Vegetable Garden Upgrades

Last season's vegetable fared especially poorly.  My tomatoes stayed leafy with little fruit.  Staking them upright, both with plastic stakes and later with metal cages, did not keep them upright.  Fruits gave way mostly to pests and to blights.  Peppers grown from nursery plants went nowhere.  Seeds planted into the ground mostly disappointed.  I generated a cucumber vine but only one cucumber. Pretty much a dud all around.  My pots did not fare a lot better.  I wonder whether lawn care extended their herbicides to my vegetables and herbs.  Or maybe my seeds had passed their expiration dates.  Perhaps my soil needs selective enrichment.  Even weeds did not grow making me a little suspicious of my lawn care service.  Some plants grew green.  The beans did not generate beans but stalks rose.

The agricultural division of my state university offers a soil analysis for a nominal fee.  They have kits, but will also accept samples placed in a one-quart freezer bag, like the TSA does for screening liquids.  I've been reading their collection requirements.  Cumbersome, but within my level of skill.  I will need to wash, maybe sterilize, the garden trowel that collects the sample.  I'll follow the collection procedure that they require.  Fill the sample bag, label it with my identification and the intent of a vegetable garden, and enclose a check for $22.50.  Mail in a secure envelope that I can get from the post office.  Enrich the soil in the way the agricultural chemists advise.

I would like to harvest some vegetables this season.

To make space more efficient, I've used a Square Foot Gardening approach.  Mine never produces nearly as bountifully as Mel's who wrote the book, nor as well as the many online sites that guide amateurs through that method.  Considering the magnitude of last year's gardening failure, maybe it's time to return to row planting.  And new seeds would likely enhance yield.  A couple of layers of organic compost from a gardening center or hardware store could also contribute to success.  I don't have a good defense from pests, though.

I will need to reconsider what to plant.  Every amateur looks forward to tomatoes.  Either exotic heirlooms or beefy globe tomatoes.  Cucumbers have been successful.  To minimize weeds, I have a layer of cloth weed block.  While successful, it also makes root vegetables unrealistic.  I've not done well with leaf lettuce, nor do I particularly like eating a lot of it.  Bell peppers never produced.  I would consider chili peppers.

But first, collect soil and do what the chemists report.

Pick One

The more preferable of two goods.  In an electoral world of objectionable choices, this one seemed welcome.  Two invitations arrived by email, one directly with ample notice, the other in a more backhanded way on much shorter notice.  Neither anticipated.

First, a program on addressing anti-Semitism to be held at the Museum of American Jewish History on a Wednesday evening.  The topic interests me, though as an American, my Jewish identity has been mostly secure.  A few snide comments by fellow university classmates along the way, but no personal threats, or even limitations.  Yet, the past several years have added to my exposure.  The physician gunned down at the Tree of Life massacre I knew well in college.  On a trip to Pittsburgh to visit family, I reserved a Saturday morning to worship at the repackaged Tree of Life Congregation.  Four years later, it was no longer the multiplex of several simultaneous services in a single building.  The survivors assembled as a single worshiping community in a rather opulent space, part of a more cathedral-formatted Reform synagogue.  The President introduced himself to me as a visitor.  No one else did.  They still spoke of that fateful day, after four years, during their Dvar Torah discussion.  

The Monsey Hanukkah attack enabled me to generate an essay for our local Jewish magazine.  I knew the geography well.  I kept up with its transition from secular Jewish of my childhood to the Haredi dominance today.  Animosities are understandable.  They seem more generated by the experience of proximity and negative consequences for a secular minority than to scripted anti-Semitism.

I've had minor interactions with Islamic anti-Zionism repackaged as a form of negative transference reaction to American Jews like me committed to a vibrant, secure Israeli nation-state.  There seems little role for education where people are pre-scripted, yet that has remained the focus of our own legacy advocacy agencies.  Protective, enforceable laws and an unequivocal national policy with minimal wiggle room seem a better option for keeping everyone safe.  Some, however, rationalize the compromise of physical safety in the guise of free expression.

