Strange tales: The rocket

I got to thinking about an event from September 24, 2022. I realized I never recorded it here. I was able to track it down on Facebook, but there's a lot more to the story:

I was standing outside talking to a friend about 7:40 tonight when we noticed a glowing thing moving across the southern sky from west to east at the speed of a slow plane , but with tails like a comet (but pointing towards the sun) or an outgassing rocket. Cold war nuclear jitters are back, so that seemed like a possibility, too. Turns out it was a Space X launch from Cape Canaveral (to release more Starlink satellites.) I got lousy video of it, with me breathing heavily and saying "WHAT THE F**K IS THAT?!" Here are some excellent photos NOT TAKEN BY ME that I collected from Twitter, taken by people from all over the Northeast.

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The story actually began a few months earlier. A friend's cat had gone missing. She was fairly sure it was still somewhere in or around her apartment. I happened to know where she lived - it was a building where I had gone to poetry readings back in the before-times. I hadn't been there in a few years, and more importantly, I hadn't seen this friend in many years. I have a large Havahart trap that I have used to catch groundhogs, one mystery animal that might have been a skunk, and numerous cats, and I volunteered to bring it up to her. It was one of my first major outings since getting vaccinated against COVID-19. I made the hour-plus trip up, showed her how to set and open the trap, chose a likely-looking location to place it, and then spent about another hour catching up - all while standing ten feet apart. We eventually made our goodbyes, and, after a false alarm when we heard something moving in the dark, I began the hour-plus trip home.

The cat randomly showed up at her apartment door later that night.

For one reason or another, I wasn't able to make it back up to retrieve the trap for several months. Eventually we made plans for me to come up. I was late getting out of the house, as usual, and arrived right around sunset. My friend handed over the trap. I put it in the car, and then we stood around talking and catching up. The night got darker and the stars came out. We were looking at the night sky and talking when suddenly something came into view. 

I didn't know what it was. It looked like a comet with multiple tails, but it was moving so fast across the sky - about as fast as a distant airplane - that if it really were a comet, it would be so close that we would be in big trouble. As I noted on Facebook, I also thought it might be a rocket - or maybe a missile. Being a Gen X Cold War Kid, the terrifying thought of seeing ICBMs crossing the sky has never left me. I had not heard anything about rocket launches that day, and I hadn't heard any rumors of war. I tried to capture it with my phone, but failed, badly. 

My friend lived in a dead zone for my cell phone. I wasn't able to access the Internet to check the news, and I wasn't able to call out to see if anyone else knew what was going on. I made my goodbyes to my friend, hopped in the car, and headed home. After about twenty minutes I was in a position where I could call home, call my mother. (Back then, that was still an option.) She hadn't heard anything on the news, but would call my sister to see if she had heard anything. I continued on my drive home. 

By the time I got home my mom had gotten in touch with my sister, who confirmed that what I had seen was a planned Space X launch from Cape Canaveral. It had traveled up the eastern seaboard and been seen and photographed by many people, none of whom had been aware of the launch. Even my cousin had seen it and had gotten some excellent photos.

Three months and three days later, my mom's leg would break as she was heading out to meet some friends with my sister. That would be the first in a series of events that would result in her death on February 24, 2023 - five months after I had seen a mysterious rocket crossing the sky.

Update, 3/22/2025: So Facebook did the Facebook thing, as expected.

NOTE: Apparently, the photos above are displaying as live links to Facebook. which means that if Facebook ever changes their file structure (again), the links will be broken. Here's a screen grab of the linked content:

 

My mom and the legal weed store

Ever since my mom's car was t-boned at an intersection as she was driving to church back in 2000, she had suffered from chronic pain. She sought help with it from many sources, including chiropractors, nerve blocks, and regular visits to pain specialists. When medicinal marijuana was legalized in Pennsylvania, her pain specialist suggested that she consider giving it a try.

It took some doing, but eventually we got her a medical marijuana license. We went to the store recommended by her pain specialist. It was a little storefront in a strip mall that I had never noticed before. The store itself consisted of a small waiting room, a receptionist, a tiny consultation room, and a larger back room. I was with her for the consultation, making sure she wasn't getting ripped off or otherwise taken advantage of. The place seemed adequately legitimate. Only she was allowed into the back room to be presented with the available product, so I waited in the waiting room, perusing the printed catalogue with product names that sounded straight out of a drug dealer's vocabulary (the one I remember was "Birthday Cake," though another one I remember involved a gorilla.) I watched a television loop through presentations on issues facing today's marijuana enthusiast community hosted by two likely-looking guys, and learned how to make hemp milk with hemp seeds. I flipped through the stack of marijuana-related magazines. Eventually my mom emerged from the back room with a medicine bottle containing a few gelatin capsules with what was purported to be just the right ratio of THC to CBD.

She wasn't especially happy with the results, which made her feel spaced out but didn't particularly address her pain issues. We went back a few more times to try different formulations. It was always a bit of an outing for us: somewhere new and strange, different from anywhere we usually went. I tried to observe and absorb as much of the environment as I could. Eventually the catalogue went away, and then the TV, and then the magazines that had articles about artistic macrophotography of marijuana buds and the science of terpenoids and aromatic terpenes, the pungent scents associated with unburned marijuana and some other things, including citrus fruits. (I have learned that some marijuana preparations include artificially adding citrus terpenes to give them a characteristic scent.) In the end - I think this was before I had a smart phone - it was just me and my thoughts, and the other people in the waiting room.

