Happy Gnu Year

Five and a half years after my first brain tumor and 2.5 years after my second one, I learned that my brain is stable (yep), which means that I have no tumor growth. Yea! That makes this a happy gnu year, or happy new 6 months (until the next MRI) anyway.


There are no fireworks (I'm not a fan of fireworks since they usually mimic bombs, and scare the neighborhood dogs--and veterans, I'm guessing). There is no countdown on t.v. I will not attempt to stay up until midnight--on the East coast. Though the rest of the world's not drinking champagne, for me this is the most joyful kind of gnu year.


Because it's my New Year, and I am amused by the word "gnu" (Why is that g there? That's a conundrum for the Cowboy Poet to sort out), I wanted to learn something about gnu (or is it gnus?)

Wickedpedia says that gnu is just a weird word for wildebeest. Because the gnu is itself such a bizarre looking creature, gnu seems to me to be a better name than wildebeest. You know, because it looks like it looks.

Ann and I saw thousands of wildebeest, or gnus, when we were on the Serengheti two years before my brain surgery (in the year 2 BBS).

Our safari group rounded a dusty bend in our jeeps and witnessed a river of these odd looking animals dashing one way, then having some one gnu at the front of the line get spooked, and all of them turn around and charge back the other way, a gnu river now flowing upstream. It was like watching a waterfall begin to fall up.

I went to Wikipedia (my favorite source for all things unimportant) to see what Wikipedists had to say about gnus. I was surprised to read:

GNU ⁱ/ɡəˈnuː/^[1] is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"^[2] composed wholly of free software. (Wikipedia)

First, I have to admit, I misread the sentence, and thought that this was a Unisex-like computer. Well, that got my attention. I didn't know that computers were sexual, and then what would it mean to be Unisex-like? Okay, so I re-read, and I was wrong about that.

I kept reading, and came to the section on Harvesting Gnus. Intriguing. I read:
Wildebeest are killed for food, especially for biltong in Southern Africa, which is dried game meat. Biltong is a delicacy and an important food item in Africa.[4] It has been found[by whom?] that the meat of females is more tender than that of males, and that meat was the most tender during the autumn season.[9] Wildebeest are a regular target for illegal meat hunters because they are relatively easy[vague] for hunters to kill. When preparing the wildebeest, the carcass is usually[weasel words] cut into 11 pieces. The estimated price for wildebeest meat is about US$ 0.47 per kilogram.[21]

So of course I started wondering who was making all of those comments in brackets. Some relative of Mr. Spellcheck, I'm guessing. The voice is pedantic, wanting to know who found the meat of females more tender than that of males (isn't it always that way? Duh.) Then I got to "weasel words." I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound very nice. And my mama always told me, "If you cain't say anythin' nice, don't say anythin' atall."

That's all the news on gnus for now. Happy gnu year to you, too, whatever the newness is in your life.

My Kind of Town

Walla Walla, Washington is not usually a vacation destination. It's best known, perhaps, for its onions. Ann and I traveled there for our spring break, however, and the visit was fabulous.

We stayed at a B and B, Maxwell House, about a block from campus and within walking distance of downtown. The hostess, Penny, is relaxed and helpful and makes a pretty and substantial breakfast. Penny is helpful and there when you need her, but we didn't feel like we were vacationing with her like we do in some B and Bs. The home was built in 1904, and Penny's antiques are interesting and practical. There's a gaslog fire in the living room and cookies in the cookie jar. The home feels like a home and not an antique mall. If you go to Walla Walla, you should stay at the Maxwell House.

People move slowly in Walla Walla. When I approached a corner, planning to cross the street, any onconing drivers stopped a good ten yards from the cross walk, leaving me no doubt that they saw me. When I made it to the other side of the street, the driver waited a few seconds before moving slowly on: there was no gunning of the motor to let me know that this driver was in a hurry and irritated that I had slowed the day.

At stop lights, I never feared for my life when I crossed in the cross walk, as invited by the man in white lights. Drivers watched for me. Not some of them. All of them.

There's public art everywhere. Whitman College, a small private college, has an art sculpure walk around campus. We saw a colorful rectangle divided into perfect ratios (Math Teacher Ann took lots of photos there); a giant colorful carving of Venus de Milo, and a great stick horse ridden by a weary looking plastic bag cowboy. (It was prank week.) That's just a few highlights. In town, my favorite sculpture was a frog looking reflectively at a fountain, fist to chin in "The Thinker" pose.

