Happy 107th Birthday, Mary!

Here's a picture of the most glamorous 107 year old in Chicago! Her birthday was yesterday, February 17. We should all look so good NOW, let alone when we reach 107!! Mary's son, Dan, outlined the following highlights of his mother's long, hard-working life [I've added maps where I could find them and also other commentary]:

Mary McGowan celebrated her 107th birthday at St. Benedict Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, Niles, IL where she is recovering from a recent injury. St. Benedict residents and staff joined Mary and her family at a birthday party February 16. Mary’s family hosted another party for her on her actual birthday, February 17, 2007.

Highlights of Mary’s 107 years

Born: February 17, 1900 at home in Dunmore, Pennsylvania

Parents: Helen (Tkach) and John Kolibaba, immigrants from Slovakia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). John Kolibaba was injured in a Pennsylvania coal mine accident.

[Slovakia is relatively small, but not this small!!! Still, you can see where they came from.]

Siblings: Five sisters, all deceased (two died before Mary’s birth)

Early Life: 1900-1905 Dunmore, Pennsylvania



[The big building with the A on it is the Catholic church in Dunmore. The picture is from a large hand-drawn topical map of Dunmore in 1905.]

1905-1920 Homestead farming SW of Glen Ullin, North Dakota

[Can't get a photo of Glen Ullin....It is still just a wide spot in the road about 50 miles west of Bismarck. The next town west of Glen Ullin is Richardton, where Aunt Joyce Carew was born and raised.]

In Glen Ullin, Mary and her family survived the 1918 flu, but she had a couple other brushes with death. She was thrown from a horse one time and landed on her back. She said it was months before she could walk again. Another time, she was coming down a steep hill. It had rained recently and the hill was muddy, the famous thick North Dakota gumbo, and her horse slipped. Mary and the horse kind of fell sideways onto the side of the hill with her still sitting on the horse, but luckily she wasn't injured. The impression of her on the horse stayed in the mud even after it dried. A less-direct brush happened on the first year they moved out to that land. Some neighbors came by and asked where they were going to spend the winter because they'd never survive in the shanty house that had been built temporarily. Her father admitted he had no place to go, and they were planning to stay there. Later a group of neighbors came, plowed the soil, cut bricks, and surrounded the house with them, which allowed the family to get through that first winter. The next spring they built a real sod house. In 1916, the family built a frame house, and Mary said it was never as warm as the sod house had been. She saw Halley's Comet as a child and worked the farm with her father at planting and harvesting time since they had no boys and she was the oldest girl. In addition to learning how to build a sod house, Mary knew how to milk cows and butcher them, smoke hams, and make cottage cheese--essential survival skills in those pioneer days.

In 1928, Mary married Daniel E. McGowan, a native of Chicago. They later divorced. Mary became the sole support of their only child, Daniel J. McGowan, Chicago. Daniel J. married Susan Marie Dwyer in the early 70s. They produced three daughters--Helen, Sarah, and Jeanne--and one son, Steven, all of Chicago. Two of the girls are married, and Mary is now the proud great-grandmother of two girls, and a boy. [Mary's granddaughter Helen is the source of the stories about Mary's life in Glen Ullin, and she also has taped Mary telling stories about her life.]

Before her marriage to Mr. McGowan, Mary did housekeeping and restaurant work in North Dakota, then moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she studied and worked in beauty culture. From 1926 to 1971, she worked as a licensed beautician in Chicago.

A brilliant woman, Mary returned to the studies she'd had to forego to earn a living in her early days, and she was awarded her GED high school equivalency degree in 1979. Mary was a former member of the St. Clement Parish and Messiah choirs. She also served as an election judge in Chicago's 45th ward. After her retirement from full-time work, she managed and operated Cuneo Hospital Nursing Center beauty shop from 1979 to 1980.

Dan quotes his mother's recipe for a long life: “Work hard”

Lunch at Montmartre and pease porridge...

A few slips and slides down the icy sidewalk from Eastern Market (the building) is a little French restaurant called Montmartre. How we managed to find ourselves in there for lunch yesterday is anybody's guess...we were on our way to either Marvelous Market on the near corner or Bread & Chocolate on the far corner on Pennsylvania Ave. My illustrious coworker (ICW) wanted a salad, and I wanted soup. We were going to take our lunch back to the office and eat at our desks (BAD!), but....we were cold, and the word Montmartre pulled us in (see earlier birthday in Paris post). Once inside we discovered the place was warm and cozy and filled with Hill workers (we both thought "Republicans" due to the number of thin young blondes wearing fur coats, but there are plenty of both in DC...it doesn't have to mean "reactionary" when fur coat and skinny young blonde converge). So we asked for a table and wound up by the big tall windows at the end of the room.

Le garcon was cute as a bug's ear, and he asked us what we wanted to drink. ICW asked for a glass of pinot, and I said "Water for me, please." Then as he took my wine glass away, I said, "No, I'll have a glass of red wine, too, but NOT pinot." The restaurant looked very like another of our favorite watering holes, Bistrot au Coin on Connecticut Ave near Dupont Circle, and they have a great Cotes du Rhone red for their house wine. Besides, this was a French restaurant. Children drink wine at lunch in France. "Cotes du Rhone, please" I said, thinking one glass won't hurt--that is, make my breath smell noticeably if I encountered Madge/Margot/Marguerita the Boss. The waiter hustled over with the wine, and we toasted the afternoon--FRIDAY afternoon, our favorite one of the week, especially since there were no meetings.

Then we tackled the menu. There were three kinds of soup available: #1 was pureed cauliflower with mussels (hanh?), #2 was pureed zucchini with Boursin cheese, and #3 was I forget...NOT French onion, which was nowhere in sight. ICW wound up getting the zucchini soup and a salad (slices of asparagus, red and yellow peppers, and parmesan cheese stacked up on the plate and drizzled with red wine vinaigrette. She loved the salad but said the zucchini soup was nowhere near as flavorful as my version, which has lots of salt & pepper, garlic, and green peas in it and is cooked in chicken broth with a tablespoon or so of dill weed, then pureed. I add a bit of cream at the end instead of cheese, but we both liked the little glob of cheese, so I'll try it next time I make it.

I kept waffling and wavering (my typical restaurant behavior) between this (mussels?) and that (hangar steak?), but what finally came out of my mouth was pot au feu (beef cheeks, carrots, turnips, and leeks). Mario Batali is always cooking beef cheeks on Iron Chef America, so I had to try this. I liked the broth, dark and rich, and the carrots. There was even a little grit of sand in there, probably from the leeks, and I liked that, too. The beef cheeks? Well....I think beef short ribs would be better, but they're about the same. Cheeks have far less fat, which might be why the meat is not as flavorful as short ribs.

Well, it was all delicious, and we each wound up having 2 and a half glasses of wine. Plus dessert, plus coffee. ICW's dessert (raspberry&blackberry tart) was great. Mine (chocolate mousse)...well, you can get lots better at Las Placitas, the Salvadoran restaurant a couple of blocks down 8th St.

Pease Porridge

I mentioned this past week to NDB that I was not having good luck cooking pea soup from one of those cellophane packets that look so appealing and easy (Just add water!!). I poured the lot into a deep skillet yesterday a.m., added the bacon grease from breakfast (I know, I know), and boiled it for an hour before I left for work. Last night I was going to throw it out, but I boiled it some more...for maybe another hour and a half. This morning I turned on the heat again, and let it burble away...Finally I could smell scorched peas, so I went out to the kitchen and turned it all off. It wasn't badly burnt...just a few around the edge of the pan had turned a nice toasty brown. I scraped it all up and thought, well, it's a shame to throw this out. So I ate it for breakfast. It was about the texture of oatmeal. "Pease porridge hot!" came to mind. Also, "9 days old!" It won't be 9 days old till tmw, and there's still plenty left. But I dunno. It's still not very good. The scorching added the most flavor, but the beans are still very chewy. Hmmm.

Love Letters

Note the ND sunglasses!!! I am about 35 here, Peggy is probably 10, Donna next to her is a couple years older.

Peggy had a great post on Valentine's Day about the lost art of letter writing. Lots of people bemoan the advent of e-mail as the cause of fewer letters being written, but I think it's not even related. E-mail is its own art form and is alive and well. What has killed letter writing, I think is the CELL PHONE...blahblahblah, yakketyyakkety....You've already said everything that's on your mind, so why take the time to write it, too? Blogging seems to be bringing letter writing back, largely because most blogging communicates over vast distances....the same kind of distance that soldiers and sailors used to experience between themselves and their loved ones.

