The Repeal of DADT

On September 20, 2011, the United States military officially ended its policy of Don't Ask Don't Tell, aka DADT.  Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta hailed the change, declaring "Thanks to this change, we move closer to achieving the goal that is at the foundation of American values -- equality and dignity for all.”

Needless to say, not everyone in the United States shared Pannetta's positive viewpoint.

The "Family" Research Council  (yes, the quotes are deliberate on my part) decried the policy change, concluding that President Obama "is more interested in appeasing sexual revolutionaries than in fighting America's enemies." Yes, the same President Obama who ordered the raid on the compound in Pakistan that ended the life of Osama bin Laden and who has overseen a policy of increased drone strikes in the mountains of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border that has killed so many Taliban is really not interested in fighting America's enemies.  Right.

Hopeless Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in a recent Republican candidates debate that saw several audience members boo a gay soldier serving in Iraq, stated in response to the soldier's question that he would reinstate DADT if elected.  Santorum affirmed his belief that "Any type of sexual activity has no place in the military."

I wonder if Ricky boy ever read Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down, which is about the raid carried out in Mogadishu, Somalia that saw two Black Hawk helicopters shot down and the US Army Rangers and members of Delta Force who found themselves surrounded and under fire for the better part of a day.  Bowden describes what life was like for the servicemen stationed in Somalia prior to the raid. 

"The worst thing about hangar life, of course, was the lack of women...There was plenty of porn around, of course, and many of the Rangers were humorously casual about masturbation.  Most were discreet about it, but some had adopted a sort of crude defiance, standing up next to their cot to announce 'I'm going to the port-o-pot to fuckin' jack off!'  Specialist John Collett, a SAW gunner with absolutely no shame about such matters...claimed to have gotten a 'harness jack,' that is, to have masturbated hanging from a parachute harness."

Given the Catholic Church's position on masturbation, and Ricky being a good Catholic boy and all, I'm sure he would be mortified to know that some of our elite soldiers engaged in a form of sexual activity in a combat area.  Maybe the mission in Somalia went awry because God was punishing our soldiers for jacking off.

My favorite over-the-top wailing about the repeal of DADT comes from Washington state's resident Christian wingnut Ron Boehme, who I've mentioned before in this blog here and here.

Boehme rants:

"December 18, 2010 was a sad day for the cause of liberty. The United States Senate voted 65-31 to rescind the seventeen-year "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy in the American forces. On the heels of a 250-175 vote in the House of Representatives, largely along party lines, homosexuality is now "free" to openly flourish in the barracks or foxhole.

By this infamous vote, The United States government now openly condones and encourages homosexual behavior among our fighting men and women. The last bastion of discipline and moral order in the United States has been breached, not by an invading army, but by a destructive Lame Duck Congress."

He adds, with typical hyperbole, "This is a sad day for real liberty--which is freedom from sin." (Italics in the original).

The reason why I used the picture of Corporal Klinger from M*A*S*H at the top of this post is because when it comes to gays serving in the military, I think that is exactly what the homophobe opponents of DADT repeal picture when they claim that homosexuality will "flourish in the barracks."  It seems beyond their realm of comprehension that a gay man can serve in the military without walking around with a boner and grabbing the asses of the manly heterosexual and devout Christian men in his barracks. 

Boehme, Santorum and their ilk are full of shit because it was not what gay soldiers were doing in the barracks or in combat or other service that caused them to be discharged from the military but because of what they did or were thought to do in their private life.

And it is disingenous of Boehme to invoke "freedom from sin" in opposing the repeal of DADT, because the last time I checked, one of the tenets of Christianity is that everyone is a sinner.  That includes every heterosexual man or woman serving in the military.  Yes, for some reason, sexual orientation, not behavior, mind you, but orientation, is the one sin that should disqualify a person from serving in the United States armed forces, regardless of that person's talents or abilities.

While the supposedly Gawd fearin' people like Santorum and Boehme are all hot and bothered about the sin of gayness being inserted into the military, there is some actual sinning going on being perpetrated by heterosexuals in the military.

While searching the Department of Defense web site for the press release I linked to above about the repeal of DADT, I came across this interesting press release about addressing domestic violence in the military. 

The restricted reporting option has been in place since 2006, and is intended to offer domestic violence victims a chance to seek help despite fears they might feel based on their situation, Robertson said.

“A lot of times, victims don’t want to come forward -- they’re afraid to come forward,” she added.

Often in such cases, Robertson said, abuse has escalated over time, and victims –- especially military spouses -- may fear loss of finances, housing and family security. Restricted reporting offers them a safe avenue to help, she added.

This article from the July/August 2005 issue of Mother Jones shines a spotlight on the military's domestic violence problem up to that time.

The article begins with the story of John Corcoran, who "arrived at his wife’s house and went after 30-year-old Michele with a gun, firing at her as she fled to a neighbor’s. (She was wounded but survived.) He shot and wounded another Fort Bragg soldier who was in the house and then shot and killed himself—all while his seven-month-old daughter lay in another room."

"He joins a band of brothers. Corcoran’s is the 10th fatality in a slew of domestic violence homicides involving Fort Bragg soldiers since 2002; in one six-week spree four Army wives were murdered by their husbands or ex-husbands. Including nonfatal incidents, there were 832 victims of domestic violence between 2002 and 2004 at Fort Bragg alone, according to Army figures."

Maybe Boehme doesn't consider domestic violence to be a sin, because the wife is supposed to submit to the husband, right?  How does he feel about sexual assault then?  From the CBS article in the foregoing link:

"Wendy’s experience is not unusual. Since 2002, the Miles Foundation, a private non-profit that tracks sexual assault within the armed forces, has received nearly 1,200 confidential reports of sexual assaults in the Central Command Area of Responsibility, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan. Those reports have increased as much as 30 percent a year.

Part of the problem for the increase, critics say, is the quality of today's recruit.

The military is increasingly issuing something called "moral waivers," so they can enlist military personnel with felony convictions for crimes like rape and sexual assault.

“We don’t enlist convicted rapists in the armed forces of the United States,” said Michael Dominguez, the principal under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. “If there’s a consensus 'that kid needs a second chance, I think he’s got it in him to be a solider,’ then they’ll let him into the armed forces.”

In fact, CBS News has learned that both the Army and Marine Corps did issue a number of "moral waivers" to enlistees with felony convictions for rape and sexual assault - something not acknowledged in a follow-up letter from Dominguez."

The Religious Right likes to bellow about the immorality of allowing gays to serve in the military, while being eerily quiet about the problems of domestic violence, sexual harrassment of female service members and the issuing of "moral waivers" to enlistees and recruits.  It seems plainly apparent that for these Christian culture warriors, some sins are more equal than others.

Ignatius the Weeper

For about six months now I have been reading many written works from the 16th century, including Praise of Folly by Erasmus, Utopia by Thomas More, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, and The Discourses by Machiavelli. 

I have also made it a point to read explicitly religious works written during the period and at present I am reading the Penguin Classics edition of the Personal Writings of Ignatius of Loyola.  Ignatius founded The Society of Jesus, better known to us today as The Jesuits.  The Jesuits played an important role in the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation in the mid-sixteenth century.

But back to Ignatius himself.  At present, I have only read about 84 pages in a book that is some 360 pages.  Even so, from what I have read so far, Ignatius cried a lot.  He cried more than Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner.  He may have cried more than any other person in history.  The tears of Ignatius could have filled buckets.

To get an idea of the frequency of Ignatius' weeping, one need only read his Spiritual Diary.  To provide some context, the Spiritual Diary was written during a period when Ignatius was agonizing over whether or not The Society of Jesus should have a fixed income for its churches.  The issue must have caused him a tremendous amount of grief and turmoil, because his eyes became a veritable Niagara Falls of tears.  Let the crying begin:

February 5, 1544: "Great devotion before, during and after mass, with tears so abundant that my eyes ached."

