Short post again today in view of the Memorial Day holiday. However, the mood is light here today as Sena adds Gomphrena to our garden. It’s an annual that will attract hummingbirds, like the feeders.
It rained this morning and she got caught in it. She just stayed out there, planting flowers. I stayed dry, trying again to catch videos of hummingbirds through the window.
It was a long day so this is a short post. It’s different from other long days in that my wife and I had fun besides doing all the yard work.
Sena got the hummingbird feeders (3) and I mixed the sugar water since I need all the practice I can get regarding cooking. It’s 4 parts water to 1 part sugar.
We’ve got Columbine flowers in our garden and that helps attract hummingbirds.
I’m pooped. That’s all I got.
My wife and I are trying to attract hummingbirds this weekend. This is a new project for us. She got a couple of feeders and some nectar we mixed with water and a little beer. No, I’m kidding; we wouldn’t try to get any hummingbirds drunk.
One of the feeders is pretty fancy. You know, it sort of looks like an upside-down beer bottle–just sayin’.
I’ve tried to get snapshots and videos of hummingbirds before. They’re usually pretty blurry and jittery, just like the birds.
We’re hoping that the flowers will help lure them to our garden.
They probably don’t care for Allium; it’s in the onion family.
We’ve got a garden ornament that might help draw them. And as long as our garden goonbird (a well-known cryptid) behaves and doesn’t scare them off–we might see the little guzzlers in a few days.
There are now 3 eggs in the robins’ nest. I saw a big turkey vulture soaring close by. I wonder if that’s what got the House Finch chicks. The bird that made a noise with it’s wings that was as loud as a big sheet flapping on a line in the wind, and looked too big to be a crow or even a raven–I wonder.
I wonder if I somehow was partly to blame for the murder of the baby birds, always messing around the tree. Still, I take pictures–and maybe draw death nearer.
And that leads to other strange thoughts. It’s odd that the nearer I get to retirement, the more I think about my life way before I ever even thought about medical school.
I remember the first time I ever heard about death was when I was in kindergarten. My mother woke me up early one morning to tell me that Steven, one of my schoolmates, was killed the evening before. He was playing around the railroad yard just a few blocks from our house. A train ran over him.
I remember my mother talking about it but I didn’t make any sense out of it. I was too young. I only wondered what it meant.
When I was a difficult teenager and made a conscious effort not to smile for pictures, I remember hitchhiking along a lonely highway in a bad rainstorm. I was glad when the man pulled over. I was not glad when he began to rub the back of my neck and asked, “How about a ride for trade?” I was not too young to know what he meant. When I said, “Let me out,” he did. I was too young to know that was miraculous.
I sometimes catch myself wondering if my life has been a grand illusion since then, only to protect my fragile soul from knowing the true horror. Maybe the driver really didn’t let me out. Why should I wonder that?
I remember a man who taught me how to do the work of a land surveyor. I looked up to him. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest over a failed relationship. I couldn’t help wondering why.
Of course, death visited me several times after I became a physician. They sometimes led to decisions I would rather I had not made about the direction of my career. I always wonder.
We have a couple of brand new birds’ eggs in what may be a second nest by the robin pair. Now that made me wonder about whether or not the first nest under our deck was a decoy or dummy nest. You probably won’t believe me, but I thought of that before I googled it.
What got me wondering was the nest the robins build under our deck about a week ago and which they seemingly abandoned. See the progress in the video:
My last picture of the first robins’ nest showed that it was empty.
There was only one egg that ever turned up in this nest.
And then we found the new robins’ nest in our front yard crab apple tree.
I wondered if the nest under our backyard deck was a dummy or decoy nest, maybe to discourage a persistent birdwatcher. I checked the web and found a short article on Sialis, “Dummy and Abandoned Nests.” Since Google identified the site as “Not secure,” I can just summarize that the author (who is not identified), reports that some males build nests to provide the female with a number of choices. She picks one and finishes the nest–much more neatly.
Some birds build decoy nests because they might have been scared by a possible predator in the area–like a large black crow in our area, which actually did make off with an entire clutch of House Finch nestlings only a week ago.
I found another web site that essentially gave the same explanation and both mentioned somebody named Benjamin E. Leese, who wrote about this topic in something called BlueBird Journal, Summer 2018, p.14 and 15. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the article, possibly because it’s a print journal and not available on line.
Another thing I wonder about: if the crab apple nest is the real McCoy and the under-the-deck nest was a decoy (hey, those rhyme), the problem with the crab apple nest is that, when approached from the back, it’s wide open to flying predators.
Anyway, both nests were done in a couple of days, although the crab apple nest probably was done after the under-the-deck model. I’m pretty confident that the breeding pair built both of them. I know they all look alike, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, evidence or no.
This reminds me of another nest that robins built on our property a few years ago, this one right between our house and the rail of our deck. It was a real Hoorah’s Nest!
