The blog of a North Country Swede!

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Nick's Gourmet Deli





Nick' Gourmet Deli



Let me explain. The start of the "process" of going over to Nick's Gourmet Deli on the southeast corner of West 49th Street and Seventh Avenue in Times Square on Manhattan is akin to catching the scent of a woman. Remember the movie with Al Pacino?

What I mean is that when I think about actually going to Nick's, I get caught up in a compulsion. (All my compulsions are kind of low-grade, easily broken off at my age--66 today--after a couple of years on Lupron, a hormone treatment for my prostate cancer.) And since there are no negative consquences envisioned--like for kleptomania--I catch--latch onto, really--the wave of excitement. (Remember, for me, that's a New Jersey Shore wave, not the Pipeline at Ehukai Beach Park on Oahu's north shore.)

I am promiscuous toward this kind of compulsion. I had the same feeling about Crabb's Corner in Central, Alaska, when it still existed and I lived in Fairbanks. (Crabb's was actually at a whole other level of excitement. Gawd, those were the days, my friend!)

Planning, then getting ready, then going, then getting there ... the process fulfils my fondest desires for pleasure. I love it so!

Yesterday, I had a free evening to do with as I pleased. Without a second thought I planned to go to Nick's ... and I caught the wave.

I drove into Hoboken, parked in a municipal public parking garage, caught the Path at the NJ Transit Terminal to the 33rd Street Path Station on Manhattan, walked over to the Herald Square Subway Station at West 34th St. and Broadway, caught the R Train to West 49th St. and Seventh Ave., emerging from subway onto the West 49th St. sidewalk directly in front of the side entrance to Nick's.

Need I tell you? Nick's is my kind of place.

I ordered a tuna salad sandwich on wheat bread, lettuce but no tomato, with a dill pickle on the side, and a small cup of black coffee. I was quickly and pleasantly served in the no-nonsense manner that offers no personal names in the customer relations script. Over time I get their names, if they last--which they do--and if I keep coming back often enough--which I do. (Is there another way that matters?)

Taking my food and coffee, I found an open table and ate, drank, and wrote copious notes for this blog entry. One thing I noted was that once in the rhythm of going, like to Nick's, if I am interrupted in what I consider the "normal" steps, I become irritated--another sign of the emotional component of the process.

Finished eating, I left Nick's and headed south on Seventh Avenue through Times Square, walking slowly to the Times Square Subway Station at West 42nd Street, catching the 1 Train to West 14th St. and Seventh Ave.--destination, Greenwich Village. There I headed south on Seventh to Greenwich Avenue, south and east on Greenwich to Sixth Avenue, then north on Sixth to West 9th Street where I caught the Path back to Hoboken.

Walking through the Village in the early evening brings a feeling which I suspect for a writer is akin to being in Paradise. I am susceptible to sensing the spirits of those who have walked the Village streets before me.

I had arrived at the 33rd Street Path Station on Manhattan at a little after 5 P.M., and I boarded the Path train at the 14th Street station a quarter past 7 P.M. or so. I had just spent a couple of hours in ecstacy ... muted, of course, by age ... but then, again, a finer, subtler feeling ... permeating the marrow of my being ... then I was back on the beach ... satisfied.

Friday, October 29, 2004

The Sacred Elders, III

A Short Story
By Hilding Lindquist
Copyright © 2004 by Hilding Lindquist

“I lied to you,” I told Fred. He was sitting across the small dining table from me as we sipped our cups of coffee in my apartment that Sunday evening in late October, 2004.

“Oh,” he replied, “how so?”

“Yesterday at Nick’s I said that it was either old age or the excitement of you coming here that made me forget my Lupron shot, and I then got depressed over forgetting it.”

Yesterday Fred and I had lingered over coffee mid-day at Nick’s Gourmet Deli in Times Square and talked, catching up on our lives. Fred was visiting me from Alaska.

“And?”

“I got depressed after getting a bill from the doctors that treated me for the heart thing. For $915. For some reason I couldn’t cope with that shit. That's when I forget the Lupron appointment. Part of it was true though, I did get more depressed after I realized I’d missed getting the Lupron shot.”

“But you have Medicare don’t you?”

“Yes, and it worked out. I called up the billing office a couple days later, day before yesterday, Friday. The bill was their mistake. They apologized and fixed it, but I don’t know, it was like getting hit in the gut when I got the thing. It took all the oomph out of me.”

“That’s kind of crappy, but you can’t let things like that get you down.”

“That’s easy enough to say. I tell myself that all the time. But when it happens, it’s like someone flipping a switch. I lose it. The energy drains right out of me. I think my PCP told me I have to watch for stuff like that because of my chronic kidney failure.”

I paused in thought and then continued, “You know I once incorrectly called it ‘acute kidney failure’—that’s what it was when I went into the hospital in Fairbanks, now it’s chronic kidney failure—anyway, some doctor was standing next to me and corrected me, that was kind of strange. Who gives a rat’s ass what you call it in casual conversation—except some damn doctor.”

“Sounds like you’re back to being feisty.”

“I am, damn it, I am.

“By the way, for us ignorant lay persons, what’s a PCD?

“Primary Care Doctor, but I said PCP, Primary Care Physician. Same thing.”

“As opposed to?”

“A urologist, or nephrologist, or cardiologist, a specialist.”

“And a nephrologist, what’s that?

“A kidney doctor. Aren’t you glad you asked?”

“Yah, well, I am, come to think about it. If you got one, I want to know about it. Don’t need to know all in one fell swoop though, but little by little I’d like to get the hang of what’s going on with you.”

“Now I have to call up the Urology Clinic and reschedule my Lupron shot.”

“You haven’t done that yet?”

“Nope.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t seem to be able to do it, to get the necessary motivation. It’s like there is something holding me back. It's kinda scarey. Things are going on with me like I have split personality or something. And I don’t seem to be able to talk to anyone about it.”

“You’re talking to me.”

“Yah, well, that’s different. I have to get it out somehow.”

