Back from the Edge Again: Missing Time

There is a concept that can be verified only by people who believe they have been kidnapped by aliens. It's called missing time, and it means just that. Instantly, it becomes a number of days later, and you have no idea how it happened. You lay down and take a nap; you wake up in the same place, but instead of the Tuesday you were experiencing, it's actually Saturday. Or later.

Really. I've read about it. Then they can tell, slowly as the situation reveals itself in their memories, about the experiences they had with some pretty weird beings who, I guess, needed them for their research. Meanwhile, some people experience being dismissed from the world for a few days, then being dropped right back into it.

I've recently spent the better part of three days back in the hospital. It was about as much fun as my other visits was, which is to say, not one bit. And, again, it was either that or the end. I went to the edge one more time and peeked over. A bunch of people prevented me from falling.

That Sunday dawned with me in obvious distress. But a church obligation got in the way. I knew I had to go. That saved my life.

I couldn't take 20 steps without having to sit down and gather myself. By that time, I knew things had gone south far more than being 'out of shape,' which I knew I was, too. 

I knew it when the congregation stood for singing, which it normally does three times each service. The first of those times, I had to sit down. I've been going to Immanuel Presbyterian for about thirty years now, and that was the first time I couldn't last the whole song, couldn't stay standing.

I got scared. But I soldiered on. Or tried to.

After the service, I managed to help shepherd the flowers that someone had paid to display near the altar, which usually someone (I did that last year, celebrating the ages of my parents by announcing their 77th wedding anniversary) pays to do and that then two deacons are assigned delivery of some of them to people that the co-pastor has picked out bereavement, celebration, or other causes. But again, I had to pause to catch my breath. Rich, my partner that day, couldn't help but notice. He pointed out, perhaps in empathy, that one of those selected for delivery lived in a home exactly one block from my apartment.

Even that seemed too far. "I don't even think I could do that," I said, and went to sit down in the hallway adjacent to the church nave. I would have to do that, too, in order to even get up, get my jacket on, and walk all the way back to the car, which seemed like quite a chore now, even though it's all of two blocks. I knew I'd have to lay down when I got back; beyond that, I had no idea.

But Rich, having seen me in obvious distress, had gone to consult with two people who would quickly change my day and, ultimately, save my life: his wife, Karen, who is a nurse practitioner; and the director of the deacons, Kathleen, who is a semi-retired, licensed physician. 

They found me and sat flanking me on the bench. They asked me how I was feeling, and I told them. They looked askance at each other. "You'd better go to the hospital now," they said, practically in unison.

For roughly the last 35 years or so, I've made up my mind to first, go to the doctor instead of toughing things out; and second, do what they say. This was not an official visit, but when two say the symptoms sound pretty bad, they're probably not guessing.

The last time I had had a hospital stay, though, was one of those times I had gone in for one thing (colonoscopy) and someone had found something else (my heartbeat slowing beyond what they felt was comfortable). The result was--instead of outpatient treatment--six days of a stay, during which I'd had a pacemaker installed. Nothing seemed to be wrong with my heart, at least no pain felt nor shortness of breath while sitting, so I knew that wasn't the issue.

Whatever it was, I needed to know. But I wasn't going to be fooled this time. Instead of going right to the hospital, I made two stops; one at a gas station to make sure my tank was filled--a silly notion, that--and back home to pick up things for a prolonged stay. That was the better move. My hunch turned out right.

And not one minute too soon. I pulled into the parking lot of Ascension St. Mary's emergency room, got out my bag, and walked, or tried to walk, to the automatic door. I got halfway and once again, had to rest, leaning against the building. I'd gotten halfway there. Finally, I more or less stumbled onto the front desk.

The staffers saw that I was in distress. I was admitted, given the universal ID wristband, and ducked into the closest room available.

My luck was holding. It was a little after noon on Sunday, and the emergency room was decidedly vacant of customers. I got immediate attention, which, looking back, I had desperately needed. About ten questions later, the staff knew I was in some kind of serious trouble. Of course, they gave me blood tests.

