Rolling On One

At my physical therapy session this afternoon, the therapist hooked the electrical stimulation machine (or maybe it’s that he hooked up two machines) up to both my shoulder and my wrist. I could feel the series of small shocks to the shoulder. I couldn’t feel any shocks to my wrist, but my pointer finger started moving all by itself — I mean, without my trying to move it. Of course I know it was moving because that’s the whole idea of the electrical stimulation, but it looked and felt very strange.

I stopped at CVS on my way to work (for some fluoride tooth rinse that my dental hygienist had recommended) and heard a song that once had a real impact on me, _Fast Car_ by Tracy Chapman.

Twenty years ago, in the fall of 1988 to be exact, I was thinking that it was really time to leave the company I had been working for for nine years. I didn’t really like what I was doing there at the time, wasn’t working on any significant project, and thought that if there were a layoff anytime soon I’d be one of the people to be let go. But there’s always a lot of inertia about leaving a familiar situation. That song came along, with the line, “We’ve got to make a decision, leave tonight or live and die this way.” I won’t say that made up my mind, but it sure did speak to me. I did leave that job, and I remember one of the happiest moments of that part of my life was when I picked up myf resumes at the print shop.

I may not have posted about it, but for about a month I’ve been going around with a brace on my left wrist. When I went for my annual physical I described a problem with lack of sensation in my left thumb, pointer, middle finger, and half of ring finger, and tingling in my arm. The doctor said the hand part sounded just like carpal tunnel syndrome but the arm could be coming from my neck. I had started doing some exercises I learned when I had physical therapy three years ago, and the arm problems were getting better. By now I’ve had two more PT appointments and the arm is lots better, but not all better, but the hand is about the same. My primary care physician sent me to the HMO’s hand specialist group. The guy there said he couldn’t tell whether or not it was carpal tunnel syndrome without an EMG, electromyogram, test. I went to Brigham & Women’s Hospital, one of the two biggest Boston hospitals (I think — Mass General is the other) today for the test. The HMO’s own group that does those tests is booked solid for a long time, and this was the best chance to be seen reasonably promptly.

The hospital is huge. There’s a main corridor marked “The Pike”, and the neurology department was at exit 7 on the pike. The exits seem as though they’re numbered like the ones on the Maine Turnpike, that is, by milepost. It turned out that my appointment was not at the neurology department proper, but on a different floor that I could get to via the elevator back at the start of the pike.

They took me after a very short wait. The test was in two parts, first with some pads on my hand and wrist with electrical contacts. It consisted of lots of little shocks. I felt like one of Galvani’s frog’s legs, with my arm bouncing around with each shock. The second part of the test required little needles, maybe like acupuncture needles but I’ve never had acupuncture so I’m not sure, connected to some electrical measuring equipment and an audio amplifier. I could hear clicks as muscle fibers contracted, and lots of clicks, like popcorn when the bag of popcorn really gets going, when I tried to move my hand or fingers at the doctor’s request (a little like arm wrestling against him.)

The upshot is that the test shows that I have a pretty severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Will they refer me to get surgery for it? I’m expecting so. Stay tuned.

Hey ho, although it makes little sense to write on an iPhone screen when there’s a computer with a real keyboard handy, it seemed worth trying!

Working backwards, well, today was a strange day. We woke up at 6 AM in Sparta, New Jersey, at Millie and Joel’s house, had coffee and orange juice, and were on the road at 7:02. We took the back road north from Sparta up to I-84 over the NY line, partly because we like that route anyway and partly because Millie & Joel thought there would be a lot of commuter traffic on I-80 at that hour.

We stopped for a late but big breakfast at the Blue Colony Diner at exit 10 on I-84 in Newtown, Connecticut. We’re not familiar with the place, but we’ll remember it. It reminded Arlene of our favorite cafe in Utah, just for being authentically itself and for having local customers who know the waitresses and talk to them.

