site meter follies followed by ramblings

Answer: In this order, ABC News, the FBI, an NPR piece, Wikipedia, Jihad Watch, the Saudi Embassy, me.

Question: What is google’s top seven for “wanted terrorist from yemen”? Returned with july 2005 archive.

Yeah, that’s me, terrorist-hunting superhero. Even more fun, following me is Fox News, CNN, and the NYT. I also come in 20th! I wonder if I could sell my page rankings … CNN can use all the help it can get.

The internet is such a dangerous place to get information.

Seems our sitemeter follies a couple two tree posts below missed one cc: on Poindexter’s e: Talisman Energy, Calgary. Dat boy dun shard are storey un stoopud tings! If’n I had a momma I’d bea telling ‘er! Dang!

Answer: In this order, Food Timeline, What’s Cooking America, Motts, me.

Question: What is Google’s top four for the history of applesauce? Return with stupid clowns with a side of applesauce.

I am the authority on the history of applesauce immediately following Motts? You guys are in trouble!

Answer: I didn’t want to sound offensive, so I googled insensitive penis.

Question: What do I do with this limp dick with which I live?

Good advice inspired by one of my hero’s in this life.


Answer: That right there is my e.a.merkel double barrel rabbit ear shotgun.

Question: What the fuck is a rabbit ear shotgun?

This sounds dangerous, and I think the person who googled such a thing is probably way too into weaponry.

Answer: It removes the need to discuss jock itch sweat and detergents.

Question: What are bunched panties?

I understand googling “jock itch and detergent.” The little buddies can be sensitive sometimes, particularly in the summer months. The addition of “sweat” throws me. I fail to see the nexus to detergent. Sweat is a function of aeration, heat, and exertion. The detergent I use doesn’t make me sweat. I might get hives. I can see that. Sweat? Um, no.

I’m working on a theory here. If I ridicule enough people that visit my site, maybe I can achieve singularity. That point of infinite density the other side of which is completely unknown to science. Is it a worm hole to another part of me? Do I burst forward into something later catalogued as Big Bang Clyde, and through this dispersion of my matter form little galaxies that float around me like a herd of mosquitoes? Am I expanding or contracting? If you look at me with a really powerful telescope, will you see me when I was younger?

What will be my last thought as I lay dying? I suspect something about what I was going to do next like the laundry, or something I wanted to do like rinse my dinner plate. I think the profound thoughts will come in the hours before, provided I am not so cranked up on morphine that I am just watching the walls melt. Will I be alone? I think I will have a dog, so I better use big bowls in case I am not found for a few days.

My Great Aunt Nana was afraid of hospitals and she died in one. That always bothered me. My second cousin Craig lived a year after his fatal diagnosis and no one told me. That continues to piss me off.

My father told my brother and me that if his “dick sill worked” he “would have divorced your mother a long time ago.” I was saddened that he didn’t live until Viagra came on the market or that the whole poker tournament thing came after his death. He was an excellent card player. The last time I saw him alive was at a card game we both played in. I remember finally figuring out his game that night. I guess it was time.

I am getting ready to enter the next phase of my life. I think it will be my last. Will it last 30 years or more?

I just got T.Rex’s Dandy in the Underworld. Marc Bolan and the band were on tour when it came out on March 11, 1977. Six months later he was dead at age 30. I don’t understand why people die so young. He had an exceptionally good time while he was here, but don’t we all?

My skin gets dry in the winter. I started to use this soap I put on a scrungee thing. Seems to be helping. But I reach around to itch my lower back, and I feel hair there. Makes me wonder if I have hair on my ass. I am afraid to look. I am not going to itch there except through clothes to ensure that I gather no information. It is just something I don’t want to know.

Does everyone write poetry at some time in their life?

I lot of us have some perpetual fuck-up we know that makes our life look not so bad. Do those perpetual fuck-ups have someone they know even more fucked up? Is there no bottom to the pit?

I love old pennies. Wouldn’t it be cool to know precisely every story associated with a particular coin from its first use to the present? I pick up every penny I find. I save them. Remind me of my twin.

Time to transit …

dreams

The pic below is the masthead from a blog I surfed onto. Not that anyone is asking, but this is my dream car. I don't know what it is. I would begin my description with, "It's green and weighs the same as my double-wide ..."

The Doctor is In

I went through my old e’s and found that I have almost 20 of these case studies. So I have some catch up to do. I sure hope none of my patients died in the interim. That would be bad. I think.

