Christmas snow?
I wish the snow would last until Christmas. Don't think it will though, it's supposed to warm up today and tomorrow.
Ann Arbor
Yesterday, Inge and I went to Ann Arbor for our annual winter jaunt. It's an hour from my house by car.Don and I had just watched Thursday on the national news that Ann Arbor is the first U.S. city to use all LED lights in the traffic lights, street lights and walkway lights. You can read about LED technology here. The mayor of Ann Arbor said these new lights are like taking 400 cars off the road, that's how much energy they save. They "burn" cold, not hot.
But seeing the LED lights was not the primary reason Inge and I made the drive. It was time to visit our favorite bookstore, Crazy Wisdom, and browse around Ann Arbor.
We pulled books off the shelves and ransacked them.
We looked longingly at other merchandise in the bookstore, all so alluring.
We drank coffee and ate scones.
After the bookstore we wandered into shops, like 10,000 Villages, a fair trade store that's gotten too expensive. I wonder how much of a cut the craftspeople receive.
'Kindness does not go rotten.'
We ended the day at the Common Grill in Chelsea, where we had a delicious meal and exchanged Christmas gifts.
I ate shrimp and lobster on linguine in red pepper sauce. Inge ate veggie wraps. We toasted our friendship with our glasses of wine, mine red, hers white.
I am grateful for my dear friend and how she grows more precious to me as the days, months and years go by.
random
Please do not ask me why I am posting this photo. I don't have an answer for you. It was taken in the summer, it's not summer now. I don't even know which summer! 2007, I think.
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All I know is, I was browsing my photo files, and this Appaloosa (?) horse spoke to me, right out of the computer. She said, "hello there, dear woman. I remember you."
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Maybe she will speak to you today, too.
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Believe it or not, I have never ridden a horse. I did ride a mule in Turkey once.
poem
Advising the student who came back from Iraq in autumn
I asked him
What did I ask him?
Did I ask if he’s OK?
If “it’s” OK.
Are “things” OK?
He’d started college
before the tour, and now he said
he wondered if he’d be too dumb
for it, coming back.
My god I just go home, and I see maple leaves
scattered, covering the green
completely. And that is my life
going from here
to there,
seeing things to be gathered up
and reassembled
only to be scattered again.
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Ruth Mowry
I asked him
What did I ask him?
Did I ask if he’s OK?
If “it’s” OK.
Are “things” OK?
He’d started college
before the tour, and now he said
he wondered if he’d be too dumb
for it, coming back.
My god I just go home, and I see maple leaves
scattered, covering the green
completely. And that is my life
going from here
to there,
seeing things to be gathered up
and reassembled
only to be scattered again.
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Ruth Mowry
October 2007
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War, of all things
With 30,000 books on Vietnam, why write another? Tom Bissell, born in Escanaba, Michigan, after America’s involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973, says about his 2007 memoir The Father of All Things:
“I bring to the Vietnam War only this: I have spent most of my life thinking about it.”
His father served along with 3 million other Americans in Vietnam and saw combat along with 800,000 of them.
Some years ago Tom and his father John traveled to Vietnam together, and Tom wrote a magazine article about it, not realizing at the time it would develop into an obsession and a book. Tom’s father was deeply troubled after his Vietnam experience, which affected his struggling marriage and the raising of his boys. The trip to Vietnam drew Tom into a consuming exploration of the country, the war, and his own feelings about having a father who served there.
The flyleaf says:
. . . he “explores the many debates about the war, from whether it was winnable to Ho Chi Minh’s motivations to why American leaders lie so often. Above all, he shows how the war has continued to influence American views on foreign policy more than 30 years later.”
He wanted to interweave his emotional experience with the historical facts. He didn’t intend to write about “war’s endless legacy,” but it ended up being inevitable that he did so.
This is Tom’s fourth book, you can read the NYTimes book review here, and I posted about it in March. Back in 1993 I took ENG 453 Contemporary American Poetry with Tom, and our instructor was Professor Diane Wakoski, who became my poet mentor and has remained good friends with Tom. The three of us will have lunch together Monday, along with a couple of students and a fiction writing professor.
