Request for Information: Dear Reader, Can You Help?

Hi,  

Retired Educator here, the prof-de-rien that you may know from Twitter or other forums.  Yes, it also falls upon me to channel Bianca Castafiore and to blog about the happenings within a fictive construction of Georges Prosper Remi (Hergé)'s Marlinspike Hall.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will be making a surgical date to have my left shoulder removed, which will leave me with something called a "flail arm."  I'm not sure, but I think the process might be described as a "fibrous pseudarthrosis," if you consider permanent removal of a shoulder prosthesis as being the conceptual equivalent of a [huge] non-union fracture!

I am an above average researcher but am having difficulty gathering any information that would be of actual use to an actual person.  When it comes to anatomy, physiology, and the understanding of movement, I am probably better considered "challenged."  In sum, I need the help of firsthand narratives written by people who understand.


Yes, I've asked my surgeon what I might expect after this surgery.  Several times now.  He furrows his brow and then -- eerily -- always gives the same answer:  "Well, sometimes people can learn to use scar tissue as a sort of muscle to move the arm.  Some people are even able to bring their hand to their mouth." He illustrates his answer -- again, eerily -- by miming someone who looks afflicted with Quasimodo's hump, bent over a steaming bowl of pungent cabbage soup and  ladling its contents in the general direction of his face.

Can you, or someone you know, help me out with practical information and advice?  My surgeon is top-notch and very kind but I hate to make him go through all those gyrations again tomorrow!

Thanks much!
Sincerely yours,

Retired Educator / profderien / Castafiore Medium

P.S.  Two of the more common causes of "flail arm" are Post Polio Syndrome and Trauma Brachial Plexus Injury (TBPI) -- but those conditions are radically different from my situation of losing a shoulder prosthesis due to osteomyelitis and CRPS.  This search for a narrative to match my own may be an exercise in severe futility!

P.P.S.  Though I don't have PPS, Roger Brown's page on "Post Polio and Music" is precisely the kind of reference I am searching for.  But it's not enough...

Mike Luckovich & Geoff Nunberg on Class Warfare

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 2, 2011.

Mike Luckovich, "Class Warfare"

Unlike Most Marxist Jargon, 'Class Warfare' Persists

by GEOFF NUNBERG

"Class warfare" was a dodgy phrase from the outset. In one of the most famous sentences in the history of political thought, Marx and Engels wrote in their 1848 Communist Manifesto: "The history of all society up to now is the history of ..."

That's where things get complicated. In the original German they wrote Klassenkampfen, which means "class struggles." But some of their critics rendered it more belligerently as "class warfare." That was the stock label they put on the bearded socialist agitator in political cartoons. And some socialists actually did use it, while others tried to turn it around to describe the capitalist oppression of labor. But "warfare" more readily suggested the disorderly violence that broke out from below. It conjured up the red flags, cloth caps and barricades of Les Mis, not the measured operations of the parliaments and law courts on the side of the bourgeoisie.

It was those violent overtones that endeared "class warfare" to the right and spared it the fate of Marxist jargon like "proletariat," "class struggle" and "the masses." Even the left has bailed on those expressions. They're only about a quarter as common in the pages of the New Left Reviewas they were in the 1970s. But "class warfare" has been on a tear in the language of the right — it's used five times as often in The Wall Street Journal now as it was 40 years ago. In fact, the phrase has actually become more frequent as the marginal tax rates have gone down. It's sort of a revenant, a specter that haunts the English language whenever appeals for making the rich pay more are heard in the land.

Like other dead metaphors, it has to be said just so. It's "class warfare," not "class war," which sounds disconcertingly European, where class isn't a forbidden subject. In a speech to a Labour Party Conference in 1999, Tony Blair famously announced, "The class war is over." You wonder how people would have responded if Bill Clinton had said that — "What, there was a war?"

In fact, "class warfare" is just about the only phrase in American political discourse where "class" can appear without the all-forgiving prefix "middle." People who level the charge of class warfare never go the logical next step to extol the virtues of class cooperation. That would imply that there actually are classes in America and would undermine the ideal of a land of opportunity. As the story goes, there are only two kinds of Americans — those who are already rich and those who expect to be. That's why Americans won't tolerate tax-the-rich proposals that pit one group against another, when we should be all in it together.

Democrats react by dismissing the charge of class warfare as a tired Republican talking point, or by trying to turn it around on the rich, the way the old Socialists did. During the 2000 election, Al Gore described the Bush tax program as "class warfare on behalf of billionaires." But the charge does tend to put Democrats on the defensive. As President Obama said when he announced his tax program, "This is not class warfare, it's math." But that approach doesn't always work in politics, where denials often are apt to raise suspicions rather than dispel them — as in "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and "I am not a crook."

Yet these days, the C-word isn't quite as off-limits as it used to be, maybe because the populist genie has been let out of the bottle. In a speech the day after he announced his tax ideas, Obama said, "If asking a billionaire to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher makes me a warrior for the middle class, I wear that charge as a badge of honor." That may be just stump speechifying, but it also makes him the first Democratic politician who has ever accepted the label and invoked the rhetoric of war against the rich.

The tone is different on the right, too. The Republican leadership still warn against divisiveness and avoid talking about class explicitly, other than saying that we shouldn't be increasing taxes on the "job creators" but rather "broadening the base." But the conservative media and bloggers have been less circumspect about cleaving society in two. Some of them talk about an all-out war between the producer class and the moocher class. And Fox Business ran a series of segmentslast spring called "Entitlement Nation: Makers vs. Takers." It isn't entirely clear who the moochers and takers are, but everybody seems to define them as including the 51 percent of American households who don't pay federal taxes, along with those who receive Pell Grants and other forms of government assistance.

This isn't just about a couple of welfare queens anymore; it carves broader than that. In fact, it recalls another famous sentence from the Communist Manifesto: "Society is splitting more and more into two enemy camps, into a face-off between two huge classes." It's true that Marx and Engels would have wanted to draw the line in a different place and switch around those "maker" and "taker" place cards, and of course they were rooting for a different team. Still, they all share the same basic theory of class conflict as the motor force of history. It puts me in mind of what an Italian friend of mine once said: "America, what a country! You have everything in America. You have mechanical bulls. You have early bird specials. You can even find Marxists in America." He was right about that — and in the damnedest places, too.