I remember the last visit pretty clearly. It was a cool and rainy day. The waiting area was fairly crowded as I waited for my mom to emerge from the back room. I listened to the conversations around me - the burly motorcyclist with chronic back pain, the 20-something woman who announced how wonderful the smell of marijuana hanging in the air was as she entered - but eventually I heard the tap-tap-tap of my mother's cane as she prepared to exit from the back room. I rose up out of my tiny cramped plastic chair, stretched out my spine to my full height, and squared my shoulders. The door opened and my mom came out, a little old lady in her mid-80s, immaculately dressed, tapping along with her cane. The room was filled with murmured "Awww"s and a "How cute!" from the 20-something as I approached my mom and gave her my arm to walk her out of the shop.

Her license expired soon after that and we didn't renew it. She was never happy with any of the formulations she tried, and we decided that the bother and expense were not worth it. Still, I have my own fond memories of the place, and the smell of marijuana-associated terpenes - even from a peeled grapefruit - remind me of my mom.

(This post was inspired by a Twitter post by Dr. Ally Louks, Ph.D. about the scent-associations of cigarette smoke, and a response regarding the particular smell of marijuana smoke.)

Dark Christmas

First of all, let me make this perfectly clear: this was a wonderful Christmas for me and my family. There were no disasters, no tragedies. It was the second Christmas without our mom, and that sadness looms over everything, but the memory of her love offsets it.

No, the darkness this year was not a metaphor, not an abstraction. It was a literal, if weird, darkness.

In part it's something I noticed when I've been out and about at night: Far fewer houses are lit up for the holiday. I observed this in Wilkes-Barre, and it made me wonder if all the dark houses are also vacant, since they seemed not to have lights on of any sort. Even in my neighborhood, houses that used to be garishly lit up are dark, or have much more subdued displays. This year the night is not filled with the sound of blower motors keeping inflatable Santas and Grinches and snowmen inflated. Laser projectors no longer play across the faces of houses - my mom was often delighted at the stray light points that trespassed onto our house and yard from the neighbors' projector across the street. On the drive out to my brother's house Christmas Eve, I noticed that many of the houses that were reliably lit up year after year were now dark. (To be fair, several that had previously not been worthy of note were lit up elaborately this year.)

It also seemed like the roads themselves were darker, as if half the streetlights had gone out. I don't know if this is really the case. Nanticoke's Main Street was completely undecorated, though this may be related to the recent replacement of streetlights throughout the downtown. The schools in Nanticoke were also missing a holiday display of any sort. (Patriots' Square has the city snowflake decorations hanging around it, and the traditional Christmas Tree is on display.)

But the weirdest aspect of the darkness was the sky. The sky itself seemed unusually dark. The Moon was not scheduled to rise until about 2:00 AM as a waning crescent, so its absence was understandable. But there were no stars showing, nor even bright Venus in the Western sky or Jupiter in the East. This could have been explained by clouds, of course. But there was none of the usual skyglow, no reflection of lights off the clouds, which should have been made worse by the presence of snow on the ground reflecting any downward-aimed lights into the sky. (Thanks to a minor snowstorm the weekend before Christmas and sustained cold temperatures, we actually had a White Christmas this year, though it all melted by December 27.) All these factors combined to have an effect like a black fog permeating the area, blotting out anything beyond some close radius.

My Christmas lights remain lit, and will stay lit for as long as I feel like lighting them. At least until New Year's Day, perhaps until the Epiphany, or Russian Christmas, or Candlemas Day. The days have been growing longer since the Solstice on the 21st, but I am in no hurry to darken the lights of Christmas.

Under a Yellow Sky

We knew it was coming. We had plenty of warning.

Wildfires are burning in Canada. Not just in forests, but in large areas of monocrop forests planted to provide carbon offsets - essentially sin-eater forests, grown to absolve others of their environmental sins in places where old mixed forests once grew. Where there's fire, there's smoke, and plenty of it. And some of that smoke was heading for the northeastern United States. For us.

I first noticed it early last Tuesday morning as I drove home from my day in the office. The just-past-full Moon had risen and was hanging low in the southeastern sky, shining through the clouds as a deep red egg the color of a dying ember. It shouldn't look like that, I thought. That's the smoke.

The next day I met a friend for lunch, the first time we had seen each other since November. Since before my mom died. We had a good lunch, but in a surprisingly short time I began to feel uncomfortable about leaving the cats alone in the house. We finished up and headed out to our cars. At that point it was obvious that something had changed. The air smelled of smoke. A haze hung in the air, dimming the nearby mountains, obscuring the distant walls of the Wyoming Valley. After we made our goodbyes, I decided to stop at the cemetery on the way home. Now the smell of smoke was even stronger.

I don't remember if the coughing started Tuesday or if that was later. I know that when I woke on Wednesday the sunlight coming in the windows was somewhere between pale amber and lemon - it reminded me of times I would wear yellow swim goggles to look at the outside world. Pictures of the sky began pouring in, locally and from places like New York City. Some pundits compared the view to images coming back from Mars, but I noted that the color tones were more similar to footage from the surface of Venus.

I didn't get any photos of the sky, but there are plenty out there - look up the yellow sky in the northeastern U.S. on June 7, 2023.

I actually didn't want to go outside at all, but Wednesday is garbage night, and I had to get the garbage to the curb. As others had suggested, I strapped on a mask before I ventured outside. It allowed me to breathe relatively comfortably. Still, I had coughing spells throughout the rest of the day. The Air Quality Index locally came in at 389, where 200 is considered dangerous.

The skies and air cleared a bit on Thursday, and even more so Friday and Saturday, but the smoke is still present, as is my cough. Conditions can worsen at any point. The fires in Canada are expected to last at least through September.

