Patient's Progress

Hail the Queen: On Her Birthday Weekend, the Queen's Wish is my Command. I Bow and Scrape Like a Foot Servant.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:26:00 +0000

Barbara and I recently celebrated her birthday, a big one, her cough-cough fifth. For an entire weekend, she ascended a queenly throne and I was her slave, bowing and scraping before her. Her every wish was my command.

She ordered me around like a foot servant and I obeyed like one, scurrying here and there with lowered head and clasped hands. All weekend, she said, “I want this” and “Do this” and I said, “Yes, dear, yes dear. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

On Saturday morning, we went for a walk around a nearby college. When I started to go one way, she said, “That's not the way I go.” I stopped in my tracks, smiled and said, “Your way is my way.” And we went her way.

It was a gorgeous fall day and she thought it would be a good day to go for a ride. “Anywhere you wish,” I said. “I'll drive, you sight-see.” She smiled. Barbara enjoys being driven. I would be the Queen's chauffeur.

We had already talked about a slow, backroads drive to Connecticut. I suggested that while in Connecticut we might visit my former wife Phyllis who had entered a rehab facility. She was dealing with serious health issues.

Now I was fully aware that I was suggesting something your average wife would do only at gunpoint, if then. I was fully prepared to have her say no, accept it, and leave it at that. After all, that would be perfectly reasonable and understandable.

But Barbara, speaking and acting like a true queen, said that visiting Phyllis would be fine with her. “I think it would lift her spirits,” she said.

She suggested that we could take our time and go the back roads and maybe stop for lunch at an out-of-the-way place. “You got it,” I said. She mentioned that there was a great place that she once ate at with her (and now my) daughter, Misha, but wasn't sure where it was. “We'll find it,” I said, “and if we get lost in the process, it might be fun.”

So I chauffeured the Queen up and down Connecticut back roads while she took in blazing autumn color and country homes. We stopped by my old house on Hidden Lake in Higginam, where we had gotten married overlooking the water. The new owner took our picture on the spot where we had exchanged vows.

In a leisurely way, we managed to end up at the restaurant that she loved so much, The Cooking Company. On a beautiful, sunny fall day, we ate outside and I have rarely seen Barbara enjoy a lunch so much.

But don't take my word for it. At the end of this post is a short video – under a minute – of Barbara having lunch at her special place. Lunch was topped off with coffee and scrumptious pastries. Now I hate to spend money. I rarely go to a restaurant or store without complaining about the prices.

However, the Queen saw no sour look and heard no exasperated word from me about prices. Stepping completely out of character, I threw paper money around like confetti.

After lunch, we meandered around Connecticut back roads in the general direction of Middletown where Phyllis was in rehab. There was no hurry; Phyllis said we could get there when we got there. There was no schedule to worry about.

Between nine grandkids, and keeping up with people, and running complicated lives, Barbara is normally like most of us -- juggling a schedule. But today the mighty, all-controlling schedule was, along with me, a craven servant of the Queen.

In keeping with the aimless spirit of the day, when we got to the rehab center, we were in no hurry to leave ... and Phyllis was in no hurry for us to leave. We chatted for a while in her room. Then I pushed her wheelchair down the hallway to a porch where she could look out upon a beautiful day.

We stayed nearly two hours. Mostly, Barbara and Phyllis, wife and former wife, chatted away like only two women can do, while I took it in with some amazement. Though on oxygen, though in a wheelchair, though deeply worried, Phyllis, the mother of my two sons Greg and Jon, clearly appreciated our visit. She was as talkative as I have ever seen her.

As I pushed her wheelchair back to the room, I couldn't help thinking back to when Phyllis and I were young, got married, and ran off together to a great adventure – three years teaching in Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. I remembered her courage in having a baby, Greg, in a little bush clinic in Kenya and then dealing with a toddler son surviving both malaria(Kenya) and dengue fever (Nigeria), deadly diseases that kill millions of Africans today.

I could never have imagined that some day we would both be old and that I would be pushing her wheelchair in a rehab center. Where did all the years go? Saying goodbye and kissing her on the cheek, I saw a picture in my mind's eye of the way she was all those many years ago.

By the time we left, it was late afternoon and the sun was still shining brightly. Normally, we share driving. But on this birthday weekend, I was the birthday girl's chauffeur. I meandered over country roads in the general direction of home. As I did, Barbara was a tourist, taking in the passing scene: old homes, farms, barns, country stores, people on bikes -- a moving, living, authentic New England panorama.

She was like a wide-eyed little girl, entranced, content, relishing being out and about on roads and in places she had never been before. She looked just like she did years ago when I took her on her first trip to Europe and my son Jon drove us through Germany, Austria, and other parts of Europe.

Normally, Barbara is the adult and I am the kid. She worries about everybody and everything, does whatever must be done, and does it to perfection. I wing it and, if I am lucky, muddle through. (A question I have never been able to answer is: What the hell is a perfectionist like Barbara doing with a flawed character like me?)

Her feelings are easily hurt. Mine aren't (though my sons disagree with this). Though great with the grandkids, Barbara likes to be with adults and do grown-up things. I could play with grandkids all the time.

Yet as I chauffeured her through the Connecticut countryside, we switched roles. She was the kid and I was the adult. She was a little girl looking like she didn't have a worry in the world, exactly what I was a striving for. I wanted this to be her best birthday ever.

I worried, again stepping out of character, that it wouldn't be. And that was the only worry I had on this weekend in this crazy, economy-crashing, warring, self-obsessed, trouble-plagued world. Barbara and her feelings were all that counted.

Sunday was the Birthday Party, with a luncheon and cake at high noon. I organized it, doing the calling, making it happen – and somehow it did. It was small with just family, with lots of kids, and a few friends. We ate, laughed, sang happy birthday,and presented Barbara with flowers, cards, and gifts.

She was happy, laughing and carrying on while I videotaped her. When I presented her my gift,a new digital camera, I told her that I fainted twice in the store -- I hate to shop -- but that "they revived me quickly." There were lots of kids, such as Liam and Bella, pictured here.

When the party was over, the celebrating was not. That night we went out and did Karaoke and a group of us sang for Barbara. She surprised everybody by going up there and singing with us and two good friends Larry and Dolores. A special moment for Barbara came when daughter Misha, son-in-law Ed, and their girls, Mia, 7, and Bella, 6, sang as a quartet.

We still weren't done. The next day, Monday and Barbara's actual birthday, was another masterpiece of a fall day. She said she would like to go for a ride. Another one. With me driving, of course. Her Highness likes having a chauffeur. I knew she liked being driven. I didn't realize she loved it.

I asked her where she would like to go. “I don't know,” she said. “Somewhere.”

“What if we just drive and see where we go?” I asked.

Totally not her usual plan-everything-to-the-tiniest detail self, she liked that idea. Where was my worry-wart, perfectionist wife?

After breakfast and a nice long, brisk walk, I steered our trusty old Corolla toward western Massachusetts. More countryside. More leisurely turns onto backroads that went who knows where. We sure didn't know. Nor did we care. Much of the time we were half lost.

But the Queen sat there watching the autumn leafy show go by as if she didn't have a care in the world ... which, for her, a total departure from her usual self. She didn't know where we were going to end up and didn't care. She was -- gasp-- winging it!

I had never seen her so childlike and irresponsible. Yes! Another kid for me to play with!

Oh, by the way, I, the supposed adult, didn't know where we were going, either. But, somehow, we ended up in Amherst, Mass. I made like I had planned it all along.

“Surprised,” I asked, “at how well I planned this?”

“Yes.”

Of course, she knew I didn't. We were in fantasyland, exactly where I hoped Barbara would be on this birthday weekend. No responsibilites. No serious thoughts. No fears. No expectations. We were leaves blowing in the autumn wind, except we were alive.

Really alive.

We walked around the center of Amherst, which was swarming with college students from UMass and Amherst College starting on a new school year. Barbara is shown here in Amherst looking -- and acting -- like a college student. There's something refreshing about milling on the streets and cafes with young college students.

Somehow the students pull you into their aura of youth, which is all about today and tomorrow. Even a brief visit into their world, where everything is exciting and everything is possible, makes you forget that you are ancient.

And wouldn't you know, but the perfect place for us to have something to eat called out to us. I pretended that I planned for us to eat there and Barbara pretended to believe me. It was aptly named “The Loose Goose.”

We ordered delicious fresh salads and sat outside watching the parade of college students chattering away, treating us to snippets of breathless conversation about romance, studies, parties, sports, petty conflicts.

Then we walked around Amherst center some more. And, you're not going to believe this, but the perfect place beckoned for us to have coffee and dessert. A table for two waited for us on the sidewalk. I snapped this picture of the table and two chairs before we occupied them.

“I had them save this spot for us,” I said.

“Good job.”

We lingered. We sipped coffee. We treated ourselves to scrumptious pastries, whose outrageous cost I accepted without a peep. We talked. We enjoyed the bright fall day and each other.

The drive home, with me the chauffeur and the Queen the rubbernecking VIP, was unhurried and mellow. I had done my best to make my Queen happy on her birthday weekend. Had I succeeded?

While I was writing this, I asked Barbara to rank her birthday weekend from one to ten with ten being the best. She gave it serious thought. “I don't usually give out tens,” she said. “How about a nine and a half?”

“I'll take it,” I said.

But she came back to me later and said, “You know, I think I have to give the weekend a ten. Thank you for a GREAT weekend!” Exclamation mark needed! Big emphasis on “great.”

It came with smile as big as her heart and a hug as genuine as she is. She meant it.

I may be just a kid, but I can tell when my wife means it and when she doesn't.

So long and keep moving.

65 Long Years Later: Five Former Foster Kids Meet Their Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Diane,Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Cheryl.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:55:00 +0000

65 years is a long time.

It is especially so when that's how long it has been since you were handed over to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, shipped out to ever-changing foster homes, your family disappeared -- and you've been wondering why ever since.

For the five of us – Reggie, Victor, Marion, Ruby, and me – wondering recently gave way to answers. We suddenly learned that we have had family all those years. And, miracle of miracles, after all those years of longing, we got to talk with, hug, and laugh with members of our long-lost family.

And here are photos of them, live and kicking, proof that they are absolutely for real. Vic and Reggie sit on a couch swapping war stories with Uncle William. Ruby hugs Aunt Lillian with all her might. My niece Linda Halloran chats with Cousin Ginny.

These joyful scenes didn't just happen. They happened because Vic decided to put flowers on our father's grave, and made a startling discovery in the cemetery: there were two George Pollocks buried there, a short distance from each other. Curiosity picqued, Vic embarked on a geneological investigation – and it led to our lost family.

The initial prod came from Vic's soulmate, Marianne. She bought flowers to put on her parents' graves for Memorial Day, which she does every year. But this year, because she knew Vic's family background, or lack of it, she bought extra flowers in case he wanted to put them on his father's grave. Since she had the flowers, Vic thought it would be a nice thing to do.

On Memorial Day, after placing flowers on the graves of Marianne's parents, the two of them went to Mount Hope Cemetery in Boston to do the same for Vic's father. When they asked a cemetery caretaker where the grave of George Pollock was, the caretaker came up with two George Pollocks.

Two? Yes, the caretaker said, he had internment cards for two George Pollocks. He led them to the first gravesite, that of our father, George Pollock. He is shown in the photo. Vic is a spitting image of him. Vic placed the flowers at the foot of the headstone. Then the caretaker carefully led them to where the second George Pollock was buried, some 50 yards away.

The caretaker stood on the spot, which was unmarked, and said, "here, along with two infants." Vic looked at Marianne. Marianne looked at Vic. Vic decided then and there to find out who this second George Pollock was, who the infants were, why the grave was unmarked, and what happened 65 years ago.

Vic and Marianne went to the Massachusetts Office of Vital Records. There they found that the unmarked grave was that of our grandfather, George Francis Pollock I. His death certificate said that his death in 1937 at 47 was a suicide, by "luminal poisoning." The certificate said that he had swallowed a fatal dose of some 100 tablets. His occupation was listed as "limousine driver."

The two infants with him were Clarence R. Pollock, one year, 11 months, buried November 8, 1924, and William H. Wilkins, one year, five months, buried on July 8, 1925. Clarence's parents, at least as of now, are unknown and William's parents were Aunt Pearl Pollock and Gerald Wilkins.

Our grandmother, Evelyn, who died in 1956 at the age of 64, was in the habit of having a child almost every year. Altogether, she had 17. Vic suspects, but cannot yet confirm, that she had one child before her marriage to George Francis Pollock I. Family rumor has it that the child was put up for adoption.

In 1916, after three girls, she had her first son, George Francis Pollock II, our father. Also according to family rumor, our dad had a twin named Patrick but Vic has not found documentation for this. He has documented that I am officially George Francis Pollock III.

As an official "the third," I felt like I got a big social promotion. I was no longer some common former ward of the state. I had three roman numerals after my name. I had pedigree. My body language said, a little respect, please.

However, this noblesse has a somber side. Of my two previous namesakes, one killed himself at 47. Why? The other, our father, died at 27 of a cerebral embolism brought on by rheumatic heart disease with mitral and aortic stenosis. At 71, I've lived almost as long as the two of them combined.

Here's the bottom line of Vic's research. Of all those children our grandmother Evelyn had, four are still alive. We have three aunts: Lucy, Lillian, and Barbara and one uncle, William. We have 51 first cousins. These are not distant relatives. They are close blood relatives.

Bingo! We have family!

Vic was blown away. Questions flew inside his head. What were these relatives like? What could they tell us about our father? What kind of person was he? What really happened way back in 1944 when the five of us were dropped into a black hole for 65 years?

His inner geneological sleuth now fully engaged, Vic went online. He researched ancestry.com. He came across the name of Diane Bowden and noticed that her family tree intersected with ours. She is the granddaughter of Mildred Esther Pollock, our father's sister. She passed away in 1997. Vic got in touch with Diane Bowen through Facebook. She is shown in the photo with Aunt Lillian.

She was surprised, to say the least, to learn from Vic that he was one of the five kids of her mother's long-deceased brother, George. An avid geneologist (talk about timely!), she quickly appreciated the enormity of the moment.

Recalling the initial E-mail from Vic, Diane wrote:

"I was so excited to get that email! I still have all of Victor’s early e-mails and I can remember reading them and at times having tears roll down my face when I learned of your early lives. YOUR email when you said something like – “for the first time in our lives we have what everyone else has – a family” – had me bawling like a baby. Family is so important to me and over the last two years, finding out all about my extended family has made it even more precious.

"The kinds of things that went through my head re: you 5 Pollocks? I just could not imagine not knowing where I came from; if I had family out there, etc. I wondered how you felt on occasions such as weddings, births, etc., - what went through your mind i.e., wishing that your parents were there to share it with you. I thought about you guys constantly and just wanted to do whatever I could to help you all find as much info as possible.... So, that, in a nutshell is what spurred me to help and do whatever I could. And besides – you’re family!!! Family helps family, right??"

When Vic asked Diane if she could set up a meeting with Aunt Lillian, she excitedly agreed – and promptly did so. And so Vic and Marianne trooped down to Whitman, Mass. to meet Aunt Lillian and Cousin Diane Bowen. Vic brought along a copy of my book, "State Kid," which has a photo of the five of us, and he flipped through it with her as they talked. Diane, now a full partner with Vic in geneological detective work, took pictures and videotaped their meeting.

In the video, Vic told his Aunt Lillian that she is "the first person I have ever met who was close enough to my father to touch him." He asked what kind of person her mother Evelyn, our grandmother, was. She said she was "great." It was clear, however, that the family lived in grinding poverty, with all those kids growing up on AFDC (Aid for Dependent Children). Yet somehow our grandmother "aways managed to put food on the table," Aunt Lillian said.

She said that sometimes neighbors would complain about the kids, "noise, smoking and drinking, nothing serious," and AFDC would hold up Evelyn's check. She would have to go down to the agency's office and stay there for hours begging for her check and being criticized, Aunt Lillian said.

The answer to why the grave of George Francis Pollock I was unmarked could not be more mundane. If Evelyn, left with a houseful of kids and no means of support, could barely put food on the table, she certainly could not afford a headstone on her departed husband's grave. She was as poor as a church mouse.

Vic is troubled that our grandfather's grave remains unmarked. Characteristically, he has volunteered to do something about it. He says he is going to "get it done soon" and keep the rest of us informed. We'll all chip in for a marker.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian what our father, George Francis Pollock II, was like. She lit up. She said he didn't drink, smoke, swear, or get in trouble and was just a "good guy." His death certificate listed his usual occupation as "none." He was apparently not healthy enough to hold a regular job, though he had mechanical ability and fixed radios at home. He was also "good-looking," Aunt Lillian said.

You can watch this video on my Facebook profile.

Vic asked Aunt Lillian if she would like to come to a family reunion to meet his four siblings. She was thrilled at the idea. Of Aunt Lillian, Vic said, "she was so warm I could hardly believe it. She just about hugged me to pieces."

When it was time to go, there were warm hugs all around. Vic, Aunt Lillian, Marianne, and Diane all agreed the visit had been all that they could have hoped for. Ruby was crying. Vic and Diane were on a roll.

Next, Uncle William.

William Henry Pollock is 78, a year older than Aunt Lillian, and our uncle. Yet he is only seven years older than I am. He was born in 1931. I was born in 1938. We are contemporaries. Aunt Lillian has a nephew older than she is. This is what can happen when there are a lot of children over a long period of time, which was the case with our family.

As our point man, Vic made the call to Uncle William. He quickly connected with "Uncle Willy." They have a lot in common. Vic spent 24 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He is shown below as a young marine. Uncle Willy served 22 years in the U.S. Navy. As they talked, ice melted away. Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty, his wife of nearly 50 years, agreed to receive Vic, Reggie, and me into their home in Dighton, Mass.

Determined to make the best possible impression, I wore an ultra patriotic hat which I felt sure would warm the heart of a military man. It had an American flag, an eagle, a big USA, and braid on the visor suggesting a high-ranking officer.

Walking down the driveway to Uncle Willy's home, Vic and Reggie designated me to say the first words to him. When Uncle Willy opened the door, tentatively and with the look of a man wondering what he was getting into, I said, "Uncle William, I'm your nephew George and these are my brothers Vic and Reggie."

He motioned us in and before he could say a word, I grabbed his hand and said, "I owe you an apology. I've been meaning to get in touch with you, meaning to get in touch with you, but before I knew it, it was 65 years. I'm sorry."

I got a crack of a smile. I thought it was funnier than that. Oh well, I thought, maybe it will get better. It did, much better. We sat at the kitchen table where Betty had set out homemade blueberry bread and cheeses, and we ended up staying for three hours. I did little comedy routines, getting a laugh here and there, and took pictures while Reggie and Vic swapped war stories with Uncle Willy. In this photo, Vic,Reggie, Uncle William, and Aunt Betty look over the family tree.

During the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, all three were in Caribbean waters aboard different warships. While the three of them were defending our country, I was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts consorting with left-leaning academics.

My standing slipped even lower when Uncle Willy noticed that he, Vic, and Reggie had tatoos on their right arms, in the same place. Tatooless, I slunk in my seat. A lot of good my super patriotic military hat did me. I would have done better to have gone out and gotten a tatoo. In the picture, the three war heroes proudly display their tatoos.

Later, when I told my son Jonathan about this incident, he said, "Dad, face it. You are not military." I'm not and Uncle Willy saw right through me. It's a good thing Vic and Reggie are military, though. Their swapping war stories with Uncle Willy was just the right way to pull him into the family. How could the poor retired naval man resist?

By the time we said goodbyes, Aunt Betty was relaxed, chatting away, and laughing easily. Uncle Willy is quieter. But he, too, gradually warmed to the idea of five lost Pollocks coming into his life. We talked about an upcoming reunion. Two or three times, he volunteered that he would like to go.

By odd coincidence, it so happens that Uncle Willy and Aunt Betty live just six miles from my son Jonathan. Jon lives with his wife Laurie and two of my grandchildren in the next town over, Berkley.

It gets even odder. Practically around the corner from Jonathan lives a Matt Pollock, about the age of Jonathan (41). Vic and Diane say that there is a 99% chance that Matt Pollock is family.

OMG!

Now the main event: on a gorgeous late-summer day, a reunion at Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass. The photo is of a lakeside scene.

With three roman numerals after my name now and a certified member of the genteel class, I arrived appropriately late. "Here's George," Vic said for everybody to hear, "late again." Reggie growled, "Where you been?"

Roman numeral-bereft commoners, I thought.

Before I could condescend, Aunt Vivian was in my arms. We wrapped ourselves around each other. I held her close and tight. She hugged me back, her head nuzzled into my shoulder.

Holding this little white-haired lady in my arms, I felt all those 65 years of pent-up emotions rushing to the surface. I took her head in my two hands, looked into her beaming face, and kissed her on the forehead. I felt complete.

Composing myself, I took her hands in mine and said in all seriousness, "Aunt Lillian, for 65 years I have been waiting for you to call. I keep asking, 'Did Aunt Lillian call? Did Aunt Lillian call?" and now, finally, you are here."

Then I made a big show of leading her away. "We have a lot to talk about," I said for everybody to hear."Let's go somewhere where we can be alone."

She giggled. This is a buoyant, beautiful lady with a sense of humor.

Aunt Lillian's daughter Virginia, whose nickname is Ginny, was there, eyes filling, taking it all in with her teen daughter, Kristen. The photo shows the three of them. Aunt Ginny had driven her Mom to the reunion. She was finding it hard to believe that all she was seeing was really happening.

Cousin Ginny, seeing how her Mom hit it off with her new family members, and especially with Ruby, said that she has never seen her mother so happy. "I've never seen her like this," she said. "Since she found out about you guys, she's so happy she's like a totally different person." Cousin Ginny said she was willing to "drive my mom anywhere so she can be with her new family."

Later, on my Facebook page, Cousin Ginny wrote: "I'm still amazed that we have all found new family after all this time. I am so happy that you all have come into my mom's life and our family."

I met Vic's partner in all of this, who was so instrumental in making this reunion possible, Diane Bowen. She's an RN who loves geneology, computers, and her young daughter Lilla who was there. She also likes her privacy. She tried to get a little with Ruby, Lillian, and Ruby's son Glen.

But a snoopy photographer (me) climbed up on a balcony and took this photo. That hand gesture she gave me means, "I love you," right? That's what I thought. Hey, that's what family is all about.

Diane: We will never forget everything you have done to make the Pollock family finally whole. You are family now. (That means you can never get rid of us.) I love you, too.

Ruby was all but overcome with what was happening. When I greeted her with a hug, she had obviously been crying. I don't think I have ever seen Ruby so happy or so emotional. She cried at the beginning of the day. She cried when the day was over.

Throughout the day, Aunt Lillian and Ruby gravitated to each other, hungrily piecing together family history, laughing, hugging, making plans. They decided to go to Aruba together on May 14 for a week at Aunt Lillian's time share, which she has had for 24 years.

Usually, Aunt Lillian goes to Aruba with a daughter (she has three daughters and a son) and the daughter's husband. She lost her own husband in 2004 and soon after the restaurant/bar they had owned and operated for many years was sold.

Since then, Lillian has often felt "like a third wheel," she said. Ruby and Aunt Lillian decided that now that they have found each other, neither one of them has to be a "third wheel" ever again.

They also talked about Aunt Lillian spending a week at Ruby's home in Oxford. They would hang out together and visit with Ruby's kids, Glen and Linda, and grandkids who live nearby. (Speaking of grandkids, as you can see in this photo, they had a ball swimming in the lake.) Ruby said that she also lives alone and that she "has plenty of room for company."

No one could have guessed that Aunt Lillian had come to the Pollock reunion under a dark shadow. Her daughter, Susan, 58, was in the hospital, a large mass having been discovered in her hip. Susan has a history of breast and liver cancer. Leaving the reunion, Aunt Lillian and Ginny went straight to the hospital.

We all expressed amazement that Aunt Lillian was able to muster up the willpower to make it to the reunion. Ginny said that her Mom "just couldn't not come. She just couldn't." Aunt Lillian, you are one courageous and determined women. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Susan is now home from the hospital but is still in pain and is undergoing cancer treatment.

Uncle William did not make it, but not because he did not want to. He was too nervous about driving so far in Labor Day traffic and getting there without getting lost. Cousin Ginny said that she would have picked him up if she had known. She said she would certainly do so for the next get-together. It is already being planned, including transportation for Uncle William.

Cheryl Chamberlain, a cousin we had met a few week's before at Vic's place in Sturbridge, Mass. could not make it. Cheryl, you were certainly missed. I'll never forget that you were the very first of our lost family that I met.

Cheryl's grandmother (Mildred Pollock) was our father's sister. Which means her mother (Theresa June Adams) - now Chamberlain - is a first cousin and Cheryl is our second cousin. Her father's name is William Henry Chamberlain Jr. Her brother is a III and he has three sons -- one of whom is a IV!!!!!

So let me get this straight. Immediately after learning that I am a III, I find out that there is a IV in the family. My "the third" crown is barely on my head when a "the fourth" rises from the unwashed ancestral masses.

And now I hear Vic and Reggie chortling, "a contender for the pretender ... a contender for the pretender..." Very funny, little brothers. By the way, in these parts, it's pronounced "contenda" and "pretenda." My goodness, does sibling jealousy of a legitimate birthright have no bounds?

Thanks for opening up this can of worms, Cheryl. But, since you are now family, I have to forgive you, don't I? So I do. The truth is, Cheryl is a sweetie. In fact, she describes herself this way: "I am a bit like an M&M; I have a tough shell on the outside but am a softie on the inside."

Of the five Pollock siblings, one has not yet been mentioned. That is Marion. Conventionally speaking, as in being able to see her, she was not there. But just because she was not there in this sense does not mean that she was not there.

She was, very much so.

She may have chosen to spend the weekend at her beloved camp in New Hampshire with her son Jimmy -- the last weekend they could be there together – but she was also very much with us at Ruby's. We have photos of four of us each hugging Aunt Lillian. But I also see Marion hugging Aunt Lillian.

In the group photos of four of us with Aunt Lillian, I see five Pollock siblings. Marion is there with us. Look at the photo of Marion below. Now look the group photo. Do you see Marion? No? I do. Look harder. See her?

Like many of us, me for example, Marion has her own way of thinking and going about things. She will go about meeting Uncle William, Aunt Lillian, Cousin Ginny, and Cousin Diane in her own way and on her own schedule.

She does so with all our love.

The next day, Ruby and I sat at the cottage looking out at the lake and talking about the reunion. Both of us wanting to share the day's wonderful happenings with Marion, Ruby called her and put her on speaker phone so the three of us could talk. Marion was hungry to hear it all and we did our best to describe the indescribable.

Marion said that she and her son Jimmy are planning to visit Aunt Lillian at her home in Whitman, Mass. But as she talked about actually meeting Aunt Lillian after all these years, and of being reunited with her lost family, her voice began to break. She choked up. "I'm sorry, " she said, beginning to sob, "I can't talk any more."

As for the great journey into our past that Vic has been on, he said that he has "finally been able to look out the window and see the past that is MINE." He says that he feels good about clearing up "issues that we all have been carrying around for too many years." As for the future, Vic sees us maintaining contact with Aunt Lillian, Uncle Willy, and Cousins Diane, Ginny, Cheryl and other family members yet to be met.

In other words: We lost our family once. We're not going to lose it again.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. Two Puppies Steal the Show! In my mind, I was da man, the George Francis Pollock III, the family patriarch, and finally getting the attention I deserved. Then, suddenly, all eyes were on something infinitely more interesting: two puppies, Lucy and Mia. Their affection for each other and their determination to be together completely upstaged me. Me! With my three roman numerals! My niece, Linda Halloran, captured it on video. Cheryl, as an animal lover, this will resonate with you. Enjoy!

P.P.S. Neither puppy was hurt.

A Family Saga: From Childhoods in Foster Care, Five Siblings Find Their Way in the World -- and Each Other.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:58:00 +0000

There are five of us. Count them from left to right: Reggie, Marion,George, Victor, and Ruby. I'm George, the oldest. On November 19, 1943, our father, George Francis Pollock died of a cerebral embolism at age 27 in Boston, Mass.

In the summer of 1944, our mother, poor and unable to cope with five little kids and with no one else able or willing to take them, handed us over to the Department of Social Services in Boston. At the time, I had just turned six and Reggie, the youngest, was a baby; he was just three months old.

Then our mother disappeared from our lives. So did whatever family we might have had.

With adoption out because our mother would not give up parental rights and with no family willing to take in five foster kids, the state did the only thing it could do: it split us up like puppies. Marion and Ruby shared some foster homes and so did Reggie, Victor and I. But for the most part, we all grew up in separate, ever-changing foster homes.

We all spent our entire childhoods wondering why other kids had a family and we did not; always asking what we had done to be so utterly abandoned and unloved; fantasizing about how wonderful it must be to have a mother and a father; feeling an awful emotional void trying to pull us even lower into the muck of life; struggling with the daily invisibility and rejection that comes with being a resident alien.

Recently, Marion did something that I had never seen her do. At Ruby's lakeside cottage in Oxford, Mass., she talked openly to Ruby and me about what her life in foster care was like. When I asked her what one particular foster parent was like, she instantly replied, “She was a witch.” And she proceeded to give examples of emotional and physical abuse that brought all three of us to tears.

Listening to Marion and Ruby talk about their lives in foster care, it's clear that they had it even harder than their three brothers. I asked them both, “How in God's name did you survive?” The question stopped Marion. She said she found it impossible to answer now because for so long the real question was "whether I would survive or not."

Ruby, after days of reflection, put her reply on paper. She wrote:

“The first reason is that until I was fifteen, I lived with my sister Marion who was two years older and she was family. She protected me as much as she could. I remember me getting a beating by my foster mother and Marion crying, 'Leave her alone!' The foster mother shouted, 'Shut up or you'll be next'!”

“I remember being in a different home where the foster parents had a 19-year-old biological son who was retarded. He was so big that I was afraid of him and he chased me around the cellar. I told Marion that I did not feel safe. Marion said that we could make a pact that we would never leave each other alone. I remember Marion canceling her first date because I would have been alone in the house. Marion and I have maintained this strong bond throughout our entire lives.

“However, when I had just turned 16, Marion went to nursing school and I went to a new foster home. I felt so totally alone. Again, I was afraid because of the way the foster father looked at me. At one point, he tried to grab me. I began locking myself in the bathroom when the foster mother went out.

“Finally, I ran away. I called the state but refused to give them any reason for my running away other than I was unhappy. At that point, the state told me that no family wanted a 16-year-old and therefore I would have to go to reform school. I called a former foster parent who was ill and begged her to take me in, which she did. This home was a place where I was happy and I stayed there until I graduated. Marion visited me there on weekends or when she had time off from nursing school.”

Ruby also recalled the time when I drove around to each foster home and picked up four younger siblings and took them to Boston to see a movie. I had just turned 17 and had run away myself (or, more accurately, “walked away.” I didn't think anybody would come for me and I was right; one less foster kid for the state to support.) I had a job, an apartment, my own car, and money in my pocket. I happily plunked down cash for the movie, popcorn and candy, and ice cream afterwards.

Of that day, Ruby wrote, “I remember praying that the day would never end. I knew that my brothers and I had a bond and that we were a family. I vowed that day that we would be together again.”

One motivation for Ruby had to do with our mother. “I had often been told that my mother was no good and that I would also be no good. This made me angry enough that I directed myself to be good so this prediction could never come true.”

Another savior was her love of reading. “I read two or three books a week,” she wrote, “often late into the night. Books became an escape from reality.” I relate to that. Left alone for long periods, as we all were, I also became a reader. I was rarely supervised and could always come and go as I pleased.

The same was true of Reggie and Vic. Much of the supervision Reggie got was from his older brother, me, when we were in the same foster home for several years. Just as Marion protected Ruby, I tried to look after Reggie. When I was nine and he was only three, I took him to a nearby public pool and taught him to swim. I was responsible for getting him there safely, making sure he didn't drown, and getting him back safely.

At one time in Stoneham, Mass., the five of us were as close to being together as we ever were. Reggie and I were in one home (with the Foleys). The next street over, Ruby was with one family (the Mullins) and Marion was with another (the McLaughlins). Across town, Vic was with yet another family (the Kenneys). Talk about weird!

Meanwhile, shortly after I walked away from the Foley's, Vic departed from the Kenney's in spectacular fashion – by heaving a brick through the kitchen window. But he didn't have to live in the streets or in the woods. Vic said, “The state told me that there was a vacancy at the Foley's and they were willing to take me in.”

Vic agreed and thus began a brotherly bond between Vic and Reggie, with Vic just a year older than Reggie, that continues to this day. They like nothing better than spending a day together fishing on Walker Pond at Vic's place. They became family and protectors for each other just as Marion and Ruby did.

Of my four younger siblings, whom did I bond with? I like to think that I bonded with them all. But my guess is that all four would probably describe me as a kind of odd man out – which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Nearly seven years ago when Vic was ripping up his whole life in Oklahoma plus facing a health crisis -- an intestinal failure arising from grenade wounds in Vietnam -- Reggie and I flew out there. The three of us drove Vic's pick-up truck, pulling his mobile home behind it, from Oklahoma to Massachusetts where he would stay with Ruby until he got his own place.

Early on, while I was driving, I hit and severely damaged a small car while pulling out of a shopping center parking lot. Not realizing what I had done, I just kept going. We found out what I had done only because a driver flagged us down and told us. He also said the police were looking for us.

Well, they never caught up to us, but Reggie and Vic made fun of my driving all the way to Massachusetts. And no matter what the issue, from driving to politics, it was always two against one. Vic and Reggie pretty much think the same about most things. I think differently from the two of them on most things. But, and this is what is important, we are brothers and family and that never changes.

However, Vic and Reg, I must ask you both a little question: Have you ever had a street named after you? No? Well, not to rub it in, but I think that this photo of me at the intersection of George Street and Pollock Street speaks for itself.

Marion read the above about how she and Ruby had a special bond and Reggie and Vic had a special bond and how I, the oldest, was the odd man out -- and demurred. She called me and said, "Yes, you are the one who is alone but it is because you are at the top of the pyramid. You are at the pinnacle and by definition there is only room for one there. You have always been the one that we looked up to. You are the father of our family."

"How can I write that?" I asked her.

"If you are a writer, you can write it."

So, there, I wrote it.

Separated in early childhood, unwanted and unloved, emotionally abused, depending entirely on ourselves and each other, the odds against the five of us were impossible. We were marked for failure and misery. Instead, all of us not only survived but thrived.

Marion went to nursing school because, as she is the first to admit, it offered a place to live. To pay for tuition, she got scholarships, took out loans, and worked part-time. After that, she went to Salem State and got a B.A Degree in nursing. She didn't stop there. She went to Boston University and received a Master's Degree in nursing.

Marion eventually became Director of Nursing at a major hospital. Today, turning 70 in January, she still works part time as a nurse seeing elderly patients and helping them with such things as prescriptions.

Ruby left her foster home at 18 and immediately got a job at an insurance company in Boston. Her strategy was "working harder than other employees." Her goal was to "reunite my family." To save on rent, she took an apartment with another young women. She worked, saved, and went to college. She eventually earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from Worcester State College and today is responsible for the care of residents at a large and respected rest home.

Vic, Reggie, and I all ran off into the military. Vic and Reggie joined the U.S. Marine Corp. I went into the U.S. Army. See how different we are? They do the same thing; I do something different. Vic made a career of the U.S. Marines, rising to the highest enlisted rank and serving as a Drill Instructor. He also took college courses over many years, earning a Master's in Public Administration.

Reggie left the U.S. Marine Corps after serving four years. Unlike the rest of us, he has no academic gene. Instead, he started out as a welder and went up from there, eventually earning a good living in New Hampshire as an expert metal craftsman. If it's metal, Reggie can make it do anything. He built a beautiful metal bench for me, for example.

Unlike Vic and Reggie, I was a lousy soldier. At a Nike missile site in California, I scanned a radar screen for Russian aircraft. This was at the height of the cold war, 1956-58. I didn't like how an arrogant, Napoleon-like battalion commander talked to me during a barracks inspection, and told him so.

I immediately got busted from Specialist Third Class to private and barely escaped being court-martialed. The only reason I wasn't was because I was a short-timer, with only a few weeks to go. As soon as I got out of the army, I applied to college having no idea how I was going to pay the tuition or living expenses.

But good fortune smiled on me. I made the Merrimack College varsity hockey team as a freshman and got an athletic scholarship. That took care of tuition. Thanks to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, I got loans that, along with working part-time in a supermarket, covered living expenses. I paid back every cent over 10 years.

After graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass, I went to graduate school at the University of Massachusetts where I received a Master's of Arts Degree. I became a teacher for three years in Africa, first in Kenya and then in Nigeria. I spent the rest of my career in publishing as a writer and editor of classroom learning materials.

Today, the five of us have each other, our own homes, families, and full lives surrounded by what we all dreamed of as foster kids – family. Just look at this picture of the Pollock gang at a recent family reunion. How far away is that from where the five of us started?

So long and keep moving.

P.S. Next time: Vic, a fellow with a curious mind, investigates our father's family and makes some remarkable discoveries. He finds that our father was one of 15 children, that we have three living aunts and one living uncle, and that we have 51 first cousins. And, wonder of wonders, we just had a joyous reunion with Aunt Lillian, Uncle William and long-lost cousins. Thus do the Pollocks come full circle, from no family to a large loving one opening our hearts and homes to long-lost family members. It is all that we have ever dreamed of -- and far, far more. Next time, Aunt Lillian and Uncle Willy.

Surging E-Books: The Beginning of the End of the Paper and Printed Book?

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:35:00 +0000

Around the corner from me, Tatnuck Bookseller closed about two years ago after more than 20 years and I still haven't gotten over it. Every time I drive by the cookie-cutter casual restaurant that has opened on the spot, I recall how much I used to enjoy going to Tatnuck Bookseller to browse, check out new books, and hang out.

There is nothing like wall-to-wall books. They fire up the brain. All that knowledge! All that adventure! They feed the soul. Any number of books beckoning to satisfy your deepest yearnings!

My wife Barbara, shown here reading, is a dedicated book reader. When a new book comes out that she wants to read, she gets it from the Worcester Public Library – free. She and millions like her expect her beloved books and the public library to go on as always. But, sorry dear, they may not – as we shall see.

While I read more newspapers, magazines, and online blogs than books, I occasionally ask Barbara to pick up a new book for me from the library. I'm too cheap to pay $27.50 for a new hardcover. At Tatnuck Bookseller, I used to dip into lots of different books and go away satisfied for the cost of a cup of coffee and The New York Times. Maybe if I and others like me were more willing to spring for $27.50 books, Tatnuck Bookseller would still be in business.

But the fact is that Tatnuck Bookseller is no more in my neighborhood (though it still has a struggling store in Westboro, MA.) and it's fate is shared by more and more booksellers across the country. The book industry is under pressure as never before.

Book publishers, though still pushing big-name authors (Dan Brown of the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code”) and ghost-written, news-pegged books (by Joe the Plumber, by the mistress of Bernie Madoff) and $100 textbooks (in every college bookstore), are in a monumental struggle for survival.

Why? Price resistance for sure, in these hard times. Yet the high cost of books is no new problem. What is new is the recent, rapid rise of formidable new competition: Electronic Books.

After years of promise and little more, sales of E-books are soaring. They hit a record $24 million in June, a 136.2 percent increase from a year earlier. Sales of E-books are the fastest growing segment of book publishing, increasing 68.4% since 2007. These figures are from the Association of American Publishers.

The sharpest increases came early in 2008 just after the release of Amazon.com's Kindle. The Kindle is an electronic device that emulates a book and whose reading experience, in the words of Amazon's chief Jeff Bezos, makes the device “disappear.” The first two Kindle releases sold out quickly. In the first quarter of this year, Forester Research estimates that more than 900,000 Kindles were sold. (Amazon does not disclose Kindle sales.)

The Kindle -- thin, book size, 10.2 ounces, able to hold 200 full-length books – offers free wireless connection almost anywhere via Sprint 3G network. E-ink technology gives text a print-like appearance. It has a keyboard. It includes a Web browser. You can browse the Web, send and receive e-mail, and play games.

When you're reading a traditional book and come across an unfamiliar word, it's a pain to pause and flip through a 5-pound paper dictionary – if one happens to be at hand. The Kindle has a built-in dictionary. You just click on an unfamiliar word and its definition pops up. A built-in vocabulary-builder. Text too big or too small? You can adjust it.

With Kindle, an E-book from Amazon's vast digital library is available almost instantly, any time, from anywhere. No ten-ton printing presses. No “dead-tree” paper. No warehouse. No shipping and distribution. No big price. Just $9.99, even for bestsellers.

Yes, the Kindle is one hot 21st century digital communication tool. Oprah Winfrey told millions of her adoring fans that it is her “favorite new gadget.” No wonder the book industry is in a state of panic. It should be.

The Aug 3 issue of The New Yorker has a great article on the Kindle by Nicholson Baker. In the story, Baker describes how the Wall Street Journal cultural critic, Steven Johnson, was alone in an Austin, Texas restaurant with a Kindle 2 when he was “seized by the urge to read a novel.” Within minutes, thanks to Kindle's 3G hookup with Sprint wireless – called Whispernet – Johnson was reading “On Beauty” by Zadie Smith. The experience convinced Johnson that “writing and publishing would never be the same.”

Jacob Weisberg, the editor-in-chief of the Slate Group confided to Newsweek that for weeks he had been doing all his recreational reading on the Kindle 2. To him, the Kindle 2 offered a “fundamentally better experience” than did a paper and ink book. Weisberg said that he believed that Jeff Bezos had built a machine to make a cultural revolution.

For a still-young (45) former geek and Princeton graduate, this would be Jeff Bezos' second making of a revolution. The first was creating Amazon.com to sell books online, which made him a multibillionaire (along with his lucky parents who put up almost everything they had). And now, with the Kindle, he is out to revolutionize the book itself.

Bezos praises the traditional book as an admirable “perfection” that deserves to have thrived for centuries.Yet -- there is no polite way to say this -- his Kindle is out to kill the book as we know it. With the Kindle (along with new competitors -- read on) he is well on his way to doing so.

Jacob Weisberg has pronounced the book, after 500 years, to be on its deathbed. He said, “Printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence.”

In an article in Slate entitled “How Kindle Will Change the World,” Weisberg wrote:
“The notion that physical books are ending their life cycle is upsetting to people who hold them to be synonymous with literature and terrifying to those who make their living within the existing structures of publishing. As an editor and lover of books, I sympathize. But why should a civilization that reads electronically be any less literate than one that harvests trees to do so? And why should a transition away from the printed page lessen our appreciation and love for printed books? Hardbacks these days are disposable vessels, printed on ever crappier paper with bindings that skew and crack. In a world where we do most of our serious reading on screens, books may again thrive as expressions of craft and design. Their decline as useful objects may allow them to flourish as design objects.”

Weisberg is less optimistic as to the fate of book publishers and, by extension, book sellers. He wrote:
“Amazon, which is selling most new books at a loss to get everyone hooked on the Kindle, will eventually want to make money on them. The publishers will be squeezed at best and disintermediated at worst. Amazon is already publishing Stephen King. In the future, it could become the only publisher a best-selling author needs. In a world without the high fixed costs of printing and distribution, as the distance between writers and their audiences shrink, what essential service will Random House and Simon & Schuster provide?”

E-books? Don't be surprised.

Amazon may be the first out of the gate in the race to capture the lion's share of the E-book market, but powerful competitors have quickly jumped in. Sony Electronics just introduced two new electronic reading devices to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition. The new devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader. They will sell for $199 and $299 respectively and will go on sale later this month.

Sony's devices are available in retail outlets like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, but their sales have lagged those of Amazon's Kindle, which is sold only online. To compete with Sony, Amazon recently reduced the price of the Kindle from $359 to $299. For its part, Sony has met Amazon's e-book price of $9.99.

Sony's new devices and price cuts may not be enough to help it catch up to Amazon. Unlike the Kindle, Sony's electronic readers cannot connect wirelessly to an E-book store. Owners of Sony readers must plug their devices into a computer to buy and download e-books. Sony has also not yet developed a version of its software for other devices like the iPhone.

Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookstore chain measured by revenue, has also jumped into the nascent E-book market. Seeing the writing on the wall in the form of declining book sales and rising E-book sales, Barnes & Noble has announced that it will launch its own e-bookstore. It will sell bestsellers for $9.99, in line with Amazon.

Barnes & Noble says it will offer more than 700,000 titles (including 500,000 public domain books from Google Inc.), and expects to offer more than one million E-book titles within a year. Amazon.com's Kindle store currently sells about 300,000 E-books. Sony's E-book store sells about 300,000 E-books, while offering free access to about 500,000 out-of-copyright books collected by Google.

What Barnes & Noble has done is make the most of its greatest assets: physical stores and a strong national presence. It has integrated its physical stores and E-book store, primarily through the iPhone. At the moment, Kindle E-books cannot be read on iPhone and other electronic readers but soon will be.

If the paper and printed book is indeed on its last legs, that does not necessarily mean that Barnes & Noble is. It is a powerful national bookseller. If it can no longer sell books, it will sell E-books. It is either that or go the way of Tatnuck Booksellers around the corner from me.

Perhaps the single greatest force behind the seeming inevitability of eventual E-book supremacy are our young people. In their readiness to accept and adapt to new technology, they seem wired differently than earlier generations. Many of today's 12-year-olds have their own cell phones and routinely chat up their friends on Facebook and tweet them on Twitter. The internet to them is as natural as breathing.

Books? For many young people, books are stodgy throwbacks to their parents' school days, soooooo last century. The young woman shown here reading a Kindle on the beach is more normal. What voluntary reading they do is online.

They read old-fashioned books when they have to, when old teachers (pushing 30!) say they have to if they want to pass. They transition seamlessly from the paper book to the E-book.

Educators who have always revered the book and assumed that it was both essential in learning and would last forever, watch their young student texting and surfing the web on cell phones and other mobile devices – and see their world of books being turned upside down. Like Barnes & Noble, they must do a major transition from traditional school books to E-books or kiss professional lives goodbye.

Except for some veteran educators resisting the trend toward E-books (dead-enders?), education is moving headlong into an E-book future. In this not-too-distant future, high school students will carry in their backpacks not books but a laptop and an electronic reading device. They will be walking virtual libraries connected to electronic reading 24/7.

At Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA., that future is here. There 16-year-old Tia M. Alliy, who aspires to become a doctor or an engineer, is getting ready to begin her junior year. Like most of her friends, she does most of her school research online with her laptop. The laptop is a school requirement.

She rarely cracks open an actual book. Ditto her classmates, many of whom have never used a library card catalogue or checked a book out of a library. And now the library at Cushing Academy is a mirror image of them. This summer the library underwent extensive renovation to reflect this wholesale transformation in student reading and studying habits – away from paper and print and toward digital reading and learning.

The library at this independent, coed boarding school has been transformed into a cybercafe and coffee shop, with a faculty lounge for more interaction between teachers and students. The library's 20,000 traditional volumes are being replaced by electronic texts, and E-readers – such as the Kindle. The books are being donated to other area schools and charities. Soon the library at Cushing Academy will be virtually bookless.

Headmaster James Tracy, an avowed book lover, finds a bookless library exciting. He says that the library is “going from 20,000 books to millions.” He says he loves the idea of “carrying in the palm of my hand the entire Library of Congress. As a lifelong learner, there is nothing more exciting.”

At the college level, the $100 and even $200 textbook is common. For decades, publishers and authors of college textbooks have fed on a largely captive market. If a $200 textbook is required for a course, the student has had no choice but to buy that book. Professors routinely assigned their own books and colleges have traditionally looked the other way.

Serving what economists call a “non-elastic” market in which customers have no choice but to buy, textbook prices have risen much faster than inflation. Financially, it has been sweet for textbook publishers and authors but decidedly bitter for college students and their families struggling to pay for college.

But now, with a surge in E-textbook sales, traditional textbook publishers are rushing to defend their lucrative turf in college bookstores. Pearson Publishing, the largest textbook publisher in the U.S., is in the forefront. Wendy Spiegel, a Pearson spokesperson, said, “We believe the world is going digital, but the jury's still out on how this will evolve. We're agnostic, so we'll provide digital, we'll provide print, and we's see what our customers want.”

Much will depend on California and Texas, which together dominate the nation's textbook market. As these states go, so do most other states. This summer California has announced an initiative that would replace some science and math texts with free “open source” digital versions. California hopes to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year – money that big publishers like Pearson will not be getting.

“In five years, I think the majority of students will be using digital textbooks, “said William M. Habermehl, superintendent of the 500,000-students Orange County, Calif. Schools. “They can be better that traditional textbooks.”

Eyes squarely on the rich textbook market, Amazon.com this June came out with a bigger machine, the Kindle DX. There are new pilot programs at several universities, including Jeff Bezo's almer mater, Princeton, testing the Kindle DX's potential as a replacement for textbooks.

Bezos also sees the Kindle DX as the new digital platform for struggling newspapers, such as The New York Times. I read The New York Times every day and have done so for a half century. Am I addicted? I guess.

But I am tired of paying its price, which has gone up faster than even college textbooks. Six bucks for the Sunday Times is too rich for my blood. It was $3.50 two years ago. I can subscribe to the Times on the Kindle DX for $13.99 a month.

Meanwhile, the big general-interest book publishers are taking a deep breath and diving into the E-book waters. After dithering for weeks, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group just announced that it was going to release Dan Brown's new book, “The Lost Symbol”(a follow-up of his blockbuster novel “The Da Vinci Code”) as an E-book “simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15.”

I don't have a Kindle ... yet. I can't bring myself to pay $299 ... yet. It's not easy being an old tightwad. But, just as Tatnuck Bookseller had to sell books or die, I have to read or die.

There is no question that it is only a matter of time before I dig painfully in my pocket and give in to the inevitable and buy a Kindle – and read E-books and my beloved New York Times on an electronic reading device that I carry everywhere and can't live without.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. On a personal note, my novel, “State Kid: Hero of Literacy,” is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store for $9.99. The hardcover version is a 407-page coffee table tome costing $89. When you read my novel on your Kindle, you save $79! What a deal! Order today! (The previous link takes you to a sales pitch for the Kindle. Jeff Bezos knows how to sell! Search for "State Kid: Hero of Literacy." The book title and cover will come up. Click on the title and you get a summary of the book. You have to have a Kindle to read E-books in the Kindle E-Book store.)

P.P.S. Hey, I gotta live, don't I? That reminds me of a story. Years ago when I was an editor at an educational publishing company, I was begging my boss for a raise. “I got a wife and kids, a mortgage, bills,” I whined. “I gotta live, don't I?” He paused, leaned forward, and said evenly, “not necessarily.”

Transgenders: Either You're a Boy or a Girl, Right? If Only It Were Always That Simple.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Having just played a tough, grunt-punctuated game of singles tennis, I stand in the men's locker room stretching in front of a full-length mirror. I'm soaked with sweat. I straighten, tighten the abs, and pull my shoulders back. In the mirror, I see something startling popping out of my wet top – a couple of nipples.

I immediately go over to Jim Kane, minutes before my enemy on the court but now my post-combat friend. “Look at this,” I said, rearing my shoulders back. “I'm growing breasts.”

“I see them,” he said with a big smile and chuckling.

“But you can't feel them; you can only look.”

We both have a hearty laugh.

Notwithstanding my flaunting my nips in a locker room, there is no doubt that, with my bald head and grey goatee and deep voice, and despite the pink water bottle I carry (with a breast cancer symbol on it), I belong in the men's locker room and not the women's. More to the point, I have no doubt that I belong there.

Pink water bottle? Breast cancer symbol? Well, the truth is I have a feminine side that's all about feelings, nurturing, personal relationships, and support for women. I have women friends in which it is all friendship and zero sexuality. When I'm with them, it's like a couple of women talking.

This is not to say that I do not have a sexual interest in women. In this respect, I'm a normal dirty old man. As such, it is easy for me to joke about breasts. At doubles tennis the other day, one of the guys brought a squishy, flesh-colored ball with a nipple on it. We all had fun squeezing it and generally carrying on like like teen-age boys copping their first feel.

But, beneath the hilarity, I have to be honest: When I saw those nipples in the mirror, I didn't much like it. After showering and putting on a dry tee-shirt, I struck the same pose in front of the mirror. No nipples. Good. Still all guy. And it had been good for a laugh in the men's locker room.

Transgenders and their families would find nothing amusing in my little locker room routine. To them, a guy growing breasts or a gal just as fervently wanting to get rid of them is a deadly serious determinant of personal identity and, indeed, survival.

Ethan St. Pierre, 47, of Haverhill, MA, was once a woman but transitioned herself into a man. As she began to look more and more like a he, St. Pierre said it cost him his job at the security company where he worked.

He was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “Once they saw the changes that my body was making, they decided that I could no longer do my job. They started taking my responsibilities away from me one at a time until they finally told me that I was no longer welcome.”

Lorelei McLaughlin is a transgender person from Northhampton, MA who can't get a job. She says she is constantly rejected for positions because of her sexual identity. McLaughin, 36, was born as a male but always felt female. For the past three years, she has been living full-time as a woman.

McLaughlin recently testified before the Judiciary Committee of the Massachusetts Statehouse on H.1828, the Transgender Bill. Supporters of transgender rights say the bill will provide people like St. Pierre legal protections at work, in public accommodations, and in housing. The bill would make “gender identity or expression” an additional category in the state's civil rights and hate-crime laws.

Also testifying in favor of the bill was Enoch E. Page, 58, an associate professor of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was born a female but has always felt like a heterosexual male. He had sex reassignment surgery in 1997 in San Francisco.

Opposition to the bill is fierce. Critics say that people like St. Pierre suffer from Gender Identity Disorder and other neuroses and what they need is help, not a new law imposing their problems on everybody else. The Transgender Bill, according to these critics, would lead to a breakdown of privacy in restrooms, locker rooms, and other single-gender facilities. They say that women's bathrooms would be opened to sexual predators.

Kristian M. Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute in Woburn, MA said “This is a far-reaching piece of legislation that will disrupt the privacy of bathrooms, showers and exercise facilities including those in public schools. This bill opens the barn door to everybody. There is no way to know who of the opposite biological sex is using the facility for right purposes.”

Another critic is Chanel Prunier of Shrewsbury, Mass., who is executive director of the Coalition for Marriage and Family. She cites a case in Bangor, Maine -- where a law similar to the proposed Massachusetts Transgender Bill has passed. The parents of a 10-year-old boy in the 5th grade successfully petitioned for his/her access to the girls' bathroom because of his “identifying” as a girl. The School Department had previously accommodated the boy with his own bathroom in an attempt to respect the privacy of pre-pubescent girls and also to protect the boy from harassment.

Ms. Prunier says that we should not have to “indulge” a 10-year-old boy just because he “feels” that he is really a girl. In an op-ed letter, she wrote: “Transgendered is self-defined by the claimant, and is based solely on one's conception of oneself on that particular day. There's no requirement of a doctor's proclamation, surgery, or hormone therapy.”

A particularly harsh critic is Peter Shultz of Assumption College in Worcester, MA. In a letter to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, he wrote: “Perhaps we can find ... appropriate closets where these human beings can go so they will not threaten the moral fabric of our society.”

My wife Barbara has problems with the bill. She said, “I'm sorry, I don't want a man who thinks he is a woman to be able to walk into the women's restroom where I am. I'm just not comfortable with that.” A former second-grade teacher, she also thinks that one 10-year-old should not be accommodated at the expense of all the other students.

She made this analogy: “Just because one student has a peanut butter allergy, do you deny peanut butter to all?” But she is quick to add that in every individual case in schools involving gender, accommodations can and should be made for the student. She says that someone coming into the women's restroom dressed as a woman and “going through the process” would be acceptable to her.

Sponsors of the Transgender Bill say it is a needed expansion of the state's civil rights protections and characterizing it as a “bathroom bill”is a gross distortion. Calling it a threat to public safety from sexual predators, they say, is a scare tactic plain and simple.

The sponsor of the bill, Rep. Carl Sciortino, Democrat of Medford, said: “What it allows for is that every person, including transgender people, can use facilities that are consistent with their gender identity in a safe and private manner. Anyone that uses a facility to commit a crime or does something indecent can be prosecuted under current laws and this bill does nothing to change that.”

(Of this comment, my wife Barbara said, “It would be a little late after a crime has been committed, wouldn't it?”)

Governor Deval Patrick supports the Transgender Bill, calling it “a very straightforward question of human and civil rights.” He dismissed concerns about privacy in restrooms. “Somehow or other, we manage at home with bathrooms that don't have men and women signs on them. I think we can probably figure that out in public spaces, too.”

A dozen states already prohibit discrimination against transgenders, though New Hampshire recently defeated a bill similar to the Massachusetts bill. Of that defeat, Chanel Prunier wrote: “Outraged mothers recently led a fight to defeat a similar bill in New Hampshire, citing the potential for abuse by predators, and the dangerous ambiguity of who is legally transgendered and who is not... Peeping Toms are certainly a worthwhile concern for women here in Massachusetts.”

On the national level, lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their-kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees. The guidelines are considered a breakthrough by transgender advocates. Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said that President Obama is “making a very clear statement that transgender people won't be discriminated against.”

Focus on the Family, a conservative evangelical group, said the guidelines were “unnecessary political action to appease a special interest group.” The group criticized the new guidelines as “government affirmation” of behavior it defined as “one of the many sexual sins that is outside God's created intent and desire for us.”

The battle over transgenders is joined. The issue is primal. It brings us all the way back to that first question that is asked of every newborn baby: Is it a boy or a girl?

It forces us to go to the heart of just what it is to be a man or a woman. It requires us to try to understand the men and boys living in the shadows among us who feel that they really are women and girls, and for whom breasts are a passionate dream.

We must look into the hearts of women and girls who hate their breasts, are repulsed by the very thought of them, and want passionately to live as males with hair on their chests, not to mention on their faces and legs.

Others are in gender nowhere land. Not sure if they are male or female, they don't know whether they want full breasts or a thatch of hair on their chests. For them, discovering their true gender identity is the driving force of their lives and the source of endless torment.

What we know for sure is that not all guys born male are necessarily standard-issue heterosexuals like me. Nor are all gals born female standard-issue heterosexuals. Ethan St. Pierre is one example out of a female-to-male transgender and Loreli McLaughlin is one example of a male-to female transgender.

Because so many live in the shadows, no one knows how many transgenders, and transgenders-in process, and transgenders wannabes there are in the U.S. The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that between ¼ and 1% of the population is transsexual.

That is not a lot but, counting growing numbers of straight transgender advocates, it is enough to bring about new state transgender legislation and federal anti-discrimination guidelines. Surprising to me -- and one reason I am writing this -- is that the reality of transgenders among us has walked into my little life, and hit me over the head.

I have known Tim, not his real name, almost all his life. As a little boy, he was quiet, friendly, with an easy smile. I saw a boy no different from my own sons, except he wasn't into sports the way they were.

When he was about 20, he decided that he was really a woman and that he wanted to transition himself into one. Now 24 and living with his parents and undergoing hormone treatments, he still dresses as a man but is taking hormones and is slowly transitioning into a female. His breasts are developing.

His parents, friends of mine for many years, have gone from initial shock, to disbelief, to bewilderment, to acceptance. While never wavering in their love for their only son, they do struggle to understand why this is happening and how best to deal with it.

Tim's father wishes that Tim would talk to him more about what he is going through so he can understand and be better able to help. But Tim has not been able to discuss his gender change openly with his father. Tim, if you ever read this, just let me say that your mom and dad and other people who love you are there for you in any way they can. That I know.

Speaking for myself, I see you are changing from a man into a woman, and I know it has to be hell on earth. But, to me, you're still the same old Tim that I have known forever. Say the word, and I will be happy to strangle a demon or two for you.

You are transitioning to a new gender, new identity, and new life. What could be more intense, daunting, and frightening? But if you gather up all the love and support you can get, over time, your being a woman becomes the new normal.

Meanwhile, the subject remains raw, painful, and replete with ambiguities and emotional traps. Will the present path, avoidance and letting things take their course, work? It may keep the pain manageable in the short run, but what about the long term?

I don't know. But I sure am pulling for my friend Tim. As I said to his dad, “I'm looking for the day when we can all joke about this, but right now it just isn't funny.”

This past summer, Barbara and I were visiting a longtime dear woman friend, Elaine, at her lakeside camp in Connecticut. It was a beautiful late summer day and Elaine was in a mood to talk to Barbara. Normally when the two get to yakking, I get restless after a while.

This day I didn't. I somehow sensed that it was important that the two talk without me trying to cut it short. I told them to talk all they want – all afternoon if they felt like it – and I went for a hike around the lake.

They did talk all afternoon. They talked about all the good and bad times they had shared over 29 years of friendship. During all that time, Elaine rarely talked about her brother, but today she did – at length.

Among many other things, Elaine talked about how her brother had abruptly decided late in life that he was a woman. After a long marriage and with three grown children and grandchildren and just a few months after the death of his wife, he morphed from a man to a woman. He went from pants to dresses, from short hair to long hair, from aftershave to perfume and earrings.

Elaine spoke feelingly of the intense anger and confusion that this metamorphosis caused throughout the family. At 70 years of age, dad, gramps, uncle, brother was now a woman and everybody could hardly believe it much less accept it. Elaine asked him to please not visit in woman's clothing. She died a few months later still troubled and not being able to fully accept her brother as a sister.

You know what? My “comedy” routine that I started out with may have gotten laughs, but now I don't think it's appropriate or funny. In the light of what I have just written, I probably should go back and cut it out.

On the other hand, maybe my men's locker room skit should stay as an example of humor that no transgender person would find funny. It can be a reminder to myself and others that while we may be secure in being a boy or a girl, there are fellow human beings among us who are not – and who want that more than anything else in the world.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. To learn more about transgender issues, read Matt Kailey's tranifesto.com. Matt spent the first 42 years of his life as a female. He is now a transsexual male. He is the author of Just Add Hormones.

The Last Cobbler? Mike Vallee Should Be History. So Why Is He Still Fixing Shoes?

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:37:00 +0000

As a cobbler, Mike Vallee, who operates a cobbler shop in Bristol, CT, is supposed to be extinct. In our throw-away society, we don't get our shoes repaired; we just buy a new pair at a giant shoe store. Right?

How come Mike doesn't know that? Shouldn't somebody tell him? I don't think so – and neither do his many clients, such as this smiling regular getting his tight shoes "blown out."

Mike Vallee is a cobbler, for God's sakes. God and his cobbler father put him on earth to heal, with deft and loving hands, wounded shoes. Using ancient skills handed down from the dawn of humanity, he saves shoes from the dumpster. Even shoes near fall-apart death, he restores to a healthy vigor and sheen.

Mike performs miracles with shoes and shoe-lovers. He says walk again and they do. For both, he heels. For both, he saves soles. (Sorry ... couldn't resist.)In a city with some rough edges, even a drive-by shooting can't stop him from doing his thing. That's a bullet hole you see in his sign.

We are the only animals that wear shoes. I spent a lot of time in Africa and saw all kinds of animals in the wild. I never saw an animal wearing shoes. Mike Vallee will surely attest that no antelope has ever came into his shop for a shoe fix. (What must horses think of those iron “horse shoes” that we force them to wear?)

However, all manner of humankind in Bristol and regions beyond troop into Mike Vallee's cobbler shop with tales of shoe woes. The mayor of Bristol, Art Ward, is a regular, as have been mayors before him. “I do Artie's shoes,” Mike said. City councilors also come in. They may be skilled politicians with talented tongues, but none can sweet-talk their shoes back into service.

Only Mike Vallee can do that and everybody in town, from the mayor to ordinary folk, knows it. They come humbly, hat in hand, spilling out with no little emotion their shoe issues. They know that Mike the cobbler is always in for them.

When they come in, their shoes are tired. They're tight. They squeak. The heel is worn. There is a hole in the sole. Any one of these can be like a dagger in the heart of someone who has worn a pair of shoes for years, loves them, and can't bear the thought of being without them.

For many of Mike Vallee's regulars, God forbid, buying a new pair in a shoe store is not an option. It's an emotional thing: the huge stores see shoes as just shoes; they insult shoes and shoe-lovers by their mass display and mass merchandising; shoes are like people, each pair unique and with its own personality; the shoe-store chains don't understand how important shoes are to people the way Mike Vallee does.

He knows that people identify with their shoes and that their style, brand, designer, price, and condition all proclaim who they are. Our shoes are us. If our shoes are not right, neither are we. And sometimes, as Mike Vallee sees day in and day out, people need to talk about their shoes.

In Mike Vallee's little cobbler shop, people can let out all their shoe troubles and hopes. They can't do that in a giant shoe store while being waited on by a bored, part-timer whose heart and mind are elsewhere. Mike is fully there. Having grown up with many of his customers, he knows them and their shoes, intimately. He's a trusted friend to both.

Sometimes people come in with a shoe emergency in which time is critical. A wedding is coming up and a mother wants to dance with her groom son wearing pumps that match her joy. A businessman has a big meeting with a potential client and wants to make sure that a delicate deal won't be done in by his shoes; they must reflect his ability to fulfill the contract. A factory worker -- Bristol has many -- must have shoes that enable him to be on his feet for long hours so that he will be able to support his family.
In Mike Vallee, such varied shoe needs find a sympathetic ear. He is decidedly NOT tough as shoe leather. He's also a bit of a dramatist who likes acting out with customers. He's like the cobbler in the famous Norman Rockwell cover (pictured here)fixing a doll's shoes for little girl. You can just see him doing exactly the same.

While chatting and exchanging stories, he tells people what has to be done. Sometimes, if it's a small job and the customer doesn't mind taking a seat, he does the fix then and there. While I was there, a regular came in complaining that his shoes were tight. Mike immediately “blew them out” while engaging in multiple ongoing conversations.

Within minutes, the customer was out the door wearing his now comfy shoes with a smile on his face and with a newly confident step. A steady stream of customers ask for and get this kind of quick, efficient shoe fix. They walk out in comfort, pride, and with a fresh new outlook on life.

Really? Really – as I would find out myself when I presented Mike Vallee my own shoe problem.

Mike's father started Vallee's Shoe Service in 1947. Mike got his start lugging a shoeshine kit around Brockton Plaza where he and a Greek kid hotly competed for customers. He learned early on that you can get a pretty good shine with a brush, but to get the lustre, you have to “pop the rag.”

When he was 10, he started working in his dad's cobbler shop, and he has been there ever since. Mike Vallee Sr. retired at 55 because of heart trouble. He had a major heart attack and underwent “five or six” bypasses, Mike says. Still, largely because of a female cardiologist from India, a “maestro in the field,” he lived another 20 years before passing away at 75 in 2000.

Mike Vallee has two brothers, one younger and one older. Both are cobblers. His older brother Joe runs Gulfgate Shoe Repair in Sarasota, Fla. Dave operates Dave's Shoe Repair in Rockville, CT. Both tried working in other fields, but always came back to the cobbler life.

Mike has a son and two daughters. His son Mike, 29, years ago “did some stitching” in the shop, but has shown little interest in carrying on the family cobbler tradition. He is an athlete who went to college on an athletic scholarship where he studied economics and political science.

“I didn't do sports,” Mike Vallee Sr. said. “I was always working.”

His two daughters have shown no interest in becoming cobblers. Mike completely understands. Cobbling is not a field that the female gender would naturally gravitate to. His younger daughter is a student at Central Connecticut College. His older daughter has just received a master's degree in education.

But for Mike Vallee, cobbling is all he knows and he has no desire to do anything else. He loves the work. He loves having all his old friends coming in to get their shoes fixed and, especially, the comaraderie that goes with it. In Mike's shop, it's all first names and nicknames and never-ending stories and joshing. He is shown here with shoe forms.

But what if work dries up in a trade that is widely seen as dying? What will he do then? Mike does not seem the least bit worried. Asked if business is good enough for him to pay the bills and keep going, he will only say, “I make a living.”

But judging from the stream of customers I saw and a little research into the state of the cobbler business today, I would venture to say that Mike Vallee is in no danger of going out of business. His business is probably healthier today than it has been in recent years.

Jim McFarland, owner of a cobbler shop in Lakeland, Fla, and a spokesman for the Shoe Service Institure of America, says cobbler shops are seeing a surge in business. He is a third-generation cobbler. He says that since November, many shoe-repair shops have seen a 25% to 30% growth in business.

In a depression like this – excuse me, recession – it makes sense. Instead of buying new shoes, more people are getting their shoes repaired to save money. McFarland says that where the typical shoe-repair customer has been age 50 and up, recent new customers have been much younger.

“We're starting to see some younger people, 20 or 30-year-olds, coming into the stores,” McFarland said. “Before this recession started, we didn't see younger people.” Indeed, the little hall of his small shoe-repair shop is piled high with reheeled stilettos, resoled boots, and polished Oxfords.

While the shoe-repair business is up, the sales of new shoes are down 3.2% in the 12 months that ended in November, according to NPD Group, Inc., a market research firm. This does not mean that the shoe-repair has become a new growth industry. At one time there were 120,000 shoe-repair shops in the U.S. Today, there are about 7,000. As with Mike Vallee, the children of cobblers are little inclined to learn the trade from their fathers or to take it up themselves.

Another reason the ranks of cobblers have thinned is that this is not a trade that is learned overnight. It can take up to four years to learn the trade. Few young people are willing to put that much time into getting qualified. On top of that, is the need to invest in pricey equipment. A finishing machine with trimmers, sanding belts, and buffers can cost more than $20,000.

In the meantime, like everybody else who comes to Mike Vallee's cobbler shop, I arrive with a shoe problem. “Mike, as a friend of a friend,” I said to him, “could you fix these loafers? They're Eccos, the best shoes I ever had in my whole life. I paid over a hundred bucks for them at a Bostonian store six years ago and look at them. The braid is pulling apart. Something is going on with the sole. They're all scuffed up. My wife thinks I need new shoes.”

He asked me to take off my shoes. I did so. Placing them on the counter, I said, “Now I suppose you are going to look at my shoes and be able to tell my whole life history.”

He took one of the shoes and studied it. “Not quite,” he said. “But I can tell that you are a man who likes his comfort and these shoes are dry. They have never met polish.”

“That's it?,” I said, relieved.

“Well, let me ask the shoe.” He put one shoe to his ear and, periodically nodding, made out like he was getting an earful.

“I don't think everybody needs to hear what a bad person I have been. Can you help me?,” I asked.

“I can't do much with the hole in the sole because it is rubber. But let me see what I can do.”

Then, while chatting up old-friend customers sitting in the shop and coming and going through the door, he restitched my shoes right on the counter. The photo shows him doing the restitching by hand. Then he applied leather treatment and polish. He put my shoes to a buffing machine. It took him about 15 minutes.

He handed the shoes to me. “I gave the sole a quick fix, a patch job,” he said. “Can't really do anything more with rubber soles.”

“They look like new,” I said. The new stitches blended in perfectly. Gone was the dried-up, tired, scuffed-up look. It was replaced by a soft leathery sheen that made my old shoes seem reborn. “How did you do that?”

He smiled.

I put my 6-year-old shoes on. They felt heavenly. “How much do I owe you?”

“On the house.”

I walked out of Mike Vallee's cobbler shop happy. My “new” shoes made me feel like a new man. Now I know what Mike Vallee's regulars know. There's nothing like having a personal shoe makeover by a guy who knows exactly what it takes to make your shoes –- and you -- happy.

Here is one happy customer, me, showing off his "new" shoes with Mike Vallee, cobbler artiste. Mike: I thank you. My shoes thank you.
So long and keep moving

Nantucket Snapshot: An Innocent Off-Islander Snoops Around a Storied Island.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:03:00 +0000

The message to me was unmistakeable: disappear.

It came from my wife Barbara and her sister Janet who was visiting for several days. They wanted to do what two women want to do. A guy – in this case, me -- is simply in the way.

So I disappeared – to Nantucket. Here I'm on the boat approaching Nantucket. Between you and me, I went willingly. I'm not wild about being redundant. And it was okay with me if I missed out on such things as shopping and four-hour conversations.

On the storied island, I filled gaps: about Nantucket; about a longtime friend, Bill Murray, who lives on the island year-round and with whom I hung out; and, a little surprising, about myself. Bill is also known as Surfer Bill, a story in itself, and henceforth referred to as such for reasons that will become clear.

I had been to Nantucket several times before, but this time was different. Now I didn't troop mindlessly around gawking and snapping the usual pictures. I wanted to understand better what makes modern Nantucket, located 30 miles off Cape Cod, so one-of-a-kind.

The island is shown here in a NASA satellite image. Nantucket means “faraway island” in the language of early Indian residents. It is surely that, at least in my infantile measurement of distance. But what else, exactly, is Nantucket?

