For Caroline

for Caroline, my grandmother and my guide. 

October 18, 1903 - November 8, 1997 

       Blanket Of Roses

 She sits across from her grown daughter,

 eyes blurred by tears too often shed to fall.

 In the clarity of grief,

 more than half a century becomes

 a single moment's shadow,

 and she asks, with defiant innocence,

 "Was I wrong, to steal the rose?"

 She stands supported by her mother,

 reaching for the tiny wooden box,

 the ashes of her son too young to lose,

 but the undertaker informs her

 she can't afford to take her child home.

 Turning to leave, she needs somehow

 to fill her empty hand, and plucks

 one wild rose from a makeshift wreath…

 She lies, encircled by her children

 and their children shivering too early

 in the wet November snow,

 dozens of the most expensive blooms

 spread before her on the frozen ground.

 With the last amen, we bow accepting

 each of us from her a crystal rose…

9:46 AM - 9 Comments - 20 Kudos - Add Comment

The Password is "Paranoid"

Everyone wants to do everything online these days.  Why not?  It's fast, convenient, and we never have to move from that chair we spend most of our waking hours in anyway.  The tricky part is that, while everyone is doing everything, we don't want anyone else to do anything with our information.  That's where passwords come in. 

When I was a kid, a password was something your best friend whispered in order to gain admittance to your tree-house.  It was also a popular game-show frequently featuring Betty White back when people thought she was a prim and proper housewife-type.  Nowadays, it is not uncommon for folks to have at least half-a-dozen passwords giving them access to their email, their bank accounts, their favorite online stores, and their cell phones. 

At first, passwords were simple.  My first email password was "Flynn", after the Jeff Bridges character who gets trapped inside his computer and has to fight his way out.  That's what we all did—picked something silly or cute or personally meaningful.  Birthdays, pet names, cartoon characters.  But as the world of passwords expanded, and their value increased, things got a bit more complicated and difficult.  Lots of people I know who don't have freakish memories would use the same password for everything.  Makes sense.  Until the "experts" started warning us that doing that left us vulnerable to attack.  If the bad guys got hold of one password, they had access to everything.  Best to have a different password for each machine, account, card, and site.  Oh, and the passwords shouldn't be personally meaningful—too easy for the bad guys to guess.  Better  make them as random as possible. 

But as we all know, for every expert out there designing a newer and better security system, there are ten experts out there designing ways to break into that system.  So the passwords get more and more complex.  When it came time for me to choose my second password, "Flynn" wouldn't work because the system required at least eight characters.  And by today's standards, even eight characters is too simplistic.  Now we have systems telling us the password we choose must be at least 12 characters consisting of four upper-case letters, three lower-case letters, two numbers, two punctuation marks, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Oh, and don't write it down because the bad guys might find it.

This is not practical.  Most people can't remember six or seven randomly-chosen sequences of numbers, letters, and symbols.  How does the computer industry handle this?  By giving us the option to have our machines, accounts, cards, phones, and sites "remember our password" for us.  Great.  Remind me again, what's the point of having  passwords? 

So what's the next step?  Well, I saw a commercial recently advertising computers with "fingerprint-recognition security".  Now we're getting into some serious 007 territory.  The scary thing is that the commercial was focused on a back-to-school sale for student-design laptops.  Helpful hint to parents:  If your kids have stuff on their hard drive that warrants fingerprint-recognition security, replace those machines immediately with a couple Bics, a legal pad, and the jumbo box of Crayolas.

So how doe we deal with this insecurity blanket?  As is often the case, the answer boils down to common sense, reasonable restraint, and an acceptance of the cost/benefit analysis.  Do computers make our lives easier?  Yes.  Do we have to put every minute aspect of our being on the Internet?  No.  Should we take steps to guard against unauthorized access to our information?  Yes.  Can we protect ourselves from all the bad things all the time?  No.  I have a pretty good security system on my machine, but if someone wants to hack into it, they'll get in.  If gaining access to my cousin's letters to me, my collection of poetry, and my wedding pictures is that important to the bad guys, there's not much more I can do about it.  But that's basically all they're going to get.  And if they want to steal my identity, I'd be interested in seeing how far they can get with it…  . 