Today we have, “Altered Mental Status in a Homeless Man.” Let’s start, as we always do, with the photographic evidence.

This here thing-a-ma-bob with the squiggly lines is called an “electrocardiogram.” It’s called that because of a little known story. It's a good story. Let me tell it to you.

It seems that a clerk in a Western Union office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in or about 1884, was sending a telegraph message.

. .- - | -- .
.. | .- -- | ... . .-. .. --- ..- ...
. .- - | -- .

(If you're out of pratice with Morse Code - you have to do one line at a time.)

A bandit rushed! He was a particularly cruel bandit with yellow teeth and small feet. He told the clerk to give him all the money – he said, “Give me all the money!” The clerk said he didn’t have any money, except the few bits people paid for telegrams to be sent. “Well then,” said the bandit, “send one of them there electric telegrams and tell somebody to bring money here! Now!” The clerk agreed:

--. --- - | ... --- -- . | .-- .... .- -.-. -.- | .--- --- -... | .... . .-. .
... -- . .-.. .-.. ... | .-.. .. -.- . | .... --- .-. ... . | -.-. ..- --
-.-. --- .-- .--. --- -.- . | .. ... | .- | ...- . .-. -... | - --- | - .... .. ... | --. ..- -.—
... . -. -.. | - .... . | ... .... . .-. .. ..-. ..-. | --..-- | | .--. .-.. . .- ... .
- .... .. ... | --. ..- -.-- | -- .- -.- . ... | -- -.-- | .- ... ... | - .-- .. - -.-. .... | ..--.. | | | .... ..- .-. .-. -.-- | ..--.. |

“You be typing a lot, little man,” said the bandit.

“I am telling them to bring a lot of money. That takes extra words,” said the clerk.

“Oh,” said the bandit.

Soon the sheriff could be seen in the distance with his posse and the bandit knew he had been duped.

“Why, I oughta send YOU as a telegram!” he spit through his cracked lips with breath that smelled like he had sex with his horse in lieu of breakfast.

Then the bad bandit smiled a terrible smile. He tied the clerk to his chair – arms, legs, and neck – and gagged him with a dirty oil rag. He took out his Bowie knife and CUT the clerk’s shirt open with a flourish. He did a pirouette and clasped his hands together as his pants got tight across the middle section. He paused for a moment. His eyes glossed over. He looked at the clerk intently. "You married? Involved?" Drool leaked out of his mouth.

With a snap of his head, his eyes cleared. “You got a needle and thread?” he asked the clerk. The clerk nodded towards the cabinet on the far side of the wall. “Thanks,” said the bandit.

The bandit rummaged through the cabinet and found what he needed. He went to the desk, took the telegram button thingey that you hit to make that tap-tap-tap sound, and then sat in front of the clerk.

“This is gonna hurt. Sorry,” said the bandit. He threaded his needle. The clerk’s eye was wide open (he lost the other in a terrible accident that the family refers to simply as, “The Baking Soda Incident,” then they all lower there heads and they shift uncomfortably in their seats). With the swiftness of a mule on crack chasing the candy delivery cart, the bandit disconnected the wires from the telegram button thingey, tied them a few inches apart on the thread, made an incision with his Bowie knife just below the clerk’s rib cage, and reached up in there with the needle in hand.

He sewed the wires to the clerk’s beating heart in mere seconds, then used a blanket stitch to close the wound.

“Now, I want you stay in this chair for a few days. Drink lots of fluids, and come see me if it isn’t healing properly, OK?” said the bandit.

With his eye as round as a dollar coin and face as pale as a bucket of chalk dust, the clerk, through his gagged mouth said, “Hhm-uh.”

The bandit stood still, tilted his head, and listened intently. “Can you hear it? Can you?” he said.

“Hrmph vtoph,” the clerk seemed to say.

“You. You’re an electrical-heart-telegram! I made a fun—”

Before the bandit could finish his sentence, ”Zing” came a .50 caliber slug into the back of his head. The sheriff had saved the day! Unfortunately, the posse opened fire at the same time, and the clerk took no less than three pounds of lead from his belt up.

A little over 50 miles away in Laramie, Wyoming, a clerk was hunched over his desk. He was transcribing the dots and dashes he was receiving from Cheyenne.

“What the fuck is that?” his boss said over his shoulder.

