Marooned Sailor Can’t Get Back from the Philippines:

Part 1:  Local Man Hopes to Bring his Family Home

 Carter ‘Hop’ Cowan looks across the narrow strait from his rural home on Cebu Island and wishes that he and his family were back in the States.  But the sea captain’s course back to his homeland is not as easy as crossing the sixteen miles over to Pacijan Island from just outside Danoa City, where he lives with his wife and 14 year-old son.

“It’s hard to believe that after so many years of living at sea and fending for myself – and taking care of my crews and passengers at sea – I can’t manage our lives here,” Carter says, his eyes scanning the horizon as if searching for a safe passage out of this situation. 

Carter with his wife and son in happier days

“This situation” involves a 68 year-old seaman (still afflicted by wounds sustained when a boom slammed into his neck and head during a storm that sunk the yacht he was delivering from Japan to California), his 49 year-old wife Vivian (suffering the devastating effects of late-stage cancer), their son Hopkins (a very promising student), Carter’s own boat (left in northern Australia after foundering there), personal financial ruin caused by mounting medical bills, and lack of work for experienced men in the Philippines. 

“I’d find a way to sail us back to the US if my boat were seaworthy.  But here I am.  Old injuries keep me from the jobs I used to do, and I can’t earn passage for three of us back home.”

The irony is that when it went down in the mid-Pacific, the Empress took Carter’s entire collection of Asian art, statues, carvings and antique swords and knives – and that treasure now lays under two miles of water.  “Hell, I know exactly where that boat went down.  I got the coordinates from the transponder, and if I could only get at that boat, there’s a small fortune there just large enough to pay my off wife’s medical bills and put us back on our feet.”

Now impoverished by medical bills, Carter can’t even leave the Philippines, because he doesn’t even have the money to fly the 355 miles from Cebu to Manila, where the US State Department might lend him the money for a ticket home.  And his situation just deteriorates every day.  “Even my neighbors here can be a threat to my safety.  Once they know that there is nothing they can get from you, you’re useless to them.”

Carter, who graduated Thomas Dale High School in Chesterfield Virginia before attending Virginia Commonwealth University in the late 60s, moved to Harrisburg Pennsylvania in the early 70s.  He later returned to Virginia, where he lived in Richmond, Petersburg, Blacksburg, and Arlington, until he followed a girlfriend from Richmond to California’s Marin County in 1978, where he first got involved with the sailing life.  One friend remembers that Carter immediately fell into seagoing as if he were made for it.  And perhaps he was made for the sailor’s life:  after about a year, he shipped out from San Diego on the Taiyo, bound for Tahiti. 

In late 1979, Carter served aboard the Taiyo as an officer on the Sir John Barrow Memorial Expedition, under command of Glen Christian, an English-born direct descendant of Fletcher Christian.  Tracing part of the route of the HMS Bounty, the group did extensive research on Pitcairn Island that was recounted in a later documentary alternately titled Island of The Bounty and Children of The Bounty

Late in 1980 Carter wound up in Ala Wai Harbor in Hawaii, working as chief engineer on the Good Fortune, a 62-foot Garden ketch that had lain untended for several years after a mid-ocean mishap that resulted in the death of a crew member.  “The sail covers were shredded, and the caulking on the deck had shrunk and disintegrated.  The engine needed a lot of work, every bit of teak was pale grey, and the hull leaked.  Our crew gave that boat a brand-new life.”

By 1982, Carter was back in Midlothian Virginia, where he had spent his childhood.  He spent some time with his parents in Richmond, working in a boatyard and seeing old friends from Midlothian and the Richmond area while waiting for his next billet.  The next year, he went back to sea, heading for the South Pacific.  And for the next 17 years, Carter sailed the world, working in boatyards and refurbishing yachts when he wasn’t delivering yachts for the rich and famous. 

