"Blessed art thou among women" (Bible)

.....RH+, unfortunately has been ill of late.  She is quite frail, having lost weight without knowing why or how.  She has no appetite and has no energy to do the things I have seen her do.  Her nephrologist called one morning and told her to go to the hospital because she was dehydrated and her kidneys were not functioning properly and she needed to take care of that.  She was in the hospital four days and while I was alone in the house I was reminded of an article and a book by Ashley Montagu titled "The Natural Superiority of Women."  And I agreed with him.  He maintains that women by nature & biologically, are superior to men. Scientific tests indicate that the female brain is more highly developed structurally and functionally and it is capable of  thinking more soundly and intuitively than the male brain, Montagu says. The end result is that women are more insightful and have greater stamina and longevity--or, in other words, women stand the test of time.

.....According to Montagu, women are the carriers of the true spirit of humanity, as best captured by the love of a mother for her child.  It is the preservation and diffusing of that kind of love that is the true function and message of women. While I was alone in the house I got a somewhat different view of the superiority of women.  I realized all the work that RH+ does in our home.  She takes responsibility for our meals; she does all the grocery shopping; does the laundry--and there is a lot of it; she folds--neatly--anything that needs folding; she cleans the table of dishes, cups, and silverware when we finish our lunch & dinner; she tends to making the bed after we rise in the morning; she takes care of the pillboxes of our medication--no easy job; she pays the medical bills; she goes to the board meetings; she just finished four years of her presidency of our City of Hope chapter; she does cleaning when needed; on holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries no one goes without getting a card from her; and when I need help, she is there for me. And the final proof that shows how superior women are to men is when she shows her love and kisses me.  No man can do that for me.

What is this thing called "Love"? This funny thing called "Love"?

.....We had some good news the other day when we went to Hollywood so that RH+ could have a scheduled UltraSound on her thyroids.  She had been told by a local endocrinologist that her weight loss and kidney & loss of appetite problems were due to parathyroidism and that she would have to have surgery.  However, the ultrasound found nothing wrong with her thyroids & RH+ was overjoyed...well, maybe not "overjoyed", but at the least, "joyed".  The bad news is that no doctor, with confidence, has been able to tell her why she had such a weight loss. But now she has to go through a battery of blood tests which various involved doctors have ordered. The result of the ultrasound took a big load off my back, so to speak.  Why?  Because I couldn't tolerate seeing her so ill and so depressed. When we got back home on Tuesday, I sent her this poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

   How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
    I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
    My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
    For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
    I love thee to the level of everyday's
    Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
    I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;
    I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
    I love thee with the passion put to use
    In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
    I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
    With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
    Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
    I shall but love thee better after death.


Pretty powerful stuff, don't you think?

.....Well, I did find something else to do with myself besides lounging in my lounging chair and watching the boob tube. I apologize for the use of the word "boob".  I don't want my hard drive to be impounded by the FBI. For as long as I find it interesting and fun, I'll be playing poker on Wednesday nights...that is, until the regular seventh guy gets back from up north.  My first crack at it I lost $5. That makes me furious. While I was on the job I had a weekly game with my colleague teachers & I hardly ever lost anything because those guys were such bad poker players.  In fact. BD, handed me a $5 bill even before the game started!  Of course, I did not want any money for free, but he did lose $5 most of the time, if not more. Gee, I really miss him.  Come on down, buddy.

"Here comes the Sun...let the Sun shine in". (Whoever)

.....Today was a wonderful day...I mean for certain--full of wonder.  The wind blew open our front door.  A mystery how it got unlocked.  We were going out for Sunday breakfast and as I got onto the catwalk with my walker, the breeze couldn't but help to soften, and even alleviate, my depressed mood.  I looked up to the blue sky laden with white and grey clouds which were being swiftly wafted along by the atmospheric winds.  They moved through the sky like great white whales in the sea.  The palm trees all bent in the wind along with all the other green life, and all in the same direction, and all at the same time---it was all like music-- a phantasmagoria of a green symphony of nature.  It was simply poetry in motion--and an ineluctable approach of winter.  I never lost my awe of the fact that we are on a whirling planet somewhere in a vast and endless, constantly expanding universe.  And in the midst of the terrible times we are living in with millions of jobless Americans, with the foreclosure of people's homes, with the fear of terrorism, with the bickering of our government, we have grown out of touch with the nature that is all around us.