Febrary 6: "Devotion, not without tears, before and during mass, and more inclined toward complete poverty."

February 7: "Very great devotion and tears before mass."

February 8: "After experiencing remarkable devotion and tears while I prayed, from preparing for mass and during mass very great devotion, also tears; only at times could I retain the power of speech."

February 10: "On reconsidering the choices, and on making the offering of complete poverty, I felt great devotion, not without tears."  Apparently Ignatius didn't cry on February 9, because he makes no mention of it in his entry for that day.  Or maybe he had just exhausted his supply of tears.

February 11: Lots of crying on this day, of which I quote only a portion: "Then receiving greater devotion and losing all desire to consider the question any longer, with tears and sobs I made, on my knees, the offering of complete poverty to the Father; and so many were the tears running down my face, and such the sobs that I could hardly get up, so great was the devotion and grace that I was receiving.  Finally I did rise though even then the devotion and the sobs continued."

February 13: "Then I experienced very great devotion, and many most intense tears, not only during prayer but while I vested; I sobbed and as I could feel the Mother and Son to be interceding for me, I felt a complete security that the Eternal Father would restore me to my former state.  Later, before, during and after mass, greatly increased devotion and a great abundance of tears."

February 14: "When I prepared to leave the room, not without tears and interior impulses.  Then before, during and after mass, very copious tears, devotion, great sobs - so great that I often could not keep the power of speech for long before losing it again."

And on it goes, day after day after day.  I can only imagine some of the people in the pews during his masses rolling their eyes and muttering "Oh for fuck's sake, there he goes again!"

There's a great line from the television series House, "Isn't it interesting that religious behavior is so close to being crazy we can't tell it apart?"  Outside of the context of intense religious devotion, profuse crying on an almost daily basis would be considered crazy or bizarre by most people.  So, why should intense religious devotion get a pass?

From the Reminisces, I offer this last excerpt:

"He used to have great devotion to the Most Holy Trinity, and so used to pray each day to the three persons separately.  And as he was also praying to the Most Holy Trinity as such, a thought used to occur to him: how was he making four prayers to the Trinity?  But this thought troubled him little or not at all, as something of little importance.  And, one day, while praying the office of Our Lady on the steps of the above-mentioned monastery, his understanding began to be raised up, in that he was seeing the Most Holy Trinity in the form of three keys on a keyboard, and this with so many tears and so many sobs that he could not control himself.  And on walking that morning in a procession which was leaving from there, at no point could he restrain his tears until the mealtime, nor after the meal could he stop talking, only about the Most Holty Trinity, and this with many comparisons, a great variety of them, as well as much relish and consolation, in such a way that the impression remained with him for the whole of his life, and he feels great devotion when praying to the Most Holy Trinity."

The Bahamas Trip - Day 4 - July 27, 2011 - An Atheist In Shark Infested Waters

Wednesday started off on a rather frustrating note.  We were diving at a site called Shroud Wall located off of Shroud Cay at the northern end of the Exumas Land and Sea Park.  As usual, I buddied up with Craig.

After making our entry, we proceeded along the port side of the Aqua Cat to make for the mooring line.  I was ahead of Craig, keeping a look out for the mooring line.  The visibility at this site was very poor, so I ascended close to the surface so that I would have a better chance of spotting the mooring line.  At one point, I looked behind me and saw Craig about 20 feet below and behind me.  Moments later I could see the mooring line and headed towards it to guide my way down to the mooring block.  When I reached the line, I looked behind and below me but did not see Craig, who was usually easy to spot with his yellow shirt.

As I began my descent, I looked down in the direction of where the mooring block was and in the cloudy water could make out several divers nearing the block, though I could not determine who they were.  I thought one of them might be Craig and figured he would wait for me.  But as I descended towards the block, there were no divers there. 

"No problem," I thought to myself.  "I'll just wait here for a couple of minutes and I'm sure he'll show up."  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited, wondering what I should do next.

Since the reef wall was just a few feet further away, I thought maybe Craig had gone ahead to the wall.  So I decided to make my way over to the reef wall and take a peek.  When I got there, I could make out a couple of divers headed away from me along the wall.  While I couldn't tell who they were, I knew Craig wouldn't have just gone off without me, so I decided to head back to the mooring block.  But when I got there, there was still no sign of him.  For a moment, I considered aborting the dive and surfacing to see if anything might have happened to him.  I decided against it and thought I would head back to the wall and do some sightseeing.

Because I was alone, I didn't venture far along the wall.  I tried to make a careful note of useful landmarks so that I could find my way back to the mooring block.  Before I got there, to my surprise and relief I encountered Craig, along with another diver, Tagi.  Tagi seemed to be making gestures towards me that I interpreted as "What the hell happened to you?"  I didn't reply, but if I could talk, I would have said "You know how long I waited at the mooring block by myself!"  I signalled to Craig and Tagi that I was returning to the boat.  I was still puzzled at that point what had happened to Craig, but was glad that at least he was not alone. 

They headed for the reef wall while I continued on to look for the mooring block.  Seconds turned into minutes, and to my growing concern, I could not find it, hampered as I was by the poor visibility.  Still, I took comfort in knowing that I could not be far away from it and decided to make a slow ascent to the surface.  If I couldn't find the line, I figured I would break the water not far from the Aqua Cat.  Then, to my relief, I saw the mooring line at about 30' and headed straight towards it.

After Craig came back on board, he explained to me that he must have missed both me and the mooring line and that he had ended up surfacing at one point before finally finding the line and meeting up with Tagi.  With the water as cloudy as it was, I could completely understand.

Rather than participating in the next dive, I decided to take my kids on a beach excursion.  We landed near a quiet lagoon and I decided that it was a perfect place for them to try out their snorkel gear.  The sand sloped gently into the water, enabling them to sit and put their gear on and then slowly ease into it by leaning forward and sticking their masked faces into the water.  Andrew had some trouble at first getting water into his mask and snorkel, but I helped him adjust and then the next thing I know, he was off swimming around on his own.  My daughter Kellyanne, on the other hand, was scared to go in and thought she saw urchins, so she stayed at the edge for the most part.  I told her not to worry and to take her time getting used to breathing with her snorkel in the water.  She started to gain some confidence and swam along the shallow edge when it was time to return to the Aqua Cat.

The next site, further south in the Exumas, was Amberjack Reef.  Andy, the dive master for this dive, told us that this was the site where they used to do their shark feeding dives.  And sure enough, as I was putting on my dive gear, I spotted a reef shark break the water alongside the boat.  I teamed up with Craig again and as before, the plan was to head for the mooring block and do some exploring.

When we began our ascent, I saw that there was plenty of life to observe right under the boat.  There were several reef sharks as well as a few Nassau Groupers lurking around.  The water, in contrast to the Shroud Wall, was very clear.

After Craig and I reached the mooring block, we started making our way through the grooves between the coral formations, heading generally away from the bow of the Aqua Cat.  As usual, I took point and would bang my tank or make hand gestures if I saw something that I thought Craig would want to take a picture of with his camera.  With each formation, I tried to make note of some landmark that would help distinguish it from the others.  For instance, the coral patch where the mooring block was had a barrel sponge on top of it.

In our previous dives, there would come a point where I felt Craig and I would go no further and I would gradually lead us back to our starting point.  After one dive, Craig proclaimed that I was "an awesome navigator!"  With this dive, after making a few twists and turns, crossing over an area of mostly sand and then hitting another coral formation, I got that feeling again that we should begin to head back to the mooring line.  I looked at my gauge, which read around 1700 psi.

