Catastrophe

The Chado Urasenke Tankokai Chicago Association, of which I am the president, is sixty years old this year - 2020. We planned a celebration with multiple tea events and a trip to Japan, and then had to cancel due to Covid-19. The former in March just before the true enormity of the pandemic was known, and the latter in July when the catastrophe was full blown.

 

It was organizationally and emotionally difficult to cancel an event that involved guests from the entire country and beyond. Watching the work our members had put in unravel was painful. Especially, if it is possible to remember, this was done in March while there was still hope the virus would dissipate and all would return too normal. 

 

I am not here to rehash the management of the virus and its sequel, but to discuss our association’s response to it. The association wanted to bestow several unique gifts upon the attendees as a thank you for helping us celebrate our sixtieth. 

 

To this end, members, lead by a gracious and talented member who is a fiber artist, designed and began to construct a satchel for each guest, both male and female. It was meticulous work requiring screen printing, cutting, and sewing of material. Unfortunately, the process was never completed.

 

In addition to the satchels, we ordered over 100 kobukusa. Kobukusa have a unique place in the repertoire of tea gear. They are small squares (15cm) of ornate fabric that are magically made with a fold on one side and hidden seams on the other three. Both the host and the guest carry these with them during the tea ceremony; a practical gift that would have brought back memories with each use. 

 

A kobukusa is used when handling various tea objects, such as natusme (tea caddy), chawan (tea bowl), and chashaku (tea scoop) to name a few. I received one as a gift for attending the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Urasenke’s retired 15th generation oeimoto (Genshitsu Sen XV) for introducing chanoyu to the western world. 

 

Its gold woven fabric is the background for palm trees, bougainvillea, mountains, and waves, and captures the joyous nature of the Hawaiian island where the celebration was held. When I use it, I smile and think of the island’s warm breezes and the camaraderie we shared. 

 

Those memories are why as I age my home becomes the repository of more and more knickknacks, and to take a clue from Marcel Proust, they are Remembrances of Things Past. In normal times, the clutter is derided but in a time of catastrophe, the memories these trinkets enliven prove their worth, too many memories to let go.

September 2020 

Visitor

Just about anywhere, if I am quiet, something happens. A little bit, or in this case, a big bit of nature turns up. Please pardon me, I know I have droned on about the backyard this year but for 2020, it is my cruising grounds. 

 

In the past the grounds have been the billion year old rocks of the North Channel on Lake Huron, and the Trent Severn and Rideau canals of Canada; Lake Champlain and the Hudson River; NYC and the coast of New Jersey; and the Chesapeake’s estuaries. It has been Downeast Maine’s rocky coast and the adventures associated with negotiating the Bay of Fundy’s tides and currents. 

 

Every one of these is worthy of comment, and when I can pry myself away from the present dilemma, their images occupy the free space left in my mind. On occasion, that something that happens drags the natural world, even in the middle of a metropolis like Chicago, into view. 

 

In July, the backyard’s west facing patio began to heat up despite deploying a large sun blocking umbrella. During the day, an elm shades the east facing front room making it a cooler place to put one’s feet up. But as five o’clock nears, the back of the house becomes approachable. 

 

I move the garbage picked white plastic chair onto the grass. A thirty foot blue spruce (planted a few weeks after moving in) provides shade. At first, I sit straight to read but after a few paragraphs slump and begin to nod off. I give in to the languor of the warm summer afternoon.

 

It is nice if there is a breeze. The wind chimes make cooling sounds, and the meter high plants and vegetables rustle creating white noise that almost negates the air conditioner’s buzz. The backyard fills with bird songs.

 

Sparrows are noisy little creatures that are given to hysteria; I typically ignore their outbursts. I might raise an eyelid if they are particularly boisterous and that is what happened this particular afternoon: screeching and then a whoosh directly off my bow. In the wake of the brown blur that had passed, came a batch of house sparrows in hot pursuit.

      

I turned to my left and there, two power poles away was a magnificent hawk being ravaged, verbally at least by the gang of sparrows. I lunged up the back porch’s stairs to retrieve my trusty Nikon SLR with the 18-200mm lens that I keep close for such occasions. I thought please stay put, don’t fly away until I can capture the moment. It did but not before moving a bit more to the left to put distance between itself and the noisy hoard.

 

In years of taking photographs, especially since the advent of cheap memory, I have learned to snap multiple pictures and not worry about the particulars of framing, exposure, back lighting, composition, all the things that are taught in photography 101 courses. Time is unforgiving, never to be repeated. Get the image while it is there and worry about the details later. 

 

And later I identified the hawk to be an immature Cooper’s hawk. Its immaturity (this is I anthropomorphizing) is the reason it let itself be bullied by the sparrows. Nonetheless, it was an impressive raptor standing well over a foot with perfectly quaffed brown and white plumage. It must have been stunned by the sparrow’s reaction, as it sat looking perplexed for quite sometime.

 

Eventually, at the sparrows urging it took off south and once more, they took up the chase. To watch this badass bird being put in its place by such a diminutive force was thought provoking. I am sure there was a moral in this, but the languor quickly set in and I resumed nodding.      

August 2020

 

Value

 

It is a quiet morning. The few jets that now fly over us come in spurts morning and late afternoon. Most are large freighters with indistinguishable colors. They often fly different patterns due to the skies being clear of traffic. 

 

It makes me think how we took the value of our life style for granted. Since last fall I tried to suppress the feeling, let’s call it instinct, that there would be a reckoning. The chance that this level of bad behavior was not going to have consequences was remote. 

 

A good example is my own behavior the last few months. Like many others sitting at home baking became an outlet. Bread is my main go too, and so I retrieved the sourdough recipe and grew a starter. This in itself is not an issue. There is not much bad that can come from sourdough bread. 

 

But it did not end there. After watching Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin’s old TV shows, experiments with various buttered dough began. Some recipes are more elaborate than others. Some require a bit of technique, and of course that means much dough needs to be made to acquire the proper outcome. 