Just about every word of communication comes to me through my eyes. My phone calls are typed, ditto the TV programs I watch. I've got several suitcases full of letters that I began to write after I lost my hearing. What strikes me now as valuable is what I recorded of my life in those days as a young mother.

Here's a sample:

From me to S., no date:



Gr - [short for Grendel, after Beowulf]
I am taking a bath surrounded by the spoor of small child bathers--soggy towels, broken soap, bubble pipes, Legos in the drain, filthy socks kicked behind the toilet. An image for eternity. At least it shuts out the demise of the green plant. And the cutting-down of 100-year-old cottonwoods to make room for a crane. (Across the street.) You had better get here soon.

My mother is home from Texas and moaning about the quiet, but rather evasive. I think she has a boyfriend somewhere. In Texas, that is. She really needs someone to direct her.

People are getting gloomy about the world. More & more the simple people are really comforting.

Our garden is 1/8 planted with 100 lbs of seed potatoes in. Too cold for anything else, as yet.

Went to May devotions for the 1st time in many years. So few people. Highly emotional, despite the editing out of all purple phrases from hymns to O.L. [Our Lady]. Funny, how the religionizers decry the emotional coldness of modern Americans, and yet perpetrate the felony lest anyone accuse them of sentiment. The same religionizers who rhapsodize over the Search and Cursillo can't bring themselves to sing "Our hearts are on fire." Oh, shit....

The kids are waiting for you. You'd better show up.

Greetings always
from where I live

Mary Ellen

Another letter, dated only "Sunday"

Dear S.,
Lest you misunderstand (not the right word) when your package arrives...it was hatched on Thursday afternoon during a pouring rain--I didn't feel like working--and mailed Thursday night. In other words, long before your letter came yesterday about myths. I have been laughing out loud periodically for a day now. And I'm beginning to be spooked. [I made her a "de-mythologizer," a device I shall explain sometime when you can see a wastebasket, etc.]
...
Quite a week. The path of g.r. [greatest resistance--a convent phrase, as in "take the path of greatest resistance"] was pretty steep, but I gained some ground, despite all the backsliding. As additional therapy I went downtown and bought a few new garments, got the hair cut & curly: the works. Now that Donald has recovered from the shock, he really enjoys the new look. And me, too.

Friday I saw a little boy who had been struck by a car. Terrifying: four squad cars with lights flashing, a mob of fascinated children, and in the center of the street a little fellow covered by a plaid blanket - he with hair the color of barley staw, and pale, and wiping blood from his eye. Both legs broken. Took the long way home - slowly.
Mother: I saw a little boy hit by a car just now.
Children (eagerly): Was he killed??

Yesterday afternoon we went to a buffalo barbeque at United Tribes. Afterward, after a brief nap, we went swimming where Thomas swallowed some water and promptly threw up in the water. I wish you could have seen the sleek teenagers lolling at pool's edge, viewing the whole scene with disgust. I hauled him (protesting) out as the entire pool turned milky murky and left the Youth to cope with the bits of watermelon floating by and the beans, bright and brown, bobbing singly.

Last night the girls and I went to a pow-wow, scheduled for 7 p.m. We arrived at 7:30 feeling guilty (o jeez) for being late. However, by Indian time we were three hours early. When we left at 10:30 it was just starting to roll. The girls spent the three-hour wait tripping back & forth to the concession stand with an Indian friend--arms around each other, faces anointed with orange pop, lips spewing peanut shells. And Mother sat on the bleachers and grooved with the evening. Sky like pearlescent plastic, wind in the microphone like thunder, an old brown dog rolling in the wood shavings spread out on the dance floor to protect elegant white moccasins fitting like skin. The beauty was overwhelming, and ancient: chant and drums, new flesh - boys bobbing, men swaying, happy women with divine serenity moving, moving. Dignity and unity and community. It was a hell of a lot better than going to church. The girls joined in for two dances. Over the microphone the Indian version of Little Big Horn handed down by the speaker's grandmother. Thus: the white brothers started the fight on the way home (cowards, but no fools) by shooting an Indian in the back. And Custer was not scalped (true) because the Indians respected him (false) but because he committed suicide, as did most of the other white brothers. That is, he was no trophy since he had not fought.

So, you see, all is not as it seems, and yet the Moment survives, is now, and ever shall be.

In hope,
Mary Ellen

Southren lunch....

[M'reen sent me this cartoon today in an email titled "Old is When...." I thought it fit real good with the whole lunch theme]

Some days, the only thing that works to get your face off the pavement is to head to Eastern Market Lunch on Capitol Hill and have a genyoowine Southren lunch: Fried flounder on a homemade roll (lettuce & tomato added free) or a fried fish platter with THREE HUGE fillets plus two sides and a homemade roll. The fish is the freshest I've ever tasted outside of my mother's kitchen at Lake Sallie, where she cooked the fish that my dad and I caught and cleaned about 10 minutes before. The tartar sauce is also homemade from the thickest, creamiest mayo you ever et plus some chopped pickle and onion. You dip it yourself out of the bucket into little plastic cups. Sides at EML include French fries, fresh collards (pronounced "cullyards" if you're from around Bal'mer), slaw, and potato salad. You wash it all down with sweet tea, which is how they drink tea in the South here. Yeah, D.C. is South. The Mason-Dixon line runs across the country up north of here. Iced tea is also on the menu, but you have to add your own sugar if you want it sweet.

The whole thing costs about 10 bucks, and there's usually enough to take a whole 'nother lunch back to work for somebody else who's still hungry. Life is beautiful....

Happy Nirvana Day

Well, I missed Valentine's Day this year by several miles. My brother Bob sent his usual delightful homemade Valentine greeting. I even got another Valentine's Day e-card from Jimmy Feeney, on whom I had a crush in 5th grade. Jimmy is of course married to his lovely and accomplished high school sweetheart, Sandy, and sends these cards out of the goodness of his big heart. Needless to say, Jimmy (and everyone else in my acquaintance) did not get a card from me.

So here's a greeting for February 15, 2007: Nirvana Day. Nirvana Day is the day when Buddhists, especially Tibetan Buddhists, celebrate Buddha's final achievement of complete Nirvana (Paranirvana).

This is a quotation from the Nirvana Sutra:

" ... if you perceive things truly, you will become free from attachment, separated from them, you will indeed be liberated. I have well crossed the watery waste of existence. I abide in bliss, having transcended suffering, therefore I am devoid of unending desire, I have eliminated attachment and gained Liberation [moksha]. There is no old age, sickness or death for me, my life is forever without end. I proceed burning bright like a flame. You must not think that I shall cease to exist. Consider the Tathagata [i.e. Buddha] to be like [Mount] Sumeru: though I shall pass into Nirvana here [i.e. physically die], that supreme bliss is my true nature [dharmata]." (Tibetan version)

I wouldn't know much about this. I am still struggling to BE HERE NOW. There used to be a great shop in Dupont Circle just off P Street near the Georgetown border. It had a t-shirt I coveted:

"Everything I've ever tried to give up has claw marks all over it."

Death on a Popsicle Stick

The 16th Winter Deaflympics, just concluded in Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 10, 2007, produced a cookbook. It reminds me of the KFYR cookbooks from Bismarck or the Frank N. Magid Associates cookbooks from the 70s and 80s, or even the White Trash Cookbook, which attained actual publication. I'm sure most people can relate to this kind of cookbook or this kind of recipe. Maybe you've even eaten something like this and lived to tell about it.

Here's a recipe that calls forth the kind of cooking that killed our relatives: Deep Fried Twinkies, or Death on a Popsicle Stick.

Deep Fried Twinkies/Death on a Popsicle Stick
6 Twinkies
6 Popsicle sticks
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
recommended amount of cooking oil for your fryer

Take your Twinkies and impale them on the popsicle sticks. Leave enough stick protruding from the Twinkies to get a decent grip and toss the Twinkies into the freezer overnight. On the day of the deed, mix your flour, baking powder, and salt. In a separate dish, mix your milk, vinegar, and oil. Once the liquids are mixed, whisk them into the dry mix and stir until smooth. This is your batter. Toss it into the fridge.

Heat your fryer to about 375. Once the oil is at the proper temperature, take your Twinkies from the freezer, dust lightly with flour, and swish through the batter mix, making sure to coat evenly and fully.

Holding your Twinkie stick with some tongs, dunk it into the oil. It's going to try to float, so hold it under the surface until it turns a nice golden brown--usually about three to four minutes. Toss Twinkie onto a paper towel, allow to drain, and consume.

