Oh My, My!!

Today, I read in the Atlanta newspaper that another instance of child abuse has occurred in an Atlanta area school. This damnable deed took place at the hands of a fourth grade teacher right in a public place too.

It seems the perpetrator advised the class that while on a field trip to The Atlanta History Center, if anyone's behavior was out of line, they would be tied up. That was her first big mistake. Issue a challenge like that to a bunch of fourth graders, and you will have them lining up to get tied. Well anyway, it wasn't long into the trip when this kid leaves his partner and goes to the back of the line to speak with a friend (no doubt about some cultural tidbit that he had picked up). The teacher, true to her word, lashes a jump rope to his wrist. As is wont to be, there were soon four other boys soon tied in tandem with this first kid.

The beast in charge here later ties the rope to her pant's belt loop (not a good idea if five boys decide to run for it, but she did it). After one kid complained of his wrist being uncomfortable, they were released. One of the boys casually mentioned to his mother at the dinner table some days later that he had been tied up by the teacher. Well, that will always get your attention. After all, how many teachers overtly are into bondage/submission activities? At that point, it really hit the fan. The teacher is now into counseling, and other unspecified remedies are likely. Of course the kid is scarred for life, has nightmares, suffers in intersocial activities, would have loss of consortorium if he was old enough, and in general is just a mess. He would be suicidal if it were not for the fact that he and the four others are legendary heroes in their class.

Well, this tale of disgrace reminds me of my earlier school days with Mr. H. I was in the seventh grade, not the fourth, when Mr. H taught us USA Geography. Part of our instruction was to learn the USA states with their capitols and their spellings. Mr. H made this into a game where we turned down a person next to us if they misspelled or otherwise did not know a state or capitol. We enjoyed this. Mr. H (the ogre that he was) also said if we missed a question, we would have to stay in detention to study what we had missed. Nobody wanted that. He did give another choice to the boys in the class. The boys could skip detention if they chose to take licks (with a paddle, not a tongue-don't get all prurient on me). Mr. H was a football coach and fit the physical bill for that, so we knew that his arm wouldn't give out.

Of course, Mr. H violated a feminist rule by not allowing the girls a choice of licks, but that was another day and time. Some of the more hardy girls wanted this option, but it was denied them. As I recall, no boy ever opted not to take licks in lieu of detention. We all survived and revered Mr. H as a good guy. We also learned the states and capitols.

Back to the present, is it any wonder that we have twelve year old boys raping ten year old girls? After all, no one would ever really punish them, would they? If kids do not learn the unpleasant things associated with failing to obey the rules, won't they do just as they please without a thought of the consequences?

This is an admittedly old fart attitude. I guess that I am just not young enough to be as smart as some.

You Never Know

Just outside of Luzern is a community called Emmenbruecke. It makes the headines every so often when it denies Swiss citizenship to Turkish or Eastern Bloc people who have sometimes been here for two or even three generations. A lot of Swiss are horified at this discrimination. At one time there was a move about to eliminate the rights of communities to be the ones that grant citizenship because of some of their actions.

So today in the newspaper, I wasn't a bit surprised to read that a Christmas musical play was taking place at a local school where most of the fourth graders are either catholic or protestant. What did blow me away was the interviews thay had with the two kids who are cast as Mary and Joseph. Each child is a Muslim! They are proud to have a leading part in the play, even though they readily admit that Christmas means nothing more than a holiday to them.

How about that for intergration? Wonder if a Christian could ever play Mohammad?

Only in the Laboratory

Now, I can wonder if I haven't heard it all. In the Sunday new York Times Magazine, I ran into an article about E. coli Wipes. E. coli is big time news these days. We all have read and heard about spinach, and the mess that Taco Bell got into with their scallions. People can get as sick as a blue ox when they ingest certain types of E. coli. Some may even die. E. coli is everywhere in our environment.

These two scientists at Cornell University have developed a wipe made of a coating that when dipped in another solution shows the prescence of some bacteria. So far the number of infectious agents that can be identified is limited, but one strain of E. coli does show up. They also are working on a "non-dip" system to make use of the wipes easier.

This sounds good, BUT I have a few reservations. Unless you are in some sort of clean room like that found in some hospitals, bacteria and virus abound. Even the clean rooms are not sterile. Can you imagine a wipe of a car door handle, a set of keys, an armrest on a bus or airplane? Pathogens are all around us, and our bodies are invaded numerous times a day. Brushing your teeth has been shown to cause bacteria to enter the bloodstream. The possibilities are endless, but in the majority of invasions the body uses its natural defenses to rid itself of these agents.

Could this turn the population into a mass of Lady Macbeths? Can you imagine the gallons of hand sanitizer people will carry around? There would be long lines at sinks for handwashing (still the single most effective disease prevetion method of all). How about running a wipe over your sweetie's lips before a kiss or holding hands? No one would venture into a public place since a wipe would prove it to be a pesthole. Airline travel would be for only those willing to get into special suits that would exclude all contamination (airplanes are still one of the truest forms of pestilence delivering agents in this world). Of course, any idiot that could pound sand would be wiping down all the scallions in taco Bell. These are just a few examples.

This could be one of those discoveries that is best relegated to the trash heap of history. Just a thought.

RJ and the Death Celebration

In the old days, while I was a pre- medical undergraduate student, I went to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. After being admitted to the medical school, I moved on to the medical units in Memphis.

To get to Memphis there were several hoops through which one had to jump. Grades, MCAT scores, etc. were important. Not the least important was to get by RJ and her physics course of three quarters. There seemed to be no way to get to Memphis without decent grades in physics. I had a great high school physics teacher, so I didn't worry a lot. That is, I didn't worry a lot until I got the scoop on RJ's course.

This lady was an old maid, ugly as homemade sin, smoked like a chimney, and hated men, especially those men aspiring to become doctors. I might mention that in those days, a teacher smoking in class was acceptable. RJ had a penchant for reminding her classes of pre-med students that they weren't going to get to Memphis without getting by her. She likely would have been a good teacher if she had not had these hangups. Her students were in her class always. No one would have cut her class if they had been half dead.

Her quizzes were always unannounced and took on a bizzare turn. She would enter the room, write a question or questions on the board, and then light up a Lucky Strike. When she put it out, the time was up. Traumatic at best describes her knowledge assessment by this means. It so happened that I liked Knoxville so much more than West Tennessee that I went to school there in the summer time also for two years. The last year, my faculty adviser suggested that I take the first quarter of physics that summer. I signed up only to find that RJ was not teaching it. I figured one quarter down wouldn't hurt when I met RJ in the fall. It turned out that in the fall, she taught the first quarter physics, and the summer teacher followed on with our second quarter.

I cannot say that missing RJ was something that I regretted, but it turned out that was not to be anyway. The week before classes started that fall, RJ died! That's right, went toes up, cooled it, left for stiff city, etc. Well, that didn't matter to me, but I was told that both medical fraternities in Memphis left classes early and threw a big party. Somehow, I think that RJ would have liked that.

Third quarter physics is another blog.

Gigli's First Day at Work

OK, it was not my first day, but it was my first Sunday on call. I had been a neurosurgical resident for about four days. The resident staff was only four. Being on call meant that I was in the hospital for twenty four hours straight, 8AM until 8AM. There was no scheduled surgery or diagnostic studies on Sundays, BUT Sunday was a big admission day for patients to have studies the next day or for surgery in the following days.

We had about twelve staff neurosurgeons to cover, both admissions and inpatients. We did not have to make rounds on all. The resident for each staff man did that on Sunday himself. The "on call" man was there for his own patients, new admissions, and emergencies. Aside from a few morning hours, he was the only resident there. The census usually ran about 50-70 patients in critical to all most well condition. Sundays off were precious. Unless you had active arterial bleeding, you did not ask your fellow residents to cover for you.

So there I was. New kid on the resident staff, first on call Sunday, and raring to go. Well, I didn't have to wait long. A little before noon, I got a call from Pappy. Some of you may remember Pappy from some other of my blogs. Suffice it to say that Pappy was the grand old man of southern neurosurgery. He was a bit behind the times at almost 80 years, but he was sharp as a pin. Anyway, he told me that his grandson had fallen at home and cut his knee. His daughter was bringing him in for me to sew up. He went into detail about how I was to do it, what antiseptic to use, and so forth. I had, by that time, considerable experience in suturing cuts as a student, intern, and general resident, but I assured him that it would be no problem. In the next breath, Pappy says that a dear friend of his has had a stroke (we took care of any/all strokes then) while in the hospital. Pappy said he liked to really be aggressive with strokes and would I go up to his room and do a stellate ganglion block on him. Well, a stellate ganglion block on a stroke is about as non-aggressive treatment for a stroke as it could get, but I wasn't about to give Pappy any flak about it. I also didn't tell him that I had never done a stellate ganglion block. I knew where to go look it up, and after all, I here to learn.

Sewing the kid up was a breeze. He was a great patient. I swung by the medical library and checked out stellate ganglion blocks, called the floor and told them what I needed, and went up to see the patient. He had been stroked since some time in the night before, so any treatment wasn't going to change things. Still and all, I did my first block on a stellate ganglion and got a nice block. This had taken me until about noon. Then things began to really pop.

Another staff man called to let me know that another stroke (fresh this time) was on his way in from a town not too far away. This staff man WAS aggressive. He told me to do an angiogram, and he would be in to see the patient. Well, I had been taught angiography as a neurosurgical intern, so I got busy in x-ray, did the study, and had it ready for the staff man when he arrived. Turns out this guy needed an operation and it was several hours before we got done with that. As I was finishing the dictation and the post-op orders on this man, I get an emergency call from the nurse on the neurosurgical floor. A patient of the professor's had gone bad. I rushed to the room, and indeed, the poor lady was brain dead. In those days, I didn't have a lot of experience with brain death, but I knew it when I saw it. We did a few cursory things for the family's benefit, and let nature run its course.

