reminiscence – Page 6 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Big Mo Pod Show: Music of the People

I caught the Big Mo Pod Show today, “Music of the People” and of course, I listened to his Friday Blues show last night.

Big Mo is a bottomless pit of blues music knowledge (as well as other genres) and that takes me back to my wasted youth when I had a short conversation with one of my former bosses when I worked for Wallace Holland Kastler Schmitz & Co., a consulting engineer firm in Mason City, Iowa.

Ages ago, Ralph Wallace and I got into a short conversation one day about blues music, believe it or not. I can’t recall what actually got that short chat started but it was kind of surreal. He asked me about what I liked about the blues and I brought him up short by telling him I didn’t know anything about it.

I think Ralph thought I would know about the blues just because I was black. I didn’t. He even tried to prompt me by asking about different kinds of blues music, for example 12 bar blues and so on. I’ll never forget his facial expression when he realized I barely knew it existed. He looked puzzled and incredulous. He was a white man and knew more about it than I did. I think it stunned him that a black guy was completely ignorant of the blues.

I could dismiss the interaction simply as a mild form of racism, but I think it was more complicated than that. He was the boss of the company who gave me my very first real job but really didn’t know anything about my background. I was the child of a black man and white woman and my father left home when I was just a little kid. I went to an all-white church. I went to all-white schools, that is, until I was persuaded by a white woman and the black pastor and professor of religion and philosophy to enter Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University), one of the HBCUs in America located in Austin, Texas. I first heard gospel music there and it raised the hair up on the back of my neck.

It’s a little ironic but I also think of John Heim (aka Big Mo) as another white man who knows more than I’ll ever know about the blues. And I’ve been learning from him for years, which is great.

So, the point is that the theme of the Big Mo Pod Show today is “Music of the People.” The blues is music for all people and the songs can have broad appeal.

One example is the song “Artificial” by Walter Trout. It’s a modern rant against the many synthetic artifacts in modern society and that includes something I rail against—Artificial Intelligence (AI). I can relate to it.

One song that didn’t make it to the list of 5 on the pod show but which was on the blues show last night was “Room on the Porch” by Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ (featuring Ruby Amanfu). I got a surreal feeling about it because it’s about being openly welcoming to everyone. I hear a note of irony in it related to the current conflicts in America and around the world which highlight the opposite of openness and welcome. They’re not new.

On the other hand, I don’t think either Taj Mahal or Keb’ Mo’ intended for the song to be ironic. Maybe I just hear it because of all the background noise that has to be called reality because that’s what’s out there.

What if they’re not being ironic? What if they believe it and they’re trying to say there’s a good reason we should think of the blues as the music of the people—all the people? Where could we go from there?

Big Mo said it last night, “The blues can heal you, if you let it.”

Reasons to Be Proud and Hopeful for the Future

As the month of May Mental Health Awareness draws to a close, I reflect a little on the Make It OK calendar items that are salient for me: 3 things I’ve done that I’m most proud of and 3 reasons I’m hopeful for the future. I’ll keep it short.

One thing I’m most proud of is being the first one in my family to go to college. The biggest accomplishment was going to medical school at The University of Iowa in 1988. That was also the year Michael Jackson’s pop hit “Man in the Mirror” was released. That’s sort of how I felt about what I was doing that year—making a big change.

The more I reflect on this the more I realize the other thing I’m most proud of was getting a degree from Iowa State University in 1985. That paved the way for the path to becoming a doctor.

This process seems to work backwards because probably the first thing I’m proudest of is making a change even earlier in my life to land a job with a Mason City, Iowa consulting engineer firm, Wallace Holland, Kastler Schmitz & Co. That came before college and they’re all like stepping stones on the path of achievement. I think I started at the minimum wage back then, which was about $2.00/hr. I was an emancipated minor and couldn’t afford an apartment so I lived at the YMCA. It was a cramped sleeping room with no kitchen, a communal bathroom/shower, and a snack vending machine from which I got a worm infested candy bar. There were strict rules about what you could keep in your room—which somehow didn’t prevent one guy from building a motorcycle in his. Now this is getting too long.

