Lunacy

For those of you staying awake tonight to watch the total lunar eclipse, here’s some scientific reading I found through a PubMed search about the effects of the moon on humans. In particular, I like the article by the Swiss researchers because they reference a John Lennon song in the title.

This topic of a full moon brings back memories of my first days on labor and delivery as a medical student. The nurse walked us to the blackboard where each patient’s name was written along with facts like the estimated date of confinement (the lingo is telling my age) and the number of centimeters of, well, never mind that detail. Anyway, the nurse explained that when the moon is full, the board fills up with patients.

My mother-in-law once told me that the phase of the moon at the time of your birth influences your personality, and if you’re into that kind of introspection, here’s more reading for you. Unless you already know the phase of the moon on your date of birth, you may need a chart like this one.

My lunacy impacts two areas of my life: writing and sleeping. Where the pen’s concerned, I’ve noted it’s difficult for me to write fiction unless there’s a waxing gibbous moon. I have trouble sleeping when there’s a full moon, and I relate that to the light that comes in my room despite very thick draperies. When we were students on call for obstetrics, we slept in a room with about ten beds and no windows. The room was called the womb. Since that time I’ve always had trouble sleeping with even the tiniest amount of light. In hotels I put socks and towels over clocks, cell phone chargers and anything else neon that might wake me. Around two o’clock in the morning, I usually wake to find a beam of red or green light somewhere that due vigilance missed.

I’m hoping I won’t be awake for the eclipse tonight. Good night!

And it's a strange lamp that lights the path back into memory/ Showing you not what you have but what you need.
Scrappy Jud Newcomb, "I Think of You"

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Doctoredits via Google account on the comment page for this blog

Blog Writer Plans Hibernation Day

Worthy Tips for Watching Television, Reading Random Stories, and Eating With Little to No Cooking

CARRBORO, North Carolina—December 14, 2010--I am officially hibernating. I last left home at 2:00 p.m. today and don’t have any plans until I fetch someone from the airport at 2:30 p.m. Thursday. And if I play this the right way, and Mother Nature decides to cooperate, I will be able to push that responsibility off onto my husband who’s a more suitable driver on an icy interstate.

Why hibernate? My fridge is stocked. My door is locked and my diamond is hocked? Not really.

I’m hibernating because I don’t like the cold unless it is accompanied by dramatic precipitation and Alpine terrain. I’m seriously living in the wrong country, and there’s nothing like December, January and February to remind me.

I’m hibernating because this is my coldest December on record in Carolina.

And what’s to do? Well, hm. I hadn’t thought of that. Perhaps this idea is not fleshed out.

Wait a minute. I could work on my 2010 taxes. I could fill out next year’s financial aid application. I could write query letters for my novel manuscript. I could update my will and spring clean a few months early.

This hibernation needs more thought. I’m already afraid I may squander it fecklessly checking Facebook. Wait! Television might be the answer.

I know, I’ll place a glass of water and a Tupperware of gluten-free banana muffins bedside and stay under the covers all the way through American Morning, my favorite really early morning show. (Have you checked out the acoustic memories they play as they return from commercial breaks? Evidently, Jon Stewart doesn’t like them.) And this just in, John Roberts will not be on American Morning anymore after the month is up. What better justification for watching it past the point of 6:50 a.m. when I normally bail out of bed?

After American Morning I think I’ll walk to my sofa to watch The Holiday for the first time this year and the twentieth time of my life. When that’s over, I can boil some shrimp and green beans for four minutes while my potato absorbs microwaves for eight. Then I’ll take my tray to the sofa to watch last night’s PBS NewsHour minus the commercials. After lunch I can check my e-mail and see what has happened to my shares of GM stock that have a stop order on them.

Then I may have to finish "St. Mawr," the D.H. Lawrence story that Dr. Weldon Thornton recommended to me at a Derby party this year, before starting on Utopia by St. Thomas More (this may seem like a word association, but actually, utopia was the word of the day on WCHL this morning, and Dr. Wayne Pond told us the word originated with St. Thomas More).

Once I’ve tired of reading, I’ll make plans for my husband to cook my dinner when he comes home from the lab.

Individuals seeking ideas for a similar hibernation or needing a sound track for hibernation should contact me via the comments page.

-END-

Permission to reprint: You may reprint any two of the suggestions herein as long as you promise to wake me up when this cold weather is over.

Need an image? Evidently all my blog photos are being placed on Google Images by robots while I sleep. So far, it’s not keeping me up at night, and it probably won’t interrupt my hibernation.


I don’t want to get out of bed/ You don’t want to go out in the snow/ We don’t have to do the things Eskimos do/ Let’s have a hibernation day, me and you.

“Hibernation Day” Jars of Clay

Westboro Baptist Church Needs to Turn, Turn, Turn Away from Elizabeth Edwards' Funeral

Two things are making me sick today: one is a gastrointestinal bug and the other is even crappier. WRAL is reporting that the Westboro Baptist Chuch (based in Kansas) is planning a protest at the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards in Raleigh on Saturday.

These protesters would do well to listen to their acoustic memories, which have evidently short-circuited on the “do unto others” sound track. If that is the case, here is a song, based on Bible verse, for this misguided group.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)/ There is a season (turn, turn, turn)/ And a time to every purpose under heaven/ A time to build up, a time to break down/ A time to dance, a time to mourn/ A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.

-Pete Seeger, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"

Give us our time to mourn, Westboro! Turn out of Raleigh!

Snow Was Falling Like Moravian Stars

Snow was falling like Moravian stars the day my son suggested we visit Old Salem. When we arrived we crossed a covered bridge and stepped back in time.  The bridge transported us to the eighteenth century.


