Solstice 2015

Solstice 2015



Dear Ones,

    It is a winter’s tale, a day to hunker down somewhere warm and dry, and watch heavy wind and diagonal rain lash at the cedars.  A day for making soup, and for writing.  Once again, I write from my perch in Anacortes, WA, still employed, (meaning not yet retired) still a night ER doc for the foreseeable future, a little fatter and alas, no wiser.  My penchant for nights has become easy to understand.  I hate mornings, I hate people, and I hate morning people. And most of all, I hate administrators.  I am at that age where I am expected to be crotchety, and I get good ratings when I turn out to be not near as crotchety a I look.  Thanks to the Disney organization for teaching us to set low expectations, and then exceed them. If Disney ran my hospital, I’d be a Dwarf. Or three: Grumpy, Sleepy and Doc. But it is a brave new world for my generation.  They have a blue pill for when you are stiff, another one for when your are not.  My eyebrows are growing dreadlocks, my neck crackles like Chinese New Year when I turn my head, and my pain scale never gets below a “3”.  You all know how I love pain scales.
    Catherine, meanwhile, is really, finally, completely retired, meaning she does whatever the hell she wants.  Mostly that is taking and developing photographs, taking online courses about taking and developing photographs, and buying the recommended equipment for taking and developing and printing  even more photographs.  It is a good gig.  We go together on photo safaris, doing night skies, Pacific NW Coast seascapes, desert SW canyons, Olympic Rain Forest, and the like.  We manage a few decent shots per outing, so all is not for naught. It has perked up her interest in backpacking, so we took a walk with full camping and camera gear up the Skyline Divide in the North Cascades, for Milky Way shots. Now humping 70 pounds up a steep hill at altitude and then sleeping on the ground in bear country is not as fun as it sounds, so don’t run out yet and buy your gear. But we did it, and got some shots. More such trips are planned…
    The news of late has been more dreary than the weather—Islamist attacks here and abroad, from a toxic alphabet soup of Al Shabaabs, Boko Harams, ISILs and more, provoke xenophobic reactions around the world, and the rise of dark, atavistic tribal impulses.  We in the West had naively thought these urges but quaint anachronisms, banished by enlightened reason, but they have risen up again, in full-throated war cries, as these Iron Age tribes attack us with modern weapons and imperialist intentions. As I have observed before, tribalism is the trait that made us the dominant species on the planet, and will ultimately kill us, if we don’t figure out how to banish it.  Meanwhile, in the States, political theater has plumbed new depths of pathos, or surmounted the dizzying summits of High Comedy, depending on your point of view.  The Donald has become the unbridled Id of the cowed and cowardly religious right, rousing the rabble with new outrages and higher ratings daily. It is only a matter of time before he chooses a Kardashian as a running mate. His appeal to the religious right is amazing, as he has not a religious bone in his body, but whatever. Dr. Carson has branched into Archeology, solving at last the ancient riddle of the Pyramids. He does indeed have a religious bone, but it is his head.  Raphael “Ted” Cruz, the stealth Canadian-born Cuban Great White Hope of the religious right waits for Trump to be fired, and for the good Doctor to choke on his own foot. He reports that he hears god in his head every day, and god tells him what to do next. I see that problem in my ER daily.  It responds to antipsychotic medications. TC, BTW, is despised by everyone who has ever known him.  He is by far the most self-absorbed narcissist bully ever allowed to survive to chronologic adulthood, and that distinction achieved in a dream team Congress of self-absorbed narcissistic bullies.  Bernie, meanwhile, continues his campaign with a barrage of spitballs and nerf darts at the elephant in the room, stirring an occasional glance in his direction, perhaps, but not much more. Ah, me. The center cannot hold. The best fall into weary silence, while the worst proclaim in passionate intensity. What dark beast, vexed from the slumber of a thousand years, slouches toward Washington to be born? (That was para-Yeats, in case you were wondering.)
    In our little world, we keep calm, and carry on as always.  The kids shape sails and continue into an uncertain world, undaunted.  Michele continues her Yoga studio-running, kid-raising super mom high wire act, while kids Jack (10) and Lily (8) continue to thrive. Husband Eric still flies Hawker 800s for NetJets.  Nathanael spent a bit of time here this year, between jobs, helping me with physical training in our garage, doing a “5x5” weight lifting plan.  There’s an app for that. That was all great until I blew out my left rotator cuff doing bench presses.  I can once again pick my nose left handed,(there is not an app for that)  but it was a therapeutic struggle to get that back.  Nathanael is a good trainer and gym bro.  I miss him since his return to San Diego, where he is now learning the dark lore of the tattoo artist.  Hannah has had herself a year—she is retired out of the Navy after 10 years, took a solo bike ride across the country, and has written a full-length book about it, all with her thumbs, on an iPhone.  That is now in the editing process. She has been studying on her GI Bill benefits at Seattle U., renewing  dusty old credits and taking pre-med courses she never took at the Academy. She plans to apply next year.  Everett has joined the dark side, working for Goldman-Sachs as an analyst in Salt Lake City.  We still don’t know what an analyst is, and he still can’t tell us, either.  SLC is not exactly a hotbed of social life for non-Mormon young men, but he is coping. He is climbing at a local climbing gym, and maintaining his Chinese reading and speaking, in hopes of a far East posting eventually. My parental units are still doing well, remarkably, with their wits very much about them.  I was out to Buffalo this summer, and gotta get back there soon.
    Work remains the uplifting, remarkable privilege it has always been.  I really do like to fix things.  I grouse about going in to work, but when I am in the thick of it, there is really nothing else like it.  I comfort myself constantly at the misfortunes I witness, with a Franciscan serenity, accepting what I cannot change, changing what I can, and recognizing the difference. If you are a dickhead when you come in, you surely will be when you leave, unless you become a dead dickhead.  Can’t fix either one of those problems.
    The theme lately has been homelessness.  Folks troop in, with backpack and trash bags in hand, settle into a bed, and confess they have no medical issues, or perhaps their toenails are too long, (no kidding, one guy checked in for that last week.) and then expect to be housed and fed. And clipped.  They are dumbfounded when I explain this is an ER, not a homeless shelter, and that I need this bed for the care of acute medical conditions. They may hang out in the waiting room until morning, but cannot stay here. I would have needed a farrier for those hooves, anyway.  Security escorts out of the department are depressingly common.
    I pause, as always, to mark the passing of a few notables from our midst:  Leonard Nimoy lived long and prospered, but not long enough.  Good bye also to Maureen O’Hara, who made her own way in Hollywood, when that was a tough thing for a woman to do.  BB King, Percy Sledge and Jazzist Clark Terry have sounded their last notes, while Terry Pratchett, EL Doctorow Oliver Sacks, and Gunter Grass have turned the last page. So long to New Yorkers Yogi Berra, and Mario Cuomo. And goodbye to Bruce Jender, but hello Kaitlyn.
    And so, dear readers, or at least those of you who have slogged this far, I wish for you a year of frequent flossing, good health, freedom from fear, the strength to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and fortitude to stand up and say what is right and true, in the face of the many who deny what is right and true.  We sometimes appear outnumbered, but that is only because of the silence of many, who are intimidated by the sheer stridency of the clamoring rabble.  There will be darkness before the return of the light, but the Solstice reminds us that the light will return.

                Peace, love, health, prosperity, and wet kisses (from your dog),