Geoffrey Nunberg's bio (i'm a fan!)

The Verbal Equivalent of Crunch

I have been misusing the popular expression "screaming ninnies." I employ it to describe my spastic, spasming, enormously painful periods of CRPS dystonia.  I say that I have the screaming ninnies.

Which makes no sense at all.

Still, it's a habit, and I'll likely continue to misuse it for lack of another phrase that feels right, that encompasses the realities of screaming bloody murder at a cellular level, my cell's uvulae all a-quiver, feeling bat shit nuts, and personifying inanity, all at the same time -- ka-boom.


I'm so sick.  Don't roll your eyes.  Usually, I get by with the assumption that there is a problem list in play, and that as I work the problem, the solutions will come, the list will end, and voilà, the problems have been put to rest, put to bed, are gone.  Stupid git!

Oh, I am thankful, don't worry.  This blog, as you know, could be converted into a top-notch inspirational gratitude journal, with an at-the-ready daily devotional.  I cannot begin to count the number of emails I've received, begging me to extend my upbeat, compassionate musings to readers worldwide... but c'mon, people, who the hell has time?  Just pick a post, any post, read it, and be glad.

While screaming obscenities last evening, I got tickled, to use the vernacular, and therefore was giggling, weeping, and yelling, pretty much simultaneously.  (The simultaneity of things is the rip tide in this, my ocean.)  Curse words are not very satisfying.  So, of course, I called out "shitake mushrooms" over and over, laughing at such a honed wit -- because laughter demands an indirect object.

I can't stop talking when I am this sick.  Rather, I cannot stop saying the same phrases over and over, and rarely can I sustain an adult-appropriate conversation that doesn't reek of, well, onions.  Oh, all right, desperation.  "[T]hat doesn't reek of desperation..." I'm hungry.

Okay, so let's replace "screaming ninnies" and "shitake mushrooms."

When I was "altered" and in ICU recently, I apparently wore myself out by my frequent "O, God" exclamations and moans, which resulted in one crazy Me screaming to another crazy Me:  "Shut up!  God ain't here right now!"

Yes, I verified the "ain't."

Further rumination on ninny would yield little.  We should, though, honor the prominence of the gerund because this term is, frankly, very verbal, hyperactive, and stuck that way, like a gerund.

The ear must be pleased and satisfied.  There needs to be texture, the aural and verbal equivalent of *crunch*.

getting through the day, the day, with jackson, jackson browne...

Your Bright Baby Blues 
-- Jackson Browne

I'm sitting down by the highway 
Down by that highway side 
Everybody's going somewhere 
Riding just as fast as they can ride 


I guess they've got a lot to do 
Before they can rest assured 
Their lives are justified 
Pray to God for me baby 
He can let me slide


'Cause I've been up and down this highway 
Far as my eyes can see 
No matter how fast I run 
I can never seem to get away from me 


No matter where I am 
 I can't help feeling I'm just a day away 
From where I want to be 
Now I'm running home baby 
Like a river to the sea


Baby if you can see me 
Out across this wilderness 
There's just one thing 
I was hoping you might guess 
Baby you can free me 
All in the power of your sweet tenderness


I can see it in your eyes 
You've got those bright baby blues 
You don't see what you've got to gain 
But you don't like to lose 


You watch yourself from the sidelines 
Like your life is a game you don't mind playing 
To keep yourself amused 
I don't mean to be cruel baby 
But you're looking confused


Baby if you can hear me 
Turn down your radio 
There's just one thing 
I want you to know 
When you've been near me 
I've felt the love stirring in my soul


It's so hard to come by 
That feeling of peace 
This friend of mine said 
"Close your eyes, and try a few of these" 


I thought I flying like a bird 
So far above my sorrow 
But when I looked down 
I was standing on my knees 
Now I need someone to help me 
Someone to help me please


Baby if you need me 
Like I know I need you 
There's just one thing I'll ask you to do 
Take my hand and lead me 
To the hole in your garden wall 
And pull me through

when you are having yourself a day

The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty
by Townes Van Zandt

Livin' on the road my friend 
Was gonna keep you free and clean 
Now you wear skin like iron 
And your breath's as hard as kerosene 
You weren't your mama's only boy 
But her favorite one it seems 
She began to cry when you said goodbye 
And sank into your dreams


Pancho was a bandit, boys 
His horse was fast as polished steel 
Wore his gun outside his pants 
For all the honest world to feel 
Well, Pancho met his match you know 
On the deserts down in Mexico 
And nobody heard his dyin' words 
Ah but that's the way it goes


All the Federales say 
Could of had him any day 
Only let him hang around 
Out of kindness I suppose


Lefty, he can't sing the blues 
All night long like he used to 
The dust that Pancho bit down south 
Ended up in Lefty's mouth 
The day they laid poor Pancho low 
Lefty split for Ohio 
Where he got the bread to go 
There ain't nobody knows


Well, the poets tell how Pancho fell 
And Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel 
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold 
So the story ends, we're told 
Pancho needs your prayer's it's true 
But save a few for Lefty too 
He just did what he had to do 
And now he's growin'old


A few gray Federales say 
Could have had him any day 
Only let him go so long 
Out of kindness I suppose

i heartily recommend sleuthing as many covers as you can of pancho & lefty when you are having yourself a day:  emmylou harris merle haggard bob dylan steve earle willie nelson gillian welch david rawlings sam beam glen hansard clay george rodney crowell halfway home kris kristofferson darius rucker johnny bush jim burns specs hildebrand roger clyne andy hersey the cumberland trio jason isbell browan lollar andrea parodi massimiliano larocca hurray for the riff raff jim dalton johnny hickman ian siegal cody canada stoney larue

the one leading off this post is lovely, by gillian welch and david rawlings, on september 27, 1997, for acoustic stage at the fireman's kitchen, in hickory, north carolina.  that's 30 3rd St NW, Hickory, NC, 28601-6135. 

everything has to happen somewhere.

if you're really havin' yourself a day, about now you'll be wondering what the hell ever happened to that sweet little nanci griffith, so best take a break.  wasn't she a school teacher marm?  just joshing, nanci's got a new album out, intersections, which, unfortunately, is being described as "adenoidal" and "pleasant," not terms you'd expect to share a review.

this is turning into a train wreck.  quick, shift gears!  or, rather, do some activity appropriate to a train.

watch the last waltz, your favorite bits of it, while averaging the manor electric bill for january through march, as you are supposedly working on amending the 2012 utilities budget.  don't throw the paperwork on the floor until you're done with it.

if you are having yourself a day, remember that you were once a member of the afl-cio.  march in a small circle;  nap yourself a power nap and dream you saw joe hill last night.

but mostly, what i do, when i am having myself a real day?  i just sit smack dab in the middle of mr. townes van zandt.  but that's the kind of day i have.

