I spent a good part of Tuesday morning before last in Kalamazoo looking at a big computer screen where passed over 268 shots Linda Hoard had taken of my sweetheart in various comely poses. The issue came to the fore because of a birthday present. In June’s South County News, the monthly paper that serves my little home village of Vicksburg and all the surrounding ‘burgs, there appeared an ad for “40 over 40”, a program offered by photographer Linda Hoard (niece-in-law of my classmate and one-time girlfriend Kevvie) for mature women seeking to have captured their still evident beauty.
Sounded perfect for my sweetie’s 64th, which then was coming right up. My interactions with Linda prior to pushing off to Ireland in July got garbled, but we straightened things out upon return, arranging an interview, which Kathy passed. Kathy’s birthday competed in Ireland with my mom’s 90th (same day), but I had a purple sash made for her that read “Needed, fed”.which she wore to the several birthday parties.
After their interview in September, Kathy and Linda arranged a mid-October shoot.
Kathy and I both had some “glamour shots” already. We came across the pictures as we rummaged through our huge collection of posters and pictures over the summer. Apparently, our folks decided as we entered our thirties that we should have captured our fading youthful looks. I recall my Aunt Dorie telling me she wanted pictures “before I lost my looks”. Aunt Dorie, who took over mom duties when my mom died when I was 10, has been gone nearly 20 years, and I still have some looks, after a fashion, but I’m happy she made me do it. Kathy’s mom Ruth sent her to a professional photographer while Aunt Dorie sent me to Sears. Ruth’s been gone since ’05, so she can’t defend her decisions either. We’ve framed both pics and set them on our living room credenza, but no visitors have yet suspected us of being Hollywood celebrities.
Handsome couple, eh? They should get married!
Kathy picked 34 from Linda’s 268 to keep. Linda’s said it would 6-8 weeks to process them, particularly since she had a vacation coming up not to mention the Holidays. But she gave us 4, and here they are.
This first is a diptych I made. Kathy asked Linda to duplicate that pose from the ’87 shot.
As Beevis once said, “I’d do the mom.”
Then the rest.
Clearly this is a woman who means business, regardless of which uniform she’s wearing. She got that flight suit as a guest of the admiral on the carrier U.S.S. George Washington, a perk of her duties as NASA’s Chief Scientist for human spaceflight. She flew an F-18, from the back seat, for 18 cats (catapult launchings) and traps (hook-snagged cords for landing) off the carrier.
But don’t let that stern visage fool you. Ultimately, she’s a sweetheart. My sweetheart. I’m truly the luckiest man in the world.
Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. It’s my favorite holiday (1). Maybe some of you obsess over it, but my worry is usually confined to getting the bird bought or thawed. I had to jump start my focus this year as we’re headed to Santa Fe Wednesday morning, not to return till 1 AM the following Wednesday, Thanksgiving less than 24 hours in the distance. We’d visited this charming southwestern town many times when Kathy’s brother Bob lived there. Now that he’s in Oregon with his sweetie, we can wander “The City Different” without his interference. Joining us from little Nathrop Colorado, just up the Santa Fe trail, will be June. She’s widow of Sam, my dear friend whose untimely death was the subject of some early posts (2,3). June’s a spitfire with whom we are completely sympatico. Her love of Santa Fe came from many years living in nearby Los Alamos and working with Sam at the “top secret lab” there. Between the three of us, we can get into all sorts of trouble.
But I don’t want it to interfere with Thanksgiving! So, in the next couple days, I must make up the menu and begin the necessary preparations.
First off, the bird. For just Kathy and me, a turkey is just too big. But not a duck! I’ve got a killer duck à ’l’orange recipe and a duck in the freezer! That puppy goes into the garage fridge to thaw before we go.
And you can’t have a Thanksgiving bird without stuffing! Granted, Mr. duck doesn’t have near the cavity of Mr. turkey, so you can’t cram too many chunks of bread in there and expect much. So you have to break some culinary semantic rules and prepare the stuffing ex avian. Can it still be stuffing when all it’s been stuffed into is a pot? I guess General Foods showed the way when they introduced Stove Top Stuffing™ in 1972, saying yes, you can do this America. Well, I’ve got some cornbread frozen away, to be joined by what’s left of my Zingerman’s sourdough batard. And if it’s in a crock pot, it’s gotta be easy peasy.
Then the sides:
Garlic mashed potatoes. Got the necessary turnips at the farmers’ market Saturday morning.
“Better brussels sprouts”. Remarkable what some chicken stock and garlic can do. Got the nice tight little sprouts Saturday.
Yes, that’s the recipe card I’ve used to decades. Maybe it’s just enough to jog my memory. It was easy enough to make a new (legible) one using my usual format, so here ya go.
Red cabbage. A stable at big dinners as I was growing up. Germans and Dutch both seemed to like it. In the 90s, I came across a recipe from some Austrian hotel. Worked great with large crowds. I bought a couple red cabbages each about the size of a softball and will try to scale down.
I’ve come across another red cabbage recipe which I might use if we don’t make it out to Therese’s today (see below). I have all the ingredients.
