I have never won the weekly New Yorker cartoon caption contest. In fact, even when I thought I had a can’t miss caption – see here – I didn’t win. But that doesn’t stop me from entering most weeks. And it shouldn’t stop you either. You can enter directly, here. Or, just reply in the comments section below with your can’t miss caption. Either way, it’s free. C’mon, what have you got to lose? Well, besides your self-respect, I mean.
Your caption here: ____________________________________ for “Couple hiking up a mountain followed by a businessman.” Hey, it’s got hiking, business, and a fading cell signal – all the great elements of great humor. So, what are you waiting for? A lightning strike? THAT can be arranged. In fact… <wait for it> …it can’t miss!
My own memories of Paula are all tied up with learning to swim. Leave it to my brother to pick a girlfriend with a pool in her backyard. She had to tape my fingers together since I never had very good form on my freestyle. But I also never drowned, and for that, I’m most grateful.
Me at age 9 in the Lerew’s backyard pool in East Berlin, showing Olympic form on the jump-in-the-pool-feet-first-ball-toss event.
Much better dive form, but I don’t think she’ll catch the ball. Y’think?
Someone once asked me what’s my favorite trail in all the world. I had to stop and think about it for a moment since there are good ones all over. But this one, I think, takes the cake. It’s the Ute Trail from the back side of Trail Ridge Road at Milner Pass on the Continental Divide, up to the Alpine Visitor Center in Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s 9 miles round trip with roughly 1000′ elevation gain/loss. Start from Milner Pass and it’s 4.5 miles uphill. Start from the Alpine Visitor Center and it’s 4.5 miles downhill. Depending on how ambitious you are, you can do the round trip in under 5 hours. Or, arrange a shuttle for either of the one-ways and be done in about 2 hours. But no matter which way you choose, the sights are pretty much unmatched anywhere.
A detailed blow-by-blow for this hike can be found here.
Pix from yesterday are below.
Milner Pass on the Continental Divide is actually the low point on the Ute Trail, so if you’re starting here, it’s 4.5 miles all uphill to the Alpine Visitors Center.
Tree line is at roughly 11,500 feet above sea level. Above tree line is Alpine Tundra. This fragile ecosystem is easily disrupted by hikers’ boots, so it’s best to stay on marked trails.
A brief thunderstorm blew in around noon but it didn’t dampen our spirits.
I think they pay him extra to pose for passing tourists. It’s an elk side-hustle that’s hard to beat. Photo credit for all: AVW.
Like I said, this is my favorite trail, so if you see this guy, make sure to stop and say ‘hi.’
So it has come to this: At the end of a long hot smoky summer, school has finally started up again. Sorry, (non-retired) teachers and students. (Susan, you get to gloat.) Also, snow has fallen in the high country, and I for one couldn’t be happier.
DP photo credit: Rocky Mtn. Nat’l. Park
We’re heading up there to RMNP this weekend for a long-delayed-due-to-COVID wedding celebration. Our friends have a cabin for the week. We’ll be staying only one night. But just in case, I’m packing my long underwear and a winter coat. As I said before, I’m all good with it. B’bye, summer – see you next year!
OK, I lied when I said “Nothing But Cartoons.” Guess I better get myself to a confessional. But you get Dame Judy and you get dragons. You also get a groan-worthy pun. Indeed, you get heaven itself. What more do you need?
Confessions only. No excuses!
Many thanks to the New Yorker for the first one, and to High Church Coyote for most of the rest. Happy Tuesday, y’all!
Happy Friday everybody. It’s the 13th of August, and you know what that means, right? Yup, it’s Word of the Day time. Did you know there are an average of one to three Friday the 13th’s per year? In 2021 there is the only one, so unless you have triskaidekaphobia, today’s your lucky day.
tris·kai·dek·a·pho·bi·a
/ˌtriskīˌdekəˈfōbēə/
noun: triskaidekaphobia
1. extreme superstition regarding the number thirteen.
Also, this bonus photo just in from Merry Olde England.
