Category Archives: Friends

Family, Friends, GeekWorld, Health, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Attenshun!

April 8, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Spring New Shoulder Moon

Good conversation yesterday with friend Bill Schmidt. He turned 81 on Friday, a birthday call. He’s deeply involved in a business, UFaceme, (picture above), writing code, doing statistical analysis, using pitch decks to secure investors. May we all be as vital at his age.

My phone call with him took place at the Final Approach, the food court at the cell phone lot for Denver International Airport, while I waited for SeoAh’s text. She flew in from Atlanta yesterday to stay with us until Thursday. Her English has improved significantly and we chatted easily on the way back from the airport.

Been wondering for a while why I’m so damned exhausted. Caretaking seems to demand far more of my psyche than my body. The various chores I do, by themselves, are not physically onerous. Washing dishes. Not hard. Doing the laundry. Not hard. Running the vacuum, picking up. Not hard. Grocery shopping. Not hard. Taking Kate to medical appointments, handling the tasks with her that being one-handed makes difficult. Not hard. Feeding and managing the dogs. Not hard. The sum of them all? Makes me, as evening approaches, short of emotional reserve and wanting to flop in a chair. Why?

Well, a reason occurred to me. Decision fatigue.* This involves the affective cost of constantly making decisions. The theory suggests that we have a limited amount of attention and choice-making each day. Sleep restores it, but as we make decisions our decision making ability depletes, often quite rapidly, leaving us emotionally drained and less than crisp in whatever we’re doing.

How does this apply to caretaking? All those not hard things each require a certain level of attention and decision making. Do I wash the dishes now or do I wait until after supper? How much laundry soap do I use? Which setting on the machine? Is it time to vacuum again? Does this stuff need to get put away? Where does it go? Why isn’t Rigel eating? What can I do to help her? What’s on the grocery list? Do I need to get gas? You get the idea.

Though none of these things individually are hard, many of them are ones that Kate takes care of in the normal division of labor in our relationship. That means I don’t have settled, habitual ways of handling them that bypass decision making. Over time I would gain those, figure out a way to include all of them in my day without having to find the detergent, measure it, wonder how long the cycle takes. But for now each of them requires a flood of mini-decisions, each of which drains energy.

Just writing about this makes me want to find a chair, flip on the TV and zone out for a while.

*decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision making.^[1]^[2] It is now understood as one of the causes of irrational trade-offs in decision making.^[2] For instance, judges in court have been shown to make less favorable decisions later in the day than early in the day. wikipedia

Aging, Family, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Kate Still At Ortho Colorado

March 24, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Spring New Shoulder Moon

Kate had break through pain yesterday and nausea that they couldn’t control well. So, she’s still at Ortho Colorado. Plenty uncomfortable, but problems that seem, at least to me, manageable. Unpleasant sequelae from the meds and the cutting. I imagine she’ll come home today. Still convinced this was the right thing and that her care has been very good.

A strange sense of exhilaration with all the changes occasioned by Kate’s surgery. I find myself whistling on the way into the hospital, generally feeling good. It’s as if the additional load is something I needed. Weird, eh?

As also happens in these situations, often enough to be predictable, a lapse in the daily routine led to Gertie consuming a substantial number of Kate’s thc edibles. My fault. Gertie is, right now, pretty stoned. We had a similar incident with Kepler a couple of months ago and he slid down the stairs, looking confused. Apparently all mammals have a cannabinoid system and cannibis receptors. Gertie seems very unhappy, I imagine because her left leg makes her unsteady to begin with and the mary jane? Adds to it.

Beth Evergreen has reached out to us in several ways. Individual members have offered to bring food or otherwise help. Leah, the executive director, called, wanting to know if we needed anything. Several folks from our mussar group responded to my e-mail on Thursday with love and concern. For both of us. A thought that keeps going through my mind: beloved community. Christian churches aspire to this, Beth Evergreen achieves it. I’m proud to be a member of the congregation.

One other thing I noticed. Both Kate and I were worried about her dying during surgery. Why? Well, it happens. Rarely, but it happens. Jeff Glantz, a member of Beth Evergreen, had a successful operation to remove a malignant brain tumor, then four days after surgery, he died. This was a couple of weeks ago. Jeff’s situation was on our minds, too.

