Daily Free Write

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for all you give, you do receive -
only know that giving shall begin at home

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: SantiMB, found here

Anemia

Well, I knew something was wrong. I just presumed it was my thyroid. I was really tired (but figured it was because I had worked so hard at finishing my first screenplay in a month). I was still losing some hair (but less of it, and still had plenty more). I was out of breath before I was tired (something I noticed especially while playing soccer). And I was chewing ice. I think it was when I went through a whole bag of ice in four days that I thought, hmm...

So I had my blood tested. Needed to do it for the thyroid anyway.

Turns out, I am anemic. Again. Like I was four years ago. Except even worse than back then. Since this snuck up on me gradually, however, the change in energy hasn't been as stark - and it's been lingering, I think, and just slowly getting worse. My hemoglobin is at 8.0. Normal range is 12.0 to 16.0. Apparently anything lower than 8.0 is considered severely anemic. (Some say that anything lower than 9.0 is severe.) Four years ago, when everyone was so worried, my hemoglobin was 9.2. So this is worse.

I'm so happy. Not happy to be sick (or thrilled about the months it will take to fix the anemia), but happy that there's a reason I've been tired, out of breath, losing hair, chewing ice... And I'm happy because I know I will feel better soon, and will be greatly improved in a couple months. My lower energy is not just because I'm 48. It is because I need to take better care of my red blood cells.

And then I think - how in the world did I write a screenplay in a month when I was severely anemic? How productive might I become if I had more oxygen in my blood? (That's the biggest thing with anemia - you have no oxygen.) And then I realize - I'm nuts. I've done this all my life (overridden my body's efforts to communicate). I thought I'd gotten better at listening to my body. But my blood test results are written proof that I'm just as capable as I always was of ignoring my body's signals. Does it mean I'm willful? Or that I just have strong stamina? Is it my body that works around the illness, or my mind? If I lived in someone else's body, would I have collapsed by now, regardless of my personal tenacity? If the answer is yes - then how do I monitor whether I'm healthy or sick, if I can't hear my body's SOS?

These are questions I have to consider. In the meantime, I'm taking the supplements that the doctor gave me and they aren't making me too horribly sick yet (I learned four years ago that most iron supplements just make me sick to my stomach - but apparently these supplements are designed for digestion)... And I'm hoping for the best. And I'm grateful this is fixable. What a gift - that I can fix this.

Daily Free Write

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caught up in winding whirlwinds of time
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draw up and above, for there I will belong,
towards a new light

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Jesse Gardner, found here

Daily Free Write

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we cannot reach without a border,
yet listen for the reality of sound

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: David Ip, found here

Women, Mothers, Role Models

Recently, Bea Arthur of "Maude" (and, later, "Golden Girls") fame passed away. This past week, Marilyn French, author of "The Women's Room" - a story of a woman getting a divorce and moving into single motherhood - also died.

The work of both of these women became popular in the 1970s, when I was in high school and after my parents had divorced. My mother, sister and I had moved to Tempe, AZ from southern CA so my mom could pursue a graduate degree (after having gone back to college later in life to get her BA). These images of strong women - or women working to get strong - through Bea Arthur and Marilyn French coincided with my mother's own paralleling journey, and the journey of her friends in AZ who all were, in some way or another, working towards similar ends. It was "The Women's Room" that struck me most as resembling my mother and her friends, because that book is a story of women working together to prop each other up and give each other encouragement in the midst of huge transformation, and it was the life I saw when I came home from school on any given afternoon - these women, mothers, students, professionals, working together to encourage fulfillment of dreams. I remember, too, being known as the kid in school with the "cool" mom, giving me something of an edge as the newbie in town.

What I remember from the artistic endeavors is not the put-downs of men (which existed, I'm sure). (Hey, it was the '70s.) (I do remember one story from "The Women's Room," before Mira's divorce, where she decided to confirm her husband's belief that she was stupid by making mistakes on purpose - like sending him to work with uncooked eggs for lunch that he thought were hard boiled...) What I remember most from the show and the book is what we call today the "female bonding." The support. The willingness to believe in a life with options. The show "Golden Girls" was an extension of that same thing, just a few years later.