Now it was about 5PM, and I had yet to see any of the steady flow of admissions that had collected with the nurses on the floor. The grand total turned out to be TWENTY FOUR. Each of these patients had to be seen, orders written or checked, given a physical exam, and given a DETAILED neurological exam. Some were straightforward, while others were not. At 2 AM Monday morning, I got to my last workup of the day. I had been waking folks up since about 10 PM the night before, so I was surprised to cruise into this last patient's room at 2 AM only to find him sitting up in a chair reading the paper. I apologized for being so late, and he said, "Doesn't bother me a bit, doctor, I work nights anyway". After that, it was a relatively peaceful early morning. The next day, my resident mates were all amazed at what I had done the day before, but I think they were not sorry to not pick up the left overs.

Well, I thought if each Sunday on call was going to be this way, I might want to rethink my choice of specialty. It turns out that the first Sunday on call was the worst of my coming four years. They weren't all easy, but after that baptism of fire, I could handle most anything.

Tipping

I happened upon a New York Times article that was a guide to tipping in the big city. Now, I am not what I consider to be a tightwad, and I have on some occasions enjoyed tipping someone who was of real help, or who just happened to be downright pleasant when they did not have to be. That said, I generally abhor tipping. I look upon it as a subsidy that I pay instead of an employer paying a decent wage. What's more, a once optional item has now become obligatory, at least in the USA.

Going by the NYT guide, I figured what an arrival by cab to a hotel in "The City" would cost if I came from the airport and had lunch after checking in. Figuring tips only after I was in the cab, it breaks down like this.

30$ for the cab plus 5.40$ tip (If a range was given as 15-20%, I split it)
1.50$ for doorman
4$ tip for bellboy (2 bags)
2$ for maid (per day)
4$ for concierge (dinner reservation for the evening. Up to 10$ for special services)
4.50$ for waiter at 25$ lunch
2$ for bar man (2 Martinis, about 9$ apiece--what else do you drink in Manhattan for lunch?)

So it costs me 23.40$ in tips for my first few hours. Then there will be a tip for the cab and the waiter at least that evening, so 40-50$ is not out of reach for the whole day, just in tips.

Now this is just for one person. Double the bags, lunch, and drinks, and close to 50-60$ isn't unrealistic. What did I get for all this? Likely, nothing! If I had tipped no one and gotten through the day still alive, these people would have done what I asked anyway.

So, who benefits from my involuntary donations? The employees usually pool tips in bars and restuarants. I don't know about bellboys, doormen, etc. The cab driver does not. The big winner here is the employer. He has me to subsidize his costs.

Dr. McKeown and nitrous oxide

One of my memories of life in the 1950s was my dentist that used nitrous oxide for pain relief during procedures. Dr. McKeown and my dad had practiced in the same building in Memphis during the depression. They swapped services to each other and their families. My dad got dental care for he and my mother, and Dr. McKeown got eye care for he and his wife. Later the dental care extended to me. I don't think the McKeowns had any kids.

Anyway, we would make a trip to West Memphis, AR and get dental checkup and work. The thing that I loved about going to him as a dentist is that he used nitrous oxide as a way to make procedures painless. You put a nose mask on and breathed through your nose if something began to hurt. If you felt the lights going out, you just breathed through your mouth. Worked like a charm.

Nitrous oxide is also known as laughing gas. Later, in medical school, I would see people come out of the nitrous laughing, and I remember us holding down "Sarge", a gender confused member of a class while giving her nitrous on an OB table. She laughed her ass off. We learned that in the early days, nitrous parties were held by medical students.

All I can say is that the stuff is great for mild pain relief in a dental chair. It also made me laugh as I awoke. I don't mean snicker. These were big and robust belly laughs from the toes upward. Dr. McKeown and his assistant would just shut the door and laugh with me.

The Vent

The Vent is a series of columns in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They appear six days a week. There are six vents, a living, a daily, a University of Georgia, a Georgia Tech, a general sports, a Braves baseball, and a Falcons NFL vent. Only the daily vent is, as expected, printed daily. The rest are on an as received basis.

A vent is a short (one or two sentences) comment on something. There is no publication of names, acknowledgements, etc. of a vent. They are emails mainly. A vent is just a way to ventilate one's feelings on any topic. I have seen no profanity, etc. so those must get put in the round file. There is a place to click to send your own vent in to them. I have been published three times.

A lot of vents have to do with local news, but many touch home on a wide variety of social and political aspects of life. About once a week, I find one that makes its way into my signature file. A lot of them are truly priceless bits of philosophy.

I think you have to sign up for the AJC to read the vents, but it is free. I use some dumb user name and an email address that I keep just for spam catching. I have never gotten spammed by the paper. The address for The Vent appears above.

JV and Me in the ICU

JV and I were in the ICU one night. We were on call. He was an internal medicine resident, and I was a general surgery resident. In those days, if a patient needed a cut down to get access to a vein, a general surgery resident did it. There was a big Tennessee football game that night. JV and I were both big fans. He may have been a bit more radical that I, but it was close.

Anyway, he had called me to come and do a cut down on an elderly man who was "low sick". The old guy needed a cut down, so I got the nurse to get me a tray for one. JV had a small portable radio with the Tennessee game playing. It was a particularly important game, and things were really tight with suspense. JV and I were both enthralled. The nurse brought the tray, but we kept listening.

The old patient was awake and could hear and see what was going on. Suddenly, he sat up and said, "Are you boys going to listen to that damn ballgame or try to get me well?" We both cracked up and got busy doing what we were supposed to do.

Old Classmates

One of the most unpleasant aspects (to me at least) of "getting on in years" is hearing and seeing old friends get older and, as they say here in CH, starting to "close the circle of life". Mortality is a fact, no doubt about it. As I have said before, one would be a fool to wish for life to never end.

Our high school class will have its 50th reunion next summer. The group has been particularly good about maintaining contacts, and email plays a big part of that now. We get emails when someone is sick or has died. Now one member has been designated as the contact for everyone to pass on information to about the members who die or have some illness. She then emails almost a hundred of us. I guess that I like this. At least next year at the reunion, I won't have the unpleasant news put on me all at once.

Dr. F's Mid Term Exam

Dr. F was a fine teacher of Gross Anatomy, however, we could not be sure that there was not a quiet malignancy in his manner at times. It was little comfort to start a new quarter without at least one or two "retreads" joining us. Retreads were students who had busted a subject and were allowed to repeat the whole quarter. Unless you were a real mental case, most everyone could get a chance ONCE to repeat. The faculty of each quarter held a grade meeting after the final exams had been graded and discussed each student and their grades. Boy!!! Wouldn't you think that would be interesting!

Anyway, a mid term exam was usually worth about 40% of your grade in a subject, so they were respected. The day of our written mid term in Gross Anatomy, Dr. F wrote on the blackboard ONE question! "Compare the upper and lower extremity."

We were all stunned. There were as a rule, 20+ questions on the two hour exam. We all thought at once, "One question means one right or one wrong". Pass or fail. Well it was not the case, but it was the first thought. Panic began to set in.

I thought what the heck, I can only bust the exam once. Then it struck me. Both extremities are made up of bones, blood vessels, muscles, nerves, as well as external landmarks. I took my little blue exam book (remember those?) and drew a line down each page with upper on one side and lower on the other. We had learned the lower extremity anatomy just six months before, so one had to consider what we learned then as well as the recent weeks. After that, it wasn't too hard. The structures are comparative even though they have different names. We had two hours.

Afterwards, there were the usual post exam worries. "Had I put this or that?" "Had I left out this or mistaken something for another structure. Some guys were distraught. It was a week before we met to receive our papers back. The grades ranged from the 20s to above 90. Dr. F was apologetic for having thrown us a loop, and I believe he was genuine. He was reassuring to those that had failed and praised those who had done well.

What was my grade? I don't remember exactly, but it was over 90. There was no one in the class that could not have passed, if the panic had not taken hold of them.

Thyroidea Ima

This is a story from long ago. Once upon a time, I was a medical student. In the second quarter, we took gross anatomy of the head,neck, and trunk. It was a lot more fun than the first quarter which was the back and lower extremity. This is where the more interesting stuff resides. We named our cadaver "Earnest" so we could always say that we were working in dead earnest.

We had not been in the lab more than a week when we found out that "cutthroats" were not looked kindly upon by fellow students or professors. A "cutthroat" is/are student(s) that have some knowledge of a fact and do not share with their compatriots. This could lead to an unfair advantage, and at least the appearance of such. After all we had done to get to medical school, it just wasn't done. A class with cutthroats was always a bad class.

In the gross anatomy lab one day, our group of four found a structure that wasn't supposed to be where it was. It was an artery coming right off the arch of the aorta and running into the neck. After combing our books, we called the lab assistant over and asked him. He did not know. He got the professor, Dr. F to come over, and he identified the artery as the Thyroidea Ima. In 1-2 % of people, this remains after birth from an embryonic vessel to the thyroid gland.

OK. So now it was time give our classmates a quiz. We started with the ones who were always at the top on quizes, etc. We asked them over to our table in small groups, and nobody had a clue. When everyone had been puzzled, we told them what it was. A couple of weeks later, we had a lab practical exam. This is a test where you have a sheet of paper with numbers on it, and you go from cadaver table to cadaver table finding small tags attached to structures. You then name the structure or answer a question about it on the paper. Our Thyroidea Ima Artery was tagged.

A day or so later, Dr. F passed the papers back and as he came by our table, he said, "Gentlemen, I placed the tag on the Thyroidea Ima to see if you were cutthroats. I am happy to say that your fellow students got the correct name as well as yourselves. I like that."

Our mid-term written exam was another story that will come later.

