reflections – Page 34 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

James Alan McPherson Park New Sign

We headed over to James Alan McPherson Park today because we saw a news item about the new sign being up and an upcoming ribbon-cutting ceremony this coming Thursday, August 5, 2021. The party starts at 6:30 PM and goes ‘til 8 PM. There will be live music from the group Cedar County Cobras.

The gardeners have been busy since we first visited in April. White Cloud Catmint, Allium, Black-Eyed Susan, Karl Foerster ornamental grasses and more were thriving. Many of these are reputed to improve your health in various ways. Obviously knowledgeable, those cultivating this communal garden also posted a sign, “Garden Guru” and are eager to teach.

White catmint on the left and allium on the right

Sena cooked a delicious soup, using Gumbo File, in honor of McPherson. While you couldn’t call it gumbo, it was hearty and file is tasty. By the way, despite what you may read on the web, file is not illegal and does not cause cancer. File is produced from sassafras leaves which don’t contain safrole, a carcinogen banned by the FDA since 1960.

There is a story told by the head of the University of Iowa literature professor Ed Folsom that McPherson, apparently an excellent cook, helped sooth the tension between the Iowa Writers Workshop and the English Department. When it got to an intense pitch, McPherson said softly, “I think we need to have some gumbo.” He invited members from both organizations to his house for gumbo. And he explained how the roux held all of the wide diversity of tastes together. It may have been his metaphor for how a house divided could blend together better and be more harmonious. Ed asked him if that was the case—and McPherson said he was just talking about gumbo. Anyway, things got easier between the two departments.

Folsom summarized what McPherson did, which was to find a way to bind the soul and the body together.

It’s a little like the Men in Black movies in which eating pie (“We need pie”) was a way to solve particularly difficult crimes involving aliens and humans. You did it by doing something completely at odds, apparently, with the usual kind of problem-solving skills and strategies. You did it by introducing a diversity of approaches by a diversity of persons, baking in a sense of humor, and patiently allowing the non-logical eureka moment to evolve.

Maybe we need something like McPherson’s gumbo moment here and now in our planet’s present madness.

Listening to the CDC

Like everyone else, I groaned aloud about the revised CDC mask guidelines yesterday. I still trust the CDC guidance, and I’m sure many might disagree with me. I think some headlines overstate the CDC mask change. I don’t believe it’s a “reversal” per se. I think it’s common sense to wear a mask if you’re inside somewhere with a lot of people whose vaccination status you know nothing about.

I think it’s worthwhile to actually read the CDC web site’s mask guidance in the section entitled “When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated.” What it says is:

“To maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others, wear a mask indoor in public if you are in an area of substantial transmission.”

It’s a good idea to check your geographical area (COVID-19 Integrated County View) to see what the transmission situation is. It’s moderate where we live in Iowa. That’s enough for me to go back to wearing a mask in tight quarters with people I don’t know.

I was dismayed to read an opinion piece entitled “Stop listening to the CDC,” in which the author said that “the vaccinated are not responsible for the unvaccinated, and vice versa.”

That made me remember my former pastor, Reverend Glen Bandel, who is now in his 90s. When my mother was very sick, he spent a long night sitting up with her. My brother and I were too little to manage the crisis by ourselves. She was unable to keep any food or fluid down and he made many trips from her room to the bathroom, to empty her bucket of vomit in the toilet. You could have made a case for hospitalizing her, but we somehow got by without it.

If we all believed that we are not responsible for each other, we would have been extinct long ago, let alone getting through this pandemic in the last 18 months. Not all of us who got the COVID-19 vaccine did it just for ourselves. I think a great many also did it for those they loved and for whom they felt responsible. This is called altruism and I think humans are still capable of it, despite what you read in the news.

Grim Fandango Nostalgia

I’ve been playing an adventure video game called Grim Fandango Remastered, driven by nostalgia. I can remember playing the first part of it 20 years ago when the original Grim Fandango was released for the PC. I just finished the game this afternoon and I couldn’t remember a darn thing about most of it.

Anyway, the main character is a dead guy, Manuel “Manny” Calavera, working as a travel agent at the Department of Death selling tickets to the newly dead who are trying to get to a kind of heaven called the Ninth Underworld. Manny’s job gets pretty complicated when he uncovers a scam involving counterfeit tickets. He loses a client, Mercedes “Meche” Colomar, an unfortunate victim of the scam, and sets off on a long journey through the underworld to right the wrong.