Carter and his wife Vivian were married in 1986, and the next year he captained The Sol on an expedition that that exposed to the world the very destructive muro-ami fishing operation, in which huge industrial pounding devices were used to smash coral reefs in order to drive the fish living there into waiting nets.  (Muro-ami was a scandalous practice that not only resulted in deaths of children used as divers, but also smashed the living coral into small fragments and despoiled huge sections of the life-giving reefs – longlasting and practically total destructive effects that have since been condemned by fishery-management agencies worldwide.)  Carter’s vessel carried the film crews that obtained the footage used by in different reports by Geraldo Rivera, Barbara Walters and 60 minutes reporters in 1987 and helped secure the ban on the destructive technique in the Philippines.



Carter on shipboard 

With the money from the muro-ami expedition, Carter purchased the Matilda in 1988, keeping it in Midlothian’s Tichou shipyard.  He then sailed again for the South Pacific.  During this period he continued his shipboard work, at the same time earning certificates in Celestial Navigation, Maritime Engineering, and Piloting, until getting his Captain’s ticket.  And even then he continued educating himself in the ways of the wind and tides – and in the laws of the sea.

In 1999, he went back to Petersburg Virginia to heal after receiving some serious injuries during a storm that sank the Empress in the mid-Pacific.   Once healed, he returned to the Philippines, hoping to get back to yacht delivery and the life of a sea captain.

And life continued, much as it had before.  Carter and his wife raised their son Hopkins, now an honors student currently enrolled in 7^th grade at North Eastern Cebu School. 

But the fair weather that Carter had enjoyed for so many years on the waves seemed to slip away for Carter.  Work slowed down, circumstances grew leaner, until he would leave to take charge of other people’s boats, while his wife and son lived aboard the Matilda.  But when his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2008, Carter’s life began to really change – work seemed to slip away with the tide, and the international financial crisis quickly changed the world of deep-water sailing. 

And that was only the beginning.  Medical bills mounted while work disappeared altogether in the bad economy that hit the Philippines like a tidal wave, affecting tens of thousands of workers.  So Carter headed for Australia after hearing a rumor of work there.  At that point, more disaster struck, as his boat was disabled at sea.  Barely able to continue paying rent on the tiny house for his family, Carter limped his beloved Matilda (now disabled) into Elizabeth Bay on the northeast coast of Australia’s Arnhem land, not far from Darwin in the Northern Territory.  The little boat was almost beyond repair – but that didn’t matter, because Carter had no money for any repairs at all and was running out of options.

Stranded, Carter managed to find a job as a mechanic at a pearl farm outside Darwin.  Sending his wages home to his wife, he was able to acquire various Australian visas so that he could continue working.  He abandoned the Matilda, and worked hard in hopes of a sea change for the better.  But that change never came, and Carter’s visa expired, forcing him out of Australia’s better economic atmosphere.  He was quoted in a local Darwin news story, saying that he didn’t mind the long working hours there.   “Immigration had a minor heart attack when I got here but we were able to work it out.  Basically I’ve been here on various working visas.  It’s a worthwhile project, the people I work with are pretty reasonable, and I’d rather work out here where the air is clean and the food is good than to be working in a ship yard in Darwin.”

Friends tell how Carter influenced them throughout his life.  Robert O, who met Carter at Pacific Maritime Academy and sailed with him out of Ala Wai, says, “No matter how big a boat is, it’s still pretty small.  This guy’s always had a generous spirit and a sense of humor – the kind you need to make long hauls across the ocean.”

Longtime friend Debra B says, “He taught me many, many things.  I’d grown up spending time with my dad outdoors, hiking, hunting.  And Carter re-introduced me to my love of the outdoors.  We had a lot of outdoor adventures together.  My half-vegetarian diet is based on all the cooking he taught me to do.”

And it’s a funny thing about sailing folk:  they keep in touch and fall out of touch as the wind and the waves take them away and may or may not bring them back.  You may never want to drink with the ones you want standing beside you on the deck – and vice versa.  And even so, you’d welcome either one of them like a long-lost sibling when they bump into you in some far-off port of call.  But the hard thing is that you can rarely find them when you need them. 

Those few friends he’s been able to contact cannot raise the money needed to help bring the family back, though they’ve contacted the Red Cross and even have found some money coming to Carter from the state of Virginia (the complicated process of even gaining access to the files would take months of work from overseas).  

