Commentary on Current Events

Thoughts, Ideas, and Comments of Bob Cardwell, from Indianapolis, IN. ________________________www.bobcardwell.com

Monday, November 29, 2004

Centering on Meaning

I try to live with the following motto, "That which produces life is good. That which destroys life is evil."

I believe it is more important to be kind, than smart, rich, or attractive.

I like witty, intelligent, and strong women. I like a good and intelligent conversation as much as a good meal and/or a passionate embrace.

I like the smell of a love one that you can wrap around your heart.

I like the touch of a love one that lingers.

I like the yearning for the presence and seek the fullness of the now.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Glad that Thanksgiving Weekend is ending!

I was awakened last night by laughter and bright lights. The police had pulled over a young man in front of my place. They were laughing and joking. The young man was very scared. They put him through the DWI field tests. He did not look drunk from my window. They arrested him and and towed his car away.

If society really wanted to get rid of DWI, they would bring out an army every night.
As soon as anyone left a bar after 12:00 midnight and got into a car to drive home, the cops would swoop down on them and take them to jail.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Looking at Indy








Get your Adwell drawing here.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Taking care of myself under managed health care.

I am feeling better today. I got a flu shot on 10/28. I got sick for a couple of days. Then about one week later, I got this horrible chest cold. The terrible hacking ripped my throat a part and I developed a secondary infection there.

Under my manage care program, I get to see the doctor about every six months. If I get sick at other times, there is no recourse except to go to the ER.

Of course, I did not go to the ER. It would be humiliating. First, you have to wait for six hours to be seen. While you are waiting, you get to see the dozens of patients come in who are injured and much more sick.

No, I did not go to the emergency room. I went back to the old home remedies. I gargled with salt water and perioxide. I used hot compresses on my throat. Now after a few days. I am feeling much better.

The problem I am left with is too much knowledge. My mother is a nurse. My ex-wife is a nurse. I went to nursing school after graduating from a social science program. I know of the complications. I know what a strep infection can do to your heart and your body. And I know that about $3 worth of medication can save a life.

Yeah, I feel better. I can only hope that I didn't get some more severe damage. Managed care is about the individual managing his treatment and hoping for the best.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

From a poem by Alexander Pope,

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting, by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind! Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd.


Many times, as I am sure many have thought, if only I could forget......

I just finished a movie that took this concept...and ran with it. The movie did not make much of a splash while it was out. But I think this is one of those films that will linger in my soul for a while. I am just finishing this movie. It is one of the best films I have seen in years. It makes one yearn for love again..... for me it has been awhile. I guess I had forgot what I was missing.

Read an excellent review here......

Review


BTW, I don't care much for Jim Carey, but HE is EXCELLENT in this flick. I have underestimated him while he did so much over the top crap.



Remember when you dressed up to take a flight?

When I first started taking the airlines, people dressed up to board the plane. There was an aire of "being on your best behavior." It was an event.

Compare this to taking a cross country bus ride.

I did both in 1979. The plane trip was like taking limo to a wedding. The bus trip was like taking, well, a bus to a funeral.

On the plane, people were nice and polite. People were clean and well dressed. On the bus, there were crop pickers, foreign students with back packs, soldiers going home, families going a visiting, and assorted riff raff.

The plane zipped you right to the city you were going to. The bus seemed to stop at every small town between here and the coast. Once the bus stopped in the middle of the wilderness, to dump a young man off for continually smoking pot in the back row.

At one bus stop, in Nashville, TN, a man tried to rob me at knife point in the men's room. I laughed at him and walked out. I was pretty naive I guess. It is a wonder he did not cut my throat.

People always complain about the airline food. They said it was too hot, too cold, too bland, too plain. Compare that to the food of the bus line of the time and it was heaven. Compare it to the service you get now, and you are left with only a sense of longing.

I traveled recently by plane. They have morphed into the buses of memory. It is like some planner took the concept of the bus system and decided to set it up in a police station. While the seedy areas and red light areas of any major city in America use to be near the bus station, they are now usually on on the roads near the airport. As any traveling sheeple can tell you, "if you want a good time, go to Airport Road." Just don't take a plane.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Death and dying in the modern world.


