The Book of Laughter, and Forgetting.
9.8.2009, 1747

Magic realism, or magical realism, is an artistic genre in which magical elements or illogical scenarios appear in an otherwise realistic or even “normal” setting. It has been widely used in relation to literature, art, and film.  It appears, too, to share a life inside the World of Warcraft, where the lines become blurred too often for too many players.  Yesterday this played out once more, as I was approached by a former member of the guild, and someone I would have called a friend up and until that day.

I would have called them a friend for the laughs we had shared, and for the time we had seen more or less eye to eye on the game, and what qualifies as “doing right” for the most of its members.  But in leaving, they had turned to griefing to generate as much stress and strain over their departure as possible.  According to the APLINK website on WordPress.com…

“Great article from Jamais Cascio, which describes Griefing, and as I recall Second Life has had its share of Griefers who have disrupted events, damaged and defaced in-world builds and developed & deployed massive code attacks.

Some Griefing can be akin to real world peaceful protesters however like phishing & viruses which are created by mainly criminals for monetary gain, Virtual Worlds are susceptible to criminal intent. Virtual Worlds like Twinity which is offering REAL world experiences in a Virtual 3D Online environment will need to develop and deploy monitoring and protective services either in partnership or directly to protect its members from criminals and Griefers alike. Article excerpt below:

The Griefer Future  

Jamais Cascio

Griefing is, simply put, making someone else’s online game session miserable. It’s not simply beating someone in player-vs.-player competitions, or even annoying someone as the side-effect of otherwise game-focused actions. Griefing means taking action intended to harm the game-play of someone else—these can include attacking someone ostensibly on your own team, blocking passageways, intentionally crashing your vehicle into someone else’s, leading masses of monsters to attack unsuspecting players (”training”), using known software bugs to force another player to “crash out” of the game, and so forth. While many of these might happen by accident, griefing is all about intent.”

But in speaking, this player and I were challenged by the notion that time had passed, and that we should “simply get over what had happened.”  Kniha smíchu a zapomnění, the Book of Laughter and Forgetting, was written by Milan Kundera.  It was published in many languages around the world between 1978 and 1990, and was a book written in several parts around a common theme, the motif of forgetting parts of one’s own life in order to make our remaining days better.  Some people will go to great lengths to rewrite history in their own minds, or to deny events they even earlier admitted to, because the truth creates for them a moment of Litost.  Litost is a Czech word that means, “a state of torment upon by the realization of one’s inadequacy or misery.”  It is difficult to equate in english terms.

Nevertheless, I have examined my own Litost, at the absence of friends created by the griefing this former friend visited upon me.  And in my mind, the Litost is a focus on my own anger, and my disappointment, knowing there were other ways I could have, and perhaps should have reacted.  Perhaps in hindsight, I turned left when I should have turned right.  But pain is not extinguished with the wave of a magical wand, or excused by the decision to overlook the event which caused it.  It is always within the victims’ confines to forgive an affront, but the act of forgetting would not be responsible when the guilty party will not apologize, and refuses to atone.  As I said in this conversation, I do not expect that a man would be damned for all time for his mistakes.  But I do expect that he pay for them.

The blog, the story and life, continue.  Perhaps some day forgiveness.  But that day is not today.

_______________________________________________

 

This is a blog I maintained for a while on Myspace.  With that account closed, I am posting these old thoughts here.
8.21.2009, 1715

Going off on the Child Dragging Mom
Current mood:  angry
While this woman is claiming she has pneumonia and lupus – and that’s why she can’t pick her child up – an intelligent person might get a device that she can use to move them safely.  Ever heard of a stroller?  Oh, and take a look at the video. She looks angry, and she’s obviously not straining to drag him on the floor, which is harder then kneeling and standing your child on his feet.
I belong to the previous generation of child care.  I believe that when a child acts out they deserve a swat on the bottom.  It gets their attention.  I was swatted a few times, and grew into a well cultured, well behaved adult who knows how to behave in polite society.
For all the people who would have jumped down her throat if she would just have taken him to a side aisle, corrected his behavior, given him a swat and then walked him out of the store, I am lifting my usual derision and encouraging, “Go get this woman.”  She deserves to know exactly how wrong her behavior is.
Looking at the cues on the tape, she drags him around the corner like a van towing a trailer.  She knows to walk around the corner far away enough not to run him into the wall.  She’s obviously done this before.
And – most compelling – one of the cardinal hallmarks for child abuse is “any impact that leaves an obvious mark.”  He had bruises from the harness and marks on his neck.
Child abuse.  Period.

August 9, 3:36PM
Sounding Off on Healthcare!
Current mood:  tired
I’ve recently joined a number of polls started by friends and soon to be former friends here on Facebook, and the cultural, ethnic and economic divides are still as constant as the northern star.  Opinions will begin to sway on both sometime around the start of the Age of Aquarius.  The topic is, of course, the bastardization of healthcare by our own federal government.
The biggest problem with the emerging national health care system is the role of the federal government. Congress actively supports a “single-payer” national health insurance system often ridiculed as “Medicare for all.”  And that in itself is a big problem, because the Medicare system is flat-ass broke.  We’ve already proved that the system as written does not work.  Now we want to put the rest of the nation on a system we already know doesn’t work!
Others, including President Obama, propose a new public plan modeled after Medicare that would compete with private health plans in a national health insurance exchange.  Here’s the problem: what happens when the US government competes with ANYthing?  Answer that question and you’ll realize why the informed healthcare profession is scared out of its mind.
Experts on both sides of the argument expect a “crowd out” of existing private options and a rapid evolution toward a single-payer system of national health insurance, where the government would slowly suck the life out of–and absorb–every insurance carrier in the nation.  The federal government would amass great power over the financing and delivery of medical services; remember the people who took care of your Vietnam-Era veterans?  Yeah, they’ll be deciding whether you get that operation to correct a back problem, or addictive pain medications to dull the symptoms, and your senses.
It would also determine the benefits and medical procedures that Americans would get and the prices providers charge for them. They’ve already decided the course of modern healthcare, because the first time they said, “Medicare and Medicaid won’t pay for that procedure” …SO DID EVERY OTHER INSURANCE PROVIDER, NATION WIDE.
This concentration of government power over health care would have a profound impact on all Americans, especially members of the medical profession, resulting in substantially lower payments to physicians and other health care providers compared to a multiple-payer system, which in turn reduces the quality of care by limiting the ability of physicians to invest in advanced medical equipment that takes advantage of new technolog. It will also serve to limit access to care, as current physicians and other professionals retire early or otherwise leave the profession.  And they will all say the same thing:  “I didn’t pay $100,000.00 for medical school, the most litigious field in the modern world, for a $40,000–$50,000 a year job.”
National medicine will limit access to care even more substantially in the long term, as the prospect of lower lifetime earnings reduces the incentive for talented people to choose careers in health care, and it will impair medical progress, because fewer talented people receiving medical training decreases the supply of talented medical researchers.
Nationalizing healthcare makes about as much sense as sending the TARP to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It’s not a solution to the problem. If they had released the TARP to pay off all standing balances on mortgages they would have had enough to pay off every major outstanding medical bill in the US.
If you want to blame someone for the current state of our economic affairs, blame the Baby Boomers, not the Generation X’ers.  And don’t expect us to pay for your misdeeds of the past.
Socialism, like Communism, are systems that were tried, and failed on their own, because they are systems which require total participation by the entire society.  And that will never happen in our time, because human beings are just too damn greedy.
——————–
I work in a hospital, and I have no health care insurance. Yes, if I am seriously injured or become seriously ill, I face a bill that could quickly exceed the cost of my car, house, and face continuing bills from any resulting disability that could absorb my entire lifetime earning potential.
But if I suffer a serious, debilitating injury or illness while I have no insurance, do you know what I qualify for? Medicaid.
Why is this so hard for people to understand? You’re not asking to raise the bar for the masses. You’re asking those with the means to lower their own expectations, which they have the right to pay for.
July 22, 12:05AM

May Be Job Hunting
Current mood:  insubordinate
Nicholas Cage was very much correct when he said, “We are a grief mob, a witness to tragedy,” this coming from the whimsical look at life through the eyes of a burned out city medic in Bringing Out the Dead. I start to wonder if I’m just burned out, when I can see my life from his eyes.

I found out that someone in a position of authority harassed my partner at work over the broken pulse-ox. Raised voices and the general statement to “take what you’re given” required a response, so I took it to the next supervisor I saw, angry that she was harassed for something I did; and then it slipped out. “I did the right thing. I did it the way I was supposed to. I’ve taken this to everyone I can take it to, and now my partner is being harassed for something I did. What do I have to do? call the State?”

His natural supervisory answer was, “Is that a threat?”

I’ve since pulled out every single thing I’ve ever written down and stored it on my thumbdrive, and I’m taking stock and inventory of everything I think I may need to defend my position–about ninety pages of notes in ten point font. And now that the lines have been drawn, I have the option to follow through, having followed my chain of command as far as I can, or I can wait to see whether they decide to be petty and find a reason to dismiss me.

Or I could quit (which looks better than a termination), and find something else. Problem is, in this economy, if I lose this job either way there may well not be another. For reasons I cannot fathom, my personal quest to strive for the highest has cost me jobs, not kept them. Have I been rewarded for a pursuit of excellence? No–because it makes the people below you angry, the people next to you jealous, and the people above you nervous.

What ever happened to the ideal of service excellence?

The politics of the field have always been one of impasse. The company needs to do its job well to keep its clients happy and their contracts signed, spending as little money as possible. They also have to wait for months on end, for reimbursement from insurance companies who hold up payments as long as humanly possible, hoping the patient see a bill and pay it (even though they shouldn’t). The employees are given the trifecta in the meantime as peer, consumer advocate and billboard. We have the outward appearance of a public servant, the obligation to provide for the expectations of the public trust and the company, and the necessity to do our job as quickly as possible so we can cram in the next call and keep the company happy while trying to remain as ignorant as possible about “how much this will cost,” “what the insurance will cover” and “whether they’ll get a bill for this.”

The State is broke. Most businesses and homeowners are broke. We’re living in a cash and carry society that has existed on predatory lending for so long, billion dollar businesses are finally unable to cover the gaps, and the government is left with the option of deciding which debts to forgive in order to make the system limp on for a few more decades, until it can recover.

Or collapse.

The truth is I got into a field where I believed making a difference was the motto, life and credo. And I refuse to stop clinging to that wisdom that my first instructor so impressed into my soul: “We are life for those that have none, at the time they are at their lowest. Whatever you choose to do with this life, do right by the people you are doing this for. It will never make you rich, but it can make you whole.”

May 8, 9:25AM
A screw, a quarter, and electrical tape…
Current mood:  bummed
So I head in to work today, and I am given the list of supplies our unit needs.

I’m told, “Hey, your pulse-ox doesn’t work.” It’s not a terribly important piece of equipment. There is nothing it tells me that a suitable assessment won’t tell me. It’s just secondary confirmation that what I’m seeing when I look at my patient is, in point of fact, what truly is happening.

I turn it on.

Flashing numbers. That’s a dead battery. I know this model, so I let the off-going crew know, “Hey, it’s probably just got dead batteries. If they’re low enough it eventually won’t read.” They say thanks, but they’re curious. They were told it got new batteries this morning, and it turns itself off if left on.

So why are the batteries dead?

I head in to dispatch and ask for supplies. God forbid you need anything after five o’clock. Everything is under lock and key, and the people with the keys are not in the building. Call the super. Not answering. Okay, call the other super. While the dispatcher is talking to the super and telling him we need a four dollar pack of batteries that should be available to us in the first place, I start removing the trappings from this device.

I take it out of its sleeve. There is tape all over the bottom. Oh, that’s not a good sign.

So I start unwrapping the tape. And immediately notice something is missing. Either the bottom plate is broken, or there is no battery cover. And I know this particular model… won’t WORK without a battery cover. So what the heck is wrong here??

I stop unwrapping, and separate the edges of the tape, grateful that someone was at least thoughtful enough to use blue and black alternating tape to make it look like something that was supposed to be there. Either that, or it was just a good tape job and someone ran out in the middle. After all, they’re putting tape on the trucks, too. They may have just needed to black to replace more of our pinstriping.

No, I’m not kidding.

Right. Freeze ray. Doctor Horrible moment. I separate the edges of the tape. This is when I hit the roof.

The damn thing is taped together, and what’s there isn’t even a broken batter cover. It’s a SCREW. That’s right, a dime store drywall screw! And underneath, as a makeshift connector, is a QUARTER. No wonder the batteries are dead. NO WONDER!

It’s the first time I think I’ve ever said “WTF” while at work.

And what were our supervisor’s words of wisdom on hearing that a piece of life-giving technology on an AMBULANCE has been jury-rigged together with a MacGyver-esque collection of dimestore parts and a quarter? “Write it up?” No. “What? I’ll be right there to get you one that works!” No, not that either.

“You can either go out without a pulse-ox tonight, or get some batteries and make it work.” I was already seeing red, but I recall something about telling me to trying moving the quarter.

W.T.F.

This is the collection of question marks and exclaimations in residence over my head, while I consider for a moment the fact that I need this job too badly to risk it by calling my “superiors” a bunch of dumbasses. They don’t consider a piece of medical equipment effectively held together by bailing wire and duct tape to be a problem.

I have since began filling out applications for just anyone that will look at me. This coming on the coat tails of an education school that had failed to produce my desperately needed class, for six rutting months. SIX months. And the class has been put on and cancelled five times. To the point I had to call in a favor to stay current.

In eighteen years, I’ve never been down to the wire on a class or a license. Over an eighteen year history I’ve tended to have three or four times as many credit as I needed to maintain my license. But trusting this fool has left me in a lurch I was lucky to escape from.

“Values are what make an organization distinctive.”
“In strong cultures, shared beliefs and values are clearly ordered…”

Webster’s New World Dictionary defines values as “Social principles, goals, or standards held or accepted by an individual, class, society, etc.”
Neufedlt (1991)

Value statements explain how an organization attends to its internal business affairs, how it achieves its work product, and how it maintains its rapport with its clientele. In short, how an organization does business is encapsulated in its value statements.

“A value is an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.”
Lebow and Simon (1997)

“They are the basis of attitudes and personal preferences which are enduring, stable characteristics within people that form the foundation for making the critical decisions in life.”
Austerman (1998)

Values are “What is important to us, the worth and priority we place on things.…We can reconsider and change or adjust our values.”
Covey and Gulledge (1992)
And I’m reminded of the EMS credo of Integrity. I have always capitalized that word in my mind. Your Integrity is all you have. And if it’s eroded, you never get it back. Without going into specifics, I made the decision to walk off the job from LSTI because working there required that I compromise my integrity. Now, I’m facing the same situation, but fearful that the current economy will force me to curtail reason, and that quiet voice screaming in my head to run before the ship sinks.

May 6, 1:11AM
Deskwarmers
Current mood:  angsty
So I was playing my favorite passtime-game in the world yesterday, the World of Warcraft.  I made the determination that I was going to get my protection paladin to level 80, and have my third 80 on my server, which is something of an accomplishment.  Now, if anyone needed any class for an instance, I would be able to supply it–tank, healer or DPS.

But no sooner do I land and start to attack my quest target, when my computer just shuts itself off.  I blink, swear a few times, and turn the box back on.  It proceeds to run “repair,” and then bluescreens.  Twice.

I figure, ‘this does not bode well.’   But I go with it and follow the prompts, and it tells me the only way to fix this problem is a “factory reset.”  Now, I’ve been thinking about loading the rest of my photos, screencaps and stories to the website, and storing everything online.  After all, it would make things like this far less catastrophic.

So I bite the bullet and hit the button to continue, and say a prayer for all the little computer memories I no longer have–photos of friends and cats, family notes and paperwork, work notes and photocopies of certificates and licenses, calendars filled with hundreds of notes about my continuing education.
The reset takes about nine minutes, give or take a bunch of cursing.

My compy resets and starts doing its ‘computer is preparing to start for the first time’ crap, and then goes to the HP helpdesk screen.

“Configuration Error:  Your computer has encountered a configuration error that will prevent Vista from running.  Please call the number provided on your service and warranty paperwork.  Press and hold the power button.  Your computer will power down after several seconds.”

Translation:  I am the proud owner of a $1200 deskwarmer.

HP acknowledged at least that the kind of error that would cause this would involve a processor or motherboard failure, so they agreed to ship it to their service center and evaluate it free of charge.  However it is exactly one month out of warranty, so it’ll cost about $350 to make it not a deskwarmer.

Less than what it would cost to replace.  More than what I have.

Fortunately I’ve already worked a little overtime this last payperiod, but I just lost everything I would have put away.

March 28, 2:18PM
Orwell Public School District?
Current mood:  blustery
Friday, February 13, 2009
PARANOIA: 1984 high-school style

Orwell’s “1984″ is coming to a high school near you. And I’m not kidding. Pennsylvania judges closed county-run juvenile detention centers, then brought in private-run detention facilities, and sentenced kids to them; the judges received more than $2.6 million in blatant kickbacks. Apparently this failure of the system was detected when the judge failed to properly report the income.

Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and co-conspirator Michael T. Conahan appeared in federal court to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for accepting millions in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

And what kind of care center is PA Child Care? Let’s ask their satisfied clients:

“The daycare is a nightmare. 11/24/2008″
“I highly do not suggest to anyone to take their child into this nightmare of a daycare.”
The commenter goes on to mention a laundry list of complaints, from dirty facilities to children left unattended in dirty clothes, and caregivers more concerned about your next payment than the kids.

“WORSE DAYCARE ANYWHERE!!!!!! 08/05/2008″
“THE TEACHERS WERE UNPROFESSIONAL,RUDE,AND UNATTENTIVE.”
Commenter claims the site is dirty and more.

“Chaotic 07/11/2008″
“Often time, I wonder how the management and owner from Pittsburgh allow regional managers, regional director run the center? The extremely loud atmosphere was a complete turn off the minute I visited the center. In addition, the staffs were shouting from one cubicle to another.”

“A ZOO FOR A DAYCARE CENTER 05/20/2008″
“My expierence with those was just a nightmare…”
Claims of children fighting, older children bullying younger, smaller children in off areas they shouldn’t have been in. Thefts, care workers bringing boyfriends into the facility.

“Child Abuse 04/25/2008″
“Sorry…. child abuse, child neglect, child endangerment. Very sad, disappointment is an understatement. Some teachers are very lazy, they sit and no interaction with young children. Some hide behind walls to make personal phone calls. Shouting and profanity are used in the presence of young children.”

“Worst Daycare in Center City 08/24/2007″
I can’t say all, but some of the providers lack little to no knowledge on childcare. They show little to no interest in children and uses profanities in front of the children. In addition, some are constantly sneaking behind walls in making personal calls on their cellular mobile.

And the last happy customer said simply…
“DON’T DO IT 09/22/2006″
So thanks to the actions of a broken system that does not and cannot advocate for child welfare and development, and a dirty judge willing to compromise his bench for a buck, this is now the leading child care service in the state of Pennsylvania, with their largest den of thieves operating right in Philadelphia.

What is the world coming to?
March 6, 1:22AM
The OCTO-mom
A number of writers more wise than I have reflected on the issues of population and birth.

Confucius (551-478 BC) cautioned “excessive growth may reduce output per worker, repress levels of living for the masses and engender strife.”

Plato (427-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC) discussed the best population size for Greek city states.  Aristotle concluded that a rapid increase in population would bring “certain poverty on the citizenry, and poverty is the cause of sedition and evil.”

Kautilya(350-283 BC) considered population as a source of political, economic, and military strength.  “Though a given territory can hold too many or too few people, the latter is the greater evil.”

Augustus (63 BC-14CE), needed manpower to acquire and administrate the Roman Empire.  Laws rewarded early marriage and frequent childbirth, providing tax breaks and preferential treatment when applying for public office. Severe limitations were imposed on those that did not have children in numbers.  Resistance to these laws led to their being abolished as “obsolete and unenforceable.”

Tertullian (160-220CE) was one of the first to describe famine and war as preventing overpopulation, saying, “The strongest witness is the vast population of the earth to which we are a burden and she scarcely can provide for our needs; as our demands grow greater, our compliants against Nature’s inadequacy are heard by all. The scourges of pestilence, famine, wars and earthquakes have come to be regarded as a blessing to overcrowded nations, since they serve to prune away the luxuriant growth of the human race.”

Ibn Khaldoun (1332-1406CE) considered population increase and decrease as connected to economic development, linking high birth rates and low death rates to times of economic upswing, and low birth rates and high death rates to economic downswing.  Khaldoun concluded that high population density rather than high absolute population numbers were desirable.

The Biblical command of the Christian faith says, “Be ye fruitful and multiply”.  However, as Bill Cosby has expressed in his many performances speaking of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from Paradise, he is quoted best, “God was angry, when God told them to do that!”

There is also a need to examine the reasons for population explosion, to examine whether large families are natural, desireable, or even harmful to modern society.  In ancient times, Mediterranean city states required large families for defense, because they fought for territory during nearly three thousand years of constant war.  The belief that each city states’ gods, leaders or people were better, and should lead, were the chief reason, second to the need for lush fields and potable river water.  As late as Depression-Era American, large families were still desireable, because family fields required tending, and machine technology was not yet reliable or widely available.

I look to Eugenics as a concern as well, especially in the face of comments that some populations are again pressing their people to expand their cultural populations to maintain their heritage or “race.”  The Octo-Mom, as she’s come to be called, had eight children already, and was receiving disability insurance for three special needs children, and State assistance for all of her children.  There’s also the honest question based on her many interviews of whether there is something emotionally or psycholoigically wrong with her, and she’s been picked apart by a variety of “experts.”

Eugenics was an international scientific, political and moral ideology and movement recognized in the early twentieth century.  It began with Sir Francis Galton in 1883, based on the works of his cousin Charles Darwin, and centered around pseudoscientific notions of racial supremacy, heritage and purity.  Its advocates regarded it as a social philosophy for the improvement of human hereditary traits through the promotion of higher reproduction of certain people and traits, and the reduction of reproduction of others.  The movement had surprisingly strong support from private philanthropies such as the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation, and was implemented by governments in North America, Europe and Australia, producing the “identification and classification” of individuals and their families, including the poor, mentally ill, blind, “promiscuous women,” homosexuals and entire “racial” groups.  Segregation, discrimination, institutional commitment, sterilization or euthanasia were recommended as “controls” for undesired populations.

The practices engaged in by eugenics advocates involved violations of privacy, attacks on reputation, violations of the right to life and flagrant discrimination, and are today classified as violations of human rights.  H. G. Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Emile Zola, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, William Keith Kellogg, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, and Sidney Webb were all printed advocates of eugenics, but Adolf Hitler was the one who villified the belief in Mein Kampf, advocating sterilization of “defectives,” work first pioneered in the United States.

Eugenics became an academic discipline at many colleges and universities, and received funding from many sources, with global conferences in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York.  Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States.  The policy of sterilizing mental patients was implemented in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, and Sweden.  The scientific reputation of eugenics started to declined after 1930, as Ernst Rüdin used eugenics as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany.  The second largest eugenics program, created by social democrats in Sweden, continued until 1975.  However, developments in genetic, genomic, and reproductive technologies at the end of the 20th century have raised many new questions and concerns about what exactly constitutes the meaning of eugenics and what its ethical and moral status will be in the current era.

In the late seventeenth century, birth rates and infant mortality were horrid.  Poor living conditions, high disease rates and the lack of modern medicines to combat illness resulted in death from a variety of sources that are today nearly eliminated in all but the most remote parts of the world.  Large families were also still needed for defense, and to produce the foodstuffs needed to feed a population that doubled on an exponential basis.  It has been said, “Ten thousand years ago, the world’s population doubled.  One thousand years ago, the world’s population had doubled again.  One hundred years ago, it doubled again.  Ten years ago, it doubled again.  Next year, it will double again.”

Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, and you’ll see a perhaps not-surprising trend.  There is a huge correlation between population density, government corruption, and poverty and famine.  While this may be a far more morose impression, there was a famous experiment were rats were placed in a sealed environment, and given as much food as they would eat.  The environment was kept clean, but they were allowed to reproduce as fast as they would naturally.  As the population density increased, they became more aggressive, then deadly violent, at which point the experiment was stopped.  After the Second World War, we experienced a post war boom in population.  If you look at our behaviors in population density today, especially in the last twenty years, you might say we rats are filling our maze, and we are turning on each other.

Do I personally think what the Octo-Mom did was a good thing, or a right thing?  No.  She already had kids she couldn’t provide for on her own.  These are facts, and I can’t deny them.  I think it was profoundly irresponsible.  I also think the doctor that deliberately did this for her is criminally negligent, and should be investigated for any technical or ethical violations he may have committed while helping this woman create a family of fourteen that she could not care for.  A physician has a moral and ethical obligation not to perform procedures that will ultimately prove harmful for his public trust.  It’s an oath I myself took, so I take this part very seriously.  It shouldn’t be an issue now, because the doctor should not have agreed to do this in the first place.
But, these children are here now, and if we are an ethical and morally base society, we have an obligation to render fellowship, care and compassion to these children.  It is not their fault that they exist, and they should not be villified or exploited as payment for their right to exist.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more…
– Michel de Montaigne

February 13, 12:35PM
Flight 3407
On the subject of the breaking news that a seventy-eight seat de Havilland DHC-8 “Dash 8″ passenger aircraft crashed in Buffalo–killing forty-nine, including one resident on the ground–I posted a response on the Firefighter Nation website.

This is a tragic event, and too many in the State of New York in such a short period of time. The miracle of the landing on the Hudson was a sharp warning that there are dangers, seen or unseen, in the New York air transportation system. These are complex issues that will require time and genuine thinking to resolve.

The technical truth is that the left wing dipped suddenly according to eyewitnesses, and the nose of the aircraft was pointed sharply down, both of which could be indications of ice and the pilot’s attempts to regain control. There were no signs of a mechanical failure, and reports of icing 10-20 miles from the airport in the vicinity of 1500 to 3000 feet, which was roughly where the aircraft was.

Firefighters on scene did apparently use their lights to “shine” the video cameras of gawkers, so some of the footage is poor quality. While we have the understanding that news reporters have the grim task of reporting these events (even when we might find their methods morose), they are a resource for us, and in that sense a part of our team. But private citizens are neither trained in the neutral recording of such events, nor the professional decorum required to interact with our crews or the environment of an emergency. It sounded like the cameraman started to ask the firefighters something, which caused one of them to turn his light in that direction, and the footage is probably cut because he was told less than politely to go away.

We will only be able to wait now for word of the cause of the crash, while our hearts go out to the families affected by this sad event.
 
Flight Details:
Origin: New York, NJ (Newark Liberty International Airport )
Destination: Buffalo, NY (Buffalo Niagara International Airport)
Travel Date(s): February 12, 2009
Airline: Continental Airlines
Operated By: Colgan Air Dba Continental Connection
Flight Number: 3407
Aircraft: DH4 (de Havilland DHC-8 Dash 8-400 Dash 8Q)
Classes Offered: Economy
Departure Time: 7:10 pm
Arrival Time: 8:48 pm
Stops: Non-Stop
Travel Time: 1 hour(s) 38 minutes
Terminal: Terminal C

February 13, 10:07AM
Sometimes…. You just have to listen
Current mood:  fascinated
Many people fail to understand the silent body language of cats.
In particular, people who are accustomed to the outwards signs of dog body language seem slow in detecting what a cat is telling them in its body language, which creates the false impression that cats are cold-hearted, unemotional, or unintelligent. To understand cats, one must observe a feline closely and learn what its body signals tell them.

It is important to keep in mind that each cat may display its emotions with different body language. The flattened ears, teeth showing, baring belly for submission are easily ‘read’ by humans. Some characteristic signals, however, are often misunderstood. For instance, a cat rubbing its body along an arm or leg of its human is not only a way in which to attract attention and, perhaps, a morsel of food; it is also a way of ‘marking’ its human as its own. Using scent glands located around its mouth and elsewhere, it subtly ‘marks’ its human as part of its cat territory. Most cats prefer gentle rubs behind the ears.

To inform their humans they need petting or attention, a cat may push its entire body weight up against the human as the cat snuggles next to his/her favourite person.

Why the odd discourse on the nature of catitude, and the feline soul?

Well, for the past year, at least, Jinx, my youngest and brightest furball, has had a fascination with a piece of jewelry left behind by a friend.  She had been so fascinated by it that this friend had actually taken it off to keep Jinx from jumping into her lap and batting at her neck and face.

Over the past couple of months, it has resided on my dresser, along with my class graduation ring and my grandfather’s silver retirement watch from the Teamsters.  These being above the cats’ food bowls, I never batted an eye when she jumped up on the dresser, and started knocking them all down, regularly and incessantly.  It got so bad I got a squirt bottle that I would shake at her, and although I never sprayed it at her she took the shaking sound seriously enough to jump down, but the second my head was turned, it was business as usual, and I would hear that oh-so-familiar *fump!* as something hit the carpeted floor.

Most notably she would pick the necklance up in her teeth, carry it to the edge of the dresser, and drop it on the floor.  Two days ago, to end the issue and save my little cat’s life,  I took the three items off the dresser, and put them in my desk for safekeeping; this morning I came in from shopping to find “the Jinx” sitting on the edge of the bed, meowing and meowing, and wandering all about the desk, avoiding the keyboard and trying to get into the drawer.

I couldn’t pacify her with petting or food, changed her water and her litter, and was really starting to get worried that something was wrong.  Then it hit me what she was after, and I opened the drawer my ring, the watch and the necklace were it.  She immediately reached in and started trying to paw the watch, and I figured, “little scamp, she just wants to play!”  But to my amaze, she knocked the watch out of the way and tried to scoop the necklace out of the drawer.

I said, “Jinx-baby, do you want this?” and pulled it out, and she actually stuck her little head through the loop in the chain.  I took it off only so long as it took to double the chain over and put the necklace on, then walked downstairs to get a collar I still had, that she would never wear before.  I took the heart shaped charm with its rhinestones off the chain, and attached it to the collar, removing the bell that she hadn’t liked, and had tried to run from whenever it was on.
She let me put the collar on, and hasn’t said a word since.

So lets plumb the depths of feline catitude, and their little fuzzy souls, and their great big hearts.  Sometimes we can learn amazing things, if we but take a moment, and really listen.

February 4, 11:00AM
Taking a Moment
Current mood:  ashamed
River City memories…
Of passing through that town.
On a train full of energy…
We were fantasy bound.
 
It is so strange to remember old things, features, things I had forgotten.  It is a dream of a place I knew once, a place that holds many fond memories.  Perhaps, in a way, I needed that strength this morning.  It is a sad tale, but it brings me strength in hindsight, which is sometimes the second best weapon we have.  Laughter is the first, but sometimes we just don’t know where we put it last.  I haven’t been able to laugh for a few days now.  This season is always hard. . .

 
This is about someone bubbly, jumpy, tense and neurotic, but also someone who had the ability to be tremendously tender and kind–just not to the average stranger.  A lot of the things that I saw were reserved for me alone, and those are the memories that I try to keep in my mind.  But this morning my sleeping brain betrayed me, or maybe it just showed me something that I needed to see.  She used to walk into a room and find a cup of coffee she had left sitting.  She would light up in surprise (probably mock surprise) and say, “Oh, COFFEE!  THERE you are!  Where have you been?!”  She would pick up the coffee and hold it, cradling it a moment.  If it were warm, she would say, “I don’t know whether to drink up, or just cuddle you a while.”  And if it were cold, she would take a sip to find out how cold, usually followed by the exclaimation, “Gweh!  Cold coffee!”  and the coffee going to the sink.  sometimes the coffee was okay, and sometimes it had been there a while, to the point that something might have been living in it–didn’t matter.  It was a routine.  And it was hysterical.  In a way, I never got over that.
The first time it happened, I remember I was working for a service that was paying me reasonably well–which is to say they were paying me more than I’d ever made before, yet still not what I thought I was worth.  She was always waiting for me to come home, and I was met with a tackle at the door, as she literally took a flying, running leap at me, wrapped her arms and legs around me and hung on for dear life.  I remember that a couple of times she fell.  I also remember that a couple of times she almost fell, and hung on at the cost of my shirt, and sometimes a little skin.

 

But it was always welcome, and it was always something we laughed at.
This, then, was a different morning than all those.  She met me at the door, placed her hands on me chest and peered up into my eyes.  She was nose to nose with me and said, “So, where are we going?”  It wasn’t a hint, or a thought–she needed to go somewhere.  The walls were closing in.  She didn’t have a whole host of people to talk to, and there were a lot of times I wasn’t able to talk to her on the phone, because of work.  I was working at least sixty and sometimes more than a hundred hours a week, and the money, though it was good, wasn’t a replacement for actually being there.
There comes a time when buying things doesn’t really count anymore, when you aren’t there.  She looked up into my eyes, and she noticed that I was tired, and I said it.  I actually said, “Oh, honey, not today, please.  I just need to take a nap.”
It was the first time she had ever asked, ever said she needed my attention like that.  And in that first test I had failed.  I saw the change come over her eyes, and watched her expression wilt.  It was heartbreaking, in retrospect, but not mine–I was too tired.  No, that’s a lie.  I wasn’t paying enough attention.  I left her there at the door, and went to lay down.  Sometime, I don’t know how much later, I woke up, and she was still standing there, nose pressed up against the glass, hands on the glass of the storm door, looking out into a world she wanted so much to be a part of, but without the strength to go into it alone.
This holiday season, don’t alienate yourself from your family to buy that extra gift.  This season is dismal, and dreary enough. 

 

Instead, tell that person in your life that you care, and stay in an extra day.  Or, better yet, go out, and take them with you.
Running, climbing trees, jumping fences. . . it’s all better when you have someone to do those things with, and we can’t do it forever, no matter how hard we try.  It is in these things that we find our true contentment, not in the reflections of time lost and risks not taken.  Sleeping, dreaming and waiting for something to come find you is not enough–because it never comes on its own, and sometimes when you finally act, it’s too late.

January 31, 12:18PM
SPAM! in the place where you live!
Current mood:  busy
Okay, this one goes out to help all of you who have been the victims of those fake pages created to lure your browser from myspace to those other sites that generally advertise porn or sex.  We’ve probably all seen them, a message or a friend request from someone saying “hi!” or complimenting your website, and either asking to be your friend or asking you what you think of their site.

_____________________________________________________

How Sites SPAM:  The nitty-gritty.

1.  The direct approach.

This is an upright, responsible person who is usually a band, comedian, filmmaker or other business that wants you to add them, so they can toss up a comment to advertise on your page.  These are generally pretty harmless, but they can get annoying if they insist on commenting regularly to stay on your front page, or at the top of your front page.  You have to decide yourself how much is enough.  I have opted to let a few people advertise, but I usually delete them after they throw out their wave, so it doesn’t overload my page.  I am not Channel 7.  I do not have a responsibility to advertise for you.

2.  The comment spam.

The friend request goes to a page that seems innocuous or even friendly, but the second you decide to “friend” them, they start loading advertisements onto your comments page, usually for a business or help-group.  These are easily blocked and the offender deleted, but they’ve still disrupted your page, and gotten their message out.  I don’t exist for the purpose of advertising someone else’s champion cause, which is why I rarely “friend” anyone I don’t know.  Because if I don’t know you, you’re not my friend.  Makes sense in a weird, makes-sense kinda way.

3.  The bogus page.

These are some of the most unscrupulous spammers.  They join myspace under false pretenses just to add a profile that they can spam from, and they create a photo of a page, which may or may not obscure the “report” button that’s supposed to be on the bottom of every myspace page.  It’s in your terms of service that this button has to be there, so if you’re looking at an odd page, and it seems like everything–even the text–has a clickable link, scroll down to the bottom of the page.  Nine times from ten these spam pages won’t have that list of links that includes the reporting feature.

Don’t click on that page.  It will navigate you straight to their spam site, which earns them a view, and may risk your computer to spybots, viruses or webcrawlers that register your IP address and then look for you, to send you more spam.  If you do navigate to their page accidently, close the window.  Many spam sites use a feature that allows them to immediately redirect you right back to their page.

4.  The Pop-Up.

The lowest of the low, they are fortunately caught quickly and banned by IP, however they can do the most damage.  These are pages that automatically direct you away from myspace to their sites, and will most often have malicious code all over their website, in the form of viruses, spybots, and webcrawlers and cookies to make sure they find you, so they can hit you again.

If you get fooled by one of these pages, they can be the most annoying, because they detect your attempt to navigate away OR close your browser, and respond by opening a new window, which might go right back to their site, or might open to one of their “sponsors,” which is another site that pays them for every person that sees their page, as an advertising medium.  The sponsor may or may not know that people are being duped into seeing their page, and it’s generally just another spam site that sells viagra, sex toys, porn or dating services.

Filing any kind of complaint with the sponsor is typically useless.  They don’t care who you are.  They just want to know that you saw their ad; they’ll just have your email address, too.  If you close their window and another one opens, it’s time to restart your computer.  It breaks the cycle.

________________________________________________________

Things you can DO.

First and foremost, protect your computer.  Take the five minutes to download an antivirus program and a spybot cleaner.  I use Spybot Search and Destroy and Avast! Anti-Virus.  Both are free, and both work brilliantly.  Safeguard your system and USE the safeguards.

Next, go into your myspace profile, and start checking out what your page is allowing others to see, and what it is allowing others to send you.  If you’re paranoid, just make your entire site “friends only.”  Solves everything.  If it’s not on your friend list, it’s not getting in.

If however you still want to be able to use your page for networking, turn on Captcha!  It’s an ingenious little protocol that displays an image that a bot can’t read, that will allow someone to prove they’re a real person, before they send you a message.  It will prevent 90% of the spam, right off the bat, because the bot sending out spammed invites to the entire myspace community can’t get past that little code.

Allow IM/Email only from friends.  You won’t get those “hi!” messages we talked about, which accounts in most cases for the other 10% of spam.  It doesn’t mean people can’t contact you anymore.  It just means they have to request to be your friend, which gives you the ultimate control over their ability to send you more messages.

Aggressively Report SPAM!  These people only exist because we let them.  When you get a spam friend request (which is all you should be getting now, if you’ve employed these other methods of securing your page) report it using the Spam feature, or for more pointed attacks, use the Abuse feature, and tell myspace EXACTLY what the other party did.  Phishing pages, inappropriate content, spam and a host of other options are all at your fingertips.
 