The Moravians settled in North Carolina in the middle of the eighteenth century on land known as the Wachovia tract. Their religion, the first Protestant denomination, was founded by a Catholic, Czech priest who was burnt at the stake for heresy. The Moravian Church is still in existence today in the United States. At Old Salem, the church sits north of the square.


Farther down Main Street we came across the campus of Salem College for women. Perhaps you’re more familiar with Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Moravians believed that education was essential for salvation. The day of our visit, children were rolling snowmen on the green while a trombone choir performed. The Moravians are credited with bringing classical European music to America.

Needing to warm up, we stepped inside the Winkler Bakery for some sugar bread. Serving sweet buns during a church service (the lovefeast) is one of the Moravian traditions.

In every gift shop, we came across the Moravian star, with its twenty-six points, a symbol of Advent.

Outside, snow continued to fall until it turned purple.



We walked along Main Street in the cold. That's my husband in the yellow jacket, strolling past the Single Brothers' House. Wreaths decked doors with diagonal designs. I turned to wave at the camera.


We saw homes that could have inspired the likes of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Up on the Housetop.” Our thoughts turned toward getting back home before the interstate froze.




The day ended with contemplation of the motto of the Moravian Church: "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love."

MAM at the Improv Slam

The weekend after Thanksgiving I found myself at Dirty South Improv getting an acoustic memory workout. The two improv teams, in their attempt to take home the gold, called on the audience for backup, putting all of us in memory boot camp.

Why so much work?
Audience participation. It's a staple of the improv slam. At one point we all participated in something I'm going to call My Acoustic Memory Shuffle.

An acoustic memory shuffle?
Right. The red team left the stage while the black team asked the audience to list favorite movie lines and favorite song lyrics. And please note, the 7:30 show was an all ages show, and as DSI promised, the show was fit for everyone from the 5-year-old to the grandparent. And that made things even more challenging. More about that shortly.

What movie line did you contribute?
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Was it hard to keep the suggestions clean for the family?
Yes, as you can see, my potty mouth got into my acoustic memory with the “d” word.

What movie line did your 10-year-old like the most?
“Dobby is free.”

Which song lyric didn’t make sense?
De Doo Doo Doo De Da Da Da

What did they do with the lines that the audience suggested?
The black team wrote each line on a strip of paper and then scattered the strips on the stage before calling the other team back to the stage.

Then what happened to the acoustic memories?
The red team came back on stage, and there was a request for the audience to name a place where people get things done. A child shouted out, “the office," but it was pointed out that people really don’t get much done at the office. Someone else hollered out “grocery store,” and the three members of the red team immediately started to improvise dialogue and mime actions of shoppers in the grocery store. As the scene progressed, it became apparent they were portraying two old farts with a grandson in tow.

Once the scene was established for the audience, they started inserting the lines from the songs and movies into the dialogue by cueing up a statement, such as, “And then he said to me…” and then stooping over, picking up a piece of paper, and reading the line to finish the sentence.

But was it funny?
Yes, it was hilarious. Uh, maybe you had to be there. And you can go, but you have to come to Carrboro, North Carolina, to see Improv Slam played Dirty South Improv style.

Can I try this at home?
Yes, please do. It would be the perfect entertainment for family gatherings during that next set of holidays that starts in December. All you need is a pencil, some paper, two teams of three people and some other random family members to make line suggestions, laugh or boo. And acoustic memories. Of course, you need lots of acoustic memories.


De doo doo doo, de da da da/ Is all I want to say to you
-Sting

Sufferin 'til Suffrage

Hey y’all, pull down your levers! It’s time to vote.

Last week my 5th grader memorized the amendments to the Constitution. I had to plead the 5th when he asked me to explain the 9th. But I’ll never forget the 19th amendment, oh no.

Saturday mornings I’d wake up and bake cinnamon rolls from a tin can and eat them while I watched cartoons in the den. Schoolhouse Rock infiltrated the mix of Scooby Doo and Lidsville. Remember "Sufferin 'til Suffrage"? You know the 19th amendment “struck down that restrictive rule.” That lyric refers to the turn of the 19th century, when women who had the right to vote in certain states lost that right. The 19th amendment ensured women would not be denied the right to vote on account of their sex. My grandmothers Elizabeth and Rose were able to vote when they reached the age of majority, but not their mothers, Lucille and Flora, respectively.

Voting rights used to vary from state to state. My current state of residence was the last state to remove the restriction that voters had to own property. That change occurred in 1856. Even in our times, it was not until 1971 that the 26th amendment established that in all states the legal voting age would be 18. So my sister was able to vote in ’74 when she was 19. She’d been waiting, too; I still remember the McGovern poster in her bedroom in ’72.

Here’s more to read on the history of voting rights, but you might want to save this reading material until after you vote—I don’t want to impinge on your voting time!

Disclaimer: There was a time that I was so turned off by politics that I was an independent, not because I wanted to remain impartial, but because I thought I was above it all that way. Now I’m affiliated with a party, and I’m humbled by my right to vote. I see it as part of my duty to model good citizenship for my children, and as a tribute to the people who came before me to ensure my right to vote.

No literacy test, no poll tax. I’m voting. Because I can.

And now we pull down on the lever/
Cast our ballots and we endeavor/
To improve our country, state, county, town, and school.
"Sufferin 'til Suffrage" Schoolhouse Rock

Backfield in Motion

There’s an old rivalry in Louisville, Kentucky, that goes back further than Papa John's to the early days of KFC. Each fall two Louisville high school football powerhouses square off in front of a crowd of around 40,000.