Things seemed to be progressing rather smoothly.  We passed one formation that moments earlier I had dubbed "The Cactus" because it reminded me a little of a cactus.  Duh!  We crossed the sandy field again and started hitting the higher coral patches cut by grooves.  Then I saw a coral formation with a mooring line rising from it.  Then I saw Tagi, who was by himself avidly taking pictures with his camera.  What a relief, I thought. 

That feeling soon dissipated as I looked at the mooring line and saw that it came to an end about 15 or 20 feet above us.  Also, I did not see the barrel sponge on top of the coral formation that I had remembered earlier.  Something was wrong.  I gestured to Craig to indicate my confusion.  I remembered that Andy told us during his dive briefing that there was an old mooring block at the site.  I took my best guess as to which direction I thought the boat was and motioned for Craig to follow me.

I kept a nervous eye on my gauge, which was now nearing 1,000 psi.  We continued on for a few minutes and when the gauge was below 1,000 psi, I started to become very concerned.  I motioned to Craig that I was going to surface and take a look for the Aqua Cat.  When I surfaced, I saw it quite a distance away from us and wondered if my air supply would be sufficient to make it back.  I descended again and motioned to Craig the direction of the boat and then I started kicking my legs as hard as I could.  When my gauge got down to about 750 psi, I surfaced again.  While we were a bit closer to the Aqua Cat, we had been heading in a direction that would have put us well behind it. 

Again, I motioned to Craig, who was a few feet below the surface.  This time, I didn't descend but decided upon a surface swim so that I could maintain eye contact with the Aqua Cat.   Slowly, inexorably, I got closer to the boat, but the going was made difficult by the current.  I decided that our best bet was to head for the Magick and grab on to the yellow rope that tied it to the back of the Aqua Cat.  

I knew Craig was still behind me, but after a point, survival mode took over me, and I was more focused on myself.  My air supply was continuing to deplete rapidly as I struggled against the current.  My air had dropped to about 500 psi when I could finally see the yellow rope in the water.  I kicked furiously, grunting loudly with each kick as I inched my way towards the rope.  It started to feel like, in spite of my exertions, that I was stationary.  Then when it was just several feet from my grasp, I looked down and to my right and saw a Caribbean Reef Shark slowly heading in my direction.  While the picture at the top of this post was from a different dive, the angle of approach was about the same, only I was at the surface and the shark was about maybe at a depth of ten to twelve feet.

I didn't panic from the sight of the shark, because it appeared rather indifferent to my presence, but I remembered thinking, "It would really suck if he attacked me now, when I'm so close to the safety of the rope."  My real concern was my air supply, which was approaching the 400 psi point.  With a final effort, I reached out with my hands and grabbed the rope, which had seemed to tantalizingly beyond my grasp.

It was at that point that I thought about Craig again.  He was a few years older than me and I knew if I was struggling, then he must be too.  "What do I do know?" I asked myself.  Part of me wanted to let go of the rope and swim back to him to guide him to the rope.  Then I considered my own situation, exhausted and low on air.  One of things that is taught in the Rescue Diver course is that when considering whether to assist another diver, make sure that you don't end up needing to be rescued yourself.   Again, my desire for self-preservation kicked in, and I decided to get back to the Aqua Cat, where I could direct the crew to where Craig was.  So, like my first dive at Closemon Reef, hand over hand I pulled myself along the rope until I got to the ladder and climbed up to the dive platform.  I gasped to the crew member, can't remember which one it was, that we had gone to the wrong mooring line.  I looked back in the direction where Craig was and saw that two crew members were already in a dinghy and on there way to pick him up.  I felt doubly relieved, for Craig and for myself.

When I ascended the steps to the dive deck, I was greeted by my son Andrew, who told me excitedly, "Dad, I was snorkelling with the sharks!"  While I was off on the dive, Andrew had asked if he could go snorkelling and Stacey, the only female crewmember on the boat, went in with him.  I was very proud as well as very surprised at what my son had done.  Generally, he tends to be timid and afraid to try new things.  But for some reason he took to snorkelling in a big way.  Stacey told me that when a shark swam near him, Andrew even extended his arm out in the direction of the shark, only to retract it as the shark drew closer.

However, even the news of my son's snorkelling feat failed to lift my spirits for long.  After greeting Craig upon his safe return to the boat, I went back to my dive station and sat down with my head in my hands.  I felt upset with myself for putting another diver, in addition to myself, in danger due to my failure to navigate properly back to the mooring line.  Perhaps my earlier successes had me feeling a little cocky and I had overestimated my abilities.  I sat there sulking for a few minutes and then went up to the sun deck, where Craig and his wife Sherri had gone to grab some refreshments.  I told him that I was sorry that I had gotten us lost and had put us in a potentially dangerous situation, but he brushed it off and told me not to worry about it.

Following the surface interval, the next dive was going to be at the same site.  Craig asked me if I would go back in with him again, and I decided that it would be best if I did.  We agreed this time that we would stay within site of the boat and in we went.   We spent the dive exploring the coral formations underneath the Aqua Cat.  As we swam beneath the stern of the boat, I looked up to the surface and saw that Andrew was snorkelling with Stacey again.   Then we came upon Nick and Bailey, the two teenagers on the boat, along with Bailey's dad, standing on the sand and taking turns doing backflips in their scuba gear.  I had never tried a backflip while scuba diving before and decided to give it a shot.  It was both easy and fun and I repeated it several times.  A short while earlier, I had experienced one of the worst dives of my life, and now I had learned from a couple of teenagers how to cut loose and have a good time underwater.  It was exactly the kind of dive I needed to have.

The Bahamas Trip - Day 3 - July 26, 2011 - Underwater Photography

Though I brought an underwater camera with me on this trip, I only took it with me on three dives.  The pictures below are from the third dive.  If memory serves, they were taken at a dive site called Fire Coral Reef.  Below are among the better shots I managed to get of the marine life in the area.

First up is a Yellowtail Snapper.  There were a lot of these guys swimming around.

Next up is a French Angelfish.  These fish were a pain in the ass to photograph.  Every time I would focus on it, it would turn into the coral facing away from me.  Finally, after numerous attempts, this was the best side view I could get.  French Angelfish are very beautiful, and this photograph hardly does it justice.

I was the only one in our group to spot this small Nurse Shark.  It was swimming over a bed of coral a few feet away from me, so I had to swim really fast to get above it to get this shot.

The Bahamas contains a diverse population of angelfishes.  This next one is a Queen Angelfish.  It was much more cooperative than the French Angelfish. 

And yet another species of angelfish, the Gray Angelfish.

Here is a pair of Spotfin Butterflyfish.  My bad for not getting closer before I took the picture.

Next up is the dreaded Lionfish.  This is an invasive species that is indigenous to the Pacific.  When I dove in Belize in 2009, the only Lionfish I remember seeing was one caught by John, one of the crewmembers of the Sundancer II.  However, in the Bahamas, there were a lot of them.  You have to be careful with these guys, because they have poisonous spines.  It was really annoying for me, because some of the dive sites had very narrow grooves between the corals, and in some cases, small coral caves, that I liked to venture into and explore.  There were several occasions where I started to go into a narrow passage and then up ahead I would see a Lionfish just hovering there. 

I'm not quite sure what this last one is.  My copy of the National Audobon Society Field Guide to Tropical Marine Fishes does not show this specific fish.  However, the guide does contain about a half dozen fish with the same shape but different colors.  I am guessing this is some kind of Trunkfish or Cowfish.

Clearly, there's much room for improvement in my underwater photography skills, though it will probably have to wait until next summer when I go to the Caymans.

Back From Vacation

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend.  Just back from visiting my wife's family in the Philippines and spending several nights in Taipei, Taiwan.  Hope to have some posts and pictures up after I've finished with the Bahamas trip.  And of course, I need to put in a few atheism related posts so that nobody thinks this site has morphed into a travel blog!