So in my Mother's Day card to my mom this year, I wrote about Bea Arthur (Marilyn French hadn't yet passed away). "You and the 'gang' from Tempe have been on my mind with the passing of Bea Arthur - all those independent women!" I said. "And a role model for me of what choices I could make. Thanks for it all."My mom was so tickled by my card that she sent the text to one of her friends from that time who also was very tickled and sent it to her now-grown kids. My mom and her friend added their own memories - of how young they were at the time (which they were - just in their 30s) (!), so that the comparison to the more-mature, very-strong Maude made them laugh - and then their own memories of falling apart to varying degrees (which made my teenager-memories of strength seem funny to both of them).

But I do wonder about the impact on my life, that I had the chance to witness these women choose the paths they chose and the real pain and excitement that they had when making these different choices. What if they had not shown that to me? Today, I take independence for granted. But didn't I have to grow into it? Didn't I need a role model? Or, at least - didn't the role model from my mother and her friends make it easier for me to imagine having an independent life? And then, I learned the friendships too, didn't I? I still have my strong women friends. We still figure out how to hang out together even though we each have been in varying degrees of relationship with men in our lives. We are lucky, to be friends - to value our friendships. I just got off the phone with one of my closest friends who lives in Phoenix. We still are close, even though we haven't lived near each other for 18 years. My mom and her friends showed me at a young age what it can mean, to value the women in my life.

Here's to Bea and to Marilyn, and to Sharon and Syd and Pat and Mary... to all those women who were making a difference, in the moment, over time, for all the rest of us. Happy Mother's Day, one day late!

Daily Free Write

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do not fear these ancient beginnings -
they are the way of life, and breath
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
Photo credit: Paul Weimer, found here

Daily Free Write

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I hear you, I have you, I see you,
I listen to you, I want you to go forward now -
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gosh, and believe

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Steve Lyon, found here

Annie

On Thursday, I took Annie and Alex - my two cats - to the vet. Their reactions were predictable. Alex freaked out in the car, meowing the entire time and periodically sounding like a little cougar (that's when his voice gets all gutteral). Annie sat very mellow on the seat next to me, loving the trip. (She's the one who has taken two cross-country road trips with me, once in 2001 and once this past year.)

Once we got to the vet's office, however, it was a complete turnaround. Alex doesn't mind all the vet's poking and prodding. Annie is sure they all are spies. Which they are, I guess, since they are trying to get information. But only for her own good! After her first bout of "treatment," she rushed into the cat box and shared it with Alex - quite unusual, since he beats up on her. And he was tolerant of her presence, also quite unusual. (Later, after he got out of the box, and then considered rejoining her, she hissed. He decided, hmm... looks like she needs her space, and left her alone.)

I call her Annie, but I think her real name is much more regal. Like, Annabelle Lee. Or Anastasia. I feel a little privileged, that I'm allowed to call her Annie anyway. And when I call to her (if she's outside), I'll triple it: "Annie, Annie, Annie," saying it fast. And still she comes when I call. Well, when she wants to, she comes. Here's a picture of her. She loves to sit on the couch by the window like that, and watch the world go by.

Annie's about 13 years old. We don't really know, we've had to guess. I got her as a young adult in 1998. She just had had a litter of kittens, and someone (her owner, most likely) placed her on Wellesley - a busy road in Spokane - with that litter of kittens. Left them to die? The pet rescue people ultimately found her and placed her in a temporary home with the kittens so she could raise them. It must have been chaotic, because the home had a bunch of dogs. That's where she got the name Annie. Once I got her, I decided she didn't need a third name in this lifetime, and left it at that. Besides, she truly is an Annie. (Short for something regal.)

She didn't like men for a long time. I figured whoever put her out in the middle of Wellesley likely was male - likely was the one in the household who would kick her when no one was looking. Over the years, she has learned to trust men. She loves my neighbor, for instance. But it took a few years before she changed her mind about them.

When we went to the vet on Thursday, they suggested getting a wellness check on her, given her age. I also wanted to get her teeth cleaned. I told them things I'd noticed - she seems to have a little arthritis; I can't just pick her up anymore, I have to let her get ready before I pick her up or she cries a little; and, just recently, she seems to have let up a little on grooming, at least around her neck and head. This one, to me, is a biggie. Annie is just a little on the fussy side. To see her fur get a little slick in places was a big surprise.

I do tell her she's not allowed to die. She's my angel cat, she circles the computer when I write, she literally "holds the space" while I work... She is very sweet, so aware of everyone else - is even nice to Alex all the time, even though he's mean to her. And I do think she's very smart. For instance, we'll be playing and she tries to grab my hand with her claws out and I tell her, "Annie, no claws," and she retracts her claws and still plays. She likes stuffed animals - will clean them, trot them around the house in her mouth... Once she got into a habit of taking one stuffed animal - a rooster that could sit upright - and she would leave him, sitting upright, facing the front door, so that when I would come home from work, there he was - sitting, staring up at me. After about the third or fourth time, I told her that she had to stop doing it - it was too creepy. She stopped.