Rutabaga. Don’t know if these will make the final cut, but I bought one half the size of my head and am eager to do something with it. If I had a trebuchet, it would make a suitable projectile. I could rummage through all those recipes from my mom, grandma, and Aunt Dorie, but I recall not liking this vegetable too much when they made it. Maybe it was my little boy’s palate, but the fun of root-uh-beggies stopped after you’d said their name a few times. I found some interesting recipes on Google. I might try this one. I’ve got a little chunk of gruyere and some cheddar. And it looks like something I can make in advance.
Roasted carrots. I have some nice ones from the market, and this is a simple dish if I decide I need even more sides. I like being able to use up some pignoles (pine nuts). I bought way to much for another recipe. The recipe calls for cashews, but who wants to nut-pick?
That duck calls for some nice pinot to wash it down. Fortunately, we still have a few in our cellar. They seem to disappear fast.
Am I forgetting something? Dessert! I leave the baking to my sweetheart, who curiously has lost her taste for things sweet over the past several years. I blame it on her flirtation with the keto diet, but who knows? Flowers, but no candy, please. She still likes fruit and has found an interesting way to treat it to bring out the juices, which usually calls for a pile of sugar (4). The secret ingredient? Balsamic vinegar. She made some dandy strawberry shortcake with it, first time summer before last. And she’s found it works for pies. So, if we get out to Therese’s, it’ll be apple, if not, we’ve got a pile of frozen peaches.
So, I mentioned Therese twice. Here’s what she’s about, at least as regards our Thanksgiving. Besides being a great and sassy procedures room nurse (where I met her), she and her husband Mike have become friends of ours. Besides their day jobs, they own and operate Alber Orchards, out in Manchester, about 20 miles southwest from here (5). You’ll find a great variety of apples, cider (regular and leaded), donuts (of course), and other knickknacks all served up by cheerful well-scrubbed kids from the local high school. And yes, you can even get a drink. The got their license to serve their homemade hard cider this year. It’s called a cidery. Like a brew-pub only with hard cider. When I was a medical student in London, cider was the cheap drink you chose at the pub if you couldn’t afford beer. I always could. Worth the extra 10p. There are fun outdoor activities like mazes and hayrides. Worth a trip. See ‘em before the snow flies.
If you’ve read this far, thanks for your endurance. It’s helped me to get this written down so I can plan what I can do to prepare before we push off for the Land of Enchantment Wednesday.
I’ve only got two things left to say. First, what’s the best thing about having duck for Thanksgiving? You get to make duck soup!
Maybe Groucho, Chico, and Harpo won’t be stopping by 1611 Harbal, but you can! We’ll have plenty of food, and, as you may know, Everybody Eats When They Come to My House (6).
My good friend and Barnes buddy Stick commandeers an email network of disgruntled misfits who try to amuse ourselves with observations on the sorry world scene and also music. The YouTubes have been hot and heavy lately. So, as I sat in the stands prior to today’s Wolverines’ game, I knew there was something he should see. Even though he’s from the Lone Star State, he never caught the football bug that’s so common down there, maybe because his Austin College ‘roos aren’t such great shakes on the gridiron (1-9 this season) and his sport was tennis. Like lots of Californians, he wonders what the hell I’m doing in the Midwest, so close to Canada to boot. Since I love it here, I have to share reasons why. Football and my U are a big part, so here’s what I wrote:
You’re sendin’ lots of YouTubes lately. I thought that was my job. But hey, the more the merrier, especially if they’re good. As I sat in the stands before today’s game, I thought you oughta see what me and 110,000 of my closest friends see at the Big House every football Saturday. They hired that one-time stutterer who happened to graduate from U of M in ’55 after starting out as a pre-med major to voice over the hype video. Let me tell you, nothing like hearing Darth Vader tell you how great your University is to get you believing it. They’ve been doing this for over 7 years, right after the national anthem and before the players stream on the field, and I never tire of seeing it. The idea was Harbaugh’s, something he came up with in the summer before his first season (1).
Go Blue (which JEJ never says)! Yeah, here’s the video(2). It’s not the current one, as Bo and deposed president Dr. Schlissel are in it. You’d think the athletic department would just put this on their web page for all to see.
They tinker with it all the time, bringing in great plays by current players to balance out the ancients. They even brought in our new energetic football-loving President Santa (for real). Last name Ono. Oh No! One change that still irks me is when they purged all mention of Bo once he became controversial for the Dr. Anderson affair (3), which ended up costing the U $490 mill (4). Crumbs from that $17.3 bill endowment (5).
I don’t know if my U is “the best University in the world” like JEJ says, but it’s pretty damned good, just like our football team, and I’ll never tire of having Darth Vader tell me about it.
Last Friday afternoon, my late cousin Terry (1) was memorialized at Blessed Sacrament CatholicChurch in Harrisonburg Virginia, 8 miles northeast from where he lived in Bridgewater. He ashes are slated to be scattered at his wife Irene’s family farm in Sherando, 35 miles due south from there. In that sense, he’ll be like his parents, whose ashes were scattered on a farm: the King George’s farm where they’d lived for over 25 years.
