Category: humor

Iowa Winter Storms One Two Punch January 2024!

I just got the update on what I think is Winter Storm Gerri. The National Weather Service has now upgraded this catastrophe in our area to a Blizzard Warning.

Iowa is getting a one, two punch from winter storms Finn and Gerri.  We hardly got a break from Finn’s left hook before Gerri’s right cross connected.

This morning we scraped off less than an inch of new snow that fell last night. We might get from 8-12 inches of new snow. Wind gusts could be up to 50 mph with dangerous wind chills over the next several days. The party gets started late tonight.

If you want to drive anywhere, I suggest a Big Wheel race around your living room.

Winter Storm Finn Defines A Sisyphean Ordeal

Okay, we got about 14 inches of snow from Winter Storm Finn, but that doesn’t begin to convey the human meaning of it.

I’m going to call digging out from all that snow a Sisyphean labor. You don’t hear that term much, but it means a chore that never seems to end while you’re doing it. The short story about Sisyphus comes from Greek mythology.

Sisyphus was the king of Corinth. Just to be clear, it generally doesn’t snow in Corinth. One day, King Sisyphus saw a splendid, mighty eagle carrying a beautiful maiden to a nearby island (where it also does not snow). A river god named Asopus told him that his daughter had been abducted, but not by extraterrestrials. Sisyphus suspected Zeus, who had never seen a snow shovel, if you can imagine that. Like a fool, Sisyphus asked Zeus to help him find her. Because Zeus hated nosy mortals who aren’t supposed to know what the boss god is up to, he banished Sisyphus to Hades where he had to roll a giant rock uphill which always rolled back downhill (Hamilton, Edith. 1942. Mythology. New York: Little Brown and Company).

Anybody who knows what it’s like to try to shovel walks and driveways during a horizontal snowstorm knows that for every shovelful of snow you remove, twice that amount refills the space you empty almost immediately. You’d have to stay out in the snowstorm forever to keep up. It’s the definition of a Sisyphean labor.

And that’s why Sena and I left about a third of our driveway uncleared last night because we were exhausted. We’d been out in that storm shoveling all day since early morning. We ached everywhere and didn’t have much to show for it.

This morning we were up early again, anticipating trying to clear the driveway and again shovel all the walks, the curb ramp, the trees and whatnot.

The driveway had been cleared, probably sometime during the night, by a good Samaritan we’ll probably never know for sure. We could tell by the telltale friction wheel tracks, and the perfectly circular mark of the machine’s turning radius. A path to our curbside mailbox had also been cleared.

We are grateful. The only big job left was to clear the curb ramp, across which was a hip high mountain range of snow left by the city plow. It was also blocked by a large pickup truck. The driver must have seen us and he hurried over from where he was working with a crew building a house. He was more than happy to move it—although I was not so happy when I found out how hard we had to work to clear the curb ramp. If you start from the top, the snow spreads out over the mountain. If you start from the bottom, the snow from the top falls down. I would call that Sisyphean labor.

Anyway, we’re waiting for the next disaster, which I think the meteorologists are calling Winter Storm Gerri. They’re promising 4 inches of new snow by Friday. It almost sounds like light duty.

Winter Storm Finn and the One-Eyed Snowball Juggler!

Holy horizontal, heavy, wet, driving snow. At least you could make great snowballs for juggling! I got up around 4 in the morning to shovel. Sena came out a little later and we took shifts a couple of times. I still had to run back out again in the mid-afternoon to clear away what’s probably going to turn out to be better than a foot of snow.

The plows plugged our driveways whenever they felt like it. But we took a break so I could make the best snowballs ever and juggled them. I wore a balaclava which got all twisted on my head so that I ended up able to see out of just my right eye—the one I had surgery on for a torn retina.

I don’t know how I saw well enough to juggle.

Snow Removal in Iowa City

Iowa City has web pages for the rules on snow removal by the city plows and by residents.

You can see the pdf of the map for residential street priorities for snow removal.

Shoveling snow or using a heavy snow blower can be hazardous to your health. There is guidance from the National Safety Council about how to remove snow. On the other hand, there are definite rules about clearing snow from your sidewalk.

There are no rules against juggling snowballs that I know of.

The Intergalactic Angle on Your Point of View

I finally watched the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the other night. It was released in 2005 and based on Douglas Adams’ book of the same title. In fact, he co-wrote the screenplay. A lot of it was not in the book. I thought a couple of scenes were noteworthy and pretty funny. I made connections to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. annual observance, which is this month.

