Ghetto Living

Occasionally we’d see a convict, goateed and grim, on our street picking up trash. Not far down from our house, a mere three houses away, was the local Madison bar “Just One More”, and it was safe to say that the ice-cream man that circled the house each day wasn’t really selling orange cream-sicles. His spooky melody would chime loud and clear as his rusty white van drove slowly by. I never got a good look at the driver, but I imagined scars and a nervous twitch as he handed out his fudge pops.

I called the area where my brother and I lived during anesthesia school the “ghetto.” Not the original context of the “ghetto” where Jews were abused and forced to live in Europe. No. Our neighborhood was more of the hoodlum and gangster sort of “ghetto.”

We were first welcomed in our house with spray paint, and maybe once a month we’d experience the “ring and run” or pebbles lobbed against the side of the house. We chased them a few times. Jesse gave up, but I hated the injustice of it. I wanted to catch the jerks, perhaps let out a stream of pepper spray in their direction. Then…as they were duly subdued and rolling at my feet—I would reach out a hand and help them up. Justice was served and all would be well with the world again.

That never happened of course so I settled on one evening for the only thing I could think of: fishing line strung across the steps. I excitedly reported the results to my brother the next morning. A silent night and a broken fishing line!

He just rolled his eyes and went back to his cereal.

It might have been a week later when Jesse noticed his hammock missing from the backyard. (Not just any hammock, but one that I had a villager hand make for him while I lived in Guyana for a year.) I was livid. If someone was starving—stealing food was one thing, but I could just imagine the hoodlum’s feet crossed, licking a creamsicle, while he swung in his trophy hammock.

I put a police report on it. Not because I expected it to be actually found, but because I had to do something. I am sure the police probably passed on the joke of the stolen hammock in the patrol cars. “Yeah Frank. 10, 4. It’s blue and yellow with a couple of carabineers. Could be dangerous.”

A few weeks later I was walking around our neighborhood getting the stress of an upcoming test out of my head when I stopped short.

There. Hanging in someone’s backyard, still and serene, was the blue and yellow hammock. I called Jesse who quickly appeared at my side. We knocked on the door, and a short blond lady who had obviously experienced a rough life answered, her cigarette bobbing as she talked.

“Whaddya want?”

“Excuse me mam. I believe you have my hammock in your backyard.” Jesse said.

“Your hammock?”

“It was stolen from us a few weeks back.”

She raised a skeptical painted brow at us.

“I put a police report on it.” I added helpfully. (I guess I was a little proud of the fact.)

She walked outside a little more so she could see around the corner to where it hung. Then she started mumbling how her troubled son had “found it in a ditch.”

“It probably blew down from your yard.” She said, shuffling back to the safety of her door. I felt sorry for her. She waved her hand for us to get the hammock back, and Jesse and I didn’t say much as we retrieved it then went back to our studies.

I try to imagine what she might have said to her boy when he came swaggering home from highschool that day, but at least our doorbell remained silent from then on until Jesse sold the house after graduation.

We didn’t take our chances though. The hammock stayed inside. As did the fishing line.

I was reminded of our ghetto living when a CRNA friend where I work was recently fired. New Haven is an Ivy League ghetto. Yale University (and hospital where I work) is surrounded by a mélange of cute restaurants, slums, and mischievous people sick of NYC. It was also listed as number 18 in America’s most dangerous cities this year. That was a relief when considering that occasionally a surgeon will come into work and display his bruised arms from a mugging the night before, or I would hear about a friend’s car tires being slashed…again.

Why was she fired? Because she was overheard in a conversation remarking that Yale was a “ghetto.” The person who unhappily eavesdropped reported her as being a racist. I should mention that my friend fired was white and the other was not. A slanderous letter was written against her to high authorities in the hospital, and she was quickly booted out. (Out of the “ghetto” I should add in spite.) Her career affected by a trouble-making eavesdropper.

What can we say on such a touchy subject? An injustice is an injustice, and my friend being fired was obviously wrong. Why should race even be factored into it? I felt my old memories of our neighborhood creeping up again when she told me why she was leaving. Could we do something? Can we change the world? I want to try.

But first I’d like to make a police report on a stolen job.

Yes officer. It happened in the “ghetto.”

Cravings of an ex-canyoner

I'm not a pothead, but I really wouldn't mind the smell at this moment wafting from the next seat over. I need the campfire sending out sparks in the canyon, my legs tucked under me as I listen to the guitar, and a sky spread out over all the earth. Nothing exists but enjoying the moment, tired arms from the river, a full belly, and my negative 20 degree sleeping bag. What's important right now? I don't care about money, about a clean bed, or even nice clothes. I crave the feeling of peace that settles over a tired body from an adventure well-lived. I am disappointed right now in mankind, about some current stresses, but what would hurt even more is if mankind was disappointed in me. Now please pass some campfire and let me live and live to the fullest.

Ham girl - KF7MOY

I called my brother as I drove. I could see swirls of yellow in my rearview mirror being kicked up and fluttering madly. It felt like my stomach.

“If you never hear from me again, I was on my way to take my test in Milford. Look on the ARRL website for the contact.”

I was following a big black truck. “The biggest truck you’ve ever seen,” the man on the phone had told me, and he was correct. We wound through small leaf-strewn roads and turned off onto an even more deserted one. The test site had been changed. How convenient for them that I was small and my body easy to dispose of. The gravel road seemed never ending.

“Here it is. My last day on earth.”

We drove past abandoned warehouses, and I wondered if I should make another phone call. Jesse was kind of sick, and perhaps he wouldn’t remember my last call. Who was the man in the big black truck? What kind of gun was he carrying? Finally the road curved at the top of the hill, and I saw the towers. My whole body sighed in relief.

His door opened, and a small gray head popped out. Veteran Ham operator.

Four more veterans, one with a limp, and one with a cane greeted me as I walked in the small shack. Their local Ham club was filled with the hums of radio and distant clicks of CW transmission or Morse code. (I learned later that the site used to be NIKE missile site thus the scary seclusive feeling.)

Pencil down and test complete. They seemed a little amazed that I even wanted to take the test much less finish/pass it, but all congratulated me with big smiles and pats on the back as I walked back out of the shack. And I walked out very much alive I must add. ;-) Thanks KB1CBD!

WALDEN

Sunlight poured through the cracked and colored leaves. It was a clear day—bright with only visions of shadows. A simple day—one that Thoreau would have raised his bushy brows, sighed, then hunched his shoulders forward in inspired determination. Then…as the pen scratched, the chipmunks chirp, and the lake is highlighted by the autumn light, a semi-truck blasts his horn.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” Thoreau’s idea in 1845 of simplicity still hovers at Walden Pond. The idea sits pristine, glimmering across the lake. Unattainable. Perhaps he himself never fully grasped simplicity. Is being a hermit a couple miles from home simplifying? It’s different for everyone. He had his mom’s pies every week in any case. That’s enough for me to enjoy the simple life. Yum. Today, roads cut through Thoreau’s forest and dozens of swim caps bob through the sparkling water—but in 1845 the world was different.

I want to simplify my life. But how? Automated billpay? Life seems to be easier in our age. Women can vote now. We can buy groceries, drive, fly, and take a weekend in Venice if wanted. But I still need the reminder to live. Live simply and completely. We have choices available that never were there in 1845. Too many choices? Never. But I will slim down my options to just apple pie please. Thanks mom.

Thoreau’s 1845
• The rubberband is invented in England
• Edgar Allan P0e wrote the Raven
• Anesthesia is used in childbirth for the first time
• Alexander III of Russia was born
• Andrew Jackson died

The Headscarf

Mark Twain said, “Clothes make the man.”

But what do headscarves make a woman?

Headscarves. Known as a wimple in English history, babushka (grandma) in Russia, hijab in Arabic.

Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani is scheduled to receive 99 lashes by the Iranian government for being shown in a photo without covering her hair. The widow is to be lashed, her skin marred and broken because of man’s laws. How can showing your tresses be against the law and deserving this kind of treatment? How can we as humans let such an inhumane thing happen? Showing your hair shouldn’t be meant as something sinister, something indecent or corrupt? How could it be?

“The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.” Mark Twain.

Now what should we demand of society?