The Very Late Greeting Card

 

It is three months today since my mother died.

A card came in the mail today for her from my aunt, her sister-in-law. I thought that was odd - why was it addressed to her? Why wasn't it addressed to us? She knows my mom is dead. I opened it, and saw it was actually written TO my mom as though she were still alive and recovering. Then I looked at the postmark.

February 8th. The day my mom had her fall. The day an unmasked ambulance crew showed up to take her to the hospital. The day she likely contracted the COVID that would result in a massive stroke six days later, on Valentine's Day, a stroke that would lead to her death on February 24.

So from the time this card was postmarked it took THREE AND A HALF MONTHS to get to us in the mail.

Perhaps I will take it with me next time I go to the cemetery and read it to her.

The card at our family gravesite, May 25, 2023. I washed and scrubbed the stone off the other day, so there's a lot less lichen and bird poop on it than there was before.

(Some small consolation: This card was postmarked February 8, a Wednesday. There's a slim chance it might have been delivered Friday or Saturday, but odds are it wouldn't have gotten to us until Monday, February 13. I went to visit her in the early afternoon that day, before the mail is usually delivered. I would have probably come home to find it, would have mentioned it in my phone call with my mom that night - the last time I talked to her - and we would have probably agreed that I should leave it unopened and bring it up the next day. She had a massive stroke that morning, February 14, Valentine's Day, so she would never have gotten to see it anyway.)

Two more dreams: The Presentation and The Prison

I had a strangely detailed dream Tuesday morning. I had another Wednesday morning. I want to preserve them.

In Tuesday's dream, I had been asked by a friend to give a brief and humorous presentation on the topic of...masturbation. It would be done as a slide show, and was to last about ten minutes. I decided my presentation would cover a broad history of the topic, mentioning The Sin of Onan (who "spilled his seed on the ground" rather than have intercourse with his own daughters, as God had commanded), masturbation celebrated in music ("She Bop" by Cyndi Lauper, "I Touch Myself" by the DiVinyls), and famous masturbators who had gotten caught in the act (Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, who was arrested in 1991 for masturbating in a porn movie theater, and, in a nod to current events, political commentator Jeffrey Toobin, who had been caught earlier that day masturbating on a Zoom call during a simulation of the upcoming Presidential election.)

That was the plan, anyway. In practice I never got around to preparing any of this, and now it was the day of the presentation.

The presentation would be in the second floor of The Gallery, a building that no longer exists on the campus of the University of Scranton. In the mid-to-late 80s, The Gallery was an old Chemistry building repurposed as offices, some classroom space, and a large study lounge that occupied the second floor of the building. The lounge was also the site of the art gallery that gave the building its name. I was there only a few times. I remember the large windows that were treated with an energy-saving film that reflected sunlight during the day, but reflected internal light at night. In the dream I needed to have some of these windows removed. I brought in a crew and a crane and we carefully chiseled out a bank of windows and removed them, only to discover that we had accidentally removed a built-in large screen TV that I planed to use for my presentation. We decided to clean the TV - it hadn't been cleaned in over a decade - and reinstall it.

I awoke realizing that the amount of mental work I had done in the dream would have allowed me to actually create this presentation with just a little more effort.

This morning's dream was a lot more serious. I had been arrested as a political dissident in a society slightly more authoritarian than our own. I was imprisoned in a large, labyrinthine prison in the wilderness outside of town. I was not yet being subject to punishment or re-education, and may have been awaiting trial.I managed to slip out of my cell and, with the aid of others, was able to find a way out, a sort of broad water outlet like the overflow of an infinity pool, that formed a small waterfall down the side of the building and outside. As is often the case in my dreams, it was a very tight fit. We had to remove our bulky jackets to get out. (Otherwise our prison garb was all-gray, much like the stuff worn by Kirk and Spock when they were prisoners on the Roman planet in Star Trek.)

I was quickly recaptured and put back in prison with no known consequences. I immediately set out to escape again. This time I was accompanied by Lo, who I had known in real life several years ago. When we got to the escape point I decided I would not try to squeeze through the tight opening again, and decided instead to walk through the lobby and out the front door, after announcing my intentions to the desk guard. I was seized and once again recaptured.

This time I was to be taken for what I assumed would be psychological torture. Among the people assigned to me was a young, evil, clean-cut, 1960's version of Chaz, the now-deceased leader of the writing group Lo and I had belonged to. He was stern but friendly to me in the manner of O'Brien in 1984. He told me about writing he had done that I had never known about, including some writing for science-fiction comic books in the 1960's. He opened a locker and let me see a few. He told me that, when all this was over he wanted me to organize and curate all of his writings for eventual publication. I was flattered by this offer, and some of the other prison officials expressed jealousy.

Lo's mother was summoned, apparently played by Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles, but with long, curly, unkempt, black-and-gray hair, looking much like Bellatrix Lestrange from the Harry Potter movies. She was there to be interrogated and, apparently, punished in her daughter's place.

I don't remember much other than that. Just a feeling of everlasting hopelessness, a feeling that others would suffer punishments, sometimes for things I had done, but I would be OK as long as I played along. Overall, a very bleak and disturbing dream.

Of surgery and weird dreams

First and foremost, my mom had her knee surgery today, and it went well. She's in recovery now. She may be home very soon, or may go to a physical rehabilitation center for a bit to learn how to walk again.

I set my alarm for 3:30 this morning so I could make sure everyone else got up on time. (They did.) I went to bed just after 9:00 PM. I woke up at 10:30, just after midnight, sometime around 1:00, sometime around 2:00, just after 3:00, and then with the alarm at 3:30.

