Battle Stations Again

For many years I thought that all of the attention and money focused on finding a cancer cure was foolish.  To me it was a disease that primarily sacked old people.  Stupidly I concluded that it was a natural happenstance of piling up too many years on your odometer.  Sure, the occasional kid battled it but mostly it was geezers who, like ripe bananas, succumbed to this malady.  My family was relatively cancer free.  My mom had survived breast cancer and added more than twenty years that nearly got her to  ninety.  Even though my wife had lost a father, brother and sister to it, cancer happened to other people.
And then she felt a lump on her neck.

Linda and I spent most of 2014 in doctors offices and in hospitals fighting her lymphoma with chemotherapy and she was cancer free before the end of the year.  This summer another lump--oh, please please let it be something else--told us the cancer had returned.  Time to put on our helmets and kick some cancer ass one more time.  That's why we are in Seattle.

 The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is the place to go for a stem cell transplant, which is what all of her doctors think is needed for Linda to send this disease packing for good.  It is the foremost facility in the world for this life saving procedure, having pioneered it several years ago.  The staff is second to none and SCCA enjoys a reputation of having the highest rate of successful transplants of any organization in the world.  Linda is in excellent hands.  She has an entire team dedicated to her victory over cancer and a life extension of many years.

My posts on this blog, which began as minor therapy for withdrawal anxiety brought on by the loss of the catharsis of a daily radio show,  have been a regular thing for me for nearly eight years now.  That may change.  Linda's battle is my battle and now it's time for all hands on deck.  I will post when I can but it may become sporadic as her treatment moves along.  I realize this is no big deal but over the years I have constantly been surprised by the number of you who check in frequently to see what snakes have crawled out of my head.  It's good to hear from old friends.

So, we will be busy for the next several weeks.  Cancer is real and it's non-discriminatory.   These days afford us zero opportunity to lapse into self pity.  There are too many children here for that.

First Day of School

My grandson Dan started school this week.  He will most certainly, unlike his grandpa, do his parents proud and excel  at all that important kindergarten stuff.  He's bright, funny, very personable and outgoing.  At 5 he will, just as the rest of us, start memory banking many of life's milestones like the day he was sentenced to school.  The fun is over!  From now on he will be expected to show up either at school or work for, unless he hits the lottery or gets a government job,  the next sixty years.  It's good that neither he or any of his contemporaries will be aware of this until it's too late, but, like spinach and brussel sprouts, it looms large.

Now it begins...60 years of responsibility.  Ugh!

Kindergarten for this correspondent was a considerable challenge.  I was the new kid, migrating to the neighborhood just prior to the start of school, and I was extremely shy.  Our house was only a couple of blocks from what was to be my elementary school so, of course, I walked.  On the very first day of class when the teacher let us out for recess I made the reasonable assumption that my presence was no longer required in the classroom and proceeded to head home.  I slipped from the playground through the teachers' parking lot, cut through a park. crossed U.S. highway 127 and made for my hacienda.  Mom was a little suspicious of my obviously short day but I assured her that we had been let out early because it was the first day.  The next day I followed the same brilliant plan but instead of going into the house after making my escape from the prison that was school I hid behind our garage where I had ingeniously stashed some toy cars and trucks that deserved my attention far more than the classroom did.

My teacher, being only slightly more mature than her young charges, remained blissfully ignorant of the fact she was consistently missing a student after each recess and I remained "at large" post monkey bars for over two weeks.  I might have pulled off my escape act forever if not for an unfortunate early recess.  One morning there was a problem with the thermostat or something in our kindergarten classroom and we kids were let out for recess a scant fifteen or twenty minutes into our day.  Naturally, since I couldn't tell time, I made my now routine getaway from the school.  I was a rebel who refused to live by their stupid rules!  Unfortunately, as I approached my garage hideaway,  dad was just leaving for work.  The jig was up.  

The interrogation tag team of mom and dad had me spilling my guts almost immediately and I was soon in the Principal's office with my parents as he and they discussed what was to become of me.  The next day I was in a new class with a new teacher who could actually count to thirty and had what seemed to be a special interest in where I was at any given moment.  I still hated school, an attitude that stayed with me until college, but wisely continued to employ my patented school survival regime of doing "just enough" to get by.  It also helped that I was lucky enough to find like minded pals to join me for a variety of trouble making schemes we practiced from the back row of nearly every class we were forced to endure.