The day following the service, his brothers and sisters and theirs who had come for the funeral took advantage of the bright sunshine to gather at a special place in the woods near Terry’s home. It was here when in a wood cutting expedition by Terry, his brother Rick, and brother-in-law Ken (Linda’s husband), one of the cut trees fell across Ken’s chest, rendering multiple injuries from which he would not recover. Hence Linda was already in deep grief as she watched her brother fade away. Fortunately, their parents had instilled in all their children a deep faith, which each has continued to nurture. Rick, a woodsman in every sense of the word, crafted an impressive cross out of that tree and erected it at the site of the fatal accident. It was there where the clan gathered.
As you can see by their faces, that’s joy not grief you see. To be sure, each ache for the brother they’ve just lost, and for the husband/in-law/uncle who preceded him. Yet God has given them this sunny day, the love of each other, and holds in his hand the people they can no longer touch.
The cross did not use up all the wood in that tree. Rick took some of what was left and threw several beautiful bowls. Thus, this family will continue to be fed by that tree, in faith and with food.
This fine family is my family, from whom I’ve been estranged by circumstances for over 40 years. How grand the bonds are still there, however tragic the way we rediscovered them. Not only are there many reasons for dives into the past, but there’s also hope for new experiences in the future. As I told Linda in an email Wednesday: I just told an old high school writer friend of mine that these deep dives into the past bring these people back to life momentarily, at least in our memories, which is where they live after all. Sometimes that comes with a regret that the memories are not richer. We can remedy that going forth packing as much in as we can by the recently departed, and those we know now! Like Carly Simon sang in “Anticipation”: “And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days”. Looking forward to some good old days with Linda and my other rugrats.
The concept grew out of circumstances. Part of my duties at the U included going out to the Geriatrics center at East Ann Arbor (EAA). Thursday afternoon was my clinic, and as I plied my way home along Plymouth Road, I passed by Plum Market, an upper crust grocery store. I began to stop there, pick up a nice piece of fish from their counter, then a chunk of bread, maybe some wine, and venture home. There, I’d throw the fish on the charcoal fire, then eat the result pushed around by the bread and washed down with the wine. It didn’t take long for us to realize, who else eats like this? All believers recall the post-resurrection Jesus encountering his disciples by a charcoal fire cooking fish (John 21:9). And references to Jesus, bread, and wine are scattered throughout the gospels.
I haven’t been to EAA for close to 4 years. But Jesus dinner persists. Sometimes we venture outside the dietary laws and have shrimp or other shellfish, but Jesus never thought much of those laws (Mark 7:14-23). Our favorite dinner is salmon steaks, and I don’t think Jesus and his pals were pulling big pink fish out of the Red Sea. But the spirit lives on, and two juicy salmon steaks are on the grill as I type this. A loaf of Zingerman’s sourdough awaits, and we’ll pull some pinot out of the cellar. Of course, we’ll eat on the deck overlooking Northwest Ann Arbor when weather permits (like today) and enjoy the best music Spotify has to stream.
Eggy lives in London now, but he was once the Austin College roommate of my Barnes buddy and good friend Chappelletti (a.k.a. Stick, a.k.a. Hawke), who is the instigator of email traffic involving a number of others, who mostly look askance on how things in the world are going these days. When I sent him my take on Rutgers (1), he circulated it to the rest of the crew. Eggy took issue with the claim that college football was born at Rutgers, pointing out that football like we might actually recognize it was first played 5 years later by a team from McGill, where the ball was oblong, not round, could be carried and advanced, stopped with a tackle, and limited by downs (2). Although the game was played at Harvard, it was the Canadian boys that came up with these innovations, and the Harvard boys took these alterations to the rest of their games, to be spread throughout collegiate football.
As my baby half-sister Jazz (for Jasmine) got her law degree at McGill, I feel a certain kinship to the school. Excellent academically, often called “Harvard of the North”, I didn’t know they cared about sports, but indeed they do. They claim McGill men also had roles in getting basketball and hockey started (3). But they’ve run into a little woke problem with their team name (4). Since 2005, their mascot has been Marty the Martlet. Whazzat? Turns out martlets are a fictional bird appearing in heraldry, basically a martin with no feet. Thus from birth to death they never alight, symbolizing constant effort. McGill teams once had a perfectly respectable name: the Redmen. This was said to honor founder James McGill, a Scot with red hair.
Over time, Redmen became Indians, complete with symbols. In the 60s, McGill’s women’s teams were the “Super Squaws”. Oh my! Students led the charge to get all the Indian stuff wiped away in the early 90s and a second movement in the mid twenty teens to change the name succeeded. Men’s teams became “Redbirds”, and women the “Martlets”, the latter also as mascot, although I believe marlets are usually depicted in heraldry as blue or black. But they’re red in McGill’s emblem.
They also seem to have grown feet.
As Eggy and I went back and forth about birds, I decided to throw the Trashman’s chestnut at him (5)
Though he didn’t recall the Trashmen, he sure remembered the song!
As I wrote him, I think they were one-hit wonders. But what a hit!
But if you’re a Dee-troit boy like me, you can’t hear that song without thinking about THE BIRD! So I had to tell him.