What they had found was something a hematologist told me about three weeks later. It would have freaked me out had I known. They did tell me that I had blood clots that had spread to my lungs; that was bad enough and of course would need immediate medical attention. What I didn't know until much later was how bad the situation was.

There is a scale, said the hematologist, that shows how well or badly your blood can clot. Some clotting is good, of course; if you cut yourself, that's how it heals. But too little means you can be challenged about that, and a scratch might mean a hospital run. Too much, and, well, the blood doesn't get where it's supposed to go, and that's an entirely different, equally serious, problem.

The average score on this scale, I was told, was 740. Wait for it: My score was nineteen thousand. I was, literally, off the charts. "I've never seen that before," said the hematologist. I'm guessing that the treatment staff hadn't, either. No one said the second part of that sentence: with someone who survived.

Suffice it to say: I was near death. My lungs were practically filled with clots. Should I have just gone home, said the hematologist, I would probably have just keeled over and that would have been that.

By 4:30 or so, I'd been taken to the hospital's ICU and prepped for surgery. Hospitals don't do anything that fast unless they have to. The physician on call that afternoon was someone for whom I'd briefly been his heart patient, though he didn't remember me (a bit recycled, wouldn't you say). It made me feel better, though. After by-pass surgery a few years back, I'd had a moment when I thought something was terribly wrong and had reported to that very same hospital to be checked out. He was the responding surgeon, who had found nothing. In reporting that to me, though, he had gone out of his way to draw a sketch of a heart and its attentive arteries and veins.

That had been a comforting moment. I knew I was in good hands this day. He didn't remember. That was okay. I did.

In I went for what they called a 'vacuuming' process, in which the clots--well, most of them; the one in my leg from which the bunch in my lungs had apparently developed is still there--would be cleaned out. I was kept awake but feeling nothing. Good thing. After he was finished, the doctor showed me how thoroughly I'd been afflicted. My lungs looked as if they'd been coated with black magic marker. There was no room left. I had no idea how I could have taken another breath. Maybe they didn't, either.

Recovery would take at least overnight, I was told, and perhaps the day after that. I'd been right about taking my phone charger and a book with me. Sitting there with nothing to keep me busy, as I had for most of the six days previous, would have driven me crazy.

After a couple of hours back in the ICU, I got a new assignment: They needed the room for someone (in worse shape?), so up to the regular hospital I would go. I tried to meekly protest, but to no avail. In came the wheel chair, out went Mark to Floor 4.

I met the nurse assigned to me. Unlike all the others, this one was dressed covering head to toe, and wore a brightly decorated babushka. The lines in her face indicated that she could not have been younger than 65. Her English was broken. She looked Southeastern European or Middle Eastern of some lineage; perhaps Muslim, hence the head cover. She reminded me of my Polish grandmother, who we affectionately used to call Bacia. 

I don't recall her name, but meeting me caused her eyes to get quite a bit bigger. I quickly surmised the situation: I was her first patient, or perhaps, her first heart patient. Her first job would be to hook me up to my monitoring machine, or rehook, as it were. It meant she was supposed to know how to do it immediately, without help.

She didn't. She laid a piece of paper with what I could tell were lines with wires to connect to their proper ports. She was nervous; her hands were moving quickly as if to finish before I knew she was a neophyte. Didn't work.

Neither did the connections. Within 20 minutes, Bacia was back on my falsely-wired chest, reconnecting me properly this time. She moved at least three wires to where they finally belonged. I watched the machine: bingo. Okay, if there was an emergency with me, it would be detected. I exhaled.

Within an hour, a new nurse reported to my bedside. Bacia was there, too, to let me know that she would be replaced. I exhaled again. I was confident that I'd live through the night.

But first I had to sleep. It got near one a.m., and they could see I was struggling. Someone, not the nurse on call, gave me a medication which she predicted would make me sweat. I awoke some three hours later, perspiration fairly running down the sides of my head. But I had slept, and I knew I would continue.

The next morning, I heard the best words a patient could hear: You're going home today. I thought I was supposed to wait for a doctor to see me, but a nurse practitioner got my papers ready (maybe they needed that bed, too) and plopped them in my lap. I must say I didn't feel "all together" when I left. It would take some days before that feeling returned.