Remember.  This is YOUR myspace.  It only stays ours so long as we keep it.  Don’t feel bad if someone loses their page because they abuse the privilege.

January 31, 11:15PM
Topaz
Current mood:  thoughtful
“So shines a good deed, in a weary world.”

They were words once said by the fictional character Willy Wonka, in the first movie adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I think I speak for everyone when I say what a good deed my good friend’s lovely wife represented in life, for all of us.  In the short time I have known her, she struck me as a beacon of innocence, and brought hope for us by seeing the best things in life, even when she herself lived with the constant discomfort of her many medical conditions.  She gave of her time, her heart and her very soul, and we will keep that light with us for a long time to come, because she left a part of herself with us, in the many things she has done, but mostly with her own gentle way.

I can think of no better way to remember someone who tried every day to bring us the very best of herself.

January 9, 10:28PM
The Land of Everytown
Current mood:  melancholy
A shopping cart sits disused, far from its home where the store had closed, long ago.  Cold winter wind ambles through the tall weeds, by the side of the road, against the old brick building, where a woman stands, just inside, making a statement to the police about an assault that happened, days ago.  They do not intend that anything would be done, just make the report, ink pens scribbling hurriedly on lined paper where the witness statement would be lost among a hundred, hundred others, to be turned in when the book is full.

As the pages turn, a man looks on, watching another lady, older, carrying her shivering dog to the counter to make a quick purchase.  She glances around nervously at the officers, who don’t notice the dog, and wouldn’t care if by some miracle they did look up.  She makes her purchase, and someone holding the door says, “Happy New Year.”  She smiles and replies in kind, swiftly moving into the darkness of the night, the moon obscured by the winter’s cloudy varnish over a chilled and crystal sky.

The sounds of a car wheeling by is interrupted by the intermittent bark of a small dog, and the echo of a radio, a conversation, a siren, the wind.

Always constant is the wind, blowing a discarded paper down the street, over the car, and past the old building into a field, finally finding its resting place among the tall grass of the empty lot besides.  The lights of the city, looming in the distant, paint an arc of pale gray about the sky, just reaching the top of the low building, punctuated by the flashing of the lights from the palindrome of sight and sound beyond.

And the wind carries that way.

January 4, 8:49AM
On the Injured List for Dumb
Current mood:  sore
Well, this afternoon I had gotten ready for work early.  Uniforms were all set, and my boots were next to the dryer, waiting for crisp, warm whites to put on so I could head out the door.

I didn’t have anything else to do, so I laid my head down and took about a two hour nap in the middle of the afternoon.  Didn’t have to be to work til six, plenty of time, not a care in the world.

Well, I fell asleep with one foot still solidly on the floor, and my foot fell asleep.  I woke up, got up and realized too late when I tried to take a step that my foot wasn’t with me, and down I went ass over tea kettles.  I heard that horrid crunch and saw my toenails touch the top of my foot, and knew I was pretty much screwed.  When I could get up again (consider the odd ten or fifteen minutes spent rolling around on the ground wondering if I might throw up it hurt so bad) I tried to hurry up and get to work.  Maybe if I could show it to them I could just be seen while I was on the road, and everything would be fine?

No dice.

I couldn’t even get my foot into my boot.  It was already a bruised, angry sausage.  I called and talked to the supervisor, and let me say for the record it’s good to have people remember when you were their supervisor and you treated them nice.  She returned the favor, and I didn’t get a whole lot of grief for calling off approximately twenty minutes before my shift.

The right side of my foot feels like it’s on fire, and I’m a little unnerved by the fact that I can’t put all five toes on the ground without a good deal of (painful) effort.  Still, I got some pictures and marked the progression of the bruising after one and five hours, and thankfully it’s not getting any worse.  But it’s not getting any better, either.

What the hell is it with my luck, anyway?

October 11, 2008; 12:29PM
Getting… so… very… dizzy
Current mood:  tired
We have been stopped in Memphis and told to find lodgings. Apparently something happened in Texas, and we’ve all been turned around. The demobilized units heading home from Louisiana have stopped, too, and we’re all instructed to find and be prepared to use lodgings for the night.

We have been told that this time we’re really going. I made the boss pinky swear.  If we don’t go, I’m going to drive this truck home, and park it up somebody’s ass.

September 16, 2008; 1:49PM
Alexandria, Lake Charles, Louisiana
Current mood:  impervious
Wish me luck.

Our unit has been based in the Little Rock area as part of the staging operation for the rescue and relief effort, and after a tornado ripped the roof off the building one of our sister crews was staying in, they’re being rotated home.  Fortunately there were no injuries, but three weeks of Gustav plus bonus tornado and anyone should be ready to be done.  From what we’ve been told, since our sister unit lost their lodgings they have been living in a barn near the site.  We still have had no communications with Lake Charles, and will be driving out to relieve them in the morning.

We will be headed into the greater Lake Charles area at 9am, and deployed a month or longer.  We charged everything that has a battery to charge; plan to stay in good contact; called our creditors to arrange for delays in those regular monthly bills; and provided ourselves a few creature comforts with a quick trip to the store, buying what camping supplies and additional equipment we might need for an extended stay without amenities.

We may be “off the map” for a while, but we are in good spirits, have a clear mission, and will continue to do our best for these good people.  Louisiana touched me with its warmth and kindness in the face of Katrina.  I am proud to be back, and in those famous literary words, we wait for the dawn.

September 15, 2008; 9:18AM
Into the Soup
Current mood:  electric
Well, I received a call from my task leader back in Michigan. He asks how we’re doing, to which I thank him for the gracious accommodations (Presidential Suites), the excellent cuisine (ask me about the Umami Salmon and the stuffed mushrooms) and the daily reports and updates; we have known everything, in most cases before CNN. And I’m reminded that this is a fluid situation, and things tend to change. 

O.O

And then he drops it on me.
The current task leader in Alexandria–and their unit in the Lake Charles area–has been asked to join another group, EMS Operations, to provide coverage for units lost during the storm. This is a unit that has been working sixteen hour days, seven days a week, since the day after Gustav–or roughly three and a half weeks now. They need a break. Having a unit staging in Arkansas, just across the border, has them considering making a change: rotating out the current group and bringing us in to replace them.

Several things could happen within the next twelve hours to change this. If the crew has been specifcally requested by EMS Operations, because of the splendid work they have been doing, they may be requested to stay; and if the crew absolutely digs their nails into their dashboard and cling to their seat cushions, they may be allowed to stay.

But as it stands now, we have been requested and have accepted the assignment to join EMS Operations in Alexandria and the Lake Charles area. We would leave tomorrow morning before 9am, and as things begin to stablize the assignment could easily last weeks, or even months. It is very difficult to hire and train new crews, outfit new units and stock new stations with personnel and equipment. In a disaster, it is not possible. So in accepting this assignment, we would fall under FEMA’s command structure, no longer part of our current task group with Guardian Angel, and we would be here for the long haul.

We may be headed into the great gulf, and we may not be out for a long time. From everything that we have seen, the response has been extremely well organized, with more resources than were actually needed. We weren’t stretched or placed in any danger, and our safety has remained the paramount concern, hence the switching of staff to replace a tired unit that has done its all since the emergency began. So, we remain in good spirits, confident in our mission, and sure of our intentions.

September 15, 1:42AM
Ike, and onward in Arkansas
Current mood:  relieved
Breakfast and a hotel room with a warm bed and cable TV.  Mana from heaven.  We’re staying with evacuees from Houston and Galveston, and met a family from Corpus Christi who just bought their first home, and were so eager to return that they were already gone when I went down for breakfast this morning.  For the kids we’ve seen, this has been like a vacation, with lots of excitement, access to computers to carry on their myspace lives and chances to meet and greet with other kids from around the gulf.  It’s nice; the people of the gulf turned an emergency into something their children didn’t really need to be afraid of.
 
This is the “official” IKE update.  We just finished breakfast and received our news brief from the mayor by closed circuit TV.

They have 140,000 people missing, but they don’t expect that we’ll be needed for any of those missing.

Right now the standing death toll from the hurricane is *four* which is to say the least a miracle, so I will likely be released on Monday. Their only real problems come from the need to boil water, but the water pressure from the standing services is already back up to 210 million gallons per day, down from their usual 300, so while they are still obliged by federal regulations to ask everyone to boil water until it’s been tested for quality, there are no major failures in the system. And while the electricity is down in a lot of areas, all the critical areas (hospitals, military, police and fire centers, as well as shelters) have already been restored by private generator or Centerpoint, their provider in this area.

Since we came down here for the people and there are no pressing needs to treat sick or injured persons, there is little for us to do. We have been released for the second day to sit in the hotel, and it’s already been strongly hinted that Monday morning we will be driving back home. I have the feeling that if we wouldn’t be dogging our way through the tropical depression the whole drive back we would already be driving.

I would still term this entire event as a very successful process. They had more help than they needed, made every conceivable preparation and took every considerable precaution. I’m very happy to have been here to help, and very happy that I wasn’t immediately needed. So now, in the literary sense, we wait for the dawn.
September 14, 2008, 4:26PM
Ten Days More
Current mood:  angsty
Well, six months effectively out of work, wandering from one temp job to the next, watching another business close and another venture fail in the wake of one of the worst administrations in this State’s history, I have been forced to make a decision.

I called a former employee, now the manager of his own ambulance service, put my hat in my hands and said “I need a job.”  I’ll be heading south to Louisiana as part of the relief effort, and for the time being will be a temporary employee, working under contract as a part of their service.

Couple of weeks pay, the prospect of work ongoing afterward, the possibility of an extended stay over the next month to two, and returning to the place that seemed to be the turning point for me.  The last time I went to Louisiana, I came home to a job that wasn’t waiting for me, a manager that ended his own life, and a program on the verge of folding.  So many things I had going for me at the time, I’ve cursed ever offering to help.  Now I’m going back with nothing, hoping like hell something will be waiting for me when I get back.
September 4, 2008; 11:116AM
New Things
I start a new job tomorrow, while I work on the school project.  It’s a unique opportunity, and something that my varied experience in ambulances and hospitals suits me for.  Ever heard of “rapid detox?”  It’s where people are sent into anesthesia and while they’re under given massive doses of medications that counter the effects of opiates and illicit substances.  These are not what the movies and TV identify as “closet junkies” or “druggies.”  These are good people, usually with forward-looking careers and positions of authority or respect, who have the obligation and the need to get clean fast in a safe environment, who can’t fall back on stardom to explain their stay at the local Betty Ford clinic.  They go through all their withdrawls and cravings over the span of a single day, and when they wake up, they aren’t hooked anymore.  No binges, no pains, no shakes.  All they have to do is wait for the effects of the anesthesia to wear off and then they’re free to go back to their lives.

What do I do?  I’ll be working as a care provider to patients in recovery, after they leave anesthesia.  Seems like a strange job, and something most people don’t know exist.  It’s a quiet realm of medicine because of the driving need for privacy.  It’s also all about the present world environment.  We have a pill for everything, and sometimes everyday-normal people end up with an addiction to a substance they were placed on by a physcian.  This is an aggressive program that allows those people the chance to return to a normal lifestyle and overcome that addiction, quickly and without the usual pain and suffering associated with withdrawl.  I’m looking forward to what this new opportunity may offer.
June 4, 2008; 2:59PM
Price of Fame?
Current mood:  angsty
The spotlight from Care Response was turned off after we lost the appeal.

Then the owner of the company sold his principle interest to three partners, and one of them decided they could do my job better than I could.  The boss called me to say he had “no more work for me.”  Now being the outspoken spokesman for a company that never really did more than shake up the local EMS community and garner a few headlines, no one will touch me.

I’m opening a new EMS school as a result, through cooperation with a local proprietary school.  We contact the local hospitals and the EMS community this week to announce our intentions.  We’ll see where it goes from there.

May 20, 2008; 11:22AM
Convention Weekend!
Current mood:  content
This past weekend saw a break from the regular schedule as many of my closest friends met to celebrate for a weekend, with professionals from as near as the local Michigan area to as far away as Oregon for a four-day weekend.

On Friday we met for a welcome-home dinner and spent the evening in each others’ company.  There were many pictures, and–yes–there was pie.

Saturday started at noon at the Planet X Games cafe, which we invaded, rented and dominated from open to close, playing every game we could think of to pass the day together, sampling new things that none of us had seen yet, and mostly delving into the World of Warcraft, where all of us it seems maintain at least one account loaded with epic heroes.  I can’t easily remember when I have laughed so easily or so hard, and there were many pictures taken, which will be posted on the website in the coming days.

Then on Sunday we turned on Ventrilo and head an open chat with all our members throughout the day, with members from as far away as our couple in Chile.  It started with a short guitar solo while someone sneaked over and turned on Vent in the first place, and got everyone into it; and then it evolved into a full out first session of WWOW as we tuned the guitar, uncovered the piano and had an impromptu music session until the pizza arrived.  Then we told a few more stories, and gradually settled in for the night.

This morning, we said goodbye to everyone at breakfast and gave final instructions for the trip home, and thus ends our first convention!  There were be tons of pictures and we’ve already decided that between August and November we will do this again for our west coast people.

February 25, 2008; 1:48PM
New Plan, New Man
Current mood:  exanimate
We presented to the EMS Commission today as planned but were not well received by the folks that stand to lose if we were approved, and in the end the Board was swayed not to support us.  For now.

Meanwhile, family in Scio Township tells me that the township pointed out glaring shortcomings and long response times for the predominant service in the area.  The service that assured the same commission that one service was the way to go, that adding a service would ruin the county and that they had everything well in hand.

Painfully obvious is the roadblock presented, but we have continued not to resort to mudslinging.  We have buckets of mud, but we’re not going to lower ourselves to join that type of discussion.  Apparently for the time being the commission voluntarily supports a monopoly, and one of their members went so far as saying “monopolies work better” and “we’re headed that way as a nation.”

So, then, will the small businessman lose himself in the corporate monster that has become local government.  Freedom dies to applause, and fear of change drives others to support the machine that serves its own interests, all the name of the community support.  They accuse us as the fox in the henhouse, never recognizing that the farmer eats plenty of eggs and any chickens unfortunate enough to catch his eye.

Are we the fox come to rattle the henhouse?  or some poor chicken on the farmer’s plate?  Or were we just crushed as an egg, that good idea that a good man had, just because it broke the constabulary.

Many ideas.  I think first and foremost, to move out of and remain outside the influence that poisons the community against a fair and level playing field, while they pretend to protect that same field.  What they’re really saying is “It’s our field, and you can’t play at all.”  I wonder when elections are planned…

November 30, 2007; 2:09PM
Light and Darkness
Current mood:  angry
This weekend I learned that my position might, or might NOT, be eliminated at the hospital.  They are expecting us to move, as paramedics, back to that vaunted position for which we show unswerving ability, . . .in triage.  But not only that, we get to float through the ED and “help out.”

Read: take my patient upstairs for me.

Read: I don’t know how to start IV’s; start it for me so I can chart it.

Read: grab some kid a popsicle and try not to shove it too far up my ass in your own mind before giving it to someone that will eat it.

If they would have been honest, and told me that I would suddenly be responsbile to triage and the entire 70 beds in the ER, I would be teaching right now.  Then again, if they were honest about what they were doing, my mirror shift would have actually just by now, and she would be teaching, too.  Oh, and the last insult?  Apparently my shift start time will bump back an hour, so I won’t have the mornings to get things done.  I will go to work early enough in the day that I won’t be able to get shopping or anything else done on my on-weekends.  Which means back to having someone else mow my lawn, feed my cats and check my mail.  Means buying a housekeeper again.

Means being too tired to do anything on my on-shift weekends, and unable to do anything without taking a day off.  Why is it whenever things start clicking someone with a new and amazing way to fuck off decides to yank the rug out from under me?

Mitigating problem over the weekend:  I took the weekend off last weekend because some yutz didn’t know how to trim a tree, and took out the power line that runs along my driveway, WHILE my car was parked in the drive.  No damage, but because of the storm that happened a day later, they didn’t get back to fix it until Monday.  Of course, they got their weekend and overnight triple time for not doing the job and probably hazard pay for the storm.  I felt like leaving them a bill for keeping me out of work with their incompetence.

Sad thing is the troll that showed up with the yellow “fix-it” helmet probably wouldn’t have noticed that it was actually paper with words on it.

Back to the matter at hand:  Now this weekend, I get the weekend off, and don’t have to go back until the following Thursday.  I have a week to think about how much I’m not going to like what I’ll be doing.  It’s not a matter of wanting a free, easy job–although in the mornings, I have to say, the position has some downtime if you get your work done and settle in.  Still, this wasn’t the job I originally took.  I originally took the Peds ER position, because I wanted to work with the kids, and I’ve perked up my skills and put on my game face, and I’ve gotten the work done.  I don’t mind saying I’m the guy they go to for the hard IV’s, but the truth is what they propose will turn me into a chicken with my head cut off. . .  and the worse part will be, I’ll probably choose to start looking for work again as soon as they do this.

They don’t ask anyone else to spontaneously cover all 70 beds in the ER, and I won’t be made to.  To steal a phrase. . . ANGST.

September 13, 2007; 1:29AM
Rude Awakening!
Current mood:  aggravated
Okay,

So last night I fell asleep on the couch.  Eh, I’ve done it before.  A lot.  It’s neither a sign of bad health nor mistreatment of my own body.  It’s just that the couch consumes me.

Don’t worry, it always spits me back out eventually.

But this morning, I wake not to my alarm clock for work, nor to the TV switching on in anticipation of my daily routine, nor even the cats in their perpetual run that I prefer to think of a more a “taxi for takeoff.”

The sound is an unearthly and deep groan, a loud sound…a sound of large industrial machinery. . . and the the sounds of swift feet coming up my walk and a heavy hand pounding on my door.

I’m instantly awake, not sure where I am, and mad as hell.

I answer the door with one hand resting in the small of my back, and I think the construction worker must have thought I had my gun with me, because the look and the pose sent him back to the head of the steps.

“Hey, is that your car out front?”

I look.  Red.  In the street.  Definitely not mine.  I know whose it is, but I’m not tellin’.  “Nope.”

“Okay, thanks!”  and a scurry of hasty feet.  He damn near fell of the deck in his bid to escape me, and got caught up in the trees that line the front walk before getting back to his people.

Next thing I hear is a tremendous “CRACK.”

The storm last night knocked down a tree in the street. . .

The tree appears to head toward my driveway.

. . . and the bastards are carving it up right in front of my driveway.

I call in, not knowing if I’ll be there or not.

August 24, 2007; 9:02AM
Photo Albums
Current mood:  cold
it’s been Forerver since I updated these.

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/stfhq/dreams_are_like_grains_of_sand/

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/sfhq/dreams_are_like_grains_of_sand/

August 14, 2007; 10:18AM
The Healer
Current mood:  cold
my child, the child of my heart
and bearer of my name
who shares my gift
who eyes though young
are mine the very same
who shares my every thought
whose skillful hands I taught so well
now hear the hardest lesson
i shall ever have to tell

however great your gift
there will be times when you will fail
there will be those you cannot help
your skill cannot prevail
when you fight Death and lose to him
or what may yet be worse
you win to find the wreck He left
regards you with a curse

this only will I counsel you
that if you build a shell
fallow, close about you
then you close yourself in hell
and if your heart should harden
then your gift will fade and die
and all that you have lived and learned
will then become a lie

as you will
i have faced the fear and pain in dying eyes
and sometimes I have told the truth
and sometimes gentle lies
as you will
i have faced the time my skill brings no redress
and wondered if my gift was truly meant to curse or bless.

worst of all and harder still
the times when it’s a friend
who looks to you to bring him peace
and make his torment end
what will you do, young healer
when there’s nothing you can do?
i can give only counsel
for the rest is up to you

my child
your healing hands are guided
by your healing heart
that is all the wisdom
all my learning can impart
you take this pain upon you
as you challenge life unknown
and there can be no answer here but one

and that’s your own

August 14, 2007; 10:15AM
Sorrow
Current mood:  cold
…..So, to understand the nature of sorrow, and the ending of sorrow, one must understand time; and to understand time is to understand thought. The two are not separate. In understanding time, one comes upon thought; and the understanding of thought is the ending of time, and therefore the ending of sorrow. If that is very clear, then we can look at sorrow, and not worship it, …..

We put it in a church, in a temple, or in a dark corner of the mind, and hold it in awe; or we kick it, throw it away; or we escape from it. But here we are not doing any of those things. We see that for millennia man has struggled with this problem of sorrow, and that he has not been able to resolve it; so he has become hardened to it, he has accepted it, saying it is an inevitable part of life.

Now, merely to accept sorrow is not only stupid, but it makes for a dull mind. It makes the mind insensitive, brutal, superficial, and therefore life becomes very shoddy, a process of mere work and pleasure. One lives a fragmented existence as a business man, a scientist, an artist, a sentimentalist, a so-called religious person, and so on. But to understand and be free of sorrow, you have to understand time, and thereby understand thought. You cannot deny sorrow, or run away, escape from it through entertainment, through churches, through organized beliefs; nor can you accept and worship it; and not to do any of these things demands a great deal of attention, which is energy.

Sorrow is rooted in self-pity, and to understand sorrow there must first be a ruthless operation on all self-pity. I do not know if you have observed how sorry for yourself you become, for example, when you say, “I am lonely”. The moment there is self-pity you have provided the soil in which sorrow takes root. However much you may justify your self-pity, rationalize it, polish it, cover it up with ideas, it is still there, festering deep within you. So a man who would understand sorrow must begin by being free of this brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality which is self-pity. You may feel self-pity because you have a disease, or because you have lost someone by death, or because you have not fulfilled yourself and are therefore frustrated, dull; but whatever its cause, self-pity is the root of sorrow. And when once you are free of self-pity, you can look at sorrow without either worshipping it, or escaping from it, or giving it a sublime, spiritual significance, such as saying that you must suffer to find God – which is utter nonsense. It is only the dull, stupid mind that puts up with sorrow. So there must be no acceptance of sorrow whatsoever, and no denial of it. When you are free of self-pity, you have deprived sorrow of all the sentimentality, all the emotionalism that springs from self-pity then you are able to look at sorrow with complete attention.

August 14, 2007; 10:07AM
Remembrance, Laughter and Reminded
Current mood:  indescribable
“Flawed I am, and flawed I will remain.”

There are many things we discover on the path to living.  Some people never get to the end of the path, and actually start.  They stumble to the wayside, and give up their dreams, and settle for something less.

I did that once.  Hell, I’ve done it a lot.  The problem is we have to get back on the horse, find the Path, and start walking again.  We can’t not.  The problem is that sometimes we take enough of a wrong turn that by the time we find our way back, the Path has been replaced by a parking lot.  You have to keep moving.

I can remember working with a old paramedic friend.  He was an Air Force pilot who had finished his time, left the service and joined ours.  He was a good paramedic, and did good things for his patients and his partners.  I don’t remember any of his good deeds in particular, but I do remember one thing. . .

About ten years ago, I was working on primary rescue in a southeastern Michigan city, and traveling down a little street called Liberty toward another larger street called Fort.  I had once been to an accident site there and when I saw the street sign laying on the sidewalk, I picked it up and put it in my truck.  The cops were laughing so hard that they didn’t realize I was actually stealing the sign–which I did.  It stands now as a trophy in my shed, waiting for me to find my own Fort Liberty to put it in front of.

This evening, however, Fort Liberty was remembering that I took its sign.  And it was planning to get even.  It was winter, December if I recall, and it had been a mixture of cold and rainy, with occasional dips in the temperature that froze everything, and created beautiful cascades of ice that locked patterns of trees into finely shaped glass, and turned gutters into a child’s best toy for breaking and throwing like a lance.  It also tended to make the streets a little slick.  By that, I mean that sheets of rain had hardened into sheets of ice, and the wind had polished the freezing water into the perfect ice skating rink, right in the middle of a major cityscape.

So my partner and I, no surprise, were on our way to a call. . . probably an MVA, but I don’t honestly remember anymore.  We were traveling at about thirty miles an hour (just five miles over the posted limited) because the conditions weren’t good.  As we came up to the intersection, I was looking down the street toward the incoming traffic to see whether I could just burst out into traffic and keep going.

While I was looking left, down the three lane street, I noticed three semis, each taking up a lane of the street, running side-by-side.  It would have been curious, but at that moment my partner noticed something else.  The end of the street was coming up a little faster than he would like, and the street was covered with ice.  He said, “Ah, brakes?”  I looked up, and my eyes grew saucer-big as I recognized what was about to happen.   These three trucks couldn’t see us yet, and if they could, they would never think that we wouldn’t stop.  They would keep coming, growing in my window, and then I would get popped like a grape.

It’s times like this that you recall important details:  seatbelt-no-damn, brakes-nothing-shit, stopping-no-OOOOH!  My partner at this point is no longer speaking.  He’s trying to crawl backward into his seat and become one with the truck while fumbling with his seatbelt and trying not to scream.  Mind, he was a combat pilot, in the Air Force, and he flew a jet.  He thinks we’re about to die, and I can’t disagree with him.

Then I see it, the one little bastion of hope that literally saved us.  There was a manhole cover at the end of the street.  Because of the way the State builds the roads, the manhole cover that was supposed to allow for drainage at the end of the street stood up a little bit, from a road that angled down until it intersected with the next road.  It was there.  It was . . . DRY.  I turned the wheel and didn’t even have time to say, “hang on.”

We hit the manhole cover with the left front tire, on a two-lane street, with cars packed on either side.  I did the math in my head, somehow, and while the angels in the sky hid their eyes from the coming calamity, . . . nothing happened.  We were suddenly going in the opposite direction, back up Liberty toward Electric Avenue, away from Fort.  And the semis went by.  It was that fast.

I had just performed a bat turn with an ambulance.  I wasn’t too proud of the fact, because it meant I had done something stupid, got lucky, and now I got to live.  I stopped at the corner, turned down the next street and came back around to Fort, avoiding the icy street.  My partner had instinctively made himself one with his seat, fingers dug into the armrests and head plastered against the seatback.  He didn’t move, and for a few seconds he processed what had just happened.

Then he said, “You know, I’m not going to write you up for that, but if you ever do it again, I’m going to kick your ass.”  I nodded, and said, “So will I.”  The rest of the day went very well.  We did something like eighteen runs that day.

Have I mentioned I love winter?

August 8, 2007; 3:27PM
Old dream. . .
Current mood:  recumbent
This morning I awoke from an old dream.

It was so strange to remember old things, features, things I had forgotten.  It is a dream of a place I knew once, a place that holds many fond memories.  Perhaps, in a way, I needed that strength this morning.  It is a sad tale, but it brings me strength in hindsight, which is sometimes the second best weapon we have.  Laughter is the first, but sometimes we just don’t know where we put it last.  I haven’t been able to laugh for a few days now.  This season is always hard. . .

This is about someone bubbly, jumpy, tense and neurotic, but also someone who had the ability to be tremendously tender and kind–just not to the average stranger.  A lot of the things that I saw were reserved for me alone, and those are the memories that I try to keep in my mind.  But this morning my sleeping brain betrayed me, or maybe it just showed me something that I needed to see.  She used to walk into a room and find a cup of coffee she had left sitting.  She would light up in surprise (probably mock surprise) and say, “Oh, COFFEE!  THERE you are!  Where have you been?!”  She would pick up the coffee and hold it, cradling it a moment.  If it were warm, she would she, “I don’t know whether to drink up, or just cuddle you a while.”  And if it were cold, she would take a sip to find out how cold, usually followed by the exclaimation, “Gweh!  Cold coffee!”  and the coffee going to the sink.  sometimes the coffee was okay, and sometimes it had been there a while, to the point that something might have been living in it–didn’t matter.  It was a routine.  And it was hysterical.  In a way, I never got over that.

The first time it happened, I remember I was working for a service that was paying me reasonably well–which is to say they were paying me more than I’d ever made before, yet still not what I thought I was worth.  She was always waiting for me to come home, and I was met with a tackle at the door, as she literally took a flying, running leap at me, wrapped her arms and legs around me and hung on for dear life.  I remember that a couple of times she fell.  I also remember that a couple of times she almost fell, and hung on at the cost of my shirt, and sometimes a little skin.

But it was always welcome, and it was always something we laughed at.

This, then, was a different morning than all those.  She met me at the door, placed her hands on me chest and peered up into my eyes.  She was nose to nose with me and said, “So, where are we going?”  It wasn’t a hint, or a thought–she needed to go somewhere.  The walls were closing in.  She didn’t have a whole host of people to talk to, and there were a lot of times I wasn’t able to talk to her on the phone, because of work.  I was working at least sixty and sometimes more than a hundred hours a week, and the money, though it was good, wasn’t a replacement for actually being there.

There comes a time when buying things doesn’t really count anymore, when you aren’t there.  She looked up into my eyes, and she noticed that I was tired, and I said it.  I actually said, “Oh, honey, not today, please.  I just need to take a nap.

It was the first time she had ever asked, ever said she needed my attention like that.  And in that first test I had failed.  I saw the change come over her eyes, and watched her expression wilt.  It was heartbreaking, in retrospect, but not mine–I was too tired.  No, that’s a lie.  I wasn’t paying enough attention.  I left her there at the door, and went to lay down.  Sometime, I don’t know how much later, I woke up, and she was still standing there, nose pressed up against the glass, hands on the glass of the storm door, looking out into a world she wanted so much to be a part of, but without the strength to go into it alone.

This holiday season, don’t alienate yourself from your family to buy that extra gift.  This season is dismal, and dreary enough.  Instead, tell that person in your life that you care, and stay in an extra day.  Or, better yet, go out, and take them with you.

Running, climbing trees, jumping fences. . . it’s all better when you have someone to do those things with, and we can’t do it forever, no matter how hard we try.  It is in these things that we find our true contentment, not in the reflections of time lost and risks not taken.  Sleeping, dreaming and waiting for something to come find you is not enough–because it never comes on its own, and sometimes when you finally act, it’s too late.

August 8, 2007; 3:23PM

 

Eyes in the Dark
Current mood:  amused
There they were.

For the fourth night in a row, I saw these eyes that woke me from a sound sleep. Always watching. Always waiting. The darkness that they erupted from was not silent, however.

A low drone of the air conditioner sounded through the darkness.

The room was still as slowly raised my head to peer at this force that awakened me. And then I heard it. The soft sound punctuated the darkness such that I flinched involuntarily.

“. . .mrrrow?”

A pillow sailed across the room, to the satisfying tune of scrabbling claws over the din of the air conditioner. “BAD CAT!” Finally, that night later, I slept through the night.
August 8, 2007; 2:55PM
Working Again (yay!)
Current mood:  cheerful
Working again.

No longer Lead Faculty, but working for a system that works is better than being the guy blamed for a system that doesn’t–especially when the problems dictating their failure began years before I had inherited their messes.

The place is nice.  There is plenty of space, and a real equipment room, with real equipment maintained by a real person who monitors their stock.  Already this is a better setup, by description. They’re already doing most of the commonsensical things I wanted to do at my last posting, which warms me a bit.

May 6, 2007; 2:22AM
What the hell–?
Current mood:  sad
Integrity is that thing that requires we do what is right, even if sometimes it’s painful.

 

So I quit my job today. . .

Don’t know where I’m going.  Had no plans or intentions.  I just won’t work for someone who has the audacity to suggest I’m not a part of the team.  Anyone who knows me, and the things I’ve done, knows better.  I’m not afraid to take a cuff on the butt if I’ve done something wrong, but don’t ever tell me I’m not in there trying to do it right.

March 12, 2007; 12:21AM
Funniest Damn Thing, Thanks, Sniffly ^^
Current mood:  giddy
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and populated the Earth with broccoli, cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow and red vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.
Then using God’s great gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream and Krispy Creme Donuts. And Satan said, “You want chocolate with that?” And Man said, “Yes!” and Woman said, “and as long as you’re at it, add some sprinkles.” And they gained 10 pounds. And Satan smiled.

And God created the healthful yogurt that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, and sugar from the cane and combined them. And Woman went from size 6 to size 14.

So God said, “Try my fresh green salad.” And Satan presented Thousand-Island Dressing, buttery croutons and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman unfastened their belts following the repast.

God then said, “I have sent you heart healthy vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them.” And Satan brought forth deep fried fish a and chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained more weight and his cholesterol went through the roof.

God then created a light, fluffy white cake, named it “Angel Food Cake,” and said, “It is good.” Satan then created chocolate cake and named it “Devil’s Food.”

God then brought forth running shoes so that His children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan gave cable TV with a remote control so Man would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering blue light and gained pounds.

Then God brought forth the potato, naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And Man gained pounds.

God then gave lean beef so that Man might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite. And Satan created McDonald’s and its 99-cent double cheeseburger. Then said, “You want fries with that?” And Man replied, “Yes! And super size them!” And Satan said, “It is good.” And Man went into cardiac arrest.

God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

Then Satan created HMOs.

Thought for the day.

There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.
January 17, 2007; 9:13PM
Amethyst and Clover
Current mood:  content
Old things behind me are like snapshots in time.

In saying that, I never mean to imply that they are gone, merely they become the stuff of memory that things like perspective can change.  Something true in one person’s mind,. . . may not be so for everybody else.

Once, a long time, ago, my grandfather went on a hunting trip.  We had gone on such trips before, and always came back with a fascinating tale of the glorious hunt–even though the most we ever caught were a couple of cases of grog.  It falls to the old prerogative of the great Mark Twain, who said, “I remember everything from my childhood, vividly and with clarity, whether it happened that way or not.”  But my grandfather’s stories were legend to me as soon as they were uttered, and I tended to hang on his every word as law.

He went up this weekend alone.  On the trip previous, he and I had gone, and during the trip we had awakened to the most curious sound.  A chipmunk had gotten into the old A-frame cabin, and was now trapped inside.  It had absolutely no fear, and climbed up onto my grandfather’s chest to wake him by chittering and chattering in his face.  I wouldn’t have believed it, but I was there.  So I leave it you my reader to discount the tale of a tale. . .

This trip was no different, except that he had gone alone, and with the intentions of actually killing something and bringing it home.  He even remembered to take his guns with him this time–don’t ask, grandmother didn’t talk to him for a week.  As he was scouting the trail, the day before hunting season was supposed to end, he took a break and leaned back against a tree to rest.  As he rested there–and there’s no mention of time or whether he fell asleep–he heard a snuffling sound and crunching on the dry leaves.  A deer had walked up the trail behind him, and because of the direction of the stuff breeze didn’t even know he was there.

My grandfather realized that this was no ordinary buck, and this is that point where I have to interject that if we went fishing a sunfish grew and evolved into a sixteen pound smallmouth, and a racoon transformed into a wild bear.  But this time, this one, he claimed as a twelve point, beautiful stag of the kind the Tuatha de Dannan would have followed to Avalon itself.  It was majestic.  It was proud.

It was three feet away. . .

Now this is the point where the reader must recall that he was scouting the trail.  Few hunters when they are preparing for a day will pack out all their gear with them, and this time was no different.  He had left his gun at the house, oiled and prepared for its grim task.

He pointed his finger at the buck in his frustration, and said the only thing that came to mind. . .

“BANG DAMMIT!”

No one believed him. . . until he pulled up his shirt.  Antler-shaped bruises lines his chest.  So, this time I believed him, just like all the rest.

January 6, 2007; 4:33PM
A Blast from the Past. . .
Current mood:  shocked
It’s amazing that fate opens a door, everytime one closes.

There is a connection on some level, between people, that requires a certain amount of inalienable human contact–sometimes whether you want it or not.

For some people that number is very large, and for others it’s not.  I think I need to start paying attention to the fact that I keep my numbers small for a reason.

January 3, 2007;  10:00AM
The New
Current mood:  bored
2007.

 

“The world is changing. . .” and the rest of the beginning of the Lord of the Rings.  Today I heard a news report from the frontlines in Iraq.  I saw a number of people, smiling, all saying how positive the changes are in the controlled sections and cities, and how glad the people there are to see them.  For so long the news has hit on only one thing–casualties.

I’ll say, for the record, that I think war is wrong.  I don’t mean this one–I mean any one.  I tend toward the saying of one Sherman Potter (M.A.S.H.), who said once, “You know, one of the first rules of war should be that you have to sit down with the other man and get to know him, really get to know him, before it’s all right to shoot him.”  If you did that, I think a lot fewer people would end up dead, and the world would be a better–if a little more crowded–place.

January 1, 2007; 2:06PM
Nearing the New
Current mood:  contemplative
Flawed I am, and flawed I will remain.  But what things we do, in our short spans, is a gift–to God or whomever, what is your wish–but it is what we do with our respective gifts . . . that is the gift back.

An Easter Seals calendar lays propped ‘gainst the piano. . .  and a box of Christmas cheer waits to see the inside of a closet for another year, and visit with its closet friends, the dust bunnies and the dreams of a time when they were larger than life.  Cards still stand upon the mantle, and atop the entertainment cabinet, while I sip from holiday cocoa poured all at once into a liter jug and mixed with water and marshmellows.  And the glorious holiday leftovers, that bane of all cooking–has passed my personal eat-by date, and just went in the bin.

Thus closes the year. . . but more closes, even than that.

A discarded letter to someone else sits on the mailing porter, probably never to be received.  In another week, it will go back in the mail, “return to sender.”  And I’ll have to say she never lived here, just sent her mail here because she had credit cards and accounts her husband didn’t know about.  Do I feel bad?  No, because I thought it was an escape card for an abusive relationship.  I didn’t know she was lying to me.  Ten years, and down the tubes.

It’s an  honest truth, I suppose, that friendships change.  People grow together, and sometimes new things evolve that  you never saw, and never expected, before.  And then sometimes they grow apart.  It’s usually not even anyone’s fault.  It’s human nature that we change.  You can be angry, and you can be disappointed.  You can even be happy sometimes, when someone grows in a new and unexpected way–a wonderful way that makes them so much better.  But in the end we are only a series of snapshots in time.  We are shadow, and ash.  We are consensual reality–immortal for a limited time.

Until we realize we aren’t.

I’m reminded of friendships, and other people, and times longer past.  Of a golf course that used to be a park, and a place where a wonderful game used to be played.  I used to be *gasp* a live action roleplaying game, called Kanar.  It was tremendous and sometimes expensive fun, and more recently I’ve gotten involved again in the core game.

