That Moment in Time

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Liza Blue

We were only about 45 minutes into our 7 hour drive north when the traffic came to a complete standstill just south of Milwaukee.  The highway was in the middle of construction and we were totally boxed in with concrete dividers and rumbling semis; there was no way to peek around and see what was going on.  The midday traffic had been light, so the abrupt halt was foreboding, promptly confirmed by the distant but oncoming sound of sirens. 

 We sat idling for about five minutes, but when the truck driver next to us turned off his rig, we realized that we might as well settle in and get comfortable.  “There’s big accident up ahead of us,” he said, “a south bound semi crashed into the divider and flipped over into the northbound traffic.  There are bodies.  Both sides of the highway are completely blocked off.” 

 The grim news traveled quickly through the trapped traffic, and one by one engines were turned off and people emerged from their cars into the bright sunlight.  I got out to look around and check out our new randomly selected social group.  The truck driver broke all my stereotypes as he stepped out of his van.  He was neat and trim, wearing khaki shorts and a polo shirt, and looked like he would be coaching a kid’s soccer game on Sunday.  Immediately ahead of us were a youngish looking man and woman who looked like they were returning from a business meeting.  They just didn’t look like a romantic couple.  But that image was shattered when the man sat on the trunk of the car, took off his shoes and starting clipping his toenails.  When he began to brush his teeth I revised my first impression and concluded that they had been married for years.  The older man in the sedan in front of them had a back seat filled with boxes of light fixtures.  He said that he had been in many traffic jams over his many years on the road, but never one so close to home.  He said that he could almost see his house from where we were trapped. 

 I thought back to my days of commuting on the El in Chicago from my apartment on the north side of the city, through the business center and then out to the sketchier West side.  When the El would mysteriously stop between stations in a pitch black tunnel, I would have an irrational fear that I might be stuck in the El train for the rest of my life, and if so, who would become my friends amongst this random collection of riders?  The easy choice would be the other medical student, or would I, by necessity, branch out and strike up a conversation with the guy wearing a doo rag and hoisting a boom box, or perhaps with the pleasant looking older women with huge bunions and cracked calluses, or maybe the pretty younger woman whose tongue was currently in the ear of her boyfriend?  The train would inevitably lurch forward as I was scoping out my options. 

 But here I knew I had a lot of time, we weren’t in a dank tunnel, and in fact it was a beautiful day and people began to mill about.   It actually seemed like a perfect setting for an impromptu block party.  I thought how great if we could find a couple of bridge players in the mix, and set up a game on the hood of our car.  A perfect way to pass a couple of hours in the cool spring sun.  Years ago just Nick and I were vacationing in the Caribbean and we put a sign up on the activities board that we were looking for middling bridge players, and were thrilled to see that room 214 responded.  We met our mystery opponents in the lobby that evening and spent a memorable evening playing bridge with an older couple (they were probably about our age now); the husband was a retired engineer who had built airplane bombers.  He slammed back bourbon after bourbon and sniped at his wife, who more than held her own.  Just last New Years we found Phil and Linda on a whale watching trip in the Sea of Cortez.  We had a fabulous time playing bridge with them for three straight nights, and I think that if we had maybe one or two more nights we might have exchanged addresses and Christmas cards and looked them up if we were ever in Oregon. 

 Our son Ned had now returned from his walk up the highway.  “The crash is really close, just ahead, under the bridge.  It’s a mess.  I saw an EMT with an axe breaking a window to get a guy out.  There is tipped over semi that is straddling both sides of the highway.  There are spilled hamburger buns all over the place.”

 I had not realized that we were so close to the accident, and immediately began to think of the series of coincidences that put us at one ripple away from ground zero.  At home, I thought that we were all set to go, and then at the last minute Ned hadn’t finished packing.  When we headed out, Ned took an unusual route to get on the tollway, which probably set us back another minute or so.  These were the most proximate factors that put us snuggled safely in traffic some 1000 yards away from a near death experience, but I probably could come with an infinite number.  Before leaving, Nick took the dogs for a final bio break.  If they had promptly performed instead requiring a couple of laps around the driveway, we could have been the bloodied bodies lying on top of hamburger buns.

 I grabbed my binoculars and started walking towards the crash.  The binoculars must have lent me an air of authority, because many people asked me what was going on.  When I repeated Ned’s story, almost universally, people said something along the lines of, “I don’t mind sitting in this traffic, that could have easily been us up there.”  As I walked further, I felt that I was approaching a bright line for the victims, separating the time before and after the crash.  I could imagine the waves of communications streaming out, sending on tragic news that would forever change lives.  Nick’s mother happened to call, and then she called Nick’s siblings to confirm that we were okay, on the off chance that one of them heard that there had been a major accident near Milwaukee, and the even more remote chance that they knew we might have been in the area.

 It made me think of a book that I had read in middle school called “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder.  This was a popular book since it was on the reading list for three straight years in junior high and thus was a perfect choice when you had to write a book report.  It told the story of an ancient Incan bridge spanning a chasm; the bridge  suddenly snapped and hurtled 5 seemingly random people to a violent death.  The tragedy is witnessed by a monk who then seeks to understand why God made these choices and how he engineered the set of circumstances that put these specific people on the bridge at that very moment.  He never finds an explanation, is accused of being a heretic and both he and his book are ultimately burned in the town square.  So if you strip away the story line, and Wilder’s elegant prose, the book report could simply conclude, “Shit happens, sometime good, sometimes bad.”

