The headline above suggests that I should hold this column until Easter. But if you can remember back two weeks (as I can, dimly), you’ll recall that I was going to tell you about a really helpful rabbit. Not the wacko one with Alice at the tea party, but a bunny that’s really helped me with signing checks and such.
(“Ah, it’s coming back!” you think. “He was writing about his penmanship! About how it never was much good, despite great efforts by a seriesof teachers, nuns who drilled him in ooooOOOOooooo and //////////, without little effect at all. And — I remember! —about the portly sister who, in desperation, stood behind his desk and leaned down over him to guide his hand — and brought a revelation.
Nuns have bosoms! Inside all that starched linen and black serge, there are women!”) Congratulations! That’s amazing recall. I not sure I could have done it.
Anyway, my real point last time was that Parkinson’s has now wiped out what was left of the nuns’ hard work, and I can barely sign a check legibly. But here comes the bunny. I mentioned that problem to Justin Deichman, the therapist who’s given me such help with energy healing and acupuncture.
“I think,” Justin said kindly, “that you’re tensing up, willing to write a clear signature. And you know that tensing brings stress, and stress, in your case, brings tremors.”
Bingo! I know that sequence all too well. Stress also brings exhaustion. And here’s the part that doesn’t seem quite fair: Not only negative stress causes it, but having a really good time does, too.
A long evening with dear friends can knock me out; leave me prostrate for a day or two. If I were running things, I think I’d adjust that factor. But I’m not. And so back to the bunny.
“Instead of tensing up to write,” continued Justin, you need gently to distract yourself. When you’re about to sign, think of a blue rabbit with crossed eyes. Then, write on.”
What? Yes. It works, every time! Pen poised, I imagine that blue rabbit, its crossed eyes staring at its twitching nose. And, mesmerized by the image, I sail through the signature. Hurray, Justin! Hurray, rabbit!
The other Parkies and I find that life is full of such accommodations, some sensible, some silly, all effective. When one of our support group members freezes in place and is unable to raise a foot to walk, two of us will brackethim and start marching in place, usually whistling the “Colonel Boogie March.”
Left, right, left, right, we stamp, until our friend’s foot, one or the other, frees itself and he begins to march in place with us. Then it’s around the room, often with everyone whistling or humming along.
I’m foreseeing these days that another kind of compensating lies in my future. My Parkinson’s Plus is monkeying with my fingers now, and that plays hob with keyboarding.
Sometimes this means backtracking three and four times to straighten the messes that I’ve made in a single sentence. There’s a remedy for this, should it get steadily worse.
It’s as astounding software program called “Dragon.” This clever beast, once downloaded into your laptop (PC or Apple), will listen to and learn the sounds of your voice: your vocabulary, your typical sentence structure, even your intonations and pauses. And, having learned the way you sound, it will then take dictation and produce a typescript right before you on the screen.
My good friend Andy, a Quaker down in New Jersey, makes great use of his Dragon. Andy’s living with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s paralyzed him from the neck down and, of course, blocks ordinary keyboarding. And so Andy summons his friendly Dragon, who listens and then produces perfect memos and emails.
Andy is still able to talk on the phone, albeit in the slurred voiced that is the lot of so many of us with neurological diseases. The last time we talked, he laughed about having to retrain the Dragon again.
“Each time my speech gets worse,” he said, “the Dragon gets confused. And so we have to get out the software and retrain it to my latest voice.”
It’s the nature of ALS that, even as his body fails him, Andy’s intelligence, wit, warmth, and depth of spirit will stay completely in his control. For many, thought of that would be a horror.
For Andy, it is surely a challenge and must bring anxiety.But my guess is that he’s deeply familiar with his own interior and with the Being Who shares that most private space. So familiar that he fears no evil as he approaches that valley of the shadow of death.
I know that Andy will laugh heartily when I tell him about the cross-eyed blue rabbit, and will understand at once its value. And so I’ll encourage you, if need be, to imagine your own rabbit—not mine; they’re one to the customer.
But I think you should surely make it blue, picking a shade that will startle you. Not baby blue, of course, or azure; these are too soft. And certainly not Prussian or navy blue; much too dark for me. For me, it’s royal blue: just right!
But make your own choice. Just be sure to cross the eyes. That’s really important.
Columns
From Fly Creek: About that rabbit
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In These Otsego Hills: Continuing on from 1986 ...
We continue this week by answering the question we asked if anyone remembers the old Cooperstown National Bank? On May 13, we wrote: “Martha Dickison, Delaware Street, called to tell us about the Cooperstown National Bank where she worked at her first ‘real job’ after her graduation from school.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: Spring inventions
The second line of Lawrence Durrell’s novel “Justine” reads as follows: “In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring.” I first read all four novels of his magnificent Alexandria Quartet during the year I traveled from Saigon to Paris after working in Vietnam for a refugee organization for several years.
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From Fly Creek: Revving up for spring
Time to bring you up to date on Fly Creek’s happy clambering into Spring. First, the eatery scene. “Is Jerry’s open yet?” The answer is, “Oh, yes!” The porches are freshly stained; the lawns a uniform green, and the hop vines are already climbing the posts on the covered side deck. Blue and I went up there to lunch earlier this week, and I celebrated spring with my traditional bacon, onion and Swiss cheese hamburger. We two sat on the deck, enjoying the broad view and some spectacular clouds marching across, up toward Schuyler Lake.
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In These Otsego Hills: More from 1986 ...
