Fragile Industries

OMG, I AM a gay man (Now my blog is not PG)

There is no secret that I have a Daniel Craig Fetish.  Now I know I'm not alone:

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/news/article_1389537.php/Gay_fantasy_Daniel_Craig

This is why. Do Netflix "Love Is The Devil."  If it is late in arriving, it's because I have stolen the DVD.

Copenhagen

I've just watched the PBS version of Michael Frayn's play Copenhagen.  It recounts a version -- actually multiple versions -- of a historical collision between two particles in 1941.  The particles, two men, the two key physicists of their generations, had already forever altered the known universe, with the accent on "known."

Niels Bohr (Steven Rea), a Danish theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner, worked together in 1920's Copenhagen with Werner Heisenberg (Daniel Craig), a younger German physicist with a more mathematical bent, shortly after Einstein's relativity theory had shattered human concepts of fixed reality by demonstrating that it all rather depended on where one was standing.  In the wake of that revelation, Bohr and Heisenberg bounced theories and ideas on one another, arguing passionately for several years, yet developing a close father-son relationship at the highest levels of their rarefied field.  Together, they developed the earliest forms of quantum mechanics, Bohr's brilliant but more general theories shaped by Heisenberg's meticulous mathematics.  Another theory developed, in Heisenberg's mind, to critical mass in the late 1920's: his famous Uncertainty Principle.  The shorthand description of the Principle (now, all you many physicists among my Devoted Readers, I won't get this perfectly, but it's the best I can do with my extremely limited grasp)  is that an atomic particle cannot be observed without changing that particle.  It takes a collision of two particles -- a photon striking an electron, the electron hitting another particle in the cloud chamber and leaving a trail, to reveal where the electron was.  That collision will alter the course of both particles.  We cannot know the fundamental location and qualities of matter without altering it.  Heisenberg humbled the very field he served by demonstrating its limitations.  And the limitations of what we know about anything.

Heisenberg returned to Germany amid great acclaim, eventually winning his own Nobel Prize.  Then with the rise of Nazi power, he was at the outset of the war secretly appointed to head the Nazi research into atomic power.  By 1941, Denmark was occupied by Germany, its citizens, including Bohr, a Jew, fearing eventual crackdown and deportation.  At some risk and difficulty, Heisenberg returned to Copenhagen to meet with Bohr in September 1941.  They went for a walk to talk privately.  Bohr returned home suddenly, furious, and never spoke to his protege again.  No one knows what was said during that conversation.  Great speculation existed that Heisenberg was trying to determine from Bohr, who remained in touch with Allied scientists, whether Britain or America had a nuclear program.  Heisenberg's later descriptions of the meeting were rather unclear, but his main point was that he wanted Bohr to know that the Germans had such a program, that he, Heisenberg, was at its helm, and that as the two key scientists in the field, they had an obligation to slow down the process on both sides so that a nuclear bomb could not be made for use in combat.  However, there was almost certainly an element of Oedipal bragging, of the son showing the father his greater power. Heisenberg could not have been authorized to reveal the German atomic secrets, and probably would have been executed if it was known that he had done so.  Bohr never publicly told his version of the meeting.

In the event, Heisenberg proceeded slowly but steadily for the Nazis, building a reactor to produce the necessary plutonium.  The fine points of the bomb itself were never realized by the Nazis before they were defeated.  Heisenberg was denounced as a Nazi stooge and spy and was isolated from the scientific world thereafter.  In 1943, Bohr escaped Denmark and went to work on the Manhattan Project.  At Los Alamos, he contributed the theory (again, he was a big idea guy, but not into fine tuning) that developed into the trigger for the bomb.

The play Copenhagen tries to answer the question of what happened between the two men that night.

Whew.  That's a lot of exposition, and it nearly derails the first half of the play.  But if you bear with it, all these collisions, all the uncertainty, all the moral questions start repeating and reflecting and as one nucleus explodes, other ideas and shifting realities trigger more and more until there is a critical mass of understanding. Like the theories the men worked on, they go over and over the events of the evening, getting closer and closer to the truth. The play, as is fitting, raises more questions than it answers.  If there is one overarching message out of all the glittering particles of this demanding work, it would come back to the Uncertainty Principle.  Freyn in the Epilogue to the DVD says his point was to show how unknowable our own positions and reasons and plans and purposes can be to ourselves, until we collide with another person, and then that person's reactions and trajectory tells us about ourselves, at least who we used to be.  I also felt, and this was never stated explicitly, but it follows as a corollary, that our own moral compass or path is unknown to us until we are deflected.  We know ourselves best when we have erred, when we have strayed. 

After the collision in Copenhagen, 1941, both men strayed.  Bohr, the moral absolutist, ended up actually being part of the creation of the worst weapon known to man.  And yet everyone who ever knew him said he was a kindly father-confessor, deeply caring.  Heisenberg, reviled as a Nazi collaborationist, a man who had compromised his highest principles for the safety and security of a life in his homeland, was by no means a freedom fighter, part of the Resistance, there was no Schindler's list for him. Heisenberg produced just enough progress to keep the Nazis on the slow track. They were, by the time of Germany's defeat, very very close. For some reason, he never performed a certain calculation necessary to the creation of the bomb, a calculation so basic that afterward other physicists were mystified.  He may not have known, himself, why he failed.

