creative non fiction
Wake Up, Dad
When TV began to resize our world
my father saw the end of civilization;
“This box is the tomb of reading, doing,
memory, imagination and communication.”
“No!” I said. “It is the birth-womb
of shared knowledge and hopes,
the loom of language, tolerance,
And the death of misanthropes.
Dad never changed his objections
to that toxic pixillated curse.
His elegant deep earth projections
Were aborted before birth.
He lost his right to drive,
lost his confident sensuality,
And though his body was alive,
He struggled with reality.
He lost is his wife of 60 years;
and at night searched in desperation
and sometimes knows he hears
her voice in song or conversaion.
Convicted in his 10th decade
Of breathing too much mining dust,
Of many rules he disobeyed
And unrepentant wanderlust,
He puts on clever acts
to make it very clear
he understands the words or facts
that he pretends to read or hear.
“You were right about TV.” I say,
It shrinks the mind and heart,
spits out toxic babble night and day
Devaluating all words might impart;
It’s knowledge without knowing,
and movement without motion
Mindless reaping without sowing
trivializing genuine emotion.
“Perhaps,” My Dad suggests,
“There are bright worlds to find
pinned like brittle butterflies
to vast dusty walls of mind.”
“Dad! That’s can’t be you!” I say:
“It must be from a blog;
You never talk that way.
You speak only analog.”
“We’re awake,” I say
“We were asleep I realize!
I’ll come again another day”..
.
.
.
Illegal Criminal Child Aliens
The subjects are jailed minor boys and girls awaiting deportation, hearing or trial. The facility where they are kept is among the best, both physically and operationally. It is an older but well maintained juvenile detention facility, with a large gymnasium, an astro-turf sports field and an extensive library. There are many opportunities provided by volunteer groups, and various departments at a nearby College…For example, the art department promotes inmate art works; the results are visible inside and outside: sculptures, mosaics, and murals, created by juvenile inmates: The facility is uncrowded; local inmates are housed separately from the illegal alien children — all, by definition are under age 18– The subjects of these brief interviews are confined to a secure facility because they have a violent or criminal past, or both. They speak, read and understand their primary language fairly well but their ability in English is very limited.
One never knows, in such circumstances, what is exaggeration or lies, but I have been doing similar interviews for a number of years, and in time one becomes more able to evaluate them. These, of course, were children; yet they were far more frank, open and expressive, less manipulative, than many adults.
Considering the alleged situation in their country of origin, and the unique opportunities available in the facility ( the jail), one might think they would be happy, or at least feel fortunate. But they are not, despite nourishing food, shelter, medical care, training in English, access to books and both video and classroom teaching.Why unhappy?
First, they are children, and moreover, teens, who by some law of nature are often unhappy and unhinged. Second, they are not free where they are. As Children their views are short-sighted and self focused; as humans they value freedom. It should not be surprising that they don’t like the strange food; but they hate worse the confinement. They want out; even if they go back to a situation that was dangerous or intolerable, it would be a place where they might Try Again to return. The reader may note that most had somehow had access to enough money to hire a coyote. Why? I cannot say, but wonder whether if criminal or drug activities were responsible, directly or indirectly. Their individual stories are moving. Here are condensed versions of a few.
Male Age 16, El Salvador Crossed on foot TX in 2014 at age 14; coyote $7k paid by parents. However, after crossing had no further assistance. Lived on street, Las Vegas; arrested for theft. Sleepless, wants sleep med and pain med for back problem. We spoke at some length about the dangers of using addictive medications for sleep or chronic pain, both best treated by being active physically! I doubt he wanted to hear such stuff, though; he didn’t seem impressed.
Male Age 17, Honduras Coyote paid $ 10k by family, 5k deposit, 5k due on arrival. Arrived age 14. Reached a relative in Las Vegas but later arrested after caught in robbery. Says he may be sent back, but will return, and is taking classes in English. The food is terrible in the USA, but the country is great!
Male age 17, El Salvador Crossed the border at San Diego asking for asylum. Sent to Oregon, placed in a shelter; but fell in with folk who lived on the street. Was arrested for theft and assault. Allowed that the request for asylum was not really valid; it was just a door that he opened. If he is sent back he will come again, this time without a claim for asylum… will cross some way, probably on foot. ‘ Better illegal here than legal there.’
Male Age 16, Honduras Dad paid for coyote, but when he got here dad sent word: ‘Good Luck, you are on your own’. Lived on the street. Arrested for assault. Expects release soon, wants to go back to Honduras because he has family there who are not without economic advantages. I asked: drug business? Yes. ‘Better a rich criminal there than poor and illegal here’.
Male Age 16, Mexico Was a ‘mule’ for marijuana smuggling; entered into Arizona on foot, but was immediately caught. Sent to Phoenix. Expects to be deported. However, in Sonora, his home, he doubts he will be able to avoid going back to being a mule. Why? Realistically there is no other choice
Male age 17, Honduras Caught while crossing near Houston; has family somewhere in US but they did not respond to attempts to locate them. Seems a bright kid, communicative, but didn’t know who his namesake, Roosevelt, was. I told him briefly about two presidents by that name. both, and he plans to look them up in the library and ask the English teacher to comment.
