Remembering Sal - Salvatore J. Zisa

When I was a freshman in college in the 1970's, I took my very first job, as a "confection attendant" - aka candy girl - at the Hyway Theatre in Fair Lawn. Over the years we were employed there, I and my co-workers became a very tight-knit group that hung out together after work, at whatever places we could find that were open and served food after midnight. It wasn't a job for us. More like a place to get into the movies for free and to make some pocket change while goofing around with people we liked. Most of us got jobs for friends, or got our jobs there because we knew someone who also worked at the Hyway. (I got mine from a classmate of my sisters, Linda Wasserman.)

One of the ushers, (I think it was Carl Winter) got a girl he knew a job, and she had a friend named Sal who also hung out sometimes with her and with us. She lived on Pomona Ave, near the Fair Lawn - Hawthorne border, and he was from Hawthorne.

Ask me her name, and I can't remember, but I always remembered Sal. He was quiet and serious most of the time, maybe even a bit shy to hang out with what was a big group of strangers that had spent a few years working and being friends. He had a soft voice most of the the time, sitting quietly at the table when we went out to eat after work, sober-faced, just eating and listening to us clown around and unwind. But it always happened that at some point he would unexpectedly jump into the conversation and have everyone cracking up, as if he'd known all of us for years and years, too.

After a few weeks, he seemed to be one of the gang. We would try, but we could never talk him into taking a job with us. He had better ideas than spending his life making minimum wage to sweep up popcorn in the lobby. In that regard, he was a lot more mature than the rest of us. He was in school. He had plans. The biggest plans we all had was what weekend to go to the shore, and what movies were opening that we could get into for free.

At some point, his female friend got a better job and quit, and Sal stopped socializing with us, too. Eventually, we all moved on to other things, got real jobs that worked normal hours, and stopped hanging out late and driving home on empty streets in cars stuffed with as many as we could fit into them.

In other words, we grew up.

In that blur of a week in September five years ago, I remember seeing his name and hometown on a message board as I searched for the name of some of my husband's former co-workers at the WTC. The first time I saw his face, I recognized him.

Damn, damn, damn.

When the New York Times posted his profile, it said:

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The Top Priority

When traveling on business, as he often did, Salvatore Zisa, 45, would almost invariably take the red-eye flight home from the West Coast. From the airport, he would then typically proceed directly into the office at Marsh Inc., where he was a senior vice president, arriving at his desk as though he had slept in a bed like everyone else. This pattern repeated itself again and again over the years.

Workaholic? Maybe. Or maybe just a father who wanted to make sure he could get home to Hawthorne, N.J., in time for a soccer game where his daughter Christina, 16, or his son Joseph, 12, would expect to look up and see him cheering.

"His priority was making sure he got to his kids' games on time, that he didn't miss anything," said his brother, Tony Zisa. "He traveled a lot, but he would work his schedule around making sure he was home for the important things. He was always there for our parents, and for his kids, and for his wife."

---

For all of us living in the suburbs of NYC, the events of 9/11/01 will forever remain in names on a list that were of neighbors, co-workers, faces we passed on the street or saw on a train, in a meeting, in a lobby, at the newstand or at the bagel shop nodding over a cup of coffee. Or a face from nearly thirty years in the past, a guy that made us all laugh over garlic bread and pizza at Barcelona's on Harrison Ave. in Garfield as we sat having dinner after work at midnight, too young, too full of life, to go home to sleep yet.

I will always remember Sal, and I am happy to remember him as I knew him. And I am sure there are a lot of others out there who he touched who are thinking of him, forever young, forever with that smile he was always sharing, too. Having him pass through our lives was a gift.

I am sorry that I never got to meet that guy he grew up to be.

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More comments from Sal's coworkers at the Marsh memorial site. Or view the guest book dedicated to him at Legacy.com . His panel in the United in Memory Quilt is here.

There is a scholarship set up in his memory - for more information, look here.

Many groups have proposed alternative ways to honor the memory of victims of 9/11, most by volunteering or participating in community service projects. Sal's page on the USA initiative site, part of the movement known as One Day's Pay is here. I am proud to be a volunteer in my own community, something I did after my family's 9/11 experience, and hope that you will help turn this tragic day into something that helps make America a better place.

Please take a moment to leave your comments and view some of the others memorialized by the participating bloggers of the 2996 project

(My husband is a 9/11 WTC survivior. I wrote a little bit about his experiences back in April. The link is posted below.)

Comments about the movie about Flight 93

(I originally posted this in April, 2006. This is a repost.)

People are falling all over themselves to discuss the trailers for the movie that have taken unsuspecting people by surprise with footage of the events of 9/11. Imagine you are from the area, like I am, and you go to see a nice, relaxing film, and find yourself confronted with the worst thing you have ever witnessed - and the idea that someone is making a piece of fiction out of it, to entertain, of all things.

My husband worked for Dean Witter Discover in 1993, was there when the first bombing took place and evacuated down 86 floors, through the fire and smoke. He will tell you that after that day, whenever he was there, it was always in the back of his mind that the WTC - and Manhattan - was a target.