I come from a long line
High and low and in between
Same as you
Hills of golden
Hails of poison
Time's thrown me through
And I believe I've come to learn
That turnin' round
Is to become confusion
And the gold's no good for spending
And the poison's hungry waiting


What can you leave behind
When you're flyin' lightning fast
And all alone? 
Only a trace, my friend,
Spirit of motion born
And direction grown.
A trace that will not fade
In frozen skies
Your journey will be
And if her shadow doesn't seem much company
Who said it would be?

There is the highway
And the homemade lovin' kind
The highway's mine
And us ramblers are getting the travelling down
You fathers build with stones
That stand and shine
Heaven's where you find it
And you can't
Take too much with you
But daddy, don't you listen
It's just this highway talkin'


All things at our life
Are brothers in the soil
And in the sky
And I believe it
With my blood
If not my eyes
I don't know why we can't
Be brothers here
I know we should be
Answers don't seem easy
And I'm wonderin'
If they could be

yep, i'm having myself a real day.  too sweaty from the cold and too shivering hot to get much into complaining.  things hurt, enough said?

my family, by which i mostly mean my brother-units and myself, came individually to love and honor pancho & lefty, itself just a song, to us an archetypal memory. (though none of us remember precisely when, exactly, townes van zandt juiced and sluiced our genes in the hopes of -- in the hopes of, oh i don't know! not slipping away?)

"it came from out of the blue.  it came through me.  it's a real nice song..." says townes, making outrageous claims about pancho villa and being a songwriter and not having had a drink since last night.

i think i adore townes van zandt and appreciate all the time he spent channeling me when he might have been living.

kim ruehl -- who has likely had a few days, herself -- has some thoughts about pancho and about lefty.  (she's one of my favorite writers about the folk, uh, scene.)

"Pancho and Lefty" is confusing. Townes left a lot of the story out, which I believe is the source of the song's strength. You can't do that with any other form of storytelling, not in the same way at least. With novels and poetry, you can only leave things out after you've convinced the reader their opinion is part of the story. With songs, you don't have to involve the listener in order to leave space. You do, however, have to manipulate a melody so that it gives the listener room to fill in the holes on their own while you take a break between verses.

The instrumental breaks in "Pancho and Lefty," at least in Townes' version, seem deliberately un-developed. There's no show-off guitar solo, no sudden, out-of-left-field other instrument to pull your mind along the journey. There's some slight development, but it's so distant and understated that it's easy to not even hear it. You're left to follow your own train of thought.

He sets up the story - about a couple of outlaws, their friendship (if that's what it is...I sometimes think it's a love affair, but that's another matter), their exploits, their mistakes and ultimate failures. He gives you a few context clues, a few verses and lines about their personal lives. Most telling, in my opinion is this line from early in the song: "You weren't your mama's only boy, but her favorite one it seems / she began to cry when you said goodbye and sank into your dreams." It's not clear whether the "you" here is Pancho or Lefty, and it almost seems irrelevant. It's also not clear whether the "you" is the one sinking into their dreams, or whether it's their mother who, no doubt, was more saddened by her son's dreams than he was. Dreams aren't generally something you sink into, unless they're misguided. It's probably one of the most fantastic lines to set up a song that I've ever heard.

Townes had a way of nailing life's complexities and shortcomings, expressing pity for people's personal plights. His songs, all of them, shed light on the numerous layers of everything, underscoring the fact that no story is cut-and-dry. What has made "Pancho and Lefty" more resonant than some of the others is confusing to me. It's not my personal favorite from his body of work. How many of us can truly relate to the overall story? Sure, most people can relate to lines like "Lefty can't sing the blues all night long like he used to." We get the way life changes us, though we often don't understand why. This song nails how it feels for life to slip away on its own, leaving one to catch up to their own self. Early into the final verse, he sings, "The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold / so the story ends, we're told." Then he continues with the story, which only makes a point that the story never really ends. Nothing ends as simply as a camera panning away on a quiet desert and a cold city. Even a made-up story in a song is more complex than that.

What makes this and, for that matter, all of Townes' songs great, are the spaces he leaves. The unexplainable emptinesses. It doesn't require any understanding or participation from the listener. It simply sheds light on the parts of us which emerge in its presence. When the song backs off, away from the narrative and the lyrics, when it breathes, and when it ends on that unresolved chord, it leaves us with our ideas exposed. In such an unassuming, subtle way, it pulls something to the surface.

not too shabby a post for a day, y'know?  i mean, there's audio,  a video,  an informed quote.  i hammered out a budget, watched the greatest rock film ev-er, and imagined myself sitting alone in the middle of the worn wide boards at the heart of this salvaged pine floor.

oh, i guess i should confess that pancho and lefty have forever been manifestations, to me, of lucky and pozzo.  in fact, i will not be surprised to find, when i reread this later, lucky and lefty, transposed.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Lucky and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

  

and, happy conundrum, townes van zandt makes me think of samuel beckett, were he in a wordy way.  for some of the same reasons put forth by kim ruehl do i think this way, as i have myself quite the damn day.  silences and spaces, literal holes in the story.


like pavlov's dogs, every mention of waiting for godot necessitates the memory of how nary a one of my students ever argued for pozzo to be god, if god had to be godot.  no, my students were too engaged in a sartrean struggle to establish vladimir and estragon as the first homosexual couple of western literature. 