I really do hope grandson Dan is better at school than I was.  It will be so much easier for him if he cooperates.  Also, sneaking home in San Diego is just a tad more complicated than taking a powder in Leslie, Michigan.  He'll need cab fare.  Hey, wait,  he's probably got an Uber app.

"Shape up Grandpa!"

A Man Ahead of His Time

His name was Don.  He worked the overnight shift on WAVV-FM in Tampa back in 1975.  From midnight until 6 a.m. he presided over waves of beautiful music interspersed with the occasional weather forecast, low key live commercials, and innocuous station positioning liners such as: "Waves of beautiful music for Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, all night all the time on W A V V." It was a snooze but lots of stations were doing it with great success as FM began its move from something owners regarded as a throwaway to the dominate band in the radio business.  The station was owned by a broadcast company headquartered in Atlanta that had enjoyed great success with its chain of Southeastern U.S.  broadcast properties.

I'm having trouble recalling Don's last name and, by the way, Don wasn't his real name, but the story I'm going to relate really did happen.  WDAE was the company's iconic AM station in the Tampa market and I had recently been hired as the morning man on Florida's oldest and (until my arrival) most respected radio station.  I was 27 years old and 'DAE was my first job in a major radio market.  My world was spinning in greased grooves.

The stations, WDAE and WAVV, were located in their own building in downtown Tampa at 101 North Tampa Street.  The sales, traffic and business offices were located on the first floor; the studios on the second, as I recall.  The AM operation was on one side of the upstairs, the FM on the other with an open office area for the disc jockeys between the two.  Every morning I would arrive around 5:15 a.m. to prepare to go on the air right after the 6 o'clock newscast.  Don, a very large and good looking African American, would often leave the FM studio  and drop by my desk to chat for awhile as he got ready to wind up his all night show.  He had lots of time to do this sort of thing as he was only required to speak every fifteen minutes or so.  As he got to know me better he confided in me that he had a charcoal grill going on the fire escape outside his studio and there were always  plenty of steaks and hamburgers if I was hungry.  This seemed a little weird to me but he was a BIG guy and I guessed he just liked to eat.  Another thing that seemed a little unusual was the constant traffic of very well dressed women who were consistently parading up and down the hallway on the WAVV side of the building.  Don claimed they were "good friends" of his who just dropped by to say hello.  Being young and stupid it didn't occur to me until much later that he had to be lowering the fire escape ladder for them to gain access as the front door and offices didn't open until 9.  Don also kept a rather large handgun in the studio with him.  Once he mentioned in passing that he was always armed and had, a few years earlier, done a little stint in Raiford (the state pen) for "opening up a guy in Tallahassee".   Being mostly interested in getting ready for my show and hanging on to my new job in "the bigs", I never gave much thought to all of this.  I liked Don and he seemed to think I was okay too.

One morning when I arrived at the stations Don had been replaced by another jock.  The new guy told me that Don had been arrested early the previous evening for running prostitutes out of WAVV.  Apparently the fire marshall had also been after him for cooking steaks on the fire escape.

To this day I wonder how it all worked out for Don.  Did he stay in radio?  Get into politics?  Politics would have been a natural transition from being a pimp, or from  radio for that matter.  I'd like to think he was just ahead of his time.  In the age of multi-tasking, old Don would be worthy of an "attaboy".

"Are you ready to party big boy?"

Showers California Style

In 1980 I took a job in San Francisco.  While waiting for my family to join me in our new home I spent lots of time walking the streets getting a feel for what the locals refer to as Baghdad By the Bay.  It was, and still is, a city unlike any other.  I remember jumping on a cable car at California street and Montgomery one afternoon only to discover myself seated next to a very large man sporting an embroidered jacket proclaiming himself to be "Floyd, the Golden Shower King of San Francisco".  I was no longer in Kansas,  maybe not even on the planet.  I was in the weirdest city in the state of Anything Goes, USA.