 I felt awkward about being a gawker over road kill, so I headed back to our car.  I noticed that other traffic was slowly being rerouted along a side road and realized that cars just a little further back had the good fortune of being able to exit – even though they were just inching along.  These cars were in the second ripple from ground zero, not close enough to the accident to think about near-death experiences, but close enough to our predicament to say, “Boy were we lucky not to get trapped in that traffic standstill.”  Traffic and bodies is a staple of local TV, and soon I heard news helicopters hovering over us.  This distinctive thwapping noise immediately made me think of the Vietnam War, imprinted in my memory from the many hours of nightly news in the 1960s.  With nothing else to do, I pondered on distinctive noises of our most prominent wars.  For World War II, I think of the menacing sound of German shepherds barking as they strain at their leashes, the sound of armies marching on cobblestone streets, and the dissonant two tones of French sirens – I suppose you would call them klaxons.  And then somewhat embarrassingly, the Korean War is represented by the M*A*S*H theme song.

 I snapped out of it when Nick said, “Hey I think that they are making progress.  They must have the bodies off the road, because now they have some device up there removing the concrete barriers.”  And then suddenly traffic starting inching forward; we were rerouted back south and then the traffic fanned out to fill up side roads as we made a big detour back north.  Altogether not a bad 2 hours.  And now we were on our way again, rushing into another infinite set of coincidences. 

The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. like meat, mate, team) and the number of dashed indicates the number of letters.  One missing word will rhyme with either the preceding or following line.  Your job is to figure out the words from the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

 Ever since you took your first breath and your life began,

Coincidences and circumstances have determined your life —-.

So don’t fritter away your nights foot loose and fancy free,

Or squander your afternoons taking —- in front of TV.

But also don’t spend too much time wondering what life is all about,

You’ll be wasting time waiting to see if your life —- out.

And don’t worry about making long term investments to get ahead,

Because with a —- of the fingers, shit happens, you may be dead.

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Answers:  span, naps, pans, snap

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Pitter Patter Putter Perfect

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Liza Blue

Here is last Saturday – overcast, dreary, a windy mix of sleet/rain/snow, particularly discouraging since this is the second consecutive month of such weather and I am desperate for signs of spring. Perfect day to start taxes and there are many other languishing house projects. Instead, I spend the day puttering.

Here is the dictionary definition of putter: “to move or go in a specified manner, with ineffective action or little energy or purpose.”

Alternatively, here is the definition of “putter away.” “to spend or fill in a random or inconsequential or unproductive way”

While these two definitions accurately describe my busy day, they do not capture the full richness of meaning in the various contexts the word is used. For example, I see a clear distinction between puttering and playing. Playing is more purposeful and has a specific agenda, while puttering is more random and fitful. For example, puttering in the garden implies that not much useful work was done, while weeding the garden describes a specific activity with expected results. Then there is “killing time,” a phrase with an explicit recognition you have nonproductive time between scheduled events, while puttering implies a bit of artifice – you are trying to fool mostly yourself, and maybe others, that you are accomplishing something. And finally the concept of “hanging out,” which similarly has no expected work output, but also implies a social activity involving a couch and a TV or maybe a thick Sunday newspaper. In contrast, puttering is a solo activity, although my friend Mary says that she and her husband Bob are known to parallel putter.

Puttering is a purely human pleasure, borne of our position atop the food chain – hopefully without the life or death grind of hunting or foraging for the next meal. Last summer, I watched my two year old nephew walk around the house, picking up a coaster and putting it down on another table, lifting up a ball and dropping it, pulling the dogs tail, and I realized that he perfectly fit the definition of puttering. Once he starts doing a puzzle, or running a car across the floor he will be playing. It is unfair to expect him to do purposeful work at this tender age, but basically he is perfecting a putter that will serve him well throughout his life.

Certainly, some animals are playful, such as otters and crows, but I do not think that animals putter. Our dogs are always eager to go for a walk, particularly in the winter when they can hunt for voles, but when they are on their own indoors they do exactly nothing. Our son, observing the dogs’ lazy life style once observed, “dogs sure have a lot of spare time, don’t they?” A life of spare time is just made for puttering but dogs just don’t have the intellectual capacity to do nothing creatively.

As adults, puttering is generally considered somewhat of a guilty pleasure and an important procrastination technique. You putter in the garden when you should really be weeding, you putter around the house when you should really be working on income taxes. Many years ago, I came home to find my husband mending his underwear, which might be considered useful work if he know how to mend, but his efforts perfectly fit the definition of “unproductive work.” In reality he was desperate to do anything but study for his MBA taxation class. The last ditch mending project had been preceded by the usual menu of puttering, walking around the apartment, idly looking at yesterday’s newspaper, looking at the pile of clean laundry clothes on the floor, but not putting the laundry away since that would be purposeful work, and then noticing the tattered underwear and deciding to walk over to Walgreen’s to get a needle and thread. Once at Walgreen’s there was an opportunity to leaf through the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition or perhaps consider the purchase of a birthday card for his mother. Several hours had passed, nothing had been accomplished and the taxation homework was still an uncomfortable and lurking presence.

