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Like many other people I am deeply affected by the death of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who committed suicide after another student posted videos of Tyler having sex with another man. I realize (sorry to be soooo slow) that discrimination of any sort against gay people is a civil rights, a justice issue – the same as the other great civil rights/justice issues of the 20th Century.

Why this time? Why not (ABC News, I think): “… 13-year-old Asher Brown, who told his parents he was gay, fatally shot himself last week after they said bullies pushed him too far. Two other teenagers hanged themselves after classmates had bullied them for years over their sexual orientations. 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana hanged himself three weeks ago, and 13-year-old Seth Walsh from California died this week, eight days after trying to hang himself from a tree.” Why not Matthew Shepard? Why not others? I don’t know.

But I do know, here I am, with no more tolerance for religious bigots who model intolerance and hate and then lie about it with the old “hate the sin, not the sinner” shuck and jive. No more tolerance for people who justify prejudice because it’s part of their culture (Hispanic, Black, Redneck [everybody else gets a cap, why not us], whatever). No more tolerance for looks and innuendo. No more tolerance for really, face it, people’s own personal threat over something (same sex sex) that isn’t unusual, that lots of people do or have done, that animals other than the human animal do.

Being gay isn’t a lifestyle choice – it just is, the same as being hetero, BUT if it was a choice, then so what. Who is anyone to tell anyone else that a choice that doesn’t hurt anyone is wrong?

Here is a link to the It Gets Better Project – a very good thing for young people struggling with cruelty. From one of the vids:

There really is a place for us
There really is a place for you
One day you will have friends who love and support you
You will find love
You will find a community
Life gets better.

.
Someone said to my teacher, “I want to kill myself in despair over the suffering.” And I thought…

Dan, I want to lift you up in rejoicing over suffering ended, diminished, and accompanied in your ~60 years of mercy and my ~40 years of trying and if both of us fall over dead today, we know that younger people are moving up to the line and we’ll get past a 100 years of mercy one way or another. A 100 years, a 1,000 years, we’ll hold the line.

I was talking last week with someone who works emergency about working in emergency and how it’s possible to take (literally) just a moment or not even that, just in the way you be, to be nice; to bring some confidence and comfort to people at the edge of existence – and people going beyond that. You don’t have to go anywhere to be a missionary. I was thinking about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in a room with a man in his 70s and his wife, also in her 70s who was dying and I noticed her breast was exposed in all the action and I reached over and covered her and her husband said, “It’s okay.”

My beloved wife

Two new links, two new trips: Blog removed (Chris in the Marines in Afghanistan) and The Way Life Should Be (Mandela with the Jesuits in Maine).

Yesterday I realized that I was enmeshed in a political internet forum and that the ugliness was bad for me. The way it works is people will post on a topic and often the more conservative posters will then be attacked in personal and vicious terms by “progressives.” And the thing is, the political forum is on a backpacking site so naturally I’d be going there. And I would think, I’ll just have a look at what’s being discussed on the political forum, and there I’d be. So I took it all out of favorites. I feel better already. Photo: Behind the refugee agency with some Karen people.

Today I rode home from the lake via Loving Street, which has the steepest hill. Oh man, what a grind! The first time I did it, I started to walk across Gaston (big, busy road) when I got to the top and realized my legs weren’t working very well at all and I couldn’t really turn around, so Mr. Rubber Legs was shaky-walking across Gaston. Time today: 1.15.

Last week I was lying in bed, thinking that it had been a long time since that same morning when Jun and I rode around White Rock and that maybe I’d work out tomorrow and then, come on, I need to take several days off each week and so okay, but the point is, when was the last time I wanted to exercise? Never in my life. Yet here I am, looking forward to the next 14 mile ride and especially the last hills. The schedule I mentioned in the last post remains the same:

Sunday – Ride home to around White Rock and back
Monday – Gym (at 35 minutes now)
Tuesday – Ride
Wednesday – Rest
Thursday – Gym
Friday – Gym
Saturday – Rest

And here I am, plotting and scheming to increase protein intake and learning lots of new good things about nutrition. Photo: Waiting for the clinic to open.

Started tonight getting food together for Colorado. It looks like this:
Breakfast: Freeze-dried eggs with cheese and bread (crostini-type toasts) alternating with oatmeal, fruit, and milk. Coffee and/or hot chocolate. I’m working on a protein drink – something like dried milk + protein powder (whey) + water chilled in snow. We’ll see how the test kitchen does (at least 50-50 chance of blech, I think).
Lunch: Granola or granola bars & candy bars for snacks
Dinner: Chili, burger, pasta, chips, cheese; Chipotle chicken, green beans, bread; Mashed potatoes, bacon, cheese, bread; Tom kha with chicken and rice; Spaghetti, pasta, burger, cheese, bread;

I’ll have this on the first (solo) part (Ute Creek Semi-Loop) and repeat it when DK and I are on the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop.