I just saw a great post on Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) on Bob Lowry’s blog, Satisfying Retirement. The link is on my home page and it’s a great read, along with many of his other posts.
FOMO for me is different because I’m not actually retired yet. Bob has been retired for a long time and knows what he’s talking about. I’m still just trying to get used to the idea of being retired for now.
Even though I’ve been in phased retirement for over two years now and this coming year is my last before full retirement (see my countdown!), I’m still coping with FOMO.
I check my email several times a day, even when I’m not on service. My position will likely be filled with my replacement well before the year is out. Occasionally I’ll find a trainee evaluation that is time sensitive that I have to complete. I updated the guide to the psychiatry consultation service and notified others about that just yesterday.
What am I going to do when I’m retired? That’s what so many ask me and which I sometimes ask myself. I’m actually having a pretty good time now that I’m finally adjusting to phased retirement. According to the 2018 Report on U.S. Physicians’ Financial Preparedness: Retired Physicians Segment, one suggestion is that physicians try to retire gradually rather than abruptly.
I agree with that and the phased retirement program I’m in has felt right for me. It hasn’t stopped me from FOMO so far, but I’m gradually getting more and more enjoyment from doing things that are not work-related—even though FOMO makes me check my email and the electronic medical record every day.
My wife and I started saving very early on in my medical training and we were fortunate enough to eliminate educational debt early. We’ve always lived simply and don’t need a lot of expensive toys.
I find ways to build a schedule into my day. I exercise and meditate.
I’m not much for yard work, but I try. I get a big kick out of hobbies I’ve rediscovered such as bird-watching.
I like to make silly videos as some of my medical students have noticed. One of them learned how to fold a fitted sheet from one of my YouTube videos. I really enjoy blogging and combining that with my mostly short YouTube movies. You’ll notice I do have some work-related videos, though, some of them fairly recent.
The featured image for this post was actually partly a creation of one the residents a few years ago, who by some miracle found a way to combine my photo with a picture of a smartphone. I added a little more to it to make the point about FOMO.
I actually didn’t have a smartphone until about 4 years ago. And I still mainly use it just as a phone. I check the step counter when I’m staffing the psychiatry consultation service, but I’ll quit doing that.
In fact, the residents persuaded me to get a smartphone. I had a flip phone for a few years prior to that mainly because a snowstorm caught my wife out on the road while she was driving to the hospital to pick me up from work. I had no way of knowing where she was and was worried out of my mind. That convinced me we needed more than land lines.
I still use a desk phone at work. For the first time in my career, last weekend it just quit working. You can’t imagine how happy I was.
Whenever I drop my pager, I always say out loud to the trainees, “Oh my gosh, I hope it’s broken!” I’m only half-joking.
I dropped most of my social media accounts over a year ago, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Doximity believe it or not. I don’t miss them.
I’ll keep you posted on how my struggle with FOMO goes.
Man, it was hot yesterday—par for the course for this time of year. Sometimes it seems like we skip spring and just start with summer. It was in the 90’s and muggy.
So Sena and I decided to head to Kalona to do some outdoor shopping at the Maple Avenue Greenhouse. Sena is the gardener and I mostly stood by the cart to make sure the surface temperature maintained a steady first degree burn level.
Sena found the Jacob’s Ladder plants and I found the martins houses near the entrance to the greenhouse property. I looked up Jacob’s Ladder later and found out that the name comes from how the plant’s pinnate leaves grow up the stem like the steps on the Biblical ladder of Jacob’s dream.
I also found out that Jacob’s Ladder prefers shady and cooler temperatures. Did I mention that the temperature was 90 degrees out in the sun?
We passed the Kalona Creamery on the way out to the greenhouse. After purchasing the Jacob’s Ladder plants, we suddenly got a craving for something cold and creamy.
The Kalona Creamery was established in 2015 and does a pretty good business. It’s bigger than it looks from the outside. Don’t let the cow sculpture scare you. Kalona cows are what this extra sweet creamery is all about.
And in turn, cheese curds and fancy, hand-rolled butter (3rd place at the 2018 Iowa State Fair) is what humans are all about.
And don’t forget the ice cream. I have a lot of imagination and cosmopolitan, discriminating tastes—so I got the “Plain ol’ Vanilla.” Sena got the Kalona Crunch—with pecans. You get a chocolate cow with any selection. It brought back memories of hand-churned ice cream in grade school. Man, that’s good.
And the people were sure friendly in Kalona—even in 90 degree heat.
We took a walk on the Terry Trueblood Trail yesterday and saw quite a few birds even though it’s early in the season. We caught sight of Orchard Orioles and got a snapshot for the first time of a bird that can fool you into thinking it’s a robin.
There are a lot of Tree Swallows nesting out there. It’s too soon for babies. Sena got a couple of great shots of a sassy Red-Winged Blackbird. I got my first good shot of a Gray Catbird.
