I was working in the Eagle-Tribune’s Haverhill bureau with an outstanding reporter I still admire named Bill Cantwell.  I have to say that because, in this story, he does not look good.  It’s the only time in my experience that he ever looked bad, or uncaring, to me, and he was just doing what he was supposed to do.  I’m the first  one who found out what the editors wanted to know, and I didn’t tell them.  They would have been right to fire me if they ever found out.  I thought being unprofessional was the right thing to do that one time.  Bill was being professional.

The paper was trying to “get” Haverhill’s police chief, Dan Fasulo, now long retired.  Many people in town thought he was crooked.  We never found any evidence of it, and never printed it.  No one in town would be quoted by name on the subject. Our paper’s policy wisely did not allow unnamed sources, especially people who accused someone of crimes anonymously.  With no documents, it’s just gossip, not news.

In Washington, unnamed sources are a necessary part of journalism.  When a low-level bureaucrat wants to stop his bosses from undermining democracy, abusing power, or threatening national security, he can secretly release (leak) official documents.  If we named those sources, their lives would be ruined, and no one would blow a whistle again.  Documents are evidence.  We’ve seen that culture abused several times, by Dick Cheney talking to a reporter off the record — lying — about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, and the special prosecutor in Bill Clinton’s case leaking confidential grand jury evidence that Bill was rotten as well as guilty of things he never proved in court.

In Chief Fasulo’s case, there were no documents or named witnesses to any crimes he might have committed.  Even his enemies would not be quoted by name, or produce documents. So all we had were widespread beliefs and gossip we could not use, document,  or verify.  They all said they were afraid of police retribution, but we could not document or verify that either. But there was plenty of evidence that he was an incompetent bully who played favorites in the department, and was using the Civil Service laws to hang on to his job. 

When the anti-Fasulo crowd elected a mayor, they hoped for some action against the Chief.   But Mayor Ted Pelosi, for his own reasons, merely asked the state police to investigate and file a written report on the chief and his deputy.  The report found no evidence of crime or corruption, but it found lots of non-criminal mismanagement and favoritism, and a demoralized police force.  It was an official public document we could quote, and pursue its allegations.

One allegation we pursued intensely was that three rookie officers had taken the oath, and were carrying badges and guns on the street, after flunking a standardized psychological test given by the Police Academy.  The public needed to know about it.  What I still don’t understand is why the public needed to know the boys’ names.

Standardized psych tests are inaccurate, designed to throw up a red flag and have the applicant interviewed and evaluated by as professional.   They are not accurate enough — by themselves — to make a final decision on a person’s ability to do a job.  How a person did on those tests should be confidential because a bad result from the written test is so prejudicial, and does not prove anything. Only the written test plus a professional evaluation is evidence.

But Cantwell and I pursued the names as if the boys were officials on the take.  We and our bosses  were afraid the competition would publish them first.  I got the names from my sources, and Cantwell from his. I did not tell anyone.  Cantwell could not until someone in a position to know confirmed it.  He got confirmation by throwing a curve ball to the local union president.

Cantwell was surprised at how upset I was.

“We killed their futures as Haverhill police officers — and maybe as police officers anywhere — based on unreliable, prejudicial evidence,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t do it to them,” he said, and continued typing.

That’s exactly what reporters say when they catch a crooked official on the take.  I don’t know what happened to the boys,buttheywere finished as Haverhill police officers, and a newspaper can’t be sued for telling the truth.

Compete with that look

“Eagle-Tribune”

I recently read an article where three doctors my age (mid-60′s) asked one another when and why practicing medicine stopped being fun.  It prompted me to ask the same question about news reporting.  When and why did it stop being fun?

Follow the Money  

The newspaper business hit a plateau between 1988 and 1992.  It never recovered.  It went from flat into decline.  Newspapers continued to make money, in some cases a lot of money.  But they stopped growing, and started losing, on average, 15 percent of their subscriptions a year.  People died and moved away, or got their news from TV and the Internet.  Fewer young read newspapers.  Circulation managers had to replace 15% of their subscriptions every year just to stay even, and it got harder and harder (and more expensive) to sell subscriptions.

USA Today was revolutionizing the look and writing style of local newspapers when I arrived at The Eagle-Tribune in 1985.  Our managing editor was in charge of making our paper more like them, so we could compete on the news stands with all that color, those big charts and graphics, and short stories.  It was all very expensive, and a big change for the writers and editors, especially because USA Today had computers that could take a story from the writer, through the editors and layout people, to the press without ever touching paper.  In 1995, the Eagle–Tribune was still struggling to bring that technology in.  The few older guys in the composing room, which new technology would eliminate, tried to subvert it until they could to retire.   

Family-owned papers began selling to big newspaper chains.  Tax laws made it hard to transfer ownership to heirs.  Heirs needed cash, and the chains had plenty.  Owning a newspaper became very hard. Working hard was no longer enough.  You had to make the right moves.  Owners who made the wrong moves eventually had to sell out at Fire Sale prices.  Heirs could save themselves all that heartache and risk by selling to a chain for the huge sums they were being offered.  Heirs could invest that money in businesses with more growth potential, or secure incomes with lots of time for leisure or other pursuits.

Young people still go to work in journalism for the right reason:  it’s the only job where a single person can do a lot of good for a lot of people just by doing the job well.  I’m very proud of the way I brought down a few local bullies, exposing them just by quoting them and their public records.  Opportunities to do that in newspapers are disappearing. Radio and TV news, especially local news, never offered much opportunity for enterprising news people.  And the Internet — already a terrific medium for opinion writers —  has not yet achieved its enormous potential as a news medium, especially if you exclude online versions of newspapers.

Working on a Chain Gang

The difference between writing for a family paper and a chain was night and day.  I base this on my experience writing and editing for a chain of weeklies owned by Ottaway-Dow Jones on the NH Seacoast, and the family-owned Eagle-Tribune in Northeast Mass,and Southeast NH.   Ottaway bought the eight weeklies hoping to start a daily to compete with Foster’s in Dover and the Portsmouth Herald.   The industry went sour, and Foster’s started moving South very aggressively, before they could do that, but they did have time to wreck three country weeklies, including the one I edited.