Whether Freyn's play accurately recounts actual events (and he makes no claim that it does), it is a brilliant puzzle, a moral and psychological conundrum of what we can and cannot know.

P.S. I confess I rented this just because I have a Daniel Craig fetish.

More Fun With The Collyer Brothers, With Mixed Metaphors

I seem to have hit a popular nerve.

From time to time, I've posted about my clutter tendencies, also known as My War On Stuff.  This war is Iraq and Vietnam combined, in terms of the chances for outright victory.  The only longer and more fruitless war in human history is the aptly-named Hundred Years War between France and England of the 14th through 15th Centuries, though the War On Stuff is beginning to take on those dimensions.  The War on Stuff is best summed up in the words of Animal House:

"Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."  "And we're just the guys to do it!"

End of War metaphor, beginning of Dog metaphor.

Most recently, I discussed the salutary effects on my moribund organizational skills of playing a computer game.  It's of a genre I've since discovered is called "Time Management" games.  I knew I was lousy at that too, but who knew the inabilities were related?  Anyway, the Pavlovian exercises have marginally retrained my mental dog.  I don't yet salivate over the prospect of creating order out of chaos, but I'm at least less paralyzed. 

I've noticed that these Collyer Brothers clutter posts get about a bazillion hits a day.  And comments, frequently anonymous, are left.

A Devoted Yet Anonymous Reader left this comment.   If you're too lazy to click, basically, she asks for advice for dealing with clutter while pregnant and exhausted.  My advice.

.... long pause for hysterical laughter ....

But here goes:

Poor J, I completely feel your pain.  Except I am not now and never have been pregnant.  I can only imagine adding a hormonal component to the apathy, though that's not the right word, nor is ennui, but mix those up and add a dash of frustration and a heaping cup of anxiety, and it's close. 

Your request for advice is endearing and ironic.  The idea of me leading seminars on An Organized Life, well, it's enough to make a cat laugh.  I can tell you what has worked for me so far. 

The key here is you are not fighting clutter, you're fighting your brain.  And you have to re-wire your brain, like retraining a mistreated dog.  You do this by misdirection, distraction, rewards.  You re-frame the entire concept of cleaning and organization into a game, if you even let yourself know you're doing it at all.  Lull that whimpering dog into a false sense of contentment.

First, really, give a Time Management computer game a try.  Seems counterintuitive, I know, if you had time or energy, you'd organize, not play some stupid game, right?  But you're asking a frightened, beaten dog to be Lassie and pull Timmy from the well.  Let the dog go play with a tennis ball for a while (yes, I'll keep using this metaphor beyond the point of reason) and smell some fire hydrants before you ask it to be a hero.

Then set up a trial run.  But don't let yourself know it.

I think your idea of having friends come and distract you is excellent.  Doing it alone is part of the Giant Stumbling Block, in my experience, because there's no escaping the fact that you are confronting what scares you, alone and unarmed.  If no one is available, I've found that if I put on a favorite CD, one both soothing and energizing, and promise myself I can quit when the music does, I have a little more motivation. Do you do creative work to music?  Pick the same music for your clutter soundtrack.

Then decide on an infitessimally small part of the overall tower of STUFF for your first trick.  Do not listen to the voice in your head that says, "Holy crap, Batman, look at ALL this mess!  It'll NEVER get done!"  That way lies madness and death.  Tell that voice, "Never mind, at least the books scattered throughout the living room (or whatever you decide to do) are going to be gathered in one place."  Don't be ambitious, pick the tiniest, most manageable job you can think of, a laughably easy task -- you're almost ashamed to call it organizing at all.   And it should not involve decisions, at this stage.  The decision is already made: all books are going in a pile.  (Oh, and don't let yourself believe that the book could stay there as decor. You can decorate later.  ALL BOOKS go in a pile.)  If a friend is over, don't even tell them this is part of the organizing.  Just roam around as you chat and you won't even notice you're doing it.

Before I start the tiny task, I mentally do three related things.  First, I consciously tell my perfectionism to take a hike.  That's another huge part of The Stumbling Block.  Tell yourself ANYTHING you do, any movement of object A to point B, is cause for celebration.  It doesn't have to be done perfectly, a half-assed effort has more ass than nothing at all.

Secondly, I tell myself that it may look worse before it looks better.  But there will be one thing, that tiny task, I can look at that shows progress.  Which brings me to the last.  

Finally, I put on blinders and tell myself that the only thing I'm dealing with now is _________ (fill in the blank for the small segment you've selected of the overall task).   I just sail through it on auto-pilot singing along with the CD, pretending this one thing is the only disorder in the house, the universe. If I find my tension level rising, I ask myself if I'm trying to exceed the task, make more decisions -- and almost always, that's the problem.   When all those scattered books are now stacked next to the bookshelf (or whatever), STOP.  And go eat a Mars bar, have a bubble bath, throw your dog brain a biscuit, thinking about that nice pile of books.  If your friend is understanding, you may now shyly announce your victory.

