Christopher Hooton is a Senior Reporter for Independent.co.uk
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OK. Just this once …
Humans have become so obsessed with portable devices and overwhelmed by content that we now have attention spans shorter than that of the previously jokingly juxtaposed goldfish.Joanne Carson. A true heroine to me
Joanne Carson. A true heroine to me
Just read that Joanne Carson died. She was notable as Johnny Carson’s ex-wife, but to me one winter night in Colorado as I lay on the floor trying to calm my two year old Dalmatian, Roscoe, during grand mal seizures.
The internet was a new thing back then, but a search for treatment landed me on a small bulletin board of women who also had dogs with canine epilepsy. Joanne had written the book on the treatment of canine epilepsy. I was panic stricken with Roscoe’s seizures and had received almost no help from local vets.
They put me in touch with Joanne, who downloaded a voluminous treatment regimen that she had worked out with her own medical doctor that included keeping a large amount of liquid valium on hand to be given to Roscoe with a catheter, and a phone number to call her. She promised would personally take my call and walk me through inserting the catheter and administering the valium.
I went to the vet with the sheets. At first, he did not want to give me the medicine, but after calling his professor at the University he graduated from, wrote out the prescription. It also sent the pharmacist into overload, because he did not know it was for a dog instead of a human and was taken aback by the dosage. It likely would have killed a human.
One bitter winters night Roscoe went into grand mal seizures again, and also began the ragged breathing that usually signifies the death rattle is near. I frantically retrieved the Valium, syringe and catheter, and called her. True to her word, she walked me through it all, and waited patiently on the phone until Roscoe began breathing normally again.
Working with the vet, we got Roscoe medicated to the point that the seizures were not so frightening, and though I kept the Valium at the ready, I never had to use it again. Roscoe live with us another eleven years before passing. I still miss him.
And I mourn the passing of Joanne, who also comforted another dying acquaintance, Truman Capote, that I chronicled on earlier.
Epicurean Mother’s Day
Mothers Day.
I sit and ponder the meaning. If my mother were still alive, it would make sense to have a special day for her. However, a special day for mothers that have passed seems a bit odd. I mourn her passing on her birthday. I mourn her passing on the day she passed. Hardly a day goes by but what a thought of her passes through my mind and I grieve.
For the present, though, I toast mothers that be. I am not a total Grinch. You had a child once. Mazel Tov! Still, it also seems a bit odd to me to celebrate a woman’s ability to become pregnant. At least in the secular world we live in today. Women become gravid when they want to, and they become gravid when they don’t want to, and in a few unusual cases, have even become with child while in a persistent coma.
The sages tell me that getting pregnant is one of the few things in life that both God and (wo)man cooperate in to create a soul. Yeah. I can live with that idea. And at some point that soul leaves its mother and father, and join with another souls to create yet another soul, and so on.
I would like to believe that I would meet my mother again in some new sphere, and even speak hopefully of such a time. Nevertheless, whether I will or whether I won’t really won’t matter. NFFNSNC as it is written on epicurean tombstones. Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo in Latin. “I was not, I was, I am not, I do not care” is one translation that I like.
I can do nothing to change that. I will not know until the breath of life flees the body. So, like a fool, I hope for an afterlife, where I will once again see my mother and my father. I hope that like they, I have an incorruptible soul. However, there is little in nature tells me that is so.
… tock …
Today was one of those days. I have taken to sleeping in a reclining chair to breathe properly. Congestive heart failure now dogs my steps and steals my joy in simple tasks. I broke down today and ordered a hospital type bed so that I can sleep upright at night. Now we must to figure out how to arrange things.
I have always felt that twin beds contribute to divorce, and I have grown so fond of Snookums over the years that I just don’t want to give her up. Even when the problem of individual comfort came up and twin beds were ordered, we pushed them together where we can listen to each other breathe at night. I’ll do the same with the hospital bed, though it is going to cause my white cur some grief. Her spot was the crack between the two beds.
It should also be amusing to watch two gimpy oldsters trundling the five packages the bed will come in into the house, and the comedy assembling everything. I’ll swap my little studio day bed with the existing bedroom twin, move Snooks bed into that spot, and assemble the hospital bed in her old spot.
But I wonder if in my addled old age if I don’t wander into the walk-in closet to pee …
I am ditching shul today, I am just too sore and grumpy to enjoy the services and the long drive. But then, I have long wanted to belong to a group where I wasn’t so driven to be there, one that I could just decide some mornings to just stay home and enjoy the Shabbat alone. I still feel a twinge of irresponsibility for missing the assembly, though.