When the corporate publisher told the three editors they could stay on as town correspondents, a big demotion, he summed up the business’s editorial philosophy:  ”Even if there is no news, people will still pick it up to look at the classified ads.  We’re not a public utility.”  In the next few years, the Internet stole most of their classified advertising by offering readers better technology.  It took me a year to find a job on a family-owned daily.  When I got there, the Eagle-Tribune editor told me I could never work for a corporate paper.  I was the wrong age, and my writing had too much personality.  Chains want their writers to bee nameless, interchangeable parts.

“I probably couldn’t work f or one either,” Dan Warner said.

Ottaway treated me like part of the overhead, with a cost but no value. Dan Warner and the Rogers family, which had owned the Eagle-Tribune for generations, treated me like part of the product.  And when I showed a flair for column writing, management encouraged me.  I was downsized in 1995.  It had not been a nice place to work for some time before that.  Downsizing meant there were fewer people to do the same amount of work, and meet the same high standards.  Dan Warner, one of the last pure print newspaper geniuses, had turned into an angry, bitter old man.  After Irving Rogers died, his adult children tried to hold on, but finally sold the paper to a chain.

Why It Stopped Being Fun

I’ve written very little about my newspaper days.  Few of my old “war stories” from small cities and towns — ordinary people doing ordinary things — would interest anyone but me.  And I don’t want to be one of those bitter old journalists lamenting the sad state of journalism today.  I interviewed a few big celebrities who passed through my beat,  and covered several First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primaries that made or changed history. I’m particularly proud of three of the awards I won, and the few local bullies I brought down.  Maybe I’ll hit a few of those stories someday if a current “news peg” makes them worth revisiting, like a new biography of Henry Aaron, that made the story behind  my revealing 1980 interview with him interesting to readers in 2010.

A good story that’s never been told, as far as I know, is the New Hampshire zoning wars,1970-1990.  In those years, immigrants from Massachusetts and New York struggled with old-timers to rewrite local land use and zoning laws, build new schools and modern curricula, municipal water and sewer systems, and create modern, professional police and fire departments.  That will be a very hard story to tell.  It covers 20 years and played out differently in each community, depending on the decision-makers and voters in each one.  Maybe I can paint a picture someday by focusing on each little town I covered.   The key words there are maybe and someday.

Considering that I spent 15 of my nearly 65 years writing and editing newspapers in small communities, how much I loved that work, and how interesting I found it, it’s remarkable how little I’ve written about it since I left.   I’ve touched on most of the reasons it stopped being fun for me.  Two incidents will need separate treatments:  the 1992 Presidential election between Bill Clinton and the first George Bush, and the sad story from 1989 that was the first time I was ashamed of my profession.  Those will come soon.

This story first appeared on www.wellnessworsworks.com

I have Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS).  It has no treatment, cure, known cause, or hope.  Acceptance is the key to  my serenity. good attitude, and great quality of life. I live one day at a time to the fullest, still write, and work with Corinna West, Wellness Wordworks and my faith community.  I have wonderful friends and supporters, and I’m just fine.

Lou Gehrig

For me, accepting this fate is choosing life, not giving up.  Staying active, positive,and productive, not boo-hooing over it, is the key to my good attitude, which is the key to everything positive in my life.

I don’t understand why people say my attitude is remarkable.  For me, it’s just common sense.

I also never understood why so many people who heard my mental health recovery story called me “courageous.”  Then, I was rejecting the fate laid out for me by mental health professionals, and fighting successfully to create my own.

The docs said it was an impossible, grandiose, manic dream to make my living as a writer.  I’d be a lot less angry and frustrated if I forgot that dream, got a part-time job driving a cab, a furnished room, took my meds, and accepted the person I really was.

A roomful of them started shouting at me, calling me arrogant and non-compliant, when I said, “If that’s such a good thing to do, why don’t you do it.

The Serenity to Accept Things I Cannot Change

As an amateur baseball historian, I’ve seen Gehrig’s farewell speech at Yankee Stadium in newsreels a million times.  When everyone knew he was dying from a rare disease they’d never heard of and could not spell — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, now commonly called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”) — he told his admirers, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

He is as well known today for stoically accepting what he called “a bad break” as for his incomparable play and baseball records, including 2,130 consecutive games without missing an inning.  Nobody approached that record for 60 years.

Today, I consider myself lucky, like Lou Gehrig.

Amazing, since ALS had always been the most horrible death I could imagine.  Your body slowly loses all function, including the ability to communicate.  Then, your internal organs fail, and you die.  The worst part is your mind stays alert the whole time and watches you waste away.     

I swore I’d kill myself if I ever got ALS, not wait to die that way.  What’s changed to make me feel so?

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  – The Serenity Prayer

When Accepting Fate Was Bad

I also struggle with mood swings and post-traumatic feelings and behavior.  Accepting fate, according to what psychiatry told me, would have ruined my life, but I never accepted it.

When I was recovering from trauma and severe mood swings, acceptance was a dirty word.  The docs kept pressuring me to accept fate. The  mood swings were an incurable  chemical imbalance in my brain, the docs said. Accepting fate would make me less angry, the docs said.

What was wrong with accepting that fate was that it was not really fate.  I could choose my own.

The doc said large doses of psych meds for life would control  my extreme moods, and allow me to live almost normally — falling asleep in groups, smoking cigarettes outside the mental health center, washing dishes, sweeping floors, or driving a cab part-time.  I was lucky to live in modern times, the docs said.  Before meds, they would have locked me in a dungeon.

Accepting fate their way would have been giving up, not choosing life, so I pursued my own goal and never gave up.  I chose life then, and I am today.  Only now, I know what I’m going to die of — not when! — unless I get hit by a bus while I’m waiting.

The docs had no idea how important my goal was to me, or how much ability, persistence, faith, and time I would bring to the effort.  Setbacks could not stop me.  The docs could not see into my heart, but I could.

Years later, when David Hilton and I, with others, were helping to build the recovery and empowerment movement in New Hampshire, we were like pit bulls.  Everything the mental health system did was the wrong thing, the wrong way, too slow, and self-interested.  Acceptance was a dirty word on the system level, as it had been for me on the personal level.

