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Something there is that doesn't love a wall
I have a nicely aged six foot cedar fence that runs across the back of my house. The backyard extends around 25 feet from the back of the house to the fence; the fence’s length along the back of the...
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The Perseids. Again, with feeling.
Reprise, rewritten, updated From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things Unchained bits, released from the bonds of eternity, flailing and burning their way through the universe,...
View ArticleFamily Dirt, part 1
The last time my mother took me out to her folks' former property in the Yakima valley was when I was around 21 years old - in 1979, a hot, hot summer day. The aging,...
View ArticleFamily dirt, part 2
There is summer, and there is summer. For those who live in seasons that change, that air, that scent of heat and sun, (because the sun does smell of life and air and heat and all things hot and...
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The Grieving Room - Ebb and tide
I went home last week. It was the first time in several years, maybe six or seven years. That long drive south to the westernmost points of Oregon, south coast, highway 101. I'm always equal parts...
View ArticleStep in Time
This will be so random. I thought about the Dark Ages yesterday. It's such a curious term, of an uncertain grouping of decades and centuries. Most respected recent historians attempt to avoid...
View ArticleThe Grieving Room: the things you think you want
In the past few months, maybe a year, I've thought a lot about the things I thought I wanted. Out of life, out of myself, out of my kids, from my family in general, from my government, from my friends....
View ArticleAmerican mouth.
11:15 PM Friday night, second of January, 2009. "Mom?" "Yeah, Ky" I sighed, finally sitting down for the first time today in a place and at a spot that is not an automobile. "I don't know what to do, I...
View ArticleI've never done this.
At least I don't recall ever doing this. For some excellent weekend reading, or as a suggestion for your Friday night literary aperitif as you prepare to delve into the New Administration's 142 page...
View ArticleThe Grieving Room - the old ways
I'll start with how my bones feel. There's an ache deep in the pocket, the socket of my left shoulder, now my right, again in my left. That pocket. I think of a billiard pocket, oddly, but the ball on...
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On Earl Avenue
Is there a soul to a house? If we call it just a house and not a home, does it still possess a soul separate from the vagaries of mortgages, layers of paint, or crayon, or grease on the walls, busted...
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my own private rubaiyat (warning - pix)
This could have been a day like others. A Spring morning, a small journey ahead, some chores to do beforehand. Dogs to water and run, clean up the yard, empty the dishwasher. I took the day off, a...
View ArticleThe Grieving Room: the fringe of consciousness
Ah hell. I attempted to start this post as a reverse "emotions" travelogue back to the time when I thought things were more stable in my life. As I track the days and weeks back, I realize that it’s a...
View ArticleHealth Care Series: Autoimmune Diseases, Collaborative Medicine
THURSDAY NIGHT IS HEALTH CARE CHANGE NIGHT, a weekly Health Care Series (cross-posted at ePluribus Media and Docudharma) In the interests of full disclosure, as I write this I'm under the influence of...
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NN09: Once upon a time in Austin 2008
I was one of the very lucky DFA scholarship winners in 2008. In all honesty - it changed my life. Before Austin After Austin Not at all fooled by the visual evidence, are you? Ah well. But it's...
View ArticleBurying Aaron
SEATTLE -- A man has died after being shot in the head in the city's Leschi neighborhood on Wednesday night. Police said the victim was sitting in a car with two others when he got into an argument...
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Good night and godspeed, Eunice Kennedy Shriver
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, 88, died this morning, and if you know nothing else about the Shriver family, know that she and her husband Sargent were two people who moved the world to action in ways that...
View ArticleRoy Rogers is riding tonight. Cancer and me. Update!
It's maybe four and a half, five miles from the Lowe's hardware store to the front yard of my house and most of the way I drive, the route is a very straight stretch of two lane road that looks nothing...
View ArticleNot uncomfortably bald...(photo diary)
Here's a little candid photo series about something some consider not so fun. Losing hair while undergoing chemo. At least, most folks seem sad about it as regards a few of the responses I've gotten...
View ArticleJabba and me
I had a wonderful and very sweet nurse during this fourth round of chemo ask me if I felt I'd changed or learned anything in the recent months due to my fourth stage cancer diagnosis, or had any kind...
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The Grieving Room: Unknown memories
I have three full, old-style chests sitting in my house now, ferried here from my late sister's house about four weeks ago, as my niece moved out of the old house on Earl Avenue for the last time. One...
View Articlethe half moon in the west
Long about midnight tonight, Christmas eve to Christmas Day, I let my remaining dogs (I have five now, down from twelve in August) outside for their last late night romp in the darkened yard. The two...
View ArticleTerminal housekeeping
Lately, there are days when I both amuse and worry myself in weird turns about the "housekeeping" I think I should do before I die. Like, "whose spoons are these in my dinnerware drawer" or "to whom do...
View ArticleHealthcare and you: be all you can be
When I was first diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma in late August 2009, the first thing I did (once I caught my breath and recovered a bit from the lung biopsy that was done on the 28th of August)...