While this forum took some planning, and I am grateful for the invitation I received, I never received a formal agenda.  The session had been assembled by an educational institution of Jewish auspices, but I did not know whose presentations I would hear.

On much shorter notice, a brief mention in the weekly OLLI newsletter that arrives by email every Monday morning disclosed that Robert Putnam would be speaking at the University's main campus at a time that largely coincided with the Jewish event.  Like many others, I have held this Harvard professor in high esteem for a long time.  In addition to becoming thoroughly engaged as I read through his landmark book Bowling Alone, I've had occasion to hear him speak.  He came to my town about five years ago.  I paid $30 for seats in the auditorium, along with a minor parking imposition.  He did not speak about Bowling Alone, which I had read maybe three years earlier, but about his latest work focusing on childhood poverty and economic inequality's harmful effects that pass down through generations.  As compelling as his presentation was, the benefit to me came afterward.  The Delaware Community Foundation, which sponsored Prof Putnam's appearance, set up tables in the foyer outside the auditorium.  They had representatives recruit those in attendance for the many ongoing projects that the Foundation oversees.  I expressed interest in reviewing scholarship applications.  Once signed on, I remain active with this project.  Each spring for five years, I review some twenty-five applications.  Some come from high school students seeking assistance with college.  Others originate with people already attending medical and law school, needing some relief from tuition and loans.  Along the way, I've made a couple of friends and offered suggestions that get implemented for subsequent years.

This time Bob, which is what the Professor likes to be called, has a new book and a Netflix movie called Join or Die.  I got to this in a very indirect way.  After supper, I often retreat to My Space, where I watch YouTube videos.  I particularly learn from Rev. Dr. Russell Moore, who produces a new podcast on modern evangelical Christianity each week.  His podcast usually interviews authors of new books with a social message.  While the host is an Evangelical, though one who has kept his distance from the political alliances of the Christian Right, the people he interviews originate in many backgrounds, including Jewish.  He recently interviewed Bob Putnam, a show I had to watch.  When Bob told Russell his brief bio, he noted that as an undergrad he took a liking to a sweet Jewish girl of the opposite political party who sat behind him.  They went on an outing to the Kennedy Inauguration.  After graduation, they married, he converted to Judaism, and more than sixty years together brought them an expanded three generational family and shared professional accomplishments.

After the interview, I watched the Netflix movie, taking three sessions to match my limited attention span.  Only after seeing the movie, did I notice the OLLI announcement of his visit.  I contacted the University sponsor, which offered seats in the rather limited auditorium for my wife and me.

Which to attend?  From a content perspective, I think my prior fondness for Bob Putnam's insight and my appreciation to the Delaware Community Foundation for welcoming me as a participant gave them an advantage.  So did my wife's interest in accompanying me to that event.  Logistics cannot be discounted either.  I've been to both the National Museum of American Jewish History and the University's Trabant Center in the past.  The University placed its parking garage adjacent to this student union where Bob would speak.  Some traffic anticipated, minor annoyance registering my car and paying the fee at the garage kiosks, but just a minor stroll from my car to the event.

Philadelphia requires more planning.  I have an unlimited transit pass and the event planners made provisions for use of a garage a block or two from the museum.  To get there and back by public transit, I would have to take light rail from a station near my home, sit on the local train for multiple stops comprising a little under an hour, then transfer to either the city subway or bus to the Museum.  The driving option would require me to deal with some city traffic and with a significant diversion from the interstate to city streets before accessing the garage, then walking as darkness approaches going and fully established on the return.  The light rail schedule would leave me with either slack time with an earlier train or a rush with a later one, then return well into the evening.

Both content and logistics favored Prof. Putnam.  That's where I went.  He gave a suitable presentation.  At the end, I got to ask him a question.  I also got to greet the CEO of the Delaware Community Foundation to remind him that Bob's previous presentation connected me to his agency.  Some light snacks at the end with small talk with a contemporary who I had not met previously.  Then uneventful drive home.

