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The Parliamentary Election at Eatanswill

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Illustration by “Phiz” for The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

If you think the political division between the Democrats and Republicans is a new think, you should read Charles Dickens’s The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), particularly in the scenes describing the parliamentary election at Eatanswill (“Eat and Swill”), one of the most savage satires by the British writer. Here is his masterful description of the state of things at Eatanswill:

It appears, then, that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns, considered themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance, and that every man in Eatanswill, conscious of the weight that attached to his example, felt himself bound to unite, heart and soul, with one of the two great parties that divided the town—the Blues and the Buffs. Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs, and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; and the consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and Blues met together at public meeting, town-hall, fair, or market, disputes and high words arose between them. With these dissensions it is almost superfluous to say that everything in Eatanswill was made a party question. If the Buffs proposed to new skylight the market-place, the Blues got up public meetings, and denounced the proceeding; if the Blues proposed the erection of an additional pump in the High Street, the Buffs rose as one man and stood aghast at the enormity. There were Blue shops and Buff shops, Blue inns and Buff inns—there was a Blue aisle and a Buff aisle in the very church itself.

Of course it was essentially and indispensably necessary that each of these powerful parties should have its chosen organ and representative: and, accordingly, there were two newspapers in the town—the Eatanswill Gazette and the Eatanswill Independent; the former advocating Blue principles, and the latter conducted on grounds decidedly Buff. Fine newspapers they were. Such leading articles, and such spirited attacks!—‘Our worthless contemporary, the Gazette’—‘That disgraceful and dastardly journal, the Independent’—‘That false and scurrilous print, the Independent’—‘That vile and slanderous calumniator, the Gazette;’ these, and other spirit-stirring denunciations, were strewn plentifully over the columns of each, in every number, and excited feelings of the most intense delight and indignation in the bosoms of the townspeople.

Ach! Not Again!

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UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center

Yesterday morning, I found myself being admitted to UCLA Hospital’s emergency room. That morning, I awoke around six in the morning to go to the bathroom. Coming back I found myself bumping into things. When I tried to get back into bed, I slipped and fell on the floor pinning my left shoulder between the bed and my nightstand. I was too weak to make a serious attempt to get up.

Martine heard my fall and frantically tried to help me. But how could she, with her right wrist in a cast from when she broke it the week before. For hours she tried to make me comfortable and gave me water to sip through a straw. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to give me 30mg of Hydrocortisone, which, as it happened, is the cure for the symptoms I was experiencing.

Time and time again, she asked if I wanted an ambulance. My consciousness was improving from the Hydrocortisone Martine gave me, so I finally said yes. It seemed that the bedroom was crawling with Emergency Medical Technicians from the Fire Department within minutes. They hauled me out of my wedged position and dumped me on the bed. Their strongly recommended I be admitted to the hospital. I tried to resist their suggestion until I had the feeling that it was pretty much de rigeur in their profession.

So, as when I had my last serious Addisonian Crisis on December 30, 2017, I was trundled down the apartment steps, plunked into the ambulance, and driven to the UCLA Hospital emergency room (but without the sirens).

What was wrong with me? The scientific term is panhyopituitarism, which means I no longer have a pituitary gland. It all happened many years ago. To read the gory story of my near-death experience in 1966, click on this post from April 2015.

By the time I got to UCLA, I was feeling pretty good as the Hydrocortisone was doing its job; but I knew I would have to go through the medical profession’s equivalent of the death of a thousand cuts. I was wheeled from one clerk to another and asked for details which were entered into their system. Fortunately, In December 2017, I had roughly the same situation.

Still, it seems that emergency wards assume you have some internal organ problem such as a heart attack or cancer, so I was hooked up with little stickies all over my upper body and probed with needles until the doctors determined that, yes, I would not be likely to die on the spot. My problem was not a disease of an internal organ, but the fact that I was missing the body’s master gland and occasionally needed to have extra amounts of ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) in lieu of natural adrenaline.

On at least two dozen times, I made the point that the problem was that I had no pituitary. I had to talk with an endocrinologist because my ailment was not a common one, certainly not one that a typical emergency room physician would grasp. Not only that, but the cure had been applied hours before when Martine gave me my medications. Back in 2017, the same hospital held me for three days until the resident endocrinologist strolled in with her hands in her pockets and, immediately understanding my situation, had me released.

Fortunately, I was released late that afternoon. Maybe it was the record of my 2017 experience that convinced them to let me go. Maybe it was because they had me walk to the bathroom and saw that I was fully mobile. And apparently, the doctors did talk to the endocrinologist who told them to let me go. I felt bad to be around all those persons who were really suffering. I kept telling the nurses I felt I was occupying space in their emergency room under false pretenses.

So I took a taxi home, and Martine was at the front of the apartment to give me my wallet so I could pay the driver.

The funny thing is, there is little advanced warning when one is about to suffer an Addisonian Crisis. In this case, I didn’t suspect something was wrong until I returned from the bathroom to go to bed. That was approximately a half-minute warning.

No Nurse, He!

