Mostly in America

From the police report:

On Thursday July 16, 2009, Henry Gates, Jr. was placed under arrest after being observed exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed at a uniformed police officer who was present investigating a report of a crime in progress. These actions on the behalf of Gates served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.

I thought Fred was trying to pull a fast one when he told me that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. had been arrested in Cambridge last week. A more perfectly framed story could not have been invented. It sounds like something that could easily have been a stunt from Punk'd. Ashton Kutcher and Henry Louis Gates -- a natural pairing.

I mean, really. After I laughed myself silly, I felt like crying. Pithy things kept rolling across my digital mental marquee: only in America, stranger than fiction and other such insights. If Professor Gates is not the preeminent scholar of African American Studies in the United States, as director of Harvard's WEB Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, he is on a very short list.

Of all people to racially profile, on his own turf, in his own home (which no doubt visually testified his identity), a home situated in his own community of scholars.

I'm betting he doesn't feel so much at home these days, and is probably redefining the term at its most basic application.

He has asked for an apology from Sgt. James Crowley, the officer being labeled the author of the incident. Sgt. Crowley might be at the epicenter of what happened, but -- scarily -- from out of the woodwork crawl the creepy people who will always, always be involved, but never named or held responsible. People such as Tom, who left the following comment on the matter over at The Root (where Gates serves as editor-in-chief):

Mr. Gate, if you are half the scholor you claim to be you should separate yourself from the J. Jackson's and Rev Sharpton's. These are the gentlemen that KNOW nothing about racism or the common good of the people, one is a cheat to his family the other is a fraud to the government. You as an educator of ALL should separate and rise above the standards of these gentlmen that try and ride your coat tails. You have been put in a bad situation, just like hundreds of thousands of other PEOPLE of all races and creeds. Learn from your mistakes and dont make a mochary of the situation, both are wrong, question is weather you are man enough to admit it publicly without making a mochary of it. Remember you are an Educator first, set the stand, don't creat a problem by getting the JJ's, Sharpton's involved. You should want to separate yourself from the level they claim to be at and are acutally on. Speak the truth and admit when you are at fault first and you will prosper longer than the others. Thank you Sir

[Please take the time to read the rest of the comments; It's scary.] Were I to elevate Sir Gentleman Please-'n-Thank-You Tom to the level of the serious (and I think, sadly, that we have to), I might start humming The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll, with emphasis on "*now* is the time for your tears." Overkill? what-ev-errr. I'm just sayin'. Sir Gentleman Please-'n-Thank-You Tom cannot, and should not, be ignored or discounted as an oddity.

Yesterday, the charge of disorderly conduct was dropped, and the impression given that the whole event was a casual misunderstanding. That speaks to me of Prof. Gates as a perhaps overly forgiving and polite individual but I'm sure that's not the end of it. This will be used as an object lesson by many, and probably for a long time.

Charles Ogletree, Professor Gates' attorney, issued the following statement:

On July 16, 2009, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of Harvard University, was headed from Logan airport to his home [in] Cambridge after spending a week in China, where he was filming his new PBS documentary entitled “Faces of America.” Professor Gates was driven to his home by a driver for a local car company. Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates’ luggage into his home.


Professor Gates immediately called the Harvard Real Estate office to report the damage to his door and requested that it be repaired immediately. As he was talking to the Harvard Real Estate office on his portable phone in his house, he observed a uniformed officer on his front porch. When Professor Gates opened the door, the officer immediately asked him to step outside. Professor Gates remained inside his home and asked the officer why he was there. The officer indicated that he was responding to a 911 call about a breaking and entering in progress at this address. Professor Gates informed the officer that he lived there and was a faculty member at Harvard University. The officer then asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard. Professor Gates said that he could, and turned to walk into his kitchen, where he had left his wallet. The officer followed him. Professor Gates handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver’s license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates’ photograph, and the license includes his address.

Professor Gates then asked the police officer if he would give him his name and his badge number. He made this request several times. The officer did not produce any identification nor did he respond to Professor Gates’ request for this information. After an additional request by Professor Gates for the officer’s name and badge number, the officer then turned and left the kitchen of Professor Gates’ home without ever acknowledging who he was or if there were charges against Professor Gates. As Professor Gates followed the officer to his own front door, he was astonished to see several police officers gathered on his front porch. Professor Gates asked the officer’s colleagues for his name and badge number. As Professor Gates stepped onto his front porch, the officer who had been inside and who had examined his identification, said to him, “Thank you for accommodating my earlier request,” and then placed Professor Gates under arrest. He was handcuffed on his own front porch.

Professor Gates was taken to the Cambridge Police Station where he remained for approximately 4 hours before being released that evening. Professor Gates’ counsel has been cooperating with the Middlesex District Attorneys Office, and the City of Cambridge, and is hopeful that this matter will be resolved promptly. Professor Gates will not be making any other statements concerning this matter at this time.

Here is a link to the .pdf file of the police report* filed by Sgt. Crowley.

*My favorite line from the police report? Upon being invited to exit his home and talk to Crowley on the porch, Gates is said to have replied: "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside..."

Yes, indeed-y, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the original Mr. Priss, is going to make a "your Mama" joke, and in this circumstance, too.

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A terribly sad story came on the television as I sat here typing, safe in my home -- not in America, but secure in the insular Tête de Hergé.

A mother called for police assistance because her adult daughter was threatening to commit suicide. Unfortunately, the presence of the police proved more of an aggravation than anything else. The mother informed the police that her daughter hoped to force a "suicide by cop" situation. Just then, the daughter descended the stairs, gun in hand. The mother moved to shield her child.

Mom was shot to death. Daughter is in a bad way at the hospital. The police spent the night "investigating."

It's tough being a cop. It's tough relying on cops. It's just plain tough, these days.

LINDSEY J. BAUM, missing and in danger

Around 9:15 pm on June 26, Lindsey J. Baum, an 11-year old from the tiny town of McCleary, Washington, disappeared while walking from a friend's house to her home, only four short blocks away.

She just had an argument with her brother, but most everyone notes that she wasn't storming off mad. She didn't have the accoutrements you'd think of when thinking of a runaway -- no money, no cell phone, no change of clothes.

Some friends set out with her, so she was accompanied for a while before they peeled off to go to their own homes for dinner, or homework, a bath or shower, whatever.

Two of those four blocks are reported to be somewhat industrial -- though we are talking *rural* small town. One block away is access to a major highway.

As any child would be, Lindsey was troubled by her parents' recent divorce. Her father lives in Tennessee. This detail is the one I have to shrug off -- in my family, similar circumstances played a role in my eldest brother's decision to run away. But he was a savvy teenager, a world traveler; Lindsey just turned 11 (a grand birthday celebration surely awaits her), and only knows McCleary.

NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN
1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)
McCleary Police Department (Washington) 1-360-533-8765

Family Website with many useful links: LindseyBaum

I learned about her over at Dr. SecretWave101's blog. He notes what many of us have seen in our own communities: How legwork and media savvy are manditory to keep the faces and stories of our stolen children front and center in the public's view.

He notes other stuff, too -- having to do with the privilege of stereotype and the insidious mechanisms by which missing and exploited children receive airplay.

Research Lindsey's story and retell it on your own blog -- or where you will. You're likely more creative than I am -- the point is to disseminate, remind, encourage. Yes, and annoy, I suppose, if that should become necessary. (It's de rigueur here at Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé!)

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Here is a snapshot of additional information about Lindsey Baum's disappearance, obtained at Scared Monkey's Missing Persons Site:


4-foot 9-inches tall
80 pounds
brown hair
brown eyes

She was last seen wearing a grey pullover hoodie with blue jeans and black shoes.

Melissa Baum, the girl's mother, said Lindsey wasn’t angry [that] Friday night, and left without money, a change of clothes or her cellphone. Police have searched for the girl in the homes of her friends, in case she had been “hiding out.”

“She wouldn’t have run away,” Baum said, her voice hoarse. “If she had been hiding she would have come out by now. She can’t hide that long, she loves to talk.”

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NAB News recently added this information:

Lindsey Baum just celebrated her 11th birthday but she is still missing, and the investigation is taking a turn for the worst. Gray’s Harbor County cannot afford to continue the search... at the level of investigation it was at when Lindsey first went missing...