One of them was the Point of View Gun. It’s probably unfortunate that the main prop was a gun, but hey, it was a ray gun. It didn’t kill anyone and in fact, it caused the person “shot” with it to be able to understand the perspective of another person. It was just temporary, but for a short while it enabled persons or extraterrestrials to understand another’s point of view. It was designed by the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives to influence their husbands to understand them better.

One of Dr. Martin Luther King’s main points was how important it is to try to understand and validate someone else’s point of view.

One drawback of the Point of View gun (besides the obvious associations with gun violence) was that the effect was specific to whoever was using it. So, when the ultra-maladjusted robot Marvin mowed down a gang of Vogons (hideous and cruel extraterrestrial bureaucrats who destroyed Earth in order to make room for an intergalactic bypass), they all collapsed from depression.

The other scene I thought was funny was the Vogon planet’s slap-happy encounter between the heroes and the creatures shaped like spatulas that popped out of the ground and smacked anyone in the face who had an idea.

I didn’t think the movie was nearly as good as Adams’ book. But I wonder if you could cross the spatula creatures with the Point of View gun that would take the perspective-taking power of the gun and give it to the spatula creatures who would slap you silly whenever you failed to even try to understand another’s point of view. I could use that kind of a slap sometimes.

It’s remarkable the connections you could make between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

How to Cope with Pea Pods

The other day, we got to talking about sugar snap pea pods. The last several times we’ve had pea pods, I’ve had to deal with them the same way I always deal with foods, like coconut, that have the texture of processed wood—I spit them out.

Well, I don’t actually spit them out. I carefully yank the stringy, weaponized pea pods from between my teeth and hurl the mess into the parallel dimension where they obviously belong. Sena had the same problem, but politely removed the stringy mess and placed it carefully in my hair.

I did a web search on this problem, which evidently doesn’t get much attention. Almost everyone else loves pea pods, despite the tendency for them to immediately assume the texture of industrial strength confetti.

I found only one exception. It’s a short question and answer section on the Home and Garden Information Center of Maryland Extension. One thing I learned is that sugar snap peas that are grown from a special cultivar (a plant variety produced by selective breeding by an entity known as Satan) on the planet Whacko in a galaxy far, far away.

What happens is that the snap pea pod becomes as fibrous as an ancient redwood tree. The person says that “…pods are so fibrous they are barely worth eating.”

I guess what you can do is write to the producer and complain bitterly about the fibrosity monstrosity.

Or is there another solution? Sena found a YouTube which suggests the problem is the stem of the pea pod. You just cut the stem away, and the stringy mess should strip off with it.

So, there you have it. First strip away the stem—and then throw the pea pod away.

You’re welcome.

Complexity Intervention Units Past And Present

Here’s another blast from the past about Complexity Intervention Units (CIUs) or what used to be called Medical-Psychiatry Units. I co-staffed one for 17 years at Iowa Health Care, the organization formerly known as Prince. No wait, that used to be called the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics. They’re rebranding.

I was looking up CIU on the web. It’s a common search term now, so Roger Kathol, the guy who built the CIU at Iowa Health Care, was right.

On the other hand, I was also puzzled when the results showed that a hospital in Wisconsin has what’s called a brand new CIU-only it’s not a psychiatric unit.

I thought a CIU was, by definition, a combined specialty unit, with facilities for acute care of both psychiatric and medical problems. But Froedtert Medical Center in Milwaukee has a new CIU and yet says: “The department is licensed as a Medical Unit – not a Psychiatric Unit.”

In fact, Medical College of Wisconsin says essentially the same thing about the CIU: “Please note that the CIU is not an inpatient psychiatric unit, but rather a facility dedicated to integrated care.”

OK, so I probably missed the memo about what a CIU is nowadays. It’s tough to find out how many CIUs are in operation in the U.S., maybe partly depending on how you define it and who you ask. Anyway, this is what I wrote about them 12 years ago:

The Complexity Intervention Unit for Managing Delirious Patients

Is there such a thing as a specialized unit in the general hospital where patients with delirium could be treated, where both their medical and behavioral issues could be managed by nurses and doctors specifically trained for that purpose? It turns out there is. Although they are usually called medical-psychiatry units, an internationally recognized expert about designing and staffing these specialized wards, Dr. Roger Kathol, M.D., F.A.P.M., would prefer to call them “Complexity Intervention Units” (CIUs). It’s a mouthful, but it’s a better description of the interaction between physical and psychiatric illness, along with social and health care system challenges typically managed in these units.

