All the Time in the World is Just Not Enough

It is the Saturday morning before the week of Thanksgiving. A pre-winter chill is in the air. We have taken the cushions in from the patio chairs, covered the outdoor tables, and stowed the big umbrellas.

The chore completed, we break out the first of a trio of 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles we have bought to work on. Puzzles were something we enjoyed during COVID isolation and putting them together will give us something to do together in the long, dark months ahead. So we will get started today, before Barb’s 11:45 hair salon appointment.

We make nice progress this first morning. We work together on the border, complete except for one edge piece we have not yet located. We then each work in our own styles, Barb putting together a large center area, while I work from the outside in.

At about 11:15, I take a break for lunch. At 11:35, Barb is still hard at work on the puzzle, and I remind her about her salon appointment. “Oh my God,” she says. “Time got away from me!”

“Time got away from me?” That is something I don’t think I have ever said. I don’t think I ever could. I am locked into time.

Time is kept (at least in experimental mice) in the medial entorhinal cortex. It has been about 45 years since I studied neuroanatomy, so I am not exactly sure where that is, but I am positive my medial entorhinal cortex is very well-developed. In fact, it might take up half of my brain.

I cannot get away from time. Without looking at my watch, I can tell you what time it is, pretty close to the exact minute. On any given day, I can sense how long each part of my daily commute is taking me–whether it has taken me ten minutes to get from home to Dempster Avenue milestone or a slacker’s twelve.

Unfortunately, that innate sense of time is not always a good thing. It can be a curse as well. The neurons from my medial entorhinal cortex, besides being my internal clock, also must fire off at my amygdala, the part of the brain that controls fear and anxiety.

It seems that I have allegrophobia, the fear of being late. I know exactly when each meeting, appointment, or interview is scheduled to begin. I time my activities so I will be there on time. On time, no matter what.

If I have had four flat tires on my drive, I still will get to the meeting on time. Of course, the corollary to that is that if I don’t have four flat tires, I will get there two hours early. I have never missed a flight because I was late, but I have wasted lots of time in departure lounges due to arriving at the airport well before any other person would consider rational.

What happens to me if by some strange adversity I am running behind schedule? My stomach clenches and my heart palpitates. Sweat streams down my forehead and my wrist aches from the countless times I have turned it so that I can stare at, and swear at, my watch. Being late just isn’t worth the physical agony.

My daughter shares this malady with me, so perhaps it is genetic. Maybe we just have extra lanes on the Medial Entorhinal Cortex to Amygdala Speedway, with neurotransmitters racing atop them like the Ferrari Hypercar returning to LeMans. There is no slowing down, no getting off.

I would tell your more about it, but I have to be at the neighbors across the street in an hour. It’s best if I start getting ready now…

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); ———————————–

Beauty and Disease. With Addison’s Disease, One Call Says It All

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a telephone conversation between Barb and me last week. Or maybe I just imagined it this way…

Barb: How are you?

Me: (huffing and puffing on an elliptical machine at the fitness center) I’m good. What’s up.

Barb: I just wanted to tell you, I picked Cooper up from the vet. And it happened again. The vet tech kept telling me how everyone in the place kept coming up to her and telling saying how handsome and gorgeous he is! I knew you would get a kick out of that!

Me: No surprises. Everyone tells us that. Anything else going on?

Barb: Oh, yeah, I almost forgot to tell you. They did a lab test and say he has no cortisol in his blood. They think he has Addison’s disease.

Me: (phone drop)

First–let’s talk about Beauty. It is a fact. Everyone we meet does let us know how handsome Cooper is, with his deep chocolate coat and the blond highlights around his muzzle And then most people mention his piercing, golden, almost human eyes that give a hint of his playful intelligence. He is a good-looking dude; we know it, he knows it, the whole neighborhood knows it. But Barb and I still are amused by all the confirmation Cooper gets.

Health has been a different matter. The Coop has been a bouncy, happy, pup, filled with energy and mischief. But his gastrointestinal system has never matured with the rest of him. Limited ingredient dog foods, prescription diets, and multiple courses of antibiotics have provided minimal improvement.

As a next step, we scheduled an appointment with a local veterinary specialty clinic. After a 10-week wait, Cooper was seen by the specialty internist. After reviewing the history, he too felt that it would probably be some combination of diet and probiotics that would eventually solve the digestive problems.

