I have healthcare through WVU Hospitals. I see a general practitioner annually, a cardiologist, dermatologist and allergist usually twice a year, and I have an annual check-in with a Medicare doctor. They GP, cardiologist and Medicare doctor were scheduled for this month, but the general practitioner was postponed and they asked me to do an online with the Medicare doctor. I've seen the same Medicare doctor for four years, a soft-spoken Italian woman. This year they told me she was on leave and gave me a physician's assistant. There were complicated instructions involving an app on my phone, but they relented somewhat and said I could do it on a laptop. The app on the laptop wanted permission to go into all the other apps on my desktop and change them, so no. The phone app was better, but then there was a WVU app on top of that that wanted to access everything on my phone. When I clicked "No" it said I couldn't use it, so I said "Yes."' Later, I sent a note to WVU complaining.
The PA was an older woman (I checked. Her degree was from 1979, so maybe sixty). She had issues with the technology. They always ask the same questions "Do you have rugs or rickety stairs?" "Do you have a bar in your bathtub to hold on to?" "Are you afraid in your house?" No, I'm afraid out of my house these days. They test your memory, and ask if you are depressed. "I'm a 70-year old gay man living in West Virgina," I said. "Of course I'm depressed." I said that.
I told her about being sick all of January after spending a glorious week running around Manhattan at the end of December. Is it possible I had a mild case of COVID-19? Mild, like not going out of the house for ten days, then no more than an hour a day for the next ten, not being well until the end of February. She told me there is a test, but we don't have it, and if you had it before, we don't know if you can get it again. The regular test for the virus would show if you had it, but you don't qualify for the test.
Meanwhile, our Governor wants to partly reopen the state this week. Maybe outdoor dining if separated from others (and if it ever stops raining) and haircuts. Our county is not included, because we are considered a "hotspot" in the state with 107 confirmed cases. My constituents are already asking City Council here in Morgantown to block off a lane on certain streets to add space for cafés on the expanded sidewalk. And Delegate Evan Hansen, from our district, and a scientist by training, points out that, although the state has recorded fifty deaths from COVID-19, statistics show that deaths in the state since the first of the year are running 1,600 above what one might expect, with most of the "excess deaths" in March and April. So maybe the pandemic is worse here than people think. Certainly everyone should be tested, and everyone should be covered by healthcare, not just rich people or people who are here "legally." People who lose their jobs, and thus their health insurance must be covered. You can't stop a pandemic if there is anyone excluded from treatment. Anyone.
Joe and I have still been going to the grocery store twice a week. All but one worker at our local Kroger is masked, but the vendors who come in to stock the shelves are typically not, and many of the customers are not masked, especially the younger ones. With pressure from the state and federal government to reopen quickly, I fear going out in the future will be terrifying. Even our city manager's office has proposed reopening. There's a meeting tonight (Tuesday) and I know some of us will object to opening city offices too soon.
In addition to my OLLI class and City Council, I've been reading a lot, five books at a time. I'm reading about the music from the Brill Building in the 1960s (my next class), a haunting collection of short stories from Carol Shields, purchased at a library sale in New Vienna, Ohio on my trip to Clinton County in December of 2018, a Pulitzer-winning book about people who are evicted, and how and why that happens. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' book We Had Eight Years, a collection of his writings during the Obama presidency with new commentaries, and Vikram Seth's more than 1500 page novel about India in 1951 and 1952, which I'm reading for the third time, A Suitable Boy. Coates attended my high school, briefly, I think, and twenty-five years after I graduated.
I read Morgantown's Dominion-Post and Charleston's Gazette-Mail every day, and Sunday's Washington Post and New York Times. We get Consumer Reports and Rolling Stone for me, and The New Yorker and The Economist for Joe. Joe has stopped reading news for the most part. It makes him too anxious. I have to read about the virus in New York City and the politics in Washington in short doses to keep from losing my mind completely.
I'm traveling in my dreams. Last night, I told the bus driver parked on 6th Street by the Los Angeles County Art Museum that I wouldn't be going on the trip to New York because I had been there with Joe in December, and last year with my mother and sister. I had a memory in the dream of visiting some elderly relative in The Bronx in an apartment house on a hill. I was, in reality, in New York with Joe in December, and in New York with my mother and sister (and nephew) not last summer, but in 2002. I haven't had relatives in the Bronx since the 1950s. That scene was filched from another dream. My friend and classmate (second to eighth grade) Rodger Kamenetz writes about dreams. Maybe I should ask him what this means.
The PA at WVU was only worried that I get up to pee five or six times during the night. She doesn't think it's heart failure because I run several days a week, and that seems to be getting better. Maybe it's kidney failure or prostate problems. She wants tests for all of those. The cardiologist told me that my heart works at 40% of what it should do. My father died of kidney failure (refusing dialysis) when he was a year and a half younger than I am now. And Medicare won't cover a prostate test.
So, the future doesn't look bright. My generation had too many people to start out with. They sent some of us to Vietnam to reduce our numbers, ignored AIDS for many years to kill off those of us who are gay men, and now that we are old, we are expendable so that the economy can reopen. Without the possibility of contracting or contracting again COVID-19, I still have plenty of medical issues that could end my life. I was able to answer most of the questions in a good way. I generally remember to take my meds, I can still keep track of money, carry grocery bags, remember most things, cook, clean (although I pointed out that we generally don't). I don't fall or feel dizzy. My goal now is to keep it all going as long as possible. I said the other day "If I can have ten more years of decent health, I'll be happy." Then I remembered that one of my grandmother's friends said that sitting around the lake in her Florida condo development more than fifty years ago. I guess that's where I am now.
Showing posts with label Rodger Kamenetz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rodger Kamenetz. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Thursday, September 22, 2016
1962
Next week, the term starts at West Virginia University's branch of Osher Life-Long Learning. Both Joe and I are teaching ambitious six-week classes. His is called "Old Testament Rituals: Don't Try These At Home." Mine is called "Great Hits of 1962." I've already taught four-week classes on the top 40 hits of 1960 and 1961. I've expanded to six-weeks to include the Country, R&B, Album and Adult Contemporary (formerly Easy Listening) charts.
Most of the people in my class were in high school in 1962, so this music will resonate with them. My classes have been popular and well-reviewed. I was in seventh and eighth grade in 1962. I had my bar mitzvah, my voice changed (after my bar mitzvah); I got braces. I was tiny, but just starting to grow, and new kids, annexed in seventh grade, joined us in eighth. I tried to be friends with them, and eventually succeeded, more in ninth grade than eighth. In eighth I tried and failed to be a clown, and the new kids had established friendships among themselves going back to elementary school.
I was in the top class in seventh grade, after not being in that class in fifth and sixth. I was a whiz at our thrice-weekly Hebrew school, winning "Best Student" in sixth grade. But in seventh, in the top class, deluged with homework, I found it hard to keep up. My seventh-grade classmates included Rodger Kamenetz, the author of "The Jew In The Lotus" and other books. He started a Jewish Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and later at the New Orleans campus. In eighth grade, we were joined by Wendy Sherman, who became Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton. I often think that my class at Sudbrook Junior High in Pikesville, Maryland was the smartest class in the history of Baltimore County Junior High Schools. If I'm right about that, then I was the dumbest one in that class. Not to mention an undiagnosed ADD case.
Mrs. Crain, our seventh grade CORE teacher, had us keep a notebook of assignments, in order, to turn in after a few weeks. While others turned in perfectly well-ordered folders of material, all I had was a handful of half-finished assignments. Mrs. Crain asked for a conference with my parents. She didn't believe me when I told her they refused to come in. She had my mother write a letter explaining why she couldn't come in. In the letter, my mother promised to help me with my schoolwork, which she never did.
Outside of my own life, the big issue I remember from 1962 was civil rights. Baltimore was still fully segregated, down to the weekday afternoon teen dance show, The Buddy Dean Show, which had African-American kids on alternate Fridays as "special guests." People who have seen some iteration of "Hairspray," based on the Buddy Dean Show, think that was made up. Our synagogue had stopped sponsoring trips to Gwynn Oak Park, the amusement park near our house, featured in "Hairspray" (filmed elsewhere as Gwynn Oak was torn down before the original "Hairspray") because they wouldn't allow African-Americans to go there. Diplomats from newly-independent African countries were refused lunch at restaurants on US 40 between Baltimore and Wilmington, while on their way to the United Nations in New York, creating international incidents. President Kennedy pushed up the schedule to build Interstate 95 to bypass those towns. Maryland House Restaurant was planned to be in the median of the highway, designed to be integrated. The road, now called Kennedy Expressway, opened in November, 1963, just before Kennedy was assassinated.
I took dance lessons in the spring of 1962. I learned the waltz, fox trot, cha-cha and mambo, my mother's idea being that I could dance with my grandmother at my bar mitzvah party. As it was, because it was a luncheon on Saturday afternoon, my Orthodox grandmother vetoed live music. My bar mitzvah was on October 27, the day the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. This was the first time I bargained with God. "Okay," I said, "There will be a nuclear war and we will all die. But can I please have my bar mitzvah first?"
For those of us living in suburban America, with two parents working before that was the norm, life was good. My parents paid $75 a month on their mortgage, they had a beautiful 1961 Oldsmobile convertible, which cost about $1500. They were still young and attractive at thirty-four and forty; my father had his first toupée. Aside from the usual issues of being twelve and thirteen, my life was good.
In music, too, this was a peak year for American pop music, before the British Invasion. This was the music Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were hearing in England. Lines were being crossed in popular music. African-American Ray Charles' album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" hit all the charts. Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and The Orlons, all from Philadelphia, crossed over to the Top 40 charts with dance hits "The Twist," "Mashed Potato Time" and "The Watusi." African-American owned record company Motown had hits by The Marvelettes, The Countours, The Miracles and Mary Wells. Jewish Artists like Neil Sedaka scored with "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," and Jewish composers like Carole King and Gerry Goffin had hits with "Up On The Roof" for The Drifters and "The Locomotion" for their babysitter, Little Eva, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote "Only Love Can Break A Heart" for Gene Pitney, and Phil Spector produced Pitney's "He's A Rebel" for The Crystals.
Italian-Americans also did well, with the hot new group of the year The Four Seasons, hits by Connie Francis, and Tony Bennett's famous "I Left My Heart In San Francisco."
Country music had Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and several hits by pint-sized teenager Brenda Lee.
1962 was the year the soundtrack of "West Side Story" topped the charts from May through June 1963, the year of "My Son, The Folk Singer" by Allan Sherman, and the iconic first Peter, Paul and Mary album.
There was American music by and for everyone, in a way presaging the coming of age of the civil rights movement the following year, as kids across America were listening to music by Jews and African-Americans without prejudice.
I'm stoked for this class. 1962 was an era of hope, an era when we thought change might be for the good and our country would be more inclusive and more free.
My class is for six Thursdays from one to three P.M. (followed by Joe's class at three) at Mountaineer Mall, Morgantown, starting September 29. Go to www.olliatwvu.org to sign up.
Most of the people in my class were in high school in 1962, so this music will resonate with them. My classes have been popular and well-reviewed. I was in seventh and eighth grade in 1962. I had my bar mitzvah, my voice changed (after my bar mitzvah); I got braces. I was tiny, but just starting to grow, and new kids, annexed in seventh grade, joined us in eighth. I tried to be friends with them, and eventually succeeded, more in ninth grade than eighth. In eighth I tried and failed to be a clown, and the new kids had established friendships among themselves going back to elementary school.
I was in the top class in seventh grade, after not being in that class in fifth and sixth. I was a whiz at our thrice-weekly Hebrew school, winning "Best Student" in sixth grade. But in seventh, in the top class, deluged with homework, I found it hard to keep up. My seventh-grade classmates included Rodger Kamenetz, the author of "The Jew In The Lotus" and other books. He started a Jewish Studies Program at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and later at the New Orleans campus. In eighth grade, we were joined by Wendy Sherman, who became Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton. I often think that my class at Sudbrook Junior High in Pikesville, Maryland was the smartest class in the history of Baltimore County Junior High Schools. If I'm right about that, then I was the dumbest one in that class. Not to mention an undiagnosed ADD case.
Mrs. Crain, our seventh grade CORE teacher, had us keep a notebook of assignments, in order, to turn in after a few weeks. While others turned in perfectly well-ordered folders of material, all I had was a handful of half-finished assignments. Mrs. Crain asked for a conference with my parents. She didn't believe me when I told her they refused to come in. She had my mother write a letter explaining why she couldn't come in. In the letter, my mother promised to help me with my schoolwork, which she never did.
Outside of my own life, the big issue I remember from 1962 was civil rights. Baltimore was still fully segregated, down to the weekday afternoon teen dance show, The Buddy Dean Show, which had African-American kids on alternate Fridays as "special guests." People who have seen some iteration of "Hairspray," based on the Buddy Dean Show, think that was made up. Our synagogue had stopped sponsoring trips to Gwynn Oak Park, the amusement park near our house, featured in "Hairspray" (filmed elsewhere as Gwynn Oak was torn down before the original "Hairspray") because they wouldn't allow African-Americans to go there. Diplomats from newly-independent African countries were refused lunch at restaurants on US 40 between Baltimore and Wilmington, while on their way to the United Nations in New York, creating international incidents. President Kennedy pushed up the schedule to build Interstate 95 to bypass those towns. Maryland House Restaurant was planned to be in the median of the highway, designed to be integrated. The road, now called Kennedy Expressway, opened in November, 1963, just before Kennedy was assassinated.
I took dance lessons in the spring of 1962. I learned the waltz, fox trot, cha-cha and mambo, my mother's idea being that I could dance with my grandmother at my bar mitzvah party. As it was, because it was a luncheon on Saturday afternoon, my Orthodox grandmother vetoed live music. My bar mitzvah was on October 27, the day the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. This was the first time I bargained with God. "Okay," I said, "There will be a nuclear war and we will all die. But can I please have my bar mitzvah first?"
For those of us living in suburban America, with two parents working before that was the norm, life was good. My parents paid $75 a month on their mortgage, they had a beautiful 1961 Oldsmobile convertible, which cost about $1500. They were still young and attractive at thirty-four and forty; my father had his first toupée. Aside from the usual issues of being twelve and thirteen, my life was good.
In music, too, this was a peak year for American pop music, before the British Invasion. This was the music Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were hearing in England. Lines were being crossed in popular music. African-American Ray Charles' album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" hit all the charts. Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and The Orlons, all from Philadelphia, crossed over to the Top 40 charts with dance hits "The Twist," "Mashed Potato Time" and "The Watusi." African-American owned record company Motown had hits by The Marvelettes, The Countours, The Miracles and Mary Wells. Jewish Artists like Neil Sedaka scored with "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," and Jewish composers like Carole King and Gerry Goffin had hits with "Up On The Roof" for The Drifters and "The Locomotion" for their babysitter, Little Eva, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote "Only Love Can Break A Heart" for Gene Pitney, and Phil Spector produced Pitney's "He's A Rebel" for The Crystals.
Italian-Americans also did well, with the hot new group of the year The Four Seasons, hits by Connie Francis, and Tony Bennett's famous "I Left My Heart In San Francisco."
Country music had Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" and several hits by pint-sized teenager Brenda Lee.
1962 was the year the soundtrack of "West Side Story" topped the charts from May through June 1963, the year of "My Son, The Folk Singer" by Allan Sherman, and the iconic first Peter, Paul and Mary album.
There was American music by and for everyone, in a way presaging the coming of age of the civil rights movement the following year, as kids across America were listening to music by Jews and African-Americans without prejudice.
I'm stoked for this class. 1962 was an era of hope, an era when we thought change might be for the good and our country would be more inclusive and more free.
My class is for six Thursdays from one to three P.M. (followed by Joe's class at three) at Mountaineer Mall, Morgantown, starting September 29. Go to www.olliatwvu.org to sign up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)