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I Discover That I Would Not Make a Good Nurse

Last Tuesday, I posted here that Martine broke her wrist in two places. Worse luck, it was her right wrist; and she is right-handed. I suddenly found myself in the position of being on call fifty times a day or more to help dress her, open jars, wash dishes, help with the laundry, and carry out the garbage and recycling, Neither of us has been in a particularly good mood throughout this ordeal, though our eruptions are fortunately short-lived.

Today Martine had her plastered splint removed and replaced with a fiberglass cast. It turned out she replaced one fiercely uncomfortable hard wrap with another. At first, the fiberglass cast was a vast improvement—until it hardened and pinched as bad as the plaster and splint ever did.

Until such time as Martine’s wrist heals, I am the only pair of working hands in this household.

You Can’t Beat a Deadhorse

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Winter Aerial of Prudhoe Bay, Also Known as Deadhorse, on the North Coast of Alaska, Beaufort Sea. ©Patrick J. Endres

It’s not exactly the northernmost point in the United States: That honor belongs to Barrow (aka Utqiagvik), which is probably a more interesting town because of its links to Iñupiat culture. Deadhorse, Alaska, is probably better known as Prudhoe Bay, the starting point of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which sends crude oil flowing 800 miles to Valdez, Alaska, from where it is transshipped via tanker to refineries around the world.

To me, the interesting thing about Deadhorse is not that it’s a company town (owned by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company), but that there is daily bus from Fairbanks to Deadhorse via the Dalton Highway, which was formerly called the North Slope Haul Road. Once one leaves the “suburbs” of Fairbanks, there are only three populated areas along the route:

  • Coldfoot at Mile 175 (Population: 34)
  • Wiseman at Mile 188 (Population: 12)
  • Deadhorse at Mile 414 (Population: 25 Permanent and 3,500-5,000 Seasonal)

There are a number of sights along the way. Below, for example, is Oh Shit Corner at Mile 126:

More seriously, the highway passes by the Gates of the Arctic National Park and the Brooks Range, with occasional polar bear sightings as one approaches the end of the road.

If you are interested in seeing this wild part of the country, you can take the Dalton Highway Express to Deadhorse. It’s an all-day trip, though you won’t lack for company, Upwards of 150-250 trucks per day take the same road. Food and accommodations are available in Coldfoot, Wiseman, and Deadhorse. It’s more scruffy than luxurious, and you will be mostly in the company of Alyeska pipeline workers. Oh, and you’ll see a lot of the pipeline, because it pretty much follows the highway for its entire length.

“Apostle Town”

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Canadian Poet Anne Carson (Born 1950)

My favorite Canadian poet, who I think is equal to the best current U.S. poets, is Anne Carson. A classical r as well as a poet, she did a great translation of three Euripides plays that was published by New York Review as Grief Lessons (2006).

Apostle Town

After your death.
It was windy every day.
Every day.
Opposed us like a wall.
We went.
Shouting sideways at one another.
Along the road.
It was useless.
The spaces between us.
Got hard.
They are empty spaces.
And yet they are solid.
And black and grievous.
As gaps between the teeth.
Of an old woman.
You knew years ago.
When she was.
Beautiful the nerves pouring around in her like palace fire.

The Other Football

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Argentine Footballers Celebrating After Scoring Against Poland

Yesterday, I watched the World Cup match between Argentina and Poland. Unlike most viewers, there are a whole lot of teams I like. I realize that the United States is still new at this game and can be upset by the likes of Liechtenstein or Moldova. A generation from now, I suspect that what we call soccer will be more prevalent, if for no other reason that parents won‘t want their sons growing up brain-damaged like Herschel Walker.

In yesterday’s game, I liked both Argentina (as I’ve visited their country three times) and Poland (because I’m Eastern European myself). Argentina won the game 2-0, but both Argentina and Poland advanced to the quarter finals. I think it was because the sum of the team members’ jersey sizes was a prime number.

The announcers kept talking about how surreal the end of the game was because so many teams were still in play, irrespective of their win/loss standings. Also considered in the standings were scores for remembering to say “please” and “thank you”; the number of syllables in the first stanza of their respective national anthems; the teams’ overall dental hygiene; and how well the teams could pronounce the name of the country they were in. (I think the latter is something like “Catarrh”, no?)

Argentina dominated the game, but the poles had one real hero in their goalie, Wojciech Szczesny. (Gesundheit!) For the entire first half, he batted away everything the Argentinians could throw at him, including soccer balls, off-color epithets, and one extremely rusted steam locomotive. Only in the second period did two goals get by him.

The Star of the Polish Team: Goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny

Although soccer football does have its problems, such as the higher mathematics involved in calculating who gets to move on to the quarter finals and the treatment of draws. In American sports, there are a lot of stops and starts to allow for advertisers to plug their products and services. Soccer football games stop only for injuries, and then they add a mysterious number of make-up minutes after the regulation ninety minutes. I guess Americans will just have to get used to all that intensity and uncertainty. The rest of the world seems to have.