It apparently is John Luttman, shown here. Surfer Bill and I met him one morning in the Bean, a downtown expresso coffee shop and hangout. He was sitting there in a corner playing a word game and we struck up a conversation.

“I never saw a guy with two ponytails, one in front and one in back,” I said.

He stroked his front ponytail. “It works. Did you hear the one about ....?” And he proceeded to tell a joke too bad to repeat, one of several he reeled off. After chatting a while, we left. I came back about about 3:30 and found him still there in the same spot, this time playing his word game with a young man.

“Shouldn't you be working?” I asked.

John had told us earlier that he was a handyman who did “everything.” Surfer Bill said that he sees him all the time around the island painting houses.

“Who says I have to work?” he said, without looking up from the game board. “Hey, I have a joke for you, but I have to tell you outside. It's too dirty for in here.”

I begged off.

Outside, I asked Surfer Bill if it was okay with the owners for somebody to sit there all day playing games. “I guess so. I see him in here all the time and nobody ever bothers him.” Pretty easygoing owners, I would say. But then again, John Luttman certainly adds color to the place.

Now my friend Surfer Bill. He's 63 and started coming to Nantucket summers as a teen with his Connecticut parents, who rented a place. He embraced the Nantucket summer lifestyle, especially the surfing. At 17, he tooled around the island in a extended 1950 Cadillac ambulance. And when he was sure there were no police around, he used the ambulance siren to clear the road. Outta the way for Surfer Bill!

Today Surfer Bill is a year-round resident and homeowner on Nantucket. He lives with his wife Tracy and two young-adult children, Margaret and Tyler. He's a maker of fine furniture and an all-around skilled craftsman. He did much of the extensive renovation on his home.

I've known Surfer Bill for well over 20 years, ever since his wife Tracy, with whom I worked at a publishing company in Middletown, CT, introduced us. “You know,” she said to me one day, “I think you and my husband would hit it off. You have a similar sense of humor.” By that she meant, I'm sure, humor that is offbeat and not always appreciated in genteel company.

Anyway, Tracy deftly palmed me off on her poor husband. For many years now, Surfer Bill and I have been co-conspiritors in staving off full adulthood. He is a closet beach bum. I am ... well, this is not about me. He was and is a dedicated surfer. He recently returned from a Panama surfing vacation with Margaret.

What I did not know was that he was famous for his surfing – well known enough around the island to earn the nickname Surfer Bill. This was news to me. He has always been just plain Bill to me. I found out the truth purely by accident.

We were at the Whaling Museum when he ran into an admirer from 1963. “Surfer Bill,” the man exclaimed excitedly. While the two talked old times, I took in some of Nantucket's whaling past.

Afterwards, I said, “I didn't know they called you Surfer Bill.” I implied that he has not been fully honest with me about his past. So to remind him of the cover-up, I now call him “Surfer Bill.”

At the Whaling Museum, we got a great look at Nantucket's glorious past as the world's whaling titan of the seas in the 1840's. In the main hall is the skeleton of a 46-foot sperm whale along with a whaling boat with harpoons and gear used in hunting down these giants of the sea.

Nantucket had some 80 rigs sailing the far seas, sometimes for years at a time, hunting sperm whales for their oil and spermacetti (head matter used in the making of candles). The whalers brought back oil enough to jumpstart Nantucket from an isolated sheep-farming nowhere into a dazzingly prosperous island with worldwide economic power.

As Herman Melville wrote in Moby Dick:

“And thus have these naked Nantucketers, issuing from their antihill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders.” Melville wrote that Nantucketers ruled “two-thirds of this terraqueous globe,” and that “the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.”

At the Whaling Museum, which was originally a candle factory, Surfer Bill and I heard a narrator tell the bleak story of the Essex. It was a Nantucket whaling ship that was repeatedly rammmed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale that the whalers had harpooned. After 94 days drifting in three small boats, after unspeakable suffering and horrors – including cannibalism -- there were only a few survivors. One of them told the Essex's story to Herman Melville and it became the inspiration for his classic novel, Moby Dick.

The storyteller told us afterwards that he has lived on Nantucket for 27 years, but was not a native. “I'm a wash-ashore,” he said. In the Nantucket heritage hierarchy, native-borns are the highest. Next highest are year-round wash-ashores. Then come summer resident wash-ashores. At the bottom are off-islanders like me. I remind Surfer Bill that, though a member of the permanent residentiariat, he is still “only” a wash-ashore.

At the height of Nantucket's whaling supremacy, the island boomed. The torrents of money that flowed into Nantucket, mostly from England, spawned island merchants. Soon the island had five wharves, dozens of candle factories, bustling shipyards, and shops catering to the lastest decorating and fashion whims of prominent island ladies.

Fortunes were made. Grand homes rose along the the cobbled streets of Nantucket town. Many of these stately homes still stand and number about 800, according to the Nantucket Historical Association. A walk around Nantucket town is to stroll through history, with home after home displaying names and stories of original owners.

But Nantucket's whole economy was built on one thing: whaling. With the invention of kerosene and the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, demand for whale oil and candle power dried up almost overnight. On top of that, came the Great fire of 1846, which destroyed a third of the town. Then the California Gold rush siphoned off hordes of young men, as did the Civil War.

By 1870, Nantucket barely cast a shadow of its former self. As people fled the island, the population plunged to a third of what it was. There were lots of widows and fatherless children. Grand homes sunk into disrepair and sank in value. With income cut to near nothing, no taxes could be collected. Nantucket sank into debt. The decline was swift and thorough. This photo from 1870 captured a Nantucket street scene when the island was at a low point.

It was not until the 1880's that a replacement for the whaling industry began to emerge: tourism. Tourism is to Nantucket today what whaling was in its heyday. The population of Nantucket is about 10,000, or about that of a small town. But during the summer tourist season, the population swells to up to 50,000.

The fine shops are back, but this time instead of catering to the ladies of whaling fortunes, they cater to the new elite: free-spending women tourists. The photo shows the wares offered at a typical Centre Street shop, not exactly appealing to the male of the species.

I said to Surfer Bill, “You know, walking down Centre Street, I see nothing but shop after shop catering to women. As a man, I definitely feel underappreciated. Is this my imagination?”

His reply was of classic simplicity: “They're the ones spending the money.”

I did a little research. I found out that Centre Street used to be called “Petticoat Row” because of the many women who owned and operated the shops that lined the street. In other words, today's Centre Street has simply reverted back to what it was in the old days: run by and for women.

Nantucket is a feminine paradise. A good case could be made that it is also a feminist one. According to the official 2009 Nantucket Official Guide, “women traditionally ran the town of Nantucket, as their husbands traveled the seas for years at a time.” It seem that they still do.

I went up to a women sweeping the sidewalk in one of the Centre Street Shops. “Hi. I'm writing about Nantucket. Is it my imagination or is my masculinity at risk on this street. Every shop is about women.”

She giggled. “Well, I can't speak for your masculinity, but I will tell you that these three shops are all owned by men.”

“Really?”

She paused. “And they're not gay. They're straight.”

In other words, according to her, it may look like women are in charge, but men call the shots behind the scenes.

You can spend a fortune eating in Nantucket and not get much for your money. But I ate well in Nantucket, really well, mostly at Surfer Bill's. One night he prepared out-of-this-world Nantucket cod. Yummy. Another night, Tracy, after working all day, came home and whipped up a delicious Mexican meal.

For lunch, we went to “the best place to eat in town,” according to Surfer Bill: The Centre Street Bistro. For breakfast, we went to the “best bakery in town” to read The New York Times and munch on fresh-baked scones: Daily Bread. Prices at both are very reasonable.

Nantucket's history and traditions are rigorously protected. The entire island has been declared a National Historic Landmark. Building and zoning restrictions are among the nation's strictest. Though he believes the restrictions are necessary, Surfer Bill rolls his eyes when he recounts all the time-consuming hurdles he had to jump in renovating his home.

There was a recent hue and cry about the bricks being placed in some downtown area. They weren't completely faithful to traditional Nantucket bricks. And construction on a downtown open public area has been halted because the Zoning Commission was not competely happy with some of the materials being used. Here the right kind of bricks are being laid.

Lately, with the recession and fewer tourists, Nantucket shops are feeling it. Mitchell's Book Corner which has been a Main Street fixture for decades would have closed except for a financial savior stepping up. It was Wendy Schmidt, wife of the co-founder of Google. The Schmidts have a home on Nantucket. Thanks to Google money, a refurbished Mitchell's Book Corner has recently reopened for business.(Mitchell's honors the memory of Maria Mitchell, a native of Nantucket and America's first female professional astronomer. She discovered a comet and was a professor of astronomy at Vassar.)

There are no fast-food joints, not a single one. The only brand-name chain is a Stop&Shop supermarket. I did notice, however, that the name “Murray” appeared several times around Nantucket town. There was a Murray's clothing store, a Murray's liquor store and a Murray's sign, shown here, that may be wine-related.

Pointing this out to Surfer Bill, I said, “What's this? First I find out that your real name is Surfer Bill. Now are you going to tell me that you are also a closet mogul?”

“The stores were named after me.”

When that instantly bombed, he said, “Actually, it's a Portuguese family that owns all those places. They changed their name to Murray.” They apparently thought Murray would have more appeal than a Portuguese name.

Nantucket has a dress code. Tourists are told in no uncertain terms that appropriate dress is required downtown. They are instructed to reserve swimwear and flip-flops to “the beach where they belong.”

If you live on Nantucket, you don't spend much time in a car. Distances are short. Bill gets to wherever he has to go within minutes. His wife Tracy often rides her bike to her job at the Whaling Museum. Except for during the tourist season, there is no sitting in traffic in your car. And you don't have to lock your car. No one's going to break into it or steal it. How do you get a stolen car off the island?

For a tiny island, 14 miles long and 3.5 miles wide, Nantucket has an awful lot of open space. People here do not live on top of each other and this is true not just with the estates but throughout the island. There are no high-risers, period.

Within minutes of leaving downtown Nantucket, you are in the country. Fully 45% of Nantucket is preserved in its natural state where indiginous plants and animals thrive. It has vast open spaces, hidden forests, 55 miles of beaches, miles of hiking and biking trails. This is truly a little island with a great outdoors.

We went out to Bartlett's Farm, Nantucket's oldest and largest family farm, pictured here.The Bartlett family has been farming the same land for nearly 200 years, from the early 1800's. All it's fruits and vegetables are home-grown. The farm is especially known for its corn and tomatoes. Eighty percent of the farm's energy needs come from wind power.
One evening just before dusk, Surfer Bill, Tracy, Tyler, and I went out to Steps Beach to see if we could see the famous Nantucket Green Flash. This is the instantaneous explosion of green created at the moment the setting sun meets the water.

We waited. We waited. The sun descended. It descended. It met the water. “I saw it,” Tracy said excitedly. “I saw it.”

“I didn't see anything,” Surfer Bill said.

"I didn't see anything,” Tyler said.

“I didn't see anything,” I said.

“I saw it,” Tracy repeated.

That's the thing about the Nantucket Green Flash. Some see it and some do not. This time, Tracy was the annointed one.

Finally, something else I found out about the slippery Surfer Bill. We decided that I would join him for his 6 a.m.swim at the Nantucket High School pool. I've always been a strong swimmer. I toyed with the idea of challenging him to a race. My thought was that he should experience getting beat by a septuagenarian. And of course, I would be gracious in victory.

At the last minute, being a good guy, I decided not to humiliate him. We would just have a casual, friendly swim at our own pace. But as soon as we dove in, it was clear that something was terribly wrong. He began churning through the water like a human speedboat.

Thump! Thump! Thump! His arms slammed into the water like propellers and, as I did a very respectable breast-stroke, he left me in his wake. In no time at all, he was at the other end and back and was passing me like I was treading water!

What the hell is this? I knew Surfer Bill was a swimmer. We used to swim together in his pond at his Killingworth, CT home, but we did so like a couple of normal human beings. But this .. this was extreme swimming.

He kept this furious pace up for fifty minutes. He did 80 laps without letting up. You read that right, 80 laps. I did 15 or 20 and, having had enough, I stopped after 25 minutes. I took this photo of Surfer Bill right after he finished his extreme swim.

Then we went to the best bakery in town, Daily Bread, and Surfer Bill proceeded to complete The New York Times puzzle. As he was doing it, he asked me questions and I didn't know a single answer. He finally did it entirely on his own.

First the physical(swimming);then the mental (NYT puzzle); and I come in a poor second in both. “I'm not taking this sitting down, Surfer Bill,” I told him.

So long and keep moving.

For more on everyday Nantucket life, check out Nantucket Washashore Journal. http://nantucketwashashorejournal.blogspot.com/

P.S. Surfer Bill: I must have made quite an impression in Nantucket. A boat has been named after me. Don't believe it? Have a look.

How long have you lived in Nantucket without having a boat named for you?

Remembering Body Donors and Families: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You in Poetry, Music, Food, Photos, and Song

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:13:00 +0000

It's hard to believe that medical students could find the time and energy – and would care enough – to do this: plan and carry out a first-class, emotionally powerful Memorial to body donors and their families.

But UMass Medical School students, class of 2012, did it. This was a Memorial that deserves the capital M. My wife Barbara and I attended the Memorial held at the UMMS Worcester Foundation Campus in Shrewsbury, MA.

It was Saturday, May 2, my 71st birthday. Since I am a future donor, we went to the Memorial more out of obligation than anything else. Knowing how busy medical students are, our expectations were, to say the least, modest. It was to be a drive-by nod on our way to celebrate my birthday with lunch and then on to a party at our daughter Misha's in Connecticut.

Well, the Memorial turned out to be the main event of my birthday (especially since two of our nine grandkids, Mia (7) and Max (2) were also celebrating birthdays, and completely upstaged me. Me! The patriarch! )

The large auditorium was filled to overflowing with the families of people who had donated their bodies. With every seat filled, people stood in back and along side walls. I thought: How can everybody in town know that this was the in place to be today except for me, the birthday boy!

The students demolished the first-year-medical-student stereotype of emotionless sleep-walkers exhausted from a year of “ingestion and expurgation” of medical facts. Their empathy for the donors whose bodies they had learned from was on full display in music, song, original poetry, and personal reflection.

The Memorial started with music, Sara Barmettler on the violin and Elizabeth Herrup on the cello, playing “Twelve Duets for Violin and Cello,” by Mozart. Next, Megan Furnari welcomed the packed auditorium, saying that we were there “celebrating the memories of people no longer with us.”

The Memorial was in two parts. In the first, medical students reflected on their experiences with the donors, what they learned from them, and how they thought it would help make them better doctors. In the second part, donor family members shared memories.

Megan Furnari told how the death of her brother allowed her to see grace and, after profound sadness, find peace. “Those no longer with you in body, leave us many gifts,” she said. In his poem, “Firefly,” Joel Bradley said that “we see it best with eyes closed.”

Joel Bradlee thanked UMass Medical School for encouraging medical students to “think about the lives of donors.” He said that “not all schools do.” He read his poem, “A Mistake,” speaking to a woman whose body he is about to dissect. He marvels at “what these hands have to teach me.” He sees her as so alive that he “cannot but wonder if there was a mistake and your eyes suddenly snap open.”

Kara Keating-Bench spoke of appreciating relationships and how the “white lady” she dissected reminded her of her grandmother. She said that in anatomy lab, shared memories of her grandmother became all mixed up with cranial nerves and her white lady. She could not separate the two.

Then the lights were dimmed for a candle-lighting ceremony. While Staci Edelstein read off the names of donors, 77 in all, a candle was lit for each while their likenesses appeared on the auditorium's giant screen. 28 medical students, each holding a lit candle formed a solemn procession as Karen Billmers performed her own composition, “Slow Air.”

Next came remembrances of donor family members. Elizabeth remembered her dad, Edward, saying that “he broke the mold for the things he said and did.” She read a poem she had written in honor of her father, “In Memory of Edward.”

Tina said, “My mother was a pisser,” using a colorful expression that brought Barbara's hand to her mouth in shock but which mostly brought understanding smiles. “She was 89 and still getting her nails done, lime-green,” Tina said. “I hope you had fun with the old bird with the lime-green fingernails.”

Dana spoke of her father, a family-practice physician who had donated his body. “He was an old-fashioned country doctor that everybody called 'Doc,'” she said. “He came to the office after hours. He made house calls at all hours of the night. He shared all the heartbreak and grief with patients.” 'Doc' was the author of “Where Does It Hurt? Life of a New England Country Doctor.” She said that of all that her dad achieved, “he was most proud of his final gift.”

The closing song was the sweet “Seasons of Love,” directed by Kristy Webster and sung by a chorus of 12 medical students and with Eben Lichtman on piano. Like everything that had come before, it was beautiful, heartfelt, and music befitting a moving Memorial with a capital M.

“That was just beautiful,” I said afterwards to Dianne Person, Director of the Anatomical Gift Program. “It was like watching a professional production. I can't believe you were able to pull this off.”

“The medical students did it all themselves,” she said, firmly declining to take any credit.

After the Memorial, we were all invited into an adjoining large reception hall for “refreshments.” I expected coffee and a few donuts and pastries that I would prefer to do without. Instead, I found a banquet fit for the Queen of England – and fitting tribute to the donors whose photos and bios were displayed along one whole wall.

The buffet took up another whole wall of the vast reception hall -- a long color-splashed display of salads, fruits, sandwiches, veggies, dips and baked goods. It was a work of culinary art. All of the food was donated by large and small businesses alike in the Shrewsbury and Worcester area.

Dianne Person and Mike Doyle, the manager of the anatomy lab, remembered that it was my birthday. They presented me with a nice UMass Medical School tee-shirt. Dianne
took this picture of Barbara and me showing off my gift. Thank you, Dianne and Mike!

The banquet was also a time for donor family members and medical students to mingle. However, this was no surfacy social. People eyed each other intently. They asked pointed questions. Everybody was on a free-for-all quest for answers to questions they could not, as human beings, help having.

Medical students looked for their donors among the photos and for their families in the reception hall. Donor families looked for the medical students. Donor families wanted to reach closure for loss and medical students wanted to satisfy stubborn curiosity about the donors as people.

“That's her,” a female medical student said excitedly, pointing to a donor photo. “That's her. I know it's her. I can tell by her hair.”

And she soon hooked up with her donor's family. This happened frequently as medical students and donor families met, shared lunch, and spoke of their dramatic common bond. There were many hugs and not a few tears. Other family members preferred to remain anonymous.

A gentleman at my table looked vaguely familiar. I kept looking at him but couldn't place him. When we both got up from the table, I went over to him and said, “Do we know each other?”

“George?”

“Skip, from the Worcester Tennis Club?”

“Yes.”

“I didn't recognize you with a suit on.”

“I didn't recognize you with a suit on.”

Either we(you too, Skip) are losing it or context is everything.

Anyway, it was Skip Hall whom I see regularly at the Worcester Tennis Club. Skip was at the Memorial in honor of his sister Evelyn who had donated her body to UMass Medical School. He led me over to her photo and bio where he is pictured in the photo here. We started talking about Evelyn, her life, and why she became a donor. I was surprised to learn that she had been a teacher in Kenya for four years, 1970-74. I was also a teacher in Kenya, (1963-65). I found this to be an almost eerie coincidence.

My curiosity about Evelyn was piqued and I pelted poor Skip with questions. After a while, he said, “Tell you what. Let me put you in touch with my niece Elizabeth. She knows more than I do. I'm sure she will answer your questions.”

He did and she did. It so happens that Elizabeth Pollak, the niece of Skip Hall and daughter of Evelyn Josephine Hall Russell is a physician and pathologist. Except for the similarity of her name to mine, Dr. Pollak would seem qualified to answer my questions about her mom.

Dr. Pollak, who prefers that I call her Betsy, first dissected a donated body as a medical student in 1972. As a pathologist, she has done many autopsies and supervised residents doing autopsies for many years. She said she was very disappointed that she was unable to attend the Memorial for her mother and other donors. “I would have loved to meet the medical students and give them an old-timer's perspective, and hear what it is like for them to encounter the stories about the people they dissected and their families.”

Evelyn Josephine Hall Russell was born in Philadelphia, PA, on December 21, 1917 and grew up in Worcester, MA. She graduated from Mt. Holyoke College in 1940 with a B.S.in Zoology. In 1941, she married Sargent Russell and they lived on farms producing all of their own meat, milk, poultry, and vegetables while raising seven children. In 1957, while pregnant with her seventh child, she received a Masters in Natural Sciences. The couple divorced in 1961.

Evelyn lived most of her adult life in Amherst, MA, where she worked as a research assistant at the Amherst College biology department for five years and as a foreign student advisor at the University of Massachusetts for six years. From there she went to Kenya, first under the auspices of the Bahai faith and then as a member of the U.S. Peace Corps. In her four years in Kenya, she was headmistress of a secondary school.

During the Vietnam War, which she vehemently opposed, she refused to pay taxes that would support the war. But when her tax protest got her in “serious trouble” with federal authorities, Dr. Pollak said, her mom went into “voluntary poverty.” She decided that she “just wouldn't earn enough money to pay taxes.”

Toward the end of her life, Evelyn lived in Orange and Greenfield, MA. She passed away of natural causes on February 8, 2008 at the age of 91. Since then, her body has been at the anatomy lab of the UMass Medical School.

An obituary, prepared by her children, summed up their mother this way:

“For her whole life, Evelyn loved all live creatures great and small. As a child she collected insects and butterflies, frogs and salamanders and hamsters and guinea pigs. She was an avid Girl Scout both as a member and later as counselor and leader. She enjoyed traveling anywhere, sitting by the ocean, fixing up used furniture salvaged from the dump, eating lobster, and visiting with her family both recent and remote. She was an avid genealogist and gathered reams of information about the family ancesters. Most of all, she loved music, and she continued to share her talents singing and playing her harmonica wherever she went.

“Evelyn lived by her adventure motto, accepting adversity with grace, energy, a chuckle and a song. She sacrificed physical comfort and material goods to be true to her goal to minimize her personal use of the earth's resources, and shared what little she had with those less fortunate than she with the rare generosity of one who gives until it hurts. There was integrity throughout her life of service to others, compassion for the underprivileged and a vigorous opposition to discrimination, hatred, and war. She always walked her talk, demonstrating for civil rights, going door-to-door fighting for housing rights, campaigning for peace candidates, and working with international peace efforts. She was a kind woman who had a goal, who lived for it and left the world a better place than she found it.”

Evelyn's adventure motto was: "An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” In keeping with her motto, she up and went to Kenya to teach and do good. In the photo, she is shown in Kenya with a friend. No doubt Africa was inconvenient. Yet an eye-opening experience of a lifetime would seem to make her going to Africa “rightly considered.” (I can vouch for that. For how Africa changed my thinking and my life, click here.)

Following are some of my questions and Dr. Pollak's answers:

What kind of person was your mother?

“Fiercely independent, to a fault actually but as with many faults and good qualities, they are merely the flip side of each other. She lived her life the way she wanted to, which could be challenging for her children, especially near the end when she resisted assistance until she had been rescued by the fire department three times and they refused to go out again.”

Why did she donate her body?

“Well, I think number one, she had a drive to be useful in life and wanted to extend that to her death. Number two, she didn't want to be a burden on any of her family and that was a way to take care of the funeral/burial expenses quite expeditiously. Number three, going along with her independence, it was a way of staying IN CONTROL. My mother was a bit of a control freak. This way, there would be no discussion about burial vs. cremation or where to spread the ashes or whatever. SHE DECIDED!! And we decided to honor her wishes down to the last piece of dust. We are looking forward to attending the memorial at the burial site in October.”

How did her family react to her decision to donate her body?

“She told us ahead of time by several years of her decision, and gave us a chance to react, but not really object. I think most of us were extremely proud of her decision, and yes grateful because it did make things simple for us. We think it is entirely in keeping with who she is, and the fact that her name will be on a granite slab as a donee for all eternity ... well, that's pretty cool.... As a physician myself, I was especially proud of her, grateful and actually exhilarated by the idea of the gift going full circle kind of thing. My mother taught me dissection before anyone else did; she gave me the gift of the love of biology, living creatures, what's inside. I could think of no more fitting end for my mother's remains, and if her soul was nearby during the process, she would have guided the fingers and scalpels of her dissectors, and whispered the answers in their ears during their practicum.”

Evelyn was very close to her grandmother, Mary Cora Davis Winship. So special was their relationship that she kept words written by her grandmother close to her heart all of her life. The words that were a lifelong inspiration and guiding light for Evelyn Josephine Hall Russell, are as follows:

We should all endeavor to live so that when dead there will be something left to tell that we lived. How much unhappiness and degradation arise from idleness and want of a fixed purpose, God only knows. Why do we not, arousing the power which is slumbering within, fix our minds upon some object, then work earnestly and cheerfully for it. We should not think lightly of small beginnings, for they often lead to great ends. Flake by flake, this vast continent was covered with a mantle of beautiful snow. With stone upon stone, the pyramids, those monuments of ancient art were built. Thousands of examples come to us through the long ages of the past, bidding us to live for something. How much there is for us to do. How immense our fields of action, as we cannot even live without influencing others. Let that influence be elevating and beneficial. Tiny acts of kindness, attention to the wants of others will bring their own reward.

Let us be up and doing.

With a heart for any fate.

Still achieving, still pursuing.

Learn to labor and to wait.

Shhh, do you hear something? I do.
I may be hearing things...
but that sure sounds like a harmonica to me. Evelyn?

The "Mayor" of Taunton, MA: With Newspapers Dying, How Can Tommy Clark of Park News Be All Smiles?

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Mon, 25 May 2009 03:48:00 +0000

On Broadway in the heart of downtown Taunton, MA, Tommy Clark, owner and operator of Park News,shown here with his wife Anna, hears of the latest price increase by The New York Times from an unlikely source: me, a walk-in stranger he has never laid eyes on – but whom he greets with a warm smile nonetheless.

"What do you think of the Sunday Times going to six bucks and the weekday paper going to two bucks?" I ask him on the first day of my week-long, grandchild-sitting visit to the Taunton area. I am at Park News to get my daily New York Times fix.

"Price increase? Another one?," Tommy says, obviously taken by surprise. "Six bucks for Sunday's? No, I haven't heard anything."

"Well, that's what I heard, " I said. I heard about the increase from the guy who puts the Sunday Times together at a White Hen convenience store in the Tatnuck section of Worcester. "I'm in a state of shock," I told Tommy Clark. "That's a fifty percent increase for the Sunday Times in less than two years and a hundred percent more for the weekday Times."

Seeing that he cannot easily escape, I continue my rant. "The Times is catching up with The Wall Street Journal, which has doubled since Rupert Murdock took it over a year ago." I'm angry at the Wall Street Journal, too, another habit of mine.

The name Rupert Murdock, the Australian Press magnate, does not ring a bell with Tommy. As I learn later, he does not read newspapers; he just sells them. He is 77. He has owned and operated Park News for 59 years, since he was 18.

18? "My dad helped me," Tommy said. "He knew everybody in town and everybody knew him. Plus I got a lot of support from the rest of the family. I have always done this and I never wanted to do anything else."

In the photo, he is shown at the nerve center of Park News with his wife of 51 years, Anna. The two have been selling newspapers together since they got married. "Actually, "Anna said. "I do the work and he talks to the customers, just like what he is doing now."

As she says this, she is waiting on a customer while Tommy combs his hair to get looking his best for the photograph. Previously, he had good-naturedly waved off my request to take a picture of him. This photo of the two of them came about only because Anna stepped in.

When I told her he wouldn't let me take a picture, she turned to him and said, "Why not? Let him take a picture of you for crying out loud. What do you care?" Tommy promptly did what he was told.

Tommy says that marrying Anna was "the best thing I ever did." He met her in Park News. "She went to high school down the street and would come into the store every day and buy some candy." Then he went away to the service for two years. When he came back, Anna came into the store and said, "You're not married?"

He said, "No."

"Six months later, we were married," Tommy said.

That was in 1948, before the advent of television, when newspapers were king. People came to Park News for news, to get the latest on what was happening. Since then, while raising five children and being blessed with eleven grandchildren, Tommy and Anna Clark have sold a lot of newspapers.

But, gradually as people got more news from TV and, more recently, as a full-blown Internet age has taken hold offering news 24/7 with a couple of mouse clicks – and much of it for free – Park News has been selling fewer and fewer newspapers.

Readers are turning instead to news "aggregators" like Google and Yahoo and to thousands of bloggers and webzines like Huffington News. The newspaper section at Park News has shrunk to a small section at the front of the store. Tommy gets only a few of copies of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which are bought by newspaper dead-enders like me.

"What I make from the newspapers, it's not worth turning the cash register on," Tommy said.

Park News' best-selling paper is the Boston Globe and the local newspaper, The Taunton Daily Gazette, but the sales of both are way down from earlier years. The New York Times owns the Globe but is itself fighting for financial survival. Faced with $1.1 billion in debt, the Times raised $225 million on a lend-lease of its building. It borrowed $250 million -- accepting stiff terms -- from one of the richest men in the world, Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico. Pushing the financial misery down the line, the New York Times has threatened to shut down the Boston Globe unless it comes up with $20 million in cost reductions.

Lois Souza, a waitress at Jimmy's restaurant a couple of doors away is a throwback newspaper junkie who reads three newspapers a day (Taunton Daily Gazette, Boston Globe, and the New York Post). She has a dim few of the future of the Taunton Daily Gazette."The only thing selling the Gazette are the obituaries," she said. But Tommy Clark says that he gets a much better cut from each copy of the Gazette sold than he does from either The New York times or the Wall Street Journal.

After three or four visits to Park News to pick up my New York Times and Wall Street Journal, Tommy begins treating me like one of his regulars. Taking advantage, I ask nosy questions such as: Exactly how much money do you make on newspapers? If it's as little as you say, how do you stay in business?

One day when I come in, Tommy decides to provide some answers. Picking up the phone, he said, "I'm going to find out about that price increase. I'm going to check on exactly what I'm going to make on The New York times and The Wall Street Journal." He gets the distributor on the phone and takes down notes as they talk.

Hanging up, he said, "Yes, you're right, prices for The New York Times are going up, effective June 1st. The Sunday Times is going to six bucks. It will cost me five fifty-three.

I'll make forty-seven cents. The weekday Times goes from a buck fifty to two bucks. I'll make thirteen cents. I make a dime on the Wall Street Journal."

He explains that in the old days, and for many years, he made a steady 20% on the Times and the Journal. "Not any more," he said. "What's my percentage now? Less than half that?"

For the Sunday New York Times, Tommy's forty-seven-cent cut comes to 7.9%. For the daily Times, his thirteen cents is 6.9% of the new $2.00 selling price or perhaps .65 for the three or four copies of the daily Times that he sells. He continues to get about 20% on sales of the Taunton Gazette.

For the six copies of the Times I bought from him during my week in Taunton, Tommy made a whopping .78. I would say that is cheap enough, considering that if deprived of my Times for a week, I would be dead.

Tommy Clark makes next to nothing selling The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He gets a much better cut from each copy of the Taunton Daily Gazette sold, but the local paper's sales continue to slide. So how does Tommy Clark stay in business?

"Cigars," he says. And sure enough, hanging out at Park News, I see a steady stream of customers, all men, buying cigars. But I must hasten to add that customers also buy a lot of cigarettes, lottery tickets, and magazines.

Customers are on a first-name and nick-name basis, so much so that I get little looks that say: Who the hell are you? Friendly joshing and wise-cracking is non-stop. Many customers have obviously grown up together and have been coming to Park News all their lives.

With Park News' name a mere leftover from a once great and dominating newspaper era, with its future now on a day-by-day basis -- the money coming in is enough to pay the bills, at least for now -- Tommy Clark's place remains stubbornly vibrant. It is a Taunton social center where people stop by for a cigar, to see old friends, to catch up on gossip, to skewer dumb politicians, and to flip a buck or two to the "mayor" of Taunton.

Presiding over it all, is the ever smiling and happy Tommy Clark. A typical longtime customer stands outside on Broadway watching Tommy schmoozing a bunch of customers. "Look at him," he said, " the mayor is working the crowd like a big-time politician. He knows everybody and everybody know him. He ought to run for mayor. He's a better politician than that guy across the street."

"Who is that?"

"Barney Frank. That's his office right over there," he said, pointing.

"Really?"

"Yeah, but he's never there. He spends all his time in Washington living the high life on our tax money. Tommy should run against him. He could get elected."

Tommy has two things about him that absolutely do not go together. The first is that ever-present smile. It was the first thing I noticed and it doesn't go away. The second is that he has multiple sclerosis, which is evident when he steps out from behind the counter.

In the characteristic MS way, his body is twisted and he drags a leg as he moves with difficulty around the store waiting on customers. Yet in the several times that I talked to Tommy Clark, he never once mentioned his MS and I saw no reason to ask him about it.

MS is not important enough for either one of us to mention, not even in passing. Though Tommy's MS is in plain sight for all to see and doesn't go away, it does diminish into nothingness before your eyes. Somehow, some way, Tommy Clark has managed to render MS irrelevant in his life.

I ask him if he has any plans to retire. "Retire," he replies. "Why would I retire? I love doing this. I've been on Broadway longer than Mickey Rooney. I want to die right here on the floor."

Note to medical researchers: find out how Tommy Clark does it – and bottle it.

So long and keep moving.

Postscript: This blog was supposed to be about how and why the newspaper that I know and love is dying a slow death – but Tommy Clark killed that idea just by being himself. Because of him, I didn't cite facts and figures, such as the number of journalism jobs that have disappeared last year; or describe iconic newspapers that have folded (such as the centenarian-plus Rocky Mountain News); or explain how Craigslist has eviscerated local newspapers by ripping away their advertising guts: the classifieds; or show how investigative journalism is slowly but surely becoming enfeebled; or document how news and journalism itself is now in a mad, headlong, desperate dash for the Internet, hoping to somehow survive in digital form.

Just as well, because, unless you live in an underground bunker, we all know all of this. However, for a good discussion of the financial issues facing the New York Times and the Boston Globe -- and, by extension, the Taunton Gazette and other newspapers, click here.

But there is one thing I must and will say. Newspapers like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal will not survive in paper form and both know it. Both are powerful national brands that have already established strong electronic editions, though the WSJ has been far more successful at monetization than has the NYT. I have already resigned myself to getting a notebook computer on which to read the NYT and the WSJ in the morning with my coffee. The notebook will be my new "blankee" – as my son Greg calls my New York Times that I carry with me at all times. On it I will be able to read at all times "all the news fit to digitize." If Tommy Clark can adapt, keep smiling, and be happy so can I, dammit!

A Pancake's Debut: A Mad Scientist's New Gluten-free Pancake is Put to a Taste Test.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:31:00 +0000

The big moment has come. After months of recipe experimentation, Ellen Allard, a self-described Mad Pancake Scientist, is ready to unveil her audaciously creative new gluten-free pancake -- with a no-holds-barred taste test. In this picture,Ellen is in the center, her husband Peter is on the right, and my wife Barbara is on the left.

The taste-testers are myself and Barbara. We don't eat pancakes. We don't really like pancakes. Ellen could not have chosen two more resistant creatures to test her pancakes on.

We associate pancakes with artery-clogging, belly fat, and premature death. We were looking forward to a breakfast visit with Ellen and her husband Peter in their Worcester, MA. home; we weren't exactly looking forward to the pancakes.

When Ellen invited us to do the taste test, I put a stern face in hers and said, "And afterwards when I tell you that the pancakes are awful, how are you going to feel"?

She forced a smile. "That's what I'm looking for," she said weakly, "feedback. We all need feedback."

"Well, you're going to get it," I said.

With known skeptics as taste-testers, Ellen understandably opts for full transparency. She knows that if we walk in the door and she serves us already prepared pancakes, and if they actually taste good, we'll wonder what's in them that we should know about.

So, while we chat, she starts from scratch. One by one, she shows and explains every ingredient, where it comes from, and why it is healthier than what we get from pancake mixes and in restaurants.

When she excitedly spoons silken tofu up and down for us to see, I cannot help but feel a little loss of appetite. Same with the soy yogurt, oganic rice milk, and flax seed. I wonder how I'm going to get through this. My tummy stirs. It wants no part of whatever is now in the air.

Meanwhile, this Mad Scientist of pancake land is scurrying around with a huge smile, measuring, whisking, blending, checking and rechecking the recipe that she has worked so hard perfecting. "I just love it," she says, oblivious to the mounting kitchen mess and the steep upill climb her pancakes face in this taste test.