He was born in Queens, and up until our marriage, a life-long NYC-er. He would never consider working any where else. We bought our house to be near the train to Manhattan, in fact, because that's where he wants to be.

By 9/11/01, he had left the job at the WTC, for a job as an internet architect in a building at the corner of John and Water Streets. On Monday, 9/10, he spent the day in a training seminar in the South Tower, preparing for meetings the following day at Windows on the World with co-workers for the computer expo that was being held there. He owes his life partly to a decision to get breakfast before going up from his office to the meeting - he and his office mates were crossing back from a bagel store and standing in John Street when the first plane hit, and still standing there, trying to get in touch with the big boss and their families to tell them where they were when the second plane struck.

For most of that morning, until his floor secretary's fiancee got a call out to me that he'd heard from her and my husband, I thought he was at Windows on the World and, after the tower fell, that he was dead.

Living in Bergen County, there is not one day that has gone by that the events of that day are not fresh in my mind and reflected in daily life. To think of someone using the deaths of my neighbors, anyone's neighbors as a means to make money makes me want to throw up. My husband had PTS afterwards, and still can not talk about things that he saw that day as he stupidly nearly got killed when the first tower collapsed and he was walking/running to try to get to the ferry only two blocks away. Only a stranger that pulled him to his feet when he fell over the decorative fence around the little park, and the people at the Battery Park City condo office that opened up their door to people fleeing the falling tower helped him get home - so he was incredibly fortunate that day in many ways. I can not even begin to fathom the pain of the family members of those on both airplanes - and, unfortunately, I know all too well the pain of friends and family members of those that died in the towers; both my husband and I lost neighbors, friends and acquaintances.

I got involved in volunteering in my community as a direct response to 9/11, and have spent much of my free time since fundraising for a memorial to victims of that day and other acts of terrorism in my town. So here I am, asking people to purchase bricks or donate for plantings in memory of people I lived around - and someone is going to make more money for their own pockets in one movie showing than we have raised in five years from the community.

Would I censor the movie, or demand it be pulled, or stop it - no. This is still America, and the rights of idiots to exploit the pain and suffering of others has to be weighed as part of the price we pay for the right to express our own thoughts. Would I spend a penny to see it, or willingly watch it - no. And I will not have kind thoughts for the values of those that do walk into a theatre or pay to own such exploitation. It takes a level of obliviousness and crassness that diminshes us all to do that. Something is definately skewed in priorities in this country if this picture has more than a handful of interest - supporting a work of absolute fiction and imaginary storytelling based upon a horrible tragedy. I would much rather see people take the nine or ten bucks and donate it to a charity or hurricane relief or to someplace where it will make the world a more compassionate place than dwell upon the pain of others for a cheap thrill. That is sick in a way I do not want to think about human beings as being.

I prefer to think about those that engaged in the small acts that made a difference, and those that went up the stairs when others were fleeing down - the countless people that helped others, the ones that sheltered strangers, supported the police and fire in the weeks afterwards, all of those of us that lived 9/11 up close and all of those who felt the pain in their hearts and did whatever they could. That is the story to be told. Not the explotation of death, but the affirmation of lives lived with compassion for others. Not the vicarious thrill of fiction, but the very real best of human nature that saved my husband, extended hands out to strangers, and wrapped all of us touched by this event with a human connection that no terrorist can ever break.

There's no one home, so please don't knock...

I had forgotten all about this blog. Seriously. I discovered most of the links I had up were to my Hometown AOL pages, which have been gone for more than a year. The others were to my Geocities page about Molly, which is also long gone.

So while the internet may have a long memory, in my case, it has dementia, too. Trying to recall a web page that has been deleted is about as futile. I promise to fix things one of these days. Otherwise, there is always archive.org and the Wayback machine.

"The world has changed. We now dream in color'

From the official website of the White House, the first act of our new president:

NATIONAL DAY OF RENEWAL AND RECONCILIATION, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

As I take the sacred oath of the highest office in the land, I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders, renewed by the courage and decency of the American people, and fortified by my faith in an awesome God.

We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.

On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright -- it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.

So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

---

How can anyone argue with that? How can anyone have fault with it? After the past decades of failures, of political side-taking, of battling over things that are not really that important to most of us who have things like keeping a roof over our heads, and keeping a job, and feeding ourselves and our children - how refreshing it is to see someone finally in power who asks nothing more than that we try to serve each other? It's like wandering in the wasteland and finding someone offering a glass of water and a map and good wishes to you if you journey on, or a solicitation of assistance if you do not wish to.

We have awakened in a new place, a place where it does not matter what shade your skin may be. What matters is what heart it contains and what it is willing to bend and embrace in fellow human beings. I said to my husband last night that the day that a woman is standing on the Capitol steps and takes the stewardship of the nation into her hands, I will feel we have overcome the last hurdle. He said "The glass ceiling breaks slowly, but once it breaks, it is quicker and quicker each time."

I hope the joy will spread to my daughters, that they too will have the same chance in this place, in this world, as their male companions. We all dream - and dreams should never have a limit.

Robert Kennedy

Tomorrow, it will be forty years since the death of Robert Kennedy, one day after he was shot in the early morning hours at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he walked in a kitchen passageway on his way out of the hotel ballroom.