If Trinity is winning the game, you can here the crowd chanting, “We will, we will ROCK you.” In the fourth quarter if St. X is winning, you can hear the crowd singing, “Nah, nah, nah, nah/Nah, nah, nah, nah/Hey, hey-ay/Goodbye.”

I attended those games from 1969 until 1982, first as a child sitting on her dad’s shoulders, last as a cheerleader standing on her partner’s shoulders. And you can add this game to the long list of things I miss about my hometown.

Last night a little nostalgia came over me as I took my son to see the Friday night lights in the 2751-oh zip code.

The library lights at Carrbor-Oh High shone like a beacon, but on closer inspection, the library was empty.

Even the principals were out of their offices. And in Carrbor-oh, Principal Batten is cool enough to wear a purple velvet jacket to the game.

I ran into one of my babies who’s in Raleigh at college this year.

But no one was drinking beer. Somebody tell me if I’m wrong: I think they sold beer at the St.X-Trinity game in the 80’s. Not that I had any.

Carrbor-oh was 5-0 going into this game, and it's the talk of the town that this team has beaten the others in town in its first five years in existence.

This morning I can’t get the soul song “Backfield in Motion” off my mind. It hit the charts before “Starting All Over Again.” This Soul Train video of the latter song showcases the talent of the cousins from Mississippi. Their moves remind me of those of the backup singers in the Kentucky band The Trendells that I used to go see at a bar in Lexington when I was in med school.

How did we get from football to soul?

Backfield in motion, yeah/
I’m gonna have to penalize you/
Backfield in motion, baby/
You know that’s against the rules
“Backfield in Motion”
-Mel and Tim

Girls on Film

The ad shows a woman, spade in hand, dressed for a morning in her flower garden. On closer inspection, “she” is a lifelike sculpture. On her lapel, a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness makes it clear how she met her untimely death.

I find the ad while flipping through a magazine in the waiting room in the radiology suite, where I have had a mammogram, have been told it is abnormal, and have been left to wait for a radiologist to consult with me.

When you are waiting for the radiologist to tell you just how abnormal your mammogram looks, the last thing you want to do is see a reminder of breast cancer’s toll. But what should you be doing while you are waiting in radiology during your annual screening?

Mammograms have a regular part of my health care since I was 25. Because my mother was diagnosed with premenopausal breast cancer, I started getting screenings earlier than the average woman, who usually begins screening at age 40.

I practiced diagnostic surgical pathology at the world’s largest medical center and saw many breast biopsies under my microscope every day. Although I still dread my mammogram, I have become more savvy about how I mentally prepare for the screening.

Taking all kinds of potential problems into consideration, I have come up with a list of action points to minimize the stress of scheduling and getting a mammogram. My suggestions are based on a decade of mammograms at three academic centers in large metropolitan areas.

• Understand your insurance company’s policies regarding reimbursement for a mammogram. Last year the radiologist suggested I have an ultrasound on the same day as the mammogram. I complied. When the explanation of benefits arrived in the mail, I was surprised to find out that the insurance company did not pay for the mammogram because a second service was billed on the same day.

• Schedule your mammogram for the first two weeks of your menstrual cycle when your breasts are less tender. The compression during the exam will be less uncomfortable that way.


• When you call to make the appointment, get the mailing address in case you need to send any previous mammograms in advance of your appointment. Find out the exact physical location of the building and ask where to park.


• Consider telling a trusted friend when you are going to have your appointment, but think twice about asking a friend to go with you. When I am mustering courage, sometimes talking stresses me out, and I would feel obligated to talk to my friend. See if a friend can help you with child transportation duties if necessary.

• Plan a fun activity to follow the mammogram, but make sure it is one with a flexible start time since you won’t be able to control how much time your visit to the radiology department will take. Whether or not you receive immediate feedback on your films, it is nice to celebrate that the exam is out of the way.

• The night before the mammogram, pack your insurance card into your purse and review your breast health history, including all procedures and screening exams. You will be filling out a history sheet in the office before your mammogram. Also, check your calendar and write down your LMP—you will be asked for it. Having this information on hand will keep you from feeling ill-prepared while completing the necessary paperwork.

• Don’t wear deodorant; do wear separates. Pack your deodorant into your purse the night before your appointment--this way you won’t reach for it out of habit the morning of your mammogram, and it will be in your possession when you get dressed after the appointment. Deodorant can cause aberrant spots on the X-ray. If you accidentally apply deodorant the morning of your exam, don’t sweat it: The radiology suite will have moist towelettes for you to use. During the mammogram you will be asked to undress from the waist up. If you wear separates, you may be less cold during the procedure. Wear a top that won’t wrinkle after it has been folded into a plastic bag and left there for an hour. This way you’ll look fabulous for your post-appointment activity.


• Eat breakfast before your mammogram. Even if you are scheduled for an eight o’clock appointment and think you’ll be at the bagel shop by nine o’clock, eat at home. You never know what delays could occur or what additional tests could be performed over the course of the morning. Stress plus an empty stomach is a sure recipe for unease.

• Be very careful when you walk through the parking lot. Stay aware of your surroundings and don’t allow yourself to slip into a mood of anxious unawareness. If you have an early morning appointment, the parking lot for patients may be used by employees who are speeding into the lot to find a spot. Look for crosswalks and don’t assume cars will stop for you.

• Take a portable music player. I say this for two reasons. You will make yourself unavailable for chit chat with well-meaning people whose story may only make you more anxious. Secondly, you will be able to drown out the audio of the TV in the waiting room that may be blaring a talk show dialogue about cancer, a faltering economy, or anything else that could zap your positive attitude.