Bahamas Trip - Day 3 - July 26, 2011: Underwater Marriage Proposal

Among the other passengers on the Aqua Cat were a young French-Canadian couple, Justin and Genevieve.  On the dive deck, their area was too my right.

Justin caught the attention of my children during breakfast on Sunday morning, because he walked into the dining area wearing a Speedo swimming brief, which, as you can see from the example in the preceding link, doesn't leave much to the imagination.   When my kids saw him, they couldn't stop laughing because they had never seen a man wear one before, and I finally had to tell them to get a grip on themselves.

At any rate, after one of the dives on Tuesday, I can't remember which one, after I had put all my gear in place for the next dive and taken a shower, I went back to my dive station and noticed Justin's dive slate on the bench by his dive station.  I saw that it was written in French, and at the time it read "Je t'aime," which is French for "I love you."  Aw, that's romantic, I thought.  Then I glanced at the sentence written below it ending in a question mark.  I said to myself, "I know I'm not exactly fluent in French, but that looks like a marriage proposal."  And sure enough, when I went up to the sun deck, I had found out that Justin had indeed propose to Genevieve during the dive.

Mikey, the crew member who was also serving as the ship's videographer, filmed the proposal at Justin's request.  Everyone got to see it when they played the video for us on Friday night, our last evening on the boat. 

On Tuesday evening, rather than doing another night dive, we had a shore excursion to Norman's Cay Beach Club, and I celebrated Justin and Genevieve's engagement by buying them a round of drinks.

The Aqua Cat at dusk as photographed by me from the Magick.

My kids in the Magick.

The Magick at shore, with First Mate John a silhouette in the twilight.

Captain Mark with a cold one at Norman's Cay Beach Club after a hard day's work.

The captain and I pose for a photo.

Sherri and Nina enjoying their liquid refreshments.  Sherri is from Texas.  I accompanied her husband Craig during dives when she wanted to stay on the Aqua Cat and relax.  Nina, the taller lady in the brown top, was part of our group that flew down from New York.

One of the local residents of Norman's Cay Beach Club.

The other resident of Norman's Cay Beach Club.

All in all, it was a nice little change of pace for us.   The next day would see some interesting diving.

The Bahamas Trip - Day 2 - July 25, 2011: There Be Sharks Here

The next day, I felt much better.  No more headaches and no more queasiness.

We found out the night before that we were doing the shark feeding dive on Monday.  I was surprised that it was scheduled so early in the trip, our second day of diving.  I figured it would have been held on Thursday as a build up to a climax.  Nevertheless, I was excited by the prospect of taking part in something that I had been wanting to do for quite some time.

The Aqua Cat conducts its shark feeding dives at a site called Split Coral Head off of Eleuthera.  Before we did the shark feeding dive, we did a regular dive at the site.  The Reef sharks were already there and I looked forward to trying out my new underwater camera to to snap some shots.  For those who are interested, the camera I used was a Sealife DC1200.

The photograph I took above was my first one.  Several Reef sharks were swimming around me as I began my descent, and I was able to get the shot above with a shark in the foreground and several of the divers in the background.

I was able to get this close up of a Reef shark, though owing to my novice underwater photography skills, I wasn't quite able to get the entire shark in the frame.

It was a good dive and the first one I ever did with sharks in close proximity to me.  I wasn't sure how I would react to find myself in the water with them, but surprisingly I didn't feel the least bit of trepidation.  It was more a sense of fascination and wonder at being able to observe them in their natural environment.   For those who are shark-phobes, these sharks seemed generally indifferent to our presence.

After the dive was over, we returned to the Aqua Cat for a surface interval and then attended Ian's dive briefing.  We would form a semi-circle on the sand, about 60 feet below sea level, while the fish would be lowered down the mooring line to about 15 or 20 feet from the bottom.   A few minutes after the feeding had begun, the crew would in turns take us one at a time to have ourselves photographed and briefly videotaped, and then guided over to the other side.   Ian stressed that we should under no condition try to touch the sharks, even on the tail, as they could bend their bodies so that their heads could reach back and bite you.  No argument with that here!

I replaced the memory card in my underwater camera, as I wanted to keep photographs separate from video.  I ended up shooting several segments of video.  The first one is at the beginning and lasts about two and a half minutes.  It is followed by a longer sequence that is more than 8 minutes.  Then there is another shorter segment of the aftermath.  Close to the feeding site was a small patch of coral and as I approached it, Ian pointed out to me one of the denizens of the coral, a spotted moray.  At one point in the video you will here me make a sound, which was my reaction to seeing the moray, as I wasn't sure at first what Ian was trying to show me.

At some points, the video points downward at the sand for seemingly no particular reason.  If memory serves, at various times I needed to clear the flooding in my mask, and at those points the camera would have been floating while tied to my wrist with a lanyard strap.   The camera was also sensitive to light, and I notice that sometimes when it pointed upwards towards the surface, everything took on a reddish hue.  What can I say, I'm not a professional at this.  But I think I did a decent job overall.  Enjoy.

Of course, I couldn't help but try to get a little bit of myself in the video by briefly pointing the camera towards me and giving a little wave.

At the end of the video when I pointed the camera at Tara, who had ended up to my left, she gave me the underwater signal for "shark."



You may notice at several points in this video some of the divers looking like they are crawling on the sea floor.  During the dive briefing, Ian explained how shark teeth are very loose and that at the end of the feeding, it would be possible to find some teeth on the sea floor underneath where they had been eating.  I was able to find two of them.

Besides Reef sharks, there were also a lot of Yellowtail snapper and Nassau groupers in the area that I also captured on film.  All in all, it was a good day of diving.





The Bahamas Trip - Day 1 - July 24, 2011: I Chum The Waters

Early Sunday morning, the Aqua Cat departed from Paradise Island to make for the Northern Exumas.  My kids had awoken early, as I did, to the sound of the engines, and we watched out of our cabin window as the Aqua Cat made its way out of the harbor.  Once it had gotten clear, the ship kicked it into high gear and after an hour or so, Paradise Island began to dwindle in the horizon.  In the picture I took above, you can just make out the tall buildings of the Atlantis resort.  The small boat trailing behind the Aqua Cat is the Magick, which the ship's First Mate John used to bring the passengers on land based excursions.  It would also prove very valuable to me on two of my dives.

While the previous day had been dominated by my intense migraine, the first casualty of this day turned out to be my daughter, who began to suffer the effects of motion sickness.   After first feeling it, she fell asleep in the cabin and awoke a little later on feeling much better.  But not long after waking up again, she began to feel the effects even worse than before.  One of the crew members ended up taking her to the bridge to have a better view of the horizon, which was supposed to help her relax and not feel nauseous.

I decided to skip the first dive of the day, a site called Barracuda Shoals near Allens Cay, because I had not set up my gear the evening before owing to my headache.  So, after watching my friends enter the water, I set about getting my gear ready so that I could participate in the next dive.  I was looking forward to trying out my new Hot Shot travel fins by Aqua Lung.  Since my last dive trip to Belize two years earlier, I scaled down my gear so that I could fit it all into my carry-on luggage.  Besides the travel fins, I ditched my wet suit and replaced it with a lycra full body skin.  I also brought a rash guard shirt and shorts.  To top it off, I switched to a foldable snorkel which I was able to fit into the pocket of my BCD.  I also had a new mask, as the one I had worn in Belize, while good, had developed cracks and needed to be replaced.

