Today I trekked down to Clear Creek and again saw the geese pair. As always, I heard them before I saw them. I swear I can hear them honking from a mile off.
They almost seemed like they were dancing together. They were the waltzing geese.
Smile at a Stranger for Make It OK Calendar
So, I’m not strictly following the Make It OK Calendar per day for May Mental Health Awareness Month, at least according to the Iowa Healthiest State Initiative. Sometimes the goals on the calendar may not feel natural on a particular day or the opportunity might not appear.
Today, I’m a few days late on the Smile at a Stranger prompt and I figure better late than never. I was out for a walk to Clear Creek, testing out my other pair of new shoes (they’re black which is the only difference).
I didn’t encounter anyone on the way there, but I did see the geese pair I saw yesterday. I think this is the same pair I’ve seen over the years and they always return to about the same area by the creek where I suspect they nest. They honked raucously as they always do as they flew in from the north before landing on the water. The female walks up the shore a few steps and just stands there while the male floats in the creek close by, protectively. I never get to see exactly where the female enters the tall grass to start building a nest. I wonder if it’s because they both sense some nosy person like me is watching them.
Anyway, on my way back I smiled and greeted 3 people who were strangers to me. One was an old guy like me, out for a walk. We smiled and said hi to each other.
The other two were special. There was a kid on a tricycle, coming in hot down the hill straight for me. There was a big guy I figured was his dad bringing up the rear behind him, murmuring words of warning about the obvious risk of so much hi octane tricycle speed down a hill.
The kid was hurtling down so fast that I thought “Am I going to have to catch him?” It reminds me of an old song written and sung by Bill Withers in 1971, “Grandma’s Hands.” The relevant lyrics:
“Used to issue out a warning
She’d say, Billy don’t you run so fast
Might fall on a piece of glass
Might be snakes there in that grass…”
Then the kid put out both feet and made a long sliding stop just a few yards short of me—and grinned wide.
I grinned back and called out, “Hey, rocket man!” He waved and said “Hi!” And so did his dad, who smiled wide. I said “How you doin’?” and he replied “fine! How are you?” I said “I’m good” or something like that.
Smiles can work that way sometimes.
FDA VRBPAC Meeting to Discuss Covid-19 Vaccines
The FDA VRBPAC meeting to discuss Covid–19 vaccines is scheduled for May 22, 2025, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET. The committee will meet in open session to discuss and make recommendations on the selection of the 2025-2026 Formula for COVID-19 vaccines for use in the United States. The meeting presentations will be heard, viewed, captioned, and recorded through an online teleconferencing and/or video conferencing platform.
I couldn’t see any specifics about the forthcoming meeting. I assume there will be updates.
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.
Further Thoughts on Ray Bradbury’s Short Story, “I See You Never”
This is an update to my post from lasts night on Ray Bradbury’s short story, “I See You Never.” My wife, Sena, happened to mention the naturalization process in the U.S. today.
In fact, we both saw the televised naturalization ceremony at the Iowa State Fair of 2024. During that ceremony, 47 children became citizens. In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has held a celebratory naturalization ceremony at the Iowa State Fair for at least the last ten years.
There was just such a ceremony last month of 69 immigrants at the University of Northern Iowa.
I had a quick peek at the U.S. citizenship and civics test questions and I’m pretty sure I would have a lot of trouble passing it. I’d probably get shipped back to Mars—which Ray Bradbury wrote a lot about.
The naturalization process isn’t easy. Under federal law, you have to live here in the U.S. at least five years as a lawful permanent resident to be eligible for naturalization, three years if you’re the spouse of a U.S. citizen. You have to learn the language. Many other countries have a similar naturalization process.
There’s no exact number of the USCIS naturalization ceremonies per year, but 818,500 took part in 2024.
Many of those who go through the naturalization process think it’s unfair for others to bypass it by getting into the country by other means.
So, I guess that’s the other side of the short story—the one Ray Bradbury probably didn’t write.
May Mental Health Awareness Month Calendar and Checklist (look below this sticky post for other new posts)
Attack of the Killer Gnats!
A couple of days ago we made our usual spring trip out to the Terry Trueblood trail. The phlox and grasses waved in the breeze and we saw quite a few birds.
There was also a swarm of killer midges or gnats that attacked us. They ambushed us when we got close to the trees on the western side of the trail.
We couldn’t really see them so much as feel them dive-bombing our eyes and ears, marching through our hair and looking for blood vessels.
What did we expect? We were walking around Sand Lake close to the trees and that’s where the gnats are. I couldn’t hold a camera still long enough to film anything because I was too busy flailing at the bug swarm. Swatting at gnats is a tricky business if you wear eyeglasses—you’re liable to slap them off your head on to the cement trail. I’ve done that.
We retreated in abject defeat in full rout away from the trees and were ready to surrender, head back to the car and leave. But the further away we fled, the gnats dissipated. We took a new direction, the opposite of the one we usually take around the trail.