• Take your own reading material that you have selected based on its low likelihood of stressing you out. Books that you already read but would like to revisit are excellent choices.

• When you leave the mammography suite, be certain that you completely understand when you are supposed to return to the clinic for your next appointment. Mark that date on your calendar as soon as you return home and call to schedule that appointment two months in advance.

I hope you share this information. The idea is to get more “girls on film.”

My day in the radiology suite ended with an ultrasound that showed benign changes; I left and took myself to lunch.

"And she wonders how she ever got here as she goes under again."
"Girls on Film" Duran Duran

Questions 67 and 68

“Was your hair that red Friday night?”

That was the first question he asked me, when at 11:55 a.m. Central Time on Labor Day, I came to the front gate to enter the code to let him into my fortress strong.

So we were for all intents and purposes on a blind date because clearly he was blind to my hair color three nights prior when we met at the Duck. But interestingly, I came to find out several weeks after Labor Day, we had been matched as dance partners at the Duck by Therese and her decorator friend, Craig, on the basis of hair color although his reddish highlights were more subdued than my brassy red hair. My Parisian hairdresser, Sebastien, referred to us, his clientele, the female physicians from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, as his “painted ladies.”

I dismissed his question as one of sincerity and not approbation and invited him in. I pulled him through the corridors pretty quickly, as I recall, trying to avoid the man down the hall that I had canceled the date with for Labor Day. (That was fairly easy because his sister fielded the call when I canceled.)

Inside my unit the next thing I suggested still causes laughter: I invited him to have a quick cup of hot coffee in my kitchen when it was 105 degrees outside. I did not know that he was not accustomed to slamming a cup of Joe like a physician does before heading to the OR. So he politely sipped at hot coffee in spite of not wanting it.

He drove us to River Oaks Theaters in his black Tahoe to see Celestial Clockwork, my choice.

I lost all movie picking privileges very early in the relationship. Since that time we have both returned to IMDb to see there just were no good movie picks for that Labor Day weekend. Just like there are probably no good movie picks for this Labor Day weekend. It is historically not a good movie release week. Try not to start a relationship with a movie date on Labor Day weekend.

In the parking lot of River Oaks Theaters, I noticed that his car had two bumper stickers, Fly Girls and a Darwin fish. I didn’t understand either one.

Questions. He asked a million questions, which he later told me was because he was nervous.

At one point I felt like invoking my grandfather Farmer's line: "You ask the damnedest questions!"

In the Darwin fish car in the movie parking lot, he asked me what nationality my last name was. I told him it was my ex-husband’s last name. That silenced him for a while.

The movie was no sleeper. It grossed 410,000 dollars in the US. Ten of those were ours.

On the way back to my apartment, we passed Randall’s on Westheimer. He asked me if I wanted to go out to eat for dinner. I said I had picked up a few things for dinner.

That was the understatement of the year. Susan had spent her last day in Houston helping me shop two or three stores for this date. But I wasn’t going to mention any of the date prep to him.

You see after I left him in the parking lot of the Duck the Friday prior, I decided and vowed to my best friends that there was no way I would try to find him if he did not call me Sunday as promised. Evidently, the call almost never happened because by the time he looked on his hand for the phone number later that night, he found that most of it had transferred onto the steering wheel of the Tahoe, most likely while the song "Good" by Better Than Ezra played over the car airwaves. (My friend Barrow dated a guy in that band back in Baton Rouge.)

The night after I gave him my number, I spent with my girlfriends at Cezanne, the jazz club above the Black Labrador Pub, listening to an African American woman deliver jazz standards with a “sultry, meet you after midnight voice” (Susan’s words, as told to me in a personal correspondence last week).

The day before the date, Suzanne flew back to Louisville early, and Susan and I hung out, shopping at Whole Foods (the small one that was closer to I-59 in Shepherd Plaza), Whole Earth Provision, Cactus Records and Randall’s. I won’t tell you everything Susan suggested I buy, but I will tell you it was fun.

After the movie, back in my kitchen I had the chicken breasts, Tahini sauce, eggplant, and a salad I prepared of avocado, Kalamata olives and grapefruit.

During this second visit to my kitchen, he noticed the photo of the little girl on the beach at Galveston mock surfing on a piece of driftwood and asked who that was.

“That’s my daughter.”

The questions stopped for a while longer. Then I asked him to do something for me: Grill our dinner on the patio. He had told me he was a volunteer fireman in Austin. I figured he could stand the heat.

We ate at my dining room table with clover cutouts, a hand-me-down from my Hoffmann grandparents’ Germantown kitchen. He pushed the salad around on his plate, not mentioning that he hated olives.

Then we moved to the sofa for more Q and A. Somewhere between questions 67 and 68, we fell asleep. Then we woke at two and he went home.


Can this feeling that we have together/
Oooh, suddenly exist between/
Did this meeting of our minds together/
Oooh, happen just today, some way

“Questions 67 and 68,” Robert Lamm

Pink Adobe Hacienda

Here’s what happened the night I met my husband fourteen years ago today.

My Sacred Heart classmates had flown into Houston to celebrate Labor Day weekend with me. I was working at the ranch that Friday (Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital). I knew that by the time I fought traffic on 59 South and made it to my apartment in the Upper Kirby Business District that it would be dinnertime. I left a key for them with the management. They sunned poolside until I showed up.

We were on a mission to get to the Mucky Duck by 7:00 p.m. A rockabilly band called the Hollisters was playing. I slammed on a pair of denim overalls and a T-shirt with the logo for a local bar, The Black Labrador. And in retrospect, let me just say, yuck. I didn't even have enough time to put on makeup.

