Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, even if I never get any presents. So simple: fantastic food, the company of family and friends, and the enforced focus on all those things for which you can be thankful, always a much longer list than you could have imagined when you first started. We should do it more often, but Thanksgiving is a good start. Thank God and George Washington, and thank God for our blessings.
I hope you all had a blessed and bountiful Thanksgiving. I’d have invited you all over, but if a number anywhere near the readers WordPress says I have had showed up, I’d actually be over Governor Gretchen’s limit. We invited my Vicksburg High ’70 classmate, retired Alaskan bush pilot Tim, who’s come into the ‘burg from his home in Healy, near Denali National Park, to escape the early winter for a while and also to look after his dad’s property. But Tim chose to stay home, so it was just the two of us. We ate well, as you can see by the menu below, tho’ it wasn’t Turkey Day for us. After an afternoon of chopping, jockeying for oven space, and drinking (of course) (plenty of time to watch our Lions lose, another TG tradition), our target of a 4 P.M. dinner slid to about 7:30. Fortunately, Kathy didn’t complain. After all, she was helping in the preparation.
Tomatin, Highland Single Malt (12, 15, 18 years old)
Traverse City Whiskey Co. – Straight Bourbon
Here’s what it looked like before we messed it all up by devouring everything:
As I write this, we’ve put away everything, either into our guts or into the refrigerators. What’s left of the bird went into the big pot for tomorrow’s project: making duck soup! I don’t know if it’ll make enough after feeding us for Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo, but if they were still alive, I’d find a way.
Footnotes
* Golden Harvest Squash soup has been know as “explodey soup” in my family ever since the Thanksgiving many years ago when I first made it. It was to be the first course for our feast and the last item to come out of the kitchen. I had made it to the last step, where everything gets pureed in a blender. The action was going too slow for my likes, and I decided to help things along with a rubber spatula. The blades of the blender caught that spatula and exploded the contents all over my face, chest, and the kitchen ceiling. There was about a thimbleful for each left, which they devoured eagerly between sniggers and pronounced delicious. It was. I’ve made it many times since, with a food processor.
Kathy and I just returned from a most enjoyable trudge up and down the hills through the Bluffs Nature Area, off Sunset on the Northwest side or Ann Arbor right by St. Thomas Catholic cemetery not far from the sewage treatment plant, highest place in town at 1,015 feet above sea level. Only 1.8 miles from our house, for we longtime Ann Arborites – me most of the past 50 years and Kathy 39 years straight – it was our first visit to the Bluffs. Kathy’s iWatch credited her with 11,006 steps and 28 flights of stairs. Our visits to Whole Foods and Meijer after might have inflated those numbers a bit, but not the stairs.
We love going on walks, and are disappointed when a day goes by where circumstances prevent us from doing so. Kathy’s been a walker for a long time, with her 4.2 mile long round trip to her 555 S. Forest office a routine. The rare times I or a friend drove her even part way, she’d feel cheated out of an experience she thought “kept her butt down and her mind clear”. Paying $1,884/year for a gold parking pass, you can bet I aimed to get my money’s worth, so I was driving to North Ingalls Building and Taubman, missing out on all that exercise. I think the first year I had a gold pass, figuring I could finally afford it, I gained about 10 pounds.
When I retired 16 months ago, I decided to join Kathy on her commute. I had to wait for September for the school year to start up. It got me out of bed and out of the house, and I discovered a number of routes that kept me off pavement and in nature. I even showed Kathy a better trip in as we descended our hill through the trees of Cedar Bend Park, through Island Park, right by where I’d lived as a fellow, hugging the river through the woods until we had to cross Fuller, then across the railroad tracks and up the 150 steps from the pit to hospital level, strolling past the dorms to her office. She was always reluctant to take the woods walking by herself. After a glass of cold sparkling water in her office, she’d bid me farewell as I’d wander to pick a way home. If I felt like mingling with students, I could go through campus, step on the M in the middle of the Diag, then head past Hill and the fountain down Thayer to pass by Sun Terrace, the box where I lived as a junior then again for a summer sublet as a grad student (with Laurie!). My boyhood best friend Eric’s son Joe lived there with his girlfriend one year. But usually, I’d prefer something more bucolic. There are 2 entrances to the Arboretum, each path with different charms. The Arb trails end at the river. I found ways to punctuate the pavement, including one particularly charming path through woods at North Campus which ended up at the site where the new Dance School building was going up, eventually taking away passage. After the music school, there was a path through the woods between the Music School and the Bursley dorm. Enduring sidewalk to the hospital, there were 2 paths, one retracing my steps and and the other going past my hero the late Armin Good’s place on old Cedar Bend, climbing up the hill (which I once attacked on a mountain bike) to the parking lots of Baits Housing on North Campus. A little more nature beckoned in the trail through the little woods next to the North Campus Co-ops, where I lived my last 2 years at Michigan, in Zapata House.
With COVID, our daily commute to South Forest became problematic. Kathy was allowed to spend less and less time in her office as more and more of her teaching went virtual. She’d designed her class to be “blended” but found the in-person classroom teaching to be vital to establishing relationships with her students. She’s been totally virtual since Friday before last (11/16), and it doesn’t look good for Winter team, which she says will be her last (we’ll see). But we’ve developed a routine. She does most of her teaching in the morning, almost entirely one-on-ones with her students, then handles e-mails and corrects some “papers”. Then the rest of the afternoon is free for walkies! We have some wonderful places to walk right around here. In addition to the to and from we’d been doing, there’s the walk to Argo Park, along the river in the woods to an area for which I don’t know the name, over to the labyrinth of Black Pond Woods then over Traver up the hill to us. A little drive takes us to Barton Nature area, Bird Hills park and Kuebler Langford Nature area, through which all manner of twisted trails can be traversed. We’ve found trails through the woods at the end of Upland, across Plymouth from us, behind the apartments on the way to Traver golf course. Down Plymouth east to Dixboro, there’s a pretty deep woods. If either of us feel lazy and just want a short walk, the church at the end of our street has developed a trail through the woods behind them to Plymouth, which we can traverse, walk along Plymouth back west, crawl up the short steep hill after jumping up on the wall, then taking the rest of the hill on Leaird, boarded up to traffic years ago but not before I got a ticket for driving up it the wrong way. The walk can be extended by going down Jones and back up Broadway, with its illegal 370 incline.
