The Last Generation Under the Gun?

On Wednesday, February 14, 2018 - Valentine's Day - a terrible thing happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

For those reading this in the weeks (and perhaps longer) following the event, no further description is necessary. For those reading this farther in the future (Hello, future people! I hope things have worked out for you. Please be aware that some of us are actively working to change the timeline to your benefit, but there's a lot of guesswork involved), this incident and its aftermaths might be in your history books. Maybe it was a significant event, one that changed things. Maybe it was just a blip, a stray thread on the tapestry of gun violence that is modern American history.

Here is what happened, in the words of the people who experienced it.

From Steph (@ohstephany_ ):






From Ivanna Paitan:






From Liz Stout:





And on. And on.

There were seventeen killed on that day in that school, most (but not all) students.

Alyssa Alhadeff, 14
Scott Beigel, 35
Martin Duque, 14
Nicholas Dworet, 17
Aaron Feis, 37
Jaime Guttenberg, 14
Chris Hixon, 49
Luke Hoyer, 15
Cara Loughran, 14
Gina Montalto, 14
Joaquin Oliver, 17
Alaina Petty, 14
Meadow Pollack, 18
Helena Ramsay, 17
Alex Schachter, 14
Carmen Schentrup, 16
Peter Wang, 15

It is not the highest death toll in a mass shooting, not even in the past year.

We are just five years past the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, in which a gunman entered an elementary school and used an AR-15-style weapon to kill twenty children aged six and seven as well as six staff members. You would reasonably expect that the horror of that incident might have stirred Congress to action to, at the very least, limit accessibility of weapons to profoundly mentally ill individuals like the shooter. But you would be wrong. Spurred by the NRA, Congress took no action to increase restrictions of any sort, and sales of the weapon used in the shooting soared.

The Pulse Nightclub shooting.The Las Vegas shooting, currently the largest mass shooting carried out by an individual. A movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. A Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. A town hall meeting. A Congressional softball practice. Hundreds, thousands of dead police officers. None of these have spurred action.

Why does this time feel different?

This time the attack was on a generation just coming of age - literally; many of them turned eighteen shortly before or shortly after the shooting. It's a generation tuned into social media, and ready to use it in ways older generations can't conceive. High school students are generally full of piss and vinegar anyway. Now they have come under attack - again, literally - and have turned their youthful energies and their creativity against the forces that have promoted inaction in the aftermath of past incidents.

They are taking action - publicly, and in a way that allows the general public to both observe and interact. For now, Twitter is their main medium, but they are also not shy about using traditional news media and TV shows to get their message across. And as elections roll around, many of them plan to be very active at the polling place.

Will they be able to persist in their efforts? A part of me wants to say that the trauma they have just experienced will keep them going. But I know that in many cases trauma spurs a desire to move on from the memory of the trauma, lest it consume the one who experienced it. How many will be destroyed by this experience? How many will just want to forget it?

They have vowed that they will be the last generation to experience mass shootings. Their banner, their rallying cry, their hashtag, is #NeverAgain. Will they succeed? There have already been more deaths - the "accidental" shooting of Courtlin Arrington at Huffman High School in Alabama, the murder of three workers - one of them seven months pregnant - at a veterans' facility in California. I fear that next Valentine's Day, as a holiday that now commemorates a mass shooting at a high school, some pundit will sardonically rattle off the number of mass shootings since "Never Again" was declared. Will the survivors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas still be carrying on the fight? Will we be fighting alongside them?

Here's a non-exhaustive list of Twitter feeds to follow. Please "like" and repost relevant tweets to boost the signal and keep the fire burning and the memories of those murdered alive.

@NeverAgainMSD ‏
@fred_guttenberg ‏

@John_Barnitt ‏

@sighnatasha ‏

@Ryan_Deitsch ‏

@lexforchange ‏

@giu0807 ‏

@davidhogg111 ‏

@Emma4Change ‏

@rain_valladares ‏

@Sarahchadwickk ‏

@longlivekcx ‏

@kali4change ‏

@ohstephany_ ‏

Peaches on the windowsill

Today Peaches happened to be in the front bow window, where I got some nice pictures of Romeo last Wednesday. I happened to be nearby with a camera, and got a few nice shots.

Peaches, like most of our cats, was a feral cat rescued as a kitten years ago.

She nearly had several other names: Cloud, and Angel, and (courtesy of our neighbor with atrocious pet naming skills)"Precious Face." I was the one who proposed Peaches, based on her color.

I have a few other nicknames for her: Peachie the Creature, and Mup-pet.

She is mostly a quiet, timid cat. She buddied a lot with BlueBear, so when he died last October, she was terribly lost.

Now, however, she competes with Thor for scratches and pets. If either of them sees the other getting petted or scratched, they will try to "steal" the scratches or pets from the other by insinuating themself between the person doing the petting or scratched and the cat receiving the affection.

BONUS IMAGE:

This is photo which, like so many others, is posted to my Facebook, but not here. I consider Facebook unreliable and ephemeral, sedimentary in structure and difficult to search. So I'm reproducing it here.

From July 19, 2011:

Peaches loves to watch TV, even if it's unplugged. 
She's watching The Peaches Show, starring Peaches.

ADDITIONAL PHOTOS, MARCH 11, 2018:
Yesterday's images were taken late in the morning on an overcast day. Today's were taken mid-afternoon on a sunny and clear day.

How to save money on potatoes

Last Tuesday I took my mom to a doctor's appointment after work. The appointment was bound to take some time, so I ran out to the supermarket to pick up a few things. A sack of potatoes, some cat treats, a few other things.

My mom still wasn't done by the time I came back to the office, so I hung out for a bit, watching WBRE's PA Live! and hoping to see if they ran the right episode of the Blog of the Week. (My segment either ran early, late, or not at all.) When she was finally done, we had to run across town to a pharmacy to get a prescription filled - an errand that turned into an hour-long ordeal. Finally, upon getting home, I realized I should run out and top off the gas tank in preparation for the expected monster snowstorm the next day.