You only remember dreams if you wake during them. With all that waking, it was almost inevitable that I would remember one.

In this dream I was doing something similar to what I am currently doing in my new job.  People were calling me about subscription services they had purchased. Their rates had gone up, and they were calling me to see what could be done to lower their monthly bills. Only, instead of cable, internet, and telephone packages, these were Dungeons & Dragons packages, including character profiles (race, class, alignment, statistics, skills, gear, and weapons), as well as guaranteed access to upcoming adventures. Oh, and instead of people, the customers calling me were my cats. I was doing my best to come to amicable solutions that would last them for twelve months. I woke up to my oldest cat sleeping on my pillow next to me, and I felt glad that I had worked out a solution that would keep him as a customer through at least next January 6.

And then I woke up. It was time to see my mom off to her surgery.

There'll be scary ghost stories

There's been some talk online of bringing back the old English tradition of ghost stories at Christmas. Outside of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and the reference in the song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," I was unaware of this tradition. But there's a lot of information about the history of it online.

The discussion tonight before our family's Christmas Eve Vigil Supper began innocently enough, talking about a newly-purchased century-old house on the edge of a cemetery. But soon we found ourselves swapping what my grandmother used to refer to as "creepy stories." Footsteps heard in the space above a girls' dorm at a local college (which turned out to belong to a vagrant squatting in the attic); something that someone - a middle-aged male professional someone - saw in a funeral home-turned-radio station that caused him to insist that the next DJ on duty call in someone to keep her company after he left for the night; my own ghost sighting that left me with the mysterious discovery of a document of sudden relevance; a ghost sighting in my house early one Christmas morning, many years ago, after my family came back from Midnight Mass; a story of a phantom extra figure that showed up in someone's family photos. It was enough to creep us all out, and we finally broke for dinner.

But that wasn't the end of things.

After dinner, after dessert, after the dishes had been cleared, about half the people gathered around the table heard...something. I didn't, but I was told that it was a low rumbling noise, like a piece of furniture being dragged across the floor. I have pretty acute hearing, and I immediately began listening for trouble sounds: running water, the scrabbling of an animal that has snuck into a house and is trying to get out, the sound of a bear dragging stuff around outside. Nothing. A quick search of the house revealed nothing amiss.

So what was it? The sound of someone digesting their meal? Vibrations caused by someone with a nervous tic in their leg? Someone inadvertently moving their chair and causing the sound of dragging furniture? A skyquake or other strange acoustic phenomenon?

No idea. But maybe the creepy stories had best be left for Halloween.

Tales of holiday sadness: McDonald's eggnog shakes

Today, after shipping a last-minute package and making a brief pilgrimage to Main Hardware's Christmasland in Wilkes-Barre, I decided to partake of my sporadic Christmas tradition of getting an eggnog shake at McDonald's. I first did this a decade or more ago, when their "large" shakes were huge and thick and came with straws nearly half an inch in diameter. Eventually they switched their shakes to a single, smaller size, topped with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. Not the same, but marginally adequate.

I went to the McDonald's nearest my house. I pulled up to the ordering thing and realized it would be best to ask first if they had eggnog shakes before I ordered anything else. They said no. Fair enough. There are lots of McDonald's in the area, so I tried another one in the West Side Mall. Nope. I was heading for another one near the Wyoming Valley Mall. As I approached the River Street exit to take me to route 309, I realized that I was passing another McDonald's. I pulled in and surveyed the situation: no ads for eggnog shakes or anything else seasonal. I asked if they had eggnog shakes, and they said no. After having gone to three locations, I finally thought to ask: have eggnog shakes been discontinued? I was told yes, yes they have, they are no longer offered. I didn't bother to check any more McDonald's, and headed home.

I checked online for information. The results were decidedly mixed.

Per McDonald's Twitter account, the eggnog shake is available in "select markets."

...although that tweet is from last year. But the responses are current, from people all over the country, wondering where the eggnog shakes are. Apparently, they're not available anywhere.

The McDonald's Twitter account stated that menu items like this are offered at the discretion of the location, and people interested in getting an eggnog shake should make their wishes known to their local McDonald's. (Probably as of June, since it would probably take that long to get everything in position.)

There are about a dozen McDonald's within ten miles of me. I checked the three closest, but decided I had better things to do with my time than go from location to location. McDonald's, of course, could easily post a list of which locations have chosen to carry this item, but they don't have anything like that. I suppose McDonald's has made a business decision that they don't need the business of fans of their eggnog shake. Oh, well. I think we'll survive without it.

Doodlebug tracks?

First and foremost: Election Day is Tuesday, November 6. Get out and VOTE! If voting weren't so important, would the Republicans be trying so hard to prevent people from voting?


I decided to make fifteen bean soup again this weekend. I had the beans soaking in a big bowl in the refrigerator overnight. First thing this morning I started cooking the soup bone and associated meat in its own pot, to make it easier to scoop off the "shummy" - the foamy residual fat that floats off the meat as it cooks - without tossing out a bunch of beans, too. After an hour or so of this, I put the beans in a big pot, added the bone, meat, and beef broth, added water to bring the liquid to the recommended level, and brought it all to a boil. Then I added sliced onion, salt, and pepper, reduced the heat, and let everything simmer gently for an hour and a half.

It was cold this morning, and the cooking soup caused condensation to form on the front windows. And in the condensation were the strangest patterns:

What could cause this? At first I assumed it was just random drops of water condensing out of the larger film on the window, then taking a drunkard's walk across the surface or the glass, affected by a bit of dust here, some surface unevenness there, slowly but surely being dragged inevitably down. But what would cause the drop to reverse course and head up? Or in circles? Or in crazy, knotted squiggles?