In order to move on expeditiously with the mental health awareness calendar items, I’m going to cheat on the 3 reasons I’m hopeful for the future because they involve what is most important to a teacher. That’s what I was. I was so proud of the many medical students and residents I had the honor to teach. There were a lot more than 3 reasons to be hopeful for the future. I used to take group pictures of them and me at the end of each rotation through the consultation psychiatry service. We got a kick out of that because the only way I could do it was by using my old iPad that had a fun remote way to trigger the snapshot. I leaned the iPad up against something on a table. We all gathered as a group at the other end of the room. We posed, I raised my hand and counted to three, then closed my hand into a fist. That was our cue to smile. The shutter clicked.

Every time we did that, I was proud. Wherever they are, I hope they know how proud I am of them.

An Anecdote About “Supportive” Psychotherapy

I just read Dr. George Dawson’s excellent blog post on supportive psychotherapy (“Supportive Psychotherapy—The Clinical Language of Psychiatry.” If you’re looking for an erudite and humanistic explanation of supportive psychotherapy, I think you’re unlikely to find anything superior to Dr. Dawson’s essay.

Now, about my take on “supportive” psychotherapy—there’s a reason why the word supportive is wrapped in quotes. It’s because I have a sort of tongue in cheek anecdote about it based on my experience with a staff neurologist in the hospital. It was long enough ago that I’m not sure what level of training I was in exactly. I was either a senior medical student or a resident doing a rotation on an inpatient neurology unit.

Dr. X was staffing the neurology inpatient service and I happened to overhear a brief conversation he had with the psychiatry consultants about what approach to adopt with a patient who he believed had a gait problem due to a psychological conflict. He wanted a psychological approach, preferring something on the psychodynamic side. I remember the psychiatric consultant said flatly, “We’re pretty biological.” I can’t remember what their recommendation was, but he disagreed. Later in the day, Dr. X gathered all of the trainees and we rounded on the patient in his hospital room.

We all crowded into the room with the patient, who had a severe problem walking due to what seemed to be unexplained hemiparesis. This is where the “supportive” element of Dr. X’s approach to psychological treatment came in.

Whether due to a deformity or past injury (I can’t recall which), Dr. X walked with a pronounced limp. He asked the patient if he would be willing to try walking vigorously with him across his room. Dr. X promised to assist him up and made it very clear that, despite his own limp, he was going to walk with the patient as normally as possible, together using both their legs.

The patient was very hesitant. Dr. X offered a lot of reassurance and encouragement—and then hoisted him up out of bed and marched with him across the room, ensuring that the only way this could happen was if he used both legs. The scene was comical, Dr. X limping but strongly moving in one direction while hauling the patient along with him.

The patient did it—twice and with increasing speed while obviously using both legs, never collapsing to the floor while Dr. X effusively praised him. He looked embarrassed and also seemed genuinely grateful for this miraculous cure. I was impressed.

I’m calling this a form of supportive psychotherapy partly in jest, but also to make a point about what support can mean, both literally and figuratively speaking, under certain circumstances according to how differently trained health care professionals might define psychiatric help.

Later in my career as a psychiatric consultant in the general hospital, I often found that many medical generalists and specialists preferred patients with these kinds of afflictions be transferred to psychiatric wards.

I don’t recall Dr. X ever suggesting that.

The personal identities of both doctor and patient were de-identified.

New and Old Stories by Ray Bradbury!

We just got a couple of books by Ray Bradbury, and I’m pretty excited. Some of the stories I recognize, but there will be some, perhaps many, that will be new to me.

Writing is Dope

I learned a new slang word from Houston White, the guy who makes that specialty coffee in Minneapolis I blogged about yesterday: Brown Sugar Banana (I’m not a fan, but I admire him just the same). The word is “dope.” That used to be an insult or an illicit drug when I was growing up. Now it means “very good.”

I guess writing, at least for me, is dope.

The further I get in time away from the day I retired from practicing consultation psychiatry, the more I reflect about how I became a psychiatrist. I’m a first-generation doctor in my family, so what follows is one way to write about it.

What has helped me get through life was this writing habit along with a sense of humor. When I was little, I wrote short stories for my mother. I was the “number one son” in the words of my father, which meant only that I was the first born. My younger brother came second only in order of birth. He was the track star. I was the paperboy. Our parents separated early on. Sena and I have been married for 47 years.