“This sounds sort of serious.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a phase, like women have menopause. Maybe this Lupron’s been doing more than I know about. It’s a female hormone, is what they tell me. I’ve just never asked any questions.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I want to go around not knowing what’s happening to me. Maybe by not knowing I can stay halfway sane. Maybe if I knew what’s happening, what I am in for, maybe I’d regret it. You know there’s a certain equanimity in not knowing.”

“Equa-what?”

“Equanimity, balance, non-stressful state of mind.”

“Sure it is. I knew that. And why should you be any different from the rest of us? Stress is as American as apple pie.” Fred paused as I gave him a funny look, then continued, “Just joking, just joking. You want me to be worried about you, Jack?

“I don’t know, I just don’t know what’s going on in my head or my body all the time and I don’t know whether I want to know. And once I know something, there’s no unknowing it. Ignorance is bliss. Do I want to give it up?”

“I am not so sure about ignorance being bliss. Seems like we’ve gone through this once before."

“You mean with Gene?”

“Right.”

“I don’t want to think about Gene right now.”

“Back then you were the one encouraging him to learn all he could about his lung cancer.”

“And he died. Maybe I was wrong.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Back then I was like you, healthy. It was pretty damn easy to give that kind of advice because I didn’t have any personal experience with facing up to dying.”

“You think you’re going to die?

“Hell yes, and so are you.”

“In that sense you got it nailed, but what I mean is, are you thinking about it now? Do you think about it like it’s going to happen soon?”

“Sometimes. But you know, that doesn’t seem to bother me, thinking about dying. I’ve been there, done that.”

“You didn’t die.”

“Came pretty damn close. Coulda done it. I was there drifting off into fuzzy soft la la land.”

“Yah, well you didn’t die.”

“No but I took nine units of blood over two days. It was touch and go. Some of them medical people, nurses and such, didn’t think I was going to make it.”

“Well, you did.”

“Yes, I did, so what’s it to you, buddy old friend of mine?”

“You tell me how you feel about it.”

“I ain’t afraid of dying. What gets me upset are these mood swings and shit like that.”

“Maybe you need to get your mental chemistry adjusted.”

“You think I’m nuts?”

“For chrissakes, give me a break. I’m carrying on a conversation here, dealing straight up with what you’re telling me.”

“You’re right. Sorry.

“You damn well better be.” Fred stood holding his coffee cup and reached out for mine. “Want more coffee?,” he asked.

“Yah, one more cup, then that’s going be it. I gotta sleep tonight,” I replied.

Fred went over to the Mr. Coffee machine on the counter, poured our cups of coffee, and came back to the table with them.

“What about the flu vaccine shortage? Doesn’t that depress you? It would me,” he said after sitting down.

“Of course it does. I’m over 65 with chronic illnesses. And I won’t know until Wednesday whether I can get one or not.”

“Wednesday you do what?”

“Go see my Primary Care Doctor, PCP.”

“Primary Care Physician.”

“Same thing.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Anyway, I go see her and I’ll find out if I get a flu shot.”

“Her?”

“Yup, and she’s a cutie. I wonder why I ever went to a male doctor. Course, I can’t say that about Dr. Sinclair in Fairbanks. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here.”

“No shit, you go to a woman doctor?”

“Sure do. Wouldn’t have it any other way now. Not for primary care. I love it.”

“I thought the Lupron was dampening your libido?”

“It is, I think. The doctor doesn’t turn me on that way. I like her attitude. Now that turns me on. She’s smart, caring, not arrogant. She acts like she really is interested in me as a human being. She’s black. But I mean smart, really smart.”

“I guess you’d have to be to survive in medicine’s old boys club.”

“Yah, well, she’s a two-fer on that score, black and female. God, are we old farts, or what?. Some of that prejudice stuff rubbed off on us growing up no matter what. We were raised wallowing around in it, like fish in water. You know I went through the South in the 50’s when they still had segregated facilities, restrooms, lunch counters, that sort of thing. I became mostly prejudiced against southern whites.”

“You’ve told me. But what about your flu shot? I got mine before I left Alaska.”

“Thanks for getting around to telling me.”

“Thank Senator Stevens for taking good care of Alaska.”

“Amen to that. I like New Jersey’s two Senators, Corzine and Lautenberg, but they’re Democratic minnows in a sea run by Republican sharks there in Washington, DC. Alaska must be coming into a heyday, what with the missile defense system going in and the price of oil going up.”

“Not shabby, not shabby at all. Boom or bust, and for now its going to be boom time for a while, I would think. Doesn’t bother me either way. I own my place and I collect Social Security plus whatever I can eke out of my gold claim. There’s still gold in them thar hills, my boy. Gold, I tell you, gold.

We sat there sipping our coffee, letting the camaraderie of the moment sink in. I broke the pleasant silence.

“So how do you think the election is going to go?” The Bush/Cheney versus Kerry/Edwards national election was only days away.

“If Bush doesn’t win it," Fred replied, “I think you're right, Cheney will steal it. Simple as that. Unless there’s an obvious landslide for Kerry which the Republicans will do everything they can to prevent.”

I paused for a moment before responding. “Do you know what disturbs me, well, one thing that disturbs me?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Yah, well, it really doesn’t affect me. Nothing is really going to change for me.”

“You can’t say that after you've convinced me otherwise. Cheney is hell-bent on fighting the Battle of Armageddon in his lifetime, which is the same as ours. He has no doubt that we will emerge victorious, God’s warriors astride the globe. He’s nuts.”

“OK, OK, there is that. But maybe I've exagerated how likely it is to happen.”

“Are you shitting me? Now you don’t think it’s likely? You got your head up your ass? These neocolonialist, Zionist-tinged, Manifest Destiny idiots are taking us right into a test by battle, ‘Let’s have a war and settle it.’ They think God is on our side so we’re going to win ... and we've got the biggest bombs. All we have to do is keep upping the ante until the other side caves. They don’t have a clue about what they’ve started. It might already be too far gone to change before it’s run its course.”

“OK, OK, maybe there's something to it.”

“No shit. Do you want to trust your future to a President that can’t even make sure there’s enough flu shots for all of us? Now that's depressing.”