 

The diet in my home, since I am the cook, is sybaritic. There is no meat, poultry, or fish. Butter is used sparingly replaced by a fruity, spicy extra virgin olive oil sourced from a beautiful hillside above Fiesole near Florence Italy. There is moderate use of salt and spices. White wine with dinner is necessary but it takes two days to finish a bottle.

 

This discipline began to break down. I found myself buying butter, not to mention eggs, at a rate unheard of in the near past. I became anxious as the shelves of the local grocery became sparser and sparser. The lack of toilet paper worried me less than the empty flour shelf. 

 

One treat after another was produced, all flaky and sweet and delicious. There were a few mistakes but they were learned by and the trend to richer foods did not abate. 

 

Then one evening with back-to-back Julia and Jacques tutorials on soufflés the zenith was reached. I should have seen it coming but my mind was cloudy with butterfat. The next morning with recipes flying out of the printer and post-it note tabs protruding from multiple cookbooks a plan was hatched. Tonight a simple but elegant cheese soufflé would be served for dinner. 

 

Eggs are not a part of my usual repertoire. I do understand their utility and the fascinating chemistry behind it. What I don’t like is messing with them. I will hold my nose on occasion to make a frittata with left over pasta and vegetables but I am usually chastised for not using enough of them. 

 

A soufflé is a dish whose very structure demands eggs. I failed to realize that I had succumbed to the allure of heavy cream, organic eggs, fresh creamery butter, and fine white flour. I had succumbed to the tyrants of technique and outcomes. 

 

About this time, my left foot, toes to be exact, began to ache. Years ago after a long hike the soreness did not fade away, and I asked the x-ray tech in my office to snap an x-ray. Sure enough, in plain sight the second toe showed signs of arthritis. I was in my late fifties and if this was the worst of it, I considered myself lucky. 

 

So, when my foot started to ache I chalked it up to the osteoarthritic joints. I thought my shoes were too tight and changed to a more broken in pair for daily wear. Then I decided that using the exercise bike in the basement was the aggravating agent and I cut back to every other day. Finally as I lay down to sleep the weigh of the bed sheet seemed excessive.

 

I determined that first thing in the morning I would take a full history and perform an exam. I would look at my foot, something I had feigned to do. There, on this nearly forty years a vegetarian’s left foot was reddish swelling across the metatarsals.

 

This could not be, but it was – gout! How many times had I diagnosis this in other poor souls, and ordained the value of a low fat and a low protein diet. Denied them beer and dairy. How many times had I inwardly smirked while writing a prescription for a powerful anti-inflammatory, and ordered a test for uric acid blood levels. The memories came flooding back.  

 

And though doctors that treat themselves have fools for patients, there was no refuting this. I searched the medicine cabinet for a drug other than Tylenol and in the corner, hiding behind a large bottle of ignored multivitamins, was a small plastic container of ibuprofen.

 

I popped two rust colored pills into my mouth, walked into the kitchen, and extolled on the value of brown rice and vegetables. My behavior had bested me, to say nothing of the soufflé!

July 2020

Visitor

Just about anywhere, if I am quiet, something happens. A little bit, or in this case, a big bit of nature turns up. Please pardon me, I know I have droned on about the backyard this year but for 2020, it is my cruising grounds. In the past the grounds have been the billion year old rocks of the North Channel on Lake Huron, and the Trent Severn and Rideau canals of Canada; Lake Champlain and the Hudson River; NYC and the coast of New Jersey; and the Chesapeake’s estuaries. It has been Downeast Maine’s rocky coast and the adventures associated with negotiating the Bay of Fundy’s tides and currents. Every one of these is worthy of comment, and when I can pry myself away from the present dilemma, their images occupy the free space left in my mind. On occasion, that something that happens drags the natural world, even in the middle of a metropolis like Chicago, into view. In July, the backyard’s west facing patio began to heat up despite deploying a large sun blocking umbrella. During the day, an elm shades the east facing front room making it a cooler place to put one’s feet up. But as five o’clock nears, the back of the house becomes approachable. I move the garbage picked white plastic chair onto the grass. A thirty foot blue spruce (planted a few weeks after moving in) provides shade. At first, I sit straight to read but after a few paragraphs slump and begin to nod off. I give in to the languor of the warm summer afternoon. It is nice if there is a breeze. The wind chimes make cooling sounds, and the meter high plants and vegetables rustle creating white noise that almost negates the air conditioner’s buzz. The backyard fills with bird songs. Sparrows are noisy little creatures that are given to hysteria; I typically ignore their outbursts. I might raise an eyelid if they are particularly boisterous and that is what happened this particular afternoon: screeching and then a whoosh directly off my bow. In the wake of the brown blur that had passed, came a batch of house sparrows in hot pursuit. I turned to my left and there, two power poles away was a magnificent hawk being ravaged, verbally at least by the gang of sparrows. I lunged up the back porch’s stairs to retrieve my trusty Nikon SLR with the 18-200mm lens that I keep close for such occasions. I thought please stay put, don’t fly away until I can capture the moment. It did but not before moving a bit more to the left to put distance between itself and the noisy hoard. In years of taking photographs, especially since the advent of cheap memory, I have learned to snap multiple pictures and not worry about the particulars of framing, exposure, back lighting, composition, all the things that are taught in photography 101 courses. Time is unforgiving, never to be repeated. Get the image while it is there and worry about the details later. And later I identified the hawk to be an immature Cooper’s hawk. Its immaturity (this is I anthropomorphizing) is the reason it let itself be bullied by the sparrows. Nonetheless, it was an impressive raptor standing well over a foot with perfectly quaffed brown and white plumage. It must have been stunned by the sparrow’s reaction, as it sat looking perplexed for quite sometime. Eventually, at the sparrows urging it took off south and once more, they took up the chase. To watch this badass bird being put in its place by such a diminutive force was thought provoking. I am sure there was a moral in this, but the languor quickly set in and I resumed nodding.