Until a a few months ago,  the only kind of acceptance I knew was accepting a rotten system, a furnished room, dead-end job, poverty, a medicated haze, and life without purpose in the “mental health ghetto.”  Acceptance killed dreams,  closed possibilities, and destroyed potential.

The Good Kind of Acceptance

On Jan. 3, 2013, I was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a gradual, degenerative neuro-muscular breakdown with no treatment, known cause, hope, or cure.  Most people live with it 5 or 6 years, but some live 10, and Stephen Hawking, the physicist, is still alive and productive 50 years after his diagnosis

My dear friend Megan Wood understood  fate. Her uncomplicated faith in God let her tell me what my intellectual friends could not.   Everything fell into place for me after that.  I calmed down, stopped fighting with myself to do things that had always been simple, like getting dressed and out of bed.  My. back felt better, I stopped screaming at people and objects, and I focused on learning easier ways to do simple things.

I found a serenity I’ve never known.

I’m Accepting Fate, and I’m Satisfied

I’m satisfied with the person I made myself against great odds, with a little help, and a lot of setbacks and discouraging words.  I like the quality and balance of my  life, relationships, and accomplishments.

When I was 28, I was a homeless cab driver in New York City, intensely suicidal much of the time, isolated, angry, and depressed all the time.  It took patience, discipline, faith, and a little unearned luck to get where I am, instead of institutionalized, in the gutter, or dead.

It’s been a fascinating ride.  My curiosity, gift of words, ability to grasp and synthesize ideas, and the empathy I learned from my own emotional struggles gave me wisdom and lots of information.  I’ve lived in interesting times, am an interesting person, and attracted wonderful friends.  If I live another five years, I’ll be 70, and that’s long enough.

Attitude and Acceptance

I wonder if acceptance (not the negative psychiatric kind), and a better attitude would have made my mental distress more comfortable.  I certainly could have been less angry and explosive.  That held me back sometimes, and made me miserable and ashamed.

I have plenty of wonderful friends now, but for years, I was lonely and isolated.  I could have had more friends if I had been nicer, less sarcastic and explosive.  I did not mellow out until just a few years ago.

I might have been re-traumatized less often.

It doesn’t matter now.  I’m happy; I have ALS, and will enjoy the rest of my life every day.  I’m really fine with this.

 “I should not talk about myself so much if there were anyone else I knew so well.”

Henry David Thoreau

“I should not talk so constantly about adjusting to life as a housebound person with profound mobility disabilities if there were not so much to learn, and these early stages of the learning curve did not demand every bit of my attention.”

Ken Braiterman

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013     

The word “cripple” is politically incorrect, but the more polite euphemisms invented by the disabilities rights community sound ludicrous to me – differently abled, movement challenged, or something. I’m all those things, but they don’t describe how I feel.

I feel crippled.

My right hand and arm are practically useless, my low back and hips are so stiff and sore that they sometimes don’t hold my weight, and I’ve taken a lot of dangerous falls in and around the house.  I need a walker to go 10 feet from my bed to the bathroom, or any farther than that, in or out of the house.  I pee in a bottle, and sit on a raised toiet seat.   Going out anywhere is a major, 2-person project, and I can only stand a couple of minutes SOMETIMES without leaning on something more secure than my hung bathroom sink,which hangs from the wall with nothing under it..

Today (Thursday, Feb. 7) is the last day of my first week home from Health South Rehab Hospital (HS).  For two weeks there, I strengthened muscles, and learned safer, easier ways to do things around the house.

Before I was admitted, I fell five times at home over a weekend.  Twice, I used the Life Alert button I wear around my neck at all times to summon the EMT’s.  “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” as the old TV commercial used to say.  The second time, they said, “You’d better come with us.”

They kept me in Concord Hospital one night making sure I hadn’t had a stroke, then transferred me to HS on the same campus

Health South Rehab Hospital, Concord, NH

.

In November, before anyone said I definitely have Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), I fell down a flight of stairs after choir practice at Temple Beth Jacob (TBJ) in Concord, NH, and the temple called the EMT’s, which pissed me off.  I felt fine, even though I had fallen smack on the back of my head.  I just felt a trifle woozy, like I “had my bell rung.”

Then, I got furious at myself when I allowed the ER docs to convince me to spend the night “just in case.”  By then, the slight wooziness was gone, my EEG and CT scan were clear, and the only reason I saw to stay was to calm THEIR fear of sending me home alone. I spent a long, sleepless night taking my anger out on every hospital staff person above the rank of Nurse.

I did not fight the hospital this time.  I knew I could not keep going as I had been.  The promise of “rehab next” appealed to me because I had done so well in rehab in 2009, when my back and hips were so stiff and sore they crumpled under me, and I fell several times in public.  I also walked with a distinct shuffle.

Rehab trained me out of that in ’09.  Now, it was happening again, and I was ready for more rehab – two weeks in HS covered by Medicare. My private insurance pays all  Medicare deductibles, and costs $250 per month.  Now, that insurance is paying off like The Lottery.

Stripping My Apartment for Safety

HS was good; the five hours of daily training, rigorous and efficient, with no wasted motion.  A few days before my release, the HS therapists and I met at my apartment with my brother David and his companion Mary Bergeron, who is family to my frail elderly mother and me.  They made suggestion after suggestion to make the grossly cluttered place safer and more fung shue when I got home.

David had already made many suggestions for getting rid of my inappropriate over-stuffed furniture that was crammed in wall-to-wall-to-wall, with junk piled on every surface.  Now, the traffic lanes were too narrow for my walker, which I would need inside the house at all times.  There were a million tripping hazards, each an accident waiting to happen, and I sunk so deep into the chairs and sofa that I often had trouble getting up.

Still, I resisted each suggested change.  David, who has been my devoted life-line through all this, threw up his hands and retired to a far corner.  But the HS therapists persisted, and I accepted each change reluctantly, one at a time, partly because they made sense, and partly because I was out-numbered.  Each decision was a gut-wrenching loss of autonomy and self, even though nothing in there was worth money or irreplaceable.  Except for the art on the walls, which I’d gotten as gifts over a lifetime, which stayed, I did not care about any of it.