Scott Baum, father of Lindsey who flew to Gray’s Harbour last week from Tennessee, where he lives, pleaded on Monday with the public to help bring his little girl home. Scott can only be in Gray’s Harbour for a short time to help in finding Lindsey; scheduled for deployment to Iraq next week, he may be facing the fight to gain peace in Iraq while he suffers no peace in his heart knowing his daughter is missing without a trace back home in the U.S.

The police believe Lindsey’s abduction is from someone she may have known over a stranger just passing by.

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The Seattle Times 7/21/2009:

$6,000 reward for info on missing McCleary girl

Investigators hope a $6,000 reward will prompt someone to come forward with information about the disappearance of an 11-year-old McCleary girl last month.Undersheriff Rick Scott of the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office says the money is being offered by Crimestoppers and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. [Reward total now is $10,000, Oct. 2009; now $20,000, April, 2010]

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Police: Is Tumwater luring linked to McCleary case?

TUMWATER, Wash. - Police are investigating whether the attempted abduction of a girl in Tumwater on Wednesday is linked to last month's highly publicized disappearance of 11-year-old Lindsey Baum in McCleary.

Officials say three men tried to kidnap the 14-year-old girl in broad daylight on Wednesday as she was walking along a busy street, but the girl was able to escape by running away.

The close call left the girl very shaken, and now detectives are comparing the similarities between her experience and Lindsey Baum's unexplained disappearance June 26 in McCleary, about 22 miles away.

"We investigate because child lurings aren't as common as most crimes, and when you have two communities that are so close together and the circumstances where obviously it occurred in public areas. And the girls are approximately the same age," says Detective Jen Kolb of the Tumwater Police Department.

The Tumwater girl, whose name is being withheld, says she was walking along Capitol Boulevard to her mother's place of work when the three men jumped out of a black pickup.

They were yelling, "Hey, pretty lady, how are you?" then came after her, she says.

The girl started running, and the men chased after her. But soon after they gave up the chase, ran back to the pickup and drove off.

The experience left the girl scared, alone and distraught. So she ran to her mother's place of work and breathlessly told her what had happened.

"She was very scared, shaken - didn't know what to think or what to do," says her mother.

The girl now says she believes the men wanted to hurt her.

"In a way, yeah. ... Just the way they were talking to me and trying to come to me," she says.

Kolb said she finds the case "very disturbing" and is struck by the parallels to the disappearance of Lindsey Baum.

Investigators want anyone with information to call the Tumwater Police Department at (360) 754-4200.

-- 7/17/2009

to read all posts relating to lindsey baum, click here. unfortunately, there are few facts to amplify what was written here, back in july 2009.

Only A Teacher: Frank McCourt

They're dropping like flies. Or maybe I am just more attentive, having my own mortality too much in mind.

My family has gravitated inexorably toward the teaching profession. Any and all attempts to do something else, something equally noble and worthwhile, that maybe paid better, had decent hours and great benefits, have failed or been allocated to the "volunteer" section of our compartmentalized existences.

There is not a day goes by that I don't remember a student or a colleague, and am blessed by the various lessons each taught me.

Teacher Frank McCourt has died. He was also quite the writer. I've not read his Teacher Man: A Memoir, but it's on the list.

Here is the [entire, gulp] transcript of a PBS interview he did, titled "Only A Teacher..."

Frank McCourt, the author of Angela's Ashes and 'Tis, is a retired English teacher. He lives in New York City.

Q: What do you see as some of the major obstacles to improving public schools in our country?

We don't like our kids. This is a country, this is a nation of people who don't like their kids. Therefore, the teachers are baby sitters. We don't look at teachers as scholars the way they do in Europe. In Spain you're called a professor if you're a high school teacher, and they pay teachers, they pay teachers in Europe. We don't here. We resent if, we resent giving them pay raises. If they rise up and say we need a cost of living adjustment, [we say], "Oh, what do you mean you need a cost of living adjustment? Look at all the time you've got off. You're finished at 3 o'clock, never mind that you go home with a bag of papers to correct, and then you have the summers off. These teachers with their summers off! Oh my, I wish I were a teacher." Well, there's nobody stopping you from becoming a teacher! Go and become a teacher, dammit! All these so called professionals, investment bankers and lawyers, [they say], "Oh these teachers have their summers off." You know what most teachers do? They go out and get a job to subsidize their miserable pittance they get from most community boards and boards of education.

Q: Why did you become a teacher?

When I got out of the army I had the GI Bill. Since I had no high school education or anything like that, I came to NYU and they took a chance on me and let me in. I suppose I was what you might call a mature student of 22. And, I thought, I'd like, at one time I thought I'd like to become a journalist, but because I had no education, and because I'd come from this horrible background of poverty and so on, no education, no self esteem, so I didn't see myself mingling with two-fisted, hard-bitten journalists. I would dream of going up to the New York Times and asking them if I could please be a copy boy or let me scrub the toilets or something like that. But I couldn't rise to those heights. So the two things I liked most of all were books and children. I used to see American movies where the teacher is there in the classroom and all the kids file in -- it was usually a movie about Nebraska or something like that where everybody's white and blue eyed, and there's Doug the quarterback and Susan the beauty queen, and they sit there with their pens poised while you discourse most eloquently on John Donne, and they'd all sit there and they would love me to death and I would be the hero of the community. Well, it didn't turn out like that. I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into, when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that. They're all natural enemies, teenagers are all natural enemies, they're really animals, but I love them, I love animals, and the average teenager should be sent to some remote place like Australia, till he's 20. But I like the teaching because it keeps you on your toes all the time. You can't back off, and some teachers say, "Oh, give them busy work." Well, when you're with bright kids you can't give them busy work, but..it keeps you... in a sense it's like Hemingway talking about grace under pressure. You're facing the bull, and that moment that the bull's horn comes close to you is the moment at which you could die. That's what it's like going into the classroom -- you could die in there.

Q: How did you learn to be a successful teacher?

There was what you would call a turning point in my life. I was ill-prepared and insecure -- because I had never been in a high school in my life -- in this first job. I knew nothing about American kids and their strange tribal ways, and it seemed to me that they were throbbing with sexuality, which you wouldn't find in Ireland, because they'd knock it out of you. But here, there's boys and girls in the class, and I didn't know what to do; and the only models I had for teaching were Irish school masters, and that was all threat, sticks, straps, and physical beatings. So, of course I wasn't gonna, there was gonna be no physical beating...there were kids in those classes who were on the football team, and would've broken me in two. But I would become frustrated and I would yell at them, I'd say to them, "You better keep up now, you're not doing the work, you're not bringing in your textbooks," and so on, and I'd rant and rave. 'Til one day there was a little African-American girl sitting in the front row -- Sylvia -- and she was beautiful and always impeccably dressed. And one day she said, "Mr. McCourt!" "What?" "Mr. McCourt." "What?" "Chill Out!" So, that was the first time I ever heard that expression, but I knew what it meant, so I chilled. What that meant was I became more and more of a human being. I dropped the Irish schoolmaster mask. It didn't work anymore. What I learned then was the main device, if you want to call it that for a successful teacher, was honesty. I said look, we're in this together, I'm learning, I would say that, I'm learning. This is what I discovered years and years and years later, I was the big learner out of this teaching experience.

Q: Tell us about your first teaching experience.

When I got my first teaching job, which was on Staten Island in 1958, I took over in midterm spring of '58 for an old lady named Ms. Mudd, m-u-d-d. And she was just, she just, the kids were driving her crazy. And she said to me, "They're driving me crazy," she says to me, "You look out this window," and the school overlooked New York Harbor. She said, "You look out this window in a week, and you'll see this ship passing by, and you'll see me waving from this cruise ship, and the two things I never want to see again is Staten Island and teenagers!"

