Life and going live in the ER

When the alarm began its high-pitched bleating this morning at an ungodly time shortly before 3 a.m., I hauled myself up from bed and already forgotten dreams and went through a ritual than I do most mornings. Finished sipping the water from the cup on my nightstand, slumped down the hallway with my furry roommate, Patrick, to let him out the back door to do his business, then hit the shave-and-shower routine.

I rarely glimpse into the mirror in the morning, particularly so at this hour, because I fear I’ll see some visage of Dorian Gray leering back at me or a bald clone of Linda Blair’s noggin’ turning 360s at warp speed. Suffice it to say, I am an early riser most mornings, but not at an hour when drunks, stoners and disappointed barflies are starting to flock to Denny’s for a nightcap of greasy eggs and oozing meatloaf.

But there I was. On assignment to help with live remotes for our local ABC affiliate, WRTV-6, beginning at 4:30 a.m. and running at the top and bottom of each hour until 6:30 a.m. It just happened to be with reporter and cameraman I have worked with several times in the past. Good folks and always on top of things.

Their news truck’s microwave tower was up and linked to their downtown Indy station.  We chatted a bit about our families, the horrible weather and how TV meteorologists had pegged this latest hellish spell. Then they met some of our great crew working the overnight shift in our Emergency Room (ER ) – the people who treat others’ pains and illnesses and keep them alive while the rest of the city sleeps.

There is an unspoken word you never use when talking with ER staff. You never ask if the shift has been “quiet.” Maybe it’s a superstition or just a tradition, but you just find other ways to ask it. An emergency room is a world of mixed-bag experiences. I always have admired the way our teams operated. And this just happened to be a blessedly q---t night.

  

'A hurtin' kind of day'

I had just passed the "Home of the Big Peach" near Bruceville off U.S. 41 North and was anticipating the next landmark of Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. That's when it happened. That’s what I get for surfing FM stations in southern Indiana, constantly changing the dial from the Doobie Brothers to John Coltrane; from daily grain sales in Princeton to syndicated screeching preachers warning that Jesus is coming back soon and isn't going to be in a great mood.

But there it came. A big, salty drip from the corner of my left eye halfway through Mercyme’s “I Can Only Imagine.” Another one. Then another. Not wanting to be left out, my right eye decided to get a piece of the action.

Just a few hours before, my family and a multitude of others had said goodbye to my uncle, Patrick A. Henry. A bon voyage party to a man whose best journey began last Friday afternoon. It was an emotional gumbo seasoned with a deep dash here and there with respect, sadness and occasional silliness.

Emotions mix with goodbye to first newspaper, daughters

Nearly 30 years have flown and fluttered away like November leaves in an aimless incoming winter wind. But there it was; a transition escalating me from the first leg of my journey as a reporter at the aggressive daily in southwestern Indiana, The Mount Vernon Democrat, to the tantalizing Mecca of Hoosier journalism of Indianapolis.

I had been offered a job at United Press International, which, at the time, had a solid reputation of fierce competitiveness against the Associated Press, yet in the not-so-distant future of financial fiasco. I took it any way, deciding it was just another way to punch the ticket.

For more than three years, I cut my teeth in virtually every capacity as a reporter, news editor, columnist, night-time editor (a constant friendly battle with anxious press guys) and the always looming deadline of getting the words into ink.

I had a great respect for the guy who had hired me, Bill Brooks, but he earlier had counseled me: I wouldn’t hire a writer who didn’t have the ambition to leave me.

So I did just that.

And then there came the most crucial confession to my daughters, Two young ladies who spent weekends with me and nudged me lovingly along after the divorce. It was bittersweet, all of it, to explain and prepare to experience. Here is the last thing I wrote, word for word:

Sex, death and life in the colony

Amazing things, those little critters ants. 


They have many attributes. For example, your average ant can lift more than 20 times its body weight. If you could run as fast for your size as an ant can, you could keep pace with any contender for the Kentucky Derby. 

Your typical ant has two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with others. God forbid that gastric bypass is ever required.


Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special trash dump. Environmentally conscious they are.

An ant colony is virtually Amazonian in nature. The larger colonies consist mostly of sterile wingless females forming castes of "workers", "soldiers" and other specialized tasks. There are "male" drones who basically are buzzing around waiting to die. 

Male and female ants are both born with large wings. When the ant matures, these wings are used so that it can fly into the air to mate. Once they are done doing the deed, something strange happens. The male ant's wings fall off. Then he dies. 


Bummer if you're a dude ant. But that's what happens when you have unprotected sex. 


Meanwhile, the female ant immediately searches for a place to start a new colony as a fertile "queen," ready to make new conquests and kill again. Her sole job now is to be everybody's mother and lay eggs which soon become larva then pupa then adult. She gets to live an estimated 10 years.



Then one day she croaks and one of her progeny takes her place. Kind of the way it's been operating for centuries in England, with the exception of there being no male heirs to the throne.

And ants are smart, too. At night, the worker ants move the eggs and larvae deep into the nest to protect them from the cold. During the daytime, the worker ants move the eggs and larvae of the colony to the top of the nest so that they can be warmer. 

Scientists say an ant's brain may have the same processing power as a Macintosh II computer. But who really owns one of those ancient things any more?

King Solomon once wrote, “Go to the ant, consider its ways and be wise.” I think one of the things he might have meant is consider the source of the ant's strength. Each ant has a specific role or pursues a particular task. And  helping others. 


In the end, they are working to make their colony more productive and sustain it for future generations. 

When you have an average life span of about 90 days you don’t want to waste much time. Your mother has high hopes and expectations of you. God save the Queen.

Unexplained lights in a Hoosier night sky

I haven’t thought much about it over the years, much less shared the story either in spoken word or print. After all, most things we observe which defy a clear explanation, much less understand, eventually tend to get filed into the misty realm embedded deep into our memory banks.

It was late summer of 1978 and me, my then-wife and first-born infant daughter, were driving to her parents’ house in rural Vanderburgh County, Ind. It was twilight and we made our way over the meandering road when we noticed three objects glowing and blinking in the sky over farmers’ fields. They didn’t appear to move much, yet, the closer we got to our destination, their collective illumination seemed to intensify.

We didn’t think much of it; it seemed likely these were the lights of National Guard choppers, or perhaps some reflections making final approach to Dress Regional Airport in Evansville. As we got out of the car, the mom-in-law met us in the driveway and gestured off in the distance. Did you see those on your way in?

The three of us looked at the spectacle, shimmering perhaps a mile or so away. We were transfixed as the objects appeared to be arranged in a slight pyramid shape and their lights were rhythmically alternating colors of red, green and white. Never moving and holding their place in mid-air. I don’t know how long we watched this go on, but after a while they disappeared one by one. And we went into the house.

I vaguely recall thinking, Well, that was pretty weird and something you don’t see every day in southwestern Indiana.  It felt weird, neither good nor bad. 

To my swashbuckling Dad -- Happy Father's Day!

For the most part, it’s an asterisk sort of day. It’s wedged tightly in between the end of Mother’s and Memorial days and the Fourth of July celebration.  It seems as if the Hallmark and the bad necktie industry long have conceded that fathers need their day of acknowledgement, too. Besides, why pass up a chance to make a few extra bucks?

Father’s Day must have been a real drag for Adam and his Dad, in the post-Eden age. Sibling rivalry affects more than its actors.

Let me tell you about my Dad. George “Buck” Stuteville grew up hard during that Great Depression. Served his country, saw buddies die and had the tattoos on his arms to prove he had seen the elephant show and was not eager to see the sequels. When it was time to go home, he did. Dropped most of his GI vices, got married and then got about the business of becoming a father, a process played out three times between 1953 and 1964.

MerryMobiles and philosophical Injuns

The grass was cut, yet my front lawn still seemed to hiss and pop, fueled on by that angry, broiling star 92 million millions away. I plopped down on the front porch bench and took a long, hard draw from the pristine Gucci bottled water.

And that’s when I heard it down at the end of the street. It could have been It’s a Small World After All or an early Led Zeppelin tune for all I Know.  Then it came in to site – a battered white van with faded painted images of popsicles and ice cream cones. The driver slowly nosed down the street, a cigarette clenched between his teeth; his head swiveled lazily from left to right looking for customers.

None to be found. So he goosed that jalopy, tossed his smoke into my neighbor’s yard and continued on to the next block.

And there I was back in my old boyhood neighborhood. Country Club Manor in Evansville, circa the early and mid-1960s. Streets bearing regal names such as Kensington, Stratford, Tremont, Sheridan, Colonial and so forth. Mostly tiny and well-kept homes occupied by WW2 veterans who used the GI Bill to put roofs over the heads of their wives and offspring.

With school out that first week of June, summer did not officially begin until you first heard that tantalizing distant sound: the tinkling approach of the MerryMobile, playing crisp songs from a small PA horn. We would stand curbside and eagerly await its arrival.

It was quite a vehicle, more precious to a kid than any convertible Corvair or Sting-Ray bicycle. This was a shiny red, white, and blue vehicle, shaped like a carousel. In reality, it was an oversized, glorified golf cart. No way were you ever going to parallel park that wagon. And almost always, the MerryMobile was piloted by a late-aged teen boy more than likely a college student earning summer bucks.

Democracy's death greatly exaggerated in Wisconsin

By now, the video from last night (June 5) is beyond viral.  The voter's tearful words in response of his support of Gov. Scott Walker’s recall vote defines spur-of-the-moment goofiness and an utter lack of understanding the most fundamentals of civics.

After the projections were in, and Walker’s position reaffirmed, the emotional man whined to reporters, “We’re not just disappointed! This was the biggest election in America. Democracy died in America tonight!  This was it. If we didn’t win tonight, the end of the USA as we know it just happened!”

His proclamation is so lame I don’t know where to begin. For starters, let me make this clear: I don’t know a whit beyond the sound bites which have been spewing out of Wisconsin the last few years about Walker wanting to curb state pensions and being at odds with powerful unions.