The Oriental rugs were nice, but only one was a real handmade Persian.  The rest were inexpensive, machine-made copies.  The real one was beautiful, but too worn to sell, and they were all very serious tripping and navigation hazards, especially the real one.  So it all went, except for a few pieces the next door neighbor kept after helping David move it out.  I’m glad they found a loving family.

It took David and Mary three days to get the place ready for me to return on Friday, Feb 1, while I stayed in HS strengthening my weak, right hand and arm, learning to use my left, and practicing with the walker.

When I got home, rehearsal was over, and my real life as a cripple, living alone at home, began.

I spent my first day getting used to my new “sparse” apartment, mostly liking it better than the old one. I also had one panic attack, and one fall overnight that brought the EMT’s, who picked me up off the slippery kitchen floor and tucked me in bed.

Life Alert

I took a very similar fall before bed Tuesday night.  This time, I told Life Alert to call David, not the EMT’s, because it was only 9:30,   and I’d learned the first time that they’d call David (my emergency contact) the next morning even if I asked them not to.  Both falls were essential learning experiences that produced better safety precautions I’ll discuss later.

Since I did not get hurt either time, what I learned, and how I adjusted to prevent it in the future, were all that mattered.  Stuff happens despite your best efforts; just don’t let the same stuff keep happening.

The therapist-types say all falls are serious because of the terrible things that might happen, like broken hips.  That’s true, of course, but I say nobody was ever damaged by what might have happened.  A setback is not a defeat if you learn from it and make adjustments.   

My two falls this week were “educational,” not serious.  I want to live with reasonable caution, not fear.  Fear makes mistakes more likely, and tense muscles are more prone to injury.

The panic attack was about everything in general, cable TV in particular.

I need cable TV when I’m home alone, now much more than ever.  I watch classic movies, PBS documentaries, baseball and football talk and history on the NFL and MLB networks, “Top Chef,” “Pawn Stars,” and the dump picker show, which I think are hilarious, and a few classic TV reruns now and then.  I can’t read and write all the time.  TV has been my reliable friend since Howdy Doody and Saturday morning cowboys, before Romper Room, Kaptain Kangaroo and The Mickey Mouse Club premiered.

When I got home Friday, with Mary, there was no cable TV.  Mary and I could not get it back, and David would not be there for another few hours.  I assumed one of them messed it up pushing buttons, and could tell it was an easy fix for someone who knew which buttons to push.  While waiting for David, my panic escalated.  When David came, he started pushing buttons and got nowhere.  Then, when he refused to ask the next door neighbor, who fixes and installs cable TV for a living, I freaked out. When I blamed him for causing the problem, he walked out, as he should have.  (The problem was probably caused by a 20-second power outage, I found out a few days later.)

The minute he left, I called the neighbor, who came right away, pushed some buttons, and fixed the problem in less than five minutes.  Then, I called David and apologized.

The neighbor’s little boy, whom I think is gifted, came with him, and for the second time in a week, I told little children that I was sick and would not get well.  Before that, I talked to dear friend Megan Wood’s two kids (7 and 10) when they came with her to see me at HS.  Both her children are wonderful, but very different from each other.  The older girl is smart, articulate, artistic, and interested in everything.  The boy likes Little League, basketball, and Cub Scouts, but is quieter, and shows his moods more than his sister.

So I thought I was talking to the girl, but when I looked at her brother, he was listening just as intently.  The boy next door asked the most intelligent questions, like does it have a name. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis sounded like a very serious, big deal to him.  The children reacted like adults.  When they hear it directly from me, they also see how OK and matter-of-fact I feel.  They pick up on my attitude.

It was the same with my 85-year-old mother, when I told her she was losing her oldest child.  She accepted it from me when she saw how accepting and OK I was.  Afraid of her reaction, my siblings and I had consulted with each other and a couple of professionals about what, when, and how to tell her, and who should tell her – we even considered telling her nothing — before I overruled everyone, and decided to tell her myself in person.  She took it fine, and said she could not have taken it any other way from anybody else.

My attitude got back to my new “normal” – cheerful and accepting – once I got my cable TV back.  I took my meds and went to bed.

Sometime later, I decided to get up and have a snack.  I sat in the living room long enough to be sure I was fully awake, then headed to the kitchen.  On the way, on the spur of the moment, I stopped at the computer and killed my low back and right hip spending much too long writing an e-mail that could have waited, or gone completely unwritten.  I grabbed some cottage cheese from the fridge a few feet away, and started back to the living room to watch TV while I ate.  I did this a few times a week before I got a walker from HS, and never gave it a thought.

At the kitchen door, I thought a piece of fruit would be nice as well, so I turned back to the fridge.  That’s when the walker and my feet slid out from under me.

I could not get up because the floor was too slippery, so I hit the alarm button on my chest, and asked for the EMT’s, not David.  I did not want to wake him or get a safety lecture. I did not want him to know I fell.  So as I lay on the floor waiting for help, I made a mental list of things to learn, and do differently, to prevent the next fall.  A mishap is not a defeat if you learn from it and adjust:

• No multi-tasking.
• No spur-of-the moment extra activities, or unplanned stops along to way.
• Every chore must be thought through and planned in advance step by step. Visualize the whole thing if possible.
• Be mindful all the time of what you are doing and what’s around and under you.
• I was still not ready to swear off carrying food to the TV, or eating late at night.

Since I had a lot more to learn about late-night snacks, I had to fall again in the kitchen Tuesday night.

When I was back in bed comfortably, except for a slightly bruised rib that still hurts a little, I decided that one fall, one panic attack, good walker skills, and a good attitude the rest of the day, added up to a pretty good first day home, especially since the walker was the last skill I learned at HS, and had the least experience using (their choice).

Over the weekend, I had visitors.  A lot of people, especially from Temple, ask me if I need anything, and offer to bring it.  I always need visitors more than things.  Now that we got all my excess things out of here, I don’t want to start bring things back.  But I do need to replace the chairs I sit in 90-plus percent of the time, by the computer and  TV.  They hurt my tailbone, and kill my back and hips.

I started carrying a urinal in my walker all the time, so I would never have to race to the bathroom with a walker.  Hurrying anywhere with a walker is risky, especially if you’re trying not to wet yourself.