I don’t know if you’re a baseball fan, but my Tigers had a pitcher in late 70s name of Mark Fidrych. He was an absolute phenom: not a blazing fast ball but an assortment of other pitches, over which he had excellent control, that kept batters off balance, sometimes ridiculously so. In his first season with the Tigers – 1976 – he led the majors with a 2.34 ERA as well as complete games, won 19 games, and was near-unanimous AL rookie-of-the-year and 2nd in Cy Young voting. He was the first rookie to start an All-Star game, but gave up 2 runs and took the loss. But he also was an incredible character. Every time he got to the mound, he’d dig around and smooth it out to his liking then wouldn’t let the groundskeepers touch it. He talked to the ball, saying it focused him. After every out, he’d strut around the mound in celebration. He’d go out and shake a teammate’s hand after a good play. And he played with a joyous exuberance. Fans packed the stadiums, home and away, when he started. He was tall and geeky, with curly blonde locks and a slightly prominent proboscis.
One of his coaches in Lakeland, Detroit’s A minor league affiliate, noted a resemblance to Big Bird of Sesame Street, and thereafter he was The Bird. And yes, they played the Trashmen when he walked on the field. He blew out his knee the next spring doing kung-fu kicks in the outfield with fellow flake, pitcher Dave Rozema. He tried to come back, but was never the same, although the antics were still there. It was his arm that got him, not properly diagnosed as a rotator cuff injury till 8 years after it happened. He’d last 5 more seasons, winning only 10 more games.
He retired to his farm in Northborough, Massachusetts and led a happy life. He also worked as a contractor hauling gravel and asphalt in a ten-wheeler. On weekends, he helped out in his mother-in-law’s diner, and would frequent the local baseball field to help teach and play ball with the kids. While working on his dump truck April 13, 2009, his clothes become entangled with a spinning power takeoff shaft on the truck, suffocating him. He was 54. There’s never been another like him, and likely won’t ever be.
There are several videos about him in YouTube. This one – nearly a half hour – put together by the Detroit local sportscasters (6).
Rutgers is the birthplace of college football (1). Street clothes clad students from Princeton showed up there November 6, 1869, responding to letters from Rutgers students challenging them to a game of football (2). A series of “games” were played, a victor declared with the first score. The scarlet turbans and handkerchiefs the Rutgers players wore to distinguish them from the Princetonians gave birth to “Scarlet Knights”. Princeton won this series 12-6 and was declared National Champion of 1869. Princeton proved to be quite the powerhouse in those early days, amassing 22 national championships (compared to Michigan’s meager 11), 10 conference titles (Ivy), and a Heisman trophy winner (Dick Kazmeier, halfback & QB, 1951). But Rutgers forever retains the title of where college football began. The game was played on the New Brunswick campus, across the Raritan River from the spiffy 52,454 seat SHI Stadium in Piscataway where the Scarlet Knights play now. End zones there are emblazoned with “birthplace of college football” but it didn’t happen there. It happened on College Avenue, now the site of College Avenue Gymnasium. A beautiful 8’ memorial has stood there since 1997, sculpted by Thomas Jay Warren.
By the way, Michigan didn’t get started till almost a decade later, when it met the Purple Stockings of Racine College on the playing grounds of the Chicago White Stockings by the shores of Lake Michigan May 30, 1879
The statue isn’t quite accurate, as the ball used in that first game was round and the London Rules followed prohibited carrying the ball. But it sure looks nice and is part of a new tradition called the “Scarlet Walk” where each player touches the statue en route to the stadium.
Although Jim Harbaugh is a student of history, I don’t think he was daunted by that 19th century stuff. Rutgers has tried to claw its way to big time football relevance. In November 2011, Rutgers left the Big East to join the Big 10, joining Maryland who left the ACC and Nebraska that left the Big-8 to do the same the previous year. It was part of Commissioner Jim Delaney’s effort to bring east coast markets into the Big 10 network. Purists like me complained about the Big 10 expanding past its Midwest origins, but $$ spoke. What it meant initially was all those U of M alums in NYC could take a short train ride down to New Brunswick to see their Wolverines in a road game. This didn’t go so well initially, as on 10/4/14, the Scarlet Knights beat a bad Brady Hoke team 26-24 to mark their first ever Big 10 win. Two years later a Harbaugh team returned to trounce them 78-0, and the relationship has been pretty one sided ever since. Rutgers hero Greg Schiano returned to coach from his NFL dalliance in 2020 and is as good a fit for Rutgers as Jim is for Michigan. I expect he will return Rutgers to respectability, if not greatness.
So, it was into all this we waded as we planned our annual road game. Over the years we’ve been to Columbus, Bloomington, Madison, Evanston, and Happy Valley. I went to West Lafayette decades ago with my dad. The experience is always fun: seeing the campus, negotiating the bars, mingling with the opposition. This year, Rutgers seemed like a good target. Easy flight from DTW and trains from Newark to New Brunswick. We’d learn from our AirBnB host that Uber was a much better deal.
The ride from EWR only reinforced what we’d thought about New Jersey, with gas storage tanks and chemical refineries as far as the eye could see. But as we came towards New Brunswick, the scene changed, with leafy trees, running water, and green everywhere. Our AirBnB was on a dead-end street, a house with a garage with a suite in the back just for us. Treks anywhere started across the back yard, though a gate, and onto a park. It was a mile or more to any civilization (bars, restaurants, stores) but always worth the walk.
