Day 4264

After a long day at the hospital, I'm finally home again. This is the longest I've ever been hospitalized in my life. You learn a lot when you are hospitalized during a Covid surge. Hospitals throughout Texas are operating near capacity. I was placed on a Covid free floor but you could tell that the disease was nearby. The hospital did a good job of keeping Covid patients in a separate part of the hospital. I was initialy treated in the emergency room, but couldn't be admited as a regular patient until I was tested and proved I was Covid free.

Not only did I have my first and only Covid test at the hospital, I was intubated twice. Both procedures required that I be on a ventilator. You are never even aware that this device is keeping you breathing. Most people are out cold when it is inserted. Breathing pure oxygen feels about the same as breathing regular air. You are only aware of the sensation for a few seconds though before the anesthesia knocks you out. Being anesthetized is still a very strange experience.

Large hospitals are really small cities. They are self sustaining, with their own power supplies. The hospital employs thousands of people. I was completely amazed at how many different people were involved either directly or indirectly in my care. Most of these people have good, well paying jobs and they know it. One of the guys pushing me around on a gurney said it took him a full year just to learn how to navigate the huge labyrinth that is the hospital campus.

If you want to see diversity in action, spend a week in a large hospital. I've never talked at length to so many black people in my entire life. It was a good experience. The lead surgeon doing my abdominal surgery yesterday was an Iranian woman. Most of my nurses were black. Lots of people with high level jobs were middle eastern or Indian. There were lots of white people too, but they were not a majority. 

It was interesting to spend a week with these people. I learned a lot. There are definite cultural differences, but it was all good. The young white nurses were very serious about diet and nutrition and were quite specific about what I should eat after I was discharged. One nurse had a Vitamix just like mine and we shared smoothie recipes. The black nurses told me to eat what I wanted and be happy. My favorite nurse told me to be sure to order the brisket for lunch yesterday and I did. It was delicious and of course the meat was full of fat. Everybody asks you to confirm your birthday when they do anything. When two young black guys who were transporting me to the operating room asked me for my birthday I said Juneteenth and they immediately smiled and started laughing. "Juneteenth boy," they said. "That's good."

My hospital journey isn't over yet. When the gastrointestinal team did their thing on Wednesday they discovered that something is wrong with my esophasgus. I have Barrett's esophagus, caused by years of acid reflux. They want to do an Endoscopic resection, which uses an endoscope to remove damaged cells to aid in the detection of dysplasia and cancer. This will take place about three months from now. What the hell. I've gone this far, I might as well keep going. I really do have a terrible problem with acid reflux and maybe these guys can fix it.

I became familiar with medicine by taking good care of dogs. Most of the conditions I was treated for this week were very familiar to me. Spot and Dash both had stones that had to be removed surgically. Dawn had stones as well. Dot had major abdominal surgery and almost died. All our dogs needed special diets at one point of another. The whole process of doing extensive blood work before administering anesthesia was very familiar. Every dog we've ever had has been under anesthesia. Our dogs made this weeks experience less scary to me. I'd been down this road before. I'm a grumpy person by nature and you'd think this weeks experience would have made me mad. It was actually kind of uplifting.  I feel a little better about everything today.

Cammy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 3914 - 9/11

I don't know about you, but I don't think I'll ever forget. I still remember the twin towers falling like it was yesterday. I was sitting at the same breakfast table where I eat today mesmerized by something on television that I didn't think was possible. As I ate breakfast today, it was very clear that a lot has changed in nineteen years. The weeks and months following the attack were probably the last time that all Americans were united about anything. There were no cries to defund the police. Our police and first responders were national heroes nineteen years ago. In our neighborhood, almost every house was flying an American flag. It was a troubling time, but I miss the sense of unity we felt then.

Of course it didn't last long. In retrospect, we should have just nuked Tora Bora when we had Osama bin Laden cornered there and called the score even. Endless wars in the Middle East didn't prove anything. Pointless wars with the lack of an end game actually sowed the seeds for a lot of the discord and unrest we are facing today. Each year as we celebrated the anniversary of 9/11, things just became more and more muddled. Senior citizens like my Dad had to take their shoes off at the airport and undergo invasive searches while absolutely nothing was done to restrict the travel of people who clearly shared the beliefs of bin Laden. A special department of the government with almost unlimited funding was set up to track the movements of these people. Nobody was arrested. It wasn't long before the NSA started tracking ordinary citizens as well. The war on terror was about as successful as the war on drugs. Basically, it was a total failure.