Still, Carter shows the tenacity and strength he’s learned from years at sea.  He’s determined to get somehow back to sea, get his wife to the States where she can get better treatment for the cancer threatening her life, and teach his son the ways of the sailor.  Then, while watching the way the wind changes the surface of the Strait of Cebu, he says to no one in particular, “Always wanted to make the circumnavigation – I’ve planned it over and over in my mind.  Looks like it may not happen now.”

Readers can send advice, encouragement, or prayers to:  Captainswife44@hotmail.com.

Donations may be sent via PayPal to:  Captainswife44@hotmail.com.  

#                      30                    #

David Hakim is an internationally-published journalist and award-winning author who has run several newspapers – and recently received a commendation for his short story That Man in the London Aesthetica Competition.  He can be reached at 415.378.6170 or dhakim@earthlink.net

© 2013 Hakim - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: use without profit allowed only with author’s express written permission. Please don't wake up my attorney. Please.

TRADERS’ MARKET MORNING

This is an old piece from 1989 or 1990.  But the memories are as clear as the day I sat in the shade of a canopy and wrote them.

Bismillah, I have finished scrubbing the black-bottomed pots and the exotic cutlery in the tiny back kitchen at the Inn of the Mullah Nasrudin’s Donkey.  The Inn, spread beneath the gaily-colored canopies on a wide bed of straw, sleepily rests (like the donkey it is named after) at the top of Traders’ Market, where merchants, travelers, gypsies, laborers, dancing girls, peasants and the occasional seafarer come to find shelter or comradeship or romance or excitement.  Here, with the fragrant aura of spices and Turkish coffee floating on the breeze, they noisily suck through their teeth the boiling chai or strong black Eastern coffee.

Under the festive banners waving slowly in winds which shake out a fine coat of dust, the sprawl of shanties and tents which border the marketplace is nestled in a serene valley, not far from the highway that leads to the great city.  The little valley is watched over by lazily-circling hawks or raucous crows in the daytime and, in the nighttime chill, by the silently swooping owls.

Now, under heaped-up tumbles of clouds, the rolling hills languidly bathe in the sun’s clear light.  I can see blue jays slip between the swaying bright mustard stems, stems which seem just barely strong enough to hold the fragile weight of the jays.  The low hillocks around are like seas of tall grass, deep greens fading to the tan of dried straw, undulating currents and waves in the breezes.

And in the deserted little tent-town, the hard clay roads around Traders’ Market will grow even more silent in the glowing mantle of twilight.  Those of us who stay here between the crowded and noisy market-days, who labor building or repairing, or who feed those who labor or make wares to sell – those of us for whom this Valley of the Owl is now home, even for a little while – we will gather under the wide canopy of the Inn of the Mullah Nasrudin’s Donkey for our evening meal and we shall talk or play music and warm ourselves with the Mullah’s hot drinks.

But that will be much later, and just now, the kitchen having been patiently cleaned and my morning soup finished, I have put on my mirrored skullcap and my wide chain bracelets and I have come to sit in the long back camp off the Inn.  The back camp is a wide oval yard surrounded by tented beds under another bright canopy, littered at one end with the tools and brooms and buckets that are used in the Inn.  The rest of the yard is more domestic, strewn with the makings of extended camp:  bags overflowing with clothing, laundry strung on ropes, the cases of musical instruments stacked haphazardly against a wall, the belongings of the servers and workers at the Inn.

Out across the fields of high grass that drape the low curve of the swelling hills – not so far, though, as the line of dark oaks which seem to stand with unmoving branches even in the strongly gusting wind – a stout young man is working, digging a post-hole for another tent pole, his broad back shiny with sweat, his movements slow and deliberate in the gathering heat.  Around me are the sounds of the coffee-house:  the slow whisper of the broom as the sweeper makes his way through the empty kitchen, the gentle scrapings of a fiddle being tuned, the ratcheting sound of the cards as the players gossip among themselves, the counterpoints of several hammers striking the notes of different nails.

I am at home here – oddly at home in this travelers’ camp, in the very timelessness of this stopping-off place, this passing-through place, this temporary home of ever-returning happinesses.  It is among the changing faces of this host of travelers that I have found a comfort.  From wherever it is that they come, on the way to wherever it is that they are going, in the shade of the Inn their paths meet.