I think I know what happened. The original version didn’t play well on the PC we had back then. I think I just gave up, not so much because of the difficult puzzles, but because of the glitchy gameplay.

But I do remember being fascinated by the art, the music, and the Day of the Dead theme. Most experts say the game really didn’t get much of a remastering job, but I thought it was gorgeous (and so did Sena, who played along with me toward the end).

I like the story and the mystery. You interact with the characters by asking them questions, which are to some extent fed to you in order to help keep you on track. The puzzles are sometimes fiendishly difficult and I couldn’t finish it without peeking at the walkthrough.

The characters tell a story full of heroism and villainy evoking themes of altruism, loyalty, kindness, and courage in the face of avarice and cruelty. And even the good guys have flaws.

I need a good story like that now and then, especially these days.

Just Because it’s Vintage Doesn’t Mean it’s Wreckage

I still have a vintage calculator. It’s a Sharp ELSI MATE EL-505. You can buy one on eBay for $30. I bought this dinosaur back in the early 1980s just before heading to college at Iowa State University. It’s still usable, so just because it is vintage doesn’t mean it is wreckage. The original batteries last for over a decade at least, and probably longer.

My original major was engineering but I quickly changed my mind and eventually ended up in medical school at The University of Iowa. I’ve been retired from being a consultation-liaison psychiatrist now for a year. A couple of days ago, I ran into someone I know from the hospital and she asked me how retirement was going. She was on her way into and I was on my way out of Best Buy (nothing big, just a toner cartridge). I mumbled something quickly about having ups and downs but in general doing OK. The automatic door kept opening and closing. It was distracting so we said quick goodbyes.

We’ve got a couple of computers at home that are probably quickly becoming vintage, especially now that Microsoft is pushing the next iteration of the operating system (OS), Windows 11. The introduction is having a rough start, beginning with the puzzling PC readiness checker. You got a message that your PC would either be good to go with Windows 11—or not. That was pretty much it until the complaints started cropping up, generally starting with “What the heck do you mean it won’t run on my machine; why not?” They finally dropped the PC checker routine.

We’ve been through pretty much every Windows OS since Windows 95. If you’re wondering why go through all that, let me say that I actually started with a Mac at the hospital in my first year on the job at the hospital, on the advice of my mentor and first supervisor on the psychiatry consult service. He had a Mac and liked it a lot. On the other hand, even though I liked it too, it soon became clear that it was often impossible to interface with the PC-based office support staff network. I ended up going with a PC and have been dealing with Windows ever since.

Actually, my very first computer was given to me by an endocrine staff physician who co-attended with me in the medical-psychiatry unit. I didn’t pay a dollar for it and it was obviously vintage, in the negative connotation as I soon discovered after trundling it out to the parking lot in a cart and getting it home. When I pressed the power button—nothing happened. I returned it the very next day. My colleague could not explain it.

I could not get Windows 95 to run basic computer games at first. Even Myst, a simple point and click game that probably nobody remembers, would freeze and lock up the machine. I spent hours on the phone with tech support. You could do that then. It was not fun. Windows 98 was only slightly better. I’m still trying to forget Windows Me (Windows Millennium Edition or Mistake Edition). Windows XP had some longevity and ran OK. Windows Vista was another dud. I can’t remember much about Windows 7. I hated Windows 8 Live Tiles nonsense. We’ve been coping with Windows 10 and the updates to the present day.

Now here comes Windows 11 and seems like the most I can recall from articles about it is that it will have a Mac-like graphic interface. Then why shouldn’t I just go back to the Mac?

In some ways, my vintage calculator has done better over time than Windows. I can even spell “hello” on it.

New Namesake for Johnson County

I never knew until today that Johnson County; Iowa had originally been named for a slaveholder. That has changed since the Johnson County Board of Supervisors voted to rename the county for distinguished African American scholar, Dr. Lulu Merle Johnson on June 24, 2021. Read the Iowa Now story for the details. The drive to rename the county for Dr. Johnson, an accomplished University of Iowa alumna, began last year with an on-line petition that gathered 1,000 signatures, led by David McCartney, an archivist in UI Libraries’ Special Collections.