Monday, October 25, 2004

Growing Old, Part 2

Growing older I have become more forgetful. This concerns me ... sometimes more deeply than other times. The specter of Alzheimer's disease clouds time's horizon.

When I forgot my appointment to get my last Lupron shot in my battle against Prostate cancer, I became depressed. Afterward it became a seemingly simple matter of calling the urology clinic and rescheduling. That is, intellectually it seemed simple. Emotionally it is impossible.

While I can think about doing it. I cannot bring myself to make the call. When I start to make the call, there is an emotional reaction that I think of as similar to trying to get two magnets of the same polarity to touch. There's a lot of resistance there. I feel the same depression that I first felt when I realized I had missed the appointment. As time goes by the reaction gets stronger, not weaker, whenever I think I should actually try to resolve it. I cannot go there.

I have resorted to tentatively talking around the issue with anyone I can get to listen to me. Kind of using it as an example of what my representative sample of a Senior Citizen (a singular sample) is thinking about. Even now I sense that if I directly asked for help, my personality would collapse into a puddle of mush. I can feel the heat of the emotion in having typed that sentence, revealing something that I have been taught is a weakness. I should not have to ask for help.

Even if it means I might die without it.

I am trapped in a mental prison, a maze, constructed in my childhood from which I am still struggling to escape. What is even worse, is that I am not aware of all its walls, not even the ones closest to me.

I know it is worth the effort to be free of it, rather than resign myself to its restrictions in order to be safe. I have escaped parts of my prison.

In the meantime I grow old.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Economics 003, Part 2

So I mention rational planning versus the free market as it relates to the production of flu vaccine yesterday, then lo and behold the New York Times (aka around here as The Times, but so as not to be confused with the London Times or any other Times ... ) has an OpEd piece discussing the entire concept in today's Week in Review section:

The Health of Nations
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
Published: October 24, 2004


Saturday, October 23, 2004

Economics 003

My economics theory doesn't rise to the level of Econ 101 even; nevertheless I think I'm ahead of some the jokers who have PhD's in it.

For instance, anyone still pushing the idea that the free market if left to its Invisible Hand, aka in certain circles as God, will produce a steady supply of flu vaccine needs to have their brain re-examined ... or that the free market will keep the high-rise condos off the hurricane swept beaches of Florida. Get real, folks.

Rational planning is not inimical to free markets. Without rational planning when necessary, free markets run amok!

For we the people of this country to turn our backs on our long history of communities--small and large--getting together to plan for streets, highways, airports, water supplies, cooperative electricity grids, sewer systems, etc., etc., etc. , we would be in a world of hurt.

What is it that gets us all worked up in a lather over an obscure illusion of socialism, but we overlook entirely an obscene level of fascism ... in which we allow our government at all levels to support the interests of monopolistic business cabals to the detriment of the people?

What the hell ever happened to Enlightenment and rational choice when the so-called free market no longer offers rational choices? What's the point in choosing between means of self-destruction? Why can't we choose a sustainable world?

Maybe we really do believe that the only hope for humanity is The Millenium after the return of the Christ and the Battle of Armageddon. Are we truly that mad? The Nazis believed in the thousand year reign of the Third Reich.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Growing old

I went to see my PCP yesterday. (A PCP is a Primary Care Physician for the non-accronym crowd.) Tomorrow I go to see my cardiologist. I also have a urologist and a nephrologist.

The cardiologist and nephrologist are teaching doctors. (I go to UMDNJ--University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.) They have a cloud of Resident Doctors and Interns following them around like mosquitoes ... everytime I come to a stop long enough, they poke me with something. (That's not entirely true, but I like the metaphor.)

My PCP is also a professor, but I see her and my urologist mostly in a clinic/office setting one on one.

I go to doctors a lot because I have a lot going on in my body that needs medical care. I go to UMDNJ and its related Unversity Hospital because I want the best medical care I can get.

I give you all this background because having chronic illnesses can be depressing at times. I know. And for many of us simply talking about what is going in our lives with another person who has been through the same mill, can be of benefit in working through the low spot ... can help put things back in perspective ... and it gets me off my personal, isolated pity-pot of "poor me".

You know, approaching 66 at the end of this month, I no longer am caught up in the bullshit of having to pretend I'm something I'm not. (Gawd, what a relief it was to shed THAT male egocentric insanity!)

At a much younger age I wrote, "It is high time we removed ourselves from our cubicle of pretended perfection, destroyed its walls, and viewed openly the mass of humanity moving with us toward the ultimate solution of existence."

Part of what I want to do with my blog, is share my experiences in growing old, which include my cronic illnesses and their impact on the quality of my life.

One of the startling discoveries I had in growing up was that I wasn't as unique (or sinful) as I thought I was, and with the publishing of the Kinsey Report: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) I learned that masturbation was almost universal in human males which in turn was the beginning of my doubt that the Bible was a true revelation from a real God. I knew I loved Jesus as a "born-again" Christian, but as a teenager I could no more stop masturbating than I could stop eating.

I no longer need to believe the Bible, or that Jesus was God as I did as a child because I believed the sacred elders in my life who taught me this was the only way to escape the fires of Hell for eternity--and believe me, at the time I was deathly afraid of being burned alive! Realizing that they were all lying to me, either consciously or because they refused to ask any questions (dared not ask questions!) was an epiphany of monumental effect.

Just as sexuality is common to all of us (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual ... or a combination), aging is common to everyone who lives long enough. And it is something I am becoming VERY familiar with ... so I'll try to share some of it honestly with you ... the premises being (1.) the commonality of the human condition and (2.) that knowing is better than not knowing.

Cheers!



Wednesday, October 20, 2004

What's important, anyway?

When it comes right down to it, what is important in life?

Why do I ask? A young relative--mid-twenties--of a close friend is dying of cancer. It's a terrible story of misdiagnosis and treatment with the intelligent, beautiful young woman knowing that if only her doctors had got it right in the beginning, this wouldn't be happening.

