Month: January 2017

This is a picture of my maternal great-grandparents – who officially became American immigrants from Italy in 1910 – and some of their children and grandchildren (including my gram). I would like to take a moment to thank William Howard Taft and his administration for supporting an immigration policy that welcomed Italians at the time, despite a well-known national hostility towards Catholicism. That was…brave. 

The older woman in the lower right is my great-grandmother Maria. She didn’t speak a lick of English when she arrived, and was forced to function as a single mother when her husband died tragically shortly after their arrival. That man seated next to her is my great-grandfather Francesco – the best friend of Maria’s deceased husband. Upon learning Maria had been widowed and was considering a return home, he committed to marrying her as a point of duty. He had emigrated a few years earlier, and the law allowed this, despite the ugly strain of violent organized crime associated with men whose names sounded like his. 

(That they wed and had nine more children seems to suggest they found each other’s company…palatable, or at least that their situation was come dio comanda – an old Italian expression meaning things are as they are supposed to be, or “as god commanded”). 

Why did my great-grandfather leave his homeland for an unfamiliar country thousands of miles away? And why did Maria and her first husband do the same? America (the idea) represented an opportunity to escape poverty – or whatever else somebody may have needed to escape. It was a place where all were welcome, despite the circumstances of their history.

They raised their ten kids in a small home in northern Minnesota, and though they experienced discrimination at the local level, they enjoyed the same full protection under the law as their Irish, German, and Swedish neighbors, all of whom practiced a variety of religions. Their story is inspirational, but no more so than millions of other American origin stories. In fact, it’s the aggregation of these family histories that comprises The Full and Complete American Story. This history, which has continued to get written every day, is at risk. 

Donald Trump cleverly tapped into the burbling fear of a weak-minded electorate, and he is quickly taking steps to reorganize America in the vision of his sweaty and bloated consigliere, Steve Bannon. The Italians have another expression – gli ha piu’ garbo un ciuco a bere a boccia – which loosely translates to “a donkey drinking from a bottle has better manners.”

They’ve said it better than I can.

I don’t have much to say on inauguration eve – I imagine I’m not the only progressive who’s feeling fatigued at this point. I’ll make one final point before we cede the Big Chair to the least-qualified and (one of the) least-liked president-elects in history. If any of the ‘stop whining, get over it’ crowd still needs a simple explanation to understand our concerns, consider this. The man sought a role that demands service to all Americans, and in fact he has recognized and acknowledged that on occasion. Yet still, in the past two weeks – long after his electoral victory was settled, and as his inauguration day approached – he made the following two comments (of course, via Twitter, and in the most petty and predictable way possible): 

• “….but who cares, he supported Kasich and Hillary” – to Arnold Schwarzenegger
• “She is a Hillary flunky” – to Meryl Streep 

There are several million Hillary flunkies, you senseless goon. In fact they outnumber your supporters by three million or so. This is the country.

I was very pleased to see President Obama’s decision to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence today, and not just because it gave Paul Ryan the zings . The New York Times provides some interesting context:

The act of clemency could be seen as a reversal, at least in part, of the Obama administration’s unprecedented criminal crackdown on leaking: The administration has brought charges in about nine cases, about twice as many as under all previous presidents combined. 

At this stage in a presidency, the temptation to focus on ‘legacy’ tends to be dominant. Undoubtedly this will be viewed as an act of mercy, considering Ms. Manning’s highly publicized personal struggles, and that will impact Obama’s legacy favorably. But his unwillingness to consider a similar pardon for Edward Snowden will leave a lingering stain on the White House carpet beyond January 20^th. As we usher in the deliberately disreputable presidency of Donald Trump, our nation is wrestling with these three connected issues: 

• Widespread distrust/cumulative failure of news sources to consistently report truthfully and accurately
• Deliberate dissemination of misinformation from both domestic and foreign actors
• A new administration with clear disdain for news media (not to mention the concept of transparency)

Candidate Obama promised to foster a transparent and accountable administration, and his critics argue he’s failed in that regard. Consider Snowden’s transgressions – through his work in the intelligence apparatus he became aware of surveillance activity our government was engaging in without our consent…activity that the Director of the NSA falsely denied under oath in 2013. Snowden believed that, as a citizen, it was his duty to inform his fellow Americans of this fraudulent activity perpetrated by our government. He sought no profit from these disclosures, and arguably acted at great personal peril (the fact that the government elected to charge him as a spy as opposed to a thief is an important distinction). The pardoning of Snowden would not only bolster Obama’s legacy of decency, but also his stated pledge of transparency.  

