Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

Ride in Your Automobile

Myrna and I recorded “Ride in Your Automobile” in New York City in 2001. This song was written by our friend, Mary Lane, one of the great contemporary blues singers in Chicago.

Myrna and I drove to Chicago three or four times a year to visit Mary. We often sat in with her and A.C. Reed at Kingston Mines. This world is becoming more lonely by the day. A.C. has also departed this vale of tears.

Ride in Your Automobile

We bought our Ford Expedition in 2001, so we really were riding in our automobile. Myrna loved that car. It was so big, tough, fast and masculine. Within a year of buying the Expedition, we bought our Harley.

The journeys from New York City to Chicago were always wild adventures. With Myrna in tow, every character in America wanted to stop and talk. New York was going through the worst of its fag worship era. Myrna was desperate to escape that sissified, swishy world. She had grown up among the loggers, fishermen and truck drivers of coastal Oregon. She loved macho good old boys.

I remember, in particular, eating lunch in a truck stop in Ohio and talking with a snaggle-toothed truck driver from Alabama. As every man did, he broke down and told Myrna his entire life story. He owned an enormous farm down south, something like 100 acres, and he was growing pot. We asked him if he wasn’t worried about getting busted and he replied that he was well armed. In fact, he wanted us to know, down south everybody was armed.

“An armed society is a polite society,” he said.

Myrna and I spent those long drives listening to CDs of our music and working on our harmonies. The cab was always filled with pot smoke. Back in those days, I smoked. Since her death, I’ve stopped, partly because I can’t afford it, and party because that was something I did with Myrna. I no longer want to do that with another person. There are so many parts of me that belong to her alone, that I can never give to another person.

Between the practice sessions, Myrna would tell me the fantastic stories of her life. She was an astonishing story teller, moving me quickly from tears to laughter. Myrna expected life to be rough and tough. In fact, she relished the rough and tumble of life… even the worst of the music world.

“Ride in Your Automobile” is one of our best harmonies. Living without singing with Myrna… good God, how can that have happened?

Impeach Woodstock’s Town Board

I was feeling pretty good driving back home today because I passed the medical math test with a 96. And it was a very tough test. On my way past the Woodstock fire house, I noticed this truck festooned with a political message.

I immediately parked, pulled out my iPhone and took a picture.

“Hey, you want me in the picture?” an old guy yelled. “That’s my truck.”

“Sure,” I said.

So, I met Al Van Wagoner. The sign expresses his disgust at our loony town board. The board members in question are Liz Simonsen, Jay Wenk and Chris Collins. Wenk, I’ve written about before. He’s a nutjob America hater and all around crackpot. Simonsen plays that odd, but beloved leftist role… the eternally outraged adolescent. She’s so pissed off that the world isn’t perfect that she’s always throwing a fit. The town board is Saving the World. Just taking care of the potholes is beneath their dignity.  Collins... I don’t know much about him.

“I enjoy getting their goat,” Al said.

I’ve got to agree with him there.

I’m considering succeeding from Woodstock and forming my own patriotic town out here in my mountain home. I wonder if that is legally possible.

Key to the Highway

Big Joe Vaccarino and I recorded this blues classic a while ago. Nursing school got in the way, so I haven’t been able to edit and post it.

This song has been recorded by just about everybody, including Eric Clapton. I think that we came up with a pretty interesting version. Joe’s guitar solo is unique, too.

How To Avoid Becoming a Vegetable

Nursing homes are a racket. The idea is to keep absurdly old people alive while continuing to gather up their Social Security checks, Medicare and Medicaid payments and any odd insurance they might possess. If you don’t take precautionary methods to stop the nursing home industry from using your body as fodder for this system, then you’d better draw up a compelling and all-inclusive living will.

Slapping a DNR (do not resuscitate) order on yourself is easy. That prevents the nursing home from going code red on you when you’re 95 years old and about to die of heart failure. So, you can force the system to allow you to die in this scenario.

But, this is not the common problem that geriatrics face. Instead, what they face is that 5 or 10 years (or more) when the nursing home keeps them alive in a vegetative state through the use of a wide variety of drugs.

A living will is a legal document that states your wishes for treatment if you become mentally incompetent. Here’s a site where you can draw up a customized living will.

The reason geriatric patients survive in this vegetative state is that the nursing home continues to treat them for conditions like arteriosclerosis, congestive heart failure and other chronic diseases. Absent these invasive treatments, the vegetative patient would most likely die. Although the nursing home industry insists that these treatments continue because of their commitment to humane service, the reality is that this is a way to keep the government checks flowing.

So, if you don’t want to spend 5 to 10 or more years in a vegetative state in a nursing home, include in your living will a proviso that you don’t want any medical or pharmaceutical treatment other than pain medication, once you have become cognitively disabled (or as we used to say, senile). I can’t say that this is a guarantee that the system will allow you to die, but it’s probably the best you can do.

Of course, your could take the approach of many of the old guy Harley riders. People (especially people in the medical profession) often ask riders why they aren’t afraid of accidents. The answer: “Dying in a motorcycle accident beats spending your last ten years drooling in your diapers.”

Support Stockings and Reading Glasses

chic noir, a regular at 2Blowhards, journeyed over here a day or so ago to suggest that support stockings might be the answer to my circulation problems, noted in this post.

Support stockings!

I’m still struggling with my vanity over wearing reading glasses. At least I only wear those in the privacy of my house.

“Do You Suffer from Varicose Veins or Tired Aching Legs?” asks Binsons Home Health Care Centers. “Stop Suffering, Our Compression Hosiery and Support Stockings Help Alleviate Pain!”

You’ve got to be kidding.