Puttering in the workplace is a definite skill. One of my first exposures to a professional working environment was one high school summer when I volunteered in the pathology laboratory at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. I was theoretically there to assist the single laboratory technician, but business was always slow, since the only pathology specimen was the infrequent muscle biopsy. She had developed a whole series of tasks to make herself look busy, like reorganizing the glassware on the shelves. In a misguided effort to be helpful, I took over all her putter projects and destroyed her façade. One day, she flat out told me, “I am not going to do any work today, so you might as well go to a movie or something.” She went around the corner to her desk and pulled out a stack of fashion magazines and started reading them.  The new trend of working from home is the ideal setting for puttering. In fact, working from home is best considered an oxymoron unless you have the discipline to control the putter or you lack the insight to distinguish unproductive from productive work. Some days are better then others.

As I edge closer to retirement age and am relieved of the time suck of work and sandwich generation responsibilities, I realize that I had better start sharpening my puttering skills. The once hectic pace is now showing signs of more flexibility and puttering will no longer be associated with guilt, but will become an established part of the day.  Here our generation has a tremendous advantage over our ancestors – we have the putter perfect internet where an entire morning can vanish into thin air. How I wish that my parents had embraced the computer. My father loved antique cars and Great Lakes shipping and would have enjoyed puttering around the internet looking at car auctions and the history of iron ore ships, but he was just not a technology adopter and instead spent hours watching golf, a sport that he never really liked. However, I do think that internet puttering veers slightly from the classic definition, which implies movement and some sort of physical activity. In contrast, internet puttering is entirely sedentary.

One day I heard the expression, “that horse should be sent to the glue factory,” perhaps describing my declining skills on the paddle tennis court. But it made me curious about glue factories, and I spent the next several hours puttering on the computer learning about Elmer’s glue, which is made from the bits and pieces of old diary cows, which segued to on an internet tour of animal rendering factories that process and repurpose all sorts of dead farm animals, and this segued to research on mad cow disease and finally to the history of dog food. A putter perfect morning.

The missing words in the following poem are all anagrams (i.e. like spot, post, stop, etc) and the number of dashes indicates the number of letters.   Your job is to solve the words using the context of the poem.  Scroll down for the answers.

Robinson —— worked hard on his island, the most solitary of men,

But even he had enough spare time to take a break now and then.

But the —— of his problems was that he had too much time on his hands

And no putter potential midst the crashing surf and shifting sands

Of —— once Friday arrived, he could stop his solitary muttering,

And start hanging out at the beach instead of relentless puttering.

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Crusoe, source, course

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Dogs Smell Poo

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Liza Blue

My friend Marion gave me a little news article about harnessing the power of the dog’s extraordinary nose.  We are all familiar with dogs that can sniff out bombs, cocaine and other contraband, but now there is a dog that can smell colon cancer in a human stool – and according to this article, the dog outperforms the standard test of looking for blood in the stool.

This article, published in the aptly named journal “Gut,” describes a single black Lab who was originally a water rescue dog, but has been repurposed as a stool sniffer.  The dog is rewarded with a tennis ball if he correctly smells the volatile chemicals produced by colon cancer.

This article was picked up by a lot of news services, but I don’t think its “newsworthiness” was related to a health care advance, but instead to the disturbing visual image.  I picture Rex, a beleaguered dog who is forced to spend his days sniffing umpteen stool samples as they move by on a relentless conveyer belt.  Behind him is a huge pile of tennis balls that he is allowed to play with for 10 minutes every 8 hours.  Hovering nearby is Steffen, the owner who has spent years creating this super breed of dog.  Rex is his stand out star.  However his venture capital financing is based on his ability to breed dogs that can smell lung cancer from the more convenient breath sample.  But the investors are worried.  Last week Rex’s progeny Ace and Primo failed miserably and even worse Rex has lost interest in tennis balls.  What’s worse is that PETA has targeted him, saying that forcing a dog to sniff poo all day is cruel.  Steffan pointed out to PETA that they are unjustly ascribing human sensibilities to dog.  While fecal odor induces a gag reflex in humans, anyone who visits a dog park know sthat dogs love smelling poo.  PETA is unmoved.

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Landmark Study for Dogs

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Liza Blue

Yesterday I saw an ad for Purina dog food that touted a “landmark” study claiming that Purina Dog Chow “extended dogs’ healthy life by 2 years.”  The word landmark  caught my eye since this term is well known in human medical research, generally reserved for a kick-ass randomized study trial reporting unassailable proof that immediately changes medical practice.  One example is the large MR FIT dietary study of 13,000 men demonstrating that lowering cholesterol reduces the risk of heart disease.  Cholesterol guidelines were built from that study, and a whole drug industry was born.  Then there is the study from the 1970s that showed that a lumpectomy is just as good as mastectomy, thus saving thousands of women from disfiguring surgery.  And of course study that established colonoscopy as a screening method for early detection of colon cancer, with results so compelling that it has convinced millions of 50 year olds to purge and submit themselves to the utmost humiliation at the hands of gleeful gastroenterologists.  Ooops, I’m exaggerating a bit on that last one, somehow nobody ever did the landmark study for colonoscopy screening.