Tomorrow, you'll not be so afraid.  Put on that pleasant CD again, and put the books in the shelves.  Wherever there's room, don't try to overhaul your shelves now.  On the shelf is better than on the floor.  If you're feeling Very Brave, have a box for give aways.  Make as many decisions ahead of time as you can -- say, all paperbacks you've already read are going in the box.  That way you're not standing there with a book in your hand reduced to tears by having to make decisions as you go.  That just adds to the negative dog brain.  Have a default decision -- if you hit the least bit of mental resistance, put the book on the shelf, for example, you can sort shelves later.  Carry the box, no matter how few the contents, to the garage, or wherever you're stacking giveaways. You don't have to decide which charity or friend is going to get them now, either.  Stop there.  Sit with a lemonade (obviously, a glass of wine is out of the question, you're drinking for two) and picture that pile that is now Out Of Your Life. 

And so on.  It sounds like measuring life in coffee spoons.  It sounds like it will never get done.  Keep repeating your mantras: screw perfectionism, I did one thing, and that's all I have to do for my reward.  And face it, it never does ALL get done.  I'm never going to stand on the flight deck with a "Mission Accomplished" banner.  (Uh oh, there's another war metaphor.  Sorry.)  But it gets easier, the piles become smaller, larger tasks become less scary, and you get braver and braver.  And more self-forgiving, because you have more on the "done" side of the scales than you did when you started. 

And thus endeth the lesson.

How'm I doing?  Well, I'm a lot more relaxed, and I'm actually to the point that I can find most of my art supplies, and have FINISHED a long-overdue gift.  Tomorrow, it's going in the mail.  And I'll get oodles of doggy biscuits in return when the recipient thanks me.  It's not done.  There are still boxes in the garage.  My shelves, while full, are not in alphabetical or subject matter order, but I can't afford to think about it.  It's better.  Good dog.

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Introducing: Friday Opera Corner

And now, a new, semi-regular, half-baked, mostly humorous feature for FI Devoted Readers:

FRIDAY OPERA CORNER

Do you want to be an Opera Snob like me, but don't have the money for the tickets and fancy dresses?  Don't own a tuxedo?  Most of all, you can't stay awake through the overture, much less 4 agonizing hours waiting for the soprano to die?  Learn the classics the EZ Way, without the fuss, muss, and heartbreak of an aching butt!

Each week, I will bring you an Unbreakable Opera Rule, a cute factoid to drop into conversation that will earn you the appreciative smiles of other Opera Snobs.  This week, courtesy of Bill B, this observation:

Carmen is the only decent opera by Bizet.

Now, I'll show you how to use it:

"He's such a fool.  After he saw Carmen, he ran out and bought all the other Bizet operas!" (pause for laughter)

"I saw a new title in the catalogue, "Bizet's Great Operas!"  (pause for queries, raised eybrows) "It only had one disc!"

... and so on.  No, it's not funny to you and me, but Opera Snobs don't get a lot of humor, so they'll eat this stuff up.  Trust me, it's funnier than watching 300 pounds of singer take 348 minutes to die, singing lustily the entire time.

Finally, I offer an entertaining opera clip, which you can watch from the comfort of your own home, while wearing whatever you want (or not wearing what you don't want).  Feel free to get up and move, cough, sing along, or rustle noisy food wrappers -- because any one of these actions during a live performance would garner Glares Of Death from stuffy Opera House patrons.

Without Further Ado: Victor Borge, A Mozart Opera.  A classic bit from a loveable musical teacher.  This will introduce you to the primary operatic traditions.  When I get the bugs out of my blog/youtube interface, I can bring it to you directly.  I've spent 90 minutes trying to figure it out and the hell with it.  You'll just have to click the link below.  It's not like it costs you anything, unlike a Real Opera Experience.  Oh, and this clip is in English, unlike most operas, yet is subtitled in Danish for no discernible reason.  No one knows but Mozart, and he's dead.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KZ4ZNbiO15M

 

 

The Dreaded Apostrophe, Part II

Some time ago I wrote about a pet peeve, the misuse of apostrophes.  (Not apostrophe's, damn it.)  Anyone who has ever tried to write three or more coherent sequential sentences -- or even a menu -- has run afoul of the convoluted rules of apostrophe use.  With any luck, our gaffes occurred when we were young and malleable enough to learn better, and someone with better sense whacked our errant knuckles with a ruler to teach us those convoluted but golden rules.  People who can operate a keyboard, a tape dispenser, heavy machinery, even a curling iron, have no excuse -- proper apostrophe use is no more difficult.  I suppose my hostility stems from my own lifelong desire to respect this punctuation form and do my best.  I still slip up from time to time, but I want my Devoted Readers to know that though I am human and prone to err, I want to do right.  When I read copy from really smart people who routinely garble "its", it's" and its'", I know they've simply sold their soul to The Dark Side and given up.  It makes my teeth itch.

The news here is there are people even more passionate about this than I, the crusaders and beneficent protectors of the apostrophe.  Bless their souls.  You can find their rallying cries and clear explanations of The True Apostrophe Faith here:

The Apostrophe Protection Society

Punctuation and Spelling Police Department -- Apostrophe Squad

The first is British, sets out the rules wonderfully, and has some appalling examples in their Hall of Shame.