I made the right choice.

Their Streak Ended

My mother's yahrtzeit approaches.  A notice came from my current congregation, as it always has.  When synagogue software first became available in the 1980s, automating special day notifications took priority.  People want a reminder of when they need to recite Kaddish.  Flag the date, assemble a packet for the office to mail, including a donation request with a return envelope, and both congregant and congregational treasury benefits.  Mass mailings were one of the first procedures to get successfully automated before personal internet access became the norm.  Snafus and uncertainties abound.  My synagogue keeps the deceased on its memorial list forever, irrespective of whether any survivors maintain their formal affiliation.  I do not know if they mail reminder notices to people who have moved away or otherwise left the congregation.  My former local synagogue stopped sending me an annual notice shortly after I stopped paying dues.

My childhood congregation took a very different path.  A quick chronology:

• 1964: Bar Mitzvah
• 1966: Breakaway group with Sugar Daddy forms a competing congregation.
• 1969: College in another city
• 1971: My mother's passing
• 1973: Relocation for medical school
• 1977: Marriage and relocation for residency
• 1980: Permanent settling in new city
• 2006: Closure of my childhood synagogue

Notices of my mother's yahrtzeit began to appear in my mail each winter starting in 1974.  I do not recall if I responded with a check before I started earning my own paycheck, but once established, they could count on a small gift in the return envelope each year.  As I moved to different apartments in the same city, or to different towns, the US Postal Service forwarded the requests.  As I responded with a check, the recipient in the congregational office had the presence of mind to record the new address, sending subsequent reminders there.  

Closure of the congregation created a branch point.  My congregation closed, it did not merge.  Assets were distributed under state laws regulating places of worship that ceased functioning.  Despite no formal merger, my congregation still had longstanding members, by then largely aging but still observant.  Nearly all defaulted to that breakaway shul, given no chance of long-term longevity at its inception, disadvantaged, or so people thought, by lack of our umbrella organization affiliation.  Whether by a preferable location or that Sugar Daddy, they not only endured, but now inherited pillars of my dying congregation.  They took the high road.  Memorial plaques relocated from the sold building to the active building.  The yahrtzeit list, including my name and address, merged with their database.  My notices kept coming.  

I had occasion to worship at the new place one time following my congregation's closure.  Familiar building sitting on prime real estate between my old elementary school and what was once modern luxury garden apartments that made that Sugar Daddy rich 

While I transitioned from place to place in my younger adulthood followed by extended stability, the institutions transitioned later in their life cycles.  The building where my Bar Mitzvah occurred lost its value as a suitable place for a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism congregation but served as a desirable location for Hasidic institutions that had become dominant in that neighborhood.  At the successor congregation, nominally unaffiliated but with the form of worship characteristic of 1960s Conservative Jews, the neighborhood also changed.  My old elementary school had become an Orthodox Day School.  The houses where the people who attended that school, and that synagogue,  once lived, now had Orthodox owners.  While both my synagogue and the breakaway had always functioned as commuter congregations where carpools brought kids to Hebrew School and people drove to worship, that drive had become too long.  The building stood on valuable real estate.  Their leadership sold it, directing the proceeds to construct an opulent structure closer to where secular Jews now lived.  I worshiped there a single Shabbos morning, tied to a high school reunion later that night.  

Heavy entrance doors.  Posh sanctuary.  Those clunky bronze memorial plaques had given way to smaller uniform brass ones, my mother's name still among them, despite having never had a formal membership stature with them.  As secular congregations struggled, so did others in the region.  Two additional ones merged, pooling resources to maintain an elegant building and populate the sanctuary.  On my visit, a remnant of people from my Bar Mitzvah congregation, nearly all men, appeared for worship.  I greeted them but sat at a kiddush table with local contemporaries.