We visited wineries, just a few among the 178 or so, and basked in the sun as we sipped red wines. Our B&B moved at just the right pace, too. Big breakfasts (I'm back to my post-Christmas weight) at a leisurely 9 am, and chocolate chip cookies in the cookie jar for the taking.

Like the poet Theodore Roethke, "I wake to sleep and take my waking slow." In Walla Walla, I could take my walking slow, too.

My Own Private Idaho

I was sceptical about Ann's idea that we go biking (well, her on a bike and me on my trike) in the Coeur d'Alene area of Idaho. When I think of Idaho, I think of potatoes and neo-nazi groups, but I was as wrong about Idaho as so many people are about the American South. It was beautiful, and the bike trails are fabulous.

We consulted Sheila (full name Georgietta Patricia Sheila), our GPS, about how to get to Harrison, Idaho, but the dealer told Sheila that we'd want to know the fuel efficient route instead of the fastest route. Sheila took us on a series of short cuts that my Granddaddy Matthews would have appreciated.

We started in Harrison, with our friends Susan and Rod, staying at the Lakeview Lodge and biking both ways on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. The trail is over 71 miles of paved railroad right of way, but we just did a little piece each day. One day we biked on a tressle over Lake Coeur d'Alene and the next day we went the other way, along a river and a series of chain lakes. The trail is almost entirely flat, and every inch is lovely.

We stayed at the beautiful, somewhat funky, Lakeview Lodge, and our rooms had decks overlooking the lake. I'd recommend them.

There was a little tension one morning. A woman with a one year-old German Sherpherd and a man who was angry because the dog bore his teeth at him when he was doing the laundry and also because the dog barked during the night (I found this irritating, too) got into an altercation. Dog Lady was calm, but somewhat patronizing as Mad Man yelled more and more aggressively at her. When he yelled, "This is Idaho, Lady, it's not Mexico" (I'm still mulling over exactly what he meant by that), and he moved towards her, the very nice owner (a guy who might have been an inn keeper on the t.v. show "Northern Exposure")...anyway, the very nice owner intervened and said, "This has got to stop."

We left on our bike ride, and when we returned Dog Lady and her puppy had checked out. I don't know about Mad Man, but we didn't hear him again. We were glad that our hotel was not taped off as a crime scene.

We all love dogs and had our own dog stories. I loved Rod's story about Smokey the Dog, a dog on his newspaper route one summer when he was an adolescent. The dog terrorized Rod all summer, and one morning at the end of the summer, the owner was in the yard and told Rod, "He won't hurt you." Rod turned around to face the owner, and the dog bit him in the butt. The owner seemed non-plussed and said, "Oh, well. He's never bitten anyone else."

(Everyone but me had been bitten at least once. If you own a dog, please respect others' nervousness. Thanks.)

We tried fifty percent (two) of the restaurants and were underwhelmed, but we had great Huckleberry Ice-Cream at the creamery where "one scoop" is really about five scoops.

Farkle friends (oh yeah, they're church friends, pub friends, auction friends, El Salvador friends, and just plain friend friends, too) John and Jerry joined us Thursday night. I won the first game of Farkle  (I have to tell you that), and then I went to bed while the others played a half game (to 5000 points instead of 10,000 points). Susan, I see in John's scoring notes, was the "half winner." I love it that Susan's a "half winner."

Friday morning, we drove to the other end of the trail and rode a piece of that trail and all of the Hiawatha Trail. We went downhil all day, not a good thing for hospital patients but an excellent thing for a tired triker.

The Hiawatha Trail travels on an old railroad bed high in the Bitterroot mountains. It winds through ten very dark tunnels and seven high tressles. The first tunnel is in the trail's first ten feet and runs 1.67 miles in utter darkness with water falling into gutters that bikers want to avoid along the sides. If you go, take a bike with mountain bike treads and several good lights. Jerry dubbed our lights, "Artificial Sun," and we were very popular through each tunnel.

On the drive  back to Seattle, Ann and I listened to the Indigo Girls song, "Bitterroot." Below are the lyrics so that you can sing along if you want to. You take the lead and I'll sing harmony:

Tonight I'll be sleeping on the mountain top,
I got a billion stars for my witness.
In the morning I'll go down and the sun comes up,
I'll take a drink from the Bitter Root River.

Have you been lonely?
Yes I've been lonely.
I've been lonely too.

Tonight I'll be sleeping on the mountain top,
I got a billion stars for my witness.
In the morning I'll go down and the sun comes up,
I'll take a drink from the Bitter Root River.

Have you been travelin?
Yes I've been travelin.
I've been travelin too.