But we were here for a football game, so what about that? Easy-peasy as it turned out. A walk across the Delaware canal then the Raritan River, a left and we’re there! Kathy took a reqqi in the early afternoon and ran into some Michigan folks from Ludington who invited us to their tailgate. The path to the stadium went through a park populated by tailgaters paying the $40 fee (can’t buy a parking space in AA for that!). Across from the Ludington folks were some Scarlet and Gray fans who were most magnanimous. They plied Kathy with peanut butter whiskey shots which I eschewed.
The stadium was a hop skip and jump from there. Rutgers played football on their New Brunswick campus until moving to this site in 1938. Works Progress Administration helped build the original, but it was torn down and a new one built atop of it in 1994, expanded in 2008 for $208 million, holding 52,454. Naming rights to defray cost of the structure included a sale to High Point Solutions (2011-18) then as of 7/19/19 SHI (“Software House International”) International Corp. Approaching the north entrance of the stadium from Johnson Park, the main tailgating area, actually found us at the back door. Here is where all the big trucks suppling the teams pull in. Still a pretty impressive face.
I told Kathy about SHI, basically a technology company. We wondered to each other if their full name had ever been “SHI Technologies”, generating an acronym Rutgers might not have wanted on its stadium. Because it’s the back entrance, those steps leading to the doors are only the beginning. Once in, to right and left are 3 flights of concrete stairs, not a defibrillator in site. The scenery on the ascent is pure concrete, maybe accentuating the eyeful once you exit on the top level.
We were very early, so had lots of time to explore. Turning right for a counterclockwise tour of the bowl, we came on the first of many beer stands. $14 got us 2 25 oz cans of cold Goose Island IPA. Food stands were ample, too, including one run by cuties from the Farleigh-Dickinson U woman’s softball team. There didn’t seem to be a bad seat in the place. Our seats in section 106 were in row 25, about halfway up, with a good straight on view of the 35-yard line. Behind us I found a beer cart vending “Tom Brady’s nightmare”, a New England Crusher, double IPA, 10% alcohol(!) made by 902 Brewing in Jersey City. I had two of those, but I still remember the game!
Most of those filing in after us were in blue, not red. In Michigan Stadium, the visitors sit in a couple rows at the top of the bowl in the end zone. The first folks to file onto the field were the Michigan coaches. We got to watch Denard Robinson trade 35-yard spirals with Milan Bolen-Morris, our female graduate assistant, who sported a hairstyle similar to Denard’s. One thing that can make pre games at Michigan a little unpleasant is the “music” that blares from the scoreboard. We employ a DJ to run it, and his choices are almost completely hard on hip-hop. The students apparently love it. My opinions clearly put me in the old fogey column. Rutgers plays lively music, too, but their scoreboard can’t achieve the same decibels, and the music is modern pop, no hip-hop.
Rutgers employs a number of devices to keep its fans stirred up. Most notable is the ancient cannon, reportedly with links to the revolutionary war, that sits to the west side of the south end zone. It is tended by a suitably clad crew, who will fire it at least 5 times every game: three before the opening kickoff, one at halftime and one at game’s end. But the cannon is also set off after every Rutgers score — even points after touchdowns. It’s very loud, shoots a long plume and plenty of smoke.
It’s been a part of Rutgers football since 1949, when the class of ’49 bought the cannon to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the first collegiate football game (3). As Manhattan brewery heir Henry Rutgers was a colonel in George Washington’s army during the American Revolution, it is only fitting his school has a Revolutionary War cannon. Critics say Knights didn’t use cannons. Killjoys.
The blast of that cannon will be the loudest thing you’ll hear at SHI, but close behind is that damned train whistle (train horn, actually). They blow it every time the opponent faces a 3rd down or 4th down conversion attempt. Almost always, it’s followed by a blast of music from the scoreboard. Takes the pressure off the fans to drown out the opponent’s signals with their yelling.
Tho’ the blast is only a secondary feature, fireworks are a big deal at SHI, shot off from either side of either scoreboard, in unison. These aren’t ooh-ahh 4th of July Fireworks, just basically industrial Roman candles shooting colored balls in the air. They’re a big part of the pre-game, preceding every introduction. There was so much smoke on the field Saturday the first 2 minutes of the first quarter were played in fog. Of course, they get shot off when the Scarlet Knights do something good on the field, so the smoke rarely becomes a problem during the game.
Generating no noise, but still altering senses, are the light guys. They like to play with the light switch at SHI, bringing dark so they can bring us light.
