Letters From a Silverware Thief

On the 4th of July, the extended family held a gathering at an RV campground in Pennsylvania. A pavilion was rented, food contributions lined up, and then the day arrived.

As it happened, I had been to the RV campground many years ago. Many years ago Grandma and Grandpa had a camper at the campground, and for two or so summers they took grandchildren to visit. I remember the dirt paths, the swimming pool, the creek, and the waterfalls. Now, over a decade later, I find myself returning. The journey there seems so familiar, and yet vague, as I make the last few turns. Then the campground is in sight, and the memories come back.

Everything looks the same at the campground, and yet it is not. A few years ago a massive flood swept through the area, scouring out the creek, eating out embankments, washing up boulders, and knocking over trees. Much escaped the water’s ravages, but some things did not. And more than the land has suffered the ravages of time.

It has been nearly two years since I began caring for my grandfather, and watching him succumb to the ravages of Alzheimer’s. A decade more at least since I last visited the campground. Those many years ago Grandpa could walk. He could run, he could ride a bike. I have a memory of a summer day, Grandpa seated straddling a bike, sitting under the shade of a vacant pavilion. Now I pull the car up to a pavilion teeming with relatives, and get the wheelchair out of the trunk. I help Grandpa into the chair, and take him to the party. We have arrived late, because Grandpa can’t stay long.

Alzheimer’s drives its victims to their knees–figuratively and literally–as inch by inch, day by day, the battle is lost. Before, Grandpa staggered and stumbled as he tried to walk. Now he crawls aimlessly about on the floor unless I push him in the wheelchair or carry him, feeling so light and empty, in my arms.

Before he struggled to get to the bathroom in time and use the toilet properly. Now I change his diaper and give him a laxative to make sure he does go.

Before he couldn’t remember the last time he had taken a shower, and struggled to shave himself. Now I bathe him, and shave him, and dress him.

Before I cut up his food so he could feed himself. Now that fails, too. His hands shake and jerk clumsily as he tries to bring the spoon to his mouth. He grabs imaginary implements and food and wonders why nothing reaches his mouth. His mind wanders as he plays with the folds in his clothes, the food in front of him forgotten. It is a battle to eat, and one he is slowly losing, but which he desperately wishes to fight alone.

He is parked in front of the picnic table and I take a plate to the food buffet, looking for things he can eat. He does well enough for the meal, but his energy begins to fail with dessert. He consents to allow someone else to feed him the chocolate cream pie–some things he wants more than his dignity, or independence.

After the meal, I go to the falls again. Last time Grandpa ran on ahead, racing. This time, I go without him, following the path among the trees. The falls are still there, much the same. Perhaps they seem smaller than before, less threatening and less majestic. Time will sometimes do that. Still, the water cascades down, loud and uncaring, as if it thinks to drown out the world’s sorrows.

The days pass for Grandpa as a lonely vigil on the couch. Sometimes he sleeps a little while, but more often he looks at magazines, looking at the pictures and wondering what they mean, reading the words and wondering what they say, or else just sitting on the couch lost in his own thoughts. His world has shrunk so that if you are not right beside him, you are not there at all. He calls out, only to sometimes startle when you answer, or appear beside him.

Nights are the lost time. In darkness, nothing has meaning. He wakes in the darkness and speaks, “Mom. Mom? Are you there Mom? Mom. Answer me. Mom? I can’t see. Mom?” I hear his words, lying in the dark, but no answer I give is answer enough. He crawls about the room in the darkness like a blind man, but more than blind because nothing has meaning. He is lost in the bedroom, lost in the night, lost in his own mind, beyond the reach of any help to bring him back, until exhaustion takes him.

The end is coming. Slowly, perhaps, but inexorably, as every little loss brings one step closer the final defeat. But perhaps the battle should not be considered as lost. Maybe it is better to say that the battle is won, day by day, as with love he is helped to the end, with what dignity and grace can be mustered. If it is how we live that matters, then each day can be taken up in daily victory, or given up in daily defeat.

I leave the falls, the roar of the water quickly fading away behind me. Back at the gathering, soon Grandpa wants to leave. Two hours is all he can take. So we leave. I drive the rutted dirt path, taking it to the highway, and then home.

Ten years have passed. It feels like nothing has changed, and yet everything has. And there is no going back.

The durian is “the fruit of trees from the genus Durio belonging to the Malvaceae, a large family which includes hibiscus, okra, cotton, mallows, and linden trees” So begins the wikipedia article. Blah, blah, blah, who cares. Right?

Well, sometimes the peculiar hides right in plain sight. Further on in the article, there was some very interesting commentary on the taste of the durian. You see, the durian has a “distinctive” smell and taste. In favour, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace rapturously puts it this way,

The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. … as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.

Others, however, are of a different opinion.

British novelist Anthony Burgess declares that consuming durian is “like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory.” That is positively mild compared to the opinion given by others. Travel and food writer Richard Sterling warns that “… its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away.” Still more, according to the wikipedia article, “Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.”

Ugh.

Want to try some durian?