Definition of SARTREJean-Paul 1905–1980 Fr. philos., dram., & nov.— Sar·tre·an or Sar·tri·an  adjectiveRhymes with SARTREart, cart, chart, Chartres, dart, fart, hart, Harte, heart,kart, mart, part, smart, start, tartBrowseNext Word in the Dictionary: SassoonPrevious Word in the Dictionary: Saroyan

nearing the end of my having-myself-a-day day, i plugged "what does pancho and lefty mean to you?" into my preferred search engine.  the first of the responses that i read, "meditation on poncho and lefty by fort worth songwriter townes van zandt," did not disappoint. [pOncho?]  but even after straining my poor brain, i cannot reliably report which of my former duke students authored the central probing analysis, cleverly presented as "the editor," though i have pegged a few of the way astute comment writers as core members of my 8 o'clock session, spring semester, 1999 intro to french lit class ["ou l'optimisme..."].  these five "meditation" responders, for instance, are clearly meghan, lorenzo, tom, adele, and constance:

Thanks for the heads up on the author. I never went that deep before now, I just thought it would make a kick-ass video

I thougt it might be lefty dizz or lefty frizell. But just recently another lefty died who may have been him – lifespan alittle longer than lefty dizz. 

I will have to investigate/muse over this.

poncho and lefty were identical twins.werent his mothers only so but the favourite one means that poncho had a brother – probably leftyponcho met his match one day means lefty was his identical brotherthe dust that poncho bit etc means I think that poncho killed lefty , assumed his identity and fled.he cant sing the blues anymore cause he is not lefty he is poncho masquerading as lefty.thats why we say prayers for lefty – he is the dead one

The story of Poncho and Lefty is not about any of those stories mentioned above. Instead it is about Poncho and his friend, Lefty, who may or may not be related to Poncho, and what had to happen as the end for Poncho grew near. Lefty was a Villa sympathizer. What he only did was what Poncho wanted. I know because my grandfather I believe was Lefty and the story that he told is pretty convincing that he indeed was Lefty. As I heard about the story growing up, the song Poncho and Lefty was something neither he, my Dad or I even knew about. It was not until my Dad passed away in 2005 that I heard the song and finally put it all together.

Revenge of the Port-a-Cath

I was happy Friday to have my port-a-cath removed.  The procedure was quick and easy, requiring only local anesthesia, and it went off without a hitch.

Just because, the surgeon snipped the tip off of the port and sent it for cultures.  It looked fine, he said, no overt signs of infection.  He couldn't fathom why it had so often failed to do its duties of making infusions and blood draws "stickless" affairs.

It required some stitching, and he covered the area with glue, as well.  Being such a small deal, he said I could shower that day, even.  There was no necessity for a follow-up appointment, as the stitches are the kind that are simply absorbed.

Everything has been pretty much the same with me over the last week.  Unexpected extreme fatigue, to the extent that I sometimes don't have the energy to sit up in the wheelchair.  Fever, from low grade 99 to 100, to a few days at or above  101.  The definitive return of CRPS dystonia, and the screaming ninnies, as a result.  The latest weirdness involving these spasms is that on my left side, they feel as if they issue directly from my left hip.  The pain within that joint when the left leg is going at it is unfreakingbelievable.

I burst into tears on the way to the hospital, trying to explain to Fred that I go from feeling emotionally stable, quite okay, quite in control, to absolute despair when the spasms start.  This shift can occur in the span of 30 seconds.  It must have something to do with the area of the brain involved in dystonia -- but ask me if I care when the desire to leap out of a very high window sets in.  I know that this reeks of self-pity and poor character, but the suffering involved -- in this, my particular case and instance -- is beyond what I can handle.  I keep saying that, hoping some insightful health care professional will hear me, understand, and treat the dystonia as something close to an emergency.  Because it is, and one day I just will no longer care that "this, too, shall pass."

Uhhh, right.  So the surgeon removed the port, stitched and glued me back together, sent the tip for cultures, and poof, we were back home within three hours.

It bled a little bit, which was expected.  It itched some, at which point I carefully peeled off the dried glue.  I did not shower Friday, having done so before the surgery, and -- frankly -- showering having become a scary endeavor, took a very thorough sponge bath yesterday, instead.  I am going to shower this afternoon, once I've whipped the Haddock ancestral home, Marlinspike Hall, into a spick-and-span* state.

* Etymology:  From spick-and-span-new (literally “new as a recently made spike and chip of wood”) (1570s), from spick (“nail”) (variant of spike) + Middle English span-new (“very new”) (from circa 1300 until 1800s), from Old Norse span-nyr, from spann (“chip”) (cognate to Old English spón, Modern English spoon, due to old spoons being made of wood) + nyr (“new”) (cognate to Old English nīwe, Modern English new).^[1] Imitation of Dutch spiksplinter nieuw (literally “spike-splinter new”)^[2] , for a freshly built ship. Observe that fresh woodchips are firm and light (if from light wood), but decay and darken rapidly, hence the origin of the term.

During yesterday's wash-at-the-sink, it became clear that there was some inflammation around the small incision.  I cleaned it well, using the left over ton of supplies from the weeks of wound care for my shoulder. Wound cleanser, sterile supplies, sterile technique.  And a dab of triple antibiotic ointment.

So this is what it looks like now.  Any suggestions?!  [Just kidding.  If it gets a lot worse today, I will ruin some medico's Sunday afternoon by calling.  Otherwise, I'll give the surgeon a buzz tomorrow.]

I just want something (anything, almost) to go as planned.

the big ditch from space

from american idyll

TW had another fine year around the sun, and is off trekking the canyon, listening to the river.  And cavorting.  There's gotta be some cavorting.

So it looks as if updates to American Idyll will not be forthcoming until the pilgrims return:

Once again
we are permitted 

to stagger into 

and wander about

the obscure hinterlands

of the Grand Canyon.

Be well until 

our mid-May return.

from american idyll

He also got my attention with a quote from one of my secret loves:

BUT IT IS NO GOOD TRYING TO TELL ABOUT THE BEAUTY.
IT WAS JUST THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTIFUL BEYOND BELIEF,
AND THAT IT IS A KIND OF JOY WHICH HAS TO BE LIVED.
--T.H. WHITE
THE BOOK OF MERLYN

God, I love that book!  

from american idyll

This is what the AI overseers left for us to ponder in their absence -- The Big Ditch from space.  They're down there somewhere, and I know they are cavorting.

a belated "happy birthday," TW!  