Could this be the path once walked by some insect, long ago? It almost resembles some slug tracks I have seen on summer mornings. Could some millimeter-wide glass-crawling slug once have made its way across the surface of this window? Or was some crazy, wandering doodlebug of fond childhood memory to blame?


UPDATE: Someone in New Zealand noticed something similar, and the consensus is that these are wee tiny slug tracks.

Same name, different life status

For as long as I can remember, the first thing my mom has done every morning is check the obituaries "to see who is no longer with us." Forty years ago this was somewhat morbid, but as the decades wore on it became a more sensible thing to do, as more and more of her friends, co-workers, and classmates passed away.

A second reason she always gave was that she looking to see if her own name was in the obituaries. But all this watching and waiting finally paid off. A few weeks ago, my mom discovered her own name in the obituaries.

Well, almost her own name.

The deceased had a different middle name, was a year older than my mom, and lived in a different part of the area. It was a heck of a coincidence, and we got a few laughs out of it, but we didn't think of it  much beyond that.

Today my brother pointed out that my mom's longtime dentist had posted to the memorial page.

Heartfelt condolences to the entire family on the loss of Eleanor. She was quite the gal and kept me on my toes for many years. God rest her soul. Sincerely Dr Len M_____

Posted by: A friend   Aug 20, 2018

So, this is...disconcerting. I actually just met this dentist for the first time about a month ago while taking my mom to an appointment with another doctor. My mom keeps in touch with many of her friends over the phone, and makes weekly social appearances in church. But there are still other friends who don't speak to her on the phone or see her in church. How can we let them know she's still alive? I'm not sure. I located Dr. M____ on Facebook and sent him a message letting him know - though since we are not Facebook friends, I have reason to believe Facebook may keep him from seeing these.

So I'll just put it out here: as of this writing, my mom is still alive. Thank you for your concern!

Fourteen on the right, fourteen on the left...

I have a bunch of things I should be doing, and a pair of longform posts I want to write. I haven't done any of these things, for...reasons. So instead, here's something that happened this morning.

I woke up thinking about the lyrics to an old song I used to hear as a kid on WNAK. I never understood the lyrics then, now could I make most of them out. I remember a chorus singing something like "...lord take me home. Fourteen on the right, fourteen on the left, take me to my lucky day...I lost my bet." I figured it was the Johnny Mann Singers, but had never thought more about the song.

I woke up thinking about it. And then I thought: inches from you is a device that can scour information services from across the globe to find the answer to this question. What are you waiting for? So I typed in what I could remember, and within seconds, I had the answer.

The song is "One Paddle, Two Paddle." Written by Kuiokalani Lee (a very interesting guy - you should read up on him) and a hit for Don Ho, the version I recalled was actually by the Ray Coniff Singers. The reason I couldn't make out the lyrics is because some of them were in Hawaiian.

One paddle, two paddle, three paddle for to take me home

Fourteen on the right, fourteen on the left
take me to Hawaii nei

A No ka best

So, that's one of life's little mysteries solved.

Written by: KUIOKALANI LEE

Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

"One Paddle, Two Paddle Lyrics." Lyrics.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2018. Web. 18 Aug. 2018. <https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1337941/>.

Following

I just recounted this story on a friend's Facebook post and decided to include it here for posterity:

I was driving into Nanticoke once. Guy was in front of me, driving slow. He turned left, I turned left. He drove straight for a few blocks, I drove straight for a few blocks. He turned left again, so did I. He pulled over to the side of the road and so did I. He got out of his car to angrily confront me, I got out of my car with my thermos and lunch bag, home from a day at work. He realized that I had basically followed him to my own house, got back in his car, and left.

Ow, my thumb

My left thumb hurts. It might be Neil Gaiman's fault.

I'm not sure when this started, but I think it was this weekend. I noticed a soreness in my left thumb, in the first (or is it the second?) joint - the second one down from the tip, the point where the thumb joins the hand. The soreness actually caused a loss of function in my left hand: I could no longer use my thumb to hold things, so my left hand was mostly useless except for typing.

I noticed a bony bulge at the base of my thumb, at the knuckle. It looks like a blister or boil, but it is hard to the touch.

Could this be arthritis? Maybe. At the half-century mark, such things start to be expected. I've never had arthritis before, so I don't know what it feels like.

A more intriguing possibility hit me this afternoon. On Saturday I picked up the latest issue of the comic book serialization of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. A good deal of this issue is dedicated to Mr. Ibis's recounting of the story of a slave girl and her twin brother, instrumental respectively in bringing belief in the old gods of Africa to the New World, and in leading a slave rebellion that eventually led to the liberation of Haiti. As an aside, Mr. Ibis (a manifestation of the ancient Egyptian god Thoth) mentions the punishment one of the slave girl's children received for demonstrating the ability to read: one of his thumbs was cut off.

I thought about how terrible a punishment this would be, how difficult life would be without a thumb, particularly a slave's life of unrelenting hard labor. I wonder now if I let my imagination delve into this too much, and if my body decided to respond by letting me know how it might feel, and to see what life might be like without a functioning thumb.

As I began to write this, the pain in my left thumb was present but not overwhelming. As I wrote, the pain gradually subsided. Now, my left thumb feels almost completely normal and pain-free. So maybe this really was a psychosomatic pain, and writing about it exorcised it from my consciousness.

Vector

I mowed the lawn at my house across town the other day, and saw that the grapevines needed some attention: they were being smothered by assorted viny weeds. Today I had a bit of free time, so I stopped over there to rip out as much as I could. The vines didn't put up much resistance, though I had to be careful not to rip out the grapevines along with the weeds.