We have lots of rain, which has turned the sere Texas landscape into a green garden of flowers and vines. I am always amazed at this rugged lands ability to survive. We had four continuous years of severe drought, so the rains are a hugely welcome happening. The land springs back just like nothing had happened to it.
So goes the days here in my rustic haven in rural Texas. The sun rises, the sun sets. Shabbat arrives, Shabbat leaves. Another three or four hundred words chronical the passage of time. The coffee pot is drained, and prepared for the morrow. Snookums retires to her studio to catch up on her days activities, and I to mine to chronicle them. In four hours the Shabbat ends with the dousing of the Havdalah candles, and the first of the week returns and so does our labors.
Shabbat Shalom!
A diversion
This started out as a comment on a fellow bloggers home page, but took a bunny trail that I think I will post on mine instead. To those of you reading this on my WordPress page, substitute WordPress® for blogster®, though I don’t seem to get into many flame wars on WordPress.
I have two nom-de-plumes in addition to my real name, and a few other identities that I use on infrequent occasions to muddy my tracks.
However, I am on blogster under just one. Yeah, Rusty is a pseudonym and nom-de-plume to distract the fine people here and on a few other sites from firebombing my house. Some people confuse the internet for the real world and I can be very crappy when I really put my mind to it.
Rusty Armor has been around for almost 30 years now after CompuServe® assigned me that username in 1986, and I also think of him as a real person. Snookums is always getting snail mail and telephone calls for Rusty, so she thinks of herself as Mrs. Armor as well.
Frankly, I really do not live and breathe blogster. It is a diversion. I can rile someone, and then walk away while they are still fuming at me, and blithely pass their pages by until they cool off. Usually I forget that I was even offensive to them and I am a little shocked when I get a cool reception from them when I stop by later.
But other than accidently clicking on a link from my tablet to blogster, I am always Rusty Armor to all, or Gus writing under Rusty Armor to a few.
One caution to all, however. If you change your name, you become a new person to me and your history with me starts then. I do not connect you with your old ID and your old posts. It is sometimes a little embarrassing, but such are the traits of a narcissist. The whole world is a stage, and the character that stands on it is the one I remember, not the fool actor who portrays him.
They don’t make Jews like Jesus anymore.
I don’t know how I got off on this today. I was listening to Toby Keith singing I’ll never smoke weed with Willy again! I don’t have much in the way of tact. My old drinking buddies once took up a collection to send me to charm school, but it was just about the same amount of mony it took to buy a round of drinks, so …
Anyway, this sort of cheered up my morbibity today …
Well, a redneck nerd in a bowling shirt was a-guzzlin’ Lone Star beer
Talking religion and-uh politics for all the world to hear.
“They oughta send you back to Russia, boy, or New York City one
You just want to doodle a Christian girl and you killed God’s only son.”
I said, “Has it occurred to you, you nerd, that that’s not very nice,
We Jews believe it was Santa Claus that killed Jesus Christ.”
“You know, you don’t look Jewish,” he said, “near as I could figger
I had you lamped for a slightly anemic, well-dressed country nigger.“
No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,
They don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before.
He started in to shoutin’ and a-spittin’ on the floor,
“Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore.”
He says, “I ain’t a racist but Aristitle Onassis is one Greek we don’t need
And them niggers, Jews and Sigma Nus, all they ever do is breed.
And wops ‘n micks ‘n slopes ‘n spics ‘n spooks are on my list
And there’s one little hebe from the heart of Texas — is there anyone I missed?”
Well, I hits him with everything I had right square between the eyes.
I says, “I’m gonna gitcha, you son of a bitch ya, for spoutin’ that pack of lies.
If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s an ethnocentric racist;
Now you take back that thing you said ‘bout Aristitle Onassis.”
No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,
We don’t turn the other cheek the way we done before.
You could hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor
“Lord, they sho’ ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore!”
All right!
No, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,
We don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before.
You hear that honky holler as he hit that hardwood floor
Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore.
Everybody!
They ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,
They ain’t makin’ carpenters who know what nails are for.
Well, the whole damn place was singin’ as I strolled right out the door
“Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore!”
No, we ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore,
We don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before.
Well, the whole damn place was singin’ as I strolled right out the door
“Lord, they ain’t makin’ Jews like Jesus anymore!”
In the clearing stands a boxer
In the clearing stands a boxer,
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that laid him down
And cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame,
“I am leaving, I am leaving.”
But the fighter still remains
~Paul Simon, “The Boxer”
So goes the tune as I sit here by the studio window and look out on the unfolding of spring. I don’t know why, but this has been a week of introspection in my headlong rush toward doom. Thanatos’ chill breath is ever felt off my left shoulder, and it colors every effort I make. “Will it matter when I am gone?”
A few miles from where I grew up in the remote areas of the Colorado Rockies is the tiny town of Manassas. A once famous boxer by the name of Jack Dempsey was born and raised there. He was a scrapper, and so was I. It was a tough place grow up back then, but not necessarily a mean one.
He went on to become first a famous athlete, and later, a famous restaurateur in New York City. His restaurant is still there. I was too small framed to become a prizefighter, and though I had a reputation in my hometown as a scrapper, I lost about as many street fights as I won. It did not matter, however. Just having the reputation as one who would instantly resort to fists pretty much kept the bullies away.
However, I have grown weary now, and though the bright sunbeams and soft breezes of spring play around my yard in gay streaks and meanderings, I am down in the dumps. None but me recall the victories. None but me remember the betrayals. None but me remember the long slog toward peace. None but me see Thanatos.
Why plant for the future when another will come along and erase the garden to suit their vision? Few, if any, will see the treasures I hid in the soil, nor even care if they did.
And like today’s patrons who visit Jacks restaurants in New York City and New Orleans, I’ll be a byword, a mildly curious anachronism to generations to come. Will some future gardener be surprised by finding a cats-eye agate in the flowerbed? Will some distant owner marvel at the novel solution I came up with repairing a damaged foundation? Will it matter.
Probably not.
Good morning!
~r
A lament.
“For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken falsehood, your tongue mutters wickedness. No one sues righteously and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies; they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. They hatch adders’ eggs and weave the spider’s web; He who eats of their eggs dies, And from that which is crushed a snake breaks forth.…”
Well, the world has come full circle again. Just fifty years from the last bunch of young people who thought they were the salvation of the world, a new crop has now arisen. And like the 1960’s world changers whose simplistic approach brought nothing but chaos, so will this generations.
The tragedy is that they are unaware of it. Philosophy trumps wisdom. In their mind they care and share more than the rest of us mere mortals, and jingoisms trump wisdom. So once again, they tear at the fabric of civilization, and thinking themselves wise, have become fools.
Civilization survived my generation’s hubris, barely. Will it survive this one?
Once again, man proves he cannot live free. He needs strong tyrants standing on his neck.
It was a grand experiment, America. However, your days of freedom are nigh over.
May I die before it happens.
~ r
Sweet Potato Sunday
The first day of the week dawns with cottony softness. I am groggier this morning than usual, but it is a pleasant grogginess. The world is in full leaf here, the migrating birds are back, and I have spotted the second monarch butterfly of the season.
It is odd how each day I arise in a different mood that is out of sync with the reality. Today a soft sadness gently dissipates with the unfolding of day and the slow infusion of coffee. One of the advantages of retirement is that you can afford moods. You can savor them like fine wines, yet not be consumed by them. I find it odd how emotions ruled me in the past when in actuality they are such transitory things.
The new porch is almost complete. New planters for the handrails came by UPS, a new saw to replace the broken one, some sweet potato vines, both green and purple, to drape the handrails, a tomato plant in a three-gallon planter, and a couple of citronellas for the mosquitos came from Lowes.
I forgot to get nicotianas for evening perfume, but another trip to town later in the week will solve that. I have spent many pleasant evenings and mornings on that deck as I heralded the passing of time.
So here in my adopted State, the days flow by seamlessly, each one unique yet each one the same. Still, like an old fire horse, I want to rise to the call of the alarms, but the battle belongs to the young, and always has. So, with rheumy eyes, I watch the young ride off to battle each morning, and a part of me wants to ride off with them. I would, if it didn’t take so much damned effort!
Good morning!
… and the coffee was good.
Preparation day dawns wet, dark and overcast as the latest storm front rolls over us. It just feels good to rise with the sun, even if the sun can’t be seen. Well, ok. For you scientific buzz killers, the sun doesn’t actually rise. It appears.
So’s … a quick diversion to whips Friday Five exercise, a few sips of morning coffee, and my mornings return to the mundane again. I forget the negatives and count the blessings. Usually.
New planting pots have arrived. I purchassed ten 3 – gallon pots for the walkway, and some planters that fit over the top rail of the porch. I’ll visit the flower shops over the next few weeks and load up on posies and such.
So on the agenda this rainy day. Fill the gas tank, go to town and get my new saw and maybe some plants, read a few scriptural passages in preparation for Shabbat.
Rusty's Armory 