Female Age 14, Mexico Coyote crossed border AZ in a car trunk. Placed on bus to Las Vegas. Arrested prostitution and theft. Jailed then transferred here. Is awaiting hearing, pending transfer motion. On zoloft and resperidol not sure what it is or why. C/O tooth problem. Whether released or sent back home thinks she will return one way or another, this time with some English. She understands she has no skills and no advantages except quite a few years ahead for profiting from her looks. I expressed surprise that plan in place at her age, but she looked at me sideways, and commented that she lives in the real world where people have to deal not with ideas but with facts; besides, she said, ‘I have a good connections in Vegas.’
Male Age 16, Honduras Crossed on foot to reach his uncle here. But the uncle was unable to take him in. Lived on street; theft, prostitution, drug abuse. Arrested states he was ‘beat up’ and remanded to Foster care. Has HIV, probable source uncle? Hep C?He doesn’t know. On medication now. I asked him about his unusual first name. He said it was from a famous poet; he knew nothing else, but says he likes poetry. I suggested he try to look up two poems that may have something to do with his unusual last name. The first is by Oscar Wilde:
Le Jardin
The lily’s withered chalice falls
Around its rod of dusty gold,
And from the beech-trees on the wold
The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.
The gaudy leonine sunflower
Hangs black and barren on its stalk,
And down the windy garden walk
The dead leaves scatter, – hour by hour.
Pale privet-petals white as milk
Are blown into a snowy mass:
The roses lie upon the grass
Like little shreds of crimson silk.
The other poem is by Brazilian Eduardo Alves da Costa, fairly easy to understand for Spanish speakers: Essentially: The first night they robbed a flower from our garden. We said nothing. The second night they openly trampled the rest of our flowers. We said nothing. Until the weakest among them entered our house by night and stole our light; and knowing of our fear, ripped our voice from our throats; then we could say nothing.
Jardim
Na primeira noite eles se aproximam
e roubam uma flor
do nosso jardim.
E não dizemos nada.
Na segunda noite, já não se escondem:
pisam as flores,
matam nosso cão,
e não dizemos nada.
Até que um dia,
o mais frágil deles
entra sozinho e nossa casa,
rouba-nos a luz e,
conhecendo nosso medo,
arranca-nos a voz da garganta.
E já não podemos dizer nada.
Comment: These histories pose a problem: they put a face on illegal immigrants even though in this case they are criminals. The last three cases in particular suggest that it is risky to look at them, or to hear them, too closely. The same is often true of all criminals, and illegal immigrants. While our country cannot open our borders to billions of people from all over the world, we share a hemisphere with many other Americans, North and South; we share a common cultural and ethnic past with people on our borders.
In fact, as always, the USA needs immigrants. If all illegal aliens were to disappear instantly, there would be an economic and social crisis here; in gardening, building, hotel maintenance, restaurant work, and farming, to say the least… and arguably, even in child-bearing! We North Americans are too often unwilling to raise enough children to replace ourselves. That is too great a sacrifice! Houses, cars, travel, education, health care, and entertainment are expensive priorities, and it costs several hundred thousand dollars and tens of thousands of hours to produce and to raise a child conscientiously.
A child, as often claimed, is a hostage to fate: a risk. But without children there is only past. Frankly, it seems possible that within 20 years we will offer to pay people to immigrate to our big beautiful USA. To relate stories like those above is not meant to glorify illegal immigrant children; yet, their desperation and decisive, high risk attempt to change their lives is the recurring story of the USA. Unfortunately, many of these illegal children come from criminal and drug dealing environments, or worse; they bring that with them. Some are MS13 members. But the first illegal immigrants who crossed the atlantic in wooden ships were often undesirables, rebels, or troublemakers. Some were criminals. All are kin to those, criminals or not, who pay coyotes or cross nations and deserts to reach our beloved land.
Adults who are illegal immigrants today are people whose journeys are even more hazardous, more sacrificial, than that of most child criminals; yet they also reveal an intense desire to find a better life in the US. As a consequence they create a better North America, and in a wider sense, better Americas.
My son Fred, a master carpenter, once again this April, drove from South Dakota to Baja California pulling a trailer full of equipment. He joined a group of Methodists to build small homes. In this case that is not simply a charitable act; the recipients of homes are limited to people who 1) work 2) have their own a half hectare lot, where they live in very marginal conditions, and 3) have children who regularly attend school. I go to build or to work as a translator for Lighting for Literature, providing small solar lighting units in the homes of the same kind of families, so schoolchildren have light to study in the evenings.
The clear majority of such families have a connection with the USA; it is generally with a close relative, usually one who has, during most of a lifetime, regularly sent money to their relatives to make their present and future more promising. That sort of story of immigrants and cross culture exchange is as old as time. It is the stuff of progress, and of civilization.
Friends of Grays and Fleets
We’ve been probed, CT’d and MRI’d,
Have suprapubic midline tatoos,
And golden marker seeds inside
To show gamma ray binocular eyes
Where to send high energy rays
to the place where cancer lies
awaiting a deadly dose of Grays.