The Mucky Duck was not just any venue. It was my home away from home. I was there most nights, getting inspired to write songs and play my guitar. The owners, Rusty and Therese, knew me by name. Their pub calendar was on my refrigerator.

The Hollisters were not just any band. They were my ex-boyfriend’s favorite band. He and I were always trying to get out to a Hollisters show, but somehow we never made it out to see them.

Susan and Suzanne were not just any friends. They were my best friends. They had endured Father Wagner’s impossible Friday vocabulary quizzes with me senior year of high school. One day in Fr. Wagner’s class they asked me to go to Florida with them over spring break. I am fairly certain the three of us failed the test Fr. Wagner gave us the week back after spring break for a novel (I do not even recall the name of the book) that none of us read. I know I failed that test. We were part of a group of teenagers that roamed Louisville with the original moniker, The Gang. Susan and I choreographed a dance to the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” that we performed for certain graduates of a boy high school on the night of their graduation. Suzanne and I shared the coincidence that our fathers had graduated from another boy high school in the same class with Tom Cruise’s dad, whose last name was actually Mapother.

When we arrived at the Duck, we made a beeline to the bar. Three Aggies in starched shirts and khaki pants accosted us. We dismissed them. After all, my friends were married, and I wasn’t looking for a starched shirt.

We settled down at a long table just in front of the stage. I always have to be in the front row.

Now the Duck is an intimate venue that seats probably seventy-five max. It’s where I met Troy Campbell, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Kelly Willis (who was my accomplice one night during a fight with the ex-boyfriend), Darden Smith, and Alejandro Escovedo, to name a few. It’s where I took potential boyfriends to test them to see if they liked music as much as I did.

I recall we were in high spirits at my table. The Hollisters, they rocked.

I had glanced over at another table and spotted a very handsome young man with long hair in a ponytail, and then just looked away. My girlfriends were going to get all of my attention.

So to my surprise, said ponytail man tapped me on the shoulder, apropos nothing, and asked if I would “care” to dance.

Wait, back up. I left out a big point about why our table was in such high spirits. The owner of the bar, Therese, was scheming with her decorator friend, and she sent a bottle of champagne to our table, and told us that it was from the men at the table where the guy with the long ponytail was sitting.

Okay, I would have danced with that guy even if I was perfectly sober. You see, on closer inspection, he was wearing the following:
A billiard ball motif silk shirt
A pair of jeans
A pair of suede clogs
A scrunchie (that a “girl’s mom” had made for him)

The man could shag. I had spent much time shagging in the basement of the Phi Delt house at Centre College. I had not mastered the Carolina shag, but I could fake it.

When silk shirt asked me to dance, his two friends asked my two friends to dance shortly thereafter. We all ended up on the very small area of floor in front of the stage that could accommodate dancing.

I think we danced to “Pink Adobe Hacienda." But, it could have been that we danced to “East Texas Pines” or “Better Slow Down.”

We only danced one song. They returned to their table, and we returned to ours.

At our table the discussion went like this: “Heather, he is doing all of that dancing in clogs!”

A song or two later, the three gentlemen reappeared and asked for another dance. We consented. My future husband and I left the dance floor holding hands and did not let go the rest of the night.

We moved to their table, and much sparring and Q&A ensued. My friends vetted silk shirt. And they bragged about my ability to throw a party. And they found out that he had thrown a party or two himself on his ranch in Texas.

The band packed up. We stepped out into the night sky, where silk shirt pointed out the moon, two days past full. He asked the designated Duck police officer for a pen, which he used to write my number on his hand. The number was something like 528-3869. At that point there was only one area code in Houston, and it was 713.

Silk shirt said he would like to see me again. I said that I would be busy with my girlfriends until Sunday. I asked him if he was laboring on Labor Day, and he said no. So I suggested that he call my apartment Sunday afternoon.

Susan, Suzanne and I climbed into my brown Volvo sedan. I cranked the moon roof open, and we drove back to my apartment.

I’ll tell you the rest on Labor Day.

A Whale of a Tale

When was the last time a stranger entertained you with a story? Traveling minstrels don’t favor hot concrete so I bet it wasn’t this summer. And in the absence of a minstrel, who is going bend your ear?

Larry McMurtry bemoans the death of the coffee shop story in his book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen. He’s right; there isn’t much storytelling at coffee shops these days with all the laptop screens dividing customers into their own mutually exclusive, synthetic, virtual worlds.

I traveled riverside this afternoon and was delightfully surprised that the river can transcend time and technology. Those of us gravitating to the southerly flow of rippled liquid seem to want to tell and be told stories as much today as folks did back in the days of Huck Finn.

“How did you end up here?” My waiter inquired, on the shore of the Ouachita River in Eastern Louisiana. I had already told him I was en route to Fort Worth, and being that the Warehouse No. 1 Restaurant isn’t just off the interstate, it was a fair question. And I had already noticed he looked like a young Dave Grohl, so I didn’t feel like I needed to hold anything back.

I briefly mentioned that I research all my stops on a trip. I am an official member of the Hey See Club (as in, "Hey, see this," and "Hey, see that"). We don’t tote membership cards but you’ll know us when you meet us. We think the journey is just as important as the destination. That’s why we’re drawn to rivers, where the allure of slow travel on a boat still hangs in the breezes today.

So I told my waiter I grew up in a river city (Louisville, Kentucky is, after all, the River City) and I’m always trying to see ones I’ve never seen before. My waiter told me the river I had chosen to see was one of the most beautiful in the state. “Not here, where there’s all this crap in the water, but not too far from here.” He told me the river is named silver water in Indian speak. Then he told me a story.