This week we continue with the discussion of telephone service from the pre-dial days. On March 12 we noted that: “No one has yet produced a telephone directory from pre-dial days, but Doug Preston of New Hartford recalls that some business (which one?) in the village had the phone number 7.”
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Home Notes: Celebrations abound at the Thanksgiving Home
April was a month of celebrations and much to appreciate. We had a 90th birthday celebration for Wanda Noyes on April 4 including her family and friends. Personal care staff Dee Bouck worked with residents to hand paint Easter eggs for the tree in the activity room.
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In These Otsego Hills: 1986 continues ...
This week we continue our journey through the columns of 1986 with the answer to the question “for whom, according to tradition, was Hannah’s Hill named?”
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Book Notes: Baseball book features local contributors
Baseball is part of the nation’s fabric. Most kids have a memory of the game either from playing Little League, attending a major league contest or meeting a favorite player. In Cooperstown that feeling is magnified since we are the official home of baseball. We get to see firsthand what has made the sport the national pastime.
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From Fly Creek: Ya really wanna know?
SETTING: Fly Creek General Store. CAST: Assorted seated geezers, drinking coffee. [Door opens, enter heavy-set geezer; walking slowly with wide stance, maybe prostatitis.]
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In These Otsego Hills: Returning to 1986 ...
For the past several years now we have undertaken sharing some of the area’s oral history we have collected over the years that we have written this column. Therefore, this year, we would like to go back to 1986 to share that rather unusual year. Those who were here then no doubt remember that it was that year that the village celebrated the bicentennial of its founding.
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From Fly Creek: For reasons unknowable
[Jim’s reached back to 2002 to share one of his favorite columns.] My father was born as the last century began into a river village in tidewater Maryland. He told me once of a man there in his boyhood who, like so many, made a thin living tonging for oysters in the cold months and, in the hot and humid ones, crabbing and raising vegetables.
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In These Otsego Hills: CCS balancing act ... side two
Last week we shared a number of activities in which students at CCS can participate. We thought it was an impressive, if not overwhelming, list. And we are indeed pleased that the young people of our area have these opportunities. However, we think it is also important to keep in mind that these undertakings do have a cost associated with them. They are not free. In fact there are, no doubt, those who would say they do not come cheap.
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From Fly Creek: A graceful crowd
Make of this what you will, friends. I feel I’m really meant to share it with you. Despite good medication for my Parkinsonism, every four or five weeks I can sensethe symptoms building up on me, giving me more than ordinary trouble. Lately it’s been falls, and last week brought a typical one. I’d gone out to get the paper, moving along with penguin steps on the snowcoved ice patches, and usingmy spike-tipped cane the waya climber uses an ice axe. But circumstances overcame me. Parkinson’s wipes out the possibility of multi-tasking.
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In These Otsego Hills: This and that and the other side ...
We note that the CCS Class of 2012 is presenting its senior class play, “Snow White” by Tim Kelly, this week with performances 7:30 p.m Thursday and Friday, March 29 and 30, and at 11 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31. All performances will be at the Nicolas J. Sterling Auditorium at the Middle/High School.
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In These Otsego Hills: That green thing ...
Of late we have noticed that our email inbox has been much busier than usual. In fact, we find ourselves hard pressed to keep up with all the various messages we receive. As a result we suspect we have not answered some in as timely a fashion as might be thought appropriate.
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From Fly Creek: What you need to know
In their last Sunday’s bulletins, all 84 churches of Otsego County were to have carried announcements of an important meeting; most of them did. But because the announcement is so important, and not just to the churched, here it is again.
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Book Notes: Living the magic of ‘Hoosier’
A lot of people consider “Hoosiers” the best sports film of all time. The 1986 classic follows the exploits of a fictional small town Indiana high school basketball team in 1952 as it attempts to achieve the impossible dream of a state championship. The story is inspired by the true life achievement of the 1954 Milan team, who with an enrollment of only 161 students shocked big city power Muncie Central on a last second shot to win the state title. It’s the kind of sports story that represents something that is hard to grasp unless you live in a small town.
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In These Otsego Hills: The most perfect village... home to heavy industry?
We suspect we would get a whole lot more accomplished if we spent less time thinking, pondering and musing about things. In fact, there is a good possibility we might actually have completed our goal of cleaning the basement if we only focused on the task at hand, instead of trying to figure out the world around us. It almost makes us wonder if it is possible to think too much about things. We certainly hope not because should that be the case, we are in deep trouble.
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Up On Hawthorn Hill: The past in the present
Clichés abound about the value of photographs. Most are probably true at least to a certain extent. What I do know about an image is that it represents something of the past that is not the pastitself. But that is the power of any image. It represents something that once was. The beauty of an image, revisited, is that it functions as a catalystfor reliving in the present a past experience. My own view, one that I thank the Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges for, is that all we ever can experience is the present.
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Home Notes: Workshops held for Thanksgiving Home residents
We welcomed Linda Keller, Ph.D. of the Bassett Research Institute and Ida Baker of NYCAMH who presented a six-week workshop for residents and staff.
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From Fly Creek: Late-winter hamlet news
Well, at least I’m “guessing” it’s late winter now — in the winter that wasn’t. But, if not snow, I can provide a flurry of Fly Creek news to share with you, scooping Associated Press, Reuter’s, and United Press International, not to mention all local news services except our General Store.
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In These Otsego Hills: Continuing on from 1986 ...
