I like doing this

Magister Artium in English, 3.96 gpa

hanging out on a cornice in Minnewaska.

Its been a long time, been a long time, Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.

. . . since I last posted. I realized the other day "what a depressing last post," and it's been sitting there for a while. Lots going on, new semester, holidays over (glad for that), taking the last two classes of my MA career. Thinking seriously of tacking on an M.A.T.-- the economy such as it is, and my love for school, I think it's probably not a bad idea in terms of future employability.

I'm taking Old English and American Lit after 1945, the former a requirement, the latter simply to plug a hole to keep my TA position. Both classes seem good so far.

I'm teaching First-year Composition, which is generally Comp. I in the Fall and Comp. II in the Spring. Comp I is the basics of rhet and comp, the second class is more focused on research and a longer paper. All of the Comp. II sections are themed, and I decided to teach metafiction again, though there's metapoetry and metadrama in there too. I'm enjoying class so far, and I'm teaching smart and engaged students--I've been very lucky in my classes that way.

Otherwise, not much going on, I keep meaning to send out poems for consideration, and instead I am sidetracked by all the other stuff that must be done.

I recently refinished an old night table that belonged to my mom and dad, I liberated it and now it's in my bedroom. It was light, now it's dark, but the grain is much deeper now-- pics interspersed, as well as new (grainy webcam) pic of Mal and the cat and I hanging on the couch.

An average of 18 veterans a day commit suicide.

In a stunning admission, top officials at the Veterans Health Administration confirmed that the agency’s own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per week -- 6,552 veterans per year -- commit suicide, according to an internal email distributed to several VA officials.

also here.

Tragedy. I was listening to Amy Goodman on the radio today, and she was interviewing another author/correspondent, and he mentioned this statistic. He continued speaking and Amy said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Wait, what? Let me stop you for a moment, did you just say 18 a day?!" He explained that yes, 18 a day, and that there was an internal memo at the VA, with the subject line "SHHH!" It said, in essence, not to allow the "press" to know of this statistic.

I'm fried, and I have to do a lot of schoolwork, and I JUST got back from LI (drove down this morning, interviewed an aide, set up two bed frames and beds, moved some stuff around, etc, then drove back. Been on the road for six or seven hours today, all told) I wanted to mention this though, because it's terrible, and it's Veterans Day, and while I want to honor those that choose to serve, I also want to point out that we need to provide support to those unfortunate enough to see combat.

President-elect Obama, will be the 44th President of the United States.

Barack Obama passes 270 electoral votes, defeats John McCain, and will become 44th President of the United States. (338-156 at the time of this post)

HE EVEN TOOK FLORIDA!

History has been made, perhaps a reason for hope. 8 years of shit, and now there is a light at the end.

An African-American President. Something I thought I wouldn't see in my lifetime.

A landslide? A mandate?

I think so, at least for the latter.

A statement against corruption, a wonderful affirmation for change, for the kind of leadership we haven't seen since Presidents like JFK. (I would settle for work similar to Bill Clinton's, minus the scandalous behavior)

It also looks like we have a majority in the Senate as well.

Look, I don't want to sound like I have "drank the kool-aid," but I'm telling you, the man is a galvanizing, powerful force, an amazing, dynamic speaker, and a signifier of a sea-change in this country.

Congratulations, President-elect Obama. I look forward to your leadership.

ps I would LOVE to go to his Inauguration.

If I didn't have to write a paper tonight / tomorrow, I would be out screaming in the streets.

I don't know why this is so funny.

Found on the "Zombie Survival Wiki":

********* Most awesome dream yet ever!But someone just interrupted it!
I was playing World of Warcraft and When I was doing Sunwell Plateau a raid instance, We defeated Kil'jaeden and the other bosses and I was very happy I got my Gronnstalker's Set and Thoridal Stars' Fury on my Hunter. I went to the CR and I saw myself wearing a weird Chain Mail,Helmet with an eye,and shoulderpads with an eye. It looked like the same thing in the game. I went to the living room and my dog looks weird too,it looked like a monster it was a warp stalker from the thing you tame as a pet in world of warcraft, I went outside and everybody was a zombie and big abominations. I saw my friend he was a zombie,I had a bow on my back and it was Thoridal Stars' Fury I shot all the zombies with a magical arrow. I was impressed and I thinked of moredamage and I gained "Aspect of the Hawk" which made me stronger. I whistled,I lost my ride so a cool armored tiger was there to take me to the city.I went to the city and while on my tiger I didn't knew I had a cool axe on my back,it made me stronger. I saw zombies coming near me and I used my bow on them. There were more zombies and I commanded my warp stalker to kill em all.I unleashed a Beastial Rage.I was in top of the building dancing . But while I was dancing, I fell down on the building and some weird dragon just saved me from falling,it was a Nether Drake and I had a huger smile on my face. I saw more zombies and I went down, I killed em all with my bow and someone just gouged me and backstabbed me finally it eviscerated me. I saw it was Bilo the rogue my arena opponent. While I was kneeling down I gave him the finger and he mutilated me.

Meet Lily "Cloud" Briscoe

Meet Lily, our new kitten. She's a beautiful baby, a little troublemaker, and we love her very very much.

We think she's a Maine Coon--note the tufts in the ears and the big mitts. And yes, her name is a nod to Ginny Woolf.

Bonticou Crag and assorted things

 
 
 
 

So, after getting a four-root root canal on Monday, which was particularly traumatic (and still only half-done as of this post), I took a "mental health day" on Tuesday; after four years in this place, I finally went to the Mohonk preserve. I climbed Bonticou Crag, which, while only a vertical rise of 1,148' above sea level, has a huge payoff at the summit. There's a scramble up 200' or so, and the view from the spine is sublime. I am getting an annual pass to the preserve. click on pics for more detail.

sometimes they just get it right . . .

This is particularly funny and current for me, as I am reading selections from Genesis and Exodus, as well as other selections from the Tanakh lately.

crows, bow, sunset

 
 
 

Update

A lot has transpired since the last post-- this is the last of the "personal" posts for a while, going to keep it to professional and academic (as well as photos) for now.

My mom has been in the hospital for the past couple of weeks. (yeah, I know, she had just been back to the sub-acute, but then she got sick again)

She was transferred back to the sub-acute tonight, but her secondary insurance pre-authorization was slow in coming, and it sounds like they only approved her for two more weeks. Keep your fingers crossed for me--my sense is that she needed two more weeks two weeks ago, but now having been in the hospital again, she might end up going somewhere other than home when she finishes at the rehab. I'm hoping she will be able to go back home, but . . . well, we'll all simply keep our fingers crossed. Okay?

__________________________________________________

In other news, today was the first day of the Fall 2008 semester, and I held my first Composition class. From what I see, I have a bright bunch of students that I'm excited to work with this semester. I know they're smart because they wouldn't be here if they weren't. To wit: news article / press release: "This year’s larger-than-normal freshman class was selected from an applicant pool of 13,868, which represents the 18th consecutive year that New Paltz has received the most new student applications among all SUNY colleges. The number of freshman applications has risen 54 percent since 2000 and as a result, New Paltz remains one of the most selective universities in the Northeast, accepting only 35 percent of its applicants.".

So yes, they're bright.

I am going to read over their diagnostic essays tonight, maybe do some laundry, wash the car?

I'm happy to be back.

setback--now moving forward again.

Mom spent the last week in the hospital; the rehab. sent her back because her white count jumped from 7.5 up to ~20 or so. Turned out to be Vancomycin-resistant enterococcus.

After some serious insanity, she is now back at the same rehab. she was in before.

I came home for three days to work and get some of my shit together, going back down to LI tonight. We need to assess our options.

update for those of you who are interested

So. Yesterday I drove back up to New Paltz, and I went over the mountain this afternoon to do some work at my boss’s house. I worked for a few hours, and during the course of the day I saw two mouse families who scurried to safety from under a tarp, several LARGE spiders, many carrying around egg sacs, and a gorgeous, inquisitive snake that was practically fearless, who came right out of a pile of siding and inspected me as I was inspecting it. Tonight I took a short walk and watched a satellite skim across a starry sky and felt the cool night breeze on my skin. It was a way to recharge some rapidly depleting emotional and psychological batteries. I’m going back down to Long Island tomorrow early in the afternoon.

As I have said before on this blog, I generally stray from the really personal stuff, preferring instead to stick to interesting articles related to my field, some brief poems, lots of photographs, and other related stuff. But some of you have caught wind of things that have been brewing over the past months, and I thought that I’d write a little about those happenings both for you, in order to keep those interested and concerned up-to-date with the ongoing situation, and as a sort of process for myself to help crystallize a maelstrom of thought that hasn’t seemed to abate, and in fact, seems to be worsening.

Earlier this year, my father (who recently turned 80) had chest pains and went into the hospital for what we thought was going to be a routine catheterization, and ended up being a triple-bypass with a stay in a sub-acute rehabilitation facility. He managed to get himself back in fine fettle with a little work and a lot of love. This occurred during the Spring semester, and I cannot thank my colleagues and friends enough for their understanding, love and support during what was a very trying time for me, as I was juggling my home issues with teaching a Composition section and taking my own grad. classes. Part of the complexity of the situation was that my father was, in some manner, a care-giver or help-mate or whatever we might choose to call it for my mother, who is in her 70s. My father was fortunate to go to the University Medical Center at Stony Brook, a hospital that I CANNOT RECOMMEND HIGHLY ENOUGH. His treatment, from the moment he went in to the moment he was discharged, was superlative at every level, and so was the treatment offered to me—as a relative, an advocate, and as a person, I was also extended every courtesy, and I will praise them to the heavens given half a chance. More on this in a bit.

A little bit about mom: she has fought with Rheumatoid Arthritis for ~30 years, and I have watched this disease wear her down for all this time. She has had knuckles replaced, ankle fusions, surgery after surgery for many years, and I have witnessed it all. She’s a fighter, and she’s managed to maintain her independence in the face of overwhelming adversity. R.A. is an insidious disease, and its severity varies from person to person, and unfortunately my mother (according to numerous specialists, including two amazing rheumatologists) was dealt a particularly bad hand with regard to the damage it has done to her. She’s been on a cocktail of meds for a long time, including gold salts in the 80’s, methotrexate, prednisone for as long as I can remember, and until a few years ago, a heavy dose of a prescription NSAIDs that she had to discontinue because her liver couldn’t take it anymore. She’s on Enbrel now, along with a TON of analgesics, primarily narcotics, still the prednisone, and some others. All of these drugs have side effects, some worse than others.

She was admitted to a hospital several months ago for cellulitis in her legs, mostly in her shins. She’s had weeping edema in that general area, and the swelling, combined with paper-thin skin from the years of prednisone led to some infections that spread pretty rapidly (also due to her weakened immune system, both from the drugs, her age, and the disease itself, which is a form of auto-immune disorder where the body attacks itself, basically eating one’s own joints away). We managed to get that under control, but frankly, the hospital she was admitted to SUCKED (I’ll give you a hint which one—it’s in Port Jefferson, NY, and it’s named John T. Mather Memorial Hospital. It used to be wonderful, but now it’s shit.) She came out of there worse than she went in. The level of care was terrible, and she left with pressure sores and all sorts of other issues.

The situation now is unrelated to that stay, but I mention it because it is part of the bigger picture. Her stay in that hospital set her back a bit in terms of her overall physical ability—she lost some muscle tone that she never managed to quite recover, and in hindsight, she probably ought to have been sent to a sub-acute rehab. after her hospital stay then. I spent some time taking care of her after she was released from the hospital, because it was at this point that my father went in for his stay.

So, mom went in to the hospital some time in March of 2008, dad went in later in the month. I have everything written down, but I can’t find all the notes right now. They both recovered, mostly, and that was that.