Ah, Good Old Politics

Another election has come and gone. We can now enjoy a bit of quiet after all the name calling, dirty tricks, and general BS that characterizes these things every time. That there was a shakeup to not many of us surprise. After 12 years, a few things needed a shake. I am basically a conservative, but not a radical rightist by any means. As I look back over my 68 years, I cannot think of a thing that one or the other party has done that has impacted my life in any fatal way. Overall, great calamity has not befallen me, or the country as a whole, no matter who was in the main position of power.

Why is that? I think it all goes back to the people who were beyond ordinary wisdom in framing the constitution of our country. I believe, and am fond of reminding people, that the USA did get get started by the Cream de la Cream of Europe. Most of the early settlers came to the New World out of need, not to start a new country with the best brains in the world. Most were not criminals, but some were just that. A lot were honest and able to work hard, but because of religion, inheritance laws, etc. in Europe, they could not have a good life and stay there. So, it was mixed bag of new people who came. There were not that many with an education of any kind beyond basic, if at all. I do not recall seeing any reports of how many went back, but it must have been very few.

There were some who were the exception, and we better be awfully glad that there were. They may have been aristocrats, and that may not sound so good, but they were good. Men like George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, and Patrick Henry were able to put together a constitution that, so far, seems to have thought of everything. That is a big reason why I don't worry too much about which party gets the nod. No matter how many "kooks" of any persuasion are elected, there is one or two other governmental divisions to hold them back from stupidity.

I have to wonder how many "suppose this happens" were discussed by those men. I also really would like to have 30 minutes with them to see what they think about today. Flabbergasted, I am sure, but I think also they would be very proud of their ideas.

Rats and Red Wine

There is a new report out on red wine. Many of you know that red wine drinkers are supposed to derive cardiac and vascular benefits from their imbibing this beverage. Well, listen up, this is just in!! Red wine fed to rats, that's right rats, also gives them health benefits and longevity. Isn't that just the most comforting thing you have heard all day?

Now, I may be in the minority here, but I haven't had a pet rat in years. In fact, I have NEVER had a pet rat. I doubt that my feelings on the subject will change either. I still think that those of you who love the the little rodents will be comforted by this bit of reassuring knowledge. Just think, little Felix, Marie Theresa, or whatever the rat's name is, will have a longer and healthier life if you can just get it to suck up a little of the grape each day.

Heaven forbid that some of the little pests will develop an appreciation for vintage, hybrids, or localities associated with red wines.

Bozo's BBQ

In Mason, Tennessee between Jackson and Memphis there is a restaurant called Bozo's BBQ. It is on Highway 70 which used to be the main drag between the east and west coasts of the USA and runs the length of Tennessee. As a kid traveling with my parents, we always timed a trip to or from Memphis to coincide with lunch or supper there. The place was always crowded, and the BBQ was wonderful. The arrival of Interstate 70 bypassed Mason, and I thought no more of it until fifty years later.

A couple of years ago, Barbara and I were near Mason and went to see if the place was still there. I was pretty sure that it remained because I had Googlized it, and it had a webpage. It was only a couple of miles off the interstate, and there Bozo's was! It looked like it always had except that the parking lot seemed smaller.

I am here to tell you that Bozo's BBQ is still going strong, has great southern style food and hospitality, even sold me a Bozo's ball cap. Next time you are in Mason, Tennessee, drop by.

ER Memories

When I was a rotating intern after graduation from medical school, we were assigned a 2 month rotation in the Emergency Room. Nurses and interns staffed the place. Residents were available if you called for a consult. We saw about two hundred patients in a twentyfour hour period. We each worked twelve hour shifts. Fortunately, there were interns who were working ER as their last rotation, as well as those of us who were just starting. I had already had two months of pediatrics, so that came in handy. We all consulted each other. This was in the days before Medicare/Medicaid, so the care we gave was free.

At that time, there was a new ER being built where the old one had been, so we practiced ER medicine in a single hallway of a clinic building. This was christened The Black Hole of Calcutta. It was cramped and crowded at its best, and absolute chaos when things got busy. There was one intern almost finished with his internship who was a whiz at triage. He sat by the lady who registered the patients and quickly sorted out who needed what. A lot of bad colds and sore throats went with a prescription without having to be examined quickly to make the same diagnosis.

ER duty was both hard and easy. Long periods of boredom treating lacerations, skin eruptions, etc. Interspersed with cases where lives were saved in minutes. Saturday nights in Memphis could be hell on wheels. Gunshot wounds were common. I helped a general surgery resident open a young warrior's chest on the floor of the ER to plug up a hole in a pulmonary artery, did a bedside traction on a man whose adversary blew his entire face off with a shotgun, delivered babies in the parking lot, and treated all sorts of misery.

There were lighthearted times too. One of the registry clerks was a stickler about anyone going "back" (to our treatment area) without first having the paperwork filled out. One Sunday afternoon, a young man walked in the waiting area with a car's fan blade stuck in his skull. The room cleared in a flash. When this clerk looked at him, she said, "no need to fill these papers out, go right on back". About once a week, an elderly diabetic patient would come in by ambulance in insulin coma. Taking your insulin when you can't or won't eat is a big NO-NO for diabetics, but it was common. To see the family's response to a miracle dose of IV 50% glucose was fun. The patient was literally brought back from the dead in their eyes, and your stock went through the roof with them.

Then there was the homeless woman famous for smuggling razor blades into jail in her "nether parts". She would then cut herself and get a free ride to the ER. The police decided to do a reverse of that, so they started bring her by the ER for a pelvic exam before going to jail. She was always drunk but cooperative. New interns were told to always do a speculum exam before doing a manual.

Officer "C" was the policeman assigned to the ER. He was a likeable but pompous appearing guy who tended to be on the portly side. Once he tried to quell an unruly drunk and almost shot himself in the leg freeing up his weapon. He was quite upset when a pair of ladies panties was found in the canister that was used to dispense iced tea to the ER personnel. No one ever found out who put them in there, or how long they had been in there. There were a few green faces for awhile, and the tea consumption took a dive.

Paricutin

When I was about 7 years old, my parents bought me a set of Compton's Pictured Encylopedia. I think that they paid about eighty dollars for them, and they were my pride and joy. I frequently went to bed at night reading one of the volumes.

In my rambles through these books, I happened upon the story of Paricutin. Paricutin is a volcano in Mexico. I believe it is the eastern part of the country. It is a young volcano, having popped up in a farmer's field in 1943. Over several years the lava flow completely covered and destroyed a small village except for the top of the church steeple. It still remains active today but is no danger to populated areas.

When I was about fourteen, I went with my parents to Mexico. We went from the USA border to the tip of the country's southern parts. We also went to Paricutin! We drove to a small village about an hour's mule ride from the volcano, spent the night, and my dad and I got up at 4 AM to meet a guide. We rode on mules with wooden saddles. I remember that for sure! When we got to the edge of the cool lava flow, it was possible to get off and walk over to the church steeple at a level of the belfry and walk into it.

There were no people there but us. I'll bet that today, the place is covered with tourist traps.

Mrs. Levy

Sometimes, I wonder why stuff like this pops into my mind. For some unknown reason, the other night I thought of Mrs. Levy. She was in my life for a few minutes about 63 years ago. That's right 63 years ago when I was 4 years old.

I don't know if there was a Mr. Levy, but there must have been one at some time because Mrs. Levy had a son. I don't know the son's name, and I am sure that I never saw him. I do remember his mother as a nice lady who lived across the street and down about 3 houses from us.

Why do I remember Mrs. Levy? She was the lady who baked cookies for us neighborhood brats on the day she got word that her son had been killed in Germany while serving in WWII. I just remember her bringing cookies out the back door for us on that morning that she became a Gold Star Mother. I wonder what her thoughts were now, but then, I just knew that she baked good cookies and loved us kids.

I remember Gold Stars in the windows of homes where a son had died in WWII. I think that Mrs. Levy's star was a Star of David.

Some of the Things that I Put into my Mouth

To begin; it is not my purpose to proselytize and encourage anyone to eat anything.

I have always been somewhat of an adventurer in culinary pursuits. At about age two, I became known as junebug because I ate one (I do not, thankfully, remember this). My nanny at the time confirmed this. One of my first adventures were raw oysters. I had seen my dad eat these but never asked for one. When I was about to become an intern, a hospital threw a bunch of us a beer fest. They had a guy opening oysters like a magician, and after a few glasses of beer, I tried one. Wonderful! Later on, I lived in a place where a guy who owned a seafood market and restaurant used to bring oysters back from New Orleans each week. One could get them in the shell to take home and shuck. Both my children were quite young and would stand with me at the sink, while I shucked away. My son loves them to this day. I think my daughter merely ate them to please me. A few years later, we were in a hotel coffee shop in Atlanta, and my son (he was about 8 years old) ordered a dozen on the half shell. The waitress asked if he would eat them, and when I said that he did at home, she asked if she could come back and watch. He is tired of hearing about that, but he can skip that part.

Some years later, I had a colleague who always had a game supper at his house once a year. That's where I was exposed to chitlins and prairie oysters. For those uninitiated, chitlins are a southern delicacy of boiled hog intestines that are battered and deep fried. Prairie oysters are the gonads of hogs or sheep (maybe other animals too) that are cut up, battered, and deep fried. They taste much like chicken nuggets and are yummy. This same game supper used to feature tomato gravy with venison heart in it. Wonderful over a biscuit.

In South Georgia, hunting rattlesnakes is a sport. One of the ladies in our office had a boyfriend who did this. Dressed and frozen, she would bring some to me. I have had it fried, but it tends to be dry. If the snake is boiled (it is VERY odifirous), the meat comes off easily and combined with sour cream and some black pepper, it makes a great dip. I have seen folks who wouldn't eat snake on a bet, scarf this stuff down and ask for the recipe.