Just before Hartford we saw signs “I-84 closed at exit 48. 3 mile backup. Seek alternate route.” We got into the backup, got off at the first exit, and stopped at a gas station when we could. The little girl at the cash register didn’t know how we could get around the traffic, but I saw a van outside with a sign “Deed Transport”, well, probably not that but some “Transport”. Sounded like someone who might know what roads went where, so I looked in. “Do you like DVDs?” said the driver, showing me a carton of possibly bootleg DVDs he had for sale. “No, thanks, I was looking for directions,” I said. “Where you going?” he asked “Boston.” “Phew!” he said. Transport, maybe, but it didn’t sound as though he makes the trip from Hartford to Boston very often. But he did tell me which way to go.

Traffic was crawling through all of Hartford. We gradually got several blocks farther and came to a point where traffic was coming off another freeway exit. Evidently everyone was getting off the highway wherever they could. We passed the Mark Train house, which we’ve seen signs for all the time but never stopped at. We passed a big stone edifice, perhaps inspired by Monticello but lots bigger, that belonged to the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. We headed towards an entrance ramp to I-84 close to the river, but the ramp itself was still blocked by the police. Finally we got onto I-91 north and crossed the river on I-291 towards Manchester. I finally got to work around 2.

Continuing in reverse! On Sunday we had gone to a memorial service for my cousin Irving Wolfe, who had died two weeks earlier a little short of his 96th birthday. We left Millie & Joel’s at 1:15 and got to the Unitarian Society of Rockland County at 2:30. As soon as I had used the men’s room and settled down in a seat a youngish woman came over and asked, “Are you Dean? Evelyn asked me to find you.” So Arlene and I spent 10 minutes talking to Evelyn, and met a woman from Ethiopia who considered Irving her foster father. She had traveled from Belgium to be at the memorial service, and brought 150 copies of a short biography of Irv she had written. We went back to Sparta for supper, evening religious services (which they asked me to lead), and to sleep.
Saturday we had driven from Newton to Sparta and spent the afternoon with Millie, Joel, their kids and grandkids, and two of Joel’s sisters and their partners and the daughter of Joel’s third sister, and Yechiel. They’re basically sitting shiva for Joel’s mother. Pictures to follow.

We had two deaths in the extended family in the last couple of weeks.

First was my mother’s cousin Irving Wolfe, on Jan 31. I have a lot about his 90th birthday party, almost six years ago, on this site somewhere, before it was a blog.

Arlene and I visited Irv and Evelyn once after that party, in the late winter two years ago, I think. Irv was tapping maple trees on their property to make syrup, and showed us a big bird feeder he had recently made, all at the age of 93 (if it was really two, not three, years ago). Irv and Evelyn had moved from their house in Skyview Acres to a retirement community in New Jersey about a week before he died. He got up on Saturday the 24th, had breakfast, and sometime in the morning started shaking. He went to the ER, was in intensive care the next day, and was in hospice on Wednesday. For the good stuff about him, please visit that second link “somewhere”.

The second was Arlene’s sister’s mother-in-law, or if you prefer, Arlene’s brother-in-law’s mother Natalie. She had had heart surgery several weeks ago and never recovered from the complications. Natalie was in her early 80’s. She had been very active until recently, and had booked a cruise in Alaska for next summer. Family from as far as Portland OR had been with her for the last couple of weeks, since it had been evident that she wasn’t going to make it.

That’s Natalie’s husband Yechiel, Natalie, the then-brand new great grandson Jared, Rachael, and grandson David, just about five years ago.

The Bohemian waxwings were back briefly this weekend. We saw a small flock, maybe ten or a dozen of them, in the crabapple late Sunday afternoon. Arlene thought she saw one redpoll, but I didn’t get to see it.

The trip to the lumber yard last Saturday was to get wood to build a stand for the Jet mini lathe I bought at Woodcraft in Portsmouth NH (actually Newington NH, but it’s a suburb of Portsmouth) on our way north the previous day. I pretty much finished the stand this weekend, but the shelves still need to be installed, and the lathe isn’t on it.