All this was on display as we experienced the pre-game ceremonies. Probably the most exciting part of the evening, not counting the band’s half time show. Helping matters was that this was their Veteran’s Day tribute. Sincere accolades abounded and were much appreciated. Also contributing to our enjoyment was the excellent weather, mid 60s and clear at gametime. Pretty good for early November when we’re usually looking at old man winter over our shoulder. The band got a shot and sounded great, leaving us eager for more. Then comes the buildup for the team entrance. Starting players had already been introduced on the scoreboard, complete with accentuations. Then came the entry of the Scarlet Knight himself. We use our billboard at Michigan Stadium to show James Earl Jones extolling the virtues of U of M (“the best University in the world!”). Rutgers shows the Knight, clad in all red armor riding a white steed, getting ready to ride to the stadium. Pretty soon, he’s here! At the same Northeast entry where the players will later enter. Galloping on the field, he’s here! Time for cannon and more fireworks. Then somehow, he disappears, and the lights go dark. The cannon, horn, fireworks, and lights go off, and the players stream in. As I watched it, I couldn’t help thinking of a human ejaculation. I told Kathy only one would reach his ultimate goal. Since the Knights scored but one offensive touchdown that evening, perhaps the analogy was apt.
The game had to begin, and we took it down the field like we owned them. I won’t get all sports reporter here. The final score was 52-17 and wasn’t as close as that. The Knights managed to be up 3 at halftime, but that was from 2 fluke plays and 2 missed 50-yard field goals by our Lou Groza award kicker.
Halftime brought out the Knights’ excellent marching band. A tease that something truly strange and wonderful might happen came in the 2nd quarter as they trotted out 7 xylophones to the sidelines. Yes, these were malleted upon during the halftime show, but nobody marched with them! The whole show was nothing but patriotic marches, truly outstanding. I wish John Pasquale (Michigan Marching Band director) would take notice.
With the brutal pounding that characterized the second half, fans began to trickle out, finally with a torrent up the aisles between 3rd and 4th quarters. Surprisingly, many wore blue. You’d think for the money they paid to be here they might stick around. Maybe some had trains to catch back to NYC. We stayed to the end, enjoying seeing our second string score a touchdown. We joined our remaining blue seatmates in a rousing chorus of The Victors, then headed to the exits as we heard news of defeats of Clemson and Alabama. All we missed was hearing the lamentations of their women.
The nearly full moon and the lights guided us back, across Johnson Park and over the river and canal and it was home for a long Jersey snooze, complete with that added hour.
The next morning, in the Delta lounge at EWR, I saw hanging on the wall two portraits: Bruce Springsteen and Frank Sinatra, New Jersey’s iconic crooners. But the singer with the best take on New Jersey is another New Jersey boy who left for Pennsylvania (4).
To bring this all back to Michigan, that song will play over the closing credits of the movie about Niles’ Tommy James (remember those Shondells?) “Me, the Mob, and Music” (5), if it ever gets made.
I was never great shakes in the lab (1). In retirement, I’ve considered the kitchen my lab (2), and results have been more promising. Certainly the joy of the lab, which escaped me while working, is something I’ve found here. Still considering myself a scientist, I feel obligated to report my results, particularly when they might be of import to the general public. That’s today’s communication, as I’ve discovered a solution to what I had found to be a particularly annoying problem.
I keep a couple squirt bottles under my sink containing home-made cleaning concoctions. Why pay all that for Clorox clean-up (1 t Tide, ¼ C bleach, water to fill to 32 oz)? I also keep a 1:3 bleach water solution, good for taking stains out of my Corian counters or cutting boards.
Problem is the squirt bottles seem to crap out after a while. The bottles are cheap on Amazon, so I just toss the bad actor and employ the newbie. It happened again a few weeks back. You can still get the same cleaning effect by pouring out the bleach mixture, but that kinda negates the reason for having a squirt bottle. This morning, facing a particularly nasty stain Kathy had left on the cutting board and an empty squirt bottle, I went downstairs to our reserve to find the other bottle that came in the Amazon order, filled it with bleach and water and went to town. The stain was eliminated within an hour. Wondering if rejuvenation was possible, I tossed the dead squirt apparatus into the dish water. It sat there all day. When I pulled it out late afternoon and left one end in the sink while I squeezed, it squirted like a champ! I figure what happened (in scientific papers, we call this section “Discussion”) is the bleach solution precipitated in the line and blocked progress of any liquid. This didn’t happen in the Clorox bottle because of the Tide, which emulsified the solution. Regardless, I’m happy to have my bleach solution on line and spared from having to buy more bottles. A small advance, but one has to savor one’s victories, however tiny.
Should you like my food & drink posts, my new book is just full of ‘em (3)! 50 genuine tested recipes ready to print on 3X5 cards and the stories behind them, plus so much more. The theme is, what else could we do during COVID? My fattest book yet.
Terry died Saturday at his home in Bridgewater, Virginia, about an hour out of Charlottesville. That I was even able to talk to him in his last months, and exchange some texts and e-mails, is a bit of a miracle, showing how life can be funny sometimes. He was the oldest of a very large spawn of my Uncle Jim and Aunt Joan. Jim was my mother’s baby brother, and very smart. And talented. He played trumpet in the MSU marching band, even going to the 1952 Rose Bowl, their first ever. I inherited that trumpet, but peaked as first chair in the Birmingham junior orchestra,7th grade. Jim pursued a PhD in economics at Ohio State, and in Columbus Joan began to have kids. He already had an entourage at his graduation ceremony.
Terry is far left in the cap. The kids eventually called themselves “rugrats” – and still do – but I don’t know when that started. Knowing Uncle Jim, I’m pretty sure it was he who coined the term. After all, he once dubbed his younger son Joe “Jo-Jo the Dog Faced boy”.
