Sam says its more intense than “fun” but that everyone needs to see it. He also said I was brave for taking him out – NOT! Of course, I did almost pitch him faceforward onto the sidewalk in front of the Latchis ([the FP] envisioned him rolling into Main Street), but no such accident actually occurred and we had a grand time. He’s not that hard to get around as he can still use his legs just enough to help one get him up and pivoted in the desired directions. 
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“Love is a ticklish sensation around your heart that turns out to be a pain-in-the-ass.”
Visited with Sam yesterday, post-birthday (June 28). His room was profuse with flowers (Lee’s doing?) and about 30 birthday cards from around the world. He was in good spirits, although markedly slowed down. No evidence of aphasia, but time moves at a completely different pace for him and one must be able to adjust in order to communicate smoothly. He’s felt a loss of energy that he brought it up with his doc last week, who told him that he had a lot more energy now than he did 2-3 months ago. He seemed more alert and engaged to me than he did during my winter visits.
Sam wanted to know if I’d been in touch with Lee (not for awhile), or anyone else. I thought I had a recent letter from the Vecchiati’s (his Brazilian family) with me but the ones I had were old ‘ I have to scour my inbox and see if there’s one I didn’t manage to get printed yet. P&L are forewarned of a dental bill. Jennifer is wished well. Sam was trying to find a letter from Manjeca to share with me but we were unable to locate it. Very sorry to hear that she’s having a rough time these days.
Updated Sam on my mom’s recent move, he’s glad she’s happy but I could see it distressed him that John has declined so much. Did not tell him about my dad’s recent mild stroke; time for that later. He inquired about [the BM] she’s a trooper, there’s just no other way to describe her skills at navigating so many difficult parental dynamics – and [the FP] (we had a good talk yesterday and I left without crying, a huge improvement). He also asked about Petr. We’re all concerned that either the cancer has returned or there is some other health complication. Not much good news on the health and happiness front these days. sigh
Meanwhile, Sam was upbeat and ready for an outing. I’ll pick him up Wednesday to go to the early showing of Fahrenheit 9-11. It’s an unflattering view of Bush (to say the least), but I think Moore has done a good job of NOT making it against all Republicans or even all conservatives. And he doesn’t go out of his way to make the Democrats look that great either ‘ it’s really a critique of Bush and his close circle’s unpalatable exercise of power.
Anyway, when Sam hesitated about the movie (or seemed to ‘ I think he was actually working out the logistics in his mind), I said he could stay there on his butt if he preferred. Got a huge grin. Of course he’s gung ho for it. We spent some time talking about voting; seems he is the only resident of Eden Park who votes. That’s a sad commentary on health care, in and of itself ‘ the reinforcement of disenfranchisement. I told him he has his work cut out for the fall.
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Visited with Sam last night for a couple of hours. Finally. He was in pretty good spirits and had good energy – he’s just recovered from an awful flu-bug that actually sent him to the hospital for a short stay. He really enjoyed seeing his niece, Jennifer, at Christmas and is looking forward to another visit from her and her mom (his sister, Edith) in February. He got lots of good Christmas presents (and is still doling some out to company) and enjoyed time with his friends and god-children.
We gave him the video Nosey Parker, he was going to watch it last night. He just finished watching the 10-part series, Band of Brothers.
I’m now hoping I don’t get whatever he had; the third floor was still under semi-quarantine and I had to wear a mask the whole time I was there. (Cross your fingers for me, ok?)
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Well, Sam and I hung out for a couple hours yesterday. No drive – too rainy, and he’s still got a cold. I finally read him everything I’ve posted in here about him. That’s the plan; that I’ll catch him up every now and then, depending on the action. He didn’t say too much about it, just grinned. I asked him if there was anything I shouldn’t have said. “No.” Anything I got wrong? “No.” So here we are.
School started today for most of my compatriots. My first day of class is tomorrow. Can already feel the intensity….but….I’ll go in with a slightly different mindset this year than last. I have a better sense what I’m in for, and a strategy for managing things better. Or so I think. :-0
Got a bit of a backlog for posting here. Realize I haven’t given credit to most of my sources; is that bad form? Many of the links I post here come off of the social justice listserv from my Master’s program at UMass. Interesting stuff just about every day. Some things come from my current program’s email list. Others occasionally from friends. More still I glean from magazines or mail.I haven’t yet carved out that much time to just go hunting on the ‘Net myself. I do it occasionally, or when I’m after something specific. Don’t want to be given credit for more than my due. (As if!)
Teaching Respect for All, the annual conference put on by GLSEN looks great. (Their mailer is sexier than their website, oh well.)
Some facts they report:
“4/5 LGBT students report being harassed because of their sexual orientation.”
“1/3 LGBT students report skipping school in the last month out of fear for their personal safety.”