8:20 AM - 19 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

Unlimited LImitations

One of the many wonderfully paradoxical things about computers is that they simultaneously open the door to endless possibilities while encouraging, if not demanding, conformity.  We shoot for the stars while aiming for the lowest common denominator.  Here are a few examples I've come across recently…

I was in my doctor's office the other day, following up on some strange things that have been going on with my eyes (I mean stranger thant the normally strange, weirder and more troubling than they typically weird and troubling I expect my eyes to be).  Sitting at her desk, she could call up my entire medical history, scrolling through it year by year, doctor by doctor, diagnosis by diagnosis, all the way up to the notes written by an ER doctor at another hospital the night before.  Even my doctor had to comment on what an amazing system this was, and how it had revolutionized the medical world.  After looking me over, and reading all the notes, she decided to order a couple tests for me.  Again, she went to her computer, where she was able to call up the scheduling page for her affiliated hospital's lab, to not only prescribe, but schedule the tests for me.  I was impressed—talk about one-stop shopping!  That's when the grid came up.  The grid was as series of symptoms with little boxes next to them.  My doctor had to check off the symptoms I was experiencing, and the grid determined whether or not my particular set of symptoms qualified me for the test she was ordering.  The grid also informed my doctor that she could override the grid's decision if the grid said I couldn't have the test and she insisted that I should—but an override would mean my insurance company wouldn't pay for the test.  Through the miracle of modern technology, my doctor had the most complete data ever available to a physician, but when it came right down to it, some generic program was going to decide on my treatment plan.  Fortunately, I have a doctor who interpreted the computer's demand for conformity as another opportunity for creativity and she redefined my symptoms in such a way that I was able to get the tests she thought I needed.  And I had to wonder—do I think this program was designed by a team of caring medical experts who want to make sure patients get the right treatment, or do I believe the program was written by a bunch of insurance company specialists who are trying to minimize the number of expensive tests they have to pay for?  Guess.

Anther example of the creativity/conformity conundrum occurred as we explored new database systems at my work.  First of all, let me just say that I have heard the phrase "powerful tool" so many times during these demonstrations, I am tempted to use it in another context while speaking to the sales reps for the software manufacturers.  Now, truth be told, these programs are astounding.  They can tie sales to purchasing to ordering to production to inventory to accounting in a seamless flow of information.  Many, many of the most time-consuming and mundane parts of my job will happen automatically without even having to think about them.  But my company uses very unusual epuipment in very unusual ways to create a variety of very unusual products, and these software systems just can't handle it.  When I asked how difficult it would be to rename some of the fields so they were consistent with our machinery and production process, I was told, "Not difficult, impossible."  What we need to do is rename our machinery and process so they are consistent with the program's fields.  O-kaaay.  Then I asked about designing and generating reports.  I was told that the program comes with hundreds of report templates that make it really easy to run a wide variety of reports.  Great, but what about the reports that are specific to this very strange stuff we do?  My boss can come up with some pretty imaginative questions that he wants answered in reort-form.  Oh, well, in that case, we can get a report-designing program (not part of the initial package-price) and our IT specialist can learn how to use it in order to create a report template for me.  I said, "Great, but what about when my boss calls me late on Friday afternoon and says he has a crazy idea with bizarre parameters and unimaginable implications, and he wants me to give him the relevant data before his Board Meeting on Monday?"  Rather than telling me how their "powerful tool" could adapt to spontaneous issues, the sales reps asked, "Well, how often would something like that realistically happen?"  I responded, "What time is it?"

I think what I find on MySpace is a wild blend of the push to innovation and the pull to sameness.  This site offers the most liberating opportunities for creative interaction that I have ever seen.  A few years ago, I could never have imagined that a forum for the free exchange of ideas could exist on such a massive scale.  But at the same time it is fostering the invention and sharing of individual dreams, it can also become a box for us all to fit ourselves into.  Look at "myspeak", for instance.  Spawned by 'Instant Messenger" and text-mesaging, there is a whole new language being developed—a language of abbreviations and acronyms.  It won't be long before things like "lol" and "omg" find themselves in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Is that really a good thing?  Granted, when you're using a 2-inch telephone as as typewriter, you want to take as many shortcuts as possible, but most of us on myspace have actual keyboards to play with.  There's something very cool about creating a new language—every generation does it—and while one of the effects is to bring a group together, another effect is to alienate others from the group.  There it is—the expanding and reducing, the enahancing and diminishing.  Obviously, the main reason I feel this way is that I'm old and tired and don't know most of the neat abbreviations out there.  But every time we say "lmao" is a time we don't have to come up with our own way of saying something was so funny I spit my coffee all over the cat in my lap.  I'm not saying there is no place for a commonly-bonding code, I just hope we keep focused on the gift of originality and liberty that this forum affords us.  To that end, I am adopting a "Lexicon of Levity Policy".  I will endeavor, at least once in every blog entry, to wax rhapsodic with sume unusual alliterative linguistics. 

bfn!   