The Merchant Woman
Tinged with sunlight
Sweeping down the back
In youthful glory
Plastered to the cheek
In rain or tears
Now laced with silver
Streaked with memories
Of fingers tangled in love
Long ago…
The black scarf untied
And purposefully left
Wisdom finally uncovered
As woman leaves
Shutting the door behind
And entering man’s world

By Becky Jarnes

New Hampshire with the Pettengills

Since I spend most of the weekdays surrounded by the white walls (sometimes splattered with red) of the operating room...by the time the weekend comes—I am almost always experiencing an intense hunger for anything outdoors. I think in another life I would have been perfectly happy as a tree gnome.

Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native, once wrote: "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

We wound through small pudgy mountains—covered with granite, maple, and pine, past the "Old Man of the Mountain" who used look out across the Appalachia until his forehead cracked in 2003...(Jennifer and I reminisced on our Winnekeag days when we saw him square-jawed and solid), while I daydreamed about a few faceless mountain men. Finally, after several hours of fighting the rivulets of cars all heading to the White mountains of New Hampshire, we made it to the trail head. "Nancy Pond trailhead..."

Matt had done his research on the original "Nancy."
In 1778, a Nancy Burton, scraped and saved money preparing on a bright future with her fiance. She came home one day to find that her lover stole her entire savings. On a cold blustery and winter night she took off after him...following his tracks through the dense wooded and snow covered mountains. She never got her revenge (or her money back). They found her frozen body the next morning. As we hiked her trail I could just imagine her stiff white face, and ice-covered hand outstretched to her lover. I could almost hear her wailing in misery when the wind rocked my tent. Poor Nancy.

The White Mountains were beautiful. The 10-mile hike torturous. We saw moose tracks, and Calissa left trails of Cheerios for the bear to follow. (It was her first backpacking trip for the almost two year-old.) We ended up camping by a serene lake framed by a beaver dam, and just got our tents up before the rain poured down. I unloaded the chinamen that were in my pack and melted happily into the pine needles.

We started the trek back down the mountain under a calming drizzle the next day, elbowed our way through hours of traffic back home again, and made plans to do it again the next month. Perhaps we won’t pack quite so much food next time. Although I must say that the haystacks were awesome...

Ode to Nancy:

If you're a male with pockets deep
Gone out to camp in the woods all alone
And hear a sound that makes you weep
Like a wheezy, half-frozen kind of groan.

Don't be alarmed if you wake to find
Your money's gone, somehow disappeared
And an icy hand creeps up your spine
A hoarse whisper close to your ear...

"I'll get you Jim. You thieving swine
In this life or the other.
Now warm my feet in that bag of yours
Or I'll send you home to mother."

Tree of Knowledge

“Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.” James Fennimore Cooper.

I remember reading Cooper in gradeschool—fondly stumbling through pages solely describing a tree in The Last of the Mohicans. For some reason I remembered that tonight as I watched the leaves rustle. A pale brown body sunk deep into its home, spreading wide its arms into the night, and the green flapping in a warm sea breeze. The tree was beautiful. But that’s not what made me pause. It was as if I had come to terms with a part of myself.

I felt the ancient pull and connection to the woman known as Eve. Books. Knowledge. Whether she really existed or not, I would have picked from the tree also. (The ancient Egyptians also had a story from long ago bearing a sacred tree and serpent, but the story didn’t stop there.) Knowledge that was forbidden or a life of ignorance…How ironic. What choice would I have?

I have discovered an expanse of wilderness that extends for miles, and before I rest—I will have discovered all of it.

Visiting home in John Day, OR

Their tall shadowy forms loomed up in the moonlight like silvery green ghosts. And when I stepped outside to open the gate, the smell of juniper hit me like a wad of sour socks. The incessant crickets poured out their soul to the night, and I looked around recalling a vague recognition of nostalgia. It wasn’t where I grew up, but I could be fond of this place.

As we unloaded the suitcases, dad pointed out what appeared to be a hummingbird, flapping its wings over a shadowed flower. “It’s a moth, but see it’s long beak.” Strange how beautiful the insect was, and I looked down and saw a bleak white antler spread out over the garden. Beautiful in its stillness, and pitiful—collecting the moon’s rays in a primitive sort of sigh.