I was hooked after not very long. For me, walkies were keeping my waistline down and spirits up. For someone who spent so many years pounding my knees running, I was amazed how much good feeling and actual physical benefit could come from such a gentler activity. But maybe the benefit wasn’t coming entirely from just the physical activity. I came across writings about “Forest Bathing”, which the Japanese, who are credited with developing it in the 80s, call “Shinrin-yoku (shinrin: forest, yoku: bathing). Per the reference URL (1) “Forest bathing in nature allows the stressed portions of your brain to relax. Positive hormones are released in the body. You feel less sad, angry and anxious. It helps to avoid stress and burnout, and aids in fighting depression and anxiety. A forest bath is known to boost immunity and leads to lesser days of illness as well as faster recovery from injury or surgery. Nature has a positive effect on our mind as well as body. It improves heart and lung health, and is known to increases focus, concentration and memory.” All that from a walk in the woods. No wonder my grandpa liked to take them. And it’s not just the touchy-feely stuff. There are chemicals involved! “Certain trees like conifers also emit oils and compounds to safeguard themselves from microbes and pathogens. These molecules known as Phytoncides are good for our immunity too. Breathing in the forest air boosts the level of natural killer (NK) cells in our blood. NK cells are used in our body to fight infections, cancers, and tumors. So spending time with these trees is a special form of tree bathing.” I know it’s given Kathy and me a chance to develop our appreciation for subtle changes that occur with passage of the seasons. We didn’t get started with walkies outside our local area till a bit after fall peak. While we enjoyed the golden colors around us, we lamented the show we had missed, vowing not to do so next year. But even as we’ve transitioned toward winter, we’ve found features to appreciate. The views through trees entirely bereft of leaves can be stunning, and unlike anything that might be see in the other seasons, when leaves would get in the way. Looking down when walking, it’s amazing how many different shades of brown Mother Nature has used. We decided to extend our burgeoning hobby beyond our local area. We knew there was supposed to be some pretty good hiking not far away and had even been out there, I think to Waterloo, a time or two. I bought a couple of books, one from Jim DeFresne (whose books about Michigan I’ve always loved) 50 Hikes in Michigan (2) and another by Greg Tasker focusing closer to home Five Star Trails: Ann Arbor and Detroit (3). From these I compiled a notebook of walking trails, including a spreadsheet including for each trail such data as URL for the map, distance and time to travel from 1611 Harbal, with and without highways (we like to take our top down ’06 Jeep Wrangler, which tends to shimmy a bit at highway speeds), and, critically, bars withing a convenient distance from the trailhead. I’ve pasted the spreadsheet in at the end of this piece. Trail maps also go into the notebook. When the recent lockdown took away the celebrations after part, we chose to look inward again. We’d turned up some gems earlier right around here, like Miller Nature area, Dicken Woods, Olsen Park, Scarlett Mitchell nature area, Stinchfield Woods (home of Peach Mountain observatory), and Draper-Houston Meadows preserve. I decided to go systematic, and what did I get myself into? I went to the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation webpage (https://www.a2gov.org/departments/Parks-Recreation) to look up their parks. Our parks, I guess (don’t ask me about my property tax bill). There is listed 168 named pieces of ground saved for nature on which the citizens of AA may frolic. To determine which might be suitable for walkies, I’ve gone through the PDFs of their maps, which almost all have, even if they only show a small patch of green with a single brown line penetrating to designate some sort of trail. But it was this exercise which found Bluff, which we kinda always knew was there. I’ve found 29 candidates in addition to the ones I’d already entered on the trails table. I hadn’t entered several, as they were already so familiar (the Arb, Argo, Bandemer, Bird Hills, Black Pond Woods, Cedar Bend, Furstenburg, Gallup, and Kuebler Langford). The exercise has given identities to places we’ve frequented, but never bothered to learn the name, like Leslie Woods, off Upland near our house and Marshall Nature Area off Dixboro, out Plymouth a ways. That leaves 18 we haven’t tried. Finding some great hikes we knew about missing from that list, I remembered that Stinchfield Woods was U of M property. There are 6 “Field Properties” under control of the School for the Environment and Sustainability (which was Natural Resources in my day). Three are operated for research purposes only, but 3 are open to the public. Add those. That’s a lot of choices. Then came the thought: what about the county parks? Sure enough, Washtenaw county features 11 stops on the Border-to-border trail (mainly for cyclists), 22 natural areas, and 13 parks (https://www.washtenaw.org/288/Parks-Recreation). I’d captured a few already but if I take the time to investigate them all and put the winners on the table I’m creating, I won’t have time to fix Thanksgiving dinner, let alone get this post in by the end of the day. The perfect can be the enemy of the good, so I’m making Washtenaw county a project for another day. Like I need more choices. Maybe we’ll write the names of each hike on a piece of paper and put ‘em in a jar, go hike the one we pull out. I don’t know if there’ll be a gem there like Bluffs in that bunch. We were very familiar with the area, even if we didn’t know at the time there was a stellar hiking trail nearby. Biking up the hill up Sunset past that cemetery was always a grueling component of our rides through that area. But we had way more fun hiking through Bluffs than we ever had on that hill, unless you call stopping for a drink at the top of a hill you’ve almost died to get up some kind of pleasure.
So we proceed, not on a quest for the perfect hike, tho’ we could encounter it where we least expect it. We look forward to our daily (or as close as possible) forest baths, even if the trees are just those in front of the old houses on Broadway.
North Center Brewing Company Northvile Winery and Brewing Company CJ”’s Brewing Company Northville Sports Den Poole’s Tavern North Center Brewing Wagon Wheel Lounge Garage Grill & Fuel Bar
I got around to reading the summer issue of my University of Chicago magazine the other day. In it was a COVID article, of course. This one, entitled “Trials by fire”, describes how U of C docs have dealt with the pandemic, not just dealing with the special needs of all the patients, and figuring out other ways to handle things, but also all the research that’s been done, at bedside, bench and in the field (1). There was even a familiar name in there, former U of M rheumatology fellow Reem Jan, who also went to the same London medical school (St. George’s) where I’d spent a month in January ’79 (https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/409). She conducted a trial using hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) at triple the dose we use in rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, finding the drug could be effective if used early in the infection, before more severe features ensued. Another rheumatologist whom I don’t know (although his Chief, Marcus Clark, was once a resident on my service), Pankti Reid, went after the vigorous host immune response, which does most of the damage, rather than the viral infection itself (just like in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic (2)), using tocilizumab (Actemra), an inhibitor of interleukin-6 used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and polymyalgia rheumatica. Another doc, liver specialist Michael Millis, dipped into the rheumatologist’s bag to come up with leflunomide (Arava), another agent we use to treat rheumatoid arthritis. To be fair, Dr. Willis had done pioneering work using Arava in organ transplantation (3). It was his work advising the Chinese health ministry as they developed their voluntary organ donation system that he developed the connections he tapped to ask whether they had ever tried Arava for their COVID patients. They had, so Dr. Millis conducted a small trial, finding patients benefitted, with their symptoms typically resolving in a week faster than would be expected among that population. Leflunomide is among a class of drugs that inhibit dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DODH), which do a number of things that would interfere with what a coronavirus is trying to do to our cells, and looks to become an important, relatively inexpensive, and not very toxic member of the anti-COVID armamentarium (4).