4:20 PM - 17 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

Tagged!?

Wow, Margaret tagged me for this book-tag thing!  In fairness, she did say, "Incoming!" first, but that was several glasses of wine into the evening, and I didn't remember till just now.

So as I understand it, this is the deal:
--Grab the first book available.
--Turn to page 123.
--Go down to the 5th sentence on the page.
--Post the next 4 sentences.
--Don't dig around for the "cool" book, just whatever is closest.
--Tag 5 more people.

Well, first of all, there isn't far to go--I am never more than a few inches from a book.  Been that way all my life.  Second, I am going by braille-page 123, so if you try to recreate where I am, you'll be off.  So here it is:

Title: Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction
Author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Text:  Only two members of the C Band were playing now, a clarinetist and a snare drummer, both playing loudly, proudly, confidently, and all wrong.  Mr. Helmholtz, coming out of his wistful dream of a bass drum bigger than the one that had beaten him, administered the coup de grace to the waltz by clattering his stick against his music stand.  "All righty, all righty," he said cheerily, and he nodded his congratulations to the two who had persevered to the bitter end.  Walter Plummer, the clarinetist, responded gravely, like a concert soloist receiving an ovation led by the director of a symphony orchestra.  He was small, but with a thick chest developed in summers spent at the bottom of swimming pools, and he could hold a note longer than anyone in the A Band, much longer, but that was all he could do.

So I have no idea who has already been tagged, so I'll just throw some name out there, and you can sort it out for yourselves:

Deaner
The Reverend
Andrea
They Call Me Elf
Carrie

It's been fun, but part of my brain is reciting Danny Glover's line from the Lethat Weapon movies, "I'm getting too old for this shit."  *sigh*, *shrig*, *smile*

9:44 AM - 10 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

American BroadBandstand

I was 15, sitting in the back of my mother's Oldsmobile, listening to the local pop station.  A song came on that I'd never heard before, and I was mesmerized.  But when the song was over, the station just went to a commercial and never announced what the song was.  I knew it was by Led Zeppelin—that much I could recognize.  Unfortunately, as is the case with many of Led Zeppelin's songs, I couldn't even guess at a title.  And I never heard the song on the radio again.  Very frustrating!  Took me 3 years, buying one album at a time (we didn't have a lot of money back then) until I found out the song was called "Kashmir".  By the time I got around to that album, "Physical Graffiti", I was in college and a die-hard Zephead. 

Yesterday, I woke up with a small piece of a song in my head.  I'd heard it on the radio, but I didn't know what the song was or who the artist was.  I couldn't even recapture more than a few lines of the song.  I wouldn't even say that I liked the song, I just couldn't get it out of my head, and knew it would bug me until I heard it again.  I mentioned it to Margaret, and she asked me what lines I could recognize.  She ran a search on them, and a few seconds later, told me the song was called "Goodbye" by the band Army of Anyone.  Then she went to the band's myspace page, clicked on the song, and played it for me. 

It's a whole new world.  I started experimenting, searching out songs and artists that interest me but not enough to go out and buy their albums.  I found every one I looked for, played them, and even decided I do like some of them enough to go out and buy their album.  Not that I have to go anywhere—I can order it from Amazon, or just download the album straight to my computer.  I used to get lost for hours in record stores.  If I'm not careful, I could start cyber-browsing and lose myself completely.  And my credit card could melt down…

Still can't use an IPOD because they don't make one that talks yet, and the media player in my braille display only plays one song at a time.  But I'm sure that day is coming.  We have a wall of music in our rec room that Margaret now carries in her pocket.  And now we can download and play our favorite music on our cell phones (My ringtone is the theme song from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly").  Gosh, remember when people thought phones were utilities?