The second is USA, so of course it's (not its) just selling a T-shirt, but a nice T-shirt.

Don't get me started on "quotation marks."

The Woman Who Mistook Her Brain For A Dog

Lazarus walks -- I'm yet again clearing out the Return Of The Collyer Brothers around the house, particularly in my studio.  When it’s tamed in there, I may unearth all the constituent parts of several projects languishing since March and finish them.  Two art books, one altered book, and the long-awaited vintage family album of photos taken between the Civil War and 1900.  This result is the happy outcome of some brain science I've been reading about.  The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge describes the revolutionary advances in the field of neuroplasticity. It's a great follow-up to all the Oliver Sacks books about "funny brains" I've gobbled since the first of the year.

Basically, neuroplasticity is how the brain can and does physically wire and re-wire itself, adapting to brain injury, using unused territory, making new and breaking old connections.  Old school neurology thought that various skills were locked into specific sites, and while the normal brain has its preferences, its physiology is sufficiently plastic, i.e. changeable, to adapt. Electrical activity in the neurons and its chemical environment work symbiotically.  Brain chemistry reinforces bad or good neuronal associations, from fetishes and addictions to stoic strengths.  We all sorta knew this instinctively, but brain scans and other recent advances in mapping show just how dramatically this theory plays out. The useful part is knowing how to train or re-train brains, impaired or otherwise.  Unwittingly, I've served as my own lab rat, or lab dog, as it were, over the last few years.

For me, 2003-2004 were such emotionally ghastly years that it bent my brain, more than it was already bent, which was considerably.  In the midst of the worst psychic pain of my life, I was committed to tasks that all involved organization, planning, creating (or trying to create) order out of chaos: house remodeling with limited funds, sorting and packing acres of possessions for three separate moves, the logistics of divorce and selling a house, etc.  I also embarked obsessively on physical self-improvement.  It just so happened that the accompanying brain chemistry and emotions were agonizing, so the payoff was more misery for completing these tasks.  (If they ever got finished ... I'm still cleaning up messes from 5 years ago.)  In effect, I was giving myself a mental training consisting of "good dog, here’s your whipping, and NO biscuit."  Like that beaten dog, my badly trained brain then whimpered and trembled when presented with any similar job -- whether actual physical clutter, attending to my diet and exercise, more abstract business or financial organization, or bringing any, ANY, plan to completion.  I thought that my mental abilities for these things, marginal at best, had become permanently lost, like speech for a stroke victim.

Well, neuroplasticity studies have shown hope for mistreated dogs and aphasiatics. "Neurons that fire together wire together," even damaged ones, and improvement can appear with astonishing rapidity when specially designed exercises are given to autistics, ADD's, OCD's, and brain injury patients, especially via computer.  I found a curative exercise in the unlikely and unexpected form of a computer game.  I normally avoid them, but I played "Hell's Kitchen" once and LURVED it so much that I bought it and played for 30-60 minutes every day for the past couple of weeks.  The game is idiotic on the surface.  It's based on the cooking reality show, where contestants run a restaurant under a tyrannical chef and brutal time constraints -- juggling customers, cooking, prioritizing service and preparation tasks.  The game didn't teach me knife skills or recipes, but as I got good at it, I was training, with positive rewards for completion, my ability to break down chaos into manageable tasks in an orderly fashion.  I found I had better mental energy all day if I played the game for about half an hour first thing in the morning.

 Within a week, I was able to start clearing clutter for short periods without panic attacks, and handled other small but long delayed jobs that formerly left me bedridden just to contemplate.  I made the connection between game and increased functionality only a couple of days ago, and it's undeniable.  Compared to less bent brains, I'm barely crawling, but I continue to improve and feel at no risk of overtraining and ending up as anal as Martha Stewart.  I plan to treat my beaten dog of a brain better in the future -- "Good dog, THREE biscuits!"

What confounds me, now that I’ve experienced a full cycle of neuroplasticity in action, is how some people facing even more agonizing psychic and work/life demands do not end up crippled.  I have a friend who endured two solid years of unimaginable emotional wreckage and adversity, yet she soldiers on, a little shaky, but intact.  I started with less skill and worse brain chemistry, I know, and maybe her coping abilities were just too hard-wired to break.  In other words, her dog could survive without biscuits for a while.  A close relation also had a full-life catastrophic meltdown, and very publicly, to boot.  I’m sure he has private scars, but he’s still in the game. Some folks have neuronal wiring as resilient under stress as a pit bull; fortunately, these friends are much less likely to bite.  

How’s your dog doing these days? Sit, Ubu, sit.

PS: It's amazing how many hits my blog gets through Google searches for "Collyer Brothers."  Occasionally, someone leaves an anguished comment about the effects of compulsive cluttering and hoarding.  There's not much out there to read -- it's a hidden illness by its nature until exposed by a dramatic denoument, as with the Collyer Brothers.  My version is mild and the improvement merely anecdotal, but suggestive.  Perhaps more serious cases could benefit from similar neural calisthenics.  If a neuroplasticity researcher stumbles across this account, I urge this for your next grant application.  It could be an interesting study.

Happy Birthday, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The first working laser was demonstrated on May 16, 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories."