File this one under Other Signs of Advancing Age. I’ve got those short term memory problems, too. Last week, I bombed on a nursing school test because I tried to cram too much into my brain the day before the test. Net result… grasping at straws. So, I’ve decided to adopt a new strategy. Got to get that stuff into the brain at least a few days before the test so that it has time to settle in.

What’s next? Prune juice? Very popular at the nursing home.

The Self-Interest of Financial Advisors

Like just about everybody else, I somehow acquired a financial advisor several years ago. Myrna got our finances organized. For the first time in my life, I had substantial finances.

As the stock market has tanked, I’ve gotten the same advice from my financial advisor that everybody else has gotten: hang tight and leave your money in the market.

This advice may be sound. I don’t know. Over the past 18 months, I’ve asked my advisor repeatedly whether it wouldn’t be best to re-invest in fixed assets and try to ride out the storm. As it has been explained to me, my portfolio is invested in some great funds that will one day return to profitable status with a vengeance. The developments of the past year and a half have made me wonder how I will ever regain what I have lost.

My sister, Diana, converted her entire retirement fund to fixed assets over a year ago, and she’s still got all her cash. I’m down to 60% of what I had at the top of the market… and still headed down. It will take years of gain to get to where Diana now stands.

All this got me thinking about how it is that financial advisors make money. If somebody has a better idea of how this works, please let me know. But, this seems to me to be the likely story. The advisor earns a small percentage in commission from the combined portfolios of all his investors. So, he has a vested interest in convincing investors to keep their money in the market. Once that money is withdrawn and shifted to fixed accounts, the advisor ceases to earn a commission.

The collapse of the market must mean a massive reduction in the absolute income of the advisor. Every time another investor decides to sell out, the advisor’s income declines again.

So, at some point, the interests of the investor and the advisor begin to conflict. This knowledge is beginning to make me very uncomfortable, because I’m beginning to believe that the market may drop again to half its current value, taking away half of my remaining funds.

Anybody out there understand better how this all works?

This Old Body

In the middle of this week, I began to experience a tingling sensation in my ankles and feet, and my legs and buttocks felt heavy. This mystified and scared me. As I approach my 60th birthday, this old body keeps demanding more upkeep.

I’ve been studying so much… and spending so much time sitting on my butt… that my blood was pooling in my ankles and feet and my legs and butt were swelling. After 5-1/2 hours sitting in class, I return home to sit in my chair and study for the entire night.

The Yoga posture in this picture is the answer to my problems. Supported shoulder stand reverses the blood flow and drains the blood and water out of the lower extremities. So, I’ve been practicing this posture a couple of times a night to break my study routine. I’m also lying on my back and stretching my legs out over a big exercise ball. That’s the position I use when I take a nap.

The material I’m studying right now is very demanding and fascinating: understanding and delivering medications. I’m learning how to do IVs and injections, and how to correctly identify and deliver medications to my patients. There is so much to know about each medication: standard dosages, adverse effects, what happens when another medication gets added to the equation… it’s endless.

Every year, my body demands more upkeep and vigilance just to stay healthy and functional. Soon, upkeep will be almost a full time job.  Thank God, I’m still here.

Cubs Beat White Sox 7-6!

The news is terrible. We’re going to hell in a hand basket. Everybody’s going broke. And, Democrats, you thought that President Obama was the answer!

So, I must divert myself with the knowledge that baseball season is not that far off. Opening day for the Cubs is only 31 days away.

Yesterday, the Cubs defeated the White Sox 7-6 in a spring training game in Las Vegas. We’ve got a new right fielder who’s famous for throwing tantrums and fighting with umpires. Milton Bradley, the guy in the picture above, will supply the fire in the belly the Cubs need to win the World Series!  Highest OBP in the American League last year!  Fukodome is old news.

So, give it up. You’re going to have to work until you’re 80. When you finally wear out and land in the nursing home, I’ll be there to wipe your butt. So, don’t despair!

In a month, you’ll be able to go to a ball game at Wrigley Field. Lou Piniella will be kicking dirt at the umps. As Ernie Banks used to say:

“Let’s play two!”

If I’m not completely broke by this summer, I might take a trip to Chicago to see a ballgame.

Happy Birthday, Myrna!

Today would have been Myrna’s 54th birthday. She must be half way across the universe by now. The picture on the right was taken when Myrna was about 34 years old. She was astonishingly beautiful.  I never really got used to that.  Every morning I’d wake up beside her and wonder what I had done to deserve her.

I’m going to begin to publish our work on this weblog. Today, I’m putting up “How Long Blues,” a traditional blues song. I remember quite vividly when we were learning this song. Myrna really had the blues. She wanted to know precisely what the song meant.

How Long Blues

This was our warmup song. We sang it together every day for 14 years. Myrna loved that sort of thing. She wanted us to synchronize our rhythms as closely as possible. She wanted us to become one… and we did. Listen closely to “How Long Blues” and you can hear the fierce passion we felt for one another.

This song is part of the memorial CD I’ll be releasing, “Blues 4 Myrna.”

I remember Myrna and pray for her every day. When I saw “Slumdog Millionaire,” I was reminded vividly of her. She, too, grew up in the shantytowns. She loved action, adventure and romance. Her wits were honed to a fine edge by her struggle to escape poverty.

Four and a half years without Myrna. What a hell of fate! Life has filled up again. New people arrived on the stage. But, the pain of living without Myrna never really goes away. Her spirit must be out there exploring the entire universe. She was curious about everything, mischievous and funny as hell.

“How Long Blues” is the appropriate introduction to our work together. I wonder every day how long it will be until Myrna and I are together again in the next world.