What would a landmark study of dogs entail?  Purina provides a few workable facts on its web-page.  The study enrolled 48 labradors separated into two groups at birth and followed them until death.  Both groups were fed Purina, but one group got 25% less food.  Okay, a 14 year study would be considered quite a feat in the medical world particularly if you are trying to control the diet of free ranging humans.  But a mere 48 dogs, presumably in cages.  Wouldn’t meet my criteria for landmark.

The results of the study are perhaps not too surprising.   The dogs that got fed less had a leaner body and lower cholesterol, and showed fewer signs of aging.  It looks like they all died at the same time, but the leaner group compressed their morbidity into a shorter number of years.  Well that is an outcome that I can get enthusiastic about.  It did strike me as odd that Purina would use the study for marketing, since it did not try to prove that their dog food was any better than other brands, and the results suggested that you should just feed your dog less, i.e. buy less dog food.  It must have taken Purina a bit of time to figure out how to turn this dog of a study into an ad campaign.  The “landmark” results were published in 2002.

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American Idol as a Beacon for Democracy

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Liza Blue

American Idol announced that for the first time it will start accepting online votes, expanding the voting options from toll-free phone numbers and AT&T text messages.  The glitch has been creating a secure website, presumably to prevent some sort of automated voting virus what would spew out millions of rogue votes that would undermine the legitimacy of the contest.  American Idol was pleased to point out that, in partnership with Facebook, voters will now be able to cast 50 ballots on line.

American Idol is late to on-line voting.  An Arabic version called Super Star already accepted on line voting, and Katherine Meizel, who has authored a book on American Idol, implies that such voting in talent contests contributes to “the potential symbolic significance of voting in the Middle East.”

Wow, American Idol is going to grab some of the credit for the democracy movement in the Middle East – a democracy gateway drug that has opened numbed eyes to the possibility of revolution and democracy?  However, one of the fundamental tenets of democracy is one person/one vote, so allowing 50 votes a person might send the wrong message.  And how did American Idol choose the 50 vote maximum, why not 100, or 200?

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Oscars Worst Dressed

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Liza Blue

Okay I admit to getting People magazine and reading other similar rags in the check out aisle and I must say one of the sections that I enjoy is some sort of fashion maven who critiques red carpet fashions with creative cattiness.  This isn’t cruel since anyone standing on a red carpet is basically asking for it.  So I thought I would take a try at some red carpeteers at the 2011 Oscars.  Open Fire!

This starlet below is standing among the billowing smoke of a messy volcano eruption, a virtual Krakatoa spewing literally tons of ashes skyward, dimming the sun’s rays and creating weather havoc.  However, if you are able to look through the smoke into the gaping maw, you would see the hell on earth fiery cauldron as hot lava erupts from Penelope’s Cruz’ nether regions and drips down her legs.

Oprah Winfrey arrived to present the award for the best documentary, which might well have included the birthing of this overly long glitterly dress, which included enough tinfoil to jam the radar of overhead airplanes.  Oprah has long had an uneasy relationship with her physique, but seems comfortable and unapologetic in her full figured mode, most appropriate for her emerging image as America’s maternal sweetheart.  One could imagine a small child or animal getting lost within the friendly and cozy confines of her mega-mammaries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kudos to Ms. Johansen for selecting something other than the basic red, black or white, but this choice looks like my grandmother’s lace tablecloth had an unfortunate encounter with a vat of red wine.  The casual tousled ‘do bears a striking resemblance to the bed head of thousands of dishwater blondes who look to Oscar fashions for inspiration not imitation.

OMG – this dress is bizarre enough from the front with the epaulets and bead work framing the blank canvas of her chest that just calls out for a full size cameo figure.  The yellow accents at the shoulders add a dash of welcome color, however expanding to a horrific creeping and pustular skin disease on her back.  Those with a penchant for picking scabs are just itching to take a turn.

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Clean Slate Club

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Liza Blue

The implications of the 50th birthday are hard to ignore and difficult to embrace.  One by one friends are starting to undergo joint replacements and drop out of my tennis and paddle tennis groups to pursue more forgiving sports like golf.  I have been lucky to avoid any obvious physical limitations as I chug my way through this decade, but my entire philosophy towards sports is incrementally changing.  Ten years ago, I looked forward to each new paddle tennis season with the promise of getting better, based not on improving my physical fitness, but mastering some basic mechanical skills, like learning how to put a spin on the ball or positioning myself correctly.  While I consider myself athletic, I do not consider myself an athlete in whom the effects of waning physical prowess would be immediately noticeable.  For me, a slowed reaction time could be more than compensated for by being in the right place at the right time, and huffing and puffing through a long point could be addressed by finishing the point with the deft placement of a spin in the corner.  However, this strategy may have run its course and my goals for each new season have become more realistic – I just wanted to maintain my level and not get worse, particularly since my social life is built around sports.  As my friend once said, “Lose your legs, lose your friends.”

Other health messages for 50 year olds come fast and furious with advice on how to maintain breast, prostate, heart and bone health and the marketing geniuses at the drug companies try to reposition aging as a disease.  For example, the inevitable loss of bone that comes with aging has been repositioned as the “disease” osteoporosis, and diseases, of course need treatment, and lucky for big pharma aging is a life long disease needing life long treatment.   Most ominously, age 50 triggers a multitude of  cancer screening recommendations.  While breast cancer screening is considered optional at age 40, at age 50 it is strongly recommended.  Millions of women make the yearly migration to the tit squisher and just keep their fingers crossed that they won’t hear the sound of the other shoe dropping, at least for this year.  Men have their blood test for prostate cancer, but of course colonoscopies are for everyone. 