That's probably because I'd gone through the second 'invasive' surgery in eight years. The last time that happened was in another moment in extremis: my triple by-pass. Your body reacts in an odd way. You've been invaded internally, and it kind of goes, "What just happened?" for a while. The last time, it took some months, more than six I'll wager, before that faded. This time, said my hematologist upon a follow-up appointment some three weeks later, it would take three months.

I'm in the middle of that now. I have good days and some not so good. But the former now outnumber the latter, so I know recovery is happening. The hematologist gave me two directives she wanted to stick: "Take your blood thinners (Like, I wouldn't? They stave off more clots.)," "Get some compression socks (Ditto: thanks, Amazon)," and "Don't push it." That last one was vague, but trial-and-error are taking care of it. As in the by-pass, I need to listen to my body carefully.

Home I came. Then I experienced "missing time." It was as if I'd gone somewhere for just a moment. I was back just half an hour when I remembered that the church deacons had a Zoom meeting. I was asked to report on my hospital stay. Strangely, perhaps looking back not so strangely, I felt myself breaking down as I said thanks. The shock of sudden death, once again turned back at the last minute, had arrived.

Ernie Pyle was a World War II journalist who reported mostly behind the front. He focused on not the generals or admirals, but the 'dog' soldiers who carried the real burden of fighting the battles day after day. Rick Atkinson, in his book The Guns at Last Light, about the final months of the European war after D-Day, quotes Pyle as writing that after the fierce campaign to free Cherbourg, an important French seaport, he felt like someone using up "your own small quota of chances for survival." I can't help but feel the same way.

I joke about using up "three of my nine lives"--count four, in the last eight years, if you include the continual possibility of a cache of bacteria, caused supposedly by routine surgery on my hip, overcoming amoxicillin, disengaging and hitting something more vital--but the reality stares me in the face every day. I wonder why my luck hasn't yet run out.

Pyle himself was prescient: jumping to the Pacific war after the German surrender, he was sniped by a Japanese soldier. His 'small quota' had run out. Mine will, too. Now I know. I feel it. I now wake up with genuine gratitude. Every time now feels like the time my heart surgery was delayed, for some strange reason, a day. I went to sleep not knowing whether it would be my last.

It feels, too, like I ought to go do something I haven't yet done, something I keep thinking about doing. That is, when I can "push it" again. A month and a half to go. We'll see what the world looks like then. 

Meanwhile, I won't stop going to church. Not that I would have, but the hematologist said something that I'd already thought several times: Good that you went to church, for more than one reason.

Be well. Be careful. With some (real) luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Real Courage Is What We Need: Anyone?

Say what you want. Getting out, or through, this mess is going to take courage, the real thing, by more than one person.

Regardless in what particular position a politician is in, defiance of 47 carries with it profound risks. By defiance, I mean a Republican taking a position opposite that of 47 in anything.

Someone who does that can count on (1) a severe bashing by 47; (2) probably a phone call or two promising, if that person got there by election, to be very sure that the next term won't be won unless they face a primary opponent that 47 backs; and (3) other, far more palpable threats, such as death to themselves or loved ones.

All of those things have happened. People watch and they learn. They know they no longer have any real choice in how they vote, but they're helpless to change this rockslide of attitudes. So they submit in advance: they keep their mouths shut, avoid the press like the plague, and continue to vote the 47 party line.

So when we roll our eyes when we read someone take a position that we feel is ridiculous--most likely it is--we can count on that person weighing opposition against all the trouble that it would bring.

We know that they in fact may not personally feel good about supporting 47. From the point at which 47 gained his first Republican nomination, though, opposition was dangerous and particularly futile. My book club managed to get commentator Charlie Sykes at one of our meetings recently (we discussed his book, How the Right Lost Its Mind), and since he's a conservative (a real one, not reactionaries who have utilized that fake title), he has spoken to enough Republicans to know that most of them don't think much of 47. They can't stand him.

