the bluff taking a last look. It was really important to take that trip.

Dad's ashes had been languishing on the old Zenith console television for a couple of years in a box engraved with ". . . to everything there is a season." Dad was not a big fan of television. He used to heave large, heavy sighs when things were not working out. We swore we could hear him sigh from up on the Zenith every time we watched something dumb on the old t.v.

So we packed him in a suitcase and he became our "mission" once again. We checked in to the Rose Hotel, renovated by the state of Illinois and set up as a bed and breakfast. It was build in 1812 to house travelers along the river, which was settled back in the Revolutionary War days. All along the river bottom, about a day's walk from each other, there were inns where all sorts of folks stayed. Several people were murdered here, when the hotel had a tavern and bodies were dug out of the basement during the renovation.

When we arrived, it was very quiet and we sneaked down to the water's edge and scattered Dad into the luke warm summer water. We spilled a little on the rocks. I don't think Dad would have minded. After all, the worst day on the rocks by the Ohio is better than bad television in a family room in Wichita. We sat and sang Shennandoah, which my Dad used to massacre in a high tenor when vacuuming or taking a shower. He had a high reedy voice that brooked no interference from concepts such as pitch or rhythm.

When my Dad died, Mom was really tired and somewhat demented and she managed to arrange funeral services with not one, but two ministers. We cancelled the second one. We got a call the day before the funeral asking if we had forgotten the "viewing." We had. They got Dad all dressed up and none of us came to see him. I can still hear him sigh. He hated suits.

Somehow this mission to Illinois, in our own minds, made up for some of that chaos.

Demise of the Republican wing of the family

This is one of the few known pictures of my great-grandfather, Judge John L. Thompson. He didn't like having his picture taken. What he and Grandmother were doing sitting on this stoop, all dressed up, but not really looking at the camera, I'm not sure. They don't seem to know what to do with their eyes. Grandmother seems to be looking far away.

I think they were photographed outside their home in Harrisburg, Illinois. Nothing is written on the back of this picture.

The Thompsons had three children: Herbert, eventually a San Diego Oculist, Clyde (McGeehee), eventually the wife of a "successful" car dealer, and Sam, my grandad. Grandmother Thompson was especially close to Sam, from what my grandmother used to say.

That's Sam in the picture below. The dapper fellow on the right in the boater. He was charming and chatty and loved a good joke as much as a bad one. Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Illinois with a Juris Doctorate. This is his Debate Team photo. Note the 1,000 mile stare. Note that he, too, does not look toward the camera.

He was too small to be inducted into World War I until it was almost over. He always wore clothes that were too large for him. He rarely admitted he was wrong.

At 23 he ran for State's Attorney in Hardin County Illinois and won. He was charming and effective, reportedly winning 130 of 150 cases, many of them homicides. He collected angry, threatening letters, bound in twine, in a World War I ammuntion box, with other mementos.


Something about all those threats eventually got to him. He imagined a great conspiracy, a "syndicate", which plotted against him. The folks in the syndicate apparently didn't get busy until he turned 40. His mother died. He married my grandmother, whisking her off in his Pierce Arrow roadster. She imagined she would be living the comfortable Republican life her twin sister Averil lived, honeymooning in Europe and watching Noel Coward on Broadway. The folks in the syndicate had other ideas. Grandad left her in Long Beach and came back to Southern Illinois to the cabin he built on the Ohio river. The syndicate pursued him. He slept on the bluff to avoid their noxious gasses. He put an ad in the Hardin County Independent challenging his opponents to "fisticuffs" on the town square. (Actually, there isn't a town square in Elizabethtown. I looked for it last time. But that's how the story came down to me.)


How grandmother made her way back to Elizabethtown to have Grandad committed I don't know. In the end his money was put into a trust for her and she was granted an "allowance." Her brother-in-law, my dad's Uncle Jack Verdier (her sister Averil's elegant husband), became her trustee. Grandmother submitted reports and petitions to the court for increases in her allowance and accounted for her pennies to these men. She settled in with the hill people of Hardin County, their nasal accents and hill speech replacing the echoes of Noel Coward elegant characters.

This stretch of river is where our eyes turned. This water moving by us collected our glances and gave us a place to stare when we didn't know where to look. On the bluff to the left of the rising sun, my father grew up, raised by his mother and grandmother, women whose worries and fears filled him. He swam and fished and explored what was then a long, shady river bottom.