After arriving in CH, I tried horse. It is a healthy red meat with almost no fat in it. My Godson's uncle used to be a horse butcher, so we had a ready source. It used to be that horse was not sold except in special markets. Nowadays, one can buy it in any meat or grocery market. It comes in several cuts. You can also buy foal, which is a bit more expensive and like veal would be. Horse is a dish for celebrations. Thinly sliced, it makes a great meat fondue, and a nice inch and one half fillet, cooked on the grill, and topped with some garlic butter will make a bulldog break its chain. My son enjoys horse (Pferd in German), but his wife is horrified when he neighs between bites.

Many years ago, I wanted to see how tripe tasted. Tripe is the lining of beef stomach. In the USA, it isn't commonly sold, or at least I could never find it. I did learn that a Campbell's soup called Philadelphia Pepper Pot contained tripe. I bought some and tried it. It was like eating pure gristle and did not seem to be pleasing on the tongue. I ate no more. Then, some time ago, I was with a friend at a mountain restaurant, when he noted with pleasure that Kuttlen (tripe) was on the menu. He said he did not get that at home because his wife thought that it contained too much cholesterol. He ordered it. The dish looked really good. Strips of tripe, cooked soft, and in a tomato sauce. I asked for, and received a taste. It was delicious! Since then, I have cooked it Napoli style in a pressure cooker. It has a tomato sauce, and I believe there is a recipe for it in The Joy of Cooking. One of Barbara's friends had me over for a Kuttlen lunch, and hers was like mine but with a bit of onion and melted cheese on top.

One of the things that I also enjoy is smoked tongue. While looking for it in the cold cuts section of our grocery, I came onto something called Euter. It looked a bit like tongue, so I bought it. I learned that Euter is German for udder. It must not be a big seller because I have never seen it again. It was nice on a cracker with a little mustard.

Eating is a learned event guided by what we see as we grow and experiment. Each group of people have built in likes and dislikes governed in large part, by our social mores.

The one thing that I cannot abide is boiled okra. My dad and mother ate it, but most of mine ended up in the toilet. I later learned to like it fried, pickled, and (the best), in an African curry.

Would You Believe It?

While Barbara is away, I have been watching the idiot box a lot. Well, we do that when she is here too. Anyway, two things hit me last night while watching "Prison Break" and one other serial.

First, since when do they have pay phones in prison yards? Did some legal eagle convince them that for inmates not to ba able to phone home is "cruel and unusual"? I wouldn't be surprised. My old dad always had two things to say about people in jails; one, they are not smart or they wouldn't be crooks, and two, jail is not supposed to be fun. I was further convinced of this when Chief Mainord, our town's police chief and neighbor, let me tour the local jail while I waited for the bus on Sunday mornings after Sunday School. Those Saturday night drunks never looked like they were happy. The place didn't smell good, and they all wanted to make phone calls. In that jail, there was no exercise yard. The only exercise that one got was walking in and out.

The other thing that hit me was that, in today's world, a man with hair on his chest is at a disadvantage. When I was a young sprout, I did everything but kiss my elbow, so that I would have hair on my chest, just like dad. Now, he wasn't an ape, but he did have a moderate growth there. The things that I did to insure trichosis on my chest would fill a small book. It was a sign of manhood, and I needed to be a man. The crusts on bread and eating all my carrots come quickly to mind. Later, I learned about genetics, so I still shed a few when I towel off. I am told that men today who want to be attractive get a wax job. I think that would feel a lot like old time adhesive tape being pulled off quickly.

No thanks!

IRS Tables and Me

Not long ago, I had a chance to see the IRS Longevity Tables while looking at some investment choices.

Blow me away!!! I have a chance, only a chance, no guarantee, that I will live to be 87 years old. Not only that, if I live to be 87, my chances of 88 are great. Now that scares me a lot.

First, I may spend all my money. I DO NOT relish drooling in some Medicare facility (God knows what they will be like if I am 87). I DO NOT relish drooling any where. If my life's experiences have taught me anything at all, it is that there are a lot worse things here "alive" than being dead.

Second, the few friends that I have (my choice) will mostly, if not all, be dead. I have some great children and grandchildren, but that isn't the same as old buddies.

Third, I might not have Barbara. She insists that she will go first, but I keep telling her that the statistics are on my side. I don't want that to happen to me (selfish).

Fourth, I likely will be so gimped up that I won't be able to take a walk. Rocking chairs are fine if you are rocking a baby, but not if you cannot get up out of them.

Fifth, the sphincters will be gone or, at best, lazy. Need I say more? I do not want to do any commercials for Depends! Bob Dole, excuse me.

OK, lets look at the best scenario. I make it to 87, and Barbara is with me. We both can still function as the best 87 year olds can do (maybe better).My children will be in their sixth and seventh decades. My grandchildren will be at least in their fourth decades. That could be a lot of fun! I will most likely be a great grandfather.

Here in CH, people have retained a great deal of respect for the elderly. There is no question that I will be the oldest American living in Sachseln, or, maybe the whole country. That said, this a country of centurions, so I still may be a puppy in comparison.

Now, if I can just figure out a way to get my liver to last. It is already up for a gold medal.

My Friend Octavius

A new friend showed up the other day. Some would call her Octavia or Octavius. I don't know the gender, so I will leave that question open. I do know that this beautiful, inch long spider has a place in my balcony.

"It" showed up a week or so ago and wove a beautiful two plus feet web over my parsley and basil plants on the balcony. By accident, I disturbed the web, only to find it rewoven the next day. Now, I see Octavius on occasion. It being shy, it usually comes to web center only when some prey needs attention. I have noticed several flys, etc. In the web from time to time. Octavius waits high up in a corner until the struggles cease, and then the arachnid quickly wraps the prey in a cocoon of web for storage.

Yesterday, I observed Octavius having a meal. With one leg holding the fly, it was drained of its juices and then discarded. The picture is not a great one due to using a handheld digital camera at Macro setting. The spider is a light golden color with some black markings on its abdomen.

"OK", What is this?

What is this with the word "OK"? OK, I know what it means, but why do people use it as a question? "I'm OK" is fine. So is "the game was OK". "Are you OK?", or "is the dog OK?" are fine to use as an interrogative.

I object to people making a statement or request and then following it up with an "OK". "Will you shut the door?", or "Will you call your brother for me?" are fine. Why ask permission to ask a question?

Parents, teachers, and other adults ask children such questions, and then they finish it with an "OK". I don't know when this started in my generation, but it was after I was grown. My parents never asked me "OK" after a request. I knew there was no negotiation to a request; it just got done.

Some might say that being a parent now requires cooperation of the child. I don't think it does. "Close the door when you leave" is a form of instruction, not a point of discussion. Children crave instruction. A friend who used to work at an educational TV station once told me that. Watch little kids when a commercial comes on TV. They will run from one end of the house to the other to stand and watch.

"OK?" is an opening for negotiation. Kids don't know how to negotiate until they are much older. It is confusing for them. Now, older kids and adults may want to negotiate, but a six year old doesn't have a clue.

Oh boy! I know that a lot of people won't agree, but that's why I have my blog.

Obituaries

I have read obits in newspapers since I was in high school and had the job at the funeral home. It was then of interest to know what the competition had in the way of "bodies" and to proof read the obits of our "clients".

Later in life as a practioner of neurosurgery, obits were of interest for a more practical reason. I needed to know who died out of interest in my patients who were ill or that I had treated in the past. One did not want to meet a member of the family out in public and inquire about how about Aunt Susie was doing, only to be told that she had been dead for months. Not kosher at all.

Now I read obits on the internet dealing with cities in which I practiced, as well as, the local obits in the local papers here. I still have a friend in the funeral home business, and I like to see how his outfit is doing. Why here in CH? Because the obits are so much more a form of art. They are known as "death circulars", and they often have ornate engravings besides the information about the deceased. Some weeks after a person dies, a eulogy appears in an adjacent page to the obits. There are usually 3-4 of these with each issue.

The eulogies are always glowing reports of the person's life from birth onward, with the story on their education, work, marriage, progeny, etc., and only a veiled report of the terminal events. No matter what, these are always crafted to show the person in the best light. Some guy may have been a lothario and an axe murderer, but you will never know it from his eulogy. Terms such as "birth" and "death" are replaced by "first saw the light of day" and "entered a peaceful sleep as the circle of life closed completely".

Bonding???

A lot of people are heard to say something about two people "bonding". I have tried to pin some of them down about an exact definition without much success. The only definition I could find that comes close to what people must mean is "to have a close relationship based on shared feelings.

That is all well and good, but how does that apply to animals or babies? How can two adults bond if neither knows the other very well? Is bonding permanent? If not, how long does it last? Is it a one time thing? I just am clueless. Are those bonded automatically friends? Is there a difference in being bonded and being friends? Are there external signs of bonding?

I think this must be some sort of a Yankee thing. I hear it sometimes with just a hit of sarcasm in the background. I fear that one would have some degree of trouble on his hands if one proposed to "Bubba" that he and his friend Lester had bonded.

Back at Home

After what seems a year or so, we are back in CH. Two months in RI were great with a lot of friends and family there off and on. Then a surprise trip to Ireland for a week with more family. Now, I have to get out from under a pile of mail, etc.

CH was in fine shape after we got back. Except for the weeds in the patio garden. The Idyllers continue to come and go, my German has come back (what there is of it), and my old CH friends seem to be well and happy.

The highlights of the summer were having my children and grandchildren with us in RI for almost a month, seeing the others in RI, and of course, the trip to Ireland.

Ireland was a real treat. I have never met such nice people who have such a great humor about them. Even the policeman who caught us speeding was a funny guy (and he did not give us a ticket). The Irish landscapes are beautiful, the weather is ever changing, and the ancient ruins were so stark. The people and the country have had many hard times over the centuries, but their economy is now booming. The best part of the trip was being together with some of the family.

We did different things but always got together in the PM to eat some great dishes and drink some fine beer and whiskey. We never did get some Irish moonshine called "Po Chine" ?sp? I have a pot load of video to work on for a movie about the trip.