Internet Con Artists: A Cautionary Tale

This is the story, the stories, about a woman that I met on the Dr. Phil website, back when I thought a support group for chronic pain was a good idea.  (It sometimes was.) She goes by many names, but they're all similar.  She is a con artist and she persists, oozing beyond the tough talkin' Texan's website that was once her primary hunting ground.  She is rascally.  She has her own section in the North Carolina criminal data base, where the charges and the many dodges of the justice system that are apparent there give the strong impression that she has mad con skills.

Personally, I think she is dangerous.  I've absolutely no evidence that she has ever encroached on anyone's actual personal space.  She has not shown up at my door.  The last I heard from her, in fact, she said:

I don't want any further contact with you!!!!
Do I make myself clear!

I tend to have that effect on people, particularly those I meet through that big, bald entertainer, Phil McGraw.

Most of what follows has been published here before, but for some reason, maybe because it is ongoing, Shawnna's story always ends up as a draft. Well, it's a quiet, cloudy Saturday morning and I am determined to rid my inbox of as many unfinished pieces as possible. The several posts dedicated to Shawnna the Internet Con Artist just need a bit of unification, and some updates.

The most important update to "Shawnna's Con" is that she has switched monikers again.  Occasional name changes, usually due to some technical gaffe, are not unusual in our online lives, but someone who does it frequently needs to be viewed with skepticism.  Or, if you have one handy, a jaundiced eye.

One jaundiced eye, courtesy of
Ohio State Univ. College of Nursing

In a fit of major clever, Lashawnna Burney is going by Lashawnna Willamson-Smith (as well as Williamson-Smith).  For having made that swift play with the Letter I, she gets a sticker!  And a half-point for full-fledged trickery:  She likes to present the misspelled Willamson-Smith as a first name, because that is really gonna throw people off, eh wot?

So, anyway.   If you participate in any sort of self-help or support group on the interwebs, you will eventually meet your own Lashy Shawnna Shawna Lashawnna Lashawna Lashonda Burney Willamson Williamson Smith Smythe.  I am sure there are other incarnations, as well, suitable for other cons.

Please don't be incredulous.  Rather, laugh at my discomfiture, sure!  But be vigilant, as well, protect your personal information, and consider referring your virtual friends to organizational help in the event of Big Troubles, in lieu of, for example, writing them a check.  The bad apples in the big internet pile of fruit are few but they're everywhere, they're talented, and most likely sociopaths.  You cannot convince them to come clean or go straight.  You cannot elicit an apology or make them feel guilty.  If you offer any sort of gift, material or immaterial, make sure it is something you give freely, with no strings attached, no expectation of acknowledgement or change in behavior.  It just won't happen.

Shawnna seems to enjoy reeling people in on her fishy lines of drama and trauma. She invades your heart, heartlessly, and does it in such volume, with such volubility, that she can make you forget what you know.  One of her more mundane arrests came on the same day she claimed a fabulous thrust-and-parry with Death -- an Easter Sunday.  Even knowing this, she grabs my attention when she writes that, in her version of the Resurrection Day, "they had to Life Flight me..."

Resurrection Jealousy.

I may as well confess, not for the first time here, that I am the World's Easiest Mark. It is great sport among my family and friends to see just how much junk they can get me to believe. I melt at a low temperature, cooing "Oh no, really?" upon hearing their sad, implausible sagas.

But I think I am wising up! At least with Fred. He has some "tells" that I can now identify, chief among which is the statement: "This is a true story." But, oh, how it delights him when he, too, can reel me in.

My former best friend in the whole wide world is a Gorgeous Iranian Lesbian. We met as undergrads, roomed together for a while, and -- even though I screwed up our relationship in recent years -- had a wonderful life together. She just could not believe the extent of my gullibility. One day, we were working on homework in the French Dept. lounge, trying to come up with paper topics for our 17th century literature class. She hit on something she thought I would like -- having to do with that famous classicist Oussama Mon Chénier.

The Shah-Meister regaled me with fond memories of her relationship with this naturalist of the Grand Siècle, and how she spent many a rainy afternoon stretched out on her bed in Téhéran, thumbing through his great and marvelously illustrated work:  L'Histoire Naturelle des Animaux Sauvages (The Natural History of Wild Animals).  She had never understood why it was such a beloved reference work in Persia but rarely known among Unenlightened Westerners.

By the time she convinced me to go and interrogate our Professor Aronson là-dessus, I was frothing at the mouth at the thought of the academic wealth awaiting my investigation.  I will just let you imagine my horror at the kindly sad smile which my respected professor assumed about 10 seconds into my presentation of this awesome paper topic... Truly une idée "reçue."

And then there was the Incident on the Berkeley Pier.

But "Shawnna"?  She's on a whole other level, tending toward malevolence, not the gentle joshing of friends.

Here is her tale, updated from the original version, published here in January 2009.  Though I'm able to piece more of the puzzle bits together, I've not gained many insights into her behavior.

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

It's beyond disconcerting: beyond it, though, to I don't exactly know what.

The popular initial reaction seems to be "disappointment." That surely was the killer reaction that worked best on me as a child -- nothing hurt so much as when a beloved adult would calmly (with maybe a Touch of Glum) express disappointment in me and in whatever behavior I had perpetrated.

For 18 months, this woman Shawnna interacted almost daily with me and several other people in an online group that dealt with living with chronic pain.

There is another woman in this group who keeps me sane. Her latest daily adventures include stealth feeding of her neighbors' horses -- or, in one of the instances, the girlfriend of a neighbor who is billeting her horses there for the duration of the love affair. My friend is an animal lover.  These horses were not being fed daily and did not have access to fresh water -- and she has reacted as most of us would. Well, not quite. I would be on the phone reporting them, neighbors or not, for the talking-it-over approach has obviously been tried several times.  I do not, apparently, understand the dynamics of life in rural Wyoming, as such an act might well, she tells me, push her neighbors over sanity's edge... and then what would she do?  It'd be a shootout and it'd be all my fault.