We arrive, our bladders full,
With a Fleet’s clean sigmoid;
Identified, pastic bracleted, we pull
Off our clothes and try to avoid
More exposure of bare buttox
To watchful target cathodes
waiting in cold whiteness.
We are cheered by nurse and technician
Who treat us like aged newborn babes
And carefully swaddle us in position.
They leave. The machine wakes, and stirs,
To mufflled beats of rap that plays;
It rotates, stops, starts, and whirs
To shoot off focused gamma rays,
Until the prescribed dose is spent;
Then deflates the swaddling wrap,
sighs, and stops, as if content,
and settles down to take a nap.
Our nurse helps us to our feet,
pulls off our wadded sheets,
Then sets it all in order again
For friends of Grays and Fleet’s
A Return to Panamà and Pànama after Fifty Two Years:
Panamà… as we pronounce it would be Pànama… is a metaphoric inversion expressed by the different accents. I first went there as an intern in 1954-55, not yet age 22, interested- vaguely- in tropical medicine but more concretely in adventure. Among my 8 colleagues, half were preparing for missionary work, one for public health, one for psychiatry. Before 1903, Panama was an isolated part of Colombia, an oligarchy run by four or five families. It was inaccessible by land across the Darien. The current sometimes road, actually highway 5, or the Pan American Highway, is still often impassable.
A canal had long been considered to facilitate travel between the Atlantic and Pacific, which required a long sea voyage around Cape Horn or difficult overland Balboa took across the isthmus of Panama. A French venture acquired permission to build the canal under the direction of Ferdinand deLesseps ( Suez Canal, desert, flat, no locks). He wanted to cut a similar sea level swatch across Panama. 40,000 French (and French colonials) died there due to that miscalculation, graft, malaria, yellow fever, poor nutrition and dysentery; it was abandoned. But in 1903 the US felt it could big crazy things. Teddy Roosevelt tried to arrange a canal treaty with Colombia and failed. But because of the isolation of the isthmus from Colombia the locals felt like colonists, and resented their voiceless circumstances and distant and neglectful rulers, like the rebellious British Colonies in North America. They found common cause with Teddy Roosevelt who wanted a canal, and revolted, assisted by U S gunboat diplomacy.
The US Canal Zone was about 10 miles across and some 50 miles long. Panama is Water, and water is the Power that could operate the locks of a canal. A dam was required to store that water, and also control the swampland created by the ever flooding Chagas River; and thereby to control mosquito borne diseases. Incredibly the huge project was completed by 1914! The original locks still operate unaltered, today.
Overall, The US Army Corps of Engineers and Black Caribbean laborers really did the heavy lifting: John F. Wallace conceived the engineering of the canal but became a victim of the terrain, disease, and the political bureaucracy; he survived there for less than one year. John Stevens, a famous civil engineer, took seriously the yellow fever/malaria problem. The largest earthen dam ever built controlled the Chagas River, and drained the swamps; which controlled the mosquitoes, malaria and Yellow Fever, and provided the gravity flow water power to operate the canal locks. Col. George Washington Goethels was finally given unrestrained authority, and was able to complete the job over the next 7 years. William C Gorgas, a U S Army physician who understood the relation of malaria to mosquitoes, convinced the Army to drain the swamps, making it possible from a medical standpoint to build the canal. A second canal was started but abandoned because of WWII; now it has been completed, arguably by China, who also had studied the sea level alternative as across Nicaragua but abandoned it.
In 1954 the canal was still operated by the US civil Service. There was segregation of several sorts. First, upper level administrators and U S military had the option to live on base, with typical military housing and commissary privileges with access to US goods and food. Most privileged long term US citizen employees of the Canal Company lived in bungalows. Second, short term US citizen employees like MD interns, lived in curious multi family wooden apartment buildings, each apartment located upstairs from a parking area below. The apartment buildings were oriented with long sides facing the sea breezes. They were two story wooden structures with space for parking underneath, and 12 ft high ceilings. There were no internal doors; the kitchen, dining and bedroom were in one line so that that the sea breeze, could flow through open screens placed above 8 ft. Each apartment had a bathroom off center and a heat closet to keep clothing dry. Construction was so light that people learned to speak quietly, even quarrel in harsh whispers. Sexual revelry was often audible, though as invisible as the morning alarm clock, flushing of toilets. Notice the 6 ft eves, a traditional style there. In the city they offer much needed shelter for passersby on sidewalks but shoot waterfalls out onto cars in heavy rain.
When I was there in 1975 the buildings were scheduled to be torn down. But the location was ideal, and all the infrastructure already in place. They were acquired somehow and have been gentrified, rebuilt so nicely that the old structures can hardly be seen. In the photo above, some of the screened breezeways persist. The open lower floor also is still there, but made into a living area, like a covered outdoor garden or patio.