“Can’t make sense of it, sir. Sometimes I think it says … wait … it just stopped.”

“Must’ve been rats chewing the line. Throw it away.”

“Yes, sir.”

The story spread to the universities on the east coast. Collectively, they thought it was rather amusing, but may also hold scientific value. So they got some government money and perfected the technique on prisoners.

The name of the procedure was changed to reflect the Latin base more illustrative of the seriousness with which they viewed themselves – electro-cardio-gram, or “ECG,” for short.

OK. Where was I? Oh, yeah, this guy’s ECG:


Notice how the lines kinda go up, and then down, with flat spots in between. Might be important. Note, “Lots of flat spots on the telegram thingey.”

See those little rises? Those are called “P waves.” You can calculate the Atrial rate from the distance between them. Them big spikes are called “R waves,” and have something to do with Ventricular rate. I have no skills with which to apply such knowledge, but I am pretty sure it has something to do with his heart.

Note, “Patient has a heart.”

OK, enough with the pictures. Let’s go interview the guy!

BACKGROUND. A 38-year-old man is brought by ambulance to the emergency department. The patient was found lying near the stoop of an apartment building (he was asleep? Why are you bothering the dude? Let him relax?). The paramedics were unable to obtain any history from the patient en route because the patient has an altered mental status (maybe because his “altered mental status” was REM sleep?!?).

On arrival, the patient’s vital signs are an oral temperature of 95.72°F (35.4°C) (a little cool), a blood pressure of 88/40 mm Hg (relaxed), a heart rate of 38 bpm (very relaxed), and a respiratory rate of 24 breaths/min (deep sleep, ok?). His oxygen saturation could not be obtained. The patient appears to be a homeless, disheveled man and looks older than his chronologic age, with a faint smell of alcohol on his breath (so he had a beers, found a nice doorway, and went to sleep. You people running low on patients or high on residents? Can’t you just let the poor man sleep?). He can be aroused but does not follow simple commands (neither do you, numbnuts, until your first cup of coffee. Did you give him a cup of coffee?). He has intact gag and corneal reflexes (“gag reflexes” WTF did you people do? You crammed something down his throat, he gags, you write “normal” on the chart? WTF?). His pupils are equal and reactive to light. No obvious signs of head trauma are noted, and the examination of his oropharynx is unremarkable (so … nothing wrong with the guy? I reiterate – why did you drag his ass in here? He was sleeping!!). The results of his cardiac examination are significant for marked bradycardia (smoker, lived outside – got a problem with that?). A lung examination reveals rhonchi in the right lower lung field. The patient’s skin is cold, and his blood glucose level is 104 mg/dL.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) was performed before the physical examination (see Image).

What is the diagnosis and treatment? (Drunk, asleep, no coffee.)

HINT. The patient’s rectal temperature is 87.7°F (31°C). (Here we go with the rectal again. You drag this guy out of bed, cram something down his throat to make him gag, and now you stick something up his ass to check his temperature?!? What is wrong with you people?!? But, hey, we have something here. Several degrees lower. Think, Dr. Clyde, think. Seems familiar. Think. New Hampshire. Snow bank. 1981. Drunk. I GOT IT! He has “Cold Ass.” Used to get it all the time when I got drunk and slept in doorways. What’s the problem here? Just give him a cup of coffee and maybe a hot shower.)

ANSWER. Hypothermia secondary to alcohol use and environmental exposure: The patient’s ECG demonstrates the classic abnormalities associated with hypothermia, the most evident being profound sinus bradycardia. … (We’re done here. Cold Ass. Drunk and asleep. Move on.)

(Only because I like you people, I’ll leave the rest of the text intact. Remember – Cold Ass.). In addition, all leads show classic Osborn waves (J waves seen at the junction of the QRS complex and the ST segment). As always, the ECG must be interpreted within the clinical context; in this case, the apparent elevations of the ST segment should not be misinterpreted as evidence of myocardial injury. Other common ECG findings associated with hypothermia that are not seen on this tracing include atrial and ventricular dysrhythmias, as well as prolongation of the PR, QRS, and QT intervals.

This case features the most common etiology of hypothermia (ie, environmental exposure or accidental hypothermia). Other conditions often coexist, such as infection, metabolic abnormalities (eg, hypoglycemia), drug or alcohol overdose, and endocrine problems (eg, hypothyroidism); on occasion, any one or a combination of these conditions may also be the etiology.