To the crossroads of Traders’ Market they come, with smiles or with tears, wise or brash or cautious or cunning, to buy and sell, to trade and argue, to learn and teach, to touch and share and fight and love, each with the other:  the merchants in long coats and colored jackets and foreign-looking hats, dancing girls caressed by their veils and bangles and bells, laborers in rough shirts or shirtless with neck-scarves pulled over faces against the dust, the laughing dark-eyed belly dancer with the lotus tattoo on her face, the freebooter who has found his sea-wit more profitable upon the land, jugglers and jokesters  who entertain travelers for a few coins, serving-girls looking chastely proper or adventurous and sultry, the artists and musicians who paint or play in the background, adding the gentle spices of their several Muses to our lives.

And late at night the gambling men drink strong spirits with their devil-black coffee, or strong spirits from hand-to-handed bottles between laughs and lies and odd bits of their stories tossed out like stray bets in their games.  And in the slow morning, the servers step to the rhythm of the Mullah’s snores… ah, the Mullah – always the Mullah, grand and watchful, a great slow presence amid the busy activity of the coffeehouse.

From my spot in the back-camp, I hear among these sounds the marketplace picking up its pace, seeming to stretch and yawn in the sun as if in preparation for a busy afternoon.  I realise that the quiet time will soon end.  For in a few days it will be Market Day, and the crowds will come – like faraway thunder approaching, like the horizon’s gathering dustcloud moving ever closer, inevitable, inescapable.

The crowds – foreigners in their own land, it seems, restless and impatient and rude – are foreign to themselves and are foreign to us, who were born side by their sides, who live and love at the shore of their busy world, who speak the same language differently and seek other goals and see other dreams under the same velvet sky of night.  And when they come, those crowds – trying to touch another life though their arms are too short and their hearts too hollow, to touch a bit of the life that flows through our eyes and through the tongues of our hearts, through our bonds and friendships – when they come, then shall we don our festal masks and sing them the smells of the gypsy fires, the eerie color of the rose-lipped dawn in the high mountain passes,  the lover’s caress of gentle waves in far-off silksanded bays.

And one or two will come out of the crowd, will be able to hear our hearts’ songs and know something of our thoughts – and some of us will talk with them and smile openly and friendships will be born.  And around that little scene of happiness in the crowded and noisy Traders’ Market, others of us will sell our wares and sing our songs and pocket the coins of our labors.

After the revel is ended, when the drinking and dancing and buying and trading is done, then back to the near-empty marketplace shall we meet again – here, it will be here in this quiet Traders’ Market that we shall gather.  And in the long hot afternoons, under the breeze-kissed canopies, those of us who live here will share our coffee or chai and gossip and tell of what has passed on Market Day.  And once again, beneath the gliding hawks, the sounds of quiet labor will echo in the Valley of the Owl.

Yes, today is quiet, the thunder and dust of the crowd is far away and my prayers are all said, and the long-handled coffee urns and the bright slick knives have all been cleaned with care, ma’ashallah.

© 2012 Hakim - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: use without profit allowed, but only with author’s express written permission. Please don't wake up my attorney. Please.

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - Nine O’clock update

Morning comes early to the Cardiac Ward, as it does in hospitals everywhere.  And though yesterday’s Main Event was not without delays and complications, we’re still reporting LIVE from Six North here in Glendale.

And while our story was overshadowed on Sunday by the Oscar show, we weren’t able to make a broadcast last evening due to a clutter of tests and other impediments throughout the day, leaving our viewers plenty of time to ponder the expected questions during the last remnants of Oscar madness.

Monday’s schedule was taken up with various tests in advance of the Main Event, starting with a Resting Test early in the morning.  Viewers will remember that there was no breakfast yesterday, in preparation for the Stress Test – guess they want you running on a treadmill with a light head.  And while other patients were celebrating lunchtime turkey on wheat bread sandwiches (viewed longingly as we were wheeled down the hallway, riding in a wheelchair dressed like Gandhi) we had to content ourselves with passing that Stress Test with flying colors.

And ‘flying’ almost turned out to be no metaphor.  That Stress Test, instead of being cut short like the previous on was, ran the full length, as we were put on a treadmill that was then turned up in increments to about seventy miles an hour.  Hilarity ensued.