So, she does the only logical thing:  She and her 80-something mother take hay to the two separate pens. I don't know the story of the other neighbor. They wait for the cover of darkness and deliver hay and water. The horses apparently go ape shit every time they see either of the two women, or even their truck.

She has a good heart.

So I am going to go way past "disappointment" and charge on down the path all the way to ANGER. Not at this caring Wyoming gal, no!

At the woman who has fooled her, and me, and lord knows how many others. We nicknamed her Shawnna. She was thrilled when she was given a nickname. It made her "one of us," one of the gang, party to the inner circle, whatever -- it marked the moment when she had definitively snookered us all.

I spent part of the day digging up every post she had ever published at the web site that hosted our laughter-loving chronic pain support group. Somehow, she never expected anyone to piece all the disparate parts together. Well, I got right to it, didn't I? It just took me a year and a half.

This is the story she has written, in bits and pieces, some meant for one group, some for another:

She is in her late 40s. She recently lost the triplets she was carrying -- made it to 6+ months, though. There are several posts about her inability to go into the nursery and pack up the tiny clothes and take down the cribs, maybe throw a little paint on the walls, scrape those silly stencils off, try to sell that stupid rocking chair on eBay.

That was mostly for Phil McGraw's online grief support group that rallied around her as she faced the anniversary of the triplets' death, and with whom she went on to share her childhood experiences of incest. Eventually, I guess, there was a strong sense of incongruity, and she moved on to the more appropriate Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivors Group, never speaking of the dead babies again.

About that same time, she approached us, the Chronic Paineurs, with a need for advice about having, or not having, a hysterectomy. The reason given was "pelvic pain." For reasons that I could never figure out, her surgery was supposed to take between 6-8 hours and might result in her death, or a colostomy. (Tonight, I relish that symmetry: her death or a colostomy. I like those odds.) She said she'd had 15 previous abdominal surgeries.

Let's see... She suffered from cardiomyopathy and a well-controlled seizure disorder, although she had a seizure on the operating table during her last operation and... you got it! Almost died.

"I almost died" could have been the chapter heading for most of her revelations.

She had three adult children. Her son was in prison for murder. Oh. As it happens, her brother was going on trial as a serial killer, and she lived in dread of having to testify. Her oldest daughter was a heroin addict with two small children. She popped into the narrative as a regular character when Shawnna decided she should have AIDS, abandon her kids (the long suffering Shawnna and her husband Rudy dedicated themselves to raising them, of course), and run off to New York with a no good man.

Shawnna's youngest daughter was a straight-A student, finishing her first year at college, and had never caused, or been in, any sort of trouble, ever. With the now added burden of two toddlers to raise, we suggested to Shawnna that her "good" daughter might be able to help out on the weekends. "Oh no," we were told, she did not want to be a burden to this young one who was doing so well.

Not even after her surgery went awry and she was mostly bedridden and living on methadone and percocet (Hey! I resemble that remark!) would she consider asking her daughter for help. She would carry on, somehow -- taking care of those two grandchildren, volunteering at their schools, working at the funeral parlor (part-time) and taking care of what she called her "wifely duties" with Rudy. [Prior to working at the funeral parlor, Shawnna said she owned a Home Health Agency, which she loved, as it allowed her to use her training as a *nurse*! I guess that is not an altogether uncommon move, to go from the healing arts to the death business?]

Of course Shawnna's surgery did not go well! This was surprising, as it took place at UNC-Chapel Hill (those slouches!). Would you believe that the numb nuts left a sponge inside of her? She ended up needing more surgeries because of their horrid oversight.

Then began the Saga of the Vaginal Bleeding. I know that it stretches the bounds of your credulity, but it was only at this point that she lost me as one of her dedicated cheerleaders. Because she kept bleeding and bleeding, going in and out of the hospital several times a week. I have also had a total hysterectomy and my crude understanding of anatomy informed me that there just are not that many sources for such bleeding... Somehow, I assuaged my suspicions with the reassurance that I apparently did not know everything, and that Shawnna was surely cursed and being used by God to do a rewrite of the Book of Job.

(Book, shmook! I forgot to mention that she is an author of two books. No, I haven't been able to find either one.)

Oh, I grow weary.

Well, what is left to Shawnna's Tale? Ah, yes. Rudy almost passed away about 2 years ago -- he had a major stroke at the age of 33. A few months later, he up and died -- he was out mowing the lawn and had a massive heart attack.

My tenderhearted Wyoming friend prepared herself for service -- a plane ticket, her own home and hearth in order -- and waited for details. Waited and waited. Shawnna was impossible to reach.

Suddenly, she posted a message saying that she was going to relocate to Memphis, Tennessee. I had begun searching for a death notice, checking obituaries in her area, then anywhere, then under any mistaken spelling of the poor dead man's last name. Nothing, nada, zilch. I asked her about it, finally, and was told that her world was turned upside down (understandable, nod nod...) and that Rudy's adult son from a previous marriage was handling those details.

Okie-dokie, then!

After a bit, she reappeared, reintroducing herself this way in an email, afraid, it seems, that the various plots of her story might have become stale:

I know that it's been a very long time, I'm fine. I have 4 grandchildren now, and all by the same daughter. I have three of them. I had a stroke on this past Easter Sunday but I must say that with some physical, and speech therapy I'm doing much better, I have been missing both you and M but I almost lost my  mind girl after my husband passed away. I'm much better know, and I've learned to cope with it. I love you just the same as I did one year ago girl!

Love,
Lashy

Finally, a period of relative calm, with only occasional hospitalizations for congestive heart failure interrupting. She was off to her new life in Elvis Land.

Except that we heard nothing and could not reach her. Finally, we received a message that she had suffered a major heart attack while driving...