She left me with mounds, piles of old papers and books, and I went rummaging through the old papers, and I didn't know what to do with the kids, so I had them reading these old papers, and some of them went back to the Second World War. And they were compositions written by young Staten Island students at that time, who later went off to war, off to the Second World War. And some of the kids in my class discovered these papers, and they were overcome: "This was my father, this was my uncle, this was my cousin Vinny," and so on. And it was so exciting, and I said to them, "This composition paper is crumbling," and they would copy them, and they were taking them home to their families, "Look what Uncle Vinny..." And this was a tremendous moment. It was my bridge to the kids. There was such a feeling of community, and emotion, because sometimes the kids, girls and boys, would come across some item from the Second World War from somebody in their family who had been a student at McKee. And, they would be overcome and have to run out of the room. That was one, I think that was my first bridge to them.

Q: How did you balance the emotional needs of students with their intellectual ones?

These girls would come from, I had one class of 35 girls come in these white dresses, uniforms or whatever they are, with hair, hairdos, these beehive hairdos, where you could raise a sparrow in each family. They came into my class and they sat, this first day they sat down, and they took out little boxes, and they started doing their nails and plucking their eyebrows, and fixing their eyelids and so on, eyelashes, and I said what -- this was a vocational high school -- I said, "What shop is this?" "Cosmetology." I said, "What's cosmetology?" "Beauty culture." And then they'd comment on me, they'd say, "Yo teach, your hair is a mess, your nails need work. Why don't you come up to beauty culture and we'll do you?" That was an invitation I declined.

But all of this was human stuff and it had nothing to do with the curriculum. In the meantime, I'm finding my way, because nobody was there to help me. I'm finding my way through this education minefield. I'd go up to the teacher's cafeteria at lunchtime. On one side of the cafeteria the old timers were gathered -- they're giving me advice, and they're saying, traditional and conservative and they've been through it, and they say you know, "You're the boss in that classroom, you tell them what to do, don't ever tell them anything about yourself, nothing private." Then I'd go to the other side of the cafeteria, and there are the younger teachers who were progressive, you know, students of John Dewey, and they'd say, "Well, you know, these kids are people. These are real people and we have to meet their felt needs." I didn't know what a felt need was, but I guess I tried to meet their felt needs. It was a long, slow process, because there's no, there's no method or technique by which you can become a successful teacher overnight. It takes years. And it's like writing I suppose, or like any art, or any human endeavor -- you have to find your own way. You have to find your own style, techniques and style. So, I found my own style after a while, and sometimes I would imitate other teachers who had certain ways of dealing with classes. Didn't work, never worked. It's like being a writer. You imitate Faulkner, you imitate Hemingway, you imitate Scott Fitzgerald, but in the end you find your own voice, and your own style, and that's what I had to do as a teacher.

Q: Describe a typical day of teaching as you remember it.

Most teachers would have, first period on the second floor, then it's up to the sixth floor for the second period, down to third floor for the third period, and in between, in between the second and third period you had what they call homeroom, official class. You had this group of kids, and you had to take their attendance, give them bus passes and food vouchers and whatever, and get excuses for the previous day's absence. You had to keep all these records. You were like a big clerk, a bookkeeper. And then you go to your next class. So there were five classes, so you'd have lunch, and then you'd have what they call, somewhere along the line, a building assignment. And my building assignment most the time was to supervise the student cafeteria. And you'd go in there and you'd hear them feeding, swilling, and whining and moaning about the food and you see kids throwing food away and you think of your own childhood when we would have eaten the stuff out of the garbage can, and I was convinced, they'd say, "Oh, this is terrible, this hot dog." I was convinced that most of these kids were gourmets. They went home to bouillabaisse every night or fine wines. Then, if you're an English teacher, if you've been foolish enough to give them an assignment, they hand it in. And you take it home in a bag. You go home and your heart is heavy because you have 170 kids. Now if you give them an assignment 250 words, multiply 170 by 250, and that's like reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. And there's another book you'd like to read or a movie you'd like to see, or you'd like to talk to your wife once in a while, but you have all these papers. Sunday night comes. That's the worst night of the week for any teacher in the country because they know this stuff is piled up and they're in such a state of despair. And you try to do it, and like any kid who has homework to do, "I'll get up in the morning and do it." Well you know you're not going to do 170 papers, so you do what you can, and try to get it back to them, but the load never lightened.

Q: Why are teachers important in our society?

What's the most precious material we have in the country: children. If we don't give them the best keepers and mentors and teachers, we're destroying them. We're destroying the country. They are the future, and the teachers are there everyday with the future. And we're so careless about that. We underpay teachers, we hire poorly prepared teachers, and we don't help them. We don't go into the schools and help them, "What can I do?" We don't participate. It's a matter of taking care of the children. If you have a child who's ill, you want the best doctor. You want the best surgeon, "I want the best surgeon for my child." But do we say that about teachers? No, we don't. We know that surgeons are well paid, they better be well paid, they don't want to have worries at home. It should be the same way with teachers. They're the single most important professsion in the country because they're shaping the future. And some of them are misshaping the future or they're not being helped by us. And as I said before, we don't like our children. Because the proof of it is how we treat our teachers. That's the one fine and significant proof: how you treat your teachers. And they're treated badly.

Q: What can we do to help improve our nation's schools?

One of the reasons the schools are in such a state is no one consults the teachers. I used to watch some of these programs on television and you'd have somebody from some corporation, and you'd see some jerk from the think tank, and then you'd have a union official, and I'd call... One time I called Channel 13 in New York, they had one of these discussions about schools, and I said -- they were inviting us, calls from the outside -- and the lady said, "Well what would your question be?"

And I said, "Why don't you have a teacher on this panel?"

"Oh, that's a very interesting question..."

I said, "It's about schools, isn't it?"

"Yes."

But I never got through. One never gets through.

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This teacher's "last" kids, from the last class, on the last day --each and every one a marvel, a phenomenon:

Oh, No, You Don't, You ScuzBags, You!

When I shake open the NYT of a morning, delighting in the fresh creases, scanning what's above the line, and what's below, it's doggone rare for me to start the day by reading the business section.

Good thing that I read the free, online version -- where this alluring headline jumped off the computer screen and down my throat. I *despise* these people with a passion, apparently. Who knew? Which people, exactly? Well, I have tended to cast the net wide.

Okay, so it took pastoral counseling and several exorcisms for me to be able to wish well all the folks who took out ridiculous, unaffordable mortgages, thinking... thinking? Thinking what? I've never gotten a good handle on what these people were thinking, if they were thinking at all.

The Fredster is more open than I am in laying the primary blame at the feet of The Scuzbags who brokered all those fraudulent mortgages. I mean, if they hadn't come along, we never would have found out about the various lacunae threatening to bring down our entire economy, as well as negatively impacting global financial health. Right?

I have fond memories of my investment account...

Chhhoooooooooooooooo!

Still, after having my head do a few 360s, and spewing what might have been creamed peas, I came to accept that good people do stupid things, and I managed to be truly glad that they were being assisted in keeping their homes and reestablishing their credit. (Yes, even as we struggle to make the payments on Our Manor, Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé -- not that we claim ownership, no -- we simply have lost touch with Captain Haddock, last seen at Bongi's place). The Captain mortgaged The Manor to fund his latest swashbuckling adventures on the High Seas, and to keep him in his cups. We're positive that he'll be sending us some money very soon.

Back to the lesson of gladness. I don't mean to beat you over the head with it, I mean to beat myself over the head with it! Because I have a hard time, sadly, being glad that someone else is being helped, when I am not. That's an embarrassing admission. The first thing to realize? It's not about you, it's about someone else, and this someone else is in need.

Still, I had hoped that this would be game over and lesson learned, and that we'd not see such financial irresponsibility again, at least not on such a scale.

Cashing In, Again, on Risky Mortgages

By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: July 19, 2009

LOS ANGELES — From the ninth floor of a downtown office building on Wilshire Boulevard, Jack Soussana delivered staggering numbers of mortgages to homeowners during the real estate boom, amassing a fortune.

By Mr. Soussana’s own account, his customers fared less happily. He specialized in the exotic mortgages that have proved most prone to sliding into foreclosure, leaving many now scrambling to save their homes.

Yet the dangers assailing Mr. Soussana’s clients have yielded fresh business for him: Late last year, he and his team — ensconced in the same office where they used to broker mortgages — began working for a loan modification company. For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront, they promised to negotiate with lenders to lower payments on the now-delinquent mortgages they and their counterparts had sprinkled liberally across Southern California.

