Notes from the Cafe Fiasco

Annual Report - v14.0

Winter Solstice 2008

At times, it's hard not to watch the sunrise this winter. Since the summer, Smudge the Cat has taken to getting hungry around five am and is insistent about me being the one to get up to feed him.  If I can convince myself not to go back to bed, I stay up and watch the golden sunrise over Charlestown from our perch here at the top of the hill. It's always good.  Always hopeful.  Even when the weather was cloudy or rainy, the lightening of the sky over Boston promises a new day with which to work.  The nights might be longer, but the dawn always comes. It's a good reminder.  Especially after the hard year last year.

In this context, there were a number of events that defined this past year for me:

EXTRO / INTRO / ALMOST EXTRO:

One of the biggest milestones of the year was the passing of my friend Craigen Bowen in March. Sixteen months before her passing Craigen had gone to a doctor complaining of a small but insistent cough and was diagnosed with 4th stage lung cancer with a terrible prognosis. I heard about this from mutual friends a few months later and offered to help by giving her Reiki treatments. She undoubtedly thought that this was nuts, but she also knew that this might be a way to actually do something besides hang around and wait to die.  And if there was ever a proactive person, it was Craigen Bowen.

So, we got together once a week for almost a year -- me trying to pull her back off the edge of the ledge that her disease and its treatments had put her with some success at first and with limited success as her disease progressed.  I didn't know her very well when we started, but I did learn a lot about her by the time that we finished.  What started as a respect that I had for someone who was accomplished in a number of different areas (paper conservation, mountain and rock climbing, being a first rate single mom, etc.) turned into awe as I watched her manage her own death.  And by the time she was gone, the relationship had turned into something that I [will] always remember, admire, and treasure.  She may have left too soon but, as usual with her, she did a great job.  And, as a result, she hasn't really left those of us who were lucky enough to have known her.

As Craigen exited, Denise Wallace entered. Two weeks after CB's passing, I got a email from a friend who asked if I wanted to meet someone that she knew who she thought would be good for me to know.  As I've always had the policy to talking to anyone who wanted to talk to me, I said, "Sure."  Without getting into details that will possibly get me in a whole lot of trouble, let me say that she liked me and I liked her and this still seems to be the case to this date.  I don't really understand it from her end.  I'm still the same curmudgeonly old New Englander that many, many women have passed on over the years.  I'm certainly not getting any prettier or my temper any easier to deal with.  But despite those facts and the fact that she's smart and cute and a sweetheart, she insists in hanging around.  And I have to admit that I like this.  All I can do is hope that she will continue to do this in the future.

And then there was the Smudge the Cat problem.  As early as March, he started to have digestive problems and a flare-up of a chronically-infected ear.  And from these symptoms he slowly went downhill until the end of the summer when he was very much at death's door.  I thought that I had lost him more than once during September.  Every trip to his veterinarian was an exercise in the diagnosis of more problems.  But Dr. Leavy at City Cats in Arlington took one last look at him during September and she noticed that his face was asymmetrical -- he seemed to possibly have a massive infection that was possibly killing him.

And so we filled him full of industrial strength antibiotics and hoped.  And it worked.  Slowly he came back.  Step by step he came back to being his old self.  Now he's back to being what he was before this all happened -- though he's been aged quite a bit by the experience and he probably used up at least a couple of lives along the way.  It is good to have my companion for all these years back. even this this new appetite in, what for me, is the middle of the night.

HEALTH:

"Prostate cancer is a dark waltz, not the raging battle of popular imagination." - Dana Jennings

Speaking of cheating death, the cancer wrestling match that I've been in for 18 months things remains a draw. I had a scare in August when my PSA suddenly spiked from 3.6 to 5.2 (not a good thing -- a sign that the cancer in my prostate may be growing).  This happened at the same time that I switched health plans and I had a meeting with a new urologist (who was summarily fired after he didn't read my medical records prior to our first meeting and I had to brief him on my small problem all through our first meeting).  But I had tests taken after the spike and the readings have come down (5.2 to 4.9 to 4.4) and the old urologist who I consulted and will be going back to said not to worry.  Of course, he means don't worry for now.  That's all you get as a cancer survivor.