On June 5th, 1968, I woke up, put on my radio, and just cried. I was scheduled to spend half a day in middle school, and half a day at St. Anne's, the local Roman Catholic church, prepping for my confirmation the next day. I remember a lot of people seemed to be optimistic that Bobby was hanging on, that he might recover from the shooting. And that we were already numb from the shooting of MLK just eight weeks before.

When I got up on the morning of the 6th, and heard the news, I didn't have time to really let it sink in. I was thirteen, the same age my older daughter is now, and I knew that I had a long day ahead of me, and I was nervous that the Archbishop was doing our ceremony, and I was not a studious Catholic. I remember getting to St. Anne's for the day long preparations. The nuns marched us into the church without anyone talking, and they asked us to pray. Some of them were crying, some of them looked like they had been crying, and all of us, kids and adults, were in shock. I know I was. I remember looking up for a moment, and seeing how many of my friends had their heads bowed - a church full of teenagers, and the only sound was the whispers of prayers.

My parents were admirers of his. His running for President held such hope that he had a true vision to get us out of that war, and to get us to be a fairer, more caring nation.

I remember thinking that how could anyone shoot a man like that, and at the same time, thinking that, like Martin, the good, and the honest, and the caring were now fair game in a land that put weapons and the right to own them so far ahead of the precious gift of such men among us. Too many times since, I have been reminded of the price we have paid, and continue to pay, for the worship of handguns and the refusal of have some national sanity to control the ownership of things that have no other purpose than to kill human beings. But back in 1968, even after the murder of his brother, the murder of Martin Luther King, the mass insanity that must have these things to own was so ingrained in our society, it seemed it would never be rooted out, and we would continue to pay the price for it, in the blood of public figures and private citizens, as we have.

I have never, never felt the same about politics or my own country since that day. At the mass before my confirmation, the Archbishop asked us to think about dedicating ourselves to the ideals that Robert Kennedy had for this nation. That has resonated within me ever since. As has the question about how much different this nation and the world would have been if he had missed that appointment with death and continued on his path to the Presidency. Imagine if Nixon had never been elected. If the upheavals that tore apart the US in the time he was in office had never happened. If Kent State had not happened. Or Woodstock. If a Kennedy had been President at the time of Bangala Desh, and the first inklings of the oil crisis...

"Some men see things as they are, and ask 'Why?'", as Teddy said at his wake in St. Patrick's, "He dreamed things that never were and said 'Why not?'"

Forty years later, we are still asking that question. And it's damn time we demand an answer of our own government. It is the least we can do in his memory.

My daughter, the star!

Last night, my younger daughter was one of the leads in her fifth grade musical production. In her school, the outgoing class produces a special show for the parents and the entire school, based upon popular music and Broadway plays. As a matter of fact, the atrium of the school has photographic collages of classes from the 1960's through last year for almost every group that has ever graduated.

My daughter sang in every number as part of the chorus when she wasn't doing her lead part, just like every other kid. But she auditioned and tried out several times for the role of "Sandy", from the cast of "Grease". When she got the part, she kept it a secret. At least until her father spilled the beans by accident about two months ago. She had planned to surprise me the night of the show.

But, in hindsight, it was a good thing to have been prepared.

There were weeks where she listened to the music on a DVD borrowed from the library endlessly, with an aside to watch "Hairspray" between times. I explained "Amercan Bandstand" and Dick Clark and poodle skirts and how "Grease", the play, came out when I was in high school and started a whole music revival of the simple rock from the 1950's at a time when Rock was a serious anti-war thing, and that "Grease" was sort of an antidote. And how I worked in the movie theater when the movie came out, and saw it like a billion times myself, but no one I knew from the Fifties was REALLY like that. It was a Seventies take on what the Fifties was, meaning there was a lot of stuff that looked good then, but wasn't authentic. Sort of how I remembered John Travolta hanging out with his brother Joey at the Jade Fountain in Paramus before he was playing a 1970's high school student on TV, BEFORE he played a 1950's one in the movie, or even a 1950's Mom in Hairspray.

As an aside, I also had to explain hair spray. And beehive hair. And, yes, I am that old that I remember it. I even had a poodle skirt, after the fashion had ended, in my "dress-up" clothes when I was little. And I remember watching "Bandstand" when the "big kids" with the big hair wore them.

But that kid! She pointed to her classmate playing Danny and sang "He's the one that I want" and just floored me in her black capri's a little black top with all those flirting eyes and little hip twirls, and I was the mother of The Star. Just like that. I could have busted a gut if I wasn't so busy trying to get my little digital camcorder to record the moment in all it's two inch by three inch glory. As my friend said: "We are such MOMS!".

One of her classmates had the other fifth-graders in tears when she sang a slow, heartfelt version of "Let it be". There was a lot of talent in that room last night.

Please excuse me for noticing mostly one kid. My daughter, the star. With her ponytail and big blue eyes.

Still trying to figure out when my baby got that big. Although the fact that she can wear my shoes and steals my old shirts should have clued me in already.

The C word

I saw Jane Fonda on Today yesterday, and somehow it slipped past me that she said the "c" word on live TV.