The third level of segregation was provided to ‘local raters’ whose situation devolved from the building of the canal. The US Army had recruited English speaking workers among blacks of the Caribbean. Communication was more practical in English, and the work performance was superior to indigenous workers. ( Only the Spanish had managed to induce los indios to work through a brutal choice made clear in a statue at a Mission in Baja CA: a priest holds a bible in one hand and a skull in the other. Believe or die. Work now to live, and die for the glory of God and the Catholic Queen. But the Caribbean blacks were different, perhaps in part because, though paid less than US citizens, and they had significant inducements: Local raters’ were provided decent livable wages, living quarters, medical care, and allowed to buy US imported goods at a reduced rate from a local rate commissary. In the long run, however local raters felt abandoned after September 7, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter gave the Canal to Panama; a long standing local resentment of blacks with special privilege boiled over. Soon many ex local raters had nether job, nor any apparent citizenship. Yet there was, and is, a Black American Atlantic Coast and black Carribean island archipelago; it may be largely invisible to most of us in the USA, though it consists of many black communities which are the source for much unique American and Brazilian music, art, dance, custom, and language. Therefore, the abandoned black local raters of Panama, did not live in limbo; they have adapted or relocated. It’s instructive to kindle and google the many American Black authors, and the Quaker beginnings of the emancipation movement. The very first American revolution was black: Haiti. * Like most US citizens I often focus only on the Northern Hemisphere. We tend to forget that we are all Americans: one continent, one hemisphere, with a shared history, indigenous, immigrant past, and present.
We visited Panama City in late 2016. Much has conspired to make it the commercial and banking center of South America, rivaling Miami. The canal was gradually and totally transferred to Panama control by 2000. Panama has retained the $US as their currency, which stabilized the economy; despite many problems it became a place where people with means could find refuge from chaos at home, or for various thieves to hide money, including drug money.
The former head of the militarily, Manuel Noriega, a cooperator with the CIA, became de facto dictator and drug lord .The US invasion to depose him in 1989-90 was complex, while brief was a real war that has left a shambles of Noriega’s base of operations still unpaired. And the whole episode has became the source of many true lies: afterward there was an election at the insistence of the US; but the winning candidate was assaulted and Noriega declared the election null and void. While US invasion was widely supported by the populace, it was real warfare against a well prepared military, deadly and destructive. It was hugely condemned, as customary, in Europe and the UN; The Panamanian military was dissolved. However, the emergence of Panama as a commercial and banking center, and a repository for suspect money, continued.
The second canal has been completed, financed largely by the Chinese. Transit fee $100,000,000. A Trump hotel, shaped like a huge sail, looks like a twin to one in Dubai. A metro was completed last year.
.
Upscale barrios and yacht harbors, continued to appear. Old is being gentrfied, the president lived there near a fast growing tourist area, and expensive restaurants flourish. As to the currently strong US dollar, Panama is something of an exception, comparable to Chile. Most other countries today are, by comparison, a bargain. But it is a good place to visit, safe for the average sane foreigner, usually cool at night, when the ocean breeze is up. In the 50’s that meant street dancing to Lucho Ascarraga’s wild electric organ: Cha Cha Chas, with typical flat foot moves, keeping the whole foot including the heel on the floor and moving The Rest… none of that heel-high stuff. That, happily, is the same today.
Ancon Hill is the highest spot overlooking the Pacific entrance of the canal, with old gun embankments at the top, set among tropical forest. Several hundred yards down hill is the site of Gorgas Hospital where I interned in 1954. My oldest daughter was born there, delivered by a descendant of one of the founding families.
My Grandparents, Leon and Anna founded the Methodist church just at the edge of the Canal Zone. It was built and supported by the North American population of the Zone who operated the canal, and large number of military people who guarded it. But when the canal was given to Panama that U S population very quickly disappeared. The old church is imposing, but obviously neglected now. There was no pastor, but we spoke with a woman in the parish and she took us inside the elegant but sad and tired building.
We visited the site of the old Gorgas hospital, of French design. It had a stolid central administration building surrounded by a series of white one story buildings in colonial French style… a series of medical units, white wooden buildings with 11 foot high ceilings where the top four feet were open screens. The units were interconnected by covered walkways among sculptured tropical gardens to allow for air circulation. How well I recall doing a femoral stick on babies or spinal taps, sweating in the humid night air. At least that is the way it all comes to my mind; it is all gone. One wing of the admin center where interns stayed and sometimes slept during 36 on and 12 off shifts looks down darkly past the surrounding neglected padlocked wire fence strangely dressed in banners left over from some event. No one was around to ask if we might go in; and yet that seemed a small loss. I didn’t much want to view the corpse from the inside.
Otherwise, Panama was no corpse, but alive and well.
Even most of the relics of Old Town were full of color and life, on the way to being restored. thier roof still extended out 4 feet over the sidewalks and balconies to shelter people from the rain.
And the restoration was everywhere evident as well, set among the colorful lives of a small rich country whose future seems bright.
And we pretended to be rich turistas nortamericanos:
*You may want to kindle and google the many black authors of the Americas, the John Woolworth and the Quaker beginnings of the emancipation movement, and the first American revolution, which was black: in Haiti. Like many US citizens I often focus only on the Northern Hemisphere. But we are Americans: one continent, one hemisphere, with a shared history, indigenous, immigrant past, and present.
* * There is a 645 pp third edition of a book Americas by Peter Winn. But frankly, it seems to me simply a compulsive compilation of the ‘news’ we read in the US. Whenever the author treats places and peoples I know very well, the omissions and commissions of errors really rankle me terribly. My bias is this: The record of a people and a time are found in between the lies, and lines; and in fiction, poetry; in other words in Literature. Usually what we call News or History is moribund fiction without flesh or soul.