For obvious reasons, I put off a colonoscopy for several years.  However I would have to say that this has been one of the more rewarding experiences of this transitional decade.  First of all, it was easy and the bowel prep that makes everyone cringe was no biggie.  I just did it and the next morning I felt clean, cleansed and purified.  I felt like I should waft through the house in a flowing virginal white gown singing that enduring Presbyterian hymn of renewal,

“When the morning wakens, then may I arise,

Pure and fresh and sinless, in thine holy eyes.” 

And the colonoscopy itself – also no biggie.  The nurse will just slip you an IV mickey and then next thing you know you are getting ready to go home.  When the doctor came in to tell me that everything looked fine he added, “I must say you did a wonderful job with your bowel prep.  It really made my life easier.”  I was giddy with pleasure over this compliment, because like most patients I wanted the doctor to really like me.  Plus this was one of the nicest things that anybody had said to me in a long time.  I blushed in response and mumbled, “thanks, no problem.” 

Based on my experience there are a lot of things worse than a colonoscopy and one of them is taking the dogs for a walk.  Now lest you think that I have developed an eccentric habit of pleasure purging, I want you to know that this comparison primarily reflects not my love for Fleet, but my distaste for walking the dogs.  I like a nice contemplative walk as much as the next guy, but the mood is seriously undermined by tugging dogs, winding leashes around trees and confronting other dogs.   And as long as we are talking about effluent, there is nothing more distasteful in my mind than walking around with a steaming pocket full of pooh.  One time a particularly distasteful pick-up job prompted such a strong spasmodic gag response that I pulled a muscle in my neck.  Furthermore, when I go for a walk, I would like to do some birdwatching, but I have found that these are totally incompatible activities.  Not only are the dogs apt to scare the birds away, but it is also very difficult to focus binoculars while the dugs are tugging on the leash.  One time I spotted a particularly captivating bird, and with the doody bag in hand, raised the binoculars to get a better look.  As I tried to focus, the dogs strained at the leash causing my hand to jerk around.  The warm and odorous bag started swaying and rhythmically tapped me in the nose.  Bring on the colonoscopy!

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (like post, stop, spot) and the number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the preceding or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on context of the pome.  Scroll down for answers.

A colonoscopy is supposed to be the way you mark your 50th birthday,

 Recommended so that some evil polyp won’t —– your life away.

Yes the bowl prep is nasty, and I’ll spare you details that are graphic,

 But at —– I’ll say the old porcelain throne saw some heavy traffic.

 However, it’s not bad, and the grisly stories you hear are just scurrilous scuttlebutt,

 The truth is that I loved flushing out old —– food, and all the bacteria in my gut,

 And at the end I felt as clean as a newborn babe, in a purified and exalted state,

 As if starting life both fresh and anew with a momentarily clean colonic —–.

 Okay, I have overstated the case, and I put it off for more than three years for sure.

 But don’t end up among the cautionary —– of those who missed their chance for cure.

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Answers;  steal, least, stale, slate, tales

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They Suck

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Liza Blue

I have concluded that the first step in facing an irrational feel is to go to the internet.  You not only have immediate knowledge – the universal antidote to fear – but you will also have easy access to others who have embraced your fear, turned it into a sustaining passion and their life’s work.  Take for example, leeches, which to me signify what is rotten about a lake.  I can hardly put my toe into the water of the cold clear lakes that are the defining feature of my Midwestern environment.  There is that pervasive fear that some leech will rise up suck my blood.  The vivid leech scenes from the movies African Queen and Stand By Me don’t help. 

 But within 0.57 seconds of typing “leech and biology” into Google, I am knee deep into the 1999 diary of Mark Siddall, who is in the Andes prospecting for leeches.  Siddall says that he first became interested when he was “attacked” by one as a child, and his mother peeled it off with salt.  For many that might have been a life scarring experience, but he became besotted with them, and tries to kindle some spark in his readers by claiming that leeches are bespotted with beautiful colors, if you would only take the time to look closely at them before ripping the leech off in revulsion.  Other notes of interest are that the bite of many leeches is the example replica of the insignia of a Mercedes Benz, that leeches are related to worms, are hermaphroditic, and some even care for their young tadalafil tablets prices.  Siddal recognizes that despite all this, leeches are an acquired taste. 

Siddall is in the Andes collecting leeches as part of a biodiversity study to determine where leeches originated and their patterns of spread.  He is hiking up and over a pass and is absolutely giddy with excitement as he packs up his collecting equipment, which one can only imagine is some sort of scientific version of Tupperware.  As he stands atop the ridge and sees the mountain lakes below, he says, “Shoot me now, I thought. If I’m not in heaven, I’m awfully close.”  Clearly he is in a stunning location, but one gets the sense it is more the promise of leeches that is orbiting him heavenward. 