According to the Iowa Now story, the drive to rename the county for Dr. Johnson was also in the context of the deaths of several African Americans by police officers earlier this year. It reminds me of another famous African American, James Alan McPherson, a long-time faculty member at the Iowa Writers Workshop, for whom a local neighborhood park was recently renamed. Part of the drive for that came from members of Black Lives Matter.

McPherson was written about in the book Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa during the Long Civil Rights Era, edited by former UI faculty, Lena and Michael Hill. Although Dr. Johnson was not mentioned in their book, she certainly could have been because of her towering status as an educator, historian, and activist.

Support for the change also came from Leslie Schwalm, professor of gender, women’s and sexuality studies, and members of Dr. Johnson’s family.

Get the Bullet Head Cut

Man, you know you’re retired when the most exciting event going on in a typical day is going out to get a haircut. It was an even bigger deal today because I haven’t been in a barber’s chair in about 35 years. Sena usually cuts my hair, but if I hadn’t gone out today to get a pro job haircut, I’d have very little else to write about except this poem that occurred to me last night.

I cannot say I know

That any UFO

Has an interstellar driver.

And if I then insist

No aliens exist,

Would you think I’m even wiser?

Weirdly, this doggerel is relevant since my head now reminds me of a bald alien. Don’t get me wrong, I actually think the stylist (I guess that’s what you call them nowadays) did a great job. I call it the Bullet Head cut or just the Bullet Head for short.

There were only two stylists and only one wore a mask. Masks were optional and since I’ve been fully vaccinated for almost 3 months, I left mine in my pocket.

My haircut took only 15 minutes. Did you want that sentence served with “literally?” OK here you go, but just this once: My haircut literally took only 15 minutes. I’ve never had such a fast haircut. On the other hand, I’ve had a lot shorter times sitting in barber shop waiting rooms. The shop takes walk-ins, if you’re willing to wait for at least an hour, often longer. The air-conditioning really worked. I was afraid to step outside to warm up a little because I didn’t know if that would remove me from my place on the wait list, which I could see on a video screen from my chair (along with the wait time, typically 90 minutes or more). Step to the right, step to the left, attempt to escape.

The other thing I was not hip to was that I could have checked in on-line using my smartphone. It also sounded like they would give you a jingle a few minutes ahead of your appointment time. I did it the old-fashioned way—and spent a long time reading the labels on hair care products. Ever wonder what’s in that tall red spray can labeled Big Sexy Hair? Me neither.

I know you’re wondering what clipper guard number the stylist used. It was a number 2, which typically leaves about a quarter inch length on a scalp which could burn under a noonday sun. But I like it. I got the senior discount and a coupon for next time. You probably want to know the name of the place; it was Great Clips. I would go back, especially if they turn the thermostat up. If you go, ask for the Bullet Head. Tell them I sent you.

Common Trekkie Birds

We took a walk on the Terry Trueblood Trail yesterday and were struck by a goggle-eyed looking Tree Swallow, which was caused by the angle of the sunlight and the shot direction—we think. It reminded us of a big-eyed alien.

Partly because I’m kind of a Star Trek fan, I think many common birds have fascinating features which can make them seem almost alien. For example, the Common Yellowthroat has a weird call, which one author has described as “witchity-witchity-wichity-witchity” (Birds of Iowa: Field Guide by Stan Tekiela). We just managed to catch it–the bird’s call, not the bird.

The Eastern Kingbird is well known for its Klingon-like aggression. The Red-wing Blackbirds tend to dive bomb you if you get too close to their nest.

It was good to get outside. There are a lot of people who get credited with the quote “Keep looking up.” The one I remember is Jack Horkheimer, who used to host the public TV show Star Gazer.

Keep looking up.

Arlington National Cemetery 2015

The video below was made from footage of our visit to Arlington National Cemetery in 2015. At the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, each element of the guard’s routine has meaning, down to the number of steps taken up and down the black mat. According to the website:

“The Guard marches 21 steps down the black mat behind the Tomb, turns and faces east for 21 seconds, turns and faces north for 21 seconds, and then takes 21 steps down the mat. Next, the Guard executes a sharp “shoulder-arms” movement to place his/her weapon on the shoulder closest to the visitors, signifying that he or she stands between the Tomb and any possible threat. The number 21 symbolizes the highest symbolic military honor that can be bestowed: the 21-gun salute.”