With a familiarity that suddenly *was* breeding a major pile of contempt, we could not contact her at the hospital she was supposedly at and so on and so on and so forth.  In the past, her "good daughter" would appear online at these times of crisis, and promise to relay messages, etc.  There appeared to even actually be such a daughter that my friends were able to reach by phone.  Something in that precious mother-daughter relationship became irrevocably strained at this point, however, because Lashy wrote, out of the peculiar blue:

She  is  doing well, she is studying at The University of Winston-Salem now. She is in her 5th year of schooling. She is still studyimg to become a Psychologist. But guess what? She doesn't even call me, come to see me. She didn't even come to the hospital after I had the stroke, and I had been life-flighted there to Winston-Salem!!!!! I was sooooo hurt. I just couldn't believe that she didn't come to see me. I haven't heard from her now in almost a year. I just this information from her father. But  I am not going to sit and worry about what is going on, I love her, have done not one thing for her to treat me the way she's been, and one day she'll regret the time that we didn't share together.

There is, of course, no University of Winston-Salem, so I assumed it a reference to Winston-Salem State University.  But it, of course, has no graduate program in psychology, but does have a good-looking undergraduate BA degree in the field.

It was a great set up.  Now Good-Daughter-Turned-Mean-Child could not be relied upon as a benevolent player in Shawnna Land.  You can't trust her or believe a word she says!  Curses, though, that the little demon spawn now has training in psychology and will trick us all with her wily ways!

That fix was apparently not enough, however, because Shawnna went on to have Good-Daughter-Turned-Mean-Child suffer a stroke, herself, and be put, herself, on the "transplant list." Again, Lashy was kind enough to provide all sorts of contradictory written information, though she never seems to completely hoist her own petard.  This is a letter she sent to my good friend during Scene 4 of Act 3, or whatever we are to call this internet con drama.  It's one of her more elaborate, and the construction is interesting, particularly the opening gambit.  Hi, it's been forever, my dying-with-AIDS daughter is such a whore... my Good-Gone-Bad-Now-Redeemed-Again daughter is in ICU... all summed up by the telling, "Oh my God girl!!!! What more can I deal with huh?"  It's all about Shawnna.


I don't know the requirements for receiving hospice care, but apparently they are not as stringent as I believed!

----- Original Message -----

From: Lashawnna Burney

Hey Girlie,

I know that it's been a while that we've spoken. How has everything been going for you? I have some very disturbing news. I just found out very recently that my last granddaughter is not my daughter's husband's daughter!!! No, her father is some other low-life piece of shit that roams the city of Fayetteville! The DNA test just came back last week. I am so through with my daughter do you hear me! So now we've got to try and find this someone to let him know that he is now a Father. I spoke with my daughter and asked her what the hell is she thinking? Not only were you unfaithful in your marriage but you had unprotected sex with someone that you really don't even know!!!! She tells me that she's been knowing this man for a year! Uh....wow...a whole year!. Please, give me a break!

Plus the fact that T (my youngest daughter) is in ICU and has been for the last past four days, we found out that she has inherited my cardiac condition. She has an enlarged heart and went out to the emergency after feeling very ill. She was having difficulties breathing and was having some swelling in her legs and hands. Oh my God girl!!!! What more can I deal with huh? But the good news is that she's doing better and the Physician told me that he'd be able to step her down off of the milirinone lactate and put her on an oral medication at this point. So hopefully she's be discharged at some point this coming week. 

I always feared one of my three children inheriting my cardiac condition and the one that has her shit together is the one that has been crippled with this enormous problem. I'm very afraid that this will limit her ability to have children one day when she's ready. All I can do is guide her and show her how to deal with this cardiac problem. They have put in a picc line so that she can be administered the milirinone, the same medication that I use on a continuous basis here at home. My picc line has been sewn in place though.

**[Lashy simultaneously posted elsewhere that Good Daughter Gone Bad was comatose, had had a stroke and suffered severe neurological deficits.  Milirinone (sic) lactate?!  Yowza!  In the little bit of reading I did about the drug, one thing was pretty doggone clear:  "treatment with this drug usually does not exceed 5 days..."  This archived drug label made it clear that this warning against longterm use was not lightly made:

Whether given orally or by continuous or intermittent intravenous infusion, milrinone has not been shown to be safe or effective in the longer (greater than 48 hours) treatment of patients with heart failure. In a multicenter trial of 1088 patients with Class III and IV heart failure, long-term oral treatment with milrinone was associated with no improvement in symptoms and an increased risk of hospitalization and death. In this study, patients with Class IV symptoms appeared to be at particular risk of life-threatening cardiovascular reactions. There is no evidence that milrinone given by long-term continuous or intermittent infusion does not carry a similar risk.]**

I was in the hospital for my birthday, (7th January). I was in CHF and renal failure. I am better now and hopefully I won't have another hospitalization for some time.

I allowed my daughter to come over to spend a few hours with all of the children during the holiday and she didn't even think or consider buying either child anything for the holiday! I was very disappointed in that too. I have just come to realize that my daughter will always be selfish, bottom line. 

Have you talked with M lately? I would like to go and see her for my 1-week vacation this coming April once the kids are out for Spring-break but I haven't heard back from her to confirm. I would like to come see you one Spring/Summer as well.

I really miss you guys so much. I feel so bad sometimes girl that it takes all I have just to get up and move around each day. My cardiac health is slowly declining, and I can really feel the change. I have hospice coming in each day and they've helped me aloft as far pain relief, and making dr's appt's for me.  And I have a CNA to come out each day for three hours. She helps with laundry and running errands for me.

I just wish that I could feel 30% better. [This is, I think, my new Lashy/Shawnna favorite.  In my mind, I hear it à la languishing Scarlet O'Hara:  "I just wish that I could feel 30% better..."]

I had a difficult time yet again this year during the holidays because as you remember Rudy passed on the 6th December. I must admit that having friends and family here for the holidays did distract from the depression that I was feeling but, It was still difficult and I guess that it will never really go away. 

Well Sweetheart, I've taken up enough of your time with my whining so I just want to let you know that truly I love you very much and because I may not post or send messages as often as I did before, doesn't mean that you're not on my mind. I look forward in hearing from you soon....Talk later 

Love,

Lashy

P.S Have you heard from Prof? If so, please give her my hello's.......................

[Prof, here, chuckling...]

Somewhere in all the chaos, Lashawnna began to mention LVADs, though it was never clear whether she had one.  It became something of an obsession.  Still -- as you might expect -- the LVAD stories came with their own healthy quantity of red flags.  Small flags, maybe more of a bled pink than a screaming ninny of a cerise.  Things like continued smoking, something that I'd think one might give up if faced with left ventricular failure.