The lure of the unknown is a powerful force, but previous explorers and naturalists have taken all the easy visually exciting stuff, like condors, pumas and others animals of prey.  What are left are the parasites of frogs or subspecies of leech, but Siddall’s display of pure intellectual curiosity in the face of revulsion and ridicule is compelling.  You also get the sense that Siddall’s intellectual rush may be mixed in a bit with dollar signs.  Leeches produce blood thinners and maybe, just maybe, Siddall can find a leech that will produce some sort of blood thinner that is easily bioengineered and will set the world of hematology on its head. 

I once had the opportunity to interview the scientist who made one of the key discoveries that simplified the process of genetic testing.  To identify genetic mutations, tiny scraps of DNA typically need to be amplified to sufficient quantities.  While it was known how to do this, it was extremely labor intensive.  The process required multiple cycles of heating and cooling, and during the heating portion, the necessary enzymes would basically get cooked and congealed, much like a hard boiled egg.  The key to automating the process was to find some sort of enzyme that could stay intact during multiple cycles of heat.  Enter a geneticist I admire greatly, but whose name I have forgotten.  I will call him Dr. Fortuitous Goes to the Bank.  Dr. FGB liked to spend his vacations hiking in Yellowstone Park, and one day was lamenting the fact that he could not get any cool clear water from the murky hot spring where he had stopped to rest.  In a life-altering eureka moment, he scooped up the water and raced back to the lab and discovered a bacterium that had been sequestered in Yellowstone Park for millions of years.  Presumably out of a dogged desire to endure, the lowly Thermus aquaticus was forced to learn how to relish hot water.  From thence, an entire industry was borne.  One can only imagine Dr. F now sipping a tall cold one as he relaxes on the patio at one of his many stunning homes.  His 1993 Nobel Prize sits on the mantle.     

The medicinal properties of leeches offer both historical and current contexts to better appreciate this relative of the worm.  Leeches were used for blood-letting for any number of ailments for thousands of years, peaking in Europe between 1830 and 1850 in Europe.  In the past, leech farmers would just stand in a swamp to collect leeches on their exposed legs.  The species Hirudo medicinalis is now largely extinct in Europe, due to the twin effects of exploitation of both the leech and its wetland environment.  Contrary to my assumption, leeches do not symbolize the putrefaction of a lake, but are another of nature’s unassuming little canaries in a cage, an early warning sign of environmental destruction. 

Medicinal leeches are now commercially bred and have even received approval from the FDA as a novelty drug delivery device.  Placed at the suture line of reconstructive surgeries, say reattaching a severed finger or other appendage (think John Wayne Bobbitt here), leeches can delivery a steady stream of anticoagulant that keeps the blood moving and prevents the appendage from falling off again.  Leech saliva has other anti-inflammatory properties, and there have been studies of using leeches to treat knee osteoarthritis.  The authors claim the treatment is successful, but it seems to me that anyone who would agree to affix six leeches to their knee would want to believe that they worked so badly that it became a self fulfilling prophecy.  There is no better example of the placebo effect than the Scarecrow, Lion and Tinman, who had come so far that they really had no other choice but to believe the wizard.  But at $10.00 a pop these leeches are one of the last best medical bargains.  Of course, you could come full circle and stand out in a swamp up to your knees and perhaps get the same effect.

Leeches USA (www.leechesusa.com) provides other endearing factoids.  Leeches are low maintenance – they only need to be fed once a year after a blood meal, although the company is quick to note that the leeches are for single use only.  They typically fall off the body after about 70 minutes.  Planned obsolescence is an excellent strategy for the supplier, since treatment may last for several days.  At first glance the logo of the parent French company appears to be similar to the symbol of medicine – that thing that looks like a snake coiled around a stick.  However, on closer inspection you see that the logo is actually two entwined hermaphroditic leeches that are mating.  Leeches USA also provides all sorts of case histories complete with lurid pictures.  A search of the medical literature produces another case history that was probably published for the ick factor alone.  Some poor guy chomped down on his tongue in a car accident, and to help with the reattachment the doctor put leeches in the patient’s mouth (who was hopefully unconscious at this point).  The authors then described how they had to carefully monitor the patient to make sure that the leeches “did not migrate down the throat.”

The missing words in the following poem are anagrama (like post, stop, post).  The number of dashes indicates the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with the preceding or following line.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

For blood brothers, it signifies a bond of both head and heart

And —- the pact that says “from death do us part.”

If you are blood thirsty, you have a taste for meat, and want to dig right in,

And rip away the tasty flesh and suck on the bones beneath the —-.

“Blood is thicker than water” means you value your —- more than your kith,

It also defines the people you have to share your holidays with.

But for the subversive leech, blood is just the stuff of each and every meal,

First they —- their teeth into your flesh and then suck with unbridled zeal.

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inks, skin, kins, sink

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Tick Season

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Liza Blue

We have now almost completed a full year at our new home on the Middlefork prairie.  One of the true pleasures is a greater appreciation of the year’s cycles.  The movement of the setting sun across the horizon and the waves of migrating birds were both anticipated and welcomed.  Our seasonal infestation of ticks, however, was not.  Starting in early May, the ticks will be tracked into our house in droves, clinging to our dogs.  The anti-tick goo keeps the ticks from lodging on the dogs, but currently there is no human version available, though I have been tempted to go canine and dab the stuff on the back of my neck.  Our poorly trained dogs jump onto the furniture and the bloodthirsty ticks drop off and search for new prospects, namely us mortgage payers.  We didn’t catch on to this until the ticks starting routinely showing up in our bed.  Nick would wake up in the morning and discover three ticks on his neck as he was brushing his teeth.  This led to frantic tick checks before getting into bed, carefully making the bed in the morning to keep the ticks out of the sheets, and diligently keeping the doors closed during the day to deny access to the dogs.  However, this belt and suspenders approach is not fool proof.  One night there was an old gummy tennis ball on the bed, a sure sign that there had been a break down.