Perspective

The life of a family practitioner can become precarious at times. Each patient encounter is entering into a new realm. Even long term patients with mundane problems can present in chaos. Whenever I relaxed my guard, whether due to fatigue or the numbness that sets in while doing paperwork, or wrestling with the electronic medical record, I was quickly reminded that biology is the boss.

Generalists tend to have an arena where they are most adept. This may be due to a special interest or due to their patient population or it may be due to the particular training they received during internship and residency. Doctors are not created equal. There is latitude in structuring your education. This is what makes medical training unique and exciting.

In my case, I had been a Chiropractor for ten years before I managed (somehow!) to get into medical school. The Human Genome Project had begun in 1990 and my application essay (1992) was about using the genetic code to treat disease. But my true interests lie in the treatment of spinal disease. I tailored my electives towards that end.

I managed to put myself in many an orthopedic and neurological surgical suite. I spent time with anesthesiologist in pain clinics and with physiatrist in rehabilitation. Countless hours were spent in complicated surgical procedures and in the follow up. It is a separate realm from the nine to five world most of us live in. I admit I loved it and due to my obsession, Charlotte spent many a night and weekend alone.

The time comes when a student must declare a specialty. Then in my mid forties, it was time to consider my limitations. If I choose the surgical route, I would be in my fifties by the time the training was complete and I reckoned I would be divorced.

Throughout the training, I had kept in close contact with the medical college’s family practice department. I helped in the lab, spent other elective time in the clinic, and made some friends with the staff physicians; after all, I was closer to their ages than to my fellow classmates. At the last moment, I decided to pursue family medicine burning a few bridges in the surgical world.

I do not regret the decision. I knew my limits and the choice allowed me to participate in multiple pastimes I had ignored for a decade. Time is the tradeoff for living. It is finite, and it is, to steal Lenny Bernstein’s lecture title, “The Unanswered Question”. Since time is a priceless commodity, how to use it is a serious decision.

The thought that time and our lives are on hold due to the virus is a misnomer. March and April were scary, and May was even worse. I kept thinking how could I escape. Then June arrived and the warming weather expanded the universe to include the backyard. Now July is here and the walls are closing in once again. Half of the country decided to go back to normal. They let us down.

The earlier daily death counts and pleas for adherence created a feeling of panic. It brought back memories of Walter Cronkite’s nightly head count of Americans vs. Vietnamese killed. It was a weird calculus to make, to somehow justify the unjustifiable with a ratio.

Infectious diseases are on their surface not that complicated: to keep disease free, stay away from the offending agent. Thus the basic facts to wear a mask, wash hands, and simply limit exposure to possible disease carrying organisms, in this case humans.

In practice, doing this is horribly complicated and heartbreaking. Parents have to isolate from their children, grandparents from their grand kids, workers from their jobs, and since the virus is an unknown entity (other than it is murderous), there are no easy answers. Schedules set in stone will fail.

I wonder what our (my) parents would do if they found themselves in a similar situation. Of course, they had 30 minutes of news with dinner, not the 24/7 coverage we are bombarded with. I knew there was trouble brewing when the normally staid weather service, NOAA, began naming any storm that came over the horizon.

Several years ago while driving home from a banal activity that I would sell my soul for now, Charlotte and I stopped at Trader Joe’s for a packet of haricot vert and a few bottles of cheap French wine. It was late Sunday afternoon and the store was overrun. Many of the shelves were empty.

We were baffled and asked the chatty checkout worker what was up. Had we missed a conflagration imposed on us by a foreign nation we had wronged. Alas no, but there was a named winter storm on the way . . . oh? It is not that I am immune to the severity of storms but in decades of living in Chicago, which includes three hellish winters as a USPS letter carrier, rarely does it take more then a day or two to deal with the aftermath.

An atomic bomb builds on itself; one neutron hits an atom that sends a few more neutrons to hit a couple of more atoms and on and on. It gets out of control, which is what is wanted in a bomb but not in a weather forecast. I am an information junky but there is too much. It prevents the rational thought that comes from introspection. There is no time to process, just time to react.

There were many times in medicine where I had to react. Whenever I board a plane, I get nervous. In fact, the last time we flew to Japan I recertified in CPR. I am not sure the little card they gave me after I successfully passed the course made me feel better, but I was better prepared.

So, from my perspective the world, at least the socially connected world, needs to take a step back, turn down the volume, and take a breather. Let me see, can I think of another cliché . . . chill out might be a good one. It does not have to be for long, just long enough for rational thought to prevail.

July 2020

The photograph was taken by my nephew Matt. It is on the southside of Chicago early in the lockdown.

Stalked

It is summer. I am in the backyard. There is a virus out there stalking me, so, as they say, I am making the best out of a sow’s ear. The local fauna has decided to use the large blue spruce, which occupies the southeast corner of the yard as a nursery.

Robins, sparrows, and now cardinals made nests, and as far as I can tell, have successfully raised the next generation. Though, I should hold off on proclaiming the cardinals a success.

At the very top of the spruce, tucked in about a foot from the outside edge is a barely visible mud nest. It took a while to locate the small mud inclusion within the shadows of the branches. Even for us city dwellers the attention that this active pair of cardinals paid to that spot portended something was a foot.

Charlotte and I took to a watch schedule similar to one when piloting Carrie Rose. She had her binoculars and I had mine. And mine are the beauteous Leica’s I scrimped and save for, and then bought in the late 1980’s.

Though other binoculars are more powerful, these have clarity of vision. The image is sharp. The colors are vivid. The ergonomics are, well, ergonomic. For years they have lived on the boat, that is when I am on it, as they travel with me. So, it was with the Leica binoculars that I saw the first hint of the muddy brown nest.

Fledgling birds grow up fast. In the few days since spotting the nest, tiny heads with beaks open skyward appeared through the tangle of pine needles each time the parents came to the nest. Then an E, three octaves about middle C was sounded whenever the parents flew away.