There was major scientific ferment in my childhood about lasers.  Lots of it at Bell Labs, which engaged in a prolonged patent fight over the focused light beam.  Of course there was lots of nerd energy expended before and after on its demonstration and application.  Wiki "laser" and you can read it all.  For some reason, I was fascinated by lasers as a kid.  I remember watching "Goldfinger" and wincing as James Bond nearly lost his dangly bits to the latest ray gun, a laser.  Details here.  Maybe that was the first time it popped into my consciousness.  Maybe I had heard of it before.  But somewhere in the early-mid-60's, the science of light was big on my baby-nerd radar screen.

Some of the first lasers were dependent on crystal amplification with a ruby.  Ruby is my birth stone.  I had a Junior Rock Hound Kit at home -- I don't know what the educational purpose was, but there were samples of feldspar and quartz and jasper and so on, each neatly contained in its own precisely labeled square on a cardboard grid.  There was a sample of some stone with tiny, non-gem quality ruby inclusions.  That might have captured my attention.  I remember holding up the ruby to sunlight and standing back warily.  Or maybe it was the advance-placement geek-certified science summer school class before 5th grade taught by a Bell Labs nerd.  We both wore coke-bottle thick glasses, he had a crew cut and the first pocket protector I'd ever seen -- I immediately wanted one.  There I first saw fiber optics (this was maybe 1965) -- wow, those little plastic fibers glowed in the dark.  Cool.  I asked him why a succession of mirrors couldn't work to save light forever.  He glowed with pleasure at his superiority, then explained why not.  Turns out mirrors are terribly inefficient, and the speed of light is too fast.  So much for my ideas on secret weapons.  But mirrors were key to laser technology, and he complimented my grasp of the subject.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Then he treated us, in the elementary school auditorium, to a boffo showcase of the latest Bell Labs neat stuff.  First he demonstrated a -- hold on to your hats -- push button phone.  He challenged poor little Susan Campell to a race.  He gave her the phone we all knew and had at home.  (We didn't have a cell in our backpacks.  This was the dark ages, kiddies.  We were still waiting for our wrist-radio like Dick Tracy.)  In case you weren't born yet, our phone looked like this:

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The Bell guy had buttons.  Poor Susan had to dial while he pushed buttons.  Fixed race.  Of course he won.  I'm sitting there thinking, "Brave new world, saving 30 seconds on phoning home.  Big woop.  He beat a 10-year-old kid.  This is a totally useless invention."

But then he brought out the big guns, literally.  He had an actual laser in his bag of tricks.  He set up a device the size of a sewing machine.  We all shifted uneasily in our seats.  This madman could blow us all up.  That thing for sure would suck the oxygen out of the air, burn down the school, hey, maybe that isn't such a bad idea.  He actually proposed to fire it at the wall.  I waited for Armageddon to let loose, a mushroom cloud over R.D. White Elementary.  With many wizardly flourishes, he fiddled with the controls and pressed buttons and we heard a mild "whoomp."  Right below the school clock a 2-inch diameter pale patch appeared, all the dust and muck of the ages was blown off the institutional green.  We all "ooooohed" appreciatively.  Every school assembly thereafter, my eyes were drawn to that patch.  It faded, new dust and muck adhering over time, but I could still see it years later.

OK, so I didn't grow up to be a scientist, I never developed any application for my fascination, this isn't one of those magic turning point stories.  But still.  At about the same age, I used to quiz my mother's mother (born in 1892) about her encounters with new technologies.  She told me about the first time she saw an automobile, about her first movie (and then she went on to be a silent film actress), and how scared she had been of technological marvels I accepted so casually.

By 1969, lasers were first being used medically.  My aunt, who came to live with our family due to failing health from life-long diabetes, had the broken blood vessels in her eyes experimentally treated with a laser at UCLA.  I expected her to come home with gory dead eye sockets like "Night Of The Living Dead."  Instead, her vision improved marginally for a while.  Ooooooh.  It was still early days.

Now, of course, we all have many lasers in our homes, in DVD and CD players and lots else.  A few years ago, I gave away my coke-bottle glasses after Lasik surgery.  I should have done it years ago.  I had little skin cancers and age spots blown off last year by laser at my dermatologist's office. Lasers are now tame helpers, not the herald of the End of Days.

I don't really have a point here, it's not one of those stories.  I just wanted to mark the 48th birthday of something that was as memorable as my granny's first automobile.  Oooooh.  Brave new world.

Tending My Knitting

Home again, home again, jiggity jog.

As tacky as it is to admit, Vegas was the PERFECT anodyne to all that ailed me.  I billed my trip as "The No Compromise Tour."  I invented a fictional persona and inhabited it for the entire time.  I denied myself nothing.  I had one of the All-Time-Greatest-Meals of my life at Bouchon, Thomas "French Laundry" Keller's bistro at the Venetian.  I lucked into a lavish room at Planet Hollywood.  The bathroom was bigger than my first apartment, literally, and I looked over the Bellagio fountains.  I was alone when, and as much as, I wanted to be, which was most of the time, and the remainder of the time, I flirted shamelessly and -- even better -- got flirted back.  Saw great shows -- Penn and Teller are certifiable, and very entertaining.  I spent 4 hours the first day at the Planet Hollywood spa, three hours the next at Caesar's, and it really did unlock the chi.  Crashed a private nightclub, the lead singer handed me the tambourine and I busted a few spastic white-girl moves on the floor.  I probably danced like Elaine on "Seinfeld", but I felt like, uh, whoever is the cool girl pop tart of the moment.  Pretty much remembered the night before in the morning, so no shame, no regrets.  I'm just on the cusp of being too old for Vegas, and this was the perfect swan song.