She does this funny pen trick too - in the middle of the night, she goes through the house, finds a pen lying around (I kind of leave them for her, now that I know she likes to do this) and then she brings it into the bedroom, talking with it in her mouth, and then - pah - she spits it out on the floor next to the bed. Like - get up and write! Time to write! I grumble, say "thanks...." and go back to sleep.

Here's another game she likes to play. It's called "sit in the paper bag." At least, that's what I call it. She loves it especially when Alex is stalking her (his favorite game) because he can't figure out how to go after her when she is in a paper bag. Also, I love it because she is just so adorable there. The photo isn't a great one - but I think you get the idea. I love that you can see Alex in the background, behind the stereo speaker (which was the chaos of my house when I was writing the screenplay a couple weeks ago).

People say we're very connected, which I think is true. Last year, when I was at spring training in AZ for book signings, Annie escaped from my friend's apartment in Coeur d'Alene (Idaho) where she was staying. He looked everywhere for her but couldn't find her, and finally called after a day or so to tell me she was missing. My neighbor - Annie's friend - went over to call for her. I thought if she heard his voice, it might remind her of home... but no luck. I was frantic that she would try to walk the 30 or so miles home. So I flew home. Yes, I flew back to Spokane to go look for my cat. Which is what she wanted, of course - she wanted me home. It was time for me to come home, is what she thought. So she created a reason for me to come home. On the flight, I kept sending her images of my friend's apartment, his front door, sent her the sense of meeting me there... not words but senses... kept urging her to "stay put, stay there." ... I arrived in Spokane around midnight, rented a car (mine was down in Phoenix), drove to Coeur d'Alene, got to the apartment complex, parked, got out of my car, softly started saying, "Annie, Annie..." (trying not to wake up people)... And voila. There she was. In the middle of the parking lot. Looking at me like, yes? Did you need something? Stupid cat. But not stupid at all. She got me back in Spokane like she wanted, didn't she? (only to have me leave the next day, back to Phoenix for more book events - but still, I think she was satisfied). It took 15 seconds - maybe 30 - between the time I got out of the car and the time she appeared right there in front of me. I swept her up in my arms. She let me. I told her never to do that again. She blinked. (You two are connected, one of my friends said, when I recounted the story.)

So, on Thursday, when the vet said we have to think about things like kidney failure, I worried. I couldn't help it. And when the receptionist told me on Friday that Annie's blood tests were back but the technician would have to talk to me personally - I paced, for 15 minutes. I looked at Annie - are you sick? I asked her. She blinked, calmly, serenely... I couldn't stand the suspense another moment. I called back the vet's office and said, isn't the technician free yet?

And then, it was good news. She was just fine. Everything in the middle ranges. Of course in the middle. It's Annie. That's how centered she is. Anastasia Belle Lee would be nothing but balanced.

Daily Free Write

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broken seals wrought unto a phoenix badly seared,
seamed upon resting laurels
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greater phoenix, arising anew with fervour and sound
bring to me helpless, hopeless and the horizon

This entry, written in 1998 (this is only a segment of it), reflects what our country is going through now. The "seals" to me are the promises. The phoenix and laurels bring to mind the back of our paper money (even though, yes, it is an eagle, not a phoenix). (The above image is no longer in use.) And then, like the phoenix who must die to live again, we do live again, and can call to our shores, again, the helpless and the hopeless. Just yesterday, I heard the Statue of Liberty will open on July 4 for the first time since 9/11. So I chose this entry.

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
Warning: Fraudulent use of the above image is punishable under appropriate counterfeiting laws.

Daily Free Write

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bring about the change that's everlasting
allow it to grow beyond where we are today
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Michael Hanlon, found here

The Duck Cam (And Other Tales)

Spring has sprung and in Spokane, that has begun to mean one thing: duck nests on the side of the bank building!

Yes, it appears that the mother duck from last year, who built her nest on the window sill of the Sterling Savings Bank building, is back. I wrote about the circumstance here, and how one of the employees ended up saving the babies as they dropped out of the nest by catching them in his hands, and then helped the mama duck get her babies to the Spokane River a few blocks away.

