Why "peculiar"?

 

 

 This is the dictionary definition

 pe·cu·liar/pəˈkyo͞olyər/

pe·cu·liar

 [pi-kyool-yer] 

adjective

1.

strange; odd: peculiar happenings.

2.

uncommon; unusual: the peculiar hobby of stuffing and mounting bats.

3.

distinctive in nature or character from others.

4.

belonging characteristically (usually followed by to ): an expression peculiar to Canadians.

5.

belonging exclusively to some person, group, or thing: the peculiar properties of a drug.

Just thought would look better than mind bending diatribe about geeks.

Darn Internet

This darn Internet has taken over my life.

I have re-connected with friends from 30 years ago. I messed around and put up a PROFILE on some "free" personals site, and now I have 135 women that winked at me. Of course you pay to see these gems of womanly beauty and that's the rub.

I don't like the idea of paying to meet someone. It just goes afoul of my old school hippy philosophy of free love. And all that. Hmm the spell check doesn't know about hippy as a word.

That's what I am talking about. This Internet thing doesn't appreciate it's own roots, among hippies that turned into yuppie white trash because they worked on computers. Years ago I met some hackers--by that I mean computer geeks, gurus and other deities in the Hacker domain.

I didn't understand much of what they told me but I knew by the smell, they  were good old Grateful Dead followers, and nothing says "hippies" more than the combination of "Smell" and the Dead in a sentence. These folks took baths, and would not mean to imply anything of the sort, but Deadheads have an ambiance that crosses between Patchouli incense and fresh pine cones.

Anyhow, I don't think any of the Hackers I met turned to Yuppie While Trash, but some did.

My mind is wandering. My Oh My it must have been the Roses.

Until I get an idea to write some more....
 

Incredible mentor passes

 I wondered why I had not heard from her- a phone call every few weeks, and emails.
Only upon getting on to the Internet, and did a search, I found her obituary from April.

I told her last year that my best description of her is now her epitaph.

Dr. Priscilla R. Crawford PhD--  "Before Rush could call her a Feminazi  Dr. Pat Crawford was writing the coda of today's women."

When I met her, she was one of the nation's most sought out speakers on Women's Issues. Her intensive workshops were scheduled and sold-out by an army of women that followed her rise.

Later, she would counsel World leaders from Beijing to Moscow. Captains of Fortune 500 companies literally had her on speed dial.

I counted her among my best friends.


 http://www.lauckfuneralhome.com/obits/obituary.php?id=169484

Life in a wheelchair

It was a 17 month reprieve from daily bandage changes, constant pain and difficulty walking. Since the removal of my toes on the left foot, a short stay in a nursing home, my life returned to normal. Then I noticed a splash of blood on a bathroom rug, and the most recent bout with disease resumed where it left off.

I cleaned and bandaged the wound, as a practiced ritual of the past seven years; I knew the drill to not allow a foot wound to get infected. All was well, and what was the quarter-sized hole was small as a pea.

I made my final visit to the foot clinic only to see my life change 180 degrees.

My smallest toe on the right foot had gangrene, a black spot was found between the toes, and I was admitted for what I thought would have been a small, almost routine procedure. I opted for another trans-met amputation (all toes) since they were looking at taking two and the other three were worthless. The surgery was scheduled and I assumed I would spend a week or so in a rehab and be back to work for the balance of the NBA season, and my career as a photojournalist for Reuters. Wrong.

The nursing home that I was sent to was filthy. Black mold stained the shower room in a place of suspended animation that was best described as the entrance of Hell, or the waiting room for Heaven.

I became infected with MRSA, an antibiotic resistant form of staph. Then spent 21 days hospital stay getting three bags of expensive drug that was the only known treatment for the deadly infection direct into my system through a Pick line- a mainline into a large blood vessel. At the end, I was sent back to the same nursing home.

Needless to say, this was not a good idea and within a short time, I was re-infected and this time the price was higher than five toes.

This time, I got to the hospital on day three of the critical first three days of infection in the life of a diabetic. Infections feed on the sugar rich blood. The staff in Hell refused treatment even though I pointed out the obvious symptoms each day.

The verdict was that the leg would be amputated 15 centimeters below my knee.

I agreed with the young Doctor’s opinion that with the infection in the bone, we could still save the knee.

I was now disabled.

I spent one year in a better nursing home. I left to live in a rental duplex on Social Security and Food stamps, barely able to survive on the stipend. But, I was no longer in a nursing home.

After a year, I wanted a life back, and started to go back to school. Then I posted a resume on the career center website, and responded to an advertised position. I was called on Friday, interviews on Wednesday and started to work the following Monday. It was a good four months of being back in the real world.

And that company laid me off, the week after Christmas, whilst I was still in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.

A heart procedure in August resulted in partial paralysis of my right shoulder. This is Rhabdo. Whilst on the table for nine hours, an enzyme started eating muscle tissue and if not discovered would result in kidney failure- All for nothing. A great doctor, Dr. Lane Jacobs noticed the cola colored urine and started pushing Bicarbonate into my IV to neutralize the  effects. After rehabilitation I can again use my arms.

Fortunately, the implantation of a bi-ventricular pacemaker, and an ablation made me totally dependent on a tiny computer chip in my chest. My heart beats 70 times a minute, as regular as a computer clock. My cardiologist,  Dr. Lazlo Littman, said my congestive heart failure has been resolved by the regular beat.

But, that does not mean a return to normalcy quite yet.

The Ortho doctors have had three whacks at the residual portion of my right leg. The darn thing will not heal well enough to wear my carbon fiber and titanium leg. I have a new appreciation of being dependent on a wheelchair. I watched Oscar running on two prosthetic legs in the Olympics.