(Parts of the preceding description may be lacking in veracity.  But not the part about hilarity.)  And speaking of humor, how does the following rate for an exchange, taken in context?  Pierre, the ER intake nurse, says to me, “I figured you have some history.”  “Oh, yah – I got some history.”  Ok, maybe you had to be there – moving on.

At one point, then whole enterprise took on the aspect of a scene from I Love Lucy – the candy factory or the bakery production line, not the head-in-the-trophy episode – and we fully anticipated being flung off the treadmill into the surrounding lab equipment in the climactic pratfall.

And that trip to the basement, as the previous one, did not include a visit to the morgue – where’s Quincy M.E. when you need him?  But the staff who administered the test (Annoush the lightly anxious lab tech) were as expert and accommodating as the rest of the staff we’ve encountered here.

We were in the midst of prepping our notes for the evening report when we had a nice visit from Steve, a Nisei nutritionist who specialises in diet for a healthy heart.  We inadvertently embarrassed Nisei Steve with a question about the two empty piercings in his earlobe…  After some hesitation he said, “Misspent youth.”

Discussion about a healthy diet awakened hunger, since we hadn’t had anything to eat since the late-evening snack of the burrito the night before.  Crankiness and a mild headache was the logical result.  And, of course, the annoying anchor of the IV tower was present for the entire day until late in the evening, a constant reminder that one may hide but one can’t run.

And once again, all the staff here is cheerful and helpful, as well as professional in demeanor.  Very pleased with the human element.  Adding to the building list of great staff persons are Gonzalo, Jennie, Adrian, Edna, Donald, Anna, Douglas, Linda, Jay-jay, Doris, Robert, Skye, Maria, Eduardo and Melissa.

The Main Event itself was accompanied by family confusion and other issues, predominantly the worry of octogenarian parents.  While we were mostly bored with the entire run-up to the Main Event – having had so much experience in these areas after a lifetime record of nine surgeries and scores of ‘procedures’ – apparently others were concerned about various aspects, no matter how much they were reassured.  In fact, a state of expanding returns was reached at one point, as the reassurances seemed to actually *increase* feelings of doubt and uncertainty.

And of course the situation was not helped by certain scheduling uncertainties.  The doctor, described by the OR staff as “optimistic about time,” wound up being like two and half hours late.  Something about his previous surgery running long, making him rather tardy for our little procedure, leaving us fully prepped on the hard and punishing table.  But patients must be willing to have patience, so we tolerated the discomfort as long as we could before telling the nurse that it was time to go walkabout.

And of course that didn’t happen, but we were transferred back to a more comfortable situation for the duration of the wait.  Finally the doc showed up and we had a nice conversation about heist movies – and confidence game movies.  And then the morphine kicked in, which removed from the brain the title of a great heist movie that he recommended.

We came out of the chemical haze in good fettle, and pretty soon after that the crazy parents showed up with a taco and some of Mom’s home-made chili.  Yum.

Everything a success:  the ablation didn’t take too long and it was all in all much like having a tooth pulled.

This will be our final LIVE report from Six North of Glendale Memorial Hospital, and thanks to all for following this not-too-exciting story!

                       #                     #                     #

oh, PS:  For anyone who thought that 'Argo' really deserved a Best Pic Oscar, I'll point out that it merely joins the long list of falsely-elevated films that exploited Hollywood politics tugged heartstrings that were louder than common sense, among which these injustices stand out:

1941 - How Green Was My Valley over Citizen Kane
1948 - Hamlet over Treasure of the Sierra Madre
1976 - Rocky over Taxi Driver, Network, *and* All the President's Men?
1979 - Kramer vs Kramer over All That Jazz and Apocalypse Now?
1980 - Ordinary People over The Elephant Man and Raging Bull?

Really?  Argo over Lincoln?  Really?

And don't even bring up the Deer Hunter in 1978… please.

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital – Morning update

Before I start my report, Walter, I just have to say, “What the hell was the Academy thinking?”  I like Ben Affleck, and I don’t agree with some of my friends that he should stick with his duckish insurance company and get out of the show business.  I liked the critic’s note in The New Yorker that he is the actor most at the mercy of his jawline, and I find him well-suited to both acting and directing.  But a best pic statue for Argo?  Forget ‘not so much’ – not at all.