A few years ago, I saw a news report about the use of cell phones in Finland.  People there use their phones for everything from starting their cars to buying c soda from a vending machine.  They showed a working mom whose daughter was locked out of the house after school.  The mom pulled out a cell phone, punched a code, and across town, her front door opened.  The report predicted that Americans would follow suit.  They were very, very wrong.  They totally underestimated America's commitment to mindless entertainment.  We didn't want cell phones that would give us access to our cars and bank accounts, we wanted cell phones that would give us access to the new Beastie Boys single and the highlights from this week's episode of "Desperate Housewives".  Would you rather have a phone that turns into a garage-door-opener or one that turns into a Playstation? 

The funny thing about technology these days is that it seems to be moving in opposite directions.  On the one hand, they're developing smaller and smaller music and video players, while on the other hand, they're developing bigger and bigger screens with more and more surround-sound speaker systems.  Do you want to watch that Red Hot Chili Peppers video on your 2-inch cell phone screen or on your 52-inch plasma HDTV?  Because of my particular visual issues, both extremes don't work for me.  The 2-inch screen just looks like a little kaleidoscope, and on the big screen, all I see is a thumb or nose.  But it's the choices that fascinate me.  And the fact that I'll never have to wonder what that song in my head is called.  Rock on!

8:20 AM - 8 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Please Reply to the Forward I CC'd You

I call it "friendly fire".  We are all familiar with the inundation of spam messages wanting to sell, enhance, enroll, survey, and consolidate.  But what about the spam we get from each other?  Heard any good jokes lately?  Why don't you forward them to all your friends, so they can forward them to all their friends, and on and on into cyberspace.  Sometimes I get emails where the message is so far down, I feel like I'm scrolling my way to China.  And then everyone who received it decides they have to comment, so they hit "Reply All" and my inbox explodes.  We've given a whole new meaning to the phrase "chain letter".

But speaking of chain letters, the digital age has given these things a new life.  Not just the standard pyramid-schemes either—sometimes it's just to see how far the message will get.  When I was a kid, I tied a note to a big helium balloon with a self-addressed stamped envelope, asking whoever found it to let me know how far my balloon sailed before it landed.  That's what some of these "e-chains" are like, bubbles of lightweight gas sailing through space.  Most of the time, they promise a pleasant reward—good luck, good health, etc.—if you send it right along to five more people.  A few of them threaten calamity if you don't.  If Fate is really counting on a mass-mailing to work its magic, I'll just lie down and accept whatever decree comes my way.

I guess I'm especially sensitive to the capricious proliferation of e-messages because it takes me so long to get through them.  With my magnification software and the reduced field, I want some actual information as a reward for my effort.  But generally speaking, I don't think any of us really need to know what somebody thought about what somebody thought about what somebody thought about that movie we weren't planning to see anyway.  And if it's never occurred to you to ask me directly what my favorite lunch meat is or how much time I spend daydreaming, that's probably because you don't really care and the answers aren't going to add a whole lot to your understanding of my life-experience. 

I love hyperlinks.  I love hyperlinks because they don't take up much space, and I don't have to click on them if I don't want to.  And you can usually tell just by the address whether or not you're going to want to click on it.  You see the link is going to take you to www.tictactoe.com/championship/results, you can just move on.  As more and more people learn how to hyperlink (and who knows, maybe I'll be one of them), we may be able to get the information back on the Information Superhighway.  In the meantime, feel free to copy, paste, and send this to all your friends and their friends.

11:22 AM - 14 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Color Scheme or Conspiracy?

Sometimes they get it right.  Not often.  Not the first time.  But every now and then, eventually, they get something right.  Sort of.

When I was first introduced to computers, everything was black and white.  Literally.  For someone like me who has trouble with glare and contrast, that was just fine—nice white letters on a nice black background. 

But just like movies in the thirties, and TV in the sixties, color invaded the computer industry.  My first experience with it was when the links on my Internet homepage turned blue.  That was a little tricky—dark blue on a black background is not great contrast.  And this was back in the old days when your arrow didn't turn into a pointing hand when it landed on something clickable (I've always thought that hand has the wrong finger sticking out, but that's another story).  But I managed.

Of course, nowadays, color is the name of the game.  And navigation is a lot harder for me than it used to be.  A few years ago, when I switched to my current Internet Provider, the homepage was laid out in neat rows of black-and-white, just the way I like it.  But then they "improved" and "enhanced", and all the links were painted in gradually shifting shades of orange, beige, and brown.  Switching my accessibility settings to "Reverse Image" menat the links were transformed into gradually shifting shades of brown, beige, and orange.  Not a big help. 