As I watch the various birds flutter from yard to yard, I am reminded of a fact that I hear repeated on public television’s science programs: birds are the remnants of the dinosaurs that were left after the asteroid crashed into Mexico. Now, dinosaurs were big beast. So, when I see how the birds constantly fly around the backyards, I wonder if dinosaurs were as hyperactive.

Of course, I know not to lump all dinosaurs into the same category. A brontosaurus was probably not as active as a T-Rex and a T-Rex was probably not as active as a velociraptor. But I admit ignorance and since it is the middle of summer and over ninety degrees, I do not feel like doing research. I am on summer break after all!

I cannot get the images out of my mind. It make sitting in the backyard more adventurous. I anxiously wait for a massive feathered creature to bound over the neighbor’s fence, and stop just long enough for me to take a picture for Instagram.

For it is my secret wish that before I pass from this earth, I will have one picture go “viral”. It will be my 15 minutes of fame, and as long as there is power for the Internet’s servers my digital footprint will exist, waiting to be retrieved by the latest search engine’s algorithm.

Is this too much to ask for while sitting in the backyard, in the summer being stalked . . . is it!

July 2020

Value

It is a quiet morning. The few jets that now fly over us come in spurts morning and late afternoon. Most are large freighters with indistinguishable colors. They often fly different patterns due to the skies being clear of traffic.

It makes me think how we took the value of our life style for granted. Since last fall I tried to suppress the feeling, let’s call it instinct, that there would be a reckoning. The chance that this level of bad behavior was not going to have consequences was remote.

A good example is my own behavior the last few months. Like many others sitting at home baking became an outlet. Bread is my main go too, and so I retrieved the sourdough recipe and grew a starter. This in itself is not an issue. There is not much bad that can come from sourdough bread.

But it did not end there. After watching Julia Childs and Jacques Pepin’s old TV shows, experiments with various buttered dough began. Some recipes are more elaborate than others. Some require a bit of technique, and of course that means much dough needs to be made to acquire the proper outcome.

The diet in my home, since I am the cook, is sybaritic. There is no meat, poultry, or fish. Butter is used sparingly replaced by a fruity, spicy extra virgin olive oil sourced from a beautiful hillside above Fiesole near Florence Italy. There is moderate use of salt and spices. White wine with dinner is necessary but it takes two days to finish a bottle.

This discipline began to break down. I found myself buying butter, not to mention eggs, at a rate unheard of in the near past. I became anxious as the shelves of the local grocery became sparser and sparser. The lack of toilet paper worried me less than the empty flour shelf.

One treat after another was produced, all flaky and sweet and delicious. There were a few mistakes but they were learned by and the trend to richer foods did not abate.

Then one evening with back-to-back Julia and Jacques tutorials on soufflés the zenith was reached. I should have seen it coming but my mind was cloudy with butterfat. The next morning with recipes flying out of the printer and post-it note tabs protruding from multiple cookbooks a plan was hatched. Tonight a simple but elegant cheese soufflé would be served for dinner.

Eggs are not a part of my usual repertoire. I do understand their utility and the fascinating chemistry behind it. What I don’t like is messing with them. I will hold my nose on occasion to make a frittata with left over pasta and vegetables but I am usually chastised for not using enough of them.

A soufflé is a dish whose very structure demands eggs. I failed to realize that I had succumbed to the allure of heavy cream, organic eggs, fresh creamery butter, and fine white flour. I had succumbed to the tyrants of technique and outcomes.

About this time, my left foot, toes to be exact, began to ache. Years ago after a long hike the soreness did not fade away, and I asked the x-ray tech in my office to snap an x-ray. Sure enough, in plain sight the second toe showed signs of arthritis. I was in my late fifties and if this was the worst of it, I considered myself lucky.

So, when my foot started to ache I chalked it up to the osteoarthritic joints. I thought my shoes were too tight and changed to a more broken in pair for daily wear. Then I decided that using the exercise bike in the basement was the aggravating agent and I cut back to every other day. Finally as I lay down to sleep the weigh of the bed sheet seemed excessive.

I determined that first thing in the morning I would take a full history and perform an exam. I would look at my foot, something I had feigned to do. There, on this nearly forty years a vegetarian’s left foot was reddish swelling across the metatarsals.

This could not be, but it was – gout! How many times had I diagnosis this in other poor souls, and ordained the value of a low fat and a low protein diet. Denied them beer and dairy. How many times had I inwardly smirked while writing a prescription for a powerful anti-inflammatory, and ordered a test for uric acid blood levels. The memories came flooding back.

And though doctors that treat themselves have fools for patients, there was no refuting this. I searched the medicine cabinet for a drug other than Tylenol and in the corner, hiding behind a large bottle of ignored multivitamins, was a small plastic container of ibuprofen.

I popped two rust colored pills into my mouth, walked into the kitchen, and extolled on the value of brown rice and vegetables. My behavior had bested me, to say nothing of the soufflé!

June 2020

Downtime

The second hand of the kitchen’s clock, the calendar attached to the back door, the monthly bank statements, anything for that matter that has periodicity has taken on new meaning the last few months. Except the months are not so few, they are lingering and passing by quickly at the same time.

Time has taken on different guises. There has been quiet time, dire time, fearful time, hopeful time, hopeless time, contemplative time, and time for screaming from the rooftops.

There is a lot of usually overlooked nature time in the backyard. Several robin families have nurtured their young in full view. The cardinals are busy with nest building. The ignored house finches have even garnered attention.

The fledglings, despite the species, clumsily begin life on the wing. They fly into fences, fall from perches, chase their parent’s relentlessly, and get lost in the bushes. They try to eat seed or attempt to pull worms out of the ground, and then alight on the birdbath only to slide into the water.

Unlike human babies, they get their chops together quickly and soon it is hard to distinguish them from their parents. This year there was a tragedy in the form of a parent robin found dead near the bath. Certain odors lead to the discovery. The backyard’s insect population was making quick work of the carcass.