Does this means my morals are forever corrupted because I didn't notice it? Does this mean there is something I have to worry about because my children were in the room, too? Do I need to be put in stocks in the public square, like poor Meridith, who didn't react fast enough and was suspended this morning from the show?

Nonsense.

Every night on television, each and every one of us is exposed to the visual pornography of violence delivered live into our homes. The prudery that demands that none of us ever say another name for our body parts, that barely lets us acknowledge that we have them in the first place, demands a swift justice be meted out for the mention of anything other than the clinical "vagina". We can see gunplay, we can see cruelty, we can see drugs and alcohol and every step along the way to sexual degradation, but we can't say "cunt", a word that means "wedge" in latin. The FCC demands that no one ever know what a real breast looks like, or a real body - but we can show a politely dead one on the news, and as long as the blood is only a little bit, that is perfectly OK for family hour. It's no different in a society that makes women nurse their children in bathrooms, out of the public site, lest someone find a feeding infant to be offensive to their delicate sensibilities. I can remember breastfeeding my daughter under a blanket, facing a wall in Paramus Park, and having someone tap me on the shoulder to complain. Why can't I tap the FCC on the shoilder and tell it just how ridiculous this all is?

So three cheers for the moral watchdogs that decide what is appropriate in your home and mine. Or, as my father used to say "What a bunch of clueless assholes."

The Bitch Cat from Hell

When the people at the animal rescue start to question whether or not you really want a particular kitten, you should listen to them, and not to the kids or the big kid who have become smitten with her cute looks, while you have become bitten by the sharp little teeth behind the disguise.

She looks SOOOOOO cute, doesn't she? She's a ticking time bomb, but she hides it well. We adopted her in January 2007, about a week before the last of the old cats died. Unfortunately, the past year has been a journey of discovering how abused this poor sweet looking thing must have been before she was placed in our care. She hates me. She comes over to me, paws my legs, and asks me to allow her on my lap. She curls up and purrs. And then, for no reason, she will either growl and bite me, swat at my face with her front paws, or just growl and go bonkers, all teeth and claws, until she can jump away. If one of the dogs is nearby, she will then attack the poor dog, biting their legs like in danger of her life, while the poor dog turns and looks at me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.



Her real nature comes out - as she sees us taking her picture while she lurks in wait inside a package of bottle water in a corner of the kitchen.

In the past year, she has mellowed a bit. She never goes after the kids. She lets the younger one carry her around the house, and climbs up into her top bunk to sleep at night. She now climbs on my lap when she's hungry or thirsty and does not immediately attack me - heck, this morning, she actually curled up and went to sleep instead of biting me - but she's still the most unpredictable animal I have ever had. Ginger, the big dog, is her archenemy, although Ginger doesn't seem to know it, and takes her attacks as a stunning surprise every time. Ginger likes cats, used to lick one of them until her head was soggy and she got bored and walked away, but now comes immediately over to my desk when Joelle starts to growl, as if she's going to fend off the attack personally.

More on the Cat from Hell, later.

More Brooklyn

In my previous post, I thought Blogger was having a melt down. Turned out it was the Western Digital 80 gig drive I installed less than 6 weeks ago as a data drive. Next time I booted up, my system told me the SMART was bad and that I needed to backup and reboot. I'm SMARTer too. I am replacing the drive with a Seagate 160 for less money than the WD. Now if I can convince WD to RMA the drive, or the OEM guy we bought it from, I'll be alphabetically happy.

Anyway - more of the Prospect Park area of Brooklyn:

Brooklyn

A photo from late September, when we attended a Buddhist Peace festival in Prospect Park.
I had never been to the actual park before, although I had been through the area many, many years ago. I had forgotten how wonderful the neighborhood around the park is. Many, many beautiful old brownstones lovingly restored like the one above.

Right now Blogger is having a meltdown, so I will have to upload the rest later.

This is why I garden

Daylilies and a Sunflower as big as the Sun.

There is little that can be as satisfying as planting a seed the size of your pinky nail in April, and standing underneath a nine-foot tall sunflower in July. Or sticking what looks like a bundle of roots into the ground and finding yourself surrounded with a riot of bright orange lilies almost as tall as your shoulders.

Except maybe having fresh grapes to eat, a handful of warm tomatoes, a bowl of cucumber salad and green beans just blanched. Makes sharing the sunflowers with the chickdees that much more fair. Birdies got to eat, too.

Life Alterations or Why I am Not a Credible Person - again?

(Image: The "Crazy neighbor"/aka CN, sighting down his driveway with a rifle. Across the street is a house where three girls are about to come home from school at the time this was taken.)

I have edited and removed this post entirely. Let's just say that when someone tells the boro attorney that you don't like what the chief of police is telling people because it is both untrue AND an invasion of privacy that he is sharing information about you, the reaction of the town is to immediately punish YOU and the person that told you about this.

I am neither a genius nor is "there a thin line between genius and insanity". Time to sell my house, move and sue this town.

And the guy with the guns is still playing with them in his garage, whenever I am outside in my yard. Chickenshit sits hidden in his garage, but the sound is unmistakable. What a waste of oxygen atoms.