“We just changed the script and changed the product we were selling,” said Mr. Soussana, who ran the Los Angeles sales office of Federal Loan Modification Law Center. The new script: You got a raw deal, and “Now, we’re able to help you out because we understand your lender.”

Mr. Soussana’s partners at FedMod, as the company is known, were also products of the formerly lucrative world of high-risk lending. The managing partner, Nabile Anz, known as Bill, previously co-owned Mortgage Link, a California subprime lender, now defunct, that once sold $30 million worth of loans a month.

Jeffrey Broughton, one of FedMod’s initial partners, served as director of business development at Pacific First Mortgage, a lender that extended so-called Alt-A mortgages for borrowers with tarnished credit for Countrywide Financial, which lost billions of dollars on bad mortgages before being rescued in an acquisition.

FedMod is but one example of how many of the same people who dispensed risky mortgages during the real estate bubble have reconstituted themselves into a new industry focused on selling loan modifications.

Despite making promises of relief to homeowners desperate to keep their homes, FedMod and other profit making loan modification firms often fail to deliver, according to a New York Times investigation based on interviews with scores of former employees and customers, more than 650 complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau, and documents filed by the Federal Trade Commission in a lawsuit against the company...

Read the rest here. I think there will be more to come.

The Tuttles with AJ Lee

The Tuttles with AJ Lee at the California Bluegrass Association 34th Father's Day Festival in Grass Valley, CA on June 19, 2009.

Molly Tuttle - vocal, guitar & banjo, Sullivan Tuttle - guitar, Michael Tuttle - mandolin, Jack Tuttle - vocal, bass, & fiddle, and AJ Lee - vocal & mandolin.




We lease twenty acres and one Ginny mule
From the Alabama trust
For half of the cotton and a third of the corn
We get a handful of dust

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

I had a daughter called her Annabelle
She's the apple of my eye
Tried to give her something like I never had
Didn't want to ever hear her cry

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

When I'm dead and buried I'll take a hard life of tears
From every day I've ever known
Anna's in the churchyard she got no life at all
She's only got these words on a stone

We cannot have all things to please us
No matter how we try
Until we've all gone to Jesus
We can only wonder why

{thank you, brother tumbleweed}

Whacking Cats

The Retired Educator Does Australian Folk Songs and Is Sad

"Curses, foiled again!"

Snidely Whiplash just won't be deterred, even though Dudley Do-Right almost always emerges triumphant in the more cartoonish arenas of my life.

Why, yes, I am Nell Finwick!

Yes, this is The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show!

I am pretty sure that I did not blog about The Smell.

You'd likely not even miss a beat, as often as I bemoan the fartings and stinky poops of our caterie here at Marlinspike Hall, deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé.

Perhaps it is worth taking a moment to assure you that I keep a clean and pleasant Manor. Honest!

No, The Smell to which I refer now came from my suture line -- the incision from last Monday, July 6.

It would have made an entertaining video clip: I kept smelling something cloyingly sweet. Not bad, exactly, just not familiar. Funny thing was that I never smelled it when I went investigating to my *right* -- and when I took off after it by going left, well, I ended up going in circles.

Yes, I am an idiot.

When I realized the source of the odor, this Brainiac also realized that the site had been itching, as well. In terms of pain? I was guarding the shoulder but trying to cut back on post op pain meds. To be frank (echos of "Mr. Pus? Mr. Frank Pus? White courtesy telephone!"), I don't trust my own pain evaluations anymore. Sometime in the past year or so, I became a wimp.

Finally, I decided to remove the dressing, clean the area, and rebandage it. My surgeon prefers that I leave undisturbed the bandage he puts on the morning of discharge from the hospital until I come in for my first post op appointment. (Tuesday, July 21)

Okie-dokie, then!

Imagine the speed with which I threw body and soul into Denial when I saw what amounted to fresh yellowish and bloody drainage... Fresh, having absorbed into the ABD bandage as a shape slightly larger than a dollar bill.

I carefully tended to it, and used good technique in getting it redressed.

I whistled while I worked.

In a bid for sympathy, I showed The Fredster the painterly evidence, and recounted my tale of stinky woe. Perhaps I failed to mention the continuing fever and sweats, the inability to sleep due to pain. Whatever I said, he encouraged me to call the surgeon first thing in the morning.

Well... the next morning, the drainage was only the size of a quarter (What *is* this compulsion to size the Rorschach blots on bandages by comparing them with monetary currency?).

To me, that clearly indicated that -- in lieu of a phone call -- the situation merited a downgrade to email communication. I may have mentioned my aversion to telephones in times of stress? No?

So I shot off this email to my ortho's main squeeze:

Hi Suzie Q --

I have a small problem.

Surgery was 7.6.2009 and I've been doing well -- the post op pain has been a problem only when I use the arm too much, and even though I still am having low grade fevers and sweats, I am also on Zyvox which ought to kill anything.

No problems with the dressing until yesterday, when the wound started to smell a bit (kind of a sweet smell), and itch. I decided to change the dressing and clean the area. Most everything on the bandage was dry and old, except for an area at the bottom of the incision that was draining serosanguinous (pink, some yellow?) stuff.

There was a fair amount that had absorbed into the ABD pad -- a little more than the size of a dollar. I just checked it -- after about 12 hours now, the bandage has about a silver-dollar size circle of the... stuff. There is no pus or anything like that and the incision looks perfectly normal to me except for the area at the bottom where the seepage is being produced -- and, still, that slight smell.

If you think I should come in to be seen at the clinic before my scheduled appt with Bob next week, then I'll certainly come. However, I have an appointment Thursday afternoon with one of Dr. Infectious DiseaseDood's PAs. I am comfortable waiting until then, unless this gets worse, in the hopes that they'll culture it and give me an informed opinion about what to do.

What do you think?

Thanks very much,
Retired Educator

Four hours later, I sent her this, effectively refusing to take responsibility for myself, and backing out of any further investigation:

Hi again --

After all of that, I think the drainage has stopped!

I put a new ABD pad on at about 7 am this morning and now, at 11:30, it is completely clean and dry.

Sorry to have bothered you --
RE
I am perturbed with myself, since the issue was hardly resolved just because I went four hours without a dime or 1913 buffalo nickel's worth of serosanguinous drainage.

There should have been no drainage at all, and certainly not with onset a week after the surgery! Then, of course, there's the issue of nearly two years spent chasing pathogens and other deleterious tiny things. Fever, sweats, pain, drainage. There's no need to page Gregory House.

Today, I went 12 hours without drainage. So I took the damn thing off -- it's hot and sticky, and I just couldn't be bothered, HARRUMPH.

A few minutes ago, I went in to take my sponge bath, a task that feels so good once completed, but seems like it just might kill you while you're in the middle of it -- and what did I see but evidence that there had been another attempted breakout from Axilla Prison.

Whether from the sudden whammy of depression or from the fever I was spiking, I don't know, but I began to shake. I was all a-wobbolly.

Never needing much of an excuse, a break from sanity seemed in order (La Bonne et Belle Bianca was out, having resumed rehearsals with her opera company; Fred was at a Church Supper, hopefully to quash and tear assunder the slutty overtures of The Church Lady ) -- and I paused for a rousing rendition of Waltzing Mathilda. Follow the bouncing ball and sing along with Mitch!

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited 'til his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong,
"You'll never catch me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."
"Oh, You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

And so, tomorrow at the InfectiousDiseaseDood's Place, I will come clean, do a show-and-tell with a little shoulder, a little leg, a little shoulder, a little leg...

Because, dear friends, the game is [again] afoot with these doggone titanium implants: My new prosthesis is infected, Zyvox be damned.

And I am so sad.

Therefore, brethren, let us bring this Pity Party to a timely close with a rousing rendition of Along the Road to Gundagai.