Having downtime meant the garden was planted early, too early. The plants struggled to find a footing in the cold soil. But now that summer is one day old, the heat has lead to exponential growth. The cilantro made an appearance in a lively lemon sauce with egg fettuccine. Various lettuces are adding a spicy and silky addition to store bought salad.

One plant that almost did not make the transition from pot to soil is the San Marzano tomato. In a desperate attempt to save it, it was dug up, replanted in a clay pot with fresh soil, and placed under the grow light in the basement. Each morning a little sprit of water is applied and soon a new shoot appeared. The tricky part is to know when it is time to reintroduce it back into the wild.

Its fruit may not come this year for time is passing quickly and now the days are shortening. Granted heat will balance out the lessening rays, but if this winter and spring are an indication of time’s passage, the plants will need urging on, as will we.

Entrenched

We are supposed to learn by our mistakes. And then, if we ignore history we are bound to relive it. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well, I don’t know where that came from, just trying to extend the metaphor.

Here is another one: ignore (blank) at your peril. Blank could be masks, social distancing, looking like a Jefferson Davis statue, etc., etc. Feel free to add whatever the phobia of the moment is.

Much of my medical training boiled down to following the example of the attending physician. So, if they were cavalier about self and patient isolation measures, so was the rest of the entourage, for that day at least. Most of it came down to peer pressure.

Upon reviewing the pictures of front line police and National Guard, there is a conspicuous lack of facemasks. I noticed that their horses had face shields, which look oddly cute but also no masks, and they are about face level with most protestors. But I digress. To see the troops completely covered in protective gear and not wearing PPE made me wonder about entrenched corporate cultures.

Did a supervisor or officer tell the troops not to wear a mask, was it a ground swell of misplaced rebellion by the rank and file, were they following the lead of the Commander and Chief; Considering that once off the front lines it is time to interact with family and friends I would think it pays to be safe rather than sorry. There is another one of those pesky saying.

I have developed an entrenched culture. Breakfast consist of tea, toast with peanut butter and jelly, plain yogurt (Greek style preferably), and one half of a banana. At 2:30 in the afternoon a shot of espresso with a sweet treat, and a quarter bottle of white wine (preferably French) with dinner. I like to stay up late to watch YouTube vignette’s of tugboats, quirky musicians, and pilots piloting airplanes to no place in particular.

And just in case you are wondering, I wear my delightful Apple Bluetooth ear buds (declaimer, I am not nor have ever been an employee of Apple) so not to disturb Charlotte who has since gone to bed. Now if I consider my entrenched tendencies, other than for dental disease, none are self destructive.

Charlotte and I have even begun to wear life preservers when going on deck while cruising and when using the dingy. This policy took decades of self reflection to put in place, so I know it is possible to change, and to look out for oneself and others, for if one of us drowns, we cannot save the other.

It is time to end this scree for my shakuhachi begins at 11:00, and I only have 15 minutes left to set up the Skype paraphernalia. Stay safe and see you on the other side . . . of the pandemic that is!

June 2020

P.S. And if you are also wondering about those yellow orbs, they are quince, and I have yet to decide what to do with them.

Sunday, June 7, 2020

I thought I understood —


Elections without a plurality,

535 representatives but only one decides,

Partisan judiciary . . . so the letter of the law is scarlet,

Intimidated experts sit silent while people die,

A treasury gives millions to anyone.


Shotguns, phones, knees,

Who in their right mind . . .

The stars and stripes can fail,

Self-serving hate brings it down,

No joy in Mudville despite thousand dollar handbags.


Rubber, flash bang, smoke, tears,

Tear into flesh,

While desert painted caravans roll,

Let’s build more fences just one more,

Why not just one more.


Now we wait two weeks,

Hope we are wrong or not wronged,

By facing off police,

By drinking in saloons,

By sunbathing on a beach.


Confined to home without a bracelet,

Each fortnight out for sustenance,

Days, months marked by X’s,

Microscopic beasts force adherence,

We long for November.


I thought I understood

— I didn’t

Expatriates

In my neighborhood, cars are parked and people are in the street.

The NYT published a map of the USA with arrows of various sizes displaying NYC’s scattered population. In the same edition, an American living in France writes of the same fate for many Parisians, including him and his family, who have expatriated to the seaside.

It seems the locals in the hinterlands of France are as welcoming as the locals in Wisconsin and Michigan, and that is to say, not. My sense is that not that many Chicagoans fled their city, though that might be magical thinking.

Chicago can appear rational at times like this, despite the homicide rate. No AR-15 toting militiamen have stormed city hall and the Illinois Supreme Court has not overturned the governor’s edicts.

Granted this positivity is coming from an inhabitant of a quiet ward on the city’s north side. And when I say quiet, I mean that literally. O’Hare’s multiple east/west runways, other than for a few paroxysms in the late afternoon, are mainly offline.

Most of March was spent in South Carolina due to family concerns. This means for us, 2020 had two springs. Chicago in May is about where South Carolina was in March.

The forsythia budded, bloomed, and greened twice as did the plum and apple trees. There have been two sets of April showers bringing May flowers. Just substitute an un-poetic February and March for the thousand miles that separates SC from IL.

A Victory garden is planted in the backyard, the weeds graciously allow me to think they are under control, and the two mustardy lettuces that grew under a cold frame over the winter were harvested and eaten.

In the garage, the clutter around the BMW R50 is clear. There is hope that after years of neglect its cylinders will plod along again. Two Christmas trees gathering dust and spiders in the attic are gone to the landfill. And a new Chicago flag flies proudly from the front of the house.

Now it is time to wait. Waiting was intolerable in my younger years but at this stage of life, I have patience. Age brings discipline and the practical holds sway over the spontaneous. Still this wait is a waste of the time left to me.

If the world were free, life would be dictated by the wind and the waves, the tides and the currents, and by protected (or not) anchorages with good holding ground for the anchor and chain. The power for this frugal but privileged lifestyle would be generated by solar panels and the navigation done with the help of legions of satellites.