But that has left them with a choice: Hide behind his suit coat, or come out with their real feelings and attitudes--which deeply risks giving up their day jobs. Or there is the other option, announce that you won't run anymore, then run out the clock telling the 'truth.' But not risking one's position cheapens the objections taken. Easy for you to say, people tell themselves quietly.

It's been done by some notable folks. The latest is North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who strenuously objected to the ongoing intervention in Venezuela. "Amateur Hour is over!" He shouted from the Senate floor, and how we wish it was. But he's the one who's over, and there was no response from 47. There didn't have to be. Nothing was diminished, nothing halted. Another voice shouting, cast into the wilderness, fading as fast as it erupted.

We haven't heard from him since. It's not likely that we will, either. And whatever he does say, it will be reported along with the moniker, "....who is not running for re-election...."

Remember John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage, stories of Senators who courageously took difficult stances, even though they knew the probable consequences? He only found 12 of them. Granted, the book was written in 1956, but I dare you to find someone after that. It's not a long work.

The point exactly. Courage in politics, as in just about everything else, is a rarity, because there is enormous risk without knowing what comes next. Thom Tillis isn't likely to be noted for his courage, at least not from here on out, because he's not taking the ultimate risk after he ripped the party leader, however appropriate it may have been. So, too, Bob Corker from Tennessee or Jeff Flake from Arizona, two other Senators who did the same in 47's first term.

I'm not condemning them. It's a lot to ask of anyone. It took work and sweat and usually more than a little luck for people to make it to Congress, usually years of preparation and positioning, so to gamble and perhaps throw it away wouldn't be glanced upon with a great deal of wisdom, either. For one's entire career to be placed on a single vote doesn't seem very fair. But the people elected him or her to make the kinds of decisions that nobody else wants. Bad luck arrives for them, too, but they're supposed to rise above it and shrug it off. Instead, so many have remained hidden in the weeds.

Leadership, or the lack of it, is defined in those moments. And we need leadership now, badly, this minute, as the very republic itself teeters on the edge of being swamped by authoritarianism.

Corker or Flake or Tillis couldn't meet that test, couldn't burn the ships in the harbor, as Hernando Cortez did before he took his men inland in Mexico to take on the Aztecs. Someone else will have to. I see few candidates. Nobody knew that we would need someone bigger than others have been to manage this, to stare 47 in the eye and say 'no more,' but that's what it's going to take. I thought it would be Kamala Harris, but she played it safe instead of going in for the kill, and her chances got killed off.

A switch in political attitudes will no doubt put this to a stop, at least temporarily. But that will take leadership to organize and gather and sustain. Milling around, muttering to each other, waiting in the lobby for an announcement by either Republicans or Democrats won't do it. It will have to take someone to be the greatest stand-up person while it still can be done, while 47 doesn't run away, having jettisoned blood so he can take treasure.

Said Ferris Bueller's teacher: Anyone? Anyone?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The Whale Outweighs This Minnow

On the cover of The Atlantic's magazine this month, the cover article is entitled, "[47] Wants You to Forget This Happened." With it, a photo displaying the chaos the of Jan. 6 uprising, now five years past.

A court case concerning an inscriber in Muskego makes that shout with irony. He was a full year ahead of this national magazine, but without access to glossy pages. He chose another medium and surface to pronounce the same sentiment: in chalk, on a sidewalk. He wrote, on Jan, 6, 2025, "Remember Jan. 6."

The reaction to it was quick and predictable. After some investigation and a positive ID from video cameras (see below), the writer was arrested for disorderly conduct.

The sidewalk on which he wrote was right outside the Muskego Post Office. The writer, a fellow named Jim Brownlow, is a person who might know a thing or two about controversial speech. He is 77 years old, and God bless him, still an active librarian. (this story from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) I don't know whether the Muskego library system has been assailed by the likes of Moms for Liberty, but considering the situation, I wouldn't be surprised.