One day, I was checking out the upgraded version of my browser, and noticed an "Accessibility" tab had been added to the Internet Options menu.  I was not optimistic.  Microsoft has been making attempts at accommodating people with disabilities for years, and these attempts have always left me with the very strong impression that the designers never actually talked to a person with a disability.  But I hit the "Accessibility" tab anyway, more for a laugh than anything else.  And the very first setting I saw said, "Ignore colors on web pages."  Intrigued, I checked the appropriate box and clicked OK.  Wow!  The gradually shifting shades of orange, beige, and brown disappeared, leaving a magnificently skeletal screen of black and white. 

The "Ignore colors" setting has given me access to a myriad of websites that were previously just blurry splashes of pink, green, purple, and yes, orange.  Including many of the myspace pages I have come to enjoy.  That's right—all that work you put into your customized and brilliantly expressive profile gets zapped into oblivion with one click.  Sorry, but at least now I can find your blogs!

Of course, there are some quirky downsides to the "Ignore colors" setting.  There are some sites that simply refuse to be confined to a black-and-white world—especially sites with streaming video.  I was shocked and saddened to discover that mlb.com, to whom I pay a handsome fee for access to all the baseball games I could ever watch, won't even load its homepage when the "Ignore colors" setting is on.  Imagine buying a new color TV, and when you try to watch a classic episode of "I Love Lucy" or "The Honeymooners" and having your screen go blank with a message appearing that says,"This television has encountered a problem and needs to shut down."  Apparently, mlb.com has decided that if I can't watch the Braves in living color, I can't watch them at all.  Even muyspace has its idiosyncrasies.  I can wipe out the colors on the active page, but if I try to go somewhere else, I just get an endless hourglass.  So I switch off the setting, get to the page I want, switch it on, then switch it off again when I want to move on.  Kind of annoying, but the pros far outweigh the cons.  Especially since  the trend is more vibrant, splashy, sparkly, rainbow Internet experiences than were dreamt of in our philosophy.

So like I said, sometimes they get it right.  Eventually.  Sort of.

4:16 PM - 14 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

PC stands for "Power Corrupts"

I've been thinking about my computer.  Not a good idea.  As Linus would say, it's like becoming aware of my tongue—something I've come to take fro granted suddenly seems awkward and strange and a little slimy (funny how becoming aware of somebody else's tongue often has the opposite effect, but that's not the point I'm trying to make).

It started with the hourglass.  Everyone who uses myspace becomes very familiar with the hourglass.  But why did the computer-designers pick an hourglass?  What are they trying to tell us?  They could have picked a rocket ship or a lightning bolt, as if the computer was saying, "Yes sir, I have received my instructions, and I am zipping off at the speed of light to do your bidding."  No, they chose an hourglass.  They wanted to make it very clear that the machine, not the user, is in control—"Yes, I know what you want, don't bother clicking again, I heard you the first time but you'll……just……have……to……wait."  They didn't even use a clock, maybe with a little second-hand you could watch spin around; at the same time they were designing this piece of high-tech wizardry, they were mocking us with their contempt of mechanical devices.  And I don't know about you, but when I see that hourglass, I don't picture a little egg-timer.  I pucture myself trapped in the Wicked Witch's tower, staring at the hourglass so big it takes two hands to turn it over, wondering with each falling grain of sand if I'll make it out alive.

Once I started following the thought-track "computer-designers-as-mocking-taunting-bastards", it led me to wonder about some of the words they cones for things.  Often, it seemed as if they were trying to make the computer a friendly and comfortable machine, using words like "desktop" and "mailbox".  But when it really mattered, they went off to the Lingo-Land-of-the Lost, naming the truly important things with words nobody used.  Like "delete".  Delete is not a word that was commonly used prior to the PC.  And considering what delete can do, wouldn't they want to call it something everyone could relate to, like trash or destroy or remove?  Do you thin they chose delete because they took such delight in watching us delete our work?  And what about "default'?  Again, not a word in the pre-PC vernacular.  Why not preset or standard or primary?  I think they were making the subliminal point that it's our fault they have to tell us what our settings should be.