I’d known some of this. Actemra is a mainstay now in treating COVID once it’s in the lung. Arava I didn’t know about (for COVID). And I’d held forth many times on this blog about Plaquenil (5), for which I remain a strong proponent, particularly in early mild disease, maybe with a little azithromycin thrown in for good measure. The jury is still out. A PubMed search of coronavirus AND hydroxychloroquine nets 1,394 hits. I can’t say I read them all, but in the first few pages I didn’t find anything concise, clear and recent enough to list here.
But the most interesting part of the article came toward the end. David Meltzer, chief of Hospital Medicine, came across an article on vitamin D in respiratory tract infections, a meta-analysis that showed among people with vitamin D deficiency, symptoms were reduced 70 % when the deficiency was corrected (6). With half of all Americans (upwards of 80% of Michiganders) and 70% of African Americans deficient in vitamin D, that’s an awful lot of people at a level of risk that could easily be reduced, and substantially. Dr. Meltzer’s own survey of UofC patient records found that vitamin D deficient persons were 77% more likely to test positive for COVID than persons who weren’t vitamin D deficient. This increased risk was abrogated if the person’s deficiency had been treated. This has been borne out by multi-nation surveys in Europe (7). So who should take vitamin D, and how much? The RDA of 600 IU is based on vitamin D’s effects on bone health. Doctors treating vitamin D deficient patients prescribe 50,000 IU weekly for 4 weeks. But before you run to buy supplements or ask your doctor for a prescription, look up to that big free source we all share up in the sky! Half an hour of midday sun provides 10,000 units. If you’re one of those whom pharma and the dermatologists have managed to convince that the rays of the sun are some sort of cancer-causing poison to be avoided at all costs, hear here what researchers from the Karolinska and Lund hospitals in Southern Sweden found following 30,000 women for 20 years: sunbathers lived 0.6 – 2.1 years longer than sun-avoiders, reduced mortality due mainly from a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and noncancer/non-CVD (8). Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group. There was a little more melanoma in the sunbathers, but they were 8 times less likely to die from it than sun-avoiders. You know that lucky old sun ain’t got nuthin’ to do but roll around heaven all day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C0ca55mgFM. And we’re lucky he’s up there doing it. We should go out there and catch some of that controlled thermonuclear activity coming at us from 93 million miles away. Sunshine and fresh air was the most effective treatment regimen in that little pandemic over a century ago involving the flu (9). Sometimes it’s worthwhile to take the lid off old treatments. Maybe we can get to feeling as good as Mr. Deutschendorf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ9kJa_6cBg
8. Lindqvist PG, Epstein E, Nielsen K, Landin-Olsson M, Ingvar C, Olsson H. Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death: a competing risk analysis of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort. J Intern Med 2016; 280(4): 375–387. https://doi: 10.1111/joim.12496.
That’s what my friend and high school classmate wrote back when I asked her why she’d given up her laptop for a tablet.
This is what I wrote back:
I think Thoreau only wrote it twice, but there is something to that. If there have been any positives from COVID, it’s that it’s forced us to simplify our lives, and I think the happiness we’ve gained from doing so has helped to cushion the grief from other aspects of the pandemic. Kathy and I leave the house mainly to go to the store or go for a walk, and we do both a lot. I’ve always enjoyed going to the grocery store, and now I enjoy it a lot, making excuses to as often as possible. Except for bar food and food trucks, we haven’t had a meal cooked for us by someone else we had to pay since February. We spend most of the time in the living room with a fire in the fireplace when temperature permits. Our home is much more calm and pleasant, as we’ve had the time to spend cleaning and organizing it. This fall, we can’t hang out most Saturdays with 110,000 of our closest friends at Michigan Stadium and found out there’s a lot else you can do on those beautiful fall Saturday afternoons. Sunday we go to church on-line at La Jolla Presbyterian where the preacher is far better than the ones who still won’t even let us in the church we used to attend down the street. We’ve not been afraid to travel, which except for the mask BS and no food or booze on the airplane, is actually pretty nice: tickets and lodging are cheaper, everything’s less crowded, and all the neurotic COVID-averse types have stayed home so you don’t have to deal with their annoying fraidy-cat asses scolding you for your “unsafe” ways. For everything, there are fewer choices, so the anxiety of having to make one is diminished.
While I don’t think Henry David envisioned this mechanism of achieving what he suggested, that’s what’s happened, and it’s been a good thing. When the pandemic finally lifts, we will have learned many lessons we should carry forward. “Simplify, simplify” may be one of the biggest, and our lives will be quieter and happier if we heed.
Two Wednesdays before last, my daily treat from Bandsintown (https://www.bandsintown.com/) included a collection of video clips of several rock icons from my day performing on the Ed Sullivan show https://bestclassicbands.com/ed-sullivan-rock-classics-2-11-18/. I got around to watching them the Friday following – wow – and it got me to thinking of another great thing we’ve lost to Mr. Corona: concerts. I love going to see live music. I know watching your fave on the screen Sunday night doing one or two songs to help Mr. Sullivan put on his really big shew isn’t the same as being there live, but just watching these performances gets closer to that. We’ve tried sitting in front of the big screen for a couple virtual concerts lately, but it just isn’t the same.