What made me recall California and showers (not the Floyd variety) was a small story that made the wires yesterday about the Water District of Southern California and its on going campaign to get the citizens of that drought stricken zoo to take shorter showers.  No more long luxurious rinses for the denizens of SoCal!  Nope, the district now has its very own radio station on Pandora called the Water Lover's Station which features non-stop rain songs of short duration.  The district actually spent employee time to develop a 100 song playlist featuring songs such as:  "Purple Rain" (must be the 4 minute edited version), "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and other stone smashes that roll 24/7.  (Hey, I wonder if the station is hiring?)

I'm fairly certain that the commissars at the WDSC are depending on their customers to do the honorable thing and call a halt to their wash down after listing to just one heavy hit from yesteryear and will not be sending monitors into any bathrooms.  Give them time.  This is the state where dumb ideas come to thrive.  Sacramento is the petri dish of irrational expectations and the home of politicians who can resist everything except the temptation to pander to their often misinformed constituents.

I wonder if this new shower station takes requests?  How about a continuous loop of Carole King's "It Might As Well Rain Until September"?  And, if old Floyd is still around, I'll bet some fed up Californians may have a job for him at the Water District of Southern California, or, better yet, in Sacramento.

Flyspecks

 

Doctor Walter Palmer's office is once again open for business in Minnesota.  The dentist who was for several days the most reviled and hated man on earth, after it was reported that he had killed Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe, wasn't actually at his River Bluff Dental Clinic but several staff members were seen entering the building.  It's no surprise that the doc has yet to show his face since there seems to be no shortage of animal lovers ready willing and able to kill him.  That's right, KILL him.

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone what Palmer did.  I've never understood guys who insist on earning their testicle merit badge by killing critters who've done them no harm.  Apparently Cecil was part of an Oxford University research project and was tame enough to be sporting a GPS collar.  The fact that Palmer was conned into traveling all the way to Zimbabwe and forking over $50k for the "thrill" of knocking off what amounted to an over sized house cat would seem punishment enough, but in the age of misplaced priorities there are many who want the doc to swing for his mistake.  Really?

The world in general, and liberal Americans in particular, seem to be more concerned with the welfare of animals than of human beings.  For example:  Ask yourself who is the bigger detriment to society, a stupid dentist who kills an innocent lion, or a guy who fathers ten kids and doesn't stick around to support them monetarily or emotionally?  Certainly the latter costs us more money and leaves a trail of lives in jeopardy and likely to be unfulfilled and unsuccessful.  Cecil's death is the easy one for us to become enraged over.  It costs us nothing and we feel good about ourselves for being angry.   

Increasingly we are a nation of people just sitting around waiting to be insulted or angered about symbolic slights or perceived injustices.  The demand for removal of the Confederate flag from just about anything and everything is a timely example of this useless symbolism.  Will it make one bit of difference to any American's well being if that flag disappears?   Will there be less black unemployment?  Greater racial harmony?  Not likely, but it may assuage some white guilt and make some of  us FEEL BETTER. 

 

Another flyspeck that seems to resonate with the more superficial among us is the campaign to change the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins.  Personally, the team's owner seems like the Mount Rushmore of jerks but I applaud his refusal to change the iconic brand name he owns.  Does anybody really think that changing the name of the team will make life a scintilla better for the native Americans we long ago snookered out of what was rightfully theirs?  Ah, but liberal whites will feel better about a phony sense of accomplishment if only they can make that one happen.  

And, they wonder why Donald Trump resonates…


"Liberalism in the 21st Century is, for the most part, a moral manipulation that exaggerates inequity and unfairness in American life in order to justify overreaching public policies and programs."--
Shelby Steele

An Anniversary

Last week there were lots of news stories commemorating the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Most of the coverage was concentrated on the devastation leveled on the Land of the Rising Sun by the atomic bombs code named Fat Man and Little Boy. Naturally, like most events viewed in hindsight, the second guessing about the necessity of a smack down of this magnitude which rendered so much damage and loss of life was mostly of the "we really didn't need to do it" variety.  The contention that "if only we had dropped the bombs off shore the Japanese would have surrendered" is most often postulated.  This chestnut is usually espoused by folks not around at the time of World War II and/or by mental midgets who think Barack Obama and John Kerry are doing a crackerjack job of handling our nation's defense.  In other words, numbnuts.