The debate on Snowden’s actions tended to center around whether he was a hero or a traitor – so much so that it became a distraction from the questions we (as a country) should have focused on in light of these disclosures: exactly what level of privacy and freedom are we willing to sacrifice in the name of security, and how should we hold our government accountable for its chronic and unwarranted surveillance of our personal lives? The administration’s comments today suggested the difference between the Manning and Snowden cases are that Manning “acknowledged wrongdoing” and took her medicine where Snowden fled to “an adversary” (you may recall that prior to the election of President Inevitable, Russia was considered an adversary). This doesn’t really hold water, considering Snowden has offered more than once to return and face a jury, if a fair trial was of interest to the government. No response. 

As a point of reference, let’s not forget that within a month of taking office Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for all his depravity – and his particular brand of smarmy criminality was inarguable. HW Bush pardoned Casper Weinberger for his role in the Iran-Contra affair (even though his diary later revealed he may have done so because Bush himself was likely to have been incriminated had that gone to trial). Even the confederate soldiers were pardoned by Andrew Johnson in 1868 – each and every surviving officer who had fought for the south. As a reminder, these soldiers would have been considered enemies of the Republic during the war. Have Snowden’s misdeeds exceeded any of these in impact? 

So now we transition to the presidency of a man who publicly shared his nuanced take on Snowden a few years ago (in short – kill him). The country is torn. We have president-elect entering office with a chip on his shoulder, and a base who applauds his dismissal of the press. His detractors recognize his autocratic tendencies, and fear the creative iniquities which will be conjured in the dark and executed in our name. Will the next Snowden find the courage? Thanks, Obama…

Highlights from Trump’s briefing today included the President-elect chiding a reporter for being rude, which is a little like Ted Cruz calling the kettle smug, and his suggestion to the assembled journalists that they develop a “moral compass.” I don’t have a joke here…beyond the idea of DJT lecturing anyone on morality. The fumbling autocrat stopped just shy of plugging his forefingers in his ears and babbling gibberish anytime CNN reporter Jim Acosta attempted a question, which is indicative of two things: 

• Trump’s engagement with and treatment of individual media outlets will be dependent on how favorably he deems their coverage of him, and
• I will be replacing many household items throughout his tenure if I continue to watch his pressers. 

The donkey dust continued apace as the President-elect sponged the credit for all domestic job retention, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. How does this bollocks endure, you ask? When you take away all the race-baiting and immigrant-bashing of his campaign, you realize he essentially ran on the Chevy Chase platform (I’m Donald Trump, and You’re Not). If he was able to bring home 60 some million votes with that swill, why would we expect him to suddenly feel restricted by the boundaries of reality? The last honest statement he made on the trail was that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. He’s got marks in the streets and enablers in the seats. 

The risk now is that the political press takes its eye off the pea while a Trump-friendly congress works to deregulate business, disassemble your healthcare, and re-write tax policy. The press should not be forgiven for allowing his refusal to release his tax returns to elude the front pages every…damn…day for the past eighteen months, and now we may have to endure a lingering focus on the more bawdy aspects of this mysterious dossier.

Perhaps the real tragedy is that most reasonable people would have dismissed the more salacious elements of the report outright if the subject had been Obama, or even Bush, but with Trump I’d wager most Americans at the very least will shrug their shoulders and think “…..sure, I could see that.”  And as many people have pointed out elsewhere, the defensive and churlish tone of today’s press conference stood in stark contrast to the graceful farewell address delivered last night in Chicago, which exuded gratitude, inspiration and compassion.  That we are ushering in an ill-tempered, opportunistic, and corporate presidency is wound enough.  That it follows eight years of coolheaded civility is the salt.