When I was done I stepped back to look at what I had done. I glanced down and noticed that my black sweatshirt was covered with tiny green balls, about three millimeters across. So were my jeans. And my boots. And my gloves. They seemed too small to be considered burrs, but I think that's essentially what they were. The weed vine had allowed me to rip it out, but in the process had hijacked my body to spread its seeds.

An unexpected journey (to a hospital)

I had to go to the hospital today after work. No, not for me, but to visit a friend who suddenly found herself there. She was in the ICU, so I had to sign in and out. I signed in at 5:32 and signed out at 6:33. I then spent the next seventeen minutes wandering the labyrinthine corridors and grounds of the hospital, trying to find my way back to the car. (It felt much longer, but I know it was 6:50 as I approached the car.)

At least I got a few hundred extra steps in today.

Car adventures (written June 12, 2017)

Note, May 28, 2018: For some reason this post was never published. It seems to be incomplete, but maybe I ended it where I wanted to. I see no reason not to publish it, since it contains an important bit of personal history.

The draft of this post was originally dated June 12, 2017.


My mom and I were rear-ended at an active crosswalk while on the way to the vet two weeks ago, on May 31, 2017. (I stopped at a flashing yellow crosswalk to let a woman with a stroller cross. The truck behind us was following too close and too fast and disd't stop all the way in time.) The car took damage to the trunk and bumper. One rear light was damaged, and the left quarter-panel was bent slightly. We were belted, so we were fine, though my mom though my mom had her arm inside the pet carrier and got some bruises.

(NOTE, May 28, 2018: She actually did sustain some shoulder and back trauma, for which she is still getting physical therapy. I didn't suffer any long-term physical effects, though I now have an aversion to stopping at yellow lights, flashing crosswalks, or for ladies pushing baby strollers - you never know what kind of idiot is behind you.)

I took the car to a body shop recommended by my brother last Wednesday, June 7. They said that if they took it in right away they could get started right away, but if I waited to bring it in until Monday (today) they didn't know how long it might take. I dropped the car off and called the car rental place that was recommended by my family (at my mom's insistence, really.) But rather than coming there with a car, as everyone assured me they would, they came and picked me up to take me to the rental site - which was mostly in boxes, since they were about to move into a new location. In fact, they didn't have many cars to choose from: a BMW X3 luxury crossover SUV, or nothing. I took the car, hoping insurance would cover it for the week or so the car would be in the shop.

(It is a fine car, I am sure, for someone who appreciates all it has to offer. Pushbutton start. Backup camera. Unfathomable console features. A radio so complex that the entry in the owner's manual says, unhelpfully, "See owner's manual.")

The next day, June 8, I got a call from the body shop: getting the parts and repairing the car would take eight days. Longer than I hoped, but acceptable; I wouldn't be paying too much out-of-pocket for the 20% of the rental, even if we hit the insurance company's maximum of $500.00. Fine, I said. OK, they said. The car would be ready June 20th.

I hung up the phone and thought wait what.

I called them back, Yes, that would be eight business days. Twelve calendar days. Twelve car rental days.

I called the car rental place and told them there was no way in hell I could afford a BMW X3 luxury crossover SUV through June 20th. Did they have anything...smaller? Yes, they told me, something smaller would be in that afternoon. Stop by around 5:00.

I stopped by that afternoon to find even more of the location in boxes. The manager waited on me personally. He inspected the BMW, and let me know that they did indeed have something smaller that afternoon. An Audi. It would be the same price, of course, but it was decidedly smaller.

I drove off in the BMW. My weekend was over, and a shift-change shortened three-day week was about to begin.

Today, Monday, June 12, is my first "Saturday" of my new schedule. I called the body shop this morning. Yes, the car was still on schedule to be finished by the 20th. I checked the rental agency website and verified that yes, they did have an economy car available. I called them and told them I wanted to swap out the car. They advised me to come in around 3:00.

Before I returned it I took a few photos of the BMW. I walked around the car, carefully shooting it from each angle. Finished, I put down my camera and fumbled in my pocket for the key fob.

As I was standing there on the sidewalk a white van pulled up to the stop sign on the nearby cross-street. It lingered there, despite an absence of traffic. After a few seconds the door on the side slid open slightly, and someone in the back compartment - young and male, by the timbre of the voice - shouted a hearty "FUCK YOU!" The door then shut and the van drove off.

The tale of the BMW X3

(NOTE, May 28, 2018: According to this post, recently discovered in my drafts, I picked up the BMW on June 7 and swapped it out on June 12.)

I've written before about how, while taking our cat Bowie to the vet's on May 31, 2017 to find out why she kept vomiting every time she ate (it was because of an abdominal tumor, part of the cancer that would kill her in seventeen days), my mom's car was rear-ended when we stopped for a woman pushing a baby stroller across a crosswalk with a flashing yellow light - and the guy in the SUV behind us didn't.

The car was damaged, but driveable. It took more than a week to arrange to have the damage repaired. We didn't know how long repairs would take, and my insurance would only cover a total rental of, I think, $500.00. I went to one of the few rental agencies in the area, and found that they were preparing to move into a new location. Their vehicle options were limited. Only one vehicle was available, really - a BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle®. (Yes, apparently that term is a registered trademark.)

It was a bit more car than I am used to, considering that I spent twenty years driving a 1996 Toyota Tercel. The official website refers to its "intuitive controls," but I beg to differ. The inch-thick owner's manual came with an inch-thick supplement to explain how to use the radio. It took me several minutes to figure out how to turn the damned thing off - the vehicle, that is, not the radio. It simultaneously felt too big and too small. My first impression was that it looked like an oversized VW Golf, but driving it felt like I was navigating a yacht.