At long last I was done. I unloaded the car and carried the groceries into the house. My mom asked how much the potatoes were. I pulled out the receipt and checked. "$5.99," I reported, "minus sixty cents for my SENIOR DISCOUNT!"

I know my beard and mustache have gone grey, but do I really look that old?

Here's the thing: I just turned 50 at the end of January. As with most of my birthdays, this one was met without much fanfare, though as usual my mom insisted on getting a cake. But turning 50 has a way of making you think about things in a way that turning 48 or 49 does not. I put some of these thoughts into a poem that's been submitted for possible inclusion in a literary magazine. Eventually I'll post it here.

Still, senior discounts are generally (but not always) restricted to people over the age of 65. What gives?

I'm not the only member of my age group to encounter this. In response to a question posed by one of my friends, someone suggested that this is actually an act of kindness by the checkout clerks. Senior discounts are sometimes the only time they get to exercise a discretion. In many cases, they are not allowed to ask customers their age. So unless a customer specifically requests a senior discount, it's up to the clerk to judge whether the customer is of an eligible age. And if they err on the side of caution, offering a senior discount to someone too young to get it - well, these things happen.

Or maybe it's not an act of kindness. Maybe it's an act of rebellion, the way for some checkout clerks to fight the power by handing out senior discounts every chance they get.

In any event, my local supermarket only provides senior discounts on Tuesdays, and only on certain house-brand items. Was this a fluke, a one-off, something that happened once and won't happen again until I turn 65?

I guess we'll find out next Tuesday.

Library card

For the first time in years - possibly decades - I have a library card.*

This is a bit embarrassing. I live just a few blocks from the Mill Memorial Library. I am an active supporter of libraries. I have friends who are librarians. I have a great love of books.

But I have a love-hate relationship with libraries. I have always felt that any book worth reading is worth owning**, so in my lifetime I have amassed a collection of thousands of books. I read and re-read these books at my leisure, sometimes leaving a newly-purchased book unread for many months (or even years), sometimes setting aside a book I have read and enjoyed to be picked up and read again much later.

With library books the rules are different. The book does not belong to you. You have a set time in which you may read the book, at the end of which you must return it or renew your loan. If you would like to read it again sometime, you may check it out again, if no one else already has it out. I don't like reading on a deadline. So I have preferred buying to borrowing.

In recent years I have found my relationship with book-buying changing. I will walk into a book store - and locally, that means Barnes & Noble, since Walden and The Tudor and the Village Green and the Book and Record Mart and all the other chains and local bookstores have been closed for many years - and look at all the books there, and I will realize that I cannot justify spending that kind of money on that book.

So there are a great many books by Neil Gaiman, and Flannery O'Connor, and other authors, that I would like to buy, and would like to own, but I cannot justify the expense. The library offers me an possibility to borrow and read these books without the expense of buying them.

After I got my card today, I browsed the stacks for a while and saw that Neil Gaiman's "Good Omens" and "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" are both on the shelves, ready to be borrowed. I wasn't ready to block out the time to read these books just yet, so I left them, maybe for someone else to borrow and read. Perhaps on my next visit...


*When I was in Ireland in 2006, I stopped at the local library in Mitchelstown to use their internet to check my mail. To use this system, I was first required to get a library card - at a charge of two euros or so. I realized this was the coolest souvenir ever. I have that card tucked somewhere with the assorted ephemera of my visits.

**On today's visit, as I do every time I walk into a library, I checked out the books for sale. I found copies of "Collapse" by Jared Diamond and "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman, both of which I already own, but have misplaced, and "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen, which I have heard good things about, but have so far found dreadfully written. I bought these three books for a dollar. Not a dollar apiece; this was a "bag" sale, where you could fill a standard plastic grocery bag with books and pay a dollar for everything.

Romeo on a Snow Day, March 7, 2018

I have a bad habit of not posting about my animal friends until they have died. That's not the case today.

Romeo was one of three pets that we inherited from our next-door neighbor when she went into the hospital and never came out again back in September 2011. Romeo had been one of four cats she had owned: Tinker, Baby Boy, Romeo, and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet were longhairs, Romeo, a bright ginger, and Juliet, a deep, dark brown. Tinker, a plump Calico, had a habit of running away from home. One day he ran away and never came back. The other three cats also ran away on a regular basis, but usually came back home. Baby Boy once somehow wound up in the ceiling of our basement, years before we took him in. Juliet ran away and never came back, as far as anyone knew; when our neighbor's sister was having the house made fit for human habitation after her sister checked into the hospital, the workers found her mummified corpse amidst the junk on her back porch. Whether she came back there to die or somehow got trapped there and starved to death, I do not know.

Romeo had also run away at the time we took the neighbor to the hospital. But he didn't run far, and I frequently saw him lurking in her back yard. When we decided to take in Hershey and Baby Boy, we also brought Romeo over.

Romeo was covered with ticks, huge, tan things, maybe the size of match heads, maybe the size of corn kernels. I carefully plucked them off, one at a time, and stuck them to pieces of tape, which I then folded over to encase them while allowing for inspection. Perhaps as a consequence of this, Romeo developed a nasty case of intestinal worms.

It was while Romeo was being treated for these worms that we made an important discovery. Romeo had been a nasty, disagreeable cat after we took him in. He would often hiss and swat at the other cats whenever they tried to eat. I warned the vet about Romeo's disposition so they would not be surprised when they began treating him. Instead, Romeo started to purr as they handled him, and rolled around in near-ecstasy during the examination. Romeo wasn't being nasty; he was being insecure. He wanted to be the center of attention, not just another cat in the house.

Lately, Romeo has been showing signs of wanting to try to get out of the house. This concerns us, mainly because a desire to run off and hide comes upon some animals when they are nearing death. Romeo is up in age, sixteen or older. He shows no signs of illness, but cats are good at hiding these things.