Ellen's gluten-free life is out of necessity. About four years ago, she was diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine caused by reaction to the gluten protein found in wheat (and related species such as barley and rye.)

The only known cure for celiac disease is a gluten-free diet. But after seeing how the diet has markedly improved her energy levels and overall health, living gluten-free has become a passion for Ellen.

Peter also follows a gluten-free diet, though he does not have celiac disease or food allergies. "With the way I was eating," he said, "I used to have an upset stomach all the time. It was so bad that I carried Tums around with me."

Peter admits to having a sweet tooth that extends, God forbid, to a yearning for an occasional donut. "But since I have been living gluten-free," he said, " I haven't had any stomach problems at all. Physically, I feel great. It keeps the weight off, too."

Ellen holds up a big bottle of vodka. "I put the vanilla beans in this bottle and age them. That's how I make the vanilla extract."

"You make the vanilla abstract yourself?" I ask.

"Yes. All natural and pure." She offers me a sniff from a little bottle of her vanilla creation. "Here, take a smell."

I put my nose to it. Hmmmmm. Not bad. I feel an involuntary something in my belly, not unpleasant. I figure that, after I have viewed all those yucky, gooey ingredients, my stomach is finally settling down.

To make a point, Ellen holds up the vodka bottle beside the little bottle of her vanilla extract. If she were to buy the little bottle, she says it would cost four or five times the cost of the big vodka-
bottle-sized vanilla extract that she makes.

Now Ellen moves operations to the stove where she carefully drips batter onto the medium-heated cast-iron stovetop griddle. Soon she has a plated stack of fresh, hot pancakes that she places on the counter for us to admire. She adds powdered sugar. She tops it off with pure maple syrup.

Done. At the very least, it is a work of culinary art.

It is a beautiful, enticing sight, I must admit. Ellen takes out her camera and takes the picture, shown here. "I'm getting so I don't take pictures of people any more," she said. "I just want to take pictures of food."

So we have a stack of beautiful pancakes and a beautiful photograph of them. Now the question is: Given all those unappetizing-looking ingredients and all that recipe-juggling, are Ellen Allard's new pancakes edible?

Barbara ventures the first taste. She takes a forkful, puts it in her mouth, chews, and swallows. The three of us -- Ellen, Peter, and I – stare, looking for a sign. For the first time since we arrived, Ellen does not have a smile on her face. Peter fidgets.

"You know... you know..." Barbara says. We all lean foward. It is the moment of truth. Barbara breaks into a big smile. "You know," she says, her voice rising, "these are good. They are REALLY good!"

Ellen's smile returns, bigger than ever. Peter is calm again. It is my turn. I think: Ellen is looking for feedback and she should get it. How can her pancakes get to taste decently without constructive criticism? Aren't dissenting views healthy?

One bite is all it takes. The pancake is thin, light, airy, crispy at the edges, and sweet but not too sweet. It tastes even better than it looks, if that is possible. Quickly my stack of Ellen Allard's gluten-free pancakes vanish. I ask for seconds, which I also quickly devour.

I think about asking for thirds, but don't. I don't want to make a pig of myself.

Ellen, you aced the taste test. Congratulations.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. For Ellen's gluten-free pancake recipe and more information about what a gluten-free diet is all about, check Ellen's website, iamglutenfree.blogspot.com. Her website also has information about Wild Willys, a Worcester, MA. restaurant that has just introduced a gluten-free menu. Remarkably, Ellen and Peter also have a whole other life as professional musicians specializing in music for children. As entertainers, they are pros who perform throughout the country. It is how they make their living. Learn more at peterandellen.com.

P.P.S. Full disclosure: I put up all the money for the Mad Pancake Scientist's research and development and I expect to make a fortune on her gluten-free pancake.*

*NOT! Lest somebody, somewhere out there believes this. Nor were Barbara and I paid for taking part in the taste test. We're still not crazy about pancakes, except for one kind. What kind might that be? Give you one guess.

Body Donation: Pausing from Medical Studies and Patient Care to ... Reflect.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:29:00 +0000

It's unheard of.

Two second-year medical students, Kristin Burke(center) and Jeremy Robbins(right), and a first-year resident in family practice, Dr. Stephanie Carter(left), sit in the lobby at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, MA and, despite murderous schedules ... talk.

Kristin and Jeremy do not have their faces in thick medical tomes and voluminous lecture notes, even though big year-end exams are coming up fast. Dr. Carter is not making rounds and rushing around trying to do what cannot humanly be done. She did, however, rush in late reciting a list of all she had to do and offering apologies.

It is neigh impossible to yank three people like this off brutal, sleep-depriving, and anxiety-riven medical and study treadmills. Yet Dianne Person, Manager of the Anatomical Gift Program managed to do it – with a flurry of back-and-forth, never-say-die e-mails.

Why? So that these three can discuss their experiences and feelings about dissecting the human body and, as it turned out, much more. In the process, they also satisfy the idle curiosity of a cadaver-in-waiting, me, under the supervision of my wife, Barbara.

I am there as a donor to the Anatomical Gift Program. Donated bodies make it possible for medical students like Kristen and Jeremy to learn about the human body, inside and out, and to fulfill their dreams of becoming doctors. They make doctors like Dr. Carter better doctors.

Voluntary donation is a big improvement over the old days when medical schools and freelance anatomists often paid ruffians, so-called “resurrectionists,” to rob graves. My body, nearly 71 (more than a zombie, less than a fully functioning human), walked in on its own without too much decay and with no graveyard dirt or clinging crawlies.

Kristin, 24, appears first, right on time at the appointed hour of 6:30 on a Wednesday evening. Looking around, steps tentative, she seems a little lost in the huge lobby, as if just released into the outside world from some confined place. Typically, she is in class from 8 to 4 p.m., with a break for lunch. In the evening, she studies until midnight, taking time out for a quick run and dinner.

Extending a hand to Barbara and me, she greets us in a soft voice and with a shy smile. It's hard to believe that such young, girlish eyes have fixed on dead bodies for hours a day over months. Yet she has done so. So have Jeremy and Stephanie. And, at the end of their anatomy course, all have taken and passed mind-numbing written and practical tests. Both tests are often given on the same day.

Medical students learn some 10,000 new words in their first year alone and many thousands more in each of the next three years. Kristin arrives with a brain crammed with medical terms and anatomical facts and functions. She has had to learn terms like neural tube, paraxial mesoderm, notochord, endoderm, intermediate mesoderm, and the difference between somatic and automatic fibers.

Making small talk with her until the others arrive, I mention the PBS/Nova TV program, “Doctors' Diaries” that I had watched the night before. It has filmed interviews with seven Harvard Medical School students from their first year in 1988, through graduation, and follows up with them 20 years later in 2008.

“It's fascinating,” I said. “You should check it out.”

“Television, what's that?” she said.

“Of course, you don't have time for television.”

She shakes her head, but not regretfully. She does so in a way that says: TV is a distraction. What I am doing now, I must give my all to.

She is a medical student. By definition, she does not -- cannot -- lead a normal life. I don't mention “Doctors' Diaries” again.

Jeremy Robbins arrives. A fine young male specimen of 26, he greets Barbara and me with a smile that is real and believable. It's the kind that politicians try for, but rarely pull off. His eye contact locks on; it would make anybody feel special. He would be great in a TV reality series about medical interns. Oops. Strike that. As with Kristin, TV is out for Jeremy. He's a medical student.

His eyes are kind. Already, even before learning more about him, I begin to see him as a future compassionate doctor.

Dr. Stephanie Carter, already a doctor finishing up her first year of residency, has had her usual rough, time-crunched day. Though laying eyes on the four of us for the first time, and after quick introductions, she plops right down and animatedly joins the conversation.

To Kristin and Jeremy, she is what they are working toward. At the ripe old age of 28, Dr. Carter is an instant mentor and our two second-year medical students hang on her every word.

Stephanie (we quickly dispense with titles here) brims with dedication and resolve. “Don't tell me I can't do it,” she said.

When she first applied to UMass Medical School, she was turned down. She went out and got a master's degree in molecular biology and applied again. Asked by an admissions officer what she would do if she were turned down again, she replied, “I'll be back next year.”

She was accepted.

During her years as a medical student, Stephanie kept her rejection notice from UMass Medical and notices from other medical schools that she had failed to get into. After she received her medical degree from UMass last year, she delightfully threw the rejection notices in the rubbish where, in her unshaken opinion, they always belonged.

Even as a little girl in Providence, Rhode Island, Stephanie believed in herself and was curious about everything. She recalls that at the age of seven, she wondered what it would be like to walk on crutches. To find out, she took a couple of
tubes, put them under her arms, and started walking down stairs.

She fell, hitting her head hard on the concrete landing. She fractured her skull and broke her jaw. Her parents rushed her to the ER. When a pediatrician was alone with her, he told her that she was a bad, irresponsible girl who should know better than to do such a silly thing.

Right then and there at the age of seven, Stephanie recalled, “I decided that I could talk to kids better than this pediatrician.” She knew what “pediatrician” meant, too -- taking care of babies and little kids. She felt that this was something she would be good at.

In high school, Stephanie was a “candy-striper” at a local hospital, a volunteer who helped out as needed. The name came from the distinctive wide pink stripes on the slip-ons volunteers wore as they would they fetch magazines, deliver mail, and bring juice and water. It was as a candy-striper that Stephanie had the first inkling of her eventual calling.

However, Stephanie grew up wanting to be an archaeologist. At the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, she majored in science and minored in anthropology.. “Anthropology is all about discovery,” she said. In life and in medicine, Stephanie is primed to ask two things: Where do we come from? What came before?

In her third year at UMass Medical, Stephanie had a vocational epiphany. By that time, she thought she wanted to be a pediatrician. “But then I realized that I didn't want to deliver the baby and then hand the baby over to somebody else.” She wanted to be there for the baby as he or she grew up. She decided to specialize in family practice.

Kristin grew up in Mansfield, MA in an archtypal American family. Her Dad worked for Polaroid and her Mom was an interior decorator. Like Stephanie, she was a self-described “science geek.” Dreaming of some day becoming an astronaut, she studied biology at Wake Forest College in North Carolina.

While at Wake Forest, she volunteered at a hospice – and the experience changed her life. “I saw how much care these patients required and I said to myself, 'I can do that',” she said. That “can” soon turned to “want.”

Like Stephanie, Kristin was also a candy-striper. As with Stephanie, it was as a candy-striper that she first imagined herself as a doctor. What attracted her most was the interaction with people. Her desire to take care of patients was born and, since then, has only grown.

Kristin is far from one-dimensional, however. She has another great passion: music. At the age of four, she played the piano. At age eight, she took up the cello. By the time she was 16 and in high school she was teaching piano to 36 students aged 5 to 50.

“You got paid for it?” I asked.

“Yes, very well.”

“But now you don't have time to play the piano.”

“No.” She says she still has her old baby grand, but hardly ever sits down at it. “I played a little when my mother was visiting and she said my playing was not so good,” she said.

Clearly, both medicine and music are firmly in Kristin's future. She said, “I feel like the hard part of these pre-clinical years of medical school is that I always feel like there is more that I can be studying. ... I know that I will come back to piano some day, but now it is more important for me to gain a solid foundation in medicine.”

Jeremy grew up in the greater Boston area, in Swampscott and Jamaica Plain. His father was a social worker in private practice and his mother was a teacher. Although you would never guess it today, he was physically “reckless” when he was younger.

“Put it this way, “ he said. “The ER knew me.” But he survived to study science and physics at Colby College in Maine and to graduate from there.

What influenced him to become a doctor? Jeremy goes back to his days in the Swampscott public school system where his class was the first to have Down's Syndrome children mainstreamed. He took two of them, both boys, “under wing,”not to please anyone but because it was the “right thing to do.” He says they taught him the importance of “being kind, sensitive, and respectful.”

He credits a “loving, caring, supportive” family for giving him the values and opportunity for college that led him to medicine. He is “especially close” to his parents and “would not be anywhere without them.”

His grandfather was an important role model. “He was a truly great man,” Jeremy said. He was an orphan who was abandoned by his father after his mother died giving birth to him. Growing up during the Great Depression and without family, he “came from nowhere” and worked his way up to become a pathologist. Jeremy describes him as “humble, loving, compassionate,” and as a “father figure” in the lives of many, many people.

His grandfather's real claim to fame, Jeremy says, was as a “master” teacher at BU Medical School. He mentions something else in passing: “writing the big-deal book.”

Stephanie snapped to. “Robbins Pathology?” she asked excitedly.

“Yes,” Jeremy admitted somewhat reluctantly. “Pathological Basis of Disease.”

“By Stanley Robbins?” Stephanie asked, now on the edge of her seat.”

“Yes.”

“Pathological Basis of Disease” by Stanley Robbins, Jeremy's grandfather, is a well-known and widely used medical text. But Stephanie must pull this distinguished heritage out of Jeremy, who evidently has inherited his grandfather's humility.

Jeremy may not yet know his speciality, but he definitely knows the kind of doctor he wants to be. As Dr. Jeremy Robbins, he will earn the “intimate trust of the patient, doing whatever it takes to ensure the health and well-being of my patients, always doing the right thing.”

In addition to medicine and patient care, Jeremy has other loves: his parents who “have so much to do with who I am as a person and where I am today”; watching a Red Sox game with good friends or “going for a hike with my wonderful girlfriend, Aimee”; and “my Italian grandmother's meat sauce.”

There is a very special place in Jeremy's heart for the cadavers he and Kristin dissected in Anatomy Lab as first-year medical students. He and Kristin worked with the Director of the Anatomy Gift Program, Dianne Person, to coordinate the annual May memorial to donors and their families.

Now this future cadaver wants to know something. “The only thing that bothers me about being in the Anatomy Lab,” I said, “is losing my identity. I don't like being nameless when all my life I have been a person with a name, personality, and individuality. When I donate my body, why do I suddenly have to be a nobody?”

I explain that it is different in some other countries and cite Thailand as an example. “In Thailand, “ I said, “they honor the cadavers in the anatomy lab by displaying their photos with names, bios, and life achievements. They refer to the cadaver as 'my great teacher.' Why shouldn't it be the same way in this country?”

While not sure about going so far as the Thailand model, Kristin and Jeremy are both open to medical students knowing more about the cadaver/patients. However, many medical students, who work in groups, prefer not to know details of cadaver/patients' personal lives.

Jeremy recalls his experience in Anatomy Lab:

“The feeling of trepidation while making our first incision (our group of four all put one hand on the scalpel) is something I'll never forget. How much things changed when I peeled back the cloth covering our patient's face and finally had an identity to go with her body. I felt much more at peace (for lack of a better word) after seeing her face; it gave me a sense of wholeness that evaded me previously. I guess after spending days in the anatomy lab, I had begun to become a little detached from the patient, and seeing her face really reopened my eyes to seeing her as I would any other human being.”

Kristin remembers Anatomy Lab this way:

“At first, the task seemed emotionally draining. I had never spent time around a dead body before, and in the first few weeks of lab, I felt a reverence for my cadaver that was almost inhibitory to my learning. I was tentative in my dissections, taking note of every detail that I could appreciate in his body. Shortly thereafter,... I became more in touch with and more curious about what he was like in life. My lab partners and I gave him a name, Hank, so that we could feel more connected with him. We wanted to know about his hobbies, his family. How did he get the scar on his knee? Who held his strong hands? When lab was over at the end of the semester, I went to say goodbye to Hank, and felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. By donating his body, he offered me the most selfless gift that I had ever received. I learned through him, not only a lot about the human body, but about my own respect for the importance of the many facets of a person’s life. I hope to carry this knowledge and understanding with me in all of my future relationships as a physician.”

I push a self-serving agenda: “To be honest, what I would really like is for medical students to be required to see the video of my 70th birthday party before they dissect me. I want them to see me in on the deck of my home on a beautiful May day laughing and enjoying life with my wife Barbara, four grown children, nine grandchildren, and a pack of friends.”

“The video could be on a big screen taking up the whole wall,” Kristin said.

“You know, Kristin,” I said. “You are definitely getting with the program.”

I voice another concern: the virtual banning of humor in Anatomy Lab. “I just think that the atmosphere doesn't have to be so heavy,” I said, “and a little humor might be a good way to give medical students some relief from the emotional burden of dissection.”

“You could write a joke on your arm,” Jeremy said, smiling.

I give him a thumbs up. I do not say that I am thinking about what I might write on my arm to coax a smile from stressed-out medical students.

But now the mentor, Stephanie, weighs in. “The reality is that when Anatomy Lab begins, everybody there is a stranger. You don't joke around with people you don't know. So much humor depends on people knowing and feeling comfortable with each other. And now add cadavers and nobody wanting to disrespect them and you have another huge reason to keep things serious and professional.”

I instantly rethink humor in the Anatomy Lab.

Perhaps there could be some lightness toward the end of the Lab when students know each other better and the inevitable initial emotional turmoil has subsided somewhat. So, as a cadaver, I'm thinking I'll save any comedy routine for toward the end when students may appreciate it more.

Stephanie, Kristin, and Jeremy all strongly believe that there is no substitute for human dissection. For all of them, intimacy with the deceased human body is necessary to prepare doctors for intimacy with the bodies of living human beings. Human dissection, all three agree, is essential for future doctors.

Dr. Christine Montross, author of "Body of Work" and a resident in psychiatry at Brown University, describes the value of human dissection this way in a recent New York Times article:

“We learn to heal the living by first dismantling the dead. The dissection of cadavers also gives young doctors an appreciation for the wonders of the human body in a way that no virtual image can match. It is awe-inspiring to hold a human heart in one's hands, to appreciate its fragility, intricacy, and strength.”

In his study of medical students in anatomy class, sociologist Frederick Hafferty sees them divided into two basic groups. One group looks upon the cadavers as purely biological specimens, like cats, frogs, and earthworms dissected in other classes. The other group views the cadavers as formerly living human beings.

The two groups have very different mindsets. A student from the first group, quoted by Hafferty, said: “To me the cadaver is a complete nonperson. You really don't think of it as being your body or somebody else's. It's just like a rubber model. When somebody says that a cadaver died of something, it sounds pretty strange. You don't think of it that way. I think it's pretty stupid to be squeamish with cadavers.”

Now listen to a student from the second group, also quoted by Hafferty: “There are people working in lab with me who never express their emotions. If they don't have that emotional sensitivity now, they'll be doing the same thing later on. There are going to be a lot of patients you are going to have to care for that will be physically, or whatever, unable to react to you, just like a cadaver, and you've got to be able to make yourself aware of the patient's feelings, his pain or discomfort ... something you must have if you're going to be a good doctor.”

Hafferty would undoubtedly place Kristin and Jeremy in the second group, and so would I. With their great empathy and respect, they can hold my no-longer-beating heart in their hands any old time. They are everything that any cadaver candidate could hope for.

But what if my precious bod ends up with students from the other group, who see me as a big frog and treat me like one? No problem: feelings don't matter when you don't have any. They are still young people there to learn. And my body is there to be their great teacher.

Of course, there is a chance that some students in the “froggies”group will acquire a habit of depersonalization. Without realizing it, they can easily and seamlessly transfer this mindset to their treatment of live patients. It happens.

But let's not be too quick to damn the “froggies” and praise the “weepies.” Mindset as a medical student does not a doctor's destiny make. Some students in the weepies group may well get too emotionally involved to focus properly and get the job done. Not learning is just as bad as too much depersonalization, perhaps even worse.

As a cadaver, I will do my part to the best of my inability.

So long and keep moving.

Postscript: For historical perspective, see an excellent account in the journal Academic Medicine of how human dissection in medical education has evolved over 500 years. Published in 2000 by George S.M. Dyer and Mary E.L. Thorndike when they were third-year medical students at Harvard Medical School,the account remains valuable today. It credits the University of Massachusetts Medical School for being "in the vanguard for incorporating emotional lessons into its learning objectives for gross anatomy" and for asking medical students to "confront and develop their attitudes toward death and dying, and also to discuss them with their instructors."

A Final Gift: My Body For Medical Science -- and Humanity.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:08:00 +0000

When Dianne M. Person, Administrator of the Anatomical Gift Program at the UMass Medical School in Worcester, Mass., shown here, speaks of her donors and their families, sometimes her eyes moist up and her voice breaks.

Her donors are people who make a “final gift” ... donating their bodies after death to the UMass Medical School to help future doctors learn the human body close up. Ms. Person is nothing if not appreciative and protective of these donors. And that is fine with me, since I am one of them.

Way back in 2,000, when Ms.Person had been on the job for only five months, and after discussing it with my wife Barbara, I trooped down to the UMass Medical School and signed up to be a donor. I had Barbara's full support.

When I die, she will place a call to Dianne Person, who will set in motion and oversee the pickup of my body and tend to Barbara's emotions. She will walk hand in hand with her through the Anatomical Gift Program. And the body of the late George Francis Pollock III will become available for anatomical studies for from one to two years.

But that will be then. Now, still alive and kicking, I recently met with Ms. Person one morning at the Medical School to talk about the Anatomical Gift Program. I wanted more of an idea of what was ahead for my precious bod. Excuse me while I give it a little kiss on the shoulder.

Ms. Person greeted me with a warm smile at the ground-floor canteen of the UMass Medical School and immediately offered to buy me breakfast. I settled for black coffee and so did she. “Great,” she said, “we can sit right down with our coffee and talk.” An hour and a half later, our coffees were cold and largely untouched.

Almost the first thing she said was that I would not be able to go into the anatomy lab. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but there are donors there and we have to be respectful of them.”

“I understand completely,” I said.

The anatomy lab -- that is the mysterious place in the basement behind forbidding black doors with the sign saying “Absolutely No Admittance.” First-year medical students pass through these doors the first time scared and unsure of how they are going to feel dissecting a human body.

This is the realm of Dianne Person's partner of five years, Mike Doyle, shown here with Dianne. While she takes care of donors and their families, Mike is the manager of the anatomy lab and works with medical students, residents, and physicians. As partners, Dianne and Mike are a matched pair. They like and respect each other, as I saw firsthand.

I wasn't looking forward to meeting Mike. He's an embalmer, after all. He works with dead bodies. He spends most working hours in the dreaded, secretive, public-not-allowed chamber where medical students dissect human bodies. I expected him to be suspicious, slightly weird, maybe a little ghoulish, and certainly close-mouthed. And I thought: This guy is never going to allow me to take his picture.

Instead, what I find is a genuinely nice young guy, only 36, who is friendly, laughs at my jokes, and is easy to talk with. He is the proud father of three adorable little girls, the youngest of which is eight months old. He shows off photos of them. There is nothing weird about him.

As for my taking his picture, the photo of a smiling Mike speaks for itself. He seems to enjoy having his picture taken. Far from being close-mouthed, he is quite happy to talk about his work. What gives him the most satisfaction is helping people. Mike, I had you all wrong. I apologize to you and all embalmers.

Mike is just as passionate as Dianne -- we're now on a first-name basis -- about protecting the dignity and privacy of donors. Once donors arrive at his anatomy lab, they become “patients,” following the example of Dr. Sandy C. Marks, founder of the Anatomical Gift Program. For the first-year medical students introduced to a cadaver for the first time, it is their “first patient.”

Mike tells the future doctors that these patients deserve the best possible treatment. How they treat this first patient is a good predictor of how they will treat patients later when they are doctors, Mike says.

I never intended to ask to go into the anatomy lab. The truth is, I have no desire to do so. I don't think I belong in there, at least not yet. I think the patients there have a right to not be stared at by a stranger with a notebook and a camera slung over his shoulder.

As for taking a picture of them, not that Dianne or Mike would ever allow it, I could never do it. It feels so good knowing that when I am in the anatomy lab, my body won't be an object of curiosity for sightseers.

In describing myself here as a donor, however, I make a presumption I have no right to make. I have no assurance that I will be accepted as a donor. Dianne offhandedly refers to me as a “potential donor.” What she is saying is that I may be accepted as a donor if my body is found to be suitable.

It could be disqualified by infectious disease, such as AIDS, TB, MRSA, and Hepatitis which would put medical students at risk. A morbidly obese body may be declined as too difficult for medical students to work with. Extensive trauma at the time of death and advanced decomposition may also render a body unsuitable.

One of Dianne's most painful duties is telling a family that its deceased loved one cannot be accepted as a donor. She is acutely sensitive to the fact that she must deliver this news to people already devastated by losing a family member.

As she says this, her voice falters and her eyes well up. She pauses to regain her composure. Dabbing her eyes, she said, “Sorry, you see that I get emotional about this.”

“Yes, I see.”

Her emotional reaction to donors and their families, though complex, arises from a simple truth. She gets to know them. And, over the years, she has gotten to know many of them. She has shared their losses, fears, hopes and intimate family lore. With Dianne, these powerful memories, and the emotions they recall, are never far from the surface.

I ask her how she ever ended up in such a job. “Well, I didn't plan it, that's for sure,” she said. In college, she studied art and business administration. “Actually, it's an interesting story. I was working in Worcester as an account rep for a company providing employees' assistance programs for other companies. If an employee had a behavioral problem such as drinking or drugs, we would step in and help. Well, our company got bought out by a conglomerate and one day they got 17 of us in a conference room and told us we were laid off. I remember saying to myself, 'Wow, I need a job.'”

Shortly after, Dianne saw an ad in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette for an administrative position in the Cell Biology Department of the UMass Medical School. She applied and went for an interview. She thought the interview went well, but three weeks passed and she didn't hear back. She later learned that the executive who had to decide about her was out sick, with pneumonia.

Feeling she had to keep looking, she saw an ad by a temp agency for another UMass opening. She interviewed for it with the temp agency. Then, through a stroke of good luck, the temp agency sent her to the first job she had interviewed for. She immediately hit it off with her new colleagues in the Cell Biology Department-- and was hired.

Dr. Sandra Bertman, a medical humanities professor in the department, told Dianne that it was “meant to be.” That was nine years ago this January. To get up to speed fast, Dianne took a graduate course on death and dying taught by Dr. Bertman. “May I humbly say that I aced it,” Ms. Person said.

Unlike Dianne, Mike always knew what he wanted to do. At 19 he went to work at a family-owned funeral home in the Boston area where he became a fully qualified embalmer. He found the work satisfying, he says, because he regularly got to see how it made families feel so much better.

Mike was really worried about leaving to come to UMass Medical. He was afraid he would not find the same sense of satisfaction. He has and then some. “Here I work with the medical students and residents as a team for common goals,” he said. “We all bond with each other and with the patients.”

He says it's like family, with everybody working together, being close, and caring about each other. “I tell the students that they are going to miss me,” Mike said. After a few months back peering into a microscope and learning mostly alone, he says the students come back and say, “You were right. We miss you.”

Dianne and Mike continue the tradition of a legendary figure, Dr.Sandy C. Marks, Jr., who joined UMass Medical School at its inception in 1970. A professor of cell biology, radiology, and surgery, Dr. Marks was the first faculty member of the anatomy department and founded the Anatomical Gifts Program. He also established the annual spring memorial service at which medical students honor donors and their families.

Dianne speaks of him with awe. In addition to everything else, she said, he had a periodontal practice two days a week, was a radiologist, and did research in bone disorders. We called him the “osteoclast expert,” she said, “a name given to him by his lab manager and dear friend, Carole.”

He donated his services to a free dental clinic in Worcester. He published hundreds of research papers and articles in medical journals on such subjects as bone cell biology, anatomy, biochemistry, radiology, and death and dying with dignity.

The son of Presbyterian missionaries to Africa, Dr. Marks graduated from high school in the former Belgian Congo and eventually received a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dianne says he was an amazing, caring person and she feels privileged to have worked with him. Dr. Marks died suddenly of a heart attack in November of 2002 at age 65.

“The call came from our mutual friend, Carole,” Dianne said. “All I could say was 'Oh no'. I just stood there holding the phone in disbelief.” Dr. Marks was registered as a donor at an unnamed medical school. “He was thinking of us,” she said. “He did not want to put us through the stress of having him as a donor.”

For Dianne, intense emotional stress goes with the job. It is never routine and always just a phone call away. She is on call 24/7. She can get a call any time day or night to hear that a human being has died. And a family member on the other end of the line may be sobbing or even hysterical and desperately needing solace.

“How do you do it?”

Dianne lowers her eyes and reflects. Seconds pass. Then she looks up and says, almost in a whisper, “I do ... I do what has to be done.”

She is warm, open, unpretentious, and an active listener. So we get to chatting. We talk about family. She tells me how proud she is of her daughter, Jessica Ann, 29, who as we talk is in Beijing, China. Her first venture abroad, she is in China on a cultural exchange explaining young American women to young Chinese women.

Jessica Ann, single and an aspiring actress, will be back home in Los Angeles in a few days and Dianne is looking forward to going out there to spend some time with her. “We are so close,” she said. “Nothing could come between us.”

I tell her that my wife Barbara and I have taken our second marriages and built a truly blended family of four adult children – two each – and nine grandchildren. “We love them all,” I said. I tell her how I teach the grandchildren how to ice skate and how I play monster with them. I describe how the other day our 2-year-old granddaughter, Riley, was chasing me around the house poking a toy dinosaur at me and growling.

“All those grandchildren,” Dianne said, sighing. “You're so lucky.”

We are both thinking the same thing. “Of course, I want grandchildren,”she said, "but they can't come according to Mom's schedule.”

Dianne walks me out, showing me a shortcut that she uses when she goes to visit her mother at the adjacent Beaumont Rehabilitation Center. She says her Mom, who has breast cancer and is not able to leave the Center on her own, is “happy and having a ball. The people there are wonderful and caring.”

She points out the granite memorial put up by the UMass Medical School in honor of Dr. Marks, Clare Small, and “those who donated their bodies to our learning.” Clare Small was one of the earliest donors. Students of the UMass Medical School class of 2008 were so impressed with her poetry that they wanted her name on the memorial along with that of Dr. Marks.

The memorial has the following words from Clare Small:
“...May that life force that ran in me shine forth once more and pass to you the knowledge and power that help sustain the miracle of life.”

Trees lining the road from the memorial have all been planted by successive classes of medical students in honor of the donors. I never would have guessed. Now when I pass them, I look at them differently. Now they mean something important to me.

I said to Dianne: “From now on, I'll be thinking of you taking this walk, across the street and up the path alongside the brook, to visit your Mom.” And on every visit to her Mom, Dianne walks by the monument and the trees planted by medical students.

Now to the heart of the Anatomical Gift Program: the human body. The Umass Medical School needs bodies for medical students to learn from. In the training of future doctors, there is no substitution for human cadavers. Dissection is required to become a doctor.

For donors, the issue is deeply personal. The first step is memento mori, or contemplation of one's death. Most of us would much prefer to put it out of our minds altogether, or even pretend that it does not exist.

Even as a potential donor -- and I do hope my body makes the grade -- I do not dream about a selfless post-life career as a cadaver. I do not like thinking about giving up the body that I've lived with for so long, which I know from head to toe, and which, to be honest, I love.

That precious bod. How we pamper it, adorn it, diet it, exercise it, medicate it, and adore it. It is an object of true love. Excuse me while I give my shoulder another little kiss. It gets our rapt attention in the mirror. Out in the street, we catch fleeting glimpses of it in store windows, and it's like suddenly meeting up with our oldest and best friend.

The body may not be perfect. It may, in fact, seriously fall short of anybody's idea of physical perfection. Yet, yet ... c'est moi. It is me! No two human beings are exactly alike. One of a kind of anything is cause for wonder.

Dr. Marks once told the Boston Globe that there are “incredible variations in the way we are put together and that each of our bodies has something special to teach.” He said that none of us looks exactly like Grant's Atlas of Anatomy.

You may well have your mother's nose or your father's ears or have a passing resemblance to others; but no one in the world puts a nose, ears, eyes, mouth, shape of head, hair, limbs, hands, and all the other many human parts together in quite the way that you do. Or I do.

So this body of ours, this one-of-a-kind biochemical masterpiece, our home for our entire lives, is something rightfully precious to us. We should not lightly hand over this most prized possession to a medical school as a teaching aid. It is worth thinking long and hard about. I've done that. After this good life comes to an end, I will be a donor -- if my body meets requirements, that is.

I don't plan on dying soon, but then few of us do. John Lennon said that life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. He was making other plans when he was shot him to death outside his New York City apartment.

He loved living in the city, even though he knew there were dangers, especially so for a celebrity. Relishing the freedom to come and go, he ignored security. On the day he died, on December 8, 1980, he had just returned to his Dakota apartment building with his wife Yoko Ono from a recording session.

He could have been driven safely down the driveway. Instead, he had his car stopped so he could get out and greet fans on the sidewalk waiting for him. There an assassin ended his life. He was 40.

Death comes on its own timetable, not ours.

I'll soon be 71. Many of the departed in the daily obits are younger. This machine of mine, and it IS a machine, may already have more miles on it than it was built for. Machines break down. My personal machine is going strong – singles tennis, ice-skating, swimming, extreme wall-building – but sooner or later its wheels are going to fall off.

And when that happens, my wife Barbara will give Dianne Person a call.

Looking back, this call to Dianne started with what I do not want after my death:

I do not want a traditional funeral mass. Spirituality is only one part of who I am. I don't want standard words spoken over a casket with me in it. A casket gives me the creeps. I'm a touch claustrophobic.

I do not want a wake where I am dressed in my Sunday best and looking pink-cheeked and peacefully sleeping. I'd rather that my family and friends remember me alive and enjoying life.

I do not want a ride in a long black hearse at the head of a solemn procession. I seem to run into long, slow-moving funeral processions when I'm in a big hurry. When I'm dead, I don't want to tie up traffic for busy people needing to get places.

I do not want to be in a casket lowered into the ground, there to slowly revert to dust and with a granite gravestone marking the spot. To me, this is taking up valuable ground and is unnecessary waste. The gravesite and stone also makes family feel guilty if they don't visit. I say: hold the guilt.

Now I have the deepest respect for these traditional practices. Barbara and I recently lost a dear friend who chose all these options, and we were respectfully there for all of them. But we watched her grief-stricken partner, Larry Behr, 84, suffer through the wake and funeral and at graveside.

I don't want to put Barbara and my family through all that stress. If my body can help medical students learn, why not? It is only going to be cremated anyway. And the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of making a contribution -- and a valuable one -- to medical science and humanity.

So, after my demise, there won't be ceremonies with a deathly pall and downcast faces. What there will be is a big party at our home. There will be lots of good food, stories, and looking through photos and memorablilia. I want everybody to have a great time. Dianne and Mike, you're both certainly invited. And bring along a few first-year medical students. Everybody will feel better, I promise.

When I told Larry Behr about my party, he loved the idea. He said he was going to call his lawyer and change his will to provide for a party. He later did so. “It will be great,” I said. “The only downer will be me telling people how you really were.” He laughed.

I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “Now, Larry, don't misunderstand me, but I'm really looking forward to your party.” He laughed, louder.

I sincerely regret that I will not be able to be at my party. I will miss seeing everybody. Barbara will offer my regrets and explain that something suddenly came up that made it impossible for me to attend. In other words, life happened while I was busy making other plans and my body must be at UMass Medical within 24 hours. But I will certainly be there in spirit. To the partygoers, I say this: eat up and enjoy!

While the party goes on, Dianne Person and Mike Doyle will be overseeing preparations for my body's post-life service. Now I'll be mostly in Mike's hands. Having talked with Mike, and laughed with him, and seen how proud he is of his three beautiful young daughters, and how deeply he cares about treating his patients in the anatomy lab with respect at all times, I know I will be in good hands. I trust him completely.

But there is one thing I won't have in the anatomy lab that I already miss in advance. And that's my identity. Mike may know my name-- George Francis Pollock III -- and who I am, but to protect the privacy of donors, my body will be nameless to the medical students. But medical students pick names for their patients anyway. They say this one looks like a Bill or a Shirley or a Peter and give them that name.

One woman patient who still had her nail polish on was thought to look like a Dolly and so that was the name given to her. “I could have taken the nail polish off,” Mike said, “but I didn't. I wanted to keep that personal connection.”

So, Mike, in other words this nameless thing might be negotiable. Maybe you could help me out here. You could point to me and say, “You know, he looks like a George Francis Pollock III.” Just kidding. But why couldn't you say, Hey, he looks like a George? Or, better yet, Georgie, the name I had in high school.

I wonder if the students will be spooked when they see my face. Mike said not as much as my hands. The hands have held loved ones, done work, and express personality more so than the face, Mike said. “The way it works is the body is always covered,” he said, “except for the part that is being worked on.” Hands get worked on sooner than the head, which is dissected toward the end of the anatomy course.