What Memorial Day is all about.

It started as a day to decorate the graves of fallen soldiers after the Civil War. Those at the time assumed that there would be no more important wars requiring these ceremonies. Most of them would have been hard pressed to comprehend the next century and the carnage and death that would follow in Cuba, Flanders, Normandy, Korea, and a little French Colony that no one thought about in their era - Vietnam. Or the war that was never declared, in two nations far from here with little of concern to most of us at the time of the civil war but of the most extreme importance in this era of machines and plastics.

Now, it's a weekend getaway to a place at the beach, or a parade where they throw candy at the kids, after which we burn meat, eat too much, and hang out doing things we normally can't or won't do, in celebration of the coming warmth.

Just a reminder of what Memorial day is really about - my blog entry from last Memorial day:

http://ifiknewwhat.blogspot.com/2006/05/remembering-bobby.html

The Danse Russe by Williams

When I discovered The Danse Russe by William Carlos Williams, I thought I had discovered something, but it turned out to be something else. When I looked out the bedroom window to the house across the street, through the linden trees, it was just another house I saw across the street. I would play games that the middle son was in his bedroom across and through the trees, and I would pull the shades tight in some modesty that I thought I needed from his peeks of life through the trees.

Now, the windows are gone, the odd angle of the roof below where I peered to listen to the summer's hail and the ice dams of the winter, where I always thought that in case of fire I could cling to the ledge below and jump into the azaleas below, landing in a bed of furious pinks and reds and whites and purples, colors of the tropics against the dark red brick of the house.

Well the people that bought it when we sold it out from my mother, they have no care about the azaleas, or the halls wandered late at night, with the cold kitchen tile and the fake red tile on the floor. The way it felt to be a little ill and step into the colder tile of the black and white bathroom floor, reflected in the silvered mirror when you closed the door and pulled open the medicine chest to sit on the edge of the sink and examine your zits in the mirror to the drone of the tv in the living room. The way the blue and green setional couch hugged the walls between the room divider and the side of the fireplace. The way the beige carpet smelled when you stretched out on the floor at christmas to examine your new Vac-u-form. The old air conditioner that replaced one of the rose windows on either side of the fireplace over the couch. And the winters when you'd set the flue and pile the logs on, to lay on the carpet-covering brown goatskin rug, the shaggy one that the cat's always loved to knead. There was a way that the light fell upon it to make it look otherworldly, as if it were the pelt of a trophy hunter's pride, laid out on the hearth of the home like a grand prize, in front of the TV and the fire.

But the people that bought the house stripped it bare, ripped of the second floor and stuck up new sticks. My blue bathroom is gone, along with the closet where I left my old transistor radio, the red one. The room under the eaves that smelled of dust and the toys we stored in there when we no longer played with them, the toys I dragged out last summer, still in stale cardboard boxes, to leave in the basement of my own house now. What kind of careless people would tear down brick and put up plastic, cover the warm brick where I found the handprint of a mason from the 1920's with plastic siding, as if that were an improvement?

I look at vintage photos now, and see brick houses with the windows decorated like battlements in brick, and wonder what souless people could do that to a house, cover it with plastic siding and tear it apart, leaving the shrubs rootless in the yard, the front steps chipped and chiseled and discarded for the dumpster where I sat and sold lemonade and watched other kids on their bycycles, held the door open for my own daughters on hot summer days, or pushed the mechanincal doorbell to summon my mother to let us into her house, me and my horde of tired kids on halloween, for thanksgiving dinner. When I drove by, I thought of the shock of seeing my grandmother's house in Jersey City was gone. As if the world has a vacancy that can never be filled again. That's what my kids will think. No one will ever look out that picture window in the front and move the curtains aside with a wave of a hand at them. The window itself is gone, the shrubs my mother so tenderly cut and shaped for all those years, the radiator that was in the way so you could never look straight out, but so that you could lean your elbows to hold your head and peek and hide from the strangers at the front door if you wanted to. The window where I watched boyfriends drive off into the night, and cars come and go. Where I heard Trixie the dog barking, and Shadow, where my Ignatz cat sat and surveyed the grass outside and jumped out of sight to greet me at the back door when I arrived home.

What a world our homes are, from the trinkets in the windows and the view of the universe we see from them, the pine tree in the yard, the lindens as they grew old and died, the wavering light of summers and winter snow and the hurricane when the dead trees were scattered and fallen across the street the entire block and how odd the light seemed afterwards. How odd it was to see sky and not trees and how bright and unnatural and naked. Now the sky is open, the roof is open and green grass that still pokes up in the winter is harsh beneath the dumpster and the uprooted shrubs. I want to drive by in the dead of night and see the darkness of the place of my childhood. But it is gone. The world is gone. Left to haunt my thoughts at four in the morning in my cold house, a world I can only hold inside for this brief time, until I too am gone. And someone takes my bones and covers them with plastic, like the brick house, and hides them from sight as something unneeded, ugly and old.

And the place most familiar, the things touched in the dark and remembered, fade and are gone forever to nothingness. Time is evil.

Happy New Year!

After eating several pounds of king crab legs dipped in garlic butter last night, Alfredo with shrimp, lemon pie, countless cups of hazelnut coffee, I just want to waddle in here and wish everyone a happy new year, and all the best for whatever 2007 will bring.

It's all got to be uphill from here. And at my present weight, it certainly feels it!

Rant du Jour - Modern Medicine

I got a phone call from my sister last week that my mother fell and hit her head again at the assisted living for adults with dementia that my sister had moved her to, after my mother fell and hit her head and broke her wrist at the regular assisted living. This means that my mother's mental state has gotten to the point where she can not function at all without someone acting as a caretaker 24 hours a day. She no longer has the ability to protect herself or think about her own safety, to use a walker or a cane to move around her room. It means she will be probably tied into a wheelchair when no one can watch her, rolled around like furniture and planted someplace where she can't get hurt by trying to take care of herself.

All of those images of the worst that a nursing home has to offer, especially when viewed through the eyes of the able-bodied. All of those things that we all dread happening to us when we are elderly. And not what any of us ever think will happen to all that we've managed to accumulate in life, the money, the possessions, the memories. All gone. All disposed of. And all that's left is a stream of days sitting like a potted plant in front of a TV or moved from place to place to be "entertained", to receive "enrichment", and to be managed.

And this is the best that money gets us at the end of our lives, thanks to modern medicine and medications that keep us alive longer, well past the point where the rest of us is worn out and no longer working.

OK - here's my rant:

I have very mild hypertension - so mild that ten years ago, my blood pressure would have been considered in the range of normal for my age. Somewhere between 120 and 130 over 80 - just ten points (or whatever it is) over what someone has decided is normal for an over fifty woman.

Every time I go to the doctor, for whatever reason, I am given a script for medication for hypertension. Just like every post-menopausal woman is given a script for anti-osteoporosis medication, and/or a bone scan and is told to get a mamogram and other tests, most of which involve radiation exposure.

What percentage of those tested get cancer from that exposure? No one knows.

What percentage of high blood pressure leads to health problems and what percentage of medication leads to health problems? No one knows.

What percentage of post-menopausal women would benefit from more exercise and a better diet? All of them. So what to do? Give them more pills to take, of course, and tell them that it won't hurt, and they probably will not even know they are taking the medication. Well, someone exposed to low levels of anything probably won't know about it either, until it kills them. Or just cripples them.

When I was pregnant, I had a huge discussion with my OB/GYN about the particular medication he wanted to put me on for pre-eclampsia. When I used to go to my mother's Parkinson group, almost all the people there had been on Aldomet for their blood pressure. It's a drug that no one understands how it works but that it affects dopomine in the brain and lowers the blood pressure, and studies have never been able to link it to problems in pregnant women. So it is automatically assumed to be safe to give to them. Short-term, it might be. But no one has ever done a follow up study on the children born to these mothers. So we really DON'T know. But thousands of pregnant woman are told to take it every year.

So I did, and I worry about what I did to my children, and may never know the answer.

Anyway, there are no real studies out there to see what the long-term effects of anti-hypertensives do to the people that take them. Do they live longer? Do they have less problems because of their lowered blood pressure? You'd assume yes, but, guess what? There has never been a study of that, so we are ingesting all sorts of odd chemicals on the pretense that we are improving our health, but with no real idea if we really are. But someone in the pharmecutical industry is driving a BMW because they can sell a drug to more and more doctors, and someone who owns shares in a pharmacy is doing quite well because they can sell more and more drugs at a profit. But are we living longer, or feeling better, or even having a better life? The answer is statistically, no, not really - not in any way attributable to the drugs we are swallowing.

The question really is why are we allowing this to be done to us? Why aren't we fighting it? My next-door neighbor is going bankrupt because he has been told he needs to get a shot that costs $300 every two weeks because of his bloodpressure, and $300 worth of monthly medications to further control it, and the side effects of all these drugs. And he's nearly eighty years old. So he has a much longer potential lifespan, but he's living in near poverty to have it. And his real problem, the kidney disease that is raising his blood pressure, is not treated. Only the symptoms. My husband, who is about 80 pounds overweight, is on an injection created from gila monster venom twice a day, four different medications for diabetes, an anti-depressive, a chlorestoral lowering drug, a baby aspirin, and a couple more that I can't think of at the moment. If this wasn't covered by his health insurance, it is more than a thousand dollars a month in medications. And, honestly, if he lost the weight, he probably would not need the drugs - so why are insurors so willing to pay for them and not for a dietician and a health club to encourage him to improve his health?

I had a big argument with his GP over my blood pressure and my decision to monitor it rather than immediately starting the two different medications he decided I needed. I lost weight, and increased my level of exercise, and lowered my pressure from what it was to what it is. And I could walk outside and get hit by a bus, or die of a heart attack when I am eighty, without medication, or live to be a miserable, incontinent, demential eighty-five year old with twelve daily medications and a three thousand dollar a week room in a nursing home. My mother is there now, and she's just turned 75. I would not want her life, and she doesn't either, even if she really barely understands what is going on. At some point, we have to expect that just because we can extend life with medications a bit, no one lives forever, and there is a point where the benefits are not outweighed by the cost of propping up lives with drugs on the pretense of making them better.