Most of you who don’t live in Colorado will have little use for this information from today’s DP. I only include it because I found the last bit of advice exceedingly funny, in a macabre sort of way: Prepare to flee? Hoo boy!
As a public service I’ve reprinted it below, along with some pix taken last week in LoDo. You can usually see further than a couple of blocks.
Mountains are in the background – Ummm… WHAT mountains?
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One recommendation for enduring the noxious air pollution that’s enveloped Denver residents this summer, included on the state’s air quality website until Wednesday evening, was to “try to move to a place with cleaner air.” That can be difficult to find, given how bad the air has been in Colorado this summer thanks to western wildfires and elevated ozone pollution. State officials later clarified that guidance to suggest people temporarily get away from smoky areas or go inside if they’re outdoors.
Creating a safe space inside your home may be the best option. The idea is to reduce the levels of tiny 2.5 micron particulates from the wildfire smoke that can lead to immediate and long-term health problems. These include trouble breathing, asthma attacks, and lung and heart disease. Inhaling particulates, especially when combined with the already elevated ozone pollution, is especially dangerous for children, elders and people with sensitive immune systems. We’ve had 36 days in a row under air quality health alerts due to smoke and ozone.
Maximizing clean air in your living space under current conditions requires reversing standard procedures. Tainted indoor air traditionally causes greater harm linked to radon, mold, dust, lead, asbestos and off-gassing from consumer products and construction materials. And better ventilation — letting outdoor air in — has been the standard remedy.
Now outdoor air is the threat.
“Obviously, you don’t want to keep your windows open. Keep everything closed up right now. It’s just common sense,” said a representative of an indoor air-testing firm. Most healthy people aren’t expected to suffer more than minor and short-term health difficulties due to the heavy particulates and ozone. But the effects of prolonged exposure to multiple pollutants still aren’t fully understood.
Here are recommendations from authorities for enduring this summer’s latest smoke-and-ozone onslaught in your home:
1 – Filter air if possible using air conditioning or evaporative coolers. These contain filters that remove some particles from the outside air before it enters your living space. Keep the AC running. But change old filters because otherwise you could make bad air worse. I if that system is filtered, you can also run the fan on your home heating system with the heat turned off. Keep any outdoor intake valves closed. Make sure furnace filters are clean.
2- Don’t close your living space too tightly if the result is sweltering heat inside. Excessive heat also causes health harm. (Duh!)
3- Be vigilant at night (Wait. What?) because smoke from wildfires tends to thicken in the darkness. Keep bedroom windows closed.
4 – Consider installing a mechanical high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtering system. If the cost is too high, you can make a filter using a box fan. Attach a furnace filter to a fan using tape, bungee cords or screws. The experts who have done this recommend a MERV-13 filter or better. Make sure to attach the filter to the back of the fan so air flows through the filter in the direction of the fan. (Sounds like fun. Also, next fall, this will make a great science project for your kids!)
This next one is a big deal for us hikers…
5 – Avoid exercise or other strenuous activities outdoors in heavy smoke or ozone. Breathing more means you inhale more (Duh, again!). While the N95 masks many residents have used during the COVID-19 pandemic provide protection from smoke, these may be in short supply. The widely-used cloth face coverings offer little protection against harmful air pollutants outside. They don’t capture most small particles in smoke.
6 – Try to find places to go temporarily, such as shopping malls, movie theaters or recreation centers. There the air may be at least partially filtered.
And last but not least, VERY important…
7- Prepare to flee. Evacuate due to heavy smoke if necessary. That means planning an evacuation route and packing items you can’t live without. (And don’t forget your pets!)
I have written before about my brief career in a white coat. You can read that post here. In my defense, that piece was a very early blog effort, and rereading it now, I’ve got to say, I’ve become a lot more direct in my writing since then. Hopefully readers will appreciate how far I’ve come, getting to the point, saying what I mean, meaning what I say, not dithering too much going round in circles on our way from point A to point B.
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There’s a new psychiatry piece in the current New Yorker and you can read it here. Unlike the last one I mentioned above which was written by a white coat (Jerome Groopman, MD), this one was written by a writer (Donald Antrim) who experienced the doctor-patient relationship from the other side of the fence. Hospitalized 4 months for severe depression, he recovered after treatment with electro-convulsive therapy. And I am here to tell you that his prose post-ECT is as fine as it was pre-ECT. Score one for the guys in the white coats.