If your cardiologist finds out you've been eating these, I didn't post this. I wasn't here, and you must have gotten the recipe from my evil twin, Skippy.
-Anonymous

Here's another recipe of a similar genre: 7 Layer Salad.

1 head lettuce, chopped
1 layer red onions
1 layer cauliflower
1 layer carrots, grated
1 layer bacon, crumbled
1 cup salad dressing (mayonnaise or other)

Layer each ingredient in dish. Spread salad dressing over top. Cover, refrigerate overnight.
-J. R., Woods Cross, Utah

And for dessert? 7-Up Cake!

1 - 2/3 cup margarine
3 cups sugar (!)
5 eggs
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon lemon extract
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup 7-Up
Powdered sugar

Cream together margarine and sugar.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Add flour and extracts and beat well.
Gently fold in 7-Up.
Pour into well greased 10-cup bundt pan.

Bake at 325 degrees for 1-1/4 hours.
Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

Makes 10-15 servings.
-B. T., Clinton, Arkansas

As they say in these kinds of cookbooks, "Enjoy!"

Cochlear Implant 7

I had lunch with Deb today, and she told me that on day 5 after her surgery, she got DIZZY!!! and she stayed dizzy for another 10 days!!! Holy Toledo! She also said it took her a long time to wake up from the anesthetic.

Well, all of that rang my bells....probably the worst thing about becoming deaf was the vertigo (Latin for dizzy). It was as if my brain were on a spindle. I'd be walking along, and all of a sudden and somebody would give the old brain a good SPIN! Whooo! I'd fall down, vomit, etc. I never really knew when this was going to happen, so I spent a lot of my late 20s and early 30s in a state of apprehension. I was always worried that it might happen when I was carrying one of the babies around, or walking down a flight of stairs, or driving the car (never did, any of those times).

And as for not waking up on schedule after surgery....that has been my pattern, too. Most people wake up after the kinds of surgery I've had in....hmmm....maybe an hour or two, but it'd take me a day or so.

Well, I have to face facts. They're gonna stick a rod in my head and thread it around in my cochlea, and it's gonna stay there. My brain tissue is gonna react, and it's possible I'll get dizzy. Hope not.

Meanwhile, I ran into Linda at work, and I asked her how her new rats were doing. Linda acquired a PhD in some esoteric kinda mathematical subject from NYU, and while she was getting this, in addition to Marcus, her neat husband, she was working with rats. She loves rats. And she's got two new ones. Her old rats didn't last too long. (Well, rats don't.) She's got two males now, and she calls one "Big Cheese." I forget what she calls the other one, but he's littler, and he reminds her of her female rat that just died. That is, he's game for anything and has great SPIRIT!! I think she calls him "Eek," which is what she called the female he reminds her of. For example: when she opens the cage, the new Eek jumps right out into her lap. And so it goes. Linda's a FINE photographer, and I'm gonna ask her for some photos of "the kids." I'll stick em on the blog here.

There's really more to life than work and being deaf and all that. In fact, life outside of work and one's disabilities is surprising! We don't think of it as anything but housework and that, but it's LIFE!!!!!

Cochlear Implant 6

Yesterday at lunchtime I ran into Deb, a prof on campus. She and I went to the same women's college in Minnesota. She is much younger than I am, and we were at our alma mater years apart. She was a music major when she first arrived, but then her hearing loss (begun when she was about 17) got worse, and she switched to psychology. She got married back in the 90s sometime, and she has a set of twins in nursery school. We hadn't seen each other for a while, so we stood on the icy sidewalk in the wind and signed a few sentences to bring each other up to date. She told me she was on sabbatical right now, and I told her I was going to get a cochlear implant in March. With a big smile, she reached up and removed her own processor and held it out to show me. "Wow! When did you get it?" I said. "Last June," she said. "I love it!!" I asked her if she could hear her little children's voices now, and she said she called them on the phone on turn-on day! I asked if she could hear and play music, too, and she said, "Yes...both. It's thrilling." She's always had a confident glow about her, so I can't really say that she looked any different or happier, but she kept saying, "I love it!" If we can arrange it, we're going to meet for lunch possibly tomorrow, and I'll get to ask her lots more about the whole experience.

Before lunch, I also heard from Bev Biderman. Bev is Canadian and the author of Wired for Sound, a great book that details her process of learning to hear again with a cochlear implant. Cathy asked me to review the book for Odyssey back in 1997 or 1998 when the book first came out, and I loved it. It was personal and informative and even-handed. When Bev came to give a talk here five or six years ago, we met for breakfast. She was getting better and better at hearing with the implant, and I was struck by how easily she handled conversation. Yesterday morning, out of curiosity, I looked her up online at U of Toronto and sent her an email, telling her about my upcoming implant in March. She wrote back immediately saying this was "wonderful news!" Bev is now an adaptive technology consultant and planning analyst at the University of Toronto. She told me she now has two cochlear implants and is enjoying the stereo effect of hearing with both ears. Bev's surgeon at Johns Hopkins for her first cochlear implant is the same guy who will be doing mine.

I have to say that my excitement about the possibilities being opened went sky high after I talked with Deb and heard from Bev. I haven't allowed myself to get too fired up about this in case it doesn't work, but now I'm just kind of humming along. Surgery will be three weeks from today! I have to remember to stop taking aspirin next Thursday.

Schwarzie! Wo sind Sie gewesen??

Well, guess wot greeted me in the lobby when I got home tonight? A nice red box from FRANCE!!!! I brought it in while I took off my coat and set it next to my plants so that it might have some nice red company after its long journey across.



Then I opened the box and took out...tada! Lieber Schwarzeleh!!


Am I seeing things, though? Is Schwarzie a little grey??? Maybe. She's 24 years old, which is pretty old for a coat! I wanted to take a good SNIFF of the box, too, to see if it smelled of the apartment. But alas, I can't smell anything in this weather. The cold has my nosed stopped up tight. Shooot! (A good North Dakota expression of dismay or consternation)

Anyway, the lost is found. Schwarzie has a whole bunch of long, blonde hairs all over her, though. Which makes me wonder if perhaps the good Parisian assistant didn't wear her on her vacation? The hair (or hairs, as they say in ND) definitely does/do not come from us. George and Cathy have blonde hair, but it's shorter than this. Peggy is the only one of us whose hair is as long, but hers is auburn. My hair doesn't match in length or color.

Btw....lest you think I know any German, I used the wonderful AltaVista Babelfish translator software: http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr
With Babelfish, you can translate just about any expression as long as it's formal or a bit stilted. If you get too colloquial, it comes out English.

Now I have to tell the good assistant that the coat has indeed arrived and would she please send me her address so I can fire off a check to her. Maybe I'll send the check back the same way she sent the coat. Ha.

Auf Wiedersehen, lieber schwarzer Mantel!

In 1983, Debbie gave me a wonderful Louis Feraud coat for my birthday. It was $300 on sale at Armstrong's, and since she worked there, she got it for even less with her employee discount. The coat was not in the regular Armstrong's coat department, called "Coatland." It was in the designer department. (The Armstrong's women's department was next to Coatland, and the employees used to call it "Fatland." Oof! Pow!)

Anyway, I wore the coat to Paris in December, and the above photo may well be its last sighting. In our rush to clear out and find a way to the airport, I left it in the closet in the apartment where we stayed. I emailed the apartment manager as soon as I got back to see if it was still there. It was, and the manager asked one of her helpers to mail it to me.

On December 9, I got the following email from the helper:

Hello Mary Ellen,

This is K---, E----'s assistant. I picked up your coat from the Abbesses apartment yesterday- it was indeed right where you left it, hanging in the closet.

I will ship it to you next week and email you a confirmation + shipping information once I've sent it.

Thanks and have a great weekend,

The following email arrived on January 16:

Hello Mary Ellen,

I just wanted to check to see if you have received the coat yet. I sent it on January 5th. I meant to send it before that, but I wasn't able to do so before going out of town for the holidays. My apologies for the delay- I did it as soon as I got back. In any case, if you haven't received it already, you should very soon.

The cost for the shipping was 39.05 Euros + 10 Euros for the time spent [As IF]. Figured at $1.29 = 1€ , 49.05 € = $63.34.

Please let me know as soon as you get the coat and then I can give you my US address where you can send the check.

Best wishes for the new year.

And this morning's e-post brought this:

Hi Mary Ellen,

Just wanted to check if you're gotten your coat back yet...I hope so! Let me know.