This time, everyone is ready.

And we now have a duck cam to monitor every move.

This is true. The bank let the newspaper (Spokesman Review) set up a camera and stream live video. There is no chance that even a single moment - precious or otherwise - will escape film. I've watched a couple of times. Must say, the mama duck appears to be fairly low key. Presumably things will become a bit more active once the babies hatch.

(UPDATE: The babies have hatched! The Duck Cam is no longer active. But here are some links to the hatching story with a video slideshow. And here is a link to the mama duck's facebook page (she now is named "Amelia Duckheart"). Also, one of the local television stations provided this video.)

The ongoing camera action reminds me of an event from last fall. As Obama fans may recall, Obama signs were very hard to come by at that time. A woman in Oregon for sure will remember that, because she would obtain one of the coveted signs only to have it stolen from her front yard. After the second sign disappeared, she resorted to making a handmade sign and then told her 16-year-old son to set up a spy camera so this third sign would remain (or at least they would catch the thief on camera). Her son took his assignment a step further and set up the camera as a video stream on the Internet. This video stream became the sixth-most-watched stream in the world. The help in watching for thieves spanned to places like Belgium, Sri Lanka, and Australia. Because the viewers were able to comment, an odd sort of club formed. The house (and the sign) were in a quiet neighborhood. Nonetheless, the obsession stuck. As noted in this article, one telling comment was "I need to go to the bathroom. Call if anything happens." Also in the article: "Each time a car passed, viewers posted alerts: 'Car. Carrrrrr' and when a garbage truck stopped within view in the early hours, the site went wild."

As one blogger from the Mudflats site (out of Alaska) put it:

We've seen squirrels, neighbors, passing cars, suspicious kids on bikes. The wind has blown, the rain has come. The sign has been covered in Saran Wrap before our very eyes to shield it from the elements. We've seen the family cat. We've chatted and laughed. And occasionally we've been inundated by trolls. All in all, a very entertaining evening....staring at a sign.

Well, and one more sign story. I can't provide a link, and I don't think it's up anywhere anymore. But from my memory... This guy somewhere out east (I think he lived in Virginia) was a big Obama supporter in a mainly McCain neighborhood. He put out his Obama sign. It was stolen. He asked around, if anyone knew what happened. He had a description of the potential culprit. The neighborhood became very upset that his sign had been stolen. We're nothing if not Americans, with the right of free speech, you know? One of the staunchest McCain supporters from this guy's neighborhood went down to the local Obama office and bought him a replacement sign. Ultimately, the presumed culprit (another neighbor) showed up at the Obama guy's door to apologize. Apparently he had heard from more than one neighbor that he had to.

That stauch support for the political process - regardless of political affliation - is something I experienced often when out campaigning for Obama last year. There were many times that I knocked on the door of the house of a McCain supporter, who would laugh and tell me my error. As I would leave to go to the next house, though, often that person would stop me and thank me for what I was doing. "You are the democratic process at work," they would say. I sure do love this country.

Daily Free Write

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do unto others
the best
that you may know

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Chuck Walker, found here

Daily Free Write

take the moment
live in the present
drink the elixir















(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Steve Betts, found here

Jack Lohrke

Jack Lohrke passed away last week, at the age of 85. I spoke with him briefly only once, and never was able to talk with him for very long. He was a private man. Even more than that, I think, was that he just didn't want to talk about the bus crash anymore.

Jack Lohrke was one of the baseball players on the 1946 Spokane Indians baseball team. He was the player who was pulled off the bus at Ellensberg, Washington - right before the mountain pass and right before the bus plummeted down the mountainside, killing nine of the players on board. The highway patrol found him at dinnertime in Ellensberg to tell him that the San Diego Padres had called him up, that the Indians' front office had asked the highway patrol to let him know, and that he should get his gear off the bus and hitchhike back to Spokane so he could fly to San Diego for his next baseball-playing opportunity.

And yes, he was known as "Lucky" Lohrke because the same thing had happened a year earlier - he had been pulled from a military plane flying to California because a higher-ranking officer had bumped him from it. The plane crashed, killing all aboard.

He preferred to be called Jack.

He went on to play seven years in the major leagues, for the New York Giants and the Philadelpia Phillies.