And, as is usually the case with computers, I wound up at the Recycle Bin.  It's not, really.  If I thought for one minute I could drop all those ads for debt-consolidation and anatomy-enhancement into the Recycle Bin, have them shredded, mashed, and reconstructed as a love letter from Katherine Erbe, I would take back every negative thing I've ever said about computers.  But it's not a recycle bin, it's an attic.  "Gee, I want to get rid of this, but I don't know, I may need it someday;  I'll just put it up in the attic."  And every few years, you go up to the attic and try to distinguish the stuff that was really worth saving from the stuff that turned out to be garbage after all.  An attic for your computer would be a pretty good idea, but not if everything you throw away goes up there.  Imagine how difficult it would be to sort through the valuables and the junk if every single thing you throw away wound up in the attic.  The fact that the designers of the Recycle Bin (so-called) give you the option to "Empty" is no help—sure, you could bring a flame-thrower up to your attic and go wild, but then your grandfather's baseball-card collection is going to suffer the same fate as your Styrofoam cup collection.  What they're telling us with the Recycle Bin is that they think we're too dumb to know whati's important.  But I guess if they called it the Oops Bin or the Dunno Bin, their opinion of us would be a little too obvious.

Oh ,and sort of off-the-track a bit, I'll end with this observation.  At this stage of our social evolution, computers are more likely to be part of the problem than part of the solution.  Try this experiment: image-google Katherine Erbe, an attractive woman who plays a popular character on a popular television show.  See how many images you get.  Now image-coogle Pamela Anderson.  Compare the results.  Try it again with some other folks you can think of, and you will find what I found—that the number of images retrieved is inversely proportional to the subject's IQ score.  To those who use their brains for more than trying to figure out who's going to be next to get thrown off the island, these results are not a shock.  Our culture has taken one of the greatest technological advancements in the history of the world and turned it into something to play games on, stare at naked people with, and generally waste hours and hours of our time.  The race is on.  Will computers save us or destroy us?  Stay tuned.

6:43 AM - 7 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Blurring the Blurred

My second entry that has nothing to do with computers.  As Emerson would say, "A foolish consistency..."

I am back online for the first time since Tuesday, still recovering from a nasty eye infection.  Okay, there's really no such thing as a pleasant eye infection--they're all gonna be nasty--but the phrase "eye infection" almost demands an adjective. 

I am not prone to eye infections, and this one sort of crept up on me while I wasn't looking.  Seems unfair, and more than a trifle redundant, to be blurring out what little fuzzy vision I have.  And it's my "good eye" too ("good" being a relative term here, meaning the eye is slightly less horribly bad than the other one).  As is the case with many things in life, my baseline blindness is a blessing and a curse when something like this infection comes along.  On the one hand, having my eye swollen shut doesn't prevent me from performing most basic daily functions because I tend not to depend on visual cues anyway.  In fact, there are some things I prefer to do with my eyes closed, since they're usually giving me a bunch of useless misinformation.  On the other hand, I don't have much to work with, and I can't really afford to lose a chunk of the bit I have.  With magnification and contrast-controls, I can still see the computer screen.  By sitting up close and focusing hard, I can still call the balls and strikes on the Braves games.  There may come a time when I can't do that, but it isn't now, and I resent being derailed by an infection.

Speaking of resentment, I would like to say a quick word about the Emergency Room experience we had the other day.  Actually, we got to have two--the second one was great, and to all the folks at the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary ER, I say a heartfelt thank you!  The first ER, however, at our own hospital, a highly regarded world-class facility, was, well...less than.  George Clooney and Noah Wiley must have had the day off, and though the hospital staff were quick and courteous, it was pretty clear they didn't want to spend a lot of time on me.  The resident took 20 seconds to look at my eye and declared I had a highly contagiious case of conjunctivitis.  Yikes!  This was a shock for both Margaret and myself; in our former jobs, we ran across dozens of cases of conjunctivitis and this didn't seem like any of those.  We pointed out all the symptoms of conjunctivitis that I didn't have, and all the symptoms I did have that are not symptoms of conjunctivitis, but she'd already written "conjunctivitis" on my chart and didn't seem too interested in continuing the discussion.  I guess she was a tiny bit concerned--enough to cover her ass--because she had us wait while she tracked down the attending physician on duty.  This guy made her 20-second exam seem drawn-out, and he just confirmed what she had written.  Agai, we objected, and his last line of defense was, "IF it doesn't get better in a couple days, go to Mass. Eye and Ear.  We didn't wait a couple days; we waited a couple hours, and then off we went to a place that actually paid attention to what we said, and where everyone--from nurse, to intern, to resident, to attending--took one look at me and said, "That's not conjunctivitis."  They also told me the antibiotic drops the first place had prescribed don't work on conjunctivitis anyway, but that's neither here nor there since the diagnosis was totally wrong to begin with. 