I have been writing my whole life. I used a very old typewriter. I wrote poetry for a while, eons ago. Like many aspiring writers, I tried to sell them to publishers. The only publisher I remember ever responding sent me a hand-scrawled note on a small sheet of paper. He told this really short, nearly incoherent story about his son, who had apparently died shortly before. His son had a “tough road.” It wasn’t clear exactly how he died, but I remember wondering whether it was suicide. It was very sad.

In the 1970s, while I was a student at one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Huston-Tillotson College, now a university) in Austin, Texas, I submitted a poem to the school’s annual contest and for entry into the college’s collection, called Habari Gabani (which means “what’s going on” in Swahili). It was rejected. Years later, I finally was able to track down a digital copy of Habari Gani.

Habari Gani from Huston-Tillotson College

Eventually, thank goodness for everyone’s sake, I gave up writing poetry. It was as bad as Vogon poetry. You’ll have to read Douglas Adam’s book “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” for background on that. The Vogons were extraterrestrials who destroyed Earth in order to build an intergalactic bypass for a hyperspace expressway. Vogon poetry is frightfully bad; it’s the waterboarding torture of literature.

I wrote a short Halloween story for my hometown newspaper contest once. It got honorable mention, but I can’t recall what it was about, thank goodness.

I wrote a feature story in a journalism class taught by a nice old guy who made a long speech to the class about the unfortunate tendency for young writers to use flowery, polysyllabic words in their prose. He made it clear that journalists shouldn’t write like that. Although I didn’t consciously do the opposite to annoy him, I did it anyway. I even tossed the word “Brobdingnagian” in it, which might have referred to some high bluffs somewhere in Iowa. Despite being infested with Vogonisms, my teacher tolerated it, sparing my feelings. I must have passed the course although how I did it remains a mystery.

I wrote and co-edited a book with the chairman of the University of Iowa Healthcare Dept of Psychiatry, Dr. Robert G. Robinson, MD. It was “Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry”. There were several contributors. Many of them were my colleagues. It was published in 2010, and prior to that, I’d written an unpublished manual that I wrote for the residents.

There wasn’t any humor in either book, because they were supposed to be evidence of scholarly productivity from a clinical track academic psychiatrist. But I used humor and non-scientific verbiage in my lectures, albeit sparingly. I remember one visiting scientist remarked after one of my Grand Rounds presentations, “You are so—poetic” and I detected a faint disparaging note in his tone…probably a reaction to a latent Vogonism. It’s not impossible to monkey-wrench those into a PowerPoint slide or two.

I used to write a former blog called The Practical Psychosomaticist, later changed to The Practical CL Psychiatrist when The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine changed their name back to The Academy of Consult-Liaison Psychiatry back in 2017. I wrote The Practical CL Psychiatrist for a little over 7 years. I stopped, but then missed blogging so much I went back to it in 2019 after only 8 months. I guess I was in withdrawal from writing.

That’s because writing is dope.

Hearing an Old Song

I have to admit that I’ve been mis-hearing some of the lyrics of one of my favorite songs, “Lean on Me” for the past fifty-odd years since Bill Withers wrote it. It stayed on the top of the charts for more than 3 weeks back in 1972. That was a special time in my life; and not an easy one.

Back then, you couldn’t just look up song lyrics or anything else for that matter on the world wide web. It didn’t exist yet. I’ve always been prone to mondegreens and I finally found out that I was hearing something different in the verse:

“Please swallow your pride

if I have things (faith?) you need to borrow

For no one can fill

those of your needs

That you won’t let show”

Just to let you know, I found lyrics in one YouTube that substituted the word “faith” for “things”. Think about that one. I don’t know how to settle it, so if anybody knows which word is right, please comment. Anyway, it’s a little embarrassing and revelatory that I heard “…if I have pain…” instead of “…if I have things (or faith)…” And I never really heard “…That you won’t let show.”

Yet I lived it.

Years later, after I’d finished college, medical school, residency in psychiatry, and had taught residents and medical students at the University of Iowa for a number of years, one of my colleagues, Scott, a brilliant psychologist and writer, stopped by my office one day. This was years ago.

His name is Scott and he suggested that it would be nice to get together sometime soon to catch up. I deferred and I remembered he replied while looking off down the hallway, “I’m 70.” I wonder if he meant he didn’t know how much more time he had left.