Ok, here in Glendale, the story was much different than *fifteen hundred people* at the Governor’s Ball last night.  (Since when has the Gov’s Ball had so long a guest-list?)  As crews are rolling up the red carpet at the Dolby Theater and sweeping up the post-Oscar party-rooms, dawn’s rosy glow creeps across the San Bernardino mountains and the scene at GMH is much more subdued.

Dr Habashy, the meerkattish renologist, made me feel comfortable right away by calling me ‘habibi.’  Though there was no wafting on the air of chai or coffee, I seemed to hear a taksim in the background for the slimmest moment, over the chatter of gaiety going on in several languages at the nurse’s station right outside my door.  I like waking to the sound of laughter and the rapid-fire talk that I can’t understand.

Dr Habashy appeared (in stylish t-shirt, strategically-faded jeans and expensive driving shoes) in the murky light to reassure me that I may finally be disconnected from my chief nemesis (yes, that is redundundant, but entirely fitting):  the IV bag leashed to my arm.  I don’t know why I need this infernal annoyance.  The catheter in my arm (connected to some kind of fishing-bobberish valve strung in the middle of the supply tube that catches on everything) is constantly a bother (I have to unplug it if I want to leave the orbit of the bed – which is like every hour or so because of the super-hydration that the contraption occasions – and when I go walkabout it must be dragged along like a giraffe out for its micturational duties).  I  just can’t understand why I have to be hooked up to it at all.  As much as I might snark around about the food, this damn IV setup is really the only annoyance about my mini-vacation here on Six North.

Breakfast in the predawn hour

The one-liter bag of saline (more salt?  really?) finally emptied itself (with the help of a pump) after 29 hours – that’s what, three centiliters an hour?  Kinda ridiculous.  The supply line hooks on everything, like a child pulling on the doorknob to anchor himself out of having to go to the dentist.  I told them and told them, “Just give me a straw and I’ll drink the damn stuff.”  (I didn’t even suggest that they put some gin in it, as I normally would!)

And what you’re hearing behind me, Walter, is the parade of night nurses and orderlies going off-shift – “Bye by Jesse, bye Malu, bye Emma!” – after a long but quiet night here at Six North.  At the risk of applying a cliché, it really is like a family here.

Which reminds me, I have to add to the list of wonderful folks Pierre, Jesse, Abby & Albert.

This morning’s waking was different, however:  lovely Emma, the Yeravani siren who stopped me for speeding in the hallway on my first evening here, had suddenly turned from a brisk effectuator into a hyperefficient automaton, jerking me out  my  dream with a madrugadal demand for blood, and in my sophorific haze I was certain that she was Doc’s wife Assiduacia from Snow White & the Seven Dwarves.  And no matter how many times I tell them that I don’t want the blood-draw from the ditch (the soft crook of my elbow), it seems they always head to that spot as if it’s the only vein in my body.

I ate the last of the burrito last night and there is no breakfast this morning.  No juice, no water even, no nada.  Neante.  The big stress test comes today – in a short while in fact – and later in the day, the Main Event, so no food til dinner, such as that will be.  The continue to tacos haunt me – the lovely tacos that can’t be eaten, the phantom tacos just out of my reach.  The Americanos, crunchy and overstuffed.  The little blanda morditas, waiting for the cilantro and the spray of lime.  My nose reaches into the air in search of the savory tang of grilled chicken.   I am Tantalus, chained to an IV tower and smelling hospital cooking when not imagining merghez, chalao, or seared bonita with wasabi dressing.

There is still fake beer in the cajon by the bed, but none of that either til I come back in the late afternoon from the Ablatatory.  And Robert Louis Stevenson, another comida-obsessive author, floats into my consciousness:  “I dream of cheese – mostly toasted.”