“41.9% of LBGT students report being physically harassed because of their sexual orientation.”
“LGBT students who report knowing of supportive faculty or staff are more likely to fell they belong in school.”
In addition to LGBT concerns (mostly secondary level, I think), they’re also doing a track on the Holocaust. As I’ve been reading Piercy’s book about WWII I’ve started wondering about parallels to the present state of military affairs. Seems like a world war to me. Piercy wrote, from the viewpoint of the writer in the story, Louise: “She had interviewed enough refugees to know what they thought they were fighting for: they were defeating Fascism or liberating their homeland or fighting for their own freedom to be whatever they were that had become illegal or dangerous, Jews or Masons or Communists or Socialists or Seventh-Day Adventists, avant-garde painters, surrealist writers. Or they were simply fighting like the Russians for survival, because the Germans planned to annihilate them. But Americans were fighting for a higher standard of living. They were fighting their way out of the Depression. They were fighting for the goods they saw in advertisements and in movies about how the middle class lived” (p. 421).
Rather grim.
Hey Raz – when you gonna show your rebelliously quirky self in here, eh? Todd materialized today…will see if we can re-group as a cohort or no….sent them all a poem today – To The Virgins, to Make Much of Time.
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It’s a beautiful day! Was supposed to take Sam for a drive, but he’s got a cold. We’ll try again tomorrow. Cleaned out the barn this morning; still have the garage to go…treated myself to an hour’s leisure read on the back deck, started reading Marge Piercy’s Gone to Soldiers while we were in Germany.
A handful of responses to the emails on the mentoring project; looking good! The main issue now is getting more concrete about the structure of the group meetings and how people can bring in their own areas of expertise. We’ve got a few weeks to sort this out.
Micheal Moore has published a letter contrasting Bush’s fundraising activities with rising unemployment, job loss, and compensation losses (Moore also implicates Clinton’s “Welfare to Work” program). To wit: “As Ron Eibensteiner, chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, left the [Bush fundraising] event in St. Paul, he was met by hundreds of demonstrators. Being the dignified, freedom-loving, compassionate conservative we all wish we could be, Eibensteiner leaned over a police barricade toward the protestors and yelled,
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Dropped in on Sam this (yesterday) morning to plan a countryside drive this weekend. We got to talking about “belonging” and he asked me how long I’d been in Vermont – wouldn’t you know it was my ten-year anniversary! A solid decade. That means I’m on the verge of setting a longevity record – we lived in Denver for about 10 years when I was a kid (aged 4-14). Wow.
Sam noted some of the characteristics of Vermonters, concluding that “we’re direct, but we get things done quietly.” I thought that was an appropriate motto for starting to facilitate the mentoring grant project today…but when I told Sam I was going to work on accomplishing directness in a quiet fashion he said, “I doubt it.” Alas! My personality precedes me.
The trouble with indirectness is that in some venues it just doesn’t translate. For instance, I think Sam’s desire to have me write about him here is not only that old friends and family read “the news,” but that they actually engage with each other (through the comments function). And, what do you want to bet he wouldn’t mind it if he made new friends this way? Or at least got somebody thinking about something…I suspect (because Sam certainly hasn’t said anything so blatant) that being published on the web is an act of life for Sam. It’s a way of asserting the fact that he IS still thinking, feeling, curious, engaged, and caring, even if his body is crapping out on him. He wants to do what he has always done – bring people together to share their experiences in stimulating ways.
Discussions about family have been percolating lately. For me, because in so many ways I feel without family – not the kind that gives that rooted sense of belonging. So I’m always seeking connections in other places. Which connections/needs can family fulfill, and which can (perhaps should, or need to) be satisfied elsewhere?
The mentoring grant meeting went all right today, I guess. It was grueling setting the schedule, but we got it done and responded to technical and methodological concerns that were raised. The turnout was great – yahoo! Hopefully the momentum will build and energize us all. Its going to be a consuming project for me and Li for the next 9 weeks, there’s no doubt! (Then we’ll get a break until the massive editing push in January.)
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[the FP] and I had dinner with Sam on Monday night; it was really good to see him but he was bumming when we left. Barbara Durst had also dropped in – she regaled us with stories about her travels to Afghanistan and other places. And we’re getting ready to go to Germany. I think Sam was really feeling the loss of traveling himself. I know Lee has mentioned something to him about trying to get somewhere, and I certainly think we could pull it off with some coordination and commitment from folk. Probably have to hire an attendant to come along (the dude is still tall, and he needs help with most things these days) but there’s no medical reason he couldn’t travel; it’s just all the access issues. Where does he really want to go?
Got a load of things to complete tonight and tomorrow morning…busy busy. Haven’t even packed yet!