Time was I could have my story before lunch every day—didn’t even have to wait for bedtime.  Grandpa George would drive me into Battletown before noon because it was just too hot to be out past lunch. We’d go to Jake’s General Store, the one that smells musty. There Jake would be behind the counter, ready to spin a tale about a president coming down the Ohio on a boat.

I was a story hog growing up. When I was sick with the flu or in bed with a headache, my dad would sit on the edge of my bed and ask if I needed anything. “Tell me a story,” I’d say. Then I’d add, “About when you were little.”

And Dad would oblige. He had stories about swinging across Beargrass Creek on vines, climbing the fence to get into Churchill Downs and running from the police in Germantown. Uncle Gordon never got caught and Dad didn’t think that was fair.

If Grandpa George were here today, I’d say, “Tell me a story about when you were in the CCC.” He fought forest fires in California and made a daytrip to Tijuana with his buddies. I have the Daguerreotype of them in a mule cart with a fringed surrey. But I don’t know the story behind the picture.

I think the only person who is going to tell me a story today told it to me an hour ago. Here it is: Last spring there was more rain than there’d ever been in years in Monroe, Louisiana. So much rain that the Ouachita River rose until it was “a foot up off of the deck.”

Now here I had to ask my waiter what he meant. We were on a deck that seemed to be about twenty feet off the ground. I put my hand down, like I was petting a dog at my feet, and inquired, “Do you mean it was this high?”

“No,” he said, “It was just a foot under the deck.”

“Wow,” I said.


“Yeah, it hadn’t been that high since 1991. And we all came out here on the deck, and hung a guy over the railing, keeping him just above the water.”

And that was his story. It was over just as soon as it began, but I suppose it’s the sentiment that counts.

My waiter told me to come back in the fall, when it’s cooler and people like to sit on the deck to linger over dinner. They probably flipped for me today to figure who would wait on the only woman crazy enough in Eastern Louisiana to eat lunch outside in the heat. But I think I’ll return next time I’m passing through especially if there’s a story waiting for me there.

Onward I went over the Ouachita, and after passing into Texas, at the very first stop possible, I saw a sign, shining like a beacon and a promise of all things Larry McMurtry to come. It was a DQ!



Maybe here, in this state of “tall tales and other big lies,” I’ll find someone to tell me a real story. And go on and feel free to click on that link to see one of the funniest animated shorts ever, starring Ray Wylie Hubbard and produced by my friend Troy Campbell.

Books: A Southern Train of Thought

When I moved to Chapel Hill, I heard that everyone here has an M.D. or a Ph.D. James Taylor’s neighbor told me this town was once known as Pill Hill. Forget doctors; I’m starting to think you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a writer.

I live in the land of the southern writer. I’ve seen Daniel Wallace at the Y. I’ve attended cocktail parties where Fred Chappell sipped juleps. I’ve even spotted songwriter Tift Merritt looking all rough and tumble in her jeans with Zeke at her side at the Saturday morning market.

I didn’t know much about southern literature until setting foot on the campus of the University of North Carolina, where I’ve acquired a taste for it at the annual Thomas Wolfe lecture. I fell in love with Ellen Gilchrist one year at the lecture after hearing her read from her story that begins “It was the summer of the broad jump pit." Another year, my friend Garrison Somers, the editor of The Blotter (the South’s free literary magazine), and I fell under the spell of Fred Chappell.

Hearing a writer read his stories has a certain pull for me. I’m growing addicted to it, much in the way I grew addicted to hearing a songwriter sing his songs in Texas.

Last night caught me a bit by surprise. Excuse my ignorance but I had no idea who Louis D. Rubin was until yesterday. He came to my attention as I supped alone at my dining room table and took a few minutes to ponder an e from Flyleaf Books. A reading by an esteemed writer and editor who had taught many students over the years--I’m in, I thought.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the community room of Flyleaf Books, listening to a spectacled southern gentleman talk as he gestured with his right hand.

He read a passage from a time in his life after he had graduated from JHU but before he went back to the campus as a professor. Can you imagine returning to Charleston and seeing the train that always piqued your curiosity, then buying a ticket to ride to the end of the line just to see where it goes?

That concept makes me think of some of the trains I missed and some of the trains I rode, and I am speaking figuratively, to be certain.

I woke this morning earlier than usual, reeling from a dream about my extended southern family preparing to board the Canadian National Railway, and twitching to write about my own American childhood. Then as I stood in the early morning light near the window, far off a train’s whistle blew.

Who is this man Rubin and what has he stirred in me? I turned on the computer and answered both questions. He is none other than the cofounder of Algonquin Books (Water for Elephants) and professor of Annie Dillard.

Something has happened in the world this night
Of rare consequence for some time to come,
Whether or not it alters the final sum.

“Passage” Fred Chappell

Summer Flesh, But Seriously

In 1970 when I had just mastered my ABC’s, Michael Jackson arrived on the scene with an ABC song.

This summer I’ve got your back. I’m going to teach you the ABC’s of melanoma detection.

By now we all know someone who has been diagnosed with melanoma. In my surgical pathology practice in Houston, I diagnosed more basal cell carcinoma than melanoma, but melanoma scares me more. Melanoma can strike at a young age and ultimately metastasize to distant organs and kill.

While this topic seems serious for my good-time blog, it is, after all, about prolonging the good times.

It’s summer and skin is everywhere. The girl in front of me at the Durham Bulls game last weekend was wearing a halter that left most of her back and her two-tone nevus bare. Two-tone is for spectator pumps, not spectators.