When I got home, Mom was alive and well-cared for in my absence, and she remarked on my glowing skin.  "Something tells me that isn't all due to glycolic peels," she said meaningfully, wagging her eyebrows.  I would have wagged them back, but Botox prevented it.  I did, however, smile mysteriously the rest of the day.

Since my return, my mood has been good.  One of the first times I've gone on vacay and not come home to crashing depression -- one of those fun artifacts of bipolar disorder.  Have a good time, then do penance.  Maybe it was all that time in the spa.  Reflexology.  Good food.  Donno, but I'm grateful.

Also have had plenty of energy, so I finished my knitting project du jour, the 40" x 52" baby blanket to go with the baby hats I'm sending to Afghans for Afghans.  I cannot claim credit for all or even most of this great work.  My pal Ade had, years ago, completed dozens of perfect 6" squares in earth tones for a blanket she never finished when the room's color scheme changed.  I remember her knocking them out two or three at a time during Book Club meetings.  All wool, so when she heard of my new wool projects, she graciously sent me the squares and I assembled them with a tedious, row by row blanket stitch in a variegated yarn that almost matched, with pom-pom bits at the intersections.  It's now boxed up and ready to send in tomorrow's post.  I think it's rather nice, but Mom, who goes for a more vivid palette, curled her lip and pronounced it "ethnic" and "perfect for a refugee camp."  I don't think that's a compliment.  What do you think?  The hats, in progress, are here, below are views of the blanket:

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Hey, at least it doesn't show dirt.

While I was otherwise distracted ...

I've been a somewhat abstracted correspondent to the Fragile Industries Chronicles for the past month or so.  The occasional knitting report notwithstanding, I've been not entirely, what, engaged in my ego-driven monologue here.  The thing is, I had a bad mammogram.  After three years of ignoring my duty towards my annual exams.  My bad.  So I waited until I had the whole story.

This health care ignorance was not the result of cheerful denial, but rather due to insurance nonexistence.  Due to my co-insured's decision to not pick up his half of the bills, I decided that $453 a month for both of us was too much to pay by myself so fuck him.  And, unfortunately, fuck myself because, once not under a general health policy, I turned out to be uninsurable on an individual policy, even a catastrophic health policy with a $5,000 deductible.  I had, under the prior joint coverage, the bad taste to go to a loony bin, and future insurers therefore viewed me as a bad risk.  "But I'm not seeking mental health coverage," I said to the various insurers who turned me down.  "Under California law,." said the oh-so-reasonable insurers, "we are required to provide mental health coverage, and we must factor that in.  The lower rates are only available to those who do not present a bad risk for any of these coverages."  What that meant was that I could not obtain individual catastrophic coverage for less than $500 a month.  At those prices, it was cheaper, so I thought, to pay cash and take my chances.  Thanks to whoever decided that mental health coverage was mandatory, therefore an automatic denial was meted out to anyone who had any need not only for mental health coverage, but also more pedestrian health concerns.

So, since 2005, I pretended I did not have breasts or a cervix or uterus.  The annual women's exam was a high-priced exercise in "no news is good news."  Then my dear friend of decades past, my law school study partner, the bride to whom I was bridesmaid and vice versa, got her own bad news about her hooter health and had to face a malignancy.  "What can I do for you?" I asked.  She replied, "Go get a mammogram."  So I faced the out-of-pocket nether zone of "cash patient," found a doctor willing to risk a bad check and went for my annual. This included a blood panel.  My Pap turned out to be the expected non-news event, all clear, but the blood work revealed that my thyroid had dropped to barely perceptible levels.  Much lower and all metabolic function ceases entirely, i.e., death.  Turns out that at least one-third of post-menopausal women have low thyroid.  This would explain a whole lot of things, such as my ebbing energy levels and semi-chronic depression, and the 30-pound weight gain and 30 point cholesterol jump.  Take heed, all women over 50 who read these tales: it could be you.  Within 10 days of one very cheap prescription later, I felt oodles of energy, a lift in spirits, and my skin and hair improved to tameable levels.  I mean, this is a beauty boost, never mind the endrocrinological benefits.  I don't need to look for more and better plastic surgery.  Just take the thyroid pills.

So nothing but good news until my mammogram results.  I had reported to the imaging center and had watched with some amusement as my hooters were compressed to the diameter of tractor tires, and held my breath while some sadist tickled odd, distorted images of my tissues.  A few days later, I got a callback.