If the world were free, this Chicagoan would flee to the islands of Maine, but as that is not the case, this Chicagoan will join the others in the street, at least in my neighborhood.

May 2020

Queasy

In 2003, 400 square feet of sail were traded away for 5.9 liters of cast iron. On a day with a fair breeze and the destination an easy broad reach away, I wonder if the decision to move by diesel instead of wind was the correct one.

The canals of Canada, the tidal races of the New Jersey inlets and under Lubec Maine’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge, and beating hellacious Great Lake thunderstorms into its harbors, if any of these are justification then, a sound decision was made.

But that is not what I am looking to explore here. It is a more mundane consideration. The one constant for me, whether by sail or power, is seasickness. It has plagued me since I first ventured on the water in a 26 foot sailboat owned by a friend's father.

Each season I awaited the inevitable episode of projectile vomiting. Old age has brought on a diminishing of the senses, so these days I get queasy and not violently ill - knock on wood or in this context fiberglass.

The Atlantic Ocean differs from the Great Lakes in that there seems to be a constant southwest swell that is indifferent to the wind’s direction. I can feel it now even sitting at my kitchen table typing this.

Carrie Rose’s base of operations is in Herrick Bay, Maine. Northeast Harbor and Bar Harbor on Mt. Dessert Island are favorite destinations. They are a 15 to 30 nautical mile cruise northeast from Herrick Bay. There is a point after rounding the island’s Bass Harbor Head lighthouse where the path opens to the Atlantic.

The shallow Bass Harbor Bar extends east off the lighthouse and though, even at low tide we are in no danger of grounding on it, it effectively divides the two waterways. It is common for the sea state to abruptly change, and often so does the wind strength and direction. To the east of the bar lies a few small islands that offers protection but once past them the southeast swell begins to be felt as it lifts Carrie Rose’s stern.

While I never cease to extol our little Nordic Tugs virtues, she does have a few peculiarities. One being the large billboard like transom that loves to get pushed around by a following sea, and two, a not quite buoyant bow. I have tried to remedy this by removing as much weight forward as possible and relocating it below deck in the stern.

With my limited knowledge of naval architecture, this seemed a prudent course of action; I am now beginning to think I have shifted the problem by 30 feet. So, when the swell attempts to raise the stern, the stern does not respond swiftly. With what must be thousands of pounds of pressure, Carrie Rose aft will eventually rise, and often with a thud ricochet off the swell.

I feel pressure build along the outer edge of the stern, and as the boat begins to yaw left into the swell’s belly I correct by turning the rudder to the right. If done correctly the boat will begin to surf as the mass of green water passes under. It can be quite exhilarating.

But buried deep within the petrous portion of my temporal bone the semi circular canal’s miniscule otoliths immediately register the discordant motion. They tumble chaotically and the nervous system, registering that something untoward is up, translates the signals into the dreaded symptoms we know as sea or motion sickness. It begins with a slight acidity taste in the back of my throat. Along with a queasy stomach comes a queasy mind.

Of course, the approach into Northeast Harbor narrows and the traffic significantly increases. It is the boating equivalent of entering onto a crowded city interstate from a rural road. Anything from super yachts to tiny one design sailing dinghies can be and are encountered. This is not to mention speeding ferries and fishing lobster boats. No place to lose situational awareness.

Charlotte instinctively senses this change in me and heightens her surveillance. It is the dividend paid from thousands of hours on the water.

I throttle back the turbocharged 6 cylinders below our feet. Slower is usually better in these circumstances, and am thankful there are no sails to furl. Though, it would be spectacular to quietly sail surrounded by the lush green mountains.

May 2020

Violets

Violets, the weed not the dainty purple flower that populates our minds eye, have become significance this pandemic season. The neighbors to the south, during a particularly difficult moment, let their backyard turn into a field of violets. Years later the entire lawn was shaved off and replaced with sod.

Sod is a miraculous thing: like the aunt that disappears for a few months and comes back renewed with years taken off. In one moment, everyone else is forced to reassess their image in the mirror and wonder if they can do better.

And so, it was with our lawn. It went from lush green to a lumpy weed ridden mess. Of course, not prone to quick decisions it remained status quo. Then one day the violets, now expunged from the southern lawn, began to migrate north across the two foot sidewalk and under the cyclone fence into our back forty.

A violet is cleverly designed. They present with a few quarter to half dollar sized leaves supported by flimsy whitish stalks. The stalk originates at the interface between the earth and the sky, and once in the grass intertwines with the grass’s rhizomes. Their soft snarly tuber is buried deep in the soil. And on that pencil-sized carrot like appendage, subterranean tendrils are sent off to inform others of the species that here lives an unsuspecting humanoid open to colonization.

If the strategy is to pull off the leaves, this is wholly ineffectual. Like pruning a tree by cutting off the ends of the limbs, this promotes spindly growth that worsens the problem trying to be hastily solved with one stroke of the clippers.

Thus, when on weed patrol I carry several devices that resemble recently discovered Neanderthal tools. The best outcome is to remove, in one motion, the inches deep tuber without creating a large divot in the lawn. This is seldom the case. Once done the lawn looks like the tee off section of a major golf tournament, pot marked.

If violets would only confined themselves to the lawn it might be possible to eradicate them using physical and chemical means. They sprout from beneath any fixed object that has been haphazardly thrown into the garden. Every brick, cobble, decorative rock, metal sculpture, wooden plank, or fence provides a sanctuary for the tuber. I have dismantled entire portions of the gardenscape to get at an offending root.

In the past, I could not ignore the dandelion’s pretentious display; they were quickly dispatched. But readying for the summer cruise distracted me from what I thought were insignificant purple flowers. Now sequestered, I see the folly of shirking my due diligence. If my mother, an Olympian weed culler, were alive, she would be proud of my efforts despite the fact that it took a pandemic to motivate me.