We’ve had one at Iowa since Dr. Kathol started it in 1986. It was one of the first such units built and now that it has been redesigned, updated, and beds with cardiac monitors added, it’s arguably the only unit of its kind in the country. The CIU allows us to provide both intensive medical and psychiatric interventions that would be all but impossible to deliver on general medical floors with psychiatric consultation. The essential features of the CIU include:

  1. Both medical and psychiatric safety features in the physical structure.
  2. Consolidated general-medical and psychiatric policies and procedures.
  3. Location in the general hospital under medical bed licensure and with psychiatric bed attributes.
  4. Moderate-to-high medical and psychiatric acuity capability.
  5. Physicians from combined residencies general medicine and psychiatry co-attending model with consistent communication and coordination of medical and psychiatric care.
  6. Nurses and other staff cross-trained in medical and psychiatric assessments and interventions.

The unit is used to optimize management of a variety of patients with both medical and psychiatric diagnoses. The focus is on providing care for the 2%-4% of patients admitted to general hospitals who are too complicated to manage on either psychiatric or medical units. And it’s an excellent teaching resource for helping new doctors learn about the inevitable interaction between medical and psychiatric disorders in an environment that fosters both/and thinking. Trainees learn that delirium mimics nearly every other psychiatric disorder and how to distinguish delirium from primary psychiatric illness.

I co-staff the unit with a colleague from internal medicine when I’m not staffing the general hospital consultation service. That helps me blend the perspectives of each role. Often, acting in the role of psychiatric consultant, I can assist the generalist in managing patients with less complicated delirium without transferring them to the CIU. And for those whose behavioral challenges would be overwhelming for nurses and physicians on open medical units, it’s helpful to have the CIU option available.

While the CIU is a great resource for managing delirious patients, they are expensive to build and generally have a limited number of beds. So it’s still important to continue work on developing practical delirium early detection and prevention programs in every hospital.

Plate!

I was listening to the Big Mo Blues Show last night on KCCK radio, 88.3 on your FM dial. I didn’t hear him mention his favorite cook, May Ree. She cooks hand-battered catfish; it’s better because it’s battered. Often, he’ll add a little to the legend, like where you can find May Ree’s establishment where you can buy her hand-battered catfish, which is filled with nitrates, cooked to perfection with manic delight, and which you can pair with any one of three flavors of moonshine, including the famous Classic Clear.

I don’t know whether Classic Clear has fruity, nutty, or extraterrestrial notes. You’ll have to try to find her joint, which is somewhere at the intersection of a highway and a street the name of which I can never recall. The story gets a new variation every now and then. May Ree has many facets to her character.

May Ree actually reminds me of the head cook at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austin, Texas. Back in the 1970s, I was a student there for a while. The head cook in the college cafeteria was Miss Mack. I don’t think you could say she cooked anything with manic delight. In fact, some of us were regular visitors who rushed with manic delight to Church’s Chicken because the H-TC cafeteria didn’t always serve what you’d call top of the line fare.

I guess Church’s want to call themselves Church’s Texas Chicken these days, mainly because they got the business started in San Antonio. Back in the day, Church’s Texas Chicken was a five-minute walk from the college. I checked a map recently, and now there isn’t a joint within an hour’s walk.

Anyway, I was a fairly frequent customer to Church’s Texas Chicken. You didn’t have a whole lot of choices about what to select. In fact, I don’t recall that there was a selection, per se. What you saw was what you got.

Sometimes, certain students were pretty frank about what they thought of Miss Mack’s cooking. One day, a guy who was fed up, in a manner of speaking, of course, held up his plate so that it was vertical, and weirdly, none of the food slid off. It just stuck there, like it was sort of a sculpture of a meal.

And then he called out loudly to everyone else in the cafeteria (not that there were many people there) as if he were offering to give to anyone there:

“Plate!” (no takers). “Plate!” (still no takers). “Plate!” (students just ignored him, but started making funny looks at their own plates).

I don’t remember what happened, but I think he just left his plate on the table and departed. I doubt Miss Mack was there. I was ambivalent about the whole deal. I liked Miss Mack, as did a lot of other students. She was kind and always had a bright smile for us.

Maybe he made a run to Church’s Texas Chicken. Funny, I didn’t see him there.

Turkeys Still Doing the High Jump Over the Fence!

The wild turkeys are still doing the high jump over the fence. This time, I saw one of them jumping over the fence into the yard. So, they know how to get inside! But I couldn’t get a picture of it! I was washing the dishes at the time.

They seemed to have a somewhat easier time jumping back over the fence out of the yard. What the heck, you have to give them a little credit.

They’re only a little bit smarter than people.