But in this time, this better time, I was running a break-away game for students of Oakland University, playing through an agreement with their Order of Lebowitz.  There were twenty dedicated players, on a field that extended from the small creek to the forest.  Deer ran the same trails, and we ran from dusk until dawn.  The local security police on campus knew most of us by sight, if not by name, and it was generally understood that we were just those weird kids that ran around the woods with sticks and shouting weird and arcane phrases that empowered tennis balls and bean bags to do strange and wonderful things, if only in the corners of our minds.

It was wonderful.

The beauty of being a child, is that a stick can be a sword, trash can lid a mighty shield, and your very hand an instrument of right.  It is that miracle called youth, before we put away childish things.

Well, one day–during those better times–I went out onto the field, to play *dum dum dum* the bad guy.  You see, everyone had to take turns, so other people got a chance to save the world.  I wore a black cape, and and played all the cliches, just like you’re supposed to.  One of the players, my good friend Melissa, was playing one of the good guys.  She carried something that we called a warhammer–meaning it was a foam hammer shaped to look like a weapon of the medieval age.  She stepped forward, a veritable rictus grin on her face.

I smiled, matching her expression.

I charged!

She charged!

I tilted my weapon to the side and began to fall back–it was a maneuver called “en pasade,” which means “in passing.”  It’s a move where you fall back suddenly and allow an overaggressive attacker to run onto your weapon.  But I telegraphed the move.

Maybe I didn’t indicate what I was going to do.  Maybe she was just that good.  Maybe she saw that I was looking where the blow would land–it was always a rule that you look at your opponents eyes so as to not betray your intentions.  She swung.  I tried to dodge.

Too late.  .  .

There’s another of those maneuvers in fighting, called Soup, Salad, Mornay.  Soup and Salad are merely those swipes to the side, as if reaching over the entree plate for the goodies you get just before.  She skipped those, though, and went straight for the last, downward stroke, the finisher that in ancient times would strike an opponent’s shoulder.  She brought her Mornay down, right on my face.

My glasses–which I had forgotten to take off–went in multiple directions.  The left lens went left, about three feet.  The right went a good ten feet, off into the brush somewhere.  It took about ten minutes to find, but that’s beside the point right now.  My frames compacted against the bridge of my nose, bent to match the lines of my cheeks, and went straight to the ground in front of me.  I fell backward, and landed on butt on the ground.

A single thought went through my mind. . .

“Damn, that was a good shot.”

Her eyes widened, and about the time I hit the ground, she dropped her hammer, and her hands went to her face.  She screamed, “Oh my god!  Oh, I’m so sorry!” and proceeded to get weak-kneed and dizzy.  About ten minutes later, she was calm enough to get up and go, and I had found the other half of my glasses.  I still bring it up from time to time, just to get a rise out of her, and it works.

I still have those old frames, too.  Maybe I’ll give them to her for her birthday as a joke gift this year. . . just to see that look   No, no that would be out of character, even for me.

 

The things that we do that make smiles. . .  yeah, that’s what we need to hold onto.

December 26, 2006; 12;29PM

New Endings
Current mood:  numb
“Good Bye” is like forever.

“Farewell” is like the end.

But in heart’s the memory. . .

And there, you’ll always be.

December 22, 2006; 12:51PM
New Beginnings
Current mood:  cheerful
So I was working at the Lincoln Park base station.

It was a small shack with a couple of garage doors behind a Mickey Shore, and we never had anything in the way of supplies.  It had run this way for years, and it wasn’t likely to change anytime soon.

Still, we made it home away from home, and aside from the occasional trading of back rubs between the male and female crewmembers (but mostly me offering Dawn a massage and her laying down) and the cookouts on the old grill it became the daily normal to walk in, throw the sheets on the bed and find something to eat.

One evening–I remember I had just come in to cover someone else’s second half–and I heard something.  It was a pitiful, low sound, and by low I mean near to the ground.  I looked down, and there he was.  Crawling on tiny little paws, eyes barely open, I met Darwin for the first time.  He was a city turnout–dirty, his fur matted and dingy, tiny in places he shouldn’t be a swollen from infection and worms.  He looked up at me a mewed.  It was a horrible, pitious sound.  It said, “Help me.”

Then he fell over.

Horrified, I scooped up the little guy, and carried him into the station.  He was so weak he couldn’t protest, so sick he couldn’t run.  But from the moment I picked him up, he started to do sometihng that still makes me happy every time I here it.  He started to purr.  When the rest of the station heard that I had brought in a stray, they flocked.  Actually, swarmed was more the description.

With lots of oohs and ahhs, I soon found myself surrounded by people that wanted to take my new kitten in.  And he was SO mine.  There was only one crewmember, though, who actually had the guts to fight me for him.  And I did.  She was probably surprised, but I won.  But, I’ll reiterate, she was probably surprised.

So, here I am.  It’s nine years later.  He weighs over twenty pounds.  He’s a Maine, and that’s normal for them.  Still gets me that he can open doors and shake hands.  He gets on the computer, though, and I’m out.

And he still purrs.

December 21, 2006; 11:02PM
The Hidden Room
Current mood:  gloomy
My partner and I went house shopping.

. . . not like that. . .  My partner was in the ambulance, while I was looking for a house.  I didn’t want to live in apartments anymore, and was looking for someplace to be.  The house that I was looking at on this particular day was close to my station, easily within walking distance, and was seriously underpriced for the neighborhood.  Hell, by now I could have paid it off and own it outright.

But. . . something was different.

We pulled up in front of the house and got out.  Big beautiful house of a type built in the early 1900s, and the house had been recently renovated–except for a few things on the second floor.  There was one interesting feature.  Aside from the coved ceilings and formal dining room with chandelier, there was a bathroom between the first and second floor, off the stairs.  I don’t know how or why they did it.  It doesn’t really matter.  It was just cool.  I was ready to buy.

When the real estate representative showed up, he seemed nervous.  I thought perhaps the neighborhood might not be good, or that perhaps he just didn’t like paramedics.  I shrugged it off.  I was interested in the house.  If the guy could sell it to me, I really did care about anything else.  When we went upstairs, the guy got more nervous, and I started thinking, ‘They haven’t finished renovating up here.  What’s wrong with the house?’  Words like ‘fast one’ and ‘carnival salesman’ flew through my head as I started to scrutinize everything in the house on that second floor.  When we went into the last room on the second floor, on the way back to the stairs, I could find a thing wrong.

‘Maybe he’s just worried that the second floor not being renovated is going to cost him the sale,’ I thought to myself.  Either that, or something was wrong that I couldn’t see, and neither could my partner.  When we went into the last bedroom, the guy didn’t follow.  In fact, at one point I think he actually backed down the stairs a little.  I thought to myself, ‘Ha!  got him!’  This must be where the problem is!  I marched in. . . and stopped.  The room was a little. . . different.  It didn’t feel right.  I turned toward my partner, and he had the same look.  He was grimacing, and his eyebrow was arched.

I walked back to the door, and noticed something.  The paneling in the room was slightly inconsistent in one corner.  It looked tilted, and when I touched it, it opened!  There was a secret room here!  I looked back at my partner, and–while we were both still a little creeped out by the vibes in this house–our curiousity was renewed.  The room was filled with children’s clothes and books.  Mostly, the pages were just spread throughout the room.  It looked like storage, or storage that had been converted into a playroom.

As I crossed into the room, I saw something in the corner of the room.  In a black on black room with no lights on, something moved.  In a vacant house.  Enter the goosebumps.  My partner shines a flashlight over my shoulder, right toward the same corner.  Either he had noticed my reaction and was looking, or he had seen it too.  When I looked back, his eyes were saucer-wide.  He had seen it, too, . . . but. . .nothing there.  As I looked back toward him, the sales guy is now backing down the stairs, looking frightened.  Then we hear something.

“Mommy?”

Clear as day, from the corner.  My partner and I simultaneously turned and started to run.  The sales guy was GONE.  He had run back to his car, leaving the house unsecured, and was already halfway down the street by the time we had gotten back to the rig.  We sat there for a minute, wondering whether that had really just happened.

Then I called the realty office and told them I wasn’t interested.  They confirmed that the sales rep had just quit, and they asked us to lock up.  My partner and I, two grown adults, waited ten minutes before sneaking back to the house, slamming the door and throwing the lock back on. before turning and running like hell.

I never went back.  I don’t even drive down that street.

 

Hm.  It brings a thought to mind.

December 12, 2006; 11:33AM

 

Clarity
Current mood:  apathetic
“Flawed I am, and flawed I will remain.”

There are many things we discover on the path to living.  Some people never get to the end of the path, and actually start.  They stumble to the wayside, and give up their dreams, and settle for something less.

I did that once.  Hell, I’ve done it a lot.  The problem is we have to get back on the horse, find the Path, and start walking again.  We can’t not.  The problem is that sometimes we take enough of a wrong turn that by the time we find our way back, the Path has been replaced by a parking lot.  You have to keep moving.

I can remember working with a old paramedic friend.  He was an Air Force pilot who had finished his time, left the service and joined ours.  He was a good paramedic, and did good things for his patients and his partners.  I don’t remember any of his good deeds in particular, but I do remember one thing. . .

About ten years ago, I was working on primary rescue in a southeastern Michigan city, and traveling down a little street called Liberty toward another larger street called Fort.  I had once been to an accident site there and when I saw the street sign laying on the sidewalk, I picked it up and put it in my truck.  The cops were laughing so hard that they didn’t realize I was actually stealing the sign–which I did.  It stands now as a trophy in my shed, waiting for me to find my own Fort Liberty to put it in front of.

This evening, however, Fort Liberty was remembering that I took its sign.  And it was planning to get even.  It was winter, December if I recall, and it had been a mixture of cold and rainy, with occasional dips in the temperature that froze everything, and created beautiful cascades of ice that locked patterns of trees into finely shaped glass, and turned gutters into a child’s best toy for breaking and throwing like a lance.  It also tended to make the streets a little slick.  By that, I mean that sheets of rain had hardened into sheets of ice, and the wind had polished the freezing water into the perfect ice skating rink, right in the middle of a major cityscape.

So my partner and I, no surprise, were on our way to a call. . . probably an MVA, but I don’t honestly remember anymore.  We were traveling at about thirty miles an hour (just five miles over the posted limited) because the conditions weren’t good.  As we came up to the intersection, I was looking down the street toward the incoming traffic to see whether I could just burst out into traffic and keep going.

While I was looking left, down the three lane street, I noticed three semis, each taking up a lane of the street, running side-by-side.  It would have been curious, but at that moment my partner noticed something else.  The end of the street was coming up a little faster than he would like, and the street was covered with ice.  He said, “Ah, brakes?”  I looked up, and my eyes grew saucer-big as I recognized what was about to happen.   These three trucks couldn’t see us yet, and if they could, they would never think that we wouldn’t stop.  They would keep coming, growing in my window, and then I would get popped like a grape.

It’s times like this that you recall important details:  seatbelt-no-damn, brakes-nothing-shit, stopping-no-OOOOH!  My partner at this point is no longer speaking.  He’s trying to crawl backward into his seat and become one with the truck while fumbling with his seatbelt and trying not to scream.  Mind, he was a combat pilot, in the Air Force, and he flew a jet.  He thinks we’re about to die, and I can’t disagree with him.

Then I see it, the one little bastion of hope that literally saved us.  There was a manhole cover at the end of the street.  Because of the way the State builds the roads, the manhole cover that was supposed to allow for drainage at the end of the street stood up a little bit, from a road that angled down until it intersected with the next road.  It was there.  It was . . . DRY.  I turned the wheel and didn’t even have time to say, “hang on.”

We hit the manhole cover with the left front tire, on a two-lane street, with cars packed on either side.  I did the math in my head, somehow, and while the angels in the sky hid their eyes from the coming calamity, . . . nothing happened.  We were suddenly going in the opposite direction, back up Liberty toward Electric Avenue, away from Fort.  And the semis went by.  It was that fast.

I had just performed a bat turn with an ambulance.  I wasn’t too proud of the fact, because it meant I had done something stupid, got lucky, and now I got to live.  I stopped at the corner, turned down the next street and came back around to Fort, avoiding the icy street.  My partner had instinctively made himself one with his seat, fingers dug into the armrests and head plastered against the seatback.  He didn’t move, and for a few seconds he processed what had just happened.

Then he said, “You know, I’m not going to write you up for that, but if you ever do it again, I’m going to kick your ass.”  I nodded, and said, “So will I.”  The rest of the day went very well.  We did something like eighteen runs that day.

Have I mentioned I love winter?

December 12, 2006; 11:01AM
It’s Not the Scream that Gets You; It’s the Sharp Intake of Breath Just Before. . .
Current mood:  giddy
Yeah, she’s a beautiful child.

I wish she could have been mine, and there have been a lot of semi-serious and a few not-so-semi serious conversations where it’s been said she may just as well be.  She’s got the most winning smile, and has been raised–not in the best of environments–but in a loving and caring one that has nutured her intelligence.

But when she was TWO. . .

So, this the kind of child, it’s been established, that greets everyone with a hug and a winning smile–and people that she knows with a bigger hug and bigger smile.  That’s just her, and we love her for it.  You can’t not.  Part of that is her mom for which it’s already established I have a tender spot, and part of that she comes into all by herself.  This is during the wakeful hours, when all is right with the world, and the world is a shiny and happy place.  This is the same girl that once put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the VCR because she was afraid it would be hungry, and the same little girl that once tried to help someone who was afraid of needles to get over it. . .

Well, we won’t go into that. . .

Suffice it say, that when the world grows dark, and the sun dips into the western horizon, and shadows paint strange shapes on the wall, this is when the other child came out.  We called her “No Thank You.”  “No Thank You” usually had to be told several times when something shouldn’t be touched, and would do it anyway.  And whenever we took it out of her hands, usually the phrase was, “No Thank You!”  Hence, the name I attribute.

This wasn’t the worst, though.  After she was put down to bed, she tended to wake up in the middle of the night, usually just at the point when everyone in the house had entered their most relaxed and fragile state of sleep.  Then the “other OTHER” child came out.  This one, we labeled “THE BANSHEE WAIL.”  Yes, it’s capitalized.  Our little lady had night terrors, and she would wake up typically in the dead of night, and would suddenly scream.

AND SCREAM.

AND CONTINUE TO SCREAM.

ALLLL THE WAY THROUGH THE HOUSE TO MOM’S ROOM.

It wasn’t the scream that woke you up.  It was chilling to hear, naturally, and the kind of heartbreaking thing that any human being not acclimated to–which we all eventually were–would be desperate to appease.  It was entirely disconsolate, and desperate in and of itself, and horrified; but it wasn’t the scream that woke you up.

It was the sharp intake of breath just before.

 

Just thought I would share that today   It’s a great tale of family, and something that now I can look back on and miss terribly, because there were a lot of of things I didn’t get to see; but the memory is very warming to me in this time of year.

 

Things are strange now.  A lot of things are in flux, and no one has any of the real answers.  It’s in this time, and usually during this season, that I remember the good things, because they are so few and far between, and you have to hold onto them tight, before they slip away.  Or, at least, that’s always what I thought. . .

Tonight, it will be like old times, but there are these new things, too, and the new things are the things that make it different, even though it is the same.  I don’t know if that makes any sense.  I don’t even know if it makes sense to me.  It’s just what it is.  Letters in space.

_____________________________________

“If you love something, let it go.  If it comes back, it really is love.”

One of the kindest things I’ve ever heard is when she said, “I had to call.  I couldn’t stand not to.”

December 9, 2006; 10:16AM
“Coffee! Where have you been?” *slurp*
Current mood:  contemplative
This morning I awoke from an old dream.

It was so strange to remember old things, features, things I had forgotten.  It is a dream of a place I knew once, a place that holds many fond memories.  Perhaps, in a way, I needed that strength this morning.  It is a sad tale, but it brings me strength in hindsight, which is sometimes the second best weapon we have.  Laughter is the first, but sometimes we just don’t know where we put it last.  I haven’t been able to laugh for a few days now.  This season is always hard. . .

This is about someone bubbly, jumpy, tense and neurotic, but also someone who had the ability to be tremendously tender and kind–just not to the average stranger.  A lot of the things that I saw were reserved for me alone, and those are the memories that I try to keep in my mind.  But this morning my sleeping brain betrayed me, or maybe it just showed me something that I needed to see.  She used to walk into a room and find a cup of coffee she had left sitting.  She would light up in surprise (probably mock surprise) and say, “Oh, COFFEE!  THERE you are!  Where have you been?!”  She would pick up the coffee and hold it, cradling it a moment.  If it were warm, she would she, “I don’t know whether to drink up, or just cuddle you a while.”  And if it were cold, she would take a sip to find out how cold, usually followed by the exclaimation, “Gweh!  Cold coffee!”  and the coffee going to the sink.  sometimes the coffee was okay, and sometimes it had been there a while, to the point that something might have been living in it–didn’t matter.  It was a routine.  And it was hysterical.  In a way, I never got over that.

The first time it happened, I remember I was working for a service that was paying me reasonably well–which is to say they were paying me more than I’d ever made before, yet still not what I thought I was worth.  She was always waiting for me to come home, and I was met with a tackle at the door, as she literally took a flying, running leap at me, wrapped her arms and legs around me and hung on for dear life.  I remember that a couple of times she fell.  I also remember that a couple of times she almost fell, and hung on at the cost of my shirt, and sometimes a little skin.

But it was always welcome, and it was always something we laughed at.

This, then, was a different morning than all those.  She met me at the door, placed her hands on me chest and peered up into my eyes.  She was nose to nose with me and said, “So, where are we going?”  It wasn’t a hint, or a thought–she needed to go somewhere.  The walls were closing in.  She didn’t have a whole host of people to talk to, and there were a lot of times I wasn’t able to talk to her on the phone, because of work.  I was working at least sixty and sometimes more than a hundred hours a week, and the money, though it was good, wasn’t a replacement for actually being there.

There comes a time when buying things doesn’t really count anymore, when you aren’t there.  She looked up into my eyes, and she noticed that I was tired, and I said it.  I actually said, “Oh, honey, not today, please.  I just need to take a nap.

It was the first time she had ever asked, ever said she needed my attention like that.  And in that first test I had failed.  I saw the change come over her eyes, and watched her expression wilt.  It was heartbreaking, in retrospect, but not mine–I was too tired.  No, that’s a lie.  I wasn’t paying enough attention.  I left her there at the door, and went to lay down.  Sometime, I don’t know how much later, I woke up, and she was still standing there, nose pressed up against the glass, hands on the glass of the storm door, looking out into a world she wanted so much to be a part of, but without the strength to go into it alone.

This holiday season, don’t alienate yourself from your family to buy that extra gift.  This season is dismal, and dreary enough.  Instead, tell that person in your life that you care, and stay in an extra day.  Or, better yet, go out, and take them with you.

Running, climbing trees, jumping fences. . . it’s all better when you have someone to do those things with, and we can’t do it forever, no matter how hard we try.  It is in these things that we find our true contentment, not in the reflections of time lost and risks not taken.  Sleeping, dreaming and waiting for something to come find you is not enough–because it never comes on its own, and sometimes when you finally act, it’s too late.

December 3, 2006; 11:35AM
Here He Comes | Here Comes Speed Racer!
Current mood:  amused
Here’s a puzzler:  the origin of the phrase “carte blanche.”  I’m told that it refers to having your list of crimes wiped clean during the French Revolution, and am also told that it arose from being able to pass as white in New Orleans prior to desegregation in America.  Or was it something else altogether?

When we say that someone has been “given carte blanche,” it means that the person has been granted the freedom to take whatever action he or she pleases or thinks appropriate in a certain situation or in order to accomplish a given task.  There was a time not so long ago, for instance, when you would often read of a business hiring a new CEO and giving him or her “carte blanche” to reorganize the troubled company by any means he or she deemed wise.

As one of the theories you heard implies, “carte blanche” is originally from the French, where it literally means “blank paper.”  The term “carte blanche” was probably of military origin, meaning an agreement of unconditional surrender submitted by the loser to the victor consisting of a sheet of paper blank except for the defeated commander’s signature, signifying that the victor could fill in his own terms.  “Carte blanche” first appeared in English in this literal sense around 1700, but by later in the 18th century was being used in its modern “do whatever is necessary” sense.

It’s important to explain this little detail, before we begin. . .

My partner used to sing the theme song to Speed Racer to me, usually after I’d driven somewhere on a call.  I had that reputation, and–you know what?–I was proud of it.  Then one evening, we were called to a priority transfer, a pediatric patient transferring from one pediatric specialty to another. . . and the doctor will meet us at the door.  This doesn’t sound good.

The response to the ER isn’t very long, and it doesn’t give us time to prepare.  As we roll in, lights still cycling, it’s obvious something is going on.  There’s a lot of activity near the door.  “They’re waiting for us,” I remember my partner saying.  There was a little edge to his voice, probably more because of my driving than anything else.  The doctor leans in the door as we’re getting out, and I end up face-to-face with him, and a little closer than comfort permits.  He leans in and says, “Look, we already sent this kid’s parents ahead, because they can’t be here for what’s going on.  This kid had a procedure at [this other hospital] that we can’t even check.  We don’t have the facilities to do what they did for this kid, and something’s wrong with it.”

“This kid’s dying,” he says, “and there’s nothing I can do about it.  I don’t care if it’s bumpy; just get me there.”  My eyes light up at this, in some mysterious and releasing way.  It’s kinda like telling Alucard he’s released for a Level One Operation (it’s from Hellsing, for all you normal people).  I say, “Yes, sir; I’ll get you there,” and they get the kid loaded up while we sit in our seats, the engine still running.  I can feel my heart beating at this point, because they’re loading in equipment and personnel, and my partner has barely enough room to squeeze into the captain’s seat in the back.

We reach the freeway in two minutes–not because I’m driving but because it’s not far away.  The road is free and clear, and we have orders to get there, by any means necessary.  This is where it’s important to remember carte blanche.  In today’s world, ambulances run on PowerStroke Diesel engines with speed limiters; but back then ambulances ran on high octane gasoline and pure nerve.  We have our orders, and we go.

An ambulance running open-throttle is a smooth and deceiving machine.  The bumps in the road are practically non-existent, because the tires are barely in contact with the road.  The yellow lines blur into a vague sense of direction, more than the lanes of the road, and the stretch of the road ahead suddenly seems more closer.  The needle buries itself somewhere around “N”, because the little tab that’s supposed to stop the needle is missing.  I imagine we’re doing about 100mph.  It is the perfect night for a drive–3am on a clear, calm summer night.  The drunks are off the streets, and so is most anyone that doesn’t have to be out there.

When we arrive, I open the door for the doctor, and I can immediately tell that something is wrong.  I think to myself in a moment of panic, ‘Oh my God, the patient’s worse,’ but the vital signs look stable.  The rest of the crew is subdued. Quiet.  They get out, and the doctor says, “You guys wait here, okay? we’ll need you to take us back.”  What did he just say?  Does he think we’re simple?!  Of course he needs us to get them back–we brought them here!   . . . well, so much for bravado, ’cause we may actually have left them there.

The patient disappears out of our lives surrounded by surgeons using jargon and a flurry of activity.  The stretcher goes down a long hallway into a suite, and the light comes on, and that is where her story leaves mine, and goes to its own end.

Thirty minutes later, we’ve cleaned the ambulance from front to back.  Mind, there wasn’t much to do, because the hospital staff had their own equipment, mostly.  But we need busy work after a big call, and kids are a special kind of call.  When you mix those two ideas together, it can mess with your head, and there’s many a night that I wonder how that child did.

Hospital doors open again, and the crew from the other hospital comes back out.  They regard us for a moment and noiselessly climb in.  The ride back is again subdued, and I feel myself keeping the truck at an even 55mph the whole way back.  When we re-enter the driveway where this wild pony ride began, the nurses seem to start sighing in relief.  Then the doctor gets out and says, “Hey come here a minute; I’d like to talk to you.”

My partner looks at the ceiling, and doesn’t move.  ME.  They want to talk to me!  Me?  Why?  I was . . .  OH.  That’s right; I was driving.  Slowly, reserving my dignity, I calmly say, “Yes, sir,” and join the doctor as the rest of the crew disappears into the hospital.  If I’m about to get ripped for something, I’m going to take it like a man.  I square my shoulders and face him, my chin forward (up would be bad, as he wasn’t very tall).

The doctor regards me for a moment before he says, “You know, I may have misspoken.”   I blink and tilt my head a little to the side, and he adds, “When I said, ‘Get me there,’ I didn’t know what you guys were capable of out there.  I swear to God I saw a guy stopped in the middle of the freeway, and I wondered the hell the idiot was doing. . . and then I realized he hadn’t stopped!”  He chuckled and shook my hand, said, “Thanks,” and joined his crew in the hinterlands of The Truman Show (something I play out in my mind on occasion when I’ve done something really stupid).

My parter is already laughing now, so hard that I can hear him from inside the rig with the doors closed.

 

“Go Speed Racer Goooooo!”

November 24, 2006; 3:40PM
Trespasses
Current mood:  listless
He used to slink into the room, glare about for the spying human eyes, bare his teeth and hiss a warning.  ‘I am a wild creature,’ he was saying.  ‘I will not be loved, will not be tamed, will not be broken.’

His tail would stream behind him as he ran.

I met the tabby named Stimpy when I went to the home of a girl that I dated briefly, which is to say we hooked up a few times.  When I saw the deplorable conditions in which he had been reared and contained–fed once every four or five days and watered, and then left alone in a room while she worked or played.  So, to be honest without too much storytelling, I stole him from her.

In his earlier days, he would continue to slink about, coming out only feed, eyes sparkling with misgiving and teeth glinting with intent.  His eyes spoke of pure feral mistrust for anything that was not his own.

“But then one day,” to borrow the phrase from the great Gene Wilder, he stopped, and took a good, long look at me.  And he didn’t shy away when I approached him while he fed.  And he didn’t growl or hiss when I reached out.  That evening, after touching him once on the petting spot between his ears, he sat down in front of me, and just like that, it happened.

I don’t know when he became a lap cat after that, but he did.  That, and he was an incorrigible wretch when it came to getting what he wanted.  You didn’t pet him when he wanted it?  he bites.  You didn’t stop petting him when he was done?  he bites.  You look like he getting a bath?  or a vet?  you didn’t want to be you.

The first time he went to the vet to stay was the first time he developed a bowel impaction.  He had gotten into a packet of chicken, and had eaten everything, including the styrofoam package.  It had been two days after that he had stopped eating, and started getting sick.  We had been in touch with the veterinarian, and keeping tabs on him, but when it came the time to take him to the vet (and we didn’t say that word, and YES CATS CAN SPELL) he was a great bundle of ‘no.’

The vet did their best with him.  They were patient and kind, and the doctor that care for him was truly a gifted young lady.  They talked about surgery, but something in me mentioned cancer.  I don’t know why I said it.  It wasn’t what we were talking about, but the thought jumped into my head at the recollection of his behavior–the moodiness, the pacing, eating things he shouldn’t be.  All were unusual, and it gave me the idea that something else was very wrong.

In the end, I had voted for euthanasia, but I just couldn’t go through with it.  Tearfully, I begged for the life of my beloved pet.  $2200 later, which I still consider a bargain, they performed an exploratory surgery to repair the damaged section of intestine, and remove the impaction.  They found a remarkably small, but focused blockage, and the doctor was good to her word to pull out a small chunk of tissue to run a CA-125 study.  If there was any sign of cancer, they assured me, Stimpy would not wake up.

The surgery went well, and a few days later he was ready to go home.  We went in to get him, and the tech went back to get. . . “Him.”  The techs looked around in shock and awe.  They went back as a group.  There was silence.

I don’t know what the hell he did.  It doesn’t even really matter.  It was just impressive as hell when ALL the techs came out with a single cat.  He had been tightly scruffed, collared, wrapped in a towel, squeezed against the chest of one of the girls (a not unenviable position as I recall she was quite attractive) and was himself a ball of hateful waiting.

But when he saw his saviors, his humans, he started to do something I don’t think he has done in the entire course of his stay.  His eyes brightened, and his ears perked forward, and he started to purr.  Handed off, we merely walked him out the door to the car, much to their amaze.  He was plopped down in my wife’s lap, and I started the car and began to prepare for the trip home.

His purring grew in intensity as he started to crawl into my lap.  He became more insistent, and she said, “He wants to sit in your lap, sweetie!”  She let him go.  Then he crawled into my lap.  Then HE let go.  ALL OVER MY LAP.  Yeah, he pissed in my lap, staring up at me with smiling eyes and purring as if to say, ‘Dick.’  It was in the high eighties, in a car that had no air conditioning, and we had been careful to pick the right veterinarian for our loving felines–which is to say it was over an hour’s drive home.  By the time we hit the driveway, my lap was starting to smell.  From there, I hit the shower.

It was two weeks later.

Stimpy had gone back in one time for an infection, because he had reverted to some of his earlier behavior and started pulling at his dressings.  But in the end, it was a phone call that changed everything.

“I am so sorry.”  That was how the veterinarian had opened our conversation.  The CA-125 tests had come back, and across the board they were all positive.  Not only positive, but very positive.  So we set ourselves to the intention that he was a DNR from that point forward–if he got sick again, we would follow through with euthanasia.  Two months later, that was exactly what was did.

He had started getting sick again, stopped eating.  One night, in the midst of a party, he ran into the room in a half-panic, vomited and then yowled.  It was a heartbreaking sound.  It meant he was going to go.  So in the middle of the night we all piled into a car, with me holding my precious cat.  And for once he didn’t fight.  He had looked up at me with that quiet reserve and grace, and his eyes smiled again, but it was that sad expression that said, ‘Yeah, dad, it’s that time.’

We had to go to the vet emergency clinic due to the late hour, and signed a simple paper that released the service from liability for what they were about to do.  It cost $150 that night to bring comfort to the suffering.  They took him into a small room, and two of us were allowed to go with him.  The other two had to wait in the waiting room.  I recall thanking them for coming, instead of bailing.  I don’t recall saying in any detail what that really meant.

He was laid down on the table, and the nurse checked the needle.  Then they asked us to pet him and help hold him.  The needle went in.  He looked up and growled softly at the poke.  Then the expression of discomfort faded away.  He smiled one last time.  Then his pupils dilated, and he closed his eyes.

The nurse said, “His vein is blown.”

I looked down and said, “It’s okay.  He’s already gone.”  It must have been the way I said it.  The nurses looked at one another and then left the room.  I remember someone putting a hand on my shoulder for a moment, I think, but I really wasn’t thinking anymore.

I petted him for a while, and picked him up and held him one last time.

He had one more surprise in store for me.  I held him for a while, then started chuckling.  My wife must have thought I had lost my mind, but she asked me what was wrong.  I looked up and chuckled through my tears, and said, “He had to do it.  He got me one more time.”

I laid him back down on the table and patted his head one more time, and took a long last look before I walked out the door.  It would only be a fifteen minute ride home this time, but he’d done it again.

He’d pissed all over me.

Today a simple picture sits on a table in my office, with his collar draped over the top.  And once a year, right about this time, I light a candle to remember.

November 21, 2006; 11:06PM
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Current mood:  thoughtful
Sometimes when people leave, their trail leaves behind a black hole where the mystery and wonder of their existence once was.  But sometimes, when what they leave is so beautiful, it leaves a light that will not let the darkness fall.

November 21, 2006; 9:49PM
Drinkies
Current mood:  bored
So, I was in a fraternity.  Yeah.

The Delta Upsilon Chapter of Kappa Kappa Psi was a group of people that I came into my maturity with, who taught me what the world was all about, what was important, and what would give my life meaning.

They taught me to drink.

The first time I ever consumed alcohol, I was on a field trip.  I was taken to a hotel room, in a strange place, for strange things.  That was the long and the short of it.  I was pledging to the fraternity at the time, and Greg, one of the established members, walked up to me, took off my pledge pin, and said, “Tonight, my son, you will drink.”

He took pity on me when I confessed I had never tried alcohol before, and told me he would take care of me.  He mixed me a screwdriver, which is a wonderfully sublime and critically easy to overlook drink.  It combines all the best qualities of orange juice with all the deleterious effects of vodka when done correctly.  He mixed the perfect screwdriver, with just a little alcohol–barely enough, in fact, to coat the bottom of the glass.

I drank.

It seemed like a silly thing, and nothing that was risky.  So when I was finished, I told him it was pretty good.  He asked if I would have another.  I accepted.  He warned me that he was putting more alcohol in this time.  He did, in fact, try to warn me.  So I had that one, then I had three more that I mixed, and by then 1:10 had become 50/50.  Greg was a little worried about me, but that’s the last thing I remember thinking.  At all.

So, there I am slowly losing consciousness.  As the telescoping black that is the approaching unconsciousness begins to overtake my field of vision, I recall that we’re watching a hockey game.  No idea who’s playing.

The door to the hotel room opens suddenly with a creak, and I hear a voice–and girl’s voice–say, “Hey guys!  Look what I found!”  I hear it, coming toward me.  Like Jason.  Or Freddy.  Or CHUD.  It sails through the air, landing on the back of my head.  A case of beer rolls off my back and onto the bed next to me.  The only thing that I can do at this point is grunt, at which point everyone bursts into laughter, and I hear the same girl’s voice saying, “Oh my God! there’s someone under there!”

Light.

Tunnel vision closing.

Someone, a girl, comes toward my face saying, “Awwwwwwwwwww–”

And, I’m out.

The next morning I wake up.  I do the perfunctory check.  Eyebrows:  attached.  Marker: absent.  Clothes: present, and on.  I get up and catch a quick shower, upon which I realize the room is backward. . .  I’m in the wrong room.  I don’t know where I am, and in the process of checking the room number I let the door close.  Now I’m locked out.

I go downstairs to find out where everyone is, and my luck! they’re serving breakfast.  And I see Greg!  I walk over and ask him, “Hey, man, what happened last night?”  He doesn’t say anything right away, only stares at me.  Again, I ask.  He says, “You mean you really don’t remember?”  When I say no, he –

Greg, the guy that could beat our entire football team, the atomic weapon, the very large man standing in front of me. . .

– blushes, turns around and walks away.

 

Sometimes you’re just better off not knowin.’

November 21, 2006; 12:13AM
Perspective
Current mood:  complacent
I was sixteen.

It was a special time for me, when the world was still fresh and everything was still new.  But more than that, my license was new.  And my mother had a mission.

I was being sent for the peppers.

My mother made an excellent dish whenever she chose to cook, which she tended to do often fortunately.  Still, I did what any dedicated son would and complained frequently whenever some small item on the plate didn’t meet with immediate approval of my highly-refined, sensitive and capable palate.

But today, I had a chance to make it right.  I needed to retrieve the bell peppers for her dinner plans.  Pepper Steak–one of my favorites, and so everything had to meet with especially high standards.  This time in other words it was time for me to go to the store and get my own damn peppers.  Even moms have their limits.

I jumped into my car, which I loved.  It was 1990, and I was driving a 1983 Ford Escort.  It was a pregnant rollerskate with headers–yeah, my stepdad and I had worked on it and turned it into a very capable little machine that I could conceivably still be driving.  UNTIL.

Yeah, you guessed it–there’s a BAMPF! coming.

So I pull up to the KMart, which is now a vacant lot–but in the day it was the sole bastion of civilization in the boonies that I called Flat Rock.  I pulled up, got out, and picked out two perfect bell peppers.  They were in a little plastic tag tied with a white and red tie.  I remember this for some strange reason (whether that’s how it was or not).

The car started effortlessly, and I also recall that the headers had looked a lot nicer than the rest of the engine, which must be why it had to be completely rebuilt.  I seem to recall this thinking for some reason.  Aside from the fact that it was expensive, it has no bearing.

So, I pull up to the end of the road.  It’s a straight drive that heads into Telegraph.  US-24 is five lanes of terror in Flat Rock, and although the speed limit is 45 there are no signs, no stops, no curves aside from an underpass for the railway.  A van pulls up, in the right lane, right turn signal on.  The driver is hauling a trailer behind his van, and he can’t get into the drive until I pull out.

So, here comes BAMPF!

Does the sunovabitch go to the next intersection to turn?  No.
Does he try to turn the wheel and just let the trailer hit the curb?  No.
Does he look out the window and check behind him?  No.

Instead, he starts waving me out.

Yeah, something in those three items was pretty damn important.  But I’m a young, punk kid who doesn’t know any better, and he’s waved me out.  So I wave back, thinking, “Hey thanks!”  and proceed into the intersection.  Then I look over and see something coming at me really fast.  It looks like a red blur.

A brand-new, still has the factory sticker on it Grand Prix hits my driver side door at about 45-50mph.  It scoops up under my car, and the bumper comes through its plastic shell and stabs into my car, just missing my left ankle.  The force of the impact sends me halfway out of the car, held down by my seatbelt even as my head takes out the driverside window.

The car flew sideways about fifty feet down the road.  Impact shears the unibody and sends glass all over the road as the car twists over its glass and plastic signals and windows, and the engine sputters and dies.  The car hits the ground again and comes to rest.

I’m laying across the front seats, which is to say the seat I was in that’s held to the car by a single bolt and the other seat my head is laying in.  I straight up and realize my glasses are gone.  I start to get the door open, but realize that I’m never going to get that mess open.  It’s bowed out to at least a 30-degree angle, and mangled against the unibody frame.

I give up on that and instead yank on the passenger side door.  It doesn’t move, so I kick.  To my surprise, it flies right open, and I crawl out to find my glasses neatly folded and waiting for me, next to the right front tire.

I bend down and retrieve them, and think it’s a miracle no one got hurt.

Then the first firefighter gets on scene, while I’m trying to check on the other driver.  He stares at me when he sees me, and when he knows for sure he says, “You get away from there!  Go sit on the curb!”  I comply.  The police come soon after, along with the rescue and an engine, then a tow truck for my car.  One of the cops takes my story, and then they go to talk to the van driver, who gets the ticket.

Mind, he thought it was pretty damn funny until they started writing.  It wasn’t so funny anymore after that–gotta love Michigan law.

One of the firefighters says, “You were pretty damn lucky, kid.”  I tell him I’m okay, and he says, “Oh bullshit, you’re lucky you’re alive.”  Are those tears in my eyes when I realize he’s serious?

Perspective.

November 20, 2006; 12:12AM
The Next Refrain. . .
Current mood:  contemplative
First kisses.

We think that they define the ends of so many great movies.  We recall that they are the model of innocent love, which is given as a token of things not so innocent to come.  But it also means something else, at least in real terms.

First kisses generally suck.