DK left two days ago for Chicago first, then Berkeley for his last year of law school. It was a good summer with him here; a significant change from two people to three in our medium-size cottage; and the only thing I would change would be for him to be around more. From his blog: “Today I leave Texas, and I don’t yet know when I’ll be back. I had an unbelievably great time this summer. I could not ask for more.”

The plan as it stands is to head back to Colorado next month. Current thinking is for me to start with the Ute Creek semi-loop, a 25 mile lollipop loop in the Weminuche Wilderness. I’m giving myself a few extra days on the trail to go slow and acclimate and hoping I don’t go too slow so I get a few days in Fort Collins (the town of my dreams). Then I’ll meet David in Denver and we’ll go back to the Weminuche to hike the Elk Park/Chicago Basin shuttle loop. We’ll catch the train from Durango and get off at the start of the hike, hike a 40 mile loop, and then catch the train back to Durango. We’ll go back to Denver, he’ll fly to Berkeley and I’ll drive back to Dallas.

My inability to get up the hill in New Mexico with Jim Z was a major wake-up call. Shortly after returning home I joined the Lakewood Gym and have been working out five days/week since then. Last week I biked around White Rock Lake Sunday and Tuesday (14 miles each time and the hard part is the hills on the way home) and worked out at the gym three days. This seems like an excellent schedule that addresses cardio and legs with some upper body as well. I’m pretty excited about it all – glad that I’m getting it done kind of like cardiac rehab before an MI. I’ll have 7 weeks to get to an improved condition.

Along with the same theme of health, or something like that, a week ago I bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker for $5 at a garage sale. The test case was basic chocolate ice cream and it’s grrrreat. Since I started baking, especially around the holidays, I’ve been thinking it would be a good idea to be able to make some primo vanilla ice cream to go with certain pies or some dark chocolate ice cream or fresh peach ice cream – so many possibilities, like mixing in chocolate covered peanuts, other things from bulk… The next test will be to make that primo vanilla, the one with 1.5 cups milk, 1.5 cups cream, a vanilla bean, 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks, and some sugar. ¡¡Ay Caramba!!

And now to the photos. In the top photo there’s more beauty here than is first seen. Lupe’s daughter, obviously, and her hair(!) – and also that she’s planning to cut her hair and give it to an organization that makes wigs for people with cancer. And there’s the man in the photo, Alan, the dermatologist who gives several days each month to the poor – he’s beautiful. And the room they’re in, the derm room, started by Carrie K when she was a resident and still going years later while Carrie’s gone on to teach at UPenn – the room is beautiful (not to mention Carrie!) and then there was Kelly (in the photo here), who worked in the derm room for three years and who passed on at such a young age. That was one of the saddest things – and she was beautiful.

Having some formatting problems with adding photos causing broken sentences and then losing photos when I try to fix the problem. Reminds me of Windows 10 years ago. I’m just going to put the photos back up – again and we can live with broken words. Photo: CK & JZ, Wheeler Peak Wilderness in New Mexico

Here we go again, Wheeler Peak Wilderness for 3-4 days with Jim Z, on to Fort Collins area for an outdoor party with Jeff, and then … just got word this evening that Martin can’t make it to the Weminuche Wilderness, so the last of the trip is cancelled. Jeff and I may backpack a few days or hang out in Boulder – or not – I don’t know. Photo: We think that’s a finch in the left center – the only one we’ve ever seen

Brief aside/ introduction to the next paragraph: I talked with a nurse today who told me she helped take care of me in surgical ICU and that I was in pretty bad shape. She did reassure me I didn’t say anything I’d regret – I have NO recollection of being on a ventilator – days completely lost and that’s probably best.

Since that hospitalization, I have been even more fully aware of the many and deep connections to Leslie. Over the past few days I’ve had feelings of dread about being away from her for so long. In the final analysis – by the time the trip rolled around – this trip was based more on getting into the mountains with Martin vs. just getting into the mountains (though I was really looking forward to getting up there with Jun, too). Anyway, I’m probably coming home a few days early. Photo: At the clinic

The moment I realized the trip would be shorter than I’d planned, I felt lighter. I’d already begun having feelings of dread, and now – now I’m distinctly lighter.