I mention this because neither of us owned up to this concern until the surgery was over. By not talking about it before, by letting the death taboo keep it hidden, we lost a chance to console each other, to go a little deeper into our relationship.

Aging, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Woolly Mammoths

Friend and Family

March 7, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

20180121_172506

Remember that deep muscle ache I got during my session for a new workout? Well, it’s not gone. If I didn’t have a collection of good pain meds, it would be interfering with my sleep. On my second visit to On the Move Fitness, their usual pattern to ensure I have the new exercises down, Debbie told me to go easier on my leg work for a couple of weeks. I have, and it’s getting better. But slowly.

Nothing like the pain Kate has in her right shoulder. We’re coming up on her shoulder replacement surgery on the 22nd. What I’ve learned, relearned really, from my leg pain is that pain doesn’t have to be searing, 8 or 9 pain, to screw up sleep. And that lost sleep can exacerbate both physical and psychic pain. Kate’s dealt with this for months, years in the case of her bursa. Yet she persists. I admire that in her. Tough lady.

Saw Scott Simpson yesterday at Brook’s Tavern. He spent a week in Carbondale visiting Corey and Todd and was on his way to Pagosa Springs in the southern part of the state to see Heather. Hwy 285 goes almost the whole way, so his route took him through Conifer.

Scott’s a Woolly and a friend of many years. He’s also recently retired, a year in May. We got caught up on family, discussed the unbelievable DJT. Scott’s tinkering with songs, creating them. He’s a first class drummer, but wants to add writing music. He’s in that retirement stage called figuring out what the hell I’m gonna do now. A long process and often with changing results. Fun, though. At least for the most part.

Art and Culture, Asia, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

Simcha

March 5, 2018 Charles 1 Comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

“The noun simcha is mentioned in the Bible 94 times and is derived from the verb samach, which appears 154 times in the text. It is rooted in the Akkadian word shamahu meaning sprout or flourish.” Simcha, The Dayton Jewish Observer

A thing of beauty is a joy forever. So says Keats in his Endymion. Kate and I are leading the mussar class on Thursday, focused on joy and sadness. What else is a joy forever?

Most of the material I’ve read about joy distinguishes it from pleasure with a time distinction. A bite of food, a kiss, a winning hand, a new toy brings pleasure in the moment, but the pleasure dissipates quickly. Joy, to paraphrase Keats, is a thing of beauty forever. Joy, in other words, is lasting.

Rabbi Jamie says true joy can be recalled and experienced again whenever we want. Not fully sure about that, but a finger on the scale in favor of a lasting experience seems right to me.

Kate has come up with an exercise that will get us started on considering joy in our own lives. She designed a sheet with three columns: single-digit, adolescence, adult. We will write as many instances of joy as we can recall from each of these life phases. My hope is that in telling our stories of joy that we can experience them again and help others experience them with us.

How can we increase joy in our lives? Can we? (A)…rabbinic teaching concerning simcha points to the inner self as the source of contentment and joy. “Aizehu ashir? Hasameach bechelko, Who is rich? He that rejoices in his own portion (Avot 4:1).” ibid

So at least part of joy is perspective. What makes our life rich? Joyful? Knowing what is enough. What is enough? No less than we need, no more than we require. This seems to link joy to gratitude. If we have enough, we are grateful for what we have. Our life gains in simplicity since we don’t end up on the constantly promoted hedonic treadmill.

With simplicity, then, we know deep satisfaction. Not only do we have enough, but we do not waste our energy and our worry on getting more. Ah.

Joy yoshitoshi Last week at mussar we had a fascinating conversation on the essential dourness of both Jewish and northern European cultures stimulated by the Norwegian concern that they had won too many medals in the winter Olympics. In both cases happiness, and by correlation, joy, are suspect. Why are you so happy? What makes you think that will last?

In the Jewish instance this trait seems to correlate with the multiple times in Jewish history, starting with slavery in Egypt, that a golden age or at least a comfortable existence had been destroyed by pogroms, the expulsion from Spain, the holocaust. Are you happy now? Just wait.