Some Hairy Thoughts

Hair? Who would blog about this vestigial reminder that we once had fur? Well, I for one would. Hair has played a sometimes interesting role in my life.

As a child, my mother took me to the barber where haircuts were twenty five cents, then fifty cents, and then on upward. My barber was Mr. Fly, a nice man who withstood my mother's wrath when cuts got to be seventy five cents. At about age ten, I told Mr. Fly that I wanted a summer cut with the number one cutter (about an eighth of an inch). I assured him that I would take all responsibility. He cut, and then I caught my mother's wrath. She called me a convict and banished me from the house until my dad arrived. He looked at me and said," If you wish to appear as a fool, so be it."

As a fifteen year old, I was the willing victim of some girls who told me that lemon juice and ammonia would do a nice bleach job. I opted for a streak right down the center of my head. A sort of blond Mohawk effect. My mother handled this rather well, by then somewhat used to my hair antics. That evening, she did mention that she hoped it wouldn't make my hair fall out. Relatively sure of myself, I reached up and grabbed a finger full to pull. Lo and behold, it came right out! Panicked, I awaited Mr. Fly for a sidewalk consultation, as he usually walked home from the shop by our house. He told me that he thought the hair would return. It did.

About that same time, I decided that I needed some sideburns. I shaved three or four times a week which was sufficient to get a decent growth by then. I had burns down below my ear lobes, and mother went into orbit. Mt father was smart enough to not forbid the fruits of my follicles, and he placated her sufficiently until that phase passed.

On the hair front, things were quiet until the early sixties, when haircuts went to an all time high of two dollars and seventy five cents. This was more than my budget could handle as a neurosurgical resident, so I bought a haircutting set at Sears and began to do my own tonsorial duties. This led to a permanent (for then), number one cut. As a resident, this saved time in grooming but required an increasing number of cuts to keep the hair under control at the length I wished. It so happened that around that time, I was fortunate enough to have a friend and neurosurgical mentor named Thor Sundt. Sufficient to say that Thor was a role model for a lot of his residents in many ways, was an excellent researcher and clinician, Became the chief at The Mayo Clinic, and by the way shaved his head.

I resisted the impulse for a time, finished my training with my number one cutter hair length, and became a POW of the USNR in Boston at the Naval Hospital, Chelsea. The commanding officer at Chelsea happened to be a short, pudgy, and bald little fascist who fell in love with the fact that I a smooth face and almost no hair while he was exposed to officers and students who wanted all the hair that they could get and still be regulation. My naval career was advanced in no little measure by the fact that the captain used me as an example of good officer material on several occasions.

Several years after the military service had ended, I began in earnest to use the Gillette and entered the cue ball phase of my life which persists to date. I was seated across from a then head of neurosurgery at The Meyer Brothers (our name for The Mayo Clinic). He cracked at me, "Who are you trying to imitate, Thor Sundt?" To which I replied, "Can you think of anyone better to emulate?" That's another story.

While studying for the neurosurgical board exams, I took a month off and decided to grow a mustache. My granddads had mustaches which fascinated me as a young child, especially when they ate corn on the cob. By the time of the exams, I had a nice semi-handlebar present. I did offer to shave it off when one of my old teachers commented on it. Fortunately, none of my examiners knew me and cared less about it than what I knew. A few years later, I spent my time in Saudi Arabia and added the goatee to look royal.

Things have been quiet on the hirsute front for sometime, although I tell each new grandchild when they ask what happened to my hair, that I told my mother a story once, and it all fell down to my chin.

Today's styles make hair a real strike against a man. The beautiful men have to shave or wax their chests. In my developing years, one ate carrots, the crust on the bread, etc. so one would grow up and have hair on their chests. Things change.

A Little of this and a Little of that

I finally got the new computer up and going. The old one died a short death last Thursday. It bugs me to be so dependent on a machine, but we were both lost without it for emails, finances, etc.

Hit the old Stop and Shop this AM. It is hard to find something to take home to prepare. It is all done for you. The best I could do was some turnip greens (they had these in a can too, must be a Yankee thing because I don't recall these in the South) and some ground beef for a meat loaf. I did get some ready to mix mashed potatoes too.

I also went out to the Newport Country Club to pick up some tickets to the US Women's Open Championship that begins there on 26 June. Boy! They have they spruced that place up, big time! I am a volunteer this year on the Admissions and Will Call committee. Two things really impress me about the event. They are VERY well organized, and they have motivated Newport to really make them welcome. No wonder at that though; they will bring in an extra 100,000 people over the week.

I saved the best for last. I went to the corner post office. The two workers that man the front desk are a real hoot. Both of them are "Rhodies" by speech, but they are also full blown conservatives. Here I thought that I was the only one in town. To hear them discuss topics from anti-histamines curing Multiple Sclerosis to what one lady does for a living is funny. They were all ears when I advised them that cobra venom was good for MS too.

I have a new (to me) cell phone at too good a deal to pass up, but the damn thing goes off several times a night with SMS messages from MY SPACE.com. I am sure that the last owner was either a pervert or else a "lady of the night".

Commercials and Idiots

I wish I could ask some Madison Avenue advertising people what gives with the commercial announcements (excuse me, the "in association with---") in the USA. For a week now, each time I watch a television program, I get to see a commercial every 5 minutes or so. Now, I understand that advertising subsidizes a lot of television, private and public, but I have a bone to pick with these people. Are they really so smart?

With things like TIVO available now, are they reaching the buying public? Don't most people mute the ads anyway? It is a perfect time for a bathroom break, a trip to the fridge, or a surf through the channels time. Why do I see the same commercial at the same time every day?

In CH, a program must be 90 minutes or longer for there to be a commercial break. Then you get 8-10 minutes of advertising. A 30 minute USA program lasts 20 minutes, and an hour program lasts 40 minutes there. Each is followed by several minutes (up to 10) of commercials. Granted, some are very predictable, but a program such as a movie, a tournament of any kind, the Olympics, etc. is much more enjoyable without this attention deficit-like interruption every 5 minutes. I find myself looking at the products advertised with a much more receptive attitude. Besides, after a week of seeing the same commercial at the same time each day, it gets annoying.

Of course I can almost hear the ad guys saying, "We do it our way because it is better than in the old country." Well, I submit it isn't better, and some of the old ways didn't need changing.

Some Reasons that I Know Where I Am

It is a comfort to know where I am, especially now that I am past 65.

In Boston, a convicted killer of his wife is claiming "cruel and unusual" because the state is not willing to pay for him to complete his sex change operation. It seems that Robert (now calling itself Michelle) has had part of the procedures but not all. The court has ruled that he could continue but did not say the state should pay. This murderer's lawyer says his client is at risk of suicide if the tax payers don't subsidize his surgery. I guess he strangled his wife because she didn't want to live with another woman. Maybe someone will send him some clothesline.

Ever notice what goes on in a baseball dugout? I don't mean all the scratching, pulling, and patting. I am talking about the spitting, mostly sunflower seed hulls, but also just saliva. It goes on on the field also, but that dugout floor must be a mess after a game's worth of expectorant. Do pros get such a dry mouth?

I am going to have to go to the drug store and check this out. A men's anti-aging "lifting" cream (no, it is for facial wrinkles, dummy). Are men so vain now, that they have to have anti-wrinkle cream, as well as, shave their chests?

Gigli Gets to the USA

Well, it has been a busy month. We have been in RI now for six days, and it remains a culture shock each time I am here. I am also amazed at how the Spanish language has taken over, even this far away from Mexico. It didn't take us long to realize that if you want to feel thin, just go to Walmart or some similar store.

It seems that Newport has finally gotten on the ball and repaired some city streets. They always do that when the taxes are going up. The sidewalks still remain as they were, and most are older than me. Driving down here from BOS was like being in a science fiction movie when a city is being evacuated. I do not know how people can live like that. The RI folks are still very courteous drivers as opposed to BOS, but our rental has Massachusetts plates on it, so I don't know what that will bring. It was funny to see a guy, obviously from MA lose it today in the 12 items or less line at the grocery store. Of course there were only about 20 people in that line. The best was a woman who was behind me in a regular line with two melons. She had tried to do the self checkout, but the machine said she owed $375.00, and she decided to get a second opinion from a human cashier.

Airlines and airports are now my least favorite mode of travel, but a ship takes too long. The plane ride in a cattle car is tolerable, but the airports are another thing. Once again, the dog tag chain set me up as a terrorist suspect. It always amazes me that a tri or quadralingual man can work as a security guard in CH. USA customs asked about my cigar declaration as if Cubans could be a threat to our homeland. I simply told him that I don't like Cubans, and no issue was made.

The Newport home looked pretty good even if it is over a century old. Now the porch furniture is clean and out, the newspaper has been started, the larder is loaded with foreign foods like coffee syrup and stuffed cherry pepers, and the first guests arrive tomorrow. The entire state of NJ and most of MA and NY were here for the Memorial Day weekend. The Red Sox are on TV with each game, but since they have lost the last three, I may be a jinx. Thank god that we don't have to drive to get to the harbor. I can settle back and read the ridiculous real estate ads now.

Another Tempest in a Teapot

One of the reasons that I began to blog is that I could say what I wanted to say. Signatures are, and will be, a part of my emails. I have 124 of them in my mail application, and they are assigned AT RANDOM to each email that I generate. I get nearly all my quotes from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution column called "The Vent". It is published six time a week, and I rarely miss one. I am told that it is one of the most popular features of the paper, which, by the way, is a liberal rag. The anonymous venting of opinions has local, as well as, political topics. The political topics run the gamut from far right to far left. A lot of them are amusing to me. If anyone thinks that I am going to go through a message that I wrote and edit it to hopefully not offend some disenchanted liberal, they are mistaken.