Today, I found Romeo gazing out the front window at the falling snow. I grabbed my camera and snapped off a few photos. Even though the snowstorm didn't live up to the dire predictions locally, it at least made a pretty backdrop for these photos on a Snow Day.

Furnace issues, December 27, 2017

Our furnace crapped out yet again during the coldest time of the year.

I don't know if furnaces are more likely to fail when they are most needed, or if already-existing issues only become obvious when temperatures drop. We had been noticing irregular heating throughout the house for a while: some rooms hot, some rooms just barely warm. Still, temperatures were generally in an acceptable range, and never below 70 degrees F (21 degrees C.) Until yesterday, that is.

Last night temperatures in the kitchen dropped to 66 F (19 C.) The furnace would cycle on for a few minutes at a time, and then go down for a while. The "hot" rooms were warm, while the "warm" rooms were cold. This morning the kitchen was 60 F (15.5 C), and the "hot" rooms weren't much better. It was time to call in the furnace repair guys, again.

Long story short: it was the circulating pump, again. Just like in 2016. The repairs were performed by Carpinet Plumbing & Heating under a HomeServe service contract. Other repairs had been done in 2007 and 2006. Once again, we've been advised there's no preventative maintenance to do. I guess we'll keep an eye on the temperatures, and call again before temperatures drop so low.

The Color of Snow at Sunset

I went on another wild goose chase this Thursday. I've documented this sort of thing before. This was actually the second one I've been on in the past two weeks - and both have involved an antique ceramic Christmas tree made by an aunt many years ago.

The first chase involved the search for a replacement star on December 3 and was documented on Facebook. (I have included this at the end of this post for the sake of completeness.) Shortly after I secured the new star, the rotary switch on the cord for the ceramic Christmas tree gave up the ghost. I took the assembly apart and was able to disconnect the cord. It was obvious I would need to replace it. Fair enough; I had bought replacement electrical cords before, many years - err, decades - ago. How hard could it be to find one?

On Monday I tried Lowes. No luck. They had a replacement cord and socket for a candelabra-sized bulb, and a "bottle lamp" kit, with more stuff than I need. (They also had a few empty spots on a rack that might have been for replacement cords, but I couldn't be sure.) I made plans to visit The Lamp Factory and maybe Home Depot. My mom suggested Friedman Electric.

I wasn't able to go searching again until Thursday, December 14, after I recorded a bunch of segments for the Blog of the Week spot on WBRE's PA Live. (My segments have been on tape for the past few years.) Friedman Electric in Wilkes-Barre is not in an obvious location. I sort-of wandered and followed my nose a bit until I stumbled over it. No luck there. The guy at the counter offered to build a lamp cord for me, but suggested I try the Lamp Factory.

It turned out The Lamp Factory had what I was looking for, but only in the back; they basically had to get one from their repair guy. (For the sake of completeness, I checked Home Depot and found that they had a section just for lamp replacement parts. Their replacement cord was slightly more expensive than the one I bought at The Lamp Factory, but it seemed to be a heavier gauge wire.)

All that is peripheral to this post.

I got to the studio to record my PA Live spots at 2:50 PM. I parked at a meter on the street, and put an hour's worth of coins in. We got a late start, but still managed to record twenty spots between 3:15 and 3:45. I hung out a bit afterwards to watch a children's group (who had been my audience during the recording) go through a sound check for their performance on the show later. I thought about sticking around to watch the show live, but suddenly remembered that my meter was running out. I got to the car as the meter was flashing "-0.00" but before I got a ticket.

I pulled out of the spot and headed past WBRE. I saw someone standing outside the back entrance too the studio with a reindeer. "Awww, they got a friggin' reindeer," I thought in my best Carl Brutananadilewski voice. (Candice Kelly later assured me on Twitter that the two reindeer were indeed glorious.)

After some wandering, trying to remember the location of Friedman Electric, I stumbled across the place by accident a little after 4:00. I was out of there a few minutes later and headed off to The Lamp Factory, located on the other end of Wilkes-Barre, Wilkes-Barre Township actually, practically in Plains. I pulled into the parking lot as the sun was setting behind the Western mountains of the Wyoming Valley.

And then I saw the snow pile.

It was glowing. 

More than that: the white snow was glowing with the orange-gold of the sunset, while the shadows were glowing with the blue of the sky.

This is something most people don't realize. We think of shadows as black, or at least gray. They are not - at least, not usually. In most environments we encounter, we aren't dealing with a single light source. In the outdoors, the sun is the primary light source, but its light is reflected all around us: off buildings, off clouds, off any object it hits. Sunlight is also refracted in the air, causing the sky to glow a glorious blue under the right circumstances. All these things provide secondary light sources, even when no artificial illumination is present.

Shadows appear when a light source is blocked. Parts of the snow pile were blocking the setting sun, keeping the orange-gold light from reaching the shadowed regions. But those regions were still being illuminated by the glowing sky. And so the regions in shadow took on the color of the blue sky illuminating them.

I only spent a few minutes in The Lamp Factory, and walked out with a replacement lamp cord, which I used to repair the ceramic Christmas tree. By then the sun had slipped completely below the horizon, and the pile of snow was now a dim gray.

*          *          *

The search for the ceramic Christmas tree star, as documented on Faceboook, December 3, 2017:

The stem of the plastic star topper on our antique ceramic Christmas tree broke, so I set out to find a replacement. I remember seeing the "bulbs" at A.C. Moore in Wilkes-Barre years ago, but that location has been closed for several years. Friday after work I stopped at Michaels in Wilkes-Barre. I spent quite a bit of time prowling the place without luck, and all of the available staff were apparently working the registers behind a cordoned-off area and dealing with a long line of people waiting to check out. (I had to squeeze past these people and the registers just to leave empty-handed.) Friday night I checked online but could not find any indicating they were available at a bricks-and-mortar location, and most wanted an outrageous amount for shipping or were sold out through next February. Saturday I checked Dundee Gardens, and they suggested I try Christmasland at Main Hardware, which had a box of very reasonably-priced "bulbs" and "ornaments" but no toppers. Finally, after last night's edition of The Writers' Showcase at the Old Brick Theatre, I decided to try A.C. Moore at Dickson City. It was already nearly 9:00, but Brian Fanelli suggested they might be staying open late for the holidays. I made it there by 8:55 and they showed no sign of closing. After several passes, I approached someone at a well-marked customer service desk, who was able to direct me to EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR! Thanks, A.C. Moore, and thanks to your helpful employees! I hope you come back to Wilkes-Barre soon!