In general, the life-threatening cardiovascular complications of hypothermia are cardiogenic shock and malignant dysrhythmias. Typically, rewarming the patient is sufficient to restore normal myocardial contractility and cardiac rhythm. For patients in shock who do not respond to resuscitation with warmed intravenous fluid and other passive and active rewarming techniques, low-dose dopamine is the recommended agent because of its inotropic and peripheral vasoconstrictive effects. Atrial dysrhythmias are generally associated with a slow ventricular response; therefore, treatment with digoxin or calcium channel blockers is not warranted. Bretylium has long been recommended for the treatment and prevention of ventricular dysrhythmias, though little evidence supports this practice. The use of amiodarone has increased in recent years as a result of shortages in the world supply of bretylium. For refractory bradydysrhythmia, external noninvasive pacing is recommended in favor of transvenous pacing because insertion of pacing wires into a hypothermic ventricle can potentially cause a fatal dysrhythmia.

Hypothermia is often diagnosed before an ECG is performed; however, the ECG can provide important clues to the diagnosis and yields critical information regarding the overall severity of the patient’s condition, from an electrophysiologic standpoint.

daydreams

I wonder if there are any documented instances of curiosity killing a cat.

Here’s a good story, discussed on the Australia version of Mythbusters. If you touch a toad, you'll get warts. False. Warts are caused by a virus, which are usually species specific. Almost all viruses that infect frogs do not have the correct receptors to infect humans as well. That’s good. One less thing to worry about. I always worried that those lonely girls who kissed frogs in the futile attempt to find something anything better in life would get sick. I can put that concern aside, too.

I had a picture come to me. Still not sure what it means. I think it was a dream. I was awake, but I dream while awake sometimes. I was sitting on the end of a pier fishing in the ocean. I have fished or walked on several coasts in the US, and have walked the ocean’s beaches in a few different countries. One thing I always do is orient myself to understand what I am facing, albeit at great distances. This seemed to me to be the panhandle of Florida, a place I have never been. I was picturing the touristy side of Mexico in front of me.

I was reeling in my line. A youthful man was somewhere behind me. I had not paid specific attention to him, as people came and went but pretty much left me alone. I do recall nodding a wordless hello now and then – tip-of-the-hat type of thing.

As I reeled my line, this younger fresh-faced guy was becoming excited. “What do you think you have?” He was all atwitter. I said nothing but concentrated on my line. He seemed to understand my need to focus. I wasn’t focusing, I was just reeling. Didn’t much care for conversation. It was clear that he was an in-lander not used to local practice, and had for some reason been given a day pass from his custodians.

I brought my line out of the water. “Wowwee!” he said, “neato! What kind of fish is that? Must be 5 or 6 pounds, hunh?” I said nothing.

“What did you use for bait?” he asked.

I turned toward him. “I didn’t. This is the bait.”

That’s it. Still processing.

I was in Philadelphia today working with my old co-workers on an accreditation doc I wrote for them. It was nice to see them. I got some time to chat and catch up, albeit briefly. I wanted to spend some more time socializing but the environment isn’t conducive to it. There’s a palatable power structure that simply needs to be honored. I don’t mind it at all.

It was funny to watch the dynamic present itself again and it immerse in it without losing a beat. I got to see some past students. They all asked if I was coming back. It was weird to say, “no.” One girl I saw is graduating next term. I remember teaching her for her first two or three terms. Very focused on studies. Wrote well. For some reason I think she’ll be a cop. I hope she is safe. I worry about such things.

I have five trips in the next nine weeks. Illinois, New York, Connecticut, Virginia, and Florida. Going to be busy. Will be time for another trip to the women’s shelter afterward to drop off my booty of toiletries. I love collecting them. It is silly how much money is wasted in hotels.

The weather is changing so quickly. Cool nights are already here. I want to go to a cider mill this fall with my twin. I have pleasant memories as a kid of stopping at Northup’s Cider Mill in La Plume, PA. The building was still there when last I drove past a few years ago, but it is no longer in use. I remember seeing it closed and unused that fall. I stopped the car and peered into the window. It was clearly done. I recalled being in a bar somewhere years before – Scranton, Factoryville, Clarks’ Summit, I forget. One of the grandson’s was there. We talked about the mixture of apples, and how the later cider was best. He said how hard it was to get field help. I knew lots of illegals from my federal criminal work and assured him if he could lend me a truck, I could fill it with day laborers.