The next dive site was called Closemon Reef.  I was going to join Tara, Jeff and some of the other divers and just follow them wherever I went.  I was happy with the fins.  They were easy to put on and did not require dive boots.  I donned my new mask, lightly inflated my bcd, and made my giant stride into the warm waters.   After giving the ok sign to the crewman on the dive deck, I started to descend and followed the rest of the divers in our group.  The first thing I noticed is that we were swimming against a rather strong current, stronger than any I ever encountered before.  Still, with effort, I kept up with the group as we made our way towards the mooring line at the bow of the boat.  Then, I noticed my vision was getting cloudy, and suddenly it struck me.  In my excitement, I had forgotten to defog my mask!  I swam alongside Tara and motioned to her that I was returning to the boat and she acknowledged the signal.

I made my way back to the dive deck on the port side and told the crewmember Andy what had happened.  I handed him my mask and he kindly put in some defog for me.  I swirled it around and rinse it out and then donned the mask again and began my second descent.  Barely a few seconds had passed when I hit that current again.  I came to the realization that it would be foolhardy of me to try to struggle against the current alone in order to catch up with the rest of the group and decided to abort the dive but remain in the water.  I made my way to the yellow rope that tied the Magick to the Aqua Cat and held on to it, while remaining at roughly a depth of ten or fifteen feet.

And then I made my big mistake.  The site was shallow, only about twenty to thirty feet, so I decided to descend to the bottom because I was getting bored holding on to the rope.  But even with my knees planted on the sand, I was still getting pushed back by the relentless current, so I felt it prudent to surface before I was pushed too far away from the Aqua Cat.  But even as I ascended, I had an incredibly difficult time trying to reach the Magick.  I kicked furiously and groaned with each kick as I reached out for the hull of the Magick for support.  Of course, being constantly submerged in the water, the surface of the hull was incredibly slipper and I could not keep a grip on it.  I surfaced and called out for help, thinking, "Oh great, just like my first dive in Belize, when I had to be rescued!"  However, rather than waiting around to be rescued, I decided to take my fate into my own hands again and resumed swimming with all my might back to the Magick.  Again, my hands made contact with the slipper surface of the hull, but I managed to push myself slowly forward until I was able to grab the yellow rope.  I then pulled myself relentlessly toward the Aqua Cat, hand over hand, until I made it to the ladder a couple of minutes later.

Andy asked me what had happened and I answered him wearily as I handed him my fins and struggled up the ladder to the deck.  I was absolutely wiped out.  When Tara returned, I explained to her what happened.  Like Belize, my first dive was a clusterfuck.  It could only get better from here on.

Because of weather related concerns, Captain Mark decided to leave the Exumas and make for Eleuthera.  The next dive was going to be at a site called Cobia Cage.  On this dive, I was going to accompany one of the passengers, a man from Texas named Craig.  His wife Sherri was with him on the trip but decided to take a pass on this dive after participating in the two previous dives that morning.  Mikey, the crew member who would be the dive master for the dive, described the cage to us, but when we entered the water, what he told us did not begin to prepare me for the enormity of the structure.

A Cobia cage basically looks like some extraterrestrial space craft submerged in the water.  I didn't take my underwater camera on this dive, so I did not get to take a picture of it, but the photo I found above shows you how massive and strange looking the structure is.  Craig and I passed over it and then headed towards some nearby coral formations.  I had a tank banger and would look around us or peer into the nooks and crannies of the corals and let out a bang when I saw something that Craig could photograph with his camera. 

It felt good being on a dive where I didn't have to fight a current.  But as the dive continued, I started to feel queasy, though it was still tolerable.  As we headed back towards the Cobia cage, I motioned to Craig that I was returning to the boat, which was visible from the cage.  Besides, there were a number of other divers circling around, so Craig wouldn't be alone.  I gradually made my way to the hang bar and grabbed on to it and prepared to begin my safety stop.  The nausea got noticeably worse, and then without warning, I puked into my regulator.  I had done it once before when I was doing one of my open water dives in Fort Lauderdale in 2008.  I remained calm, trusting that my regulator could handle it.  And then I heaved again.  And again.  And again.  I think I overloaded my regulator, as I sucked in some vomit when I started to inhale.  I decided I had had enough and shot up to the surface, letting out one last upchuck in view of the crew member manning the dive deck (can't remember which one). 

Undeterred, I participated in the next dive, at Knuckleheads Reef.  While I still felt vaguely queasy, I did not get sick and I had my first good dive of the trip, though to my chagrin my mask was prone to flooding and I had to constantly clear it.  I was also pleased to see that my daugher was no longer suffering from motion sickness and was her old self again.  I dove with Craig again and managed the itinerary, finding him marine life to photograph.  This dive site was tricky, because there were lots of cuts and and turns and it is easy to get lost if one goes too far.  When my air supply got down to about 1700 PSI, I motioned to Craig that we would be making our way back.  After retracing our path, I felt a sense of relief when I could make out the bubbles of a number of other divers up ahead.   We made contact with the other divers and continued to explore the coral formations near the mooring line.  At one point, just as I was ready to begin my ascent, I spotted a Southern Stingray up ahead, but it was headed in a direction away from us and soon passed out of view.

The night dive was being held at the same site.  None of the group I went down with nor Craig and his wife were participating in this dive, so I just stuck with Ian the divemaster and three or four of the other passengers. 

When I did the night dives in Belize, the bottom of the Sun Dancer II was lit up like a stadium, making visibility near the boat very good, as well as providing a sense of comfort because it was easy to spot even if one went some distance away.  But with the Aqua Cat, there would be no such light, owing to the presence of sea wasps, which are attracted to the light and at night rise to about 10 feet below the surface.  I wore my full body skin again, having eschewed it for my previous two dives, as I found that the water was plenty warm enough to dive wearing only a t-shirt and shorts.

The dive itself was largely uneventful and I couldn't wait for it to end.  That urge became even stronger, as I found myself becoming increasingly nauseous again.  I signaled to Ian and when he looked at me, I made the hand sign for "not well" and pointed at my abdomen.  He must not have understood me, or if he did, he may have thought it was not terribly important, as he continued to go about poking about the coral and shining his light on it.  I tried to suck it up and tag along hoping the dive would soon end.  Then I felt myself nearing the point of no return.  I signaled to Ian again and this time, to make it unambiguous, I gave the thumbs up sign, which means "surface."  This time he understood, and as we made our ascent, I vomited several times again. 

I was so glad when I finally made it back to the Aqua Cat.  The dive deck was dark as I ascended the ladder, owing to the aforementioned sea wasps.  It ended up being a good thing, because as I found myself looking skyward, I stopped and looked in utter amazement at the night sky.  Never in my life had I seen so many stars.  There were so many that I barely recognized familiar constellations.  The real treat though was that for the first time in my life that I can recall, I saw the band of the Milky Way.

Later on, after the dive was over, I went up to the sun deck and they turned off the lights so that we could all admire the majesty of the night sky.  I spotted a couple of meteor streaks, and in the distance, the lightning from a far off thunder storm flashed in a fantastic display.

Back From The Deep

I can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since I returned from my scuba diving trip to the Bahamas.  While returning to work from a vacation is hard enough, I had the added burden of moving to another law firm, which is one of the reasons why it took me this long to return to blogging.   The change of work place happened rather suddenly, with the partner I worked under at my previous firm telling me the week before my vacation that she was moving to another firm several blocks away and that some of the clients were following her, including the client for whom I the majority of my work.  She told me that the new firm said she could bring a paralegal with her and asked if I would be interested.   It only made sense to do so, since a good chunk of my workload was leaving with her.  Plus, the new firm said they would match my salary, so I decided to make the move.

Anyway, back to the vacation.  It was on a liveaboard in the Bahamas called the Aqua Cat.  Above is a picture of the Aqua Cat at dock as seen from a nearby outdoor bar called The Green Parrot.  I had my two kids in tow so that my wife could have a week of peace and quiet to herself rather than having to stay home with them while I cavorted in the azure waters of the Bahamas.