I believe he wears the Otto Bock Cheetah legs. I want a bumper sticker for wheel chair that says, “My other leg is a Cheetah”

Life on Holt Street

It is almost hilarious if it were not be the state of our economy.

Petty details of a fourth of million or a million as a cutoff for a tax hike, as if that is of any consequence to the person who rents a babies’ social security number from a mother whose “season” is tax-time.

I was a white man living in a rental property in what Realtors would call a Transitional Neighborhood.

For those who can understand- that is Yuppie Speak for an upside-down house across the street from Fred Sanford’s duplex, complete with pit bull on a chain and frequent socializing.

Junk vehicles, frequent loud parties and mud were across the street from the monthly mortgage payment on a upside-down house on a street that has gas lights in every yard.

That was your dream home, and you chose to buy.

So begins the story of “Life on Holt Street”.

I was not the buyer, nor the developer who was completing a spec house on the street with gas lights.

I was the neighbor of “Fred” -a registered sex offender, man who spent 28 years in Raleigh’s State Owned Hotel for double homicide, and a self proclaimed King of his domain. That included having the pit bull named Roscoe to my back steps, my water hose filling his washing machine (always a cold wash).

I tried to fit in, pay the proper respect to His Excellency, and the court which became fast friends as neighbors, even letting him use my Lincoln, since I was not able to drive.

He has since been returned the Big House for another 10 year stretch.

.

My second attempt

Well, I guess I will get back in the swing of things. Let's give this another swat.

This was piece I wrote back when they were talking about charging an American soldier with Capital Murder in a small massacre of Afghan citizens- Many fewer than My Lai, or the fire bombing of Dresden.

Today I met a man. An American hero, I noticed while having lunch. He was in his 80’s and proudly wore a hat bearing the B-17 Flying Fortress.

I asked him if he flew over Germany and he said 44 missions.  I thanked him for his service, and told him how much I appreciated the sacrifice he made during World War II. I said it must have been both terrifying and exciting and we began a conversation.

He and his crew had one real close call, his plane sputtered, out of fuel as in landed at the 100^th Bomber Group field at the white cliffs of Dover.

He recounted one mission when his primary target, the submarine pens near Kiel was shrouded in fog, his secondary target also under low hanging clouds, so he made the call to drop their load of bombs over Poland before returning to England. As they flew over the occupied countryside, they saw a prison camp and they unloaded on the gates and fences. He said they were so low they could see the prisoners fleeing their Nazi captors, smiling and waving up at the American planes.

My father was a veteran of that war and might have repaired the radio of this man’s plane. We never talked about the war before he died at 59, back in 1982.

Years ago, I regularly photographed an annual “Last Man” lunch for veterans of World War I. Each year they met at a Gaston County Fish Camp, to see their fellow Doughboys, vowing to meet until the Last Man was standing. They have now passed. Veterans, like the man I met today are dying as the years pass.

I felt tears in my eyes as this man talked to me and munched on his sandwich.

A few years ago I lost a dear friend, a retired U.S. Army Ranger, and Special Operations Sergeant who was also part of the Green Berets. Exact details of his operations are still classified, but he told me, “If you saw it on CNN, I had been on the ground for at least three months prior.” He refused to watch the film “Blackhawk Down”, he was in Somalia at the time, and he had trained and served with Rangers killed that day. He had suffered a few “traumatic brain Injuries” during his career.

He died from his injuries, long after he retired.

Today, the story of the American accused of murder in the deaths of 16 civilians in Afghanistan, and I am reminded of Lt. Calley and My Lai.  I am also reminded of Capt. Willard and Col. Kurtz in the epic Viet Nam war film “Apocalypse Now”. To charge a soldier with murder in this insane 10-year war should jolt Washington out of the cloud of “Political Correctness” and call these brave men and women home.

The Veteran’s Administration needs to gear-up for the Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury cases that will follow.

Three men, each called by the government to do a job.  

A hero who survived the Luftwaffe 44 times over Germany, a Green Beret U.S. Army Ranger who did the dirty work under the cover of secrecy, and an injured veteran of four tours of duty that went out of control in a Stone Age world that we have been trying to bring into the 21^st century for over 10 years.

Accusing him of murder, like Willard’s mission to “Terminate Col. Kurtz, with extreme prejudice”, begs the question of just how upside-down our world has become.

I watch with utter amazement at the Internet. I remember when there was no Windows or GUIs, all text line...and we liked it!

Then an addiction like the Internet cost real money, services charged your phone bill by the minute, and the modems were dial-up.

Now the porno pop-ups and the selection of bizarre choices for free will surely bring the end to civility as we once knew it.

All  of this was predicted by a man called Kortron, from his hand-built log home of the side of a mountain here in North Carolina. I met him in a e-mail chain about UFOs, and became aquainted.

He insisted that he was the Commander of a star ship, and his physical body had been taken over by alien energy. He is dead now, passed away from this plane of reality.

There are too many stories about those halcyon days of "X-files" and Art Bell overnight on the am radio dial.

We all had it figured out, and only awaited our fate, knowing that the Truth was Out There.

I had an optical drive given to me after it was left behind at a business. We figured out why- the optical disc it wrote to was about $400, and held almost as much data as a current DVD.

The Commander was happy, because he could finally get the whole archive of his files in one place. I doubt if a current generation of machines could even recover those files today. And then I see a closeout of 4 Gigabyte thumb drives for $4 each.

The Aliens, who secretly work with the shadow government and are aligned with the Fifth Reich Nazis, still have not executed the plan to enslave Hu-Mans. All is right with the world today, and as for the Mayan Prophecy of doom for December 21, 2012-- I have canned peaches that will still be serviceable food well into 2014.

I trusted the Commander on his grim predictions of the Apocalypse, but if the Mayan were such good prophets, why didn't they see the Spanish enslaving them.