Today is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, January 15, 2024.
It’s sunny and cold outside. The dogs are pining for a walk. At least I think they are; I’m not sure.
I’m experimenting with Apple Journal in the hope that I can get motivated to write again. This is a different blogging/journaling experience than what I’ve used in the past. I’m going to try it out and see how it works for me. I also have Jetpack, the WordPress blogging extension, loaded on both my phone and my iPad. It’s a decent environment but I found I was getting too many notifications from it. I didn’t like that. Maybe this will be different.
I started wearing hearing aids at the end of November – about 6 weeks ago. I’m a little overwhelmed still, but my ability to hear is much better than it was. Sometimes I have to simply turn them off because there’s so much more sound. At some point I’m sure I won’t even know they’re in my ears, but that’s not happening now.
Maybe this isn’t a bad way to write. There are other tools on this journal app, including voice transcription. We’ll see how that works at some point. It’s only taken me less than a year to get to this again; maybe I can be more consistent. Let’s hope so. And I will try to continue to copy them over on to here as I move forward.
I think there are a number of things that make someone unique. Probably the most common is personality. Everybody, no matter who they are, has quirks. Some are more pronounced than others, and some are either endearing or despicable, with a lot of variation in between.
Life experience is another thing that contributes to an individual’s uniqueness. Depending on who the person is, it’s likely that there is a fair amount of stuff in their background to give them the range of tonal color to their world view as well as their person. In my own experience, I have had the privilege of knowing a number of people from different backgrounds throughout my life. Some I am close friends with. Others I simply can’t stand. Most are people I am acquainted with and know socially, and some of these people I am in awe of.
An example of one of those in this last category I mentioned is a gentleman I was exposed to when I was a young Marine recruit over 40 years ago. This individual commanded the training battalion I was assigned to. He earned the Medal of Honor for actions he took to deal with the aftermath of an ambush on the rifle company he was attached to. The company commander was killed, as was the radio operator, and he did what was necessary to both protect his Marines and encourage them to repel the ambush. I read the citation, and what he did was extraordinary.
Since then I encountered him once, probably 15 years ago. He was the featured speaker at an event at his Alma Mater, and I was in the audience. I had an opportunity to speak with him during the event, and he was very gracious. Well-spoken, clearly sharp, and down to earth. I was surprised at the last of those traits, but it was a pleasant surprise. And I shouldn’t have been surprised at that; after all, he is a Marine, and I don’t know any Marines who aren’t earthy in their speech.
I expect throughout the rest of my life to encounter all sorts of different people. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the way it should be.
A tough question to answer because there are things I would prefer doing on any given day.
Two hobbies I have that I don’t get to do enough of are, to most people, a bit unusual. One of them is working with software defined radios, mainly to use them as receivers for a couple of different applications. One is tracking aircraft traffic at our local regional airport. The other is as a shortwave and HAM radio receiver. As it turns out, with some of the weird New England weather we’ve had my mast took damage. Enough, in fact, that I’m planning to replace the existing mast with a J-style so that I can attach and secure the four antennas that I am currently using. I’m also considering moving everything I have set up to a slightly different location in my house to optimize reception. We’ll see if that works.
The other is music. I am a vocal performer with an area choral organization near where I live. I’m also a long-standing trumpet player. I’ve been playing off and on since I was a kid, and for a while as a young man I was a professional musician. I still love it, but I don’t get to play nearly as often as I’d like (or as I should). I own two B-flat trumpets, both excellent instruments, neither used as often as they could or should be. Maybe I can work on that.
One thing that isn’t really a hobby but is an important chore is yard work. Because the house my wife and I own is part of a homeowner’s association (HOA), we pay for certain services, like trash collection, snow removal, and landscaping. However, we will not allow landscapers to work on our back yard because of our dogs and the amount of time they spend back there. We don’t want them to get hurt in the event they were to ingest fertilizer, so we take care of the back ourselves, for the most part. The only things we won’t do are to remove leaves in the fall and mulch the property line in the spring. That said, it’s coming into the time of year to do outdoor spring cleaning. That will be happening soon.
This is where I am. It is a thought-provoking question, and I’m sure I will continue to find activities that I wish I could do more often. Maybe I’ll write about those as well.
Technically, it’s one book that I recently read. Not an especially long read, but a hard one in many ways.
The title, Where You’ll Find Me, published in 2015, is an account of the rescue attempt of a hiker named Kate Matrasova, a New York City-based hiker who was attempting to traverse five peaks in New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. By all accounts, she was a physically fit, experienced hiker who had been to a number of different places worldwide where the hiking challenges were brutal.
Unfortunately, her talent and experience didn’t account for the challenge of these mountains. The Presidential Range is notorious not necessarily because of the climbing (New Hampshire is the home 48 mountains where the summits are 4,000 feet high at a minimum) but because of the weather. One of the mountains in the middle of the range is Mount Washington. At a height of 6,288 feet it is the tallest mountain in the northeastern United States. While it is not near the height of Mount Rainier or McKinley (Denali), it has some of the fiercest weather world-wide. High winds and cold temperatures are not unheard of in summer, and a regular occurrence in winter.
Her hike was intended to be a fourteen hour trek. She had researched the route, the weather conditions, and what she would need for gear. She also had selected six bailout locations where she could get below the tree line if she got into trouble. The distance wasn’t exceptionally long, but the weather conditions would turn out to be a factor in her failure, and ultimately, her death off of the Star Lake Trail on Mount Adams.
Ty Gagne, the author of this memoir, did a really good job of recounting the efforts of the rescuers as well as following what was believed to be her hiking route to where she ended up off of the trail, exposed to the weather, unable to make her way to the tree line. He described the process of hypothermia, from mild to severe, and how it affects the human body. He also recounted what was found near her, and what was not, including food, frozen water bottles, and the communications equipment she brought with her.
It is a really good study about risk, and the decisions people make under potentially arduous conditions. And it is well-written; Gagne does a noteworthy job with his narrative. Probably the hardest part of the memoir is reading the account, rooting for her, and knowing what the result will be. That was like a gut punch.
With that said, I would high recommend it just the same. As I write this post, I am listening to it again as an audiobook. I fully expect to pick some of what I likely missed in my initial reading.
This is something I don’t do especially well, especially lately for some reason. Part of the reason has to do with the workload; there is a lot happening with my full-time employer, in terms of events and operational stuff. In addition, I have a couple of side gigs that I am pretty busy with also.
The other reason is that I deal Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, better known as ADHD. That affects how I function. Medication helps, but not always.
I shouldn’t be this busy; I’m an old guy. But it’s keeping my reasonably young, so I shouldn’t complain.
Yesterday I sat in remotely on a meeting of the operations staff where I work. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to participate directly unless there is a need for me to contribute. Most of what is discussed are upcoming events over a two week period. Nothing that is earth-shattering, but it is good to know what is happening in our areas of responsibility.
As I said, I have multiple employers. My main employer, where I work full-time, is a state agency that is responsible for the EMS and trauma systems in the state where I live. My two part-time jobs are with an organization that provides EMS education services, and the other is privately owned ambulance company that has municipal contracts in the Merrimack Valley area of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Juggling those can be hard sometimes, but I like all of the places where I work, and I’m able to make a reasonably decent living.
In any case, it’s time for me to go back to stumbling through multiple work items. It has taken me two days to write this post, but at least I got through it in the midst of working on other things.
Maybe I can multitask after all. I’ll have to try this again on another day.
It has been a long time since I’ve done any writing to speak of. Years, in fact. I think part of the reason is that I simply wasn’t inspired to do any, for quite a while. Not writing, I think, was a mistake; there has been quite a bit of water that has flowed over the proverbial dam over the past few years. For whatever reason, my creative juices have started to flow again, and I’ve decided to pick this back up.
I think one of the things that caused this – and it was actually a little bit strange when this happened, but I don’t question things I have no control over – was that I inadvertently opened the WordPress app on my smartphone and was prompted to transition to JetPack. For grins, I did. When I opened it up I discovered it has a lot of really good features; more than the original WordPress app. My initial post using this app was done on my phone, and I decided to download it onto my iPad as well. Since I have a Bluetooth keyboard, I find it is easier to work on this (what I’m working on as I write now) than the phone, and I can actually type faster. So this post is coming courtesy of a larger screen and a quasi-mechanical keyboard.