Tonight I'll be sleeping on the mountain top,
I got a billion stars for my witness.
In the morning I'll go down and the sun comes up,
I'll take a drink from the Bitter Root River.

O, Pioneer!

If I had lived in the time of U.S. Westward expansion, I would not have been a pioneer. I love to travel and to see new lands and new ways of living, but I also love bathrrom facilities and timely, balanced meals.

I wonder if people got wagon-sick as they crossed the plains like people get car-sick now. With all the tedious bumping, I would have gotten wagon-sick. If I had been in the Donner party, I would have been the first to go. I would have gone before the horses. I just can't skip a meal.

Pioneer women got up before the crack of dawn to lug in the firewood and get the home fires burning. They tilled the rocky soil, planted and nurtured their gardens, and split wood for their amusement. I like to sleep until 10 a.m., watch a hummingbird flit about the garden while I sip a glass of fine wine, and lie by the gas logs fire (cleaning ashes is for pioneer women and Cinderellas, and I'm neither) while Ann reads me a good book.

I have surprised Ann on our travels. Since I have loved to travel in somewhat remote developing areas, Ann was surprised to see how squeamish I was about toilets in Tanzania and Ethiopia and El Salvador. I'm also squeamish about honey-buckets.

My friend Chris talked this morning about how she could manage rural Mexico's squat toilets (really a hole in the floor) because of the years she lived in Asia, but she just couldn't get used to paying the lady by the door per square of toilet paper. Chris's Spanish isn't so good, so she just flashes fist fulls of fingers and hands over all of her money.

Chris wouldn't be a pioneer either. In fact, she and I would probably still be in Europe somewhere if we had been born back in the pioneer days.

I think about this often. In fact, I divide my friends into the people who might have been good pioneers and those who would not. I admire those who would have been good pioneers, but I would not have travelled with them.

Ann would have been a good pioneer: she pops up in the early morning dark ready to take on the day. Marie, too, is a hardy soul. She likes to backpack, and years ago she told me that she hauled a 60 pound backpack around a mountain. She wasn't bragging, but I thought to myself, "I'll bet she was a nice pioneer lady in another life." My maternal grandmother could have been a pioneer woman, too, but she was an exception in our family. The rest of us would still be in England with Chris.

I'm glad for all the hardy souls in this world. Thank you for making my life better. Mary

The Quint of Luuuv

Ann's colleague Adina celerates  "the quint of love."  She pronounces it "luv" with an extended soft "u": "luuuuv." Since the this time period includes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, President's Day (depending on the president), and Valentine's Day, the designation seems just right.

Unsure asbout what a quint might be? Is it A) an era: we had the quint of Bush and now we are in the quint of luuuv B) a metaphor from science fiction literature where time is a substance to be measured in "quints": It was a time of love, a quint of romance. C) (we all know C's the most common answer, so it won't be this): Is it a fifth of a school year, so that we have semesters, trimesters, quarters and quints D) Perhaps it's an age, as in the Quint of Acquarius or E) a very naughty word in Jamaican culture. The correct answers are C, a grading period which is a fifth of a school year, and E)  very naughty word in Jamaican culture. (Adina told me about the Jamaican meaning, and I confirmed it on the innernets.. I wonder if that's why their school, which has lots of students from Asian countries, has no students from Jamaica.) As a good reader, you can use your context clues to be assured that in this instance we are discussing a grading period.

In last Sunday's church service, the reading came from the sexy Song of Songs: "Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love" (New International Version (©1984) cited on http://bible.cc/songs/2-5.htm). For sure, it must be the quint of love: The Bible tells me so, and so does Adina.

On the radio last week, I heard a remarkable love story, a husband's retelling of the joyous moments of his wife's last days. She was home from cancer treatments, weak, in a wheelchair, and unable to speak. The day before she died, he noticed again how beautiful she was, and he asked her to marry him again. Though weak, she kissed him vigorously and repeatedly on his cheek.

Last summer Ann and I got married in a commitment ceremony at our church. I had survived brain surgery for a tumor and could no longer walk or dance as I used to. I could no longer smile with both sides of my face. My eyes were somewhat crossed. I can no longer hike up mountains or travel in developing countries. Still, she said she loved me. Still, she spends her days with me. Still, she asked me to marry her.

We had a great time. We practiced dancing to Exile's "She's a Miracle" for weeks so that we could dance, and I would not fall. Our families and friends celebrated with us. We shared photos of our lives together: from hiking up Lalibellas's mountainsides to watching waves crash on North Carolina's shores: if you look closely you can see not only that I am affectionately holding Ann's arm, but that she is holding me up. We said our vows and our siblings made toasts.

On this Valentine's Day, as on all days, I am so thankful for all of the love in my life: for friends and family, an astonishing world, our communities of faith and fun and work, and especially for Ann. My heart is full, as is my life.

All my love. Mary

Year of the Giraffe

The Chinese say this is the year of the metal rabbit (whatever that is). On my blog, however, this is the year of the giraffe. If you are reading this blog in China, there's a conundrum you'll have to figure on your own.

Why the year of the giraffe? The giraffe is my partner Ann's favorite animal, and this is Ann's year. She loves the giraffe for its simultaneous awkwardness and grace, for its calm loping across the Serengeti, for its fierce gentleness and for its amusing curiosity, bending that long neck to see what's up. Besides, Ann's colleague Randy just told me that the giraffe has the biggest heart.

Ann and I went to East Africa, on a safari in Tanzania and then a four week tour of Ethiopia, two years before my first brain tumor was diagnosed. I feel lucky, as I feel about so many things, that we took this trip when we could.

On the Serengeti, we watched lionesses (the females do all the work) hunt zebras and we watched a river of thousands of wildebeasts change its current in midstream due to a waiting--and smiling--alligator. We witnessed giraffes lope in family groups across the prairie lands to chew on a nearby acacia tree. We watched two lionesses make their determined way across a large burn, guiding their eleven cubs as they plodded through the burn. We watched warthogs in family groups of three as they ran hidden through the tall grasses, only their tails visible above the stalks. Hippos yawned; violet splendors winged their way from tree to tree; zebras turned their elaborately tattooed butts our way.

In Ethiopia, we celebrated a coffee ceremony with our young guide and his mother; we calmed to the chants of Lalibella's monks echoing off the mountainsides; we rode our way southward on a public bus, complimented as "Habis" (something like that, meaning clever and brave) by the old woman in the school bus seated near us.

There are so many things I'm thankful to have done when I could: getting to know friends in a rural Salvadoran town, rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, hiking Alaska's trailless tundra, playing on the beach with nieces and nephews, and teaching diverse classrooms of teenagers seeking a dream they didn't often even know they were seeking.

Throughout my new life with tumors, I have felt gratitude for my life. Even so, last year was a rough year, with a new tumor, new allergies to chocolate, cheddar and garlic, increasing difficulties with balance and vision, the piggy flu and pneumonia, and losses in my community.

This year, the year of the giraffe, will be a year of healing. It will be a year of gracefulness in the awkwardness, a year of loping across difficult terrain with friends and family, a year of tenderness and curiosity. It will be a year with a big heart.

Summer #17: Agressive Kindness

Summer #17: Public transportation like airplanes and busses are the most notable places for folks who are aggressively kind. In Dallas last week, I acquiesced to a ride in a wheelchair down the ramp. The airline attendant asked me if I'd like her to arrange wheelchairs at my next stops. "No, thank you. I'll be fine." She nodded. In St. Louis and again in Seattle, a person with a wheelchair met me at the gate. So much for No, thank you. In Seattle, I asked the woman with the wheelchair just to take me to the end of the jetway. "Oh, no. It's too far," she insisted. When I tried to get out, she would have none of it and pushed me back into the chair. Ann tried to argue, but I've been through this before, so I sat back and enjoyed the ride and said thank you at the end.

On another flight a couple of years ago, the attendants insisted they call for one of those cars that beeps at everyone in order to take me to the exit. Again, after some arguing I acquiesced, but Ann refused and walked ahead with our luggage. I started to wonder how I was going to find her. Now, she rides with me.

My favorite time was when the attendants really wanted to call a second wheelchair for Ann, who has white hair and was holding my cane for me while I put on a sweatshirt. Now Ann makes me hold my own cane.

As I was getting off the bus last week, an older woman asked me if I needed help. "No, thank you." She decided to help me anyway. She tried to help me get up and move down the aisle anyway, but she wasn't so steady herself and nearly knocked me down.

If you've been following this blog since the beginning, you already know about the two homeless guys who helped me across the crosswalk when I didn't want to cross the street.

When, as a teenager, I was taking CPR, I remember learning to ask someone who seemed in trouble, "Are you okay?" I found the idea of performing mouth-to-mouth on someone who was just sunbathing funny. Now I know how important that question is, and how important it is to listen to the answer.

If you are aggressively kind, I appreciate your spirit, but really, no thanks unless I say yes please. Mary

Summer #16: Shame on You!