“But,” he said, “with your permission, I would like to run a few blood tests, just in case something else is going on here.”

And that brings us to where we are now, with no cortisol, the key steroid hormone from the adrenal gland. As a pathologist, I know you can rarely make a diagnosis based on a single test result and some additional tests are in the pipeline. But I am pretty confident Coop, with his marked cortisol deficiency, does have Addison’s, and now we just have to figure out why.

This is upsetting, but certainly not a tragedy; it should just be a small setback in Cooper’s life. When all the tests are completed we will know how best to treat the condition. With proper care, Cooper should have a long, happy life.

With our help, this Beauty will beat his disease.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

To Write, or Not To Write-Is That the Question?

I was on an early morning walk through the neighborhood, Cooper as always pulling at his leash, sniffing at every signpost, looking out for every one of his girlfriends. We came to an intersection and Coop gave a tug, drawing me across the street to a corner lot where a new pup was romping with a woman whom I had never met before.

We crossed the street and in the neighborhood tradition the Pup-Mom and I exchanged the essential facts about our dogs–where we got them, their lineage, their age, and then admired the coats on each other’s furry friend.

While the dogs were playing together and just before Cooper got muddy pawprints all over the new human neighbor I remembered my social graces and introduced myself. “Oh,” she said. “I recognize the name. Aren’t you the writer?”

Wow! Yes, my family and a lot of friends, colleagues, and social media contacts know I write a blog. They will sometimes bring up a particular post, mention they found it informative, or well-written, or fun. Or they will complain that my inclusion of a particular song has planted a weeks-long earworm in their brain. Those interactions are always with the clear understanding that my relationship with them is primarily that of a relative, co-worker, or friend who sometimes spits out 500 electronic words.

But this was different. I have never before been recognized as someone who tries to tell stories as part of my identity. It was thrilling.

Though I didn’t ask, I assume the neighbor (whose name in my true absent-minded fashion I have already forgotten) had read one of the blogs I had posted on the neighborhood FaceBook page–maybe my silhouette dog vs. geese story. But whichever blog it was, something I had written had stuck in her mind for at least a few weeks. I felt like the garage band who had heard their song on the radio for the first time.

So when my inevitable retirement as a full-time pathologist comes around, maybe I will give this writing thing a serious look. Take one of those online masterclasses (learn how to write short stories from Joyce Carol Oates or creative writing from Margaret Atwood) and eventually learn to write dialogue. I will finally produce that medical thriller Barb is always telling me I have inside my head.

Cooper, you have done me a favor with your insistence on meeting every dog in the neighborhood. Maybe I will just write a novel about you!

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

How Ba-Ba became Ba-Ba

I recently posted my portrait, drawn by my granddaughter H, as a new cover page on Facebook. After lots of positive feedback, I decided to repost the blog below from 2016.

What’s in a name? I blogged a while ago that I have never had a nickname. It is as glaring a deficit in my personal history as not having a tattoo would be for today’s millennials. Somehow, I have learned to live as “Les”. And my full name, “Lester”, has taken on a bit of a cache since Leicester City, F.C. won its remarkable 5000-1 championship in the British Premier League Football. Yes, “Leicester” is pronounced “Lester” (and “British Premier League Football” is pronounced “Soccer.”)

But now I have a special name! I have had it for several months, and like most special names it is one that no one could predict. What makes it super-special is that it came from my granddaughter H. I am proud to be Baa-Baa.

It is always fun to guess what children will call their grandparents. When H was a newborn, Barb and I played that game. Barb was hoping for “GlamMa”, defined by Urban Dictionary as “the new Grandma, a woman with a sense of self and style. ” Yes, that would fit Barb. I had no special preference, but we both agreed that we did not want to be Bubbie and Zaydie, names we still feel are a little too old school.

So how did I become Baa-Baa? Every Friday morning while Barb is babysitting for H the three of us spend a few minutes Face Timing. On one of those morning calls, I gave H an iPhone tour of my office, including the row of bobbleheads on a high shelf above my microscope. There was a one-armed Robin Ventura, a stern Carlton Fisk, Detroit Tiger star Miguel Cabrera, and even White Sox groundskeeper Roger Bossard. H was fascinated as I bounced their heads up and down. Soon all our Friday calls started with H calling out for the bobbleheads. “Baa-Baa, Baa-Baa” was her greeting to me. And that’s what I became. Not Robin, or Carlton, or Miggie–but I will take Baa-Baa any time.