Convent, gone

All that remains. November 5, 2017. I never realized until I saw this rubble that the mortar used on these bricks was purple. Yellow bricks with purple mortar. All these years, and I never noticed that.

The former convent at the old St. Mary's school in Nanticoke has been torn down.

St. Mary's church (background), new rectory (left), convent (right), November 6, 2005 - twelve years less one day ago.

Perhaps some explanation is necessary. In the olden days, a Roman Catholic Parish consisted of several physical parts. Central, of course, was the church itself. This was the gathering place of the members of the parish for weekly attendance at Mass, and for special masses throughout the year. Next to the church was the rectory, the home of the parish priest - or, often, priests. This also served as an office for the priest, a place for him to meet with members of the parish for parish business or private conversations. Near to the church was the parish school. At one time, Catholic schools were the primary alternative to the public school system in many areas. These schools were small, but each parish usually had its own, and even in a small city like Nanticoke this meant multiple Catholic schools for the multiple parishes. Next to the school was a convent. The convent provided dormitory-like housing for the parish nuns, who also served as the primary teachers at the Catholic schools.

The whole system has been in decay since before I was born. My parish, Our Lady of Czestochowa (commonly called St. Mary's), had already combined its school system with that of crosstown parish St. Stanislaus. Kindergarten was at St. Mary's, as were first grade and all subsequent odd-numbered grades; even-numbered grades had classes at St. Stan's. This arrangement ended before I made it to sixth grade, at which point all classes were being held in St. Mary's. There just weren't enough students to sustain two schools.

"New" rectory, convent, and school, March 2005

There also weren't enough nuns to teach all the grades. Kindergarten was taught by a lay teacher, as were second and third grade. At least one other class was taught by a lay teacher - sixth grade, I believe. The nuns were getting older, and more of them went to the retirement home in Reading each year.

I graduated from eighth grade in 1981. Not long after, St. Mary's and St. Stan's combined their schools with the nearby Holy Trinity parish. (Another parish, St. Joseph's, had closed its school a few years earlier, sending its handful of students to St. Mary's.) All of the classes were held in Holy Trinity's school. St. Mary's school closed.

With the closing of each school, the associated convent became superfluous. While nuns provided other services in the parish, their primary role was educational. Without students and a school, the nuns were no longer needed. They moved out of the convents, which, like the schools, were either repurposed or left vacant.

And so the convent at St. Mary's has been vacant for over thirty years. Until this week, when it was torn down.

*********

The Nuns' Bridge, which allowed them to walk directly from the convent to the school. Below is the entrance where my mom and her fellow students would enter the convent to take shelter during air raids. The nearness of the buildings captured any wind and turned it into a raging vortex. Photo taken November 6, 2005.

My mom went to the same grade school as me. This is a strange thought, that she and I walked the same hallways, climbed the same stairs, sat in the same classrooms.

She has her own memories of the convent. For me it was a dark and forbidding place. I was only inside it a few times, and only to serve Mass, during the periodic but infrequent masses held inside the convent exclusively for the nuns. I remember nuns on kneelers, clutching rosaries.

I also remember the smell of baking coming from the basement of the convent sometimes. This was the basement that my mom remembered, the place that would serve as a shelter during air raid drills. She grew up during World War II. Air raids were a real concern.

I drove her past the rubble of the convent after Mass yesterday. Her breath caught as she remembered those long-ago days of seeking refuge in a place that is now no longer there.

Church and convent. The area where my mom and her classmates would take shelter during WWII air raid drills is in the foreground, now covered with creeping weeds.

The rubble that was once a convent.

Halloween 2017

I didn't intend to pass out candy last night, but I did.

I had bought rather a lot of candy to be passed out at work, as coworkers were allowed to bring their children in in costume. Despite generously doling out candy by the fistful and leaving a huge pile to be passed out by a coworker who would be there several hours past the end of my shift, I still brought home a fairly enormous amount of candy.

My shift ended at 2:30. As I drove home I noticed the woman in the car behind me was wearing some sort of Nefertiti headdress. I passed by a few kids and their parents at a Halloween event at the Red Cross. After taking my mom to All Saints' Day mass (which ended with the organist breaking into Bach's Toccata and Fuge in D Minor, the first time I ever heard it played live), we saw numerous groups of kids and parents getting out to an early start of Trick-or-Treating, and as we pulled in front of her house, the neighbor boy patiently waited on his front lawn for friends to arrive while dapperly dressed as Orson Krennic from Rogue One. I decided then that if all these people were putting effort into Halloween, I would pass out candy at my mom's house.

One of the front steps there needs repair - that's on my to-do list for my current staycation, brought on by having nearly two weeks of use-it-or-lose-it vacation time - so I didn't want to make the kiddies walk up the steps. Instead I fitted myself with winter gear - sweater, scarf, coat, gloves, over-the-ears hat - set a chair out at the bottom of the steps, turned on the porch light, and sat down under the fading twilight to await the Trick-or-Treaters.

There weren't many houses in the neighborhood passing out candy, but there were a few, so my night didn't just consist of seated stargazing. Kids came in groups, anywhere from two to seven. A few were alone, escorted by their parents. Most were younger, but young or old, everyone got candy. Quite a few people brought along their dogs in costume, but all I had for them were pets on the head, which they appreciated.