 

Wow…this just got interesting. 

(To be clear, at this point we don’t know if this will be something, or nothing at all, but the intelligence agencies have at least deemed the story credible enough to investigate)

As this Russia story has burbled on the newswires over the past few weeks, few seemed to be asking the right questions. It never should have been about whether there was a measurable impact on the election. The question that every politician, pundit, and policy-maker should have been asking (repeatedly, considering the 24-hour news-cycle) is: why?  

If it were true that Russia sought to influence our election in his favor, why? Why is Trump viewed as such a favorable American president from the throne in Moscow? For the sake of debate, let’s concede the point that Trump voters needed no coercing to punch the chad in his name. Let’s concede the fact that it was Candidate Clinton’s choice not to campaign in Michigan, not the Kremlin’s. Let’s concede the point that we’ve meddled unwelcomingly in foreign elections throughout history, and we should expect the same in our own. In short, let’s concede Trump would have won regardless of any foreign intrusion. The story, which hasn’t gotten nearly the same press as the pervasive did-they-didn’t-they narrative, is…why would they? Shouldn’t that have been of more concern to Joe Patriot? 

Beyond that, if we were told eighteen months ago that Putin had a clear favorite – that he believed his interests would best be served by one candidate versus all the others – Republican or Democrat – wouldn’t that have been cause for alarm? Wouldn’t there have been bipartisan support for investigation and potentially disqualification of that candidate? As it’s become clear that candidate was Trump, was it not exceedingly irresponsible of the GOP to permit his nomination without further investigation?

It’s been clear to this point that the GOP has let its appetite for legislative dominion exceed any remaining sense of patriotism. Put simply, Putin has no interest in making America great – again or at all. What comes next, as I’ve felt every day since November 8th, is beyond prediction. 

And if any of the more ‘colorful’ rumors trickling out in this evening’s news dump are true? Let’s remember these wise words from Obama’s mom: reality has a way of catching up with you.

I spent the better part of the day and night at the ER today (not for my own care). Everything should be fine in the next day or two, but those several hours of inaction reminded me of the only time I’ve ever had to visit the ER for myself. Story below, from March 31, 2009.

(PS – the ladyfriend referenced here eventually became my bride)

Sick Balls

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like I’d just taken a knee to the giblets…that feeling you can never fully crystallize when describing it to a woman, yet every single man or boy on the planet knows intimately. Perhaps truly the only shared bond among all men – the acute understanding of that singular pain. I noted it immediately, but brushed it off. I assumed I slept on them funny or somehow elbowed myself in my slumbered awkwardness. I hit the shower, and while washing myself became aware of just how gingerly I was working my way around the troubled region. I silently chastised myself for whatever stupid decision I made in my sleep that led to this bizarre and uncomfortable start to my day. 

On my way to work, I was hunkered down in my bucket seats and made a standard shift – a classic “no hands” rearrangement of the berries we’ve all done a million times while driving. This time the pain shot directly from my stones to my neurons, and while it only lasted a second, it was powerful enough to elicit a yelp. It was like some sort of James Bond torture scene we’ll never see where the villain or a cleverly-named henchman actually takes one of 007’s grapes between his thumb and forefinger and gives it a periodic pinch. I was starting to get nervous at this mysterious injury’s stamina. 

On the average man’s graph of medical maladies and their corresponding calls to action (which ranges from “Smells Funky – Put a Band Aid on it” to “Bone Exposed – Consider Medical Attention”) this was registering somewhere around “Consistent Annoyance – Distract Yourself” by mid-morning. Midday drifted into early afternoon, and by this point I had resigned myself to the fact that this issue was now a condition, like loose ankles or tennis elbow. 

On my way home, I snapped out of it and realized these were my biscuits that were ailing me ALL DAY. This wasn’t a headache or a stiff back…this required answers, research, resolution. Bring on the Googles! The information superhighway is truly a world of wonderment. With just a few clicks I was finding discussion threads – actual questions and answers on this very topic written by those who had been there before me. There were knowledge bombs going off all around me, and I soaked in the shrapnel of every theory, suggestion, and summary, including this one: “Sore testicles are one of your body’s clearest way of saying, ‘I have a problem.’” Indeed they are. 

Descriptions which sounded pretty accurate to what I was experiencing started to spook me. Sometimes you don’t know what a word means, but you can infer quote a bit from the way it sounds. Testicular “torsion” was one of the front-runners in my self-diagnosis. Its symptoms matched mine, but torsion to me sounded like a word that describes metal gears grinding against each other, and I pictured my poor danglers gettin’ squished in between (turns out that’s not remotely accurate. I am not a doctor!). I thought I better take another visual inspection to see how things were developing. The last time I’d checked was around 6:30 PM. Things had looked a little off then, but those little pods shapeshift so much on their own that I didn’t get too alarmed at what I saw. By now it was getting on 10:00, and I’d been suffering this discomfort for a full fourteen hours. I was armed with the weapon of knowledge now, and I wanted to see what was what. So I dropped trou. I was slack-jawed. It was like there was suddenly a third being, two to three times the size of the others, growing out the side. I was almost ready for its head to burst out and gnash its teeth at me like something from a movie my brother would watch at three in the morning. Time to call the nurses line. 

The woman on the other end of the phone couldn’t have been any sweeter. This ended up being the first of seven women to whom I’d describe my symptoms that night. We’ve probably all tried to explain what it feels like to take one in the stones to a female, but as I said before, it really is impossible to accurately characterize. I think the words just don’t exist right now. Regardless, she bled empathy over the phone, and somehow that made me feel better. She did say though that this is what they consider an “emergency situation,” and that I should NOT wait to see if things feel better tomorrow as I had planned, but rather I should get to an ER stat, provided I am “able” to do so. I hoisted up what felt at this point like the watermelons between my legs, and I made my way out the door. 

My ladyfriend was nice enough to accompany me, and despite being a “man” I was thrilled that she insisted on joining. There are lots of reasons for this, including but not limited to (1) she is smarter than I and would be better at asking useful questions, (2) we were going to Abbott Northwestern, right in the heart of Shitsville; the stories I hoped to gain coming out of this would be much better corroborated by another, and (3) she is funny. This is always an asset, but especially so in otherwise gloomy scenarios. This proved valuable early on when she called her mother who was expecting her, and let her know she wouldn’t be seeing her because she was at the ER. Her mom naturally asked why, and she replied “Charlie’s balls are sick.” 

I was both encouraged and dismayed at the alacrity with which they graduated me from the waiting room to the Big Show. I’d never been to an ER, but they operate as they did on M*A*S*H* – they’ve got a limited number of beds/rooms, so they assess the extent of everybody’s injuries, and grant service and access to those whose situation warrant it the most. The process of triage somehow got me in the door right away, which is great when you want to get in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible, but it was the first time that it hit me that maybe this is a bigger issue than I had considered. I mean there was an old dude there in a wheelchair who was bleeding in the lobby, and I was advancing to the next stage more rapidly than he was. Is my situation really more alarming than his? 

Therein lies the true source of most people’s distaste for hospital visits – the unknown. Here I was, in the middle of the night, nads throbbing, unsure the root or extent of what damage I’d done. As with all doctor visits, I spent more time waiting than I did face to face with any medical personnel. I laid there in my backless robe, trying to replay in my head what I’d read earlier and speculating my fate. A very sweet nurse whose nametag read “Luv Bug” granted me five minutes of face-time and small-talk, though she admitted upfront this wasn’t really her area of expertise. She did answer my most pressing question though – why I was seen ahead of the others. Apparently the net result of torsion is the cutoff of circulation, which leads rather quickly to necrosis. In other words, the whole program down there gets shut down and some of the items I’ve grown fond of over the years get removed and discarded. Triage is a measurement of risk, and to put it in Luv Bug’s gentle, simple terms, the risk in my case was “loss of use.” 