Well, of course the coat has not yet arrived. Louis Feraud, the coat's designer, died in 1999 at the age of 79, and a Google search produced this article from BBC news online:

Tuesday, 28 December, 1999, 18:19 GMT
Designer Feraud dies

French fashion designer Louis Feraud, who designed clothes for Brigitte Bardot in the 1960s, has died aged 79.
...
Feraud was born in Arles, southern France and left his job as a ski instructor in the Alps to open his first boutique in the 1950s in the French Riviera city of Cannes, where he sold clothes to the sun-worshipping jet set.

His first success came in 1955 when Brigitte Bardot walked into his shop and purchased a girlish, white sun dress.

"Photographers and journalists followed her," he once said.
"Within a week, every woman up and down the Cote d'Azur was wearing my little white dress. We sold 500 of them in a matter of days."

In 1956 he opened a boutique in Paris for clients including actresses Kim Novak and Ingrid Bergman as well as Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the late French president Francois Mitterrand.

As much artist as couturier, he kept painting throughout most his life, crafting stylish nudes, landscapes and flowers which were exhibited and sold in Paris and New York.
His clever and amusing black and white geometrics and graphics often went directly into his outfits, and some of his most beautiful, luminous scarves were his own colourful designs.

"What I always wanted to do was please women," he once said.

There are about 50 Feraud outlets around the world whose annual turnover is about £81m.

Feraud also created several perfumes for the American company Avon and made contributions to the work of other designers, including Daniel Hechter and Jean-Louis Scherrer.

After he retired in 1995, his business was run by his daughter Kiki - his only child - his ex-wife Zizi, and colleagues until earlier this year when it was taken over by Dutch firm Secon.

He will be buried in his home town of Arles.

Despite Feraud's French origins, the coat itself, which I loved, was made in Germany! It had a row of buttons down the front (which I could just barely button this year, thanks to the increase in my shoe size, among other things). It reminded me of the photo I saw of my grandfather's sister, Tante Franziska. In the photo she was wearing a long black dress with many small buttons down the front, almost like a priest's cassock. The coat may have appealed to me on some deep ancestral level.

Anyway, I fear the coat has gone home to its final resting place. I've lugged it around for years, not being able to fit into it but also not wanting to part with such a beautiful garment. But now it's gone. Goodbye, dear little black coat!

Wind Chill

Here's a chart from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOTE: click on the chart if it's not fully displayed in your window on this post.

We never heard of wind chill back when I was growing up in Fargo, ND, and the temps were often waaay below zero. Since Fargo is the windiest spot in ND (even windier than Grand Forks!, which is 80 miles north of Fargo), the wind chill numbers would have driven everyone away. The average wind speed in Fargo year-round is about 12 mph. So--and pardon my creaky math (Ha. All my brothers with the possible exception of John were geniuses in math and wound up as engineers...I was a writer...John turned out to be a doctor)--in theory if the air temperature on any given day in January was -2F, and the wind was puffing away at 12 mph, the wind chill would be somewhere around -16F to - 19F!! I think. I just remember the way Judy Henning and I figured out to tell if it was colder than -20F when we walked to school in the a.m.: the outsides of our legs would get stiff. When we got to school, we had to go through a few minutes or hours of pain while our legs warmed up! Sting and burn!

Happy Birthday, Dad - repost

[NOTE: I posted this two years ago, but I like it, so here it is again.] Sorry I missed your birthday, Pop. I always get it mixed up with my h.s. boyfriend's, whose birthday is tomorrow, Feb. 5.}


Yesterday was the 115th anniversary of the birth of my father, Francis Thomas Dwyer. He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 5, 1894, and he died at Shoreham, Minnesota, on January 3, 1968, a night of bitter cold. (It was -41 degrees in Bismarck the following morning when I dropped off the girls with our neighbor Iris and took the train to Detroit Lakes for his funeral. Tom was not yet born.)

Here are some of the photos I have of Dad. There are more, but they're not organized, to put it mildly. These are the framed photos I have in the den.

First is the earliest photo I have (maybe anyone has) of Dad. He's maybe a year to 18 months. Notice his lovely blonde ringlets. Dad's hair was blondish until he was 13, when it turned black. It stayed curly, although he always combed it flat so that it wouldn't curl.

The bright-eyed girl is my Aunt Ellen, who was a year and a half older than Dad.



The next photo shows Dad with Ellen and little Edgar in the middle. Dad was the oldest boy in their family of seven children: Ellen, Francis, Edgar, Rose, Ann, and Mary. The seventh child, Theresa (Susan says "Mary"), died as an infant, and she followed Francis.



Here's a photo of Grandma and Grandpa and their lovely family of teenagers. It's the only photo I have of the whole group, and the only one I have of my grandmother. The two boys, Edgar and Francis, are in the back row. In the middle row are Ellen (soon to become Sister Mary Mark, I.H.M. (Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, Michigan), Mary, Ann, and Rose. Grandma was teaching school in Cherokee, Iowa, when Grandpa came back from Iowa Normal School in Cedar Falls with a teaching certificate. His father had wanted him to stay home and work the farm, but he did not want to be a farmer. He ran away from home at age 15 and worked his way through college in Cedar Falls and then Valparaiso College in Valparaiso, Indiana. (Grandma and Grandpa actually met at Valparaiso where they were both students.) Arriving back home, he taught school during the day, studied for the law at night, and presumably courted Grandma at the same time. Soon he applied for admission to the University of Michigan law school, was accepted, married Grandma, the lovely Alicia Hogan, and moved to Ann Arbor. Ellen was born the day Grandpa graduated from the U of M with his law degree.

The following picture is of the St. Thomas Parish baseball team of 1912. My dad is in the middle of the back row wearing his Shaker knit sweater, and my grandfather is on the end at the right. He was now a lawyer in private practice in Ann Arbor and coach of the team. Grandpa at various times also was the city attorney for Ann Arbor and the bishop's lawyer as well. Right after Grandpa's graduation from the U of M, he taught law there, also. The two guys on either side of my dad, Leo and Everett, were his pals growing up, and I remember him talking about their baseball exploits and canoeing trips on the river. Dad played shortstop or second base, I forget which, and shortly after this, he won a baseball scholarship to the University of Michigan.



His graduation photo is next, but I'm not sure which graduation this was taken for, high school or college. I thought I remembered Mom saying this was his U of M graduation photo, but Susan said it's his high school photo. He looks older than high school in this one, and certainly older than he does in the family photo.





The U.S. Army appropriated him after he graduated from the U. of M. with a degree in English, and they stationed him for the duration of WWI in Newport News, Virginia, as a typing clerk. Mom took this photo of him on the farm in Iowa when he was home on furlough. Mom met Dad while he was still in college. Grandpa used to send Dad back to Iowa during his summer vacations to help Grandpa's two old maid sisters, Nora and Ellen, who wound up running the farm after all the boys in the family defected or proved incapable of managing the place. Mom taught school with Aunt Nora, who was eager to introduce her handsome nephew to her bright, bubbly co-worker. Dad wrote home after the introduction, "I've met the liveliest girl in town."



Fast-forward to the 50s....Grandpa is dead, and Dad bought a lake cottage on Lake Sallie with his inheritance. Here he is out back of the cottage by our 1947 green DeSoto, which he bought when I was in 8th grade. It boasted the forerunner of automatic transmission. When you started out, you'd step on the gas until you got to maybe 15-18 mph, then you'd let up on the gas, the car would shift itself--Ka-KLUNK!--and you'd be at driving speed.

Dad always wore khakis from L.L. Bean on the weekends, plus a yellow terry cloth longsleeved t-shirt like he has on in the picture. He carried his Pall Malls in the pocket in front. On his feet, he wore old wingtips that were too scuffed to wear to work. And he usually wore a cap like this.

The smoke from his Pall Malls was deadly, and when we drove to the lake every Friday night after Dad got off work, Mom and I would beg him to open the window a little wider so we could breathe. He always did, but ever afterward, I could tell Pall Mall smoke from any other cigarette's. It was tarry and raw, and it stunk upwind.

The big house behind Dad belonged to Jack and Babe Maloney, parents of my growing-up playmates at the lake, Michael and Marcia. It used to be the main house of a resort, and our cottage was one of the little rental places. It had a living room, a bedroom, and a porch on two sides...the kitchen on the side, and a big round table & chairs plus a big squeaky spring bed in front.

Here are Dad and Gene getting ready to put the dock in for the summer. Dad is pulling something out from under the front porch, where he stored the dock over the winter. Part of the dock is stacked to the right. The trees are not yet in leaf, but the snow is gone, so it must be the end of May. I took these little photos with my 8th grade graduation present camera. I wish I'd taken hundreds more.