Kathy and I always liked going out for music. We had one of our first dates going to hear folk legend U. Utah Phillips at the Ark when it was in a white house on Hill, and have haunted the place in all its successive iterations. We were regulars at singer Susan Chastain’s wonderful jazz club the Firefly, even taking a small financial interest in the place. To this day, some our friends refer to it as “our jazz club”. It was there we were reintroduced to the wonders of small group jazz from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. My dear dad approved as he loved the stuff, too, and had the stack of 78s to prove it. I’m sorry we never got the old man over to the club. To this day, we’re friends with some of the musicians we first met at that club. We braved the traffic and crowds of Pine Knob, Freedom Hill, and Meadowbrook. We chased down the Commander whenever he pulled his ass out of Saratoga Springs and came to Michigan to try to fill a few seats in some dive. But the big time concert going didn’t begin till about 6 summers ago. We realized a lot of our faves were getting up there, but still managed to show up and play somewhere now and then, with at least a fragment of their old bands. When I announced my intention to go start seeing them in earnest to my old friend Forrest, to whose musical knowledge I cannot hold a candle, he just said “well, see ‘em before they die!”. Our first venture was a little 90 minute road trip to Kalamazoo, where guitar-legend Johnny Winter himself was holding forth at Bell’s Eccentric Café. Even if the show sucked the beer would be good. Kathy and I went with a couple VHS ’70 friends: Vicksburg’s own guitar legend Wang and the incomparable and unique Rollo. Now skinny albino Johnny always looked pretty other worldly, but when he came on stage, bent over, mostly blind, and guided by a strong man on each arm, it looked like the world to which he was most suited now was the one above. But his hands sure did come alive when he sat down and ripped into that guitar. He sang too, and sounded just like … Johnny Winter! He turned in an energetic and satisfying performance. A fine first stop on what I was calling our “Fogey Rock Tour”. Next weekend, we ventured to Cleveland with my best Vicksburg buddies (Forrest, Northam, Eric and Rod plus spouses) to tour the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (and see our Tigers lose to the Indians), a good prep for what was to come. Next stop, less than 2 weeks later, was northeast to Pine Knob (technically since 2003 DTE Energy Music Theater), where the elderly (b.7/7/40) Sir Richard Starkey held forth, helped by some of his over-the-hill rocker friends. Ringo’s been doing this since 1989, and does he put on a show! His helpers were once stars in their own right and still have the talent: Todd Rundgren, of all people, Steve Lukather, once of Toto, Colin Hay from Men at Work, and Gregg Rollie, once Santana’s keyboardist. For kicks check out Wiki’s piece on his band and see the many big names that have passed through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringo_Starr_%26_His_All_Starr_Band. Ringo’s hired someone else to do most of the drumming – although he does take some turns behind the kit and is apparently a well-respected technical drummer in his own right – so he can spend his time singing, clapping and dancing. My is he in fine shape. Almost enough to make you wanna stop drinking. Each of his all-starrs takes a turn with their hits, so the tune selection is top notch. I daresay that I can recommend if you have but one outdoor concert to take in, go see Ringo. He’s still at it, was just as good when Kathy and I saw him August ’19, and I’m sure is chompin’ at the bit to get back out on the road, as are his fogey friends. You’ll have a great time ”with a little help from your friends”.
Next, we stayed right home in Ann Arbor at the Michigan Theater where Jackson Browne performed all by himself. He walked on to the stage past a row of 23 guitars, lined up in the back. He extended his arm toward them, turned to the audience and explained “my set list”. And except for the few songs he sang at the piano, each began with his assistant bringing him one of those perfectly tuned guitars. His songs have always been great, and he still has his voice. I’ll allow him a little wandering into the political weeds as long as I can hear the rest. Before another week passed, on Kathy’s birthday, a month and 2 days since Kalamazoo, we got word out of Zürich that Johnny Winter was gone, Forrest’s words in my ear. We now carefully attend to news of the health of those performers we had seen. Jackson is still fine, although he did contract coronavirus last March, surviving. We haven’t kept up the percentages of our first 3 concerts, but have seen a few more pass on, all to be missed: local Jim Dapogny, Merle Haggard, Tom Petty, Glen Frey, Dan Hicks, Stuart McLean (Canadian raconteur), Charley Daniels, and John Prine (although we’d seen him before 2014).
We’ve racked up 136 more concerts since, even getting to a few clubs in Chicago in this time of COVID. I’ve gone as far away as London, seeing Dianne Schuur at the legendary Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, but that’s a technicality since I was there on the NIH’s dime to participate in an ultrasound exercise. Going to go see somebody has been a good excuse for some trips. We’ve gone to Boston, New York City (with a side trip to Pawling to hear Marshall Crenshaw and later Tony Castro at Darryl Hall’s place), Urbana IL, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, and even Ohio (Toledo, Huber Heights, Cleveland, Kent) and Canada (Windsor, Kitchener, Kingston). And we haven’t neglected our home state venturing from Detroit to Manistee, and hitting New Buffalo, Kalamazoo, Portage, Allegan, Buchannan, Battle Creek, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Mt. Pleasant, Flint, Clarkston, Auburn Hills, Rochester, Rochester Hills, Sterling Heights, West Bloomfield, Royal Oak, Ferndale, Dearborn, South Lyon, Canton, and Chelsea.
Clearly, we have favored some artists. Bill Kirchen – once lead guitar for Commander Cody and the lost Planet Airmen – we’ll go to see anywhere. He greets us with a hug and we have good conversations about how Kathy’s NASA pep talk with his daughter got her straightened out. The Commander himself is a must see, as he recreates on his electric piano the raucous output of his old group plus the many non-P.C. numbers he’s created since. The venues he frequents are small enough I can usually have a drink or two with him before the show. As he’s racked with arthritis in many joints, he hangs on to what I offer as potential remedies someday. We’re not so close with the rest of the acts to which we snug up. But as you can see as you review the itinerary below, there are several other artists we also favor. You can tally the numbers. We love Marshall Crenshaw and will see him any time. After that come the bigger acts which fortunately are listing down to lesser venues. John Fogarty is down to casinos now and his act is absolutely fabulous. Another one we’ll see anytime, anywhere. The Doobies at Freedom Hill were just spectacular, with Tom Johnston with his 3 original cohorts blasting out all the energy we remember from them 35 years ago. China grove! Roger Hodgson was a one time at a small venue (at the Sound Board Motor Casino in Detroit), but the former lead of Supertramp took us on a wonderful journey, beginning with “Take the long way home” (“just to get it out of the way”, he said). We loved to go see Robbie Fulks wherever he was, whether at the Ark, some Methodist church n AA, or a dive in Chicago. His regular appearances at Hideaway, a true dive in Chicago, prompted several train trips and weekends there just to hear him. Always well worth it. He’s since moved to LA, so the Hideaway concerts have stopped, but he still stops back from time to time.
You can see on the list that follows all the big and not-so-big names we’ve seen. Some other repeaters still worth mentioning: Eilen Jewel, a little wisp of a thing from Idaho who belts out soulful country-tinged tunes with a guitarist who knows the e-string. When we first saw her in Chicago she was 8 months pregnant, and held forth like a trouper. Here’s my favorite tune of hers, a cover https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkUwWJgykFQ. Then there’s Don White of Massachusetts, not Boston (http://www.donwhite.net/). Wise, funny tunes, here’s one of his most touching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJFN-KCnHDQ. And we see Kathy’s chronological compatriot, Pennsylvania’s John Gorka, whenever possible. We’ve loved his warm baritone for 30 years, and he’s only gotten better. Houses in the Fields. What I think of now, but here’s another tune, the one that sustained Kathy and me when she was in D.C. and I was in A.A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1wuJI5U8EY. Just go.
Of course , there are the regrets. We obsessed a couple years back over going to Nashville to see John Prine, and didn’t. And now he’s gone, alas. We did see him at the Ark in 2010, a little after his cancer surgery. Plus we saw that what’s remained of Jefferson Starship would be in Jackson. Short hop. We didn’t go. Marty Balin with his fantastic voice was the only original left, let alone the Airplane, and now he’s gone, so there’s that chance. Problem when your idols are septuagenarians.