In the northern European instance it seems to have more to do with seriousness. “For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; “Dust thou art, to dust returnest,” Was not spoken of the soul.” Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Both cultures, in other words, find joy and delight and glee and exultation, ecstasy and exhilaration suspicious at best and distracting at worst. Distracting from what? From the possibility of life’s stability being snatched away in an instance. From the need to keep the shoulder to the grindstone, quite literally. From the guardedness that protects us from disappointment, suffering, pain. Joy may make us vulnerable.

So it’s no wonder that joy is a middot, a character trait that needs cultivation. The soil for it is rocky, like that in our backyard here on Shadow Mountain, at least in these two cultures.

How to do that? I chose to scan my life looking for joyful moments. My hope is that I can begin to identify in the now, embrace them, live in them. Looking at my list (it’s posted here.) I can see some common threads. Intimacy: seeing Orion at night, dogs nuzzling, the mountain night sky full of stars, hugging Kate, hearing from Tom, Bill, Mark, seeing them. Challenging myself: learning Latin, using my sumi-e brushes, grinding ink, having a new idea, reading a new book, writing ancientrails. Letting the world in: driving over Kenosha pass and seeing South Park laid out ahead, the golden aspen among the lodgepoles on Black Mountain, paying close attention to the natural world. Being in community: working with Marilyn and Tara and Anshel, setting up for adult education events at Beth Evergreen, having an idea, sharing it, seeing something happen. Travel: hearing the howler monkeys on the road to Angkor, leaving for a trip, rolling retreats (roadtrips), the earthen smells when getting off the plane on Maui, Kauai, Hawai’i. Inner moments: the moment of mystical connection with the universe in 1967, meditation, remembering the two year old me who learned to walk after polio, mindful cooking.

One track for increasing the joy in my life then would be to seek intimate moments, identify new ways to challenge myself, stay alert and let the world in, continue at Beth Evergreen, travel, allow time to cultivate the inner life.

“On the bright side, simcha is a word laden with exhilaration and festive activities. Simcha expresses not only the joy of an event, but it is also the noun which means a happy event.

A holiday is a simcha, a family gathering is a simcha, a wedding is a simcha, the birth of a child is a simcha and a Bar or Bat Mitvah is a simcha.

The host of an event is a baal simcha and the sound of joy resonating from the event is kol simcha.

Simchat yetzirah, a joy of creativity, is a way to describe the exhilaration one feels while being engaged in a creative process…

(A)…rabbinic teaching concerning simcha points to the inner self as the source of contentment and joy. “Aizehu ashir? Hasameach bechelko, Who is rich? He that rejoices in his own portion (Avot 4:1).” ibid

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mussar, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Yesterday

March 2, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Back to On the Move Fitness for my second session on the new workout. Unusually, I experienced significant discomfort in my hip, quad and lower back after Debbie gave me the new workout on Tuesday. Not the result desired. We both suspected the one leg squats, so she took those out and put in goblin squats, which I’d been doing, holding a weight in both hands in front of your body, then doing a squat. Repeat.

Getting new workouts every 4-6 weeks has been really good for me, keeps things fresh and allows somebody who knows what they’re doing to design progressions into the exercises. And, to pull back when necessary. My leg work will be less intense for the next couple of weeks. Still ouching, but not nearly as bad as Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Debbie said something odd when I was there on Tuesday. “You’re moving a lot better now than when you first came in. But even then you had a basic strength.” She attributed it to our having Irish Wolfhounds because they’d come up in conversation about her new rescue dog, Finnigan. In fact I’ve been working out since I turned 40 and did often heavy manual labor in Andover for twenty. She saw me about six weeks after I’d finished p.t. for the new knee, so I was not in the best shape. It made me feel good for someone to recognize the effort I’ve put in to keep my body functional.

Thursday afternoon mussar. Talking about joy and sadness, how to cultivate joy. The middot of this month. Middot = character trait. Though the discussion was good, the time immediately afterwards was even better. I shared in vaad (speaking into the group, with no feedback. Concentrated listening.) about melancholy, being there now and having learned to listen to the melancholy instead of trying to fix it. Waiting it out.