One thing to mention is that my wife and I are traveling, so this is a partial travelogue post, among other things. We were invited to the wedding of a family member – our nephew – who lives in central California. I am actually writing this post from the Hotel Del Monte, located on the campus of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. I had never been here, but I’m glad we came. The hotel itself has a rich history; it has been moved a couple of times to where it is now, and the current building has had to be rebuilt from the ground up twice. It is a beautiful setting, and the campus is both much smaller than I initially expected, and it is a typical military installation in that it follows protocols I know from when I served in the Marine Corps. That, at least, was some familiarity that I found some comfort in.
We are staying in a room which is actually a small suite. It consists of a bedroom, a kitchenette, a sitting area, and a bathroom which is actually in two parts. The toilet and bathtub/shower are in their own little room and the bathroom sink in a space outside of this little room. The kitchenette is surprisingly outfitted really well. It includes a sink, a refrigerator, two burner induction stove, and a bunch of kitchen cabinets. There is one large closet and four small ones, which I can’t quite figure out. And there are two ceiling fans, one in the bedroom and one in the sitting area. Plus two television sets, which I find a little mind-blowing. All in all, it’s really quite nice. In terms of space, it is almost as big as the second floor of my house.
As I look out the window, I am overlooking a couple of small buildings which I suspect are maintenance buildings, but I don’t know this. One consistent thing I have noticed about California every time I’ve been out here is the terra cotta roofing. It is not nearly as common in the Northeast; most of the roofing back home is either metal or asphalt shingles. I imagine both are effective enough if they’re compared to each other. But I think it is really a situation of where utility is in the eye of the beholder.
Well – this is the second post I’ve written today. I’m actually reasonably surprised that I’ve been able to do this, and I’m pleased with myself. One of the things this application allows is to set prompts as to when to post. I have set a three day per week prompt, and I’ll have to see if I can maintain doing that. Hopefully I can. Another thing: this app asks a question daily, and depending on where I am for head space, I may try to answer. We’ll see.
The short answer is “yes – I do enjoy my job.” And the follow up question is usually “why?” In my case, it’s pretty easy to answer that.
I actually work in multiple places, all of which are related to Emergency Medical Services. I’ve had an interesting work life including two different careers prior to EMS. The first was service in the United States Marine Corps, as an infantry Marine and as a musician, and the second was in the technology sector, primarily doing computer hardware integration, writing software, and implementing data and voice communication networks. Working as an EMS provider turned out to be what I was called to do, however. And I have never looked back, although skills I’ve picked up in my past lives have come in handy from time to time.
My full-time “day job” is managing and supporting New Hampshire’s statewide trauma system. There are 26 acute care hospitals located in New Hampshire. Of those, 11 of them are designated as hospitals situated to provide care to trauma patients. Technically, every acute care hospital has the ability to provide stabilizing care and transfer to a hospital with more resources and the ability to provide definitive care to these patients. My job is to support these hospitals, whether or not they participate actively as a member of the trauma system.
I enjoy this for a simple reason: the work I do keeps the system functioning properly, which is ultimately in the best interests of these patients. Plus I get to collaborate with people smarter than me, and most of the time I get to learn from them.
My other two gigs, also related to EMS, involve teaching and actually practicing medicine. The teaching job is one I’ve done for a number of years – at this point I believe I’m in my fourteenth year. I am a credentialed instructor for the American Heart Association and I teach a number of their courses. I also am a skills evaluator for the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. This gives me the opportunity to evaluate people who have gone through the process of being trained to work as Advanced Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics to ensure they are competent. There is also a written examination in addition to the practical skills testing they undergo. Both are important. In the future, however, this will likely change somewhat. The degree of this, as of now, is not clear.
Finally, I still work on the road as a Paramedic at 60 years of age. I have been doing this for a total of nearly 30 years at every level of licensure with the majority of that time – approximately 18 years – as a Paramedic. This is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. We see patients who are sometimes in a situation they never expect to find themselves in. More often than not, it is not nearly as bad as it could be, but from time to time it is potentially devastating. Our job is to provide appropriate medical care and transport to a hospital where proper definitive care can be administered. The overwhelming majority I have worked with throughout my career have endeavored to do this, and I have been both awed and humbled by them, plus I’ve learned a lot, which I am grateful for. This is probably the most important thing about our work, and there is a legitimate reason why medicine is “practiced”; every situation is different, and what could be considered appropriate care in one may be totally wrong in another. It helps to keep this in mind.
To update from the last post I put up, we let Weezy go on May 22. The veterinarian who took care of her actually came out to our house, and she was absolutely wonderful. Weezy went peacefully, and my wife was with her at the time. To be honest, I’m not sure I could have handled having to witness her being put to sleep. It was difficult for me to leave to go to work that morning.