There's a track winding back
to an old-fashioned shack,
Along the road to Gundagai.
Where the gum trees are growin'
and the Murrumbidgee's flowin'
beneath the starry sky.
Oh my mother and daddy are waitin' for me
And the pals of my childhood once more I will see
And no more will I roam 'cos I'm headin' right for home
Along the road to Gundagai.*


*"Along The Road To Gundagai is a song written by Jack O'Hagan in 1922. It is well-known among Australians, and one of a small number of pieces which could be considered an Australian folk tune. The town of Gundagai is a rural town of New South Wales, Australia. In May 2001 the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), as part of its 75th Anniversary celebrations, named "Along the Road to Gundagai" as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time." -- Wikiwikiwikiwikipeeeeeedeeeeeeyahhhh!
**************************************************************************************************
UPDATE -- Thursday, 16 July 2009
Jesus H. Christ, do I hate the InfectiousDiseaseDood's office. Ah, but that is neither here nor there, and certainly is not news.
ID-Dood made the bacteriologist -- who identified a gram positive bacteria in the stain (but not culture) from the "deep tissue" sample taken during last week's surgery -- take another look.
I can hear him saying, in his very precise way: "Check your work! Please and Thank You!"
The guy changed his freaking little, tiny mind and now says he sees no pesky pathogens after all. For most people, that'd be great news, cause for a celebration, even. For me and my medicos? It's yet another sucker punch.
ID-Dood's PA talked over me, and over me, and over me. She's ask a question, I'd start to answer, she'd start talking, I'd stop. Again and again, until I finally stopped even trying. She cultured the fluid still drip-drip-dripping out of the suture line. She ordered blood cultures and the usual labs. (I was febrile and tachy -- yawn.)
Their phlebotomist is a sweetheart of a man. He had to stick me four times and was upset with himself -- but really he did well, given what he had to work with. He even managed to get an extra tube, "just in case." Mostly, he's a pleasure because he's... normal. Nice to talk with, very professional but with a great sense of humor. Talks to the blood vessels, encourages the blood to flow. (Maybe he needs to break out of the lab for some fresh air.)
So... here I am, left hanging. Fred is oh-so-frustrated. The PA kept making blithe comments like: "Well, you should be used to this by now!" and "You should write a book, telling people how to deal with stuff like this." Good thing she cannot read minds.
I reiterated, just to have something of note to say, that I will NOT give up this implant. I told her that I needed them to get "creative." She took umbrage. [Was saying that rude? I didn't mean to insult anyone, just wanted it clear: I WILL NOT GIVE UP THIS IMPLANT, I don't care how infected is the bone.]
Fred thought of something that has me laughing out loud. I got the hospital bill today -- $40,800, with the prosthesis constituting $13,000 of that charge for a 3-day stay. He pointed out that they've removed two -- in August and then December 2008 -- and suggested that I should ask for them back! To my incredulous, "but what do I want with titanium shoulder implants that aren't... implanted?" -- he answers, "You bought 'em, they're yours!"
Cracked me up!
So. We wait. On cultures and labs. On next weeks' assessment by the surgical crowd. Once again, no one wants to be in charge.
For your inner crooner's pleasure, today we turn to the Music Outback Foundation and some fresh young Bush Bards:

Bush Bus
Written by: Students & teachers from Apungalindum & Aniltji HLC
with Matt Hill, Music Outback Education
(C)(P) 2006 Music Outback Foundation

Verse 1
The bus goes through sand and water,
The bus is old and slow.
The bus goes through hot and cold,
It's full of kids we know.

Verse 2
Josilyn sitting in the front,
Randall's happy anywhere,
Riding along the bus is old,
Laughing along without a care

Chorus
Bush bus, bush bus
Take us to school
Bush bus, bush bus
You're so cool.

Verse 3
Little kids, big kids say thank you,
We will miss you goodbye bus,
Bouncing like a Kangaroo,
Thank you for being so good to us.

Joie de vivre!

It's Sunday morning and the fur is flying, as feline jealousies are in high gear. I am a "dog person," and so, of course, we have four cats.

Sam-I-Am considers himself mistreated and abandoned since we took in Uncle Kitty Big Balls back in May. Sammy is an impressive-looking cat, having cultivated a James-Deanesque sort of bemused glower. If there is such a glower.

He has been with us the longest, joining us after Dear Prudence passed away... when? Wow. It's been ten years. He came along to pester Monaghan -- Monaghan deserves a post all his own -- such a gentle giant. He was our Nurse Cat. He loved music. The Fredster brought him home as a "surprise" one Thanksgiving morning -- he appeared to be nothing but long, black, matted hair and proved his quality by enduring his first brushing with dignity. His death was very hard on Fred -- it came at a time when he was dealing with his diagnosis of adult ADHD, the loss of a job, my usual dramas, a new house -- beaucoup de stuff. Monaghan sort of marked the trajectory of his personal journey. Fred could not accept that the sweet thing was very, very ill and I had the awful task of forcing him to the vet, knowing that Monaghan would not come home again.

Among many other Monaghan Mysteries, we could never figure out how he managed to have such cold, minty breath.

Dear Prudence was a great influence on this oh-so-serious animal, as she was just a lovely ditzer. Sadly, she wasn't with us long. She apparently had a stroke that sunny summer day... and the forensic-inclined vet who examined her just minutes after her death opined that she may have had an undiagnosed seizure disorder. I miss the little thing. She was so naturally tiny that the shelter from which we adopted her was unsure of her actual age. Turns out they were a little off, the vet, too -- or Prudy set a record for Youngest Estrus. We were holding off on having her spayed because the vet refused to operate on such a young kitten. Ar ar ar!

The poor thing clawed her way out of a window screen in the middle of the night and when we managed to corral her the next day, she had obviously experienced a great deal of sexual trauma. As in gang rape.

Dear Prudence loved pretending she needed saving -- from trees, rooves, car tops, boulders. Typical girly-girl.

Sam-I-Am was born in a Walmart store. His mother was hit by a car after being chased outside, and her kittens were promptly delivered to the local shelter. Sammy was pitiful -- covered in fleas to an extent I'd not thought possible, really too young and tiny for adoption (but we're so glad they fudged the numbers for us!).

[beep:beep:beep: John McCain is on Meet the Press. His response to the implications of the burgeoning Cheney scandal and the possibility of an investigation: "What's the positive that could come from dragging this out in public when we already know bad things were done?"

Damn straight! Why examine our conscience -- I mean, we *get* it, already: Big goofs, they happen!

As for Sarah Palin and her baling out of the discomforts of governance? "I wasn't shocked. A bit surprised... I am confident she will be a major factor on the national scene..." And, explaining her reasons for resigning, as laid out by Palin in a breathy private phone call: "How can she best serve?" It is all about finding the best place, the most effective position, from which to wield her intricate policies. Warming to his mental notecards, McCain then goes on to blame the media, the ethics charges, and "sustained personal attacks." He does a fine jig when asked why he won't back her candidacy for future office.

Dance, John, dance!

David Gregory: "Knowing everything you know now, would you nominate her again?" Pirouetting, doing a great job of spotting as he whips around, McCain says: "Absolutely, absolutely." Said with the stiffest smile I've ever seen.

She really *owes* this man for his kindness, for his reticence to say what we all already know.

Looking more closely, though, I think he is either suffering eye strain or communicating in dotty dashes of blinking -- yes, Morse code blinking!

Calling on my somewhat rusty code skills, here is McCain's Morse text, translated:

.--. .- .-.. .. -. / - --- .-. .--. . -.. --- . -.. / -- -.-- / -.-. .- -. -.. .. -.. .- -.-. -.-- .-.-.- / ... .... . / .. ... / .- -. .- - .... . -- .- .-.-.- / .-. ..- -. --..-- / .-. ..- -. --..-- / .. / ... .- -.-- --..-- / .. -. / - .... . / --- .--. .--. --- ... .. - . / -.. .. .-. . -.-. - .. --- -. .-.-.- / .. -. / - .... . / .-- --- .-. -.. ... / --- ..-. / ... .- --. .- -.-. .. --- ..- ... / --. .- -. -.. .- .-.. ..-. ---... / ..-. .-.. -.-- --..-- / -.-- --- ..- / ..-. --- --- .-.. ... .-.-.-

On the need for additional troops in Afghanistan: "Let's not go back to a Rumsfeld war..." Hmm. When was the last Rumsfeld sighting? And... John, how are we to avoid the repetition of such errors if we don't give them a good airing, a close and public look? It's not that there is a subset of the citizenry jonesing for some bitchslapping of the Bush administration for its more criminal endeavors... Oh, wait. Yes, there is such a group of reprobates! That's precisely what I want, for instance.