Sixty percent of the first-year medical students are female. I'd like my hands not to frighten these young women or, for that matter, the young men. Let me now talk directly to the medical students and see if I can make them feel better about what they are about to do with Georgie:

Hi. Listen, I know you're scared and nervous. You've probably never been up this close to a dead body. But maybe I can help you relax and feel better about what you are about to do.

First, don't feel bad for me. I have had a great long life. You know how old I am and may you live as long. My body is here in the anatomy lab because I want it to be here. It is my free gift to you.

Please, be my guest and learn. This is a learning opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to get up close and hands on with the marvelous complexity of the human body. Make the most of it. It will make you a more skilled and caring doctor.

Now, sneak a hold of my hand. It is nothing to be afraid of. It is just a harmless appendage with bony fingers, palm, and thumb. It's not me. I'm out of here. But this hand is a brilliantly constructed, nimble, and efficient tool.

A human hand can make a fist and pound a table or somebody's face; it can be a tweezer, deftly plucking a single hair off your coat; and its tender, loving touch can express the deepest of human emotions. How? Why?

Check out my two artificial knees. One was implanted in 2002 and the other five months later in 2003. I played singles tennis on them for years, running around the court like a crazy man. The knees never let me down. Study the tissue around them. How does it differ from tissue around natural knees?

Note the spine. There's spinal stenosis, a narrowing that can cause older folk to walk bent over. But the condition never seriously bothered me or affected my quality of life. Why? I fought it. I made a point of walking chin up, shoulders back, abs tightened. I sat up straight, always. Although the stenosis and gravity worked hard against me, they lost. I never walked stooped over.

Observe the pelvis and how it is aligned with the body's frame. In August of 2005, I was wracked with so much back pain that I had to be hospitalized. For a whole week, doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me. They suspected cancer. They ran all kinds of tests, but remained stumped.

Finally a young physical therapist solved the mystery. She did so by getting up on my hospital bed , sitting on me, grabbing my pelvis with both hands, and moving it here and there. Her diagnosis: misaligned pelvis. Maybe someday you'll make such a diagnosis – without a physical therapist having to bail you out.

Now, take that scalpel and go to it. I'm with you all the way!

I'm back alive. On May 2, medical students will hold their annual memorial honoring donors and Dianne Person has graciously invited me to attend. I will be there. By very weird coincidence, May 2 is also my birthday. At the memorial, I'll be in the interesting position of celebrating my 71st birthday and my death at the same time.

Dianne Person, Mike Doyle, and I will no longer be strangers. They have met my wife Barbara. We have talked about our families and shown photos of loved ones. They now know me as a person.

I asked Dianne how she would feel if I suddenly passed away and she received a call from Barbara. Those warm, expressive eyes looked into mine. Ever so softly, she said, “I ... I would be honored.”

I asked Mike how he would feel about hearing from Dianne that I had died and that he would soon be receiving my body. Sitting on a file cabinet top in Dianne's office, the young embalmer, in a surprisingly humble voice, said, “I would feel blessed to have met and talked to you.”

For a dead guy, it doesn't get any better.

P.S. Dianne and Mike. While I trust you both completely, you should not trust me. Be wary of what I may write on my arm. Do not put it past me to find some way to smuggle this story, or even my novel, into the anatomy lab. It's this loss of identity that I find the hardest. Georgie would help. But, as my grown children will tell you, that probably would not be enough for me. I need to be watched – as I'm sure the two of you quickly figured out.

So long and keep moving.

Starting Over at 84: Beloved Elaine Gone, Alone in a House of Memories, What's Next for Larry Behr?

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:37:00 +0000

“I've been down the last few days,” Larry Behr said at his home in Bristol, Connecticut. “I feel like I'm declining.”

But, as we shall see, this 84-year-old's idea of decline would be more of a summit for the rest of us mortal souls.

It has been nearly three months since Larry lost Elaine at 72, his soul-mate of 18 years, to breast cancer that spread to her lungs. She died after a final, glorious journey through Denver, Albuquerque, Sante Fe, and breathtakingly beautiful surrounding country. The pain of the loss has not subsided. If anything, Larry hurts more.
Improbably and unfairly, he has been through this before, having previously lost Helen, after 31 years of happy marriage. She also died of cancer, at 64. By choice, they had no children but they had each other for all those many years and that was enough for both of them. Larry does not know how he managed to survive the loss of Helen.

And now he does not know how he will survive the loss of Elaine. In one lifetime, he has been called upon to somehow endure a double loss of daily love and sharing. This is something that most men avoid by wisely dying. Women live an average seven years longer than men, leaving us with surplus widows and scarce widowers.

It is well established that women do much better than men in adjusting to the loss of a spouse, largely because women tend to have wider and stronger family and social relationships. When it comes to surviving the loss of a life partner, there is no doubt which sex is more successful: women.

Yet society at large still expects grief-stricken men like Larry Behr to do what they have always done – be strong, pull yourself together, get the job done. In short, be a man. We say to them: Hey, nothing lasts forever. This is the way it is. Get on with your life, man.

This is the way it is, of course, and Larry knows that. He not only gets the societal message, he embraces it. But this is purely intellectual and cultural and has almost nothing to do with what Larry is actually going through today.

His heart is broken. His love has left him. He is bereft. He is lonely. He is inundated with powerful emotions that, even the second time around, he does not fully understand. He only knows that these emotions are trying to take him down and, dammit, they ain't gonna do it.

Larry could play the helpless old man, except that he obviously isn't. He is a fully viable adult man, in good health except for normal aches and pains. He has prospered first as a sales manager for 28 years at the same New Jersey company and then during the many years since in active “retirement.”

He is quick to say that he is not the retiring type. There are men many years younger than Larry in nursing homes, whiling away their days in dependency and despair. Not Larry. He is independent. He has his own money and has had the same financial advisor for 20 years. He lives in the large, comfortable home that he and Elaine shared and enjoyed together.

He has all his cookies. He is fully mobile. He drives. He sails. Here he is on his boat on Gardner Lake. He travels. He keeps up with current affairs and can expound at length on the pros and cons of President Obama's stimulus plan. A whirlwind of interests and activity, he is always doing something.

“Idleness is my enemy,” he said. “Time on my hands gets me thinking too much. And when I think too much about Elaine, I get down.”

He said he couldn't sleep last night. “I kept waking up with my mind going in all directions. Finally, at four this morning, I took a sleeping pill. I can't bear the thought of going to a movie."

The plan was for three of us -- Larry, my wife Barbara, and I -- to have lunch, take in a movie, and fill a Tuesday afternoon together. He and Elaine used to love movies; the two of them went almost every week.

But Larry said he was just not ready to go to a movie without Elaine. So we decide to do lunch, have Larry give us a guided tour of historic Bristol, and cap off the day with a trip down memory lane in the home he now lives in alone.

A bright spot in Larry's life is that Elaine's family of five grown children (and 16 grandchildren), have reached out to him and make a point to include him in family gatherings. He deeply appreciates this and wants to remain a part of the family as he has been for 18 years.

But at the same time, he knows that as caring as Elaine's family is toward him, they can never fill the emptiness he feels. "They have their own lives," he says. "They are busy running here and there and I understand that."

He is also close to his sister Norma in New Jersey, and his nephew Mark and Leslie and their son Alan. But they are in New Jersey and Larry is three hours drive away in Connecticut. The distance is difficult to surmount regularly.

The neighbors have been wonderful, sending food and making a point of checking in with him. But now there is less of this as his being alone in the house has become more and more accepted as the new normal. Normal for others maybe, but not for Larry.

It is a leisurely two-hour lunch in a Bristol family restaurant, Applewood. "You can't beat this place," Larry said. "The food is good, there's plenty of it, and it's cheap.” He proved to be right on all three counts. Elaine was an excellent cook and did all the cooking.

Larry does not cook. He has been eating out a lot, coming to Applewood three or four times a week. The staff now know him. While reinventing himself emotionally, it is a safe and familiar place. He and Elaine used to come to Applewood to give her a break from cooking.

I insist on picking up the check, Larry having characteristically snatched the previous lunch bill. I said: "This is to let you know just who is making the decisions about your life now."

The running joke is that I have applied for and have received court custody of Larry. I tell him that the reason we are there is because the court requires regular visitations. He laughs.

As heartsick as Larry is over the loss of Elaine, his sense of humor still marches on as if to its own imperatives. The sign here is typical Larry Behr humor. It is near the front door and greets every visitor.

He blames his poor mother for his sense of humor. “Wherever she went, even to the store, she would come back with a story about somebody she met or something that had happened,” Larry said.

Larry's stories are legendary and come out when they have to, which is all the time. You have to run off somewhere. Too bad. You have to hear a story on your way out. Not feeling yourself, Larry will have a story for you. It may or may not make you feel better. It may or may not be funny. It may, actually, be awful.

But quite a few are hilarious. Many are cultural jewels from his childhood, from his wartime experiences in World War II, from his stint hosting a Connecticut radio show – and thus the sonorous voice – and from going on nine decades of living.

Normally, I limit Larry to three stories a visit. He good-naturedly goes along with the limit and Elaine seemed grateful for it. But Larry never stops trying to slip in an extra story and must be gently but firmly restrained.

He is also a thoroughly addicted punner. When you thank him for something, he invariably says, "my pressure.” Much in Larry's life may be changing, but the punning goes on delightfully impervious.

Driving through historic sections of Bristol, Larry demonstrates a keen eye for architecture, pointing out structure after structure with striking form and appeal. Some are Victorian or even earlier mansions, evoking long ago entitled classes. Some bespeak Bristol's history, such as the Bristol Clock Museum. The city was a leader in the manufacture of clocks. Larry himself is a skilled clock craftsman, attested by the antique clocks in his home that he has restored.

Larry drives by the site of the Hope Clinic where Elaine received loving treatments for her cancer from Dr. Virginia and her dedicated staff. The Hope Clinic and Elaine's hopeful, humane experiences at the Hope Clinic was the subject of an earlier blog.

"A few months after Elaine died, the Hope Clinic closed," Larry said, "and Dr. Virginia moved out to Colorado. The clinic could not go on. It was buried in debt." We passed the building that the Hope Clinic bought in the hope of expanding its services. "It went into foreclosure," Larry said.

After the Bristol tour, it was time to inspect his home redecorating. The home is gradually becoming his home as opposed to his and Elaine's home. “In my redecorating, I want to make it a tribute to both Helen and Elaine,” Larry said. Elaine is already a powerful presence in the home since she and Larry furnished and decorated it together.

During his years with Elaine, memorabilia of Helen were stored in boxes in the basement and in his office. Now he is going through photos and mementos and figuring out how to make Helen a presence in his life once again along with Elaine. The restored clock shown here recently went up in Helen's honor.

He points at the dining room wall. “I'm thinking of a large framed picture of Elaine at one side of the wall and one of Helen at the other side, as a tribute to both of them.” He asks if he can have photos enlarged that much. We tell him that it is done all the time.

He takes out a photo album of Helen and we go through it viewing Larry's life with a longtime love, while he supplies a running commentary. She was beautiful with the figure of a fashion model. She was also bright. “This was a woman who did The New York Times crossword puzzle in pen,” Larry said.

Speaking of his life with Helen, Larry's voice is soft, his eyes wistful. It is exactly the way he speaks of Elaine, who was not formally his wife but was in every way that counts the most.

Next, he shows us his office or “War Room.” There is a large framed montage of old photos from his World War II service in the U.S. Coast Guard. He was an anti-aircraft gunner on a Coast Guard vessel. It's mission in the Pacific was to deliver arms, munitions, supplies, and U.S. Marines to enemy beaches.

Serving through most of the 1941-44 war, he took part in several fiercely fought and bloody invasions. He first fired at attacking Japanese warplanes at the age of 18. The photo shows him manning his anti-aircraft gun.

He vividly recalls one particular combat moment. “A Jap plane had come out of the sky at us and the pilot had positioned the plane between our ship and our destroyer escort. He figured we wouldn't risk hitting each other and hold fire. I fired with everything I had and the Jap plane caught fire and crashed into the ocean between us and the destroyer.”

To this day, Larry has not been able to forgive the Japanese. “I do not forgive and I do not forget,” Larry said. He says that he has never bought a Japanese car and never will. Two monster American cars are in the garage; one of them was Elaine's, which she loved.

The War Room has a display of Larry's collection of antique guns, including a wood model of a 12-pounder cannon. This was a weapon used by the American Man of War in conflicts from the Revolution through the Civil War. He restored it himself. He fixed the jammed wheels, made the ramrod, and added chains.

In remembrance of his radio host days, the War Room also has an oldtime radio mike along with an “On the Air” sign. Here Larry reenacts his old radio days. A wood sculpture depicts him on the air "almost live." He boasts that he has "the perfect face for radio."

The theme song for his radio show was Duke Ellington's "A Train." The choice was easy for him. Besides loving the music, Larry used to ride the A Train from Coney Island all the way up to the Bronx.

He has a collection of old military hats and happily poses in his old Coast guard hat and other hats, not all of them becoming. In posing, Larry does not, frankly, act his age.

In the deepest of grief, he cannot seem to stop the child in him from repeatedly coming out. It is a child that we get to see in old photos, such as the one of him taken with his 1939 classmates.

Larry plans to stay in the home that he and Elaine shared and that he will now share with memories of both Elaine and Helen. “For one thing,” he said. “look at all this stuff. The cellar is packed too. What am I going to do with it?”

Yes, Larry's home has lots of “stuff,” but it is also spotless and in perfect order. Nothing is out of place. There is no dust on anything. Elaine used to keep the house that way. I tell him that I expected to be stepping over all kinds of junk. I ask if he has a housekeeper.

“No,” he said. “I do it all myself.”

“Even the vacuuming?”

“Yes.”

The extreme housekeeping is part for Elaine – she would want it that way – and part to keep busy. Larry is investigating our world to find out what it has to offer an 84-year-old starting over. He is looking into getting involved in Literacy Volunteers, for example, and other social service organizations.

He has joined a 150-strong Bristol choral group that meets for two hours every Monday night. His base baritone is a welcome new voice. The group, led by the head of the music department at Bristol Eastern High, described by Larry as "brilliant,"sings everything from Latin liturgy -- in Latin --to modern pop.

The choral group is rehearsing for a public performance in May, at a location to be announced soon. Larry is shopping for a tuxedo to wear at the performance. "Music helped me get through the loss of Helen," Larry said, "and now it is doing the same after Elaine."

He has started a business selling and fixing antiques and calls it “Fetherson & Fothergil, Purveyers of Antiquity.” We are all invited to make of that name what we like. Sounds to me like old comporting with old.

His business card offers restoration and repairs of the following: Weapons. Scientific. Clocks. Tools. Primitives. Does the last one refer to people or things or both? He makes house calls. The card sums up his business as “specializing in almost everything.”

Rarely does one see or hear of a business with almost no interest in making money, but Fetherson & Fothergil is such a business. “I'm not doing it to make money,” Larry said. “I'm doing it for people, to see them, to be around them, to talk to them.”

He didn't also say, “to save my life,” but that is surely the bottom line for Fetherson & Fothergil just as money is the bottom line for General Electric. In pursuit of his own surely quixotic idea of business, Larry will be hitting the antique shows, fairs, and other places where antique-lovers gather.

While serious businesses follow the money, Fetherson & Fothergill goes to where the people are. Its “customers” don't need fat wallets; they just need to love antiques and be willing to hear Larry's stories and tell him their own. He will charge something for his wares and services, but it is largely a front to maintain appearances.

“I'm cheap,” he said. But he is quick to add that he does quality work. Should there be any doubt about that, it is dispelled with one look at the beautifully restored fine antiques displayed throughout his home.

If you are an antique-lover and are in the market for a cheap antiques purveyer and restorer who makes house calls, there is a number you can call. It is 860-585-6484. In conscience, however, and in the interests of full disclosure, there is a caveat.

If you are a woman, you must understand something. Having loved two fabulous women, Larry Behr is a newly-single man who is fast approaching the day when he may be ready to love again. Do not think that because he is 84 that he is romantically harmless. He is 84 going on 55.

“I'm on the prowl,” he admits. “I'm looking for a meaningless relationship.”

He has already gone on one date. Date? At 84? “Aren't you a bit too old to be even thinking about dating?”

“Look,” he said not the least bit sheepishly. “I like girls.”

So girls -- excuse me, ladies -- watch out for Larry Behr. Also, he has been known to dangle enticements, as in this photo. There, you have fair warning.

In March, he is heading to Florida to visit a woman from high school days. "She lost her husband and son and I've lost Elaine," Larry said. "We have a common bond." They have been in touch by phone. During one such conversation, Larry turned on an early 1940's arrangement by Harry James, "Lush Life,"for her to listen to.

"That wasn't fair," I said. "What woman could resist something as dreamy and romantic as that? We've all grown up slow-dancing cheek-to-cheek to that piece."

"Actually, it is very sad," Larry said. "It was inspired by a guy whose love affair ended badly and he turned to drink. He went from bar to bar and ended up drinking himself to pieces."

"You're not going to do that, are you?"

"If it weren't for the gout, I would."

He is just playing with me, as usual. Drinking is not on Larry Behr's agenda. What IS on his agenda are life, love, and the pursuit of happiness.

As we were leaving, Larry said he was going out that night to learn the tango and swing dancing at a Bristol library. Speaking as his court-appointed custodian, I gave him a stern lecture. I told him that there were going to be a lot of lonely widows at that dance session and that they were all going to be “hungry.” I said I expected him to leave the dance exactly as he arrived – alone.

“Have a good trip back, “ he said.

So long and keep moving.

P.S. CUSTOMER SURVEY: At Fetherson & Fothergil, customers come first. Which of the following five hats would you prefer to have Larry wear to your house call? He asks that you be honest.

Ketzel Levine: As Jobs Vanish, the NPR Whisperer is Uprooted.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Plants talk to her and she talks to them. Living plants somehow get wind of her Living Plant reports on National Public Radio and she's just as tuned into them. She also talks to people and they talk to her and many others nationwide through NPR.
She has just finished her NPR series called, “American Moxie: How We Get By.” It's about people coping with today's mass catastrophic job loss and financial nightmare. Her final “Moxie” report contained an unexpected personal footnote. As if to demonstrate the truth of the “Moxie” series, she told listeners that she herself had been laid off.

She said that “as a direct result of the current economic crisis, I have been laid off from my job. I was told almost two weeks ago, but it's only today that I'm sane enough to tell you.” She said that she had been “spending most of my time careening around the five stages of grief ....” You can listen to this final report, her “swan song,” on the NPR website.

Ketzel Levine's last day on the job as a senior correspondent for National Public radio is January 12. Actually it is today as I write this. I'm thinking of you today, Ketzel, as are many, many other listeners who have taken you into their homes, on the road – and into their hearts.

She went to work at NPR oh so long ago as an eager, fresh-faced 24-year-old. She walks out the door 30 years later still relatively young in years but no longer young as far as the job market is concerned.

Ellen McDonnell, the director of morning programming, told The New York Times that she had misgivings about Ms. Levine becoming a part of the story. “As a reporter, you never want the story to be about you,” she said. “I also recognized a very unique opportunity for Ketzel to tell a story that lots of people can relate to. She found out in a very personal way what it's like to have to start over again and to have the moxie that she spoke about.”

Ms. McDonnell also said that the end result “was kind of eerie” and was “not something that any of us anticipated.” But, as it turned out, NPR could hardly have told a story with more gripping human interest. What a great ending ... the reporter loses her own job!
Hey, it got my attention and here I am writing about it.

Ketzel Levine thus becomes yet one more victim of the financial meltdown that is fracturing the lives of millions of Americans. How bad is it? We've had bad recessions before, such as in 1974 and 1991-92, but jobwise this is the worst since 1945. That is the year World War II ended.

What a year it has been!

The numbers for 2008 are in and they are jaw-droppingly awful. For the year, we lost 2.6 million jobs. We now have a veritable national army of unemployed: 11.1 million, not including a few uncounted millions more looking for work and not finding it. This monumental unraveling of the job market puts us on track for 10% unemployment in 09. That's one out of 10 American workers.

This past year, we have seen giants of Wall Street toppled: Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, the swallowing of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, taxpayer bailouts of Insurance Giant AIG and financial behemoth Citigroup, the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together service half of all residential mortages in the U.S.

We have seen photos of dazed Lehman Brothers employees lugging boxes of personal items out the front door of the majestic Lehman Brothers skyscraper. Companies like Citigroup and AIG, deemed to big to fail and saved by taxpayer billions, shed many thousands of workers. Ditto hat-in-hand auto companies. Ditto belly-up big retailers like Circuit City, Linen's 'N Things, and others too numerous to list here.

Small businesses with 500 or fewer workers, which employ half of all American workers, are not just reducing employment; they're slashing it with broadswords. When the money is not coming in and credit has dried up, the quickest way to stay afloat is to let workers go. Everybody knows people who have lost their jobs. Many are out of work for the first time in their lives. Unemployment offices are swamped.

Newspapers, facing relentless declines in circulation, are cutting staff as never before. My favorite newspaper, The New York Times, which I have been reading daily for over 50 years, has just mortgaged its building to raise cash. Another great newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has been bought out by Ruport Murdock. It's newsstand cost has since soared, doubling in one year. Now will the Journal's journalistic excellence be gradually replaced by Murdock's trademark thoughtlessness and pandering?

Fear reigns and feeds on itself, creating a vicious downward cycle in home prices, employment, manufacturing, and general ecoomic activity. Americans lucky enough to still have a job live in cold fear of losing it. Many put aside retirement statements unopened, unable to look at sickening losses.

Home foreclosures are at levels not seen in decades and are rising while home prices continue their freefall. Today's mantra is hoard cash, don't spend, and hunker down. But when people cut back on buying goods and services, businesses large and small are squeezed all the more -- which leads to yet more layoffs.

The proverbial rainy day is here. And it looks like it's going to be here for quite a while. As its announced job cuts demonstrate, National Public Radio is not insulated from this financial chaos. In recent years, it has depended on corporate underwriting. Suddenly, it is no longer there the way it has been. Interest payments of about $10 million a year from the bequest of the late Joan Kroc, the McDonald's heir, have been wiped out in the sharp downturn in the financial markets.

Founded in 1970, NPR has grown mightily in the past dozen years. 26.4 million people listen to NPR programs each week and 8 million visit NPR.Org each week. It has expanded its news operations while many of its journalistic peers and competitors have cut back. It maintains correspondents in both Iraq and Afghanistan, one of the new American news orgaizations to do so.

Altogether, NPR is cutting 7% of its work force. It is laying off 64 people and will not fill 21 vacant positions. It is canceling two daily radio programs, Day to Day and News and Notes. NPR will still have more than 800 employees, including 300 journalists.

NPR has issued the obligatory statements saying that the layoffs are driven entirely by a projected $23 million budget shortfall arising from the economic recession. Ellen Weiss, NPR's Senior Vice President for News, said that the layoffs were “not a judgment” on “smart, talented and hardworking journalists.”

In other words, it's nothing personal. It's just the numbers. Tell that to Ketzel Levine and the others who are losing their jobs at NPR. On her NPR blog, Talking Plants, Ms. Levine wrote: “Through no fault of my own (management assures me 'it's not personal'), I've been laid off from NPR.”

She has had a long, productive association with NPR. She started in 1977 producing Voices in the Wind with Oscar Brand, honing her skills as an arts producer. In 1979, she began with “Morning Edition.” When the program became the first NPR show to offer sports coverage, she took “no more than an irrational passion for the Yankees,” according to NPR, and created the sound of NPR sports. She introduced radio audiences to two legendary broadcasters, Red Barber and Frank Deford.

She then took a leave from NPR and worked for the BBC in London for several years. She returned to NPR as an arts reporter for a few years, only to leave again in 1990 to study horticulture and landscape design. She immersed herself in the green world, becoming a plant lover and gardener extraordinaire.

Two years later, Ms. Levine was back again at NPR, this time as a commentator for Weekend Edition Saturday with a new moniker, “Doyenne of Dirt.” “For ten years, she and Scott Simon entertained Weekend Edition Saturday audiences with their ever-irreverent gardening shtick,” according to a brief NPR bio.

Meanwhile, she began writing about plants and gardening, contributing to Horticulture Magazine, The Oregonian (her home is in Portland, Oregon), and publishing a book in 2,000, “Plant This! Best Bets for Year-Round Gorgeous Gardens.” In the same year, she returned to Morning Edition as a senior correspondent.

Ms. Levine did stories like touring the Bush Texas ranch with Laura Bush to reporting on the world's flora. The latter assignment, according to NPR , “took her to places as varied as a dairy farm in Vermont to an ancient case in Hawaii.” In 2007, she launched her own NPR blog, “Talking Plants,” in which her love afffair with plants was on full display along with, according to NPR, “her trademark wit and irreverence.”

But now the plant whisperer has been uprooted from NPR. She is being forced to reinvent her life and there is no known instructional manual for that. NPR may say that her layoff is nothing personal, but it is. It has to be.

Numbers may have ruled the overall layoff decision, but Ms. Levine is not a number; she is a person. She was among the 64 employees with names and personalities chosen for layoff while more than 800 employees with names and personalities were not.

Ms. Levine professes to have no hard feelings toward NPR. On the contrary, she takes pains to say that she has loved working at NPR and considers the people she worked with there to be family. At the same time, while confirming the rumor that she has been laid off on Talking Plants, she exclaimed, “That's my life!”

Now I do not know Ms. Levine personally. I know her only through her work on NPR. You might say that I am a fan. But I thought that she and her story say much about the economic quicksand that America is stuck in -- and sinking fast in, say a lot of normally sane economic experts. It is pervasive. It is deep. It can pull anyone under.

We tend to think of layoffs as something for the common folk, those who toil in factories, assembly lines, restaurants, and the Wall Marts and Home Depots of America. It's not for people like Ketzel Levine. It's not for professionals. It's not for talented pros with intelligence, wit, a public following, and a full Rolodex. It's not for plant whisperers.

Except that in this recession, which with its perfect storm of multiple economic collapses(housing prices, employment, financial markets, confidence), it is. Ketzel Levine and many like her have become dollars to be excised from the payroll just like the worker on an auto assembly line. Nothing personal. The budget decides.

For Ms. Levine, as with any of us, getting laid off IS deeply personal. It is rejection. In her case, it is public rejection. Even if she is part plant, the human part of her has to hurt like hell. Like everybody laid off, she suddenly faces no regular income. If that's not scary, what is? Bills have to be paid, period. And if they are not, all hell breaks loose. Let's hope she has a decent severance.

On Talking Plants the first day of 2009, Ms. Levine said:

“I was given the news 36 hours ago and I've been on the proverbial roller coaster ever since. Earlier this morning, when I took my first shot at this blog item, I wrote something to the effect that my being rift was not personal,'it's just what it is.' And that, wait for it, 'I've been one lucky woman, why should it end now?'

“What was she on? I could use some of that tonight, as I look over at the clock and see that in the last hour I've written three sentences and chewed my nails and cuticles down to stumps. I've also been eating compulsively, only the richest most fattening things: organic peanuts, candy-coated toxic peanut M&M's, and for my last act before sleep, organic cashews.

“In truth, there is no reason on earth why I shouldn't continue having a long and lively career. It could be in radio, in print, online or in public lectures, on TV shows and in books. But there's a journey in between and it heads right through the land of loss, which is where I'm reporting from tonight, live! And up to my neck in decades of memories of the people I've met and the places I've been because of this job ... and the nail-bitten terror that the loss will drown me and I won't be able to breathe....”

I'm happy to report that already Ms. Levin does not seem in danger of drowning. As for not being able to breathe, she is excitedly gulping down oxygen as she opens a new web site and plans for a botanizing expedition to Turkey where she will commune with some of her favorite plants.

Her new web site is aptly called Ketzel Uprooted. On her home page, she describes herself as a “public radio slut with a red hot passion for plants, hiking, botanizing, classical music, and liberal to left causes, with a wealth of empathy for the human condition.”

Does that sound like an NPR employee? I don't think so. Even before her last day at NPR she was already no longer an organizational potted plant with bosses(though one given a great deal of freedom); she is an exotic wildflower happily blowing in the wind, free of all bosses and organizational restraints. Whether she wants to be or not, she is a model for other fired working stiffs in these misbegotten times.

I wonder what the plants have been whispering in her ear.

While neither confirming nor denying back and forth whispering between her and her beloved plants, Ms. Levine says the conversation would not include cliches like "When one door closes, another opens," and "Some things happen for a reason," although she's hoping they are true. It would include embracing the following from her personal layoff survival manual:

*YOU DID NOTHING WRONG! You're the same person with the same talent and (fill in name of company that dumped you) cannot take that away.
*GOOD THINGS DO COME FROM SUCH AN INSULT. You will get through this and land firmly on your feet.
*ENJOY THE HIATUS. Take advantage of the chance to rest, re-create and re-focus.
*GET SOME SLEEPING PILLS! Sleep is good, no sleep is very, very bad.
*YOU ARE IN OUTSTANDING COMPANY. Welcome to the world of the un- and under-employed!
*YEAH, THIS SUCKS They should have dumped (fill in name of lesser talented co-worker).
*WALLOW IN ANGER AND GRIEF. Then once you feel it, get up, shake it off and get going.
*NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Do not take on a rommate to save cash.And above all, remember this:
*YOU AIN'T DEAD YET.

So long and keep moving.

P.S: I thought of getting in touch with Ms. Levine with questions about her layoff: how she was actually told, whether she had any idea it was coming, how it is affecting her life, how she is going to pay the bills, the names of people who should have been laid off before her and why, how she sees herself in five or ten years, how she thinks she will feel walking out of NPR on her last day, her true feelings about the layoff, and, naturally, her love life.

Of course, I haven't called or e-mailed her. No one wants a stranger coming out of nowhere asking personal questions, especially in a time of great stress. But, given who Ketzel Levine is, I have a feeling that soon, very soon, we are all going to get an earful on Ketzel Uprooted. I think this layoff is going to take Ketzel Levine to new heights that could never have happened if she had stayed at NPR.

PPS: Anybody out there interested in the story of how I got laid off from my job during the recession of 1991-92 after 26 years? If you are, raise your leg. Just what I thought. No interest. Crap.

The Spy Within: Your Blood Sees All -- and Tells the Ultimate Inside Story.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:04:00 +0000

Needles give me the creeps. The VA phlebotomist, pleasant enough considering, has me make a fist. She holds the needle up, lovingly it seems to me. I see imminent invasive pain. Just before she is to stab me in the arm, I close my eyes and look away.

While I transport myself to a beautiful, magical place where there are no needles and no pain, she jabs me – ouch-- and draws out my... my... BLOOD. My precious bodily fluids! Into a bloody needle!

It's downright vampiric, only without the bloodthirsty night creatures. Yet when it comes to the state of my health, the blood drawn into that needle knows me better than my wife and my family. Better than my best friend in the world. Better than I know myself. Maybe even better than my doctors -- who depend greatly on what my blood tells them.

Marion Connors, a former nursing director at a large Massachusetts hospital who today often explains blood tests to elderly patients – and is my sister – says that the blood test is both simple and complex. It is simple, she says, because it is easy for the physician to order, for the patient to take, and to get quick results from the lab.

Marion says the blood test is also complex because “it tells so much ... because blood does so much in our bodies. It is the fluid pumped by the heart with each beat. Blood carries oxygen to every cell in our bodies. The cells cannot live without oxygen. Blood flow to the brain allows us to function. If the blood supply to the brain ceases, we dies within minutes. I could go on ...”

She says that the composition of the blood varies depending how our bodily systems are functioning. “That's why blood testing is a basic tool ... to get a cursory overall check of bodily function.” From hundreds of blood tests, physicians order only those they need to monitor and diagnose, according to Marion. “Blood testing is a great general screening tool. The doctor may order more specific tests based on the general screeding tests or stated patient symptoms.”

Pumped by the heart, constantly flowing through our veins and capillaries dispensing oxygen and nutrients, our blood visits every organ and crevice. When things are as they are supposed to be, blood is happy and goes dutifully and uneventfully about its vital work. But when anything is different or out of the ordinary, it notices – and reacts.

A few cells acting strangely? An invader from the outside? White blood cells converge, sounding the alarm. In the blood test, a high white cell count can be a sign of infection. On the other hand, a low white count can signal bone marrow disease or an enlarged spleeen.

The average adult has a gallon of blood, but the phlebotomist draws out no more than a teaspoon. We don't even miss it and, in fact, our bodies replace this teaspoon of blood in about an hour. But at the lab, this small amount of blood is enough to describe the state of our health in remarkable detail. Which is probably why many millions of blood tests are performed each year in the U.S.

Red blood cell count low? It could be an indication of anemia. C Reactive Protein high? CRP is a marker for inflammation and a widely used predictor of vascular disease, heart attack, and stroke. Blood sugar, or glucose, up? This could be a precursor to diabetes, or Impaired Fasting Glucose (IFG). Or, if the count is higher, it could be diabetes itself.

Cholesterol, a fat-like substance, building up in the blood? It is generally considered a major risk factor for heart and blood vessel disease. As blood cholesterol increases, so does the possibility of plaque build-up leading to “hardening of the arteries” or atherosclerosis. Plugged arteries feeding the heart can cause a heart attack. Plugged arteries leading to the brain can cause a stroke. The blood test shows the extent of the cholesterol build-up.

That's why the cholesterol count is such an important part of just about every general “check-up” blood test. I was certainly wondering what my cholesterol count was after a year of taking a statin to control it. Six months after taking the statin, Simvastatin, which is the generic form of Zokor, my cholesterol count was down to well within “normal” levels. I and my VA primary care provider were all smiles.

My blood test has many more specific counts, four single-spaced pages of them, all of them telling me something, all of them important. It is almost impossible for the average person, in which I include myself, to make sense of them. The story is embedded in abbreviations for big, undecipherable medical terms. Normal ranges are given so we can jump out of our skins with fear when a count is above or below “normal.”

However, what is normal constantly changes. New guidelines for cholesterol, for example, come out regularly – setting the desired count at lower and lower levels. And what is normal for me may not be normal for you and vice versa. Sometimes blood tests identify abnormalities that are not really abnormal, leading to a fixing of things that don't need fixing. There are false positives and false negatives. Results vary from lab to lab.

I am me and you are you and, as much as a blood test can tell us, it cannot account for all of our often significant differences. It cannot say with certainty what is normal for each of us, only what appears to be normal over a large population. Yet we all owe it to ourselves to listen and take seriously what our blood is telling us. It certainly is potentially life-saving feedback.

I found an ingenious web site that was a great help in deciphering a blood test. It shows a typical blood test and all the things it tests for. Click on any specific abbreviation, such as “GLU” and a box pops up with a good explanation in plain English. I found the site very helpful in understanding my blood test.

But the site is no substitute for sitting down with a medical professional. Here is an informative video about one woman, who had previously had a stroke, sitting down with her doctor and going over her blood test results.

With blood test results in hand, I went to my appointment with my VA primary care provider. She had ordered my annual blood test and already had the results in her computer along with the rest of my medical history.

“Hey, how come you cancelled twice?” I asked as I walked through the door. “You don't love me any more?”

“I was sick,” she said, looking at the computer screen where my file was already up

“Oh.”

Respecting “professional distance,” I stifled an urge to ask about her sickness.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

Her attention fixed on the screen, she said, “I think that, all things considered – the TIA(Transient Ischemic Attack or “mini” stroke) you had in Seattle, diabetes in your family, the fact that you have Impaired Fasting Glucose, you are doing very well. At 117, your glucose is a little high. It should be under 100. Your complete blood count and urinalysis are perfectly normal. Liver function tests are perfect.
Your PSA is 2.10, perfect.”

“Cholesterol?”

“Well, your HDL or good cholesterol is 51, which is quite good. But your LDL is 123 which should be lower.”

“But it's better than it used to be, right?”

“Yes, definitely.”

She motioned for me to look at the screen. It showed a graph of my cholesterol over the past ten years, ever since I had been going to the Worcester, Mass. VA. That's one of the many things great about the VA, it's technology.

“Look what your cholesterol was in 1997,” she said, pointing to the bar for that year, which stood out like a skyscraper compared to the other bars. “You were a heart attack waiting to happen. Now it's down here,” she said pointing to a recent bar, “but it still should be lower according to new standards. So I'm going to recommend that we increase your statin from 40mg. daily to 80 mg.”

“Doubling it?”

“Yes.”

Seeing the none too happy look on my face, she said, “I know you have a problem with statins – I read your blog about it -- but I have to do what I think is best for you based on all the information that I have and to do everything I can not to harm you. But it's not easy.”