"Remember Jan. 6" is, at it stands alone, a politically neutral comment, crying out for context. So why did Brownlow feel so compelled to proclaim such a sentiment on a public sidewalk, or what he probably believed to be public, since it's actually privately owned (a strip mall located nearby) by Muskego Partners, LLC, which received numerous complaints from those who either don't want to hear about Jan. 6 anymore, or who want to hear it only from people with whose political affiliations they're more confident? For himself, police believe that Brownlaw also wrote close by, "We almost lost our democracy," which pretty much clarifies that (he denies the latter). "If we're going to improve our democracy, we've got to remember what happened on that day," Brownlow said in an interview with the Journal Sentinel.

He's right, but now I'd like to ask him: How's that working for you, or perhaps--for us?

Originally, Brownlow, who was recorded on camera, was charged with criminal damage to property, a low-level criminal offense. But because he was potentially a criminal (!), he was handcuffed and taken to the police station for booking.

Handcuffed. For writing an unobscene message. A real threat to public peace there, right? What's he likely to do, wield more chalky weapons? Does he play hopscotch, too?

The charges were reduced to disorderly conduct, with a potential fine of $565. I don't know of Brownlaw's financial background, but for most of us, $565 isn't chump change. He chose to fight the charges--himself, lawyerless, the cost of which could easily have run rings around his potential fine.

The court system, of course, has stretched out what should be a simple matter. More than a year later, the case is still tied up without resolution. The decision was supposed to be made this past Monday, but the judge, Lisa Warwick, has ordered new briefs to be filed by next Monday, with a final decision made to either dismiss the case or proceed with final arguments within a month.

So it's back to the internet for Brownlow, who's already spent lots of time, he says, on research. How much sleep this has cost him from nights awakening at 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling, wondering what in blue blazes kind of country this has become to make this big of a deal over something this minor to string it out more than a year, is unknown.

But he has a case, and I think it's a damn good one. There are limitations on speech in our society, and there should be; intentional speech meant to do damage is wrong and should be prosecuted. But it has also been a watchword of our political and social culture that the benefit of the doubt should go to the speaker because the response can be both immediate and expose a disingenuous or lying speaker (such as the one who cause the insurrection features on The Atlantic cover) to be exactly that by doing what the respondents, too, are supposed to have every right to do: speak out in corrective, even defiant, opposition. Such rights are, at present, being smothered by ICE agents in Minnesota as you are reading this.

Where such a situation is unclear, it's been a rule of law that the relative damage done by the speech, or its threat to public safety, should be weighed against the intent of the speaker. Such challenges have, you might have surmised, gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and started doing so long ago. A few come to mind--my master's degree in journalism working here--which you might want to google:

• Near vs. Minnesota
• Gitlow vs. New York
• Whitney vs. California
• Brandenburg vs. Ohio
• Johnson vs. Texas

All these cases, decided back in the last century, featured ferocious attacks that simply overwhelm what happened in Muskego. It pales in comparison. Our jumpy, post-9-l1 attitudes are probably the only thing that's keeping this case, simple and obvious, from a quick, summary dismissal.

The litigants claim that it's damage to property that should measure cost. By chalk? Let's return to hopscotch. Is there such a thing as indelible chalk? You mean a sharply streamed water hose can't wash it off--at a cost of what?

Will a dismissal of the charges lead someone else to write something else on that same sidewalk? Will Muskego develop a kind of "sidewalk debate"? Funny: Nobody had before. Mr. Brownlow is left to measure his act against the trouble he's had to go to. But he got the attention he sought. The message got through. The price he's paid for that is plenty--and far too great.

This shouldn't be close. We have more serious issues to contend with, such as whether or not fascism, recently introduced in America, will make other efforts to achieve justice moot and, as Mr. Brownlow may or may not have also written, dispose with our democracy. Such matters outweigh those sidewalk scribblings like a whale outweighs a minnow.

But then, we've just learned that part of the reason why 47 is obsessed over Greenland is that he didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize--until he did, from the vice-president of Venezuela, whose country he has seized. A temper tantrum addressed? A booby prize delivered? A world gone crazy?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

All You Have to Do Is Look

The blogs and newspapers are filled with hope nowadays. The awful treatment of the immigrants, the Epstein files, the terrible attacks on other countries--all of it--suggests that enough of the country won't possibly put up with this nonsense for the Republicans to survive keeping their majorities in Congress in the upcoming elections next November.