As for Barb, both of H’s grandmas became Na-Na. But now that H is a little older and wants to differentiate between her two wonderful grandmothers, Barb has become Na-Na-Baa-Baa. It works!

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Have You Said Goodbye to a Forever Home?

Five years ago this month the trucks rolled up our Long Grove driveway. First came the moving vans, separating our furniture into two collections, one group to be placed in storage while construction of our new home was being completed, the other batch to furnish our temporary rental. This was followed by the We’ll-Get-Your-Junk mobile, hauling off the leftovers; rejects that not even Goodwill wanted. We locked up and said goodbye to our “forever home.”

I don’t think the term “Forever Home” existed when we built the house in the early 1990s. We just knew we were set to put down roots and stay somewhere for a long, long, time. It’s not that we had been nomads previously, anything but, but this was where we wanted to raise our children, and where we would reside while life’s passages took hold.

Our kids were barely beyond the toddler stage when we moved in. Twenty-six years later, in our last family photograph at that house, our nuclear family was supplemented by a wife, a fiance, and our first two grandchildren. The photo was taken on a sunny August afternoon and I like to think all our dazzling smiles were thinking of the wonderful times in that house, as well as the future ahead.

That house saw so much. Celebrations–birthdays, anniversaries, proms, election victories. Tragedies–the deaths of my father and sister. An important victory–Barb’s success against melanoma. And more pets than I can count on one hand.

The house changed over time as well. A small addition for the sake of a big piano. A foosball table that migrated from our over-the-garage bonus room to a finally finished basement, where our offspring and their friends could hang out. A remodeled en-suite bathroom that we enjoyed; a remodeled kitchen that we never got the benefit of.

But I admit that I grew restless after twenty-five-plus years. I grew tired of running the same 5K routes. The long slog to and from the tollway became more than I was willing to endure on a daily commute. And our neighborhood friends were leaving for their own downsizers, or for a home in the permanent sun of Florida or Arizona.

If you are a long-time reader of this blog and its predecessor, you know the process of convincing Barb, finding/building a new home, and selling the old one, was complex and not always straightforward. But we persevered.

And now our “forever home” is five years in the rearview mirror. But like the sign says, “Memories in the mirror are closer than they seem“–and worth cherishing.”

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

For Its Inventor, The Game of Life is over.

The Game of Life-the box top I remember.

Pink and blue pegs in a tiny plastic car. A pathway that took you to college and a job. A spinner that made a great, whirring, sound but needed it frequently oiling. Stock and insurance certificates. And $100,000 bills with Art Linkletter’s picture on it. It was all in The Game of Life.

I grew up in the mid-’60s playing Life with my family. It was faster-paced than Monopoly, less cerebral than Scrabble or Chess, and harder to cheat at than Go to the Head of the Class (yes, I memorized all the questions). And it was fun, twirling the spinner and hoping for the career with the highest salary. You could wind up a millionaire, or you could wind up in the poorhouse.

By the time we were raising our kids, Life had fallen well down the list of treats on family game night, far below our favorite, Sorry. Still, our first thought for the theme at Laury’s Bat Mitzvah was to base the celebration on Life. Only when the party designer couldn’t grasp the concept did we switch to an Animal Kingdom idea.

This morning I learned that Reuben Klamer, the man who invented The Game of Life, passed away on September 14th. He was 99 years old–almost making it to that ultimate life marker of a century.

It feels like another little bit of my childhood is seeping away. As the sole survivor of my first nuclear family, I have no one to share that time of my life with. There is no one who remembers the nightly dinner table (always starting with Campbell’s Soup, always including dreadful canned vegetables); who remembers the Sunday night’s watching What’s My Line (me peaking around my bedroom door into the living room); who remembers the weekly walk down Morse Avenue to Ashkenaz for kreplach soup, a toasted bagel, and a Coke.