Despite his tendency for duplicity, I still like McCain and will never understand why he shot himself, again, in the foot last time out, reviving doubts about his judgment and temperament.

John, remember to spot as you turn, else all that spinning will make you dizzy. Whip, whip, whip! beep:beep:beep]

Um, anyway. Choo choo?

After Monaghan died, the entire household here at Marlinspike Hall, deep deep in the Tête de Hergé, seemed to age and become somewhat musty. There was a lot of sneezing and blowing-of-the-noses. Sam-I-Am began to put on weight and undertook a deep study of cat-napping.

It was at this point that a rather ragtag pair of siblings began to haunt the moat area of The Manor: now known as Uncle Kitty Big Balls and his sister, the mercurial Marmy. In a creative stretch, they are also known as Little Boy and Little Girl. Okay, and occasionally: Pickle Head and Fluffy Butt. Then there is the ubiquitous unisexual appellation of Stinky Boy/Girl. Trust me, this family line has produced some bodacious foul odor producers.

This served to drive Sammy nuts -- his nose gone into overdrive, haunted by the markings exterior to Marlinspike Hall that easily invaded his space through the as-yet-to-be-repaired late Renaissance chinking, especially pervasive in our wing. (Spring cleaning usually keeps us busy twelve months out of twelve...) We plan to spend the $70 per 3 1/2 gallon bucket next "spring" and use PeneTreat: Log Home Preservative: "PeneTreat by Sashco is a borate-based wood preservative that forms a shell of protection to defend against rot, most wood-destroying insects and fungi." Yes, we are borrowing a page from those intrepid North American pioneers.

C. h. o. o.

And so it went that Miss Marmy turned up preggers. Huge, sway-backed -- a real test of her tiny body and mind. We couldn't let her remain out in the open, struggling to feed herself and escape outdoor dangers. Enter Miss Marmy!

She defies description. I'll not even try.

At eight months old, she delivered a litter of five kittens: Speckle-Belly-White-Foot, Fuzz Bucket, Little Girl, Mascara, and the one, the only Dobby. All were adopted out, eventually, except for Dobby. We kept him -- The Runt, and Our Little Idiot. That'd be him on the far right.



Sammy's head was likely spinning. He went from a staid life with Monaghan, and virtually free reign over a whole section of The Manor, to cohabitating with a Hormone Freak of Nature, to the truly terrifying period of dealing with Marmy -- and her pronounced lack of maternal instincts --
and the cinq chatons.

Once we adopted out the four -- life settled down for our Walmart hero, and life became good. Marmy remained aloof but still was young at heart and soon was racing like an addled nutjob down spiral staircases and leaping among the Caravaggio collection. Dobby proved to be a stellar little guy and definitely came to love Sammy -- seeking him out for play and nuggling.

Um, it was also a time of sexual experimentation for our now completely sterile brood. Sammy and Dobby continue to have periods of confusion about their orientation. Progressive and open-minded as we, of course, are? We don't judge and only intervene when Sammy's weirder efforts begin to elicit cries of fear and pain on the part of his little boy-toy.

Then... Uncle Kitty Big Balls began to come around again. I had thought him dead. And he looked pretty close to dead, closer with every subsequent visit.

In late April, as I lay in the ICU, hooked up to a ventilator, Fred came to my bedside looking all emotional and distraught. "Awww," thought I, "he is really worried about me, poor guy..."

"I need to talk to you about something important," he began. Calling it a "talk" was certainly a stretch, given that I had a tube down my throat...

"Little Boy came by The Manor today, begging for food. He could barely walk. I think one of his back legs is broken. He looks bad, real bad... I want to rescue him. I know you are, really, a dog person (Ha! And here you thought I had totally lost my train of thought -- choo to you!) and that we already have three cats, but I hope you will say it is okay."

After one of the nurses increased my oxygen and suctioned the hell out of my bronchs, gave me a little something for pain, re-positioned me, and fluffed a pillow or two... I held out my thumb, in the "up" position... and so it went. Had I a clue what I was approving? Not really. Some Dilaudid delusion...

Several thousand dollars and a few surgeries later (which NO, we could not afford but *did*, anyway, out of love for this strange little guy fighting for his life), Uncle Kitty Big Balls rounded out the feline contingent. He's almost alien in the depth of his affection for us; He seems to understand that he was at death's door and that The Fredster saved him. Me? I am some sort of side dish that he cannot quite comprehend. He thinks the wheelchair is a demonic vehicle out to run him down. Sometimes he is right.

It warms our hearts to see him playing, to have him curl up as tightly and as close as possible. He has begun to gain weight and his fur is coming back in.

So he is a little over the top in his rough-housing. So he will eat everyone's food so that he won't be hungry ever again. So he didn't seem to understand the point of the litter boxes, at first.

The others need a little toughening up -- and so long as it is done without malice, we let Pickle Head swat at them to his heart's content. It's an invitation to chase, to begin a round of hide-and-seek.

Still, when I wake, as I did this morning, to piles of cat hair all over Captain Haddock's antique Karabagh rug and a whole bunch of waling going on? Especially now, when I can barely move without cursing because the "good" shoulder is even dillydallying with the Pain Scale?

I smile at the intricacies of their relationships, at their liveliness. Sammy looks like a kitten, Dobby is trying out a little assertiveness and is thrilled with himself. Marmy so admires her fluffy butt. And Uncle Kitty Big Balls is simply pure joie-de-vivre!

48 Minutes Ago OR The Tip of the Iceberg

Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project

By SCOTT SHANE 48 minutes ago

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”

In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

Okay, so I threw in "torture" as a tag.

Call it habit.

I'm just sayin'

I'm home!*

The Good Doctor ShoulderMan worked his magic on Monday, gifting me with a new left shoulder. He had to do some rearranging but he made it work.

But, of course, this being me (me, under the everloving influence of La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, both of us under the magic skies deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé) -- well.

Well, on the "deep tissue" stain, we finally found bacteria waving back at us, all gram-positive-y, upbeat, and downright defiant. But, of course, this being me (me, under the everloving influence of La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, both of us under the magic skies deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé)-- Wait one freaking minute! (The fog of anesthesia?)

As of Day 2, there was, natch, no growth on culture! My Infectious Disease Dood's eyes are bugging out. Bless his bones, he cannot decide when, and how much, to lie to me -- in his mind, I think, he sees this as "managing" the patient.

Because, you see, I refused insertion of a PICC line. They thought I was just posturing, joshing, when I made the declaration before surgery. But, of course, this being me (me, under the everloving influence of La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, both of us under the magic skies deep, deep in the Tête de Hergé) -- arg! Sorry about that, and je vous prie de bien vouloir m'excuser, too -- covering all my bases.

So, Infectious Disease Dood decides that I need Zyvox, a ridiculously expensive antibiotic that just happens to have serious interaction issues with 3 of my meds, as well as some nasty side effects all on its own. The deciding factor? Insurance coverage, as the $1500/week cost doesn't fit my very tired budget. Anyway... Fred and I think it was all a plot. As in, ID Dood was expecting BCBS -- Bull Crap Bull Skeet of Tête-de-Hergé -- to refuse coverage.

I was held hostage, told I could not leave the hospital without either the Zyvox or a PICC line with trusty i.v. med balls full of vancomycin.

[I know that it's overkill for the vanco hyperlink to refer back to this blog, but it astonished me, upon searching, to find out how much vancomycin has occupied my life and mind, and what it has come to signify. Allow me that rare {raspy cough} professorial moment of recommending a read of Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5. Wunnerful wunnerful commentary --

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I'm just sayin'.]

Fools! They didn't know with whom they were messing. Once Fred, all bleary-eyed and pooped, arrived... well, we were hell-bent on leaving the hearsepital. At that point, ID Dood and His ID Minions began weaving tangled webs.