I only had the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® for two full a few days before I was able to take it back to swap it for a less expensive vehicle, a stripped-down Chevrolet Aveo that made my old Tercel seem spacious by comparison. But during that brief time together, I managed to have one preposterous adventure.

The day after we were hit, June 1, a new paving project began on the street in front of our house, the street where I usually park the car. There was a chronically empty spot in front of the house across the street facing the front of our house (the one that recently lost the shingle that came through our front window.) I parked the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® there, which meant that I could view this extremely expensive rental vehicle from the front door of our house.

Now, please understand: I am a stranger to many technological innovations in cars. In part this is because I do not trust them - or, rather, I do expect many of the electronic features on the car to cease functioning within the reasonable life expectancy of a car. Why have an electronic control for a window when a crank works just as well? Why have a pushbutton start for the ignition when a key works just fine and is more secure? Why use a key fob to unlock the doors remotely, and sometimes inadvertently?

After a few days of driving the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle®, I was starting to get used to it. I had to make some peace with it, because I had tried to swap it for something smaller that day and could not. At the end of the day that day I parked the car across the street, dramatically used the key fob to lock it up as I was walking away, and then locked it again, just to be sure.

The next morning after I got up I looked out at the car. It was still there. It sure was a good-looking thing: glossy black paint job that was both dark and bright at the same time. Windows so clear they looked like they weren't even there. Why, I could see straight through the windows on the driver's side and the windows on the passenger's side like I was looking through plain air.

I didn't start work until a few hours later. Much of that time was spent tending to Bowie, giving her her medicine and syringes of food and water. About fifteen minutes before I had to be in work - it's a ten minute drive on a good day - I stepped out of the house, lunch bag and key fob in one hand, coffee thermos and jug of iced tea in the other. I had clapped my hat on my head before I walked out, but I left my coat in the house. It hadn't rained in days, and wasn't supposed to any time soon.

As I walked to the car, I was awfully glad it hadn't rained overnight. All of the windows were rolled down, and the sunroof was open.

How the hell did that happen? I thought. I don't have time for this crap. I started the car and rolled up the windows, and then began to fumble around looking for the controls for the sunroof as I drove. Nothing was intuitively obvious. A bunch of cryptic buttons were along the top edge of the windshield, the most obvious place for a sunroof control. This one didn't do anything, and this one didn't do anything, and this one...

Uh-oh. That one was marked "OnStar."

Within a few seconds I started to experience the consequences of my random button pushing. The headlights began to flash intermittently. The horn began to beep. An alarm screeched as I drove to work. 

"This is OnStar, how can I help you?" a voice asked from somewhere.

I explained, as frantically and pathetically as I could, what was going on, explaining that this was a rental vehicle and I had no idea how all the windows had gotten rolled down or how the sunroof had opened up or how to stop the alarms and I was just trying to get to work. The OnStar person had to put me on mute at least once, probably to let out screams of laughter at my predicament. Eventually they were able to explain how to close the sunroof. They also explained what had happened: I must have held the "lock" button on the key fob for an extended period, either when I was double-locking the car the evening before or possibly by pressing the button while it was in my pocket. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to create this functionality? Who would think that pressing and holding "lock" should cause all the windows to roll down and the sunroof to open?

The next day Eventually I was able to swap out the BMW X3 Sports Activity Vehicle® for a much less expensive, spacious, and and technologically sophisticated Chevrolet Aveo, with roll-up windows and a key for the doors and the ignition and no sunroof. It was quite a step down, but closer to what I was used to.

A few days later, on June 17, 2018, the repairs to my mom's car were complete - the same day Bowie died.

Saint Anthony and the Cat? Not quite...

At the front of the Nanticoke church formerly known as Holy Trinity, now the St. Faustina Main Site, there is a mysterious statue. It is small, about 2/3 life size, and rather simple in design. But it is not a single statue. It has a companion.

When I first noticed this statue a while back, I assumed it was St. Anthony of Padua, just on the basis of the tonsure and the soft, youthful face. But St. Anthony is usually depicted in a brown habit, holding a young (but usually not infant) Christ. And what was that at his feet?

...Seriously, what the hell is that thing? Based on its size and posture, I assumed it was a cat. St. Anthony doesn't have any connection to cats, though he did once preach to a lake full of fish when he decided he just wasn't getting through to humans. This is the sort of thing that might interest a cat greatly. But that face doesn't look like a cat. It looks more like...I dunno, a fox, or weasel, or even a dog? And what is that thing in its mouth? From a distance it looks like a lit cigar, but up close it looks like...a torch, maybe?

I searched for saints associated with cats. I found St. Phillip Neri, St. Gertrude of Nievelles, and even St. Martin de Porres, though his cat is usually depicted with a dog and a mouse, all eating from the same bowl. No cats, especially not cats with torches in their mouths.

There is, however, a saint associated with a dog with a torch in its mouth. From the entry for St. Dominic on Catholic Online:

According to one legend, his mother made a pilgrimage to an abbey at Silos. Legend says there were many signs of the great child she would bear. One of the most common legends says that during the pilgrimage, Joan had a dream of a dog leaping from her womb with a torch in its mouth. The animal "seemed to set the earth on fire." His parents named him Dominic a play on the words Domini canis, meaning the Lord's dog in Latin. 