Why, when I had the brief illusion that I was an actress, had I never had a callback?  My tits garnered more interest than my 1970's audition monologue from "Waiting for Godot."  So I reported back for more boob compression.  My right tit was deemed unremarkable, but my left garnered me an immediate appointment with the ultrasound room.  There, in a more magisterial gloom and hush than the mammogram room, I was swabbed with cold gel and poked and prodded with a device that resembled a staple gun, and watched as images appeared on the screen that looked like every photo of the Loch Ness Monster ever recorded.  The technician pulled a long face and went to hobnob with her fellow wizards. Then a male radiologist manned the helm, or staple gun, and after much fussing about, pronounced my left titty to be worthy of a biopsy.  I told him that I couldn't tell what the hell was causing the furor, and he was very helpful.  As the first male to have touched me in such regions in two years, he had my attention.  He prodded my fatty tissue about with the gizmo, then pointed to the screen and showed me what looked like a jellybean.  "This," he announced, "is questionable."  It was novel since my 3 year old images.  "It could just be a fibroplasmia something something, but it could be something else."

OK, let's find out, I said.  Well, that took a special needle, on back order, and would be at least three weeks, but don't worry.

Right.

So I had an ultrasound-guided vacuum-needle biopsy scheduled for the 21st of April.  Fine.  I made the appointment, went home in good spirits, then I realized that all these professionals were getting their knickers in a twist about the possibility of CANCER.  The big C.  Let's call it what it might just be.  No more denial.  And I'm uninsured.  I am in an enviable position among the uninsured.  I have family with resources.  Should I need really expensive care, there are bank accounts, not my own, into which I could tap, so I wouldn't be completely without options.  But that pissed me off.  I don't want to bankrupt parents who did nothing more than conceive me and have good moral sense.  And I'm not some feckless will o' the wisp, relying on the kindness of blood kin to bail me out of some malignancy.  I'd tried to do the responsible thing for health care, and had been shown the door marked "bad risk."

I went to my best friend, the internet, and found a plan within Medi-Cal called "Every Woman Counts."  Based on income only, not assets, it guarantees every woman whose income is below a certain level to annual exams and coverage for female bad news, like cervical or breast cancer.  Over the phone, I was qualified and was then sent a package of information and lists of appropriate folks with whom I could consult.  I brought them my reports, mammo and ultrasound screens, and they agreed that the biopsy was the logical next step.

I let slip my uncertain cellular status to a select few angels, and asked for good thoughts on the day of the biopsy.  I was, to a humbling degree, rewarded with email, phone, snail mail and other support, and promises of prayer and other sacrifices to my heavenly credit.

It's hard to pick out the most blatant demonstration of love, but bragging rights probably go to my dear pal who shall remain nameless.  He's been witness to much bad behavior, my compradre, and partner in crime since 1990.  He performed the wedding ceremony for my most recent ex-husband and myself in 1995.  When I told him of my situation and that I was uninsured, he drawled, "Well, I married you once already, sugar."  My dear darling big gay brother would  share his excellent health benefits with me in the only way recognized by the legal system, as that system would deny him those benefits and rights should he have a spouse of the same gender.  "We've always been outlaws, honey," he purred.  I have never been so grateful for a proposal, and this was not my first.  I have never, also, been the recipient of such a gesture of absolute love and generosity.  After a few hours to mull it over, I accepted, provisionally, the proposal.   If the results of the biopsy were positive, with all that might entail, I would become his wife.

My mother (my roommate, here in Bakersfield-by-the Sea, at Casa de Gray Gardens) was over the moon, of course, and was having fun planning a beach wedding.  Mom would be best man or bridesmaid, depending on her whim, and she would finance a white linen Armani suit for the groom.  My groom's mother, another Dorothy, aged 82 or so, could be flower girl, and maybe, just for symmetry, we could talk my most recent ex-husband into pronouncing the vows.  It all escalated into wonderful heights of silliness while we avoided thinking about what might bring it all about.

The morning (mind you, this was an EARLY morning) of my exam, just as I'd fished my keys out of the black hole I call my purse and I was heading my newly bathed and shaved bodily parts towards the door, I got a call from the imaging center.  The radiologist would be out that day.  I would have to wait a week.  I rescheduled, as that was my only option, but I warned the other end of the line that if I heard the radiologist had merely been improving his golf game, there would be blood on the walls.  I never got an explanation or excuse, but I'm willing to cut him some slack.  I alerted the prayer circle of the delay and joked that the saved-up prayers, good intentions and incense would not only spare me bad news on the biopsy, my jellybean would have disappeared entirely when I reported to the hushed enclave of the ultrasound room.

This last Monday, I underwent the biopsy, which also included 1) the complete removal of as much of the jellybean by means of a gigantic needle and heroic suction as was visible by ultrasound, 2) the implantation of a titanium chip at the jellybean's former location should that become relevant for further surgical or radiological procedures, 3) a final compression and mammogram of my left hooter from several angles to document removal of jellybean and location of bionic woman titanium chip.  The biopsy procedure included administration of painkillers at various tissue depths with needles of increasing circumference, and a secondary administration of a needle as wide as a #2 pencil with vacuum assist, which emitted a noise far less reassuring than a dentist's drill.  I found new applications for my lessons in self hypnosis and monitored the tension in my knees and jaw and toes, willing them to relax while I slipped into a lovely beta state of stupidity.