Sure, going to see these old fogey rockers just stuffs further their already substantial pocketbooks. And I know you can dredge up stories of how much the tickets cost to see them back in the day. But how much is the price for a magic ride back to your youth? When those old familiar tunes begin, you’ll be transported back to the time when you first heard them, and isn’t that a good place? I submit that some of this good feeling is a neurobiological trick, where the first notes of the tune trigger your memory of how it first sounded, and that’s what you actually hear. Maybe that’s why they sound so good. No matter, it’s an experience well worth the entry fee, and I recommend you go, as often as possible.
Concerts I’ve been to since 2014 (there’s more stuff at the end of the list)
2014
6/14 Johnny Winter; Bell’s Eclectic Café, Kalamazoo
6/27 Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band; DTE Energy Music Thtr, Clarkson
7/4. Detroit Symphony Orchestra Public Salute; The Henry Ford, Dearborn
8/9 Beach Boys/Temptations; Freedom Hill, Sterling Heights
8/11. Donald Trump; Birch Run Expo Center, Birch Run
8/15 Happy Together Tour (Turtles, The Association, Mark Lindsay, former lead singer of Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Grass Roots, The Cowsills and The Buckinghams); Little River Casino Resort, Manistee
9/6 Jackson Browne; Meadowbrook Amphitheater, Rochester Hills
9/19 Joe Walsh; Caesar’s. Windsor ON
10/20 Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard; Fox Thtr, Detroit
10/21 Paul McCartney; Joe Louis Arena, Detroit
10/23 Robbie Fulks; JAX, Jackson
11/9 Arlo Guthrie; Michigan Thtr, AA
12/11 Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra 4th Annual Holiday Pops; Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor
12/20 Jorma Kaukonen; Ark, AA
12/22 Robbie Fulks: Hideout, Chicago IL
2016
1/23 Ragtime Extravaganza; Mi Thr, AA
1/24 William Shatner; Sound Board, Detroit
2/12 Christine Lavin/Don White; Ark, AA
2/14 Marshall Crenshaw; Daryl’s House, Pawling NY
2/26 Commander Cody; Callaghan’s, Auburn Hills
3/12 Star Trek: the Ultimate Voyage; Fox Thtr, Detroit
3/19 Montreal Symphony; Hill Aud, AA
4/5 Marshall Crenshaw; Ark, AA
4/8 Lipstick and Lead (Wang): Nob Hill, Portage
4/9 Accidentals; Ark, AA
4/12 Robbie Fulks; Ark, AA
4/14 Mnozil Brass; Hill Aud, AA
4/16 Bill Kirchen/Redd Voelkert; Rose Bowl Tavern, Urbana IL
4/21 Melvern Taylor and his Fabulous Meltones; Toad, Cambridge MA
5/8 Eilen Jewell; City Winery, Chicago IL
5/9 Community Jazz Orchestra, Jazz Showcase, Chicago IL
5/10 Fat Babies; Green Mill Jazz Club, Chicago IL
5/20 John Fogarty; Rose Music Center, Huber Heights, OH
6/4 Monkees; Caesar’s, Windsor ON
6/9 Laith al-Saadi; Liberty Square, AA
7/1 Billy Joel; PNC Park, Pittsburgh
7/2 Jessica Lee, Mark Strickland, George Jones, Jeff Berman. James Street Gastropub and Speakeasy , Pittsburgh
8/4 Dave Mason/Doobies/Journey; Pine Knob, Clarkston
8/10 Hot Tuna; Ark, AA
8/16 Asleep at the Wheel; Ark, AA
8/25 Mitch Ryder; Liberty Square, AA
9/30 Brian Wilson; Fox Thtr, Detroit
10/15 Tommy Castro and the Painkillers; Daryl’s House, Pawling NY
10/16 Jon-Erik Kellso and the Earregulars; Ear Inn, NYC
10/17 Village Vanguard Orchestra; Village Vanguard, NYC
2017
5/2 Eilen Jewell; Ark AA
5/5 John Gorka; Ark AA
5/13 Robbie Fulks; City Winery, Chicago IL
5/14 Fat Babies; Honky Tonk BBQ, Chicago IL
5/20 Steve Martin/Martin Short; Meadowbrook Amphitheater, Rochester Hills
5/26 Bill Kirchen/Jimmie Dale Gilmore; Ark AA
6/11 Paul Simon; Toledo Zoo, Toledo OH
6/30 Marshall Crenshaw y Los Straitjackets, Sara Borges, Ark AA
8/24 Bob Seger, Huntington Center, Toledo OH
9/16 Tim Allen, Royal Oak Music Thtr, Royal Oak
9/30 Sean Jones quintet, Jazz Showcase, Chicago IL
10/1 Fat Babies; Honky Tonk BBQ, Chicago IL
10/14 Petra van Nuis/Andy Brown/Pete Siers/James Dapogny/Paul Keller, Kerrytown Concert House, AA
10/20 Mary Chapin Carpenter (w/Emily Barker), State Theater. Kalamazoo
11/3 Laith Al-Saadi, Michigan Theater, AA
11/17 Count Basie Orchestra, Orchestra Hall, Detroit
12/1 Don White, Greenwood Coffee House, AA
2018
1/26 Burton Cummings Colosseum at Caeser’s Windsor, Windsor ON
2/9 Robbie Fulks Green Wood Coffee House, AA
4/14 (unknown quartet) Andy’s Jazz Club, Chicago IL
7/27 Bill Kirchen Sounds and Sights Festival, Chelsea
8/22 Eilen Jewell Ark, AA
8/24 Invasion McHattie Park, South LyonMI
9/12 Charlie Daniels Band
Travis Tritt Allegan County Fair, Allegan
12/2 Detroit Symphony Orchestra: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II; Orchestra Hall, Detroit
12/3 Bill Kirchen Ark, AA
2019
3/28 David Wilcox/Beth Nielsen Chapman Ark, AA
4/7 Bottle Rockets/Marshall Crenshaw Ark, AA
4/15 Chicago Farmer/Todd Snider Ark, AA
5/6 Eileen McGann Causerie, Kitchener ON
5/10 Jaimee Harris/Mary Gauthier Greenwood Coffee House, Ann Arbor
5/17 Robert Jones/Matt Watroba Ark, AA
6/2 Karla Bonoff Ark, AA
6/15 Bill Harley/Don White/Bill Lepp Ark, AA
6/19 Michael McDonald Sound Board, Motor City Casino, Detroit
7/23 Tedeschi Trucks Band Meadowbrook Amphitheater, Rochester Hills
7/25 Eilen Jewell Ark, AA
8/25 Ringo Starr and his All-Star Band Santa Fe Opera House, Santa Fe NM
8/27 Boz Scaggs Santa Fe Opera House, Santa Fe NM
9/21 John Fogerty Firekeeper’s Casino, Battle Creek MI
9/29 Carol Burnett Detroit Opera House
11/1 John Gorka Ark, Ann Arbor
11/3 Savoy Brown Magic Bag, Ferndale MI
11/14 Ray Kamalay and His Red Hot Peppers University Hospital, Ann Arbor
11/22 Boz Scaggs Firekeeper’s Casino, Battle Creek MI
12/1 Bill Kirchen Ark, Ann Arbor
2020
1/2 Cirque de Soleil; Little Caesar’s Arena, Detroit
1/12 Ray Kamalay and His Red Hot Peppers; West Bloomfield Library, West Bloomfield
3/8 Chi-Town Jazz Festival (featuring the Bobby Lewis quintet); The Green Mill, Chicago
3/9 (unrecalled group) Jazz Showcase, Chicago
9/25 Greg Artry Quartet; Jazz Showcase, Chicago
mementos. When the concert’s over, you’re left with the memories: songs running around your head, images of the disgusting old people who shared the experience with you, the CD(s) you might have picked up, and of course the ticket stubs. Tickets aren’t much these days, just the facts printed on a little piece of cardboard, or maybe those 8 1/2 X 11 computer printouts. Kathy is a bit of a pack rat and fortunately saved most of these things from my excursions. Going through them, I picked up a few concerts I had neglected to enter on my own lists. But sometimes you get other cool stuff at concerts, like this post card of the Johnny Winter band.
