A Stormy Night for Donald and Me

Finally, Donald Trump and I have something in common. It might not be something to be proud of.

I was watching Party Down, a 2009 sitcom about a catering crew whose members would generally prefer to be doing something else. In this episode, they are working at an after-party for an adult film awards ceremony.

One of the actresses playing a porn starlet looked vaguely familiar.

I can name the Best Actress Oscar winners for the past 50 years. I could probably do the same for the Emmys. But if the Final Jeopardy! category is PORN PEOPLE, I’m wagering $0 of my hard-earned winnings.

In fact, there is only one porn star I can name. And when the credits rolled, there she was: Stormy Daniels.

This is an odd cultural development. I know her name and recognize her face because of her involvement with the man who became president. I thought I was watching a sitcom about caterers. Instead, I was watching the extended Trump universe.

So Donald Trump and I both know who Stormy Daniels is. The difference is, I needed the credits.

And now that Katie Zacharia’s brief tenure as White House press secretary has ended, perhaps Stormy should be considered for the position. She has television experience, is comfortable answering embarrassing questions, and already knows the boss.

There could be a problem, though. This time, he would be paying her to talk.

Back to Eden—and Those Nasty Women

Barb and I are enjoying the new Netflix adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Watching the program reminded me of a blog from 2016. You can read it below. It’s a fun piece, the irony is that 10 years later we are still dealing with Donald Trump.

10/20/2016

Yes, Hillary accused Donald Trump of cheating on his taxes. And how did he respond? As everyone knows, he called her a “nasty woman.” For the sake of argument, let’s say her remark earned her a one star  (★) evil rating. How does she stack up against some other famous nasty women in history?

  • Eve ★ ★ ★ :  Here was a gal who knew how to get her man in trouble. If she hadn’t gone after that apple, none of us would be paying income tax.
  • Bonnie Parker ★ ★ : Yeah, she robbed banks, killed people, and wrote awful poetry. But Faye Dunaway was just so damn alluring.
  • Norman Bates’ Mother ★ ★ ★ : Now this was a mean one. Even dead and mummified she got poor old Tony Perkins to off Janet Lee. But that was a great shower scene.
  • Marie Antoinette ★ ★ ★ : No, she didn’t cause the French Revolution by herself. Did she really say “let them eat cake”? In any case, it’s a great line.
  • Hansel and Gretel’s Witch ★ ★ ★ ★ : A true nasty. Kidnap kids, fatten up kids, eat kids. It wasn’t until Hannibal Lecter came around that we had a comparable male maniac.
  • Cathy Ames ★ ★ ★ : John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” is one of my all-time favorite reads, and Cathy is my favorite character. A prostitute without a heart of gold, she killed her parents and slept with her brother-in-law on her wedding night. But at least she didn’t eat her children.
  • Polk Salad Annie’s Mama★ ★ : A wretched spiteful, straight-razor totin’ women. And I hear Annie was no sweetheart herself!
  • Queen Isabella ★ ★ ★ ★ :  Whether you hate her for sending Columbus to the New World and blowing the ecosystem, or her role in the villainous Spanish Inquisition, there is not much for redemption.
  • Gemma Teller Morrow ★ ★ ★ : The Mama Bear of “Sons of Anarchy, ” she almost killed her first daughter-in-law, and succeeded in killing her second one. And I had always thought that is was daughters-in-laws that wanted to kill their mothers-in-law.
  • Elizabeth Holmes ★ ★ : Yes, I know, I should stop picking on the Temptress of Theranos. But her whole deal just gets me so pissed off…

So Hillary, you barely nudge the nasty meter. So keep on smiling that smile and do what you’ve got to do. Only one person on the ballot is truly evil.

One More Song For Me

Today was a jingle-jangle morning.

I was hitting the halfway point in my early morning elliptical routine when Roger McGuinn’s 12-string guitar led me into the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I pumped up the volume, and soon I was nine years old again, and it was the summer of 1965.

My mother and I were sitting in a diner on the corner of Argyle and Broadway when those same chiming notes came over the restaurant’s speakers. It was a little before the lunchtime rush, so the place was nearly empty. Not Nighthawks empty, but there were only a few customers at the tables or counter. Soft rain spattered against the plate-glass windows.

Mom and I had just been visiting my grandmother. Mama, as I called her, was then in her mid-seventies. She had fled Nazi-controlled Austria with my mother and grandfather. They had built comfortable lives in Chicago, settling first in Hyde Park, then moving north in the 1950s.

In 1963, Mama and Papa moved to a senior living building populated mostly by German immigrants. They were among its handful of Austrians.

Papa passed away within months of the move, and Mama was assigned a new roommate. Mama lived with Mrs. Palmer for ten years—ten years in which they never once addressed each other by their first names. Prussian formality, I assume!