Though I have "cancer light," most of the year has been about digesting the fact that once you have it you're never actually free of it no matter what treatment that you get or even if you're considered "cancer-free" by the docs.  No one is ever "free" after a cancer diagnosis -- you're always looking over your shoulder.  This is especially the case if you have active cancer in your body like I do.  Treatment for most cancer is a terrible thing in the category of "I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."  For prostate cancer, the "side effects" (temporary or permanent urinary incontinence and/or impotence) can be much worse than the treatments.  The only good thing about it is that most prostate cancers are slow to replicate, so that you have some time to either deal with these facts or allow them to drive you nuts.  Many men that I meet at the monthly prostate cancer support group had surgery simply because they couldn't deal with having cancer inside their body even if it wasn't a threat to their short term health.

And so, at least for me, cancer has become a mind game -- pay attention to what I can do about it, but not so much attention that it ties me up in knots.  Slip off the path one way or the other and then try to get back on.  It's become like having a part-time job that you don't like but you can't afford to give up.  Always there, always distasteful, never going to go away.  Can't say that I like it much, but there isn't much to like about it.  The overarching question is how you integrate your death into your life.  Craigen pulled it off.  I'm still trying to figure out how to do it.  I've been at it for 18 months.  I guess it may take a while.

WORK:

Amazing what trouble you can get into on the bus if you work it right.

The first half of the year was spent in a part-time job at the BU Medical School.  It was pleasant working for old friend Terry Gibbs and I did manage to increase my hours enough so that I had health insurance (always handy to have when you have cancer), but the constant drain on the bank account was going to be a problem if I continued even if I loved only working four days a week.  So, I knew by the time that the fall came it would be time to start to look for a full-time job.

In May I ran into an old friend on the bus on the way to work and he was very happy about the new job that he'd gotten at MIT.  Brian had been in the Army, so I knew that he had some perspective on the "large organization" problem, so I told him that I was going to be looking for a job sometime in the near future and he should let me know if there was anything available at MIT came up.  Somehow, within a month I had a new job as a computer support consultant at MIT.  I'm still not quite sure how that happened.  Must have been my winning personality.

I've been there for six months now and I find that Brian was right.  MIT is a much more compatible environment for a techie than Harvard ever was.  First, MIT is fundamentally an engineering school no matter how brilliant its faculty and student body.  As an engineering school they are very pragmatic.  The overriding question is whether what you offer is a solution to the problem or not.  Yes, you stay;  no, you go.  They don't care where you graduated from or who your grandfather was or if you used to be the foreign minister of a small mideastern country.  Secondly, technical abilities in general are much more positively regarded at MIT than they are at Harvard.  At the "World's Greatest University" they don't care if you aren't technically smart enough to run your computer (there are other people to do that sort of thing) as long as you're sufficiently well connected to some source of power somewhere (they mainly like money, but they'll take it's stand-in political influence).  The assumption is the same as it was at Attleboro High School forty years ago -- the smart kids took the college courses and became Masters of the Universe (or Middle Managers of the Universe) and the dumb kids went into the trade school and made a decent living if they were able.

Anyway, I like the people that I work with at MIT, the person that I work for, and the work that I do -- even if I'm sometime pitched problems that I have little idea of how to solve.  All in all, a much better situation than the past few years.  Best of all, they leave me alone to do my work.

ARTS:

Writing is always hard for me despite that fact that I consider myself a writer above everything else.  Writing certainly hasn't gotten any easier this year with all the emotional flack coming through the life so not all that much of that particular activity has been going on.  Even the journal has been relatively bare this year.  Maybe if things settle down or the MacArthur grant comes in ... (chances of these two things happening being about equal).

As for the visuals, I've found that even after layoffs from classes, I've retained the ability to do some basic sketching that looks somewhat like what I was looking at when I did it.  That's all I ever wanted from my artistic career, so I'm happy.