When we visited, I became increasingly aware, the older I grew, of how complicated things were there. Subtexts existed that I began to appreciate. My father's palpable tension increased as we approached and didn't abate until we were long gone from here.

Yet we went down to the river and watched and he stared that thousand mile stare and I could feel in him a rare peacefulness.

When we were last there, it worked for me, too. Good old river.

Beauty, limits,boundaries. . .

Coneflower. Close up. I'm interested in shapes and patterns, visually and musically. I love the groove. I have learned to make less noise and more music. I like this picture because it's just essential coneflower. Nuance is in the eye of the beholder.

How do you know when you've gone too far? How do you know when you've passed the line and hurtled into the inappropriate zone? I think we usually realize we are in the "zone" long after we have arrived. One minute we are feeling no pain and the next we are stumbling and inflicting it accidentally. It is no less painful for its accidental nature. Thoughtlessness is not an excuse.

I would like to feel as ease from time to time. Will I need chemical aid to achieve this? Antidepressants only rub off the rough edges. The sharp pain eases, but the ache continues. We are less angry, at least at first, but the ridiculous nonsense that infuriates us continues, muted, distant.

In the end, there is a rhythm, a groove. It is a river. It is a thump, shuffle, rest, step, bump that repeats and undulates. We all have our role in the groove, our contribution, and we are also responsible for the space we do not fill. By singing notes we creat space between notes.

Yesterday was not my best day. I would like it back. I would like it to have been another day. I will get up tomorrow and try to be more useful, more kind; I will try to listen better and I will try to think of something new.

Buds

When I'm not wondering about world peace, I'm watchng buds open. How something round and blunt can morph into something ornate and decorative cause for wonder, if only on a small scale, on my counter.

My son is also morphing. He's growing, flexing his muscles, and challenging things he would have let go last year. Challenging us by devil's advocating, proving us wrong, proposing alternative times to do what we ask him to do, proving us wrong, he moves toward manhood, whatever that is.

Of course, he's really just like I probably was. My parents invented an alter ego for my know-it-all, testosterone poisoned adolescent self: "SuperTeen!" Mom didn't tell me until I was about 30. It's not hard to believe that Robyn and I (and Caitlin, who certainly has had a hand in this) would raise an opionated, verbal person. My rational side (I think I am sitting on it) knows that this change is inevitable. My emotional side would just like to get the last word. Once.

By definition, of course, none of us gets the last word. Our history will be defined by our successors. Who we are is up for grabs, depending on who remembers what. My Mom is busily forgettng things she never told me. I'm remembering her through each intervening moment.

Walker and Brendan finished the go cart last week. It has flames and rolls quite nicely down our long hill. Robyn says we should have kids' parents sign a waiver if they ride it. They did a nice job, please note the flames, and the 666 insignia, and even put away most of my tools when they were done.

Today I drive to Dubuque. It's an hour on Hwy 151, north through our Grant Wood landscape. Sometimes I turn off the radio and talk to myself. I get the last word then, by God.

Womens

Here are the executives who are actually in charge of my life.

Those of you who don't have wives or daughters perhaps have some illusion of autonomy. These two love each other and they love me. In my line of work, I routinely encounter families where such relaxed moments do not occur with any regularity. In our home, they do, and for this we are grateful.

One day one awakens and discovers that one is living with two women, rather than with a woman and a little girl. Caitlin is evolving into a pretty spectacular woman. She's smart, witty, caring and insightful. She's not dependent or particularly reactive. She has good friends who find us tolerable and/or even enjoyable. She's good to her brother and to us. Caitln has a job and is a good student.

Needless to say, she's "trouble." And don't get me started on Robyn. Anyway, I'm just glad we all mostly like each other.

Happy Sunday.

Mudville

Tonight was our last baseball game of the season. We sat on the hill in the shade at Roosevelt Middle School and watched our boys play their last two games of the season. Whew. That's about enough sitting in lawnchairs for this daddy. I like watching the kids but less and less enjoy watching the parents.

And anyway my contact lenses were drying out and my eyes felt sandpapered. It's all about me and my eyes.