Mom visited Mama twice a week. At least once a month, I would join her. The ride on the El to the Argyle “A” stop took barely fifteen minutes from our Rogers Park neighborhood. Once there, we would help tidy up, do some hand laundry, and politely ask Mrs. Palmer how she was doing before she hustled out of the room.

We didn’t often go to a restaurant after our visits. I don’t recall whether this was a special day or whether we were simply taking a few minutes out of the rain before walking back to the El stop. But there we were, my mother and I, splitting a piece of sesame seed cake before returning to the bustle of the train.

I think that was the first time I heard “Mr. Tambourine Man.” I was just forming my taste in music, and the song stuck. I didn’t realize then that it was also my introduction to Bob Dylan.

Nothing remarkable happened that morning. But more than sixty years later, a few chiming notes brought me back to that table, with rain against the windows, sesame seed cake on a plate, and my mother beside me.

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play one more song for me.

Streaming Back to the Future

My calendar had a big red circle on September 16th. I didn’t want to forget that this past Wednesday Apple TV would be broadcasting Episode 1 of the sixth season of Slow Horses, my favorite off-kilter British spy series.

So I sank into my favorite chair, lowered the window shade, and dimmed the lights as the Mick Jagger theme song began. I watched, enraptured, for an hour as the slovenly Jackson Lamb farted, the immaculate First Desk Diana Taverner calculated, and the insufferable Roddy Ho preened.

And then it was over.

No Episode 2 to help fill my afternoon. No binging horses for me. I’d have to remember the plot line until next week!

Of course, waiting a week for another episode shouldn’t seem strange to me. That’s how I watched television for much of my life.

In the ’60s and ’70s, you watched an episode of a show and came back a week later for another. Most episodes were self-contained, so there wasn’t much to remember. Later, shows like Hill Street Blues began stretching stories over multiple episodes, forcing viewers to pay attention to the “arc.”

Then came streaming and binging.

Barb and I started by discovering shows after they had been on for years. We watched Parenthood, Breaking Bad, and Sons of Anarchy long after their first episodes, and sometimes their last ones, had aired. We could watch one episode a night and get the full story in a matter of weeks, or, in the case of 11 seasons of Shameless, a few months.

Netflix took things a step further. Instead of making viewers wait, it began releasing entire seasons of new shows at once. Suddenly, the only thing standing between you and the next episode was self-control.

But now I’m wondering whether something was lost along the way.

When you wait a week, you have time to think about what you watched. You wonder what happens next. You talk about it with someone else who saw it. A character or plot twist has time to settle into your brain before another one pushes it aside.

With binging, one episode can blur into the next. Barb and I have watched some very good series that we can barely remember a year later. Did that happen because we’re getting older, or because we swallowed eight hours of Your Friends and Neighbors in a week?

Probably a little of both.

So maybe Apple is doing me a favor by making me wait for my next Slow Horses. Maybe anticipation really does add something to the pleasure.

Now after decades of VCRs, DVRs, DVDs, and streaming, television has accomplished something remarkable. It has brought me right back to where I started. I’ll have to wait until next week to find out what happens.

I’d better circle next Wednesday on my calendar.

Barb Tells It Better

On paper, I am the storyteller of the family. But in real life, my tales tend to be short and to the point, while Barb can mesmerize an audience, weaving a story she has honed to perfection. Here is Barb’s latest not-so-tall tale. Not surprisingly, I am the straight man.

“It was about 2 a.m. when the alarm went off,” Barb begins.

“I was disoriented and felt around the nightstand for my glasses. Once I found them, I looked for Les, but he wasn’t in bed. I staggered to the alarm pad and saw that the family room sliding patio door was the cause of the alarm. I used our code to turn it off.

“Calling for Les, I made my way to the offending door. I remembered that a serviceman had used it that morning. We had probably forgotten to lock it, but that didn’t explain why it had opened a little and set off the alarm.

“I knew the police would show up, so I went to the front door to wait for them. And still no Les.

“After about a minute, I saw flashlights coming up the walk and two policemen appeared.

“‘We’re sorry, ma’am, but we got a call that there was an alarm going off. It turns out it was for the house next door, but we came to your house by mistake a few minutes ago. While checking all your doors, I think we set off your alarm.’

“‘OK, that explains the alarm. But I have a bigger problem. My husband is missing.’”

At this point in telling her story, Barb is beginning to grin, a twinkle coming to her eye. It is the officer’s next words that send her—and her audience—into hysterics.

“Looking over my shoulder, the policeman says, ‘You mean the man in the green underpants standing behind you?’”

