Does Trump Have America By The Pussy?

“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Where were you in October of 2016 when the Washington Post published the infamous Donald Trump/Hollywood Access tapes? Did you, like me, assume that this was it, that this was the moment the wheels would come flying off and the Trump train would derail for good?

How wrong we were. That comment and the rest of his “locker room” chatter with Billy Bush proved to be barely a speed bump in the theretofore unimaginable presidential campaign of 2016. And that was just the beginning of the Trump Express. Trump won in 2016, claimed he won in 2020, and has an excellent chance of winning in 2024.

Trump has grabbed us right in the privates. How have we let this happen? How has the American electorate elevated a demagogue with no discernable skills other than to shine a light on our fears and stoke our hatred to once again be within baby steps of the highest office of the land?

He has informed us of his plans to be a dictator. As he told Mr. Bush on that long-ago recording “…when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” For millions of Americans, he is more than a star. He is a prince, a king, a god waiting to ascend to Mt. Olympus. After all, he has let us know God (Judeo-Christian variety to be precise) has anointed him. Just ask an evangelical.

America, I think we are in trouble. The world is a powder keg, a tinder box. An irrational, unprincipled US President will not bring to the world peace or an end to all wars. He will create a vacuum. The race by aggressive world leaders to fill that void will have the explosive force of hydrogen atoms crunching together in a fusion reactor. None of us will escape the fallout.

I will concede things are not perfect in the present administration. Yes, we need to figure out and pass a humanitarian border/dreamer policy. Yes, we may need to take a more nuanced stand on events on the world stage. The far left is as outrageous as the far right (though I would argue less dangerous.)

But America, please don’t reelect the guy who wants to grab us by the pussy. Let’s grow some balls and welcome Joe Biden for another four years. Not all nice guys have to finish last!

An Open Letter To WDRV’s Bob Stroud. Late isn’t Always Great!

WDRV’s Bob Stroud Hosts *Rock ‘n Roll Roots* on Sunday Mornings

Hi Bob,

I hope you are enjoying your semi-retirement as much as I am enjoying mine. New paths to discover and old ones to reminisce about.

And plenty of free time to air pet peeves and gripes, hang-ups and annoyances. So I am using this space to air one of mine.

But first, a compliment. Long-time listener long-time fan. I was an early adopter and admirer of The Drive. I only relegated the station to the hardest-to-reach button on my car radio when Van Halen+ACDC+Aerosmith began to dominate the station’s playlist and I was forced to return to ‘XRT. But through it all, if I am in my car on Sunday mornings, I push that hard-to-get-to button and listen to you and Rock’n’Roll Roots. You beat that Breakfast with the Beatles show hands down.

I greatly enjoy the mix of 60s and 70s rock you feature. Some of the songs are well-remembered, others buried deep in the sulci of my cerebral hemispheres. Cover versions and forgotten originals are always a plus. But it’s your thoughtful commentary that holds the show together.

So what is my complaint? Bob, I know it’s your phrase that pays, but not everyone who has passed away deserves the honorific of “the late great.” When you die you are “late,” but that doesn’t automatically make you “great.”

I can understand if on February 25th you want to play While My Guitar Gently Weeps and preface it as a celebration and remembrance on the birthday of the “the late great George Harrison.” After all, he was a Beatle, if only the quiet one. And sure, on the anniversary of Glenn Frey’s death it’s ok to play The Heat is On and reminisce about the late, great former Eagle.

But I cringe when I hear you call the guy who brought Fleetwood Mac their coffee during the recording of Rumours as “the late great caterer Ferd McPorter.” From what I hear, McPorter frequently poured too much milk into Lindsay Buckingham’s cappuccino. Surely you can find a better way to talk up You Make Loving Fun. Late great indeed!

And don’t get me started on your annual Gone But Not Forgotten episode. Was the guy who vacuumed the carpet in the office where Billy Joel signed with Columbia Records really all that great of a janitor?

I know you didn’t originate the phrase, and I know you aren’t the only one to ~~over~~use it. I ran across it in the New York Times today, in an article about the very good, but never-Oscar-winning, not quite great, actor Tom Wilkinson. And there was a massive best-seller in the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth. Perhaps that’s where you first came across the “late great” phrase?