Uncle Jim went to DC and secured his dream job in the Department of the Interior. He sometimes would say he got that job because of the Masonic handshake he gave his interviewer (both he and his dad were 32nd degree Masons). Like his dad, he was never much to talk shop, but I do recall his description of sitting with some Saudi sheiks (over there) describing to them the benefits of a national park system. He never donned a uniform for his job, but Terry did, spending a career as a National Park ranger.
I never had a good handle on just how many kids Jim & Joan had. I know that when their last daughter was born deaf, they adopted one or 2 additional deaf children. If I never developed a strong individual relationship with Terry, it might be because visiting Arlington, where they lived, meant mingling with all the rugrats en masse in their basement abode. Kind of like a hive, and not an experience to which this only child was accustomed, however delightful.
My last encounter with any of the rugrats came in medical school. My Kraft Fellowship was sending me to a nutrition conference in DC in the Fall of ’78. A female classmate, Judy, was also coming. Jim said he’d put me up and put us in a trailer in his back yard. The Metro made it easy to go to and from the conference. Nothing happened between me and Judy (darn) and we headed back to Chicago.
I never made it back to Arlington. Jim became a gentleman farmer in King George upon his retirement, raising peaches prized at the local farmer’s market, among other things. Kathy and I visited him and Joan as she finished up her NASA chief scientist duties in 2002. It was clear Jim was one happy guy on the farm, where he’d spend 27 years. Joan got me on the phone with Linda, my favorite cousin (1) Joan died first, then Jim a few years after. The phone message from Terry in September 2019 telling me his dad had died was the last I heard his voice until last month.
Fast forward to this summer. I’d decided that all the albums of old pictures in boxes in our storage room belonged on shelves where someone might actually take a look at them. I saw an awful lot of wonderful old pictures, if but a fraction of what I had. Quite a few I pulled, scanned, and sent to the individual pictured. Such actions sometimes reopened relationships (2). That’s what happened with Terry. I found a picture of his clan (at the time) standing in front of our Grandma Slater’s garage, with me, my dear Aunt Dorie, Grandma, and dad. My dad’s he short guy far right . Joan is next to me in blue, and Aunt Dorie and Grandma next over. Only 7 rugrats, so they still had some time to go. Terry is in a yellow shirt in front of his dad.
Terry’s a little more than 4 years younger than me, so he’s still a pipsqueak, but the biggest pipsqueak of the rugrats! I had no contact info for Terry, so I plunged into Instant Checkmate to find a Terry Slater in Virginia who might match, and found a guy in his 60s who’d been a park ranger, so bingo?! I copied the handful of e-mail addresses and shot it off. Within a week I got a response. He was the guy and we were off and running. We talked a bit but he saved the bombshell for an e-mail. Also with an e-mail came a synopsis of his sibs and what they were doing now. Only 9? Who’s missing? But close to 3 years ago, Terry was hiking alone on the Appalachian Trail when he came down with severe abdominal pain. A stranger helped him the two hours to medical attention, which culminated in a diagnosis of gastric cancer. At the point we connected, he was feeling pretty good but knew his days were numbered. Having lost a dear friend to that diagnosis, I knew how rapidly it could turn (3). I realized I should get my butt in gear if I were to meet up with him one last time. Our phone conversations were warm and extended, and I figured as old guys we might be able to connect. Linda stepped in and kept me posted. She was delighted to know I might come down to visit, but by the time I set to make arrangements, Terry was going downhill. Last week, I booked a roundtrip to Charlottesville, got assurance from my cousin Rick, Terry’s next brother, that he’d pick me up and put me up. Saturday came the fateful call from Linda. I was in the grocery score. Terry had stopped eating and drinking, and was no longer communicative. I told Linda I had to think on travel plans. Later that afternoon came an all-family text: Terry had died. I told Linda and Rick that I figured interjecting a 40-year absent cousin might not be appropriate for this time of loss and mourning. I’ll catch them later this winter. Virginia is balmier than Michigan. All these rugrat reconnections were stirred up by Terry. So even though he’s gone, he left me the rest of his family. As I recall, they’re quite a bit of fun. Thanks, Terry. R.I.P., my cousin. God be with you.