"Trouble deaf heaven with our bootless cries ..." - Shakespeare

It comes down to all that really, really matters is that we care about one another. That is what I want from you, that you care about me ... not how rich or poor I am, able or disabled, not because of what I can do for you, not because I meet your expectations of me ... but that you care about me simply because I am another human being like you.

And I must take the risk of caring for you before I know whether you will ever care for me.

That doesn't mean we care about everyone equally. That is impossible. But in the intimate relationships of each of our lives, we care for one another because that is the basis of humanity, of family, of community, of friendship, of love ... to give another person the awareness that I care about him or her, the other person. That is the transforming power of love.

Jesus taught us that if we want to transform the world what we have to do is go out into the highways and byways, find the unloved, the uncared for--not en masse, but as individuals--and love them, care for them.

When I feel loved I experience the self-esteem to live fully, and so does the other person.

Don't get me wrong. I do not believe Jesus was "God". He was simply telling us the truth.

Jesus started with twelve disciples and transformed the western world. Love has that power.

In that respect, God is love.

Monday, October 18, 2004

The Sacred Elders: Choices

A Short Story
By Hilding Lindquist
Copyright © 2000,2004 by Hilding Lindquist

"Allen told Gene not to do it," Fred said as we sat down in a window booth overlooking Elliott Bay. It was shortly before noon on a rare sun drenched Tuesday in January. Fred and I were in The Athenian Inn in the Pike Place Market in Seattle, a market workers' hangout during winter when the tourists were gone and the Christmas rush was over.

"What?," I gasped as I looked at Fred and spilled my cup of coffee, misjudging the cramped fit of the table and high-backed bench. The thick ceramic mug hit the corner of the dark wood table and clattered to the polished plank floor. The rich aroma of fresh coffee filled the air as the brown liquid flowed across the worn wood of the restaurant.

Before Fred arrived I had gotten coffee at the counter just inside the entrance. The counter was a U-shaped affair with stools, bowing out from the kitchen toward a bar along the opposite wall. Back a few years the coffee was only fifteen cents at the counter. It became a sit-in for the homeless and the price went up.

"Getting clumsy in your old age?," Fred bantered as he smiled and shook his head at me. "And you said you knew your way around this place."

Fred was sixty-six to my fifty-nine. Gene was sixty-two. We were three gray-haired old farts who had been friends since the pipeline days in Alaska in the mid-seventies-- twenty-five years before--when we chased the available women around Fairbanks.

I picked up my fallen mug as Fred continued, "Allen told Gene not to have the operation. That Gene should trust God to perform a miracle."

"You're putting me on."

"No, I was at Gene's when Allen called. Yesterday. Darndest thing."

Allen was Gene's fundamentalist Christian brother from Georgia. He came up before Christmas to visit Gene for a week. Fred and I met Allen then.

"I'll get that cleaned up," our waitress said, gliding up to our booth. She took the empty coffee mug from my hand, giving me a mock look of disapproval as she bumped my shoulder with her hefty hip. She was a little younger than me. Over the past couple of years on my return trips to Seattle we had gotten to the point of showing each other photos of our grandkids. I never could remember her name. Turning to Fred she asked, "Coffee?"

"Why certainly," he replied, giving her his lopsided grin from beneath his gray handlebar mustache.

"Do either of you use cream?"

"Hot, black, and barefoot," Fred answered.

"Nothing added," I said quickly, self-consciously. She responded to Fred with a slight smile and a wink. I grimaced at him as she walked away.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever works."

I nodded and stroked my own gray mustache, trimmed short with its full beard, and flipped my equally gray ponytail out from under the collar of my worn brown leather jacket. Gene was facing the Big C, an almost inoperable cancer tumor in and around his right lung. The cancer threatened to invade the sack surrounding his heart. I shivered.

One of the bartenders came over carrying a damp rag and mop. He wiped off our table and started mopping the floor in front of the booth. Our waitress returned with our coffee and multi-page menus placing them on the table in front of us. She stood back. Fred and I raised our feet. The bartender made a few energetic swipes under them and the table and left.

"I'll be back in a bit to take your orders," the waitress said. She turned and walked off to another booth.

"Well, I don't think I'd have the operation if it was me, but it's not me," I said, and then bent closer to Fred. "I intend to support whatever decision he makes."

"Hell yes. So do I."

"Who's to say quantity isn't better than quality."

"Huh?"

"Of life, quantity of life. Gene's trying to get a longer life."

"Well, sure."

I settled back. "God, I just had a horrible thought."

"And?," Fred prompted me when I paused.

"Gene's lying on the operating table just about to go under and he starts thinking maybe he shouldn't be doing this, that maybe he's about to be punished by God for showing a lack of faith. He believes that shit, you know. What if it is the end for him? What a crappy way to go."

"Hey, Jack, I feel the same way. You do what you gotta do and you make the most of it. Friends should support that."

"Hell yes," I agreed. "How do you think he's taking it?"

"Who's to tell? Gene just stuffs it outta sight."

I looked at my watch and then toward the entrance to the restaurant. "Where is he anyway? I thought I was late. Then I thought you were late. Gene is late."

"I was late. Gene'll be along. Don't worry about it. We're not going anywhere."

"What'll it be, gentlemen?" Our waitress returned with order book and pen poised.

"Actually, we're waiting for another person," Fred told her.

"And speaking of the Devil, here he comes now," I added and then stood up and called out, "Hey, Gene, over here." I waved. He spotted me and headed to the booth. Several heads turned, first toward me and then toward Gene as he ambled over.

The waitress tucked her order book and pen into her apron pocket. "I'll come back after you all have had a chance to decide. Coffee?," she asked Gene as he walked up.

"Sure."

"Cream?"

"Sure."

"Is it Shirley?," I questioned myself silently as she walked away. "Surely it's Shirley," I said out loud when she was out of hearing, and then chuckled to myself at my comic brilliance. Fred and Gene gave me funny looks. Maybe I'm not the comedian I thought I was.

She was back with his coffee, cream, and a menu by the time Gene was settled into his seat in the booth beside Fred. "Sugar's on the table," she said.

"Thank you, ma'am," Gene responded, smiling up at her.