I picked up my glasses two weeks ago, on a Thursday morning, and they broke in two at the nose-piece. I took them in to the Eye Center and they couldn't fix my old Ralph Lauren frames (I know you knew I was a fashion plate), of course. We looked at some other drill in frames and I picked out a color. The woman ordered a couple other frames just in case. . . .

She said it'd be a week. This is a week of wearing contact lenses 14 to 16 hours each day. This is using eye drops to make it through and slamming contact lenses into puffy eyes in the morning. I asked if she couldn't expedite things. I should have used a smaller word.

After a week there was a voicemail on my cell phone. "We have your three frames in and they ALL fit your lenses, so just come in and pick out which one you want and we'll send them to the lab." My already watery eyes were freshened by real tears.

I called and explained that I had already indicated my choice and that we shouldn't be having this conversation. I explained that I had indicated the silvery sort of frames. He said that would work and I could get them Monday. Now a week is seven days. Now we were talking eleven days. That's almost a flipping fortnight. I also complained about my eyes.

On Monday I called and the nice man explained that the frames would be in from Iowa City about 3:30 p.m. This is about the time my client comes on Mondays. She and I both called and cancelled each other. Her eyes were fine. I told her about mine.

At 4 p.m., the Eye Center had not called. I called them and the receptionist was very pleased to discover that my glasses were in from Iowa City. I wept tears of joy. I drove slowly, due to impaired vision, to the Eye Center. I told them about my eyes.

Because it's all about me, and them.

Polar bear sneezing

The height of action photography: catching a polar bear in mid-sneeze. If you look closely you can see polar snot.

Big Wooden Radio has been playing lately, the last few weeks have been what my whole summer used to be like: music on town squares on weekend nights, long drives home late at night. I find I still really enjoy the playing, but not so much the other stuff - waiting around, driving home, missing out on family things. Tomorrow night we are on the Pedestrian Mall in Iowa City, which is always an experience requiring a good deal of concentration. We are playing well, and getting along well. That's nothing to sneeze at.

Oh, and today I could put a title on my post. Go figure.

Why can't I put a title on this?

My current curse in life is that I can't get this program to let me put a title on these posts anymore. I have no idea what I did. It was probably an involuntary muscle spasm.

My friend Jay Hathway and I believed strongly in the redeeming power of the involuntary muscle spasm. It explained a lot about the choices we made. We used to slap each other and say "Involuntary muscle spasm!" This explained much of adolescence.

I can grow plants. That's part of what makes me a "homey guy." "Bring me home to Mom, baby. I'm homey!" About 18 months ago, I bought an orchid at Target. It was in the Orchid Department, with a bunch of othe orchids. It looked a lot like this:

This is a Paphilopedilum sukhakulii. It looked really scary and I was drawn to it. In Target, for God's sake!

Picture it on a metal shelf, between the baskets and the silk flowers. This one is reputedly in the wild, but the one I bought was definitely in suburbia.

After 14 months, I got the Paphilopedilum to flower again. My family now believes I can grow orchids. This is a challenging prospect, but also very interesting. My mother-in-law, Donna, boght me the Phalaenopsis (Moth Orchid) for my birthday. That'd be the one at the top of this post.

I turned 49 Saturday, doing a sound check on the second flat-bed trailer stage in two nights of entertainment. It was some hot asphalt, but things cooled down and folks danced and did a conga line, at DB's suggestion. I have noticed that Fairfield crowds tend to be rather open to suggestion. One guy who appeared to be on the last stages of an ecstasy trip (and not one which included any recent hygiene) yelled "Group HUG!!!" really loud and raised his arms. The dancing Fairfieldians parted like the waters before Moses. Apparently the power of suggestion has its limits.

Independence day

We lived in a "shotgun" house in a neighborhood with tall elm trees and many old people. It was Summer, 1967. I can almost smell my dad's aftershave looking at this picture. Something was pretty funny. I can't remember what it was.

There was trouble ahead and trouble behind. This was a good day. I can feel that.

It's the Fourth of July. I really hate firecrackers and only tolerate sparklers. Every party has to have one, eh? I like fireworks displays, but I don't like crowds and traffic and waiting. I will instruct myself not to bitch.

I'd like to have a good day today. Maybe we'll take a picture of it. My son or daughter may find it, on some disc (the modern equivalent of a cardboard box) some day.