I missed taking a pic of last night’s repast, because when they brought it in I was deep in conversation on the merits of poetry and the plotting of fiction with the lovely Echo Tech Lisa.  So the skinless tarragon chicken breast sat untouched for an hour, alongside its companion zucchini and roasted potatoes.  Then my hero, Dr McKenzie, visited to discuss the Main Event, and I was so famished that I made short work of it while discussing the merits of various ‘treatment modalities.’  So, no pic.  But I’m here to report that the meal was an improvement, even if the pechuga was a bit dry (not that *I* might have had anything to do with that, by leaving it on the side while conversationalising with Lisa).

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - 11:30 pm update -

David Hakim

February 24, 2013

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - 11:30 pm update -

so a lot of people *always* complain about friends who tweet or post about the 'wonderful' sandwich they just had or how great that foot massage feels (*while* they're getting it), and i have never seen the appeal of reporting in from the supermarket line or the carwash.

and then here i am, in the cardiac ward of the hospital on one more saturday night, and i thinks to myself, "well, why not?"

so i'm here to tell you that the food is somewhat adequate and too salty (!)... but the people here are cool and helpful and great in pretty much every respect.

had a nap for like three hours in the ER after they told me to forget getting any morphine. like they stopped all attention when they realised i wasn't gonna croak on the spot, so i had all that time to snooze. because of that, i was keyed up when we got to the CW... thinking, "well, my doc says i should get exercise every day, and i just had that nap."

so here i am taking a stroll around the floor, like on my seventeenth lap when this charge nurse pulls me over for speeding!

yah, i was shocked too. "too fast?" says i. "how can you tell?"

"heart rate's over a hundred," says she, "so get in the slow lane or i'll run you in." (parts of this exchange might not be verbatim)

just got me a nightcap (full liter bag of Saline Light - "breakfast of former champions!") - dominic the cheerful orderly guy just brought it in, sans paper umbrella.

"cheers!" i said as i first tasted the metallic flavor hitting my taste buds.

he looked at me slanticular and smiled: "sure!"

not sure if that "signs of the times" magazine came from him, but it was an interesting angle to see the world from.

moms came earlier and brought me some enchiladas - she smuggled them in wrapped in an old new yorker, so i'm set for now: food and reading. check. (see accompanying photo, live from the scene)

breakfast will be another story. longing for tacos. wistfully remembering the best tacos in ensenada (in hollywood with capt slanty). or those ones actually *in* ensenada. or those ones in mazatlan. or those ones at hotel colonial just south of rosarito with ric. or mi tierra. yah, it's tough in glendale on a saturday night: yearning for even one. small. relleno.

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - 9 O’clock update

 This update was originally scheduled for the 11 AM slot, but technical difficulties got in the way, so we’ve rescheduled it for the 9 PM broadcast.

So yah, breakfast was a little sketchy.  What’s the deal with “Belgian Waffles” anyway?  The association of “Belgian” is misleading – they are nothing like Belgian bulldogs.  Here is what I found when I lifted the insulating cover on the plate:  two tiny waffles (suspiciously like frozen waffles and nothing like actual Belgian waffles) with two small turkey sausages on a plate with a piece of miniature purple cabbage the size of a confession wafer, which was the most attractive thing on the plate.

So my mind is going, Ok, we got some kind of post-modern hotdogs here that they expect you to put fake maple syrup on and nom nom nom boy that’s some good eatin’.  It all makes me wonder what Jim Harrison (The Raw & the Cooked) would make of this.

I mean, look, the waffles really do resemble the crypt systems in modern graveyards, which are like the cubbyholes of old post offices but all poured concrete, installed at the same time and capped later to keep out vermin et al.  The other visual association is with “waffle stompers” – vibram-soles on shoes.  Yum!  That’s attractive.  So you got these “waffles.” 

 

And then you got this little cluck-weiner bedded there.  Now I don’t need eggs, and I certainly don’t want a Grand Slam, but jeez… there’s got to be something edible around this joint.

I know that airline food is notoriously terrible, and hospital food is famously terrible.  I get it about the airline food – they have factories where they make about ten thousand meals at once and they’re bottom-lining and you’re trapped in this speeding aluminum cylinder miles above the welcoming earth, so you can’t complain.  And you’re probably hungry, right?  I mean after the long run down the concourse to the gate and all.  So you’re gonna eat at least some of it.