I have no quibble with memorializing people who have passed on. From celebrating my own mentors to folks in the world of music, I have done it often in my blog posts. But while these people had a huge impact on me, their knocking on the pearly gates didn’t instantly elevate them to greatness. Even the Oscars and other awards program present their “In Memorium” segments with somber music and dimmed lights, but without the allegation that every cameraman being recognized was a great one.

Bob, thanks for letting me get this off my chest. It’s quite a relief. And let me say, for all these years, it has been GREAT listening to you.

Long-time fan,

Les

The Puzzle is Back! Find the Musical Connections

It’s cold outside. Very cold. So unless you have to, why go out?

Instead of slithering on the ice outside, sit yourself down and play another round of our Connections Garme. Just like the New York Times game, the object is to take sixteen words and arrange them into 4 categories. What are the categories? That is for you to figure out! My one hint? At least some of the categories deal with music. Some words might just fit into more than one category, but there is only one way to get exactly 4 words into each of the 4 categories.

Here is the full puzzle

When you solve the puzzle, send me your solution at chidoc@post.com. You can send complaints there too! If you enter your results in Comments, please flag it as a spoiler. We don’t want to ruin anyone else’s fun.

Remember, solutions and complaints to me chidoc@post.com.

26 And Me. The Unhandy Side Of Retirement

Did you read my blog detailing my first year of retirement? If you did, and I hope that was the case, you read about travel and pickleball, playwriting and volunteering. What you didn’t see was a description of any of the multitude of home improvement projects that kept me busy. There is a good reason I didn’t include them in my post. You see, there were none. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

To be quite clear about it, my Y chromosome totally lacks the Y326798g gene, more colloquially known as the “HandyMan Gene.” First identified in Bob Villa’s righthand-man Norm Abram of This Old House fame, with a variant discovered in Home Improvement’s Al Borland 10 years later, it is Y326798g that gives a man the confidence and the ability to hang drywall, paint a baseboard, and to cut once without measuring twice. I just have a big, gnarly, gene deletion where that stretch of DNA should be. It’s a gap only CRISPR could repair.

Despite my genetic deletion, there are some minor repairs and adjustments I am capable of accomplishing. For instance, Barb has repeatedly reminded me that the pair of twin beds in one of the loft bedrooms are as close to collapse as the Berlin Wall had been in the autumn of 1989. In an attempt to avoid an international incident, I lugged my toolbox (more on that later) up the stairs, used trial and error to select the proper hex wrench, and in the span of slightly less than one hour tightened the 16 bolts that kept the two Bob’s Discount Furniture beds from falling apart. Tragedy averted!

Now about the toolbox. I may use them rarely, but I have a lot of tools in that black box; 26 pounds worth, to be exact. It has an insert tray of wrenches and another of screwdrivers. It contains whatchamacallits and thing-a-ma-jigs and even a petite-sized hand saw with a rusty blade that reeks of tetanus spores. Where most of the tools came from is a mystery to me, but I love their brilliant patina. I just can’t recall buying any of those wrenches, screwdrivers, thing-a-ma-jigs, or either of the two hammers that nestle at the bottom of the rectangular box.

I did make one significant tool purchase recently. The ancient electric drill we inherited from my father-in-law drilled its last hole a few months ago, ending its life in a blaze of sparks. Feeling emasculated not owning a working driller (a name bestowed upon drills by a long-ago Israeli boyfriend of our daughter Laury) I ventured into Home Depot and found a menacing-looking battery-powered model for under a hundred dollars. I have only used it once, but it looks cool hanging in the garage. At least, it looks cool to me.

So if any of you need help with something around the house, please don’t call me for my help or my advice. But I will be happy to lend you my tools, all 26 pounds of them. You can borrow my cool drill too. Just be sure to return it to its spot of glory on the garage wall. I might even find a use for it–someday soon.