While the ethics of a doctor’s responsibility to tell a stranger to get a skin biopsy would make for an interesting topic, it's not as interesting to most people as say, baseball stats. I will allow that when I saw my husband’s “funny looking mole” on his back last month, I didn’t even nag when he said he would take care of it. I scheduled the appointment and drove him to the dermatologist.

Now it’s time for the ABC’ s of skin cancer detection. Any one of the following signs is reason for concern about malignant potential in a nevus and could be the first sign of melanoma:

Asymmetrical growth
Irregular border
Variations in color
Diameter larger than a pencil eraser
Evolving (new look or new symptoms)

The accompanying pictures of melanoma are purposefully horrific to illustrate their respective point. Keep in mind that melanoma doesn’t have to look “that bad.” If you have any mole that makes you worry, see a dermatologist.

Early detection is important with skin cancer. I strip for my dermatologist every year and you should, too. If a dermatologist hasn’t seen your back in a couple summers, it’s time to go back!

Feel free to pass this blog on to anybody whose back you want to cover.

Dad's Lullaby

Sir Robert Mansfield

A master of nicknames--mine was Hez--
he wore a Robbie roby,
fashioned of plaid flannel blue and gray,
and sang of a shiny pony
as he paced the hall of our ‘60’s ranch,
my febrile head at rest on his shoulder.

A savior from sickness and avengers,
in the Smokies he gunned our Impala at the boulder
to keep us safe from Chief Falling Rock and his mob.
“Only once in your life tell off a boss.”
So much advice from a man named Rob
there’s an eponymous book, his Rules of Order.

A city boy allergic to the farm,
at the track he explained all things pari-mutuel,
not my musings on cell division.
And he bought his form at a package store in Buechel.
Though in school he studied the catechism,
the nuns they cracked his knuckles with rulers.
His hands never healed and his joints were his fate.

A Southern man in blue seersucker,
his white Cadillac with the “Go Cats” plate, a fave.
The scourge, it put my father too soon to the grave.



Go to sleep-y, little baby/
Go to sleep-y, little baby/
When you wake/
You'll patty-patty cake/
And ride a shiny little pony.

Into the Mystic

Writing challenges me more than anything else I know. Making reality fit intention wrestles on the page with letting magic trump reason.

When I’m running on empty I turn to poets and troubadours for inspiration.

My dear friend Susan gave me a book of poems, and the poem for June 18 was written by Percy Shelley. The last year of his life, he wrote this poem for another man’s wife after hearing her play the guitar he gave her:

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

The magic of that world of music can evade on the written page. I need magic in my novel manuscript because it’s about music, that intoxicating elixir.

I’ve turned to writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez to study the trade. I’ve enjoyed reading books, like Bel Canto, that try to capture on paper the aura around a singer. The three sci-fi writers in my Raleigh coffee klatch told me that the cow can’t suddenly jump over the moon on page one hundred.

Seeds. I had to plant seeds early so as not to spook readers later.

Most of my friends know me as a girl caught in the two dimensions of what she can plainly see in front of her face. It’s not just that I have to open up and believe, but I have to take my readers down with me.

Nature does her share. Carolina feeds me daily. While I’m working on feeding a family in the kitchen, sycamores and pines beckon to me from a southern-facing window.

One morning last month I rose craving miracles and I turned to the miracle-maker: Mother Nature.

My camera could hardly keep pace with the wonders.







Most days I feel like my writing conveys a tree in a forest



But what I really want my readers to see is the mystical light on the tree trunk,





and that kind of sun just doesn’t shine every day at my keyboard.

I want to rock your gypsy soul/
Just like way back in the days of old/
And together we will float into the mystic
Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic"

The Memory Stax

Whatever is going round and round your head, I bet there’s a song with it.

The DJ of our life is that man in our mind—I think he is Jonny Mambo’s great-uncle—who takes a memory and pairs it with a song from our mental Rhapsody player. He also works in reverse. He can take a song and run to the stacks of our life memories and pull out a day that fits the song. It’s an acoustic rhorschach. For me the exercise goes like this:


I hear “Itchycoo Park” and I remember sitting on my mother’s lap at the dining room table in the morning before heading to montessori.



I hear, “My Old Kentucky Home” and I remember standing at the Kentucky Derby, the first one after my mom died, and watching my dad brush a tear from his eye with his handkerchief.


I hear “Strange Magic” and I remember making out in the backseat of a parked sedan while another couple made out in the front seat.

Inevitably, the association evokes an emotion, and so the full reaction plays out:

The Small Faces' "Itchycoo Park"—Mom’s lap—filial love

ELO's "Strange Magic"—parked sedan—young passion

Stephen Foster’s "My Old Ky Home"—Dad’s handkerchief—loss

Gin Blossoms' "Follow You Down"—Phoenix hotel clock radio –ironically, excitement about moving to a city where I was not following anyone

Steve Earle's "You’re Still Standing There"—missing someone while driving a rental car in Nashville--achingly smitten

For some songs I can also layer on a specific sense:
The sax of "Bahia"—a lover’s apartment –lusting full tilt—the smell of garlic sauteing with onions

Over the years friends have shared their acoustic memories with me. One told me the song he heard on the road in his car the moment he found out on his cell phone that his child had Down Syndrome.

What’s playing on your station today?


She gets rock n’ roll in a rock n’ roll station for a rock n’ roll dream/ She’s making movies on location/She don’t know what it means/ But the music make her wanna be the story/And the story was whatever was the song/What it was/ Roller girl, don’t worry/D.J. play the movies all night long

Mark Knopfler, "Skateaway"

Naked Valedictorian

A naked valedictorian. I was not a naked valedictorian, but Matt the Electrician sings of a valedictorian who sheds her clothes and says, “This is who I am, and I’ll never see any of you ever again.” I heard Matt sing the song live in Raleigh a few summers back. When I told Matt I was the high school valedictorian, the lady sitting next to me at the bar said that she was, too. We’re out there at Matt shows, the former valedictorians.