The trip got off to a bit of a rocky start.  We all met at the house of Martha, one of the people going on the trip, at 4:30 in the morning to catch our ride to Newark Airport, where our flight to Nassau was scheduled to depart at 7:30.  I thought it might be cutting things a little too close, but figured we would make it in time.  But when we finally got to the group checkin area at Continental Airlines terminal at 6:30, the lady behind the counter told us that the computer would not allow her to check us in and that we would not make the 7:30 flight.  Sue, the wife of Larry, who used to own the dive shop where I took my lessons, pleaded with the lady to no avail and then demanded to speak with a supervisor. 

A few minutes later, a supervisor, a more pleasant Latina, had us move to a different counter where Sue continued to plead our cause.  Finally, when all hope seemed lost, the supervisor said she could take all but four of us.  So Sue, Martha, Tara, Nina, Bruce, Ira and Jeff checked in their bags, received their boarding passes and proceeded to the departure gate.  That left Larry, myself, and my two kids.  After a few minutes, the supervisor returned and after spealing with Larry, told him that she would put us on standby for the next flight for Nassau scheduled to leave at 8:55.  We checked in our bags, got our boarding passes, and then did the security screening shuffle and headed for the departure gate.   Fortunately for us, the agent at the gate told us that we would be able to board the plane.

Several hours later, we found ourselves in Nassau and the Aqua Cat arranged for us to be picked up.  We were dropped off at the Green Parrot, where the rest of the gang was already relaxing.   The Aqua Cat doesn't let passengers board until 6 p.m., which meant that we had to wait another four or five hours.  Normally, that wouldn't be so bad, but I developed a rip-roaring migraine that refused to go away.  I tried napping it off to no avail, and finally around 5 p.m. I asked for permission to go to my cabin on the Aqua Cat so that I could sleep on the bed in my cabin.  When I awoke a couple of hours later, everyone else had boarded and it would soon be time for dinner.  I still hadn't completely shaken the headache, so Martha's son Greg, who came down on a different flight, gave me a couple of Tylenol PM.

After the dinner, prepared by the Aqua Cat's Chef Kirk, we were treated to the orientation lectures by the ship's captain Mark and the lead dive master Ian.  I retired early that night, looking forward to waking up the next day feeling refreshed and ready to hit the waters.

Scuba Diving Hiatus

Yeah, I know, not that I've been blogging all the much lately anyhow.  But now I have a legitimate excuse.  In a few hours I will be jetting off for the Bahamas to spend a week on a live aboard diving at sites in the Exumas.  Also planning to do a shark feeding dive, which has been on my bucket list for quite some time.

In addition, I recently purchased an underwater camera, so hopefully I will have some pictures and video from below sea level, unlike my Belize trip.  So, take care for now and see you all at the next surface interval!

UPDATED - Pet Peeve of the Day: Jews For Jesus DON'T Promote Littering

Since writing the post below, a couple of J4Js have commented here, including quite possible one of the members I saw handing out literature the other day at the subway station @ 34th and 6th around 5 PM.  She and the first J4J commenter both insisted that they clean up any of their literature left on the ground by recipients who discard them.  

Most, if not all of us, are prone to episodes of confirmation bias.  In this instance, I, an atheist who also greatly detests littering, saw members of a particular religious group handing out literature in a public place and then seeing the same literature scattered all over the subway station steps and the sidewalk outside.   I guess for me it was a two-fer and I jumped on it based only on what I directly observed.

But, to quote Jerry Ohrbach's character at the end of the movie Dirty Dancing, "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong."   I hereby apologize to the Jews For Jesus of NYC for accusing them of enabling littering and for referring to them as assholes.  In instances such as this, it can be all too easy for a blogger to delete a post and flush it down the memory hole.  Instead, I will leave the original post below intact as a reminder, to myself and others, that we should be mindful of making hasty accusations, especially in a public forum.

That being said, of course, as an atheist, I find it odd that a being that presumably can communicate directly with every human being simultaneously needs to rely on a few people to hand out pamphlets in a subway station in order to get its message across.  However, I support their right to do so.

The original post follows:

It's not uncommon to see Jews For Jesus in New York City subway stations handing out flyers and pamphlets to passersby.   What really annoys me about them is that often just a few feet away from where they're standing are pamphlets they handed out that the recipient hastily discarded the moment they realized what had been given to them.  The J4Js (for short) know that most of the literature they hand out ends up as litter and yet they don't seem to care.  Great way to promote your religious beliefs, assholes!  Of course, the recipients who litter are assholes too, but the J4Js are culpable knowing that most of what they hand out ends up on the sidewalks or subway platforms.

Adam and Steve To Get Married In New York - The Backlash Begins

A town clerk here in my state of New York has recently resigned her position because, in her words, "There was no protection provided in the legislation of Town Clerks who are unable to sign these marriage licenses due to personal religious convictions, even though our US Constitution supports freedom of religion."

My response to that, well, don't let the door hit you on the way out, Ms. Fotusky.

Before same-sex marriage became legal in New York State, I wonder, did Ms. Fotusky ever wonder if any of the marriage licenses she signed for heterosexual marriages were for marriages that might have conflicted with her religious beliefs?

After all, some married couples have open marriages.  Did Fotusky bother to ask the bride and groom if they intended to fornicate with other people?   Perhaps one or both spouses entered into the marriage intending to engage in an adulterous affair behind the back of the other.  Maybe one married the other simply for the other person's money.  Given the prevalence of such behavior, it shouldn't come as a surprise that some of the people who had marriage licenses signed by Ms. Fotusky committed acts that went against her religion.

If these god fearin' town, city and county clerks are so worried about sinful behavior, why get all in a twist about same-sex couples, when quantitatively they have likely signed more marriage licenses for heterosexual marriages where immoral behavior will take place then all of the same-sex marriage licenses their offices will ever be asked to issue?

My Third Child

That's what I call my mom nowadays.

Not long ago, I discovered I was part of something called the "sandwich generation."  It refers to adults who are simultaneously raising children and finding themselves having to care for one or more parents. 

I joined the club a little over five years ago, when my father died from complications resulting from a surgical procedure in the hospital.  My mom had frequent bouts of anxiety and depression during the course of her life.  My dad was the type who handled all of the finances, so when my mom found herself a widow, she was woefully unprepared for the job of managing her own money.  Add those two factors together, and you have someone who is not consistently up to the task of managing her own affairs.

My uncle and I helped her out by setting up funds to provide her with an income stream to supplement her Social Security and pension checks, and we both had online access to her checking account so that we could monitor it.   So, from a financial perspective, my mom was in decent shape as long as she lived within her means.

For the first six months or so after my father's death, things were not so bad.  While my mom was understandably still in grief over the death of her husband the better part of half a century, she otherwise was doing okay.  That all took a sudden turn for the worse in December of 2006.  I have already recounted the details here in an older post, but to make a long story short, my mom experienced a double-whammy, catching pneumonia and injuring herself in a fall.

For the next three months, visits to the hospital and then the nursing home where my mom underwent physical therapy were part of my daily routine.  On weekdays, with my wife at work, this often meant having to bring my then 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter with me.   We also hosted my mom's dog Kiki, a Shi tzu-Maltese, until about June, when my mom had recovered from her injury.  She even seemed in good enough shape that I felt comfortable leaving her on her own for two weeks while the wife, the kids and I went to visit my wife's family in the Philippines.

Sadly, Kiki died a few months later.  Shortly afterwards, my mom bought a new dog, a seven month Pomeranian that was not potty trained.  About a month later, my mom ended up being hospitalized again,  which meant that yours truly got saddled with a dog that found my basement an all-too convenient place to take a frequent shit.  Finally, my wife and I got so disgusted, I took the dog to the Town of Oyster Bay animal shelter.  I had hoped that would be the end of my mom's dog days, but alas, some months later, she got herself a little Chihuaha.  Luckily, it took my mom little more than a week to realize she could not handle this new dog and it ended up being given away to someone.  Again, I dared to hope that my mom had finally come to her senses and understood that as much as she desired the companionship a dog offered her, she was not up to the task of handling the responsibility of ownership.