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A Snowy Night In Chicago –1979

A recreation of that long, cold, walk. Photo created by Dall-E

Looking out at this snowy January day takes me back 45 years, to the very beginning of my marriage to Barb, and to a snowstorm that paralyzed Chicago. The Blizzard of January 12-14, 1979 dumped about 20 inches of snow on the city and surrounding area–and led to one cold and frigid walk through Skokie, a northern Chicago suburb.

I was doing a fourth-year medical school rotation in gastroenterology at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, while Barb was early in her Occupational Therapist career at RIC, Chicago’s famed rehabilitation center, just off the Magnificent Mile downtown. Knowing that a storm was brewing, we both elected to take public transportation–a walk to the Skokie CTA station for a short journey on the Skokie Swift, a transfer at Howard Street to the main North-South “L,” from which I would get off at Wilson, and Barb continue on to the Chicago Avenue stop.

As the storm approached, I was able to leave my rotation early, and reversing my morning route, made it back to our Skokie home without incident. For Barb, the situation was quite different.

After seeing her last patient of the day, Barb trudged through the falling snow the the subway stop. Following her descent down the elevator to the platform, she found herself engulfed by hundreds of commuters, the daily regulars plus the throngs of people like her who had opted not to drive on that wintery day.

As Barb waited on the northbound platform, two, three, four trains hurtled past, overfilled with passengers and not stopping at her station. Before panic set in, Barb decided to head in the other direction and was able to board a train that took her four stations south. From here, she was finely able to board a northbound train.

More than an hour later, in the black and cold, Barb disembarked from the Skokie Swift and began the half-mile walk to our 2nd-floor walk up on Lavergne Avenue. The snow was blinding and the temperature falling rapidly. Barb struggled as she slowly made her way, huddling in doorways every few minutes to try to regain some warmth in her fingers and toes.

In the meantime, I had called Barb’s parents wondering if they had any idea where she was or if they had heard from her. In those pre-cell phone days, we were all as deeply in the dark as Barb. Finally, close to three hours after she had left the bright lights of the rehab center, Barb made it up the stairs to our apartment, home at last.

Barb vowed that evening never to take a Chicago “L” ever again. Since then we have ridden the subways of New York City, Boston’s famed MTA, London’s Tube, the Paris Metro, and Berlin’s U-Bahn. But I don’t think Barb has ventured onto a CTA platform since that frigid day 45 years ago. Some promises you keep.

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Retired But Going Strong!

2023 is past. All the good, and fortunately, all the evil, that has been part of the last year is behind us. And for me, it has been a unique first year of retirement.

I have written in the past about the various ways that a retired physician can spend his time. So how did I wind up spending those last 12 months? In ways that I anticipated, and in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.

I am frequently asked, “Do you miss going to work every day?“ My unflinching answer is that while I miss the people and some of the challenges, I have no fond memories of the commute or the daily routine. I know I have performed my job well for over 40 years and I’m glad to be free of the constraints it brought.

I have not dropped out of the professional world completely. A few consulting positions allow me to explore the non-clinical side of pathology. While I have spent less time doing this than I originally anticipated, I am glad I have kept my toes in the water.

Volunteering has been a bit of hit or miss. When I originally enrolled to volunteer at the local high school, I didn’t realize that various security snafus would stretch my application process to close to six months! Finally approved, I was disappointed to discover that the volunteer opportunities have been fairly limited. I did enjoy my one assignment, chaperoning students in the school’s Hebrew language class to an Israeli movie in Chicago.

The Northern Illinois Food Bank in Lake County has been a more fruitful place to volunteer. Whether packaging cereal, energy bars, or russet potatoes for local food pantries, the time spent at the food bank is rewarding and an opportunity to socialize with fellow volunteers, including Kris Ford, the mayor of Riverwoods.

Stealing a line from Monty Python, “For those of you who don’t like sport, there’s sport.” After years of resistance, Pickleball has won me over while tennis seems to be disappearing in my rearview mirror. I’ve found amiable companions for leisurely rounds of golf and mid-length bicycle rides. The bowling bug hasn’t spared me, though I find those spares (and strikes) hard to come by.

Our travel time has been special, both with friends and family in the USA and Mexico, and while discovering family roots and Jewish history while exploring Europe.

Despite my increased “leisure” time, the number of blogs that I wrote this year, compared with years past, has diminished. I suspect this is due to the time I have devoted to writing a pair of plays. I hope at least one of those will see the light of day (or night) at a theater near you.

Unanticipated was my opportunity to serve as “First Gentleman.” Barb’s activism as president of our homeowners’ association led to the successful prevention of the construction of a poorly planned and poorly located logistics center. The work of Barb and other neighborhood leaders has been recognized by the local print and broadcast media. Work on statewide legislation is next on her agenda.

Times with family and friends, times deep inside novels of mystery and suspense, and times binge-watching TV series with Barb have occupied most of the other quiet moments. What little free time remained was used to digest the surprise diagnosis of celiac disease. Goodbye flaky French croissants, hello to a world of gluten-free bread and pasta.

Bit I am not complaining. It has been a wonderful year, in a wonderful life.

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Do You Have a “Trigger” Song? Tell Us What It Is!

I heard one of my “trigger songs” this morning. You know what a trigger song is, right? It’s a bit of music that once you hear it, immediately brings back memories, good or bad. Some of those memories might be buried deep in your subconsciousness; hearing the song startles you into instant awareness. I probably have half a dozen of those tunes moored in the sulci of my brain, waiting to be untethered.

The trigger song I heard today was from David Bowie, a number from the early 1980s called Modern Love. It’s a bouncy, danceable, upbeat tune–though the lyrics don’t relate to me in any fashion. So why is it a trigger song for me? Here’s the story.

In the fall of 2005, I had just left my long-time position at Holy Family Medical Center, as the hospital converted from a general hospital to an “”LTAC,” a long-term acute care facility (think very ill patients on respirators.) I had begun my association with UroPartners and my first task, was the creation of a laboratory to process and read urological biopsies–mostly prostate biopsies, but bladder and skin biopsies, too.

The process was long and arduous, as step by step I first went through the design, and then the process of obtaining a contractor, necessary permits, and laboratory equipment.

After a month of working totally solo, and spending sleepless nights wondering if the grossing station I had ordered would fit through the front door (the lab space lacked a loading dock,) I was given a temporary office in the headquarters of a consulting group that was working closely with UroPartners on the integration of the various doctors and facilities that were joining together to form the “super-group.” I was also given a consultant/partner to help me on the business end of the lab set-up and though she knew nothing about laboratories, she was a steadying influence on my efforts.

So where does David Bowie fit into this scene? I never brought a radio to the office, but I did have a computer on which I streamed WXRT, my favorite radio station, into the space while I made my hiring decisions, argued with contractors, and chose paint colors. A quirk of streaming radio in those days was that the commercials that were being broadcast over the airwaves did not stream. Instead of ads, I would hear, over and over, a bit of saxophone from Modern Love.

So yes, when I hear the first few notes of the old Bowie hit, my mind immediately drifts back–and I remember how panicked I originally was, but then I also remember how well it all turned out.

Not all triggers are bad ones.

Send me some of your trigger songs at chidoc@post.com or comment directly on the post.

Looking Back and Wishing All A Happy Holiday Season

A little while back my friend Rick handed me an old holiday card he had received from Barb and me years ago. “We were decluttering the house while we renovated, ” he said. “We came across years worth of your cards, and thought we should save at least one for you.”

I added the card to an orange folder I keep, a folder containing a somewhat incomplete roster of all the cards we have sent through the years. This morning, I added the 2023 edition and spent much of this dreary day looking back on all the old cards, as many past memories came my way. It was my personal TBTOAS (Throw Back Thursday on a Saturday.)

The collection begins with the very first picture holiday card we ever sent. In the photo, Barb, Michael, Laury, and I are enjoying an English Tea at a small shop on Vancouver Island. The kids, aged 7 and 5, daintily raise their cups, little fingers extended, bubbling over with sophistication. It is almost impossible to comprehend that in the photo on this year’s card, a card featuring the entire family at Disneyworld, both our kids are parents, and our grandkids are now 40% of the clan.