May 2020

Shelves

This time of the year, I am usually immersed in planning for the spring and summer cruising season. Part of the process is staging materials deemed essential on allocated shelves in the basement. This year the shelves are filling much slower.

There sits the new AIS (Automatic Identification System). For those familiar with flying, it is the transponder of the watery world. AIS is simple in concept but immensely complex in execution. The device locates similarly equipped boats and displays their location on a screen for us to see, and broadcasts our location to them. Next to it is an ever enlarging folder with our and Carrie Rose’s papers just in case we need to justify our existence to the authorities.

There are the two solar panels I replaced last year that are going to be reborn because Dave tells me that one electron is as good as the next when it comes to recharging the new and larger batteries just installed. There is more but that is what I can remember without getting out of my chair to go look, and since the topic of this essay is a remembrance of Carrie Rose’s first cruise, I hardly think it matters.

It was the end of October 2003 when the monthly payments began. The boat spent its first half year in our possession unseen in heated storage in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. An entire winter passed without seeing it. As I think back, I am not sure why we never drove up to see her in storage but we did not.

The next time we saw her she was bobbing in a marina. It was mid May and almost blizzard condition prevailed. The wind was gale force and the temperature was hovering in the low forties. We walked to the slip with heads bowed into the northwest wind and the horizontal rain.

There she was, the occupant of our winter’s dreamscapes. We stumbled aboard and it was freezing. The previous owner had instructed me on how to start the heater. All I needed to do was connect the electricity. I knew how to do it but was not sure of the steps. Lenore, our now departed sailboat, was never kept on a slip always swinging on her mooring at the mouth of Montrose Harbor in Chicago, so I seldom had to.

The gangly yellow power cable was located in one of two dock boxes located on the salon’s roof. It was time to go back out into the wind and rain, and retrieve and connect the cable. The heavy cable is about as big around as a thumb. It would be hard to design a more obstinate thing.

The connecting points are an odd assortment of three curved appendages made to connect to only the thirty amp receptacle. It can only go in one way. In the best of times it is an awkward process, so when in a gale on a unfamiliar boat in an unfamiliar marina in the dark while hovering over water which will kill you in 15 minutes, well it puts a bit of an edge on the whole procedure.

With a little forethought, and some trial and error, the now connected cable swung between the dock and the boat. Back in the cabin, I striped off the soaked rain gear while trying not to drip water on the teak and holly floor. I made my way to the pilothouse, turned a few knobs, flipped a few switches, and heat began to calm our shivering.

The storm continued unabated the next day, the day we were to start our delivery trip back to Chicago. We stayed put and awoke to a calm crystal blue morning. It was time to leave.

Why we did not head south along the Wisconsin coast I cannot remember. It would have been simpler and less of a risk, but we did not. We headed straight east over the deepest portion of Lake Michigan (900 feet) for a 90 nautical mile cruise at 10 MPH to Frankfort, Michigan.

The trip south was a series of false alarms, large following waves, mal de mer on land not on the sea, waterspouts, and help from our friend’s on loan 16 year old daughter. What were they thinking! It took us a week longer than planned to arrive home due to 5 days spent sheltered up a river due to a late spring storm. But alas, that is Great Lake cruising.

Sixteen years have come and gone. Now the Great Lakes clear fresh water has been forsaken for the North Atlantic’s frigid brimming-with-life salt water. I will keep filling the shelves in the hope that the seventeenth year will not come and go without any log entries.

April 2020

Grins

I have, until now, neglected to add the little round image that is meant to represent myself on the computer. For some reason I suddenly felt the need to add one. I usually resist such temptation but this time I gave in. I knew instinctively what picture to add. The problem was, I could not remember where in tens of thousands of pictures it resides.

First, I began to search the most obvious place, the MacBook Air. This skinny little computer has been a trusted companion for almost a decade. We have had our ups and downs. It has played me dirt on several occasions, and caused me pain and sleepless nights, but overall it has been a useful tool.

I have written thousands of words, stored thousands of photographs. It has kept me entertained, and it has worked its little processor off navigating Carrie Rose from Chicago to Maine. More importantly, it has allowed me to keep connected with friends and family.

And I suppose I’d be bereft if I did not mention how with a few clicks of the keyboard it has helped me stimulate our consumer economy. That said I was looking for the image that I could see in my minds eye.

This brings me back to one of the “downs” we have experienced. On a rudimentary level I understand how this chuck of aluminum and plastic works but more on the hardware side. When I see computer code my eyes glass over and my mind goes blank. I spent my career dealing with flesh and blood not a digital representation of it.

So, when the computer decides to fail drastically I reach out for help since I cannot drive to Clark and Devon Hardware to search for a part. On several occasions, the hard drive has stopped recognizing my existence, and a dear friend who is wise to the world of bits and bites has rescued the data.

I am grateful for this even if at the time I was intolerable. One of the complications was that the individual files that separate the photos into useable/searchable data were lost. This left more than 80,000 photos with no rhyme or reason other than for dates, the mass of images became an integrated whole with no definition.

As I stated above, I knew the image but where could it be. To make matters worse about 2/3’s of the photos are on an old MacBook Pro. The search on the Air proved fruitless. It was time to turn on the Pro. The Pro has a quiet life. It lives on the bottom shelf of the printer stand perpetually plugged into its power source. In the past, despite the neglect it has always booted up though I live in fear that one day it will not.

The Pro is more than twice the size of the Air. Its screen is cinematic. I push the button that sits flush in the upper right hand corner of the keyboard, and the hard drive began to spin and make odd clucking sounds. The screen lite up displaying a picture of the Amtrak Bridge that blocks the path of the South Branch of the Chicago River.

I clicked on the iPhoto icon and the disc’s RPM immediately increased. This is not the instantaneous process I am used to on the Air. This process requires patience, and a bit of faith that in the end the program, with its treasure trove of 60,000 photos, will open and allow entry.