This tick situation caused a crisis at bell choir rehearsal.  We were practicing a tricky piece that had a riff of competing doublets and triplets, and I requested that we drill on several problematic measures.  Just as we launched into the piece, I felt a tick marching across my forehead.  Since we were rehearsing for my sole benefit, and both hands held bells preventing any discrete removal of the tick, I tried to stay focused and ignore the patter of little feet.  However, when the tick turned northward and headed into my scalp, I snapped.  I dropped my bells with a clank, the music slid off the stand and I yelled, “it’s a tick!”  I threw the tick onto the floor, and when I looked up, now relaxed, I saw the horrified look on my musical mates, who looked at me like the epitome of pestilence.  At this point, I had grown used to peeling ticks off, but I can understand their disgust and intimation that it is a simple courtesy to delouse oneself before social events.  The very fastidious women next to me did not want to proceed until we had found the tick and killed it.  While the tick was easily found, killing it is another matter, since you simply cannot crush them.  I was then instructed to impale the tick with a pencil, and when I attempted to do this, the point of the pencil snapped and the tick flipped away out of sight.  We bravely continued on with our rehearsal, but I noticed everyone nervously fidgeting and looking at the floor.     

This morning I have enjoyed my sojourn on the internet, learning more about the life cycle of a tick, and am pleased to report that they all die by the end of June.  Those that have had the great good fortune of a blood meal die after laying millions of eggs, the others just die of starvation.  The life cycle includes egg, larva, nymph and adult.  The latter three stages all require blood meals, often from different hosts, which seems to be an inefficient and risky way to live.  The larva has six legs, but the nymph and adult have 8 legs.  What’s up with that?  You’ve just got to love the mysterious ways of Ma Nature.

The missing words in the following poems are all anagrams (like spot, stop, post) and the number of dashed indicatd the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with either the previous or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing letters based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down for the answers.

Ticks await on the —- of grass blades just out of sight,

Then crawl up your pants, looking for soft flesh to bite.

Their hypostome pierces the skin, and they dig right in,

Using an anticoagulant in their —- to keep the blood thin.   

You certainly don’t want the diseases that a tick transmits,

So right now check your belly button, hair line and both arm—-.

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Answers;  tips, spit, pits

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As Lolita Lay Dying

Posted on February 27, 2011 by Liza Blue

As a child, I was a reader, voraciously consuming books like the Boxcar children, or the adventure series by Enid Blyton (Sea of Adventure, Circus of Adventure, etc.).  Once I had run through all of these, I would save up my allowance and go to the Surprise Shop and buy a new Hardy Boy mystery.  (My identity as a tomboy was so firmly established that it never occurred to me to buy Nancy Drew.)  Old family photos show me sitting at the beach quietly reading while the rest of the family went swimming.  On one vacation I had packed poorly and had to read the single book I brought over and over.  My mother gave me a book quiz, and when she asked how Ellen held the lion, I was able to give the correct verbatim reply of “fondly.” 

My love of reading was certainly not nurtured by my parents.  My mother hated bedtime rituals and felt that reading out loud was only a manipulative trick to prolong the process.  She wanted to snap her fingers and have us all march dutifully to bed.  In her defense, she was dealing with 6 children.  Besides I never cared, since I could read a book faster than anyone could read it out loud.  I adopted the same strategy as a parent, and thus have felt a bit guilty – maybe if I read more to my children, they would enjoy reading more themselves.  Oh well.

After grade school, “reading” was no longer a class and you were pretty much left to your own devices.  Certainly in college and medical school, there was limited time for anything other than textbooks where reading was purely a communication device.  But just as I had been eager to find out whether the Boxcar children ever found their kindly grandfather, I was just as eager to find out why Hitler did not invade England when he had the chance or how energy was transferred in the citric acid cycle.  I would situate myself in the library with a big textbook on my desk and a brand new yellow highlighter, which I would sniff in appreciation of its chemical odor, and then off I would go for several hours.  At one point in medical school, I had such an extraordinary volume of material to consume that I sat up in bed and arranged all the books around me in a tight fortress.  When I went to sleep at night, I simply lay back quietly without disturbing any of the books.  When I woke I just sat up, picked up a book and resumed where I had left off.  In the afternoon, I would move the operation outside to a lawn chair, occasionally napping off as I was surrounded by my books.  At the end of the study period, I was perfectly tanned only on one side of my body and I looked like the two disparate sides of a pancake.   