Getting out of bed first thing is a special technique I learned before HS.  It’s almost always a race to the bathroom with a real risk of soaking yourself, the bed, and the whole floor.  If you don’t do it right the first time, anxiety can start, and really slow you down.

The trick is to get on your side, near the edge of the bed, with your legs dangling over the side.  Then, bounce your upper body up and down a few times, until you can get an elbow underneath.  Push yourself vertical on it.  Wait a few seconds for the dizziness to pass, then reach for the walker and lumber to the toilet.

Anxiety — fear of soaking everything — can make you waste bounces and precious time.  So can the slow walk to the toilet with a walker.   You can cut out the walk to the toilet by keeping the urinal next to the bed, and using it carefully enough to keep everything dry except the inside of the urinal.

You can save wasted, time-consuming bounces by accepting the need to bounce a few times.  You’ll have enough time if you start right away.   But if you get anxious and panicky, you can bounce forever, and keep falling back helplessly, until your entire world is soaking wet, and there are no nurse’s aides to repair the damage.  I can also slide onto my knees, under control, facing the bed, and pull myself to my feet, on days bouncing takes too long.  I call that the “Now I lay me down to sleep” position.

I’ve been home a week, without soaking my carpet, clothing, or bed sheets.

I throw money at other problems.  Meals on Wheels comes five times a week for $10. The meal is worth about $2, too, but lunch is one less thing I have to think about.

My housekeeper Julia goes to the grocery store, bank, and Laundromat for me now, for her normal hourly wage.  She’s like an executive assistant more than a house cleaner, and an excellent house cleaner.  She’s completely reliable and capable.  When I moved here in ’09, she packed and unpacked both apartments while I was in rehab, and remembered where everything was.

David or Mary do most of my other shopping.

Megan Wood of Allenstown, NH

Sunday, I spent all day getting cleaned up (sponge bath only; I’m not allowed in the shower alone) to have dinner and watch the Super Bowl with Megan.  We had a nice time, and our team won.  Ray Lewis, the best player of the generation, went out a winner.

Monday first thing, David drove me to our family doctor.  I had my first attack of gout in HS, and my big toe still hurt like hell.  The practitioner (whatever her title is) gave me a new anti-inflammatory, and it cleared up almost completely in a couple of days.  It was great “fun,” my first weekend home, learning to use a walker with a big toe that could not stand to be touched, or hold any weight.  I did it though.  The trick was not minding the pain.

Meals on Wheels started at noon Monday, and I had a great phone visit with my other best friend, Corinna West from Kansas City. We became friends in 2008, and I encouraged her to create her own job when she ran out her string at Mental Health America of the Heartland.  So she started Wellness Wordworks, and made me board chair and website editor.  We also have the most equal, mutual peer support relationship I’ve ever seen.  We each saved the other more than once.

Tuesday, I was too busy for my own good.  After my usual phone chat with Megan, in her car on her way to work, my schedule consisted of Rabbi Robin Nafshi from TBJ, Meals on Wheels’s first visit, my home health aide from Visiting Nurses (VNA) to give me my first twice-weekly shower, and Julia, to pick up her list of groceries and other errands for Wednesday.

Tuesday morning, the physical and occupational therapists from VNA called to say they’d be over later for some therapy and their own evaluations and treatment planning.  The day was too long and full.  After another near-sleepless night, I woke before dawn Tuesday, dressed, had coffee, and inventoried the pain in my right hip, side, and toe from fatigue and gout.

I wrote for 3 hours, getting seasick because David and the HS therapists took the wheels off my desk chair. There was no longer a risk it would slide out from under me, but the feet did not sit flat on floor.  I used my supply of stationery to even the legs, keeping the cardboard-backed legal pads under the seat, safely out of the traffic and tripping lanes.

physical therapy

I was just finishing that when PT from VNA came, a lovely Christian gentleman my age.  He evaluated, made PT goals, and chatted for an hour, until Robin came right on time at 11. It was  another lovely visit.  Lunch came, and I went to bed right after that for 60-90 minutes.

I woke up feeling less pain, and more relaxed, 15 minutes before Home Health Aide arrived.  The OT came with her to watch me deal with the bathroom, a big part of her evaluation and treatment planning.  The aide gave me a great shower – refreshing, efficient, but as sexual as a haircut.  I felt so good when she was done.

OT made a list of 5 shower things for David to buy, and I called him, glad he had a day off from me (till the fall that night.)

Julia came to pick up the laundry and go over her list for Wednesday, including groceries.  Buying, cooking, and eating fresh food had been very important, enjoyable parts of my life, but now, using the old electric stove was unsafe.  David had disconnected it.

Julia and I would have to do some trial and error for a while to find a few canned soups and microwave-only frozen meals I liked. I knew nothing about that kind of food; I’d made all my meals from scratch before. I was not sure how much cooking I’d be able to do in the future, but for now, I could not do any.  The safety of counter top electric appliances fry pans was still under question.

Around 9, after a supper of cold, leftover turkey pie from Super Sunday, and good deli potato salad, I had no portable food till the next day.  Tired and hungry for a bedtime snack around 9, AFTER I TOOK AMBIEN, a sleeping pill HS had started with me, I decided to nuke some oatmeal.

That was a big big mistake.  I never considered how many things I had to pull out and put together, or that you can’t carry hot oatmeal with a walker.  While setting up the snack on the kitchen table, two steps from the microwave, the walker slid out from under me, and I fell on my tummy.  I was not injured except for my pride, because I messed up what had been a full, perfect day at almost bedtime.

I could not get up, had nothing to grab onto. My right side was too weak, and the kitchen floor was much too slippery.  I pushed the Life Alert button on my neck, and told them to call David, not the EMT’s, because it was still reasonably early.  I felt terrible about spoiling his day off from me.

With a lot of effort, cooperation, and creativity – he can’t lift me alone – we got my ass off the floor, and into a kitchen chair. We pushed the chair to the carpeted office, where I had traction, and I used the walker back to the living room.  Then, David served me the oatmeal, which I no longer wanted, but ate anyway, while he straightened the kitchen and put me in bed for the night.

I was so tired my right arm was paralyzed.  I could not grip the walker, just let rest my hand and hanging arm on it.  We were both too terrified to say anything at the time.  Was the ALS progressing to a new  irreversible level?