Scott and I had taken similar paths in the middle of our careers at Iowa. I wanted to try private practice and left for Madison, Wisconsin. Scott got the same idea and left for a position in Hershey, Pennsylvania. We both regretted it and soon after returned to Iowa. I swallowed my pride and came back because I loved teaching. I think he returned for the same reason. We were both grateful that the UIHC Psychiatry Dept. Chair, Bob Robinson, welcomed both us of back.

I touched base with Scott a little while ago. We’re both retired. I was trying to find out how to contact Bob about messages I was getting from the publisher of our consult psychiatry handbook. Neither Scott or I could find out what was going on with Bob, who retired several years ago and moved back East. It turned out he had died. Sometimes we all have sorrow.

Scott is my friend, and I leaned on him a long time ago. I’m unsure if I let it show. I’m 70 and I’m grateful to him.

On that note, I’m finding out that I can’t walk all the way to the mall and back anymore. On the other hand, I can walk about half that distance. It’s about a mile and a half out to the Clear Creek Trail and back. There’s a lot of uphill and downhill stretches along the way. I can manage that.

And Sena bought me a couple of pairs of new shoes that I’m breaking in that will probably be easier on my feet and my calves. They’re Skecher slip-ons, not to be confused with the no hands slip-ins. I’m used to slip-ons. I tried one pair out today, in fact. Before I left, I took a few pictures of Sena’s new garden. As usual, she’s planting new flowers. The dogwood tree looks great. She’s even excited about the wild phlox. I can’t keep track of everything else out there. She makes the beauty out there.

And I lean on her for that.

Three Photos to Share for Mental Health Awareness Month

So, I have to hurry up and get these 3 photos posted for today because it’s getting pretty late. Recall the Iowa Healthiest State Initiative calendar along with my photos to share:

The images are important features of events in my life or my sense of humor.

I’m a birdwatcher and many different species of birds visited the fountain. The fountain attracted bluebirds who splashed and even swam in it. That fountain was very heavy. We couldn’t leave it out all winter. In the fall I had to lift the bowls off and move them somewhere else. Moving them entailed lifting them onto bags of mulch so as to reduce the work of hefting them a small distance at a time. The birds were beautiful to watch.

The letter was a class assignment our Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher had us write at the beginning of the class. After we graduated, she mailed us those letters shortly thereafter. We were to write something connected with what we thought we had gained or what we thought might happen after taking the MBSR class. The book might seem out of place, and while I can’t talk much about Gordon Strayer, I did meet him and read his book (which is now long gone; probably lost in a move). I admired him. I don’t think he feared death.

The Chrysler Building reminds me of the Men in Black (MIB) 3 movie, and I included it because my sense of humor is very important to me. In the movie, Agent J and Jeffrey Price have this funny conversation about time travel back to an era that was not the greatest for black people. I know because I lived through it. Agent J is about to use the time travel device which involves jumping off a tall building (it’s a “time jump!”). Agent J is preparing to travel back in time to M.I.B.’s early days in 1969 to stop an alien from assassinating his friend Agent K and changing history. They have this short conversation:

Jeffrey Price: Do not lose that time device or you will be stuck in 1969! It wasn’t the best time for your people. I’m just saying. It’s like a lot cooler now.

Agent J: How will I know if it works?

Jeffrey Price: You’ll either know…or you won’t.

Earth Day Trees and Other Thoughts

Today is designated Earth Day although there is such a thing as Earth Month. Among the several trees Sena planted in our back yard trees are a few that we hope exemplify the Earth Day theme, which is Our Power, Our Planet.

One of them is a dogwood, which we’re hoping will bloom soon. Dogwoods represent joy and rebirth. There are a couple of crab apple trees, a red jewel and a perfect purple. Crab apple trees represent love and all are very special to Sena and me.

Love, joy, and rebirth. They can all be linked to power, which can be the power of will. The will to respect the planet also implies respecting each other. Practicing humility can be a kind of power.

The power to be still and listen to each other can make us more open to change.

On that note, because I can’t go for long without joking around, I should retell the story about me and the walking dead meditation. About 13 years ago, I had an even more serious case of not listening to others than I do now, if you can believe that. It eventually led to my choosing to take the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class ( see this current University of Iowa mindfulness essay). I wrote an essay for the Gold Foundation and it’s still available (I updated the links):

How I left the walking dead for the walking dead meditation (August 13, 2014)

When I was awarded the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award in 2007, I was the last person I thought would ever suffer from physician burnout. Early in my career I had won several teaching awards and had even edited a 2006 Psychiatric Times Special Report on Stress.

