Month: February 2020

I searched for advice on the best time for a Type 2 diabetic (blood sugar controlled) to have a slice of chocolate cake. The best answer was to have it in the morning after fasting all night. Made sense to me, although it was past 6 p.m. and I had already devoured a third of the slice. I put the rest in the freezer since I had lab work scheduled in a few days.

My lab work was completed this afternoon and I finished off the slice of cake. I’ll work on getting the timing right. Ask your doctor and do your own research, but I sure did enjoy the cake!

I had a rectal bleeding episode in 2016 and another one in November 2019. A colonoscopy performed on February 4, 2020 confirmed a diagnosis of diverticulosis.

I came across an alarming article about research that showed that calcium channel blockers used for high blood pressure such as amlodipine, which I have been taking, have a direct link to diverticulosis. I haven’t changed anything yet, but I’ll for sure ask my doctor if I could try another medication for blood pressure.

Source:  Imperial College London. “Blood pressure drug linked with increased risk of bowel condition.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 July 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190703121413.htm>.

Brevity in communicating volumes is one of the hardest things to do, and on short poems, the Japanese are masters of the three-line 5/7/5 syllable haiku. The English language version is more forgiving of the usual constraints in the Japanese models which usually reference the seasons or some aspect of nature.

A teacher in a seminar on creativity in the classroom made it so much easier for me to write haiku. She told us to meditate for a few minutes to think of events or memories that came to mind. We folded a sheet of paper in thirds and titled each column Environment (5), Actions (7), and Feelings (5). We jotted notes under each column and came up with a haiku poem. This would be a great exercise for second graders on up and the completed poems displayed on the wall would impress all parents on Back to School Night. My poem:

Teenagers’ Saturday Night Drive

Signs cautioning curves

Passengers singing, laughing

Arms touching, goosebumps

I felt like Chinese today and ordered the items pictured. I had war won ton soup, mushu pork, and honey glazed chicken.

I finished the soup but took most of the food home for at least two more meals. My aging palate and sore throat did not enjoy the meal, but I’ll be back for sure.

Gerrit Truin, November 25, 1910 – May 25 2005

Fond Memories

For over 20 years I often enjoyed coffee with the Truins just two doors away.  We had pleasant and memorable conversations about our personal histories, the news of the day, our families, and our hopes and dreams.

I learned that that Gerrit Truin had many obstacles thrown in his path.  His father was blacklisted from many jobs because he was a union activist.  Young Gerrit was selling newspapers at the age of 6 or 7 and was often the only one in the family working.  He admired his mother who had to raise five boys and marveled at her cleverness.  She would cut a loaf of bread in half horizontally and butter it, then slice it.  Gerrit realized later that she was trying to stretch out the butter that way.  He cried when he said he would have spoiled her if she had not succumbed to cancer at the young age of 57.

His beloved grandfather gave him a saw when he was nine years old and got him interested in carpentry.

Strong in his convictions, when the German army occupied Holland, he joined the resistance movement and harbored Jews.

He brought his family to America in 1947 and found work as a carpenter.  He was apologetic about his Dutch accent, but a friend advised him, “Keep the accent, they like that.”

In his garage which was his workroom, he showed me projects he was working on and taught me the names of different pieces of wood he had on the table.  He showed me paduk, ebony, mahogany, birch, purple heart, walnut, and cherry wood.  He also showed me mitered corners and dovetailed joints.  He demonstrated the way the wood changes color when clear varnish is applied.  He told me that the most important thing in cutting wood is measuring it.  He made beautiful inlaid trays and jewelry boxes for gifts in his later years, and showed me the grandfather clocks he made for his grandchildren.

He created a beautiful dining room cabinet for me with rich stained mahogany, walnut, and oak.  When he selected the panels, the men at the lumberyard allowed him to examine the available wood.  “You have to get brother and sister,” he said to me.  He then told me about paneling a church in Pasadena.  After its completion, the directors called a meeting and decided to have the work redone.  The reason was that portions of the paneling pieced together resembled a nude woman.  “I was trying to match things up and they were looking at something else!”  He laughed.

You cannot talk about Mr. Truin without speaking of his beloved wife Grietje.  They were one in the same spirit.  I was a struggling single mother with three children and they looked out for me.  When I hadn’t visited in a while, Mrs. Truin would send her husband over to make sure everything was all right.  For Christmas, they gave me delicious Dutch pastries and each of my children an envelope containing money.

I’ve always thought it a noble goal to want to leave a place better than you find it.  The Truins never had to think of it.  It was their nature to live with pride and grace and harmony and leave the world better than they found it.  Whatever they did or said, wherever they visited, whatever they touched, they made the world better.

I can imagine them now, holding hands, beautiful blooming tulips in the background, a large work table with saw, hammer and nails, measuring tape, a miter box, an electric sander, clamps, and a large bottle of wood glue.  But these are all props.  They don’t have to worry anymore about tending the flowers or measuring wood.  They are meeting all those friends and family who preceded them and they are having a grand party.

I feel their love now as I have always felt it.  I see them nodding their approval of all the lives they’ve touched.  They often expressed pride in the accomplishments of their children and grandchildren and relatives.  They will continue to watch over their family and friends with the same love and devotion as when they were alive.  They’re home together now, in heaven, and I am blessed and honored to have known them.