“Of course. I understand completely. Those graphs are amazing.”

“Yes, they are. The whole history is there.” She clicked the mouse and another bar graph popped up. “This is your blood pressure history. Your latest is 116 over 60, the lowest it has ever been.”

“Tennis,” I said. “Singles tennis, in my unprofessional opinion.”

She smiled and then reminded me that last year's colonoscopy had been “cloudy” in places. Three polyps had been found and excised. The doctor who performed the colonoscopy had recommended that it be redone in a year just to be sure there were no other growths. I agreed to make the appointment with the outside doctor.

With a stethoscope, she had me take deep breaths. She felt the sides of my neck for blood flow to the brain. “Good, very good,” she said. That was it. Fast, about 20 minutes. High tech. Efficient. Thorough, with my entire health history referenced at a tap of the computer.

She entered the latest datum, her new statin prescription. She gave me a sheet for an appointment in six months, and sent me on my way. Within a week, a new bottle of 80 mg statin tablets arrived in the mail from the VA. I have been doing a lot of staring at the bottle.

So far, I have not taken the doubled dose.

I also asked Marion to review my blood test and tell me what my blood is telling her about the state of my health. Here, in her professional opinion, is what my blood is telling her about this 70-year-old caucasian male, who is also her older brother:

“Your body isn't fighting any significant infection because your white blood count is not elevated. You have good blood volume with adequate red blood cells and hemoglobin. You have normal range of platelets so you are not in danger of of bleeding because your platelets help to clot blood – eg. If you cut yourself. Your liver function is normal. You are not at risk for cardiac disease based on your cholesterol results, including HDL and LDL. Results show normal kidney function. Your blood sugar is borderline high for a fasting blood sugar. With your family history of diabetes – ie.mother and sister both diabetic – this requires monitoring. You may want to consider watching your CHO's. You are not overweight and certainly get enough exercise, so the only option is to watch CHO's and see if it changes. Overall, I think you should be really pleased with the story your blood told. I see no signs of any major disease.”

I'll take it. I'll take it. Thank you Marion!

On the issue of doubling my statin dose, I cannot shake reservations about doing so. My cholesterol is only marginally high by new, stricter guidelines. I do not have heart disease. Aside from cholesterol, I have no other risk factors for a heart attack except that three years ago I did have a TIA while out walking in Seattle. This could have been a “mini-stroke” which, if it was, could be a precursor to a bigger one.

Though I have experienced no side effects, no muscle pain or kidney problems – and my cholesterol count is down since going on a statin– I find it hard to entirely discount responsible criticism of statin use.

In his newsletter, drmcdougall.com, John McDougall, MD, one of many such critics of statin use, wrote:

“During my forty years of medical practice, I have never seen anyone die of high cholesterol (and neither has any other doctor). Cholesterol is a risk factor – this means it is a sign that reflects: the richness of the person's diet, his or her ability to metabolize the rich foods, and most importantly, the overall health of the body. The cholesterol molecules, themselves, in the bloodstream are relatively non-toxic.

“If cholesterol, itself, were the problem, then their predictive value for heart attacks and strokes would be close to 100% -- high cholesterol would always mean sick arteries. However, I know many people with cholesterol levels over 300mg/dl, with perfectly clean arteries – and just the opposite, people with levels below 170 mg/dl who have suffered a major heart attack.

“Furthermore, when the arteries of patients taking statins are studied over time, regression of the underlyhing artery disease, atherosclerosis, occurs in only a minority of patients, even if cholesterol drops profoundly under the influence of powerful medications.

“The underlying truth is: there is a strong correlation between the richness of a person's diet (reflected by cholesterol and saturated fat content of the food choices) and the level of cholesterol found in that person's blood. The richer the diet, the higher the blood cholesterol. The association continues: the higher the choleterol in the diet and in the blood, the more likely disease will happen – such as heart attacks, strokes, and a variety of cancers. The real culprit is the rich diet; the elevated cholesterol is, more or less, a secondary finding.

“Because of the enthusiastic and dishonest promotion of these high-profit drugs, many patients actually believe they are “cured” of their health problems. As a result, they may see no more need to make beneficial diet and lifestyle changes, which in truth make a far greater difference than any medications.”

Dr. Nan Fuchs, who has a Ph.D in nutrition and writes the Womens Health Letter, writes that "all statins reduce your body's stores of coenzyme Q10, a nutrient essential to heart and brain health. In fact, if you're taking any statin you should be taking at least 100 mg of CoQ10 a day. Many doctors of integrative medicine believe that 200 mg or more a day is necessary to protect the heart and brain."

The experience of Martin Winn, 71, a retired machinist in Vancouver, B.C who reminds me of myself, reinforces my statin skepticism. With his cholesterol count inching up, his doctor put him on a statin as doctors do around the world. Statins are the best-selling drugs in history.

But it so happened that Winn's doctor, James M. Wright, was also a professor at the University of British Columbia and a director of government-funded Therapeutic Initiative, whose purpose is to evaluate how well particular drugs work. Just as Winn went on a statin, Dr. Wright's team began analyzing numerous statin trials over the years.

Soon, Dr. Wright began not liking what he was finding. Yes, he found that the statins can be life-saving for patients who have already suffered heart attacks. But when he looked at the data for the majority of patients without heart disease, like Winn (and like me), he found no benefit in people over the age of 65, no matter how much their cholesterol declined and no benefit in women of any age. Statin takers did not live any longer than non statin-takers.

Dr. Wright changed his mind about statins and advised Martin Winn to stop taking them, which he did. “Most people are taking something with no change of benefit and a risk of harm,” Dr. Wright said.

Other studies have found that for healthy men over 70 without heart disease, there is little evidence, if any, that statins make a meaninglful difference in longevity. Dr. Mark H. Ebell, a professor at the University of Georgia and deputy editor of the journal American Family Physician, said, “High-risk groups have a lot to gain. But patients at low risk benefit very little if at all. We end up overtreating a lot of patients.”

A 2006 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at seven trials of statin use in nearly 43,000 patients, mostly middle-aged men without heart disease. In that review, statins didn't lower mortality. Nor did they in a study called Prosper, published in The Lancet in 2002, which studied statin use in people 70 and older.

Joge Tsang, a competitive singles tennis player in his sixties, took matters into his own hands when his doctor urged him to go on a statin to get his cholesterol down. He felt that there had to be a better way -- and he found one. Today his total cholesterol is a low 176. Here he describes how he did it:

“ I take daily dosages: flax-seed oil pills, 2000 mg, 3000 fish oil capsules, also began eating more soy base products: tofu (twice a week) New addition: 1 red rice yeast pill w/ COQ-10, 2 vitamin C tablets.

“My typical diet consists of (Breakfast)Oatmeal, granola(home made) cranberries dried, fresh fruit, yogurt. Lunch: leftovers from nite before. Dinner: organic chicken, lots of greens, brown rice, mostly whole grain stuff. Fish twice a week. No dessert. No carbs such as potatoes, or processed foods. Very little cheese & eggs.”

This diet is working for Joge. But I have a sweet tooth. Do I want to give up my desserts with coffee (black) while watching the evening news? Do I want to give up the occasional chocolate-covered ice cream bar? I enjoy potatoes once in a while. Do I want to give up carbs? I love fish and have it a couple of times a week, but do I want to start taking fish oil capsules?

I don't know.

Thanks, Joge, for making me feel so damned guilty. Thanks for coming between me and my chocolate-covered ice cream bars. Congratulations (grudged) on your discipline and success, though.

I must also decide whether to take the doubled statin dose. My VA provider is superb and has my deepest respect. She takes wonderful care of me. She has my blood tests and my medical history. She has professional qualifications that I don't. In her considered professional opinion, I should take the higher dose.

I'm wondering whether I should take a statin at all. After all, it is my body and my life. The final decision, as unqualified as I am to make it, must be mine – as it must be for all of us. In this holiday season, however, my thoughts will not be of statins and my blood test and corruptible corpus. My thoughts will be of all that I have to be thankful for, such as a loving family and good health at age 70, and the many who are less fortunate.

So long and keep moving – and enjoy the holidays!

Behind the Walls: Surprises in a Maximum Security Prison

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:38:00 +0000

It is New England's largest maximum security prison measured by its inmate population of 2,101 as of July 1. I am about to spend 23 hours there locked up with a couple of dozen convicted criminals.

All the inmates are men. All have been convicted of serious crimes, including murder. Most are serving long sentences. Some have been in prison for as long as 40 years. Some will never get out.

In this prison this past spring, an inmate beat another inmate to death. The murdered inmate had been sentenced for his involvement in a car chase leading to an accident that caused the deaths of four people. A relative of one of the victims happened to be in the prison -- and he took deadly revenge.

Why do this?

First, a couple of months before, my friend Ray told me about his volunteer work with the Alternatives to Violence Project. Associated with the Quakers, AVP conducts workshops in prisons and other institutions on understanding and controlling violent impulses.

Ray is a retired accountant and former manufacturing business comptroller who has been conducting AVP workshops in prisons for 12 years. He has also been an AVP volunteer in several nations in Africa.

He is deeply committed to AVP, which has been highly successful in teaching convicts and others how to control impulses to violence. Ray feels he is making an important contribution. His AVP work also gives him great personal satisfaction. And when he said that I might be able to take part in the program, I was intrigued.

I agreed to give it a shot and filled out a form that seeks to uncover any criminal past or unsavory associations. Felons need not apply. “Good news," Ray said when he called later. “They couldn't find anything on you. You're approved.”

Second, I have been thinking a lot about what seems to me to be an epidemic of violence. Shooting and stabbings have become almost commonplace. They are no longer confined to “bad” parts of town.

They happen where we live. Shown here is a typical frequent news story about a killing where I live. Indeed, everyday violence has become almost normal, and – grotesquely – even celebrated. See the previous post.

A few weeks ago, within walking distance of where I live, a 19-year-old Becker College student was stabbed to death after an argument at a Saturday night party. He was a freshman with his whole life ahead of him. He died of a single knife thrust to the heart.

The killer was among a group of young men who arrived at the party uninvited and, according to the police, looking for trouble. In all likelihood, the police will find him and he'll end up doing time in a maximum security prison such as they one I will enter.

Third, there is something else about American violence that is rarely spoken of: It is overwhelmingly male. Generally speaking, husbands beat wives, not the other way around. Men, not women, are warlike. Men get into fights in bar parking lots, not women. Men carry knives, not women. If you're walking alone at night and you see a woman, no need to worry. But if you see a man, you are well advised to walk faster and watch your back.

Of course, not all men are violent. If you see my friend Ray walking on the street at night, not to worry. He wouldn't harm a fly. Or if it happens to be me, no sweat. Although I got into fistfights as a kid, boxed Saturday nights at the old Los Angeles Arena before a crowd looking for blood and usually getting it, and took pride crunching ice-hockey opponents into the boards, today I'm as nonviolent as Mother Theresa.

My wife doesn't worry about me smacking her one. Call me a girlie guy, I don't care. Violence has nothing to do with manliness. This was a chance to talk with men whose past would seem to suggest a different attitude toward violence.

They are men who have killed, men imprisoned for punishment but also because they are deemed dangers to society. How did they get that way? Born violent? Taught to be? Forced to be? Can they change? Do they want to? Or would they just as soon gut an intruding stranger?

Fourth, we all have views and attitudes toward men locked up for murder and other crimes of violence. A common attitude: They're animals. They deserve it. Look what they did; let them suffer. Life in prison is too good for them. Good riddance.

I have my share of negative attitudes about the kind of people these convicted inmates must be. How would my own preconceptions stand up to the reality of looking into the eyes of, and listening to, and getting to know a bunch of convicted inmates?

This will be no run-in and run-out thing. We will be locked together in a room for a total of 23 hours over the weekend. With everything that must be done in running a life, many of us feel lucky to get twenty minutes alone with family members and best friends. Our doctor gives us 14 minutes. A whole undistracted hour with anybody today is a rarity.

Now think 23 hours.

While you mull that, also think -- ready for this?-- laughter. Yes, you read right. I'm asking you to keep your sense of humor at ready. I never dreamed that I'd find anything to laugh about inside a maximum security prison, but I did.

It is one of many surprises.

At about 3:00 p.m. on the designated Friday, I report, along with Ray, my friend and leader for the Alternative to Violence Project weekend, to the MacDougald-Walker Correctional Institution that sprawls over 140 acres in Suffield, Connecticut. It is a maximum-security prison for men.

Notice that it is called “correctional institution,” not a prison. Inside I expect to find a garden of euphemism in full flower. I do not -- another surprise. Inmates call each other what they are: inmates. Officially, the prison calls them “offenders.”

In the lobby, we meet up with Marge, who will be the only woman – yes, a woman – taking part in the program for some two dozen inmates. She is a facilitator with advanced AVP training and has been doing these workshops for four years. On the outside, Marge works with behaviorally disturbed children. She has warm, compassionate eyes and a ready smile. I like her immediately.

I think: this thing must be perfectly safe or they would never allow a woman to be locked up with male convicts -- especially with no correction officers present and with only an alarm device in Ray's pocket with a button to be pushed in case of an emergency.

An unsmiling correction officer has us empty our pockets of metal objects and hand over things like car keys, before passing through the metal detector. “I'm going to set it off,” I say. “I had my knees replaced.” I set the alarm off.

The officer sees that it originates from the knee area and we are buzzed through a door to an institutionally bare corridor. There a metal drawer falls open and we drop our driver's licenses into it. The metal drawer closes. A shadowy figure moves behind the darkened glass and the drawer clanks open again. The licenses are gone, replaced by clip-on ID cards.

The door at the end of the corridor opens and we are met by another uniformed correction officer, also unsmiling, armed, and talking on his mobile device. I want to say something but a decidedly unfriendly look stops me. We are in the prison's main corridor, which is as wide as an interstate road, cavernous, and noisy.

Correction officers, or CO's as they are called here, carry sophisticated communication equipment, but shout at each other as they escort and hand off small groups of inmates. Their voices echo through the vast space.

Passing inmates eye us curiously before we are quickly deposited at the workshop location and locked in. I immediately get another surprise. The first two inmates I am introduced to, both inmate facilitators, give me big, warm hugs. One is white, the other black. Both tower over me. I like them immediately.

“Why don't you go in and introduce yourself,” Ray says to me, pointing to the adjoining conference room where inmates sit around in a wide circle, “while we get ready for the program.” Marge stays in this small connecting room helping out.

Thanks, Ray. I walk in as casually as I can. Just like that, I am alone with a roomful of convicts with not a correction officer in sight. Everybody in the room is dressed the same except me(they in baggy light tan prison-issue jumpsuits and white sneakers; me in jeans, shirt, and loafers). I'm an alien dropped out of the sky.

I 'm not sure what to say or do.

Then I see a lifeline – an inmate who is the spitting image of my youngest son, Jonathan. Same bulky build. Strong facial resemblance. Same short and graying hair. Even the same style of small-lensed glasses.

I go straight to him and sit down beside him. “I can't believe it,” I said. “You look just like my son.”

He smiles, warmly. I like him immediately.

“You know I bet you're about his age.”

“I'm forty-one.”

“He's forty.”

The ice is broken and we chat easily. He is intelligent and easy to talk to. Not only does he look like my son Jonathan, but he tells me that he graduated from the same university and with the same degree. He graduated two years earlier.

“You know, I think I'll sneak in a little camera and take your picture and show it to my son. He won't believe it. You're his double.”

“You're looking at five years and a $250,000 fine.”

“On second thought, I don't think I will sneak in a camera.”

I wonder what he did. Did he kill somebody? He does not say and I do not ask. Nor, I would soon learn, do any of the other inmates say what they did. In fact, they talk about everything but why they are there. Only one inmate would tell me in passing what he was in for – a killing in a moment of rage – but did so while saying how sorry he was for this worst mistake of his life.

I may not give the name of the inmate who is my son's double. Nor may I give the university that he graduated from, nor the course he took, nor any of the personal details that he told me about his life. Nor may I give the names or any identifying personal details that other inmates shared during the weekend.

The cardinal rule for the weekend is that everything of a personal or identifying nature must be kept strictly confidential. I was not allowed to make notes. I could not bring in a pencil or a notebook. A pencil is a potential weapon.

In fact, I am not supposed to bring in or take out anything. This is a secure facility and any object could be what is called contraband. Visitors and outside AVP participants are not permitted to give an inmate anything.

Ray is allowed to bring in sandwiches and some fruit because we do not know whether we will be fed or not. We do get one meal which I can't eat – more on that later. And I am permitted to bring in a couple of newspapers, The Boston Globe and the New York Times. Inmates pounce on them and pass them around.

At first, I feel controlled and even censored by the strict rule of confidentiality. For a writer, personal details are everything. But I quickly come to realize that for this weekend to be successful, confidentiality is everything. Without it, the inmates would never share their stories and real feelings – and several inmates tell me just that.

With confidentiality, inmates feel safe enough to share their true feelings about being in prison, how they are treated, what they think of the CO's, what they must do to survive, problems with cell mates or “cellies,”and their personal stories.

Ray, Marge, and the inmate facilitators enter. Ray explains the ground rules, which are written on the blackboard behind him: confidentiality, no putting yourself down or others, give everybody a chance to talk, don't talk too long, listen closely, volunteer only yourself, everybody has the right to pass or not take part.

A gentle soul, Ray speaks softly and is about as nonthreatening as a grown man can be in a leadership role. He quickly hands things over to two inmate facilitators, who are veterans of AVP and have received advanced training. They explain the weekend program in greater detail, as well as their roles. Well-prepared, polite, soft-spoken, fully-involved, they conduct themselves like a couple of pros.

The inmates are from all parts of the prison; most do not know each other. As a way to put names with new faces, we are all asked to do something mnemonically clever: choose a positive adjective to use with our first name in which the first letter of each is the same. After a few moments to think, we go around the room. I choose Good George. Ray is Radiant Ray. Marge is Magic Marge.

Leaving out their first names, some of the adjectives chosen by inmates are Meaningful(my son's double), Marvelous, Excellent, Energetic, Courageous, Elevated, Humble, Jazzy, Blessed, Racecar, Boy. Then we take turns going around the room trying to remember the names. I don't do very well. I tell myself that its because I am nervous.

I am surprised at how well the inmates do. One of them not only reels off everybody's name, but then, to show that it was no fluke, does it backwards. That takes big-time listening and brain power. I couldn't do that in a million years.

As we take turns pairing off and going through various exercises with heavy emphasis on listening and honesty, in no time we are all on a first name basis. I find myself face to face with one inmate after another talking about such topics as the causes of violence, things we have done that we are the most proud of, a personal problem that we are working on right now.

After each exercise, the floor is thrown open for discussion. At first, I am more observer than active participant. But there is no shortage of inmates eager to have a say. And just about every one of them does so with remarkable honesty.

Though some Hispanic inmates have trouble speaking in English and many inmates speak in street lingo, all manage to make their points. And many do so graphically, powerfully, describing broken lives and dreams with a quiet rage. No one is interrupted. No one is put down.

We are in a maximum security prison, but it feels more like an undergraduate educational seminar except for sentences starting with “Yo,” and lots of “You know what I'm saying, man,” and references to “dudes” and “bros.” I have a one-on-one session with a young black convict with dreadlocks down to his waist, who if I saw him walking toward me in Worcester's Main South, I'd cross the street to avoid him.

But he is softspoken with beseeching eyes. He is more than willing to sit face-to-face with a stranger from the outside and say things about himself that he is surely not in the habit of saying. He says he feels lonely and abandoned and, in a later session, I and the rest of the group learn why. I cannot disclose what he shared with us. I can only say that it was heartbreaking, frustrating, but also remarkable in the way his sharing appeared to touch everybody in the room, including me.

As the weekend progresses, I hear one heartbreaking story after another. And what stories I hear in that room! Of abandonment, foster homes, grinding poverty, violence and drug-dealing in the projects and the back streets of Hartford, the cruelty of some CO's, anger, hopelessness, how prison life makes inmates unfit for the outside world.

Feeling safe, no CO's in sight, confident that confidentiality will be observed, convicted criminals unload bottled-up emotions in torrents. I repeatedly hear about the meanness of one particular CO who “treats us like animals” and loves to “write up tickets” for “stuff we don't do.” They don't tell me his name, just the name they have for him, which can't be given here. But I don't think I will ever forget it.

When a CO comes by periodically to do a count (to make sure that all inmates are present and accounted for), there is instant silence. As soon as an inmate sees a CO, he raises his hand. When a hand goes up, nobody says a word. There is a deathly silence.

The inmates don't want the CO's to hear a thing. The AVP conference room is perhaps the only place in the prison where inmates can interact with each other without CO supervision. Throughout the prison, every effort is made to keep prisoner interaction under strict control.

Inmates are hustled from place to place in small groups. They eat in small groups, not in a large hall. Times for eating are not announced and vary. Without discussion, CO's just show up and herd inmates out to a lunch area. Or sometimes, also without notice, lunch is delivered in take-out containers on a cart.

Maximum security requires such precautions. The less inmates interact with each other, the less chance they have to create trouble. The smaller the number of inmates together at one time, the easier it is to control any violent outburst. When inmates don't know when out-of-cell events like lunch are going to happen, they can't collude, can't plan. It's hard to organize trouble when you don't know when things are happening and are kept constantly off balance.

Inmates and the CO's necessarily have an adversarial relationship. They openly don't like each other. They view each other from across a vast divide of distrust and suspicion. In a maximum security prison, it can't be any other way. The CO's have a job to do: to maintain secure control of inmates at all times. And inmates naturally bristle under such tight control.

The unfriendliness of the CO's toward us is also understandable. We represent a break in absolute control. We are non-inmate, non-felon outsiders who for many hours give inmates a chance to speak their minds, to compare notes, and perhaps develop attitudes.

The prison administration is at best ambivalent toward AVP and does not exactly treat us like honored guests. For example, the prison used to provide water and coffee but stopped doing so without explanation.

Yet it is telling that the prison continues to admit AVP and people like Radiant Ray and Magic Marge, and me, Good George, for a compelling reason: undeniable proof that AVP promotes security and non-violence better than anything the prison administration and the CO's can do themselves. AVP is here because it is in the best interests of all concerned – the prison, the inmates, and society.

In an all-male, maximum security prison like this, the level of rage is so great that violence can break out at any time and for seemingly no reason. Most of the violence here takes place among the younger inmates in the so-called “school block.” The inmates taking part in this weekend are mostly older, tired of senseless violence, and want something better for themselves. They call the inmates in the school bloc a bunch of “young hotheads.”

Late in the day on Saturday, the inmate facilitators direct their fellow prisoners in role-playing exercises with the goal of understanding – and preventing – the violence that often breaks out in three different settings in the prison: the dining hall, the TV room, and the showers.

Basically, what the inmates do is put on three mini-plays from daily prison life in which violence erupts. In the dining hall, it is over seating (which involves status and “respect”). In the TV room, an inmate turns off the TV set (TV is a prison lifeline). In the shower scene, it is over an imate removing another inmate's clothing from a shower stall (touching another inmate's property is a big no-no).

The settings have been chosen by the inmates. They have written the script and play all the parts. I could have been one of the actors, but instead opt out as is my right under the rules. I decide not to take part simply because I am exhausted after some eight straight hours of communication exercises. My brain needs a rest.

So I pull up a chair and have “Saturday night at the theater” in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. Inmate-facilitators direct. The inmate-actors put everything into their parts. There are villains. There are interceding good guys. There are innocent bystanders who waver one way or another, toward or away from violence. In each play, there is a peaceful denouement.

Sometimes the actors improvise, often hilariously. In addition to turning off the TV set, one actor decides to also put it out of commission by going through the motions of pouring water on it. Inmates in the audience roar with laughter. And this happens over and over. It is some of the funniest stuff I have seen in a long, long time.

Shorty before, the inmate-actor who poured the water on the imaginary TV and who was laughing and enjoying the fun as much as the audience, had told the circle of the rage he felt over his abandoning mother. He has not seen her for nearly all of his adult life. He told us the exact month and day that he last saw her. If he were to see her tomorrow, he told us exactly what he would say to her and what he would do to her.

I can't say what that was, but it was chilling and I will never forget it. Nor will I ever forget the date that he last saw his mother. It is imprinted upon my usually unreliable memory. If Radiant Ray or Magic Marge were to ask me for the date, I can give it to them.

Periodically, the inmate director calls, “cut.” And then he grills the actors about the scene they had just played. Did the scene accurately portray what actually happens here? Why or why not? How did you feel when you backed down? What part did the others play in encouraging or preventing violence?

There is a lively discussion among the director, the actors, and the audience. With each scene, the process of pausing, questioning, and rethinking personal attitudes toward violence takes place under the guidance of inmate-directors.

Along with Radiant Ray and Magic Marge, I sit in the audience taking it all in – and laughing along with the inmate audience. Mostly it is serious. Often is so funny that you can't help laughing out loud. I wish I had a video camera.

What I am seeing is something the outside world cannot imagine happening in a maximum security prison. On YouTube these plays would get a zillion hits. I wonder how many years I would get for videotaping this? Five? Ten? A million-dollar fine? I now know how easy it is to get put in jail for years.

These inmate-actors are hardened criminals?

Half-way through the weekend, after hours of intimate talks with these inmates, after laughing with them, after playing fun games with them-- such as Simon Says -- between serious communication exercices, I see only human beings.

I started the weekend with my left brain -- the logical, analytical, rational side – calling the shots. I looked for reasons why and telling details. But gradually, as I got to know these guys and as they got to know me, my right brain took over. This is the side of the brain that is holistic, intuitive, subjective as opposed to objective, and all about feelings.

I began to like these guys. Soon I felt comfortable enough to share personal things about myself, such as that I had spent my childhood in foster homes as many of the inmates had. I even admitted to the group that when I was a kid and anybody called me a “state kid,” I replied with my fists.

Having some fun, I went up to the inmate who had recited everybody's name forwards and then backwards and grabbed him by the neck and waved my clenched fist in his face. “Yo,” I said. “You think you can put me down like that in from of everybody and get away with it? Huh? Huh?”

At least a foot taller than me and outweighing me by at some 50 pounds, he gazed serenely at me with his arms at his side.

“What you got to say for yourself, man,” I said in my best street tough voice, cocking my arm for the blow, “before I take you down”?

He just looked at me.

I took my left arm off his neck and lowered my right. “I'm backin' off now, man,” I said, “but only because we're doin' nonviolence here. Next time you pull that crap, I take you down. Got that?”

“Got it,” he said. “And thank you for backing down.”

Then we had a hearty laugh together.

People on the outside do not see this human side. Many say: you do the crime, you do the punishment. If punishment is what you want for these inmates, rest assured. They pay for their crimes every single day. You can't spend hours with these inmates without getting a sense of what an awful thing it is to be locked up in prison.

You are herded everywhere like goats. The CO's watch you 24/7, tell you what to do all day every day, and control your every move. You have nothing to say about who you live with in a tiny cell, though you must somehow co-exist with him in the most intimate ways possible, such as sharing a toilet.

If you do happen to find a cellie that you actually like and get along with, he will tend to be transferred to another cell. CO's don't like it when cellies get too cozy. They talk. They get to like and trust each other. From a security standpoint, that is an incipient threat that could escalate to include like-minded others – in other words, a group.

If you are Hispanic and want to learn English, the best solution would seem obvious: a cellie who can write and speak good English and from whom you can learn. But, according to Hispanic inmates, that doesn't happen. They don't understand why. But the reason, like everything else here, is rooted in security. Too much coziness and a secure prison are like oil and water – they do not go together.

If the one lunch I have is any indication, the food here is punishment in itself. The lunch is mayonaise-soaked noodles sprinkled with kernals of corn and mayonaise-soaked chicken salad, with two slices of white bread. I take one taste of the noodles and can't take another. I sample the chicken salad and come up with a two-inch chicken bone.

I hold the bone up for Radiant Ray to see. “Look at this,” I said. “You are the witness.”
He looks at the bone and shakes his head. The inmates say that you never know what they will find in the food and they have an interesting reason for saying so.

“All the food is prepared at the women's prison in Niantic,” one inmate told me. “They have lots of issues with men. That's why nobody really trusts the food.”

On Sunday, as we prepare to wind down the weekend, Radiant Ray and I finish off the lunch basket he brought in. As I walk around eating an apple, I notice inmates staring at my apple. “What's the matter,” I said mockingly, I and the inmates now regularly kidding each other, “never seen an apple before?”

“Not one like that,” an inmate said. “Ours don't look that good.”

The same thing happens with the fresh pineapple I eat from from Ray's lunch basket. “I haven't had fresh pineapple since two thousand,” an inmate said.

Another surprise about prison life is that there are haves and have-nots. A few have access to money. The vast majority do not. Inmates are not allowed to possess actual money. Yet the few inmates with supportive families or outside friends may receive money from them in the form of credits. These credits may be used to make purchases at the commissary.

Not that they can go shopping. No inmate is allowed to go into the commissary – which carries lots of candies and other high-calorie sweets – and buy things. Once a month, they may fill out an order form for things they wish to buy. If they have the money from the outside credited to them, that is. If not, they can buy nothing. My son's double is one of the few who gets money from his family.

The inmates are assigned chores as needed. My son's double works in the kitchen despite the fact that he is computer-literate and keeps asking for computer-related work. However, for security reasons, no matter how good he is with a computer the prison cannot allow him to get near one. He will not get a chance to read this report online and nor will the other inmates.

Other inmates are assigned janitorial and maintenance tasks. One inmate works in the prison's hospice where terminally-ill inmates are cared for under the supervision of doctors from the University of Connecticut. Still another works in an eyewear unit that manufactures the prison-issue horned-rims worn by some of the inmates this weekend.

No matter the job, the pay is the same:$.75 a day. That's seventy-five cents. And commissary prices are high, just as they are on the outside. In a strange irony, inmates and those of us on the outside have one thing in common – we both complain about the cost of living.

These are just a few of the reasons why prison life is rock-hard. What does it feel like to be an inmate day in and day out? One inmate sums it up this way: “Every morning, I wake up pissed off.” It is clear that he speaks for many inmates. Doubt not, inmates here are punished in spades.

So what is it that keeps them going? How do they survive emotionally? A major reason is religious faith, which I hear of from inmates time and time again. Throughout the weekend, a group of Muslim inmates are periodically excused so they can go into the adjoining small room for prayers. Christian inmates are just as fervent.

A Muslim elder, who has been in prison longer than most of the other inmates have been alive, speaks to the group with his eyes closed and head lifted up as if channeling Allah. He speaks in a preacher's rhythmed cadences about having faith in Allah, and faith in yourself, and never giving up.

And after an exercise in which groups discuss and decide what to do with $100,000, the elder sternly condemns the choices of two groups. One group decides to put the money into a “high-class nightclub.” The other opts to invest in a strip joint. The elder tells them that they are going down the same dead-end street that got them into prison in the first place.

He tells them they are better than that. He says they must leave behind those old ways of thinking. His own group invested it's $100,000 in a facility to help underprivileged children. The inmates, all of whom respect the older inmate, accept his lecture with barely a whimper – like children after a parental scolding.

Something else that nourish's hope among the inmates is AVP itself. As we go around the room giving final thoughts, the elder admits that for a long time he resisted the program. He didn't think that it would do anything for him. “I was wrong,” he says. “This is a great program and so much good has been achieved here this weekend.”

An Hispanic inmate says that he has been trying to get accepted for AVP for 3 ½ years. And now that he has finally done the program, he says that he has the strength to keep clean and eventually get out of prison and rebuild his life. He begins to cry. A couple of inmate go over and comfort him.

One inmate after another thanks AVP and Radiant Ray and Magic Marge and even me, Good George, for taking the time to come into the prison. They say how good it feels knowing that people out there care about them. They thank us for treating them like human beings and giving them hope.

Radiant Ray, Magic Marge, and I, Good George, say a few words. But I think an inmate sums up the weekend best for all of us when he says, “I laughed from the gut. I heard stories that broke my heart.”

We are hugging and saying goodbyes when the CO's arrive to take the inmates back to their cells. There is the usual rush to get them out the door. Magic Marge is teary. I think: I don't want them to go.

I see my son Jonathan's double waving at me as he is swept toward the door. “Good George, Good George,” he says loudly over the din. “Tell your son that he has a doppleganger here!”

Then he is gone. “I will, my friend,” I say to no one. “I will.”

I leave prison late Sunday afternoon, and it feels so good to be outside. I make a run for my free life. It is a glorious fall day. The sun is out. There is a brisk breeze. The trees are ablaze with color. Unlike those unfortunates I have just spent the weekend with, I am free to enjoy it --but I am very sad for them.

I hope that I have been of some help.

So long and keep moving.

Culture of Violence: When Killing is Normal and Serial Killing is Entertainment.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:28:00 +0000

It is Saturday night, party time for college students in an old three-decker a few blocks from Becker College in Worcester, Mass. The music is loud. The beer is flowing. As the party winds down, four young men show up uninvited, all non-Becker students. They are asked to leave. An argument breaks out. And then a fight.

The fight spills out onto the street. Within minutes, 19-year-old William L. Smith, a transfer Becker student from Scotland, Maryland, who is looking forward to his courses in sports management and going out for basketball, falls to the ground after a single knife thrust to his heart. He is rushed to UMass Memorial Medical Center where he is pronounced dead around 2:45 A.M.

Police recover the knife used in the slaying. A few day's later, a 19-year-old Worcester resident, Andre J. Thompson, is arrested in connection with the killing. He is held in $75,000 cash bail. The investigation continues as this is being written.

More than 150 Becker Students, many of them in tears, hold an impromptu Sunday evening candlelight vigil in honor of their well-liked fellow student, William L. Smith. Even though he had been on campus a short time, "Will" had made many friends.

Aimee Giza, an English professor at Becker had Smith in her class. "Everyone loved him," she told a reporter. "He seemed to be friends with everyone. I never heard a bad word about him."

In his hometown of Scotland, Maryland, he is mourned by 1,500 at memorial services attended by Becker College officials and a busload of Becker students. Family and friends remember their Will as a "nice kid" who "gets along with everyone" and who was an all-star high school athlete in baseball, basketball, and football. Will is an in-shape, six-foot one inch, 175-pounder when he is buried in his hometown.

About the same time that Will Smith is laid to rest, Worcester police investigators announce that a "person of interest" in the slaying of six women in the city's "Main South Woodsman Case" has been formally charged with the rape and murder of one of them, Theresa Stone. All the women worked as prostitutes in the Main South area of Worcester.

The five women ranged in age from 29 to 40 and had a total of 22 children. All were poor. All led struggling, fragile lives. Theresa Stone was discovered on a Fitchburg, Mass road in October 1996. She had been raped and strangled. Two, Betzaida Montalvo and Carmen Rudy, were found in June 2003 near I-290 in Marlboro, Mass.

Also in June 2003, Dinelia Torres was found off I-290 in Hudson. In September 2004, Wendy Morello was found in a 35-gallon trash can in York, Maine. In September 2007, Lineida Olivera was found in the woods off Rte. 122 in Rutland, Mass.

In Worcester Superior Court, Alex F. Scesny, 39, is arraigned on charges of murder and aggravated rape of Theresa K. Stone, 39. According to the coroner's report, she died of "asphyxia caused by strangulation by a ligature." The evidence against Scesny includes DNA drawn from him in another case in which he had been charged, and acquitted of, sexually assaulting and trying to smother a woman in a West Boylyston Motel on March 17, 2007. The DNA matches that found in the Fitchburg case of Theresa K. Stone back in 1996. Scesny lived in Fitchburg at the time.

The thing that strikes me most about Scesny is that he looks and acts so normal. Indeed, with an athletic build and a full head of dark hair in a stylish haircut, the guy is downright handsome. Looking at him, it's hard to imagine him as a serial killer. Oh, sorry. He is accused of one murder. The office of the Middlesex District Attorney will say only that "he is certainly a person of interest in our investigation into the Metrowest murders in our county."

There is good reason to see why. The skeletal remains of Ms. Montalvo and Ms. Rudy were found on the grounds of a school, the Hillside School in Marlboro, where Mr. Scesny's father was caretaker. The younger Scesny lived at an address owned by the school. The deaths of the other two women, Ms. Morello and Ms. Olivera, were similar to those of the other three victims.

The killings of Will Smith and these six women did not happen in some faraway place. They happened a few miles from my home. I play tennis a few blocks from where young Will Smith met a sudden, senseless, violent end before his life had even begun. Tragically, the story of Will Smith is one that we have all seen played out many times.