About a year or so later, I bought Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book on Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Full Catastrophe Living, because I was dimly aware of the burden of stress weighing on me as a consulting psychiatrist in an academic medical center. I didn’t get much out of Kabat-Zinn’s book on my first read. But then in 2012 I started getting feedback from colleagues and trainees indicating they noticed I was edgy, even angry, and it was time for a change.

Until then, I’d barely noticed the problem. Like most physicians, I had driven on autopilot from medical school onward. I had called myself “passionate” and “direct.” I had argued there were plenty of problems with the “system” that would frustrate any doctor. I had thought to myself that something had to change, but I never thought it was me.

After reflecting on the feedback from my colleagues and students, I enrolled in our university’s 8 week group MBSR program. Our teacher debunked myths about mindfulness, one of which is that it involves tuning out stress by relaxing. In reality, mindfulness actually entails tuning in to what hurts as well as what soothes. I was glad to learn that mindfulness is not about passivity.

But I kept thinking of Kabat-Zinn’s book, in which he described a form of meditation called “crazy walking.” It involved class members all walking very quickly, sometimes with their eyes closed, even backwards, and crashing into each other like billiard balls. I hoped our instructor would not make me “crazy walk” because it sounded so—crazy. I dreaded crazy walking so intensely that I considered not attending the 6-hour retreat where it might occur.

We didn’t do crazy walking. Instead, we did what’s called the “walking meditation.” Imagine a very slow and deliberate gait, paying minute attention to each footfall—so much so that we were often off balance, close to crashing into each other like billiard balls.

I prefer to call this exercise the “walking dead meditation” because it bore a strong resemblance to the way zombies move. One member of the class mentioned it when we were finally permitted to speak (except for the last 20 minutes or so, the retreat had to be conducted in utter silence). It turned out we had all noticed the same thing!

Before MBSR, I was like the walking dead. I was on autopilot — going through the motions, resisting inevitable frustrations, avoiding unstoppable feelings, always lost in the story of injustices perpetrated by others and the health care system.

In practicing mindfulness, I began noticing when my brow and my gut were knotted, and why. Just paying attention helped me change from simply reacting to pressures to responding more skillfully, including the systems challenges which contribute to burnout. About halfway through the program, I noticed that the metaphor connecting flexibility in floor yoga to flexibility in solving real life problems worked.

Others noticed the change in me. My professional and personal relationships became less strained. My students learned from my un-mindfulness as well as my mindfulness, a contrast that would not have existed without MBSR.

As my instructor had forewarned, it was easy for me to say I didn’t have time to practice meditation. I had to make the time for it, and I value the practice so much that I’ll keep on making the time. I will probably never again do the walking dead meditation.

But I’m no longer one of the walking dead.

This post was written by Dr. James J. Amos, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the UI Carver College of Medicine at The University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. He has co-edited a practical book about consultation psychiatry with Dr. Robert G. Robinson entitled Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry. As a clinician educator, among Dr. Amos’s most treasured achievements is the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award. He blogs at https://retirepsychiatrist.com/

Below was my acceptance speech for the award:

Today we gather to reward a sort of irony. We reward this quality of humanism by giving special recognition to those who might wonder why we make this special effort. Those we honor in this fashion are often abashed and puzzled. They often don’t appear to be making any special effort at being compassionate, respectful, honest, and empathic. And rewards in society are frequently reserved for those who appear to be intensely competitive, even driven.

There is an irony inherent in giving special recognition to those who are not seeking self-aggrandizement. For these, altruism is its own reward. This is often learned only after many years—but our honorees are young. They learned the reward of giving, of service, of sacrifice. The irony is that after one has given up the self in order to give back to others (family, patients, society), after all the ultimate reward—some duty for one to accept thanks in a tangible way remains.

One may ask, why do this? One answer might be that we water what we want to grow. We say to the honorees that we know that what we cherish and respect here today—was not natural for you. You are always giving up something to gain and regain this measure of equanimity, altruism, trust. You mourn the loss privately and no one can deny that to grieve is to suffer.

But what others see is how well you choose.

I’m still practicing mindfulness-more or less. Nobody’s perfect. We hope the dogwood tree blooms soon.