As the laughter engulfs Barb’s audience, I explain that I had trouble sleeping that night and had gone into the guest bedroom so I wouldn’t wake Barb, only to appear when the police were at the door

“And he didn’t hear the alarm! No wonder his doctor says he needs to get the wax out of his ears.”

And that is the difference between the two storytellers in our family. I’ll write this one down and you’ll smile. Hear Barb tell it, and you’ll be laughing until tears run down your face—and my underpants will be getting greener with every telling.

Sorry! Hasbro. You Can’t Change That Rule!

Barb and I were absorbed in an intense game of Sorry! with Captain Comeback and Superheroine Girl, our 5- and 8-year-old grandchildren, when I made the discovery.

The game set we were using was the third or fourth set our family has gone through since we first started playing the board game with our children more than 35 years ago. We have spent countless rainy days, afternoons, and evenings chasing each other’s colorful pegs around the board.

Playing Sorry! has helped first our kids and then our grandkids learn counting and strategy. They have also learned how not to have a fit when a sibling or cousin flips over a dreaded Sorry card and sends their peg back to Start. And most importantly, they have learned patience, as turn after turn goes by without drawing the 1 or 2 card that allows one of their markers to leave Start and begin the trek toward home.

By the age of 5, any family member knows the rules backwards and forwards. We have made a few minor changes as the years have gone by, but waiting for that 1 or 2 card has been the requirement that anchors the game. So I was amazed when, casually reading the latest set of instructions, I discovered that a player can now start moving a peg after drawing any number card. This is heresy!

I suppose Hasbro has updated the rules to fit with modern times and limited attention spans. I am sure the new rules speed up the game and keep everyone more actively involved. But to my family, this change is as absurd and unnecessary as, well, I don’t know, automatically putting a runner on second base in the 10th inning of a baseball game.

Sorry!, like baseball, is not meant to be played at a TikTok pace. It needs to build slowly, with plenty of time for Captain Comebacks and Superheroine Girls to rebound and claim the lead.

And that is how we will play it in our house, for every generation that comes our way.

You Can Still Call Me Doctor

I’m still called an admiral / Yet I gave up the sea long ago. Tim Rice, Evita

With barely any notice, I went through a significant transition at the end of July. My Illinois medical license, something I have cherished for almost 50 years, expired. I made no attempt to renew it.

It wasn’t the minimal fee that kept me from renewing. It was my lack of the necessary continuing medical education hours. When I renewed the license the first time after retirement, I still had more than enough allowable hours from my working days to meet the requirement. But for the last three years, I have barely dipped into a pathology journal, attended a conference, or attempted an online course.

A friend suggested applying anyway, and just “creating” some CME hours. “No one will catch you,” he said. Of course, that’s not me. I wouldn’t do that, equal parts moral compass and fear of being discovered. Besides the point of all those hours isn’t just to list them on a data sheet, but to keep current with my profession, so as not to be using an abacus in an AI world. Molecular pathology, barely budding when I left the field, is now in full bloom. Unless you’ve been a constant gardener, reading, watching, and using, there is no way to keep up.

Would there be any benefit to me in maintaining my license? None that I can think of. I already turn down the monthly calls from locum tenens companies seeking a temporary pathologist for this lab in Idaho or that one in Maine. The companies I once thought I would do remote digital pathology for seem to have crashed and burned, or at least discovered that they didn’t need me. I won’t be able to prescribe an antibiotic for Barb or for a grandkid, but I never did much of that anyway.

So my Illinois license is a thing of the past, alongside ones from Indiana and Wisconsin. But you can still call me a doctor. That came with a degree that will never expire, no matter how long it’s been since I went to sea.

Hugh Jackman’s One Mistake

The skies were threatening, but the predicted rainstorm never came. Instead, we had a pleasant evening sitting with friends at Ravinia in Highland Park, enjoying dinner and the showmanship of Broadway and movie star Hugh Jackman.

Backed by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra and a quartet of backup singers, Jackman romped across the stage in a carefully timed 90-minute performance that offered glimpses of the numerous personas he has occupied during his long and varied career.

For Neil Diamond fans such as Barb, there were “Crunchy Granola Suite” and “Sweet Caroline,” from last year’s movie Song Sung Blue. Jackman even donned a stars-and-stripes vest to salute Thunder and Lightning, the Neil Diamond and Patsy Cline impersonators the film was based on. At least I think that’s what he was saluting.

Jackman made his Broadway debut in 2003 and won a Tony Award portraying his Australian counterpart Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz, so it was not surprising that songs written by Allen were featured in a lengthy medley. Jackman closed with “Once Before I Go,” the 11 o’clock number from the musical.

I missed my chance to see Jackman in the Broadway revival of The Music Man, one of my favorite musicals and the show that reopened Broadway after Covid, so I was glad to see him perform a number from the show. As Harold Hill, he strutted through the newly renovated pavilion and out onto the lawn, warning us all about the trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool.