Arlington National Cemetery YouTube video music attribution:

Americana – Aspiring by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1200092

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Memorial Day Reflection

It’s a cool, sunny afternoon. The lawn has just been neatly mowed by hard-working, reliable people who use power mowers. We used to mow lawns at previous properties using old-time reel mowers. I should say my wife used to do the lion’s share of that while I was at the hospital, working as a consulting psychiatrist. Now that I’m retired, I sometimes just wonder what I’m good for.

But it’s not hard to remember what Memorial Day is for. I was never a soldier. I never knew anyone who died in war. I only talked with military recruiters in a time so long ago, I barely remember being that young. I think they knew I was not ready to die for my country. They didn’t scorn or openly reject me. They treated me with respect.

Though I know what grief is because I am bereft, I cannot imagine what it’s like to grieve the death of any loved one who perished in war.

All I know is that when I was young and thought I wanted to be in the armed forces, there were recruiters who saw through me and knew I did not want to be a soldier.

They knew I did not want to die thousands of miles from my home in a bloody field. They knew I did not want to be buried forever in a foreign graveyard.

They knew I could not be one of them. Yet they did not treat me like an outsider. Now all I can do is be grateful. Now what I can do is honor them in silence.

Crazy Like a Fox

I finally got a picture of a fox not far from our property—but not close enough to get a good image. That said, it led me to do a little reading on the web about foxes. The most interesting item is the idea foxes might be able to locate prey under deep snow by using some kind of magnetic sense involving a protein in the retina called a cryptochrome. I’m not sure if this has been conclusively proven yet, but some scientists have said that this explains why foxes are able to find mice hiding in deep snowdrifts. They use a comical nose dive leap to catch them. It looks crazy, but it might increase their hunting success rate. Maybe that’s the origin of the expression “crazy like a fox”. Other animals, including bears, might be able to use this magnetic sense. Let’s hope not.

Bears don’t have a comical leap when they hunt. They’re anything but comical when they’re surprised. A land surveyor in Alaska surprised a brown bear recently and got badly mauled. The Associated Press news item title was “10 Seconds of Terror: Alaska man survives bear mauling.”

It’s a harrowing story although the man’s telling of it is almost eerily non-dramatic. He’s pretty matter-of-fact about the whole thing. It turns out he’s lived in Alaska for 40 years. He personally knows five other people who’ve been mauled by bears in Alaska. He even sounds like it would have been all the same to him if he’d been killed rather than injured. He didn’t sound like he was depressed or even unhappy, just calmly matter-of-fact.

That’s exactly how several Alaskans talk about what sounds like an absolute traffic jam of UFOs in the skies over the state. I guess I should call them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) now that we have a government task force (The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence) assigned to investigating them. It sounds a little crazy. I sometimes wonder if this might be an attempt to draw attention away from other things happening in the country that’s getting a lot of press. That might be crazy like a fox.

I’ve watched the show Aliens in Alaska a few times. Ordinary, everyday Alaskans tell their stories about the UAP they’ve witnessed. They all describe them in the same way the guy talked about getting mauled by a bear, even the ones who say they’d been abducted by aliens. One guy was pretty frank about his UAP story, and even joked that maybe he was putting himself at risk for getting hustled off to the Alaskan Psychiatric Institute (API). Most of the time, when people are telling these stories on other TV shows, they always seem to be a little hysterical, which makes them a little less convincing. But the way Alaskans tell their stories, it’s like hearing how they got mauled by a bear, no big deal (“…oh, and did I ever tell you how I won 10 straight games of cribbage, all with at least one perfect 29 score?”).

Come to think of it (for no particular reason), I’ve never heard of any episodes of bear mutilations. There are plenty of stories about cattle mutilations, which are often attributed to aliens. How come bears don’t get the same treatment? Maybe because they’d fight back. Getting back to that mauled land surveyor, when I was a land surveyor’s assistant back in the day in Iowa, the only trouble I had with animals was with pesky cows trying to tip our tripods over out in the fields—probably as revenge for cow-tipping. I didn’t tip cows. They never put the salad fork in the right place (rim shot).

Anyway, I saw a commercial recently made by Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy, talking up Alaska as a major tourism destination, also touting the state as having one of the highest vaccination rates in the country for COVID-19, although that has been fact-checked. According to the commercial, among the many exhilarating experiences you can have in Alaska is to see the bears.

He didn’t mention the aliens (which I’d rather see than bears), even though it could be one of the biggest draws to the place given the soaring interest in UAP. Crazy like a fox.