I spoke with my mom on Thursday, 6.5.2008, and she told me she felt sick; she didn’t feel like talking. She had gone out to dinner with my dad and his brother, who they hadn’t seen in a while, and she thought she might had gotten food poisoning. I told her to call me when she felt better, or I’d call in a day or two.

My parents live in an “Independent Senior Living Community,” which is ~150 apartments under one roof, and they are provided a continental breakfast and a sit-down dinner everyday, as well as organized activities, entertainment (they just purchased a Nintendo Wii a few months ago for what amounts to Senior Wii parties), and other activities like outings and excursions to the mall, etc. Each apartment has a refrigerator, stove, and other amenities, and there are laundry facilities on each floor—two washers, two dryers, an ironing board, an iron. It’s pretty well set-up, with a small library and ten or twelve internet-connected terminals, movies on a giant-screen projection-type television, and other things to occupy the residents. There’s a feeling of community there, and a great deal of social interation. I’m happy for my parents that they managed to find such a nice place to live, after they sold their house. There are support staff there all the time, cleaning, keeping tabs on residents, and notifying family members of issues that need to be addressed. They are all wonderful, committed people, and I’m thankful that they are there as well.

Friday night, I was doing laundry at a local 24-hour Laundromat; I had waited until later because the daytime temperatures were in the high 90s. At 11:30pm, I got a call from a staff member that my mother had taken a fall, and that they had requested “lift-assistance.” What this means is that they called the fire department—despite having support staff on site, they don’t deal with issues like this. Further, the paramedics that came determined that my mother was “unresponsive,” and needed to go to the hospital. Fortunately, I was able to direct the parameds to take my mother to the University Hospital I spoke so highly of before.
The story is VERY long, but the short version is this (not like this whole story hasn’t been long enough as it is . . .). When my mother was brought in, she was in septic shock from a massive internal infection, and she stayed in the hospital from the seventh of June to the nineteenth. Her care was amazing, just as my father’s was when he was there, and again, I am truly thankful that there are such proficient, talented, and caring people over there. This time she was recommended for sub-acute rehab upon discharge, and that’s where she is now. She has been there since the 19th.

Her major issues were/are: no control/lack of muscle tone on the right side (which unfortunately is her dominant side) to the point of flaccidity, weakness on her left side, and profound weakness in her legs. Prior to all of this new stuff, she had been working once or twice a week with a physical therapist, but all of the time spent in bed undermined any gains she had made.

The biggest problem though is that once she got into the rehab, things seemed to be getting better. Then the Physical Therapists got to her and fucked her up. Apologies for the vulgarity, but that’s exactly what they did. They were a bit overzealous, and they worked her left wrist a bit much, which became inflamed and agonizingly painful, and I’ve been at her bedside with icepacks trying to fix the damage they did. I’m also feeding her, as she’s lost the ability to do ANYTHING with her hands—she can’t really even push the call button for an RN or a CNA, so her roommate (who is wonderful by the way) calls for her.

It’s sad, because she’s sharp as a tack mentally, and it must be hellish to be aware and watch your body melt down around you. I’m trying to be with her all the time, but there’s only so much that I can do—I’m trying to be her advocate (although the staff at the rehab is pretty good, the only problem is getting everyone on the same page; a lot of the staff are per diem workers, and so don’t have a chance to become familiarized with the individual patient’s situations.) I’m also trying to make sure that my father is okay by himself—he is, mostly, but he’s slowing down and there are a bunch of things that he either won’t do or doesn’t know how to do, and so I’m trying to maintain all the finances and the bills and the mail and all that.
In the midst of trying to be my mom’s emotional and physical support, as well as my father’s, I’m also serving other masters—I’m committed to doing some editorial work over the summer, and I’m an assistant to a woodworker/restorer who depends upon me to keep our shop running smoothly. I’m trying to make everyone happy, and I’m going to snap if I can’t figure out a way to juggle all of this stuff. Did I mention I’m an only child? Yeah, there’s that too. I’m not going to get all “poor me, poor me,” but it is a rough road.

I know this is long and rambling, and if it doesn’t cohere, I apologize, but it’s a way for me to vent, to update those of you who weren’t aware of what was happening, and a way of keeping up with those of you who were aware. There’s SO much more to this story, but perhaps I’ll post more later. This is all surface that I’m speaking about right now—there’s so much more running under the surface that I want to address, stuff that I perhaps ought not to post on a public weblog, and yet . . . I really want to say some of it out loud. Some of it needs to be said, and some of it I suppose must remain private, occult, away from those who cannot know what this is like. I've been up and down and up and down (both emotionally and geographically) and most of the time I don't even know what day it is anymore. There have been other, smaller sub-dramas, like the car breaking down and stuff like that, but all that pales in the face of what the overall situation is. I have a small support network, and Malorie has been amazing--AMAZING, but I can't help but feel alone in this in many ways. Perhaps more on this in the coming days, as I am able to continue processing what's happening.

I’m not asking for much, just maybe send me (and mom) some healing energy or white light, or something.

More later, I suppose.

Requiscat in Pace

Sparrow
Jane Arden Stoneback
1935-2008

Sparrow-Jane Arden Stoneback-singer-songwriter of
international reputation,
paragon of grit and grace, wit and will, during her long
fight with lung cancer and all her life, passed away May
25th at Cumberland County Hospital in Kentucky. Born in
Carter County, in the eastern Kentucky hill-country,
daughter of Alice and Richard Hillman, she made her home
in the Hudson Valley for the past four decades. Before
moving to Highland in 1969, she lived in Alabama, Florida,
Hawaii, Kentucky, New Orleans, South Jersey, and
Tennessee. She also lived and traveled extensively
abroad, especially in France and China.
She studied at Vanderbilt University, the
University of Paris, and Peking University. She taught and
tutored English language students and lectured on folksong
in France and China. Other work experience included a year
in Hawaii as Executive Assistant to the President of one
of the largest Pacific Rim firms, three years in Nashville
as national troubleshooter for General Electric, and many
years in the emergency room admissions department of
Benedictine Hospital in Kingston. She was also a writer
who published essays, poems, and songs.
During a forty-five year singing career as
the better half of the duo "Stoney & Sparrow," she
achieved national and international renown as a singer
through her powerful and nuanced performances of folk,
country, and gospel songs as well as her own compositions.
She made concert tours and television and radio
appearances throughout Asia, Europe, and North America
under the auspices of the British Council, the Fulbright
Program, USIA (the US State Department), and many other
cultural organizations and institutions. She performed in
Austria, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France,
Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand
and other countries as well as in most of the fifty states
and throughout the Caribbean.
In 1984 she sang all over China and several
albums featuring her singing were major hit recordings
there-said to be the first million-selling records by an
American in China. In 2006 a 2-CD album, "Stoney &
Sparrow: Songs of Place 1962-2006," was released (recorded
live in New Paltz). In 2007 another album-"Overcoming:
Live in Alabama, China, and the Hudson Valley"-was
released, featuring earlier concert performances and
dedicated to the Hope Lodge in Nashville, where cancer
patients at the Vanderbilt Medical Center reside during
treatment.
Closer to home, Sparrow was well known for her
performances in the Hudson Valley, especially at SUNY-New
Paltz where she performed annually for many years. The
world that she made in her singing was inseparable from
her role as gracious host and adoptive mother to the
extended family of generations of SUNY-New Paltz students
that she welcomed to her home, their home. This community,
this communion of students and teachers, poets and
writers, salutes her as muse:
"Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her
husband also, and he praiseth her."
(Proverbs 31:28)
She is survived by her husband of forty-six
years, H. R. ("Stoney"-Distinguished Professor of English
at SUNY-New Paltz), her son Rick (CEO of the Cumberland
County Hospital in Kentucky) and his wife Robin, her son
Gregg (Professor of English at Westfield State College in
Massachusetts) and his wife Nancy, and her four
grandchildren, Adam and Lee (Westfield, MA) and Rachel and
Richard (Marrowbone, KY).