The Human Cancer

For some indefinite time (it probably gurgled up during my undergraduate years, when such metaphysical ideas tend to gurgle up, adolescent, often with the aid of various medications, legal and otherwise) I’ve had the notion that the human species is a cancer on the earth, destructively eating away the planet, at least metaphorically if not actually. But as I grow nearer to my end, I suspect more and more that it may not be either adolescent or metaphoric, that the escalating climate degradation, carbon emissions in the atmosphere, proliferation of pesticides into the soil and streams, spread of floating garbage (pelagic plastic) throughout the oceans, and mountains of toxic trash that ring the planet – all of this detritus of human civilization is but Nature’s dark side, the proliferation of a cancerous species whose purpose is to procreate exponentially, waste, and finally wipe the globe clean. It doesn’t matter to me or my generation, or any other – except the last one, the final generational pustule that dies with the planet, viral but innocent, infected by those of us who preceded, left to wither, waste, only to wonder why.

Dropping Dollar

We’re going to Spain in two weeks, Barcelona more specifically. And that means that the dollar has been falling steadily against the euro since we made our reservations. This is to be expected; whenever we go to abroad, the dollar drops, particularly against whatever the currency of the country where we’re going. Having something of a masochistic streak in me, at least when it comes to travel, I’ve been checking the exchange rate regularly, sometimes daily, since we booked our flight in December. There was a period in December and January where it held fairly steady around $1.32=€1.00, and even dropped to $1.29=€1.00 for a day or two in February. But then it started to drop again, and now is sitting at $1.48=€1.00, 11% below the December rate, a three-year low, and, according to this article, “is expected to decline for the a sixth straight week in the coming sessions on expectations the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates low while the European Central bank raises them.” I don’t have any idea what this means beyond the phrase “expected to decline.” But then I don’t think anyone – you, me, the Federal Reserve, or the European Central bank – understands economics, macro or micro. In the end, it’s all sleight of hand by I-don’t-know-who, if not just plain voodoo. What I do know is that our trip to Barcelona is going to cost us at least 11% more than when we booked it.

Donald Trump, Clown Candidate

Probably the most humorous sidebar to today’s release of Obama’s “official long-form birth certificate” (although there are many) was Brian Williams’s introduction to the story this evening on the NBC Nightly News, when he misread the prompter and referred to Obama’s birth certificate as a “Gift Certificate.” But then there is also the idiot billionaire candidate clown Donald Trump who stepped off his helicopter in New Hampshire and claimed credit for the release of the certificate (finally!) – "Today I am very proud of myself because I have accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish" – before adding, “Now, we have to look at it, we have to see, is it real” – and then stepping into a new goofy conspiracy theory about Obama’s education – "How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" he asked the Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records." He continued darkly, "There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president." There certainly aren’t many questions unanswered about The Donald. He’s a publicity whore who will say or do anything to get attention from a more than willing pimp media. But the saddest side of this tale is how many people still buy into this bile (one is one too many), diverting the debate in this country from what we should be talking about (three wars, a recession, record joblessness, debt and deficit?) and to a quest for face-time on the cable news networks. If the Book of Revelation were to be written today, it would have to include at least a few verses devoted to the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse, Fox News.

Death of the Typewriter

My first typewriter, back in the late 1960s, was a manual Smith-Corona. A couple of years later I graduated to an electric Smith-Corona. And in graduate school, because my mother worked at a university and was able to arrange it, I ended up with what for then was a top-of-the-line IBM Selectric. When I went to teach in Germany for a year in 1981, I bought a portable Olympia, with an umlaut key, and I kept that machine until I got my first computer contraption (and that’s what it was, weirdly connected through a phone to a mainframe down on campus where I would go in the middle of the night to pick up print-outs). But the last typewriter factory, Godrej and Boyce, has closed and there won’t be any more typewriters in the near future except as museum pieces. I have no regret for the death of typewriters. While there was a certain tactile pleasure in pounding out a text on a typewriter, especially a manual model, the speed and ease of a digital machine (as typed out in this post) is so much more gratifying. Nostalgia only goes so far – and not all that far.

November in April

A cold rain and wind this morning on my walk. 36° (“feels like 28°”). I adjust my route to avoid the northeast wind as best I can. The tulips, opened over the weekend, are closed again, confused. North of here there is sleet and snow, roads are slick (“travel not advised”), the schools are closing this afternoon. My plan tomorrow was to drive to Des Moines for a noon Iowa Cubs game, but the forecast, which was for 60° and sunny two days ago, is now cloudy, 50°, and windy (and that 50° will no doubt happen in the mid-afternoon if it happens at all); the plan will probably not hold up. I hung the snow shovel in the garage yesterday. But I still haven’t drained the gas from the snow blower. You can’t be too wary in April in Iowa.

My Mammogram

I’m not sure what the first sign was that I am not the typical patient at the Mercy Hospital Breast Imaging Center. Maybe it was the three women sitting in the waiting room with me, trying not to be conspicuous in their glancing up to figure out just why I might be there. Maybe it was the available choice of magazines – People, Better Homes and Garden, Redbook (that’s it). Maybe it was the registration sheet, with questions such as “Was your previous mammogram done at this clinic?” or “Have you had any bloody discharge from your breast?” or “Are you pregnant?,” or the line drawing at the bottom of the sheet of a torso of a particularly well-endowed woman where I was supposed to indicate where exactly the lump on my breast was? It was definitely by the time the clinician, almost giddy with anticipation, told me that she would have to take several images of both of my breasts because “we don’t get very many men” and so needed some comparative shots. I’d like to think that she was looking forward to feeling me up, albeit it in a quite professional way (though it’s not likely, given I’m old enough to be at least her father, plus our flirting was limited to talk of mowing the lawn, planting the garden, and the chance of rain).

The procedure itself turned out to be thankfully simple and painless. I’d been led to believe that it sometimes is more painful for males than females, but I had no pain at all, the only discomfort being the contortions required to maneuver my tiny man breasts into the optimum view of the machine. And I was surprised to get the results of the pictures soon after the shoot, and relieved that the results were good – only a benign growth (according to the images), perhaps an indication that I’m becoming a woman in my old age (or at least that was how I took whatever it was the doctor was saying). I’m still supposed to go to my appointment with the surgeon next week, if only to get his opinion about what to do about the lump (and its tenderness) – forget about it, monitor it, biopsy it, or just cut it out and be done with it. Whatever. I’m just glad I don’t have to go on some daytime talk show as a breast cancer survivor.