My final time there, likely 2009.  Still, each year that notice of my mother's yahrtzeit would continue to arrive each winter.  I returned a check promptly.  Later I learned that a high school friend, a fellow violinist in the orchestra, had remained with that congregation. Her parents had become charter members of the breakaway.  She ran a special project for the needy.  I wrote a second check for her to use, along with a brief note of admiration for her effort.  She sent a brief note of thanks to me.  And I added a third contribution to a semi-affiliated agency that dedicated a project in memory of one of my mother's close friends from my Bar Mitzvah shul, that one by credit card.

This year, that chain of fifty annual notifications stopped.  They had survived my relocations and their relocations.  People at one time devoted effort to keeping me, a minor donor, in the loop.  I do not know the fate of that congregation, though modern electronics offers a few hints.  They have a Facebook page to which I subscribe.  Every Shabbos, they post a greeting, at least until recently.  They have not had a Rabbi, but engage a Cantor, one with adult children. Within the last year, they posted that rather than maintaining their tradition of mixed seating/ male honors, their format since founding, they would try to make themselves more acceptable to the nearby residents by adding a mechitza.  This may also facilitate recruiting a Rabbi.  

The congregation offers a website, though a neglected one by modern standards.  It has not been maintained, with their newsletter postings ceasing in 2021 as Covid became less threatening.  

Why hasn't my reminder come?  In the pre-insulin era, Dr. Elliot Joslin, the recognized master of diabetes, used to ask his patients who descended to his Boston Clinic from far and wide, to send him a greeting card each Christmas.  When the cards stopped, he would have his staff try to contact that diabetic or family to confirm the expected mortality.  In our modern age, I could call the congregation or send a note to the office through their website.  I think I will send my usual checks, then inquire if they are returned.

Enjoying Spring Break

As a student, I would read about kids making their way to Ft. Lauderdale or Daytona Beach for spring break.  With my tuition and living expenses in school already burdening my father, any cost for debauchery would be prohibitive, even unthinkable.  No doubt some kids could load into another classmate's car, drive to Florida and back in shifts, and share a motel room, paid for by their part-time jobs in the school cafeteria.  In all my university years, I never knew anyone at my school who prioritized their amusement that way, though some devoted parts of summers touring Europe with rail passes and hostels.  Europe has an enrichment value that recreation on a beach drinking beer obtained by an acquaintance with an of age ID lacks.  As a wage earner, I had my share of vacations, some very memorable ones.  Few with hedonism as the focus.  Not even those on cruise ships or beach resorts.  A respite from work became the goal.  Sampling new things, staying away from the telephone, protected time with my wife.  Nothing close to debauchery on my agenda.

Now in my senior years, not needing a respite from any rat race but still with personal schedules to maintain, I find some chill time seriously overdue.  I last took a cruise about six years ago, an Adriatic one that included strenuous tourism in addition to the food, aquatics, and entertainment.  I cannot remember when I last checked into a resort for a few days.  Not since I retired.  My Osher Institute program has its downtime.  Six weeks in winter, more in summer.  One week at the start of spring.  My plans to get away for a couple of days in the winter fell through for the first time in a few years.  The last few spring breaks and the summers, I went on touring type vacations to major cities, places of history, or National Parks.  All places that required agendas or itineraries.  What I need now may be chill time, even if only for a few days.

My funds are ample.  So is my health and energy, adjusted for overdue recreation.  I disliked most of my visits to Florida.  Las Vegas may be a suitable getaway.  Facebook friends periodically travel there for a few days, sometimes prompted by a special show or a need to merge relaxation with stimulation.  It struck me as a good option.  Three or four nights at a hotel, depending on airline schedules.  Bright lights, places to get wet.  Buffets.  Day trips.  Shows at night. No rental car needed.  Just right for a few days.  I would just have to convince my wife, who to my surprise, seemed almost as ready for a few days of minimal responsibilities.  