At a place like the Mass. Eye and Ear Infirmary, I get treated like a rock star.  The retina disease that is blinding me is pretty rare and, to opthamologists, fascinating.  They don't get to see an actual case very often, especially in the Emergency Room.  So after they were finished accurately diagnosing me, performing a procedure that I won't go into because the memory is still making me nauseous (on my pain-scale, it rated just above running as fast as I could face-first into a concrete post), and making sure that the infection hadn't compromised any other part of my eyes, they all lined up for "Show and Tell".  It was like a lecture on retinal degeneration and I was the breathing Powerpoint presentation.  This happens a lot at hospitals, and usually, I tell them to leave me alone and fix what I came in for, but this is a teaching hospital for eye doctors, so I let them ooohh and aaahh over my arteries and optic nerve for a while.  Besides, I was feeling grateful, and I was probably still in shock from the procedure. 

Two days later, my eye is much, much better.  I can see enough to write this blog, and maybe by tonight, I'll be able to see the baseball.  To Margaret, who held my hand while they did unspeakably painful things to me and didn't pass out watching it, who spreads antibiotic ointment goop in my eye four times a day, and who makes me smile even I'm screaming, I can only say, "Thanks, honey, I married well." 

. 

7:08 AM - 5 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

If I was me, I probably wouldn't read my blog

Ive been going over my last few blog entires.  Not actually reading themI havent got time for that.  They seem to be getting longer and longer, and Im not sure how this is happening.  How did these pithy little bits of consciousness-sharing become so unmanageable?

I speak very slowly, and use very few words (Thats one of the reasons Margaret and I are so well-suited; I give her lots of silence-space to fill).  But I talk really fast in my mind.  Theres a natural filter somewhere between my brain and my tongue that keeps my uttered speech comprehensible and succinct.  This filter has always existed between my brain and my keyboard as well.  Until now, apparently.

Back in the days before I was keyboard-dependent, the flow from brain to pen was unbridled.  I would write really long letters.  Remember when letters had a secondary meaning, not just characters used to form words?  Paper, envelopes, zip codes, a writing instrument that looked almost but not entirely nothing like a PDA stylus?  When the word mailbox referred, not to a link, but a big blue box sitting like a dormant Dalek on a street corner?  Well, in those days, I would get letters from friends that would go something like this: Dear Jeff, How are you?  I am fine.  The weather is nice.  Work is hard.  Did you buy the new Bowie record yet?  Its really good.  Take care, Your Friend.  I would respond with twenty pages of college-ruled theme paper, in small and precise handwriting, covering every major and minor aspect of my life in brilliant detail. 

Then along came email.  The great thing about email is its immediacy.  I have established and maintained relationships with loved ones I havent seen in years.  But its hard to really get on a roll with a keyboardespecially with that cursor blinking impatiently at me, as if to say, Come on, come on, how many nanoseconds is this gonna take?  The acrobatics of keyboard manipulation (I am not a fluid typist) tend to demand more attention than my fountain pen, and the sense of continuity suffers.  Dialogue is reduced to sound-bites, and thats okay, because hey, were all busy people.

When I started writing blog entries, they were very similar to my email messages.  Convey thoughts and information in an easily-digested packet, throw in some attempt at humor and a glimpse or two of personality, and click Post.  Lately, though, I tend to be going old school, telling stories and wandering off on tangents, and the cursor can just hold its horses and wait till Ive said everything I feel like saying.  For better or worse, the filter isnt working anymore. 

The irony here is, of course, that it takes me a really long time to read things, and when I get long letters or blogs from other people, part of me says, Oh dear God, no.  Actually, I always read them, I enjoy them, and Im glad I got more than just a momentary glimpse into their world, but there are only so many hours in a day.

So maybe Ill try to shorten things up a bit.  Or maybe not.  Like I said at the beginning, if I was me, I probably wouldnt read my blog; I recognize theres a cost/benefit analysis to be considered, and Im not sure Im that interesting.  I certainly dont want my blog to turn into a blook as blong as the bloody Blible.  Blieve me. 

7:47 AM - 10 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment