5/31/2026

 Sunday, May 31, 2026

1900 US troops arrived in Beijing to help put down Boxer Rebellion

1912 US Marines landed on Cuba

1921 A large-scale race riot broke out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, later described as the worst incident of racial violence in American history with 150-300 African Americans killed 

1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded "Give Peace a Chance" in a Montreal hotel, during their second 'bed-in' for peace;

2025 A court in Guatemala convicts three men of crimes against humanity and sentences them to 40 years in prison for the rape of 36 women from the Maya Achi indigenous group during the civil war. 

In bed at 9, up at 4:30; 0445 145/83/64 123 202.0, 0505 143/81/65 93;  49/64/48, cloudy day ahead.  

Morning meds at 7:40 a.m., and half-dose of Bisoprolol at 5:30  a.m.

Summer Spring Winter FALL.  As best I can recall, that was the name of the Indian princess on the Howdy Doody puppet show when I was a kid and home television was still a new thing.  I think of her today because, while doing my required restful sitting with both feet flat on the floor before taking my blood pressure, I read one of Donald Hall's essays (he's a former Poet Laureate of the U.S.)  in his collection, Essays After Eighty, the one titled "Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr. Dr."  The title refers not to the large number of doctors one regularly sees after age 80, but rather to the number of honorary doctorates Hall has received, leading a friend to adress him not simply as Dr. Hall, but as Dr., Dr., Dr., . .  The chapter is actually a rather harrowing account of his life after 80, describing a number of automobile accident he caused, and at least one house fire.  What caught my attention mostly though was his description of his various falls, because they reminded me of my daily battles with the law of gravity.

I don't recall my earliest notable fall, but I have photographic evidence of it.  I was about 3 years old and I climbed through a break in a fence/railing around the depressed entryway to our apartment building's basement, where our little family lived, sometime before my dad was drafted into the Marine Corps and sent off to Iwo Jima to kill and/or be killed.  I fell only a few feet to the concrete below, but landed right on my noggin and fractured my skull.  Somewhere in the basement I have a photo of myself with the top of my head wrapped in tape or bandages, taken my my mom or dad with my mom's writing on the back, "Don't loft [laugh] at me, Daddy!"   

The only unintended fall I recall during my years in the Marines occurred during a middle of the night training exercise around our air control center in Yuma, AZ, when I was still a second lieutenant.  I was in charge of a small group of supposed guerrilla infiltrators tasked with blowing up the installation which was located on top of a small, rocky knoll at the Yuma air station.  While creeping up the hill at the head of my sappers, I turned to quietly warn them that the footing was treacherous, and, as I started to do so, I slipped and received quite a gash on my right shinbone.  I looked and felt silly, of course, and the staff sergeant who was my second-in-command had to take me back to his quarters after the exercise was completed to patch me up.  I still have a 2 inch scar from that fall but what I remember most is the embarrassment I felt as I took a tumble while warning my troops not to take a tumble.

The only memorable fall I recall in my early civilian life was falling out of a tree in front of the Kenwood Avenue Methodist Church, while helping my next-door neighbor Lance Herrick, who was the pastor of the church.  I don't remember why I was up on that tree, but I do recall falling out of it and the zinger I experienced when I hit Mother Earth.  So far as I know, I suffered no serious damage from the fall, but who knows?  Maybe that fall coupled with the fractured skull when I was a youngster set the stage for my becoming as Geri once described me, "eccentric."😀

We have lived in our current home in Bayside for 14 years now and in that time, I have fallen several  times.  The first time was many years ago when I heaved a heavy branch down the steep-ish slope to the ephemeral pond on our lot's western boundary line.  I heaved the branch so forcefully that I followed it down the slope and had to climb on all fours up the slope to get back onto my feet.  Another embarrassment.😟  Then a couple of years later, I fell down wrestling with a large package of some sort at our front door.  A little embarrassing, but again I could get back on my feet by myself.  

Since I turned 80, my falls have been more problematical than embarrassing, because I'm no longer able to get back on my feet by myself.  My leg muscles are too weak and my balance and general coordination too poor.  I fell once in my bedroom doing-I-can't-remember-what and had to call to Geri to help me up.  A couple of years ago, I fell (backwards this time) in the tv room, trying to pick up some pencils I had dropped, hit my head on the built-in bookcase/cabinet, and had some bleeding from my elbow.  That time, Geri had to call 911 and get the North Shore Fire Department to the house to get me up and check me out.  The paramedics offered to take me to the VA ER but I declined.  Finally, just a couple of months ago, in March, I took a header, or more accurately, a knee-er, on our driveway, while taking the trash cart down to the curb for pick-up the next morning.  I was proud of myself for making sure before I went out that I had my iPhone with me AND a flashlight, just in case.  And sure enough, where the driveway's downslope becomes steeper, the trash cart started rolling faster than I was moving, taking me down to the 20℉ asphalt.  I tried to call Geri on my iPhone but it seemed that something wasn't working, perhaps my iPhone, perhaps my fingers, perhaps my brain.  BUT, mirabile dictu, my Apple Watch (the cheap one) worked, noticed my fall, as well as my longitude and latitude, and called the North Shore Fire Department who responded in due course.  While waiting for the paramedics, I shined my flashlight on and about the trash cart, hoping to attract some driver passing by and, sure enough, a young couple in a pickup truck, stopped to help.  The lady went to the house and alerted Geri of my plight while the gent stayed with me.  I told him the fire department was on the way and indeed, they showed up within minutes, got me on my feet, assisted me into the house, checked my "vitals," asked if I wanted to go the ER, and left when all appeared to be OK.

When I was hospitalized for 5 days in March for very low heart rate and blood pressure, I was confined to bed, not by railings or bars, but by a pressure-activated alarm system that blasted whenever I got out of the bed.  I had to call a nurse every time I wanted to go to the bathroom or to get out of the bed for any reason.  I begged the attending nurses to turn off that alarm system so I could go to the bathroom by myself, like a big boy.  They explained, quite properly, that I was, quite literally, confined to bed because of my very high risk of falling which, in turn, had a high risk of a broken shoulder, broken hip, etc., or worse, of hitting my head and getting "a brain bleed, which can leave you a different person."  I was finally told that whether to release me from bed confinement would be up to a professional assessment by a physical therapist.  When the physical therapist finally arrived, I told him that I was lobbying him for release from confinement and that I was well aware of my risks of falling, etc.  After taking me on a test lap around the entire hospital floor plan, he set me free.   I could have kissed him.  I felt the same kind of elation that I felt when Dr. Ryzka in Rheumatology officially confirmed my self-diagnosis of polymyalgia rheumatica and put me on prednisone.  The latter freed me from months of severe pain and disability; the former freed me to go to the bathroom by myself.  Such is life in the mid-80s.

In Hall's book, the essay following "Dr., Dr., Dr.," etc., is "Death."  In it, he writes: 

In my eighties, the days have narrowed as they must.  I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.  Louise the postwoman brings letters to my porch, opens the door, and tosses the mail on a chair.  I get around - bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, new chair by the window, electrical reclining (or lifting) chair for Chris Matthews and baseball - by spasming from one place to another pushing a four-wheeled roller.  I try not to break my neck.  I write letters.  I take naps.  I write essays. . . . My goal in life is making it to the bathroom.

To which I add only, amen.