I agree that a travel chat is not a political forum. The two women (degraded now from ladies to women) had no business replying to the chat with comments as they did. My email address is between my name and my quote in every signature, so anyone with sense enough to pound sand should be able to send me a private message. My mistake ( I do make some dillys ) was in responding to them and including the chat address. It has happened before when I am pissed about some ding dong response. So it is on bended knee that I acknowledge my humanity.

Do I apologize for disparaging Teddy? In no way! It is sad that the analogy is true, but it is of his own doing. While I lived in Boston for two years, I never heard a kind comment about Teddy, and I wasn't living in some Nazi enclave. I lived is an apartment complex with all kinds of people. One local Massachusetts citizen did tell me once that the whole Kennedy clan was rotten except for young Joe, and he died in the war. After Jack, the gene pool took a definite turn to the south. It looks like there may have been a mutation in the form of Patrick now. He has had the guts to not emulate dad, and he has admitted to his problems, taken steps to help himself, and risen in my sights.

It must be easy to be liberal when you cannot even count up to your net worth. Liberals come in two flavors. Those who have considerable means and want to throw other people's money at problems, and those who want to suckle the government breast. There are exceptions, but only one comes to mind. His name is Hal Taussig. He and I agree to disagree on a bunch of things, but he defines "liberal" in my mind.

To know the "why" of my slant, I can only say that I was raised by independent thinkers who were not a pair of radical right wingers. Regarding "rude", I can only say that you do not know rude. I am never rude, but I can be downright ugly. You cannot have it both ways, I am either nice or ugly. It is like a dip switch; it goes up or down. If you don't wish to see my signatures, block my name in your email application. You may miss an occasional pearl but think of all the peace that you will have. I realize that may require a modicum of computer knowledge which is lacking in some people. It is too bad that superficial computing is so easy. If one had to pass an exam to use a computer, it might lead to a more efficient and sensible situation. Think of all the bandwidth that would be saved!

Someone suggested that I change the subject line, so he would know when to delete. My subject line in the post was appropriate and not misleading. Anyone who knows me will tell you that if I wanted to bash Teddy, I would have made that a subject line. The subject has nothing to do with a quote in my signature. I do want to thank the lady who spoke of Venn diagrams. I thought that she must be smoking something funny until I Googlized the words. Lo and behold, I learned something new for the day.

I guess I might become really paranoid about some of the opinions of my post signatures, if it were not for the fact that the split between pro and con is about 50-50. Most of my "pros" send messages to me privately for their own protection, I expect. These folks are not rabid, and on your next trip, you may sit by one. Nevertheless, I am glad to know that not everyone is a limousine liberal.

Make no mistake, I abhor some of the things that the rights proselytize, and if there had been a choice in the last election, I might have voted otherwise. There was no choice except to stay home or go and waste my vote. One of the things that makes the Swiss political system attractive to me is the multi-party arrangement in the government. One can choose between varying degrees of a philosophy. The one person who says he is a liberal and does not like political correctness really intrigues me. He may honestly have the heart of the matter in his head. Below is a good definition of this from The Vent.

Political correctness prompts the belief that no one should be offended. If you cannot offend anyone, you cannot be controversial. If you cannot be controversial, you cannot have principles. If you cannot have principles, you are a perfect liberal.
AJC Vent

That some people out there feel disdain for me, consider me self-rightous, think of me as arrogant, and do not agree with me, I consider a compliment of the first water. The world would be damn dull if we all were in lock step.

Swiss Humor 2

From Neue Obwaldener Zeitung .

The little guy is applying for a new job, and the boss asks him why he is looking for another job. He answers that his last boss told him to go to the devil. The boss answers, "and this is why you came right to me?"

Swiss Humor 1

The Swiss have an unique sense of humor in my opinion. Each day's paper, The Neue Obwaldener Zeitung, carries a great cartoon the illustrates this often.

The one above is an example. Baiscally it is a grandma asking if her grandson would like sugar in his coffee. he says that he does and asks for seven spoonfulls. He then cautions her not to stir it, because that will make it too sweet.

Gigli's Trip to Another Planet Part 4

The doctors at Al Hada Hospital were much like the doctors in Alabama. Together, it was hard to agree to evacuate a burning building, but as individuals, very nice. A few stand out even today.

Handley Coles became a dear friend, was some years my senior, had to eventually go back to Britain for a second cardiac valve replacement, and later died. Before that, I got a chance to run over to Wales from CH and see him and his wife Patty in their farm home. He was fun to play rummy with, and a classic gentleman pediatrician. He also taught me some very colorful ways to cuss out someone in "English".

Loren Ryan was also a friend. He was closer to me in age, and I never heard from him directly again. I did get hear through others that he and his girl friend, Joella, had bought a bar on a Greek island. I expect that was Loren's motivation for his contract in SA. I hope he hasn't/didn't drink up all the profits. He did show me the only case of leprosy that I ever saw. We had some good times together.

The others are nameless due to time and the fact that I did not keep a journal then. Stupid.

A quintessential psychiatrist, complete with pipe, tweeds, etc. who gave me good insight as to the princes and princesses addictions to everything. He likely had more night call than any of us by far because when the royal family calls, you go.

A funny British general surgeon with a great cutting wit who gave the hospital's administration fits.

A nice Turkish general surgeon with the thankless job of Chief of Surgery. Who besides that, had a wife and kids that almost drove him crazy.

A Sudanese internist who had trained in London and was a smart cookie.

"King Louie", a hilarious Irish-Canadian with a general practitioner wife and kids who lived in the Royal Suite at the Sheraton. He got booted when the King of Djibouti arrived. He was a gynecologic oncologist, but he did everyday ob-gyn at Al Hada.

Some nice guys from the USA who were oral surgeons. One of them was a rock hunter, and we took some interesting walks in the mountain behind the hospital while he gave me geology lessons.

A Dutch general surgeon who lived in Seattle and learned Arabic. The Dutch do languages very well!

An orthopedist from Jacksonville, FL whose name is long gone. This guy was a mover and shaker. He was in hog heaven. Polio was endemic in SA, and he ran a crippled children's clinic as good as any in the USA. He even got a ruling from the imams that a hand severed for theft could, under the Koran, be reattached. I expect that he was the happiest of us all because he had plenty to do, and he stayed out of the medical political scene.

Another psychiatrist who almost died while driving to Jeddah to pick up his wife at the airport. His car struck a camel in the dark, and he awoke with a dead camel in the back seat of a station wagon. Some English people came along and helped him, or it would have been a day or so before any Saudi would have dared.

Another GP who had a wife and several children with him. He told me it was imperative to get them out of the kingdom every three months to maintain sanity. He also has his smallest child programmed to say, "Daddy, I am going to throw up." to speed their way through customs.

A lab tech that had arrived with me who got rousted out of bed and flown out of the kingdom at two AM because he had been making some sort of illegal substance in his room. This would have landed him in jail had not the hospital management people acted quickly. Life in the compound was hard for those young people with little to do except work. There was a beautiful outdoor pool, but of course, no mixed sex swimming. Read, sleep, and work was about it. It was funny to go out to a restaurant (Some nice Turkish places there) and see a young couple with an older woman on a "date".

Random last thoughts:

Christmas and Thanksgiving when the hotel held some sort of celebratory feast. Loren asking the very nice Lebanese Chief of Service for a double Beefeaters on the rocks. He was nicely refused.

Watching baboons, yes baboons, scale the cliffs of the escarpment in the dessert near the hospital.

Talking with some young Saudi men while on a hike. Learning that a wife cost about a hundred thousand dollars paid to her family. No wonder they are considered property.

When it was time for my two month trial to be over, a Saudi man often seen in the hospital and that we all thought to be a government agent, sat down with me and very nicely asked what he could do for me to stay an extra month. The Pan-Islamic conference was in February, and the powers were so paranoid that they just had to have a neurosurgeon there. In my situation that was not possible as my partner and I literally passed in the airport, as he was leaving on his two month sabbatical in turn. In today's climate, I expect that I would have just been held there until the conference was over. I wonder what he would have paid for me to extend.

Departure time was not a thing that I had seen with dread. There were things back at home. I was going to miss my new friends there. Handley was going home on home leave, so we arranged to get a British Air flight from Jeddah that left at two AM but did serve alcohol once airborne. We booked a room at the Jeddah Hyatt to sleep until time to go the airport. Leaving was no hassle as coming in had been. I had in my possession an exit letter from the government saying that my conduct in the kingdom had been correct.

Sitting in first class of the big BA bird as it lifted off, I saw a whole Saudi family, mom, dad, and grandma stand, pull off thobes and veils, and order martinis all round. In SA you go by the rules, but outside the kingdom, apparently anything goes.

The return to London was fine. I taught the BA steward how to make a boilermaker. When I saw a woman behind a counter at Heathrow, I was shocked. I knew that I had returned from another planet.

Gigli's Trip to Another Planet Part 3

Sheraton Al Hada Hotel

The Islamic philosophy about injuries and accidents became evident to me when I received, as a patient, a lady from Mecca who was related to a Saudi soldier. In SA, if you are related to a member of the military, you are eligible for medical care in a military hospital facility. Now, I know that there must have been neurosurgeons in Mecca, but I was glad to see a patient. The chief of surgery was a Turk and a Muslim, so he rode with the ambulance, the fifty or so miles to Mecca. Outside of Mecca, there is an expressway bypass for non-muslins, as only Muslims can enter the city. This patient was to teach me a lot about how accidents were handled in SA under Islamic philosophy.

The idea is that any event that happens is "God's Will", and to interfere with his will is a big mistake. The lady had been injured in an auto accident several days before. How long she remained at the scene, I do not know, but she did lie on a stretcher in a Mecca hospital for about two days without an IV, etc. After that, she was referred to Al Hada because she was an aunt of a soldier. Then it was OK for us to treat her. Well, the poor thing needed some fluids, etc., and then she should have had a CAT scan. The CAT scan was still being installed, so it was unavailable. Therefore, we did it like the pre-CAT scan days. We put in some burr holes on both sides of her skull. It turned out that she had no surgical lesion or increased intracranial pressure, so the medical people took her over. I spoke with her family again through an interperter after the surgery was over. I told the interperter to relay to them that this patient was not likely to make a good recovery, if indeed, she lived. The lady interperter said that she could not tell them all that at once, but that they should be told over several days. That point became moot, as she died some hours later.