On to the travel sites.  Air and hotel.  These have now embedded themselves into DIY getaways.  Look for airfares.  Assess places to stay.  Once transparent and straightforward.  Now with budget airlines competing with legacy carriers and people turning their homes or investment property as places to stay, comparisons of options require more sophistication than they once did.  The sites themselves more overtly serve their subscribers than their end consumers like me.  Low Ball teaser rates in big print.  Total packages once taxes, resort fees, and cleanup assessments of Airbnbs, change that considerably.  And the geeks who could enable sorting any way they desire restrict users to sorting by big print.

So three or four nights in Vegas, getting there and back, sleeping, amenities, and eating.  My airport has a dominant carrier with a few budget options.  Round Trip about $350 for American Airlines, $150 + baggage fees for the discounters.  So I thought.  Not that big a difference.  Pick based on departure and arrival times.  Round trip by American Airlines is not really $350.  It is $450.  If you pick a discounter for the return trip, it is $350 plus luggage fee in one direction.  You are not really buying a round trip but one way trips in each direction added to each other when you get to their electronic cash register to pay.  I was willing to spend a flat $350 or $700 for a couple to travel.  I am not willing to spend $900 for my own downtime just to get there and back, especially traveling home cramped in a high pack fuselage.

Hotels, or really places to stay, sorted by teaser rates in big print with full cost of three nights in little print.  Airbnb or vbro might be great if three couples are traveling or if somebody is staying ten days.  The cleanup add-on, part of a hotel's business model, is exorbitant but at least fixed.  Divided three ways over ten days, maybe a reasonable consideration.  Paid by one traveler who only stayed three days, or even one night, doesn't make sense.  Yet I cannot seem to get Travelocity and Hotels.com to eliminate them from my list.  I cannot get them to list the options by real price instead of teaser price.  Not that it matters.  The airfare reality eliminates Vegas.  Just as a college kid, or even as a gainfully employed prosperous adult, pampering of self never had high priority, as much as I enjoyed the times when it happened.

If not Vegas, what about Florida?  I dislike being in Florida most of my visits, don't want to rent a car.  What about Atlantic City?  It's a scaled-down Vegas with spas.  Its grand hotels discounted off-season, accessible by an amount of driving that I am willing to do if I only need to put myself behind the wheel for the hour and a half in each direction it takes to travel there and back.  On to Travelocity again.  Bargain resort hotels in Big Numbers, acceptable with the add-ons with adjacent fine font numbers.  Except what you see is not always what you get.  Some bundle use of the recreation facilities, some hotels go à la carte with a fee for the sauna and steam rooms.  The travel middlemen do not distinguish these.  After picking candidate hotels, I need to go to each site to calculate my own real costs for what I want to do there, from parking to pool, buffets to shows.  I'm getting close to maybe.  Generally you get what you pay for.  Figuring out what you do and don't pay for takes some exploration.  I've not yet abandoned an upcoming respite focused on my physical pleasure.

My age and background give me an advantage.  I learned basic numeracy in the 1960s courtesy of the taxpayers of Ramapo Central School District #2.  Math instruction and analysis of data in science classes progressed from one year to the next.  It was done with brain and paper.  My university years in the 1970s saw my own need to travel periodically.  Big stuff was sorted by a professional travel agent.  Hotels and airfare or train fare to visit family between cities required mostly the skills achieved the previous decade.  Air fares had fixed rates until the Carter years airline deregulation.  Even then, fewer carriers competed with each other, honoring their teaser offerings.  Hotels either advertised in the local newspaper or a handful of chains had begun to emerge.  Knowing how to assess transportation and lodging by hand lets me move from travel site boldface numbers to real costs fairly easily. This may be more difficult for younger folks who already had their numerical data pre-digested.  

How badly do I need an escape?  What is the monetary value of that escape?  I know how to answer this.  My personal hedonism is definitely price elastic.  That price, though, still has some flexibility.