The personnel attendant on the procedure were fabulous, gave me all appropriate warnings, cautions for future after care, and assurances that I would receive the results within 48 hours.  I went home and conducted a phone barrage of messages to ensure that I would be informed of the results by anyone able to read and speak at the other end of the fax-machine payout.  I then retreated into a quivering mass under the covers with an ice pack over the bruised, sore and swollen left hooter and was hateful to one and all.  For the continued health of my mother, who is dependent on me for the mail, morning coffee, and basic nutrition, I had frozen dinners perched in the microwave and told her to have at them.  In the meantime, I alternately froze my swollen, hot left hooter and scratched at the adhesive on the compression bandage.

Within 24 hours, the radiologist gave me the good news: benign.  And no threat of the jellybean's revenge, as it was, to all intents, completely gone, sucked away in the needle.  My joke had come true: it was not only a negative test, the blob was gone.  Prayers work. 

So I've sent a swift global email to the prayer circle, including the jilted bridegroom.  All recipients have been stellar support, and I've been staggered by the warm response.  In the meantime, I wanted to go to a spa next week for R'nR.  Turns out there ain't a hot springs hotel, mud bath vendor, etc. in California that will permit drinking and smoking and bad behavior on the premises.  We must all take our Purification and Detoxification very seriously.

Fuck that.

I'm going to Vegas, where drinking and smoking are almost required by statute.  I'm not a gambler, I don't get throwing money away like that, but I can have a massage and facial in my room while surrounded with bottles of Crystal.  I don't plan on putting that to the test, but I like the idea that I can go raise hell and sign up for the Hangover Special Reflexology the next morning.  Wish me luck.  I've got a lot of living to do, and the wedding's off.

On the other hand, I'm still knitting like a fiend.  Hope to God I find a better use of my time in Sin City.  I'd promise an on-the-road report, but remember, What happens in Vegas ...

Way To Go, Tucker

While I was looking the other way, last month some truly fugly things were said by a woman named Sally Kern in Oklahoma.  If you, like me, have been living under a rock, here's the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=tFxk7glmMbo#  The appalling thing is that she serves as an Oklahoma state legislator from Oklahoma City, home of the worst domestic terrorist attack in this county's history (yep, sometimes Americans blow up Americans), and had the nerve to say that gays are worse than terrorists.  The more appalling thing is she still has her job.

The advantage of being behind the curve on viral stories like these is that I get to cover the fallout, and if I'm really lucky, some wise soul has already put the thing into perspective better than I can.  And then I get to cut and paste.

Without further ado, I give you Tucker from Oklahoma City, a high school student with a keenly personal take on Representative Kern's remarks, who wrote the following letter to her:

Rep Kern:

On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would've likely have included one more. Over 800 other Oklahomans were injured that day and many of those still suffer through their permanent wounds.

That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn't live up to them pay with their lives.

As you were not a resident of Oklahoma on that day, it could be explained why you so carelessly chose words saying that the homosexual agenda is worst than terrorism. I can most certainly tell you through my own experience that is not true. I am sure there are many people in your voting district that laid a loved one to death after the terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. I kind of doubt you'll find one of them that will agree with you.

I was five years old when my mother died. I remember what a beautiful, wise, and remarkable woman she was. I miss her. Your harsh words and misguided beliefs brought me to tears, because you told me that my mother's killer was a better person than a group of people that are seeking safety and tolerance for themselves.

As someone left motherless and victimized by terrorists, I say to you very clearly you are absolutely wrong.

You represent a district in Oklahoma City and you very coldly express a lack of love, sympathy or understanding for what they've been through. Can I ask if you might have chosen wiser words were you a real Oklahoman that was here to share the suffering with Oklahoma City? Might your heart be a bit less cold had you been around to see the small bodies of children being pulled out of rubble and carried away by weeping firemen?

I've spent 12 years in Oklahoma public schools and never once have I had anyone try to force a gay agenda on me. I have seen, however, many gay students beat up and there's never a day in school that has went by when I haven't heard the word **** slung at someone. I've been called gay slurs many times and they hurt and I am not even gay so I can just imagine how a real gay person feels. You were a school teacher and you have seen those things too. How could you care so little about the suffering of some of your students?

Let me tell you the result of your words in my school. Every openly gay and suspected gay in the school were having to walk together Monday for protection. They looked scared. They've already experienced enough hate and now your words gave other students even more motivation to sneer at them and call them names. Afterall, you are a teacher and a lawmaker, many young people have taken your words to heart. That happens when you assume a role of responsibility in your community. I seriously think before this week ends that some kids here will be going home bruised and bloody because of what you said.

I wish you could've met my mom. Maybe she could've guided you in how a real Christian should be acting and speaking.

I have not had a mother for nearly 13 years now and wonder if there were fewer people like you around, people with more love and tolerance in their hearts instead of strife, if my mom would be here to watch me graduate from high school this spring. Now she won't be there. So I'll be packing my things and leaving Oklahoma to go to college elsewhere and one day be a writer and I have no intentions to ever return here. I have no doubt that people like you will incite crazy people to build more bombs and kill more people again. I don't want to be here for that. I just can't go through that again.

You may just see me as a kid, but let me try to teach you something. The old saying is sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. Well, your words hurt me. Your words disrespected the memory of my mom. Your words can cause others to pick up sticks and stones and hurt others.

Sincerely

Tucker