Some periods of time are harder than others. It is not measured by length.

gardens and benches

Vegetable gardens are deeply meaningful to me. I am amazed at how my thoughts run as I recall gardens of my grandfather, father, and me. A peace and comfort settles within as if I have abstractly found some place safe from intruders.

We lived in Scranton when I was young. My dad grew up in the country, and we eventually moved there. Every Sunday we would visit his parents. My grandfather owned about 17 acres divided into three fields. His home was in the first field, a moderately sized yard off the road. The backyard ran deep. On the upper left was the chicken coop and, behind it, the barn; on the right, rest his garden. It still seems to me impossibly large for personal use, although he did sell sweet corn.

During each summer, I would spend several days there on more than one occasion. On Sundays, beginning in mid-July, people would come to buy corn. Whatever grandkids were present were sent off to pick 13 ears for each dozen requested. He charged one dollar. Years later, as I lived in the general area again, having made the mistake of leaving my adopted home that was chosen almost solely to be as far away from everyone with shared DNA as possible, people would tell me how they would go to my grandfather’s home with their parents to buy Harry Middleton’s corn. They marveled all those decades later that it was still the best corn they ever ate. They told me stories about their Saturday and Sunday dinners. I told them that on some of those weekends, they ate corn that I had picked.

Saturdays and Sundays from about 2:00 P.M. until 5:00 P.M. were always busy. The latest arrivers always spoke with a New York or New Jersey accent. During those busy times, I would sit on a bench and wait for folks to come up the drive. The bench was always there ever since I could remember. It was painted green, well-worn to show grey underneath. It was obviously hand-made, with two planks on top, a skirt, and one plank with a “V” in the bottom to serve as the leg. On the right side of the bench, if you were coming up the drive, it was attached to a maple tree. That tree and bench was the “free zone” or “home base” when the some of us 15 grandkids played games on Sunday afternoons. I recall many times when it was time to leave and return to coal town, I would sneak outside and climb the tree to hide. My dad would feign looking for me, talk to his dad, then shine the flashlight on me. I never sat on the bench with another person even once. I got up plenty of times when others presumed to sit. I can still feel the loss of turning into the drive years later and seeing both the tree and bench gone. I cut myself oftentimes thinking of the ignoble death that wonderful bench endured: discarded as if it was no more than old wood.

My grandmother and her daughters would work for what seemed weeks to can the harvest. They made pies from the apples in the orchard, which was in the lower right corner of the second field. Throughout the winter, when all the kids and grandkids came for dinner each Sunday, the table always had stewed tomatoes, creamed corn, and potatoes – all from the garden. We usually ate a chicken or two that a few hours previous to that dinner wondered why it was being carried out of the coop by its neck and hung by its feet on the clothesline. I’m pretty sure its wondering ended soon thereafter.

During the summers I would fish for hours at the lake. I knew the friendly people that would let me use their row boat. The lake was shaped like a dog bone caricature, with the “lower lake,” where I went, joined to the “big lake” by a long narrow canal. The canal was probably manmade. I was always reluctant to go from one lake to the other because the occasional motor boat would make the same journey. Being 12 was not an age absent of fear or present with false immortality for me. Being tossed by the wake in my wooden row boat was a risk easily managed – just don’t go there – so I usually avoided the risk altogether.

I remember catching a lot of fish, but rarely bringing any to the house. I would hold the bass, perch, sunny, or bluegill that gobbled up the worm I had dug up before I walked to the lake, and always look into its eyes. I tried to understand what it was thinking as it was instinctively sucking the air for oxygen that never came. I always returned it to the waters. I thought of families and of young fish wondering where mama or daddy got the gall or the strength to swim away from them so quickly and why they seemed angry at the time they left. I returned them in the direction where I caught them, assuming they would find their family again. I had one exception, which to my shock was more common than I could rationalize. If I caught the same fish twice, I presumed it was retarded, so I would throw it as far as I could in the opposite direction from where I caught it. I figured that fish families would benefit from not having to care for a retard in their midst. I eventually developed a system of putting the retards on the stringer and taking them close to the overflow dam. My logic was that they would either leave the lake altogether or be too stupid to leave that general area. I was comfortable with the process because I chose a place with an overhanging willow. Willows always meant sustenance to me. For fish, the shade and abundant food falling from its leaves meant that my retards would live a content life, but would no longer be a burden on their families.