Baker’s Dozen

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Indian Novelist Anita Desai (Born 1937)

On this last day of November, I am happy to report that my month of reading only books by women authors was both highly successful and satisfying. In a post I made at the beginning of November, I wrote:

For the month of November, I will be reading only women writers, both fiction and non-fiction. Some of the authors will be new to me; some of the books will be re-reads.I began by reading a short story collection entitled Dead-End Memories by the Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto.When I finish, I will re-read Joan Didion’s Salvador.

From there, a number of possibilities present themselves, including Virginia Woolf, Edwige Danticat, Joyce Carol Oates, Wisława Szymborska, Dorothy B. Hughes, Patricia Highsmith, Freya Stark, Norah Lange, Dawn Powell, and Elizabeth Hardwick.I’ll just see where the spirit moves me. At the end of the month, I will summarize the discoveries I have made.

In the end, I came pretty close to my aim. Here is the final list:

  • Banana Yoshimoto, Dead-End Memories (short stories)
  • Joan Didion, Salvador (travel/history) – reread
  • Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room (fiction)
  • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (fiction) – reread
  • Freya Stark, Rome on the Euphrates: The Story of a Frontier (history)
  • Anita Desai, Journey to Ithaca (fiction)
  • Mary Austin, One-Smoke Stories (short stories)
  • Patricia Highsmith, Found in the Street (fiction)
  • Joyce Carol Oates, Wild Nights! Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway (short stories)
  • Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights (autobiography/fiction)
  • Norah Lange, The People in the Room (fiction) – reread
  • Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (autobiography/essays)
  • Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place (noir fiction)

That makes a full baker’s dozen of thirteen books.

The best three were Jacob’s Room, Northanger Abbey, and Sleepless Nights. Writers I had never read before included Banana Yoshimoto, Elizabeth Hardwick (a real find!), and Edwidge Danticat.

I may well do this again next year. Too long I have been ignoring the real talent of great women authors.

Broken Wrist

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Today, Martine slipped on a rug in the bathroom and, grabbing for the wall, broke her right wrist in two places. She was in such excruciating pain that she was not able to communicate with me for upwards of a half hour. As soon as she was able to move, I drove her to UCLA Santa Monica Hospital’s emergency room. It was only by clutching a largish container of blue ice that she was able to endure the agony.

We were in the ICU for over six hours while she was X-Rayed, injected with Lidocaine, and bandaged with a splint (twice, after her thumb became numb the first time). For the whole time that I was waiting next to Martine’s gurney, a homeless woman tried to use me as her private nurse while she loudly threatened to check herself out of the hospital if she didn’t get her oatmeal instanter.

It looks like there will be some changes to my schedule as Martine is unable to wash dishes or wet her bandaged splint. I had been planning to visit my brother in Palm Desert this weekend, but we’ll have to reschedule.

My goal is to see Martine through this difficult period, just as she helped me through two broken shoulders and three cracked ribs. That kind of support is an effective way of showing love.

The Darien Gap

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Is It Possible to Drive All the Way the South America? Not Quite!

Let’s see: Just hop in your car and start heading south until you get to Tierra del Fuego. It would be the trip of a lifetime except for one thing: There is a 66-mile gap between Yaviza, Panama and Turbo, Colombia where there are no roads. According to Wikipedia:

Roadbuilding through this area is expensive and detrimental to the environment. Political consensus in favor of road construction collapsed after an initial attempt failed in the early 1970s, resuming in 1992 only to be halted by serious environmental concerns. As of 2022, there is no active plan to build the missing road.

Below is a rough map of the area:

This is the only place on the Pan-American Highway where there are no roads. If you wanted to take that long drive south, you would have to either fly over the Darien Gap or take a boat. Or you can take a dangerous hike of some four days through the nastiest jungle in the Western Hemisphere and risk coming down with Mogo on the Gogogo or some other tropical disease.

Ruta Cuarenta

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The Other Great North/South Road in South America

Like the Chile’s Carretera Austral, Argentina’s Ruta Cuarenta (Route 40) is another of the great South American highways. It runs for 3,246 miles (5,224 km) from the northern tip of Argentina where it meets the altiplano of Bolivia all the way to Cabo Virgenes, the most southerly point on the South American mainland. It doesn’t include Tierra del Fuego which is on an island.

Although I have never been on the Carretera Austral, I have ridden Ruta 40 between Neuquén and San Carlos Bariloche in 1995. Both highways are practically up against the Andes. Where Coyhaique is the only large town on the Chilean highway, Ruta 40 goes through Cafayate, Mendoza, San Carlos Bariloche, Esquel, Rio Turbio, and Rio Gallegos on its way to the large Magellanic Penguin sanctuary by Cabo Virgenes. To go further south in Argentina, one has to take a Chilean ferry across the Straits of Magellan before crossing over to Ruta 3 to Rio Grande and Ushuaia.

There are stretches of the highway south of Rio Negro Province that are not yet paved, being the windy deserts of Patagonia. Even so, a good part of the southern highway is the only land route from Chile’s Villa O’Higgins to Puerto Natales. In addition, there are Argentinian buses plying the route

I would love to take Ruta 40 along its entire length, but I would require an SUV, at least two spare tires, and an auto mechanic. Oh, and for certain areas, a guide. Alas, I am too old and poor to be able to indulge in this travel dream of mine.