My first was no less a weird occasion than anything else that has ever been associated with my life as “that guy.”  You know, the guy that’s just a little outside the normal (okay a lot).  The guy that’s generally kindly and quiet but you wonder whether he’s secretly experimenting on mice in a lab (and no I don’t).

I was sitting in the high school music room.  Her name was Ann.  She was . . . fourteen?  I think?  I was sixteen, I recall.  Yeah, okay. . . it was September 14, 1990, sixth period (so roughly 2:30p).  I didn’t even realize that I remembered that until now.

Maybe that IQ thing on my site works?

Anyway!  *huff*

So I’m sitting at a piano and realizing that I just remembered all those piano lessons I had gotten from my babysitter all those years ago.  She was my first crush, so I have to thank Tammy Martin for everything she did for me, because this was the day it was all to pay off.

I was talking to this girl, and in all truthfulness I didn’t even know her NAME.  I found out later that she was not only Ann, she was the daughter of one of our teachers.  Anyone read the “So I bought a Computer” blog?  Look up BAMPF!  It gives you an idea.  That is to say, I stood up, and she was correcting my poor piano playing skills by showing me, and demonstrating with painful slowness, how my arches were supposed to be set on the keys.  Then she did it.

She tilted her head back and smiled at me.  And I knew what I was supposed to do.  I leaned forward.  I kissed her.  I became vaguely aware of my old professor, Dr. Ludwig, going into his office, it seemed quickly for some reason.  Still, just one innocent kiss, right?

She got up and went. . . wherever it was that she did GO after this part of class, probably home by way of her locker and the bus.  I walked to a stool to sit down, head in the clouds.

Totally missed the “sit” thing and sat on a stool that had been set at its lowest height.  This, then, was my first BAMPF! as my ass met the seat with an audible crack.  Well, that’s why I’m pretty sure not all of my spinal compressions come from car accidents, although I’ve been pretty reckless.  This was no exception.

The next time I kissed her, I’m pretty sure. . . yeah, I was wearing braces.  I closed my eyes.   She closed hers.  It was magic.  I reached forward and effectively tried to drive my braces through her jaw.

Yeah, she ended up with a root canal out of that one, and didn’t seem so eager to kiss anymore after that.

 

Ah, young love.

 

(feh)

November 19, 2006; 10:54PM
Redux
Current mood:  grateful
…..So, to understand the nature of sorrow, and the ending of sorrow, one must understand time; and to understand time is to understand thought. The two are not separate. In understanding time, one comes upon thought; and the understanding of thought is the ending of time, and therefore the ending of sorrow. If that is very clear, then we can look at sorrow, and not worship it, …..

We put it in a church, in a temple, or in a dark corner of the mind, and hold it in awe; or we kick it, throw it away; or we escape from it. But here we are not doing any of those things. We see that for millennia man has struggled with this problem of sorrow, and that he has not been able to resolve it; so he has become hardened to it, he has accepted it, saying it is an inevitable part of life.

Now, merely to accept sorrow is not only stupid, but it makes for a dull mind. It makes the mind insensitive, brutal, superficial, and therefore life becomes very shoddy, a process of mere work and pleasure. One lives a fragmented existence as a business man, a scientist, an artist, a sentimentalist, a so-called religious person, and so on. But to understand and be free of sorrow, you have to understand time, and thereby understand thought. You cannot deny sorrow, or run away, escape from it through entertainment, through churches, through organized beliefs; nor can you accept and worship it; and not to do any of these things demands a great deal of attention, which is energy.

Sorrow is rooted in self-pity, and to understand sorrow there must first be a ruthless operation on all self-pity. I do not know if you have observed how sorry for yourself you become, for example, when you say, “I am lonely”. The moment there is self-pity you have provided the soil in which sorrow takes root. However much you may justify your self-pity, rationalize it, polish it, cover it up with ideas, it is still there, festering deep within you. So a man who would understand sorrow must begin by being free of this brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality which is self-pity. You may feel self-pity because you have a disease, or because you have lost someone by death, or because you have not fulfilled yourself and are therefore frustrated, dull; but whatever its cause, self-pity is the root of sorrow. And when once you are free of self-pity, you can look at sorrow without either worshipping it, or escaping from it, or giving it a sublime, spiritual significance, such as saying that you must suffer to find God – which is utter nonsense. It is only the dull, stupid mind that puts up with sorrow. So there must be no acceptance of sorrow whatsoever, and no denial of it. When you are free of self-pity, you have deprived sorrow of all the sentimentality, all the emotionalism that springs from self-pity then you are able to look at sorrow with complete attention.

November 19, 2006; 10:39AM
And so I become a voice in an empty theater. . .
It was a stage production many years ago, when I first realized my love for the theater, to tell the story where it really began.

It was my tenth year of life, and the civic theater called out auditions for their production of the Music Man.  I remember being not nervous at all.  I loved to sing, and I loved to dance.  I actually remember on a few occasions just sitting my parents down (as any truly serious child does) to sing to them, because they listened, and always told me how great it was–especially if it wasn’t.

My mother still has a blackmail tape of me singing, “Rainbow, rainbow shining so bright” and even offered me a copy of it on a CD just as the open threat that it was.  Hysterical, but damn.

I digress.  And I was five when I cut that first tape, so hush.

Any theater is a magical, special place, and some may think that it becomes pale, and ordinary, once you have stepped to the other side of the veil.  In game-terms, a Veil is something that separates one stage of reality from another, and in this case it is–I swear to you–all the moreso and more.

The hard wood of the floor was dotted with countless holes from the spikes, nails, screws and pins that had been used throughout the ages (about 1983) to secure sets to the theater floor during performances.  Most sets were made out of a thin material called muslin, which is both very flimsy and very resilient, which is to say it tears whenever you need it to hold, and keeps a tight grip which it needs to come off.

I set foot on stage.

It was my first real performance.  I remember not being scared at all.  After all, my mother was a member of our local community activity group, and had been a part in getting us some stage time at the local Apple Festival, one chilly fall day.  Not a whole lot of people came–it was cold.  I was bundled up so tightly it could have been that kid from Christmas Story and no one would have known.  So what’s the big deal, then?  That’s when I stepped out into the set, on the first day, on opening night.

It was a sold-out crowd.  There were over four hundred people in the audience.

And I remember what I said.  Coming from a ten-year-old boy, it must’ve been hysterical to hear me say, “oh SHIT!”  I don’t think I ever told anyone that, and the woman playing the Librarian, Marion, never told a soul.  So, sorry, mom:  I actually started swearing when I was ten.  But at least I used it in the right context.

The performace was a magical two weeks.

We played hard, and we stayed up late.  I was a child actor, and didn’t have things like bedtime, or school.  Well, I had school–it wasn’t THAT big a deal.  What can I say?  I’m a legend in my own mind.  I stayed up into the wee hours playing poker and euchre with forty-year-olds, and had the most amazing time.

Three weeks later, the set was to be struck.  The show was over.  I walked onto the stage, and was the last person there before they came in to strike the set.  And I remember an old song that I had learned, at some point.

“The stage is bare
The crowds are gone
The love we shared
Still lingers on.
We say and played
And we laughed and cried
And in our stumbling way
We tried to say
What only hearts can know
And all to soon, we had to go.
But now, here in this darkened room,
Just empty seats,
Just me and you.
It was easy, to call you, Lord,
when a thousand voices
Sang your praise,
But there’s no one to hear me now.
So hear me now.
Be near me now.”

It followed with a refrain, and was very pretty.  It is painful to me now, because I understand what it means finally.  Too many memories cloud me now, and make me weary.  They are not the nostalgias I have already shared, and I realize that it is time to take a break.

 

Until then, be well.  Fondest wishes attached.

November 19, 2006; 6:11PM
Non Gratis
Current mood:  exanimate
Just found out what that word really means.

Not only did she come back and take all her stuff back, and not only did I feel the need to lock the deadbolt for the first time in three years. . .

she actually felt the need to bring the cavalry with her.

Now I don’t know what to think. . .  except that I feel myself fading.  And even for all the things that I’ve done in my life, this time it actually scares me.
November 19, 2006; 6:06PM
Emileigh’s Input – Thanks
Current mood:  angry
FIGHT
what do you want from me
what do you plan tonight
can’t you see what i can see
and put up with the fight
i remain alone this time
’til i know for sure what’s mine
why can’t you face the truth
why must you run and hide
your ego’s killing you
i hate your stupid lies
can’t believe what you’ve done now
the faith we had can’t explain how
your selfish games and cruelty
somehow come back to me
i remain alone this time
’til i know for sure what’s mine

November 19, 2006; 7:25AM
4 am Again
Current mood:  uncomfortable
Somtimes being in tune sucks.

 

Stop waking me up. . .

November 18, 2006; 5:04AM
Stella – blast from the past (Thanks)
Current mood:  depressed
Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
I’ve lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I’m needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

November 18, 2006; 10:13PM
Brittany’s Thoughts – Thanks
Current mood:  apathetic
Traumatized

And there you were, sucking on a ciggarette, and we all sat in cellophane. In that silent, secluded sound came solitude with every syllable that came to our lips. Searing from the sky came warmth with the sun and the melancholy crowd’s silence subsided. But that sight was so shocking, sadness stole us. It sneaks in our sleep and we will never be the same.
November 18, 2006; 12:21PM
Green Eyed’s Perspective – Thanks
Current mood:  apathetic
In My Dreams!

In my dreams I dream of you,

I dream of dancing on air,

flying so high,

I could touch the sky,

to be free like a bird,

and soar like an eagal,

thats the only time I truely feel,

like I can be who I am,

with open arms,

and wings to help me charm,

by having them shiney,

and making me bold,

I feel like I can hold,

a mountain on top of my shoulders,

never feeling weak,

for my mind is clear,

and I never have fear,

so take me up,

and let me fly,

for I want to touch the sky.

 

Day after day,

I wonder why,

I cant dream all day.

and soar in the sky,

like birds through the night,

and a shooting star,

I want to leave and go as far,

as my golden wings,

you provided me to soar,

for to stop flying would be tradgic,

and my love to be no more!

 

My life is full,

even though your gone,

for your love for me,

gave me sight,

to feel like a shooting star in the night,

so thank you for giving me the gift,

of love, sight and flight!

November 18, 2006; 12:17PM
Stop the world a while, I may want to get off.
Current mood:  sick
In the past few days I’ve encountered some earth-shattering realizations, and I’m stepping back to do some soul searching. NOLA, and pretty much anything else in my life, is taking a back seat right now to some things that on a personal level may redefine who I am. I had to take a long look in the mirror this morning, and I didn’t like the glazed and hopeless look that greeted me. I may not be very prompt to respond for the next while, and I don’t know how long that while will be.

Yeah, for those that didn’t already know, it’s a love interest, and it didn’t go well. When a group of friends that’s known each other too damn long suddenly starts professing and espousing their unrequired loves within the circle, it usually doesn’t. I have one interested in me that I didn’t want, and someone I have been into for years who wants somebody else, and can’t return what I feel in either case.

It’s forced me to realize that so many things I want, I can’t have, and I don’t ultimately know what that realization will mean. But I don’t like myself very much right now, and that at least has to change, or things are going to get much, much worse.
I could use some thoughts here, and some perspective, because mine has, for once in my life, totally betrayed me.

November 18, 2006; 11:20AM
I know. . .
Current mood:  drained
the winter here’s cold, and bitter
it’s chilled us to the bone
we haven’t seen the sun for weeks
to long too far from home
I feel just like I’m sinking
and I claw for solid ground
I’m pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
oh darkness I feel like letting go

if all of the strength and all of the courage
come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
my love

so it’s better this way, I said
having seen this place before
where everything we said and did
hurts us all the more
its just that we stayed, too long
in the same old sickly skin
I’m pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
oh darkness I feel like letting go

if all of the strength
and all of the courage
come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
my love

Novemeber 18, 2006; 10:38AM
Dude, This is Pretty Fucked Up Right Here
Current mood:  cold
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.
Jager, in any form, is evil.

November 18, 2006; 9:59AM
Ghost
Current mood:  crushed
There’s a letter on the desktop
That I dug out of a drawer
The last truce we ever came to
In our adolescent war
And I start to feel the fever
From the warm air through the screen
You come regular like seasons
Shadowing my dreams

And the Mississippi’s mighty
But it starts in Minnesota
At a place that you could walk across
With five steps down
And I guess that’s how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown

And there’s not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
I’m in love with your ghost
I’m in love with your ghost

Dark and dangerous like a secret
That gets whispered in a hush
(Don’t tell a soul)
When I wake the things I dreamt about you
Last night make me blush
(Don’t tell a soul)
And you kiss me like a lover
Then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
Play your memory like a piper

And I feel it like a sickness
How this love is killing me
I’d walk into the fingers
Of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity
I’ve never been this close
I’m in love with your ghost

Unknowing captor
You never know how much you
Pierce my spirit
But I can’t touch you
Can you hear it?
A cry to be free
Oh I’m forever under lock and key
As you pass through me

Now I see your face before me
I would launch a thousand ships
To bring your heart back to my island
As the sand beneath me slips
As I burn up in your presence
And I know now how it feels
To be weakened like Achilles
With you always at my heels

This bitter pill I swallow
Is the silence that I keep
It poisons me I can’t swim free
The river is too deep
Though I’m baptized by your touch
I am no worse than most
In love with your ghost

You are shadowing my dreams
(In love with your ghost)
(In love with your ghost)
(In love with your ghost)

November 16, 2006; 11:14PM
“Don’t Tell Me You Love Me”
Current mood:  crushed
Nine years, and struggling.

I had run away and tried to find another life because I couldn’t get over her, and five years later when I came back I found that nothing in me had changed.  I still loved her that much.  More than anyone I’ve been with.  More than that, we’re both available now.

Tonight I finally told her how I felt, and more.  I told her that I loved her, and I told her that I had been in love with her now for longer than I had realized or been able to admit I loved her.

She smiled, just a little.  After all, it took me nine years to say.

But then she told me she had just said the same damned thing to someone else.  And then she told me, that he had given her the same response that she was about to give to me.

I had been her friend for too long, so long that it would be like being with a sibling.  So I’ve been given that penultimate curse/compliment.  I’m like a brother to her.  Not “let’s be friends.”  Which I suppose is good.  But “like a brother.”  Which means I can never have what I most want in life.

Never.

God, what a word.

 

I’ve been up all night drinkin’
To drown my sorrows down.
Nothing seems to help me
Since you went away.
I’m so tired of this town.
Every tongue is wagging
When every back is turned,
Telling secrets
That should never be revealed.
There’s nothing like to gain from this.

But disaster.

If I had the chance, love,
I would not hesitate
To tell you all the things
I never said before.
Don’t tell me it’s too late.
’cause I’ve relied on my illusions
To keep me warm at night.

I deny to my capacity to love
To be willing to give up this fight.

Or am I willing, to give up this fight. . . ?

November 16, 2006; 10:05PM
So I bought a computer. . .
Current mood:  apathetic
So, the other day, I was at work.

It’s a new position, and I had just moved all my useful data onto my HDD.  The computer was humming along, when all of a sudden — BAMPF!

BAMPF! of course is the technical term.  We’ll define that a little later

The computer’s old power adapter had failed a long time ago (it was a Presario, back when Compaq was still a company.  So, it was time for something to fail.  I had to replace the power adapter and settled on Targus.  Herein lies my mistake, and the BAMPF! to be later defined.

To say the least I did not buy the average power adapter.  Very few adapters came in the 90W power requirement that my computer demanded.  Instead, I had to buy a special adapter that could provide the 90W, but it also had a kind of overdrive.  In the event you plugged something into it that caused a draw of more power, it could give you 120W for a short period of time, to keep your computer from browning out, and thus protecting it. . . unless the draw is a bad ground.

So, here comes BAMPF!

“Becoming A Major, Phenomenal Fuckup”

The ground faults, and the computer starts drawing more power.  The adapter gleefully complies.  My computer begins to smoke.  I panic and, in so doing, throw it on the floor.  It doesn’t go so well with that.

So, now I’m harvesting my computer, in the office, while my coworkers try their best not to laugh at me.  Instead, they’re turning their heads and trying their best to be polite.  I’m observant–it’s something I curse at times like this.  I harvest the HDD, the DVD/ROM and the RAM chip, and start trying to harvest the monitor screen.  It’s worth a couple of hundred dollars, which could take the bite out of what I’m about to have to do, which is replace my computer–something I don’t really have the money for.

I take the pile of Smaug (my old computer) to Circuit City.  I have a HDD that has over 3 Gigs of data on it, that I desperately need, and I’m willing to try almost anything in the hopes of saving it.  It’s nearly 7pm by now, and the good people there watch me walk quickly around the laptops and basically say, “I want that one.”  When the guy realizes I’m serious, they start jumping over each other to help me–in the process alienating everyone else they were helping, because one of them wanted a free repair, one of them was returning something and I was buying a whole, new computer.  It mildly amuses me, so I don’t really say anything, and I’m not about to apologize for someone else’s human nature.  Hey, so I’m an ass; I can live with that.

I get the computer, but it’s already out of the box, and the guys at the register have lost the manual, the battery and the discs that come with it.  I tell them, “Make me a deal, ’cause I’m leaving with it.”  On a $1029 computer, I end up with $749.  That works.  Then I get the protection plan.  Add $169.  They give me a flashy disc that gives me a bunch of other options.  That’s not so bad.  They also give me a warranty that means I can call the service desk pretty much as soon as I get home and they’ll send me  a new battery, no questions asked.  That’s not so bad–it’s just going to take a little while.

Then I tell them about the HDD.  I need the data off of it, no matter what.  The guy, who’s actually been pretty cool, tells me, “Well, we could strip the data off using a program that transfers everything to DVD’s, but it would cost a lot more, and there’s a good chance any actual programs wouldn’t work.”  When I tell him I need 3 Gigs of data, he tells me it’s not worth trying.  Instead, he routes me toward a carriage that I can use to turn my old HDD into a portable drive–basically a REALLY big flash drive.  This tickles me all to hell, and I buy it.

When I get the computer home, I realize two things.  First, I realize that the carriage they sold me has the wrong cables.  It was made for a desktop HDD, not a lappy.  Useless.  I have to take it back the next day and hope to hell they have the one I need.  Second, I realize they forgot to deprogram the computer.  It still has Circuit City’s security programming on it.  It’s the kind of thing that locks up the computer and makes it useless unless you have the password, and it’s embedded into the boot server, meaning safe mode won’t bypass it.

I call.  I let them know that they forgot to deprogram it and ask for the password.  The guy I get tells me, “Oh, they’re different on every computer.”  Worse than that, without the manual, they don’t have the password to give me.  The guy tells me I can boot up in safe mode and use the discs to recover the system.  But, OOPS!, they didn’t have those either.

So, here I am.  I get the computer to boot up in safe mode, and I’m not sure how.  But this one time, it works.  I create a new logon, make it an administrator, and then log off the Circuit City user account.  It works, and I think, Eureka!, I am so “s-m-r-t.”  The computer works, and the next day I go into the store and return the carriage I couldn’t use, and they actually have the carriage I need.  I get it; it’s $15 cheaper.  Oh, boy.

I get everything working, but for some reason Java won’t enable.  Half the software I use and most of the powerpoints use the latest version of Java.  This is not good.  I try to download IE7, hoping to fix it, and all of a sudden I lose my entire connection. . . all of it.

Netscape works.

But Netscape isn’t IE.

IE is what I need to use auto-starting windows and download things through internet connections.  The computer won’t recognize internet connections from Netscape–it insists I don’t have a connection.  Hardline.  Wireless.  Might as well be Playdoh.

So I end up completely deleting IE from the computer through the windows components files.  Then I use Netscape to download the Java components.  Now that IE isn’t a part of the system, Windows is forced to accept that Netscape will be the default internet program, so this time it works.  I have Java.  Things seem to work.

So when I hit the button to verify that Java works, it opens. . .

. . .get this. . .

. . . an IE6 window.  IE6!!!

I’m afraid to log off, because I’m sure it will never work again.  And I’m using the IE that my computer insists I don’t have to write this post, just because it seems funny.  I’m also remembering that I have a Mike’s Hard Lemonade in the ‘fridge.

Three, actually.

And I’m thinking, ‘eh, what the hell?’

October 29, 2006; 9:57AM
Culmination
Current mood:  cranky
“Angst!”

In ten days, I take the test of my career.

On the same day, I hope to see the program I’ve written take hold, and a curriculum that will be taught in our area for the first time that will be completely ours, suited to our unique needs, will be offered through the group I will most likely teach for.

I’m in the position I’ve wanted to be in, ever since I lost it.

And yet. . .

I’m not entirely comfortable at the station I’m working at now.  It’s a twenty-four hour station, which I swore I’d never do again–worse than that it’s the second one that I’ve done.  The hours are too long, and our dispatchers don’t seem to know the difference between a day car and a 24 when we’re sitting so close together on the map.

I’ve gone home rather than work for someone who can’t dispatch us effectively, or appropriately.  It’s a selfish thing, because I know there’s no one to cover me.  I don’t feel so bad for a moment when I see seven openings in tomorrow’s schedule, but then I feel a whole lot worse.

There will be people that will need us, and I won’t be there.

Integrity.

That was the word that was drilled into our heads in school as “most high.”

Selfishness.

What I’m doing right now. . .

On the 23rd I’ll take a simple, 100 question exam that will determine whether I’ll be teaching, or working on the road another year.  Part of me almost feels like I don’t want to pass as badly as I once did.

Almost nine months since the end of the class, I’m actually wondering whether I can pass.

And then there’s the medical repercussion of staying another year on the road.  Degenerative Joint Disease.  C3, C4, C5, C6.  Subluxation.  C1.  C2.  Vertebrae giving out.  L3, L4, L5.  My knee.  My sinuses.  My burning throat when I lay down at night, and the nightly dose of TUMS I’ve been taking to treat my on-the-road diet of fast food, spicy treats and bad snacks with waaay too much soda.

People I don’t call anymore.

People that don’t call me anymore.  That’s more accurate.  After all, I’m not around enough to be reliable, and while everyone else is out having a good time I’m either sleeping or at work wishing I was sleeping.

Rees used to sleep too much. . .

I should be sleeping.  I’m supposed to be in Canterbury tomorrow.  Then Milan the next day.  And the next.  And back to work by Monday like nothing happened.

“Someday I’ll fly away. . .
 Leave all this to yesterday. . .”

I never did call that guy about the radio show.  We only tried to put this damned thing together three times now.  He hasn’t emailed me again, and I haven’t emailed him either.  Not since I completely forgot to call the day of the interview.

So tired.  Angst.

October 12, 2006; 11:01PM
From the offices of Free and the Krishnamurti
Current mood:  grateful
…..So, to understand the nature of sorrow, and the ending of sorrow, one must understand time; and to understand time is to understand thought. The two are not separate. In understanding time, one comes upon thought; and the understanding of thought is the ending of time, and therefore the ending of sorrow. If that is very clear, then we can look at sorrow, and not worship it, …..

We put it in a church, in a temple, or in a dark corner of the mind, and hold it in awe; or we kick it, throw it away; or we escape from it. But here we are not doing any of those things. We see that for millennia man has struggled with this problem of sorrow, and that he has not been able to resolve it; so he has become hardened to it, he has accepted it, saying it is an inevitable part of life.

Now, merely to accept sorrow is not only stupid, but it makes for a dull mind. It makes the mind insensitive, brutal, superficial, and therefore life becomes very shoddy, a process of mere work and pleasure. One lives a fragmented existence as a business man, a scientist, an artist, a sentimentalist, a so-called religious person, and so on. But to understand and be free of sorrow, you have to understand time, and thereby understand thought. You cannot deny sorrow, or run away, escape from it through entertainment, through churches, through organized beliefs; nor can you accept and worship it; and not to do any of these things demands a great deal of attention, which is energy.

Sorrow is rooted in self-pity, and to understand sorrow there must first be a ruthless operation on all self-pity. I do not know if you have observed how sorry for yourself you become, for example, when you say, “I am lonely”. The moment there is self-pity you have provided the soil in which sorrow takes root. However much you may justify your self-pity, rationalize it, polish it, cover it up with ideas, it is still there, festering deep within you. So a man who would understand sorrow must begin by being free of this brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality which is self-pity. You may feel self-pity because you have a disease, or because you have lost someone by death, or because you have not fulfilled yourself and are therefore frustrated, dull; but whatever its cause, self-pity is the root of sorrow. And when once you are free of self-pity, you can look at sorrow without either worshipping it, or escaping from it, or giving it a sublime, spiritual significance, such as saying that you must suffer to find God – which is utter nonsense. It is only the dull, stupid mind that puts up with sorrow. So there must be no acceptance of sorrow whatsoever, and no denial of it. When you are free of self-pity, you have deprived sorrow of all the sentimentality, all the emotionalism that springs from self-pity then you are able to look at sorrow with complete attention.

August 29, 2006; 10:00AM
Quitter
Current mood:  angry
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
What is “being a quitter?”

A person who “is a quitter” doesn’t intend to do a particular thing again.  Sometimes they can be convinced to reconsider, and sometimes they come to their senses and change their mind.  Sometimes they want to change their mind and can’t.

But a “quitter” is also someone who won’t take things the way they are, and realizes he can’t change it.  Wasn’t there something about Serenity and knowing the difference?

So is being a quitter a good thing?  or a bad thing?

August 26, 2006; 6:17PM
Lots of swearing here. Forewarning.
Current mood:  bitchy
Okay,  this is me taking a moment to put on my “Minion of Foamy” hat and espouse against the general stupidity of television today.  Not that it was ever such a great thing; it’s just gotten a lot less intelligent in recent times.  For today’s lesson, let’s look at the Stupid Life:

Is it just me, or is the new Paris and Nicole show known better by the name “Child Exploitation?”  I happened to catch just a snippet of an episode today (quite by accident I assure you) where “darling Nicole” was teaching a young child to stuff her bra so she “could make more friends.”  The same child was in the same five minute attention-span time-block encouraged and taught to disrespect her own family by kicking her brother “in the baby-maker,” and being told what that was!

What the fuck?

It’s not bad enough that we have to watch her idiot friend Paris the porn queen (she never went to prom) trying to ride a bicycle in a dress and pumps.  Now we have to watch that other idiot teaching a small child who doesn’t even need a bra to stuff it! so she can make the kinds of friends that want to see what’s in it!!

Does anyone else wonder why thirteen year olds are having babies?!

It’s just as little wonder that in the same time block the commercials advertise dating snuffs like Live Links, where even more desperate idiots can “connect,” when what they really should be doing is getting FIXED.

Dear God, let us pray that no one is ever stupid enough to “connect” with Paris or Nicole without anything less than a steel-belted radial condom.  For their own protection, if nothing else.  And if anybody ever marries those helpless tramps, I hope the reverend will order pre-marriage counseling, so that they can be kicked the “babymaker,” and that kind of stupidity will not be encouraged to breed!

I’m out.

/me takes off the Foamy hat

July 10, 2006; 1:36AM
Proliferations or Pontifications?
Current mood:  cold
This morning I was asked to be a character witness.

For someone I don’t like very much.  He can put away drinks about as well as me, and put pool balls away a little bit better.  It’s the trick shots.

For someone accused of doing something I personally abhor.  Violently.  I was asked to write a letter for the character of someone that, if guilty, stands for everything I hate.  There is no such thing as a “mistake” for the crime of which he stands accused.

So I have that immediate evil grin and think “karma, baby, yeah!”

And then feel immediately guilty.

But is this my guilt, or a guilt I have learned to inherit, and by so doing have I learned to accept the idea that I hate. . .or is it just the person accused?  It’s all about Star Trek, I suppose.  Well, I’ll get to that.  It actually started when I presupposed starting my own cop drama.

None of the cops would ever be the bad guys.  Ever.  None of the criminals would ever have confusing complexities that make them fascinating, and somehow redeem them while still maintaining their guilt.

These cops would be the epitomy of the able-bodied line of blue we depend on when we really need someone.  They would never be “dirty.”  Cops would never have to go after other cops, and the bad guys would always get caught.

But that wouldn’t sell.

Sadly, I realize that someone invented the “facet.”

A “facet” is a character “sliver.”  Nothing more.  But what that “sliver” represents is something “different” about the character.  It could host an allure.  A want.  A need.  And then suddenly you have cops that question the law, cops that turn their heads when the real “good” guy wins (even if it breaks the law). . .cops on the take.

A multi-faceted character will always beat Dudley Do-Right in blue or any other assortment of color, because they’re not only more believeable–they help us explain away our own faults.  And then we get to be heroes, too.  You see, once someone displays a character trait we abhor in ourselves, we HAVE to identify.  HAVE to hope that character will overcome.  It might be a slight thing, a trifle.  Or it might be an obsession.  Or rascism.  Or hatred on an even worse scale that knows no single creed or color.

And we are bred to that hate.  Which leads me to my next rambling thought: those same cop shows and dramas on TV.  Cops breaking the rules until they’re little different from the people they catch.  Criminals that are too smart, too swarthy, too good–often caught up by happenstance or chance-found evidence.  And the same shows breed better criminals.  Fortunately the kind of programming we host doesn’t breed smarter people, or we’d have a problem.  Imagine a hundred Bundy, Simpson, Peterson and Dahmer-copycats that all know bleach doesn’t hide blood.  I didn’t know that until I watched a cop drama.  They also told the crook what would have worked.  Which I won’t repeat here for obvious reasons:  Myspace is a great resource for people to come together in ways they never could before, but it’s also a home to weirdos.

But, anyway, the cop dramas proliferate disregard for the moral right in exchange for the complex character that draws the crowd.  That’s how people see the commercials, and that’s how people get paid.

Speaking of complex characters–and issues–and it’s back to Star Trek again.  Would the original Star Trek have EVER used the term “rape gang?”  Absolutely not.  The ideology of Star Trek was one of advanced learning, positive thinking and overcoming.  Welllll, it was about Kirk making out with a different woman every week, too, but they had to attract the crowds in the end the same as everyone else.   Not everyone got the “cerebral” “wagon train to the stars”–a mix of great meanings and metaphors, most of which are lost on an audience too used to being led through the plot twists of modern television with and by the expectations of a blind man’s cane.

And what do those people see?

Star Trek: The Next Generation hosts a character played by Denise Crosby, the backward hero “Tasha Yar,” with a multitude of complexities, not the least of which are her origins from the world Elba II, where “rape gangs” wander the darkened halls of the failed colony hunting for their only sport.  Civility and human moral fiber is utterly gone, and she is the subject of that upbringing, if only in her hope to overcome it.

But it profoundly influences acceptance of the evil, too, as long as one overcomes it.  And so, full-circle, you see “real-life” cop dramas with helicopter footage of people waving to fleeing fugitives as they pass in their cars, urging them on–or even worse: people-come-vigilantes who try to stop the bad guy on their own, because if the TV taught us one thing it’s that the straight-laced cops just can’t cut it anymore.

I won’t even go into all the footage of random violence that just puts the idea in the heads of others in places where that kind of violence had never happened before,. . . until they saw it on TV.  You see, there are a few of us that will always strive to do “good,” based on their own moral compass, just as there are people resigned to their fate of “evil,” often because they’ve never known anything else.  Or sometimes they just decide that “good” takes too much effort.  That leaves a vast majority of the “neutral ground,” people that can be swayed to do the right thing, or condemned to its opposite.  Like the old saying, this is a devil’s playground, because it’s easier, and more gratifying, to be bad.  Power with gratification has always been easy.

Extreme action shows and reality TV, people discarding their own morals, standards, any semblance of civility, their honesty and their innocence, right down to the famous footage of the Bachelor getting busy in a bush–with the audio portions of the film enhanced to hear every suspect slurp and gutteral noise.  This comes with more recent news media reports that–oh no!–the “voters” don’t actually have any say, and the people who make the decisions on the screen didn’t actually get the power to decide behind the scenes.  After all, people invested money in this crap, and they don’t want to see the normal pairs and the friendly couples.  They want action, mayhem, maybe even a fatality!  After all, why else would a show deliberately falsify its intentions, name and purpose and call it anything but “The Average Joe” except to get a bunch of nerds to sign up for it, or for the Real World–the first real reality television show–to surrepticiously plant a cast member dying from AIDS into the motley crew and then sensationalize his death (and the reactions of his former fellow cast members in a revival that ends with just a lot more screaming, making sure to invite the guy that was so out-of-line he had to be voted off).

Don’t be quick to be offended unless you don’t have to look up his name.  I remembered Pedro with about three seconds of thought, and I’m straight.  And healthy.  I count my moral compass intact.

But these shows and others like them opened the door for South Park, the unreality-reality show, hosting the very worst of what people can be, and there’s ALWAYS a fatality. . .except for the season where Kenny actually stayed dead.  And they said “shit” over one hundred times in one episode, just because they could.  Just because the censors have fallen enough.  No, because we’ve fallen enough. . . In truth, I think these two people stumbled upon a great truth, and they poke fun at our own inequities, and in the end they’re laughing at us, everytime we’re laughing with them.

After all, the censors are only representing our minimum moral expectations, and we’ve certainly fallen to the point that “shit” is a homile.

I’m reminded of the attempts of some “interest groups” filled with people who seem intent on protecting us from ourselves. . . the ACLU, for worthy example, attempted to force Americans to remove every cross from every Federal property in the United States, . . .without remembering a little thing called Arlington–more like offering a drowning man a glass of water, then not giving it to him because it will take longer to drown, prolonging the act for as long as possible.

Okay, I’ll admit, I capitalized that, more than once, and rewrote it many times in an attempt to justify the use of CAPS.  But I’m trying to depose anger here.  Trying not to react with what I’ve been trained to display, and so far I’ve managed to speak out against most of the commonly accepted conventions of thought presently practiced.

And I’m left with the same request.  To write something to defend someone whose character I know to be fallible, when I do not believe that he did what he is accused of.  It’s not in his character.

Then again, what is “character” but a history of learned traits, told and retold in the lives it has touched?  Rhetoric only, but compelling.

“If you can’t do something smart, do something right.”

June 16, 2006; 12:56PM

Where am I?
Current mood:  contemplative
Someone made the observation that I have a lot of email addresses, and I took a while to research my origins online. . . I say research, because it DID take a while.

So, here’s me, the Ghost in the Machine.

In late 1990 I was Shudder–I won’t say how many years back I was Shudder; let’s just say AT&T might not like me very much.  There was only one of me, and I was pretty good with a Commodore    Yeah, that was back when the Apple was still run on Basic and 212MB was all the memory you would ever need with the IBM, which ran on DOS.

Then I dropped offline for a few years and focused on college, and when I came back, I found out there were hundreds of Shudders!  People had stolen my handle, and I wasn’t even close to original anymore.  So I regretably became Shudder01, Shudder001 and even Shudder0001. . . and, yes they each had their own email address.  It became so confusing I eventually dumped all the various 1′s and 0′s and chose a single handle–Shudder0001.  That would be my handle for a further five years, during which time the ‘Net became more the monster it is today.

Then in 2000 I almost completely left the web again, this time focusing on Kanar, a roleplaying game that sucked a great deal of time, effort and money out of my life.  I should have avoided it.  It led to my next three relationships, none of which ended well obviously.  It also ended in a major political shakeup during which time I ended up partly running the organization and severing ties with nearly every human contact I had.  Of course, they were all starving artists and college students, so some might say that’s not a bad thing.

Finally, in 2005, my former wife decided to be bored, and I ended up finding a dating site online.  So I invented a few more names and ID’s, made sufficient back-history for them and made contact.  Then I found out where she would be and showed up during one of her dates.  It was ugly and ultimately self-satisfying.  Her new beau squared off with me, and I calmly smiled and shook his hand.  When he uncertainly returned the gesture I said, “Thanks, you showed me everything I needed to see.”

Man, was he screwed.

In the end, I stopped using any of my other addresses and broke off contact, hermitized for a year and created a single account: WandererAscendant.  “Ascendant” for the Rising Sign and the Cusp of the First House, signifying the degree of the Zodiac that is on the eastern horizon at the time and place a person is born. Each sign takes approximately two hours to rise above the horizon.  Wanderer, from “Peregrine,” said of a planet that does not occupy a sign of essential dignity or debility. A peregrine planet is like a wanderer or homeless vagabond and in essence lacks any clear power to act.

It seemed appropriate at the time.

Now, in the past two months, I’ve started using all my accounts regularly again.  I’ve also let my oldest account, the last original “Shudder,” go by the wayside, little more than a dumping ground for spam.  So, here I am, WandererAscendant.

But, no, there won’t be a myspace.com/wandererascendant.  At least, not one from me.   It’s much too metaphysical, and in the end “Shudder” still suits me just fine, even if I don’t get to be original anymore.

Either way, I don’t think AT&T would like me very much.

June 5, 2006; 4:11PM

Work, Work, Work
Current mood:  aggravated
I have a job interview with the boss on Monday.

I can’t say that I’m terribly enthused.  They offered me this position more than a month ago, and then the other managers started going to meetings, going on vacation or just going.  After the exchanges of hats over the past two weeks, no one really seems to know what it was they were offering.

So here I go again, interviewing with boss again for a job I supposedly already had.  That, and noticing curious notes about the workplace advertising “volunteer activity groups” for discussions in the areas I was supposed to be placed in management of.

I’m not terribly enthused.

I would tell you how I really feel, but I have friends at work that visit this site, and I wouldn’t want to worry them   Something about Haldol?  LOL!

June 3, 2006; 10:30PM
Suck It Up!
Current mood:  pensive
Something an old professor once said.

Well, actually he said it rather often!  And sometimes to me

However, in this particular case I’m trying to set something right that I did wrong, a long time ago.  I didn’t break anything, or hit somebody’s car and then drive away, and it certainly wasn’t illegal.  No, I did something that’s pinged on my moral compass for long enough that for a time I had decided I didn’t have one.

Recent events have convinced me that it’s time to re-evaluate that belief.

May 11, 2006; 2:26PM
Please pass this on!
Current mood:  enraged
Today, we received a request to sign a petition to push for the maximum punishment for a 21 year-old Dallas man involved in the torture death of a young pitbull. The petition only asks your name, city and zip code. 

The organization sponsoring the petition is Operation Kindness, a no-kill animal shelter in Texas.  Operation Kindness is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and receives no government funding.  They treated the dog, who has since been buried in their memorial garden.

Please note before clicking that there is a graphic picture of the animal’s wounds.  Mercy was a 10-month old puppy, and was reportedly stabbed, doused with gasoline and burned alive.  The picture is not appropriate for the young or easily offended.  The burns cover 70-75% percent of the dog’s body, and are mostly full-thickness burns across the flanks exposing tissues underneath the outer layers of skin.