But all you have to do is look at one thing, one other thing that suggests that people will overlook all the other nonsense and rationalize voting for the Republicans again.

You see it nearly every day, too: The price of gas. All you have to do is look.

The price in the Milwaukee area has dropped to $2.37 a gallon, by no means the lowest in the nation. This is the lowest it's been for months. You can rationalize about the prices of other consumer goods rising, and well they may be. You can grouse about the job numbers slowing down, and well they may also be. But those are hidden in newspaper reports, explained in more than one sentence, filled with economic gobblygook. Won't matter.

As long as that number stays low, stays even beneath $3 a gallon, the Republicans are not in trouble. That's the number they will point to, the number that the Democrats are helpless to change if they even wanted to.

Plenty of articles have run for years now that says that the president has nothing to do with the price of gasoline, one way or another. But 47 will brag about it, lie about it, during the next campaign. They'll take the credit as evidence that their policies are working for America.

Remember, too: Many of his supporters will rationalize anything so it doesn't get in the way of doubting their support for him. Cults work like that. So if they have something noticeable, something right out in the open, which indicates anything positive, they'll rush right at it.

I'm not saying it can't be overcome. I'm saying that if Democrats think that the latest disasters will work decisively against the Republicans later next year and they don't need to work very hard, they will get hung on yet another tree of naïveté.

People keep forgetting, or at least ignoring it: Elections are close. The country is split so closely you can't get a toothpick in there. Democrats just won't believe it. They refuse. And yes, it's difficult to accept that those 'over there' who believe the other side's propaganda and lies continue to do so. But they do. They accept the packaging that 47 and his minions concoct.

What that means, sadly, is that the betraying facts alone won't do. It's the packaging that will turn people  away from the nonsense and towards the light. And Democrats have traditionally been bad at that.

Republicans have been working on it, been donating money to it, been honing it to a fine edge for about 60 years now. They failed miserably in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent. The Democrats had a built-in advantage with the hangover of the Kennedy Assassination, so they won in a walk. But the Republicans knew they were on to something, so they continued with the research, the largesse, and the results.

The late George Lakoff, a linguist from U-Cal Berkeley, wrote about this about 20 or 25 years ago, and not nearly enough people were listening. He noted the think-tanks that Republicans were forming and how they were twisting our language to fit their needs. His predictions have become all too clear. The Republicans have become too good at packaging their phraseology.

Project 2025, for instance, has done horrible damage to our governmental system, with doubtless more to come. But that has been buttressed with major social research money over the last six decades. No question that they've thrown some of that money away. But behind it came much more.

Example: The Democrats have tried to capsulate their new appeals under the heading of "affordability." But gas prices are diving too fast for them to keep up: That is the most obvious indication of dropping prices, even though they have nothing to do with what's going on inside grocery stores. They will lose on that word. Unless gas prices will spike somewhere down the road, they will have to come up with something else. Gas prices will counteract "affordability."

Besides, "affordability" is an awkward, made-up phrase that's clumsy to use. Republicans are masters at drawing people's attention away from issues that make them uncomfortable, pay for advance polling, and coming up with something that sticks better in people's heads.

How much does this matter? Think about the 2024 election campaign ads. You knew the Republicans would use their massive moneys to scare you about trans-people eating up sports awards in high schools. That ridiculous notion was a contrived chimera. But it had its effects on minority males. They broke for 47. In a close election, that made the decisive difference. We are living in a deepening dystopia because of it.

So ignore what the pundits are saying now. Wait until later. If gas prices remain low, we'll all feel better about that, the Republicans will try to attach it to the imperial presidency, and things will tighten up again. If prices go up significantly, say over $3 a gallon again, enough of those who remain on the margins will more likely dash to the other side. 

Only prices on groceries can fog over gas prices. Yes, that may make more of a difference. But 47 will keep making promises, keep blaming Biden, and keep the count close. And there is the matter of seizure of ballot boxes, too, if it's obvious that Republicans will get clobbered, drawing on some bogus legal remedy.

Irrational? But how is 47 in there again at all if not irrationally?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark