Pix

Turkish Tower and downtown B'more skyline

Looking west over Druid Hill Park Lake.
Madison Ave (NorthEast)
Mrs. P on the stoop

My herpetic knee

I find my biannual physical exams amusing. Yes, I go twice a year, because 11 years ago I had an adventure with malignant melanoma, and my GP likes to measure my moles regularly.

I find the mole-measuring very amusing. There's a mole on my stomach that he was measuring today, and he said "It might be a bit wider than last year, but I can actually stretch it out if I want to, so I'm not sure", and he started pulling at my skin with his fingertips pushed into my stomach above and below the mole. He was laughing and claiming the mole looked like a bird, or a shark, or a lemon, depending on how he stretched or scrunched it. I suggested the mole might look wider because I'd put on 6 pounds over the winter. We agreed that it was actually the same size as before.

I've been going to the same GP since I was 13. He did my first high school athletics physical before I joined the track team. Now he's doing my physical a year after foot injuries ended my running career. He's great, but some of his assistants are morons. Today I groaned when he let an assitant take my blood sample. I'd had her before, and she'd stuck me five times before finally finding a vein. My veins stand out like ropes, just like the veins on all southern PA backwater rednecks. This time she hit the vein first try, but didn't push in far enough, so the needle was in the outside of my vein. She couldn't figure out what was wrong and was manipulating this fat needle stuck in my arm when the glass collection vial fell off onto the floor. She reacted trying to catch it and in doing so pushed the needle far enough in to draw blood. A nice crimson jet resulted, and a huge mess. I've never in my entire life laughed at my own spurting blood, but today I couldn't help it. Then, after cleaning up and collecting three vials she started sticking adhesive things all over my chest and arms for an EKG. "Uh, you might want to shave me before putting those on," I suggested. I'm harrier than a '70s porn star. "It's ok," she said. "These things won't pull out hair." She clipped the machine to my adhesive things, did the reading, and promptly yanked the adhesives off, removing huge patches of hair and causing me to yelp. The tentacles on the EKG reader looked like wilted Chia pets, and I looked like I'd been attacked by a Humboldt squid. I think she was angry I laughed at her.

My BP was 106 over 65 at the beginning of the appointment--I wonder what it was when I left?

Doc looked me over and found a tiny clear bump on my knee. He asked me about it, and I told him I get them occasionally on my knee and they go away. "I think you've got herpes," he said. "On my knee?" I asked. "Sure," he replied. "You can get herpes anywhere. I'd advise you keep your knee away from your wife." "You're not serious," I said, but he was, and he was vigorously washing his hands. "These bumps don't ever burst and scab over," I told him. "I doubt they are herpetic." "You're probably right," he said, "but keep your knee away from your wife's private areas."

How the fuck could I have gotten a herpetic knee? I simply can't imagine--and I have a pretty perverse imagination. Who, I wonder, gave me herpetic knee? Perhaps I'll phone up old flames and demand to know if they gave me herpetic knee. Will there be a new drug for herpetic knee along the lines of yellow toenail drugs and restless leg medications? "Ow, Doc, my restless herpetic knee!"

My wife will be horribly disappointed that I can no longer knee her in the groin without protection.

So True

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

Actually, much as I love Amsterdam, I would never want to live there. I'd be incoherent too often. I'd like to live in Bruges or Brussels or some other city close to Amsterdam.

Of course every European city is close to Amsterdam by Eurorail/air. We drove up from Rouen and it took about five hours.

Now!

After Kyle Sampson's testimony, Congress must act immediately to impeach Alberto Gonzales. Enough is enough.

A Beautiful Day

We finally met the neighbors directly across the street from us. Other neighbors we've met have referred to them as The Mayor and First Lady, a title earned after 6 decades living there.

Returning from the park we saw Mr. and Mrs. P. out on the stoop, where they held court in the warm evening air. He stood to the side of the marble steps, leaning over with his elbow on the top. She sat just outside the door on the threshold, stooped herself. They looked to be in their sixties but are in fact 85 and 83. We rushed over and introduced ourselves and promptly formed up into pairs. Cha and Mrs. P. chatted about the neighborhood and Cha's work as Mr. P. told me stories about being a cook in the Army and going ashore at Normandy and moving through France into Germany. He told me about each house on the block, and which ones he'd helped restore during a previous revitalization in the 1960s. What Mr. P. must have seen, as Reservoir Hill moved from its lofty top-tier economic status into a racially mixed middle class region, then following a short period of white flight it became a black middle class neighborhood, and following the deaths of many long-term residents Reservoir Hill descended sadly into a struggling ghetto with pockets retaining mere hints of past dignity.

I was awed and humbled by the arc of their lives. Mr. P. overheard Cha mention art teaching and mentioned that he himself was not only a painter of houses, but also a self-taught painter of pictures. At his suggestion Mrs. P. gave us a tour of the first floor of their charming old house, where several of his paintings hang. They were impressive, including several accomplished family portraits, a clever oil featuring two Jewish men drinking beer ("Them's his Jews," Mrs. P. said in explanation), a lovely portrait of a rooster and two hens, a colonial or Revolutionary-era parlour scene of three gentlemen seated in a grand library with mugs. Mr. P. had also done extensive murals on the walls of the house, but sadly these had decayed into disrepair, with grandchildren's artwork taped over top. "He don't paint no more because he done got lazy," Mrs. P. said and laughed. When she laughs she claps and then throws her hands in the air, a gesture particularly endearing to me, as my paternal grandmother also did so.

As we returned to the stoop their daughter arrived, herself in her fifties and a former principal in the City school system. "I'm typically the docent on the tour," she lamented. "Mother is not an entirely incapable stand-in, but omits much of the vital history. Some day I'll take you through with more context." As her father resumed telling me house and family histories, she corrected him from time to time, gently but with a teasing tone. He said someone had died twenty years before, and she said "More like 45 years ago. I was a young girl when he left us."

"You're still a young girl," Mr. P. replied, and she stroked his wispy hair. The entire P. clan is full of humor and thus they retain a remarkable youthful vigor, a twinkling in the moist bright eyes set in sagging faces.

The daughter told us her father and deceased brother were at one time amateur magicians of some renown. Mr. P. had constructed his own illusion machines, including a guillotine, a sword-box, and a "lady-sawn-in-half" table. "They violated child labor statutes by forcing me to work as an unpaid magician's assistant. The worst part was rehearsing every night in the basement for weekend birthday parties."

"You wasn't unpaid," Mr. P. said. "You got ten percent of the proceeds for each show."

"Ten percent of five dollars!" she protested.

Is there anything Mr. P. had not done? Electrician, painter, artist, teacher, magician, soldier, contractor, unofficial Mayor...

At this point we met another neighbor, three doors down from us. A slight man with Einsteinian bushy black hair, dressed all in black himself, and effecting, dare I say, dare I use the cliche? Pourquoi pas? He was effecting a certain je ne sais quoi.

"Here's another of your nice neighbors," Mrs. P. said. "And all the way from Paris, France. This is M."

"I move here because in France I read the name Reservoir 'Ill and knew I had to come," M. said with a sneer. We spoke French briefly, but were chided by the others, who began teasing us and yelling random words of European origin, like "cappuccino."

M. mounted a convertible sports car after announcing he was due in Providence, RI for a date in seven hours. "The drive will take six and a half, so I must leave now!" he shouted, waving and winking.

And thus we add more good folks to those we've met already, and we learned that for two decades our house had no roof, and no rear wall.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Scientists are confounded about the cause of a startingly precise hexagonal storm in Saturn's atmosphere.

I believe said storm was caused by the fact that Oprah has selected Cormac McCarthy's The Road as her latest Book Club selection.

VISA: It's everywhere you ain't

A representative of the bank who controls my credit card called yesterday. She went through a list of recent charges, asking me to verify them. More than $500 was spent at an online catalog called BooStore, and another couple hundred at some joint called 2BSports. These purchases were not authorized.

The representative said someone had opened department store credit accounts using my name and birth date, but that they were investigating this and had already notified the major credit bureaus of possible fraud. She said after our conversation the credit bureaus would be advised of actual fraud.

This must have happened very recently because nothing was amiss when we financed our new house. I've experienced credit card fraud before. Three months after a stay in Rome somebody used my VISA number to buy thousands of dollars worth of auto parts and car stereo components in Urbina. Someone else used my VISA to purchase an internet service in Reims, France two years ago. In both those instances, however, there was no actual identity theft. I suppose nearly everyone will deal with this at some point in the information age. Thank goodness the folks running my account caught the suspicious activity before it got out of hand.