We ask anyone that is outraged by animal cruelty to sign this petition and pass it along to your friends.   We also hope you’ll consider sending a donation to the shelter for their efforts.  The diligent work of Worthy Causes brought this issue to NOLA PetRescue, giving us the ability to continue to pass it on.  Please visit them at http://www.worthycauses.org and show them your thanks and support.
 
I would like to thank Worthy Causes for their informative report on Mercy, a little dog that in a better world might have been overlooked as “an ordinary animal.”  The shocking and deplorable conditions under which Mercy was found brought everything here to a standstill as we began to read, and to tears as we read the continuing report about her final hours.

An “ordinary” life that should have gone on has not, and because of the wanton cruelty of a single human being who–because of our legal system–will be treated far better than perhaps he deserves.  Ten years does not seem a fitting sentence for so heinous a crime, and if it is true that these kinds of criminals often commit their crimes upon animals first and later human victims, this could well have been a serial killer in the making that was stopped by Dallas’ fine investigative work and diligent efforts.

It is sad that nothing can bring Mercy back, nor take back the pain she must have endured to have had even a chance at survival, kindly given by such wonderful people for no other reason than they could try to make right what another human had done.  Perhaps we can hope that the jury or judge–whomever shall hear this case–shall find cause to exceed the common sentence, which is legal and permissible in extreme circumstances in many states, and find a sentence that will keep the criminal responsible for this act in prison for the remainder of his life.  It is still more kind punishment than the acts he has inflicted.

Please sign this petition and make your voice known.  You can find the website at: http://www.operationkindness.org/AnimalSponsor/ForMercy.htm  Again, please be warned that the photos may be extremely disturbing.

 
Therle
NOLA PetRescue

May 5, 2006; 1:43PM
Detroit Goes On
Current mood:  awake
I’m meeting with Susan with the OEM tomorrow at 11:30.  We’re planning to discuss CERT in more detail, and hopefully to cement my involvement in the development of a zoo team, which could then be used for emergency response in the event of a disaster either here or elsewhere in the nation.

It’s just a several-step process.  The Zoological Society was interested in the program, but the folks running it have determined not to develop a program until they have completed their transition from a City-run service to a Society service.  From there, perhaps a year or two down the road, I intend to have a refined program that I can set down in front of them, ready to go.

For that, however, I’ll need OEM support.  These people are very committed to doing what they think is right, but to a large extent I think they aren’t used to trusting each other.  And this is a project built on a great deal of trust. . .

April 17, 2006; 8:06PM
Oh, Danny Boy
Current mood:  contemplative
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
  From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling,
  It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow,
It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—
  Oh, Danny boy, O Danny boy, I love you so!
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
  If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye’ll come and find the place where I am lying,
  And kneel and say an Avè there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
  And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
  And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!

This has long been the favored dedication for fallen emergency services personnel, something that was personified in the tragedy in New Year.  But while that tragedy was caused by terrorists, other groups believed to use these same acts have associated with this song as their “calling,” although in truth it was not written by someone who ever set foot on their soil.  These two phrases appeared as additions to a version of Danny Boy circulated among members of the IRA.  It is sometimes misunderstood as actually belonging to the original version of the song.  The add-ons are in a different color, to make the distinction.

But should I live, and should you die for Ireland,
Let not your dying thoughts be all of me,
But breathe a prayer to God for our dear sireland,
That He will hear, and He will set her free.
And I will take your place and pike, my dearest,
And strike a blow, though weak that blow may be.
To help the cause to which your heart was nearest,
And you will rest in peace until I come for thee.

Oh Danny boy, go bravely fight for freedom
And give life’s all if wretched fate must be.
My beloved child I give to mother Ireland
For it was she that gave him unto me.
A hundred sons, though they be taken from me,
And if for Erin’s cause they too must die,
God’s hand will surely guide them onto glory
As upon the holy battlefield they lie.

The song actually came from a man who in the late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds who written a lyric that was not well received; then, while he was traveling in the States a family member sent him a copy of another song, whose music matched the lyrics he had written.  This time, the song was released as what became the version many know and love today.

Another controversy began when one Diocese forbid this song at a funeral mass, a controversy that still has not been entirely resolved.  While that Diocese has not reversed its position, several others have permitted the local followings to make their own decision.

 

I could give you my opinion, but I would lose my PG rating   Instead, I’m inclined to say hell with it and listen to Michele Rodriguez on Leno talking about ghosts and the danger of daddy-long-legs spiders.  You know, they could kill you if they could break skin.

March 16, 2006; 3:42PM
Ever Forward, as those we love move on
Current mood:  crushed
AISLING AN OIG-FHIR
 THE YOUNG MAN’S DREAM
BY EDWARD LAWSON
 
Aisling ghéur do dhearcas féin,
Go rabhas go faon sealad a’m luidhe,
Faoí ghéugaibh crann chois amhan a’m aonar,
Mar a m-bíodh aér agus spóirt a’ t-saoíghil ;
Bhídh ceileabhar eun ann ; a ngcaiseadhaibh ngéura,
Bídh gleacaídheacht éise ann le feicsin trídh,
Monbhar beach agus mil ‘na slaodaibh
Le fághail ag gach aein neach d’á ngeabhadh an t-slígh.  In a dream of delusion, methought I was laid,
By a brook overarched with a fluttering shade ;
A delicious recess, where silver-tongued rills,
And far cataracts deep roar echoed round from the hills :
Gleaming fish in clear waters were wontonly playing,
And hoarse murmuring bees o’er wild flow’rets were straying ;
While sweet honey distilled from old oaks to regale,
The young and the fair in that odorous vale. 
Rinn me stad tamall ag éisteacht
Le ceileabhar éin bhídh a m-bárr na craoíbh’,
Ag síor-chur nótaídhe a g-cóir a chéile,
A’s dhearc mé sbéir-bhean mhín, dheas le’m thaoíbh,
A gruadh ag lasadh air dhath na g-caér-chon,
A rosc mar réult ghlan seaca bhídh,
A scuab-fholt ómrach fighte go bróig léi,
‘S le cúmhaibh na deóigh súd ní mhairfead mí.
 A beautiful bird on a blossomy spray,
Was warbling a varied and rapturous lay ;
As I listened entranced in delightful surprise,
A lovely enchantress astonished my eyes ;
Her cheeks like the quicken’s rich clusters were glowing,
Her amber silk locks to her white ancles flowing ;
Like a keen freezing star gleamed each sparkling blue eye,
Alas! in one month, for her loss, I must die. 
Do bhiodhg, do phreab an ainfhir mhaordha
A’s labhair go séimh de chómhrádh chaoín ;
” A thogha na bh-fear mo slad ná déun-si
“‘ S gur maíghdean mé casadh a’d líon,
” Ná bídh-si ciontach le cam le claon-bheart
” O taoím a’m aonar air mo chliú bhuain díom,
” Oir gheabhainn-si bás trídh náire an sgeil sin
” Nó’m gheilt do bheídhinn-si air feadh mo shaoighil.”  When first she descried me, startled, alarmed,
And with coy supplication my sympathy charmed :
” Oh favoured of men ! do not ruin a maid,
By fate to your power unprotected betrayed ;
For with sorrow and shame broken hearted I’d die,
Or for life thro’ wild desarts a lunatic fly.”— 
A thogha na mban, ná tuig-si féin,
Do shlad go n-déanfainn air aen t-slíghe,
Le cam, le cleas, ná le beartaibh claona,
Oir tá mac Dé aguinn ós cionn ag t-saoíghil ;
Cuirim-si m’ímpidhe chum Rígh na gréine
A’s chum gach Naomh eile ghabhann le Críost,
Tu-sa agus me-si bheith ag á chéile,
A mhaighdion mhaordha, air feadh ar saoíghil.  ” Oh peerless perfection ! how canst thou believe,
That I could such innocence hurt or deceive ?
I implore the Great Fountain of glory and love,
And all the blessed saints in their synod above ;
That connubial affections our souls may combine,
And the pearl of her sex be immutably mine. 
A phlúir na m-ban—a dheallradh na scéimhe,
Ní fhásfaidh féur glas tré thalamh a níos,
Ni bhiadh teas ann ná neart na gréine,
Agus ní bhiadh réulta ann a d-torach oídhch’,—
Ní dhéanfaidh an ghealach solus d’éin-neach,
‘S ní bheidh éisg ann air muir nó air tír,
Beidh aghaidh gach srutha a g-coinne na sléibhte
Tráth bheidhead-sa claon duit, a ghrádh mo chroídhe !  The green grass shall not grow, nor the sun shed his light,
Nor the fair moon and stars gem the forehead of night ;
The stream shall flow upward, the fish quit the sea,
Ere I shall prove faithless, dear angel to thee.”
Her ripe lip and soft bosom then gently I prest,
And clasped her half-blushing consent to my breast ;
My heart fluttered light as a bird on the spray,—
But I woke, and alas, the vain dream fled away. 
Taréis gach geallaibh d’á d-tugas féin di,
Phog mé a béilín go dlúith arís,
Leag mé lamh air a brághaid bhreagh, ghléigheal,
A’s rugas am ghéagaibh air rún mo chroidhe :—
‘N-uair d’úmhluigh si gabhail liom mar chéile,
Bhi’dh mo chroídhe mar éun ag dul le gaoith ;
Trí lár mo shúgradh do mhúscail mé,
‘Smo chúmhaidh nír bh’ aén read acht aisling í. 

March 3, 2006; 2:50AM
The New Project
Current mood:  amused
Presently the new site is located at http://calhouncountycert.homestead.com, but this is going to be changing, whether to a .gov or a registered domain we’re not sure.  The site took me about two hours to build, initially, and about another four hours of fussing with until I felt good about it

The coordinator had a meeting today, and I got to phone conference.  I would have been there, but the roads, as is common to Michigan, were terrible this morning, and I wanted to take part in the meeting rather than end up a subject of it when I crashed over a bridge or into a tree.  I know it’s a long shot, but I feel better about it with the not-dying part.

Work has been a bear, but it’s getting better.  I had a partner that is very good at skills, but is also a browbeating know-it-all, and unfortunately it isn’t something that I have a lot of stomach for anymore.  There are many things in this world that I can tolerate, and if you want to point something out, I’ll happily give it it’s proper consideration, but don’t ever EVER say anything in front of a patient or their family.  They have enough to worry about as it is, and it’s not the time to discuss the finer points of risks to patient safety.  When the care providers are arguing, it’s a fair bet something must be wrong.  In this case, it was more a matter of an attitude problem.  If that weren’t bad enough, the argument was ended by a closing door instead of the conversation that could have avoided the angry mess that typically follows.

EMS: energetic misbehaving shithead

Applications are in the mail. . .

February 27, 2006; 8:05PM
Latest Project
Current mood:  accomplished
Calhoun County Community Emergency Response Team
“To provide . . . a quality resource for safety education, hazard mitigation, emergency response assistance and other volunteer efforts.”
Office of Emergency Management, Calhoun County
——————————————————————————–

Calhoun County, Michigan
Mission Statement Recent News Member Yearbook IRC Chat 2006 Schedule

 

Larry Utterback Jennifer Prewitt Therle Dregansky

CERT Members exist specifically to assist the lay public. They will:

Distribute and/or install smoke alarms and batteries to the elderly and disabled.

Assist with evacuations and traffic control.

Promote community awareness of potential hazards and preparedness measures.

Supplement staffing at special events, such as parades.

Act as victims in training exercises.
——————————————————————————–

 

Area Groups

CERTs are considered “Good Samaritans” and covered under the Volunteer Protection Act. CERT volunteers do not have any authority beyond serving as “Good Samaritan” when helping others.

When deployed appropriately, however, CERTs can complement and enhance first-response capability in neighborhoods and workplaces by ensuring the safety of themselves and their families working outward to the neighborhood or office and beyond until first responders arrive. CERTs can then assist first-response personnel as directed.

 

February 20, 2006; 9:18PM
Should be in bed by now. . .
Current mood:  drained
I can’t remember the last time we kissed.

You never think to recall, probably because you never think it will be the last time.

February 5, 2006; 11:30PM

Abstract
Current mood:  cold
my child, the child of my heart
and bearer of my name
who shares my gift
who eyes though young
are mine the very same
who shares my every thought
whose skillful hands I taught so well
now hear the hardest lesson
i shall ever have to tell

however great your gift
there will be times when you will fail
there will be those you cannot help
your skill cannot prevail
when you fight Death and lose to him
or what may yet be worse
you win to find the wreck He left
regards you with a curse

this only will I counsel you
that if you build a shell
fallow, close about you
then you close yourself in hell
and if your heart should harden
then your gift will fade and die
and all that you have lived and learned
will then become a lie

as you will
i have faced the fear and pain in dying eyes
and sometimes I have told the truth
and sometimes gentle lies
as you will
i have faced the time my skill brings no redress
and wondered if my gift was truly meant to curse or bless.

worst of all and harder still
the times when it’s a friend
who looks to you to bring him peace
and make his torment end
what will you do, young healer
when there’s nothing you can do?
i can give only counsel
for the rest is up to you

my child
your healing hands are guided
by your healing heart
that is all the wisdom
all my learning can impart
you take this pain upon you
as you challenge life unknown
and there can be no answer here but one

and that’s your own

February 5, 2006; 10:53PM
What Follows
Current mood:  disappointed
When you get all you want in the struggle for self,
The world makes you King, for a day.
So just go to the mirror, and look for yourself.
Go see what that man has to say.

For there isn’t a force that is stronger in life
Whose judgment upon you must pass
Than the fellow whose verdict counts most in your life:
The man looking back from the glass.

The man in the glass is the one you must please.
He’s the one with you straight to the end.
And you’ve passed the most dangerous, difficult test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world through the passage of years
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

February 5, 2006; 10:10PM
Ten Days
Current mood:  contemplative
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Days

 
The Fall of New Orleans

The Rise of a People

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Therle D. Dregansky III, CCEMTP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Dedication

 

 

 

I would like to dedicate this work to

all the fine men and women of the

service of emergency medicine

who play a part in emergencies

everyday, sometimes at the cost of

their very lives–and for very little

recompense. They ask for little,

and they give life every day.

 

 

 

I would also like to offer a

personal dedication to Kerry.

Yeah, you, Boston!

Even though I wasn’t really

hitting on you. Believe me,

you would have known!

 
Foreword

 

 

 

In the days that followed Katrina, hundreds of thousands were displaced and battered. Stores were emptied, resources depleted, spirits challenged–sometimes broken. What followed was the largest rescue effort in the history of the United States to date, and the first real test of the new protocols and guidelines that were created to protect us under the auspices of Homeland Security. This is their story, and ours. I was a Paramedic at Katrina.

 
The Gulf Coast had been through storms before, and this would certainly be no different. As Hurricane Katrina rounded the Florida Keys, she exhibited some curious activity, growing and turning with frightening speed. No one could have foretold that this would be The Perfect Storm, but the warnings had been written before, and the truth was there in the warmth of the gulf waters and the dominant weather patterns. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, reporters and forecasters had become public doom-sayers, writing articles that challenged the sea-level community of New Orleans would become “the next Atlantis.” The levy system, old and outdated, could no longer support a massive flood crest from a major storm, nor could it support the amounts of water that could flood the city that even now continues to sink just a little further into the bayous and backwaters of southernmost Louisiana every year.

 
After Ivan, planners and prognosticators largely did nothing, waiting from the sidelines for the opportunity to report, while urging little real change. Everyone in the world has their jobs, ultimately, and the reporters saw more than the public services were willing to change. And so, when Katrina turned sharply northward and slammed into the coast, no one was prepared. The people of New Orleans and the surrounding communities largely ignored the evacuation order until it was just too late. Worse, mandatory evacuations didn’t urge people to go far enough away, and the rescuers and guardians just became additional casualties as the storm rolled through–as a twenty-foot wave jumped the levy in some places and smashed it to bits in others. It led some of them to later desert, some taking their families to safety and others taking their city vehicles and running away. The devastation that chased at their very heels in some places wiped away all trace of homes, roads, schools and businesses, returning to the wild by force that which Man had created.

 
Two days after the storm had passed, organizers from across the country and around the world began to move, and although press agencies strangely omit their presence, we owe much to our friends in Great Britain, Mexico and France. There may have been others, but in the words of one of our greatest writers I will try to retain in writing only that which I experienced. The silence that persists about the assistance of our neighbor nations does not negate fact: they were there–right there with us–all along. Some local and out-of-state services contacted FEMA and the Office of Homeland Security. Others simply packed up as many supplies as they could in ambulances, fire engines, police cars and private vehicles and came en masse, becoming known as “Rogue Units,” and later simply as the Freelancers. Emergency Operation Centers were established along the damage zone, and thousands surged to the area before waters had even begun to recede, themselves a massive wave ahead of a storm of criticism, political machination and ultimately neglect of the real problem–people were still dying. Twelve days after Katrina had passed, the residents of some of the poorer areas of southern Louisiana, seeing our units deployed and wandering door-to-door, remarked that it was the first help they had seen–mere blocks from more affluent communities littered with yellow hand bills from FEMA providing emergency instructions and promising future aid. But those weren’t the kinds of things you focused on if you wanted to help. You did your job and kept your mouth shut, and you didn’t tell the people going through it what was happening. You just helped out the best you could.

 
The truly heart-rending casualties were the scores of abandoned domestic pets released in these resource-depleted areas to fend for themselves, because the evacuation effort had made no provision for our non-human family members. Crew after crew would tell tales of the exposed ribs and fright in the eyes of animals that remembered humans as kind, now confused as to why their own had gone away. A mother cat will burn horribly rescuing her kittens from a building on fire, yet we turned away. This is a cost that has no price–largely ignored, mostly forgotten; a begrieved child is easily placated with a replacement. They, in this disaster, were the throw-away population.

 

 

 

The Wild Easy

 

 

 

Rob Van Slyke was a Basic EMT with Community EMS, a service operating in the southeastern lower Michigan area. I don’t know where he really came from, but Rob was a real Detroiter. Told it like it was, liked to fight and loved being objectionable. In my first encounters with him I took a strong and immediate dislike, but in the days that followed as the relief effort continued, I would find a friend.

 
Through Rob I heard a story about the early days and nights in New Orleans following Katrina. The power was out. There were no other working vehicles in the city, save what ambulances had come in from outside. The infrastructure–totally devastated–could no longer care for its population, and there were people who desperately needed help. The ambulances that responded initially ran “hot,” meaning that they were using their emergency signals and sirens. The units ran hot to calls and to get fuel when they ran low; they needed to be available to respond to other calls, because there was no backup. They were it. And–yes–a few times they even ran hot to get food. Not everyone in New Orleans was glad to see the rescuers. Shots rang out in broad daylight as armed gangs of looters traveled the streets in search of whatever they could steal. It wasn’t any matter of survival for the low-life bottom-feeders–unless of course someone really believed that they just couldn’t survive without a plasma-screen TV. Tales as the military deployed to support responses into the troubled areas changed to rumors of buildings liquefied by automatic weapons’ fire when a sniper took a shot, and in particular of four armed looters who made the mistake of firing at a police officer who found himself–to his surprise–backed up by the entirety of the 82nd Airborne, or thusly runs the tale.

 
Within a matter of days, the city had been emptied of provisions; some buildings had burned to the ground, with no fire department left to douse the flames. Damaged and underwater gas mains continued to erupt flames, and the water running through the streets itself seemed to be set ablaze. Looters–tiring of their game of stealing–took to arson as well, setting additional blazes that illuminated the night, destroying evidence of their misdeeds and probably desecrating the remains of those that hadn’t escaped. The City of New Orleans had a new name, and that name was Hell. Military assistance had come only after the President and FEMA announced that the entire state of Louisiana was in a persisting state of emergency; it also had effect of legitimizing the presence of the “Rogue Units” and established an Emergency Operations Center, or EOC, in Baton Rouge. From there, the effort would be joined across the entire state. It is here that my part in this story truly begins.

The Long Road In

 

 

 

My station in Romulus was a pit. That’s just the way it is. The building, vacated by the fire department over twenty years ago, had cloth-wrapped wiring, lights rewired from socket connections of the pre-existing incandescent lights to the inadequate fluorescent strips running across the braced and reinforced wooden beams that line the ceiling. Paint chipped off in large sheets in the bathroom where the shower still generated some heat when it decided to work–something in the plastic piping was kinked, and it can never decide when it will run full strength or not at all. The cement floor is badly-cracked and poorly-patched–tripping was a danger even coming into the building; and the supply room ceiling used to be made of plaster that gave up long ago. Last, before I left, most of the lights were out, and the garage door leading into the bay was broken, supposedly bound up upon itself while closing, when in fact it appeared to have been dented by something vaguely ambulance-size moving out of the bay. It was there, sitting in the persisting twilight of our small office-bedroom-kitchen-space, when the pagers went off. Community EMS was sending a response team to New Orleans under contract with FEMA. The contract would last for thirty days, though the general consensus remained that we wouldn’t be there that long. Three weeks at most, perhaps, but probably less. Two teams would be deployed. The first team included Emergency Medical Technician Rob Van Slyke, Paramedic Dave Lata, and Mobile Intensive Care Unit Paramedic Pam Davidson.

 
Pam was charged initially with writing a blog for Community EMS while we continued to assist in the efforts to safeguard New Orleans, to tell the story of the men and women that were very much risking their lives on a daily basis in swamp water mixed with feces and the decay of so much death, dodging bullets when they weren’t hauling people out of the Big Easy. It quickly became clear that the response initiative was so focused on the relief effort for New Orleans that someone had been left out. Several thousand someones, as the case turned out. The affluent and poor alike in the surrounding communities had in some cases cheered as ambulances had torn through their towns, lights and sirens playing shapes, shadows and sound against the backdrop of silent woe that pervaded. Their cheers had then become mouth-agape shock and horror when no one stopped to say hello, much less provide to the needs of the people. The poor, especially, would become an example of how the system–for all its good intentions–cannot escape what it is: a tool of the powerful, sometimes forgetting the weak.

 
The blog at http://CEMS.blogsource.org gathered national attention, quickly becoming the most-read page on the site, BlogSource.org; it remained at number one for weeks during the emergency. Pam’s thoughts and focuses were–in her own words–philosophical, and I cannot debate the perfection of that word for what she accomplished. The words brought a face to what was happening in southern Louisiana, and made people see it in such a light that they couldn’t look away. Other national figures and celebrities became the highlight and focus, probably because they jumped right in and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty–offering the same hugs, good wishes and in many cases all the resources they could afford. They, too, were true heroes, giving hope to those who had none, and offering at the very least a kind word after a devastating loss.

 
Long hours drew into longer days, then a week, and it was then that I received a phone call from my manager, Jeff Chappelle. I had been upset at not being selected to go down with the first team, and I hadn’t been the only one that felt left out. The hurried nature of the response had resulted in the typical loudest voices receiving primary consideration, while sometimes those that patiently waited were simply forgotten. While FEMA was checking our credentials I had actually been placed on hold, then told that they would need to get my information later, because things were getting busy in the office. I blamed that incident on my not being selected in the first team, and was fearful that, with a class coming up, I would be unable to offer any assistance. That phone call with Jeff cemented what was to follow.

 
“Hey, T?”

 
“Yeah.”

 
“This is Jeff Chappelle.”

 
“Morning, sir.”

 
“Good morning. Hey, I heard you were interested in going down to Louisiana. You still interested?”

 
(half-second pause)

 
“Yeah!”

 
“Good, you’re goin’. We’re sending a second team.”

 
“Really? That’s great! I had a bag packed when the first team was sent, but I know right where everything is.”

 
“Great, T. We’re leaving Tuesday. Be here in Southfield at eight a.m.”

 
It represented an opportunity to do some good. It meant a chance to help. It meant I had to hurry up and dig my crap back out. Tuesday was two days away.

 

 

 

We’re All Gonna Cram Into This?

 

 

 

I contacted my parents and informed them that I was going. My mother took the news poorly, but she didn’t try to talk me out of it. She knew better, it would seem. It was her own fault that I’d been brought up to jump in and help out, after all. We had a light breakfast, and no less than five times she repeated the phrase, “So, just to make sure here, you’re getting your shots as soon as you get there, right?” The local news had been declaring that the death toll from cholera and a score of third-world illnesses that this nation had not seen in decades had built up her fear that I would contract something horrible and be left to my own devices, devoid of any treatments that would long since have run out in the devastated region. I consoled her each of the five times—mind, I’m pretty sure she would have turned the truck around and driven me home had I said I wasn’t sure. I was dropped off by my parents, who would have to watch my three hellion cats and my chinchilla, along with the cat I had adopted and her three babies, who had been born just two weeks before. It was no small imposition, then, but they and a good friend jumped right in, and I realize that I owe and then-very-pregnant Kimmie my heartfelt love and thanks.

 
When I was dropped off, then, at Community EMS headquarters in Southfield, Michigan, I didn’t see anyone else. I took the opportunity to play a small joke. I walked inside, then came back out a few minutes later and said, “Well, they left an hour ago; they’re already gone.” It wasn’t a mean joke until you consider for a moment that my mother was secretly hoping that something, just anything! would stand in my way, so she wouldn’t have to. It was probably a rotten thing to do, and I offer myself up for judgment. Worse, I learned that “shots” had been moved to an on-site injection after we arrived in Louisiana. They had never gotten the promised immunizations—a miscommunication that essentially meant that the shots we were to receive would still be completely effective (just about a week after we had already come home). It was better than nothing, but regardless I didn’t tell mom. We instead favored a short goodbye and “see you soons.”

 
I walked back through the building to find the rest of the team waiting in the departure bay along with a truck hauling a trailer and. . .space. No transportation. Then I found out what we were taking south. We weren’t driving ambulances, nor were we riding in a bus. Instead we found ourselves trapped in a wheelchair van that the mechanic was still prepping for the trip. As he tore out of the driveway to take one more test drive, calling it “a run to top off the fuel tanks,” we realized that this might not be the most comfortable trip we had ever taken. I rounded the corner of a staged vehicle to grab my gear and saw something I hadn’t expected to find. Her slightly deeper red than normal hair still reflected her Irish heritage, and her eyes were the blue of a very hot flame. Freckles laced across her cheeks, and her slightly taller than average stature brought us to eye-level. She smiled. I melted. I quickly learned her name and helped her stow her gear, but I wouldn’t learn until she made a phone call that she was leaving behind a boyfriend in Michigan. Oh well; I contented myself with the fact that she would be present, a “kind face” to look upon for a while. She was an Emergency Medical Technician waiting on her Specialist paperwork from the State, and I offered to check the State registry on-line to see whether she was ALS now. I also learned that her family was involved in mighty works in the Dominican Republic, building homes and providing comfort to the less fortunate in that more-traditionally devastated nation. It was only natural, then, that she be one of the people to go to Louisiana, and I’m very glad that she did. She would be driving.

 
Driving until two that afternoon—and right on time—we reached a small town just outside Dayton, Ohio, where we met a crew from Community Ambulance Service. The boys from CAS were headed the same place we were going, and our sister service had borrowed a van from one of their affiliates—a van with more seats, more room for belongings and a small chance to stretch our feet, which we did. On the trip down we got to know each other. The CAS crew had a mild, easy manner to them, which made them both easy to travel with and easy to like.

 
The trip to Baton Rouge took twenty hours, along with a few stops for fuel and a close encounter with the largest spider I had ever seen—somewhere south of Kentucky (which was a mild sensation in itself as we first considered evicting the rather large critter from its perch and then dissuaded ourselves on the premise that it might be poisonous). We arrived at four-forty-five in the a.m. one time zone further west. Reseting our watches and reporting to the Emergency Operation Center, we discovered that the EOC was going to put us to work. Immediately. Our first deployment was at six a.m., and although it would be the only time we would report for duty and be cleanly and easily deployed, it nevertheless set the stage for our efforts. Though they calculated our time-in to include transportation there and back, I only count our time once we were on the ground in Baton Rouge. This, then, was our first day according to the architects of our trip, that began twelve hundred miles away.

 
We saw little in the way of damage until we reached our assignments. Coming in from the north, it was almost as though nothing at all had happened, until you realized just how empty the streets were, and for one brief moment I allowed myself to be taken into the scenes of Left Behind, almost as though our small contingent of travelers might well be the last human life on earth. The illusion was shattered when we reached Camp Swaggert in Baton Rouge, where eighty ambulances over various days, thirty support vehicles and even more personnel from around the country had assembled. The florid motion of activity in the camp sites and the emergency shelters lined up across the asphalt focused my mind, and I even allowed myself a light, inward cheer as I realized the “showers” they had promised us in Baton Rouge would be coming from Decontamination Tents that had been set up behind the shelters, large tents built in spider-like assemblages that stretched from one side of the pavement to the other. Trash had piled up behind the tents, where a single large box originally intended to hold refuse had been simply overwhelmed, but curiously there were no vermin to pillage the rich spoils left by two-hundred men and women.

 
The tents were themselves organized in simple fashion–cots spread across both walls leaving narrow paths between the end-to-end tent flaps and the two side accessways tucked in the corners. The tents already smelled of sweat and old socks, boot leather and musty clothing, pitiful attempts at cleaning and cologne to cover it all. Tents were organized after that in long rows, and when the occasional rains soaked the ground it became a race to close up the tents, hoping that sealing the Velcro flaps would seal out the rain, but we had a mop and bucket in continual attendance to clean up after the afternoon showers, ever since the first one that had happened while everyone was away. Last the tents had a snaked line of power strips that ran through the spidery internal structure, leading back to generators that tended to run for twelve hours at a time or less. After the rain fell one day while the generators were running, the circuit breakers continued to cut off power to the second tent–water had obviously gotten in somewhere, and periodically grounded out the circuit.

 
The Decontamination Tents behind the tents we slept in provided simple, cold water, at whatever temperature the weather and sun decided to provide. Most days it wasn’t so bad, although most people tried to get their showers in the evening. These tents, though, built for decontamination, had no internal superstructure, which meant no place to hang lights. It was a minor inconvenience, and we weathered it well enough. The one downside was the total lack of identification between the male tent to the right and the female tent to the left. There were two chutes on each tent, and the phrases “left side” and “right side” became sometimes deliberately confused as a joke played against the new arrivals. The only thing that was certain was meal time.

 
Served three times each day, meals consisted of simple but very filling fare provided by the generous staff. Biscuits and gravy, sausage and eggs were served every morning. Some kind of meat, jambalaya and a biscuit usually rounded out lunch, and the was served for dinner. At all three meals you could find a fruit cup and any five kinds of drinks. The cafeteria was busy at all hours, except when it was very late at night, and it was never completely empty–even when I wasn’t there.

 

 

 

Day One

 

 

 

Daylight came slowly to the south. Shadows cast across the compound of Camp Swaggert gave unknown and disturbing dimensions to the already-foreign tents, and the shear number of emergency vehicles there. In all, over seventy-five ambulances had responded into the area. The EOC had established a placarding system to identify units according to their own unique designation, and every unit had to be marked with tape on the passenger side and back window. The number of my unit was no longer Healthlink 595. It was now MI-238. The designation system changed frequently, as did the implementation methods and information required by the EOC. It was the first sign that something was wrong. Still, we had just arrived, and we were here to do a job. We set out for our new camp, and that camp was Tammany Parish. The secondary EOC established at Camp Tammany was run out of a school. Classrooms became makeshift quarters, cots strewn across the floors as desks were piled in corners of stacked in the halls.

 
The Library became an operations center, while the main hallway into and out of the building became a dispatch center for Incident Command. Wires were run throughout the building in places where things were needed, supplemented by the hum of emergency generators. Power was restored quickly, and soon the wires were gone, in some places leaving a subtle reminder in marks of adhesive on the floor from the tape laid down to keep the crews–exhausted and rarely paying attention–from tripping and either injuring themselves or dragging something that couldn’t be replaced off a table.

 
My first day in Camp Tammany, I was asked to write a blog to record our arrival–a passing of the flags, or so to speak. A volunteer had been requested to write for the blog that Community EMS was keeping as a living record of what occurred. Much of what was really going on wasn’t appropriate for the site, and I ended up writing my own separate blog on my website in my off-time. Pam had worked on the blog until that time, and when we met I ended up stepping on my own feet when I mentioned that I would be writing–I of course said that I’d be happy to write with her and cooperate, but in the end we ended up writing from two perspectives, hers the philosophical and mine the dramatic. As it turned out, we both wrote entries that conflicted, even though they from basis of fact said mostly the same things, but both of us wrote posts that didn’t end up staying on the site.

 
Once we had met, and the crews had been informed we were going out–actually, as I recall we were told, “Well, you’re here, and they need you, and the trucks are over there!” I ended up partnering with Erin O’Brien, and we were settled into 595 and given a portable radio. Sometimes, they told us, the unit radios didn’t work out here, and sometimes cellular service was extremely unreliable. What we were really told was “Good luck getting any signal!” We had to figure out what that meant on our own. The trucks were dispatched to the north end of someplace called St. Tammany Parish, in a place none of us had ever been. We had to follow the unit in front of us, because none of us had any maps, and in the end we were following someone who took a few wrong turns. Flanking maneuvers and cool, team U-turns became a commonplace occurrence, and whenever we saw a string of units sitting alongside the road, we knew it wasn’t because they were staging or waiting for orders–they were lost, just like we were.

 
The drive into southeastern Louisiana was a trip back in time, but to a world in flux. Huge trees bent and broken, twisted and uprooted, blocked some roads and lay alongside others, obscured driveways and crushed cars and houses. Homes were sometimes spared by the capricious wind storms, and other times ripped apart. There was no even balance to any damage zone. The wind did what it wanted, make no mistake. It became remarkable and surprising when people began to emerge from their homes at our approach.

 
The first homes were nestled behind a stand of trees, which would have made for a pleasant sight, were it not that the trees were occasionally laying on their sides. One tree turned out, in fact, to be a utility pole. The wires had been wrapped so tightly around it and a nearby tree that it looked like a massive spool of thread discarded by some giant seamstress. The road in had seen miles of wire displaced from poles, the tops of the poles sheared off and laying next to the poles in some places and on the wrong side of the street in others. In a few places the road where wires had landed were scorched and fried bright gray against its normal darker shade. We drove right over them–the power had long since gone.

 
As the survivors emerged from the first homes we visited, Erin and I quickly worked out a short speech. “Hi, my name’s T, and this is Erin. We’re part of the relief effort. We have food, water and some medical supplies.” It changed a little depending on the situation. The typical questions that followed–”Where y’all from?” “Do you know when they’ll have the power back on?” and “You’re from MICHIGAN??”–were dotted by more disturbing questions. “Have you seen my neighbor? She’s got diabetes.” “Has anyone heard from my mother?” “Where has everyone been? We’ve been waiting for days.”

 
On our first day, four units in our deployment delivered four truckloads of food, water and tetanus shots to families living off the the 190 in northern Tammany. We didn’t get through all the areas we were assigned to, partly because we couldn’t get through all the debris in some places and partly because we ran out of time. We obeyed a strict curfew while we were there, because it still wasn’t safe after dark. We had been warned that all operations were to end at 1800, giving crews plenty of time to refuel and return to Camp Tammany. We never saw any need for this policy, but then again we were never out after dark.

 
Some time during my first day I received a tetanus shot, which would make the remainder of my stay interesting, to say the least. Although I had received tetanus shots before, this time I would have my first allergic reaction. It was mistaken for a sunburn when my face turned red and I developed a fever. The following day I was wracked with cramps and nausea, and my fever climbed to 102.4. I spent the day moving as little as possible, going from meals to bed and writing what I overheard. It was some time during this period that the first two posts for the blog were written:

 
“Beyond 65 South – The Way to Camp Swaggert

Thursday, September 15, 2005
‘This town is coming like
a ghost town
No job to be found
in this country.
Can’t go on no more,
people getting angry.
This town is coming like
a ghost town.
This town is coming like
a ghost town.
This town is coming like
a ghost town.
This town is coming like

a ghost town.’

From ‘Ghost Town’
–The Specials, 1981
Progress is an elusive pursuit when public health is a negative.

When it functions at its best, nothing happens. There are no epidemics. Children are immunized. Food and water are safe to consume. Air is breathable, and you can swim in the water. Personal health habits are observed from an informed and willing populous. In the absence of failure advocates are appeased, and political bodies with budget crises trim away at a system that appears to have everything.

Until the day it doesn’t.

The factors essential to a healthy people are ancient and unchanged–clean water, enough good food, decent shelter, appropriate waste disposal and good medical care; and all free from the social and economic divide. The maxim of medicine, then, is and must be to do no harm.

We eleven, the second wave, came into a nightmare in a waking state. We left our homes and the people we love, and drove straight into a vision of hell. Trees are being cleared, but many areas remain impassable. Wires are down across roads and through trees for uncounted miles, and house after house pleads for light in the darkness. A fearsome underworld has surfaced in the metropolitae. Trash is pushed by caterpillars into huge bins, which then wait for semi tractor-trailers to haul them away. Cranes are visible to deal with the worst of the damage, but I haven’t seen them moving. In a state of disuse, the city takes on the proportions of a ghost town, with the occasional forced door and broken window dotted by other homes with the occasional signs that say “No Trespassing.” Others, less rhetorical, write, ‘If you loot, we will shoot.’

1400, the previous day. We met up with our friends from CAS less than two minutes apart at the rally point outside Dayton. The appearance of planning, a well-oiled machine, bolsters our spirits. Even better, while we have packed MRE’s and bottled water, the CAS crews have been gifted with cold sandwiches, soda and snacks. It’s easy to get to know these good people, and Tim gives us a smooth ride most of the way, trading off when it gets dark.

0445. The team arrives in Camp Swaggert, ahead of schedule. We weren’t due until 0600, but in light of our arrival the teams are told that they are being deployed immediately. Most of us haven’t slept, or have slept little during the trip 1200 miles to Baton Rouge. We’re eager, though. As Eric puts it, “Let’s get out there and get it done so we can get some sleep.” Similar sentiments are echoed around our little circle. We have arrived together, in more ways than one.

The units have been renumbered for the emergency response initiative, but we still have our unit radios and cell phones. Service becomes a little more unreliable in the northern areas where we are headed, and the team leader hands out two-way radios as an additional means of communication. We are warned that under no circumstances are the teams to separate. There have been problems–people in trees, people with guns, animals.