Last photo: "Brothers of the Brush" - Fargo's Diamond Jubilee, 1950. Dad, like most other men in town, grew a beard for the Centennial celebration. He sent a copy of this photo to Aunt Mary Barnes, I think, and on the back, though the ink has almost completely faded, he wrote "Is this Pop Hogan or a duke's mixture? With love, Francis"



Love to you, Francis. You were my best pal as a kid. You took me everywhere with you: fishing, hunting, even bowling at night during the winter when the NW Bell team had league bowling--you'd park me at the bar with a glass of 7Up while you rolled up one great game after another. You were a natural athlete and a lover of the outdoors. Your temper scared me to death when I was little, but I learned that yelling back would shut you up good. I only did it once, actually, because I was so appalled to see you silenced like that. Thanks for giving me life and a share of your unique spirit....

Found Things

Found this gem in a suitcase full of old letters tonight.

It's Peggy's first (and only) postcard from Camp Dominic Savio in Riverdale, ND. She mailed it on August 18, maybe 1970 or 1971? So...she was like 8 or 9?

It says

Dear Mom
I'm Having a good time.
Tell The Family Hi. And
Tell dad The rod Broke
I Need More Money. Love Peggy

That's my girl, the writer!!

The Book as Art

http://www.nmwa.org/exhibition/detail.asp?exhibitid=150

Click on this link to see a sample of the fabulous "The Book as Art" exhibition currently showing at the National Museum of Women in Art in DC. The interactive page turner feature is so great! Alas, the exhibit itself runs only through February 4, 2007. I finally got to see it this afternoon, and it is one of the best and most mind-blowing art exhibits I've ever seen anywhere.

It's been especially enjoyable for me personally to see these marvelous handmade books. One of my first attempts to write a book resulted not only in writing the story but also in making it into a physical book, as well, in collaboration with Sister David, C.S.J., aka Martha Greenwood, a graduate of St. John's Academy in Jamestown, ND, in 1954. Martha and I were born 16 days apart in December, 1936, and we both entered the community of the Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul, MN, on September 8, 1954. As novices, we were assigned at various times to work in the library. This involved not only typing a book pocket for the back of each new book but also repairing books. We learned how to make a book from scratch by replacing torn covers and reinserting loose pages. Martha did the fabulous calligraphy for this book...I forget the exact title...Agnes...maybe? She also did the calligraphy for our second and final book, but goddess knows what the title of THAT one was. We left the books behind when we left the convent...I in 1959, Martha a few years later. The books probably bit the dust somewhere along the way.

Martha is now a wife, mother of three children, and grandmother of three, also, including the fabulous Ruby, age 9. She is retired from long service as a teacher of English as a second language with the public schools in her town and is currently several years deep into a collossal family history project. A vastly talented artist and musician, she gave up both while raising her family. Now she's passed on some of her gifts to Ruby by teaching her to play both the recorder and the violin. She also is probably the very best cook I'm privileged to know personally. When they moved into their present house, they tore out half the downstairs and made it into a kitchen, complete with a commercial range (six burners, two ovens, and a raised griddle).

News from the Diet Wars

• iVillage has a great free diet & fitness website that you can use to help customize your meal plans, an exercise regimen, and stress relief activities (didn't they used to call this meditation back in the day?).

www.healthylivingonline.com

• Trader Joe's sells the most wonderful whole wheat hot dog buns! I know...hot dogs are a no no...but on my custom designed iVillage meal plan (1200 calories/day, nonvegetarian), my first dinner called for one hot dog on a multi-grain bun. I haven't found any multi-grain buns yet, but the whole wheat one is great. And who's to say you can't put a tofu dog in one of them? Some of those fake sossidges are better than others.

• One of our coworkers showed up at a meeting the other week looking very thin. We all asked her how she did it, as she's been battling overweight for several years....the old yoyo diet gig....lose 18, gain 15, lose 10, gain 15...we all know how that goes. She said she tried the program at my hospital (which is also Dick Cheney's hospital, grrrr). Anyway, I was emptying the wastebaskets of junk mail this a.m. in preparation for Carmen's arrival this afternoon, and a blurb on a flyer caught my eye: "Soandso Lost 140 Pounds in One Year! Learn More on Page X." I turned to Page X and discovered that the program was at my hospital. The program was not about simple weight loss, however. It was offered by their center for bariatric surgery. I don't know if our coworker actually had weight loss surgery. I know my hospital does other things besides surgery to support good health practices. But, gee. Another of our coworkers did have this surgery several years ago, and she's as skinny as Wallis Windsor now. I'm sure this kind of thing is going to go over big here in the City of Satan's Everlasting Brunch.
  

Cochlear Implant 5

Yesterday was another milestone on the road to Cochlear Implant Day (March 1, 2007): I had a pre-op physical at George Washington University's Medical Faculty Associates.

GWU MFA have a bunch of young resident doctors who do all of these pre-op physicals. They ask a bunch of questions, enter the answers into a computer, and then fax the whole wad over to Dr. Niparko at Johns Hopkins. Because I am over 50 (mad, hysterical laughter) and have cardiac problems, I also had to have a chest xray, an EKG, and some blood tests.

The first very young, beautiful doctor (from India or the Middle East, I neglected to look at her badge) had hiccups when she came into the room, and they kept up for a while. She was very embarrassed, but I thought her shy little hiccups were charming. I told her that hiccups must be a young person's plague, as I haven't had hiccups in years. She smiled....and hiccuped. My dad used to call them "hee-coughs." He had some very Irish expressions that he inherited from his mother, Alicia Hogan Dwyer. Her vocabulary was very Irish at its roots, but she attemped to refine it. Instead of "praties" for potatoes, Grandma Dwyer would say "perAYtoes." She thought it was common to say "praties." I suspect "hee-coughs" arrived in my dad's vocabulary by the same route. (And btw, many of the very young doctors at GWU are beautiful. That seems to be another young person's attribute--at least among the GWU MFA.) It's fun to look at all these Doogie Howser types running around practicing excellent medicine.

She asked me how old I was when I lost my hearing, and when I told her I was 26, she got a startled look on her face. Then a senior resident came in a while later and asked the same question. When I told her "26," she, too, got the same startled look. I suspect the two of them were about 26 themselves. That kind of information would make you wince if you were 26.

There's nothing between me now and the operation except the calendar. Two weeks before the surgery, I have to remember to stop taking a baby aspirin every night. And either two or five nights before (I have it written down at home), I have to stop the Plavix. And I have to buy a train ticket to Baltimore and back. It's so much easier than driving and parking. It's a very short cab ride from the Amtrak station to the outpatient center.

It's Snowing!!!

The first snowfall of 2007 started this afternoon sometime around 12:30 p.m. Cathy and I were both working on books in my den, when Cathy got up to get a cup of tea and said "Look!"

She pointed out the window, and sure enough....tiny little flakes were falling fast and had already covered the cars and tree branches out back. The flakes are bigger now at quarter to six and still falling. They look so beautiful drifting past the amber-colored street light at the end of our property. Of course, both of my cameras would be disabled! I took this photo with Cathy's, but she's gone home now.

The first snowfall has always been a miraculous event: the stealthy arrival--even if snow has been predicted, it's still a surprise. One minute the sky is leaden and grey, and the next, white flakes are sifting down. I love the soft blanket covering the earth as it rests, the whiteness and brightness. I remember my mother's excitement every year when the first snow started to fall in Fargo, N.D. (often around Halloween). So much of my love for nature comes from mom's calling my attention to natural beauty whenever we walked to the grocery store or to church or to school.

Like the inner 4th graders we really are, both Cathy and I (and I'm sure 100% of our coworkers) will be huddled around the TV tomorrow morning watching the school closings and hoping against hope there will be enough snow in DC that they will close the schools. Snow days are a gift, pure and simple, to those of us who love to stay at home on snowy days and color or read or make popcorn or take a nap and get paid for it to boot.

[Note to the Little Red Hen....it's colder here right now than in NYC or Minneapolis!]

Minnesota, weather or not.....

Winter is finally here. All the flowers that were blossoming here just ten days ago (see above) are now frozen solid, and there are no more little insects flying around in the beams from our security lights at night. I, for one, am relieved. After 70 years on this planet, most of them in the Midwest, my cells hanker for cold weather--maybe not quite as cold as in Minnesota, but cold enough to require an honest-to-goodness coat, gloves, and even a hat.