Such things as "God's Will" became a source of some relief for me in that unless I were to deliberately do someone harm, as in a criminal act, there was no such thing as malpractice in SA. Bad results are viewed as faultless. Instead, it is God's Will, and nobody would blame God. The hospital had its own mosque, but in SA, no one but a Muslim can enter a mosque. During prayer times, it was common to see men on their knees facing Mecca to pray. I saw one such man in the hospital parking lot. I later bought a prayer rug to take home. It made an excellent floor mat for my car at the time. I don't think that God minded that at all.

Evenings and weekends were free, and since I had no patients in the hospital most of the time, I could go with Handley and Loren (Loren had purchased a classic old Mercedes and gotten a Saudi driver's license) into downtown Taif. Most of the city was in a state of perpetual construction, since in February, it was to be the site of a Pan-Islamic Conference. The areas of the souq and the nearby street where the telephone exchange was located were open to all. The souq quickly became our favorite place. Maybe one should use the word souq in the pleural because it was like a department store. A clothing souq, a money souq, a gold souq, a food souq,etc. This area was much like an open air market with stalls and small buildings holding all sorts of merchandise.

The three of us frequently ate in the souq in the evening. The crowds were thick, but as non-believers, when all faithful knelt at prayer time, we could easily move about and get ahead of people in lines, etc. One of our favorite places to eat was "Dirty Thobes", a hole in the wall joint where a friendly Arab in a dirty thobe (the robe worn by Arab males) acted as a sort of barker out front in the street. I think that he was also the cook. He became familiar with us, even though we could not converse, to the point that he would invite us into the kitchen to pick out what we wanted. Giant pots full of rice, potatoes, etc. were there. Usually this, along with a broiled chicken was fine. He never understood why we always refused the salad. The vegetables in SA are gorgeous, but are fertilized with "night water", or raw sewage. No one of us ever got a GI problem, but we were judicious in our intake. Foreigners must adjust there thinking about flies in SA. They are everywhere, and you can become used to them. Thobe's had asingle cold water sink to one side where we washed our hands before eating. All the Saudi customers ate with their hands and washed AFTER they finished. After a meal there, we could go to another spot in the souq to have a delicious crepe-like dish made of a crepe, bananas, sugar, and butter, all rolled together and steamed. Other dishes that we sampled were a Saudi hot dog, which was what everyone knows now as a Kebap. We found Tabasco sauce in SA along with these. I have often tried to reproduce the wonderful rice dish at Dirty Thobe's place. It had whole cloves, cardamons tumeric, and all sorts of spices in it, and I could eat it by the bowl. Along with our meals we always had alcohol-free beer. I never realized how many beer companies made this beer for export to SA. Try Schlitz, Miller, etc. for example. Dirty Thobe would step next door to a kiosk and fetch it for us. While in the souq, I usually would buy dates and olives, both of which I snacked on out of my room refrigerator. They were delicious!

The souq held many other things besides food. Handley and I bought thobes for ourselves, as well as the head dress typical of Arab men. There were camel skin bags big enough to carry a small child, all sorts of electronics and tapes. Tapes were openly counterfeited while you waited. Gold at that time was about eight hundred dollars an ounce. In SA gold is sold by the gram, so you pay for the weight and not the workmanship. SA women have arms full of gold bracelets. I wanted a fifty Peso Mexican gold coin to take home, so I enquired around and found a young man who knew where I could buy one. He took me by the hand and led me to a place in the gold souq. I will always remember being led down the street, holding hands with a young man, while Loren ran along behind us laughing. It is accepted in SA, for males to hold hands while walking. That would have never flown in Alabama. Anyway, I got the coin.

In Taif, as in all SA cities and towns, there were small open storefronts with tables and open double tiered seats like bunk beds where men congregated to drink sweet tea and smoke Hooflahs. These contraptions were small to huge and consisted of a column of brass set on a pot filled with water, and a tube leading to a mouthpiece. One puts a sweeted tobacco in the top, lights it, and then puffs away. I found one of these in a souq and brought it and a can of the tobacco home to the states. Phone calls to the USA were at a premium, but once a week, I could go to the phone souq, wait in a room full of folks, and then make a pre-paid call.

The role of women gets and has gotten, a lot of press in the western world. In SA, women are restricted in public. You see no Saudi woman in public not covered, face, arms, and legs. Western women are advised to cover all but the face. A woman's bare legs are subject to being sprayed with black paint by the religious police if seen. Women do not go out in public alone. They must be with other women or a husband. An unmarried woman with a man without a chaperone woman along is considered an adulteress or prostitute, both are which are a no-no. Women do not work or drive cars, and this applies to western women also. In the compounds, this can cause a lot of distress among wives. Unless they have a job teaching, they play bridge. It is a hard existence for them otherwise. On the other hand, I have seen men driving a car with one or more women in the back seat, shaking fingers at him and verbally giving him the devil. You never acknowledge a man's wife either in public or by asking her health, etc. in private. I am told that behind the door of a family home, it is another matter entirely regarding male-female relationship. The woman is boss. The Koran has specifics on men and women. Their children belong to the man. The man is obligated to care for his wives, no matter how many. Divorce is his prerogative, but he should see that his former wife does not go hungry, etc. If she has been unfaithful, that is another matter.

Saudi punishments are severe and delivered by Islamic law. One pays "blood money" for manslaughter. At the time I was in the kingdom, it was thirty thousand dollars or equivalent. Theft is punished by removal of the right hand with a sword. The right hand is always used for eating and shaking hands. The left is used only for personal hygiene, so this is a stigma for life. Adultery is punished by stoning. The person to be stoned is buried up to the chin, and people are encouraged to thrown softball sized stones at the head. If one can extricate themselves before losing consciousness, one if free (but likely has a bad headache). Murder is punished by beheading, always with a confession of the guilty. This is done with a sword and always, as with all punishments, on Friday afternoons after prayers. If the victim's family forgives the murder, the life may be spared. There are no appeals otherwise, and punishment is swift (usually the week of the deed). Punishments are public and youngsters and foreigners are pushed to the front so they may see well. So much for deterrence! The executioner for Taif also happened to be the head gardener at the hospital, so I saw him often in his "other job". He was aid to be an excellent swordsman with a clean cut always. I never saw any punishment, but we christened the spot "Chop Chop Square". There were several beheadings in Mecca and Ryhad while I was in the country as reported in the newspaper.

Regular paydays were held in the hospital, and of course were popular events. On my first payday, I went down to the basement mail room where the salaries were paid. To my surprise, the man in the cashier's cage pushed a huge stack of Saudi Ryals to me. It was more than I could fit into all my pockets, so I put the notes into a sack. There was no way to handle all this, so I took a few hundred Ryals for incidentals and headed off to the bank in Taif. The bank scene reminded me of the Jeddah airport. Total chaos with people pushing and shoving. Jumping lines is an accepted custom in SA, so it is like musical chairs sometimes. Anyway, while all this was going on, Bingo!, it was prayer time. I found myself standing amongst a floor full of praying Saudis. I simply went to the head of a teller's line and grabbed onto the bars at his gate. He arose after praying, and I was number one. He told me that for traveler's checks, I needed to go to the balcony and see another man. This man was an old Arab in a beautiful gray thobe who had good English. He fixed me up with US Dollar traveler's checks and took my Ryals. Then he said that "sometime soon" I should sign the checks. I did that at his desk. Where have you ever taken a blank traveler's check out of a bank without them insisting on this at once? Theft was not likely, but who takes chances?

Six Degrees of Separation

We all have said, "It is a small world, isn't it?", before when we meet someone who also knows a friend or acquaintance who we also know. Well, the world is a lot smaller than you think, and it has been fairly well substantiated. Barbara is the one who brought this to my attention, but once you are aware of it, you keep finding examples.

Supposedly, every person is connected to another by no more than four other people, or six degrees of separation. Theoretically, that means that A and B would know each other if A asked four people if they knew B. Some one of those four would be able to say yes. There is a similar theory in dictionary use. If a word researched has links to other words, then by following these links six times, one would be able to find any word that has links. The theory is that we all have a circle of acquaintances, and by each searching their database, overlaps will occur.

Now remember, this a hypothesis, not a guarantee. Of course it doesn't work every time, but it is uncanny how often it does. For instance, some years ago, I had a friend who was a retired teacher. We saw each other a few times in Georgia and each time he came to CH. I also knew two ladies who visited CH often and were retired teachers. Neither man or the two women knew each other. They both knew me. At a meeting of retired teachers in Georgia, they happened to meet and exchange information about their Swiss trips. Not only did they both know me, but they also knew my landlady here in CH.

One of my daughters has a position with Tennessee Economic Development. One of her favorite contacts is a man who I knew when in High School. He and I have not seen each other in fifty years, but he works at times with my daughter. She also works with two other people who I never met, but whose relatives were friends of mine or my parents.

We know a women here in Sachseln who would be called a mayor in the US. She has a sister who lives in San Francisco. A lady who visits Sachseln as a tourist was at a party in San Francisco and saw a woman in a particularly pretty sweater. She asked her where she had found this clothing. The lady told her it had been a gift from her sister in Sachseln, Switzerland (our "mayor"). I know both the US tourist and the "mayor".

Six Degrees of Separation was first popularized by a psychologist named Stanley Milgram who went about having people send letters and packages to people in other cities and tried to prove that we are interconnected by no more than six other people that we know. In other words, one person knows no more than six people who know you. Various efforts have been made to show this with results varying from 5 to 97%.