So you see Mr. Klamer, the end of your days has made me nostalgic and a bit sad. I don’t know how you lived your life, but I know your Life was part of a wonderful time in mine. Wherever you are now, your spinning wheel will never stop whirring for me.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Ring-a-Ding-Ding, I Do Hate This Thing!

The sound of glass breaking. Once, then twice. I roll over, squinting to view the digital clock on my bedside cabinet. 2:37 a.m. I know from experience that no one is breaking one of the glass panels in our paneled front door. I know it is only the Ring app on Barb’s phone–the latest in modern security–letting us know a fern from our potted plant is waving past the sensor at our entrance. It’s another dream disturbed, another good night sleep lost.

Remember when we built this house five years ago, the original raison d’être for this blog? We put some technology in: wi-fi and soundbars and an electronic door lock. We have added tech through the years: Alexa now allows Google to track our every move and utterance, and we have a nifty motorized window shade. But we had resisted Ring.

Our front and side doorbells were nothing fancy. If someone pushed the doorbell button, Westminster chimes played. The tones were slightly different for the two doors, though I admit the dogs learned which tone was for which door better than I did. We would then stand, walk to the appropriate door and open it. Just like it has been done for millions of years.

A few months ago, while having some Wi-Fi updating done, we succumbed to temptation and had the Ring doorbell/security cameras installed, and added the app to our iPhones and Apple watches. And gave away a little bit of our sanity.

My wrist now vibrates every time Barb takes Cooper out for a walk. I get a tingle every time Barb goes out to water the flowers. I am alerted every time a goose waddles by and whenever debris gets blown by one of the doors.

Yes, I also now know important things such as every time FEDEX or Amazon makes a delivery to our home. But unlike many of our neighbors, we don’t do all that much online ordering. So far, deliveries have accounted for less than 1% of all the alerts–and the most frequent of those deliveries has been Lou Malnati’s Pizzas. And believe me, I don’t need an app to be watching for those particular deliveries (donations of thick-crust cheese and pepperoni, well done, gladly accepted!)

Yes, the installer gave us tips for minimizing all the nuisance notifications, but spoiler alert, the tips haven’t helped. Yes, I could totally turn the alerts off. Then what was the point of getting the contraptions in the first place? Good question!

So if I seem a little blurry-eyed on many a morning, if I keep checking my watch as another alert blazes through, you now know what’s going on. It’s just my head Ringing.

(Added note: I have received approximately 14 alerts while writing this blog. Ouch!)

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Tribune, Won’t You Make Me, Your New Columnist (with apologies to Janis Joplin)

“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”

Tribune, won’t you make me
Your new columnist.
The old ones are quitting
Or getting dismissed.
I’ll write for a dollar
You’ve got a tight fist.
Tribune, won’t you make me
Your new columnist.

Tribune, won’t you put me
Up on Page Two
John Kass used to get it
Until his miscue.
I’ll write real good headlines
I won’t stir the stew.
Tribune, won’t you put me
Up on Page Two.

Tribune, I can be your
New Schmich and your Zorn.
I’ll send a swell headshot
My page to adorn.
I’ll do lots of tweeting,
I won’t be a bore.
Tribune, I can be your
New Schmich and your Zorn.

Tribune, I don’t need my
Own office space.
I’ll write from my kitchen
It’s my favorite place.
I’ll write about music,
‘Bout health and ‘bout waste.
Tribune, I don’t need my
Own office space.

Tribune, I remember
When Royko was king.
He wrote about Daley,
It was his Boss thing.
I’ll write about Lightfoot
And go Pritzkering.
Tribune, I remember
When Royko was king.

Tribune, if you like me,
Just drop me a line.
I’ve done lots of blogging,
It’s finally my time.
You won’t last forever,
On Alden’s thin dime.
Tribune, if you like me,
Just drop me a line.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Two Mind-Bending Treats. No Drugs Involved

Anthony Hopkins in “The Father” and Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait

Hallways expanding and contracting. Time looping back on itself, forward then back, the forward again. Faces changing, personalities slipping in the blink of an eye. Cicadas chirping as they cover a screen.