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What goes around, comes around
"He put Americans back to work building things we still use." Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Address to Congress, January 1936: If these gentlemen believe, as they say they believe, that...
View ArticleKeith Olbermann Names Senate Committee of Indian Affairs to His WORST List
Keith Olbermann chooses the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs as the WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD segment tonight for their non-response to the disasters in South Dakota. Keith mentions Daily Kos in the...
View ArticleWhat the doctor orders
I put off writing this post until the very last minute. It isn't the very last minute, but perhaps you get my meaning. Discussing health care and the idea of rationing and the explosive medical costs...
View ArticleA double bogey game
(Note: Uncited, unlinked text in blockquotes below are from an earlier post of mine on a slightly different topic – Play it as it lays - and replace your divot, please.) Golf Etiquette 101 Unlike many...
View ArticleHomeland Insecurity
3.27 pm: Republican House leader John Boehner speaks: "This bill is a dangerous experiment with the best healthcare system in the world." What, this bill also affects Japan? White House healthcare...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
There are now 300 days left in 2010. This past week's focus on the RNC's scare-the-shit-out-of-donors plan has led to a DNC ad that will be running on cable: Can germs cause obesity? U.S. District...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
From March of 2009 through December 2009, thirty individuals have used Washington State's new Death with Dignity law. However, many have failed in their attempts to get the assistance they seek. Jury...
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The return of the tide
(Note: this is an updated revisit of an earlier post.) There are some things that will always be constant. Things infinite in the sense that it is beyond imagining a time ahead in which such things do...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Looks like Marco Rubio has been playing fast and loose with money--about $600,000 worth, according to a detailed analysis by the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald, and it's catching up with him: Rubio...
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The National Broadband Plan and Indian Country
The bird who has eaten cannot fly with the bird that is hungry. --attributed to the Omaha It can be said, alternately, that the hungry bird cannot fly as far or hunt as successfully as the bird who has...
View ArticleThat space between life and death
I’ve thought a lot about dying this last week. I’ve shied away from really thinking about dying for awhile now. I mean deeply, deeply thinking about it. It’s unnecessary of me to mention that most of...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Sunday, HCR sleepless Sunday. Update: note that the Kossack livebloggers are on the job today, keeping better track of floor action than we can on the fp, where we're also trying to keep track of the...
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A little nightcap: Whidbey Island (pix)
I would give you the world. In a moment, on a sigh, a heartbeat, the world is mine to give. A great sky has touched the skin of the water and time is measured at the moment of such intimacy. With...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Be a good egg. Wanna be happy at work? Be happy at home. Duh? It's estimated that at least two million young adults are in line to get back on their parent's health insurance plans. On today's date -...
View ArticleRunning after happy
I caught myself up in an internal inside-my-head debate on happiness due to a search during HCR week on the web for "Nancy Pelosi, pursuit of happiness". After hearing her remarks on the passing of the...
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Midday Open Thread
April 18, 1906, San Francisco Earthquake. Bush Street, near Stockton Street. Library of Congress DLC/PP-1906:42971 (more images) New York hospitals are financially the weakest in the U.S. according to...
View ArticleWhere credit is due
If credit was worth something... cred·it (krdt) n. Belief or confidence in the truth of something. A reputation for sound character or quality; standing: It is to their credit that they worked so hard...
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From the Sea of Cortez
This is an updated, edited repost of an earlier diary. Sorry, folks, I'll try to complete my previously announced post next week. There is a town by the name of Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez, in...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Younger men, and the older women who love them, may die earlier. Johnson and Johnson has had at least four drug recalls from its McNeil Consumer Healthcare division in the past seven months....
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
Precious. You can now buy your gold at an ATM if you happen to be in Abu Dhabi. The Government Accountability Office says that many Bush-era security measures have turned out to be high-tech "flops"....
View ArticleA distribution of normal
For those of you who want political in this post, you’re not getting it. It's freakin' Sunday night, for crissakes. This is memory, a bit of "normal" musing, and a dash of meta. My odd notes before I...
View ArticleThe UNDRIP. It’s time, Uncle Sam.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was formerly adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. Out of 159 votes (or abstentions), the United States...
View ArticleMidday Open Thread
The first living Medal of Honor recipient since the Vietnam War may soon be announced officially. It's rumored that the honoree is a paratrooper from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, nominated for the MOH...
View ArticleWhat is health? Money.
What is "healthy"? From my perspective, I haven't seen much of it in Las Vegas this week. Guess it may be simply that - a matter of perspective. I see leathery faces, drawn and dry from the sun, too...
View ArticleThe Southern Delta Aquarids
Look up, look up. The near dark night sky has another show tonight if you are far enough away from city lights and a bright moon does not obscure the chasing of meteors across the sky. The Southern...
View ArticleAll my bags are packed...
I'm ready to go. I hope to leave Houston in a few hours. My open heart surgery was on August 11, so I'm about two weeks and a day post-surgery. To briefly (subjective reference) cover my backstory for...
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