My department invited Tom to come back for a visit to talk with current English students about his life in writing. I get to truck him around campus Monday and Tuesday to meet with folks.
In the Introduction, Tom writes:
“War is a force of influence above all else—the most purely distilled form of partisanship ever devised. Yet war’s energies and dark matter are too complicated to allow anyone the certain physics of right and wrong. When war begins, leaders inevitably frown as they promise courage and bravery, guarantee tragic sacrifice, yet vow, all the same, to see it through. What any war’s igniters rarely admit are the small, terrible truths that have held firm for every war ever fought, no matter how necessary or avoidable: This will be horrible, and whatever happens will scar us for decades to come. Indeed, even necessary wars can destroy the trust of people in their leaders, just as war destroys human beings on both sides of the rifle.
War is appetitive. It devours goodwill, landscape, cultures, mothers, and fathers—before finally forcing us, the orphans, to pick up the pieces. These pages are, I hope, a few such pieces.”
the patient
Before surgery:
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After surgery, below, the Patient is hooked up to his cold water pump that circulates in the pad on his shoulder for 4 days. And you can see his nifty black sling with a support. He got to bring them both home.
The Patient is comfortably watching MSU basketball as I write. The pain block is still in his system. He'll take Vicadin before "bed" to help when the block wears off.
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"Bed" will be a recliner chair, most comfortable apparently for rotator cuff patients.
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The surgery was fine, the doctor told me she repaired the rotator cuff beautifully, and she also found a bicep tendon that needed help. So she cut it! He has two on that bone after all! Who needs two? No, really, I trust her.
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You see I am not showing many pictures of the Patient. That's because I waited four hours in the waiting room.
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I slept.
I read.
I talked with a very funny bus driver waiting for his wife.
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I drank coffee.
I watched CNN.
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And I took pictures.
"Sıkıldım," we say in Turkish, which means a combination of boredom and anxiousness. "I was restlessly bored." I wanted to know how things were going.
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After surgery, below, the Patient is hooked up to his cold water pump that circulates in the pad on his shoulder for 4 days. And you can see his nifty black sling with a support. He got to bring them both home.
The Patient is comfortably watching MSU basketball as I write. The pain block is still in his system. He'll take Vicadin before "bed" to help when the block wears off.-
"Bed" will be a recliner chair, most comfortable apparently for rotator cuff patients.
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The surgery was fine, the doctor told me she repaired the rotator cuff beautifully, and she also found a bicep tendon that needed help. So she cut it! He has two on that bone after all! Who needs two? No, really, I trust her.
-
You see I am not showing many pictures of the Patient. That's because I waited four hours in the waiting room.
-
I slept.
I read.
I talked with a very funny bus driver waiting for his wife.
-
I drank coffee.
I watched CNN.
-
And I took pictures.
"Sıkıldım," we say in Turkish, which means a combination of boredom and anxiousness. "I was restlessly bored." I wanted to know how things were going.
Happily, the first stage of the ordeal is over and successful. Now on to the rest of the story.
Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for your wellness wishes for the Patient! We were, and are, touched and encouraged by that.
torn rotator cuff
Today Don is having torn rotator cuff surgery.
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In August the rotator cuff on his right shoulder tore when he caught a ball while pitching for his kickball team.
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The rotator cuff is a group of muscles and tendons that keep the arm in its ball and socket. These tendons keep the shoulder muscles attached to the shoulder and arm bones. Don's rotator cuff tore from the shoulder bone, so the surgeon will reattach it with suture anchors (think staples).
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He won't spend the night, it's outpatient surgery. But recovery for rotator cuff surgery is long and painful, partly because there is not a lot of blood flow in tendons. He will have to endure 5 months of rehab.
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The surgeon will also remove a bone spur on his shoulder, and she'll look for any bursa that might be lurking.
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