St. Dominic founded the religious order of the Dominicans, also known as "God's dogs." From the Wikipedia entry "Dominican order" as retrieved on May 11, 2018:

In England and other countries the Dominican friars are referred to as "Black Friars" because of the black cappa or cloak they wear over their white habits.

This matches the outfit on the statue. The book, the tonsure, the rosary, and the dog with torch are all considered common attributes of St. Dominic. The missing ones are lilies, a staff, and a star on the forehead.

So, it seems this is not a depiction of St. Anthony and a cat at all, but rather one of St. Dominic and a dog.

The storm, one year later

A year ago we had one hell of a snowstorm. All I managed to post during it was a picture and a little text.

21 inches of snow on the front porch by noon on March 14, 2017. Snow was still coming down. Three hours later, when it seemed to have stopped, I measured it again at 22 inches.

We've had bad snowstorms before. The blizzard of 1993. The Valentine's Day 2007 storm, which dumped "lasagna" snow - alternating layers of dry snow, sleet, and wet snow. The March 2017 storm was bad, but manageable. Still very bad. This storm was mostly light, shovelable stuff, but an awful lot of it, with drifts of over three feet.I watched as the outside world was transformed into a "marshmallow world," with a soft, thick, flowing layer of snow covering every surface.

I worried about the feral cats outside. I hoped they had retreated to places of safety, but had not become trapped or buried alive. They did not show up on the porch at all that day to eat the food I had put out. That night, I resolved to fight my way out to the bird feeder, fill it with seed, and put out some suet cakes. With effort, I forced open the back porch door and faced down the smooth slope that had once been a flight of steps. I grasped the wrought iron railings, searched in the snow with my boot for the surface of the stone steps, and slowly made my way down to what I eventually decided was the ground level.

Drifting snow buried the back yard waist-high. I waded though the snow blindly, operating on a remembered map of the yard: here is a recycling container, here is a lawn chair, this is a rhododendron,  that lump is the bird feeder... The snow came up to the bottom of the bird feeder. I knocked it clean of snow, refilled it, and set the empty seed container down on the waist-high snow. I then hung the suet cake cage I had bought decades ago from the shepherd's crook that the bird feeder hung from.

Satisfied I had given the birds a fighting chance, I looked around the back yard. I could not have positively identified it as my house. Gentle, fluffy mounds occupied the places where familiar objects had been. Were the cats buried under those mounds?

I plowed my way back toward the steps, carrying the now-empty bird seed container. The snow-covered slope of the steps was much harder to navigate going up than it had been to come down. Eventually I hauled myself back onto the porch, set down the bird seed container, and looked sadly at the untouched water and food bowls.

I shook the snow off my clothes and opened the back door. Looking back one last time, I saw that Little Girl, a feral cat who has been with us since 2010, had followed me up the steps and was drinking from the water bowl.

********

My mom had an appointment the next day. I was either scheduled off or had taken the day off, I don't remember which. It was an important appointment, hard to get,not easy to reschedule. It turned out that the doctor's office was opened and seeing patients. Her appointment was not until the afternoon, so I had some time to clear the sidewalks and dig out the car - all by hand.

Shoveling the snow took strategy. Shave off the top twelve inches, toss aside. Shave off the next twelve and toss somewhere else. Dig down to the sidewalk layer and clear. Take one step forward. Repeat.

I wasn't doing it alone. My brother and nephews stopped by to clear out the car and help with the sidewalks. We also shoveled the side street and dug out the fire hydrant. It was a lot of work, but we got the job done.

Shortly after we finished, I escorted my mom down to the car. She needs a cane to help her walk, especially when the sidewalks are covered with snow. As we made our way to the car, we looked at the walls of snow piled on either side of the sidewalk. The one on the tree lawn was pretty impressive. It was braced by the snow piled up on the side of the road, pushed there by snow plows. But the sidewalk was clear, and my mom could walk to the car and get to her appointment.

When we came back from the appointment, the sidewalk was buried.

This is what my mom had to walk over. It was worse before I dug at it. It was much better before it was buried.

So the plan was, I would drop my mom off at the bottom of the sidewalk, and she would begin to make her way up as I parked the car. That would have been at a spot next to the utility pole in this picture. The sidewalk had been shoveled clean before we left. But while we were at her appointment, a snowplow had helpfully come by and scraped the snow off the street, all the way to the curb - so close that it actually broke a chunk off the curb near the handicapped access ramp that the city installed on the corners of every block a few weeks ago. The snowplow pushed all the snow that had been piled on the tree lawn onto the sidewalk, re-burying it and making it nearly impossible for my mom to get back into her own house. (Incidentally, they also buried the fire hydrant under several feet of snow.)

I picked up some of the bigger blocks of snow and hurled them into the street like an enraged caveman. I remembered the shovel I had put in the car to deal with any emergencies. I took it out and began to shovel. I cleared enough of a path for my mother to get back into the house. I then continued to re-shovel the sidewalks I had just shoveled, getting angrier and angrier with each passing second. Finally my anger got the better of me. I carried the shovel into the house with me, grabbed a phone, and called the city. 

Note the collapsed snow and the path I had cleared for my mother. The snow at the bottom of the sidewalk was so densely packed that I dug an alternate path across the lawn and around the utility pole.

I gave them an earful. Told them about what my elderly mother had just had to deal with. Told them about the buried fire hydrant. Told them that whatever contractor had been hired to plow the roads had better get their ass out here to undo the mess they'd made.

And they did.

I can be very persuasive when I'm angry.

********

The snow melted, eventually. Sometimes I still can't believe that it did, but it did. I think it took about two weeks. When the snow was finally all melted, we were hit with a heavy rainstorm that caused my basement to flood.

But that's another story.