Don’t know enough about any of these things since my only concern for that state purely is that families are safe, well fed and employed; that Harry Houdini’s heritage is being well preserved in Appleton; and that the Green Bay Packers always will remain a contender in the NFL.

In some slim measure, I can grasp this young man's outburst. Obviously, he was a passionate advocate for a cause. It afflicts us all from time to time. He was emotional and speaking from an anguished heart.

Reality: His team lost. That’s politics, my man, and the pendulum doesn’t always swing the way you like. For good or ill.

One bright morning in the dark of night...

One bright morning in the dark of night,

Two dead boys got up to fight.

Stood back to back, and faced one another.

Drew their knives and shot one another.

The deaf cop responded when he heard the noise,

He came and killed those two dead boys.

If you don’t believe it and think this story is odd,

Ask the atheist ‘cause he heard it from God!

Only two days into this week and that little ditty I vaguely recall from my boyhood reminds me just how strange things can seem or occur at any time.

It began early yesterday morning when returning a voicemail to Sears, claiming I was delinquent on my account and would be charged $100 and some change if I didn’t pay immediately. A wondrous thing given that I have a zero balance with the iconic store where America use to shop. 

I finally connected with a real human named “Ellen” whose cheerful voice carried a trace of Bollywood. After we busted the language barrier of my backwoods Hoosierisms and her all-too-stilted English, we fixed the problem.

Later in the day, an out-of-state news reporter calls me. He wants to interview one of our physicians about a cardiac procedure that person helped pioneer eons ago. I explained the good doc was no longer with us and had moved on to another institution years ago and didn’t know where.

Bad news, convertibles, vasectomies and an ode to joy

I was driving to my office and listening to the news on the radio, slumping deeper in my seat with each report. New murders overnight; more bloviating balderdash spewing from politicians and pundits of every stripe on every conceivable issue; woeful economic news; protesters protesting other protesters; and so forth. And that was just the news in my beloved Indy.

Then I came to a stop sign on McFarland Road. Ordinarily, I would look in all directions and make sure it was my turn before moving on, but something caught my eye that kept me in place. There was a white-haired woman on a porch swing – not just sitting there slightly moving back and forth, but really pushing and swinging the same way a youngster does on a playground.

As I watched, I also noticed the old woman – who was wearing a short-sleeved top so loud in color that it would make Jerry Springer blush – had this wonderfully big, goofy grin on her face. Her hands were clasped behind her head as she continued to make that porch swing move faster and a bit higher. I think she might have singing, too, or revisiting some great thing from memory lane. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world.

The woman seemed to be experiencing something far deeper and more lasting than happiness. I think I was witnessing pure, unabashed, unbridled and unbelievable joy.

And Jesus laughed

The gospels (official and not so official) and few historical accounts about Jesus don’t necessarily portray him as having much of a lighter side. And over the centuries, the imagery on stained glass, paintings and statues shows a sad-eyed fellow, reinforce his solemn image: Here’s a guy with a staff quietly wading through sheep in gridlock, holding the requisite fingers upward when making an important point during a parable. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed Galilean morosely moving through a world clutched in the fist of Rome.

Never  smiling. The one described in John in what is the shortest verse in all of the Scriptures: Jesus wept.

On the surface, who could dispel this portrayal? After all, Jesus had a job description and goals set for him that no Lean Six Sigma guru ever could achieve. Not to mention his earthly mission statement: to transform the lives of creatures of free will and redeem them.  That's a pretty tall order.

When reading between the lines of both the official and unofficial biographies of Jesus, it becomes clear to me that he was one quite capable of a good quip or joke. A clever twist of words that made the haughty religious cops in tall hats jiggle their phylacteries nervously.

Say, y’all – hear the one about the Pharisee and tax-collector going into the temple to pray? Well, quite piously the former thanked the Almighty he wasn’t like the most folks, particularly the bean-counter standing behind him. Then the collector stepped forward just asking to be forgiven for who he is and what he has done.  Remember this: if you think highly of yourself you’re pretty low. And if you have some humility, you up your odds in the view of the one who really counts.

WWJD?

"I'd like to thank our young brother for such a heartfelt tune. Coming up in just a few minutes -- after I deliver my meditation on the Gospel of St. Fred Phelps and the Book of Al Sharpton's Lamentations -- we're gonna invite our youth choir up here to sing a medley of inspirational songs about why there also ain't no place in Heaven for cripples, women and them there so-called minorities in management roles, registered Democrats and turncoat Republicans, people with cancer and heart disease, tree-huggers, anti-bully advocates, any believer not of our liking, scooter riders, PBS donors, community garden supporters -- and we know they are communists -- and Justin Bieber fans. '

As you know brothers and sisters, just like the Good Book says: "Nothing is better for thee than Tea! Can I get an amen!... Okay, who's the joker in the back pew who just yelled out 'Akbar?' "

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2agsAZcA3fU