My Phone Texts

Though a long way from a Luddite, not every innovation replaced what I did before.  Email quickly enabled messages. Accessed to excess multiple times daily.  Fax, introduced to me by my secretary, became a convenience for her, a burden to me as endless unselected papers arrived.  Seeing X-rays on a computer screen, great.  Using a poorly designed electronic medical record where checking boxes replaced doing real exams and following up on details of patient histories probably reversed quality medical care in many ways.  My cell phone keeps my world in a pocket.  For calls, it is a phone, whether initiating or receiving.  Its apps, though, rarely duplicate what they replace.  Camera not as good as my dedicated digital camera or even my prized Canon AE-1 purchased with my savings as a resident.  Flashlights on the phone screen not nearly as effective as a flashlight taken off a shelf, or even a key ring.  For tape recorders, I go to my small tape recorder collection, two digital, two with physical tape.  Annoyances mostly, but not harm, other than doctors no longer paying as much attention to patients as we should.

Text messaging brings me to harm.  No question, they have a place.  If a site I want to visit, like my bank or retirement plan, needs assurance that it is really me who opened that financial data, sending me a text message with code numbers adds security and privacy.  I solicit those from my sign-in pages on my laptop.  I know they are coming.  My phone is at hand and I record the number so that I can see my own accounts without anyone else accessing them.

Unsolicited messages sent as texts to a phone pose more harm.  My cell phone just stays in my pocket or in a holder in the car.  I know the telephone signal and usually answer it.  Instant Messaging preys on the addictive parts of our frontal cortex and probably more primitive centers.  People at the steering wheel engage in electronic conversations or invitations when they should have their wits attentive to their windshields and mirrors.  No FOMO for me.  For me, these messages fall beneath email in importance.

Despite my telling doctor's offices not to notify me that way, preferentially giving them my landline as the primary contact, some still bury messages on my phone.  Upcoming appointments I can track without their help.  Patient portal connected to email handle lab results.  

My text messages have become clutter.  They are unselected, random, taken from lists.  They depersonalize what should be interactive.  My last twenty unsolicited messages:

1. Political pitches for funds:  14
2. Charitable pitch for funds: 1
3. Asking feedback on experience with company encounter: 1
4. Comment from  a friend on Eagles Parade: 1
5. Confirmation of autopayment: 2
6. Realtor asking about my house: 1

The autopay confirmations could come by email.  They typically do.  Charitable solicitations come by email in large quantities.  Companies or medical facilities soliciting my experience with them usually arrive by email.  Comments from friends have a better forum on Facebook.  Other than clutter, these harm no one.  I cannot say the same about the dominance of political solicitations, both to me and maybe to my party.

As a result of 70%  political solicitations, I've largely ignored text messaging for all its purposes.  My relationship with my party has changed as well.  I suspect the election results shifting to the other party may also reflect that annoyance in a more widespread way.  At least the companies that want my feedback convey an impression, sincere or not, that they care what my experience had been.  My comments, or aggregate sentiment, could change their operations for the better.  That improvement could be better service for me as a customer with other options.  It could also be more profit for the company by having happier clients.  But at least that company that sought my feedback as text and many more by email, dangled something that might benefit me.

The political parties exist only to benefit the voters by adopting positions to issues we find compelling.  They should be the first to care about what their own base thinks.  Instead, they prioritize $10 or whatever paltry sum somebody responding to a text message might offer.  They pretty much tried to convince me that they are already adequate surrogates for the aspirations that I have.  My input to them is less important than my input to my cell phone carrier when I just called their helpline or to my medical network when I just visited one of their doctors.  They cannot shake their image of control by elites who direct a phone bank, an impression that in all likelihood is accurate.  My vote has a value of $10.  I price my visions of optimal political policies much higher than that.  They exist to represent me, but overestimate my loyalty.  Whether as a customer, patient, or voter, I have my grievances, all legitimate at least in my own mind.  My bank, electronics providers, and sources of medical care understand that.  They keep in touch.  They don't clutter.  My governmental advocates devalue me.  They make text messaging, which should be a communications asset, largely unusable.  And their voting loyalty teeters because of it.  They don't seem to be as smart as they claim to be.