However, cold as it has been this past week, things are changing. A friend in NYC was expressing her wonderment at finding her town colder than Minneapolis the other day. That's something to think about. Minneapolis-St. Paul is the coldest major metropolitan area in the U.S. and one of the coldest large metropolitan areas in the entire world.

After reading my NYC friend's email, I thought about living in Minneapolis. I remembered that I used to take great comfort in the fact that there were only about 12 or so days per year when the temperatures were lower than -20. One solid week of severe cold weather would eat up seven of the 12, and it always comforted me to know there would be only five more left if it was a normal winter. (And yes, my cells did not like all that cold, but we got used to it.)

Minnesota, because it's a crossroads of three major continental biomes, may serve as a kind of canary in the coal mine for global warming. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has a newsletter for their volunteers, and back in the January/February 2001 issue, they ran a fascinatingly informative article, "The Crossroads of Climate Change," about just this.



http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/janfeb01/warming.html

2001 is now six years ago....before Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" but after G.W. Bush's refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement. Six years ago, scientists and naturalists in Minnesota had a specific vision of what could happen if we the people do nothing to curb our carbon emissions. I shudder to think what they'd say now after six years of foot dragging and denial from our leaders and from most of us, too.

And sure enough, the Washington Post had an article last week on climate change: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901769.html

In it, the curator of the U.S. Botanical Garden said "Washington is the new North Carolina." A University of Minnesota regents professor is quoted at the beginning of the Minnesota DNR article as saying, "If I wanted to live in Nebraska, I'd move there." I feel the same way about North Carolina. Washington would not look half as beautiful if it were covered with kudzu.

Here's another quote from that article, and remember, this was written six years ago:

Reducing emissions is "not about giving up your car," says Michael Noble, director of Minnesotans for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Instead, he says, it's about galvanizing public demand to put energy-efficient technology into use now. Just as the world has embraced information technology--cell phones, personal computers, the Internet--in the past 15 years, so can people transform the use of energy technology, he says. "It's not a mystery how to fix this problem," says Noble. "Every change in energy technology has led to an improvement in the quality of life--wood to coal, coal to gas . . . now to solar cells, wind turbines, fuel cells."

Research ecologist John Pastor insists that people need to view both the causes and consequences of warming in personal terms. How we use our land, cities, and highways affects the climate as surely as the climate affects us. If we drive fuel-efficient cars and reduce our annual mileage, for example, we keep tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.

Though we must continue to investigate the impacts of warming, Pastor says, we cannot afford to wait any longer before we act. "Once we see broad-scale changes happening in vegetation," he says, "it's too late." Natural systems will collapse.

Humans might be able to adapt to new habitat in a warmer world, but what are we willing to give up? At risk is our natural heritage, Pastor says, our sense of place. And we could lose that identity soon. While they skied together near their home in Duluth, Pastor's college-age son asked him to estimate the speed of change. Pastor calculated a possible time line based on his own age of 48. "I'll live out the rest of my life in these north woods I love. You will not," he told his son. "By the time you die, this is not going to be here. Your children--my grandchildren--will only live a small part of their lives here. And my great-grandchildren probably will not see this at all."

You Might Live in Minnesota if...

[Here's more Minnesota stuff, also from M'reen....who saw these on Jeff Foxworthy (??)]

You Might Live in Minnesota if...

You consider it a sport to gather your food by drilling through 18 inches of ice and sitting there all day hoping the food will swim by.

You're proud that your state makes the national news 96 nights each year because International Falls is the coldest spot in the nation.

You have ever refused to buy something because it's "too spendy."

Your local Dairy Queen is closed from November through March.

Some0ne in a store offers you assistance, and they don't work there.

Your dad's suntan stops at a line curving around the middle of his forehead.

You have worn shorts and a parka at the same time.

Your town has an equal number of bars and churches.
[If there are more churches than bars, how d'ya like D.C.?]

You know how to say... Wayzata ... Mahtomedi .... Cloquet ... Edina... and Shakopee.

You think that ketchup is a little too spicy.

Vacation means going "up north" for the weekend.

You measure distance in hours.

You know several people who have hit deer more than once.

You often switch from "heat" to "A/C" in the same day... and back again.

You can drive 65 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard, without flinching. [Don't think so....35 mph, maybe]

You see people wearing hunting clothes at social events.

You install security lights on your house and garage and leave both unlocked.

You think of the four major food groups are: beer, fish, beer, and venison.

You carry jumper cables in your car and your girlfriend knows how to use them.

There are 7 empty cars running in the parking lot at Mill's Fleet Farm at any given time.
[Global warming, anyone?]

You design your kid's Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.

Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.

You know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.

You can identify a southern or eastern accent.

Your idea of creative landscaping is a statue of a deer next to the blue spruce.

"Down south" to you means Iowa.

A brat is something you eat.

You find 0 degrees "a little chilly."

You actually understand these jokes, and you forward them to your friends.

Cochlear Implant 4

Thursday, March 1, 2007, 10:45 a.m.That's when they'll install the cochlear implant. "Tune in" will be a month or six weeks after that--April 1 or 15 or thereabouts. My horoscope last week said, "The long melt-down of your life is almost over." Hmmm....

After the operation, my ear will be worthless without the implant. The shrink asked me yesterday how I felt about that, and I said, "It's worthless now." I'll still be able to wear an earring on it or tuck a pencil behind it, though. And it will hold up the processor, which please the gods, will work as desired and hoped for.

Cochlear Implant 3

Officially, there are no rocks or other impedimenta in my cochlea, even though my head is as round as the Minnesota heads Charles Schultz immortalized in "Peanuts." Looking at the scans, you'd think they'd taken photos of a bowling ball. The diagram above is what the surgeon handed me yesterday with his notes regarding the possible risks: infection (I'll need pneumovax vaccine), weakness in my facial nerve, imbalance, and failure of the device itself (1% need to be yanked and replaced).

Officially now, too, they have the evidence on paper that my auditory nerve is not dead or too seriously disabled. I got maybe 50% of one batch of monosyllabic words right with my right ear helped along by a hearing aid, and 94% with my left ear, ditto. So it's working. If it were not working, all the cochlear implants in California (where they make a lot of them) wouldn't do a thing.

A beautiful Chinese resident really rattled my brain (I could hear it sloshing in there--yeah, really!) when she was twisting my head to see if I would still get vertigo from sharp, sudden movements of my head, and I didn't. When I was first losing my hearing, even tipping my head down to peel potatoes could set my head spinning. I'd have to lie down until the spinning stopped. Then I'd go throw up, and after that, I'd go finish the potatoes.) I also could not eat movie popcorn without risking an attack of vertigo--too much salt--but now I can. As my hearing has gone south, the vertigo has disappeared, too.

They told me yesterday, too, that officially I now need a permission slip from my primary care doctor for them to perform the surgery. (She is a marvel, by the way...she got her B.A. from Barnard College, then a law degree from Yale, then an M.D. from Yale. She's one of the best doctors in D.C., and she speaks not only English but Hungarian--not that that's going to do me any good, but she has a very lively mind. She always notices things: what I'm reading, the color of my new glasses, etc.)

And I told them yesterday officially that yes, I did want to get a cochlear implant. The beautiful Chinese resident said, "Why do you want a cochlear implant?" To which I replied, "Why not?" When cochlear implants first came out, they had one channel of sound. The contrast between the number of natural channels of sound in the human ear and the one in the implant seemed too great. But now there are implants with 22 channels of sound. You don't need to have all of the channels to make a huge difference in what you hear. So why not go for it? I'm looking forward to the experience of learning to hear with the bugger.

One more barrier to leap is the psychological evaluation, which is tomorrow. On the questionnaire, they had items like "In the past few days, have you felt depressed or suicidal?" and I checked "yes." Well, it was right around Christmas. Of course I was depressed (though not suicidal)! Isn't everybody? Tom Lehrer had it right in his "Christmas Carol":*

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say when.
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On christmas day you cant get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
Just the thing I need! how nice!
It doesn't matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
Whats important is the price.

Hark the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!

So let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

* http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/tom%20lehrer/a%20christmas%20carol_20138380.html

Another item they asked about is "How many alcoholic drinks do you have every day?" To which I replied, "As many as it takes." Well? What do they expect? I can't listen to music!

Anyway, if by some miracle I pass this last hurdle, they will send me an email as to when they will perform the surgery. The surgery itself will be an outpatient procedure and take about one hour. The surgeon will cut a flap in my scalp behind the back of my right ear, drill a hole through the temporal bone, thread the electrode through the hole into the cochlea itself, where it will curl up next to my auditory nerve, and then sew everything up.