"You're welcome," she smiled back and left us alone again.

"You seem to be pretty chipper today," I said, taking a sip of my coffee.

"No reason not to be," Gene replied. "Today." He settled back and stirred his coffee.

I looked out the window at the Washington State Ferry plying the waters of the bay, headed west to Winslow on Bainbridge Island across Puget Sound, the snow-capped Olympic Mountains rising in the distance. I thought how great it was to be with good friends.

"So what's up?," I asked, turning back to Gene. He was still rhythmically stirring his coffee.

"Not much. Just looking around the market."

"Pretty quiet now that Christmas is over and only lifers left in the stalls."

"Nuff stuff for me. There's always something around here I'd like to have."

The ferry kept moving, getting smaller. Sunlight glittered off the facets of the small waves, water ruffled by a slight breeze. I turned back once again to Gene slowly and methodically stirring the light brown liquid in the heavy mug in front of him.

"When do you see the doctor again?," Fred asked.

"Thursday."

"This Thursday?"

"Yup."

"Have you decided anything yet?," I asked.

"You gentlemen ready to order?" Our waitress had returned.

"No, I'm afraid I'm not," I answered and looked at my menu.

"I am," Gene said.

Gene and Fred ordered and by the time it was my turn, I was ready. "Scrambled with bacon, wheat toast, no butter, small orange juice," I said. Shirley took our menus and left.

"You know," Gene said, "when I was in Alaska I went fishing a lot. One time I was on the Chatanika River up by Long Creek off the Steese Highway. What's that, 44 mile?" He paused and looked at Fred then me.

Fred shrugged. "I think so," I answered.

"Anyway, the greyling were biting and I was doing catch and release fly fishing, meandering my way along through some willow brush and scrub spruce, following the river as best I could for a little ways out of camp, when I heard something moving around up behind, between me and the highway. I says to myself, 'Oh shit!.' This was grizzly country and there I was without my twelve gauge. Now wasn't that a dumb-ass move. I had left it in the tent and I was now maybe fifty yards up-river from my camp, up until that very moment having the time of my life fishing and not thinking about where I was.

"Then I got into that adrenalin zone, everything just slowed way down. I was cool as a cucumber." Gene laughed at himself and then continued, "And for some god-awful weird reason I thought about what if I played it safe and wound up in a nursing home strapped to a bed with tubes sticking in my veins because I had played it safe. What would I say to myself then? That I didn't go into the wilderness so I could wind up swimming in my own piss on a rubber sheet?" Gene paused and looked out the window, then went on. "I never did find out what made that noise. I probably spooked a moose." Gene paused again and looked at each of us in turn. Fred and I waited.

"Y'know," Gene continued, "some of us come down to the last minute of our lives and know it's that last minute. And if it happens at twenty-five years of age or seventy-five, or sixty-two, it's still gotta be somethin'. I'd like to see it coming with the adrenaline flowing rather than with me crying for someone to help me out of my misery, wallowing around in my own shit, and for sure not because I was afraid to live life, to feel a little adrenaline pumping. Now that's a natural high I can live for." He paused. "Die for? Who knows?

"Anyhow, I'll take the surgery if there's a chance. This is lung cancer not prostrate cancer. It acts fast. But listen, if I wind up on a rubber sheet, you guys are my friends. We've got that covered, right?"

"Sure," I said. "Uh huh," Fred echoed his assurance. We both knew what Gene meant.

Shirley brought our orange juice. "I'll be right back with some more coffee and your breakfasts."

"She married?," Gene asked, leaning forward and whispering across the table to me.

I laughed. "Yes, and I'm sure her husband keeps a shotgun handy, my friend."

"Well, hell, I got at least until Thursday."


The Sacred Elders, II

A Short Story
By Hilding Lindquist
Copyright © 2004 by Hilding Lindquist

I remember as a kid, sitting around listening to old people talk about their operations and illnesses. I used to feel sorry for them, if that was all they had to talk about. Now Fred and I were doing the same thing, sitting in the heart of Manhattan. Was this madness or what? Wasn’t there something we could be doing? I figured I’d better change the subject.

“You know, most of the 80’s when I was living in Seattle, I thought if I never left the Pacific Northwest, that would be all right with me,” I said. “Now look at me, sitting here in Times Square on Manhattan in New York City. I’ve come a long way, baby.”

“Yah, so?,” Fred responded with his typical jovial sarcasm. “If you like this shit so much, how come you always said you loved the wilderness of Alaska so much?”

“I never told you the story of my getting there? My life transforming journey?”

“Yah, right. You told me something about driving a friend’s car up from Seattle and falling in love with Interior Alaska. Tell me again. It’s gotta beat listening to you tell me about heart attacks and hernias. I would have thought you knew what you were getting into after being up there for the pipeline in the 70’s.”

“I never said anything about a hernia, and I didn’t have a heart attack. I was just worried about some symptoms. And in the 70’s I never was sober long enough in Alaska to know anything.”

“Yah, well, tell me how you got to Fairbanks for the winter of 95.”

“OK, it’s like this, back in the summer of 95 as you know I’d been living in Seattle—let’s see you and I went there in 97 when Gene had his operation. In 95 I’d been there for over twenty years working my way up through accounting systems—in the mid-seventies I did that freight discharge system for that barge company out of Seattle for the sealift at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, that’s when the three of us met in Fairbanks when I was passing through."

“I know all that,” Fred said impatiently.

“I’m putting it in perspective here. This is how I’m telling this story. You want to hear it?”

“So tell it, why don’t you?”

“That’s what I’m doing. Anyway, I’d gone from accounting to computer programming to System Analyst bullshit and I had sort of retired from my computer stuff because I was dead-assed tired of fixing Bill Gates bugs in his operating systems, making all our DOS stuff work in Windows 95. Don’t get me wrong, there was damn good money in it because there were a lot of bugs, but it wasn’t creative, not like the early days when I first got started in PC’s and Jobs still hadn’t built his first Apple computer in his garage or wherever that was. And some young guys were back-engineering CP/M in a little electronics shop on Third Avenue. Ah, if the truth were known! Voilà, Microsoft blossoms in Redmond.”