Is it worth more now that he’s dead? Regardless, I’m hanging on to it.
For Roger McGuinn (leader of the Byrds) we got a whole brochure.
And all by himself, he was just terrific. Forrest can attest.
A couple months later, Forrest and his best friend Rod joined Kathy and me as we lept back to high school. TJ himself, son of Niles MI, lept a few times to punctuate his ever endearing songs, getting as much as 2″ off the stage, enough to flip his toupee a little. “Chrimson and clover, over and over…”
(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, entering the football season that had not yet begun with the Minnesota game. I blew right past the Gophers and focused on State. Three games in, it’s not looking so good for our Wolverines. But, my beautiful wife still loves Michigan!)
It started pretty early. Kathy’s mother was born at U Hospital, graduated Ann Arbor High in ‘36, and went to dental hygenist’s school at U of M, where she met med student Clutch, Kathy’s dad, who stayed on for his residency but chose to pursue orthopedics at the wider open spaces of Akron City Hospital. Kathy was the second of their kids to be born there, so Kathy’s a buckeye by birth. Her time at Ohio institutions Western Reserve Academy and College of Wooster did not translate into a stronger bond to the Buckeye State. When Kathy went looking for grad school programs in Kinesiology, she saw that the program at Columbus had some attractions. Asking her dad about the possibility of going there, he responded “sure, but don’t ever plan on coming home again”. So she headed north up 23 to Ann Arbor, coached swimming for a while, and met me. Together we’ve been immersed in all things Michigan ever since, helped along by those great 50 yard line season tickets her dad got in ’64. We added basketball season tickets maybe 5 years ago and surely enjoy those outings. For the past 11 years, she’s taught Scientific Writing in the school of Kinesiology to sophomores (“just shoot me”). Kines is still home for many athletes, although many have drifted over to L.S.&A. as Kines has tightened its requirements. But she still gets a lot of athletes in her class, some of the high profile basketball and football types. Drew Dillio, slot receiver, might have been the first she noticed, who kept a low profile as he didn’t want to be taken as a dumb football player. Some of her latest charges have no problem with that. “Big country” Austin Davis, Juwan Howard’s returning center, is headed to P.T. school after he completes his 5th year in a Kines masters program.
Andrew Vastardis walked on to the football team 5 years ago and has taken his 6’4” 300# frame to the middle of the line as Michigan’s starting center. He has his eye on medical school. Kathy wants him to be a pediatrician.
So it’s understandable Kathy might take some special measures as we face what in pre-COVID time was a huge week. Facing her class this week, Michigan State week!, she’s found a way to be decked out to show her Michigan spirit. Those kids who already love this cool old lady will surely get a boost of Michigan Pride. Go Blue! Beat State!
P.S. That’s our stuffed wolverine, Fritz, in the background, named after Fritz Crisler
“See here how everything Lead up to this day And it’s just like any other day That’s ever been Sun going up and then The sun going down Shine through my window And my friends they come around”
– from Black Peter. Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. First performed by the Dead December 4, 1969 at Fillmore West. Performed 342 times thereafter. Cut 2 side 2 on Workingman’s Dead, released June 14, 1970 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ka6yhEUyos.
I like being old. I’m not a Deadhead. That’s my brother-in-law in California. But sometimes Hunter and Garcia are spot on. From another Dead staple, I like where my long strange trip has led me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pafY6sZt0FE.
I’m getting tired of hearing my boomer friends bitch about getting old. It was hard work getting to this age (68), and I like it fine right here. I’m rid of a job that for years I thought I loved when in truth it was crushing my soul. Good riddance. Thanks for the 401ks. I’ve met a whole lot of people over the years and been fortunate to stay connected to many of the good ones. There are more good ones out there to be met and befriended, I’m sure, but I’m thankful for my base. My knees don’t hurt anymore since I’ve stopped running, and walking everywhere seems to be just fine as a way to keep the waistline down and the mood elevated. I can drink all the beer I want. Whenever I want. Wherever I want. With whomever I want. No one is lurking to report me to my Chief. Of course I’m not free of consequences: calories, mornings mainly. The boo I craved in college and got to use when I had my card is legal now, but I don’t partake as I don’t want to zone out and miss something. I’ve accepted that I’m not going to procreate, after lots of trying. Even if I were to meet some fertile young chika who found graybeards attractive for more than their retirement accounts, the wizened flagellate filled product my blue-pill charged member might propel up her tubes would carry such damaged DNA that any product of conception would carry too high a risk of ending up some two-headed imbecilic deformed thing that it’d be best just not to start. I could volunteer my high-IQ WASP DNA to a bank, justifying a few moments of solitary pleasure, but any recipient might be in for a bad joke. I love my dear wife of 34 years, more than ever. My partner. My equal. My best friend. And the physical part? The emotion and attraction are constant, and let’s say that modern science does keep everything possible. I am constantly in awe of her and thank the good Lord every day for sending her to me.
I paid my mortgage off in April, 5 months early given the little extra I’d been kicking in each payment. Uncle is giving me back a little of the money I started paying him working at the print shop in high school over 50 years ago. The Missus is still bringing in a nice check for doing something she loves and is very good at. Walking her to and from her campus office gives a nice day’s exercise and we plan to do that even on those days when she’s forced to teach her class from the dining room table. I don’t have to see patients anymore, so no one expects me to fix their aches and pains. But young faculty still sometimes ask me for advice and there seems to be an audience for my writing about some things I used to do. Any harebrained idea that comes to me can be turned into a blog post, and I’ve had over 80 since I started the thing up in January.