Case managers arrived. All nurses with decision-making capacity suddenly were off the floor, scarfing down lunch. And didn't I wish to order lunch? And, uh-oh, the medication you must take before eating hasn't come up from pharmacy. Let's get a blood sugar and another set of vitals! And then they sneak in: They'll be up to put in the line in about 2 hours, no need to go down to Interventional Radiology, how great is that? [I despise the huge, cold, scary room down in IR.]

They promise a nirvana-inducing insertion, complete with a soundtrack. And lest I scoff, they cite:

PICC the Music and Travel to the Port of Relaxation: Preliminary Results of the Effects of Music on Perceived Pain and Anxiety During the Placement of Ports and PICCs
Journal of Radiology Nursing, Volume 26, Issue 2, Pages 61-62
C. McDaniel, M. Burkett, M. Cormier, J. Duvallm, S. Davis, L. East, G. Gilmer, N. Mahaffey, M. Moran

Giggle.

We left. Politely. Give me a call when you all figure out the antibiotic situation, okay?

Amazingly, BCBS of Tête de Hergé decided to fork over the money and my pharmacist, who inexplicably informs me that "[i]t's like déja-vu," promises that I'll have these ridiculous little white tablets by noon the next day.

My BCBS policy, for which I pay $1328/month [Remember: my (private) disability income is a whopping $1996.20. Without that luxurious twenty extra cents, all would be lost!] -- My policy dictates that I pay for medications and then receive reimbursement of whatever they think arbitrarily fair.

So what a hoot it was to have Discover Card's Fraud Unit calling me, all breathless. Did I know that a $3030.00 charge was just made at the nearby Huge Grocery Chain? That was for a mere 14 days worth, ID Dood suggesting I buy the Zyvox in 2 wk lots, in case I need to stop it for some reason or other. Anyway, to the inquiry about the charge:

"Yep!" said I.

There was a tremendous pause. It was absolutely KILLING the woman on the other end of the line to not be told WHAT I had bought. So she rephrased the question, and, on cue, reiterated the pregnant pause.

"That's right!" I crowed. Her frustration was now palpable.

Why not give her something to liven up the day? Let her imagine an elegant late dinner of lobster and caviar, un petit souper à la parisienne [or A Family of Sans-Culottes refreshing, after the fatigues of the day]. Just a little casse-croûte thrown together by a retired French prof whose purchase habits extended to extravagances of generic yogurt and diet cola. Okay, okay -- I also splurge on almonds and good coffee.

By the time the credit card gods were appeased, the antibacterial troops put all in a ducky row, my clothes 'n sundries put away, urgent emails answered, ablutions completed, phone calls returned? I truly felt like shit. I was febrile to the tune of 101 degrees, sweating, and hurting like the proverbial Dickens ["Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine!" -- ummm, any excuse for passing on my favorite Dickens quote].

Alas, poor Yorrick (sic), a quick and easy search about the origin of the phrase "hurts like the dickens" reveals the following:

Posted by James Briggs on December 18, 2001

In Reply to: Re: Hurts like the dickens posted by R. Berg on December 18, 2001

: : My son said this at supper tonight........."It hurt like the Dickens". We wondered if any one knows the origin? I have also heard "scared the dickens out of me". Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

: From the archives, here's a response to the same question.

: Posted by ESC on January 12, 2001:

: "Dickens" is a euphemism for "devil" as in "'what the dickens,'.an
expression common centuries before Charles Dickens was born, having been used by
Shakespeare in 'The Merry Wives of Windsor'." "Morris Dictionary of Word and
Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, New York, 1977,
1988).

It may be an altered pronunciation of "devilkin"

En tout cas... since then, it's been a topsy-turvy time but anything beats being in the hearsepital. And, thank goodness, we only have to visit ID DoodLand once a week versus the usual three or four times.

My MDVIP Go-To-Guy? He opined in an email: "I'm glad it's over and done with. We are all a bit skeptical that this will take care of everything but please try and keep positive thoughts and prayers as we all are trying to do." I have noticed that since his switch to MDVIP, he communicates much more freely and makes frequent reference to prayer, saying that I am being kept in prayer. At first, I was somewhat taken aback. Now? I am thoroughly appreciative and almost virginal in the prose with which I write him.

However, I will visit Holy Ruin on the first person to suggest removal of this prosthesis.

I'm just sayin'.

*******************************************************************************************

*graphic of huge mouth courtesy of BENBENEK BLOG -- from an entry which consists of the following:

I’m just sayin’…
I’m pretty tired of people using the phrase “I’m just sayin’…”

Anacoluthe!

"Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon! Subtropical sea-louse! " I stared, enthralled, at her pink sweaty face while La Belle et Bonne Bianca Castafiore paused to take a breath.

"Swine! "


That apparently exhausted her reserve of beloved Captain Haddock exhortations in English, for the next thing I knew, she was belting them out in French:


"Perroquet bavard! Sale menteur!
Anacoluthe!
Analphabète!"

Clearly, she enjoys the alliteration in English, and the vagaries of a lost insult in French.

Vagaries? Maybe to us... mais pour le capitaine Haddock? No, he was schooled by Tête de Hergé himself! "Anacoluthe"? Nothing but a blurt-out? Not hardly, as the kids say.

The Blessed Wikipedia explains:

An anacoluthon is a rhetorical device that can be loosely defined as a change of syntax within a sentence. More specifically, anacoluthons (or "anacolutha") are created when a sentence abruptly changes from one structure to another. Grammatically, anacoluthon is an error; however, in rhetoric it is a figure that shows excitement, confusion, or laziness. In poetics it is sometimes used in dramatic monologues and in verse drama. In prose, anacoluthon is often used in stream of consciousness writing, such as that of James Joyce, because it is characteristic of informal human thought.

In its most restrictive meaning, anacoluthon requires that the introductory elements of a sentence lack a proper object or complement. For example, if the beginning of a sentence sets up a subject and verb, but then the sentence changes its structure so that no direct object is given, the result is anacoluthon. Essentially, it requires a change of subject or verb from the stated to an implied term. The sentence must be "without completion" (literally what "anacoluthon" means). A sentence that lacks a head, that supplies instead the complement or object without subject, is anapodoton.

And "analphabète"? Well, that's just pee-in-your-pants funny. Ah, but the poor dear was not in a joshing mood, all pink and sweaty, her violet-besotten frock-and-sash a muddled mess. Still, even at such a moment, Bianca is one of the few women whose strong calf muscles will always nicely set off a red pointy-toed stiletto pump. Such natural gifts, in fact, are divine appointments of grace in this anxiety-driven, pain-filled world of ours.

You see, la Belle et Bonne Bianca Castafiore had just been pulled over by the cops --a mere kilomètre from Marlinspike Hall, the warm hearth of home -- and given two tickets and a summons to appear on August 12. Before I could express both my wrath that she was driving my darling Ruby to begin with, and my pleasure that, whatever the circumstances, both she and Ruby were apparently unharmed, the Dastardly Diva exclaimed:

"Et c'est tout à fait de ta faute, toi! And it is all your fault!"

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Comment ça?"

It turns out that she would never have forgotten to renew her driver's license if I had not been such a distraction, with all my drama, fever, infection and such. When I pointed out that she had been absent for a good period of the "drama," and was not overly concerned when she actually had been at The Manor, she looked me square in the eye, and... sniffed.

There was a brief lull during which either one of us might have chosen the higher way and opted to be the better person.

"The only reason le flic nabbed me for speeding was that I was practicing getting you from zee Manor to zee 'opital in whatisityoucall? Ah, yes! Zee no time flat! Comme je t'ai dit, tout, tout, tout -- c'est tout à fait de ta faute!"

This may have been when I felt compelled to make a few observations relating to personal and communal responsibilities, perhaps even a remark or two on hygiene -- I don't sniffin' remember.

Even though I had promised the more levelheaded Fredster not to make mention of it, I found myself, in my best scary voice, relating how, on a frigid, late-spring, early afternoon during one of her lighthearted jaunts around Europe, icicles were glinting on the Marlinspike's eaves -- and the alluring scent of two putrid cans of half-eaten Libby's Vienna Sausage* stuffed in the serpentine bottom drawer of a 16th century French armoire -- beautifully restored as a well-stocked wet bar -- led Fred and me, on behalf of our spry-tongued seafaring benefactor (and hers) -- the good Captain Haddock -- to jimmy the lock of her appartement. {don't touch my paragraph}

Slowly she turned... her BB-gun pupils a steely grey -- "Yes? Ah. Oui?"