I hope they remember that we were in a good mood. I hope they smile. I don't care how I'm remembered by "history" but I hope, in their scramble to launch and get away and start their lives, my kids look back fondly and remember something like a normal summer day, a good laugh about who knows what.

And I'd like it if they clean their rooms.

Left Field

I'm a klutz.

Imagine my surprise when our son turned out to be athletically competent. Robyn and I looked at each other and shrugged.

Walker wanted to play competetive basketball, and he was a pretty good guard at the time, but it seemed like the only way to get on a team was to have me start one and be the coach.

I'm a klutz. Assistant coaching, perhaps. No team starting.

One day Walker came home with a try-out flyer for a team called the Swisher Swat. He went and had so much fun he went back and tried out again. The Swisher field is at the end of a city park, wrapped in corn. They did drills and learned skills. Walker was hooked. He didn't join the Swat, but was invited to play with a unit called the Prairie Baseball Club.

Walker didn't know much about baseball when he started. He worked hard to learn the minute stuff that you have to know when you play ball. There's the play where you're on 2nd and the center fielder sneaks up and tags when you lead off and you're picked off! There are a hundred things to look for, to remember.

Walker is hitting really well these days. His muscles remember routine plays. He's turned into a good, hustling outfielder with aspirations of second basemanship. He plays well with others.

Cool July summer evenings, sitting in lawn chairs, holding popsicles and ice cream bars, we stand at home with bats poised, looking dangerously intent, each of us.

We stand in left field imagining what we will do when the ball comes.

It always comes. Think about what you're going to do.

Ohio

This stretch of river is on the Ohio, about 35 miles north of where it meets the Mississippi at Cairo. The Rose Hotel was built in 1812 to house miners and river boatmen and others traveling along the river bottom. It sits on a bluff overlooking the river, with this summer-house on the edge of the bluff. There used to be a red flashing light just to the right of the summer house, put there for navigational purposes.

When I wrote the song "Ohio," it was this stretch of the river I was thinking of. The hotel is five doors down the river from the cabin my grandfather built, on part of this same bluff. He intended it for a getaway spot, but as he descended into paranoia, it seemed like the last safe place to him. He built platforms on the bluff to sleep on so that he could not be gassed by those who persecuted him.

When we visited last, my children, my mother and I, the weather had turned cool. This was rare for July, which hits Southern Illinois hot and humid. The river had been absorbing sunlight for two months and was warm as bathwater. I woke early and there was mist rising everywhere. I took about 200 pictures. This one was almost an afterthought.

There are places for each of us that contain symmetry, magic and peace. When I was a boy, I went a spot under some overhanging trees, by the less magestic Arkansas, where I found some quiet from time to time. The Arkansas, pronounced in Wichita with the emphasis on the second syllable, was shallow and sandy bottomed.

When we returned to this stretch of the Ohio in Southern Illinois, I was amazed at how at home we felt. Our best time was spend sitting on the second floor porch of the hotel watching the water.

The second night we stayed, Mom went to bed early, exhausted. The kids and I lay on the grass, on the hotel lawn, and watched falling stars. My father's footprints were all over that bluff and along the river bottom, now mostly consumed by the big river bend.

My mother sometimes asks "Will we ever go back there?" I don't know.

Quality control

One never knows when to press the "save" button. I need spell check to follow me around. I'm supposed to be writing bills.


I used to be much more uptight about money. I worried and ranted and raved and got the damned things written ON TIME. Now I worry a good deal less, but am not so good at meeting their deadlines. Anxiety promotes organization. Lack of anxiety promotes poor spelling on blogs, more hammock time, late payment fees.


The police were called to Walker's baseball game. Two coaches were thrown out for complaining about bad officiating. The second coach bumped the official. The opposing team called the police. In the end, Walker's team won, the coach apologized, everyone went home, and the CRPD Canine Patrol did not have to unleash it's dog.

Walker had two hits and scored twice. This is cool because until recently he has been snake-bit at bat.


Unfortunately this game will not be remembered for my son breaking out of his slump. The official clearly was inept. He was young and lacked confidence and appeared to be unclear about the rules. This game is about boys, though. It was disapointing to be associated with such mid-life drama.
I'm still celebrating stationary objects with my camera. It makes it easier, while I'm trying to learn what all the buttons do.

I'm going to try to get through the day without getting into an argument, getting the cops called, or making a late payment.