Most costumes were fairly generic, or at least had no discernible connection to any celebrity. I had a Batman, and a pretty elaborate Cleopatra, and only one Donald Trump - I only realized this after I noticed the orange makeup smeared over his face. No Fake Melanias, which would have been a pretty easy costume: a wig, big sunglasses, and a raincoat. (Note for future readers: Donald Trump recently did a speech where he pointed out, unnecessarily, that his wife Melania was standing right next to him. Melania, who was in fact standing next to him in a raincoat and oversized sunglasses, nodded slightly and turned her head almost mechanically. It was an odd thing, and immediately spawned tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theories that this was not in fact Melania but a hastily-put-together double. I really think of this as a companion piece to an event a month earlier when Trump apparently forgot that Melania was standing next to him at an event, and expressed regret that she couldn't be there.)

I had started handing out candy around 6:30, and decided to wrap things up at 8:00. My cousin brought her daughter (dressed as Rainbow Dash, not Rainbow Brite) over toward the end of the night. Shortly after that a young couple came past on the sidewalk, pulling a wagon with two little girls who were probably not much more than two years old. The parents asked the girls if they wanted to go to one last house, but they both said they were too tired. I jumped up and went to them, loading up the girls' bags with handfuls of candy. They were all very appreciative.

In the end I wound up with leftover candy. But I was glad I got to pass out what I did.

BlueBear, April 2009 - October 20, 2017

Two of my friends lost their pet cats this week. In both cases the cats were quite sickly, facing many chronic health issues. One died on Wednesday, another on Thursday.

I didn't expect that BlueBear would be dead by Friday night.

BlueBear was one of a litter of feral kittens born in April of 2009. We took in his sister, Bowie, first, and then his brother, Thor. BlueBear we caught with a Havahart trap baited with garden netting. BlueBear loved to play in the garden netting, so I figured it would be an ideal thing to trap him with. It was.

BlueBear was the biggest of our cats, bigger than any cat since Ashes, and maybe bigger than him. He was one of two black cats in our house. I always felt very lucky to have two black cats in the house. "Miniature panthers," I called them.

BlueBear as a newly-caught kitten. The blue had mostly left his eyes.

BlueBear used to love to sit on the back of a chair and gently chew on my scalp. He would often hold my head in his paws to position it just right, and then extend his claws to make sure I stayed still. He didn't like when I let my hair grow long, but returned to this practice once it was short again.

I began a new shift a few weeks ago: Monday through Friday, 6:00 AM to 2:30 PM. This means that I need to be out of bed by 4:00 AM to do all that needs to be done, and also need to be in bed shortly after 9:00 PM. Fridays I can indulge myself a bit, staying up later than usual because I can sleep later than usual on Saturday. But this past Friday found me dozing in a chair while watching the news. Various cats were scattered around me. BlueBear was in the bow window in the front of the house, one of his favorite spots for sunning himself and watching the outside world. He, like the other cats, also has a habit of nibbling on the (non-toxic) houseplants in the window - and often throws up what he had eaten. So I didn't find it at all unusual when BlueBear began to make retching sounds like he was trying to cough up a hairball. He did this a few times, and then wandered off into the next room, creeping along with a wobbly gait. Bad hairball, I figured, and this thought was confirmed when I heard him give a brief yowl and another retch from the next room. I roused myself and went into that room to find him, but he scampered out into the room I had just come from. Fine, I thought. I had to write out a bill anyway. I would check on him after I was done.

BlueBear (top), Bowie (left), and Thor (right) as kittens

I wrote out that bill - the only one I still pay by mail - put a stamp on the envelope and sealed it up. I went to put it in the spot where I would remember to mail it the next day, and noticed a suspicious looking lump under a carpet. I nudged it with my foot, and BlueBear dashed out, to hide in one of his favorite hiding spots - inside the pedal chamber of a disused and depowered organ.

I returned to my bills and went through all the other bills I had, noting either each one had already been paid or the dates on which they were due. I marked the due dates in my ledger, sorted out the to-be-paid from the already-paid from the junk mail. I heard BlueBear yowl faintly from the other room, possibly from inside the organ. I sorted everything back together and put it on the organ bench, which serves as my mail sorting station.

Thor and Bluebear, October 27, 2009

Enough of this, I thought. I went down on my belly to pull BlueBear out from under the organ. I reached in and pulled out...another cat. Where is BlueBear?, I wondered. I looked around. I spotted him sprawled out under a coffee table, glaring at me.

I picked him up. He yowled again and struggled - with his forelimbs. His hindquarters were limp.

I took him off to a bathroom we use for cat isolation. I put him down and he proceeded to crawl away with his hindquarters dragging. I got my mom, let her know that there was a problem with BlueBear. Let her know that we would probably have to take him to the emergency vet.

I think we both knew that this would be a one-way trip.

We didn't know for sure what had happened. She speculated he had had a stroke, which didn't seem right. I have never heard of a stroke affecting only the lower half of the body, both legs and the tail. I speculated he had somehow broken his back, but there seemed to be no other sign of the sort of trauma that would accompany this.

We made it up to the emergency vet fairly quickly. BlueBear cried a bit going down to the car, but my mom was able to keep him calm during the ride. It was 8:00 when she was leaving messages for my sister and brother, letting her know where we were. Where we were going. What had happened.

Once there I quickly and succinctly explained his condition. They rushed him back immediately for an examination. We were directed to a nearby waiting area.

As we seated ourselves a young, athletic-looking woman approached us. She apologized for the intrusion, but said that she couldn't help but overhear our situation. And, she explained, she was here for exactly the same reason.

Now, her situation was not the same as ours. Her cat was 14 or 15, while ours was not yet nine. But her cat had experienced the same sudden onset of lower-body paralysis.

As we conversed, a young veterinarian came out and asked us to join him in a private room.

He took a quick history of BlueBear. Medicines, vaccinations, is he an outdoor cat? None of that, in retrospect, seems relevant to what he told us next. BlueBear had apparently experience a "saddle thrombus"

PetMD: Saddle Thrombus: Every Cat Owner's Worst Nightmare

Saddle thrombus is, basically, a blood clot that has traveled from the heart though the aorta and down into the area where the artery splits to feed blood to the lower parts of the cat's body. It has now created a blockage, and is denying - has been denying - blood flow to the lower half of the body. Treatment is possible, involving radical surgery, but the likelihood of recovery is close to zero - and the likelihood of death during or shortly after surgery is high.