This fall was a screw-up.  On this learning curve, screw-ups are OK, provided you don’t get hurt, learn what went wrong, and make a procedure or plan to prevent it next time.  Here’s what we learned:

That kitchen floor is dangerously slippery.  This was my second late-night fall on that floor since coming home from rehab.  The plan is:

• Don’t go on that floor without sneakers.  Wear sneakers in the house all the time, so you don’t get lazy or adventurous, and try to do the kitchen without them.
• This is my second late-night fall after taking Ambien, the sleep med they gave me in rehab.  Both falls are like the kind of late-night Ambien falls they warned me about.  I had taken Ambien the previous two nights, and slept just  3 hours each time, so it does not do what it should do, just what it should not..
• I TOOK AMBIEN OUT OF MY DAILY PILL PLANNER, AND STOPPED IT COMPLETELY.
•  Transferring hot food from the microwave to the table on a walker needs more thought before I try it again.  This time, I was transferring hot oatmeal from the microwave to the kitchen table by turning 180 degrees.  Before I start eating my microwave-only meals, I must study them, and develop a safe procedure.
• I now have graham crackers, vanilla wafers, granola bars, cottage cheese, and fruit for late-night snacks.

Wednesday was a great day.  VNA solved two problems that had been puzzling me all week, and when I woke up, the gout pain in my foot was almost gone.

Most important, the paralysis in my right arm David and I noticed Tueday night was also gone.  In the morning, I could lift my hand again, grip and squeeze a little, touch each finger with my thumb, and do a few rehab exercises again, as well as before.

David told me he did not sleep Tuesday, worrying if he’d have to put me in a nursing home, and if all our efforts to keep me in my apartment had been futile.  He had warned me the night before that I’d be unable to stay home if I kept falling.  He said the arm paralysis had scared him the most.

Me too, I told him.

Occupational therapy

OT^ came and showed me a safe way to move warm sandwiches from the microwave to the table, and said they make trays that attach to the walker that would let me move warm entrees the same way.

Then, she attached my grabber to my walker so it would go wherever I did.  That’s my favorite rehab tool. It reaches down and picks up anything off the floor, as small as a baby aspirin..  But it’s never where I need it because I absentmindedly walk away from it.  Same is true of my phone, which I now carry wherever I go in the basket of my walker.  Finally, we did some hand exercises.

Thursday, I was awakened at 1 a.m. by the sound of this diary banging around in my head. I’d been making notes on it all week, but now, whole sentences and paragraphs were forming.  After lying in bed with that for an hour, my experience told me this subject was so ready to write that the only way to stop the noise was to start writing. So I did, from 2 a.m. to 7 p.m., a “work-a-holocaust.”

I got a rough draft into the computer through Tuesday night. Then, I could stop, knowing I’d be able to finish it later.  Also, I had broken my back sitting in that horrible chair that rocked and made me seasick and wrecked my lower back and hip.

Late Thursday afternoon, predictions of 3 feet of snow for the weekend started to worry me when they started warning against power outages.  For me, that means no heat, maybe for a few days.  So I called VNA to ask if there was an emergency plan for shut-ins.

They gave me a name and phone number in the Office of the Health and Human Serves Commissioner.  When I reached her, it was late afternoon, she did not know the answer, and everyone had gone home. But she said she would stay on the question tomorrow until she was “sure I was on somebody’s radar screen.”

True to her word, she called the next morning with another name in the Office of Emergency Planning. When I called there, they already knew who I was, and said they were still working on it.  By 10 a.m., someone from the non-profit sector called, and we had a Plan A and B within a few minutes.

Plan A is to have David pick me up and take me to his house, where I’d be most comfortable and get the best care.  If that’s impossible, I should call 911.  They will have my name and information in their computer, and would send someone to take me to a nursing home to sit out the crisis.  Having made the plan, the storm dumped at least two feet of snow, with high winds, and I did not lose power.

I mention this, even though it happened Friday, at the start of the second week, to demonstrate the high caliber of state and non-profit employees this state has, despite what political demagogues and many citizens say – that they have no value, but their price is always too high.

What’s it worth to have a bureaucracy that’s willing and able to make an individual with complex disabilities feel safe and cared about, in his home in a major storm?

That’s the story of my first week as a “cripple” home alone.

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra

How good a player was Yogi Berra?

Casey Stengel, his manager for 12 seasons, whose baseball intelligence is among the greatest ever, most people say, never started a game without him in the lineup — at catcher or somewhere else.  Yogi’s performed best in crucial situations, and his baseball intelligence on the field was comparable to Casey’s in  the dugout, according to people who played with him.  But Casey was a better manager because his intuitive people intelligence was also far above normal.  Yogi was a good manager; Casey was one of the best.

People younger than I am (64), who never saw Yogi play,  tend to remember him for the funny, outrageous things he said — “Yogi-isms.”  Many don’t realize that Yogi-isms are memorable because they are wise and funny, not foolish.  For example:  “I NEVER SAID HALF THE THINGS i SAID.”

That simply means Yogi, who was uneducated, and never tried to be funny or wise, never said many of the things people remember and give him credit for saying.  Joe Garagiola, his lifelong friend from the old neighborhood in St. Louis, a fellow catcher, and great raconteur, got a lot of mileage telling Yogi stories on the lecture circuit.  He often re-worded Yogi-isms to make them funnier, and some he made up out of whole cloth.   So Yogi never said half the things he said.

It gets late early in Yankee Stadium.

Yankee Stadium had three enormous tiers of stands behind home plate.  About 3 p.m., the sun began dipping below the top tier.  Heavy, dark shadows started creeping across the field, engulfing home plate, then swallowing the pitcher’s mound  and beyond.  When the field was partly in sun, part in shadow, it became difficult for players to follow the white ball, especially hitters trying to see it when it left the pitcher’s hand, and fielders trying to pick it up off the bat.  In most ballparks, the sun would not become a factor for another hour or two.  But in Yankee Stadium, it got late early.

“Never answer an anonymous letter”

 It would probably be unwise even if it were possible.