THE FUTURE:

While my future at MIT seems somewhat secure (computers still break no matter what's happening with Lehman Brothers), it's hard to watch the accumulated damage that Bush and Company have visited on the country for the past eight years come home to roost.  It was probably too much to ask that this administration who had been running the country like the Exxon Valdez wouldn't eventually hit something before they left. The capitalists have had their feeding frenzy at our expense and now can take their golden parachutes back to the Hamptons while we pour buckets of money into the black hole that they created.  Thanks. guys.  You've done a hell of a job.

On the other hand, it does seem that there is some hope in this situation. It is unlikely that the American public would make the changes that are going to be necessary for all of us to survive in a world of rapid climate change and depleting fossil fuels without some sort of crisis to get people's attentions.  Well, we've got that. Let's see what we can do with it.

And we do seem to have our head up for once -- starting to deal with problems rather than pushing some worn out Robber Baron philosophy at them.  I don't know if Barak Obama has the juice to deal with what's coming -- it's certainly going to take more than us waiting around for him to save us from what we've done to ourselves. But at least we have a chance now and maybe we can bury the 1950's back where they belong -- in a mythical place that never really happened -- and see the folks that we're promoting Bush World for what they really were: self interested con men who, using patriotism, sold the American public a dream that in the end they couldn't ever have so that these guys could make bags and bags of money.  They somehow thought that the fifth freedom was the Freedom to Loot and they went to town for eight years at our expense.

If Barak manages to remove these leeches from the body politic over his Presidency maybe we got a chance.  If not, then we're going to have to take a long hard look at the fall of the British Empire to figure out how they managed to come down from the Imperial status while retaining some level of dignity.  I don't know about you, but I'm too old to learn Chinese, so I'm pulling for him.

NEXT:

So, lots of change this year but, for the most part, good change.  As my Zen priest Josh says, "Everything changes, everything stays the same."

This Annual Report marks the 40th year since I went around the bend suddenly and violently on the Winter Solstice 1968 at UMass Amherst.  After this blow out, it took a long time to rebuild myself into the person who still attempts every day to be thankful for the second chance that he was given.  I could not, and did not, do this by myself.  Directly or indirectly, all of you who receive this missive every year have been responsible for any of the good that I have managed to do over these years.  For this, I thank you with all my heart and I will attempt to continue to do this work for at least another 40 years more (give or take).

Smudge gets me up to feed him in the middle of the night, but he also gives me the chance to reflect on the fact that no matter how dark, the light always comes back.  For this theme and realization, I thank both him and you.

Please have a wonderful Solstice season and please remember that from now on, throughout the winter, there's always more light.  Time to get back to work.  There's a lot to do.

With a deep bow and palms pressed together.

Your friend,

MTS

"But I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers.  Still crazy after all these years."  --  Paul Simon

Not Blogging - Yet

I've not been very productive of late. Since I seem to have a finite number of words, I'm saving up all those words for the large Annual Report that comes due at the end of the week. At least that's my current excuse.

Dear Representative Capuano

Dear Representative Capuano,

I don't write you folks in Washington very often, but it does seem that there is an opportunity in the middle of this economic mess that I wanted to be sure that you didn't miss.  When the Big Three Auto Manufacturers show up on Capitol Hill this afternoon with their hand out, they should be asked one question:  "What is your plan to get us off oil?"

No clear plan (with timetables) = no money.

Unlike many economic questions, this one is simple. We all know where we want to go. Continued reliance on oil threatens our planet, our economy, and our security. If these guys don't want to take us to a place where we aren't reliant anymore, then there is no reason to give them our money.

I hope that you will insist on this as part of the deal that we all know will be eventually be worked out.

Thank you.

Best,

Marshall T. Spriggs

Thanksgiving

Lots to be thankful for this year: the cancer is currently on the down side of the roller coaster; the cat is acting like the old cat that he is, rather than the dead cat that he almost was; the job is doable and pays okay even if it is not packed full of meaning; we will soon have a President that we don't have to be embarrassed about; a cute and interesting someone seems to like hanging around with me for a change. All good stuff - even if the economy is going to hell.  Well, you can't have everything.