All of that brings to mind for me one particularly memorable patient I had when I was a resident. But more on that later.
You can take the boy off the psych ward, but, well… you know.
This is Antrim’s detailed description of the ECT process. I can say, having been there, he’s got the details down cold.
This is how it goes: You lie on the table in your gown and your socks. You’re looking up at the white ceiling. The ECT nurse sticks electrodes to your head, chest, arms, and legs. Wires run from the electrodes, across your body. You nod to the anesthesiologist, who is usually pretty friendly and who sticks you with a needle, to set up the I.V.
Maybe you speak to the administering physician, the team leader. This doctor stands behind your head, programming the shock. You look up at the doctor’s face. The ECT nurse fits a pulse oximeter over your index finger, and then binds your ankle with a blood-pressure cuff. The cuff will remain inflated throughout the procedure. It blocks the muscle relaxant, succinylcholine, from entering your foot. This allows your toes to twitch, visible evidence of convulsion. Vital-signs monitors beep. You are having right unilateral ECT. The convulsion should last half a minute.
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If other patients are doing ECT, your buddies on the ward, you may glimpse them asleep on gurneys in the recovery area. You feel something like fellowship, as if you were all at war together, or had survived the same dreadful accident. You ask the ECT nurse to hold your hand, and you squeeze hard. The anesthesiologist says, “Atropine.” Atropine keeps the heart beating. You are crying. You’ve been in tears the whole time. You tell the doctors that you want to get better. You’ve only ever wanted to get better.
There is a bite block on the metal table beside the anesthesiologist. The nurse fits the oxygen mask over your face. The anesthesiologist inserts a syringe into the pipette connected to the needle in your arm. The anesthetic trickles down the tube. You can smell it. It has a sweet smell. You count backward, a hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, and then the anesthetic reaches your blood, and a second passes, and you feel that you are falling—and then blackness. The succinylcholine goes in, and you no longer breathe on your own; you are on life support, and your body will not shudder or shake.
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And now you are awake—did anything happen? Is it about to begin? A voice asks you where you are, and you reply that you are in the General Clinical Research Unit, on the fifth floor of the New York State Psychiatric Institute, at 1051 Riverside Drive, in Manhattan. You are behind a curtain, recovering in bed. You have had general anesthesia. Your mouth is dry. Your friends in treatment have already woken and been returned to the ward, and, in fact, you are done; it is over.
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My own memorable ECT patient was a patrician old gal from one of the ritzier L.A. neighborhoods near UCLA: Brentwood? Pacific Palisades? One of those. She’d been in before and knew she’d get temporary relief from her severe intractable depressive symptoms with a 10-day course of ECT. She knew the drill and wanted the treatment. That made her the perfect patient for me, greenhorn first year resident, eager to learn the trade.
What made her so memorable was not the mundane medical details Antrim expertly lays out above; but rather, how she came to be admitted to the hospital in the first place. Her desire to die when in the grips of her depression was so strong that she had lain down behind her husband’s Caddy early of a Saturday morning as he was on his way out to the golf course. Riviera Country Club? Yeah, most likely. They had the U.S. Open there once as I recall.
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Anyway, she had placed her head behind his right rear wheel just inside the garage door where he couldn’t see, and made not a peep as he started to back over her. Sensing something was not right – had he left his golf bag propped against the rear bumper? He WAS getting forgetful of late – he stopped, put it in park, and found her back there with tire marks on her forehead and a misshapen skull.
She explained all this to me on intake in a monotone whisper. She’d wanted to die. This seemed to her the most logical way to get it done. It isn’t a story you easily forget. I guess it’s the sort of thing that makes the rigors of ECT pale by comparison. In any case, a week and a half later she was up and about and back to her normal self, smiling and conversing in a normal tone of voice with the staff. She was discharged to the care of her husband who, let it be noted, came to the hospital in full golf attire.