.....It was Wordsworth who wrote, ".....the world is too much with us, late and soon, getting and spending; we lay waste our powers...little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon.  The sea that bares her bosom to the moon, the winds that will be howling at all hours, and are upgathered now like sleeping flowers.  For this, for everything we are out of tune...it moves us not.  

.....He goes on to say that he would rather resort to Paganism  believing that it would help him to get back to appreciate the wonders of the natural world as pagans apparently did...to see Proteus rising from the sea; or hear old Triton "blow his wreathed horn".  Well, I don't have to be a pagan...but every once in a while when the world is too busy on my back, I crawl out from under and once again turn my attention away from the issues that assault me and I feel in my soul the earthly wonders of this planet...and it heals.  It heals.

"The Second Coming"

    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
       THE SECOND COMING
    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.
    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



,,,,,Well, we are now done with, I hope, discussions of what is appropriate dress in a trendy restaurant and also a debate as to whether or not Hannah is a good girl.  I know that one of the blogs dealing with dress codes had a new record of 23 comments...each reader apparently struggling to have the last word. I believe it was Unca Phil who won that contest.  Anyway, we each had a go at it.  Who knows, there may be another  juicy family or political problem that would break the comment and last word records.  I know son, Joel, is very good at having the last word even though it might be rationale thin. 


.....The "Second Coming" was written by Yeats in the aftermath of the first world war.  At the time  the economy was sluggish and the Great Depression was coming.  Hopefully the "Second Coming" does not refer to the situation in our country and in the world at the present time.  So many people have lost their jobs and their homes.  Fortunately, I am not one of them.  The money I receive each month from my school, from the VA, and from Social Security is sufficient to allow Rhoda and I to live a good life.  We can afford to go out to dinner a couple of times a week; and we can go to a movie anytime we choose.  Also, should we desire, we can go on a cruise each December.  However, Rho has second thoughts about my cruising inasmuch as I broke both hips on two different cruises!  Cruises are not very hip friendly.  And hopefully, though Yeats writes "...things fall apart, the centre cannot hold..." his vision of "the rough beast" will not materialize in these years.

"Beware the Ides of October"

.....In the last post, I mentioned that I had sent a congratulatory electronic card to Hannah on her new job.  Today I received her reponse...to wit; "Thank you.  That's a very sweet gesture to send me a note."  Actually, I was of the opinion that we sent something a little more than a "note".  But, at least it was a response.  Our sweet gesture consisted of the card and the accompanying note: "Congratulations.  We are very proud of you. Now go out and celebrate, girl!"  I was somewhat disappointed in Hannah's response which I thought was rather terse. One more sentence would have done the trick.  

.....Today, I went back to the hyperbaric treatment which is supposed to hurry the healing process of a wound that is taking its time to heal.  I don't have too much faith that it is going to work; it didn't appear to me that it did much good the last time I entered their oxygen chamber; but who knows? I'm desperate to try anything at this point.  I'm really tired of the pain that this wound comes with.  I have endured it for seven months now.  AND I'M TIRED OF IT!!

.....New subject.  Son, Bobby, who is an experienced member of e-Bay, who, in his 50s, is still playing the demanding game of soccer, who is a crack salesman of Harley's (a bike salesman, not a salesman of crack), and who has a new girlfriend named Michelle -- who was here about a month ago and who is a very personable young lady...and what I mean to say is that Bobby sold a gold coin for me on e-Bay to a buyer in Indiana.  I bought the coin from the mint a couple of years ago for $1189 and this guy bought it after a high bid of $2850.  So I packed it up and sent it to him by UPS.  When it was delivered to him, he had a "change of mind" and refused the delivery...which is now on its way back to me.  The guy must be a little loony because there is no way he can get his money back...so Bobby and I are going to sit tight and see what his next move is going to be.  The bottom line is that I can keep the coin if I choose to do so.  More to come...stay tuned.  This is weird!    (Signed: King & Emperor of all I Survey...nee Red Baron)

"Life is good"???? Really???? Not at the moment.

