The other day my spouse and I were driving home from visiting friends on the South Side. Spouse wanted to see my mom’s old house. Mom hadn’t been living there for a few years; she’s got dementia, and can’t be left alone.
Last I saw it, maybe a year and half ago, the house was run down, and had become overgrown with shrubs and weeds, and the two-car garage had all but collapsed.
It’s a place I’d never wanted to set foot in again, anyway, for reasons. So seeing that it had been fully rehabbed – new garage and all – and seeing the interior pics on Zillow, and learning that it had been scooped from a tax sale and flipped, felt like a successful exorcism.
Granted, we just drop in on them. My dad isn’t expecting us, and he’s hustling in his labored, jerky way to tidy for guests. This room has become my mother’s entire world. She eats there, she sleeps there, she watches TV there. It’s more cluttered now than it was on our last visit. My mom tours the house when my dad leaves on errands. She gathers up items that speak to her on these tours and brings them into the room to surround her. I spot a few Madame Alexander dolls, several stacks of past Christmas cards from family and friends, baby pictures, and pictures of her parents. On the mantle, she has hung a few outfits from the 70s, which she saved in upstairs closets because “things always come back in style.” She even has a wig on her side table.
She’ll leave the room also to sneak wine in the evening and occasionally go to the bathroom — though from the smell of the room, she’s taking full advantage of her adult undergarment. And changing it less and less.
[Read more…]“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As I ease along toward my mid-fifties, having borne witness to a great many atrocities committed in my name, and as I currently witness a transition from the blundering, brutal fascism of President Trump to the smugly violent neoliberalism and imperialism of President Biden, I am tempted to dismiss King’s statement as hopelessly naïve. Not only is that quote a curt paraphrase of a more nuanced idea, it has likely also been used for cynical or misguided rhetorical purposes more times than I am willing to count. Even liberal commentator Chris Hayes has his doubts:
[Read more…]There’s nothing left on earth that’s more evocative of my dad than his wheelchair. I always had a complicated relationship with my dad, and now I have a complicated relationship with that chair.
He spent years fine tuning it to his needs. The cushion on a stalk that supported the back of his head was raised and tilted. The angle between the seat back and the flat part of the seat was increased until he didn’t feel like he’d tumble forward out of the chair, but not so far that he felt like he’d tumble backward out of the world. The armrest that held the joystick and control panel was positioned at just the right height so that when he reached out, his stiffened hands touched the controls, and he could move himself through the first floor of the house. He went through several seat cushions and experiments in foam toppers before he found the one least likely to give him sores from sitting all day and all night in the chair.
[Read more…]Medical Note: My name is Annabelle Schultz. I’m a licensed speech and language pathologist. I met Patient WK in 2017. He was an 85-year-old black male who suffered an ischemic stroke which caused him to fall naked down a flight of steps, landing in his home’s foyer. He lay unassisted for three days till his mailman heard his cries through the mail slot. I was dispatched to Patient WK’s home after his hospital discharge as part of his outpatient-services team. My job was to assess and improve his speech and language skills.
Quickly, it became clear that Patient WK did not need my services. His speech was flowing, flowering, sharp, and colorful. He easily pulled up both long- and short-term memories and showed no impediments whatsoever. But Medicare kept sending me out, so I kept going.
[Read more…]Stoneslide would like to propel junior executives clamoring up the corporate ladder with a business tip they won’t get at Ross, Haas, Kellogg, or Sloan. Liberally use “Sit your ass down” during any meeting you’ve been selected to lead. It’s the latest in business jargon so you can add muscle to meetings.
[Read more…]- Sit your ass down
- Sit your ass down
- Sit your ass down
- Sit your ass down
- Where’s the bathroom?
The political polarization in America has come to affect even the one area of society that used to unify us: shopping. Ingraticorp, a consumer market-research and development company, has launched an innovative product to help businesses navigate the newly tempestuous reality in the wake of the 2020 election.
The new Take a Stand™ is a large digital display that owners of all sorts of retail businesses can place in their shops to show that they agree with their customers’ politics—whatever those politics might be.
[Read more…]The FBI released an alert about a new foreign influence campaign targeting a wide swathe of American social media users. In a vast, coordinated attack, hackers have broken into the accounts of millions of people no one cares about and posted divisive political content that almost no one noticed.
“We’re all at risk in this new scheme,” said SAC Robert Twillit. “Previous hacking campaigns have targeted an elite few so-called influencers, but there are millions more of us who are truly insignificant that no one will listen to. I know my wife doesn’t read my texts unless I call her to ask if she’s seen them. Any of us could be the next target.”
Cybersecurity experts who have studied the attack warn that the nation should brace for further disruptions caused by this new breed of hackers. As in the 2016 election cycle, the hackers will release private messages and correspondence they have illegally accessed.
“They have acquired a huge trove of personal messages from these negligible individuals,” said Simone Allafart, CEO of security consultancy DigitalChastityBelt.io. “They will no doubt time the release of this information for maximum political effect. I expect to see grocery lists, poems aborted after the first line because the writer couldn’t come up with a single rhyme, maybe even brainstorms about new businesses to sell shoes to raccoons, which would, when you think about it, keep them from digging into the trash.”
God’s a lousy planner.
[Read more…]It’s so hard to know what anything means anymore. Our fellow Americans are using language in recklessly novel ways, which has the effect of shattering the centuries of shared understanding and history that underly our efforts to understand each other. I no longer trust I know what the simplest word means.
Take “canceled,” for example.
[Read more…]A comedy that follows heavy-equipment mechanic Mike Deiter as he works in the award-winning but loony landfill (or “dump”) called Big Moody Mountain.
Introduction
Big Moody Mountain (“BMM”) is arguably the most pristine dump in the country, which of course seems incongruous. It’s a dump. It’s filled with human discard and household waste. Doesn’t it stink? Isn’t it gross? On the contrary.
[Read more…]An interview with the creator of Netflix’s surprise hit
Unless you were a fan of the United Kingdom’s Department for Transport public safety and personnel training videos, until recently you were probably not familiar with the work of C. C. Cheltenham. By now you may be familiar, however, with the controversy and buzz surrounding their new Netflix movie Mark of the Healer. The movie, which debuted on the subscription streaming service January 19, quickly became the subject of wildly varying reviews; a rapidly growing global cult following; and even a series of protest campaigns in the U.S., Canada, and the UK.
[Author’s note: the following will be heavily laden with spoilers!]
[Read more…]Lots of people ask me how I manage to produce so many pitches. These days everyone wants to be in the business, and they’ve seen on my blog that I’ve averaged 7.46 pitches per day over the last three-plus years. I don’t want to sound self-aggrandizing, but I think some people are awed by that number. They think I must have some secret, but the truth is the only advice I can give is the classic advice for all writers: pitch what you know. When you look at it right, your own life has endless wells of inspiration.
[Read more…]This weekly drama will consist of a 70-something, white male born and raised on the Eastern seaboard of the United States staring at one of his favorite herringbone blazers, suspended by a hanger.
[Read more…]Expository sh*t about what’s happening in America.
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