Pablo Pavo, Pisco, Guajolote
What follows is Creative Non Fiction about a hot air sauna burn in late November, 2016
I am Pablo. I most enjoy those times when I alone am personally responsible for what I do, whether in on a mountain peak, or in an ultra-lite over the Sierras, or a Cessna flying from California to Punta Arenas, Chile. At times, of course, that sort of self indulgence, lust for adventure – arrogance perhaps- has put me precariously clinging to a cliff face, or flying alone over SW Argentina when it was prohibited by the threat of war. Similarly, I enjoy dry heat so much it recently put me alone in a sauna, on Thanksgiving day 2016, for between 20 and 40 minutes. I cooked myself like a turkey. The recipe, or receta para asarse:
Lie down in a hot air sauna at the highest, hottest level. If you are diabetic and use repository insulin, which activates more quickly in heat, drink some water often, and eat an apple or an orange every 20 minutes.
I followed the recipe, but remember nothing after lying down to begin my second 20 minute session in the sauna, until sitting in a wheelchair, confused, frightened, and hyperventilating, amid about ten strangely dressed strangers in a strange world who spoke in unintelligible tongues. I had no recollection of being found unconscious in the sauna or being extracted. I could not formulate my own thoughts, or movement or speech. I began to shiver and have coarse muscular spasms. There was no pain, but I was angry at having no control of what was happening; about missing the rest of my life; maybe that anger motivated me to mumble some jumbled thoughts that surfaced: though it took me several long minutes to get the words to form, i finally managed to say:
“Diabetes!” a voice in English said,
“Your blood sugar is 87. You are going to be fine.” Happy to hear a familiar language, I said
“Adrenalin?” The voice said
“ No. ” and after I insisted on some water with sugar. The voice said “ Your blood sugar is 87. ” I said
“Wet towels, Ice” …The voice responded
“Your temperature is normal now.”” But then my wife and daughters appeared and got the towels, and gave me sugar water with a straw. I suggested
“Ambulance.” The voice said
“ It is on the way” I still could not get up or control my movements, and felt hopeless, as if i were sliding into oblivion. But gradually I was thinking more clearly assuming I was in Sacramento. I began to fear I would live, and be terribly embarrassed when my E R colleagues saw me and learned of my my stupid sauna behavior.
I was lifted on to a wheelchair and for what seemed a very long time was pushed down a long series of poorly lighted bare cement halls and walls, set among conduits, and dark recesses. Then out into the night to be lifted onto a sheet, and then to a cot and placed into primitive station wagon ambulance. I began to recall I was in some other country, but couldn’t recall which: In the ambulance I asked about a place I had been recently:
“ Brazil?” My wife, Marili answered,
“ Panama!” It all came back to me. I had been alone in the hot air sauna of a hotel. I felt that surely I would need to be hospitalized for some time and said,
“ You go home as planned. I’ll fly back later, or come by helicopter.”
“No, we will not and you will not!”
By the time we got to the hospital, I was fully alert, coherent, and coordinated. The nurse took vitals, did an EKG, asked my name and birth date, asked the litany of questions about illness, medicines, and allergies, and drew blood with some difficulty due to collapsed veins. The Dr. repeated the same questions, checked my coordination and strength. My Family Angels were allowed to be with one at a time. Lili asked about an MRI, because it might be possible I that I had a stroke or a fall with injury because found unconscious with strange lower extremity injuries. And though the Dr. said there was no need, and I agreed, the universal rule prevailed: when a test is possible and suggested it must be done. In short order the normal labs and MRI results were back, and I was released. The Dr. explained that I had minor first degree burns. Obviously neither of us knew much about Hot Air Sauna Burns* at the time. We paid the $753 bill, of which more than $400 was for the MRI.
As I write it is six days since trying to cook myself for Thanksgiving; I am now guardedly thankful to be alive, and in relatively human condition. It was at first curious that most of my injures were below the knees; it became clear they were not abrasions, but: Bullae! Blisters. The skin is cooled by evaporation of sweat and by cooling from blood circulation; because circulation is less in the lower extremities by comparison to the rest of the body, both circulation and sweating are decreased there… more blistering or burning result. Deep partial thickness burns are very tender to touch . They can look something like the skin of a turkey leg that begins to blister as it cooks. On standing up the pressure increases immediately and for about 10 min causing pain. very pa. Yet after lying down again they become more tolerable. I lie about a lot. The deeper ones form an eschar… a leathery covering that must be scraped off to allow healing; that eschar removal process is almost beyond tolerable, but smaller wounds like mine are not worth the risk or trouble of anesthesia. When being cleaned up I despair about the purpose or significance of life. On the other hand, yesterday I was able to do a half hour of upper body workout and a half hour of elliptical trainer. I should be healed within a few weeks, though full recovery will require several months, and resolve to avoid hot air saunas from now on.