I took a deep breath to let that sink in. Fred nodded and I continued.

“So anyway I’ve told everybody, ‘I am outta here!’ I packed up my shit, gave up my studio apartment as of the end of that July, and made plans to go down to the Oregon Coast, mid-coast around Lincoln City, Newport. I really, really loved the Oregon Coast. I was going to sit on the beach and write the great American novel.”

Fred nodded his agreement. “I remember when you told me you were moving to Oregon, then bingo, you’re ringing my doorbell in Fairbanks,” he said.

I nodded in turn and continued. “So a friend of mine called me. We’d worked together on some social awareness issues out of the Pike Market Senior Center. She was staff at the time and I was a volunteer, doing my ‘good deeds for humanity’ bit. Anyway she didn’t work there any more but we kept in touch and she knew I was leaving town. So she calls me up and tells me her husband has gotten a call out of his union hall to take a job at the Fort Knox Gold Mine in Fairbanks, Alaska, and he has to report for work the next Monday—this being Tuesday, I think, maybe Wednesday. And if I could take care of packing up their apartment and putting everything in storage, then she could drive up with him and all would be just fine and my karma would be pumped up several notches or whatever, and they would pay me, and I could stay in their apartment because the rent had been paid until the end of September. And if I did all this for her she would love me forever and ask her kids to name a grandchild after me. Whatever.”

“And you fell for it,” Fred interjected.

“Yes, I fell for it. What are friends for, Fred? Actually, I enjoyed doing it. Strange, maybe, but true.”

I paused briefly, took a big swig of coffee, and gathered my thoughts. “Are you sure I haven’t told you all this before?”

“Sounds like new stuff to me.”

“OK. I’m packing stuff, shipping some things and putting the rest in storage. They’re calling me everyday and things are progressing rather nicely. In the meantime they’ve left their Suburu Justy, a little 3-cylinder, 3-door hatchback for me to drive around in with the plan being that I would put that in storage for them also. So they call me up and ask if I thought I could find someone who would be willing to drive it to Fairbanks. They had figured out that they needed two cars, and it now was early September, winter was coming. Anyway, I volunteered—mostly because I knew you were there also—and they were ever so grateful. I could stay with them a couple of weeks and get to see Interior Alaska and look you up. That sounded fine to me, so at the end of September I stuffed the Justy full of Alaska essentials and took off, driving from Seattle to the Canadian border, up through Canada, then to Fairbanks. That trip is a story all in itself.”

“Some other time,” Fred responded. “So you got to Fairbanks at the end of September, winter is closing in. You stayed. Like I said, I know you drove a friend’s car up and you fell in love with the winters, but I don’t remember you ever telling me that story behind you driving their car up.”

"Maybe not. Guess I was too awestruck by getting to put my boots on the ground up there, sober. I fell in love with the winters, the place, and the people. Before getting there in 95 I didn’t think a place like Interior Alaska still existed on this earth.”

“I tried to tell you quite a few times.”

“I know, I know. But it didn’t sink in. Living something is a whole lot different than hearing or reading about it."

Sunday, October 17, 2004

The Sacred Elders

A Short Story
By Hilding Lindquist
Copyright © 2004 by Hilding Lindquist

Asexual orientation had appeared in the news that week, but it wasn’t the first topic of conversation for Fred Strom and me, Jack Celsius, as we sat down at a table at Nick’s Gourmet Deli on the southeast corner of 7th Avenue and West 49th Street in Times Square, Saturday afternoon, October 16, 2004.

We were two old farts—I would be 66 on Halloween and he was 73—continuing to catch up on life’s details after a couple years separation. I had moved east to New Jersey in September, 2002, and Fred had stayed in Alaska. He was visiting me for the first time, also his first time to the Big Apple, New York City.

We had started jabbering away at each other as soon as I met him at the Alaska Airlines baggage carousel at the Newark Airport on Thursday. It seemed we hadn’t skipped a beat since I fled Fairbanks after a bout with acute kidney failure which had settled into pre-dialysis chronic kidney disease. I didn’t want to get stuck in an Interior Alaska winter contemplating having to make a trip to a dialysis center three times a week.

Fred was still as healthy as an ox. We had lost a good friend, Gene Richards, to lung cancer in the spring of 2000.

Fred spoke first as we settled into our chairs, two cups of hot black coffee steaming in front of us. “So how do you think George W. will explain the flu vaccine shortage?,” he asked.

“He’ll say Clinton didn’t do anything either,” I replied.

“Or his father, or Reagan, or Carter, or …,” he left his sentence hanging unfinished.

“Did you read that article in the Times Magazine I showed you?”

The New York Times Magazine for the next day had been delivered with the Sunday supplement sections that morning. In it was Ron Suskind’s article about Bush, Without a Doubt.

“Uh huh,” Fred responded. “You called it on him. Bush is a damn True Believer." There was brief pause and then he continued, "But aren’t you worried about not getting a flu shot in your condition?”

“Yah, but I really got depressed when I missed my Lupron shot last week. I totally forgot the appointment. Old age is creeping up on me, or I was just too excited about your coming to visit and I forgot everything else.”

“That stuff working?”

“Uh huh, my last PSA the week before was normal, so they’re thinking pretty positive about my prostate cancer.”

“Shit, is there anything you don’t have?”

“You know I went into the emergency room last month because I was worried about some soreness just under my sternum, and I was feeling kind of light-headed. Thought something might be happening to my heart. It got my attention.”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“I thought I was going to have to tell you not to come, but the doctors think I can weather whatever is wrong with me. They put me in the hospital for a couple of days, gave me some pills, and told me to come back for some follow-up, next Friday actually.”

“Did they say what was wrong?”

“Nah, but they said they would have gone in and looked for it except my kidneys probably couldn’t stand the action.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh.”

We sat there sipping our coffee for a few minutes, watching the pedestrian and vehicular traffic flow past the corner outside. I broke the silence.

“Did you read the stuff on asexual orientation in the news this week?”