There is one story I found when I researched the 1946 Spokane Indians team (for the novel I wrote about the crash), from spring training in 1947, when Jack was playing for the New York Giants. He had a red shirt he always wore, was the story. No matter how much his new teammates teased him, he always wore it. All he would say about the shirt was that it came from his gear on that bus. I dramatized the moment in the novel, and hope that I guessed right. (I had one of the other players, Levi McCormack, who always wore red shirts, give Jack one of his own red shirts as Jack left the bus.)

I found out last year that another one of the players from the bus - Ben Geraghty, who survived the crash and went on to become one of the best minor league managers ever (Hank Aaron calls him the best manager he ever had) - also had a red shirt that he always wore, in memory of those 1946 men.

We can't know what the men who survived the bus crash went through, not really, for the rest of their lives, losing their teammates like that. They were a close team, right after World War II, having survived the war, able to come back and return to the game that they loved to play. They really were a special group. And Jack Lohrke, who went on to get married and to have children and to work in security for Lockheed in California - he was a good man who lived his life as they each might have done had the bus crash never happened. I'm sorry he's gone.

Daily Free Write

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..
understand and believe in your own power of being
that goes beyond where you are today

(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Matthew Stewart, found here

The Bike Exchange

I have my bike!

It's here. It's in the garage. It's ready for riding.

As mentioned before, HBO blog reader and commenter "Arpie" offered to give me a bike after I revealed that I did not actually own one. We came up with having me get the bike from his wife Julie on the morning of Bloomsday (our local mega-race, for anyone unfamiliar with Spokane).

A friend of mine (I'll call him "Duane") and his truck got recruited from Idaho to transport the bike from the Spokane Valley Mall to my house on the lower South Hill.

And at right about 8 a.m. yesterday morning, we manifested The Exchange.

Here is Julie and her daughter Jenna, holding me up on the bike. Yikes! "Duane" took the photo. (Then I took him to breakfast, and we talked politics, and we both survived. Quite a feat!)

Here's the thing I'd forgotten. I'm not much of a bike rider. Which is kind of weird, because I'm otherwise pretty athletic and coordinated. But I'm not very good with bikes.

Probably it goes back to men. (Yes, it's always good to blame an entire gender when no other explanation is readily available.) But wait, hear me out. My first bad adult experience riding bikes occurred back in 1981, when my boyfriend at the time got angry with me (we were bike riding) because I got off my bike on a steep hill and walked it up the hill. I did that because he had gotten so slow in front of me that I figured he was having trouble and if he was having trouble, what luck was I going to have going up the hill? (Turned out, he had slowed down to let me catch up to him, not because of the hill.) He was really mad at me. He refused to go bike riding with me after that.

Then fast forward to the late 1990s. The guy I was dating wanted to go bike riding. I flashed back to 1981 and told him it might not be a good idea. He might get mad, I said. He assured me he wouldn't. So we took out the bikes. He lent me a bike that had these weird fangled things on the pedals that looked like foot traps. I flipped the pedals over so I wouldn't get my feet stuck. He saw what I was doing and chided me. Hey, those are stirrups for your feet, he said. "You're supposed to put your feet in them." I didn't think that was such a good idea. "They look like foottraps to me," I said. He insisted. I complied - and immediately toppled over. See, I was unsteady on the bike. I needed my right foot to keep from falling. But it was too busy being trapped in some sort of Venus flytrap deal. So I fell. At least he didn't get mad at me - he felt bad, actually. But then the rest of the day he kept commenting on how slow I was going. And we never went bike riding again.

So you can see why I'm a little uncertain of myself now, given that those are the two experiences I've had, riding a bike as an adult. I don't think I've ridden any other times. But now, I have to compliment the opposite gender. Arpie got the bike all ready, and Duane helped me get the seat adjusted to the right height. So maybe we've turned a corner here (so to speak). And you know what? It was so great, going up and down the street on the bike, no matter how shaky I felt.

This is going to be fun!

Daily Free Write

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I give to you the gift of belonging, yet take from you
the gift of the burden of belonging - it is one in the same -
yet it is, as well, the beam of enlightenment, through which
only scallions of scorched shoulders will belong
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Ivan Makarov, found here

Daily Free Write

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hear the noise, see the noise, then block the noise
through its filter into sound
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)

photo credit: Darren Hester and www.imageabstraction.com - photo found here

Daily Free Write

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Reflect seriously upon the stars and the beginning,
for through these ways will come your base and your answer
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Andreia Bohner, found here

Daily Free Write

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celebrate life, and lived moments
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(want to know what free writes are? Check out the "About Free Writes" category to the right)
photo credit: Matt Reinbold, found here