Young people, often college students (Worcester has 10 colleges), have a party. There is music, horseplay, and plenty of drinking. A look or a word hits someone the wrong way. Words are exchanged. There is pushing and shoving. Suddenly a knife or gun is drawn -- and a young man falls bleeding and dies.

Or maybe it's a gang killing. Almost exactly a year ago, two young men were gunned down in an apartment on the very street where Will Smith was killed. Two intruders barged into the building, stormed up the stairs, kicked in the door, and opened fire on Andrew P. Robinson, 29, and Luis Acevedo, 24, killing them both.

The killings, which took place in a quiet, well-kept neighborhood right near a community elementary school, shocked and frightened residents. In the photo, a TV reporter interviews a community activist with the apartment where the murders took place in the background.

I find myself getting used to it. "Another stabbing," I say to my wife Barbara as we read the papers over breakfast.

"Yeah, I saw that," she says.

We could be talking about the weather.

Has killing become mundane? Are we so used to violence that we barely notice it? Has it become so much a part of our lives that we look upon violence and killing as normal? Do we have a mass morbid fascination that keeps us actually wanting more? Do we contrive to set aside moral qualms so that the killing can continue, bigger and better? Most unsettling of all, has killing become entertainment?

In the latest New Yorker, there is a full-page color ad for the season premiere of "Dexter." The ad is shown here. "Dexter" is about the adventures of a serial killer. The cover shows him with a bloodied knife that he has used on his most recent victim. He is asking us, his confidantes, to keep quiet about what we know, presumably so the killings can continue. It is a conspiracy of death and we are all asked to be in on it because it is right and because it is good entertainment.

The ad explains:

"Okay, so he kills people. We all have our little secrets. Cut Dexter Morgan some slack, though -- once you get past the whole murder thing, he's really a likeable guy. You don't get to be America's favorite serial killer without considerable charm, not to mention something that his fellow serials lack: standards. you see, he's a serial killer who kills other serial killers. He has found a way to feed his dark impulses while making the streets safer for the rest of us. It doesn't exactly make him a "good" guy, but he certainly has a refreshing take on taking life."

Lots of viewers agree since "Dexter" is now in its third season on Showtime. I had never seen a single installment and had no desire to see one now. But I decided to look in on the season premiere to see if it was a sick as I expected it to be. It is. This is a character, played by Michael C. Hall, who is likeable and normal to a fault --a job as a forensic expert in the Miami-Dade Police Department, an apartment, a girlfriend who calls him a "great, gentle, generous guy" and falls all over him.

She doesn't know that the only reason he is seeing her is that not having a girlfriend at his young age would only raise eyebrows. It wouldn't be "normal." "She assumes we've taken it to the next level," Dexter says. "She doesn't know yet, I don't have a next level."

On the job, he brings donuts for the cops and he makes them look good by helping them close cases. He's a good guy as opposed to all those bad guys out there. He makes it impossible for any cop to look at him and say "serial killer," even if one should come upon him with a corpse and a bloody knife in his hand.

Dexter Morgan is not your street-level psychopath. He's got class. He's a charmer. But he would be the first to describe himself as a soulless vendetta machine. In a simple, to-the-point voiceover narration, he says, "I'm a very neat monster," while packing up the remains of a pederast and child murderer into a few tall kitchen bags. "Whatever made me the way I am left me hollow, empty inside. People fake a lot of human interactions, but I fake it all, and I fake it very well...."

Fake humanity. Morally condoned killing. Just what we need. If that's not enough for a thumbs-down on "Dexter," there's the obscene language. If THAT won't keep you away, how about fake, empty entertainment that's just as soulless as Dexter Morgan himself?

But surely, you are thinking, "Dexter" is an aberration. Would that it were. For a female counterpart to Dexter Morgan, you can pick up a copy of a new book by Chelsea Cain, "Sweetheart." It's about a beautiful serial killer who likes to watch her victims suffer, combining blood lust with sadism. Her favorite victims are children.

This psychopath's name is Gretchen Lowell. Like Dexter Morgan, she has standards. She speaks softly, has impeccable blonde hair, and dresses tastefully. Her love interest is Detective Archie Sheriden who in the past has been duped and tortured by his "sweetheart." (She tied him to a gurney, poured drain cleaner down his throat, removed his spleen and carved up his torso with a scalpel).

He enjoyed it. Though physically scarred by Gretchen, Archie wants more. He cannot stop fantacizing about being tortured by his beautiful blonde sweetheart, even while attempting a modicum of normalcy with his long-suffering wife. For most of the book, Archie struggles with sexual Stockholm syndrome -- in which a victim is emotionally attached to a victimizer -- while the reader is caught up in the fear that Gretchen will torture, literally, his innocent wife and children.

With Gretchen's penchant for amateur surgery, "Sweetheart" is graphic. She likes to leave entrails as a memento mori. You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking that Gretchen Lowell and Dexter Morgan would be perfect for each other. I can see it now, a new TV series on Showtime: "Dexter and Gretchen." Sure, it would be a new low in sick violence. But can you imagine how popular it would be?

That almost certain popularity says a lot about us as Americans. We are not only drawn to violence as entertainment, but commit it, accept it, tolerate it, and ignore it as we go about our lives. It is my wife and I barely noticing the latest killing around where we live because we have accepted it as normal.

When sudden violence takes the life of a college student like Will Smith, it is an old story. Partying young men always drink too much, then get into an argument that turns into a fight and someone is shot or stabbed to death. We think: That's never going to change and move on.

Even the violence that the Dexter-like Alex F. Scesny is accused of (raping and strangling Theresa K. Stone) and suspected of (raping and strangling five other women working as prostitutes in Worcester), we take in our stride. Six women are horrifically dead and 22 innocent, motherless children are bequeathed a heritage of violence. We say, "Isn't there a TV program about that? We should watch it. When is it on?"

So, yes, just as the violence goes on, so does life. I pick up today's (October 1) Worcester Telegram & Gazette. There is a headline saying that two men have just been given life imprisonment without parole in a man's killing. I wonder: what killing was that? I read the story.

Oh, yeah, that one. The one where a 22-year-old Worcester man, Bernard Johnson, had just proposed to his girlfriend and the happy couple went off to a party in Somerville. Upon leaving the party, Johnson was confronted by Valentino Facey, 21, who tried to grab his gold chain. They struggled. Facey pulled a gun. Another man, Walter Norris, 20, ran up with a gun. Johnson was shot several times "as a group of other men watched," according to today's story.

I had forgotten that one.

So long and keep moving.

Whittier Farms: A 100-year-old Family Farm Battles History and the Odds.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:53:00 +0000

At Whittier Farms in West Sutton, Mass., fields of corn stalks stand in precise rows: tall, straight, proud, resplendant in identical tasseled green, an army on parade, an army ready for orders. Its ears of corn are ripe and ready. Mission accomplished, Sir!

Near two giant silos, registered black and white Holstein cows munch placidly on green meadow, producing some of the purest, most wholesome milk around. The herd of 350 is fed a combination of grass, corn silage, and commercial grain. Ready for milking, Sir!

If this sounds like armies in the field, they are. If it sounds like Whittier Farms is at war, it is. The scene may be a picture postcard of an old-time New England farm, which it is, but it is also a battlefield. Whittier Farms, like many family farms in Massachusetts and across the U.S., is under attack.

A half century ago, there were about 5,000 family farms in Massachusetts. By 1980, the number had been reduced to 630. In 2000, the number was 247. Today, Whittier Farms is one of just 189 working family farms.

Even though the Whittier family has been farming this 500 acres since the early 1900's and doing so successfully; even though it is considered an important community asset with many friends and supporters, it faces an uphill struggle.

Against Whittier Farms are economics, such as the rising costs of energy; large-scale corporate farming, which keeps growing and squeezing farm families off the land; federal farm policy whose subsidies favor the big agribusinesses, but don't do much to help family farms like Whittier Farms; and longterm trends of rising farmer productivity and falling farm prices.

The amazing productivity of American family farmers has actually hurt them. In the non-farm world, when you produce more, you get paid more. In the world of farming, you can grow more and actually earn less.

Big agribusinesses get around this by employing big-time lobbyists to game the subsidy system. Family farms like Whittier farms get crushed by the immutable laws of supply and demand and farm policy willing to relegate the family farm to history.

You've noticed that food prices are going through the roof. But farmers get little or none of this extra cash flow. Almost all of it goes to those that "add value" in the many production stages from farmer to consumer. The price of oil has recently fallen back but increases in packaged food derived from corn, such as Kellogg's Corn flakes, have held. They're also loaded with high fructose corn syrup, which many nutritionists say is unhealthy and even dangerous. See earlier blog on high fructose corn syrup.

Kellogg executives argue that the company must recapture lost profits. Yet complex formulas under the federal farm bill leave family farmers no way to do the same. The only way Whittier Farms can make more money from federal subsidies is by producing more -- which depresses corn prices.

The first thing I notice when I go into the Whittier Farms store are the low prices. I ask the woman on duty at the store, "Is that corn any good?" She laughs and replies with an emphatic, "yes." I buy fresh sweet corn of 25 cents an ear and red grapes for 1.67 a pound, the lowest prices I have seen anywhere. (In a taste test later that night, both turned out to be fresh and delicious.)

After paying, I asked her if I could talk to someone about corn. She said, "Sure, that would be Wayne." He was not around around, so she gave me his card, saying she was sure he would be happy to talk to me. I later learned that this was Wayne's wife, Mary, who runs the store.

So here I am, old, ignorant of corn and farming except for macroconcepts -- such as those above from my obsessive reading of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc. -- and unbelievably nosy. A few days later, I show up unannounced in the middle of the afternoon asking for Wayne. That would be Wayne Whittier of the 4th generation of Whittiers to farm this land. Also self-important, I expect Wayne to halt work and talk to me -- someone he has never set eyes upon and who could be a kook or con man or worse -- about how things are for the Whittiers. He not only does exactly that but does so with warmth and candor.

"Sure," Wayne Whittier said, "We can sit out on one of the picnic tables." We walk out together. He is 45, tall, trim, muscled, with large, powerful hands. His face is weathered. Towering over me, a runt, he could probably pick me up and twirl me over his head.

This is no desk jockey. This is no absentee agribusiness executive living off federal farm subsidies (though Whittier Farms does receive modest federal subsidies that are "not enough to count on"). This is a working farmer, as I would shortly find out.

On a beautiful early September mid-afternoon, we sit face to face on a picnic table in a combination public common and family compound. This patch of land has been the center of Wayne Whittier's whole life. He points out the house where he was born and where his father before him was born and where his mother and brother, Todd, now live as co-owners with him.

He tells how he lost his dad to cancer in 2005 after a 13-month struggle. He was 67 and had spent his entire youth and working life at Whittier Farms. The way Wayne tells it, softly, wistfully, there is no doubt that his dad's loss is deeply felt and not likely to go away any time soon.

A stone's throw away is his own solid, middle-class house where he lives with his wife and three children, 16, 13, and 9. The oldest and youngest are daughters with his son, John, in between. All work on the farm when they are not in school. He said, "My oldest, Samantha, can run the store by herself. A while back, my wife was in the hospital with a ruptured disk and the two girls opened and ran the store and my son did all the picking."

As his father did before him, Wayne has devoted his entire life to Whittier Farms. He worked on the farm as a youth and never went off to college. Instead, he commuted to technical school and became certified in welding. A truck rumbled by. "See that truck," Wayne said. "I built it's frame."

Wayne quickly gets to his greatest concern: galloping prices. "Fertilizer is a thousand dollars a ton. Diesel fuel just hit five dollars, though it's pulled back a little bit. Everything we do -- fuel, storage, cooling, -- consumes energy. It's tough."

He rattles off costs that seem very small, but that that worry him because he has no control over them and they add up fast. "The bag for five dozen ears of corn costs me fifty cents. A pallet costs seventy-five cents. That's a cost of a buck twenty-five before delivery and transportation. It becomes significant."

The look on Wayne's face says it all. He is clearly worried about the longterm future of Whittier Farms. "We're looking into all other sources of income -- selling house lots, selling development rights to the state, changing crops to something more lucrative, and other alternatives. In some ways, we're a 4H project that got out of hand. You know, picking 250 dozen of corn by hand is hard. I looked into buying a mechanical corn picker, but it costs $5,000."

And, like all family farmers, he talks about increasing his income by producing more. The federal farm bill encourages him to do so. Corn is one of the commodity crops that the farm bill subsidizes to the tune of "$25 billion a year ( the other four are wheat, soybeans, rice, and cotton) "We used to have a twenty ton per acre target," Wayne said. "We moved that up to twenty-five. Now our target is thirty ton of corn per acre."

Wayne's face brightens, however, when he talks about the quality of the corn that he grows. "We sell corn in the store for twenty-five cents an ear, the same as at Wall-Mart. Our corn is top quality and fresh. I won't say how long I thought that corn I saw in Wall-Mart was sitting in there because I'll get in trouble. All the corn in our store is freshly picked. The best goes into the store and the rest is wholesaled."

In addition to "cow corn," Whittier Farms grows three genetically modified varieties of sweet corn. The SE variety, for example, stands for sugar-enhanced and, Wayne said, "produces good corn flavor and the sweetness that people are looking for."

He is a strong believer in genetically modified corn. He says it helps him "grow a near perfect crop without pesticides. I can give you a perfect ear of corn and guarantee that there will not be a worm. It will have never been sprayed with pesticides. It's a management tool for better quality. It produces higher yield at less cost."

We're interrupted by an impromptu meeting. With a helicoper pilot-customer coming out of the farm store, Wayne tries to arrange for a helicopter to spread rye seed for winter cover. Planting rye saves on fertilizer and is used for feed and cow bedding, among other things. Nothing is wasted at Whittier Farms. But flight scheduling and the cost of the helicopter are not working for Wayne.

"Can you see what you can do and get back to me?" Wayne asks the helicopter pilot-customer."

"I'll try and call you," he replies as he leaves.

Earlier in the year, as if Wayne did not have enough to deal with, Massachusetts Department of Health officials linked a wisteria outbreak to the Whittier Farms milk processing plant in Shrewsbury, Mass. Three elderly men died and a woman in her 30's miscarried and lost her baby. Wayne voluntarily shut down production at its milk processing plant. Since then, Whittier Farms has been selling its milk to other processors.

The investigation is ongoing and Whittier Farms has issued a statement saying that it is cooperating fully with the investigation. Wayne hopes to "find out what happened" soon and get clearance from the state to reopon it's Shrewsbury plant. Whittier Farms has a growing "to-do" list from the state as requirements for reopening. Meanwhile, the plant has been closed for eight months and there is a large"For Sale or Lease" sign on the street. The front entrance is overgrown and mail is sometimes left on the front stoop.

"I can't really talk about it," Wayne said, "but the longer it goes on, the more it hurts. A lot of people hear about it and decide to stay away. Traffic to our store is definitely down because of this and it hurts us."

Which leaves Whittier Farms in limbo.

I ask about the longterm prospects for Whittier Farms. He pauses, looking around at his life. "Things are tough, " he said, "but our plan is to keep going for the forseeable future. You know, one thing we found out is that we have a lot of friends in the community. We are so grateful for all the support we are getting."

But now he must get back to work. He invites me back later in the day when he has some high school kids coming by to help him pick sixty bags of sweet corn for an order to be picked up the next morning. "I like pick-up orders," he said. "No transportation costs."

"High school kids working? I never heard of such a thing."

"Come back. You'll see."

I return around four in the afternoon to witness a remarkable feat of extreme cornpicking. It is unusual for three reasons. First, it involves high school kids, known more for hanging out than for physical labor. Second, a co-owner of Whittier Farms, Wayne Whittier, works side by side with them. Third, cornpicking by hand is hard work done at lightning speed.

So that I don't get lost in the cornfields (don't laugh; I easily could because once in this cornfield you see nothing but cornstalks and they all look the same), I am escorted by a young woman from the store. As we approach the cornfield, they are supposed to be picking in, I see and hear no sign of life. All I see is a beautiful sea of green.

"Nobody's here," I said.

"They are here," she said, pointing."Walk straight there and Wayne will meet you. Bye."

I walk and, sure enough, come to an opening, a cornstalk-strewn path with bags of picked corn all along it. Way into the field, an arm pokes out into the path, waving. And then outsteps Wayne Whittier, a formerly towering presence dwarfed by giant cornstalks.

I get there and he and the high school kids are furiously picking corn. No intros. No smalltalk. Wayne's friendly demeanor has disappeared, replaced by a breathtaking work intensity. I don't think I have ever seen human hands move so fast.

"We got an hour and a half to pick sixty bags and have them ready for pick-up,"Wayne said, shoving maybe a half dozen ears into a bag held open by one of the high school kids. And then he disappears and returns within seconds with another armful.

I watch in awe, snapping pictures. "You're no desk jockey, are you Wayne."

"No. I work." And the reason is simple. The corn has to be picked. And while he picks, Wayne also takes calls on his cell phone. Talk about multi-tasking!

Not wanting to get in the way of the work, I stay maybe twenty minutes. I say my goodbyes to mostly hidden cornpickers (visibility in a cornfield is near zero)and the rustling sounds of speed-picking human hands. If there were an Olympic event in cornpicking -- and I think there should be -- I would nominate Wayne Whitter and his high school kids.

I find my way out by the same path I came in, not daring to deviate left or right. Truthfully, it is with a certain minor relief that I emerge onto open land and can see where I am. A big cornfield at its peak can give one a sensation of being swallowed up by nature.

I turn and look back at the vast cornfield from which I had just emerged. Serenely quiet and peaceful, it shows no sign of the frenetic work going on within it, reveals nothing of its bountiful intimacy with a family farmer named Wayne Whittier.

It is his life. And he wants nothing more than to keep on doing what he has done all is life -- and to pass on the legacy of Whittier Farms to three young Whittiers who already have no fear of hard work.

So long and keep moving.

Hope Clinic: Where Cancer is "Just Another Journey in Life" and People Smile a Lot.

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:21:00 +0000

Elaine Duval, 71, arrives at the little Hope Clinic in Bristol, Connecticut for a chemotherapy session. She is accompanied by her life partner and soul mate, Larry Behr, 83, her longtime friend Barbara (and my wife), and a fly for the wall, me.

She is tiny, losing weight, and wears a cap to cover a hairless head. She has herself recently removed the last few scraggly tufts of hair. "It was good before when some hair was showing below the hat. Now that it's all gone," she said with a sigh, "everybody can tell that I have no hair at all."

Her breast cancer of ten years ago, which she had triumphed over after a long, courageous, all-out struggle, has returned. After eight years of no cancer and a normal busy life with Larry: home, family, friends, camping, travels near and far -- now this.

And the cancer has metastasized. After returning from a cruise, she felt pain in her hip and had trouble walking. After tests, doctors at Yale-New Haven gave her the bad news: secondary cancer, or "breast cancer in the bone." It is the same diagnosis received by Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of John Edwards, former U.S. Senator and candidate for president. It is a sobering diagnosis.

Then a tumor was found on her liver, requiring surgery at Bristol Hospital in an attempt to "burn" the growth off. And now another spot has been found on her liver, not necessarily cancerous, but she has been told that "something is there."

So why is Elaine Duval smiling? Why is she happily chatting away with Nancy, the nurse who comes out to take her vital signs and prepares her for the chemotherapy session? Why is the talk all about Nancy's new grandchild, her first, and how wonderful grandchildren are, and not treatment options? Come to mention it, why is everybody at Hope Clinic, patients and staff, smiling and seeming to be having a grand old time?

It is obvious now that Elaine and Larry are among dear friends. Even as Nancy professionally gets Elaine hooked up for chemotherapy, she does so with the intimate familiarity and caring of a friend. While on paper Elaine is the patient and Nancy is the "care provider," a fly on the wall can see that they are two human beings in this cancer thing together. Nancy calls Elaine "honey," as in "Any questions, honey?".

Elaine's family doctor suggested that she try Hope Clinic and she has been coming here for two years now. She knows everybody and everybody knows her. Nurses come to Elaine and Larry's Christmas party and have met their entire extended family. The chatter is constant and unrestrained as it is always among friends. After all, there are so many more interesting things to talk about besides cancer!

This comes as no great surprise to Barbara and me because we have been hearing about Hope Clinic for a long time, as well as meeting Hope Clinic nurses in Elaine and Larry's home. At a time when the newspapers are filled with horror stories about heartless, incompetent, expensive and inaccessible medical care, both Elaine and Larry go around singing the praises of Hope Clinic.

Of Dr. Virginia Wettstein, the owner and founder of Hope Clinic five years ago, Larry said:

"Wait until you meet Virginia. She is an amazing woman. She doesn't want you to call her doctor. She says, 'Call me Virginia.' She sits on the examination table and explains everything. She says we have many choices and we're going to find the right once. She's gentle. She's caring. She speaks beautifully. She knows her stuff. She's phenominal in every way. When she started the clinic five years ago, she took all the best oncology staff from Bristol Hospital. On top of all that, she's adorable."

Having lost his wife to cancer, and having seen firsthand a different kind of cancer care in New York, Larry has some basis for comparison. "Our doctor sat on the edge of the bed and, in effect, told us that she was going to die, " Larry said. "I wanted to slam him against a wall and kill him!" After that, he just went through the motions.

Elaine also experienced the trauma of unfeeling, doctor-centric cancer care during her first struggle with breast cancer ten years ago. She said, "The oncologist at Danbury Hospital was high-strung, insulting, arrogant, even to the point of making remarks about Larry and me not being married. He wanted me to take tamoxifen and I didn't want to. When I told him I didn't think it was a good idea, I'll never forget what he did next. He raised his arm and pointed at the door and said, 'There's the door.' "

"Excuse me," Elaine said to the oncologist. "It's my body. I have a right to ask questions about my treatment."

But it was clear that this oncologist did not want patients asking him those kinds of questions. "I didn't like the way I was being treated," Elaine said. "They were running an oncology factory. They isolated me. One time they put me in a storage room all by myself. I received no PET scans or CAT scans. They were indecisive about treatment, except for insisting on tamoxifen. That's why I know the difference between good care and bad care. That was bad care. This is good care."

The first time Elaine went to Hope Clinic, Dr. Wettstein asked her if she took tamoxifen. When she said no, Dr. Wellstein went on to explain that older women do not respond to the drug in the same way as young women and that it loses effectiveness after a few years. Almost immediately, Elaine felt she was in caring and competent hands.

When we first arrived, Dr. Wettstein was busy. With staff handing her notes and asking her to go here and there for quick consults, she only had time for a quick introduction and a handshake. But it was done with a smile and warmth for a couple of strangers coming cold to her clinic. "Please excuse me," she said. "I'm very busy at the moment, but I'll be back."

I had hoped to be able to talk to her for a few minutes and maybe take her picture. It didn't look like it was going to happen. I was wrong. After a while, Dr. Wettstein did come back and she sat and talked with us for at least 45 minutes. For some reason, never explained, she had a break in her hectic schedule and she spent it with us. With stunning openness, honesty, humanity, and humility, Dr. Wettstein (shown gesturing in the photo) spoke of what Hope Clinic is and why. And, remarkably, she did the same with her innermost thoughts and personal life.

As with Nancy, much of the conversation was personal: family, kids, goings-on, life in general. Dr. Wettstein and Elaine and Larry chatted amiably like longtime good friends. As the conversation went on, Dr. Wellstein spoke openly about cancer, her family, where she went to medical school, where she did her internship, how she got hooked on oncology, "rocky" times at Hope Clinic, and -- most fervently -- why her cancer patients are everything to her.

"I tell patients, yes, it's cancer," Dr. Wettstein said. "It's bad. We talk about it. Dealing with cancer is not going to be easy. But you still have a life to live. If you put a ton of bricks on top of you, you can't move. You have already lost. I think cancer is just another journey in life and we have to squeeze every drop of life out of every day. Life, that's my thing. And God. God is my guide in all that I do."

Dr. Wettstein stresses that all her patients are individuals above all else and this is a key factor in determining treatment. "Every patient is different. Every one has a different story to tell and, believe me, I hear all those stories. Everybody with cancer is on a journey and everybody goes on it in their own way. As far as treatment is concerned, what works for one may not work for someone else. If you put everybody in one bus, you're not tweaking it."

Naturally friendly and outgoing, Dr. Wettstein can't help but get to know every patient as an individual. "I'm friends with everybody," she said. "I know I cross the line this way and sometimes I get in trouble, especially with staff and business issues. It's hard to be friends and run a business and deal with finances. But that's who I am and I know that God will guide me."

She says her personal involvement with patients is beneficial to them even if it does violate the "professional distance" tradition of the doctor-patient relationship. "What this patient involvement does," Dr. Wettstein said, "is cut down on anxiety and reduce stress. There are no studies for it, but I think this approach makes a big difference in survival. Actually, I see the difference all the time."

Dr. Wettstein is from Indonesia and was brought to the U.S. when she was nine. She is the oldest of four children. One sister is a cardiologist and the other sister works at the Hope Clinic doing billing and accounts and general administrative work. Like everybody at the Hope Clinic, she goes about her duties with a permanent smile and warm manner. Her brother is a lawyer. Dr. Wettstein's parents live in New York City where her father, at 68, has a pracitice in internal medicine.

Her husband, Marcus, is an endocrinolgist who sees patients at the Hope Clinic on Tuesdays and Thursdays. With a husband working in the same space, three teenagers, and responsibility for Hope Clinic, Dr. Wettstein lives in the real world. And she shares her experiences in this world freely with patients.

Dr. Wettstein reminisced about her student days at the University of Pittsburgh. "I started as a music-voice major before switching into pre-med. My adviser called me into a meeting, I think after my third year, that I'll never forget. She told me that my grade-point average was not good enough, that she would not recommend me for medical school, and that I should think about a different profession. I just went into a depression. I left the University of Pittsburgh without finishing. If I can't be a doctor, I thought about working with special-ed kids. One thing I was sure of: I was never going to be a nurse. I'm just not a girlie girl. Then I happened to see a flyer for Ross University in the Caribbean, Dominica. I applied, took the entrance exam for medical school and passed. I went and got my medical degree from Ross University in 1991."

How did she get into oncology? "That's an interesting story," she said. "When I was a resident at Danbury Hospital (in Connecticut), we had to do oncology training. I really didn't want to do it. The whole idea of cancer was so depressing to me. I showed up the first day and told the supervising doctor that I had worked all night and I was too exhausted to work. I asked him if I could start the next day. He insisted that I work at least a few hours. I had no other choice but to work. I ended up staying all day. I found it very exciting."

What was so exciting about it? "First, it was not depressing as I had thought. And it's not all outpatient where you just see the patient in short intervals. You're with the patient and you hang with the patient. It's not all academic. It's about people and caring for them."

When Dr. Wettstein mentioned the name of the Danbury Hospital doctor who made her do oncology that day, Elaine looked amazed. It was the same doctor who had shown her the door when she refused to take tamoxifen! As it turned out, he opened doors for both. For Dr. Wellstein, it was to her life's work. For Elaine, it was getting the care she wants and deserves with the Hope Clinic.

While Hope Clinic is all about the patient, it must also survive in the often brutal financial world of today's money-driven health system. Hope Clinic is a business and it must succeed or fail as a business. Dr. Wettstein freely acknowledges that Hope Clinic is going through "rocky" financial times. "I admit that I'm not very good at business and it's because of me that we have financial problems. But we use a lot of medications that are expensive and we have to pay up front for them and its really hard to get reimbursed from insurance companies. Every medication has to be pre-authorized. Every medication has a code and if the code is not exact or if the reimbursement form has any little thing wrong with it, we don't get paid."

Many of Hope Clinic's patients are on Medicaid, the federal program for lower-income people. But Medicaid re-imbursements are much lower than those from Medicare patients and people with private insurance plans, often as much as 50% lower. Yet at Hope Clinic, all patients get the treatment they need regardless of insurance or lack of it. Elaine Duval will vouch for that.

Dr. Wettstein is sustained by her deep faith in God and her dedication to her patients. She ceaselessly tells patients like Elaine that they are on a difficult life journey and that they must live every day or else cancer wins. But she herself and Hope Clinic are also on a difficult journey of dashed dreams and financial hardship.

She is as open about this as she is about everything else. She talks about her purchase of the large historic Ingraham House at 156 Summer Street, a few blocks away from Hope Clinic. It was built in 1890 by the notable clockmaker, William Ingraham.

Dr. Wettstein envisioned Ingraham as an expanded-care Hope Clinic that would accompany patients on their cancer journey right to the end, whatever that might be. One floor would be a hospice for patients, all dear friends, living out their last days -- emphasis on living. There would be room enough for family to stay over and have 24-hour access.

It is not to be and Dr. Wettstein says it is entirely her fault. She hired an architect to draw up a plan to renovate the building. When she asked how much the plan was going to cost, she didn't get an answer. As things needed to be done, she approved work and had bills paid. "Everything was expensive," she said, "much more than I had ever imagined. And then I started getting these huge bills from the architect. I think he thought I was rich or something. I'm not. I don't have any money."

While her father put up money and his name is on the deed, all the bills for the Ingraham House had to be paid by Hope Clinic. "We couldn't do it any more," Dr. Wettstein said. "I couldn't let Hope Clinic suffer any more. Now the property is in foreclosure and the architect is chasing my dad for money. I still have the key -- you want to take it and give yourself a tour?"

We didn't take a tour, but did drive by to look at Ingraham House and take the picture, shown here. I imagined how content the hospice patients would have been in that historic building with lots of windows and light and open space. They would have completed their journeys secure in knowing they were "home"among friends and family.

"It was going to be home," Dr. Wettstein said. "It was going to be like people were in their own living room. While they are getting treatment, they could still talk to each other, do things like play cards and have the feeling that their lives are not over."

Instead, Ingraham House sits there empty, forlorn, and a money pit. Because of all the money lost to it -- hundreds of thousands -- and many bills still coming in, Dr. Wettstein's dad now starts his day checking prescription codes and reimbursement forms for Hope Clinic. Her Mom is lonely in New York City and wants to join family members in Connecticut.

Why don't her parents move? "My dad can't leave his patients," Dr. Wettstein said. "He loves them."

So that's where she gets it.

Elaine and Larry left Hope Clinic with big hugs from Nancy and Dr. Wellstein. At lunch, Elaine was still aglow.

"Did you have a good time?" I asked her.

She thought. Her eyes moistened. The smile took over her tiny face.

"Yes. I always have a good time when I go to Hope Clinic."

So long and keep moving.

High Fructose Corn Syrup: "It's Really Bad for You, Uncle George, and I'm Not Kidding!"

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:47:00 +0000

That's 11-year-old Cam Halloran talking to me. He's trying to raise my awareness of the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup and talking knowledgeably about a sweetner that is added to our food and drink on a massive scale.

I've never seen Cam so serious. This photo of him hamming it up with his cousin Logan, who is on the 4-wheeler, is the way he usually is: fun-loving, easygoing, not a big talker. But he was fully engaged in this conversation with me and his Mom, Linda Halloran.

With the three of us sitting outside the family cottage looking out on beautiful Lake Saccarappa, Ms. Halloran had brought up the subject of High Fructose Corn Syrup. She described how a recent nutrition seminar she had taken at Dana-Farber Medical Center in Boston had been an eye-opener on HFCS. In the photo below, she is shown working at her hair salon

"I was just blown away," she said. "I knew about it but I didn't realize that it was so bad. You know me, I've been eating and cooking healthy for a long time and generally avoiding HFCS. But I was shocked at what it can do to your body and the fact that it seems to be in just about everything. And it's covered up with labels like 'natural' and 'low-fat.' You have to be so careful. That seminar changed my life."

"Me, too," Cam said. "I completely stay away from that stuff and you should, too, Uncle George."

"Well, Cam, I do watch what I eat, have lots of fruits and vegetables, and prepare food at home intead of eating out. You look like you've lost a little weight."

"I have. I make sure I don't eat any of that stuff any more. On top of everything else it does to you, it makes you fat."

His Mom smiled approvingly. "That's right, he has lost weight and its because since that Dana-Farber seminar, as a family we are super-aware of the importance of avoiding HFCS. HFCS is a big reason that so many people, especially kids, are overweight. If you think Cam is up on the subject, you should hear Karina."

Karina, 13, is Cam's sister. She was away at camp.

"Are you sure you aren't eating stuff with HFCS, Uncle George?" Ms. Halloran asked.

"Yeah, I'm aware of it. I'm pretty careful."

"Just for the heck of it, why don't you check when you get home. Check your yogurts and cereals. Give me a call and let me know if you find anything."

Now I love my Yoplait Very Vanilla yogurts. Yummy. I have one or two of them every day. I also love my cereal, which I have at night with 1% lowfat milk and a banana and piled high with blueberries. Yummy. I have felt very good about these foods for some years now. Fat-free yogurt. Rice Krispies with zero saturated fat and zero trans fat. Low-fat milk. A banana. Fresh blueberries.

Why shouldn't I feel good about foods that fairly shout Healthy Eating?

When I got home and checked my Yoplait Light Fat Free Very Vanilla yogurt with zero saturated fat and zero trans fat and my Kellogg's Rice Krispies with zero saturated fat and zero trans fat and with "Nutrition at a Glance" information touting nutritional value, I felt a bit sheepish.

There it was, in both of them, under ingredients: High Fructose Corn Syrup. Cam the 11-year-old kid was more nutritionally aware than I, the grown-up writer of a blog on healthy living and longevity who is supposed to be up on such things.

"Can you believe it," I said to my wife Barbara as she took my picture holding up my HFCS-laden Yoplait yogurt and her truly healthy Stonyfield yogurt. I'm smiling in the photo, but I have no right to be.

"I tried to tell you, "she said. "but you didn't listen to me. You never listen to me."

Yikes! Shown up by an 11-year-old, rightfully, and scolded by my good wife, rightfully, on the same day. I set out to write a helpful little post and this is what I get? All I could do with Barbara was grovel on the kitchen floor apologizing and asking for a second chance. "I'm sorry, " I said. "I promise to listen to you from now on."

I suppose Cam will want me to grovel, too. Oh, well. With my credibility shot to hell and my self-respect at a new low, I'll now try to crawl out of this big hole I have dug for myself. I'll start with a few excuses ( telling you something about my character on top of what you know about my credibility.)

I always thought of HFCS as a problem of sodas and fruit drinks, neither of which I drink, ever, because they are so loaded with the sweetner. So I thought: no use, no worry. I just now realize how thoroughly HFCS had quietly infiltrated into my supposedly healthy diet of lots of fruits and vegetables and home-cooked meals using natural ingredients.

I usually do check the ingredients for things like trans fats and HFCS, but didn't with the Yoplait yogurt and the Kellogg's Rice Krispies. With Yoplait, I fixated on the words "light" and "fat free" and "1/3 Fewer Calories than Regular Lowfat Yogurts." At a glance, which is all I gave them, those words say healthy and good for you. I have associated Rice Krispies with wholesomeness for so long that I think I just didn't want to even think that anything as bad as HFCS could be in it. It was somehow unpatriotic.

These may be excuses, but I think they are common, understandable, and (hopefully) forgivable. The marketing and the health coverings are so cleverly diverting that millions of busy shoppers are taken in as easily as I was. Food manufacturers may take out the fat. But to maintain flavor and sweetness, they replace the fat with a cheap sweetner, HFCS. So my supposedly healthy Yoplait Lowfat yogurt can have twice as much HFCS as a full-fat brand!

For the record, Kellogg's Rice Krispies are now history for me. So is Yoplait yogurt, which I have replaced with Dannon Lowfat Yogurt. The Dannon container shouts "No Artificial Anything." I made the choice only after carefully reading the list of ingredients. Let's hope Cam doesn't see something that I missed. I don't know how much more battering my ego can take.

I realize apologies, excuses, and changing my ways are not enough to get me back in good graces. So let me try another tack. Since discovering the error of my nutritional ways, I've been doing some serious research on High Fructose Corn Syrup. If I share with you what I have learned, will you give me another chance? You can't see me, but I am on my knees begging. (After you grovel once or twice, it gets easier.)

Please?

You will? Oh, thank you!

Why, exactly, is High Glucose Corn Syrup so bad for you? According information Linda Halloran brought back from her nutritional seminar at Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston, HFCS is a "health nightmare" causing the following:

Raised Blood Pressure -- Levels of inflammatory uric acid spike, which can raise blood pressure by 32%.

Aging of the Liver -- HFCS reduces the liver's ability to detoxify the body and break down fat. This causes chronic inflammation and premature aging of the liver.

Impaired Pancreas --Beta cells of the pancreas become less responsive to blood sugar changes, which can cause high blood sugar, insulin resistance and diabetes.