In the midst of this long non-fiction period, I did manage to read a few novels which generally occupied the comfortable middle ground of an engaging story, well told.  But I will never forget the two that taught me that in talented hands words can go beyond their meaning and that the plot line can be an incidental vehicle to showcase their beauty.  I encountered William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” in high school, a shortish story told in multiple voices of the Bundren family from backwater Mississippi.  The family is making a rare trip to town to bury the family matriarch, Addie.  Each family member has a separate agenda, young daughter Dewey Dell wants an abortion, her father wants new teeth and a new wife (in that order), the youngest brother wants a train set.   Sometimes the punctuation and phonetic spelling are sketchy and the story line is garbled.  Unlike a linear narrative, you have to work at this story and reread passages.  At one point, Darl goes on this existential riff:

“In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep.  And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you.  And when you are emptied of sleep you are not.  And when you are filled with sleep, you never were.  I don’t know what I am.  I don’t know if I am or not.  Jewel know he is, because he does not know that he does not know whether he is or not.”

The commentary that seeks to explain this passage far exceeds the length of the entire book, but to me Faulkner brilliantly describes the challenges of identity with simple unadorned language.  Come to think of it, just last night, I had trouble emptying myself for sleep to make room for a dreamy new identity.  In another chapter, Dewey Dell says, “I feel like a wet seed, wild in the hot blind earth,” a phrase that exquisitely captures the limitless possibilities of youth unencumbered by responsibilities or realities.   I have not reread As I Lay Dying in the last 40 years, but occasionally at the library I will go into the stacks, flip through the book and find that phrase, easily spotted at the end of a chapter.  I feel the same way when I happen to walk by my jewelry box, open it up and check up on a much loved bracelet.

I first encountered the novel Lolita in a bizarre way.  A friend was giving Nick and me an engagement party and unexpectedly showed the movie as after dinner entertainment.  This was in the pre-DVD days, so an at-home movie was a real novelty.  Somehow Rich had gotten hold of the actual film reels, a projector and had set up a sheet for a screen.  We all sat transfixed, watching the grainy movie that was slightly distorted by the undulations in the sheet.   Lolita tells the story of a middle aged man with the improbable name of Humbert Humbert* who has a consuming obsession for a nymphet, his namesake stepdaughter.  Deglamorized, Lolita details the chronic rape of a 12 year old, but the alliterative language and word play is so magnificent that you are not repulsed. In fact the novel is number 4 on the Modern Library list of 100 best books.  I rushed out to get the book the next day.  In most novels I riffle ahead, since the whole point of reading is to find out what happens.  With the author Nabokov, I can just sit back and let the lush prose and sly humor wash over me. 

“Once a perfect little beauty in a tartan frock, with a clatter put her heavily armed foot near me upon the bench to dip her slim brave arms into me and tighten the strap of her roller skate, and I dissolved in the sun, with my book for fig leaf, as her auburn ringlets fell all over her skinned knee, and the shadow of leaves I shared pulsated and melted on her radiant limb next to my chameleonic cheek.”

In contrast with Faulkner’s simple language, the Russian Nabokov finds obscure English words that would even escape the most diligent preparation for the SAT vocab.  Periodically, he lapses into his native French or even Latin.  I stumble across the phrase, “those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts.”  I had never seen the word crenulated before or since, but I know immediately that this is the one perfect word to describe the little chain of pockmarks left by bunched up elastic.  And then there is the word “phocine,” as in  “[Lolita] retreated to her mat next to her phocine mamma.”  I initially thought that phocine was just a typo for porcine, a word that could easily convey Humbert’s disgust with the mamma who stood between him and his obsession.   But a word like porcine would be a pedestrian choice for a linguist like Nabokov, so I was intrigued enough to look it up.  Phocine: seal like.  Of  course, the single perfect word to describe a well-oiled, sleek, but overweight woman beached and basking in a nearby lawn chair.  I should expect no less from Nabokov.

Puttering through the library, I was thrilled to find an audio version of Lolita to entertain me during my 7 hour drive through the upper peninsula of Michigan.  When I popped in the cassette, I realized that Jeremy Irons was Humbert Humbert, reading the book in one of those cultured English accents that Americans always fall for.  His sonorous tones were simultaneously reptilian and thoroughly compelling and the hours flew by as I reveled in the language.  I would heartily recommend Lolita for your next long distance journey, but would caution you to pay attention lest you get distracted and carelessly swerve into oncoming traffic.  When I first saw the Michigan squad car tailing me, I felt sorry for the poor sap ahead of me who was about to get arrested.  And then I realized that I was the target.  What had I done?  I was stunned when the policeman said, “Ma’am did you realize that you were doing 85 in a 55 mile zone?  I explained that I had just been caught up in a book, but wisely decided not to educate him on the charms of Lolita.

Forty five minutes later, I was arrested again, this time in Wisconsin.  

*Humbert Humbert joins Sirhan Sirhan and Boutros Boutros Gali in the elite group of people with repetitive names. 
The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. spot, stop, post) and the number of dashes indicate the number of letters.  One of the missing words will rhyme with the preceding or following lines.  Your job is to solve the missing words based on the context of the poem.  Scroll down for answers.

Ah my nymphet, with languid limbs and dewy —-,

 Your bare necked tawny nape, and puerile hips,

 Your feckless sibilant —- is the essence of pure bliss,

 And beckons me forward to proffer a clandestine kiss.

 I lie helpless and bewitched in your tremulous thrall

 Into your voluptuous abyss, I —-, tumble and fall.

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Answer: lips, lisp, slip

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