Anyone who has spoken with veterans of the war in the Pacific, especially those unfortunate enough to have been taken prisoner by the Japanese, will, to a man, tell you that Japan had no plans to surrender.   American captives witnessed the daily sticks and stones drilling by men, women and children preparing for the Allied invasion they knew was coming.  The bombs dropped by B-29 pilot Paul Tibbetts and company were the sole reason the Japanese accepted the Postsdam surrender terms seventy years ago today, August 14, 1945,  and signed the formal documents aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2.

The courage of President Harry Truman to order the bombings and Paul Tibbetts crew to complete the mission most likely saved a couple of hundred thousand American lives that would have most certainly been lost during a land invasion of Japan.  Both men reportedly slept well for the rest of their lives knowing they had made the right decision and carried it out in a timely manner.  I seriously wonder if we ever again will be blessed to have such men.   Doing what is required to put an end to wars we never seem to start these days finds us timid and reluctant.  Career politicians with an eye on polls seem fearful of making any commitment that risks even a whiff of unpopularity with an impatient and often uninformed electorate.  The U.S. is poorer for it, and, I fear, because we are currently led by an embarrassingly naive and timid administration, we invite war with far greater consequences than the country has ever experienced. The world will always be home to those who seek to dominate others.  To show weakness and lack of will only invites conflict.  We pull our punches and equivocate at our  peril.


"I thought to myself, 'Gee, if we can be successful, we're going to prove to the Japanese the futility in continuing to fight because we can use those weapons on them.  They're not going to stand up to this thing.  After I saw what I saw I was more convinced that they're going to quit.  That's the only way I could do it," - Pilot Paul Tibbetts


"Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences." -Norman Cousins  

Have Junk, Will Travel

The end wasn't pretty.

With a "San Francisco or bust" taped to his tin can carcass, the Canadian bucket of bolts known as Hitchbot  set off from Salem, Massachusetts on July 17 for a U.S. tour designed to take him from East Coast to West.  It didn't work.

Maybe the boots were too much?

The Ryerson University research project would have been better off attempting an exploration of its native Canada where the folks are fewer and the politeness plentiful.  Instead, Hitchbot wound up decapitated and disarmed in a Philadelphia alley just two weeks into the planned coast to coast navigation of America.  It was one of those big East Coast Philly welcomes reserved for folks who can't decide between Geno's and Pat's when it comes to where to go for cheesesteaks.  I'm guessing that Hitchbot chose wrong.

This misadventure has given me an idea…

(Two hours later)  There, I feel better after that brief nap.  Big ideas always tire me out.

After watching yesterday's Republican debates and also observing the complete incompetence of our current administration, I have decided on an experiment of my own.  This afternoon I placed our less than efficient I-robot vacuum cleaner by the curb in front of our home in Coeur d' Alene, Idaho sporting a sign saying: I'm D.C. Bound!   Please give me a lift and help sweep the crooks away.  I have also pinned an identification badge sporting the name "Jeff" to this contraption in an attempt to appear friendly.   I have know many Jeffs in my lifetime and am reasonably sure  that the name practically guarantees harmlessness.  Of course, if you are a politician, all bets are off.

This will be a real test, America.  Washington needs a good sweeping out and Jeff is just the hunk of junk to do it!  He won't take up much space in your car or truck should you decide to help us out.  In fact, he can easily ride in the trunk or on the lap of any willing passenger.  The only maintenance he'll require is an occasional re-charge if you're near an outlet.  Your country is counting on you!  Don't leave him broken and battered in the parking lot at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota.  (A delightful side trip if your a fan of corn and Lawrence Welk)

I just checked and, so far, nobody has stopped for Jeff.  Maybe I'll join him as he waits. Our local forecast is calling for clear skies and no rain.  The sun goes down around 8:40 PM in these parts.  Let's hope it won't go down on our country.

Just remember the world is a freak show.  In America we're lucky enough to have a front row seat.

"Hi, I'm Jeff.  Washington sucks!  Let me fix it."