Eventually the only true doc on the staff for the night paid me a visit. She wasn’t there longer than 90 seconds, but she managed to poke, prod, and squeeze me into discomfort with the finesse of a drunk mime…all the while without even breaking a smile. She told me I’d need an ultrasound, and they’d come and get me for it once they were ready. She scurried out of the room like her garlic was burning on the stove. 

It starts to get a little blurry here because this wait I think was around 45 minutes to an hour, which may not sound like an eternity, but was the middle of the night, my sack was distended, and I was getting groggy. My lady was kind enough to sit right by me all night, and didn’t complain once about the time or all the better things she could have been doing. When the nurse finally showed up to wheel me down to the ultrasound room, he was clearly making an effort to be talkative and cheery. In his curious attempt at frivolous, friendly chatter, he fielded three guesses at the extent of our relationship, each one sounding more ridiculous than the previous. “Are you guys cousins or something?” “Neighbors?” “Co-workers?” I finally just told him, and he said “oh….well, I never know, so…” as if somehow asking if we were married or dating would have been offensive in some way. People are weird. Cousins was your first guess? Really? 

I naively believed that ultrasounds were reserved for pregnant women, but Larry, the Sonographer of the night, let me know that ultrasound technology was used throughout the hospital. One of the primary goals of using it on me was actually aural – they want an opportunity to listen to the blood flow, not just take a peek at what’s happening. Within minutes, it was party time. Larry lifted the transducer from its holster, lathered my swollen rocks with that jelly (warmed to 98 degrees), and the camera started rollin’. 

Larry turned the screen towards me a couple times, but my untrained eyes didn’t take note of anything too spectacular – just a couple pulsing blobs colored sprightly in some areas and darkened in others. The good news, at least as Larry interpreted it, was that the uniformity of the colors suggested there was no torsion. This was not a final diagnosis, he noted, as the radiologists who actually read the sonograms are in Florida, and all my scans would be emailed to them as soon as we were finished. Good news is so fleeting in hospitals, it seems. 

We shifted gears, and leapt headfirst into the audio portion of the presentation. While my eyes noted nothing of interest before, my ears perked up like a puppy’s when the mic was turned on. The blood was flowing through my scrotal walls like the rushing rapids of an industrial river. Larry agreed, and he deduced that instead of the feared loss of blood circulation and subsequent necrosis that accompanies torsion, perhaps I’m actually experiencing “hyper-anemic” activity – heightened blood flow. After getting whatever he needed, he shut down the system, sent off my slides to Florida, and started wheeling me back to the ER. This adventure seemed fruitful – Larry’s steady hand led us to the light: there was no torsion, there’d be no necrosis. I was enjoying the moment until Larry said “eh, but what do I know? The guys in Florida may totally disagree with me. I’m outta here after this…I’m exhausted.” Larry had been my first positive experience of the night, and he managed to kill all that goodwill in under five seconds. It crossed my mind that maybe he was just the janitor that got his hands on a lab coat and a key to the tech room, who was now trying to sneak out of the building before the word leaks out. 

Once again there was waiting…and waiting. Excessive waiting. We had no real data until the mysterious Florida guys called in their opinions. I don’t know what time it was anymore – somewhere in the 3:00 AM range. They even had to move us into another area of the hospital. We outlasted last call at the ER? Can you even shut down an ER? Evidently. 

Eventually the doc made her way in to see us one last time. The news was good; Larry’s reading was accurate, whether he was truly qualified to make it or not. There was no torsion; just some sort of viral or bacterial infection. My prescription was ciprofloxacin or some such pill and bed rest. Again, her visit came and went without a smile and without much explanation. All the questions were asked after the fact, and she wasn’t there to answer them. My lady and I went home, my undersides still squishing with what remained of the hot jelly, and my knobs still swollen like baseballs.