When my dog was diagnosed with lymphoma, the vet told me the next thing to do would be to have her cancer "staged" and start chemo. So what did that involved? Major internal surgery for about $800 for the dog who would now have to recover from it, plus still have lymphoma. Then chemo, which, in animals, is not always a big deal - which might get her an additional six months of remission. Or might not, at all. At a cost of two or three thousand dollars more. At the end, tho, the cancer always wins. Meanwhile, she needed to be on comfort medications. And needed to be screened for other medical problems, at a cost, to us, of nearly another five hundred dollars.

What happened at the end? After eight weeks, Molly died of lymphoma, without the major surgery. Without the chemo, which would have allowed her another four months of life. Or possible not. Or she could have been hit by a car when she darted out the door, as she used to do all the time. No one will ever know. But we did what we thought was best for her, and she took her last breath where she was surrounded by her family and in a place where she was HOME. That's better than probably you or I will be allowed to have. Not tortured in an effort to stave off the unstoppable, not drugged into a stupor, not handled by strangers who don't care much, not in a place we don't know, with choices made for us by people that don't know us, have no idea of what we would want or how we lived. Molly got a better death than most humans are now allowed to have.

How sad is that for all of us?

Sometimes, medicine has to make difficult choices. The problem is no one is willing to do that anymore. And the government, the people we trust to make sure the best choices are made, isn't doing that either. So we slog along, being told absolutes that aren't anything, that have no facts to back them up - and we spend huge amonts of money on hopes that aren't based in anything real. We put hopelessly brain-damaged people on life support until their bodies literally decay, because the doctors won't tell us not to, and can - so they do. We treat diseases we might get - and get other diseases from the medication that kill us instead. And instead of just making a choice and saying that no one lives forever, but the quality of the here and now is what matters most.

And how really sad, and really, pathetic, is that? We are exploited to the end - and those that survive us, laden with guilt that they might not have done all they could, in the impossible effort to cheat death. Mortality always wins - but the greed in the culture can not and will not admit that, even to themselves. And never, ever, to us.

More Christmas

This one is from an actual photograph from one of last year's blizzards - the arbor vitea's belong to my neighbor across the street, so this is a close up view of what I see from my desk. These bushes are so pretty that they have become the backdrop for everyone's posed pictures - high school graduations, proms, christenings - everyone is walking over and posing the kids and the family in front of them all the time, including us, so I figured I might as well have them on my desktop. If you want 'em, right click and save them. I use a blue desktop to frame them rather than stretching the image out, but it works either way.

Another Christmas Window background, thanks to Paint Shop Pro. Sized at 800 x 600, you can swipe it by right clicking and saving.

More Molly

Molly, Ginger and Grendel (clockwise from left)

















Molly decides that Gren's ears aren't clean enough.











I miss my smiling dog - every time I'd come in the back door, she'd be grinning at me (as she plotted how to get outside and run away for a couple of hours). The day I took her to the vet, she stood on the metal table, looking out the window, and then cased the joint - standing up on the windowstill to see if she could open the window and peering into the wall vent looking for alternative means of escape.

She was sweet, but those wheels never stopped turning. One of the biggest things to hit me is the act of leaving the screen door open off the kitchen for fresh air. I haven't done that since June 2001 when I found out the hard way that Molly could force it open. And no one has peed in the living room for a week.

Wait a minute - just why do I miss that dog?

Molly

My dog Molly died yesterday after a struggle with lymphoma for most of the past two months.

She was a monumental pain in the ass from the day we bought her home from the shelter. Pregnant, I spent most of the summer of 2001 with her and nine puppies in the middle of my living room, a slave to dog containment and poo. I developed elaborate means of laying down grocery bags and newspapers in layers to make it a little simpler to maneuver around puppies in a wading pool, and an old playpen, and finally a huge metal dog crate. Molly was not housebroken, and nursing dogs eat and relieve themselves seemingly a thousand times a day. And I patrolled the house, mop in one hand, Nature's Miracle in the other - seemingly a thousand times a day, plus all the times the puppies got out, or Molly let them out, or the kids let them out.

But then there was the night that I was putting up the side on the playpen, Molly on the outside, the puppies inside, and she came over and insistently stood on the side so that I could not lift it and lock it. One at a time, she licked each of her children on the snout, wagging tails on both sides, as if she were counting noses and saying good night. Only when she was done, did she jump down and let me secure the side. She repeated this ritual every night until most of the puppies had gone to their new homes, and only she and four of them were left. And, then, it was just Molly and her son Grendel, the runt of the litter. She'd look over her shoulder at him, and lead him into the crate for the night, crying and barking and carrying on until both of them finally settled down.

She opened the refridgerator, and stole a turkey. She taught Grendel how to do it, and when Ginger, one of the other puppies, was returned to us after six months, she taught Ginger. So we'd get up in the middle of the night to the sound of three dogs trying to scratch the door open to the Magic Food Place when we tried to outsmart them with a toddler lock on the door. Woe betide us if we forgot to latch that latch. Molly never missed a chance.