After the class brokeup, a guy said he had the same experience , “After my dad died, when I was 50. Since then, every year.” A human moment. Then I spoke to a woman who’d been away for a couple of months. They’d been tough for her and we talked for awhile. Another woman, who played Queen Esther in the Purim play the night before, when complimented on her acting, said, “I just lived out my inner Jewish princess.” We all laughed. This is a group that cares about each other, about the journey, the ancientrail that is life.

Next week Kate and I are presenting. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Garden, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Judaism, Kabbalah, Mountains, Myth and Story, Our Land and Home, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

March 1, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

The full new life moon had a cloudy cover as it rose in the east yesterday, a halo. Driving back from the Purim celebration last night it was moving west, though then in a clear sky, Orion visible nearby. This morning as I came up to the loft it sat near the horizon, visible only through under the branches of our lodgepoles. This bout of melancholy began under the waning Imbolc moon, grew stronger under the first days of the new life moon and now seems likely to be gone during its waning. Maybe a month total. As these visits go, not too bad.

Fellow melancholic and friend, Tom, called yesterday and we talked about the gremlin’s energy sink, its dredging up of old emotions, its general sucking out of life’s marrow. We both have long acquaintance with it. And, long experience does yield some perspective, a hint of how it will probably go. For me, the down is matched by an up, a safer version of the bi-polar depression to mania swing. The up has not come yet, but I can feel it on its way.

A couple of things have come into focus over the last few days. One, I need to work more with my hands, with my body. Now that the turmoil of our first years here has begun to subside I’m missing the garden, the orchard. Not just the growing, the plant care, the flowers and vegetables and fruits fresh out of our soil, but carrying bags of compost or digging or moving bee hives, tending to the raspberry patch. If I don’t do this, I can get stuck in my head. Not the only part of me I want to nurture.

Two, I need to read more, be quiet more. Meditate. I’ve been reading novels, as is my habit, and I read news of all kinds on the web, but I need to shift my reading diet a bit to include more philosophical, theological non-fiction. Example. I began re-reading, as I mentioned, David Miller’s, The New Polytheism. That’s the sort of work I’m talking about. It sends sparks off in so many different directions.

A few possibilities for more tactile activity. Kate and I looked at a greenhouse made by an outfit called Grandio Elite. I’m not interested in the very laborious work it would require to garden in the rocky Shadow Mountain soil. But, in a greenhouse, yes. I miss working with the soil, with plants. And, we could grow plants in the greenhouse and put them outside in containers during our short growing season. Green thumb Kate grew tomatoes here last year. Not easy.

Finally got to working with my brushes and ink, rice paper. Still a really, really long way to go before I have any true facility with it, and that’s a good thing, lots of practice required. My presentation for the kabbalah class, unveiling the Hebrew letters, will be certain letters drawn with these ancient Chinese tools and a line of poetry congruent with the letters deeper meanings written below it. Here’s a couple of alephs and a mem.

Hiking, of course. And to that end, more new workouts. Though. Got a new workout Tuesday and my left quad and bursa have complained a lot. Gotta figure out what caused that. Still, these workouts give me more strength and balance, continued ability to be in the world with my body.

And the reading. Oddly, the deeper my immersion into Judaism, the more my interest in Taoism increases. So. Diving into those books, some online educational material. Also, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. Material on emergence. James Hillman. Magic and reenchantment. Reinvention of the sacred. The auld Celtic faith.

These things seem to have traction and will be a significant departure from the immediate past. A balancing, or rebalancing, of time, of attention. An outcome I expect from melancholy. Underway now.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Feelings, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, The West, Third Phase

A Very Jewish Weekend

February 26, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Silhouette of hiking man jumping over the mountains

In psyche news. The heaviness seems to be gone, that drug down, want to keep going down feeling. When I’m in it, my soul seems more attracted to weight, willingly binding itself to a fall. The heaviness is a major physical clue to melancholy for me, a way I know to check for other signs. Its absence does not mean the melancholy has lifted, but does usually precede it. May it be so.

A very Jewish weekend. On Saturday we attended bagel table, an informal sabbath worship with conversation and, you guessed it, bagels. The presenter this week though wasn’t Rabbi Jamie, but Rabbi Evet of B’nai Havurah, a reconstructionist synagogue in Denver proper.