Last night my daughter was stressing about writing a speech she’ll give at graduation, and it was taking me back to a time when Andy Dumstorf and I tried to write my valedictory under the influence of Pete Townshend.



Actually, if I had to write a speech today I would call on Andy or Tim Culver or Kelly Ford to help me.

I did flounder a bit with my valedictory. The nuns rejected the first copy. So I wrote the speech with fifteen minutes to spare before jumping in the sedan to head downtown with my parents.

And while I was driving around in North Carolina today, thinking about this blog, I heard a gospel singer named Mary Williams sing on The Story on NPR. Her voice immediately reminded me of that of my beloved classmate, Cathy Hughes.

I got to know Cathy personally sitting next to her on the bus. Buses deposited us at a common stop on Bardstown Road and Grinstead Drive every morning. My first bus came from the Fern Creek area, and hers came from downtown. Together we rode on the second bus that took us to Sacred Heart.

Cathy did not graduate from high school. A river washed her away one summer in Tennessee. A river—think of that—something to be enjoyed and loved—something that should inspire. In this instance the river was the reaper. It ended Cathy’s story. Cathy had so much vocal talent that one can only wonder where that voice would have taken her.



We had a teary memorial service for her that August, and we sang “Candle on the Water.” The ever-composed Jean Cassidy led us in song. It was a song that was supposed to make us feel better. Every time I have an acoustic memory of Cathy singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” I get a deep down sorrowful feeling of loss.

And today on The Story, Mary talked of how gospel music can give you the courage to go forward. Mary talked of troubles present. World problems. Dick Gordon and Mary decided a song can be a way to a solution. We need a world of song today.

And wouldn’t you know, after longing to hear Cathy sing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Mary sang it on the radio show today. She sang it from the bottom of her toes, the very depths of her soul, the way a song should be sung. I heard Cathy again.

I’m thankful for singers like Mary Williams and Cathy Hughes. They give us the courage to go forward. And that’s something that today’s graduates need.

Principals and counselors close in, trying to avert a scene/
She just keeps on sticking to her speech, feeling like a prom queen

“The Valedictorian,” Matt the Electrician

Romancing the Stones

I’m romancing the stones. You’d expect this from me, right? You know I’ve got it bad for Mick and the boys, and you probably think the re-release of Exile has me mad. Yes, I’m writhing on my sheets. No, it’s not what you think.

The irony is that I have some rolling stones in a vestigial organ that concentrates bile, and I’ve been out of sorts lately.

Remember the 911 call? Not an auto accident. Thought it was a heart attack. There have been roughly four more since that day, only one other that involved a fire truck and beefy men. By the way, the Durham firemen are more buff than the ones here in Orange County.

The workup wasn’t too prolonged. Thanks to one of the studies, I now have the reassurance that I don’t have mitral valve prolapse like some in my family. But the problem is what I do have is really, really painful. And can you believe my friend, Susan, made the diagnosis over the phone without seeing the patient? And without spending a fortune on medical school like I did.

So I’m romancing the stones. Cutting fat out of the diet. Painful? Very. My husband is a wizard in the kitchen and we can’t break bread the way we used to. Every day sustenance is a challenge. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. And stay away from the muffin man.

My strawberry shortcake ain’t what it used to be. Here’s one that I made with gluten-free cornbread, strawberries soaked in apple cider (not balsamic) vinegar, topped with (yum?) no-fat plain yogurt and a sprinkle of what might be too much coconut now that I've checked the label.

Taking a walk on the bright side, I get to watch late night TV if I’m having an attack--they often occur when you’ve already drifted off to sleep. This week I tuned into two-timing, sorry, two-time Oscar winner Michael Douglas on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and heard him suggest that Catherine’s understudy might come home on the nights Catherine has to do the show. Yep. Also caught Sean Penn on C-SPAN2. He gave a harrowing account of an ambulance ride with a young Haitian who eventually died of Diptheria. Saw Hillary looking tough as nails in a hot pink suit on the same channel. Turns out the New Start treaty has nothing to do with "Start Me Up."

So I better roll. I’ve got a stone to romance.

“I’m romancing the stone, never leaving your poor heart alone/
Every night and every day gonna love the hurtin away.
Oh and in the heat of rapture when I feel the cold winds blow/
Through the broken glass, I’ll see at last the sweet desire in you.”


“Romancing the Stone,” Eddy Grant

She's Already Made Up Her Mind

Was it the Texas Ranger Museum? Dr. Pepper? Or Big 12 conference athletics?

Let Lyle say it for me. She's already made up her mind.


Two years of road trips. Think Thelma & Louise.



We were on the run from idle hours in Carolina. We weren't sure where we'd end up. We always met friends on the road.

Hit a couple of honky tonks and record stores along the way, like the Bruton family biz and the Love Shack. Stayed with Uncle Jeff. Even caught Pat Green sneaking into a Mystiqueros set.



We hit the Big D, the capitol of Texas, and Capitol Hill.



We even stormed the Mall. No, wait. It was storming on the National Mall.



Now the journey is over.


Ella is off to university. She's already made up her mind. She picked the private school in Waco.



She's leaving me because she really wants to
And she'll be happy when she goes
She'll be happy, she'll be so very happy
She'll dance and sing and even learn to fly
-"She's Leaving Me" Lyle Lovett