I have a wonderful relationship with my aged vehicles. I have 2 Jeeps. One, a Patriot blue 2006 Wrangler, I bought in September 2005 with the big bonus I got for having won the American College of Rheumatology Clinical Scholar Educator Award – paid over 3 years – 2 years previously. The other, a silver 2011 Patriot came home in August 2010 to replace our maroon 1991 Cherokee that we’d bought slightly used almost exactly 20 years previously and had finally rusted beyond salvageability. They both look and run great, and Kathy and I love ‘em more now than when we drove ‘em off the lot. One of the Jeep dealers in town used to send a card every year asking if we wanted to sell the Wrangler and get something new. They never got a response and several years ago I stopped getting the card. I’m not sure how much gas I buy each year, but we don’t put a lot of miles on. I dropped the next biggest travel expense after insurance last June when I retired and became ineligible for the Gold parking pass which bled $157 out of my paycheck every month. Now I have a retiree’s pass, which accesses any U of M lot after 3 P.M. weekdays and all weekend, and costs me nothing. I have parted with my 6 2-wheeled vehicles, formalizing the end of a long and loving relationship that ended little Christmas eve 2014 in the lake country of Chile when I braked hard to avoid a little dog and got thrown into a ditch where I broke and dislocated my shoulder while trashing my brachial plexus (see my March 15 post “Bye Bye Bikes? https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/theviewfromharbal.com/311).
Steely Dan, in “Night by Night”, sang “When the joker tried to tell me I couldn’t cut it in a school town. When he tried to hang that sign on me I said ‘take it down’ ” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxFzHO9lfI. This September it was all but 8 of the last 50 years I’ve done just that. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else, except maybe LaJolla (if I could afford it). I still have all my favorite places, add new ones, get to swim among hordes of young students (I think I draw from them like the oldsters in Cocoon did when they swam in the pool containing the alien pods). If I want, I can even play student myself and sit in on a course or two. The two I sampled last fall term, econ of banking and “death and afterlife” crashed when they became boring and/or too morbid. Nothing this term, but half the classes are virtual and the rest restrict contact between teachers and students, taking a lot of fun out of the classroom experience. I’ll take a look at the course catalogue in November to if something looks good for winter term. Until the lockdown, there was an abundance of lectures, seminars and workshops on campus open to the public. I filled my phone calendar from the University Record. Fortunately, I haven’t needed much doctoring. But if I ever do, there’s a world-class medical center a mile and a half away in which many familiar faces are tending to the sick, and would do by me if I ever became one.
David Foster Wallace wrote a book some years ago A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again. At this age, I’ve tried an awfully lot of those sort of things and am pleased there’s no going back: running, ice skating, motorcycles, canoeing, kayaking (especially at sea), cruising (except on small boats), opera, ballroom dancing (much to the disappointment of my mate), basketball (playing, not watching), the NBA, hockey, soccer, do-it-yourself home repair, automobile maintenance (although I can still change my own oil), modern jazz (Miles Davis and beyond), lap swimming, long hair, foreign language films, golf!(I know that was my sole varsity letter, but it’s all been downhill since) , Belgian beers, smokin’ dope, political news (sorry PDJT, but I still and will always love and support you), and bicycles (see “gone, gone, gone” https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/theviewfromharbal.com/587). I suppose there’s more, as life serves up a host of annoying things you’d rather not have to deal with. DTE and AT&T for example. But don’t deal with them and there go your lights and your internet. But overall the pressure not to enjoy all those things is a huge burden lifted from my shoulders. And life still has a lot of fun things, including the 7 Fs. Football is one of them. I’ll leave it to you to figure out the rest.
My high school English teacher Mrs. Pharriss recently wrote me: “When you reach 80, I’ve come to realize as I approach 81, you no longer think long term. It’s odd, that adjustment, but it also heightens appreciation of the Here and Now. Even the smallest of pleasures—like watching the hummingbirds come to the feeder or hearing the four-year-old twins chattering away while playing on their patio next to ours–brings me happiness.” This compression of the future into a keener appreciation of the here and now is something I’m experiencing even at the tender age of 68. I think it adds to an appreciation of the life we do have and translates into happiness. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, partly because so much of the BS that used to bother me is in the past, and partly because I appreciate the present all the more. I didn’t seek this or plan for it. It’s a gift. Maybe God’s gift to transition us from the “useful” to the “landfill”. From the basket to the casket, as Kirchen sings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WThqW7IX21w. Whatever it is, I’ll take it.
Maybe some of this happiness comes from heeding Thoreau: “simplify, simplify”. But I take care not to overdo that, either, lest I end up like Jack, per Louis Jordan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NAUeL0D4SI
So I rest in my blue La-Z-Boy in my living room a happy and contented man. I look forward to sharing with you all the oddball observations my undertaxed brain happens to conjure. As Evita sang “Don’t cry for me” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpNy6xqoQa8. Where I am is a very good place to be. Now to just hold on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3PZ-Mju5Hk.
My wife and I have lived in this 1958 3500 square foot brick ranch for over 35 years. We’re perched high atop the Defiance moraine on a little cul-de-sac nestled between Broadway and Plymouth overlooking northwest Ann Arbor. We see the sun set from our deck every day it’s not cloudy. We share the street with 12 other houses, all built about the same time as part of a real estate development – Fair Acres – carved out of an apple orchard when some of the land up here was still farmed. The developer Harry Baldwin contracted his names to produce Harbal. If you search on Google Maps you’ll find no other street with a similar name. Early in its settling, residents proposed renaming the street Defiance Moraine, since that was the geologic structure they resided atop. One of Baldwin’s descendants came out of the woodwork to protest that the change would defile Harry’s memory, so that was that. In 2015 when All-American quarterback and Michigan legend Jim Harbaugh came home to accept the challenge of returning Michigan Football to greatness, I proposed we rename our street Harbaugh. Sounds the same and maybe we could get Coach to come to the ribbon cutting ceremony. My idea was soundly overruled by my neighbors, who liked our unique name. By whatever name, we love the location, although you’ve got to go up or down the 37 degree grade Broadway hill to get anywhere, as we’re close to the hospital and campus. My Taubman office was 1.3 miles away (with more direct and interesting walks through woods possible) and Kathy’s 2.1 miles off, a very doable walk we take each morning, weather permitting. The houses here turn over very rarely, with neighbors right across the street coming in last fall the first new ones in several years. Everybody knows everybody and we have gatherings throughout the year, including Tom’s very noisy affair on the fourth of July when the city permits discharge of explosive devices. A couple neighbors have young kids, and Tom and Kara have a couple in college, but mainly we’re a pretty gray bunch.