I wonder a lot why the country has become so divided. I think we have lost something special that my parents took for granted. The idea that our country was a great melting pot where people from all over the world with a diverse set of beliefs could come to Ellis Island, renounce their past and adopt a common set of values as American citizens was central to our national identity. This common set of values was what allowed my parents generation to win World War II. We were a tough, bad-ass country and we owned it. Nothing could stop us.

This didn't last long either. Our definition of diversity changed over the years and the whole idea of the melting pot was lost. Instead of adopting a common set of values, people were encouraged to keep their traditions, beliefs, and language. It took a while, but tribalism gradually replaced the melting pot. Now we are an extremely tribal nation where people's loyalties don't extend very far beyond their own tribe. I don't see how you can even have a country where the citizens are just a bunch of special interest groups.

I'm not really surprised that a lot of young people just want to scrap everything and start over. If I was young in today's world I might want the same thing. One of the few benefits of age is experience. I'm lucky to have experienced a world where nobody locked their doors at night. I grew up in a world where none of my friends had peanut allergies or autism and our Moms let us wander around all over town without supervision. I ate dirt, took family vacations in cars without seatbelts and grew up confident. It's hard to convey to a younger generation how valuable this was. Pretty soon there won't be anyone left who actually saw the twin towers standing. I've taken the elevator to the top of the South Tower and looked out over the city. It was a fun place to work when I was young. I took this picture many years ago from my hotel room in the UN Plaza. Times were good. I'm glad I had no idea back then what the future would bring.

Shadow is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2639

There weren't any blueberries when I went to the store this weekend, so I substituted blackberries in my morning smoothie today. I think I like blueberries better. Do I go out and look for some more blueberries tomorrow, or do I just live with the mix of blackberries, strawberries and bananas for the rest of the week? Why do I concern myself with such minutiae? Probably because it allows me to avoid the frustration of thinking about larger issues.

I could be thinking about globalism vs. nationalism. It's certainly a hot topic right now. I prefer blackberries vs. blueberries because I can actually make a choice about things like this. Larger issues just become abstractions that nobody really understands. If you really want to know, I think nationalism is better than globalism. Not for the reasons you might think though. Nobody seems to take the long view on these type of issues. It's not national pride vs. cheap flat screen TV's for everyone. I tend to think that globalism is a recipe for the extinction of the human race.

A global society is the ultimate too big to fail entity. If a global, unified society fails, who's going to bail it out? Small redundant systems are much more resilient. The natural world works this way. So does the internet. When you have thousands of independent connected servers, it doesn't matter if one goes down. The signal just gets rerouted to a different server and everything stays connected. Wouldn't a world consisting of thousands of small independent countries be better? Lots of small countries, each developing their own rules, traditions, and culture would give the world the genuine diversity and redundancy it needs to survive. If a few countries screwed up, it wouldn't really matter.

It is ironic that we even talk about diversity in a global society. The whole point of globalism is to maximize efficiency and standardize everything. This destroys diversity. If there is a Starbucks in Beijing and your food comes from Argentina, choices gradually diminish for everyone. When everything is one big giant system, the repercussions from failure are enormous. Remember, when the world becomes too big to fail, who's going to bail us out when it all starts to crumble?

I don't know why people can't understand this. Lots of small, weak countries that manufacture their own stuff and create their own traditions is a better recipe for long term survival. If the European Union fails, it is probably a good thing. The United States should probably split into several smaller countries too. We just aren't smart enough to create a unified world where everyone follows the same rules. With lots of little, isolated, self sufficient countries, you wouldn't have to worry about world wars as much. People would still fight, but it wouldn't really matter if nobody had any power.