This time it went well, and before I knew it, I was reliving my life. It is not that I forgot my purpose but that I became immersed in how blessed a life I have had. As I searched the photographs, faces, countries, boats, all the experiences of decades came flooding back. I luxuriated in the images.

Did I find the picture I was looking for, I did. It is of my smiling mother and her cubby boy, hair cropped short in a photo booth. And the cubby boy seems equally as happy to be there, wherever there happened to be.

Like I said, I am not sure why this image called out to me but each time, when I have to enter my password to allow the computer to let me in, I grin and maybe on occasion tear up just a bit with the memories of time gone by.

April 2020

Risk

I am not risk adverse, though I am self protective, sometimes to the point of cowardice. But there is also a trait I have noticed of needing, let’s just say, a bit of calculated risk in my life. Since my eleventh year, I have been on the water. Much of that time was spent on Lake Michigan, a body of water that will provide as much risk, calculated or not, as anyone could want.

These years I am boating on Maine’s North Atlantic coast. This is a different world than the Great Lakes. It is not that it is more dangerous just more complicated. There are tides that average between 10 to 15 feet. These tides, along with the convoluted geography of islands and coves and rivers and rocks nestled along a corrugated mainland, make for strong currents and tidal races. And need I mention the fog.

Maine has the added attraction, which does exsist on the Great Lakes in a diminished state, of manmade hazards. Here I speak of the ever present lobster buoy. Maine’s lobster men and women manage to populate much of the coast with a system of colorful buoys that float within feet of each other if not closer.

A short cruise on a calm sunny day through the legions of buoys leaves the possibility of disaster always open. If one of the thousands of buoys passed managed to wrap around the boat’s propeller, well then, the boat is dead in the water. And as the water’s temperature is in the mid forties or low fifties diving in to untangle the line is not an option.

The purpose of the above several paragraphs is to give myself bona fides, and to make a case that I am not a scaredy-cat. Add to this that I practiced (and I do mean practiced) medicine on the south side of Chicago, and I think this should give me some cred.

On occasion, when confronted by a truly sick patient in the office I would tell them to go to the emergency room ASAP. By which I meant immediately. Most people confronted by such a demand begin a negotiation with themselves and eventually with me.

I understand this. They have responsibilities, which in many cases are deemed more important than their own well being. This lead to the inevitable question/statement, “I’ll go first thing in the morning . . .” To this I would respond that if their condition was making me, an old grisly white haired family practitioner nervous, then it should make them nervous.

This ended the conversation, and over the years my track record was, if I don’t say so myself, admirable. So, when I say that the Corona Virus has me nervous it should make everyone of my beloved readers nervous. Now is the time to error on the side of caution. Trust me, you do not want to be flat on your back with doctors trying to decide if you are worthy of a ventilator!

April 2020

2019 was an offbeat year.

2019 was an offbeat year. It started with a Viking cruise from Norway to Iceland. To be a passenger on a ship that someone else was piloting is an odd feeling. There was rain, snow, and a couple of gales. There were also four magnificent sunny days in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik.

Iceland’s terrain has the look of the pictures beamed down to earth from the NASA Mars Opportunity rover. For me though, the story of Iceland is in its people. I lack the skill to describe my impressions of the culture that permeates this volcanically active rock sitting in the North Atlantic. To get a true sense will require an extended winter visit. I doubt I will have any takers for this endeavor.

We “only” had six weeks on the water with Carrie Rose. And by on the water, at least in Maine, I mean cold, fog, wind, and waves. I mean 25 foot tides and 6 knot currents, and whirlpools that the anticipation of which would be good fodder for a Peter Jackson movie. And I mean a nasty Canadian border patrol officer (an extreme outlier), and a United States Customs Border Patrol reduced to an app on the iPhone.

2019 reinforced the notion that it is impossible to avoid doctors. The year brought with it various skin lesions, some trivial, some profound. It brought with it plastic surgeons, urologist, dermatologist, pulmonologist, cardiologist, and of course our long suffering family practitioner. I cannot say that I enjoy the role reversal.

We realized that it was better to deal with the hand dealt, and deal with it efficiently. Thus, we came home early, reluctantly leaving our friends on Sir Tugley Blue as they cruised off into the sunset. It was the correct choice for other than a few missing pieces of flesh, the effort turned out positive.

The return home early in August, a first in nine years, prompted us to look around the bungalow and we noticed many deficiencies. This is the result of hours spent in Carrie Rose’s bilge to the detriment of our brick abode.

The dingy backroom room was painted. An ignored audio-visual system was re-commissioned, and wires were put in place for two new ceiling fans and a heated toilet seat. Four new windows were installed at five hundred dollars a crack, and on and on.

For all the care that North Talman Ave. needed, I began to think of it as a boat without a propeller. But then there were other projects that, let’s just say, were frivolous and thus, more fun.

An electric guitar (Gibson SG-ish) was built. It required many hours of study and tinkering in the basement. This did not prevent multiple missteps, several involving Titebond III Ultimate wood glue, making for more hours of study to plan how to recover.

Tools not used in decades were dusted off and recalibrated. After a heroic effort, the day was saved with the help of an accommodating guitar luthier. Now quite a nice instrument occupies a hallowed spot by the front door.

Then a vermin infested violin complete with open seams and a spilt face; with slipping and cracked pegs; with the hair and poop of the various species that had called it home for decades, came into my life. It took a bit of work and once again, the day was saved by a different, but as accommodating luthier. The violin, ensconced in its black paper case, also resides in the front room along with a growing menagerie of wayward instruments.

Charlotte, with her bent towards practicality, mentions on occasion that no one in our home has the skill to play this growing band of noisemakers. But it is reassuring to have them in working order, quietly inhabiting the house.

They lend a sense of hope, a sense that music surrounds us, and thanks to Ornette Colman’s aphorism, the truth that everyday is a new day and we can do whatever we want, including guitar and violin lessons.

Happy Holidays!
Dean and Charlotte