 ” It’s deja vu all over again”

 ” When you come to a fork in the road….Take it “

See “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost, which Yogi probably never read, but understood anyway.

  “I want to thank you all for making this day necessary –
Yogi Berra Day, St. Louis.

 ” You can observe a lot by watching ” –

 How much of what we see do we miss because we were not observing?  Observing is an essential skill for a ballplayer.  It separates the great ones from the ordinary. Yogi could observe the slightest change in a better’s stance, and use the information to help decide what pitch to call for.

The game ain’t over till it’s over.

Probably the best-known, most quoted Yogi-ism of all, it was his way of expressing the old cliche, “The game ain’t over till the last man is out.”   

 This seeming no-brainer is really one of the things fans love most about the game.  It has no clock.  A football game is 60 minutes; a baseball game is 9 innings — 27 outs for each team.  If the game is tied at the end, the teams play extra innings until somebody wins.  In extra innings, if the visiting team goes ahead, the home team still gets three outs to tie or win.  If they tie, the teams keep playing.

Theoretically, a baseball game can last forever.  A team cannot run out the clock or sit on a big lead, like in football.  Baseball teams down to their last out, or last strike, can still come back to wipe out a big lead and win, even in the 7th game of the World Series.

In 2003, Pedro Martiinez of the Red Sox, the game’s best pitcher of that era, could not hold a 5-run lead over the Yankees — for a trip to the World Series — with two out in the 9th.  In the 1960 World Series, Game 7, the Yankees overcame a lead to tie he game in the top of the 9th.  Then, Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates led off the bottom of the 9th with a home run to win the game and the World Championship.

It does not happen a lot, but enough to be a real possibility any time.

Disputed call

 Yogi put up the biggest argument of his life on this play.  He insists to this day that Brooklyn’s Jackie Robinson (sliding) was out on this still-controversial steal of home in the 1955 World Series.  Decades later, Duke Snider of the Dodgers said in a TV interview that Robinson told him he was probably out..  But the umpire, who had the only opinion that mattered, called Robinson safe. 

“Let there be Light”

In the first story (Genesis 1-2:3), the Creator is Elohim; in the second (Gen. 2:4-4:26), it’s Yahweh.  The stories have different beginnings and endings, with different methods of creation in between.  There are also linguistic differences.  Many scholars, who believe in separate authors, refer to the Elohim story as “E,” and the Yahweh story as “J.”   Jews and Christians who believe God is the single author of both stories, are often offended by those initials.  In this analysis, J and E are simply convenient shorthand, not a judgment on the authorship.

Six Days of Creation

In E, Creation takes six days.  On the seventh day, God creates the Sabbath and rests, so the world and the Sabbath are the culmination of Creation.

Before Creation in E, most translations (interpretations) say the world was “without form and void, with the wind or spirit (same word ruach in Hebrew) on the face of the deep, void, or waters (translations differ).  In the original Hebrew, “without form and void” is tohu va’vohu, and God’s ruach is on the face of t’hom (same root as tohu).

T’hom ­­– what existed before Creation — is a strange, very unusual Hebrew noun, which is why translators can’t agree on an English equivalent.  Dr. Joseph Baumgarten of the Baltimore Hebrew University said it’s similar to the word for what existed before Creation in Babylonian mythology – Tiamat, a dragon-goddess of watery chaos.  Babylonia, like Egypt, was a river civilization with an annual flood that first destroyed, then fertilized, everything, and deposited fresh topsoil.  In the Babylonian creation story, the chief god Marduk kills the dragon and creates the world from her carcass.  It happens the same way every spring.  People pray and sacrifice to the gods for the world to renew itself, and rejoice and sacrifice to the gods when it does.

E’s method of creation was to say “Let there be….,” then differentiate what was new from what was already there, then look it over and see it was good.  That constituted a day in Creation.  Since the sun, moon, and stars were not created until the fourth day, we have no idea how long each day was.

First, God differentiated light from darkness, then the waters above from the waters below, with a sky in between.  Then, God gathered the waters below and differentiated them from dry land, and filled it all, including the sky, with different kinds of living creatures, with two genders.

Then God says, let’s make people in our image and give them dominion over everything, man and woman, at the same time through the same decree.

E sounds like it came from a river environment, Egypt or Mesopotamia, with man and woman created equal at the same time.  J might have come from a dry environment like Ancient Israel.  The Jews who wrote the Bible lived in all three places for long periods.  In J, Man was created before anything else, and woman was created last, out of the man’s body.

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, Adam’s rib, the serpent and forbidden fruit, Cain and Abel are all part of the J story that begins at Genesis 2, verse 4.  This God is anthropomorphic, like a person.

Before Creation, “on the day God made Heaven and Earth.” the world was dry, barren, without vegetation, “because God had not made it rain on the earth, and there were no people to till the soil.”  So a mist went up from the earth, and watered everything.

Then God formed man from the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath or soul (same Hebrew word) of life.  Then, God created a garden, with everything pleasant to look at, and good to eat, and placed the man in it.  God also put into the garden the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  God told the man to eat anything in the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Garden of Eden

Next, God decided man should not be alone, and created all other living things out of the ground.    Man became an assistant creator by giving all of them names.

Last, God put the man under anesthesia – into a deep sleep – took out one of his ribs, and created a woman, and brought her to him.  He named her Eve, Life, Chava, in Hebrew.  God placed them in the Garden, and they were naked and not ashamed, until they ate the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, realized they were naked, hid from God because they were ashamed, and got kicked out of Paradise.  They had to start working for a living, and the rest is history.

In Jews, God, and History, Max I Dimont says history itself is a Jewish invention, in the sense that the older religions of the river civilizations, Egypt and Mesopotamia, are cyclical.  Nothing changes from year to year. In Judaism, history moves from Point A to Point B.

Though Dimont’s history is completely secular, not at all theistic, much of the Bible can be interpreted as God working through history to achieve goals.  My favorite example is the story of Joseph,   The ancient rabbis say God knew, when Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him into slavery, that Joseph would go to Egypt, and become powerful enough to save his family from a famine many years later.  In fact, the rabbis say, that was God’s intention all along.

I do not take Genesis literally — don’t need to — because its stories of Creation, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the Patriarchs  are great, instructive, metaphorical, (inspired?) literature, whether things really happened that way or not.