This led to an adventure that we might not have otherwise had. We would not have encountered the family of killdeer with their stilt-legged babies crisscrossing the parking lot and other wonders. It reminded me of the Out of the Woods song (“Optimistic Voices”) in The Wizard of Oz:
You’re out of the woods
You’re out of the dark
Away from the flies
Step into the sun
Escaping the gnats dive-bombing your eyes
Keep straight ahead for the least buggiest place
Off your face the crap from swarming flies
Hold onto to your breath
Hold onto your nose
Hold onto your ears
Stop breathing in gnats and run like crazy…
And then the action picked up along the less wooded section of the trail. People were fishing along the lake’s edge, although I don’t understand how they tolerated the bugs unless they bathed in Deet before arriving.
We never got so many video clips; in fact, we ran the camera battery nearly empty. If we hadn’t taken a different path, we’d have missed the show.
The first picture I took was something Sena thought was interesting far out on Sand Lake. I thought it was a rock, but after we got home and looked at the clip closely, it was a group of three turtles jostling for room on top of a small rock. They could have been fighting or mating; it was hard to tell. There’s a moral in there somewhere.
I think some birds like orioles and redwing blackbirds like the sensation of being blown back in the wind while they perch on slender tree branches. They don’t get motion sickness.
There were several birds on a utility wire which were difficult to identify because of the angle of the sun. It would probably remind some of Leonard Cohen’s song “Bird on The Wire.”
One brief highlight was the aerial “dogfight” between two male goldfinches, probably about territory or females. They were little more than a yellow blur on video whaling away on each other in the air.
The comedy act of the day was the killdeer family farting around the parking lot, crossing and recrossing the streets. We made video of it that you can see in a different post.
The tree swallows were doing their usual aerial acrobat routines and there were probably babies in the nest boxes. A brilliant tree swallow appeared. I’m pretty sure it was a male because of the beautiful blue-green feathers. I think I caught a clip of a female as well. The color of the feathers were more muted.
They were probably gobbling up the killer gnats.
Do We See Each Other?
I know that what I’m writing here this evening is going to sound foolishly sentimental and maybe even a little spooky, but I was struck by this weird experience I had tonight. It was just a little odd and too fortuitous. I’m not going to talk at any length about the politics of it, just the strangeness.
We have these two books by Ray Bradbury, and when I was a kid, I loved his science fiction stories. I read many of them, but never like the one I read tonight.
The way this started was I was looking for something to do. I thought about watching old reruns of The Red Green Show on YouTube, which always struck me as funny when I watched them long ago. I still do, but couldn’t get into it tonight.
I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels which, as always, were reruns. I was not even interested in the X-Files reruns and I’m a fan. And I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing any more in-your-face commercials about total body deodorant.
So, I picked up the hefty paperback of a big collection of a hundred of Ray Bradbury’s short stories, entitled oddly enough, “Bradbury Stories.” I just opened up the book with no particular story in mind and it fell open right to one I’d never read before, “I See you Never.”
It’s all of 3 pages long and it’s about a Mexican immigrant named Mr. Ramirez. He’s been brought by the police to the front door of the rooming house where he’s been living on a temporary visa, which has been revoked. He’s just there to say goodbye to his landlady. He’s being deported and has this sad conversation with her on the doorstep. He just keeps telling her in broken English, “I see you never.” The landlady, Mrs. O’Brian (no accident she has an Irish name, of course) just says repeatedly that he’s been a good tenant and that she’s sorry. Then he leaves with the police. She goes back inside and can’t finish her dinner with her family and realizes she’ll never see Mr. Ramirez again.
There’s a much better summary and analysis than mine written by a professional reviewer. This story was published back in 1947 and is set in the historical context of post WWII America.
I hate politics, and I’m not going to say anything specific about how this little story struck me with its irony given what’s going on this country right now. I was just looking for a little science fiction distraction and instead got irony. I didn’t go looking for this and I’ll be brutally frank—I actively avoid political news and I hate like hell to get reminded of it every day. All I did was open a damn book. I wish I had never seen this story.
I guess maybe that’s what I get for my avoidant approach to certain things. How’s that for a Mental Health Awareness month event?
Why Did the Killdeer Cross the Road?
We hit the Terry Trueblood trail yesterday and caught pictures of several birds including a hilarious family of killdeer herding babies around the parking lot. At first, we weren’t sure how many chicks there were because they were difficult to see in the grass.
Eventually we counted 3 chicks. It was a comical show as the parents, aided by other adult birds trying to be helpful, attempted to round up the youngsters.
Crossing and recrossing depended a lot on the traffic flow and other factors including us. We made them nervous following them around with a camera!
I think most drivers got the hint that we were out filming the killdeer in the parking lot as the adults tried to round up the stilt-legged chicks, who would scatter in different directions. Their only guidance were the calls of adult birds—which we couldn’t reconcile into anything sounding like “killdeer” despite what the books say.
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.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 