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farming are an interesting concept. Basically, instead of just buying whatever they want from a farmer, people buy a seasonal “share” and get a fixed percentage of whatever the farmer produces. There are some variations, but the general idea is that it relieves farmers from dealing with fickle customers and the vagaries of farming. Instead of having to deal with supply and demand issues, the farmer has fixed demand (because he is selling fixed shares) and the customer carries the burden of supply issues. If there is a bad harvest, everyone gets and equal share of the bad harvest.

It is an interesting hybrid. In a sense, the farmer becomes simply the labor for his customers, who are “share farming” and thus dealing with all the real life difficulties of farming–too much harvest of one thing, too little of another. By spreading the risk across a stable customer base, this allows small-time farmers to survive.

For more information, read the wikipedia article, check out this example farm, and for more reading, see this Google search.

An AP article on May 15th caught my attention. The title said: House approves $290B farm bill.

What really caught my attention was the line which said,

almost $30 billion would go to farmers to idle their land

Stop a moment to consider. That is $30 billion paid out to farmers so they will not produce food. (See here.)

When is the last time you went to the grocery store? Did you notice food prices had plunged dramatically, perhaps grain products costing half of what they cost a few months ago? Wasn’t it apparent that we have a massive over-supply of food and we need to start producing less food?

No?

Maybe that is just some delusional world occupied by politicians and special interest groups.

Maybe when you last went to the grocery store you saw the found prices continually climbing. Maybe your food budget is being increasingly pinched by high prices, and you wish somebody would start producing more food so prices would go down.

That would be the reasonable, intelligent, thing to do, right?

Instead, your illustrious government is spending your money to pay farmers to produce less food so the food prices will be higher. Your government is spending your money so that you will have to spend even more money to purchase your food.

That is your government working for you.

Now if only the government would start paying all of us to work less and stop being productive.

The American farm industry is screwed up. The scary thing is, a lot of countries are more screwed up than us.

A few things for the curious.

Did you know the Smithsonian Magazine had a website? They do, and it has a lot of content. If you have enjoyed reading the magazine, you might want to check the site out.

Search for the Holy Grail, end up dead. The Telegraph had an interesting article on a real search for the Holy Grail during the time of Nazi Germany. No, his name wasn’t Indiana Jones.

Picture This: Wedding photographs during earthquake.

From the same website as I mentioned in my last post, here is another tip: How to download your WordPress install on your local computer and get the permalinks to work.

It’s nifty to know how to edited a database.

For some time I have wondered how one went about adding a “Stumble This” link to blog posts. However, I didn’t wonder enough to take the time to look it up. Then I recently stumble upon (ha ha) some directions. As it happens, the website also has directions for implementing a few other services as well.

• How to add StumbleUpon links
• How to add Digg links
• How to add Del.icio.us links
• How to add Reddit links

Thanks to Herselfwebtools for these clear and concise instructions.

Who would have thought such a hip person as Steve Jobs would have such a dim view of human media consumption? Well, okay, who would have thought he’d admit to such a thing.

From Wikiquote:

When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth. — Steve Jobs

Poking around the internet I came across this: Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto

I was on some writer’s blog, and if I remember correctly they felt the book spoke for them. I consider myself something of a loner (not severely so, but leaning in that direction) and so the book piqued my curiosity. If I had more free time I would crack the book open to see what it is all about. I admit I found some of the reviews on Amazon a bit amusing in their apparent relief to discover an acceptance for (or justification of) their lonerism. Personally I was never so insecure in my personality to need affirmation on this subject.

I have no idea if the book offers any insightful thoughts. Maybe you can check it out for me.

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As an unrelated tid-bit, I was recently sucked into browsing on Flickr. I generally try to avoid the website as, at best, it seems to be a waste of time. Not to say you can’t find a lot of really good photos–because you can–but even then . . . it really is rather a waste of time.

Anyhow, I ended up browsing the “Beautiful Mountains” pool. Needless to say, there are a lot of really beautiful mountain pictures. In an attempt to redeem my wasted time, I will point you all toward two I thought stood out from the many beautiful photos I saw.

I think the sky in this one is fantastic in its moodiness. Too bad there isn’t a larger version.

This one is larger, and may induce a sense of vertigo. Either you will want to fling yourself off, or will be afraid that it might happen. I think the photo is so cool.

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As a final note, it came to my attention that, as a result of a mistake on my part, readers who keep up on my blog via e-mail notification were not notified about two recent posts I wrote. Perhaps you e-mail readers found them anyhow. For those who didn’t, they were:

Interesterified Fat and Prenatal Urination

and,

Photos Round 2

For anyone non-technical, this article will make your eyes glaze over. The author has accomplished the feat of keeping track of all that he does with the Concurrent Version System (CVS). Even I do not have a good grasp of the precise details of exactly how one uses CVS or similar software, but I was recently looking Subversion, an attempted replacement for CVS, while investigating doing something like the author of the linked article did. My present conclusion is that the work required is not worth it at this point in my life.

But I certainly sympathize with the writer’s mentality, and admire his accomplishment. Being able to keep track of every change you’ve ever made in a file is a control freak geeks dream come true.