Then there was the time that she and Grendel figured out that they could squeeze out the space on the side of the air conditioner in the children's bedroom. First, the plastic shutters were destroyed. Then, when I replaced them with masonite and screws, they pushed the entire air conditioner out of the window when I forgot to lock them in the crate while I ran and errand for 45 minutes. I came home to find it hanging from the back of the house by the cord, and both dogs tied up in the yard by a neighbor that had found them. And a police officer, trying to push the air conditioner back in because the door to the house was locked. So the air conditioner went back in with heavy mending plates screwing it in to the windowframe and securing it from moving.

I thought that was it. Problem solved.

A few days later, I came home to find Molly tied to the front railing.

Another neighbor was standing on her porch across the street, and watched Molly push open a partially open inside window and scratch her way out through the screen, poke her body through the hole she had made, and leap into the bushes from the dining room window. Molly, being the friendly thing she was, ran right to the neighbor, and quickly back into captivity.

So I learned to close windows when I went outside for a minute.

A week later, we go out to dinner. And come home to an empty house. No dogs. Thinking someone had broken into the house and taken them, it took us a while to see a window that had been closed tight in the kid's bedroom was wide open and the screen shredded. They had made their escape somehow. A few minutes of searching, and Ginger came back from a dumpster around the corner, covered in blood from hitting the footboard of the neighbor's truck on the way out - and the other two were caught about a block away a few minutes later. Molly had managed to open a closed, but not locked, window, a trick I could not believe any dog would do, until she got brazen enough to try to do it one day right in front of me - she would claw at the window until she could get it open a narrow crack, and then use brute force to push it up with her nose.

So every window on the house got a safety wedge to prevent it from opening more than a few inches.

Over the past five years, we discovered that Molly could shoulder her way out the screen door, taking Grendel with her (Ginger stopped following her after she got hurt jumping out the window), and be gone for hours if we turned our back for a second. And she would not come back, except to Larry, no matter how pleadingly I begged, until she was tired or satisfied that whatever her mission had been was completed.

But she was my dog after a while, totally mine. She started sleeping on the bed, between Larry and I, her head on my shoulder, snoring into my ear all night long. She was always where ever I was, under my feet as I sat at this desk, tripping me in the kitchen, watching me from the bedroom doorway - and outside the bathroom whenever I took a shower or closed the door. Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, she was so weak she tottered when she walked, but I was not permitted to go to the bathroom without Molly guarding the door - I could hear her nails on the floor, slowly, sliding a bit, as she got up from where ever she had been painfully trying to rest, and flopping down against the door with a groan from the other side of the door. After our guest had gone home, I sat here, looking down the long center hallway as Molly struggled to her feet and walked toward the back door and the kitchen where we had been keeping newspaper on the floor because the medication had been making her urinate constantly. When she got to the paper, she turned around and looked right at me as she went, clearly telling me that she was a good girl and knew what the paper was for, dignity intact to nearly the end.

Yesterday, I found her at the foot of the bed, stretched out on the rug, her breathing labored and loud. I called her name and told her it was OK to let go. Her eyes were open, but she never looked at me - she was in some other place, far away. But the corners of her mouth turned up in a smile when I said her name.

She died a half hour later, at home, having said her goodbyes to all of us in her favorite spot.

Smiling.

Happy Turkey Day.

Wish me luck. One of the kids was up until 3 AM, Molly the dog is dying from lymphoma within the next few days since her drugs have stopped working, we have company coming, I'm still defrosting the turkey breast as I watch the parade, there are spiderwebs in the oven in the basement, and trash is strewn from one end of the house to the other. And the extra dresser is still in the kitchen, like an unwanted maple houseguest - I can't even open the door to the refridgerator completely.

On the other hand, I have a home, I have family that loves me, and friends that emailed me this morning to send their wishes. I have a friend that is taking three trains to get here to see us because he does not drive and did not want to put us out to pick him up at his home. I have a cool pair of PJ's to wear at the moment, a pair of comfortable shoes, a warm bed, and a change of clothes to wear later. I have a pair of almost-new jeans. And a set of antique mix and match dishes to display. I even have a bottle of wine and some gourmet Turbo Dog beer to cook with in my kitchen.

In Iraq, in Louisiana, Mississippi, and the Sudan, in places where the floor is dust and there is no roof, children will get up hungry and be fortunate if they survive the day. Their mothers will cook over fires of twigs laid on rocks. They will have never seen a turkey, and their dogs will be for the purpose of hunting or a meal. They will wear the only clothing they have, barefoot, and scavage among the grass and the harvested fields or from a truck full of strangers with bags of handouts and leftovers from places far away. Their children be up at 3 AM, running from gunfire and bombs, if they haven't been victims of diseases that we treat here with one pill a day for ten days.

While we are vexed by the imperfections of our world, and irritated by what are blessings to millions of those who do not share the gift of living here, in this country, we should do more than just give thanks at our table. Let us look upon the blessings of friends and family and the absence of hunger, a warm room, and take a moment to be grateful. Just as those with none of this wealth are grateful for the things that are not - that they have a meal and someone to share it with. In the spectrum of humanity, that is really what life is all about.

Happy Thanksgiving.