“No, what did it say?”

“That a small percentage of the population has no sexual activity whatsoever and don’t miss it.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh, and guess what?”

“What?”

“I’m in that group since I got out of the hospital in 2002.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh, I think it’s the Lupron.”

“What do your doctors say?”

“I don’t tell them.”

“What?!”

“Like I told you, I’m in the asexual group that doesn’t miss sexual activity. I like it this way.”

“You have got to be kidding me! You?!”

“Me.”

“What’s going on here?”

“Well, as near as I can tell, if I don’t feel the urge, I don’t feel any frustration and I don’t miss it. In a way its like in, ‘out of sight, out of mind’. For me its ‘no testosterone, no thoughts’.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s my final answer, at this point.”

“That’s kind of scary.”

“That’s what I used to think if this would ever happen. But things pretty much slowed down after I reached my mid-fifties, and I wasn’t too worried about it then. Now it’s totally gone and I’m loving it.”

“Really? You can’t mean that.”

“I do, I do mean it. I used to think the same way you do, no longer. I can now fully understand the wisdom of the sacred elders in sexual matters. It isn’t getting wiser. It’s simply getting older.”

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Economics 002 and other stuff

O.K., O.K., I know economics isn't rocket science, and I was a little too eager in my prior posting (Economics 001) to point out its shortcomings by comparing it to the precise science of measuring the energy it takes to boil water. I should have used weather forecasting.

Still there are some aspects of the generally accepted axioms of free market economics that appear to be a bit absurd ... on their face ... AND after further examination. Well, let's say the axioms that are used to justify the actions of the particular person wielding enough power to act don't seem to add up all the time.

One way I have come to look at the business cabal monopolists who preach the glory of free market capitalism is they are like beach-goers who justify the use of funnels to make cone shaped mounds of sand on the beach while they disregard the effect of wind storms and tides. As they pour the sand through their funnel and it comes out in a perfect cone (if the wind isn't blowing and the water's not rising) they point to it as proof of the "Invisible Hand" at work.

Here we are with a shortage of flu vaccine staring at us and high-rise buildings crowding hurricane swept coastlines (to name but two instances of the irrational nature of some markets) ... and we still denounce rational economic planning as somehow anti-God. How can we forget our heritage in which communities of all different sizes and shapes come together to plan for streets, public transportation, utilities, education ... etc., etc., etc.?

Has our greed for the big individual material payoff so constricted our thinking that we reject any notion of raising the safety net to a reasonable level? Do we really believe that we need the threat of homelessness and malnutrition and untreated illness to force people to work for the minimum wage ... even if too young or too old or too disabled or too ill to work?

When did we as a Christian nation forswear the teaching of Jesus to judge ourselves by how we take care of the least among us? What have we become?

But these are questions. I really don't have the answers either. It's just that, to me, they are obvious questions that need answers that we must form together.


Other stuff...




The leaves are turning color.

I walked Odin (our house mutt) and the neighbors' dog, Pepper, up in the South Mountain Reservation this morning.

That's right up there at the top of my list of desired things to do. Gawd, life is great!

Friday, October 15, 2004

Letter to Maureen Dowd

Re: Courting the Finicky Women, By Maureen Dowd, October 15, 2004

Dear Ms. Dowd:

Right on! Gawd, if these two (Bush and Kerry) are the top of their respective heaps, we need new heaps.

I think the evidence of our nation's decline is in the who's who list at the top.

Why would a mentally healthy person ever aspire to leadership in one of our public arenas? You have to deny your humanity, your natural warts, your learning experiences (aka mistakes) ... and resort to (what used to be called) air-brushing your resume.

Obviously the greedy and power hungry are applying ...

In the mix competing for the top jobs, we have the ex-Halliburton CEO and the trial lawyer, and we have "God has chosen me to be President" versus "It is my destiny to be President".

Of course, these could just be the front men for those with real power ... is there another explanation for the current political scene?

Maybe it's simply that we are a nation gone mad, drunk on our own power and wealth ... thinking we have been chosen by God because we are willing to destroy anything or anyone who gets in the way of our Manifest Destiny.

Regards,
NC Swede

Thursday, October 14, 2004

The coming Presidential election

Last night was the third and final Presidential debate between Bush and Kerry. I didn't watch it.

I watched CNN immediately after the debate to catch the spin. They gave the debate to Kerry, 52% to 39%. Quoting CNN's website: "A CNN/USA Today/Gallup snap poll taken immediately after the presidential debate found that respondents gave a significant edge to Kerry over Bush, 52 percent to 39 percent." You can check out the complete article at:


But does it mean anything ... that Kerry has "won" all three debates?

Personally, I believe that unless it is a landslide for Kerry--enough of a vote difference so that manipulation of the count is out of the question--Bush is going to be declared the winner.

You can't tell me that a group of political operatives that did what they did in Florida last time around are not prepared to do whatever it takes to come out on top this time ... after being in power for four years.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This political cabal simply adheres to a well-defined set of principles. They individually and collectively have a core set of beliefs that guide their individual and collective actions. They don't have to be told what to do to "win". They KNOW what to do to win.

The innermost members of this cabal (the Vulcans) are selected and rejected on their adherence to their core set of beliefs centered in Straussian fascism. (See prior blog entries.)

They are willing to use anyone as cannon fodder in their build-up to the final battle of their defined good over their defined evil, mythically prophesied in the Biblical end-time's Battle of Armageddon, which will lead us--they believe--into a millennium paradise.

Where else have we heard of a thousand years of glorious rule as the result of victory in battle? the Third Reich, maybe?

If those of us who believe that rulers must have the valid consent of the governed--that is, must be democratically and legitimately chosen--allow THIS election to be stolen (2000 wasn't the first time an election in the USA was stolen from the people) the United States of America will be descending into dictatorial darkness rather than resuming its rise toward the shining dream of freedom for all.


Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Autumn near New York

The leaves are turning color. Autumn is here.