We knew what the other option was. We knew what had to be done.

The doctor brought us back into the holding area where BlueBear was being kept in an oxygen-rich chamber.  He seemed distraught, but we were both able to put an arm through an access port and pet him, That calmed him a bit. I touched his back legs, and as the doctor had told us, they were cold. No blood flow.

We stayed with him for a while, but we knew that he was upset and confused and frightened and, I believe, in pain. We wanted to make that stop. Bowie had died in my arms. Nikki had died in my mother's. Both suffered a lot in the end, I think. We didn't want to put BlueBear - or ourselves - through that.

When we were ready, we were directed to another room. BlueBear was given sedation before he was brought to us. He lay on the blanket they had provided - the one we had brought him in on had become terribly soiled on the ride up - eyes open, but motionless. We were allowed a final few moments with him. Not long enough. Never long enough.

Then the doctor gave the two injections that rendered him insensate and did something else - stopped the brain directly, he told us. And then it was over. The time was about 9:15 PM - I didn't check it. BlueBear was dead. Another box to be added to the collection.


CODA 1: 

I had wanted to get to sleep early Friday night because I had two things planned for the next morning. I planned to take my mom up for blood work as early as possible, to allow me adequate time to get ready for my dental appointment at 11:00 AM. We still went up for blood work anyway, both shocked and shaken by the events of the previous night, and I had time to take a shower, change into fresh clothes, and brush my teeth thoroughly.

I was getting some work done around existing fillings, and it required a lot of novocaine. I wouldn't be able to eat or drink for a while afterwards, and my speech would be slurred until the numbing went away. That was OK: I planned to run up to The Lands at Hillside Farms, a nonprofit farm dedicated to preserving a place that might otherwise be destroyed by development, the dream of the late local veterinarian and founder of Blue Chip Animal Rescue Dr. Doug Ayers. I had a glass bottle from milk to return, something I had picked up last November, and I had just been planning to spend some time with the animals. Now I felt like I needed it more than ever.

I made the twenty-minute trip from Nanticoke to The Lands at Hillside Farms. I returned the bottle and was surprised to find that I had a two dollar deposit being refunded to me. I pocketed the two singles and headed out the back. As I had entered through the front door I had seen a sign about a current fundraiser to build a new dairy barn, but I didn't see anywhere to make a donation. I figured I would look for one as I wandered about.

My first visit was to the peacocks. Beautiful birds, two of them, a male and a female. I wondered how they would do over the coming winter. I had no such worry about the alpacas, who seemed quite ready for any weather that came their way. I wandered along the path and saw some goats begging for food - but on my way there I first stopped and said hi to a chicken who seemed to want something from me. Unfortunately, the nearby dispensers only provided goat feed, not chicken feed. I popped in some quarters and got three handfuls of the goat treats. I held out a hand to each of two nearby goats who were eagerly looking for handouts and let them each eat about half. Then I moved over to a more forlorn-looking fellow with his head stuck through a fence and let him have the rest.

I stopped in a barn to commune with some cows, first calling out to a surly-looking orange barn cat who had business to attend to, but I quickly moved into the calf stables. I don't remember the separate area for calves when I came on my first visit almost exactly three years ago. The girl I was with then was surprisingly willing to get her new pink sneakers dirty as we visited the cows, but she surely would not have passed up an opportunity to be with calves. I spotted two rocking chairs and a bookshelf in the back, and remembered reading about a call for volunteers to come read to the calves during cold winter nights. I thought about picking up a book, taking a seat, and reading to the eager and curious calves right then and there. As I was contemplating this, a family came in. The mother expressed wonderment at seeing cows, and the little daughter quickly responded that these weren't cows, though she couldn't explain what exactly they were. I mentioned to them about the rocking chairs and the books in the back, but with my half-numb mouth it sounded like I had had a stroke. I decided it would be best to talk as little as possible for the rest of the visit.

Reluctantly leaving the calves, I walked through an empty barn that, according to the signs on the stalls, housed some donkeys. The donkeys were wandering around a nearby enclosure that they shared with some pigs. One pig was wallowing in some mud in a connected enclosure, but the other pig, Otis, who had recently returned to the farm following a bout of rheumatoid arthritis, lay in the dirt near his little pig house.

"Hello, Otis," I said.

"Grunt," he responded. I interpreted this as "I wish I had some mud to roll in. That mud is too far away."

Our conversation went on like this for a while. Finally I had to go.

"Goodbye, Otis," I said. "Take care. I'll see you later."

"Grunt." ("Don't forget to stop back in the dairy shop and donate those two dollars. You saw the bit about the two-for-one match, didn't you?")

Indeed I had. I stopped in the shop and found my way to a checkout counter where I mumbled about making a donation. The girl eagerly took it, and offered to have me fill out a form so I could get on a thank-you list. I realized that the postage and overhead involved in such a thing would vastly reduce the impact of my meager donation, even with the two-for-one match by an anonymous benefactor increasing the value to six dollars. I demurred. Maybe some other time with some other donation.

My spirits were somewhat lifted as I left The Lands and meandered home.


CODA 2:

After we came home from the emergency vet's - without BlueBear - I sat down to finish working on my bills. I paid one after another, rapidly erasing the temporary windfall in my account produced by my biweekly paycheck. I checked my email and saw that I had received a coupon good for $5 off a $30 purchase at Pet Supplies Plus, good Friday through Sunday. I filed the coupon away for later.

Today was later.

I took my mom out for a ride. Today would have been my parents' sixty-second anniversary - my father died just a few months short of their fiftieth - so we stopped at his grave, where she left a single pink rosebud we had picked from one of my rosebushes. After a trip to refill the nearly-empty gas tank of the car, we headed out to Pet Supplies Plus. She didn't want to come in, so I left her in the car.