I miss her very much.
Two weeks later, however, we were made aware of a puppy who had been given up to a shelter in Alabama or Tennessee; I’m not certain which state. She is a Boxer/German Shepherd cross, and her name given to us was Dolores. We brought her home on Sunday, June 6. And she is a beautiful creature.
Who the hell names their dog Dolores?
We changed that name immediately. Weezy’s full name was Louise Lily, which was on all of her paperwork. To honor Weezy’s memory, we changed her name to Lily.
She is a very sweet creature. And she is terminally ill. She has been with my wife and me for almost 6 years. We rescued her when she was not quite 2 years of age. She’d been a street dog in the Atlanta, Georgia area, she’s had puppies, and she’d been shot. But she found a home with us.
When she was healthy she was a loving, happy, mischievous girl. She seemed to know whenever I was having a bad day because she would always snuggle with me without ever having to ask or be invited. And she was always welcome to do that. And she could eat. She loved her food. Ours too. She loved beef jerky, cheeseburgers, and bacon. She also loved Pepperidge Farm Goldfish even though she wasn’t supposed to eat them.
She loved my grandchildren. They loved her, too, especially Peyton, my oldest granddaughter. They had a wonderful bond. It was always heartwarming to see them together. She loved Callie and Harley, the little ones, just as much. They were sometimes a little busy for her, though. But she loved them just the same. She never got to meet Elliot, my grandson. But I have no doubt she would have loved him too.
About a month ago we noticed that she wasn’t herself. We thought she had a urinary tract infection so we got her evaluated. Sure enough, she did have one. So she was treated with antibiotics. We thought she might have started to get better, but she didn’t. She became more lethargic and she drastically decreased her food intake. It was alarming. So we brought her back to the vet to be evaluated again. They ran more blood work and discovered her white blood cell count was double what it should be. She also had imaging of her abdomen; what the findings showed were ominous.
Tumors and nodules were found on her liver and spleen with more suspected on her lungs. We were asked if we wanted to do further testing for more information, but we know it won’t matter. The involvement is much too extensive.
Over the past three days we’ve noticed that she is much weaker than she was even a week ago. She is drinking lots of water but not eating to speak of. Mentally she is still quite alert, but her body can’t keep up. And she knows something significant is wrong. The pleading look she sometimes gives simply breaks my heart.
We have decided her to make har as comfortable as possible. We will give her all the love and care she’ll allow and accept from us. Soon she will be put to sleep. It is merciful to do this sooner than later as we don’t want her to suffer more than she already has. But we will make the end of her journey as peaceful and as comfortable as possible.
I have a dog. She will be gone soon, but her presence will never leave me. I believe that with my whole heart. And I will always love her.
Kind of a weird title, no? I promise this will become clear as you read this post.
As I write this we are in the middle of a pandemic. There isn’t a lot to do because there is a mildly enforced stay-at-home order in place in New Hampshire. It doesn’t say you can’t go to work or get exercise, but you have to try to keep your distance from others. The virus that is the subject of this pandemic is a nasty creature. But I’m not going to talk about that in this post. Maybe another day.
My Walking Companion
I took Weezy for a walk this morning. We went almost three miles total, and it was a bit unusual. For those of you familiar with Manchester’s landmarks, one of the routes we take puts us past the Derryfield Country Club as well as Station 10 of the Manchester Fire Department. We usually turn around on the campus of Trinity High School then head back home. This morning was a little different.
The Derryfield. Nice place to eat, drink, and if you’re so inclined, play 18 holes of golf. Just not now
We did indeed go past the Derryfield. And it was strange; because of what is going on right now with the problems related to COVID-19 (aka the Coronavirus for anyone reading this who has been in hiding) there wasn’t much activity. I spotted maybe five people out walking and there weren’t many cars out on the road. One person and I spoke from across the road from each other remarking that we were both having difficulty adjusting to how there wasn’t much going on.
So our route took us down past the north side of the golf course onto Old Wellington Road, a residential street that is really well-hidden from the beaten path. I think between our house and turning off of the main street I saw ten vehicles at most. It was a small number, to be sure, and there simply was minimal traffic.