I did crank up the lathe and turned one big weed pot (that’s still what I’m calling them) on it. It sure is easier to use than the little worn out lathe I’ve had up to this point. The adjustments are very convenient and smooth. Speed changes are easy (not as easy as the variable speed model, I guess, but easy enough that I don’t yet regret saving the money on that feature) and mostly it feels very solid.

There was a full moon this weekend. Arlene and I went out on snowshoes as far as Sleeping Rhino on Friday night. It was a little too cold to be much fun, about 5 degrees, and we settled for a very short walk. I went out alone on Saturday night just before midnight. It was much warmer, way up in the 20s, and I was pretty comfortable. There were scattered clouds blowing over the moon. The lighting changed from moment to moment with the cloud shadows, but it never got so dark that there was the slightest problem finding the path. We had been all around our trails on snowshoes the previous weekend, there had not been any more snow over the week, and the trail was easier to follow than it is in midday in the summer.

Arlene and I went out to see the new film _Coraline_ last night, at the Oxford Hills cinema. We were the only people in the auditorium for the 9:05 show. The movie is excellent, probably not for kids (except maybe older kids, with plenty of parental guidance) but disturbling. But what I wanted to say was, among the credits is a knitwear designer. The movie is done with puppets, many of which are knitted or have knitted costumes. At one point Coraline is shopping with her mother and asks for a pair of knit gloves (which her meanie mother doesn’t get her). The gloves are really a pair of knit gloves, about the size of your thumbnail! I couldn’t find a direct link to the video about the costume knitter, but here are directions: Go to the movie’s web site linked above, click on the “trailer” board on the signpost to the right of the house in the picture; when you get a choice between “trailer” and “films” click on films, and scroll to the right until you see “miniature knitter.” Amazing!

When we got home from the lumber yard last Saturday, Arlene got out of the car at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox, and I drove up to the garage. Before I got out, I saw several birds flying from the right of the driveway up to a tree beyond the house. They didn’t look like mourning doves, but it wasn’t until more flew back and into the crabapple tree that I figured out what they were. Arlene heard me calling to her, “Hey, how do you tell Bohemian waxwings from cedar waxwings? It’s the cinnamon under tail coverts, isn’t it?

Bohemian waxwings are hard to find in Massachusetts. We saw some weveral years ago in Royalston, in central Mass, far away and only because other birders pointed them out. We got a good look at a flock on a telephone wire in Truro five or six years ago, after driving back and forth on 6A a couple of times trying to find them. Here were 200 of them, chowing down on crabapples in our yard, and they didn’t mind my being there in the least.

Both species of waxwings have the yellow band at the end of the tail, the overall gray color, and the mask. Both eat fruit, and like cherries and crabapples. The Bohemians are a little larger, have the cinnamon color under the tail, and have more pattern on the wings. Cedars have yellow on the belly. We’re pretty sure we picked out one Cedar among the flock.

“BOWA” is the code for BOhemian WAxwing used by bird banders.

When I first heard the term “weblog”, long since shortened to “blog”, I thought the idea was to keep a log of what websites you had been looking at. I still think that’s a reasonable thing to put on your blog. Here’s one: Maine Fish and Wildlife magazine, published by the Maine department of inland fisheries and wildlife.

When I was a kid my family used to get a magazine called something like New York Conservationist, from the corresponding part of the New York State government. Years ago, when we used to go fishing in Horn Pond in Woburn and Flagg’s Pond off route 2 near Lunenberg, Arlene and I used to get Massachusetts Wildlife. (that one doesn’t seem to be online.) A lot of people are opposed to hunting and fishing, but (mostly from reading the New York Conservationist at an impresionable age) I feel strongly that hunters and anglers in general do more to preserve and protect wildlife than people who don’t participate in those activities. It’s the people who hunt and fish who really care about having wildlife out there for the future. It’s the money they give the states for hunting and fishing licenses that funds state wildlife departments so there can be wildlife biologists to keep track of animal and fish populations so that hunting and fishing regulations can change from year to year so that (for example) deer neither disappear nor overrun all the gardens in the state.

All of those magazines, as far as I know, discuss all kinds of fish and animals from their respective state, not just game animals and sport fish. So, anyway, take a look.