As usual I stopped first at the rescue pet they have available for adoption on a regular basis. Usually it's a cat, but not too long ago it was a rabbit. This time it was a cat, the same cat who had been there the last time I had stopped in. A big black cat of unknown age named Pa-Pa. Last time I had remarked that he was the spitting image of BlueBear, and now that reality hit me hard. Here, for a $70 adoption fee, was a cat nearly identical to the cat I had just lost. His face was not the same - Pa-Pa's eyes looked far more world-weary than BlueBear's - and his throat featured a patch of white far larger than BlueBear's. I opened the cage and pet the sleeping cat, who quickly roused and moved to exit the cage. I had to gently hold him back, but pet and cuddled him for a while until I had to move on with my shopping.

I quickly found some items that added up to more than $30 and which, with the coupon, would be much less expensive overall than I could get them elsewhere. I headed for the register and stopped to see Pa-Pa again. Opened the cage, pet him, cuddled him. Kissed him on the forehead and told him that someone would be there to adopt him soon.

I moved to the checkout and found myself telling the clerk about BlueBear, about saddle thrombus, about how much Pa-Pa looked like him, about how if I had an extra $70 I might just be taking him home today. Tomorrow the funds that I had transferred to my cards would be available. Maybe tomorrow.

I left the store, thinking about coming back tomorrow for Pa-Pa. As I loaded the cases of cat food into the car I mused that I would need to bring up a cat carrier to take him home - just like that couple walking into the store now.

They're returning the cat carrier, that's all, I thought. They bought it and it doesn't fit their needs, or it's defective in some way. Quality ain't what it used to be, amiright?, I mused as I pushed my cart through the parking lot, back into the store. No way could they have just shown up to adopt the cat that you had just started to try to convince yourself to adopt.

I entered the store, returned the cart. Got the customary "Thank you!" Saw the couple and their cat carrier next to Pa-Pa's now-open cage, playing with the cat they were about to take home. Another clerk was there, taking pictures with her cell phone.

I sidled up to them and intruded on their moment. Told them that the cat was the spitting image of a cat I had just lost Friday night. Told them how lucky they were to be taking home such a cat. Told them how I had thought about adopting him myself.

"See, Pa-Pa," I said. "I told you someone would adopt you soon."

I left the store, walked back to the car, and cried for my lost friend.

TWO blogging events on October 14!

When life hands you a scheduling conflict, turn around and declare it..synergy!

Shortly after last year's NEPA BlogCon, Northeastern Pennsylvania's blogging conference and convention, a date was set for the 2017 event. Arrangements were made, a venue was reserved, and sponsors and presenters were lined up. The 2017 NEPA BlogCon will be on Saturday, October 14 from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM at Penn State Worthington Scranton. (Get your free tickets soon - they're going fast!)

Meanwhile, Ben Hoon from Gort42 was hard at work making arrangements for the Fall 2017 edition of NEPA Blogfest, the region's long-running gathering of bloggers, politicians, political candidates, and others. After a long process of discussing schedules with politicians and candidates, a date emerged that would work the best, and the Fall 2017 NEPA Blogfest was set for October 14 at the River Grill in Plains from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

What to do? The two major blogging events in Northeastern Pennsylvania were now in conflict with each other! Sort of, kind of. NEPA BlogCon would end shortly before the NEPA Blogfest was set to begin. The two events were set to be taking place about twenty-two miles apart - a half-hour's drive under optimal conditions.

After some discussion, a solution was worked out: NEPA Blogfest would be the site of the official afterparty for NEPA BlogCon!

From the post on NEPA Blogs:

SAVE THE DATE: 10/14/17

Six years ago, NEPA BlogCon (NEPA's only blogging & social media conference) was born out of the informal gathering known as NEPA Blogfest. This year, we're happy to announce that we're coming back home to where it all began -- and you're invited! BlogCon's after party and NEPA Blogfest will join forces to bring you the bloggiest event this area has ever seen! Mark your calendars!!

NEPA Blogfest 2017 (Fall Edition)
10/14/17
5pm -- ???
The River Grille
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18702
RSVP on Facebook

Since its inception Blogfest has been described as the best non-political political event of the season. No speeches are allowed and the rule is to agree to disagree but don't be disagreeable. Many local and statewide candidates will be attending. All are welcome, and there is no charge for admission.

Since its revival in the Spring after a short hiatus people have been asking us to do it again. Started as an informal political mixer it became a networking event for bloggers, voters and political candidates.

This a joint venture of NEPA Blogs, The Lu Lac Political Letter and Gort42.

We hope to see you there!

Bowie, April 2009 - June 17, 2017

Bowie, April 2009 - June 17, 2017

It seemed for a while my blog was just a series of obituaries for my animal friends. Hershey. Scooter. Nikki. Baby Boy. I wrote each one as quickly as I could.

Not this one. It has taken more than two and a half months to write Bowie's story.

Bowie came to us in May of 2009. As a young kitten, perhaps six weeks old, she crawled into our house through a hole torn in the screen of a basement window. The first time she did this, my mom was able to retrieve her and return her to her cat-mommy, who seemed indignant that we let such a thing happen. A week later she crawled in again. I heard  her meeping cries from another room. As I entered the room with the window, I saw her holding onto the screen for dear life. She let out a scream as she let go and fell nearly six feet to the concrete floor behind an old stove. I was able to retrieve her using a toy robot arm grabber from Cracker Barrel. We decided that since she was so determined to be in our house, we would keep her. We named her Bowie, since she was The Cat Who Fell to Earth.

Soon we took in Bowie's brothers BlueBear and Thor, and then assorted cousins, nieces, and nephews. Bowie was the first of the "new" cats, but she never really asserted her position in the pecking order. She was tiny and shy and preferred to spend her days hiding (she was an excellent hider), or alone in the upstairs bathroom, or with my mother. She was one of the "Superfriends" - Bowie, Homer, and Scooter - three tabbies who would sleep in the upstairs bathroom, which my mom would keep closed at night. This was mainly to keep Scooter in a known spot overnight. He was never a totally well cat, and we were always worried about something happening to him while no one was around. If Bowie happened to get locked out, she would scratch at my mother's door in the middle of the night until she got up and let her into the bathroom.