As for my mom herself, I was beginning to notice signs of mental deterioration, most worryingly with regard to her medications.  Every week, I would fill up one of those pill containers where you pop open the lid for each dose.  It also revealed to me the extent to which she was forgetting to take her medications.  When I would come by to fill the container at the end of the week, I would see that she would be missing several doses over the course of the week.   My uncle suggested getting a pill dispensing machine, so in August of 2008, I purchased one for my mom.   Every Saturday night, I would fill up the pill tray and stick it in the machine.  Twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, the machine would let out a beeping sound at the programmed time and deposit the medications into a pull out container.  It cost a lot of money, roughly $800 if memory serves, but it was definitely worth the piece of mind.

Around that same time, my mom was having recurring bouts of depression and anxiety, and for weeks at a time she wouldn't be able to fall asleep at night, despite taking anti-anxiety medication and Ambien.   In addition to the loss of her husband that she continued to mourn, she was also saddened that two of her lifelong friends had ended their friendship with her.  When brooding on it in my presence, she would chalk it up to them abandoning her, but I suspected there was more to it than that.  I spoke to one of them in person when I stopped by her house to sound her out on the possibility of visiting my mom to try to cheer her up.  She told me that my mom had been insensitive to her in a phone conversation they had.  As for the other friend, I can only guess that my mom must have said something that inadvertently offended her as well.  Sometimes my mom has a tin ear, and with her memory problems, I wouldn't past her that she said something to each of the two friends to upset them and then didn't remember the substance of the conversations, thus mentally insulating her from recognizing her culpability.

Fast forward to the summer of 2010.  My mom had come out of her depression and was entering another active phase.   She would drive herself to her doctor appointments, beauty parlor appointments and other local errands, though she did get into a couple of minor traffic accidents.

Then one day in September at work, my phone rings and I see on the caller id that it's her number.  I pick up the phone and greet her.  "Guess what, Thomas?" she said to me with a slightly jubilant tone.  I groaned inwardly and replied "Oh, please, no."  She had gotten herself another dog.  It was a Papillon.

Lacking originality with dog names, my mom called her Lola, the same name she had given to the Pomeranian.  And like the first Lola, this one had the same problem with peeing and defecating indoors.  And like the first Lola, soon after purchasing her, my mom ended up in the hospital for a few days, this time because she had problems swallowing something she ate and ended up becoming dehydrated after a couple of days of not being able to take her medication or hold down any food or drink.  Once again, yours truly had to pay host to another Lola, Lola 2.0.   No matter how often she would be taken outside, she would crap somewhere in the house moments after coming back inside, even if she was observed doing her business outside.  A couple of times, she even ran up the stairs to my son's room on the second floor and took a shit on his carpet. 

It was such a relief when my mom was released from the hospital and was well enough to take her again.  Don't get me wrong, Lola is a cute, friendly dog.  But in addition to the lack of potty training, she can be very noisy when she wants attention.  Not just barking.  She makes this whiny sound that can be very irritating when you are trying to sleep.

In what was another sign of the change in my mom was her toleration of Lola going to the bathroom frequently on her living room carpet.  It got to the point where the smell was almost unbearable sometimes when I entered her apartment.  When I was a child, my mom had always been a clean freak and as recently as a few years ago such a state of affairs was unthinkable for her.

A further development was a tendency for my mom to lose her balance and fall from time to time, though luckily none of the injuries were that serious.  At the beginning of this past June, she had told me about an incident at a department store where she felt pain in her legs and that she was going to fall, but held herslf up by holding onto a clothing rack.  Some store employees aided her and called an ambulance, but she refused to go to the hospital and instead had herself wheeled to her car.   She had dropped off Lola at the dog groomer earlier and had to pick her up.

About a week later on a Saturday, it was my birthday.  I had tried running in a 5K that morning at Muttontown Preserve, but the trail was muddly from the rain and after about a mile I had decided to just turn it into a nature walk.  I had gotten home around 11:30 and was looking forward to spending the rest of the day with my wife and children.  Then around noon the phone rang.  It was my mom's neighbor at the senior housing development.  My mom had fallen while walking her dog and had to be taken to the hospital.  Shortly after I got there, they had diagnosed her with a dislocated left elbow.  They did a procedure to pop it back in and discharged her.  But her left arm was wrapped in bandages and in a sling.

I ended up missing the next four days of work.  On Monday I tried to get an appointment to see her primary care physician but there were no openings.  As for Lola, who had caused the accident by running away after the leash slipped from my mom's hand, I decided it was best at least for the short term to put her somewhere so I wouldn't have to deal with her, so I brought her to a dog hotel out in Deer Park.  The next day I was on the way to work and called the doctor's office and was able to secure an appointment with her PCP later that afternoon, so I went into work for a couple of hours and left early.  Earlier that morning I had stopped by my mom's to check on her, and she was babbling about hearing people speaking in her apartment.  When I was helping her off the couch to go to the bathroom on the commode, she even told me to shut the door so that that wouldn't see her.  I told her that there was no one else in the apartment.

The PCP gave us a referral for an orthopedist in the area and an appointment was made for the next day.  When I brought my mom there, they took x-rays of the elbow and the doctor took one look at it and said "She needs surgery."  Then informed us that his office doesn't do elbow surgeries and referred us to another orthopedist in Great Neck, which is on the North Short of Nassau County near the Queens border.  I understand that orthopedics is a very specialized field, and it wouldn't surprise me if some orthopedists specialized only in the upper knuckle of the pinky finger.

So, day 4 (don't worry, we're getting close to the end!), and I have to bring my mom all the way to Great Neck.  And when we get there, I find out that the PCP's office had not sent the authorization, so the orthopedist could not see my mom until it went through.  After calling them on the phone twice, it finally came through nearly an hour after the time her appointment was scheduled.  The ladies behind the desk told me they frequently had this issue with my mom's medical group.  Anyway, after nearly an hour and a half wait, my mom finally gets seen.  They take some x-rays and the orthopedist tells us my mom might not need surgery, particularly since she is right hand dominant.  He tells us though that he would like her to have a CT scan.

Things finally seem to be returning to a state of normalcy.   Saturday night, the wife and I stayed up almost to 3 a.m. watching tv together.  I turned into bed a few minutes after her, chiding myself for staying up so late, but figuring I would just have to sleep late Sunday morning.  Then I drifted off to dreamland.   Alas, my stay there was cut short when I awoke to the phone ringing.  I looked at the clock to see what time it was and it was only 5:30 a.m.   I grumbled, because I knew it was my mom calling about something.

I'm sorry to say I wasn't in the best of moods when I answered the phone.  "What is is mom?" I asked.  She started telling me about how a top she was wearing got tangled on her left arm.  But that wasn't the real problem.   She also told me that her granddaughter Jamie was underneath her bed and wouldn't come out.   I could tell from my mom's voice that she was in a confused state.   Unfortunately, having barely two and a half hours of sleep in me, I was not exactly at my sharpest either.

Because my mom is hard of hearing, I had to practically shout back at her that I would be there in a few minutes.  I hung up the phone and, to my disappointment, let loose a litany of angry and profane words at having my life disrupted again.  I stormed into her apartment and found her sitting on the couch in her tv room naked save for the sleeve of a shirt on her left arm.  After I got it off her, I either helped her to a standing position or she got herself up.  She told me to put the shirt in her washing machine.  As I walked to the washing machine outside the room, I heard her cry out and looked to see her fall backwards onto the carpet, hitting the back of her head on the leg of a plastic chair behind her.  One of her implant teeth also came out, evidently being dislodged by the force of the impact.