0600. We drive the 45-minutes to Covington Wood, where we are checking door-to-door for the needs of the general population–those people that didn’t get out on time, or simply had no where to go. It is a hard-hit area, by my perceptions, but then again I’ve haven’t been to New Orleans or Mobile or Biloxi. At Covington we are introduced to the EOC, run from the Parish high school. We arrive in the wake of news that the director has stepped down, but the level of preparedness that we find on-site is impressive. DEA, Fire, PD, EMS. I counted eighteen communities from New York to Arizona, and I’m sure there have been more.

The units are divided, and we are given simple phonetic designations to communicate with one another. The trip to the north end of Tammany Parish is uneventful, but we begin to see the scope of the damage. Telephone poles are ripped in half and tossed great distances. No one has been sent to claim the equipment, which could draw power if the wrong lines are energized too soon. There are burns across sections of road where live wires fell, but the power is long gone, and we drive right over them.

We survey a section of Tammany and deliver much-needed food, water and medical supplies. Our team leader makes a number of runs into town to acquire needed medications for those who can’t leave their homes. As often as not, the homes are damaged–cars sealed in by fallen trees or crushed under them. One man, an older multiple sclerosis patient, was left by his wife with their six children and five dogs when she headed into town to get water. She hasn’t come back. They have no immediate medical needs, and we call for a wellness check, plus a check by community police: In his frustration, the man has taken to swinging a belt at the children. All we can do is offer them some food, water and words of comfort, but we and another unit return to check on them more than once.

My partner, Erin, and I saw less than thirty people in our sweep, handing out a truckload of MRE’s, water, chips and other snacks. We gave a few tetanus vaccines to interested parties, but many aren’t interested, or are already current. More often, we found abandoned pets outside locked homes, mostly dogs, with no food or water and frightened, at first afraid to approach us. We lured them in with water and some of our own rations and outright fed the worst of them, rewarded with wagging tails and a little light in their tired eyes.

1800. After covering most of our maps, we are forced to retire for the evening. It will be dark soon, and it still isn’t safe to be out at night. That evening we learn that FEMA has moved us to a new campsite at the EOC. We have to go back to Camp and gather our things, then travel the round-trip back to the Parish.

2130? Bleary-eyed, exhausted and a little frustrated, we return to the Parish and bed down. Classroom 218 – Espanol. There aren’t many jokes until we wake up the next morning. We are just too tired. Sleep comes fitful, but on the third day or our mission, after a welcome shower, we rested.
0645, the next day. We wake to several phones, buzzing pagers and groaning. It’s a mutual exhaustion, which for me at least makes it a little more bearable. I’m sunburned, and my burning face gives me a mild but convincing headache. On occasion I realize it’s frustrating to be going bald when you forget to put lotion on the top of your head. After a breakfast of sausages, grits and bread I sit at a terminal in the high school library, having resurrected a number of their computers for others to use to keep in touch with their friends and loved ones. My partner from the day before is out with one of the fine folks from CAS. They have another several trips to make today, and those of us off-duty may be activated around noon to go in with the DEA to survey damage in other areas by helicopter.

Tuesday we assumed command of a remote EOC in Tammany to finish the work that we have started. Discussion abounds, and the logistical nightmare of a lengthening stay begins to loom. Right now the food, water, supplies and fuel are all free. After today, we will have to face the realization that we are on our own.
Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
EOC Tammany Parish”

 

 

 

Day Two

 

 

 

As the sun rose, the remainder of the team was dispatched, and I overslept. No one made any attempt to wake me, or if they did I don’t recall. My face was bright red, my scalp tingling, and I was nauseous and sore. The repeated commentary was “Looks like you got some sun,” to which I laughed and tried to maintain the jovial attitude that I had forgotten to put any suntan lotion on the top of my head, which seemed to be the largest exposed patch of skin that I had. But the truth was that I was hurting. Over the course of the day I took some Sudafed and aspirin, then later I took a cold and flu pill and went back to bed. Out for over six hours, I woke sometime between 1500 and 1530. Walking the lonely halls of the camp site, I learned that the rest of the team was in a new area, while another coverage unit finished the areas that we could get to the day before. It seemed as though things were going very quickly indeed, until you looked at the map and realized that Tammany was only a single Parish, and there were over seventy sections in Tammany alone. We were ONLY halfway through with it, and the storm had already passed over a week ago, now approaching two.

 
Studying the large maps in the school library afforded us absolutely no help. In an area we didn’t know, where most of the signs and addresses were down, it was impossible to get our bearing, and our team leaders typically were given instructions to get everywhere that including bearing checks like, “the white building on the corner,” or “if you get to the bridge.” As teams began to return in the evening, around 1900, we settled in for a dinner that would consist of some regular staples: a few kinds of rice-something, sausages that were a bright shade of pink I didn’t recognize (someone told me later that they were filled with seafood and crayfish), and usually one kind of heavy meat with bread. It was simple fare but always filling, and we were usually so hungry it didn’t matter. Rarely did I see a plate that wasn’t emptied, and I usually emptied my own–something not normal for such a finicky eater. In the end, part of me didn’t want to offend our gracious hosts, and the thought kept coming back to my mind, ‘they’re feeding us better than they’re getting for themselves right now.’ Still, a good appetite helped me begin to regain lost strength, and sometime the following day I took my shirt off to change, and someone noticed the redness and swelling around my injection site–up to then I imagine everyone thought I was just a real wimp–and there was the reason I’d had trouble changing the night before. My arm was swollen. In the end I never received any treatment for it, and although I told Jeff that there had been a problem I asked him not to pull me, assuring him that I would let him know if it was going to be a problem. I was there to do a job, and I had already missed a shift from oversleeping that morning.

 
In the evening someone mentioned that there had been an accident. A Trans Care unit, traveling to a destination miles away, had been struck by a private vehicle that had pulled out in front of them. The vehicle sustained some minor damage to its front end, and photos later showed the front clip and hood of the vehicle precariously bungee-corded together. So not all escaped without bruises, and most ended up taking a hit for the team. Units that returned in the evenings had scratches across their rooftops, hoods, side panels and mirrors, and a few had windows and light panels punched out by tree limbs that proved still a little too stout. Duct tape became a popular site around camp on a few units, and one paramedic in particular took to decorating the wounds on his vehicle with a star of life and his units designation. There were even claims that a few units had come under fire, but these were widely doubted as apocryphal. Our own were no different. One unit returned with a mysterious dent smack in the middle between the back doors, and the newest unit we sent there–our Healthlink unit–could be easily described as a single, long scrape. That’s okay, though. The running joke was that Erin was driving.

 
My second post to the blog came as we were preparing for Day Three of our operations. It became a hotly-contested topic after a posting error resulted in the appearance that this post actually came from Day Three. Timing on the blog made things difficult thereafter, until I went home, and I actually established a mirror site with the correct dates on another site:

 

 

 

“We Quickly Are Settling In

Friday, September 16, 2005

 

 

 

Death And Birth

Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Death and birth.
Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth
Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether
Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?
Ill the rose-red and the sable feather
Blend in one crown’s plume, as grief with mirth:
Ill met still are warm and wintry weather,
Death and birth.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne

We quickly are settling in and preparing for our hardest days.

LaCombe, one of the last areas for us to check in our initial surveys and assessments, has been under six to twelve feet of water since the storm, and as the waters recede we prepare to make our push. We’ve had no choice but to wait with traffic lanes blocked by massive trunks and homes submerged, in some places to their rafters. An additional concern, the ubiquitous downed power lines hide under the water in places, unseen, their status unknown but most likely unpowered.

Teams today were forced to leave supplies in a local church by the truckload, with roads that were impassable in our area and some homes still underwater. Teams got to whom they could and urged them to give up their homes, but in the wake of this tragedy if they have not left by now we will most likely find them in the morning on their porches or waving from their upper floors.

The teams remain in high spirits, and I sit now with a larger group from Tulane. Many are filling out forms for relief even as they continue participate in efforts themselves. Sadly they may be among the last to receive assistance themselves. The group of young paramedics lament the tale of two Tulane University students staying in Boston who were attacked and stabbed on Boston St. One young woman in Tulane, trying to contact her family, has only today been able to reach them by text message. Another asks, ‘Does anyone bank at Whitney?’

One of the coordinators sits behind me, taking a moment to check his email. He just got word that I had some computers working, and his cellular service has likewise been unreliable. Our loved one and friends have to wait while we touch the lives of strangers, but no one is complaining. The office takes on a lighter tone with so many people taking up space. My own team has already bedded down for the night–unlike me, they had to work today. A unit for another service had a traffic accident today, and another is broken down on the West Causeway, waiting for service from who-knows. He receives update photos that show an oil tanker sitting on the levy, fishing trawlers laying on the freeway far from the coast.

A Carolina paramedic shows me photos of Gulf Port, where a woman was living on the third floor of her home until rescuers reached her. The first two floors were underwater, and she had dragged the generator upstairs with what she could grab as the waters rose. We exchange a few war stories as the coordinator shuts down for the night and gets ready to go to bed.

Tomorrow we take LaCombe. It is nothing less than an invasion, against a foe that is not Man. The coordinators of this mission want our teams to be swift, to overwhelm the area and essentially to take the town at one time amidst concerns about the angry or desperate people living on their own after the winds swept through. It’s hard to explain to them that we couldn’t get to them. What, after all, can you say? There are other concerns as well, and all the teams going to LaCombe will be attended by law enforcement to secure our safety while continuing operations in the devastated town.

I step back into nostalgia and remember better times as the overwhelming scope of what we are doing hits home, with Ophelia living up to her name–a shepard satellite for the epsilon that is the coast; or, more likely, that tragic figure who “In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonized cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking.” (Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy 132-3). I’m finally starting to shrug off the effects of the vaccinations, and the sunburn. I’ll have to get some sleep before I get up at 0600 to do it all again.
Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
EOC Camp Tammany”

 

 

 

Day Three

 

 

 

My third day in Louisiana found my working once again with Erin, and though I imagine I was beginning to tire her I certainly didn’t mind the company. And she was still driving. Our mission sent us to the remains of Tammany’s hardest-hit area: LaCombe. The evening briefing between the team leaders and the incident commander the evening preceding had sounded like nothing short of a battlefield drill. Crews were to be informed that there were concentrations of homes and roads in LaCombe where the DEA was monitoring crystal methamphetamine drug production and distribution activities. One DEA officer sitting in on the meeting commented that they had pulled these people out of the last flood, only to watch them immediately wade back through the sludge-churned waters to their porches and properties, where they could keep a closer eye on their wares.

 
Crews were also to be warned of the signs of these labs–the sights, smells, observations and any obvious choke points where it would be dangerous to be caught out by these individuals, who were among the worst kinds of criminals. A drug dealer is content to kill you slowly by pushing his product, but he’ll kill anyone who gets in his way any way he can, and if he can make it hurt that just gets out the message to leave him alone.

 
For the first time we faced the possibility of entering an unsafe area, where there would be people that didn’t want us snooping around. The units were prepped at the La Croix distribution center and sent into LaCombe en masse. A flood of units, personnel and protection we never even knew was there descended into the bayou community of LaCombe. What we didn’t know was that someone had already beaten us there. In community after community, affluent homes just blocks from shantytown neighborhoods were littered with yellow placards. The placards displayed the title “FEMA” in bold, black lettering, and carried instructions, emergency preparedness plans for the area and promises to return with additional aid–along with phone numbers and other contact information. Yet when we delved into the deeper bayous and smaller roads, very which of which had actually needed to be cleared of debris, the yellow placards disappeared, replaced with stares of bewilderment. It became quickly apparent that these poor people had been going it alone, and they hadn’t expected anyone to come along to help them.

 
The first several homes that we stopped at we vacant, and at one point Erin and I were forced by downed power lines and fallen timbers to hike down a small, unmarked road in the middle of LaCombe, far from the support that lay in our radios and phones. Cellular service was non-existent out here, and the two-way walkies we’d be offered didn’t have the range of a tin can and a few feet of string. We started noticing a few things. Soap in fifty-gallon drum here. Tin plates and cookie sheets with residue there. Finally we started seeing propane tanks and bottles labeled ‘Toluene.’ It was only when Erin said, “I don’t think we need to be here,” that we decided to leave. At my question she pointed off the trail to something I couldn’t see, and never actually saw. She described a tactical dummy sitting in the trees, the kind that people sighted-in on to improve their shots at range. The long driveway with the rows of buildings and the stand of trees had been a choke point–and we had willingly walked into the most dangerous part. Fortunately there was either no one at home or no one willing to take a shot at a couple of innocent rescuers come to say hello.

 
After we returned to the truck, we rounded up our units and rallied to a mobile home park in southern LaCombe; it was located on fairly high ground, although the homes had still largely flooded. The survivors had evacuated or clung to rooftops, themselves rescued later by people with boats and makeshift rafts. Again, FEMA and any kind of uniform response were strangely absent, and we–twelve days into the emergency response initiative–were the first official faces these poor people had seen. One woman was concerned because a home in the park had housed a handicapped woman, and no one had seen her in over four days. Worse, there was an odor of decay coming from the modular unit she had been living in. Our units each in turn surrounded and inspected the home, while other units dropped off and consolidated our provisions so our team leader could return to the pharmacy in Tammany to get medications for the people there that needed them. While the last group was snooping around the home, someone discovered the back door open. I don’t know if it was unlocked, forced or helped, but on entering they were relieved to find that the odor feared to be the woman’s body had turned out to be the must and mildew of the water that had lay on the floor of the home the past week, drying under the hot sun.

 
The units returned to their inspection, moving into the bayou proper. Homes in the swamp were built on stilts, some a good twenty feet above ground. Others had small service garages and boat launches set to stairs, so that a boat could be tied in such a manner as to be accessible no matter how high the flooding had occurred, right up to the door. These folks, mostly well-to-do, were less interested in our presence, and a few actually asked, “Why are you out here? We just saw those guys from —– this morning.” And so it was solidified as fact in my mind. These other rescue groups had driven through the depressed areas to get to the more affluent communities on the other side, without ever stopping to drop off supplies to the people that actually needed them. A few of the more affluent, realizing what was occurring, encouraged us not to leave them supplies, accepting in some cases only water and in others refusing any aid until the other less fortunate had been served. It was a high and a low point, because we knew that the people of LaCombe, suffering alone the past two weeks, could have had help a whole lot sooner.

February 5, 2006; 9:57PM
Ten Days, Part 2
Returning to EOC Tammany early that day, we ran across a group of workers across the street from a church that lay on our route home. We had been ordered to stop there and drop off whatever supplies we had left. Popular word was that Tammany Parish was “complete.” The mission, especially in LaCombe, had been a roaring success. When we saw the workers across the street, we checked in on them and were appalled to find that they were tree cutters sent out as day labor by a service contracted with the architects of the emergency response. That in itself wasn’t appalling. What was appalling was that their employers had left their checks wherever they had come from, with no way of getting paid–you can’t tell me that day laborers have direct deposit. Worse, the foodstuffs that the workers had purchased, some $10,000.00 in food and water, were gone, having been shared with the people of the community they had been staying in. So these poor people had no food, no water, no money and no options. Our team leader matter-of-factly opened the doors to his unit and said, “Okay, guys, we found a place to drop this stuff! Unload it all!” The workers realized what was happening, and the gratitude quickly became a festive attitude–MRE’s, microwave meals, bottled water, fruit juice, a small cache of precious fresh fruit, toiletries; it was like Christmas, and the workers gave us enough good cheer that it lasted all the way back to dinner at Camp Tammany.

 
That evening

 

 

 

“Relief Workers Without Food Get Relief

Monday, September 19, 2005

 
With lightened hearts we returned from the mission at LaCombe. Mission accomplished. After seeing to the needs of the general population, we returned to a distribution center established by one of our crew at a local church. Across the street we were shocked to find a group of repair and recovery workers, getting ready to go to bed hungry. In the press to care for the sick and injured of Tammany, the work crews, having brought $10,000 in perishable and non-perishable foods themselves, had shared and shared their resources, and today they had an empty trailer. You should have seen their eyes light up when four units loaded with MRE’s, microwavable meals, water, fruit drinks and a small cache of some much-desired fresh fruits were trucked in for them–a festival something like Christmas.

The farewell dinner put on by the staff was extravagant–catfish, grilled and peppered tuna, pasta Alfredo, ribs and all the trimmings. This was the evening that we learned that the wonderful men and women that have been keeping us fed night and day, serving 900 meals three times a day were actually the secretaries and other staff members of the Parish school. Their kindness and generosity have been immeasurable, and we are invigorated, and ready to press on.

Tonight we return to Camp Swaggert, tired, recovering from scratches and bumps and burns. Tired, from the things that we have seen, but renewed in purpose.

There is more to do.

From Camp Swaggert, we will most likely continue to Slidell, where we have heard word that things are getting worse. The local MASH facilities established there are each seeing in excess of 250 patients every day, and they are running on less staff than we normally see even in our resource poor State of Michigan. They need our help–hands, transfers, minds and energy.

And we are ready. We wait for the final official word, which will come at 1400 tomorrow.
“Camp Tammany, signing off.
Command terminated.
God bless.”
Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
EOC Camp Tammany”

 

 

 

“Extended Deployment

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

 
Yesterday, Tim and I were assigned to stand by in the
EOC. Joe would have been up instead, but dinner beat
him to it (hope you’re feeling better, man). The CAS
crews were up for the next regular assignment, and not
a great deal was going on. Checking our email,
chatting with the other fine folks there and enjoying
a breakfast of eggs, grits and sausage, I received a
phone call from the EOC Dispatcher, Kerry.

When we arrived in the dispatch center, we and a crew
from South Carolina–Kim and Keith, a husband-wife
team from Carolina Ambulance–received orders to join
one of several United States Public Health Service
teams working in the area alongside members of the
CDC. Our mission would be in Lake Charles, nearly
one-hundred-fifty miles further west, near the border
with Texas; and, also, the location would be less than
thirty miles from the Gulf.

This being the furthest west I’ve ever gone, I was
excited at the opportunity, and I would be rewarded
with the sights as we crossed the Causeway through the
bayous of Louisiana. The medical staff of the
USPHS–Brian, Keith, Scott, Valerie, Stephanie, Chris,
Meridith and several other fine folk I haven’t had
opportunity to speak with for more than our brief
introduction that morning–took us on a convoy across
the Causeway and into Lake Charles, where we performed
immunizations for more of Louisiana’s displaced
families. Red Cross volunteers at the shelter jumped
right in when we got there, wrangling support from the
shelter volunteers and displaced families.

The workers at the shelter have been so kind to them,
many of the displaced New Orleans residents say, that
they plan to relocate to Lake Charles if they can find
work or housing. I made the observation that, if by
some magick a great apartment building could be built
that would house everyone from the building, they
probably would stay together–if for nothing else, for
what they have been through as an extended family over
these growing weeks.

Although I don’t have an exact count, I know we
immunized the vast majority of folk there, at least
190 according to Stephanie, in under four hours while
using only three vaccination stations. It was a good
feeling, and by the end of the day–though tired–we
all felt that we had really accomplished something.
The group decided that we would celebrate our good
fortunes at having been chosen to work together, and
went to someplace I know all-too-well: Logan’s
Roadhouse. There, we all enjoyed a fine meal and a
few stories (and cola! Only cola, Jeff! We were
strong, Jeff!).

In the evening we were invited to the McNeese Building
in Lake Charles proper, where we pulled out cots and
slept in the same dormitory as the displaced families.
The USPHS staff we are traveling with doesn’t afford
themselves any extra privilege, and prefers to do
their work with an amount of caring and diligence that
made me very proud to be a part of it. The fact that
we shared accommodations with the very same people we
came to help only affirmed in my mind a sense of
purpose, the fact that we were welcomed with open arms
a sense of accomplishment.

Nevertheless, this is a military assignment, and we
have been afforded security, even in light of good
cheer.

This morning we will be briefed on Hurricane Rita
after going for fuel. Since the mission is so far
from Baton Rouge–and the only route back across the
Causeway–we are told to be prepared to evacuate with
our USPHS team, Region 5, should such a decision
become necessary. With landfall expected around
Friday, we will know more in the coming days.

From what Stephanie has been told, we are now in the
projected path of what will most-likely arrive as a
Category 3 storm. The team has also decided that,
should it become necessary to leave, we will do what
we can to help people who can’t get out prepare,
before we go. Safety is the utmost priority, and we
will take steps to be sure we don’t stay too long at
the party. It just planning upon planning right now,
no sure things.

Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
McNeese Center, Lake Charles”

 

 

 

“Final Mission, Lasting Thoughts

Thursday, September 22, 2005

 
This looks familiar, vaguely familiar,
Almost unreal, yet it’s too soon to feel yet.
Close to my soul, and yet so far away.
I’m going to go back there someday.

Sun rises, night falls, sometimes the sky calls.
Is that a song there? and do I belong there?
I’ve never been there, but I know the way.
I’m going to go back there someday.

Come and go with me, it’s more fun to share,
We’ll both be completely at home in midair.
We’re flyin’, not walking, on featherless wings.
We can hold onto love like invisible strings.

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.
Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay.
I’m going to go back there someday. . .
I’m going to go back there someday.
Lake Charles is behind me now, and my partner on that mission, Tim, will be returning home in the morning. Thus ends our first and probably only assignment together as we return to our respective companies in the real world. We reached Camp Swaggert at 1800 to learn that the third watch had already arrived, and that they were already “out there.” The old guard went to the movies together one last time, and that evening we were met by Ken and his third watch; we traveled to BW3′s to enjoy some spirit and good cheer, and–topping my day–a single, gentle smile when I needed it made my whole day, and reminded me of other good times.

Tomorrow I head out one last time, with a new partner, while the first shift and team two prepare for the long journey home. The third watch arrived today around 1700 CMT, and Cassie and I will embark on a mission to join Dr. Factor and her team of USPHS officers. Impressive people deserve attentive crewmates, and Stephanie and her team certainly are that, and more. It falls upon me to show Cassie what we people of Louisiana will expect from her as she makes this place her home. What she doesn’t yet realize is that a part of her, once here, will not be coming back. Illustrating the point, I wrote “we” even without realizing, adding this line after writing what follows.

It has been ten days. We arrived as strangers. We leave perhaps not all friends, but with an understanding. We came to do a job; we came with a mission. Somewhere, amidst the beaten-path bayous and the broken bowl of the world that is New Orleans, we made a statement instead. For the tattoos we will have to commemorate a trip into the surreal world of a southern American city torn to pieces and our striving to save it, we will be humbled. For the real friendships that we made, that will last a test of time, we are proud. For the things that we saw in glimpses in the eyes of those around us–a genuine, real smile; that shared emotion; the hopelessness; the hope–we will have offered up our very souls.

This is what we were meant to do. It is the music that charms the very soul.

We eleven had set out to find the homeless, the displaced, the sick and the injured; yet, somehow, I think perhaps that they saved us instead–reminding us for a brief moment of what it is that we really do, and why.
Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
Camp Swaggert, Baton Rouge”

 

 

 

“Backward Glance, Frozen

Thursday, September 22, 2005

 

 

 

‘Let’s go do this.’
- source unknown
‘Evacuate.’ It was the word I overheard from Stephanie while we were on assignment with the USPHS today. We were scheduled to service four centers in the Baton Rouge/Port Allen area when the call came in. She was being ordered to wrap the inoculations up and be prepared to vacate their base of operations. Rita has changed course and picked up considerable steam, quickly jumping to a Category 5 storm–the same rough power base as the storm that brought us here in the first place. This storm, she told me, will now strike somewhere between Houston and Lake Charles, where Tim and I had originally gone to inoculate the general population living in emergency shelters. Now some of those same people that suffered Katrina are going to go through Rita, and there isn’t enough time to get everyone out.

The military is vacating its operations in Baton Rouge, and Stephanie’s USPHS team will be redeployed to Region 9. On the news we begin to see notices flashing across the major networks that Louisiana is again evacuating everyone south of the I-10, this time across the entire state. I illicit a promise from Stephanie to call me in a few days’ time to assure me that everyone is all right. She’s upset that I can’t come with the team, and honestly so am I. With so many things going into motion, I know that they can’t afford to take time out to train anyone else. I know the mission specifics.

By the same token I understand that, should this become an evacuation issue, they will need every available seat in every vehicle. Tagging along is not an option.

With the growing emergency it is becoming clear that they’re going to need more help than they currently have.

“Hurricane Rita is a Category 5, and the storm is expected to hit somewhere between Galveston and Corpus Christi,” the Incident Commander said. “We are going to go and support FEMA’s efforts to move the patients out. Every patient we move away from the coast will be a life saved.” Forty-five ambulances are in Lake Charles. The rest are deploying to Orange tomorrow, to the Chennault Air Base. “FEMA said that there are no state lines,” he continued, informing crews of their expected duties. He had to stop during his address briefly–sharing that his own home is in the path of this storm.

Thirty-six hours from now, the safety window will close, and the emergency teams will be forced to evacuate. That will be a little less than eighteen hours before landfall.

The last words spoken that I heard before people started moving were, “Let’s go do this.” Source unknown.

There is no better way, I think to end. But there, then, is another beginning. And I wonder when we’ll be going back.
Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
Almost Home. . .

February 5, 2009; 9:56PM
Super Bowl Sunday
Current mood:  lonely
So here I sit. . .

I had dinner with an old friend this evening, and I imparted to her something that surprised both of us.  I should have married her.  A number of years ago, when both of us had been unattached and already friends, were watching a movie and had–against all odds–fallen asleep.  We woke up curled up together long after the movie had ended.  We laid there for a while, neither of us saying a thing.

Nothing happened, and we never talked about it.

Years later, she’s happily married with two beautiful daughters.  We still get together on occasion, and she’s one of the few female friends from that period of my life that I was never “involved” with.  We have plenty to talk about.  We have similar, or at least amicable, outlooks on life.  She’s someone who can look into my eyes and tell pretty accurately what I’m thinking, and that’s something few people can do.

So tonight at dinner I told her that I should have married her.

It’s too bad that one of us was always involved.  I’ve done a few things in my life that I haven’t been able to be proud of, but this is the one time I’ve regretted doing. . .the right thing.

Big, house.  Empty house.

February 5, 2006, 9:39PM
Disgruntled
Current mood:  angry
Well,

I had recently written a few long blogs that included a lot of the materials I had written when I went to Louisiana to help out with Katrina.  The materials are stored otherwise on another blog site that I had heard was shutting down our page, citing, “It had served its useful purpose.”

Now, without so much as “notice,” my blogs were deleted, wasting a lot of work I had done on the site to make the blogs display properly in myspace.

 

Not a Happy Boy.

January 25, 2006; 11:24PM
Blast from the Past – My Name on a Search
Current mood:  amused
Comments: Smallpox attack response: vaccinate all of US

If you clicked in from a search engine click here to see the body of the posted article.
There are two major points here.

First, the Smallpox vaccine, while a phenomenal breakthrough for its time, outright killed an unacceptably high number of the people who were injected with it and crippled far more. While the country was fighting a deadly, debilitating disease whose signs, symptoms and generally poor outcome were terrifying to the populous, the same drug would not pass today’s more rigorous standards. True, it is available and now used daily, but in retrospect if it had to begin from scratch today as a new drug, with no prior use, it wouldn’t be out there.

Second, the idea of mandating injection is reserved for the military. This is something far more frightening a concept than the idea of seatbelt and helmet laws “for our safety,” which more often translates to the government acting “in our best interests,” “for our own good.” The government may have the right to line me up with 250,000 other soldiers and require that I take injections when I sign away my rights to the military during a tour of service, but I am a product of freedom, and I do not give up that freedom lightly.

There are those who will always seek to control for control’s sake, as well as those who will always seek to change the world for our collective betterment. It is often difficult to tell, except in retrospect, which kind we have welcomed into our highest offices to lead us.

January 22, 2006; 12:14PM
Yahooey and Other Dating Services
Current mood:  aggravated
Yeah,

I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do for over a month now. My Yahoo! Personals account is toast. I’ve had a much better experience with my myspace account actually meeting people that I want to have something to do with, and I can write with impunity–for free–without being warned that certain phrases (like anything that would have anything to do with another site and thus take business away from Yahoo!) are not allowed.

Yeah, I paid $100 for a year of personals listings on Yahoo! That’s not the most silly thing I’ve done this year. I finally paid off the last payment of a service that was supposed to help professionals meet people that they are compatible with. Great Expectations. . . I had some. Unfortunately their only expectation was that they would be taking my money and giving me absolutely nothing in return. Ah well. At least I can start saving my money again and going out to do the things I like to do. I’ll do better on my own anyway.

My advice to anyone that’s ever considered a dating service, personals chat or professional meeting service? Don’t pay. Don’t pay. Don’t pay. They won’t do anything more for you if you’re giving them money than if you select the free services, and if you aren’t getting any response with your free listings, that should tell you something right there.

. . . ouch. Reality check.

January 22, 2006; 11:56AM
On my Merry. . .
Current mood:  annoyed
So I sat down to dinner with the folks.

It was a nice evening.  We sat down and watched the DVD put together for us by my employee to commemorate our trip to Louisiana during the Katrina / Rita disaster.  The whole thing is apparently viewable at my employers website, at http://www.communityems.com but I haven’t seen it there.  I did take a moment to read back through all the old blog posts there.

I also noticed that they forgot to give me credit for the photos that they used, but I’m not worried about it.  It was enough that they allowed me the opportunity to be there. I’m also still working on a project that the boss set me on when I got home.  I’m calling it “Ten Days,” and it documents our trip into hell, or rather into St.Tammany and LaCombe.

Now I’m home, and the kitties have dissected their presents.  My Jinxie is playing so hard with this little blue ball that it’s a wonder she hasn’t broken me, the ball or gone through the floor   I’m also writing again, on something of a different venue.  I’m teaching the Neuropharmacology portion of a course as part of my student teaching with Kellogg, and I recently learned that they don’t just mean the four major drugs for neurological injuries–they mean the FOURTEEN drugs, the four ion channels and the six corresponding neurotransmitters and proteins that we work with.  I had started to wonder why it took two days to go over four meds, so thankfully I checked into it a little more closely.

I’ve written a lesson plan and nineteen slides so far–there’s nothing anywhere that teaches this!  So for a change I’ll be writing the materials, and wouldn’t you know that this will be the first class I’ll have taught totally on my own.

Finally, I’m renewing my BLS Instructor license and getting ready to enroll in the PALS and ACLS Instructor courses scheduled for February.  I would be able to simply renew my BLS Instructor license, but I can’t trust my former employer to do the legwork for the classes I taught for them.  Kellogg is fortunately putting on their own course that occurs before my license lapses.  I also checked, and with my I-C course I have more than enough credits to renew my Paramedic and CCEMTP licenses, without counting my online credits.  This stuff is just getting too hard to keep track of.  I’m glad I’ll be a formal instructor soon, and will be able to track and write for my own courses–no more guesswork, wondering which courses will be acceptable, and which “don’t count anymore.”  CECBEMS here I come!

December 25, 2005; 2:48AM
So here I sit. . .
Current mood:  apathetic
I was always told that the first holiday would be the worst.

My writing project has petered off to nothing, and as I continue to make weekly sojourns into Battle Creek for my education I realize that I don’t even open the books anymore.  Everything made a lot more sense a year ago.

A sense of purpose comes from direction, from family, from friends.  Career lends accomplishment.  Seeking new purpose comes slowly when age begins to advance.

December 11, 2005; 9:01PM
Death and Taxes
Current mood:  morose
Yesterday my aunt, Ruth, passed away after long bouts with illness.  She had suffered through multiple strokes and heart attacks, but had kept her mental faculties until this latest event, which began last week.

The decision was made to place her in home hospice, and two days later she passed with dignity in her home, surrounded by her family.  Arrangements will be carried out over the next several days.

She had a long and fruitful life, children, grand-children and great-grand-children.  Her family lived in the Detroit area, and she finally had retired to a small home in one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city.  It was broken into on several occasions by the trash that wanders the city, but their spirit never wavered–it was home, and home was where she chose to stay.

October 27, 2005; 12:30AM
The End of an Era
Current mood:  uncomfortable
Tonight, at 7:25pm, Rosa Parks passed away in her home.

She was an era unto herself, and her passing marks the end of that age.

 

Respectful moment of silence follows. . .

October 24, 2005; 10:53PM
Okay, I’m not religious, but this guy rocks!
Current mood:  pleased
When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:
 
Heavenly Father,

We come before You today to ask Your Forgiveness and seek Your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ”Woe to those who call evil good,” but that’s exactly what we have done. We have lost our Spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values. We confess that; we have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it pluralism; We have worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism; We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle; We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery; We have neglected the needy and called it self preservation; We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare; We have killed our unborn and called it choice; We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable; We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem; We have abused power and called it political savvy; We have coveted our neighbor’s possessions and called it ambition; We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression; We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, O God, and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of this state and who have been ordained by You, to govern this great state of Kansas. Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of Your Will.

I ask in in the name of your Son, The Living Savior, Jesus Christ

The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest.  In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea.

October 11, 2005; 10:47AM
Not a Good Day
Current mood:  gloomy
My elementary school principal, Frank Brown, passed away today.  He was in treatment for melanoma, and succumbed to the disease.  He will be prepared for viewing in Michigan Memorial Park, most likely for a Saturday service and burial–although the details have yet to be finalized.

A very large light from my childhood just went out, and I plodded through my regular day’s activities not knowing what I had lost.

October 5, 2005; 3:32AM
“There’s a Shadow hanging over me,”
Current mood:  drained
“’til I believe in yesterday.”

Old song.

 

I remember now.  Maybe I just needed to really look in that mirror after all, without even trying

October 2, 2005; 6:16PM
Disquiet, and Discontent
Current mood:  discontent
“Shadows hanging over me.”

I think that’s the line that I recall.  I don’t remember the name of the song.  I barely remember the tune, and a few of the lyrics.  I remember that I forgot to do what I was told, once.

I’ve put my hand out the window while I was driving and found myself suddenly startled, thinking that my ring was going to slip off my hand.  Except for the fact that I haven’t worn it in almost six months. . .  I have all the papers from the decree, and she has what she wanted.  She was bored, and wanted to be free. Now I’m bored, and wish I didn’t have all this time.

I guess when you start blaming Murphy, the world becomes an easier place, until it hits you full in the face waking up in the middle of the night that there is no Murphy.  Murphy’s Law is just a figure of speech, and I don’t know the source.  I realize how silly that sounds and open my browser to find the reference in Wikipedia:

“Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives” is one version, coined by the phrase ‘Anything that can go wrong, will,’ was first believed spoken by John W. Campbell in the 40′s to 60′s, but it was never as popular as the original.  Finagle’s Law was later widely used by Larry Niven, where it received somewhat more attention.  But the phrase was first used by Major Edward A Murphy, Jr., during his work on the railroad rocket sled project at what would become Edwards Air Force Base–Project MX981.  Murphy, it seems, had a bad habit of blaming his assistant for his own failures, and later revised his thinking to “If it can happen, it will.”

Other sources challenge that the assistant coined the phrase by naming it for the Major in protest during evaluations of the project, when someone asked how their had been no injuries during the highly risky project, “because they took Murphy’s Law under consideration; he then summarized the law and said that in general, it meant that it was important to consider all the possibilities before doing a test.”

I smile slightly, but it really doesn’t make me feel any better.

The radio blurb’s.  Someone’s heading back over to somewhere, but the chronic terrible reception of my unit allows me knowledge of neither who is going nor where they are going.  We’ve gotten used to just ignoring the damnnable thing unless we here “-schrack-17-schrack-”  Either the dispatcher isn’t holding the button down a second or two before speaking, or the truck isn’t listening right away.  Personally, I blame the truck.  It’s new, and I can listen to my own inner Murphy.

A motorcycle rides up to the nearby light where we’re tucked away safe in an alley between a Wireless Toys shop and a privacy fence.  Some innane and unnameable melody stops right before the light changes, and I’m suddenly curious to know whether it’s someone who pulled into the parking lot, or if they suddenly had the sense to shut their radio off while they were sitting.

Yeah, it’s the dispatcher.  Another unit calls in, and I can hear them perfectly clearly, but the dispatcher’s reponses are still missing the first word out of every sentence.  Oh well, sorry, truck.

I briefly toyed with the idea of naming the truck Elsie to Kim’s Eleanore, a reference to the movie “Gone in Sixty Seconds.”  The first movie had better cars, but the remake had better actors.

Rambling, rambling thoughts, typing whatever comes to mind or whatever takes my focus, enjoying a brief descent into self-induced attention deficit disorder.  I smiled and huff slightly, but my partner’s outside the truck and doesn’t hear it.  I’m glad for that; he’s a really nice fellow, and doesn’t need to hear the incessant tap-tap-tap and the occasional snicker as I think of things I believe are witty. Most of it isn’t–I just amuse myself.

My thoughts are still very much on the effort in New Orleans, and on the pet rescue site I started right here on myspace.  Feel free to check it out, if anyone’s actually looking.  Truman-show moment.

My partner goes home in an hour, and I don’t know who my second-half partner will be.  24′s suck, but at least I don’t have to worry about hours while I’m home.  I heard that they’re trying to assign me a permanent partner from Central, someone that I have a lot of respect for.  I’m just not sure if I want to work with him on a daily basis.  We both have very strong personalities–and it’s not that I feel we wouldn’t get along–it’s that he’s the Specialist, and I have a higher level of licensure.  I wouldn’t want to hold him back and have him taking a rear seat when his skills are so damn good.  When you’re dealing with two strong personalities, someone has to step back, or all hell can break loose.

On a good note, he IS a good partner.  And down here in the hinterlands they don’t watch us closely enough that I couldn’t let him hold the reins from time to time. . .  Bad thought, that’s how I got fired from the last job–thinking about people and not the letter of expectation.  Not that they weren’t looking for a reason, but I went ahead and gave them one.

Maybe I wanted to.  I wasn’t happy there.  I didn’t like the work situation, the weekly meetings, the last nights and long hours, the daily problems caused by the absolute dregs of society they had coming in to bitch on a daily basis.   Man, I sound bitter!  but to see that ignorant witch wearing my white shirt, knowing that I set her up and she sat down before my chair wascold, really bothers me to no end.  Doesn’t deserve it, isn’t good enough, doesn’t respect it.  All these things run through my head, and I realize that it’s probably best that I’m gone.

The sad part is that they allowed rumors to persist that cost me most of my friends there.  I used to get between five and ten calls a night, enough that I was usually over my minute limit on my phone and arguing with. . .Marisa about it. . .