A congregant of Beth Evergreen, loved and respected, a mensch, had died suddenly, just that morning. The conversation about his death after operation for a malignant brain tumor was hushed, shocked. When Rabbi Evet started the service, the conversation quieted, but the looks, the feeling of it was still palpable. She stopped the service and had us focus on his death. It was a powerful moment, one in which what was being suppressed got lifted up. People told stories about Jeff, about what he meant to Beth Evergreen.

Evette_Lutman2-350x247 Rabbi Evet teased out characteristics from those stories after a bit and suggested that a way to honor his memory was to figure out how to put back into our little community the attributes lost by his death. His smile. His willingness to help. His commitment to education.

Steve turned to Marilyn and said, “Marilyn, I really appreciate everything you do here. We don’t say those things out loud while people are alive. Maybe we could.” And, later, after the service was over, Marilyn came up to Kate and me and said, “I want to tell you both how much you mean to me.”

“And you to us,” I said. “Through having met you and found Beth Evergreen, we feel like we’ve finally moved to Colorado. This is our community now.”

“Makes a difference, doesn’t it?” Marilyn replied.

“It makes all the difference.”

Lev_Poster_LB I meant that and this experience with Rabbi Evet illustrates it. Beth Evergreen is a place where the heart and the mind both get their due. In fact, lev, the Hebrew word for heart, is also the word for mind. There is no other word for mind. Mind and heart are lev.

On Sunday we drove over to North Turkey Creek, up Peaceful Hills to Meadow View Road. The occasion was a new member/prospective member gathering at the home of Dan and Kristin. 40 or so folks, some board members, Rabbi Jamie and Tara, folks I knew and many I didn’t gathered around, yep you guessed it, bagels and lox and fruit and veggies.

The energy was good. There were little kids and older adults, all milling around, getting to know each other. I enjoyed the time. As is now usual for me though, I felt a sense of relief when we left and I got outside, to the quiet. Like the candidate event at the Friedman’s a couple of weeks ago I can hear in these settings, but it’s hard and stressful. I don’t always notice the stress until it’s absent.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Great Wheel, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Life opens forward if you let it

February 18, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

Friend Jim Johnson had an opening of his work in Aberdeen, South Dakota the other night. His new work is lots of colors, strings, leaves, nice bright colors as Simon and Garfunkel sang. Jim, and his long time friend Mark, have both taken their art with them into the third phase. Mark has written one book, an initiation tale, about his time in Vietnam and is at work on another, a hero’s quest tale of his time in Fiji and on the road. He also had a show of new work a couple of years ago, his bridge series. I admire them, keeping Bridgit’s hearthfire lit. Life opens forward if you let it.

Bridgit is the triple goddess in the auld Celtic faith, patroness of poetry, of song, of craft, of the creative spirit. At the double monastery in Kildare, Ireland (men and women), Christians kept her eternal fire burning even after the church absorbed her as a saint. This is Bridgit’s time. She’s the goddess of Imbolc, the cross quarter holiday when the magic of life in the womb brought hope to ancient Celts after the long fallow season.

bridgit's holy well, Killdare, Ireland — Bridgit’s holy well, Kildare, Ireland

This is my creed outworn (see Wordsworth in the post below). Or, part of it. James Hillman, a very interesting Jungian analyst, said we find the gods in our pathologies. I believe that, too. Jung said we find the gods in our diseases. I believe we find them, too, in passions, in new art, in turning over old life like a furrow in which to plant the divine seeds of a new one.

A while back I talked about doing the work that only I can do. Jim and Mark are doing theirs. Over the last few weeks, reading Emerson and Deng Ming-Dao in daily meditations, I’ve found resonance with this idea. Emerson said, for example, in his essay, Success, “Each (person) has an aptitude born with (them). Do your work…It is rare to find a (person) who believes their own thought or who speaks that which (they were) created to say.” Ming-Dao, in his 365 Days of the Tao, says, in his entry #40, subconscious: “Everything to be understood is within us. All that must be transcended…is within us. All the power of transcendence is within us. Tap into it and you tap into the divine itself.”