After the surgery, we'll wait about a month to 6 weeks for the incision to heal, and then they will start to tune me in. Thus, I'll have a metal implant a little smaller than a flattened bottle cap under my scalp; the electrode leads off this into my cochlea. On top of my scalp, there will be a round thing with a magnet attached to the processor (which looks like a very big hearing aid). The magnet will grab onto the bottle cap thing under my scalp, and transmit sounds via the processor behind my ear, through the electrode, and directly to my brain. It's all done with electric impulses, and part of the reason why the processor is so much bigger than a regular hearing aid is because it has to hold 3 batteries at a time instead of just one. A rechargeable battery unit comes with the processor, also. I had my choice of colors for the external parts: black, brown, that new titanium steel color, tan (the boring old hearing aid color), pink, and blue. I got the steel color. There's also a little panel on the processor that comes in other colors and patterns. I definitely did not want the leopard print!

These pictures are from the Cochlear website: www.cochlearamericas.com/Products/23.asp


the electrode with the 22 channels (l), the processor and external magnet (r)

Fan letter

My blog is pretty humble compared with many or even with most. However, I do have a few devoted readers. Here's a letter I got in the mail today from my friend Lida about going out for lunch together on New Year's Eve. I had brought her laser copies of my blog so she could see what I had written about her recently. I also brought her some of those delectable little Anthon Berg chocolate liquor bottles.



It's a typically exquisite Lida letter, written on a drawing she sketched on the back of a flyer from her condo office advertising a talk on "My Trip to India." As Lida says about my blog in her letter--"like when you were a kid & had your own friend & sat together talking on & on & sharing thoughts & stories..."--I want to share it with my readers (my gift to you for January 7, 2007)....

One of the many wonderful things about Lida is that light shines through her every word and deed. Lida is the bosom buddy everyone dreams of as a kid. Who knew that when my special friend came along, she'd be almost 90 years old (and me not too far behind)? However, she's better than any 9 year old. She is wide open to the world and has no judgments for those who are in any way different from her. She has no time to sit around sucking eggs over the past because she is fully immersed in living in the present moment. She continues to work harder than almost anyone I know. Thank you for the joy of your friendship and the grace of your good example, Lida.

Dieting

Magazines, newspapers, and online services are full of DIETING articles these days. This is because many Americans are big and fat, and no matter how hard they try (true), they keep getting bigger and fatter. I am no different. Here are some of the diets I've been on in my life, and the end results:

NO SALT diet: 1961-1962
The Army nurse at Fort Devens put all of us pregnant mothers on this one. We were allowed to gain 1.5 pounds per month or face being sent to Ward E, where we dined on bread and water until we'd lost the excess weight. I weighed 118 pounds on my wedding day, which was down a bit from my normal weight of 133 thanks to all the running around and anxiety involved in getting married and preparing to move to Massachusetts the next day, and I got pregnant approximately 3 weeks later. You really do get used to the taste of food without salt, and as required, I did not gain more than the baby's weight plus a few pounds here and there for the placenta and all that. Even so, my body was sprung and I could not get into my sister-in-law's regular clothes when it came time to leave the hospital. However, with a new baby I didn't get much sleep or time to eat, and I was soon back to 133 lbs.

Diabetic 1200 calorie/day diet: 1971
Ten years and 3 more kids later, I was weighing in at 168 pounds!! I looked like Porky Pig, and the good doctor at St. Louis Park Medical Center suggested I go on this diet. He said "You're not diabetic, but this is the most effective diet we've found here." I really did stick to it, and by the end, it was hard to eat everything on the diet every day (all those apples and glasses of skim milk!!). When I called off the diet, I weighed 138 pounds.

Atkins diabetic diet: 2006
Bob, one of my printer sales reps, stopped to visit around in the beginning of January this year, and he looked fantastic! He had lost 27 pounds since I'd seen him last, and looked years younger. I asked him what he was doing to look so good. He told me he had gone to the doctor, and the doctor told him he was officially diabetic and had to go on a strict diet to get rid of his extra weight. I weighed 184 pounds at the time, thanks to all kinds of things: lack of exercise, side effects from pills, etc. He wrote down the diet for me, and I forged ahead. The Atkins diabetic diet allows you to eat all the protein and green vegetables you want, plus ONE serving of whole grains and ONE serving of fruit/day. No milk, no cream, no juice. One glass of red wine/day. I was down to 164 pounds by the beginning of the summer, but the weight started to creep back up again even though I was still eating the same things. The day I left for Paris (November 29), I weighed 168. (I don't think I look so much like Porky Pig any more....I'm not as pink, for one thing.)

High fiber diet: December 2006 - ??
I went to CVS to refill my presciptions just before I left for France and found the price of Pravachol had tripled since I first got it a year or two ago. That was too greedy of the drug company for me, so I said no thanks. I started researching on how to lower one's cholesterol without prescription drugs, and one of the things I found in many sources was that dietary fiber and niacin can work well. So I started eating beans and rice, fresh veg and fruits (no fruit juice, though), whole grains (especially steel cut Irish/Scottish oats). I'm somewhere less than 168...maybe 166 today, although yesterday's Christmas dinner was a blowout...but I have lots more energy. I don't know what my cholesterol reading is. It used to be off the charts--like 340 or so--and the last time it was maybe 190, which did not satisfy the cardiologist at all. He said he wanted to see a total reading of 170.

My friend Cathy won't even tell me how much she weighs, and she's struggled with weight for the past two years since having major surgery.

I read somewhere online that "Hoodia works." Whatever Hoodia is.

Secrets of the Supermarket diet - January 2007
Friday I read an article called "Secrets of the Supermarket." It said that the cereal ads' claims--"lose weight," "lower cholesterol"--mean that if you eat a bowl of cereal for two of your three meals/day, you will lose weight and have lower cholesterol. I'll buy that. In fact, I bought it and tried it, and today I weight two pounds less than I did on Friday. And that's even with cheating on Whole Foods's delicious marshmallows--no fat, 12 calories, hardly any sodium. I think this works so well because it's hard to drink red wine with Cheerios.

Yinka, our secretary, and several other coworkers went on the Three Day Diet last week. Presumably, you diet and fast a bit for three days, then eat normally for four days. I can't wait to find out how they've fared with this. Somebody said they eat peanut butter for breakfast during the three days?? Oh, man....

And so it goes.....

For Pete's Sake, Martha....

I like Martha Stewart. I think she got a raw deal being sent to the pokey, and I love her FOOD magazine. But here's her "to-do" list for January as it came to me today via e-mail from the Martha Stewart Living Newsletter. Glory Jee to Besus, Martha....

The new year brings a chance to start fresh. Now that the holidays are behind us, we can focus on organizing and making plans. Here's what's on the to-do list this month:

Make New Year's resolutions. Take stock of what you've accomplished over the past year, and make a new list of goals.

Catch up on correspondence, and write holiday thank-you notes. (Mail them by the end of January.)

Clean wood floors. How you treat your floors will depend on their finish. Vacuum first to remove dust and dirt, and then clean polyurethaned floors with a damp mop and a mild cleanser. If the floors are waxed, strip the old wax, and then reseal. Let dry, then buff. (Do this once a year.)

Update calendars and planners. Take time to make appointments for annual physicals, biannual dental exams, and so on.

Test batteries in appliances and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors; replace if necessary. (Do this twice a year.)

Clean out closets. Start the year with an orderly wardrobe. Sort items by type and color so they're easy to find. (Do a thorough cleaning once a season.)

Review household paperwork. Prepare for tax season and a meeting with your accountant. Gather financial documents, receipts, and other papers for filing taxes. This is also a good time to check insurance policies and make necessary updates.

Right. All these things are really good to do. That last one "Review household paperwork" is a hot one. I have the most wonderful accountant in the world, and I have a whole drawer in my desk into which I stuff the kind of thing he'll want to see. God love ya, Joe. It was a happy day (well...) when I moved to Brooklyn and discovered your office on the main drag.

Speaking of papers, I started cleaning up my office today, and I was relieved as heck to find that one of the stacks of papers that have been weighing down my desk and that credenza thing in the back consisted entirely of old permission requests from 2004 and 2005!!! These have already been entered in my log (yes, in 2004 and 2005!), and I can't even remember now why I kept them. (Probably just too busy to think. Who has time to think?) So they took a flyer to the circular file under my desk. Too easy!