A writing exercise from a previous class

If I were invisible, I would check out all the places that say “Forbidden,” “Do Not Enter,” or “Keep Out, and then I would go to the board rooms of the largest corporations to listen to their conversations, then the State Department, the Pentagon, and perhaps even the White House, out of curiosity.  I would go to the payroll departments of these places to see what the salaries are like.  I would also go anywhere else that I perceive to be forbidden to me because of gender, race, or lack of credentials, money, or status.

When I tired of these concerns, I would go to Hanama Bay in Hawaii, don my invisible diving gear and wade past the tourists who are snorkeling and feeding the fish by and go deeper and deeper, enjoying the silence and marveling at the schools of silver fish with blue and red lines and the reflection of the sunlight on their bodies.  I know I would encounter brilliant colors and be dumbstruck by the infinite variety of sea and plant life.  I would go deeper and deeper and try to adjust to the darkness.

As sure as I am sitting here, not invisible, I know that I would soon find on the ocean floor near the life that dwells at the bottom – tin cans, inner tube tires, fish knives, old shoes, beer bottles, and drums of toxic waste with deadly liquid leaking out from corroded containers.  I would not waste my time pulling my hair in rage or crying out in pain at the evidence of human encroachment and stupidity, but I would hurry back up above the surface and join a world that needs me in a visible state, needs me to turn on a light or break a wall or open a door, to make a passage for someone else.

I know that I will at times discover that the walls were created by me and not by anyone else; at other times, I will be locked out by walls that others have placed in my path.  I will say to myself, “I might as well be invisible – nobody sees me and nobody hears me,” but at the end of my life, I would like to be able to say, “At least I tried to make things better.”

The Japanese are ever so considerate of their fellow humans and wear masks if they have a cold to avoid passing germs on to others.  Notice also the gloved hands that open doors for customers in hotels and department stores, and taxis with automatic doors so passengers don’t have to touch the door handle.  They take germs seriously. Rather than shaking hands, they have been bowing for centuries.

The United States is not ready for a pandemic should COVID-19 infect large numbers of Americans. Schools are breeding grounds for germs and some parents are turning to home schooling to keep their children away from exposure.  Other places you’ll find a concentration of germs are concerts, political rallies, and sporting events.  Only a few states have testing equipment available and there is no master plan to deal with every aspect of life as we now know it, from business operations to public transportation to family vacations.

While masks are usually seen on surgeons and medical personnel in a hospital setting, there has been a surge in sales in the U.S. because masks would perhaps assuage the fear in people who are naturally suspicious of others. Having a supply of masks on hand probably give people some feeling of control.  One type of mask is the kind worn by doctors and health care employees to avoid expelling respiratory droplets in the air. The second kind, N95 face respirator masks, create a barrier to protect a person from inhaling germs and viruses. Both types of mask become damp in a short time and are uncomfortable to wear for more than 30 minutes. The CDC has not recommended face masks but pharmacies are running out and masks are disappearing from hospitals.

I watched an interview of a doctor on TV and she advised everyone to use common sense: wash your hands frequently, carry an alcohol based hand sanitizer with you, and consider not shaking hands. For the new cases of COVID-19 without a known source, I personally wonder if the common denominator will be a product or piece of clothing that originated in China.

This will probably be part of a short story.

Lamar quickened his stride as he approached his home. Lady always came bounding down the dog run when she heard the latch of the gate click open. Her ears and coat were brushed back by the wind and she’d brake to a stop and lick Lamar’s face with kisses, her tail going like a windshield wiper against a fierce rain.

Something was terribly wrong today because she did not come to greet him. His parents were sitting on the porch, his father reading a paper and his mother mending socks. “Where’s Lady?” Lamar asked.

“She’s gone,” his father said.

“Where?”

“A family who owns a farm asked if they could take her. They said she’d be happy there running across the whole field. I said ‘Yes.’

A couple of years later when Lamar was walking through a wooded area near his home, he found Lady’s skull with a bullet hole in the center. He pieced together what may have happened. After Prohibition ended, drinking establishments sprang up all over. Patrons of the bars passed by Lamar’s house on their way home and were startled by Lady’s barking, and they complained to Lamar’s father. Lamar’s father shot Lady. When Lamar turned 17, he joined the Navy.

We liked our homemaking teachers in junior high school because they were wonderful hostesses and they took chemistry in order to get their credentials.

Our first project was to make cinnamon toast. The staples were, of course, bought in bulk and when I went to get the sugar, everything was in large canisters and I chose the salt instead. We put some butter on the bread and sprinkled what we thought was sugar on top and put it all in the oven. When we took a bite and realized our mistake, we were terribly disappointed but didn’t say a word to Mrs. Cobb as she came around to taste the toast. I guess adults would call it a conspiracy of silence, but to young girls who still believed in miracles, I think we had our fingers crossed behind us, hoping that the salt would turn into sugar. Mrs. Cobb was really mad, but she didn’t explode or anything like that. She just gave each of us a D for the our project. We also chose the wrong can of cloves for ambrosia. The recipe called for ground cloves but we used whole cloves and one of the visitors got a clove stuck between her teeth.

DP 7/9/1996

There’s been so much news about the Coronavirus that started in late December, 2019 in Wuhan, China. Of interest to me was the impact it had on Diamond Princess passengers as they were quarantined and about 44 passengers and crew members became infected.

In light of all the news and lack of a cure, I’ve cancelled my cruise for next year. I think I’ll fly to Japan and hope that no one becomes sick on the long flight. There are so many germs floating around everywhere, it’s hard to believe we can dodge them all.