Sagging of Skin -- the Maillard reaction, a cross-linking of the proteins that makes skin smooth, is speeded up.

Memory Loss -- People with high levels of HFCS by-products in their blood are five times more likely to score below average on memory tests.

Weight Gain -- Appetite-regulating hormones are disabled, so you feel hungry even after a large meal. Because the liver's ability to break down fat for fuel is reduced, the body is forced to store more fat.

At the seminar, Ms. Halloran also learned that you can't always be sure you are getting wheat bread even when it is labeled wheat. "Most breads that say they are wheat actually are not!" Ms. Halloran said. She said that the bread must carry the word "whole" to be real whole wheat bread free of HFCS and other chemicals.

When she got back from the seminar, Ms. Halloran went to the supermarket to see if she could find authentic whole wheat bread. "I spent an hour at Price Chopper in the bread isle. There was only one!!!! It was Dark German Wheat Bread. So that's what I bought. It tastes the same as other breads and my family is not consuming extra chemicals."

You can learn more by going to the Dana-Farber website and clicking on nutritional services.

Gerard E. Mullin, M.D., Director of Integrative GI Nutrition services at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, says that HFCS has a devatating impact on human physiology. He says that it "significantly disrupts the function of the liver and pancreas, organs that control weight by metabolizing fatty acids and regulating blood sugar."

Repeated exposure to HFCS triggers a "health sapping cycle," according to a Dana-Farber nutritional seminar handout. Richard J. Johnson, M.D.., professor of medicine at the University of Florida in Gainsville, explains: "Eventually, even a single large dose of HFCS can trigger energy shock in the liver -- a sudden, severe drop in the organ's function. And that can impact dozens of bodily systems."

I asked an old friend from Northhampton, Mass., Marybeth Home, a certified nutritionist, what she thought about HFCS. She referred me to the website of Dr. Joseph Mercola and an article entitled, "The Plague of High Fructose Corn Syrup in Processed Foods." The article states: "The consumption of High Fructose Corn Syrup not only exacerbates the obesity epidemic, it also harms the way primary organs like the liver and pancreas function, leading to bone loss, anemia, and heart problems, just to name a few." You can read this article and others at mercola.com.

There are, however, views on HFCS that are very different from those espoused by Dana-Farber and Dr. Mercola, such as those found on hfcsfacts.com. There you will read that HFCS is just as natural as sugar: "HFCS, like table sugar and honey, is natural. HFCS is made from corn -- a natural grain product. HFCS contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients or color additives and meets the Food and Drug Administration's policy for use of the term "natural."

Funny how a simple word like "natural" can make people go to war. It's true the FDA has approved HFCS as a natural and safe sweetener, but it certainly isn't natural in the sense that I understand the word. Getting from corn starch to HFCS is a long, complicated process. It involves application of genetically modified enzymes, which to me is anything but natural.

Also not natural are all those great vats of murky fermenting liquid and all the chemical tweaking -- three successive chemical processes -- that takes place in 16 chemical plants throughout the Corn Belt. Despite all the mashing and boiling and mixing and all the special enzymes required, HFCS is much cheaper than sugar. It's also easy to transport -- it's just piped into tanker trucks. This means lower costs and bigger profits for food conglomorates, dominated by four giant corporations: Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Staley Manufacturing Co., and CPC International.

While many researchers say there is a direct link between the obesity epidemic and HFCS, hfcsfacts.com -- a site run by the Corn Refiner's Association -- sees no evidence of this and cites studies to that effect. "Obesity results from an imbalance of calories consumed and colories burned," the site says. I would agree with that statement in itself, but I also see 11-year-old Cam Halloran slimming down a few months after cutting out all HFCS and that being his only dietary change.

Ms. Halloran said, "My husband and two kids ... have taken HFCS out of our lives. My husband and son have both lost weight doing so -- there's the extra bonus!! I am also losing weight, but doing it the balanced way -- eating healthy and exercising."

The start of the obesity epidemic almost perfectly coincides with the explosion of HFCS use in the early 1980's. A coincidence? Maybe. Research studies cited by hfcsfacts.com legitimately conclude that there is a lack of evidence that HFCS is a major cause of obesity. But with the livlihood of the Corn Refiner's Association at stake, it's research can hardly be expected to find otherwise.

If HFCS and rampant obesity ramping up at about the same time is mere coincidence, I find that both eerie and highly suspicious. This conclusion might not pass muster with a peer-reviewed research journal but, as they say where I come from, "it's good enough for poor people" -- and it's poor people who are overwhelmingly the victims of the obesity epidemic.

The down and dirty truth is that HFCS turns what we eat into a genetically and chemically altered industrial food. Michael Pollan, the author of the "The Omnivore's Dilemma," defines an industrial food as "any food whose provenance is so complex and obscure that it requires expert help to ascertain." Tell me, before you read this piece, did you have any idea what HFCS is? Did you know you were eating it? Did you know that a lot of smart people think that it is a threat to your health?

I have already admitted that I was only vaguely aware of HFCS and its health implications. But what I have learned since has convinced me that this is something I don't want in my body. I love corn, but I don't don't think I can now think of corn as corn. I know that just when I'm not looking, just when my guard is down, it turns up as manmade fructrose. Today we Americans consume more HFCS than sugar, something I find astounding.

I'm also a little angry -- not my usual emotional mode -- that HFCS is widely slipped to us under the cover of healthy-sounding marketing. This is deliberate deception and so-called health foods, like my Yoplait, are among the worst offenders.

Well, my guard against HFCS is up now and it's going to stay up.

The other day my friend and tennis partner Jim Kane and I were at the Worcester Tennis Club waiting for the courts to be ready. I was telling him about this post and how shocked I was to learn that HFCS seemed to be in everything, even my Yoplait yogurt and Kellogg's Rice Krispies.

"I wonder if there's any in my Gatorade?" he asked. Nodding to the bottle of Gatorade poking out of his tennis bag, he said, "Why don't you check it out?"

I went over, picked it up, and checked the ingredients.

"It's there. High Fructose Corn Syrup. Can you believe it?"

"No."

"Yes."

Between games, Jim sipped his Gatorade -- but did so hiding under a towel. We played again today and I brought my camera, planning to ambush him by taking a picture of him sneaking his Gatorade.

"Got your Gatorade, Jim? I brought my camera."

"No. Forgot. I rushed out so fast ..."

Sure, Jim. Sure.

So long and keep moving.

SCHLEP: An Amazing New System Guaranteed to Help You Live to 120!

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:24:00 +0000

Question: What could this fieldstone wall have to do with health and longevity? Read on.

There are two new health books out by practicing physicians who both have prominent side careers explaining medical principles for wellness and longevity. The first, by Dr. Nancy L. Snyderman, is "Medical Myths That Can Kill You," with the subhead, "And the 101 Truths That Will Save, Extend and Improve Your Life." The second, by Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, is "Worried Sick," with the subhead, "A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America.'"

Dr. Snyderman, a surgeon and a veteran broadcast journalist, is the chief medical editor of NBC News. As she does in her TV reports, she dispenses the standard wisdom that we have all heard a million times before: don't smoke, exercise, lose weight, keep cholesterol down, eat right, etc. It's all backed up by medical science.

Dr. Hadler, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, is a fervent and longtime debunker of medical establishment truths. He tells us that we are all going to die and holding disease at bay for our entire lives is impossible and unnatural and that we should not even try. He says that the best we should strive for is to make it to 85 still be recognizably human.

Citing authoritative random and double-blind studies, Dr. Snyderman and Dr. Hadler both offer guidelines for the average healthy adult to achieve wellness. The only trouble, according to a New York Times review of both books by Abigail Zuger, M.D., is that the two physician-authors dispense "completely, utterly, diamentrically opposite advice."

Dr. Snyderman urges regular check-ups and screenings. Dr. Hadler writes that the annual physical exam is "entirely useless" and all those screenings for various cancers and heart diseases can cause more harm than help. Dr. Snyderman would have us take daily multivitamins. Dr. Hadler tells us that there is an enormous North American vitamin scam that does nothing for us but suck up our money. And so on, right down the line.

So, given starkly contrary advice from exhalted medical experts, what are we ordinary folk supposed to do? Choose one over the other? Pick and choose from both? Punt?

Fortunately, fully unqualified, I have personally developed an amazing new wellness system that will help you develop and maintain vigorous good health at least to age 120. Yes, you heard right, age 120. The system is called SCHLEP. It has six components that are easy to understand, joyful, and a snap to incorporate into your daily life -- without grunting and groaning in a gym.

Not only that, I dare say that both Dr. Snyderman and Dr. Hadler will embrace the SCHLEP

system because nothing in it contradicts the guidance in their books; indeed, the SCHLEP system is fully complementary. The six components of the SCHLEP system are: Sporting, Creating, Humanizing, Laboring, Equilibrating, and Preventing.

And just as the good doctors have authoritative studies behind their health guidance, so does the SCHLEP system. It is based on a 70-year trial based on the actual life experience of one study subject, me. Unlike the studies that Drs. Snyderman and Hadler cite, this one is compeletely unobjective. Indeed, it is rigorously subjective.

Hey, why not? The good doctors both cite authoritative studies and proudly claim to be objective. Yet on every issue they disagree on, one of them must necessarily be wrong. So even if my SCHLEP system turns out to be half wrong, I'm doing just as good as these famous experts. And, maybe, just maybe, I'll be more right than both of them. Maybe I'll even blow them both out of the water! Maybe I'll be offered Dr. Snyderman's job as Chief Medical Editor at NBC News!

Okay, so I am getting a little full of myself here. Still, did I got this old by accident? You think I got this old by slavishly following the advice of doctors that other doctors disagree with? No, I got this old by following the SCHLEP system -- and I fully expect it to get me a lot older.

Now, drumbeat, the SCHLEP system:

SPORTING

Be an athlete and stay an athlete. Why? Because that is what we have been made to be. We were not made to sit at a desk or on a couch or behind the wheel of a car. We were made to run through the forest chasing down our living food. To eat, our ancestors, gulping for air and flooding their lungs with oxygen, had to leap streams and vault over boulders and fallen trees and do so for miles every day. To eat, they had to compete and prevail -- or die.

We need to do the same and for the same reason. The trouble with the standard advice to "exercise" is that it is not urgent enough and demands too little. It tells people to walk thirty minutes three or four times a week. The fact is that we were made to run and to do so every day for hours not minutes.

My friend Rich Pyle is a runner. No exaggeration, he looks thirty years young than he is. Not an ounce of fat. As if that were not bad enough for the rest of us, he has a full head of dark hair that he does not color. (Anybody with evidence that he does: please let me know. I'll take it from there.)

Of course, the reason the standard advice on exercise is so modest is that our health experts are realistic. They know that most people hate to exercise because they see it as grinding work. Doctors are tired of talking up exercise and being ignored. Today they settle for getting people to walk for 30 minutes two or three times a week.

It is nowhere near enough. Exercise does more good for us than any pill or combination of pills. That's where Sporting comes in. It transforms transforms exercise from a chore to a joy. It gets the juices flowing naturally. Exercise becomes a pleasurable habit and way of life. My Sporting happens to be tennis, swimming, and ice skating. None is a leisurely stroll in the park. All are vigorous, at least the way I do them.

I play singles tennis, above, at least once a week and often twice, as well as doubles two or three times a week. In summer, I often follow tennis with swimming. In winter, in addition to indoor tennis, I ice skate. Want to get your heart rate up? Try sprinting the length of a rink two or three times, which is what I do. Try playing hard tennis singles for an hour and a half, running and chasing balls all over the court, which is what I do.

Win or lose, I come off the court soaking wet and feeling just like one of our ancesters after a successful hunt. And then I do just what the Neanderthals did after a hunt: eat like a pig.

It's great fun, great cardio, and great eating. Exercise does not have to be boring and something to dread. If it is, you won't do it. So why not try Sporting? There a dozens of vigorous sports to choose from. What's your sport going to be? Don't choose your pain; choose your pleasure.

CREATING

Creating? What's that got to do with wellness and longevity? It certainly is not exercise. It most certainly is. What's more, it is absolutely vital for overall well-being. Today, I started the day with an hour and a half of tough doubles tennis and am ending it creating -- by writing this post.

The two feed each other. All the running around the tennis court, all the charging the net gets oxygen-rich blood flooding to a 70-year-old brain, stirring the synapses that send signals from neuron to neuron. The vigorous exercise primes the brain for... thinking.

It may not seem so, but this post requires a good deal of thinking. Giving myself just a few hours, I have set my pea brain onto creating an entirely new wellness system, the SCHLEP system. And it may just sweep the nation. Well, maybe not. BUT, whether the SCHLEP system turns out to be helpful or hairbrained (you decide), my creative process has been fully engaged.

I started this section with an unscholarly quesion: What the hell can I write about the part creativity plays in keeping us vital? What I got out of my exercised brain at first was nothing. Blank. Zilch. Nada. Where were all the bright ideas I thought I had? I told myself: like our bodies, our brains have to get warmed up. (How's that for a good excuse?)

And then something came to me! Here it is:

Creativity frees us from our bodies and also from the cares of the world. Creative juices are the world's greatest anti-stress potion. Creativity kills the stress that is trying to kill us.

In the three or four hours I have been thinking about and writing this, not a worry has intruded into my creative bubble. Even though today the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 358.41 points and oil touched $140 a barrel and thousands of dollars evaporated from my 401K, I have been perfectly serene.

In fact, I have been literally out of my body. I have been completely unaware of my breathing, for example, which is the sure sign of a creative thrall. Of course, now that I mention breathing, I'm aware of it. Bummer. Just like that, creativity flies away. It's so fickle, so touchy. It's precious and knows it, like some girls I used to run around with in the old days

So I might as well stop now and go to bed. It is one a.m after all and I will be up at six for a couple of hours of reading and then tennis. But before I turn in, let me leave you with this:

Be creative. Express yourself. Whether it be through writing, or song, or art, or anything else that fully engages you and contributes your individuality to our world, creativity is a free and powerful elixir that can keep you well and young all your life.

HUMANIZING

On second thought, maybe it should be RE-HUMANIZING. Gradually, over many years, we have allowed ourselves to retreat from each other. With each step back, we have lost a bit of our humanity. Marriages, family, friends, fellow workers, and people generally have become more and more disposable.

The wife or husband seems demanding. Dump the bitch. Boot the bum. Forget talking and working it out; divorce is easier and everybody is doing it anyway. Kids acting up? Punish them, teach them a lesson. So-called friends mispeak or otherwise act not to our liking. Get rid of them, more where they came from. Same with everybody else we come into contact in our lives.

At the large corporations that have increasingly come to dominate the workplace, numbers are more important than people. Millions of us are cubicle rats nibbling on tiny parts of a vast corporate system, dehumanized, isolated, powerless, dispensable. With our economy seemingly in freefall, hundreds of thousands are now in the process of being "terminated." (Along with a few other large companies, Google is a glaring exception to corporate dehumanization. It's official policy is humanization throughout the huge company -- and it is being implemented.)

In our apartments, people behind the next door are strangers. We ride with them in elevators and look up or down, anywhere, to avoid eye contact and having to speak. In our cozy suburbs, we live across the street from people we see coming and going, sometime for years, and somehow manage to avoid speaking -- though we will quickly fall into a dispute with those same neighbors over, literally, nothing.

The people we get glimpses of in car windows as we whiz by on our morning and evening commutes are literally mirages, a blur of faceless faces. It is easy and, in the hurly-burly and tension of rush-hour traffic, almost necessary to forget that these are human beings. Our only reminder of humanity is when we give each other the finger or the horn.

Supermarket clerks? Besides being nobodies, they are literally invisible. We don't even see them. If we did see them, we might notice a lot of blank faces, the result of streams of us completely ignoring them while we dig in our wallets or pocketbooks or stare silently at the cash register. Only the cash register, happily ringing away, shows signs of life.

The examples are endless, so I won't go on. I think you get the point. We have allowed ourselves to be dehumanized. And when we dehumanize others, we dehumanize ourselves. It is not only bad for our society, it is bad for our health because it robs us of joy and the will to live.

Humanizing is involvement with and caring about other human beings and not just your immediate family. We are social creatures and we are happiest and healthiest as involved members of a human community. A baby that is never touched or loved cannot develop into the human being that we have all been intended to be.

Now I don't mean that we have to around hugging everybody. If I went up to my nemesis Marty Griff and hugged him, he'd probably punch me in the mouth and I wouldn't blame him. No, small acts of humanity can be done that are easy, painless, and pay huge dividends.

For example, I won't hug Marty Griff but I will do my damndest to make him laugh. And when I succeed, especially when its at his own expense and especially when he is trying his best not to, we both become a little more human.

At the supermarket, I make eye contact with the clerks. I talk to them. No speeches, just a friendly word or two because after all they are busy. I am constantly amazed at how easy it is to turn a dead face into an alive one. A little poke of fun at myself ("Am I the oldest person you ever waited on?") can even draw a smile. The order gets rung up. There is no work stoppage. But a customer and a supermarket clerk, strangers, have shouted to the heavens, "We are human beings and we care about each other!"

I like to walk around our neighborhood. And when I meet a neighbor, I make a point of not looking way. And if I get eye contact back, I say hello. Some neighbors make it clear that they want nothing to do with me by studiously looking down until I have passed, which is the normal and accepted way. I don't force myself on them. But most reply and are quite willing to exchange pleasantries.

In this way, I have gotten to know many of our neighbors. Quite a few of them came to my recent 70th party, along with their spouses. I was happy to have them in our home and I think they enjoyed themselves. It was a humanizing occasion for them, for Barbara and me, and for the neighborhood. We are all that much healthier as human beings.

So, do not be an island. Get out of your own skin. Make eye contact. Talk to other people. Listen and learn from them. Tell them how wonderful they are. Love them. Make them laugh at and with you, as my grandniece Karena is doing at right in making fun of my grey beard. Grow as a human being. Be healthier and live longer. Humanize --- yourself and others.

Oh, yes, one last thing. According to several major studies, people with close ongoing connections to family, friends, and people generally are healthier and live longer than those who do not.

LABORING

Every one of us is a battlefield of conflicting emotions and needs, but I have not met many with the warring extremes that I live with. At one extreme, I am a wild animal (Grrrr). At the other, I'm as sensitive as a teen-age girl. ("How COULD you say that to me?").

I have always been aware of the beast in me, chalking it up to maleness run amok. But only recently, and only after years of suspicions, have I come to recognize and accept an equally strong sensitive side. My youngest son took me aside and said, "Dad, you're more sensitive than you think." I was 69 and being given a little sonly advice for my own good. And, as if to prove his point, I took it to heart like some girly girl -- without a peep, but surprised that this sensitive side was so obvious.

What has this got to do with LABORING? Nothing, really, just that I don't want what I'm about to write about LABORING to make you think that I'm ALL animal. LABORING is working like a slave and loving it. It is doing extreme brute physical labor.

I get my cardio from tennis, swimming, and ice-skating, not to mention walking up and down our big hill. But we need more than cardio. Especially as we age, we need to maintain muscle strength. If we don't, it doesn't take long before we are not strong enough to put out the rubbish or carry groceries or maintain balance and prevent dangerous falls.

What I do to maintain muscle strength is build stone walls. And I am proud to say that I overdo it. I am an extreme wall builder. Working only with fieldstone, never using mortar, never paying for stones, I scavage for fieldstone at construction projects. I generally ask permission of contractors and I have never had one refuse. The only thing they ask is that I do not interfere with work and I scrupulously respect that.

When I first started wall-building, the rock were small. Gradually, as I grew stronger, the stones got bigger. These days I routinely pick up small boulders, which are needed for a solid base, and walk(while tightening abs, the key to a strong back) with them to my little Honda Civic. In addition to building massive walls at my home, I routinely build stone walls for family and friends.

This spring I built a big wall around the driveway at the Pennsylvania home of my son, Greg. I did it in two days of nonstop, brutal work. Greg's wife, Kelly, calls me "the machine." She says that "you feed the machine and it just keeps going." A few weeks ago, I built a long stone wall at my sister Ruby's lake cottage. She was amazed that I could do it, that I did it so fast, and that it looks so beautiful. Now she loves to sit with her coffee and look out at the lake framed by my stone wall, which looks like it has always been there. A week ago, I built a wall at my daughter Misha's house in Connecticut, left, only the latest of several feverish wall-building episodes.

Call me a masochist, but I like the brutal work. I like working outside. I like surprising people with how much hard work I can do and how fast I can get it done. There's one other important thing I like about it. It is also art. It is highly creative. It is purely natural. Finished, a fieldstone wall is truly a thing of beauty.

Aren't I afraid I'll hurt myself, strain something? Just the opposite. I'm afraid that I'll hurt myself or strain something if I don't build walls. I used to have back problems. They have disappeared since I began building stone walls in earnest. Never has my back been so strong.

Building a fieldstone wall is classic strength training. It exercises all the major muscle groups: back, legs, arms, shoulders, chest. All that bending, lifting, and walking with a 50-pound or more rock is certainly extreme exercise. But in order for muscles to grow stronger, they must be overworked. Once you become strong, stress on joints is reduced, you are more stable on your feet and less likely to fall, and you can impress your family and friends with how strong you are.

When my old Friend, Barbie Bell, issued a call for people to come to a "chuck the muck" party at her lakefront home, I showed up. I spent a happy two hours waste-deep in water shoveling black muck into buckets and wheelbarrows. In a later e-mail thanking me, she wrote: "thanks for coming and showing up all those young guys with your amazing strength and energy."

EQUILIBERATE

I don't think this is a word. Oh, well. When going where no one has gone before, when creating a whole new way of living, it is sometimes necessary to coin a new word. Thus: EQUILIBERATE. It is derived from equilibrium, which means the state of being equally balanced. An organism is said to be in equilibrium when it is oriented to and at peace with its environment. The environment is the world we are surrounded by every day.

Many of us let ourselves become prisoners of our environment. We hand over our lives to the whims and vagaries of the environment and, because we don't know any better, think that what we have and what we are is not enough-- and this makes up unhappy and unhealthy.

We let doctors tell us what is good for us instead of looking into our own hearts and listening to what our bodies are telling us. I am the world's foremost expert on my body and so are you. I have decided that extreme wall-building enhances my health and well-being, regardless of what my doctors say. It may be quirky not to say weird, but it's me. And I'm at peace with it.

What is your heart and body telling you? Oh, you don't know? Could it be that you are not listening?

We wish we could be more like others who have more money, live in a bigger house, are better looking, are more knowledgeable, have a more impressive job, are more popular, are in better health. I know lots of people who outdo me in each of these categories, but I still don't want to be them. I still want to be me.

For example, my friend Rich Pyle is tall, handsome, with a full head of hair that he doesn't color. I'm short, unhandsome, and bald. As much as I like Rich, I do not think more of him because he is better looking than I am or less of myself. What I look like is me. More than that, I'm happy with what I look like even though it fits nobody's idea of handsome.

So, my friend, EQUILIBERATE. Be at peace with your environment by owning it. Liberate yourself by throwing off everything that the environment tries to impose on you that is not you. Being yourself is great for your health and longterm well-being.

PREVENTION

Finally, you think, something down to earth. Sorry you feel that way. Admittedly, the previous paragraphs might have struck you as, shall we say, flighty. Give them a chance? Let them sink into your grey matter? Let your brain mull them over while you sleep tonight?

You will? Great.

Prevention would seem to be an obviously good idea that is easy to understand and carry out. Like everything else in health care, however, it is more complicated than one would suspect at first glance. For one thing, it begs the question: How?

You already know not to smoke, to keep belly fat down, to control your cholesterol, to exercise, to watch that blood pressure, to eat your fruits and vegetables, and see a doctor regularly. The SCHLEP system assumes you are already doing these proven good things to greatly reduce your risk of getting chronic disease leading to a shortened life. The goal of SCHLEP is to take you to the next level: An extraordinarily long life in which you are healthy and viable until the day you die.

Does that mean that you have to take every available test so that you can catch cancer or heart disease -- the two biggest killers -- at the earliest possible moment? The answer is no. To do that, you would have to spend your life in doctor's offices and also subject yourself to unnecessary risk and expense.

A case in point is the CT scan, a $1 million machine that produces detailed images of the heart for from $500 to $1,500 a pop. On June 29, The New York Times ran a front page article describing how more than 150,000 people in this country received CT scans last year at a cost of more than $100 million, yet there is "scant evidence that the scans benefit most patients."

Moreover, the article details how demand for CT scans is driven not by patient needs but by the financial incentives of cardiologists and hospitals. When cardiologists in private practive have invested $1 million in a CT Scan, they can't afford to have the machine sit there unused. Needing some 3,000 scans to pay off the machine, the cardiologist has every incentive to use it aggressively and that is what is happening. It is the perfect setting for binges of self-referral, also known as conflict of interest.

Given to patients without symptoms, the CT scan sometimes does find dangerous blockages that require immediate bypass surgery, but such cases are rare. Cardiologists who oppose wide use of CT scans say that such cases are too rare to justify the cost and the radiation risks. A typical CT scan hits patients with radiation equal to over 1,000 conventional x-rays. And these doses are cumulative and additive.

I'll pass on the CT Scan, thank you. But there are certain tests that I think are important to take. An annual blood test is a must to track lipids for signs of diabetes, to check the PSA numbers for indications of prostate cancer, and to get a calcium count as a measure for calcified plaque in the arteries. An ultrafast scan, a series of X-rays can also produce a calcium score. And it is essential to discuss with your primary care doctor the meaning of these results.

I think that when we get this old, a thorough eye examination is essential. Both eyes must be dilated and checked for glaucoma and macular degeneration, diseases whose risk rises markedly as we age. And don't forget your feet. Many of us ignore our feet but there are important preventive measures we can and should take to keep those feet walking.

At my request, my VA primary care provider ordered an appointment for me with a VA eye doctor and a VA podiatrist. The appointments took place within two weeks of my request. For my book, the VA is the best source of preventive care in the U.S. In a later post, I'll have some interesting things to tell you about what I have learned about eyes and feet. Stay tuned.

So long and keep schlepping.

P.S. The SCHLEP system is guaranteed to help you live a healthy and happy life to at least age 120 or YOUR MONEY BACK!

Turning 70: A Bash to Make a Birthday Boy Feel Like a Kid

pollock.george@gmail.com (georgepollock) — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:59:00 +0000

... and act like one, I must admit. After this picture was taken, both Matthew, seven, (with the active face and hands) and I were given timeouts. After punishment and a good talking to, all of us kids were herded together for another group picture, this time under the watchful eye of a supervising adult. We were better behaved, drawing only one stern look from the adult.

The thing about a lot of kids at a 70-year-old's birthday party is that they are so full of life: running around, playing games made up on the spot, yelling, goofing, giggling, making friends with each other, being good AND bad, getting in trouble, causing bedlam, always being real.

Grown-ups see this and guess what? They forget they are in a social situation with many people that they do not know, where polite conversation is required, where there are certain standards of behavior to observe, where everything certainly does NOT go.

They begin to lighten up. You can almost see adult cares and proprieties abandoning ship and being replaced by smiles. And soon the smiles turn to laughter. Then normal, responsible adults start acting like, well, kids. And with over a hundred kids running around, little ones and big ones, and with so much noisy chatter, the party is soon completely out of control.

But what takes over is lots of love and happiness. And that is what this birthday boy saw and felt. Take this series of pictures of me and my niece Nanci, who flew in from California. We see each other for the first time. We rush toward each other. We wrap ourselves in each other's arms.

There had been a lot of rain in the days before the party and rain was threatening that morning. Fortunately, I was able to make the sun come out at exactly two in the afternoon and we were able to be out on the deck and also under the tent in the driveway.

Marty Griff, my opponent in tennis and in life, told me and told me that if it rained I would be in deep doo-doo "in that little house of yours." He used a different word for doo-doo. He is shown below left along with two other tennis friends, Jim Kane, the tall one, and Joge Tsang, right. I'm the good-looking one. When my daughter, Misha, was having so much fun that she forget to videotape the party, Jim stepped in and did so. He produced a terrific video. Thank you, Jim!

Surprisingly, Marty was on his best behavior. While everybody else was acting like a kid, he was acting like an adult. I kept wondering when he was going to cause trouble, but he never did. But then I realized why. His beautiful and feisty wife Christina was there keeping a watchful eye on him.

She brought with her a wonderful, creative gift that she made herself, a one-of-a-kind tennis racquet. It is is pictured here, complete with bandaids and a package of Aleve for the aches and pains of an aging tennis player. Thank you, Christina!

Another creative tennis-themed gift came from Barbie Bell, who has been family ever since I took her and my niece Linda to New York City when they were both 12. They had never been to the big city. I'll never forget their wide eyes and oohs and aahs as they looked up at the tall buildings and took in all the noise, bustle, and grandeur of a great city. What they have never forgotten was how I let them play three-card monte on the sidewalk and lose their spending money!

Barbie turned tennis balls into my age, 70, shown here. Along with the tennis balls, she wrote the following:

These balls represent some of the best parts of your life ...

-- They're round and have come full circle.

-- They're extremely Bright. (Don't say anything, Marty)

-- They're firm and full of bounce, yet a bit soft and fuzzy.

They may help you win the game on the court, but it's your LOVE that has won us all over.

Game! Set! Match!

Happy Birthday

Love, Barbie

Tennis players Billy Gibbons, Ed hippert, Rich Pyle, and Bob Smith also made time to stop by. Billy Gibbons is the unofficial mayor of Worcester's sports scene. He is in the paper all the time and I have been begging him to get my name in. So far, nothing. At the party, I tried to get my picture taken with him, but he kept slipping away. Bummer.

Ed is the winning tennis coach at St. John's in Shrewsbury. He is a student of the game. And what he teaches his players, he practices on the court. He plays classic doubles. It was good to see him -- and hear him on the video.

Rich Pyle is a new member of our tennis group. A marathon runner as well as a fine tennis player, he is in great shape, looks too young, and has more hair than this birthday boys thinks is fair. On top of that, he is a genuinely nice guy -- at least for now, before Marty Griff ruins him.

Bob Smith is a longtime winner of tennis tournaments. Years ago as a junior, he won the Holden Towers singles championship six years in a row, not to mention other titles in both singles and doubles. The day after the party, he and Lou Farber beat Al Kurlan and me in doubles. Frankly, I thought that was not a nice thing to do the day after my birthday party. (In the photo, Al is the little grey-haired head appropriately in Marilyn's shadow.)

Asjed Jalil also came by with his wife. It was especially good to see him since he is struggling physically and has not been able to play tennis. Doctors are not sure what is wrong. We are all pulling for him as he undergoes tests to get to the root of what is keeping him off the tennis court.

David Jacques was there because we made him come. He called me and said he was injured, hurting, and could hardly get in and out of a car. He, the iron man of the group, really was hurting. His injured leg was all bound up, making it hard for him to walk.

I told him that that was no excuse and that we would pick him up at home, drive him to the party, and carry him in and out. He thought I wasn't serious. But I immediately called Jim Kane who tightened the screws. Dave came and we all jumped on him for playing too much and asking for an overuse injury.

With his wife Bev looking on approvingly, we literally read him the riot act. I won't go into that here, but Jim Kane captured it all on tape in his video. Dave went away apologizing to all and promising never to overplay ever again. He will be supervised by Marty Griff.

Bill, Tracy, and Tyler Murray came up from Nantucket for the party. No 70th party would have been right without these longtime friends. Not that Bill behaves any better than Marty Griff. He doesn't. When I introduced him as an old friend, he said with unmistakeable weariness, "Yeah, we've known him for sixty years."

When I apologized for having to leave him to talk to other guests, saying, "You know, Bill, it's all about me today and there's only so much of me to go around," he said, with a completely straight face, "Tell me, how is that different from every other day?"

The Mosebachs, Bob and Donna and their son Michael and fiancee Danielle, came up from Connecticut. For several years, we shared a home on Hidden Lake in Higganum, Ct. and I knew Michael, Bobby, and Kelly when they were little kids. Now they're all grown up and working and getting married. Time does pass, doesn't it? Bob sang at our wedding, which was at home on the stone patio I built overlooking Hidden Lake.

I thought he might bring his guitar and sing at the party, but he came minus guitar. I soon found out why. He is now a full-time professional singer with a full schedule of gigs in Connecticut and beyond. He didn't want the party to be just another day at the office. I don't blame him.

For a good part of the afternoon, while the birthday boy cavorted with tennis buddies and friends, my long-suffering family had to cool their heels. My four younger siblings -- Marion, Ruby, Victor, and Reggie --were left to amuse themselves. They ate, chatted and watched and rewatched a video about my life created by Barbara and Misha. With all exits blocked, there was no way for them to get out.

The 15-minute video, "The Life and Times of George Francis Pollock III: The First Seventy Years," complete with music and professionally done, came as a complete surprise to me. My creative wife and daughter gathered up old photos, scanned them, restored many of them, and organized them into chapters. It took them hundreds of hours. They overcame all kinds of technical problems.

The result speaks for itself. Marion cried during it. When I saw it, I nearly lost it. The video unavoidably and vividly recalls the very early days when we were all abandoned, separated, and placed in foster homes. We remained in foster care for our entire childhoods. No one wanted to adopt five kids. The trauma of growing up in foster care, unloved, alone, afraid, without family, is something that all five of us will forever share.

(Note to Joan Halloran and Sue : I am still available for adoption. Then I could enjoy your great baking and cooking all the time instead of just on special occasions.)

But that was way back then. Somehow, all five of us found our way in the world and built successful lives. Today we all have careers, homes, and families of our own as well as each other. From having no family in the beginning, we are now surrounded by family -- as anybody can tell by all those kids at the party.

Barbara and I have nine grandchildren and they were all there along with our four grown children. I never got a chance to introduce Greg, Jonathan, Mark, and Misha, but they were all there. It's not easy getting nine grandchildren together, but here they are.

Greg and his wife Kelly came all the way from Pennsylvania. They made the long trip even though they have a lot going on in their lives right now. Jonathan and Laurie also drove over an hour to get here with Aidan and Nathaniel (at opposite ends of the picture above).

Then came the time my four younger brothers and sisters were waiting for -- a chance to take me down a few pegs. Victor was especially eager. Watching all the attention I was getting and the fun I was having, he was visibly irritated. First chance, he led the attack.

My being better looking than he has never sat well with Vic. So the first thing he did was to take my handsome face and uglify it. This is what he made me look like. Then he threw a handful of worthless foreign paper money in my face (that I had given to him on his recent birthday thinking that he would never find out that the currency was worthless).

Then came the unkindest cuts -- off-color cards and anal-oriented health aids. I cannot show these so-called birthday greetings because this is a family-friendly blog and they are not suitable for small children. While I wanted to crawl into a hole, Vic thought all this was hilarious. Just look at him laughing his head off.

I was mortified. But then, horror of horrors, I realized that the rest of the family also thought this was funny. Every one of them was laughing at me! Me! The family patriarch! In my own home!

Where was the respect?

Anyway, I took it. No one ever taught these former foster kids how to behave. As the oldest sibling, I could not afford to get down to their level. I had a responsibility to set a higher standard of behavior. So I smiled and went along.

Also, we are family. We love each other and are committed to each other no matter what. We have a right to poke fun at each other. The truth is I deeply enjoyed seeing Vic, Reggie, Marion, and Ruby and the others holding their stomachs laughing -- even though it was at my expense.

This love and laughter is my 70th birthday gift to them and to all who came to my home to celebrate this milestone with me and Barbara.

Speaking of her, what a job she did!!! Using her own recipes, she cooked for and fed a hundred people. On top of that, she did a million other things that made this birthday party such a joy and special memory for all of us. Dear, I thank you, with all my love.

P.S. Then, suddenly, all the love, attention, and joy from so many people was gone -- and I missed it. I felt a letdown. I called Bill Murray in Nantucket and told him how I felt. He laughed. No help there. Desperate, I drove to Marty's and Christina's. Christina let me in with a warm smile, just the kind of smile I was missing. Yes! Then Marty came out with a perplexed look that said, "What do you want?" Christina brought me lemonade and then proceeded to make out some bills. Marty talked about problems with a large tree outside. I soon found myself nudged out the door. Back to reality.

P.P.S. Reggie, thanks for the mousepad shown here. I didn't have one. I'll use this one forever. I'll be sending you the papers showing that you are actually the oldest and I am the youngest. Happy 70th!

Finally, let's hear it for the photographer, Keith, who took almost all the photos and uploaded them for me to copy. He beautifully captured the fun, excitement, and love of a memorable day.