Approa39 It is axiomatic that each person is unique, a particular example of the human, of life, of the creative process that began at tzimtzum or the big bang, thrown into a particular time and a particular place. It is that particularity that Emerson elevates. It is that particularity which formulates within us, as instantiations of the whole, our own work. When we tap into the sacred, the shard of ohr (divine light) lodged within us, we come to know our work. And, the world needs it because you are the only one with this spark of the divine and the only one in the whole history of the universe who has it. If you don’t express your ancientrail, it will die with you and the world will be poorer.

We need you. As you are. Not as a bearer of tradition. Not as a follower of rules and laws, no matter what their claim to authority. Not as a sycophant to the culture in which you were raised. No, none of these. Instead we need the you that dances among the stars, the you that drinks from the deep holy wells within you. We need the you that only you can be.

Yes, it’s a scary prospect that you might be worthwhile just for what you are. Not for the degrees you’ve earned or the children you’ve had or the job you do, but for the you that carries a singular vision, a once in eternity vantage point on the universe. Tell us what you see. Tell us what you know. Tell us who you are. We need you, all of us need you.

Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

February 16, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New Life Moon

photoR — Left to right, starting in the back: Jim, Bill, Paul, Tom, me, Mark, Warren

Excited about the possibility of four good friends visiting for a Colorado mountains road trip. These friends, Tom, Bill, Mark, and Paul, are as good a friends as any guy has a right to have in his life. Fun, bright, compassionate, engaged, still pushing their own limits. (in age appropriate ways) High times with great altitude just over the pass. As Tom said in a recent birthday card, referring to our 30 plus years with the Woolly Mammoths, “…almost half a life time.” Well, when you put it that way…

Dogs, Family, Friends, Health

Medicine. Good.

January 30, 2018 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Imbolc Moon

Met a charming Dr. David Schneider yesterday. Kate’s shoulder guy. He said thin women like her were ideal candidates for a new shoulder, either the reverse or the normal. He recommends the reverse implant because it not only provides pain relief; it also will allow her to reach above her head. Her bones and muscles that support the shoulder are all strong so he anticipates a good result. Sometime in the next couple of months. Not scheduled yet.

“Boring,” he said. And boring is good. One of the first things I learned after marrying Kate was that you do not want to be an interesting patient.

pacemaker history

He told several stories, starting by commenting on the three lead pacemaker that Kate has. It showed up in the shoulder x-rays. “Made possible by the transistors invented in the 40’s and battery improvements in the 1950’s.” Seemed like an odd place to start Kate’s consultation, but he went on, “Did you know the wearable external pacemaker was invented by a TV repair guy in Minneapolis?” I didn’t.

Earl Bakken had a shop near University hospital and collaborated with a well known heart surgeon, Dr. Lillehei. Apparently, Lillehei had successfully planted leads into the hearts of several patients but they were literally plugged in, “…using a hundred foot extension cord.” Schneider went on, “Then there was a storm, power failed and the patients all died.”

Bakken came up with a wearable device (external) based on an electronic metronome (rhythm for the heart). Crude, but it worked. Lillehei took it right away and tried it on a dog. It worked. The very next day it was in use in patients. Medtronics was born. Schneider is going to the Big Island in three weeks to interview Bakken, who is 94. Turns out Dr. Schneider is writing a book on the history of medical devices.

As he went through the consultation, he explained who came up with measuring certain angles in the shoulder and referred to one guy, whose name I don’t recall, as “a shoulder God.”

He’s also a fan of Mama’s Fish House. Good taste.

gratitude shiloh sophia Sandy, our house cleaner, who is about to have brain surgery for a second time on the 20th of this month, got her quilt Kate made her yesterday. She’s a strong woman and she’s had a very, very tough year. Unfortunately, the tumor did not debulk as they had hoped after the first surgery. It’s benign, but large. The aftermath of the surgery is awful. Disorientation. Nausea. Headaches. And these last a while. A quilt is such a great gift in this situation, since a lot of time in bed is part of the recovery. Covered in love.

I know. A lot of medical stuff over the last few weeks. Kate. Kate and me. Rigel. Our friend with breast cancer and her husband. But. Kate’s shoulder replacement should ease her everyday load. Rigel’s getting better. Jon’s gradually making the transition to single life and doing wonders on his new house. Ruth is growing up very fast. Kate’s friend anticipates excellent results. It feels lighter around here right now. I’m grateful.