I was 14 when we moved to the country. My dad bought 30 acres about five miles from his parents’ home. It was the last section of a field that is about 100 acres. No other homes were in that field. As the first two years wore on, my dad remarked that he had a false memory from long ago: he said that he remembered from his younger years that this opening was planted with field corn every season, but it was clear to him now that the crop was actually rocks. Every day, I picked rocks, filling my bucket and carrying them to the spring run-off area. I haven’t seen that spot for several years, but it never felt good to look at it anyway. I don’t miss it.

My dad had a deep layer of happiness to him that enveloped a complicated core. I think he was largely tormented by his lot in life. He worked hard and was incredibly successful financially for the last 18 years of his life, but he was in a marriage that systematically destroyed him like a cancer. In some measure, I think he accepted his lot because he came from Eastern European blood on one side and coal miner blood on the other: you aren’t supposed to enjoy life, just endure it. I am in the process of a divorce, in part, to avoid a similar fate. I will not do to myself nor to my estranged spouse what I saw occur to my father and his wife. I plan on living much longer than age 71, and will not smoke and drink myself into the grave; I do not want my estranged spouse to become bitter and hardened beyond a comeback.

After several seasons, my dad found the best place for his garden. The early attempts had respectable crops, but lacked the right feel. My dad was incredibly cynical about anything liberal – from politics to liberal-arts studies. But his shifting garden space spoke to me of feng shui. If I ever said that to him, which I did not, he would have scoffed. If he ever listened to a description of it, and was honest about his feelings as to why he moved the garden, I think he would have agreed with me. It would have been, however, an unspoken agreement. Outwardly, he would have told me about water runoff during storms, depth of top soil, and how he didn’t like not being able to see the garden from his window.

The end result was that I picked more rock to clear more garden space here, there, and seemingly everywhere until he settled on the spot in the lower backyard.

Dad would start looking at seed catalogues during Christmas Week. His orders were timed to arrive in March. Some time shortly thereafter, the germination plats would come out. We lived with seedlings for several weeks. “A garden needs to be fully in the ground by Memorial Day. Only lazy people do not take the time to understand that, and then they wonder why the yield is always supplemented at the farmers’ market. If you’re going to do something,” he would say, “do it right or not at all.”

His biggest challenge each late spring was crows. They would dig up the corn seed and eat the young plants. It was a battle each year, but one I think he relished and even looked forward to fighting. He found that coating the seed in tar won the first phase. A scarecrow with pie tins on strings dangling from the arms won the second phase, but just for a while. Crows are smart. They began to ignore the noise. A plastic owl on a perch was the next battle tactic. He admitted that nothing would stop it completely. One of the truly happy times for him would come when he would stay quiet behind a nearby tree until the crows gathered in numbers too bothersome to count. Around the corner of the tree, so slight in its advance that the crows would not notice, would come the long barrels of a double-barrel shotgun. Blam! Blam! Both rounds at once shot a few feet over their heads. Sheer panic would ensue. “That’ll keep them away for a week or so,” he would say with this incredible look of victory dominating his face.

One memory that makes me wince oftentimes is the last garden of his life. The crows toasted his first planting. I did the second planting as he sat in a lawn chair and told me how, even though I was 42 and fully versed. That planting did not come up. He didn’t bother with a third try. It was the first time I recall that he gave up. He said to me several times that summer, “You planted it too deep.” I said, “I’m sorry.” I knew he was wrong but I never defended myself. I used an old corn-seed planter that I recall buying for him twenty years earlier. I loved that it was still his mainstay. It is not possible to plant seed too deep using a planter. He knew that. I’m not sure why he put the burden on me rather than the crows, but I took it like a son is supposed to.

From June until early September, there was rarely any need to ask where he was. If he was home from work, he was sitting in the garden. Always rock to pick; always weeds to clear; always plants to honor. It was a replacement love for where it lacked elsewhere in his life. His words on picking the first generation of tomato blossoms, pollinating corn by hand, and growing a cucumber inside a bottle each year as a gift still resonate.

I have had gardens over the years, but only twice have I allowed myself to love them as they deserve. I have decided that until I can allow myself to feel as I should, that I will not dishonor a garden by merely putting seeds or seedlings into the ground.

That growing season lays out there somewhere, around a bend I cannot yet see.