First Photo of Jeanie and I in 1998.


It is another experiment with audioblogging.

Listen to Part One

Listen to Part Two



Over the past seven years I have experienced many severe losses. The most impact was from the death of my girlfriend, Jeanie. It has been 17 months since her death, and I am still feeling the impact. In fact, it seems that everyday I discover a new way this loss has affected me. The grief is not a steady process. There are some days better that others, but yet there is always an ache. Not a heart ache, like we have all either experienced or know something about. It is a soul ache. A quivering and shaking of my very being.

No, I am not losing control, going crazy, or slipping into the throes of depression. It is suffering and it is like nothing I have ever experienced before. But I have experienced losses before....and I know you get through.

Part of my healing has been to focus on some of the memories. Sometimes I remember with photographs. Sometimes I hear her laugh. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I smell and feel her in my sleep. Sometimes I write.

I have been trying to write an account of the last few months of Jeanie's life. Following are some of my recollections. I guess I will finish it, when I finish it.

There is an over used statement which seems to fit looking back at Jeanie's deterioration. Things seem to make some sense and pieces fall in place. Hindsight is better than contemporaneous understanding.

Jeanie's problems seemed to start gradually after her hysterectomy in the Spring of 1999. By the winter of that year, she seemed to have aged ten years. Her skin became more leathery and wrinkled. Her hair became more straw like. Her body seemed to aged and changed shape. She became more irritable. These changes continued until she died. At her death, she looked 70 years old.

Part of me has always thought that a major cause of this change was the major hormonal change caused by her hysterectomy.

Jeanie quit her job in Jan. of 2003. She was unable to concentrate and had become too irritable to work around demanding customers. She was a waitress.

In April of 2003, Jeanie had her first seizure. By May, she was having a seizure once per day and finally got in to see a doctor. By the end of May, she found out she had a tumor, but believed it was benign. Since she did not have insurance, health care was certainly lacking in quality and continuity.

One clear memory was toward the end of May. I went to Jeanie's dad's church with her. She had expressed a desire to be baptized and wanted me with her. After the church service, Jeanie met with the pastor to discuss this. Apparently, he refused to baptize her because she was not a regular church goer. For some reason it seems the Baptists always treat me and mine harshly.

By the first week of June, Jeanie's seizures become so intense and painful, her father took her to Wishard Hospital and demanded that she be treated. She was admitted about June 8, 2002.

While at the hospital, a MRI confirmed she had a tumor in her left temporal lobe. The doctor met with the family and recommended surgery. Jeanie asked me if I would help her and take care of her after the surgery and I said I would. She totally believed that she would recuperate and become her old self. Later, after she was released, I learned that the doctors had not told her that she was terminal. She would not learn she was terminal for more than a month after her surgery.

Before Jeanie's surgery, I arranged for a chaplain friend of mine to perform a baptism at the hospital. We had to get special permission from the hospital to do this. Jeanie was baptized in a hospital tub a day or so before her surgery. I and a couple of med techs were present for the service and they became quit tearful.
In fact over the day or two before Jeanie's surgery, I would catch many of medical staff glancing at Jeanie with tears in their eyes. At the time, I thought they were just sympathetic to her surgery. I now know of course, they knew, that she had the most severe and aggressive of brain tumors and it would just be a short time before she died.

One of the few regrets I have about all of this, is that Jeanie was not informed of how sick she was or that she was probably terminal before the surgery. Neither was she informed on how severe the surgery would be to her cognitive abilities.
As I said the Lord's Prayer with Jeanie before she was wheeled to surgery, she was confident that she at least had a fighting chance of getting back to normal. I know now that there was no chance and the surgery could only buy a few months of impaired consciousness. I wish they would have told her. Knowing her the way I do, I think she may have not chosen to get the surgery.

I don't know if there is anyone to blame for this. Her father had assumed control of her care and at least had got her into a hospital. He was an old burned out alcoholic who had found the Lord and had been dry for several years. Jeanie had had not much to do with him for years because of his temper. He was rude, overbearing, uneducated; but he was her father. He would later claim that he had not understand when the doctors had told him that she was terminally ill. The rest of us did not find out Jeanie was terminal until they were ready to release her from the hospital. They called and stated they were ready to transfer her to a nursing home where she could rest until she died in a few months.