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Ah…………….my main man is back! Truth is, there just haven’t ever been that many guys in my life. I’ve never been a separatist in any political sense (I certainly understand why some women are, and think we need those places/spaces for women to retreat from the still overwhelming patriarchal forms of everyday life), but, there just haven’t been that many men for whom I’ve felt affinity. There are increasingly more men that I personally care about and want to connect with, most from the Com Dept, but also within the Deaf community and around town. Anyway, long way of getting around to talking about Uncle Sam.
Sam had a hell of a winter. His body is just plain giving out on him but his mind is so sharp, and his spirit continues to be so generous and live-giving. I hadn’t visited him in five weeks (perhaps the longest spell since he moved to the nursing home, two years ago now), but he was much more perky and engaged than he had been during my last few visits. He asked about the on-going family dramas (H&P; me&B) – when he’s down he doesn’t ask, my guess is because he doesn’t want to know any more “bad” news. So that was cool. Then I read him a couple of chapters from The Alienist, which is fun. Because I had enough time to really hang out, we started talking about “the important stuff,” which is always what I have loved so much about him. Sam never flinches from acknowledging the emotional subtext of things. (He may not always say something about them, but you know he knows.)
He asked me if I’d read Tuesdays with Morrie, which of course several of us read right after he moved into the nursing home, at his request. (That he had forgotten is one of the minor evidences that occasionally show up regarding his mental state.) I always understood that it was his way of reaching out, asking for people to stay in contact with him, not leave him alone through the dying process. He’s not literally dying yet, but its on his mind almost all the time: I’m pretty sure that the only times he isn’t thinking about it is when he has company. Anyway, I told him about the idea I had to use this blog for some kind of “study” of subjectivity – my own, but obviously if I’m writing about my reactions and thoughts to him then I’ll be revealing a lot of info about him too. I suggested that we could maybe use it as a way of reaching out to the people who know him – they can keep a bit more up-to-date on him (even if the picture is refracted through my lens), and even – if inclined – post their own comments and engage in more of a dialogue with him. I’ll print stuff for him, and can even take dictation from him if he wants.
“What do you get out of coming here?” he asked me. Besides just liking Sam, I told him its one of the few places where I feel I can be completely uncensored: be mad if I’m mad, complain, whine, whatever. Exercise the sharper edges of my sense of humor – I just don’t have to worry about his reaction, “because I don’t give a shit what you think.” He laughed, “If I even react at all!” He mentioned that all his family is in Colorado and California, and asked me what it was like for me having my family far away. “I worry sometimes that I might feel guilty later for not having pursued relationships with my family more vigorously, but I think the nurturing that inspires a close relationship just didn’t happen when I was young, so there isn’t much of an emotional basis for connecting.” I do miss my brother, but I told Sam that as much as I love him, I just don’t know how to connect with him while he’s so messed up.
Sam said he hadn’t nurtured relationships with his brothers very much. But he’s the youngest and I think the burden is always on those who are older to reach out and make the connection meaningful. This Christmas is the first time, he said, that he hadn’t called his brothers’ widows. (Sam was the youngest of a dozen, there’s only himself and two sisters left, and then nieces, nephews, godchildren, etc.) There’s a way in which Sam is “alone,” that I can relate with; we are without family in somewhat similar ways. I know that some of my emotional functioning – what I feel, fear, and sometimes act upon – is that there is no “group” of belonging for me. Even with B&H I’m a bit on the outside. It fluxes, with the DoMH a bit more fluidly than with the FP. The DoMH and I do cycles of closeness and distance; sometimes it seems to me that the times of distancing are increasing, but then we’ll re-connect…the FP and I have done distance for so long that whatever cycle there might be is operating on the basis of years, not weeks or months as it is with the DoMH. It seems to be shifting recently, which is nice, but (as I told Sam) I’m not getting excited about it. We’ll see what happens.
I also told Sam that one of the things I appreciate about visiting him is that it always makes me think of these important things – death/dying, what really matters, after all? What’s a life worth living? His first winter at Eden Park I read a book about dying to him; we spent hours talking about the process and the connections between his own body’s decline and the experience of the author, Ram Dass. It was reading that book when we discovered that his speech problem isn’t mechanical, it’s cognitive – a very mild (at least for now) kind of aphasia: the brain is looking for a certain term, and substitutes the wrong thing but thinks it is correct. It’s a misfire between thinking and speaking; the words come out and Sam thinks he said what he meant, but one of the words is the opposite of his intention. So, sometimes he’s slow. It’s a good experience for me to alter my always on-the-go pace to his much more measured (and calm!) mode.
Anyway, in case you’re wondering, Sam did approve my writing about him here. “It’s a good idea.”
Note: edited from names to codes on October 2, 2005.
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