Where has the time gone? As I look through the cards, I see it in the many photos we have selected to send to our friends every December. Pictures from birthdays, from weddings, from marvelous vacations, and from everyday life. There are reminders of beloved pets that are no longer with us and a photo that stands as a memorial to our former home in Long Grove, the home in which the kids grew up and from which Barb was so reluctant to leave.

Along with the photo cards are many of the inserts we composed to send along to let everyone know how we were all doing. Those inserts were clearly forerunners to my blogs, with the same tenderness mixed with the same tiny bit of snark. Among my favorites: A letter to a “Dear Kitty” advice columnist in which our new kitten described the past year and asked why we had so much trouble naming her; a newspaper Special Edition announcing the various roles our family would play in the (first) Obama administration; a TV Guide page listing the astonishing TV shows the Raff’s were starring in that season. All fun things to write, and along with the photos wonderful to look back on.

I hope this holiday season is being kind to you all. For all of us, our personal lives and the world around us bring challenges, but to paraphrase the late Danny Thomas, “Give thanks for the good things in your life, and give support to those who need it most”

Happy Holidays from our family to yours.

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The Neanderthal In Me–Why I Am An Early Riser

Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man—The Kinks

I have always been a morning person, an early riser. Before retirement (is that really already a year ago?) I started the day bright and eager at the sound of my 5 a.m. alarm. I’d launch down the tollway well before the morning traffic rush, do a quick walk-through of the lab, and be finished reviewing a tray or three of slides before my associates even got to their microscopes.

Things haven’t changed much in the past year. Although I rarely turn on my alarm clock, I still rise while the house is dark and Barb and our dog Cooper sleep. My only wakeful companion is the kitten. By the time anyone else joins me I have had my morning workout, showered, shaved, fed the cat, downed my gluten-free breakfast, and successfully (hopefully) completed the Wordle, Connections, and Waffle daily puzzles. I am hyped up and ready for morning pickleball or a long dog walk.

I’ve always considered that the morning energy was just “my nature.” I have never given a thought to why I might be that way. And then this morning, I discovered an article in my early morning news feed that explains it all. According to an article in the science section of The Guardian, I am part Neanderthal!

For those of you not up to date on your anthropology, the Neanderthals were a primitive species sort-of related to homo sapiens (the current us.) Probably originating in Africa, the Neanderthal ancestors migrated to Europe and Asia before homo sapiens but interbred with them when the sapiens eventually followed a similar migration pattern. The Neanderthals died out, the homo sapiens flourished.

What does that have to do with me? Scientists at the University of California San Francisco explain that for the Neanderthals to survive the relatively shorter days in Europe, early morning wakefulness was a useful trait and part of their genetic makeup. And today, people with certain Neanderthal genes in their DNA (remember there was interbreeding between the two species) have “an increased propensity to be a morning person.” There was no mention in the article of whether we morning people also inherited shorter arms and legs and big foreheads from our prehistoric forebearers.

So it’s true, I have a bit of the caveman in me. I’d like to write more about it, but I need to start the grill for the barbecue we are having with our neighbors Fred and Barney and their wives Wilma and Betty. It’s a good thing the brontosaurus burgers were on sale at the local Jewel, that Fred can eat a ton.

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Some Limericks for Our Times

A little look ahead toward the season to come. No, not the Holiday Season, the Republican Primary Season. With apologies to all!

Ms. Haley is from Carolina
She can give you a lecture on China
With her thoughts she can grab you
While with her heels she will stab you
I fear her plans might give you angina

In the South is a bloke named DeSantis
Not much height he is short as a mantis.
In all the polls he is dropping
His run seems to be flopping
I think he will sink like Atlantis

Young Vivek Ramaswamy's a newbie
Who glistens and shines like a ruby
In manners he's lacking
Other pols he's attacking
Chill out dude, have a puff, here's a doobie.

The ex-guv'nor of New Jersey is running
But I'd prefer Chris Christie off somewhere sunning
He'll shoot from the rump
To head off the Trump
A victory by him would be stunning

Don Trump's still the leading contender
He's beloved by the masculine gender
Is there still time at this juncture
His great ego to puncture
Or will he just bask in his splendor?