Sinceramente,
Pablo
* two links on the subject:
file:///C:/Users/john/AppData/Local/Temp/Hot%20Air%20Sauna%20Burns-Review%20of%20Their%20Etiology%20and%20Treatment-3.pdf
- Virve Koljonen, MD, PhD Summary from ResearchGate \
Hot air sauna burns (HASBs) are rare but potentially fatal injuries with simultaneous rhabdomyolysis. The mechanism of HASBs involves prolonged exposure to hot air because of immobility. The burned areas are on the parts of the body that are directly exposed to hot air. This type of heat exposure results in a complex injury, in which full-thickness skin damage occurs concurrently with deeper tissue destruction. Sauna bathing is becoming more and more a popular recreational activity around the world. The objective of this review article is to familiarize burn care specialists on this unique and clinically challenging type of burn injury and to illustrate our department’s long experience in treating.
Wheed Machey
I have diabetes and use a long acting repository insulin that slowly is released over about 24 hours. At night, if my blood sugar is very low I sweat and awake.* That can happen if I forget to eat at all after mid day because of mild gastroparesis; my slovenly slouch stomach just sits there silently doing-nothing. I don’t get hungry. see https://nwalmanac.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/a-90-hour-fast/
For the same reason, lazy stomach, I don’t like to eat much before lying down to sleep; a meal will stagnate acidly while waiting for attention like a supplicant at The Department of Motor Vehicles.
By contrast, mildly low levels during sleep can spin off splendiferous dreams. At night when my bed is toasty warm the little lake of repository insulin warms up too, and that heat causes a faster release of insulin. Last night I had such a dream based on the following real life situations:
My daughter, a well known free lance writer, has been waiting during several years for an eminent national U S newspaper to be granted a visa to send her to Cuba for an interview with their most popular TV personality; he has, in effect, become too big to fail; he gently but sharply lampoons the average Cuban’s encounters with the dictatorship.
Yet it is unlikely a visa will be granted for an interview in the near future because of the politics and economic circumstances of the two countries. The Cuban government fears calling more attention the embarrassingly popular TV show magnate. Our government– while grandly announcing an historic breakthrough in diplomatic relations, tourism and commerce– fears voters. Long after the hoopla, no average citizen can visit freely, independently, economically, and legally.
The two governments have quietly collaborated on restrictions which give each what they want, but pitifully little to the average would be visitor who hopes to travel freely and communicate freely with average Cubanos. The restrictions and process remain obscure, but effectively make it impossible to visit except under conditions imposed by cooperating tour agencies and privileged Cuban groups that can profit nicely from the great interest in Cuba travel. It is as usual: profit and politics rule.
But last night was different. In a low sugar moment, L’s visa was approved. After a long and involved series of preparations too detailed to recall or understand, she left. Shortly afterward, a mysterious person called to ask me to remind her to look up Wheed Machey in Havana. At that point I awoke, recalling that I had not eaten much supper. Blood sugar 73; half a banana and a quarter of an apple took care of that nicely.
But what to do about Mr. Machey? Afraid to forget details as in most dreams, I wrote down his name and slept on it. Today I called L, but she didn’t know how to reach him, so I am posting, emailing and Face-booking this open letter, hoping it will be shared, and ultimately reach Wheed Machey H:
Muy estimado Sr. Machey,
Le saludo cordialmente. Lamento la nececidad de intentar conectarme con Ud. de esta manera tan extraordinaria. Creo que posiblemente somos parientes. Mis tatarabuelos vivian en Matanzas , pero no se nada de ellos. Por la situacion internacional creo que no voy nunca poder viajar a Matanzas antes que me muera. Con la esperanza que me pueda responder lo mas luego posible,
Atentamente,
Juan Heriberto Huachuca Machey
*Long ago I used both insulin and two oral medications for diabetes; after 45 minutes sweating in a very hot sauna, which always delights me, I felt weak; thanks to the combination of oral medications and long acting insulin my blood sugar was 10! But since stopping all medication except insulin I have never had a similar problem.
The Journal Of John Woolman, Quaker
My Kindle was lost somehow. Not thinking it stolen, but simply misplaced, I searched for a week. But found only that I was lost myself without it, and bought a Kindle Fire 7. It is a much superior edition than the old one, and with a wireless connection offers email, browsers, movies, on line series and much more. It has a decent battery and offers Amazon Prime movies and series. It uploaded all my old books, and I added a complete set of Harvard Classics as well as a complete set of Britannica Great Books…for $2.99 for each set. While I have both these 50 volume series in hard back, the kindle versions are portable and searchable. Instead of marking up the margins , flagging or dog-earing pages, I can highlight or save quotes.
The Harvard sets begin with John Woolman’s Journal. He was a Quaker who, after visiting Barbados (1671) became most known for his active opposition to slavery among his fellow Quakers. Woolman begins his journal with a short account of his youth, including an episode that is my own.
“I saw… a robin sitting on her nest, and as I came near she went off; but having young ones, she flew about…. I stood and threw stones at her, and one striking , her she fell down dead. …I ( became) seized with horror, at having in a sportive way, killed an innocent creature while she was careful for her young….. I climbed up the tree, took all the young birds, and killed them, supposing that better than to leave them to pine away an die so miserably.”