I tried to help my mom up to get her back on the couch, but she was too heavy for me to move.  I called 911, not only because I couldn't get her up unassisted (and who exactly was I supposed to call at 5:30 in the morning on a Sunday for help?) but also I wanted her to have medical attention to make sure she did not suffer a serious head injury.  About ten minutes later, a police ambulance showed up, followed by two additional Nassau County police officers.  It took all three of them to lift my mom up and then sit her on a chair that they then used to wheel her out to the living room where they had placed a stretcher.   She was then taken to Plainview Hospital.

Fortunately, it was determined that my mom did not suffer any injury from the fall.  They discharged her around noon.  Before that point, I hit my nadir for the day, and the recent past for that matter.  At that point I just felt the crushing weight of all that had happened for the past eight days pushing down on me.  I sat down on the floor in the emergency room with my back against the wall and my head in my hands.   One of the staff, a nurse I think, saw me and asked me if I was alright.  She gave me the number for a hospital social worker to inquire about getting placement somewhere for my mom, for which I thanked her, though I ended up not calling the number.

Since then, things have gotten more tolerable.  I arranged for a home companion to be with my mom on weekdays from 9 to 5.  I have to take time off from work again for a follow up appointment with the orthopedist in Great Neck.  Her dog is back with her, though I had to take it for a few days because the home companion was complaining that the dog was pooping on the rug and making the apartment stink, which caused a bit of a brouhaha between mom, the home companion, and me.  Just what I needed.

As much as I complain about the burden of having to be a caregiver for my mom, I know that there are other adult children who are in much more difficult situations than I.  Some have parents who are in far worse shape than my mom.  Some caregivers are in poor health themselves.   I'm sure quite a few of them handle their situations with more grace and stoicism than I do.  With my mom, as the story above describes, it has not been a daily strain for the last five years.  Rather, there are periods, often lasting many months, of relative calm that is then disrupted by episodes that last anywhere from a few days to a few months.

In addition to being a member of the "sandwich generation," I also suffer from what I call The Curse of the Responsible Sibling.   Longtime readers of my blog might recall that I am the youngest of three siblings, but when it comes to caring for my mom, I might as well be an only child.   While my oldest brother Bobby calls my mom once in a while, he doesn't really do anything meaningful to help out.  His excuse is that he does not have a drivers license (taken away for drunk driving) and a car.   Lately he has also been hobbled by a foot injury incurred at work, which at present gives him a plausible excuse for not being able to help.  Then there is my brother John, who has barely been heard from in the past year.  He never calls mom or myself to inquire how she is doing and if there is anything he can do to be of assistance.  Therefore, the burden has fallen squarely on my shoulders.  I have coworkers and acquaintances who are in similar situations.  They have siblings as well, but those siblings seem to think nothing about washing their hands free of any responsibility of caring for their elderly parents and leaving it by default to the "Responsible Sibling."

What makes it even harder for me is that I am raising two school age children and I commute to a full time job in Manhattan.  My two brothers are both divorced and each has three children that neither plays any role in raising.  Like I wrote above, I might as well be an only child.  So, all I can do is carry on and do the best I can, knowing that the best I can do might not be the best that could be done.  With an elderly parent like my mom, the situation is not one of a very sick parent who requires lots of care.  Rather, it is more like trying to manage a steady decline over time, hoping that a placement in a nursing home or assisted living facility can be put off for as long as possible.   And I know that one day, the burden will end.

Updated: A Not Quite Such A Clusterbleep!

It turned out my initial reaction to the changes were largely unjustified. Plus, some of the changes to the blog are an improvement over the way it was before.  The problem with the followers seems to have resolved itself.  I'm still annoyed that I have to redo my sidebar links.  I managed to reconstitute two of them.  The template only seems to allow for one set of links, but I figured out a way create additional sets of links, but I won't be able to get to it tonight. 

When I logged on earlier, I noticed I had a new follower for this blog.  So, I clicked on Followers to see who it was, and then I got prompted to make a template change that (1) resulted in changing the appearance of this blog, and (2) wiping out the blogrolls in my sidebar and making it impossible to even see who my followers are, even though I added the thing it told me to add.

Is Blogger intentionally trying to dissuade people from using its services?  It would be a shame if I had to end my blog over this.

Le Fin de Weiner

I'm a couple of weeks late in commenting on this, partly due to factors in my life beyond my control, but wanted to throw my two cents worth in before the story completely vanished from the news cycle.

In my previous post on this scandal, I wrote that I wasn't sure if Weiner should resign and that it was between him and his constituents.  However, I believe that in retrospect his resignation was the right thing to do.

When you look at the matter in perspective, Weiner's resignation was not that terrible a loss for liberal Democrats.   For starters, even if this scandal had never happened, it was highly likely that Weiner would have ran for mayor of New York City in 2013, and if he had won, he would have assumed that office in January of 2014.  So as much as his supporters will miss him, Weiner only had, at most, a term and a half in the House left to him.

Second, due to population changes, New York State is slated to lose two seats in the House of Representatives, and Weiner's seat was on the cutting block.  If Weiner had not resigned, his district and seat would have been erased even sooner than 2013. 

What ultimately burns a lot of liberals about this affair is that it lent credibility to partisan smear merchants like Andrew Breitbart.  But as someone who considers himself more or less a liberal, I can't help but put 100% of the blame on Anthony Weiner for all of this.  No one forced him to behave the way he did.  His real fault, in my eyes, is that he lied about sending the pictures, claiming that his account had been hacked.  For over a week, Weiner's supporters publicly defended him because they believed he was telling the truth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them when he finally confessed the truth.  That, and the revelations that there were even more pictures, eroded whatever good will toward him that had remained.  

Maybe if Weiner had owned up to sending the pictures as soon as the scandal erupted, he might have salvaged some measure of credibility.  Then again, Weiner had a reputation as an abrasive personality who rankled even some of his Democratic colleagues.  I suspect not a few of them were glad to see him go.

A valid question that the Weiner scandal raises is to what degree should an elected official's (or even a candidate's) private conduct impact on that person's fitness for office?  In Weiner's case, his behavior was seen as weird or creepy, especially given that he was only recently married.  Did marriage bore him that quickly that sending pictures of his penis to women he never met seemed like a productive use of his time?   What was particularly embarrassing for Weiner, as Bill Maher pointed out on a recent episode of Real Time, was that the former congressman was the center of a sex scandal and he didn't even get laid.

I thought of another potential scenario that I want to throw out for consideration.  Pretend a group of partisan activists looking to take down a firebrand politician from an opposing party smuggled a web cam into a hotel room where that politician was spending the night.  Perhaps they're hoping to get footage of him cheating on his wife by having sex with a prostitute.  But instead of hiring an escort, the politician is filmed unpacking a sex doll and then spends the next hour using it for sexual gratification.

There's no doubt that such footage, if made public, would be highly embarrassing.  But is it really something that should destroy a politician's career?  Granted, sex dolls aren't exactly in the mainstream.  However, is anyone really harmed by what is little more than an act of glorifed masturbation?  Or, to put it another way, should we hold politicians to a higher standard than we hold other people when it comes to sex?  After all, if you found out the morning shift manager at your local Starbucks pleasured himself with a sex doll, are you going to demand that he be fired?

As for the sex doll scenario, the inspiration for it came from me remembering an episode of Nip/Tuck wherein series regular Kimber had a sex doll made in her likeness.  Below is a scene from the episode in which Kimber solicits Sean and Christian to make some improvements to her doll's vagina.



I couldn't find the clip on YouTube, but later on in the episode, a drunk and emotionally distraught Sean has a graphic encounter with the Kimber doll.  To date, I believe that Dylan Walsh's performance in that scene is one of the bravest ever filmed for a television program.