———

Dream the world all alive
Busily conspiring humming like a hive
Dream the world all alive
I dream it as me

If I could sing only one song I’d sing of you
If I could sing only one song I’d sing of you
If I could sing only one song
If I could sing only one song I’d sing of you

———
All that’s the best about me is about you or for you or from you.

Bread I’ve baked in recent months:

Yeasted French (Acme Bread Company recipe from Glezer book)*
Yeasted herb slab (also Acme)
Sourdough,* San Francisco style from Reinhart book*
Sourdough, French (we liked the SF better)
Sourdough with kalamata olives
Sourdough with pepper jack cheese – a breakthrough!
No-knead French*
No-knead sourdough
No-knead French with rosemary
Whole wheat (Tassajara and Reinhart recipes)
Banana bread (not yeast or sourdough)

*Books include Artisan Baking by Glezer, Artisan Breads Every Day by Reinhart, The Tassajara Bread Book by Brown. Sourdough starter made from recipe in Glezer book. No-knead bread is from NPR recipe here.
—————-
Photo: And dreams emerge – a photo of Hong from Alison in Hanoi & Australia

Some of my notes from a church school lesson. Reading the notes again, I’m amazed and uplifted. Things in parentheses are my additions.

People need an upward vision in order to find an earthly place to stand. Purpose in life not solely self. Faith (and experience) gives us a spiritual place to stand.

A metaphor for living a sacred life is building Jerusalem – where we live. William Blake wrote a poem on this and it became the hymn, Jerusalem. We are in the business of bringing hope AND building Jerusalem – in our life/heart, our family, our church, our community, our world.
—————–

I don’t know who this is from: Our entire universe is contained in the mind and the spirit

The patients that stood out to me today were:

55 year old woman with no way to get into Parkland and 1) uncontrolled insulin-resistant diabetes, maxed on all the oral hypoglycemics we can give (metformin, glipizide, pioglitazone); 2) bipolar disorder controlled on olanzapine and fluoxetine; 3) hypertension managed with lisinopril; 4) hyperlipidemia marginally controlled on simvastatin; 5) OA, for which she takes ibuprofen; 6) and she’s also taking aspirin and multivitamins.

6 year old girl c/o 2 week history of red eyes with exudate and dry skin on her hand. As the encounter unfolded, she said she was crying every day, had headaches, and insomnia. Her father is in jail since February and it’s unclear when he may be reunited with his family. Photo: Nora and me

21 year old woman in NAD from Burma (Karen) c/o cough and feeling warm at night. The first thing I noticed was head lice, then a normal exam until her lungs, where I auscultated rhonchi in all fields – what!? Renee listened and found the same thing. So she walked in with a cough and out with pediculosis and community-acquired pneumonia, probably mycoplasma. I started her on a challenging regimen of clarithromycin, prednisone, albuterol, ibuprofen. Also permethrin for the pediculosis.

Mary saw a woman I’d seen 3 weeks ago. At the time she was in respiratory distress and I called 911. They declined to transport her to a hospital because she didn’t have any symptoms other than SOB (lungs clear, no fever, etc.). Nora took her to the Baylor ER, where she was admitted (for >week) with a pneumothorax.

We ask all patients, have you ever been physically or sexually abused? It’s not an uncommon question, but we take care in how we ask it, trying to create a space where people can say yes vs. just tossing it out and then on to the next question. And here I was in exam room 2, with Nora and a 32 year old woman who answered, “Yes.” She was raped when she was 18 and this was the first time she’s said anything about it. And so there we were and after I worked her up, left so that Nora could sit with her, listening, the woman crying, Nora talking in the soft connecting way she has. Paroxetine, regular visits, “You came to the right place.”

How long, how long must we sing this song, how long, how long?

Congratulations. To the graduates who worked so hard for this wonderful achievement – the FNPs and this, the first group of DNPs from Baylor – the first BSN to DNPs in the nation! Congratulations to the families of the graduates who supported them and sacrificed to help them. Congratulations to the faculty who taught and mentored the graduates. And congratulations to Dean Lott, Dr. Brucker, Dr. Faucher, Mrs. Kurfees and everyone else involved for creating the DNP program. What a great day this is. Photo: One of the DNP graduates when she was an undergrad – outreach in the community garden

What great opportunities lie ahead for all of you.

You/We have the great opportunity to heal the sick. Like anyone else, we can (and should) be kind and gentle. Like anyone else we can pray for and with others. Like anyone else we can support and contribute to the efforts of people working to heal the sick. But in our case we also touch people physically – with kindness and gentleness. We can often heal the body, and even play a part in the healing of the spirit.