Summer #16: I got kicked off the plane on my first international flight, from New York JFK to London Heathrow to Dublin, Ireland. When I boarded the gigantic plane, a woman was already in my seat. We had matching tickets, except for our names. The nice attendant said they'd get it straightened out, no worries. Just wait right here. Just off the plane. About twenty others joined me just off the plane; the attendants blocked he doors like they were storm troopers, and we were herded back to the concourse. "Our computers have been sabotaged," claimed a Hogan's Heroes caricature with round glasses and an exaggerated German accent posed as an airline agent. Pan Am agents rebooked me and my peers (we had become peers) onto a flight going from New York to Germany to London and from there I would continue to Dublin. I sat in the upstairs area with a high school wrestling team. In Germany, a bomb went off in the airport, though I didn't realize that was the cause of all the sirens when we landed. Finally, I flew to Heathrow and on to Dublin where my friend Sara did her best impersonation of O.J. Simpson (before the slow chase days) leaping over obstacles to greet me a day later. Mom wrote a letter to Pan Am, closing, "Shame on you!" They refunded the price of my ticket, and this flight prepared my for low expectations when I fly, an attitude that has come in handy.

About ten years ago, Ann and I had a more frightening ride on  a small Costa Rican airplane. We had been to the Pacific Coast and took a taxi to our "terminal." The taxi left us off at a meadow in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere. We stood in the field with our suitcases and gradually about ten other Americans joined us. Eventually, two small airplanes landed in our field. An overweight pilot took our bags and the bags of four others and started shoving them into the baggage hold. One woman had a suitcase as large as my mother's suitcase, and the pilot grunted and sweated so much that we feared he might have a heart attack. We boarded the six-seater and prepared for take off. No drinks would be served on this flight. As the pilot took off, I wondered if the red flashing light was important and was then distracted by the mountain that we were headed towards. At what seemed like the last minute, the pilot banked, and went at it again, this time clearing the mountain. As we flew, the plane kept hitting air pockets and the plane would sink. Thinking we might die, I was thankful that this flight was at the end of the vacation instead of the beginning, and I wondered if someone would develop the pictures I had taken with my new camera. Deep thoughts for a dying person. Everyone else, somewhat green, had their faces in their barf bags. I doubt their thoughts were any deeper. When we finally landed no one cheered or even looked at each other. We got our bags and shuffled off to find our next flight.

On another miserable flight, not scary but unpleasant, we were returning with our friends Marion and Wolfgang to Seattle from our Mexico vacation. We landed in an intermediary city, maybe Phoenix, and found that our flight to Seattle would not be going. Everyone on this flight would need to rebook. The next flight to Seattle was in three days. We booked a flight to Portland, tried unsuccessfully to find a hotel for the night, and finally slept on the airport floor. At least we had our luggage with us since the airport was cold at night. We put on all our clothes. The next morning, I sat with Ann's and my luggage as she went to find Marion and Wolfgang for breakfast. Aware of all those airport announcements about unattended luggage but also experiencing Montazuma's Revenge, I dragged all of our luggage into the restroom with me. Whew. Made it. Finally, we flew to Portland, rented a car, and drove home to rest for our day back at work in a few hours.

A few months after my brain surgery, Ann and I flew to NC for the annual summer beach trip. Our seats were in the very last row. I sat in the middle, and when the attendant brought me a cup of ice-water at the beginning of the flight, I didn't notice that the tray was tilted. The cupful slid into my lap. That ice was cold, and when we landed my britches were wet. I was walking with a walker and could not see well, so as soon as we got to a bathroom, I tried to dry up. I could just see others in the airport thinking, "Oh, that poor disabled woman wet her pants."

This year, our flight from Raleigh to Seattle  wasn't as bad, and some of the misery was our fault, but the flying experience wasn't joyful. Confused about the day our flight left, we arrived at the airport about 24 hours late for our flight. After much hemming and hawing, the airilne reparesentative rebooked us on the same flight for that night. Ann bought a new ticket, but because I was flying using frequent flyer miles, I just lost my first class status. Because of mechanical problems, our flight would leave two hours late, so we found a pub and had dinner and a large beer, knowing there would only be expensive cheese and crackers or peanuts on the plane. This tasty beer was the best part of the night. The napkin served with our on-board drinks read, "Turn flights and everyday purchases into lifetime memories." There's humor everywhere. We just missed our connection to Seattle in Dallas, so we spent the night in Dallas, got up the next morning and caught a flight to St. Louis and then finally returned to Seattle in time for my dentist appointment.

I understand why rich people have jets. Mary