Music and Change Go Together

We listened to the Big Mo Blues Show last night on KCCK radio 88.3. It was recorded and we noticed that he sounded younger for some reason. Once he remarked that things were difficult because of having to “shelter in place.” The format of the show was different from usual.

That made me wonder if the show was recorded sometime during the Covid pandemic. I’ve been listening to Big Mo for a long time. John Heim, aka Big Mo, been doing the Friday Blues show since about 2005, according to one news story. Another KCCK legend, Bob DeForest, has been doing the Saturday night blues show for over 30 years now.

John Heim, aka Big Mo is still going strong. I think I’ve been listening to his show for about as long as he’s been doing it. He has come back strong since an accidental fall in 2018 in which he sustained a neck injury which led to a long rehab stint. But he’s back.

There have been interesting additions over time, like the Shout-Outs, the Concert Calendar, the Bodega Bay Weather Report, the Big Mo Pod Show in which he and producer Noah on Saturday discuss the music selections he made on Friday. The comedy bits have also been interesting, like MayRee’s hand-battered catfish (It’s better because it’s battered!).

Last night, we heard a couple of songs which we both liked. One of them was “She Don’t Live Around Here” by Samantha Fish. I heard it for the first time on the Big Mo Blues Show and just about every time I hear it, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. I’ve read that music will do that sometimes, although I can’t remember getting that sensation before.

We both liked Delbert McClinton’s rendition of “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.” He’s had a huge career. Sena asked me if he’s still alive and I foolishly guessed that he died. Nope, he’s 84 years old and evidently still going strong.

I have a personal top ten songs, most of which I’ve heard on the Big Mo Blues Show. They’re not in any particular order. A few of them I like mainly because of the artist’s voice, like Samantha Fish and James Carr.

“She Don’t Live Around Here” Samantha Fish

“The Dark End of the Street” James Carr

“Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday” William Bell or Eric Clapton

“Lean On Me” Bill Withers or Keb Mo

“Mockingbird” Larkin Poe

“I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” Delbert McClinton (written by Otis Redding)

“You Were Never Mine” Delbert McClinton or Janiva Magness

“A Change is Gonna Come” Sam Cooke

“Over The Rainbow and What a Wonderful World” medley Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

“You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks” Seasick Steve

Lately, Big Mo has played Larkin Poe’s “Mockingbird” a fair number of times. I think one interpretation of it is that people’s sense of their identity tends to evolve over time. At different times in your life, you’ll take on a new voice, so to speak, which fits with the idea of the many songs the imitative Mockingbird sings.

Some songs I like because of the message, like “Lean On Me,” or “A Change is Gonna Come.” And I like the song “You Can’t Teach An Old Dog New Tricks” just because I identify with it. I realized that runs counter to the theme of many songs, which are often about change: people change, the times they are a’changing, and the like. So, my top ten song list will probably change, too.

Certification of Old Fart Status by Iowa House of Representatives

Well, thank you very much, State Representative Adam Zabner, for recognizing me as an old fart as you prefer to call it, which is fine with me.

I received a similar honor several years ago, from State Representative Dave Jacoby, who was much more prolix in his remarks on my certificate.

A long time ago, I kept a blog when I was a consulting psychiatrist in the University of Iowa Health Care Dept of Psychiatry. I used to mention occasionally that someday those who recognized my greatness would raise a statue of playdoh to me in the Quad.

Funny thing is I don’t know if the Quad even exists anymore. I supposed the statue could be raised (and perhaps later razed when people finally catch on) somewhere else, in a place much more prominent given my eminence, possibly at the state house in Des Moines or outside Pagliai’s Pizza here in Iowa City at least.

I’ll admit frankly, age does bring with it some of the usual markers: deepening wrinkles, receding hairline, fading memory and the like. There are some advantages, such as the tendency to joke and tell little stories of the distant past (chariot races and so on). This helps to bore younger persons enough for them to move out of line at the ice cream shop so that I can move up.

And I still exercise vigorously, lifting the salt and pepper shakers, crossing and uncrossing my legs on the ottoman, walking back and forth between the chair and the fridge, and power napping.

Seriously, I’m still juggling, which I took up about two and a half years ago. I exercise but not too much. A while ago I had an issue with my quads getting so big they were flopping over my knees so I had to cut back a little.

I don’t know that I’ll get many more certificates of senility from the Iowa House of Representatives. That makes it even more important for somebody to get to work with all possible speed on my playdoh statue.