Clockwise from lower left: Bowie, BlueBear, Thor

And that was the situation for several years.

Last year Scooter died, and it was no longer really necessary for Homer and Bowie to sleep in the bathroom. But they had come to prefer it, so my mom kept them there at night. They were both very happy with the arrangement. They would both be there to greet my mom in the morning, and she liked that.

Bowie never really warmed to me. She never wanted me to pick her up. If I scratched her or petted her, she would make a querulous two-note cry that sounded like "Really?" (to which I would respond "Yes, really") and then run away just out of arm's reach. But then she would wait there, and allow me to approach her and scratch her again - on her terms.

She started to throw up everything she ate in mid-May.

Maybe not everything. She held down some stuff, sometimes. My mom was convinced she was dying. I thought she was overreacting, being overly dramatic. I figured she just had a hairball, maybe just an upset stomach.

After nearly two weeks of her eating sporadically and throwing up daily, I was convinced. We decided to take her in to the vet on my next day off, which happened to be May 31.


I drove. My mom sat in the back seat with Bowie. Bowie was in a pet carrier, padded by a blanket. My mom rode with her arm inside the carrier, petting Bowie. Bowie was extremely calm.

About a quarter of a mile from the vet's, we were rear-ended at a flashing crosswalk as we stopped to let a woman pushing a baby stroller cross.

The car was still drivable. We were both wearing seatbelts, unlike the idiot who crashed into us. I was OK, I guess. Bowie was fine. My mom's arm was bruised and cut from being pushed against the opening of the carrier. (The story of the car and its repair and the various cars I rented while it was in the shop will be the topic of another post, maybe.)

We got to the vet's about a half-hour late. He took Bowie right in, performed an examination. Told us she had a large mass in her abdomen. A tumor. He offered to put he down on the spot.

We refused. She was still being a cat. We would not kill her just because she might become inconvenient in the coming weeks. And, given her size and the size of the tumor, it seemed likely that she wouldn't live more than a few weeks.

The vet gave her emergency hydration. He gave us an appetite stimulant and some special cat food. The food could be mixed with water to make a paste which could be administered with a syringe.

For the next seventeen days I administered a daily regimen of pills, food, water, Pet Tinic - anything to keep her going. She gradually got weaker and thinner. She would sit with my mother, or lay on the floor, or sit by herself on a chair. Her spine became bonier and more prominent - one of the sure signs of failing health in a cat - but, paradoxically, her belly seemed soft and full. Maybe that was the tumor. Maybe that was where all the food and water I was giving her with the syringes was going.

A few days before she died, I may have done the thing that killed her.

She never liked the syringes. But she wasn't taking anything on her own. The alternative was to just sit back and watch her die, or take her for a trip to the vet to have her put down. A friend who used to be a respiratory therapist always warned me about administering anything by mouth with a syringe. One wrong move could result in aspiration of the food or water, which could lead to pneumonia and death.

She would struggle against the food and the water. To her, it was the worst thing in the world. She would fight me, and then run away after I was done. As long as she could fight and run, I knew she had some fight left in her.

Five days before she died, as she was growing weaker and weaker, she reacted differently to the syringe. As I shot the quarter-teaspoon of liquefied food paste into her mouth, she snapped back and looked at me with a shocked expression, her mouth agape. A dribble of paste came out of her nostril.

I cleaned her up, as I always did after a syringe of paste, and worried about the paste in the nose. Had I just gotten it into her sinuses? Her lungs? I didn't know. I still don't.

Over the next few days I still gave her water and nourishment. Every morning I woke to expect to find her dead. But she was still alive. Each day my mom suggested that this was the day I should take her to be put to sleep before I went to work. But she would rouse, and run around, and jump on chairs, and fight me as I tried to give her food and water. As long as she could decide for herself where she wanted to be, what she wanted to be doing, I didn't want to have her put to sleep.

June 16 was my last day of work before a week's vacation. My shift ran 11:00 AM to 7:30 PM. I called my mom throughout the day to check on Bowie. During my first break, when I called, she was sitting on my mom's lap. When I called, she jumped off. Perhaps that action dislodged something or did something to her fragile system. Whatever the case, she lay down after that, and never regained consciousness.

From my Facebook post the next morning:

Bowie died at 4:49 AM on June 17 while I held her.

She had been lucid and mobile until yesterday afternoon. Around 1:30 she jumped off my mom's lap, ran over to one of her favorite spots on the floor, next to my old Travelocity gnome, and curled up there. She never got up again. My mom picked her up and held her until I got home from work around 8:00, too late to take her to be euthanized. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, her heart was racing, her eyes open and fixed, and her pupils dilated and unresponsive. Her limbs were outstretched and her paws cold. I changed into nightclothes and took my mom's spot. I held Bowie all night long. After 4:30 AM she began to show changes, stretching her arms and neck to a new position, and I called my mom. Around 4:45 her breathing changed. Her heart stopped beating, and she took a few more spasmodic breaths, then curled herself into a more comfortable position and died.

We will take her up to be cremated this morning.

Coincidentally, our car, which was rear-ended as we took Bowie to the vet's for her diagnosis on May 31, is ready for pickup this morning at the body shop a block from the vet's.

And that was that. I picked up her ashes on June 22, after I recorded a bunch of episodes of the NEPA Blogs Blog of the Week at WBRE. Her little box is now stored with the boxes for all of her cat friends, and Hershey, and cats and dogs she had never met.

I miss her so much, even though I interacted with her so little. It hurts me to look at pictures of her pretty little face. She was so young. I thought we were going to have many more years together. But now I have written this, so that is one step taken in the process.

I love you, little Bowie.