It is hard to even explain this concept, because this is not the world we live in. Humans seem to operate on two emotions: fear and greed. When a country gets a little more powerful than it's neighbor, they become greedy. The temptation to gobble up the weaker country becomes overwhelming. That's how the world became the way it is. We just can't leave things alone. I take the long view. Democrats vs. Republicans is just a minor distraction if you're convinced that the human race will be extinct in 30,000 years.

So, this is why I spend my day talking to dogs and wondering whether blueberries are better than blackberries. The larger issues are like the wind and the tides. I can't change things. I can't even articulate what I am seeing. I just watch and wonder, thinking that something has gone horribly wrong.

Anne is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2398

It's a sad day in Dallas. I learned about the shootings just before I went to bed last night and watched the unfolding carnage on TV for several hours before I drifted off to sleep. The next morning I woke to find myself in a city that was coming to grips with a massacre. At breakfast and later at the grocery store I overheard people talking about the shootings. I'm sure there was anger, but the prevailing sentiment seemed to be profound sadness. What have we become? When I think about recent events, I feel like I'm witnessing the decline and fall of civilization itself.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time not all that long ago when Americans genuinely thought of our country as a great melting pot. People came here from all walks of life and were proud to adopt a commonly held sets of values and call themselves Americans. Assimilation was not only regarded as a good thing, it was the only thing.

All that has changed. Somewhere along the line, we have abandoned the concept of our country as a great melting pot and started worshiping diversity and multiculturalism instead. In my opinion, the results have been disastrous. We no longer have a common set of shared values. We have reverted to a strange kind of tribalism where people's loyalties are only to their own tribe. I've been around a while and I've never seen the country more divided. We may talk a good game about how American society is different, but when you look what is happening, are we really that different from the Israelis and the Palestinians or the Shiites and Sunnis? Basically, we all hate each other.

It was a slow, very hot day. Dot pooped in the house. I paid a few bills. And I spend way too much time trying to convince the U-Verse people to remove the non-return fee from my statement and credit the $150 back to my account. Eventually, some help desk people on the opposite side of the world told me that the situation had been resolved and that I should just pay my normal monthly bill. On the plus side of things, the sink doesn't leak anymore.

I'm hoping that the water on the roof has evaporated. I'm getting really tired of removing it every time it rains. At least we didn't have any downed trees during our recent thunderstorms. High winds blew over one of our neighbor's trees, creating a real mess and blocking a city street for two days. I always worry that one of our old Oak trees is going to come crashing down, but so far all they are doing is killing the grass. I need to think of something more exciting than vacuuming and going to the gym this weekend. We'll see how it goes. I've been so tired lately that whenever I find myself with free time, I just take a nap.

Trevor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1448

I wonder if any of you would even notice if I occasionally substituted a post from a previous year for my daily missive? Pride prevents me from doing this, but to tell the truth, I wouldn't know the difference myself. The days all run together. After 25 years of walking a succession of Dalmatians in the park while writing a steady stream of endlessly similar advertising messages, I not only forget what day it is, I forget what year it is.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't enjoy days like today. I just have trouble telling them apart. The falling leaves look the same as they always do in early December. The dogs still remind me that it's time for dinner precisely at 4:30 PM every day. The Version 14.1.4 of Microsoft Word that I opened to complete this morning's writing assignments seems remarkably similar to the very first version I bought for my Mac in 1989. Jeez, I've been sitting in the same Herman Miller Aeron Chair for so long that I've worn out three of the comfortable mesh chair backs.

Today certainly wasn't a day to break the mold. I came up with an interesting new landing page for a very old website that I initially designed in 1997. I wrote another article about luxury goods. Before the end of the year, I will have written over 500 of these articles. I fix my oatmeal and fruit. I make the bed. I count the hours and I wonder why.

For diversity, I had a Greek salad instead of my usual Kale. The dogs and I walked over a small hill instead of around it. Even though there was a pretty sunset, I took a picture of a leaf instead. This is really all the diversity I need. I'm going to the gym tomorrow. I'll make some oatmeal with strawberries again for breakfast. I'll watch the business channel and check my stocks while I'm eating. The dogs will sleep most of the day. David Byrne said it best way back in 1981. "Same as it ever was..."

Gretta is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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