In Memory of Priscilla

 

Our cat Priscilla, our pet, faded away peacefully after a brief illness.  My wife, who provided the bulk of her care and received the lion's share of Priscilla's affection, watched her final breaths.

She had come to us from a shelter.  Since our children were in grade school, we nurtured cats continuously for about twenty years.  The passing of Sadie, another shelter cat transported to us over some distance, left us without a furry pet, this time as empty nesters.  I do not recall how long we lacked a cat, months, maybe a year.  I was indifferent to having a pet, but my wife correctly judged the house as incomplete with no kids and no pet, despite some of the freedoms we had as a senior couple.  She contacted shelters.

Priscilla stood out.  She was a few years old, no longer a kitten.  Her recent time had been disruptive.  She amused a small group of nuns in their apartment.  As they aged, they required relocation to a new convent.  House rules demanded only one cat, which they already had.  Priscilla, already named, entered a shelter.  I do not recall how long she lived there, but the bond with my wife's visit stood out.  She became ours.  

As an adult cat, neutering and immunizations had already been provided.  She tested Feline HIV positive, but never needed treatment for this.  A few lower incisors were missing.  I found her docile, a bit tentative though not at all submissive.  At times, she liked to play, preferring a red laser more than her other amusements.  But mostly she devoted her adult years to keeping us company.  On our travels, she had a sitter who offered food and kept her sanitary facilities as appealing as they could be.

Each night for years this cat hopped onto my wife's side of our bed.  Priscilla did not particularly like being petted or otherwise handled.  She recognized a car carrier as Vet Appointment, resisting as best she could through a blend of hiding and combat.  The carrier always prevailed.  On the vet's exam table, she offered no appreciable resistance.  Growth records stable, no threatening illness over the roughly ten years she shared with us.

Insidiously, maybe over a month or two, she became less active though never appeared visibly ill.  At fourteen years, elderly but not ancient for a cat, some slowing might emerge.  It seemed a little more noticeable, at least to my wife, so she scheduled a veterinary assessment.  The doctor's assistant recorded a one pound weight reduction over about a year, significant weight loss.  The doctor herself noticed a respiratory rate that exceeded a normal feline baseline.  She took a chest X-Ray which showed a partially calcified lung mass and some lab work that showed minor lymphocytosis.  As Feline HIV positive, she was at risk for lymphoma, which has effective life-prolonging potential without undue toxicity.  I thought the mass had more characteristics of lung cancer, something I had encountered regularly taking care of people.  

The vet made a referral to a veterinary oncologist not that far away.  We transported Priscilla, a few weeks later and significantly droopier, to this monument to sophisticated animal care.  Parking spaces at this immense complex were few.  The waiting room contained a surplus of dogs on leashes but cats had their representation in carriers.  Our turn arrived.

The vet had seen the original X-rays referred electronically.  She thought it was a primary lung tumor. A new film disclosed that Priscilla had acqured a new pleural effusion.  The vet took an abdominal ultrasound which showed no masses.  She removed 75 ml fluid and did a needle biopsy of the mass.  The next business day, they reported malignant cytology in the pleural fluid.  Priscilla had a terminal tumor.

We opted for comfort care.  Each day for the next ten or so, she quietly faded.  Little food.  She would find herself a nook in any one of our rooms, rest in a lateral decubitus or prone position for a while, then move someplace else.  She no longer resisted being petted or handled.  To the final day, she managed to negotiate the stairs of our home.

Last night she lay down on the floor next to our daughter's bed.  This morning she had come downstairs, starting in the family room near my treadmill.  She must have arrived after my session started, as I did not notice her coming in.  Shortly thereafter, Priscilla made her way to the dining room, taking a decubitus posture at the leg of a dining room chair.  My wife found her, breathing more agonal.  She faded away peacefully.