Some houses have been renovated over the years, including ours. Most drastic was when Tom and Doug inherited retired shopkeeper friend Jim’s little bungalow next door and tore it down to build an Italianate villa. Fortunately for sake of neighborhood appearances, the place is much more ostentatious inside than out. In 2004 we moved completely out of our house to let designer-builder Gary Rochman have at it. We lived in 2 different houses on nearby Broadway for 6 months each. I emptied out most of the inheritances from my dad and Aunt Dorie, who had both died the year before. And I took out a new mortgage which was finally paid off this April. But boy did we get our money’s worth: soaring open beamed ceilings, a new Ipé deck, a giant hot tub, a fireplace shared by the hot tub and master bedroom, a laundry room, a storage room, a back yard (previously we’d just had a steep slope the glacier’d thrown up), ash floors, and a spiral staircase leading to an observation deck on top of the roof. Quite a few more square feet came from the bump out; fortunately, I don’t think the assessors have caught up. Gary got us on the homes tour that Spring and still features the job on his web page https://www.rochmandesignbuild.com/whole-home-renovation-harbal-dr-1 Our house is also still featured on Houzz https://www.houzz.com/hznb/photos/whole-house-addition-and-remodel-harbal-detroit-phvw-vp~114336632. https://www.houzz. We’ve made further improvements since, this time with Uncle Sam’s help and of the green variety, installing a geothermal system 2014 and adorning our roof with 54 solar panels last fall. Take that, Greta Thunberg! (Oops: politics, sorry).
So, we love our little hilltop home and use every inch of it, and not just to store our junk. Indeed, I’ve been attacking that with a frenzied, focused passion since I retired – Marie Kondo’s got nothing on me – and already we’re enjoying more neatness, organization, and open space. Get ready to check your Craigslist and eBay for bargains on homebrewing equipment, stereos, appliances, kitchenware, extra long sport coats, and plenty of other stuff. You don’t have to come to the house to pick it up, but if you do Kathy and I will be happy to show you around. Then you can see my view.
Tommy hasn’t been part of my life for over thirty years, except for the memories. Soon, that’ll be all I have.
Tommy is a year and a half older than me, but was always light years ahead intellectually and academically. He was the brightest medical student my later mentor Bill Arnold had seen at University of Illinois, and Bill recommended Tommy to his own mentor, the then young chief of medicine at U of M Bill Kelley. After a slightly twisted training with a medicine residency and chief residency interposed with a rheumatology fellowship including a stint in Kelley’s lab, he signed on as faculty to the Division headed by the man who hired me, Giles Bole. When I first met Tommy, he looked up at me and asked the usual question “did you play basketball?”. I gave him a retort he didn’t expect “no, were you a jockey?”. Little Tommy and big Bob became fast friends after that. He attended my second rotation on the Arthritis service, where we set the census record. I enjoyed our constant banter, and tried tripping him up with obscure references. He later said rounding with me was like “rounding in a minefield”. But nobody got the better of Tommy for long. Fellows trembled under his Jesuit logic with some occasional Greek thrown in for good measure. But we learned. Oh did we. Sometime after he left, the Division named the award that goes to the fellow with the best teaching skills the “Thomas D. Palella Award”, not that any winner has come close.
Shortly after I got offered a job, my beloved chief Giles got kicked upstairs to become an associate Dean. Of course, once you have a job, it’s time to buy a house and get married, which I did. Tommy served as my best man.
Irving Fox was interim chief for a couple years before Kelley decided Tommy, at the ripe age of 36, was ready for the task. As Kelley had taken on the whole department of medicine at that age, he didn’t think age was all that important, if you had the talent, which Tommy certainly did. Tommy was a terrific chief. Fellows loved him. Faculty uniformly respected his fair, firm manner. But the job wore on him and less than four years after he took it, he announced he was leaving to go into private practice in suburban Chicago and by 1990 he was gone. I may have seen him once since. In 2000, I bought a card and rustled up signatures of those left behind who still knew him. The card was intentionally sick: a nice picture of Burton Tower inside which I inscribed “10 years since you jumped, and some of us still miss you”, recollecting the horrible moment on when Regent Sarah Goddard Power jumped to her death 3/26/87, witnessed by students milling to get to their 10 o’clock classes. I never got a response from Tommy, but I’m sure he got the joke.
The little runt had a way with women. When I arrived, he’d been squiring the tall, blonde, sassy head nurse on the Arthritis ward, whom married man Giles took a shine to, and married her out from under Tommy, who didn’t take long to find a replacement, beautiful dark-haired Julie, whom he married shortly after I met Kathy, showing me the way.
Let me allow the e-mail I posted from the plane Sunday to fellows I remembered from the 80s tell the rest of the story:
Hello old friends
I have some sad news to pass along, which some of you may know already. I was trying to connect with Tommy Palella to send him a PDF of an article on Arthroscopy I’d just gotten into Rheumatology (Oxford). He’d been with me in the trenches at the beginning and I thought he’d be curious as to how things turned out. When I struck out at all my usual ways of finding an e-mail, I contacted Bill Arnold, my scopy mentor, who had known Tommy as a medical student at U of I. I wasn’t prepared for Bill’s reply. I’ll say to you what he wrote to me “sit down before you read this”.
Bob
> Tom is dying of lung cancer metastatic to his brain. > He retired a year ago. In March or so he became confused and a CTs revealed tntc Mets in his brain with a mass in his chest. He is undergoing chemo. > His former partner and one of my fellows called me with the news in May. His wife asked that no one visit. I’ve heard nothing more in the last 6 wks. > Tom essentially went off the grid after leaving AA. I think I saw him once in the last 25 years. He was the brightest student I ever had. > I don’t think he wants to be contacted by any of us.
Tommy was our chronological peer but light years ahead of us academically. I’m sure none of us can forget being victims of his Jesuit logic with a little Greek thrown in for good measure. Pause, remember, reflect. At our time in life, such things happen. May you all push on many years before others are spreading such emails about you.
Bob Ike
And this is an addition after the e-mail:
Yes, Tommy liked his smokes. I always saw it as a sort of self-medication, helping to comport his supremely superior brain to the wants and needs of us under him. But to have that great brain slowly taken away by the cancer is too sad to comprehend, and something I’ve seen personally with my dad and with Joe, Kathy’s brother Bob’s best friend. I suppose my peers should expect this sort of thing starting to happen at our age. As we lose this great, smart, special man, we should feel fortunate we ever got to know him at all, and treasure the memories.
You’ve got to pay attention to a professor named Siddhartha. But this is Verma not Gautama
and he’s currently studying fluid dynamics at Florida Atlantic University.
In this video, he explains and demonstrates clearly what all this COVID particle transmission and control is all about. Notice that masks are all about protecting others from you, not you from others. So those nervous Nellies walking up my way as I walk down Broadway hill and stop to put on their masks are wasting their time.
It’s not long, and the images of particles being projected are pretty amazing.
Bob Ike's blog 