Marisa.

I’ve been thinking a lot about her.

(Idiot, admit that it’s the reason you’re writing)

The internal monologue that I sometimes keep with myself is sometimes entertaining and sometimes frightful.  I’m not a nice person, or so I tend to tell people.  I just put on my “good cop” face when I’m at work, or when I’m around people I don’t want to scare.

In White-Wolf terms, my Humanity is around a three. . .  Anyone who knows what that means probably just stopped reading or said something vulgar.

But Marisa is a light that keeps me thinking about how I can better myself, not make the same mistakes, repair old griefs and complaints and turn to the newer horizons.  Was a light?  Is a light?  What changes, truly, when two people are divorced?  If marriage is immutable, unbreakable, then nothing, except that we aren’t staying in the same place and we’re both probably sleeping with someone else.  Is that adultery?  Or because marriage is “divorced,” broken or annulled, does that mean that we are truly free?  In the final words of the Bible, Revelations I think, it said somewhere that what we hold true on earth God will hold true in Heaven. . .

I’m not religious, though.  Does it matter?

Maybe “not religious” isn’t the right term.  I just think that God probably cries a lot.   Either that, or he’s laughing his ass off.  Or very angry.  Or contemplative. . .  Not sure which, of course, not having insights into the divine, but probably somewhere in that order.

I delete a line, thinking “no one wants to hear me spouting poetry or rummaging through my own thoughts and quizzes and rhetoric.” But then again, if someone IS here, that’s exactly what they want.  And besides, if I truly have a Humanity of three, why should I care?  The weather is a little warm, and it irritates me.  I can feel my forehead beading with sweat.  Just a little.  The thought, strangely, that occurs to me is that I haven’t earned the right to sweat.

Things run through my mind, rapidly now.  I remember things I’ve done, places that I’ve been.  Mostly mistakes.  Defensive design–that’s the more productive line of thought that came from Murphy’s Law.  Planning against every possible failure, to minimize the loss.

Or am I just dining on ashes?

 

Disquiet, and Discontent.  They aren’t the same thing, but they’re. . .  as immutable as marriage.

I’m a coward, I guess.  It’s not that I don’t feel comfortable discussing my life (lie) with strangers, it’s that I can’t bring myself to speak of the things that should matter most to people that really don’t know me, and couldn’t possibly care!  And I say (lie) because in a kind of Freudian/unconscious slip I originally left out the “f”, corrected it, then realized that there wasn’t much difference.

Try every day to make yourself a better man.

Try every day to push until you can do something new, that you couldn’t do the day before.

Try every day to do one thing that you thought you never could.

Just don’t do it stupidly, just to get it out of the way.

 

Resigned to failure, I realize that it really just doesn’t matter.

That’s Discontent.

Disquiet is just me blabbing about it, mirthing about the fact that there really are things in this world that I can’t change, and I’m slowly approaching that age when I’m going to decide I can no longer try.

Maybe that’s when people die. . .  when they realize that they can’t be a productive part of society anymore.  No, I realize that I touch people every day, give people a chance to better themselves, give second chances at life and offer a kind word when people sometimes have no hope.

“. . .sometimes I have told the truth, and sometimes gentle lies. . .”

Another song, one that I sang for a co-worker once, when she was uncertain of the path she had chosen.  I start to write it down, but a combination of not wanting to bore the avid reader and part not wanting to look in that bright, shiny mirror we sometimes challenge ourselves to see, but more often challenge others.

I’m truly just rambling now.

But not yet done. . .  Finished, perhaps, but not yet DONE.

October 2, 5:43PM
Getting Involved from the Home Front
Current mood:  hungry
I’m trying my best to stay busy as Rita rains down on the coast, displacing more families, causing more destruction and flooding the city I had only just begun to know for the second time.

NOLA.com has established a Pet Rescue forum, and I’m doing what I can to get the little lives out of the path of the second killer storm to strike in a month on the Gulf Coast.

A good friend, Brandee, has offered up her networking services, and I’ve taken out a new mIRC at irc.aceirc.org, under alias #sfhq, channel #PetRescue.  I’m hoping to save a few furry lives, which because of the lack of preparation of FEMA and the local shelter groups had made no provision for animals.  We’ve reached over 500 people so far, and judging by the law of averages that means I should have at least a dozen reliable volunteers by morning.  Hopeful to find more!

ICQ 30561230

Y! shudder0001

AIM shudder0001

MSN shudderbackup@hotmail.com

IRC shudder0001

 

Anyone looking to help, please get in touch!
Therle

September 23, 2005; 6:34AM
Home, and Remembering
Current mood:  sympathetic
I remember now the things I had forgotten to miss.

I missed a warm shower.

I missed mealtimes that actually come with choices, and a menu.

I missed reliable cell phone service.

I missed animals that knew who you were, and weren’t afraid or starving.

I missed people that didn’t look to you for their daily survival.

 

As odd as it sounds, and as cold, there is a lot that I missed that I never thought about, nor had time to remember that I had taken for granted.  When I report for my first regular shift again on Sunday, I will have to be careful not to try to pack my bag for the day.  I will have to double-check to ensure I actually wear my uniform.  I will have to remind myself not to tuck my pant legs into my boots.

I never missed the things I didn’t miss while I was gone.  But now I’m grateful for all the things I’ve had, that I never knew were so precious.

 

Therle

just Therle again, after all

September 24, 2005; 1:38AM
Backward Glance, Frozen
Current mood:  hopeful

“Let’s go do this.”
- source unknown
“Evacuate.” It was the word I overheard from Stephanie while we were on assignment with the USPHS today. We were scheduled to service four centers in the Baton Rouge/Port Allen area when the call came in. She was being ordered to wrap the innoculations up and be prepared to vacate their base of operations. Rita has changed course and picked up considerable steam, quickly jumping to a Category 5 storm–the same rough power base as the storm that brought us here in the first place. This storm, she told me, will now strike somewhere between Houston and Lake Charles, where Tim and I had originally gone to innoculate the general population living in emergency shelters. Now some of those same people that suffered Katrina are going to go through Rita, and there isn’t enough time to get everyone out.

The military is vacating its operations in Baton Rouge, and Stephanie’s USPHS team will be redeployed to Region 9. On the news we begin to see notices flashing across the major networks that Louisiana is again evacuating everyone south of the I-10, this time across the entire state. I illicit a promise from Stephanie to call me in a few days’ time to assure me that everyone is all right. She’s upset that I can’t come with the team, and honestly so am I. With so many things going into motion, I know that they can’t afford to take time out to train anyone else. I know the mission specifics.

By the same token I understand that, should this become an evacuation issue, they will need every available seat in every vehicle. Tagging along is not an option.

With the growing emergency it is becoming clear that they’re going to need more help than they currently have.

“Hurricane Rita is a Category 5, and the storm is expected to hit somewhere between Galvestion and Corpus Christi,” the Incident Commander said. “We are going to go and support FEMA’s efforts to move the patients out. Every patient we move away from the coast will be a life saved.” Forty-five ambulances are in Lake Charles. The rest are deploying to Orange tomorrow, to the Chennault Air Base. “FEMA said that there are no state lines,” he continued, informing crews of their expected duties. He had to stop during his address briefly–sharing that his own home is in the path of this storm.

Thirty-six hours from now, the safety window will close, and the emergency teams will be forced to evacuate. That will be a little less than eighteen hours before landfall.

The last words spoken that I heard before people started moving were, “Let’s go do this.” Source unknown.

There is no better way, I think, to end. But there, then, is another beginning. And I wonder, when we’ll be going back.

 

Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
Almost Home. . .

September 21, 2005; 5:57PM
And Going Home Again, or Texas. . .
Current mood:  pissed off
Well, I had an argument with my manager about the current circumstances. The boss wants to be the boss, but when we’re in service we belong to the EOC.  It represents a problem when you’re told to do two different things, because the thing you’re supposed to do could get you fired.

I returned to the EOC this evening and signed out the truck, only to be asked, “how long were you gone?” by the EOC dispatcher sitting at his little tabled hutched into the cafeteria.  I told him, and he replied, “oh, you haven’t been re-assigned yet.”  He impressed upon me that the truck needed to receive a new placard number, that he needed to confirm our levels of licensure, and that he needed more information about the actual vehicle we were driving.  The reason was that freelance or rogue units operating in the area had been causing some confusion, so I’m told.

Meanwhile, I was also told that we could not be placed out of service and needed to remain with the vehicle.  My partner insisted that she return to camp and get her things, and I told her that she should just bring everything to the EOC and leave it in the truck, because we don’t know if camp will be vacated while we’re away.  I didn’t feel it was a good idea for her to leave until we checked in, but she insisted.

Ten minutes later, I’m still waiting, and the EOC dispatcher is getting irritated.  He tells me that the unit can’t be out of service and needs to be available, and I assure him that I’ll find out what the hold-up is.

When I call, with the current phone capabilities in Louisiana already limited, I get no answer from the boss most of the time.  His phone doesn’t work.  My phone drops out mid-sentence.  I call and get my partner, and I ask her to bring the truck back down.  She asks me why, and I start trying to explain that the truck needs to be in service, that we need to get a new placard for the truck or we can’t be in service.

Either the call gets dropped or she simply hangs up.  Then the boss calls.  Twice.  Everytime I answer, I get a hang-up a second or two after I pick up.  The truck comes rolling up with my boss and someone I don’t know in it.  My boss and I commence to having a discussion that quickly devolves into an argument.  He says everything has to go through him, but the EOC doesn’t agree.  My understanding is that the EOC is the overall incident commander, which means that they talk and we listen.  The disparagement between manager and incident command system becomes an argument between he and I.

It ends with him driving away, in my truck.  I get my license and provide information to the EOC, which they no longer really have time to record.  They say now that they’ll get it later, because things are changing.  I have finished my exit interview now, and I have a green light to get the hell out of here.  The thought in my mind:  Custer had a plan, too.

 

Therle D. Dregansky, III   CCEMTP

Baton Rouge and Homeward Bound

September 21, 2005; 8:27PM
Last Day, and Disappointed
Current mood:  aggravated
This morning I woke, dressed for my shift and met my partner, Cassie.  Our manager was already awake and approached us when we were ready to board the unit and sign in at the EOC. He informed us that Cassie could go back to bed, and that I would not be going back out with the PHS today.  Cassie’s complaint was brief and to the point, and then she retired to the tent.  My own, grown in the telling stress of the past several days around camp, was somewhat more extended but ultimately just as pointless.
 
There is an element of frustration here that has followed our hours.  There were too many people here without vehicles.  Crews from the first shift are still working today when they should be going home, and it feels–with the inconsistency of hours–that there was in fact a persistent element of favoritism.  Shifts have changed on a regular basis, usually on less than twenty minutes’ notice after we’re already awake, dressed and ready.  My week-one partner, Erin, gave me an approximation of her hours that was more than twice my own, and in the end I will be the only paramedic that earned less than fifty hours two weeks in a row, when I had come with the initial promise of daily twelve-hour shifts and extended details.  I will check today to see whether someone will trade me a ticket to allow me to return a day early, and perhaps I can recover some of my lost hours.  It is a frustrating thing, and I remember something that I was told years ago that I accepted as an axiom: the quickest way to sow the seeds of dissent is to screw with your employees’ hours.  I don’t remember the man who told me this fondly, but I have to admit the Weasel was right.
 
To those we leave, we offer trucks that require cleaning, supplies that smell like swamp and the little daily cares and frustrations that will soon be their own.  All I can offer of myself is the hope for a speedy return home, fair hours and a few good memories–in the end, this has been a learning experience.  I wish I could be more upbeat about my final thoughts leaving Baton Rouge, but knowing that financially I will be less stable than before I left bothers me.  We came to alleviate the suffering of others–no one ever said we’d have to take it on ourselves.
 
. . .
 
Well, in the five minutes since I walked away from my computer, I was just advised that Rita has surprised everyone, jumping to a Category 4 and turning this way.  All units are now on active status, and I’ve been placed back with USPHS on alert status.  Funny how things work.  Now I’m going to miss my flight, but it’s something to do.  I couldn’t be more thrilled.
 
Wish us luck.  We aren’t done yet!
 
 
Therle D. Dregansky, III  CCEMTP
Region 2 USPHS

September 21, 2005; 7:55AM
Rita???? Who the hell invited her???
Current mood:  energetic
Extended Service
Yesterday, Tim and I were assigned to stand by in the
EOC. Joe would have been up instead, but dinner beat
him to it (hope you’re feeling better, man). The CAS
crews were up for the next regular assignment, and not
a great deal was going on. Checking our email,
chatting with the other fine folks there and enjoying
a breakfast of eggs, grits and sausage, I received a
phone call from the EOC Dispatcher, Kerry.

When we arrived in the dispatch center, we and a crew
from South Carolina–Kim and Keith, a husband-wife
team from Carolina Ambulance–received orders to join
one of several United States Public Health Service
teams working in the area alongside members of the
CDC. Our mission would be in Lake Charles, nearly
one-hundred-fifty miles further west, near the border
with Texas; and, also, the location would be less than
thirty miles from the Gulf.

This being the furthest west I’ve ever gone, I was
excited at the opportunity, and I would be rewarded
with the sights as we crossed the Causeway through the
bayous of Louisiana. The medical staff of the
USPHS–Brian, Keith, Scott, Valerie, Stephanie, Chris,
Meridith and several other fine folk I haven’t had
opportunity to speak with for more than our brief
introduction that morning–took us on a convoy across
the Causeway and into Lake Charles, where we performed
immunizations for more of Louisiana’s displaced
families. Red Cross volunteers at the shelter jumped
right in when we got there, wrangling support from the
shelter volunteers and displaced families.

The workers at the shelter have been so kind to them,
many of the displaced New Orleans residents say, that
they plan to relocate to Lake Charles if they can find
work or housing. I made the observation that, if by
some magick a great apartment building could be built
that would house everyone from the building, they
probably would stay together–if for nothing else, for
what they have been through as an extended family over
these growing weeks.

Although I don’t have an exact count, I know we
immunized the vast majority of folk there, at least
190 according to Stephanie, in under four hours while
using only three vaccination stations. It was a good
feeling, and by the end of the day–though tired–we
all felt that we had really accomplished something.
The group decided that we would celebrate our good
fortunes at having been chosen to work together, and
went to someplace I know all-too-well: Logan’s
Roadhouse. There, we all enjoyed a fine meal and a
few stories (and cola! Only cola, Jeff! We were
strong, Jeff!).

In the evening we were invited to the McNeese Building
in Lake Charles proper, where we pulled out cots and
slept in the same dormitory as the displaced families.
The USPHS staff we are traveling with doesn’t afford
themselves any extra privilege, and prefers to do
their work with an amount of caring and diligence that
made me very proud to be a part of it. The fact that
we shared accomodations with the very same people we
came to help only affirmed in my mind a sense of
purpose, the fact that we were welcomed with open arms
a sense of accomplishment.

Nevertheless, this is a military assignment, and we
have been afforded security, even in light of good
cheer.

This morning we will be briefed on Hurricane Rita
after going for fuel. Since the mission is so far
from Baton Rouge–and the only route back across the
Causeway–we are told to be prepared to evacuate with
our USPHS team, Region 5, should such a decision
become necessary. With landfall expected around
Friday, we will know more in the coming days.

From what Stephanie has been told, we are now in the
projected path of what will most-likely arrive as a
Category 3 storm. The team has also decided that,
should it become necessary to leave, we will do what
we can to help people who can’t get out prepare,
before we go. Safety is the utmost priority, and we
will take steps to be sure we don’t stay too long at
the party. It just planning upon planning right now,
no sure things.

Therle D. Dregansky, III CCEMTP
McNeese Center, Lake Charles

September 21, 2005; 3:28PM
Baton Rouge and Homeward Turning
Current mood:  drained
Since we left Tammany, we haven’t seen anything of Slidell; instead we have returned to Camp Swaggert and commenced to the mission of “hurry up and wait.”
 
One crew was assigned to a twenty-four hour mission, running rescue for a local community, Lafayette.  The others were assigned to provide immunizations to those that still need them, returning in the early and mid-evening.  With the persistent calm after our return to Tent City–which is growing smaller by the day–those remaining off-duty have been largely left out of the loop.  Frustration has again followed in the lack of activity.  We came here to work, and we know that there are things that still need doing.
 
In the morning the off-duty crews took in a movie, then returned to camp and had lunch in the EOC.  The fare has been light but filling, and the staff caretaking us friendly and helpful.
 
This afternoon it rained.  The tents–not built entirely for their present standings–had to be mopped out, the velcro contacts sealed back up, and the doors zipped tight to keep the water out–but some got in.
 
The high point of the evening came when the day crews began to return from their missions and the off-duty crews met in the EOC for dinner.  A woman from the EOC came around with a box full of small children’s toys–tops, barrettes, paper checkers games and a few things I’m still not sure about–but any child could probably figure out.
 
A minor storm was followed by a mild sensation as we learned that a parlor is advertising tattoos for medical personnel for $20, and a fair number of us, myself included, have endeavoured to get the official Katrina tattoo, or one of the ever-growing number of them as the rescue efforts wind down, and normalcy returns to the Gulf Coast.  He’s located at 3607 Government in Baton Rouge, and he does excellent work.  I will be sporting his work on my arm for the rest of my life, come hell or high water.  Let the next storm be damned.
 
The remaining missions are immunizations at Red Cross Disaster Relief Services centers set up in shelters dotting the area–that, and staying up at night to wait for a call.  We have been advised to be prepared to innocuate thousands in the coming days, exaggerated numbers perhaps as many as sixty-thousand.  Today saw less than two thousand, at least in our part of the world.  Perhaps, overall, 60,000; but I’ve come to learn that the commanders of the centers tend to build in great scope what turns out to be missions of fairly normal repute and response, and danger doesn’t lurk ’round every corner.
 
The team has quickly forgotten that the small things don’t matter, and with the larger concerns in life now past us, life, too, has begun. . .sadly. . .to return to normal.  There are still the occasional great pranks, and I’m still shaking off the heavy-beating heart of the joke my boss just played on me (sorry, I’m not sharing), but the comraderie is largely returned to the loose association of people who work together, that share only their feelings and knowledge of their work in common.
 
Well, there was one thing:  Thanks for the pretzels Emily, but it was the warm smile and the conversation that was really what I appreciated.  I hope the coming days are as dreary and normal as our hopes were far-fetched and further-reaching.  That is the best wish I can give you, and I hope your new job is still waiting for you when you get home.
 
We were warned by Damea tonight that Tropical Storm Rita has become Hurricane Rita, and that Rita is rounding Florida and possibly headed our way.  I can’t see that the city could fall now, and have no fear at all.  These people, in all their resilience, are unbreakable.  Atlantis though it may one day become, I have no doubt it will be an Atlantis with domes and light.
 
I’m sitting in a cafeteria in the Swaggert compound, listening to and sharing stories with the residents, doctors and nurses that are providing some of the mass innoculations.  One of them literally tried to charm a man with a rifle out of his T-shirt.  Good group of people, and a number of them are camping tonight in the tents.  It’s amazing what glimpses of people you get to see, and what things can amaze you even gives you glimpses into yourself.  Sometimes about the things you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
 
 
Therle D. Dregansky, III   CCEMTP
EOC, Camp Swaggert

September 21, 2005; 3:07PM

After LaCombe, and a Day of Mourning
Current mood:  busy
People in every culture celebrate holidays. Although the word “holiday” literally means “holy day,” most American holidays are not religious, but commemorative in nature and origin. Because the nation is blessed with rich ethnic heritage it is possible to trace some of the American holidays to diverse cultural sources and traditions, …
- HOLIDAYS IN THE U.S.A.

 
With lightened hearts we returned from the mission at LaCombe.  Mission accomplished.  After seeing to the needs of the general population, we returned to a distribution center established by one of our crew at a local church.  Across the street we were shocked to find a group of repair and recovery workers, getting ready to go to bed hungry.  In the press to care for the sick and injured of Tammany, the work crews, having brought $10,000 in perishable and non-perishable foods themselves, had shared and shared their resources, and today they had an empty trailer.  You should have seen their eyes light up when four units loaded with MRE’s, microwavable meals, water, fruit drinks and a small cache of some much-desired fresh fruits were trucked in for them–a festival something like Christmas.
 
The day was also marked with the recovery of three small lives, kittens that were recovered from a building that we had set up near as an impromptu clinic with a wandering doctor and our manager.  They were mildly malnourished but of the right age to begin weaning, and they were removed after Aaron stepped in with a calming effect that left me markedly surprised and impressed.  In mere minutes, three feral kittens were in friendly arms of humans they had never seen, accepting petting and soft words, and later formula salvaged from some rations someone scavanged.  The three were returned to Camp Tammany, where more admiration and adoration followed.  Oh–just so we’re clear–the kittens, mostly.
 
The farewell dinner put on by the staff was extravagant–catfish, grilled and peppered tuna, pasta alfredo, ribs and all the trimmings.  This was the evening that we learned that the wonderful men and women that have been keeping us fed night and day, serving 900 meals three times a day were actually the secretaries and other staff members of the Parish school.  Their kindness and generosity have been immeasureable, and we are invigorated, and ready to press on.
 
Tonight we return to Camp Swaggert, tired, recovering from scratches and bumps and burns.  Tired, from the things that we have seen, but renewed in purpose.
 
There is more to do.
 
From Camp Swaggert, we will most likely continue to Slidell, where we have heard word that things are getting worse.  The local MASH facilities established there are each seeing in excess of 250 patients every day, and they are running on less staff than we normally see even in our resource poor State of Michigan.  They need our help–hands, transfers, minds and energy.
 
And we are ready.  We wait for the final official word, which will come at 1400 tomorrow.
 
 
“Camp Tammany, signing off.
Command terminated.
God bless.”
 
 
Therle D. Dregansky, III   CCEMTP
EOC Camp Tammany

September 21, 2005; 3:06PM
Death and Birth
Current mood:  calm
Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Death and birth.

Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth
Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether
Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?
Ill the rose-red and the sable feather
Blend in one crown’s plume, as grief with mirth:
Ill met still are warm and wintry weather,
Death and birth.
 
- Algernon Charles Swinburne
 

We quickly are settling in and preparing for our hardest days.
 
LaCombe, one of the last areas for us to check in our intial surveys and assessments, has been under six to twelve feet of water since the storm, and as the waters recede we prepare to make our push.  We’ve had no choice but to wait with traffic lanes blocked by massive trunks and homes submerged, in some places to their rafters.  An additional concern, the ubiquitous downed power lines hide under the water in places, unseen, their status unknown but most likely unpowered.
 
Teams today were forced to leave supplies in a local church by the truckload, with roads were impassable in our area and some homes still underwater.  Teams got to whom they could and urged them to give up their homes, but in the wake of this tragedy if they have not left by now we will most likely find them in the morning on their porches or waving from their upper floors.
 
The teams remain in high spirits, and I sit now with a larger group from Tulane.  Many are filling out forms for relief even as they continue participate in efforts themselves.  Sadly they may be among the last to receive assistance themselves.  The group of young paramedics lament the tale of two Tulane University students staying in Boston who were attacked and stabbed on Boston St.  One young woman with Tulane, trying to contact her family, has only today been able to reach them by text message.  Another asks, “Does anyone bank at Whitney?”
 
One of the coordinators sits behind me, taking a moment to check his email.  He just got word that I had some computers working, and his cellular service has likewise been unreliable.  Our loved one and friends have to wait while we touch the lives of strangers, but no one is complaining.  The office takes on a lighter tone with so many people taking up space.  My own team has already bedded down for the night–unlike me, they had to work today.  A unit for another service had a traffic accident today, and another is broken down on the West Causeway, waiting for service from who-knows.  He receives update photos that show an oil tanker sitting on the levy, fishing trawlers laying on the freeway far from the coast.
 
A Carolina paramedic shows me photos of Gulf Port, where a woman was living on the third floor of her home until rescuers reached her.  The first two floors were underwater, and she had dragged the generator upstairs with what she could grab as the waters rose.  We exchange a few warstories as the coordinator shuts down for the night and gets ready to go to bed.
 
Tomorrow we take LaCombe.  It is nothing less than an invasion, against a foe that is not Man.  The coordinators of this mission want our teams to be swift, to overwhelme the area and essentially to take the town at one time amidst concerns about the angry or desperate people living on their own after the winds swept through.  It’s hard to explain to them that we couldn’t get to them.  What, after all, can you say?  There are other concerns as well, and all the teams going to LaCombe will be attended by law enforcement to secure our safety while continuing operations in the devestated town.
 
I step back into nostalgia and remember better times as the overwhelming scope of what we are doing hits home, with Ophelia living up to her name–a shepard satellite for the epsilon that is the coast; or, more likely, that tragic figure who “In her wanderings we hear from time to time an undertone of the deepest sorrow, but never the agonized cry of fear or horror which makes madness dreadful or shocking.” (Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy 132-3).  I’m finally starting to shrug off the effects of the vaccinations, and the sunburn.  I’ll have to get some sleep before I get up at 0600 to do it all again.
 
 
Therle D. Dregansky, III   CCEMTP
EOC Camp Tammany

September 16, 2005; 3:04PM
Katrina 2005
Current mood:  optimistic
Okay, folks!
 
Here’s the real blog of my trip into Katrina.  The posting at CEMS has been unreliable, the photos not shared as they had been promised and the timing of the posts highly inconsistent and mismatched.  It has resulted in confusion, panicked calls and hurt feelings, and I’m not wasting anymore time writing for a system that doesn’t appreciate the effort.
 
Here’s the real blog, uncensored and from my own perspective.
 
This is how FEMA dropped the ball.
 
 
15 Sept 2005 — Beyond 65 South – The Way to Camp Swaggert
 
This town is coming like
     a ghost town
No job to be found
     in this country.
Can’t go on no more,
     people getting angry.
This town is coming like
     a ghost town.
This town is coming like
     a ghost town.
This town is coming like
     a ghost town.
This town is coming like
     a ghost town.
 
From “Ghost Town”
–The Specials, 1981
 
 
Progress is an elusive pursuit when public health is a negative.
 
When it functions at its best, nothing happens.  There are no epidemics.  Children are immunized.  Food and water are safe to consume.  Air is breathable, and you can swim in the water.  Personal health habits are observed from an informed and willing populus.  In the absence of failure advocates are appeased, and political bodies with budget crises trim away at a system that appears to have everything.
 
Until the day it doesn’t.
 
The factors essential to a healthy people are ancient and unchanged–clean water, enough good food, decent shelter, appropriate waste disposal and good medical care; and all free from the social and economic divide.  The maxim of medicine, then, is and must be to do no harm.
 
We eleven, the second wave, came into a nightmare in a waking state.  We left our homes and the people we love, and drove straight into a vision of hell.  Trees are being cleared, but many areas remain impassable.  Wires are down across roads and through trees for uncounted miles, and house after house pleads for light in the darkness.  A fearsome underworld has surfaced in the metropolitae.  Trash is pushed by caterpillers into huge bins, which then wait for semi tractor-trailers to haul them away.  Cranes are visible to deal with the worst of the damage, but I haven’t seen them moving.  In a state of disuse, the city takes on the proportions of a ghost town, with the occasional forced door and broken window dotted by other homes with the occasional signs that say “No Trespassing.”  Others, less rhetorical, write, “If you loot, we will shoot.”
 
1400, the previous day.  We met up with our friends from CAS less than two minutes apart at the rally point outside Dayton.  The appearance of planning, a well-oiled machine, bolsters our spirits.  Even better, while we have packed MRE’s and bottled water, the CAS crews have been gifted with cold sandwiches, soda and snacks.  It’s easy to get to know these good people, and Tim gives us a smooth ride most of the way, trading off when it gets dark.
 
0445.  The team arrives in Camp Swaggert, ahead of schedule.  We weren’t due until 0600, but in light of our arrival the teams are told that they are being deployed immediately.  Most of us haven’t slept, or have slept little during the trip 1200 miles to Baton Rouge.  We’re eager, though.  As Eric puts it, “Let’s get out there and get it done do we can get some sleep.”  Similar sentiments are echoed around our little circle.  We have arrived together, in more ways than one.
 
The units have been renumbered for the emergency response initiative, but we still have our unit radios and cell phones.  Service becomes a little more unreliable in the northern areas where we are headed, and the team leader hands out two-way radios as an additional means of communication.  We are warned that under no circumstances are the teams to separate.  There have been problems–people in trees, people with guns, animals.
 
0600.  We drive the 45-minutes to Covington Wood, where we are checking door-to-door for the needs of the general population–those people that didn’t get out on time, or simply had no where to go.  It is a hard-hit area, by my perceptions, but then again I’ve haven’t been to New Orleans or Mobile or Biloxi.  At Covington we are introduced to the EOC, run from the Parish high school.  We arrive in the wake of news that the director has stepped down, but the level of prepardness that we find on-site is impressive.  DEA, Fire, PD, EMS.  I counted eighteen communities from New York to Arizona, and I’m sure there have been more.
 
The units are divided, and we are given simple phoenetic designations to communicate with one another.  The trip to the north end of Tammany Parish is uneventful, but we begin to see the scope of the damage.  Telephone poles are ripped in half and tossed great distances.  No one has been sent to claim the equipment, which could draw power if the wrong lines are energized too soon.  There are burns across sections of road where live wires fell, but the power is long gone, and we drive right over them.
 
We survey a section of Tammany and deliver much-needed food, water and medical supplies.  Our team leader makes a number of runs into town to acquire needed medications for those who can’t leave their homes.  As often as not, the homes are damaged–cars sealed in by fallen trees or crushed under them.  One man, an older multiple sclerosis patient, was left by his wife with their six children and five dogs when she headed into town to get water.  She hasn’t come back.  They have no immediate medical needs, and we call for a wellness check, plus a check by community police: In his frustration, the man has taken to swinging a belt at the children.  All we can do is offer them some food, water and words of comfort, but we and another unit return to check on them more than once.
 
My partner, Erin, and I saw less than thirty people in our sweep, handing out a truckload of MRE’s, water, chips and other snacks.  We gave a few tetanus vaccines to interested parties, but many aren’t interested, or are already current.  More often, we found abandoned pets outside locked homes, mostly dogs, with no food or water and frightened, at first afraid to approach us.  We lured them in with water and some of our own rations and outright fed the worst of them, rewarded with wagging tails and a little light in their tired eyes.
 
1800.  After covering most of our maps, we are forced to retire for the evening.  It will be dark soon, and it still isn’t safe to be out at night.  That evening we learn that FEMA has moved us to a new campsite at the EOC.  We have to go back to Camp and gather our things, then travel the round-trip back to the Parish.
 
2130?  Bleary-eyed, exhausted and a little frustrated, we return to the Parish and bed down.  Classroom 218 – Espanol.  There aren’t many jokes until we wake up the next morning.  We are just too tired.  Sleep comes fitful, but on the third day or our mission, after a welcome shower, we rested.
 
 
0645, the next day.  We wake to several phones, buzzing pagers and groaning.  It’s a mutual exhaustion, which for me at least makes it a little more bearable.  I’m sunburned, and my burning face gives me a mild but convincing headache.  On occasion I realize it’s frustrating to be going bald when you forget to put lotion on the top of your head.  After a breakfast of sausages, grits and bread I sit at a terminal in the high school library, having resurrected a number of their computers for others to use to keep in touch with their friends and loved ones.  My partner from the day before is out with one of the fine folks from CAS.  They have another several trips to make today, and those of us off-duty may be activated around noon to go in with the DEA to survey damage in other areas by helicopter.
 
Tuesday we assumed command of a remote EOC in Tammany to finish the work that we have started.  Discussion abounds, and the logistical nightmare of a lengthening stay begins to loom.  Right now the food, water, supplies and fuel are all free.  After today, we will have to face the realization that we are on our own.
 
 
Therle D. Dregansky, III   CCEMTP
EOC Camp Tammany

September 15, 2005, 2:25PM
Community EMS Katrina BLOG
Current mood:  exhausted
I am now writing the blog for the Community EMS team that responded to Baton Rouge as part of the relief effort.  I don’t have the time to write two blogs, and simply regurgitating the same materials on two boards isn’t going to do it for me.

HENCE, if you’d like to read my blog, please go to communityems.org until you see word that I’m returning home.  Right now we’re running operations at Tammany Parish outside Covington, just to give you locals an idea where I am.  Hope you all are well.

September 15, 2005; 11:27AM
In Memory Of
Current mood:  contemplative
A Fireman’s Prayer

When I am called to duty, God,
Whenever flames may rage;
Give me strength to save some life,
Whatever be its age.
Help me embrace a little child
Before it is too late
Or save an older person
From the horror of that fate.
Enable me to be alert
And hear the weakest shout,
And quickly and efficiently
To put the fire out.
I want to fill my calling
And to give the best in me
To guard my every neighbor
And protect his property.
And if, according to my fate,
I am to lose my life,
Please bless with your protecting
All those I hold dear in my life.
September 11, 2005; 6:56PM
New Photos!
Current mood:  sore
http://www.angelfire.com/trek/sfhq/dreams_are_like_grains_of_sand

http://www.angelfire.com/trek/stfhq/dreams_are_like_grains_of_sand

 

The old photo album is now full!  The link on top is the new album.

September 7, 2005; 1:14AM
There Are Days
Current mood:  indescribable
There are days when I wonder what I’m doing.

Then again, there are days when the world seems just about at rights.

Right now I’m feeling an odd mix of both, and I can’t decide which is more compelling.  Strange, this feeling.

September 7, 2005; 12:04AM
Relief Efforts
Current mood:  sympathetic
A brief reprieve, and I may write.

It isn’t like they say it is on American television.  Our British friends come through for us with food and humanitarian supplies, and will be sending tons every day for the next week.  One man said, “The emergency zone is roughly the size of Great Britain.  How can we not help?”

The death toll may reach ten thousand within the coming week.  Roughly a thousand died in the initial onslaught–at least, so far as we know.  The numbers may be higher because of the numbers of families in the low-lying bayou, who may not have even had warning the storm was coming.

I sit waiting for word, waiting for an opportunity to do some good.  Meanwhile, the people of New Orleans took to the streets in a makeshift parade, celebrating nothing more than survival–and their good fortunes that a large portion of the French Quarter was amazingly spared.  It is nothing less than an act of God.

And in the news blotter today, justice is finally being served.  Armed looters fired on police responding to the emergency response zone.  Four of the looters were killed when the 82nd Airborne and other armed response units, already deployed, returned fire.  60,000 some armed guards now tend the streets, and peace is slowly returning.  Local sheriffs, frustrated by the low-life looters, have encouraged folks remaining in defense of their homes to defend them, and to shoot first, saying,  “It’s martial law.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Ten more states are now considered a part of the disaster zone.  Two more may be added tomorrow.

September 5, 2005; 10:20PM
Well, here I go. . .
Current mood:  determined
The FEMA briefing for medical personnel going to New Orleans will be within the next twenty-four hours.  After that I get to find out if I’m flying or driving.

Wish me luck.

September 3, 2005; 2:46PM
Katrina Relief Effort
Well, I’m probably off to New Orleans as part of the relief effort in the morning.  My employer is sending some of us down to help out with the relief effort and hopefully help some people out.  If I disappear for a while, you know where I am.

http://www.illwillpress.com/kat.html

This just about sums it up!

September 1, 2006; 12:02AM
Firestorm
Current mood:  amused
Yeah, that’s what they’re calling it.

What it actually was was little more than a standard industrial park fire, and it wasn’t even that fascinating by those standards–calm winds, no rain, good visibility with no exposures (that is, no nearby buildings threatened by the fire.

Long story:

Well, I was bored, so I figured I might as well pick up an open shift and be bored at work I drove in to the station and sat down to get comfortable. It was a night shift, in the middle of the week, and everyone knows that nothing ever happens in the middle of the week, right? WELL. . .

We receive a call at the station, which usually means we have a call, but I’m asked by the Supervisor–who isn’t normally the person on the phone–if we’ve been watching the news tonight. I feel a minor pucker and say, “No, why?”

(small explanation: a “pucker” is that little internal feeling that tells you something is wrong, and you typically recognize it because it kinda feels like your butt just slammed shut. No one should really need me to explain this, I don’t think; it is just on occasion amusing.)

The Super tells us that there has been an explosion at an industrial park near Van Born and Wayne Road, which puts it in our area. I tell my partner, and he runs to the door and yanks open the little door between our office and the garage, when our unit sits waiting.

And the world had turned orange.

I honestly remember saying the word “Holy” about four times–and everything comes with it–and my Super, who I think was getting a little nervous asked, “What, what, what is it?” to which I had to explain that I could see what he was talking about. Now, our station is at Wayne and Goddard, which is about two to three miles away.

Then there’s another flash, and we see fire.

Okay, this is an interesting event now. We turn on the news, and the Super tells us to pay attention to the news in the event the wind changes. They’re concerned because they don’t know what’s in the plant that’s burning.

Initially we listen to witness statements that either a plane crashed or something exploded and showered them with plastic. One particularly clueless fool and his little Scooby Gang says, “Well, we heard an explosion and saw a fireball, and we thought a plane had gone down or something, so we all jumped in our car and went right over there.”

My partner and I are laughing at this utterly ignorant waste of flesh, wishing something could have fallen out of the sky on him and bemoaning the fact that he’s still out there, somewhere, wasting our air. We take some satisfaction when he gets yanked off the air by the reporter for saying something they can’t censor in time. Three days later we’re still giggling about it on our next shift.

Then the inevitable happens. The news gets a call from some doctor somewhere, some “expert” that seems to know just what to do. Let’s call him “Duck McQuack.” Well, Dr. McQuack seems to think that everyone down wind is going to be turned into mutants by all these unknown chemicals that are burning and blending in the air and turning into all these complex chemicals that no one’s ever seen before, and he basically urges everyone to go to the hospital, because “even hours later, the symptoms can start.” What an idiot. If I ever see this guy, I hope I’m not in uniform.

Anyway, no sooner does Dr. McQuack get off the phone than the phone rings. Guess what, it’s a possible exposure, and someone in the dispatch office in the background is already laughing and saying, “Yeah, we think he was watching channel 4; he got exposured to some major bullshit.”

The patient, it turns out, actually might have been rather close to the explosion. He had gotten off a bus and was walking south on Wayne Road when the explosion happened. From where he was he had simply walked off the road and watched some dust stir up around his ankles. Then he started to itch, and when he scratched his hands started to itch, too. Then he wiped some sweat off of his forehead. Now his head itches, and he won’t hold still.