But what’s the deal with hospitals?  Is the quality level of the food meant to make sure you don’t come back?  Are they doing you a favor on some subliminal level?  You’d think they want to take pride in the food – especially since you might want to stay longer in the costly room.

Why no miso soup?  Oh yah, too much salt in the miso.   But you know – and this is no kidding – the staff here is exemplary.  Emma & Francisco & Hector & Kathleen & Lisa & everyone is just super.  And not only that, they laugh real authentic laughs at my attempts at humor.

 

Hector took me down to the basement in a wheelchair, bound for the big stress-test machine that is rather reminiscent of a MRI maw.  And I thought, The basement, huh?  So I says to him, “Hey, Hector – you ain’t takin me to the morgue, are ya?”

And Hector says, “Naw, you ain’t dead.  Why would I take you to the morgue?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  I kinda pictured you  opening the door and sayin, ‘See all those guys?  If you don’t straighten up, you’re gonna wind up here!’”

And he answers, “Scared straight, huh?”

“Scared stiff, is more like it.  If I owned a hospital, that’s what I’d do.”

 So dear dear Lorin smuggled in a nice fat burrito and a six-pack of fake beer, so lunch was double good (as if to disprove my assertions about the food in the graphs above, the spaghetti & meatballs was pretty good – al dente to the tooth-edge!   Not as good as Mom's, but then whose is?).  We had a nice visit, and then off she went.

Now sharing poetry with Lisa, the Echo Tech.  And ain’t that a cool phrase for the moniker…

Reporting LIVE from Glendale Memorial Hospital - 11:30 PM update

So a lot of people always complain about friends who tweet or post about the 'wonderful' sandwich they just had or how great that foot massage feels (while they're getting it), and I’ve never seen the appeal of reporting in from the supermarket line or the carwash.

And then here I am, in the cardiac ward of the hospital on one more Saturday night, and I thinks to myself, "Well, why not?"

So I’m here to tell you that the food is somewhat adequate and too salty (!)...  But the people here are cool and helpful and great in pretty much every respect.

Had a nap for like three hours in the ER after they told me to forget getting any morphine. Like they stopped all attention when they realised I wasn't gonna croak on the spot, so I had all that time to snooze.

Because of that, I was keyed up when we got to the CW... thinking, "Well, my doc says I should get exercise every day, and I just had that nap."

So here I am taking a stroll around the floor, like on my seventeenth lap when this charge nurse pulls me over for speeding!

Yah, I was shocked too. "Too fast?" says I. "How can you tell?"

She points to the monitor on her rolling cart, where my name blinks like a "Don't Walk" sign in two-inch-tall red letters – then swings that accusing finger to the transponder slung against my chest.

"Heart rate's over a hundred," says she, "so get in the slow lane or I’ll run you in, pal." (Parts of this exchange might not be verbatim.  Your mileage may vary.  Contents may have shifted.  Objects are closer than they appear.)

Just got me a nightcap (full liter bag of Saline Light - "Breakfast Of Former Champions!") - Dominic the cheerful orderly guy just brought it in, sans paper umbrella.

"Cheers!" I said, as I first tasted the metallic flavor hitting my taste buds.

He looked at me slanticular and smiled: "Sure."

Not sure if that "Signs of the Times" magazine came from him, but it was an interesting angle to see the world from.

Moms came earlier and brought me some enchiladas - she smuggled them in wrapped in an old New Yorker, so I’m set for now: food and reading. Check. (See accompanying photo, live from the scene.)

Breakfast will be another story.

Longing for tacos. Wistfully remembering the Best Tacos in Ensenada (in Hollywood with Captain Slanty).

Or those ones actually in Ensenada.

Or those ones in Mazatlan: tacos de atun, in a rich tomato sauce.

Or those ones at Hotel Colonial just south of Rosario with Ric.

Or at Perone's on Boulevard Baby Heroes in Tijuana.

Or Tacos Delta near Sunset Junction, where Lucille crosses Sunset.

Or, while we're in that neighborhood,  Casita de Campo on Hyperion.

Or Mi Tierra... always.

Yah, it's tough in Glendale on a Saturday night: yearning for even One. Small. Relleno.