Jackman chose to portray two opposite characters from Les Misérables. After telling a story about his first audition for a musical, he sang “Stars,” the song that gives insight into the dark Inspector Javert. A few numbers later, Jackman returned to his own character in the film, singing the moving “Valjean’s Soliloquy.” I’m sure the versatile Jackman could have handled “Master of the House” and gotten a few laughs as well.

The Greatest Showman was celebrated with four songs. Jackman dazzled with “The Greatest Show,” while “A Million Dreams” gave solo opportunities to the backup singers. Their voices easily rivaled Jackman’s, who may be more of a performer than a technically outstanding singer.

Where did Jackman blunder? He closed a set of American classics with a pair of Frank Sinatra tunes, “That’s Life” and “New York, New York.” Surely in the several months since his last concert performance, someone should have told him that you can’t sing “New York, New York” in Chicago without following up with at least a few verses of “My Kind of Town.”

If he had sung that, he could have blown the roof off the new pavilion.

And that would have been fine, since it never did rain.

Sharing My Thoughts With a Future Pathologist

The other day, when I was packing potatoes in my volunteer job at a local food bank, a shift supervisor approached me and said, “You’re a pathologist, aren’t you?” I confirmed that I was, and he asked me to come with him to meet a first-time volunteer.

He introduced me to a young man who was just entering a local medical school and wanted to be a pathologist. We exchanged a few words, and I left him with my email address and an invitation to contact me any time.

This morning, I had an email from him thanking me for speaking to him and asking about memorable cases. I emailed him back. Here is a copy of my response.

Hello Izaiah,

I’m glad Phil, the supervisor, brought me over to meet you. I had a wonderful career in pathology.

Your role in healthcare will most certainly wind up quite different from mine. The practice of pathology will change with the digitization of diagnostic material and the advent of artificial intelligence. Perhaps pathologists will become more active as liaisons between the world of the laboratory and the world of the clinician. And there will always be room for the innovative researcher.

As to memorable cases, the thousands and thousands of surgical cases tend to blend together. Individual autopsies are more memorable. My autopsy cases included death due to the unsuspected ingestion of a portion of a denture, the “double bubble” neonatal GI anomaly, death from tumor necrosis in the brain of a patient with thyroid carcinoma and cerebral metastases, and a case of Moya-Moya disease, a rare cerebrovascular malformation. I hope a significant number of autopsies will still be part of your training.

I also want you to remember how early you are in your education. Open yourself to all the fields you will be exposed to. You might find out you want to be a cardiologist or radiologist or plastic surgeon. Whatever you find, grab it with both hands and be the best cardiologist, radiologist, or surgeon you can be. Your life will be richly rewarded.

Best regards,

Les Raff, retired pathologist

Will Izaiah become a pathologist? I doubt it. It is a rare physician who sticks with their first medical school desire. And with all of medicine, all of healthcare, evolving so rapidly in the next few years, we may not now know the new specialties and opportunities that may arise. But as I said to him, do what you love, and you will know you have made the right choice.

I Owe Someone a Note

I’m listening to The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I’m only partway through, so don’t worry. This isn’t a review, and there will be no spoilers.

One sentence made me stop and hit rewind.

“He was finding confidence behind the veil of ink on the page.”

That’s a beautiful line. It also made me realize how much of my life I’ve spent communicating through the written word.

One summer in high school, I came home from overnight camp corresponding with about fifteen girls. Long-distance phone calls weren’t an option. Fifteen nightly phone calls would have bankrupted my parents.

To keep eall the letters straight, I created a chart on a piece of cardboard. Down the left side were the girls’ names. Across the top were columns for the date each letter arrived and the date I mailed my reply. My personal correspondence log. Looking back, it may have been a little obsessive. At the time, it felt perfectly reasonable.

The cardboard disappeared years ago, which is probably for the best. Otherwise, one of my grandchildren might someday uncover it and conclude that Baba had been far more popular in high school than he actually was.

Letter writing eventually gave way to pathology reports, emails, newsletters, and blog posts. The audience has changed. The pleasure hasn’t. I still enjoy staring at a blank screen or a piece of paper, chasing an idea around until it finally behaves.

A few months ago, I found myself buying a box of correspondence cards on Amazon. Not birthday cards. Not sympathy cards. Just simple white correspondence cards with a gray border for thank-you notes and the occasional handwritten letter. The kind of stationery that practically insists you mind your manners.

In this era of texts, emails, Facebook posts, and emojis, buying stationery felt almost rebellious. But the cards are on my desk now, and every so often one finds its way into an envelope.

It turns out I never stopped being a correspondent. So excuse me, I owe someone a note.