Why my own? In the way that itinerant children must adapt and integrate to survive, I always did so, as my father moved us each year to different mining towns. I had to focus on those little worlds, completely unaware of the rest. In Santo Domingo, Chihuahua, Mexico, when I was about ten, my friends and I used slingshots meticulously fashioned from a proper stick, an inner tube strip of rubber and a leather pouch. We shot at lizards with rare success, but always killed imagined enemy planes. It was during WWII, but so fresh was the painful loss of the northern third of Mexico to the USA, that; they were always Gringo planes. We shot at most anything alive, and at lifeless windows in an abandoned buildings. We rolled rocks into canyons, heedless of whatever was below. We shot at bats in limestone caves by the light of carbide miner’s lamps.
One morning walking to school I shot at a sparrow perched on a wire. It fell. A strawberry sized hemorrhage developed immediately aside it’s head . I can still see it quivering on the dry ground.
Yet I have never had a second thought about rational killing. When my grandmother asked me to ‘wring a hen” or take the .22 and shoot a dying old Tom cat I did so without qualm. The headless hen flapped around for a little, and soon became dinner. Old Tommie stopped suffering. Like the faithful border collies, cats were only farm instruments to help control varmints. They had names, but never were ‘family’, never in the farmhouse, ever. There was no wealthy Small Animal Vet, waiting in the wings, no Veterinary Small Animal Medical Drug and Devise cabal.
A couple of days ago I went to a friend’s cattle ranch, to watch their annual roundup of calves for branding, tagging, immunizing, worming, and dosing with antibiotics. The veterinary medical aspects of the roundup process are fascinating and most procedures familiar to physicians, including the thoughtless and dangerous industry driven excess use of drugs and antibiotics.
The procedures themselves are brutal to the innocent eye and ear: Frantic crying and bawling of frightened calves, roped, tied down. Burning hair and skin of the brand. Blood from ear markings and castration, the injection of vaccines. Adjacent, one hears the baleful angry calling of the calves’ mothers observing from a pen nearby. Frankly the castration reminds me of the way we once circumcised infant boys: restrain and proceed. But the mothers were not there.
Even so, a Round up is pageantry, and there is beautiful co dependent relationship between people, horses, and dogs. It seems surprising that small scale cattle ranching is so nearby, so extensive, so common, and so invisible. Many local horse /human skilled pairs at my friends small ranch roundup compete nationally; one is a current national champion, several are ranked or former champions in various aspects of their work and art. The cowboys, and girls, dressed up in their fine and fancy gear, working seamlessly with highly skilled horses, makes the word ‘awesome’ appropriate.
During the Fall or Spring, local ranchers go from one small ranch to another, in a spirit of camaraderie and community. Yet there is a subtle, subdued sense that they belong to a culture with no future; at least here where people seem to love to eat meat, but hate to see how it is made. California cattle ranchers seem to suspect that their way of life will be exported to some less chicken-hearted area; or be off shored. They fear of global warming may make us all heartless vegetarians, in a recent version, dating from at least as far back as 1962 when Rachael Carson , published her seminal work, Silent Spring. They expect there will be a CA ballot initiative soon called the Cattle Cruelty Act.
Even so, I regret the coming loss of cattle culture, despite the feeling it is rational and in many respects politically inevitable. Surely dressage, horse racing, polo and such will survive; but these are reserved for the wealthy and privileged, unlike the rough and raw culture of cattle ranching. How easily we are blinded by belief, by dogma. I’m reminded of of time I worked as physician on an expensive scientific expedition to Antarctica. It was on a refurbished icebreaker abandoned when the USSR collapsed. One day all 12 scientists and 20 pampered passengers watched Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. We seemed to believe it all, while simulataeously burning more fossil fuel on that one trip, producing more global warming gas in that week than 400,000 methane producing cattle could in a year. There is a story about Alaska: A pilot crashed and survived by eating a Bald Eagle. When rescued by the Forrest Service, he was arrested for killing a protected bird. In court he plead no lo contendere, guilty, then was let off, considering the circumstances. But the judge was curious and asked what Bald Eagle tasted like. The accused thought a moment, scratched his chin and said
“Well, judge, somewhere between a California condor and a spotted owl.”
As to Woolman’s lifetime long efforts and essays. or addresses to Friends on slavery, and abolition, they are well worth reading, and re reading. I have a much better understanding and admiration of Quaker thinking, and their situation among Northern colonies. Of course I never will shoot at a sparrow again. The experience was painful, and the bird was dry, tough, and tasteless, without enough meat to keep a bird alive; I doubt Woolman’s robin was any better.
Book Review: The Log from the Sea of Cortez
With the Dec 7 1941 attack of Pearl Harbor, my father immediately volunteered with the Naval Sea Bees hoping to build airfields, and bases. Yet he was a geologist and mining engineer at a large remote Cascade range copper mine in Holden Washington. Since copper was essential to the war effort he was rejected by the Navy, and quickly transferred to the Santo Domingo copper mine in the Municipality of Aquiles Serdán, Chihuahua, Mexico, to help develop it and other nearby copper mines. He was 33 and I was 9. We lived in those particular parallel worlds of father and son. I understood nothing of the Great War or mining, but everything a boy can know about the demanding and transient childhood culture of boys in remote little mining towns. He understood blasting hard rock a mile or more underground, and analyzing diamond drill cores to make 3D maps of mineral deposits. I understood one had to carry a stick to make it to school unscathed until he could transform himself into a local peer.