It’s very peaceful out there—except when the bugs fly up your nose.
When we got home, we noticed the House Finches flitting around the juniper tree where the giant crow stole all their chicks the other day. It looks like they’re planning to rebuild. Foolhardy.
The robins may have abandoned their nest under the deck but they’ve built a regular Hoorah’s Nest in our front yard crabapple tree. It still needs a proper floor.
The featured image for this post is that of a Painted Lady butterfly, one beautiful member of a hugely diverse group of such creatures. It reminded me of the state of our physician supply, which is not so very diverse when it comes to inclusion of minorities.
Even though I’m moving into the final year of my phased retirement contract in July and I’m off service—I still check my office email several times every single day. It’s a hard habit to break after 23 years, not counting 4 years each of residency and medical school. So, I get a pang every time I see a news item in my inbox about the shortage of physicians, especially the shortage of minority physicians. The challenge to increase diversity of race and ethnicity in the supply of American doctors is a big one.
The Greenville News in South Carolina posted a long article about this issue on May 13, 2019 (“Despite efforts to boost their numbers, blacks account for just 6% of doctors in SC” by Liv Osby). Even though blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population, only about 6% of the doctors in Greenville, S.C. are black. Many members of minority groups do not recall seeing a doctor who looked like them while they were growing up. Minority role models for the goal of becoming physicians have always been few and far-between.
I recall being one of a handful of minority students entering the summer enrichment program in 1988 at the University of Iowa. The summer enrichment opportunity was intended to be one way to assist minority students excel in the basic sciences courses that we would be facing in the upcoming regular academic year.
I have always appreciated that boost but not all of my peers saw it that way. One young man said simply, “I’ll see you in the fall,” evidently meaning he would not be attending the summer enrichment program. It was clear from talking with him that he thought the program sent the wrong message to the majority students—that we were getting an unfair advantage. I’m pretty sure that the summer enrichment program ended many years ago, at least in part because of that negative perception.
This reminded me of my undergraduate experience at Huston-Tillotson (H-T) College (now H-T University) when the controversy about affirmative action was prominent. I recall only one black student who was planning to go to medical school and hoped to get into the University of Texas. In fact, even though the term is no longer used, the Greenville News story mentioned that Texas Tech last year eliminated race as a consideration for admission to its Health Sciences Center. This indicates ongoing discomfort about the perception of favoritism or special treatment being given to minorities.
I still see one of my summer enrichment program professors in the hospital hallways every so often. He even remembers my name. We exchange friendly greetings.
And I’m painfully aware that there may be only one other black psychiatrist in Iowa—and I think he’s also a baby boomer.
As I head for retirement, I remember a line from one of the final scenes in the movie Men in Black, “I haven’t been training a partner; I’ve been training a replacement.” I’m not sure if there will be someone to replace me.
This is the season for optimism and milestones: graduating medical students and residents, new faculty from the graduating resident class—including the milestone of getting the suspicious looking postcard notice in the mail reminding me that I’ll soon be eligible for open enrollment in Medicare.
No kidding, I got my first ever Medicare Open Enrollment postcard notice although, of course, it was not from any government agency as the Medicare Open Enrollment Inquiry Card indicated. This notice was obviously a lure from an anonymous marketer soliciting for one or more insurance companies, “SD Reply Center” in Rockwall, Texas.
Don’t get sucked in by this hustle. This has been going on for years. I found an on line news story from 2012 written by Bob LaMendola, with the Sun Sentinel in South Florida.
This is widely viewed as a scam, and the company targets seniors (yes, I am one of those). If you send back the card with all of your personal data on it which they request, outfits like SD Reply Center (SD stands for Senior Direct) will sell it to insurers who may knock on your door. Insurers themselves are forbidden by federal and state laws from sending these postcards or otherwise soliciting seniors unless we request them. While it’s not against the law for companies like SD Reply Center to solicit seniors, consumer advocates advise us not to mail our personal information to the sender of an anonymous postcard. While it may not be harmful, seniors are then in the difficult position of fending off eager insurance salespersons.
I will be shredding my postcard. But I will remain aware of Medicare open enrollment and pursue less worrisome avenues for more information about my coverage options. You have to keep your eyes peeled for trouble.
Speaking of trouble, our birds are in a lot of it. Right after the house finches lost their nestlings, the cardinals lost their only chick, probably to the same predatory crow that took the house finch babies. The cardinal and house finch parents are now gone.
However, while the robins might have abandoned the under-the-deck nest (not clear, my wife says she saw one flying under our deck), they may have settled into our front yard crabapple tree. It’s thick with flowers right now and provides excellent cover for the brand new nest the floor of which still needs work (just like the nest under our deck needed for a while).
Spring is a time of optimism. Hope springs eternal in the human breast—and in the robin redbreast.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 