"Yes," I continued, "we have been inside. We have seen it with our own eyes, and we are shocked, Castafiore, shocked! Whatever could you have been thinking? What will our spry-tongued seafaring benefactor conclude when he hears about this abomination, this perversion of his family's ancestral home?"

La Belle et Bonne Bianca hung her head. Without looking up, in a steady voice, sounding well-practiced, she recounted the story of Her Fall, beginning with the unthinkable -- how the Faust of Gounod had finally, and for the first time, had a closing night -- and how all those arty Anglophiles were rubbing it in with glee: The Mousetrap wins; It has never stopped running since its premier at London's Ambassador’s Theatre in 1952.

There would be no more "je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir" until the financial wizards of the world managed to staunch the bleeding that was hemorrhaging the bottom lines of the operatic universe.

The Castafiore, out of work and desperate to continue to earn a living, fell back on her early training as itinerant seamstress to the Wandering Renaissance Reenactors of Belgium, and, unexpectedly, Wales. All that time we assumed that she was touring Faust -- and okay, yes, I was a tad bit self-absorbed with the cartography of my own navel.

Still. Still! "Bianca... How? Where did you get the money?"

"I borrowed it, it was easy. I borrow, then I borrow again, at a better rate, and swap-switch the debt. You know -- take from Peter and give to Paul and, above all, keep washing the Messiah's feet -- no one ever takes a close look at the beautiful chica whose long hair and boobies are all hanging out..." said my friend, her bitterness spilling over. "I just wanted to be able to send money back to my familia rustica, trapped down on the farms outside Roma. Is that so wrong?"

"You really have a flair, you know. If I did not know quite a bit about Chenonceau, I might have fallen for it. I mean, really, Castafiore! How much were you going to charge?"

"That is the trick, mon amie. I would ask 'only for what you can spare, to defray the costs of upkeep.' The tourists? They would squirm in guilt, they would take out their portefeuilles and fill the coffers with their monies. After all, Francois Ier is the epitome of the Renaissance... and toss about the story of Leonardo da Vinci having died in his arms, cared for during his final days in the King's own bed chamber." Her eyes were glowing; She was far away.

She and her unemployed theatre cohorts got it in their minds to gut the Captain's appartement and build a replica of Francois Ier's bedroom at Chenonceau. Never mind how confused her explanations could get in an attempt to distinguish his digs at Chenonceau from the official residence at Château de Blois, and how they managed to confuse the one with the other in her imaginary trip down the Loire Valley.

And how was she going to get people in and out of the place without stirring, umm, lots of suspicion? Easy... cut a door through the three feet of stone leading to that nice shady spot at the northern end of the moat.

We never would have seen or heard a thing.

Hard times... they surely do bring something out of people. We sat and stared at one another -- me, determined to never complain again, because that risks causing people to be carted off to jail, so abstracted are they by my constant grief, and The Castafiore? Sorry mostly at having been caught, but also regretting the end to subterfuge, she was thinking of all those nice doublets waiting to be sown and beaded at 600 Euros a pop.

*"Vienna sausages are life’s 'fuck you' waiting in the cabinet when you’re hung over and depressed..."

Palin trumps Jackson and Grader Boob wishes me well

In case any readers or passing trolls are wondering, the reason for the frenetic posting today is that surgery is tomorrow.

I am nervous.

I really should not be, given that this will be the... give me a minute... the seventh surgery done by this particular operator, since 2005. The sixth since we began this mucked-up odyssey against infection last summer.

He's talented, famous, and more importantly, he practices good medicine.

Still, despite the wrongheadedness of it, I feel like I have been primarily... lucky.

Last August, I ended up in ICU on a vent. Then again in April of this year. And through all of this, we have been unable to identify the offending organism.

I am worn down, exhausted, in a world of pain, able to do less-and-less. I am full of self-pity.

Anyway. I just got an email from Brother-Unit Grader Boob. He claims that he is taking his "organizational scheme from Governor Palin," as in:

"Before I continue with my resignation, I'd like to thank the American troops who are fighting abroad to give me the freedom to quit."

He goes on to note that, "[w]ell, at least she interrupted the Michael Jackson death watch."

Truly. Isn't it a frightening glimpse into American culture, that this woman should prove to be the newsmaker to shift a dead, mentally-ill, drug-addicted, worldwide pop icon from center stage?

Anyway, Grader Boob and I have communicated through, and hidden behind, sporting events our entire lives. I remember watching bowl games with him, snug and secure in my big brother's presence, while my family and country went about the process of disintegration. He's been an awesome brother, and I would do anything for him. You know... like if he were reading this and all, it would be nice for him to know that, trust in that.

Ahem. Anyway, he has already left Wimbledon behind (fourth set now, Roddick kicking booty in hopes of tying the match at 2 sets all) and is getting his head into Le Tour de France. Grader Boob was an accomplished cyclist. I say was because:

"Right now, I'm watching the le Tour prerace show and I look over at my cycling shorts and realize that to squeeze into them would be truly an eyesore."

He closes by telling me about the class he is teaching: "[A]pparently, they're still at the stage where they like to mutter smart ass answers under their breaths, not at all concerned about offering up a more insightful response. Hopefully, that will change as they delve into the readings. Hope springs eternal!"

He also promises that "I'll be thinking of you tomorrow, sending good thoughts up into the heavens and some semi-articulate prayers towards {Tête de Hergé}."

I couldn't be more blessed.

Words, despite my best efforts, pale.

We, The Troika* of La Bonne et Belle Bianca Castafiore, The Fredster, and myself, The Retired Educator, along with two of the four felines, watched American History X last night. The cats in question were Dobby, our little idiot, and Uncle Kitty Big Balls, Dobby's Uncle, the newest addition to the entourage. Dare I say that UKBB is the newest addition to The Troika, or would that just be... silly?

*We use, of course, the European Commission Glossary of Justice and Home Affairs definition of TROIKA: A meeting of ministers of the current past, present and future presidencies of the EU. Except that we are not, at present, current past, present and future presidents of the EU. It may be, for all you know, that we are, rather, a Russian carriage pulled by three horses abreast. Except that we were also that plus two cats. Meh! Probably? Probably, we were a Troika in the simple sense, so like a simple syrup, of three [simple] humans -- the lexically tight version of Princeton's Wordnet, which strictly specifies: Three -- the cardinal number that is the sum of one and one and one.

Were I purposefully obfuscating or trying to buy time so as to buff up something of import to say... I might posit the Wiki that Troika is a chocolate-based confection made by Nidar AS of Trondheim, Norway, using three distinct layers, hence the... okay, okay! Anyway, the top layer is soft raspberry jelly, the middle layer is truffle, and the bottom one is marzipan...

Wiki also breaks the troika down into a Russian folk dance in which a man dances with two women -- given Fred's situation, lodged as he is between myself and The Castafiore, that could be the genesis of the germ.

Or not.

As I was saying, we all professed to be left with the same feeling after the movie – and for once, I found a way of expressing it that was clair comme du cristal, même limpide comme de l'eau de roche: Mwahahahahaha!

In other words -- you know how nouns are introduced, fleshed out, amplified – so that the move to a pronoun is smooth as silk, obvious, not at all a hitch or a glitch? Well, even the ambition of seamlessness was lacking to this cinematic effort. As the vague neutral pronouns were tossed glibly about, it was like, you know, lacking clear internal reference.

I swear, when I said it last night, we all, human and feline alike, nodded – it was a case of deft, classic-prof insightfulness. Honest.

Letting all -- or any -- of that be as it may – Edward Norton delivered a virtuoso performance. The film was worth seeing just to witness his various incarnations at different ages.

But an insightful look at skinhead culture this movie was not. It was as if all meaning had been voided from terms such as neo-nazi, as if a swastika were just an arbitrary intersection of lines.

Maybe insight is not requisite.

Maybe it was enough just to play out an instance of curb stomping... about which words pale.

in real time...

9:48 am, Sunday, 5 July: Andy Roddick takes the first set!