Priscilla was our fifth cat, the only one living her whole life in our house without another feline companion, or in one case rival.  We've never considered euthanizing any of them.  And we have avoided comparing the memory of any of them one to another.  They are our companions, sources of amusement, sources of responsibility when our growing children needed responsibility.  All became part of our household.

Priscilla had her unique traits that endeared her.  She could be combative.  I admired her independence.  Our furniture got ravaged on occasion, but we responded by protecting and replacing some of it, never directing remedies at the cat's claws.  She could be affectionate sometimes, though not often.  And when she allowed petting I enjoyed that soft warm fur more than she appreciated the kind intent of my palm.  She brought us years of pleasure.  We hope the security we provided her, and the consistent kindness of our offerings, enhanced her life in equal measure.

Dropping a Class

In my several years enrolled in the Osher Institute Program, I had never previously withdrawn from a class.  In fact, to the best of my memory, I had never disenrolled in any specific class through kindergarten, though I did offer the Rabbi a Sayonara to the whole program in Hebrew School.

It's not that I've had disappointing course selections or had requirements to take certain classes that left me wishing I were someplace else in that scheduled time.  At OLLI I've given some candid adverse feedback.  In one course review I asked the University to send in a Mystery Shopper to see if the instructor's reasonably blatant negative view of Islamists breached University Standards.  I had an instructor up in years who read us his notes for 20 minutes at the start of each session before turning on the DVD of the Great Courses series with an internationally recognized lecturer.  But until now, I've never filled out a form to enable the University to offer my place in the class to somebody on the waiting list.  In fact, in all my years of schooling, I don't think I've ever expressed my negative opinion of a class by silently discontinuing my attendance, outside of a Rabbi series or two at my own synagogue.   The lady who demeaned Islamists has a good heart.  I know her in another setting.  The man who read his presentation from loose-leaf paper was once an esteemed public school science teacher.  Each class had offsetting merit to justify some irritation.  I've never left a class out of boredom.  I've even tolerated my own inability to keep up with the presentations, toughing it out for a full semester of Thermodynamics that flew over my head by about the fourth session.  Even this time, I considered just not coming anymore.  Instead, tomorrow ends the formal Drop/Add process, so I submitted my Drop on time.

So what makes a course tell me it has no salvageable value after two sessions, or really just the first session with the second as confirmation?  It had a formal title of Prosperity and Panic.  The Catalog provided a description that made me expect a dozen lectures or DVD series on economic cycles through the last hundred years of American History.  I lived through some of that.  I heard of the Depression from my grandparents.  Along the way I read about economic cycles.   We have Biblical stories of famines, but we also have the background of Pharaoh storing grain with insider information on a coming shortage.  He consolidated power this way, guided by his Hebrew Viceroy.  The Egyptians made their Faustian deal, but at least avoided starvation.  The rest of us got Pyramids and modern Egyptologists as the legacy of concentrated wealth.

I learned of Adam  Smith's positions on international trade creating global prosperity, though with an underpinning of self-interest.  He tempered it by assigning certain responsibilities to government to protect the vulnerable.  In high school I had to read and report on Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth.  Only by concentrating wealth can we all benefit from great public works.

I'm the beneficiary of this.  I've had a car for the past fifty years because cars have become plentiful. My TVs get better and more economical with each replacement.  I am connected to the world through cyberspace.  My medicines mostly do what they are supposed to do.  And if somebody else gets rich by making something better for me and for most other Americans, I'm for that.

That's what I expected from the course description.  When you watch Flip Wilson portraying Geraldine, What you see is what you get.  When I attend the two class sessions that's not what I got.  Instead, I sat at a series of long tables with mostly men of my age listening to a retired portfolio manager collecting recent newspaper clippings from the Wall Street Journal and Barron's.  No history.  No assessment of broad policies.  Not even simple things like changes in how investors create wealth and manage risk.  None of that.  At least my own financial advisor has some obligation to me.

The comments of the class shouted pooled ignorance.  As the basis of discussion.  For the first time in my OLLI tenure, I found the exit ramp the best place to be for this class.  Form completed and submitted.