I’m still just overwhelmed by this – by this daily contact with the suffering and need and hope of the world. And it seems such a privilege, such a wonderful thing to talk with a person, examine that person, and then understand what is the problem, why it occurred, and best of all, what to do to manage or heal the problem – and then do it! I well remember the first person whose illness I cured. She was about 50 years old and looked about 60 – a person who’d had a hard life. She had been treated as an outpatient at a major medical center for pneumonia, but the treatment was unsuccessful. I gave her clarithromycin and it worked! We were both very happy.
And so we do countless variations on this – people with diabetes and hypertension and pharyngitis and otitis and asthma and acne and along the way we ask questions like, have you ever been physically or sexually abused? On most days are you mostly happy or mostly sad? Is there anything else? What questions do you have?

Here is something one of my students wrote in her journal: “When she admitted to having thoughts of killing herself it just added to the weight in my heart … when we prayed it was the first time I participated in spiritual care. I didn’t know what to do because while Lupe was praying I started to cry, but tried to stop because I had to get through the rest of the day.”

So we work to heal the sick and lift up the oppressed and as we work to provide holistic care to as many people as possible, we must remember that there are others waiting to be seen and if we take the time to do a 100% job in all dimensions with one person, another person may get nothing. So we work smarter and faster and learn to deal with priorities, but still, there is much to do, much left undone. – there is a deep ache in the world, a groaning inwardly while they wait, while we wait.

Let me read to you what I wrote in my journal last week – about Albert Schweitzer:

• Schweitzer suffered from major depression while he was in a French POW camp. Through his depression he became aware of “the fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain” – and he further realized that all people bear pain – and in this way (and other ways) he understood that we are One.
• He discovered that the ideal is the human capacity to experience and express reverence for the miracle of life … and to act on that reverence.
• The greatest happiness is through seeking and finding ways to serve. And he discovered that people who set out to do good should not expect others to help move boulders out of the way; in fact, others will sometimes move boulders into the path of those trying to good.

Like Dr. Schweitzer we all see things that need to be done.

Who and what will you see? People who are hungry? People who are thirsty – who thirst for freedom and justice? People who are strangers in a strange land? People who are naked – naked of dignity and of hope? People who are sick – sick in body or sick in heart? People who are in prison – in prison like Paul or in prisons of a different sort. What will you see and what will you DO.

Here is something else from my journal – about a woman in prison …

A middle-aged woman came into the clinic today. Her chief complaints were diabetes and asthma. The promotora who saw her in intake asked two depression screening questions and on the basis of the woman’s answers then administered a more complete depression screen, which also was positive. When I saw her she said that “something happened” when she was 8 and 9 years old. It turned out that she had been systematically molested when she was a child. She had not told anyone other than her mother until today. One of her children has been asking her, “Mommy, why don’t you ever hug me?” The answer, which she hasn’t been able to say, is that she cannot. There is something about physical affection between family members… because, naturally, it was a family member who molested her. She and I talked for awhile and it was intense there in exam room 4. When we were done, I told her I was glad she came in and that she had come to the right place. I gave her medications for the diabetes, asthma, and depression (or more accurately, PTSD). She’ll see our psychiatrist next week…

There is much left undone by the ones who went before us, by the Apostle Paul, by Maimonides, by Albert Schweitzer, by Mother Teresa, by countless people – and these people, dear ones, are our colleagues, our brothers and sisters in faith and works. They would ask that we carry on; that we see the poor and the afflicted and that we do something about them – that we do something about the individuals who cross our paths AND that we create even greater opportunities – programs for adult survivors of abuse, for children whose potential is swallowed up in the hard life of poverty, for prostitutes, for drug addicts, for people seeking to break free from so many different prisons. So much left undone.

‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Photo: The students had a shower for this Karen woman who was pregnant. You can see the guys are having a great time.

You/we have the rare opportunity to heal the sick. To relieve suffering. To help the world be a better place. To be a part of the great dream of mercy and human dignity.

I’ll end with the Oath of Maimonides* (gender-adjusted)

The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and health of Thy creatures. May the love for my art actuate me at all times; may neither avarice nor miserliness, nor thirst for glory or for a great reputation engage my mind; for the enemies of truth and philanthropy could easily deceive me and make me forgetful of my lofty aim of doing good to Thy children.

Today we can discover our errors of yesterday and tomorrow we can obtain a new light on what we think ourselves sure of today. Oh, God, Thou has appointed me to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures; here am I ready for my vocation and now I turn unto my calling.