When we roll up he’s walking toward us with a carry-all in his hands, which by now has bumped into his ankles, his stomach, his hip and his knees. He’s a walking searing itch at this point, and the poor guy really does look uncomfortable.

So what does he do? He tries to hand me his bag so I can put it in our truck for him. Oh, no no no. He gets to put that on the ground and sit down, because we’re going to do something can “decon.” I come at him with a few liters of sterile water and give him a thorough dousing, while my partner tries to get some semblance of a history from him. He wants us to take his ID, which is also contaminated, because he’s handling it.

This is going to go well. . .

While the patient is sitting on the curb we continue to douse him with water while we get him out of any potentially contaminated garments, which are basically all of them because he won’t stop touching and scratching.  After decontaminating his hands for the third time I finally get tired of ducking when he reaches to scratch, because he doesn’t just reach down like a normal person to scratch what we keep telling him not to touch–he has to try to be polite and stay out of my way, which means he ends up reaching around ME!  So I take a couple absorbant blue chucks (they have a very soft cotton on one side and a plastic shell on the outside that won’t let liquid through) and tell him, “Hold out your hands.”  As soon as those little meathooks are out there, I make little bags out of the blue chucks and glove him.  Thus contained, he’s not a risk to me anymore.  This works so well that we do the same thing to his legs because he’s taken to kicking them around now.

So we get laughing boy to lay down on the stretcher after dousing him with an insane amount of sterile water, and then we place a non-permeable burn sheet and a sheet over the top.  This is not so much for treatment or for stabilization as much as for couthe, and to provide this poor man some sense of privacy because we’ve stripped him to his shorts and t-shirt, soaked him and strapped him to a bed.

Mind, we never actually see anything on him, except where he’s scratched himself red.  He doesn’t appear to be burning, but he’s seen the TV, and he knows it could happen at anytime.

When we get to the hospital, he’s run through the entire decontamination process, which means he’s stripped (completely this time), showered and given a pair of scrubs to wear; then he’s taken inside the hospital to have his blood drawn, receive an EKG and just generally get poked and prodded until either we’ve run every test or he realizes that Dr. McQuack wasn’t really an MD, nor even a DO.  He was a shingle-carrying FOS all along.

Three days later we’re still containing and examining the blast site to try to figure out what the heck happened.  The length of this story has actually meant that I’ve been writing it over the past few days, and we’re still no closer to knowing the truth.

Sometimes we don’t get to know.  We just get to be glad everyone went home that night.  And the next, and the next.

September 1, 2005; 1:44PM
Little Problems
Current mood:  thoughtful
So where you I start?  Loyalty is a funny thing–probably causes as much harm as it does good.

I had posted a phenomenal line or two.  Would have been great, if I hadn’t lost my connection, or the computer hadn’t shut down. . .or some other damn thing.

On the 22nd I witnessed a murder.

Oh, it wasn’t a murder with a body and a weapon.  The body was thrown from a moving vehicle, on a freeway, at freeway speeds.  Only problem with this little story is that she wasn’t quite a body yet.  The body tumbled off the freeway into on the shoulder.

The force of the impact shattered a leg, peeled the skin on her head back like a grape and caused massive internal injuries.  Only problem with this little story now is that she never lost consciousness.  What a ride.

Now the emergency unit arrives on scene and is directed to a small crumpled form, and does what it can.  We deliver her to the closest trauma center, and they perform exemplary work.  A credit to their service.  She begins to lose consciousness in the emergency room.

Four hours later we learn that she succumbed to her injuries.  Worse, there is now conjecture that she may have jumped from the vehicle, and the only witness is a young girl related to the only person that could have been responsible–if it wasn’t an accident.

Problems.

So, here I am, four days later.  I worked 211.1 hours that pay period, had a CPR that we saved on my next shift and still have an impressive record of a 100 ave rate over the last two years.  I deliver everyone alive, and I bring back the people that check out.

There were a few that were DOS, of course.  That means Dead On Scene–in other words, we didn’t even have a need to try anything, because they’d been gone way too long.  But in the long haul people that I receive alive stay alive.

But the politics of the thing has me down.

Watching the following calls of that evening, we saw an assault, a drunk and some poor girl that went out with a guy for a couple of drinks and ended up being assaulted by him, and his friend.  Fortunately she was smart, pretended that she was more drunk than she was and convinced them to let her go to the bathroom.  Then she punched out a screen and ran like hell.  Good thing, too, because I don’t think the bastards would have ever let her go.

Now I’m sitting at home talking with someone about the morals of Man, and finding myself wanting.  People have a fantastic ability to be cruel to one another.  And I find that I was upset because I was stood up today.  Boy, am I ever shallow.

July 10, 2005; 4:57AM
The Catmandments (or, “What I did with my day off”)
Current mood:  busy
THE CATMANDMENTS

Thou shall not jump onto the keyboard when thy human useth it.

Thou shall not bite the cords that come out of the computer.

Thou shall not unroll the toilet paper from the roll.

Thou shall not sit in front of the television or monitor as if  transparent.

Thou shall not projectile vomit from the top of the refrigerator.

Thou shall not walk in on a dinner party and commence to licking thy butt.

Thou shall not lie down with thy butt in thy human’s face.

Thou shall not leap from great heights onto thy human’s genital region.

Fast as thou are, thou cannot run through closed doors.  Thou canst however make it through screens.

Thou shall not reset thy human’s alarm clock by walking, sitting ot laying upon it.

Thou shall not climb on the garbage can with the hinged lid, as thee will fall in and trap thyself.

Thou shall not jump onto the toilet seat just as thy human is sitting down.

Thou shall not jump onto thy sleeping human’s bladder at 4 a.m.

Thou shall realize that the house is not a prison from which to escape at any opportunity.

Thou shall not trip thy humans even if they are walking too slow, particularly on stairs.

Thou shall not push open the bathroom door, especially when there are guests in thy house.

Thou shall remember that thou are a carnivore and that house plants are not meat.

Thou shall show remorse when scolded.  Okay, thou mayst fake it.

 

 

——————————————————————————–
BATHING YOUR CAT

Some people have the misconception that cats never have to be bathed. That somehow
they “lick” themselves clean. Well contrary to this popular belief, cats do NOT have some enzyme in their saliva that resembles Tide (with or without bleach).

Cats, like their nemesis, the dog …. do get dirty and have a variety of odors… from smelling like the outhouse where you camped last year to the same odor as your dog’s breath. (Remember… your dog will try to eat anything.) Now we all know that cats HATE water. And we know that giving the cat a sedative to ease this process of a bath is out of the question.

So, the best approach is both sneaky and direct. Remember now, this is not the dumb dog who can be led to tub with lies and a trail of Kibbles and Bits.

Although your cat has the advantage of smarts, quickness and total lack of concern for you …. you have the advantage of size, strength, and the ability to wear protective garments.

1. First …. dress for the occasion. A 4-ply rubber wet suit is suggested, along with a helmet, face mask and welders gloves.

2. A Bathtub with a glass enclosure is preferred to the one with a shower curtain. A frenzied cat can shred one of these in about 3.5 seconds.

3. Have the Kitty Bubbles and towel in the enclosed bathtub area before hand. No … blow drying the cat after the bath is not suggested.

4. Draw the water, making it a little warmer than needed as you still need to find the cat. Position everything strategically in the shower, so you can reach it even if you are face down or prone in the tub.

5. Find your cat. Use the element of surprise. Pick the cat up, nonchalantly as if you were simply carrying him/her to the supper dish. No need to worry about the cat noticing your strange attire…the cat barely notices you anyway.

6. Once you and the cat are inside the bathroom …. speed is essential. In one single liquid motion .shut the door to the bathroom, step into the shower, close the sliding doors, and drop the cat into the water. While the cat is still in a state of shock, locate the Kitty Bubbles and squirt whatever part of him is above the water line. You have just begun the wildest 45 seconds of your life  Remember that cats have no handles and add the fact that he now has soapy fur. His state of shock has worn off and he’s madder than a wet hornet.

7. As best, you can, wearing welder’s gloves, try to field his body as he catapults through the air toward the ceiling. If possible, give another squirt of Kitty Bubbles with his body now fully exposed.

8. During the 5 seconds you are able to hold onto him, rub vigorously. No need to worry about rinsing. As he slide down the glass enclosure into the tub, he will fall back into the water, rinsing himself in the process.

9. Only attempt the lather and rinse process about 3 times. The cat will realize the lack of traction on the glass by then and will use the next attempt on the first available part of you.

10. Next, the cat must be dried. No…this is NOT the easiest part. By this stage, you are worn out and the cat has just become semi-permanently affixed to your right leg. We suggest here that you drain the tub and in full view of your cat.  Reach for the bottle of
Kitty Bubbles.

11. If you have done step 10 correctly, the cat will be off your leg and hanging precariously from your helmet. Although this view of the cat is most disgusting, he will be in a much better position for wrapping the towel around him.

12. Be sure cat is firmly wrapped in towel before opening tub enclosure. Open bathroom door …. put towel wrapped cat on floor and step back quickly. Into tub, if possible, and do not open enclosure until all you can see is the shredded towel.

13. In about 2 hours …. it will be safe to exit the bathroom. Your cat will be sitting out there somewhere looking like a small hedgehog while plotting revenge.

 

 

Fortunately I am safe at work now. . .

July 10, 2005; 6:15AM
A Day Off
Current mood:  contemplative
I left work at around 7:30 this morning, after the incoming crew woke me up.  They didn’t expect to find us there, because our station had shut down for the day.  These were part of our relief coverage, who would be occupying our station until this evening.

Thirty-six on, twelve off. . .  wtf am I doing? LOL

So here I sit in front of my piano, using my bench as a table for my lappy.  It’s faster than my desktop unit, and my desktop is doing an update in the meanwhile.  Viruses, viruses everywhere, but “there are no strings on me.”

I take a moment to polish my boots.  The shine reminds me of a better time.  When this field was new, the uniform meant something to me.  It wasn’t just a job, and I couldn’t think of it as a career.  I belonged to a service.  We had a purpose.  Now sometimes it feels as though we are simply trying to stay alive.  Prime targets:  that’s what they call us now.

Paramedics don’t carry guns.  Paramedics don’t carry non-lethal weapons.  Paramedics are not permitted to utilize restraints unless supplied by law enforcement or a medical facility along with a physician’s written order.  Paramedics are not permitted to use force of any kind without law enforcement backup or a physician’s written order unless able to prove beyond doubt that we are fighting for our lives.

This evening, though, we were approached by a local gang of teens who were traveling the streets near our post.  They walked up without fear, as they outnumbered us five to one.  My partner was outside the unit exercising, doing push-ups.  He noticed them and told me, playfully, “Hey, we’re about to be jumped.”  His smile disappeared as he realized they were still coming.  The teens weren’t out looking for trouble, thankfully, and encouraged him to keep doing push-ups, but to “do them right.”  One of them joined him on the ground and started doing push-ups with his knuckles turned down.  They enjoyed their little contest, and I stayed quiet in the front of the unit, with my hand drifting near a little button on my console.  A red button on my mobile data transmitter that says “9-1-1.”  It would send out a silent alarm, a plea for help.  Dispatch calls us one time and activates a GPS tracker that monitors our unit’s location.  Then the police start looking.

With the closest police station five miles away, and the time to contact them approximately two minutes–assuming they sent their closest cars–help would be ten minutes away.  They wouldn’t be coming to save us, you see.  They would be coming to stop someone from potentially taking an ambulance and turning it into a bomb.  The protocol doesn’t protect the crew.

Thankfully, however, the teens tired of their sport and moved off, their colors creating a blot that persisted until they were nearly half a mile away.  Most of the people that live on the streets see us as a necessary evil.  We aren’t on their side, but we aren’t cops, and they know they can count on us when they get “beat down.”  They also know that they can freely tell us what they’re taking, and we can’t inform the police.  A legally-enforced patient confidentiality called HIPPA restricts us from giving any health information to anyone not directly involved in the patient’s care.  That includes illicit drugs.  The police have to get a search warrant and have the patient tested.

We did one of those today, too–an involuntary blood draw on a drunk that became belligerent and spit on a police officer, then bit a hospital employee on the hand.  We took his blood and conducted it to a testing facility, where the hospital would be able to learn whether they had to tell their employee that the patient had any communicable diseases.

Twelve hours later the cycle would repeat, as a drunk in the holding that became belligerent with police in a different city used a taser to bring him back under control.  He crumpled like a rag-doll, then used the experience for all it was worth.  He had chest pain.  He had trouble breathing.  He had asthma.  He couldn’t stand.  The story changed almost as fast as his crocodile tears hit the ground.  Then, after fourteen years, the unthinkable happened.

Somebody got me.

The patient rolled over and spattered me with spittle, across the right side of my face.  I shave.  It’s an exposure.  My partner still insists it was accidental, but the guy was only sputtering and spittering when people were near his face.  Besides, he fails his conscious exam–deliberately.  He’s evasive and resistant, doesn’t follow commands, keeps trying to roll off the stretcher and pretends to fall unconscious; I can tell, because when you hold an unconscious person’s hand over their face and let go, they smack themselves (he somehow magically couldn’t be made to hit himself with his hand).

I don’t have to worry about HIV.  The odds of contraction through intact skin is over a million to one.  But I do have to worry about HBV–Hepatitis.  I also have the worry about MDRTB–multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis.  Both can be transmitted through droplets in saliva.  Both can be transmitted through intact skin when absorbed through pores or non-intact skin; or through inhalation, respectively.

Hepatitis takes thirty years to kill you, and you know you’re dying the whole time.  Liver engorgement, chronic pain, infection, malaise, jaundice and ultimately renal and hepatic failure and death sometimes mitigated for a few years by equally uncomfortable dialysis.  Most dialysis patients develop diabetes as their assaulted bodies fail, and then they start losing body parts as tissue necrosis sets in.  End result?  It kills you a piece at a time.

TB, likewise, kills you over a long period of time.  The symptoms including night sweats, weight loss, coughing, general malaise and high fevers.  The last symptoms are a heavy cough with production of blood-tinged sputum.  You end up bleeding into your lungs and drowning in your own fluids.  Plus, most TB these days is drug-resistant because doctors prescribe too damn many antibiotics, and the people who get them don’t take all the drugs they’ve been given.  They stop when they feel better and save the rest for a rainy day.  Result?  Some of the disease survives and adapts to the antibiotic.

Boy, cheerful, aren’t I?  I look over at the TV and spy my Halo 2 sitting atop by XBox.  Hmm.  Killing bugs in restrospective, contemplative hopefulness? maybe old uncle Murphy will take pity.  Adrina’s song is playing in the background on my desktop, which means my updates have started, and my desktop has gone back to my homepage.  I wonder if that will affect my submission of this blog?  Probably not, but I plan to make a copy of everything I’ve typed, just in case.  I’ll probably forget.

It also happened last evening that I finally ran into a few people that I haven’t seen in a month or so.  I used to work for a different company and left their employ; they basically have through the course of several months lost every major contract they possessed by obsessing on the their first rescue contract, sending every unit to cover it rather than falling on mutual aid with neighboring communities.  The only thing they managed to accomplish was a track record of late arrivals at their other contracts; the regular contracts are the ones that pay the bills, and rescue contracts historically don’t pay.

I look out at my plant’s through the front door and lament the dying hanging plant I have on my front deck.  I’ve been trying to save the poor thing, but for some reason it just doesn’t seem to want to “green” up.  It’s at this moment that the TV elicits the word “Romulan,” and I give myself an inward cheer.  Across the street a child plays on the neighbor’s lawn, and a car goes whizzing by, far faster than it should be driving on a residential street.  It’s not an uncommon occurrence, and it’s been a miracle that no one’s been run down yet.  People around here know what I do for a living, and I live in constant fear that I’m going to hear a screech of tires or a thump, followed by an engines roaring and people shouting–then the knock on the door.  Hurried, panicked.

Changing the subject now–I live at work even when I’m at home.  That doesn’t make sense to say, so it probably isn’t healthy to do.It borders on obsession, which is how this career initially began. . .
 

A Story I’ve Told Before. . .

“I am sixteen, newly a driver and a junior in high school.  An actual or feared rubella outbreak (based on some reported cases) causes the health department to instruct schools to check their immunization records.  A number of children in my area have been immunized too early in their lives, at an age when the immunization might not have effect.  I am one of those children.  My parents give me the option of taking the immunizations a second time or waiting until twenty-one days after the last reported case.  If I wait, I may have to repeat a year of school–the board of education hasn’t decided yet, and by the time they have I will not be able to take back my decision.

“I decide to be innoculated.  I go the doctor and receive my shots, then am informed that I will need to stay out of school for two weeks.  The board of education has already decided that the interruption in classes will be unavoidable, and they opt to cancel all final exams and make further testing for the year optional, at the students’ choice.  Grades are frozen to the week the first cases were reported, and the year when I return will have taken on a festive aire.

“A bunch of students throw a party, and I’m invited.  I honor the doctor’s instruction, however, and stay away.  A friend–an acquaintance actually upon whom I have something of a crush–goes in her car, and is on the way home at the same time a drunk driver is speeding on the same road.  The bastard had gone to a bar in town and gotten into a dispute with his ex-something.  He was thrown out by the bar’s assembled patrons and replied by ramming the buildling with his car.  When people start coming out after him, he panicks and flees at a high rate of speed, perhaps eighty miles per hour on a winding road with a posted limit of thirty-five.

“The car is traveling at approximately eighty to one hundred miles per hour when it rams into her car, traveling in the same direction at forty to forty-five.  The force of the collision sends her car into the railing of a freeway overpass, and she pinwheels across the bridge twice more, coming to rest in the middle of the road.  An officer pursuing the drunk driver along his last known route discovers the collision minutes later and radios for help.

“I am sitting at home when the tones go off.  My stepfather is a firefighter for the local volunteer department.  No one is home, and I listen alone as the call for help goes out.  The alert trips his monitor, and I here the unedited conversations as the officer calls for help, first relayed through dispatch, who states the responding firefighters need to ‘step it up,’ then by the officer himself as he switches his radio to the fireground frequency and pleads for help.  He has no medical training, and she is dying in front of him.  The ambulance arrives on scene at the rural location perhaps ten minutes later, close to the national standard for an emergency response and she becomes unconscious.  Whether she dies in the back of the ambulance or the hospital ER I never learn, because the crew forgets to call and announce their arrival.

“I get this awful feeling in my gut.  Sixteen-year-old female.  Someone from school.  Someone in my class.  Dead.  I make myself a promise then and there that I will never be in the same position, to be forced to stare at death and stand unable to act.  ‘One man can make a difference.’  Three days later I return to school.  There is a single empty chair in my biology class.”

The funeral was two days later.  I didn’t go, but as everyone else did I was in the memorial park at a large pond near the entrance.  I renew my promise at that time.  So I suppose you could say that I have dedicated my life’s work to this girl I barely knew–someone I wanted to know at a time I was just too shy to ask.

A friend calls me, and I’m reminded of things I should have done the right way, only not as long ago.  I am closing the blog to give her my full attention.

July 9, 2005; 9:42AM
Many Thanks for the Wonderful Song!
Current mood:  embarrassed
I just realized–or rather it was pointed out–that the tags I added yesterday do not give this amazing young vocalist her due.  So without further ado, please let me give very heartfelt thanks to Adrina Thorpe, singing her own piece, ‘Round the Bend.’

She has a very smooth voice, and the words seem to come so easily; very good listening.  Once she’s done updating her site I’ll return to find the tags I apparently had missed, and try to see if I can find a CD cover.

July 8, 2005; 10:05PM

 

The Rescue Call (or, Working Overnight)
Current mood:  crappy
Still recovering. . .

Last night we responded to a not-very-typical emergency.  A building gets hit by lightning–okay, that’s not so unusual.  The building has partially collapsed and needs to be completely evacuated–makes sense.  The building is an extended care nursing facility with almost one hundred patients and care workers inside.

Okay, the night has just gone to hell.

We were the third unit to call in when disaster management took over our frequency and started calling, “All units report–” and we were the seventh unit on scene.  The first six units had already assumed differing roles, or had transported patients already had now returned to the staging area established in the parking lot across the street.

I’ll say this up front.  My hat is off to the good people of the City of Wayne.  The fire department ran an incredibly well-organized event.  Everyone had something to do; every need was met; and every patient was transported in rapid succession according to severity.  My hat is also off to the nurse who was sitting at the charge desk when the collapse began.  She had the presence of mind to dive under the desk and grab the phone, and she didn’t wait for a manager’s decision–she called 9-1-1 right away and got help on the way.

The injured were suffering from anything from direct trauma from the collapse, to drywall dust in their eyes and burning their lungs, to terrible anxiety because this kind of thing just doesn’t happen.

We transported three times during the evacuation, and the non-injured patients (which were what were left when we got there) were transported en masse to another building on the same campus.  The entire emergency was called in and dealt with in a little more than two hours–phenomenal, considering the scope of what we had to do.

The OIC at the staging area even had the presence of mind to–sorry, that’s “officer in charge,” the staging officer–get bottled water from some unknown store for rehabilitation as our own people began to tire in the muggy evening air.

My partner was a newer paramedic who I actually used to supervise at another company.  It’s always nice to see someone you’ve served as a peer and realize just how far they’ve come.  Cool, collected–didn’t know the directional signals the firefighters were using, but if I hadn’t been a firefighter for five years I wouldn’t have known either.  Took me a minute as it was to realize what those familiar patterns and gestures were.   Most gestures I deal with on the street are a lot more simple.

I learned two things about the new photo album.  One, it doesn’t have nearly the memory allocation I thought it did.  I thought I had two gigs to work with, but as it turns out I have only 85 megs.  That didn’t take long to fill.  The next thing I realized was that the site has a horrid, horrid habit of adding pop-ups every other page, which is incredibly irritating when you’re trying to look at pics.  I’ll probably change the resolution of my photos and pare them down a bit while I search for a new host.

Cats were glad to see me when I got home.  King Darwin is planted in the middle of the kitchen floor–long hairs and linoleum, you know.  Jinx is happily flopped on the floor at my feet and alternately nibbling on a catnip and my big toe.  Chester is, of course, no where to be seen.  He was sitting at the patio door a few minutes ago, but he’s descended back into subspace–or wherever the hell cats go when they don’t want to be seen.

The weather has turned cooler with the light rain that fell during the night.  Having gotten a full night’s rest (which for me is about four hours) I am looking forward to the rest of the day.  My lawncare people showed up briefly yesterday, but according to my neighbor they just pounded on the door for a minute and then left.  Doesn’t matter: they’ve been out every week according to their bill, and grass doesn’t grow that fast.  Still, it would’ve been nice if they’d finished edging the sidewalk.  They’ve never done it all in one sitting.  Driveway one visit.  Front walk the next.  Sidewalk near the street the following visit.

And soon it is time for breakfast.  I don’t eat much at the moment.  At two hundred pounds and five-foot-eleven I consider myself a little overweight.  My diet consists of eating a large breakfast–usually lots of bread, for which I have a particular affinity.  Lunch consists of a sandwich or two and a side of veggies.  Dinner, if I have any, is usually restricted by my work schedule.  Sometimes I have to fast-food it; other times I have the fortune to find a good thai restaurant.  When I’m home, it’s ubiquitous spaghetti cooked with my own from-scratch sauce.  Nummy!

I think today I’ll be eating a little more and rewarding myself with dessert at lunch.  The quarters we were stationed in last night was filthy, and my partner and I disassembled the place to do a thorough cleaning.  Pulled everything off every shelf and figured out where everything went.  Cleaned the shelves and put everything away–anything that had the patented “inch left in the bottom” or “couple of” in an empty container was either lumped together in one bottle or box or else pitched in the garbage.  My partner did the vacuuming while I cleaned the bathroom. . . *Shiver*

We were done in about four hours; considering that one of the delays was the fact that the drain in the vehicle bay was overflowing and burping pooty water all over the floor, I don’t think that was a bad amount of time.  I got the water cleaned up, put down some sanitizers and scrubbed the floor with an old push broom I had found.  Then I took the drop-offs that hadn’t been put away and went through them, putting the materials we needed away and basically pitched everything else.  We’re talking serious amounts of dust, here.  Lastly, we slept in about an hour over our off-time because we were just completely exhausted.  I don’t even think our relief realized we had cleaned.

Oh well. . .

Oh damn, I just realized I left something in their station.  I’ll have to go get it before it grows legs and leaves on its own.

July 5, 2005; 10:31AM
Online on the thin Blue
Current mood:  chipper
So there I was, no kidding, sitting in an ambulance with things blowing up all around me   Well, okay, so they were fireworks.  It was still cool.

My partner for the night and I are sitting at a point on the south end of Taylor, covering two cities for 9-1-1 response.  We have done anything yet today, for which I’m very grateful.  It’s been a fun combination of bad weather and ticked off people that missed their fireworks today, and people are lighting off just about anything to burns in a light rain that’s just heavy enough to be annoying at times.

The rain has stopped for the moment, though, and the blooms of myriad light shatter all around us.  I keep reminding myself that we’re less than a half mile from a major airport, but the planes don’t seem to mind.  Must look fantastic from the air, if a little worrisome when you start realizing that the blooms are getting closer.

My partner is reading a little rag called “Fate,” that has an article on the famous Spring-Heeled Jack.  He was always something of an antihero to me, and I followed his exploits with some interest as the legend of the sightings grew to myth.  There are so many theories about the origins of the mad genius behind it.  But I digress.

A large, rattling *boom* draws me back to the present, and an instant later the dispatcher calls, “704.  Priority one, Clawson.”  That’s a city nearly fifty miles away; our mirror, 797, is covering St. John’s NE today, and we get 787 and the lucky rescue assignment on the south end of the world.  Ten miles south of us is the border to Monroe County, where our jurisdiction ends.  There are rumors that we will be acquiring a competitor company that I used to work for, until recently, and I look forward to seeing a few surprised faces as they realize what they believe I must have.

Truth be told, they didn’t have any use for me any more, and they let me go.  A service that didn’t have a critical care program didn’t need to be paying a critical care paramedic to be a dispatcher, supervisor and bariatric transport team leader.  Okay, so I’m blowing my own horn a little.  So what?  I can be proud, right?  especially on a day of national pride.

I missed the best time to enlist, and now I’m honestly too old and disinterested.  I was intrigued with the Civil Air Patrol in my youth, an organization of volunteers that during World War II flew rations, news and occasionally interference in Europe and over more friendly skies in exchange for increased fuel rations that allowed them to keep their planes in the air.  It developed into a formal Air Force Auxilliary with a junior members’ unit, similar to a Junior ROTC.

That brings back some bad memories.  I was getting involved with that group when Flight 255 happened.  Metro Airport.  I remember the plaque they issued to the crew that found the single survivor of that plane that stalled and crashed on take-off.  It killed people on the ground and scattered debris over a quarter of a mile.  The Civil Air Patrol had offered their assistance, as they sometimes participated with search and rescue operations out of Selfridge ANG Base.  The authorities, believing the outfit to be a formal Air Force wing or auxilliary on par with the National Guard, set them the daunting task of establishing and guarding the perimeter.  And later the morgue.

Imagine their surprise at a gaggle of fourteen-year-old youths guarding pieces of corpses that looked just human enough to be idenitified for what they were.  The awful discovery of one cadet who found a discarded boot from some luggage, only to find that someone had been wearing it when the crash had occurred.  You guessed it–the foot was still in there.

My old partner was the first paramedic on scene, and established the first staging area before the airport fire department arrived on scene.  He died some years later–whether as the result of a deliberate of accidental overdose, no one knows.  He had been a pilot with some combat training.  Irony.  And delicious ingenue.

My co-star on that play would have said, “only first class dragons may apply.”  I, in turn, performed my next line, and slapped her across the face.  Now I’m the medic, and she, at last count, was a Captain in the Air Force somewhere down south.  I still remember the vampwiches

Okay, that takes a little more explaining than I have time for tonight.

July 5, 2005; 11:24AM
The New Site is Up!
Current mood:  amused
Well, here we are. . .

A black page, with dim letter, on borders that are both difficult to discern and slightly clashing.  Seems about right.

One of my three cats is slowly chasing a beaten, fuzzy, pink ball across the kitchen floor toward me.  I stoop to pick it up and toss it back across the kitchen.  He seems not to notice and stares at me, so I ball my empty hand and make the throwing motion again.  This time he goes for the “ball” and comes back with it a moment later.  Of course, he leaves it just far enough away that I have to go and get it if I want to keep playing.  Yeah, I’m owned.

The house was the site of a major paranormal event last night.  Oh, yeah!  I believe in that kind of thing.  Chairs overturned, I kept finding pennies on the floor in every room in the house–the windows were closed, and the cats were cowering with me in the living room with all the lights on.  Sad, I am reduced to cowardice by a bump in the night.  I have seen enough death to know that it is no sinister thing, and yet the things that I had seen that night left me feeling strangely aloof from the world.  No, not aloof. . .but a reminder that I am again alone.

Oh, and I missed my appointment for jury duty.  I didn’t refuse to go or try to postpone it.  I actually did everything I was supposed to do: arranged time off work, had the summons with me to show the boss, . . . I just forgot to go.  I called this morning, and they didn’t even care, just rescheduled me for a date in August–they’ll send me a new letter.  No contempt, no punishment.  They didn’t even care, and in fact I daresay seemed surprised that I bothered to call.

With a looming divorce (she played, she paid), a recent, sudden death in the family after a long illness that wasn’t related to the demise (suicide by carbon monoxide followed by days in a garage under summer heat), bills mounting (with the need to take her name off of my whole life and make sure she can’t use my credit for hers) and a recent job change (a company in the process of dying from mismanagement followed by a number of bad decisions that have cost them their largest operating contracts and most of their reputation); it’s no wonder I’m feeling a little verklempt.

There is an explosion down the street.  I jump.  Some nutball has been lighting off an M-80 or two every evening for the past week.  Now he’s doing it every hour.  No one seems to know who or where he is, but the bastard keeps setting off everyone’s car alarms.  The police, of course, don’t have time to search out revelers.  Nevermind the fact that high explosives in the amounts he’s been using them is downright dangerous.  I hope he isn’t storing them in his garage.  Mm, bad memory.

The cat is now laying down, staring balefully at his ball and hoping I’ll retrieve it.  He won’t meow or come over to me, and he sure as hell isn’t going to bring it.  I go and get the ball and throw it into the living room.  He just watches.  Somebody shoot me.

My little one is sleeping curled up in a chair under the dining room table.  She takes note of neither my passage across the room nor the ball in flight.  Blissfully ignorant, she continues to breathe in soft, rhythmic expansions and relaxations.

My pager made a noise earlier, but I know it’s just the battery demanding to be changed.  It made it a week–it’s going to be expensive.  I consider putting in a rechargeable.  I can go through those and let one charge while the next is in.  That seems most equitable.  Still, the thought of using the rechargeable on that seems almost wasteful, since I keep those on hand for my camera.  It’s own batteries might go dead, and what would I take photos with while the batteries were charging?

Circular Arguments, 101.

Tried to strike up a conversation with someone this evening.  She asked for my profile and exclamed a moment later.  “I’m 19!  I’m not into that.”  Have people gotten that. . .I don’t know.  I don’t have the means to describe the odd awful rush of responses that produced.  My first reaction was to type, “I’m asking to talk, not asking you out.”  Then I felt almost an odd sense of embarassment, that somehow my intentions had been misunderstood, or that somehow my actions were wrong in some way.  A few seconds later it gave way to righteous indignance.  Who was this person to think so much of herself, that anyone who attempts to contact her must think of her as a sexual object?

I gave way almost as quickly to indifference.  That happens a lot, lately.  It gets easier to just not care.

I was married for four years.  I don’t think it’s necessarily an evil for me to express myself, but by the same token I’m not sure I remember how!  Everyone sees a potential interest in an uninvolved man, whether it’s there or not.  When I was attached and wore that ring of “safeness,” I was able to maintain a rich list of contacts with people that didn’t think I wanted anything more than a friendly conversation.  Now, of course, the stigma of “divorced” on my profile and on my applications and on my life paints the picture of someone who was wrong.  A failure.

I shake my head, crane my neck to eliminate the stiffness for a few seconds and try to reassert my thoughts.  “Reassert your personhood!”  a voice from my memory shouts.  Stupid movie.  It’s odd; I was never interested in these sites, never saw the need to air one’s dirty laundry, took no interest in reading anyone else’s.  Yet tonight I sat down with my technical quill and began to write.  Now I can’t shut up.

Of course, that thought gives me a moment of writers’ block, and I find myself stretching again and looking about the room, trying to find something that will jog my memory, give me something to write about again.  Could it be that I’m lonely?  Is that what this is?  I don’t think so.  The cat relaxing into deeper sleep next to me reminds me that I am not alone; living in a haunted house one never really is   But when the phone was ringing today I didn’t answer it.  Oh, I answered a few times, but I blew most of those calls off.  Now I’m performing for strangers.

Feel complimented, reader.  You are safe.

I mean safe for me, of course.  I don’t know who you are and truly couldn’t care less.  I work in a field where you need to always be polite, always be professional, always be appropriate.  If your facade of reliance and control fades–if you are only human that day–bad things can happen.  Very few jobs can say that they control the immediate sway of life over death.  I’m not even sure that I can stave away death, but I know that I can keep its icy hands away while I run for a place of healing.

I smirk to myself.  Most hospitals are the cause of most nosocomial infections.  Community-acquired pneumonia and methicillin-resistant staph aureus are killers of a new age, when we in our arrognace fail to do what our forebears knew long ago–just dip our hands in some water and scrub.  People in civil war encampments commonly suffered from infections, but they were not acquired on so great a scale that they required naming.  I am reminded of The Village.  Night is a fantastic mind, with a good sense of timing, and of history.  His cohorts were astounding and brilliant.

He has a habit of being a good judge, and a think tank in his own right.  Vaguely experimental concepts reign, and I wonder where those thoughts fled in myself.

A noise in the living room attracts my attention, yet I do not go to investigate.  The door is securely locked, and if not the chinchilla I saved from a fate worse. . .well, a fate of death (being fed to something long and coiled) when I removed him from the pet store where I acquired him–but I digress–if not the chinchilla then something I will not be able to see.  It has already made its mischief, and I will find out later.  The third cat still sleeps soundly in my bed upstairs, surrounded by clothing that still needs to be put away–folded, but unassigned to a dresser drawer where it belongs.

Maybe he came downstairs after all.  I turn up the music a bit–couldn’t hurt.

In the coming days I will be searching.   I don’t know what I’m looking for.  Someone said once that the search for enlightment in a world gone mad was called Kolwynia.  She kept a diary upon which in gold inkpaint she had inscribed “The Search for Kolwynia” along with a drawing of an old-style key.  Of course, I was enthralled with the idea.  It was no wonder I married her then.  What happened?  Did she change that much that the old ideals no longer appealed to her sense of value.  Or was it more emptiness even than that?  Maybe that person was a facade, something she merely aspired to be, but learned was never there at all.

Ah, there’s the issue.

The CD has stopped.  It was almost over anyway.  I should have changed it or started a good song over.  “Don’t try to fix me; I’m not broken.”

Good. . .?

Appropos, at least.  A horse.  A name that rifles me back to another place, another time.  Her horse.  A memory that stirs, and makes me forget for a moment that it is actually rather cold in the house tonight.  The storm has dropped the temperature at least twenty degrees, and I find myself happy I washed the blankets yesterday–I may need one tonight.

Everything in this house that can sleep is, right now. . .  I could USE the sleep, but  I’m not sleeping.  I feel tired, but not sleepy.  I am fatigued.  Exhausted is more the word for it.  I should be working, picking up extra shifts and ensuring that I make my money now so I can start paying off the debts I have incurred with my divorce.  But something stays my feet.

I see a light out of the corner of my left eye.  It seems to reflect off my glasses.  The cats notice it, too, and stir briefly.  Probably a car, someone heading home.  My very comely neighbor returning from her night out with whomever, perhaps.  She only stays with her parents, but she’s the only that lives there, so far as I am concerned.  I don’t even remember her parents’ names.  Odd, because a year ago, married, I wouldn’t have known her name, but I might have been working with her father on this project or that, spending my time on my yard.

I wouldn’t be able to say “over a beer.”  That’s a terrible acclaimation.  It’s not that I wouldn’t drink beer now and then.  I’m actually allergic to something in beer.  It makes me violently ill.  Self-imposed, genetic antibuse.  Sadly, though, I can drink the hard stuff–it’s hard to say, “would you like to go get a beer” when you can’t.  Just as I’m sure it would be amusing to say, “would you care to go do a few shots?”  Yeah, being single again sucks.  I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.

But at 2:24 in the morning I realize that I’ve done enough for today.  I have been carefully training myself to stay up at night owing to a deal I made with my boss to pick up a night shift for the next few weeks, while they work through the shift bidding process.  I’m just covering–I don’t want the shift I’m on, and the chances are that no one else will either.  Northeast Detroit, middle of the night.  This little white boy’s going to get himself shot, ’cause at a glance anyone who looks at me is going to see hayseed and corn stalks, not smoking-weed and cornrows.

I never ever experimented.  I watched in amusement while others did, and I was often rewarded with many a tall tale, being the only sober person in a room full of stoners.  That was what we called them back then.  Back then. . . what a cruel phrase.  I’m Sam Fisher–old and doing a job someone ten years younger than me should be doing, working too hard for too little and with no pension to show for it.  A good friend of mine is a G-12 (meaning he works for the government in a civilian capacity).  He’s applying for a G-13 spot in Texas, and probably will get it.  I don’t know how much he makes, but he said his raise alone would be a $12,000 increase.  That’s one helluva raise.  I was tickled to get an extra dollar an hour and a signing bonus of $2500.

My ramblings are getting obtuse now, and I’m letting on more about others that aren’t here to defend themselves than I am about myself, who deserves whatever he writes, whatever be the result of it.

Another noise in the living room reminds me that I am not truly alone in this house.  It is not a comfort.  Things have been more and more active of late, even more so than when we had first moved in.  Still, if the cats don’t seem to care, I don’t wonder that I should just be better off ignoring it.

The third cat, Chester the Black, wanders in from the living room.  That explains the noise, and my nearly soiling myself when he silently slithered in, cat streaming behind him.  Fucker.

The house seems to sigh in relief.  I’ll be able to get some sleep tonight, after all.

July 1, 2005; 1:25AM

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