I was contacted by a very nice guy who is an authority on LVADs and whose blog is dedicated to helping others learn about the life-saving devices.  Shawnna was driving him a bit mad, writing, then calling him repeatedly with requests that he call her, and performing her typical zero-to-sixty insistence on intimacy and instant friendship.  She glosses over the normal periods of making acquaintances so as to rapidly insert herself and her confusions into the mark's life.  Unfortunately, she just came off sounding weird to him and he did an internet search... finding, eventually, my previous post, "Shawnna's Con."

An aside:  What a wonderful guy, what a wonderful attitude!  He is steeped in gratitude, and it shows -- well beyond words, it shows in pictures and videos, it shows in how he reaches out to give others a hand up.

My capacity for playing the fool has amazed me. I still want the thousand dollars back that I gave to someone I "met" online in an osteonecrosis support group.  I did not hesitate to help her pay her electric bill so that the utility could be turned back on, keeping her young children warm. One of her sons was very ill, she said, and she couldn't afford to take him to the doctor.  Are you sitting down?  Turns out she had other uses in mind for my money, uses that were more in the line of "entertainment."  Well, we are all deserving of fun... Right?

I still wonder whether I had any right to expect my osteonecrotic friend to use those bucks for her overdue bills. Did I have any right to know what she used the money for, at all?  The answer is clearly "no." But the emotional truth is something different.  And ugly.

I never gave Shawnna anything material.

No, I cried with her, listened, tried to help and advise, pitied and prayed for her -- and for "hers," who were always so deep into trouble, lost without her able help and guidance.

I cannot even laugh at myself as I begin to seriously fret over who is taking care of those beautiful, innocent grandkids.  Even after all of this, I believe in the existence of those children, mostly believe the stories that accompany them, and fear for their welfare.

Because I cannot know what tidbits are true, which are false, which are more properly interpretations.  She may have a failed heart, her daughters might be equally ill -- one sticken with Lashy's own disease, an inheritance, the other with AIDS, Lashy's emblem for "bad."

The proliferation of grandchildren, all born to an HIV+ woman, is at the heart of this con's tale.  Babies, some of them dead (her opening at Dr. Phil's, remember, was that she had just lost triplets), all of them displaced, are what's the matter.

I wish I understood.

It turns out that Shawnna may have an online accomplice. So I -- and others, especially one kind spirit in Wyoming -- are waiting for the other shoe to drop in the saga of Shawnna's con.  She wants to set a trap, and has, probably.  I just want to issue a Public Safety Announcement -- which is what I suppose this post was supposed to be.

But oh, Dear Readers, there was one wondrous development, just a few months ago, and I will end this rambling "cautionary tale" by copying below a rare moment of love and warmth between myself and this con artist.

You can imagine how thrilled I was to be able to notify Shawnna, in January 2012, that there had been a resurrection, good news of the miraculous sort:

lashawnna wrote: 

"Morgan and Dianah I know that it's been a while since I last spoke to either of you, I have been really having a hard time dealing with the death of my husband, so much so that I had to relocate to another home, too many memories.[...] Prof, I have really had you in my thoughts and prayers and I hope that all is well with you. I have had to really dig deep for my sanity, for a time there, the walls started to close in on me and I felt as if I was losing sight on reality. I couldn't sleep because I was in constant thought of Rudy. I have lost 39 pounds. When I first started posting, I wore a size 14 pants, now I am wearing a size 5/6."

i, profderien, wrote: 

hi lashy,
long time, girl, long time!
but i am so glad to be able to come to you with good news.  
heck, it's great news!  
are you sitting down?  no?  well, take a second and sit yourself down, because i don't want you to faint and hit your head, thereby sustaining a life-threatening subarachnoid hemorrhage or possibly fracturing the medial epicondyle of your humerus (the "funny bone"!).  heck, the joyful shock of what i am about to disclose to you, our dear loving lashy, might cause your cardiac muscle to shift into overdrive.
it's PHENOMENAL news!  it's put-it-on-the-doctor-phil-show-it's-so-good news!  (seriously, my friend, you would make a fascinating guest.)
ready?  are you sure?  okay, here goes:
RUDY IS ALIVE AND WELL AND WORKING AT WALMART!  it's a freaking miracle.
no, i am not pulling your tiny size 5/6 leg!  it's time to have a really big, fattening meal in celebration -- but cardiac-friendly, of course, maybe an arugula salad dressed with balsamic vinaigrette, some poached salmon over a lovely parsnip purée. (i'm hungry.)
you probably don't believe me, i know what a stickler you are for truth, justice, and the american way -- and here i am, saying rudy (by whose grave you wept and loss scads of weight) -- that scumbag who pretended to stroke out while mowing the lawn -- here i am saying that your husband rudy is flaunting his status as a living organism... all over facebook!
i wasn't sure, and again, out of respect for your reliance on honesty, i asked someone who knows what rudy looks like to take a gander at his profile picture.  i was assured that "yep, that's him!  the no-good pretending-to-be-dead bozo!" 
i know, this news is really a mixed bag.  part pure relief (He Lives!) and part ultimate frustration (How Could He Let Me Grieve and Waste Away to a Size 5/6?).
but you are nothing if not a strong woman, accustomed to adversity (good lord, when i think of the tragedies your family has suffered... the loss of your triplets, your brother's murder conviction, your son's murder conviction, your daughter's HIV, your other daughter's cardiomyopathy, your own cardiomyopathy, your multiple and simultaneous needs for a heart transplant... why, it boggles the mind, if not one's credulity!).
i gotta say, though, lashy... i believe i would divorce the bastard.  no doubt you have moved on in these intervening years, and some other lucky man has scooped you up.
well, that's about all.  i hope you can get over the shock of it.  this is a great place to vent, though, you know? everyone here is like FAMILY, gullible as all get out, willing to lend you sympathy, understanding, love, and probably a ten spot or two.  you can say *anything* here.  it's a safe place, where no one trolls for victims to exploit, where no one even considers playing a con.
all the best,
prof