Once we got to the end of Old Wellington Road we ended up on the extended portion of Bridge Street, one of the main streets in the city. This end of Bridge Street is not terribly busy under normal circumstances because of its location, but on a Sunday morning in the midst of a pandemic there is even less traffic out now. It also runs along the back side of the Derryfield’s golf course on one side. Directly across the street is a monastery.
The monastery from the golf courseThe main entrance. Note the red letteringThe chapel. One of the things to notice is the coloring of the brick. This seems to be a consistent color for institutional houses of religion
This is the Monastery of the Precious Blood. It is a community of nuns whose purpose is contemplative in nature. They are cloistered, which means they don’t have an apostolate or a mission of any sort. I don’t know if they have a constitution which they follow, and if they do I don’t know if it is based on a rule for monasteries like that of St. Benedict of Nursia or St. Augustine of Hippo. At one time I had the pleasure of transporting one of these nuns back here when they were discharged from one of the Manchester hospitals. They always travel in pairs (in this case the nun in question was accompanied by two instead of just one), and something that I was pleasantly surprised at was how this ill, elderly nun – this was over ten years ago and as I recall she was around eighty years of age – managed to both have a sense of humor and be, for lack of a better word, flirtatious. All three of them, in fact, showed just how human they were in the eyes of God.
I was honored to have been able to help them at that time. It is an illustration of the point that each of us is here and at different places at different times for different purposes. That was one of those times for me.
But – I digress….
We were walking on the golf course side of the street across from the front of the monastery. There are normally visitors to the chapel, mostly to spend time in prayer. Not today, and I would imagine not for a while prior to today. Being the nosy sort that I am I figured I’d go across the street just to look; I could see the sign affixed to the door, and when I got to the door I took the photo posted below explaining why there were no cars parked on the premises.
This was on the front door of the chapel.
As I read this, I thought to myself that even God is fighting the virus. I imagine the conditions they have laid out in the notice I saw on the door will change when life returns to something close to normal. Just not now.
While we were there a Fed-Ex truck pulled onto the property and pulled right back off. I don’t know if he had a delivery for the monastery or if the driver was just turning his vehicle around. I thought it was actually rather strange.
I turned us around and was going to cross the street as I figured it would be a good excuse to do something I’d never gotten to do before: walk across this particular golf course. As we were getting ready to cross the street something struck me as extremely odd. Not a quarter mile away from this monastery is another community of Roman Catholic religious women. Their buildings are not made of the same sand-colored bricks; theirs are considerably more traditional.
Right next to the golf courseTaken from the far side of the golf course on the monastery propertyThe left front of the buildingTheir logo
These photos are of the Provincial House for the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary in New Hampshire. Their property is a combination convent, administration center, and skilled nursing facility for members of their order. They also conduct Rivier University in Nashua, approximately 20 miles south of Manchester. I actually used to work for this order at one time; I managed the computer networks at Rivier for a short time, less than a year. Nice people to work for but they were notorious for being fiscally frugal. In fact, they could make a nickel scream if they squeezed it hard enough, which they often did.
Anyway, I thought it was ironic that two communities of religious women had property on either side of a golf course. That had never occurred to me before. Maybe it should have. Just the same, it was one of those things that nearly blew me out of my shoes.
Once I was able to get that out of my head, Weezy and I made our way onto the golf course cart path. After all, I figured that nobody would be out; there is an order in place closing golf courses, at least for now. They will open again soon, and I probably wouldn’t get another opportunity to walk on the course so freely.
Across from the monastery on the golf course. Note the Puritan Backroom sponsorshipPretty little golf carts all in a rowNever expected to see this on a golf courseSomewhere on the back nineRight across the path from the sisters’ residence. As I said, the irony is not lost on meThe road less traveled. At least today it was
Once Weezy and I were on the golf course property we followed along the golf cart path. It was a nice walk, both up and down hills. And it was a challenge to get Weezy not to drink from the puddles; the last thing I need is to deal with a dog who contracted Giardia from bad water. One of the things I notices is that the greens are saturated. Once they are able to open them again I suspect there will be a lot of work trying to get them ready for people to play on.
Think about what I said, though. Where else could you see two religious houses sandwiching a golf course? In Manchester, of course.
All together, Weezy and I walked almost three miles. She is now crashed on the couch and I have to go to work. Hopefully my musings aren’t totally off the wall. But what else do I have to do in the time of a pandemic?
Qui Interrogat 