Since I had promised Jeanie before the surgery that I would take care of her and help her recuperate, I felt obligated. She came home with me with the mind of a four year old and without the knowledge that she was dying. The family wanted not to tell her this until she was better. The problem was that she never got any better until the day she died.

Taking care of Jeanie was an extreme hardship financially. She had no income and my bankruptcy was final the day before she went to surgery. I had experienced some severe business set backs in the two previous years. I was now working as an insurance adjuster and the season for work had just begun around the time of the surgery. When the work was there, the pay was very good, the hours were very long, and there was much time spent on the road. I was independent adjuster with a home office.

Jeanie's family came over and we had a meeting. The sisters and women folk all worked out a scheduled on who would come over on what days and take care of the house work and Jeanie. They agreed they would prepare food and do the chores. It was a nice agreement. It lasted for all of two days. Jeanie would stay in my care from June 12, 2002, to Jan. 3, 2003.


Last Photo of Jeanie and I 2002.

Learning HTML and trying to find space.

I continue to work on the web page at www.geocities/bbbob_99/index.htm


I am experimenting on a daily basis trying to get the right mix of seriousness and fun.

If you have any ideas, or secret code, please send them on.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Politics are filthy!

I really don't have any political leanings. I go both ways. The political hacks and crooks I have known locally are almost exclusively GOP, though.

If I were to have a political inclination....it would be for truth and justice.

Some of the characters on TV, radio, the blogs, and boards are so pig headed and rightish, that it may seem I am a lefty from playing with them. I am not. I have learned politics is too dirty, dishonest, and nasty to immerse your soul into much. If you touch that kind of filth, it sticks....for a long while.

Jude Law Doesn't Have It All!

I have some nominations for the sexiest moment in media.


There was a scene with the pretty boy of honor. In the movie, Enemy at the Gates, Jude Law and Rachel Weiss. They are in a dorm during the war in Russia. Sleeping on the floor with dozens of others. They make hot love in a sleeping bag and it doesn't show one bit of nudity. Hot.

From the literary world: In the book Lie Down with Lions.....about? 1984 or so. There is a scene in the wilderness. Awesome. Still remember it 20 years later.

Oh yeah....I forgot....I want to put this out there before anyone else. It is more powerful than it is sexy.

The scene in Deliverence. The "love scene" between the mountain man and the pig boy ["squeal like a pig boy" "Pull those panties down"]. It is one of the great ones of all time. It is still very powerful. I watched the uncut movie again not long ago. It is hard to believe it is over 30 years old. It is very gritty and timely. One of the few films that has not aged at all even though all of its key actors are old men now.

The best, and sexiest song I heard lately is Lucinda Williams doing Essence

Baby, sweet baby, you're my drug
Come on and let me taste your stuff

Baby, sweet baby, bring me your gift
What surprise you gonna hit me with

Refrain:
I am waiting here for more
I am waiting by your door
I am waiting on your back steps
I am waiting in my car
I am waiting at this bar
I am waiting for your essence

Baby, sweet baby, whisper my name
Shoot your love into my vein.




Check Lucinda out. She is hot and this song is more steamy than the prose indicates.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Chance Meeting

Life is full of odd chance meetings. I was helping out at the family store today. I helped a lady for probably a total of twenty minutes. She had worked with my ex-wife. Her kids had grown up with mine. We had gone to the same church for ten years.

I recognized her, but she not me. Divorce destroys a family. I didn't want to go through the pain of updating her on the past seven years. Sometimes, you just gotta let it go.

A fart away from a stampede revolution?

sheeple (SHEE.pul) n. People who are meek, easily persuaded, and tend to follow the crowd (sheep + people). Sheeple are people that follow blindly and never question their leaders. Their simple Motto is:"Follow the Asshole in front of you."


We are just one fart away from a stampede!!!!

Commentary on the news from the Indianapolis Star

Intent with this blog is to set up ongoing commentary on stories in the Indianapolis Star newspaper.