"Update calendars and planners" - There's another good one. I spent a couple of hours looking for the slip of paper with Billy the Plumber's phone number. My garbage disposal is clogged again--or rather, the drain pipe way below it is clogged. I do not put any garbage down my disposal. Occasionally there will be some crumbs from the sink, but that's it. I don't believe in throwing my garbage in the river, which is what would happen to it I used the disposal. However, as it was last time, this will probably be clogged with long curly hair, and again, as last time, this will not be my hair (or hairs as they say in parts of North Dakota). Two of my nearest neighbors have long curly hair, but it never seems to affect their drains...just mine. Anyway, I did enter Billy the Plumber's number in my Filofax. Let's hope he's still answering that phone.

New Year's resolution? I liked Sally's: gain ten pounds. And I've already done that, so I can relax until 2008!! (Well, that's just rhetoric....who can relax as long as GWBush is still in office?)

Little Known Facts about Minnesota

M'reen sent these to me. I don't know where she got them or who wrote them, but they're a stitch! as they'd say in Minnesota.

Here are some little known facts about Minnesota:

·Minnesota became the 32nd state on May 11, 1858, and was originally settled by a lost tribe of Norwegians seeking refuge from the searing heat of Wisconsin’s winters.

·The state flag of Minnesota consists of a blue background upon which sits a design best described as “How a 7-year-old city girl would draw a picture titled ‘Life on the Farm’.”

·Minnesota gets its name from the Sioux Indian word “mah-nee-soo-tah,” meaning “No, really, they eat fish soaked in lye!"

·The state song of Minnesota is "Someday the Vikings will...aw, never mind."

·The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, covers 9.5 million square feet and has enough space to hold 185,000 idiot teenagers yapping away on cell phones.

·Cokato, Minnesota, is known as “The Lutefisk Capital of the World.” Avoid this city at all costs.

·"The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was set in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was Mary’s first real acting job since leaving “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” The show—about a single woman’s struggle to find happiness in the big city—was originally titled “Life without Dick,” but that was changed for some reason.

·The state motto of Minnesota is, "Where even a man who wears a feather boa can be governor.”

·Downtown Minneapolis has an enclosed Skyway system covering 52 blocks, allowing people to live, work, eat, and sleep without ever going outside. The only downside to this is that a Norwegian occasionally turns up missing.

·Cartoonist Charles M. Schultz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and was the only artist to perfectly depict the circular heads of Minnesota natives.

·The Hormel Company of Austin, Minnesota, produces 6 million cans of Spam a year, even though no one actually eats the crap.

·Water skis were invented in 1922 in Lake City, Minnesota, by Ralph Samuelson. Sadly, he drowned shortly afterwards, as the motorboat hadn’t been invented yet.

·St. Paul, Minnesota, was originally named “Pig’s Eye,” after French Canadian whiskey trader Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant. Its “Twin City,” Minneapolis, was known as “Pig’s Sphincter.”

·The stapler was invented in Swingline, Minnesota, by a chubby, mumbling man named Milton in 1899. The city was mysteriously destroyed by fire later that year.

·Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, is home to a 16’ tall concrete pelican, which subsists on a diet of 4’ long concrete fish.

·In 1973, Olivia, Minnesota, erected a 25’ tall fiberglass corn cob to celebrate its rich agricultural heritage. Then, in 1974, it was eaten by a 50’ tall statue of Babe the Blue Ox. Yes, Minnesota has a lot of problems with statue cannibalism.

·Minnesota license plates are blue and white and contain the phrase, “Blizzards on Independence Day—You get used to it.”

·Frank C. Mars, founder of the Mars Candy Company, was born in Newport, Minnesota. His 3 Musketeers candy bar originally contained three bars in one wrapper, each filled with different flavored nougat: chocolate, Spam, and Lutefisk.

·The first fully automatic pop-up toaster was invented in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1926. Minnesota’s stringent bread-control laws currently allow only residents to own semi-automatic toasters.

·Tonka Trucks continue to be manufactured in Minnetonka, Minnesota, despite the fact that thousands of GI Joe dolls are killed by them annually in rollover accidents. No airbags, no seat belts. These things are deathtraps, I tell ya!

·Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was born in Walnut Creek, Minnesota, and was famous for writing the “Little House” series of books as well as for inventing the “Spam Diet,” which consists of looking at a plate of Spam until you lose your appetite, much like the “Lutefisk Diet.”

·The snowmobile was invented in Roseau, Minnesota, so as to allow families a means of attending Independence Day picnics.

·Minnesotans are almost indistinguishable from Wisconsinites. The only way to tell them apart is to ask if they voted for Mondale in ’84.

Cochlear Implant, 2

Next week I have two more appointments at the Listening Center and one psychological evaluation. Last week I had a CT scan to make sure there are no rocks in my skull where the electrodes for the implant need to go.

As I was sitting in the waiting room at the radiology place, I was feeling tense, as usual, about figuring out if they were calling my name. I had to watch the speech (or read the lips, though it's not just lip reading...it's everything else, too: body language and head, nostril, throat, and eye movement) of all three people behind the desk...the woman who checked me in, a woman with a stethoscope who was looking at the charts, etc., and another woman, off to my right a bit, who was answering phones. They were all talking with each other, and periodically, one of the two who were not on the phones would call somebody's name.

I was thinking about how much work goes into getting through this kind of experience--and how much patience and focus on the present moment is involved. I suppose I could relax and just read my newspaper and trust they would come get me, but I've missed being called before, and they generally DON'T come to get you. They proceed down their list, and if I've blown it, I have to go to the end of the line. So I pay close attention, and a little bit more of my psychic energy gets eaten up. This is why they told me when I first lost my hearing that I would need extra rest. Well, I've never gotten any extra rest. I've been lucky to just get the normal amount. But I have perfected, in my 7th decade, the art of sleeping while sitting upright in my office chair. Ha. Works for me.

I also was wondering if the cochlear implant will change this experience for me. Will I be able to go to, say, a dental appointment and read a magazine article and depend on my hearing to know when it's my turn? Will I be able to sit in the boarding area and hear when they're calling my flight?

The purpose of the psychological evaluation is to make sure I don't have any unrealistic expectations for this cochlear implant, should they decide to give it to me. I'm curious as to what they consider unrealistic. I want as much as I can get from this thing, if I get it. I know I'll have to work for it, but so what? Do I want to be able to hear music? Hell, yes! Use a cell phone? Sure. Make snarky comments sotto voce in meetings? Yup. Do I want to survive the freaking operation? You bet! Do I want to be able to get on the bus in the a.m. and say hi to all the interesting-looking neighbors I've been riding with for years now? Oh, boy, yes! Do I think it's going to solve all my communication problems? No, but hey....if it works, at least I'll have a shot at it.

This is My New Year's Resolution...

One of my favorite songs when I was growing up was Spike Jones's "Happy New Year." It was one of the songs we kids--Marcia, Michael, Kay, Diane, and I--would sing at the big bonfire on the beach at Lake Sallie for Fran's birthday.

Besides the lyrics, however, there were the riotous sound effects on Spike's records. Best of all, to my 12-year-old mentality, was the belching in the third verse--about taking "a lovely lady out to eat - Burp! Burp!"

Here are the lyrics, thanks to STLyrics' website:

www.stlyrics.com/songs/s/spikejones9866/
happynewyear323977.html

This is my New Year's resolution:
When my mother-in-law begins to yell and shout
Through the window I would like to throw her out.
But I resolve not to do it, here is why:
I'm afraid of hitting someone passing by.
This is my New Year's resolution.

When I'm at the movies watching a love scene
And a lady's hat is blocking half the screen
I resolve not to shout, "Take off that hat!"
I'll remove it gently with a baseball bat.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When I take a lovely lady out to eat
And she orders caviar instead of meat
I resolve to let the lady have her fill.
And of course I'll also let her pay the bill.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When I'm sitting with my wifey on a bus
And a dear old lady stands in front of us
I resolve to be a gentleman discreet.
I'll politely offer her my wifey's seat.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

When my mother says, "Come in, it's time to eat."
And I keep on playing games out in the street
I resolve to rush right home now when I'm called
Cause my pop just got a hairbrush and he's bald.
This is my New Year's Resolution.

On the radio this year I hope to score
With some funny jokes you've never heard before.
I resolve not to tell a corny joke.
Hello, what's that? The church burned down? Holy smoke!
This is my New Year's Resolution.

In this coming year I'm going to be discreet.
Have the Slicker's playing music soft and sweet.
I resolve to treat Tchaikovsky tenderly
And set his second movement with TNT.
This is my New Year's Resolution.