Becoming a doc is a hard road. And it should be. Docs have your life in their hands. If you’ve got it figured early, there’s that time spent in high school making sure you get into a top college. Once there, it’s the grind for grades (in hard classes!) and seeking recognition sufficient to impress a med school admissions committee, provided you’ve aced your MCATs. Should you actually get into one, there’s your classmates who have been doing basically the same thing as you for years. Talk about competition! The pressure eases up a bit – even though the classwork is way harder than anything that’s come before, and then the wards! – as most med schools grade pass-fail, like my own U of C did even in the 70s. But beware, they keep a separate set of books, and the dean always knows where everyone ranks. If you can impress a few professors to get them to write you good letters, you might overcome meh grades and lack of honors to get into a decent training program. You surrender your fate to a machine with that next choice, as the computer takes your rankings and the rankings of the places where you interviewed to come up with the best match. But what comes next is the real crucible: internship and residency. You’re the doctor now, with life-and-death power over patients who may not know the ink is barely dry on your diploma. Yes, there’s always someone more senior to back you up, but the training process remains as it has been for ages: one of graded addition of responsibility. And a good program makes sure you have plenty of opportunities to practice. This involves many hours of hard work and more than a few sleepless nights. I suppose docs have always realized that maybe this isn’t exactly a good thing – I sure didn’t like it when I was going through. But recognition beginning in the 90s that overworked, sleep-deprived doctors-in-training made mistakes – sometimes serious ones – spawned a movement to limit house officer’s work hours. Finally, in 2002, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) established guidelines that limit on-call nights to 24 hr and the work week to 80 hr, implemented long ago (7/1/03) (1). Two and a half decades before, my call nights regularly ran into the next day and my weekly work hours rarely came in under three figures. So when I hang with my buddies from those days, we grunt how easy kids today have it. But do they? Being an intern or resident nowadays is different. Compare the antics of the Beth Israel house officers from House of God (my era) (2) with those at the same place in Man’s 4th Best Hospital (3). Time pressures may have lessened, but hospitalized patients are sicker, pressures from the business people are greater, and there’s that damned EMR (electronic medical record). So interns and residents still get stressed and depressed and burn out. How much that happens, and maybe even why, was addressed by a U of M faculty colleague of mine, Amy Bohnert, a PhD mental health services researcher in the department of Anesthesiology. She assembled a team that assessed cohorts of first-year resident physicians (we used to call them “interns”) from across the country from 2009 to 2020, 17,082 docs in all. Each doc completed a 9 item questionnaire that purportedly could measure features of depression, repeated quarterly. Then, the team kept track of their work hours. Wouldn’tcha know, more hours, more depression! Of those working more than 90 hours a week (where’s the ACGME?!) 33.4% met criteria for depression. Further, the relationship between weekly work hours and depression scores was linear and, of course, statistically significant. The U put out a little 4 minute video summarizing the study (4). As you might imagine, this all got a lot of press, even if it was a mere letter to the editor (“correspondence”) in the New England Journal (5). Watch it be quoted by those pushing for a ratcheting back of the work week everywhere. Since Professor Bohnert and friends looked only at two factors, they may have missed some others that could be contributing to house officer dissatisfaction. I wrote her to point this out, as follows:
Dear Professor Bohnert
I read with interest your recent NEJM letter after having it brought to my attention in the online University Record. I commend your ambitious work in a very important area, and am sure the accolades and attention you are receiving are well deserved. From a mention I read today in an Asian publication (6), I see you are being recognized internationally and your findings are being extrapolated to the general workforce. Please allow me, then, to raise a question and take issue. Is it possible that work hours are not the only contributors to the stress and depression we see in today’s house officers? After all, work hours, though still substantial, have decreased after the ACGME established guidelines that limit on-call nights to 24 hr and the work week to 80 hr, implemented long ago (7/1/03). The admitted patient now rarely sees the same doctor through the night, instead being signed off to someone else covering. I saw trends beginning 40 years ago. I trained at Barnes Hospital, a pretty freewheeling place then with a proud and confident housestaff. Coming to Michigan in ’82 for my rheumatology fellowship then beginning to round on the wards, I was taken by differences. Medical students and house officers here often seemed timid, unwilling to think beyond their assigned roles or challenge group opinions. Consultations were common, whereas we looked on a consult at Barnes mainly as a way to show off to a subspecialist what a good job we’d done on a patient. Requirements for attending input increased steadily, then came the EMR. Guidelines and protocols proliferated and it became less and less necessary for a doc to think through a diagnostic/treatment plan all the way oneself. Who’s happier, a doc thinking independently on his/her feet or one sitting at a keyboard checking off the elements of a dictated protocol implemented? And hours spent working can be fulfilling and not stressing if spent in an activity that engages one’s talents in a challenging and satisfying way. Check out the work of Csikszentmihalyi (7), who pioneered the description and analysis of the “flow state”, in which a person is completely focused on a single task or activity. Attaining the positive feelings which result is the main reason people scale rock faces or crack chests to do a CABG. Do today’s house officers have chances to enter such a state? I doubt that sitting at a keyboard entering data provides that. Perhaps after 16 or more years of striving and achieving, our new house officers are hit with a little buyer’s remorse when asked mainly to be automatons. Even less of that will still be depressing. I think that better work, not less work, is the answer. Medicine can still be a fun game, if you just let the players play it. Time to loosen up a little and let some autonomy back in. A mind is a terrible thing to to waste, especially of the best and brightest who choose to become doctors.
References
1. Philibert I, Friedmann P, Williams WT; ACGME Work Group on Resident Duty Hours. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. New requirements for resident duty hours. JAMA. 2002 Sep 4;288(9):1112-4. doi: 10.1001/jama.288.9.1112. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/195244
5. Fang Y, Lodi S, Hughes TM, Frank E, Sen S, Bohnert ASB. Work Hours and Depression in U.S. First-Year Physicians. N Engl J Med. 2022 Oct 20;387(16):1522-1524. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2210365. PMID: 36260798. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2210365
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