David Braiterman

“It’s nothing like our experience in liberal arts colleges,” he told me.  ”Most allowed like five non-engineering courses in a college career.  One school’s idea of an elective was choosing from five different chemistry courses.”

Professional engineers are trained to think there is one best solution to every problem.  Once that is demonstrated, every reasonable person will see it immediately, and fall in line to do his or her part.  That’s a big reason why the two professional engineers who became President — Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter — had serious problems.  

Hoover dismissed the idea that government had a responsibility or role to play in the Great Depression — not in relieving the  human suffering, or fixing the broken business cycle.  

Carter went to a mountaintop for 10 days and came down with the best solution to the energy crisis.  He revealed it in a televised speech, and called it the Moral Equivalent of War.  The plan was immediately dubbed MEOW, and died instantly.

H.Ross Perot’s 1992 Presidential campaign peaked and began to implode when he replaced his passiomate, amateur volunteers with professionals.

– Ken Braiterman

How Engineers Built a Better Mousetrap

By David  Braiterman

A competition was scheduled for which engineering department could build a better mousetrap using Cheez-Wiz and other tools in their departments.  Results were, well, revealing:

First to come in with their solution was the Chemical Engineering team.  Beginning with D-Con as their base useful material, the team added Cheez-Wiz to make the product more delectable, and frankly irresistible, to the average mouse.  The team chimed in with an impressive 8 mouse kills in a one-hour trial.  Combined score for effectiveness was 9 of a possible 10, but innovation points for the rather mundane approach was only 2, for a combined score of 11.  Good job, Chem-E’s.

Next to step up were the Civil Engineers.  The Civ-E’s began by luring the mice toward the Cheez-Wiz and then corralling them with sound waves circling around in a spiral pattern.  With 14 mice so convened, the team of students then unleashed a torrent of water through the department’s river flume, and drowned the unsuspecting rodents.

Thirteen successful kills for thirteen points, and four more points for innovation and technique, made for a combined score of 17, a very strong performance.  Team leader Shawn Mussman found the 14^th mouse doing back stroke toward the dining hall later that day.

Engineers’ plan for a better mousetrap

Electrical engineers were next up with, well, an unconventional approach.  Betsy Uhrlich, team captain, pointed out that the team immediately rejected the old-fashioned zap ‘em approach predicted by others for the Elec-E’s to typically lite upon.  The team used the Cheez Wiz’s conductive properties to form a vaporous cloud of cheese goo hovering over the entire arena.  The mice, drunk in a lactose-induced stupor, tripped over one another to reach the alluring smell.

“And then we zapped ‘em, “ Uhrlich said.  “It’s what we do!   220 Volts worth, to leave no doubt about who was king.  No mouse was going to limp away from our demonstration,” said Urhlich with a devilish grin on her face.  19 points, and second place.  Awesome!!

Electric mouse zapper

Finally the Mechanical Engineers had their turn.  The Mech-E’s spent the first two weeks of their research examining just how Cheez-Wiz behaves in different thermal states.  Too warm, and the Cheez got so runny the mice just waded across like Moses across the Red Sea.  Too cold, and they hopped from curd to curd and off to freedom.

“The ideal temperature for maximum rodentia capture capacity” according to Matt Heugel,  was determined to be 42.236 Degrees Celcius.  Cheez Wiz depth of not less than .39 mm proved enough sticking capacity while also maximizing the spreading capacity of the 2 liter allotment of orange goo.

“From the outset,”  Heugel commented, ”We wanted at least 8 square feet of coverage.    42.236 Degrees Celcius allowed us a commanding 8.72 square feet.”

All in all, not a single mouse swaggered in and escaped the Mech-E’s clever snare, and with 14 captures and 7 innovation/precision planning points to their favor, the Mech-E’s took this year’s competition with an unprecedented 21 points.

No escape from warm Cheez Whiz

Again this year the Nuclear Engineers were disqualified for incinerating the building housing this year’s competition as well as the southeast quadrant of the campus and much of the town’s downtown shopping district.  Better luck next year, Nuc-E’s.

Thanks to all who participated, and we look forward to an even better competition again next year.

Megan Wood Heldman

Before my dear friend Megan Wood Heldman moved to her new house, I asked her if she wanted a mezuzah on her doorpost, and the 20-minute ceremony that goes with putting it up.  It’s an offer I make to any close friend who moves, Jewish or not.  (Megan is not.)

I explained to her that a mezuzah is a little box, made of wood or silver, that contains a piece of parchment with the commandment to post the mezuzah on the doorpost of your house.  (Mezuzah is the Hebrew word for doorpost.) Posting it is one way of fulfilling the command to love God with all your heart, soul, and might.  We read the entire passage from Torah as a central part of every worship service.

In addition to writing the command on the doorpost, the passage tells us to teach it diligently to our children, speak of it in the house and in public, when we lie down and rise up, and to bind it as a sign on our hand and between our eyes.

Prayer with tefillin

Orthodox and many Conservative Jews do the hand and eye things during morning prayers on weekdays, using ritual objects called tefillin, phylacteries in English.   Tefillin are also little boxes containing the commandment, with straps attached, and a special way of attaching them to the left arm and between the eyes.

Mezuzah

Megan wanted a mezuzah for her new house the minute she heard what it is and what it means.  We had the ceremony on her first full day in the new house (a happy coincidence, not a law.)

To perform the ceremony, I needed a book of home ceremonies, which Rabbi Robin Nafshi was kind enough to let me keep.   The new version, published recently by the Central Conference of American (Reform) Rabbis,  is titled, appropriately, “Al  Mezuzot Beitecha, On the Doorposts of Your House,” a direct quote from the prayer we say all the time that includes the command to post a mezuzah.  Mezuzot is the plural of mezuzah.

Megan was so thrilled to have the mezuzah, and the consecration ceremony, that she wrote on Facebook that night that her new place had God in it thanks to the mezuzah Ken Braiterman put on the doorpost for her.  Megan is such a good, Godly person that any house she lives in has God in it, with or without a mezuzah. 

But I’m deeply grateful that I got to perform the mitzvah of posting a mezuzah for my friend, and consecrating her new  home.