I took part in this study not long ago. It is being done at Columbia University. If you are interested go to

http://smallworld.columbia.edu/

I did not receive any results from query (so far).

Gigli's Trip to Another Planet Part 2

During my tour of the hospital, I met some of the doctors already there. I think that I was the only one there on a trial basis, since a lot of them had families with them. The whole place was brand new. It had been opened about three months before. The only native Saudi doctor in the whole place was an anesthesiologist who had trained at the Mayo Clinic. There were a few Americans, some Brits, some Canadians, and a Turk or two. Although I only became close with a couple, the rest were quite congenial and all seemed to be well trained. The nursing staff was predominately British, American, and Canadian in supervisory roles and Filipino as floor nurses. They all tended to interact with doctors a bit more pleasantly than their USA counterparts, but that is a two way street.

One of my first surprises was the fact that the hospital had NO real neurosurgical operating instruments. Never fear, my predecessor had already ordered them ,and they were to be in the kingdom shortly. More about that later. I was asked to tell them when I wanted to have clinic and when I wanted to schedule operating times. There were general surgery, ophthalmologic, ENT, dental, and other procedures up and running. There was an active OB-GYN service also. The clinics were both in the hospital and in downtown Taif. The latter was the most interesting by far, as was a visit several times to the old Taif hospital. In this facility, likely built during the Ottoman Empire, one felt like he was far removed from the modern world outside.

After the hospital tour, I was taken, along with my bags to The Sheraton Al Hada Hotel. I was led to believe that this was only for a short time before I was to be moved to a spot in one of the several dormitories in the hospital compound. Truth became, I was a resident of this hotel for the duration. That was not bad, I had a beautiful room for two facing the hospital about a mile away, with a nice bath (with bidet), an alcove on entering held a small refrigerator. Bottled water was delivered daily, and it was used even for tooth brushing. The hotel had a coffee shop where I frequently had a continental breakfast, and I was picked up each AM by the hospital van. In those days, the knees were in marathon shape, so I usually was up before daylight to run down the hill from the hotel and onto the expressway that ran by the hotel's site and contained no traffic.

It was downright cold in the early AM, but nice and quiet. The prayer call from the mosque would begin at daybreak, and the kids would begin to come out of the dessert to wait for a school bus. The children are beautiful and anxious to see people who don't look like themselves. Once the girls reach puberty, things change. They are veiled, and if I approached one on foot, she would move away and turn her back. Occasionally, I would meet a goat or two, since animals and cars share the expressway. Only as one got close to Taif about ten miles away, did the cars appear and use appropriate lanes. I was told that these nice roadways had been built by Scandinavian companies. Saudi drivers were on the par with those in bumper cars that one rides at carnivals, etc.

On my first day in the hospital, I renewed my orientation and found that there was little to do. My two closest friends in SA were to be Handley Coles and Loren Ryan. Handley was a British pediatrician in SA on a two year contract. He lived in retirement in Wales, and like many Brits, he needed the money even in retirement. Loren was a neurologist from California, divorced, and there for reasons that I never really explored. Both guys were fun, and we all lived in the hotel, played a lot of gin rummy, and talked about drinking gin a lot. I had taken the pledge on arrival in the kingdom, thinking that when in the kingdom, do as the kingdom says. Loren and Handley were not of that mind.

Saudi Arabia is alcohol free, but be sure that does not mean there isn't plenty to be had. There was a thriving business in homemade "hootch", and in all the foreign compounds, bars could be found. Drunkenness was punished by whipping, so drinkers were smart to stay in their compounds when imbibing. Drugs likewise were banned, but I learned that members of the royal family, especially, the young princesses were prone to addiction. My tour in SA included the holidays of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years' Eve. This was cause for me to be a designated driver on at least one of those days. I'll remember that because while sitting in a bar in the compound of a large armament company, I had occasion to talk with an interesting character while Handley and Loren were getting polluted. His name was "Fast Eddie". He was an American who ran booze from some where up near Israel down through the dessert to Taif. At ninety dollars a fifth for a bottle of scotch, he must have been doing OK. If he had been caught, it would not have been pleasant if he lived. The bedouins would have robbed and killed him, or the religious police would have jailed him. I never saw a Saudi jail, but I was told that if jailed, a person's family was responsible for his food and water. The jails didn't run a hospitality service.

Days at the hospital consisted mostly of reading in the library, walking the compound, eating lunch, and generally trying to pass the time. On clinic days, I would go into town with Loren to a few patients. Occasionally, there was a consult to see in the town hospital, but mostly I just waited for this load of neurosurgical equipment sure to be just around the corner. Well, it turned out that this stuff arrived two days before I left in mid-January! Lot of good that did me. I did a sum total of three cases in two months; not a week's activity back in Alabama. The Saudis had so much money that they had taken my predecessor's order list and DOUBLED it! There was enough neurosurgical equipment for TWO hospitals when I left, and as far as I know, there was no new man immediately following me.

My three cases were done with some orthopedic instruments that one of the surgical nurses put together for me to approve. She was one of those scrub nurses that could anticipate what I wanted as I realized it myself. We did two herniated lumbar discs and burr holes for a closed head injury. One of the discs was on a Saudi's wife, and the other was on a Royal Air Force pilot who had trained in TX and IL. Both were happy with their results, as was I. The woman and her husband spoke no English, so one of the Jordanian women translators helped me on rounds etc. On discharge, her husband presented me with a brand new Gruen wrist watch. As I thanked him, the translator cautioned me not to be too appreciative, or else the man would not think highly of me. The pilot patient and I had some interesting conversations. He was congenial but frank in his assessment of western values. "You have your rules and laws, and we have ours, but we abide by ours." Apparently western culture in a big US city such as Chicago had turned him off. The closed head injury will come in another chapter.

Gigli's Trip to Another Planet Part 1

Al Hada Hospital (r)

Back in 1980-1981, it became somewhat advantageous for me to take a trip out of the country. Now, this wasn't because I was on the lam, or something like that. It was just a matter of expedition in a civil matter.

I found an ad in the back of a medical magazine looking for doctors to go overseas. My partner agreed to a sabbatical, so I called these people. It was a national medical company that managed hospitals in the USA and other countries. I spoke with a recruiter who sounded interested in me. I agreed to meet him in Dallas which was half way between us to be interviewed and get details on his offer to post me to a hospital in Saudi Arabia. The meeting went well enough, but he was looking for someone to make a two year commitment. I told him there was no way that I would consider going to Saudi Arabia on a two year contract without trying it out for a shorter period. He said he could offer a two month trial with an option for two years after that. I did not know then that the neurosurgeon present at the post then was leaving, so needs were urgent.

It was set up for me to be in SA from 15 November until 15 January. Over the next several weeks, I received literature on SA, got my shots up to date, and made preparations to leave. I had never been to SA, so it sounded interesting. I was to be flown from Atlanta to Dulles, then to London and onward to SA where I would spend a night in Jeddah and get picked up to travel by car to Taif. Taif is the summer capitol of SA. The king moves the whole government from Riyadh to Taif for 3 months each year because at 7000 feet above sea level, Taif is cooler. I was to work in a military hospital near Taif called Al Hada. This was a brand new facility. More about that to come.

In those years, SA was pulling in several BILLION dollars A DAY from the sale of oil. That had so much money that they couldn't spend or invest it all. Therefore, the sky was the limit. The flight over and back was all first class, I was put up in The Sheraton Al Hada hotel in a nice double room for two months, I could have all my meals free in the hospital, and the salary was generous. So, I hopped the plane in Atlanta ready to transfer in Dulles for the ride to London. Whoops! I got to Dulles with only one of two suitcases. I called my contact in California and assured him that I was not about to leave the USA for SA without both suitcases. No mind, just check in at the airport hotel, and they would find the baggage. Sure enough, the next evening, I was off with both suitcases, on my journey.

Talk about another planet! The trip to London and on to Jeddah was uneventful. First class is grand, especially if someone else is paying the bill. Saudia, the national SA airline was the last leg from London to Jeddah, so I learned to drink cardamom coffee. The Kingdom bans all alcohol, so there was no wine list. We arrived in Jeddah at about one AM SA time, to be greeted with a blast of the hottest air I had experienced in a long time. Winter in SA means temperatures of the upper nineties. The Jeddah airport was a mess. I mean a Chinese fire drill gone bad mess. Yelling and screaming in Arabic, no English whatsoever, no usable phones, AND no one there to meet me. After I went through a search in which customs wanted to make sure that I had no bibles, Christian symbols, booze, or pornography, I finally got some money changed. Talk about culture shock, I was blown away, hot, and jet lagged. Then up comes this kid of maybe fifteen years who did have a few words of English. He had a taxi and would drive me to the Hyatt in downtown where I was booked and to meet the ride to the hospital the next morning. The streets in Jeddah may be paved, but the dessert covers that, so we roared off in a cloud of dust with this kid driving like there was no tomorrow. We made it to the hotel, I paid junior off, and went to bed.

The next morning I was met along with three other folks by a hospital representative who was to drive us about sixty miles up to Taif. No matter what one says, the landscape was striking, and the trip up the escarpment to Taif was impressive. Al Hada is a name for a mountain near Taif, and the hospital was named after it. It sat at the foot of the mountain, and it looked beautiful and new. The several buildings sit inside a compound off a big autobahn with little or no traffic. Once we reached the main building, I was met by a doctor who was to be my guide. I mentioned that I wanted to store my bags somewhere, and he said to just leave there by the front door. They would be perfectly fine. When I questioned that, he said that there would be no theft, since one gets the right hand axed off for stealing. When I returned several hours later, there were my bags.

Since the hospital dorms were full, surplus personnel were being housed at the Sheraton within walking distance on a hill near the hospital. This was to be a temporary measure, but I stayed there for two months. A real adventure was to begin!