Barb and I weren’t chewing on gummies or ingesting magic mushrooms this weekend when our minds were warped out of shape, not once but twice. First, Friday evening we sat home and watched Anthony Hopkins Academy Award Winning performance in “The Father.” Then on Sunday morning we drove down the Tri-State Tollway and Kennedy Expressway to the Sandburg Village area where we experienced the twisty “Immersive Van Gogh” exhibit at the Germania Club/Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago. Between the two, our heads will never be wired quite the same way.

In “The Father” Mr. Hopkins plays Anthony, an engineer, who along with his daughter (Olivia Colman) is dealing with (or not dealing with) his increasing dementia. It is the more thought-provoking of the two experiences.

Do you think Mr. Hopkins playing a similar role in the 2005 movie “Proof” where his mental illness is the source of friction between his renowned professor character and his equally brilliant daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow)?

Think again. In “The Father,” by scene two, everything you thought you knew or expected has changed. Is Olivia Coleman the daughter? Who are these other people? Why does the furniture keeping changing in the hallway? Will someone be going to Paris? And for what reason do some scenes keep repeating, the same, but not the same.

Slowly we realize our point of view is that of angry, frightened, and demented Anthony. And we are left to ask ourselves–is this what it feels like to suffer from dementia. I fear that it is.

****

We know Vincent Van Gogh suffered from an unclassifiable mental condition. But that is not what made the immersive Van Gogh exhibit so twisty. The filmmakers have created a 45-minute video, screened on the walls of 3 large exhibit halls. We sit on the floor, our heads swiveling to catch the entire experience.

In the first few minutes, black cicadas cover the screens. Then selected elements from Van Gogh’s paintings–here a face, there a sunflower, a chugging train–appear, vibrate, explode. Music, mostly classical, pours from surround sound speakers. The artist’s self-portraits stare at us. This is true immersion.

As our brains reach full pickling, the finale fills the screen — swirls from “A Starry Night” splashing like fireworks against the sky. The music crescendos, and then dazed, the crowd staggers for the exits. It is only as we all pour into the inevitable gift shop that normalcy returns.

Hopkins and Van Gogh gave us mind-blowing weekend–no hallucinogenics needed.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Have you eaten at a place like Hilda’s Hot Dogs?

It wasn’t a Rogers Park dive bar, just a dive. A counter with four bar stools. Five tiny tables lined up against the sidewall. A sizzling griddle for the burgers, a deep, oil-filled, bubbling, fry vat, and hot water to boil the hot dogs. A soda fountain and not much else.

Behind it all was Hilda, a woman of indeterminate age to my 11-year-old self. Her hair in a bun under a net, a white apron around her middle, and a gray cloth covering her laryngotomy site, Hilda ruled the tiny lunch place–a small hiccup on Morse Avenue between a laundromat and a barbershop.

We were a loyal bunch, the construction workers and the small gaggle of school kids living at the far end of the school district who had lunch each day at noon during the school year in the late 1960s. Forty-two cents bought a hot dog, french fries, and a small Coke. Most days I dug into my lunch money for an extra nickel, trading the wiener for a single patty hamburger. A piece of cheese was more than I could afford.

There were ritzier places down the block, places like Ashkenaz and Froikins. But you needed more than half a buck to eat at those places, and I carefully guarded the lunch cash stash my mother gave me so that I would have enough pennies to buy chocolate cupcakes at Davidson’s Bakery on Mondays and Thursdays. Or I would use that loose change for an extra-large Coke with my burger on a hot day in June.

In the 2020s it would be considered child abuse to allow a 10 or 11-year-old kid to eat alone or with classmates at such a place. But having lunch at school was not an option, and walking the mile-and-a-half home (a 3rd-floor walk-up apartment) and back during the lunch hour would have left no time to actually eat. Besides, my mother was a working woman, not a stay-at-home mom, so I would have hurriedly gulped a cold sandwich. Hilda’s was the better option, and in truth, I loved it.

I never learned why Hilda had a laryngotomy, though most of us assumed it was due to a history of smoking. And I never learned how the city inspectors allowed the less than sparkling joint to stay in business. I never realized just how filthy the place was until a teacher asked me to take a new student with me to lunch. He was a southern import, and I remember two things about that day. First, he asked to use “the lav,” and second, he never came back.

I may have had better hamburgers since those days, I may have had tastier fries, but I can tell you I have never had a happier 47 cent feast.

———————-

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise! ___

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name