In that March and April of 1942 of the log, we lived about three hundred miles to the West, of where John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, were in their own parallel world with a crew of three, aboard a boat on the Sea of Cortez. They were collecting littoral sea shore specimens at each low tide, and afterward sorting and preserving the specimens, and collaborating on a journal while joyfully consuming 2500 bottles of Corona beer. They knew not of the crush of day to day events of WWII, nor did their close Monterrey friends know of their days and nights on The Sea of Cortez… sea cucumbers, limpets, rays, swordfish, Gulf of California life forms including the local human inhabitants.
While my former Holden childhood friends shot down imagined Zeros, my new friends and I shot down Gringo warplanes. In the Cascades of Washington, WWII raged. In Chihuahua wounds from loss of the northern 1/3 of Mexico’s territory still wept. Each world was unaware of the other. That has generally been the way of humanity, at least until recent decades when people are progressively more heavily bombarded with the sounds and sights of suffering people in other contemporaneous worlds, thanks to technology. It remains to be seen if that assault of ugly information will lead to more mutual understanding, or will dull our sense of common humanity. So far the outcome is in great doubt, as if we are the generations of chaos suggested by Moisés Naím in The End of Power, another book review on this blog.
But The Log from the Sea of Cortez. ISBN978-0-14-019744-1 is the subject of this review. The cover names only John Steinbeck, and yet the content, and interplay of writing styles, clearly supports the two old friends claim that they both wrote it. They make that claim in a brief introduction as well as in the text; there is a rough map of the route; there is a Glossary of Terms- mostly devoted to taxonomy and ecology. But on first opening the book The Appendix drew my attention. It is a long eulogy to Ricketts written in Steinbeck’s, sharp, often moving and often humorous, unhurried rich prose on the life and death of his friend and co-author.
That long eulogy is in contrast to the many sections of the log with taxonomic names and descriptions, and pithy commentary about ecology, the nature of collecting specimens, the importance of life’s diverse forms; and life’s natural purpose – or better said- non purposeful, non teleological nature. There are many dense little essays on the ecology, the one-ness, of living and non living matter, and the interrelation of individual animals to the collection of all those individuals that make up and entirely different animal; there are crisp philosophical discussions on the nature and fate of life. The log is clearly a joint effort by two great writers who became one, in separate but contemporaneous world of the 1941 Sea of Cortez.
A brief introduction sets forth the authors’ vision: “We take a tiny colony of soft corals from a rock in a little water world… Fifty miles away the Japanese shrimp boats are dredging with overlapping scoops …destroying the ecological balance of the whole region. … Thousands of miles away the great bombs are falling and the stars are not moved thereby. None of it is important or all of it is.” But the following 221 pages of log entries make clear the authors believe that both are true: none and all.
The pages are encrusted with zoological terms, sticking like limpets to the pages. There is a glossary of terms —from Aboral ( upper surface of a starfish brittle star, sea urchin.), Amphipod, (paired legs of beach hoppers, sand fleas, shrimp-like crustaceans..), Atokous ( sexually immature forms of certain polychaet worms) … to zooid (individual members of a colony or compound organism having a more or less independent life of its own.
The Log is chronological. It begins by detailing the process of finding a suitable boat, The Western Flyer–a 70-some foot long well maintained and well built trawler; finding and getting aboard scientific equipment and supplies, six weeks food stores, and introducing the reader to the characters crew, including an outboard engine that has its own troublesome personality. It becomes immediately evident these writer/explorers are not simply adventurers, but a team of zoologist ecologist and gifted writer.
By March 11, at page 25, after a days-long raucous celebration and farewell, they cast off. The log speaks of writers classically educated in history and literature and science, in the mold of lovers of knowledge: Philosophers. The Captain, Tony, is a solid sailor, a careful hard bitten technician. Tex is the engine man whose very bones are parts of a diesel engine; Tiny and Sparky are old friends, ‘bad boys’ become bad men, rough sailors, whose perceptions and salacious comments are–to everyone’s delight– in sharp contrast with those of the toney writers. Page 18 begins a seven point/paragraph introduction to the remaining crew member, an outboard engine called The Sea Cow, who always promises to propel their skiff, but always refuses, or quits when it causes the greatest problem. They row. Except for the captain and Sea Cow they all share a great affiliation with 2500 bottles of Corona beer.
This log is informative, entertaining, and thought provoking. The fame of the authors makes it especially notable and relevant to those familiar with the Monterrey area and history. It is doubly enjoyable to me because in the same days and nights described in the log, I lived nearby in my own very different parallel world, one that is in another sense the same world. Goodreads offers many quotes and have note-booked many of Steinbeck’s beautiful portraits of people, seascapes, places, children, towns, officials, and natives; and many pithy Ricketts short essays on the nature of nature, of ecology, of relationships among living beings. But if one doesn’t read both Steinbeck and Ricketts in their log habitat, they seem to me lifeless as a diaphanous pellucid sea creature in a specimen jar, where color and motion and even structure are lost. To enjoy that one must simply… Jump into the Log!
Northwest Almanac 