Today is a bright, sunlight day. The perfect day of the year ... crisp, cool, colorful, sunny ... a day to move around in, do things. Doubly, triply true in Interior Alaska where the coming of fall meant winter was right behind ... and you damn sure better be ready ... because ready or not, winter would arrive! I had seven years of that in Fairbanks, and even more years in and around Duluth, Minnesota, growing up. (I do love a good winter!)

Here in New Jersey, we kind of ease our way into winter, and while it snows once in awhile most years, snow is not a given. So what's the allure for an old North Country Swede?

It's Manhattan. It's living comfortably in my old age (I'll be 66 at the end of this month) a little over 35 minutes away from Penn Station on the Midtown Direct New Jersey Transit Line ... within walking distance of Times Square aka Broadway, or Greenwich Village in the other direction ... with Harlem a short subway ride just north of Times Square and Central Park.

Gimme a high-five, is this heaven or what?! ... for an old fart like me.

Well, there is one caveat to all that ... my kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids live on the OTHER side of the Mississppi River ... all but one of them on the other side of the Rocky Mountains.

Heaven doesn't have to be perfect, does it?


Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Economics 001

As the title indicates this blog enty doesn't even rise to the level Econ 101. I simply had to say something to coincide with the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to two "Mavericks" as in the article's headline in the New York Times this morning: 2 Mavericks in Economics Awarded Nobel Prize

I've started reading some Economics stuff in a dream-like aspiration of working on a degree in economics as a way to struggle against the onslaught of old-age ... or some such grandeous goal that I can tell my great-grandchildren I am pursuing ... hopefully as an inspiration.

To tell you the truth, I can't believe what I've read so far. "These" people (Economists) are lost in an unreality of their own invention, and struggle as they might (which is mightily), they can't make their sophisticated mathematical models predict anything in reality very far into the future, other than the results of their models ... results that do NOT correlate very well, if at all, with reality. (I know, that's redundant ... but I wanted you to get the picture.)

It's like a scientist predicting how much energy it would take to boil a gallon of water at an altitude of 1000 meters with the water starting at its freezing temperature. If the scientist (or engineer) or high school student got the wrong answer, we would say that person didn't know what he or she was doing. Not so in the case of Economists. They continually get their answers wrong, and we keep going back for more answers. (Who is insane here?)

The situation parallels in my mind what I think about witchcraft. The random occurance of events is in a narrow enough range that the witch doctor nails the outcome frequently enough to retain credibility through our own wishful thinking ... or we are the rulers and we are able to make the witch doctor predict the outcome that best serves our goal ... which is to retain power.




Sunday, October 10, 2004

Straussian fascism, continued

Straussian fascism advocates the subversion of democracy by an elite to gain political power.

Leo Strauss, the now deceased guru and idol of Straussian fascism, was a German Jew who watched Hitler come to power in Nazi Germany. He had good reason to suspect the good sense of a majority of the voters. It is a reason continuously raised throughout the development of western civilization: left to the common citizen, will a nation choose the right way? Does mob rule produce any good thing? Those who believe in some version of the preeminent role for a ruling elite have always been with us.

The United States of America dealt with this issue in its constitution through a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, and guaranteeing to the common citizen inalienable rights both in our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to our constitution. We established a republic and the rule of law to define the boundaries for the herd, thus establishing a workable democracy.

Straussian fascists actively attempt to subvert this democratic foundation whereby political power ultimately derives from the consent of the governed. They believe they are doing this for our own good, to protect us from their definition of the true evil in the world ... evil that can defeat us from within or without.

Straussian fascism teaches that through adherence to a set of philosophical principles as the litmus test of membership in an elite group, that group can gain control of political power in the USA by advancing its members to positions of power in all of the branches of government.

Straussian fascists believe their commitment and specific slant to deciphering philosophical wisdom combined with their willingness to exercise power to achieve their goals will bring about the millennium and protect us from evil ... and are willing to engage in the Battle of Armageddon, if necessary, to do so. They believe that it is this very willingness to be uncompromisingly strong in the pursuit of their philosophical principles that will save our nation from an ignoble end.

The Bush-Cheney cabal, the Neo-cons, the Vulcans, are Straussian fascists.

Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin ... and now the Bush-Cheney cabal ... all were in power during my lifetime. They all have used the tactics of the big lie and magnifying an external threat to attain and retain political power, justifying it by believing they know what is best for the common citizen.

I believe it is dictatorial and secret control by a governing elite that is evil.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Saturday, October 09, 2004

My thoughts on the death penalty

My thoughts on the death penalty: I'm against it, period.

Want to know why? There is no better reason than can be found in today's New York Times editorial, An Inexplicable Vote for Death.

There are far too many concrete and proven examples of the miscarriage of justice in death penalty cases tied to the race, social status, and wealth of the defendent versus the victim.

And that's death penalty cases where defendents are SUPPOSED to have the best defense lawyers available. Think how that relates to all criminal cases.

Maybe there is something to the fact that so many prisoners claim they are innocent of the crime of which they were convicted.

Maybe we simply refuse to look outside the walls of our own cubicle of pretended perfection at the vagaries of humanity moving with us toward the ultimate solution of our fate. Do we go forward with dignity and truth, or with fear and self-serving fiction?


Friday, October 08, 2004

Straussian fascism

The more I learn about the Bush-Cheney cabal bearing the name of The Vulcans, the more I am bothered by their rejection of populist democracy, and their willingness to lie about it to retain power.

cabal: the artifices and intrigues of a group of persons secretly united to bring about an overturn or usurpation especially in public affairs; also : a group engaged in such artifices and intrigues. -Meriam-Webster Dictionary
Former Secretary of State George Schultz is labled the "father" of the Neo-cons. The name "Vulcans" was attached to a sub-set of these same Neo-cons working as a team on George W. Bush's 2000 Presidential campaign by Condoleezza Rice, currently Bush's National Security Advisor. The originating guru and now deceased idol of the "movement" is German Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss, who immigrated from Hitler's Germany and became a professor at the University of Chicago.

If you care at all about what is taking place in the United States today and how we got into the mess in Iraq, google the web for "Leo Strauss" and "Strasussians", then sit with your feet firmly planted as you read lest you fall of your chair.