.....I am wearing  a t-shirt that, on the front, claims "Life is Good".  It's 100% cotton which is required when entering the hyperbaric chamber.  I'm not at all cognizant of why that is a necessity.  I am also not at all cognizant of whether or not life is good. It used to be good--at least 100% better than it is now.  (This blog is sort of a biographical journal, so I have to be honest--just in the event that it at some point it is entered in the Congressional Record...or on the editorial page of the Jewish Journal).  My life right now is overrun with a tsunami of medication.  I take pills in the morning; pills in the afternoon; and pills at night.  It's depressing and not a little humiliating for a nobleman like the Baron).  Then I have a wound care nurse coming to the house every other day to dress the wound that never heals on my left heel.  In addition to her efforts, I have appointments every two weeks or so to report to the Wound Care Center so that a doctor can look at the wound that never heals...at least not since last March when I broke my left hip. (The right hip was broken about two years ago and is trouble free).  Not so the left hip which was fractured on the cruise ship Oasis back in March.  It is still giving me problems.  I am relegated to the use of a walker...along with a few thousand other people in the area.  However, I am the only handicapped guy with a Harley-Davidson walker.  At least that's what a sticker claims on it.

.....I am thankful, however, that I no longer have to depend on Val, my former aide, to drive me to wherever I need to go.  I now can drive myself...very carefully.  It appears, however, that I do not need to drive anywhere else, but to doctors' appointments.  I have an internist whose Indian accent I cannot understand; so when he says something I just shake my head as though I can comprehend him.  I also have an orthopedist, a urologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a dentologist and an audiologist and, no doubt, a few other --ologists that, at the moment, I can't recall.  I am not convinced that any of them had decent grades in med school. As for Rhoda, I'm not convinced about her view of life at this point...she is in need of thyroid surgery which probably won't happen until the end of October.  She will remain depressed until that is over with.  Oh, yes...nothing in her closet fits her.  But two good things about her life--her four years as president of the City of Hope chapter here is over and has set her free!  And, she still picked herself up and went to Rosh Hashanah services, as she does every year.  Well, that means Happy & Healthy New Year to all of you out there.


.....An addendum to the blog about the importance of the family; Hannah Ross has just landed a prestigious job as a fashion photographer. To wit;

Skye Associates, LLC, a fashion e-commerce solutions company, has named fashion photographer Hannah Ross as their Director of Production and Studio. Ross will supervise the launch of Skye’s new production studio and will manage all model casting, photography and video. Owner Adam Hanin wanted to enhance the in-house production of his burgeoning company.

“Hannah is artistic, fashionable and has a fresh eye. She will be able to pinpoint the creative needs of our Skye properties as well as our ever growing brand management business,” Hanin says. “Our business has reached a point where it is now about optimizing the traffic that we have built. Hannah will be able to immediately raise the quality of our visual presentation, an obvious and important feature of e-commerce. I have been searching for this level of talent to deliver what our customers are looking for. Hannah is the one," Hanin concluded.

Ross is quite well-versed when it comes to fashion, celebrity and photography. With degrees from New York University and the University of Arts London, Ross is also the recipient of multiple awards and her works have been exhibited at galleries and museums around the world. Her photographs have also graced the pages of The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar and Rolling Stone. High-profile subjects include Perez Hilton, LMFAO and Lauren Conrad. 


Rho and I sent her an e-card congratulating her on her appointment.  Thus far we have received no e-response.  This omission must be owing to the fact that Hannah is of a newer, different generation.  We acknowledge that fact.  Nevertheless, we are proud of and happy for her.


Baron & RH+ atop the family tree.